About writing

Recently I ran into an author/illustrator of books, Richard Torrey. I’ve been acquainted with him for years, ever since I had his daughter in my class. We got to talking about storytelling and writing. He was in the process of sending his second proof of a book he was working on to his publisher. I mentioned that I am still interested in becoming a published author some day, but haven’t worked much on any new stories (fiction wise) since my Dora and the Jade of Knowledge story. His comment to me was to just keep on writing.  He mentioned that he had been at a writer’s conference recently where a famous author said it took almost 20 years to get published, so I shouldn’t get discouraged. He also mentioned another famous quote, I think attributed to Thomas Edison, stating that as long as I keep writing/inventing, even if most of my work is poor, I will eventually find some gems. Something like that.

I guess the true quote and I’m not sure who stated it is that if I don’t write a lot or at all, I am guaranteed 100% that I won’t find that gem. So I write. Part of the difficulty in deciding what to write is that everything that I write I try to post on my blog. This creates a number of dilemmas. There are a number of things that I could write about, which might be in the personal realm that people I might be referring to might object to, that. I don’t write those since they would not be posted, hence I would have no one to share them with. There are fictional pieces that I could work on that would take a while to develop and revise and perfect, and again I don’t write them, because I tend to want to post my writing right a way. I’m not sure readers of this blog would be interested in reading sections of stories that aren’t developed yet. Then again, based on the number of people that have read this blog so far, I really shouldn’t worry much about that. My main goal is that I like to share what I write and enjoy feedback on it.

What it comes down to is that I should write a lot more. I should focus more on my writing, without the end goal that it will be published on the web. To do that, I must write more things on my own and then just save them on my computer. When and if I come up with something noteworthy, then I should post it. In that way I can write everyday and about anything I want and just see where it goes. That is the direction that I plan to go in.

I’ve had a number of ideas on what to do with my Dora story. I’ve always wanted to write a sequel, in fact I even started the sequel shortly after I wrote it and never got anywhere with it. It went like this:

Around the stone and under the tree
A treasure worth having; that could fill you with glee
Or a mind full of sadness that will make you quite mad
For having lost, what you wish you had had
Make sure you choose right; make sure it’s your best
You’ll get just one chance to succeed in your quest.

Will was bored with being king.  Dora could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, and feel it in his touch.
They had ruled well for many years.  But times had changed.

My other thought was to rewrite Dora again, but this time as a parallel story from Dora’s point of view. This is an interesting challenge for a writer.

And lastly, to rewrite Dora as a telling story, rather than a reading one. The difficulty with it now is length, if I’m going to tell it at the venues that I tell my stories to now (schools and libraries). I need to make it more concise and maintain its dramatic, folklorish quality. I had done that with my Jeremy the Frog story, which I think worked well in the performance that I did tell it at.

And there ends this tale. Not that my writing has been consistent and frequent on this blog, but hopefully with me writing more frequently for myself, the posts that I make will be better developed. And who knows, someone might actually read them.