Why I Write

The primary answer to the question, “Why do I write”, is simply because I want to. The problem for me was that while I have always wanted to be a writer, I always feared that I did not have what it took to succeed as one.

In High School I joined the journalism club, the yearbook staff, the newspaper staff as an advertisement designer, the speech club and through it all I never stopped dreaming of being a writer. My lack of self confidence, however, left me shirking, avoiding and outright refusing the responsibilities entrusted to me.

By the time I graduated, the only creative accomplishments I could claim were making a complete fool of myself on the one and only speech competition I entered and a few half-hearted short stories I managed to throw together for my twelfth grade creative writing course.

My fear of failure had my dreams in a headlock and it would take many long years for my dreams to finally break the strangle hold. Nearly twenty years to be exact.

I was thirty-eight before I finally started to seriously consider having a future with writing. By this time I had dropped out of college, watched two marriages crash down in failure, alienated nearly all of my friends and family and brought myself as close to bankruptcy as is humanly possible without actually having to file.

The catalyst that finally got my butt in gear and my pen in motion was as simple as an oil change; my car’s, not mine.

That morning my second wife and I had one of the few arguments we ever suffered, and needing some time to myself, I jumped into my car and drove it to my mechanic. Being a bit perturbed with my wife, I didn’t tell her where I was going as I was leaving, and since I was working rather irregular hours at the time, I figured she assumed I was going to the office.

I had the car’s oil changed, and still feeling a bit upset I was all ready to go by myself to watch a movie when something told me I needed to head right home.

I arrived at home and ran headfirst into my wife and her family systematically dismantling everything we had accumulated during our nine years living together. Her family scattered like rats upon seeing me arrive and they left my wife and I alone together in our half empty apartment. I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me and did not care what I had to say. Eventually, she left me alone also, and I found myself sitting in our vacuous apartment and going over, what I thought was a rather model relationship, in my mind.

It took about a half-hour for the import of what was occurring to sink in. If I had gone to work, or to the movies or anywhere else that day, I would have returned home to a bunch of empty rooms.

After sitting down for my half-hour of enlightenment, I realized I needed to get to work packing up my stuff. I loaded everything of mine that was left and would fit into my sub-compact Hyundai Accent and drove away from our apartment for the final time. The reality that after 38 years of life, I was able to fit everything I owned into such a small car and still have room to spare left me depressed and feeling sorry for myself. To combat my emotional mood, I turned on the radio to my favorite country music station. Hearing Toby Keith sing American Soldier reminded me that there are those with more difficult situations than mine and knocked me clean off of my pity pot.

My second failed marriage, especially the manner in which it dissolved, could have sent me into depression, caused me to take up drinking again, pushed me towards drugs, or occasioned me to sit in a puddle of my own tears wallowing in self-pity. Instead, I chose to have faith that God never gives us more than we can handle and to use this radical change in my everyday routine to rewrite the final chapters of my autobiography.

For nine years I had been neglecting my real family by assigning all of my resources to look after the one I gained through marriage. Luckily we didn’t have any kids to complicate things further, so with her abandoning me, I decided that where I belonged was back with my blood relatives in Minnesota. I drove my overloaded car from California to Minnesota in three days.

I secured a job, paying much less than I was accustomed to, helping out elderly people with Alzheimer’s and Dementia; a job which provided intense personal satisfaction, even though it was very demanding. I started a diet and exercise regimen, of my own design, which took me from an out of shape 36" waist to a trim and sexy 32" one in just under three months. I branched out in the type of books I was reading to broaden my horizons and I started writing my first novel.

Today I finished the first draft of the novel, just over 20,000 words, and only one month and three days from when I commenced. I still have a lot of caressing and finessing to do before it will be publishable, but with the confidence I gained from taking a tragedy and turning it into success, I know that I will finish it and see it published, fulfilling my dream of being a writer. So the answer to the question, “Why do I write”, is more than just “because I want to”, rather, it is “because I refuse to let any obstacle stand between me and my dreams.”