A Writer's History

I have kept damn near every piece that I have ever written.  I say “damn near,” because I lost my earliest work due to the files on my 3.5 floppy becoming “corrupted.”  So, all the movie scripts I wrote with the intention of filming with my friends have been lost. Everything from 4th grade through junior high… gone, which probably isn’t a bad thing. 

My oldest surviving piece dates back to the summer of 1997.  Since then I have written dozens of poems and short stories. 

In the spring of 1999, my short story “Shadows of the Night,” won an honorable mention in my high school’s creative writing contest. 

While attending Macalester College, I had two pieces published in the campus’s weekly newspaper, The Mac Weekly.  One was a poem entitled “Talik, the Barbarian.”  The other was a “Letter to the Editor” complaining about the tastelessness of one of their authors.  Lol - I didn’t know that they were going to publish it in the following issue.

I have never been greatly interested in writing short stories.  I have always had my eye set on publishing a novel.  During the summer of 2000, after having attempted to start five separate novels, I began what would become my first completed manuscript, The Dragon’s Pawn.  It took four years.  In the end, all it did was teach me what not to do,  which of course did not sit well with me at the time.  It would be easier to start over than to attempt to edit it.  I will likely never touch it again.

Three years later, in 2007, I sat down to write the outline to Temporaltorium, my second completed manuscript.  However, it wasn’t until after I graduated the following year that I truly began writing.  It only took two years.

With my time spent editing and soliciting literary agents, I have not written anything substantial since I finished the novel almost a year ago.