Writing Thoughts – Sitting In the Writer’s Chair

I wrote my first novel in 1976 when I was ten (yup, fessing up to my age). Nadia Comaneci of Romania had just broken the scoring machines at the Montreal Olympics which weren’t designed to display the full four digits of a 10.00 perfect score. It was the Bicentennial summer. And I had an active imagination.

Photo courtesy of the Montreal Gazette

So, I began my first opus (is that a contradiction in terms?). It took a couple of weeks to type out on a Smith-Corona typewriter. The heroine was a seventy-pound gymnast who fought evil governments and generals across three star systems (this was pre-Star Wars, y’all) and two hundred years. My masterpiece weighed in at fifty-two pages (double-spaced).

The story predicted the fall of the Soviet Union (yeah, a lot of people saw that coming, but I was ten) and the rise of the European Union. At the ripe old age of eleven, I considered myself a writer.

And that was because, even at the age of eleven, I’d already put myself in the writer’s chair. I’d done some serious seat-time (this to be taken in perspective). I’d typed out pages and, because this was before word processors, had to re-type them, over and over.

That’s what writers do.

Four decades later, I still think it’s okay to call myself a writer. But, after four decades, I’m not ashamed to admit there’s a lot to learn about my craft. Fortunately, I’ve gotten to work with some terrific authors and editors. In these Writing Thoughts posts, I share what I’ve learned (so far).