hen I was young, I was reading a book on anime (this was back before Akira, and if you don’t know what that was because you are too young or too old, shame on you). There was a picture of a Japanese artist sitting in front of a pyramid study room in his back yard, something someone had told him to make. It was supposed to give him all sorts of mystical triangle powers of creativity. “All I do is sit in there and drink sake,” he told the interviewer.

I didn’t understand that – if you can draw so magnificently, how could you ever tire of your own creative work?

Now, digesting my 56th birthday cake, I’m reflecting on it.

Twenty years ago, I was going to set the world on fire. I religiously wrote Tuesday and Thursday nights. I co-wrote Don’t Jettison Medicine with my sister, and churned out articles for years. I posted out Fire and Bronze enough times to get it into hardback release. I even went through the hassle of getting this website regenerated (webmastering it myself after the stiff F&B version), leaning how to webdesign in Joomla. All of this was a lot of work.

And now? I’m not sure. I’m sorta pushing the local shop to stock Early ReTyrement – they offered a Sunday table at a local author show but I can’t work up the enthusiasm. I still generate these blogs and do a little writing on the side (as you can see from my submission to an English freelance collection, posted HERE last week). But it’s not the same.

I haven’t submitted Indigo for months. And I keep telling myself I need to sit down some Sunday and post out three submissions just like I used to do. But it’s discouraging. The publishing world is changing. Tastes are changing. My grand novel might be too long for modern attention spans. And I’m shocked that Watership Down, the book that inspired my own work, is completely unknown in this CGI world.

I know where this is going while I write it, so I’ll say it for the folks in the back – I need to get those three submissions out. And since I have this blog of intentions, it looks like I’m drawing another line to fight for – this means I need to submit them next Sunday so I can report a success.

So stay tuned. I’ll tell you how it went.

>>>IF YOU WANT TO READ MY LABOR OF LOVE, GO HERE – CHEAP AND EASY TO WRAP FOR CHRISTMAS!<<<