It's only taken me twenty months, but I think I've finally found my writing voice, and hit my sweet spots, to boot. Getting here has been a large battle, in which my biggest enemy was myself. Every day, there was something about myself that I was fighting against, whether it was an overgrown ego, self doubt, impatience, or lack of drive. In the last year and two-thirds, I've learned that those demons just come with the territory. They will be around as long as I continue to write. They're there to test my ambition, and to test the product of the work I complete. I'm finally getting used to beating back those beasts on at least a weekly basis if I want to get any good work done.


When I started writing, I was only working on my novel. I had this incredibly naive notion that it was going to be a bestseller, and that I was going to become an overnight household name. (I won't lie and say this is no longer my dream. Now, I just acknowledge how unlikely it is that something like this will happen; there are many amazing, unpublished authors out there, and we're all grasping for that elusive big book deal!) In that first novel, my prose was shit, and the ego that fueled it was entirely unearned. The first time I went back and reexamined my preliminary manuscript, I remember wanting to throw out the whole damn thing. I thought that was a sign I wasn't cut out for the task I'd set my hopes on. I've since learned to love that feeling, because it means I am able to recognize the places where I can still grow and do better.  What a blessing!


I thought I'd reached a point in the rewriting and revising process when the thing was ready, and I started shopping it around to various agents. I received a load of rejections, and was really disheartened. Then I met a Vietnam vet who started sharing his stories about the war. They inspired me to start working on a new project: compiling shorter pieces about the experience of war from veterans of various conflicts.

Writing short pieces was a new game for me, and I really enjoyed the freedom I felt writing non-fiction after the painstaking process of creating timelines and personal backgrounds that fill out fiction. Pretty soon, I knew I had a piece that needed to find a home, and that was when I discovered Words After War, and a new world of publishing.

With Words After War, I had my first success. It didn't come with money, but what it came with was a sense of achievement and accomplishment from an external actor who didn't have to love what I put on the page. Best of all, with my first piece being published, I knew that my observations and writings about the world around me were out there for others to share. I could finally be in a dialogue with other authors and readers, rather than just typing away into a massive Word Document that might not go anywhere.