I’ve just completed my first novel. ‘just’ and ‘completed’ being relative terms when referring to the act of writing a book, as I have come to find out. The actual first pass on writing The Secret Life of Statues took about two months. Though as I dip into editing and researching how best to get the book published, I find myself nose deep in a morass of terms I previously had no reference for.
What do I need a platform for? At five foot eleven, I rarely have to look up at someone and what does height have to do with publishing a good story?
What do I need a blog for? I’m already writing already, why in god’s name do I need to write even more, unrelated stuff, so that I can get the first ‘stuff’ published. It’s the novels I want people to read (yes there are more banging around in my head waiting to be let out) not some blog filled with my rants and opinions. You people, in this multiverse, have more than enough opinions and rants as it is. Why should I add to the din and cacophony?
And why, oh why am I wasting my time blogging this drivel when I could be storytelling, working on my next novel? The Story is what matters. The tale, woven true by even a merely mediocre storyteller, can catapult the reader/listener to other worlds. It can help them to experience a catharsis or a right of passage not available to them in their current existence. The Story teaches lessons. It can birth best friends, in the form of protagonists. The Story can feed you, often in many ways that we don’t let life feed us.
The. Story. Is. Why. I. Write.
Not the potential fame, or the accolades, or even the money. While all of those things can be nice, the Story and my obligation to those characters is my passion. Midwifing that world through the womb of creation and into the light is my passion.
I follow a woman on twitter by the name of @justinemusk and just the other day, one of her tweets/blog posts, got me thinking.
how to hook me with your author blog & make me follow you with the devotion of a dachshund http://ow.ly/YqUR
After reading her post this occluded catacomb of ‘post-novel-creation’ and ‘what-you-need-to-do-to-be-a-successful-author’ hype that I’ve been totally distracted in, was really clarified for me. I am going to post, to blog, to tweet, but only what I’m passionate about.
It’s about the Story.
It’s about the act of Storytelling.
That, for me, is my passion. It’s what drives me, probably what always has driven me.
