Friday, December 23, 2005

Starting to Write

On his blog today, Lee Goldberg brought up the subject of when he knew he wanted to be a writer and discussed some of his early efforts along those lines. I think I knew when the other kids in the neighborhood just wanted to run around and pretend to shoot each other, and I wanted to discuss beforehand who all our characters were and why we were going to run around and pretend to shoot each other. They usually weren't very receptive to that idea, but I had the best collection of toy guns so they tolerated me.

My first story was written when I was in fifth grade, which would have made me eleven years old. It was a sword-and-sandal epic inspired by all those badly-dubbed Italian movies featuring Hercules and various Hercules-like characters that I was watching on the local TV station at the time. My second was a Western.("Showdown in the Canyon" or some such . . . Lord, the more things change, etc.) I wrote all through junior high and high school -- a series of Hardy Boys ripoffs starring me and my friends, science fiction, secret agent yarns, Tarzan and Lone Ranger stories (early fan-fiction, I guess you'd call it). But I never actually tried to sell anything until I was in college, never succeeded until after I was married and working in an appliance repair shop.

Apologies to those who have already heard all this. I think I've rambled on this subject before.

By the way, I finished my 185th novel today.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Congratulations on finishing #185! As always I'm in awe of your abilities. Have a great holiday. You deserve 24-hour break.

James Reasoner said...

Actually, other than a little editing, I'm taking today off as well as tomorrow, so it'll be more like a 48-hour break. Unless I decide to write an outline or something . . .

Graham Powell said...

Heck, just go outside and enjoy the "winter" weather.

Juri said...

Congrats from me, too! I wrote on my blog a week earlier that you've written 180 novels. Should I correct that one..?

James Reasoner said...

Juri,

No need to change your blog. That number is close enough. The next real milestone is 200 novels, and I won't hit that until sometime in '07 (assuming publishers keep buying my stuff).

Graham,

I'll sure take this "winter" weather over that we had a couple of weeks ago. For those of you not in Texas, it was in the Sixties and sunny yesterday and will be again today. My kind of Christmas.