It makes me something like sad that here I am 45 years old and I have never successfully completed even a short story when I have wanted to write for 30 years now. I think I'm more or less about in the right place finally to do so. I think. Still haven't finished anything so who knows. But I feel like I ought to put it down, what was going on, as I spent a lot of time over the years trying to understand why I just couldn't seem to do it.

I have no idea the importance of each of the following. Some combination of:

1. I wanted to write something amazing. I wanted to change the world. I kept rejecting anything short of amazing. I should have set my sights lower and perhaps as I went along I would turn it into something at least intelligent while still enjoyable.

2. I had these strong feelings attached to some images/feelings in my head. They were vague though and not remotely a story. I kept trying to turn them into a story and as I went completely losing the original motivation. I simply needed to focus much more on the nuts and bolts structure even though it meant I wasn't feeling the original inspiration and it had instead turned into a simple problem solving exercise. It's not about that intense artistic feeling. That inspiration. It's about persistence and day to day problem solving.

3. I have been quite unhappy most of my life. But much less so in recent years. Really once my situation improved it still took time for my mental/emotional state to catch up. Anyway, a story for the most part, usually amounts to bad guys doing ugly stuff to good guys. Inventing that sort of stuff in your free time when you already have real life bad guys doing stuff to you is really quite hard.

In a lot of ways it can be difficult to create bad guys anyway as evil is ultimately quite banal. It can be hard to want to focus on making it and all that.

4. For so long I just flat out couldn't stand just sitting down with myself and writing. I felt like I was missing something. This was in part because I didn't have enough in the way of friends when younger. Didn't have enough just hanging out with my friends. Maybe exacerbated by who I am somewhat. That I vaguely had this feeling of this great fun I was missing. I couldn't stand to just sit by myself as my life passed me by. Finally I have had enough of those good times with friends and I see that as nice as they can be, ultimately time just spent alone can be really nice too. Or something like that I guess. Not exactly. I recall as a young child playing with match box cars all alone and making good cars and bad cars. It was the beginning of being a writer. They fought. I was alone. I enjoyed it. And I hadn't had all that fun hanging out at that time. So, I don't know. Something negative happened. I don't know. Somehow I needed fun with friends that was missing from my experience.

Something else may come to me later. So at least in the age of microsoft word, I can create bad guys and good guys now. It's not some horrible thing to just sit here and do that. It's like I've done all those other things enough now and my life situation is positive enough. Finally. At 45.

So now, the nuts and bolts. Bad guys and good guys who are more or less evenly matched. Enough so that the match is interesting to read. Nuts and bolts stuff. Pacing. Finding the right words. Hopefully something more. Hopefully something much more. At this point I have a ways to go I think. I have to write and as I write figure out the characters abilities, the magic system, the world. I can't just throw together a good outline first. Too many choices I can't decide about. So I start writing and I have to rewrite a lot. For example, I realize I've made my one character too powerful compared to the bad guys. I have to weaken him. And on some level it feels like a silly thing. Contrived. Also it's all been done before. And perhaps in this age impossible to get published probably anyway.

But I have a brain. And I can sit down and enjoy writing daily now. Finally.