I’m currently writing a book by two people, present me and past me. About fifteen years ago, I began writing stories for kids. I was a little over thirty years old and had been teaching third or fifth graders for about five years. My oldest daughter wasn’t yet a toddler and my wife was returning to college. I was really too busy to write, but I had always wanted to author books for kids. I had some experience writing for a start up cultural magazine, which is something I should focus on in another post, but I never seemed to have time to see things through. But after volunteering to teach summer school that year, my assignment was a writing class.

When you have to teach something, you really get to know it. This holds true even in a fifth grade writing class. So while I was helping kids to organize their thoughts and to follow through after being given writing prompts, I found myself working on some of my own ideas along side them. For some reason I was able to stick with it after summer school was over. A few months later, my first book was ready for submission. The next few months had me collecting several rejection cards. I was actually lucky to get them. This meant that they were actually reading it! Authors know all about the dreaded sludge pile in publishing houses. It was never published, but I still loved it, believed in it, and was proud of it.

This thing called life happened to me. As many of you know, it can be brutal. The book collected dust for over a decade. Meanwhile stories still brewed in my head. Finally, I began writing again and technology changed everything. Self publishing became so much easier, on the production side anyway. Delusions of grandeur aside, it’s a great time to be an author. The opportunity is available like never before. So is the competition. But with this comes community. Independent authors are very supportive of one another, in forums, associations, and in blogging platforms.

Coming full circle, I was inspired by one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, to revisit my first book. He had written stories in a small newspaper column for kids, and then published them in a book when he was a teenager. Decades later Disc World fans discovered he had published this book so many years ago and wanted access to it, but it was out of print. So he revisited his old publication and decided to rewrite it. Thus it was written by two people. This book, CARPET PEOPLE, is great to read with kids.

So now I’m rereading and rewriting my old book. It’s an interesting journey for me, discovering the differences in how I thought then and the way I think now. I plan to self publish THE FISH CREEK FORUM in a few months through KINDLE SELF PUBLISHING. To any authors in my community, I encourage you to do the same thing I’m attempting. If you’re young, keep your writings and revisit them when you can. If you’re more seasoned, take a look at your old stuff. Inspiration can come from the strangest places. If you’re a person who’s tried writing before, but never went anywhere with it, give it a try now. Take a look at any old stuff you may have tried before (you know you still have it somewhere). Life happens, but you can make things happen too.