Cloud 9

Many years ago I decided to start my own business because I was tired of working for someone else. I was wasting away, mentally and physically. I needed to be creative, to do something creative, so I bought a computer from a friend and opened an editorial service. Clients were teachers, lawyers,  artists, students, general walk-ins, some wannabe writers. I quickly discovered that this kind of shop was not what I had in mind. I was working all hours to meet their deadines, and everyone had one, especially the court cases of which I seemed to have more than my share. There was only one me and many, many clients. No, sir, this was not what I had in mind.

What did I love doing? I loved to read novels. I could edit novels! I had learned to edit at various daily and weekly newspapers where I had been employed for many years. I loved working at newspapers. The creative energy was amazing. The people were amazing. So was the pace. After a couple of years at that pace, burnout set in and it was time to move on to another paper. A new challenge. After another paper, another burnout. I wasn't getting any younger.

The day I decided to edit novels, I pulled my editorial service ads, finished up with my clients, and closed the door on that business. If I'm going to edit novels, I thought, I'd better write one. So I did. I took it to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and had a conference with a former editor at Bantam Books, who had read my novel before the conference started. He liked it and suggested some changes. I was on Cloud 9. I went home bursting with the knowledge that my novel was basically good, it just needed a little more work.

I made changes, fleshed out a couple of characters, rearranged some sections, edited some more, changed this, deleted that until I eventually broke it. I could no longer recognize it as the novel I had written. I put it in a drawer and there it sat for a few years. I was too busy with other writer's novels now to even think about mine.

I loved editing novels. They were my passion. Some very good Bay Area writers came through my door. I also had a small publisher as a client, and they kept me quite busy. By then I had quite a stable of writers. Once again I was on Cloud 9.

My novel sat in my drawer (and on a computer disk) for a number of years. Every once in a while when there was an editing lull, which didn't happen very often, I'd look at my novel and try to fix it a little here, a little there. Then back into storage it would go once I got busy with other writers' novels.

Years went by and I forgot about my novel. I moved to Los Angeles and began working with a literary agent and fell in love with screenplays. Actually, I fell in love with the entire movie business. It was exciting. I loved reading scripts, looking for scripts that would sell. They were few and far between but I admired the tenacity of all the writers who stuck with it and finished a script. I read for a couple of screenplay competitions. I was usually in the second or third round. I mentally marked one or two scripts on my round that I thought were winners. Often they were. Good writing stands out.

So now it's many years later and I'm not doing much of anything very exciting. A few weeks ago I saw my novel on my thumb drive when I was looking for something else. Whoa! Let's take a look. After all these years it will be like reading someone else's writing. I had even forgotten what a lot of the story was about.

I read it and I couldn't believe it. All the edits I made somehow came together and made a novel. It was like reading someone else's writing. It was even good writing! I changed the title and published it on amazon Kindle a couple of weeks ago. It's already gotten a 5-star review!

That Cloud 9 is some kind of wonderful.

Check out my paranormal novel, Like Father, Like Son here.