Why I’m a specutalitve fiction writer

When events in my life piled up to the point that I thought I’d explode, I sat down and puked out a novella on my laptop.  This is how I started writing.

At first it was furious typing, expelling out a story at breakneck speed with no idea of where it was going or when it was going to end.  I only knew I had to keep going.  The story was drawn heavily from my life, and the process leeched out a toxicity that had been building for years.  I felt invigorated.
Naturally, as I finished that story and searched for more to write, I chose to write in the same genre–mainstream fiction.  Which is not be confused with literary fiction.  I never even approached that, but do confess to thinking I did at the time out of ignorance.  No, I left my life behind and wrote stories about everyday people set in the modern world with the conflict centered on some type of dissonance between the way they viewed themselves and reality.
I did this for about a year and a half.  Until one day I sat out on my porch (my preferred writing spot) and realized the problem with the current story I was working on: I was bored, not only reading it, but writing it.  This wasn’t a one day funk to work through; boredom pervaded this piece from beginning to end.  I diligently finished the piece and half-heartedly sent it out (if I was bored writing it, who would be excited reading it?).
The idea of not writing anymore never even entered my consideration.  Instead, I thought about the stories that I’ve read and were fun to read and what made them awesome.  My mind naturally went back to all of the fantasy I consumed as a kid: to the epic battles of good and evil, to magic systems, to floating castles and underwater cities, to all of the things that make fantasy awesome.  Soon, I had an idea.  Two weeks later I had a story.  I felt invigorated again, and I knew exactly what kind of writer I wanted to be.
I am a speculative fiction writer, and I haven’t been bored since.

Consummate rule follower

I am nothing if not a consummate rule follower.

So here I am, as directed, launching a website and blogging about becoming a writer.  The landscape of publishing is changing in strange ways.  Writing, normally, attracted by those types that prefer quiet and solitude (myself included) are now told they must have an online presence.  They must build a following and do their own marketing.  This used to be the role of the traditional publishers, but now they’re doing less and farming more onto the beginner writer.

The introvert writer that needs that daily quiet time writing to stay sane, is now thrust in front of a faceless horde that could number anywhere from hundreds to thousands to millions.  The first one might not sound so bad, but have you ever spoken in front a crowd numbering in the hundreds?  And then do it on regular basis?  But from publishers to authors, both large and small, they all seem to agree that an online presence is necessary in this new age of publishing.

Despite this, I am determined to become a professional writer.  I write daily, study markets, attend workshops; I submit, get rejected, and submit again, and again, and again.
And now I blog about it.

I am nothing if not a consummate rule follower.