For essentially all of my life, I have been a writer.
The love affair began in the third grade, when I wrote a short story about John Glenn and the moon landing for an assignment. That was the first time I wrote a story and had someone tell me it was good.
As a matter of fact, my teacher thought it was good enough to enter into a contest. Presumably she spoke to my parents and got their permission to do so, because a few weeks later I received an award for it.
That experience cemented in my young brain that writing was fun and I was good at it. Good enough, apparently, to be rewarded for it.
For the rest of my primary educational life, I always got the highest marks for anything I wrote. Writing came easy to me and I never had to give more than a first draft effort to get an A.
Around age eleven I also fell in love with reading. I don’t remember the exact series of events that led up to this, but I know that it began with a book that the school librarian recommended for me to read. The book was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I remember her sort of ushering me through the process of borrowing it from the school library somewhat against my will… but I’m so thankful for that now.
I read that book over the course of a weekend and returned it to her early the next week. I remember her asking how I liked it and recommending another book, but I chose a Goosebumps book instead (possibly to her chagrin, but I’m likely just making that part up).
Either way, by my second or third Goosebumps book, I was hooked. I read through the full catalog of R.L. Stine’s work - at least the ones that my school library had available. Then I started asking for books for my birthdays and Christmas.
The second book that completely changed my life and solidified that I wanted to be a lifelong reader came the summer before my freshman year of high school. That was the summer that I bought a mass market paperback copy of The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring. I had never heard of the story and no one in my family had either, but there it was on the bottom shelf of the book section at Walmart… and it was calling my name.
I bought it for $4.95 (I know, because I still have my original copy) and started reading it that night. I don’t remember how far into summer vacation we were, but it was before my birthday, that much I’m certain of, because I asked for the other two books for my 13th birthday. Either way, by the time school started, I had finished both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.
It was around this time that I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the first time. If I remember correctly, I borrowed that one from the library, but eventually got the first four books in paperback for Christmas (all of which I also still have).
C.S. Lewis made me fall in love with the art of a good story. Tolkien is who started my love of fantasy novels and their power to transport us to magical worlds. J.K. Rowling, however, is the author who first gave me the inkling of a desire to be an author myself.
I still remember the day that thought first hit me. I was lying in my bed with a flashlight and had just finished reading The Prisoner of Azkaban (still my favorite Harry Potter novel by the way) and I had that feeling that many readers experience when you finish a good book of being torn, because I didn’t want the story to end, but also being so grateful I just read that one. Then, seemingly out of the blue, another thought hit me.
I want to write books that make people feel this way too.
There’s a very real part of me that wishes I could go back to that exact point in time and encourage my younger self to take up that mantle and just write stories. Teenage Ian, however, was not confident in himself at all and buried that desire deep down inside.
Either way, writing still came easy to me, as noted above, and I did write poems and essays willingly and with ease. Then, when I graduated high school and went to college, something unexpected happened.
I stumbled upon blogging.
It was around August or September 2005 when I created my first blog, Forbidden Clause. I don’t remember how I found Blogger or even came up with the idea of blogging, but however it happened, I started writing and never turned back.
Now, at first, I wrote things that were born out of my trauma in the most negative way possible. I used it as a platform to lash out at people who had either hurt me or I was jealous of in high school, but thankfully someone I respected very much pointed out to me the mistake in doing so. I deleted those hateful posts and started writing on whatever topics I found interesting. I still remember my most popular post on that blog was Why Do Men Have Nipples?.
In college I excelled at writing. My first drafts almost always got me an A, though a few times I got an A- or even a dreaded B+ for something I turned in. Let’s assume that those lesser grades were likely due to me procrastinating until literally the night before the assignment was due… because that most definitely happened many times.
Now, I used to be ashamed of the fact that I wasted a full-ride scholarship and got kicked out of college my freshman year, but I’ve come to embrace it as a part of my story. Either way, after getting kicked out I had a year until I could try to re-enroll. I was working two jobs, because by this time I was married and had our first child. Soon enough, boredom kicked in and I wanted something to do that didn’t cost any money (because I had none).
As fortune would have it, one day I happened to be selling some things to a pawn shop and they had an old Thinkpad laptop for sale. I was able to grab it for less than the items I was pawning and took it home. I remember that the hard drive had been wiped and I had to install Linux on it to use it, because that was my first time really digging into a terminal.
Regardless, that old laptop became a good friend. I wrote on it every night after work for a year. This was the first time that I tried to write a novel and as many authors do, I copied my inspiration as closely as possible. I ended up with a story that was over one hundred thousand words - a full-length novel.
It was terrible. The writing was cliché. I basically ripped a lot of my material from J.K. and Tolkien, but I had written the story and I shared it with a friend or two (who made no qualms in telling me just how cliché it was).
Unfortunately, I lost that manuscript. This was back in the early days of thumb drives and when 3.5 inch floppy discs still reigned supreme. I thought I had backed it up, but if I had, I lost the disc and when I wiped the machine to give it to a kid in need, I lost the story forever.
After my year of waiting in college purgatory was over, I attempted to reapply to the same school. The admissions team advised me that I would be better off by auditing a class and proving that I could keep up (and had learned my lesson, though I don’t think they quite said it like that). So, I decided to take a creative writing and poetry course that Spring.
That course nearly changed the trajectory of my life. I fell in love with writing even more while auditing it and the professor who taught it was very enthusiastic about my submissions. I recall her telling me that I had the gift and should really pursue a career in writing. She had read several poems and a short story that I had written at that point. I remember sharing the first few chapters of a new novel I was working on with her as well and that was what prompted her to encourage me to become an author.
So, I decided to reapply as a creative writing student, rather than the engineering path I was on before. She wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation. I met with the admissions counselor and shared my success in her class and my dreams of writing glory… all which were predicated on getting into the program. They smiled and nodded and assured me they’d do their very best.
I didn’t get in.
Twenty years later as I look back on that time, I realize how mad and depressed it made me that I wasn’t selected for that program. It hurt me so deeply that I abandoned the idea of becoming a writer altogether and instead decided to pursue a career in culinary arts. I so wish I could go back to twenty year old me and tell him that other schools had creative writing programs as well, but even if I never got a degree in it, I should be writing stories.
I did eventually get my undergrad degree in Biblical Studies with an emphasis on Missions and Evangelism. During my years in Bible College I probably wrote close to a million words. Every semester I wrote fifty or more pages in papers and I had my second blog, Meditations of a Doulos. That blog was focused on theological articles and book reviews, but I kept it going for four years and even had some arrangements with publishers to receive advanced reader copies of books for free to review. I thoroughly enjoyed writing on that blog, but eventually life got so busy I couldn’t do it anymore.
I started a Master’s program in seminary, which for several reasons I never got to finish. Namely, I had a family of five (which eventually grew to seven) to take care of and provide for, and seminary was not cheap. During this time I did write a bunch of poetry and picked journaling back up (a practice I first started in my teen years), but I didn’t really write any stories and I wasn’t blogging.
Then, by the grace of God, I made some friends at work — people who were writers — after I transitioned from food service to customer service and sales. That was a little over ten years ago and I’m so grateful for that time. Inspired by our conversations, I decided to start writing stories again. It had been ten years from the time I had gotten rejected from joining the creative writing program, and I was ready to try again.
Those friends, one of them whom I still talk about writing with weekly to this day, were the ones who encouraged me to become the best writer that I can be. They read several of my short stories and encouraged me to submit them to contests. I did eventually submit one to an L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest and ended up getting an honorable mention for it.
As much as I’d like to say that I became a prolific writer during that time, I did not. I would write in bursts of a month or two at a time and then stop for a bit. This pattern has continued on for nearly a decade now. I’ve written many short stories during that time, finished one middle grade novel, and started several other novels that are all in various points of progress.
Yet, it wasn’t until very recently that I realized that I was allowing the past and fear of failure to keep me from pursuing something I’m extremely passionate about. As I’ve been digging into my own healing journey over the last year or so, I’ve learned to explore these areas with curiosity and self-compassion.
In doing so, I’ve come to accept that at my core I am a writer. I’ve shared the story above as some context that colors my declaration as such. My entire life I’ve been good at writing and loved doing it. I’ve never understood the people who complain about having to write an essay or term paper. It was second nature for me to do so.
In addition, some very good friends have helped me realize that we should pursue the thing that we were made to do - the thing that we are both good at and enjoy doing. The cherry on top would be the ability to be paid for doing that thing, but even if that doesn’t come, the enjoyment of the process is enough.
For me, there’s so much joy in the process of writing. I love the feeling of putting words on paper (or screen) and sharing them with others. Writing is one of the few things in this life that I can enter the flow state while doing… and it’s often the case that this happens.
While I don’t know what the future will hold, I have accepted that my truest self is one who writes every day. I may not ever get published by one of the big five publishing houses, and I’m okay with that. It’s a dream of mine, sure, but it may not happen and that’s quite okay.
You see, the fear of failure and the negative voices saying that it’s darned near impossible to get published these days have kept me from pursuing my dream for far too long. I now know that the real problem was actually my mindset and my focus on the wrong aspect of the dream.
Rather than allowing myself to enjoy the process of writing and not care what the result will be, I was so caught up in wondering if my work was publishable that I’d get discouraged when it felt like it was not good enough and I’d eventually think that it wasn’t worth it… so why finish?
That’s the wrong mindset. Period.
What I’ve learned from listening to many people who are further down the road than I am is that I must embrace the journey first and let the destination come later. I’m not in control of my book getting picked up by a publisher, but I am in control of my routine of sitting down at the desk each day and writing the words that become the book.
So, that’s what I’ve committed to doing. For myself. For my family. For my friends. For my future readers.
I hope that by doing my part and writing the stories that are inside me, one day a kid somewhere will finish reading one and think, I hope I can write a story like that one day.
Nothing would mean more to me than inspiring one young writer to embrace their calling and take up the craft, just like J.K. Rowling did for me.
Until then, I’m going to be at my desk letting the words flow out while I sip my coffee and enjoy the process.