The moving finger writes…and writes…and writes…

“Dear sir or madam will you read my book?

It took me years to write, will you take a look?”

--The Beatles, “Paperback Writer”

When I was about 10 years old—give or take a year or two—I started a neighborhood newspaper. Well, I use the term loosely. I wrote out the neighborhood “news” in pencil on notebook paper, made a couple of copies and handed it out to family and friends. I may have sold it for a few cents, but more likely I just gave it away.

The one-page flat sheet probably included such breaking news as who got what for his or her birthday and who won the day’s baseball game in the Hawkins’s side yard. I think the number of editions topped out at…let me think…one.

It wasn’t much, I’ll admit, but it started me on a writing career that has spanned more than 40 years, including 13 as a newspaper reporter, sports writer and editor; 20 years writing public relations materials; 10 years as a freelance communications consultant; and three years as a blogger. During all of that time, I had one thought residing deep in the back of my mind:

“So you think you’re a writer? Then why don’t you write a book?”

That idea started to become a reality about 20 years ago when I was mowing the lawn at our new house in Hagerstown, Maryland, and my mind began to wander. A day or so earlier, if I recall correctly, I had struggled to plant an eight-foot pear tree in our barren back yard, which was hard as concrete and full of rocks, and I wondered, “What if a man was digging in his yard and found something he didn’t expect?”

Spoiler alert: It was a time capsule.

I started thinking about writing such a story and in 2004 began to commit the book to paper—or rather to a keyboard. I began by writing down the first thoughts that popped into my mind, then began to develop the story and eventually incorporated some short stories I had written previously by linking them into the main thread. I thought it was a good secondary plot line and also a sneaky way to make the book get longer.

In the intervening years between then and now, I finished the first draft of the book, edited it, didn’t like it much, rewrote parts of it, shared it with my wife and a friend, accepted their constructive criticism, made more changes, set it aside, wrote some more, realized it didn’t make sense chronologically and put it away for several years until recently, when I decided to give it one more look. I fixed all the parts I didn’t like, straightened out the timeline and improved some of the characters…and sent it off to a publisher for an editorial review.

When word came back that the publisher liked my work, we began the process of turning my Time Capsule manuscript into a novel.

Not only that, but Beth and Tim Rowland at High Peaks Publishing liked my first effort well enough to encourage me to keep writing, and asked if I had anything else to show them. I had started a second book several years ago but had only written all of three pages, so I set out to make a book out of them and in three weeks had completed a second novel. I have since written a third one and have started to write a fourth.

So today as I write this, the finished draft of Time Capsule—after one last round of edits—is in the pipeline for publication and work will begin soon to design a cover and format the manuscript into paperback and e-book form. Actual publication is still weeks away, but it occurs to me that before long, I’ll be able to hold in my hands a book that I wrote from out of my own head, and that nearly 60 years after scribbling out the first and only neighborhood newspaper, I have finally done what actual writers do—I have written a book…or three.

Eventually, all three will be published and maybe even more. At least, I hope that will be the case. I will be able to call myself an author and you can carve that on my tombstone when I die. I only wish I had started all of this 30 years ago, but I guess it’s better to have started late in life than never to have started at all.

Did someone important say that? As a writer, I feel like I should know.