This is article is on best selling author Scott Berkum’s blog . In short it’s excellent:

Every author I know gets asked the same question: How do you write a book?…

Here’s the short honest truth: 20% of the people who ask me are hoping to hear this – Anyone can write a book. They want permission. Truth is you don’t need any. There is no license required. No test to take…

Being famous and wealthy: Now this is the kicker. About 50% of the time the real thing people want to know is how to become a famous millionaire rock-star author dude. As if a) I qualified, b) I could explain how it happened, or c) I’d be willing to tell.

Read the entire article at Scott’s blog

This says it all…

Like everyone else I watched the news in rapt attention.

Listening to news radio during  my morning commute they made following distinctions about the event:

1. The shootings were done by a single gunman
2. It appears that Major Hasan snapped
3. He used semi-auto pistols
4. He performed the shootings in a calm, controlled manner
5. He was stopped by a civilian police officer who shot him
6. Hasan killed 13 people: 12 Soldiers and 1 civilian (rumored o be a cop)

Why?

I started writing my NaNoWriMo novel this past Sunday, just like must people who are participating. The very first scene I wrote this past Sunday was eerily frikkin similar to current events.

1. It involved a lone gunman
2. He was a combat veteran who snapped
3. He used a semi-automatic pistol
4. He went around in a calm, controlled manner shooting people
5. He was stopped by being shot by the police
6. He killed 13 people: 12 civilians and 1 cop

It was these coincidences that freaked me out. Here I wrote this scene on Sunday only for a real-life major event with glaring similarities to occur four days later on Thursday.

The most significant difference between my story and the real one is that the shooter in my story died after being shot by the cops.

I wrote 2,221 words of story today. Not bad.

I had set the goal of getting in 5,000 but it was so nice out after yesterday’s deep gloom that I just had to get out of the house for a while and enjoy the day.

Taking a break from writing my NaNoWriMo novel, I visited my friend Rick Holmes, our town historian. As always we had a terrific conversation. When they open the authentic Irish Pub across the street from the museum in the old fire station, we’ll be having our talks over a pint of Guinness.

I bought his latest book about Derry, and as he signed it he told me the next book he’s going to write is about Robert Frost during his years in Derry from 1900 – 1910.

He related an awesome story, told by Frost’s own daughter, about one of Mr. Frost’s most famous poems Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.

It was actually inspired by an event in Derry, but the poem itself was not published for another 20 years. Rick told me the meaning behind what inspired the poem and exactly where Frost was and what he was doing at that time.

I know exactly where that spot is and have been there dozens of times. From now, on whenever I visit that spot, I will look upon it very differently forever more.

Rick also said he has a photograph of Frost from these years that has never been published. I can hardly wait the 2-3 years before this book finally sees publication.

Now I know what I know about this poem, it has a whole new and deeper meaning to me than it had before:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

In preparation for the start of NaNoWriMo, I have listening to the audiobook of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, to set the tone of my own story.

I listen to it while I commute to and from work. The first couple of days of listening to the story were rainy, cold and gloomy – just like in the story. Lemme tell ya, that really sets a tone in itself. It’s also not a great mindset to take to work in the morning, but a large cup of coffee usually helps with that.

This is one of the most emotionally heavy stories I’ve come across. The story gives you such a sense of hopelessness. You think, “What’s the use? What is the purpose?”

Stephen King’s The Stand is a unicorn and rainbow filled fairy tale of joy and happiness in comparison.

Of course The Road won a Pulitzer and another literary award. The literary community just loves stories about the hopelessness of life.

After I finish this – I was thinking of renting the movie Ironweed (another Pulitzer winner) to watch on a rainy afternoon. Then I think I’ll jump out of a basement window…

As stated in the last post, I participated in the Gotham Writer’s Fiction Workshop. It was a good course and there was a good group of people with which to interact.

I was really into it and enjoying myself. I stretched my writing muscle quite a bit and got a lot of great feedback. Of the critiques, they were very constructive and in a positive tone – a style which I appreciated and reciprocated.

Somewhere around Week 8 of the 10 Week course, I suddenly lost all interest. Not just in the class, but with fiction writing altogether. I had no idea why, but I completely and utterly lost all passion for writing stories.

I was still writing plenty of non-fiction blog articles, but there was no passion for the writing of fiction at all. It left a culpable hole, no a void where my love of writing stories once resided.

I have had plenty of periods in the past where I did not want to write creatively for a while, but I always knew that when I stepped away from it for a while that urge would awaken and I’d be back at it. This time was different – the urge was gone. It had left me or died. I had never felt this way before.
 
I was shocked by this development of going from always having an interest in writing from the time I was 8, to not wanting to have anything to do with it at all. Even worse, I was beginning to accept it and be okay with it. It got to the point where I was going to donate my extensive books on writing to our library.  

I have no idea why it happened, but now that I no longer had that passion for writing a part of me felt dead inside. The thing is I didn’t want to lose it and wanted to understand what went wrong.

For weeks I could not brink myself to even look at a writing magazine, book or blog – let alone open one up and read it. I still read some fiction, but mostly non-fiction.

I recently remembered that back in 2000, I read Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I remember thinking while reading that book, ‘Man, I didn’t know you were allowed to write like this’. It was brilliant.

I went to the library and checked it out to see if I could remember why I felt that way about it. I still think it’s a great piece of writing, but there wasn’t that “Aha!” moment I had hoped for.

As October rolled around, it dawned on me that the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November was fast approaching. I felt melancholy that I was not going to be a part of NaNoWriMo. I always had fun with it. It would have been my 9^th year.

I perused the NaNoWriMo forums as I always had, and decided to post in the NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul forum. I posted my woes and bid farewell to NaNoWriMo and left it at that.

Over a week later, this Monday, something prompted me to go back to the forums and see if anybody left any remarks about my situation. I was surprised to see 17 responses. As I read each one there was good advice, encouragement and support. I took each piece of advice and response to heart and before I knew it ideas were beginning to flow.

One great idea came to me fully formed. I would fictionalize an event I experienced during a paranormal investigation I went on. It has haunted my thoughts ever since.

The passion for writing fiction isn’t as intense as it once was, but the interest is there. It’s like resurrecting a clinically dead person with a defibrillator – shocking them back to life. The pulse is weak but it’s there.

I have my story idea, I know what I want to do with it and the current working title is The Death Walker