Keep On Trying

You can’t try to do things. You must simply do them. — Ray Bradbury

I would make a wager that this is the Facebook Generation — social media is huge right now, and between the aforementioned Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more, there are a myriad of ways to connect with new contacts and to reconnect with old friends once thought left and gone by the wayside.

It’s been my good fortune to reconnect with an old friend who I knew from more than a decade ago, someone who I grew close to as a friend and a co-writer from the very beginning of my “apprenticeship,” when I first knew I wanted to write, that I had to write. It became a part of me, something very dear and special.

But while some paths merge, others diverge, and my own personal love and desire to write fiction is something I’ve fostered and maintained over the years. My friend has moved on, gotten married, has a wonderful family and has what I hope is a great life for her and the ones she loves. On a whim in response to a Facebook status update, I suggested she try writing again — it’s how we met, after all, and it’s still something I seriously intent to break into. Why not suggest that?

Her reply, while not hostile in any way, seemed almost sad when I read it. “I haven’t written any fiction in years.” With those words there seemed, to me, to be an air of resignation — after getting off of the wagon and focusing on professional or educational writing, what was the point in writing fiction again?

I can’t say whether my friend will reconsider her words in the future. For my part, I hope she does — it’s been a very long time since we did any writing together, but she was good then, and I think she had potential just as we all do, or did. I’m a much better writer now than I was those 10 or 15 or almost 20 years ago, but only repeated failures and constantly honing my craft has led to any improvement at all.

Many of the books I’ve finished were downright unprintable, let alone being better for anything other than kindling. Neverend was good, but could have been better. One More Such Victory is better than Neverend, and with any luck, the next book will be better than O.M.S.V. is now. Only by continuing to try and try and fail and keep on trying will I continue to progress, just as anyone else will in their chosen field.

I wish my friend well. By all accounts she seems very happy, and she deserves to be. I hope that her writing, in whatever form it takes, is the best it can be.

But I’m still sad to know that I’ll never get to see Alicia Dragonwing take flight again.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll need a moment of silence before I get back to work.