| Submarine #9 |
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Hello, Yes, I’m still alive. I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get back to my journal. Life has taken a wonderful new turn and until that time I had nothing new to report. Since then I have been busy. But today I forgot to bring my Flypen to work so today during lunch I decided to update my Journal/blog/“Submarine” diary, whatever we want to call it. (More on the “Flypen” later.) I am grateful for those of you who have come here to read this on-going account of my writing life. It’s nice to share my thoughts with someone, even if there is no feedback. Well, I said my life has taken a wonderful new turn and it has. As you were last reading, I was feeling really hopeful about the writing contest. But not having made the cut, I decided to press on. Since it seemed that there was going to be no place for my Christian writing (other that on my website for you fine people – God bless you every one!) I decided to return to one of my earlier loves – space adventure fiction. I had decided to write a sequel to my second novel “Seed of Aldebaran”. It had never been typed, so I had someone typing it as I wrote the sequel and planned to release them nearly together. It was not a bad plan, but God nudged the steering wheel and away I went in another direction. Don’t you just love Him? (I do!) As I mentioned in my last entry, in the letter to my wife, I had asked the Holy Spirit for a time table concerning when I was going to be doing what He had for me to do. Note, I didn’t ask about the writing specifically! The impression I got was about five months. That put me at August ’06. Yahoo! The contest winners would be announced in July. The timing was perfect! (Note – I am not nearly so naïve now. I have embraced the business side of the writing world and am making healthier and more sensible choices. But that was my thinking then.) I did not make the contest, but in August I did enroll in the “Cleansing Stream” Seminar that was being conducted at my church in conjunction with other churches in the Charleston area. It comes highly recommended and many things that have stopped me in the past were removed (rejection issues, etc.). I recommend it to any Christian. All the promises we have in Christ happen there. It really changed my life. But the most significant way it changed me was in my writing. Not three days after the retreat ended I was awakened by a dream. It was very powerful and as I lay in bed I began to mull over the implications of what I saw. I got up (12:15am, 10/31/06) and started taking notes. My daughter came home from work 2 hours later asking what I was doing up so late (I usually wake at 4:45am to have my prayer time and go to work.). I told her I had just outlined a new novel and read her my notes. We talked for a little bit, then I was finally tired enough to go back to bed. The dream itself would be the opening scene to the novel. I continued with the sequel, but I was filled with an urgency to start the new one. Usually I think out and research a novel for about a year and a half before I start writing. This time I felt I had to start right away, so I started writing in January of ’07. It ran in fits and starts and I began to think that maybe I should go back to college after all. (See letter in entry #8.) But my wife Vickie, knowing the premise of the novel said, “I think you’d better write this book before you do anything else.” I don’t know why, but that energized me and I forged ahead, determined to let nothing else sidetrack me. For Christmas ’07, Vickie got me a Fusion Flypen and it has helped me tremendously. It is a computerized pen that has a camera next to the ball point. When you write on the Flypaper (covered with tiny blue dots) the camera records everything you write! You upload the data to your computer and you can see it on the screen! Then you have it open the page as a document and, voila, there it is, all typed! Astonishing! All I need to do is to go over it to clean it up. (My hand writing, particularly when excited, is more than the software can bear!) You cannot believe what a time saver this is for me. I typically write in notebooks because I can take them anywhere (doctor’s offices, barber shops, lunch breaks at work, kitchen table at home, voting lines, car trips, etc.). Having to retype the notebooks was doubling my time needed to write, but not any more. Thanks, Flypen! In ’07 I wrote just under 30,000 words. I have written as much in the last three and a half months! Another big development has been my participation in writers’ conferences. The folks in my writing group said that is the only way to get published now. You get to network there and that is critical. Adding that good advice to my prescribed course of action, I sold my boat to finance the conferences that I would need to attend. It was a motor boat that I had bought after our sailing boat accident. I love to be out on the water, but that was a distraction, also. (I still have my sea-kayak, anyway.) The boat had not been running right for a year and although I am good at fixing machines, I could make no progress with it. I put it up for sale and decided to work on it one more time. I found out what had been wrong and got it running perfectly the day before the ad hit the paper! The first person to come by bought it and I got everything I had in it back. I think God was in with the plan as well! With cash in hand I went to my first conference at the end of March. It was an American Christian Writers conference and I met a lot of really cool people! I learned a lot, including how to get the manuscript ready and some good ideas on how to market it (a weak area for me). I also got some valuable feedback on my novel idea. I couldn’t be more pumped up! Another bonus of the conference was that I finally received the validation I had been searching so hard for. As I told someone at the conference, being a writer is like being a Martian walking around earth wondering why you are the only one with a horn sticking out of your head. Then you go to a conference and find that everyone there has a horn sticking out of their head! You are no longer just weird, or alone. And I guess that brings me to full circle in this “Submarine” journal. I have finally found my “people”. I finally have found some place where I fit in. I won’t see them all the time, but they are within “email range”. Like me they, too, are submarines. We are all out there somewhere running silent and deep, carrying out our mission, our calling. What a relief it is to know that. In my heart, the whole matter is now settled. I have recently started a writers’ group of my own at the church called “Adventures in Fiction Writing”. It has been very small, but it has been rewarding to see someone else blossom into their calling. God is so good. As for the new novel, I am reluctant to say too much about it until I have the final draft completed. I hope to have that done by the end of May, and then spend the summer polishing it. I will tell you the title, though. It is called “What So Proudly We Hailed” and it is a portrayal of the end of America as we know it. One of the speakers at the conference said that the things in the novel “are all over the newspapers right now”. It is very relevant and, in my opinion, very important. I am boiling to share it with someone, but I must resist the urge. I will tell more later on. I still have lots of money left from the boat sale so when it is ready I will travel to pitch and promote it the best I can. I wish it could be published before the election, but it will be fine whenever it does come out. As God once told me, “Nothing is wasted – Things happen when the time is right.” That sounds good enough for me. Onward I go! - James Howard 4/17/08 P.S. I won the “Persistence” award at the conference. Below is the essay I submitted. Resume for James Howard for the Persistence Award. I have been an avid reader most of my life starting when I was in kindergarten. I devoured many children’s books and by the time I was ten years old I was already into the classics. I was eleven when I read my first modern novel, “Jaws” by Peter Benchley. I was so impressed by the intensity of the book that I decided I would be a writer. I began my first novel then (not surprisingly, it was about a shark attacking a beach community), but I soon lost heart to continue. I wrote sporadically over the next dozen years or so as I finished high school, completed four years of military service, got married, had three children, and began working in heavy industry. After a few years I decided that I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I was pursuing an engineering degree at the time, but decided to put it all aside to pursue my dream of being a writer. Confident of a speedy victory, I wrote vigorously and completed three novels in five years. I also read many books on writing. The last novel seemed salable to me and as I was finishing it a friend opened my eyes to the possibilities of “On Demand Self-Publishing”. I sold four copies of the book (one to each member of my family) and came to realize the deficiencies of the vanity press. I was about to pursue a new direction when my wife left me to raise three small children by myself. This placed my writing dreams to one side again as I focused on more immediate concerns. In time I remarried and eventually decided to give writing another go. I had gotten saved in Boot Camp and this time I would give my pen to the Lord. I began to write short stories which became a collection entitled “Glimpses of My Friend the King”. I went the self-publishing route once more, but this time sold one hundred times as many copies (400). Although I received much praise for the work, it seemed that my “time” still had not come. I started a website called “aPenForHisGlory.com” which featured my stories, poetry and a journal. In October of 2006 I had a disturbing dream which prompted me to write again. I was in the middle of a fourth novel, but felt an urgency to put it aside. I took the dream and used it for the beginning of a new novel titled “What So Proudly We Hailed”. I am nearly three quarters of the way through writing it and am very excited to be pitching it soon. I hope to network this weekend to that effect. As for persistence, I am at the same old job (twenty years now) but still writing furiously. There has been no monetary gain as of yet, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I was told once that writing was how I worshipped God, and being a writer is written on the fabric of my soul. I have embraced that fully now and have found my peace and contentment. That peace, coupled with His purpose in me, is what drives my persistence now. (I have learned also to be thankful for the security of stable employment).And who knows, perhaps my “time” is approaching, yet. Thank you. James Howard
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