One of the most comforting aspects of the internet is the ability to answer the question—is there anyone else like me? That is exactly what I set out to do when I discovered my love for writing after a long career in a technical field. I call it my love for writing because it means that something so completely new can still reach inside my soul, swirl around with wondrous possibilities, and occupy almost all my waking thoughts. It certainly feels like love, and I certainly feel just as vulnerable and naive. I don’t know if I should have discovered this years ago, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I missed the obvious and selected a more difficult path. I seem to have a knack for doing things the hard way.
When I fell in love with writing, I did what anyone with an overwhelming number of questions and an internet connection would do. I started by googling “new writer,” “beginning writer,” “writing fiction” and virtually every possible variation, and of course, I received far too many results to be of any use. I may have spent my remaining years wading through hundreds of millions of search results if it were not for the realization of the opposite of what we have been told all our lives that everyone is different. I realized that I can’t be unique, and there must be others like me. I felt that I should find them so we could all be lost together or together find our way.
I immediately set out to find others like me in all of the usual places. I searched on Facebook and various blogging sites looking for a community that welcomed people that are not formally trained—late blooming wannabes, writers that shared my goals. But there was the problem. I couldn’t really articulate my goals, even to myself, much less distinguish how I related to the communities I visited. I was left wandering through various online communities searching for something that felt comfortable and appeared to have the potential to be productive. Because I was so new to the field, I did not have the knowledge or terminology to describe how or why I am different or even what I wanted to accomplish. I only had a feeling that something didn’t fit, and maybe the next community would be better.
It’s hard for me to admit, but it took me more than two years to realize what I wanted to accomplish as a writer. Once I laid out some objectives necessary to reach my goals, I realized that the specific community I was searching for didn’t really exist.
During that same time, I was reading blogs, tutorials, comments, and book after book after book. I finally learned enough to understand what I didn’t know, understand what I couldn’t describe, and understand I also need someone unlike me. As much as I want to believe that I possess some degree of talent and the desire and the aptitude to learn all that is required to become a successful author, the reality is that I need a team. I need to find those that have strength in areas where I am weak. If am I really lucky, I might even find others that are not only skilled, trained, experienced, but also inspiring and creative in their own areas. I have come to understand that my goals as a writer require significant skills in many related areas both creative and routine.
It sounds so simple as to be embarrassing, but it took me two years to figure out my goal as a writer is simply to be read. Not just to publish out to the internet or place my passion, my hard and loving work, out there somewhere where only an accidental read might initiate a discovery of my words. I need more than an accidental read. I am not unique as a passionate writer in that I believe that I have a story worth hearing and a story worth reading. I am committed to working as hard on writing a good story as I am on all the things that improve my chances of being read. That brings me to our new community, Raising A Story. I want to build a community focused on increasing the chances of being read through successful team building, good practices, and plain old grass roots support from all those like me and not like me. A community where we help, support, and complement each other in ways that take everyone to a place better than they can reach alone.
-Mark