A Life of Telling Stories

I have been writing for almost as long as I can remember.

When I was about eight years old, my mother bought me some blank exercise books and coloured pencils, hoping that I would turn out to be artistic. Somewhat to her chagrin, I quickly filled the books-- not with drawings, but with words. 

As a youngster, I wanted to "tell stories." The whole idea that there were actually people who were able to tell stories as their "work" was both fascinating and very appealing to me.  Some kids wanted to be fire fighters, or astronauts or professional sports figures... for me, telling stories was the goal.

Of course, I didn't really grow up to become a writer.

Well, scratch that... I wrote a lot, but it didn't become my profession. The (ostensibly) wiser adults in my family persuaded me that writers tended to be "weird fringe-dwellers" and besides I would have no chance of making a good living... so I gave up on the idea and got a nice "sensible" university degree in Finance, and another in Marketing.

However, I never stopped writing... although the nature of what I wrote gradually changed from "stories" (fiction) to commentary on life and the human condition. The whole process of life and the things that motivate people was fascinating to me, and remains so. Mostly I kept journals, for myself.

I did briefly try to write "for a living," doing time as a technical writer in the IT industry. On one level, it went fairly well-- after all, I was getting paid for doing one of my favorite things-- but my enthusiasm didn't last long as I soon grew to realize that writing other people's ideas "to order" really felt like selling out. 

With the advent of the Internet and "instant publication" I soon joined the ranks of bloggers. I was also part of some of the web's earliest incarnations of venues that revenue shared with contributors. 

In today's world, it's probably hard to imagine that there were web sites that paid as much as ten cents per page view! Of course, getting a page view back then was a special form of rocket science...

Every single one has fallen by the wayside, most often victims of that most basic human trait-- greed-- which leads people to try to "game the system" in their attempts to get money for nothing... as a result of which everyone loses.

So here I am, one more time, trying out a new writing venue. Hopefully, this one will stay around for a while!