I’ve written about two short stories
in my lifetime and zero novels, yet when I was seventeen I envisioned myself as
the another Hemingway. I planned to write the Great American Novel and travel
the world while doing so. However, reading the truly great novelists and reading
the top critics and listening to the analysis of my best teachers and professors,
gave me an inferiority complex, so, over the years, whenever I came up with a
great fiction idea, I chickened out often before I even started writing.
On the other hand, decades of composing
nothing but prosaic poetry and personal and political blogs has taken its toll.
I’m getting tired of producing the same old stuff and so are many of my polite
and generous readers. The time has come to challenge myself and free up a certain
aspect of my creativity that has been dormant for too long. If I want to write
something publishable, marketable and maybe even popular amongst readers and/or
critics, I have to man up and write a piece of fiction.
I have plenty of potential artistic
material, I simply lack the courage to test myself and see if I can utilize, if
not master, various fiction techniques. I still don’t think I’ll ever win a Pulitzer
or Nobel, but wouldn’t it be a waste of all my reading, studying and other
types of writing led to absolutely nothing literarily? And what if I wrote something
that could actually make money: wouldn’t that help me financially, socially and
personally (i.e. I could contribute more to my family)?
It may be a pipe dream, but I’ll
never know until I make an attempt, a sincere attempt.
So, watch out for some fiction in
2018; you can say down the line that you read it first.
Craig R. Bayer, 2/17/18
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