Ever since I was in grade school I've always had a fondness for writing. I used to fill countless spiral notebooks with make believe stories I invented in my head, but it wasn't until the family computer - purchased when I was 10 - and learning how to touch-type that I was able to really start churning out the works. I wrote strictly fiction from grade school through high school, and a bit into college, but stopped once I really got into computer science. I didn't stop writing, I just stopped writing fiction. Instead I turned to technical writing, starting 4Guys in 1998 and churning out, at times, an article per day. (I blogged about this shift from fiction to non-fiction previously, in Do You Write Fiction?)
I've done non-fiction pretty much exclusively for the past six years. I've authored numerous books, magazine articles, and probably more than 1,000 online articles. Taking a cue from Coca-Cola's bold move in the late 80s in rolling out “New Coke,” I've decided that it is time to change tracks, to get back into writing fiction. And when I saw, “getting back,” I don't mean just writing a short story here or there for my own personal enjoyment. No, I mean writing a novel and having it published.
Ok, so that may be a bit overambitious, especially for someone who's had zero practice in writing fiction for the last 1/4th of his life, but why bother setting goals if you're not going to set them high? My goal is to begin writig in earnest starting no later than November this year, hopefully sooner. Basically, I have a number of consulting projects and training jobs that are cluttering my schedule now, keeping my brain in a very logical, non-fictional world, but come October or November, I'll have those projects wrapped up and I won't be taking on any new ones until I emerge from my writing cocoon. (Granted, I'll still be writing non-fiction articles for 4Guys and, hopefully, MSDN, but I'll have suspended the dozens of hours a week consulting projects consume, and dedicate those to writing.)
The wife is happy to let me try this for a while, so long as there are tangible results. I don't think she'll be too excited to come home from a long day of work after fighting traffic to find me in my bathrobe, unshaven, holding a Big Gulp, reporting, “Today I narrowed down the title to one of three choices.” I already have the germ of the idea for the novel, have had it bouncing around the noggin for the past few months, in fact. It involves computers, surprise, surprise, and therefore will likely be enjoyed by geeks and nerds alike. There will also be plenty of explosions and car chases, if I want someone to ever make it into a movie.
What really piques my interest currently is the economics of writing a novel. I know, firsthand, the depressing economics involved behind writing a computer trade book, and would guess that the same results are experienced by 99% of published fiction writters out there. (Ever notice just how many novels there are in a book store? For every “best seller” by King there are several dozen no-name novels filling the shelves as well.) While this may sound depressing, it does offer some hope that there is a chance, however remote, of actually getting a work I create to press.