Everything has a beginning, this is one of my beginnings.  I talk about how I love to write, I think about how I love to write, but I never write…and that just isn’t right.

I just finished my second session in my leadership training course taught Vance Ceasar, sponsored by my employer.  One of the commitments I made to myself was about starting to write…so here’s my first blog.

My vision is to write novels.  Perhaps some of my novels will be science fiction; it is the genre that I have read the most.  My favorite science fiction / fantasy author is Stephen R. Donaldson.

I love the freedom the genre affords.  However, what I really want to write are novels like James Baldwin, novels like J.D Salinger … novels that drag a person through the emotional mud, so good, so painful, so raw that I end the book emotionally drained, mentally exhausted and spiritually inspired.

James Baldwin did that for me.  J.D. Salinger left me thinking, thinking, thinking.

I have fodder; I have my family:  crazy, unique, irritating, funny and tragic.  Toss in some Jewish guilt, art imitating life.  Life imitating who knows what, and a dose of meshuga.

I saw Ray Bradbury talk a lifetime ago.  I liked his writing, but his talk, wow he seemed so arrogant, it was such a turn off that I never read anything else of his, but he did say something important in his talk.  Something I should have listened to back then.  He said, he wrote 2000 words a day, every day.  That writing helped keep his skills sharp, helped figure out stories, helped make explicit ideas, phraseology, moiling amongst all of his unconscious and semiconscious thoughts.

Anyway, I am going to write and this is a start!

Steffush