Just Keep Writing

As we launch this site, I am trying to find my lost passion for writing. Don’t get me wrong, I still love to write, I still want to write and I still need to write. But writing simply never bubbles to the top of the to-do list anymore.

And this needs to change.

When I was a little boy–even before I was old enough to write–I’d wake up in the morning and stay in the bed for a while. Not just for the sake of lingering–even back then I saw sleep as an unfortunate-but-necessary evil and wanted to do as little of it as I possibly could.  Rather than just enjoying a lazy moment or two with nothing to do, I would lie there and imagine.  I’d imagine what the day ahead held for me. I’d imagine what the day might be like if the last little bits of what I could remember of my dreams were somehow to be real. It was truly exciting to imagine the world in so many different ways.

Once I was old enough to write, I continued the pattern of waking up and imagining, only now I would put the imaginings on paper.  It was exciting to build worlds and characters every day. I would end my days the same way, often writing until I fell asleep at night, sometimes continuing sentences as I was in the process of falling asleep (you can imagine the crazy things that got to the page in that state of consciousness).  Back then, the point wasn’t the quality of the words that made it to the page or the neatness of the handwriting—it was the pure joy and excitement of the act of getting them to the page.

Fast forward to today, some 35 years into the future and it’s a different story.  I still wake up early and still hate that I have to sleep.  When I wake up, I imagine what the day holds for me, just like I did when I was little.  But now the imaginings are of bills, deadlines, kids’ schedules, the day job to which I am enslaved and many other things that are simply not as pleasant.  I no longer drift off to sleep with a pen in my hand nor do I wake up and reach for one.  Somewhere along the way the passion for writing was lost.  And I want to find it again.

Here at Today’s Author you will find many writers in various stages of their writing careers. Some of us are published, some are not; some of us have major works-in-progress that are underway or nearly complete, others are between projects.  But all of us share the love of writing and a desire to inspire and support writers in every stage of their writing life.  Whether you’re a lifelong-hobbyist, an emerging professional author or a first time writer just trying to find out how to get started, we’ve got you covered.  Here you will find articles about the technical aspects of writing.  There will be articles about our favorite tools of the trade (there are as many different ways to write as there are writers!).  We will have articles talking about our own journeys through the creative landscape and our own plans for our futures as writers.  We’ll have articles focusing on how to participate in – and win—NaNoWriMo.  Are you looking for regular chances to write but you lack ideas for getting started?  We’ll have several writing prompts here every week.  And if you are simply looking for a place to read what other people are writing, we’ll have that for you too!

Writing today is different from what it was for me 35 years ago when I started scribbling words in whatever crayon or pencil I had laying around. The world provides today’s authors with many more distractions and excuses to take us away from writing.  Yet, it also provides us with so many more opportunities to create our worlds and share them with each other.  Our mission here at Today’s Author is to foster a community of writers, a community in which we encourage each other to be creative and ultimately just keep writing.  We are glad to have you join us.