Because like my father and grandfather (his father) before him I have the gift of being articulate and descriptive in the ability to tell of experiences I have had or relaying experiences others have had. Many including one of my best friends were not like this but he was my best friend from Junior High and High School because he was always a faithful and loyal friend like I tried to be to him too. Then when the Viet Nam war drew us both towards the draft he had to find a way to stay alive so he got his jet engine certification at Glendale College while I studied computer programming there. But then he had to join the Air Force to survive the Viet Nam war whereas most boys got drafted and died or were injured in the Army infantry on the front lines. So, choosing what you were going to do in the war could save a person's life then. So, he repaired jet engines in jet fighters and B-52s in Thailand there during the war and I because of Blunt Trauma childhood epilepsy until I was 15 didn't get drafted at all. So, our lives diverged a lot too and then later on he died around age 64 I believe in 2011 partly because of the Viet Nam war shortening his life a lot.
My cousin for example became a lawyer and joined Vista which was the Peace Core in the U.S. which was also a deferment then. He learned to be an Immigration lawyer for them and he stayed with this specialty throughout his life after that. Other people I knew did all sorts of things including going to Canada so they wouldn't have to die in Viet Nam along the way. I was lucky to almost die many times between 10 and 15 years old from seizures caused by a fall rock climbing with my father when I was about 8 or 9 years old so I didn't have to get drafted when I was 18 then.
As I have said I see myself as a storyteller more than a writer because I don't have the editing skills that a writer might have. I see my problem regarding being a writer is that many times what I write is sort of like one of my children so I feel very loyal to what I have written and so find I can't edit it because it seems perfect in many ways to me and I don't want to harm my children. It would be like snipping off the fingers of your children for me in some ways to edit beyond spelling and context what I have written.
Many writers (especially those who aren't getting paid for writing) are like this. I suppose it is very difficult to be a writer in that you often get attached to what you are writing. So, in order to get paid for what you are writing often you have to find a way to detach yourself from your writing in order for that to work.
Writers sometimes find ways around all this but I haven't so far. Recently, a friend of ours who is a very good editor said she might be able to edit my "Memories" book this year or next after she finishes editing the book she is editing for someone else right now. So, that might be promising as well. I have waited years for her to agree to editing my book because she or my wife or one of my daughters might be the ONLY ones I might trust with what I have written.
Also, since I started writing about Arcane and Elohar and Ragna and His Oneness and everyone back all the way to 1980 with Arcane, all this has become sort of like my private Bible in a spiritual sense and taken on a whole new meaning in my life than it meant starting in 1980 with Arcane.
One day I walked home from Pine Grove Health Food Store in Mt. Shasta (now Berryvale next to the post office in Mt. Shasta) and I wrote with a pen right on the large brown grocery bags I had carried home from Pine Grove across from the cemetery then to my home on the corner of Lassen Lane and Old Stage Road.
I sat on my front lawn on the acre of land there then and wrote looking up at Mt. Shasta the first few words of arcane. I then put these writings in a drawer on the Grocery bags until I transcribed them onto my IBM Clone AT computer in 1987 when I first got it (so 8 years later). Then I went to a local community college here on the Northern California coast and took my first "Creative writing" College class which helped my writing and organizing abilities a lot that semester. So, I have continued to write about Arcane and all these beings ever since 1980 now about 40 years. So, they have now taken on a life of their own on many different levels of my life and the lives of others who have read about them.
But still, I don't consider myself to be a writer really, only a Storyteller who is articulate enough to share amazing experiences of this life and others with people all over the world.
By God's Grace
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