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I knew I was going to be a writer by the 3rd grade. The first school I was in had 18 kids and one teacher for all 8 grades. Another school I was in only had 6 students. As I look back it amazes me just how great my teachers were. One gave up a career where he earned $100 per night in order to teach a bunch of wild Indians for $70 a month with a "house" included. The nearest store was like 45 miles away.
No matter where I was or what I was doing my mind was clicking to record every facet of my life. As Victoria Holt points out "Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience. At a tender young age I began throwing myself at new experiences; even when I went through a vicious stoning, I told myself, "I shall remember this." and I dragged deep the smell of the earth beneath me.
At an early age I began conducting survival lessons for a class of one. Frequently I would spend from 3 days to 30 out in the desert, taking no water, no hat, no fire, no food, and occasionally no shoes, just to see if I could survive and I learned what spirit brings a man out of surrender to struggle out alive. All too often I would collapse and know I wasn't going to make it, then I'd begin monitoring everything around me; "What would a hero do out here? What could he smell? What resource could he use for food? If he was heading for that mountain how would he get there?" The survivalists of today would put me to shame but back then I was the only kid out there.
There was enough action in the period of my youth to furnish 40 books, but the emotion I remember best from those days was boredom.
The best time that this constant monitoring happened was when I was 14 and I batched as a cowboy on a big ranch on the Grand Canyon, alone all summer. Every day, and most every hour of the day I was telling myself to "remember this, you'll never be happier."
The Army widened my horizons substantially with extensive travel, exciting escapades and seeking OJT on 3-4 skills per year. If I could have known how fascinated I would be with the ocean scenery I would have joined the Navy.
I traveled the U.S, including Hawaii, went to Japan, spent a year in Korea building bunkers that surely still stand today as first lines of defense when the 38th runs red again. I was still there when the truce dissolved in 1959-60
Then I got to play around in Combat Development Experimentation Control.. probably the only time in my life (before 25) that I had more excitement going on than boredom. Then JFK ordered the Berlin Air Lift and I volunteered to get there and spent that winter at Grafenveer,,, (spelled wrong)
Ice would form a foot thick on the inside of windows in our buildings, not that I was inside them for very long at a time. Those were Great days and it was a great army. The Kennedy Challenge inspired a whole lot of men and officers to show they were combat fit. 50 mile volunteer marches on weekends were norms for the year I was there.
I was exultantly fit by then. Then I was joyously crossing a chasm by swinging by hand from one hold to the next -- and something popped. I fell to the ground, unable to move. From one second to the next I quit being combat ready to a complete invalid.
A great doctor and a personal friend helped me get back to walking, one shearing painful step to the next, but NOTHING wrong with me could be found. For the next 45 years every bone in my back might suddenly freeze up -- for weeks and months. And NOTHING wrong with me could ever be found until 2001 when an MRI told my doctor, "HERE'S THE PROBLEM." But until then, I was labeled a hypochondriac, hated by doctors and spurned by employers.
The only job I could get was as a ditch digger. There's an art to doing that right, by the way. When my muscles turned loose (as they often did) I could break shovel handles by shoveling too fast and putting too much strain on them. 24 years later I was still digging ditches or lying in a heap somewhere, unable to move until my muscles turned loose -- minutes, or months later. When I could work some of my days were 60 hours long with no time off for lunch. If I had to assign my worst enemy to the bitterest torture I could imagine I would simply label him "a hypochondriac". Let half the fingers on earth wag and say, "FAKER" and the other half turn circles against the hairline and giggle while lip and eye sneer at your cringing soul and you don't know if you are faking it so well you fool yourself, or so deviously insane that you know you aren't. Experience, oh, I racked it up with a steam shovel.
After 8 years of bleak homelessness I slowly and surely mastered my fate only to be smitten with one distressing "phantom" disease after another. One by one they were found and one by one I gained insights into the human psyche that even the most compassionate doctors will never equal.
There was one last bout extending for over 7 months that I was laid low with nothing but my brain functioning. There aren't many job openings for men whose sole talent is to lie flat on his back. But my mind turned again to that childhood dream of being a writer. "If I am ever going to be a writer I had better get going."
By 1984 I had taught myself how to type and burned 2 electric typewriters out with speeds blazing up and over 100 words per minute. Nothing sold, of course -- but I was hunkered down by then and there wasn't nothing going to stop me.
Official schooling for me terminated in the 5th grade and reading how to write never taught me a thing anyway. When my trials finally produced 1 sale another followed right in its footsteps and went around the world. When my first check (for $100) came in I was out of food, living in a deserted house, and didn't even have enough money to make a copy of that check, so I did without food for 3 days and finally got work cleaning a yard, and was paid enough to make a copy of my first check before I let myself cash it. I've still got that copy.
At this point I was feeling a sore need for more education. What I finally decided to do was interview executives in every industry in a large metro. Places that wouldn't let me through the door to apply for a job were rolling out the welcome mat so I could interview top executives.
There was only one company that I missed. I had an appointment to interview a big company's chief executive and when I came in he introduced me to all of his VPs, then we sat down, with me there to watch and learn... but first, he told me a joke. I did not laugh at it. There I was, shown the door immediately. As I sat down on the curb outside I decided it was time that I developed a sense of humor.
The notches on my word processor have gone up over a thousand articles, a few hundred feature stories, and way, way too many press releases. My first book came out just before the 20th century gasped up the ghost, and it wasn't long before I realized I could sell more of my books in person than the trained professionals could en masse. "From now on, I'll publish my own."
That was my undoing, but it has taken me 11 years to realize that it was a bad career decision.
While I've done amazingly well with that program, there is a certain amount of applause that I can't live without, so when Amazon came out with the Kindle publishing route, I took a right turn. It still feels right.
