stranger than...

Ever since I was in the third grade (at least that's as far back as I remember in this case) I wanted to be a writer. Mrs. Miller, my third grade teacher, had us write stories that we then put into books complete with wallpaper and tag board covers. I still have that book.

Through the years I've wanted to pursue many things, but the one constant has always been writing. If I had to pick one thing that I was created to do, it's tell stories.

I'm at that point now where I've told a few, both in prose and poetry. I've had some credible figures in the field of writing tell me that I do it well. And I've even finished a few novels. But finishing a novel doesn't get it published. If you took all the finished but unpublished novels in the last five years, I would venture you could cross the good old US of A with them!

Which brings me to now. If this is what I was created to do, if this is the purpose of my life, then I need move forward. It's not enough to tell a story that no one hears--stories must be read, be shared, be told. And to do that, I need to get published.

Getting published is hard. Like hitting a baseball to the moon sort of hard. But there is something that can help make it more like hitting a ball from San Francisco to New York--and that's an agent. So that is my next step: find an agent.

And to be honest, I'd much rather have to find an agent than to have one of my characters show up at my door (like in the wonderful film Stranger Than Fiction). It's not going to be easy to find one, but most easy things aren't worth it in the end.

So, wish me luck! I'm off to find an agent.