My fantasies about my hero Delgado continued on my walks around town, usually to three drugstores, which I visited so that I could check the spin-racks for science fiction that I didn’t own yet. Back in those days I could find some books for twenty five cents. My fantasies also kept me occupied while riding with my parents to visit my father’s family in North Dakota. The drive, back then, took two nights each way. 

But I got bored with my fantasy hero. He was like one of those guys who overdevelop on steroids, but with extra body parts like wings and horns and other things — all very embarrassing as I write this — in an effort to make him even more powerful. But he was boring. He could take his thirty pound sword (most real broadswords weigh less than three pounds), walk into the trouble spot, hack and slash and destroy everything, and walk out. No more problem (like in The Dirty Pair). And there was no challenge.

My heroic fantasy was no fun any more. What could I do to make it interesting again?

My daytime fantasies about the hero continued for years. His name was Delgado, because of my fascination with Spanish names at that time. These were not real stories, so much as events and episodes. As time passed, my hero became bigger, stronger, eventually a grotesque superhero, who wasn’t really super at all, just a teen-age boy’s wish-fulfillment fantasy. Eventually, after I had published other books, I wrote something long enough to be called a novel, and sent it to my agent. She rejected it, which was the right thing to do. 

Nonetheless, I decided to write a sequel, and then another, then revise the first book and try again. The sequels, hand-written on the back of wide-format computer paper — which I had been given since I couldn’t afford regular paper — amounted to about a hundred fifty thousand words each, and were so bad that, when I some years later looked at them again, I literally, not “figuratively,” could not read them. Some time after that, since I needed the shelf space, I threw the sequels out. Garbage is garbage after all, and after a while it begins to stink. The original story was rejected again, and now is lost. Maybe that’s just as well.

I got the inspiration for The Black Ring in my early teens, when I had a dream in which I was a hero in some kind of story. (A version of that dream is in Book One, Part Four, Chapter 14, near the beginning of “The Cottage on the Border”.) I had never been a hero in my dreams or fantasies — and certainly not in real life — and I never had another dream about being a hero, though I have sometimes assumed the role of someone other than me.

The dream persisted in the back of my mind for a long time, as no other dream had done. The idea of being a hero entered my fantasies for the first time, which had never never been about being a hero before. I eventually started writing down a lot of ideas — strange lands, monsters, companions, enemies, modes of transportation, weapons — and over the years filled several small notebooks. I decided, after ten or twelve years or so, to compile them all into a single notebook, and threw the originals away. When I referred to the compilation later, I found that I had tightened too much, and had left out alternates and details which I now wanted. I should have kept the originals.

I have been working on preparing a second edition of The Black Ring since September 6, 2020. I’m not there yet, but the end is in sight, in the not too distant future.

Had it been a second edition of just one book — say A Thing Forgotten, which needs a corrected second edition — it could have been done easily, in just a week or two. But The Black Ring is six volumes in a numbered series, which adds complications at Amazon and at Bowker (where you get ISBNs) and possibly at the U.S. Copyright Office as well. And each book needed lots of re-readings and corrections and revisions. And formatting. And cover adjustments. Sigh.

But it is coming along. After it’s done, I would like to start something new. Or get back to Star Kings, or The Empty House. But I intend to take an extended break first.

Under the present circumstances, it is difficult to find anything to write about that is as important as the present circumstances. Of course, at my age, my creative energy runs out all too soon anyway. I am not the only one. I subscribe to a blog by a writer who, once rather prolific, now seems to have run out of things to say.

But I have not given up. I am writing a book which, typically, is far too ambitious. It consists of a cycle of twelve stories, each of which requires enough world-building for a whole novel. My characters grow, a great problem is solved, and the ending of the cycle — when I eventually get to it — gives me chills.

But, even without the present circumstances, it becomes ever more difficult to find the energy each day to do a sketch, a rough draft, a developed draft, then a first, second and third draft, then a series of final readings, all for just one chapter out of five or seven for each story. It’s typical. But I don’t have the creative energy I used to.

I am an introvert, but I find that, oddly enough, I am motivated by prolonged, intense social interaction with a lot of different people at once. Like at a science fiction convention. Which I have not attended since early March. And probably won’t for a while, under the present circumstances.

But I have not given up. Every day I go a little further. Maybe only ten or twelve steps instead of thirty or fifty or a hundred. But every day is another ten or twelve steps closer to that ending which I so much want to reach. I’ll get there.

I have been spending all my creative energy trying to finish my newest book, and get a cover, and get it published, and at last it is done. My final draft was listening to Voice Dream read it aloud to me, and catching far too many little problems I had missed on every previous reading. I did the cover myself this time, under Darcy’s supervision and with her advice. Formatting for 6×9 printing is easy, dealing with widows and orphans (including on the paragraph level) takes some time. Publishing for paper and digital was a bit tricky, since I hadn’t done it over a year, I use my own imprint, Ogden House, and have to deal with Bowker for the ISBN. Putting it on my book site (Allen Wold’s Books,  http://allen-wold.com) should have been easier, but I hadn’t done that in over a year either, and it took a while to remember how to do it, and save it, and update it, and so on.

Writing a story, of whatever length, is one thing. Making it available to readers is quite another. But at last it is all done, and is life on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/0998546720?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860. Now I can get back to work on my next book.

Jack Vance was the Guest of Honor at a convention in Virginia Beach many years ago. He was perfectly comfortable in small room parties — such as the one I was hosting — talking with people even if they weren’t fans. He influenced a lot of writers, and readers too, by his storytelling, characters, and plots. Something he told us that night would eventually change the way I wrote my first drafts.

The conversation was about word processors, and he explained that he had been reluctant to try them, since he tended to edit himself while typing. That’s not easy, especially if he did more than just fix typos. Revising a whole sentence meant x-ing it out and retyping it, which broke the stream of his creativity. Going back to revise anything before the current sentence meant retyping everything after that, sometimes the whole page. His internal editor was insistent.

He discovered a way of dealing with that. He would take a sheet of yellow legal paper, fold it in half top to bottom, turn it 90 degrees, and write across the lines, using four fountain pens: black, blue, green, and red. As he wrote, he concentrated on making colored patterns with the different inks. This distracted his internal editor completely, and liberated his unconscious creator, in a kind of automatic writing. When he finished his draft, his wife typed it all up, and then he could make his revisions.

He was afraid that, if he used a word processor, it would only give his internal editor more power. Someone suggested that he should try using it with the brightness turned down, until he couldn’t read the text well enough to edit, so that he could just stare into the depths of his story. After a bit of experimenting, he found that it worked. He didn’t need the pens any more, and his wife didn’t have to type it up. And editing a finished draft on a word processor is far, far easier than retyping all those revisions and corrections and changes scribbled on a typed page.

I still use longhand when working on a story, if I have to think carefully while creating. But most of the time I compose at the computer, especially if the story is alive in my head, and I need to get it all down. In my own version of Jack Vance’s solution, I turn away from the screen, stare into what my muse is showing me, and transcribe what I see there. 

I really like it when I can do that.

I know people who write full time and make a living at it, but most writers have to have a day job, or other financial support, so that they can pay the bills and provide for their families. They write when they can — between patients, early in the morning, instead of TV — a police officer by day and a writer of romances by night, as it were. 

My day job is household management.  My wife has an outside job, to provide our living, and I stay home and run the house. It’s a good job, from six in the morning till eleven at night — though not straight through. I am not paid in money, but in kind: a place to live, a car to drive, food, clothes, books, movies, insurance, trips to conventions, and the computer. It’s what my mother earned in the fifties, while my father earned his living at the advertising agency. 

My day job is usually flexible. I can choose when to do what needs to be done, and I’m able to write when the time is best for me, and for as long as I want, my muse permitting. 

Like so many writers, I write part-time, but a writer is what I am. My day job is just what I do for a living.

I know a few writers who don’t depend on traditional publication. They write what they want, have lots of fans, and know how to please them as well as themselves. One or two make a living at it without the need for other employment.

Those who support themselves have to work quickly, but they have the skills. Their imaginations are impressive. They pretty much do their own editing, and even distribution. They all have to produce marketable works. And they have to know how to promote. Not everybody can do all that.

Those who can write good stories. They have their own styles. Their characters are sympathetic and believable. The plots make sense and are frequently surprising. The situations and settings are interesting. The stories are internally consistent. And the endings leave you wanting more.

These few writers may not have the sales numbers of those who are traditionally published, but they are real writers by anybody’s definition. They enjoy another form of success. And I enjoy their company.