I have just emerged from a deep dark period of dormancy, in which I couldn’t seem to find anything to write about, and I didn’t even feel like editing any of my work that I’ve been trying to publish for years. Suddenly my brain woke up to the enticements of my Muse, and I feel alive again. There are several new ideas floating around in the air about my head, and I feel like I need to stay close to the keyboard listening for the voice of my Muse, in order to catch them in the prison of the printed page.
This little project is only to whet my appetite and get the juices flowing. It may turn into something and then again it may not. As long as it serves its purpose it’s all that matters.
I find it very interesting as I think back on how my writer’s DNA slowly kicked in and began working on my innate desire to write. Even as a young boy I was drawn to writing. At ten or eleven I wanted to start a newsletter for shut ins with amusing stories, cartoons, and tidbits of information that those who didn’t get out much might find interesting. This didn’t last long because of my inability to gather such material. When I was even younger I tried to write sequels or further adventures of the stories that I read or heard. In the seventh grade I contributed a cartoon featuring a Bulldog named Muggsy and a Blood Hound named Snoopy. I also had aspirations of writing and drawing another cartoon character, Mister Marvelous. He was an ordinary simple farmer with a trademark wheat tem hanging off his lower lip, and a shock of blond hair hanging down over his forehead, When there was trouble in the country he was there to fight for the right. He had a motor cycle that had a giant spring loaded jumping mechanism to help him bound over barns, haystacks, creeks and trees. My Uncle Morley, who visited me several times while growing up, was a sign painter back in the day when sign painters had to paint their own graphics. He looked at my sketchbook one time and encouraged me by saying, “You have a talent Billy, keep it up.”
I never kept a journal until after I was married, and I don’t remember writing much of anything during my young adult years. I think the hormones blocked my creative art juices. In fact I didn’t write much of anything until I began writing documents, at the age of forty-seven, for the Land Acquisition Department of Pacific Gas & Electric Company in San Francisco California. This didn’t really blossom until I had to write some of the new boilerplate which addressed the new laws put forth by the Environmental Protection Agency regarding the sale of lands which had held generators, fuel tanks, and PVC filed transformers. This task sparked my creative penchant and I took up the craft of writing, at first as a hobby, and then with hopes of being published. So far I have self published two books on CreateSpace.com, and they are offered for sale at three locations Amazon, CreateSpace, and latter-daybard.com. This last website is the one I developed myself, but it needs some work, which I hope to get around to one of these days.
Bill Willson 