Side Step...Chance Conversations

     It has been a very long time since I have posted anything to this blog.  In the span of months since that last Side Step posting, a great deal has occurred.  In it all, I have managed to really lose my mind as opposed to just misplacing it like I do my keys.  I am not going to bore everyone with the full details.  However for three easy payments of 19.95 plus shipping and handling...
     In short, everything that has gone on has taken me away from one thing I love:  Writing.  I was trying to get stuff submitted and accepted in all these proceedings and had hit a wall.  Nothing was getting accepted, even a story I had high hopes for.  When added to everything else I was trying to fight through, the rejections started getting to me.
     For months I have found myself practically unable to write.  Ideas even refused to grace my mind for the longest time.  Fear welled up in me, and I thought maybe I would never write again.  That single thought scared me more than I can easily describe in anything less than an hour of your time.
     For the record, I do not believe in the concepts of Fate or Destiny.  Based on what I believe in this life, neither are practical, nor are they smart bets.  To me, life is a series of never ending chances and choices.  Everything interconnects in some fashion, and what happens from there depends on what one chooses to do or not do.  I have a theory about time that works in a similar fashion.
     Chance is something else entirely.  I actually find it refreshing that I see chance in almost any situation, no matter how hopeless.  I believe the quote comes from Spock of Star Trek, about 'there are always possibilities'.  I modified that to say: There are always possibilities.  You just have to look for them.
     Two chance conversations have set me back on course with my writing.  One was with my very good friend Paul.  In a rambling conversation while I was editing, he gave me a few valid points.  We were comparing our writing styles.  Paul is much more geared to the Sherlock Holmes method of things:  Logical discourse, testing of chains of reason, collection and collation of details.  When he writes, he is detail driven, down to in some cases very small pieces of how things work.
     I am more given to the John H. Watson approach.  I write quickly, details literally playing in my mind in full colour detail.  I am not nearly as detail driven, focusing on my characters and the situations they are in.  As for detailed science, I sucked at science in high school, and to this day can not be brought to understand physics.  Such discussions usually end with me screaming in agony. 
     There is nothing wrong in either approach.  I have seen both done and each holds its own.
     (And yes, I am a very large Sherlock Holmes fan.)
     When I started getting my pile of mounting rejections, I began to fear that maybe I was lacking too much detail.  My old 7th grade teacher (A man whose opinions I respect from my early days of writing and will always respect) summed up how I write quite well.  He told me that my beginning and endings are almost not there.  He also told me that when I get going, I do not waste words or time, and that I made good and real characters.
     In short, he told me to stick with how I did things.  Paul simply had to hit me over the head with the clue by 4 to remind me of it.
     Another chance conversation came last week.  I was talking to the sister of my friend I am working for.  She was talking about writing and publishing some stuff related to her work.  We had a conversation about it for a bit.  Afterwards I reviewed what I was thinking and realised that nothing much was actually holding me back from writing, except myself.
     Amazing what a chance conversation can do.  Or in this case, two of them.

     In due course, new stuff shall appear.  Also, a couple of my older stories will reappear as I take them out of submission circulation.  The next thing I write will be a bit of real Life.