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James, I first dreamed of becoming a novelist when I was about 13 years old. I was still in 8th grade when I started writing short stories. That summer I was paid $4 a day for irrigating cotton, and I used the money to buy a typewriter. The day I got it home, I started work on my first "novel". Nine months later, I finished it. It wasn't much of a novel, only 120 typewritten pages, double-spaced, but I finished it (and it's still in my garage). My high school teachers raved over my writing ability. I didn't know it was any big deal...I just liked to write stories. I didn't realize right away that I had a serious talent, even though I had written five (somewhat longer) books by the time I graduated high school. One of my English teachers said to my mother, "If he was my son, I'd take him out of school before I'd let him stop writing". Right around the time I first started writing, my mom joined WCG (RCG at that time). I was writing stories all the time, and I shared them with some of the kids at church. Not surprisingly (knowing what I know now), a ton of shit came down on my head. Mr. Armstrong had said fiction is a waste of time, just "ready-made daydreams". And I was writing daydreams of my own. To make a very long story short, I was sneered at, snickered at, insulted, and condemned. I finally surrendered. I gave up my dream of becoming a famous novelist because “God's ministers” disapproved of the idea. Fast forward to 1992. I left WCG on May 29. A couple of months later I saw an ad in a magazine for people to write children's books. I knew it was a ripoff and I didn't bite, but it got me thinking. I sat down at the keyboard and banged out a 31,000 word kid's novel featuring my son Joe (who now works for Disney Animation) and his friend Howard. It only took me two weeks, writing a couple of chapters each night, and the boys loved it. They shared it with their friends. It was a hit. I was 44 years old. I had figured, back when I was a kid, that by the time I was 44 I would be world famous for my novels. (That was a kid's dream, of course, but it does happen to some people.) But in 1992, I was a complete unknown as a writer. Hell, I wasn't even writing. But I decided it wasn't too late. I wasn't dead yet, and I still had time to go after my dream. I sat down and started a science fiction novel that had been banging around in my head for years, about a slave girl who escapes an oppression society and makes her way to Earth, where she joins the Space Force and fights to free her enslaved planet. I hadn't written much in a long time. The talent was there, but like a diamond in the rough, it needed polishing. I tried but failed to sell the novel. In the meantime I wrote another novel, a prequel to the first, and later a third novel that included some of the same characters but told the story of the galaxy-wide war from a much broader perspective. In 1997 I joined an online workshop for science fiction writers, and learned a lot of techniques that I hadn't known before (or had forgotten). One of the things I realized about that first novel was that it was much too long for a "first" novel. Publishers won't take a chance on a newcomer with a 135,000 word book that might not sell. They prefer first novels at around 90,000 words. So in 2004 I split the story in two, rewrote the first ten chapters completely, and created a fourth book in the set. So...why the hell am I telling you all this? Because on July 15, 2009, that first novel went on sale. I'm 60 years old (61 next month), and I let my dream get away (thanks to HWA and his Gestapo), but at least I won't die unpublished. Would I have ever become famous? Maybe not. Is my writing any good? You be the judge. The book is called A Vow to Sophia, and you can review it Here. (More information at: http://bornnovelist.wordpress.com/a-vow-to-sophia/) John
Bowers John Bowers began his first “novel” at age 13. It took him nine months and was only 30,000 words, but he finished it. Before he graduated high school, he wrote four more. His teachers were convinced he was the next Hemingway, but it was not to be. Bowers was raised in a religious cult. Cults suppress creativity, demanding obedience and conformity. Though he wrote several more novels for fun, he never published them, and by the age of 30 he gave up writing entirely.
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