Before I croak

One of the things I want to do some time before I die is to write and publish a novel (or, you know, many wildly successful novels). I've actually finished a few but aside from one query letter, I made no moves to try to get either of them published.

The first was something I wrote back when I was about 15-16 years old. It was terrible. Terribly formulaic. I am ashamed to this day that I let anyone else read it. 

The second book was written more recently, something like three years ago. It was one part an experiment to see whether I could, in fact, finish something on the scale of a full-sized novel. It was also terribly arrogant of me to write it. Why? Well, I went into it with the thought that surely I would have no problem getting something published if I wrote for the Christian market. I arrived at this conclusion after a lifetime of reading bad Christian novels. The cherry on that Sunday was a book by a more successful Christian author that was set during the Revolutionary War. Within the first chapter I walked away in disgust. Who greenlighted a period novel and then let whole paragraphs about dating and being happy to see one's boyfriend slip by? I'm still appalled. 

"I could write any old piece of crap," thought I. "If only I dress it up a bit in Christian colors, it'll still be better than 90% of what is already out there." 

Ugh. I was such a jackass. 

Since that, I've started and stopped a half dozen projects. I more or less abandoned the first blog I had and went from posting nearly every day to posting about once a month. Another series of blogs centering around WoW (something I played heavily while not writing) were started and stopped within a few weeks. I did manage to write a decent amount of a WoW-centric fanfiction during that time, but that's about it. 

Maybe it's because my interest in WoW is waning. Maybe it's because of recent personal events that have re-awoken areas of my life that had been dead. Maybe it's because I've recently had the experience of reading stuffchristianslike.net from start to finish and was challenged and humbled and inspired nearly every post of the way. Maybe it's because I recently discovered Brandon Sanderson and was blown away by his books. Maybe it's a combination of everything I just mentioned. Whatever the reasons, I find myself wanting to write again. 

Unfortunately, all my ideas are very rough. I have no idea what to write. But I'm working on it and that's a pretty good feeling.