How Ohlen's Arrow came to be

This book began simply and without grand ambition. Writing creatively has always been a source of joy and has rarely felt like work, even when it was to meet a scholastic or occupational requirement imposed upon me by others. The first three chapters saw their genesis on weekend morning sessions, writing in the quiet early morning hours with a cup of coffee and a comfortable chair. It was simply for the joy of it. Without any long-term goals, I merely wrote what I wanted to read. The main character is not based on any person, alive or dead, fictional or factual; he is what my hands typed almost at random, nothing more.

I learned about Ohlen the same way the reader does, word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence. His personality unfolded to me as I wrote him. Once he and I were properly introduced, ideas and inspiration began to form in my mind about interesting things that could happen. I had to equip him with the skills and experience necessary to survive and thrive. He needed friends and family, so they came next. He needed a world to live in and that was created as well.

It wasn't until the first three chapters were finished that I began to realize that turning it into a full-fledged book might be a worthwhile endeavor. I read everything I had and found myself eager to read more, wanting to know what happened to him next. Up to that point I had simply written what I would want to read, so I took the leap of faith that what I liked might also be liked by others and made the decision to keep going with the explicit intention of making a book out of it.

Writing for fun is one thing; writing for profit is an entirely different enterprise. It has been described as eating an elephant with a spoon. The scale of what you write varies, of course, but there are many other concerns that I quickly discovered would influence how I wrote the story. Just like pop songs and blockbuster movies, there are formulas that govern how high-selling books are written. I found myself focused on the mechanics of writing a fantasy novel instead of being driven by the passion to create. I stopped writing and began to read everything I could about the business of writing, how to write, what to write, and how to make it sell once the writing was done. I almost stopped writing altogether because of it. I felt discouraged.

Through the encouragement of others, however, some of which are successful authors themselves, I decided to invoke a cliche and just be myself. I engaged my creative drive once more and continued putting words to virtual paper, with energy and motivation renewed.