Rant #2,598: Every Day I Write the Book

We can all look back on our lives and take pride at what we have done to survive, to make money, and to put food on the table.
 
I write, I write, and I write some more.
 
That is what I do here, that is what I do for my remote job, and that is what I have done seemingly my entire life.
 
During one of my few recent dull moments, I though about how much I have written over the years, not just during my time when writing has been my profession, but even before that, when I was a kid.
 
I think the first thing I had published was in the literary magazine put out by P.S. 30, the very first school I ever went to, in Flushing, Queens, New York.
 
I went to kindergarten and first grade at the school, and the first thing I had published was a short piece about voting.
 
It read something like “You vote. I vote. We all vote.” And that was that, but it put me on the road to what would later be my profession.
 
I continued to write as a kid. I used to write letter upon letter to my favorite comic books, and every once in a while, I would get my letter published.
 
I remember that when we moved to Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York, there was a point that I mailed out about 50 letters to various titles that I used to read, including “Superman” and “Batman” and “Lois Lane.”
 
I distinctly recall that I bought a comic book at one of the stores that sold them at the retail part of the development—It was a Jimmy Olsen”—and lo and behold, my letter was published!
 
I got all wild and crazy about it, and everyone within earshot knew that my letter was published.
 
Writing was my salvation, I guess, and it helped me express myself in ways that I simply couldn’t verbally.
 
Later on, when we moved to Long Island, when I was in high school, I had a teacher who became enamored of my writing, brining up things that I supposedly said in my writing that I didn’t even know I had said.
 
I took a television writing class with her, and in this oft told story, I wrote a teleplay for the then popular TV show “Sanford and Son” starring Redd Foxx.
 
She thought that it was so good that I should send it to Hollywood, so I did just that. I don’t remember where I found the address of the show, but I found it, and sent it directly there.
 
The story I wrote was about Fred Sanford competing for a World Record, reaching that goal, and everything he had to do to get to that point.
 
The teleplay had all the standard “Sanford and Son” schtick, and yes, I also thought it was pretty good.
 
So I send the thing out to Hollywood, but being as naïve as I could be, I don’t send it registered mail or anything like that, I simply sent it out in the standard mail. And I did not make a copy of the teleplay, either.
 
I did not hear from the producers of the show, and I kind of forgot about it.
 
Then in the next season’s shows, I turned on the TV on a particular Friday night, when the show was on NBC, and lo and behold, the had a show about Fred Sanford breaking a World Record! They used a lot of the schtick that I used in my teleplay, but my name was not to be found in the credits.
 
So no, I got no credit, I got no money, I got no fame or fortune, but if you ever see the episode in reruns, that was my story, my idea, and it was stolen from me because I was an ignorant kid.
 
Later on, I wrote for a variety of publications on the side as I pursued my graduate and undergraduate degrees, wrote for the college newspaper for four years, and would occasionally have a letter published in popular periodicals like People Magazine and even Newsday, the Long Island newspaper.
 
Later on, I decided to put out my own publication, what was called a “fanzine” back in those times, which was a self-published fan magazine directed at a certain audience and a certain subject.
 
“Hear Again” lasted a few years, and I actually had subscribers all over the world when I gave it up right after my daughter was born.
 
It was a labor of love for me, and it also allowed me to write on a larger-scale basis for something called “The Island Ear,” a local music publication where I wrote the “Hear Again” column for more than 11 years with that free publication.
 
Through that time, I was not only freelancing for several other publications, but I was writing on a full-time basis about real estate, then security, as a full-time job, with my writing going out to thousands of subscribers to the publications that I wrote for.
 
One thing led to another, and I ended up writing full-time about military stores just as my son was born, commissaries and exchanges, and that is where I am today, still writing about them with a respite of a few months when the company I worked for for nearly a quarter century went belly up.
 
My stories have gone international, and I know for a fact that a few stores around the country and around the world have my story about their particular store on the wall of their establishment in a picture frame, so even though I have never been to places like Germany and Turkey and Japan, my stories have taken me to these places.
 
And then there is this blog, which has been going on for quite a bit longer than a decade, a blog that I do for fun, not for fame or money.
 
So when you add it all up, I have written thousands and thousands and thousands of stories during my life. I still remember learning to actually write out letters for the first time. I tried to copy the letters off of flash cards, and while my writing is still pretty bad, not only did I learn those letters at a very young age—maybe two years old—by learning the letters, I was able to teach myself to read, which I know I was able to do at three years of age.
 
So long ago, but I still have those memories.
 
And of course I probably started writing in crayon, moved over the pencils, then pens, later I typed things out—I remember typing out a college paper on toilet paper, literally—and then like all of us, I moved over to the new world of computers, and that is how I write my stories today and probably into the foreseeable future.
 
I have no idea why all of this came up, but it is a valid history.
 
I was put on this earth to write, write and write some more, and while I will never be a best-selling author—I wrote a novel while out of work that still sits here without being officially published—I have made a decent living because I know how to write, probably better than I know how to speak.
 
Everyone seems to think they can write, but it is a skill, much like playing a musical instrument.
 
Everyone can pick up a pen and write things on paper, but there is a real skill to writing, and getting out precisely what you want to say.
 
I am happy that you have been around for at least part of my writing journey, and as long as I can get to a computer keyboard, I will continue to ply my craft.
 
In fact, last night at 12 midnight, I was writing something for my remote job … it was something that I started and could not stop—I was energized, had my thoughts together, so why should I stop and go to bed without it being completed?
 
Yes, every day I write the book, and I might be semi-retired, but I stilt think I have the “write” stuff, so why stop?