Publishing Later in Life

To Alice

If all goes as planned, I should have a novel published by January 2022. I recently signed a contract with TouchPoint Press to publish my novel To Alice. Until that happens it’s a bit premature to call me a published author, or at least a published author of fiction. I regularly write feature stories for the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus and the Rutland Herald and occasionally write essays but not fiction. When To Alice is published, it will be my fiction debut.

I wrote the novel for three main reasons: Since I was a kid I always wanted write a novel, I wanted to honor home care and hospice workers, and I enjoy writing the way some people enjoy painting.

I started the book in April 2018 and finished 13 months later. To Alice isn’t the first novel I’ve written, but it is the first that is any good. I wrote one twenty years ago, maybe twenty-five years ago. It was pretty terrible. Took me ten years to write it and the ending chapters had almost nothing to do with the opening chapters. My main problem was I wrote sporadically, four or five hours a month, some months nothing at all. My excuse was I didn’t have the time, I had a young family and a full-time job. If you’re thinking of writing a book, and you are serious, don’t do what I did, it doesn’t work. Set aside time to write each week. If you don’t have the time, make the time, five hours a week minimum, 10 is even better. Make it a routine. And most importantly, don’t wait for inspiration, if you do you’ll never get it done. If you can’t think of anything to write at your scheduled writing time, type anyway, type How Now Brown Cow; type anything, it doesn’t matter, just type. Eventually you’ll hit your target. As Larry Bird or Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordon or who knows who said, you can’t score if you don’t shoot.