I have decided to publish my short stories piecemeal via the Kindle bookstore, rather than wait for some publisher to call me up and set off the fireworks in my honor. The first is here, called “The Years Teach Much.”

It’s about a gorgeous, lonely 20-something who meets a wealthy older man… and then gets pregnant. She winds up a trophy wife past her prime while her aging husband has to try and keep up with a rebellious teenage daughter almost 50 years younger.

The title is from an Emerson quote from his essay Experience: “The years teach much which the days never know.” Hopefully that sums up what the story is about, albeit through a highbrow, English major explanation.

It’s about 5,800 words but took a lot longer than you would think to write, edit and figure out how to format for the Kindle. It’s only 99 cents - and free to Prime members of Amazon - so please pick it up, you 3 people who are reading this blog.

I hope this is the beginning of me staying true to my promise to write more and actually get my work out to the world.

I don’t know why I never thought of this before, but I used to always sit in the basement in my hidey-hole when I worked on my fiction.

I recently uploaded the text to Google Docs, however, and now whenever I have a few free minutes I can reengage with the story and keep the momentum going.

Not only is this a great way to get out your thoughts while they last, it’s also a good way to remind yourself that there’s work to be done.

Also eliminates fear of losing a great project, the need for backing up docs, etc.

I highly recommend working in this format.

It is very difficult for most writers in this world to write professionally (earn a living), write for themselves (make themselves happy) and consume others’ writing at a respectable clip (you MUST read others to write well).

Difficult, but not impossible.

I’ve been reengaging with a host of mediums I have recently neglected – handwritten letters to friends and relatives, for instance. Now I’m going to give a shot at getting the Tumblr wheel spinning again.

The reality is that if I can’t post a few hundred words a day here, as a stream of conscious narrative about my experience as a writer, then I’m probably not cut out to write at all.

Here’s to lots of coffee and early mornings in my near future.

Done right, writing is magic.

Picture this: Under a towering oak tree, a small gray squirrel with glassy black eyes turns an acorn over in his paws, gnawing all sides at once. A gentle breeze rustles the leaves above and the shadows shift on the patchy grass, the blades still yellow and brittle from winter despite the warm spring morning. Nearby a twig snaps — the squirrel jerks straight, frozen.

Did you see it? Did you hear it? If I did a good job… did you feel it? If so, that’s magic of the first order. Consider me Albus freakin’ Dumbledore.

The funny thing is there are millions of us who can do this. And that is an awesome thing. I’m not naive or conceited enough to think I am a rarity or particularly good at the craft writing. In fact I embrace the fact that writers exist in this world, many of them better than I.

We can conjure a scene, a feeling, a truth that exists in the world — or maybe a truth that has not yet sprung into being. And that raises an interesting philosophical question: As we create, don’t we somehow owe it to ourselves and our fellow humans to create a world that is better … if only on paper or the Kindle? If we can create, can we not also destroy with our words?

I have to pay the bills, and I’m lucky to do so writing. But I wish I had the time or independence to write something clear and true, something that does so much more than entertain. I wish I had time to write the world right — for one reader or for one million.

And my wish for you is that you find the time and the courage to do the same.