Opus 100

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This will be my 100th blog entry.

Not that anyone but me is counting. ha!

Ever since I clutched on to Isaac Asimov’s book of the same title as this entry, I’ve aspired to the same goal….having 100 [somethings] in print. Didn’t expect it to be a blog, but, then again, blogs didn’t exist when I first curved fingers around Dr. A’s pages, back in 197….um…whenever. My goal was to have written 100 books, just as he did.

Of course, I was a kid, and I had a list of other goals equally challenging that I wanted to achieve before I was 40 or dead, whichever came first. While I’m grateful that 40 came first, I was almost to that milestone before I fully accepted that there were a few items on that list that I would never achieve.

I’m okay with that.

Doesn’t mean I’ve taken them off the list, however.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve become fixated (again, still, however you want to view it) on Hunter S. Thompson, another author I’ve been reading and admiring “forever.” Just as with Dr. Asimov, I first read some of Dr. Thompson’s work when I was a teen, and, along with Harlan Ellison, I can honestly say they’ve been three of the authors I’ve been most influenced by, although the full list would take up a complete blog entry.

Not that I write like them. Couldn’t if I tried. And I did, at one time. I have to write like me, a fact that (late bloomer that I am) took me almost as long to accept as it did that I’d never climb K-2. But they remain, for me, like most of the items on that list – out “there” – representing things I want to achieve.

I wanted to climb K-2; I learned to backpack and have spent many amazing hours exploring.
I wanted to dive the Great Barrier Reef; I’m a certified rescue diver. May never hit Australia, but I discovered that I do indeed love being underwater.
I wanted to learn to fly; Haven’t (yet), but my desire for being in the air has meant dozens of eagerly embraced trips to some fabulous cities.
I may never publish 100 books; but my 4th comes out in February, and my ideas never cease — and my writing continues to improve.

Orson Scott Card (another ‘hero’) once said something to the effect that a successful writer must walk a very fine line between thinking the most recently finished work is the best thing you’ve ever written — and the worst. If you don’t think it’s the best, you’ll never send it out. If you don’t think it’s the worst, you’ll never improve.

I want to sell. And improve.

And, someday, fly.

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