WRITING ARTICLES, SHORT STORIES, POEMS, AND SONGS

I have always been an avid reader. I remember as a young reading the King James Bible, bible story books, and other books. I remember imagining that I was one or maybe even more than one character that I was reading about. I liked to read poetry. I have always liked poetry about nature. And I have always enjoyed reading the classics in one form or another. I’ve read the works of Ernest Hemingway, Robert Newton Peck, Samuel Clemmons, William Faulkner, and the works of other authors.

When I was a youngster of around 13 years of age, I tried to write a story about someone who saw a UFO. I eventually got side-tracked and my attentions went in another direction. Needless to say, the story never got finished and it surely didn’t get published. The idea of becoming a writer was still there in the back of my mind, but it was stuck there behind many other things that I had to do in everyday life. I remember that I had to write a story for an assignment every now and again while attending high school, and two particular memories stick out above the rest from that time period in my life. An English teacher handed out a photo that showed a man and woman’s feet surrounding a little baby’s feet. And she asked us students to write what the photo made us think about when we looked at it. When the assignment was graded and passed back to us, mine had been commented on by the teacher. She wrote on my paper that she felt like I was going to be the future writer of this class. That made me feel good. And it was not something that I had never thought about before. I had thought about being a writer many times over the years. Later on in that school year, she asked us to write a short story about something that we knew something about in some way or another. I remember that the story that I wrote was about a fellow who was up in a tree stand hunting with his hunting bow. At the end of the story, the man saw a large buck, pulled back the bow, aimed, and released. My ending was slightly different from the end result that the teacher suggested. In my version, the man released the arrow, and the arrow sailed through the air, and struck the buck. My teacher said, “Why don’t you end the story where the arrow was released. That way, the reader can determine in his or her mind whether it killed the buck or missed.” I thought that that was a good suggestion, and the release of the arrow became the ending of my story. She asked me to let her keep the story to show other students what a good short story should be like. I liked the idea. Unfortunately, it was close to the last day of school, and I failed to remember to come back by her class room and hand her the story when the school year ended. I ran for the bus, and soon was heading home for summer vacation. I have no clue as to where that short story went.

I recall writing simple poems at the age of around 12 or 13. I had a small box filled almost to the top with my humble efforts. I remember one poem was about a wren. Unfortunately, that box of poems got discarded by me a while later and I said to myself that I would maybe try to write more later. I got my first guitar for Christmas when I was around 15 or 16 years old. It took me quite a while to learn how to be somewhat decent at playing that thing. And one thing led to another, and I was soon trying my hand at writing simple songs. Since poetry and lyrics are somewhat similar, I didn’t find it too hard to write songs (At least the lyric part of songs). I have always enjoyed the hobby of metal detecting and have found many neat and some valuable things over the years. That led me to writing articles for Lost Treasure magazine. I was a major contributor to that publication for around 10 years.

I have written many books of poetry, and many other types of books over the years. Most of my books are published on Amazon KDP. I just finished my 81st book on KDP. It is a book filled with my hand-drawn illustrations and underneath each illustration, I have written a sentence, or a couple sentences that tell what I thought about whenever I looked at the illustration. The illustrations were drawn awhile back…not here recently. Writing is a big part of my life. Just like creating artwork with acrylics and colorful markers are a big part of my life. I am a very-creative person. And I always have been.