Like
a lot of writers, my first and biggest “Ah-Ha!” moment occurred on the
day I opened the envelope that contained my first acceptance letter and
contracts for my first professionally-sold, professionally-accepted,
professionally paid-for and –published short story. I stood there alone
in the living room of my parents’ home (where I was still living at the
time – don’t ask, it would only depress you), hands shaking as I
re-read the acceptance letter from Alan Rodgers at Twilight Zone’s NIGHT CRY.
Needed to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, that I hadn’t at last
taken that swan dive off the deep end that lands one in the Twinkie
Mobile on its way to the Cracker Factory. I hadn’t. After over one
hundred submissions, I had made my first professional sale. I realized
then that I wasn’t deluding myself; I was good enough that somebody was
willing to pay me to publish my work. So I began jumping around there in my parents’ living room, hollering like an idiot and aching to tell someone my unbelievably spectacular, epoch-defining, life-changing news.
I
was, of course, alone. And I could not remember anyone’s phone numbers
to save my life. So I went out onto the front lawn and began hollering
and dancing and singing and laughing and crying. Yes, the police were
summoned; yes, a sobriety test was administered; yes, I passed it and
the police left after I assured them this would not be repeated.
The
actual “Ah-Ha!” moment came when I went back into the house and sat at
the kitchen table, still clutching the letter and contracts. The
epiphany was this: being a professional writer was going to get me in
trouble, and I would be spending a lot of time celebrating alone, and –
you know what? That was fine by me. Ah-ha! I was a writer.
And on the Newark, Ohio Police Department’s “People to Keep an Eye On’ list. I probably still am.
The
moral of this story – I like stories with morals, don’t you? I think
every story should have a moral, and the moral of this story is: write the story you want and do not for one second consider how others may view you and it;
don’t worry that it’s going to get you into trouble, or that your
mother or father or dear old gramma is going to look at you sideways,
wondering how it was that the gene pool managed to spring a leak and
produce something the likes of you; write for the most important,
demanding, and unforgiving audience you will ever confront: yourself.
About this author:
JACK DANN is a multiple award winning author who has written or edited over seventy books, including the groundbreaking novels Junction,Starhiker, The Man Who Melted, The Memory Cathedral-which is an international bestseller, the Civil War novel The Silent, and Bad Medicine,
which has been compared to the works of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S.
Thompson and called “the best road novel since the Easy Rider days.”
Dann’s work has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Roald Dahl, Lewis
Carroll, Castaneda, Ray Bradbury, J. G. Ballard, Mark Twain, and Philip
K. Dick. Philip K. Dick, author of the stories from which the films Blade Runner and Total Recall were made, wrote that “Junction is where Ursula Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven and
Tony Boucher’s ‘The Quest for Saint Aquin’ meet…and yet it’s an
entirely new novel…. I may very well be basing some of my future work onJunction.” Best selling author Marion Zimmer Bradley called Starhiker “a superb book…it will not give up all its delights, all its perfections, on one reading.”
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