Writing on the road

(photo of La Garita Wilderness)

This week, my family and I will embark on a 12-day road trip through western Colorado. Stops will include:

• The Flat Tops Wilderness
• Glenwood Springs
• Aspen
• Marble
• Paonia
• Telluride
• Mesa Verde
• Durango
• Weminuche Wilderness
• La Garita Wilderness
• The Great Sand Dunes
• The Royal Gorge
• Cripple Creek

My challenge will be to continue writing without disrupting our family vacation. Also, I hope to move forward with the online novel writing class. I am scheduled to submit the first 5,000 words of my novel on August 8 for review by my classmates.

I plan to write on my laptop and communicate with my class via Iphone. I have a converter that will allow me to plug my laptop into the cigarette lighter. Ideally, I will rise early and write while my wife and kids sleep. Perhaps I can also get some writing done during drive time (laptop perched upon the steering column???) Maybe my wife should drive...

Vacations have always been a period of renewed creative energy for me. Whether it is the change of routine, the extra sleep, or the new sights and sounds, my mind seems to wake up when I leave home. Hopefully, this trip will be no different.

Early in my marriage, my wife and I joined her parents for a week on the Gulf of Mexico. I was working on a recording of my songs at the time and had been stuck on lyrics for months. I found inspiration on the beach and wrote most of the lyrics for my record that week.

Likewise, I have done some of my best writing in ski lodges, airports, hotel lobbies, and the like.

Come to think of it, those same times have served to renew my relationship with my wife. Maybe she's the reason I feel inspired.

Here's to dramatic vistas, effortless narrative, and sharing a tent with my wife.

The role of hope in writing a novel

Yesterday I started an online novel writing class offered by Gotham Writers' Workshop. This is my first class in 15 years, and my first experience with online learning.

While it is too early to tell whether the benefits of the course will outweigh the cost, I was intrigued from the outset by the stories shared by my fellow students.

We come from all corners of the U.S. and both sides of the Atlantic. The subjects explored in our novels cover the gamut of human experience. In many ways, we couldn't be more different. Yet we are bound by the common hope of selling our novels to a publisher and seeing our works in print.

For some of us, this has already been a lengthy journey. Many of my classmates have been closet writers for years or even decades, reluctant to share their work (or even the fact that they write). One student is working on the ninth draft of his first novel. Another has written "quite a few stories" and has yet to see any of them published. Another published her first short story and is now afraid to submit anything else for fear of rejection.

And yet we write on, dreaming of glowing reviews, best seller lists, and book tours.

But how likely is it that any of us will ever get our novels published? And should we achieve that goal, what are the odds that we will sell enough books to justify the expenditure of time, let alone convince our publishers to take a chance on any subsequent efforts?

The sad truth is that most "writers" never finish their novels. Of those who finish and submit their manuscripts for publication, less than 1 percent ever make it to print.

Self-publishing Web site parapublishing.com offers statistics that suggests most of us are kidding ourselves:

• A third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

• 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

• 70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.

• 70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.

(Source: Jerold Jenkins, www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)

• About 120,000 books are published each year in the U.S.

(Source: www.bookwire.com)

• A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies.

• A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies.

(Source: Authors Guild, www.authorsguild.org)

• On average, a bookstore browser spends 8 seconds looking at a book's front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover.

(Source: Para Publishing, www.parapub.com)

My wife recently commented that if a person takes on a project as large as writing a novel for any reason other than personal satisfaction, he is likely doing it for the wrong reasons. She's probably right. Publication is elusive, but making a living writing fiction is all but impossible. The process of writing a novel must be undertaken for different reasons altogether.

So why do people do it? I suppose hope plays a significant role, as it does in anything. Whether it is writing a book, raising children, buying stocks, earning a degree, or any other endeavor that requires investment and risk, hope is the essential ingredient that makes it all seem possible.

And who knows? One of my classmates could be the next Stephen King.

Where would we be without hope?