WRITING 1.0

I'll just get right into it. The blog title "From The Ashes" is derived from my love of the mythical Phoenix bird. Also, I've made my fair share of mistakes in writing and in life and I don't mind admitting any of them. Because of that, I always sort of feel like I'm rising from the ashes of something. But alas, I always rise because that is the only way to really exist.

As for writing... it is my passion! I began writing books of short stories when I was in grade school, yes grade school. By the time I was in middle school I was writing plays about my circle of friends. In college, I united writing with my other passion, politics. I wrote championship winning debate cases and penned a couple of plays that were staged during my undergraduate years. During that time, I also wrote for the campus political paper, and began analyzing the political landscape for my fellow Gen-Axe’s in a way that got the attention of a very powerful man and eventually manifested itself into my being awarded a White House Fellowship. I got lucky one night, when I happened upon a movie set in my home town (Baton Rouge, LA.) and met an actor who gave me the most amazing gift. The movie was "Favorite Son", and the actor was Grand L. Bush. Mr. Bush, after hearing that I was an aspiring screenwriter, gave me his script so that I could use it to learn spec format. I was an extra in that movie and it was an amazing experience.

My first foray into novel writing left me with a bad taste in my mouth in a few ways. Namely, because I needed to up my game by being more selective about my supporting cast. I trusted the wrong editor and met with disastrous results, simply because I trusted that the job was done and sent my manuscript on to be published. I got that mistake fixed pretty early on but some of the damage was already done. A lot a writers have "debut book" horror stories and on the disaster scale my problem ranks somewhere in the middle, but since I've never been one for mediocrity, that certainly wasn't the time to start. That mistake will never be forgotten and the lesson learned has been cemented into my brain. I have invested quite a bit of time into finding the perfect editors for my future projects. As I said before, I pride myself on the ability to rise FROM THE ASHES.