The stories exist, whether or not they are ever written down. They float in the air; they live in abandoned homes and silent desert valleys and subway stations crammed with humanity. The stories exist—luckily, some find their way to the printed or digital page.
I’m Scott William Taylor and I’m an author. I live at the base of a mountain with my wife, four children and various domesticated animals, who, depending on their attitude, appear to appreciate the home we provide for them. Like many of us, I spend my weekdays in an office building staring at a computer screen. When not at work, I divide my time between duties as a husband, father, neighbor, friend. Finding time to write continues to be a constant battle, and though I lose many of these contests, I hope to ultimately win the war.
Growing up, I never imagined writing as a profession, or even a hobby. I began my writing adventure at nineteen when my friend gave me a present: a journal. “Write in it everyday,” he said. And I have, everyday, for almost three decades. Several years ago, the bug to write more than my daily activities bit and I began venturing out into the world of fiction. This coincided with a desire to return to school after a fifteen-year absence and I earned my graduate degree in English.
Returning to school proved to be a pivotal moment in my life. As a child, reading was not a favorite activity of mine. I never read many of the classics typical of a well-read individual. In graduate school, something changed and I learned to appreciate the words, the craft, the authors, and the art. I left with a degree and a desire to gather those floating stories and preserve them for others to read.
Since leaving school, I completed a feature-film screenplay and its accompanying novel. The project is currently in development. I’ve also written numerous short stories and scripts. Last year, I attended several writing conferences, and the consequent knowledge and understanding has been invaluable.
The best advice I received: writing takes practice. Learning to write effectively requires hard work. We need to write everyday. We learned to crawl before we could walk, and we learned to walk before we could run. We hear of authors gaining apparent “overnight success.” Very few outsiders see the years and untold hours writers dedicate to the profession. I strive everyday to respect the medium of writing, and consider myself someone who crawls who yearns to run.
We write and research and submit the stories we’ve created, all in the hopes that someone will find it interesting enough to share with others. Then one day a submission is chosen. I’m quickly learning that when this happens, it is not an end to the work, but in many ways, only the beginning.
And so I join the ranks of those who chose to lay bare their souls and create worlds where imagination lives and dies, loves and hates, fails and triumphs. Many people write for many reasons. For me, it’s because I’ve found few things I enjoy more.
Scott William Taylor’s first foray into print explores an alternate reality for Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Match Girl.” “Little Boiler Girl” will appear in Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology, slated for release April 30, 2013.
