It must be February because Open Salon’s Luminous Muse and his Musette are back in the Bay area for their annual visit. The three of us get along so well we were asked to leave a local sushi restaurant yesterday because they needed to close after the afternoon lunch.

Last year I thought I knew everything I needed to know about John Manchester and his wife Judy but I didn’t. I came home after the delightful outing and told Steve that John’s father had written some sort of book about President Kennedy. Steve gave me one of his looks and asked me if I knew who he was.

“He wrote a book”, I said and who cares what someone does or who they are related to. I like people for who they are and even if you have dollar bills glued to your body that would not make the slightest difference to me at all.

In the next five minutes I was told that John’s father was William Manchester who had written “The Death of a President”. The book was published in 1967 by Harper and Row and became one the great American Classics. Seeing that my likes consist of celebrities, Madonna and Sweet Valley High I brushed it all off. All I knew was that the Muse and his Musette were great people and we could discuss the world of writing and the hamburger chain "In N’ Out Burger" like Olympic champions.

Last week John wrote a blog about his father and how he spent 95% of his time locked away writing. For 15 hours a day, 7 days a week he conducted over 1000 interviews to write a book about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I read the blog three times, rolled my chair back and started to think.

For the last six months my daily outings into the world have consisted of an 11 block walk to the Post Office and then back home to sit in front of my laptop the rest of the day. I will never be William Manchester but I am very persistent in my goals.

I start at 7 am and sometimes finish around 8 pm. Let’s face it I am almost 61 years old and time is of the essence here if I want to get anything published. To make matters worse I could not get John’s blog out of my mind and wondered if I too was becoming obsessed.

Last summer I made a decision to blog on Open Salon only once in a while and head over to a Canadian social network site called Zoomers. People thought I was absolutely nuts but I am a stubborn, driven person. Let’s face it, Zoomers is not a blogging site but I made it my home and have worked hard to bring in readers as they have been nothing but incredible to me. 

Everyone says they want to become a writer, but to be a real writer you have to dig in and write, and put up with lots of criticism and rejection. I did not have the luxury of graduating high school nor attend college so I live, breathe and write what I do now.  I have become obsessed to learn everything I can as I still consider myself far from being a real writer.

A month ago I hooked up with my literary doppelganger named Elizabeth C. who owns the site Crabbygolightly, which is simply pop news with a snap. E.C., as she is fondly known is one smart cookie who has worked as a reporter covering news, politics, trend stories and features for several daily newspapers and, most recently, for Time.  Again friends thought I was nuts and over-extending myself and why on earth would I want to write about celebrities?

I knew from the word go that Ms. Elizabeth was not going to put up with bad writing and I could learn how to write entertaining information in a short span of words. Writing for her is very similar to newspaper writing and former newspaper guru Matt Paust can tell you how difficult it is to do something like that. Did I add more literary obsession to my day I asked myself? Was I going to end up going mad like Poe and write about ravens?

In a few weeks my book will be done and off to a real live brick and mortar publisher. Again people think I should have gone a different route and published it with an internet site. I spent last summer researching and realized a lot of these publishers have rules and regulations of where you can sell your book and for a lot of money you get a couple of free books and do not even own your own IBSN number. So for the same amount of money I can publish my book, have 100 hard copies and upload the e-version to Smashwords.

Is my obsession going to pay off? If I sell 1 copy or 100 copies I am happy because it’s just another thing off my bucket list. I will have something concrete that I can give to my kids and for once in my life I have finally finished something from start to finish.

Am I obsessed in my work ethic like William Manchester? Most definitely; but after reading John’s blog I am revaluating some of my writing time as his words scared me beyond belief.

Am I a writer now? Of course not; in my mind I will forever be a blogger and will never become even close to becoming a great writer like William Manchester; but I do know one thing.

I have figured out that I can tell stories with my words just like the people that sat around the pickle barrel a long time ago and I am quite content with that. After the book is done I am going to get out more often due to what John Manchester wrote in his blog. You see; John is a real writer and his words made sense to me.

That my friends is what it's all about in the very end; just to be able to write well enough to make a difference in someone’s life. The rest of it all is just icing on the cake.

Words and Images by Linda Seccaspina 2012

This was not meant to be a pity party essay; just simply a continuation of our conversation yesterday on how people that write sometimes feel.