Welcome to the first edition of Dispatches from the Lab. In this series, I tackle random stuff. It's just kind of a miscellaneous updates section. But today, it's about perseverance. And writing.

As some of you may know, my current obsession has been trying to get my first novel to the finish line. I've spent a majority of my life dreaming about writing a book. I remember pulling up to our family typewriter when I was maybe six years old, and trying to pull the words from deep down inside my soul to write my first book.

It would have been the most amazing Paddington Bear adventure ever written—in red ink, no less. Because red ink on the typewriter was so much cooler than the black. I think I got two sentences in before I was hit with the age-old curse of writers block. My first encouter with the beast was a hard one, and set me back a good eleven years.

I mean, I'd always written little things. Rambling opinion pieces and music reviews in my friends' fanzines, the odd english assignment that I felt inspired by, and maybe a some song lyrics for the various skate punk bands I was in as a teen.

In my senior year of high school, I had a creative writing teacher, Ms. Wood. She gave us an assignment that had the prompt, "Write about something you wish you had done differently." I had recently gone on a date with a girl I'd had a crush on, and it was the first time I'd actually asked someone out on a date. The night was awkward, and I made so many mistakes, but it was also charming in a way. And we did end up dating for quite a while after that.

Anyhow, it was new year's eve, and thing I wished I'd done differently was I that I had kissed her at midnight. I wrote it in a flurry of typewriter clacking (yes, I am that old, we did not have personal computers yet). I channeled the narration of A Christmas Story.

Ms. Wood was incredibly encouraging. She asked if she could read it to the class. Then if her husband (who taught english in another district) could read it to his class. People were invested in the story, and it felt... great. She encouraged me to enter it into a state high school writing contest. So my mother and I packaged it up and dropped it into the mail with the requisite documentation.

And then we waited.

And waited. And heard nothing back. My mom called, and as it turned out, they never received it. And it was too late to re-send by that time. Again, we did not have e-mail—this all had to be done via the Postal Service.

Something in me said this is a sign that you are not meant to do this.

Yet, looking back, Ms. Wood's encouragement stuck with me all these years. I held onto that feeling and tried to tell myself that someone who was not a blood relative believed in me on some level. It made a huge difference at a subatomic level. Sure, I have had other encouraging souls in my life, I am not trying to play the sad pity boy here. But that formative nudge from someone in the know meant so much to a student who was pretty cool with straight Cs throughout his public school career. I had gotten used to teachers writing me off.

Despite my disappointment in the missed contest, I still held that dream close.

As I moved through life, I published my own fanzines, wrote some short stories, music reviews, and did some band interviews for Punk Planet, a nationally-published print magazine, for a few years. I went back to college as a journalism major, was the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, and continued to write for myself and smaller publications.

A novel, however, always felt like such a monumental task. I would often start with a half-baked idea and then just not know what to do with it. Again, this was back in the dark ages, so we did not have boundless free information or how-videos on Youtube. If you wanted to write, you'd either innately understand that you just had to keep writing and failing until you figured it out, find a mentor, and/or check out library books. Or school. Lots of school.

As I came to find out much later in life, a lot of this paraylsis was undiagnosed inattentive type ADHD at play. My executive dysfunction was working behind the scenes to shut me down before I even got started. Short stories, reviews, and articles? Not so hard. But a book... well, that was just crazy talk.

Now that I'm an adult and I know better how my brain works, and why it works this way, I have been able to build routines and skills that help me overcome those things. And, I have so many tools and resources available at my fingertips to help me get past that initial organizatonal phase.

It just felt like it was time to stop dreaming and start making.

I'd applied this to so many other things in life over the years—making music, building tube amps and guitar pedals, home improvement projects, making things. But carving out the time and focus for writing was always met with excuses. I need hours alone, uninterrupted. I need the mental space to flesh things out before I write. I need inspriation. I need talent.

As it turned out, I just needed to do it.

Writing is a process, and the old adage that there is no writing—there is only rewriting, is so true. Just get the words down. If the characters, the plot, the settings resonate with you, it will pour out. Not all the time, but in the best moments, it's like entering a trance. Sometimes one has to work harder to get those words out. In those cases, just get them down and know you will be coming back to it at least one million and thirty five times to rework and refine it. The important thing is to get the skeleton in place. Then you can come back and add the organs, the veins, the flesh and hair. Maybe even some clothing.

And this all takes time.

There is no such thing as a "once and done" in writing. And if you start with that mentality, you, too, may find yourself not commiting to the process until you are into your fifties.

I say all of this not to make myself the main character in my success story, but to give you the hope, inspiration, and tools to just... write.

Write.

And write again.

It doesn't matter if it's a success, or even if your dog thinks you are the Hemingway of your time (spoiler alert: your dog already thinks that, because dogs are the best). It matters that you get your story onto paper. That you feel that sense of completion. That you accomplished it.

All that other stuff? Window dressing. The only validation you need is yours.

So if I was asked to write that essay today? I'd write about how I wish I had written more and not given up on the dream until I was in my early fifties. I would write about wishing I had not given up on writing at so many points. Which seems highly recursive. But so much of life is. Reiterating, revising, following a process until you reach the end.

But one thing is for sure: one will not get better if one gives up.

Keep writing. Keep trying. Keep at it.