30 years, and finally success

I'd been reading good reviews of Karl Marlantes' MATTERHORN, and heard a little about the backstory--that he had served in Vietnam and basically had been working on this book ever since. But I just read a great story in Poets & Writers that filled in the details. This is a guy who once worked as a lumber salesman. He was a guy, like so many of us, who bought books on the writing process and read them voraciously. He went to college before he served in the war and was a writer there, but other than that from what I can tell he was a self-taught writer (like so many of us). He endured rejection after rejection, but always plugged away on the novel. As the story says, "...he didn't really think about why he perservered in the face of so much rejection; writing this book was just a part of his life." I can identify with that. I'm very much enjoying crafting my story and playing with the creative nonfiction form--that alone brings me a lot of satisfaction. Of course, some wider recognition would be nice! :)

I'm going to buy MATTERHORN, even though my reading list is pretty long. I love the idea of supporting a guy who seems like "one of us," those self-taught writers who put butt in chair every day to get it done, even if it takes 30 years.