An Author’s Note
I started this series of pieces because I have wanted to be a writer since I was ten years old. I would scribbled into a brown, leather-bound notebook, a gift from my dad, or type away in our office-art studio with the door closed. Each decade since has been marked by a pen, yet rarely have any of my words met eyes other than my own. Countless journals have hosted first entries dedicated to this desire, yet I have had a hesitation — even to just call myself a writer.
The words “The Manuscript” came to me years ago late one night in my friend’s mountain lodge slumbering next to Lake Tahoe, and I find comfort in that title like I found comfort in the Sierra Nevadas. A manuscript is just words, hand-written mostly. It has not been published or edited or read by very many at all. It is a work — in progress: words brought to life on a page and drafted into existence.
My life is forged around the idea of purpose — a design, and I consider this simple thought here: If I have always wanted to be a writer, why not just be a writer? The half-thoughts of twisting doubt and fear only find a breath or two in me before I return to the cadence, the drumbeat of purpose — a design — exhale.
It is my plan to share the half-thoughts, the twists, the valleys that I have documented these years in the hope that they draft encouragement into existence and pen a path that had been hidden prior and point to a design — a purpose.
