Writing Tulpas

Writing for me has always been a therapeutic endeavor. Maybe I haven’t made money at writing because it wasn’t the goal. The goal was to exercise inner demons. Prior to 2016, my writing was sporadic; I waited on the whims of a muse. My writing has been hit or miss. Maybe a reasonable poem or thought leaked through and got a bit of attention, but it was always followed by the Long Silence, followed by random interrupted sleep because I had an idea that needed to be written, racing thoughts taunting me to catch them or be lost forever. Looking back, I probably would have met criteria for a Bipolar diagnosis.

The first ‘real’ effort I put forth at ‘writing’ was a fan fiction. I had no intentions of sharing it, but someone at work asked me what I was working on and I shared it. They loved it. I tried another friend, and he insisted I share it online. I did. It was surprisingly well liked. Oh, it had problems. If you found it now you might think a high school kid had written it. I pushed that in 2004 and I was overwhelmed by the flood of positive response to it. I received letters/emails from every continent. Nice letters; many asking for more. I struggled with feelings about that. For instance, I had feelings of being a fraud. Who am I? It’s just fan fiction. This is not legitimacy. But I responded with gratitude, and wound up meeting some incredibly nice people who shared a love for that thing I was writing. And, so, I wrote more. I branched out away from fan fiction, but still like writing it- even though there is no money in it. The greatest gift came 2 weeks ago, when a Vet wrote me…