How I Became a Writer: The Real Story

How I Became a Writer: The Real Story

I didn’t set out to be a writer. I set out to understand my grandfather, and the writing part followed. That was over forty years ago. Since then I’ve published 113+ books, ghostwritten 54+, written dozens of novels, and built a career that runs entirely on words. But the path from there to here wasn’t a straight line. It went through a demanding technology career, a devastating critique that silenced me for a decade, fifty hikes through Joshua Tree after losing my wife, and a photography obsession that produced over 980,000 images before I ever sat down to write professionally.

This is the actual story. Not the polished version. The real one.

My Mother Made Me a Reader

My mom signed me up for the Scholastic Book Club when I was a kid. I built up a collection of books and magazines that I still have favorites from. But more than the books themselves, she taught me to form my own opinions about what I read. She wanted to hear what I thought, not what I was supposed to think.

Our weekly library trips became ritual. I’d borrow the maximum number of books every time. When I graduated from kids’ books to adult reading, my first picks were Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Henry Kuttner’s “The Narrow Land,” and a book on the battle of Iwo Jima. Those three books mapped the genres I still gravitate toward: science fiction, fantasy, history, geopolitics, and mystery.

Her influence wasn’t dramatic. It was steady. She believed in me when other people didn’t, and that belief carried me through periods when I had every reason to quit. Every book I write carries something of what she taught me about curiosity, persistence, and paying attention to the world.

My Grandfather’s Story: Where It Started

At seventeen, I decided to interview my grandfather and write his biography. He was a World War II veteran, a Navy cook who’d served on the Yangtze River patrol in China. He was captured at Corregidor and spent years in Japanese POW camps. After the war ended, he was marched through Manila before liberation. The family had stories about his experiences, but they were secondhand and sometimes wrong. I wanted the real account.

Getting it wasn’t easy. He was a quiet man. His memory had gaps. He opened up about the war, the camps, the cooking skills he’d sharpened during his naval service. I used his diaries and old photographs to piece together a coherent narrative from fragments of a life most of the family had only heard rumors about.

That project taught me what ghostwriting actually is before I had a word for it. You sit with someone. You listen. You ask the questions that get past the surface. Then you take what they’ve given you and build something they can hold in their hands. The finished biography became the nonfiction book “Behind the Wire,” and the process of writing it became the foundation for everything I’ve done since.

The Critique That Shut Me Down

In college, an English teacher tore my writing apart and told me I’d never be a good writer. That criticism, from someone whose job was supposed to be developing writers, knocked me sideways. I stopped writing creatively for over ten years.

During that decade, I ended up writing technical manuals for Software Techniques. It wasn’t creative writing, but it was writing. Crafting clear, precise documentation rekindled something I thought that teacher had killed. I learned the difference between criticism and critique. Criticism looks for fault. Critique looks for improvement. That distinction became central to how I work with ghostwriting clients today. Feedback is part of the process, not a judgment on your worth.

Joshua Tree: Fifty Hikes After Loss

After my wife died, I went to Joshua Tree National Park. Then I went back. And back. Fifty times total, hiking through the Wonderland of Rocks, across the desert floor, through terrain that is simultaneously beautiful and completely indifferent to whether you survive it.

On one hike, I lost my footing on a shale cliff and grabbed the first thing available, which turned out to be a cactus. I ended up with a spine through my foot. The desert doesn’t care about your grief or your personal growth narrative. It’s just there, vast and silent, and if you pay attention it teaches you something about scale. Your problems are real, but they’re small against that landscape.

Those hikes reshaped how I write. Characters became more grounded. Descriptions got more specific. I stopped reaching for metaphors and started reaching for what things actually look, feel, and sound like when you’re standing in them. The desert taught me that the best writing comes from direct experience, not from imagining what experience might be like.

980,000 Photographs

For about a decade, I shot everything. National parks across the Southwest. Renaissance Faires. Performances of every kind. I accumulated over 980,000 images, and the practice of seeing the world through a viewfinder changed how I construct scenes on a page.

Photography teaches you about composition, light, timing, and the difference between what you think you see and what’s actually there. A sunrise over the Grand Canyon doesn’t look the way you expect it to. The shadows in Joshua Tree’s valleys create shapes that shift minute to minute. Renaissance Faire performers aren’t just costumes. They’re body language, facial expression, the way a jester moves differently from a knight.

All of that feeds directly into fiction. When I describe a setting, I’m drawing on thousands of hours of looking at real places through a lens that forced me to see details I would have otherwise missed. When I write a character’s physical presence in a scene, I’m pulling from years of capturing how real people carry themselves in motion.

The Technology Career

Before writing became my profession, I spent over twenty years at Trader Joe’s as Director of Computer Operations. I managed the data center, handled disaster recovery, oversaw security systems, and ran the computing infrastructure for the company. It was demanding, high-stress work that consumed most of my creative energy. By the time I got home, I had nothing left for writing.

Eventually I made the decision to leave and build a writing career. The transition wasn’t instant. I started by writing and publishing my own books, but I quickly discovered that while I loved writing, I didn’t have the patience for the marketing side of self-publishing. That realization pointed me toward ghostwriting, where the writing is the job and someone else handles the visibility.

Building a Ghostwriting Career

My ghostwriting career started at the bottom. I worked for a ghostwriting company earning $1,000 per book. I knew I could do better, and I did. Despite people telling me that writing books wasn’t profitable, I landed a $10,000 project that proved them wrong and gave me the confidence to keep building.

Today I charge $1 per word, I’ve ghostwritten 54 books, and my clients’ books have helped them raise over $30 million in venture capital, earn TEDx invitations, and secure adjunct professorships at institutions like Purdue University. The work hasn’t gotten easier. It’s gotten more complex. Every client is different. Every book presents problems I haven’t solved before. That’s what keeps it interesting after all these years.

One project that still stands out involved a client named Doris, who gave me a collection of handwritten notes chronicling her dreams. The notes were disjointed, fragmentary, sometimes contradictory. Assembling them into a coherent narrative was like solving a puzzle where half the pieces were from different boxes. The finished book fulfilled her lifelong goal of becoming a published author. She passed away before it was published, but the book exists because she trusted me with something deeply personal, and I took that trust seriously.

My Sister Belinda

I can’t tell this story without mentioning my sister. Belinda is the smartest person I know. She turned a passion for science into a non-profit school in San Jose that’s served thousands of students. She faced setbacks that would have stopped most people and came out the other side stronger every time.

When I’m stuck or frustrated or wondering whether the work matters, I think about her. She built something real from nothing but persistence and intelligence. That example keeps me moving forward when the writing gets hard, when a project stalls, when the doubt creeps in. Having someone in your life who demonstrates what relentless commitment actually looks like is worth more than any motivational quote.

Where It All Leads

I write between 2,000 and 12,000 words a day. I’ve published 113+ books across fiction, nonfiction, and the AI Writer’s Library handbook series. My fiction catalog spans dozens of novels across science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, and literary fiction. I ghostwrite for executives, entrepreneurs, and public figures through The Writing King. I coach fiction writers through Master of Worlds. I maintain an active Substack at thewritingking.substack.com for publishing insights.

None of it would exist if a seventeen-year-old kid hadn’t sat down with his grandfather and tried to write a story worth telling. That impulse, the desire to take someone’s experience and turn it into something that lasts, hasn’t changed in forty years. The skills have gotten sharper. The catalog has gotten bigger. But the core of the work is still the same: listen carefully, write honestly, and finish what you start.

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