Hello! My name is Dirk.
Being a writer is not something I ever thought I would do. A mountain I would never attempt to climb because I wasn’t good enough. However, I have always been drawn to storytelling. Whether it was my crude drawings of military men battling giant space aliens or setting up my action figures all around my room. In both cases, I saw the story unfold as I laid it out before me. Even now, I find myself constantly drawn to those who can keep me engaged and tell a good story, no matter whether it is a joke, a long tale about a serial killer, or a book set in the stars or with swords; I love them all.
In my short life, I have thought of doing many things that capture this spirit of adventure I would so often get from playing with action figures. From wanting to join the Air Force to owning a company that creates inventions to help with environmental solutions to being an actor, I have always had my head in a cloud of dreams, always somewhere far off and distant.
However, as I hinted at before, being a writer was something I never thought I would do because I constantly told myself I was not good enough, nor would I ever be good enough to be a writer. I remember a distinct moment in my seventh-grade academic block class where the smartest student said he wanted to be a writer when he grew up. I thought to myself, if he wanted to be a writer, I would have no chance to ever do something like that. I pushed it down and out of my mind, no matter how much the little voice in the back of my head told me to try.
Eventually, I had the grand idea of starting a book. It came with all the grandeur. Months of plotting, devising the characters, and a whole series of books…it’s just the writing never came. UNTIL, one fateful day in March 2020, just before COVID-19 shut everything down, I started my first attempt. I wrote at least a page a day; the most I ever got was seven. I was proud. It was just when I thought about actually reading those pages that I knew I was coming into a problem. I didn’t know how to write at all. It wasn’t just the words, but how does one switch POVs seamlessly, break for cliffhangers, or should you break for a cliffhanger? All of those thoughts berated me until I knew I had to give it up after two weeks.
It took me two years of back-and-forth to decide whether I was worthy enough to write. In June 2022, I made a deal with myself to write three short stories by the end of the year to focus on the basics. As I wrote, I felt a great sense of satisfaction and continued writing in my spare time whenever I could fit it in. Between students I tutored, waiting for my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class to start, the ten minutes before class started. Any time. Anywhere. I knew those who considered themselves writers had to do two things: 1) write and 2) write consistently. By the end of that year, I had come up with over ten short stories and a novella. None of them would be seen except by the eyes of a fateful few, but with some encouragement from my lovely mother, I started writing a full-on book.
The problem was, I had never written a book before. Was I a plotter or a pantser? A gardener or an architect? A white-collar writer of artistic brilliance or a dedicated and disciplined blue-collar writer? I had to figure out what MY process was above all. I had heard the statistics of writers needing to write six books before getting published, so I knew I couldn’t waste a brilliant idea as a new, inexperienced writer. Except that I wasn’t a writer yet; I was only posing as one. From there, I started a novel, got about fifty pages in, and realized I had no idea where the story was going. I shrugged this off and came up with a new idea. I was a pantser, so I needed to write more to get through this mental block. I tried again with the next idea… and got nowhere. Then, with another story, I tried again to end up in the same place. After writing the start of three separate books only to make it to page fifty and have nowhere to go, I realized I might not be the spur-of-the-moment pantser. I tucked my tail between my legs and submitted to the plotters' demands of creating an outline. With that outline, I took my time, roughly a month. A grueling month of time spent plotting when I should be writing because writers write. I finished at the start of May, and from May 2023 to August 2023, I wrote my first book from start to finish. I may not have been a writer, but after a long haul like that, I had shown to myself I was ready to be one.
After that, I decided to stretch my abilities in 2024 to a multi-POV, galaxy-expanding story that became the first installment of Metal on Flesh. A lot of writing, rewriting, and editing followed in the next year. By the end of 2025, I had a product I was extremely proud of in Forged Paths. Along this ride, there were many trials and a lot more errors, but I think it turned out to be something I really enjoy. I will continue to enjoy writing the next installments. I can only hope I bring you the same joy when you read it.
Please enjoy, and as always, May Essence Guide You.
