Driven

 

Driven              

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I believe that everyone needs to be driven.  Not in an automobile, you understand, but pushed forward by a passion.  Each of us needs that “something” to inspire and give us purpose.  Perhaps that is why I write.  I do not write because I think I am a talented “word smith”.  On the contrary, I know that vocabulary and grammar are not my strong suit.  And yet I write.  It is the stories that run around inside my head that demand to see the page that drives me.  

I was reminded recently that I had spent years writing a sequel to Lord of the Rings, as if the four volumes, counting The Hobbit, were not enough.  Numerous spiral notebooks and reams of typed pages formed an incomplete work of more than 1300 pages.  Mostly rubbish.  But within those pages were some reasonable plots.  Asked what I accomplished in all that time, I answered I learned I could tell a story.  That is what drives me forward even today. 

The profession I chose required long hours.  Life’s demands added to my responsibilities.  But a short story entered my mind in 1999.  From it came Tree in the Meadow I passed along a copy to someone I trusted and listened closely to the comment he gave. “It shows real talent.”  Validation helps fuel drive doesn’t it? 

I wrote a draft of 411 Apple Street, my first novel, it took seven long years.  Moments scratched out of a busy life.  But changes offer me more time for my passion, and the words come swifter these days.  Now with drafts of four novels, a novella, fifteen short stories, and more than two hundred essays like this one should indicate that I am driven. But for what purpose.  I have already stated that I do not think myself a “great” writer.  Maybe it is the stories themselves.  Stories that I feel should be told.  It remains my hope that someday they will be read.  I already have a small following that wait for each new story as it leaves my computer.  But I am driven by the hope that in some small way I lift…SOMEONE…just a little…to encourage…to teach perhaps.  That my words add just a match light’s worth of illumination in what seems a dark world. That is what really drives me.  To take the talent GOD has given me and use it in a positive way…to make a small difference. Yes, I am trying to make a difference…that’s why I am driven.  

 

(425 Words) 9-15-2016