Start Here | Discover FaulknerFiction

Have you ever tried hard at something, for a long time, and thought what you were working on was excellent?

That it was just a matter of time until other people thought it was excellent, too.

You'd kept going by telling yourself that it was just a matter of time.  That you just had to keep at it. Fulfillment's right around the next corner. That someday, all that work would convince a lucky break to appear in your life, when you least expected it. That you'd meet some mysterious, influential stranger who'd help get what you'd done in front of a large audience. That your hard work would finally be appreciated.

Instead, there was an unexpected knock on your door.

Reality introduced itself.

Shook your hand.

Forced you into the bathroom.

And made you look in the mirror.

Prevented your eyes from looking elsewhere.

The mirror-image's lips never moved.  The image in the mirror was you. But somehow, you heard the image say, "You've been wasting your time. Nobody is ever going to give a shit about what you've been doing. Nobody cares about this stuff, and nobody ever will. Quit, while you've still got a little bit of life left to do something else you might enjoy. Stop whining. Stop looking for answers. Deal with it, like an adult."

After that, there was only an image of you in the mirror.

The uninvited visitor had vanished.

I've written novels for over forty years.

Alone.

📖 Sitting in a McDonald's, writing on paper, scratching through things while smelling cheap food I could rarely afford to buy while I waited to get into my depressing, minimum-wage day job. Writing; striving; continuing. Hell-bent to perfect something I thought mattered

🏦 Fast-forward to another job, where five of my colleagues went to breakfast together in the middle of the morning (on the clock!) and got away with it.  The place where we ate was inside a bank, so when we went there, I stored my paper-writing in a safety deposit box. That's how valuable it was to me.

❄︎ Jump-cut to another job. I'd decided to write a play, and I wanted to open the play with a soliloquy in iambic pentameter. I had a long walk from where I parked to my job, so the shiver of winter away, I'd go over that soliloquy and refine it, daily, in my head, on my walk to work.

🛞 Images of me. Sitting in numerous seminars, by famous writing coaches, or getting tips inside a writer's group. At one of these writing seminars, I had a flat tire during the lunch break, and I changed the tire, in double-time, so I could make it back to the class to get what I thought was valuable information.

🖥 Another snapshot. It's an image of me, crying in a tiny bathroom, so my wife won't see, because I can't pass a basic computer class, so I can apply for a low-wage job as a programmer, so I can do my writing on the weekends, and still provide the basics for my family.

🎬 There's a recurring, short memory-video that shows me lying in bed, in unfocused darkness, asking God why he would give me a talent, let me come to love it with all my heart, and then thwart every opportunity I get to be published or have an audience.

These were happy times, too.

Like when I finished my first novel, got married, or when my children and grandchildren were born.

But the only time writing has ever made me happy was when I was working on a novel or had just finished writing a novel.

And no one was happy with me, other than my supportive wife.

If you know me, in real life, when I look at you, I'm always wondering — not about what food you like, not about how your kids and grandkids are doing, not about that Photoshopped, Facebook impression of you in some foreign country having fun.

I'm actually wondering what your version of a 'Start Here' story might be.

Especially if you're in the Arts.

Who knows?

It might encourage you to know that I'm still writing novels.

It would definitely encourage me to know that you, too, have heard that voice in the mirror.

And that hopefully, those dark details on your own timeline didn't defeat you.

And, that you made it through OK.

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Lewis Faulkner is the author of six novels and a creative educator with over 40 years of experience studying story structure, narrative craft, and the creative process.

His work often explores how systems shape perception and how individuals respond. 

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