Sunday, January 16, 2011

My first time.

Personal inventory. Thirty years old: almost. Two year old daughter: not quite. Wife: wonderful. Life accomplishments thus far: See above. There isn't an exactness to a successful life lived like I'd thought there would be. Growing up I was sure that I would have won the lottery, achieved fame and fortune as a rock star, saved a thousand lives as a volunteer firefighter and been reasonably far along in my quest to become the youngest president in the history of the United States, all by the time I was thirty. I'm six months away from that birthday and I can't say my foot is in any of those doors. It was all not to be. On the bright side, if any one of those things would have happened to me I would surely have missed out on the life I am presently so fond of. I stay at home. I am a father. My wife works at job she loves. My little girl will turn two next month. I wouldn't trade any of that. Not for anything. But, like most people who find themselves later in life without insane wealth or superpowers and insist that the only respectable career doesn't exist anymore because NASA has stopped sending people to the moon, I have turned to that most sacred of last ditch efforts, the novel. I started writing when Sevyn, our daughter, was born. In the middle of the night while rocking her gently with my foot on the cradle, I began typing. It started as an attempt to fend of boredom. You would think they'd do something about the programming at three in the morning. Who told every single network that infomercials are all we want to watch from two to six am? But somewhere along the line it took it's first breath and a life of it's own. So here we are. Like anything worth doing I am not doing it alone. Actually all I really do is write. Everything else is done by friends I don't deserve. Who work tirelessly to read and to edit, to motivate me when I get tired and who prod me in the right direction when I get lame. I didn't even make this blog. The novel is a story about living in spite of Death's constant calls. It's a story about pretending. It's a story about selfishness and lies and murder and panic and trouble that finds you no matter what you were planning on doing that day. It's a story about body parts and breakfast burritos. It's a story about smoking cigarettes and bakesales. It's a story about dog barf and sunrises. And when it's all finished, it will be a story for them. Those I couldn't live without. Courtney, I love you the most. Sevyn, you're an extremely close second. Knottingham family and the Zeigler's, I would be lost without you. We're in the final stages of the process and will begin publishing in early June. The first books will be out by late July. My name is Nathan Lee Christensen. Happy birthday to me.

3 comments:

  1. Nicely done. I'm very excited to read this book in its entirety.

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  2. This, my Friend, is your Ars Poetica. Not exactly the beginning of your writing timeline because the thoughts sparked about 30 years prior but a new beginning nonetheless. The same phenomena occurs in expectant mothers and unborn infants when the realization of cognitive sentience is achieved. You know this as: THE QUICKENING!!! (Que Queen's Princes of the Universe)

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