Hello, world! Introducing: Cyrus Drummond
Why on earth would anyone choose a career as an author? Unless you’re Stephen King, JK Rowling or George RR Martin, it’s not for the money. It can’t be the recognition, that spark of joy when someone reads your work, otherwise that staggering list of authors who only achieve fame posthumously – Philip K Dick, Jane Austen or Franz Kafka, anyone? – must be some cosmic joke. (Ha). Could it be that all authors are simply self-indulgent masochists?
Well, although I’m convinced quite a few are, that doesn’t hold enough explanatory power either. The conclusion I’ve come to, through years of personal experience and echoed by my peers, is this: the choice is borne of a deep passion for storytelling, not just stories. That rush which comes from crafting your own personal narrative filled will all the things you love and hate and fear and crave. Maybe a narrative you needed to hear at that point in your life, a narrative to heal or transform. Something which doesn’t need to be seen and appreciated by others (although that’s often the intended byproduct), because it was written fundamentally for you.
And now, if you’ve made it this far through, it’s only fair that I get to tell you mine.
As far as I can remember I’ve always been a voracious reader, with a penchant for daydreaming to boot. Although I’m extroverted by nature, I’ve never struggled spending time by myself, perhaps because I cherish the quietude in which I lose myself in my own fantasies – many of which never made it to the page. A childhood fear of Child’s Play and Night of the Living Dummy began my fascination with the horror genre, and my first King book when I was thirteen (IT, one of my favourites to this day), solidified it.
But nothing came of those endless hours spent imagining, nothing besides a few attempted half-stories and a general enthusiasm for English in school, until a thinly veiled Skyrim-themed dream truly put me on the path to writing (I promise to reveal it fully in a later post). Suffice to say it gave me the kick up the butt I needed, followed by long, ponderous years worldbuilding and multiple attempts at writing an opening, only to give up a few pages in. Through nothing but sheer obstinance I continued until I reached the point after finishing my undergraduate where I had a half-formed fantasy world, 40,000 words of shoddy manuscript, and a burning desire to see it through.
That would be the first of many fantasy drafts, which even now I’m still re-editing, interspersed with numerous short stories (published and unpublished) and a horror manuscript (now completed). Since then, the balance between writing and more ‘sensible’ career pursuits has been a constant battle, and for a long time I’ve felt I wasn’t progressing in either. The first wave of rejections from competitions and pitches to publishers and literary agents helped test my conviction that I would be able to weather the difficulties which everyone warned me of. Despite my earlier musings, even now I still struggle with the idea that no one will read my stories, that this has all been a waste. Yet even in those moments, I don’t stop reading, I don’t stop writing, and I don’t stop dreaming. And that’s what’s kept me going.
I hope you don’t stop dreaming either, dear reader, and I look forward to sharing all the exciting things to come.