What’s my artistic drive for writing?

Based on my observations over many years, I believe most writers begin their writing lives with certain built-in dominant artistic motivations. I also believe that many of us suffer because we don’t understand that motivation.

In my own case, my earliest writings were confused efforts to evoke a sense of place and mood (emotion), which probably means I was principally motivated to write stories about places (settings.) I was enthralled by the sound of foghorns in the night and echoing footsteps on cobblestones in the fog, ala Sherlock Holmes stories. In those early efforts I could just see and feel and smell and hear those dark, moody places about which I wrote.

However, I was a very confused young writer and also had a strong desire to win fame and fortune. The result was simply a writing mish-mash with lousy stories (or none at all) and too much mood and sense of place. The result also was far too many years of misery and frustration as I batted my head against the wall, trying to make what I wanted to do sound like all those best sellers out there.

Eventually I learned that most of the big sellers write suspense-filled plotted stories. I then began an agonizing shift toward learning to tell a good story (as opposed to creating a mood. A report of my efforts to learn and the knowledge I accumulated forms the heart of my new soon-to be release book, Quest for the Golden Quill of Storytelling.