I started writing "professionally" in 1995 when I started on my first book. In the following five years, I would write a total of 10 books before taking a break after my son was born. The writing was something I did on the side and not my profession. I was an IT consultant or manager through most of my writing career.
After about five years without writing a single book, I was hired by a company to write about their product, and so I worked on my next three books, this time in a different language. Once again, I took a break from writing, even though most people at work would still bring me documents to read, review and comment on. The funny thing is that I had never intended to be a business or tech writer. I always wanted to become a fiction writer. With that in mind, I ended up accepting the challenge to write my first book about software development. I remember thinking that "Hey, it is a step in the right direction." Back then, I had no real idea of how far from the truth that was. I never stopped to consider that the skills you need, as a writer, to write a technical book are totally different from those you need to write a novel.
Silly, I know.
I was twenty-four, and things just seemed to line up favorably towards my goal. Writing the first book was tough. I called in a friend to be my co-author to overcome what most people call writer's block. Having a co-author helped. It helped a lot. Having someone to discuss what you will write about in each chapter makes the process a lot less daunting.
After the first book, things got easier. Enough for my writing partner and me to propose a three-volume series for our third go at writing about technology.
It was only after we had written nine books together that I did my first solo work. In all, I wrote nine books with at least one partner and four solo ones. And then I stopped again.
Writing books demanded a long commitment which I was no longer willing to make. So, after two years without writing, I started to write some short blog posts. At first, I wrote a lot, getting thousands of views regularly, but as social media algorithms evolved and organic reach decreased, I was less motivated to write. So I moved on and started to create videos on YouTube.
A couple of years ago, I met a person online that evolved into a good friend. Christopher was working on the first title in a series he was planning, and he was looking for beta-readers. He found me in another author's Facebook group and invited me to join his early-access group, which I promptly did, as I am a compulsive reader. After many emails exchanged and a couple of video calls, he encouraged me to write fiction. It took me a while to sit down and write something, but eventually, I did. Only to stop once 2020 turned out to be the worst year of my life.
After doing hundreds of videos over the course of almost four years, I decided that I will start writing again. I am not going to stop creating and publishing videos, but I've started writing and publishing posts, articles and working again on my lifelong project of writing fiction. I will take on three different writing projects: a personal newsletter project called The Longo Review, a NOCODE newsletter called The Nocoder, and writing a series of science fiction books.
And so, at the iconic age of fifty, I've decided to become a writer… again.