[ OT ] SatChat : What inspired you to start writing more seriously ?

I'' m a 40 year old male from Kentucky, and I've been writing poetry ( bad ) and stories ( Much better ) since I was 15. 
 
 When I first started writing it was on index cards, hand written in about 6pt font equivalent. Bad poetry about sleep deprivation and death. Typical teen angsty stuff. 
 
 Then we got a Packard Bell pentium 60 Mhz. It was a sad, pathetic machine that blew my mind, and I wrote using whatever word processor we had at the time. Over the years I've used MS Word, OpenOffice, yWrite, Notepad++, and most recently google docs. 
 
 Google docs work well for me because it's so easy to pop open a browser and just write, regardless of where. And I know I wo n't *lose* crap. 
 
 I write because I ca n't stop. I tried giving it up a while. I always end up coming back. THere are some very specific stories I want to tell, and I need to write them. 
 
 Recently I finished my first full book, and it's about 160k words ( I will probably end up splitting it to two books because of the size ), and that took me about two years ( little under, actually ), but there would be months at a time when I did n't write *anything*. When I am typing, I go fast -- Aesop's fables test says adjusted to 48, but that's low for me. I do make mistakes, but I make fewer when writing from my head rather than copying. 
 
 One day I'll start promoting my work, but for now, I'm doing work to allow the book to be split into two. 
 
 As a plug for that story, here's a synopsis: 
 
 Nearly two thousand years in the future, humanity has spread among the stars. We sent out hundreds, maybe thousands of colony ships, most of which were lost to our records even before the Awakening -- an apocalypse. The Awakening destroyed existing governments, existing continents, and brought with it war, famine, disease, loss of infrastructure, and general chaos. And magic. Then from the ashes, rose a new civilization based on a marriage of magic and technology. It has been almost a thousand years since the Arcanum, a new multi-star spanning empire now, was founded. In that time, humanity has remained convinced that we are alone in the universe. 
 
 Carr, a seasoned Adept for the Arcanum Operations ( ArcOps ) military branch, is on a routine scouting mission when he and his Navigator run into an impossibility -- a forty kilometer wedge-shaped ship. Clearly alien, clearly impossible. From there, everything Carr thought he knew about the Arcanum, Magic, and the universe is challenged. 
 
 -- -- - 
 
 The story is technical in it's handling of magic -- there are strong rules, and there are a lot of things it *can't* do. But it can do a lot. Carr is a prodigy with personal issues, Nav is brilliant at his job, but utterly without ambition. And this does n't even touch on the other half of the story: A lost human colony is seeking it's homeworld and runs into it's own problems. Eventually all collide. 
 

