A Moment with Alex Gorman

When and why did you decide to pursue writing as more than a hobby?

This question made me feel like my first college roommate. He and I were both in a writing class, one that every freshman was required to take. He’d sit in front of his computer to work on each assignment, only to find himself staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, unable to think of a word. Meanwhile, a few feet away, I’d be happily tapping away on the keys, the paragraphs just flowing out of me.

I know on at least one occasion, he mentioned how much this made him hate me.

As I tried to come up with a response for this post, I found myself sitting in front of my computer, staring at the blinking cursor. So I stopped trying to answer the question and spent some time thinking about it. I quickly realized that I’ve never had a moment where I decided that writing should be more than a hobby. I’d never considered writing to be a hobby at all. It’s just something I’ve always been compelled to do. The stories start to form in my mind and it’s my job to catch them, to find the right collection of words that traps them on the page. Sometimes this is euphoric, sometimes it’s a slog.

The closest I came to having a moment of decision about writing was around my mid-twenties. I had decided that I had other priorities. I chose not to focus as much energy on writing stories. I still wrote a little, blogging, doing a few articles for soccer websites, things like that. But those only offered me a partial outlet. The ideas kept building up. So I found myself leaving behind a trail of incomplete stories even during those years when I thought I didn’t want to write.

Maybe I’d decided to pull back, as young adults often do, because I was a little afraid, more of failing than of putting myself out there. Not too many people pay the bills with the written word, after all. It took a little growing up for me to realize that it wasn’t about paying the bills. It was about the stories, about learning and improving and becoming a better writer, so I could really bring those ideas to life.

The reality is that I’ve let hundreds of story ideas go, uncaptured. Some because I was too lazy to write them down, others because they never became more than a note on a scrap of paper, many because the words just never came together into a story I thought was good enough.

For those few stories that actually make the journey from idea to completed work, keeping them to myself was never really an option. I think if I considered myself a hobbyist, I’d be okay with not sharing them. But I’ve always wanted my stories to be read. After all, a story only comes to life in the head of the person reading it. I want my stories out there, moving in the world, interacting with people and helping create new ideas.

Alex Gorman lives in sunny San Diego with his wife and two children. He writes maniacally and has had work published in Big Pulp, the Triangulation Anthology and the Kazka Press.

Learn more about Alex Gorman and his adventures on his blog Nonsensicles.