Category: General

The following is for a request made by my final Scout Troop for their 20th Anniversary celebration:

To say that I have been influenced by my time in Scouting would be like saying a pizza is influenced by its time in an oven.

For 17 years I was either in a troop or employed by Philmont Scout Ranch. My first troop taught me all the basics: camping, hiking, and being a good follower. My next troop taught me how to have fun. And my final troop, Troop 21, taught me not only how to lead, but then expected me to actually do it.

I doubt I was the best Senior Patrol Leader 21 ever had, but I was the first. For me that stands as an important honor and I like to think that my involvement with Scouts since then has been colored by that honor. In the final month of my time as SPL, I became an Eagle, graduated from Edmond Memorial High School, and then went off to work for the summer at Philmont Scout Ranch encouraged to go by events and people I met here in 21.

Blessed with ten summers and a single autumn at the Ranch, I worked in food service, tent cities, and the backcountry. During those years, I made and lost friends and then made more. Not a day goes by that I don’t speak to a friend, several friends, I made because of Scouting. My wife and I met at Philmont, I proposed to her in the Villa’s gazebo, and our daughter’s name bears small homage to that Scouting place.

The strength of Scouting in my life has never been more evident than it was this past February when I joined with friends, many I hadn’t seen in 12 years, to bury a great Scout that was taken far too early. At that gathering was my wife, my business partner, a groomsman from my wedding, and my first tent-mate.

Most definitely Scouting has left me well done.

Not the only reason, but certainly one that puts my writing in perspective.

Tobias S. Buckell blogged a great follow-up to his request for advance amounts.

In lieu of actual writing, I like to distract myself with investigation into the business of writing. The above is the closest I think I am going to get to seeing an advance for fantasy in a few years.

To characterize the poor pay one makes as a writer as the reason I keep my day job is a little over the top, but the disproportionate ratio of pay to effort increases my respect for those that choose to make a living this way.

I think that most of us unpublished authors still nurse the idea that we are birthing a work of art and that our child will soon be discovered as the next big thing. The reality appears to be that it is hard to become an author, harder to make a living that way, and barely affordable once one gets there.

Those that make a living this way have clearly been able to pass over a threshold and are able to both create and produce.