About
(Don’t ask me, I didn’t do it.)
“It only seems fair that someone who tells stories about fictitious characters should have their story told by a fictitious character.”
Olden Gnu
Chasing a beautiful story
No benefits package. No cost-of-living increases. No 401k. No one ever said writing fiction was a brilliant career move. When children declare they want to grow up to be writers their mothers weep, wondering at what point had they given the impression subsistence living was a good thing.
Where had they failed?
Yet millions of people spend a substantial portion of their lives in front of a keyboard—seemingly with no choice in the matter. Writers chase stories the way wildebeests chase the rain.
Beautiful writing is elusive. The pursuit of it pushes writers to migrate between two worlds. The first is the exterior world of manuscripts and rejection notices—the steps writers take in search of an audience. The second is a deeper, internal world of quest and question—where writers ask themselves: does my work have meaning? Is it important? Do I really want to spend my life in a perpetual state of obsession and frustration? If so, why not just take up golf?
My name is Olden Gnu, and this is a chronicle of a writer in pursuit of an elegant, irreducible story.
One writer. Two stories.
TIMELINE
These are the chronological milestones of a writer reaching out, submitting manuscripts, and navigating the world of publishing.
INSIGHT
This is the internal story of what happens when someone sets out to write something truly beautiful.
The story of a fiction writer as told by a wildebeest