As a child, I was painfully shy. Until midway through my freshman year in high school, I had difficulty communicating verbally with all but my family and close friends; and only in small groups at that. I found it far easier to communicate with people via the written word.

Writing transformed from my method of avoiding talking to people to an avocation when I won first place in a Sunday school magazine-sponsored short story contest when I was 13, just at the end of my freshman year. Seeing my words on the printed page, with my name below the title was an amazing feeling, worth more to me than all the money in our small town's bank vaults. From that moment on, I was hooked.

For the rest of my time in high school, I was a stringer for the local newspaper, reporting on school and community events. I learned to listen and remember, and how to capture the essence of an event in a few well-chosen words.

After high school, I joined the army to see the world. During my first overseas tour, in Germany, I wrote often for the "Pup Tent Poets" section of the European edition of Stars and Stripes newspaper.

As the years rolled by, I continued to free lance, writing anything that an editor would be willing to publish. I did theatrical and book reviews, travel and historical articles, and of course, continued to write poems whenever the muse struck. From 1977 to 1979, I was managing editor of the base newspaper at an army base in the south, also doing hard news and features. I also did theatrical reviews and news articles for several local newspapers. I was also the editorial cartoonist and feature writer for the weekly paper in a nearby town. During that same period, and for about five years afterwards, I wrote feature articles and book reviews for a number of publications.

From about 1985 until 2005, my writing tapered off. I did pamphlets and flyers for local clubs, kept a journal, and took a stab at novel writing (most of those manuscripts ended up in boxes in my garage). I managed to squeeze out five or six poems a year, getting published in a number of limited distribution anthologies.

In 2004, a colleague at work suggested I write a book about my philosophy of leadership. After two painful years of drafting, it was finally finished and published in 2008. I wish I could say it was an instant best seller; but it did enjoy modest sales. More importantly, it attracted the attention of a number of organizations that asked me to do occasional articles on leadership and management for their websites. The writing bug, I discovered, had not died; it had merely been hibernating, waiting for an excuse to emerge. I published my second book in 2009, and finally dusted off some of those old manuscripts. I could finally see the mistakes I made in the earlier drafts, and a couple of them are almost in publishable form.

I can, nay, I will, no longer deny the muse. I'm no Voltaire or Hemingway or Stephen King, but I will continue to write until I can no longer move my fingers or see the page, and if I only have one reader other than myself, I will put as much effort into writing as if I was writing for millions.

Learn more about this author, Charles Ray.
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