I first latched onto the idea of becoming a writer because my daughter mentioned wanting to be an author when she grows up. She was in 5th or 6th grade. She is an avid reader and the idea of being an author appealed to her. She even started writing stories for fun. I don’t think she has shared her writing with anyone, so I can’t say how well she was doing with it. I would assume from what I know of her that it was above average writing for her age.

After she told me that, I asked if she might consider writing a book with me. She hesitantly said yes. And since then has been actively avoiding the idea. I guess I ruined that interest. It is interesting to see how parents often live vicariously through their children, but fail to see how that sometimes that works counter to what you would want to have happen. It is also interesting to see how different your kids react to something compared to each other. For instance, if I had asked my youngest to write a book with me, she would probably not leave me alone about it until it was done. Now that I have said that, I might actually ask her when she gets a little older.

All of that does nothing to explain why I think I want to be a writer. Perhaps I should ramble less, and write more.

I was playing golf with some friends from work one day, and we were talking about the way that people view the world. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I am a bit of an optimist. I think that the world is a much better place than the people around me. Or so it seems to me. I also think that a lot of Science Fiction paints humanity as being unredeemable or barely redeemable. There is this one person or small group that is/are worthy, but everyone else is either a victim or a perpetrator of the evils of humanity.

I personally believe that most people are by nature ‘good’ people. I think that we have grown up thinking that if we don’t know a person, we can’t trust them and they are out to get us. That has not been my experience. I find that people tend to be generous and kind more often than they are selfish and cruel. The broad majority of people almost certainly fall into a middle ground of being generous and kind, until they are in a position in which they feel they have to protect themselves or those they care about. At that point, people become less kind, less giving, less considerate. It is probably unreasonable to expect them to behave differently than that. Why would you be generous when you are defending yourself or your loved ones? Why be generous when you are in a situation in which every choice you make is going to be viewed in the most negative light?

Back to golf. We were discussing the way people view the world and I mentioned that I might want to write a book one day that paints humanity in a more positive light. That doesn’t paint humanity in such an unfavorable light. I said I want to write a book in which humanity is full of good people.