Robert Woodard

While writing is my main passion, the most significant portion of my working career has been in the tech industry. I started as an Operator Trainee and continued all the way up to Chief Information Officer. Along the way, I worked for GNA Corp, GE Capital, Washington Mutual, The Regence Group, and Kern Health Systems. With the exception of Kern Health Systems, which was an 8-year position in Bakersfield, CA, I worked out of Seattle. The Regence Group provided my start in management as an IT Manager. This had me traveling regularly between Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and Utah. It was during one of these Amtrak roundtrips between Seattle and Portland that my writing was launched. I had picked up a sci-fi in a used book store in Portland that looked promising based on the narrative on the back cover. However, it was anything but good. The storyline was rambling and hard to follow, the characters were too scripted, and their dialog was unbelievably bad. I put the book down, fired up the laptop, and started rewriting the story based on the narrative just for something to do. Somewhere along those train tracks, I discovered I could write. I deleted my rewrite and started on a new story that popped into my head, and The Chance Encounter was born. This led to many other stories, along with a migration into different genres. I am forever thankful to the wonderful folks at The Writers of Kern, a writers club serving Kern County, for all the lessons and helpful tips I learned about writing. I was raw going in but better polished coming out during my eight years with them. I learned about writer's interference, plot drag, show--don't tell, and many other things we writers need to know and adhere to. Most importantly, I learned that there is no right or wrong way to tackle writing, and what works well for you is how best to do it. Where someone may map out all their characters, scenes, and such, I plow along like a farmer churning dirt, but we both will get to the end with the same results. My story is sitting in my brain, and just putting it into words works best for me, but I applaud those with better discipline. I'll be retiring in a couple of years, at the age of seventy, and I plan on dedicating more time to writing. My next writing will be another volume in the Gibbon's series. I have a blog site where anyone interested can go to read more about me and see what I have written. This includes links to Amazon for purchases. The site is https://www.authorrobertwoodard.com. Enjoy, and thanks for checking me out.