the meaning of ONWARD...

Four years ago, I was sprawled out in a mindless state on the couch, waiting to see who the Bachelor was going to pick. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving. It was 10:30 at night, and when the phone rang, I imagined some crazed telemarketer--with no sense of time--on the other end ready to get me to sell my soul. I was wrong.

It was Ray Bradbury, perhaps one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, asking to speak with me. My wife had actually answered the phone, and when she walked into the living room to tell me the news, I hardly believed her. Of course, it didn't take long to realize that the man on the phone was, indeed, my childhood hero. The visionary who wrote Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of the UCLA library, a book that I would read over and over every day before heading to school.

I had written him a letter a few months earlier and he was actually taking the time to respond. You see, I was ready to call it quits, ready to give up on writing. I had been doubting myself, wondering if struggling day after day to get published, to have my work viewed, was all worth it. After all, I was a family man now and I couldn't exactly write until the wee hours of the night.

And then Ray said something I'll never forget: He said, "I read your work, and you have a gift that is worth pursuing." He then went onto to give me two rules to live by as a writer: 1) Always love what you do or else it's not worth doing, and 2) Never quit.

Simple enough: I haven't watched The Bachelor ever since.

[A few weeks passed by, and I received a letter in the mail, along with a picture. It said, "Onward," and I've been moving forward ever since. Thank you Ray.