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Rick Schultze
P.O. Box 142
Yachats, Oregon 97498
541-547-3540
541-961-0662
yarick@pioneer.net

About Rick Schultze

Ever since I learned how to read I wanted to be a writer! How cool would it be to write things that other people read?

However, as a child I didn’t actually know anyone who was a writer, or how to go about becoming one. I mean, I sort of knew what they were, because I read stories and books, but I couldn’t really grasp the whole deal.

I thought about it, as a kid would, and came to me the only way to become a writer was to take action, and jump into it. So, with my parents help, I started a very small neighborhood newspaper in Portland Oregon. Of course, this was way before computers and the high tech systems we have now, so it was very labor intensive. The old typewriter, on which I did one finger typing, the small messy ink roller printing process, and even though I was editor, chief reporter, and advertising salesman, I still had to, out of necessity, be the ace delivery guy!

It lasted one summer, but I’d had a crash course in the world of writing. Professional writing at that, I think the papers cost a nickel!

Then youthful curiosity for me turned to other things, sports, girls, cars, and all the other distractions. While I never lost the urge to write, I kept at some little stories, it was shoved way back on the back burner.

Uncle Sam called, and the Military life took out a few years, but that time wasn’t lost, I read a ton of books. This was in the early sixties, and some folks were writing some powerful stuff. College followed and writing began to work it’s way back to the main burner.

Then it happened, American culture changed. Alternative newspapers sprang up everywhere, and I found a ready market for my musings. I could cover musical events, review books, do opinion pieces and the like. Although it didn’t pay enough to do it exclusively, it did provide some cash, lots of free concert tickets, and a bunch of great new books. I held a variety of jobs, from being a janitor, to working in the advertising department of Tower Records, and that allowed me to keep up my habit of writing. I went through several typewriters, a view writer, and finally procured the first of several computers I’ve owned.

Eventually I moved to Oregon fully intending to become a full time writer who actually made a living at it. However, reality meant making a wage, and I ended up working in a family owned grocery store. But locally there was a good alternative paper, Inkfish, as well as two traditional newspapers, and I ended up working for all of them. I doubled as a reviewer, and a reporter doing community interest stories and profiles of local residents. They all paid decent money but I found, much to my dismay, that I didn’t like newspaper reporting. The “just the straight facts” program had lost it’s luster and I made the decision to return to my first love; fiction.

I’ve been writing long enough, and have taken many enlightening writing classes, attended workshops, seminars, interviewed authors, and had many conversations with successful writers to get the basic idea. To write, and to do it well, one must dedicate themselves. It’s not an easy task to do well. Ideas fly in and out of the brain, but the trick is to translate that to the reader. One timeworn adage is” to be a good writer one must place one’s butt in the chair and write!”

On Writing, A Memoir Of The Craft, by Stephen King, published by Scribner,
would be my singular suggestion of a book about writing to read and study. There are many, many fine books on the subject, but King’s is the most realistic.

Writing, in my opinion, is a combination of reading, enjoying it, writing, actually doing it, enjoying that, and putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. It’s an attitude, an exercise, and a chore. But the result is worth it. It’s something you’ve done, something nobody else can do the same way you did.

I hope you enjoy reading what I put on this site as much as I’ve enjoyed doing it!

Thanks,

Rick