BY JOHN BRICE
THE LAFAYETTE SUN
LAFAYETTE —
LaFayette native Sid Mickle has written and published seven books since his retirement after a long career in business where he traveled acorss the country. Returning to his hometown of LaFayette, Mickle wrote his first book “A Backward Glance,” which was comprised of a collection of memories from his childhood in Chambers County. Mickle reflected on the unique experience of writing a book for the first time.
“It was one of those things that I enjoyed doing because it exposed some of the things that I had been asking myself,” he said. “Like what happens to my self-esteem at times, why do I always question this or question that. That book is kind of a memoir, but it is a memoir filled with stories about my life growing up here in LaFayette.”
Having spent his career working in business, Mickle spoke about the unexpected return to a passion for writing which he had felt in his youth.
“I really never thought about writing until I was a teenager,” he said. “I was much more into reading. Maybe the idea of just reading led me to the thought of writing later on. For some bizarre reason, I wrote 100 pages of a manuscript when I was maybe 13 or 14. I found it about five years ago.”
In spite of the technology-driven fast pace of our modern world, Mickle said he has found immense joy in pursuing the classical art of writing.
“The way that I look at it, writing to me is very comforting,” Mickle said. “It is a slower pace, it is an escape from the media overload that is on our phone, on our TV and everywhere that we go. I can get myself in a quiet place and I do this on a fairly regular schedule, and I can just escape all that and write what I want to write. I would never have guessed that I have any kind of creativity about me. I find it interesting to be able to just sit down and come up with a story, a plot and the characters that get into it.”
Writing is a pursuit that many newcomers find daunting, which is a process that Mickle commented on.
“When I first started, I beat myself up about not knowing proper punctuation style or proper writing,” he said. “I would just beat myself up and I was constantly critical. I learned about halfway through that book to just completely stop that. That is my nature, to be hard on myself and very determined and goal oriented and focused on deadlines. Someone said to me once, ‘You are an independent writer; the only deadline you have is one that you make.’ That one statement just completely changed the picture for me.”
Mickle is currently working on a two-book series of fictional novels set in the factual history of the Civil War, which he was inspired to write by his favorite author Jeffrey Shaara who wrote the New York Times best seller “Gods and Generals.”
Encouraging his fellow aspiring independent authors is another passion for Mickle, which led him to start a YouTube channel named Sid Mickle Publications, which provides writing advice and a supportive environment.
