Not really a long week but several LOOOOONG weeks all strung together. My writing has been limited. Hit my handwritten journal a couple of times. Very little updates to the life story e-version. Work has taken so much of my time.
I’ve come to realize that I want to get to a point in my life, even if it’s just for a little while, where I don’t have to think about security, unions, selections, operational strategies, meetings, VIP visits, community meetings.
I just want to be.
I don’t know if other people have the same experience as this but when I stay at my parents’ house for the night I get the best sleep ever. My parents purchased the house in 1985 and they’ve stayed there ever since. I was 16 years old and it was (and still is) the best house I ever lived in.
They’re less than 100 miles from where I live now but ever since they renovated the house’s landscape (adding grass, pavers, fruit trees) I’ve been going over at a minimum of once a month, sometimes every couple of weeks. My parents are in their 70s and my dad, although still quite active (thank God), could use a hand with the yard. (The yard work is definitely worth another post.)
So I don’t think it’s the resulting dehydration and tiredness of doing the yard that helps me sleep well. I think staying over takes me back to when I was a kid. Takes me back to a time of little to no real responsibilities. Stress free living. My biggest need was the need to finish high school. Biggest desire was my girlfriend at the time (thankfully I didn’t end up with her). Dreams included becoming a pilot (what can I say, it was the age of Top Gun) or working with computers (at the time I had a state of the art Apple IIGS with a whopping 512K of RAM). I was dabbling in writing back then too. Also thought about becoming a soldier or going into law enforcement.
Some people say being an adult sucks and I pretty much agree. The responsibilities can become overwhelming at times. At my age I’m preparing for retirement and realizing I should’ve taken it a little more seriously about 10 or 15 years ago. I also realize how fast time is going by and how it seems to go by faster and faster the older I get.
But all those thoughts go away when I’m home, when I’m standing in the kitchen talking with Mom and Dad while they cook something up. I’m a kid again when I’m sitting in the living room watching a movie with them. And when I’m lying down in my old room, everything is right in the world…even if it’s just for a weekend.
I fight with an overactive mind and I work at a job where it’s a lot of brain work. When I get home I don’t want to do things that require a lot of hard thinking. Writing requires hard thinking especially the way I go about writing–going at it hard for a few months and then just letting everything else in life get in my way until the urge presents itself again a year later.
I just realized it today, looking at the dates of my short stories I’ve written over the years. Craziness. Bursts of writing and then long periods of nothing. I think a lot of it also has to do with the fight against Mr. Doubt. He’s the sumbitch that waits until I’m about 30 days or so into loving the process of writing and then starts whispering in my ear.
“Dude…what are you doing?…..Why are you wasting time?……This shit is hard work and then 2 things are inevitable: 1) Nobody’s going to really like it and 2) You’ll have wasted AAAALLL this time that you’ll never get back. …..Really bro? The odds of you being a success are worse than you winning the lottery 3 weeks in a row.
“Look at that gaming system there. You hear that?…….That’s Grand Theft Auto 5 calling your name. That’s something you’re good at. And you can make money playing. I mean it’s game money that you get from being a criminal and going on missions but look at the apartments and houses you own in that virtual world. Go have fun in your sports cars, your motorcycles, your airplanes. Go be a bad ass
“And that bad ass gaming computer you bought a few months ago…wow. You can flightsim the shit out of your spare time, man. Put on those headphones and hear those jet engines scream as you zoom down the runway and up into the sky, piercing clouds, climbing and climbing until the sky is black and you fall back to Earth. You’ll regain airspeed and expertly land that baby wherever you want. You’re an ACE!
“So why are you going to go back to writing? It’s not real fun. Why are you going to put your babies out there for people to pick apart? F*ck that, bro. You a glutton for punishment or what?
“Oh yeah. And don’t forget you have to work for a living. 10 hours a day to pay the bills. Stick to that. It’s not a bad life.”
“Mr. Doubt?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Go f*ck yourself.”
According to Wikipedia self-censorship is defined as the act of censoring or classifying one’s own work out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities or preferences (actual or perceived) of others and without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority.
I hate to admit it but I’ve been totally guilty of doing that. Unfortunately although I thought I’d been doing it for the right reasons, it actually went against my writing instinct and method. In the original version of my novel “Disintegration: A Memoir” it started with the following line:
The first time I saw someone die was when I was seven.
From there it goes into the time when the main character, as a seven year old, kills a class bully. But the doubt that lives in some of us new writers got the best of me. I began to fear that people would be put off with reading about the death of a seven year old, bully or not, and not want to buy my book. So you know what I did two weeks after uploading the original version?…..ugh, I removed the first couple of scenes taking out the death of the kid and the killing of a noisy dog. Totally chicken-shit in hindsight. So a halfway decent Chapter 1 with a first-line hook (or at least an attempt at one) turned into a half chapter of descriptions and the reader having to get through several pages before he/she gets to some conflict.
It’s taken me 3 years to realize that maybe I could be doing better with the book if I hadn’t taken out the hook. Having a hook early on is Writing 101 shit, man.
So I uploaded new versions of the novel to include the original Chapter 1.
Lessons to all you thinking about writing a story:
1) Have confidence in yourself.
2) Trust your instinct
3) Your story is your story. It is what it is…and hopefully people think it’s something good.
4) Don’t kill the hook!
First, I hope this post works because I haven’t used the iPhone to upload anything to this site yet.
Just released a new short story on Smashwords a couple of days ago. You can view it here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/541435
The story is a contest entry on writing.com.
Enjoy.
I’ve been referencing The Harvest a lot throughout this blog, I’m having trouble jumping back into it because I feel constricted. Constricted because I have 3 parts online already and I feel it’s removing the freedom I should have as its creator to change things, especially if I have to change some of the foundations of the story.
For this reason, I’ve removed The Harvest (Parts 1-3) from Smashwords. For the hundreds that have downloaded these 3 serial stories, I apologize for taking so long to come out with part 4. Not sure when I’ll be able to churn out/modify what I have to get you the whole story but I’m revving the engine of my writing machine. Of that I can assure you.
I don’t know what the mystery is behind it but some of my best ideas for stories or music come right within the first minute or two of waking up in the morning. It never happens most mornings when the blaring alarm wakes me up. I just hit the alarm clock and roll out of bed for work. If I’m lucky, though, and this usually happens on the weekends, I can just stay in bed for a few minutes after waking up on my own. In these instances my mind allows itself to get creative and just roam free. And in that short transition period the good stuff rises to the surface.
The challenge has always been for me to capture that good stuff, especially when the good stuff is music. Music is the hard one because sometimes I’m just too lazy to get up, grab a guitar and hit record. But on the rare occasion that a cool story premise comes to mind, I just grab the iphone and punch in the idea, saving it to my Notes app.
Got a good one this morning…or it seemed good as I was still half asleep. Short story…fantasy. Working title is “Aunt Jamaica.” We’ll see what happens but this one whole story came together within a few minutes, beginning to end. That’s freakin rare.
And now to bring the idea to life in words…
Blowing the digital dust off some old stories and the project I put on hold since Spring 2013. I can’t remember what inspired me to get back into writing but I’m wading back into the giant pool that is my imagination and love for words. It could be that I’m eligible to retire in 2017 and just working on my writing chops for the next phase of my life when I can actually dedicate a lot of time to writing. For now I’m just hitting it after work in the evening and more on the weekends.
I am working on revisions to The Harvest and actually have some of it released in parts (1 through 4) on Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JohnSouthcross) and Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6542034.John_Southcross). At this point I’m not even sure I want to keep the same premise but I do have a lot of hours invested. Bottom line is that if it doesn’t work for me then it probably won’t work for my readers either.
More updates soon…or at least before another 2 years go by 🙂
I’ve always read that writers need to write every day, even if they don’t feel like it, even when the Muse is out doing whatever it does when he’s not standing next to your screen feeding your mind with all these great ideas and scenes that will help make your story “the one” that helps you break through. I think I’m at the point in my writing career that…wait, I shouldn’t say that. I think I’ve always been the kind of writer that only writes when inspired.
Admittedly, this is the longest I’ve been connected to my writing. When I took it up as a “serious” hobby in 1995 (although I’ve written things all my life starting with a journal when I was 8) I’d write a few stories over the course of a few weeks and then 2, 3 or more years would go by before writing again. But since 2009 or so, I’ve slowly narrowed the gap between my efforts from years to months and now to weeks. Maybe I’d write more often if I wasn’t a weekend writer.
But realistically, for me anyway, I need to write when I’m inspired. Everyone’s different. There is no singular way to do things. Yes there are some methods that work better for most people but there’s no commandment that says you have to write when you don’t feel like it. I’ve written when I don’t feel like it and when it comes time to edit weeks later (depending what I’m writing could be days later) I can tell which parts I trudged through.
Ha ha. Of course if I had a multi book contract, damn right I’d force myself to be inspired every damn day 🙂
But that’s just me…
Went over part 2 of The Harvest this morning and made some slight adjustments. I’m going to sit on it for a day and hopefully upload it to Smashwords this weekend.
You probably haven’t noticed that I hadn’t posted in a couple of weeks but I have been very preoccupied by work. Real work. My real job. REALITY. I had this huge rant I was going to get off my chest but you never know if what you post will make it back to your boss and you’ll have to pay for it later. Better safe than sorry.
Weekends are made for writing and for pretending that this is what I do for a living. Speaking of which, I’m wondering when and if I should set a price for Part 2 of The Harvest.
Decisions, decisions.
First Novel Blues 