The Fight

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.”

A Morning Smoke

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. 

Housekeeping

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.

Subconsciousness

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

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 🙂

Inspiration…or lack of

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…