About Brian B Baker

I write horror stories, review books, and talk about depression, and how I get through all of it.

Writing Critiques and How TM has changed my view.

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Brian B Baker

As a child I remember my father critiquing me for anything he believed I did wrong. If I stood with my hands on my hips, “That looks Gay”, or when I’d get bad grades, “You’re stupid.”

This type of critiquing didn’t go well with my creative side, it impeded it.

Now that I have kids and don’t say those things to them, I learned more about what is a good critique and a bad one and how TM figures in to my writing.

The one thing about TM, is that I no longer care as much about the past, or the future. I’m finally able to live in present, and with the present I’m able to handle criticism a lot better.

I recently got my edits back from an editor, though they’ll change the way I write, they’ll also let me grow as a writer, which is more important.

The edits were on a draft of a novel I wrote and they’re what I’ve wanted to hear from someone who knew what they were talking about.

I’ve attended Meet-Ups, but a lot of them are just a bunch of people gathered to drink at a bar, which may be fun for those who aren’t serious about the craft, but for me they limited what I wanted to do and they were detrimental to my craft.

I knew going in to writing that I needed work, and with the notes I received, I know what I need to fix, and I’m also now more aware of my writing issues.

I no longer live in a world where I care if I’m berated for not cleaning my room, but that prepared me for writing more than anything.

As a kid I had to have thick skin, but I also became aware that I could write to escape things, which went hand-in-hand.

TM allows me to worry less about the critiques I received in the past and let me focus on my present writing issues.

Being critiqued is part of writing, and being critiqued well are the best kind of critiques.

Before TM I was fearful of being critiqued and based what I knew on my experience with my father.

I now know that a critique should be a lesson and not a reprimand.

Living The Gift of The Cosmos

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Brian B Baker

Whatever future, whatever past, each day brings us to the very last.

We see our life, but detest the idea of our death. We wait until the very moment, or near the moment, we’re going to die to make amends.

This ability is purely human.

Does a bird tell the bug sorry for eating it, no. Will the parent of a turtle long-buried in the beach, be sorry for leaving its children on the beach, possibly, but humans are the only creature that is truly sorry for things its done, but we don’t say sorry, and mean it, as much as we should.

Our lives are gasps of air in the middle of a cosmos of gasps. We see the stars overhead, but don’t think about the life we’re living, or how it affects the people around us, not to mention the environment.

Our gasps or air are stories in a cosmos of stories. Our lives, deaths and eventual rebirths, are nothing short of miraculous in a cosmos which pays no mind to person in Africa starving, or to the person in America who is doing the same thing.

The difference between the two is the ability to change the way things are.

We see the stories and the little gasps after they’ve happened, but the problem is, we never understand the reasons for our life, or for why we’re here.

We live in a life where the world changes faster than it has at any other point in history, but we never stop to look around, never think about doing things to help those around us, and oftentimes, we don’t think about those we hurt.

Our little gasps are just that, breaths of air escaping through tubes and chambers underneath our skin, but the act of breathing is something we don’t control, it occurs for us without thinking about it.

In a cosmos full of extraordinary things, we still don’t think about what each breath means or what each day is.

In our world, our life is lived day-to-day, but we don’t think about our life as what encompasses it.

Get through the gasps and stare into the cosmos and see your life for what it is, a gift from the creation of the universe.

Ignoring Fear and Living

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Brian B Baker

Whatever future, whatever past, each day brings us to our very last.

These words are something which ran through my head the other day during meditation. I’m not sure where they came from. Maybe I tapped into something which was screaming to be heard, or my mind thought, “let’s screw with him”.

It’s possibly the first and not the latter, but neither would be surprising.

Our future is there in front of us, yelling at us, telling us we can do amazing things, if we’d just do them and quit stalling or being afraid, but fear is always what keeps us from doing things.

Fear drives us to commit horrible crimes and fear creates people who otherwise wouldn’t be heard if not for their fear.

Stealing away from fear, our lives are our own. They are run by us, and only us. We do the things we want, because fear has less hold on us than anything else, but the fear is always there, it’s just hidden away.

Our past may not be the way we wanted it to be, no ones never truly is, but it’s there to learn from, to destroy the fear residing inside and chase the demons of our past into the night.

The night holds fear, but only for those who fear it. There are many things to fear in our world, none of them are truly about fear, more about we believe fear to be.

Fear is that heartbeat in the bottom of your throat, the gasping for air in pool and lies we’ve told.

Our fear, our past and our future are nothing but what we make them out to be. They stand by waiting to be called into battle, but there is little we can do until the battle call is heard.

Fear keeps us from fulfilling who we should be, and not who others believe we are.

Fear disrupts, causes chaos and changes our very subtle rhythm in our hearts, There is nothing more controlling about fear, than the pain of fear.

This pain causes things to wear us down. Take our mind from us and causes us to question who we are, or who we want to be.

The fear of our lives is under our control, how we control it determines how we live our lives, or if we live our lives.

We fall through our lives, waiting for the very last, living in fear of that last day.

We should ignore the fear of our last day until it arrives and then only at that moment when our last gasp comes out will we know that our fear of death meant nothing.

Writing Through the Falling Ash

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Brian B Baker

Searching through the files of our lives, they must look like the deleted technology of a long-lost civilization, long burnt down, crashed and falling to ash.

We watch the reel, enjoying the moments of joy and cringe at the moments of self-realization.

Each of these moments have created who we are, the wrinkles, age and that odd grey color in our hair which we swear wasn’t there yesterday.

These moments are unspoiled by time, life and the things we’ve done since.

Through the years of tears, and every one has a year of tears, no one’s life is perfect.

Staying in a reel, we see watch the life we had, and think about the things yet to come. The loves, loss and the disappointment.

There’s nothing more disconcerting than not being able to see these things. Pulling these files from their roster, some collecting dust, others fresh from the other day, none of them are bad, they just are what they are.

Leading our lives through years, days and hours, each new thing we discover is different, but it may feel the same.

We have the same feelings, but different. The same pain without consequence or the laughter without the joke.

There are some of these which lead to our goals and our strength.

Running through the life which never changes, or appears not to things don’t fall away.

These things add caution and fire to what we want. Going through, we see the difference of who we’ve become, what’s fallen away, what our foundation has become and where the ash has fallen.

First, Write the Story

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Brian B Baker

Staring into the future; the road seems long.
The less we know about what’s coming the better we may feel.
Last week I hoped for the best, but those hopes were dashed Monday.
My writing and this blog have become my extension. The part of me I let out into the world.
This happens because I like letting people, especially artists into my world. There are many reasons I enjoy this. Mainly because I want to help new writers who feel their writing being crushed under the weight of their day job, family and responsibilities outside of writing.
I often think of where I was a few years ago, and how I dealt with the frustrations of finding the time to write.
I dealt with them by arguing with my wife, getting angry with my kids and hating who I was.
These things took over who I was, and they made me unbearable to live with, my wife will attest to that fact.
With each short story or novel I’ve gained more confidence, and I feel my writing has grown by leaps in the last year.
I attribute that to writing as much as possible.
It’s best to finish stories, but sometimes you learn more from the unfinished stories and how not to craft a story than from finishing the story.
When I started writing I’d never use an outline, today I find them indispensable.
I sketch the outline, get the points of that part of the story down and start writing.
I thought it would restrict me, I was wrong.
Get through the story then edit, but first write the story.

Brian B Baker, Writer

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