Category Archives: Writing

Move Forward

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There’s a point in life when you’re tired of the bullshit, tired of talking about what’s happened and you must step forward and move on.

You must forgive, you must remember what got you to where you, are and find a new way forward.

It’s when this happens that freedom comes. It’s this moment that you’re available to get your head out of your ass

It’s this moment that you’re available to get your head out of your ass. You’ll stop and get past the bullshit, you’ll stop, look in the mirror and stare at the person you’ve become and then you can understand the truth of how you got to your current situation.

Hold on to this moment, write it down, work through it and do what is required to move on.

Your writing will push you forward, you must listen to it. You must listen to your heart and the breath coming from your lungs.

The voice inside is no longer a viable concept. If you listen to the voice in your head you’ll falter, you’ll fail and become on of those who gives up.

Don’t give up, it leads to misery. Misery leads to finality and you’ll never dig yourself out.

Get through it, put your head down, get the words out that you need.

If you push through to the other side you will thank yourself later.

Move forward, always…

Ignoring the shiny.

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We writers, we have a problem.

There is this thing, it’s called “The Shiny“.

It comes when we least expect it, but it screams its damn head off when it appears.

We’ll be working on a story, and it doesn’t matter the length of the story, and BAM, The Shiny appears.

It could be a new thought on the current story, something that we didn’t anticipate or worse, it could be a new story, yelling, ‘look at me, look at me. I won’t let you get stuck, but if I do at least you’ll be writing five-thousand words while you wait’. 

The more we’re blocked, the louder the damn thing screams, but we have to ignore it, we must. There’s a part of us that knows we have to keep going on the current story, because, no matter how blocked we get, we still have more words on the current story than The Shiny.

We want to stop because we’ll get The Shiny to be quiet, then we have the damn things popping up to yell at us. It will happen when we’re going to sleep, taking our kids to school, reading a book. That last one, that’s the most frustrating.

The only thing we can do, write down the idea, put it somewhere we can see it and work on it later after we’re done with the current story.

Don’t give in to The Shiny.

Finding Courage…

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Courage is in short supply…

We write, and early one we may be afraid to write the words that scare us and chase us into a hole.

We lack the courage to confront the stories we’ve lived, the nightmares we’ve lived through and that confrontation comes when we’re at a latter stage of our writing development.

Instead, we may write stories of a wholly less personal, but relevant nature.

These stories confront the world, not our own nightmares.

Our nightmares, the ones we keep within our darkest thoughts, our darkest corners, they come out when we’re writing for ourselves

They’ll come when we least expect them too because we lack the courage to write them.

They’re too familiar, they’re unstable as possibly we once were and like a chemical reaction, we’re not ready for the world’s reaction to the personal stories we keep to ourselves.

Once we’re no longer afraid of the world and our courage comes through, we move to a higher place in our writing.

We advance to a plane that writers who don’t care about the world’s thoughts exist.

That is when freedom comes. That is when good writing happens.

The Marionnette in the Writer’s Toolbox.

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We often wonder what it would be like to be published.

We steal glances at the recently published books at our local bookstore, stare at the copies of paperbacks at the grocery store, all the while we ignore the little voice in our head asking, “Why the fuck aren’t you published yet?”

This voice stands up like a broken marionette, one string is torn as though it was never attached, but we keeping hearing the damn voice, calling to use in our dreams.

“Write asshole, why aren’t you writing, you’re sleeping and you should be writing, why aren’t you writing?”

The marionette is a clever disguise for our lack of faith in our writing or that we often, without understanding it, try to destabilize ourselves by worrying about the most recently published writer we’re friends with on social media.

Then we pick up their book and think, I’m better than this.

We continue our slog, staring at the paperbacks when we’re buying beer or another box of Cap’n Crunch.

We write, ignoring that damn marionette and keep going for one reason, we love to write. We love it like we love our kids, spouse, mom, and dog.

Stop staring publisher’s weekly, their emails will just drive you mad.

 

On rejection letters…

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The flow, muse, and rhythm of writing make for a strange time when nothing grabs those you’re submitting to.

The meaning of writing is for yourself, but what about when you’re submitting and getting constant rejections?

Writing improves with time, right?

When there is no one to tell you that you’re improving but family, it doesn’t feel the same.

Submitting stories to places that appear to only want writers with publication credits feels the same as the reason Hollywood is doing remakes.

Why should they risk their publication on an untested and unpublished writer?

Hollywood does remakes because they’re using a formula that works. They don’t want to take chance on an unknown writer; neither do story publications unless your story is badass and your writing has zero issues.

When looking at publications, the list of authors and stories are from previously published authors. The stories are rarely from authors who haven’t been published numerous times.

It feels like there’s fear in these magazines at taking a chance on an unpublished author, but there shouldn’t be.

Broaden the minds of the readers and give them a story from someone who would kill to be published.