Category Archives: Writing

When I Think About The Writer I Could Be…

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Moon in the sky

Standing in the middle of the room, to my left are people milling about waiting for “him” to come on. On my right are people reading books, one particular book, my book.

I sit down, my hat pulled low across my head, hiding my eyes behind sunglasses, because they give me away every time.

My phone buzzes for an incoming text message.

Agent: Where are you?

Me: Milling about with my fans, why, where are you?

Agent: I’m trying to keep the people backstage under control. They think you’re not going to show. They’re going crazy. They got the food you asked for and the tea. They want you to come backstage.

Me: Alright, I’m on my way.

I exit through the front door–my fans never noticing I’d been sitting next to them–make my way to the rear entrance.

A large man who looks as if he worked for the mafia guards the door.

Mafia guy: They’re waiting for you.

He says in a very strong Scottish accent, which I wasn’t prepared for, open my phone–wondering whether I’m in the right place–look at Google maps and think it’s broken until my agent comes out.

Agent: B, where have you been? They’re losing their minds in here.

Me: It’s fine. I’ll start in a couple of minutes and everything will be alright.

Agent: Very well, I’ll tell them you’re here and that they should start getting the stage ready for your speech.

Me: Thanks. I’m going to use the restroom first.

Agent: Whatever, just be ready to go onstage.

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The previous story is how I imagine my first signing going, though I haven’t written a published work, I do write every day, and not just blog stuff.

When I think about the writer I am and the things I think about when I’m published it always comes down to this scenario, I’m not sure why.

I’m sure other unpublished writers think about their first foray into signing, readings and speeches, but lately that’s not been on my mind, I’ve just been writing.

When you sit down to just write your mind goes through processes of trying to figure out whether what you’re writing is any good, but that happens when you’ve taken the next day to read through what you’ve read, though I try not to this always happens.

As I write every day, a lot of my thoughts are on the characters I’m writing at the moment and not what comes next.

I write the first draft just full-blown, the second draft starts after my first read-through when I get an idea about what the story is about, who my MC is and what will happen when I clean everything up when I do an outline, which is what comes after my read-through.

I only start the second draft after I understand what’s going on, and why. After my characters are thoroughly in my head, and not leaving there. I set out to discover what my characters are truly like, but thinking like them, talking like them–which is often fun but can scare my kids–and making choices the way they would.

After all this is finished and I have a better idea of things, I start the second draft, it wasn’t always like this.

When I decided to write a novel, I’d start then stop, just to get the opening right. I’ve written two books in ten years and I’ve recently had my eyes opened to a different way of doing things.

This eye-opening wasn’t just induced by meditation, but by reading more subjects and listening to books on tape. Listening to books on tape by a great narrator can help you understand dialogue better.

When I found myself reading books just to see where the story originated or where the MC first chose their path.

These little things have changed the way I write, the way I rewrite and how I perform my day job as well.

Keeping track of the small changes in your writing makes a huge difference in how well you understand your writing and how much you understand your characters and what they want in the story.

On a side not to this post. I’ll be giving away three books the end of September. Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch, On Writing by Stephen King and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. These books have helped me either learn about TM or helped me with my writing and I’ll be giving them away.

I’ll do this on my last post of the month, so you have plenty of time to get your entry in. Either comment on the blog, share on Twitter with the hashtag #delusionsofink. Share on Facebook and tag the blog. Here is a link to the blog’s Facebook page, the link for my Twitter profile is here.

Thanks for enjoying the blog and good luck.

How Transcendental Meditation Changed Why I Write.

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Last year I started this blog, my third, I wanted to write things that I cared about. The blogs which came before this felt more like they were catering to people or like I wanted to be noticed.

Delusions of Ink seemed like a perfect title since I was under the delusion the ink I put on the page would be seen by people.

At first I thought it may be like the others, boring, forced and uneventful.

This changed around the time my grandfather died last year. I began to write things which were risky. Things which I wanted to write for the sake of getting my mind clear, but still keeping to a formula that the blog should be about writing.

I kept to that formula until April of this year when my life changed and I found the voice and the will to write what I needed to put on the page.

I knew after I sat for my first transcendental meditation session I wouldn’t be the same. But I honestly didn’t think anything would happen, how could it, it’s simply sitting and thinking of a word or producing a sound a word makes.

After my session I felt alive in a way I’d never felt before, I also felt more confidence than I’d felt since I was a little boy.

A week after I’d written my first transcendental meditation themed post, TM.org asked if they could post it on their page, happily and honored, I said yes.

I’ve been told that articles have done well on their page and that a lot of people who have read my articles have asked for more information about TM, which makes writing them worth it. If my articles can help anyone who is where I once was, then I’m ecstatic.

My confidence in my writing has grown with each week since starting TM and my offline writing has improved in ways I never thought possible.

I see the story better, the characters have better voices and I feel a better grasp of the craft.

There are many days, I wake up, stare in the mirror and think, where did this person come from? Where has he been hiding?

Then I realize, I was always here I just needed to open my eyes, clear my soul and find myself.

I’ve never felt better about where my writing is headed, where the blog is headed and most importantly, I understand why my writing was horrible.

I wasn’t truly here to write. I was trying to perform for people. I was out to prove certain people wrong about who I was and why I wrote, and that’s not the true way to write.

The only true way I’ve seen to write, is to let your voice, that one deep inside of you that you’re afraid to let out, let it free. It will create for you a life which is more meaningful and will create a place in your soul where your heart is full.

I’m no longer under the delusion that Delusions of Ink is for people. It’s for me.

 

When Your Feeling the Writing Flow…Or How I Spent My Tuesday

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It was empty when I walked in, the freshly polished floor shone in the early light. The smell of coffee and cinnamon rolls rolled through the mall in waves of ecstasy.
My footsteps echoed though I only wore Vans.
The mall was my savior.
I people watched, wrote new chapters of my new project and took notes on what I saw.
When you’re in the mall there are things you don’t see, unless you’re there wasting time for five or six hours, as I did on Tuesday.
There’s something different about being there with only the security guards, the mall walkers doing their laps, a laptop and a Moleskine.
There’s a different feeling to it when the stores are preparing to open on a Tuesday. There’s no anticipation of it being busy. The shop keepers seem to understand, “Today is a get your hours and go home day.”
Sitting in the Starbucks, a pool of wetness at the base of my Venti iced latte, I started to write.
It wasn’t like the other times, it didn’t sputter, it wasn’t clogged with traffic or nonsense.
It was the beginning of The Flow.
There were glimmers it might happen, the morning TM was amazing, breakfast tasted better, but I couldn’t believe that I would write with such energy.
The first few sentences weren’t remarkable, but they were sentences with structure, flavor and they flowed.
With each description, each piece of the story I didn’t notice my latte was creating an lake in the middle of the table, nor did I notice the two people watching me write, who incidentally saw me look up at them and turned away.
I wasn’t sure how long I was writing, maybe thirty minutes, possibly forty, but they moved together as fast as my fingers across the keyboard.
It’s an incredible feeling to make the scene the way your mind sees it. To create the atmosphere the way your bones feel it and to feel the flow of the words without noticing how much time had gone by.
When the flow comes, the writing moves without effort.
It’s the Zone, the box or your own little world.
It moves and you don’t see how fast the words come until you’re staring at your words, look at the clock and see it’s been forty minutes since you looked up.
That’s the best type of writing.
Feeling the flow.

How Living in Wyoming Made Me a Better Writer

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The year I graduated from high school, we lived in a small trailer on the plains of Wyoming.

It was beautiful to me.

Snow drifts grew to be as large as a truck. The days blended together as the grey, overcast clouds blocked out the sun. We hid in our rooms, or the living room, a dull orange light from the lamp or the white glow of the television casting its glow upon our faces.

It was these nights, with my sister, mom and dad huddled on a couch or under a blanket, which reminded me life wasn’t as bad as my teenage mind thought it was.

Each day, my sister and I would wake from our sleep, hurry to the bathroom, for if we didn’t there would be no hot water, or worse yet, not water at all.

We’d dress in adjacent rooms, only a panel separating our rooms.

It was there on those mornings, when we stood for the bus in 20 below weather I thought not of living somewhere warm, but thought of how beautiful the snow looked, the shape of the ice on the road as it jutted from the black top.

You see, in Wyoming, when there is slush in the road, it freezes like the world turned upside down. There were mornings when I was worried we’d hit one of these icicles and the bus would stop on the freeway leading to the nearest town where we attended school.

Life was easy on that plane in Wyoming. I had school, different girlfriends, and I’d stay up late writing.

Those were the days of teenage angst ridden poems about love, pain and the things which I’ve now outgrown, but the things I wrote were the beginnings of who I’d become years later, 20 years later.

Now that I’ve been away from snow drifts, the world turned upside down and the long bus rides, I think about why I wrote, not what I wrote. I remember thinking, no one will ever see this.

I loved that I could write something I thought was beautiful, and not care if the world saw it or not.

I liked the feeling of writing that way, it’s something I’ve tried to do again, but my mind fails me at those moments.

I think snow drifts and a trip down the rabbit hole will help, but I’ve been in the darkest places, and prefer the light, it keeps the dark away.

I saw life through my 18-year-old eyes a few days ago as I sifted through journals of poems and stories.

I liked what I read, the carelessness of the writing, the sense that the writer knew no one would see it, least of all himself in 20 years.

I’m going to return to writing without caring, because I was happiest when I stood in 20 below weather, my life in front of me and the discovery of what comes next.

What do we do when our life gets out of control?

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For most people, stress is an everyday occurrence and they just live with it, deal with, or put it out of their mind until they’re laying in hospital bed.

Almost a year ago I was stricken with Shingles. I thought it was something older people got, but I was wrong. Shingles can attack anyone who’s had chicken pox.

Having Shingles was especially unnerving since my parents had said I’d never had chicken pox, well I obviously had and band of scabs stretched across my clavicle, spread up my neck onto my head and right ear.

I missed a few days of work, luckily I noticed it early and started treatment.

After my recovery I began to think about how I became so stressed that a virus ravaged my body.

I discovered there was a perfect storm around me.

  1. My grandfather died.
  2. My dad ignored me at my grandfather’s funeral.
  3. I became depressed enough that I wanted to take my own life.
  4. My fiction writing became stagnant.

It was months later, after someone I worked with confronted me and said, “I don’t care about your problems”, which sent me over the edge. I talked about this in a previous post.

The death of my grandfather was something I knew was coming, but having little contact with my dad’s side of the family, I was unaware of how bad he was.

My dad’s snubbing me at the service was something I didn’t think would happen, This comes mostly because it was his father’s service and I thought he’d need the emotional support, I was wrong.

The depression which set in after leaving my grandfather’s service hit me a month later when the first sign of Shingles appeared.

My writing had always been my escape from depression, even as a kid I’d create stories in my head, never writing them down.

Writing has helped me discover who I am as much as TM has, possibly more since it’s been in my life longer.

As a teenager, writing helped me find who I was, and even though I wasn’t quite sure who I was, writing always helped.

When I wasn’t able to write, my depression became worse; which led to more stress, eventually leading to Shingles.

I’d never experienced sickness like Shingles before. Sure, I’ve been suffering from migraines since 2004, but I’d never had something knock me on my ass like Shingles. It made me begin to reevaluate my life.

The catalyst to getting over my depression, the stress I’d suffered from my grandfather’s death was a mental break.

The break made me realize I wasn’t healthy, mentally, physically or spiritually.

When I broke, I knew something had to change. That was the middle of March, just after my 38th birthday.

The one thing I thought of when I broke was this, “Every one will be better without me.”

I believed this, not because I was selfish, but because I believed I was doing something good for those around me.

When you’re depressed enough to want to take your life, you completely believe if you weren’t there, every one would be better.

This thought is not selfish, it’s a belief that life for you is better without them, it’s not about getting away from life, it’s about you being better because they’re not there to cause problems for you. This one thing is a misconception about suicide.

I’ve been to the edge with a knife, and I know what it looks like to stare at the blade and resist the urge to “make things better for those around you”.

Depression nearly took me, but it was my desire to see how this story ends which has kept me going.

When it was at its worst, I found something to help me get better.

Life takes us places we never thought we’d go. Sometimes we end up in a place where we need help.

Please ask for help if you need it!

Suicide Support Line