Tag Archives: self-improvement

What fiction is to me.

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The thought of what fiction is to me and what it means to me has been on my mind this week.

It’s the little spaces in between paragraphs when I’m considering what to write next. The moments when I write something well and amaze my self.

Most of all it’s freedom.

Freedom from distractions. Freedom to find purpose in the lives of the characters I create and the ability to try and scare them.

I used to write to impress people. I thought it would but most people don’t care.

When I write it’s to scare myself and maybe my wife. She’s my first reader and if I can scare both of us, I feel accomplished.

I gave up writing for others. There’s no satisfaction in it. There’s no reward in it. They won’t come to you frightened. Most of them won’t read what you write anyway so what’s the use.

Fiction to me is being myself. Finding purpose within the words and trying to make something memorable.

I may not be published but writing for myself is rewarding as hell.

I’m tired of being unpublished.

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I’ve reached a point where I’m tired of being unpublished.

I’ve written eight books and haven’t published a single one.

There are many reasons for this. But they boil down to not editing and not giving as much time to editing as I do to the first draft.

This caused me, at times, to hate writing.

After trying to edit one book, I got tired of it and wrote a couple more short stories as well as a novella.

So with every screw up a plan is born.

This plan will allow me to write something new as well as edit. I tried editing at night. It took away from time with my wife.

I love time with my wife. Sure, most nights were sitting across the room from each other reading. In Las Vegas I was lucky to get that.

I have two novels I’ll be editing for the year. I want to make sure they’re as perfect as possible.

Last summer 13 agents said no to one of my books. After having my writing group go over it, they noticed glaring issues only a different set of eyes can give a story.

I’ll be giving my writing group one of these. The other I’ll post in various places.

I will publish this year.

Happy writing!

The Fight…

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I’ve been circling the pit lately.

I hear the voices from within its muddy walls and the world stops.

I get those panicked breaths and I wonder what’s brought it on.

Staring down from my cliff, waiting for the tendrils to pull me in I wait on the rim.

I wait for something worse to happen, I wait for a lost job, a tragedy to befall my loved ones where the tendrils pull me back.

I feel the pillow over my face suffocating that smothers the life I want and takes away the life I have.

I stand at the rim looking in, hoping for something to bring me back.

But as the tendrils reach I put words on the page, for that’s my only solace.

The words count at the end of the day and the fight back the monsters.

The words push me away from the rim, away from the tendrils as their claws rip at the muddy precipice of the pit.

The Course Isn’t Set

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pablo (21)

A matter of course.

The matter, of course, is the way in which our lives move through the world and the way we see things in the world.

Each course is the culmination in the way the way see the world and the truth of who we are.

The course we pass through is indifferent, and the reality of how we move through the world is indicavit of our choices as we move.

Our movement, though possibly slow is the only way we know how to get into the lives we’ve worked hard enough to enjoy.

Our enjoyment of these lives is the truth, not the reality.

The reality isn’t the way we want it to be, but in the course of our life, it creates, thrives and moves about the world how we couldn’t dream, much less allow ourselves to be.

We allow ourselves to be comfortable in the false reality and neglect the course. We fit ourselves into the world we don’t understand and enable the course to move us instead of the other way around.

Within the course of our lives, we’re the master, but we oftentimes neglect things because we’re unable to separate who we are from who need to be, the course is set and we must follow.

Time to be thankful…

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pablo (17)

I bartend weddings, graduations, and corporate events to pay for my writing habit.

You learn a lot from people who are starting out, ending or are somewhere in between. The constant at all of these is time.

At all of these events, regardless of the event’s purpose, time is brought up in some form. Whether it’s the time they’ve been with their company, the time they’ll be spending with their new spouse or the end of their journey in the corporate world.

We think of time only when it passes us by or when it’s coming towards in our looks to the future.

We rarely look at time as something to savor or something that we need to harness.

Taking the time to structure our lives in the best possible way to harness the time we have left, because honestly, we never know when we’re out of time.

There is a constant with all of these moments I’ve worked, not just time. Thankfulness.

Thankful to be honored, thankful for family who’s supported them and the rare, thankful for being able to keep going through the hard times.

I make decent money with the events, but it’s the stories people tell about their lives that make the events worth it.

I have coworkers who talk to each other during the speeches while I’m listening intently to them. I cherish the speeches because the time you spend listening is your time, not theirs. You’re using your time to focus on someone else instead of wasting it with idle chatter.