Asghar Abbas's Blog - Posts Tagged "grrm"
Mad Max
Georgie boy was right. This was one of the best movies of the year so far. I think our wizened wizard from Santa Fe, New Mexico loves sweet rides of all kinds. Yeah me too.
Finally, a real movie after a longish while.
Quentin Tarantino agrees; it's the best movie of 2015. No doubt.
*chappiesuckednoitdidn'tsashabanks*
Finally, a real movie after a longish while.
Quentin Tarantino agrees; it's the best movie of 2015. No doubt.
*chappiesuckednoitdidn'tsashabanks*
PERIPETEIA
I am a full-time writer. Yet I don't write full time. Full time I don't even exist in one place. Writing. Most of the time I try to forget that aspect of my being. Yet that's all that I am and all that I am, everything around me naturally converts into words, everything heads into that direction eventually, all roads lead to paper and pen where there is only a rumor of an evenfall, where the night sleeps snug tightly dreaming of stars in the daytime. Sometimes, I write in spite of being a writer. Yet I don’t write all the time. At other times, I don't know why I am writing at all, why do I write really. Maybe I write to contain the chaos inside of me, to get the words out, to retain my sanity, and keep an even mindset. Maybe I am writing to find myself or maybe I am writing to forget. Everything I want to say ends up skewed on paper anyway, so why bother, but maybe that's how it needs to said in the first place, how it is supposed to be, it just takes a roundabout way of getting there. A route less traveled, or not to be taken at all. Like this, for example, I wanted to answer a simple query that you quoth and here I am a rook dipped in crude ink fluttering on and smearing the blank pages unnecessarily. For those who asked and for those who shouldn't; this is my answer. This is my lonely country, all the roads dusty and verdant are mine. I am the Wanderer here. I am alone, I am my own Guide.
Just what is it that you are asking me? Are you asking me what motivates me as a writer, or what my writing process is; a procedure that is as fickle as the dual nature of the stars? Or that what motivated me to sit down and finally write my first novel? I'll illuminate both; I'll illuminate all. Maybe I'll illustrate nothing. I wanted to pay tribute and give homage to Hemingway with my untainted and early hope but ended up tipping my hat to Quentin Tarantino at my first attempt to murder crows. See, the writing pattern, writing habits are fitful and strange, of even strange beauty, our wizened wizard from Santa Fae is quite right, there are two types of writers. The Gardeners and the Architects.
I've been One of those for 15 years now, ever since I was 18. How is almost as important as why, I guess, but both those reasons are lost. It's moot now; it's not important how I became one, I am now and yes ala Aurora there is blood on my lies. Reasons may be lost but despite my best efforts, I am not. I am still writing.
Thoughts about my first novel. OK. Four years into this acute madness, I thought I was ready to do things on book level and actually finish one. After all, I had put in enough hours, spent enough time at the abattoir I felt I was ready when no one is ever ready. But spend enough time and you can hone any skill. I thrust my gingerly titled stillborn fawn called Wave of a Dark Ocean (re titled from Testament Deal Gone South via Wave of a Dark Ocean; yeah like I was Alan Bradley (heck, Bradley wasn't Bradley at that time or Ethan Hawkes's character from Before Midnight ) ) so I shoved my nascent but completed work (I cannot stress this enough) into the thresher and what came out from the fog and smoke wrapped up in trellis of wet leaden smog was Beyond Desire, thanks a lot Florida! And yet they weren't done, they dealt another kindness, a brutal blow; our poor protagonist had gone into the promised land a flaxen maudlin golden with promise and she was spat out the other end as a raven-haired tempest. I had sent Iva Gyongy to the slaughter and Eva Green was reborn. Such treachery, such a travesty! So so many other things had gone wrong but that’s another ghost story for some other campfire storytelling.
Moving on. Alright. As a writer, I am trying to remember my surroundings but as a man, I am trying to forget them, trying to undo the Where so I can begin with the What. You asked why am I writer and how to be one, more or less. Well. Words. That's the simple answer. Bubble wrapped in words, shrouded in their spume, you'd be so elated that you’d feel like you are on psychedelic drugs, you’d be so high you'd end up believing in them, yourself and unfortunately in other people as well, but that's the byproduct of watery words, that toxic optimism. Words can be your ariel aid, heck you wouldn't even need wings with words in your bloodstream, let them rattle around in your skull, let them hum through your body. With them as your succor and savior, everything around you makes sense and you can sense everything in a way you wish you had before. Or sometimes wish you never did. Every single solitary thing is enhanced, all get better. Garbed in the threadbare cloth of words, the hues that you suddenly see you can feel them. You can reach out and touch.....anything, least of all minds of others whilst stroking your own embers, mind hardening up, your mental prowess ever-sharper ever ready for the never-ending battles of being alive, until one fine day when you are not that is, glorious day that would be indeed, WarBoy. Engorged on words while letting them eat you, words can sate and satisfy in a way that no lover possibly can. Airily empty as they most definitely are, words can make you happy- they are dangerous like that, yet you can actually love them and feel them loving you back, they corrupt you with hope like that. You feel their love blooming up in you like the love of a dead child. They grace you by touching your mind and by taming your emotions. When others grace you, they only touch your dust, taking your songs with them along with their harsh softness. But within words, you possess your own emotions and no one else can twist or tweak them. Words can show you the other side of courage; you can have everything without getting blotto drunk on delusions.
Granted, only an illusion of control it maybe be, but with word-tinged control, you could control the world you have the misfortune of being in. That control will rather bear the ritual of living.
To be sure, everything is a rework, from Superman to the place where most familiar strangers meet nowadays, even that medium is nicked and improved upon. One way or another everything is a rework originality got lost somewhere between good intentions. How easy it is to just give in. How tempting it is to fall back upon lost coins, to be falsely awakened, to be utterly forgotten. It is rather difficult to be removed from environs made stale, but we have to stop borrowing air from the minds of others, no need to suck in borrowed air really. Instead, find pockets of sadness breathe in the freshness of bare words, add an authentic spice to that mix, spike it liberally. And then sup on those words, EAT THEM, take in their smoked chalky texture, they taste like most Blake poems and they'll be more nourishing than stolen wordlings, I can assure you that. If you write with unalloyed pleasure, then everyone tastes better. It's OK to start with a lie, we all do at some point, but make sure it ends up being your lie. Make sure it's your own bed that you are lying in before you make it.
It is so easy to see writing as a short cut but it is a very long way to a generally maddening occupation and you get bloodied on the way. The only thing you end up with is the valueless realization that it was a long wynded way to nowhere and it was no short cut. How I see this now; writing is looking at the torn part, glistening, butchered words, and still be able to make sense of that jumbled mess and see how they'd fit together. To still be able to see the whole picture the words are trying to show you and how they'd come together. Writing is taking those words and snitching together a tapestry from your pliable thoughts to display to others exactly what you want them to see. It’s about not showing your hand immediately; learn to avast that impulse. Reveal only that needs to be out in the open. So, take the veneer off the wordy items one by one. Build things up slow slooowwwly. So, kick back, relax, and cherish the disrobing. There is really no need to show the skin of your thoughts all at once, nope, not until you are ready to rain down your mist on the eager countenances and cover their delicacies with the squalls of your plume. Make things happen with infinitely simpler and infinitesimal smaller words. Above all, be subtle.
Weltered in your blood your words are bricks, use them, build a damn fortress where you can take refuge as both a faceless king and a gaoler but best of all, in your fort you are your own jester. But it is a place where you can hide from your natural enemy and traditional opponent; yourself. In the small recesses of your mind, you can hide in those blunt shadows caught between light and the dark, where you are safe from everything and everyone, especially yourself.
Be a ghost in your own haunt; free. Be a Mad Hatter in a deserted Wonderland. No one needs to get any curiouser, no need for Alice or White rabbit to shoot down the gaping rabbit-holes. You can have the warren all to yourself.
Through the tunnel vision from where you stand, you ask me how do I mold my words, flick my wrist, swish my pen, how do I punch in my keys. How do I break the walls down? My writing habits, my doodling patterns are erratic and a little bit odd, weird mostly. What I do....um ok here is the thing, all that you need know for pinioning down the slithering words is. All that you have to do is this. Think. Hard. Dwell. Ponder. Squeeze your thoughts until your head is sore. And then squeeze harder. Talk to yourself. Talk to your characters. Make them talk to each other. Communicate. And excommunicate everything else especially fear your own or others. Rewrite. Remember. Forget. Forgive. Don't panic. Panic. Be playful. Be mean. Be rough. Be gentle. Press your face into the tender papery bosom, nibble the warmth, worry the softness until you have something piquant and delicious in your hands, something misshapen but breathing, try to hold onto that, cradle it against your chest. And just be done with people in general, they are just not worth the effort, not worth the trouble of being sincere. People are so fake, so much fictitious than all the fictional worlds inside your soft gullible noggin. All those unreal Gaimaned fantasies brewing inside you are so much real, even if they are not.
Coming back on track if I must. Um. What I typically do is constantly sketch in my head. I'd be doing something else while writing in the air around me. I'd working or working out, reading something, watching anything, sank deep in the music, hanging out with special someone or no one special, but constantly sketching in my head. Whether animated or in stasis I am writing in my head, on paper not so much but in my mind, oh yeah- I am an impeached lord ruling over wastelands. Then I'd take that wet nebulous swelling mass struggling within my arms and take it to my desk quaint and ole. I'd sit down in front of my broken in typewriter. I'd slip in a paper made virgin with the words now eager to come out -and I just let it all go, all that I have been trying to hold in. I let all that tumble onto that fallow paper, onto and into that. It's as simple and as impossible as that. But of course, by the time I take the secrets that are alive to my battered desk and cranky old typewriter, I forget what I wanted to paint. But maybe what I do write in its stead is better or maybe what I write instead of what I wanted to write will make me better. Either way, there is no down side to this. In writing, there is no loss.
And even though I'd hate to admit it, but musing things does speed up the whole magical process exponentially, I use the term magical very loosely here. But overall it can lead to a healthy relationship between you and your words, no longer that relationship has to remain platonic or chaste. Attentions of a certain kind of Muse helps, end of discussion. Though that usually ends up in a Russian roulette with you facing a fully loaded chamber. Chances are you'd end up stuck in a swale of self-loathing, so it’s better that you avoid muses all together, but they find you, man, seek you out even, flush you from where you have been hiding in the Everglades. Just try not to fall in love with one. Sometimes, they fall for you but that's only a small victory. What you gonna do with it? You can't buy food or feed yourself with that gold. You can't eat that love.
But then again, the whole writing process is not an exact science and everyone handles things differently. Everyone's gotta bleed their own way, don't ask others to bite your wrist. So do what works for you. Only you can know what that is. Mostly it's something you'd eventually find out, stick to a typewriter and you will uncover it.
Find inspiration where you can, when you can. Stay inspired. Let what you have and what you need charm you. But not necessarily what you want. At my end, from my side of the equation intensity of everything works for me, I am interested in the intensity of everything. But the thing worth remembering and you have to keep this in mind, the most important thing is to remain calmly excited as you meticulously build up the world from the whorls of your words. Remember, don't get tapered out before becoming a taper that remains ever steady in the breeze. Just a cautionary tale attached to any tales that you might be weaving from your spittle. Find your song and hang onto it, don't let it get mauled and mangled on the way down from the dell of your mind to your fingertips.
I'd be remiss if I didn't address a salient point of this reckless and capricious business. How to put this gently? There is no money in it whatsoever. Take that in for a split second. Sure, there are exceptions and rare cases of novices finding bestselling stardom. Aspiring lunatics launching into that kind of success, but that usually involves agents and you have a better chance of having tea with your Maker. That being said however people do retain agents and make some serious money; anything can happen, just so keep in mind this simple Stark fact going in. There is no money in it. You must, you absolutely need to have another solid source of income, especially if you want to do this thing full time and do this for a living which is ironic at best. Work so that you can write then if life is gentle write well enough so that it's not work anymore. And here is the bigger irony, there is a lucrative angle to all this, but it's on the flip side of the voodoo. It's on the other side of fiction, there is lot of market in the nonfictional part of the Town. So yeah, there is plenty of plunder to be had, lots to pillage, but it's on the other side of the Mardi Gras, a darker side where you barter your soul, if you still have one at this point, and slaughter your creativity for that. Naw, do what you gotta do. Feed your soul, just don't feed it to anything else.
One of the hardest things in this life is to finish a novel, make it pretty enough, presentable, and readable, that's just the basic standard stuff. You’ve to run the extra mile if you want the book to be extraordinary, or just a little apart from all the others, all this hard work just to make it above average. Finishing that book is still nothing compared to, is a bit easier, benign even, than getting your book published properly.
Because the reality of it is even if you write a well crafted, very well written, powerful, imaginative, a feat that is a moveable feast, gem of a novel. Even if you achieve a rara avis accomplishment, it still means less than nothing if the book is not out there in reach of the populace. If you do not put your work out there, it is pointless. See, there is this Painted Woman, this very unreliable slut of a vixen called Luck. Some have it, some do not get her at all. So you could be genuinely gifted but sunken in obscurity, there is no rescuing you, no kiss of life to make you alive again, no lost hope for you. While there are others barely talented sitting on top of the slush pile, saddling your dreams strangling your chances. So this game is definitely luck-based. Yeah, something as minuscule, minutiae, and random as luck plays an important part in your life, even more so in writing. So better hurry, or sultry Luck would be gobbling someone else's knob.
However, the thing of most paramount importance is completing your work. Without that, you might as well throw in the towel and let someone else fill lovely Luck’s soft palate, let her gobble someone else. So when you start and whatever you begin with, whenever you are ready to make that first cut, plunge in deep with the foreknowledge, with the premonition, that you will finish, that you want to finish. And you look like someone who knows how to finish.
Get your work out there. Keeping D&D in mind, not David Benioff and Dan Weiss, though they used to be banner of excellence many moons ago. No, dedicated, and disciplined you can display your innards. You don't even have to go down the traditional road to publication to showcase your talents. There are so many alternatives in this digital age to pick from. There is a whole different way of doing things now, you are not bound to just one option. Too many there are. Choose from any of them, for example, there is Amazon's service of CreateSpace it's a great tool for putting your work out there. There is no excuse for not promoting your labor of unlove in today's ADD world. Ultimately, you have to decide what you are writing for, what your main objective is here. Is it to make money or are you just writing for peace of mind and to be at peace, which is it? In the end you must write for yourself and no one else whatever that means, but write dammit I implore you, even if you wind up impaled on words. To write is to reflect, to think. We sorely need thinkers now more than ever. The point is there isn't any actual need to become another Edgar Allan Poe, an innovative originator who died at a young age with almost nothing, or that guy who birthed that whale of an epic called Moby Dick. You know your hunger, you know you are hungry; use that.
You don't have to starve in order to nourish your soul or feed your mind.
I absolutely understand this inherent fear of failure but as things are now, every dewed malleable bliss is on the other side of the river, so stop dithering on the banks skirting close to the bobbing heads of mermaids and fork that fjord. Why fret or bother with the Ferryman when you can build an Ark. You have to stop this fear from imploding within you, no more of the mini riots of any sort. To be any kind of writer you must overcome it. Like the King of Human Horror said on the stakes before he was burned in his own mind, he believed fear to be the main cause of terrible writing, I concur that he is right. He is King after all though sometimes like Stannis the Mannis he is unpalatable, but that is neither here nor there. Just this. Don't be afraid of the ink - spill it. Don't wait for the blood moon to feel a little carmine and get things done.
If I were to say something based on my experiences down in the trenches, if I have anything to offer it is this; be open always, always be open for anything, for new things, and learn; I am still learning. You have to be open for the words to sink in, set in, set you up, and seep in. If you are not open then words would sail right by you, they'd go over your head and you won't be able to retain any of their touches. You wouldn't be able to feel them when you'd need them. Don't hold back, don't look back, don't back down.
If there is one thing I gleaned from the time I spent pulling myself apart, if there is one thing that I can give back, the most important thing that I garnered from my time down in the trenches is time itself, the underrated concept of understanding time, the deficiency of time. You think you have time but you don't, you have a surfeit of hours and days but no real-time, no real understanding of it. So a dollop of my understanding is this; the time to write is now, not yesterday, not tomorrow but now. Whatever that you have to write it has to be in the now, right now. Don't think too much about it. Stop over thinking, stop thinking about it, don’t think at all, just do it. You are already thinking too much, stop that! There is no some other time, there is only now. You write and wade through the beautiful morasses of your ugly mind, but believe me when you'll hit that stride, oh boy, your work will be everything and everything will have a flavor that only you'll be able to taste, sip, savor and relish. A final final key that I stole from the Keymaker; try to have fun. If this is not fun for you, it won't be any fun for others. So play with your food, don't be wary of mixing up the paints on your palette. Find all the wrong colors. So have fun.
You know, far be it for me to be a dream killer. I wouldn't want to dissuade anyone from pursuing their dreams or stop their dreams from stalking them. But you gotta make absolutely sure this is what you want. Like Hank Moody puts it so sagely; Being a writer blows. It's like having homework every day for the rest of your life. To me, being a writer is like exorcising a demon-like being a demon yourself; where you gonna go?
You can't just be in love with an image of a tortured artist. It's a calling that I wouldn't want anyone to take lightly, answer it only reluctantly and with plenty of caution. Because the more you write the less you heal and the more you have to write in order to heal.
Writing is like a punishment for something you didn’t even do. See, folks looking for their lore have a tendency to romanticize being writers, they willingly engulf themselves with that fantasy, instead of spewing one. They get confused about pain and words, pain about words, words about pain, the simple truth of it is, there is more pain than words. Everyone wants to be a writer, but no one wants to write, like really write.
But ah an unshakeable belief in yourself! Like a shade in the water or Gollum underground somewhere, words can play tricks on you. For a second there you almost believe in everything and anything.
But belief is the folly of the youth, by the time you are a veteran of this world, you know better to give hope a name. So get out while you are still human, but if your words can convince you, then stay. But you better make sure you are doing this for the right reasons. Because writing’s pretty much like looking for the right happiness in the wrongest of places. But on the other hand, you can’t be asphyxiated with a stubborn attitude that writing is valueless, that would only lead to suborning yourself. Writing has some value. Writers none.
Sore from all my dreams, I have been someone else’s dream. Now I want to wake up from this. But waking up is a dream too.
I've been at war for 15 years with that hidden part of me, a fugitive fugue state that remains restive and refuses to let me stay still. With every fiber in my body, with every ounce of my being, I wish I hadn't answered this call. I don't want to fly anymore. I wish I didn't chose this. If I could I would do everything differently, not necessarily right but different.
But then.....
But then again …..
Sometimes, sometimes it feels like the moon is on my side and I am running through the woods and the forest is bleeding for me. Moonlight cool and balmy on my free skin, I am running, the wolves are there running along with me and I am their Wulf King. I can fly. Not every high but I can fly.
So if you do decide to go down this road to convert and turn yourself into this monster and render yourself to this beast. Then you better embrace what you are. It'll be hard enough for the civilians to accept what you are. So what do you do? You become yourself so much so that it's hard for them to deny your reality. No more half measures, you gotta go all the way, so embrace who you are.
Last words. The way I see it doesn't matter what, no matter what, if you are auger with talent then the words will come out of you, they will bubble up to the surface despite how hard you try holding them in, struggling to keep them down below in your grotto. So this is what you gotta do; batten down the hatches, quiet yourself, and empty out your mind. I know it’s nigh on impossible but ignore the buzzing of the moths, shut down the white noise, and write in the silence of your mind. In that ensuing cold silence, make your words rustle on dried pages as you move your hands around. Write. Just write. And listen. Then. You are no longer a stranger to your familiar words. Their secrets are your own. You are them. You are your words. It's an addiction now and you are a junkie. Breathe in that electronic ink. Suffocate. There is no going back now. You’ve changed things for yourself. You've become. A writer. Enjoy your slow death. Write.
Even though as a writer I am more like Hannibal Lecter, writing to amuse myself but I want this, I want it all. As that Warpaint song goes Give me more, give me more, I haven't had this before. I want this. I want it all. The glitter of Greed. The label of a scribe. Knowledge. Pretentiousness. Power over people. I want to knead their minds. I want the fame, the money, the women. The notoriety. The shrewd girls, the gullible men succumbing to those girls. I want to laugh at them both. Mirthless laughter but still. I want the peak of my impression, the adulation, the absolution, the accusations, the satisfaction, the pacification, the gratification. I want You. I want to glow on your face, burn your fucking face off, and then dissolve on your tongue. I want to be the dark heart stuck in your throat, skewered there like something else ought to be, consuming you whilst I slit my own throat. I want to be a recluse. I want to spiral downward. I want to crave the decline. I want the dwindling of relevancy. I want the dearth of freshness. I want a lack of ideas. I want the dispersia of words. I want different things now. I am the secret in the Book of Kells. Get down on your knees and watch while I burn your world around you. I want the atrophy of morals. I want you. All of you. Every bit of you. And none of you. I want words. I want nothing. I want to burn out. But this Phoenix won't be rising up from the piles of cold tinder.
I want to be the smudges of inkblot heart on papers. I want to sketch the funeral of stars with my felt tip pen. I love it, so I must kill it.
Maybe this is my madness.
Maybe I am my madness.
All my creatures are going to get their happiness reduxed. Even all their endings will be revived. Their sadness redacted.
Maybe closing everyone's chapters but my own is my happiness.
Maybe I became a writer because I didn't want to forget. And now I can't. Maybe, just maybe, I forgot that I don't have to remember at all.
See, in the end, and it's all about the endings, always, there are two kinds of writers; those who write because they feel something and those who write because they want to feel something.
I am the latter.
I am letters
I am a Letter.
περιπέτεια ; min månen
Just what is it that you are asking me? Are you asking me what motivates me as a writer, or what my writing process is; a procedure that is as fickle as the dual nature of the stars? Or that what motivated me to sit down and finally write my first novel? I'll illuminate both; I'll illuminate all. Maybe I'll illustrate nothing. I wanted to pay tribute and give homage to Hemingway with my untainted and early hope but ended up tipping my hat to Quentin Tarantino at my first attempt to murder crows. See, the writing pattern, writing habits are fitful and strange, of even strange beauty, our wizened wizard from Santa Fae is quite right, there are two types of writers. The Gardeners and the Architects.
I've been One of those for 15 years now, ever since I was 18. How is almost as important as why, I guess, but both those reasons are lost. It's moot now; it's not important how I became one, I am now and yes ala Aurora there is blood on my lies. Reasons may be lost but despite my best efforts, I am not. I am still writing.
Thoughts about my first novel. OK. Four years into this acute madness, I thought I was ready to do things on book level and actually finish one. After all, I had put in enough hours, spent enough time at the abattoir I felt I was ready when no one is ever ready. But spend enough time and you can hone any skill. I thrust my gingerly titled stillborn fawn called Wave of a Dark Ocean (re titled from Testament Deal Gone South via Wave of a Dark Ocean; yeah like I was Alan Bradley (heck, Bradley wasn't Bradley at that time or Ethan Hawkes's character from Before Midnight ) ) so I shoved my nascent but completed work (I cannot stress this enough) into the thresher and what came out from the fog and smoke wrapped up in trellis of wet leaden smog was Beyond Desire, thanks a lot Florida! And yet they weren't done, they dealt another kindness, a brutal blow; our poor protagonist had gone into the promised land a flaxen maudlin golden with promise and she was spat out the other end as a raven-haired tempest. I had sent Iva Gyongy to the slaughter and Eva Green was reborn. Such treachery, such a travesty! So so many other things had gone wrong but that’s another ghost story for some other campfire storytelling.
Moving on. Alright. As a writer, I am trying to remember my surroundings but as a man, I am trying to forget them, trying to undo the Where so I can begin with the What. You asked why am I writer and how to be one, more or less. Well. Words. That's the simple answer. Bubble wrapped in words, shrouded in their spume, you'd be so elated that you’d feel like you are on psychedelic drugs, you’d be so high you'd end up believing in them, yourself and unfortunately in other people as well, but that's the byproduct of watery words, that toxic optimism. Words can be your ariel aid, heck you wouldn't even need wings with words in your bloodstream, let them rattle around in your skull, let them hum through your body. With them as your succor and savior, everything around you makes sense and you can sense everything in a way you wish you had before. Or sometimes wish you never did. Every single solitary thing is enhanced, all get better. Garbed in the threadbare cloth of words, the hues that you suddenly see you can feel them. You can reach out and touch.....anything, least of all minds of others whilst stroking your own embers, mind hardening up, your mental prowess ever-sharper ever ready for the never-ending battles of being alive, until one fine day when you are not that is, glorious day that would be indeed, WarBoy. Engorged on words while letting them eat you, words can sate and satisfy in a way that no lover possibly can. Airily empty as they most definitely are, words can make you happy- they are dangerous like that, yet you can actually love them and feel them loving you back, they corrupt you with hope like that. You feel their love blooming up in you like the love of a dead child. They grace you by touching your mind and by taming your emotions. When others grace you, they only touch your dust, taking your songs with them along with their harsh softness. But within words, you possess your own emotions and no one else can twist or tweak them. Words can show you the other side of courage; you can have everything without getting blotto drunk on delusions.
Granted, only an illusion of control it maybe be, but with word-tinged control, you could control the world you have the misfortune of being in. That control will rather bear the ritual of living.
To be sure, everything is a rework, from Superman to the place where most familiar strangers meet nowadays, even that medium is nicked and improved upon. One way or another everything is a rework originality got lost somewhere between good intentions. How easy it is to just give in. How tempting it is to fall back upon lost coins, to be falsely awakened, to be utterly forgotten. It is rather difficult to be removed from environs made stale, but we have to stop borrowing air from the minds of others, no need to suck in borrowed air really. Instead, find pockets of sadness breathe in the freshness of bare words, add an authentic spice to that mix, spike it liberally. And then sup on those words, EAT THEM, take in their smoked chalky texture, they taste like most Blake poems and they'll be more nourishing than stolen wordlings, I can assure you that. If you write with unalloyed pleasure, then everyone tastes better. It's OK to start with a lie, we all do at some point, but make sure it ends up being your lie. Make sure it's your own bed that you are lying in before you make it.
It is so easy to see writing as a short cut but it is a very long way to a generally maddening occupation and you get bloodied on the way. The only thing you end up with is the valueless realization that it was a long wynded way to nowhere and it was no short cut. How I see this now; writing is looking at the torn part, glistening, butchered words, and still be able to make sense of that jumbled mess and see how they'd fit together. To still be able to see the whole picture the words are trying to show you and how they'd come together. Writing is taking those words and snitching together a tapestry from your pliable thoughts to display to others exactly what you want them to see. It’s about not showing your hand immediately; learn to avast that impulse. Reveal only that needs to be out in the open. So, take the veneer off the wordy items one by one. Build things up slow slooowwwly. So, kick back, relax, and cherish the disrobing. There is really no need to show the skin of your thoughts all at once, nope, not until you are ready to rain down your mist on the eager countenances and cover their delicacies with the squalls of your plume. Make things happen with infinitely simpler and infinitesimal smaller words. Above all, be subtle.
Weltered in your blood your words are bricks, use them, build a damn fortress where you can take refuge as both a faceless king and a gaoler but best of all, in your fort you are your own jester. But it is a place where you can hide from your natural enemy and traditional opponent; yourself. In the small recesses of your mind, you can hide in those blunt shadows caught between light and the dark, where you are safe from everything and everyone, especially yourself.
Be a ghost in your own haunt; free. Be a Mad Hatter in a deserted Wonderland. No one needs to get any curiouser, no need for Alice or White rabbit to shoot down the gaping rabbit-holes. You can have the warren all to yourself.
Through the tunnel vision from where you stand, you ask me how do I mold my words, flick my wrist, swish my pen, how do I punch in my keys. How do I break the walls down? My writing habits, my doodling patterns are erratic and a little bit odd, weird mostly. What I do....um ok here is the thing, all that you need know for pinioning down the slithering words is. All that you have to do is this. Think. Hard. Dwell. Ponder. Squeeze your thoughts until your head is sore. And then squeeze harder. Talk to yourself. Talk to your characters. Make them talk to each other. Communicate. And excommunicate everything else especially fear your own or others. Rewrite. Remember. Forget. Forgive. Don't panic. Panic. Be playful. Be mean. Be rough. Be gentle. Press your face into the tender papery bosom, nibble the warmth, worry the softness until you have something piquant and delicious in your hands, something misshapen but breathing, try to hold onto that, cradle it against your chest. And just be done with people in general, they are just not worth the effort, not worth the trouble of being sincere. People are so fake, so much fictitious than all the fictional worlds inside your soft gullible noggin. All those unreal Gaimaned fantasies brewing inside you are so much real, even if they are not.
Coming back on track if I must. Um. What I typically do is constantly sketch in my head. I'd be doing something else while writing in the air around me. I'd working or working out, reading something, watching anything, sank deep in the music, hanging out with special someone or no one special, but constantly sketching in my head. Whether animated or in stasis I am writing in my head, on paper not so much but in my mind, oh yeah- I am an impeached lord ruling over wastelands. Then I'd take that wet nebulous swelling mass struggling within my arms and take it to my desk quaint and ole. I'd sit down in front of my broken in typewriter. I'd slip in a paper made virgin with the words now eager to come out -and I just let it all go, all that I have been trying to hold in. I let all that tumble onto that fallow paper, onto and into that. It's as simple and as impossible as that. But of course, by the time I take the secrets that are alive to my battered desk and cranky old typewriter, I forget what I wanted to paint. But maybe what I do write in its stead is better or maybe what I write instead of what I wanted to write will make me better. Either way, there is no down side to this. In writing, there is no loss.
And even though I'd hate to admit it, but musing things does speed up the whole magical process exponentially, I use the term magical very loosely here. But overall it can lead to a healthy relationship between you and your words, no longer that relationship has to remain platonic or chaste. Attentions of a certain kind of Muse helps, end of discussion. Though that usually ends up in a Russian roulette with you facing a fully loaded chamber. Chances are you'd end up stuck in a swale of self-loathing, so it’s better that you avoid muses all together, but they find you, man, seek you out even, flush you from where you have been hiding in the Everglades. Just try not to fall in love with one. Sometimes, they fall for you but that's only a small victory. What you gonna do with it? You can't buy food or feed yourself with that gold. You can't eat that love.
But then again, the whole writing process is not an exact science and everyone handles things differently. Everyone's gotta bleed their own way, don't ask others to bite your wrist. So do what works for you. Only you can know what that is. Mostly it's something you'd eventually find out, stick to a typewriter and you will uncover it.
Find inspiration where you can, when you can. Stay inspired. Let what you have and what you need charm you. But not necessarily what you want. At my end, from my side of the equation intensity of everything works for me, I am interested in the intensity of everything. But the thing worth remembering and you have to keep this in mind, the most important thing is to remain calmly excited as you meticulously build up the world from the whorls of your words. Remember, don't get tapered out before becoming a taper that remains ever steady in the breeze. Just a cautionary tale attached to any tales that you might be weaving from your spittle. Find your song and hang onto it, don't let it get mauled and mangled on the way down from the dell of your mind to your fingertips.
I'd be remiss if I didn't address a salient point of this reckless and capricious business. How to put this gently? There is no money in it whatsoever. Take that in for a split second. Sure, there are exceptions and rare cases of novices finding bestselling stardom. Aspiring lunatics launching into that kind of success, but that usually involves agents and you have a better chance of having tea with your Maker. That being said however people do retain agents and make some serious money; anything can happen, just so keep in mind this simple Stark fact going in. There is no money in it. You must, you absolutely need to have another solid source of income, especially if you want to do this thing full time and do this for a living which is ironic at best. Work so that you can write then if life is gentle write well enough so that it's not work anymore. And here is the bigger irony, there is a lucrative angle to all this, but it's on the flip side of the voodoo. It's on the other side of fiction, there is lot of market in the nonfictional part of the Town. So yeah, there is plenty of plunder to be had, lots to pillage, but it's on the other side of the Mardi Gras, a darker side where you barter your soul, if you still have one at this point, and slaughter your creativity for that. Naw, do what you gotta do. Feed your soul, just don't feed it to anything else.
One of the hardest things in this life is to finish a novel, make it pretty enough, presentable, and readable, that's just the basic standard stuff. You’ve to run the extra mile if you want the book to be extraordinary, or just a little apart from all the others, all this hard work just to make it above average. Finishing that book is still nothing compared to, is a bit easier, benign even, than getting your book published properly.
Because the reality of it is even if you write a well crafted, very well written, powerful, imaginative, a feat that is a moveable feast, gem of a novel. Even if you achieve a rara avis accomplishment, it still means less than nothing if the book is not out there in reach of the populace. If you do not put your work out there, it is pointless. See, there is this Painted Woman, this very unreliable slut of a vixen called Luck. Some have it, some do not get her at all. So you could be genuinely gifted but sunken in obscurity, there is no rescuing you, no kiss of life to make you alive again, no lost hope for you. While there are others barely talented sitting on top of the slush pile, saddling your dreams strangling your chances. So this game is definitely luck-based. Yeah, something as minuscule, minutiae, and random as luck plays an important part in your life, even more so in writing. So better hurry, or sultry Luck would be gobbling someone else's knob.
However, the thing of most paramount importance is completing your work. Without that, you might as well throw in the towel and let someone else fill lovely Luck’s soft palate, let her gobble someone else. So when you start and whatever you begin with, whenever you are ready to make that first cut, plunge in deep with the foreknowledge, with the premonition, that you will finish, that you want to finish. And you look like someone who knows how to finish.
Get your work out there. Keeping D&D in mind, not David Benioff and Dan Weiss, though they used to be banner of excellence many moons ago. No, dedicated, and disciplined you can display your innards. You don't even have to go down the traditional road to publication to showcase your talents. There are so many alternatives in this digital age to pick from. There is a whole different way of doing things now, you are not bound to just one option. Too many there are. Choose from any of them, for example, there is Amazon's service of CreateSpace it's a great tool for putting your work out there. There is no excuse for not promoting your labor of unlove in today's ADD world. Ultimately, you have to decide what you are writing for, what your main objective is here. Is it to make money or are you just writing for peace of mind and to be at peace, which is it? In the end you must write for yourself and no one else whatever that means, but write dammit I implore you, even if you wind up impaled on words. To write is to reflect, to think. We sorely need thinkers now more than ever. The point is there isn't any actual need to become another Edgar Allan Poe, an innovative originator who died at a young age with almost nothing, or that guy who birthed that whale of an epic called Moby Dick. You know your hunger, you know you are hungry; use that.
You don't have to starve in order to nourish your soul or feed your mind.
I absolutely understand this inherent fear of failure but as things are now, every dewed malleable bliss is on the other side of the river, so stop dithering on the banks skirting close to the bobbing heads of mermaids and fork that fjord. Why fret or bother with the Ferryman when you can build an Ark. You have to stop this fear from imploding within you, no more of the mini riots of any sort. To be any kind of writer you must overcome it. Like the King of Human Horror said on the stakes before he was burned in his own mind, he believed fear to be the main cause of terrible writing, I concur that he is right. He is King after all though sometimes like Stannis the Mannis he is unpalatable, but that is neither here nor there. Just this. Don't be afraid of the ink - spill it. Don't wait for the blood moon to feel a little carmine and get things done.
If I were to say something based on my experiences down in the trenches, if I have anything to offer it is this; be open always, always be open for anything, for new things, and learn; I am still learning. You have to be open for the words to sink in, set in, set you up, and seep in. If you are not open then words would sail right by you, they'd go over your head and you won't be able to retain any of their touches. You wouldn't be able to feel them when you'd need them. Don't hold back, don't look back, don't back down.
If there is one thing I gleaned from the time I spent pulling myself apart, if there is one thing that I can give back, the most important thing that I garnered from my time down in the trenches is time itself, the underrated concept of understanding time, the deficiency of time. You think you have time but you don't, you have a surfeit of hours and days but no real-time, no real understanding of it. So a dollop of my understanding is this; the time to write is now, not yesterday, not tomorrow but now. Whatever that you have to write it has to be in the now, right now. Don't think too much about it. Stop over thinking, stop thinking about it, don’t think at all, just do it. You are already thinking too much, stop that! There is no some other time, there is only now. You write and wade through the beautiful morasses of your ugly mind, but believe me when you'll hit that stride, oh boy, your work will be everything and everything will have a flavor that only you'll be able to taste, sip, savor and relish. A final final key that I stole from the Keymaker; try to have fun. If this is not fun for you, it won't be any fun for others. So play with your food, don't be wary of mixing up the paints on your palette. Find all the wrong colors. So have fun.
You know, far be it for me to be a dream killer. I wouldn't want to dissuade anyone from pursuing their dreams or stop their dreams from stalking them. But you gotta make absolutely sure this is what you want. Like Hank Moody puts it so sagely; Being a writer blows. It's like having homework every day for the rest of your life. To me, being a writer is like exorcising a demon-like being a demon yourself; where you gonna go?
You can't just be in love with an image of a tortured artist. It's a calling that I wouldn't want anyone to take lightly, answer it only reluctantly and with plenty of caution. Because the more you write the less you heal and the more you have to write in order to heal.
Writing is like a punishment for something you didn’t even do. See, folks looking for their lore have a tendency to romanticize being writers, they willingly engulf themselves with that fantasy, instead of spewing one. They get confused about pain and words, pain about words, words about pain, the simple truth of it is, there is more pain than words. Everyone wants to be a writer, but no one wants to write, like really write.
But ah an unshakeable belief in yourself! Like a shade in the water or Gollum underground somewhere, words can play tricks on you. For a second there you almost believe in everything and anything.
But belief is the folly of the youth, by the time you are a veteran of this world, you know better to give hope a name. So get out while you are still human, but if your words can convince you, then stay. But you better make sure you are doing this for the right reasons. Because writing’s pretty much like looking for the right happiness in the wrongest of places. But on the other hand, you can’t be asphyxiated with a stubborn attitude that writing is valueless, that would only lead to suborning yourself. Writing has some value. Writers none.
Sore from all my dreams, I have been someone else’s dream. Now I want to wake up from this. But waking up is a dream too.
I've been at war for 15 years with that hidden part of me, a fugitive fugue state that remains restive and refuses to let me stay still. With every fiber in my body, with every ounce of my being, I wish I hadn't answered this call. I don't want to fly anymore. I wish I didn't chose this. If I could I would do everything differently, not necessarily right but different.
But then.....
But then again …..
Sometimes, sometimes it feels like the moon is on my side and I am running through the woods and the forest is bleeding for me. Moonlight cool and balmy on my free skin, I am running, the wolves are there running along with me and I am their Wulf King. I can fly. Not every high but I can fly.
So if you do decide to go down this road to convert and turn yourself into this monster and render yourself to this beast. Then you better embrace what you are. It'll be hard enough for the civilians to accept what you are. So what do you do? You become yourself so much so that it's hard for them to deny your reality. No more half measures, you gotta go all the way, so embrace who you are.
Last words. The way I see it doesn't matter what, no matter what, if you are auger with talent then the words will come out of you, they will bubble up to the surface despite how hard you try holding them in, struggling to keep them down below in your grotto. So this is what you gotta do; batten down the hatches, quiet yourself, and empty out your mind. I know it’s nigh on impossible but ignore the buzzing of the moths, shut down the white noise, and write in the silence of your mind. In that ensuing cold silence, make your words rustle on dried pages as you move your hands around. Write. Just write. And listen. Then. You are no longer a stranger to your familiar words. Their secrets are your own. You are them. You are your words. It's an addiction now and you are a junkie. Breathe in that electronic ink. Suffocate. There is no going back now. You’ve changed things for yourself. You've become. A writer. Enjoy your slow death. Write.
Even though as a writer I am more like Hannibal Lecter, writing to amuse myself but I want this, I want it all. As that Warpaint song goes Give me more, give me more, I haven't had this before. I want this. I want it all. The glitter of Greed. The label of a scribe. Knowledge. Pretentiousness. Power over people. I want to knead their minds. I want the fame, the money, the women. The notoriety. The shrewd girls, the gullible men succumbing to those girls. I want to laugh at them both. Mirthless laughter but still. I want the peak of my impression, the adulation, the absolution, the accusations, the satisfaction, the pacification, the gratification. I want You. I want to glow on your face, burn your fucking face off, and then dissolve on your tongue. I want to be the dark heart stuck in your throat, skewered there like something else ought to be, consuming you whilst I slit my own throat. I want to be a recluse. I want to spiral downward. I want to crave the decline. I want the dwindling of relevancy. I want the dearth of freshness. I want a lack of ideas. I want the dispersia of words. I want different things now. I am the secret in the Book of Kells. Get down on your knees and watch while I burn your world around you. I want the atrophy of morals. I want you. All of you. Every bit of you. And none of you. I want words. I want nothing. I want to burn out. But this Phoenix won't be rising up from the piles of cold tinder.
I want to be the smudges of inkblot heart on papers. I want to sketch the funeral of stars with my felt tip pen. I love it, so I must kill it.
Maybe this is my madness.
Maybe I am my madness.
All my creatures are going to get their happiness reduxed. Even all their endings will be revived. Their sadness redacted.
Maybe closing everyone's chapters but my own is my happiness.
Maybe I became a writer because I didn't want to forget. And now I can't. Maybe, just maybe, I forgot that I don't have to remember at all.
See, in the end, and it's all about the endings, always, there are two kinds of writers; those who write because they feel something and those who write because they want to feel something.
I am the latter.
I am letters
I am a Letter.
περιπέτεια ; min månen
Dragons and Butterflies
A butterfly effect indeed ;
If HBO hadn't come along I am pretty sure we'd have gotten Winds of Winter by now. But let's be honest, if HBO hadn't come along most of us wouldn't even know about it. There must be but a few who are invested in this song since 1996 though by now most of us love this world, in both mediums.
Martin doesn't owe us anything, least of all an explanation.
Writing is difficult
but is it supposed to be hard?
There will always be a Spring to dream about.
There are more worlds out there.
If HBO hadn't come along I am pretty sure we'd have gotten Winds of Winter by now. But let's be honest, if HBO hadn't come along most of us wouldn't even know about it. There must be but a few who are invested in this song since 1996 though by now most of us love this world, in both mediums.
Martin doesn't owe us anything, least of all an explanation.
Writing is difficult
but is it supposed to be hard?
There will always be a Spring to dream about.
There are more worlds out there.
