Words of Wisdom

I have finally decided to post this. These are the wise words I read in a book that snapped me out of a long standing creative funk and I know that a lot of you are either struggling with your own writings or have yet to be able to find that confidence in expressing what you have to say. So I'm posting these words by Dorothea Brande and hope that they help you as much as they did me. Because I'm not sure I would have started "Where Love Leads Us" without having read it.

"But then comes the dawning comprehension of all that a writer's life implies: not easy daydreaming, but hard work at turning the dream into reality without sacrificing all its glamor; not the passive following of someone else's story, but the finding and finishing of a story of one's own; not writing a few pages which will be judged for style or correctness alone, but the prospect of turning out paragraph after paragraph and page after page which will be read for style, content, and effectiveness.

 

Nor is this by any means all the beginning writer foresees. He worries to think of his immaturity, and wonders how he ever dared to think he had a word worth saying. He gets as stage-struck at the thought of his unseen readers as any sapling actor. He discovers that when he is able to plan a story step by step, the fluency he needs to write it has flown out the window; or that when he lets himself off on a loose rein, suddenly the story is out of hand. He fears that he has a tendency to make his stories all alike, or paralyzes himself with the notion that he will never, when this story is finished, find another that he likes as well.

 

He will begin to follow current reputations and harry himself because he has not this writer's humor or that one's ingenuity. He will find a hundred reasons to doubt himself and not one for self-confidence. He will suspect that those who encourage him are too lenient, or too far from the market to know the standards of successful fiction. Or he will read the work of a real genius in words, and the discrepancy between that gift and his own will seem a chasm to swallow his hopes. In such a state, lightened now and again by moments when he feels his own gift alive and surging, he may stay for moths of years.

 

Every writer goes through this period of despair. Without doubt many promising writers, and most of those who were never meant to write, turn back at this point and find a lifework less exacting. "

A Declaration To Stand

I take a deep breath.
Let it out slow.
Let the pain of the world fall away.
Don't let it touch me.
I wont let it touch me.
I refuse to be made to feel this way.
Like how I feel,
and how I think,
how I see the world with my eyes
is something I should be ashamed of
Something I should be trying to hide.

I want to feel happy.
I want to feel free.
Simply to be who I am.
So I say this to you,
whoever you are,
this is my declaration to stand.
To stand for a cause,
for what I believe,
for the person here at my side.
For the love that I feel,
the love that we have.
For them, I will no longer hide.

Updated Photo!

Alrighty. I finally got around to getting it. I love the white ink. It's there without being obvious. I've only had a few people at work notice it and that was right after I got it done and it was still reddish. I might have to get a few touch ups, but I still wouldn't have wanted it in any other color.

Click on it for a much larger version. Bit of a funny angle.

For My Readers

I've mentioned this in the author's notes section of BWYDT, but I feel it needs more explaining. I know I have shared with you a few screen caps that have shown the number of you there are and how much feedback I have received with that particular story. But I would like to share something a little bit more personal now.

Since I was a little kid, I have struggled with feeling inadequate. I know must people have at some point in their lives, I always have. I've tried to figure out how best to describe this to you all and my sister summed it up rather nicely for me, so I will borrow her words. Growing up, my parents expected us to do well at everything and were disappointed if we didn't live up to their expectations, wanting to know why we weren't able to. While we were always encouraged to try something new or different, our efforts were never appreciated or praised because the results were expected. Why praise something we should have been doing in the first place? They very much lived by the mentality of never saying 'you did great' but rather saying 'that was okay,  but this is what you need to do to be better'.

That left a void and a feeling that no matter how much I tried, it would never be enough or at least never what they wanted. I could never reach that level of perfection that would win their praises. It's not that they were trying to be hurtful. They were simply wanting us to keep pushing so we never settled for less of anything. I understand this, but it still hurt and has left very deep wounds that have affected me in many aspects of my life, past and present.

The reason I'm sharing this is because of all of you. Your messages, letters, reviews... all of them have filled this void. For the first time in my twenty-four years, I felt like I had done something worth while and that was appreciated. When I first started writing, it was just to write. But with BWYDT, when I added the tattoos and poetry, it became so much more for me and for most of you. I made a connection with several of you that I was never expecting and am left without words to describe how thankful I am for. To those of you who have sent me letters telling me how much that story has impacted your life, you have done the same for me. You have given me the confidence to try something and actually believe that what I'm writing is something special. That I've managed to do something well enough that you can take something away from it. Like I've finally succeeded at something. So I thank you. Thank you for giving me something that I never thought I would find.

To remind myself of this fact, that if I try, I can do something worth while, I got this.

I just got it today and it's still healing, but it's not meant how it is explained in the story. Not entirely at least. But this phrase is what everyone latched onto. This was the first real piece of me that I put into the story that I had been hesitant to share because I didn't think it would be understood. You all proved me wrong and I am so happy you did.

Not only that, but after realizing how much of an impact that story has had and how much of a positive response I have received from it, my parents are actually proud of my attempts. I know that might not sound like much, but it's a lot to me. Thank you again for giving me something I never thought I would find.

Welcome to 2011!

I'm going to start off the new year with words from one of my favorite writers/philosophers, Henry David Thoreau. More specifically, ones that can be found in a single book titled Walden. For over two years Thoreau lived in a small cabin that he built himself, a mile away from his nearest neighbor, and wrote this book on his day-to-day life and the discoveries and thoughts that came to him during this period. Here are a few of my favorite quotes that I think are good lessons to begin the new year with in mind.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.

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Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

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Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

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What old people say you cannot do, you try and find you can.

All I can say is WOW!

I know I just posted the last chapter of what has become an epic fanfic, but I have two screen caps to share with you. Click on them to make them bigger.

The first is proof of how amazing and consistent all of my readers are. On average I had around 1,800 read the story every single day. The yellow line is how many unique people read it in a single day. The blue bars are how many pages of the fic have been viewed in that same day by those people. Amazing.

Then I went to bed after I posted the last chapter and woke up to an email inbox that looked like this:

By 8am, just six hours after I posted the chapter, I already had 56 reviews on it. That is insane and completely... just... I'm speechless at all the support. Thank you all who also frequent this site. Your interest is truly inspiring. I cannot thank you enough.

My All-time Favorite Poem

This poet single handedly hooked me on poetry when I was just a little kid. My parents bought me three of his books when they couldn't get me interested in reading and they won me over. I've read them cover to cover. This one has always and will always stick with me. It's called Listen to the Musn'ts (must not (s) ).

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Listen to the Musn'ts

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“Listen to the Musn'ts child,

Listen to the Don'ts.

Listen to the Shouldn'ts,

the Impossibles, the Won'ts.

Listen to the Never Haves,

then Listen close to me.

ANYthing can happen, child, ANYthing can Be.”

 

Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)

Lone Flower Bud

Lonely among dying, desolate trees

growing askew in an ocean of mud,

grasping to a barren branch

is but a lone flower bud.

Perched, so obstinate in its cause,

a spot of color amidst the gloom,

as a harsh wind of knives beats

urging it not to bloom.

But the taunting and the teasing

and the mockery shall not prevail.

For when this bud should bloom,

is shall be anything but frail.