So this one is late, pretty much it slipped my addled mind. My apologies but here it is.

I have to admit that this time I will not have any specific quotes or points to pull from Roberson’s little book: ‘City Eclogue’, rather I wish to discuss the overall theme of the work.

This is a hard work for me to critique as my own personal life experience has been nothing like his. I am white and I grew up in a rural area far from any large city. I was 25 before I moved to a major city when I moved to Atlanta, truth be told I could take it or leave it (city life that is) it’s not horrible but it’s also not the most comfortable. I suppose if I was in London or Stockholm or Hong Kong possible even Tokyo I could handle it better, more to do, richer culture, more things I am interested in to pursue. Atlanta was kind of boring really, except for it was there that my ill fated professional wrestling career pretty much died. Live and learn I guess.

If you don’t know, ‘City Eclogue’ is a book of poetry depicting life from an African American perspective in a big city I am assuming  is New York. Again, as far as specifics I can’t really relate to anything within the work, but I can comment on the themes.

Racism exists everywhere in the world, I know a few Europeans and some of them still despise other Europeans, a couple aren’t afraid to hide it either. Though that’s not really racism. I know lots of Asians, they don’t always get along either, again though that’s more akin to Nationalism than racism though I’m sure racism exists in those places too. America, where I’m from, however is different.

The origins of racism in this country predate the colonies, they curve back to the time of the Protestant Reformation and the idea of a sort of spiritual superiority as espoused by many German preachers of Lutheranism. This, eventually informed the entirety of Protestantism (which fractured so badly so rapidly following the Reformation one wonders if the Catholics weren’t right all along…no, but…) and even seeped into Catholicism to the point that by the mid 17th century almost all of European Christianity, Colonials included, was imbued with a form of theologically supported racism. Slavery, though always existing throughout history (still today too, though it takes different names) only became really racially motivated what with the factors of the expansion of the Ottoman and other Muslim powers into Africa, the setting up of Muslim controlled trade routes to the west of Africa in order to reach the European controlled ‘New World’, inter-tribal/Kingdom warfare in Africa as well as a rich market in the ‘New World’ for relatively cheap slave labor. The Ottoman’s opened the market, the Africans provided the goods, the Colonists and Europeans purchased. It became to be racially motivated when all kinds of Christian churches (I am reminded of the Anglican hierarchy of man idea in this) supported slavery as a means of ‘civilizing’ the slaves. This bred the idea of superiority amongst whites and that idea has never fully left America.

The Civil War in the United States didn’t help matters any at all. The South seceded to keep their slave economy intact (despite the fact that Lincoln all but promised them, wait he did, that he wouldn’t touch slavery as an economic institution in the Deep South whatsoever, the Republicans merely wanted to stop the EXPANSION of slavery in any new states, not abolish it entirely.) but the North did not by any means wage a moral crusade to free the salves. Ken Burns and James McPherson got it totally wrong. The Union waged war to preserve just that: the Union. The base of the Republican Party, despite what the South thought, was not abolitionist but rather ‘Free Soilers’.

The Free Soil movement grew out of a severe economic recession that his New England and the upper Mid-West starting in the late 1840’s, it would eventually grow into a full on depression (just was never named as one) by the time of the outbreak of war in 1861. Poor whites in the northern states wanted to migrate westwards into the new territories won from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. The tenants of Free Soil thought was not to keep the new states ‘Free’ as a humanitarian gesture though it would stop slavery’s expansion. Rather they wanted to keep the new states ‘Free’ for poor whites and poor whites only. The North (Lincoln included in this) also was undergoing a political ideology designed to re-colonize former slaves back to Africa. To state it bluntly the average man in the North on the street would have thought: ‘I don’t mind freeing the slaves, as long as I don’t have to get shot at for them, they don’t take my jobs, and they don’t live around here, ever.’

After the war, the North’s culture changed. More men from the North died in the war than from the South by a factor of almost 50% greater. The culture of Christianity, heretofore prevalent in the North, died out due to the mass casualties caused by Confederate forces and disease as well as the economic exploitation of many veterans immediately upon their return by large New England corporations. Also, to mimic South Park for a moment, the refrain: ‘They took out jobs!’, has always been prevalent in America since before the Civil War. Freed slaves who migrated North could work for much less than a returning Union soldier, and most Union soldiers saw that the jobs their families livelihoods depended upon were now being taken by former slaves who offered to work for a fraction of the cost. This only heightened the already strong antipathy many Union soldiers had for African-Americans they had picked up during the war if they didn’t have it before hand. This explains why from the late 1800’s onwards the KKK moved from the South to the Mid-West, it was more fertile recruiting ground. The fact that many African American communities were pushed to ghettos inside big cities can, in part, also be blamed upon former Union soldiers many of whom became police officers following the war and who did their best to drive them into secluded areas away from where the good jobs were in order to support their own struggling former army buddies.

Fast forward to today and the time in which Roberson wrote his poems I think one can see that little has changed. True we may have a President who is African American but the overall culture of the country hasn’t changed. And there was one section in Roberson’s book where he had a slew of poems dedicated to the country and things of a nature sort. He does mention in one poem about the police in white, suburban areas definitely treating African Americans much differently than other minorities or whites. Sadly, I’ve witnessed this and many people who live in the country do so to escape the cities and they do tend to band together against any African American’s who move to the rural areas. (They don’t for Asians or Latino’s or anyone else though…strange) But it’s not all like that, where I grew up granted almost an third of the town was Latino as were many of my friends and we had a few Asian families move in, but only two or three African American families. I saw some nonsense, but mostly they were treated like everyone else.

So to be fair, I can’t relate to Roberson’s work, I am a country boy and white. But I did comment on where I think racism sort of came from. It’s not something that’s going to go away either, it’s just going to be there until, over long periods of time, many, many generations, it might get bred out of people.

Maybe, hopefully.

Allow me to be slightly serious for a bit here.

Last time, I do believe, I was discussing conflict. Well, I promise I’ll return to that later in another post but today I wanted to talk about flaws and why they’re necessary.

A little over a year ago, close to a year and a half ago now, I started a personal writing project that I would post, in chapter form, on Facebook. It was science fiction and I intended it only to be a short story, a few posts and done. An ulterior motive was also as a means for me to vent some truly awful emotional stuff I was going through at the time all related to a girl who is now to be forever referred to as “She Who Shall Not Be Named” or “Angel Exterminatus”. That was the intention, something simple and quick and easy…boy was I led wrong!

About two months ago I typed the 255th page of the, sadly and tragically, never to be published novel called: ‘Flying Saucer Roy and the Warriors of Earth.’ It was an epic story about a man named Derrin Meeks (an avatar of myself) living in farm country outside of Murfreesboro Tennessee. He is a sad middle aged man, prematurely aged by the tragedies in life he has witnessed. The love of his life, Yu Ling Meeks, his wife, was killed along with their little daughter Mai Ling in a tragic drunk driving accident two years prior to the start of the story. Derrin’s life has fallen apart and he is on the verge of being suicidal. One night he is sitting out on his porch, reminiscing about the times he shared with his wife, looking in the night to the hill backlit by the starry, autumn nights sky. Underneath the tree that crowns the hill sit the two headstones of his buried hopes, dreams and love. Looking at that tree reminds of a time when he made love to his new wife underneath the tree, thank God for country life huh?, and he sits there, in his chair, on the porch clutching a family photo with tears streaming down his face. Suddenly he see’s a bright star that grows brighter and brighter until he realizes that it’s really a UFO. The UFO lands in his front lawn and out walks a bobble headed, bug eyed, grey whose name happens to be Roy. Derrin’s life will never be the same again.

Roy needs Derrin to help him organize a human led military force to be used as auxiliary troops in a gigantic galactic war waged by something called the Alliance and a group of baddy’s led by the Delsha. (This is justified as Derrin was a writer, writing both works on military history as well as sci-fi and dark fantasy where Derrin showcased a talent for military strategy and tactics. Also he had been abducted numerous times by Roy as a youth and Roy knew, and guided, Derrin in his hidden talents.)  Derrin, albeit reluctantly at first, agrees and so begins the wild ride that was the little short story that blew all the hell out of proportion.

How does this relate to flaws? Let me explain. First of all nearly everyone is a flawed character. Derrin is forever haunted by his past, and as the novel progresses you come to see that Derrin is only living so he can die. The reason being that he keeps having dream-visions of his wife Yu Ling. Not really dreams, more like spirit journeys where he communes with her in a beautiful natural setting that he grows to accept as the ideal of ‘heaven’. But without her he is lost, she is his rock, his guiding light and a large part of his strength. Without her he wouldn’t win the battles that he eventually does. His aide de camp is a man by the name of Antonio Lopez. Antonio is the man who has been Derrin’s best friend since grad school and even set Derrin up on the date with his future wife. But he is also the man who happens to have been the man behind the wheel while drunk of the truck that slammed into his wife’s car killing her and their little daughter. Derrin comes to forgive and once again love Tony like a brother. But Tony never fully forgives himself and eventually leads a spec ops raid, that he had no business doing, on a Delsha research station where he loses his life. Derrin suspects that, deep down, it was a deliberate act of suicide. Roy himself harbors a deep and dark secret: it was his race, the Yindal that guided the once barbarian Delsha on the path that they are know striding down like giants. And the Yindal have been manipulating lesser races for millenia, and it’s finally coming to bite them all in the ass. The main villain, Scorpius Trelfa (the Delsha Grand Admiral and de facto dictator of Delsha society happens to be a nod to actor Wayne Pygrams amazing performance as the villain Scorpius in the Australian sci-fi tv show ‘Farscape’.) of the Delsha (my inspiration for them was the aliens from ‘Prometheus’, not knowing as I watched it till the last ten minutes that said film was actually the prequal to the ‘Alien’ film series…oh well, anyway: the main villain Scorpius Trelfa is a haunted soul himself, Derrin’s counterpart in every way. While Derrin lost his wife to tragedy and almost died as a result, Scorpius, while also losing his wife to tragedy, uses his pain to ride the waves of revolution on his homeworld where, like Napoleon, he eventually rises to the top. His daughter, Kylara, (an homage to a character I love from an Elizabeth Moon series) is a lesbian who has dreams of glory and honor who refuses to give in to her destructive desires due to her horrible past of being persecuted for loving women instead of men. She is actually one of the heroes of the novel and dies heroically protecting human children in a firefight in Tennessee in a last ditch raid on Derrin’s property to kill him. (Derrin uses his farm to rent it out so to speak to disadvantaged people in the area) The death of his daughter, his last link to his past, almost breaks Scorpius as his love for her was the only thing that ‘humanized’ him. With her death in battle, he truly turns vicious.

Derrin adopts a young Japanese orphan girl named Tomiko after an event called ‘The Black Day of Humanity’ when Delsha ships, after an amazing military victory on a far away world where the Earth Defence Force under Derrin’s leadership crushes a Xoron (allies of the Delsha) invasion force and turns the tide of the whole campaign, bombard most of Earth’s major cities and wipe out large sectors of the human population. (It’s complicated but Derrin was in Tokyo at the time of the orbital strike attending a general staff meeting with members of the East Asian Military Alliance) Some nations are literally almost bombed to extinction: Korea, North and South, Japan, Taiwan, Austrailia, Sweden, South Africa, Mexico, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and the eastern half of the US are all bombed so severely that in a single day over 70 million people die worldwide and within two years of the bombings, due to all the dust and particles blasted into the atmosphere and the resulting blockage of the sun and the famines and disease and wars that resulted, nearly 1.5 billion (BILLION) human beings are dead as a result of that day. Derrin withdraws into himself and nearly dies, guilty as he believes that all of this is his fault. But it’s the love and adoration of little Tomiko, who he raises as his own daughter, that makes him realize that he has a duty to perform. He snaps out of it and though it takes over a decade, the human race claws its way back from the brink, builds a fleet (with alien help of course) rebuilds a massive army, and looks for Delsha ass to kick. Derrin trains Tomiko to become his replacement, as in a dream vision Yu Ling tells him that she has been gifted with an inner warrior soul and that she will be humanity’s final salvation. Derrin raises her to become what he calls: Angelicus Victrix Terrata or Earth’s Avenging Angel.

The book would have ended with a huge space battle where Derrin would lead the United Terran Fleet in a desperate battle over the Alliance Captial against the Delsha People’s Fleet led by Scorpius himself. At the hinge of the battles fate, Derrin, his ship the ‘Independence’, battered by Delsha fire, orders abandon ship and stays behind to ram his ship into the Delsha flagship. Scorpius, having grown to respect Derrin as a foe and a kindred spirit if a hated enemy, salutes Derrin as Derrin’s Dreadnaught plows into his flagship killing everyone onboard and winning the battle. Derrin’s adopted daughter, Tomiko, now in her twenty’s, takes over and in book 2 would lead the human race on a holy crusade against the Delsha worlds themselves.

Sadly it will never get published because I posted it on Facebook and thereby lost all of my first person rights to it. (A blogger I follow who is a fellow writer by the name of Livia Blackburne informed me, albeit nicely, of the stupidity of my decision…) Still I wanted to discuss the lost epic as a means of highlighting flaws. Flaws in character.

No one in the novels were perfect, everyone was flawed. Yu Ling could be, well, a bitch when she had to be, and thanks to flashbacks we saw while she was alive that she could be somewhat selfish, stubborn and sometimes thoughtless. Derrin was a hopeless romantic who held too tightly to, well, everything and was a control freak. Tony was a harborer of guilt and someone who refused to face his own emotions, and it kills him in the end. Scorpius covers his own pain with ambition which eventually kills his emotions which in turn makes him even more sadistic. His daughter is living her life only to run away from her past, though she redeems herself in the end. She also hurts every lover she ever has, and she has the inability to ever make amends for doing so. And Roy, Roy is freaking Roy! Seriously I loved that little bastard, funnest guy I ever created. Though he too is deeply flawed.

The point is that flaws make the life of a story more real. Yu Ling is so lovely precisely because she is flawed and imperfect. I admit, she is the avatar of my perfect girl: I’ve always liked foreign girls and I freely admit that I think Asian women are the most beautiful ever created. So yeah, my avatar of a goddess is Asian, but even so she’s flawed and lacks perfection. Perfection is boring, predictable and lacks spice and life. Yu Ling is so gorgeous and such a help and foundation for Derrin precisely because she is flawed. Derrin is a hero also because he is really flawed, but he always finds a way to grow and to change. And I do believe that Tony’s death (which I hadn’t gotten to yet, though I wrote out the scene) made me shed tears precisely because Tony was the avatar of the perfect friend, and he is such a brother, my true hermano that his death is made all the more tragic because it needn’t have happened; all he had to do was face his past and accept, truly, Derrin’s forgiveness. And Scorpius, oh God yes my villain. I wrote him in such a way that, by the end, you were sympathizing with him, you saw the world as he did and you saw that he truly believed that his way was the only way to re-create the order in the galaxy out of the chaos it was infested in. And to Scorpius order brings peace. And don’t let me forget Kylara, a perennially wounded soul who projects her pain onto her lovers even though it tears her up on the inside every time she does it. But in the end she redeems herself by not giving in to her ambitions and she makes the ultimate sacrifice for a truly good cause.

Flaws are necessary, a perfect character is a boring character. I’m out of time but let me say this: write with flaws, it makes your characters real people.

1: That monkey was like a gigantic engine of steam and iron, raging in his torpor over being denied the banana of everlasting life.

2: And then, the goat, squeezing together it’s immense strength, farted…

3: Like the aroma of a left over meat pie on a hot window sill, much like the panorama of the buffet line that Rosie O’Donnell cruelly conquered, as bitter as news received that you have won the Publisher’s Clearing House…and now owe taxes on your winnings, as soft and supple as a baboons rounded posterior, akin to the crashing cacophony of two large, sweaty men in a Russian Bathhouse breaking wind. Such is my love for thee.

4: The pain was almost like hearing the agony of my ex-girlfriends cooking.

5: In Washington, there thusly rode George Washington…

6: Though, of course, he did no such thing for actually it was Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery.

7: And then, with a sigh, he died in the rain.

8: So ain’t that the bees knees ay?

9: Because we all know that when one eats a peanut butter and ham sandwich while balancing upon your left inner most toe, that you will cause the stock market to plummet.

10: “And so I told him: Jim, why the hell can’t you come over tonight?’ And do you know what he said to me? ‘No?’ ‘That bastard said: ‘because of the glue!” (Sobbing followed…)

11: The flipping Concrete of British tea!

12: And so much like the reddish glow of an Autumn sunset, as it darkens the waters with it’s black, abysmal, deluge of down-pouring hatred and ironic despair.

13: So then, with a wink, he jumped into the air and landed atop the soaring 737, where he proceeded to lasso it and wrestled it to the ground as she swooned below.

14: That Derek guy, Big D he is, what a pal, truly what a pal.

15: For in the year 2525, all the calendars could only be divisible by permutations of seven.

16: Hurt me worse than the soft, squishy granite!

17: Because, as Oliver Cromwell once said, always wear your knickers atop your head when approaching the time to address Parliament for this is the surest and thine holiest way in which to smite the Dark gods of Chaos, especially that fatty Nurgle, and thereby beat Hitler at Poker.

18: ES TUTHT MEHR LEID!!!!! MEINE KOFFEE BONNEN IST VARUCKT!!!

19: Whereby the monkey, reclining in the corner, wearing his beige lab coat, lit up his cigar, looked me straight in the eye, took a deep puff and said: ‘You’re totally fucking crazy.’

20: As I walked out into the dark, abysmal morass of the reddish glow of the Autumnal sunset….

(Whispering voice) Hi…yeah, sorry for being so quiet but uh…well I lost control of my monkey support staff. They’re on strike now and they got pretty violent. Poor Bob the security officer is dead as are three random passers by and the mailman. Poor Frank, oh poor Frank. Then again all he ever brought me was bills…so screw Frank.

But I guess since my life is in apparent danger (I have very recently discovered that Monkeys find it offensive to be paid less than minimum wage. I considered that since they weren’t humans, it wouldn’t be an issue. I mean really, what the hell does a monkey need money for anyway!?) I should discuss something that should be included within any ones novel and that is conflict.

Yes I know, I know: I am not a published author so how can I be so bold as to dispense writing advice to published authors actually earning a living wage with their craft? Simple: I’m a fan and a voracious reader and I am responsible for said paycheck because it’s my money I, gladly, shill out for you in return for producing work that I enjoy.

It should be obvious that in any major story that there should and would be at least some small element of conflict. Without it you will find it hard to connect with the characters and even worse find it hard to care. There’s nothing that can kill a story faster than having characters you don’t care about. Also bear in mind that if you bore your readers, you’re just as in dire need of help. As am I because now the monkeys have discovered my location and are starting to fling things at me that I really shouldn’t discuss in polite company…

I love to read science fiction and dark fantasy. The more epic the scope the better the tale is in my honest opinion. I read everything from established series such as David Weber’s ‘Honor Harrington’ series to Joe Abercrombie’s books set in the universe of his ‘First Law trilogy’ to individual works like Heinlein’s ‘Starship Troopers’ and even shared universes and meta narratives with the best example being Black Library’s ‘Horus Heresy’ and ‘Warhammer 40K’ series of novels. I devour this stuff and one thing they all share in common is that none of these authors are afraid to put their heroes’/heroines in mortal danger. (And in George R.R. Martin’s case ruthlessly murder them…the bastard.) (I love him for it though.) It’s that element of impending mortality that really draws me and many people like me into the story. Why is this important?

(Ducking a particularly large clod of primate feces: SHIT! YOU LITTLE BASTARDS I SWEAR I’LL RING YOUR NECKS FOR THAT ONE!)

If you place your characters in a setting where all you read about is some of the same situations that you yourself experience in every day life then you find it hard to enter into that other world. Certainly a fictional universe should feel ‘real’ and lived in. Alive and vibrant with all facets of life and types of living. Still many people, myself included, love to read fiction for its ability to allow one to escape the present and to live vicariously through the eyes of another. In my time I’ve picked up Admiral Harrington off the floor of a Super Dreadnaught and helped her back to her command chair following a Solarian League missile salvo, I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with Logen Ninefingers, the Bloody Nine, and together we hacked our way to victory. I looked up to Ferrus Manus, hoisted my bolter, and waged war in the name of the Iron Father. I’ve done all of these things and more because the settings and the characters were both in mortal danger. And it was that danger, that impending doom, that really made me feel truly alive.

 

More to come on this at a later date.

Today I shall discuss something that, if I had not had this class, I never would have discussed and that is-gingivitis. What’s that? Ok, hold on. (Receives a stack of papers and a computerized printout from a monkey wearing a lab coat.) Oh hell, screwed up again. Ok looks like we’re talking about poetry today… (Half the monkey’s leave the building out of boredom.) FINE! YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS!!!

Anyway….

First of all I would like to discuss, briefly, Shakespeare’s sonnet number 130. The first thing one should notice about this sonnet is that if immediately follows sonnet number 129, that’s the first noticeable thing. Also, as rumored by Macbeth, this particular sonnet may also be the bastard love child of sonnet numbers 128 and 14 though at the time number 14 was already involved in an illicit affairs with numbers 20, 34, 46, 77, 190, 236, and 666. She had a thing for bad boys, hence the love for 666. The second thing is that it is one of the few sonnets I have read that have actually made me smile. Why? Because Shakespeare is having a bit of fun and more than just shaking a rusty, pointed shaft of wood. “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;” Not exactly the most flattering why to describe your main squeeze there billy boy, but whatever floats your boat I suppose. Actually the entire sonnet is a commentary piece on loving what one has rather than holding to an overly idealized standard of beauty that is falsely created by society and it’s shitty standards. Shakespeare obviously loves someone deeply and, as he points out, though she may not be the ideal of an Englishman’s love, he adores her and she fulfills his romantic needs. Truly, what more could a man or woman ask for in someone?

A familiar theme is ran through inside of his sonnet number 127. This time the object is of someone’s eye color: “In the old age black was not counted fare, or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;” He goes on to say that his lovers eyes are as black as a ravens and that he, of course, doesn’t give a rats fallow backside about what the rest of the ‘community’ around him thinks of his lovers eye color. He loves her, enough said. To go a little deeper I think that Shakespeare was a little hurt by the constant prodding of other people into his private affairs. Obviously, (or else why write a poem about it?) some of his acquaintances were giving him gaff for loving a woman who didn’t meet their standard of beauty. It must be galling, certainly, to love someone and to have other folks, well intentioned or not, tell you that because she doesn’t look quite right, maybe you won’t be involved in the deeper social circle.

Now of course I’m only speculating here but it seems to be that Shakespeare loved someone who didn’t fit everyone else’s standard of beauty and other human beings, being the ass hats that they invariably are, decided to let him know so. Only being neighborly right? Kiss off…

No one, for any reason, has the right to tell you who to love, how to love them (unless your love involves abuse of course…) or why you should love them. And that’s all I say about a very particular American political issue, moving on.

Let me talk about another fun little diddy from Harryette Muligan ( I think I spelled that right…) NOPE! That’s Mullen. Ok, well anywho the poem is entitled Dream Cycle and is about an ice cream truck that conjures up images of not just ice cream but also childhood frolicking and times long lost from the past. At least that’s what I saw. If ice cream trucks are an exclusively American thing let me enlighten you: back in the day (50’s through the early 2000’s, mostly it’s a lost art now…) companies or individuals would lease or buy utility vehicles (ugly ones too) and turn them into frozen treat delivery vehicles that would slowly course their way through neighborhoods with a sound system playing a joyful little tune to announce their presence. The sound would cause dozens of kids, many soon to grow up into porky adults, to scramble upwards to buy ice cream from the person behind the little window in the side of the truck from funds that they more than likely had pilfered from their milk money budget. If you’ve never experienced this than you can’t grasp how this can conjure up old memories of childhood and some of the happier times of life. “…and I could lick a quick dream, when the ice cream truck goes lullaby again.”

Lost in translation, that’s what I like to think happened with my title, when really I fully understand it was just something I forgot to mention the other day when I started this here star ship of mine. (I stole it from the Imperial Fleet, I suppose this means an Inquisitor is after me now, sigh…)

I forgot, quite conveniently really, that this blog was prompted more by the fact that I had to have one for a class I’m taking then for anything else. However, despite this inconvenience, I have decided to abduct this blog, brainwash it, force it to undergo Stockholm Syndrome, marry me, love me, raise my three kids, cook my dinner and…oh hell, that’s my foreign wife. Wait a minute…I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. (SHIT!)

Anywho, this blog is now mine to do with as I please, although today is part of the onus of having a creative writing class. For today’s blog, unless I make more than one, is all about two reading assignments I have to read for this class. Let me read the bloody things and I’ll then let you know what I think of them.

Crap. Pure and simple, just plain crap.

About as entertaining as having ones molars removed with a pencil without the added benefit of anesthesia. About as useful as having a mute rottweiler in an apartment complex full of deaf drug dealers. About as fun as having ones private organs mashed by a large industrial piece of machinery…I suppose you get the picture.

Ok, being serious now. Also being bored. Anyway: The first piece is, oh hell let me find the title, is “Foreword”, no hold on, oh yes “Writing Down the Bones” by some person…no, wait: by J. Goldberg. The piece, which rambles, prattles and never once manages to entertain or provoke any sort of deep emotion beyond “I wonder what hanging out with the Aflac Duck would be like…?” is a piece devoted to telling the reader that, in order for one to be a good writer, one must place emotion and deep feelings into their work. Well…um…yeah.

But then again the piece isn’t supposed to “entertain”, besides we’re  a culture far too devoted to entertainment for its own sake now aren’t we? Rather the piece is part of, what I’m assuming, is a larger whole and that is a composition designed to instruct one on how to write creatively, with feeling, and successfully. I’ll be honest, I never find these peculiarly American self-help and how-to books of any use or even interest. Let me explain why.

Writing is something I’ve been doing since I was a kid, since I was oh say seven years old and sketching out comic books for the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” on to making my own film scripts at age ten for films starring a miraculously resurrected Bruce Lee, I’ve always been writing. Whether it was fiction as was often the case or non-fiction (I remember being about twelve and one day, just for the hell of it, began writing down what turned out to be  a twenty page discourse on World War Two, all of it from memory and just for my own enjoyment…yes, I’ve always been a strange lad.) So I suppose that the craft of writing has come easy for me, I enjoy it, the process of it seems almost like a natural ability and as far as the mechanics of it, I give zero thought to the whole thing. However…and here’s the key…I still have yet to MASTER the craft and everything I write (including this one I’m sure) has errors, mistakes and other impurities and could always, always, ALWAYS, be made better. So as far as how to write, I don’t need to know or read anything about that, never have, never will. But to master and truly refine my craft…? Well that just takes patience and perseverance. I suppose it also helps to do something that you enjoy doing as far as writing. If you are forced to write about issues or stories that you just can’t involve yourself in emotionally, to invest in them, then you’re heart and your best effort won’t be there and the end product will suffer  as a result.

The second torture I was forced to endure, oh wait, sorry, assignment I had to finish was “The Right to Write” by Julia Cameron. Again, this is a piece devoted to teaching someone HOW to write. Although, more so than the other at least, this one is devoted to evoking the budding writer to place their own emotion down onto the paper. Much better there, at any rate, then down onto your dinner, such things can end up tragically messy. Not to mention ruin a perfectly good date.

I must be serious ( 😛 ) for a moment again and confess that I actually liked something she said. It’s very brief so let me quote her: “In our current culture, something much less healthy is afoot. Writing is not forbidden, it is discouraged. Hallmark does it for us.” Take a moment to reflect on just how profound that statement is. She’s making a brilliant point that I want to take two to three sentences and ramble on about it for a moment.

Everything in Western culture, and increasingly in Eastern culture as well, is devoted to mercantilism. Now I will refrain from getting into a political discussion here, without the free market I would never have the opportunity to publish what I am working on and, hopefully, scratch a somewhat decent living that could help support a wife and a kid or two without said free market. All one needs to do is look at history to see how the alternatives fare, or watch European news and see what Spain, Italy, France and Greece are suffering through to see how the alternatives can be taken too far. However, in the US we have taken the free market also too far. Everything is now an opportunity for advertising and profit enhancement, little to no thought any longer is made to whether or not anything has any lasting value. Why bother when you chug out a cheap plastic piece of crap that some fool will gladly plop money down for again in a few months or a year or so. The same is true of writing, in our culture it is discouraged to engage in intellectual expression. Why? Because someone else can rarely make money on what it is that you think, unless you specifically tie it in to something that they are enterprised with. 

Cameron goes on to say something else that I won’t quote as she doesn’t provide me with a nice simple blurb and that is that we should reform how we teach writing in schools. Spare the books but fire the teachers and burn down the schools. Not a bad idea. Schools of all levels here in the US are designed merely to propagate the all invasive market system. You’re not taught to think, you’re taught to conform and to consume, nothing more. Anything more is a social heresy, and the Inquisitors are always nearby. I like to call that the slow death of American culture. The strangulation of an entire people of now over 300 million souls.

I admit, nothing else she wrote really stuck out at me, and I really didn’t care as much as the rest of her piece sort of trailed off into yet another peculiarly American how to manual which always sound like: “How you too can turn yourself from a loser into a winner by writing some bullshit that will make poor, stupid saps, such as you used to be, spend their hard earned cash on your hot air.”

 

 

 

So, here is where it all begins. My first, ever so tentative step into the self indulgent, possibly narcissistic world of blogging. What can you expect to see here? Well, pull up a chair, pour yourself a scotch, ice or no ice tis up to you. Here grab a cigar, hope you don’t mind some Bach in the background for a bit of atmosphere do you? No? Well good. Now let me tell you what you can expect to read here in this blog.

Madness.

In a word yes for aren’t we all individually, insanely, ragingly mad? I’d argue yes but that’s half the enjoyment of life. You see I am a special kind of mad, I am that kind of mad who assumes that by parking his or her keester in front of  a computer for hours at a time, typing endlessly, that I can somehow manage to create a work of art that will actually change the world. Now of course every writer throughout human history has had at least a shell of this thought rattling around inside their cabesa as they, thinking they’re so clever, produce something that they find to be completely, and utterly, world shattering. When really most of us produce nothing more than pop art that will live in in the minds of a few for at most a few years afterwards. Still, it’s worth it ain’t it?

I’d argue yes it is. I am working on three novels for publication, I won’t delve into details as of yet or possibly even ever, but one day you may see my ugly mug plastered all over the rear endpaper of some unsuspecting, and rather undeserving, book cover and you’ll read a tale of truly epic and tumultuous events that may or may not have anything to do with why I really should kick my habit of breakfast cereals.

In all honesty I love to write and will, with my own admittedly limited understanding, bring to you my own thoughts and twisted opinions on how to write what you want to write. Listen if you wish, do with my advice what you will. Regardless, I sure as hell hope you’re entertained. Now tell me, how was the cigar and the scotch?