The musings of a madman...

  This was all one big happy-ass accident… On a random Thursday (September 1 nd ) in 2016, at 7:30am, I logged onto The BookFace and made a silly little status about God-knows-what.  I started it with the term True Story©… Doing so forced people’s eyes onto the status, then only a few dozen words long to have them get all the way through the story to realize I was ABSOLUTELY bullshitting.  It was such a hit at the time, with the comment thread lasting for days, that I decided on the next Thursday to do it again.  Rinse, repeat and so on and so-forth.  With practice, the statuses got longer and longer – perhaps at the danger of being too long for social media.   Now y’all know why I am procedurally MARRIED to Thursday morning at 7:30am. After a few weeks of this, I remembered that I do have and had since neglected a blog that I could be using for this… Say Less™…   Natural next step was to UN-neglect the blog.  I could come on back home and make use of all the space I wanted withou

  You are getting sleeeeeeepy...      Good afternoon, dear reader and welcome… Now that I have you all focused (or experiencing an epileptic episode from the above light show) , allow me to explain to you why we are here.      Several years ago when I started this, I activated and allowed ads on the page in an attempt at what I thought would monetize a talent. Do you know how many tens of thousands of eyeballs on stories it takes for that to actually work?   Wait…   That is tens of thousands of eyeballs who ALSO periodically click on ads as well.      Needless to say, that wasn’t it.   A couple of years ago when I came back from my new job/hospitalization hiatus, I realized something.   Two things, actually… 1 – When I am using my phone an encounter a page with ads on it, I am more inclined to say “fuck that” and close. 2 – When I am on either of my computers, I have adblocker set to gestapo and I haven’t known what an ad on a web page looks like for several years. “Alexa,

“Just talk it out…”      That seems like a simple enough instruction to follow, right? Well let me explain something.   I am a middle child by birth order, a creative weirdo by nature and a bit of a misunderstood outcast due to both of the above. …   I also talk about writing like underground rappers talk about rapping.   It is something I enjoy and I am good at.      You know what I DON’T do a lot and never became particularly good at?   Talking! This isn’t to say I am inarticulate or lack vocabulary, I am just used to “sit down and shut up” as a parenting technique that I tend to silently watch a room until I need to talk.      Unless I am excited. When I am excited, unless the audience is similarly interested in what I am yammering on about then I fully expect to feel the “sit down and shut up” vibe I was raised on.   The only difference is nobody better put their hands on me, lest there will be an expensive lesson taught. The same can be said for topics that I am par

       If I told you I noticed what was happening and specifically planned to do so the way it has unfolded, I would be lying… True Story© has created itself as its own host, as a perpetual virtual novel, if you will.   It was “officially” born on September 1, 2016 as an exercise, a place for me to flesh out ideas and keep my pen game up on the chance that one day I might realize my dream to write for a living.   Comments on The Bookface and a push from a then-girlfriend-now-wife and three other friends who I love dearly caused it to become “a thing.”      “A Thing” became, as is my nature, something I became obsessed with the very production and presentation of to present every available Thursday and I did just that for almost two years before a surprise week in the hospital and the resultant fallout in 2018.   I still WANTED to write, but sometimes being benched can throw things askew.      Two years of sitting still does NOT make a creative mind rest.   I still had ideas.   I

     When I was 12 and in seventh grade, my aunt came to visit my English class.   She was, unbeknownst to me until that class on that day, a published author and a good friend of my teacher whose name alcohol has erased from my 41 year old memory.   She spoke of a book she had recently written and was on the way to publishing that happened to be stories of my family and her and her siblings (including my own father) during their own upbringing. These were stories I knew first hand, but the way she presented them made it so…   ENTERTAINING.   It was something completely new to me to see something so mundane as a story that every kid knows of what begat them presented in a manner that could hold the attention of 20 twelve year-olds.      I was hooked… As a middle child, also-ran, “who is that guy” kid, I have always been used to things just being whatever they are and cruising through life without any specific dream other than “making it,” whatever that means.      I deci

     I’m spaced out in the car. I’m sitting in front of the coffee table, hands on my chin staring into nothingness. I am in the middle of a workout mumbling to myself. I randomly chuckle while I am in the shower. I take the long way home or circle the block one or five more times.      “Babe, what’s wrong?” my wife asks.  Every time, I tell her nothing is wrong, I’m just thinking.  When she (inevitably) asks “about what?” I can only shift my eyes and shake my head.  She is beginning to get it.      This is my creative process.  By the time I put my fingers to the keyboard, my map is already drawn and my hands are already driven to what must be done.  I have thought it through, I have planned where I want to go and how I will get there.  My mind is an EVER active place.  While this usually manifests itself in a cavalcade of memes on my FB timeline or in a weird dance of nervous energy that manifests in me doing, fixing or cleaning something in the house (we will talk

     Sometimes you don’t know what the fuck you want to write, you just know you want to write when you sit down to do so. My trick when I find myself in this spot?  A key word or phrase… What do I mean? Come back to August and September with me. Work Spouse : ALL I knew I wanted to include in that story was the “Pennsylvania into her Virginia” line and had been thinking about it for THREE WEEKS before the scribe. Quaaludes : I was talking about The Get Down with someone the day before I wrote this story and the only thing I could think of was “boogie oogie Disco Biscuits.” I wrapped ENTIRE stories around getting those words/phrases into the mix.      Sometimes, that is about all the spark you should need.  A “why” to your “what.”  Having one goal to write toward is what it took to get you typing, the real fun is making it JUST there. To me, that is the fun part; sitting down with NOTHING to go on and remembering some silly shit that happened in a text

     Today’s theme: Don’t Overthink it. As simple a concept as this may seem to be, it is DIFFICULT in a creative process that is constant to actually do.  The work done toward constant improvement is more in constant practice and willing acceptance of what comes back.  But that is a concept we have already dabbled in, so no need to repeat ourselves.      This is more about trusting yourself and your instincts.  You sat down to write, let that bitch fly!  What I mean by this is that your first gut feeling is usually the best.  Back over the summer, while I was in and out of vacation and away from both my home AND work computers, I was in a pinch to get things up and I kind of felt my work suffered some for it.  I would never let anyone know this shit as it is happening, but as I sit and type this, I see EXACTLY why that was. I was too obsessed with things like word count and a multitude of other shit that really didn’t matter that I neglected my time-honored approach of “

     I have a massive amount of respect and sympathy for tortured creative souls… There was a time where I just didn’t get it; the grief that comes with being one of those people who is constantly looking to pull everything they see/say/do into something that is their outlet du jour at the next moment they will arrive to their medium to do so.  As I have been back writing for the last 16+ months with an all-new focus here, I see it more than ever.      I look back to the last time I was actually motivated and I see it.  I finished my novel in 30 days, all 50k words of it.  Waking up at 5am to pound out an idea brewing.  Carrying a flash drive with me everywhere and writing without eating lunch.  Ignoring the whole-ass world around me, for better or worse.  I did it all.  Two of the four albums I listened to for that September/October month were Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and Gil Scott-Heron’s Winter in America .  If ever there was a succinct definition of tortured creative

     “Stick and Move.” Every day I have been near a desktop computer for about the last 16 months, I make a point of opening my blog dashboard and looking around.  I make sure of the traffic numbers, I look at comments that might have found themselves in the Moderation Queue, I look back over previous posts and make small changes I may have missed on the way through the first time. Most importantly, I open my drafts queue.  In it there is usually one to three posts I am actively working on, one I am purposely never posting and FIVE I can best describe as a “false start.”      My archive goes like this: 2009 – 204 posts.  I was new and excited. 2010 – 178 posts.  I was still into what I was doing but busy in the real world. 2011 – 110 posts.  Ava showed up in July and my time was strained. 2012 – 35 posts I was slowly being dragged somewhere I wound up not liking. 2013 – 8 posts…  see above, I was actually there now. 2014 – Took a whole YEAR off and apparently started

Short post today y’all… “Fearlessness”      Not everything is for everybody.  Don’t let fear of catching a brick keep you from trying .  Some days, you will do something and present it to the world and at the end of the day, the only hits you’ll register are the ones that came when you visited the post to share it…  In your head you will hear the cartoon “whomp whomp whomp…” Fuck that, you stand learn more from having it happen than you EVER will from pussing out to avoid it.      Don’t be afraid to be the only one laughing.  Of course, when you find yourself in that position you should be working on what got you there to stop it.  Do. NOT. Shy. from being taken there from time to time. Don’t get comfortable BEING in that spot, by no means am I suggesting that being unfunny is a desirable place to reside.      Back to the leading thought.  You can NOT please everyone.  More importantly, you shouldn’t try to.  Do what works for you and let the chips fall where th

“Controlled Chaos”      Ask me where anything in my house is, I will take you right to it.  You’d never know that to SEE it though.  It looks like some slapdash assemblage of stuff, but it really does make sense when I can explain it. My creative process is quite similar…      Imagine you sit down at your computer every morning, open FIVE instances of MS Word, then come back to each every time an idea strikes you, and scribble some notes on it.  Now imagine if you will you could somehow do this without having to necessarily sit down to the computer and type these things out. I do this shit in my head. Back in late July/early August, I had an idea for True Story© that I had been actively working on for a couple of weeks.  That idea is STILL in my drafts box.  I cut my grass one Monday and thought up, from start to finish, the Marlon story .  I went out into the yard with the first story in my mind and repeated lines to it as I worked on my grass, but the Cheaters/Marlon/d

“Voice” As I learned – or, more accurately, willed myself – to write, I used to hear/read things about “voice” in writing. As I look back over my old writing, I think I understand more clearly what was meant by "voice." [ Phlip note : I HATE some of my old work] What I have observed over the past year or so, though, I have watched my work evolve.  What started as a 150-300 word blurb on my FaceBook wall has grown to an every-Thursday event that both of you VERY much look forward to. The growth has come with some evolution in my presentation and not just with the addition of a leading picture to each of the posts.  I had to learn to structure them physically to help each reader make their own adventure of it. What does that even mean? It means that I use indentation to start certain paragraphs, and not in others.  The indentation is to begin a new though, the lack of it means I have not finished that last idea yet but need the separation that simply putt

Last September, I took a shit that would change my life. No, the shit itself wasn’t so epic or one that felt like it was leaving my body sideways or anything.  The thing is that while on the crapper, I sat with my phone and typed out a very short story.  There were elements of truth to it, but embellished upon for comedic effect.  I posted that story to my FB wall and people enjoyed it.  The next Thursday, I happened to do the same thing. So on and so forth, I did this every Thursday morning until someone suggested “dude, you should start a blog with these!” Me, ever the dumbass, thought “shit, I DO have a blog!” and I was onto something.      Prior to True Story©, I REALLY hadn’t felt like writing for the three years prior for reasons those close to me are already aware of.  The attention the posts on FB garnered and the suggestion to start a blog reminded me to use the one I already had.  I back-posted the previously FB-only stories on their respective dates, and be

     I am a confusing being… I know I am difficult, yet I pride myself in the simplicity that I tend to operate in. When I was 11, we left my pops... When I was 12, I dreamt up two plans… 1 – when the moment arrives, any child I sire will be left with no question of preference, nor would they live in a dearth of attention. 2 – when I get the words confounding my head in order, I WILL entertain the masses with what I am thinking. To thought number 1… I am the middle child in birth order, do your research and understand that this is a real thing.  I live in two families that are each colorstruck, and lived not light or dark enough for full inclusion on either side.  I was left to make my own way.  My baby knows not these problems.  She asks for my attention, she gets it.  She doesn't ask for my attention, she still gets it.  Suffice it to say, I take to this daddy thing seriously enough to not repeat the things that broke me growing up. And 2… I was ne

     Now that I have my muse, motivation and most importantly the support I need to do this, I am BEATING on my craft. At home, I have someone I can bounce my ideas off of and instead of being met with indifference to even wanting to do it, I get feedback. Sometimes it is “ehh...  I don’t know if I like that,” or "you're moving to quick to close the story out" or even just “you’re moving too fast, chill and perhaps let me read before you publish” when I make rookie mistakes that I normally don't but even those are better than turning and walking away.  What is most important is that I am being engaged in what I love to do. It also motivates me to CONSTANTLY perfect my creative process.  I have often spoken about seeding scribes with ideas that I will use later.  Another thing I do is conceptualize and repeat things to myself until I can get back to a computer to type them out. Support for my craft: the love of my life knows I have short term memory issu