Writing: Follow Your Flow

Something I have been resisting recently is my ability to make people vomit. I can do it in nothing flat, paint mental images that make the hardiest soul squeamish and little kids stay awake with the lights on at night.

Not because I'm ashamed of it, mind you. I love watching people's reaction when they read story that I wrote, but if it's one that has a twilight zone-ish plot twist ending? Oh baby...!

The reason I have been fighting it is because I want to be good at other styles besides just psychological horror. Nonfiction, sci-fi, anything. I don’t want to simply be “good” at writing; I want to be so good that people know they will enjoy my books regardless if it’s their style or not. I want to be as good at writing as I am at martial arts. I want to be the kind of writer that people threaten to sue because they lost sleep reading my books. I want them to have to go through months of counseling and therapy because they’re afraid to sleep with the lights off. Either from fright or interest, I don’t care which. But I want to be the cause of it.

*SIGH*

Alas, nail-biting weird-out scary things seem to be my lot. My friend Todd gave me some good advice recently, told me to just accept what I do well & focus on it. Maybe the rest will come later. Either that, or I get a call from Tobe Hooper in the future, I guess.

So, as I have embraced my dark half and plowed forward without looking back, no less than four more short stories came out of me the past week (Not counting the three redundant ones where someone I know gets tied to a telephone pole and covered with slow-burning lighter fluid. I hate being cliché’.) Suddenly, my muse has moved in, evicted my wife & is dressed in a latex French maid outfit. I woke up with something in my head this morning, as a matter of fact, and have been fleshing it out until now.

I guess what I’m driving at here is that, if you’re writing, you will probably come to a point where you gravitate towards things that interest you most & write about them. Continuously. You may even get bored with the same old subject material, but don’t let that stop you. It all lends itself to the grist mill in the end. I might be projecting that last line a bit, I’m still not good at very many forms outside of short story horror. I’ll get back to you on that one in a few months, or a few million words. I do believe the practice helps, however. I have a lot of stuff I haven’t published to this blog, as well as many unfinished, half-written attempts at novels. Everything I wrote previously, particularly the “Broken Horizon” stuff, adds to the experience. Like learning the ropes of something like motorbike riding, you learn how to shift, turn and brake. After going to fast or falling off, you learn not to do the same thing wrong again. Maybe not the first time, but you will eventually get it

Inspiration is something I don’t think I can comment on, mostly because everyone’s is so different. Almost nothing I write comes from dreams, otherwise all I'd write would be Asian cheerleader porn. As far as inspiration goes, I don’t ever really look for it, it just happens. It seems like everyday situations turn into stories for me, because they have so much potential to be more, if only a vampire showed up…Wearing a BBQ Hut cap and offering a cheese plate. Mostly I'm just walking along & I see something that annoys me or is at least passing a bit strange, and I think "Wouldn't it be funny if...?"

It usually goes from there. "The ribbon at the top of the clock" started that way, my next door neighbor's kid was actually setting his G.I. Joes on fire in the driveway. I was halfway imagining them screaming & begging him for mercy, & then for some reason, I imagined the whole house turning on him and punishing him for it when he came in.

45 minutes later, I had it committed to paper.

I should also add that what I see as good or bad writing isn’t necessarily what others see, and you never know what others may find interesting. I thought the Ribbon at the Top of the Clock was a throwaway piece, pure and simple. Something that would act as “filler” between serious stories. I wrote in under an hour, no rewrites, and sat on it for a few months. I posted it on a whim, because I couldn’t think of anything else to write that day.

Turns out everybody loved it. I got several emails from people other than my “usual fans” about how great it was, and they really loved it, etc. See, I wouldn’t have thought that…It just didn’t ring that deep for me. I thought it was good, but not as good as some of my other stuff, like “Waiting for God”. But now I’m getting an idea about what other people think is good, and want to read more of.

Lastly; Find someone who is better at writing than you & learn from them. Experience trumps novice every damn time, and just like anything else in life, you need to know what the ones who have gone before you learned. Steve Perry has been giving me advice for almost three years now, and I only really started listening for the past year and a half. I wish now that I had taken him more seriously from the start, but since our relationship didn’t start with those classic teacher-student roles, only a little of what he said to me in those early days trickled through…And I fought him at every turn. Gaah, I shudder to think of it now!

Not everyone will get a professional writer to guide you, that’s fine. The point is FIND SOMEONE WHO KNOWS AND TAKE FUCKING NOTES. I have actually met many professional authors since getting into this madhouse called writing, and while some are indeed razor-edged pricks, most have been very generous with their time and knowledge, if you’re sincere.

That’s all I have for now. There’s a story calling my name, and I have to get back to it.