Wrestling With My Mind

***WRESTLING WITH MY MIND***

One day of creative inactivity is unacceptable to me, let alone four. Creating blueprints for my next novel idea doesn’t count, because that shit was too easy. I’m so close to putting the finishing touches on Silent Warrior. Only four more chapters to go and my racecar ran out of gas. I know I originally said three more chapters, but I’ve decided to add another one to make sure all of my loose ends are tied up. You want to know what I’ve been doing during those four days of inactivity aside from creating blueprints? Wrestling with my mind. It wasn’t a schizophrenic attack, but rather a creative struggle within my soul.

Wrestling with your creativity can be good for coming up with story ideas, but when it takes the place of actual work, that’s not a good thing. I used to do this all the time when I was a teenager. I’d wrestle with my mind and never get around to writing something that would amount to a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex fan fiction. Back then I wanted to do a self-insert fic where I was the subject of unrequited love for Makoto Kusanagi. I ran a bunch of different scenarios through my head and eventually popped something tangible out. Looking back now, it’s not very good, but at least some good came from the constant inner turmoil.

In the case of my most recent four days of nothingness, this running of the gauntlet was a long time coming. It began in mid-February when I researched an episode of Millennium called “A Room with No View” due to nostalgic curiosity. I’ve beaten this topic to death with a lead pipe, so to give you the Cliff’s Notes version of why that episode was upsetting to me, it was a unique version of the kidnapping trope, this time a beautiful woman kidnapping a handsome high school boy and giving him lovey-dovey treatment while in captivity. I saw the Wikipedia article for this episode and figured, I want to do a story like that too, though with my own spin on it. Thus a novel synopsis for “Beautiful Monster” was born. But blueprints aren’t anywhere near as valuable as an actual novel, so it’ll have to be shelved for now.

Less than a week later, I went to see Pop Evil at El Corazon, a nightclub in Seattle. The music was good and dancing to it was a lot of fun. Here’s what I didn’t tell you guys. While Black Map (one of the opening acts) was performing onstage, a cute stocky black chick tried dancing with me. She had her hand in mine. She had her hand on my shoulder. She was twirling around. For all intents and purposes, since I’m apparently so lovesick, I should be making moves on her too. But no. I was terrified. I just stood there frozen like Walt Disney while this chick was giving me sugar and love. It didn’t help matters that she shoved another woman with her elbow and got herself ejected from the building, but that’s beside the point.

I spent the next two days wrestling with the awkwardness and then the following Wednesday I saw Starset at the same venue without incident. But think about this for a minute: an episode of Millennium, an embarrassing moment at a concert, and a childhood of rejecting girls as a reaction to my father’s divorce troubles. Bad timing aside, don’t you think this makes for some emotionally raw creative fuel? You’re damn right it does. The creative fuel helped get me through ten more chapters of Silent Warrior, which is a story about an unconfident high schooler named Scott George getting into an unfamiliar romance with a younger woman. Pay attention to the theme of lacking confidence around women, because that’ll come into play multiple times during my creative journey.

Because of this creative fuel swirling in my brain, I became obsessed with certain songs in my music library. You all know about “Beautiful Monster” by Otherwise, but I also listened to a lot of “This Love” by Pantera. I also listened to a lot of heavy metal songs to bring me back down into bathos territory. And then I start watching Final Fantasy videos on You Tube and finding even more vicarious romances to set my mind on fire. Squall Leonhart and Cloud Strife are both emotionally distant characters who are colder than Walt Disney (man, I’m really laying that shit on thick!). When they went on dates with their respective love interests, I felt the terror building up in my stomach yet again.

And then the scenarios swirled in my head once more. I actually imagined Squall, Cloud, and Landon Bryce (Millennium) joining a group therapy session to get in touch with their feelings, y’all (as Dr. Phil would oftentimes say). And then I imagined myself in a college class introducing myself as someone who doesn’t open up easily. And then I imagined having a schizophrenic episode in the middle of a WWE ring with the girls of Absolution screaming for paramedics.

And while all of this nonstop nonsense is going on, I still have two novel ideas floating around in my head. One of them is Beautiful Monster as I’ve mentioned before. The other is Booger the Clown. Let’s compare and contrast the main characters of both stories. Windham Xavier is an elf paladin who gets kidnapped by a beautiful vampire named Shelly Atwood so that the two of them can have a black wedding together. Booger the Clown (real name Private Andrew Gale) is a depressed birthday performer who picks fights with orcs because he secretly wants to die. Both main characters are snarky. They’re both emotionally fucked up for life. They’re both being pursued by beautiful women. And whatever happy ending they achieve, they’re going to have to earn it through fire and fury.

Keep in mind that these ideas and dream scenarios are all invading my mind right when I’m ready to pull the trigger on Silent Warrior. Four chapters left. Four fucking chapters left, all of which I’ve played out in my mind many times before and therefore have a solid foundation for how I’m going to write them. Two chapters are going to be told through Tom Simpson’s point of view, one chapter is going to be told through Scott George’s POV, and the other one goes to Alan Young. You won’t get many spoilers beyond that, so cool your jets, as my mother once told me.

But let’s go back to this theme of being unconfident and afraid around beautiful women. This is a curse that has followed me for pretty much all of my life. Even when I was dating a Bremerton woman named Brianna, I could never bring myself out of the shadows for fear of offending the other person. I’ve been offended by women in the past and I don’t want to put anybody else through that. So in order to keep the peace between us, I give them a shield from my lovey-dovey behavior. Even if they don’t give me a shield, I give them a shield. Though the peace treaty is intact, our hearts are not. Careless overconfidence can lead to awkwardness. Nobody needs that. Shyness, on the other hand, is the greatest defense I’ll ever have.

But instead of rolling over and playing dead for a cold world, I use sexual inadequacy as creative fuel for my emotionally rawest stories. William Butler Yeats was once told by his crush that if they got together, he’d have nothing to write about. That doesn’t mean I don’t intend to date again when the opportunity presents itself. It just means I’m going to focus my broken heart on getting things done rather than being a perpetual angsty mope. Like I said, Silent Warrior is four chapters away from completion. I may write the twenty-fifth chapter today, depending on whether or not my brain wants to cooperate. I think it will. It’s cooperated with me long enough to get this blog entry out, so I think I’m good to go for Silent Warrior’s twenty-fifth chapter. I’m Garrison Kelly and I’ll see you next time!

***NOVEL QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I know it isn’t fair. I know how hard you try. But if you want love and affection in this world, you have to earn it by being a good person, not by throwing a fit.”

-Windham Xavier to Shelly Atwood-