Why I Love the Author Community

***WHY I LOVE THE AUTHOR COMMUNITY***

I saw so many indie authors online from Jenna Moreci to Hannah Lee Kidder discussing this topic and I thought I should throw my name into the hat. I have a lot to be grateful for when it comes to my writing career and one of those things is the company I keep. The first thing people will tell you is that the author community is like one big family and the stigma about competitiveness is just that: a stigma that needs to be erased. Or as Red Green always says, “I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together.” I agree with this philosophy one hundred percent. It takes a village to write a novel, whether your villagers are beta readers, editors, audience members, or otherwise.

I must confess that it took a long time for me to allow the author community into my life. When I first started creative writing as a sixteen year old, I had a massive ego and a chip on my shoulder the size of Texas. My filter for constructive or hurtful criticism was so strong that anybody who gave it to me was met with derision. I remember one night in Spokane, Washington in the fall of 2001 where I attended INCON, a sci-fi, fantasy, and anime convention. One of the feature attractions was having a piece of writing critiqued by five different professional authors. After the second one had her turn, I stormed out of the room and spent the rest of my evening crying my fucking eyeballs out. Were the authors using kid gloves? Not at all. But did that mean I had nothing to learn from them? Also a resounding no.

I took this egotistical attitude with me everywhere I went whether it was online or in college. I took my first creative writing class in 2004, though big ego or not, that class was deeply flawed judging from how much leniency was shown towards nasty critics. It got so bad that I wrote a poem about one of my classmates and told him that he looked like Frodo Baggins and that I wanted to impregnate his mother. I will admit that this gave me the confidence I needed to write poetry, but still, all that rage over a “You suck” comment? Ugh…

I would go on to take many more creative writing classes at Western Washington University and just like before, my ego got in the way of a true education. I remember one teacher I had who labeled my use of swear words as “hate speech” and told me I also wasn’t allowed to have gratuitous violence in my stories. What set me off wasn’t that alone, but the fact that I still got a C in her class despite adhering to her rules. My ego got bigger and my walls got higher. It would take a bloody miracle for me to let people in.

Fast forward to the year 2013, where I wanted to embark on an indie author career, but didn’t have anybody to critique my writing. I must have driven all of those people away, but it’s true, if you go long enough without criticism, you’ll be desperate for it when the gatekeepers lock you out. I caved and went to a group on Good Reads affectionately called the WSS (Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company). I’m still a member of that group today. I would enter a short story or novel chapter into the weekly contests, just like the name suggested…and the critiques I received were a complete one-eighty from a lifetime of seething anger.

Everybody was so nice to me that little by little, my walls started to strip away and it was easier to let people in. I got more of an education in this group than I did in school. You can teach people how to show instead of tell, how to keep one narrator, how to use colorful descriptions, how to not pull the trigger too soon when it comes to the climax, and how to make your characters overcome great adversity. People with massive egos never learn these things because they believe in their hearts they’re already good enough. The more you realize how imperfect you are, the more likely you are to improve. Thank you, WSS, for stripping away my oversized ego with your kindness and love.

From that moment, I would go on to meet many wonderful indie authors whom I can learn from and depend on when things get rough. I can’t say enough positive things about Ashley Uzzell/Marie Krepps. She’s honest, she’s funny as hell, she’s wise beyond her years, and she backs it all up with her kick-ass stories. Aurora Styles is every bit as wonderful as her Hollow Hills cohort with her own sense of humor, her own literary wisdom, and her own terrifically-written prose. Jenna Moreci uploads You Tube videos every so often dishing out sagely wisdom of her own whether the topic is writing or marketing. Hannah Lee Kidder is also a You Tuber who’s fun to watch when it comes to giving the world thoughtful advice. Patrick Doran’s cheerful Deviant Art comments give me the fuel I need to carry on during moments of exhaustion. If I’ve left anybody out, I swear it’s an accident. Thank you, writing community, for being my rock and not letting my head over-inflate.

I’m Garrison Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain!

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“I’ve been alone. Felt abandoned at times. Given into the fall. I can’t forget what it’s like. When I felt numb and so hollow inside, you carried me through it all across the divide. I’ve been lost. Felt ruined inside. Watched it all crumble in the blink of an eye. You were strong and so hopeful inside. Saved this fallen one when I wanted to die. And when I went through it all, you gave me your heart. I learned to forgive. And when I come through it all, I know you’re the one I’ll never forget.”

-Device singing “Through It All”-

Explaining Stories: Carlos vs. Bryan

***EXPLAINING STORIES: CARLOS VS. BRYAN***

I’ve allowed this topic to float away in the breeze for far too long, yet it’s been rolling around in my head since college. At WWU, I had two different writing teachers who had opposite schools of thought when it came to authors explaining their own work. Carlos Martinez, my first multi-genre writing teacher, was of the belief that it’s okay to explain yourself while Bryan Willis, my dramatic writing professor, was adamantly against it and would discourage students from doing so during critique sessions. Today we’re going to look at both sides of that debate and see which among you is on Team Carlos or Team Bryan. Though there will be disagreements, I promise you this debate won’t be nearly as much of a train wreck as the 2016 US Presidential Debates. But that’s an argument for another day.

If you’re in a critiquing session and you want your beta-readers/editors to know what it is they need to watch out for, you’ll probably want to sign up with Team Carlos. That is information your readers need. It’s your work, so you should have full reign as to what your story is trying to say or do. Your editors can’t give you advice on how to best convey your message if you don’t explain yourself ahead of time. Being a member of Team Carlos also has benefits if your work is unintentionally offensive and you’re trying to do damage control. While it is true that there’s always someone out there who will be pissed off at what you do, it would help those people greatly if you put them at ease with a reasonable explanation. But when you give them that explanation, give them the sensitivity they were looking for this whole time and don’t be condescending.

But if what you want most is for your art to be a democracy, join Team Bryan. Art by its very nature is a subjective field. Everybody sees something different and it’s those many interpretations that give the medium the spotlight it deserves. It sparks debate, just like this blog entry is attempting to do. According to Bryan’s way of thinking, if you tell people what to believe, you’re taking away the creativity you yourself exercise so freely. I think this might be part of the reason why my current beta-reader Ashley Uzzell tells me not to put little disclaimers at the top of my poems. Of course, the other reason why she tells me not to do that is because it’s insulting to the reader’s intelligence if the lyrics are blatantly obvious. It’s like if an author says “green grass”, “red blood”, or “big elephant”. Duh! Remember, kids: show, don’t tell. Don’t tell your audience how to feel about your work. Show them and let them make their own decisions. The last time someone forced his artistic will upon his audience, it was in the movie Pink Floyd the Wall during the music videos for “In the Flesh” and “Run Like Hell”. You don’t want to do that.

So there you have it, folks: both sides of this debate presented in full. Both Carlos and Bryan have good points that should be carefully considered, but ultimately, my own personal loyalties lie with Team Carlos. My biggest reason for that is because I’ve been on the wrong end of offending an audience before and I know what it feels like to be rained down upon with hateful comments. In 2009, I wrote an opinion essay called “Class of ‘13”, which was supposed to be a humorously vulgar look at what life would be like if I became an English teacher. My readers didn’t think it was funny at all and labeled me an ageist (because of my views at the time on teenagers). The argument started with me hurling endless insults at the readers, which to nobody’s surprise escalated their anger even further. Only through explaining my work in a calm and collected manner whilst apologizing did the situation eventually cool off. I’ll be the first to admit that aside from my big gut and chubby cheeks, I don’t have much of a thick skin. Being diplomatic and having the ability to defuse a situation is a huge benefit to being on Team Carlos.

Now don’t get me wrong: just because I favor one teacher’s point of view over the other’s, doesn’t mean they’re right or wrong altogether. Both Carlos and Bryan were easily some of my favorite teachers at Western Washington University. They had everything a student could ask for in a professor: friendly personality, flexible rules, infinite wisdom, and an open door policy when it came to asking for help. I particularly liked Bryan because of how much of an interest he took in one of my theater scenes. He wanted to see more of that story come out, so he gave me alternative assignments from the rest of the class where I would add on to the ongoing narrative through different characters’ points of view. The original story was about a high school student named Kurtis who complained to his girlfriend about a D- he received in his history class. One of the alternative assignments I had was to write a monologue from the teacher’s point of view and the other one was an interaction between the girlfriend and the teacher. These new assignments were a huge ego boost, not that my arrogant ass needed one.

As far as why I liked Carlos so much goes (aside from his views on explaining stories), he was just an all around gentle human being even during moments when the students got under his skin. Even when one student openly admitted to not doing a reading assignment out of blatant laziness, Carlos never raised his voice when he reprimanded that kid. He was also delicate about how constructive criticism was handled amongst our stories. He insisted that we all be nice to each other, because at the end of the day, every author is sensitive towards critiques no matter how much they hide it. Carlos even told us a story about how he got pissed off as a kid when his fellow students told him to cut his lengthy poem down to four lines. Being hurt by critiques (whether they’re friendly or not) is universal and one-hundred percent natural. But the more you surround yourself with people who want you to succeed, the less painful those critiques become. Carlos wanted all of us to succeed and it showed in his friendly and calm attitude.

Not that this is a focal point of the greater debate at hand, but in case you’re curious, I ended up getting an A in Carlos’s class and a B+ in Bryan’s class. And to prove it’s not a focal point, I don’t hold any ill will towards one professor of mine, Katie, who gave me a C in my medieval literature class. She did everything she could to help me whether it was answering my questions or allowing me to visit her office for a one-on-one session. The blame for that C falls squarely on my shoulders since I had a hard time understanding the material. I went into that class thinking it was going to be like reading Dungeons & Dragons campaign, but instead all I got was religious zeal and purple prose, lots of purple prose! They call that period in literature the Dark Ages for a reason. That class was my version of the Dark Ages by virtue of how difficult it was to learn the material (despite having a good teacher).

But enough about me, let’s turn this debate over to you fine internet folks. Are you on Team Carlos (explaining your work) or Team Bryan (allowing your work to speak for itself)? Are there any points on either side of this debate that I’ve unintentionally neglected? Feel free to let me know in the comments section. I’m Garrison Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain! And to show you my undying loyalty towards Team Carlos, I’m going to explain my signing off phrase. They’re lyrics from the Three Days Grace song “The Mountain”. Not only do I love the hell out of that band, but those lyrics can be surprisingly inspirational to someone who needs encouragement.

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Sailing along the river of time. Adrift on dreams through midnight chimes. Positively frozen crystal waterfalls. The mountain of hope is there to be climbed. The sea of serenity is rightfully mine. Step onto the water knowing what is true. The beat of my heart. The rhythm of love. The earth that’s beneath us. The heavens above. I can hear forever calling out to me. The changes we go through are making me strong. The shelter of friendship is where we belong. Look into the future knowing what we see. The whirlpool of doubt can spin you around. The wave of emotion takes you up, pulls you down. Leaving far behind us sweet young passion spray. And never blame the rainbows for the rain. And learn to forget the memories that caused you pain. The last whispered wish of age is to live it all again. And never blame the rainbows for the rain.”

-The Moody Blues singing “Never Blame the Rainbows For the Rain”-

Extremism

***EXTREMISM***

When you’re young and naïve, extreme comments can be very appealing, either because of comedic value or aspirations of badassery. As a teenager, blatantly offensive jokes were the funniest to me. During my early twenties, I still found them wildly hilarious despite me conforming to a college environment. With age comes wisdom and what was once cool in the past isn’t so cool anymore. My 33^rd birthday is this coming June and I’d like to think I at least have enough wisdom to know the difference between what’s acceptable and what’s not. I often find myself measuring my posts online for this very reason. Would you like to hear some of the salty stuff I said during my youth? You may find it darkly funny, then again, your jaw might fall on the floor. Either way, it’ll be a slight departure from the emotional diarrhea blog entries I’ve posted lately. Speaking of which, I finally learned the word that sums up the act of “Wrestling With My Mind”: brooding. How did I not learn this word earlier?!

This journal entry will have three different examples of extreme dialogue and the first one is the most contemporary example I can think of. The year is 2010 and a Roger Waters concert at the Tacoma Dome has just let out. I’m walking the streets with my dad, my step-mom Charlie, and her son Ryan. We’re walking adjacently to the train tracks and there are drunken morons wrestling around on them and yelling like lunatics. The drunks were warned by train station personnel to get off the tracks, but they kept hooting and hollering. When I describe this incident, I could just as easily say things like, “What a night that was!” or “I’m glad we got out of there!” But this is a blog entry about extreme dialogue, so instead I say…“I was kind of hoping the drunks would get run over by the train.” You all know via my poetry how I feel about drug addicts and alcoholics who behave obnoxiously in public, but this is a stretch even for me. And by stretch, I’m talking Gumby levels of stretchiness.

Example number two. The year is 2009 and I’m taking a creative nonfiction class at Western Washington University. As part of the class curriculum, we had to read certain books and one of them was “This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff. There’s a scene where a young Tobias is with his mother at some kind of Seattle fair and these two bearded guys in flannel shirts approach them. The guys treat the Wolff family to sugary treats, hotdogs, and rides on bicycles. The smart thing for me to do would be to answer the actual assigned questions on the online forum for our class. But instead I…sort of…compare the two bearded men to the mountaineers from Deliverance. You know the ones. “Squeal, piggy!” The next day, the teacher announces that several people were offended by my post and that I should be careful about what I say on the internet. In hindsight, this was a good lesson. The problem? I was too arrogant to heed it, so I silently stewed for the rest of the class and laughed about it once we were dismissed.

Final example. The year is 2008 and I’m still attending school at WWU, this time for a dramatic writing class. The class met every Friday afternoon and that was when our scripts for short theater scenes were due. Mine happened to be about a kid named Kurt Liddell who had to be comforted by his girlfriend Georgia Cushing after getting a D- in US history. Kurt could have phrased his feelings any way he wanted. He could have wished for higher marks. He could have vowed to work harder. He could have wished for a transfer request. But no. He says something that would unfortunately be a hallmark for plenty of school-related stories in my future career (including, sadly enough, Silent Warrior). Kurt Liddell says…”Those Columbine kids had it right all along.” Let that sink in for a moment. Kurt channels the Columbine kids because he got a D- in school. If that’s not extreme behavior, I don’t know what is. Nonetheless, I got an A on that assignment and was given the opportunity to write more scenes in that series as an alternative to the scheduled work, so I thought that was pretty cool.

Needless to say, these were not years where I had my shit together. I’m 32 years old and some of my shit is still scattered here and there. If you learn one thing from this blog entry, it’s to not let your ego get in the way of a good lesson. No matter how good you are (or how good you think you are), there’s always room to improve your life, whether it’s creatively, professionally, or personally. The day you stop growing is the day you get complacent. Complacency can be smelled from miles away and it stinks like shit. If growing from extreme behavior is your way of moving on in this world, go for it. I know growing up sucks, but there are still aspects of youth that can be appealing to adults, Legos and videogames being chief among them. I’m Garrison Kelly! Keep climbing the mountain!

***THE NEXT NOVEL***

Silent Warrior has finally been put to bed for the very last time. It’s only a first draft, so there will be lots of editing in the future, which I’m very much looking forward to. In the meantime, I need a new novel to work on. The ideas that seem the most appealing to me right now are Beautiful Monster, Booger the Clown, and (maybe) Suck It Double Dork. Only Beautiful Monster has been developed from beginning to end. The other two need some fleshing out, which is why I spent so much time brooding in the first place. Heh. Brooding. I love that word! Brooding!

***MOVIE DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

GANGSTER A: What about us?

GANGSTER B: That shit was wrong, man.

GANGSTER A: You just drove by and started blasting.

GANGSTER B: That shit was wrong, man.

GANGSTER A: We weren’t even the ones who capped your homie.

GANGSTER B: That shit was really wrong, G.

CRAZY K: Man, fuck you niggas! It was your set that did my homie Little Joe! You motherfuckers would try to kill me if you had the chance! Man, fuck you niggas! Fuck y’all!

-Tales from the Hood: Hardcore Convert-

***POST-SCRIPT***

Andrew Gale a.k.a. Booger the Clown is a huge fan of gangster rap and the movie Tales From the Hood. If his story is the one I end up writing, TFTH will be referenced quite a bit. Hell, in the opening segment, I’ll have Andrew drive down a dark highway with “Born II Die” by Spice One blasting on his stereo. “My gat screamed fire! The bullet told me shoot that motherfucker, he’s a liar!” Man, I love those lyrics! Badass!

Lonesome Town

***LONESOME TOWN***

Trust me, guys, I’d love to be able to stop talking about Western Washington University and how Bellingham is a dead ringer for “Lonesome Town” by Ricky Nelson (a song I first heard on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack). I’ve talked enough about it, so it’s pretty much a dead memory at this point. And then I get an email from WWU’s department of English asking me to take a survey as to how my experience was and how it could have been improved. If these surveys were written on paper, they would probably end up in a big fucking fire pit. But I took the survey anyways and gave them a piece of my mind. I told them about the lack of social programs, the lack of psychological counseling, the bias against introverted students, the shoddy public transportation system, the censorship of R-rated writing assignments, need I go on? No? Okay, I’m actually relieved. I open Face Book one day and I see that many of my classmates had the same vitriol to spew at their former school, so it feels good not to be alone. Perhaps the lyrics to Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town” could sum up my classmates’ feelings as they did for me. Maybe they’ll relate to it in a non-romantic sense and I’d be inclined to agree with them. Want some lyrics? Here they are:

VERSE 1

There's a place where lovers go

To cry their troubles away

And they call it lonesome town

Where the broken hearts stay

VERSE 2

You can buy a dream or two

To last you all through the years

And the only price you pay

Is a heart full of tears

BRIDGE

Going down to lonesome town

Where the broken hearts stay

Going down to lonesome town

To cry my troubles away

VERSE 3

In the town of broken dreams

The streets are paved with regret

Maybe down in lonesome town

I can learn to forget

Got any more surveys for me to take, WWU? You want to ask me again to donate $50 to the English department? Sure, why don’t I give you a blank check while I’m at it. And my social security number. And the pin number and security code on my debit card. Go nuts! I really should stop talking about WWU. It’s ancient history. Eight years counts as ancient history to me. Truth is, I didn’t have any better ideas for a blog topic than those Ricky Nelson lyrics. I was exhausted all day today and got very little done in the way of creativity. Maybe when I snap out of my sleepy haze, I could do one of the following:

***AMERICAN DARKNESS 3***

Two stories down, forty-eight more to go. Clocking in at number forty eight is “Air Pain”. Clever title, huh? It goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

1. Andrew Gilbertson, Drunken Businessman
2. Zack Scott, Convicted Felon
3. Tony Battles, Zack’s Handler
4. Susan Martin, Flight Attendant

PROMPT CONFORMITY: To be announced.

SYNOPSIS: All four characters are taking a six-hour flight to the Paulson City Airport, which means nobody wants to be screwed with. Midway through the flight, Andrew gets drunk and verbally abuses Susan when she denies him more alcohol. Zack, a shackled criminal with Detective Battles watching him, considers bailing on his handler to confront the obnoxious drunk at the risk of losing his plea deal. The longer this flight goes, the more annoying Andrew becomes and the more Tony considers unlocking Zack’s shackles.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

Marie Krepps jokes with me all the time about how I mostly have fat male villains in my short stories and novels. This next Dark Fantasy Warrior will keep the jokes rolling. His name is Big Daddy X and he comes from a short story idea called “Sub-Culture Urban Marketing”. Anti-smoking commercial viewers from the early 2000’s will remember that title and what acronym it forms. “I’m sure they meant it in a good way.”

***ALLEY KAT BLUES***

Now that “No Cure for Cancer” by Denis Leary is in my rearview mirror, it’s time for a fictional book. I purchased “Alley Kat Blues” by Karen Kijewski (“key-EFF-ski”) at a book sale in Chehalis, Washington (another place that could be described by Ricky Nelson’s lyrics). It was a low-stress book sale that was void of pushing and shoving due to the wide selection of books and big open space in the Lewis County Mall. I was happy for the low stress. It looks as though I’ll be even happier with reading Mrs. Kijewski’s book. It’s a crime thriller with a fast pace and a dead body or two. I blame Brett Battles for getting me hooked on this genre. Thanks, Brett!

***WRESTLING DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

FINN BALOR: Good luck tonight, Roman.

ROMAN REIGNS: Good luck to you, man.

FINN BALOR: Luck? I’m Irish. I invented luck.

ROMAN REIGNS: Well, I’m Samoan. Enough said.

Unrequited Love Stereotype, or "That Guy"

***UNREQUITED LOVE STEREOTYPE, OR “THAT GUY”***

In all my time of surfing the internet, I never knew the Urban Dictionary could actually be educational on some occasions. I thought it was just a safe haven for swear words and sex terms like “See You Next Tuesday”, or the clearly made-up “Quaker Cum Meal” (if you don’t know what that is, I’m not going to tell you). The other day when I surfed the Urban Dictionary, I typed in the words “Unrequited Love” and the results were mildly depressing. It’s basically when you love someone (or have a crush on them) and they don’t love you back (either because they don’t know you or don’t give a damn). Every celebrity crush in the world is an example of unrequited love. Every damn one.

When I was going to Western Washington University from 2007 to 2009, my source of unrequited love was Tarja Turunen, the former lead singer from Nightwish. I set the bar pretty high for myself and was let down when my stubby arms couldn’t reach it. So naturally I assumed every local crush was just as high on the bar as well. I wrote tons of essays and poems dedicating my love to this opera metal diva, but I tiptoed around the language used to write them because I didn’t want to be...that guy. I didn’t want to be the stereotypical 300 pounder with a Princess Leia poster on my wall, a Tifa Lockhart photo for a desktop screen, and a sorrowful attitude towards romance. I tried hard not to be an embarrassing version of…that guy. So I kept it all on the inside most of the time.

You know what happens to people who are…that guy, right? Well, the minute they bear their feelings to the world, some yo-yo will sit them down, pat them condescendingly on the shoulder, and give them a familiar speech we’ve all grown tired of. “You know, Garrison…Japan had an earthquake, Haiti had an earthquake, there’s mass starvation in Africa, there’re wars going on in Afghanistan and Iraq…and you’re crying over chicks?” Granted, some of those travesties are dated in today’s world, but you’ve heard that speech, I’m sure. Folks, not one time has anybody thought of worldwide earthquakes and immediately felt like a million bucks about their own problems. The author of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” makes this clear in his novel (read it, damn you!).

If someone who has been labeled…that guy gets any kind of reward for his awkward and depressing behavior, it will be because of sympathy and no other reason. I didn’t want that for myself either. If I ever decide to date again, I want it to be with someone who genuinely thinks I’m a cool person, not because they feel like they have to. When a girl feels like she has to, it’s not a sign of a healthy relationship. Nobody is obligated to date anybody for any reason, and that’s the way it should be, quite honestly.

Even now, I don’t talk about unrequited love these days because I’m still fighting the urge to be…that guy. I used to talk about it a lot whenever I’d blog about dreams I’ve had or music I’ve listened to. Not anymore. It got old after a while and I had successfully become…that guy. So what happens to people when they refuse to become…that guy and they still don’t have it in them to approach their love interests? They become indifferent to romance. Every once a while the urge will come back, but ultimately, indifference takes over.

If you’d like to know how hard someone has to work to not be…that guy, do me a favor. Get on your computer, smart phone, or smart TV and type in Netflix (or some other movie streaming service). In the search engine, type in the movie “Obselidia” and you’ll find out all about your precious unrequited love. I did a review on this movie once, but I didn’t give away any spoilers. Well, just for this journal, I’m going to spoil the movie for you, so if you enjoy surprises, skip this part of the blog.

George is an introverted librarian who has tasked himself with keeping an encyclopedia of all things obsolete (hence the title “Obselidia”). He even believes romance is obsolete as evidenced by the way he turns down a date from a customer at the library. He’s lonely, but doesn’t want to admit it. And then as part of his research for his encyclopedia, he meets a projectionist named Sophie, who is all bubbles and smiles when it comes to the world. The two of them go on a trip to Death Valley together and get an earful from an environmentalist who believes climate change will destroy our world sooner than later (it actually might, I’m not doubting him).

George is ready to include the whole planet in his encyclopedia, but spending more and more time with Sophie brings the positivity out of him that he needed. They get back to the city and George finally musters up the courage to bring Sophie flowers and confess his love. But when he arrives at her apartment, some guy in the background says, “Who is it, sweetie?” George barricades himself in his own home and refuses to answer Sophie’s pleading messages on his machine. In this one moment of unrequited love, Sophie has managed to squeeze George’s eyeballs dry of tears like she was making the most sorrowful pitcher of orange juice.

Unrequited love is basically a catch 22. If you don’t talk about it, you get hurt. If you do talk about it, you get hurt. Nobody would have blamed George if he sheltered himself forever, yet he manages to keep the positive attitude he gained from his experiences with Sophie. It makes perfect sense as a movie ending, but brain chemistry doesn’t always work like that in the real world. And that’s really all romance is: brain chemistry with an addictive reward system. When you get one kiss from a pretty girl, you want more. And when you don’t get more, you get withdrawal. And when you get withdrawal, you try your hardest not to become…that guy.

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

I’ve been waiting forever for an excuse to write the following short story. Now that the prompt is “butterfly”, I’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. This story is a combination of the WWE Divas Revolution in 2015 and life with cats that I currently have or have taken care of in the past. My mom calls our cats divas all the time (because of how often they want attention), so this short story will be called “Divas”. It goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

1. Piper, Divas Champion
2. Tori, Leader of the Supermodel Kitties
3. Stitches, Enforcer for the Supermodel Kitties
4. Calypso, Rookie from the Supermodel Kitties
5. Willem, Schipperke Referee

PROMPT CONFORMITY: The Divas Championship belt has a butterfly design on it.

SYNOPSIS: In a pro-wrestling organization where the female wrestlers are humanoid cats, Piper is defending her Divas Championship against Tori at a pay-per-view main event. Piper has held the championship for over a year on the platform of making her dreams come true and being a role model for young cats. During their rivalry, the Supermodel Kitties have made Piper’s life miserable by calling her “Piper-Diaper” and other childish middle school names. With Stitches and Calypso to serve as ringside distractions, Piper could very well lose her championship to Tori and disprove the idea that all dreams come true.

***FACE BOOK POST OF THE DAY***

(Here’s an interaction I’d like to see happen on WWE Monday Night Raw.)

MICHAEL COLE: And here comes Bayley for her one-on-one match!

COREY GRAVES: Keep your hands above the table, Saxton!

BYRON SAXTON: That’s not PG.

Debating

***DEBATING***

Even though I post a lot of short stories with controversial topics and post John Oliver videos on my Face Book page, I actually don’t like debating that much. I agree with the idea of being open to new ideas and not being completely coddled from the opposing side. However, if someone tries to engage me in a debate, the most talking points I’ll ever have in that conversation is…maybe two. After those talking points are on the table, I have nothing left and I’m completely vulnerable to the limitless number of talking points the other guy has. Being on this jobber losing streak in a debate has nothing to do with the fact that I’m right or wrong. It just means that I don’t have an unlimited number of talking points. I suppose I could cure that with extensive research, but that only adds maybe two or three more talking points to the already short list.

It didn’t dawn on me just how bad my debating skills were until I moved into my dorm room at Western Washington University in 2007. I had a roommate named Carl who was always helpful to me and an all around nice guy. However, when he tried to engage me in a debate, I would sit there in silence not knowing how to answer his talking points. Carl described himself as a “conservative with a strong liberal twist”, but most of his talking points were right-leaning in nature. He’d present all of these carefully-worded arguments that went on for about a minute or a minute and a half and it always drove me nuts that I couldn’t debunk all of them.

So whenever I hear somebody talk about open-mindedness, I always tell them it’s a two way street. In other words, if you want me to be open to your viewpoints, you have to be open to mine. But that’s the problem: my viewpoints only have a lifespan of one burst of alphabet soup. After that, it’s over. I’m like a bottle rocket when it comes to debating, which is why I avoid it most of the time.

Of course, there’s another reason why I avoid debates and it’s because I have this fear of offending my best friends by justifying the things they hate. It’s the reason why I don’t wave a Richard Dawkins book in the face of one of my Christian friends. Not only is it offensive to do, but it could kill the friendship. I put love and friendship before politics and religion every single time. If somebody gives me a ride when I need one or cooks me a nice meal or gives me twenty bucks to buy my favorite book, why should it matter what side of the political spectrum they’re on? Of course, I wouldn’t accept a million dollars from Donald Trump, but that’s because…well…he’s Donald Trump. But you get what I’m saying, right?

So if you see me back out of an argument, it’s not because I’m closing myself off to that person. It’s because unlike that person, I can’t keep talking forever and ever and ever. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch some more John Oliver videos and chase them down with a rant by Immortal Technique about vegetarianism. Peace! I’m out!

***SWAMPLANDIA***

As many of you have noticed either from my Deviant Art journals or my Good Reads account, I’ve been chipping away at “Swamplandia” by Karen Russell for a little under two months now. According to my Good Reads account, I’m 83% done with it, which means I’m going to spend one day blowing through the rest of it. Even though I’m not finished with it yet, I’ve already decided that it’s going to receive a mixed grade (three stars) when I review it. The concept is great, the depressing themes are great, and even the idea of a World of Darkness theme part ignites the dark fantasy passion within me. But what gives it a three star rating is the pacing. It’s slow enough to tire my eyes out after five or six pages of reading. I don’t know what exactly to owe the pacing to, but it’s definitely a slow one and that would explain why I’ve spent so much time with this book. That and it’s 400 pages long.

***WRESTLING DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

JERRY LAWLER: If Emma was a vegetable, she’d be a cute-cumber.

MAURO RANALLO: The world is pun-derful and I’m glad you agree, King.

Bent To Fly

***BENT TO FLY***

The last journal entry had to do with song lyrics that resonated with me and this one will be no different except for the song in question. As I was at the YMCA doing my water-walking today, the Slash and Myles Kennedy song “Bent To Fly” came up on my waterproof MP3 player. Until today, I never paid close attention to what the lyrics really were. Now that I’m home and I’m reading the lyrics online, I realize just how powerful this song really is. Like the singer, I too had aspirations of living independently from my parents. Not because it would actually benefit me, but because society told me that that’s what success looks like. And then I started taking classes at WWU and living in a dormitory with three strangers. I’d never felt so alone in my life. No animals, no family, very few people who were permanent friends, I went to Bellingham and had nobody to turn to. Because of my loneliness and isolation at WWU, I was constantly depressed, bored, and in a negative state of mind. My family in Port Orchard has always been my go-to place for love and friendship whether it came from my parents, my brother, his girlfriend, their daughter, or my pets. I don’t live at home purely out of financial stability. I live there because my family loves me and I love them. When I listened to “Bent to Fly” today and paid closer attention to the lyrics, they hit me almost as hard as the lyrics to “In Perfect Harmony” by Within Temptation. Take a look.


VERSE 1
Mama, don't you cry
Don't you worry
I cannot stay here any longer
The time has come to find
A distant calling
That only seems to get much stronger
And I know it's hard
To see the one you come to lean on make his way
Far beyond the womb
But I can't stay

CHORUS
I won't stop running
I'm only getting closer
To getting off the ground this time
The sky is calling
The wind is at my shoulders
Won't let this chance pass me by
Mama, I'm bent to fly

VERSE 2
Remember yesterday
Before the storm
Before the innocence was lost
I promised I would stay
Forevermore
But every boy in time moves on
Your wounds will heal someday
This I know
But I am restless and so torn
Mama, I can't stay here anymore

HOOK
I can feel it coming
A perfect storm is rising
Gotta say my last goodbye


Who would’ve known that such sensitivity could come from two hard rock badasses like Slash and Myles Kennedy? We’ve got tears, say beers! Wait, that’s not how it goes.


***DOMESTIC DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

SUSAN: If you see a girl you like, just ask her if she wants to get some coffee with you.

ME: I don’t like coffee.

SUSAN: She might like coffee, you ass! What are you going to do, ask her out for some cheese and energy drinks?!

My Cloudland Has a Sense of Humor

***MY CLOUDLAND HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR***

I’ve spoken candidly about my weird ass dreams before and I’m going to continue the tradition on this lovely Wednesday evening. I believe even the weirdest of weird dreams can serve as creative fuel. Marie Krepps, my beautiful beta reader, will definitely stand by my side on this one since she too has some weird ass dreams. Granted, these two I’m going to talk about make no fucking sense whatsoever, but that’s the beautiful thing about having a whacked out mind: it doesn’t have to. We’re going to start with dream number one.

　

I don’t remember too many of the details from the first dream other than it was a nightmare that made my heart race when I woke up at 11:00 in the morning. What I do remember was that it was about the clown from Brave Little Toaster and how he wanted to cut me up into little pieces. I tried to get away from him, but the only place where I could find refuge was with the Dust Witch from Something Wicked This Way Comes. Tarantulas scare the shit out of me, so I accepted my fate of being chopped up by the demon firefighter clown.

I had every intention this morning of getting out of bed and getting a buzz cut at Hair Masters. It didn’t happen. My hair is still shaggy and my dream world is still knocking at the door. I fell back asleep and started my second dream, which wasn’t necessarily a nightmare, but it was really goddamn weird.

I was doing research at the Western Washington University campus library, probably on graphic novels. I’m waiting for my study buddy to show up and when he finally does, he turns out to be French-Canadian WWE superstar Kevin Owens. He doesn’t try to beat me up or harass me like he usually does to his opponents in the ring. He does, however, offer to walk me home after the studying is over.

By the time we walk outside the library, we’re not in Bellingham, Washington anymore where WWU is supposed to be. We’re in Victoria, Canada, a favorite vacation spot of mine, but somehow different this time around. The Armenian Mafia was patrolling the streets of this normally crime-free city looking for people they could beat up. I guess Kevin Owens was supposed to be my bodyguard, because I was able to make it to my hotel room without being mugged.

Outside the hotel, there’s a large group of fat people doing exercises and being tired after the first few seconds. One of the exercise students was a woman so fat her entire torso was covered with a tool shed. She was sitting on a horse doing nothing and suddenly fell off to the side. The irony wasn’t lost on me when the class of exhausted fat people were laughing at her. But then they found it disgusting when a pair of disembodied legs wearing jeans walked by.

Me and my family minus Kevin Owens left the Canadian hotel and went down to the ferry terminal to catch a ride. We’re sitting on the dockside and there are these two cute British lesbians sitting across from us holding hands and being happy. Even though I know a relationship will never work between the three of us, I started feeling nervous around them anyways. So what did I do? I listened to Three Days Grace’s song “I Am Machine” on my MP3 player and picked my nose. When it doubt, be socially awkward. My social awkwardness has gotten me through everything in life.

The ferry arrives and we all get on to presumably go home. Except we didn’t go to Port Orchard, Washington. We went to London, England, where a horse and carriage was waiting for us. We’re on a two-way cobblestone street and somehow the different positions in the road lead to different countries. The right side will take us to Norway, the middle will take us to Germany, and the left side will take us to France. We get on the French side of the road and the carriage takes us there at a lightning fast pace.

Our destination ends up being a sandy beach with a lot of pollution and ducks in the water. I pull something mysterious out of my mouth and it turns out to be a baby black duck, which I throw into the water with its family. Reina asks me if this is a great vacation and I steadfastly agree.

I woke up at 1:10 in the afternoon and got on the computer to check my messages. No, this isn’t part of the dream, this is real life. When I was trying to read my Good Reads messages, the lines of text were all blurry, probably because I was still tired. I went back to bed and didn’t officially start my day until 2:20 in the afternoon. Still, no buzz cut at hair masters.

　

We’ve got ears! Say cheers!

　

***TELEVISION ISSUES***

Last night as I was watching NCIS: New Orleans, my flat screen TV burned out and stopped working. Prior to that, me and Reina kept smelling plastic and rubber burning, but we couldn’t figure out what it was. It was the TV this whole time. My other electronics work just fine, but not the flat screen TV. I originally wanted to review a wrestling match from WWE NXT Takeover: London, but without a TV, that’s not possible. I could watch it on my computer, but my internet connection isn’t always reliable. I’d have to find a way to download it onto my hard drive. Or I could buy another TV, that’d work too. Either way, I’ve already looked up the results online and I was genuinely surprised by them. Baron Corbin defeated Apollo Crews, Bayley made Nia Jax submit in order to keep her NXT Women’s Championship, and Finn Balor overcame Samoa Joe to keep his NXT Championship. I’m definitely going to have to find a way to watch this show.

　

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

The last entry into this series was Debra Winter, a hero from Occupy Wrestling. The next entry will be Cameron Gillespie, a villainess from Watch You Burn. For my reference picture, I Googled TNA wrestler Awesome Kong, who is a 6’1”, 295 lb. black woman with a nasty attitude and a hard-hitting repertoire of moves. I originally wanted Cameron Gillespie to be tall and lanky, but Awesome Kong’s massive frame will do just fine. Be afraid, bitches!

　

***MOVIE DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

RANDAL: Do you know how much money the average jizz mopper makes per hour?

DANTE: What’s a jizz mopper?

RANDAL: They’re the guys who clean up the nudy booths after each guy jerks off.

DANTE: Nudy booth?

RANDAL: Yeah. Haven’t you ever been inside a nudy booth before?

DANTE: Guess not.

RANDAL: Aw, man, it’s great. You go into this booth and there’s this glass between you and these chicks and they put on a show for you for like ten bucks.

DANTE: What kind of a show?

RANDAL: Think of the weirdest, craziest shit you like to see chicks do. These chicks do it all. They’ll insert anything into any opening on their bodies. Any opening.

DANTE: Can we not talk about this right now?

RANDAL: The jizz mopper’s job is to clean up the nudy booths after each guy shoots a load. Everybody does it right on the glass. I don’t know if you know this or not, but cum leaves streaks if you don’t clean it right away.

-Clerks-

Bury the Past

***BURY THE PAST***

In my college days, I used to talk candidly about my past like it was no big deal. I would write little essays of my most negative and emotionally draining experiences and post them online as if I was hotter shit than Tobias Wolff or Alison Bechdel, both authors masters of the memoir style. I even had aspirations of writing my own autobiography and talking about high school in Chehalis, living with my former step-dad Art, and being depressed at Western Washington University. Every negative experience I had in my life would bring me gold and silver, I thought to myself.

But then people would see these nonfiction postings and would want to know more. So they prodded me with questions like “What did he say?” and “What happened?” and anything else that would be considered nosy and detective-like. Talking about these experiences doesn’t bring me peace of any kind. It brings me sadness and heartache, so I try to avoid these conversations as much as possible. But then the nosy people would ask me why I posted my memoirs online whilst refusing to talk about it afterwards. I could never argue with that logic. I knew in my heart it was wrong, but I couldn’t disprove it. So please, if I don’t want to talk about the past, don’t make me. I keep those memories buried beneath the dirt forever, never to surface again.

I say these things not just as a warning to anybody digging into my past, but to anybody who wants to write memoirs themselves. If you publish something, people will be nosy about it and ask you about traumatic memories until the end of time. A prime example of a memoir gone bad is “My Fight/Your Fight” by UFC fighter Ronda Rousey. I haven’t read it yet, but I do know about it through Rousey’s Wikipedia profile. In the memoir, she talks about a time when she beat the shit out of her ex-boyfriend because he wanted to post revenge porn (nude photographs) of her online. Ever since then, domestic violence groups dropped the hammer down on Rousey while completely ignoring the cyber abuse her ex-boyfriend tried to commit, which is just as bad in my opinion as any physical beating.

Rousey has her own reasons why she wrote the memoir and none of her public backlash is her fault. But after hearing about that part in her book, it makes me want to read it more. Make no mistake about it, though: if there comes a time when the two of us talk online, neither of our pasts will be on the menu. Same thing goes for authors like Jaycee Dugard, Randy Blythe, and Amanda Knox: if I want to know their life stories, I’ll read their books and make no further comments other than to leave an online review.

Privacy is always a fuzzy gray area with the internet being as abundant as it is today. People love to share their lives online, but when the sharing becomes too much, their followers still want more. I personally enjoy my offline privacy. I keep my past buried beneath the earth, I refuse to write memoirs, and the only pieces of my life that I do share are clean photographs and occasional updates of events that might affect my artistic performance. Being an introvert and being a private person go hand in hand. When privacy is violated, the introvert becomes bitter at whoever violated it and rightfully so. So please, don’t force anybody to talk about something they don’t want to. Talking doesn’t bring peace for everyone, mostly just traumatic flashbacks and chilled blood.

　

***CREATIVE WORK***

A new week at the WSS is on the horizon, so expect another Poison Tongue Tale to come from that prompt as well as my independently written short story “Zombie”. The biggest update I have so far is for the Dark Fantasy Warrior drawings I’ve been doing. Up next is Rosie Moonbender, the antelope wizard from Unleash the Animal. She is the epitome of the “colorful, over-the-top violence” Edward Davies at the WSS likes to talk about when commenting on my short stories. Unleash the Animal was a bizarre story to say the least, which is what will make this picture of Rosie Moonbender all the more special.

　

***WRESTLING JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What does Stone Cold Steve Austin say every time he changes a baby’s diaper?
A: Austin 3:16 says I just wiped your ass!

"Last Train Home" by Pat Metheny

From September 2007 to June 2008, my main method of transportation between Bellingham (college) and Port Orchard (home) was the Greyhound Bus. The filthy, disgusting, degenerate Greyhound Bus complete with a urine and shit-scented bathroom and mentally unstable passengers who have an uncanny knack for breaking out of straightjackets. It was a miserable experience that I don’t wish to repeat anytime soon. One day in late 2008, my senior year of college, I was in the bus station with my mom and I told her in the saddest voice possible, “I hate this place.” It wasn’t hard for her to see why. Therefore, instead of taking the putrid and rancid Greyhound Bus with dirty diaper stains and beer-scented creeps, I took the Amtrak home on the weekends. The train is a much gentler experience than an intercity bus. The people are sane, the staff is friendly, the scenery is much more pleasant, the passengers get to move around at will instead of being cramped all the time, and best of all, they had a food lounge in a separate car. Such a joyous public transportation experience deserves a special kind of music and that song is called “Last Train Home” by Pat Metheny. I used to listen to this song all the time when I was a kid, but I didn’t know it until I asked my dad about it. My main question to him was, “What was the song with the train in the music video and the guy who looks like George Harrison?” It wasn’t much to go on, but dad came through for me when he told me the name of the song. It was a worthy quest for knowledge. Imagine these peaceful instruments coming together to make beautiful music: an Indian-style guitar, a grand piano, a snare drum with brush sticks, an upright bass, and maracas. You’ll be knocked out within the first few seconds of the song. That is, if you aren’t already relaxed by the orange and pink sunset followed by the starry night with the vanilla moon in your train window. And just for the hell of it, imagine a hotdog and diet soda on your food tray while you patiently await your next destination. If listening to this music with Bose noise-cancelling headsets, you get bonus points, because if there’s ever a disrupting noise such as children screaming or cowboys laughing, Pat Metheny’s gorgeous music will be all you hear. Simple pleasures such as these open up creative pathways in more ways than just getting schoolwork done. You could actually write novels under these conditions. Or you can do what I’m currently doing, that is edit the hell out of preexisting stories you’ve written in preparation for a new anthology to be released. If you have an imagination as vast as the stars in the night sky, you can make these beautiful circumstances work.

　

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Washington: we’re left of Idaho. Then again, who isn’t?”

-John Keister-

"Like Nobody Else" by My Darkest Days

“September 7^th and she’s headed for school. She’ll probably leave me for some college fool, and I know that’s just the way it goes.” While I wasn’t in a romantic relationship during my college days, I still had people who I was away from for five days a week. Port Orchard may be a crappy town, but it still had the one thing I needed most in those days: my family. Mom, Dale, James, Susan, Reina, the animals, they were all a necessary part of my life. When I went to school in Bellingham for five days a week, my access to these people was very minimal. I had nobody in Bellingham who I could go to for help. My roommates moved out because I snored too loudly. The few friends I did have didn’t stick around long enough for a cup of coffee. I didn’t know of any therapists that were in Bellingham nor did I have a way to get to them. So here I was in this strange little town all by myself. Who would want this kind of loneliness and isolation? Isn’t that what prisoners feel every time they get locked up in solitary confinement? And what was it all for? Forced extroversion? A degree employers don’t care about? Hard-to-understand course material? Classmates who ignore me? I often wonder why I would put myself through this torture in the first place and the only answer that seems plausible is that it helped my writing. Actually, my experiences after college were more helpful to my writing than any class I could have taken. After college, I became a born-again bookworm and started reading fast-paced novels (as opposed to the boring literary garbage we were assigned). I also decided that the only critique I would ever accept from my audience was a hybrid of honesty and sensitivity. Constant reading and openness to gentle critique were what saved me as a writer in the end, not college. In fact, I learned more from joining writing groups on Good Reads than I did in those classrooms. Granted, I was highly immature in those old days, but immaturity eventually goes away with age and experience. So what does “Like Nobody Else” by My Darkest Days mean to me? It may have been the song that convinced me to come home if it was released earlier than 2010 (I went to college from 2007 to 2009). Now that I’m home with my family indefinitely, I still feel bouts of loneliness and depression, but these bouts don’t last as long as the ones in college did. I’m never going away again. Ever. If I do go away, there better be something or someone out there waiting for me. I shouldn’t need a high speed sports car to find whatever’s out there. If there does happen to be someone there for me, I still won’t forget where I come from.

　

***DR. SEUSS QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“That Cat’s gonna suffer like never before!”

-The Grinch-

"Not Gonna Die" by Skillet

I’m not a Christian. I’m not even religious. In the immortal words of Bill Maher, saying atheism is a religion is like saying abstinence is a sex position. Having gotten these items off my chest, my nonreligious status doesn’t deter me away from the beautiful and inspirational music of Skillet. If you listen carefully to the lyrics from “Collide” on, you’ll notice that rarely do they actually mention Jesus or God by name. So that means the lyrics of the songs in which they’re professing their love to someone could be directed at anybody (at least in the atheist listener’s mind). They could be directed at a girlfriend or a wife. John Cooper singing the lyrics “My heart hurts for you” strikes a romantic chord whether that was the intention or not. Before I knew that “Lucy” was a pro-life anthem, I figured it to just be a song about missing people in general, whether they’re dead or simply out of your life. Even though Skillet is considered Christian rock, the listener doesn’t necessarily have to interpret the lyrics as religious. Everybody makes their own interpretations and nobody’s going to tell them otherwise. Let me tell you what the song “Not Gonna Die” means to me. It may be a call to believe in Jesus harder than you already do, but to me, it’s simply an anthem of not throwing in the towel when life becomes too hard to handle. When you give up, you “whisper goodbye” and “flat-line”. But when you “stand and fight forever”, your hard work will bear fruit. It makes me wish this song came out between 2007 and 2009 instead of smack-dab in the middle of 2013. I could have listened to this song forever when I was feeling lonely in college and missing my family. So instead of wishing in one hand and shitting in the other, I used “Not Gonna Die” as inspiration for a short story of the same title. Mario Gustafson, the lead character, finds himself in a similar situation as I was back in my college days. Mario was alone in his dorm room with no one to talk to and his family so many miles away. The difference between me and Mario is that the latter finds his “American family” (he’s a Swedish exchange student) in the form of an unhappy girlfriend of his roommate. Mario takes advantage of Tammy (the girlfriend’s) fragile situation and the two of them form a semi-romantic friendship that is sure to last them at least until the end of college. I’ve never been more jealous of a fictional character in my life. I had a few female friends in college, but we didn’t talk a lot then and we don’t talk a lot now that we have this wonderful invention called Face Book. Do you have a piece of music that speaks to you this way? If so, don’t hesitate to make art out of the inspiration you feel. You might have an idea one day and then it’ll fade away with a quickness if you don’t write it down fast enough. Even for those of you who aren’t “musical people”, if not a beautiful song, then a beautiful movie, TV show, book, or videogame. Find inspiration in something, goddamn it! Heh, I said “goddamn it” in a blog about Christian music. Hehe!

　

***DEPRESSING JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What do romance and All That Remains have in common?

A: A War You Cannot Win.

Defending Your Work

One of the few things I loved about my college days was taking a class on dramatic writing (as in theater, not necessarily as in tearjerkers). Having said that, it always drove me nuts whenever the teacher, let’s call him Bryan, always insisted that the students not explain their work whenever it’s being critiqued. Don’t get me wrong, Bryan was a well-liked teacher and deservedly so. I just never understood why it was such a sin to explain your own work to people who are confused. Fortunately, I had an English teacher, let’s call him Carlos, who said it was perfectly okay. Going back to Bryan for a moment, his main reasoning for not explaining your own work is because the work should speak for itself and that you won’t always be there to explain things to one person. Seems like a reasonable explanation, but when you’re being critiqued, it’s important for your editor to know what the hell’s going on in your story. That way, the editor can steer you in the right direction of what you want to do rather than impose his own will. For example, if you want to express sadness through colors and you use a lot of red in your set design, you’re going to want to express your need for sad colors to your editor so that he can tell you that blue is a better choice. Of course, this may not be the best example I can think of since everybody knows blue is a sad color and red is an angry color. Even so, I hope everybody understands my position on this. While you won’t have the opportunity to confront every one of your confused readers all the time (at least not without the internet), it’s important that they at least know something about the work that they didn’t know before. Knowing Bryan the way I did, he would probably propose the counterpoint of the audience making their own interpretations so that they can enjoy the work without limits. Maybe I can agree with that point since I do that a lot myself when I add books to this blog. But sooner or later, making a faulty interpretation is going to catch up with you, whether it’s with your grades in school or with a mass discussion with your friends. If you say something potentially foolish, people aren’t always going to be there to break your fall. The other students in a nonfiction class I took one time can attest to that since we were reading This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff and I compared two scruffy gentlemen to the mountain men in Deliverance. Boy, were they pissed…or so I was told. But you know what? It doesn’t matter in the end, because if an author wants to explain himself, he’ll do it anyways, probably through an interview with a newspaper or talk show. So deal with it! No offense, Bryan.

　

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What’s a Deliverance character’s favorite soda?

A: Mountain Screw.

"Quiet" by Susan Cain

From the very moment I started reading this book, Susan Cain became my instant hero. Like her, I too am introverted and always appreciate it when somebody recognizes it instead of dismisses it for weirdness. Introverts are not weird people. Enjoying peaceful moments to yourself doesn’t make you antisocial or awkward. It simply means that the world is too noisy for you and you prefer to be alone so that you can actually get things done. Extroverts, you don’t need to worry about a thing, because Susan Cain is not striking against you in this book. She’s not suggesting that introverts are better people than extroverts. She’s suggesting that there should be a balance between them and that these differences need to be accommodated for, whether it’s in the workplace or in a college classroom. I wish someone like Susan Cain spoke to my teachers in college about this subject. In pretty much every class I attended, the students were graded on class participation. One of my theater teachers was one of the worst offenders when it came to singling out introverts since class participation accounted for 30% of the overall grade. You can imagine what emotional pain I was in by the time the class was over after having exhausted every resource in my brain just to make academic small talk. Because of the fact that western world schools force their students to speak up, I may never attend another college class again for the rest of my life. My privacy and solitude mean that much to me. But seeing as how teachers aren’t going to readily change their minds, then I have a suggestion for them that Susan Cain would wholeheartedly agree with. In lieu of class participation, the shy students should be able to post their thoughts on an internet message board. With that kind of wall between the introvert and the rest of the class, solitude and privacy are maintained due to the fact that internet conversations aren’t physically imposing. I’ll even settle for a one-on-one conversation with my teacher over Skype. The point that this book is trying to make is that if someone wants to be left alone or be cerebral, don’t take it personally when he shuts you out. It’s never personal. We’re not misanthropes or antisocial. We’re just peace lovers. Thank you, Susan Cain, for standing up for the quiet types like me and many others out there who are being blocked out by the American noise.

　

***CLASSROOM DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

ME: It’s actually easier to suspend your disbelief with nonfiction than it is with fiction.

LEE: You think?

-Nonfiction Seminar at WWU-

Theatre Roots

Before deciding to go through college as a creative writing major and a theatre arts minor, I originally wanted to double major in psychology and cinema. By the time I was accepted into Western Washington University, I found out that they didn’t have a cinema degree available, so I had to minor in the next best thing: theatre arts. As for psychology, I decided that solving other people’s problems was too exhausting and impossible, so I chose to major in something that I was actually good at: creative writing. Back to the theatre arts major for a moment. The reason I wanted that as part of my educational pedigree was because I liked writing movie scripts and I hoped to make it into Hollywood as a screenwriter. Movie scripts differ from traditional prose because it’s quicker and doesn’t require a great deal of description. Plus, whenever a character talks, it’s as simple as putting his or her name down and writing the dialogue underneath it. When I write traditional prose, it takes me up to half an hour to write three full pages. But when I wrote screenplays, I could get through five pages in almost a third of the time. The process was so quick and painless that I actually wrote a Dungeons & Dragons-style screenplay called Tree Party Nation in a matter of two days. Granted, it’s only about 60 pages, but I still consider it one of my finer moments as a screenwriter. It wasn’t until after I graduated from WWU that I decided traditional prose was more interesting to me. At the time of this discovery, I was playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends of mine over the internet. One of the characters I was using was a level eight human barbarian named Brutus Warcry. I got my start in traditional prose by writing Brutus’ character sketch, detailing his time as a kid in a barbaric tribe to his present day life as an MMA icon. At the time, I firmly believed that it was okay to use hyperbolic descriptions in every other sentence. It made sense at the time because it was so well received by my friends. Two years later in 2012, it dawned on me that it was slowing my writing speed down and most of the descriptions didn’t make sense. So now in the present day of my life, I write using simple descriptions such as one-word adjectives and describing literally everything that’s going on within the prose. I haven’t had any complaints yet. In fact, people seem to like what I do. This is quite the journey to go from a non-reading screenwriter to a bookworm novelist. If it wasn’t for my roots in theatre, I wouldn’t have had the material for my proses. So thank you, theatre roots, for keeping it interesting. Now let’s all do the hotdog dance!

　

***ADVICE OF THE DAY***

If you’re writing a story and you need to use the contraction of “who” and “are“, don’t forget the apostrophe. I can’t stress it enough.

Introduction

My name is Garrison Haines-Temons. I’m a 2009 graduate of Western Washington University with a Bachelor’s in English. Having said that, I didn’t actually become an avid bookworm until just before my final quarter of school. Up until that point, I preferred movies over books. My reasoning for this was that books took too long to read and I wasn’t known for my patience. Ever since I picked up “The Cleaner” by Brett Battles in June 2009, I was still impatient, but the only thing that changed was that I discovered that books dictate their own pace. The books I read in college had very slow paces due to their heavy descriptions and uninteresting subject matter. Therefore, I made it a rule to only read books that dictate a moderate to quick pace. If I have to spend five minutes on one single page, that’s a sign that I’m not going to enjoy what I read. If the author takes multiple pages to describe one single action, that’s another sign of a boring book. I’m not a fan of Stephen King’s work, I rest my case. Carl Hiaasen and Bentley Little? Those are a pair of authors I can lend my support to. This entire blog will consist of book recommendations to you, my wonderful audience, based on their pacing and genre. You won’t see too many multi-layered works here, because they tend to be slow reads that drag on until eternity. Genre literature is more my style. One last thing before I end this introductory post: impatient reading is a style, not a flaw. I heard someone say that and I couldn’t agree more. I’d like to thank the people who spread that philosophy as well as the guy who started that quote. Now then, let’s get started!
　

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Drugs have done good things for us, I really believe that. And if you don’t believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor: go home tonight, take all your albums, all your CD’s, all your tapes, and burn them. ‘Cause you know what, the musicians who made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years? Rrrrrrrrrrrreally fucking high on drugs!”

-Bill Hicks-