The Magic Pen

Ranting, Writing, ,

Fountain PenMany years ago I happened to be at an auction house that had a variety of antiques of all kinds going up on the block. I was there with a friend whose family had several pieces for sale. One of the star pieces for sale at the event was a fountain pen once used by Samuel Clemens (i.e. Mark Twain). The provenance stated it had been used during the period he wrote “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and I was spellbound by the artifact.

Here, sitting before me, just a glass pane away was the tool used by this amazing writer. The very device used by the writer that changed how we write, the voice of books that changed American and the world’s literature. A man who never met a boast he couldn’t top or a story he couldn’t stretch to the very limits of possibility.

It was like a magic totem or fetish to me. Of all the items there and all the interesting histories, that item, that pen was all I could see. It was the personification of being a writer. It was a link to genius and a talisman that I was certain would propel me to get off my ass and write like I always dreamed of writing. The price was . . . equally awe inspiring so I just stared and drank in every aspect of it I could before they got annoyed with me and asked me to stop drooling on the display case.

I remember that pen though. It’s been close to 30 years and I still remember that pen like I had just seen it a moment ago. I do not covet ownership of it. I don’t wish I had the money to get it. Instead I enjoy the idea it is out there somewhere. Like some mystical beast loose in the world. I think of it as better to be out there, the mere sight of it inspiring people to dream . . . to write . . . to create wonderful things in ways no one ever imagined before.

 

What We Keep, What We Carry and What We Think We Threw Away

Writing, , ,

A Journal

I always thought we were like a puzzle box. Intricate and crafted so as to be a challenge to understand but with a core secret little space inside us that we choose what we carry forward with us through life. I was sure of this as a matter of fact and would tell people this philosophy with confidence that what I was telling them was the absolute truth.

Then I was writing my first novel and things I wrote reminded me of things I had long ago forgotten. Emotions I was crafting into my character resonated within me and brought back echoes of phantoms from pages past. Not actual events but mirrors, shadows of things . . . Feelings and thoughts that I would have sworn I had thrown out years ago.

I was wrong.

Writing has been a catharsis in a way. Not that anything is lost or purged . . . Quite the contrary as a matter of fact. We are not a box to hold life experiences in like tiny bits of treasure hidden away but a notebook of all that has been. We are a notebook with a thousand different starting and stopping points and a multitude of covers and ways to open it from different angles and different sides. We carry it all with us.

Everything stays . . . we move on. Like reading a novel, the words at the start do not vanish as you read, we just turn the page. Life is like that. Except in life’s notebook the chapters can be inline or they can be at complete right angles or opposite sides or anything between. They can even be all of the above and other things we can’t describe. Forwards, backwards, sideways . . . we turn the pages however we want to.

The bad we turn the page on and leave behind. The good we carry forward to the next page with us to continue the narrative. Nothing is thrown away though. Blacken it with ink, color it with bright swirls or paste pictures over it. . .it will still be there. Rip it out and the absence will be there like a negative image. You will know what is there by seeing what is not and in that way, it will be there.

We need not look back at those things we prefer to leave behind and they need not color the next page if we choose to move on but, they are there.

So, I was wrong. We do not choose what we carry with us because it is all in the notebook of our life. Nothing is thrown out, nothing discarded, nothing erased. . . but . . .

We choose what we carry forward to the next page.

A Beginning

Ranting, Writing, , ,

Book, Writing, Anxiety

What if I am not good enough?

That is the quiet, ever present whisper in my head as I am trying to finish my first novel. I am confident in the idea and the story. I am sure of the twists and action and the overall story arch and message. I am especially sure of the message which is ironic because that is the major underlying theme of the story.

Yet sometimes the words feel like they won’t come. They feel all bunched up and twisted inside my head so that they don’t flow. Then I wonder ‘what if they are not good enough’. Maybe there is a reason they won’t flow. I know the story is good so maybe it is just the teller of the story that is lacking.

I have published collections of erotic stories that did well enough. I know I can write but what if, in a cruel quirk of fate, I am just not good enough to write something that doesn’t end with a money shot? What if base titillation is the peak of my ability?

I know the advice to just push through and to believe in your own words and not to worry because you can always revise and rewrite. I know those things are all true but still I find myself paralyzed at times by my lack confidence in my own ability to tell a story to the fullness that I think this story deserves. We’ve all read things or seen movies that were good ideas slaughtered by bad writing or, worse still, just left limp with a muddled, lack luster telling. It is like the story was betrayed in the telling.

If I could tell you this story you’d understand why this is so ironic, my own battle with fear. I actually completed it once. I typed out 93,000 words and finished it only to realize that telling it in third person didn’t work. The power of the story is lost if I am not directly linked to the story in first person. I have to own the story even though I am not basing the character on myself in any way; I have to own the point of view. I just feel if I am not willing to put myself into it, to bare myself to it, it means nothing and this story deserves to mean something.

So I am going to be 51 in a little over a month and I am still paralyzed by my fear of not being good enough. I am pushing through, I am pushing the story out because I can always go back and revise and rewrite . . . but it is not easy. Maybe it is not supposed to be.

Maybe the facing of my own fear is the price I have to pay for writing this story.

It is a lot easier to write smut. As long as it titillates, it’s ok. It has served its purpose and fulfilled expectations.

I want something more than OK though. I want this story to be the thing I see in my mind, the emotions I feel in my heart as I write it. I want the power I see in it . . . I want to share that.

I hope I am good enough.