A Year of Writing Badly

 Two years.

 It has been two years since I last posted here. In fact, I thought that I would never be back. I had given up on writing, you see. On art in general, actually. I had given up on art in general because I had finally come to my senses in regards to the amount of time that I had available to me. That is,the amount of time left after accounting for the giant portions chopped of by financial need and the constantly growing demands of my merciless brood. I had done the right thing, and walked away from my muse in all of her forms.

But you can't walk away from something that lives inside your own head. I accept this, and have given up on giving up.

Who was the writer who said that we all have one million words of crap in us before we get to writing "the good stuff"? I think that it was Raymond Chandler.

Well... whoever it was, let's take his words more literally than he would probably like. The plan is to use this year to write a one million word brick of crap fiction, and to commemorate its end by driving forward into a stronger phase of work.

Um... it is guaranteed to be a stronger phase, right?

Well, I'll keep going whether it is or not. I've given up on pretending that I have a choice.

On My Way To The Lab

All I did was mumble aloud that I had to collect four poems.

She began giggling, and then through a Cheshire cat grin: "You used to write me poems."

"Ah...yeah, I did."

"With a calligraphy pen."

Oh, god. She just pronounced it "cawigwaphy". How far was this going to go?

Her giggles were now lifting her shoulders "That was so cute!"

"Yes...I was dying, and you thought it was "cute".

"But it was!"

I randomly moved the notebooks on our bedroom dresser, as though finding the right formation would end my torture. I glanced to find her staring at me, still grinning.

"No one had ever written me poetry before."

"Well...it's unusual these days, I guess."

A new wave of giggles.

"I thought that you were going to start serenading me under my window!"

"Yeah, couldn't think up a rhyme for 'pussy'."

"You were so cute!"

She threw herself on me drunkenly, though there wasn't a drop of alcohol in her.

"Now, what if it were I who was laughing at you like this?"

"You can't. Boys can't do that to girls, but girls can do it to boys."

"You're right."

And what this boy knew not to do at that moment was to point out what may be a more important truth. That truth being that it was only a function of this noisy age that no one had ever written her poetry. And even more important than that-to me anyway, was that someone as verbose as I am, had never been moved to write poetry for anyone else, no one but this insane creature in my arms.

Meanwhile, her laughter was reaching its apex, and she was talking into my neck.

"And now...after all that...you probably wonder why you did it…and what the hell you got yourself into."

"Oddly...and pathetically...I do not."

I pressed hard on the muscles of her back with all ten fingertips, forcing out the last of her giggles.

She slowly composes herself, sighing. "Oh. Whew. I don't even need drugs. This stuff just happens."

"I don't need drugs to feel weird either."

I resisted the impulse that would keep me too long from my lab.

Why I Write Horror

The Brothers Grimm spoke with nannies and maids throughout Germany to catalogue and solidify stories that had been shaping the psyches of children for generations. All passed forward by word of mouth.

D.H. Lawrence interviewed women of many stations and ages across his native England in search of the roots of those things that they all seemed to know,but would never dare speak of.

The Grimms were exploring the fictions that had shaped psychological truth.

Lawrence was seeking the truths that shaped the most compelling of fantasies; personal late night fictions.

This alchemist finds his gold where these things intersect.

That is why I blend realism with dream.

And in doing so,I find that most of the dreams in this dark world of ours are either nightmares,or could easily become them.

That is why most of what I write will,of its own accord,seep into nightmare.