I grew up reading fantasy and comic books. This seems pretty standard as these genres are perfectly suited for stirring the imagination of the young and creating excitement for reading in general. In short, many kids start this way. This was of course augmented with the occasional classic, the Tom Sawyers and Treasure Island’s of the world.

Okay, a quick digression about my parents. My mother and father are very conservative people by nature and bought into the idea of protecting their children from the nastiness of the world. This meant no R-rated movies, music was censored, and comedy with curse words were strictly forbidden. Somehow, though, this philosophy was never, at least in my memory, applied to books. I remember my mother’s take on it vividly: “As long as he’s reading…” This was her response to my grandparents suggesting my love of comic books was a problem. “As long as he’s reading” became a (probably somewhat reluctant) mantra for my entire childhood. This was severely tested when, in my early teenage years, I developed a taste for True Crime. I eagerly gobbled up every book on serial killers and mass murderers (they’re two very different things) I could get my hands on, and my parents bought these books for me. They weren’t happy, were in fact quite concerned, but never told me I couldn’t read them. This, parents and prospective parents, is a glorious way to instill a love of reading into your children. Books should carry an element of danger to them, and parents should support while not necessarily condoning the reading choices. End of digression.

My fascination with True Crime led me to gritty, literary fiction. Charles Bukowski, Larry Brown, Raymond Carver, and John Fante became my heroes. When I first started writing seriously, my goal was to emulate these guys. Thus, in my early creative writing classes, I turned in short stories that were bleak and utterly grounded in realism. My professors, possibly finding it refreshing to read young people writing about drunks and the hardness of life, lauded praise on me. I don’t mean to say that in bragging fashion, well maybe a little, but to suggest that this destroyed my development. Over the years, my writing got more and more realistic. I became obsessed with staging, and believable dialogue, while forgetting the importance of things like plot and action. My solution to a lack of action? Make something incredibly violent happen, if possible, a grisly death.

I have had zero success in the real world. Rejection slips have piled up (metaphorically) higher than Manute Bol’s reach. The problem, to be honest, is that my work is kind of boring. And predictable. I’ve come to realize I’m not a tortured soul like Bukowski, nor an alcoholic like Carver. I might have a bleak outlook, but I’m not nihilistic by any means. Further, writing is fun, I’m learning. It’s not just about creating something dark and gritty and devastating, it’s about telling any story I could ever want, a story that sticks with me and hopefully the reader for a long time.

The joke is that he was a very tall man.

I think I’m starting to realize the possibilities of writing now. If I want something crazy, or insane, to happen, then why the hell not? Just write it, and make it good, and believable within the context of the story, right? Of course, it’s not that easy, but it’s a start. My thinking has changed from “what would happen here, to what can happen here? I just rewrote a short story where the climax is a man celebrating the one surviving ant of thousands killed at this man’s own hand. He responds with so much joy at this one life that I got a little emotional myself. Is it any good? I don’t know, probably not, at least it most likely needs more work, but it feels good and fresh and exciting. It’s not boring anyway.

I honestly don’t know if this means I’ll have any more success, or if this post is in any way exciting to any of you, but I feel something changing in my approach and I can barely contain it anymore. Plus, I haven’t posted anything in a while, so there you go.