When I Started Writing Stories.

Photo by Dan Foy 

Thinking about when I started writing stories. I can’t remember exactly when it began. Some time in elementary school. Actually it’s the only thing I did. I refused to do math or science or history or anything else. I’d just doodle on the white paper they gave me and tune the teacher out.

Lots of parent teacher conferences. 

Suggestions of Ritalin. (My folks ignored those.)

Shameful report cards.

But come English I always wrote stories and I got good feedback from the kids when I read them to the rest of the class.

Well…usually. A gory horror story left everyone in shocked silence. And I think it lead to another parent teacher conference. I don’t know. There were so many of them I can’t keep track.

I guess I was a troubled little kid, but now a lot of the edges have fallen out of my mind in a Vaseline of nostalgia and it seems I turned out all right.

Then sometimes I remember bad stuff.

It’s funny old days seem either wonderful or terrible according to my mood while the present is a steady middle.

Maybe that’s the way it always was.

Fun

                                                          Photo by Tom Hodgkinson 

Trying to have fun, but I don't know how. 

When I was a kid I didn't have that much fun either. 

Kid's are supposed to have fun and then you put away your childish things, but to tell the truth I didn't have that many childish things to put away.

I guess smiling with my wife is the best thing I've got going for me in the fun area. It's no wild disco, but I like it.

Writing stories is fun, sending them out is okay, but that's more business.

I don't know if anyone reads them or doesn't, but the process of making them available--well,  I wouldn't say it's much fun, but it's valuable.

If I was an actor I'd get applause. I could gauge how well I'm doing by how much applause I got.

A writer doesn't have that. You kind of just hope.

Not trying to be negative here, just trying to figure out how to have fun. 

So writing is fun, getting readers has the potential to be fun, if I'm getting them, which I have no way of knowing. At least I'm getting published sometimes. You figure someone's got to be looking at my stuff at some point.

I guess I won't really know if anyone's reading my work until I get a book of my own. If it sells, I'll have some idea.

Of course, people buy books, but don't open them...

Fan mail?

I've had a few nice comments over the years in comment sections.

My wife's made nice comment's, but she's my wife.

So I started out trying to think of how to have fun. Now I'm worried about my author career, which isn't fun at all.

How to have fun, how to have fun, how to have fun...

No Sleep

                                                              photo by Howard Lake

 I've been doing okay. The days melt into each other. I swear I posted last week, but it seems I posted over a month ago.

Put a story into No Sleep on reddit and in a way it's been a great experience. 

No Sleep is a group collection of frightening stories that are all true. Really they are. Promise.

If you want to read mine, press here.

I know it's not pro, but 38 thousand people read it and I got 88 percent upvotes and a guy made a video out of the thing and I'm really, really happy. 

When I get stories in magazines--well, the magazines are very cool, but I don't know how many people read them and it's a lengthy process. Full of rejections, waiting.

This was fast.

Like lightening fast, I just wrote it, and sent it, and boom.

I know it's amateur, but it was so much fun. Like jumping into a cold lake on a hot summer day.

It was refreshing.

Will I send them another one? I don't know, but maybe I will.

Fall's here. I like it. Zesty breezes.

Meanwhile, I've sent out more stories to respectables. And...I'm waiting. The usual.

Wish me luck.

Words

                                                    photo by charcoal soul

Nice day today. It’s getting a little cooler around here. Still hot, but not scorching. Looked out at the trees from the windows in my bedroom.

Then I worked on a story.

I've taken a long time off. Family issues.

It feels strange to be writing again. Some things still come natural and other things are shaky. Like I’m in the process of getting my brain together into pages where once I didn’t have to think about it.

It will be flowy for awhile and then it’s not as flowy as it used to be.

I’m not worried because I know I’ll fix it in the mix.

By the time I’m finished no one will be able to tell the stops and starts of my work.

It will just be a story.

Unless of course I throw it out before I’m done. And go back to looking out my bedroom window. And forget about being a writer for a bit.

I don't think I will, but it's always a possibility. 

I’m just not worried about it though. That gives me a freedom.

I do like words.

Not genius.

 

                                          Photo by Alexander Henning Drachmann

Getting back to posting after a while.

Thinking of starting a substack, but I don't know if I have enough to say. 

Also, don't know if anyone listens or no one listens. 

Some kind of stats thing, but I'm really bad at graphs. Don't know what they mean. If the graph goes up does that mean someone was here or is that just me it's recording?

Sometimes the graph seems up a few notches and then sometimes it seems level and sometimes it goes down a little

To tell the truth, I don't know what it's saying.

I'm not an idiot, but I'm very bad at math.

Anyone there?

I'm a better writer then anything else, but I'm not a genius writer.

Published somewhat. 

Will I get anywhere?

We shall see, what we shall see.

Card from Kyle Gray's Divine Master Oracle Cards. Art by Jennifer Hawkyard.

Dream

 

photo by Sohaib Ghyasi

Nothing much happening around my neck of the woods. No news is good news.

Shame about  Afghanistan. President Biden makes it sound like their army is a cowardly one who won’t fight, but I’m wondering if they’re severely outnumbered, can’t seem to find this info in any of the articles I’m reading, don’t know where to look; only the basics seem to filter down to me.

The days here are hot, but now cooling off a little. Yesterday was pleasant: a breeze. The problems of the world swirl around the back of my brain like awful fiction contradicting my quiet American suburb. The problems seem unreal, but they’re not.

Unless you call everything unreal. All the physical universe a dream.