Mutant Pizza

Who’s writing this, man or machine? Bloody organs stitched together patchwork-like around calcium sticks with individualistic beating-heart rhythm, or a mess of boxes and conveyor belts producing sausage words and occasional email correspondence — it’s a choice, really.

I’ve spent the past three years clambering over rocks piled in the curves of my brain, trying to read the stones. When I was young young (younger than young), I wrote poetry and prose and rattled loose papers at anyone who would be tricked by my pitiful eye. My writing was raw, as I’ve been told, and scratched at something, something good. Something engaging. The distinct note from my readers, the one I got tired of hearing, was that my writing lacked structure.

Flog me harder!

“This is a good rant, but where is it going?”
“This is engaging but I don’t understand how it relates to the other events.”
“This paragraph is too long, it’s just really long, and it’s weird and terrifying; this paragraph is like peering down a long well and chanting ‘Marco,’ only for the well to respond ‘jump on in, the water’s fine.’”

Okay, I’ve never in my life received that lsat bit of feedback, but you get it — this was a song I was tired of hearing. If people are put off by my weird writing, how am I ever going to be a successful writer? My identity was slowly being chipped away at by friends and acquaintances. That type of thing also just seems to happen to us when we’re young and reflecting inward and sorting our brain stones. Identity crises, am I right?

At the time, I felt I needed to change it up. Become a different caliber of writer. Someone who people enjoyed reading, who had a clear, non-bombarding way of writing. My rants would go places, baby. Yes, straight in the trash. Edit edit edit, then edit some more.

Get yourself cleaned up

I refined and refined and refined and, well, wouldn’t you know it, no one was paying me to play around with the word clay and *find myself* as a writer. I had to acquire currency for trivial material possessions like food, shelter, and DVDs. I adapted to the corporate times, a sellout, a shill, a capitalist yardstick. I traded my precious words for currency serving the most mundane of purposes: software.

The past fifteen years of my professional life — my ca-ching! make that money, honey life — stringing together text in ways most purposeful. Friendly, professional, plainspoken, informational, and as brief as possible, that’s the blowhard warcry of the technical writer, the witchy spell-chant of the UX writer. I spent years writing non-creatively for non-creative use cases. No spice, but structure in assorted and distilled spades, my friends.

Not ones and zeroes, but just as boring

Two years ago, I was lucky enough to exile myself from techno-corporate communities everywhere. I’m sure the feeling of elation was mutual; I fucking hated spending time arguing over why the word or phrase I want to use is better than the word or phrase the non-writers want to use. I always won those arguments and my words were always used, but wasting time bickering over something I wrote that, in the grand scheme of all things beautiful and fun, I didn’t give a nugget of shit about was spirit dissolving for me.

When I left money ingesting based business software for businesses, by a business-style writing, I leaned hard into my creative writing. While I had a full-time UX writing job, I released The Aether: A Scifi Collection. I had little idea of what I was doing. (Hey, don’t agree with me on that! You’re supposed to be thinking “you knew what you were doing, all those stories were Perfect with a capital-P!” not “I’ll say, those were like the expired mayonnaise of scifi short stories.”) I worked hard on that collection while maintaining ridiculously long normal job working hours. Oh, and I designed board games as well — toot, toot goes my horn! (Not in a weird way.) I’m proud of the work. I’m proud of those stories, but…

But…?

Butt (hehe). There was something missing from the work. I felt it. I’m sure readers felt it. They were good, not great. Years later, I released the ten short stories plus four new ones in a highly-edited, zippy new collection called Transfiguration. Much better *ahem*.

Butt…? (more hehe)

But something was still missing: Me. The real writing growth journey is the me we discovered along the way, or something. The edited stories had a better quality, I can’t deny, but they didn’t have as much of my personal, exhausting, ranting, critical and scrutinizing scattered brain rocks. I realized that I needed to stone anything new. Wait, that sounds like dark age torture. No, no, it’s accurate, moving on…

Let me serve up a three course meal of words, an intro to a story I wrote when I was a freshman in high school, that same story that I rewrote and had professionally edited as an adult, and the intro of a *new* story I just completed the rough draft of last week:

Walt Whitman (First Edition)

This is the worst night of my life. I have to write three pages on Walt Whitman’s influence on literature for my AP English class, and all my dad cares about is looking good for his dumb date with dumb Debbie Walsh’s dumb mom. I don’t even remember her name. Ms. Walsh; Ms. Dumb Walsh. Dad always proofreads my papers and now he can’t because he’s got the hots for some dummy.

Walt Whitman (Second Edition)

This is officially the worst night of my life. Three pages on Walt Whitman’s literary influence are due for my AP English, and guess who’s not around to lend a hand? My father. He is so preoccupied with trying to look good for his dumb date with dumb Debbie Walsh’s dumb mom. I don’t remember her mom’s first name, so here’s a new one: Dumb. Ms. Dumb Walsh. Dad always proofreads my papers, and now he can’t because he’s got the hots for some dumb dummy.

Working Title “Pirate Radio” (Rough Draft)

After all of the dutiful United Solar Empire grunts’ egos have been satiated and they’ve scurried off the good ‘cargo ship,’ Calliope’s Lyre, Captain Lo spray paints an X on three of the imposing crates meant to house massive USE-grade computer console units. These console are designed modularly to fit in any station of any department of any Neo-Dreadnought class starship. And for the record, as in the manifest, they all are massive USE-grade computer console units. Off the record, as in reality, these three crates freshly adorned with precision crossing lines — straight as arrows from a practiced Captain’s hand — have something special in them. A band. Not the rubber kind or the ‘merry men’ kind, but the music kind.

This last excerpt feels more like me. The most, in fact. It’s a rough draft, so rounds of editing will change the writing, but I believe this is the me I was looking for all these years. The old me. The new me. Raw ingredients with a pinch of structure.

For the first time in a long time, I can see myself in my writing. And that gives me confidence, darlings. I guess you can say I’ve finally arrived.

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What fresh hell have I just read?

This was the first in an inconsistent series of articles on my journey as an author. To stroke my pencil-dick ego further, I must write essays about the act of writing. Yes, yes. And when that shallow content well runs dry, I may even write about writing about writing. Then, I can write about writing about — hey, wait, where are you going?

Okay, okay, I’ll stop. In conclusion, the universe is heartless and without warmth. Until next time!