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30Hz Bl-g

A writer’s manifesto on January 20th, 2017

Today is a day. Today is a day like any other. In Pittsburgh, the sky is overcast with intermittent rain shows. The temperature hovers around 40 degrees. This is what happens in January. Sometimes it snows and wrongly convinces us all that January is not always gloomy in Western Pennsylvania.

a writer's manifesto

 

 A Writer’s Manifesto

 

Right now, just a few hours south, the inauguration of our 45th President of the United States ushers in an era that more closely approximates something out of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley or, well, Mike Judge — who perhaps most correctly predicted this day in the prescient documentary Idiocracy. Somewhere Three Doors Down is playing in celebration of something. That alone warrants concern.

But I’m not here to engage in any kind of political or ideological discussion. Not right now. This is more about how we react as artists. We’ve probably Tweeted and Re-Tweeted, shared Facebook posts, and even made some of our own. Is that the best use of our talents? Is that the best use of our creative energy?

In the time since the election, I’ve been wading through a swamp of disbelief. Guess what? There’s no drain in a swamp. A swamp just is. I’d love nothing more than to pull the plug on this shitshow. It’s not that easy. We can’t bury our head in the rising tide of muck and filth. And we can’t just hope it all dries up.

Tend your garden.

As artists, we cannot be sent into a tailspin of malaise. Use this anger and anxiety. Use this hatred and passion. CREATE. WRITE. PAINT. Do whatever it is that poets do. (I kid.) Use this to inspire yourself to pick up your pen and do what you love. What you set out to do. Exact change through your artistic contributions. Now for a writer’s manifesto, a personal statement about how I plan to endure.

a writer's manifesto

 

So today, on January 20th, 2017 and for the foreseeable future, I vow to do the following:

 

  1. Write.
  2. Read more.
  3. Respect the Presidency but refuse to respect the man elected president. And for the record, I did not like George W. but I still respected him as a man that always intended to do right by his country.
  4. I will not say his name. I will call him Captain Cuntmonkey or Senior Pendejo. Coming up with the most creatively derogatory names as a regular mental exercise.
  5. I will not legitimize. Never legitimize. The man is a cartoon gerbil and should be treated as such. This is not normal.
  6. When all this gets you down, write more.

 

Put something of yourself out in this world rather than retreat inward. Be bold. Allow yourself freedom from your inner critic. Trust your instincts. Surround yourself with good people and trust their instincts. Collaborate.

Join me in ushering in an era of personal accomplishment and creative entitlement. Our collective, creative renaissance begins today. This is our Resistance.

 

 

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30Hz Bl-g On Writing

The Two Week Deadline

I’ve been plugging along on #Bond_age_: The James Bond Social Media Project for nearly 18 months now. The end goal has been, for some time now, to create a book out of everything we’ve accomplished with the project. I’ve had some people express cursory interest in a full-length manuscript. I owe it to myself to give the publication thing a shot.

Thus, the two week deadline.

I gave myself a deadline of two weeks from today to complete the book proposal along with the screenplay I’ve been tinkering with, on and off now, for six months. It too ties into the James Bond project as it is a revisionist version of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER spun off with different characters. I am viewing it as both an homage and a satire of the film I revile and enjoy in equal measure. I wrote my #Bond_age_ essay for DAF considering how I would recast and thus re-assemble the film. Thus NOT IAN FLEMING’S DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (working title) was born.

I plan to use my sluggish bl-g here to document my push to finish both projects. If I confess my inactive days, my distractions, my procrastinations I only have you to blame when I don’t finish and nobody calls me out on my tardiness. I’m already redirecting responsibility…. this will surely be a smash success.

The bottom line is this: I need to finish something. Anything. I’ve been toiling on this book for 18 months. I need to nut up and try to make something out of all this time and effort.

In order to complete my quest I have enlisted Raiden, my go-to Mortal Kombat character from back in the Genesis days, as my spirit animal because he’s a guy that knows how to finish.

Mortal Kombat - Raiden finish him

Words of wisdom, support and/or packages containing liquor are welcome.

Categories
30Hz Bl-g On Writing

Commence NaNoWriMo

It’s November. For some it’s #Noirvember (watch as many Film Noirs as possible). For others it’s NaNoWriMo (write 50,000 words or die trying).

I’ve been “participating” on and off in NaNoWriMo for five or six years. The first year I was just out of my MFA program, and gung f’ing ho to write that first m’f’ing goddam novel! YEEAAAAAHHHH.

NaNoWriMo calendar

Year One:

By the time Thanksgiving hit, I was something like 30,000 words in and hating. every. single. sentence.

I wasn’t into the book I was writing and I’d hit a stone cold wall of self doubt. There’s nothing… and I mean nothing that kills a writer’s mojo more than self doubt. 99.9% of all cases of so-called “writer’s block” I’d guess have something to do with self doubt. That’s how much it cripples me. And it doesn’t happen all at once. It starts with 0ne discordant sentence that grows into a paragraph, a page, a chapter… and then, finally, consumes the entire project. With only a week left, I threw in the towel, scrapped the project and never returned.