Tag: Writing

Loose Threads

Close your eyes and imagine your favorite sweater. Take a moment to envision it in all its glory. Maybe it’s blue, or red, or maybe it carries a garish Christmas print, or the logo of your favorite sports team or band. When you wear it something just feels right. The way the fabric falls against the contours of your body, the way the neck has stretched out slightly and the elbows are worn through makes it perfect to you. It’s comfortable, it feels wonderful, and you couldn’t ever imagine loving another inanimate item of clothing quite like your sweater.

Now imagine that your favorite sweater had a lose thread, and suddenly you’re faced with a decision you never thought that you would have to make. Do you pull on the thread and risk the delicate stitch work unraveling? Do you try and find a pair of scissors and cut it off, leaving a gap in the intricate pattern? Or do you simply accept that even something as cherished as your favorite sweater can carry an imperfection and leave it alone?

Well, what would you do?

Now imagine that your favorite sweater is in fact the world. The loose neckline is the Northern Hemisphere, the stretched out hemming at the bottom that you have learned to love is the South Pole. That garish Christmas print or logo is actually a cluster of nations defined by borders of water and man-made lines carved into the earth. And that lose thread? Well that my dear reader is what we know as racial intolerance and religious vilification.

I know that it may seem like an odd analogy at first thought, but look a little deeper; look beyond the surface of this earth and see the world for what it truly is. Look at what we as humans truly are: a species of Homo sapiens stretched across the planet with alternate thoughts, feelings, physical attributes and social structures. Yet for all our differences, we are supposed to be bound by one thing: our humanity. Those differences that at first make us seem so incongruous, are merely another tawdry pattern interwoven into the compassion that binds us.

So why the fuck after thousands of years on this earth are we still killing one another in hate? Why are we the only species on the face of this earth at war with itself? And why the hell are we so willing to blindly accept the wedge being driven between races by faceless cowards and men who hide behind misconstrued messages of faith?

There has always been a loose thread in the fabric of the world. With a population of over seven billion people and over four thousand alternating religions, we are bound to have clashes on an ideological nature. But right now in this moment in time, we as a species seem so fucking intent on yanking on the filament until the world unravels like a shitty sweater and anarchy reigns supreme. The thing we love so much: life, is being ripped away from us. We are been bombarded every single day with public imagery of war and hate to the point where we now mistreat and mistrust our fellow man based on the colour of their skin or the faith that they practice.

We’re pulling; we’re yanking on that thread by dividing and segregating ourselves and playing right into the hand to the minute percentage of arseholes who genuinely want to watch the world burn. Yet no one seems to have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say fuck this. There’s a bunch of bullshit on social media that allows the general public to believe that they are making a stand against hate and cultural vilification. You can change your profile picture on Facebook to the colours of a flag belonging to a country who has suffered at the hands of terror. Or you can subscribe to anti-war pages that promote slightly skewed logic to their followers. But no one is really doing anything, are they?

We’re still stuck in this troublesome cycle of fear and loathing, feeding the hunger and needs of terror-based organizations and allowing them to grow. Imagine the world as a sweater once again. Imagine that the loose thread is you and your intolerance of a race of people that is rooted in the media you consume and propaganda you endure. Imagine that you start pulling on that thread; imagine that you start vilifying innocent men and women because of the faith they practice. In turn your friends do too, and the sweater unravels ever so slightly. Those people that you discriminate against grow bitter, and start to lash out against you. Tensions rise. Social order breaks down and the fabric of the world begins to deteriorate as the sweater becomes an unravelled pile of yarn.

Now imagine if you just left that thread the fuck alone. Rather than discriminate against a set of values you don’t fully understand you instead try to learn about them. Rather than create anger you create love and passion. Soon that tiny thread of cultural differentiation becomes obsolete and irrelevant in the lives of those around you and the compassion that binds us grows ever stronger.

We can either have a sweater made stronger by our cultural diversification with a few loose threads throughout the stitching that add character. Or we can pull at the loose filaments and watch our world unravel. The choice is ours to make. We can pretend to make a difference, or we can swallow our pride, roll up our sleeves and actively do something to overthrow religious and cultural vilification. Befriend a stranger, learn their story, and stop passing judgement on matters of faith you haven’t taken the time to understand or comprehend.

You

If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die. That’s what they told you from the very start. If an author pines for you, you’ll be immortalized in their words. Your eloquence will be captured in their prose as they strum at the chords of your heart and kiss the innermost chambers of your naked soul. So let me take off your clothes and take you in my arms.

Let me enfold you. Let me take your heart in my hands and feel it beat my name. Let me be the air that fills your aching lungs and swells within your chest. I’ll breathe life into your soul and be the man who basks in a beauty far greater than his own. Throw your bones against mine and feel the solidarity of my embrace. Let my kiss your skin, stroke your hair and settle your racing mind.

You are poetry in motion; a landscape of flesh so exquisite that to lay my trembling hands upon you causes my heart to skip a beat. I am nothing more than a foolhardy wanderer determined to claim you as his own. You are the fluidity and grace that course through my life as surely as blood passes through my veins. So let me enfold you. Let me take away your pain.

Feel my hands on your hips, my fingers tracing the contours of your curves. I’ll kiss your dimples and run my fingers through your hair. Feel my lips on your neck as I whisper my hopes, dreams and desires against your skin. No words could ever describe the beauty of your cheeks as they burst to life with a rush of blood to the head. I want you to lose yourself in my eyes. I want to be your reason to breathe.

Let me feel you writhe beneath my sheets as I take your breast in the palm of my hand or interlock your fingers with mine. Let me devour and defile you as I pin your hands above your head and leave teeth marks against your skin.

You are divinity incarnate: a woman of heavenly beauty. Angelic in poise and grace. So let me encompass you in my arms and show you what I have yearned for. Let me worship the ground beneath your feet.

Embrace my warmth as I set your world on fire. Watch the flames of my passion rise and fall with every kiss and every touch. Feel the euphoria wash across your skin and cause your hairs to stand on end as my hands grace your delicate surface. I’ll tease your goose bumps and watch them prickle beneath my fingertips.

Let me peel back the layers of your soul and quell your innermost fears. I long to make love to your flesh. But it’s your mind that I crave the most.

So open your heart and take me inside. Tell me your innermost insecurities and fears. Let me take away your pain and carve my name into the chambers of your soul. Let my love enfold you as I capture your magnificence in my prose. You are poetry in motion; the apple of a writer’s eye. So throw your bones against mine until we become one. Let me take your heart in my hands, let me feel it beat my name.

Mediamorphasis

I need you to clear your thoughts. Remove all distractions, torments and dreams. Free your mind and abandon everything that you have ever learned or assumed to be true. For the next thousand words or so you are a clean slate. You have no beginning; nor end. You are an infinite entity uninhibited by prejudice and fear. It’s difficult isn’t? It’s hard to remove all the subjectivity and partisanship that we have allowed into our lives. But this little experiment will be worth the effort. Trust me. I’m a writer.

I want you to think about the evening news. Close your eyes if you have to. Imagine the reporters and journalists on your television screen. They are immaculately dressed in the finest of clothing as they sit at their desks or report live from the field. They look fantastic. Enviable even. One must feel so accomplished standing in a beautiful dress or designer labeled suit as they deliver the current affairs.

But looks can be deceiving. When you turn your attention away from their image and the branding presented to you; when you focus instead on what they are saying, are you still impressed with what you now hear? Death, destruction, and sacrifice reign supreme. A man has murdered his wife. Another has shot five people dead in a robbery attempt. Millions are starving. Wars are tearing the humanity from the clutches of nations. Another child has become radicalized. Every heinous report is accompanied by depictions of broken windows, police units and fractured lives splashed across the screen in a macabre slideshow.

Ruin and woe are threaded so effortlessly through each story that you have become desensitized. The damaged lives and senseless murders of others have been reduced to nothing but sound bites and footnotes that barely even pierce the veil of your subconscious. You have probably never noticed how repulsive the evening news is. Until now.

Every day the media tells us to trust no one and fear everything. Ruin and woe make the world go round. Or so we’re told. But are things really as horrible as we have been led to believe? Is the man whose religion differs from yours actually plotting your demise? Are governments truly lying to us about everything? Is every man, woman and corporation really your enemy?

…The short answer is no. The guy who lives next door and practices alternative beliefs doesn’t give a shit about you. He’s too busy trying to live his own life. The shear logistics required for a government to deceive its people make it nigh on impossible for them to cultivate devious conspiracies against us on a daily basis. And no one actively wants to hate you.

We’ve merely been misled and misinformed in the media’s quest to win our attention. Outlets like current affairs programs, tabloids, and circulars are businesses. As a business their primary objective is to accrue viewers. More viewers equal more money, and big business learned long ago that the human brain is attracted to two things: violence and obscenity.

The world seems to be becoming increasingly grim because the media started exposing the general public to violence, obscenity and disorder through events like the Vietnam War with the intent of providing a genuine insight into the perils of a conflict on foreign shores. But their pure intentions became distorted when marketing began capitalizing on society’s interest in the darker side of human nature. Nowadays media organizations are competing for viewers by continuously pushing one another to feature increasingly graphic and repulsive imagery, and we the viewer have become so bombarded with grotesque content that we have stopped seeing beauty in the world.

Before we go any further I feel like we need to take a quick break so that I can issue a disclaimer… I am a writer first and foremost. I’m not a scholar or leading expert in the media industry. My thoughts that are being presented here should by no means be taken as gospel. If you don’t like my opinions, or don’t agree with them, that’s fine by me.

Alright, let the controversy begin.

The media has undergone a metamorphosis. What was once a medium designed to communicate messages of interest and entertainment has now become a rabid beast hungry for consumer attention. While it is fair to say that we have become desensitized to violence, we have also created a world in which we form judgment and beliefs based off of targeted stories and biased opinion. We believe that the Muslim man who lives down the street is an extremist because we are told to mistrust. We believe that foreign parties are radicalizing children because we are exposing them to adult concepts long before they have the mental capacity to develop rational thoughts and understand their own emotional and chromosomal makeup. And we believe that it is our right to question everything, but we are being led to ask the wrong goddamn questions.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. There are horrible people in the world. It’s inevitable that with a world population of over seven billion people that there are bound to be a few bad eggs. But the murderers, the rapists, the terrorists, extremists and extortionists are a minority. They are not the majority that you have been led to believe…

…So let’s start over…

…I want you to clear your mind again. I want you to empty your thoughts and bias just like you did at the start of this post and try to imagine that you are watching the nightly news again. Picture the anchors, the journalists and field reporters. They’re still dressed immaculately; they still smile at you with brilliant white teeth. But this time they’re telling tales of a different tune.

Instead of reporting that a man of Islamic decent has been arrested on terror related charges, they are instead talking of the Sheikh who has encouraged his community to aid the homeless. Instead of a story reporting that a man murdered his wife, there is one describing a man who loves his partner so dearly that he has professed his love with a hundred red roses. Instead of a child being accosted for attempting to carry a weapon onto a classroom, they are praising a school for their academic and sporting excellence.

Imagine how different our outlook on the world would be if the media presented stories designed to expand our minds and highlight the better angels of our nature rather than beating war drums and chanting tales of ruin and woe. If you knew of the wonderful deeds that they had completed, would you still be so quick to judge your fellow man? Would you still be so afraid of everyone and everything? And do you believe that we would be plagued with the same issues currently eroding the fabric of our society if we focused on positivity and progression rather than fear and violence?

I’m not saying that we need to be ignorant. We should never turn a blind eye to the one percent of mankind that choses to hate and destroy rather than love. There is no heaven without hell and without those heinous acts of brutality and violence we could never truly appreciate just how lucky we are to be alive. But we shouldn’t allow that same one percent to rule us through fear. The media has undergone a metamorphosis and led us to a horrible state of misinformation and hysteria. And if they can transform once, then surely they can do it again. So isn’t it about time they evolved into a medium of integrity and human decency once more?

Literary Criminals

“This city deserves a better class of criminal. And I’m going to give it to them.”

-The Joker

The word criminal carries some negative connotations doesn’t it? We associate the word with crooks, delinquents and thieves living in the shadows as they commit devious acts. And why shouldn’t we? The word criminal is a label bestowed upon someone who commits an action or activity considered to be evil, shameful, or wrong. From an early age we are taught that crime is vile, and therefore a criminal must be equally as abhorrent to our society.

But we live in unprecedented times where the very definition of the word has become tainted. Politicians mislead and misinform, men of faith commit shameful acts, and laws are broken in the name of freedom while outlaws fight for their civil rights. The lines of right and wrong are so convoluted that it’s becoming increasingly impossible to distinguish a felon from a hero, and good intentions from underhanded persuasion.

So let’s loosen the reigns on the whole criminal angle just a touch so that we can flesh this out a little more. Let’s steer away from crime and talk about social disorder, antisocial behavior, art and literature.

Not unlike crime, social disorder is typically defined as an action or activity that is incongruous to the best interests or equilibrium of the larger community. Whereas crime is repugnant, social disorder merely upsets. We are repulsed at crimes; yet tolerate minor misdemeanors like graffiti, despite the fact that delinquents and criminals commit both acts and they have equally negative impacts upon society.

Are you keeping up so far? Good. Let’s get to the art and literature and start blurring the lines between right and wrong. Are you ready to taste the bitter tang of social disorder?

I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a fucking criminal trapped inside a cell. I was born into an age of intellectual neglect where cheap gimmicks and slick marketing have trumped my work ethic and talent leaving me subdued and alone. Society has allowed the creative arts to die and ridiculed me for trying to save it. I’ve been labeled an outcast and immoral by the very people that I have aimed to inspire.

My crime? I care. I care so goddamn much that it hurts my heart to see brilliant and audacious artists beaten down and cast aside in favour of bullshit. I spend every single day searching for beautiful pieces of literature, art and music that will never be seen by more than a few while millions devour mass produced shit spoon fed to them by snake oil peddlers and slick salesmen.

You want to know what my crime was? I made a deal with the devil and begged to be different. I wrapped my hands around the equilibrium threaded through our society and tried to break it apart.

But it was an act of passion; an act of love that was misconstrued and seen as evil. All I ever wanted was to create a little social disorder and save the industry I love. Is that really as monstrous as I’ve been led to believe?

Creativity is dying. Shot through the heart by advertising campaigns and pseudo-celebrities who thought that fame was more important than the vision that lead them to celebrity in the first place. Now here I am on my knees with using my hands to plug the bloody holes left by their bullets. I’m covered in claret, but I refuse to let what I love become carrion discarded by a world who no longer values intellectual diversity and beauty…

…Alright, maybe it’s not quite that bad. There’s plenty of blood on my hands but the industry will struggle on, wounded by society’s insatiable lust for instantaneous entertainment. The newfound equilibrium in the creative arts places less and less emphasis on literature, meaning that book sales are on a downward spiral. Even though more authors are being published then ever before, just over one percent of them are finding their ways into bookstores, profits are razor thin, and younger generations are turning their backs on the written word.

It’s an extremely worrying trend, but the saddest thing about the industry’s current predicament is that rather than having publishers and agents look towards new and exciting authors to recapture the audiences they’ve lost and the minds of younger generations, they’re trying to replicate successes of days gone past. Imitate rather than innovate. But it’s not working. Not like it used to.

I’ve been really struggling to find my rhythm with blogging lately. While there are a few personal issues involved in my creative slump, it is largely due to growing frustrations at the manner in which society views and values entertainment. I tell myself every single day that I’m the best writer of my time and that I’m only getting better. But sometimes I feel a twinge of self doubt when I see literature devalued in comparison to emerging (and senseless) mediums. The creative equilibrium of the modern world is skewed and it’s time to set it right; even if it takes a little literary crime and social disorder to do so.

This world needs a new breed of author who isn’t afraid to engage in social misconduct, create a little havoc and breathe new life into the aching lungs of the industry choking for air. Fans of prose and fiction deserve a better class of author. And I’m going to give it to them.

I could give you some bullshit speech here about how I’ll push myself to new creative limits and try to further the industry, but you and I both know that it won’t work. We’ve been there before. I’ve spent years trying valiantly to be the man who redefines the written word and all it got me was a prison sentence when I was caught plugging up the holes of a bleeding industry with my fists. What I will say is this: it’s time for emerging writers to find rise and start smashing in the windows of ignorance, marching against the fall of literature and setting the world ablaze.

Traditionalists will call us criminals. They’ll distance themselves and say that we don’t represent the craft they love. We will be viewed as literary outlaws and delinquents who stand for something foreign. But that’s OK. The greatest accomplishment a writer can ever realize is to stir emotion within their readership, even if that emotion is discontent.

This social disorder can extend beyond the boundaries of my industry too. We can start a revolution, one man or woman at a time. I’m calling out to the wolves, world eaters and literary criminals across the globe and asking them to stand proudly beside their prose and fiction. I’m asking artists, musicians, athletes, and fucking everyone else who has ever had a passion and a dream to rise up and stake their claim.

This world deserves a better class of writer, painter, singer, musician, lawyer, doctor, mother, father, and everything else. And we’re going to give it to them. You and I. All it takes to change the world is a little social disorder.

The Lion’s Gaze

There is an ancient fable from Terma in which Padmasambhava, a literary character, appears before a Terton and teaches him how to better focus his emotions. Padmasambhava says that when a stick is thrown to a dog, the dog will chase the stick. Yet when you throw a stick to a lion, the lion chases you. A dog’s gaze will always follow the object: the stick. The lion gazes steadily at the source: the thrower.

Yep, that’s right. After a brief absence from this site I’ve returned to drop some obscure philosophy served with a side of self-indulgence on you that’s sure to leave you scratching your head wondering why the hell you’re even reading it.

But hear me out. Open your mind and be prepared to look beyond the stick and instead focus on what is really important: the thrower, and why they tossed it in the first place.

The stick is a distraction; a frivolous entity designed to draw your attention away from your heart’s true desire. Yet so many of us chase the damn thing every fucking time that it’s thrown, diligently returning it to its owner, only for them to hurl it in a different direction. So many of us are as loyal as a hound, and that loyalty ultimately becomes our undoing. We play according to the rules of men and women distracting us with a petty game of fetch, when all we really want is for them to treat us as equals or allow us the opportunity to blossom.

A lot of people have been commenting on how quickly this site has grown over the past few months. Your writing has improved! Your followers have exploded! You seem so much happier in your work! All of which are true. I’ve put in a lot of hard work into what I am producing and amassed numerous sleepless nights as I’ve toiled away at my writing. It hasn’t been easy, and at times I’ve wondered why I chose to enter such a fickle industry. Yet when people ask me what inspired the metamorphosis between the boy I was eighteen months ago and the man I am today, I’ve struggled to answer.

            I’ve learned to silence my ego. I say. I’ve let go of my hate.

I haven’t though. I’m still the perpetually frustrated mind I was back when I was producing endless streams of whiney bullshit to a lackluster audience. And I’m still arrogant as sin. I don’t understand humanity, and I struggle to tolerate much of popular culture. Yet I have grown. And I have improved. But I’ve never really understood what changed inside of me that allowed me to become someone with a published novel and a chance to actually carve my name in the walls of the literary industry.

Until I learned about the lion’s gaze.

When I first told myself that I was going to become a writer I did what most people do. I dove headfirst into an industry that I didn’t really understand and started fetching sticks, wrestling them from the mouths of other like-minded authors and presenting them to literary masters. Get and editor they’d say. So I did. Tone down the violence. I obeyed. Jump through this hoop. Sit. Roll over. Play dead. I’d bow down at their feet and do anything that I could just to capture the attention of the industry. But the industry itself was merely throwing sticks into a field to keep me occupied.

The problem with trying to earn the respect of someone or something in this manner is sooner or later they are chucking more sticks then you can ever hope to fetch. You become confused, unsure what direction you should follow, or what branches are worth retrieving. Soon that confusion festers and becomes anger. You’re tired. You’re bitter. You dream of success and of lashing out to bite the hand that feeds. You become so caught up in playing games of fetch that you just end up chasing your tail around in circles.

But you don’t have to hunt distractions. It took me a long time to learn this but it’s ultimately true. The difference between the shitty little blog that I ran eighteen months ago and Renegade Press is that I learned to ignore disruption and interference, stop chasing sticks and do what I want to do: write fucking entertaining posts that capture the imagination of my readership. I’ve let go of comparing myself to the works of others, I’ve turned my back on purposely trying to cultivate ‘confronting’ pieces, and I’ve allowed my work the opportunity to be judged based solely on its merit.

It’s been a sharp learning curve, and at times when I’ve felt my confidence falter it has taken all my strength not to start playing fetch and conforming to the whims of others once again. To help me through I created foundations of strength through my wolf and world eater monikers, but never once have I taken my eyes off of my ultimate goal: to write damn good literature.

When you understand what your heart truly desires you have to learn how to develop a lion’s gaze. You have to teach yourself to ignore the distractions that life throws at you and never allow yourself to lose sight of your dream. You may dream of being a writer like me. You may aspire to be a parent, or a lover, an artist, lawyer, doctor, or poet. The dream itself can be anything. But that fire, and that intestinal fortitude to never lose focus even when times get tough is what ultimately allows us to grow and achieve.

When Padmasambhava, appeared before the Terton he taught him that the slightest shift in perspective can change the world. When I stopped focusing on chasing down frivolous exploits or competing with others and focused instead becoming a better writer, I altered the course of my life and found success.

Now it’s your turn. Take a moment and ask yourself if you were to shift your perspectives away from the unimportant and block out all distraction, where would your lion’s gaze be focused?

What could you achieve?

Why the hell are you still chasing sticks?

An Interview and Apology

I feel as though I need to apologise as my posts have been a little sparse as of late. I recently put life on hold to go on an overseas adventure, but now I’m back at home and ready to start posting again really soon.

In the interim I recently completed an interview over at TJ Talks Writing. If you’d like to check it out just click here.

If you would like a hint as to what’s in store with my next post all I will say is this: Close your eyes and imagine a lion, a dog, and a stick.

Fire & Ice

‘No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.’

-Aristotle

I often have days where I contemplate giving up. They’re the kind of days where I sit down at my computer to write and think to myself why the hell am I doing this? I’m twenty six years of age and I’ve never had a career, I’ve never finished any of the multiple university degrees that I’ve started, and despite having served more than a decade in the workforce I don’t really have anything of substance to my name. I really struggle when those moments arrive. I sit at my computer for hours and stare blankly at a screen clouded by my own insecurities and self-doubt wondering why I don’t just give up and become happy like everyone else. I want to be a writer; I am a goddamn writer. But in those moments I question whether I have what it takes to make a career out of this.

I hate those days. I hate when all the bravado and bluster is stripped away and the lost, lonely little boy that I once was is left sitting naked before a computer he bought with labors that make him feel ashamed. However for every day of isolation and insecurity that I suffer through there is a day of contentment. For every hour of self-doubt there is a period where my fingers dance so effortlessly across a keyboard, or my pen scribbles frantically against pages in a desperate attempt to keep up with the thoughts spilling from my mind.

I’m a man of contradictions. I’m a wolf; yet at times as vulnerable as a wounded beast. I’m a world eater, yet at times I’m afraid of my own realities. I’m a man, but still a child. And I’m a writer. Yet I still feel like I haven’t quite made it. I’m succeeding, but at times I look around at the life I’ve tried to create and all I can see is the decaying carrion of opportunities squandered.

Someone once told me that I must be crazy to try and create a life out of writing books. They were right. The truth is that I’m frigging insane. No one of a sound mind would ever spend ten years chasing down a career with no clearly defined path and no guarantee of success. They’d think that such a perilous decision was insanity. And it is. But after ten years I couldn’t imagine living my life any other way. I’ve become so used to being lost in my own thoughts that to lead a normal existence where I’m just like everyone else seems too difficult to comprehend.

So while everyone else I know lives in the present; I live in a world of fire and ice.

In those down days when I feel alone my mind is ablaze, yet my heart is frozen. While an inferno of self-doubt melts away my confidence and cripples my desire to write, coldness settles over my chest until my heart becomes as fragile as glass. If I were to cradle it in my hands and let it fall to the floor it would shatter into a million pieces and the dreams that I’m fighting for would be lost forever.

In my brighter days my heart burns with a force capable of turning the entire world to ashes, while my head is icy, calm, and methodical. The fires of my soul feed upon failures of days gone by and leave behind a head of dispassionate clarity. My heart ingests all the self-loathing and negative thoughts like oxygen, turning them into creative fuel. In those days I watch the world burn in the eyes of my peers and I know that I am good enough; and that if I just keep fighting for my dreams one day I will achieve them.

Lately I’ve been feeling pretty down. I’ve been struggling to find the inspiration to write and have felt the bitterness of winter turn my heart to ice while the firestorms of my mind have reduced my creativity to dust. I feel like I’m forever on the cusp of success and as though I’m always chasing something new. I wanted to write a novel; so I did. I wanted to see my work in print; and now it is. Now I want to do it all over again; so I am. I feel like I’m stuck in this perpetual cycle of fighting for my dreams and I’m so goddamn tired. I’m tearing myself apart every day just to thaw my frozen heart and hopefully lay the foundations of future successes. I’m stuck in a terrible case of writer’s block,  but I’ve been trying. I promise that I’ve been trying.

I’ve been sitting at my computer and forcing words onto a page. They’re not very good and none of them will ever appear in any blog post or book. But at least it’s something. And with each word that I manage to write a little piece of my heart softens and I begin to melt away the ice that leaves me feeling alone and set the world alight once again.

I may feel a little lost right now, but I’m never going to give up on this. I’m never going to quit no matter how lonely those darker moments may feel. Writing is so ingrained in my soul that without it I wouldn’t be half the man that I am today. We all have self doubts and moments where the odds seem stacked against us. In those times others may look at us and believe that we are mad to fight so valiantly when all hope is lost. But the only madness is giving in and throwing away a dream you want so badly that it hurts. Self-doubt will always pass. You just have to keep your head down low and work through the negativity. Keep pushing and refuse to give up. After all, there’s no point in coming as far as I have only to give up just because of a little fire and ice.

Landscape

landscape

I lie beside her and watch her back rise as her lungs fill with air. She breathes so carelessly in her slumber. She holds her breath deep in her lungs for the faintest of moments before she exhales and her body melts into the softness of the bed. A smile creases her lips as my fingertips graze her shoulders; firmly enough for her to feel my presence, but light enough so as not to rouse the muse twisted between my sheets. Her lips curl so gracefully in the corners, her cheeks dimple in response. This woman, this muse of mine is beautiful; from the crown of her head down to the tip of her delicate toes. And as I lie beside her and watch the rhythmic movement of her breath I can’t help but imagine how glorious it would be to shrink myself so that I can explore every inch of her not as a woman, but as a landscape.

I would start in the small of her back. To my north would lay the bottom most ridges of her spine. Small vertebrae visible beneath the smoothness of her skin, stretching away into the distance until they slip between the rolling expanse of her shoulder blades and vanish beneath her silky hairline. To my east and west her sensual hips arc and curve beneath her sleeping frame. And to my south the gorgeousness of her buttocks rises beneath a fragment of crisp white sheet that is draped across her. Such choices. Such wondrous journeys await me as I discover her beauty inch by glorious inch.

I would move south, slowly venturing to the crest of her round buttocks. I would cherish my climb; pausing to inspect a freckle, or to marvel at the intricacy of a birthmark. Her skin would be so smooth; my calves would ache rewardingly as I journeyed to the summit. I’d stand atop her rear and pull the binoculars from my hip, casting my gaze down the seemingly endless legs that stretch across my sheets. Oh how I would die to walk the length of her luscious legs I would think to myself before realising that in my miniature state I can do just that.

I’d march across the suppleness of her hamstring, descend the hollow at the rear of her knee, and traverse the concave of her calf. My journey would take hours. I’d stop to note pigmentation here, a scar from a youth filled with sport there, until I arrived at her ankle. I’d follow the runway of delicate bone past her padded heel, through her arch until I reach her toes. Her nails would be painted brightly, my footsteps tickling her slightly as I walk right off of the tip of her big toe onto the sheets before journeying across the bed and climbing onto her opposing limb, reversing my long walk back to her buttocks.

My journey would take me across her hips. Her gorgeous rounded hips would be like walking across a beautiful knoll. They’d rise gently from her back and roll across her side before delivering me to the firmness of her stomach. I’d reach her navel and camp by its edge. I’d dangle my weary legs over the edge and I would marvel at the feeling of her stomach muscles beneath her tantalizing flesh.

Rejuvenated, I would journey on to the base of her sternum. I would take my time to walk beneath her stellar breasts, running my palm against their curves before ascending each one to marvel at the loveliness of her areola. My, they are beautiful. Their pinkness so perfect against the whiteness of her untanned flesh; it is so exquisitely her. I can’t help but imagine how my loins would cherish this moment atop of my muse’s chest.

But my travels would not cease, I would venture on to the nape of her neck, and descend into the crevice of her collarbone. I’d track a path across her neck and over the precipice of her jawline until I arrived at her lips where I would plant the smallest, most fragile kiss she had ever received against them. I’d move to her ear and whisper into it just how completely she moves me as the scent of her hair fills my senses. I would move around her hairline and descend her occipital ridge until I arrived at the upper echelon of her spine between the two matching crests of her shoulders.

I’d begin to walk slowly now. More aware that my journey across the luscious landscape of her if drawing to an end. I’d run my fingertips across her shoulder blades and kneel to plant the softest of kisses against her skin. And when I finally arrive at the small of her back once again I would turn ever so slowly to view the beauty of her once more. My eyes would fill with tears. Neither of sadness nor those of joy. But the tears of a man who has witnessed something more extravagant that he ever believed possible. The tears of a man who believes in God, for he has found the true magnitude of his work in the flesh of a Goddess.

But alas, I cannot shrink to such a minute state of being. I cannot worship my muse as a landscape and venture along her supple flesh. I cannot plant those miniscule kisses against her skin, or stand atop her buttocks with a yearning within my soul. But I can lay beside her as she sleeps and watch as her lips twitch and eyes fritter with the makings of a dream. I can hold her tight as she stirs, and tuck the loose strands of hair that fall loose behind her ear as she wakes. I can be hers, and she can be mine.

Writer’s Laze

For someone who is still finding their way within the literary industry I get an unusually large number of people who email through asking for advice on how to make their own websites more successful. It’s a weird concept to me, especially considering that in the grand scheme of things I have a fairly small about of followers here at Renegade Press. Don’t get me wrong; I’m flattered that someone would ever consider reaching out for advice. I just think that there are probably a few hundred thousand minds that are trust worthier than mine to seek assistance from. Nevertheless whenever such an email arrives I try to find the time to read through a few posts and provide what little constructive feedback that I can to an author not too dissimilar from myself.

While some excerpts require a little more structure or clarity of thoughts, most posts that I read are great. In fact some make me a little worried about my future. I’m still trying to establish myself as a writer and yet the people who are asking me for advice are already out producing me. Not that that is a bad thing; I’m an arrogant piece of work who wants to be the best. I revel in the fact that there are still a myriad of authors ahead of me. It keeps me hungry and pushes me to create bigger and bolder pieces. But for all of the positivity and acclimations I bestow upon these bloggers there’s one reoccurring issue that I tend to point out in the works of others, as well as myself…

…Swearing.

We writers like to believe that we have this insanely broad vocabulary that we can call upon at a moments notice to create poignant and emotive prose. Yet more often than not we resort to vulgarity to drive home a point. We create pieces that butcher the language we love by using lowbrow phrases like fucking hate rather that loathe or abhor. Or we use terrible clichéd expressions like fuck you to allow our reader to understand our angst and frustrations. While it can feel good to write such unrefined prose, it is ultimately lazy and tends to alienate your reader.

-Actually let’s stop for a second because that one is a real pet peeve of mine. Simply writing fuck you is never clever, nor witty, nor anything else. It’s hands down the laziest expression one can use to display angst. No writer anywhere should use such overused, tired, pathetic excuse of a statement. It cheapens what you are trying to accomplish and makes you look like a second rate hack. Got it? Good. Let’s continue…

There are many pitfalls to writing and there are so many factors that can influence the work you produce. Your mood; the music you listen to, films you watch, people you associate with, books you read, exercise, exposure to media, and just about anything else has the power to alter how you approach your work. There’s no exact science to what we do, and the effects that our circumstances have on our craft can range from inspiring creative outpourings during which you produce an endless stream of high quality work, to writer’s block; the dreaded emotional ailment that sees you unable to even form a coherent paragraph. But perhaps the most troubling condition that can befall a writer (young or old) is writer’s laze.

It’s this state of creative complacency that sees potentially great pieces become disjointed postings that just miss the mark they’re intending to strike. More often than not the manifestation of this laze is witnessed through a writer reverting to profanity.

But Chris, you swear all the time…

Yeah I do. And in the interest of complete disclosure it must be said that my excessive use of profanity has become a point of contention with some of my readership. For every email I receive asking for a critique there’s another saying a reader disagrees with my liberal tongue. But in spite of vulgarity’s ability to destroy prose or an argument, in some instances cussing has the ability to further a manuscript or blog post. However achieving such an outcome requires talent. It needs to be used sparingly and needs to be inserted into a piece of work with the utmost precision if it is to further the intrigue or emotional engagement of the reader. It’s lazy to rely on cussing to drive passion into a piece, however it’s extremely wondrous to read the work of an author with a deft mind who can utilize a word like fuck to create a level of heightened understanding within their readership.

For someone who swears as much as I do it can be easy to slip into a perpetual case of writer’s laze. It’s easy to show emotion through profanity, but it’s so much more engaging when a writer produces clean and concise literature that blindsides the reader or creates an emotional outpouring without tramping out the same busted up profanes being uttered in school yards. In some respects it’s a writer’s ability to detach themselves from their writer’s laze and reliance on cussing that separates an amateur from the very best. Profundity can be found in the most structurally fragile piece of work; readerships can be established upon the scaffolding of semi-coherent ideas. But the alienation of a reader through an over abundance of swearing can take a masterpiece and turn it into just another piece of shit.

Run

There’s this photograph: a snapshot in time taken by an unknown photographer and posted onto a website filled with thousands of images pooled together from all over the Internet. It sat nestled in a series of travel pictures, wedged between a photograph of the Louvre at sunset and a deserted island beach with crystal clear water and sands of brilliant white. It was the kind of image that many would skip over and never give a seconds thought. There was no tranquil waters, nor monuments of modern architecture. There was just a camera, a knife, and a gun sitting on a velvet runner. An odd inclusion amongst a sea of exotic locations, but that moment captured in time sent a shiver rolling down my spine.

I’ve never seen anything as striking as that photograph. I’ve never witnessed another image that could cause such a whirlwind of emotion within my soul. But between the camera, the knife, and the gun there was a freedom and simplicity that I’ve always longed for.

We live in a world where we are bound and constrained by our own creations. We wake every day and repeat the actions of the day before. We commute to work and clock into a job that leaves us unfulfilled so that we can earn enough to buy ourselves a few moments of respite or items of leisure that will help distract us from the fact that we are living out the same repetitive movements day after day. We sit in contemplative silence at our desks, in our cars or on the busses and dream of something more. We sit. When all we want to do is run.

I’ve always had a desire to run. I guess that’s why the photograph left me feeling so fragile. It’s what compelled me to save it to the desktop of my computer and stare at it every single day for years.

I’ve never really grasped much of the world that we live in. I don’t understand who decides what is popular, or why some people’s lives seem to be blessed with so much, yet others are afforded so little. I’ve never understood why hardship befalls good people, or why the wicked and heartless continue to achieve. But I’ve never really wanted to either. I don’t want step on others so that I can have a lot. I want to reach down and help out those who have fallen so that we may all achieve together and have just enough.

Sadly though my mentality is frowned upon. It’s a dog eat dog world, or so I’ve been told. People see your humanity as a weakness and use it as leverage for their own personal gains. Sometimes I try to fight against these feelings. I try to fit in. I wear masks to appear normal. I speak poorly of others in a vein attempt to show strength. But all I really want to do is run. Run and be free. I want to liberate myself from feeling as though I have to fit in. I want to take a camera, a knife and a gun and walk into the wilderness and find a freedom that people seldom realize exists.

But I’m not that brave. A guy like me would be eaten alive in the wild. I call myself a wolf but I’ve been raised in suburbia where I’ve suckled on the teat of mindless acceptance and laziness. So instead of living a life off of the map, I write for my freedom instead. I substitute the camera for a minds eye. I’ve traded the knife and gun for paper and pen. I can’t run no matter how much I want to. I can’t vanish into the sunset, but I can dream. I can create worlds to disappear into for a few brief moments in time. I can create literary photographs that provide a glimpse into a life of freedom and peace.

I use literature to create halcyon moments. When the demons of my past or the anxieties of my present become too much to bear I slip into the memories of glorious phrases, subtexts and plots like an intrepid traveller armed with his trusty camera, knife, and gun. I’m never going to understand humanity; I’m never going to be just another number marching to the beat of the majorities drum. But as long as I have my heart and my mind, my pen and my paper, I’ll never have to run.