Tag: Writing

TCB

Believe it or not I fail a lot of university courses. It probably sounds rather peculiar to hear considering that my debut novel has just hit bookshelves, but my writing style isn’t necessarily what some tutors or lecturers would deem as palatable. For those who know me well it’s no secret that I struggle in my university studies. I’m currently six months into my seventh attempt at obtaining a degree, and it’s taken all of my intestinal fortitude not to throw in the towel again. It turns out that conventional education isn’t designed for a self-assured writer who refers to himself as a wolf and a world eater. I have a nasty habit of enrolling in a course only to quickly lose interest when the realisation that you just can’t teach creativity dawns upon me and I start cussing at anyone who will listen about just how frivolous university is.

Or at least that’s what I tell myself. The truth is that for a long time I just assumed that I was destined to be the John fucking Lennon of literature and that completing a degree was merely something I would do to kill time before achieving superstardom.

Ah, delusions of grandeur. They’re great aren’t they? Why take your education seriously when you can just coast through, fail, then expect to still become something better than your efforts deserve.

The very concept of my thought pattern sound ludicrous. Do nothing: achieve everything. And yet I’ve whittled away time in courses based upon grammatical construction, contemporary literature, and god knows what else waiting for the moment my name hits the best sellers lists. I’ve done little more than the bare minimum and then blamed everyone except myself when I haven’t achieved the grades I know that I am capable of. Then when I have inevitably failed I’ve done the stupidest thing possible and quit.

But quitting is a fool’s decision. What I need to do is learn how to take care of business. When things get tough, you don’t throw in the towel and walk away. You dig deeper, you fight harder, and you transcend beyond the bullshit roadblocks holding you back.

See, I think university for creative writing is bullshit. I genuinely don’t believe that spending time in a classroom studying or writing pieces that are tailored towards achieving a grade is the best use of any creative mind’s time. You can teach someone the basics of narrative, grammar, and the likes. But you can’t expect to create a passion or an urge to push the boundaries of one’s creative potential simply by clicking through a few lecture slides or by prescribing homework. University has its place within the education system. But teaching something as subjective as creativity is fundamentally flawed and virtually impossible. If I had aspirations of being a journalist or writing copy then maybe I would feel a little differently. But I’m a goddamn wolf tearing at the door of the literary industry. If someone stands in my way and tries to preach how conventional education can improve my creative process, they’re going to be savaged.

Nevertheless it’s this aversion to conventional education I battle with every single time I attempt to study that makes the completion of a degree so important to me. I don’t need help trying to cultivate creativity.  I’m fortunate in the fact that I have an extremely overactive imagination and a tongue laced with acid. But the discipline required to apply myself to something other than my creative endeavours will become increasingly important as I continue to grow and develop as a writer.  I once met a world renowned author who told me that the bigger his name became, the less time he actually had to write as he was forced to indulge in a plethora of alternative ventures. Therefore university is imperative to me simply because it’s teaching to expand my mind and struggle through adversity rather than simply giving up.

Immerse yourself. Then swim.

I want to become synonymous with literature. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; writing is my dream and the life I’m fighting for. University is a hurdle that I am choosing to face because I believe that I need to learn how to be resilient and challenge myself at every given opportunity. I want to take care of business and become a name of notoriety, but I can’t do that unless I develop the inner strength to stand up to my weaknesses and learn how to overcome them. Rather than rely on my delusions of grandeur and simply whittle away time until success falls into my lap, I’m chasing it down and pinning it to the floor.

I’m a wolf taking care of business. The literary industry should prepare itself for a new kind of violence, because I’m learning just how great I can be when I simply refuse to quit.

Crime Without Punishment

You broke into my chest and stole my heart. You looked me in the eye, asked me to take your hands and then robbed me blind. Like a thief in the night you moved so silently; climbed through the boarded up windows of my soul and pillaged from within. You should have been punished! You should have been reprimanded and rebuked! But yours was a crime without punishment. You stole my heart, and all I could do was watch as held it in your trembling hands and told me to trust that you would keep it safe.

I told you that your body was a landscape. I was supposed to be the vicious world eater with an insatiable lust to destroy the map. But now I feel you inside me; feel my heart beating your name and know that I have been bested by the contours I fought valiantly to conquer. I scaled your breasts, left my teeth marks on your neck and impressions of my hands on your hips. But these marks were only skin deep; you broke beneath the surface and saw the nakedness of I. You forced your way into a place no other has ever reached and carved your name into the fleshy chamber of my humanity. You took a soul plagued by anger and stole from it. You took away the anger; plundered from the well of bitter thoughts. You should have been punished. You should have been admonished.

But how could I ever hurt someone so darling? How could I ever dream of stringing you up like a thief and tearing apart your innocence? Your crime was one committed through best intentions. A soul descended from the heavens, dragged through the mud and tarnished by a wolf. I could have been your fall from grace. But instead you lead me to the waters of my rebirth. You stripped me bare and asked me to bathe until I was washed clean. So I sank beneath the surface until I was engulfed by a world so calming, so wondrously silent and tranquil.

Alone with my thoughts I could think of nothing but you. I could feel you with me; imagine your fingers interlaced between mine. I was the devil. I was the world eater and wolf. But you tore apart all the misguided preconceptions I had of you and I. You showed me in the silence beneath the waters just how beautiful we could be.

I emerged born again; infatuated and no longer alone. I had never imagined I could be so contented; so smitten and besotted. I tried to fight it. I wrapped my fingers around your throat, left bite marks and bruises on your legs. But I couldn’t fight the remorse or shake the feelings of regret. The thief who stole my heart deserved more than I could ever give. You broke open the vault of my heart and found it barely beating within.

You took it in your hands, stared deep into the eyes of a wounded beast and nurtured it back to health. You committed a crime without punishment. You stole my heart to set it free. You should have been chided, strung up and ousted for your devious ways. But all I could do is stare into your eyes as you asked me to trust you and place my hands in yours. You stole my heart, now it’s yours to nurture and keep.

I am at your mercy. A wolf swallowing his own pride. I am vulnerable and exposed. You are the thief who committed the ultimate crime.

Bragging Rights

Every now and then I’ll branch out and attend a writer’s conference. My reasons for doing so usually stem from a bout of writers block or shear frustration at my own inability to move forward within the industry, so I throw my hands in the air and venture out to see what others are doing to carve out their own success. I become disenchanted with my own abilities and stupidly start to think that the only way to succeed is to emulate, instead of innovate.

Whenever I do show up to an event I have a blast. I meet a bunch of great people, listen to a range of interesting talks, and find a renewed love for what I do. But no matter how much I enjoy myself I never walk away from an event with that piece of elusive information that will see my writing and carer soar to new heights.  Why?

Because it doesn’t exist. The whole concept of emulating what has worked for someone else and expecting it to yield similar results is flawed. We are all unique and we all approach similar goals and aspirations with our own set of circumstances that impact upon the inevitable outcomes of those dreams. It’s great to listen to someone talk about their pillars of success or foolproof methods of being successful, and many of us are able to draw great inspiration from this. But the truth is that there is no one who can tell you how to be successful, because there is no one who has lived through the same circumstances or developed the same idiosyncrasies as you.

You can draw influence from the successes of others, but if you truly want to achieve you have to create your own path. You have to wake up every single day with a hunger to achieve and be willing to bust your arse to make it happen. We live in a society drowning underneath a never ending sea of instant success stories or celebrities that are born out of a minute amount of talent and damn good timing. But rather than recognise that many modern day successes are born out of unique opportunity and circumstance, we start to criticise ourselves for having to fight tooth and nail for what we want.

We misconstrue the concept of celebrity with success and convince ourselves that the only measure of our accomplishments is our notoriety. If I’m not famous I mustn’t be producing works that are good enough right? Wrong. Some of the most stirring pieces I’ve ever read, watched, listened to or viewed have come from artists virtually unknown amongst their peers. They are men and women who have carved out niches in their chosen fields and although they aren’t instantly recognisable or celebrated within their fields, they are consistently redefining what it means to create wonderful art.

Excellence comes not from the praise of others, but from a continuous honing of one’s talents. Words of affirmation and celebrity within one’s chosen field is nice, however real satisfaction and success comes from knowing that you have created something beautiful and lent a piece of your soul to a work that will live on forever.

Bragging rights don’t equate to shit if you’ve won the praise of your peers for producing second rate work that belies your true potential. We all have the ability to excel at whatever we decide to. But we have to want that excellence with every ounce of our strength.  We have to consistently redevelop and redefine our craft and who we are over and over again until we become who we are born to be. You want to write? Write. You want to make music? Learn to play an instrument. You want to be a ball player? You better lace up those kicks and hit the court.

The very best of us earn our keep and blaze a trail of success that is uniquely ours. We don’t rely on the pseudo-helpful never fail theories of others, and we certainly don’t wait for pure chance to pluck us out of obscurity and hand us our dreams on a silver platter. We reach, we fall, and when we are knocked down we get back up and tell life that it hits like a bitch. This persistence and determination; this unending love for our crafts and passions is what forces us to aspire, create and ultimately achieve.

Bragging rights are earned through grit and determination. Success is achieved through hard work. You can become a legend in your own right; it just takes a lot of hard work.

Five Years

Anyone who has been following this site for a little while will be aware that I’ve undergone a metamorphosis of character over the past twelve months. The aggressively creative arsehole that I used to be has grown up and become a man. I would still call myself aggressive in my creative tendencies; when I get into the zone and start writing I lose all touch with reality and slip back into the mindset of a world eater. But I’ve stopped pushing myself to become a prick and have started trying to be a better person instead. I’ve still got a bucket full of angst and a tongue laced with acid but I’m learning how to channel them into something positive rather than trying to destroy myself.

To be honest I never imagined that I would become someone who could be happy. I had spent so long fuelling the anger within my soul that to suddenly quell my demons and instead aim to inspire surprises me. While there’s been many reasons behind the shift in my mental state and subsequent successes through this page there’s a story that really inspired me to make a change. It made me pull my head out of my arse and realise that I am an extremely fortunate man who has the world in front of him.

It goes like this: There’s this woman I work with. Her name is Gina and she’s incredible. See, Gina is blind. But even though she can’t see she works as a switchboard operator taking inbound calls and redirecting them to the relevant departments within our organisation. Every single day she comes to work with a smile on her face and works harder than anyone else. Inspiring: yes. But that’s not what makes Gina so special. It was a story that Gina told during a training session that really moved me.

Five years ago Gina had a necklace that she loved. Then one day it went missing. She put it down on her bedhead, forgot where it was and it simply disappeared. She searched for it. But when you don’t have the ability to see the world you live in something as simple as locating a necklace you have misplaced becomes quite difficult. So after a while she resided to the fact that the necklace was simply gone and moved on. Then one day she was cleaning her room and managed to work her hand between the bedhead and the wall. Guess what she found? The necklace that she’d lost five years earlier.

As she sat in our training session and told the story of how she had been reunited with her necklace Gina broke into a smile that brightened the whole room. Here was a woman who spent every single day moving through a world that she couldn’t see and she was happier than I was. Why? Because she knew how to take solace and find beauty in every single day. She understood that every day is a gift and that to be anything but happy is to deny ourselves of something truly incredible. Something as small as finding a necklace bought a smile to Gina’s face.

And there I was sitting across from this woman baring fangs at a world that I thought was trying to stamp my face into the dirt. When the training session was over and Gina returned to her desk I couldn’t shake the story. I took it home with me, thought about it over and over and cussed myself out for ever thinking that I was hardly done by. In a moment of complete vulnerability this woman that I worked with broke apart every single preconception that I had about myself and made me want to be a better man.

It turns out that even though I have been through some shit I actually live a very fortunate life. I have two parents who love me; three healthy siblings and a partner who adores me despite my ability to disappear into myself or become an abrasive prick at the drop of a hat. I live in a country without war, and have a roof over my head. I have no reason to be angry; no reason to want to tear myself or anyone else apart.  I’ve never lost a necklace behind a bedhead and spent five years searching to find it, so surely I could find happiness within the life that I live.

Just like that I decided to change. I let go of my hate and set myself free.

I don’t want to be known as an angry child. I want to be known as a man with the capacity to be brilliant. I write because I love. And I love because I write. I haven’t achieved everything I set out to do when I started writing, but as long as I continue to evolve and embrace myself there’s no telling just how wonderful life can be.

Sometimes we need to look beyond ourselves to realise just how fortunate we truly are.

Three Faces

Back in 2011 I won the Heading North Young Writers Competition and a place on panel of up and coming writers at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. At the time it was a pretty big achievement for me. I was twenty three years old and struggling to find my way in this world. I was living away from my family and partner so that I could try to pursue my writing dreams. I was broke, fragile and alone. But somehow a panel of judges managed to see through the muddled tale of woe I’d written and gave me an opportunity to shine. I was thrilled with the opportunity and told myself that this was my big break; that I was ready to take on the literary world…

…It was a definitely a break. Unfortunately it would be one that I’d fail to fully embrace before slipping into a harrowing low that saw me abandon writing altogether for a number a months. It was case of opportunity and talent colliding with sadness and sorrow. Unfortunately for me sadness and sorrow won.

So there I was sitting before an impressively large audience who had turned out to see me and two other writers interviewed on stage in a showcase to highlight the next big things in the local scene. I was trying my hardest to seem accomplished in my craft, but I couldn’t help but wonder just how the fuck I’d managed to win when an audience member asked if I had ever thought about starting a blog. Until that point I had never once considered running my own site, and promptly responded that I hadn’t because a blog was a very personal thing and I wasn’t prepared to expose myself like that. In hindsight the response was idiotic. You could see as much on the faces of those in the audience. I had this crazy idea that my writing life could be kept separate from my private life; when in reality the two were so intertwined that if I wanted to truly succeed as a writer I would need to learn to embrace both.

Why am I telling you this? Well, to make a long story short, I screwed up. I missed opportunities and thought that I could create success with nothing more than arrogance and a sliver of talent. It would take another four years before I’d actually see my debut novel put into print; and it would take a broken mind, bloody knuckles, and eventually acceptance of self before I could even begin to achieve. I’m only just beginning to make up for lost time and make a name for myself as a writer. And while many of my friends, family and followers believe that I have achieved a great deal as of late, the truth is that I have been busting my arse for nearly a decade just to get here. I have invested a great deal of time to my craft, and will continue to do so for years to come.

But I’ll let you in on a secret: the reason that I have managed to gain so much momentum as of late is because I finally figured out how to be a great writer. It turns out that it’s actually quite simple…

…You have to be naked.

Peel back the layers of your outer self and expose the vulnerability within. Remove your inhibitions, cut out your insecurities, be naked and set yourself free.

There’s an ancient Japanese proverb that says you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are. For the general public this adage holds true. We put on a façade and move through life leading the world to believe what we want it to. Then we choose to let a few select friends and family members inside our circles of trust and allow them see our second face. The face that we reserve for those that we trust contains blemishes and insecurities, but as we grow comfortable with our loved ones we afford them the opportunity to glimpse the minor fragilities of this intricate canvas of ourselves. But it’s the third face, the one that we shield from the world that we really need to embrace if we are to be truly free.

It’s this face that you need to be prepared to show the world if you want to succeed as a great writer. This face is completely naked, vulnerable, and utterly beautiful. But for some bizarre reason it’s one that so many of us are afraid to reveal. It was this face that I was so afraid of exposing to the world when I said that blogging was too personal and that I wanted to differentiate my private life from my public one. It was this face that I would ultimately learn to be proud of and use to start finding momentum in my quest to create a career out of my passions.

So why are we so afraid to be vulnerable? Is it that we are scared of the judgement of our peers? Or is it that we are simply afraid to be free? We are so used to concealing the purest incarnations of our nature and desires that allowing ourselves the opportunity to be liberated from the faces we create to satisfy strangers appears daring and dangerous. But it is this art of removal, this art of extreme vulnerability that allows a writer, artist, man or woman to transcend beyond their inhibitions and be beautiful.  Look at any successful man or woman within the creative industries and every single one of them has one thing in common: they’re comfortable in their vulnerability. They can stand naked before the world and accept their imperfections as well as embrace their strengths.

So here I am standing before you, vulnerable and exposed in my nakedness. This blog allows me to remove the two faces that I have created for my family, friends and peers and be uncovered for all to see. You can see my strengths and flaws, and through embracing them I have become a far better writer than I ever dreamed possible. I’m naked, I’m vulnerable and I’m free. And you can be too. All you have to do is free your mind, remove your inhibitions and allow the world to experience the beauty of your soul stripped bare.

Be naked. Be beautiful. And be you. And if you do decide to open your soul for the world to see make sure you let me know. I’d love to meet the truest reflection of you.

I

‘Here I am with all my insecurities, all my imperfections, crying out to a world that just won’t listen’

-Adrian Fitipaldes

Someone recently told me that ‘I’ve changed.’ The comment was meant in jest; the individual in question was referencing the self-destructive Chris Nicholas of days gone by who was so bitterly angry that he’d cut off his nose to spite his face. Delivered by an old acquaintance with a cheeky smirk and a chink of beer glasses, they never could have imagined just how devastating their words would be. I’ve been feeling flat lately and the comment hit a lot closer to home than intended. In the days that followed I spent a great deal of time mulling over the idea in my head. I asked myself over and over if I have changed, and if so when this metamorphosis took place.

So have I?

You better believe I have. You only have to take a look at this site to see the shift.

In July 2012 I started this site as a means of confronting the mounting depression that had overtaken my existence. I was struggling with family illness, low self-esteem, being broke and away from those that I loved. So I wrote shamelessly; cutting open my chest and offering the small audience who read my first few posts a piece of my heart. From there I transitioned into an arrogant child who preached my narcissism and willingness to maim and self-destruct. I became wayward in what I was trying to achieve and my writing suffered greatly as a result. For the longest of times I was stuck in a cycle of frustration and self-deceit. Recently however, I’ve managed to get my shit together, produce some better quality work and actually start to make a name for myself in this industry.

I’ve come a long way from the teenager who struggled so much with his English studies that his parents forced him to undergo tutoring. And even further from the lost soul who cried out to the world for help on July 17th 2012. But no matter how far I reach, how much I achieve, or how wonderful my life is, I will forever have to live with my insecurities and imperfections; namely depression. For a long time I tried to deny this. I tried to tell myself that I had overcome the demons inside my mind and that I was cured. I mistook my arrogance and aggression as overcoming my illness rather than recognizing that it was just another phase of self-loathing. I foolishly thought that if I didn’t feel down anymore I was normal once again. But there is no such thing as normal.

The truth is that it’s alright to not be OK.

The shift in this site’s content, my success as an author, and my life in general came when I began to accept that I will never be normal. I will always have a flaw in the biological makeup of my brain that makes me feel insecure or down at times. But that flaw is chemistry, not character. No one should ever feel ashamed about suffering from depression or mental health. It takes so much bravery and strength to stand up and tell the world that you need help, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for anyone courageous enough to do so.

I’m not OK, I never will be. But it’s my insecurities and imperfections are what make my life so beautiful and worth living. It’s through embracing these weaknesses (and I say the word loosely) that I am able to write and thus reach out and connect with you the reader. No one is infallible, no one is perfect, and at some point in our lives we all feel low. I’ve just been fortunate enough to learn how to use this site to turn those negative thoughts into something greater than I.

The person who told me that I have changed did so because I told them that Midas had been put into print. Whenever I tell people about my proudest achievement to date they inevitably do the same thing. They congratulate me for the success, purse their lips and ask ‘do you mind if I ask how much money you’re making from it?’

While I’d love to tell them that since the book was released in February I have become a millionaire it simply isn’t the case. I’ve sold a few copies (hopefully enough to please Meizius Publishing) but financial gain doesn’t mean a thing to me at this point in my writing career. Right now I just want to reach out and connect with readers so that once they put complete my novel, or finish reading my posts they are grateful for the experience we have shared together. While in my days of anger and frustration I used to brag about how much money I could make when I became published and tried to base my emotions on fiscal gain, the truth is that I’m not doing this to become a millionaire.

I’m doing this because I, Chris Nicholas am a depressive person who has the ability to see both great beauty and despair in the world around me. I’m doing this because I want to share my experiences and my love with readers. And I’m doing this because through writing I have learned that it’s perfectly normal to feel fractured, broken, down or low. I have learned that it’s alright to not be OK.

So after a great deal of thought I’ve decided that I have changed. But I’ve done so for the better. The boy I was three years ago when Renegade Press isn’t shit compared to the man I am today. I am Chris Nicholas; writer, man wolf and world eater. I’m not perfect and I never will be. But that’s what makes what I do so damn beautiful.

Wolf at the Door

‘There was whiskey in the devils blood; and there was blood in my cup.’

-Keith Buckley

I used to think that I was really intelligent; that I was this supreme thinker who was going to redefine what it meant to be a writer in the modern day. I thought that my opinions were always well educated and justified. I cussed at conventional wisdom and dished out advice to anyone foolish enough to listen. I was the proverbial blind leading the blind. And I was leading myself and anyone who followed off of a precipice. I genuinely thought that I was better than others. I told myself that I didn’t need university, or advice from those who had achieved before me, or anyone at all. I shut out the world by trying to prematurely transcend beyond it.

In reality I wasn’t nearly as smart as I thought and I wasn’t better than my peers. And I wasn’t ever going to achieve anything or find happiness with the arrogant mindset of a child. What I was though was bitter, irrational, and so damn angry at myself for failing to actually live up to my own obscure ideals that the anger began to manifest itself in depression and anxiety. I told myself that I wanted to be successful; that I damn well deserved to be. But I wasn’t really willing to put in the work to make my dreams a reality. I was so blinded by my own inflated ego that I’d forgotten to produce anything worth reading.

I wanted to dance with the devil. But whenever the bastard rose to meet me I realised that I wasn’t ready for the challenge. Here I was trying to move with the best of them when I hadn’t even learned how to crawl.

I was screwing up every opportunity afforded me. I was too arrogant to bother studying and began failing subjects; too self-absorbed to realise that I was posting rants and dribbling bullshit that I started haemorrhaging readers. And too concerned with stroking my own ego that I couldn’t see just how far my head was stuck up my arse.

At my most arrogant I wrote a post on this site where I expressed a yearning to dethrone all those who had achieved before me. I wanted to drag down the literary greats and take my place as a God. Press my foot against their neck and watch them cower in fear. The idea was noble, but incredibly naïve. I wasn’t the wolf at the door I claimed to be; I was a boy trapped in a cage, pounding at the glass while others mocked my dreams of being free.

When I finally realised that I wasn’t the man I thought I was, or the man I wanted to be, I decided to start over. I took the first character I had ever created, a soldier by the name of Jason Dark, and I started writing a story worth telling. For the first time in years I was producing something that wasn’t just an egotistical wank; instead I wrote a story that I myself would actually like to read. Then I expanded and I started doing the same thing here at Renegade Press. If I stumbled across a site curated by a callous writer spruiking his ego in poorly written postings I would be embarrassed for them. Yet I was doing exactly that.

So I changed. As hard as it was I changed. I tore down the idea of who I thought I was and gave up on being a prick and started focusing on being a writer instead.

I have started studying properly. Well, kind of. I still have to force myself to prioritise university over my more creative endeavours, but I’m getting there. I’m learning to listen to the advice of those who have achieved before me rather than attempting to prove them wrong. And I have started reaching out to the artists, writers, and musicians that inspired me in an effort to let them know just how beautiful their works really were. I still want to dance with the devil, so I’ve taught myself to crawl. Now with my debut novel now in print I’m starting to walk. I still have a hell of a lot to learn before I can move like him, but I’m prepared to bust my arse to make it happen.

I’ll outdance him before his peers, leave him stunned and speechless. Then I’ll tap his veins, fill my cup with his blood and become the man who did the unthinkable. I’ll break out of the cage of ignorance I built for myself, and become a wolf tearing down the door.

It turns out that I’m not as intelligent as I once chose to believe. And I’m perfectly fine with that. In fact, I prefer it that way. I still have so much to learn in this industry and even though I’m now a published author, I’m still no better or important than someone spilling their thoughts onto a page for the very first time. I’m still arrogant; at times I encourage myself to bare my fangs. I want to be aggressive; I want to be vicious and unafraid. But I want to do be more cerebral when doing so. There’s nothing gained from savaging oneself or others in the pursuit of success. There’s nothing gained from believing you are too good to crawl. If you don’t start at the bottom you’ll never truly appreciate the view from the top.

You can’t be a wolf at the door if you’re still trapped inside a cage.

Thanatophobia

‘This is hell. You bought a candle to burn?’
-Keith Buckley.

I’ve been thinking about my own morality a lot lately. I’ve had a pretty frustrating case of writers block and whenever I do I start to contemplate the space in time I’ll occupy between birth and death. I get caught up in a mindset of frustration and start thinking about the choices I’ve made, opportunities I’ve missed, and how I will spend the moments I’m still yet to experience. To be frank, I hate when I get like this. I’m fucking petrified of growing older and knowing that I’ll one day kick the bucket causes my anxiety levels to skyrocket until my heart is hammering in my chest and I become short of breath.

I guess a large part of the anxiety I experience comes from the fact that I feel as though I still have so much I want to accomplish in my life. I am forever working against my biological clock to achieve my goals before death wraps his talons around my heart and squeezes until it becomes still. I want to be successful writer and make a career out of what I do. I want to see the world. I want to be loved, loathed and revered. And I want to know that when I’m a rickety old man with a busted hip, gruff tone and permanent scowl, that I’ve lived a good life and made a positive impact on those that I leave behind.

I’m trying to leave a legacy of words. Through my writing I want to create something worthwhile that allows me to reach out and connect with people. In reality I’m a pretty emotionally stunted individual. I keep even my closest friends at a safe distance, and while I’ll protect those that I care about till the bitter end, I rarely feel the need to reach out for their help. But through writing I can be vulnerable and I can be beautiful. In a weird kind of way I’m liberated in my madness through writing. Even my closest friends tell me that they read this site on the regular as a way of understanding me.

So I’m frightened of death. It’s occupying my thoughts and stressing me out. I’m suffering from writers block and stuck in a hellish state of frustration. So what can a writer do when they’re in hell? Bring a candle to burn. Turn up the heat ever so slightly and make the inferno their own.

Yep, after a brief hiatus from the world of my character Jason Dark, I’ve started penning my way through a follow up to Midas. It’s a tale that will undoubtedly focus on the idea of death. Ruin and woe are central themes that I’m trying to explore quite heavily in the four book story-arch and having the ability to do so allows me to further immerse myself into a mindset that both troubles and inspires me. I’m afraid of dying. It’s my hell. So why not create a story that gives me the ability to really engage with the concept and overcome the hell within me?

The way I see it is this: I’m pretty lucky. Every single person on this earth has some form of fear or phobia that has the ability to leave them crippled with anxiety or worse. The fact that I fear growing old and failing to carve my name into the sands of this earth seem to fail on comparison to the afflictions of others. I have a unique opportunity to use my fear to create not only wonderful art, but a beautiful life. I can use my fear to propel myself towards success.

Fear is hell. But fear is also easily overcome; you’ve just got to be prepared to embrace it. If you’re stuck in hell make sure you’ve got a candle to burn. Take ownership of the very place designed to break you and make your hell a place you can thrive in.

If you’re afraid of death; explore it.
If you’re afraid of change; embrace it.
And if you’re afraid of fire; light and candle and learn to control the fear that binds you.

If you do that you can set yourself free. For me right now that freedom comes from my newfound lease on life and from shaking off this frigging writers block and get back to what I do best: writing. I have the ability to create hell through my literature and I take solace in knowing that my protagonist is arrogant enough to embrace it, light a candle and turn up the heat ever so slightly. And if a product of my imagination can be so brazen, surely I can too.

If you spend your whole life fearing death, you may as well already be dead. Step into the inferno you fear and set it alight. Set yourself free.

Space

Have you ever stood at the entrance way to an attic left cluttered and disheveled and thought about just how beautiful the space could be if someone only took the time to clear up the junk, sweep out the dust and make some space? You probably stared across the landscape of dank cardboard boxes stuffed and overflowing with the past, or moved through dusty sheets protecting furniture discarded long ago from the humiliation of a dirty surface. There was probably very little room for you to move. You stepped over boxes, or pushed between stacks of books and piles of sundries from a previous life as a thought settled into the back of your head that this space could be glorious. If only you took the time to clear up the haphazardly discarded contents and made it your own.

Or maybe for you it wasn’t an attic. It could have been a basement; or a storage shed; or another space entirely. No matter how you choose to refer to the room one thing remains constant: it has the potential for beauty, you just need to allow it the opportunity to be beautiful. Clean up the mess, throw out the shit you’ve held on to for too long and you’ve got yourself a space that is all your own…

…That attic is essentially how the mind of a writer, musician, artist or creative individual looks. Or at least that’s how it feels. When you are in the infancy of your immersion into the creative industries you find yourself bound by certain real world principles and responsibilities that can make it difficult to fully embrace your creative impulses. You need to have a roof over your head so you get a job that doesn’t really aid your creative urges. You need to be healthy so you start an exercise program. You want to be smarter or learn how to better hone your craft so you sign up to university or online courses. And of course you still want to have the luxury of a social life so you schedule events into your calendar.

Before you know it you’ve committed the creative man’s ultimate sin and quite literally scheduled yourself out of having the time and space to produce art of any form. You get busy; we all do. But unlike your peers who have to attend to one existence you’ve got two. There’s the regular every day you moving through the actions above; and there’s the creative you who is stuck in a rut desperately searching for a way out.

The inspiration and ideas to be creative don’t stop coming in those times of scheduling nightmare. In fact they come hard and fast, often blindsiding you at the most inopportune of times. You can be in a meeting at work when the ending to a scene you’ve spent weeks searching for suddenly comes to light. Or you’ll be on a date, in the gym, or stuck in traffic when a brilliant idea for a blog post or manuscript settles into your mind. If you’re lucky you’ll have a scrap of paper or notepad on hand to scribble the idea onto. But if you’re not you’re left with no other choice than to pack the idea into a cardboard box and store it in the attic of your mind. You throw it haphazardly amongst similar thoughts and there it sits untouched while you continue to deny yourself the time to create.

Then you inevitably crack. You become disengaged with reality as you yearn to become lost in your own thoughts. People say that they understand. But how can they? They don’t know what it’s like to have an attic full of cluttered ideas. The urge to produce art continues to grow inside of you until you have to step back and re-evaluate your existence and the choices you make. If you don’t you start pushing people away, fucking up at work and become increasingly bitter at yourself for consistently making such poor decisions. You need to clean out your mind. You need to make some space.

So you pick up a box and open it up. There’s a half formed idea for a novel inside. There’s promise, but it’s not great and you know that it’s the wrong time in your career to embark on a project like this. So you take the idea and make some notes in a notepad for another time and place. Then you remove it from your mind completely. In the next box you find a dreadful blogpost that was never meant to see the light of day. It has no purpose in your attic anymore so you set it alight and watch the frail paper blacken and curl. And so you move on and on; compartmentalising the ideas worth keeping, turning many boxes into all but a few. You discard anything that doesn’t feel right or is just plain shit. Before you know it the attic overflowing with discarded thoughts has been swept clean and you can even open a window and allow sunlight to spill in.

The space brings with it a clarity; a sense of clear understanding of who you are and why you fell in love with creative arts in the first place. Your attic is an area that exists solely for you. You can choose to crowd it and watch your creative inhibitions suffer. Or you can periodically clean it out and whittle the ideas and opportunities that you do have down to your very best.

As I grow older and start to realise that I’m no longer a teenager with an acid tongue and an axe to grind, I’m finding myself more and more inhibited by scheduling. I need to work. I need to be healthy. And I need to be social. But if I continuously try to find time to write and ensure that I prevent my mind from becoming cluttered then when I do manage to put pen to paper it will be the very best work that I can produce. I mean, there’s twenty four hours in a day; no matter how busy I am surely I can devote at least one of those to doing what I love.

Day 57

For a blog that is supposedly about writing I’ve noticed that I don’t spend a great deal of time actually producing articles specifically for writers or even aimed at the craft itself. While many writers and authors have created wondrous platforms where they write about self-publishing, grammatical structure, or establishing an audience, I have taken a different approach to this site. It’s an approach that I believe is more important to my own creative journey than producing pieces on growing an audience or the likes. Here at Renegade Press through postings of wolves, broken windows, floods and catastrophes I have created a space that is uniquely my own. In this space I can be vulnerable, arrogant, aggressive, creative, and above all else it’s a space where I can be free to express myself creatively.

I’m not knocking those who choose to write posts that are logical, well thought out, and coherent; I actually admire many of those writers and follow their sites. I’m merely suggesting that the idea of producing such posts doesn’t really feel right for me. I’m too erratic in my thought processes and not yet accomplished enough in my craft to be handing out writing/publishing advice to anyone.

I’m a dog chasing cars. Or more accurately a literary wolf chasing fragments of ideas through the shadowy contours of my mind.

One such idea was to change the way I see the world. I’ve forever been known as narcissist and a bit of a prick so on January 1st 2015 I decided to focus on sowing seeds of positivity into my mind rather than allowing the oppressive weight of hate to rest upon my heart as it had done for years. The experiment came around after I read an article detailing a study released by the European Journal of Social Psychology on creating habits in which the researchers suggested that the average time it took for someone to adopt a new habit was sixty six days. It sounds easy enough doesn’t it? Practise optimism for sixty six days until it becomes so ingrained in your mind that you’re constantly searching for the positive in life rather than brooding over shit that’s outside of your capacity to control.

So how have I found the experience?

Well, at times I’ve struggled with remaining positive. There have been a few moments where I’ve gnashed teeth and threatened to break someone’s nose or flown into a verbal tirade of expletives. At one point over the past two months I even found myself hell bent on returning to my former state of perpetual hate as a means of rousing myself from a momentary creative slump. But for the most part I’ve remained upbeat and embraced life and my fellow man with a vigour that surpasses any I have ever had before.

I’m now at day fifty seven of my experiment and I’m actually stunned by what I have managed to achieve during this timeframe. My altered mindset has seen me embrace new concepts and ideas and abandon much of the narcissist bullshit that was hindering my progression as a writer and a man. I’ve started reading a more varied series of blogs and texts, re-enrolled in university after a hiatus, and have even started developing a social media presence through Instagram. In addition to this I’m continuing to grow more tolerant of people and have stopped being an arsehole just for the sake of it. This openness of heart and mind has paid huge dividends as my debut novel Midas is now available on Amazon, my followers here at Renegade Press is now five times what it was on January 1st, and people are starting to see me as something other than a insensitive dickhead with an axe to grind.

All of which is overwhelmingly positive. The experiment has been an overwhelming success, but as I draw ever closer to the climax of my sixty six days I’ve began asking myself where do I go from here?

Publishing my novel actually left me a little dazed and confused after the goal I’d toiled away at for close to a decade suddenly came to fruition and I’ve kind of struggled to reignite my motivation to create and understand where my career as a writer is headed next. But now I’m starting to put together another series of goals that will consume my existence and with my new mindset I believe that I can achieve them. I’ve got the world in front of me and even though I have quelled my arrogance somewhat, I’m still egotistical enough to believe I can achieve anything.

On day fifty seven I have set my sights on grandeur and excellence in my field. As I begin penning my way through a follow up to Midas as well as continue to work on a myriad of alternate scripts I’ve also set my sight on becoming a name synonymous with modern day literature. It’s not an easy feat to accomplish; nor should it be. I aim to inspire but I also aim to challenge myself at every opportunity. So while I have a incredible amount of work to do just to begin to become well-known in this industry, I feel that just by knowing that someone is reading this post I can say that I am already on my way to achieving my goal.

Here I stand at day fifty seven with the world in front of me.