About Writing

Why do I write this blog? Why did I start it to begin with?

I ask this on a regular basis especially now that I don’t have as much time to keep up with it. Some pieces take a day or two to write, the so called fluff/ advice pieces but the other writing the writing that I am actually interested in those take weeks sometimes a little over a month to complete because research takes time.

People think writing isn't a job, that it’s sit down and write and yes sometimes it is just that but other times it is laterally like giving birth. It’s painful, messy and exhausting but when it’s finally done it’s just the best feeling. It’s not always perfect, it takes time and patience to get it to be something that’s more than what it started out to be but it is also true that some stories have a life of their own. You start off thinking you are telling one type of story and when you look at it it’s turned into something else completely.

I think Stephen King’s number one asked question is where he gets his ideas and his simple answer is that that he sees to things and they come together in new and unusual ways and that to ask what if. This is something that I think people most people don’t expect. King does not only write horror but his horror novels are the most acclaimed and the man has written some bloody and disturbing scenes. Especially when his writing contains so many child characters fighting against evil it’s not an easy pill to swallow that his ideas come from such mundane things; the devil needs an heir, what would happen if he went to a small town to find that heir.

Writing is a labour, yes, but some stories want to be born, some stories the world needs, no matter the effort or the time it takes. People think King is a writer about horror and gore only but his stories have a deeper meaning than that. It’s about innocence and love, that innocence is important and powerful. Sometimes it the things we see cause us to lose that but sometimes it can be our greatest weapon but sometimes we have to give it up to overcome something.

Then there are books like You before me, that talks about accepting others choices about loving and giving it up or maybe loving someone enough to let them go. How do we accept and the choices other make, when they affect us deeply when we would rather have it be different. The truth is that we do this every day anyway, we have to accept the choices other make for themselves even when those choices do not affect them alone yet what would we do, how we would react if we had to be told about the decision before hand. Would we be able to accept it and still love them with no hate, would we be able to remember our time with them with fondness and affection? The saying, “It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never have loved” always bothered me but as you grow, grow in life experience and sometimes in age we begin to realise that this is true. Each time we love it’s different and it changes us somehow, a little every time. Of course it depends on the person because some people do not ways learn and become better when things in love go wrong they become worse, if they were hurt they take that hurt and feel the need to return it into the world. Then there are those that realise that they never want to hurt others the way they have been, if they are able to prevent it.

Then books like 13 Reasons Why, tell about a different type of pain, the pain of exclusion, the pain of being treated badly. When people who are your peers, people who are supposed to be just like you treat you not only as if you don’t matter or belong but verbally and physically abuse you it can be soul shattering. It is simply called bullying, the dictionary defines bullying as “use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force them to do something” and while this definition is on point the words could never convey just what that pain and humiliation is. Often when people describe what it felt like to be bullied not even they are able to carry across the feeling, that emotion that turmoil comes across in their voice, the expression the emotion that you see them go through as they talk about it.

Good writers are able to not only tell a story and set scenes but their job is to, in words alone, make you as the reader live the emotions and pain for a character. Yes, books that provide action and romantic angst are popular because they help escape from the hardships of life but other works are very necessary because the world we live in is changing every day. Life isn’t harder from generation to generation; things are just different as each new generation brings with it its own technology and a different means of communicating ideas and thoughts but with this there are also new means of hurting others.

Good writers are in a unique position to challenge sociality either directly or indirectly as they are the one able to shape the narrative. Good books, good writers, are not defined only by how entertaining they are but do they reflect something about the human condition, do they cause use to pause and consider if not our lives but the world around us.

Yes ago a read a book by Stephen Lawson “Chasm”, it stalks about an earth quake devastating a small town and inevitably the lives of its inhabitants, it is not the quake itself that necessarily changes the lives of those left alive, it is the beginning, but what happens after. A group of people find that they are only a handful left alive and each are very different from one another, no two back stories are anyway alike but not only do they have to learn to live their lives together under a single roof, because that is the only way they can be safe but eventually come to the realization that there is no escape from what now constitutes their existence. Besides the fact that each of the characters are damaged and no one can help them repair that damage but themselves, this is not what stood out to me about their fate. We eventually learn that this small group of people have been transported to a different reality, realm of existence or dimension if you will, where only parts of their town exists on small islands in a gaping chasm, shrouded by a mist that never lifts, a sun that never shines and a darkness that comes on suddenly and is infinite in its blackness but it was the creature that stalked the night; the creature that mentally tortured them before trying to kill them one by one.  The idea of a sentient black sludge that has the ability re-animate the dead is scary in itself but the fact that the sludge knows everything about them, every bad thought, every had thing that has happened to them and every single one of their fears is more terrifying. And all this sludge wants to do is hurt them, torment and torture them. Why? Not because it can but because its wants to. We find out later that this sludge has spent centuries in this void, growing, and that is everything evil in the world. And it literally is, the sludge is the physical embodiment of all the evil people our universe has done to one another; pain and hatred. This thing is a result of wars and everything that comes with it, famine, killing and tortue, every bad deed every day people do onto others and themselves, murder, physical abuse, self abuse, even small things that we believe as no impact to the world at large; arguments, unkind wards, nasty gossip even nad thoughts about others have call seemed into this realm to create this creature and it has been waiting, waiting for something or someone to be able to use this evil on. It has all these thoughts and feeling of hate with nothing to do with it until these people are stranded there with it.

And reading this book makes one wonder, what does happen to all that negative energy, all that anger and hate in the world? Where does it go? In physics and chemistry, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be conserved over time. This law means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. It has been proven that the energy the positive thoughts and energy as well as the negative has an effect on the things around us so maybe that effect is further reaching than we realise.

These are the things that good writers make you consider, and these deeper thoughts are often buried in the most unlikely stories. Being a writer is not a way of life, often it’s a job like any other but is a distinctive job, writers see things others don’t, or old everyday things in new ways. It is a good writers duty to make us see a different type of world than the one we live in.