Speaking Up

"Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughs and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up afterward." - Kurt Vonnegut

I haven’t always spoken up when I should have. Take for instance this one time in my high school English class. The teacher asked us, “What makes people laugh?” My hand shot up. She called on me and I answered with, “When something bad happens to someone.” A student a few seats away immediately shot me down. She said that my answer was stupid and that people cry when bad things happen. I heard such venom and anger in her voice and I froze. The teacher made some comments and somehow we moved on.

I had a clear response in my mind but I didn’t speak. I was seeing bad things happening every day. On top of that, people laughed. Hell, I laughed. What I wanted to ask was, “So you cry when a coconut falls on Gilligan’s head?” Because that’s what I was thinking of, the Gilligan’s Island sitcom I was watching everyday after school. I had just seen a coconut knock him out the day before. That coconut looked painful. And I laughed. Bad shit happened to Gilligan all the time. And we all laughed. And it wasn’t just on Gilligan’s Island! Warner Brothers cartoons as well! I wish to this day that my teacher asked me to explain. Maybe she was worried about how I would answer.

I’ve been interested in drawing and writing all my life. Except for a few stretches, I’ve usually been hesitant to commit. That’s changed over time, especially the last two years. It happened in stages. The spark was a speech by Ray Bradbury that I found on YouTube titled “An Evening With Ray Bradbury.” He gives advice to aspiring writers and one of the things he talks about is short stories. It was a good reminder for me. Short stories got me into reading. I love short stories. He gives all kinds of advice but the gist is to read a lot and to write a lot. He also recommends a lot authors. John Collier, John Cheever, Raymond Carver… I didn’t stick with the writing advice, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The next step was discovering author Ken Scholes. His work really speaks to me. Of course there are a lot of other authors that I also feel strongly about. John MacDonald, Lawrence Block, Robert Parker, Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson, Harlan Ellison, Ernest Hemingway, just to name a few. But I think I discovered Mr. Scholes at just right time in my life. Soon after reading his work I found an article of his where he recommends books on writing. He also explains how those books helped him. I read two of them, From Idea to Story in 90 Seconds by Ken Rand and Writing to the Point by Algis Budrys. Their advice changed things for me. Changed things for me in a such a way that I’m writing regularly. The spark turned into a flame. Oh, it’s a very tiny flame, and I keep thinking that any disturbance is going to probably blow it right out, but there’s some fire there.

Awhile back I bought a small notebook to use as a sketch journal. I chose the Hobonichi Planner. I got it because it’s small, portable, and each page is dated. My intention was to keep a sketch diary. It started out fine. At the end of each day I would do a quick sketch and write down a few lines about my day. Things changed after two weeks. I stopped drawing but I kept writing something about each day. My entries started getting longer. Then I started filling up the page. I thought about upgrading to a larger version but I realized the size I had was perfect. It helped me with being concise. I’ve been writing in my journal for about a year and a half now. The recent realization that I’ve been writing a little everyday for over a year, well, it blew mind and it feels really good.

It’s taken me quite awhile, almost a lifetime, but I’m ready to speak up.

Next: My first attempts at telling stories.

P.S. - Here’s some of the specific advice from the two books I mentioned.

From Idea to Story in 90 Seconds  by Ken Rand

“The right brain is the creator, the left brain is the editor.”

“Your left brain hates disorder. So when your right brain starts writing a story, your left brain, if not leashed, will interfere, even before you finish the first word, phrase, sentence.”

“Wear a hat labeled “writer” when you write, and one labeled “editor” when you edit.”

“Some is better than none.”

“The first 1000-2000 words may be a warm-up.”

“Missing elements will appear as you write. But the elements can’t appear if you don’t write.”

Writing to the Point by Algis Budrys

“Try very hard to establish a particular place where you are going to write.”

“...although Frederik Pohl and many others define their workplace as anywhere they happen to be, and simply take a laptop computer along.”

My Struggles With Creating, Part 2

“When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we are capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.” - Maya Angelou

I’ve liked drawing from a very early age. I doodled whenever and wherever I could. One time I did a little drawing of my own superhero in the margin of a school workbook. I based it on a cartoon I had been watching and really liked. I must have been about five or six years old. I forgot about it and eventually turned the workbook in to be checked. I got it back with a note from my teacher. I got the message and stopped drawing in my workbook. So I doodled elsewhere.

One day just doodling and drawing wasn’t enough. I was around seven or eight. Star Trek was my favorite TV show and I had recently discovered Star Trek comics from Gold Key. I found myself with the desire to create my own Star Trek comic but lacked the skills to draw it. I didn’t let that stop me. I grabbed paper, pencils, and tracing paper. I came up with a story, picked out panels from various issues, traced them, added word balloons, then added my own dialogue. Tracing paper sure is great for tracing but makes for poor comic book pages when put together. I had a plan for that. I stapled the tracing paper pages to regular blank white pages to give the tracing paper a white background. I did the same thing for a cover, tracing the logo and a large panel of the Enterprise. Then I side stapled all the pages together. In the end I had a thick, crinkly, Star Trek comic book of my very own. Making it was so much fun that I made another one.

It’s amazing the lack of hesitation I had back then. No doubts, no concerns. I didn’t overthink things. I just did it. That’s something that’s gotten harder as I’ve gotten older. On the other hand it’s something that I’m more conscious of now. For years and years I was doing a little drawing here and a little writing there. Goals that kept changing, short term goals, vague goals. Recently I’ve become a little more focused. I’m writing regularly and I started this blog. What changed?

A number of things over the the last two years come to mind. Watching a speech a famous writer gave to aspiring writers. Discovering a writer whose work spoke to me in ways that others had not. Reading advice in a book on writing that was different from the advice I’d encountered in any other book. Starting a journal. Writing in it every day. My father’s recent health scare, which had me reflecting on life like I had never done before.

So here I am. I’m at a point in my life where the need to create and write has finally overcome the doubt and hesitation that I gained as I got older. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to seeing where this leads.

Next: Speaking Up