This excerpt is not a stand-alonescene. However, I haven’t shared anything in nearly two-weeks, so, I thought, why not share today’s work, raw and unedited.Read the story from the beginning by reading this post first:
“You won’t need the Gods or anyone else once we’re done. You will have servants to wait on your wives, horses for your sons, and hunger only a bad dream.”
Ishaq panted against the wall. The men screamed their prayers.
He shouted,“SILENT.”
They collected themselves, their breathing relaxed, and with unexplainable death, now, no longer imminent, the party started scanning the room. The air was thin, and their torches were barely embers. Ishaq scraped forward in the dark. The men were transformed into floating mouths. Their eyes veiled beyond their torches’ reach. Then he crashed into onyx eyes. Inches from his face, suddenly, out of the black, he snagged himself and his head found stone.
Everyone squeeled at plates made of gold and bronze plates tumbling to the floor. The event relit fires-of-greed in the diggers’ eyes because any proper robber knows the clanks of treasure.
“Was that gold or silver?” A dizzy Ishaq heard someone shout.
“A leopard,” he said.
—End of Chapter—
Ishaq walked through the first-opened-gate back in Thebes. Bes avoided eye contact with the guards. An elderly tax collector appeared to brood over ordering them searched. They had filled their wagon with sand, and that, Ishaq did not forsee, would attract attention. There is plenty of sand on both sides of the wall. The thought, Ishaq could see, was painted on the man’s brow. They were fortunate when the old-man started to raise his hand, a dispute, further down the line, interrupted him, and saved them.
The days passed slow. Four walls become cells of madness for those in hiding. Ishaq emerged the evening of the fifth day. His supplies wore out, followed by his spirit, and he went to market as if he had been there every day. He confused many shopkeepers with inventions of old-conversations whenever a guard was near. He considered this the right decision when, buying tobacco, he heard a temple priest tell a guard captain to follow anyone purchasing with gold or bartering jewels, plates and Ishaq quit listening when Nefari tugged his arm.
“Oh, where have you been hiding?” she said. “I just left our magistrate’s house, I told him to put out the word to find you.”
“Why would you do that?” he said.
“Why? It isn’t like you to disappear. I thought,” Nefari hesitated. “I feared you were hurt.”
That night he dug up the gold he hid, in the earth, under his pillow. He sneaked through his city’s quarter’s shadows. Hidden under the rampart’s shadow, Ishaq spotted the priest he eavesdropped from earlier. Two men emerged into moonlight. Their daggers shined. These men weren’t temple guards.
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Most writers will face the existential crises of writer’s block. It is, perhaps, the most painful and draining season in our lives. The words won’t come; the blank page taunts you. Writer’s block is demoralizing, and, if like me, you already battle mental health issues, like depression, O.C.D., and anxiety, the struggle is ten-fold. I know, I know, there are writers out there, very successful ones, who claim writer’s block is a made-up-excuse. For example, Stephen King argues he has never struggled to concoct a sentence. I call bull sh!t!
For me, writer’s block often appears when I am in a season of performance anxiety. I live in the United States, and, here, the culture is toxic for creatives: if you are not producing, you are failing. I think anyone who discounts how hard it can be to write through these struggles are certainly not writers themselves. So, one way, and it may not be for you, I crawl out of writer’s block is to disregard the end goal; I focus on the process and not the ambition. In other words, ignore the noise.
This is a fact: stress kills art. Sure, there are those who are exceptions to this rule, but, again, focus on your process and stop comparing yourself to what others can do. Some writers will write and publish fifty-books, and some, probably me, will only publish five-or-six, but who knows the future? When you stress volume, you are actually inviting that little devil who goes by the name Capitalism to handcuff your creativity. No real artist, regarding any medium, goes in it for material success—yes, even though, it is natural to day dream money and fame. We do what we do, because it is who we are. There is no plan B option for those called to entertain or educate readers.
Truly, I tell you, you can easily spend a whole-life feeling behind everyone else or below their expectations, or you can embrace who you are and accept your whole self and not just what others accept about you.
So, I want to encourage you, dear follower, to remember why you write. Maybe write down a note about why you love writing and stick it to your computer or desk. Remind yourself that, first-and-foremost, the number one goal is to have fun. Leave your bitter haters to themselves, and cut from your life anyone who tries, even those who love you, to get you to compromise who you are. Art demands sacrifices.
You can do this; you can write today. Now, sit down, set a half-hour timer and force something—anything—onto the page. Trust me, if you do life “their” way, you’ll fail to write, and, ultimately, you will fail to live your true self. You are created to do this; your gifts are part of your identity, and don’t put yourself—and your art—second to anything.
I pray all of you, even the non-writers, have the courage to be yourselves. Truly, I tell you, you can easily spend a whole-life feeling behind everyone else or below their expectations, or you can embrace who you are and accept your whole self and not just what others accept about you. Now, write!
“You won’t need the Gods or anyone else once we’re done. You will have servants to wait on your wives, horses for your sons, and hunger only a bad dream.”
Few writers achieve the distinction of master, herald, or avant garde of entire genres, but Stephen Crane, the crown jewel of naturalism, rests in the pantheon of literary history among the immortal few, near divine, writers whose works will outlast time itself. Crane wrote with, at the time, a unique, not seen before, style and voice, and he compounded his mastery over language with exceptional attention to detail; thus, allowing him to microscope the human condition—the plight of living and dying according to one’s circumstances.
Stephen Crane’s, 1871-1900, career was replete with flare, ingenuity, and influence but, unfortunately, brief; He died at only twenty-eight. A few of his notable works are Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)—his debut, considered the first complete work of naturalism, novel, The Red Badge of Courage (1895), War is King (1899), and, of course, the infamous short story The Open Boat (1898). Crane can be considered, without stretch, to be the American version of Victor Hugo. Crane, a student of European naturalists, was committed to write the truth, “He was convinced that if a story is transcribed in its actuality, as it appeared to occur in life, it will convey its own emotional weight without sentimental heightening, moralizing, or even interpretive comment” (Perkins, Perkins 815). This idea of creating characters and putting them in the path of realistic circumstances and observing how they worked themselves through their plights, without conveying an author’s opinion, was, at the time, revolutionary.
There is more, here, than Crane’s infatuation with writing the truth—naturalism; One, artists can only write well what they know; and two, life, truly experienced, is not filled with moral themes and positive character arcs; sometimes, as in life, characters have negative arcs and, without much choice, compromise their ethical positions. People are a product of their circumstances; they are, in a sense, unable to control the evolution of mankind’s predicament. The world, no matter how much one may wish it untrue, is chaotic, dark, selfish, and competitive; a life-lesson everyone learns, some too young, but all will eventually. Consider this, “he was initially in agreement with the naturalistic belief that the destiny of human beings, like the biological fate of other creatures [referring to natural selection], is so much determined by factors beyond the control of individual will or choice that ethical judgement or moral comment by the author is irrelevant or impertinent” (Perkins, Perkins 815). This truth is the defining characteristic of naturalistic literature.
Crane knew struggle; he knew, all too well, the cards life hands out, and how unromantic existence is for most people. His life began in Newark, New Jersey, and he was the youngest of fourteen children to a Methodist Minister. His father died when he was still a young boy. Crane wrestled early the pain which life, for no rational reason, dealt him. His troubled upbringing did not bring him intimate with faith, in fact it did the opposite. Crane once joked his family were, “the old ambling-nag, saddle-bag, exhorting kind [of ministers]” (Crain par. III). Without his father, the family struggled financially, “as a teenager Crane worked for an older brother’s news agency and later left college to work as a reporter in New York City” (Gioia, Gwynn 195). One grows up early when one grows up poor. One can, easily, even to some degree confidently, assume within this context and his exposure to the calamity of other’s struggle—through being a newspaper reporter—Crane did not find life rosy. There is nothing romantic in suffering. Perhaps, it was these circumstances that Crane decided for himself, as an artist, as a writer, as a storyteller, that he would rip off the band aid and write the truth—naturalism.
He proved himself the master, the herald, the avant garde of a new style of craft, and the apex naturalist author. There are laws one must follow in every art, and fiction is no different. These laws, rules, are what, when followed, breathes life into an author’s prose. However, in Crane’s case, like all other geniuses from all other mediums of art and academics and sciences etcetera, he was a pioneer, “he [Crane] pioneered free verse and plainspoken idiom—techniques that seemed radically innovative at the end of the nineteenth century…” (Gioa, Gwynn 195). As a consequence, the next generation, the masters of existentialism in particular, would turn his style into common practice. The most famous of all the writers he inspired was the legend Ernest Hemingway—considered, the inventor of modern fiction and its discipline of tight and active prose. In laymen terms, Crane wasted no time inserting his own thoughts; he simply revealed, through his craft, the plight of the human condition, without opinion and without judgement. His only footprint in his work is his belief in determinism.
The Red Badge of Courage is considered the pinnacle of his achievement. It is a panoramic view on the psychological struggle one finds themselves wrestling in war. There is no doubt, and no contesting, that this novel is a great work of literature. However, it is the opinion of this author [me] that The Open Boat is his masterpiece. The Open Boat (1898)is short fiction, otherwise, and perhaps more popularly, known as a short story. Unlike The Red Badge of Courage, Crane wrote from firsthand experience.
“Throughout these pages, the reader finds the brushwork of the master, and like all great artists, James can not only paint a story by the prowess of his craft, but, simultaneously, he hangs a mirror of enigmas and human complexity. Every reader can relate to the figurative handcuff’s persons’ finds themselves confined to.” —W. Alexander
On New Year’s Eve, 1896, Stephen Crane, aboard the Commodore experienced a shipwreck, “Working as an ordinary seaman, Crane helped bail the flooding water [the ship had sprung a leak] until the order came to abandon ship. Crane and other survivors spent thirty hours on the open sea before reaching land” (Gioa, Gwynn 213). Crane wrote a newspaper account himself on the wreck, “Now the whistle of the Commodore had been turned loose, and if there ever was a voice of despair and death, it was in the voice of this whistle…it was as if its [the ship] throat was already choked by the water, and this cry on the sea at night, with a wind blowing the spray over the ship, and the waves roaring over the bow, and swirling white along the decks, was to each of us probably a song of man’s end” (Crane par. I). Even in his own factual account, Crane’s style fills his readers with despair; every verb he uses themes chaos and fear—choked, cry, blowing, roaring, and swirling.
The Open Boat may have easily been a best-selling nonfictional account which would have dazzled readers across the globe, but Crane had a different idea: he wanted to tell the truth, the whole truth. Such truth can only be told in fiction. One excerpt from his short story, which reminds readers there is more than men riding together in a dingy hoping for rescue, there is a bond formed, “It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him” (Crane 10). Anyone that has ever been in the unfortunate position of complete despair, a battlefield, a stranded boat, or lost in the forest will swear this is true: a bond is fused, which will last a lifetime, between them and those that shared in the experience. The fears experienced in life tattoos the heart far easier than the joys.
So, Crane told his truth; he shared the plight of surviving on the high seas; he wrote with vivid imagery, to provide his readers with the exactness of the experience—only fiction can do this well, “Crane’s characteristic use of vivid imagery is demonstrated throughout this story to underscore both the beauty and terror of natural forces” (Poetry Foundation par. VII). His syntax, his weaving of prose, highlights more than just the natural truth of-a-thing, he explores ethical questions too.
Ethical compromises seem to have a place in all his works. Caleb Crain, in The New Yorker captures naturalism in a nutshell, “In narratives of the hopeless and the near-hopeless, of human beings experiencing powerlessness and self-delusion, he [Stephen Crane] managed to record a new kind of consciousness, giving the reader glimpses of the self as an opaque and somewhat mechanistic thing” (Crain par. III). This revealing of a mechanistic approach is no doubt why Stephen Crane is considered the herald of naturalism.
Crane’s mastery of craft and passion for elaborating on naturalistic themes lays the seed for the later literary movement of existentialism, albeit, in Crane’s day, the world still held the illusion of its institutions and their reliance. The façade of civilization’s reliability was only beginning to crack—new ideas emanated across the globe, and the world then, much like today, seemed to be near boiling over—which it did in WW1. This is why Crane is considered the avant garde of plain-spoken and direct writing—no higher themes, no moralizing, only the truth of the matter. A true idea, a portrait of reality, can and should stand on its own without embellishing it with higher purpose. The story must reflect life’s very real, very raw, realities and her uglies.
There is little doubt Stephen Crane is one of the most, if not the most, innovative writer of his day. He, like the European naturalists he loved and studied, was obsessed with showing that life is largely deterministic in nature and is indifferent to mankind’s suffering. He looked at life with sober indifference; there was nothing anyone could do, but what they did, in certain circumstances. There are no martyrs of the poor and helpless. People live miserable lives and are treated like miserable wretches by those of privilege. The latter is as true today as it was in his day, and every generation since the first generation of mankind.
Crane is the crown jewel of naturalism. He was inspired by the plight of the human condition—that one’s choices are according to circumstances; he committed to writing this truth without embellishing it with higher moralism or themes. He simply painted, with words, portraits of the inner machinations of one’s life; he microscoped and copied what he observed, and wrote, for all the world to see, a portrait of the human psyche. He was a heartbeat away from existentialism, which his legacy, no doubt, influenced the style of the modernist and the literary generations to follow. Determinism, a major influence on the naturalistic style, has spread its roots ten-fold in the modern world, and as a result, one can easily surmise that Crane was the avant garde of an entire worldview being manifested in prose. Civilization and art have come full circle: mankind has returned to the mythological psychology of accepting that they cannot escape fate; their actions are products of their place in the world.
The Open Boat is a work of genius. Here, without research, without study, he wrote a story from which he had personally experienced. He, like all the great masters, turns his sentences on strong verbs, and as he used consistency, plain—spoken language, radical close attention to detail, to capture the truth—the exactness—of what it is like to be stranded at sea. He added no color to his work other than what would realistically be seen. His story is even more impressive when one realizes, despite escaping death, death stalked him, and he died two years later of tuberculosis.
Fiction is the vehicle which truth is revealed, and Crane, perhaps, more than any other author of his generation proved this to be true. His writing style compares to the artistic movement of impressionism—he paints, with words, what is before him and without judgement. All great writers master the craft, but Crane—like Whitman, like Dickinson, like Hemingway, like Hugo, like Pope, like Voltaire, like Homer, like Kafka, like Woolf—had a touch of the divine; that unteachable it factor, and it is among the company of these writers where he lives forever in the pantheon of literary immortality.
Crane’s work can be identified in regard to the ethical compromises one faces in specific, negative, circumstances. One’s pursuit of virtue is largely affected by one’s place in the world, and, similar to the natural world, one’s ecosystem—community—and their position and predicament in life is largely out of their control. His legacy is far more than the herald of naturalism, he was among the first to shine a light on the plight of humanity, without comment or opinion, and show the world the very real mental gymnastics characters, like people in real life, must navigate according to their circumstances.
Crane, Stephen. “The Sinking of The Commodore, New York Press, 7 Jan 1897: Author’s Perspective.” The Art of The Short Story: 52 Great Authors, Their Best Short Fiction, and Their Insights on Writing, Pearson Longman Publishing, Boston, MA, 2006, pp. 213-216. Print.
Crane, Stephen. The Open Boat. E-artnow publishing, Apple Books, MacReader, 2013, pp. 10. E-book.
Gioa, Dana & Gwynn, R.S., “Stephen Crane.” The Art of The Short Story: 52 Great Authors, Their Best Short Fiction, and Their Insights on Writing, Pearson Longman Publishing, Boston, MA, 2006, pp. 195. Print.
Gioa, Dana & Gwynn, R.S., “The Open Boat.” The Art of The Short Story: 52 Great Authors, Their Best Short Fiction, and Their Insights on Writing, Pearson Longman Publishing, Boston, MA, 2006, pp. 196-213. Print.
Perkins, Perkins. “Stephen Crane: Author Bio.” The American Tradition in Literature, Volume 2, edition 12, McGraw-Hill, Inc., 2021, pp. 814-815. E-Textbook Liberty University English 341.
W. Alexander Dunford I will never forget the television’s blue light that night fifteen years ago. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond played. Outside, beneath black skies, rain pelted our windows and the house’s bones braced against high winds. Thunder shook the walls. It was Father’s idea to watch the movie. He loved violence, and I loved…
“…in that moment my fear retreated. I discovered I hated him and his kind. I hated his affluence, his expensive clothes, his chiseled looks, and the arrogance he was born to. But most of all, I hated the power he held over me, his assumption of authority, and the truth of his superiority.”
We’re turning the corner, finally, with this pandemic. Soon, within the year, most of us will begin dining out, vacationing, throwing backyard parties, etcetera. I cannot wait. A sense of renewal, of regeneration emanates through the atmosphere. Not unlike, being on the other side of an awful illness; you feel the life, the vitality spreading throughout your body. However, let’s not discount the reality that danger continues to lurk around every corner.
One thing I have done the last few years is journal. I use, like all millennials, an app—Day One. Every night I write a short prayer, something I’m grateful for, add photos, and bullet the key events of my day. And every night, when I open my app—Day One—I can view my entries that I wrote last year, two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, etcetera.
The memories I read, right now, consist of entries from Covid’s first days. I archived news clips of Trump telling us it will all be-over-with by spring (2020). I have my take on folks emptying the shelves of toilet paper, paper towels, and other (never before conceived) essentials. I even saved articles into my diary from the, Washington Post of folks buying up all the hand sanitizer and then selling it on e-bay. I looked ahead a few days and saw where my wife and I purchased a roll of toilet paper from China for $60.00 because there was none left, at all, at the time. This was all in the final days of March. Can you believe it?
Like most of you, covid killed my work; I was a brand-new realtor, and well, I’m not anymore—I think. I just didn’t have the comfort of walking into other homes, nor did I have the connections needed to survive, and I, most important, didn’t have the time; I was needed at home. I decided, like many, with death looming around, and the fear of catching this virus striking my borderline hypochondria (a joke, but I fear sickness), to reprioritize what matters. My wife played a critic role in this.
I transformed.
Before Covid, I was the poster-boy of preppy, healthy, and hard-working. I was raised in Appalachia (southwestern Virginia), pronounced apple-at-cha, and I spent my entire adult life trying to separate myself from those early days. I never thought myself better than another, but I certainly didn’t want to live on the bottom. So, I worked, and I became whatever people needed me to be. It was not long, sometime after my father died, my early twenties, that I noticed I pretended so much for everyone else, I didn’t know who I was anymore.
As the years passed, and I obsessed over saving money (a good thing), and pleasing others, I began to take a much more comfortable route to life, one where getting honest with myself wasn’t required, and, so, I wore a mask, I wore all masks.
See, I had always wanted to do one thing: write. Well, besides that short season, when I was a kid, that I wanted to be a biologist—I’m obsessed with Darwin and evolution. One of the things I always loved was historical fiction, and if I’m being honest, and I am, I wanted to write and publish historical research. I love that stuff!
Like many people, I never got the chance to be who I truly was. It wasn’t just that I lacked the courage or the support-system, it is the fact that I never had the chance. I have worked a full-time job since I was fifteen years old.
When I was in high school, I worked five days a week, 4pm to midnight at a Sonic-Drive-In (I still don’t eat at Sonic, lol). In college, I worked the night shift, 10pm-6am stocking groceries for a couple years (going to class at 8am and sleeping in my car between gaps), and after dropping out, I worked at a factory, 50-55 hours a week for three-and-a-half years, and was a waiter at Applebee’s in the evenings. I’m not complaining, I just had to do what needed to be done: bills have to get paid.
In short, when I moved to Michigan, interned for Google, and then became a general manager for The UPS Store (a job I held for five years). Money was tight, and I saved what I could, and I struggled, and that’s when the pain that I was throwing my life away really sat in. If I was going to struggle, couldn’t I at least be happy doing it? Having a good job didn’t matter to me. I woke up every day doing something I know I wouldn’t choose to do, if I had the choice (don’t we all?). And only people of privilege say folks have a choice. They don’t know what it’s like to push one bill out, so you can eat. Not the kind of environment where a dream is ideally fought for, or hell, America’s poor would all become success stories.
Either way, I met my wife in Michigan, and my faith flourished there. But the identity crises began emerging toward the end. I left my job, and took a break, I had a significant amount of money saved, and could live years without working—if I played it right. A friend and I traveled all over America, we went to forty states, and I spent that summer hoping, just like in the movies, under desert stars I would rediscover who I really was. After that, my future wife and I went to Europe, got engaged there and I entered a blissful season, where my identity crises was band-aided—I tied my self-worth to her vision. After all, I had no honest vision of my own; I did not even know who I was anymore.
I decided money was the common denominator to a peaceful life. I knew it wasn’t everything, but I knew without it, personally, one lives a miserable life. So, I went to Wall Street, and became a MLO at a huge financing conglomerate. My entire time there, training months included, I never worked a week under 60 hours. Not a single one. I made BIG money, but didn’t even have the time to do anything with it. Everyone around me wore Rolex’s and drove black luxury sedan’s, and, although I tried, because I always become what people think is the best version of someone is, I couldn’t sustain pretending that I wanted those things too. I found, I wanted to just save again so much money, I could spend the rest of my life writing. I use to need a few drinks every night to settle these demons down.
The thought came in one night, my hand under my pillow, my suit still on, four or five whiskey’s drowned, so randomly that I thought I snapped. I remember thinking I was having a nervous breakdown. I hadn’t truly thought of getting serious about my writing in years, though, I did from time-to-time start, but never finish, projects.
I decided then and there, I would find away, but, again, it never happened. A few months later, I was bogged down, it had been 31 days since I had a full-day off, and my fiancée reveals she had enough with her job, too. She was the envy of everyone around her, but she couldn’t go on pretending either. We decided to move to Boston, a shared dream of ours and look for jobs. She found one first, I quit a couple weeks before we moved, and found, believe it or not, another job as a General Manager of The UPS Store franchise in Beacon Hill. Though I quickly took to operating within five different stores at once. I have always, and I mean always, had a strange knack for leadership. I even like it, but, again, that is just a mask I am great at wearing. Hell, I would have become a stripper before going back into finance. You couldn’t pay me $500,000 a year to do that again (which realistically, is what I would make if I was still there). So, I didn’t mind making less, and having time to see my fiancée again.
We lived downtown, got married, went off to Paris and Bordeaux, and lived our happy, well-off, healthy young body’s life. Then we got pregnant.
We wrestled with staying in the city. The cost of daycare was close to 3,000 a month per child, our apartment was 2500 per month, and we would absolutely need to go bigger, but we were unwilling to live outside of Back Bay or Beacon Hill. So, we wrestled and wrestled and wrestled some more with what to do.
We decided to make another move. You know, get the big house. We loved the city, but we didn’t want to work ourselves to death just to live in a certain zip code. People really put themselves in awful situations over keeping-up-with-the-Jones’s—we are not those people.
We moved to New Hampshire—closer to her family, and she transferred offices. We got the big house, and a nice spread on our personal P&L sheet—budget. I became a realtor. That was something I had always been interested in doing. My wife told me, “if you do that, you can get pretty flexible with your schedule and write. You’ve always wanted to write. Maybe this will help.” And so, it did.
However, the winter after our first child was born, Covid hit. Pow! I hadn’t been successful yet in real estate, but it imploded. The day care closed its door to us, we weren’t essential, and we worked from home. Pretty soon, I was daddy-day care.
Well, I saw the real estate experiment coming to an end long before I allowed myself to think that way. I tried riding that dead horse for months after. I hate failing, and I took it pretty hard. I started drinking for the first time really heavy. My father was an alcoholic, and that scared me, so it only lasted a couple of months before I reigned it in. I was taking some writing classes, because I never went too far away from it, just far enough to not get serious about it, and I decided I would finish my degree. After all, the pandemic was a great opportunity to recenter one’s life.
And that’s what I have been doing since Covid hit, working on my degree and raising my kids all day. I don’t have ulcers from the stress of pretending anymore. I did struggle pretty hard with telling my in-laws about school. But at some point, I figure they will see that I won’t be much good as a father if I’m miserable. I can’t exactly raise my children by example, if, well, I didn’t pull myself up by the bootstraps and get honest with myself. Sometimes the only way to move forward is to walk all the way back to your biggest regret and strike a new path from there.
I decided to pursue my dreams and write, finally. And let me tell you, for the first time in my life, I never think about money, and I have learned to write some pretty elegant, at times, prose. I already have two pieces submitted to publishers. This is not a pipe-dream. Somehow, I just know I have it. That this is the path, and I know many fail here, but I don’t worry about that (I honestly don’t). I don’t do it for approval, I do it because it is the most natural thing in the world to me.
Derry, New Hampshire was the longtime home of Robert Frost. This poem is in dedication to my favorite poetry book: North of Boston, and his poem October.
Have you ever heard it said I would love to write a book, if only I had the time? I hate to hear those words. They imply that writing is easy; some people think they can just sit down, one-day, and produce a story. I want to reply: I would love to be an astronaut or a theoretical physicist, if only I had the time. It is irrational to think writing is not serious, hard work. Some people think art is a childish past-time. However, we know writing is a craft, and the technique requires mastering, and sometimes that takes decades.
Every book you have read, poem you have memorized, movie you have loved, and painting you have admired have one thing in common: someone, probably family, told the creator it wasn’t realistic. Go be unrealistic!#amwriting#WritingCommnunity#motivational
These people think since money buys everything, therefore it means everything, and dreams come, unfortunately, second. They understand little in regards to what a person is called to do. Unfortunately, haters are here to stay in our lives, so we will always be surrounded by people who grade another’s worth in numbers. Below are some examples of what you have, no-doubt, personally heard:
Do you know how difficult it is to get published? This is often the first frustration they reveal, as if you had not considered the odds. True, for some it is hard (depending on your goals), and recognition would be nice, if only to shut-you-up, but money is not the goal. Money and recognition are nice to have, but creatives would rather live without those things than work for them. See as an example, the entire life of James Joyce.
It is a fine dream, but take care of your life first, so that way, when you do not need to work anymore, you can go for it. Again, money is never the goal. These people always think in terms of money (that famous glass castle). I find it ironic when religious people give this opinion. Jesus teaches that nothing robs a person more of who they are—and their salvation—than the cares of this world. They are literally asking you to say to God, whether they realize it or not, I know you made me for this, but you were wrong about the timing. Trust me, God is on the side of those whom obey his call, and not with those who heed worldly-wisdom (common sense). Heaven’s wisdom never has and never will make sense to the ways of the world.
It does not pay well. Blah, again, it is always about money. No writer writes for money; no painter paints to be rich. Personally, I give away the wealth I already have. If I made a million from a book, I would not keep more than a couple years of expenses (if I needed them). Nothing frightens me more than arriving into old age with wealth and security, because I fulfilled someone else’s dream. The biggest lie America, ever told is that God wants you healthy and wealthy. No! God wants you humble, obedient, and kind to one another.
It sends the wrong message to your kids. What a foolish and hypocritical thing to say. Artists are not burn-outs: they have mortgages, they have families, they have financial goals too, but they, as best they can, resist this horrid ultra-capitalist attention-economy. I want my kids to be themselves, and not what the world tells them they should be. I want them to make smart decisions, but not decisions to fit-in. They will be a great disappointment to me if they sacrifice spiritual and personal goals for financial and professional reasons. I would be ashamed!
Most people fail doing this. One, these people don’t actually know very many artists or they would realize that failure, as they regard it, is a subjective construct. I see failure as never writing, regardless of recognition. Some writers would say the opposite: to be published makes it real for them. Others, like Emily Dickinson, refused to be published until after her death (she thought fame might rupture her creativity). You are a writer now, and not, only, after someone reads your work.
These are only a few of the experiences we have all had, but every artist has their own unique resistance to work against. One thing God has been working with me on, is judge not, lest you be judged accordingly. Until recently, I never conceived this as being karma, but it is true: what you put out, you get back: if I criticize others, I invite criticism into my life; if I judge other’s life-style, they will judge me by mine. As an LGBTQ+ Christian (we won’t get into that), I have quite a bit of conflict in my heart. I should keep my mind off of others and onto God.
I have an unhealthy inner dialogue with my haters; they live in my head rent-free. Every new idea seems, internally, to have-its-say against them (family). I confess to being human: I want justification, I want to be believed in, I want support, I want respect, but it is not going to happen. It takes courage to be who you are, when you have to go it alone. You cannot please everyone, so focus on your inner-circle of support. At some point, we all need to give up on wanting to please everyone. This is my prayer:
Lord, I worry about how others think of me, how they see me, and how they unapprove of my efforts. Lord, you know I spent years, a decade, trying it their way, giving all of myself to corporate work-culture, collecting accolades from work-achievements, saving more money than I need, concerning myself with the cares of this world, worrying over my future, planning everything down to the last detail. I did not know, when I could no longer be who everyone else wanted me to be that I would feel so rejected. I believed their love ran deeper than it did. I did everything right for years, exactly as it was suppose to be, and where did it get me? It got me one year ago, last week, in the ER, wanting to take my own life. I can’t go back to pretending to be someone I am not, and they can’t support me on this journey. Jesus, I trust you, and I give all of myself up to you. You are my only true friend. You have blessed me with the ability and opportunity to go after what you created me for, and I will not say no this time; I will write for you. You are worth all the hurt; you are the object of my complete devotion.Thank you for my wife, whom is my greatest, next to you, support and best friend. Reveal to me how I can be, everyday, the man she prays for. Thank you for my children. Reveal to me, Lord, how I am to raise them to seek you above all else. Thank you for my doubters. Reveal to me Lord, how I can glorify you with the work you have called me to do. Lord, thank you for creating me. Lord, thank you for pushing me forward, when I want to give up.
-Amen
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Keep writing friends!
I reached a milestone this week. I finished reading the entire Bible. I am proud of myself; this was no easy feat. I finally can say I have read the whole Bible, every word. I do not know whom in real life, I would actually say it to. But I can say it, and that is something. You might say, that is good for you, but how is this related to your writing blog? My answer, God is my inspiration for writing. I just did not know that for a long time.
This post is not meant to be self-gratifying or boastful. My purpose is to show you how transformative reading the Bible is.
If you have read my work, you know I teeter on the edge of existentialism. This life is a mess, and God gives me a firm foundation in a collapsing world. He gives me a reason for hope. As an artist and scholar, I have long looked for my voice. I think I found it now; Or at least I am close. I do know one thing for certain, my writing is meant for ministry. Whether that is apologetics, fiction, or creative nonfiction, I do not know, but I know I am called to both cloth and pen.
“I Am Second”
W. Alexander
I study creative writing at Liberty University, under New York Times Best selling author Karen Kingsbury. Both play a major role in influencing me. But for once, I do not mind being influenced. When I write about God or themes of God, my heart feels unleashed. I feel nothing, but peace, love, and fire. There is more to my writing than mere words. A higher message is being conveyed. One of hope, in a world that suffers generation-to-generation.
With that being said, I confess I am no pedantic observer of every scriptural truth. I am after all, human. God and I disagree on quite a bit. I lean progressive in scholarship; think C.S. Lewis. But I do submit to God’s design for life, not mine. I do not understand why some things are sin and others are not; etcetera. But my feelings on the subject are not part of the equation. I am second. This is where I find peace. Submission brings inner peace. That is the lesson I learned from reading the entire Bible.
Now, I am curious to learn what inspires you? What makes your heart race when you write? Whom is the reader you imagine reading your manuscript? I cannot wait to read your answers.
Below is my Goodreads review for the devotional Bible I finished a couple days ago.
Wow! I did it. I read the entire Bible, beginning to end. Peterson’s edition is designed to only take one year; it took me three. Life gets busy. I have school, a toddler, work, other books to read, etcetera. But I am proud to say, finally, I have read the entire Bible; every single word. I spent my mornings with the Bible in one hand and coffee in the other.
You should understand that The Message translation is not an authoritative translation. And Peterson’s, The Message Remix is to be read as a devotional. Serious scholarship will be done elsewhere. But you are not reading this Bible for serious scholarship; you are reading it to spend time with God. To have a daily conversation with your creator, I highly recommend this Bible. It took me years, but I am glad I finished it.
Trust me…, stopping and noticing the details around you is life’s most generative experience, not only will your writing improve, but so will your mental health.
Hi, friends and readers, subscribers and first-time-site clickers. I have big, beautiful news to share with you. I published in The Closed Eye Open, which is an impressive literary journal boasting beautiful art and great writing. If you’re looking for something new, creatively speaking, to delight and inspire you, I recommend reading The Closed Eye…
