When I sit down to write on here, I usually don’t have a gameplan. Only on review day do I actually have a set agenda. The rest of the time, I sit down, apply flame to an individually rolled cancer delivery system, and type whatever vomits forth from my brain. That is the crux of my problem. Some days, I just have nothing and no post goes up. I do have other options outside of this here blog and sometimes they take precedence. I’ve been playing guitar more due to laying down tracks for my friends’ new cd. There’s this long-form written piece I have been compiling notes for, with having to slog through outlines and character studies, all based on a short story I wrote ten years ago. That stuff is not really what I consider “writing”, more like file-keeping. Then there is real life: consoling my wife whose grandmother just passed away, contacting the proper parties concerning the pet food recall which almost killed our cat, interviewing for a new job, sending both my Nintendo DS and Xbox 360 in for warranty repairs when they died within a day of each other… This here blog just gets bumped down the priority list, which is a double-edged sword, as I consider writing on here somewhat a therapy session. Smoking, listening to metal loud on the noise-cancelling headphones, clacking away… heaven.
It’s the actual process of my writing that I find so enchanting. I started reading when I was very young and went directly into shaping my own stories. As a shy child with no siblings and very few friends, I found solace in my imagination. Never one for long stories, I usually wrote what I guess would be called “scenes”, where I would give no backstory and would just directly jump in feet-first. In, out. One to two pages. Blam. In fact, my senior year of high school, I wouldn’t just scribble “keep in touch, dude”. For a few of my friends, I asked them to give me a term, say “shoes” for example, and I would write a very short story on it. It made it different and interesting for me. There would always be fictional stuff floating around in my head, but my favorite, truthful stuff I never showed anyone.
Hands down, my favorite writer of all time is Hunter S. Thompson and he completely changed my life. When I was about twelve years old, I stumbled across a book entitled Cosmic Banditos, by A.C. Weisbecker, which had been misfiled into the Children’s Section at my local Crown Books. It was most definitely not a kid’s book, as it paralleled drug running and quantum physics. Flipping though it, I was amazed at how funny it was and my dad, being the permissive science nerd parent he is, bought it for me. One day was all it took to finish. Afterward, I loaned it to him and when he was done with it, asked me if I remembered a movie we had watched together called Where The Buffalo Roam. He then informed me that it was based on a real guy who was a writer named Hunter. One trip to Crown later, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas was in my eager hands.
His writing style floored me and I purchased as many of his works as I could. He wrote everything so factually yet none of this seemed real. How could he even survive to tell the tale considering the copious amounts of drugs and alcohol coursing through his system? As entertaining as it was, it was phrasing which always stuck with me. How describing something so ugly could be so beautiful. How he could be so caustic about people and yet lovingly describe a near-death experience while flying down PCH late at night on his Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle. Hunter S. Thompson irrevocably changed me. I paid more attention to politics and journalism, how important friends are and who the bastards are. Most importantly, writing changed. Gradually, my fictional pieces fell away and out started pouring ultra-personal journal pieces. The wording mattered more and how to phrase something was integral. A bit of fiction never hurts as long as the overall story is truthful. No boundaries whatsoever. Nothing is off-limits. Hell, I’m just as willing to tell you about my breakfast as my two-year addiction to cocaine. It all comes down to learning from life and erasing the badness.
In fact, that is precisely what I want to achieve with this blog. I don’t really think about who reads it, although a few friends do come here regularly. This entire thing is somewhat of a writing exercise and my sole audience is me. My wife theorizes that I don’t get a lot of visitors because they are turned off by the long-form format, but that is something I can’t allow to creep into my psyche. All it will do is force me to second-guess what comes out. And I can’t. This is more for me than anyone else and if I inform or entertain anyone along the way, great, but this is therapy, remember? No one said that is would be easy. Or even punctual.
Except for on Thursdays. The Comics On A Budget column is part of my on-going effort to get people to realize that there are still great comics out there. If a comic is crap, the solution is easy. Just don’t buy it. Don’t go anonymously post endlessly on some forum while still buying it in hopes that the powers-that-be will listen. Just shut your mouth and stop buying it. Comics are a wonderful world where there is literally something for everyone. Maybe give an independent creator a try sometime. You might be surprised. Hell, even some of the mainstream stuff is still palatable. Or, better yet, WRITE OR DRAW YOUR OWN. It’s simple. Take what you like or don’t like about comics and learn and grow. Like I did with Hunter.
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