The Works and Worlds of J Dark
What I learned about being a writer is that
a) it’s hard work,
b) there are long days of struggle with few sentences, and occasional bursts of inspiration that can cover pages,
c) the stories are what drive the writer, the desire to see for themselves, what happens next, and finally
d) there is nothing like seeing the end of the story so another can begin.
I sit here, tapping away on my keyboard to bring you a message of electronic media. Writing can be fun, and snarky, and at times, thoughtful and even prescient. But it does not happen unless someone decides to write. Sharing of stories and ideas is a social process, one might almost call it a social ‘need’.
Writers of any kind are social bellwethers. What is written is part and parcel of the times that they live in, and affect them. As an example, when the nuclear bomb appeared, humanity was shocked by it’s power, and fascinated by it’s potential. Stories and movies appeared that reflected these feelings, both positively and negatively. A famous example is ‘Godzilla’, a creature of the atomic bomb.
Realize we, as writers, are a reflection of the times we live in, and in our writings these values, fears, wonders, and curiosity are reflected. We also shape the future. Another example of this, is are the numerous science fiction stories that presaged the creation of items that now are ubiquitous in our modern world. Lasers, prophesized in H.G. Wells, war of the worlds, is probably the most recognizable example.
As writers, our job, is to entertain, speculate, expose truth, question ourselves and our world, and most of all, stimulate the imagination.
Writing is what I like doing, and what I want to do. But I do notice that when I read, words are not as hard to come by. By reading, I set my mind into looking at, and for, words to use in the story I am writing. The words still struggle, but I’ve more focus for the writing, and this also benefits in that there are more synonyms that come to mind for a word, and that makes reading more interesting.
Mom dressed all the time in old clothes and dark colors. When we went out to the store, it was usually in the very early morning. Mom always told me that it was best, because there weren’t many people around and it made shopping easier. Looking back, I think it was because at those hours, hardly anyone she had met at her ‘job’ would be around. She table-danced, or stripped, whichever describes it best for you. Mom hated it, and came home crying a lot. That would make Dad unhappy and those were when the biggest fights happened. About her job. About the money she brought home because dad couldn’t work. About him not working. They always fought. They didn’t pay much attention to me then. I learned to hide in my room when their voices started to get an edge. It meant that things were going to get broken, and a lot of slapping and throwing. It was better in my bedroom.
As I look at the memory of it, that room was my refuge. The one place I had some little privacy of my own. It wasn’t sacrosanct. Both mom and dad would come in to wake me up, or yell at some accident, or even hide from one another, either in play, or, you know. The not-fun-not-play stuff like fighting or yelling or crying. Dad did it a little more than mom. He’d charge in and slam the door, then lean against it. Mom would pound a few times, then go quiet. Dad watched me as he leaned on the door. He’d hold his first finger to his lips and go ‘shhhh’.
Do you know how you’re going to say goodbye to someone? Is it going to be a loving embrace and a soft caress of their cheek before they go to the great beyond? Or, is it going to be heated words and a pistol stuck in their belly as they try to argue, or to plead with you, not to pull the trigger? Or is it simply a call in the night? A quick stop at the mortuary to look at a lump of flesh bloated with formaldehyde, because that’s the law? Or, will you, like me, wonder what happened when they just disappear? Here one day, and gone the next, and no clue where.
I remember, or think I do, the last time I saw Mom and Dad. They’d dropped me off at Uncle Soap’s apartment after packing the beat-up gold Ford Taurus for a camping trip. They often went camping alone at least twice a month, down in the Big Bend National Park. I remember him having on his red and black shirt he’d pulled the sleeves off. Mom always told him that was her favorite shirt of his. She’d wear it around the house sometimes to tease Dad. Not that they were all sweetness and love. More than once I heard them screaming back and forth about all sorts of things. Always it was mostly about drugs.
I didn’t understand then, but I think I do now. They argued the most just before they went camping, and were best together after they got back. As a child, I saw the change, and knew it had something to do with them going camping, but it really didn’t matter. Mom and Dad were happy. They paid attention to me, and bought me things like a new set of shoes, or a cool shirt. It’s funny that I remember the clothes but not their faces. I remember Dad always being skinny, and he had fuzz on his face. I don’t remember if it was a beard or mustache, both, or if he just didn’t shave every day. Mom was like Dad, skinny.
When they didn’t go camping, Dad stayed home nights with me while Mom went to work. She’d always dress up in baggy pants and a shirt, and carry lots of bright, flashy clothes that fit in a little carry bag to work. Dad would stay awake with me until I got tired, then I’d get tucked into bed on the couch at the far end of the trailer. I’d fall asleep listening to Dad watch television. Every so often, before I passed out, I’d watch him give himself a shot of ‘medicine’ in between his toes. I know he was shooting up now, but then I knew he was always more happy afterwards, so it seemed a good thing to me. I knew something was off, most four-year-olds can sense things. We’re not yet aware enough of how to lie to ourselves and avoid uncomfortable truths. Denial and delusion aren’t something that’s learned right away.
Good-bye is a word we use a lot. When it’s going away for a couple weeks, or leaving to go home from visiting parents or children, good-bye is the one word everyone uses. But, what if, it is the last thing you are able to say to a loved one? How does it change in meaning? How do you resolve those words in yourself after uttering them, knowing that the one you’re talking to, will hear them as your last communication? It’s a deep gut-wrenching reality that everything in this universe is finite, that everything will, at some point, cease. ‘Saying Good-bye’ is a look at this shift from existence to history.
Hiya, as you can tell it’s eight days into the New Year and this is the first post. it’s been a little slow, and for that I apologize. To get to the situation, Book Three, (current working title “Beguiling Words”) is stubbornly refusing to finish. It may require a rewrite of the last portion again to find that elusive path to the end.
Frustrations aside, things feel like when a person is moving from conscious thought to a more instinctive reply. There’s a point in practice, where, at the start you have a steep learning curve, and then a plateau, where movements you have to think about to perform, struggle to become a learned response one doesn’t have to think about. This is where I’m feeling my writing at the moment. It’s like I can see more of my weaknesses, and I can get around them by thinking about each word and situation, but there’s the struggle to push on and let the words flow, which then loses some of the descriptive emotional color, or vibrancy of the background.
The job now is to let the lessons I’m seeing in writing sink in and become part of the learned response so I can add more to the story while the instinctual flow can add more color, description, and emotional impact without the conscious part interrupting the creative flow.
NaNoWriMo is coming up soon. Tomorrow at midnight the new 50k challenge starts.
The setup’s done and now what’s needed are words, lots of words. 50,000+ words by the end of November. That’s the goal, and the writing is the Journey.
He turned off Belcher, then slowed and turned on Collier. The street ran north and fronted the warehouses that stored good from the ships being serviced at the docks. The pace on the docks and warehouses was frantic. It looked to Charlie like an ant nest that had been kicked open. Cranes were moving cargo off the freighters in large pallets. Another freighter was sliding containers down a ramp to waiting eighteen wheel tractor-trailer flatbeds. The line of trucks stretched over a quarter mile by his estimate.
He looked back forward just in time to avoid drifting into the curb at forty miles and hour. He over-corrected and moved into the oncoming lane. He grunted as he planted his foot and shifted back into the proper lane. I gotta pay more attention. I can handle a wipeout, but not an oncoming car. Where is the turnoff to the dockyard? Charlie’s thought was answered a moment later as the road ended at a ‘T’ intersection. He slowed then slewed right, skidding on the loose gravel, then straightened out, slowing to avoid a tumble, and approached the gate. The gate was a railroad crossing re-purposed to be a traffic control. It was currently down as the gate guard was checking the papers on a white and blue UPS truck.
The outbound lane had a tractor trailer slowly moving forward to leave the docks. At his speed he’d bee there before the truck could clear the gate, and with four others behind it, there was no way to use the oncoming lane to bypass the guard. ‘Skid’ slowed as he approached the gate, raising his hand to his pullover mask to make certain it was still in place. The heavyset gate guard stopped talking as the bright red and blue stocky superhero trotted up to the gate.
“Whatta ya want, uh, kid? I’m kinda busy here”, the guard said with a surprisingly soft voice. ‘Skid’ took a moment to realize that the guard was a woman. He could feel himself blush as he tried to sound authoritative.
“Sorry, ma’am. I’d heard that some stuff was stolen last night. I came by to look the, uh, scene over and see if there is something that, umm, would help find the crooks.” He tried to puff his chest out, and got the mental image of a cartoon mouse trying to look tough while facing a cat. The man the guard was talking to had also turned to look over at ‘Skid’, then turned back the guard with a small chuckle, making Charlie blush even redder.
“I suppose I could let you look around. Heck, seeing you prowling might make them guys with sticky fingers decide not to try anything if a costume’s poking around.” She pressed a button, raising the gate, then waved her clipboard at ‘Skid’. “G’wan through. Place that got hit’s on the north side up there.” ‘Skid’ nodded, then trotted around the van, accelerating back to a somewhat leisurely thirty miles and hour. He slowed again as he dodged a swarm of fork lifts moving pallets of crates and boxes to the white concrete warehouse to his left. The traffic was incessant, with two men shouting orders to the stream of men, and equipment coming from a docked freighter. The noise was near deafening as ‘Skid’ dodged swiftly, and awkwardly between the moving vehicles and people.