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How Writing Heightened My Senses

“When a regular person gets sick, they take an aspirin. When a writer gets sick, they take notes…”

This past July I found myself in the hospital – as a visitor, not a patient. It was the first time I’d been in a hospital in years.

I was there early in the morning, and as I rounded a corner there was a multi-tiered cart pushed against the wall holding dirty dishes from the patients’ breakfasts. Walking past, I was hit with the unmistakable smell of stale pancakes and maple syrup. Despite everything that was on my mind that morning (my wife had stayed overnight with a mystery illness), those smells put a thought in my head – I need to remember this.

Suddenly I began looking around more aware, trying to take it all in:

The smell of the pancakes and syrup, the way the cart with all the dirty plates was pushed against the wall.

The chatter at the nurses station as well as all the different beeps, boops, and hums throughout the floor.

The people ending their overnight shifts with dead, heavy eyes, in contrast with the morning shift who had just started, bright-eyed and smiling as they made coffee and chirped “Good morning!” to everyone.

The (mostly elderly) patients that you could tell had been there quite some time, padding up and down the halls in their robes and slippers as part of their physical therapy, rolling their IV’s along beside them.

It was like I’d flipped open a mental notebook and was trying to commit to memory every detail I could because, as I realized that morning, it was inevitable one of my characters would end up in the hospital someday. Since then, I’ve made a conscious effort to take more notice of my surroundings.

I’ve always been a people watcher and an eavesdropper by nature; I could sit in a mall food court or similar public place and watch people for hours – making up imaginary backstories for them, trying to figure out where they’re coming from and where they’re headed, that sort of thing.

800px-Food_court_edo_japan_la_belle_province_basha — Judging from the size of his backpack, this young man has obviously just run away from home. (Wikipedia)

But now I’m listening to ambient noise, looking at minute details, trying to identify smells and thinking about how to describe them. It’s like suddenly my senses have been heightened; everything is more vivid because I’m paying more attention in hopes of being able to describe it in my writing later on.

About six weeks ago I had a stomach bug that lasted for about five days. It was awful. I was absolutely miserable. But it was different this time – I thought about it like a writer. I paid attention to every little twinge of pain in my stomach. Of course it hurt, but how did it hurt? What did it feel like?

I was driving not too long ago and saw that the street up ahead of me had been closed off. There were firetrucks everywhere with their lights on. I slowed to just above an idle and grabbed my phone, snapping pictures as I took the detour. When I got home I looked at the pictures to see how many vehicles were actually there and where they all were. Some parked diagonally to head off traffic; a few were on the curb; two just stopped right in the middle of the street. I had no idea what was going on or why the fire department was there, but it helped give me a frame of reference whenever I have to describe a situation where emergency vehicles arrive on scene.

We’ve all heard about how when a person loses one of their senses, their others are heightened. Someone who loses their eyesight will find their hearing becomes quite acute, or maybe develop an exquisite sense of smell. That’s kind of how I feel anymore. Ever since I started paying more attention to improve my writing, I feel like I have super senses. I see more, I hear more, smell more, feel more than ever before. As an added bonus I haven’t had to lose any senses in the process. 🙂

I’m not sure if this is normal for other writers or not. I’d imagine a lot of writers already have that attention to detail that I’m just picking up. That’s probably why it seems like every writer but me has an 80,000-100,000 word first draft to slash down, while I can barely hit 50,000 and keep finding more to add. So tell me, fellow writers, has writing made you more aware, or were just born that way?

The Best and Worst Band Names, As Determined By Me

I decided against anything too serious this week. I figured people are getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday, preparing to face the rabid masses on Black Friday, or going balls-to-the-wall to wrap up the month with a win at NaNo. Either way, I didn’t feel like writing anything too lengthy or serious, either. I decided to look at band names a little bit.

Band names are a funny thing. If a band is around long enough, or if their music is good enough, their name just sort of becomes accepted no matter how nonsensical or silly it is. But if you strip away the name and just look at it for its own merit, what do you have?

Sometimes band names have deep meaning (Rage Against The Machine). Sometimes they’re just random words thrown together (Foo Fighters). Sometimes the names fit the band perfectly, and sometimes you’re embarrassed to speak them aloud. Let’s take a look at a few.

The first band I was ever in (who never played a single gig) was called Doomsday Parade. Pretty dumb, but I guess there’s a certain ring to it. Nah, it’s dumb. The next band, and first “real” band, was called Grimoire (grim-war, phonetically). It’s the name given to a textbook of magic and things of that sort. We basically just picked it because we thought it sounded cool. I still like that name okay, but the spelling threw people off, so it wasn’t especially catchy.

The band with whom I spent most of my time trying to pursue a living playing music took their name from a comic strip. The Far Side by Gary Larson, to be exact. Try as I might, I can’t find the original comic online. It featured a three-piece elephant punk band. Across the bass drum were the words ‘Tarzan must die’. The caption read “Angry Young Pachyderms”. We used the name (and acronym AYP) for quite a while. At first, it fit our style perfectly. Our music was angry, but we definitely had a light side. Later, as we became more serious we used the acronym exclusively and felt like the name didn’t fit like it used to, but we had built a bit of a following under the name and didn’t want to change it.

I have a feeling some of the bands on my list fall under that category, too. It may have been a good idea at the time, but they would’ve changed it later if they could have.

The Groundrules

I’m sticking with fairly mainstream bands here, that hopefully most people have heard of. If I wanted to get totally obscure, there are over a dozen bands out there I’ve never heard of with ‘Anal’ as the first word of the name. I’m not going there. I’m also trying to keep this somewhere near a PG-13 level.

Saying I don’t like a band’s name is not necessarily a condemnation of their music. There are lots of great bands with stupid/silly names out there.

This list is obviously extremely subjective, and I want to know your nominees for best and worst in the comments. Okay, let’s start with the good ones.

Best Band Names

The Clash – Simple, effective. Also fit the band’s musical stylings to a tee.

Massive Attack – Great name. Fun to say. Maybe it’s something about those soft ‘a’s. Doesn’t really fit the music they put out, but an awesome name nonetheless.

L7 – Slang for “square” and easy to scratch on your notebook or Peechee folder.

Black Flag – Opposite from the white flag of surrender, black flag means to not give up. They were not, in fact, named after bug spray. I stand corrected.

Misfits – Again, simple. You know what you’re gonna get when you hear the name. They were more goth and horror inspired than the name implies, but a great name. They also hold the distinction of having one of the most instantly recognizable logos of all time, but that’s a subject for another post.

Sex Pistols – One of my favorite names, for the sheer audacity of it. What I like is hearing people say it. It’s kind of dirty, but not so dirty people would refuse to say it (like the more recent Pussy Riot).

Public Enemy – Such an obvious choice for a name it’s hard to believe no one else thought of it first. Completely fit the music – there couldn’t have been a better name for a rap group in the ’80s.

Worst Band Names

The Meat Puppets – Ugh. I have the feeling it sounded funny when they thought of it, but it’s really hard for me to take seriously. At the same time, the music isn’t jokey at all either. Fail on both counts.

The Presidents of the United States of America – The only way I could’ve gotten behind this name was if the members actually wore presidential masks when they played. But they didn’t.

Tool – I’m going to take a lot of heat from my friends on this one. Like I said before, I’m separating the name from the music. Great band. Awful, phallic name.

Hoobastank – Enough said.

Limp Bizkit – What can I say about them that hasn’t already been said? Not much. Generally, it’s a good idea to not put the word ‘limp’ in your name.

Toad the Wet Sprocket – On the good side, it was taken from a Monty Python sketch. On the bad side…well, everything else. Not catchy, not funny, not anything good.

Goo Goo Dolls – Whenever I hear this name all I can think is ‘what the hell?’ What is a goo goo doll? Is it for babies? Is it for adults? *shudder* I don’t know, and now that I think about it, I don’t want to know.

Cinderella – Yeah. Let’s name our rock band after a girl in a fairy tale. I really have no idea what these guys were thinking. Not just thinking the name up, but sticking with it after all the chances they could’ve had to change it. It just boggles the mind.

Okay, your turn. Tell me who I forgot or who makes your list. Good luck to all my writer friends scrambling to hit their word count for NaNo, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Serial Killers and The Nature of Fear

In the winter of 1986, my family was in a bit of a transitional period. We were in the middle of a move from Riverside, California (just east of L.A.) to the desert about a half hour north. We had managed to sell our old house before our new house was finished being built, so for a few months we stayed with my Grandmother, who also lived in Riverside. There were a lot of things going through my twelve year old mind that winter: having to move away from my friends, trying to make new friends at a new school – the usual concerns any kid would have when they move. There was one thing in particular, though, that crept into my head every night during those months at my Grandma’s house, and kept me absolutely petrified.

Richard Ramirez was a brutal serial killer who terrorized the residents of the greater Los Angeles area for months in 1985. The majority of his crimes were break-ins or “home invasion” style crimes. In many cases, he killed his victims in their bedrooms, some while they were still asleep.

Since my parents and I were in an already occupied house, sleeping arrangements were a little different, especially for me. My parents got the spare bedroom, while I got to “camp out” in the formal living room. For the sake of practicality, my little air mattress was placed on the far side of the room – under the large picture window.

By that winter at my grandmother’s, Richard Ramirez had already been captured. That was of little consolation, though, as I lay nightly under the large picture window in the living room of a house that had already been burglarized once. Ramirez terrified me. Would tonight be the night he escaped custody and broke into my Grandma’s house? It may sound silly now, but to a scared twelve year old that was perfectly plausible.

By this time I had already begun a steady diet of horror books and film, and they were scary in their own right, but this was different. This was tangible – a real, deep down fear of something quite real that could (theoretically) actually happen. This wasn’t a burnt-faced boogeyman who haunted people’s dreams like Freddy Krueger, or a hockey mask-wearing slasher with a machete who killed campers like Jason Voorhees. This was a real person, who really did kill people with a machete, in real life. It was fear on a whole new level.

I still love horror stories and always will – the monsters, the zombies, the slashers, etc. But nothing ever seemed quite as scary after that winter sleeping under the window, wondering if I would be the Night Stalker’s next victim.

I bring all this up for a couple of reasons. Since that winter, I’ve always had an admittedly morbid fascination with serial killers. What could possibly be wrong with their brains to make them do the horrible things they do? Some acted out of pure impulse, while others were extremely careful and calculating. When I think of what could really scare someone, put the fear of god in them, that’s what I think of. Not monsters or demons or vampires, but another living, breathing human being who is perfectly capable of taking a life, and you never know who will be next. It could be anyone. It could be you.

That’s scary.

I just finished reading a relatively old book (1989), The Girl Next Door, by Jack Ketchum. The book tells the story of a teenage girl in 1950’s rural America who is abused, tortured, and eventually killed by the relatives she is sent to live with following the death of her parents. It’s a work of fiction, but the horrifying part is that it’s loosely based on a true story. Ketchum makes up the methods of torture and adds fictional characters for the sake of adding context and drama to the story, but it really happened. That’s what makes it truly scary.

One of the most unsettling and disturbing movies that doesn’t always get talked about is Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). It’s loosely based on real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. The unflinching depiction of violence, especially one scene in particular of a family being murdered and Henry and his partner Otis watching the videotaped recording of the killings over and over on their couch later, is downright chilling. That scares me more than any made up monster.

It relates a bit to what Stephen King has said in some of his many interviews regarding the pressure he feels with his latest novel, Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining. To paraphrase, he said that he understands that many of his fans were kids when they read The Shining, and it’s a lot easier to scare a kid than an adult. As I’m finishing up my latest rough draft, I find myself grappling with the same thing – is it going to scare people?

It’s a thriller/mystery/detective story about serial killers with a bit of a ‘meta’ edge to it. There is talk of serial killers past in the book, and my killers want nothing more than to instill fear in everyone in the city as they increase their body count. I think it’s a pretty damn scary concept; now I just have to revise and edit to try and make sure it scares people as bad as I was, lying under that window in January of 1986.

I want you to tell me what scares you. In a great bit of irony, as I let this story I’m finishing sit and “breathe” a bit, so to speak, I have another project to go back to – one that involves monsters and the supernatural. So I want to hear the scariest stories you know, real life or otherwise. Be they books, movies, creepy pasta (do any of you read that stuff?), urban legends, ghost stories you heard around the campfire…what makes you afraid to turn out the lights?

How Do You Find New Music?

I would generally consider the ’90s to be my musical peak. Not only in terms of writing/performing (although it certainly was that), but also in terms of just listening to music. I still love music, and I still listen to music as much as I can, but it doesn’t compare to the way I went through music back then. I consumed music. Devoured it.

During that time, I remember a handful of old guys (and by old I mean they were older than the twenty year old me, so I’m probably the age now they were then) who made me kind of sad. They seemed to be stuck in decades past, musically speaking. They refused to acknowledge that any good music had been made in twenty years. They thought good music ceased with the last Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin albums. In a way, I felt bad for them. Pitied them, even. Because I knew how much awesome music there was out there to be had, and they just wouldn’t allow themselves to enjoy it. I’m never going to be like that, I told myself. I took comfort in knowing I was cool enough to recognize good music never stops being made, you just might have to do a little work to find it.

So now, jump twenty years to the present. I go to put some music on, and look through my iTunes library for something that will move me. Tens of thousands of songs to choose from, and what do I do? The vast majority of the time, I put on the music I was listening to in the ’90s. Not necessarily music that was made in the ’90s so much as the music I listened to during the decade. I’m afraid I’m turning into one of those old curmudgeons who ends up walking around muttering about how everything was better back in the old days.

I don’t know if it’s just my advancing age or if it has anything to do with how the music industry and the act of discovering new music has changed over the last twenty years. For instance, does anyone still listen to terrestrial radio anymore? The radio stations in my town are a pathetic joke – the only difference between the “Rock” station and the “Classic Rock” station is that the former will play maybe one song an hour from the turn of the millennium; otherwise, they’re pretty much interchangeable. I know in bigger cities that’s probably not as much of a problem, as I do remember being turned on to new bands on the radio when I lived close enough to L.A. to have an actual selection of stations to choose from.

But even when I put on Pandora, I set it to help me discover new music only to skip the new stuff because I don’t like it or I ignore it until something I already know comes on. So the question remains, how do I find new music (that I actually like)?

I’ve found myself going through the guide on my TV for the week, seeing who’s scheduled to perform on the week’s late night talk shows. I’ve found a couple of new favorites that way. One of the biggest finds in the past couple years for me and my tastes actually came courtesy of Last Call with Carson Daly. Yes, that Carson Daly. He takes a lot of guff, but I like the guy. I never gave a crap about TRL and I don’t watch The Voice, but throughout his career he’s always tried to introduce new music via his late-late night show, and I respect that. Thanks to him I discovered the band OFF!, fronted by the legendary Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag), which ironically sounds a bit like a ’90s punk band.

The other “new” artist I found (and can’t resist mentioning) is Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings. I saw her on a late night show too, but it was a different TV appearance that hooked me. She had a set on Austin City Limits that I’m pretty sure left smoke wafting from my TV by the time it was over. If you have even an ounce of a liking for funk, soul, R & B, or even if you don’t – check them out. She has the voice of a funky angel, and The Dap-Kings are as tight as they come.

There have been the occasional recommendations from Facebook friends, which are always much appreciated. Thanks to good lookin’ out from my friends I’ve been turned on to the spacey, trippy, indie rock of Alt-J (∆), the massive downtuned riffage of The Sword, and what I’m listening to as I write this, the rock beast that is Red Fang. I appreciate it all, and when I find something I like I eat it up, but the thing is…it’s not enough. I know there’s so much more out there, but somehow I’m missing it; this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So what recommendations do you all have? How do you find new artists? From TV shows? Movie trailers? Car commercials? College radio (is that still a thing?)? YouTube? Satellite radio? Has Pandora turned you on to new artists? Somebody clue me in.

As a tooting-my-own-horn kind of a side note, I logged on today to the news that I had reached 1,000 followers here on the blog. I know a lot of people have reached that number a lot faster, but I’m still floored that I’ve reached it at all. Now, I’ll be the first to tell you “followers” of the blog does not necessarily equal “readers” of the blog, as my stats can attest, but the fact remains that I am in awe that so many people have taken the time to click that ‘follow’ button, and for that I thank you.

Now, back to the topic at hand. Give me your advice for finding new music, stat! Who are some of the new bands/artists you’ve discovered, and how did you find them?

‘Unpacking the Suitcase’ and The Pain of Knowing What You Don’t Know

I want to start by wishing best of luck to all the writers out there crazy/brave enough to embark on the insanity that is NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, November is designated as National Novel Writing Month, and if you sign up for the challenge the goal is to write a complete draft of a novel (at least 50,000 words) by the end of the month.

I don’t think I have the organizational skills to have a story so well thought out that I can crank out the words that fast; maybe next year (?). I’m with you all in spirit, though – I’m 26,000 words into my current rough draft, and the way I work I may need all month to finish that. So read my blog, then get back to churning out the 1700 words a day you need to hit that goal and win NaNo!

I’ve been re-reading some of the craft essays on Lit Reactor (which, again, I can’t recommend highly enough) for help and inspiration as I go, and there’s a phrase Chuck Palahniuk uses throughout his essays: he refers to ‘unpacking the suitcase,’ a term he came up with for identifying what writers need to do sometimes to slow down and be more descriptive. I have a really hard time doing that.

I sent out a tweet recently (follow me on twitter here!) saying that as I read over what I’d written I heard the voice of an annoying little kid in my head. Do you know the kind of kid I mean? The one who doesn’t know how to regulate the volume of their voice when they talk, and love telling lengthy stories as though it’s the world’s longest run-on sentence? Since my writing (at least in early drafts) tends to lack some of the details that makes a reader slow down and take in what they’re reading, it felt like I was rushing through it as I read it. When I go back on future drafts I need to slow down and ‘unpack the suitcase’ so the scene is a little easier to visualize. It’s good to leave a reader room for imagination, but you don’t want to leave it all up to them. Throw them a freakin’ bone, ya know?

A couple months ago I read The Long Walk by Stephen King (from way back in his Richard Bachman days). It’s one of his most well-liked by a lot of the die hard King fans out there, and if you’ve never read it I highly recommend it. It’s not flat out horror, but of course it’s very bleak and dark. As I read, I came upon a paragraph that stuck out to me so vividly that I went back and looked it up now months later just so I could quote it in this post. The book is set in New England during an unseasonably warm early May:

Birds sang in the high-crowned trees, the furtive breeze now and then masked the heat for a moment or two, sounding like a lost soul as it soughed through the trees. A brown squirrel froze on a high branch, tail bushed out, black eyes brutally attentive, a nut caught between his ratlike front paws. He chittered at them, then scurried away higher up and disappeared. A plane droned far away, like a giant fly.

When I came across those four sentences I stopped. I don’t think I’ve written that much detail in a single paragraph, well, ever. I’d like to think as I keep writing I keep getting better at ‘unpacking the suitcase,’ but I suppose time will tell. Which brings me to my next point.

I was thinking about how frustrating it is, knowing I’m not usually descriptive enough with what I’m writing, but at least I should take comfort in the fact that I know and don’t just keep doing it wrong without realizing it. That took me back to something I heard in high school, which I had to look up to refresh my memory, called the four stages of competence. They are (cribbed from Wikipedia):

Unconscious incompetence

The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognise their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.
Conscious incompetence

Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.
Conscious competence

The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.
Unconscious competence

The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become “second nature” and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

I suppose I’m in between 2 and 3. I know enough to recognize what I’m doing wrong, but for the most part I think I do know what I’m doing (if I do say so myself). I don’t know if many writers ever feel like they’re fully at number 4, aside from maybe King, Cormac McCarthy, people like that. I have a hard time believing I will ever reach number 4, but that’s okay – there are lots of 3’s out there who are doing just fine.

With that, I’m going to retreat back into my little writer’s dungeon, start mashing on the keyboard and see what appears on the screen. Once again, best of luck to the NaNoWriMo participants, may the word count gods be with you.

The Three Things That Shaped Me Into the Horror-Loving Weirdo I Am

Going back as far as I can remember (which is probably around the age of 8 or 10), I’ve always loved the dark side of things. The horrific. The violent. The macabre. By the time I was thirteen, I was renting slasher movies at the video store every weekend, reading the scariest books I could find, and watching any horror movie I came across on TV.

With October almost over and All Hallow’s Eve practically here, I realized I hadn’t written anything about Halloween or my love of all things frightful. I contemplated some sort of Top Horror Movies list, but to be honest, as much as I love horror there are tons of people out there who take it a lot more seriously than I do. People with encyclopedic knowledge of virtually every horror flick released since Noferatu – that sort of thing. I’m not going to insult a true horror fanatic’s intelligence by ranking horror movies when I haven’t even seen The Conjuring yet.

So I started thinking, and a question popped in my head: if I was watching and reading all this crazy stuff so young, when did it all begin? What turned me into such a little gore-obsessed freak by the seventh grade? I began to think back, and I realized if I really had to pinpoint the origins of my love for the sick and twisted it could be traced back to three things.

1. Pet Sematary – Stephen King (1983)

It will probably come as a surprise to absolutely no one that one of my first forays into horror was via Mr. King. It wasn’t the first King book I read (that would be The Dead Zone), and it wasn’t the first horror book I read (that was Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, although I don’t remember a thing about it), but it had the biggest impact on my young, impressionable brain. I believe I was around 10 when I was given the book as a gift, and between the gore, the reincarnations, and the terror of those that have come back to life being a little ‘off’, the book captivated me like nothing I had read before it and set me on a very dark path, entertainment-wise.

2. Elvira’s Movie Macabre – KHJ-TV Channel 9, Los Angeles (1981-1986)

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I don’t know if everyone reading this will know who Elvira is/was, but in L.A. in the early eighties she was a freakin’ rock star. I remember tuning in to her show every weekend and being treated to schlocky B-horror classics, as well as some not-so-classics. I was but a tiny tot, so the memory is faded at best, but the standouts I remember were The Man with Two Heads, Crucible of Terror, Blacula and especially The Incredible Melting Man. Elvira would make cheesy jokes and double entendres throughout the movie, bringing me my first glimpse of the combination of horror and comedy – another big part of what makes me, well, me.

My dad did not share my love of horror, but he would watch Elvira with me every weekend. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I realized that he watched for a couple of obvious reasons.

3. Scanners – Directed by David Cronenberg (1981)

The first “serious” horror movie I remember watching (even though it’s largely part sci-fi as well). Although I would later immerse myself in all things Voorhees, Krueger, and Myers in my teens (not to mention Pinhead), before all that there was Scanners.

I haven’t re-watched the movie in ages, and to be honest I had to look it up on imdb to remind myself exactly what it was about – a group of extremely powerful psychics are able to control minds and inflict bodily harm on people at will, and they must be stopped from reaching their goal of complete global domination. But really, none of that mattered when I was a ten year old boy excited to be watching his first real, grown-up scary movie. What it really all boiled down to was one scene that burned into my brain like a smoking-hot branding iron.

A man’s head explodes right before your very eyes. There’s no cut away to blood splattering on the wall then back to the bloody stump, there’s no little spray like when someone gets shot in the movies. His head blew up into a million little pieces and it left me with my jaw hanging open and changed me forever. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

I re-watched the short clip of the exploding head before writing this, and I have to say after all these years the effect holds up incredibly well. As a young boy just getting his feet wet in the pool of horror and gore, Scanners took me and threw me in the deep end head first.

Some might think it’s odd that I enjoyed such gruesome stuff at such a young age, and some may find the fact that my parents would let me watch and read things with such graphic content a little troubling, but I turned out okay (heh heh, right? I’m okay, right?).

If you want to see the cranial carnage in question, take a deep breath and watch the 11 second clip by clicking here.

So, there you have it. The three things that set me down the path of evil, darkness, and…more evil. Writing this got me wondering: what would you point to in your childhood that set you on your path, whatever that path is? No matter what you do, for most of us one (or in some cases several) things helped shape us to go in the direction we headed. What are yours?

Have a great Halloween everyone, and since I can’t help myself: for anyone out there who doesn’t watch a lot of horror that is wanting to scare themselves silly, I would recommend turning off all the lights and watching The Descent (2005), directed by Neil Marshall, preferably with the original UK ending. Enjoy!

Why Bowling is Awesome

It’s finally my favorite time of year. The God-forsaken hot weather has cooled off, the yardwork is nearly done for the year, and my favorite sport is starting. Every Sunday I can plop into my recliner with a snack, flip on the TV, and settle in to watch my warriors do battle.

I love bowling. I love doing it, watching it, talking about it, you name it. I have a miniature toy ball and pins on my desk at work. I’ve got both miniature and full-sized bowling pins as decoration in my basement. I have a small collection of bowling shirts, and if left to my own devices I’d probably have a whole separate closet devoted to them. This very well could be the most unpopular post I ever write, but here goes nothin’.

First, there’s the recreational aspect. There are no other sports (aside from golf) that can be played professionally at the highest level as well as played by a bunch of people just for fun, often with the inclusion of alcoholic beverages. You can’t go play baseball on a Friday night with some friends just on a whim.

That’s one of the things I love about bowling. Literally ninety-some-odd percent of the population can participate. Sure, many of them are not very good at it, but there’s another great thing about it – you can have a good time even if you stink.

Not to get off on a tangent, but here comes a tangent: I started bowling at about five years old. My parents both bowled in a league, I was in a youth league, and I would bowl extra sometimes outside the league. It was not unusual to be at the local bowling alley a minimum of three or four times a week up to my teens. Over the years, I saw the following people have fun bowling: toddlers, the mentally challenged, the blind, paraplegics, senior citizens, people with one arm, and one guy with an artificial leg. In what other sport would that wide an array of people be able to participate? Now, some of those people required some extra assistance like bumpers in the gutters, a hand rail, etc. but hopefully you see my point.

I’m making the assumption many (if not most) of the people reading this have never bowled regularly, ie. a weekly league. If you have one night a week to spare (no pun intended) and have a few extra dollars to spend, I highly recommend trying it out. I imagine non-bowlers think league bowling is competitive, serious people who throw fits if they don’t strike every frame. Let me be clear – those leagues really do exist. The thing is, there’s a league for every level of bowler. All the ultra-competitive types have their own league. The last league I was in was full of people mainly looking to have a good time on a Wednesday night. They kept score, sure, and everyone wants to bowl the best they can and win if possible, but it was all in the name of good fun.

And now, allow me to pull out my very own special prop.

Professional Bowling is sport, dammit. I think sometimes people confuse what they do with some friends and a pitcher of beer with what actual professional bowlers do. The consistency and focus it takes to bowl at their level week in and week out is insane. Some of them bowl as many as 64 games over the course of just a few days just to place in a tournament.

I decided to do a little googling before I started this post. I found some very passionate arguments about why bowling is actually not a sport, in their opinion, and to be honest I found the ignorance infuriating. Many of the arguments went back to the same point – ‘anything you can do (sometimes better) drunk is not a sport…if old people and handicapped people can do it, it’s not a sport…‘ and then my favorite…‘one of my friends bowled a 300 one time, it’s not so hard.’

Okay, so points one and two both make the same argument: basically, it’s too easy. It’s not challenging enough to be considered a sport. I will try to stay brief and refer back to what I said at the beginning when I mentioned bowling for recreation. There’s a difference between bowling for fun and bowling for sport. Kind of like the difference between some guys in the park playing flag football versus NFL games. It seems so obvious to me, I can’t understand why people don’t see it.

As for the guy whose friend bowled a 300 – I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re telling the truth. Bowling a perfect game is an extraordinary feat, and one I myself have never accomplished; never even gotten close, really. But my first thought after reading this was, what did your friend bowl the game before and the game after?

If someone bowls a perfect game in a PBA tournament they obviously win that particular game, but they don’t just cancel the tournament and give the person the trophy right then and there. It’s about how well you do over an extended period. Plus, I’m really trying not to fly off on tangents with everything I say, but there’s also the matter of the way the lanes are oiled for general recreation play versus league and sport(pro) conditions.

*steps off soapbox*

Okay, I’ll end my little tirade. I don’t like to let my posts get too long-winded and I really could write tons more. I could probably create an entire separate blog devoted just to bowling, but I’m too lazy. 🙂

In the end, I guess here’s what I was trying to say in this bowling-themed manifesto: Bowling is awesome. The pros deserve a little more respect, and the sport in general deserves a little more respect, but if there’s one thing we can hopefully all agree on it’s that bowling with your friends can be a lot of fun.

With that said, it’s Friday – the weekend’s coming up and you may be looking for something to do. Whether you think it’s a sport or not, go to your local alley and bowl a few games, and just have some fun.

Lacking Focus: It’s Not That I Have ADD, It’s Just…Wait, Where Was I?

Coming up in a few weeks I have a week’s vacation scheduled. A glorious nine day period (including weekends) of NOT WORKING.

Taking my vacation during the fall started kind of at random, but has become a tradition five years strong. The week of Veteran’s Day I take the entire week off.

Last year my wife and I went to our home away from home, beautiful Las Vegas, but this year’s trip is up in the air – at this point it’s starting to look like we won’t be making it, which presents a different set of circumstances.

A Staycation.

A week of doing anything I want, anytime I want. Stay up ’til 4am drinking coffee and watching Japanese cereal commercials on Youtube? Go for it. Cook a steak at 9 in the morning then take a 3 hour nap? Done. Although, there is something more productive I need to be doing with my downtime…

I need to sit my ass down and write.

That’s what I want to do, for the most part. I’m working on a rough draft I’d love to get finished, and I have enough editing to do to last me until the next Ice Age, as well as some other writing-related endeavors. But there’s a problem…

I lack focus.

Most of my writing gets done in bursts, much of the time no more than 30-40 minutes, either before work or on my lunch break. If I’m really on fire I can spit out around 600-700 words in that amount of time.

There have been times when I’ve managed to get the afternoon off work, and I drive home thinking Hell yeah! I’m gonna go home and write my ever-lovin’ ass off! I go home, get comfortable in my chair, turn on the computer and…

Well, I probably should check my email before I start writing, just to see if I heard back from any publishers who want to print one of my short stories. Ooh, someone favorited one of my tweets! Who is that? I better jump on Twitter and see who this person is, maybe I want to follow them. Since I’m already on Twitter I might as well read my newsfeed…heh, look at that cat chasing the laser pointer. I wonder if my friend on Facebook has seen this…I should put a link on Facebook. Now that I’m on Facebook I guess I should look at my wall, there could be something important on there. Cool, my friend posted a fight scene from a martial arts movie! It’s only 8 minutes long…wow, have I really been sitting here two and a half hours?

And that’s just sitting at my computer. If I get up for some reason, chances are I’ll find myself sitting in front of the TV with the iPad in front of me. So, how do I focus and get some work done?

I’ve read that other writers like to go somewhere that limits their access to the internet, like a coffee shop with no WiFi or something like that – problem is, I do all my writing on a desktop; no laptops here.

I know there are programs you can install that will block your access to the internet for whatever time period you choose in an attempt to force you to do what you need to be doing, but I would imagine there are ways around that stuff. That doesn’t sound like a real solution.

Somebody help me here. Not just writers, anybody. How do you ignore distractions and get things done when you have the chance? The vacation/staycation will be a great way for me to recharge my batteries no matter what, but if I piss it away without getting a lot of writing done, I’m really going to beat myself up over it.

In the meantime, I’m going to try and get a little writing done before work, because – wait, what? Ben Affleck’s going to play Batman? That’s a hoax, right? Let me just click on this link…

Oh My God, I’m 40

“I’m 40 now…I’m half dead, basically. 40’s a weird age. You get to this point where, like, you’re not old enough for anybody to give a shit that you’re old. Nobody’s like, ‘I helped a 40 year-old guy today, and it felt really good to do something for him.’ Nobody spends their holidays delivering hot meals to 40 year-olds. And you’re not young enough for anybody to ever be proud of you, or impressed. They’re just like, ‘Yeah, do your job, asshole. Nobody cares. That’s what you’re supposed to do.'”

-Louis CK

I knew it was coming, but somehow it still snuck up on me. It sounds so weird.

I’m 40.

I’m not freaking out completely – I’m still young, 40 is the new 30, all that jazz – but it still seems a much more significant milestone than 30. People in their 30’s are still practically kids. 40 year-olds are decidedly not kids anymore. You’re supposed to have things pretty much figured out by now, and the fact that I don’t is a little disconcerting. I began reflecting, thinking back to how old 40 used to sound, and what I imagined I’d be doing once I got to be this age. Here’s what I came up with.

When I was 10, I thought by the time I was 40…I’d already be retired from my Major League Baseball career, and would have transitioned to a new phase as either a play by play announcer or color commentator. Baseball was my life at that age, and for several years after. There really wasn’t much more to life at that point, aside from school and the original Star Wars trilogy.

When I was 20, I thought by the time I was 40…I would be making a living somehow in the music industry. I never had true “rock star” dreams, like selling out arenas or getting platinum records…the truth is I never really wanted any of that. I’ve always been drawn to art that’s a little off center, so to speak, so I never expected to get rich from music. But at that time music was basically everything to me: working in music stores (both selling CD’s and selling instruments), constantly playing in bands (a death metal band morphing into a punk band morphing into a hardcore band with some dabbling in rockabilly and swing), briefly giving guitar lessons…everything revolved around music, and I was sure it would be how I made my living.

When I was 30, I thought by the time I was 40…My new “real” job would provide my new bride and I with everything we needed to get by and still allow me to go about pursuing my art. There was nothing stopping that from happening except for me getting in my own way. By this point I had gotten back in to writing again, having already written my first novella as well as still writing music. But something happened. Looking back, I guess it was complacence; it felt nice to relax and enjoy having a house and a wife and a dog, and just take a little break from creating for a while. That lasted longer than I would have guessed – until just a couple of years ago, when my artistic side began to bubble up again until it was eating away at me.

And now that I’m 40…I feel a slight need to make up for lost time. I spent enough time dicking around; it’s time to get some stuff done. Maybe that feeling is just the start of the fabled Mid-life crisis. Before long maybe I’ll be shopping for a sports car and going skydiving.

I don’t have many regrets for the way things have turned out this far, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy to just sit back and let any more time pass me by. For all the passion I’ve always had toward creating, I don’t have much to show for it aside from a couple decent-sounding demo tapes, some wild tales from some pretty cool gigs and some roughly written stories only a few people have read. So now I’m trying to make my mark – write my books and get them published, be it the traditional route or self-published. Like with my music, making money at it would be great, but that’s kind of beside the point. The point is putting something you created out into the world and knowing someone, somewhere enjoyed it.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I got up before work so I could practice what I just preached and write a little. But first, I might be on Google for just a few minutes…how much does skydiving cost, anyway?

The Curse (and blessing?) of Being an OverThinker

I was watching a reality show last week where teams of three would go madly racing from one city to the next. One of the teams got in their truck to go to the next destination and the truck wouldn’t start. None of the three men on the team were very mechanical, so they started looking on their phones to see what the problem could be; one of them even called a family member for advice. At one point one of them was on the ground under the truck hitting something with a giant metal spoon before a kind passerby asked if they needed a jump. Lo and behold, they merely had a dead battery and five minutes later they were back on the road again.

I could relate. I’m a chronic overthinker. I may think of a half dozen solutions to a problem before I see the one right in front of my face. I’m like a dog trying to go through a doorway with a bone in its mouth that’s too wide to fit. I’d smash through the doorway before I’d think to turn my head.

There are obvious disadvantages to being an overthinker. What should be simple tasks can take a lot longer to solve or complete than they really should. I remember a time at work where a few of us guys (dubbed The Strongbacks) were rounded up to move some tables and chairs around for a function. The chairs were able to be stacked, but the legs had to be turned a certain way to do it. I saw another guy carrying a stack of five or six so I knew it could be done, but I didn’t see how he did it. I spent close to five solid minutes wrestling to stack one chair on top of another before I realized the other guys were standing back having a laugh at my expense.

Frustrated, I took a couple of steps back and asked one of them to do it if they were so damn smart. A young guy came up with a big cheesy grin on his face, twisted the top chair just so, and had the two chairs stacked in approximately two and a half seconds. I chuckled to prove to the guys I had a good sense of humor about my inadequacy, even though in my head I felt like punching that young guy in the mouth. Even though I’ve come to grips with being the way I am, moments like that still tend to be embarrassing and more than a little frustrating.

There are also some advantages to being this way as well, I suppose. In a way, it’s a bit like thinking outside the box. While “normal” people are presented with a problem and all come up with the same solution, I’ll come up with something way out of left field that ‘the normals’ wouldn’t have thought of.

Also, when you do finally think of the solution to a problem and it turns out to be a simple fix, you may feel silly and frustrated for not thinking of it sooner, but it’s such a relief. It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from your shoulders, setting you free to go back to living your life. So there’s that.

What got me thinking about all this was a story I have percolating in the back of my mind (yes, I’m still going to talk about writing from time to time). I wrote the rough draft and tried to stop thinking about it because I wasn’t very happy with the way it turned out. I read somewhere you should try not to go back to a story until you forgot most of what you wrote, so I was trying to do that. Still, problems with the plot stuck in my mind. When I lay in bed, plots holes and questions of character development are what go through my head now before I fall asleep.

Completely out of nowhere a notion hit me, and I realized a solution to one of my problems was right there, patiently waiting for me to see it. It’s not going to solve all the problems I’m having, but it could be the piece that sets things in motion to get me back on track. OverThinkers unite!

For anyone still trying to keep track of what’s going on with my writing: the last time I talked much about any of my work, I was getting ready to expand a previously thought-to-be-completed novella into a full-fledged novel. Yeah, that hasn’t happened. I sat down to get started, and realized even though I knew where I wanted to end up I didn’t know where to start. I gave it about a week; I even tried to force it at one point and squeezed out a scene to see if it kick-started anything. Nope.

Instead, I took off with an idea that had been burning like a fuse at the base of my skull. Progress has been a little slow due to circumstances beyond my control, but I’ve managed just over 5,000 words so far, and I’m really excited about it. On the surface it’s a fairly standard mystery/thriller about a detective on the hunt for a killer, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve to hopefully keep it interesting. The focus of the blog may turn back toward writing soon, as the stars in my life prepare to align, allowing me to devote more time to both finishing this new rough draft as well as editing and rewriting another neglected story.

Okay, overthinkers, let me hear you. Do you struggle with things that should only take a minute because you instantly think of the hard way first? Have you done anything to change the way you approach problems so you don’t take so long to get from point A to point B? And lastly, do any of you actually read blog posts that turn out to be this long?

PS – I uploaded a new short story to my Readwave page. It’s creepy and very short. It’ll take you less time to read than it did to read this long-winded post. It’s called Mikey, and you can find it here.

PSS – Anyone else going to start reading Doctor Sleep today?

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