Reclamation

   Despite what bloggers may think blogs change very little. At best they make you think, or make you laugh, or show you something you didn’t know was out there. But it’s in those moments that the spark of an inferno lays.  

Flint is a city notorious for its issues and it gets frustrating to see people focus on them and not the world being done by the people here to better the city. For someone like me, that lives here and has lived here for some time it gets upsetting to see that the work people do and want to do gets pushed aside by some glory hounds and wanna-bes that have the connections and gloss to get the press, the funding, and the attention that these others don’t. I am tired of seeing people granted money to do art shows for people who are not held out of traditional art shows and events. I am tired of seeing money funneled into groups that want to bring in and compensate outside artists before and above the local arts community we have here. I am tired of the same people doing the same shows over and over and over. For too long the arts establishment has stayed safe and not fostered the arts scene as they should and then you hear people decry the ‘brain drain’ when all of our young people leave the area. With little work being done to create jobs in the area and less being done to support the young and struggling artists it’s no wonder these people feel the need to leave.

I do art from time to time but I am no artist. I don’t focus on it enough and am terribly sketchy in my talent but that I was invited to do shows out of the city and was able to show my work in Detroit to any degree meant the world to me. Heck, selling art to strangers was amazing for my confidence and is the sort of reinforcement artists need. They don’t need people criticizing them for their style and for their lack of experience they need support and opportunity. It says something that there is a grant funded super arts group that focuses on press friendly art shows that tackle such great issues as POVERTY, HUNGER, um…STUFF with an emphasis on out of town artists when so many locals have felt the need to create their own collectives to encourage, support, and create together. My first foray into Flint’s arts scene was in such a group and that group has definitely influenced the arts in the city but they never were able to make real in-roads to changing the culture.

And the arts culture in Flint HAS to change.

Flint is a city struggling for a new identity and we have the things to create one – multiple colleges, lots of college students, a brilliantly conceived cultural center, a successful monthly Art Walk and young and established artists that are desperate to show their work. This is your identity. This is your key to retain young people and draw older folks into town for shows, for the city to capitalize on the assets that are here. There is a criminally under utilized waterfront performance space. There is an openness in the local businesses to work with artists. And by building off of the Art Walk there is an established and regular event that can used as a base to draw more people here for arts events. But there needs to be a change.

There needs to be more support for the smaller art shows, for the more unique events, and more work needs to be done to spread the funding around. Let organizations that have established themselves stand on their own and find their own funds and stop granting them the same money over and over because it’s safe and looks good. Stop rewarding mediocrity and hold grantees responsible for the money they take as well as the trust they lean so heavily on.

There is a divide in Flint that is growing by the day. A divide that is more than just money – though that is clearly a mammoth in the room – and it is between the people on the inside and those on the outside. Those on the inside keep getting the funding, the press, and the lights and those struggling to just survive and find their voices must beg, borrow, and all but steal show space and then have to decide if it’s worth remaining here if they have to fight so hard just to keep doing something that for them feels like the most natural thing in the world.

The arts cannot save a city but it can revitalize, reinvigorate, and renew a city’s people and can serve as part of a foundation that a future can be built upon. Look to Grand Rapids, Michigan if you doubt me. Art will not save Flint but it can give the city an opportunity to retain the very young people that it will rely on to repair the damage that has been done to the city over the past decades.

…c…

meepsheep.com

Because Giving Up Is What We Do

Living in Flint, Michigan isn’t easy.

Ha.

Yeah, I know, run through your Open Mic Thursday stand-up routine for me about how crummy the city I love is and I’ll move on when you’re done.

And…

OK.

The thing about this area is that yeah, there’s a lot of things that are going on here that are bad, not ‘not good’ but bad. I am not going to belabor that point because the local and national media has a pretty good grasp on things here, at least the crime and all the bad things going on. It’s a drag. The thing is though that in pointing out all the bad things here the good is overlooked. Hope and all that stuff doesn’t make for engaging news, I get it, and I am not going to act as if the story of someone murdered or robbed is less important than the story of a festival or a new business. The math doesn’t work out, nor should it.

Tragedy, bummer though it is, is universal. Joy isn’t. I wish that wasn’t the case but it is. We all feel pain, we all know tragedy. Not everyone knows joy. And in a city that has a lot of struggle to overcome it doesn’t really seem reasonable to expect everyone to jump for joy at the small successes and the little victories.

Yet…

It’s so easy, so very easy to burn the world down.

All it takes is a match and something flammable.

It’s building things, things like hope that create a foundation for people and for the future, that are hard to do. Hard to make.

There is no glory or honor or true joy to be found in tearing things down yet we are a city that thrives on negativity. And again, some negativity is natural and reasonable but there’s a point where you start hurting yourself for attention and a point past that where you hurt yourself because it’s the only thing you know and that’s where we are. We just don’t know HOW to be hopeful anymore. So many have been waiting so long for the clouds to part that you begin to wonder if there was ever a sun at all. Ah, but the thing is that sometimes you have to make your own light. And you know what else fire is good for – creating light.

The same passion people put into their negativity can be put into doing things. And sure, an art show, a craft show, a concert, a bicycle tour, a car show, none of those things alone makes the city a better place but together they start to change perceptions. They start to change minds. Every little act, builds to bigger acts. Every small event opens the door for more events and bigger events. Events and ‘happenings’ lead to more people coming into Flint, spending money in the city and spending time here. The more good and fun things going on the better chance that all the young people that go to school here will spend time here doing more than just GOING TO SCHOOL. And the more people coming here, being here, spending time and money here the more attractive it is for businesses to come here to take advantage of all those people.

Simplistic reasoning?

Sure it is, but it’s HOPEFUL reasoning and there is reason TO it.

I’d rather be hopeful about Flint than to spout nonsense like it should be bulldozed and burned and ignored. It is just so easy though to give up because then you can’t get hurt, you can’t get disappointed, and you look like a genius when things go or stay bad.

Only, you shouldn’t root for the fall of a city and its people.

You shouldn’t root for destruction.

It’s petty. And small. And mindless. And childish. And it’s so black hearted that it makes you wonder what it is that gives those people any joy at all, because if watching people flounder and watching a city die is your kick then you’ve got way more trouble than Flint.

We’re at a point in Flint where we can burn the city down or light it up and I choose to light it up. I choose to believe that the small things, the small events, the small businesses, and the little bits of kindness and civility we offer one another can make a different and can change the tide. There are a million reasons why things got bad in Flint – jobs left, poverty grew, education fell, people moved away, drugs and violence grew, and apathy and frustration skyrocketed. Those are just SOME of the reasons things got bad but you know how they can get better – Hope. And yeah, it takes more than wishing on a four leaf clover to change the fate of a struggling city but it’s like kicking an addiction – if you don’t take that first step, no matter how small, you can never learn to kick.  You can never learn to run.

And who knows what will happen in the end? I know where I stand though and isn’t with a can of gasoline in one hand and a match in the other. No, I stand here blowing on the embers of the spark that makes Flint so special, hoping that eventually those of us who believe and work to make this a city to be proud of will be here to see the Phoenix rise from the smoldering ashes. 

Life’s Full Of Disappointments And I Am Full OF Bees

It’s a horrible feeling to look yourself in the mirror and admit that you can’t do everything. To admit to yourself that sometimes plans, as well intentioned as they may be, are sometimes just plans. Goals are just goals. And sometimes we can’t always do what we had wanted.

It’s a rotten thing to admit to.

It’s a rotten thing to see.

BUT…it’s better to admit to it and to see it than to blind yourself into running into a wall.

Because the thing is this – it’s a lot easier to pick yourself up and dust yourself off if you are willing to accept that you do have limitations, in life and as person, rather than naively ram yourself into walls trying to knock them all down if they try to stand in your way. It’s a good ideal to have, that notion that you won’t give up and won’t let up no matter what but the fact of the matter is that life isn’t about blunt force, it’s about forward movement, and sure, that movement doesn’t always seem to be going at the pace you want but if it’s even inching forward it’s still progress.

Life is about progress.

Even in our setbacks.

But, about my setback – I had decided a few months ago that it’s time to pull the tents down, for the clowns to clean the greasepaint off, and for the circus to close up shop. I am a writer, and always will be but for now, for a very long now, it’s time to stop putting books out. Not because I ran out of material or things to say but because it feels as if I am nearing self-parody. I have seven books out and two last ones on the way and there’s a point where you have to look yourself in the mirror and say – enough is enough. I have put out collections, two fairy tale books, and a novel. With these last two projects my slate is pretty clear. There’s a long lost book I had written ages ago and lost and was going to re-write but it isn’t pressing or necessary. These other books were. I proved to myself that I could do it – I could write, edit, put together, do the art, and release and support my own books (with aid from CreateSpace’s services). I was able to also do it with a LOT of help from friends. I was able to prove to myself that I could do it and I have loved it. I love the process of writing, of editing, of putting the thing together, of doing the art, and of supporting it. I love it and hate it both. Hate it because it isn’t the most fun, and it is stressful to walk the line of ‘artist’ that just wants to create and ‘business person’ that feels the need to sell. But there’s a point where you have to say – enough is enough.

I am at that point.

Which is not to say I won’t support the books I have but that it’s time to focus on other projects in my life. I don’t want to reach a point where it feels as if I am making a fool of myself. And I am being harsh, but I am harsh because I need to be to understand where I am. I don’t want to be someone who publishes out of vanity. And I feel like, with the limited interest in my work that I see, it’s time to re-assess things. Not because I don’t think the works are invalid but because I need to find better ways to get the books out to people. I need to support books I have put out and the two nearing completion, and I need to work on other projects.

None of this is awesome, but it’s necessary.

It’s far more fun, for me, to go through the process of creating a book than it is to support books that are already done.

As for the two books for this year, the ‘last two’. They’re done. I wrote them in two months. One is a book of zombie stories that comprise a novel. I started it in 2000 and slowly added to it and finally realized it was time to finish it. I had sat on it because I didn’t want to be the person that put a zombie book out after the ‘fad’ wore off. Well, that was several years ago and the ‘fad’ is still going so I figured I needed to finish it and get it out. I am currently in the edit of that book. The other book is the third and last of the Meep Sheep books and is a darker story about the passing of the torch from the Queen to her daughters. I wrote that in February and have let it sit a bit before I go back to edit it. I have a lot of work to do on it, to flesh it out, but I like what it is. I was really worried because I knew what I wanted out of it but wasn’t sure how to get there. In getting there the book changed, the story changed, and the ending change…and it’s a better book because of all of those things if you ask me.

The hope and plan for the year had been to get these two books written, edited, and released in Spring in time for two conventions I wanted to do in my area. Alas, the real work is a cruel mistress and I couldn’t afford to do the two shows so I decided to slow myself down and to stop driving myself so hard. I really want to get these books done, out of sheer AHHHHH excitement but also out of the need to move forward to other projects. Art, for one. So this is a setback. A big one. A heartrending one because it means that I have to figure what to do but in the long run it’s necessary and it’s good. I want to make sure these books are ready to go.

And life’s all about setbacks and disappointments and it’s figuring out how to deal with them that begins to define you. You keep moving forward, inch at a time, or you smash your head into things and try to force the world to conform to you instead of learning to move within the world as it is and to slip between the cracks. It is a VERY fuzzy future for me on the artistic front, the writing front, but it’s exciting because whatever happens is going to be a huge surprise.

C

www.meepsheep.com

Everything Ends

Everything ends. Every empire will fall. All things fade. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Humans have a need to cling to things, about not letting go, about holding on even in the face of the cold reality that change is constant. And sometimes how strongly we hold on is a noble trait, a sign that we won’t give up on something we believe in, something we love. But sometimes it’s just our terrible fear of mortality, of losing something precious to us that keeps us from every being more than we are. And maybe losing these attachments aren’t always so bad. There’s something beautifully tragic about being human, with our compassion and our hate holding sway over us, always leaving us balanced, if we’re lucky, on a razor’s edge that we can never walk without falling to one side or the other from time to time. But it’s that we dare to walk it at all that is the magic of life – that we can master emotions that at times feel insurmountable. That most of us default to Giving A Damn more than we fall to anger and rage. And that we can let it go, can let go of the overpowering feelings that bring us down and can reign in the feelings of maddening joy that make us act impulsively is truly a sort of magic. And as much as we try to hold on to things, to people, and to emotions, sometimes we have to let them go. We have to let go. It’s easy to forget, in the day to day chaos of life, the joy and pain that make us who we are. Sure, we remember the big events, when you fall in love with someone special, or lose someone you love, but it’s the day to day battles that make us who we are. Holding the door for an elderly woman or saying something nasty to a stranger. Those are the small battles that we fight daily that make us who we are and that connect to the bigger moments. Those are the wars we wage, and every heartbreak, every joy, every kiss, every slap, and every moment leaves its mark on us, whether we see them or not, and like so much dust it all starts to collect. And sometimes we have to let go. I can say that this has been perhaps the most memorable of years in a life where the years are becoming a blur. I year I both hate and love in equal measures. But it’s all a blur. Age has that effect, which is frightening at first but which serves I think as a salve against the great, long war we all wage through our years. We forget because to carry all of our guilt, and all of our pain with us, the wounds as fresh and red as they were the moment they happened, we’d go numb, we’d go numb and mad from the pain of it. So we forget. And there is so much to forget. So many moments that make up our lives. And with the bad we forget the good, which is a shame, but the effects of those things, good and bad, are always with us. Like ghosts. And we hold on. And holding on keeps us tied, to the good and bad, tethered so that we don’t lose sight of who we are, where we come from, and what made us. Yet…we are. Without the pain. Without the joy. Without the memories we ARE. And why? Because in our forgetting, and in our quest to cling to memories we lose sight of the reality that we ARE our memories. We ARE our love, we ARE our hate. We are the accumulation of everything we do, every person we love, and every moment we experience. Even if we lose our memories, if we lose our loves, if we lose our joy WE remain because the memories remain, deeper in us than even we can see. So we have to let go.  We have to stop hoarding our emotions, our moments, our time. We have to let go of the fear that keeps us trapped in lives we often hate. We need to let go of the anger, the rage, and the heartbreak that paints our memories, that paints our past and imprisons our future. We need to stop chasing the things that don’t make us happy and need to learn to chase our passions.  And we need to let go. We need to live. We need to experience. I consider myself so very, very lucky to be where I am. This has been a year that has tried me and has pushed me and pulled me and I have only made it this far because of the people who cared enough to be there, even when I needed to be alone. In two years I have put two life dreams to bed and feel as if I am reaching a point where I have cleaned the slate and can move forward without the baggage of things I wanted to accomplish. But that isn’t the end. It just means I am letting go of dreams that I had wanted to see fulfilled but not the passion that created them. So many people have influenced me, have inspired me, have driven me, and have shown me through their own passions how to keep pushing myself to get better and bolder in the choices I make. As a teenager I would never have imagined I would be a part of a group that put together a horror convention in Flint. I would never have imagined I would have met the people through the con that I have. I would never have imagined I would have published seven books – 7! – my way, the way I wanted them put together, edited, and released. I would never have dreamed I would sell books and art to strangers who simply wanted something I had created. I have lived through crushing heartbreaks, horrible disappointments, and losses that still haunt me but I am working, every day, to let that go and to let their shadows remain. Because these events changed me, just as all the joy, the love, and the amazing moments with special people have and even as the details fade with time, their effects do not. Their effects never fade. And THAT is what we need to remember. We almost covet the worst of ourselves. The worst of others. We covet the loss, the misery, and hold these as banners to the world, always ready for war when what we truly need is peace. The peace only we can give ourselves. Too often we give in to our pain and make choices that simply compound it. Stop it. Stop punishing yourself with the pain. Stop dwelling on the past. Stop living a life without passion. Without joy. You may be amazed at what some passion and drive can create. And maybe we all need more amazement. If I have one wish for all of the people in my life, for all the people I love, and for everyone who reads this that is to follow your passion. And sure, some passions are simply desires painted pretty but passion, PASSION is deep, is sometimes hidden but always there and if we all followed the paths of passion maybe we’d all be a lot happier with ourselves and our lots in life and less interested in the day to day greed and lust that can bind us and drag us down so often. I can never thank you all enough for the gifts you have given me, your friendship, your support, and more than anything your passion. And everything I am, and everything I can be is in great part because of you. And even though many of the people who helped me reach where I stand today are gone from my life their mark remains, and their legacy stands.  And that is why my hope is – that in some small way I can influence, inspire, and impassion you to not give up on yourself or your dreams.  We need to let go of so much but never, never let go of your passion and the ones you love. Because even when we lose those things most precious to us they remain, hidden but there, living and driving us like the silent drumming heart of our soul.  We hold on to so much. Are you ready to let go yet? We need to build ourselves ladders to the future and no more altars to the past. Remember, cherish, and move on. Move on.  Thank you for being in my life, for giving a damn, and for fighting every day to be who you are. Because I love that person.  Thanks.

 

Why We Do It

Every so often I find myself asking – why do I do this?

And sometimes I don’t know.

Sometimes I am just staring up from the bottom of a deep, dark well and I honestly don’t know why I do it. Why I write. Why I paint. Why I draw. Why I take photos. Why I put events together.

Sometimes I just don’t know.

And that’s normal.

And it’s good.

We need to re-examine things from time to time, especially the things we love and are passionate about. Without constant questioning we start to meander and lose sight of what it is that drives us on and fuels us with that passion. There’s a point where you need to ask yourself – why am I doing this? What’s the point?

And why do I do it?

I do it because I love to write. I love to tell stories. I love create worlds and people to fill them. And I love to shine the light on the things people don’t always see. Sometimes these are ugly things but so be it. We need to face the ugly from time to time to appreciate the beautiful when we find it.

I draw because I love it. I am not a good artist but it makes me smile. It lets out my silly side and taps into my creative side. I doodle more than outright draw but that’s what gives me the joy. Sometime quick and dirty and simple. I still prefer pen and paper since I can do things more precisely but I have grown to love drawing on my phone since it’s a quick fix with immediate results. Yeah, I know – typical American.

I paint because I love it. I had wanted to learn to paint for years and was too timid to do it until a friend gave me a starter set for Christmas one year and I have been painting since. About five years now. I am not a good painter, at all, but I have fun, and I think that comes through. I have slowed down for about eighteen different reasons, but really, part of me is still in that – Why Do I Do This phase and looking at a box of twenty paintings makes me question myself, much like looking at a box of unsold books does.

I take photos because I love it. Again, not good, but sometimes, sometimes I am not bad at all. I don’t take photos as much as I would to but I do love it. It’s another way to be creative and to set scenes. I am still too timid to really give myself to it, to go with all of my ideas, but I am trying, inch by inch, to get better and get more of my personality into things.

I do events because I love them. I love putting people together who have similar passions. I love working with people who are still finding themselves, their audience, and their path. I love adding to the culture of Flint, even if but in a small way. And I love creating things that inspire people in some way.

Why Do I Do It?

Because I have to. I do the things I do because it drives me crazy to see how little thought and imagination goes into some of the events I see. It drives me crazy to see how so many always seem to have their hands out waiting for someone to fund them and their convention, hobby, whatever. There’s so much that can be done if people just work together, and in a city like where I live, Flint, we need to work together more than anything. I love this place, as many flaws as it has, and want to help to make it better. Sure, art shows and horror cons don’t do much to change people’s safety, and doesn’t create a future perhaps but it’s only by inspiring people and passing our passions on that we can actively change the future. Without that passion, without a reason to stay, people will leave. And if moving makes you happy, then do it, but sometimes staying means more because you can effect the place you live.

You can change it.

Why do I do what I do?

Because I want the things I do to create my legacy. And hell, even if people forget who the hell I am, at least I want to know that I tried to make a difference. I cared enough to try. And the future is only created moment to moment and if we give up inspiring others, inspiring ourselves then we give up on the future. There is so much indifference and apathy anymore, so much negativity about everything that we have to keep the fires burning for one another because someone has to. I do this stuff because it isn’t about fame, or money, but about trying to make a difference. Heck, we all want to make enough to survive and then some to be silly with but that can’t be what we live for. It can’t or we live for nothing. And it’s easy to forget all that as we struggle day to day and the debt piles up, and the stress compounds, but what the Arts give us, what passion gives us is a way to see past those things and into the future, or the past, or anywhere we want. We do the things we love because we have to, not because we want to, but because we have to. Because not doing them drives us crazy. Not doing them makes us feel as if we are wasting away.

And the only thing that can outlive us is the future and it’s better to help create that future than to help destroy it.

So, take a moment and ask yourself my simple question -

Why Do You Do It?

- c

www.meepsheep.com

Contempt

The saying goes ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ and it couldn’t be more true – when you are an artist or a writer and you don’t get your book further out than your immediate area you will hit a very, very large wall of indifference.  It isn’t that people don’t like you, and not that they don’t like your work but that they have seen both, even the new stuff, so often and so many times that at a point they are bored with you.  You are backdrop.  And heck, they can see/buy your work any old time, right, because they have seen you a few times before.

This happens with friends and strangers alike, and it’s heartbreaking and it’s something I struggle with.  For me, I have been writing for a looong time and doing shows for almost as long and I have been doing this long enough that I have run out of steam.  There are only so many times you can query publishers, do art shows, and hype up new work to little interest where you just get burned out.  And for me, someone who had ten years between books, I feel like I have wasted enough time and don’t want to waste it anymore.  Alas, in haste to produce I didn’t realize that I was becoming furniture.  And I see this all the time at conventions when they get the same guests year after year after year, and with artists who do the same shows over and over again.  And it isn’t you, per se, it’s that people get bored of seeing the same or similar work all the time.

Just how people are.

Heck, I am still coming to terms with the general indifference I have faced from many after publishing my first, and odds are last, novel.  To me it’s a big deal but everyone else, it’s nothing.  Part of that is that I have released five other books in the past three years, and part too is that in the era of social media, when EVERY event is OHMYGOD big it’s hard to really get people to react to some things.  It seems like someone is ALWAYS getting married, or engaged, or having kids, or breaking up, and it’s hard to really make people care.  We’ve just become a very self involved culture.  Not having to help your neighbors build a barn, or fight off invaders, or grow food, or having to do a hundred other things that we used to have to do has made us lose touch with each other.  (which, parenthetically, has also made a lot of us utter cads out in public but that’s for other blogs to examine).

Familiarity breeds contempt.

You have to pace yourself and your work.

You have to time your releases and shows so that you give people space and room to breathe.

You have to make sure you do shows out of your immediate area so you can give yourself a chance to reach a new audience.

And you must be patient, with yourself and those around you because it isn’t you that they are bored with but with the familiarity of everything these days, and that’s what breeds the contempt.

c

Tips Off The Top

As far as I have had my blogs, and we’re talking a lot of time now, a lot of years, since nearly 2000 so that’s a lot of years and a lot of rambling and as much as I may like to think I have nothing but pearls of wisdom and deep thoughts to offer the fact really is that well, a lot of what I write is rambling. Especially in the early days. But then, there was a catharsis in it all. Blogs/journals were a place to exorcise yourself and it felt good if you were careful and not too revelatory. I can’t say I learned a lot from it but it felt good in the early days to know that some of what I was saying was reaching someone and was heard, because that matters. In an era where we are all struggling to be heard but rarely listen the blog has changed. It seems that it is  more about Me and less about Us. It’s not about trying to connect but trying to differentiate as so many of us push to get noticed, to get seen, and to get famous.

Fame.

The thing about fame is that it is a kiss without emotion. It feels good when you’re doing it but when it’s done, when it’s gone, it meant little and lead to nothing.

Fame.

What I offer you, friend is not a path to fame, it is not a path to riches, but it is a path towards finding that part of yourself that we sometimes neglect and I offer that part water and light and hope.

Traditional publishing is dead.

Long live traditional publishing!

I come to you as a writer, an author, but not one of any great name or legacy but the thing is, that’s ok. I didn’t get into writing to become a legend, I got into it to amuse myself, to exercise my mind, and to just tell stories. And that is what matters to me, the stories. Sure, I want to sell some books, I want to make some money because this is Art but this is business too and you can’t forget that. You can’t. When you first start writing you have to be willing to ‘give it away’, as much as you can do because these are stories, nothing more BUT nothing less. A story alone may not have power but stories together gather a lot of power and a lot of strength. So you can give away a short story or poem here and there just so you can give people a chance to get to know you. Get to know your work.

Consider writing a job, even if it isn’t.

Sometimes you have to put in that training time to prove yourself, and to some people, you’ll never get hired but that doesn’t mean that you stop working at it, that you stop writing, it just means that you find a different employer.

Publishing has changed. It’s not hard to see it but that doesn’t make it any less shocking and worrisome. There are just not those smaller presses anymore that will put out the lesser and unknown authors. It’s too expensive to print, promote, and to release and ship these things and when the market crashed in recent years it was a way to clean house and that house cleaning meant a lot of smaller publishers died and others went wholly digital, and the rest, the rest focused on commodities. And there’s the rub – these stories, these books are commodities. They are ‘goods’. And as such you have to accept that some people will value your work more than others. It doesn’t mean that your work is better  than anyone from Joe Writer that writes fan fiction for fun or any worse than Steinbeck, Hemingway, or King. It just means that the market bears what it bears and right now, in mid-2012 classy smut is in. Just as vampires were in, just as zombies were in, just as bios were in and on and on. If you have the right story at the right time you can make some good money (with a lot of work and a lucky break) but that doesn’t mean that your story is necessarily better than someone with the right story at the wrong time.

That’s the thing too, being a business, if you are going to pursue it seriously then you have to make the decision of why you write – for profit and fame or for fun and to tell stories? Either path is valid, believe me, but I offer that it’s better to do something you love and suffer than to suffer for something you’re doing for money because unless that money is coming in it’s going to be a waste of time.

Slowly I am inching towards something and that something is this -

If you love to write…write.

Write.

WRITE!

And write your ass off. Write as much as you can and stretch yourself. Write blogs, reviews, stories, poems, and keep it varied. Why? Because the more you grow and challenge yourself and your writing the better at it you become. Fall in love with writing. That’s the key.

Make your own schedule.

Scheduling is a big thing for writers and it makes sense because the further you get from it the more of the threads you lose. It can still be a good story but you’ll lose your passion for it and that’s dangerous. It’s easy to get distracted from writing and you need to learn the discipline it takes to see projects through. Everyone can write a story or poem, not everyone can finish those things and see them through to completion.

Learn.

You have to be up for learning and the biggest thing you can learn is to edit. It will ALWAYS be helpful to get the opinions of others but the first opinion you need and in many cases the most important is your own because YOU need to feel that this is the story you meant to write, that you wanted to tell, and that it’s told how you meant to tell it.

For me I write, I let it sit, then I go back to it and go through it and see what I think and change and fix from there. My short fiction I am pretty picky about since I prefer to decide how that plays out but the novel, that thing needed other eyes on it. Had to have outside editing because it was so big that if I was missing some things I had to find them and fix them and make them work.

Publish!

Now, this is where you are getting MY advice and most writers may disagree with me but to hell with them. I am telling you to publish. Now, this means a lot of things to a lot of people but for me it means this – get your work out there.

It’s great to publish a piece here and a piece there and it’s something to work on because you need to go through that and heck, maybe you break through with something and you can get started on things in a different way.  But for me publishing has kept me going. I don’t know that I’d suggest doing it how I have done it but there’s something to be learned.

After you’ve been writing for a bit and have a body of work, and I think this works better with stories, then you need to start thinking about what you want to do with them. Stories work easier because if you write a novel and put that much time in you will want to pursue traditional publishing, just so you know you did. Stories are good because you can put a collection together of anything from three stories on depending on length and format and you have something valid. I cut my teeth with ‘zines and chapbooks but with services like Create Space and Lulu you have the chance to put out a professional looking book and that means so much more.

So why the hell are you doing this?

Because until you have that book in your hands, until you see why you do this, and until you have to start learning how to promote yourself and your book and how to market and how to price and how to sell your work you are just working with theories. Books make you move from theory to practice. And you need to know what you are working with and you need to learn what works and doesn’t. In essence, you need to learn to be a sales person because that is part of the deal now. And for me, seeing what it becomes, seeing what stories are meant to be, it really brought it all home and made it real and made me love it all the more.

Follow Your Path.

Every writer out there has THEIR way to do things and THEIR way to become successful and all that other crap but here’s the deal – this is your journey, your path, and you need to find your own way. Listen to what everyone says, even mopes like me, but in the end you have to decide the course you need to take. Once upon a time I let someone tell me I was no artist and I quit art for a looong time after that and that’s my fault. I can’t imagine where I’d be if I hadn’t listened to them. I may not have been a great artist but I may have been a happier person because I loved art and I shouldn’t have let someone talk me out of that love.

So write.

Write not because you have to but because you want to and you want to share your stories. There are so many options now. E-books, podcasts, open mic nights, chapbooks, self publishing, comic conventions, horror conventions, sci-fi cons, and on and on and on. There are so many options and so many resources and so many of us, so many of us writers out there that you don’t have to be alone. Remember that. It gets pretty lonely being a writer and that loneliness doesn’t go away easy but you are not alone.

You’re never alone.

This is your journey. These are your stories. If I can impart anything unto you it’s that you need to let yourself dream, let yourself be in love with the writing, let yourself struggle and strive, and finally, let yourself do this and see what happens.

No one promises us a future, we have to make it, and as writers that’s easy because we’re well versed in writing the future, the past, and everything in between, and we should be damned before we let someone talk us out of being in love with writing and pursuing our dreams.

…c…

http://www.meepsheep.com

Perspective

Perspective

Maybe there is something more to the Biblical story of Lot’s wife than we always realize. Something perhaps not intended but which is there just the same. Looking over one’s shoulder back to the past can be a dangerous, sometimes deadly thing. There is glamour to the past, a haze that makes you forget the reality of what it was like. Need an example?

Do you really think the 1950s, with its women’s and racial oppression, with its limited view of anything that ran against the norm, was really that amazing? Sure, our memory of it is, but was the era that great? Same with the 1980s, an era of excess and selfishness. It isn’t that those times didn’t have amazing aspects but that if we forget the issues we lose sight of how truly good some things were.

Such is the case of me of late. I am preparing for the release of my first and probably only novel and in getting that together I have decided I wanted to see what weird stuff I could come up with to put out with it. I had recently moved so it was a good time to go through my little archive.

BOY!

And an archive it is. I found drawings that went back to the late 1980s, when I was not even a teenager yet. I found the first submission version of my first book. I found old school papers, old versions of stories, and all manner of ephemera that showed the path my art has taken. From drawing faces, to space ships, to monsters, to zombies, to nothing for a long, long time, to the modern era of silly monsters. I put much of this work in a large binder for people to go through at the book release party and seeing it all, from the weird magazine I made as a kid to the early version of the first book it reminded me of the weird path I have taken to get where I am. It reminded me of how foolish I have been.

As I have said before I was told when I was eighteen and in a Commercial Art course that I was no artist. It was the nastiest, meanest thing I could have heard and it cut deep enough to stop me from doing art regularly, seriously for a long, long time. I was told it by a nasty teacher who didn’t like that I had gotten into the class not on merit but because I was in Special Ed. I was certainly not the best artist there, and I am not a great artist in any way, but you can see in my work I was trying, just not always succeeding. Maybe I should have been better. I can’t say. I can say that I am sorry for halting my art for so long. I am sorry that I let someone do that to me. I will never know if I had become a painter earlier, if my art would have changed, gotten better, maybe even worse over the years.

It’s not as easy to be hard on myself about writing. Even though I couldn’t find a publisher I was always writing. I was putting together ‘zines, chapbooks, and blogging and reviewing constantly. I was certainly not lazy over those years. I do wish I had had a better outlet for my writing. In the marketplace that exists you have to be someone to get published in a paying publication and the alternative are sites with few views and no money and at that point the benefit of your being published gets dicey. Though I tried, to be sure. I have to admit though that I wish I had had more outlets for my writing. Having said that though, I did pretty ok keeping my head up through all that time. In the ten years between books I wrote a novel, hundreds of stories, and never stopped promoting my one book that was out. I never gave up. I can’t say that it lead me anywhere, but it didn’t lead me to an ending of my writing, which I am thankful for.

But there’s the thing.

The past is beautiful, is full of hope, of promise, of everything you dare to dream. It is in the present that reality sets in and you see the limitations of your situation. The future, the future is the real blank slate but it is often a slate that is colored by who you are today, and limited by that same thing. You can soar or crash based on how you act and react today. It’s just a fact. But looking over your shoulder and what was and could have been will get you nowhere.

You need that knowledge, that perspective to move forward. You need to know what you did right, wrong, and what paths you may have taken so you can see where you want to head as you move toward the future. Without that knowledge you begin going over the well-worn tracks you are already in and it’s a lot harder to see the future from the bottom of a rut. But perspective, true perspective is knowing what things to value from the past and present and what to walk away from and survive.

Sometimes all it takes to change your fate is to survive, yourself, others, and the overpowering will of life. And sometimes you need to know you can survive to keep fighting and keep not give up.

And it’s all about knowing when to look back and when to keep walking forward, knowing that nothing lies behind you but the past.

c

http://www.meepsheep.com

Reign It In

There’s a lesson you need to learn, and learn quickly, as you go out and start doing art shows, book shows, conventions, or get involved in putting together events – the need to reign it in.

What you find, in all of those scenarios, is that you are entering a world that while new to you has existed for a while, and because you are entering it you are suddenly disrupting things.  This doesn’t mean you are trying to do anything bad, or wrong, or will ill intent, but that in all of these areas there is a lot of passion, a lot of investment (personal and financial) and a lot of time has been spent to establish these things and people so as soon as you start joining the party it creates a ripple effect.  And some people will welcome you and others won’t, and you just have to roll with it and understand – the quicker the better – that any poor reception to you and what you do may be simply because you’re new, and not because you are You.  The Arts are very volatile, and things have gotten very compacted.  People don’t look to a great variety of the Arts for entertainment right now and there is not much funding for it so it makes things difficult to find places to sell, promote, and to connect.  You joining the party just makes it that much more compacted.  So there are bound to be some colored feelings towards what you are doing.

The thing is though, people need to get over it.

No one owns the Arts, or any arm thereof. There needs to be new artists, writers, conventions, art shows, movies, music, everything. We need the inspiration and outlet.  We need to keep pushing our universe outward.  An example is that a lot of traditional writers hate/d e-books.  They’re a perversion of the Art.  Well, the market changed.  Tech changed.  People’s needs changed.  And unless we’re willing to let literature and stories disappear we all need to accept that the Times change and we need to evolve with them.  The wise writers stopped fighting and the rest, well, the rest are waiting for the asteroid to finish them off with the rest of the dinosaurs.

With so many of us using social networking to promote, sell, and connect it also makes things much more pressurized because comments are instantaneous, feedback is immediate, and grudges can form and become arguments and spin out of control in a matter of moments.  The temptation to return fire when someone starts calling your work, your professionalism, and what you are doing into question is too strong sometimes to resist.  And once you respond you can easily forget that you’re online, that what you are saying is being seen by the world, and that what may have been a mere disagreement or misunderstanding can suddenly become a caustic war that damages both sides. You get so wrapped up in the pettiness that you lose sight of the bigger picture and that is your reputation.

People pay far more attention to petty squabbles than we think.  Our minor wars that we may get over in a matter hours or days will leave a stain that lasts far longer.  So for the price of our frustration, for the price of letting someone get to us, or for our own hubris in thinking we have the right to attack others we have damaged our own cause.  Perhaps fatally wounding it and all the work you’d done.  And that is what people forget – that the good things we do last but that the bad things seem to last forever.  At least as far as forever can last in this digital age.  Mounting a campaign of hate on someone, what they do, who they are, or what you think they are saying about you will only lead to damaging your own credibility and all of the work you’ve been doing.

Reign it in.

You have to.

The internet and social networking is not the place for vendettas, grudges, or romantic drama. It can’t be because our social networks are our new faces to the world.  That’s why we post happy things, happy pictures, and all of the great things we do in our lives and not the struggles we have, the sadness, the sorrow, and the frustrations.  Sure, some of us are less filtered than others but even then we must be aware of what we’re putting out there.  And that is even more important when it comes to professional work.  A loved one or friend may forgive our temporary madness but the world often will not.  So we must reign it in and always remember that in business of any sort, even in the Arts, you have to treat everyone better than they treat you because you never know when you’ll need a friend, a favor, a job, or a new client.

It’s hard.

It sucks.

But if you can’t keep control of your temper and cannot watch what you put online and out to the world when you are upset then maybe the focus needs to be more on that, and less on what dream projects you may have stirring within.

…c…

BOOKS!

(e-books only .99 cents!)

www.meepsheep.com

Somewhere In The Middle

The funny thing about Truth, as I have mentioned in the past, is that it’s always changing, always evolving and is many times more about the feeling and not the fact.  And that’s fine.  We are emotional beings and who we are is always changing and as that changes our perceptions will change as well.  As a kid you can be bullied by someone constantly, not beaten up but bullied.  Ten years later you can both be friends.  Someone you knew your whole life as a friend can one day be seen with new eyes and become a lover.  The Truth changes. Perception changes.  It’s the facts that make things dicey.  That’s where the ice gets thin.

I was chatting with a friend online (because I’d like to think I won’t be caught saying I ‘chatted’ with anyone outside of online), catching up on where we are in our lives and the place I live came up – Flint, Michigan.  My friend came from Flint, has family had lived here, and she went to school here.  She loves Flint and still has people she cares about that remain here.  And because of her love for Flint and the people she still has here she has fear and honestly, I can’t blame her. At all.

Flint is not the city it once was.  If you are from this area you know that very well, and if you are not from here then you have a perception of what it’s like.  For most people they imagine Flint as a war zone.  A burned out hull of a city with people living on the streets, poverty festering like and infection, and gunfire the music to make love by.  See, for many, they don’t want to let the facts get in the way of the Truth and a lot of people love to see Flint as a Murder Capital, as a dangerous place where blood runs down the gutters.  The facts don’t support that.  But Truth and the facts aren’t the same.

There has been, for a few years now, this strange anger towards Flint, this dark glee that man take when describing the many, many problems we have here.  All it takes is an annual survey of unhappy cities, or dangerous cities, or poor cities, or some other silly stat filled rhetoric.  All it takes is a blanket stat and not on the ground facts.  Which is not to say that stats are not facts, because they are, but they leave out so much.  A stat shows a couple was married for twenty years.  Facts show that he beat her throughout the marriage but she stayed because they had a child together.  Facts and stats.  Facts and Truth.

Things are not ever what they appear.

They are somewhere in the middle.

Flint is dangerous.  I will not make any bones about that.  But every city is dangerous.  And every town is dangerous.  Anywhere humans populate can become dangerous in some way.  That’s something we forget, that it’s we humans that create the danger, not the cities.  It’s the poverty, the frustration, the racism, the sorrow, the greed that causes the crime and its brethren.  It isn’t about politics, it isn’t about race, it’s about the human spirit.  It is about conditioning.  If you live in darkness and are told you will always live in darkness then why seek the sun?  If you are unhappy, and always have been, why would you seek an alternative?  But these seem like excuses.  Maybe they are.  Maybe the facts here are that sometimes humans just do bad things.  For any one of a million reasons.  The misfiring of something that predisposes one to do things that many others don’t do.  Society only lasts as long as we agree to play by the same rules or pretend to play by them.  Otherwise there is chaos.  And chaos serves no one but the self, and the self can’t survive a heck of a long time in chaos.  But chaos is not is going on in Flint, it is despair.  It is the despair of a city that is trying to re-invent itself.  I will never tell you there are not problems here, that it is not a time of trials here, but neither will I tell you that the notion that the city should be bulldozed is ridiculous.  Is madness.  We abandon things to easily in this nation of America.  Walk away when things get hard.  When they get worrisome.  You cannot just walk away from people though.  You cannot walk away from history.  There is an anger towards Flint because it seems to symbolize the change in the national economic machine.  Once we were nation of industry and the world turned to us for many of their goods and that has changed.  Cars can be made for less in other parts of the world and that has lead to the change of the auto industry that employed so many in America.  And with that change it has hurt a lot of cities that were not ready to transition to another industry and so the American dream, as we knew it, changed.  Down with big business.  Down with corporations. Down, down, down.  And it was like a bad break up where you don’t want to see, or hear from the person that is out of your life.  Thus it was for cities like Flint, who served as constant reminders of the dangers of trusting your entire future in the hands of a company that must, in the end, always serve the master, a slave to the dollar.  Flint was a prime example of what could happen.  Arrogance, bad investment, faulty trust, greed, despair, and egos run rampant and the foundations of cities start to crack.  I can’t tell you I know WHY things like this happen but I can tell you why I love this city and why not everything you hear is Truth.

Flint is beautiful in the Winter. During the holidays. When snow blankets the brick streets of downtown and the arches are lit with colored bulbs.

The city has so many beautiful old homes, waiting for someone to love them again and to remind them what it meant to be beautiful.

We have these wonderful man-made falls that, when they turn them on, are spectacular. They fill floating ponds, cascade down into pools. They are a mix of craft and design, magic and metro.

There are sprawling, beautiful parks here that make you forget, if just for a little while, that you’re even in the city.

Flint has something called the Weather Ball that is sort of our adopted mascot here. It is a huge lit ball that sits atop the Citizens Bank Building and will change colors according to the temperature  – blue is cold, red warm, yellow is…something else. It was a genuine mascot for the bank many years ago but not serves as a beacon to those of us who love Flint that we are either home or nearly there. It is our True North.

Then there are the people. I have met so many creative, passionate people here. And everyone says that because it is true everywhere. Here though, in spite of such hard economic times, in the face of adversity, in the face of a culture that appreciates galleries but doesn’t buy art these people still play music, write, sing, dance, and create art. They still follow their passion, even when there’s no money in it. That’s pretty amazing.

And then there was a woman, a wonderful woman that was so impassioned about community service and helping other people that she created an organization to do just that. And in so doing she touched hundreds of lives and she helped change the life of the person writing this now. A woman who made me see that there is beauty in helping those around you.

These are just the thing I can think of now. Sitting here. They are not stats. They are not Truths, they are not even necessarily facts, but they are real things that matter, that make Flint so beautiful and unique.  There is more to this place than the violence, and the crime, and the poverty.  We are not defined by that.  Take the worst moment of your life, and magnify that a thousand times, and now think about it.  Seriously.  Now remember that a city is not a human, is not governed by the lifespan of one human, but lives for decades, for centuries, and so it must be seen through new eyes.  It must be seen over the long term.  It must be seen in the long view.

Things are not perfect in Flint, MI, and my friend is right to worry.  If you are not careful you can get hurt here.  And being careful is not always going to matter because sometimes violence just happens.  Just strikes. But that violence can strike anyone, anywhere.  There are more opportunities in a city with as many struggles as Flint has but there are plenty of crimes committed in the rural areas too.  What I guess I wanted to tell my friend, to tell you, is that this is not a perfect place but it’s a real place, a place where you can have an impact, a place where you can change things.  If just in small ways.  Sometimes the risk is worth it if you believe in something.  And I believe in Flint.  I don’t know hat fate will always have me here, living here, but I love it here now.  The city’s people drive me crazy, for sure, but I don’t blame the city for that.  I blame the politics of people.  I hope for a time where we will all look out for one another here, will work to stop the violence and to end the despair, but that is a long term project and to really work on it you need to be on the ground.  It’s unfair to look at stats from afar and condemn or praise a place outright knowing that what you say or write will change the future for that place.  In fact, by your saying these things you can make your words a prophecy.  And I am not saying someone should lie to save someone’s feelings but that context is needed.  For a city its size Flint has a lot of problems, but without understanding why, without looking at why and trying to explain why it’s like saying all the people in Paris are happy because it’s Paris.

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Flint is not perfect, nor is its people, but we’re working to make things better here, against all odds, and that matters.  So I tell my friend, don’t fear for we that live here, because we have made that choice.  And by choosing we have taken an active part in our futures.  That is all anyone can hope for.  I will be as careful as I can, and I will hope the people I love will do the same and I will look out for people and hope they do the same.  But this city is no different than any other, and that is my own truth that I have no real facts to prove that people would believe.  Save for this – Flint has so much strength, so much love, so much fight left in it, like Detroit and any other city on the ropes in America, and I refuse to give up on it just because it’s what we as a culture tend to do now.  Because giving up is not Truth, is not fact, is not a statistic, it is cowardly, and there’ve been enough cowards that called Flint home and now’s a time for people willing to stand up and try to be the heroes this city needs.

I love Flint.

And that won’t change.

That’s a fact.

Meep!

…c…