Noise in the Attic

Apparently, I’m a bit of a drip…

Your Element Is Water

A bit of a contradiction, you can seem both lighthearted and serious. That’s because you’re good at going with the flow - but you also are deep.  Highly intuitive, you tune in to people’s emotions and moods easily. You are able to tap into deep emotional connections and connect with others. You prefer a smooth, harmonious life - but you can navigate your way around waves. You have a knack for getting people to get along and making life a little more peaceful.

Did a hard-copy edit on “As the Worms Turn” (I still don’t like that title.  think, dammit, think!).  Fixed typos, did some re-wording, etc., but nothing really major.  I’ll do the type-in tonight and send it off.  Got to get this one out the door before I change my mind.

Second and subsequent drafts are a dangerous time for my short stories.  After I’ve had time to cool off and think about things, I start getting scared and back off from the really hard thoughts.  I’ve killed more than one story by gutting it in a second or third draft.  At least I’m aware of the problem, though, so I can watch out for it.  It’s still hard to face the monsters the second time, though.

Ah, the joys of the writer’s life.

The Google ads from the Poe story I linked to:

Can you find the one that doesn’t fit?  Or did I miss something yet again?

In a comment on my “Still Shaky” post from sunday, Jean said, in part, “Nobody but me knows about the really scary things in my life…”

That is at once the most scary and most beautiful part of being a cretive person, whether writer, artist, musician, dancer, whatever.  Creativity flows from the holes that we punch in our defenses against the stuff inside us.  The bigger the holes, the better the creativity.

Unfortunately, that same weakening of our defenses also brings us closer to madness.  Depression, anxiety, even outright psychosis are almost within our reach and can strike at almost any time.  It is the price we pay for our “gifts”, the tuppence for the piper so we can dance.  I say “gifts” because I believe we creative types don’t have anything that everybody doesn’t have.  Anybody can be creative, if they are willing to cut loose their anchors, hoist the sails, and set course for the edge of the world.  Not many are that brave, or that foolish.

Does that mean creative people are unbalanced?  No.  It just means that we feel more deeply, see farther, hear more of the Universe’s music, than those who deny their creativity.  We simply live closer to the soul.  We are exquisitely balanced, because we stand on the fulcrum.  The imbalance lies in denying a vital part of the human experience by hiding in a shell and never experiencing the joys and sorrows of the creative life.

In conclusion, I leave you with a similar thought, courtesy of Mr. E. A. Poe:

TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.

heh heh heh

Typed in/rewrote the short I’m working on for The Any Dream Will Do Review.  1760 words.  Still struggling with the title.  “As the Worms Turn” is the latest lame attempt.  Got one more rewrite to finalize that, so it’s still stewing.
This is the most intense story I’ve ever written.  The editor says she wants stories from people who will examine their raw emotions honestly, so that’s what I’m trying for.  To do that, I had to stir deep in the cauldron, scrape the bottom, and stir up some sludge that I avoid every chance I get.

This story tries to show what anxiety disorders and panic attacks are really like to the person experiencing them.  Someone who has never had a real panic attack may have some problems understanding what a person in the throes of one is feeling and seeing.  Panic on the scale I’m talking about is a real mental disorder, a form of temporary insanity in which reality becomes distorted out of recognition and fear and adrenaline drive reason and sanity screaming into the night.

These feelings are not something I really wanted to face again, but I need to understand them, so I can deal with them better next time around, which, God willing, will never happen.  There are no guarantees, though, and I have to prepare for the eventuality.

I hope this story affects readers deeply enough to bring them a little closer to understanding why people with anxiety disorders behave the way they do.  When panic attacks, there are few defenses that can stand against it.  If any.

Another season, let’s hope it’s not one in Hell.

Tropical Depression Five is expected to be Hurricane Ernesto by the time it reaches the Western end of Cuba sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning and then move into the Guolf of Mexico.  After that, it’s anybody’s guess.

How about let’s all remember Katrina and keep an eye on this bastard?  More importantly, let’s be prepared and run for it if we have to.  K?

Is there some genetic disposition to deeply ingrained insecurity that is necessary in order to be a writer?  It often seems that way.

tambo went off on one form of childishness the other day.  Simply put, what she’s talking (ranting, cussing, whatever) about is a lack of professionalism.  Being a professional entails a Hell of a lot more than just selling a book.  There is also the matter of acting like an adult.  Writers who spend their time snarking and snitting and calling names have a long way to go before they can claim to be professionals.

Real professionals, like tambo, realize that they did not get where they are by themselves.  Sure she’s a great writer with one wicked imagination, but the support she received along the way played a major part in pushing her to the top of the hill, and she will be the first to own up to that.

What that means is that every professional writer has an obligation to repay.  There is no way to repay our benefactors, so we must take a different tack.  We must offer support and help to those coming along behind, the ones who need it the most.

Like me.  I have also received some very good support and help from some real professional writers that has helped me get to the point that I can imagine actually having a publishable novel some day (SOON, DAMMIT!).  Once I have crossed through the Valley of the Shadow of Publishing, it will be my turn to look around and lend a hand to someone else, and then someone else, and then someone else.

Anybody that wants to see living definitions of “professional” only has to look at tambo, Holly, and PBW.

I’m not even able to comment on Debra’s post today.  It’s just too disturbing.

We spend an awful lot of our time doing things.  Think about it.  Almost all the time, we’re active, doing something, going somewhere.  We’re taught to believe that active is good and passive is bad.  “Do something about it.”  “Do something with your life.”

By living this way, though, we are missing a vital part of life, in some ways maybe the most important part — doing nothing.  By “doing nothing” I don’t mean suckling on the boob tube or staring off into space.  What I mean is that many lesons can best be learned by opening ourselves up and letting the world act on us.  No directions or deflections, just relax and go with the flow.

It’s hard for Westerners to do that.  We’re so used to being in charge and doing that we feel very uncomfortable, vulnerable, being passive and accepting what comes.  Easterners are much more comfortable with this.  Don Juan Matus taught Carlos Casteneda the value of not doing, of watching not the leaves, but the spaces between them.

Meditation is a good way to start approaching this state, but, to fully experience the totality of life, we have to learn to punch through the bubble of meditation and not just observe, but allow the Universe (or the Divine, or whatever you want to call it) in.

It’s hard to know when is the right time to act and when to lie back and just be in the moment.  Everything in life is a balance, the Secret of Life is to find the balance point in everything we do or not do and to live there.  I hope to find some of those balance points before I die and quit wavering around going from good to bad to worse and back.  I would call that serenity.

“Some of these beginners, too, make little of their faults, and at other times become over-sad when they see themselves fall into them, thinking themselves to have been saints already; and thus they become angry and impatient with themselves, which is another imperfection…They dislike praising others and love to be praised themselves; sometimes they seek out such praise.”

Saint John of the Cross was writing about those Christians who take an overarching pride in their faithfulness and obedience to God.  Self-righteous twerps, in other words.  Apparently they had plenty of them in 12th Century Spain, too.

I was struck by how eerily this passage describes one of the first and hardest obstacles a writer has to face and overcome.  How many prima-donna newbies have you known or heard about?  Have you been one?  I was.  Long ago, I thought I was just the cat’s pajamas, could out-write anybody.  I was going to be rich and famous.

Then reality set in.  Those first couple of rejections were tough, but I thought they were just aberrations.  Surely somebody would recognize my proverbial deathless prose for the golden honey-drippings of ambrosia that it was.  Yes, you may laugh hysterically now.

Looking back on those stories now from a perspective of years, I just shake my head.  What an embezzle!  What a maroon!  What a fat-head I was.  It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I have a feeling I’m not alone in having these memories.

It’s hard to learn you’re not perfect.  It’s damn hard to realize that you will never be perfect, no matter how long you live or how hard you try.  All we can do is live in true humility, learn as the opportunities present, and strive to do the best we can with what we have.  The hardest lesson of all is that we must have faith that that will be good enough.