Tag: #Writer

  • Personal Writing History; The Abbey Writers

    At least my life has been colorful, and has gone is some different directions. I say that because, at one point in my life, I thought it best at 19 to drop out of college and try my hand working low paying jobs, and become a professional writer. I was lucky enough at the time to have several friends around me that all worked equally low paying jobs, and also had artistic ambitions.

    One of my good friends, let’s call him John, was also an aspiring writer as well. We had been best friends since 9th grade, and since then we had read each other’s stories. One late night, over cigarettes and coffee at a 24-hour IHOP, one of us came up with the idea that we should professionally write together, like a band. So, like any good band, we had to come up with a good name. We thought “The Abbey Writers” was a great choice. It was based off our favorite album, Abbey Road, and it also made us seem like a group of monks. Right, that’s cool?

    It was a fun time, and we were able to put together a collection of short stories called, “Double-Jointed Mythology.” I have a copy of it locked in my storage space, and I haven’t looked at it in maybe 20 years. What I can remember of it was that we were trying to take a snap shot of life in the suburb we grew up in, and the disconnection between the world we were promised as kids, and the disappointment we found as adults in that artificial town. (Say, that sounds a lot better than what I think we wrote.) We even did a photo shoot with a photographer friend for what we thought would be needed on the dust jacket.

    What can I say? The publishing world didn’t have a need for us. We tried but never could get any of the short stories published, and this was back in the day when submissions required a self addressed stamped envelope. I think we tried for two years, but after awhile, rejection begins to weigh on us. I don’t think we ever “broke up” as a writing collective, but just drifted to other things, and worked on other projects.

    But I still think it was a good idea.

  • Small Town Research

    For Labor Day, I took the three days to not write. I only journaled on Saturday morning, but that was all of the physical act of writing that I did.

    We spent time out of New York City, and tried to honestly forget about being stuck in our apartment, and all the other things that are going wrong due to Covid.

    I was able to get the family to go with me upstate to look at some of the towns and the region that I am thinking about as the setting as the novel. I took pictures on my phone, and thought about how some places are just tourist traps, while other small towns fight hard not change what they have been for decades.

    Most ideas being thrown on the heap…

  • A Place in the Woods, Reading and Writing Stories

    This morning, when I was journaling in the park, as I was running through some ideas and desires, I had a thought that, “I wish I had a place in the woods to read books and write.”

    Then my mind jumped right to an interview I had for a theatre conservatory in San Francisco back in January 2019. The interview was going really well, and then the woman asking me questions shot out, “If money wasn’t an object, what would you being doing right now?” And without missing a beat, I blurted, “I would be living at a place in the woods, reading books and writing stories.” She smiled a disappointed smile at me, and that pretty much ended the interview. It was clearly not the answer she wanted, as I didn’t get the job.

    Then I was reminded of an interview I had in February of this year for a rather prestigious theatre company. I had made it to the final round, and the managing director of the company asked me pretty much the same question, and again I said, “I would be living at a place in the woods, reading books and writing stories.” I think there were other issues with my candidacy, but again, I didn’t get the job.

    It reminded me of Maya Angelou’s quote, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

    I think sentiment cuts both ways.

    When I show people who I really am, I should believe it myself, the first time.

  • Reading Challenge for Fall

    The one thing that I am really sucking at right now is reading books. I mean, I do read, but with everything going on, I have not been consistent. And what I am reading right now is the news, and news related publications. I used to read before I would go to bed, but now, I’m exhausted and overwhelmed at the end of the day, and I just zone out with stupid TV, and fall asleep.

    I know that is no excuse, as reading needs to be a habit. Or at least that’s what I tell the kid. Yeah, I’ve turned into a “Do what I say, not what I do” parent.

    Then the other day, a writer friend posted that she was going to use the Fall to immerse herself in the work of a writer that she should have read, but for whatever reason never got around to. I thought that was a very intriguing challenge, being that there are so many great writers that, for whatever reason, I never get around to as well. The first name that popped into my head was John Cheever. I know a good deal about Cheever, but I have never read a word of him, not even a short story.

    I think for my mental well being, I have to have a goal attached to my actions, no matter what the action. This will be the Fall of John Cheever. I want to see how much of his work I can read. It’s like I am trying to make 2020 the year of accomplishing. It just might be the only control I can exude over my life right now.

  • Journaling at the Park

    Yesterday, it rained in the morning, which meant that we didn’t get to have our early park time. No running around for the kid, and making new friends. And no sitting on a bench and writing in my journal. Over the course of this pandemic, park time has become a very essential, and needed outlet for the kid and me. She gets to burn off energy and have social interactions with other kids, and I get to start my day with organizing my thoughts.

    It was a slight monkey wrench to our day, but the sun did come out later, so we were able to make a late day park visit. The later time allowed us to discovered a whole different group of kids that my daughter loved playing with, and I got to have the introspection from the end of a day, rather than the beginning.

    I have been writing in a journal since I was 18, and I have over 30 notebooks filled. I like to think of myself like Thoreau when it comes to writing in a journal, but do sometimes wonder if I’m not the crazy recluse guy in the neighborhood, jotting down meaningless things in his notebooks. (It’s a fine line.) I have been journaling so long, that it is an engrained habit. But they aren’t reference books. Only rarely do I pick one up and go through it to see what I was thinking way back when. And I don’t use them to work out “story ideas” or anything like a creative workbook/sketchbook. It’s just a catching place of ideas, thoughts, sketches, and feelings… maybe a little documentation of events, but not very often. Journaling for me is a cathartic exercise. It is immediate, spontaneous, and in the moment, which again and again, I seem to discover is a theme for me when it comes to the art I enjoy. With everything going on in the world right now, I need to have an outlet for all of these pent-up emotions, and hopefully, I can find a constructive use for them.