The World is Made of Candy

Exactly like a Memory

Oh yeah, I have a blog. I almost forgot.
So I was thinking about the fact that I could never write an autobiography because if I did, 90% of it would be complete bullshit. It's memory, man. As in, I have a lousy one. I don't understand how anyone could possibly remember events from a week ago, let alone from childhood. It doesn't help, in my case, that I spent a great part of my later teen years and early twenties completely whacked out of my mind on various illicit substances-- not the sort of thing that lends itself to perfect recall. I shudder to think of all the brain cells I snuffed out.
But in place of actual memories, I've managed to create my own private mythology, based loosely on reality. I've sort of filled in the blank spots with speculation that may or may not be true. My eye, for instance; when I was about three, I had a bad accident that damaged my right eye. I have no memory at all of the event, but I've created a story about it based on what I've heard from my Mom and various other sources and my re-imagining of it has become so clear in my head that it's almost exactly like a memory.
So that makes me sort of wonder about the significance of actual memory. If something "untrue" can be as vivid in your mind as something "true", then what good is "true"? Like most writers, I live mostly inside my head anyway, yeah? Another example: dreams. Ever have a dream so vivid that you remember it years later? You remember it just as well, if not better, than something that actually happened?
If memory is only a chemical reaction in your brain, a response to some sort of stimuli, then who's to say that there's any real difference between the "actual" and the "dream"?
So yeah. My autobiography would be equal parts real and unreal, and both parts would be equally valid. Because your life in your head is just as significant as the one outside. Maybe even more so.
Come back in a week or so. I'll have another story for ya.

Incident on a Rain-Soaked Corner

I'm way overdue to put up a new story here (and the world collectively stops holding its breath, right? Ahem).
This one's new-ish; I wrote it last month. I like it, but that's just me. It's nice and nasty.
Enjoy.

Work Tomorrow

So I had this back injury, right? A pretty bad one, bad enough to lay me up for several months. Herniated disc. Sciatica. Couldn't even walk for awhile, used a cane, took tons of pain pills, etc, etc. No fun at all.
But, after the initial couple of months in which I couldn't do anything, I started physical therapy and gradually began getting better. Eventually, I started writing again (propped up in bed, laptop balanced on a pillow) and as the weeks went by my output really skyrocketed. Beginning in November of last year, I was writing like a madman (however a madman writes).
I pumped out almost two hundred pages of a novel. I wrote four short stories. I posted tons of book reviews on my Facebook account (because I was reading tons of books) and updated this blog two or three times a week.
In other words, I was getting a little taste of what it's like to live the life of a WRITER.
I liked it. A lot.
But now it's time for all that to wind down. I started back to work this week; my day job that pays the bills. It'll take some time getting used to it again, after being away so long. And it feels kinda weird, having my day now belong to someone else, not me. You know what I mean. It's what we all do.
The writing output, of course, will drop off dramatically. I'll be lucky to get in two pages a day during the week. I'll go from reading two or three books a week to, maybe, one tops. My postings here will be more infrequent (actually, they've already declined these last two or three weeks, as I devoted more time to the novel-- knowing my time was running out).
I'm not complaining, exactly... most writers have to share their valuable time with the outside world in order to get by. I know this. And let's be honest, in this economy I'm goddamn lucky to have a job.
But I'm awful selfish. And I'll miss these last few months.
Gotta sign off now; getting late, and I have to get up early to go to work tomorrow. Look for another short story here next Monday.
'til next time,
Heath

A Freeway on Earth

Here's another story. It's probably the lightest thing I've written; not a damn thing dark about it, except maybe how utterly sad it is how we are all slaves to our paychecks, yeah? The central character, Frank, is in such a panic to make it to work on time that aspects of an existence outside his job go right by him. Actually, come to think of it, that IS rather dark after all.
But honestly, the story is just meant to be diverting and mildly entertaining. I think. You decide; it's right over there in the usual spot.

Extinction Enterprises

Usually, when an idea for a short story comes to me, I don't do anything with it for awhile. Just a sentence or two jotted down in the notebook. Weeks or months--sometimes even years!-- later, I write it, and because the basic premise has had time to mutate in my head it winds up being considerably different than what I'd originally conceived of. And that's fine.
This one, though, went from amusing concept to complete story within about two hours. Maybe it suffers for the short gestation period, I don't know. But I like the idea. What could be funnier than the corporate planning behind the complete eradication of all humanity?
Anyway, you be the judge. It's over in the usual spot.

Say it with Action

Editing and revising your work is par for the course; unless you're some sort of literary genius who can whip off a perfect manuscript with a first draft, you're gonna spend a great deal of time fine-tuning, cutting, lengthening, etc. But just recently I had to completely re-write two chapters in my novel from scratch.
The reason: no action!
My novel isn't a mystery exactly, but there are some mystery elements, in that the narrator, Drake, has to "dig up" some important info to get to the next stage of the story. While writing it, I really just wanted to plow through and get where it needed to be, so what I did in one of the chapters (chapter two, to be precise) was have Drake overhear some vital information (that is, stuff my reader needed to know) on the television news. On the news! Very lazy of me. My friends in writer's group, Christian and Janine, called me out on it, and they were right.
So, chapter tossed. In the re-write, I have Drake getting the info by visiting a drug den, finding a stoolie of his, and intimidating the information out of the guy. Much better, yeah? That way, it's not just an info dump, it's an actual scene, with actual characters.
The other chapter: Drake learns some details about a shadowy secret society that could be behind all his misery. What did I do in the first version? I, um... I had him go to the library and look up things on the internet!!
Good god, man, what was I thinking? Fortunately, I caught myself out on that one. One laborious re-write later, Drake takes a trip to visit a paranoid drunken writer who knows all about the society. He gets the info from him.
The lesson: when you're writing a chapter in which some revelation occurs, try to include other characters as the source of the revelation. Don't hand the revelation to your protagonist on a silver platter. Make him work for it. Use it as an opportunity to introduce new and interesting inter-actions that reflect more than just the new information.
When you need to tell the reader something vital, why not say it with action?