Great art comes from a place of fun. When the creation of a piece of art was driven by jealousy, or a sense of obligation, the results tend to feel phoned in. It’s hollow. The audience notices this. The artist definitely does too. I’m guilty of this. Many of my larger projects after my first couple works suffer from this (I’ve nearly enjoyed writing every short story I’ve ever done, so most of those don’t suffer this problem). I listened to bad internet marketing people turned book gurus (people trying to sell indie authors snake oil) and became obsessed (as I think we all do at some point) with sales and reviews, and platforms, and blah blah blah blah blah (I never really put too much heart into the email list, so I left that bad boy off my listicle there).
But, I’ve recently let myself enjoy the wonders of stories again. Whether it’s been in the form of books (Stephen King’s new novel LATER is pretty damn fun), TV shows (anyone seen season 2 of Love, Death, and Robots yet?) and movies (WRATH OF MAN was good, people. Go see it!). And, while letting myself enjoy the things I’ve always loved, letting myself be a human instead of a robot programed to classroom manage above all else, I’ve really wanted to put this love back to work. Because, you see, I’ve always been a story teller. Since I was a kid I made up my own, preferring to put pen to paper rather than pencil (I was a writing utensil snob). I’d write my friends and I into adventures in my Sliders spoof, Slippers. We slipped, instead of sliding, into alternate dimensions (you know, like that 1990’s television show). I wrote a story of the Wizard of Oz, but from the POV of the Scarecrow (it was a satire that involved a Space Balls reference when they meet the Man Behind The Curtain). My 5th grade teacher read that story to the whole class, and he couldn’t help laughing while he did it (one of my proudest moments).
When I turned into a teen, my story making love took to home movie making. Movies are where my love of story making came from. We were one of those VHS freak families. We had boxes, tubs, and bookcases full of the things. Our sections were organized by moi. We had a John Candy section, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, you name it. Of course there was a Spielberg section, and a separate spot for excellent series (Rocky, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, etc.—and for those cinephiles wondering how I dealt with putting Rocky and Indy in the section with their actor and/or director or the excellent series section, the series trumped the actor and/or director on those ones).
At first there were no scripts. Just me, my brother (and later friends), and my camera. We filmed bonzo stuff until I was about 15 or 16 and then paused for awhile. When I went off to college I got a personal computer for the first time. A clunky eMachine that didn’t even have a wifi card until I upgraded it. Anyways, once I had that bad boy, scripts became the norm for all further home movie adventures, and eventually they got pretty good (this one’s my favorite). Well, by pretty good, I mean good for young kids hoping to get a laugh (I learned early on that with home movies, the easiest way to get buy in from your “crew” and audience was to make it funny…regardless of the genre).
And, then eventually that tailored off (right about the time my long time collaborator joined the Air Force), and I focused on making my way through college (everyone was doing it! Plus, I didn’t get the money for film skill, plus I didn’t want to leave my girlfriend to move off to Hollywood).
Regardless, eventually that old bug itched too much, and I started back up with the stories. I had this one that I had started seven years earlier, right after I graduated high school. It was about this bullied teenager who killed himself, and then went to hell, and then became the guy who gives people nightmares. That was the basics. I knew there was going to be a girl in there, some bad guys (probably), and that eventually he’d be some kind of dark superhero (like Darkman, or Spawn…only, like more of a good guy). I just needed to finish writing it. So, I spent a semester doing that. I had class one day a week, so I spent my mornings writing, went to school on Tuesdays, and worked at Walmart at night. After three months I had a finished book (you can buy it HERE. There’s also an audiobook narrated by a guy who’s acted alongside Bruce Campbell). I probably haven’t come up with a cooler premise (though, a lot of my short stories are pretty cool. Check them out HERE) or been as productive as I was back when it was all just for fun, and just to get the thing made, and made well.
Since then, I’ve written several sci-fi novels, a couple dark fantasy ones (that’s pretty much my wheel house) and a bunch of short stories here and there. I’m working on a novella in my Dick and Henry series that I’m really liking so far. Got a lot of where I want to go in my head, and I think it’ll be a doozy that I know that I will at least enjoy.
So, now back to the original point. Good art has to be something the artist enjoys making. Somewhere along the journey I lost sight of that and wrote to finish a word count, or to meet some deadline I made up for myself. Then, to make something that I could live with, I had to rewrite the things over and over again until I could at least point to sentences in the thing I liked. That said, I do take pride in all of my creations, and think for fans of genre stories, there’s something in all my stories some people will like, but I’m not going to worry about that, not anymore.
My goal this summer, as of now, is to write a lot. But, with the caveat that I’m going to write stories that I like, that are fun for me to create. Stories that interest me, that make me feel things. I’m not going to worry about creating things that the internet thinks I need to create. I’m going to create what I want to create, which I think will roll like a snowball, until I’ve created so much somebody out there just might like it. And then, maybe they’ll read it.
That’ll be something.