WHAT'S GOING ON?

It's been a while since I was on here. I left simply because after a lengthy period of writing you get the feeling that the cycle the world moves in is too damn repetitive to matter. I thought about this for a while and realized that even a repetitive cycle is fun to write about in a few different ways. There are things out there from the hateful Justing Bieber, to Obama, to that stinking shit fucker Oscar " I killed my Hot Girl and Got Away with it" Pistorious. Let's see what I can really get into.

POETRY

I'm no poet but I love reading poetry simply because I feel that there is some manner of genius in brevity. Poetry was something that I loved as a kid because it was short but most of the time it told some story. Let's look at some of the things that poetry covers in a few lines:

1. Love.
2. Heartbreak. 
3. Happiness. 
4. Sadness.
5. Success.
6. Failure. 
7. Appetite.

In short, poetry covers just about everything you can imagine and write about. When you do it correctly a poem can pretty much sum up the long and short of your life. Poetry can be what defines a writer, shapes a generation, and establishes a legacy. 

I'm writing this because I want to encourage people to really seek out poetry, not as a drag but as a form of enrichment. Perhaps you are a poet, perhaps not but either way you can really yield something great from it. Seek out a poem from days of old, seek one out from recent time but remember it will broaden your mind.

AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.

So I have seen two episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I have to say I dig it. I think that the formula for a comic based series is really there. With the long run of Smallville and the apparent good reception of Arrow it seems like there's a new age for comic book stories in television. It doesn't help when people like Jim Steranko, the Warhol of Marvel, say that the stories are weak. Comic books have a broad base of material to chose from.

Marvel has a lot that they can incorporate but it does help to create certain characters, like they did with Firestar in the 1980 Spiderman and his Amazing Friends cartoon. I love the fact that they brought in Samuel L. Jackson and that they use foreshadowing as a tool to broaden interest. It may be a long time before they decide to hype up interest by attempting to bring in faces such as Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo for cameos.

I think the show deserves a chance because honestly it's one of the few good shows on TV, where entertaining the audience with a plausible continuing story is important.

WHY AM I STILL UP?

It's late and I am still up writing, I really have to question my sanity. I have a meeting in the morning and need to be sharp but I am so interested in other things at the moment. I wonder if night brings about hubris and makes people feel invincible. I am tired, I am thirsty, I know what my day will bring tomorrow but I just don't feel like letting that get to me. I am thinking of so many things and so many things I am thinking of make such little sense, even to me.

An hour ago I was thinking of what it must have been like to be David Sarnoff back when he was delivering flowers to the may mistresses of Marconi out in New York. Then I think back to previous hours and how thrilled I was with the latest installment of the HBO drama Newsroom and how cool it is that Jeff Daniels will likely have an iconic role to define his outstanding career. Here I am, it's late as fuck and I am still writing, and yet I don't know why.

This blog is such a medium for expression, often times I express raw emotion without any real attention to accuracy and I wonder how many mistakes I have made in the process of creating volume. I don't give a shit about what people think of my mistakes because this is my forum and yet I want reactions, I want to push buttons and get people talking. Yes I know what I'm saying because I read and read carefully but often times I write recklessly because I am fully invested. I look forward to numbers, ideas, reactions and I love when I have the opportunity to prove assholes wrong.

I am not really into political correctness, in fact I challenge that ridiculous and hypocritical norm which we enforce because honestly it's nothing more than fear, a blanket for the cowardly. It's late and I am opening up to perfect strangers because I am secure in my own feelings and opinions, I will agree, disagree, and stand up when it's necessary. I will attack people not for the sake of the attack but simply because I live in reality. It's late, I'm tired and open, and I will say whatever the hell I want to say.

NEVER GIVE UP

I have heard that I need to give up my dreams and ambitions so many times. I have heard it said that I have " far out" goals and the truth is I don't give a shit. People that criticize me for taking action in pursuing my dreams are also the very cowards that do not have the courage to go after their own dreams. The fact is that dreams will only as far as you take them. If you have your dreams stuck to a pillow chances are better than average they will never come true.

I am living my dream because I want to live my dream. I am a writer, I am everything I wanted to be. I do get paid to do what I love but not as often as I need to. I know I will get paid more eventually and I can make the adjustments but giving up is not an adjustment I am considering. I made a decision that I would not put myself in a position where I would be the waiter and writer combo. This is not me being arrogant or unrealistic, it's me saying that if you want something in life you get it regardless of what you are told.

Life was meant to be lived with real desire, we are not here to exist and just be. To hell with all the cowards that are willing to wake up and exist. I respect every person's decisions in life but to be honest I don't really care what they think of mine. I am a writer, I write because I love to write and because I can write. I live life to the fullest because it's what I want. Every possession I have will live on because I can't take it with me. My dreams are something that will define me as they become reality and when I am gone people will remember what I dreamt, what I accomplished and what I stood for.

Dream on if you have the courage, achieve if you have the strength and never give up if you have the heart.

DEATH, A POEM

I had this dream, I don't know if it was real but so real it seemed
Death came for me
Not a word
It wasn't a skeleton
It did not wield a scythe
I did not want to go
I did not know what it was
There was no cloak in this spirit
There was no form at all
Death was a mere cloud
It took me through a hall

I walked many steps
At one point I stopped
Death was now in front
When suddenly the cloud dropped
It formed a stream on the floor
Rivers of reflection
I guess death was giving me time for retrospection
I was so young upon first glance
Here I was looking at my life
Stripped down for an eventual rise

Death my friend what it this?
I see ships with hulls all of them rotting
The ships sink to the water as they make a big mess
Things keep happening
I can't well see the rest
Death my dear friend it's been like a ride
I look upon my life with a great deal of pride

I ask death one more time what's going on
It doesn't respond and something is wrong
What will I do?
What did I do?
Everything is odd
I am dead
I have not bled
My clothes are not red
Why death?
What has my attitude bred?

Death told me
I was good
I was decent
My parting was not recent
It takes time to see my life
Even if I was good and polite
Thank you death I know I did right

IF YOU CAN SELF PROMOTE YOU ARE OKAY

I love the term shameless self promoter because it's kind of a contradiction. When a person says you are shameless they almost mean it in a derogatory manner. I am shameless but it's because I have nothing to be ashamed of. The fact is that when you are starting out no one will promote you so you have to do it yourself. If you are a writer this means multiple things outside of putting pen to paper on a daily basis.

Oh my blog! let's all get on the blog train to blog city. When you are a writer looking to get attention it's a great idea to go ahead and start a blog with opinions on relevant topics. The more outrageous your view the more attention you can draw to yourself. It's not about shocking people so much as it is about getting a little attention from different places. Of course there is a secondary option outside of blog city and that is self publishing.

The chances of you writing a best seller without any proper backing are very rare but if you have that little book to demonstrate what you can do as well as that sense of esthetics that's ever so important you definitely have an opportunity to draw some much needed attention to yourself. The point is to make yourself as visible as possible in order to show potential backers who you are and what you can do.

Always remember that no one ever paid attention to a person with little to say.

WHY A WRITER NEEDS TO KNOW HISTORY

I have always loved history because when you really get into the description of it it's almost like you can see it unfold once more in your mind's eye. My favorite subject through my primary education was history because I felt like I knew the players. I recently realized that history lessons are the first stories we are ever told. Sometimes we hear the tall tales of Americana and other times we read key literary works such as The Great Gatsby which serve as a glimpse into specific periods. The fact is that history reveals that the greatest stories told are told by each and every individual.

I never met the founding fathers but I feel as though they were truly civilized gentlemen with enormous skills in the art of diplomacy, otherwise known as bullshit. A historical document such as the declaration of independence reveals an ardent desire for a new identity, great concern for proper linguistic correctitude, and a fierce need to prove intellectual superiority in certain respects. Then there are works like the bible which is referred to by many as the key work in literature. A story can either be an approximation of the truth, a play on fact, or a total fabrication of the imagination. Honestly it's history that serves as a basis for all of that.

George Orwell wrote 1984 over sixty years ago and while his concepts seemed to far fetched to be real they were realized and validated over the years. While Orwell's work was fiction there can be a safe assumption made that Orwell felt through research that Big Brother was not an unreal and purely fictional idea. Everyone has a view of the future but those that express it in print base it on certain historical study. I am not saying that every person that desires a career in writing must be a history bookworm but it helps to know history in order to avoid sounding like a complete jackass.

WHY BLOGGING IS NOT FRUITLESS

I used to think of blogging as another way for over opinionated people to spew their pseudo intellectual pearls on to the rest of the world. I will go as far saying that the word blog itself made me want to throw up in the sense that it was a word used largely by people that I perceived to be complete assholes. One day a childhood friend said "You should start a blog" and I decided to give it a shot just to see if I could be a lesser evil. The first year I had this blog I only put out some six blog entries total and did not bother to look at stats or anything of the sort.

As time went on I kept hearing that question about why I wasn't doing anything with my blogs. I never bothered to answer because frankly I felt that I did not need to do so. One day everything changed as my paid writing assignments started to wane a bit. I began to wonder about my writing and how I could stay relevant to myself. I was reminded of a tidbit  read my first day of class in Full Sail's MFA in Creative Writing program, that tidbit was that writers write. I hear that over and over and I realized that I would be doing myself a grave injustice if I stopped writing on the basis of what I was or was not earning.

Over the last six months I have been averaging something close to thirty entries a month and over that period of time I have been reminding myself of several things. First thing is that writers starting out have to be consistent in order to get somewhere. The second thing I remembered was that writers must self promote in all possible avenues. Every writer has a strong point and that can be anything from telling a story, to relating facts, to giving an opinion. I was reminded that building up volume of work helps get your name out there. In a six month period I have managed to build my stats to nearly 14,000 views in over 180 entries. I have finally taken in enough income to buy myself three candy bars from my google adsense and I am seeing exposure of my work in other countries even if it's only ten people that hit the page.  

If I continue to go at the pace I am going I know eventually I will hit some sort of niche. Blogging also makes social media useful as it's good to showcase your work in facebook, and twitter as well as google plus in order get that work in front of as many people as you can and make sure they are as varied a crowd as can be. The bottom line is that if your serious about getting exposure and building something relevant to put in your resume a blog is a great way to go.

THE TORTURE THAT IS WRITING

I must have read enough about writing to teach a small village. I spent countless hours working on an MFA with the focus on Creative Writing and one thing never changes, writing is pure torture. Some people love torture and I guess writing is that type that drives you insane but you just can't get enough of. There are so many dimensions to writing that just seem so wrong.

The first thing about writing that bothers everyone is subjectivity. You can write something that you hate and everyone else loves and something you believe to be your best and everyone thinks is absolute crap. No matter what you do or don't do you always have that nagging "I want to be liked" feeling when crafting a story. There's that desire for perfection that you end up having to cut out in order to do what's right for the story.

It doesn't really matter what you do you will always find a flaw with what you write and when someone else point's it out you will be infuriated but the fact is that fresh eyes see far better than a tired mind. Writing is a passion and like all passions it can be unhealthy in multiple ways. Ultimately writing is that ex girlfriend that you loved but drove you insane, that parent you idolized but could not stand and ultimately it's that one fantasy that will be as painful as it is joyful once it becomes reality.