So I’m over a decade out of a cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram* and I carved out my place as a writer, got can­cer, had a series of unfor­tu­nate events, and am now try­ing to build the whole thing again.

[*I got tired of edit­ing this every year. I grad­u­at­ed in Decem­ber 2011]

And as I do, I’m going to post it right here.

Some­time around 2002, I hung up a sauce-stained tie, stopped man­ag­ing The Old Spaghet­ti Fac­to­ry in Con­cord, gave up the USDA, pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment recipe for Hap­pi­ness and the Amer­i­can Dream™, and struck off on my own path. I had tried the “real” job, “real” life, “real” respon­si­bil­i­ties, and even saved up for a “real” house and was talk­ing about “real” kids with my “real” spouse.

All that real­ness sucked balls. Sad­ly, not in the way that is vague­ly tan­ta­liz­ing. More like in the way that an over­en­thu­si­as­tic teen with braces does it. No, not even that. More like if a Klin­gon with bad teeth (even for a Klin­gon) were try­ing to like do the thing where you… you know what, you get the point.

So I dumped all that “real” crap, and I start­ed writ­ing. I got a flip-over hair­cut and I told my mom I just real­ly need­ed to focus on my art.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, what I pro­duced was lit­tle more than a steam­ing pile of vivi­sect­ed emu tes­ti­cles. I mean it had words and sen­tences and stuff, and I had a decent sense of pac­ing from a life­time of watch­ing movies, but I did­n’t real­ly know how to WRITE. That is when I began my mis­sion.

Well, real­ly, I began a quest.

Many years ear­li­er, I had “Become a Writer”… Dorothea Brande style, so my process was already cook­ing with gas, but I need­ed help with the craft itself. My prose was rough around the edges. My gram­mar was pret­ty atro­cious. I liked writ­ing about farm boys fight­ing dark lords. I had to learn to do with qual­i­ty what I loved to do with quan­ti­ty.

And so began the quest. I dis­cov­ered the loca­tion of an ancient, mag­i­cal sword. This ven­er­a­ble dude who looked amaz­ing­ly like Burgess Mered­ith told me I had to kill a troll.

At first I refused, because you have to refuse the sword. But then a rabid lemur killed my father and I swore vengeance and went back. I’ll spare you the details, but I’ll just say that troll toe jam smells extra tangy and troll sausage is even worse than it sounds.

So… I went back to the Burgess Mered­ith guy and asked him how all this sword-grab­bing, troll-slay­ing, toe-jam-smelling stuff was sup­posed to make me a bet­ter writer.

“Writer?” he blinked. “Who the hell would ever want to be a writer? There’s no mon­ey in that. What you need to do is lop the heads off of drag­ons. Trolls, drag­ons, wyverns, maybe even the Loch Ness mon­ster… The big­ger the drag­on, the bet­ter. Lots of mon­ey, fame, for­tune. And lem­mie tell you, chicks dig drag­on slay­ers. LOTS of chicks. You’ll be knee deep, real­ly. I used to bed a dif­fer­ent groupie every night for a week after a good head lop­ping. You could hook up a three­some… after your first kill, of course.”

“No, you don’t under­stand,” I said. “I want to be a writer, not a… drag­on head-lop­per. I like drag­ons. I think they’re cool. Got some drag­on stuffies at home that ha—”

“Well, no three­somes for you. Leave the sword, okay? I got men­tor archtyp­ing to do here. Some­one out there will want to be knee deep.”

With­out a wiz­ened old men­tor cliché, I didn’t see how I was ever going to learn to write. I would put on on mon­tage music and then sit down to the key­board, but by the end of the song, there I still was. I hadn’t man­aged to become bril­liant or write the Great Amer­i­can Nov­el, even in those two uplift­ing min­utes.

I med­i­tat­ed under water­falls. I waxed cars. I caught chick­ens. I fought chick­ens. I also got a hor­ri­ble case of histo­plas­mo­sis (from fun­gi in the chick­en drop­pings) that put me in the hos­pi­tal for like a month. But that’s nei­ther here nor cliché. I lift­ed heavy buck­ets.

So I decid­ed to quest for the secret to craft myself. No men­tor. No fear.

And no fuck­ing clue.

Per­haps I would assem­ble a rag­tag group of mis­fits along the way—hopefully includ­ing a nin­ja who is look­ing for his father and can pull fish right out of a riv­er with his hands. And a man­droid. We would be joined by a talk­ing fire­dog, a gruff dude with a machine gun for an arm, and a giant stuffed ani­mal rid­den by a cat with a mega­phone. And if I were very lucky, Snap­per Car*.

[*Whose pow­er is snap­ping. That’s it. Just snap­ping.]

Each of them would join me for their own pur­pos­es. But, with sausage fest full of tropes assem­bled, we would face the Dark Lord togeth­er.

The… um… “dark lord” of… uh… shit­ty writ­ing.

I walked the road alone. I even queued up moti­va­tion­al music. I looked to the hori­zon, where the sun was set­ting, and swore I would learn to write.

And it was pret­ty dra­mat­ic except for fuck­ing Matthew Wilder’s voice..

Okay, but seri­ous­ly, Math­ew Wilder: If we go to the stars and meet intel­li­gent life on oth­er plan­ets, we are going to have to answer—as a culture—for the com­bi­na­tion of hip­pie mus­tache and leather pants in a tri­bunal of stern-faced crab peo­ple.

My quest led me to col­lege… where leg­end had it that men­tors still lived. But where the demon to be defeat­ed was col­lege itself.

Thus I bat­tled with col­lege. For sev­en years we fought. Col­lege smashed me, beat me, slammed me into walls, threw me to the ground, chewed me up and spit me out, and once swal­lowed me and digest­ed me along with a very gen­er­ous help­ing of rather pun­gent Mon­go­lian goulash. But every time it thought the fight was over, every time I looked well and tru­ly dead, and it turned away, I would stand up.

“Is that all you’ve got?”

I found that col­lege (even a cre­ative writ­ing degree) had very lit­tle to do with being a writer, and a lot more to do with a firm basis in gen­er­al edu­ca­tion, lit­er­ary analy­sis, and fol­low­ing arbi­trary direc­tions. It had some to do with writ­ing (though not as much as I’d have hoped), but almost noth­ing to do with being a writer. It also prob­a­bly wrung out the desire to write from more writ­ers than it ever taught to go forth with the craft.

Now I had to fuse the knowl­edge of how to write with the love of writ­ing itself, and com­bine it with one seri­ous fuck­ton of work.

That’s where the blog began. And even though most of this post is about the past, what I’m try­ing to get at is that you found me still on my way to The Black Fortress.

Here is my pledge, how­ev­er.

What­ev­er I dis­cov­er, I will share here. If I learn a trick, I’ll put it here. If I dis­cov­er a sure­fire way to net­work, it’ll be up here by the next week­day. If I hit pay dirt along one avenue or hit noth­ing but walls along anoth­er, you will know it hap­pened. If there’s a wait involved in an accep­tance process, I’ll detail every ago­niz­ing day of it.

It will also show you the banal in excru­ci­at­ing real time. No overnight suc­cess sto­ries. If I start to carve out some­thing, you will see how it took me years of writ­ing every day to get there. You will watch me improve from old arti­cles to new. You will see my career as it hap­pens.

If I expe­ri­ence a half a decade of set­back [and I did], you’ll under­stand what it did to my career in gran­u­lar detail.

If I dis­cov­er that paraso­cial rela­tion­ships actu­al­ly cre­ate pow­er dif­fer­en­tials that are EXTREMELY uneth­i­cal to exploit and stop mak­ing groupie jokes, I’ll tell you all about that here.

The new leg of my jour­ney begins, and I’m going to chron­i­cle it here. Any insight I glean—be it the weak­ness­es of trolls, that pub­lish­ers have a weak­ness for sil­ver and cold steel, or kings­foil as a cre­ativ­i­ty stimulant—I’ll put it here. Con­verse­ly, if any place I point out teems with troll drop­pings, ogre sniper rifle laser sight dots, or vam­pir­ic agents—because I know what to look for—I’ll warn you. We can take the next part of this fan­tas­tic quest togeth­er.

Best to imag­ine me as Mad­mar­ti­gan look­ing at Airk with an imp­ish smile. “Wan­na come with us?”