When I was a kid, my birthday was like a magical ME day. I believed that the world would send me a present.
I was a very magical thinking kid.
When I was around 10, we lived on Cooper Lane. I have a lot of great, beautiful memories from that place. I’ll probably haunt that road when I die. Anyway, behind our house was a creek that ran all the way down the street.
On my birthday, I went outside and looked for my gift. I went down into the creek and, lo and behold, there was turtle. A small box turtle. I put it a bucket and it was my best friend for the entire day. I took it with me everywhere and we had adventures that only a little girl and a turtle can enjoy.
At the end of the day, I went back to the spot where I found the turtle in the creek and let it go. It toddled off, into the water, and I never saw it again.
Today, I turn 58 years old. That’s a lot of spins around the sun. And, no, I haven’t had anything like that turtle birthday since I was a kid. I worry that, maybe…as one gets older, magic gets dimmer. Like our eyesight. Or maybe this life just dulls us to it. I don’t know but, I hope that maybe I can find some kind of magic today.
I did a writers’ workshop today. It went well enough until a question asked….and I’m paraphrasing here…”How do you justify writing about such dark subject matter in a world that is so filled with darkness as it is? Don’t you feel you are adding onto the burden?”
I’ve been asked this question a dozen times before. And it never ceases to annoy me.
It’s this sophomoric marshmallow type of thinking that if we all just sat around making daisy chains, sipping tea, and dancing in the meadows, the world would suddenly become an idyllic Disneyland wet dream that makes me want to scream out obscenities so foul and hot Tinkerbell’s wings would twist and crumble in the flame.
Let me pull out an old chestnut here by G.K. Chesterton:
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist.
Children already know that dragons exist.
Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
The same goes for people like me who write stories that are tinged with horror, death and bit of fun (i.e monsters) on the side.
I am not inherently dark or creepy. I like sunset walks on the beach and kittens with pink squishy toe beans. I don’t side with the forces of evil because I write these stories. I’m actually a pretty chill chick who loves to sit around the fire pit watching fireflies and counting stars. And the same goes for my friends who also write horrific stories; they’re not necessarily inhumane. As as matter of fact, they are probably some of the most humane people I know.
I scoop wasps out of the patio; as long as they don’t hurt me, I let them be. I let spiders live on my front porch; a few cobwebs in the summer means less mosquitos. If I find a worm cooking on the hot asphalt, I will move them onto the cool ground.
Because I can feel their anguish.
And why? Because I write about pain. I write about loss and fear and terrible things that gnash and grind bones in the dark. I see on both sides of the story. I feel the pain of the victim as well as the monster. I am Janus Sighted and, because of that, I go out of my way to not inflict pain on any living thing.
I do not bring more darkness into this shitshow of a world by writing horror.
I show it to you. I mirror the monster hiding behind you.
It’s been awhile since I’ve had a free day so I decided to devote this Saturday to working on my story, Politics of Children.
Ok……BUT FIRST!
COFFEE
Social Media fix. Gotta check those emails and see what’s trending.
Sit on the porch, enjoy the morning. Listen to the crows.
Shower. Body maintenance is important.
Breakfast – toast with peanut butter, some flax seed and slices of apple.
MORE COFFEE!
Go to the office.
UGH! What is that smell?
Clean the litterbox
Sweep and swiffer the floor around the litter box
Dispose of nasty Pee Pad and put down a fresh one.
Oh wait….the cat’s water fountain. I need to clean that.
Dump out water because no one in this house understands that you can’t just keep filling the fountain with water, goddammit, it has to be cleaned!
Take the fountain apart and use the tiny scrubbing brush that came with the cleaning kit to get all the ICK out of every thing. Seriously. It’s disgusting. Fur, mold and I don’t know what the hell else is growing inside this thing. I’m destroying an ecosystem. I am the destroyer of worlds.
Assemble the fountain and return it to its corner of my bedroom.
Fill with water while cats eye me suspiciously. I wonder if perhaps they were in league with the filmy mold. Did I just cause an interdimensonal incident?
OK! Back to the office. Time to get some work done.
Wait….where the fuck is my bottom taskbar on the screen?
Google the problem.
Find 600+ solutions.
Try a few. Makes it worse.
Suddenly task bar comes back.
WTF
Pull up WIP
Damn…now I need to pee.
Urinate. Wash hands. HYGIENE IS IMPORTANT.
Wait…I still need to eat.
Eat breakfast
Glance over WIP while crunching on apple slices
Delete sentences.
Wait….need music.
Select a playlist.
Phone Pings.
Check Phone.
FUCK! NO NO NO! PUT IT AWAY!
Ok….get to work….
WAIT!
Let’s journal about this….get our head on straight.
I was invited to be on an author panel to discuss beta readers/critique groups and how they benefit writers.
A rather dry topic to anyone outside the craft but, hey, I thought I could contribute a little something.
Oh boy.
I soon found myself drowning in things like Google Forms, Google Drives, Google Docs, Excel Plotting Sheets, Newsletters and newsletters within newsletters, Project Management Tools, Questionnaires, Beta reader pools alongside ARC groups, and two things, Storyorigins and Trello, that I have yet to look up.
Luckily, I have the superpower of Lying My Ass off (my therapist called it sublimation), so I just nodded and agreed to the benefits of everything. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Definitely.
Inside, it was like being in high school geometry where the teacher was explaining the mysteries of the cosmos via triangles and polygons. The entire class nodding and obviously drinking this in like mother’s milk while my eyes crossed and my brain imploded.
What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck.
Where do these people find the time to even have the time to plan out their days?
One author said she would outline the entire novel with synopsis and plot points and send it off to her critique partners with the challenge to break the idea BEFORE EVEN WRITING IT.*
I spent two hours last night researching the history of poor farms in the 1800s before ditching the whole idea.
And newsletters. The idea of subjecting myself to littering people’s emails makes my stomach hurt.
And joining online writing groups, newsletter swapping sites…streetcrowding or some such fuck…..oh gawd….I just can’t.
One author said she had presold 500 copies of her book. PRESOLD. Fuck me. I got excited when I saw that one of my books sold 6 copies on Amazon.
Suffice it to say, my Imposter Syndrome came on strong. REAL STRONG.**
And I can’t be the only one who wonders am I cut out for this? I just want to write fun stories.
Shit.
I guess it all comes down to what you define as success.
If I want to be the next Brandon Sanderson and make quadrabillion $$$, have a fan base that obviously bleeds into other dimensional realms, well, that’s going to mean a big lifestyle change.
If all I want to do is write some cool stories that find themselves magically into a few dozen hands, well, sweetie, that’s the track you’re on.
Still….a newsletter might be a good idea.***
*Frankly, that sounds brilliant. I might steal that idea if I could ever get the squirrels in my brain to outline something that intensively.
** A bit of retail therapy and Lindor chocolate truffles fixed that up.
I check the kitty litter box. Oh yeah. Someone, a dog I suspect (because if it was a cat….man, would we know it) had pissed on the Puppy Training Pad we keep next to the box for just such occasions. However, today being a SPECIAL DAY*, the pisser had aimed for the edge so the urine was half on the absorbent pad and mostly on the very non absorbent linoleum.
I get on my knees, start cleaning up the mess and instantly regretted the decision when upon standing I find that both knees are drenched in piss.
Sweeping up the disaster, clumps of litter and grossness gets caught up in the bristles. Now that needs to be hosed off.
Here is now my updated chore List:
*Dispose of litter
*Sweep and swiffer the offending floor
*Put down new Puppy Pad
*Take the broom outside and hose it down
I grab the bag of shit, the pisspad and the funked up broom and dustpan. I dispose of poobag, put the broom on the porch and then gather up the utensils to swiffer the floor clean.
After taking care of the bathroom floor and getting that mess sorted out, I grabbed the broom, opened the porch door…..and Jack** entered into the fray as he took this moment to bolt out to freedom.
FUCK! I tossed the broom into the yard and ran after him.
He darted under the shed, his usual first hiding place. However, I have been tossing potatoes out there for the rabbits that live under the shed so I had projectile weapons to hurl at him.
He looked at me like, “ARE YOU THROWING TATERS AT ME? STAHP!”
Then Jack ran out from under the shed and toward the bird feeders. SHIT SHIT SHIT….too close to the gate! He could get out. I run, cursing and shouting. Jack flattened himself to the ground and then bolted towards the porch but the door was closed so he turned and ran towards the back fence.
The back fence closest to the clump of trees and bushes outside the border of the yard. If he gets out there, we’ll never find him.
FUCK! I curse and start running with my arms and legs flapping like Phoebe from friends.
Jack flattens himself to the ground, looks at me like I’m a monster*** and then darts back to the house. Brenna opens the porch door and he races inside, probably looking for his Da to protect him from the crazy bitch outside.
FINALLY, I go wash off the broom and find a massively dead mole.
Now I need to take a picture of it because my sister is having an apocalyptic war with the moles in her yard.
Seriously dead
I go inside, mud and grass trailing in my wake, find my phone, go back outside, take a pic and send it off.
THEN I wash off the broom and leave it to dry in the sun.
Back inside to change clothes that are now covered in mud and wet from piss.
My daughter sees me and asks, “Are you taking the day off? Why aren’t you at work?”
And this all started with a smell….
*Checking the calendar I learn that today is Friday the fucking 13th. So, obviously.
** Jack is a cat. Just in case you might be under the delusion that we have a person named Jack trapped in our house desperately looking for help. Please don’t call the police.
Nikki Nelson-Hicks 