Tag: writing life

*AHEM* HORROR IS GOOD FOR YOU

Nikki Nelson-Hicks

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.

And I teach you how to kill it.

You are welcome.

Writing Day!

Nikki Nelson-Hicks

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.
  • And here we are….

The one where Grammar saved the day.

Nikki Nelson-Hicks

November 24, 2019

Yesterday, I spent my Saturday doing all the Responsible Adult things. Laundry. Housework (a bit more deep cleaning than usual with Thanksgiving looming next week). Groceries. Paying Bills. ALL THE THINGS!

By the end of the day, I told myself that I would spend Sunday doing Creative Things. My mind flew in all sort of directions about all the THINGS I would get done. I went to bed feeling hopeful and excited.

And then the day came.

Yay?

I stared blankly at my List Of Things To Do and felt my guts tighten.

I started it with some baking. Blueberry bread. Hey, it’s still creating.

I fiddled with my printer which for some reason no longer wants to do its ONE DAMN JOB.

After giving up, I pushed the traitorous printer aside and sat down at my desk.

After taking a deep breath, I decided to do something easy. Let’s get those wheels turning by doing some journaling. It’s spreading ink on the page. That counts, right?

I love journaling. It’s a way to talk out problems and finding answers. Sometimes, it is like your subconscious can find a way to talk back to you. There is something magical about it.

I started writing about my latest battle with Imposter Syndrome. How I haven’t written anything since October 1.  And the panic I’m feeling because in a week, I’m supposed to talk to a writers’ group about my adventures of being a writer. HA! Who am I to tell anyone about BEING a writer?

And that’s when my subconscious chimed up, “Ah, there’s the problem, isn’t it, Love? That adverb. BEING. That’s a passive a To Be verb. And WRITER? That’s a noun. Nouns are active so snip that down to WRITE. Not Writer; nouns aren’t active. They just sit there. You need to clip that and just use the active verb. WRITE. Just write something. Anything. Don’t worry about it being good or if anyone will like it. Just grab that Silver Flame and mold it into something NEW. ACTIVE. Get moving.”

And that’s what I did.

Here it is.

I don’t know if any of this is good or is just another post about me whining, but I did it. At least it is a start.

The One About Day Jobs

Nikki Nelson-Hicks

Want to hear a writer joke?

Hey, how do you piss off a writer? 

Ask what they do for a living.

It’s funny because it’s true.

We’ve chosen a profession that doesn’t pay well. At least, that is the reality for the majority of us in the inky trenches. The last royalty check I received was less than $10.

Woot Woot! Ice cream is on me! But only the cheap brand, okay? I’m not pulling in Breyer’s kind of lettuce.

So, unless you’re like my friend, Dana, who is an oncologist searching for the cure to breast cancer, or you’ve got a Sugar Daddy/Mama Patron, you’re working a crappy day job to make ends meet.

You’re not alone.

I have thirty years of crap jobs listed on my resume. Only two of them were any fun. The rest were all minimum wages for minimum effort. Hell, if I were to time slip back into that part of my life, I probably wouldn’t even remember how to do most of them.

When I got the gig where I’m working now, my boss took me out to lunch and said words that I’ll never forget: “98% of this job is just showing up. So, just come to work, do your job and don’t go crazy like the last one did.”

Like the last one did? Oh, it’s one of THOSE kinds of jobs.

But, here I was, nearly forty years old, transplanted back to Tennessee, starting over from scratch, in yet another bullshit job that was going to take me nowhere.

I had a decision to make. I could either slip into a dark depression OR I could use this time to write stories.

I won’t lie; I fell into a depression. It’s my default mode.

But I think it was that Big 4-0 birthday that pulled me out and gave me the kick in the ass to use this time wisely.

I’ve been here for 15 years. I come to work, I do my job and, in the downtime which makes up 75% of my day, I write. I’ve been blessed with Time. And I don’t take it for granted.

So, don’t let your day job make you feel less of a writer.

The next time someone asks you, “What do you do?” look them straight in the eyes and say:

“I create worlds from nothing but ink scribbled onto paper. I make people laugh. I make people cry. I give people hope when they are sitting in a hospital waiting room as their loved ones fight to survive. I tell children that there are monsters in the dark with sharp teeth and ripping claws who want to eat them and then I tell them how to kill them. I provide diversions for people when they are sitting on the bus or sitting on the toilet. I am a writer. I am the bridge between Mythos and Logos. What do you do?”

The One Where I Slap Down a Youngling

Nikki Nelson-Hicks

I was honored to be asked to write a few columns about writing for Kristin Kindoll’s Writing Goal Group. She wanted them to inspirational and give advice on a few of the things I’ve learned about the writing life.

Here is one of them.

So, one night, while hanging out with some writer friends, drinking, talking shit as one does, this little 20-year-old thing, says to me, “Hey, Nik, do you regret waiting so long to start writing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, you didn’t really get started until you were, like, you know. Old. In your forties. Aren’t you afraid you waited too long? Like, you should’ve started sooner?”

Because of the outright rudeness of the question, I was stunned and I think I sputtered out something like, “Yeah, I guess so?”

But I’ve had time to reconsider my answer.

*Insert the noise of cracking knuckles here*

Listen up, sweetheart.

The Arts is one the place that maturity is a freaking asset, sweetie.

While, yes, I will admit that I wish I had the vigor and energy that I took for granted as a lithe twenty-year-old but, as an artist, the years I’ve acquired have given me flavor and insight.

Oh, sweet beautiful thing. With your flawless skin, white teeth and high metabolism, you don’t understand life. Not yet. Not until you lived it.

It’s a cruel paradox.

It’s only after you’ve been through the fire do you understand the heat.

There is a perspective that comes with being able to look back on life in the rear-view mirror that you simple cannot have until it is all in the road behind you.

And it is from this, the best and greatest stories are born.

Do I think for a second that Past Nik would have understood regret? Absolutely not. She had read about it, watched movies and seen it from the outside but she had never felt it.

Now, I get it.

I can see all the hurt I caused my mother. The cutting words I hurled at her never caring about damage it did because I felt that the truth was all the mattered.

As if I understood what the truth was at twenty.

She died at 49; I am currently 52 years old. I have outlived my mother by three years.

And I have regrets.

I have been pregnant, went through labor and delivered children. I was a mother. Not the best one I could’ve been, I know. I suffered through years of depression where I was only a shadow mom. I had no money to give them what they needed and I have so many regrets.

I have 30 years of crap jobs that led nowhere but several that gave me some great stories.

I have traveled to different countries and lived in foreign lands where going to the grocery store was traumatizing.  I once bought toilet paper thinking it was butter because I couldn’t read the labels. That taught me compassion.

And it took the passing of time to wear away my body so that I was no longer beautiful. To be a woman who is overlooked and unseen. That taught me to be myself because, fuck it, nobody else really gives a damn anyway.

While you are still swept up in the maelstrom of life, whipped around by youthful indiscretions and casual cruelties, I am outside the dance. I watch it, a chimera of Adult/Child and I can see all the movements.

So, the answer to your question, my sweet, gorgeous, simple child, is no. I do not wish I had started sooner.

I started exactly when I needed to become the person my stories need me to be.