5 posts tagged “writer”
I arrived home a little while ago from running an errand for a friend, and have been staring at my computer ever since. I prefer to write six days a week, and today I am finding myself struggling. I explored some unfinished projects, I stumbled through about one hundred websites, and flipped through the news of the day. None of these paths have given me anything interesting. The next step I take when stuck is to start looking through correspondence with friends, perhaps in there someone said something that could inspire me. It has worked before, but today it did not.
I moved on to looking through blog's and websites of both friends and strangers alike, and that is where I found todays offering.
I am going to ask a question... and expect you to answer with questions. It is a scientist that I am copying.
Usually I find that sort of exchange pretty annoying.
Me: "What time is it?"
You: "Why do you need to know?"
Me: Because I need to know if it's time to hit you in the face with a frying pan, just answer the damn question!"
anyway...
I am at a point that I want to know what people who stop by and read this blog think about.
I am asking for you to propose a topic or just ask a question of me. I propose no limitations. Anyone who has been reading here for more than a week knows that I quite often change theme from personal to silly to creative writing. What I am looking for, is for you dear reader to challenge. I stress again that there are no limitations, and assuming I get asked more than one question or presented more than one topic, I will start with my favorite and work out from there.
Here are a variety of ways to get in touch with me.
#1 comment on this post, I read them and almost always reply so start there.
#2 Email me. I check that about a million times a day.
#3 Facebook. This is a link to my fan page, I only have eight and I am one of them. There are discussion boards and communication avenues abound so join up, stroke my ego and ask me a question.
I look forward to the challenge of standing up straight in the face of your proposals and look forward to hearing from you
So here it goes... What do you want to know? .
Seven, Eight and Nine years ago when I lived in Baltimore, on a rare day off of work I went out to buy cigarettes and some beer to drink. I only had to walk four blocks to the Korean mini-mart, down and around the corner. I would pass my dog’s veterinarian and many doorways and shops on the way. I would pass people in every class of life. This particular day I passed a homeless man, sleeping in one of these many alcove doorways, at least that is what my brain led me to think. After gathering my twelve pack and camel lights I hit the sidewalk again in the opposite direction from before.
There was new activity on the street during the minutes I was inside. That same homeless man, whom I had assumed sleeping in that doorway, was now being gathered into a large black sack with a zipper up the side. The paramedics treated it like a chore, generally ignoring the life that had passed while a policeman jotted some notes on a clip board and something made him laugh.
I have never once told this story of how I walked past a dead man in the afternoon on the street, mainly for the reason this story holds no dignity for any of us, those who died, he who writes it and those who read. Today however and all week as a matter of fact I have been walking through and over a makeshift memorial in the middle of the street. Every day at least once and sometimes twice I grab my backpack, plug some music in my ears and head to the coffee shop “Ike’s”. I walk toward Speedway Blvd. head west for a block, push the magic button that makes cars stop cross and head another half of a block east.
It would seem my footsteps have been crossing the location of where another person has died. The flowers appeared and photographs and notes, they may have been there for days and lost in my thoughts I wouldn’t know.
His death is inconsequential to me, and has no bearing on my life, other than I feel a little bit selfish for not caring. A more sensitive person would I suppose, but I definitely don’t. This person whose name I couldn’t have known, has died and has since been autopsied, buried or burned. He might have been an abusive drunk or on his way to sainthood, but his death means nothing now, he is merely worm food.
I’m not worried about dignity anymore. I feel that has fallen upon me with age. I don’t worry that I don’t have shame in admitting it, and I fart in public places. Death and life come and go, soon the nameless man who died on my path to caffeine will be forgotten by you and me the same. In fact now that I think more about what I am trying to say I don’t feel guilt for selfishness at all. I feel nothing. I am just a guy with a story to tell.
If I die on the side of the road, please don’t waste the flowers and make the cop filling out the report laugh by telling a joke.
I received a message (via Facebook) from a friend Debbie which read, “I was pleasantly surprised to login to Facebook and see on my home page "LJ Daniels is now a fan of Lucas J Daniels" (or something like that). We should all be fans of ourselves. :)”, and it got me to thinking.
My reason for creating a “professional page” on Facebook, was honest from the start as long as you read yesterdays blog… but you have no way of constructing the correlation, so I will explain it to you.
Ethan one of my two generous benefactors, is quite the scientist, vastly intelligent on the universe and it’s structure ( which mostly goes over my head ). Ethan is beginning production of a film about such things and has produced a trailer. I am helping him network and “pimp himself” as I often do on many social websites. For that purpose I created a mock “professional page”, to show Ethan how it could work and benefit him. I am also a bit of an ego maniac so instead of just editing a page, I went ahead and published it to Facebook. I also went to the length that I became a fan of myself.
This is where Debbie and her message came in.
I responded to her “of course I am a fan of myself. I am helping a friend set up a batch of networking through his website, relevant to the movie he is making and made the page to show him how cool it can be. It's funny I think, but I must ask, why are you not a fan of me?”
… and of course this is where I got to thinking…
At first I was thinking how amusing it was to get that kind of message from a girl I “dated” in the 9th grade… and then…
…and then I thought to myself, “Why the fuck not?”
I might as well just own it. I am doing research for a book. I am finishing a number of other things I will be attempting to have published. I might as well do more than look at Google Analytics to figure out who I am writing to. It is important to know who actually reads this.
So I’m going to fucking own it.
Visit my Facebook page, this is where I am going to be keeping people who are authentically interested in my writing and being kept up to date.
Visit this link to join up and become a “fan of me” Lucas J. Daniels
On a slightly unrelated topic I felt very aged thinking this whole thing through before I wrote it down. I was outside, barefoot drinking a beer and leaning on the fire poker as if it were a cane. I lifted each foot individually for as long as they could stand to be warmed by the fire. I thought about things, poked at the fire… and looked at the sky.
I felt quite old while I thought about this thing.
I have in my life been every type of artist. I realized early in my life that I wanted to create and to make something so perfectly beautiful that everyone in the world wanted to come and see.
I have made chalk drawings on the sidewalk. With little success.
I have played musical instruments from the saxophone to the guitar. I made little more than noise.
I have painted and I have drawn. I am no Leonardo da Vinci.
All of my life though I have known and eventually I settled on the art of the lazy. I decided I wanted to write. I was probably only thirteen. I would make up stories to tell, and stories to write. I would shamelessly show off, if only to impress the ladies. Today I actually cranked out what I can only call a "short short story", and while I don't usually post anything on here that I wrote with serious intent, I will tomorrow after a few "tidy it up" kind of edits.
... and on another note I would like to talk about how the hell some brilliant musicians got past me...
These two guys are absolutely amazing. I am going to include a song on tonights blog for you, I encourage you to sit back, crank up the volume and plug in some high quality headphones if you got them. I pride myself on knowing when things are cool before they were cool. ( I hated "W" before you did ) I am ashamed to say these guys have probably already booked Saturday Night Live, the last vestige of the " I knew it was cool before you" guy.
Anyway I will stop rambling at this point. Scroll down and hit play for The Black Keys ; Have Love Will Travel and stumble on back here tomorrow for a little bit of my actual writing.
After another day looking for a job and filling out applications all over Tucson my hand is sore... but I have some writing to do... and it's as part an application for pseudo writing job where I could make an overwhelming fifty dollars a week.
The reason I even mention it is because it has gotten me to ask what is fair of me as a person and a writer.
Hemingway always believed his stories ( which all had relevance to his life ) improved the further he was from the experience... I don't know that I agree. I have had personal success writing about things as they happen to me, but the impact on people and lives around me is where I began to have problems.
If people knew that I might write about them, they start to act like a person on a reality show.
They choose their words carefully.
I perhaps also start to over analyze their actions, and motivations in what they do and say.
I have this story idea, of course it involves me. I gave it a working title of "120 days in Arizona" in my head but haven't put any of my thoughts through the pen. I am debating and struggling on how to approach what I want to and what I have to write. The characters of my life will always reflect, but what impact of disagreement or resentment am I willing to take?
... but I am wandering from what I wanted to say. I have to write to this company a relevant experience to the business that they are in. I have a lot of exposure to this business and know what I want to write, but the subject delivery has to be mechanical and succinct. I don't know if I can't keep from a thought going astray.
