Category: My Work
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Ink on watercolour paper x -
I suppose this is the frustrating feeling I get a lot. I feel deep depression robbed me of a life. -
I originally posted this on Instagram, and I thought it might be a good topic to put here, too. Criticism can be hard to hear, especially from friends. When I was a teenager, any criticism, no matter how well meant, would be greeted with a sulky silence from yours truly. Of course, my knowledge of good fiction writing had only really begun, so this attitude was both laughable and childish. I should’ve been eager to learn, not closed off. But in many ways. I was still a child, so at least I had an excuse back then for reacting so mulishly.
However, years later, long after I’d given up writing after four or five (very bad, although I was only 17) attempts to write a novel, I returned to writing via fanfiction. My stories were short, fun, and silly. It was my attempt at a darker, more serious piece that got got torn to shreds that stopped me dead. I just stared dumbly at the words on the screen, before blocking said critic, furious and, strangely, humiliated.
But something about what that person had said kept bouncing around my head. During one of those nights when insomnia struck, I realised, reluctantly, that some of what she had said was accurate. It had been a bad piece. And the more I considered her words, the more I found myself agreeing with her about it. She may have expressed them bluntly, but she had put forth genuinely helpful feedback. And I had just disregarded it and sulked.
I don’t know where that person is these days, but I owe you an apology and my thanks. The latter especially is long overdue.
Thank you.
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I quite enjoy the challenge of combining a photo with 200 word limit to go with it. Finding the right words to express what I want succinctly is tricky and a useful way to try and find my writing muse again. -
I ran until my legs could barely hold me up.
I ran until I could feel nothing but jelly anymore,
If that makes sense.
I ran unti I had could no more longer breathe.
I ran until I tripped and could run no longer.
The chase was over.
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When is an Impossible Dream a Dead Dream
I spent a good portion of this evening typing up my entry for the Impossible Dream collaboration. I will eventually post it, if only because I made the effort to write it up on Cheetah Corona (my Corona electric typewriter), to I feel I shouldn’t waste it. A lot of ideas of mine get abandoned and wasted, which brings me to what inspired me to write this.
While it is nice to vent my feelings on all that seems impossible to achieve in my life as an artist and as a person, I also found myself excavating some unpleasant thoughts that I try to ignore a lot of the time.
It was not a pleasant excavation.
The biggest discovery? As a creator (writer, artist,delusional buffoon, whatever you would like to call me), I feel my window of opportunity is, at best, nothing but a tiny crack lit by sunlight on occasion. I’m nearing 40, I have little money, no connections to open any doors in life, and my struggles with mental illness and – more recently – epilepsy mean even finishing a project is difficult. Depression tells me I can’t do it, that no one will like it, why bother because I am useless. Anxiety is the sane tune played in Paralysing Fear of Mockery. Epilepsy is often triggered by stress, which all of the above bring on.
The best I can often manage are a few mediocre drawings of people I admire and abstract vent pieces. Writing happens in dribs and drabs. Most of it remains hidden.
I create so little of value, and I feel my dreams are dying along with whatever skill I may have posessed once. But I have nothing to move on to. I already know ordinary jobs are like being trapped in a cage to me, a cage that drives me slowly mad. No matter how good my coworkers and boss are, it feels the same.
I’m stuck here in a hole I dug for myself. I often ask what will happen to my work after I die. And the truth, save the few that are better than average, is they’ll be heading to a landfill one day. And that will be when I am truly dead. -
I often wonder what will happen to my work after I die. Will my family bother keeping it? Or just shove it in the attic with the rest of what they consider junk. The only art that gets “saved” in a respectful manner is by the well-known. The 99% of us who don’t qualify as such…our work is forgotten, destroyed, and eventually nobody will know it existed at all.
Bloody Roses 