Author: Bob

For another year, I’ve been unable to participate in NaNoWriMo. It’s one of the conditions of my job that I’m just too busy during the semester to do much creative writing, or anything else creative. At this point, though, I only have to wait another month and a half to have my next batch of free time. How will I ever make it that long?

In my day job, I teach software development and databases. It’s a good job, but it takes up a lot of time. I’ve got full classes, my program is short a faculty member, and the technology keeps changing. That last one keeps me on my toes because all of my class preparation can go out the window with one update. All of these things use up my day, making it hard to turn off long enough to write.

To worsen the situation, my work already involves long hours at the computer. The idea of staring at a word processor when the job is done is not inviting. My vision blurs. My wrists and knuckles ache. Anything I do will need to be on paper, and even that is difficult to see.

Unfortunately, the writing is an important part of my sanity regimen. I can feel the stress build when I’m not creating things. Writing software can help, but it’s not the same as kicking out a short story or poem. The stress is bad for my health and that of the people who have to put up with me.

For now, I spend time making notes. When I can, I write notes for things I would like to write or modifications to things already written. Sometimes, the notes are just creative gibberish for my own amusement. Whatever the notes entail, they are the release valve that keeps me from exploding in a creative cloud, scalding all in range.

I will have a break between the end of fall semester and the start of spring. There will be some work that I need to do, but there will also be time for writing. At that point, I will gather my notes, organize them, panic at the sheer number of them, and not get around to writing. The avoidance and chaos will be very creative though. It may be enough to last until the coming summer.

Last summer, I spent a great deal of time on curriculum updates. For both physical and mental health, this summer will not be spent on work. I will engage in purely creative things. I may even knock out another novel; I’ve got several lined up. Whatever the case, I just need to keep finding enough creative outlets to keep my sanity until then.

It was a grey morning in my small town. I stopped to unlock the door of my shop.

“Hey, buddy, want a dog?”

I turned to see who spoke, but didn’t recognize him. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties, but his tattered, grey baseball cap covered much of his face.

“No, thanks,” I replied.

“Why do you hate dogs?” he asked.

“I don’t hate dogs. I’m just not in the market for a do right now.”

He stopped a woman in a red dress who happened to be passing. “Can you believe this guy hates dogs?”

She looked at me with disgust. “How can you hate dogs? Dogs are wonderful.”

A man in overalls walking by stopped to ask, “Who hates dogs?”

The woman pointed to me. “He hates dogs.”

I shook my head. “I don’t hate dogs. This guy just asked me if I wanted a dog and I said no. I never said anything about hating dogs; that’s just something he made up.”

The man in the cap said, “Have you seen those commercials where the dogs are chained up outside and the owners beat them all the time?”

The second man frowned. “What kind of jerk does that to dogs?”

“Probably somebody who really hates them,” said the man in the cap while gesturing toward me with his thumb.

By now, a handful of other people had gathered and were murmuring about mistreatment of dogs. The woman was still scowling at me and lecturing about how great dogs were and how ashamed I should be. The chatter from all of them was getting to be too much. It was hard to keep track. A few hurled accusations and others demanded to know how I could do such things. Somehow, the wind picked up, adding noise to the din.

“I don’t do any of those things,” I tried to explain. “It’s entirely made up by this guy right here.”

The man in the cap suggested, “Someone that sick is probably a pervert too.”

That set the crowd off. They turned to their nearest neighbors to vocalize their disgust.

“What, here in our town?” some demanded.

I stared at the man in the cap. Where did he get this stuff?

Some old man in the crowd shouted, “He beats dogs and he’s a kiddie diddler? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“No, I don’t do any of that,” I yelled. Is that what he got from “pervert”?

They didn’t listen, but they did move closer toward me. The crowd had grown. Where did all of these people come from?

It looked like the red dress of the first woman was more reddish-brown now. In fact, the clothes on most of the crowd seemed muted, greyer.

I stepped back, bumping against the door behind me. I raised my hand and pointed down toward the man in the grey cap. “This idiot made all of this up. He’s lying to all of you. I never said any of those things. I have never done any of those things.”

The man in the cap called to the crowd, “Did you hear him call all of us idiots?”

“I’m not an idiot!”

“Some pervert thinks we’re idiots?”

“He’s the idiot!”

The wind picked up even more.

At this point, my heart raced. There just didn’t seem to be any way to convince these people that they were wrong about me. I pulled out my cell phone. “That’s enough! I’m calling nine-one-one.”

Someone slapped the phone out of my hand and yelled, “You’re not adding my picture to your porn collection!”

The phone clattered against the sidewalk at my feet, breaking into pieces.

I stared at my empty hand. My brain provided no response for what was going on. They couldn’t hear anything I said. They didn’t want to hear anything I said. The man in the grey cap had wound this engine and now it ran on its own.

I think the clouds darkened.

Among the angry shouting I heard, “… porn! Let’s get him!”

As I looked up at the onrushing crowd, my hand fell to my side. There, it found a length of rebar, the steel reinforcement rod used for concrete. It shouldn’t have been there in front of my shop door. I didn’t know where it came from, but my hand closed around it. Why was there rebar by my door? It’s rough surface felt real, solid, like something I could get a grip on. It became the only secure thing in my life at the moment. I held it up in front of me.

Someone yelled, “He’s got a weapon!” and then there were screams.

The crowd scattered, running over each other to get away. How had the crowd grown so big? Who were these people? Were they even from my small town?

I don’t know why I didn’t just turn and enter my shop. The door was right there. I think my keys were still in my other hand. Those hands shook. My knees shook worse. The sound of my pulse drowned out much of the crowd.

The wind blew down the street, carrying bits of garbage and leaves. The urge to run with it filled me. I leapt away from the door and down the sidewalk.

“Drop the weapon!” The voice came from behind me.

Turning to see who said that, I saw the uniform about the same time I saw the flash.

The worst case of heartburn flared through my ribs, knocking me over and to the ground. It felt like a fire started in the back of my head and raced across my scalp. Dark circles formed in my vision, encircling the scene around me as though I wore goggles.

The man in the grey cap shimmered and was someone else. Whistling, he walked away with his hands in his pockets. My eyes followed as best they could. The dark circles extended to become long tubes with the scene growing smaller in the distance until the tiny spots disappeared completely, leaving only the dark.

When you have a writers’ group, it is likely that you will have some members whose writing just isn’t your taste, or that the other writer’s personality doesn’t click with yours. That’s easy to deal with. The tougher part is when they submit for critique something that offends your morals, beliefs, or ideals. Like with all things, there are good and bad ways to deal with this.

Assume, for example, that a member of a group has submitted a personal essay that asserts some racist beliefs they hold. For the purpose of this article, assume that you vehemently disagree with these beliefs and you find them offensive enough to make you very angry. How should you handle the situation?

You could go about trying to figure out why the person wrote such an essay. Do they really believe these things or are they just trying to get a rise out of everybody? If they do really hold these beliefs, is it a matter of upbringing and they just need to meet more people from whichever group they dislike? However, figuring this out may be a waste of your energy.

Focus instead on the fact that this is a writer’s group. Concentrate on the writing. Give their writing a good, thorough going over. In particular, an essay often has a structure and purpose. Does the thesis statement match the conclusion? Do the supporting arguments support the conclusion? Don’t just attack the writing because you disagree with it; go after the actual writing and any real problems found therein.

Then comes the second step. Make the counter argument, but as an essay of your own. Make your assertions. Make sure your supporting arguments support your conclusion. Cite appropriate sources as needed. Really build your case.

What good does all of this do? There are several good outcomes. First, it helps keep the group civil and functional. A good writers’ group can be hard to build, so you don’t want to throw one away. Second, if the racist author was just trying to get a rise and no one took the bait, they may get bored with such things and move on. However, if they see, in a civil, non-attacking way, that their logic has holes, they may have to spend time thinking about their argument. If their beliefs are too ingrained, you aren’t going to change their mind anyway.

Finally, and this is one of the more important parts, if you truly believe what you think you believe, writing an essay and getting a solid critique helps bolster your ability to make the argument when needed. You will have taken the time to remove any weaknesses from your assertions and make your argument unassailable by all but the most illogical of opponents.

This is just like any situation. Maintaining self control is the first step to maintaining control over the situation. If you can do this over an extended period of time, your writers’ group with grow strong.

Many of my friends who’ve read my works or discussed story ideas tell me I should write horror. I like the idea and I enjoy reading horror. A good horror movie is great. A really bad horror movie is hilarious. As I’ve looked into it more, I’ve found there is one thing that really keeps me from making progress as a horror writer.

At the local bookstore, I perused the magazine selection. The only horror-related items were for gory movies and special effects, and not many of those. I realized that I don’t really know what the horror market is doing, because I don’t see the horror market in my area. It’s not blatantly in my face.

Recently, I’ve been reading The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Ten (ISBN: 9781510716674). In the front, it discusses the wide assortment of sources for the included stories. One or two seemed familiar. How can I make it as a professional horror writer if I don’t know who is publishing horror?

In the distant past, i.e.: my teens and twenties, horror magazines were everywhere. I tended to read only a few. I also avoided many of the people who were, shall we say, enthusiasts; many were a little less stable and usually wanting to borrow money, bum a ride, and so forth. It didn’t help that I was always at work and had little time for genre-related activities.

Now, I’m older and better suited to horror show host on a small cable channel. Much of my knowledge is out of date. My horror ideas tend toward the basics of the human animal. Even my supernatural horror is more influenced by fairy tales than anything else.

It looks like a decision has to be made. If I want to continue to dabble, I can keep doing what I do now. If I really want to sell my work, I’ll have to make a greater effort to go find the horror market hidden out there in some strange bazaar. What will my inherent laziness let me do?

They say it was long ago, on a night just like this, that the two young lovers pledged their undying devotion to each other. They swore they would be together forever, letting nothing tear them apart.

Fate would intervene, and in just a few short weeks, her father got a job in another state and she moved away. He never heard from her again.

It’s said that, when the moon is full and you listen carefully, you can still hear him mutter, “Hmm, I wonder whatever happened to what’s-her-name?”