Tag: writing

The First Time

I was 15 years old when I wrote my first short story. I have no idea what the impetus was for choosing the short story format, but if I had to guess, it would be because it would have seemed like less work since, you know, it was short. I wrote most of it in Study Hall and finished it at lunch, so, perhaps 2 hours was spent on this.

The experience was magical. Scenes and words were in my head and flowed from my fingers, pouring out like a gushing stream. I was so proud, and I showed it to three adults, all of whom I trusted, and all of whose remarks involved how violent it was, and I was made to see the guidance counselor as a result. I had no management.

I wish I could talk to 15-year-old Hugh. I wish I could tell him, as someone whose writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers and published books and other esteemed places that he had really good instincts. That his 800-word story that involved *checks notes* three scene changes, drug use, three homicides, teen pregnancy, and suicide was probably a little ambitious for his skill level, but that the plot was great for a first time effort, and that the plot twist at the end was ambitious as hell and something he should be proud of himself for trying.

I would tell him that he told when he could have shown, and that if all his knowledge of drug culture came from Miami Vice, maybe that shouldn’t be central to the story. I would also say how proud of him I was that he took a moral position in his writing, even if it is heavy handed, and that giving the drug dealer a Hispanic name was a bullshit move, but was no doubt also learned from Miami Vice.

Then I would have hugged him, and told him he could, at 15, do things and see things other people couldn’t, and that he could already tell a good story; that the people we trust don’t always know what to do with people like us who make things, and that sometimes they are afraid of us, and sometimes they are afraid for us, and because of that, we have to be careful who we let see the things that matter to us.

But mostly, I would have told him to keep going.

Content Warning: The following story is pretty violent to have been written by a 15 year old virgin who couldn’t bring himself to write out the word “fuck”, even if that is clearly what he was thinking, and involves depictions of murder and descriptions of suicide, but is pretty tame by modern movie standards.

* * *

David had been my best friend since kindergarten and I am a senior in high school now. David’s and my parents were out of town together and left us there so we could go to school Friday.

It was Friday night when, after drinking a ton of beer, David told me about his “enterprise”. He was taking cocaine and cutting it with roach poison so he could make more profit. I was appalled. The very idea of drug use repulsed me, let alone something as deadly as this. I knew David had been doing coke since 10th grade, but I couldn’t have believed him to be capable of so sadistic a crime as this. However, out of ignorance or fear, I ignored it.

Saturday afternoon, I went to his house and then we went over to the mall. That night, about 1AM, we pulled into a Circle K for gas.

“You pump the gas, Johnny,” he said. “I’ve got to use the john. Pull up and wait for me when you’re through.”

I pumped $10 worth and pulled up to the front of the store to wait for David. Rstless, I got out nd was pacing in front of the store when a move caught my eye.

Why was the store owner holding his hands in the air? Why was the woman screaming? WHY GOOD GOD? Why was David holding a gun? The old man handed David a wad of money, and David shot him in the forehead. His wife never stopped screaming. Wet sticky pieces ofher husband’s skull sliding down the wall and all this woman can do is scream.

“Shut up!” David yelled.

The woman continued to scream.

“Shut up, I said!”

David emptied the gun into her chest. The woman, not willing to die, lay writing on the floor.

I know all of this could not have taken more than 5 or 6 seconds, but everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.

David hopped in the truck.

“Drive, dammit! Drive!”

David gave me directions to his “place”. As I drove, my sphincter muscles were clenched tight with fear. Here I was, sitting next to a double murderer, who was calmly sitting there. Every time I would look at David, I instead would see that old woman, writing on the floor, spitting up pink blood.

David’s place was an old beat up shack at the old railyards I had heard about it for years, but this was the first time been there.

David was bad off. It had been six hours since his last hit and he looked pretty bad. He was shaking and breathing fast. Even though it was November 8th he was sweating like a cold water pipe in the middle of July.

“Did you see them? Did you see that woman scream,” David asked?

David had went pretty far before, but this was it. He had done the unthinkable. He had killed 2 innocent people in cold blood. I made up my mind. In the morning I was going to call the cops. I had a load of scholarships, and I did not want this to mess them up.

“Johnny”.

He was whimpering, crying with joy from the money and pain from his habit. It was too much. I flew into him.

“Dammit, why did you rob that store?”

“Why not?”

“You killed 2 people for…” I counted the money “245 dollars. Why?”

“I needed the money to buy a rock. I can make over $2,000 with that.”.

“Damn.”

I was disgusted. Then it was about the same old thing. Money.

“Look Johnny. Go to the mall. Just outside the door is a guy named Ramone. Tell him it’s for me, and give him the money. He will give you a package, OK?”

Why I agreed, I’ll never know. Maybe I was still in shock over what happened. Or, maybe I already had an idea of what would happen.

Well, I went to the mall and got his package. I also stopped by the hardware store.

I went into the shack. David was sweating bad. I gave him the package and he tore it open like a kid at Christmas. He cut a line and snorted his life-giving powder. Revolting how one’s life could be dependent on something so terrible.

He stood up, euphoric, for about 30 seconds. Then he toppled, fell, face first onto the floor, writhing and hacking at the fluid in his lungs. Amazing what effect roach poison and coke will have on a person.

If I live to be 100, I will never forget how he looked at me as if I had betrayed him. Well, maybe I had, but what I have done is wipe a little of the scum off the earth. Is that so bad? I know I must answer in hell for what I’ve done, but my girlfriend is pregnant, and I want my kid to grow up in a decent world.

The above was the author’s last words, found in a sealed letter beside his body. He shot himself through the head at approximately 4AM Sunday morning.

 

The Woo Woo

I tend to be very pragmatic. It’s not that I don’t have room for the supernatural: It’s just that it has, in my experience, often been used as an excuse by people who don’t really want to actually take tangible action.

Many is the time when I have been faced with needs that surpassed my abilities and have asked for real, tangible help – Help me get this person fed. Help me pay this person’s light bill. Help me get this person a job. Help me get this person some clothes. – and I have been assured of their prayers.

They often reply to my Facebook request with a hasty “Praying!”, apparently in such a rush to get on their knees and beseech the Almighty on our behalf that they can’t use sentences. The fervent prayers of the righteous may avail much, but in my experience, landlords require negotiable tender.

My friend Kathy once wrote a fundraising letter, and when someone replied that they were praying for her organization to have the resources they need, she replied back that their prayer team was full, and they really just needed somebody to write checks.

That said, I have had experiences I cannot explain pragmatically. As my buddy Brian said, I hate it when my experience of God contradicts my theology. So, I try to be open minded, especially as I strive hard to not yuck somebody else’s yum, and I never want to take away something that brings somebody comfort.

This has led me to interesting places over the years. Meditation retreats. Sweat lodges.  Pentecostal worship services. Folk slain in the Spirit. Other folk speaking in tongues. Prayer walks. Beads. Dream catchers. Familiars. Teas and tinctures. Spells. Healing services. Oil anointing. Tibetan singing bowls. Sitting with the dead.

All of which is a preamble to my friend Amy, who several weeks back mentioned she was starting up a book group around The Artist’s Way, and did I want to be part of it.

Which is how I have ended up writing three pages longhand every morning for the last two weeks as I lean into the program, which involves, among other things, writing three pages longhand every morning, in a ritual they call Morning Pages.

Now, I will confess, it seemed somewhat silly to me, but I am doing it. And because I have learned that rituals are important, and the more I take a ritual seriously, the more value I will get from it, I have tried to ritualize it as much as possible.

The same time, every morning. The same notebook, that I don’t use for anything else. I bought a special pen that I use for writing these pages, and I always start them the same way. In short, I am taking it seriously.

Now, I don’t know if this will “work”. In fact, I am unsure how I would know if it did work, or define what I expect it to do. But I can tell you that somewhere after day 7, it ceased to be a chore, and now I actually look forward to it. And the other day, I kept going after my three pages were done, because I had more stuff still waiting to come out. And Friday morning I had an idea for a book come to me while I was doing it, for which I have since done a rough outline.

And I’m just getting started – I committed to another 13 weeks of this. And while I can’t make a pragmatic case for it, I guess it doesn’t hurt to be open to the woo-woo, either.

The Notebook

There are some authors who were made for audiobooks. They are more spoken word artists than true writers.

Rick Bragg is one of them. Another is David Sedaris.

Like many people, my introduction to Sedaris was through This American Life, when he reads excerpts every Christmas from his essay The Santa Land Diaries. At the time, I lived in Raleigh, NC, where he grew up, so there was the additional level of cool because I knew many of the places he mentioned, and often ate at the IHOP where he stayed up late and wrote while in college.

As someone who writes and tries to tell stories, another thing I like about David Sedaris is that he basically writes about himself. He does do occasional fiction, but it isn’t his strong suite by any means: He is at his best when he is talking about himself, and the world as he observes it.

In his essay Day by Day, found in the collection Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, he lays out his process:

  • Keep a notebook with you all the time, and make notes about things you find interesting.
  • The following day, refer to your notes to write a diary entry, fleshing out details while it’s still fresh in your mind.
  • Periodically review the entries for items that merit fleshing out into stories
  • In front of live audiences, read the stories out loud and get feedback, which you use to edit the stories.

In short, it all starts with a notebook.

Trying to blog daily while living with ADHD in the middle of a pandemic ain’t no joke, y’all. I will have really cool ideas while on a walk, or while doing something else, and will think, “That’s it. That is what I will blog about. But then I sit down in front of my computer tomorrow to write one of the 8 things I have committed to write this week, and suddenly, I got nothing. It’s like every single thing I wanted to talk about is gone.

So, I bought a notebook.

It’s a simple pocket notebook, roughly the size of an index card, which I carry in a leather wallet I bought for the purpose. There’s room for a pencil in there, too, and when inspiration hits me, I stop and make a note. But really, I think any sort of notebook would do, as long as you remember to carry it with you. Thus the wallet, as I need my license and debit card, so this way it’s all together.

Should this notebook ever be stolen, it will make no sense to anyone. For instance, the entry that led to my post I called No Man’s Land literally says:

Pool, skylight, abundance

20, 21, 22, Thunk!

Guy splashing in next lane

And that’s it. I sat down in the locker room at the gym and scrawled it down as soon as I got back in from the pool, and the next day, that was the backbone of my entry.

So, that’s what I do now: I scribble in a notebook. Yes, I know you could do this on your phone, but I really hate writing on my phone. Like, really. I also forget it’s there. All the apps on my phone – it’s like they are not there – that whole object impermanence ADHD thing. But with a wallet in your pocket, it’s somehow more real, and I don’t forget it.

Yesterday, I was thought about something else to write about, and when I pulled my notebook out, I thought, “I could write about this notebook habit!” And wrote the following entry:

Carrying a notebook!

And that is this post.

Writing Hopefully

I was afraid I had lost my voice.

Three and a half years ago, I walked away from a ministry I had founded and built for 12 years because it was killing me.

The Rabbi Abraham Heschel said something to the effect that the Biblical prophets were enraged by things everyone else assumed were “just the way things are”. For the first 12 years of my career, I was enraged all the time. If someone died in the woods because there was no trans-friendly shelter for them, I not only became angry – I took it personally. I saw it as a personal affront to me and my work.

That sort of rage is… useful. That sort of rage helps you win fights, helps you change things, and will give you focus and clarity when everyone else is in a fog. It also makes you hell to be around, will risk your deepest relationships, will drive you into deep depression from which you may not survive, and is generally unsustainable.

The worst problems to have are those that are destructive, yet socially reinforced. In our social media driven world, the sort of rage I used to have is celebrated and applauded. We love people who are angry like that, who are “passionate” and “vulnerable” and who “tell it like it is”. On social media, anger is celebrated and reinforced.

I used to routinely “go viral” writing about things that made me angry. And I was good at it. There are people who ended up with large book deals that are worse at being angry on the Internet than I was.

But the depression that follows long periods of unresolved anger almost killed me. Literally. So, I have spent the last three years trying to not be angry. Oh, it still happens sometimes, and all the old anger comes back and my body knows what to do – the flared nostrils, the tingle in the upper back, the accelerated heartbeat, that vein that pops out on my right temple.

When it happens, it’s like like welcoming back an old friend – but the old friend you used to get high with when you skipped work and cheated on your spouse, who met your emotional needs but in a way that was corrosive and slowly suicidal.

It feels good to be angry. And it scares the hell out of me.

That was part of my blog silence until this Fall – having written perhaps 5 things in the prior two years, and having nothing I’ve written published since I left. I didn’t know how to write when I wasn’t angry, and was unsure if I had anything to say if I wasn’t angry. And I can’t do that again. I’m not interested in being that guy any more. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t survive being that guy, actually. And I want to stick around.

I was afraid, though, that I had lost my voice. I didn’t have any words. And God almighty, the world needs words right now. There is a lot to be angry about these days. And my personality type is such that I will always have a dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and will dream of the world as it could be, and will work to build that better world. But it’s a quieter, more gentle anger these days.

And slowly, the words have been coming back. I’ve been learning that hope is also an emotion, and one worth sustaining and building on. I like me better when I’m hopeful. And if I can’t write things that make people angry in ways that make me popular, perhaps I can write things that make people hopeful in a way that makes the world better.

Habits Are Things You Get for Free

Yesterday, my friend Don told me that he admired my output since I began daily blogging. What he didn’t know is that if I don’t do it daily, it pretty much won’t happen at all. I write every day, because if I only write when I get in the mood, I will write never. In the first 9 months of 2021, I wrote 9 blog posts. Since October 1st, I’ve written 72, and since November 1st, I’ve written one every day.

Today I have written more than 2500 words, between two very rough draft blog posts, a newsletter, and this blog post. I have written about 25,000 words in the last 30 days, which is about half the number of words in The Great Gatsby, by writing every day. That is 25,000 more words that I would have written had I written when I felt like writing.

I publish newsletters on Monday and Friday, every week. As a result, I have sent hundreds of newsletters to my lists in the last 5 years. When I had a newsletter that I sent when I had something to say, I sent perhaps 3 in two years.

I was talking to a friend this morning as I was on the way to the gym to swim.

“I really admire your regularity. It’s impressive,” she said.

I told her that regularity was sort of my super power. Regularity can make you unstoppable. My ADHD brain thrives on structure, but has a really difficult time creating structure. Like many ADHD folks though, I thrive in structured environments, because it drastically reduces my choices, and choices are paralyzing for me.

That is why, for example, I wear the same clothes day after day. I don’t wear shirts with letters or graphics. I tend to wear earth tones, and literally I grab whatever shirt is on top of the pile.  When I wore suits for a living I did the same thing, only with blue and white shirts, red ties, and blue suits. I don’t have to worry about what I will wear, or if it matches or is appropriate. I have casual clothes and work clothes and dress clothes and there are rules for all of them, and I only own clothes that follow those rules. As a result, I bet I spend less than two hours a year thinking about clothes.

Some people exercise on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I would exercise Monday, Wednesday, and the forget and it would be Saturday and I would get mad and then forget Monday and say to hell with it.

Doing it every day means you don’t have to remember. How much time do you spend thinking about brushing your teeth? None, because it’s a habit. And as the writer and activist Corey Doctorow said, “Habits are things you get for free”.

I have a habit of exercising, whether that is a walk or a swim, every day. A habit of working in the shop after supper. A habit of reading before bed. A habit of writing. All things I get for free.

In fact, it’s the parts of my life I haven’t figured out how to create structure around that give me fits.

But I’m trying.

Reflecting on 30 Days of Gratitude

“Twenty Twenty One hasn’t been so bad,” she said. “It just feels like… Groundhog Day, maybe. Every day is the same. Lots of uncertainty. We are both home pretty much all the time. Going out feels unsafe, but you see lots of people acting like 10,000 Mississippians didn’t die in the 18 months.”

It was the end of October, and Renee and I were sitting at our kitchen table, having just eaten one of perhaps a dozen meals that we have in rotation right now – meals we can fix with little mess and fuss, that don’t require much creativity or fresh produce. We think of it almost as a pandemic playlist, but for meals.

And that is what so much of my life is like these days – hoping for a time beyond this current uncertainty, and yet realizing we are going to be here for a really long time. If I still drank, a drinking game where I take a shot every time someone says “the new normal” would wreck my liver in short order.

I just happened to be on Facebook on November the 1st when someone posted their first post of “30 days of Gratitude”, a popular Facebook meme where you post a thing each day for which you are thankful.

Honestly? These things suck me in. My ADHD brain loves structure – but my executive function is such that my brain can’t manufacture it. So, 30 days where I don’t have to think about what to write about is a gift. So I decided to use it as a prompt.

I made some rules.

Other than Renee, I couldn’t write about being thankful for a living person. That was mostly to avoid leaving people out.

I had to have an original picture I took or owned to illustrate or accompany the post. In other words, no stock photos. The only time I broke that was the Doctor Jabbour post.

I have a complicated relationship with my past – I know a lot of us feel that way. But I also have come to recognize that the things for which I am grateful have come out of my past – that I am really the product of my stories. So each post needs to have a story in it.

I had to write it every day. I broke that rule once, writing Thanksgiving’s the day before, but I was on the road 10 hours out of 36 during that time, so if I didn’t do it the day before, it wouldn’t have happened.

And it needed to be at least 500 words. To put that in perspective, this post you are reading now is at 450 words at the end of this sentence.

And after a year of writing about Dad, I decided that no single post would be about him.

There were days I had no idea what I was going to write about. Some days I wouldn’t know until I was halfway through the post. Some days I thought it was going to be about X, and it ended up being about Y. Sometimes I narrowed it down while writing: The post about Heather started as a blanket post about my LGBT friends, the same way I wrote about my atheist friends. The post about friends who disagree with me started about a particular person, but he was still alive, and the more I wrote I realized he was one of several in that position.

And I think that is the thing I liked most about it – in fact, it’s one of the things I like about writing: The discovery. That you learn something you did not know before as you write.

Having grown up evangelical, every time someone mentions the word accountability, I think it means somebody got caught with porn. But the accountability of knowing that people were expecting me to publish something each day mattered, even if nothing would happen if I had missed a day. The truth is, I am more afraid of letting you down than I am letting me down.

The last 20 months or so have been horrible. But this month I learned that I have much to be grateful for, that there are things in the midst of a pandemic for which to be grateful, and that the common thread that runs through all of the things for which I am grateful is the relationships that have, formed me, held me, and given my life shape and meaning.

I’m not sure what to do next. I don’t really want to break a now 31-day streak, but I don’t know what I can write about tomorrow. But hey, I’ve been there before.

Regardless, thank you for reading my stuff, for sharing it, for commenting and interacting with it. It’s good to be known.

You.

On the 30th and last day, I’m grateful for you. Yes, you, who is reading this post.

A long time ago, I knew a poet. Like, a real poet. She is published these days, and went to school and got her MFA at a famous university and introduced me to Phillip Larkin and Billy Collins and Mary Oliver. But this was before all that.

We had similar, blue collar roots, but she had just a bit more direction and management than I did, and even though she was much younger than I was, and even though when I knew her she was living in genteel poverty and making minimum wage, I aspired to her life. We shared books, and stories, and walks along the Mississippi river on Saturday afternoons.

At this point in my life, I had written nothing in a decade, since a horrible encounter with an English professor that tried to squash my dreams. But I remembered the joy that came from sitting down and opening yourself up to the universe- the ancient magic that happens when you show up, ready to write, and the universe gives you the words.

One day, looking over the river, I asked her, “Why do you write?”

I have heard many people try to answer this question. Often they say something about how they can’t avoid writing, or they have to write, or something like that. But her answer stuck with me, and has rung true for me.

She turned her back to me and walked a few steps away, looking down at the ground, hands in her pockets. Then she turned around. “Why? Because I want to be understood. I’ve never made sense to any of the people who knew me – not even to the people who thought they loved me. I write because I want someone to read it and understand who I am. I write, Hugh, because I want to be known.”

Instantly, I knew the truth, and like the old story goes, the truth set me free.

I too write because I want to be known. Because I have never made much sense to the people who know me or love me, and I want them to understand. I write because I have stories that have shaped me and changed me, and I’m conceited enough to believe that if you knew them, they may change you, too.

There are people who write in a journal, with instructions that it be burned after their death. They are an audience of one, and they write as a way of understanding themselves. But it is not lost on me that it took the invention of blogging to get me over my self-imposed writing embargo. It wasn’t enough for me to have the means – I also required a reader.

Often when I write, I imagine a particular person reading it, and I write it as a personal communication to them. I have six ideal readers, all actual people, even though none of them know, and two of them are now dead. But when I write, I write it to one of them.

For more than 18 years now, I’ve been writing down my stories, my ideas, my discoveries, sharing them in various places. It’s like we’ve been on a journey together, you and me, and I’m sharing what I learned along the way. And sometimes you are going someplace I have been before, and I know where the pitfalls are, and might be able to save you some steps.

I’m constantly amazed that anyone cares at all about what I have to say. Every time something I write travels at all, it is a shock. People often will reach out and tell me how something I wrote a decade or more ago changed their life. That never ceases to move me, and to remind me of the importance of story.

At the end of the day, dear reader, I’m just a working class kid from rural Mississippi who realized one day that the things he felt and that seemed so huge were things we all feel, and we are all just searching for language for those things. The highest compliment someone can ever give me is when they read something I write, and they say, “This is how I feel too, but I didn’t know how to say it.”

Because in that moment, they know more about me, yes, but feel known, too. They know then that they the things in their head and hearts are not worthless or pointless or known only by them, but are human things, and they feel a little less alone, a little bit more understood, a little bit more emboldened to share their own stories, and a little less shame, perhaps, over the late night fears that greet them in dark places.

In other words, I write because I want to be read, and what’s more, I want to know you and be known by you. And for almost 20 years, you have kept showing up: Reading, sharing, interacting, telling me your stories in response. You are the most important part of this operation, and I couldn’t do any of it without you. You make my life more than I ever dreamt possible, and I’m grateful for you beyond words.