Getting Back to Writing

It’s been a long time since I have been on wordpress, and for a while I neglected my writing. I neglected all kinds of things for a while. I read less now. I write much less than I used to, and listen to music less than I used to. This is an admission I am certainly not proud of. I loved a few people, and gave up, and lost. Many things happened since I last visited WordPress. I don’t know these things were ‘meant’ to happen, but they did.

I traveled, while I’ve been away, and met my wife. I continue loving, and loving life more. I have had some bouts of feeling down, more down than ever really. I guess it was the idea that things were changing again, quickly, and not really knowing if the changes are for the best. They just are. Getting married meant that I had to move to another country, and leave family and friends behind. They’ve all been relegated to visitation. I don’t have any friends where I am. My yearly routine of going home to Florida for Christmas has changed, interrupted if you will.

I am glad that I have still continued to write, and read, although there have been lapses. The lapses have been total breakdowns in my routine. I’m starting to get back into music as well. I’ve missed it. I haven’t stopped living. As long as I continue to live and love, and love life, I will always have things to say, and be interested in things to read, places to visit, music to listen to.

Yours,

A.N.Miller

The Gap I Hope to Close

I’ve been seriously slacking with my writing since I started working at the office I’m currently working at. I started a year ago, and it’s been busy and left me drained day after day. I haven’t yet figured out how to cope with that drained feeling. I don’t feel like I’ve been able to get any work done, but I’ve made some small efforts in the past few months. I’ve taken trips here and there, but nothing significant, in various attempts to take my mind away from work. I try my best to be creative with my life, even if writing isn’t the only creative avenue I pursue. I’ve fallen in and out of love, and I don’t know if that has helped or hurt my creativity. New York can be a lonely place, but I’ve got good friends that keep me going and I love seeing them when I get the chance. My family is great and filled with vitality. That also keeps me fresh and gives me a love of life.

I hope to get back to writing soon. I’ve only written in my journal, occasionally, to help myself get back into the swing of things. I wasn’t reading for the longest time, and hoped I would find something great in reading a friend’s manuscript. I did, thankfully, due to the fact that he’s a good writer. But, before reading my friend’s manuscript, I was reading a number of bad books. They were uninteresting, or if they were interesting, it didn’t last. I put down about three books before reading my friend’s manuscript, only to read subsequent books and be bored with them rather quickly. I hope I get myself out of this rut.

HOTEL

Earth is like one big hotel

And we’re the rock stars

Trashing all rooms,

Because We can.

But, We don’t know why

We have to pay for places to sleep.

Why the heck are people so easy?

Color Atrium – Micropoetry Collection

It’s been a few months, but I submitted a short collection of poetry to a well-known contest. I didn’t win (big news). I don’t mean for that to sound like a downer. I think all of my rejections are piled up in the back of my mind somewhere, somewhere they can fester and cause me to get mad, and with the anger, keep trying. I don’t think I write for acceptance. I try to understand myself more, and of course that means trying to understand other people as well.

I’m going to publish that collection of short poetry on the cmillerproject. I don’t consider myself a poet, but this collection may be the best poetry I’ve ever written. I feel inclined to share it for free.

I’m still working on my novel. It’s looking more like a novella now that I’ve edited another draft, and I think I’m going to self-publish it because I care more than anything how the story gets finished. I don’t want it to be heavily edited by some person I don’t know. I want the ideas to stick, and everything that happens to happen.

With all that said, I’ll post the collection in the next day, or maybe a few days. I have to make sure it’s smoothed out.

Heavy experimentation in the works. Things have been too clean lately, too precise, and predictable.

None

A lot of time has passed since I’ve written anything. I haven’t even been writing in my journal heavily lately. I feel like it’s a sickness, conversely, I feel like it’s just normal. There’s nothing burning inside me. I suppose I’ve had that feeling before, and I wrote it down (whatever it was), but that’s not the case. Count this as a journal entry. I’ve said this was a kind of journal. I’m still editing my short story collection as I get it back in pieces from my friend. I need new opinions also. The novel is still sitting, whether it’s a bad idea to have it sit or not. That’s what it’s going to do. I’ve ordered a messenger bag to carry it around in. Once I get that, I’ll print it up and begin working on it. Sometimes I like to get out and work on things rather than work from the house. Sometimes the house can feel suffocating and I need to change the scenery to get things the way I want them–‘right’.

About not writing lately–I don’t really feel guilty for not writing. I recently took a road trip to my mother’s house for Christmas and I didn’t take anything with me to keep writing. Maybe I needed a break. Maybe I still need that break. In a way I feel like there’s nothing wrong with taking a break from the writing if there’s no urge to write. There’s a difference between urge and inspiration. I have things to write about but I haven’t written them, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s a bad thing, as I’ve said, but when I get back on, I get back on, which will be soon.

Untitled

I don’t know why it’s hard to write on the keys sometimes. I guess it’s a thing of finality—like, what I’m writing is final, and this must be something. I guess that’s natural to feel that way since people often type things up when they are done. It’s like you don’t want to hit the delete button, or the backspace button. I don’t mind it. I’m not from a generation of using a typewriter. I write on my laptop. I’m not ashamed. This is my typewriter. This is my journal sometimes. I try to write perfectly most times though, and abhorrent ‘backspace’ key sits on my shoulder like a ghost, waiting to be called on.

I haven’t had anything serious to write about since finishing another draft of my novel, but I hope it comes soon. I don’t feel like I can go on to something of longer form until I’m finished COMPLETELY with this novel. When I’m finished with it I’m saying goodbye to it, and that’s all I want to do. It would be hard to keep returning to that world I’ve created—editing, re-reading, etc., while trying to write something completely new. I admit I’ve been starting things, but they’re just studies, or samples, scenes maybe, background, and nothing concrete ready to be continued. I like doing it like that. It’s comfortable for now, yet uncomfortable because I like to know where I’m heading after this thing is done. I still have that collection of short fiction out right now too, and that was hard to have in the back of my mind while I worked on the novel (the one I just spoke about). It’s the bouncing back and forth I don’t like. but this is my first time around with writing something longer, completely, so I’m training myself to know what I am capable of doing, and how I’m capable working, and what makes me comfortable working. I have this burning feeling to get the first thing right.

Prize Fighter

The ways in which we qualify things are getting worse. I read around just about every day and I gather opinions about the ways in which we qualify things. There was a quote from a writer of some sort (forgive me, I don’t remember the name of the writer) I read on tumblr saying that everyone nowadays is afraid of the big idea, or anything grand. He went on about the ways people speak—saying ‘like’ a million times, ‘I feel’, ‘in my opinion’, and there were so many. He said no one states anything clearly anymore. There are no more real proclamations. I agree. I saw Kanye West on Jimmy Kimmel’s show recently. I hate to reference this, but what he said while on the show was important. He said everyone is so concerned with limiting you and fitting you into a box, and he called himself a ‘creative genius’ (whether we believe him to be one is irrelevant). Then he said if he were to say he were not a creative genius, he would be lying to himself and to people when he talked to them. The crowd laughed. I laughed when I watched the video. The rest of the interview isn’t important for what I’m talking about, but what I’m getting at is the uncertainty in all of us. It spreads. It’s popular. I realize we can’t all be the same. We can’t all have the same type of confidence, or any confidence at all.

I talked to a friend out on the west coast the other day. She’s an aspiring actress, and she models. After seeing 12 Years A Slave I text messaged her telling her to go see the film. She saw it maybe a week later and told me she thought it was incredible and the woman that played Patsy will get an Oscar. I said I hope she gets something (if anything). The next thing she said was ‘this is her breakthrough role. She went to Yale.’ I didn’t say anything after that. I knew it meant nothing, but still after my friend said that I thought—what does any of her acting have to do with her going to Yale? Or, how does her potential to win awards (whichever ones) depend on where the hell she went to school? My friend’s logic poses that the academy puts nominees into a perspective based on not only their performances, but also their ‘story’, when they’re considering who should win. Everyone’s talked about people and celebrities about their careers, or their lives, and adding where he or she went to school, and it’s sad. I don’t do it anymore. We throw these things into conversation casually, and unknowingly, as if to say that we are nothing without Yale, or Columbia, or Harvard, or some other qualifier. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of where someone went to school. But, look at how many people are successful in careers without formal education, or if they had formal education, look at their success without accolades. People are using accolades alone to determine whether something is great, or worthy of attention—their attention. We do it with athletes. What is a quarterback without a superbowl if he is to be considered for the hall of fame?

There was a WordPress post I read sometime earlier this year. It was an excerpt from another writer about there being no other greater mark of mediocrity than an author winning the Nobel Prize for literature. I don’t think that every laureate is mediocre. But I don’t think I should choose what books I read based on the list of past laureates. I don’t think it should be among the criteria schools use to develop curricula for their literature courses. I don’t think it means a writer is ‘bad’ or ‘not as good’ because they did not win the Nobel Prize, or Pulitzer Prize, or Book of The Year, or any other award. You may compare the concept to recording artists winning awards too—artist wins award for making something that appeals to an ideal or the greatest number of people. In the words of Alfred Nobel: “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.

Awards are a guide if you want to use them that way, but I don’t use them as incontrovertible criteria—like I’m diseased with linear thinking. We do artists a disservice by mentioning the awards the ways we mention them. We use them as attachments that for the artist, without them the artist is nothing and has done nothing worthy.

At least I think it’ll be soon. I’ve come a long way. I’m not rushing.