Artistry With Words

A word or two about confidence and chasing the demons away.

I was reading a book by Lisa Messenger . . . “Daring and Disruptive” . . . and her opening line is this:  “To succeed in business . . . hell, to succeed in anything in life . . . you must have an unwavering, insatiable, tenacious belief in yourself.  You have to be able to back yourself, to harbor that kind of unbridled passion for winning that will stop at nothing until you reach your goals.”

Writers, pay attention to those words!

It is amazing to me how many people I know do not have confidence in themselves, and being a reflective sort of person, I often wonder why that is?  How often have those people been told they are not worthy of succeeding? How often have they been beaten down psychologically, with words or actions, and told in a variety of ways they are not good enough and they will never accomplish their goals?

When does that happen? During the childhood years?  As a teen?  As a young adult?  And who is it telling them these negative things?

Or is it a DNA thing? Are there some people who are simply born lacking confidence?  I suspect it might be a combination of the two.  Of course it got me thinking about myself and my life.  I was bullied in elementary school, but I would then go home to parents who told me I was good just the way I was, and hard work would accomplish great things.  So I fought through those early years at school, took my parents’ advice, and soldiered on. Today I am brimming with confidence.  I know I can accomplish what I set out to accomplish, as long as my goals are realistic.  I will never be a civil engineer or famous doctor, but those are not my goals. If, however, I choose to start up a new business, I have every confidence it will succeed.  If I choose to write another book, I am confident it will be of high quality.  If I decide I want to turn my backyard into an urban farming classroom, I know I can do it.

Thanks to my parents! An adopted kid could not ask for a better mother and father than I had.

How about you? How’s your confidence level?

You are good enough just the way you are! Believe it as much as I believe it.

Bill

“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”

Tags: writing tips

It’s Sunday morning as I write this.  Bev is out walking the dogs.  I’m sitting in my office looking out the window at popcorn skies, and my mind is all over the place, skipping through a field of random thoughts.

I’ll share some with you.

DEATH AND TAXES

The only two things we can be certain of, or so we are told.  A former student of mine died this past week. She was forty-two, a mother of two, healthy one moment, spinal meningitis the next, two strokes to follow and dead within a month.  I have nothing terribly inspirational to share regarding her death.  It takes no talent to die.  It takes no special social standing, no set of specific beliefs . . . death only requires that you stop breathing whenever your number is drawn from that lottery headquarters in the sky.

Death has no hold on me. I have given it no control over my emotions since the day my dad died back in 1969. I refuse to mourn and I choose, instead, to celebrate the life of the person passed.

R.I.P. Sara . . . I’ll be joining you at some point, so save a spot for me please!

YOU ARE A WRITER?

You meet new people and eventually the conversation comes around to “what do you do?”  And my answer is always “I’m a writer,” and their reaction is always “WHAT?????”  Like total disbelief, mixed with sadness,  look at this poor creature, wasting away in a fantasy world, actually believing he is a writer.  If I told them I was a plumber their reactions would be much different . . . a grocery store clerk . . . an office worker . . . a school teacher . . . but a writer?  WHAT?????

If you have ever faced that kind of reaction, or if you have ever been looked upon as slightly mad for following your passion in writing or art or music, consider this: We have a talent shared by only about 5% of the people on this planet.  Out of seven-billion plus, you and I and a small handful of other writers are capable of creating works of art using words, works of art which will make people laugh, or cry, or shout to the heavens “OH WOW!”

So, what do I do?  I am a writer.  I create art, using words, in a world hell-bent on ugliness and  destruction.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

CONNECTIONS

When I was maybe ten, or eleven years old, a friend and I started our own neighborhood newspaper.  His last name was Bird…mine Holland…so we called the newspaper The Flying Dutchman!  Get it?

The reason I mention that is because even at that age I was interested in writing and connecting with people.

Flash forward six decades and how cool is my life?  Because of writing, and because of the internet, I have several good friends living in California. Several more in Florida, a couple in Ohio, one in Iowa, Dubai…where the heck?…China, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, England and Italy and Canada and…and…and….all told, friends in forty-one states and fifty-three countries.

Pretty damned good for the original Editor-in-Chief of the Flying Dutchman!

Have a great week!

Bill

“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”

Tags: writing tips

More naps these days

Just playing around with words, seeing where they lead me, that sort of randomness.  Maybe this guy will show up in a novel one of these days . . . or not!

Those who understood him best were knee-deep in the life themselves.  Grifters,  hookers, money washers, brunos, fakeloo artists, street dips, shylocks, old-time petemen, hypes, all respected him. Alkies and needle embracers had no beef with him.  Strong-arm robbers, those who would impose their wills on others through violence, the child abusers, wife-beaters, button men, all feared him.  When his anger was unleashed he transformed into a Greek god, anvils for fists, arms swelling, splitting the stitching in his clothes, fire spewing from his mouth, havoc the only path he traveled when the River Styx was in view.

He dropped a San Diego pimp from the top of a high rise.  He grabbed a corrupt Teamster official by the ears and tossed him into the tar pits at La Brea.  A bag man with a penchant for beating women was drowned in a toilet bowl, and he took out a sex-trafficker in Miami with a fire hose switched on full.  There was the time in Portland when he filled a corrupt politician’s car with cement, and the time in Dodge City when outlaw bikers were rushed to the E.R. with pool cues rammed up their asses.

He protected the weak and innocent, tossed scat at the strong and guilty, and somehow came through it all unscathed.  His appetites were enormous, for booze, for drugs, for sex and rock n roll.  He loved Van Gogh, for obvious reasons, but hated Shakespeare for reasons forever locked in his child-man’s mind.  To some he was simple-minded, but I knew him to be one of the most intelligent men I had ever known.  Saving others was his purpose on earth, as was his penchant for self-destruction.

And he was, and is my best friend!

I love to play around with words, with phrasing, and with images.  I never know where I’m going with any of it, but the journey is a blast!

Thanks for hanging out with me. Have a great week!

Bill

“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”

Tags: writing tips

How about I share a section from my upcoming memoirs, “And the Blind Shall See?”

They all did the best they could with an impossible situation.  We are all wired differently.  One size does not fit all with human beings, and that’s just the real of it.  It took me decades to come to that realization, and another decade after that to forgive myself and accept the fact that the same rules apply to me. I did the best I could with an impossible situation.  There are no qualifiers with that statement, no buts or howevers.  I did the best I could.

No talent there . . . or is there?

I don’t know how others view their parents.  I suspect my impressions are shared by many.  When we are young, our parents are all-knowing, all-wise, and all-loving.  There is no fault within them. They understand the world; we do not; it’s as simple as that.  We assume their decisions are based upon some warehouse of knowledge we are not privy to as children, but it turns out our parents are just skin and bone, marrow and muscle, indecision and concern, nightmares and fear, just as we all are.  Just as I had no “Adulthood for Dummies” book to reference, the same can be said for my parents, my sister, and all my other relatives.  My mother was pregnant and married at fifteen, divorced at sixteen, and barely functioning at forty-seven.  My sister Darlys lived her own “hell on earth” life as a child, married and pregnant at seventeen, and was trapped in unhappiness at thirty-one.  My dad worked hard, played hard, and fought hard, constantly trying to outrun beatings as a child, and horrors of war no man should ever see, and he was dead at forty-nine.

How wise were any of them?  How all-knowing?  Or any of us?

The truth of the matter is this: we are all moving forward blindly, uncertain of our next steps, constantly concerned that our decisions are incorrect.  We buoy ourselves up with bravado and an air of confidence, both of which have the consistency of an under-baked meringue, but then we chastise ourselves when we make poor decisions when in fact the odds were against us from the very beginning.

“Trial and error” isn’t just a catchy three-word toss-away.  It is, in fact, how we all learn the most valuable lessons in life, and that’s scary as hell . . . and yet, necessary.  It seems to me, in the year 2019, parents spend far too much time protecting their children.  It’s natural to do so, for sure, but I also see it as harmful.  Children need to occasionally fail, and children need to occasionally feel pain, and they need to understand that neither are the end of their world.  Failing a test is not the worst thing that can, and will, happen to you.  Breaking a neighbor’s window while play ball is certainly not a joyful experience, but it also is not the worst fuck-up we will do and, in fact, on the “fuck-up” scale it barely registers.  Losing a girlfriend to a rival sucks, but life goes forward, and losing a loved one to heart disease can be crippling, but even those with walking impediments learn to be mobile.

Philosophical discussions, like this one, are enjoyable and, at times, enlightening at the age of seventy.  At the age of twenty, having just lost my Rock of Gibraltar, my father, philosophy was just a four-syllable word.

I was scared shitless and determined to never show it.

Tags: writing tips