Monday, April 25, 2022

Apropos of Nothing, My Blog

This is my blog. There are many like it but this one is mine.


I have not blogged for many a year (almost three), but the writing bug is upon me again so I may resume. I am certainly not writing this in response to someone buying Twitter. Assuredly not! As this platform is at the sufferance of Google so it's not like it's better.


Anyway: if you're worried you'll miss my presence on the Interwebs at some point in the near future, the contact thingie on the right still works. Mebbe. Or you can leave a comment - I know that works because that's where the spambots live. So... yeah.


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Speaking of the writing bug.


I recently watched one SuperEyepatchWolf's retrospective/celebration/memorial for Kentaro Miura, author of Berserk, recently passed. And there was a bit that stuck with me punched me in the throat, in the last ten minutes, where he talks about putting one's happiness before one's dreams. I won't try to summarize or quote it, watch the video it's well worth your time.


And what hit me was not an epiphany about overwork, because when it comes to writing I'm very much the opposite, writing in fits and starts over years and, very rarely, finishing the things I start.


What hit me was, after doing this for... let's go with twenty-five years, because that's a nice round number that encompasses wee Davey getting started with a six page short story in high school...


After doing this for twenty-five years, I finally got hit with the big question: Why?


Why am I doing this.


Why am I writing.


Does this make me happy.


Because if writing is my big, shining, Griffith-like dream then I've been deferring it for a lot of years so it sure seems like maybe I'm not all that keen on it after all.


But. But.


There's a world where the crossing between life and death got broken a long time ago, ruled by a tyrant in black armor whose body will never stop burning. And in that world there's a boy who just picked up a jewel that could fix the world, or break it apart.


And then there's a bar in Washington where the fair folk work a woman half to death, not knowing that inside her is a knight sharpening silver knives. Across town her brother studies magic under the tutelage of a pixie of mysterious motives. And in a hospital nearby a golem sits by her husband's bedside, comforting a man she's loved for eighty years through his last days.


And in southern Maryland, a brother and sister are wandering the woods behind their house, hoping the Antlered King can guide them to a cure for their sick mother before the Widow Queen wraps her in thick webs and devours their home.


And there's a kid with his pet cyberdemon rocketing towards fallen Earth to reclaim the world, and there's a rogue landing on a planet-sized engine with a plan to steal it, and there's a beast with flaming orange hair that used to be a human running on all fours through the grass as her flesh and muscle warp into horrifying new forms, and there's a man trying to troubleshoot a Teams call late at night as the shadows in his office building creep closer and closer, and, and...


And I don't really know how to cope with a head full of too many ideas, except to try and write them down.


So I'm going to keep trying that. And I think this year, I might try a little harder.


-Dave

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