Writing is hard. Especially when…

If you have been reading my most recent posts, you may, very likely have developed an impression that I am not physically, emotionally, or just generally, well. You would be correct in this impression. Yet day in and day out, I persist in writing like I have never written before in this journal and elsewhere.

That is partly the point of this current post: it is hard. I mean really, really hard. The degree to which I feel physically and cognitively ill at present is making that so difficult that there are times when I wonder if it would not be more convenient or productive to just disappear and not write another word. At least for a few months, or maybe even forever. And then it hits me in the face. I cannot go without being autistic or suffering from PTSD effects for months whilst I try to right the way I feel within my everyday world, so why should I deprive others of my output in order to do the same?

Writing these outpourings is also a lot like making the videos that I used to put together as quickly and crudely as I could and put on YouChoob. I would get an idea, sometimes merely a flash of what I wanted to end with. I would cull together bits of text in graphical formats, snippets of video taken from films, even video that I record of myself, put bits of music over some of the texts, and post it for everyone to see and act indignant at. The process of writing a new article on here is not dramatically different. An idea, a germ of what I want to convey to both the idiots and the decent people reading my post, comes to mind. Oh, and for the record, decent people means people who are neither on board with the curebie or normalist agenda, and are not mistaking it for something any decent Human being would be on board with. If you have even the slightest inkling that the curebie agenda is somehow acceptable or even worthwhile, piss off. But anyway, the process goes something like I get an idea, I start to think about how I want to structure the text based on that idea, what I want to say to a person who is reading the text I base on this idea, and then start typing away.

Writing varies from person to person, and from case to case. Stephen King claims that he wrote The Running Man, in my opinion one of his best works, over a period of seventy-two hours. Given that this novel is at least a hundred thousand words in length, I suspect that some very serious chemical stimulants were involved. But the point here is that writing to me is a lot like pulling apart or putting back together a very elaborate three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Who are the people I am writing about? What are they doing to these other people I will have to write more about? How much do I want to know about those other people? Why are they doing those things to those people? It is like the lament configuration box seen in the Hellraiser films, or more accurately described in The Hellbound Heart. Inside there are so many pieces that lock together in just such a way that a person can spend days, weeks, months, even years, trying to pull the thing apart. And this applies regardless of how big or small the story I speak of is. My most recent completed project, which I have yet to determine a title for, is 16,463 words in length (as a point of comparison, the novels that places like Dymocks see fit to charge upwards of twenty dollars for can be anywhere from 50,000 to 150,000 words in length). This, of course, raises questions in my mind concerning how I am going to post that material here, because I tend to find some difficulties in reading the text I put on this journal at around five to six thousand or so words. Breaking up the text with graphics can sometimes help, but the simple fact remains that, as I have read in articles dating back nearly twenty years now, reading from a screen is a major pain. E-readers mitigate this to a good degree with certain features, but mobile ‘phones can get buggered. In fact, ask me why I will not redesign my site or sites for reading on a mobile ‘phone, and I will take your mobile ‘phone off you and shove it in your arse.

(Two videos are above this paragraph. One is the opening titles used in Doctor Who serials of 1979. The other is a fan-made opening title series based on the idea of Sir Ian McKellen playing the Doctor, an idea that would rock my face off for reasons I might write about later.)
But I digress. The point here is that even as I write, the process reminds me of an opening sequence for the fourth version (Tom Baker) of the real Doctor Who. In 1979, the Doctor Who theme was quite elaborate compared to the ones that characterise the previous Doctors (William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee, in that order). The basic concept revolved around travel through a slightly darker than the norm for the 1970s conception of the wormhole. As these dark, blue to purple-themed graphics gave the illusion of the viewer’s viewpoint going through time and space with the Doctor, and the creepy woodwind-like sounds in the background of the music added to the effect, that became a symbol of storytelling to me when I saw these things as a child in the early 1980s.

But the thing is, writing reflects what we are, who we are, and what we do with the things that come into us from external sources. Which should make you very worried about the kind of person I am and what has come into me over the years from external sources. Anyway, what makes me worried about the kind of material that gets shovelled at us in the present time is exactly that: how it reflects the minds of the people who made it. I, for one, do not want to live in the kind of world that has somehow convinced Stephenie Meyer that living a chastity-promoting life with a stalking, abusive boyfriend is normal or anything worth aspiring to. Nor do I want to live in the kind of world where it is considered normal to extend infancy or childhood to a point where one has an overgrown child who can really hurt people.

In fiction, what I write reflects the greatest desire I have concerning the world I live in. Where intelligence is valued and cultivated, and herd conformists are basically left out in the snow to either fend in herd conformist groups or die. Where a child who is scared of the people they regularly interact with is told by an adult in authority that the adult in authority will either make the people in question stop frightening them, or find that child some better people to interact with. Where a person who has abused their position of authority and used such to hurt a child is either left to die or hurt back in ways that make people thinking along similar lines wonder if they are not better off wandering out into the wilderness and letting nature take its course.

This is why much of my writing involves characters who are either Dwarrow, or closely connected with Dwarvish culture. Dwarrow are a race who have both sides of the problem solved. Psychologically and physically, they are by some margin the toughest race in any known fantasy canon. But like any race where honour means something, they do not exploit this position to bully and abuse the others. Instead, they stand as an example to others of what is possible, both through their military might against those who would attempt harm against them, and through their craftsmanship. A popular saying among Humans and Halflings is that Dwarrow are the best people to buy machinery, tools, or the products thereof from. The reasoning goes that since a Dwarf builds things to last their lifetimes, a Human or Halfling will never need to worry about it breaking down or wearing out during theirs. This is an understatement. A Dwarf makes things to last until their grandchildren are elderly, so even some Elves never have to worry about those things wearing out during their lifetimes.

I find it abhorrent, therefore, that cultures which no longer reside or really even subsist in our world regard pride as a sin, or sinful. Pride in oneself, especially when it is earned, is a virtue. Being proud of the fact that on a planet of at least seven billion souls (and climbing exponentionally), there are only 46.666 (repeater) million of them that have this one common characteristic that you do is a virtue. And pride in your workmanship, in what you do, in the things you are creating is a virtue. Songs like Blondie‘s Call Me or Cadaveria‘s Flowers In Fire have quite obviously been made by people who have pride not only in themselves as musicians, but in the work they were about to unleash upon the world. To say that this makes a dramatic difference from the likes of Justin Baby et al, who clearly make songs as a work for hire and as a job akin to prostitution, is an understatement. Simple fact is, when you look at, sit in, or in any way interact with something that has been made with actual pride (as opposed to the kind that schools try to force on children as an example), you notice the difference.

Dwarrow take pride in their uses of the metallurgic or engineering arts. Halflings, the intelligent ones that want to determine the future of their society in place of the traditionalists anyway, take pride in their theoretical and artistic work. Elves take pride in their ability to use their senses to make and predict things well beyond the purview of the other peoples. And Humans take pride in their ability to adapt into literally any situation that they find themselves in, especially ones that those noncy Elves (their words) would run back to the forests at the mere sight of. When you have earned it in some manner, being proud of an inherent characteristic is a virtue. As is being proud of and taking pride in something you are making or have made.

But all of this is a digression. I am not proud that I am having trouble even getting out of bed now. I literally wake up in the middle of the day feeling so sluggish and exhausted that if I am out of bed and trying to salvage any of my affairs before closing time, I am doing well. Quite frankly, this scares me. I am becoming extremely frightened that the cancerous cells in my face that were diagnosed late last year and are still there after months of prior testing has already metastasized and is now in my brain, wreaking havoc upon hormonal regulation and other important departments. Yes, I am feeling that frequently and powerfully tired. Were I living in the Parramatta region like I did for the first twenty-three years of my life, this cancer would be out and being analysed for whatever it can tell the scientists right now. I would be recovering, albeit slowly, from the general anesthesia and exploratory surgery that is entailed by the removal. Calling social services in Queensland a joke does not even begin to cover it.

Nor am I proud that I am having difficulty actually getting to sleep at night due to how much I seethe with rage over things like this. I would give anything in order to make that change now. In fact, what I would have liked to have happen is going to figure prominently in a story I will be putting on here soon (it is currently slightly less than 17,000 words, so this will take time to plan out and implement). But that is all something I will have to return to at a later date. What I want to impress upon everyone who reads through piles and piles of words on the World Wide Wait and takes the content for granted is just this: writing is difficult. If you need to be told this, you do not grok the fact at all. So as hard as it might seem, you would get along a lot better with the writing folk out there if you did not take the sum of their work for granted.