Write the Weird and Wonderful Stories of Your Secret Heart
My favorite writing to date is a story I wrote about giant bears fighting robots.
Yes, you read that sentence correctly.
I wrote a story about bear/man hybrids battling against the ruins of humanity who piloted giant mechs in the scarred wastelands of the post-apocalyptic Rockies. The hybrids could transform into enormous bears, easily twenty feet tall when standing upon their hind legs. The mechs they fought were piloted by the horrible elements of humanity who had done all the apocalypsing at the start of the story. The man-bear hybrids were led by the genetically engineered First-Bear (Soviet, of course) whose title was Pontifex Ursa.
That’s right, Bear Pope.
It was glorious.
I have never enjoyed writing more than the days where I sat down to add another section to that tale. It was an impractical and utterly absurd bit of fluff, but I laughed uproariously with every new scene and each battle was written with Godzilla music thundering in the background.
Was it New York Times best-seller material? Not so much, no.
Was it a project which filled me with passion and made me excited to be sitting at the keys? You better freaking believe it!
When I wrote that wonderful nonsense in 2017, I was only a year into my career and writing was an enormous struggle. I had a two year old at home, I had just moved to another city for the first time in my life, and I hadn’t found a new job as of yet.
In short, it was a time in my life where I needed a little whimsy and a whole lot of action to salve the pains of living. It was the perfect time for the ashes of our world to be ruled by the strong yet benevolent Pontifex Ursa.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been ruminating on the why’s of everything. II think the answer to why we write is simply because the stories are being told inside our hearts and minds regardless of whether or not we write them down. It’s only reasonable to go ahead and jot them down so that we don’t have to spend all our waking moments daydreaming about them anyway without anything to show for it.
Yet, writing is a task before it is anything else, and a harsh one at that.
So when you find yourself at the intersection of pursuit and passion, where the Bear Pope of your heart longs to breathe free, I beg of you to take the leap and let it loose. Close your eyes, abandon your doubts, and dive headfirst into the waters of your passions.
Many, many, days of being an author boil down to forcing yourself to stay at the keys despite the desperate need to do literally anything else. If your writing career is a boat, then you are both captain and helmsman and most days are spent navigating storm-churned waters. You cling to the wheel of your ship, straining against the waves to hold a steady course as the winds howl without and within. You navigate for all you are worth, because if you do not then your career shall surely flounder sending the both of you to the ignominious deep.
While I am not trying to imply that writing should be done without pause for rest (it shouldn’t) nor that all of writing is a horrendous stormy mess (it’s not), the reality is that most projects will start with an idea that seems so promising only to realize half-way through that you missed some key element which renders the whole affair inert.
You desperately try to resuscitate your darling, but no amount of love will keep it from flatlining. In the end, you’re forced to admit defeat, and all that’s left is to cut away the dead bits and try to make the best of whatever’s left. You send your dearly departed idea to it’s own document-coffin for safe keeping, swearing your undying loyalty to it with blood-oaths made under the light of the gibbous moon. You carve a promise upon the walls of your soul that you’ll go full-on Frakenstein and bring it back from the dead.
Then it just sits in a folder and rots. Forever.
So when an idea comes along and sets up an easy chair in your heart like it owns the joint, an idea whose shape and features makes you whoop and shout with glee, an idea whose wit and charm fills your soul with laughter and drives you to write with reckless glee, DO NOT EVER LET THAT IDEA LEAVE.
Swear your undying allegiance to that idea; put on all the armor you can beg, steal, or borrow and go full-on Sir Galahad with it! Every day you’re privileged to write that beauty, reach up to the heavens and give your Deity of preference a big ol’ high five. Then, get back to squeezing every last drop of talent out of your precious grey-matter.
Hold. Nothing. Back.
The sobering slog isn’t going anywhere. It is unchanging and eternal.
Don’t pass up a chance to climb out of the muck and actually have some fun for a change.
Passionfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
