Ray in New Orleans

How can any one of us state that we know the operating system of another?

You are a good egg on it's own path. There are ups and downs, but you are one of those who will look and grasp the good.

And your Blog becoming brochure ware, spare me Darlin', some of your posts have made me look upward and outward.

And no... speaking for myself, I'll never know all of you, but the discovery will be wonderful and a great journey.

Things happen in their own ways...

Brochure-ware, my ass.

Keep plugging away in your own way. Damn the torpedoes.

You might be able to ingeniously disguise the people and places in your fiction so that they would never ever recognize themselves in those places. There are thin veils and thicker ones.
I don't buy that brochure schlock either.

I'm fighting this same issue myself. I can write cute little stories about my hilarious family members, and blog entries about movies, but there's part of me that feels I'm not going to go anywhere until I pry open some of the darker stuff and let it out.

I figure the best thing for me to do is write it the way I want to write it, warts and all, let it fly ... but then re-edit and reshape that material so it will be emotionally honest without hurting anyone's feelings. But I still haven't reached the point where I'm actually *doing* this yet.

But I write best when I write what I know, when I base my writing, at least loosely, on things that have actually happened to me or to people I know.

I think that your experiences might be broader and deeper than you know, so this may not be such a limiting factor.

And as for being "just a blog" -- I think people denigrate electronic media way too much, and bloggers who are good writers always seem to be apologizing for having a blog. Whadever. Quality writing is quality writing whatever the medium is, whether the words appear on paper or in bits and bytes. And a blog is a good testing ground.

I think what's important is that *you* feel like you're being inauthentic here. Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading you as you move your way toward authenticity.

Ray, I'll have more to day about this, but I have to make something clear: There was no derision in my tone -- I was serious. I've been where you've been, down to the details: depression, booze, darkness, stunted creativity, etc. For some reason, I've always found something in JD's music that kept my spark -- and me -- alive.

I grew up in the frozen far north, and the first miunte of "Atmospheres" puts me back there, walking out into a silent, white, -25 degree day. I can barely listen to "I Remember Nothing" without getting shaky in the knees and remembering the worst of the worst of times. I think "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is one of the greatest pop songs ever written.

Misery loves company. I love Joy Division.

Ray, you write what you write and you write it well. It's a tough balance, trying to write something that's emotionally honest without hurting those you love. I can't do it, which is one of the reasons I don't post anything as emotional as I used to post.

Count me in with the "Brochure-ware, my ass" folks (thanks, liprap). You still make me think and you still make me feel when I read your stuff. That can never be bad.

Thanks, y'all. Even when I posted this, I thought it might sound like so much self-indulgent navel-gazing bullshit, so I appreciate the support.

In Circe's defense, she said what she said during a period in my life when it was true...I wrote meaningful stuff early in my blog, and then for a while I stopped because the stuff I wanted to talk about wasn't for public consumption. And then Katrina happened, and the game changed for all of us, permanently.

And Greg, sorry about the paranoia. You remember what it was like, though. Us JD kids, we were the emo kids of our generation, objects of ridicule by the "normies" in the punk/indie world, the ones who seemed to effortlessly skate through life with energy and confidence. I suppose I should have given you more credit than that. And when you see the movie, it's gonna whomp you upside your head.

Since you started with a musical theme, a little musical hug:

And he's kind of like a poet
Who finds it hard to speak
Poems come so slowly
Like the colors down a sheet

He opens his mouth to speak and
What comes out's a mystery
Thought about, not understood
He's achin' to be

And I guess my answer to you could be encapsulated as:

I've been achin' for a while now, friend
I've been achin' hard for years...

For a longer answer:

I think this is a struggle for many, many writers. I struggle with it myself. I didn't when I was younger. Now, after many things have happened it's a bit like having had one's voice taken away, after you remember having it.

Except I'm finally getting it isn't taken away in the end. The voice IS there, and no one took it away except me. And that's weird to realize--that I'm the only one who's *really* invested in ensuring I keep my own mouth sealed shut.

For me, I think I'm slowly coming to feel that there's a fear there. A fear that keeps the block on and that has kept me feeling like I've been opening my mouth to say something and no sound can come out. I've told myself many a time it's really about consideration of other people's feelings, or just being too busy/overwhelmed with other mundane-but-necessary life things to get around to speaking up. But, I'm slowly beginning to realize it's less about that than that I'm fucking terrified to speak my truths out loud (a.k.a., write). And that ultimately, far more than protecting others' feelings, it's about the fear of my *own* feelings--fear of what will happen to ME if I say what I *really* feel, rather than spout off someone else's brand of truth (or just keep myself shut the fuck up and do neither). Fear of what will happen to *me* if someone chooses to be hurt by how I feel, or how I express myself.

Slowly over time in situations other than writing ones, I've begun to say things to people I never thought I would say--telling them how I feel when I've been terrified to do so, and of what the outcome would be. And through that, I've discovered that nothing can happen to me unless I choose it to happen. And nothing can happen to me that I can't be okay with if I'm ready to be okay with it, or work to be okay with it. I've found, MUCH to my surprise, that speaking honestly can't and doesn't destroy me or those around me. And that in fact, although the initial conversations weren't always happy, often the people I thought I would most hurt by being honest with have ended up telling me they've been waiting for years for someone to just come out and say something, because they weren't brave enough to do it themselves.

In almost all instances so far when I've spoken authentically and honestly without any intention to hurt, but just to express my own feelings and needs, it has brought me so many good things. My life has improved vastly as a result. And even in situations where the outcome wasn't as great I had desired, I found I wasn't as scared and hurt and feeling empty as I thought I would be--certainly not nearly as much as I had been when I just sat there depressed over it but saying nothing. And my recovery was much faster and much stronger.

So I'm thinking, this is something I might want to apply to my writing and formal creative expression, too--the last big fear I've not tackled.

There are certainly legitimate reasons for me to have these fears I spoke about. And there are dangers involved with either choice--speak up or keep silent. But are there benefits to both? To me, if i'm going to be 100% honest, while both have drawbacks, the benefits seem solely on one side.

So Ray, as one writer to another: Given the choice between screaming into a void with no sound for the rest of our lives, or getting to speak in our own voices and allowing people (including the people we love) to know us, really KNOW us, and how we feel...

Who you gonna call?

I guess I'm getting a lot more solid on which of those two choices I think I want. It's scary as hell, and it's gonna be hard to figure out how to do it, when I'm so used to the other way of doing things, but hell...I've been through a lot of shit. Compared to feeling depressed and without any voice or power at all, I suspect this will feel like a breeze.

For me, it's catharsis through blogging. So mine is more of an annotated encyclopaedia than a brochure. That's not necessarily a good thing, either.

Hey, I have similar issues with blogging.

I just want to tell you: It's OK to write stuff that's not OK for some people to read. That's what pen names are for. That's what private/restricted entries are for. That's what *fiction* is for.

I don't know you beyond a comment you made in a blog I read, and this post I just read in your blog, but somehow I imagine right now you're shaking your head and saying, "Yes, I know that, but..." so I'm going to say it one more time:

It is OK to write stuff that's not OK for some people to read.

Not only can writers NOT get good with the superego in charge, writers can also not get good without some validation, endorsement, and unconditional approval. So, here I am, a total stranger, coming to tell you: You're OK. Go on and write the things.

Hell, if you have to, you can email them to me to read. I don't know your life, I don't know your friends, or your kids, or any of that. I wouldn't know if you were sending me fact or fiction anyway.

I understand what you mean. It's why I started blogging, to write about those things that were so painful, so difficult, that there was no talking about them, at least not any longer ('cause folks had tired of listening and therapists wouldn't keep me past a couple of years unless I, well, left him). I never got it done (writing about *that* on my blog), finding myself somehow unable to put it out there even when no one was reading. When I try to ficitionalize it all, well, it's still recognizable for those who matter and it's so extreme that it's not believable. I can't write fiction anyway, either.

Finally, I'm with Leigh'n'em. I know brochure blog and this is no brochure blog.

You be da Ray.