“Occasionally, never, when I’m in the mood, if I’m moved, only if I remember,” when it comes to writing I hear every excuse as to why you don’t…and yet, each experience improperly and untimely laid out during this daily adventure has the ingredients that could, may, might, quite possibly invite influence or inspiration to another person’s tough time or bad day.
Justin Halpern lives with his 74 year old father; something about getting old gives you a legal license to say whatever you want, whenever you want. Justin’s decision was to share with the world. Not only did **** My Father Said not only turned Social Media wanter’s into Twitter users but this Fall the book becomes a sitcom starring William Shatner.
The Meryl Streep film Julia and Julie began as a weekly blog; a common everyday woman who found pleasure in cooking challenged herself to bring Julia Child’s eloquent dishes to life then document it on the World Wide Web.
In the past five years Blogging has become a writer’s paradise; an avenue of release without having to worry about editors, publishers, bookstores and walking through a flea market and spotting your work now selling for a nickel. Blogging has very delicately welcomed the shy, easily embarrassed, the timid, fearful, the ghosts and over willing into a theater of: This is me and I’m going to shove every rule about writing to the side and write like I speak. Mark Twain is a great example of why you should always be you as a writer.
Having such a place to perform has unlocked lives. Feel creatively constipated and bloated? Write! Had a great weekend filled with love or misguided adventure? Write! Can’t believe the way your boss is treating you and it’s turned you into a drug abusing alcoholic with no hope for tomorrow? Write! On the opposite end of your writing instrument isn’t a sheet of paper I call a once living tree…there’s a pair of eyes that need to know they aren’t alone.
Julia Cameron couldn’t have said it better when she penned out, “You were born to write. You have the right to write.”
Blogging is an incredible new beginning. It’s a platform to display your art so you can learn to ignore criticism. (Another Julia Cameron-ism)
Because writing is becoming a valuable tool again…what can’t be lost are the stories you wish to share. Those are the tiny torn pages from a notebook you used in school uncaringly thrown into a box now sleeping in the attic. Sleeping not dead. But! But! Who would want to read my stupid childhood chicken scratches? Who would want to travel along with the imagination belonging to a timid half witted hard working employee who writes every now and then because it’s like getting lost in the words of a great novel except you’re the creator of the final page?
Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com have paved the way for authors, performers, singers, songwriters and other creative outlets to make it to the shelves of where reading is going…digital.
The Ipod’s of books isn’t just the Nook and Kindle…your cell phone can latch onto a free AP that’ll connect you to a world of storytelling. Now you can be a part of it. The walls of discomfort have fallen. The reasons and purposes that forced you to hide your works of writing art no longer have silence to look forward to.
In 1977, while fighting hard to stay interested in high school I wrote a Rock n Roll novel called Halloween 78; the original handwritten in pencil collection of words about a teenage garage band who makes it famous due to a stupid stunt sits heavily protected in a weather proofed box because I knew one day it would be released but because of my addiction to radio, the writer in me was forced to think only of 30 and 60 second commercials you tune out of.
My first book published wasn’t the one I wanted to be remembered for but I was playing a game called, “Publisher wants…publisher gets.” Although the book has been read by people from India to Russia and somewhere in central Carolina…the joy of writing and getting published still hasn’t set in. In fact it’s blocked me from keeping future work from reaching bookshelves.
I still wrote but just like 48 billion other writers, the written was quickly hid totally forgetting the idea that writers and what they create isn’t supposed to be about me but a willing passerby who needed something to push them through the next level of play. It doesn’t matter what you write, every word that moves through you has the strength to make it to those wandering eyes.
When my books began to appear on Amazon.com it seemed like, “Whoa…is this dude just writing to write?” No…this dude’s had these books sitting in a farm yard barn ready for publishing for three decades completely bathed in goober amounts of the same fear that keeps artists away from displaying their unexplained reasons for writing.
Now that digital books have begun to make their way onto a readers path…the new journey has grown wings allowing writers who’ve been hidden for a lifetime to step outside their normal way of breathing to share what could become the next great novel.
After 32 years, two marriages, nine radio stations, eight dogs, a cat and several birds I call my Jazz singers…Halloween 78 will be released this fall. It’ll sit next to the multitude of self help books that carry my name for no reason other than to say, “It’s time to give away what doesn’t rightfully belong to me…a story.”
If you write or want to write then do it but don’t be like an artist who puts paint on a canvas and expect to charge astronomical amounts of money for something that was given to you for the sole purpose of sharing with the universe. I’ve been at war with the music companies of the world for charging $17.99 for a compact disc then $100 for a concert ticket. In this age of new beginnings for writers…be a true pioneer and keep the prices extremely cheap because the more readers you collect, the bigger the chances one of them will reach into the future to change another life.
You are the messenger and the day of bringing what you hear to life for the world to see has arrived. I am so proud of the words you’ve written and hidden but its now time to let it go for the world to hold. Now you can finally get back to breathing and from it new words will begin to play with your imagination and that’s where a writer's life begins.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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