How I got my start as a writer
I have had a bit of time to reflect these past few days, as I’m sure many of us have. I’m not going to speak directly to the pandemic in this blog post, except to say that wherever we can, it would behoove us to be loving in what we do. That’s not just for today - that’s pretty much a prescription for a life well-lived, I think. As for practical advice, I am trusting this one to the experts and following their directives.
Which means lots of time to read and write! Given that you’re probably in the same boat, I’ve got a long form little story here, one that might be of interest if you are considering whether you would like to pursue art.
So, writing. How does anyone get attracted to any form of expression? Consider a person who has creative expression inside but it is still dormant. Is it random chance that this person who has yet to discover their creative outlet stumbles upon a paintbrush or a writing pad or a bit of modeling clay? Or is there something deeper there? A personal path calling to us? A destiny that awaits? You know, this chicken and egg thing between free will and fate has been dogging philosophers for millennia, but I suppose since you’re here, I’ll tell you what I think.
Are people born to do certain things? I believe so. Artists have a job to do, and it’s a job that’s just as important for humanity as a carpenter’s or an engineer’s or a doctor’s. But, like those types of vocations, there has to be some work on the part of the person involved. Duty can be shirked - and in the case of our souls, the shirking is to the detriment of the shirker (damn, love that word ‘shirk’).
I was a dyed-in-the-wool shirker as a kid. Just ask my mother - I was impossible to reason with. I wanted to do sweet fuck all and I wanted to do it now. I wanted to play video games, read books, get lost in my imagination. Looking back on it now, it makes perfect sense that this was the way that I was as a child. I was doing what I loved - turning inward and casting off into the wild vistas of imaginary worlds.
But there was a dark side to my shirking. I didn’t do the work I was supposed to do. I kept putting things off and being lazy. If earnestness in my imagination was my virtue, sloth was most definitely my Achilles heel. I was intelligent enough that I didn’t have to try very hard in school. Some years I got straight As, but usually there were Bs thrown in there as well. How many times did my mother get exasperated with me for getting Bs when even the slightest modicum of work would have seen me succeed?
I know - what a problem to have. I am very grateful to have been blessed with my brain, but I did still have problems. No matter what advantages we have in this world, we are each still subject to the great equalizer that is the human condition. No one gets away scot-free - no one. Just look at any story about someone with advantages - there is always a dark side, always a demon to fight against (thanks for teaching us empathy, artists!)
For me, my demon was my sloth. But while I was shirking (there’s that beauty of a word again) my duties, I was doing some pretty important formative work. I was developing a love for fantasy fiction.
My earliest memory is that of watching the old cartoon version of The Hobbit on a little CRT television in my parents’ starter home. There are a couple of other ones floating around that time, but it is seared in my mind like a tattoo. Why that one, though? Why was something seemingly so insignificant obviously of such import that I can remember it above all others?
Again, chicken or egg? Do I remember it now because I have become a writer of fantasy fiction? Or was it that my path always was to become a writer and I just had to do the walking?
As the years wore on, my taste for fantasy gained breadth. I got into video games like King’s Quest and Baldur’s Gate, I read all kind of books, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I watched every fantasy movie when it was released. It wasn’t just fantasy, of course. I tasted of all kinds of artistic delights - horror was a close second love of mine. But fantasy was always my first and most beloved.
I tried writing when I was younger. I have a very clear memory (again, see the pattern?) of picking up one of those old ubiquitous Hilroy notebooks and scribbling out a page and a half long story, some nonsensical dreck about aliens or some such. Pardon my French, but it was horrifique. I must have been seven years old at the time. I read what I had written, put the pen and paper down, and didn’t pick it up for a few years.
I can remember the next two abortive attempts at writing. Both were for school, and both got pretty abysmal grades. I had thought they were so good, and my teachers dropped steaming piles upon them.
This was my first taste of Resistance, that force in the universe that puts a wall up in front of us and tells us ‘no’ (credit where credit is due - I learned that term from Steven Pressfield, whom I will get to in a moment). Resistance is a part of nature - it is the whetstone against which we have to grind ourselves into better versions of ourselves. It is a catalyst for growth and it is a despicable fucking liar. It tells us we can’t when we can, and it is very convincing. Still, I didn’t know my arsehole from my elbow at the time, so I just gave up (shirkers make unbelievably talented up givers).
Life continued, of course. Owing to my nature as an indoor kid, I gained weight because all I ever wanted to do was shirk. I wasn’t really drawn to anything else (except, to a lesser extent, music). I hated sports, hated exercise, hated doing anything that wasn’t reading or playing video games or hanging out with friends to do the same. Still, there came a day (after puberty, of course ;-)) when I discovered that I wanted to become a more social animal.
Resistance came up again. When I was trying to lose weight, I gave up. Over and over. Countless times did I give up. I gave up Atkins, I gave up running, I gave up going to the gym. I gave up swimming. I gave up and up and up and up and up… until the day that I didn’t.
I was twenty-two. I had just been accepted into law school. It was February. I had read a book about eating properly and exercising. I was primed. And so I did it. I actually did it. By the time I went to law school in September, I barely recognized myself. I had actually beaten a demon.
I’m not going to lie. I still struggle with my weight. It fluctuates - up and down throughout the year. Sometimes I’m out of shape, sometimes I’m in good shape. It’s a part of life - I might rail against it some days, but I have largely accepted it.
Still, that was just one battle. What about my desire to become a writer - what about beating my demon in that arena? The call of my heart was still there, wasn’t it? I couldn’t be sure - I was doing my damnedest to drown it out with booze and partying.
We come to a darker element of the story. When I got into adulthood, I discovered these things. For a shirker, the shirking that comes with the oblivion of alcohol is without question seductive. There are a number of people who have much darker experiences with booze than me, and I am grateful that my rock bottom was relatively shallow compared to others.
See, Resistance loves drinking and partying. It loves the path of least Resistance - it adores it when you don’t fight. Resistance loves it when you don’t do what you’re supposed to do. It is a highest order motherfucker, and it is deceptive and tricky and all of the things that we lay at the feet of the antagonist characters in our myths. As I gave into the seduction of the easy way, I was bringing myself closer and closer to a tipping point that I did not know was there.
I became anxious and depressed as law school wore on. I was prescribed pills and told to get over it. I was offered some other supports but nothing really ever worked for me. So I drifted deeper into a hell realm where all of the colour seemed to have been drained from my world.
I just shiver when I think back on that phase of my life.
Sadness will always be an element of human life - it’s inescapable that we have down days and days when we do not always feel the best. But there comes a time in a dormant artist’s life when they have got to say ‘enough is enough’ or suffer the consequences of not doing what they are supposed to be doing. We can numb the call of our own hearts for only so long before it comes knocking on the door with a sledgehammer.
For me, I didn’t even know what I was doing when I heard Amber Lyon’s story about ayahuasca on one of Joe Rogan’s podcasts. I didn’t know that this all ultimately was related to the fact that I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing, i.e. shirking my soul’s duty. I just knew I barely recognized myself (in a bad way this time) and heard, ‘here’s a person who has suffered from similar unhappiness to me, flew to Peru, and found some lasting relief.’
The fear that accompanied my decision to follow in Ms. Lyon’s footsteps was indescribable. It was a terrifying concept - go to the jungle to do drugs? That’s going to fix me? My parents were appalled when they discovered my plan. Owing to a recent breakup, I was living in their basement again and my father told me, “I don’t know how to stop you aside from physically restraining you.” Still, I persevered. I did not let the fear stop me. I got on the plane.
And it turned out I had made the best decision of my life.
I’m not going to tell you what ayahuasca is here, aside from perhaps letting you know that the word is Quechua and it means ‘the vine of the soul.’ For me, that is an apt description. It reconnected me with my true nature - but it was not a one way street. As soon as I came back, I knew I had to put my life back together.
I started making little choices that made a difference, little examples of victory over Resistance. One of my first great oeuvres was making butter chicken for my family after I returned home from Peru. Nothing crazier than that - but for a self-interested person who had his head so far up his own butt that he couldn’t see those around him, it was a start. Then onto other big feats, like doing the dishes for my family. I also picked up a regular yoga practice and became deeply interested in philosophical and spiritual works, especially writing by Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, and Paulo Coelho.
And I finally got serious about writing. I learned about Resistance and The War of Art from Steven Pressfield - because make no mistake, it is a war. The enemy is tireless and will do everything to stop you - try to get you to choose video games, sex, drugs, television - anything but doing the work you’re supposed to be doing. The only problem for the shadowy bastard that is Resistance is that his quiver will always have one less arrow than the ones that we carry. Our own grit and determination is something that will always beat Resistance, and it was a lesson I had started to learn. I learned it once with losing weight. Why not writing? Would the same refusal to quit that had seen me shed all of the weight that had been dogging me all those years, would that finally help me to make my dream of becoming a writer come true?
Never giving up included pulling out my laptop and getting my write on every morning. Rain or shine, desire or no, I put on my war helmet and strapped myself in. I sat down, put my hands to the keyboard, and typed.
It was garbage, most of it. By that I mean that there was too much interference. What I mean by that is this: everyone who is literate has the ability to write sentences. Most people can express themselves. Actually writing, though, is something different. It has less to do with putting words on paper and more to do with allowing words to come through. But when you’re a day or two into your writing career and everything is absolutely terrible you have a hard time believing that you’ll ever become good at it. That’s where perseverance comes in.
Of course, there needs to be a development of the other helpful abilities - an expansion of vocabulary and a learned understanding of certain elements of story. But that all kind of happens synergistically. Like threads on a loom, if we don’t stop, if we don’t quit, eventually the different elements of a writer weave together and an artist is born.
I mentioned that artists are born before. Well, in reality, we’re born twice: once when we come into the world, and again when we discover the treasure in our hearts and are able to express it at last. At least, that was my experience. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is evidence that at least one other person had a very similar experience. The more I look at other writers and their accounts of their journeys (as well as all of Joseph Campbell’s work about The Hero’s Journey), the more I realize that it’s been happening all around me, since I was a kid and before. There are a million different names for it: I think Steven Pressfield calls this rebirth ‘going pro?’
The thing is, before I had this rebirth experience, I didn’t know what I wanted to write, although I knew that I did want to write. What did I have to say? I had tried writing Lovecraftian short fiction, mostly. I tried a personal account of my experiences in Peru. I had a crazy experience writing out The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho, chapter for chapter with a story of my own that will never see the light of day. But none of it was good, none of felt real. None of it had that bit of je ne sais quoi (OK, that’s enough of the French).
The moment I knew how to write was the moment that what I wanted to write came to me: The Yoga Trilogy. A series of three fantasy books filled with mythological symbols that would be an engaging story first, philosophical treatise second. The first one, The Yoga of Strength, would be all about what I went through: the transformation of potential into a self-actualized human being. Only told on a backdrop of a fantasy world.
My truth about random chance and fate was expressed beautifully by Paulo Coelho once. He said that we choose our destinies, but our fates are sealed. We can choose to sit on our butts and not do the work that we know in our hearts that we are supposed to do. And maybe, after a while, our hearts will stop beating on the drum and cease asking us to follow them into the great unknown. We will simply survive the rest of our lives, eating and sleeping and shagging our ways to death’s door.
But life - the real kind - the one that’s messy and unpredictable and, dare I say it, fun - that needs us to play along. It needs us to learn about courage. It needs us to learn that strength of will is not something handed to us on a silver platter - we have to earn our fucking keeps.
And what a goddamned beautiful keep it turns out to be.
This is for anyone who thinks they want to pursue an artistic calling: you are the lord or lady of your own castle of imagination, but you have to build it by your own hard work and dedication. Awaiting you is a towering structure of creation that will allow you to feel truly happy for the first time in your life. If ever there has been a time to pursue an artistic calling - now is it.
We’re all self-isolating and though it is definitely a time to rest and indulge in Netflix and video games and other pursuits, think about setting aside a bit of time to pick up the guitar, the paintbrush, the whatever. You will stumble, you will fall, you will fuck up. But all you have to do is pick yourself up. Just one more time.
If you have anything to say about what I’ve written, please leave a comment below! I’d love to hear your thoughts!