The Theater of My Brain

I drive a lot for work, which means I spend a lot of time alone, in a car, with nothing but top 40 radio and my own thoughts.  Music always gets my brain working, the songs creating a narrative in my head.  The narrative may get replayed or rewritten, but it is constantly evolving, moving, shifting, growing.  When the music stops, and I sit down to write, the story continues to carry the beats that formed it.

I love my time in the car.  I've done most of my plotting for the stories on this blog during my drives.  The stories grow and take form as I rush from courthouse to courthouse.  Not all the stories I create end up on the blog.  Not all of them get written.  

The ones that do get written, the ones that I don't know what to do with, sit unfinished in a folder on my computer, waiting for the day when they pop back into my brain, and the story becomes something solid, ready to be born.  That doesn't always happen.  Some of those stories may never amount to anything more than just a few pages.

I don't let the fact that a story doesn't take form stop me though.  I press on, onto the next story, onto the next drama that my brain has formulated.  It took me years and years before I could ever even complete a major project that I started, and even now, it isn't always a given.  Writing takes energy.  It takes more energy then people even realize.  It can fill you up with joy and excitement, while also draining your mind.  Writing takes time, something that I seem to have less and less of as I get older.  Writing takes passion, which seems to be my driving force.  Not a passion to make it, or be recognized, but to get the world of my sometimes dark and twisted, sometimes goofy, sometimes playful mind out onto the page, and out into the world.

I don't let the failures or the stalled ideas stop me though.  I love this too much to let it stop me.  I don't write this blog to gain fans.  I write this blog to share something I love with those who are willing to listen.  If that is one person or one hundred people, I am just grateful that someone has taken the time, that precious and limited commodity, out of their day to even glance at something I have made.  If no one looks, then it just there for me to enjoy, to create, to release.

Life is never easy.  As I approach thirty, my life looking nothing like I had planned, I still find myself drawn to writing and creating.  When I was younger I dreamed of being the next great horror author, but now the success doesn't matter.  I can find success elsewhere in my life.  That doesn't mean the writing will stop.  That just means that I can remove the pressure to succeed, and replace it with the joy of creation.  So what if I will never be as good as King, or even Koontz or Saul? I yearn to tell stories, and so that is what I do.  I do it because I love it, because no matter what, my brain will create stories and characters and worlds, and I will take great pleasure into putting those thoughts into words.

Even this post has been bubbling up in my brain.  Originally I had intended it to be a slice of advice, but soon I realized that I am not in a position to give advice.  I am not a teacher, but a student.  I am still learning, and will always be learning, listening and growing.  If I have any advice to give it would be this:

Do what you love.  Do it not because it will bring you wealth, success or fame, but because it will bring you joy.  Do it because it is yours, your gift, your art, your creation, a child of your thoughts and dreams.  If it brings you success, fame or wealth, then great.  If not, then it is still great, because it is yours, a part of you.  Don't do it so that others will praise you.  Others are fickle.  Others can, and most likely will, tell you to do something else, something worthwhile.  Know that your passion, your drive, is worthwhile, if not for them, than at least for you.