Lucidity or Nocturnal Emissions

At 3am last night I finally felt like a writer. This is something that I never really appreciated before. Up until now, I had always just sort of written words on paper or typed them in to a word processor.

Occasionally I would release them in to the world at random and without much thought. This did not make me a writer. It made me the same as everyone else, I just happened to be a bit more long winded and pedantic about what I wrote on the internet. 

In the last two weeks, I have been procrastinating editing my first true manuscript. I am now sure exactly why I was completely fearful of editing. Part of it was a complete lack of confidence. 

The only person who read it is someone who is contractually obligated to support me, even when I am being a bit overreaching. This of course meant I would not see any positive feedback as useful, and would see any negative feedback as a veiled attempt to tell me it sucked monkey butt. I was convinced what I had wrote was trash worthy; a story full of holes and meanderings with stupid imagery that no one would care to actually pay to read.

I was prepared to hit the delete button and scrap the whole thing. Put lighter to paper on the one copy my stupid printer worked long enough to spit out.

Last night, I changed my mind. Last night, I convinced myself that maybe I am a writer, and that come whatever may (great album by the way), I should transcend my own insecurities and go for it. 

I had a writer’s dream. I had one of those half lucid dreams where you start to realize you are dreaming, but the story is a good one, so you start making the people in your dream do things based on what might be a bit more interesting. It isn’t a full lucid dream, it is more like conscious dreaming. 

Think of it as, dreaming is normally like when you are acting on emotion instead of thought. You might even know what you are doing is wrong, but you really aren’t in control. Now think of my writer’s dream as more of a thinking process. I had that feeling of thinking out the next scene or what will be said. This is what I call a writer’s dream. The thinking may be at the same instant as what is happening, so you aren’t forming a thought and then seeing an image react to that thought. It is also a dream that you aren’t in. I was an observer, not an actor, watching the story unfold. I think this is different than normal dream. In normal dreams, even if you are not you, you are still a character in them, but in a writer’s dream you are the audience and the narrator.

I awoke at the end of the story, and immediately got out of bed to urinate, because I am old. Then I went and found a special notebook I was saving, for what purpose I had no idea. Sorry for that, but I had to break up the cliche of bolting upright and running to do important writer things. Ok, aside aside, a notebook. I was discussing a special notebook.

A friend had made this notebook for me. While she did not kill the deer it was made from, she did cure the hide and formed it in to a a binding and even etched my initials and whatnot. A beautiful gift indeed. It had sat untouched in my bag or on my desk for months. I would trot it out at gaming sessions, writing sessions, and even just stare at it from time to time when I was procrastinating with video games or pointless internet chatter.

Last night, I found a purpose for it. I would write my story ideas in it. That is what I did. I spent half an hour jotting down notes on theme and plot, and some characterization. That last part amounted to a note that said something about Rachel Leigh Cook from Josie and the Pussycats. I am almost embarrassed to write those words. Anyway, the point is, I think I became a writer last night.

It wasn’t the first time I had had one of these dreams. Heck, the manuscript I just wrote started as one of those dreams more than ten years ago. Most of the time, the dreams die, and fade and I stick to my safe and comfortable day job of being bullied by eight year-olds.

And now for the part that includes you, dear reader. All too often we hide our fears away in some box in a closet, or in a random notebook. Then we go take on our day, never to fully realize, or even attempt to be who we are. We hide our true selves away in this cocoon of a safety blanket so that we are not vulnerable to the whims of others.

Walk around your workplace, or even your social setting. How often do we respond with “I’m good, how are you,” when we aren’t good, when we are everything but good or ok? We do not show ourselves, be it to coworkers or even friends.

I know for a fact a friend is going through hard times and everytime I ask I get, the usual response. It makes me sad inside every time that it happens, because it means even with people we consider friends, we avoid being vulnerable and weak.

I am afraid of criticism, but more than that, I am afraid of obscurity. I am afraid of putting my heart and soul in to something, only to sell 4 copies to friends and family. I doubt even my mother will buy a copy.

I worry about making my writerness vulnerable to the world, as we all worry about making our true feelings vulnerable in conversation. That I think, is the reason I had put off editing and making a better draft of my story. It meant telling someone I was not ok. It meant saying, “not great.” It meant making myself open and vulnerable, like taking of a scraf in winter and allowing the wind to sand blast your face.

Why is that an issue? Because what if the person just does that simpering, “oh, sorry to hear that, now how about those TPS reports, and I need to see your WENIS by Friday.”

We put ourselves out there, and get nothing back in return.That is the feeling I am hiding from. It is a type of loneliness that I am not sure I can handle.

I have a friend who is a poet. He has brass something or others the size of something large because he is putting his work out there all the time. Sometimes it gets published and sometimes it does not. The thing is, he is willing to make himself vulnerable to all of the rejection and harshness of criticism. I like to think I have that level of courage, that I am not too afraid of the criticism of rejection to do anything about it.

The thing about his story that gives me pause though was when he told me about not even hearing back from a publisher. That is my fear. I am afraid that I won’t get anything more than a blank stare back when I put myself out there.

But, let’s you and I make a deal. I will try very hard to do what I set out to do, and be me, a writer. A person who tries to organize their ramblings into coherent thought. You try hard to be more honest about who you are with people.

Instead of telling people you like Star Wars because it is the safe, socially acceptable answer, tell people you like Josie and the Pussycats, even if it is kind of a dumb comic book movie about barbie the punk rocker. That is when real conversation can happen. That is when you can find out about each other.

I am going to start editing today. I am going to do a second draft before Christmas. I am going to have a third, and possibly final draft a week in to the new year. Then, by end of february, whether traditional or self, I am going to publish that nonesense. 

Also, buy my book or I will cry.

And that is the moment I became a writer. I just tried marketing my book through emotional manipulation. 

What are you going to do to try and be more the real you?