We writers are a strange breed. We spend quite a lot of time being different people, in different places, doing different things. I have been every race under the sun, I have been nearly every occupation, and I have drifted from being the kindest of hearts to the most vile and repugnant of them all. I feel that to truly write a good story you must become your characters, and not just your heroes either. Now of course this doesn’t mean I occupy my time kicking kittens and popping balloons when I’m writing a villain, but I do take the time to seclude myself and get into the head of each of my characters, living as them, breathing as them, dying as them.

There’s a movie Will Farrell was in, Stranger Than Fiction, which I regrettably never got to finish but enjoyed immensely nonetheless. In that movie, the writer therein would make common practice of becoming every experience she was writing, culminating in my favorite scene, the “dying” scene. The writer is stuck in that she is trying desperately to find the right way to kill her protagonist, and spends much of the movie in various states of “death”. One of my favorite scenes has her standing barefoot on the edge of her coffee table. The woman who is supposed to be helping to motivate her and keep her on task walks into the room and asks what she’s doing. The writer replies “I’m going to kill myself” and after gathering her nerve, jumps off of the table. A few moments later she declares “No, that’s not it either” and sets about finding a new way to “end her life”. Another favorite has the writer standing in a powerful rainstorm, contemplating the sensation of drowning. To me, these are some of the purist representations of the place many writers take themselves when creating the most authentic of works.

I try not to work on a novel when anyone else is in my house. I’m routinely walking, jogging or running up and down the hallway and bounding all over the room depending on what the circumstance demands. I speak in no fewer than three different languages, most of them in human tongue, at varying pitches and octaves with varying levels of ferocity and timidity. I speak and act the parts of heroes, villains, boys and girls. Humans, aliens, angels, devils, all of them. On rare occasion I’ll let an extremely curious friend in on small parts of my creative process, but have to date shown no one the process in totality.

Writing is a very private and intimate thing. Writing is a very public and outspoken thing. Writing simply is.

I spend a lot of my time contemplating worsts. Depending on the type of story I’m working on, as I lay still and “dive”, I contemplate what the worst something is. One of those worsts is pain. Not physical, rather spiritual, emotional and psychological. In the stories of others, whether a novel, an anime, a movie or a video game, I am always looking to feel something. I’m very off put by media that makes me feel nothing. That isn’t to say I don’t enjoy, say, Expendables 2 for instance (which makes me feel quite a broad range of things to be truthful :D), and I’m far from the critic who decries any media that is not “artsy” and “avant garde”, but I need to feel something. I once spent an entire day listening to four hundred different versions of “Cry Me a River” trying to find one that made me feel on the level I was looking for. I haven’t quite found the sound I’m looking for, but Susan Boyle has a lovely rendition.

There are times that I ponder what is the worst pain or most frustrating pain to find oneself in. I can’t really put into words my interest in that anymore than I can in the macabre, dissonant or whatever else is in between, but it’s something that makes me curious nonetheless. I think that, in many ways as writers we use our novels as a catharsis  as a means to push through our struggles, celebrate the joys of the world, or simply experience something unique, different and new.

There are some stories, such as Epsilon’s Eclipse that I write simply because I desire to challenge myself, to see if I can write something that seems quite impossible to do with a Christian emphasis. There are other stories such as The Ballad of the Damned that I write because of an interest in the genre. There are other stories, such as The Blackest Rain, that come to life because I needed an outlet for my struggles at the time, and writing is how the world makes sense to me.

I would like to take this time to state quite clearly that this world makes very little sense to me; it is simultaneously uninteresting and the most interesting thing in existence, and filled with both the most wretched examples of life, and the most wonderful caricatures thereof. In short, the world is a beautiful ugly awful wonderful place that is very exciting to experience each turn anew.

Writing helps me gain perspective and push through certain experiences. I pondered this evening the question of what I find to be the most awful or deepest of pains. If you asked me this question two years ago (was it two? I honestly stopped counting quite a bit ago), I would say that one of the deepest pains that can be inflicted upon you is that of caring for someone more than they care for you. Today, I think the most frustrating one is feeling as though you cannot be heard.

Something of this difficulty can be seen in More Than a Fairytale Book 1: Xea’s Story. The protagonist has a very rocky relationship with their parents, and an all but nonexistent one with their sister. In this novel we see Xea struggling to deal with a very painful secret in the past, as well as a family in which there is nothing in common and very little to relate to. The relationship we see between father and child in particular is a quite difficult one for Xea to reconcile and push through, and the relationship between siblings is one in which communication has little to no weight, bearing or possibility.

I think the most frustrating thing is feeling as though what you have to say doesn’t matter, or that the person you wish to say it to simply won’t listen, change or budge. Now, in many situations this is actually quite easy to deal with. Aggravating though it my be, you can always walk away from a friend or significant other. Well, unless you’re married. Then you’d best find a way to work that out! Ah, but I digress, in a friend or a boyfriend/girlfriend you can simply decide enough is enough and part ways either for a time or something more permanent. This becomes more complicated when the individual whom you feel you matter very little to is say, a boss or family member.

Before anyone takes this out of context, my boss is super mega awesome.

I have both been recently and in the past in one of the less desirable scenarios, as have many of my friends, and to put it frankly, it sucks. I think that the more you love, adore or look up to and respect the individual, the more infuriating the situation becomes. You begin a downward spiral in which you feel your best is never good enough, you rack your brain constantly trying to find the right thing to say, you feel like it’s impossible to speak to the person about anything that upsets you or hurts you, because you feel that individual simply doesn’t care. Perhaps you’ve tried, perhaps that person only responds to you with anger, or an antagonistic tone. Perhaps experience has taught you that no matter what you do it will not be received, or met with ridicule. Perhaps you’ve explored every option that you can imagine, and yet something beyond you feeling worse than when you began yet eludes you.

What’s the solution?

*shrug*

Heaven if I know!

That’s the wonderful thing about being human; not a one of us has all of the answers. Part of why I write the books that I do, beyond spreading the gospel in an innovative way and spinning a good yarn, is because I figure there’s no such thing as new pain under the sun. If you’re experiencing something awful, chances are someone else in the world has and is as well. If you have no idea what to do about it, I can guarantee you that there are hundreds, even thousands of others that a grasping at quicksand just as gravely as you are. I figure, for the pains that I’ve figured out, perhaps someone else can read my novels and figure something out too. If nothing else, perhaps they’ll see that life goes on, and it does get better.

If I haven’t figured it out, well, at least you know you’re not the only one going through it!

I have learned quite strongly if nothing else in my life, you can’t force someone to change or to listen. For those people that you can do something about, perhaps it’s time to do something about. For those that you can’t, well…

A little prayer goes a long way. Good evening everyone, be blessed and may God watch over you all.

-Eugene W.
a.k.a. Xeawn R.