Hello, friends.
I took my father to another appointment this week, which meant an afternoon of work on the book and lots of sleeping. It’s kind of crazy how tired I get lately. It’s likely the depression as well as the other things going on as an overweight middle-age guy. The week itself seemed pretty good though the anxiety is still through the roof. Teaching in this time period is not for the faint-of-heart.
Well, nothing in this time period is for the faint-of heart.
But we persevere. What else can we do?
Welcome to the 115th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and courageously creating.
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Anyway, let’s go!
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Project: Amusement Park’s progress continues. I revised nearly 100 pages this week and took out just over 2,000 words. There was need for a little clarification in places and adding a little bit of new elements. I’ve got about 45 pages left. If everything goes as I hope, I’ll finish revising the novel tomorrow. Then I’ll go through, add some foreshadowing in the earlier chapters, and will be done. Beta readers get their turn with the piñata.
I do Daily Progress updates on Patreon where I get into more detail about the work than I do here for the weekly updates. Because I didn’t get to work on the novel Friday, I ended up posting some inking I’ve been practicing.
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I’m afraid of almost everything. It’s one of the reasons, I think, that I’m drawn to the horror genre and why I’ve found a home for my writing there. I also think it’s one of the things I like about superhero and other kinds of fantastic and adventure stories (I nearly wrote fantasy stories but didn’t want you to confuse my love of all kinds of fantastic tales to be a love of elves, orcs, and wizards. I have nothing against those things, but I’m thinking Star Wars more than Lord of the Rings). The fantastic stories and in adventure stories, heroes are often afraid but try it anyway, thereby succeeding. There is one avenue, though, that I’ve never really found fear, or at least not as consuming as it can be. That is in creativity.
I’ve been making up stories my whole life. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was concocting a story as the doctor pulled me out of the womb. “Pretend those hands are a monster and I need to fight it to stay in this nice, warm, place.” I didn’t always write those stories, but when I played it was always with a story in mind. I would mimic the TV shows or movies that were a part of my life.
For instance, I didn’t know that Ben Kenobi going to turn off the Death Star’s tractor beam and then confronting Darth Vader was a subplot to Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca rescuing Princess Leia Organa, or that C-3PO and R2-D2 hiding from Imperial Stormtroopers was another sublot to those other two adventures, but I knew they happened and that the movie would take me to one thing and then another, and that it always switched where it was when things were getting really interesting or bad.
So when I played with my action figures, it wasn’t uncommon for me to have this group on the kitchen table doing this thing, that group on the end table doing that thing, and maybe even yet another group doing yet another thing. It could be annoying for my parents finding the figures here and there and having me screech, “Don’t move them! I’m in the middle of a story.” Don’t even get me started with my younger sister possibly touching them. I still have issues with people touching My Stuff.
Drawing was another thing I started doing when I was very young. My mother liked to draw and had dreams of going to art school. Being from a single-parent home in the 1950s and ‘60s, those cards weren’t on the table. She had an art teacher in high school who kept telling her she should go to art school until one day when she said to him, “If you’re going to pay for it, then I’d love to. If not, please stop saying that because I can’t.” He never said it again.
(Me going to college was huge for her because she wanted to go to college or art school or a combination of them. My older daughter going to art school was something my mother was so proud of, it was even something we talked about during our last conversation).
My father would bring home comic books when he’d stop for milk, bread, and cigarettes. These made me want to draw. I was pretty good, too.
All this to say that creating has always been a part of my life. Now as a middle-aged adult, creating almost seems foolish with everything going on in the world yet I can’t stop. I’ve been writing since I was 13 and submitting since 14. It doesn’t get easier. It’s also an act of courage. Ego, too, but mostly courage. To say that I created something that I think others might like…that’s brave.
Don’t think I’m patting myself on the back or puffing my chest because I’m not. Not for an instant. What I’m doing is trying to convince myself to continue. Because with all the fear that I feel and that’s out in this world, the act of creating and sharing what you create is courageous.
I tell my students that all the time. Being in an art/creativity program, I get a lot of students who want to be a part of the various and sundry fields that’re out there for the creative person. Courage is as important as talent. Anyone can write a story. Anyone can draw a picture. But to share it with others in a real way takes courage. To demand payment for it is even more courageous.
I’m socially awkward and very shy, so I had to really work myself up to reach out to bookstores for the signings I did last year. The fact that they were all fairly successful helped me a lot. Still, I’m afraid to try to do conventions and such. That’s something I’ll be trying to work on, including, maybe, some traveling. I don’t want to travel but I may need to in order to get my work out there. And that’s something I want to do. I’ll need courage to have the conversations with loved ones about coming up with plans for this. I’ll need courage to keep writing and sharing my creativity in general.
And you need courage to create, too. I know a lot of creative people and many of them don’t actually create. Not for themselves or anyone else. It’s heartbreaking, really. I wish them the courage to create.
The world needs it right now.
You need it right now.
I need it right now.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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