Hello, friends.
Remember back in February how good I felt at the end of vacation? I worked hours and hours on the revising of a novel and got to feel like a full-time writer. I’d hoped for something similar this past week.
It didn’t happen.
Some of it was things that needed doing around the apartment, which I did some of. Some of it was trying to be more present for my family. Most of it was crushing depression where I didn’t feel like doing much of anything.
I’ll talk more about what I did do down below but that’s what happened. And here I am at the end of vacation feeling like an imposter, a fake, a loser.
Stop! I see you heading to the comments to tell me that I’m none of those things and that my body and mind must’ve needed the rest. I know that. I believe that. But those goddamn voices so many Creatives hear won’t be still. And I’m good. I promise you, I’m good. I’m disappointed but I’ll live. We’re living in extraordinary times and I got to have some fun this week, though I did not do what I’d hoped to in terms of maybe seeing people and losing myself in my words.
I got to go to the movies with Pamela and G and see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith for it’s 20th anniversary re-release, which I’ll write a tiny bit more about that below. I did get to see one friend for a short time before the depression really took hold. And the vacation was still good because I’d turned off Mr. Gauthier.
I had stress dreams–mostly about work–every night this week. I’m not looking forward to opening my work email for the first time since Thursday, April 17th, this coming Monday but I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Anyway, I’ll be all right, I guess. Just have to get through.
So, let’s get into this week’s newsletter.
Welcome to the 119th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and being transported into stories.
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Anyway, let’s go!
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As I stated above, I didn’t do much in terms of physically writing. However, every day this past week I pondered over various stories I have yet to write. I also looked a little more into stories I have written. I tried to find some open markets for short stories that paid. Some of the resources I once used has been shut down and there aren’t as many paying markets that seem trustworthy. Let’s forget this weekend’s shock of a venerable market that seems to not treat all of its authors well. That has been a goal publication to land since I was 16 and now…well….
I updated the bookmark I designed last year to add an ISBN number to a book that didn’t have one. I meant to design some ads for my books but never did.
Same with hitting up bookstores for possible events. Wanted to. Meant to. Did not.
I began inking the Superman drawing I showed you last week.
So that was this week. I will be getting back to things. This inertia is a way that my mind sometimes handles things in stressful situations and also right before a burst of creativity. Stuff is happening, I can feel it, it just needs to show itself.
Thank you for your patience.
***
This past week, the family and I went to the 20th anniversary re-release of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith. It was my third time seeing it in the theaters, Pamela’s second, and G’s first. I’ve seen the movie itself countless times. It was the one movie of the original six that G didn’t watch until a couple of years ago because she’s very sensitive and I knew it’d be too intense. She was so excited to see the movie and that made it even more exciting to me. G’s 12 and at that age where I’m learning how to parent preteen her. She doesn’t seem excited by much that she once was so to see her light up and be enthusiastic about seeing a Star War with her Dad was thrilling for me, too. As she does, she kept asking if I was excited. And afterward, she kept asking if I’d had fun. Of course, I’d always ask her the same thing. And then she asked what she always does when we watch a movie:
“What was your favorite scene?”
I gave her my standard answer for Revenge of the Sith: Anakin Skywalker’s and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber duel. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that while, yes, I did still enjoy the lightsaber duel I’d waited 23 years to see the first time, there was a different part of the movie that I loved even more: the opening crawl.
Since 1982, the opening of Star Wars movies acted as a doorway into that galaxy far, far away. From the fairy tale opening of George Lucas’s version of “Once upon a time” to the blast of music as the main title flies away from the screen, to the episode number, subtitle, and then three-paragraph introduction, this opening has been synonymous to a grand adventure.
In the spring of 1982 when my father took me to see a re-release of Star Wars, he had to read the opening crawl to me but that didn’t stop the way the words picked me up out of my seat like a conveyor belt and transported me into a world of giant, pie-shaped spaceships, starfighters with X wings, droids, Wookiees, and–most importantly–lightsabers. It happened a few months later, when I was five, when Dad took me to see The Empire Strikes Back. It happened in the summer of 1983 when I went with Mom and Grandma to see Luke Skyscraper (as my grandmother called him once) to see Return of the Jedi. A charity screening of the same movie in 1984 (admission was a bag of canned food). Multiple times in 1997 for the Special Edition rereleases for the 20th anniversary of the film. Then several times in 1999, 2002, and 2003 for the Prequel Trilogy, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and, of course, Revenge of the Sith. Again in 2011 for The Phantom Menace 3D. Then the Sequel Trilogy of films, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. My third screening of that last movie was the last time I was in the movie theater before COVID shut everything down.
I get a chill when John Williams’s music starts and those words lead me to George Lucas’s galaxy of evil Empires, good Rebel Alliances, falling Republics and Jedi, and rebirths of all kinds. And when you can share it with the people you love, as I have been able to, it makes it all the better.
I’m 47 years old until August. I’m the same age as Star Wars, which actually precedes me by three months, but I’m still four years old when that crawl starts. Or five, or six.
Right now, as we’re watching Democracy fall with “thunderous applause” in real time, and with the call to follow a Rebel Alliance to stop it, these movies remind me of the power of stories. Whether it’s a space fantasy or a horror novel or anything in between, the road into the story is an important one. It’s essential.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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