It’s time to pivot.
After a years-long hiatus from professional writing, or any writing beyond random observations and philosophical quotes in notebooks, I started this website as a blog to chronicle my family’s life in an RV. Life on the road didn’t last long for several reasons, not the least of which was COVID, and once we bought a home in Colorado a few months later, the journey was over and so was this blog. But I couldn’t let it go.
The blog evolved into a website focused on dads. For about a year I considered several ways to monetize it and create content on various platforms, but I found the market simply flooded with dad stuff already and I didn’t have the budget or desire to invest in a project that felt personally stifling. While I do my best to be a good dad, I am not the best and certainly no spokesperson for them. I’m just a guy who loves his kids, what else can I say? I think it’s that simple and yet there’s an entire industry built on repeating that message.
About that time, my life became routine. I carved out some early morning hours to focus on building my photography business and developing some other skills I wanted to explore for decades, particularly in the areas of photo restoration, videography, and video editing. I started using my personal home videos as raw material to create goofy short films. If you’ve seen my YouTube channel, there’s a noticeable difference from the earliest videos:
To the latest one:
Then Chels encouraged me to pick up the pen and write stories again. She was in law school by then, making her dreams come true. Not only is Chels a firm negotiator but she can be obstinate when it comes to getting things done. So, I set a schedule and got after it like a dog. I woke up at 4:30 every morning and after a quick shower, me and the coffee hit the typer.
I wrote about my life. It’s ridiculous, to say the least. I started a memoir about my teen years. I completed a 55,000-word first draft in three months. Then my buddy Cornelius tried to rope me back into his failing CBD business in Oregon. We’d been best friends for a long time but his CBD venture got the better of his scruples and I had to burn rubber. After a bizarre business trip to Philadelphia with him, I came home, shelved the teen memoir, sat at the typer, and six months later banged out the first draft of a 75,000-word memoir about my crazy year as a hemp farmer.
During this time, I changed the focus of this website to: One Man’s Search For Meaning. The theme was an attempt to pull apart my experience, understand what I’ve been through and how I’ve navigated my way through the forest. But what I discovered was the more I wrote about my life, the more guarded I became. There’s a lot of bad mojo back there. And while I’ve always shrugged it all off as merely “stuff I lived through,” truth is, I didn’t know there were so many skeletons in the closet until I started poking around in the darkness. Putting flesh on sinew and making those skeletons ambulate and speak again didn’t do much more than make me question my own sanity and ability, never mind talent. It eventually sent me to Dr. Milberger.
After eighteen months of therapy, I got the answers I was looking for and clocked out. Much of the heavy lifting I can do on my own, hopefully. But what I need to do as far as writing is concerned, is get out of my head. Aren’t we all stuck in our own heads enough already?
I also encountered Resistance, in the Steven Pressfield sense, as I wrote about my life. It was Resistance to tell the truth, to tell my stories honestly. Always holding something back, keeping vitals hidden. Ironically, in order to tell the truth – and avoid litigation – I need to insert some magical realism.
My friend and infamous Boulder poet Rob Geisen used to write under an alter ego he called “Get in the car, Helen” where he wrote about his crazy relationship with a femme fatale. Without the vehicle of “Get in the car, Helen” Rob would have had no other coping mechanism for “Helen’s” abandonment other than nursing a pint of Canadian Mist. I think “Helen” is dead now. Figuratively, at least. And Rob has moved on. Figuratively, at least.
My friend and Houston writer Philip Loyd told me a few weeks ago, “Sometimes we need the veil of fiction to protect ourselves from telling the truth.” It’s a paradox, but one that should be freeing . . . and hopefully protect me from getting sued.
So, I need to pivot towards fiction.
Then two weeks ago I had a short story rejected from a lit journal because I featured it on this here blog. Apparently, it is now considered “previously published.”
If I had known giving my stories a test run on my blog would be considered a legitimate publishing platform, I would have rethought this whole weird experiment to begin with. If I can’t showcase my stories on my blog without sentencing them to death row, what am I going to do with this thing now?
Welcome to: THE LIFE AND MISADVENTURES OF FORD GRANADA
Stay tuned.
