language

I watched the movie The Doors the other night. Jim Morrison was one wacked-out genius! His poetry is nothing short of amazing. He had an incredible ability to say a whole lot with so few words.

Indian scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding,
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind.

What fucking power!

I often wonder how great poets think. The ability to combine such small words to say so much… I’m very methodical when I write. I try to plan ahead, choose my words carefully. I’d never use the word eggshell to describe someone’s mind!

My biggest influence, as far as my writing voice, has been William Gibson - author of Neuromancer. His descriptions grab me, pull me into the story so quickly! He uses a lot of sentence fragments to express a complex, dynamic scene. I think it’s truly amazing…

Gibson writes with exacting detail. He shows you the whole scene, even the little shit. It all adds up to a rich, powerful image in my mind.

Then you have guys like William S. Burroughs… psychotic genius. Well, that and drug-crazed. His writing - what little I’ve been able to consume - is another kind of genius.

I’ve always been interested in language. My math scores always sucked on standardized tests like the ACT or SAT, but my language scores were great. I’m not exactly sure when, but I became interested at a fairly young age. Somewhere it became very important for me to be able to use language as effectively as possible.

It worked - in a way - for quite some time. During my angry youth, I wanted very much to be able to decimate those who would provoke me using words alone. I was quite good at it, if I do say so myself.

But being quick on my feet with an acerbic comment hasn’t helped my creative writing at all. Reviewing a lot of the stuff I’ve put on paper shows that it’s generally either morose or macabre. Well, that and it lacks literary substance.

I’ve been carrying this idea for a story around with me for quite some time now - almost three years. But it’s a real loose idea. No long-term plot. Really, it’s just a couple of characters I’ve been slowly developing. They’re autobiographical to a degree, but I don’t want to write about specific things in my life - at least not yet. So I’m trying to find a story for these characters. Maybe that’s the wrong way to go about it…