The Battle Against Youth

Let's just be blunt: Writing is hard.  So is life.  And so is being young.

Doubt.  Insecurity.  Too few years.  Burning, unbridled ambition.  Unequaled potential.  These are the core elements of a young writer.  Writers live in an expanse of nothingness, hindered not by boundaries or walls.  Young people live in a world of extremes.  The two often do not agree, and are often at war inside our brains.

Young writers, say, under the age of 25, have a whole different perpective of the nothingness before them that is the creative void.  Populating that void are the shadows of every writer and successful person they've ever admired, hated, aspired to be.  They hover like Godzilla over the streets of our minds, every glance a judgement and every motion a challenge.  Most young people feel oppressed by what we believe are dictators over our writing, the shadows of everything that isn't us.  I went through that phase myself (I promise, I'll say something about my age later). 

Without the wisdom that years of trying and failing and succeeding over and over again into infinity brings, a lot of young writers have trouble accepting their inexperience.  We want to be older.  We want to believe that we're as good as the greats, while secretly knowing we're not.  It's a battle, and not one that a sword or laser beam shooting dinosaurs can fix.  Hard to believe, but it's true.

Aside from all of the personal doubts and insecurities housed by our young minds, there is enemy that is the outside world, the vast network of writers and authors and storytellers who make it all look so damn easy.  And they're all better than us, or worse, we think we're better than them.  We're stuck thinking that we have to fight so hard to be heard, and that the vigor of our battling will make up for the years we lack.

The truth is, there are extra battles to fight.  There are more monsters to slay, more monkeys to cage.  Not only are young writers fighting against the other 99%, most of whom are older, wiser, more knowledgable about the world, we're fighting against ourselves.  Often, we don't know any other way to fight than to press on and hope the years reward us with the tools needed to craft a story the 'proper' way.

That went off on a tangent.  I apologize.  The point is, writing is hard for everyone.  Learning to love and accept the battles, learning which Vorpal Sword of Shattering works best against the looming bestsellers of the great artists is all part of the process, no matter how old you are.  But as a young writer, we're not going in with the Vorpal Sword of Doorstopper Destroying.  We're going in with sticks and paper hats, afraid of the enemy but sure that we can win.  Without the support of those older and wiser than us, we would surely lose the battle

Now, I promised I would write about my age.  At the tender age of only two and twenty, I feel as I've lived for a thousand years.  As my grandmother would say, I'm an 'old soul'.  I've been through the battles.  I've slain the demons and Grendel-beasts.  At times, I've thought about putting up the sword and pursuing a safer, easier path of life.  That's not who I am.  I have many, many more battles and beasts to overcome, and just as many stories to tell.

So carry on, penbearers.  Help the young, conspire with the old(er), support each other.  Send dinosaurs armed with AK-47s at all of your insecurities and fears and misguided beliefs about being too young or too old or too this or that to tell a story and tell them, in a strong, passionate voice: "Shoot to kill."

(I rewrote this post somewhere around four times.  Trying to put into words something that is hard to pin down is...well, hard to pin down.  One day, I may revisit the topic.)

Fear Is the Mind Killer

Come one, come all, to Jamie's Circus of Fear!  Actually no, there probably won't be anything too scary here.  As an amateur blogger, as in 'I have never before even contemplated doing this in my life ever at all period', there is a lot to be afraid of on the internet.  Am I doing this wrong?  Are people better than I am?  Am I just one more anonymous stream of data racing from one system to the next?

Of course, the answer to all of these things is a resounding yes.  And of course, like anything on the internet, that's a total lie.  Your internet identity is as unique as you are – but I digress.  That's a post for another day.

Let's get personal.  Fear is something that lives in our hearts right next to happiness and bacon.  Scientists will tell you that fear is all in the mind, and while this is true, it sure doesn't feel like it.  Fear is heavy and dark and larger than the Empire State Building.  It hovers over you like a persistent hummingbird or a very angry gorilla.  Fear is the sharks beneath our feet, hiding in our shadows and chasing us away from our dreams.

Or, if you're a writer, toward them.  Writing, much like life, is a battle.  Against the paper, the pen, the words in your brain, and your brain itself.  Most of us are afraid of some part of the process; I know I am.  Writing fears are easy, as fears go, because writing is a space without boundaries.  No story is quite the same, no voice has quite the same timbre or pitch. 

The great thing about being a writer, or any other type of artist, is that we have the perfect arena for facing our fears.  A novel.  A painting.  An abstract jumble of junkyard metal that can only be described as Neo-Cthulu.  Every day that we step into that arena to do battle with the vicious Work-In-Progress monster, we shout to the sky that "You will not have my soul." 

So tell me, what are your fears?  Do you incorporate them into your stories and characters?  Do you embrace them or destroy them?