Starving Writers

A Little Donation Can Feed

A Lot of Kids

See that kid in the picture?

He's hungry.  Lots of kids are hungry these days and so are a lot of adults.  

Don't wait til the holidays to help out.

White Cat Publications, LLC. has partnered with Gleaners Community Food Banks.  Why?  Because writers and artists aren't the only people who starve.  Click on the picture of the kid and you'll go to the website we've set up together so you can make your donations.  It all goes to Gleaners.  And 96 cents goes to food and only 6 cents to overhead.  

So if you can help, click on the kid and done some bread.  No pun intended.  Well, maybe a little one.

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The Werewolf Principle- Man or Beast?, Part Three of Five

The guy in the middle is the writer.

His name is Elmo.

He wants to write an action adventure novel, or a paranormal romance, or... maybe eve a western.  Possibly a suspense/ thriller.

The problem is, Elmo's kind of geeky.  His life is average.  He plays online games a lot and hangs out on Facebook because in-person crowds make him nervous.  Girls don't think he's cute, but he'd like a hot date.

His dog likes him, and he saved the neighbor's cat from being run over by heroically dashing out into the street, grabbing it up and diving for the grass but landing on the pavement instead.

The cat freaked, and scratched Elmo's arms and back.  Elmo broke his right big toe trying to run away.

Do you think Elmo, as Elmo, will make a strong narrator?

Does he need to change his personality to be a strong narrator?

Is anyone going to want to read what Elmo writes if he's writing using his real identity?  He can't make life work in his favor.  Do you really think that makes him qualified to be a strong writer?

You and I can be supportive and tell him it's the power of his desires and his imagination that will make his fiction both dramatic and compelling.

But Elmo wouldn't believe us.

Elmo's praying for that full-blown full-moon transformation to become someone people will want to listen to.

So he's thinking- nice guy or evil wild man?

Which way to go?  Who would be the better writer?

We really and truly are someone different when we write successfully, but the question is the same as every werewolf has faced throughout the centuries- can we control who or what we become when the full moon of writing illuminates the inner recesses of our minds and hearts?

Quintelex Objects to Extraterrestrial Profiling

It's not hard to see why Quintelex is upset.

Quintelex is the first extraterrestrial entity to run as a presidential candidate in US history.

It seemed like the Regulan's entrance to the race would successfully show the American commitment to diversity and civility in political discourse.


Then Democrats and Republicans started passing out tinfoil hats to prospective voters.

"It keeps their mind control rays from fusing your neurons,"  they explained as they gave them away, never mentioning Quintelex by name.

Quintelex maintains these election year tactics are a form of profiling.  Both President Obama and Mitt Romney deny this.  President Obama claimed that giving away tin foil hats was just another "unique jobs program developed by his administration.  Someone has to make those tin foil hats," he maintained.  Republican nominee Mitt Romney would only say, "I like shiny things."

Undaunted, Quintelex's team maintains that the tinfoil hats are evidence of polarizing partisan pejorative profiling.

To see if there is any truth to this accusation, this reporter interviewed Dr. Rhebus Downthenose of the Chicago Institute of Annoying Behavior.


"Dr. Downthenose," I asked,  "is focusing on a candidate's planet of birth another form of profiling?"

"You see, you just had to ask that," he shouted and jumped up from behind his desk to double power-fist the air.  "Your kind always does."

"My kind?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes, your kind.  Sit down."

He pointed at a chair across from his desk.

I sat.  My kind always did.

"So professor, is it true that the American people are profiling Quintelex just because he's an alien?  If so, does he really have a fair chance?"

"You see, this?"  he asked, holding his right index finger up in the air.  "It is known in certain parts of Detroit as a passage opener, or nose-picker.  Regulans do not have an index finger.  Quintelex therefore cannot pick his own nose.  He isn't like us."

"Why thank you, Dr. Downthenose.  I think that answers my question."

"Where's you tin-foil hat?" he demanded.


"I'll be leaving now," I said as I got up from the chair and edged back toward the door.

His eyes narrowed.


"You have to protect yourself from their mind control rays," he said in a menacing tone.


He rose from the chair slowly; a look of manic intensity flushed his pinched face.


"They bombard us with their thoughts constantly.  They take over our way of thinking.  Always displacing our thoughts with theirs.  You can't hide from them."

I closed the gently but firmly behind me.  From behind the frosted glass I could hear the doctor ranting about how they were always bombarding our minds, displacing our thoughts with theirs.

The thing was, I wasn't sure if he was talking about Democrats and Republicans or aliens.

My cell phone rang.

It was that special ring reserved for out of state political telemarketers.

Constantly bombarding our minds.  Replacing our thoughts with theirs.

Now that I think of it, how much difference is there between the thoughts of politicians and aliens?

Now You've Done It

Your family and friends were right.

You write about your writing too much.

You spend so much time Facebook spamming the rest of the world about your writing that you missed the call.

No one who works for the government ever answers their phone, so they called you.

They were looking for the insurance carrier that would take care of the damages caused to their saucer by our planet's unmanned spacecraft.  Space is a dangerous place and everybody is supposed to have insurance.  It wasn't their fault that our space probe didn't have enough brains to recognize an intergalactic stop sign.  And now someone has to pay for the replacement dilithium crystals.  So they called you.

But you were so busy writing about your writing on Facebook.that you missed their last peace offering.  They are a peaceful race from a peaceful planet and like to resolve things peacefully.  But, as the designated Earth representative, you were writing about your writing and didn't answer your phone.

What's an alien race with a grudge to do?

Maybe you should take a breather from writing about your writing long enough to realize that the planet's in danger without you.

Or maybe just pay attention to your family and friends.

It's summer, don't you know?

Put away you laptop and your electronic friends and engage in life.  Writers who don't live life to the fullest have no business telling stories to the rest of us.

Besides, we're all still dodging alien death rays because you wouldn't take the call from the planet Regula.

We Found Your Writing Desk

Don't deny it.

It's right there beneath the bike.  It's pinned beneath either the front or the back wheel.  It's kind of hard to tell which.

Or it could be your grandmother.

But I digress.

Some writers are organized and others are not.

I use Microsoft Outlook and turn my characters into Microsoft Contacts.  Then I organize the plot sequence in Microsoft Calender.  And no, this isn't an advertisement for Microsoft.  I'm just saying this is how I do it.

Writer Janrae Frank is an organizational genius.  She uses Scrivener.  It's amazing.  But I'm a creature of habit. and stubborn, too.  So I'm still using Outlook

How  do you organize?

Forget the evidence shown in the picture.

Help the rest of us out.

Tell me how you really organize your stories, your characters, your plot, your timelines and your writing projects.

Spring Issue of White Cat Magazine is Online!

We'll be working all day and into the evening to post the Spring Edition of White Cat Magazine.  So if you have time, stop on over and read the new stories.

The winner of our April Fool's Flash Fiction contest is Alex Hughes whose story Cartoon Bastard Clouds has rather a surprise ending to put it mildly.

We have a marvelously off-kilter story by the always entertaining Marissa Lingen titled Dinosaurs of the Southern Dust Bowl.

If you enjoy end of the world stories (and who doesn't), there's always the intriguing Centralia, by the British writer Tony Haynes.

Dystopic science fiction is represented in fine form by the sharp-edged short story Breaking the Ice, by the Australian writer Robert N. Stephenson.

We also have an eerie ghost story Tryst by Brian K. Lowe that our editors just loved.

There'll be more going up later tonight, but til then- enjoy!

Oops.  Got to go.  It looks like she needs help with her typewriter.

Your Character Made Me Cry

Well, maybe not.

I just said that so you'd feel good.  Frankly, I think the woman in the above photo is faking it, too.

What's that?  My characters didn't make you cry either?

Ouch, that hurt!

But wait a minute- do we really have to make our readers feel emotion?  Maybe that's not as important as it used to be.

Maybe.

But let me ask you- could you do it if you had to?  Could you make your readers cry?

The Witch's Brew- The Writer and the Pirate, Part Four of Four

Pirates can't write worth a damn.

But they're always giving advice and pushing that bottle of rum at you.

Don't do it.  Don't take even a sip.

Years at sea and most of them don't have a gold doubloon to their  name.  But they go on and on about buried treasure and stormy seas.  Slapping the tavern table and spilling the rum everywhere.  Eyes darting around the room looking for danger while whispering to you about bloody battles and captured damsels.  Dead men tell no tales and skeleton fingers pointing the way.

They push their witch's brew at you.

Strong female characters.  Strong male characters.  Fatal flaws.  Characters just like the ones you've seen on   television and movies.  Just like the ones you've read about in other books.  Actually, that's where they get them.

You're almost convinced.  Pirates know their writing, don't they?  They sound like they really know what they're talking about.  They have an eye-patch over one eye and the other is lit like a lantern you can follow with confidence to the shore of writing success.

Look closer, it's actually a skeleton holding that lantern.

Pirate writers, you see, are just skeletons.  There's no meat on their bones.  There's no meat on their character's bones.  They're not real.  They're simply pirated from the stories and scripts that someone else created.  That's why we call them pirates.

They don't do what real writers do.


It's why so many characters in so many books, TV shows and movies seem alike.  

They are.

Readers are desperate for truly original characters.  They don't want Fool's Gold from pirates.


Don't be a pirate writer.

But while it's just you and me here, tell me how close the characters you create are to those you've read about and watched on either TV or the movies.

Don't be nervous, it's just the two of us talking.  Are your characters really yours?  I don't mean to say you stole them.  I just want you to examine how original they really are.  Is their dialogue something you've already ready or heard?  Their mannerisms?


Think about it.

The Witch's Brew- The Writer and the Living Dead, Part Two of Four

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds..."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius. I like the way it rolls out. Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius."  Wile E. Coyote

*****

Sometimes you just have to scrape them off the windshield.

Zombie writers.

The ones who shuffle mindlessly down the street with nowhere particular to go and the only word they can spell correctly is "hungry."

But they should have seen it coming.  This reporter saw it coming.  Writer's rear ends are getting much larger.

They drank the witch's brew, the one labeled "I don't have to leave this chair.  Google will save me."  So now they wander the literary streets wondering why their writing doesn't ring true.  Doesn't sound authentic.  Sounds kind of like it was made up.  Actually, it was made up.

Worse yet, Hemingway was right.  People that never leave their writer's chairs get kind of big on the back end.

"This is great," one zombie-ized writer told me.  "I can write stories that happen anywhere in the world.  I don't have to travel, I just use Google Earth."

She asked to remain anonymous, so I'm leaving her name out of this interview so I can blackmail her later.  I mean use it to advantage later.  I hope she doesn't read this.

"But do you truly get a feel for that country?"  I asked.   "Enough for your reader's to trust you?  To allow you the convincing narrative authority enabling them to suspend their disbelief and enter completely into your story?  And do you have to keep eating Doritos while we talk?  Don't they have a million calories per bag?"

She twirled a wild lock of red hair and smiled.

"Honey, most of my readers watch Keeping up with the Kardashians.  The rest of them actually don't believe Dancing with the Stars is rigged.  And I can eat all the Doritos I want, dear.  I just ordered the Brazilian Butt Makeover so calories don't count.  It said so on the infomercial."

"You don't seem to like your readers," I observed.  "You get all the information in your books from Google and infomercials.  Is that why you have a Ginsu knife as the murder weapon in one of your murder mysteries?"

"I love my readers.  My readers worship me."

"But you don't really go out and experience life so that you have something to share with them.  How can they trust you with matters of emotional truth if you don't really have a life?  You never seem to leave your computer chair.  Aren't you just recycling third party information?  Why don't you get up from your chair and see and smell the towns you're writing about and talk to the people you're writing about?"

She actually recoiled in her chair.  I felt terrible.  Clearly I'd reminded her of past experiences, where she actually saw her friends instead of Facebooked them.  Times when she actually walked city streets to know what they were like.  Those were the days when she knew the nuantial difference between the word "mean" as it was used in "mean city streets" and as a participating adjective in the movie title "Mean Girls."

I was about to apologize when I saw her on Facebook cutting and pasting conversations.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Collecting dialogue for my next book," she said vaguely.

"You don't write your own dialogue?  You cut and paste it from Facebook conversations?  You have no feelings, no writer's heart.  You can't write about reality," I screamed,  "if your only reality comes from a computer monitor.  Dialogue should come from your created character's heart!"

Without looking up she said, "You get some good dialogue off of Twitter sometimes, but you've got to really look hard."

I left the interview with a journalistic epiphany- when zombie-ized writers throw themselves against the windshield of your life, this journalist says to just keep driving. 

The Witch's Brew- Writers and Politics, Part One of Four

It's hard to write good fiction.


Very few of us write great fiction.

Fewer still write great fiction capable of truly transforming reader's hearts and minds.  We're afraid to try, and, really, we don't think we're up to the noble task.  So mostly we join writer's groups, live in fear of critiques and workshop, workshop, workshop.

Instead of exploring the world around us, dissecting it and imagining how to put it together again in a better way, we network with other writers, agents, editors and publishers.

We measure our success or lack thereof in number of positive Tweets, number of likes and/or comments on our Facebook page, or number of blog visitors measured by the great Bean Counter of the Internet- Google Analytics.

The thrill and exaltation of writing our first novel fades when no one much pays attention.  It turns to mortified rejection when it's first rejected by an agent.  By the sixth or seventh rejection, our writing life may be measured in terms of how many milligrams of Valium the doctor prescribes or how many glasses of wine we imbibe on any given day.

In between this Dark Night of the Soul and our first real success, many writers develop the Lemming Syndrome.  If there's an emotional cliff anywhere within miles of where they live, they feel compelled to do the Zombie Walk to it and jump off, making sure their reputations crash to the bottom with them.

The Lemming Syndrome occurs mostly when we know that we want to write, but realize we really aren't good enough yet to write something of lasting value.  That's when we commit the terrible sin of trying to teach others to write.

When as writers we have done this to the point that we realize we are as welcome in writing circles as relatives who belch fire, we panic and commit the most heinous of writing sins: we begin to blather away in public about politics.  We have drunk from the Witches' Brew.  We post political materials on Facebook.  We are enraged by the "Opposition Party."  We make fun of their candidates, deride them as "small-minded" or "dangerous" or "out of touch."  We scream slogans we'd be ashamed to hear other primates promoting.  We Twitter like there's no tomorrow.  Each election is the most "...important of our lifetime."  We not only agree, we shout it from the rooftops.  It's safer than taking a risk with our writing.

We do this because we're too lazy to write novels that will change the hearts of minds of others.  We're afraid.  It takes too much work.  It's risky.  We are not, after all, Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Harriet Beecher Stowe or John Steinbeck.  What if nobody likes our serious writing?  What if it's politically unpopular?  Better stick with genre.

The same writers who are proud to the point of stridency about hyperactive addiction to discussing endlessly the political evils of our world, do very little in the way of creating powerful fiction.  Talk is cheap.  The cost of great fiction is your heart, your soul and your mind.  You must invest everything into it.

"The Grapes of Wrath" took a toll on Steinbeck.

Are you wasting your time writing ubiquitous fiction? Is it because you no longer believe in the power of fiction to change hearts and minds?  Or is it just your own fiction you doubt?  Leave the socially powerful writing to the very talented few, you say.  Leave the heavy lifting to the strong writers.

Someday, you say, you will write a "social novel."  One that will change the world.  Or maybe just not embarrass you.

But it has to be later, you say.  It's 2012 and we have to discuss politics and talk and talk and talk.

Why not write?


What will that change?  you ask.  

If you aim low, you can never fall too far.

And you've forgotten why you write.  That's what happens when you drink the witch's brew.  You quit believing in yourself and the muscular power of the written word.

Cheer up.

There's an antidote.

Sex and the Writer- Part One of Five

Our sexuality empowers our writing.  


Family members hate to hear writers discuss such things.  Ever see a child recoil at the thought of their parents having sex?  So if you're going to read this series of posts, please don't tell your family.

Our readers don't like to think about it, either.  It's okay if our characters are sexually attractive or charismatic, but not you and I.  We're the storytellers.  We're supposed to be the trusted narrators of their stories, not vicarious participants.  

"I wish they'd take writer's pictures off of their books," one reader told me.  "It spoils my image of their characters."

Now that's odd, I thought.  We write the stories, but they don't like to think of us in the stories.  That's especially true when it comes to sex.  We'll take a closer look at this phenomena in the next post.

After that, we'll explore the complex relationship between sexuality and creativity.  I won't look at sterile, stilted surveys and studies, but I will be exploring why only sexually driven writers can create intensely engaging fiction.  I'm not talking about creating sex scenes, I'm talking about the ability to create powerful fiction.

What about the great social fiction that has nothing to do with sex?

It might be a great topic, but it's not our topic.  But to deal with the question tangentially, I believe only writers who are intensely sexual can create powerful social fiction.  Our creative power comes from our sexuality.  Social tensions, if you really examine, are strongly rooted in out sexuality.

It's a complex topic, but let me start you off with something to think about- when you write your story, have you ever considered the image your reader has of you, the writer?  Are you good looking- as a narrator?  Are you a man or a woman? Are you powerful?  Are you ruthless?  Are you lonely?  Remember, I'm talking about the way you come across to your readers, not your characters.

Think about it- who are you (as a narrator) to your readers?  Who do they imagine you to be?

He Needs Your Help

Who is he?

You don't recognize him, do you?  You should.  All he's asking for is some recognition.

You grew up with him.  

What happened to him?  Oh my, you really are out of touch for a writer, aren't you?  He's a character in your latest book.  

I'm afraid you've fogotten the true source of your stories.  Let's try another test.

Recognize her?

Oh, no! 

How could you forget her?   She could use a little recognition, too.  She's a character in your first book.  The one that got you noticed.  The one that made everyone think you could write like the love child of Jane Austen and John Steinbeck.

No?  Still doesn't ring a bell?

Have you forgotten where all of your great characters and great stories can be found?  I was afraid of this, so I'll remind you but don't tell anyone else or they'll end up being great writers, too.

Your childhood. 

Keep it to yourself.  Every great story begins in your childhood.

Think about it.

Every great character is someone from your childhood all grown up.

Really think about it.  It will improve your writing.  But don't tell anyone I told you.

Meet the Guy Telling Your Life Story

What's that in his hand?


Why, it's your life story.

You're a writer and maybe you thought the value of your writing life would be written down by someone who investigated and contexted your personal history, the evolution of your feelings and ideas.  Maybe you were hoping your biographer- and we all like to think someday we'll be successful enough writers to be written about- would have a little empathy and understanding for your life.  That maybe he or she would actually care about your first kiss, your first love, the birth of your children.

Well, sure, but he's a little busy now. And he's a little amused that writers don't understand how their biographies are being created these days.

There are only two sources to look at to compile the meaning of a writer's life, he says.

First, your credit card receipts.  They reveal what you actually do with your money, which, he believes, kind of says who you are.  Every penny you spend reveals a little more of yourself and fortunately for him, it's actually accessible.  Why listen to what a writer says or writes when you can actually see what they did, where they did it and how much they did it just by contacting Equifax or TRW.  They have everybody's real history, including ours.

Ouch!

You're nervous now, aren't you?  Writers create fiction, about themselves and their characters.  But credit receipts don't lie.  According to your biographer, they are you.

But wait, there's more.

You've been telling on you.  Yes, blabbing your life away telling all sorts of things you shouldn't.  Writing down the evidence of your attitudes, who your friends are and what you all are doing.  Ouch again!  You squealed on yourself.

It's all written down- that's what your biographer says.  Why bother reading your fiction when he or she can read the real stuff.  Where do they get it?

The picture's below is a clue.  Yes, now you get it.  Between your credit card receipts and this rendition of the details of your life you've provided to your future biographer, your fiction can pretty much be ignored.  Your online life tells the world your real story.

The Fifth Dragons of Creative Writing, The Dragon of Putrefaction, Part Three of Seven

courtesy of clone_trooper at deviantart.com

Descending into Darkness

*****

The sky flared and twisted like screaming flames. I saw it in the congealing reflections ripping across a teenager’s sunglasses. She was maybe thirteen, and her shoulders glistened like caramel glaze. A green hand flashed in a yellow metal box across the street; I heard the sudden electric crack of a chrome pistol bouncing high off the pavement.

Shrunken-head eyes stared at me from a black car streaked with angry light as the passenger window moved up like a closing spaceship door and sealed them behind reflected darkness. Heat shivers wriggled above the searing concrete and rippled the air; I closed my eyes, hoping the entire city of Detroit would just disappear.

excerpted from "Concrete Abrasions," by Ferrel D. Moore

*****

They were both from Montreal. When he spoke, he sounded like he'd been places and done things. His gestures were elegant and cultured, fingers pulling away at the threads of ideas and intense brown eyes that knew the meaning of taking what wasn't his.

When he said, "But that is, of course, only a metaphor," she brushed his wrist with the back of her hand. He seemed not to notice.

I thought about that for a while. I thought about her for a while. He wasn't going to live long if I had anything to say about it.
excerpted from "The Dark Visitor," by Ferrel D. Moore

*****

Mystic Rose is right. The Dragon of Putrefaction does sound horrid. And it is a horrid experience to meet the Dragon of Putrefaction. But without confronting the Dragon of Putrefaction, there is no way to meet the beautiful Dragon of Fermentation, which Dragon represents, in her own beautiful way, the birth (or rebirth, if you will) of a new writer.

When writers first begin to achieve success and because recognized as "real writers," not those who stay at home hoping they will, someday, see their name in print, they begin to move away from the creative mindsets that finally brought them success. They begin not wanting to make mistakes, and thus they begin the fine art of dowsing their own creative spark. We begin to try and "fit in" as writers, and the quality of our work becomes more acceptable and less volatile. We develope a more "mature" voice- less edgy, less "in your face," and more reassuring to the social culture all around us.

*****

“I don’t know what I’d wish for if I had the choice,” said Mary. “For you to have a functioning brain or a functioning penis or one day a week for both. Where’s you mind, Edgar? Where’s your testosterone? We don’t always have to go where they take us.”

“But they could put us out,” whimpered Edgar. “Where would we go then? I don’t have a car; I don’t have a house anymore. Maybe I do. I don’t think so. It was on Maple Street. Have you ever seen my house? God, I love to work in the back yard. Annie can’t do much gardening anymore.”

He leaned toward her, smiled a row of stumpy teeth and whispered, “Her back’s bad.”

“Annie’s been dead for a long time,” said Mary.

Edgar began to cry.

Mary looked away.

excerpted from "Death's Door," by Ferrel D. Moore

*****

If you study the lessons from the first four Dragons of Creative Writing, you will have a measure of success as a writer. Perhaps you will achieve the blessing/curse of being published. This is when writers takes stock of themselves in a serious way. We see the chance of success as possible but so very far away, but we see the chance of public failure as growing closer with each chapter or verse we write.

So, we begin to play it safe. The Imp of the Perverse has become our literary agent.

Suddenly, we are ever more conscious of other's opinions. How will our work be judged? What kind of reviews will our work garner? Do we have a theme in our work? If not, it and we could be judged as not "literary" enough. Are we not economical enough? Then we write purple prose. The judges, after all, are always qualified to judge our work and find it wanting. A critic may bemoan our lack of tension or- God forbid- an unclear character arc because no story can really be any good without the author prostrating themselves before these golden rules, can they? Certainly not. That would be like living in the Matrix without first having watched the movie to show us how to behave in that fictional construct.

At these moments, we have doused our creative sparks with fear and buried them in the muck and slag of egotistical sensitivities. Our writing begins to develop a certain "odor of commonality" about it. Like good soldiers in the Army of Writing Zombies, we lumber forward as though alive, yet writing without zest. We are more afraid of wounds to our ego than we are of falling down while running with exhuberance. We have traded away our spark of Creative Heart to put on the uniform of Peer Review.

We become good students and only face foward. We become respectable writers and stay between the lines.

*****

Havier clicked his tongue.

“Mary,” he said, “you are so hot blooded. You should have been born Latin. And at your age… I am so proud of you. But do the two of you use protection? You should ask me to bring some in for you. They have them in colors now, did you know that? Hey, Edgar? What do you say to that? You are a man. Such things are not your responsibility, but you must sometimes think for two.”

excerpted from "Death's Door," by Ferrel D. Moore

Mary’s stomach roiled when she saw Havier lean toward Edgar and place one palm on each of the armrests of his wheelchair. Mary noticed Havier’s muscles flex as he squeezed the armrests, and she was certain Edgar did as well.

“You must have something special for this woman to find you so attractive. What’s your secret?” asked Havier.

Edgar stared up at Havier and Mary felt like crying. She watched Edgar blink his eyes and take a small gulp of air to fortify himself the way years ago he would have taken a shot of whiskey. She looked at Havier’s hands as they slipped down to adjust Edgar’s gown.

“My, my,” he said. “What you got down there Edgar? You hiding some special equipment?”

*****

In our writings, our readers- and critics- expect to see a glimpse into our souls, and, as writers with a little success under our belt, we want to clean up a little bit before that photo shoot.

Hence the need to hide our raw insights and uncomfortable observations beneath the Putrefaction known as Conformance. It is a black and murky thing for a writer to slip a leash around their own neck and then heel to the side of Convention. Somewhere below that ugly darkness float the scattered points of creativity that made that person into a writer in the first place.

But if we don't succeed in our confrontation, if we don't dive into the decomposing darkness our selves brought about by our initial succeses, then we will not be able to break the surface again with our lost creative sparks held tight in our fists like captured fireflies. We will never be able to look about that inky mess and gaze on the radiant beauty of the Dragon of Fermentation as she rises up from the dark and into the night sky. To writers, achieving that moment gives the right to release our handful of re-captured creative fireflies and send them skyward with her as she rises toward the constellations.