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stories are the bones of everything

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There are only two kinds of people

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There are only two kinds of people. I have been both of them at different times. I suspect you have too if you’ve been around a little while.

In my 20’s I loved using the word fag. I threw it around in online gaming forums like free candy. Someone got the better of me and I got fragged. Then my mic went on. “You’re a fag.” Yep. That was my brain to mouth without filters in action. I don’t do that these days. Doing didn’t make me a better competitor. It just pissed off the person on the receiving end.

In my 20’s I loved to argue about everything and I would never back down an inch. I knew what freedom was. I knew all my rights. I knew how to fix every social ill that plagues our planet and our species. I knew that I had a high IQ and I thought that entitled me to being heard and respected.

I wanted other people to hear me. I thought I deserved it. The problem was that I didn’t want to hear them. I wanted other people to learn from me. I didn’t want to learn from them. I already knew everything. I couldn’t have been more wrong about that.

In my 20’s I was condescending. I was arrogant. I loved to argue. I’m in my 40’s now.

I’m still condescending and arrogant inside but the rough edges have been sandpapered. I’ve walked through some storms that I managed to survive somehow. Storms that I elected to walk into of my own free will. I still love to argue but I approach if from a completely different place. I might think you’re a whiny little bitch, or that there’s a double standard about the use of the word nigger depending on what color your skin, eyes and hair are. I might think a thousand different things are unfair, unjust or nonsensical. I might find you utterly boring. It won’t come out of my mouth anymore. Why? Because you don’t ever prove a point by crushing someone or turning up the volume to a point that no one hears any of the words anymore.

Annihilation tactics never turn an enemy into a friend. Escalation doesn’t solve problems unless you’re willing to bomb those arrayed against your point of view or stance into non-existence. That isn’t my go to place. I’m not a sociopath or a psychopath.

So somewhere between shouting out “fag” and creating a bunch of unneeded bad feelings arguing about everything under the sun I had an epiphany. Or a thousand. Here’s one of the most important ones.

I learned that enemies can become friends. To make that a possibility I needed to stop blurting things out and start paying attention to what the enemy was doing and saying. That guy who fragged me all the time knew something I didn’t. He had tactics I could have learned from. He wasn’t a fag. He was a better player than me. If I had been paying attention to what he knew back then instead of flailing around feeling angry about losing I might have combined what he knew with what I knew to improve my gaming experience. Which, at that time, was pretty much the world I lived in and cared about. Priorities change. What you care about changes. What you believe in changes. People usually don’t change. Until they start listening and stop talking.

That’s a lesson it took me nearly 20 years to absorb. You don’t become better at anything by pissing people off. Unless your ultimate goal is to be a world champion douche bag. If you want to be heard you have to shape the message in a way the doesn’t immediately incense your audience or potential audience. I eventually stopped using the word fag. I have used other expletives in the past in attempts to win arguments or save face. Now I just avoid the argument in the first place. I don’t care about saving face anymore because I’m focused on learning from failures as much as I learn from successes.

If you believe that Jesus Christ is the one true path to an eternal reward I’m not going to convince you otherwise until you are ready to consider other possibilities. If you think the CIA introduced crack into American ghettos to keep the black man down then one white guy isn’t going to change your mind no matter how eloquently he speaks. If you believe the moon landing was faked, 9/11 was an inside job or the Tea Party will save us from the downfall of America (whatever that is), I’m not going to change your mind before you decide that other possibilities should be weighed. You have to be ready to hear the message.

What’s the point of writing all this? It’s a message to all the really smart, high IQ, outside the box people who are struggling to be heard. You probably have important things to say. We all have a soapbox that we would like to have an audience for. If you want people to hear how great atheism is here’s a hint: don’t start off by telling them how stupid their current theology is. It doesn’t work. I know from personal experience.

Starting a conversation with “you’re wrong and here’s why” is like trying to pickup a woman in a bar by telling her that you are repulsed by her saggy breasts and the hairy mole on her face. Unless she’s an emotional masochist that approach isn’t going to work. You have a soapbox. You have an agenda. You have priorities. So does everyone else. Take the time to hear them and you might have a chance of convincing them to hear you. If they raise the volume try lowering yours. You’d be amazed how effective it can be to simply wait and listen without taking offense. I don’t take anything personally anymore until someone starts trying to punch me.

I never won arguments in my 20s. I spent too much time getting angry. I sometimes won video gaming contests but my blood pressure and my belly both increased when measured over a period of time. Shouting out “fag” or “nigger” or “I’ll kill you mother fucker” never helped me make a point about anything. It didn’t help me win. It did ensure a few people hated my guts in more than one online forum or gaming den. I’ve learned from those ineffectual years. I’m still learning. Here’s where I’m at in this moment.

Want to convince people of something? Try these tactics:

  • Endless patience. Be ready to wait a lifetime for them to be ready to hear you. Don’t get invested in changing their mind until they are invested in new possibilities. Which brings us to…
  • Understand why you believe what you do. If you don’t know why you hold a certain viewpoint no one else is going to be convinced either. It’s always been that way. The status quo doesn’t mean there isn’t a viable or superior set of choices. Fail. My parents told me so. No parent knows everything. No parent is infallible. Fail. It’s the law. Total fail. It used to be the law that you could own human slaves. The law is a dumb, blind animal enforced by mostly unimaginative people who carry guns to enforce rules passed by more mostly unimaginative people. Which brings us to…
  • Explain your belief/stance/solution/viewpoint from a humble place. Realize that you haven’t walked in the same shoes as your potential friend and convert. They have a different experience of the world and they look through different lenses. That’s OK as long as they are willing to listen to you and you’re willing to listen to them. Never ever start with “you’re wrong and here’s why.” For fuck’s sake you just used up some of that endless patience above waiting for an unlikely moment when they were contemplative enough to hear you. Which brings us to…
  • The point is not to win. The point is to plant seeds. They might grow into something later. They might not. But for most people epiphanies don’t happen in an instant. Most people have to connect a lot of dots before they see the big picture. You on your soapbox on any given day or in any given moment are only one of the dots in that person’s life. Finally we come to the most important part of being alive…
  • It isn’t about you. It’s about wisdom. Wisdom is bigger than any one person. Somehow, through a series of unfortunate mishaps and close calls, I came the conclusion that there are only two kinds of people. The ones I can learn from and the ones I can learn from. I learn things that I want to incorporate into my own life and journey from the first kind. I learn things that I don’t want to incorporate into my journey from the second kind. That means everyone has something to teach me. You cannot be a good teacher until you’re a good student. Spend a lot of time talking with the first kind of people you can learn from. Identify and observe the second kind of people you can learn from. Try to avoid close engagements as they are likely to result in hostility and bad feelings no matter how endlessly patient you think you are. By engaging the first and watching the second kind of people I have improved myself. I believe you can too. In my 20’s I was the kind of person who taught people how not to be and what not to emulate. In my 40’s I’m trying to be the kind of person who listens enough to be worth being heard. It’s not a science. It’s an art form. It’s not a static thing. It evolves. That is the nature of being human. You aren’t supposed to form a set of viewpoints and then spend your life telling other people how great they are.

There are only two kinds of people. The ones who are evolving and learning and the ones who have to be dragged along on the trip kicking and screaming. I’ve mostly stopped kicking and screaming at this point. I’ve started paying attention to my traveling companions. I’ve realized that some of them are magnificent, beautiful souls. I’m starting to understand just how amazing the journey is. I’m less scared of being alive than I have ever been. I see the stars and I want to go there with you.

Training wheels

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I remember learning to ride a bicycle. Not the color of the thing. Not the size of the seat. Whether that first bicycle had a bell, or cards in the spokes of the wheels escapes me. What I remember most about my first weeks with a bicycle is the feeling I got when the training wheels came off.

I took my first hill in a terrifying, wobbly series of leg motions and then I was in the gravity well of that downwards curve going at breakneck speed. Back then I didn’t have the automatic routines that kept my speed carefully controlled. No brakes. The subroutines I have now that would auto position me in the softest landing spot possible should disaster have struck in the form of a blown tire or other mishap just weren’t there. I wasn’t wearing a helmet. For the first time ever, I was on my own.

I was heading out into the world without a safety net of any kind. And it was glorious.

There is a lot to be said for an experience like the one I had on that hill on that day. Without my training wheels for the first time. I felt exhilarated. Free. Out of control. More alive than ever before.

I could have fallen. I could have broken my head in half. I didn’t. I might have, and then it is possible you wouldn’t be reading this story.

The training wheels stay on too long nowadays. I don’t like all the things we’ve added to the mix. Orange safety vests. Helmets. Kneepads. Elbow protectors. I don’t need a spacesuit when I go fast. I want to feel my mortality without being terrified I’ll fall down and die. With the understanding of what it all means. I want the risk. I embrace it and own it.

The toughness and resilience I have now are byproducts of prevalent social mores in my youth. The balance between risk and safety during those years makes more sense to me than what I see happening now. Before I was a legal adult I’d seen many of the faces of mortality. Not the way kids see them on television now. As dramatic falsehoods.

We protect young minds from death and mortality. Try to insulate ourselves from real risk. Some of the mechanisms we put in place are good but others poison us. We desensitize ourselves and our children to the truth of being human. Overstimulate the parts of the brain that process loss, fear, risk. Then we medicate the ones who can’t cope with that overload. It turns into a downward spiral of self-doubt and weakness for some of us.

I can’t tell you when you should take off the training wheels and let the people you love most go down their first hill without any safety net. I can tell you that if you do, they’ll be stronger and wiser for it. If you overprotect the people you care about you are actually doing them a disservice.

You won’t always be there when they need you. That’s impossible. It’s dysfunctional to even try. Let them go fast on their own. Don’t always make them wear a helmet. They need to know what falling down feels like. One of the most important lessons I ever learned came from falling down as a teenager.

I had been successfully copying someone I saw in a movie. Cars would be going by slowly making a turn and I’d sneak up behind them on my skateboard and grab hold of the back bumper. I’d let them pull me along until they were going about 25 miles per hour and then let go. I thought I was pretty slick.

Until one day when I hitched a ride and waited too long. The car pulling me was going down a hill. I didn’t let go when I should have. By the time I did, the inevitable life lesson was unstoppable. I lost control of my skateboard and learned what eating asphalt feels like. Everyone needs a moment like that. Some of us need a few. Not all of us will survive them. That’s part of life.

The gravel that got embedded in my skin that day taught me a lesson as it worked it’s way out of my body over the next 20 years or so. Reminded me of limits every time I felt it. If I had been wearing a helmet and protective gear the experience would have been completely different. I wouldn’t have learned the same lesson.

The point is this: take off the training wheels and let go. You will fall down sooner or later. Going fast and falling down aren’t something we should be terrified to experience a few times. All of us need that context to be well rounded, thoughtful, considerate human beings. You only have so much time to live. Be brave and let your people and yourself learn that our world can hurt us sometimes.

Don’t set the limits so cautiously that the you or the people you love end up unable to cope with falling down. Because it will happen no matter how hard you try to avoid it. You might as well have some experience under your belt by the time you start pretending you’re an adult. Take off the training wheels when it’s time. Zoom down the hill. Gravity will slow you down on the upslope.

The simplest lesson

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[dropcap background=”yes” color=”#333333″]I[/dropcap]t is the simplest lesson. To be good for anyone else, you must first understand how to be good for yourself. It is the hardest lesson. That the only way you can be good for you and others is by living honestly. You and others. They all need honesty to truly thrive. You cannot arrive at truth until this lesson has become your paradigm.

I am speaking to myself by writing these words. I am hoping you will wander by and hear them. For 40 years, I lied to myself about who I was. Denied myself what I needed to truly thrive. In that state of existence, my mind became a wasteland littered with the debris of everyone else’s expectations, demands and goals. No one else’s expectations, demands and goals will ever make you feel fulfilled. I know this lesson well.

This essay may, on the surface, appear to be an argument for a selfish existence. There is truth to that viewpoint. Every viewpoint has merit. If it did not, it wouldn’t be a viewpoint to begin with. The trick is learning to understand that not every viewpoint has enough merit to be my viewpoint. Or yours.

I am not bound to your truths. I am not bound to your worldview. I am not bound to anything you expect from me. If we collaborate synchronously I will be grateful for the exchange and for the sharing. If we do not, I will walk alone. Content with my own companions – the truths I have chosen for myself.

It is the simplest lesson. My path cannot belong to you. Yours cannot belong to me. If we join hands for a while, I will be grateful for the warmth we share. If we journey together for a lifetime it will likely assure that I smile more often than I would without you.

It is the hardest lesson. I cannot live for your truths. Only mine. That is the key to unlocking myself. Would you like a copy of my key? I will give you one without expecting anything in return. That’s why I left it here. In the lock where I hoped you would see it.

Please come inside. I am waiting to greet you.

Ignoring conventional thinking about genrecide

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[su_quote cite=”Ryan Casey”]Listen, people are clever. If you put a new book out, chances are they’ll read the blurb/see the cover, and decide whether they want to buy it or not.[/su_quote]

I had a conversation this evening with someone I care very much about. This person is invested in me and my nascent writing career as a self-publishing author. We were talking about how I can market myself and sell my books. One of the questions was whether an author can publish work in multiple genres. It’s a good question, and one that I want to think about. I have every intent of writing in any genre that I wish. The two books I have published as I write these words are erotica. Specifically, they are BDSM psychological conditioning thrillers with elements involving unethical acts, criminal acts and plot themes that involve murder. Mixing all these elements is not easy, and I am sometimes disturbed by the things I am writing about. But, they’re thrilling and engaging. That’s what my current audience feedback says, in any case.

I see no reason that I shouldn’t be able to build an audience of erotica readers who will also be interested in self-help, modern fantasy, science fiction, horror, poetry collections and post-apocalyptic novels down the road. My friend and adviser thinks I might be limiting myself or hurting my personal brand if I’m not careful how I market. And, because I value the person and the advice I’m receiving, I’m mulling this over very carefully.

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What do you think? Once you like something by an author, how likely are you to try out a title in a completely different genre? Let me know your thoughts, either in a comment or using the contact form if that’s your preference. I love interacting with my readers, and however you arrived here, I’d like to thank you for your interest in my work.

Pen

What makes writing good

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You probably have at least a passing familiarity with Stephen King. Mister King is one of the better writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The prolific author has penned more than 40 novels. He is often harshly treated by professional critics, and that is a sure sign that he is doing something right as an author. Stephen King has readers. He has readers because he doesn’t write for critics, he writes for normal people who want to read exciting stories.

In my mind, the best writers don’t give a shit about what the critics think. They write to please themselves. For some, doing so will also mean pleasing an audience. The writer who has good marketing people working for him or her will find that audience. Stephen King doesn’t stop to worry about what other people thinking of his writing. He just keeps doing it, year after year, page after page, novel after story. And his fans fucking love him.

They love him because he knows how to speak to them from the pages. His characters are believable. His plots keep the reader interested from beginning to end. His writing is simple, direct and easy to digest. Stephen King knows how to make words come alive. More importantly, he actually sits in front of a computer and puts the words out there for the universe to eat. He is a wordchef. You won’t find wordchef in the dictionary, dear reader, and I don’t care. Stephen King is a wordchef, and an inspiration to inspiring wordchefs everywhere.

Stephen King’s writing is good food because it is simple, digestible and readily available. There is enough of it to go around, and most people will never get tired of the taste. There are lots of other writers who taste different, and sometimes you will be in the mood for those writers. They come in every flavor and I firmly believe that readers and writers should sample a wide array of flavors when it comes to the words they eat. The prevalent flavor in this article, however, is Stephen King flavor. He wrote a book on the subject, which is appropriately called [easyazon-link asin=”B000FC0SIM” locale=”us”]On Writing[/easyazon-link]. Here are some worthwhile quotes from that man on writing (and what makes it good):

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity. Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic. Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

What makes writing good? It has to be important. It has to be meaningful. It has to come from the heart. It has to have a point to make. Most of all, it has to flow. If you don’t know how to flow as a writer, then you will never make your point, and you’ll never find your audience.

Start everything at the beginning. Figure out why your story matters. Then make your case. Remind your dear readers of why they the jury agree with you. Ram that shit right down their throats if you have to. Use rich descriptions. Sprinkle in anecdotes that reinforce your case. Figure out the compelling stuff and tell everyone that shit. Wrap it up and poke your reader right in the eye with that sharp spear that is your point, again and again, until they will remember you and and your tale for the rest of however long they have to live. That’s what makes writing good.

1,000 words per day

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It may seem obvious to you that in order to be a successful author, one must actually write. I am dense. It took me 40 years to catch on to this simple truth. When I did, I realized that goals must be set. In my current existence, I work full-time for one of the many corporate entities that make modern life a complete drudgery. Therefore, my daily word count goal is modest; 1,000 words a day is what I demand from myself. I will write 1,000 words per day no matter what. I could have just shit my pants. I may be bleeding from my nose. A gang of midget ninjas may just have snuck in through air vents I didn’t know about, beaten the hell out of me, and stolen all my money. I still have to write 1,000 words per day.

The 1,000 words per day rule is critical. If I don’t follow it, then I never finish a project. Goals are critical, and every writer should have them. Even if you are not a writer, you should have goals. Some examples:

  1. Get laid once a week.
  2. Stay out of jail by avoiding trouble.
  3. Ignore all media coverage of Whitney Houston, and other self-destructive time wasters.
The point of having goals is to ensure that you get things done. People without goals end up watching a lot of Jerry Springer and some of them ending up eating a gun, or 1,000 gallons of ice cream. So then those people are either dead or rolling around the grocery store in a motorized cart, farting a lot and wishing things had turned out different.

Assuming that my first novel is going to be roughly 100K words long, it should take me 100 days to knock out the rough draft. Time to get back to it.

What about you, dear reader? Do you write? If so, what are your goals? How many words a day do you write? What rules keep you on track and focused?