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In all fairness, I don't seem to either. Care to go exploring? |
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Hello and welcome. My name is Jack, and for around a decade, my "muse," whatever you conceive that to be, has been lying in a coma, rising occasionally to spout a line or two of gibberish, then falling back into oblivion. While I wait for her return, I offer reviews and this blog. Feel free to partake, but don't get too excited; the wake is still in progress. But thanks for your support, by the way. You guys are the best! Jack...  ![Merit Badge in WdC Community Hero
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For forty-odd years in this noble profession I've harbored a guilt, and my conscience is smitten. So here is my slightly embarrassed confession— I don't like to write, but I love having written. ~ MICHAEL KANIN Good morning, friends and followers, and I hope it finds you well. It finds me in a sharing mood, and that's why I'm here. I realize it isn't "Phriday," but I got words. Make of them what you will... I have mentioned in a number of places that I used to write a lot, I've enjoyed some minor success that never grew into anything really meaningful, and that I haven't written anything original in years. This is all true. I've been aware of writing.com for a good many years, and know that there are an awful lot of good stories here that can't be found anywhere else. So I joined under my handle, the Phantom Reviewer, to read, enjoy, and attempt to impart some of the lessons I've learned over a lifetime of writing to folks not as far along the path that they might be able to use to take their writing to new heights. This has, by and large, worked out well. I have indeed read some wonderful stories that can't be found anywhere else and made a few friends in the process, but I had an ulterior motive. I had hoped that daily exposure to all the fine works I was sure to encounter here would inspire me to return to the page. That, alas, hasn't worked out so well. Allow me to explain... During my "heyday," when I was younger and believed that I was God's gift to writing, I used to love to write. I couldn't wait for a spare hour in my busy day that I could fill with words on the page, and when I couldn't write, I was constantly making notes about what I would write the next time I got to my desk. I retired almost nine years ago, and was looking forward to all the stories I would be able to write with the 12+ hours of free time I would have every day. But, as so often happens, the reality didn't match the dream. Perhaps I overdid it at the beginning and burned myself out. Whatever the reason, I no longer find writing interesting. I have a little checkbook-size calendar where I write everything from household chores to doctor appointments to when to reload my phone; I'll forget if I don't! And clear mornings always say "review." When the workload is minimal and I have a block of hours, I mark in big letters, "WRITE." But as those days approach I find myself consumed with a sense of dread, like it's some horrible chore I have to do, like mucking out the septic tank or something. I get out my materials and try to produce something, but it's like being at a boring job and watching the clock, praying for it to be over. This saddens me. I have been a writer at one level or another for as long as I can remember, and I don't want to not be one, but this is the reality I must live with. I am currently parceling out old books and stories that I've written before, and I hope you find them worthy, but nothing new has come from the old pen in a while. I will continue to schedule these writing sessions and continue to hope that I catch the bug again, but if it isn't to be, know that I will keep active as a reviewer and a blogger, once I retitle this particular endeavor. Shortly I will reboot this and prattle on about this and that whenever the mood strikes me. Reviewing will continue apace. And writing? Well, let's just say, fingers crossed, and let it go at that. Have a productive week, and I'll see you around the stacks! Stay inspired, Taylor...  |
"When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation." ~ Jorge Luis Borges You read it right, I'm putting the Philosopher to bed for a while. I spend several hours each week rustling up an idea for a post, cobbling it together, formatting and posting, then watching the mail for a taker. They are few and far between, and of late, I've become mindful of the Law of Diminishing Returns. I've been blocked for years and one of the things I hope to accomplish here at WdC is to reclaim the magic of writing stories again. It seems that until I'm able to do that, blogging is a waste of my chief resource: Time. So until new stories start hitting the page, the blog will have to wait. Like my kids used to say, it's been fun, but I've got to run. I'll still be lurking around with near-daily reviews, so it isn't like we won't be seeing each other. Stay inspired, Taylor... |
"I think it can be dangerous for writers to be modest when they're young. I've known a number of truly talented writers who did less than they could have done because they weren't vain and unpleasant enough about their talent." ~ Norman Mailer I like to think he's describing me here. How successful could I have been had I been pushy and obnoxious? Of course, the implication is that there's talent behind it, but we can dream... Now that this little get-together is showing that it has some legs, it's time to cast about and find a theme. The two things that I do here are reviewing and the occasional dark story. I covered my views on reviewing with a single post ("On Reviewing"  ), so dark it is. Dark paints with a broad stroke, and can cover horror, suspense, heinous crimes, or unrequited love. I may end up ranging far afield here, but I'll begin with my favorite facet of the style, horror.Why do I like horror? I couldn't tell you. I'm not a fan of the horror movie, and haven't been since the bug-eyed monsters of the 1950s went out of vogue. I find modern horror movies, with their reliance on jump-scares and splatter, repulsive. I guess I like the sinister stuff, the thriller and the slow burn that may have a monster at the end of it, or maybe just a monstrous person. So I'm going to assume that I'm having a discussion with someone who is just getting interested in writing, or maybe someone who writes in a different field and wants to dip their toe. What do they need to know? I think the first thing you need to understand is that fear is fun — not real fear, of course. Encountering a knife-wielding thug in a deserted parking lot is certainly not fun, and I wouldn't begin to suggest it is. But fictional horror is another thing entirely. As a reader of horror, you get to experience the unthinkable, overcome it, and survive. This probably accounts for its popularity over a couple of centuries. Just ask Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Robert Bloch, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Steven Spielberg, among enough others to fill a major stadium. The simple fact is that horror is immensely popular, and probably always will be. The last complete reports rank it fifth among genres in popularity, and note that its market share by sales has doubled in the last ten years. It's definitely worth exploring as a writer whether you're writing for a living or just for fun, because you can count on it being read. The first decision to be made is what sub-genre you're going to write in. There are as many horror sub-genres as there are writers, it seems. Monsters created by radiation or chemicals, monsters from space, monsters from other dimensions. Human monsters, deranged murderers, sinister stalkers, the ravenous undead, authority gone mad. Cosmic horror, the terror of an unopposable, even godlike entity, indifferent to humanity, that might sneeze and destroy the universe we know. Even internalized, psychological horror. The wife who is sure her husband wants to get rid of her, driven to the brink by her own imagination... Does he really, or is he acting suspiciously because he and her best friend are planning a surprise party for her? Anything you can think of that makes the hair at the back of your neck bristle falls legitimately under the horror umbrella. But here's one point to look out for: As you write about these interdimensional portals, the aliens landing in the swamp outside of town, the volcano that has caused giant scorpions to run amok, you're going to look at this at some point, and say, "This is completely ludicrous. Nobody's going to buy this!" Ignore this feeling. People aren't coming to horror for its documentary quality. The more outlandish it is, the more they're going to like it. It's what they keep coming back for. I don't make grand plans for this blog. The wind blows north, I go north. But I plan to do a series about horror and its many faces. Maybe not consecutively, but keep an eye out. I'll always announce when something goes up, and this will be no exception. Do you have any questions? I've got one for you. Are you horrified yet? Stay inspired, Taylor... |
"Never read any book that is not a year old." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson By that logic, you should now start reading the books you got for Christmas of 2023. Hi there! Pretty sure I'm the last one to wish you a happy new year, but don't blame me; I didn't put Friday on the 3rd! In any case, here we are in 2025, a year certain to be a turning point in American history. But that's the Big Picture, a scope I can scarcely comprehend. My concern is with the Little Picture, in fact, my little corner of the Little Picture... Mine and yours, and the subject of the ever-popular New Year's Resolution. Is anyone still making these? I know I quit decades ago; it's just one more thing to fail at. I understand the attraction, though. A brand new year, a brand new calendar with 365 blank squares filled with promise and the temptation to use them for good. But it's been my experience that that isn't what happens. Quite the opposite, actually. But I can see the attraction; never let it be said that I'm not willing to try something new. I've not made a secret of the fact that I've been blocked for years. I have come to terms with the fact that I may be finished writing, that there is nothing left in the tank. But I refuse to go quietly. I have had small, incomplete ideas come to me, produce a minor work here and there, then fizzle out like a wet squib. But I don't want to be finished writing. That's one reason I hang around here doing reviews. I'm hoping that exposure to quality writing will reignite my own interest, and my writing hobby will take off anew. So far it hasn't happened, but I've got another card to play on my quest for that particular jackpot. You see, I'm retired, have been for 8½ years. Because there's a ten-year-old inhabiting this broken down old corpse, I put all my chores on a small, personal calendar... because if I don't, nothing will get done! Vacuuming, watering, showering, updating the bank statements, even things like the Thursdays that I don't sign in here because I don't want a big pile of those fake "merit badges" just for checking my email. Because these things happen at different frequencies, there are sometimes days when very little needs to be done. There are nine of those during January. If, instead of sticking my nose in a book or forming my hands around a game controller, I use those days to brainstorm, plot, and, you know, write, I might get the fire lit again. Or, I may find out that there is no fuel left to light anything with. There are thirty-one days this month. If I can't create something in those nine days, then I probably am done. I don't want to be, but then, I don't want to be old, either. There are some choices that you don't get to make. How about you? Taking on anything new this year? Stay inspired, Taylor... |
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if you remember my review.
Writing is a seesaw of love and hate, I can testify. Just this month, I was ready to give up in frustration over three different prompts because of seasonal exhaustion and brain drain. But I pushed through anyway, and actually, I have a very interesting blog post about one of them... "
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