Putting Yourself Out There

Rambling thoughts and two announcements

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

I’ve always been extremely goal oriented. When I was in elementary school, I decided that I wanted to be an Olympic gymnast. This was at the height of the Magnificent Seven, so it’s no mystery that gymnastics was on my mind. There was just one problem.

Money.

(Well, that and I probably wasn’t especially talented at it. I was eight. I don’t remember.)

Gymnastics is an expensive sport, and while I had big dreams, there was no way I was getting a private coach. Still, I devoted several years to practice. At recess, after school, at daycare. It was all cartwheels and back walkovers, handstands and the like. Nothing fancy. And then a babysitter spotted me while I attempted a back handspring, and poof! I broke my arm and never practiced again.

Until my mid-twenties, that was how most personal goals went for me. The bar was always higher than imaginable. Reaching it was next to impossible. And my followthrough was utter garbage. A lot has changed since then.

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I always wanted to be a runner. Unfortunately (and Ancestry just confirmed this via DNA), I don’t have the sprinter gene. It’s not a surprise. I had to participate in track and field day in elementary school, and I was always the last one. I don’t have the get-up-and-go, that burst that other people seem to have. And, my legs are short.

As a kid, that made me shy away from running sports (read all sports). But by the time I reached my thirties, I thought, What the hell? You don’t have to be a champion to get out there and do it. Just run everyday and see what happens. Last year I planned to participate in a trail race. A 10K.

I signed up for a little road race to prep myself, and…drum roll please…ended up with a torn meniscus. Not from the race mind you, but from sprinting (it’s a relative term) down a mountain trail joyously one morning.

Being a non-athlete and thinking I was “sore”, I stupidly ran the damn thing anyway, then limped around for the next five months until I saw a physical therapist who set things straight. Fast forward to this year. My year of doing things. My knee was feeling great, so I decided last minute to do the race that I missed out on last year. And this time, I wouldn’t just do the 10K. I was going to do the 25K.

But of course, deep down inside, I didn’t want to. It’s 15 miles. I’ve never run that far in my life. So instead of weighing the decision, sitting on it, thinking about it, I signed up for the race. Paid my entry fee and forced myself to feel the anxiety of it. The sting if you will. And do you know what? That made me train for it. I’m happy to say that I actually ran it. A few years ago I would never have believed it was possible.

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Writing is no different than that.

My approach has been to follow Stephen King’s advice: read a lot, and write everyday. If you missed my first post, you may not know that I missed out on a lot of books because I was a fundamentalist Christian. So when I read that I needed to, you know, actually read to be a good writer, I was a little crushed.

Not because I don’t enjoy reading (because I do), but because I knew I was way behind. I had the classics and literary works under my belt because of school, non-fiction and of course the Bible, but that was about it. Starting in 2020, I set a goal to read and write. And I’m happy to say that since then, I’ve read over 100 books.

That’s not to brag. That’s to tell you that my world is infinitely richer because of them. My imagination is on fire. The world feels vibrant and colorful. So many stories and characters are locked away in there. They come up and remind me of little truths throughout the day. Inspire me to push forward in creative pursuits. To enjoy small beauties.

There is a lot of advice on writing. How to do it, whether you should outline or freewrite, etc. I listen to a lot of writers talk about writing, and I love the advice out there. It inspires me. The only thing is that I see the tendency to listen to the advice, think about writing, talk about writing, read about writing, everything but the actual act of writing.

Fast forward to you, here, reading this newsletter. This is the race I signed up for. The hard, objective, visible goal that I can look at and see that I’m moving toward a target. It’s been an experiment in writing about all the things I love, and a place to put stories that I think you’ll enjoy. But more than anything, it’s a weight set. A gym I go to every week to check in and make sure I’m doing the work.

It’s not always easy. I struggled during the month of October with time. I had a family vacation, a work trip, deadlines, jet lag and kids and dogs to take care of. I didn’t feel like writing. But I had this, my race on the calendar, and more specifically, I had a story. One that I had started publicly, and therefore one that I had to finish.

Night Witch came to me at the end of September. I had just finished a run and was having breakfast when the first line floated in. She had only been in the house for seven days when she stopped sleeping. I wrote the first part of the story, and decided in a wave of caffeine induced enthusiasm, that I would just hit publish and see what happened.

It didn’t feel good, but there was an energy behind the story now, a push to finish it. Get it done now that the world (or a few dedicated followers) was watching. I’ve never done anything like that. Never showed someone work that I hadn’t meticulously revised, and of course nothing that I hadn’t finished yet. But I decided it would be an experiment. A way to push myself to get the work done no matter what.

I’ll tell you that the experiment was a success. Forcing yourself to treat writing like a job is important. There was only one time last month that I felt inspired to write it. Only one time that I actually wanted to sit down and get to it. Had I followed those feelings, I would have missed the story. I would only have that snippet, the picture of June Huntsman buying her first home. Afraid and insecure, but pulled by something invisible to act. And that would be the end of it.

Instead, I scared myself into following through. That’s, unfortunately, how I work. For me to get things done, I have to put it out there. Announce it for the whole world and then panic at having to do it.

In honor of that reality, I have two announcements.

1. I will be adding voiceover to all my stories (maybe my articles as well), to accommodate all the busy people out there. I could never have read as many books as I did were it not for Audible. Will you do me a favor? Listen to Night Witch: Part I, and tell me if the audio is okay? I’m no expert. Please give me some feedback before I finish them all!

2. I will be starting a podcast to accompany this newsletter! Release dates are tentatively set for December, but I’ll update when it’s a definite thing. It will cover all things horror, both real and imagined. If you think you’d like to hear me blab about ghosts and the like, it’s probably for you.

I’m a few months into this thing, and I have to tell you, I’m loving it. I love it more than I thought I would. Now that I’m done with travel, I’m ready to buckle up and bring you some great content in the next few months. Mass hysteria, voodoo deaths, unsolved crimes, and skinwalkers to name a few. Thank you so much for reading, for subscribing, for commenting. It means the world to me as I’m just getting started.