Perhaps if the story I tell is too fantastic, no one will believe it. I was always taught as a writer to be able to help the reader along to suspend their disbelief. Honestly, I look at the world around me and see plenty of things I can’t believe are true. Yet they are. 

I don’t know that it’s fair to hold a reader’s hand and guide them on a tour of whatever nonsense my imagination may blurt out onto the page. I think you just have to take things as they come as you do with life, but realize that as a reader, you have a lot more control than you do over life. Or is that so? Aren’t we all authors of a sort just by breathing?

Perhaps the characters and settings I have painted with my words are not ones relatable to a wide range of people. But why should that concern me? Why should I be concerned with others’ opinions? How often do opinions actually change reality? Probably, perhaps, more than they should. 

Sometimes taking action does not appear to be a fruitful endeavor, but action is the only thing you can do, right? Yet, there have been times where I have found inaction to be more effective than taking action. But isn’t the choice not to act in and of itself, an action? Decisions, decisions.

Yes, life tends to involve too many decisions that you simply don’t want to make. I’ve always been fascinated by those choose-your-own-adventure stories, but I think that the reason that they aren’t more popular is because sometimes people just want the adventure to be chosen for them. We are always making too many little decisions that we don’t want to make anymore. Besides, in most scenarios in those kinds of stories, you’re going to end up dead nine times out of ten. It’s a really good thing that life itself doesn’t actually work that way.

Everyone has a story to tell. The trick is to know how to actually tell that story in a compelling way that will actually make a difference in the lives of those that relate to it. Sometimes it may come off as whining or seeming a bit too self-important. Perhaps, you’re simply not much of a storyteller, but that seems like too convenient an excuse. Myself, I’ve always wanted to be a novelist, and yet, I often find my storytelling skills lacking, although in actuality they probably are not. Self-confidence is a major issue for me, the lack thereof, rather. But the words are there, it’s just a matter of actually getting them out there and putting them forth in a way that people will actually go about reading them. If no one reads them, what good do they do you?

I’m not really in the business of getting rich off of my writing, but it would be nice for it to actually support my livelihood for once. I have long tried to tell my story, but it has never really come out in a way that compels me to continue. I’ve tried starting at the beginning, the middle, and the present. Perhaps, I’m being much too linear. The universe is infinite, and by remaining focused on staying the course of a straight timeline, even if I “flash back” from time to time, seems to be the wrong approach for me. 

The inevitable gaps in my memory keep me from really keeping track of where I should be going with my story, and some of those gaps exist for a reason, to keep me from becoming too focused on the many “what if” scenarios that I’ve encountered in my life. I still have so many regrets, and as easy as it is to say “live without regrets” it’s the exact opposite to actually follow those words in practice.

I once said that I really hate how so many good ideas that work on paper never work in practice. The reason why they don’t? People screw them up. I’m wholly convinced that it really is people that keep some really cool stuff from happening. Most people are apathetic to things that seem cool but don’t really do them any good. The things that seem to work best are those that somehow reach people on an emotional level and cause them to irrationally become addicted to said things. For whatever reason, I’m not good at making those kinds of things, although perhaps my thinking hasn’t been slanted that way, because really, I want to actually create things that are wholly useful and not purely for consumption.

Like it or not, it’s really hard to write a story. Actually, it’s easy to tell a story. But it’s mostly easy to tell one badly. Everybody can tell a bad story. It’s not even the story itself that’s bad. The best stories are those that are told well. When you really think about it, a lot of the most popular stories out there are actually, in fact, pretty simple. Yet, many stories these days are over-complicated for really no reason other than to create more things for people to talk about. Why do they do that? The more the story is talked about, the more people want to find out what happens. 

Serialized stories are addictive, for no good reason other than to be addictive. So many series, especially on streaming services, have gone in this direction. I don’t really like serial stories. It’s not that serials are terrible, but they are often written in such a way that doesn’t actually improve the lives of those that follow them. But I’m not all that great at writing serials myself, and perhaps that’s to my great disadvantage. I’d rather tell a bunch of different, but related self-contained stories. What brings people back to those are the characters and the familiar settings.