I Haven't Been Here in a While... · 10:04am Dec 12th, 2018
...and that's because I've been living in a box. Seriously, it's starting to get cramped. They didn't put air holes in this thing, either.
Writing, I have to admit, isn't always the most comfortable thing for me to do. If you write at all, I think you've felt the same at one time or another. Sometimes it requires you to mess with icky topics, or write words that would never come out of your mouth in sane company. Or perhaps it requires you to meet unfamiliar characters, then roll their dice into a story and hope the result is an interesting and original idea. Sometimes you fall so in love with those characters or stories, and you want them to grow up big and beautiful, have all the opportunities you never had growing up, be a better person than the schlub you turned into. So you handle their fragile little lives with Kid Gloves, feeding them cautiously from your sterilized repertoire of stiff language and bland storytelling, not daring to try something that could irreversibly scar them—which is ironically the thing that could make them shine someday.
Or maybe the fear of screwing them up is so strong that it keeps you from ever making them in the first place.
If you've ever felt this writer's paralysis, welcome to The Box! Find a corner. Mind the ceiling. Pay no attention to the yellow jars over there. Get comfy. Sorry, it never gets any comfier in here. We kind of just like to pretend it's comfy. Cardboard Stockholm Syndrome.
"So, if it's a flimsy and uncomfortable box, why don't I simply climb out?" I ask myself. The true (and stupid) excuse is that I'm worried about what I'll find out there, and it could be anything. Seriously, there might not be a lion within a thousand miles of my box, and I'll pose the question: "Oh yeah? What about robot lions? Didn't think about those, did ya?"
Let's re-rail my runaway train of thought for a moment and pretend like I had a point to this whole ramble, which was ultimately to allow myself to write, even if it means screwing up many times. Even if it means slapping together an incoherent blog post at 2 AM, leaving this time capsule to fester in an obscure corner of the internet for it to embarrass me in twenty-five years' time (or tomorrow morning).
As with any practice, this whole writing business isn't always comfortable or clean, and staying in this little boxed world without making myself vulnerable to critique isn't going to help me improve. Masterpieces aren't born in a vacuum. They're the stuff of diligent messes.
-RLC
(Lastly here's some sketchwork I did recently. Not too shabby!)
It's nice seeing you again my dude. Here's to hoping that you can leave that box soon.