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Monthly Archives: October 2015

Hanging On for the Wrong Reasons

18 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by Aaron L. Hamilton in Writing

≈ 5 Comments

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Writing

ASeniorPic0001 - Copy

Sometimes we hang onto something far past the right time to let it go. Whether from a perspective that quitting is failure or just plain stubbornness, I’ve maintained things in my life, ignoring advice and sense, and later looked back in disbelief. How could I have been so blind to the signs that I was headed down the wrong path? Why did I keep fighting that uphill battle against reason? Why couldn’t I let go? The mullet I wore from my senior year of high school until my junior year of college is a fine example. It wasn’t stylish, it didn’t make me “metal”, and I certainly had plenty of people tell me that I would look better if I cut it. Why did I hang onto it? Stubbornness is at the top of the list of reasons. I felt like if I let it go, I would compromise something important about myself. In case any of you guys that told me to get a haircut read this, you were right. It didn’t make me a different person to cut my hair. I didn’t sell out to the man. Oh, I also lied about something (not like you believed me). I totally got it permed at one point, and I can agree now that it made me look like that guy from the band Air Supply.

It turns out that I repeat this same kind of stubborn attitude about my writing. The majority of the time, I’m better off listening to the advice I get from beta readers, even if I feel like I’m letting go of something important. It could be a character I really love, or a piece of dialogue that sounds cool to me when I read it aloud. Sometimes an entire story I think has promise falls completely flat when read by someone else. It can be extremely difficult to objectively look at something I’ve spent hours writing, almost like it’s a part of me that I lied about getting permed.

Hair will grow back. Well it used to before I hit my 40’s, but I could still grow a mullet if I really wanted to. There would certainly be a lot more party in the back than business in the front, but you get the idea. The same is true for my writing. Editing can work out the kinks in characters, plot, and dialogue. No first draft is ever very good compared to what it can become. There have been stories I’ve edited to death, trying to make them work, until I’m embarrassed to send another draft to the poor people willing to read them. There’s always something I think the magic of editing will fix, but sometimes a story that’s interesting to me just doesn’t have what it takes to draw in a reader’s imagination. Sometimes what I see in my mind that I think they’ll enjoy just doesn’t come out in the words I employ. Will I ever find the right words? Sometimes I do, and those successes are what keep me working to improve a story. Other times I fight with something until the referee would’ve called the bout rounds before, like Rocky and Apollo slugging each other until they both fall down. I hate to lose, and that’s what it feels like to shelve a story. It feels like the inner doubts I have about my writing get to win.

Every time I read that one of my favorite authors has a trunk full of unpublished novels, I start to feel better about letting my weak ideas sit unwritten. Even those I relinquish incomplete to gather dust are exercises that hold some value. Sometimes characters get recycled into stories that work better. Sometimes bits of dialogue stick in my brain until I find a character to say them. I’m beginning to see that the pieces I let go deserve a place on my shelves or my hard drive. When I read about Stephen King or Joe Lansdale holding onto finished novels they have no plans to publish, it tells me that learning to let something go is part of the journey I have to take to become a successful author. I have to get better at determining which projects are worth pursuing and which look better on the barber shop floor.

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Everyday Heroics Deserve the Superhero Treatment

02 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Aaron L. Hamilton in Personal

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Good Deeds, Inspiration, Superheroes

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In the spring and summer, when I was nine or ten years old, my yard was plagued by gypsy moth caterpillars. Their gauzy tents pocked my beloved maples trees, where I loved to climb, swing, and have lunch in their shade. I saw leaves like thinly sliced Swiss cheese, some sporting half a dozen of the prickly vermin. Worse, they dangled from silky strands, blown by the breeze to attach themselves to my face and hair.

The pests were a sharp contrast to the woolly bear caterpillars I loved, with their soft fuzz and comical reaction to my touch, curling up in a ball. It only made them more cute, and I would watch them slowly uncurl in my palm and start their slow migration from my hand onto a nearby dandelion or shrub. Their apparent helplessness set them at odds, in my young mind, with their voracious counterparts in the maples. The gypsy moth caterpillars, naturally then, must have been invading enemies of the woolly bears. My experiences watching the Super Friends had taught me something: great evil needed to be confronted by brave heroes, men and women (sometimes noble aliens and robots, too) who used their powers to help those unable to help themselves. The woolly bears needed a hero, and I was just the guy for the job! I didn’t have superpowers, but I did have a sword (a reasonably straight stick), a rocket-cycle (my BMX bike), and a cape (an old bath towel).

Before going any further, I have to know that I can trust you not to reveal my secret identity. It’s been a long time, but there are bound to be a few great-great-great…great grand-kids of those original beasts I slew, and I bet they’re thirsty for vengeance. OK then, here it is… I am THE WOOLLY BEAR FORCE COMMANDER! Hey, I was nine years old. It didn’t matter to me that I was a force of one, on a bike, with a stick and a towel. I was going to be a hero to the woolly bears because they needed one (so I thought).

I galloped (pedaled) up and down my driveway and around my yard, slashing at the dangling menace with my stick. They popped under the tires of my bike and squished under my sneakers. I gently relocated the woolly bears to flowerbeds. It was hard work, being a force of one and fighting the good fight, but I didn’t lie back to bask in woolly bear adulation. I was on a mission powered by my desire to be a hero and also on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

It felt great to be a superhero, even if I made the whole thing up and never got to hang out in the Hall of Justice with Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and the Wonder Twins (surely at least those two had heard of the Woolly Bear Force Commander’s exploits). The noble objective, the sense of accomplishment, and the knowledge that I had changed lives, however short woolly bear lives might be, gave me great satisfaction. Today it makes me wonder why people don’t do stuff like that more often. Why don’t I ever see somebody in the news in a bath towel cape, telling America that he or she was on the job, making our lives better in some way? Maybe it’s time for me to start!

If you see a middle-aged man wearing a sheet for a cape, some yellow rubber gloves, and maybe some swim goggles, returning shopping carts to their corrals in the parking lot, just give me, er, him a wave. It’s Cart Man, and he’s out there keeping your car safe from dings by runaway carts. Because carts don’t put themselves away, and a lot of shoppers don’t either. Once again, a hero will rise to meet the challenge, and he probably wouldn’t exist without the inspiration of childhood imagination and the Woolly Bear Force Commander.

What everyday act of heroism might you perform around your neighborhood? Leave a comment and let me know. Don’t worry, your secret identity is safe with me.

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