Tag: Writing

Fear of Success

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

So I haven’t been here in what seems like forever.  I wish I could tell you it’s because I’ve been SOOO busy doing SUUUCH exciting things, but then you’d be expecting me to write about it and well, it’s simply not true.

Truth is, I’ve been busy writing, which, I guess is sort of exciting.  It’s exciting to me.  It’s also frustrating and nerve-wracking and irritating and a whole hell of a lot of fun.  It just. Takes. So. Long!  I have a cheerleader who is desperate to read my book.  She’s read the first two chapters and the “mom” chapters I posted not too long ago.  She likes what she’s read and she’s chomping at the bit to read more.  Sorry!  You’ll just have to wait.

Anyway, I’ve been busy committing all my writing time to the book and I’m really happy with what’s coming out, even it is taking an eternity and a half to create but I’ve noticed that there’s a certain amount of fear that goes with it.  (It would be well to note that fear often has no basis in rational thinking, however…)

I’m fearful that this book is not as good as I think it is (despite significant evidence to the contrary.)

I’m fearful that just because a handful of people have read a small fraction of what I’ve written and liked it, a lot, that it will not be good in the eyes of a publishing company.

I’m fearful that because of the nature of its content, what I’m writing will never be accepted by mainstream publishing and even if it ever does get published, it won’t be by a mainstream house and may not be promoted or marketed enough to sell many copies.

I’m fearful that this is the only thing I’ll ever be able to write.  It took me 32 years to come up with an idea which actually formed into a complete story.  What if it takes another 32 years to come up with the next one?

While I’m enjoying the process and would be happy for any amount of success that might come from it, I have to admit that all of that is tempered with a fear that I might get exactly what I want; a fantastic book, well received by major publishing houses, huge promotion and significant compensation and an opportunity to do more…

I’ve grudgingly resigned myself to the idea that my family may never really know me; never know the full truth about me.  I don’t love this idea, but I’ve lived with it for a long time and it’s…familiar.  But, what if I get published.  What if this book I’m writing, a book all about a young man who comes to terms with his sexuality despite his conservative upbringing and judgmental mother, a book full of emotional turmoil and sexual revelation… and sex, get’s published and promoted and makes even a medium splash in the literary world?  My mother is a voracious reader.  I’m not sure if a book like mine could accidentally find its way into her hands, but the prospect is disconcerting, at least.

I wrote a scene just the other day between our lead character, Calvin and a would-be lover/pseudo mentor, Trip, in which Trip explains his less than blissful relationship with his own family.  Without getting too bogged down in details or giving away too much of my, as yet unpublished passion, Cal has been taken to an Atlanta emergency room after a relatively minor injury.  Trip accompanied Calvin and is waiting in a room with him.  Pay attention to the last line:

Another thought occurred to me that I was ashamed not to have realized earlier.  “Oh my God, Trip!”  I slapped my hand down on his arm which had been resting comfortably on the edge of my bed.  “I’ve done it again.  You missed your brother’s reception.  What was I thinking making you bring me here.”

“Those drugs they gave you must be really good,” he laughed.  “You’ll recall I didn’t give you a choice in the matter.”  He patted my hand still resting on his other arm.  “Don’t worry about the reception.  I was there for most of it.  I won’t have been missed, I’m sure.”

There was something sad in his tone and I wondered what his relationship with his family might really be like.  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I suggested.  “You’re brothers after all.”

Trip just looked at me for several long seconds and then he leaned forward in the chair, and whispered to me, conspiratorially.  “I’ll tell you a secret Cal.  What you saw last night?  The way Tommy acted when you and I were leavin’?  That was just the tip of the iceberg.  My family has really struggled since I came out.  Most of the time I think they’re happier when I’m not around.”  That revelation struck me hard.  What must it have been like for him to accept being gay, acknowledge it, and tell his family, knowing that his father was a Baptist Preacher and his family would not accept him?  I couldn’t imagine what his life must be like and I didn’t understand how he could come off as being so self assured when he had this burden weighing him down when he thought no one was paying attention.

And he wanted me to be in the same boat?  How could he expect anyone to follow in his footsteps and demolish whatever sense of a life they had?  I was about to ask him just that when the nurse walked in.

…

We ate in silence for a while, crunching on our fruits and vegetables.  In spite of my hunger, I couldn’t bear to eat the white bread bun so I pulled the turkey off the sandwich and ate it plain.  Finally, I gingerly turned my head to look at Trip directly and I said, “I’m sorry, Trip.  I’m really sorry.”

He was confused, “’Bout what?”

“It sounds terrible,” I answered, clearing nothing up.  “I can’t imagine facing my parents and knowing that they don’t approve of me.”  Even as I said it I realized, I already knew how that felt.  I was all too familiar with the look of disdain my mother was so adept at displaying at the merest mention of pretty much any new idea I’d ever had.  I knew that if I were to tell her I was gay that would be the end for us.  The look she would give me, her reaction to that news would be impossible to get past.  “It must be just awful to be faced with that every day.”

Trip’s expression darkened.  “It’s not easy,” he said, his voice was thick with grief.  “My parents had such high hopes for me when I was growin’ up,” he continued.  “They wanted me to be a pastor like my father and like his father and his father before him.  Our family has been leading The First Baptist Church of Savannah for three generations.  Daddy is pretty well respected in the community.”  He paused and as his eyes glistened he gulped hard, holding his feelings in.  “Well anyway, he was.  And then about eight months ago I was caught on film coming out of a club called The Cockpit.  There was a local news crew doing a remote spot outside the club.  I didn’t even notice them at the time and I have no idea what the story was about let alone that I was on film but before I knew it, someone had seen me on the news and it got back to the Convention – The Southern Baptist Convention – and they talked to my dad about it.

“And then a couple months ago Janelle got pregnant and she and Tommy had to have this shotgun wedding.  Which is a sham, as far as I’m concerned and I just know they’re not going to last and I can’t help but think that’ll be even worse for my father’s reputation.  But you know…  At least they’re doin’ the honorable thing in the face of their shame.  There’s nothin’ I can do to make this right in their eyes.  And now, daddy’s reputation is damaged and the Convention is talkin’ about replacing him at the church.  It’s all a big ugly mess and not the way I would have wanted it to be, at all.

“I dreaded comin’ out to my parents and I put it off way too long…  I sure as hell didn’t want them to find out from someone else.  Let alone the whole community.”  Tears crept down his face now and he lowered his head, staring at the blanket that covered me.  “Talkin’ to my parents about being gay was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I owed it to them to be the one to tell them, and I didn’t do it.”

It seems like a long shot at best but I would hate for this book to be the way my family finds out that I’m gay and yet having that conversation is something I’m unable to imagine.    But the flip side of that is, what happens if this book actually gets published?  What if it actually is a moderate (or bigger) hit and I make a nice chunk of change from it?  What if I need to go on some sort of book tour because of it?  What if this turns out to be a really big deal…  And I can’t share it with my family, because to share it with them I’d have to tell them the hardest thing I could imagine ever having to tell them?  And what if I have to go through the rest of my life watching what I say, careful never to give any inclination about any of the experiences that I’ve had as a result of writing this book, just as I have to be careful now, never to mention anything that might reveal the identity that is Riggledo (blog, twitter, e-mail, etc.)

I realize I’m putting the cart before the horse, as I’m prone to do, and I’m not allowing these fears to stop me writing the book, but I can’t help fearing all these things.

Dear Diary

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

I happened across my diary last night, mostly, because I was looking for it, but still I found it.  I hadn’t written anything in it for over 18 months, and the previous entry before that was at least six months.  I was disappointed.  I like keeping a diary and it hardly serves it’s purpose if it never gets written in.

There’s something so romantic about a beautifully bound tome; a record of one’s life.  It really appeals to me.  Every time I see a lovely, leather-bound volume wrapped with a leather strap, the pages yellowed with time, weathered, I want to write in my own, only I never do.  It takes time I feel like I don’t have.  It takes concentration I’m not often prepared to give.  Distractions abound and self-doubt and internal criticism can lessen the pleasurable impact of the act itself.

I’ve kept a diary since I was twelve years old.  Of course, I always called it a journal because “diary” was just too effeminate.  “I don’t think you should call it a diary,” my sister, my biggest fan, told me.  “I think only girls keep diaries.  If a boy keeps one it’s called a journal.”  Perhaps that’s true.  Perhaps it’s not.  Perhaps it was once true and now, no one cares.  Perhaps times have changed.  Whether you call it a journal, or a diary, or a personal history, or letters to myself, it was mine.  It was the story of me.

In the 7th grade the school play was The Diary of Anne Frank.  In the 9th grade I read the book.  I began to think about what it might be like, some time, many years from now, for someone to come across my diaries and make a story out of it.  What if one day The Diary of Kevin Riggs was a best seller, a hit play, a block buster movie?  This of course is never going to happen.  There’s nothing extraordinary or exciting or particularly moving about my life that it should be worthy of such a treatment.  But in those younger, more hopeful, more impressionable days, I didn’t know this harsh reality and so I wrote my diary/journal/personal history/letters to myself as though someone, somewhere would someday read this chronicle and want to be able to make sense of it.  Failing that, I wrote the pages as though, some day, I would read them, senile and befuddled.  I wrote explanations about who people were, with nearly every entry.  I explained in excruciating detail about things that either didn’t really matter, or I was sure to remember forever and for always.  Each new book represented a “chapter” in my life.  Each was labeled in the front cover, “Chapter 9, Wednesday, November 3, 2004 to Saturday, August 11, 2007”.  It would take that long to fill the pages because my writing was so sporadic.

I’m on Chapter 10 now.  The book is only half full and what’s here is such mundanity, I wonder if I wasn’t just putting things in there for the sake of putting things in there.  There are magazine clippings, photographs, theater tickets, song lyrics, snippets of writing from other places… I’ve even got hotel room keys glued to the pages of my diary; souvenirs of places I’ve been, trips I’ve taken. (Apparently I needed a souvenir of my grandfather’s funeral and the hellacious trip I made to attend it.)  I never wrote as often as I wanted to, or felt I should, because it always ended up taking a long time to write everything I was thinking about.  And then it seemed like the only time I wrote was when I was unhappy, which granted was often, many of my diary entries are about wishing I would die.  Some of what I wrote about, I’m just plain embarrassed by, but who cares, right?  I mean, it’s my diary, not like anyone is going to see it, right?

Six years ago, when Michelle and I were moving, one box never made it to our new apartment.  One box.  One box. This box contained the first seven “chapters” of my life.  Seven books.  Seven diaries kept since I was twelve years old.  Gone.  Forever.  I was devastated.  I was angry.  I was embarrassed.  I’m still hurt.

Two and half years ago, I began blogging and I started doing all my writing on the web.  The web, as far as I know, will never be packed away in a box and left sitting on the side-walk by the professional movers you hired to transfer your entire existence to a new home.  The web will never disappear entirely taking with it all record of your thoughts and feelings no matter how adolescent and embarrassing they may be.  Someone, somewhere, may well have read the first seven chapters of my life.  I can only imagine what they might have thought.

I enjoy blogging.  It’s faster (and even this takes me a while sometimes, to make sure that everything is just right, that the formating is correct, that the wording is acceptable for public consumption.)  Sometimes, though, I find myself holding back.  I know I’ve written about this before and the comments I get are always words of encouragement to just be myself and write what I want to write, but the truth is, I don’t want to bore people, or worse annoy people, with my constant whining, bitching, complaining about being done wrong, mistreated by someone or just generally being pissed off.  I don’t want this to be the blog about the gay guy who just can’t get over all his baggage and live his life, even though that’s who I am.

And I worry about offending the people who already read this blog.  The following is small, but between the comments that are left here, the occasional e-mails that I get and mentions on twitter that follow the auto posting, I “know” the people who read this.  You’re my “friends”.  I wouldn’t even use the quotation marks, except, I’ve never actually seen any of you in person, face to face.  But you’re still my friends and frankly, the thought that I’d offend, or annoy, or turn you off, the idea that you might tire of my words and stop reading, well… that rejection would hurt me.  So I try to make my blog posts fairly…. consumable?

So between the length of time it takes to write (hand or type) and the desire not to lose anyone, I go lengthy periods of time without writing anything at all (which only serves to lengthen the next post and the time  it takes to write it.)  The problem is, writing really does help me.  It can be cathartic!  Even if it doesn’t resolve anything, there’s a true relief in getting my thoughts and feelings out of my head and onto “paper”.

And so I wonder:  What if this blog were “grittier” than it is?  What if I stopped putting on the “public” face that you normally see?  What if I wrote about my deepest darkest feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt?  What if I wrote about my fears of never being able to have a relationship and the honest terror that surrounds the subject of sex and intimacy?  What if I vented all my frustrations and anger and sadness and feelings of loneliness and betrayal?  What if I wrote all the things I think about, and not just the few things I’m able to pull from the ashes of my psyche that seem like they might be acceptable for public consumption?  Would you still read?  Would you still respond?  Would you still be my “friend”?

I’ve given serious thought to starting a second blog.  One that would not be private, but would not be linked directly to this page either.  I’ve thought of having a place where I can dump all those feelings and fears and doubts and maintaining this page as the “happy, shiny face of Riggledo”.  But then I wonder how hard it would be to keep track of what should go where.  Would I post things here that should go there, and vice versa?  I wonder if I’d be doing all of you a disservice by not giving you the chance to know all of me.

I need to write more.  I need to write in my diary more.  I need to get more of these thoughts and feelings out of my head and into my car– no wait, that’s a song…

I need to get it out of my system.  Writing and talking seem to be the only way to purge the emotions and get some sense of peace.  Talking to the cat doesn’t cut it though and I can only afford to see my therapist once every other week.  Why writing helps when thinking doesn’t, I don’t know, but it does.  And I need to do more of it.

Get Out Of My Head

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

It’s amazing really how quickly and easily I can get wrapped up in my own head.  I guess that’s the right way to put that.  I’m not really sure.

I re-read yesterday’s post and I realized I didn’t really covey my sentiments as well as I would have liked and I wondered why.  Do I not know what I’m feeling?  I thought I did.  Am I unable to articulate it?  I know lots of words but sometimes I’m not as good as I think I am at stringing them together in the right way.  Am I afraid to say what I really mean?  Possibly, but if so why?  And I think, really, that’s the answer.

For all the talk about how I keep this blog for me, and it’s my thoughts, and my commitment to honesty, and blah blah blah, I do find that as I – I’m going to contradict myself here – as I form connections with the very small handful of readers/commenters (there are a handful of people who only comment to me on Twitter) the more I think about these real people who will read my blog and what they will think when they do and then I start to sensor myself.

Part of my real life job, though not in my job description, is risk assessment.  I spend a lot of time thinking about how actions will affect people, how they will react to them.  I spend inordinate amounts of time planning for likely eventualities.  And I’m good at it, which perhaps doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

My point is, that’s kind of where my head is most of the time; planning, softening blows, anticipating outcomes and reactions.  So maybe when I’m writing, and I’m thinking about you and you and even you reading what I’m writing, maybe I’m getting too caught up in my head, thinking of all the ways you might react to what you read and how you might respond in your comments.  Maybe I’m managing your expectations, your responses, in advance, somehow.

I made a commitment to being honest when I started this blog, and I can say that I have absolutely upheld that commitment, unless you want to split hairs and say that a lie of omission is still a lie.  It’s true that everything I have said is true.  It’s also true that I have not said certain things for fear of the reaction it would get.  It is also true that I have… softened some of the things that I have said so as not to illicit pittying replies, or words of encouragement that won’t really hit the spot.  (See, even as I write that paragraph, I fear how it will be received; that someone, somewhere, will think “well, fine!  I just won’t try to encourage you at all anymore!  Hmmmph!” and I’m not saying that.  I guess the truth is, it’s not the encouragement that I want to avoid so much as the assumption I make in conjunction with that encouragement: that the person doing the encouraging now thinks I’m a pathetic, whinny looser.

So clearly, I need to work on getting out of my head.  Spend less time worrying about what you all will think, and more time sorting out my thoughts and feelings and making them make sense in written word.  I need to put more energy into “full confession” and less into “polite commentary”.

My commitment to you is that I will try.

On Donuts and Fluff and Stuff

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Well, I can’t put it off any longer.  I’ve procrastinated and procrastinated and put it off and put it off and repeated myself and repeated myself and been just a little bit redundant and then did it again.  Long enough!  It’s time I wrote a blog post.  Only… I’m not sure what to write about.

It seems as if posting only on Fridays is my new thing.  I need to get a new, new thing.  Only posting on Friday’s isn’t good enough.  I was reading some blog posts in my Google reader and I got to this post on Jennsylvania where Jenn Lancaster talks about being out of practice with blogging.  It seems funny for her to say that because she is, after all, a very successful, multiple times published writer of books, but I can tell you from my own limited, first-hand knowledge that writing books and writing blog posts is so not the same thing.  Anyway, in the posts she says:

I hate when I get out of the habit of writing because it takes such effort to get back into the swing of things.  I always tell budding authors that the best way to be a writer is to write; the ability to write is a muscle and it’s got to be worked daily.  Presently my writing muscles are flabby and weak, chugging along at two point five miles an hour on a treadmill with no incline.

Worked daily…  Gosh, I can’t even seem to manage to work it weekly at this point and that frustrates me because I really do love to write and I want to be able to do it more but finding the time is a real hassle.

There’s another blog I like to read, another blogger who has become a published writer of book.  One thing has always stood out to me about his blog.  I remember reading in one of his posts once that it takes him 15-20 minutes to write his blog posts, “these things practically write themselves” he said.  My blog posts don’t write themselves and they take a lot more than 15 minutes to write.  I’m not saying that to draw a comparison between us, either.  There is a valid reason behind it, because the truth is, it takes on average two hours to write one of my blog posts.  Maybe that’s because I don’t do it daily, or maybe it’s because I don’t know how to be brief or maybe it’s because the things I write about can’t be short and simple, I don’t know.  I just know that lately, sometimes when I’ve thought, “maybe I’ll write a blog posts now”, I’ve then looked at the clock, realized it was after 4:00 and remembered my determination not to stay at the office until 7:00 and decided not to write.

I have given some thought, on more than one occasion, to undertaking something called NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month.  It’s sponsored by the same people who do the National Novel Writing Month program in November that I abandoned you all for last year, only NaBloPoMo isn’t a specific, designated month… I don’t think.  Honestly, I haven’t researched it, I’ve just heard other people talk about it.  But really?  A post a day for 30 days?  I couldn’t possibly commit to that.  I barely touch a computer on the week-ends and I don’t have time for writing in the evenings.  I’m much to busy with food prep, clothes ironing and vegetating in front of the television!

And besides (or maybe it’s because), I spend all day on the computer at work and a good portion of that time is spent dealing with my own personal interests, it hardly seems worthwhile to think about it when I’m at home.

Things haven’t really changed much since my last post as far as feeling overloaded and not being able to get anything done.  I’m frustrated because there is so much I want to accomplish, both professionally and personally and it feels humanly impossible to get much of it done, let alone all of it.

Boy this really isn’t going in the direction I would have liked it to go…  I spend too much time on this blog talking about all the things I wish could be, or all the time I do not have.  What a bummer.  That’s not my intention.  I’m not sure why I have such a hard time writing fluffier stuff… I guess I’m just not a fluffy person right now.  Maybe some day I will be.  Maybe you can stick around and find out?

~~~~~~~~~

Here’s something fluffy, sort of.  Today is National Donut Day.  No kidding.  If you don’t believe me look it up.  Then again, if you’re reading this, you’re clearly familiar with the internet and with some level of social media and you must already know that today is National Donut Day.  Dunkin Donuts, Krispee Kreme’s and Tim Horton’s are all giving away free donuts today in honor of National Donut Day, or so I read on-line.

Today is also Friday, so it’s Another-Friday-At-Riggledo’s-Job-Where-The-Boss-Always-Brings-In-Donuts-On-Friday Day.  It’s really not as exciting as it sounds.  And if you’re anything like me, it doesn’t sound very exciting to begin with.  Anyway, I walked into the office today, and sure enough, there was the giant pink box filled with sugary, glazed goodness that I try so hard to ignore and pretend isn’t’ there and isn’t calling out to me, only today is National Donut Day and what kind of red-blooded American would I be if I didn’t celebrate a national holiday?  Six times.  Serioulsy!  SIX.  TIMES.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go lie down now.  The sugar coma is taking over.