I’ve begun the polish on my map of Chichiyaboo, which is the land central to my story telling. Better to create a place that can have it’s own personality than muddy things up with some place already laden with preconceptions.

The geographic divisions are each a Bae, pronounced bah-ee and each has their own character. Wend Bae, for example has one of the main population centers with the four cities Proxa, Heager, Copper, and Rileton. But it also contains one of the least populated natural wonders, a deep valley winding canyon with the Wend River. It also has some structures and relics from occupants who filled that canyon long before. It’s beautiful and wonderous and for some, it has an unsettling character. Some Wendians know that the reputation does not match the facts.

Rileton has a central location but a western town feel to it. It’s a supply hub.

Distelle is a get away town for vacations, dream trips, good times.

TotanuhgoganaEtafig is very different. It’s full of eccentric citizens. It’s odd but fun.

The Upidon forest patch is like no other place. Wide open and spacious with a warm canopy of translucent leaves. Hero’s are made there. It also has a series of mesa’s and one has the forest brushing right up against it’s sides and flowers and food plants  on the flat top.

Plenty of water from the sea on one side and the mountains on the other.

A writer friend wrote me that he couldn’t relate to this. He said that it was hard enough dealing with the lands he knows without complicating life with a made up place.  His wife loves fantasy but he likes political writings. It got me thinking. I wrote back this:

Here’s an irony – I don’t read much fiction. I had to be forced to read Atlas Shrugged in high school at the threat of not graduating. The teacher made it an assignment and to my mind since it was fiction it was all made up and therefor bogus and of no value to me. A thousand pages of rubbish. I wanted facts, not more fiction. Many of the standard reading assignments had been actual rubbish to my mind. Preachy stuff that just left me with a bad feeling, such as lord of the flies. Later I learned that a great many works of fiction contain more truth than those books that follow the lead of Pravda by presenting themselves as factual while being incapable of withstanding honest scrutiny. ‘Pravda’ means truth. Naming an instrument for delivery of propaganda like that is similar to naming a bill that triples costs ‘affordable’.

I’m still not much of a reader and though the room where  I’m writing  has two walls of floor to ceiling book shelves all full, the only “fiction” is the child literature. The rest is ‘how to’..and a few biographies along with some math, language, and picture books.
There is a smattering of renegade volumes left over from lives I’ve come into contact with. Kalil Gibran is there. I do remember very much enjoying Dave Barry. Out of sheer boredom I read a Grisham novel and the Hunt for Red October while bed bound in the hospital. The Grisham novel was a good read right up till the stupid ending. Red October was good throughout.

And I used the Atlas Shrugged experience to teach myself speed reading. In the end, it was one of the really memorable and good experiences of that year and I liked it. The book made me think and consider things that I was oblivious to prior and began to give me a basis for the way I think today on some matters. It wasn’t enough to get me to read The Fountainhead or any of Rand’s other books though.

The rest of the story, the part that makes for the irony, is that I like to write. There have been times when I have been a prolific prose producer and yet I am loathe to read poetry. If it sold, I could write two solid volumes of that stuff every week. But I don’t read it.

One of my daughters was quite the fan of Shel Silversteen and pestered me for years to compete with him in the market place, but I couldn’t see it as a real option. Prose is fun and comes easy but somehow it seems inconsequential when it’s just light and fanciful and yet that’s what I’m fit to produce along with insightful lengthy poems on serious topics. Never the less, Beawulf could not hold me for ten lines.

The stuff I like to read is not the stuff I write and the stuff I write is not anything I’d pay good money to buy since I already have it.

So I end up writing these little snippets of the most compelling parts of stories that I imagine in great detail, and only do it for the purpose of fleshing out the setting so I can make an illustration. The rest of the story nearly always goes untold because when I try to write it, the drive is gone. I got the part I wanted. Like this painting I did years ago of a fellow who couldn’t participate in group hunts with his tribe because of a bum leg, but who devises and carries out a successful purge of a menace tiger through strategy.

Honestly, I don’t know if anything I do is marketable. I haven’t put it out there. I have a very successful ability to discredit the viability of my own offerings while absolutely loving the things I create. Very strange combo. It leaves me only the option of ‘hobby artist’ and ‘hobby writer’.

So if I were to succeed at the nice combo of writing and illustrating stories, they will be fiction more often than not. The very thing I personally avoid reading. And they will contain my view of things – the very thing I deem ‘preachy’. Like Atlas Shrugged though, it can actually help people formulate their world view in ways that leave them more sure. Only those interested in the ideas will come. It’s a concept I should understand because of it’s relevance to my religious beliefs.

I did manage to read every word of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy in high school but I could never do it now. I tried to read Harry Potter but considered it a monumental waste of time for me which was the same reason I gave away my television and fell asleep in the theater during every one of the movies they made based on that fantasyland.

When the Hunger Games was all the rage, I bought the whole book  set so I could figure out what made it work. I lasted ten pages. Rubbish. It was a sound investment though, because I then had absolutely no interest in finding out what was so mesmerizing about Fifty Shades of Gray and have since come to the conclusion that good writing was not the driving force behind sales. So I tried another route and bought three books purporting to know what must be practiced in order to write a good novel.

The creation of a new environment for the stories I intend to write is crucial because they need the context it provides.My stories are devoid of certain reliable ingredients that are already over represented in entertainment but I’m anxious to demonstrate that it can work well without them in the soup.

Now I’m left with all the ammunition and tactical understanding to produce good art and write compelling literature but now I shoot down every project that I conceive, fearing it unworthy. If everyone thought like I do, there would not be gasoline engines, compression engines, or even paved roads. It’s ridiculous. I feel paralyzed in the same way that I would be if I actually were. “To know and not to do is not to know”.

This happens even though I’ve come to the conclusion that the shear joy of producing creative projects is enough justification to do it. So the paralytic effect of the shoot-it-down negativism is vexing when in another part of my brain there is a clear endorsement and enthusiasm of the concepts I want to follow up on.

Is any of this familiar?

Somehow I do equate the endorsement of people paying money for my art with it having value. I know this isn’t necessarily true because people have built fortunes selling what not only has no real value but is actually harmful. Like Larry Flynt.

As a creative, I’ve successfully jumbled myself up so much that I’m effectively out of the race. In the old days I looked for inspiration. When it came, I didn’t analyse the value of it. I thrilled to just do it and got right on it.

Now I get really great ideas and within a day I go from thrilled and excited to unsure. Nothing happens. Inspiration eventually gives up on that sort of abuse.

I’d like to develop a strategy that actually works to shut out the thinking that second guesses things. The old question, “How long can rolling waters remain impure” seems to be the answer. Just get on it and stay with it. But all the negative thoughts do like to move in and set up house. They’re like fleas that drive a dog to distraction and lead to mange while producing nothing for their rent free stay. Just obnoxious and irritating.

A dog can’t get rid of fleas. Outside help is needed. I think that’s where the analogy breaks down, fortunately. People can turn their thinking the right direction.

The most valuable thing I can do at this juncture is slay that dragon then have a defense to keep others away that come in its stead.