about the android

24.11.2009

“How I Became A Writer…” aka worst.decision.ever.

I didn’t always want to be a writer. I’m not that writer. You know. The writer who wrote before he learned his alphabet.

I actually wanted to be a doctor for most of my childhood. In between those dreams, I wrote on occasion. Less than that, in fact. I wrote three stories by the time I turned fifteen. It was never approached as a goal or considered a career choice. I come from a tribe of pragmatists. Pragmatics. Pragamaticons…?

So I fell in love for the first time @15. And I wrote poetry for my high school sweetheart because, not only was I in love, I was faced with the prospect of losing my virginity. Wrote from fifteen to seventeen and, when we broke up, I didn’t pick up the pen again until six months later, on a dare of all things, I wrote a story. It sucked. My cousins liked it. What can I say?

I kept writing poetry because I figured I was a poet and did so from 18-25. This was while I went to college for journalism (because I believed I was a writer), dropped out, moved to DC and…well, this kind of bleeds into “Start With The Core” so…I’ll spare you.

It never occurred to me that people go to college for creative writing. I just assumed you either did it or not. What could a school teach you, I asked myself. Well clearly, enough to save one the embarrassment of calling yourself a poet without, you know, understanding the “craft” of poetry. And at some point, I realized my poetry was, in fact, fiction. Stories. Imaginary tales and such.

So I made the transition. Wrote a novel (it sucked), tried to rewrite the novel (no dice) then, in a fit of patience, decided to slow down, write short stories, study the craft on my own and build up my publication credits.

So why is it the worst.decision.ever? Because writing haunts me. All day, every day, its all about character and theme and plot and all of that shit. It’s knowing you’re meant to do this, mixed with the notion that perhaps you’re not, and trying to write worthwhile prose amid this confusion. I’m a decent businessman who does pretty well at my day job. And yet, I’m dissatisfied. I’d be happier making 25% less if I could do it with my art. But that’s a ways away. Right now, I’m just trying to finish a first draft.

24.10.2009

“Start With The Core…” aka the beginning, the first page entry, the old model

I come from New Jersey or, rather, I was born here, left here, got chased back here after the world told me, in its debilitating way, “Here ain’t there, so go home and find yourself…again.”

I lived here my entire childhood, then decided as a man I needed to live in Washington DC. There, I learned a couple of lessons:

1. Cohabitating sans employment is never the best move.
2. Subways are needlessly complicated.
3. Never drink Alize, beer, Kaluha and wine and think for a second that, mid-coitus, you won’t turn over and stain the hardwood floor with vomit (aka blue screen of drunk).
4. My father was right.
5. Generosity can never be taken at face value.
6. Leaving one woman for another may very well be the best move for you. And it might work out. And live happily ever after. Keeping old girl from killing herself before leaving for new girl (by way of one sleepless night) is, among other things, the trickiest endeavor.

Then I lived in Georgia for four years:

1. Cohabitating sans employment is never the best move (had to reboot to get this lesson installed).
2. If you’re from the Northeast US, and you can’t understand Southern accents, just smile, nod and say “Right. True.”
3. Marriage is a loaded gun.
4. Children, the untrained and the noncommittal shouldn’t play with guns.
5. I shot myself in the head.
6. The accompanying wound exacerbated a pre-existing, though unknown struggle with Depression.
7. Left there, left an ex-wife to her own devices, and came back here to figure out how to get there…finally.

Now none of this speaks to existence pre-adulthood, because most of that is the usual. You know: either you had a good childhood or you didn’t. I did. That is, my parents didn’t go out of their way to misguide me, got along with my siblings, played the schooltime role of “fat kid” with, if nothing else, ambivalence. No complaints.

Now this specific portion of the Bullsh*t interface isn’t meant to tell you everything about me. Nor do I feel like purging. But I do appreciate context and, even better, subtext. Maybe you do, too. So this is to give you some background into why, as you’ll begin to see or already noticed, I’m slightly off, but not in a bad, douchebag way. And not in the pretentious “I iz individualisticz lolz” way, either.

But “mensah” is completely separate from the other me. It’s not my real name (o rly?), I picked it for its meaning, co-opted it as mine when I lived in DC to hide from life for a while. It’s the name I gave to the nonsensical, creative, maddeningly sarcastic parts of my personality. It’s what I want people to see all the time, but this damn flesh overlay…the fears and self-doubt and self-consciousness.

Besides, you don’t want to meet Dennis or, God forbid, Thomas…I can assure you, for high quality online banality, including an obsessive compulsive desire to be a writer, mensah’s your man, in a sense.