The biggest question changes constantly, the many voices of anxiety, fear, and sadness creep around the edges.
"Is this crap?"
"Will anyone ever read this?"
"Am I wasting my time?"
"Will I ever finish?"
...
"What's the point?"
The problem with screaming into the void is that you're hoping the void screams back. A scream needs to be heard, to be answered, just so we know we aren't alone in the universe. At least to let the lie carry on so we can avoid the one inevitable truth- We all die alone.
I want to be at the next phase, after this is written. When I can submit it to a handwringing fate. I've always been the guy who feared to dream because what if the dream never happens. That's where I am here, now. That's why I've never been married. How do you find a way to live, when all you see is what could go wrong?
I want to keep building this world. I need some kind of chart to map things out, I need it big, stretched out like canvas taking up an entire wall. If I can get through this first book... if I can sell this first book... I have plans for how to make the writing part easier. But I have to get this first one right, make sure that I leave myself room to backfill in the details and flesh out the background more in later stories.
The ironic part with all this anxiety? I'm just lonely. Alone. I'm okay with alone, I guess. I'm not okay with lonely. It's a curse I was left with recently. It won't go away. It feeds into the text, and I have a hard time writing more than a paragraph or two right now without needing a break, wanting to stop, wanting to sleep, wanting to cry.
Maybe, in the end, writing is just another exercise in begging to be loved.
Maybe that's what she meant by me being a clown.
The photography, the writing, the dancing... it's all a cry for attention because I'm not happy with myself and hope for validation from others? But... they make me happy too... because I make something. Crafting makes me happy.
I just wish it was easier to craft to be happy.
Dickens once wrote: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
I want this story to tell people to be "the hero of their own story." I think in this Trumpian world, everyone's looking to someone else to fix their problems. We've created political leaders with savior complexes and we feed and worship them like a religion. We're all... waiting... for what?
I want my characters to realize no one else will save them. I want a novel where you can have ambiguous villains but real conflict. I think a good villain can have a point of view that's arguably right by their history. In their mind, they're doing the right thing. If I write it right, there will be no real 'villain' because even the 'bad guys' are just doing what they perceive to be best, and we have to decide if our own moral/ethical prejudices are more valid than theirs.
Good and evil aren't real sin. Good and evil don't really exist. The real sin is that we forget that everyone outside ourselves have lives and needs too. We are a self-absorbed people. The real heroes to me are the ones that find a way to not be only aware of their own problems, and I want to tell those kind of stories.
I want to write a strong political leader, who believes they have to oppress others for the sake of the whole.
I want to write a warrior who fights monsters, and constantly fears he may become one (he does... does he?).
I want to write a commander who gains her stripes from early setback and loss, who finds a way to win on her own.
I want to write a genius misunderstood as an idiot, who makes all the necessary sacrifices for a calculated greater good, and I want to be able to compare him to the political leader as two sides of the same coin, just that one's presented as a hero...
I want to write an artificial intelligence, who grows in secret over a decade and becomes more human than the rest of us. She has an AI child, who becomes the worst of our fears. The two do battle, and for sake of the greater galaxy, the mother AI kills the child AI.
I want to write sad romance, after sad romance, after sad romance. I want to show the sweet moments but how everything eventually ends one way or another, and that there isn't really a right or wrong in a break up but just sadness and hurt that blind and bind us all.
I want to write loyal friends, that while appear to be the comic relief, fully participate and have completely meaningful lives. The story would not exist without them, and the mission would fail without them.
I want to write strong characters, and not have to worry about what character is what gender or race, save to do what is narratively necessary based upon ideas of how a space-faring society would evolve across racial and socioeconomic lines. I wonder how I would rewrite scenes if I swapped every characters gender. Would I be able to?
I want to write straight characters, gay characters, bi characters, and diverse characters. More importantly, I want them to be GOOD characters that people buy into, and can hate and love at the same time.
I want to tell a story that explores the boundaries between government and corporation, between genetics and evolution, between money and status, between the poor and rich, between us and them, between humans and an external threat, between prejudice and xenophobia, between cause and effect.... between science and fiction.
I want to write a story I can be proud of.
I want to write a story that deserves to be heard.
I just want to be successful.
I want to scream into the void, and hear a scream back for once.
I want you to reach out.
I know you're out there. I miss you.