Who Am I?
By Andrew G. Carson
Copyright 2012 Andrew G. Carson
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
For Emma
For showing me there is more to life than shadows and for that I will always love you.
Contents
Chapter 1: Every journey begins with stopping off for gas!!!
Chapter 2: Get well soon or not your call!!!
Chapter 3: Beginnings or something similar
Chapter 4: Hurt ‘n’ hell
Chapter 5: Double dose of short fiction
Chapter 6: The Housebound Writer
Chapter 7: The Prozac years
Chapter 8: Movies, scripts & books oh my
Chapter 9: The problem with internet dating
In Closing: Or something to that effect
CHAPTER 1 - Every journey begins with stopping off for gas!!!
“Ever noticed how the majority of words in the English language that are both loathed and treasured are just four letters long? At the end of the day if we remember this fact maybe we would feel less heartache when such words are overused!”
- Andrew G. Carson
Who am I? I have asked that question more times than I care to mention. Mostly without reply just the usual dead silence and tumbleweeds but on occasion, on very special occasions without provocation or unintentional slight minded, I receive a reply a damning brutal reply. A silent scream from the darkest corner of my mind and a reply that haunts me and chills me to my very core. That reply is “AN UNTALENTED NAEBODY!!!!” Now I am not one of those 2 squid celeb wanabes you see queuing up in their droves to appear on bullshit so called “Reality TV” series just wanting, praying to be famous for any reason and displaying no real merit or exhibiting any substantial talent just pure desire, coveting to be, well to put it simply, to be FAMOUS!
No, no that isn’t me I don’t want or need attention to feel like a worthwhile individual. Actually, that’s a lie and I intend to write none of those in these pages. Hell we all need a little attention sometimes to feel like what we do and who we are matters to someone be it family, friends, co-workers, lovers or in extreme cases the entire world. For me, it is the trifecta of family, friends and the love of my life but in regards to that last part I’m getting quite ahead of myself. What I’m trying and failing to say effectively is that I don’t need to be loved by the whole world to feel worthwhile but I do have a small part of me, no joke intended, that requires a little more than a simple “well done, good job sport” and that is my creative side. That part of my brain that weaves the stories and creates adventures for characters that only exist in my head. No, I am not crazy (or at least not clinically for at least five years!) Nah just a writer, a writer who craves the attention of someone reading and enjoying the words I have put on the page with my own imagination, sweat and printer ink.
Now you may say you just found what you are, you are a writer but I’m not a writer not really. Hell if procrastination was an Olympic sport I’d have a few gold medals by now. No I write but I’m not a writer and there is a difference, a subtle nuance between the two. I put words on paper, weave story arcs and play God with my creations but alas I am not a real writer. I’m not someone who will write a masterpiece of fiction like Charles Dickens, Stephen King or Emily Bronte I’m not even going to write a bargain bin/ trash bin piece of you know what like Katie Price or some other so called celebrity because that would entail completing something I have started and that is something I seldom manage to accomplish. I am not bitter about it honestly I am not. I may sound like a bitter hack throwing a one man pity party but I’m accepting of my limitations in some regards. However I still have the passion there, a deep troubling need to simply FINISH!
I live movies. Some of you may be thinking that’s a strange statement to make but as someone who has seen over 10,000 feature films in his lifetime with most of them being seen twice or more I think I am entitled to make it. I love movies I know stupid little annoying random facts about them and daftly boring facts about how they were made. Hell I’ve made a few myself both from behind the camera (directing and writing) and in front of the camera (as a very hammy actor) and have wanted to take my life’s passion and make it a possible profession for a long, long time. I recently found myself in a position of being able to take the risk of actually trying to make a small town kid’s dream a reality. The only problem is it’s easier to dream it than to wake up and realise it! Alas I am not a film maker or a hammy actor. That is not who I am, even if I have experienced these existences they are not who or what I am.
Well, let’s get back to the procrastinating writer in me part and take a look at some examples of stories I have started but alas not fulfilled, which is a recurrent and maddening part of my journey through my creative life. This project started so differently. Originally it started innocently enough as a plan to dive back into the world of Orchid Grove. A safe haven for me, a world I knew really well and a world I felt comfortable writing about. The only problem was that, that comfort was misleading as the ease of which the worlds sprang to mind, the honesty of the piece had become lost. Lost behind what I had become and that my friends was a hack writer hoping, hell praying for commercial success. I hated each and every paragraph for they had lost the swagger and effortless joy they once brought me and all that remained was a shell of me with the tap to my soul seeping full flow and the depths of my psyche trickling progressively down the drain.
What had occurred without me realising it was that I was trapped in an unknown uncomfortable position of having to create a story that will make money, that will sell big, rather than just simply telling a story worth telling that brought happiness and escape to those nearest and dearest to me. My creative freedom felt quashed and imprisoned by circumstance, false duty and bruised pride. I burdened my shoulders with the weight of the world determined to write the next big selling blockbuster novel which led to my creative core going on strike in protest of management’s bureaucratic decision to destroy all their creative freedom and their freewill.
What caused all this to acquire? You may find yourself asking or may not but as you have read this far I’m guessing you may just be interested enough so I’ll tell you. I had found myself in the unfortunate position of being blissfully happy and enchanted with and by the greatest love of my life and that terrified me completely. Suddenly I felt anxious to succeed like never before. It simply had to be huge as I needed to prove to myself and maybe to others that I deserved to have this wondrously happy life and this completely and utterly magnificent partner in it.
Now not for one second, hell not one micro second, did she say or indicate any validity to this anxiety overkill phase I was transfixed by and if I suggested this was going through my head she would be the first to correct it immediately. However the worries were there nonetheless and they were growing in mass with each and every key stroke and with each and with every key stroke the anxiety rose in my body to the point where I felt like I had to pull the bed covers up over my head and hide myself away from the life I have craved all my life. Paradise comes with a price and that price is ego always getting in the way of a man’s intentions and I was no different. I needed to be able to contribute and at that moment in time I could not and that knowledge was killing me slowly but surely.
Now don’t for a second forget, my inability to finish my projects isn’t something new. it’s burdened me from time to time for many, many years and I’m sure always will but recently the kinds of things I could have done without that much planning or thought have escaped my realm of creativity. Be that my blog http://thehouseboundwriter@blogspot.com/ or writing simple little emails or letters to friends and acquaintances had become oh so difficult and with every passing day I wondered if I’d lost the little talent I once had for writing, for creating, for imagining. Maybe when you find your own personal nirvana you have to relinquish your greatest previous joy. If that be the case, I gladly relinquish it but as writing is my greatest opportunity for employment and income I fear I will also lose not only my self-respect and myself but my own personal nirvana also.
ORCHID GROVE: Volume 1 otherwise known as TALES FROM THE DARK CELLAR was to be my crowning glory but it was far from that as you’ll see in a moment. What was planned as a collection of short stories ended up as a very short, short story without any real merit and devoid of the heart and soul of its writer. It was just a few small paragraphs of torment, a half fulfilled rendering of what I had locked in my head but to which I couldn’t find the key to spill the creative juices onto the page.
ORCHID GROVE: VOLUME 1- THE HIDDEN
Some towns are quiet, some are not so quiet. Some are large, some are very small but what all towns have in common is that they harbour secrets, secrets that are kept from the outsiders and the world beyond their township limits. Orchid Grove is no exception to this for Orchid Grove has many secrets, some kept close to chest, some that are more open than others but all have stories behind them, stories worth sharing and stories worth dying to deliver even if only as a warning, a whisper in the shadows, to outsiders to give this town as wide a berth as they possibly can.
They say every story has a beginning, middle and an end but in this town it is never that simple. No, no this town’s stories are different and as unique as Mrs Tapert’s orange and olive bread loaf or Jack Winifred’s sea salted coffee. Orchid Grove has its own ways of doing things and you’ll have to bear with me as I try to explain them to you all. You see I grew up in Orchid Grove right over there on Elk Drive, house number 43 with my mother and sister. We weren’t a rich family when it came to pennies but we had a magical key that gave us the greatest gifts of all- knowledge and escapism. That little rectangular thin key gained us access into the vault like rooms of paper in the grand town library where my mother had worked since the age of 13 and where I spent the vast majority of my childhood lost in worlds of dinosaurs and goblins and my sister in fairy-tale lands of romance and white knights. It was in these vault rooms I first met a local with a secret to keep but whose trembling lips couldn’t stay shut long enough for his brain to engage and his tongue rolled over the words he desperately only wished to speak of in his head.
Alas I’m getting ahead of myself, as to understand this tale you have to understand the town itself. Orchid Grove is a town of eight hundred inhabitants in summer and little over two hundred in winter as in winter the part timers move off to their coal fire warmed city dwellings to try and escape the notoriously difficult conditions the winter months bring to this town. Not one winter can I remember that I haven’t been fighting my way through waist high snow and blindingly bright fog. As a kid this was a wintery wonderland but as an adult I now realise what hides behind the white blanket of winter. I know what creeps through the night, chasing shadows to dwell within and chasing cold fight-less limbs to capture and return to the cold bitter hate of fear and the quiet of forgotten souls lost in the night.
Orchid Grove has many secrets many of which are so terrifying they could make your blood boil even on one of its infamous wintery nights. The secret I am going to tell you is one of those terrifying secrets which will lead many of you to undoubtedly not believe my words when I recite what I saw and what I heard from others who experienced the terror of the winter of ’02, the winter I realised what lies behind that blinding light of fog on a wintery night in Orchid Grove.
Remember one thing if you choose to read this tale. There is no resolution, no happy conclusion and no kiss on the cheek by mother’s words of wisdom and comfort. No, this tale is for the bravest of souls alone and should only be undertaken by those who have the stomach for the gory, for the dark and for the never ending terror of night without day.
Thud, thud, thud. How could the sleeping world not hear the pounding that Mollie heard in her ears and felt in her chest right now? Mollie was thirteen going on eighteen like most girls her age, with her apparent confidence so large and her skirts oh so very short, but deep down Mollie had a dark secret she would never utter to anyone. Not to her family, not even to her closest friend Gemma. That secret being that she is, and always has been, utterly terrified of the dark. Terrified of what, or should I say whom, lies just beyond her strained night vision hidden from sight within the blackness of night but not hidden from you entirely. What lies within the blackness of night liked, no loved, to make noises to frighten the young and torment the innocent and not so innocent into making the mistake of leaving the safety of their bed covers. Mollie had learned to pull those covers up over her head from an early age when she almost caught sight of the hidden noise makers when she was three years old and now she was convinced they had known about it all along and they sought to keep her from telling anybody who and what they are and what they desire most of all.
Thud, thud, thud. Her ears felt like they would explode with the unbelievable pounding. Thud, thud, thud. Her chest felt like her heart was trying to make a run for the highway, to escape the inevitable capture of the hidden beasts who haunted Mollie on a nightly basis and who she knew would one day catch her when she made the mistake that so many children make of screaming out for their parent’s help. Doing this would give the hidden the opportunity to jump down your throat and eat your body from the inside out. Keeping yourself from doing this sounds so easy so simple but when a child is terrified the one thing they want is the safety of a parent’s embrace and that is what the hidden knew best and why they torment the young the way they do with such menace and such delight.
……………….. About here is where I went to make coffee and I never got back into the groove with the story as I was beginning to realise that what I liked about the world I had created had been whored out and in its place was a watered down open plea to the reader to not just like it or escape within it but to buy it. I decided there and then that I was going to write something not with editors and publishers in mind and definitely not with a commercial eye. No, I was going to write something true, something honest, something devoid of tricks and false dawns and final scares, something personal, where I couldn’t hide behind any protective shield where I’d be made to show my heart, my soul to simply show me and with that I would finally realise who I truly am for better or for worse.
“To crash and burn isn’t always necessarily a bad thing!”
- Andrew G. Carson
So, what to write about? I questioned what subject matter could give my creativity that all needed jump start in the right direction. I pondered this for so long I thought I was going to lose my mind, all the time continuing to say I was still working on my other project. Not willing to admit to myself or anyone else that once again I had given in at the first hurdle. Too embarrassed, or is just too egotistical, to allow someone I care about to realise my lack of pursuit of conviction when it comes to my creative side. After all what would that say about my conviction towards friendships or relationships for that matter? I was burying my head in the sand once again with no real hope of coming up for a breath of air. I was letting anxiety and pride get the better of me like so many times before in my life although now it seemed to hurt even more than ever because I wasn’t only letting myself down, which is something I have come to almost rely on, but I was letting someone I care deeply about down in the process and that was hard to swallow. So, I decided to throw myself into a project not knowing what, who or where I would be writing about and what came to the forefront was that old adage of write what you know. Well I don’t know a lot other than the pre mentioned stupid little annoying random facts about movies and well, my life but where is the drama in writing about that? There are numerous books out there on the subject of movie trivia and who in their right mind wants to read about an unsuccessful person who has done nothing of value?
I realised that was not the way to think about it. Firstly and fore mostly I need to find the real me, I need to get to know myself and find out who I am, to be able to progress as a creative person, as a friend, as a partner and most importantly as a man. I need to work through those niggling little issues that dwell on my mind and hide in its dark corners whispering spiteful self-mockery. I need to push past all of this and by taking this journey to find the real “me” maybe, just maybe I’ll find that story that will form my first novel. I know that deep down this probably won’t be my first book but maybe, just maybe it will unlock the creative gate and let the tale of that book flourish into my mind’s landscape.
The problem is how do you keep something like writing an autobiography a secret? After all people ask what you are writing about all the time it’s just good manners to do so after all and how do you answer that? If you are like me the conversation goes something like this:
FRIEND: What is your new story about mate?
Andrew looks about nervously.
ANDREW: It’s…. It’s…. I’m writing a book about a procrastinating guy questioning his life and who he is!
FRIEND: Mmmm sounds kinda like a thriller or something is it going to have your usual horror moments?
ANDREW: Maybe…. Probably you know me, always throwing cheap scares in!
Or something to that effect. What you don’t do is say:
FRIEND: What is your new story about mate?
Andrew looks about nervously.