Just so no one can say that I didn't warn them, this is your advance notice that this is going to be one of *those* OL posts.
Which is to say, you can count on it including:
-A pop culture reference!
-Oversharing!
-About a thousand more words than are strictly necessary!
-Schmaltz galore!
-Digressions!
If this doesn't sound like your jam, then please feel free to skim down to the bottom. I'll give you a second to get the heck out of Dodge.
... *whistles to himself* ...
Alright, only consenting adults left? Good. Let's proceed.
First off, I am reminded of one of my favorite jokes from
The Simpsons, which is when Lisa gets a letter in the mail from her foreign pen pal:
Quote:
Dear Lisa,
We are very sad in my country today, because our beloved President has been overthrown and [narrator's voice changes] REPLACED, BY THE BENEVOLENT GENERAL KRULL. ALL HAIL KRULL.
SINCERELY,
LITTLE GIRL
Alright, checked that box. Next up: feelings! (Ew!)
As one of the new kids on this block (and, admittedly, not even a Wahlberg - one of the less-cool kids), I don't feel particularly qualified to comment on the how the leadership of the M:EM should work.
What I do want to comment a little about is the M:EM itself, and the people who make it what it is.
The body of work which has grown up inside this project is really pretty remarkable. There is so much high-quality fiction, poetry, and world-building under the aegis of this collective project, and that's something which it's probably easy to lose track of if you've been around it for some time. As someone who is still pretty fresh to this collection, and who is still picking his way through the back catalog, I keep being surprised and amazed by the things which the people here have created. So I hope that everyone who has contributed to the project in whatever manner, be it large or small, be it as an author or a supporter, feels justifiably proud of the work they have done and the content they have created or helped to create.
And yet, at the end of the day, the content's not even the best thing about this little corner of cyberspace. I love it, but it's not the thing which drives me to spend an objectively unhealthy amount of time hanging around here, doing things like cracking-wise, passing along Mrs. OL's bon mots, and trying to bait Raven into making MST3K jokes.
It's the people which make this place so much fun. You're a wonderfully talented, funny, and supportive group of totally-sweet internet persons. I love to read what you write, be it a story, a poem, a quick comment about what you ate for breakfast, or a truly terrifying suggestion for the shipping wall. You keep me entertained, you give me great ideas, and you inspire me to try to write and to write better.
For someone who spends so much time flapping his gums about writing fiction, it’s something which I haven't actually managed to do very much of in my life, much to my own regret. For something I genuinely enjoy doing, I have always had a hard time actually getting myself to do it. The critic's voice inside my own head can get very, very loud, and at the end of the day I usually find it's easier to shut that jerk up by just putting down the pen than by telling him to go stuff it. He is a genuine, class-A troll, and he knows exactly what to say and exactly where to poke in order to have maximum effect.
Left to my own devices, I have always been better at finding excuses not to create things than at creating them. For example, I wanted to take creative writing when I was in college, but I had a hard time summoning up the guts to do so. What if I couldn't cut it? What if it wasn't for me? The syllabus said that spots were limited and were primarily reserved for underclassmen in the creative writing program, so it probably didn't make any sense for someone majoring in a social science to apply anyway.
Finally, in my senior year, I got up the courage to just sign up for the class. What was the worst that could happen? Well, the course was full, and I started the term on the wait list. But, after a couple weeks, someone dropped the class and a spot opened-up, and this clown here had to find the English department building on the campus map so that he could show up and try to learn a little bit about writing.
Things went surprisingly well. I was enjoying the experience. The internal critic started to sound a little tongue-tied at times. I decided to sign-up for another class the next term, and I got in. I felt like I had broken through a barrier.
And then I got sick.
I woke up one morning, and I felt like someone had stuffed the inside of my head with cotton wool. I felt like I couldn't think straight. I felt like I would fall over whenever I stood up. I waited for it to go away, but it didn’t. So I went to a doctor, who sent me to a neurologist, who sent me to a counselor.
At the end of the day, the best diagnosis anyone could come up with was that this was the long-term consequence of binging for years on a nasty cocktail of not enough sleep and too much stress. I had just worked my brain into a bad place, and it needed time to heal. I had to simplify my life, and I had to slow myself down.
One of the things that meant was that I had to drop a class. I didn't have enough mental stamina to take a full course load. I only had one class which I was in which I didn't need to be taking for my major or minor, or in preparation for grad school.
So I dropped creative writing. And I kind of felt like a door had closed on that part of my life. I'm not saying that made sense, but it was the way I felt at the time.
Over time, I started to feel better. I graduated. I went to grad school. I married Mrs. OL, who just happens to be the most wonderful person it has ever been my pleasure to meet. We got jobs. We settled-down. We started to build lives.
And I didn't really do any writing. I tried from time to time. The hard drive on my laptop is full of abortive efforts to get words onto the page. I scrubbed out of NaNoWriMo three years straight. "Do some writing" was a perennial inclusion on my lists of New Year’s resolutions, and it was always back on the list again next year, sandwiched in self-improvement purgatory right between "lose weight" and "go to the gym."
It was just too easy to not do it. I was busy. I had work. Mrs. OL had work. There was always something which needed doing. It felt like we barely had any free time for ourselves as it was. I couldn't seem to justify squirreling myself away with the computer and banging the keys to grind out the first chapter of a crime novel which I knew I wouldn’t finish.
I needed a kick in the butt.
Then I stumbled across the M:EM, and that was a kick in the butt.
This was something which looked like fun. This was something I wanted to try to do. And I gave myself an ultimatum: write a story. It doesn’t have to be good. No one has to like it. Just write it, and post it, and prove to yourself that you can do it. No excuses this time.
And here’s the funny thing – I did it.
And I don’t know how many thousands of words ago that was. But I know it was a lot. And since then I’ve been writing, and enjoying doing it, and my life is better and more interesting and more fun as a consequence. All of which I essentially owe to the people in this community. Not just because you give great feedback – although you do. Not just because I love seeing what you all create – although I do. But because, by virtue of who you are, and what you’ve done, you created something which can be so much fun that it seemed harder not to be a part of it than to be a part of it.
And that’s the real magic here, if you’ll excuse the pun. I feel like I get more out of the M:EM than I put in to it. And I just really, really hope that other people feel the same way, and that this is something which people want to do because it’s fun, and because it makes everyone’s life just a little bit richer.
We’re all busy people, and we all have a lot going on in our lives, and we don’t always have the time to devote to things that we wish we did. And so I will never expect or want anyone to put time into the M:EM if life isn’t affording them that time. Life has to come first. I learned that lesson the hard way.
But what I would hate is for anyone to not participate because they feel like it isn’t fun for them, like what they get out of it isn’t worth what they put in, or like this is something that they don’t want to be a part of.
And so I guess this is my extraordinarily long-winded and roundabout way of saying that, if people aren’t participating for those reasons, I’d love to hear about it, because I’d like to see what if anything I can do to change the equation to make sure that this is a fun, rewarding use of people’s time. Because if there’s something to be done, I want to do it, or to at least try.
Anyway, that’s my two cents, inflated to about a buck-o-five thanks to runaway verbosity.
...
Reader’s digest version for anyone who just scrolled down here from the top: You’re all super. Thanks for being super. I hope you keep on being your super selves, and that here is where you want to do some of that keeping on.
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That's brutal, man.
