What inspires you? This should.

Adaptive, creative, beautiful, inspirational, dedicated. He is Richie Parker.

Watch this video for eight minutes and then go out and change the world, somewhere.

Richie Parker is a vehicle engineer and 3D chassis designer at the famed Hendrick’s Motorsports for eight years. He is an amazing man whose parents are to be commended for their efforts and fortitude.

Why does writing a novel always feel like the first time?

BECAUSE IT IS.

Each novel is a completely unique experience, even if you are working with characters you are familiar with and whose histories are known to you. Each time you sit down to create with them, you are creating them three times. Once in your vision of what you want the story to be, that nebulous cloud of potential realities which you hone down to just one or two when you create…

Your outline: the document which coalesces what your protagonists want and how your antagonists work against those goals. How those two or more streams of potential realities come together in a cataclysmic explosion of…

Prose. The final choices you make when you put your pen to paper, finger to keyboard, voice to recorder and create the final work; where the decisions are made, the deeds are done darkly, the antagonist has the upper hand until the protagonist chooses more wisely or has aid from an unexpected source or finds renewal in an emotional moment.

This is a complex and peril-ridden process, filled with emotional anxiety, mostly yours, that it will be good enough to publish, good enough for my agent, good enough for the best-sellers list, good enough to spend my life’s blood on…good enough to spend my only non-renewable resource, TIME in a way to create a monument to a moment in my life.

That is a lot of pressure. So, yes, every time you write a novel, there is a sliver in time and space that shudders until you create and finalize the reality you are thinking about.

Indeed, every time is exactly like the first time, if you are doing it right. It should cause you a bit of fear, but it should also exhilarate you as you part the curtains to another reality and create/share it with the world, a thing that is uniquely…

YOU.

It is easy to feel you are not enough, not strong enough, not good enough, not bold enough. Don’t let that stop you. Remember: Most of what we know in the world today was created by someone who was not an expert in their field. And until the last century, expertise was a relative thing. But most importantly, you have the ability to be as good as you want to be by doing what you think you want.

If you desire to be a writer, then write. Everything else follows the intent of your will.

Memorial Day, by the numbers

Maybe the best way to honor the fallen… would be to find more ways to NOT send others to join them.

To my brothers and sisters in arms, both in the field and in Valhalla, I salute your efforts and your sacrifices. I honor them by making the world a better place through my Works as you believed you have in yours.

Fred, Frank, Eric, Robert, Paul. You will always be my brothers.

Memorial Day 2013

Thaddeus Howze, Operations Specialist 3rd Class, retired. United States Navy.

Here’s to the Crazy Ones

Prescient Inspiration: Play once a day or as necessary…

Charlie Chaplin’s Speech at the end of The Great Dictator (1940)

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an Emperor, that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in;
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery we need humanity,
more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say: do not despair.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators will die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish.

Soldiers: don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder!

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men,
machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts.
You are not machines!
You are not cattle!
You are men!!
You have the love of humanity in your hearts.
You don’t hate, only the unloved hate.
The unloved and the unnatural.
Soldiers: don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty!

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
– “The kingdom of God is within man.”
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men: in you!

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power, let us all unite!
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security.
By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people.

Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy: let us all UNITE!”

I have, until I heard this, never knew anything or heard anything which espoused my personal belief in human potential, in human virtue, in the strength of what is good in humanity in such a clear and focused way. I keep thoughts like these to myself because I fear most people would think I am too optimistic about people, that I don’t recognize what terrible things humans are capable of. I tend to think differently in that regard. I think of what we could do if we harness our energies for good, the same way we harness them for greed or fame or dominance over our fellow man. I will live this way even if no one but me can believe it is possible to harness the good in men. I think of movies today and find them mostly banal, filled with little to stir men’s hearts, but this, this is an anthem worth remembering.

What do you do to nourish your muse?

A bit of consistency is best for a muse and her subject. So I try to start my day at the same time, as early as she can kick me out of bed. If time permits, something to break the fast of the night’s repose, healthy if possible, fruit, cereal or dare I admit to it, the candy of meats, bacon. If I am really lucky, my wife makes one of those banana/fruit/flaxseed/protein powder drinks she loves. When I am unlucky, the recipe includes kale (ugh).

A brisk regimen of blood flowing cardiovascular activity to increase the muse’s serotonin levels boosting creativity. For exercise to truly benefit a muse, it need be a regular thing, a long term gift to both you and your muse. A healthy muse is a wealthy muse. My muse admits to not enjoying regular exercise.

I admit my muse did once have a caffeine habit as the wicked drug can force open the doors of creativity, but the cost was a nervous eye twitch that was quite unbecoming to everyone who knew us. We have now dropped to one cup, in the morning after our exercise and breakfast.

But for a muse to truly be creatively inspiring more than just exercise is needed. A muse thrives on experiences, the more diverse, the better. A muse does not thrive sitting at home watching the telly. No, if anything the telly saps a muse of creativity, exposing it to the idea the blandishments of modern media are to be the accepted form all creativity must take; be safe, be friendly, be predictable, be violent, be dangerous, ensure a happy ending when all is said and done.

As if life were so predictable.

Go outside, meet your neighbors, ride mass transit, yes, mass transit, for a wealth of stories await you if you can simply look, listen, imagine and believe. Driving is a solitary prison disconnecting you from stories not introducing you to them. Jump from a plane, ride a cross continental train, ride a ship, do all of these things, so you might experience the world from a perspective different than yours.

See the night sky at sea. Be amazed at all the stars you didn’t know were there. Introduce yourself to the Milky Way. It will speak back to you. Plummet to the ground at 32 feet per second, per second, feel you heart rise into your mouth, know fear. Makes your writing about it more real. Go to a play. Feel language in a way you don’t normally use. Let it roll over you, through you. This feeds your muse like nothing else.

A muse secretly craves facts, despite their artistic bent. My muse reads over my shoulder marveling at the same things I do, often finding ways of using things I read in a fashion I hadn’t thought of. Technically, that’s her job. Reading the news, reading the tabloids (not too often) reading the crackpots (so many interesting theories its hard sometimes to remember they are crackpots).

Most of all, read the classics. Yes, some are SO dull. My muse falls asleep when I read some of them. But they are not for her anyway. They are for me. Jack London reminds me to connect to nature. HP Lovecraft connects me to fear. Edgar Allen Poe connects me to the monstrosity of the human condition. Machiavelli connects me to the intellectual craft of human manipulation. You may never use any of these. But it helps as a writer, to know how far human beings have come, will go, and have gone if you want to write about characters you or anyone else will give a damn about.

Most of all, engage your muse in fun. This mean getting away from writing and having a good time. Muses need fun to unleash their creativity by connecting ideas from all of your experiences, your reading, your writing, your life, your loves, your beliefs and most importantly your connection to the Universe where ideas abound, awaiting you and your muse to reach into that realm of Logos, that place of perfection and find your stories aborning.

Your muse and you are one, inseparable; to follow your muse, you must first lead her to your inspirations.

What do you do to nourish your muse? © Thaddeus Howze 2012. All Rights Reserved

Painting: My Muse, © Deviant ARTist: parsakoira