The Hider

The arrival of a thought. To write or not. Trusting. Believing. Fearing and doubting. Why does it seem so easy for other writer's to let go of what falls from their fingers? How can you begin to grow forward?

Treasure

Most teachers command, "There are rules you have to live by in order to be looked upon as being a writer." Writer's are faith keepers. But for how long? How many brilliant writers fell short of living up their expectations due to the casting of opinion by readers that elected not to travel the trail of tales invited to the surface by the writer? There are just as many writing styles as there are different animals on the face of the planet. Keeping you from believing in yourself is an addiction to acceptance. What if you believed in the style of writing you were given at birth? What if what you hold just needed support from the body that's been carrying it around hidden in a soul no longer strong enough to tackle the guilt a reader tosses out like candy at a parade? What if you gave yourself permission to do it your way?

Moods

Being part of a creative circle. Doesn't guarantee the journey. Getting locked into an outlet. The mental overthrowing of all things normal. In reality. Is the very reason why most people choose not to be creative. I'm not in the mood. Isn't "Art" a mood? Writing. The act of setting the mood? Moodiness. A person blessed with the opportunity to feel the shapes of multiple collaborations. The longer you create. The more you learn how to separate. Who is the writer? Why has the painter slash illustrator suddenly presented his or her face? I didn't invite the editor! What do you mean the interviewer. The inner self that asks endless amounts of questions is sitting outside the bathroom? I penned out a song in 2009 called Daily Writing. I turn the page. A thousand personalities rush to the edge. If I could paint a face. I'd show you every mood I'm in. Rustic days and endless nights. Feelings inside too strong to fight. Going home to be left alone. Julia's way. In artist clothes. Don't wanna run. Can't find the sun. Don't wanna hide. Shadows steal from the artists eye. Julia taught me how to change my way. To paint with words every day. Going home to be left alone. Julia's way. In artist clothes. A quick glance at your reaction. Puts a memory into place. Got no idea why this happened. Guess God was mad at me that day. Numb doesn't mean empty without feeling. Numb only seems like nothing. For a heart feels something. To be left alone. Going home to be left alone. Black pen. White pen. Just let me in. Give me a pad of paper to release what's in. Living on the edge of a Poet's nib. It becomes my blood. Giving life to love. Going home to be left alone. I'm just an artist in human clothes. Kind of weird. How admitting. That you're a writer. Opens the floodgates. To moods. Permission slips to feel. The acceptance of a faceless beast. And if we could. Writer's would push them away. But elect not to. I've always believed it's because the final page of a mood in motion. Is art. That would've been kept inside the heart beats of a living imagination. If being in a mood. Didn't surface to reality level. So... when someone tells me, "I'm not in the mood." The writer steps back. To study. To view from a slanted curve. The presence of a body, mind and soul. So selfish to be so protective. Of their art. Into their eyes I do stare. Searching for the key. To open the door. For if I feel there's art in there. My moods of multiple shapes and sizes are professionally trained to truly make you upset. So that I can have access to the art you keep hidden from the world.

Attempt-Tation

Listen to the story on I Heart Radio What is writing? But an act of attempt-tation. Tempted is the imagination. So easily soiled by the actions and lack of from the passerby willingly giving only to find...what's been written rarely if ever has anything to do with them And if it did. Congratulations. You just won a cameo within the words of expressions. Writing about someone you know is no different than bumping into a stranger at Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. The moment you put into ink the stains of relationship. The mindless trips we take as writer's is the difficulty of maintaining how true we are to remain. People, places and things change endlessly. The attempt-tation is to bring to the surface of a page the elegance of a reader seeing exactly what has been painted. But how many times does the passerby happen to bring to their lips, "I don't get it." Or "This isn't my style of book and or blog to read." Writer's and authors aren't sensitive by choice. Attempt-tation. The attempt to bring food to the imagination is the encouragement of being open. Wide open. Exposing the color of the scented dust and cobwebs unevenly positioned on the back wall of a very tall mountain aimlessly peaking upward like a bad mood on the rise. Attempt-tation. The attempt to expose. To lay out. To unfold the what ifs. The could be's. The nifty cool Hollywood like drama filled scenes that make 50 Shades of Gray look a little purplish. Writing is just like painting a canvas. There's fascination and infatuation driven into the seams of a surface based on the delivery of adding nudity to the resume. The passerby stops to materialize. They hem they haw. They sometimes giggle but hardly if ever wiggle. One might want them to look away but the passerby stays. The attempt-tation finds no faith in having to easily explain. Writer's do a lot of stopping. Push. Pound. Sort out. Swiftly move paragraphs to the side. While unearthing new characters to bring up from the dirt to stand unsteady on an invisible ground. Attempt-tation is having the guts to bend a super hero at the waste and make them weak. To make not nice and destroy a family home by a secret not yet lived. But the writer knows it's coming. I don't hide my writing. But I'm quiet in sharing it. Seven books deep and I'm still stepping in the uneducated articulation of other people's opinions based on just being in the wrong place at the right time. Attempt-tation. Having all out courage to be discouraged. Accepting the fans of your creative way as being the meanest most misunderstood people on the planet and yet the weekend block parties wouldn't be the same without them. Attempt-tation is having a complete warehouse of multiple lives as a writer and finally after being numbed by every medication on the planet. You begin to realize. The difference between you and them. Your attempt-tations are read. While they seem to always keep everything in.

A Writer's Voice: Page B

Listen to the story on I Heart Radio The choice to write isn't always a free form given. No day passes. Thousands of unknowing people walk forward. Dropping the fruits of their imagination off onto paths worn out by judgment and disbelief in the writing self that vows to live unprotected.

A Writer's Voice: Page A

Listen to the journey toward writer's on I Heart Radio There are too many words spewing separated expressions onto a universe designed to share stories. Tall tales fall from pages nicknamed Tweet and Yahoo Messaging. If you don't think we were born to write. Then why are there hundreds of millions of people blurting out their whereabouts on something called Face Book? What if the next great novel came from the innocence of discovering you had the ability to write?

Stealing From The Future To Fertilize My Past

Interviewer: What do you say to closet writer's that have located the crack in the wall that helps them push away from self doubt? What I won't do is rush them into thinking I have to see their verbal art. It puts both sides of the conversation on high alert. Being accepted as a writer is a tough task. Especially when the reader thinks they've got the magic dust to turn any shape of expression into a billion selling novel. Writing takes guts! I've yet to meet the writer that doesn't question the presence of being the holder of all of these words! What am I supposed to do? Taking chances is a dangerous game in a fameless world. Paragraph structure is more personal than using the bathroom How and why a writer chooses to express shouldn't be laid out by rule books and pointy nosed school teachers. Let there be confidence! It creates a path for each collected paragraphs to chase their own life. To have the strength to live on the outside of your human then away from the creator is a challenge not all pages of creative expression can handle. Suddenly demanding a personal need to view the landscape of recently released writer's process is asking to bump into the possibilities of silencing the creative mind and heart. The moment I shake hands with another writer my eyes and soul look away from the shapes of their flow. I ask about writing instruments and or mediums. I wander into what times of day or night they are allowed to write. My goal is to know the writer more than the droppings. I would never be a great editor. I love the idea of being with writer's more than I do correcting something that doesn't come across perfect. Interviewer: How often do you scratch out handwritten entries in your daily journals? I can't do that. It's like that argument you have with a family member, "You must have meant it or you wouldn't have said it. I learn a lot from the fits I toss onto paper. I return several months later and giggle about the questions while having a better grip on what the final outcome ended up being. But to scratch out words and sentences? I stopped doing that when I began to recognize my poetry had deeper impact the moment it was released...not when I tried to Bob Dylan my way into history. Writing is about letting your imagination breathe. The moment you scratch...expect there to be blood. Interviewer: Nearly twenty years of daily writing. From those pages: You've laid out seven books, hundreds of paintings, a vividly incorrect broadcasting career, martial arts testing, surviving a heart attack and more. Your entire life has been discussed inside those hard covered journals. What do the airtight boxes smell like when you stop in for a quick visit? Each book. The pages. The ink combined with the acrylic paints. The sweat from palms searching for success. The scent of a constantly moving imagination should be labeled a weapon of mass distraction. The moment my eyes fall onto a page where new ideas or old attempts were brought up...it fuels my soul to try again. Through my daily writing there is phonographic photographs. Some people listen to music and instantly rename the day with the very paint they were sporting. Writing does the same thing for me. I can pull a book out from February 1996 and sweat the beads of fear just as I did when it first fell from the writing instrument.

Great Writing Should Be Part Of Gallery Bar Crawls

Interviewer: In most of your Blogs and Daily Entries you talk about writing like an artist paints on a canvas I blame that on teacher's! They were constantly after me to write with description. "Let me smell those hot apple pies sitting next to the open window." When you practice something a lot...it becomes part of your signature. I incorporated so much description into my writing that it became poetic. Musical! Expressed filled. Readers felt like they were on vacation. One night while on the Barnes and Noble writing tour a visitor said, "It's like you paint a picture. Have you thought about moving your words to a canvas?" The very essence required to build a well rounded paragraph also goes into the shape of a flower. The moon making out with the sun. A guitar melting in the backseat of a very hot canvas topped car. Interviewer: Where have you found more success? Writing or on a canvas? Seriously what is success to a writer or artist? The size of an ego doesn't determine the measurement of wind inside an unstoppable imagination. I've enjoyed several years of painting pictures for readers. The same can be said about gallery crawlers. There's a passion that lives beneath my skin: Don't just show off the multitudes of color free flowing within. Teach it. Words are words until they are delivered. Two decades of future Broadcaster's have stood in line waiting patiently to learn my shape of picture making. Interviewer: Your motto has always been: Steal my art. It wasn't mine when I picked it up. I know the faces of every teacher that took the time to share. No move is made without there being a memory of who let me in. I honestly believe it would be a disserve to them if I didn't pass it to the next set of painters. Be it words on paper. Delivered through the air. On a canvas. Expression Art is the ability of captivating emotion without having to sacrifice anything more than the willingness to share.

Baby Making With A Writing Instrument

I fall into buckets of wandering laughter when bumping into creative minds that believe books...just pop out. "Are you still working on that thing?" "Wow you must be really busy in life." "I thought it would be on the market already." Eventually the inner voice catches up to other people's uneducated judgment. Interviewer: Are you losing interest in the writing process of your new book? Not at all. A writing challenge is my greatest journey. I'll write to put myself in a box. Then free myself with a newer better painted picture. The difference between the first write and the second draft is how much your heart gets involved. It allows nothing to stand in the way of seeking a higher level of delivery. Interviewer: You've spent seven months laying out paragraphs and unedited sentences. How much longer and why? I'm not looking for the final page to arrive until February 2014. There's no way for it to take less time. There's way too much story to be developed! Interviewer: Compared to your six other published books. What's the hardest part to write in this new adventure? It has to fit into my day. If I'm lucky...I may get thirty minutes in the morning. Maybe an hour in the late afternoon. Most writers demand eight to ten hours. My other books weren't competing with Blogs and Radio. I love the way this one is being written because its keeping me valuably hungry. Then I deliver.

The Interviewer Un-labels Family

Interviewer: Your concept of family doesn't necessarily fall into the same definition as to what's printed in a dictionary. The term "Family" gets lost. I picked up on that really early. Before being set free as a teen. It sits inside hardened caverns without having to face the essence of its existence. Family is the explanation. "I can't do what I want because someone doesn't approve." Or... "I'd never do that because it would take me away from." Life with all its character faces enjoys sticking out its Murf shaped head then whispering, "You could've been." Hearts and emotions are easily sold. Dreams don't grow. Stagnant is the demand to move up and outward away from five or six generations of nothingness. We're fat with laziness and blame bosses, jobs, friends and lovers for our shortcomings. But hardly if ever family! I love my parents and siblings! But to sit on top of their shoulder's the failure of my success is totally unfair to them. I hear every excuse from every walk and pay scale, "Our reasons for living in a shack made of straw and mud has to be the fault of outsiders and family." How dare we think that way! I've been accused of selling out so many times that the Going Out of Business sign company knows me by my first name. The reality of it is simple: If I hadn't given life a swift swirl...would my family look at me as a could've of been? Interviewer: What does that mean selling out? Some see it as turning your back or walking away from the foundation that kept you warm in the middle of winter. I make it clear, "I'm always here." Just because we aren't hoisting beer and wine to our lips during a late Saturday afternoon in the backyard doesn't qualify as a family quitter. The hardest thing about life isn't making the decision to seek your own rooting system but trying to figure out how to slow this stuff down. It felt like a lifetime to hit graduation and only 30.2 seconds to reach fifty one in years. Interviewer: When is it time to go back home? To the green green grass. Where all those songs from the 1970's were written about. No morning passes that I don't pick up the smart phone to see if someone in the family has left a message. The moment the decision to stop chasing dreams becomes the new found reality...is the "Goodbye" life requires when rebooting the booty away from those friends that have become closer and more understanding than family. I don't have a problem being with family. I just wish that being part of a family was a little more like a game of neighborhood baseball. All the players line up on one side of the street and you get to pick who you want.

The Interviewer Questions Compliments

Interviewer: You play hard ball when the attempt to give you a compliment is offered. Instead of accepting the gesture; your choice is to shove it away without thinking about what's been said. Compliments have become this generations backstage pass to getting more. It rips the feeling of guilt from their reasons of demand. Compliment first. Then follow it with, "Oh by the way." It's my choice to see through the compliment. I instantly butt in, "What do you need?" The compliment that terminates best moods is, "You are so good at what you do." The reply, "Good isn't where I want to be. I vow to be great." Pastor Steven Furtick said it best, "Stop living life through other people's compliments. When you know the way of God. You will know his will. I was having a brilliant day before hearing what you thought of me." The very moment the Compliment-er steps through the thick clouds I instantly look toward the corner of the studio. There sits God! Eating a freshly opened can of roasted peanuts, "Hmmm sorry they did that to ya. Wipe the mud off your face and get back in the race." Interviewer: Yet you toss out compliments like Elvis Presley purchasing gifts for family and friends. Why do you expect people to accept your gesture? I don't follow the compliment with, "But there's a change or I now need this?" The essence of quality constructive criticism requires one simple rule: Breaking down a foundation only works if you're willing to help rebuild the several floors of readjustment. The quality of your voice could very easily be exactly on target but the volume or rhythm totally off. Through parroting the producer. The vocal acting delivery can be met if what's being offered is the effort of what the producer is trying to reach. I've had way too many bosses and studio producers use higher vocal volumes in trying to explain their efforts without ever demonstrating the correct pitch volume and tone. It's been: Compliment. Then: Do it my way or play on a different stage. Interviewer: You're telling me that you don't use compliments to gain access? That's cheating on the heart. No different than having a love affair.

The Interviewer: Introduction

Nearly my entire process. Child to adult. From Aunts and Uncles to co-workers and business relationships. I'm often accused of being conceited. Stuck on myself. An ego driven maniac. Yet not one person. Not even my Mother. Those tossing out the accusations like candy at a Thanksgiving parade have stood next to me while getting dressed in the morning. Watched as I wash my hands after a held back finally let go long ass pee. Or studied martial arts which requires students to blend into the visions the reflected path beaming back from the mirror. Conceit. Ego. Endless eye connection with a mirror. I've never had it. The outside description of my inner self feels no need to lock lids and share conversation. My mirror. A writing instrument. If I could change it. I would've done it in the second grade! It's the invisible growth that pops out of your skull at awkward hours. Usually 1:15 am to whenever the body gives out some eighteen hours later. It took me until 1994. A trip to Montana to take note. My body, mind and soul were being followed. By an out control desire to write. I had always written. Not just pages of poetry and song lyrics. Books! The second grade and beyond! Tablet after tablet stuffed into bent up, beaten to hell cardboard boxes shoved into the attic because I feared having this disease. I didn't know how people would accept me. The more I wrote. The easier it was for me to hide. I became the actor! I played out the roles the writing instrument danced into existence. Only to learn...it seemed my actions, reactions and vividly wild imagination had earned a name: Conceited. Ego Maniac. You've got the wrong face. That image doesn't belong to me. I find no time to dine in the arms of such energy stealing abilities. But...my writing instrument is a different story. I call him. Her. It... The Interviewer. No matter the day. Night. Impossibility. Victory or tiring bull crap journey forced into play by robbers of this gift to write. The Interviewer has the balls to step up to my page. Demand. Command and Deliver every cartoon character swimming through my eyes to fall freely about the world and land on his page. The bastard! The View From The Writing Instrument. The Interviewer will scrape from the surface of any soul the wisdom of a hundred years. Place it in a jar and let it cook under a southern sun some 100 degrees or more. Then open its lid. Sniff its present. Laugh out loud. Burp. Suck down a second lung full of shamelessness. Then whisper, "Grow a pair." The Interviewer. The View From The Writing Instrument. What I write. Come from darkness. My purpose in life is to locate light.