10 Things You Didn’t Know— uh oh!
“Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
It was a simple task, it really was Jack Preston King nominated me for 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me and all I had to do was think of and write ten things people didn’t know about me and I did! (I did my homework!) I came up with ten things that were pretty honest (although no confessions of murder) then a weird thing happened I got depressed and didn’t really know why. I read a lot of others 10 Things lists and I’m amazed at the wealth of experience and adventure there is in the lives of the people here.
Then I remembered my book of short stories Stranger Souls which I’ve already been publishing the stories I like from it here on Medium (A Bird Called Failure, Xmas, and After the Movie, The 1000th Chimpanzee and Are You Safe?), the blurb on the back says “I am the killer, the vampire, the drunk, the lover, the star. As are you. The farther I go in, the further I reach out.” I’ve always believed that that my experience would touch the universal. My life is an open book, almost literally. My writing has always been revelatory, Kerouac has always been a big influence on my writing (Whoops! There’s one of the 10), and in finding things to write about has always been like a self-interview. My first novel Becoming Angel was a roman a clef (as many first novels are) and hewed closely to my life in my early 20’s, and the last time I read reads really well and I think would have been the last piece of the puzzle of 80’s writing of which Jay McInerny and Bret Easton Ellis had become famous for (touted as the Hemingway and Fitzgerald of the 80’s). One of the things that surprised me in that rereading of Becoming Angel was that a female character that was an amalgam of a couple of women I knew also had characteristics that could apply to me. Got me wondering if I subconsciously the female side of me?
The Last Stage which is a totally fictional plot does have some of my experience from hanging out with rock bands in my late teens and early 20’s, but has merged so fluidly with the fiction that some parts of it I don’t remember if it really happened or if I invented it. During the writing of The Last Stage I hit a section in which I was going to use an experience of mine for the protagonist, I balked I didn’t want to put that revelation about myself in the book, I thought about it for about an hour debating with myself what it came down to what was I willing to risk? Did I dare reach in far enough to be honest with my readers? Was I willing to expose myself? I was, I put it in and I think the book is better for it. The ego exhibited in The Last Stage is mine, it is blown to monstrous proportions, but it is mine in my more imperious moments.
This also carries over to the non-fiction things I’ve written. The Doors Examined, I first got interested in The Doors, of course because the music spoke to me which I guess tells you something about me and the darker poetic perspective I tend to have, also because I identified with Jim Morrison, a shy bookish guy interested in being a poet. You can also guess my leanings from the political articles I’ve posted in Medium but that’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Why Keanu Reeves Hates Me is just a blatantly true experience.
In my recent fictions you can see I haven’t strayed far in themes or technique from my earlier writing, although I think that style has matured, you can still find me in the characters in The Seas Have No Stars the protagonists unrealized dreams were momentary teenage interests of mine, and a story I’m working on finishing now, As Good a Name as Any (which I previewed with the work-in-progress What Darkness Seeks) returns me to an early idea of Jack the Ripper. If you want to know ten things about me or all about me, read what I’ve written, and you’ll find me in between the lines.
Who are some people I’d like to see 10 Things I didn’t know about them? Steve Newman Writer, Edward Punales, Steve Marinucci, Devon Henry, novalis, Róisín McLiam, Steve B Howard, hannah miller. As noted by a lot of others there’s so many here and I’ve read a lot of them anna Breslin, A Maguire.