In Pursuit of Creative Fulfillment

Writing, for me, is a lot like performing an exorcism. I don’t know why I do it. It’s stressful and I’m just relieved when it’s over. My natural talent is drawing, specifically simple, offensive cartoons unbeholden to rules of perspective. A few years back, my favorite director released a documentary about Mike Diana, the first and thankfully only US artist ever convicted of obscenity, for selling self-published comics through the mail. I saw a bit of myself in Diana. Our styles are similar. It never occurred to me that parlaying my passion for doodling diseased cocks and machete-wielding elephants into a living was an option. I fell into a mild depression, wondering where I’d be if I truly applied myself. I stopped nurturing my talent because I lived in cramped apartments for years and never really had a good workspace. That’s what I tell myself anyway. It was easier to work from a laptop. I have an office and a huge finished basement now, and still haven’t picked it back up. That tells me I’m my own biggest obstacle. Seems I’ve gotten used to this “writing” thing, as frustrating as it is. I’m not a fountain of creativity. The words don’t just flow from my fingers. It’s something I have to work at.

Movies have always been my muse. I used to get disapproving comments from my saintly grandmother for drawing violent Friday the 13th comics with boobs in them. I also had a series called “Bug Killers” based on the puppets from Puppet Master. Each diminutive character had their own weapon or ability for combatting insects. After that, until about fourth grade, I stuck to drawing “good stuff” — mostly animals — so as not to concern the adults. It takes a special kind of movie to get the ol’ creative juices flowing. Once they’re pumping sufficiently fast through my body, I find the best approach is to get all my half-formed thoughts down in a big wall of text and revise it from there. If I can’t get the piece to take shape right away, I come back a day or two later with a fresh set of eyes. If I still can’t get it to read how I want, it slowly consumes me. I begin to question my grasp of the English language. I obsess over grammar and trivial word choices. I think why is it I can say something in conversation, be understood, even get a laugh, but when I write it down, it doesn’t sound right? I keep checking what I have, hoping it magically rearranged itself into Shakespeare. By this point, I’m stabbing my groin with religious objects. I ask my wife to read over my writing. She identifies any typos and tells me it’s fine. Hearing that is like hearing the hero of a bad horror movie yell “Fight it! I know you’re still in there! Don’t let it win!” I splash a little holy water on my keyboard and hit publish, ridding myself of the evil. I usually don’t watch the movie again for a long while. I move on with my life.

Me being tormented.
Credit: The Happiness of the Katakuris, Tubi TV

My wife.
Credit: The Exorcist III, Tubi TV

The truth is, I don’t consume many movies these days. I start plenty, but end up turning them off at the first sign of nudity. My kids are constantly running around, and the titles I pick out are often unsuitable. So, I just watch halves and thirds. When a title captures my interest, the first thing I do now is check the parents guide on IMDb for sexual content. Naturally, it tells me a woman shits on a dog’s erect penis or something equally heinous, limiting when I can watch said movie to past my children’s bedtimes. If there’s no advisory, I’m back to square one with my finger riding the home button. That’s a dangerous game.

Remarkably, I managed to post 61k words last year an average of just over twice a month, the most since my old blog. My goal for 2023 is to keep increasing those numbers. I’d love to get the engagement up too. I want to make WordPress the lively community I remember it being a decade ago. I went through a period of mourning when my favorite blogger stopped posting. I’m still healing, honestly. If you were around to see the comet that was Dr. Humpp’s Curious Collection streaking through the sky, count yourself lucky. I miss the camaraderie I had with him and others.

In between posts, I do my best to read, like, and comment on as much of my fellow bloggers’ work as I can. I spend a fair amount of time in the reader scrolling through the horror tag searching for similar sites. Lately, I’ve noticed an uptick in Fangoria wannabes spamming multiple news items an hour. I hate that shit. I hate this whole clickbait/podcast/streamer/content creation culture we’re in now. I may “monetize” my site in the future by adding one of those clichéd “buy me a coffee” donation buttons, but not today. I’m more apt to click on a site with a .wordpress.com domain than a .com domain because it shows me the author is in it for the love of the game. If I can offer some free advice, always acknowledge your visitors. Reply to comments. Nobody wants to go unheard. Also, I never like a post with the expectation of getting one in return, but after a point, it’s common courtesy to check out what your visitors have to offer. Unless someone’s writing is super witty or funny, I lose interest and unfollow after the tenth or twentieth unreciprocated like.

Shout out to Beau Montana of The Internet Ruined Everything, Bert, Billy Peppers of Space Rats From Outer Space, Kevin Hurtack of Gun Smoke & Ghouls, and Film Miasma for keeping the mice away! Stay possessed 🤮