Comicality

https://imagine-magazine.org/releases/ Just a quick note to let you know that the newest issue of Imagine Magazine is now live for all of you guys who are interested. It's a day and a half late, but that was all my fault for being under the weather an unable to finish things up on time. I'm not at 100% quite yet, but I'm getting there. and I hop you guys will enjoy the May issue! K? Love you lots. And I'll seezya soon! Hehehe, CUTE astronaut! I'd share some space with him any day!

Present The Problem I’ve often felt that the key to drama and anxiety for a lot of people who may be reading your stories, or just from life in general came from something very simple. And that’s the constant idea of ‘choice’. Better yet, a dilemma. The more that I played around with the idea of it all in my own fiction, the more enamored I became by the power of it all. You can use it to put pressure on your audience, and create a much more stressful situation out of a fictional that may seem like a very easy answer, created by a spontaneous reaction to the moment. Learning how to use this tool in your writing can force readers to see the fork in the road, and realize what might happen by following either one. How do we do that? By presenting the problem through the thoughts and actions of your characters. Expressed openly, clearly, and allow your audience to weight their options against with whatever it is that your characters are going through. Just make sure to balance out all sides and let people wrestle with their own questions and get further involved to see how it all turns out. One thing that can create a boring and disengaging story is the act of filling it with uninteresting questions that all lead to uninteresting answers. When we do that, it dulls the experience to the point where reading through it is just a matter of going through the motions. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re watching a movie, and you reach a point where you’re simply not concerned at all over how it turns out...but you’ve already invested so much time into what you’ve watched so far, you surrender to the idea that you might as well sit ther and make it to the end credits. Hehehe, obviously, you don’t want anyone to think about your story in this way. Especially if it’s their first encounter with one of your works. It’s a slow and painful death for any author to deal with, believe me. Ugh! How do you get around this? With a touch of cleverly exposition, that’s how! Hehehe! Now...I know, I know...some of th rules that I’ve talked about before can occasionally seem as though they’re in direct conflict with one another, but you’ll quickly learn that any rule that you’ve taught yourself to adhere to when writing will tend to waiver, morph, and shift, as the need calls for it. So don’t worry about it too much. The beauty of art comes from its flexibility sometimes. Now...if you’re an engineer or a computer programmer...the same rules do NOT apply! That’s just asking for a tragic collapse to happen. With fiction? Not so much. See...every time that you present a choice to one of your characters in a story, you want to make that choice one of significance. Something that will possibly have a major affect on how the story moves on from there, both for your protagonist and for your readers. But I find that it helps to actually get in my main character’s head and actually think through the pros and cons of both choices before making a decision between them. I state it openly and do what I can to follow their thought process in a way that allows my readers to know what the stakes are. What are the possible rewards? What are the potential consequences? What’s the probability that things will go the way your protagonist wants them to once they choose one or the other? What obstacles are in the way? How does their personality or their past experiences affect this equation? And are the X-factors that they may not even be thinking of right now? If you’re writing a ‘choice’ part of your story, I think it can be a really effective practice to tackle all of these questions on screen where your readers can see them laid out. And here’s why... I have written soooo many stories in the past where a lot of the feedback has been so incredibly different from person to person that I couldn’t help but think that we weren’t all on the same page at the same time. Now, I’m fully aware that every story is going to be interpreted differently by each individual reader based on who they are as a person and how and where they grew up. That’s a given. But these responses were extremely scattered in ways where I found myself going back to look at my own work to see if it was an interpretation or if that’s how I actually wrote it. Because it does happen, you know? Sometimes I might write something that comes off in a way that I didn’t mean for it to, in which case revisions may be necessary to get the appropriate message across. But as I went through the comments and emails and the like, I discovered something. People were choosing sides and courses of action without having me paint a complete picture as to how the rewards and consequences might be severely out of balance. Looking back, I would have certainly made different choices in how that fork in the road was depicted in the writing. And I would have done that by expressing answers to the questions that I listed above. Hopefully I haven’t lost you yet! ::Giggles:: Check out this video down below. It comes from a movie called, “Ladybugs”, which is a silly guilty pleasure of mine! LOL! Always has been, since I was in high school. Plus, I mean...Jonathan Brandis. Sighhhh! (RIP) This is an exaggerated example of what I’m talking about here, but watch this clip and look at how the problem is presented to us, ‘the audience’, as the weirdness begins. Now, watching the whole movie will give everybody more context as to what is going on with the character ‘Matthew’ dressing up like a girl to play on the girl’s soccer team and not having his cover blown, but if you’re watching the clip...do you see how the predicament is simply put out there on display to keep everyone together on what’s going on and what they stakes are. What the consequences might be if he’s caught on either side of the equation? It can just be a comedic scene of a teen boy and his crush, and hiding from his mother while changing clothes and racing up and down the stairs...but then you have parts of the audience saying, “Why doesn’t he just get his mom to leave the room?” Or, “Why doesn’t he just sneak out of the door with his girl crush while his mom isn’t looking?” Or any one of a thousand other options that might be presented to them in the midst of all this unnecessary chaos. Suddenly you have one hundred different perspectives looking off in one hundred different directions, and a bit of the story’s cohesion gets lost in my opinion. It feels much better to me to bottleneck some of those points of view and guide them in a certain direction where I’ve got a bit more control over the narrative and the questions don’t get to be too distracting. It’s not always possible, but it helps to make an attempt. With my stories, I always had comments pop up from some readers who would be frustrated with my protagonist. “Jesus! Why doesn’t he just go up and ask him out on a date already? He OBVIOUSLY likes you! Just do it already!” Well...who knows? I do. That’s who. Maybe this boy thinks his love interest is way out of his league. Maybe he’s bashfully shy to the point where it’s an almost crippling experience to talk to the boy of his dreams. Maybe ‘coming out’ isn’t an option for him for fear that he’ll be bullied or disowned by his parents. Maybe he’s been abused his whole life and his confidence is barely enough to allow him to love himself, much less someone else. There are answers to all of their questions when it comes to making one choice over another...but those answers aren’t doing my story any good just rattling around in my head. In “A Class By Himself”, Derek feels inadequate financial and has nothing of real value to offer a love interest who is so much better off than he is. In “Jesse-101”, Tristan was recently dumped and had his heart broken by someone he thought he could trust, and now he has doubts about going through that again. These are things that I think about when I’m writing for one of my characters, and now I try to make it a point to take their big choice moments and write them out for my readers to actually see. Just to let them know that my characters are actually thinking logically, weighing their options, and trying to assess the number of threats on both sides so that they can hopefully pick the road of least resistance. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. Such is life. But they ARE thinking with a rational mind. They’re not just making whatever decisions I force them to make for the sake of story melodrama, there’s a process going on here. Hehehe! So, as I began to experiment with this method of adding weight and depth to the choices my characters make, I found myself feeling better about the results of my work, and I noticed that people (while some of them could still feel frustrated from time to time...hehehe, which is ok. I get it) began to understand the story situations and the characters themselves with a bit more patience than they ever did before. Bottom line...some people came out of the closet when they were only thirteen years old and had no problems at all. Some went through hell and were outed against their will in college. Some were already married, then divorced, with a couple of kids, before they felt comfortable being themselves. Some people grew up in a large, accepting, and all inclusive, metropolitan city. Others grew up in small rural towns where everybody knew everybody else and spent every Sunday in church. All of these elements form who they are as people, and you’re never going to be able to please everybody. Don’t even try. But...if you can take a few paragraphs, or even just a few sentences, here and there to explain to your readers why they might be leaning in one direction or the other when it comes to the pressure of making the next big choice in their journey towards the end of your fictional rainbow...you build a sense of understanding between the two. They might be able to say to themselves, “Well...I would have just told my parents that I was gay and let them deal with it...but I can see why this character might see that as being a bad idea.” And it helps to have your audience connect with your project on that level. It’s more realistic, you know? Not everybody has been sharing your personal experience. Not everybody is seeing the world through your lens. How can they possible make choices based on a set of rules and inner conflicts that they know nothing about? Anyway, as always, I hope this draws some attention to a few techniques that you guys can use to further enhance your work in the future. I really do enjoy sharing this stuff with you guys, as I think only other writers would really be able to make much sense out of it. Hehehe! Just remember to present the problems in your character choices in as short and as clever a way as you can. Your readers should always be asking themselves what they have to gain, as well as what they have to lose, at every turn. No matter what road they decide to choose...they’re going to have to sacrifice something in the end. Even if it’s only a few awkward moments of discomfort. Got it? Cool. Seezya soon! And stay beautiful!

Yeah, so I started feeling a bit ill about a week and a half ago, and tried to do a pre-emptive strike on it to stave it off for another couple of days. And....ummm, that did NOT work! Hehehe! So sorry about that. It's been three or four days, but I'm trying to get myself back in working order. Don't worry, I'm used to this now. It happens every couple of weeks. It's not something that I can really help, but I keep trying regardless. That being said, my Wednesday post has been moved to Saturday. Cool? And we should be good from there for the next couple of weeks. I'll try to gt some email out tomorrow as well. Seezya then!

Hehehe, time machine... How I still imagine the characters for this series... Just so you know.

So...whether you've been waiting outside the lines or not (Hehehe see what I did there? ::Cheesy grin::) The new chapter is up and ready for you guys to jump into whenever you get a chance! Cool? I'm feeling a bit sick at the moment, but I'll try to post again tomorrow night! Cool? I'm just trying to, like...NOT be sick right now! Sorry, it's sort of out of my control. But I'm dealing with it as best as I can. And it's been two or three days already, so I should be recovering soon. ::Nods:: Hehehehe! THANKS so much for the emails this week, and the Paypal donations on the https://paypal.me/Comsie account for my birthday! I definitely had a good time! And next year, I plan to have an ever better time! I wish sooooo much that I could go back to work again, but the pandemic ruined everything. So, I'm still struggling with all of that. But your donations helped sooooo much! Thank you! Just five bucks was enough to change my life around! Thank you! And love you lots! Anyway, I'm getting back to what I do best! I have to babysit for the family tomorrow in order to help out, which is always fun...because I'm a big kid at heart myself! LOL! Plus, I just need to be here to help my family out whenever they need me. I get to do something good, spend time with my younger cousins, and still have some fun in the process. So it's always awesome! I'll seezya soon! And I hope you guys the new "Waiting Outside The Lines" chapter! Only a few more left to go before it's finished. I look forward to the grand finale! I hope you are too! https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/waitingoutsidethelines

"Waiting Outside The Lines 30" It was more than a few deep breaths that got me back out onto that set. My thoughts were a chaotic mish mash of kinetic collisions to refused to stay still long enough for me to slow things down and concentrate. Already, I could feel the new lines that I was trying so desperately to memorize in such a short amount of time evaporating into thin air as the other workers on set rushed over to make sure that I looked just right for the next few scenes that

((Hugz)) You've got to hold on to your heart, dude. No matter what. It'll happen, over and over again until you find the one you're looking for, and vice versa. You know? Hehehe, I was SO in love! It was ridiculous. Still am to a degree...but our story is sort of in the 'to be continued' bin at the moment. I'll keep my fingers crossed until then. But yeah, we just sort of stumbled over one another online, and things escalated from there. In fact, he's the one that literally created a working language for "Gone From Daylight". He was a linguist who knew how to do that sort of thing. And then he wrote a story, and then I added him to "GFD", and then he wrote another story, and I added his characters in the background of "GFD: Fanboys", and...well...love blossomed along the way. This is a short vid of his voice speaking the language he crafted. Hehehe! Verzpetilio sounds sexy, doesn't it?

Hehehe....this was soooo me and Erick... For those of you who were around a couple of years ago...and I found my soulmate and fell all head over heels for my sweetie...this was us! LOL! My apologies to all of you guys in the chatroom back for us both putting you through sooooo much of our mushy and gooey romance stuff! Hahaha! We were so goofy for one another for so many years. Trading places. Sometimes I was the bad boy, and he was the diva...and then we'd switch where I was the diva, and he was the bad boy! But it just worked, you know? Good times and bad, I wouldn't trade them in for anything! ((Hugz)) If you ever happen to find that person that truly 'completes' you, hold on tight. And don't ever let them go! Love you, Erick! MWAH!

The Neverending Story Last Summer (In late June, early July)...I lost one of the best friends that I’ve ever had before in my life. We had known each other since the fist grade, and shared a life of late nights, movies, video games, and laughing until we fell over holding our stomachs with tears in our eyes. He was the kind of friend that you only make or twice in a lifetime...and one day, he was just...’gone’. Went to bed, heart failure in his sleep, and that was that. A huge part of me was gone without warning, and there was nothing that I could do about it except move on. Sometimes it still doesn’t feel real. I see or hear something funny, or want to talk about what’s on my mind...and even now, almost a year later...I pick up the phone and I forget that he’s not there. It hurts. I won’t lie, I don’t think that hurt will ever fully go away. I’ll be able to function, sure...but my life won’t ever be the same again without him here. Way it goes, I suppose. Why do I bring this up for the sake of posting a brand new writing tip? Because of the very idea that his ‘story’, at least from my personal perspective, is over now. It’s done. I have an idea of his beginning, his middle, and now his end. Sometimes it’s exactly what a story needs to truly have a meaning and a position that gives a story...no matter how short or how long it is...it’s impact. Everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow and then it’s gone for good. But I do have one or two stories that don’t exactly follow that formula in the same way, and that’s what I’d like to discuss here today. Especially when it comes to stories like “The Secret Life Of Billy Chase” and a few other series that actually do have endings planned out to finish the tale, once and for all, but have taken years and years worth of hard work for me to get them out there as quickly as possible. (Hopefully, I’m doing a lot better these days. Hehehe!) So, let’s see if I can get this alternate method of putting a story together to make sense somehow to a point where you might want to try it out for yourselves someday. It’s no real secret that it takes me forever to finish off one of my series, despite my best efforts. Trust me, I know. And even if I managed to somehow forget over time, I’d be reminded of it with every new chapter that I post. “When are you gonna finish this story, once and for all?” “I hope we don’t have to wait another YEAR for a new chapter!” “Now if only you could finish that other story that I like!” “Why don’t you just end this story right here? It’s the perfect spot to just stop writing, and I can finally have some closure!” Well...writing these stories takes a lot of time and effort and emotional energy to create and put together just way so that I can get them to look and read just the way that I want them to. You guys can easily tell when I rushed older chapters or short stories in order to toss out something new at the expense of using that heart and those ideas for something more fulfilling. Or...at least I can. If I happened to sneak one of those stories by you, then...GOOD! Hehehe! I got lucky on that one! But, “Billy Chase” isn’t really a story in the strictest sense. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I have an idea of how it ends and all of the events that will eventually lead up to that ending...but there’s no set structure in place to guide Billy through a divine maze and then just end the whole thing with a kiss and type ‘The End’ for the sake of everybody having closure. “The Secret Life Of Billy Chase” is more like an ongoing memoir, detailing the life and times of a gay teen trying to figure life out one step at a time and hopefully find himself while a lot of my younger readers were doing the same. Racing towards a definitive ending is like...racing towards death. That’s the ending. The idea is to love, enjoy, and appreciate the time that you get to spend with him while he’s still here, and I understand that this is difficult for some people. Hehehe, sorry. You can’t eight hour binge this one like a Netflix series. It’s meant to be a story that I created to be enjoyed in the present. Moment to moment, where readers are simply looking to see what happens next. How one problem gets solved while two or three other conflicts are left hanging in the balance. While this may aggravate many readers to tantrums of insults and rage...it was this very style of writing that made the “Billy Chase” series so addictive in its presentation. Especially when it came to the ebooks...where people who were finding it for the very first time would read the very first book and immediately grab all of the books to follow all at once so they wouldn’t have to take a break between them if there were any questions left unanswered at the end of whatever they were reading at the moment. There’s a certain joy and charm that comes from writing a project like this, and it has a lot of benefits that come along with it. For example...the emotional investment in the story and its characters becomes soooo powerful. Readers get a chance to go through so many problems, enjoy so many triumphs, and share such a historical bond, with your characters that they feel like old friends. Ones that you would never want to let go of. So the reader involvement is going to continue to grow as time goes on, and every new chapter strengths the attachment without fail. Always a plus, and it inspires reader loyalty as well as excitements for each new step forward. Another benefit? You have an entire lifetime’s worth of material to play around with, and it never has to get tired or boring. Like...if you read the “Twilight” series or the “Harry Potter” books, they are all connected, but every book has an ending. The Dark Lord wants to kill Harry Potter in book one...and in book two...and again in book three...etcetera. The stories are all different, sure. And they’re all connected, yes. But how many times can that same formula work before it simply doesn’t anymore? You know? Even Batman has to fight more than just the Joker every issue. In order for these storylines to continue and remain relevant. Every story, no matter how well written, needs a change up from time to time. But...like I said, “Billy Chase” is not a story in the same way as many others. Every ‘Book’ ends with enough questions and anticipated events to keep things going forward. Now...you easily could stop at ‘Book One’ and never pick up another one. Hehehe, but most people don’t. Just saying. The audience has just spent the past fifty chapters getting to know this ‘imaginary person’, and even though this one particular part of their journey has come to an end...this ‘person’ still exists outside of their current view. Each book is left with a few questions unanswered, a few conflicts unsolved. It creates an anxiety that goes beyond the plot of that one project and leaves people questioning, “But...what happens after that? And what about this? And I can’t forget about this!” This isn’t a story that they’re reading to the end and putting to rest at the end of the day. This is someone’s life. And a very small piece of it at that. Barely a taste worth mentioning. Writing a ‘neverending’ story may feel like it’s not heading in a specific direction, even if it is. And that’s where your readers will grab and hold on the tightest. It’s no different than having a friend or loved one in real life. They can’t just walk away in to the cornfields of ‘happily ever after’ when there’s so much more to discover. So many more adventures to accompany them on. So many more laughs to share. This method of building a narrative can really be an exercise in developing character and creating lingering feelings that last long after the story is finished. Speaking of exercises...that’s another benefit to writing a story like this. It teaches patience, pride in your work, and a fullness of expression. The story grows with you as a writer and as a person. There is an infinite amount of room for you to get your feelings out, untangle your own thoughts, and build confidence and stay in practice the entire time. Writing “Billy Chase”, “New Kid In School”, “A Class By Himself”, “My Only Escape”...it made have taken me an ice age to finally get everything out of my system and get them finished or this far along...but I wouldn’t change the experience for anything. I wish I could even put into words how much of ‘me’ exists in those stories over such an extended period of time. It’s insane. But I learned a lot of my best tricks by simply focusing on the thoughts and feelings of my main character over constantly trying to balance those introspective moments out with the dire need to concentrate on heading towards the ultimate destination and maintaining a certain level of pacing along the way. If anything, it was stress relief for me. A writer’s palette cleanser of sorts. Hehehe! So, if nothing else, it’s a great way to sharpen your skills on character building and connecting them with your audience. Listen, I really do know that people want an ending to the stuff they read, and a vast majority of my stories can and have delivered on that promise over the years. Then I have other series that may have been going on for years and years, and I get an occasional email from a reader saying, “Omigod...I was just starting high school when I started this story! Now I’m out of college, and it’s still going! Wow!” But those have endings too, and they’ll be coming your way faster than you may think. So keep your eyes open! But I still have those few stories that were meant to enjoy for what they are while they’re still around. Maybe I’ll start to run out of ideas and figure that it’s better to end those stories on a high note instead of letting them burn out and fade away after all the time and hard work that I put in. But until then...the end of their story means the end of them. And if Superman and James Bond and Dracula and Freddie Krueger can live forever...why can’t some of the people in my life that I wish I could hold on to for a little bit longer. You know? Anyway, that’s the lesson for today, folks. Give it a try some time. Even if you don’t share it with the public at large...it does wonders for exploring that part of the writing craft, and it’s a skill that will trickle down into your other works once you learn how to use it to your advantage. Take care! Love you lots. And stay beautiful.

Wait....what did I miss? Did Kain Rivers, like...change? Is he gay/bi? Is he Trans, maybe? All of his old videos are gone...and he had a LOT of them! And he changed his name to 'Orphy' now that he's older. Dangit! I can't read Russian, but something changed here while I wasn't looking. Either way...congrats, cutie! MWAH!!! He's always been a certified 'beauty-pie'!

Hahaha, why do I remember me and my best friend, Chris, (sort of) hip hop dancing to this during a sleepover when we were little boys? Hahaha! In our underwear, no less! And this was back in our 'Nyte Flight' days! I wish I could have taped it! It would have been so cute! He was my rock when I really needed one and couldn't find any peace at home. Thanks, Chris. I'll always love you for being my light in the darkness. MWAH! ::Still remembers being in my soaking wet sock feet in the rain when he let me stay at his house that day::

Working on more for tonight! Hope to talk to you guys soon! And I'll try to stop by my chatroom this weekend if time allows! I'll let you know when I'll come by to play for a while! I miss talking to you all in real time! It just takes time for the stars to align, I suppose.

It takes time. It really does. You've got to dig, and peel back a bunch of layers...but in time, you'll get to be who you want to be. Who you need to be. But it's a process, you know? Just know that we're with you. K?

Damage, imperfection, and works in progress, make for the most interesting and intriguing people alive. So keep going, dude! Be a legend, born of fire. ((Hugz))

THANKS, you guys! And now that I got a bit of a breather and celebrated for a bit....

THANKS, dude!!!

Awwww, my bad! Nope! I'm just enjoying life for a day or two! That's all, promise!

Just the evening! Yes!

Before I go, I'm reaching out to you guys through a mini email blitz! Cool? Thank you all for giving me so much support! Thanks for the comments! The ebook grabs! And BIG thanks for the b-day donations! I will definitely use them to have some added fun tonight and tomorrow! Love you lots! Soooooo much! So don't be a stranger! And I'll get back to more of you tomorrow as well as throughout the rest of the week! MWAH! Take care!

It's almost time! I have waited since 2020 to have some fun for my birthday! And now I'm here! Good times to be had tonight and tomorrow! Can't wait! Leaving in about an hour and a half! But FIRST...?

It's quite alright. Thanks, you guys. I just want to write. And I want to share. And I want to entertain. And everybody else can benefit from it if they just let me do what I do. Why take 'control' of it. If you had any control at all...then you'd be entertaining ME! And I'd love every last minute of it! So go for it. Take the wheel and show me what you've got. I'll even help to promote you! Sit down at a blank screen and do it better than I can. I'll applaud you the whole way. Promise. Give it a try. Maybe then they'll understand. Until then... ::Shrugs:: I guess I'll just have to keep doing it my way. :P

Wordy Whooo….now here’s a challenge that I can wrap my head around. How to write an article about being ‘too wordy’...without, in fact, being ‘too wordy’. Hehehe, wish me luck with this one, people! ::Fingers Crossed:: One repeated bit of constructive criticism that I often get when it comes to my writing has been pretty consistent. And that is...I am too wordy in all of my stories. And it’s the truth. I definitely have to concede defeat when it comes to trying to defend that desperate need to get all of those feelings out of me at one time and digitally scribble them out on this screen while I’m still caught in the undertow of it all. Strike while the iron is hot, as they say. I know that it may come off as babbling or overdoing it sometimes, but trying to cut it short seems like such a waste of a moment. It’s like going to listen to a band, an orchestra, or a vocal choir...and hearing a series of flat notes the whole time. It, like...bugs me. Hehehe! But I do notice it, myself, on occasion...and while I should be trying a bit harder to correct my desire to talk too damn much when I’m writing...I’ve kind of been fighting harder to maintain my own personal sense of a personal ‘voice’ in my work than I have trying to get some better mechanics working in my favor. Is that a bad thing? A good thing? Hard to tell. It’s just how I write. My worst habits are the hardest ones to break. Annnnnnd...even now I can feel myself getting wordy again. So let me just assume that I’ve thoroughly explained my point and move on without lingering on this any longer. Please let me know if any of you guys ever run into this problem yourselves, and if you have any personal ways of solving it. It’s never too late for me to pick up a few extra tips myself, after all. Ok, so one of the things that I believe contributes to me writing too much when something simpler might actually serve the story better by itself, is the insecurity of me truly fleshing a scene out to its fullest without completely translating the message that I want to send to my readers. I tend to look at every emotional scene as a three dimensional sphere. I can practically see it in my head. So, in order to faithfully describe it or translate it into words, I have to completely surround it and turn it around so that I can attack it from all sides. Maybe ‘attack’ is the wrong word to use, but I hope you get what I mean. For me, I feel my emotions very deeply. Love, anger, sadness, joy...whenever they ask me to take notice, I feel this intense curiosity to explore it from all angles. This is something that I try to add to my stories so that my audience can feel and explore it for themselves. Sometimes, it can really work and not feel like it’s too much. But then there are times when I go back and read some of my older stuff later on, and I feel like I sound like... That is a bit much, don’t ya think? Hehehe! But all of those extra words and descriptions have to come from somewhere, and they’re all focused around that one moment in time, so it feels totally natural to me when I’m typing it out. It isn’t until I go back after my brain stops buzzing and my rational mind has returned to its somewhat normal state that I can see the flaws and overly wordy descriptions that makes everything else feel out of balance. And then I find myself chained to the old editing anchor until I find ways to tone it down a bit. Especially when it comes to my ebooks. I’m constantly doing all I can to make sure that those are my best efforts on display for anyone who stumbles across them who doesn’t have a history of Comicality errors behind them. So...more writer confidence, I think, helps a great deal when it comes to restraint and keeping my experience simple and effective. That’s the key word there...effective. Everything else is garnish. Say what you’ve got to say, trust in your instincts to have said it right, and then move forward before you get too wrapped up in adding a bunch of details that your story may not really need. It looks nice, but without the right balance...I can see how it could come off as wordy. Something else that I’ve learned, but doubt I’ll be holding back on any time soon...is repeating myself in my fiction. I’ve trained myself to cut it waaaaay down from how much I used to do it before, but there are still times where I can’t help myself and it just feels necessary. Otherwise, like I said before...it’ll bug me. I have a tendency to phrase a certain emotion or sensation one way...and it won’t feel like it’s enough. Which probably ties into the whole insecurity thing, but I’ll look at what I wrote in that particular moment and I’ll go back and phrase the exact same emotion or sensation a different way. One might be more of a simple statement or everyday description written with ‘easy prose’. The second way may be a bit more flowery in its language, with some metaphorical flare thrown in to enrich and enhance the picture in some way. It will be a more exquisite version of the sentence that I wrote before it...but, once I enter that territory, I end up possibly doing it again. Especially when it comes to situations like heartbreak or fear. Or trying to find the inner strength needed to combat your own demons. I end up describing these emotions in various ways, and they’re all deeply connected to that one three dimensional sphere to a point where even during the cutthroat self editing process...I don’t want to cut anything out. So I get stuck, and I leave it in there. Thus...making my story a bit more wordy than it has to be. Now, understand...it’s not my intention to make you guys paranoid about the number of words that you use to tell a story. Hehehe, you can use as many or as little as you feel you need to get your point across. That’s up to you as an author, and I think that you should do whatever it is that makes you comfortable. I’m just letting you all know that I can be a bit extravagant with the details myself, and it’s obvious that readers over the years have noticed. So if I can find reasons to explain why I do it, and maybe find ways to shave it down a bit, then maybe I can find a new balance that will allow me to keep my own unique style of writing and not sacrifice my fans’ enjoyment of what it is that I have to say. Something else that I’ve gotten better at trying to avoid is going off on tangents when I’m writing a certain scene. I don’t think that I stray too far off topic, but a little more focus can only help, right? At least, that’s I’m thinking. Allowing yourself to wander off or your thoughts to go astray can end up eating away at the strongest elements of the scene that you’ve built for your readers to dive into. It takes away from the impact, maybe? I’m not really sure. But when I go back to my older work to re-edit stuff that I’ve written in the past, even the recent past, I end up having to make a lot of sacrifices that I never noticed before when I was all zoned out in a different frame of mind. It helps to streamline my work a little bit more. Not by a ton, but it’s more focused than it was, I believe. Then again, I can be my own worst critic most of the time. So tightening things up here and there can only be a good thing, right? Anyway, I promised myself that I would try to write this article with as little ‘fluff’ as possible. I was going to try to have the confidence it takes to know that my message is being read and received, I was trying hard not to repeat myself in any way ( a further extension of rule number one), and I resisted the temptation to slide off into any other tangents that might get me sharing stories or experiences that I had in the past with stuff like this. Did it work? Well...hehehe, I saved myself less than one thousand words. So...not really. Ah well, I tried. And one thousand words is nothing to sneeze at in terms of making improvements in my writing process. (Comsie says as his every additional word eats away at his own minor achievement! LOL!) But I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Do you ever think that your stories are a little word heavy? Or have you found the perfect balance that you were searching for and have become most comfortable with? Or...does it matter at all? I don’t know. I just work here, man. Take care, and I’ll probably go back to blathering away again in the next article regardless of this experiment. But, hey...I gotta be me! Stay beautiful, you guys!

I will definitely be myself! Hehehe, besides...everybody else is taken. Thanks, bud! Every now and then, it's good to know that I've got somebody on my side. ((Hugz))

There are a few people out there...and I don't need to name names...who are so privileged and so entitled that they have honestly convinced themselves that I really give a shit about them not getting more and more and MORE free entertainment from me on call. I am NOT a genie! You don't just rub the magic lamp and expect me to show up like I'm enslaved to your every wish. No...we're not playing this game anymore. It's NEVER enough! Not ever! And it took me many years of pain and frustration to realize that and get past it, but I fully understand it now. So knock it off. Ok? You don't comment on my stories, you don't rate them, you don't send me a single email unless it's to complain, every word out of your mouth is a passive aggressive insult, you haven't bought a single ebook, you don't donate to the Paypal account...you can't even click a fucking 'like' button to say 'thanks for the free story'...and you think you're in a position to demand anything from me? Really? Fuck off! I work and work and WORK, and you do NOTHING to support me. That's fine. I won't ask you to. But don't take the energy that you could be using to support me to send me emails about how it's not enough to keep you happy. It's not my JOB to keep you happy. You want even more than you're already getting from me exhausting myself on a daily basis? Then help me out. Otherwise...you get what you 'pay for'. And what you pay is NOTHING! So be grateful. Because I am. Sorry. But some people get so spoiled that they forget just how much work went into to keeping that warm and fuzzy feeling in their chest. I give it away for free because I've got an abundance of love to give. Not because you deserve it. Don't 'Elon Musk' me...I don't work for you. You've got no say in this at all. Just remember that, and humble yourselves. Because the second that I want this to stop...it stops. Period. Be careful how you talk to me...