FULL BLEED: I WANT YOU TO HIT ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN

Go ahead, name the movie.

Think I survived my daughter's graduation from college. I mean, I did. But I'm currently at whatever thousand feet over the eastern half of the US on leg one of the trip back home. Haven't survived the trip yet, but the odds are more or less in my favor. I think. I hope.

Washington DC was fun to visit. It was also a nearly-non-stop stress machine for several reasons, not the least of which is the impending adulthood of my youngest child which means I'm brushing ever closer to whatever comes next, slowly orbiting it like one black hole orbits another, sending out ripples in the fabric of space and time (which doesn't actually exist so much as is assumed) until the inevitable bloop when they meet and one ceases to exist, leaving only one black hole. I wonder if the ghosts of those dead stars even know what's happening at that point, that where there was once a them there's now only a they or an it, a singular. Which set of dishes gets kept? Which of them keeps on paying the Netflix subscription? I speak metaphorically, of course. I mean, who even pays for Netflix now, right?

There's always the other thing. The thing I'm not naming. That's coming closer, too. Progression increases. Achievements unlocked and once done they don't re-lock and remove all knowledge of them having happened. Experience leaves fingerprints when gentle, scars when not-so. You can't reach those passed times anymore, but you can see the wreckage and the tracks if you squint some.

Had likely my last bagel from Bullfrog Bagels right near the GW campus. Same with the strawberry turnover from Tatte and the cheesy grits from Founding Farmers alongside a breakfast more anemic than the ones that I remembered from the first visit here. Austerity cutting close now. Sure, there's tourists on the Mall, but not nearly so many as there have been in years past. More cops on the streets, less access to the White House. Lots of eyes down looking just past their wing-tips and moving along so as not to be noticed please God don't notice me don't even perceive me. Town's working up to holding its breath over something bigger coming. They're all dancing too, dancing with that fate that's swooping over them in slow orbits, but each one coming closer and closer. I like to think that people will learn something from all this, but how else are we gonna get history not repeating but hella fugue-ing if folks don't ignore the past, right? Yeah. The liars are here, as a friend of mine once wrote. The liars are here and among us. But then not all of those lies are straight-out lies, and instead are strategic omissions served up to one's advantage.

Made a funny joke on Bluesky while I was there. Said "This is me talking about publishing" and it was a picture of Saw Guererra (from Andor and Rogue One, portrayed magnificently by Forest Whittaker), charismatic and ruthless, sad and paranoid, reduced to fear for himself and surrounded by only a handful of faithful followers. Lies and deceptions, every day more lies. I know. The business can't help it. The business had needs and decades of growing hunger and increasing lean-ness of pickings and audiences has made things pretty dire. But still, they move along, titanic and huge, flush with real estate holdings and stockholder options and you bet that this AI stuff is gonna save all our collective bacon. You'll be able to talk to Raymond Chandler as he narrates your copy of The Long Goodbye and he'll bitch and moan about everything Altman got wrong and tell you what's wrong with this country if you give him a minute to. Talk about a thing nobody wants. Chandler isn't someone you're gonna want to spend time with but man could he turn a phrase.

Anyways, that post got some traction. It' s almost like people can watch this stuff happening and don't, in fact, believe that these are all innocent decisions made just so that these noble publishing houses can bring the next generation of great novels to you, the people. Funny. But hey, that prestige from being published will sustain you in the lean years. Keeps you warm at night.

One of the many subjects that comes up on the roulette wheel of Creator Talk over there on Bluesky (I won't use the dreaded D word) is the whole question of reviewing. Granted, you should probably bifurcate this into Reviewing (ie, feedback on the work once it's been completed, usually by critics and slash or readers) and Editorial (the whole writers' circle and maybe even paid editors or wandering into an online forum and posting your work for feedback.) So let's do that.

Reviewing? Sure, it happens. But most of what happens online isn't that. That's fine. People want to react to the work. Go ahead. That's what this stuff is for, right? Let people know you loved or hated a thing or how the latest installment of a franchise disrespects everything the franchise stands for. Go nuts. Go crazy. Go wild. Nobody can own your reaction to a thing other than you. And by that metric, I'm not too fussed over these sorts of posts. Sometimes I engage and even make reaction posts of my own. But I've no illusion as to the importance of these things. They're not. Now, would I feel different if my own work was the volleyball in question? Yeah, and I'd probably end up muting the titles of my own books. I'd probably just walk into the sea so that I might stop being perceived. Because that's not what this is about. Sure, there's lots of criticism that's well-reasoned and passionate and perhaps constructive. But it's not the gig for anyone other than the reviewer.

As for the Editorial side of things? I'm torn. I'm also old enough to be the father (or feral uncle) of lots of folks I interact with online. So I guess I've aged into a place where I'm tired of giving a fuck about this. The idea of marching a short story into a writing workshop or posting it up on a Reddit and asking folks to tear this apart? The whole I want you to hit me as hard as you can thing? No. I'm done. I'm not sure it does anyone any good. In fact, I'm quite sure it does them a lot of harm. For a lot of reasons.

What's the point of entering into an online critique melee with a group of other folks, some who you might even know? What good does it do? What are you even trying to do with your work? I suppose that's the most important question. What are you trying to do with the work and what could you gain from this sort of process?

Are you seeking commercial success? I'm guessing there's a lot of folks who are and maybe hoping that this bruising initiation will reveal the shortcomings in their fiction and I'm sorry, but it won't. It. Will. Not. It might reveal issues of basic clarity and focus and let's have that "might" lift like the shoulders of Atlas. You're going to get exactly what you pay for in that equation. Maybe there's an incognito genius writing teacher and your paths cross. Okay, sure. But that's not going to happen. And even if it does, that mysterious mentor is not going to know what will be a commercial success enough to pay the bills solely as a writer. Nor does that mean you've written something that's any good or satisfying. The teams out there churning out AI space opera or harem romance or cozy apocalypse or barista detective stories might be paying the bills with this, tricking folks into enough clicks. But that's just Anti-Life, right? That's the Anabsence (original character, do not steal) a sucking nothing that actively consumes attention and intention and time in an anti-human process. And maybe you're just trying to have an old-fashioned success like say Twilight or its semi-parasitic progeny Fifty Shades of. Those books sold millions. They're not good books (and quality absolutely does not matter in terms of success, sorry.)

Are you seeking prestige? Being in the company of elevated others? Perhaps to be glorified as the ancestors were, they who strode the globe in a dozen steps or less? Those people aren't even real anymore. The legend is as much fiction as the works they wrote. That only comes in time and I'm not even sure the conditions to manufacture the legend of another Hemingway or Shelley of Dickinson will hold. Hell, the legend-crafters will probably turn their attention to Joe Rogan and Mr. Beast next. I'm not sure it's safe to crave that kind of fame any longer. And yes, yes I did. I sure hoped that I'd be recognized as a genius twister of words and one who works them in a singular voice. Youth or delusion or both? Chasing prestige, chasing the becoming of legend, that sounds like chasing and not working. How many folks who got lionized as being great wordsmiths instead turned out to be terrible people, just wretched? How many not-famous ones did? The whole wretchedness thing is success-agnostic, bee tee dubs. Though sometimes it takes real narcissism to turn off the brakes that might slow down one's career.

Oh, does me not chasing this make me good? I dunno, I'm a self-involved jerk at times. No protection there. I'm a loudmouth and humblebragger. So consider the source before you take any of this advice.

Are you trying to be better at what you do? At the work itself? Subjecting yourself to the opinions of folks who might just be shitposters and might actually just want to piss on anyone they can might not be a good use of time and or mental energy, both of which are finite resources. Remember, those black holes are circling and one day they won't be circling but merged and you won't be you anymore. Is talking to randos going to help? Will they know what you think you're setting out to do? (Reminder that you might think it's clear but someone else might pull out something else entirely from your work, that's the gig. And if it's a bad-faith read, then you don't even need to pay it any mind at all.) Will getting hit as hard as the other reader can hit you help? Or is that just thinking that you need to toughen up, get some grit, git gud? Hell, the world itself is going to take shots at you over and over, daily and multiple times a day even. Sometimes you just get beat up and don't develop armor at all.

Fun story. I used to get beat up and teased at school, particularly through junior high and the first year of high school. It did nothing but suck. It didn't make me better at taking insults or abuse or being flinched at or being hit. Just made it all worse. So I'm not a believer in the whole toughen up thing. 'Cause it's not fucking real. So maybe I carry that over to the whole gladiatorial style of round-robin feedback and writer's clinics and online reviewing. And you'll say "That's totally not the same thing as the schoolyard" and I'll look around and say "Oh yes it is." That's all human behavior and I learned my lessons in it.

Do I reject all editing and feedback? No. I seek it out. From people I trust and who've proved that they are open to what I'm doing. Other editorial experiences have been rocky. The editor who wanted to make everything globe-trotting international, the editor who didn't like the time setting of the book they'd agreed to and took every opportunity to remind me of the former and forget the latter, the editors I paid to look over things and instead said "No, everything looks good" in the hopes of getting more work and me learning nothing from the experience more than that, the editors who worked over pitches like pulling teeth but didn't have more to do when it came to the copy phase other than "looks great". I've learned more from the handful of folks who I've run across in the last couple years than all of them. I've been very lucky in that regard.

So I guess the whole point of this exercise is to get you to ask yourself what you're trying to do. Or maybe you're not trying to do anything more than write a story about something and in a manner that is pleasing to yourself. That might be the smartest path to walk. You may as well do something that you want to do because chasing what's popular now might just get you hooked into trying to write what's popular forever. Forever chasing, which is the same thing as being led by. Or you could chase a thing and never catch it, chasing that success thing. Because that's not something you can ever grant on yourself, right? The market speaks and it's you are or you aren't. Imagine giving over happiness to that inchoate thing, not even a semblance of rationality or heart or something to even say "Good job, sport" and pat you on the back. It's not going to love you or your work. Publishing isn't going to love you or your work. People might.

You even might.

I even might.

The truth of things is that in the field of creative pursuits, we're often isolated and atomized and lonely. If you haven't had the good fortune of finding folks who you can trust to look at your work before you release it into the world, to be there for other artists even if no more than as a pillow to scream into, it gets hard. It gets bad. It turns into an eternal 3 AM and not the cool KLF kind, but the kind where the dark has solidified and thickened into something suffocating and your own thoughts are the only thing rocketing around your skull and oh god why can't you go to sleep. That kind of 3 AM. So maybe the "feedback" of total strangers begins to sound like a good idea just to know that you're not insane and that you exist. Takes a lot to get through those dark nights. So we look for some kind of companionship and often it's just down to scraps in the howl of the Scream Machine. You gotta decide what works and what doesn't. You gotta decide if that's good for your development or not. You gotta decide if you're happy simply having a weird hobby that satisfies you or if you're going to be bothered by the fact that it's not a real job and we live in a world where that is less and less and less of a possibility.

A world of contraction and retreat, even as we're supposed to be more and more connected than we ever were. A constant hookup to the ids and superegos of an entirely technologically-connected world of other humans, many of whom are just as confused and lonely as ourselves at these keyboards or oblong phone screens, fingers swiping out countless letters of an incantation, of a working that never ends because it can't. Yeah. It's a lot.

Everything is a lot. I'm going to suggest that maybe Howard Beale was wrong (and possibly, no, 100% schizophrenic) and shouting out our windows to anyone who'll listen is not a way to develop as an artist or a human. Makes for a hell of a movie, though, right?

I've just spent a long time saying that the answers are all on the inside and you might have to work at them. You have the answer to why you're doing what you do even if you think you don't even if you simply believe yourself to compelled or wanting an experience you're not finding elsewhere. You have to answer the questions, or at least ask yourself which questions will propel you forward. You meaning me. Meaning you. But don't ask it of other people to grant to you. That's gonna lead you to a rubber room where you're drawing crosses on all of your exposed skin and if that door pops open, you'll find a nearby abandoned movie theater and laugh yourself to death. Can't be them. Gotta be you. Maybe some thems can help you along the way. Maybe you can help some thems. Let's hope you can, that we all can. Because we're going to need it. You ready for the world that's coming? Because it's still coming even if you aren't. Perhaps our influence over it is less, far less, than we'd want it to be. We can still exercise some power over it, even if we're the only ones to see that.

I'd love to say that it's all gonna be fine. It'll all come to an end. It'll all be something else at some point. A friend was relaying a story about one of their college music professors complaining about how rock was just a fad, a blip in the great story that is human music. And sure, in the mid-80s that sounded a little bit ridiculous. A little less so now. Granted, Ragtime was such a blip, so was Doo-wop, etc etc. The song changes, but we're all still making music. Gotta keep playing. Gonna keep playing.

As always, your forbearance is appreciated. Let's us both give each other pats on the back and not be strangers.