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Category Archives: Creativity
Am I a horror writer?
I’ve had stories appear now in six horror anthologies. Some of those books, in full disclosure, I had a hand in designing the covers or page layouts, though completely separate from my story submissions and inclusions. A few more horror-genre publications containing my work are on the way to print in the next few months, but I still often wonder whether I am truly a horror writer.
Before anyone lambasts me for such a self-serving ponderous statement, I’m being completely honest about this question, and this is my personal blog. All organization and personal blogs are self-serving regardless of their intents and purposes, don’t blind yourself to this one truism.
Thing is, I never set out to be a horror writer. I am always drawn toward dark material for the books I read or TV shows I watch, which in turn influences or inspires what I write. I’ve tried my hand at happy stories and they never feel authentic to me. Difficult decisions, personal conflicts, and imperfect flaws that lead to dramatic and usually tragic conclusions are what drive me. They are sometimes allegories, other times criticisms on or responses to our current day culture and society. The messages may not be obvious to everyone, and I don’t expect them to be; they typically serve as starting points from which a story takes on its own life. As a story should for every writer.
These statements or criticisms on the world, our society, or our culture come from a perspective of gritty realism, they are neither optimistic nor pessimistic. They just are. The world exists as we shape its existence, both good and bad. This perspective spawns the perpetual evolution of my creativity: a dark point-of-view mired in grit and horror; a creative process carried by a glimmer of hope that challenges an ominous darkness and crushing fear. Think Baroque music and painting. Think Gothic architecture and literature.
Looking back at these paragraphs I just wrote I realize just how subjective it is to define one’s work in any particular genre. This is art and not science after all, there are no mandated axioms on the natural world’s behaviors that dictate creativity, just concepts and ideas.
So my stories may not contain much gore, graphic sex or violence, or the standard supernatural creatures that account for many horror movie and story tropes, but they do contain accounts of mental anguish, trauma, shock, and the deterioration of one’s mental faculties. In that sense, these attributes are real life everyday horrors of the human experience, whether they are set in a dystopian backdrop or a current-day real-world environment that may or may not be affected by a supernatural influence depending on the protagonist’s perspective.
The answer, then, is yes. I do write horror.
My online portfolio is resurfacing
I haven’t kept an online portfolio since 2008. It’s now 2015….
It wasn’t necessary, I had a full-time job from mid-2008 until a couple months ago. I wasn’t actively searching. Now I find myself in a peculiar crossroad. Many of the jobs I’m interested in want to see a great portfolio – online. Most of the work I performed since 2008 was focused on areas other than visual design, though I did continue it, and applied that same level of creativity to the other work I was doing.
Show as much great work as possible – my mantra of the moment. It isn’t easy considering I don’t have access to much of the work I produced, designed or written, since 2008. It’s a slow exhausting process that I pushing through nonetheless.
Work I produced long ago has been added to my new portfolio section of this site, some dating back to 1996. I’m far from finished. I figure image retouching is still image retouching, regardless of the year I performed it. In fact, the available tools and processes back then are ancient if not obsolete compared to today’s capabilities, but the creative process remains unchanged. That’s what matters. Revisiting that old work is like reviewing a photo album of my childhood, only I recall the thoughts and reasoning that went into each creative decision I made as I if it was a few hours ago. Crazy how that works.
If there is anything for readers to learn from this scenario, it’s this: maintain copies of everything you produce no matter how big or small. Be prepared.
Banksy, my quiet hero
The Banksy image in Folkestone before it was vandalised Source: independent.co.uk
I already knew Banksy’s arrest was a hoax by the time The Independent published the story, but I’m happy to see an artist receive on-going international attention, even if it was due to the publication of a completely false news report.
The Independent: Banksy arrest hoax: Internet duped by fake report claiming that the street artist’s identity has been revealed
Banksy has struck a nerve in the global collective consciousness and I love it. I almost as equally enjoy laughing at the poorly misinformed National Report, which seems to dig for dirt on anyone who doesn’t coalesce with their political agenda while not vetting the source material. They reported on the arrest hoax as if it was a true event, detailing his alleged crimes of counterfeiting and vandalism. The undertones of the author’s excitement exuded from each account of how bad a guy Banksy is.
This isn’t nearly a one-time thing with National Report, for those of you not familiar with the agenda-driven publication, wrap your head around this headline from October 8, 2014: “Potential Ebola Outbreak Prompts Martial Law.” The president did not declare martial law. It never happened. There is no ebola outbreak in the US. In fact, it was announced yesterday that several dozen people were just removed from the ebola watch list in Dallas. Read this USA Today article for more about the good news.
It’s saddening to think our culture has produced the need for fake journalism that has only one purpose: propaganda. Rile up the base, persuade new readers to hop on the ideological bus ride into the abyss! When authentic information can’t sell an audience, the subject must not be worth selling. The intermingling of fake news with the real news is exhausting. We’ve reached a point in our culture that the audience wants only the correct news and and agreeable news, not necessarily the factual authentic news. It’s tough to determine what’s even real anymore in our jaded and skeptical society, nor do we have the time to sort out fact versus fabrication and hyperbole. You can thank 24-hour cable infotainment news networks where negative news and politically-biased news means higher ratings, increased advertising revenue, and higher stock yields.
I crave authenticity now more than ever and I always find myself turning to the creative world. There is an honesty that cannot be disputed in creative works; whether you agree with its message is your individual right. For me, Banksy’s work is the epitome of art in that it is authentic, it challenges popular opinion, questions the news media, provokes thought, evokes visceral responses, rises above expectations, and continuously catches the audience off guard.
Does a news source exist out there that meets some of my definitions of art? I have some ideas on who might, but I don’t know anymore. I don’t usually know who or what to trust. Absorbing information from one source is a risk; from several sources a comprehensive story develops filled with self-conflicting statements. I don’t have the time or resources to fact check every item of news I read, so I question everything and challenge popular opinion every day. Facts and authenticity are king and queen, and they are Banksy’s work.
Creatives using Adderall and other performance enhancers – what’s the deal?
Hey writers and other creatives – are any of you aware of this new trend of taking Adderall to be better at your disciplines? Take a look at this article, “In search of perfection, young adults turn to Adderall at work” published December 3, 2013 on Al Jazeera America.
Besides the insane idea of using a drug dependency to maintain a leading edge on the competition, what got me was that the interviewed writer claims her work is better as a result of taking Adderall to stay awake all night writing her article. It seems to help her connect to her work. What is her writing baseline otherwise – mediocre work? How does she truly know the work is even better with the drug than without it? Fooling herself with this mythology is more than likely. What gets me, why does she even have a high pressure job writing for the NY Times?
This story, or this epidemic rather, makes me crazy. When I need to perform at a high level, whether in writing, designing, website creation, or whatever else I do, I just put myself in that mindset and do it. Sure, extra caffeine helps stave off the eventual weariness, but I don’t look to performance enhancers to do better at what I already do best.
For the sake of my argument, maybe a bit self-centered on my part, not to intentionally show off, yet it would seem I am, I have been knocking out some end of semester grueling grad school writing while heavily medicated. I had cervical spinal surgery almost two weeks ago, complete with a disc replacement and decompression of my alarmingly compressed spinal cord. The condition was maybe a month or two shy of becoming an emergency situation. I was very lucky to have this situation discovered while checking for another unrelated neurological condition condition just a month ago. Ah, the fun of growing older and degenerative conditions like osteoarthritis setting in to my vertebrae. My point is, I am still performing at my top level, albeit at a slower than normal pace as I fight through the overwhelming need to sleep while I heal, the fuzziness of my thought process throughout most of the day, and the horrendous effects it all has on my typing abilities. But I work through it. And I own it, every bit of it. No excuses.
I know, I’m on a soap box here, and stepping off it now. But I wonder, I am in some way different than others not finding a need to depend on Adderall or other performance enhancers to do my job well, even under conditions of my current ailment?
I’d love get all of your takes on this. I know a lot of you who visit this blog are creatives in varying fashions – several of you are my friends, so I’m on to you 😉 – and have probably encountered in some shape or form people using Adderall or whatever else to get through heavy loads of college work or big job related projects. I’m interested in learning more about this apparent epidemic from first-hand accounts. Don’t leave me hanging, that would be cruel.
On that note, happy holidays as I nod off now.
Article referenced: “In search of perfection, young adults turn to Adderall at work,” Al Jazeera America, December 3, 2013.
D.T. Griffith 