Re-Introduction

Leave a Comment / Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr / By

I blame this on Don Rhoden and Anthea Burson. After reading my various writings that appear in this section, well, you can blame them too. 😉

I popped in a new menu and category on the site after a conversation about poetry and various writings with them on Facebook.  See, from time to time I do write poetry and just “oddball” writing.  Sometimes it only happens in my head – and once the piece is completed there it’s immediately discarded.  Sometimes it gets as far as being pounded out on my keyboard and gets deleted when I’m done (or, saved into a folder somewhere semi-hidden.)

I’m uptight about writing stuff like that.  I’m not an expert at writing – I can pound out lots of words very quickly, and I’ve completed four or five books so far (I’ve lost track of where I’m at – I’ve got a couple of pieces that are done but are waiting on The Editor to finish.)  But I really lack the verbiage necessary to have more than a simple conversation over poetry.  I’ve more than once considered trying to improve my writing education – I only got as far as Creative Writing for my English classes in college.  And one of those rare, hidden moments of true envy (I may say I envy someone – usually it just means I’d like to do the same thing they are doing) was when I met Kat and she revealed she had an English degree.  For “real world” purposes an English degree isn’t really that important.  But if you’re a writer or editor an English degree is worth something – she can speak in concepts that I don’t have words for.  Here I am writing, and she’s the one that actually KNOWS how it’s supposed to work!

So often I get uptight about my writing that I delete the small pieces.  Big pieces are completely different – a one page piece of prose, for instance, requires delicate adjustments of the minutia to be good.  A book, on the other hand, is composed of larger concepts.  If you screw up a small piece in a 400 page book it’s not quite as big of a deal, and while the reader might groan  – or, in the case of The Story of Gamer Zone, groan a lot – it doesn’t hurt the overall book unless it’s being read by a critic.

After chatting with Don and Anthea I started reading my old stuff, loathing it a bit at times, liking it at others.  A comment that Don made got me to thinking – maybe I’m looking at this all wrong.  Just like shaving my head bald, maybe it’s time to embrace the terror I have about my smaller works and use it.

I’ve brought over the stuff that I had on my DeviantArt account into a new section, and added two new pieces (Share The Stars part 1 & 2).  From now on I’m going to make an attempt to “balls up” and post my stuff on here rather than deleting it.  I may hate it and you, the reader, may hate it.  But at least it has a home now and I can overcome that fear of my short works and poetry.

Who knows – maybe my writing will improve 🙂

A quick list of the stuff that appears here to start:

There’s a couple more pieces I need to scrounge up and get posted on here when I get the time.  No real hurry, though.  You can only have so much horrible writing at one time anyway 😉

 

 

 

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