B.R. Black

Thriller and Horror writer

Tag: anxiety

  • B.R. Black is bowing out for now

    B.R. Black is bowing out for now

    Have you ever read anything that just made you want to propel yourself to the blank page and write a story?

    Sure. I’ve had stories and essays inspire me to create and I’m often jotting down snippets of dialog or imagery in my Notes app, never to be seen again.

    But have you ever read anything that made you want to stop writing?

    Sure again. Sometimes you read something so good that you think there’s no point in doing anything else. It’s just not worth it. Reading The Auctioneer by Joan Samson made me feel that way.

    But, but what about a story that is making you consider not writing in a particular genre anymore?

    Yes. This week, in fact. And I’m pretty shaken up about it.

    I started listening to Stephen King’s “A Good Marriage.” A novella from his Full Dark, No Stars collection because I had some busywork to do and it was relatively short. The narrator, Jessica Hecht, was good, though it took me a moment to get into the voice, but I was intrigued. 

    Look, before I go one, I’m GenX, I cut my teeth in King when I was a teenager. It’s not that I’m sensitive to horror. Or at least I wasn’t.

    I ended up having to stop listening with about 30 minutes to go due to family obligations. The story bothered me in the same way that the over abundance of violent media as been bothering me of late. But I walked away knowing I’d come back and finish eventually.

    I came back to the story last night to finish and there’s one reveal at the end, a description of a horrific act that broke me (iykyk) and I just couldn’t think anymore.

    You could argue that it wasn’t necessary, that the character exploration that King is so fucking brilliant at was enough, was more than enough. You could argue that, but it’s not my story, and there’s no denying the visceral effect that addition had on me as a reader. That’s a success. 

    I’ve written before about how I am drawn to horror because of the absolute despair that it evokes. I thought that’s what I wanted. But not this. 

    I can’t do this anymore.

    I lie in bed last night wondering what I wanted to do with this “horror/thiller” name, what was I trying to create here.

    I thought that I wanted to switch to focusing on ghost stories or more ethereal threats. But I’m not sure I have the spine for even that anymore.

    You can toss it up to current events. Which? All of them. Blame the constant flow of violence from all media streams. Blame the fact that even as we say  “think of the children,” we as a community do not, in fact, give a fuck about the children or anyone else.

    We are the hosts of evil in the world. That’s what King has been writing about all along, you know. 

    The monsters are us.

    Who is “us?” All of us. (I may probably delete this section because it seems a bit preachy and I’m not entirely sure what point I’m trying to make. I’m a bit lost. I thought I knew myself.) 

    Essentially, something hurt my psyche and I don’t want to partake in this genre for a while. I’m not making a moral judgement, but a personal choice. 

    I’m not finding this cathartic as I once did. The escapism feels more like an escape room and I can’t leave. It’s not that the genre is bad, not at all. It’s just that in this season of my life, it’s not for me.

    I am fully aware of the mountain of privilege I possess that allows me not to be a victim of the world’s actual horrors. 

    I’m putting this pen name in cold storage for now. Perhaps I can find a way to bring it back, but only if there’s something I really want to say. Swamp Stories is suspended and the Patreon will go dark.

    To those of you who supported me in any way, thank you. Take care of yourselves.

    I’ll still be creating and writing. I’ll just be over there, by the window, where there is a bit more light.

  • What to do? What to do?

    I fully resonated with Sarah’s post, “When You Realize You Don’t Want to be a Writer After All.” I’ve gone back and forth over the years thinking that if I really wanted to be a writer, then I wouldn’t have any issue pursuing my goals.

    But that’s not how it works.

    The writing world is full of stories of the writer who’d written their whole life and never wanted to be anything else. Not all of us are struck with such certainty at a young age.

    Many of us have to put the desire aside for pragmatic reasons. Or self-doubt forces us to ignore our feelings and go for a safer route.

    We all travel different paths as we approach the page, and each one is as valid and important as the words you write.

    Doubt, declare, then get back to work. We’re all waiting for what you’ll write next.

  • The great Meta reset

    I just spent the last twenty minutes thinking my Facebook account had been hacked.

    For all any of us know, the whole shebang has been hacked.

    In the time I was trying to reset passwords, read through instructions on how to retake my account, and desperately try to find a “Contact Us” somewhere, I imagined my world without Facebook. It was both good and bad.

    Since removing myself from actively being on Twitter, I found myself using Facebook and Instagram more, mostly as a way to talk to friends and a few (very few) family members. I’m less of a consumer of social media recently and I think that, overall, is a good thing.

    But the Meta Lockout today got me thinking about what I have online and what I need online. Do I need a Facebook page that I’m rarely posting to? Do I need to keep Instagram when I’m just passively consuming content?

    I’m not really sure.

    I think, if/when Meta comes back online, I will download as much of my data as possible and then scale back my consumption. I’ll reset my passwords, disconnect any access that FB and IG have to other accounts or apps, and just occasionally post a link to the content I’ll be posting here.

    I think the Internet has expanded as far as it will go. Perhaps now we’re starting to see the eventual collapse.

    Oh! I still have a Tumblr!

  • Getting out of my own way

    I’ve been trying to work through some small blocks that I’m putting in the way of getting my writing done. I had some low ambitions for October. I decided to remove myself from the Prep-toner nonsense by getting another book done before I start the one for NaNo.

    I have, of course, not yet finished the book.

    I don’t want to talk about fear or anxiety since I’m not sure those are my particular issues at the moment – though fear is always an issue when you endeavor on a creative journey. No, I think this is something else.

    I am having too much fun and it feels like I’m doing it wrong.

    I’d decided to use Dean Wesley Smith’s advice in his book ˆWriting into the Darkˆand just go with the flow, focusing on starting and cycling back a bit here and there to make sure threads are followed and tied up. While I already had a loose idea of the steps in the plot (it is a murder mystery/thriller), I decided to stop trying to figure out my characters first and just let them tell me their story.

    it’s gone in a few weird directions, but I’m having a blast. I think that’s why I’ve been hesitating.

    I don’t want to write a junk draft and then go back and revise. Like Smith, I feel like I’ve already been down that road. Granted, I don’t have the years of experience, nor the bibliography to back this up, but it feels right for me.

    But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m supposed to be suffering. (I’m typing this on a tiny, Bluetooth keyboard connected to my phone – it’s hugely convenient, but my wrists are suffering, so there’s that.)

    I’ve got a pretty creepy scene coming up and I’m excited to write it, but I’m worried that my excitement will build up my expectations and I’ll be disappointed with what I produce. When I write that out, it sounds absurd, but inside my head it’s perfectly rational.

    My brain is just trying to protect my ego. I wish I could tell it not to bother. Well, in the meantime, while I procrastinated on the creepy scene, I’ve written this blog post. Thanks for reading this far and I wish us all luck!

  • Time blocking and writer’s block

    There’s nothing I love more than a YouTube video that promises to solve all my procrastination problems and anxieties about productivity only to see, three minutes in, that it’s another argument for time-blocking.

    I have learned to scan the timeline of each video, previewing frame by frame, to look for the candy-colored grid that will inevitably show up in these ‘tutorials.’ “Let me show you how I plan my week,” they will say in dialects of enthusiasm and twee and then explain how their particularly busy influencer life can be broken down into Tetris-like blocks that always fit well.

    High Score!

    If I sound cynical, it’s because I am. Having undiagnosed anxiety for most of my life left me feeling demoralized when it comes to productivity. I couldn’t produce or create what I wanted. I couldn’t stay on task. I couldn’t follow through.

    I would always be a failure.

    Then I started to realize that these tools, suggestions, tutorials, classes, courses, the entire world of productivity influencers focused mainly on people with typical brains. By typical, I mean brains wired to properly work in our capitalistic-achievement society. Perhaps typical is the wrong word.

    Perhaps they have “preferred” brains.

    What I want to say to you, and give you permission to say to yourself, is that time-blocking is one way to schedule your day, or give priority to your goals, but it’s not the only way.

    For me, blocking out my day created too rigid of a structure. And it was a structure built for failure. The confinement of all those colorful boxes on my calendar made me excited to see all the things I would accomplish, but this only lasted during their creation.

    Once set up, the slightest adjustment or distraction, meant I slammed up against the bottom of a blue or red box and had to switch tasks to stay on track.

    Hold on, I’d built the track and could rearrange it. But then that added another task to the list and the boxes all fit so nicely together, to insert five minutes to shift everything would ruin the aesthetic of the whole… Aaaaaaaaagh.

    See? For me, the anxiety of the grid took over my thinking and I could never really focus on my writing (or other work for that matter). Time blocking blocked my writing.

    Over time I’ve noticed that my biggest area of anxiety is transitions, from one task to another or one place to another. And realizing this has allowed me to think more strategically about my time use with fewer boundaries. I’ll explore more of that in a later post.

    For now, just remember what works for everyone else isn’t the right way to do things, it’s just their way to do things. We can all find new ways together.

    Image courtesy of Gerd Altmann from Pixabay