When I first began playing golf, I really sucked at the game. I only wanted to learn how to play golf so I could fit in with the business people I was attempting to emulate. Good businessmen and women played golf. I would go to the local driving range, buy a couple buckets, and smack at the tiny balls until I was frustrated enough that I wanted to wrap the golf club around the closest tree. But then something miraculous would always happen – I’d hit that golf ball so perfectly long and straight that it negated the frustration and I would keep trying. Soon, more and more balls would fly gracefully into the deep blue sky, toward the retaining net that surrounded the range. When I got onto the course and played the game with other people – people always better than me – I discovered that I still sucked at the game, but the people I played with were happy to help me in any way they could by showing me how to stand or how to grip the club or where to hit the ball. Every now and again, I’d hit the ball perfectly – its arc and flight flawless. These hits were perhaps one out of every ten, but they were just enough to keep me going – just enough motivation to keep me striving to become a better golfer. The better I became at the game, the more I practiced, the more comfortable I got with the equipment - the more I was satisfied. In many ways, learning to play golf is the same process as writing.

I’m currently in a phase where I’m rewriting all of my earlier work. I’ve recently completed rewriting The Suicide Flowers, which was my earliest novel. I wrote it when I was just learning the craft of writing. Ten years later and a million written words later, I decided to give the story and characters more depth and meaning. I’m about to do the same with a story called The Arbiters. The basic structure and characters are all there, but because I now write with a broader palette, I’m going to give the story the literary attention that it deserves. At 49k words, I anticipate adding at least 20k words, and fully rewriting what I’ve already written. I’m very excited to begin this journey because all of my characters are real to me. I like to tell people that my best friends are in my novels. I laugh with them and cry when bad things happen to them. I guess it’s because my characters are all extensions of the person that I keep locked up inside me… it’s been a long time since I last visited with Marcus and Sein (pronounced Sane). I’m eager to find out what’s new with them.

Finally, speaking of the whole golf analogy, I’ve republished my book of poetry, short stories, and essays. The name is 104070. I’ve included all of my earliest works, including songs I wrote for my band, Southpaw, and short stories that have acted as character development for other bodies of work. I’ve kept these short stories as original as possible as a way to document my journey as an author.

...comes in the form of poetry.

I’ve been asked to answer the question, “what might the literate arts be said to be good for?” Well, I’m not able to answer such an informal fallacy. This question has no answer because in order to answer this question I would be following an agenda and I do not wish to follow an agenda. This is a loaded question.

I cannot answer this question because as I sit here at the computer I am reminded that it’s been over ten years since I last saw my daughter and I wouldn’t know how to express the love that I’ve had for her all of these years with merely words.

I cannot answer this question because as I write this blog my wife is planning on quitting her job, taking out a massive student loan, and moving to England to complete a degree in a field where there are few jobs and I don’t know how to tell her that I’m as scared as hell.

I cannot answer this question because as I sit here pondering the literate arts I am reminded that the next time I go to the theater I shall have to remind myself not to use my phone in any manner lest I be subject to lethal action. I wouldn’t know how to articulate myself out of the situation.

I cannot answer this question because as I watch the children get off of the bus outside my window I think that no matter how many times innocent children are slaughtered at school there is a group of people in this country that will come to the defense of the murderer by quoting the edicts of an outdated Constitution.

I cannot answer this question because as I continue to write novels and screenplays and poetry that nobody reads I wonder what exactly it is that I’m creating with the written word. Do I create works of relevance or do I merely muck about in a hobby that has done nothing but prevented my suicide?

I cannot answer this question because as I sit here contemplating the suicides that have cemented other artists in history I am afraid that if I had the talent to write a suicide note, then it just may present me with the capacity to go through with it.

I cannot answer this question because despite the Surgeon General’s written warnings on the cigarette cartons and the scientific data that prove that smoking cigarettes kill these words cannot bring my father back from the dead because he smoked too many cigarettes.

I cannot answer this question because of the assortment of love letters that I had carefully and thoughtfully written as a young man and the relationships that could not be saved from an eventual and predictable demise.

I cannot answer this question because of the words of Jesus Christ and countless other religious martyrs that expounded on the humanist virtues of loving one another as you desire to be loved and forgiving those that sin against you and the religious followers that twist their words to fit their own hate-filled agendas.

If we, as a species, truly believed that our words alone could provoke righteous action or inaction, then there would be no need to defend the humanities. It must be concluded that regardless of what is written, the human race will continue to ignore the literate arts. Time and time again we are reminded of this fact. Parents continue to use their child’s love against each other. Capitalists will always dream up new and improved methods of separating us from our money, as are exemplified by the college degree and student loans. Groups like the NRA continue to rally around an outdated Constitution and when school massacres devastate a community they blame the event on mental illness and not on the ease of obtaining weapons and the problem we have with violence in this country. Children will still become smokers despite the efforts of government agencies that provide proof that smoking kills and religious extremists will still twist the words of their holy books to fit their personal, hateful ideologies.

However, I could not imagine a world in which we lived without the literate arts.