Splendid Cadaver

I can't always tell the difference between real and imagined threats. In other words I have a heightened fight or flight reaction, or acute stress response if you want to be clinical, and my reaction is usually to fight or scream loudly. No one is sure exactly why but doctors suggested that during my mom's pregnancy was stressful and this triggered epigenetic switches to enhance genetic anxiety that would otherwise be within the normal range. For example, the first time I took a shower I got some water in my eyes and I felt like I was dying and totally freaked out. Whereas when my little brother Carl got water in his eyes for the first time, it was uncomfortable but once it was wiped out no big deal. It gets really bad if I'm tired and hungry. And I hate sleeping. I mean, it's not that I hate to sleep, I actually really like to sleeping, especially having funny or crazy dreams, but I hate going to sleep. It's so boring! There's always something mor...

I've never been the writer, or the type of reader that leads to being the writer. That was my sister and in our social hierarchy there was only room for one writer. So I never wrote. I thought I couldn't write, so I never wrote. And when I did have to write a school assignment I wrote with my eyes closed as fast as possible right before a deadline hit. That was my formal writing style all through undergrad yet somehow there were a few professors who thought I wrote well and would give me feedback that reflected that feeling. I figured they were wrong or I was tricking them in some way. But when I got to grad school I tried a little bit. Like, I would reread a paper and make changes before turning it in. And somehow that got me through grad school. Now, like, 85 percent of my job is writing and I've started working at writing better. It helps that I work with people who aren't good at writing and don't try so that the most minimalist of effort on my part makes me l...

Facebook private message 11/25/2018 Hey Brian. I'm interested in freelance writing. If I've gathered things correctly, you are a writer, and so I wondered if you may know some reputable sources for me to learn… what niches I could try, who to contact, ways to practice. Any thoughts you have, especially references that are more reliable than I may pick, would be greatly appreciated. Facebook private response 11/25/2018 Hi Mark, I’ve never gone solo outside of being a paid staff writer for community newspapers but let me put you in touch with my friend Tom who I know has done some freelance writing....

Jeez.. eye rolling at this first topic. It reminds me of job interview questions like, "What is your greatest weakness?" My sixth grade teacher, who was a writer by night, thought that I was a natural writer. I wrote a nice piece in 9th grade and got invited to join the literary magazine which seemed like a mistake because I've been more of a STEAM person than letters. I recall this blue mohawked, skateboarding girl who wore punky boy's dress code at our ivied, college prep academy. She ticked the diversity box which was otherwise on-paper diversity only. She wrote a jaw dropping poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Chain" inspired by Wallace Stevens' poem . (I just read Stevens was inspired by Haiku which helps explain why I like it so much. ) I appreciated that poem so much and it made me feel I really didn't fit the bar for the lit mag. One thing everyone at my high school had in common was that they were all great writers. Some people were so am...

Thanks Ramona ;) I have always loved the sound of chalk on the blackboard and the scratching of my fountain pen on my notebooks. I had good grades in calligraphy. Then I somehow discovered how some famous person had kept a journal in his youth and how valuable that was now, kept in a museum and all that. So I started jotting down what I thought were memorable events of my young life. From my mom I learned to love books and stationary. She was always reading something, whenever she had a chance. With her brother whom I adored she would discuss the latest novel by some Romanian contemporary writer, occasionally mentioning names of perhaps a French writer and I was SO impressed. I loved the smell of my school library, although now I think it was just the smell of dust and stuffiness, as the windows were not opened very often. There was a bookstore on the ground floor of our apartment building and I think I spent significant amount of time in there. In addition to books they c...

I've been thinking for a while about writing, for various reasons. The most obvious is that I've been reading some interesting books, which always has the potential for leading me off into "it must be nice to express yourself like that", which leads to "why don't I ever write anything?", which leads to "I have no idea where I would even begin", which leads to thoughts about how to avoid calcification and the realization that writing is actually one of those things the thought of which paralyzes me. Not in the way that the idea of getting over my phobia of dancing paralyzes me (I've pretty much accepted that I'll probably never address that, and the idea that I should feel obligated to address it deeply annoys me), but in a less frightening way that somehow motivates me to address the paralysis. As a wordy, nerdy, smart introvert, I've never felt like I was an especially ineffective written communicator, aside from my weakness fo...

Here's what I'm picturing. Something simple and flexible, with just enough rules to provide impetus. The goal is to post something--anything--every week, responding in some way to the chosen subject. The first person to post each week will also choose the upcoming subject for the following week (to be stated at the end of the post). Subjects can be anything--love, war, toast, frogs, socks, death, embarrassing experiences, dreams (literal or otherwise). To simplify, let's stick with the traditional Sunday-to-Saturday calendar week. When I say "anything," I really am picturing anything: aimless diary-style rambling, a poem, a researched and informative news-magazine-style piece, a single sentence saying "I got nothing on this subject". Anything! My goal here is to oblige myself to do some kind of writing every week, since normally my only writing is overly wordy texts and e-mails to friends and family, or pointless capitalistic massaging of marketing-a...