Stone Tower

In Which I Kill a (Figurative) Dragon

I wrote the following essay last August, right after taking the Patent Bar Exam.  I think I wrote the first draft less than 24 hours after walking out of the exam, actually.  At the time, I remember reading it, telling myself it was stupid, and promptly forgetting all about it.  But I came across it today (I've been going through my email archive this afternoon as I prepare for my yearly employee evaluation "discussion" with my boss) and--if this doesn't sound too lame--was surprised at how much I like it.  Maybe I was a bit too close to the subject mater at the time, but I certainly feel like I captured the moment with this piece.

Anyway, I thought I would post it.  Let me know what you guys think...

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I've been away for a while.  Sorry about that.  I was off--quite figuratively--killing a dragon. 

As many of you are no doubt aware, figuratively killing dragons is not an activity one takes on lightly.  There is training involved.  And conditioning.  And lots and lots of swearing.  And, in my case specifically, a 3,000 page book on obscure, seemingly unrelated, and--at times--infuriately contradictory rules and procedures. 

So for the last three months or so, that's where I've been.  Training and conditioning to kill my figurative dragon, while occasionally swearing about it.  This, of course, left little time for anything else.  My entire life has been consumed with dragon-killing-training (DKT, if you have your Monster Manual handy) for the last three months.  There has been no time for writing (here in this blog or otherwise), spending time with my family, or any of the other things in my life that are so important to me.  It's been a hard few months, but it's been worth the effort.

A little know fact--shared mostly among fantasy writers and very high level wiccans--is why one kills a dragon.  A popular misconception often passed about is that one kills a dragon much for the same reason one climbs a mountain: because it is there.  People who say this have clearly never killed a dragon, nor climbed a mountain.  No, my friends, one kills a dragon not because it is there, but because it is in the way. 

Dragons, the sinister creatures that they are, are quite adept and discovering what is most important in life and planting themselves, quite firmly, between you and just those things.  For reasons that are complex, lengthy, and stretch the bounds of my playful little analogy here, my dragon stood in the way of my writing career.  The path to everything I wanted and cared about--a path I'd only discovered existed a short time ago--was right behind the bastard.  I had to face this dragon, and best him, or spend the rest of my life writing LabView code and debugging JTAG failures, leaving the inhabitants of Ahearn Mour to fend for themselves.

And so yesterday, figurative sword and dagger in hand--no shield for me, people, it's double wielding or nothing--I marched into the cave, woke the snarling beast up, and picked a fight.  And fight we did.  For six hours (not counting a tidy twenty minute lunch break) we had at it.  I got the upper hand early, but was only lulled into a false sense of security.  With a whip-crack of his swishy tale, the dragon knocked me from me feet, sending my sword skittering across the cave floor into a bottomless crevice--which I can only assume was filled with lava.

On instinct alone I found my feet and retreated behind a conveniently placed boulder.  As I fought to regain my senses, I could hear the dragon chuckling smugly to himself.  Understand that crushing dreams is what all dragons live for.  It's what gives them their long life and keeps their scales shinny.  And this dragon knew he had me.  Knew my tasty, tasty dreams were just an hour and forty-five minutes away.  They'd go so good with a tall glass of milk and nice piece of chocolate cake.

But what dragons don't understand--what they can never seem to learn--is how fiercely we hold on to our dreams.  How ferociously we'll fight to keep them alive.  Being smug and evil creatures, dragons don’t have dreams, and that is the great irony--and some say great weakness--of their existence. 

I called out to any god who was listening--you'll recall from previous entries the god of my youth and I might not be on the best of terms at the moment--for help and stepped out from behind the boulder.  Meager dagger in hand, I fought the creature, gaining ground one step at a time.  I lost track of the entire battle.  All my careful strategy and planning dissipated around me.  I fought him in what I can only describe as a controlled panic.  I focused on hit after hopeless hit, mindlessly scrambling for just one more point (dragon battles are very often decided on a point based system where guessing cannot hurt you). 

When the final hour of the fight began (very often fights with dragons are done in two timed three hour sessions, you understand), everything that was logical inside me knew it to be a lost cause.  The fight was too far gone to salvage.  You can't kill a dragon with a dagger, not even an uber-cool war dagger you wife picked up from sabersmith.com.  But I'll tell you this, in that hopeless moment when the battle seemed surely lost, I felt something.  A surge of hope and faith and belief from seemingly nowhere filled me, and I resigned myself to fight every minute I had left.  I wasn't going to lie down.  I wasn't going to quit.  He wasn't getting my dreams so easily.

And then, in the last moments--much to my shock and disbelief--he fell.  Somehow, someway the sum total of all those little hits, the aggregate of all my faith and tenacity, added up to be enough.  As he slipped into a large bottomless crevice--again, I can only assume filled with lava--I caught a note of respect in his beady red eyes, and I knew I had earned my right to walk the path beyond him.

And so, I've returned.  Stronger, hungrier, and surer than ever as to what I want.  I still have a long road to walk (it's not as though the dragon left behind a scroll of summon literary agent for me in a treasure chest--although, wouldn't that have been a cool end to the story?) but I am ready.

Do You Have the Time to Listen to Me Whine?

Back in college, riding an ego boost from my brief stint in semi-pro theater, I took an acting class over summer semester.  I actually earned three humanities credits for the class and was able to free up three hours a week in my schedule for the fall semester that year.

Aside from that, two lasting benefits came out of that summer:

1.  I learned that I am, quiet possibly, the worst actor ever to have cake make-up liberally applied to his face by a girl in a top showing a somewhat less that respectable amount of cleavage.

2.  I learned a series of acting techniques that have proven invaluable to my writing.

There is not a single piece of fiction that I have sat down to write that didn't benefit from something our professor taught us that summer.  He gave us a pretty comprehensive overview of scene study and character creation and even some new-agey exercises like body memory and "the method."  We worked a number of scenes in class over that summer to put these techniques to use, and while I couldn't seem to execute the results on a stage as well as I could in my head, I found that I could grasp the theories and tools pretty quickly.

On the first day of class that summer, the professor had us jump right in.  Half the class had to climb up onto the stage, while the other half remained in the seats--watching.  I was with the stage group, and so I made my way up there with the eleven other "lucky" ones.

"Just be," the professor called to us from his seat in the back row.

We all looked around nervously to each other wondering just what the hell he was talking about.  I was especially nervous because I desperately wanted to impress this guy.  Keep in mind that at that point, I thought myself the gifted little actor.  I had visions of this professor taking me under his wing and honing my talent--which had earned me exactly two major roles (both as an "awkward nerdy type, with a heart of gold"--quite a stretch) in my entire acting career.  Surely this was the time to show him what I could do!

"Um, do you want us to talk or something?" a nervous older woman, one of the continuing education students, on the stage asked.

"Just be."

"All right," the big guy next to me said with a bemused confidence.  "Hi, everyone.  My name is Silas.  I am six credits short to graduate, so I thought this class would be an easy three.  Anyone want to get a beer after this?"

The class laughed quietly.  Damn.  This guy was showing me up with his confident stage presence and his "I don't care that if I look like an idiot up here" demeanor.  He wasn't even an actor!  He was just here for an easy three credits.

"Guys," I whispered urgently, turning around to the rest of the group on the stage.  "I think we are supposed to improv something.  Someone say something funny."

I got back eleven nervous stares from the group, each one begging me to just shut the hell up.  To give them any credit, I don't think I was exactly casting the inspiring image of master thespian that I thought I was.

"Just.  Be."

It went on that way for ten solid minutes; the twelve of us awkwardly standing on the stage while our remaining classmates looked on.  The entire time, I was convinced that he wanted someone to take center stage and do...well, something.  I wanted to be that person more than anything.  I just had no idea what to do.

After our ten minutes, we all sat down, and the professor took the stage.

"How did that look?" he asked the class members who had remained in their seats.

"Bad," one guy said.

"Uncomfortable," a girl called out, earning a few laughs.

"That's a good word for it," the professor said.  "And what did we learn from this?"

We all looked around to each other not having a clue what the point was.  He let us quietly mutter for a few moments before cluing us in.

"If you are going to take a stage," he said, "have a reason to be up there.  Otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time."

And with that, I was introduced to the world of real acting--as opposed to the world of repeating memorized words the way a volunteer director coached you.

It was actually a profound lesson, and to this day I can still remember how it felt to stand on that stage with no lines or blocking or clue what I was supposed to be doing.  I especially remember it any time I sit down to write a scene for a fiction piece, some technical paper for work, or even an article for this blog. 

Is there something I am trying to accomplish by having these two characters sitting in a tavern talking about their childhood?  Is it relevant to the process I am trying to describe if a probe is moved circumferentially about a cylindrical test piece under ultrasonic inspection?  Is there some need in a given piece for a reader to care about the summers I spent at camp?  In short, is there a reason I am typing these words at all?

And that, in an admittedly roundabout way, brings me to my point.  Faithful readers--both of you--may have noticed that I haven't posted an article here in the last few months.  I've written a number of things--or perhaps I should say I've started to write a number of things--for the site, but nothing turned out to be worth posting. 

I wrote a pretty interesting story about the first and last time I got into a real fist fight, but beyond making a few joking asides, the piece had no point.  I had no reason to tell that story other then filling up the page with some words.  I wrote a number of articles--some I even edited and got close to posting--on the fears and doubts I've been having about fiction writing over the last several months.  But, to be honest, they just read like diary entries; so much ranting and self indulgent pep talks that don't really have a reason for existing outside of my own hard drive.

The problem really is I have no idea what to do with this space anymore--I don’t really know why I am standing on this stage, if you will.  From the beginning, I decided that I didn't want this site to become an online diary.  Not that I think there is anything wrong with sites like that, but that type of blog was just something I wasn't interesting in doing.  So I tried to dig deeper and focus on telling different types of stories about my past or things that were going on in my life now in a way that had some value beyond just documenting my life.  I tried to write thoughtful or poignant pieces that might connect with someone who stopped by to read them.  I tried to produce some humor pieces that would stand on their own.  And, once or twice, I tossed in some short fiction, just on a lark.

I've had fun, but I find the well running dry.  I find myself struggling to write pieces to fit a blog which has made a point of having no point.  I scour my brain to think of some childhood story that will fill up a few pages rather than think of some story that illustrates a point I want to make or communicates a feeling I am having.  The result is somewhat bland, auto-biographical slop.  This site has ceased to become an outlet for my creative expression and become some new obligation I don't feel I am living up to.

Anyway, that's where I have been (I've even drafted two or three versions of this article over the past couple weeks that just really degenerated into whining).  I had a conversation with someone today that really showed me how skewed some of my priorities--with respect to writing--have become over the last few months.  That led me to--among a few other things--finally writing an update for this site.

I think I need to make some adjustments to my writing habits and goals, and this site will be a part of that.  I'm just not sure how, yet...

Is anyone even reading this anyway?