how i write, why i write, and what’s with the colourful shirts?

i’ve had a few emails this past two weeks, asking how the hell i come up with the ideas, and how i can make the creepy and hatboy episodes consitently funny.

thankyou. i blushed a lot, and tried to reply as best i could.

i don’t try to be funny. i don’t try to be weird. i have to say, writing for me is an exercise in frustration because i can’t be as good as i want to be. i want to write crime novels, and scifi novels and fantasy novels. sometimes i want to write westerns. or childrens books.

i try very hard to write many things, but often i throw my hands up and give up on them because i find myself writing a style i’m just not able to sustain due to the intense pressure i put on myself to do something i’m just not overly interested in for the sake of success.

i have been lucky enough, i think, to have read a lot. i think that’s where it began for me. i read so much, and so fast, that i ran out of things to read some weeks and needed something else. writing was simply a way of continuing the reading process in a more interactive way. as my tastes are often unusual and not clearly defined, so my writing reflected this endless change of genres which has infected my bookcases. i’m still not sure if that’s a good thing.

what i do know is i have tried consistently to have my work accepted in australia, and it’s been a bit of a failure. i have rejection letters in which the rejector has asked to see the rest of the story so they can read it, but that they would never publish it because it’s too funny. too funny is a burden i’m having to bear with the creepy and hatboy stories, hence my giving up trying to get them published and offering them here for you for free. my occult novels were given some fine rejection slips, including one which suggested i take them overseas. as i’m yet to get a passport, i think i’ll pass on that suggestion. it’s not important for me to struggle against rejection. i prefer to just throw it all out there and let it be read.

the zombies of widgeroo and philosophica majestus were merely exercises in language and discordian theory put into a bizarro-slipstream narrative. i wanted to mess with words and the linear construct of sentence to sentence so in some cases you didn’t know when you were in the narrative – without it being extreme for extreme’s sake. i still have a fondness for gentleness in my stories, so try to keep the flow in an easeful and natural manner – it’s the lazy man in me that sometimes takes control.

my ideas for the creepy and hatboy series came primarily from extended video nights with a good friend of mine, andrew “hatboy” hindle. we used to watch too many movies and between movies we’d make coffee and talk about the movie’s best features. like, when watching star trek, we’d wonder what we’d do with a holodeck that didn’t just involve a random amount of cheerleaders. being lazy, it seemed natural that creepy and hatboy would solve most of their problems by not doing much about them. we started the story together, as a university project for one of andrew’s classes. i wasn’t writing humour at the time – i was writing some rather simplified pieces involving a rat character – so wasn’t really certain i could contribute. unfortunately, pandora’s box, once opened, is a devastating thing indeed. my version raged out of control, and as far as i know andrew’s still working on his.

zombies of widgeroo began life as a simple roadtrip novel. i didn’t really want to do anything weird with it, but about a page in, it turned on me and twisted itself inside out. most of my ideas come from reading a lot of old grimoires and discordian literature. i love old occult philosophy. i love the idea of it. it’s musty, mysterious, and the fact that some of the greatest characters in the history of the occult simply vanished just heightens the value of the occult as inspiration for weird novels. what happened to them? where did they go? why did they just vanish?

chaos as inspiration is never to be underestimated. the universe as an infinite creation opens all number of boxes and i find myself lost when i try to express my idea of what i think should be happening in my work. i try hard to express my discordian side in these novels, and the beliefs of my characters often mirror my own – they change, they alter, they slide in and out of reality like something you shouldn’t be watching until you’re old enough.

my method of writing is quite simple. i just sit at my table and sip some coke and eat some chilli-coated cashews and let it out. i start with a few poems. poems are wonderful ways to purge yourself of all those silly words you shouldn’t really use in prose. like opalescent. it’s a great way of getting out all the excess emotion so you can be calculating when writing your prose. and it’s an awesome way to just express some rather wacky alliterations or metaphors which could otherwise ruin a good bit of prose. i never edit my poems. i don’t class myself as a poet, or think of my poems as being anything other than what they are – the purging of stupid ideas.

i try to write a few pages a day.

i’m not very good at adhering to this rule, but i tell people about it anyway.

some days i just splurge on writing and it explodes out of me like brainblood. i can’t stop it. it rages until i’m exhausted and reality intrudes telling me i should sleep before work tomorrow.

other sources of inspiration come from movies and music. i’m a big fan of weird movies, strange music, punk music (gets the blood flowing), and anything just remotely different. i can’t say art has ever inspired me much, but mambo shirts really do it for me. a good tropical shirt can inspire all sorts of stuff, as creepy and hatboy can attest. when you wear a nice bright colourful shirt, you just can’t feel depressed, and you won’t find yourself writing another silly heroin spoon story. god, i hate those.

i don’t wear black clothes. i don’t like black clothes. i don’t look spooky, or even slightly goth. my pants are also worn around my waist. i think this helps me a great deal as i don’t feel i need to conform to any outward identity. it means i can concentrate on expressing myself through my words more than my photograph. which is good, because i don’t photograph too well.

i try to keep my humour, despite being an unpaid and unpublished writer. one day i hope to have something in print. until then, however, i really can say i write for me, and not for anyone else. it’s a pity, because i really do wish i could contribute something commercially viable. i do wish i could write a simple normal story for a change. i am now writing my next book, which is heavily influenced by korean sword dramas. god help us all.

so, to conclude, i do thank you for the praise. i thank you for your questions. i hope i answered them a little here.

i appreciate the criticism even more. i find everything is helpful.

lots of green,
lucas

Tags: how to, writing