putting that frickin pen to paper

Right now I am sitting on a couch in Ottawa hanging out until I go do my 2nd show tonight, see some shows, and hang out with a lot of hilarious and fun people (I have found my ideal job). I left Montreal two days ago, and sorry, New York City, but I think I’m in love. Anyways, today I am just checking in to introduce you to a dear friend of mine, Matthew Blake Williams. Matthew and I went to college together. He was my very first comedy partner. We’d do the Marty Cope & Bobby Mohan Culp characters at college events, and it was SO fun. 

Matthew is one of the most talented people I know across the board… And I’m very excited about his new endeavor! Here’s Matthew…

Blue initially asked me to write about how I was going to run a marathon. And run it I did. In January of 2011. In Carlsbad, California. It was awesome. The pain was… awesome. Here is a picture of me and all my awesome pain.

BUT – I procrastinated about writing about running a marathon.

Dammit.

Six months later, still no insightful essay on the process of become a Real Runner, even though I’ve already clocked an additional half marathon, plus another one on its way in August.

So I never wrote about running. Instead, I humbly submit to you today the thing I really want to do. (Hint: not running. Running is great and all, but that’s not the demon I need to stare down.)

Here it is…

I am a writer who doesn’t write.

There! Spoken! Confessed! Unburdened of oppressive secret!

It’s been over a year since anything substantial found its way from my head to the inked, printed, or digitized page. This is a problem, because writing is special and sacred to me. When I was a skinny boy catching crawdads in the creek of my parents’ property in the sticks of western North Carolina, I wrote about it.

When I was a fifth grader who still wet the bed and got bullied by John McGinnis in gym class every Tuesday and Thursday, I wrote about it.

When I was a pimply adolescent who bought some Valentine candy for my first girlfriend, Jenny Belding-Miller, and hid it in her locker because my knees were knocking even thinking about handing it over in person, I wrote about it.

When I was in high school playing Professor Henry Higgins in Asheville Christian Academy’s lauded production of My Fair Lady and took a fall down the stage stairs on opening night right smack dab in the middle of my most climactic fight with Eliza, I wrote about it.

When I was in college finally acknowledging that I was gayer than a Grey Goose cran-tini at a Palm Springs resort – and hating myself because of it – I wrote about it.

Sometimes what I wrote was (really pretty awful) poetry, sometimes prose, often just my stream-of-conscious thoughts in a journal. When the Internets were invented, it became blogs and MySpace entries. Most recently, I channeled my writing into lovely three-and-a-half minute songs that I played to emo high schoolers in suburban coffeehouses.

But life got serious, jobs got serious, relationships got way too serious, and before you know it, you’re on the verge of 30 just clocking time until you can take that really fun vacation or a rich relative you never knew about dies and leaves you his summer house in the Alps.

Then, on May 21, 2011, a funny thing happened. The world, which was supposed to end according to that Harold Camping fellow, didn’t.

May 21 also happened to be my 29^th birthday. (Yes, my friends and I celebrated with a bar crawl themed around Britney Spears’ “Dancing ‘Til the World Ends,” and yes, I dressed like a slutty pimp. Beside the point.)

I realized that, since the world was still functioning properly, I could yet have another good forty or fifty years on it. Sixty if I’m lucky.

And I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend one more of those years not doing the thing that pulls at me, whispers to me, constantly and quietly beckons me to put a frickin’ pen to paper and write a book.

Here is a list of reasons why I’m afraid to write a book.

• I don’t have enough education.
• My life is pretty bland, really.
• No one will read it.
• What the hell am I gonna write about, laying on the beach in sunny San Diego?
• It will never make me any money and I got bills, yo.
• I’ve got nothing new to say.

Here is the reason why I’m writing it anyway.

• THOSE REASONS ARE ALL HORSE SHIT.

Today I am a month into the process of writing my first novel. It could take five years. But if that’s true, it’s now only four years and eleven months.

If you want to see this endeavor unfold, you can do just that at This Novel Idea, which is another blog where I’m chronicling the process of being a first time novelist.

I’m pretty darn excited. I never wrote about the running. But I’ve finally written about the writing. It feels good to answer that little nagging voice (that is really just your heart of hearts) with a resounding “I’m doing it, dammit!”

And do it, dammit, I shall.

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