Brew Fiction: Black Friday Rules

Unsure of the why but well practiced in the how, Liam pulled the straps on his father’s kevlar vest tight, jostling the back plate to make sure it didn’t move and expose any vulnerable vertebrae near his neck. Reminders of past years nicked and slashed the thick canvas, letting the ballistic plastic below smile through as a dozen plaque-stained grins.

His father shrugged forward to test his gear, twisting and bouncing like a sprinter preparing for the one hundred meter. He pointed to the machete lazing on a stool next to the fire. Liam lifted the blade, watching the flipped images of the flames dance on its polished face, careful not to cut himself on the edge so recently honed to skin slitting sharpness.

It was too much ferocity for a ten-year old, too top heavy, too awkward and inelegant to be an effective weapon. But in his father’s hands, rough steelworker’s hands, it snapped through the air, a cobra striking with steel fangs. After three quick flicks he slid it into the scabbard already mounted on his hip with a satisfying shlink, like a key settling into a lock. “Dad, why do you have to go out?” Liam studied the flames, trying to scry the answer before his father responded.

“We won the tickets this year. I have to go. We’ve been waiting for this chance since your little sister was born.” He sank into the ochre couch as he bent to tie his boots, the tension in the room tightening with each pull of the black laces.  Liam swallowed the mix of fear and tears that filled his little body to emotional maximum. “But…last year…”

His father didn’t look up from his boots. “Last year was different. I was just part of the mob. I thought maybe I could…but we don’t have to worry about that this year. I got tickets. I’ll be right up front. I probably won’t even have to use this.” He pet the machete like it was his loyal pet, man’s best metallic friend. The boots tied, he stood up. Where his lanky, underfed father had stood twenty minutes ago, a soldier stood now, a man made for war, ready to face or deal death, whichever came first.

From the window, Brooklyn looked split in two: slowly dying fires twinkled down the shadowy streets of the burrough, while those few who could still afford electricity blared prosperity from the top of the skyline like a decadent halo. Liam thought he could see into those impossibly high windows sometimes, catch a glimpse of the people in colorful clothes watching little men dance across digital screens, look into, however briefly, the life his father promised to bring home for them every November.

“Why can’t you just stay home? Me and Jess don’t need a TV. We’re OK, Dad.” His father stopped adjusting the filter on his gas mask and met the boy’s unblinking stare. “It’s not that easy, Liam. I want to give you the chance you deserve, and to do that, we have to fit in. One scan shows that we have no TV, no computer, and that keeps me from even interviewing for a better job.” He dashed a pile of high gloss ads off the kitchen table, casting a rainbow of sales across the sparsity of the ground-floor apartment.”We need this stuff, and today is the only day I can get it.”

A scream shattered the glass serenity of the night, the last cry of some unlucky soul falling early to the violence in the streets. His father knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be like last year, Liam. I promise. This time I’ll be there right when the meal ends. Right next to all the stuff. I’ve got a plan to get there, my whole route home. We’ve got the gear and I’m more prepared than ever. This year might mean we can move to the tenth floor next year.” He slung the empty sack over his shoulder, trusting the strength of his own bag more than the thin white plastic with the blue and yellow logo.

He moved towards the door, heavy boots marching out a funeral dirge on the wooden floors. “By why, Dad? Why does it have to be this way?”

His father turned around to take one last look at his son before he put his life, and his money, in the hands of the corporate machine. “Because it’s always been this way, son. There isn’t any other way to make it in this life. Those are the Black Friday rules.”

“Thousands they grieve as the Black Friday rule” – Flogging Molly

Longhand Fiction Contest: Photo Finish

As I began to write this post, JC and Phillip McCollum were tied with 3 votes each. When I went to disable the poll, not five minutes later, Phillip had 4 votes. In blog-speed terms, that’s a photo finish.

So congratulations to Phillip and his story The Grownup! And congrats to JH Mae, who I am picking as my personal favorite.

But really, congratulations to everyone who entered. Part of the idea with this contest was to get you to write longhand, change your habits a little bit, stretch those fingers and brain muscles on something other than a keyboard. But another, secret, ulterior motive was to get people to put their work out there, push it from the nest to see if it had grown strong enough to fly.

Bravo for the bravery. All of these pieces were a delight to read, and I am honored to have played host to them. While I can’t offer a full review for every entry, if anyone has specific questions about their piece, I am happy to answer them. Shoot me an email at literatureandlibation@gmail.com, if you are so inclined.

I’d also like to thank all the people who read the stories and voted; I hope you enjoyed these stories as much as I did!

Look for another writing contest coming soon. No official details yet, but there may be assorted (tangible) goodies involved.

 

Brew Fiction: Elysian Dragonstooth Stout

Three boys, all dark haired and light hearted, sat cross legged in front of a dwindling fire. Their eyes reflected the glow of the embers like little paper lanterns twice tethered to the earthen floor of the cottage by their still growing bodies. On the stool, a pile of robes and wrinkles and wisdom hunched, shoulders rolled forward, leaning on a piece of gnarled ash as if trying to keep his body from tumbling into the flames.

“Kawakuchi-sensei, tell us another one! Tell us about the dragon!” The smallest boy fidgeted as the other two took turns teasing each other and trying to resurrect the fire.

With much effort, Kawakuchi no Ichiro sat up, coaxing the years out of his spine with several impressive cracks. He tapped his staff on the ground twice. The universal call for silence.

“Many years before you three were born, a dragon lived in the mountains above our village. Naka was his name. He was a runt, some say, an unwanted son of the great seadragon Watatsumi. He was reclusive and few ever saw him, to the point where most locals thought him a myth. He hid in the caves and behind the waterfalls, always fleeing deep into the serpentine caverns of the undermountain when anyone came too near.”

The little lanterns faced forward, wide open, fixated on the storyteller.

“Despite his lack of size he was kind and bold, and wanted nothing more than to make his father proud. He’d watched the great dragon, a torrent of watery power, put out massive forest fires with a flick of his tail, or change the course of rivers to save crops from withering droughts. Naka knew there was greatness in him, and he traveled the land looking to help man like his father before him. But whenever Naka saw a chance to help, witnessed the sad plight of the struggling mortals in the towns and villages, he caused more harm than good.”

Ichiro passed the staff to his other hand and leaned in closer.

“Most men began to fear Naka. He’d accidentally set houses ablaze when trying to help a blacksmith light his forge, or uproot field after field of newly sprouted rice as he beat his scaly wings trying to cool off farmers toiling in the summer sun. His shadow on the ground became a herald for destruction.”

“Eventually he just gave up. Stopped trying to help. Stopped trying to be a dragon who could bring pride to the family. He retreated to the northern mountains and most thought he had died there, forever lost to the snowcaps and drifting mists.”

With both hands on the staff, the old storyteller sighed and sagged, as if the weight of the dragon’s shame was his own.

“Many years passed and Naka faded into legend. The dragons all but disappeared from the land; their majesty forced out by metal and machines, man-made modernity. Men became drunk on their inventions, swollen with hubris, thinking they were better than nature, stronger than the land that had nourished them since the first sunrise.”

“Naka watched from his solitude, watched as the men built and bent the world to their will. A town had grown like a mushroom at the doorstep of his home, and just beyond that a great dam, a wall of stone and wood and steel, stood in the path of the river like a shield in the path of an arrow. It turned the river into a sea; a sea perched atop of mountain.”

The six lanterns bobbed up and down in agreement.

“But one day, Naka noticed commotion in his village. The men ran about and the women cried, holding their babies and praying aloud. Water had begun to spout from the river-wall, and the town was slowly filling like a freshly overturned hourglass. The sea-atop-the-mountain had sat serene long enough; it wanted to be a river again and nothing would stop it, not even the destruction of the town and death of many people.”

“Naka watched as the hole in the grey stone grew bigger. Without thinking of his past, he flew down to the dam, forcing his claws against the hole. The water rushed past his thin fingers. His feet were no better. His flames turned to mist as he tried to seal the hole with heat, drowning the valley in a dense fog.”

The lanterns were now fully alight, flames flickering, betraying their excitement.

“The water would not stop. Out of frustration, refusing to fail again, thinking of his father, Naka sunk his teeth deep into the dam. One tooth, a large curved thing much bigger than a man, slid into the hole. A perfect fit. The mountain-sea stopped its surge and was quiet again.”

“Naka could hear the people cheering below, the reverberations of their shouts an echo of his father’s spirit in the valley. But Naka could not go celebrate with the people. If he removed his tooth, the water would flow again.”

The old story teller trailed off slowly rolling his neck upwards to look at the ceiling. The lanterns blinked and turned to each other. “What happened to Naka?”

“No one really knows. Some say he stayed there, tooth stuck in the dam, until nothing was left but bones. Some say his father saw his sacrifice and turned him into the biggest mountain in the range, a testament to his bravery. Some even say that, with much effort and a roar that could be heard the world over, he sheared the tooth from his mouth and disappeared into the mountains once more.”

The lanterns dimmed, squinting looks of disbelief falling onto the old man. “Well what do you think?”

“We’ll never know.”

He smiled a perfect smile at the boys. Perfect but for the one black spot. A missing tooth.

Craft and Draft: Why Writers should Listen to Pop Country Music

I know. You don’t like Taylor Swift. Keith Urban offends you on at least seven, different, personal levels. Rascal Flatts makes you want to get all stabby with the butter knife when their wailing interrupts your morning bagel-and-cream-cheese ritual at the local coffee shop.

I honestly don’t blame you. Country music is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot of drivel dribbling out of Nashville. A veritable ice cream sundae of uninspired banging on the same three chords with some cheap-beer lyrics messily ladled on top. It’s pretty hard to get your brain around all that twang, especially when there is so much great music out there that could be filling our earholes with audio joy instead.

But cast your prejudices about country music aside for a moment. While it may not be the height of melodic art, those guys down on Music Row understand the business. They get what makes a hit song, and why; all the minutiae that turns a regular guy with a hat and a guitar into a legend of Southern rock, or a baby-faced blonde bell into a stage-trotting goddess.

They’ve figured out what people want to hear, and the song writing reflects it. If there is any art in the industry, it is in the hearts and minds of the writers who, beyond all human belief, can still work the words “Georgia,” “redneck,” and “truck” into new songs in new ways. They use grammar to infuse the verses with freshness, even when the backing music is the same one-four-five progression we’ve been listening to since the Grand Ole Opry went on the air in 1925.

Let’s look at Tim McGraw’s 2009 hit, Southern Voice.

This song is the quintessential three-major-chord-progression that all new guitar/mandolin/banjo players learn: G, C, D. It’s plain vanilla ice cream, white bread, about as complicated as toast. But the writers (Bob DiPiero and Tom Douglas) manage to toy with the grammar of the verses, breaking/playing with some literary rules to great effect:

Hank Aaron smacked it / Michael Jordan dunked it / Pocahantas tracked it / Jack Daniels drunk it / Tom Petty rocked it / Dr. King paved it / Bear Bryant won it / Billy Graham saved it

The sentence structure is as simple as the chords: subject, past tense verb, direct object. But these sentences are perfect examples of the power and importance of the right verb; not only does each move the song forward with action, it’s also perfectly applicable to its subject. The historical subjects are allusions that build on the theme of the song (a single, unified “voice” of the Southern states) and give the reader (or listener) a concrete idea-cleat to attach their brain-ropes to.

The major rule violation here is the use of the abstract pronoun, “it.” In most other settings, this would be a no-no, as it’s an unqualified, unattributed object, which normally leaves a reader confused. But when the chorus comes in…

Smooth as the hickory wind / That blows from Memphis / Down to Appalachicola / It’s “hi ya’ll, did ya eat?” well / Come on in child / I’m sure glad to know ya / Don’t let this old gold cross / An’ this Charlie Daniels t-shirt throw ya / We’re just boys making noise / With the southern voice

…we see that the “it” actually refers to the eponymous “southern voice;” as if each sentence is a square on the quilt that makes up the culture of the American South.

Ever wonder why a song is so catchy? How it so easily grafts itself to your short term memory even when you actively try to force it out? Because it’s grammatically kickass, that’s why.

Not convinced that you should subject yourself to country music from one example? Then here’s another; this one form Jason Aldean’s Texas Was You.

This one’s chord progression is, you guessed it: G, C, D. It throws in a nice little E minor for spice, but it’s still as standard as it comes. But check out this gorgeous grammar writers Neil Thrasher, Wendell Mobley, and Tony Martin slipped into the verses:

Ohio was a riverbank / 10 speed layin’ in the weeds / Cannonball off an old rope swing / Long long summer days.

Tennessee was a guitar / First big dream of mine / If I made it, yeah, that’d be just fine / I just wanted to play. I just wanted to play, but…

Carolina was a black car / A big white number three / California was a yellow jeep / Cruisin’ down Big Sur.

Georgia was a summer job / ‘Bama was a spring break / I got memories all over the place / But only one still hurts. 

The opening lines of all four verses are Subject, verb, subject compliment, a sentence structure that typically doesn’t move anything forward, as it’s only equating the subject to the compliment. The fragments that follow all support the initial comparison, building on the same image or metaphor established by the full sentence. It has an awesome effect in this song because it drops a declaration at the begging of each verse, confidently telling us what comparison Aldean is making.

It’s especially powerful when the chorus comes sliding in…

Texas was green eyes crying goodbye / Was a long drive / A heartache I’m still trying to get through / Texas was you

…and we get three more “to be” verbs, three more comparisons, showing us why he’s making all these metaphorical connections. The setup for the chorus is great, and proves that even generally inactive sentences/verbs can be used bring the hammer of theme down onto the nails of details in your writing.

I can provide other examples if people are curious, but popular country is full of songs that are captivating listeners with clever lyrics with even cleverer grammar. If you’re struggling with edits, or need examples of structure and verb usage, or just how to arrange written elements to get people interested, fire up some Eric Church or Dierks Bently and getcher country on!

“Bend those strings until the Hank comes out.”

Longhand Fiction – Vote for your Favorite!

Pens and pencils down! Quite literally.

I’d like to thank everyone who entered, and hope you had fun writing with a pen on some paper, especially if that forced you to change up your writing routine a little bit.

The hard part is done. Now we get to read all the wonderful entries from all the wonderful writers who scribbled these inken mini-masterpieces.

Voting will be open for one week; you only get one vote, so make sure you read all of the entries (they’re all well worth it!) and choose wisely.

I’ll announce (with much pomp and fanfare) and feature (with much respect and admiration) the two winners next Wednesday, July 24.

The stories (in the order they were received):

Beast of Burden – by JH Mae
The Virus – by Stuff and Things
My Blood for your Thoughts – by JC
Bereavement’s Brew – by Regina LaValley
The Grownup – by Phillip McCollum
The Wonderful Cost of Climbing – by Exist for Zen
The Writer – by John W. Howell
Dmitri – by Tkipsky

Cheers and enjoy!

A Bubble of Collective Beer Nouns

If verbs are the workhorses of the grammatical world, nouns are the plows being pulled through all that fertile syntactic dirt. Nouns give us solid descriptors of people and places beyond “she” and “there”, rocky outcroppings for our minds to grab a hold of and say “hey, I know that thing!”

Even cooler than singular nouns are collective nouns; containers that hold the place for a bunch of smaller nouns, like a corny keg cradling several dozen beers. Some are so simple you don’t even recognize them: a group of people. Some are so exotic you can’t help but wonder what sinister allusion inspired its original use: a murder of crows.

There are thousands of other collective nouns bouncing around our eccentric language, most of them related to animals: a pride of lions, a school of fish, a parliament of owls, an ostentation of peacocks. The animal naming thing comes from the ~500 year old game of venery (related to “the hunt”, not human sexuality, perv), in which hunters would challenge each other to come up with the best word to capture the spirit of the animals they were hunting. T.H. White had Merlin playing the game with Arthur as part of his lessons in The Once and Future King. James Lipton’s 1968 book, An Exaltation of Larks, expanded upon the game and moved it beyond animals, and the version re-released in 1993 included lovely twists of phrase like a shrivel of critics and a blur of Impressionists.

I’d like to take it a step further. The craft beer culture is full of so many wonderful nouns – hops and malts and yeasts and kettles – but lacks the poetic collective nouns to do a lot of these beautiful people, places, and things linguistic justice. Sure, people reference our beloved beer accouterments with general collectives, but a bunch of hops is hardly elegant enough to properly represent our favorite Cannabaceae.

Here are my first 10 official additions to the world of collective beer nouns. The fun of the game is to debate and offer alternative collective nouns that better describe the singular noun, so all suggestions, rejections, and additions very welcome!

1. A tumble of pint glasses
2. An aroma of hops
3. A backbone of malts
4. A shine of brew kettles
5. A cacophony of brew pubs
6. A flocculation of yeasts
7. An infection of off-flavors
8. An oasis of kegs
9. A steep of mashtuns
10. A crown of bottle caps

If you had to add one, what would it be?

A helix of hop vines.

Brew Fiction: Firestone Walker Double Jack

The flames speak.

Each crack a noun, each snap a verb, each sizzling hiss an adjective. All part of a language no person can comprehend, part of an infinite chain of echoes that has been flaring and dying since that first bolt of lightning kissed the trees in the Earth’s infant years.

Interconnected, but not a hive-mind. Sentient, but not sentimental. Alive, but not quite living.

The flames sing.

They repeat every story ever told to them, mimicking the words and waves that thump out a beat for their endless dance. They absorb and become those stories, fueled by the tales and their troubadours, perpetuating the oral tradition with burning lips.

Every campfire a ghost story. Every grease fire a spitting satire. Every bonfire a Homeric odyssey.

The flames rage.

They’ve seen it all, those eyes in the inferno; the wars of steel, the wars of hearts, the wars of gold and greed. They know our history as it is their own, and lash with red-hot whips against the conflagration of our culture.

Unable to stop us. Unable to tell us. Unable to do anything but burn us if we get too close.

The flames die.

Their energy dissipates, leaving only the light of elder embers and the chants of a slow dirge. The heat leaks, and with it the story, warming the air and ground and soul of the planet, sprouting into new fledgling flames somewhere in the unseen distance.

In every flick then lick of fire or flame a word and idea. In every human eye a reflection of the glow. In us all a burning need to tell.

Craft and Draft: Zen and the Art of Homebrewing

Watching the frothy white wort churn, rising high, almost spilling over the edge of the stainless steel kettle, then dropping back down to a calmer roil, I pretend I’m an alchemist trying to transmute grain into gold, tossing in hops like they are little green cones packed with raw natural magic. I like to sit and watch the science happen, equal parts actively and passively involved in the swirling primordial creation of something great.

There’s something peaceful in the rhythmic dance of that malted water, the smell of wet grain on the summer air, the sticky sugar on the end of a big stirring spoon. When I brew, I’m not concerned with what reports are due at work, who I’m supposed to email, what time I need to be somewhere and if I need to put on nicer pants. Brewing is an activity where my mind can solely focus, find flow, reconnect to some more primal, innate elements of my emotional self that are often lost in a sea of tweets or overgrown fields of HTML.

When we’re out there, it’s just me and the pre-beer – mano-a-malto – with no concerns beyond getting the temperatures right and timings down.

The entire process of making beer demands devoted method and time. Scooping grains into bags, measuring them to match your recipe. Cleaning your buckets and mash tuns in the never ending battle against infection. Mashing at precise heat to make sure those amylase alphas and betas get a well-balanced, nutritious meal.

And then the waiting. The definitely not opening the primary fermentation bucket to check out the krausen. The definitely not sticking an eye dropper in there to taste your progress. The patient weeks of listening to bubbles as the CO2 floats its way to freedom. All necessary. Nothing rushed. In a world where people expect instant responses, the beer in stark, stalwart opposition, demands the opposite. It asks to be kindly left alone, so it can ruminate and flocculate.

This forced slow-down is important for a person like me, the frenetic type who can and will do anything and everything (to the point of it being too much) just because he can. The beer looks me straight in the eye – with little to no bullshit – and says, “No, Oliver, you can’t rush this. Do it right.” And, because I love the beer, appreciate its magic, I listen. Because I rushed a few early batches, and got decidedly meh beer as a result, I fight my instincts and take my time. I slow the hell down. I measure twice and brew once.

And as odd at the connection might seem, this ability to slow down, to take your time, to commit to quality and perfection, is directly applicable to writing. The excited rush to get that presumably delicious beer into a keg so you can drink it is the same as that excited rush to finish a first draft to get a story told. The theoretical beer always tastes delicious on the made up taste-buds of your mind, just like the story always works out perfectly, with no flaws, in your head. You even plan a beer recipe like you outline a story, selecting the correct grains (characters), hops (telling details), and yeast (conflicts), always making sure the water (author’s voice) is of balanced pH and doesn’t contain anything that might give the beer (story) any off flavors (inconsistencies in tone).

In practice, a poorly planned, rushed beer, with the wrong hops or yeast, where fermentation never really finished, just won’t taste very good. A story that wasn’t really thought out, that wasn’t edited objectively, that never really resolved some major plot point, likely won’t be a very enjoyable read. Great literature requires proper fermentation time. No amazing novel was finished, and no whiskey-barrel aged stout is ready to drink, in a week or two or even three. The same amount of slow, purposeful development that goes into creating a world class brew goes into creating an award winning story.

Quality takes time. It takes patience. It takes slowing down from the “I’m definitely going to get hurt if I keep going this fast” pace of our daily lives. It takes knowing when to tell your brain that an investment in the development of a product will yield a vastly superior result. It takes discipline. It takes practice.

But in that slow down, that moment of focus on a single luxurious task, you may find some peace you thought you’d lost. As the wort swirls on its throne of steel and flame, and as a plot forms ranks around a few thousand serifed soldiers, you’ll find a moment of clarity – possibly even of zen – where there is nothing but you and your brain. And in that space, you’ll find your best stuff: the freshest ideas, the tastiest beers.

So take your time. Relish rolling around in the decadence and wonder of your own imagination. Don’t try to push it aside, or run past it. Embrace it, spend time with it. When you’re brewing up a batch of story ideas, give them the time they want. Give them the time they deserve.

“Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.”
–John De Paola

Brew Fiction: Southern Tier 422 Pale Wheat Ale

The waves never relent. A group of Sanderlings, all grey and brown and white like they are made from the same sand they run on, chase the ebb and flee the flow. Two boys, lathered with lotion and stung with sun, fight over the height of their tiny Tintagel. The high tide washes over my feet, baptizing them in the name of this unchanging summer ritual.

It’s impossible not to notice the surfers, the dots of purple and blue and orange on the horizon appearing and disappearing behind troughs and crests. I watch their practiced patterns: wait, paddle, stand, ride. I admire how they jump up from their knees to their feet, like proud warriors against the waves. I cringe as they fall, face first, into the greenish brine. From the dry safety of my chair I’m with them, balanced as precariously between awake and asleep as they are between surfing and swimming.

As a black wet suit and orange board peaks at the top of a foaming surge, another surfer slides by, thrashing wildly on the stubby East Coast wake, like a shark caught in waters too shallow for comfort. He turns hard, spraying water behind him, before the energy of the wave is spent, and his ride unceremoniously ends. Slapping the water out of frustration, he pulls himself back up onto his board.

I’m sure out there -weightless, bobbing, free – we sand-slugs look silly hunching under umbrellas, sprawling on towels like jerky left to dry in the sun. Out there, in the endless tides, where a dolphin is more than just a fin in the distance, a man can be calm. Out there, where the only focus is feet and wax and waves and wonder.

Out there.

I swear to myself I’ll ride one of these days, feel the spray of salt on my face. I swear I’ll know the freedom and fun of a day on a longboard. I tell myself to just stay positive, to work hard, to take it one day at a time. I tell myself that practice makes perfect and without pain there is no gain.

I call to my assistant. The thin wheels of my chair are stuck in the wet sand. This happens every summer, when I demand time at the beach, and then demand I wheel myself to a ramp, off the boardwalk, into the sand, down to the water.

I tell myself that soon I’ll be unstuck. I won’t need an assistant to wheel me back to the van. Soon I’ll be able to feel that water washing over my feet, feel the sand burn my soles. Soon I’ll have an orange board and a black wet suit of my own. Soon it will be the power of the wave carrying me forward, not the power of my arms.

Soon I’ll be out there.

Craft and Draft: Poison Ivy, No Calamine Lotion

The writing side of your life – once you’ve truly embraced it, absorbed it, made it part of you – is like a new skin. It surrounds and covers you, forms a protective barrier, keeping your emotions and squishy opinions safe from the daily onslaught negativity and rejection and slimy internet trolls.

When you start out and your writing is raw and innocent, this skin is delicate, easily marred and easily broken. But as you grow through and with life, every fall and bump and clumsy tumble toughens it. Callouses form and harden, scrapes dry and scab over, and the worst gashes fade into story-worthy scars.

As years and decades flit by, exposure to life will turn this skin into a flexible, protective suit of armor. Eventually, it will be your natural bulwark against critics and haters, who by definition, are gonna’ hate. And that’s real nice. A mighty fine thing. But it’s a pretty slow process.

If you want to speed it up, you have to main-line some kind of writing steroids. You have to introduce an external catalyst to creativity and motivation.

You have to give your writing-skin some poison ivy.

Poison ivy, that insidious vine, isn’t all bad. Sure it’s painful and unsightly, springing up at the worst possible times, in even worse places. But it also has the ability to bring your mind into a state of hyper-focus, where your brain is twisted and bent on one thing: itchy scratches and scratching itches.

Go finds some oily, nasty leaves (the kind made of focus and determination and motivation are the best) and rub them all over your writing. On your drafts. On your edits. In between your independent clauses. Rub them in the most annoying places you can think of, and make sure to get the oil in there really deep.

Rub them on yourself too. On your wavering confidence, on your self-doubt, on the weakest parts of your artistic bones.

A day or two will pass with no results. You’ll think, “thanks a lot, Oliver, I wasted like, 22 whole minutes finding and rubbing those leaves. I could have watched most of Wheel of Fortune instead!” And you’ll sit and be annoyed with me, typing like you usually type, thinking like you usually think.

Until a herald appears. The oil of motivation sinking into your brain, causing an allergic, innervating reaction. A red smear on a Word doc, an itchy piece of awkward grammar that you can’t help but scratch. You’ll think nothing of it at first, mindlessly clawing at the annoyances as they appear. You’ll rub and rub just so the frustrating feeling goes away, but that will only work temporarily.

Soon the red smear will spread to entire manuscripts of impartial edits, hundreds of damaged sentences you can’t help but repair, tens of thousands of word-itches that can only be scratched by typing them out, one-by-one. The oil has now been absorbed by your brain, and no amount of laziness or doubt can wash it off. You won’t be able to ignore the vexing throb and burn of all those words that just need to get out, all those edits that need to happen, all those ideas that need outlines.

All those itches that invariably need scratching.

And don’t even think about dumping half a bottle of calamine lotion or Benadryl gel onto the festering mess. Let it flare and shout its anger out into the world. Let the itches itch. Let the annoyance and frustration build, until the blisters and boils and the crimson patches of infected writing are the only thing you can conjure in your mind. Let them interrupt your sleep. Let it be the first thought on your mind before food or drink or other worldly wants.

The itch will become all you know, the scratch all you want. And you will write because you have to. You won’t have time or energy to think about “not being good enough” or mull over “will this be rejected” as you force the words down onto that poor keyboard, chasing after the never-ending tail of an insufferable itch worm.

And then, with as much creeping subtlety as when they arrived, the itches will fade. The redness and swelling will recede like a beach at low-tide, leaving freshly exposed writing-skin made tougher by the fury of the flaming reaction. Your skin, in a matter of a few weeks, will be more resilient and more experienced. Your writing will be stronger from having fought the itches and won.

And after you’ve had it once, sometimes in the shower or at your desk or on the toilet, a phantom itch with dash across your skin and you’ll remember how the poison ivy made you feel.

And then you’ll write, knowing that the itches might come back. Secretly hoping they will come back. Just so you can have the joy of scratching them all over again.

“Poison Ivy tastes like an itch when you have it on your tongue, and I’d say that love tastes the same, only itchier. 
” – Jarod Kintz