Coffee With David

Seven years etched itself into my face, my mind, and my soul before I could begin writing again. In 2000 and 2001 I was working on a novel that was almost published. Between then and 2008 when I started to pursue my writing in earnest again I had gone through divorce. I was nearly bankrupt by the divorce and I am still paying off those debts. I faced the death of a parent. There was a titanic change of my life when I had to move back home to take care of my other parent. In my thirties I witnessed the deaths of too many of my friends. I fell in and out of love many times. I succeeded in various achievements in other part of my life—such as earning my Black Belt and completing a new certification program. I made new friends and grew closer to those I had known or a long time.

When I sat down and began to write again, I was petrified. I will admit that I do not know if I would have had the courage to resuscitate the muse if it had not been for joining a great writers’ group (Saint Louis Writers Guild) and making all the friends in that organization that I have. Despite that support, the fear was there. I would start and stop many times, crumble paper or hit the delete button, before I felt comfortable with anything my muse put out. One of the things I have learned is that in the hiatus that I have grown jaded and gritty in my writing. This is not a bad thing.

I believe firmly that I am a better writer now than I was back then. My Black Belt training has reinforced my personal discipline and reminded me that I can achieve what I set out to do—no matter how long it takes.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for blogs and updates to my articles, short stories, novels, and novellas that I am writing.

I am posting this on all my blogs. Due to an extra project at my “bill paying job” I have been finding it hard to find time to write, nevertheless blog. I hope to have that schedule under control soon. Please keep checking for updates. I hope to have one up by the end of the weekend on all of these.

Thank you
David Alan Lucas

I am writing this entry out of frustration. It is not a rant or a rage that has become popular on many blogs. Instead it is the frustration of obsession. What obsession do I have? While I may have many other obsessions, two are bringing pain to me from the lack of being able to access them: karate and writing.

I have to be obsessed. Can you think of any other description for wanting to focus on story after story, idea and character, every day? Or what about the focus of thought about martial arts and the possibilities in sparring, katas, techniques and applications? It is an obsession that I suffer from, for I can not find any other word in the dictionary that better describes it. They are both physical outlets of the mind and the body.

I wake up in the morning, take my shower and then what do I do? I turn on the computer—even before the coffee pot—and get things started and capture the thousand pings on the creative sonar that will coalesce as black pixels on virtual paper. Maybe I might eat sometime before noon (or before I go to work if it is a weekday). When the body finally stiffens from the sitting and typing, feeling like something pulled out of a coffin, I begin to stretch and clear my thoughts. So what do I do? Karate.

If I am working at home, which is rare (otherwise I will go to a park) I stand up and begin going through some katas or techniques and then zen my thoughts away to clear my mind. I miss going to the karate studio and working out, feeling the bag beneath my foot as I drill it with some kick or as I hammer home a hand strike. I miss the mental chess match of sparring great fighters or trying to improve those who are of lower belts.

It must be obsession. What else would you call it if you are willing to spend your time on thoughts and allow your heart be bruised by rejection or your body by blows in sparring. If this obsession is a disease, then let there be no cure other than doing that which feeds the disease the most.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates to the novels, novellas, short stories and blogs I write.

As I wrote in my last "Coffee with David blog", I am having to juggle a lot right now. During some moments when I actually had time to think on the stories and novels I am writing, I began to understand how much of my schedule I will need to juggle, what I will need to do, and how I will need to re-prioritize things.

Here is what I have realized and why I consider it humorous in a twisted fashion. One, the novel Dark Medicine will need to be re-plotted and rewritten. I will discuss this in more detail in the blog dedicated to that novel. A second thing is that the novel The Guardians needs to be so re-imagined that the original novel it was derived from needs to be tossed into an incinerator and the ashes swept into a dust bin. I will discuss this in more detail in the blog dedicated to that novel. The third thing I have come to grips with the new issues I have to adjust to is that the short fiction I am writing will have to be reduced from the original ambitions to trying to get one story out a month—and not stressing over it if I don’t.

The fact is, as much as I love to write and how much my heart is dedicated to being a full time author, I am not there yet and must give top priority to the “bill paying job.” I am not surrendering, I am not retreating. I refuse to surrender. With a force of will I am regrouping my efforts and holding the line to reach fro the stars and beyond.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for continued updates on the novels, novella and short stories I am working on.

Over the last two weeks things at my “bill paying” job have been shaping up to bring a lot of stress and pressure. I will be working on a very stressful project over the next 6 months on top of trying to ride the waves of changes that US Federal government is making to my industry as a whole. As a result, I am going to be juggling even more as I balance events around my writing and “bill paying” careers.

I will continue to write my short stories, novellas, and novels along with the blogs I maintain on my website. My blogs may not be as frequent as the daily schedule. I have not decided if I am going to reduce “Coffee with David” down to once a week. If I do reduce my blog output, it will be in this blog, as the others are already weekly. I hope and pray that the readership I have developed will forgive this…IF I do it.

In the meantime I am adjusting my story output so I can still accomplish as many short stories and novels (novella as well) as I can this year under the changes in the other career. I am already drastically reducing other things in my life, like Martial Arts. I have informed my karate studio that I will probably not be in much over the next 6 months. I am saddened by this, yet my two careers have to be first.

I greatly appreciate all the support I have from my writing friends, from my commenting readers and my silent readers. Thank you in advance for your continued support by reading these blogs, visiting my website, and reading the stories that get published.

Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for up to date information on the blogs and stories I am writing.

One of these days I may learn that when my muse stops talking it is usually means I am not writing the story correctly. This was the case with “The Last Friend” that I sent off for hopeful publication last month and it was the case with “The Indebted.” Hopefully I can recognize what I am doing wrong in the future and fix it. What did I do so wrong?

In both stories, the story is to be a personal for the reader to feel the pain, the solitude, and the desperation of the characters. This can be accomplished in many ways. Every writer who tries to write a story like this does it in their own style. It can be a story told in third person and reach the reader. However, when I started writing those stories in third person there seemed a built in distance that I was not able to bridge. Considering the story, it was a gap that needed to be forged for the story to have life. In response to this, I changed the style of writing from a third person narrator to a first person narration. As I wrote I felt the story come to life.

I pray that I have now learned this tiny lesson in my life as a writer: when writer’s block hits it is time to listen to your muse and see what it is you are doing wrong.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for up to date information on the stories, novels and blogs I am writing.