Glory Fiction

Creating Into The Void Of My Own Indifference to Fit In

Writer, Author, Creator of worlds and characters that I’m constantly getting lost in…so why not bring others with me?

recent posts

  • Throwback Post Pick

    Throwback Post Pick

    A weekly feature where I fling open the vaults of past works – no matter the naivete they reflect – and revel in the making of progress!

    Perception is an interesting thing. It is unique to the beholder who’s eyes will convey one meaning well your own would work to convey another. It is something that speaks for itself, it doesn’t need facts or truths to take its que and interpret intention. Perceived notions will destroy relationships and blind the value of communication.

    It is very true that other’s opinion of you is none of your business yet we are a society so focused on our external exposures approval that it can be hard not to get wrapped up in another’s narrative…especially when it seems so juxtaposed to what you would have your message be.

    Monicaloyaduel

    I myself have been the victim of some brutal character assassination, triggered by peoples guilt, jealousy, and disapproval. Instead of talking to me about it they decide to paint every action with this less than flattering intent.

    They take out on me what they themselves refuse to face.

    Not saying that I’ve always been a perfect angel and have handled my shit in the best of ways – hell no! There was a time when I was angry and hurt, let down by those who I felt should have my back and be my support.

    I looked for recourse, for relief in my writing, in keeping an open journal of a blog to better express my way through this rough passage of youth and chronic illness. Of being mad at the world; the lone victim of circumstance, left to be forgotten and ignored or else chastised for my truth and means of dealing. Well not everyone approved and now, even to this day, holds me to a moment in time, perceiving me and all that I feel through the same teenage angst-filled ramblings as though my means of coping has not changed, and my opinion never changed, got over, or resolved not matter how much I prove and live otherwise.

    monicaloya2
    Monica Loya

    I have always been a live out loud, deep end dive, type of person. I am sensitive and passionate, but I don’t ignore problems. I’d rather face them, rather stay in the darkness and plunge into the depths so that I might release the tension and move on instead of leaving it to fester and slowly consume. You could say that I’d rather be punched in the face than slowly poisoned.

    I don’t do passive aggression very well. I don’t suffer hypocrisy. But I probably care way, way too much about being understood for my part rather then how it is perceived.

    I don’t want to be trapped in a moment forever judged by it. I hate when people put meaning to my words without any venture to understand my own, but especially when they are placing me in box, a situation, that I have far outgrown.

    I try not to live in the past with my feelings, try not to make a problem that I have now the epitome of all others before or the proof of my resentful tale of woe. When I am upset – even if it mirrors a situation before, reflects and old wound, brings up unresolved feelings, etc – I’m very much in the now of it.

    So it can be really hard when you have to do the time of time gone by. When you are talking about the present pain but haunted by the pasts.

    Relationships and feelings stay stunted in the monotony of torments repetition, always bringing you back to that time, that person, that place that you no longer are yet still remain on the outside for those who refuse to move past or move on.

    So who are you when perception is so skewed no matter how much you try to prove it different? Who do become when faced day in and day out with a reflection that you no longer recognize?

    We are made too physical to be kept as a shadow in the flesh. A ghost of a presence no longer breathing, residual and pantomime expressions of emotion without life. Adrift in what once was as you are now. Within and without.

    Who are you now, but dust in the wake of moving on and leaving behind.

    Perception destroys when presumed. It takes the beholder and make them the victim of a self-fulfilling proficiency of assumption without grounds or merit.

    Without communication perception is a self administered poison of our own worst traits refusal to accept defeat, the possibility of false impression, or inaccurate instinct. Most of the time we don’t want to face ourselves so we paint another to stay ahead. Pushing away the ability to expand comprehension and not be left behind in the dust of progression no longer in need of the static disservice.

     

     

    Monicaloya
    By Monica Loya

    Static perception in motion

    Wasting away,

    Perceived notions,

    Stuck on a page,

    A troubled ocean,

    Don’t cause a wave,

    No need for commotion.

    All stays the same,

    And I lose my devotion.

    To what?

    To the past?

    To the future still present?

    To this I resent,

    For which makes me reluctant.

    To start again still,

    Over when it was lost,

    Struck by the thought,

    Paralyzed by the loss.

    Yet here is me now.

    I am what I can.

    So defined by appearance,

    How I’ve lived in the land.

    So make-believe,

    So lesser departed,

    From all things real,

    From all things forgotten.

    So who am I now?

    My body seems vacant,

    For reality is still little less than I make of it.

    A floating head,

    Numb and defiant,

    For substance has change for which that I’m reliant.

    ~Glory Anna

    Monica Loya! Man do I love her style and artist eye! How the water colors overlap the hard lines. The surrealist out-of-body, reflective, psychedelic loveliness! Oh how it does just fill me up with the squeals of inspired enthusiasm!

     

  • Writer’s Quote Wednesday

    A weekly feature where I delve into famous writer’s words of wisdom and share how I have interpreted the meaning for my own creative endeavors!

    writerquoteEmilyDickinson

    Forever is composed of nows

    This is everything that one needs to remember when living there life, making plans, setting goals, and just simply existing. I know that it is something that I need to remember being someone born who was always planning the next step of her future.

    I never really liked being a “kid“, never really jived with books, series, etc. that centered around kids my own age or there abouts. In my many realms of make-believe I was always an adult, and always my own character – I also never liked assuming other people’s identities ( that came later, *menacing laugh intended to be a giggle), the ego of youth eh?

    I guess I found it limiting if not a bit *yawn* boring. I believed that once you make it past that remarkable age of eighteen then the fantasy – the things that you can only imagine and dream of as a child – become the reality. You are in the driver’s seat and can be taken seriously for all you have to offer.

    Really that was the main squeeze of the situation, being taken seriously. I’ve always had a hang up on that. On equality. Blame the Libra in me, I guess, but I just can’t stand people brushing me or things that I am passionate about off like I’m just some rambling dreamer, some bohemian beatnik who doesn’t know any better with not even a toe in the shallows of reality.

    I know I’m unconventional, I know I am a creative liberal, all innovation and odd-ball, but I try to treat all I do and all that other’s do – especially if they come at me with some passion, seriously I could find anything interesting if the person conveying the topic was into what they were talking about, if my listening with interest got them all excited because what they are talking about excites them and now they can share, I mean who doesn’t want that, jive that, crave that? – with legitimacy and respect and  I would like the same from other’s.

    As a child I thought that age was all it would take…

    Unfortunately time and circumstance also come into play. I grew up and became frustrated and insecure with the constant reinforcement of limiting beliefs, an unfortunate side-effect of age.

    Suddenly the pressure of what you have to show for yourself consists mostly of dollar bills and status prerequisites that stamp you with the proud medal of “adulting well.”

    Effort and experience count for very little in our society unless they can be observed in the obvious constructs of exhibited structures.

    So as creatives it can be hard to remember that it’s not all about the end goal, that book deal, that movie deal, that script sold, that contest won, that award nomination, etc and so forth. It takes a great deal of time to get to those places and a GREAT deal of hard work, drudgery, dedication, disappointment, failure, burnout, EDITING! drafts, words, blood, sweat, and tears go into those ends means.

    One doesn’t become a writer to be famous, yet how often does this goal cloud the due diligence necessary to take you there? How many see their book in stores but stop when its month two of writing the darn thing and they’re stuck, they can’t find the time, they’re overwhelmed with second-guessing, with the contemplation of industry standards, how to publish, where to publish, do I need an agent? How do I get and agent? can I get an agent? am I even good? what am I even doing with my life?!?

    And of course the ever present where do I start and the should’s and would’s that come with that overload.

    We want to get to Z, and are so transfixed and hung up on the how that we can forget the why. We can forget to fully engage in the process, to enjoy the ride of writing, of story boarding, creating, and the get in there so head deep you can’t even piss without having an epiphany that will further the intrigue of your script.

    So much goes in but we focus so hard on what will be got out, that we forget to fully engage in the process of production.

    Forever is composed of nows

     

    I fall, and have fallen many times before, into this trap, of getting ahead of myself and projecting concerns over whether or not I’m doing it right, if I could be doing it better, if this or that is even the right thing to be focusing my energy on, and indeed whether or not there is a purpose to it at all!

    So much sacrifice goes into seeing your dreams come true that is can feel like loss is all there is in the time it takes to achieve that win, any win. Desperation sinks in and you go FOMO central. You second guess your purpose, you wonder if it’s a waste of time, if you’re not just some hack who just refuses to live in the “real world” because something, something, etc and so forth.

    Suffice it to say it sucks.

    You want to be in it already, to be doing it from a place of serious professional not just writer by word of mouth, the dedicated but starving artist bum.

    But let’s just stop for a moment and look at things subjectively. Let’s put into perspective the other side forever. When you’ve accomplished your goal – no matter what it is – you look back on what it took with reverie, with nostalgic fondness and delighted pride, but also a tinge of regret. The secret wish to go back – now that you’re secure in you position, now that it exist on more than just your endless belief and perceiving spirit – and really enjoy it for all that it was. To do it in a better way and truly embrace the journey.

    I know in many ways that’s how I look upon my youth, so dedicated and confident, too easily corrupted and affected by others doubts and lack of respect. I do wish I would have said fuck it and gone pel-mel into everything I believed. Just created for the sake of creating and figured out the practical application all later! I wish I would have screwed the time spent doubting and just done. Because no matter what at the end of the road you’ll either have something to show or something to regret.

    The shame, the uncomfortable, the embarrassing, the lack and sense of social/peer debasement wont matter as much as what came out of it with. So wave that flag high and proud, freak.

    Your forever is based on the everything that you do now, so why not paint your yellow brick road with the engagement of its walk? Everything happens for a reason so why not engage in better reasoning?

  • Throwback Post Pick

    Throwback Post Pick

    A weekly feature where I fling open the vaults of past works – no matter the naivete they reflect – and revel in the making of progress!

    The beautifully atmospheric art of Jessica Durrant was the inspiration for this weeks throwback piece pick (for more of her art just click here!)

    And much like the reflective silhouette the verse works to capture the journey of struggle’s burden, particularly that of a hero. Call it a fixation if you like, but I have always been fascinated by the reality behind the psychology of our favorite cape crusaders. I mean it is a very isolating thing to be a superhero I would think, to be a hero at all, set apart from a society that so depends upon your talents that you never quite belong to anything or anyone.

    You live in the shadow of an image and icon, yet exist physically like any other human being, with the same wants, needs, and desires. Yet touching untouched.

    I have always protested the backhand of too much respect, believing that you should never venture to respect someone so much that you no longer want anything from them, for you have made them too great, so to ask would be to presume you were worthy. You put yourself in the role of inferior, of the intimidated “who am I” and them in the role of archetype. Stripping them of their individuality and humanity.

    You make them greater then what they are well at the same time lesser then what they deserve to be. Creating a one dimensional representation of salvation. They become inhuman, immune to the common foibles and fall outs of what it means to be normal, average, human.

    That’s why one mistake, one mishap, or misstep can send them crashing down from that pillar and into the realm of disappointment. You were supposed to be stronger than, better than, more indestructible than…you were supposed to be better then anyone else could be in said situation. In other words you were supposed to be perfect.

    But perfect is boring, hence why we have the predilection to make our heroes as human as possible, it creates that rather juicy concoction of inner conflict and outer moral.

    Nature fighting nature.

    What’s your physiological discord?

     

    jssicadurrant
    Art by Jessica Durrant

    Happiness & Life

    Eerie night I find thee,

    Now rest upon my breast,

    For so heavy is thy burden,

    Yet I wear the heroes crest.

    I wish it was for certain the benefit of quest,

    To search with doubt in question is to live without the rest.

    Forever have I sought thee,

    A happiness and life.

    Forever will I keep thee,

    In minds eternal eye.

    I feel the present weight push against my lidded curtains.

    To seal my fate if gaze should fall from thy suns steady burning,

    Ever bright,

    I feel its heat with all too tempting a retreat,

    But keep my goal in sight.

    For I am love in wanting and in waiting,

    For happiness and life,

    So keep on daring to tread uncharted lands,

    For at least I have chosen to fight until the end.

    ~Glory Anna~

     

     

  • Writer’s Quote Wednesday

    A weekly feature where I delve into famous writer’s words of wisdom and share how I have interpreted the meaning for my own creative endeavors!

    WriterquotewednesdayTonimorrison

     

    “I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.”

    There is one golden rule for all things in life that make it a lot simpler to navigate what is right and what is wrong for you, and that is if you don’t fill in the blank (i.e. love, respect, want, need, obsess, etc) first then how can anyone else?

    As a creative there are no set rules, there is no one path to follow, no A) B) and C) way, it’s a luck of the draw, zeitgeist, iron hot, collective conscious, Ah-ha! type of situation. Yet no matter the facts we do – as a society – try to still fit it into a box.

    You have to do it this way, no proverbs, no longer than five lines, too much description, too little description, show don’t tell, you’re showing too much, you’re showing too little, da-da-dee-da-da-da and so it goes.

    There is so much contradiction when it comes to the creative “how to’s” that it can leave one weary to try to be any different then what is already a proven market success,  pre-established, and safe.

    Vampires are hot right now so what if I just pound out a YA vampire romp just to get my foot in the door, then I can focus on my speculative fiction piece about aliens set in the civil war!

    What if I wrote a horror screenplay because those are easy and they sell even though my heart is in drama?

    This is exactly the kind of get notice quick scheme that makes you just another voice in a very large crowd because thanks to the internet everyone’s a writer nowadays!

    You keep editing, writing, and rewriting your project because every other day somebody on Medium is writing about the do’s and don’t’s of writing your first novel and now you’re feeling insecure!

    Well first thing is first: there is no right and wrong in the world of writing! There are no hard and fasts! What matters first and foremost is that you are writing! Is that you believe in your dream, your idea enough to put it into action and write it the fuck out!

    The second thing is that every story has been told in some way or another, there are no new ideas or original stories, it all comes down to the same old formula, what varies is perspective and voice.

    That’s what makes you get noticed. That’s what makes you stand out.

    Now ask yourself why? Why is this the idea that made you finally start? That gets you excited and all dancing in your skin because you just love to think about those characters, this situation, the words and where they lead, that have you coming back day after day?

    Why?

    Because you, at this stage of the game, are your first numero uno fan! You are the stay up later, the first in line, the conspiracy theorist, the reddit admin. Before you know it, hell, you’ll even be writing the fanfic! Ever hear of prequels anyone?

    You have to be your idea’s ride or die, you’ve got to go all freakin’ stan-fan on it and anybody who tries to negatively – not to be confused with constructively – poo-poo on you and your world.

    What you commit yourself to as a writer – or any creative profession for that matter – has to have your heart, because this world wasn’t meant to simply produce product. We write to add to the human experience, to capture, reflect, and convey humanity in a way that touches something worthy of reaction.

    Well that reaction has to start with you! It has to move you, to thrill you, to excite, anger, entice and involve you in order to provoke that same reaction in anyone else!

    At the end of the day every critique, every piece of advice, every rule, guideline, and commandment of writing has to be taken with a grain of salt and a bit of speculation – if not there would be absolutely no voice overs in movies ever!

    You have to trust your gut enough – the very same gut that got you into this lovely insanity that is writing – to know what’s right and what feels right for you and whatever it is that you are writing.

    Most great writers, hell even writers not that great but great successes, have one commonality, one universal rule that they followed that aided them in their careers and that was that they didn’t bother playing by other peoples rules. At the end of the day they wrote what they wanted to write and the rest just fell into place.

    There will be plenty of time for market research, for the pitch and bitch, for editing, for submitting and yes, second guessing, later. First comes the writing, the story, the idea and the fandom of one that moves it all forward, that powers this engine and makes shit happen!

    What will make the business side of things easier to deal with is that you believe so wholeheartedly in what you are trying to sell that people wont be able to help but jive off that energy that you’re putting off, take a hit, and get high themselves!

    We are the trend setters, the true believers, and we are the dreamers of the dream!

    wright because you want to read, you want to follow these characters, to see where they are going, and they will end up. You have to be along for the ride in order to catch the breeze of forward momentum.

    Art isn’t subjective, criticism is.

    Because at the end of the day, when all is said and done, everything eventually has a time and a place. Just do you!

  • Throwback Post Pick

    A weekly feature where I fling open the vaults of past works – no matter the naivete they reflect – and revel in the making of progress!

    This week’s post pick is Loud Silence. Quite a personal piece, I wrote in in a rather struggling time in my life, one that I’m not quite sure I’ve reconciled completely for though I refuse to live in regret it can be hard not to look back and wonder, or not feel a little let down in myself.

    You see I was young, I was creative and unconventional, sick and weak in body but passionately fierce in heart and temper – have I mentioned that I am a rising sign Scorpio? I do have this habit of coming at things full throttle, maybe it scars people off, but, hey that’s just apart of me and another topic of interest all together so back to og story…

    The long and the short of it, and without using you as the armchair psych, I felt totally and completely alone. I was so committed to my art, to my writing, my characters and the storyboard style I coined TBM, but in the immortal words of Poe “Everything I loved, I’ve loved alone.” – a saying that gave me much solace in my youth and actually first got me to pay attention to the man, yes I was one of those.

    They say that extremes in life will show you who your real friends are and at that time it felt like it was one right after another. Life changing things and chronic things, they came like battering rams. My one constant companion was my creative.

    Yet no one creates something to keep it a secret. At the heart of every creative there lies a great exhibitionist. For you have found something that brings you so much and you want to see it thrive, see it appreciated, see it providing not just for you for another who could be like you when you created it. Art is very much like a child for the artist you nurture, you birth and you raise it to go out into the world and make a difference. It is something that you are proud of and you want it to make you proud. You want to celebrate it!

    Well for those I shared my art with I felt a lackluster response that plummeted my into the great well of questioning doubt – very destructive to the moxy needed in this kind of profession.

    Was it worth it to do what I loved and be alone or be loved and half a whole?

    An eternal question of a rather wrinkled, lumpy, and dirty mind…

    enjoy!

    geoffreyjohnson
    Art by Geoffrey Johnson

    Loud Silence

    Silence piercing air,

    Alone and yet I’m scared,

    For there are bodies all around,

    Yet still there is no sound.

    Comfortable yes silence can be

    When one tries and one succeeds,

    Can bring calm and sweet serenity,

    Yet if one is all alone in effort there can be little left of silence comfort.

    A room full of people,

    And yet still alone.

    A person left with no growth can be so young and yet so old.

    There’s a divide in soul,

    So proud and unconvincing,

    Pulling, driving, forcing hand,

    A disbelieving state of man.

    Constant question of words brought to life,

    To seem wrong or dumb,

    Your fight or flight.

    You let silence fall in its wake,

    Concerned only with your doubt of self,

    Leave alone your questions still unanswered,

    Leaving the discomfort of silence persons together yet alone

    You bring forth your own disaster.

    ~Glory Anna

  • Writer’s Quote Wednesday

    A weekly feature where I delve into famous writer’s words of wisdom and share how I have interpreted the meaning for my own creative endeavors!

     

    JJAbramsquote

     

    There was a time in my life when I thought that I was more of an “idea” person then a “details” person. That I wouldn’t be able to write for the ideas that I had, that I wouldn’t be able to connect point A to point b in any kind of manner. I was more of a storyboarder then deep dive creative.

    Can you imagine…because I certainly can’t!

    This doesn’t sound anything like me or my style nowadays! I mean I don’t even use your typical storyboard, I much more of a synchronistic – intuitive sort, but Ill chalk that is judgment up to youth, siblings telling me who I was and what I couldn’t, and my stubborn refusal to follow any kind of pattern or per-established path…I mean that and the way that life tends to make it so that everything you said that you’d never or couldn’t or wouldn’t becomes exactly what you do, did, and are going to, but that’s a whole other topic all together!

    Onward and upward!

    I’ve often wondered how many projects is too many for a writer to be working on at any given time, the jury’s still out on the answer – but the focus groups are in the works!

    Even if you have five things going on there are more ideas to follow, it can be hard to have a constantly churning idea machine attached to your perception. Literally everything becomes a source, a spark, and a something that then generates visions of story dancing in one’s head.

    I see characters, I can even start to form them, to play with them a bit. Sometimes its just good fun, other times something else connects, as though the character was there just waiting under the surface of impulse, waiting for the perfect moment to be born!

    But how do you tell the difference between playful and meant to be? That’s where JJ Abram’s advice comes in to play:

    “I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the one’s that ultimately end up happening.”

    At the end of the day you’ve got to be master of your domain. If I wasn’t I’d probably be locked up by now – I got so many characters and personalities bouncing around in this brain and frame of mine already, can you imagine if I let just any roam?!?

    So what I’ll do is write it down, I have a notebook just for such a purpose. I’ll put down any little detail that’s playing through my head, this could be lines, descriptions, places, facts – if based off something that sparked the idea in the first place, thank you very much Mysteries at the Museum! – I’ll put it down then I’ll close it. I’ll move on back to the task at current hand.

    Some I never really think of again, they were more just in the moment “hey you know what would be a great idea” “You know what they should do” type of flexing your creative muscles in that conversational way, – the yeah I have bomb ideas like this everyday way that I know we all do! – only your not really that married to the horror genre or whatever and you only ever reconnect when in-between projects and looking for a new starting point or are looking for a dinner party killer icebreaker moment…however, there are others that simply will not abate.

    Hell my trilogy was an idea I had that turned into a few chapters of an underdeveloped short story that I left sitting for more than a year until one day during a creative slump after months of screenwriting, editing and revision was suddenly at an end I reread what I had and was excited to see where it was going, so I played with it. I just used it as an exercise in creative writing, in a playful free flow. I just went with it and look at me now! Not only do I have one book but three! Three! When I said I could never even be an author! – See how that came back around? 😉

    Not only to they keep itching my imagination but they begin to grow as well. Characters become there own people in my head, dynamics begin to take form, their worlds begin to take shape, until it feels as real as my own.

    I have a WWI story that was sparked with the fascination in the time, from there I began to research and struck upon a little acknowledged part of that history. Suddenly I was there, so I played with it and began to develop it further, but other things came up, other projects took priority – *cough* book *cough* – I still have chapters, scenes, both for screen and novel format and every time I revisit the I fall deeper in love with that world and the characters. I know that I will write this one day because it’s already so real to me. They are in me and they need to be told. They will not leave me alone!

    That’s when you know you have something worth taking your time with.

    Because magic is creation and when they wont leave you alone you  that’s when you know you have given birth to something with a mind of its own that’s just looking for you to help it grow to maturing, give it legs as well as life.

    So play, watch, observe and engage with your ideas then let them go, finish the task at hand, don’t force yourself to commit to something just because its a great idea because nothing will be truly great unless it has a heart and that begins and ends with your own.

    Play hard to get, build that tension, that longing, let your ideas chase you so that the sparks really fly when you finally, perfectly, and ever so syncronistically connect and make magic together!

  • The End

    Saturday saw me write this definitive text…and I got to say I am trepeditiously pleased. A little over a year in the abstract making and I have a trilogy on my hands! Final word count was 300,074, with page # at 619 enough to see each book comfortably with 200+ pages – of course that’s just cursory, I still have the whittling and honing of editing to do and that always gives or takes!

    Now I say trepeditiously, not because I’m uncertain but rather it’s a bittersweet thing to be done with something that’s been so much an active part of life, to think I’m no longer going to interact with these characters in the “unknown” of their journeys and lives, that something I have endeavored to accomplish and meet is now tangibly my own…well it’s humbling and in it’s own way melancholy, but the kind of soft/sweet melancholy that looks back on something so vivid and full of life having lived and made it through – I mean do we ever really believe there is another side until forged by the trenches and embraced by its sudden warmth? It’s like engage, struggle, struggle, feel, bleed *BAM* breakthrough, hello other side! Was I really ready to say goodbye? Ya know, still in surreal disbelief of it kinda.

    It all really came together though, in a subtle way too, like I was just writing until whatdoyaknow, the end. I guess there’s always this part that thinks it’s going to be some dynamic dramatic climatic thing, but it just was…on the wings of letters and meaning, the end.

    So yeah, I’m on to editing, which is also a jive worthy process that allows me to revisit in chronological sequence parts that, who knows, maybe even I’ve forgotten!😂

     

    what you just read above was the organic first text of a writer having just written “The End.” after a little over a year dedicated to writing my first novelized trilogy.

    Mind you it wasn’t my first time or experience with these words. I have bid plenty a farewell in my time, and it is always the same sort of dance – though possibly making less of an impact then the adieu to a process that was a little over a year in its daily endeavor, since they tended to be scripts, or short stories, or ongoing sequentials – this was my first time ending a book series.

    Characters I didn’t just visit, but lived with. We established a routine, we got comfortable with one another, and came to expect and accept each other as an intricate place holder in our lives. Now, suddenly, there will be no new interactions. No more surprise encounters, or new things to discover in our relationship.

    For all intents and purposes the romance is dead.

    Now, I’m not trying to be a killjoy or anything like that. There is triumph in these words, their is mastery, and accomplishment. All I am trying to convey and break down as I look over these raw emotions of text, is what might be missed by those looking in.

    When you are a creative coming to the end of a project you can feel the contradicting emotions of a parent watching their child leave home. This was a piece of you, you created this, and now you have to let it go. You are a mixture of pride and despondence. For you are going to have to pick up the pieces of your life, to fill the gaping whole of what you dedicated you time, thoughts, and energies to, with something else equal to the task of your intense love.

    That’s a lot of wayward emotion pulling at your heart and mind strings. You can feel adrift, ungrounded, and alone well at the same time be excited, celebratory, and blessed.

    Maybe I feel too much. Maybe I think too much. Maybe I just am too much. But at the time of ending, I was shaking in excitement – this is it, this is what I’ve been working so hard to achieve – but reserved in its reality. It was surreal. This is it – Suddenly those words take on a new meaning when the period is placed. This is it. It is over.

    Yes there is editing, but that is like looking over picture books, reliving the experience from a distance, from the other side, not side by side, not in it. You are retelling the story, not creating it as you go. It is wonderful, but it is different, and sometimes you are not ready for the sting of that difference.

    The end, is just a little harder when brought about by friends.

    Distance makes the heart grow founder because in time something else has filled the absence of what has left. When you are a writer, you have to keep going. After the creation comes the technical coldness of what needs to be done in order to make it viable.

    Yes that seems to suck the joy out of editing, but really when editing you can get sucked back into that world. The newness of end only makes it harder because you used to belong, now you just visit, and that’s what you struggle to rationalize.

    The best advice I could give another writer is to recognize these feels for the blocks they can cause. I know part of my struggle can come in when I get hyper focused on one project at a time. It can be hard to jump into a new one, to get the feeling of another after being so intensely intertwined with another, but it helps – when possible – to have another creative project going as you focus on the technical of your last. To have an escape into the creative side of things, when spelling, grammar, and continuity are doing your head in and causing you to doubt and second-guess what it is you have dedicated so much time and energy to in the first place.

    So cheers to the end, but try to make sure it comes when you are in the middle of something else!

  • Throwback Post Pick

    Throwback Post Pick

    A weekly feature where I fling open the vaults of past works – no matter the naivete they reflect – and revel in the making of progress!

    Today’s piece is a poem, a piece inspired by the art of Daniel Taylor! There is nothing that I love more than to expose myself to various styles, mediums, and interpretations of art and artist.

    A writer is and always will be the penultimate – ha-ha pun definitely intended – observer, to stop and truly take in any and all sensory reaction we ourselves and others are exposed to at any given time of day so that we can then touch upon those feelings through description in a way that can resonate with a reader sparking within them the same kind of emotional and sensory response, to bring to them that mindfulness of feeling that reawakens its expression in their sinews memory.

    By putting myself in the middle of other creative mediums I am able to ignite my own inspiration and keep my imagination active. I look for a piece then write down the immediate response it invokes.

    This piece obviously sparked upon some of the insecurities that any writer, any dreamer really, faces choosing a path uncertain and all too often plagued with the repetitious echo of how hard it is, how impossible, how inevitable, how doom, gloom, womp-wah…

    It’s hard to live in two worlds, to blend the dreamland of art with the harsh sting of what other’s would have you believe is reality. To mix whimsy with strategy, and active creation with active networking and the business side of things. It can get heavy, it can get hard, it can become defeatist, but it’s who we are.

    In my time I’ve found that the sooner you accept that you were meant for a path less traveled, that nothing is certain but the more you follow your heart the more things seem to work out with perfect synchronicity!

    So cheers to the creative, to the dreamers, to the dream!

     

     

    Dreams Reality

    The fusion between reality and a dream can seem an impossible thing.

    A thankless task,

    Never quite in ones ever reaching grasp.

    The pain in you swells like an overfull dam,

    Breaking down trust in that which once you called a friend.

    When hopes seem to fade,

    Nothing left of determined,

    The feeling that you are the problem when hurting.

    Talents seem scarce,

    Your dream now so illusive,

    So drained of its color,

    So timid and uncertain.

    Yet you want it so bad you can touch it and feel it and your being seems to ache for the taste of its grit.

    Immersion is something we want out of our dreams,

    To make it come true,

    To make it reality.

    To mesh it in flesh with that of illusion,

    To put end to memory’s never ending confusion.

    An everyday life that is yours for the taking,

    A physical thing that is yours for the making.

    Yet it all seems so doomed,

    You feel so lost,

    What makes your dream so special,

    Worth more than a thought?

    When the world is full of so many yet dreaming,

    Trying, convincing it’s a life worth conceiving.

    Who are you to think it will come true,

    That if life was a Prince that he’d come straight to you?

    When the crushing of logic seems to ring in your ear,

    Seems to beat against eyes,

    Seems to prey on your fears,

    It can be hard to remember there’s a reason you’re here.

    A universal pull,

    A reason to why,

    Something you have to just trust will be answered

    In time…

    ~Glory Anna

    To shop some of his brilliant works check out his Society6 page!

  • Writer’s Quote Wednesday

    Writer’s Quote Wednesday

    A weekly feature where I delve into famous writer’s words of wisdom and share how I have interpreted the meaning for my own creative endeavors!

    MayaAngelou

     

    “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”

    Now here is a piece of advice from a woman who’s wisdom I have worshiped for a long time. Maya Angelou had this way of stating things in such a beautifully powerful way – things that often times should be simple truth, common knowledge and sense, yet in this comparison society that pushes conventional needs in order to be complete they are very far from practiced and ever the reminder we need.

    Her words ring with the clarity of a bell that reverberates in your soul the reawakening of truth that reconnects you with your whole, with the greater picture in a way that brings you back to the simple wonderment of a moment, an emotion, your strength and inner capability.

    Something that I personally have needed along my journey of creation vs creator and the life associated with the struggles of an artist.

    One of the biggest, I think for any creative really, is the struggle, the want, and desperate need to be seen, to find an audience, to feel accepted by your peers and embraced by an audience…any audience.

    We want to be understood. We want our work to be understood. And yeah, let’s face it, we all want to be told that we are talented. It can be a world of insular second-guessing quicksand “am I any good?” “Is this even legible?” “Does this make any sense” “Oh god, I’m a hack” etc. etc. etc.

    Ironically enough this inner torment usually comes from looking outside for the acknowledgment and We reassurance that this world, this genre, this vocation has a place for us. We start to seek out something anything that will put our minds at piece, that will stop that dreadful nagging of self doubt and encourage us to keep going.

    However…

    You google anything about any kind of writing/author career and you get ten to one a bunch of articles detailing the reasons why its an impossible dream. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of support and encouragement to be found even in the silver lining of what is deemed the “reality of the business” but when you are coming from a place of needing to be told you are good, of such extreme insecurity there is little to be done and even less to be found.

    The unconventional path of an artist is full of unknowns, of subjection, rejection, no’s, and failure. You signed up for that the minute you put pen to paper and well immersed in it, well facing the hundreds of thousands of other writer’s you think are better than you, well reading statistics of getting published or finding an agent, when submitting a piece and getting it back covered in red ink, or with notes that use the whole point of your piece as a critique instead of contextual consolation! – not that something that specific has ever happened to me or anything *cough-cough* – it can be hard to remember what prompted you to start at all.

    It’s easy to forget the passion, to have the flame burn out, and completely lose the fun. I mean think back to the last time you were sitting in front of your computer on a roll, sitting on the edge of your seat as your fingers fly across the keyboard trying to keep up with the scene playing out vigorously in your mind’s eye, tries to keep up with your lips as you mouth the perfect exchange, the most poigent description, or scene you didn’t even know was necessary but brings it all together and bridges that gap that you hadn’t clue of how to before!

    It’s magic, it’s synchronicity, its brilliant and so are you! You strut your stuff, you pat yourself on the back, you do a happy dance in chair – hell you even jump up on the damn desk sometimes and boogie it the hell out! – you feel amazing because you just accomplished something that fuels you. You just filled up your own love tank and are that much closer to realizing your potential. You just made physical a dream. Your dream. And all because you believed in yourself enough to start.

    That’s really all that matter’s. Like Maya said herself “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.” 

    So believe in yourself enough to see it through, enough to finish and, if necessary start again and again and again until it happens, but keep the faith in yourself, keep the joy. Keep reaching to be better, to stand alongside those you admire, don’t compare because we are all different, no two paths will ever be the same and in such an uncertain career that goes for the rules as well. They are guidelines not hard fact, and that’s great because it means that anything can happen.

    So keep tooting your own horn, keep having fun with it, well you grow, you learn, and you keep writing, expanding your reach where it will eventually touch upon the audience who will love your work as much as you do. It exists, but in this business the only thing that really opens doors and gets you places is the consistency and respect that comes from withing, that shows up for itself.

    We should all be our number one fan first and foremost, after all…if you write it…they will come. So write on you mad genius, write on!

     

     

  • Don’t Hate The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Hate The Way We Treat Her

    people-2601484_960_720

    Coined by Film Critic Nathan Rabin, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is the trope of a character who’s soul existence is to help their sensitive leading man find his heart again by showing him the magic that life has to offer through their usual playfully unorthodox views and whimsical traits.

    She has been called out for her one dimensional features and napkin-like presence; she comes she helps she leaves before she herself can become an actualized person or reap any benefit from the relationship through which she nurtured another so.

    Feminist tend to hate her because she does little to further the cause of equality and instead is there essentially to give the man purpose so that his tortured (usually self inflicted brooding, I might add!) story can come full circle.

    However, I have a really hard time disliking this type of character (bare with me) but rather tend to find myself defending and even championing her.

    Not because I agree with how she is represented, don’t get me wrong, but rather because of the way she is perceived. After all it is not her fault that she is merely there to be used, aren’t we supposed to get that this truly is her authentic self so in that regard she is just living when a more selfish pity party decides to latch on to her and antics ensue?

    The truth is I find myself protective of this character because in so many relationships and situations in my life I was her.

    I don’t write people off easily nor do I give up on them. Instead I tend to bluntly defy them, not because that’s how I get my jolly’s but because that is how I live. I am a positive, unconventional, creative being who some might call daffy, others insane, but that’s me. Why should I change?

    “Character” “real” these terms do not just apply to cynicism and blunt disparaging remarks and observations. After all another trope is that strong women equals bitch or worse gross?

    Again I have nothing against these traits, I too am rather dark humored and sarcastic in a dry wit sort of way that can fly over peoples heads no matter because they just take a seat strapping into the ride of me as though I were just some means of entertainment as goes hand in hand with the aforementioned traits of the MPDG, because all I do is for others after all.

    This is what I’m pointing out; one side does not full dimension make. Just because I am compassionate, quippy and positive in nature doesn’t mean my soul purpose in this life and world is to be there for everyone else.

    This personality type is one that is so easy, it seems, for people to take advantage of. To idealize without humanizing.

    This is why I have to be on the side of the MPDG, I mean it wasn’t her choice to be used and seen for only what she could do instead of someone being intrigued to go deeper and see what she is and makes her that way.

    Too often when people like this are met the napkin effect takes hold. People think that they can take and dump and take not needing to give anything back, because the source is just so alive, so positive and different that surly they have enough reserves.

    • *Spoiler alert* spirit is not a renewable resource.

    In other words people need people, positivity begets positivity just like negativity. So stop and think of those naturally bright and cheerful, those who others tend to not want to see the “darkness” in because they — subconsciously or not — exist as light for them, as an escape from the “every days” and “awful world truths”.

    It’s too programed in human nature to not want to see your “heroes” flaws. To not want to take burden from the very thing that lifted yours.

    So here we are seeing these characters vibrant and unconventional saving these men by pointing out that it is in us all to live the way that we want, to see things as good or bad, to make of or world what we want to live and be.

    So basically by pointing out what is to them the obvious, in some ways the adult thing to do. The get over yourself and get on with it mentality that more of us should learn. Go with the flow and love it for what it is and if you can;t then work to change the flow don;t just sit in the hate of it all expecting it to get better and if it doesn’t then oh well that’s just life now feel bad for me bullsh**.

    They are loved because of what they did not who they are and instead held in contempt for what others refused to acknowledge; that they are human too. They aren’t just superheroes come to save your day — hell superheroes aren’t even just that, but that’s another rant for another day. (And yes I know that most of these romantic comedies and indi-flicks aren’t necessarily thinking or putting this much into it and that that is part of the problem for the are just creating said characters as a means to an end, I’m just looking at this physiologically if not a bit over protectively sensitively.) When it’s our turn people tend to shut down if they don’t just outright leave. They tend to shut it down before they have to give back.

    And from my own experiences I’m not exaggerating. When I lost a brother I lost relationships as well because they didn’t like the idea that they have to deal with me not being able to support and encourage them.

    It comes down to the idea that happy means no depth. That positive translates to dumb, unrealistic or fake. That simply isn’t the truth, the reality is that the truth is just something that people don’t tend to want to see.

    That the depth scares them because they might have to commit to seeing the flaws in something that was precious to and for them. They seem to miss the very fact in life and in writing that by cultivating the human you enhance the character.

    No one exists merely for others entertainment, happiness or encouragement. No one exists souly for others. Period. Really emphasize that period now.

https://bsky.app/profile/gloryfic.bsky.social