Why I Wrote Show Me Where It Hurts

Writing the stories in Show Me Where It Hurts changed me forever. BTW those are not my teeth. Art courtesy of JournalStone.

I wanted to be a writer even as a kid. Imagination was something I had plenty of, ask anyone that knew me. Books became jet fuel for my young mind, and my fertile brain brought those stories to life in rich detail. I wasn’t a popular kid, so I preferred those fantasy worlds to real life. That’s when I realized the power of a good story. I knew one day, I wanted to write them.  

It didn’t take long for that dream to crash with my reality. With my blue-collar roots, the idea of becoming a writer seemed lofty. I didn’t know how to move forward and never had a support system to guide me. So I gave up on it. Other people in life would see their dreams come true, but I would not be among them.

Grade school art project showcases my love of spooky stuff. Clearly, it’s obvious why writing suited me better. (No idea why the moon looks like a butthole.)

Things get weird

Years passed. Life became a literal blur. All I’ll say about this phase of my life is I picked up a habit. Like, a really, really bad one. Every aspect of my life was in jeopardy: my relationships, my health, my future.

What I didn’t know—and wouldn’t come to understand for years—was that imagination has  a dark side. Anxiety can be a side-effect for brains that won’t turn off. It was the evil yin to my otherwise-sunny yang. Without the proper outlet, my creativity found other ways to manifest. Unfortunately, those ways were often self-destructive.  

So there I was—miserable and on the cusp of middle age. For the first time, I could see Death looming down the road. I wondered if I had cheated myself out of my heart’s desire in life. It was too late to start now, wasn’t it? I mean, half of my life was over.

The same thought kept churning in my mind. If I didn’t start writing now, I’d never do it.

Two things happened simultaneously. I dropped that habit—and started writing.

Going for it

Was it easy? Hell no. Getting my shit together put me through an emotional wringer. Also, my first stabs at writing were unpleasant. I felt like a monkey behind the keyboard. The things I wrote felt dead on the page, little more than cliché. The critic inside my head mocked me relentlessly. You waited too long. You suck at this. You’ll never be good enough.

I kept at it, though. I had this idea for a novel about killer plants, so I started bringing it to life. Working in fits and starts, it took me years to finish. Trust me, there were days I wanted to throw in the towel. There were months when I barely wrote at all. To keep me moving forward, I took classes and read books about the craft of writing. I taped two motivational quotes to the wall near my desk. One said, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” The other was a quote from Dory, the forgetful fish from Finding Nemo. “Just keep swimming”.

Just keep writing, just keep swimming…

A page from a novel I started writing in 7th grade. I got one more page before I fizzled out. (Cracks me up how afraid I was of that right margin.)

Eventually, I finished that novel. My heart broke all over again when publishers rejected it. The thought of quitting popped back up. Instead, I dug in my heels and reframed the experience. I’d developed a writing habit, right? And I was learning basic story elements. These were good things. So, I turned my attention to short stories. Writing a short story is different from writing a novel, with its own timelines, its own conventions and rules. By no means were they easier to write—you could simply get to the end faster. Rejections piled up by the dozens while I slowly got the hang of things.  

Finally, I started selling some stories.

Turning pain into progress

One of the beautiful things about writing is the ability to work out real-life problems on the page. Writing short stories allowed me to do this in many, many ways. Freaked out by the patients you meet at the memory care facility where your mother is dying from dementia? Bring those characters to life in a story called “Family Time.” Stuck at a job that sucks the life out of you? Reveal the absurdity of corporate life in “Evil Inc. (or How to Succeed at Business without Really Dying).” Politics got you down? Channel that frustration into a social commentary like “A Very Stable Zombie.”

Voilà. Pain into art.

This new collection from JournalStone compiles what I feel are my best stories so far. Show Me Where It Hurts isn’t just fiction. It’s a battle cry. It’s me, baring my soul to the world, revealing everything I sometimes don’t say in public, warts and all. Because bottling those emotions up was literally killing me.

My first store book signing with my friend, author Kerry Shatzer. Pick up his puzzle book, Diversions.

The title for the book came to me during a brainstorming session one sweltering weekend last August. Show Me Where It Hurts. For me, it resonates because it sums up why I write. Also, it’s how we speak to a child, yeah? Someone who can’t articulate their pain. I almost didn’t use it because I didn’t have a piece with that title in the collection, and I wanted the pieces to resonate thematically. So I created one. The poem starts out as an exorcism of sorts, a way of purging those loathsome feelings from my dark past. The monster at the end wasn’t supposed to be there. Yet there it was just the same. Surprises like this are the best part of writing, even if they’re sometimes alarming.

So, I hope you enjoy the collection. Sure, some of the stories are disturbing, but it’s not all blood and darkness. There are some light moments along the way. If it helps you understand me any better, just know that writing these stories completely saved my life.  

This book is when the kid inside me found the courage to follow his heart.  

Read interviews with some cool horror authors I know here.

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