Motivations

Hello! I'm back! Been away in spirit if not in body. My heart just wasn't in writing the blog and rather than post the depressed maunderings of a man approaching an accelerated old-age, I opted to let the blog lie fallow until I had something of worth to plant in it.

Addressing the title of this post: my motivations for writing. I like the idea of leaving something behind me for others to see. Perhaps they might come to understand me to a certain degree. It's not that I'm especially difficult to understand; I live, I breathe, I eat the foods that others eat, I want many of the same things that others want. I'm just not very vocal about how I feel about things. That's where writing comes in, like a knight on a white horse, carrying me forward and spurring me to essay new and untried avenues of expressing myself.

There is also a cathartic release for me in my works. Did I have a romantic relationship that went horribly wrong? Yes. Have I come to terms with it? No. Though the blame resides with me every day, it originated with another and I curse the day that I relented and agreed to speak to her. After being hammered day in and day out with her pleas and promises, I eventually did as she wanted and it cost me dearly, in more ways than one.

So, how do I achieve a cathartic release from that? I have written several pieces expressing how I feel about the pain that I feel every day. My novel, "Congruencies" was my daydream of how I would go back in time to change the thing that I did to ruin my life. No. I haven't taken my characters from anyone that I knew in life. I'm not about to court a lawsuit of any kind because of my writing. My work is a product of my imagination coupled with the pain I've known in my life. The short stories in my book, "The Empty Heart: A Collection", are also drawn from my emotions and longing for a second chance. As a young man, I was what was called "a dog" where women were concerned. I suppose it was only justice that I was lied to, lied about and deceived in every sense of the word. The penalty that Kellan pays in my short, "Cost of Passage", is self-flaggellation for me. The emptiness of heart and loneliness of never truly having loved another that Wade Travis feels in the title piece sums up the way that I've felt for a very long time. Incidentally, the macabre visitation that he experienced is something that actually happened to me shortly after I betrayed the young woman that I should have spent my life with. Was it a product of her ill-wishes? I don't know. That's why I explored it in the story.

After dealing with such heavy thoughts while writing those stories, I wrote "Wild Weasel Wilson and the Banshee Chicken" as an exorcism of those dark thoughts. I thought that something funny was in order. "Repetitions" expressed my thoughts regarding reincarnation. I don't believe that there is any possibility of distancing from race or culture. I believe that if reincarnation exists, then people must be reincarnated within their original culture, from DNA belonging to their families. How else can they atone for their sins against people they have known intimately? It only makes sense to me that by remaining as a karmic burden of their family, they are most likely to come in contact with the reincarnated spirits of thsoe they've hurt the most. That's simply a personal opinion and I have nothing to offer as proof.

Do ghosts exist? I addressed that question in "If Shadows had Voices". I kind of think that karma is also tied up with the concept of ghosts. If a spirit is unwilling to be reincarnated; where does it go? Is it stuck in a kind of limbo? Is a haunting, being tied to a place, a kind of limbo? Can ghosts be tied to living people?

"Cold Feet" was my foray into the urban adventure genre. I liked the experience and will probably write more of them. Imagine; ordinary people, faced with extraordinary circumstances. It enables me to write with realism and gives me an enjoyable writing experience.

For my attempt at writing a Howardesque piece; see "The Keystone". I liked it but felt that it was incomplete when I was finished with it. I wasn't able to write with the florid phrases that he used in his works because I have been too heavily influenced by the spare, but evocative writing style of Zelazny. I AM NOT AS GOOD A WRITER AS ZELAZNY AND NEVER WILL BE! I wanted to get that said so that no one will think that I am comparing myself to him. I just like the way that he wrote and don't think that anyone can ever write as well as he did.

Now you have read a few of my motivations for writing and I must say that there are others that I don't have time, space or inclination to go into here. The best way to get a firsthand sampling of my motivations for writing is to read my work. Read between the lines and apply them in a suppositional manner to aspects of your own life and you may come up with an idea of why I write.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of The Empty Heart: A Collection, Congruencies, Gulf of the Plains and others.
Available on Kindle