Two years. Twenty-four months. One-hundred and four weeks. Seven-hundred and thirty days. Eight-thousand seven-hundred and sixty hours. Five-hundred, twenty-five thousand six-hundred seconds. Forty-hundred and thirty-thousand words. More or less.
Two years ago I stopped opiates and started writing. First to keep my mind off of my emotional withdrawal, then to find out the end of the story. Now it is more about a deep and abiding love of the written word.
During the years before I wrote poetry, which is really working with the written word in its most basic terms. Expressing big ideas in the least amount of words is a true gift for those that can. I am not one of those people. Occasionally I struck gold, but I am a long form storyteller.
If I look back, though, I kept the spark of writing down words alive, bad poetry, or not. I can much better express my ideas with more words. They aren’t ‘BIG IDEAS’, they are simple tales of love and loss, figuratively and literally.
I think we writers worry too much about the ‘BIG IDEA’, science fiction, especially. My current trilogy started with this simple line I wrote down in 2013:
The powerful and rich merge their bodies and minds into ai powered androids
I know it’s not a terribly original idea, but from that grew an idea, characters and a whole world. For five years, I didn’t have the wherewithal to follow-up. In fact, I don’t know if I even thought about it.
When I did? It came pouring out of me. For one reason. Two years. Twenty-four months. One-hundred and four weeks. Seven-hundred and thirty days. Eight-thousand seven-hundred and sixty hours. Five-hundred, twenty-five thousand six-hundred seconds.
I have filled nearly every second with a word. Four-hundred and thirty-thousand words later, I am opiate free. I wonder what my words will be like when I reach six-hundred and forty-five thousand.
Remain Lost 