SOMETIMES YOU START DOING something for one reason … and then end up doing it for an entirely different one.
When I was younger, that sort of drove me outta my gourd. A reason is an expectation—but an expectation not met? Humiliation, indignation, and everything in between. Now I see it’s part of a process I’m often totally unaware of—that is, in my case, I’m “completely in the dark.”
The years 2008–2010 were probably the worst of my life. Too many harsh changes all compacted into two years’ space.
In ’08 my mother died at the age of 73 of, among other conditions, congestive heart disease. Dad followed her that autumn after a heart attack. My “dream job” got sold down the river to a multinational corporation (I got “acquired,” too) but ended up quitting without a new gig in 2012 after my employment contract period lapsed.
Oh, and there was more fun.
I broke up from a year-long relationship with a marvelous woman, but in the end we were terribly unsuited for each other. She knew it first, then I knew it, but only after desperately trying to hang on.
Again, change pileup.
Sometimes that ain’t pretty.
And it didn’t help that I wasn’t going along quietly with the matter. In fact, 2009 was the worst of it—bottom of the gutter, off the rails, and straight into the ditch. My neighbors were confused—certainly my friends, and definitely my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. Throwing up in the back alley. Lashing out at people. I was in a place I’d never been before. It was confusing.
And I hated it.
THE HARD THING ABOUT change is finding a course of action to deal with it.
You flail about, rant at others, oversleep, suffer insomnia and pace the floor, have crying jags, and abuse alcohol or drugs. All that gets, well, a bit “samey” after a while. If you’re smart, you knock it off.
When I was younger I felt I had to prove I was a writer, an artist, a musician, a poet, a playwright, all these and more I picked up along the way. But when the year 2010 rolled around, I didn’t care anymore.
In early April of that year I wrote in the journal:
When I got in my place I was nervous and felt nauseated. I drank some water. I knew I had to get laundry started, so I frantically started looking for the laundry soap. I eventually got a load in and she was still sitting in her car talking, probably this time debriefing her feelings on that incident to whomever she was speaking to. She had two bags of groceries in the back and eventually got out of the car and took them in, now off the phone. I wondered if she’d be polite enough to call me, or somehow ease the awkwardness of the moment. When I’d finally waved goodbye she gave me what I thought was the phoniest forced smile, and I hated looking at her. Hated it.
By October 9, 2010, I dashed this off in the journal: “Wow. I just don’t write in this goddamn thing anymore.”
The very next day I wrote the first post to my “old” WordPress screenwriting blog Completely in the Dark, an entry titled: “Let’s Start Here.”
I didn’t know it then, but I’d found a path.
Just needed to keep walking it.
THERE ARE NO JOURNAL entries from October 31, 2010 until Monday, December 16, 2013.
I know—that’s a long time.
So, you might wonder, why?
Apparently I was building an ark to where I’ve landed now.
The WordPress blog was probably begun in 2001, when I was teaching a course called Elements of Screenwriting at IFP-North (Independent Feature Project-North, now FilmNorth) and wanted to write about narrative in filmmaking, which in most cases left me completely in the dark. I was more confused by people’s stories and wanted to figure out why they weren’t working. I’d probably written two or three posts (one in particular I wish I would’ve kept on Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl) but I stripped them out that Oct. 10th day in 2010 to make way for something I desperately needed.
My goddamn life back.
By late December ’13 I’d “been writing so much in CITD (Completely in the Dark)…that I was surprised to discover I hadn’t written in the journal in a very long time.”
I went with the same layout I had with the film blog, although I’ve never been happy about it. For me it’s the words that matter (and some complementary images) so I let it slide for many years.
In January 2014, I revealed this to the journal:
I’m wondering if publishing at all is the right direction for me. I’ve always felt more like a craftsperson—that is, if I could be left to craft something that people would want to buy, I’d be way happier than some perceived “manager” or “publisher” or CEO of anything. That’s not a bad realization to come to—borne out, actually, in all the care I put into crafting CITD: the look of the blog, the thoughtful approach to the edit slate, the timely drafting and editing of content, to the consistency with which I publish every goddamn week. THAT is something I feel in control of—a big reason why I did the pivot with StoryShed in moving away from others’ works and more along the lines of what I’m able to do for and by myself.
This is interesting, and might be useful to readers here. Maybe less about what others think and more about exploring where you are. A blog is a vehicle for a larger thing, and I was just discovering that.
But even that would change over time.
AT THE BEGINNING, AROUND 2010 and into 2011, my senses were my muse.
Sharp memories of my late mother’s griddled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she made for my brother and me, the chlorine in swimming pools we visited and late 1960s dentist offices with their glowing green surfaces—my brother playing basketball at the elementary school gym out East, when Mom and I used to go pick him up—me scrounging around for papers kids had tossed out in the bleachers while I was thinking about a pop song on the radio I’d heard on the way over.
I was trying to rediscover my life.
It was galvanizing to write my way through to the new decade of the 21st century, now that I can no longer call on my parents.
It was comforting to plan an edit slate for the weeks ahead—if one story didn’t pan out, I’d go for another. There were plenty of stories to tell and I was somewhat determined to do them in chronological order.
Back then I’d write in MS Word, print out a draft, staple it, jot down the word count and iteration (1, 2, 3, etc.) and let it sit for a day or two. I’d try to draft a full week ahead of publishing, just so I could take the printout to a coffee shop and mull over it before making edits and printing out a new version to review.
Nothing was ever published until there were four or five edit spins on a post. If it got beyond that I realized I was overthinking things and needed to cut back. Some of the longer posts needed multiple rewrites—it totally depended on the subject.
Sometimes I felt the urge to do something offbeat and see where it went, like this post about a missing date in my diary of 1977 (a non-leap year), published to CITD in 2012 titled “The Day That Never Was.”
Or an early post about an oddball teacher and a mystery, (“Mr. Hicks and the Backwards Dreaming Experiment” from 2011).
Or a post about young love and springtime, (“Pieces of April” from 2013).
Friendship in love and being pen pals, (“The Lisa Letters” from 2012).
And writing about music and what it meant to me, (“The What on The Who” from 2011).
Later, I had fun when I joined Paula Poundstone in a dare to quit social media altogether—she rewarded me by sending a photo of her cat, (“An Untweetable World” from 2015).
At one point, in December 2014, I called a halt to all CITD activities and did a blog-to-book printout so I could survey the landscape of over four years of solid writing on WordPress. It felt good to do that, but I’d also planned to keep going. I just needed a breather.
The blog’s shape formed after I’d uncovered the original diaries and journals and joined them up with letters and photos. I KNEW I was missing details, but couldn’t be bothered “just making things up,” because, well, it was my life and the thing you begin to realize as a working writer is there are always multiple angles to any given story. You just gotta pick a lane and stick with that. Find the essence and follow it to wherever it leads you. You will be surprised sometimes, but also mostly put-off. It’s not a pretty thing if you come at it casually—that is, without having an initial theme or topic in mind.
In my case it was a lifeline. I needed to know what happened and work it out from there. So, eventually, the sensory stuff went away and the posts got more reflective. Two examples come to mind:
“You need a strong imagination to see into the future”: “Leaving the Lake” from 2014.
And a 2015 post about getting hit by a car and wondering about suddenly dying: “The Impossibly Improbable Inevitable.”
Some humor in 2012 about the second family dog we ever owned: “Lassie Gets Knocked Up.”
It’s weird how I can recall the tone of any particular CITD post but not the details or title. I’m guessing that’s what happens when most readers approach someone else’s words: they linger on the emotion over the facts or details.
That, and you start to forget your own life at some point.
Sad but true.
For now, it’s been a too-long goodbye. I quit writing to CITD in the middle of a multi-part post and, well, I need to return. I stopped because I was angry at an old friend. And now I just don’t care enough to be angry—just tell the goddamn story and get on with the rest of my life.
Taking a quick glance back, I was surprised at the stats.
Twenty-two thousand visitors from all over the world, reading a total of 411 posts and making comments and thinking about what I’d written over 10 years. And usually on a Sunday night probably just after dinnertime.
My friends, I’ll take that as success.
In the end, writing has been with me from my early days as a young reader. Once I started keeping diaries and journals, I realized writing helped me make sense of the world. I could rely on the words to buoy me up when the waters felt choppy.
By the time I got to Completely in the Dark 2.0, it was a lesson about “how do I write about my life so that, even if you knew nothing about me, you would be able to clearly understand what I mean?”
That was the goal.
Substacker Dan Blank said it best in a recent Note:
When you write, you do so because you feel called to from something deep inside of you. If you choose to share, this is not “self-promotion,” but you sharing that work knowing that it may resonate deeply with someone. In that moment, you can change their life — providing a brief respite in an otherwise difficult time; helping them see the world differently; or even seeing themselves differently. How you share is a craft of believing that your writing matters and how you connect with others does as well.
It comes down to confronting who you are even if you’re confused about who you are.
We all are—no doubt.
But there are many ways to express this: Through music, painting, dance, design, writing, poetry, education, business and beyond.
You have the power to just express it.
Start with “Let’s Begin Here” and see where it goes.
That is what I did back in October 2010.
I loved this post. It's full of raw, hard-earned wisdom, written in sentences of clear quartz.
Michael you're truly a blogging OG. Been at this for a long time. It's really cool to hear your story and your perspectives are a must-read for any newer bloggers just joining us now in 2024. Thank you!