Guest Blog: Time Warp Writing, Part 3: Puberty Strikes Back J. H. Bardwell

Both parents and writers (and parents who are writers) suffer a deep, dark curse.  Did your mother not tell you?  “I hope when you grow up,” she said as year of toys and angry words smacked the walls, “that you have a child who acts just like this.”  No wicked witch or evil stepmother could have done better.  Whether the child is real (parent) or metaphysical (author), the damn curse works.  The muse is a myth, a lie perpetuated by romantics and dreamers.  There is no gossamer fairy alighting on our shoulders when we squeeze the words down from our brains and push them out our fingertips.  The meme of the shoulder angel and devil hits closer the truth, but still misses.  That tiny voice who knows better than we do, who comes when our brains are wracked and leaves them wrecked, who is a tiny god in our own minds, that whiny, nitpicking, petulant absolute master of the universe: our adolescence haunts us.  Mine was a right prick and the little monster has not aged well.

Puberty is an interesting time in our lives.  In the midst of our bodies sprouting like a patch of weeds and our hormones flowing like a river slipping past its banks, among all this change, our  minds ossify.  We have spent our entire childhood observing and learning.  We once knew nothing, but now we know everything.  We stride through our little worlds like a Colossus, blissfully unaware that every new fact, book, or revelation we shower upon those lesser beings living with us is at best a rediscovery or worse a delusion.  Parents, teachers, and authority figures are all fools and figureheads.  If they would only let us rule, we'd change the world.  Years later, we learn that the world rules us instead and begin to understand our parents better.  It takes years to strip away all that empty, pompous self righteousness and realize that we don't know anything after all.  And from that tiny spark, we ignite wisdom in lieu of knowledge, doubt instead of certainty, and patience replaces instant gratification.

Adolescence passes us by, but never really leaves.  It burrows deep into the adult mind and waits for targets of opportunity.  Mine still looks over my shoulder from time to time offering useless advice, a fresh selfish perspective, and gleefully ripping old wounds.  He is the repository of loathsome things I would rather forget.  I hate to compliment the windbag, but he serves a purpose, a valuable (though hardly invaluable) resource.  I take more pleasure than I should wringing that particular part of my psyche.  The prick had it coming.

I like to think I'm a well-rounded person who creates vibrant, three dimensional characters.  The teenage devil on my shoulder laughs at that.  My paunch is the only well-rounded part of me; the rest has largely stagnated.  I have grown comfortable in my age and wear my opinions like a soft leather jacket.  As the years progress, it has become a straight jacket, sleeves elongated, wrapped up and tied around the back.  I sit ranting and hugging myself into oblivion.  It is not a lack of imagination that stifles me, it is insidious certainty.

I need the little prick on my shoulder to avoid becoming a prick myself.  I need to change perspectives, borrow someone else's jacket for awhile.  I need to borrow a stranger's shoes and walk around in them.  I must reject certainty and embrace empathy.  My cup does not runneth over.  My cup is empty.  I will never fill that cup.  If you know everything already, what's the point in living?  It's the new experiences, the people we meet, and the stories we collect from others which fulfill us and hopefully make us better people and maybe better writers.

Thanks for reading!

J. H. Bardwell

Twigboat Press | Good fiction rocks the boat
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Tune in next week for Time Warp Writing, Part 4: Fickle Memories.

Liked what you read?  Visit my blog at http://twigboatpress.com

Coming July 4: Appalachian Monster

Want to see my shoulder devil get what's coming to him?  Check out my new coming-of-age novel Appalachian Monster available for pre-order today and remember: this is a work of fiction.

            

Author Biography

J. H. Bardwell was born with stories in his heart and a pencil in his hand. To this day, he retains an odd black birthmark on his neck where he says the pencil poked him as they both left the womb. Raised in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the young man fled to see the rest of the country before the ink dried on his high school diploma.

Besides writing engrossing works of fiction, the author also enjoys aquaponics, making cheese, gardening, performing theater, and wood crafts. When not writing fiction or enjoying his hobbies, J. H. Bardwell works at a university where he teaches students to think critically and question everything. Then he teaches them to write. He keeps his degrees skinned and mounted on the back wall.