July 31st, 2023
Today is the last day of Brushfire month, which means I can shut up about it for a little while now.
I tell people that I don’t write for an audience, and that is generally true; I don’t sit down and think of a target person, their age or gender or preferences or blood type. I stand by my claim that I do not have a demographic; I just write the story that I feel I need to write.
But it’s also a lie. I’m a liar! There is an audience. But it’s tiny, insignificant, a speck under the rug of the aisle in the dust-soaked theater.
The audience is me.
I write what I needed to read at certain points in my life.
Since I can remember, pop culture has been an essential pillar in my construction. I use it to help myself understand the world around me.
Comics & TV & books & movies & music have all saved my life.
And they have, just as meaningfully, also let me down.
There were times when I was feeling something or thinking something and I didn’t see it reflected back at me.
So I wrote it down instead.
That’s the core of all my writing, but especially in the micro-world of Brushfire. There are things in there that are echoes of my childhood that ring so deep they still resonate today.
I wrote them now because I needed them then.
I needed them on the days when I felt so much pain and didn’t know what to do with it, or what it was good for.
I needed them when I didn’t trust myself, and the affirmation that one day maybe I could.
I needed them when I gave up on myself; those days are never over, and I’ll need them again.
I needed them to understand that nothing is ever done, everything is a process, and the process itself is a reason to keep going.
I needed them on the days I didn’t have hope for tomorrow.
Those days, too, still haunt me on the edges of my being; I write the words to turn on the lights, so I can tell the monsters I can see them, which doesn’t make them go away but greatly diminishes my anxiety over them.
I have never felt big in this world, and it has been one of my greatest fears.
Writing about these small creatures who are anything but helpless has been the greatest help to myself.
The Den 