Nuts, Bolts, & Wires: Oh My!

As a little girl, I'd watch my dad -- a humble maintenance man working a factory job down in Florida -- fix anything from cars to air conditioners with seemingly little effort.

"How did you do that?" I'd ask.

"Years of practice." He'd reply.

It took me several years to realize that his practical wisdom of "practice makes perfect" applied to anything. Both of my adoptive parents, who I'd taken to calling "Mom" and "Dad" since I could speak, didn't understand most of the words that came out of my mouth or the drawings scattered across the floor of my bedroom. Yet, they encouraged me to continue with whatever made my heart happy. Pulling random, science fiction-esque critters from out of the ether did just that.

At twelve, I wanted nothing more than to be a graphic novelist. A friend from middle school got me Chobits for my birthday one year. The style and story encapsulated me. American comics had nothing on the care, detail, and interesting plots of their Asian and European counterparts. I completed the rough draft of my own graphic novel at eighteen while working in some Christian daycare facility in St. Petersburg for a crummy minimum wage under the constant worry of ever-dwindling hours. On my half-hour lunch breaks, I'd scribble character dialogues and settings, page by page, into a dark blue college ruled notebook. After work, I'd go home to my then-boyfriend and we'd eat dinner while he watched TV-- glancing over at me every now and then as I worked for three hours straight on the night courses for my teaching certificate. When I went to sleep, I'd do a roach check with the cat and spray pesticide and/or bleach water (depending on what we had at the time) all over the counters, sinks, and electronics.

One day, some kid from work got me so sick with pneumonia I couldn't walk to the bus stop or even the bathroom. It took every ounce of strength in my body just to crawl across the floor of the bedroom and grab my phone off the charger. I didn't have a choice, so I called in. The director decided to fire me as I did, stating that my "performance had been poor". At that moment, I knew exactly what happened. The day before I'd gone to work despite feeling the nasty precursors of sickness, just because I couldn't afford to take a day off. One of my fellow co-workers noticed my struggling to walk, my incessant coughing and nose-blowing, and the unusually low intonation of my voice. She commented that I shouldn't work while sick. I remarked that not all of us possessed the privilege or the option of staying home from work. I really wanted to tell her to mind her own damn business and fuck off. Considering the way they acted, pretty typical of Southern Christians, actually, it wouldn't have hurt to say what was on my mind in the first place.

I never found another job for the remainder of the next two years I'd spent in Florida. The economy is still god-awful down there. Unless you're retired and rich, it's a sucky place to live. So, I moved away to Upstate NY, got a job and car, and enrolled in University. People in NY, for the most part, understand my thought processes a little better. Plenty of equally tough, absolutely wonderful creative people encourage me to keep going.

If there's anything I've learned through my travels and discussions with various people from all walks of life, it's that you can't let the douchebags get you down. I'm not gonna use a "bootstrap" metaphor here, not only because its offensive but because it fails to accurately define the intense personal struggle involved in trying to reach a hard-to-accomplish dream. Famous singers, writers, actors, etc. all have one thing in common - long-term struggle. An increasingly-technological, numbers-driven world does not appreciate people like us and will do absolutely everything in it's power to make us conform or destroy us. Don't. Fight. Always, always, fight. Always, always, create. It's in your heart. It's in my heart. It's the single most powerful force of human nature.

Creative people flow with ideas. The physical nuts, bolts, and wires required to bring our dreams and goals to life don't show themselves without conscious effort. When I felt down and couldn't write last week -- when the frenzy that is life tried to get in the way -- I remembered the words of my Dad. I'd spent so much time fretting about the quality of what I was writing that nothing would come out; almost like how amateur performers might experience a paralyzing sense of stage fright. In fact, ever since I wrote that huge paper for one of my English classes, I'd gotten so nervous about writing that the whole process felt less like fun and more like aimlessly twisting nuts and bolts.

Writing a book or a story, acting on stage, or singing in front of an audience all have a nuts, bolts and wires process. It's much less nerve-wracking when you realize that the process which at first seemed so daunting is actually laid out for you like a map. For example,

Writing

• First draft (Nuts)
• Second draft (Bolts)
• Editing (Wires)

Singing

• Vocal Warm-Up (Nuts)
• Practice (Bolts)
• Performance (Wires)

When I thought of it like this, everything fell into place. While I didn't make my goal of 10 pages a day, I got enough done. A friend suggested a little bit every day will go a long way. Taking that approach and keeping nuts, bolts, and wires in mind can bring me just a little closer to my goal of publishing this year.