Trust your vision. Be authentic. Be honest. Do the damn thing.

I've been told that your first book is the hardest for a number of reasons.  I really really really hope this is the case.  While it was an amazing and enlightening process, it was also difficult in ways that are hard to put into words.  The best I can explain it, THE UNSEEN is me and I am the THE UNSEEN.  I'm not talking about soul transference or anything like that but I poured it all into this book, multiple times.  As I've written about before, this book has been DONE at least four times!  Do you know what it feels like to cycle up to that singular moment FOUR times?  It's awful!

I asked a lot of people to read this book at various times and in various forms, so I've asked for and received a ton of feedback.  I wanted this feedback so that it wasn't just my mom telling me how good I was (thanks Mom!), I wanted, no needed, other people to tell me what they thought.  I believed that the more people who gave feedback, the better off I'd be.

This was mostly an accurate statement.

The notes, thoughts and ideas that I got were unbelievably needed and helpful, I wouldn't have been able to finish it in the way that I did were I not surrounded by very patient and loving people.  Even when people I trusted gave me tough feedback (see-Get them the hell off the train!), I appreciated it.  When a family friend who's a published author told me (when I cranking out the first and second versions of this book) that she writes a book, then rewrites it again because she understands the characters, tone, setting, etc, I couldn't hear it.  But that's exactly what I've done, listen to wisdom friends! 

With that said, it's important to not write your book by committee.  You can have friends and family members who you love and trust not fully understand your vision...and that's ok!  I was talking to one of my students today who said that his friends were busting on the story he was writing because they didn't quite "get it".  My advice to him?  

Keep writing your story, not the story his friends think it should be.

If you don't love your story, who else will?  Trust your gut and get after it.  One of the most powerful things that I remind myself of every day is that there are so many people like me/you/us out there.  You may be on the other side of the world, you may have never met, you many never actually meet but your story is their story.  If you write with authenticity and honesty, you will find your people and they will find you.

Two minutes ago, I checked my Kindle reviews of the book.  In the last few hours a gentleman reviewed THE UNSEEN, giving it five stars.  The stars are amazing and I am beyond flattered and thankful, but there was something that he said that meant even more:

"This was a great, engaging read. I really enjoyed this world and the characters were refreshing. One of the characters even reminded me of my best friend. Does it get better than that? I hope there is a sequel (hint, hint) coming down the pipeline. I want to meet other Unseen!"

One of my characters reminds him of his best friend!  I'm actually desperate to know which one, then I want to meet his friend!  

When I'm teaching, I implore my students to be brave and ask questions.  I feel them rolling their eyes right now because they've heard me say the following so many times, "If you have a question at least two others have the same question!  Be brave, speak up!"  Through all the ups and downs, nerves, anxiety, dreaming, hope, failure and everything that came along over the last 4+ years, I'm happy.  My people are out there, the people who I'd be friends with and the people who Dan, Colman, Lily, Maeve and Ira would be friends with are waiting to find us.

To the journey.

Have a good night friends.

"Get them the hell off the train!"-The day I became a writer.

Me?  A question?  Waaattttt?  I recently received my first question on Goodreads, "What advice do you have for aspiring writers?".  Frankly, I was floored by this because 1) I've been out here in the wilderness with my book for at most six-seven weeks and 2) I still see myself firmly in the camp of "aspiring writer".  However, my new friend from Turkey views me as a full fledged author already!  And you know what?

I am! 

The weight that was lifted off of my shoulders when I put THE UNSEEN up on Kindle was immense.  As I've said before, I feel a responsibility to both my characters and my family.  My characters because I see them as real people and their stories deserve to be told.  My family because they have been there, every step of the way, as I've tried to figure this whole thing out.  They were there the first three times I said with absolute iron clad certainty, "I'm done!".  They cheered me on, all the while thinking quietly to themselves, "No, you're not!"

The first eighty pages that I wrote in my initial draft were by far the most important for me.  I began to get a sense of who Colman and Maeve were.  They were funny, warm, unsure, wickedly smart and stood up for each other when they needed it the most.  Of those first eighty pages, do you know how many I kept?

Zero.

I remember the day that my father and sister called me up to have something of an intervention.  "Ben, we're proud of you and we love the kids.  There's some really good stuff in here but, well, uh..."

Me-"What? What's wrong?"

My combined father and sister loving me but talking to me like Tina Belcher does when she's the babysitter on Bob's Burgers- "Ben, you need to get them the hell off the train."

Note, did you know that the original first eighty pages took place on a train?  I'd done so much research on the Coast Starlight (Amtrak, runs from LA to Seattle, beautiful views) that I knew the specifications of the damn car they were sitting in during the day and how their room was set up in the sleeper car at night.  I knew what stop they got on and what stop they got off.  I knew what food was served on the way north to Washington State.  

They thought that this would absolutely destroy me but after mourning the loss of the ridiculous things the kids did and the first bad guy, Keith, I realized they were right.  "Get them the hell off the train!" has been my rallying cry since that moment.  When I'm feeling too comfortable or when they've been in the same place for too long, I tell myself to "Get them the hell off the train!".  

Looking back, I think that's the moment that I became a writer, when I had to let go of something that got me through some difficult times.  When I told myself that even though those eighty pages (my first eighty pages, to be clear) were the most important thing in my life at the moment, I wasn't doing right by proto-Maeve and proto-Colman to keep them trapped in that one place.  By creating my own world, not one that was confined by a real space, I was able to truly begin to let them be themselves.

It's amazing what a single question, from a single stranger, can clarify for you.

To proto-Colman and Tproto-Maeve.  May your hilarious yet train bound story be told one day!

Have a good night friends. 

For Mom.

"I envy you the journey."

These were the words that my mother said to me in the days before I left for college.  I've always thought about why she said that.  Obviously, she was proud of me, sad that I was leaving, happy about where my adventure might go, and nervous for her baby boy but there was something else mixed in there, something much deeper.

My mother grew up segregated in the south, and while it's not my story to tell, it's important to note that the opportunities afforded to me, were only there because my parents fought tooth and nail to make it my normal.  My older sister and my mother are the family historians and you don't have to go very far back to find amazing men and women who were quite literally, someone else's property. 

I bristle when someone tells me I cannot do something.  I've always thought this was because my parents raised us to be highly independent but looking back, I think I have some kind of generational chip on my shoulder as well.  My family, my blood, were told what they could and couldn't do.  In almost every aspect of their lives, they didn't have the choices that most of us take for granted today.  So when my mother offered me those words, she was also telling me that it was my responsibility to enjoy the myriad choices that I would have as I got older.  She didn't tell me to go to college so I could find a career, she wanted her only son to enjoy the journey of realizing who he was in the world.  

I do this for myself but I also do it for her.  My mother is selfless, she has time and again put almost everyone else in front of her own needs.  So when I make a decision in my life, one of my first quiet questions to myself is, am I following that advice?  What would my mother think?  What would my great-great-great-great grandparents think?  Am I doing right by them?  I'm always aware that I get to have the options I do, to have a great job, a wonderful family, the space to let my creatitivty out because of my mother's bravery.  Her strength, her wisdom, her fire, her humanity shapes me every day. 

I love you mom.

Have a good night friends.

My early-mid twenties was the middle school of my adult life and the blinking cursor of fear/awesomeness.

There's a scene from a story that I've been wanting to write since I was in my twenties that has looped on repeat for years now. At some point I screwed up the courage and wrote it down. It was actually the first creative writing that I'd done since a creative writing course in college.

Almost every time I think about it, it brings me to tears.

Let's be clear, I'm not saying that the prose is so arrestingly beautiful that it moves me to tears. I'm not even saying the writing itself is so remarkable that it moves me to tears. It's just that scene connects all the dots for me.  There's hope, fear, righteous anger, looming sacrifice, duty, honor and the call of a home that most had never known.

As I kicked around in my twenties, trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do, writing would flit in and flit out but I never gave it my full focus. I think part of me felt foolish to dare presume that I could write. With the certainty that someone else could write it (whatever I was thinking about) better and my struggles with disordered learning in college, it was never something that I let crack the bubble of possibility.

There is a significant amount of cognitive dissonance that this produces for me because I essentially see the world as a story. Some part of my brain is looking at what's happening around me and ordering it through the lens of a novel. This was why jogging on the streets of New York City after 9:00 pm was so vital and amazing for me in grad school, there was just so much happening at once. Anyway, that dissonance was rooted in literally seeing the world in a certain way, then another part of your brain telling you, "Sorry bud, that's not for you."   

It wasn't until I was thirty-three that I started THE UNSEEN. I wrote it during a difficult and nearly overwhelming moment in my life but it was in that place that I allowed myself to throw my self created caution to the wind. Once I let myself believe that I had the right to write (English ftw!) I held myself accountable and just did the damn thing. Of course "doing the damn thing" took far longer than I initially anticipated. If THE UNSEEN ever takes off, I have about 80,000+ words that got cut, so although it's only one finished novel, their world is already much larger.

If I could go back to that twenty something kid, I would tell him that you gotta grind, everyday you have to fight for it. You will fuck up, often repeatedly. Your writing will take you places that don't end up anywhere other then knowing your characters better. Staring at a blinking cursor on an empty page is equal parts terrifying and breathtakingly incredible.  

There is no big bow at the end, there is only the journey. The marvelous, awful, beautiful journey.

Have a great weekend friends.

My little sister, diversifying across platforms and deep self loathing

Let's get right to it tonight friends.  In my family my little sister is regarded as an almost mythical hero.  She might not believe it or understand it, but she is.  She is braver then I'll ever be, stronger then I've ever been and waaayyyyy smarter then me.  From the moment she graduated college she pursued her dream with a level of determination and grit that she shares with Gandalf (Grey and White), Luke Skywalker(trench run) and Calvin (during Calvinball).

I get it now.  In a way that I never understood because I wasn't brave enough yet, I get it.

Being creative is some lonely shit yo.

When you're done with the lonely part, you're sharing your art and baring your soul to the entire freaking universe!  Whether your audience is one or a billion, it's exhausting in a way that even the empath in me didn't fully appreciate it.

I've been out in the wide world of the internet for a month, she's been singing, recording songs, putting albums together, playing shows for twelve years. 

I think we all have that spark inside us, that dream, that hope for the one thing you want to do and that allows you to make a living as well.  For some of us those two things coincide, for others they don't, and for people like my sister, she brushes it all off and keeps singing.  She just does the damn thing.

This brings me to plot point two and three.  We were laughing today because she said in a extraordinarily nerdy voice, "You must diversify across platforms!"  It was funny if you were there, promise.  In this new alien, almost too bright world of creative writer Ben, she's right.  You don't want to have the same image or story up on all your social media platforms (I'm actually rolling my eyes at myself right now, so you don't have to).  However, I think I might today based off the most timely meme that was shared on my Facebook page about an hour ago.

A gentlemen that I went to elementary, middle and high school with tagged me in the picture you see above.  He was always one of the smartest guys in our class, seemingly devouring all new material at a rate that would have made a large Chtorr (reference anyone?) proud.  For instance, he and one of his best friends actually learned Elvish from LOTR, as in they passed notes to each other, that the other understood (!) in Elvish.  They were actually the basis for Maeve to understand, read and speak Klingon in my book.  Anyway, out of nowhere he tags me in the post from above and what he can't know, what most people who aren't in the shit as it were, was how far in my head I was today!  This was coming off a really great night last night (I'll get into insanity tomorrow) but I was stuck way in my dome today.  Nothing was good enough, I wasn't good enough, my plan to get the book out wasn't good enough, I smelled and someone stole my lunch money.

But out of nowhere, David, who I haven't had a conversation with since graduating high school comes riding over the hill with the Knights of the God Damn Vale and saves the day.  So for all those reading this, HOLD FAST!  There are people around you, watching, waiting, protecting, lifting you up in ways large and small.

We can do this.

You CAN do this.

Good night friends. 

The cool kids and the Librarian

Look at the picture associated with this, seriously, take a second.  Look at those two, these are the people I wrote THE UNSEEN for.  It just so happens that this is a picture of me at seven attempting to round house my little sister back into pre-school. (nice camera work Mom and Dad)  We both had our noses buried in books growing up, all the time.  In fact out greatest joint nemesis, was the local librarian.  This wasn't his fault of course, because the Farrell kids might not have been "great" at returning our library books on time.  Inevitably this would lead to getting to the library and praying that he wasn't there.  I'm not going to use names because I'm still fairly certain that he knows where I live and is coming for me.  

I wrote my book for all the kids out there who just want to hide in the quiet stacks of their local library and get lost.  I loved getting to library and getting transported somewhere, my mom and dad had to PULL us out.  Safety might be too strong a word but there was a sense of belonging that I felt while at the library.  That somehow someone had created a space for kids like my sister and I come to, grow and meet others like us.  With that said, we were just anti-social enough that we didn't really make any new friends but hey, there was safety in numbers, right?

Anyway, if you read my book, please know that you are welcome, you are safe and you are a part of something larger than youself.  We're all in this together and know that if called my seven year old roundhouse will be there to support you.

Have a good night friends.