I’m Not Emilio Estevez has come to an end, again. I’ll leave the site up, along with Thinly Sliced Raw Fish. Comments will be turned to moderation to
prevent spam that seems to find it’s way to defunct sites, so feel free to
leave a comment and I’ll approve if it’s not junk.
Though I’m quitting this blog, I’m starting another
one with a different purpose: A Specific Gravity, which will focus on my non-fiction adventures in craft beer. It'll be live soon.
So long!
One of the challenges I had with this blog was, what’s the purpose of it? Should it be to post thoughts about writing fiction, or to post my flash fiction, or to comment on other works or ideas out there, or something else? The last few posts aside, I’ve tried to shy away from posting my thoughts about anything and made it mostly straight posts of fiction. Perhaps it should’ve been more than that. But know that "what's the point?" has long been a struggle of mine with this blog.
The last year has been very challenging for me as a writer. I’ve been in what might be considered a block, though I’ve been writing through that in fits and starts. It’s more a lack of direction and an overall lack of desire that I think I’ve been experiencing. I’ve worked in collections for a long time, which has provided me direction, but I’ve struggled to come up with new collection themes. I haven’t really submitted anything for publication. I really haven’t had the desire to go through that process and receive the many rejections that come before hitting an acceptance. I view this last year as just a phase, one that I’ll eventually emerge from as a stronger writer. In the end, I don’t think there’s anything that the blogging experience can do to assist me in getting out of it.
I had the realization that things were done with the blog when, after not doing so in awhile, I looked at some of the blogs that I follow. Many of them are now gone or essentially defunct, as the bloggers haven’t posted in quite awhile. The fact that I hadn’t taken a peek at these blogs in such a long time is at the core of my problem here—I’ve fallen out of touch, and I’ve failed at keeping up with and encouraging other writers. I’ve been posting new stories regularly here since I returned. I've received scant comments though the traffic stats do indicate that people are still visiting the site. I could bemoan the lack of commenting, but it’s really my fault for falling asleep at the wheel here, and there seems to be no way to correct this as the small network I’d tapped into just a couple years ago now seems to be essentially gone.
More to come...
I'm Not Emilio Estevez 2.0 is winding down. This time, it'll be for good. It's not quite over yet, as I'll have some posts coming documenting my thoughts on the whole blogging experience. Stay tuned.
One day as a child C, at a steakhouse, glimpsed the future: the restaurant closed, covered in graffiti, crumbling parking lot asphalt sprouting weeds. Neighborhood overrun by crime’s chaos. Teenage boy lying in blood where C sat, another boy standing over him, firing a gun. In C’s present, it was a place for Friday evening dinners, sliding plastic trays along cafeteria-style metal rails, fountain sodas in plastic cups, plastic wrap covered pudding. Frozen by the stark images, the child said nothing to his parents, instead quietly ate his ribeye and fries, both drowned in A1 and ketchup, drank his soda.
He had no more visions. Eventually, he saw the abandoned building, read about the shooting. Years later, he found the shooter from the vision, 24 years in prison, asked him why. Money and drugs, thought I was bad, got a son I haven’t seen since he was a baby. Sitting across from him, another vision, indeterminate future: the adult son robs a coffee shop, kills the clerk, two bystanders. After some searching, he found the place, went for coffee. Cradled the warm cup in his hands when a robber fired shots. Searing heat through his chest. The coffee spilled, mixed with blood. He collapsed, thinking the visions senseless, random films of violence.
