Paul Vargis
TyYup, for the past well over a year I had placed the adjective “used to” or “retired” in front of writer. Why? I simply needed to distance myself and rest, to rediscover the glimmer of joy as writing when done at a publishing level can sometimes sap a lot out of an individual (I find especially in smaller markets where money is not enough to live on) and when I let the project not the market shape my work.
Yet, I am slowly moving back into writing and speaking on my own terms, a little as my home church, Centennial Presbyterian, has invited me to take 2 services this summer, but also in part to the Calgary Public Library where I have been on a retro reading kick rediscovering the comics that shaped my fiction writing in my teens.
Currently rediscovering James Robinson and Tony Harris’ Starman run. The story of Jack Knight really aided me in reshaping the super hero universe I had been spinning stories out of for my friends since late elementary school, and became known as “The Verse” in High School where friends would eagerly await each new chapter (and even say a short story banned from publishing as a winner of a short story contest for the CBE due to LGBTQ content–a bi-sexual monk of all things).
Yes, the stories that saw characters that stayed with me well through college years and were a great stress release. Some rejuvenated and in e-books shared on this sites, others lost to the mists of time. Ah technologies dying and losing saved files, hard copies vanishing there’s only so much one can save when they could write the equivalent of a book a month when one had free time when work was not 40 hours a week, when a term paper could easily be distracted from by pounding out another epic chapter…before the layers of life… for non-fiction writing when A&W still had an excellent and cheap breakfast before the advent of microwave bacon and the doubling of price…when there was space for quietness and reflection.
But life story morphs and as one reflects on building the writer’s space renewed in one’s home, family crisis leads to the space evaporating to aid an individual.
Now though, as I continue down the retro train, and rediscover old interests I ponder a renewal of the work. Maybe not “The Verse” (for the longtime fan out there know it eventually got dubbed “The TyVerse”; ah the era’s of Johnny Power; Bionic Knight; Street Avenger and Hacker such wonderful times that the stories were told, and as any good story not to be revisited but for a few).
Where will this renewal lead, I do not know, but it is time to first work on discovering/crafting the space to create, to research, to spread out and be…
Thank you my loving wife for supporting the renewal of interest.
A Monk's Musings 