This is number 110 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF.”
“How do I know it’s small stuff?”
“It’s all small stuff.”
Mad at me for not recognizing that your problems are real problems that are huge? Upset that I don’t consider the crumbling of civilization to be big stuff? Ready to fight over sexual identity, women’s rights, deportations, border protection, the war in Ukraine, salvation, racism, tariffs, democracy, civil rights, voter identification, government waste, autism, taxes, social security, health care, constitutionality, wokeness, gun rights, vaccinations, homelessness, pronouns, abortion, inflation, tourism, golf, football, basketball, or checkers?
Still reading?
Yes, it’s all small stuff. In fact, if all we had to deal with was any one of the things above, we’d realize it’s small stuff. Even terminal illness is something small. It affects when a person will die, not if they will die.
That’s right. It’s only when we collect the things up into batches we believe in or are concerned about and consider them all at once that we get overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. It seems like a crushing weight that has to be dealt with in order for humanity to survive.
Individually? It’s all small stuff.
The Strange Art series will be released in July as The Art Étrange Trilogy in a single volume as part of my Signature Collection of print books. The series is about a young artist who is simply overwhelmed by life. His speech gets bottled up when he tries to speak to people. He is overwhelmed by his classes, even though he’s a good student most of the time. Strangers, lack of familiarity, and new circumstances are all triggers for panic attacks.
He’s on the autism spectrum disorder, what the secretary of health and human services wants to have registered, declaring of those on the spectrum: “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date.” Etc.
Well, Art is evidence that is not true, and though the story is fiction, the characterization is not. He simply needs to deal with one thing at a time in order to not be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the things facing him.
The thing is that autism spectrum disorder was redefined recently, identifying a plethora of different conditions as being ‘on the spectrum.’ Asperger’s Syndrome. Rett Syndrome. Kanner’s Syndrome (also referred to as classic autism disorder). Pervasive Development Disorder—Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. It’s not on the rise; we are diagnosing a broader range of disorders under the banner of ‘autism.’
And most of those affected will, indeed, pay taxes, hold a job, play sports, write poetry, go on dates, and live lives that are almost indistinguishable from others. Just as Art the artist does. When he learns to focus on one thing at a time, he finds life less overwhelming.
The entire Strange Art series is available as a collection or individual eBooks at Bookapy.
No, this post isn’t about autism, but rather how a bunch of things get thrown at us at once and we start to panic instead of listening to one thing at a time.
Perhaps you have seen the 1907 photograph by Herbert Ponting of a Fakir in Varanasi, India lying on a bed of nails.
Did you know you can even buy a bed of nails online and practice lying on it? It is reasonably safe, and they are usually priced at less than $100. The weight of the person lying on the bed is spread across many points so there is not enough pressure from any one point to break the skin.
Imagine this person represents the people of the world (or just your family or community) and the nails represent all the problems of the world with which you are concerned. People don’t pay attention to panicked alarms because they are so numerous they (we) actually become comfortable lying on them.
The bed of nails looks overwhelming. They are so many that we feel hopeless to do anything about them. We raise the alarm about everything we see that is wrong, but no one listens. They have become comfortable lying on it.
But have you ever seen a picture of a person lying on just one nail?
Ridiculous, right? Because one nail doesn’t distribute the weight across the entire body. It focuses on one point and punctures.
When I say ‘it’s all little stuff,’ I mean we are so overwhelmed by the number of things that they all become equal and we are helpless to do anything. Perhaps it is not a sleep number, but in a way, the bed of nails becomes comfortable. We start shutting out the pain of so many things wrong in our lives, our world, or even our minds. We simply lie on all of them and can do nothing.
I’m suggesting that if you focus on one nail, you can make a real impact—flatten it, bend it, change its course. It doesn’t make a difference which nail you choose. It doesn’t have to be the same nail that anyone else chooses. But that focus helps you make the point. Continuing to drive it home day after day makes it irresistible.
It doesn’t mean you don’t care about anything else. Obviously, you do. But the mass of things you care about becomes the little stuff and you are able to actually accomplish something.
What does all this have to do with writing erotica?
I find that in the course of writing a story, there can be so much that needs to be dealt with that it is overwhelming. When I focus on one thing and resolve that, I can then move to another issue and resolve that. Trying to resolve them all at once leaves me unable to progress at all.
Yes, that means that I often need to backtrack as I’m writing and add something earlier in the story to support the next issue I’m dealing with. That’s okay. I’m still only dealing with one at a time.
I hit that point in my current work in progress this week. I looked at the number of things I needed to complete in the story and it was too much! It could (and will) all be dealt with, but I’ll be doing a lot of making sure each point has been set up correctly and that I successfully bring each one to a conclusion.
One at a time.
I don’t sweat the little stuff.
Sometimes my editors ask me for an estimate of how long the book will be when finished. Next week: Lying to my editors.