In Receipt of a Dream

20 chapters, 40,000~ words of Bleak were written on over 300 receipts (about half pictured here).

“Ben, you are a talented writer, but you need to seriously ask yourself what you are wanting to accomplish here.”

The statement sounds straightforward enough, but when it was written in an e-mail from Dr. Ann Martinez, it contained a visceral power that leveled me. Professor Martinez was the professor of a college class on the fantasy genre, a class I took in my second semester of my creative writing major. Her teaching had the gravity, respect and esteem that this statement was one of the most devastating statements of my life — and this statement has become one of the most important in my life.

I should provide context. After my first semester at KU, I decided to switch from elementary education to creative writing. To be honest, I wasn’t fully committed to being a creative writing major, an admission that foreshadows Professor Martinez’s email a year later — but I knew I wanted to write Bleak. I was driven to finish my novel about bullying. The experiences I had in 4th, 5th and 6th grade were life defining for me, and in the 10 years since that time I felt driven to get the story inspired from those experiences into a novel.

Professor Martinez is now a professor at Kent State. I highly recommend her articles, “Elvencentrism: The Green Medievalism of Tolkien’s Elven Realms.” Studies in Medievalism vol. 26  (June 2017): 31-41. and “Bertilak’s Green Vision: Land Stewardship in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Arthuriana: The Journal of Arthurian Studies 26.4 (Winter 2016):114-129.” especially if you love fantasy.

I even wrote a blog post at the end of that semester (Spring 2012) called “Bleak, It’s Time to Write Again.” My hope was that putting this blog post on the record would make me commit to the idea. The difficult thing is that the work itself was stuck. Not that my writing was, in fact, I had written 40,000 words in part 1 (now roughly 14,000) words. It wasn’t that I was struggling to write, it was, in fact, the opposite, I was writing way too much.

I did a lot of soul-searching that summer. I went to lecture by Ira Glass at the Stifel Theater in Salina, Kansas. Ira’s advice on storytelling rocked my world. He talked about how he introduced a narrative sequencing to his stories on his podcast,This American Life. He explained that this type of narrative sequentialism was innate to the human experience. It naturally causes humans to yearn to know what happens next in a story. Ira abandoned the “Topic Sentences” and “Opening Paragraphs” in his stories (as is often taught in schools) and that his sequencing ushered a “forward momentum” in his stories. His stories introduced an anecdote (a sequence - this happened, then that happened, then this came next…)

Ira also talked about the bait in stories. A lede as simple as “Someone is walking, and the creaks of their footsteps echo through the silence in their home” causes questions such as “who is walking/ why is this house quiet? And where is this person walking to?” These unanswered questions led to inherent narrative tension in a story - no matter what the story was. Ira’s style was inspired by Fiddler on the Roof, and Ira’s narrative style was transformative to the podcasting and reporting world - as instead of presenting non-fiction human stories from a detached style of reporting, it gave a plot to the story, and causes the audience to naturally want to learn more. I was so moved by Ira’s presentation that I worked up the courage to ask him a question, which was “I am a 19 year old college student who is working a full time job, if you were in my shoes, where would you find the time to write?”

Ira’s answer was simple, “treat writing like a job. The interesting, and peculiar people in your life are begging to be characters in your story — and whenever you have the opportunity, write.” He said “don’t wait” and at every opportunity I had, write." 

Ira went further, he talked about how the stories I write on paper might not resemble the stories that I have in my head, but to stay determined, and write, write, and write some more. He mentioned to persevere, because he didn’t feel like he found his voice as a broadcaster until his eighth year. He may have sensed my surprise at this, but he said this was okay, and that he wished that someone told him that it would require this dedication. He said eight years is the time it takes for someone to become a surgeon. He said to start writing, re-writing, and then make the writing better, and if I had that dedication - the gap between the stories I imagined and the stories I wrote would eventually close. 

Ira’s advice made me realize precisely what I was lacking in Bleak. I had zero forward momentum with any of my characters. The scenes were essentially composites of many of my worse memories with bullying. The protagonist was a protagonist, getting bullied by an antagonist, who was an antagonist. On the way home, I took Ira’s advice and decided to add a new character, Cocaine Thayne. Thayne became Tommy’s cousin, who inspired by a couple of close family members of mine and a friend of my parents.

I considered dropping out of KU. I didn’t have a place in my first year of college. That summer I tested a life where I worked full time at Applebee’s (40 hours a week over a 4 day workweek and 3 days off in sequence to write). The 3 days off, while looking good on paper, did not stimulate the creative energy I was hoping. In fact, 3 straight days of double-closing shifts and consistently coming home at 2 am left me so exhausted that I didn’t write anything at all.

I was hoping this would change when I returned to KU. I enrolled in classes that, on paper, I should have loved as a creative writer. The class I was most excited about was Dr. Ann Martinez’s class on the Fantasy Genre. The class was incredible, but for some reason, I was never fully into it. While I was working in the class, all I could think of was Bleak. She could tell, too. The best teachers have a knack of getting to know their students. For the final essay, I wrote a 3,000 word essay on how heroes in high fantasy like Sir Gawain have transformed into the contemporary era. In the past, heroes had unquestioned virtue, and strength that was often reflected in their physical characteristics and moral compass. Today, instead of embracing heroes with that classic archetype, we yearn for complex, gray shaded heroes such as Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion became an icon of our culture and representative of the types of flawed heroes we search for today. It should have been amazing. Unfortunately, I pulled 2 all nighters writing it before the deadline and fell asleep 3 hours before class. I slept in and missed the deadline by 15 minutes. I will forever remember how difficult it was to walk to her door and take ownership of the fact that I missed the deadline.

Later that day, I came home and saw the mail waiting for me in my inbox. Professor Martinez was kind enough to accept my paper with a penalty (keeping me from failing), but she offered some honest advice in her e-mail, which included this line.

“Ben, you are a talented writer, but you need to seriously ask yourself what you are wanting to accomplish here.”

That one stung. Professor Martinez talked about how I wasn’t letting her down by turning in my work late, but I was letting myself down. The hardest part was that I knew she was right. A Creative Writing major wasn’t the path for me. I felt like a more natural fit in the School of Education. But would it mean I’d have to give up Bleak in my journey to become a teacher? Everyone I talked to had different answers. I got into the School of Education in the next semester. I wasn’t writing, but I was doing much better academically. I was working 28 hours a week as a cashier in my college dining hall and 12 hours a week as a social media manager. I wasn’t allowed to bring a composition book to work on homework at my dining hall and was struggling with back problems. It was around this time that a doctor informed me that I had Spina Bifida Occulta, and informed me that this was a degenerative condition that I will need to adapt to for the rest of my life. Though I would have two years before the pain set in, the diagnosis and occasional back spasms loomed large in my life.

Despite everything, I was holding my own academically (mostly B’s) - but I wasn’t writing. One night in September of 2013, I was sitting in the Watson (Library) Stacks at KU, and I was weighing whether to put my goal to publish my novel on hold. I was struggling with back spasms this night, I stumbled across an interview (a reddit AMA) with actor Sharlto Copley, who shared this advice. 

A graphic made of one of my favorite quotes from Mr. Copley in his 2013 Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything)

The advice reminded me of this advice from Ira Glass, and I found myself watching, and re-watching Ira give this advice on a video I found online.

The next day during my shift as a cashier in my college dining hall, I knew I wasn’t allowed to bring a composition book, but the dining hall did have a receipt printer. I kept thinking of Ira’s advice, “don’t wait, in every opportunity you have, write.” I kept thinking of Dr. Martinez’s advice, “what do you want to accomplish here?” and before I knew it, I printed a receipt, and started writing. I kept printing receipts, and when my bosses caught my writing, they shrugged, and said since I was one of the few cashiers that stopped students from stealing cups and plates, they’d… look the other way.

So I kept writing. Receipt after receipt, and before I knew it I had written 20 new chapters of Bleak on the backs of receipts, with new characters, new sequencing, and new stories, and by the time I was done at North College, I knew I would one day publish my novel.

My cashier station at GSP Dining Hall (The North College Cafe).

Today I feel indebted to the words of Professor Martinez, Ira Glass (this includes my parents, who convinced me to see Ira and drove me to his lecture), Sharlto Copley and everyone who helped me along the way. I feel in receipt to this dream to publish my novel, Bleak, and 8 years, hundreds of receipts, and countless hours of forward momentum later; I have finally accomplished my 15 year goal, and Bleak is finally published.

At the advice of my parents, I started saving my receipts (and ended up saving about half) here they are in the year 2020, days before Bleak’s publication.