The Black Water

I get sad sometimes. I mean, everybody gets sad sometimes. I get depressed. Yesterday, a friend of mine showed me a meme he'd seen on Instagram. It showed the faces of entertainers who have committed suicide. These were people who were outwardly happy and seemed to have it all. He told me the meme made him think of me. Because I tend to be the class clown. I strike people as being impossibly happy - until I'm not.

I am a joker. I am happy-go-lucky. I've had people half my age call me a child. I out-kid my kids. But now and then I find myself swimming in the black water. Sometimes, it happens for no reason that I can name. Sometimes, it is triggered. It's always fairly debilitating.

The important thing is that I've learned enough about myself to recognize when I'm swimming in the black water, and I can deal with it. I try to work as I normally would to keep my mind occupied. I keep my distance from people. I don't want them to hurt me and I don't want to hurt them. I endure. No drugs, prescription or otherwise. I take a little time and I work through the issues, if there are any, and I occupy my mind.

I'm not saying that people who suffer from depression shouldn't get help. I'm a big believer in therapy. I believe in having a support system. I believe in self awareness.

So, if you are like me in the sense that every now and then you get depressed and feel hopeless or lost, please don't let yourself believe that it's a situation with no way out. There is always a way out and as Robert Frost said, "The best way out is through."

For a writer, everything can be fuel for the fire. Even the things that feel like the opposite of fuel. Sometimes art comes from pain, and the light shines in the dark places. Don't be afraid to package your sadness, your pain, your anger, your fear, and even your happiness into a story, a painting, a poem, or a song. Everything's been said before, but not by you. It is your uniqueness and personal life experience that separate you from the billions of people you share the planet with. Sharing that point of view will enrich the world and will serve as therapy for you. Trust me. I just did it.



Adolfo Jimenez is a writer living against his will in Hollywood, Florida.  His latest release is Scenes from a 1979 Ford Fairmont, a short book of poems. Get it on Amazon!

Check him out here!

The Support System

Maybe it's because I'm staring down the barrel of the big 5-0. Maybe it's because I'm just a little tired of not doing what I feel I was put on this earth to do. Maybe things happen because they are meant to happen. I don't know.

What I do know, is that I am taking writing more seriously than I have in the twenty-five years since I first started writing.

A little background:

I was married and had two kids from two different women before my twenty-first birthday. I was divorced before my 22nd birthday. It was a tumultuous and traumatic time. It was then that I started writing.

I wrote a few books, a bunch of short stories, poems, and some screenplays. First drafts all. I never rewrote a damn thing.

What an idiot.

In those years there were women, one of which I lived with for four years. She was a great lady and I loved her dearly. But she never read a word of my writing and it destroyed me. I felt she didn't support me. Maybe I was right and maybe I was wrong. I don't know. What I do know is that I got choked up on all the wrong things.

That relationship ended and I slept around until I met the woman who would become my wife and has been by my side for 19 years. She has read my work and supported me. She has put up with my crap.

And being the ungrateful shit that I am, I realize I don't really need her. It's not that I don't need her. I don't need anyone at all. I don't need to have someone read my work and tell me I'm a genius, especially since no honest person would say such a thing. What I need is someone to not only give me my space, but to protect that space. I need someone to stand watch and protect me from interruptions. My wife is that person... most of the time.

I've come to understand that putting pressure on people, making them feel that in order to love you, they must also be your adoring fan, is destructive. People are people and we are supposed to love them for their individuality. Well, sometimes, individuals don't feel like reading your shit. Deal with it.

Abby and I have a nice system. I read to her. I read to her on our first date. I tried to read to her but I couldn't because I was only focused on getting her alone in the dark and this was in the time before tablets. But reading to her is a nice way for us to spend time. It gives me the opportunity to find flaws and typos. It's a bonding opportunity and has become part of the editing process for my work. I can't zone out or skip over things when I am reading to an audience. Especially when the audience is made up of my number one fan and roommate!

So, yes, look for support. Look for your own fans, but don't let the lack of support cripple your progress. Don't take another person's lack of interest to be a sign that you're wasting your time. Work harder for their attention. They'll either get to say they knew you when you were nobody or they'll have to admit they missed the greatness that was right in front of their nose!




Adolfo Jimenez is a writer living against his will in Hollywood, Florida.  His latest release is Scenes from a 1979 Ford Fairmont, a short book of poems. Get it on Amazon!

Check him out here!

A Clean, Well-Lighted (Quiet) Place

You need a place to write. Writing is a job like any other job. What happens if you don't show up for work? You lose your job. You are unemployed. You are pounding the pavement. There may seem to be no consequences for you as a writer if you choose not to write because no one will fire you, but if you don't make time to write, you will not make it as a writer. I know that seems obvious, but sometimes the obvious things are the hardest to see.

Too many people are in love with the idea of being a writer. They want to tell people they are working on a novel or two. They want to be seen in Starbucks, staring off into the distance with their laptop at the ready, standing by to capture their genius. They want to do the writerly things. They just don't actually want to write.

I have a close friend who is an incredibly talented individual, who could own Hollywood (the real Hollywood, not the South Florida shithole where I live) but he doesn't do the things that he would have to do in order to succeed. His reasons are personal and real and I don't bust his balls about it anymore. I used to, but I'm not his agent. I have no place telling him what to do. It's his life, not mine.

The point is that you have to do what you have to do if you want to succeed. Fuck the attention. The thing about being a writer is that attention ruins everything. Don't believe me? Ask Hemingway. Never mind, he's dead. Read The Snows of Kilimanjaro and he'll explain how every day of comfort and betraying who he was contributed to the end of his career as a writer. He was telling the story of a man named Harry, but he was seeing his future.

So find a clean, well lighted place to write. Or find a noisy, dim place to write. Just find a place and do your thing and do it.



Adolfo Jimenez is a writer living against his will in Hollywood, Florida.  His latest release is Scenes from a 1979 Ford Fairmont, a short book of poems. Get it on Amazon!

Check him out here!

When to Steal

This is not about plagiarism. That kind of stealing is never cool. If you do it, you deserve a fate worse than death. Something really horrible, like having to spend eternity in the waiting room of a clinic in Hialeah where the old ladies complain about their aches and pains and how little their social insecurity checks are.

This is about stealing experiences. Hemingway said that you had to really know a thing to write about it. He was right - for himself. Tell that to Tolkien or Lewis or to George Lucas. These men created new worlds that simply didn't exist. Worlds they only knew inside their heads.

How can a man write about the experiences of a woman? How can a woman write a man? By learning. And how do we learn? By paying attention. There are seven billion people on this planet and every one of them is having an experience every moment. I am experiencing the writing of this blog post. You are suffering through the experience of reading it. So, let's do a little exercise...

What am I wearing?
Where am I sitting?
Is it day or night?
Am I showered and shaved?
Do I have a cup of coffee or a glass of whisky nearby?

I don't care about your answers anymore than you should care about the correct answers. You decide what I'm wearing, what I'm drinking. You decide everything about it. Steal the experience of me writing this and make it your own. Steal it as you would steal the experience of a cop chasing a bad guy or a caveman hunting a woolly mammoth.

You don't need to experience all there is to experience in order to be a writer. Imagination trumps all.





Adolfo Jimenez is a writer living against his will in Hollywood, Florida.  His latest release is Scenes from a 1979 Ford Fairmont, a short book of poems. Get it on Amazon!

Check him out here!

Little Notes

I've been married to Abby for nineteen years. Long time. Love her more each day. Though, there are times when I remember that if I'd killed her the day I met her, I'd probably be out by now.

We have good times and bad times though more good than bad. We put effort into getting along and being happy and I don't mind saying we have a damn good sex life after all these years. We are lucky, we are fortunate; in a word we are blessed.

It's not easy, but it's not hard. We do the little things. We sometimes write each other little notes. Sometimes on paper, sometimes by text. We listen to one another. We make time for each other. We support each other.

Why do you care about this? I don't know. I don't care if you care about this. I do. It's good to have some stability. She is my rock. She gives me space to be myself and listens to me bitch and moan when being myself becomes too much to bear. I'd like to think I do the same for her.

I'll admit I have the easier end of the bargain. She's an intelligent, normal, stable person. I'm a writer. I'm manic-depressive. I'm temperamental. I'm an idiot.

So this post is a little note to my wife. The woman who took everything from me except my name, and gave me so much more than I could have reasonably expected and more than I could ever deserve.






Adolfo Jimenez is a writer living against his will in Hollywood, Florida.  His latest release is Scenes from a 1979 Ford Fairmont, a short book of poems. Get it on Amazon!

Check him out here!

Doing Writerly Things

I got a rare Saturday afternoon to myself today. My wife and older daughter are out of town. My younger daughter was at a party which I was not invited to. Rubber chicken and no booze. I'll get over it. I dropped her off and found a local bar. I sat down and ordered a very tall beer and lunch.

I was halfway through the beer before the food came. It was not yet noon. This is new to me. Not the eating. Not the drinking. The drinking before lunch before noon could be a thing, though I doubt it. Still, I ate. I drank. I was merry for a while.

I had one more very tall beer and finished my lunch but before then, I did a little writing. In my head and on my iPhone. I took notes for what may or may not become a poem, a short story, part of a book or nothing at all.

I texted a writer buddy of mine and told her this drinking alone at a bar before noon is the most writerly thing I've ever done. She agreed that it did indeed sound writerly. Whatever that means.

In Paris in the 20's, writers hung out in cafes not to be seen, but to take advantage of the heat. Now, people crack open their laptops in Starbucks because writing, it seems, is the least important part of being a writer. What matters is that you are recognized as a writer. It seems to be an excuse to be eccentric or not have a good job, or to drink on someone else's tab. I don't know how eccentric I am, but I pay for my own drinks with money I earn from my job.

Writerly things vary. Hemingway liked hunting and Fishing and Travel. Bukowski drank wine and loved L.A. Hunter S Thompson did every drug imaginable.  Two of these great men committed suicide. Is that writerly?

So go on and hang out in bars. Drink coffee, write in full view of the public, or pretend to write as you read Facebook posts about writing and answer idiotic questions posted in writers' groups. Perhaps you'll post some idiotic questions of your own.

But I would advise you to lift your head now and then. See what's happening around you? That's life. That's the stuff of literature. The world is what you need to understand if you really want to be a writer. Not the look, the looking. The listening, the watching. Soak in the smells of a place because they tell you as much about what's happening around you as anything else.

What it comes down to is that if you want to be a writer, there is only one thing you must do, and that is write. The rest is pretentious bullshit.




Adolfo Jimenez is a writer living against his will in Hollywood, Florida.  His latest release is Scenes from a 1979 Ford Fairmont, a short book of poems. Get it on Amazon!

Check him out here!

Digging Up The Past

Hemingway said you can't write what you don't know. What that means to the science fiction and fantasy writers I have no clue. But to writers like myself, his words are gospel. You can tell when a writer knows the subject.

I can't write about mountain climbing - never done it. I can, however, describe the fear of bridges. I'm not proud of it, but it's true. Bridges terrify me.

Our writing is informed by our experiences. I dare say what we read or the movies and TV we watch count as experience. Everything is fuel for the imagination. The more you take in, the more you can put out. It also helps to not be lazy. I can't tell you how many people I've met over the years who looked for shortcuts. Well, there are no shortcuts. Not to any place worth going. (I read that somewhere. It's not mine. I'm not that clever, but it illustrates the point. Read more, know more. Write more.)

So don't be afraid to write about old lovers or the bully from third grade who punched you and stole your lunch. If you were the bully, write about your experiences as an insecure asshole. It's all good. It all counts as raw material. Fuel for the fire.

Write what you know. Write it well. Write it now.

Well, go on. Do it!

- Adolfo






Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, blogger, and past-digger-upper living in Hollywood, FL .