be there out there

One big advancement for me as a writer was being able to BE THERE (wherever that might be) with my characters, so that my reader could be THERE with my characters experiencing the story in what Robert Olen Butler calls a "moment-to-moment" way. But there was something else I had to do to get to this place. I had to let go and allow myself to make my stories as weird as they could be. I had to go with the WEIRD TALES. That’s just who I am as a writer. I write strange comic stories about ridiculous and serious things. Every time I tried to tell my stories in a conventional way or pull back from the absurdist path my story was taking,it died or became the walking dead. And not in any interesting zombie way either. What I had to do was to go “out there” and just let my stories be what they had to be. So, in my case, I had to BE THERE OUT THERE to BE THERE.