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In Die By the Pen, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.

I failed at heavy metal.  I did.   And before you pat my shoulder and tell me “no no, you were great” — let me clarify. I succeeded in performing heavy metal to my standards. I think the old Snaggletooth put on a pretty good show. I succeeded in composing heavy metal. I liked my songs. They were the types of songs that I liked hearing (a touch more vulgar than I would perhaps prefer nowadays but good just the same).  I also succeeded at living a heavy metal lifestyle.  I think I looked the part…still do if you believe the picture above and I can still throw back whiskeys with the best of ’em…for a little while at least and then it’s cab time.

But just the same, I failed at it. It’s true. I know I did it. I never toured, only played a handful of shows outside of Rochester,  stopped writing songs for the last couple years of the band,  never got much radio or label interest.  Off the stage, I never really gave it my all.

I’m sure you’ve never heard of the band. But it wasn’t for lack of wanting. It was for lack of pushing and then settling. Settling on being a local band and being content to stay there. This was how I failed. Through lack of vision and hope.

Don’t be afraid to dream big. This is the one important thing I learned which inspires me and keeps me confident when working in solitude as I’m slugging it out with my work and (more importantly) my own low self esteem. Hopefully all of you reading this can benefit from my experiences. Never be afraid of your own aspirations. They are as valid as you let them be.

Too many folks start thinking of the “buts” and “why-nots” when opportunities emerge. As Pee Wee Herman says, “All of my friends have big buts.”

Successful people are successful because they know they have a right to be.  That sense of entitlement we hate so much in others would be pretty helpful in our own back pockets! Particularly my own.

I have never felt that I deserve anything. The truth is nobody does.  The idea of deserving is a trap played on ourselves by our own dramatic needs. In fiction and cinema everybody gets what they deserve. In real life, people get what they get.  No one needs to settle. Keeping a hope and  a dream alive is one of the greatest powers we have as human beings. No one can take it from you. It never has to disappear. It isn’t cheesy or a cliche’ to want what you want.

One of the great failures of my old heavy metal band was that we viewed it as something so deeply personal that it could never be marketable. We “did it for ourselves” and could never conceptualize it as something that people would appreciate beyond the folks in Rochester who came to our shows. We thought the world at large didn’t want to know what we were up to.

Writing my stories is (of course) quite different from fronting a live band in many ways. There is no crowd response for a quick visceral reaction to your work. It is a slow needling to find out how folks respond to your stories. When you suck on stage, you know instantly. When you suck at writing it can take years to find out. I have discovered the struggling alone in the dark very painful but I am proud of the work I’ve been able to drag out of the cellar.

Now, with my writing, I often feel the same way I did with Snaggletooth. I fight it, but those instincts of “who cares” and “why bother” creep up.  I get so involved in my projects that I can’t help but think that it is too much a reflection of myself and I am not interesting enough for anyone to want to know me that deeply.

Of course, I also know I’m full of it and that it can be good work.  I stand behind my stuff but I’ll tell you that every step is second guessed and I often feel timid about the work as I network and write new things.

Get behind your work! Don’t sell yourself short. You worked so hard on it, it deserves to be heard or seen or read.  Share it. Once again, by “you” I mean “me”.

One of my buddies hit the road with his girlfriend last year to play honky tonk music. He came back to New York after being out for six months (and was about to head out again) when he told me, “people want you to succeed”.

Think about that for a minute. “People-want-YOU-to succeed.” Strangers. Critics. Rivals. People want you to succeed. Keep saying it. It’s as true as you let it be. If you succeed, that means you are producing pretty good work (hopefully) and that will only make the world better, keep the bar raised a bit higher, and inspire others to improve their craft.

I was never able to believe that when in heavy metal. I thought all the bands and clubs and promoters were all working against each other. That there was some sort of competition going on for status in a scene. I may have been partly right but at the same time, it was a very minor thing and should not have influenced the arc of the band as it rose and fell.

Most people aren’t that concerned about what others are doing. They’re more concerned about themselves. People don’t work directly opposed to each other most times. Usually they work independently towards their own goals and sometimes it works against others.  Sort of like the two volcano movies coming out the same year unbeknownst to the filmmakers.

We were quick to admit defeat. Any time there was the smallest bump in the road regarding taking the band to “the next level” we saw it as a fulfilling the expectation that we were simply failing again and that was what we were born to do. We weren’t born to fail. No one is. Failure is a gift you give yourself.

Now with my writing, when talking to editors or colleagues, when pitches get passed on or when I am ignored I try to remember that I am doing it. I am a writer. I am playing the game. I’m not sitting around hoping to think about wanting to do the things I think I want to do. All bumps in the road  are just that — bumps in a ROAD. They wouldn’t be there if you weren’t on the road itself. And they couldn’t drag me off the damn road with dogs and tractors…guns and snakes!

At the risk of sounding too much like an infomercial, YOU CAN DO IT! Trust yourself and trust your work. And don’t be so quick to want to believe that the world wants and expects you (me) to fail.

Jared Gniewek works in the music industry as a back line technician, performer, and promoter. He is also a freelance writer whose work can be seen in the recent re-launch of Tales from the Crypt and heard on The Dark Sense, an audio anthology of the macabre for which he is also the story editor — http://www.earstage.com/darksense.htm.

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