Resolved.

~ resolutions on my art collection, writing process, and coalescing novelism.

“If your eyes were but open, you would see wonderful things…Heaven is in a holy man, and hence everywhere that he stands, sits, or lies, there is heaven also.”

Something I long ago resolved to doing is “collecting” digital art. 

What I mean by that: I digitally *save* my favorite artists’ work (w/credit links), favored memes, and the altogether beautiful x hilarious x strange images from the Internet that call out to me. 

I harbor my collection of Memes and Story Arts in simple digital archives (read: shareable Google Docs), all located within my Commonplace Book that I revisit from time to time to brainstorm ideas for my writing. I keep such documents shared for others to see because that somehow matters to me; I allow comments on Story Art docs in case I missed (or could not find) any attributions to the original artist.

Though I’ve been doing this art collection for years now as my primary interaction with social / media {Twitter / Tumblr}, I have only just recently consciously realized that I have essentially become a full-fledged Art Collector, with a robust digital gallery and a real coalescing aesthetic to my selections for the cherishing.

I feel great pride in this. Why? One, because it is cool. Two, because I feel as though the human artist is soon to be overtaken. Or, at the very least blurred, made less meaningful to the public at large.

Like a tsunami wave, the power of Artificial Intelligence looms over the shores of our reality now; A.I. art is already showing up in practically every art-based Google search, in case you didn’t know. The situation is becoming more dire every day. 

The prospect of America’s overall decline coinciding with the rise of A.I. eliminating all kinds of work from the already flagging creative industries is rather frightening. This knowledge has become so harrowing, in fact, that these circumstances have summoned certain stark and undying revelations within me. 

First and foremost, I am a writer.

I still want to make a career of this. I wish to make a livelihood within the creative industry. In some form or fashion, even just as a self-published artist, I want to truly be called a writer by friends, colleagues, editors, publishers, an agent, and of course ~ readers. 

I speak such desires aloud so as to highlight my biases openly. 

Naturally, I defy the prospect of computers taking over the work of writing stories, painting pictures, and altogether staking any ground whatsoever upon the territory of the soul that is artistry. Art and story must forever remain the realm of humans. Or else…I believe something imperative will be lost. 

I believe all great art is borne of the impassioned intentionality of the human soul. There are no shortcuts to artistry, only the work of human minds, bodies, and souls. A.I. has no soul and therefore its “art” is necessarily lesser. It is not borne of intentions and desires and the love of the craft.

…And on this personal and rather soulful note, I am excited to begin professionally publishing some of my work soon! 

I am on the path of writing books, novels, long-form sagas in the realms of phantasy. This is occurring not just because of the pressure of A.I. coming to seriously displace space within the already competitive world of books. No, it is rather because ~ I am ready to publish my work. Simply put, I feel as though my ideas, my skills, and my purpose as a writer have achieved such a state that my work has become publishable. 

Here is the link to my freshly launched author website!
~ DylanOrosz.com

I’ve begun this process, now in the middle of self-editing my first novel and drafting & revising my second and third; I am firmly on the path to manifesting books, both digital and physical in nature. I have many more within me, waiting in the wings, all already being lightly outlined within the far reaches of my subconscious self {and in some other Google Docs too}.

To such novel ends, through the experiencing of others’ art — I wish to continuously fill my unconscious mind with every delightful thing it can find. This unconscious force is the one that does all the heavy lifting in terms of my creativity and the building of my soul. This is what art collection and the experiencing of storytelling constantly does for me. 

Art becomes a kind of intangible sustenance. I do not believe I am alone in this, as artist or human. 

My art collecting ~ as well as my love of books, comics, films, TV, video games, photography, architecture, the animal kingdom ~ feeds my unconscious mindscape with most everything it needs. Such artful experience nourishes my soul and tempers my taste and prepares me for my own work.

By collecting art online in particular, I venerate and contribute to digitized posterity everything Real and phantastical that was the work of human minds, hearts, souls. {At least for as long as anything online may end up lasting.}

Art of monsters and magick features prominently throughout my artistic archive {I admit I heavily favor fantasy x sci-fi x horror in All things, though that should come as no surprise to the reader}. 

Often, it is visual art ~ sketches, drawings, paintings – both traditional and digital – as well as audiovisual art {i.e. da MOVIES} ~ that inspire me to write my own stories on the page. 

Second, and deuteragonistly upon this topic, I am a man of character & passion, and I carry a supreme appreciation for beauty in All things, artistic and non, conscious and un. 

This includes people, the creators themselves.

I am a great admirer of the artistic form in every way. I take such a thing very seriously. And this mindset includes paying spiritual respect & giving a dose of intentional appreciation to my favorite artists, writers, and creators of every stripe. The artist’s work is not just to be admired, in my view, but their life too. As far as can be gleaned or as they wish to tell it, through their art or otherwise, I believe artists should be understood as people ~ and more obviously, credited and remunerated for their life’s work.

This, too, is part of my purpose with my collecting of well-credited digital art and keeping it, sharing it, for free and with no ulterior motive beyond the experiential expansing of joy x appreciation x humanistic art-making glorification. 

None of my collections of images and files are anything I paid to access; they are borne of social media posts from the artists themselves, or fellow admirers passing on such lores to future generations.

Here in my digital spaces, in my own small way, I aim to keep kindling the fire of creativity within the human frame. 

I too wish to contribute to the creation of art in this world. And I wish to do it in a more tangible way. 

Altogether, these wyrds of resolution mark my separation from the short story to the long one. I mean to endeavor a new focus upon novels, or The Novel: A Perfect Vessel for Longform Storytelling. 

Many outlines of book-length sagas and stories have blinked within me for longer than I can remember. Half-baked, crudely drawn, existing merely in cold void. Waiting. For their moment? For me to put in the work? Column A, Column B, etc. But I have taken some time over the past year compiling my most salient ideas into one big overview. I separated out the ideas by their logical flow, category, and overall vibe ~ and even ordered them in the haphazard chronos of their eventual creation. They include the genres of fantasy x sci-fi x horror and more.

Altogether, right now, I have 14 of ‘em. 

I carry the intention within me now to write 14 major stories within my lifetime. 

14 tales of beauty & terror, hopes x despairs, bodies + spirits. 

14 writing projects. 

Many will be novels, but not all. I believe I have a few movie screenplays within me, an animated TV show, several fantasy book sagas, and some cyberpunk stuff. 

Writing these long-form stories will be the focus of my creative efforts from now on. This is not to say that Thresholds of Transformation will be abandoned. Nor will my Substack ~ z-punk ~ or my various other ongoing writing projects, be totally discontinued. I shall simply only write on here when I feel called to. And will certainly return to market my future books. So that will be fun. 

I honestly feel as though my destiny is to touch the world with my writing. 

I have absorbed much from my experiences. And I have much to express. 

I will write as much as I can and take this as far as I can go. 

My goal with writing books is primarily to share my perspective with the world and express thought-provoking & satisfying characters x stories x worlds to readers. To entertain them and to enlighten them. I will write books within the structure of the novel because I believe that is the best possible form to coalesce my spirit and my talents. 

The novel, the singular storybook, is precious to me because it affords total control to an author ~ and allows for infinite imagination. 

As Alan Moore has said ~ there is no story that cannot be told with a novel, with 26 letters astride sentences, paragraphs, chapters. No matter how absurd, or supernatural, or budget-breaking, your story is – a novel can get the job done. 

Novels shall be my tools to convey my intentions and learnings, to necessarily affirm my mana flows and express that which makes up my soul — and to totally stretch apart the very limits of my brain’s imaginings.

I originally came up in this game writing weird short stories; my first real inspiration to develop creative & cinematic ideas of my own came from watching The Twilight Zone as a kid, introduced to its strange audiovisual phantasms by my father and mother alike. Seeing Rod Serling talking directly to me, asking absurd questions and receiving supernatural answers ~ this was the way. {TZ also coincided with a growing love of the paranormal and the tantalizingly dreadful concept of ghost hunting.} 

Half of The Twilight Zone’s draw, to my nascent childhood gaze, was the black-and-white world. It was like looking into a deeper past, a place I would never know, but also for that moment ~ could not tear my life away from. Indeed, I have always been utterly drawn to the strange, the bewildering, the horrifying beauty of our vast dreams and nightmares. 

Anime and manga hit me the same way ~ the gorgeously alien language of Japanese, the art designs of the supernal characters, their worlds ~ their powers. All this too was a fascinating saga of hyper-worlds I would never belong to. But might it be a place that I could create from? Maybe I could harbor some powers of my own, straight from the raw materials of my imagination…

Ever since I was a kid watching anime like Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Cowboy Bebop on Toonami, playing Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior and Golden Sun, reading Dune and Lovecraft and 2001 and King and Barker, watching Lord of the Rings and The Matrix, reading Batman and Spider-Man ~ I have been absorbing. Learning. Growing. 

I have long been accumulating my own sensibility for stories and developing various visions for how I’d want to write mine. Not going out there and aping the masters, or even just genre lords, but really being able to say that I have a story inside me no one else has. 

As a creator, I must wield the instinct and initiative to write stories that no one else would ~ that no one else possibly could. 

This is my lifelong goal. And I believe I’ve recently crossed a threshold on that front. 

I am a writer carrying my own worlds now. 

My soul has engendered an aura that encompasses those worlds and expresses my ever-growing inner via the written word. 

My mind houses the seeds for a true forest. 

My body can feel the power within.

This state has only arrived after much hard work and a degree of devotion to the craft. There is no doubt about that. I have put in many reps, gone through the creative process many times. 

And now ~ with this revelation of my creative maturity, with the rise of Artificially Intelligent writers to challenge me, and with a certain faith in myself ~ I will write my books. 

This is how I most impact the world; this is probably the only heartful labor I am really cut out for in the long run. 

Such an “awakening” did not come from any one thing. It has come from everything. 

Spiritual experience is nothing new to me. I can say with confidence that my spirituality has become a dominant factor in my life, and it is so within this decision too. 

What is important is that I have 1) absolute focus and 2) my work cut out for me. 

I can see the wyrds ~ the books, their stories, characters & conflicts & complexities of the writing processes for each therein. 

Now it just comes down to planning (outlining) + execution (drafting) + rewriting x revising (editing). 

In sum: the work of writing. That’s all. 

I am resolved.

 Deva! ~