M. G. Arnold-Law Writes

Growing up, my little sister had a hole in her heart. At least, that was the story I said in show-and-tell. It was surly more entertaining than some random kid’s sea shell from the beach or whatever everyone else was talking about while I was thinking of the most dramatic thing possible. My mother picked me up from school carrying my sweet baby sister and found a group of teachers in tears. They cooed over my sister and how adorable she was. I couldn’t fathom why she got all this attention when I was the one who just gave the performance of a lifetime. I got a strong talking to from my thoroughly embarrassed mother about telling lies on the way home.

Over the years, I envied my family members who all seemed to have great creative talent. While I watched and listened to my loved ones paint, draw, and perform in nearly every medium, I couldn’t help but feel left out. You couldn’t exactly bring your math skills and facts about outer space and dinosaurs to the family jam sesh. Years of self-conditioning and the Pygmalion effect made me believe that I was not creative, but strictly logical like Mr. Spock. These were the years where the ‘left brained’ and ‘right brained’ myth was largely believed.

Don’t get me wrong, I was well loved. My parents encouraged my young passions in my nerdy pursuits. I participated in robotics and debate teams and eventually got my bachelor’s in mechanical engineering. At risk of sounding even more droll, I later got an MBA. All that scientific and business tedium was offset by my choice of profession for the past ten years.

As a Navy helicopter pilot, I’ve had amazing experiences and traveled to awe-inspiring places. I have flown between skyscrapers, trained with special forces, shot rockets at dummy tanks, helped recover the Orion capsule from Artemis I, and even skydived out of one of our helicopters with the Navy’s parachute team, the Leap Frogs. In my travels I have seen Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and large swaths of the U.S. to include Guam. It was awesome.

It was also very difficult. At many points of my life, I found myself physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted. Sometimes all three at the same time. Doing all-nighters studying thermodynamics to roll into NROTC training at 0500 was not how most people spend their undergraduate years. Having shaky hands due to adrenaline, or fear, or both, after dangerous flight events is not how many people spend their 20’s. My mentors, my friends, my wife, and my family all helped me push through and enjoy the fruits of my efforts. And now you will watch me process it all live in my works.

It took reading The Martian and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir for me to realize that I deserve a creative outlet as well. He was someone like me. A huge geek (in the kindest way possible). I saw a quick Instagram reel of him in an interview where he mentioned he didn’t have a visualization for Rocky in his head until he saw the puppet constructed for the movie of Project Hail Mary. That was the final straw. I thought my lack of visualization when I read fiction was an impediment of my ability to be creative. Thanks to him, I’ve gained the courage to let my creativity flow.

If you got this far, thank you. I am primarily starting this blog to practice the art and hopefully get halfway decent at it. If people like what I do, all the better. In that effort I have the following goals and promises:

1. I will not use generative AI in any of my works. Blog post, writing, or otherwise. If I get writer’s block, it is my burden to bear and it will only make me better in the long run. If I get to the point where I want and can afford art to go with my work, I will commission a human who is practicing their art as I am practicing mine. If I want to research a topic, I will seek out valid sources the way I was taught before AI was a thing. The closest thing to AI I’ll touch is spelling and grammar check in word processors (and I might not even listen to them).
2. I will always graciously accept constructive criticism, but may not always heed it if it is counter to the direction I want my work to go. I may be factually incorrect from time to time, but I will not let my hubris get in the way of immersion and a good story. I will flat out ignore comments designed to demean or belittle.
3. I will attempt many genres. My personal favorites to consume are fantasy and sci-fi, and that is where I want to put a lot of effort, but I believe all genres have something for me to learn from.
4. Life may get in the way for periods of time, but I will not give up on this art as I have on the guitar in the corner of my office or the comic strips under my childhood bed. My writing will be rough and clunky from time to time, but I will learn and grow with it.
5. I will likely use names of people I have known in my life in my work. That does not mean those characters are how I see these people in my life. I will be overly dramatic on characteristics both positive and negative for the sake of entertainment only. All characters and situations may be loosely inspired by my life experiences but are all fictional at the end of the day.