Aw, Shucks...

My scheduled posts went a little on the dark and heavy confessionals, but NaNo is my month of isolation and I have to admit, UnHeard is becoming a voice for themes in my life that aren't light and pretty. There are moments of humor, moments of lightness and kindness, but like many of the themes in this series, I wanted to be as honest as I could about what these characters might go through, not just due to disability but how the fantasy version presents issues that I do have to create without any context in realism to go by.

It's exciting, as it always is, but it also builds a sense of urgency. No matter how ambitious my word count is this month, I won't even by halfway done with my draft this month. I engineered each of these books to exceed 200K words. Not with fluff or rambling, but with actual plots, structure and development. How do I know? Well, I couldn't have said so prior to writing UnSung, but once I stopped looking at word count and just developed it, I found that the stories I wanted to tell naturally tended towards large word counts. And this coming from a skeletal writer who used to struggle with working off of a frame at all!

Truly, I'm excited to put this one down where it stops and go back to refining UnSung for its final forms. No small task. A single book three times the size as the average book in my first series and I need to make at least two full editing passes before I'll even consider publishing.

I make it sound like I wasn't careful the first time around.  Eeeeee, so not true. I might even say I was way *too* careful in those days. I can recall fully passing through each one upwards of five times, wondering if the deliberate rush in the beginning would hurt it or not. It originally wasn't intended to be a novel after all, so I struggled with the first one the most. The others came more naturally. I was turning my life around, getting healthier and WHAM BAM ZOINK those drafted up so quick that I was skeptical that they could even be coherent. It wasn't until towards the end of the series that I dialed back the obsessive urge to pass through 'editing' that resulted in zero changes... repeatedly.

Nevertheless, I'm planning to take a short break after NaNo and another around Christmas. I'll crunch some more of the everything in between the New Year and the release of Kingdom Hearts 3, aka Soul Steal Month. After that, I plan to enjoy marathoning again, something I haven't done since the letdown that was Final Fantasy XV. Only so crushing because such an otherwise beautiful game with great mechanics was flattened by a limp story. lol I do have a Selective Gamer blog floating around with my handful of reviews that go into this more, so I'll spare the rant here.

So! As we reach the end of NaNo, congratulations to all of the participants and I encourage everyone to try to fit it into your future! I'll post my final word count (and I only count the novel, not the endless blog posting I do) and my graphics in a later post. Post yours in the comments below! In fact, do your victory laps everywhere you get permission! You've earned it!

The Fiction Author's Journey

Writers, even before they are authors, often hear a lot of similar lines from the people in their life. If not being asked to be a character in their book, then something else; perhaps that they have some ideas that would be great for their story. Sometimes it's a shared misery (or pretended misery more akin to a humble brag), sometimes it's a bit of pleasant nostalgia. If, like me, you're in the latter group, then no matter how many times you hear it, it always warms your heart a little that people want to be involved in your work, even in a passive manner. Sure, some people can be pushy or relentless, but in most cases, they are coming to you with a vulnerability, a trust that you won't reject their interest. So even if someone can get a little defensive or stand-offish, it's mostly coming from a place we can relate to, maybe a place where we've lashed out from before ourselves.

One thing I'm learning to tackle more are personal alignments. While I've said before that I don't make characters that line up very well with myself, I've been more generous in offering up vulnerable instances in the guise of fiction. I might change the relationships of the involved characters or put it in a wholly different environment, but the psychological landscape is an internal conflict that can take place in anyone, resonating with people for the intricacies of those similarities. It's true enough that people who share a diagnosis are still, for all intents and purposes, alone in their suffering. Yet in support groups or forums, people still find comfort that other people can better describe a feeling they are troubled by as long as they can't name it. Because of that, I've learned to use my experiences without making it about me-- I can transfer these details and name them, creating an environment that can be discussed or understood.

Perhaps. I'm also aware that I might be too wordy for some people, which I'm not using to insult anyone's level of intelligence. I don't just fixate on what characters do or even observe. I also let them muse on what they think they are seeing on people's faces. Often, they aren't right so I do rely on the reader not automatically trusting a character's observations sometimes.

Conversations. Hoo boy, that one was not so easy for me. I wouldn't say it has little to do with any social ineptitude on my part. I just started asking myself if people really talked like I was making them talk. Back when Gilmore Girls first came out, that was a huge point of contention, how rapid and instantly witty the characters were yet how emotionally inept they were as the counterbalance. While it was an enjoyable show, too often it felt disingenuous and unrelatable. While I don't expect fictional stories to be overly realistic, it can really take you out of a story too much if a character can't be believable in and of itself. Conversations can't just be witty or enjoyable to be successful, but I do labor to avoid the small talk as much as possible because I loathe it and... I'd rather the reader just assume it happens rather than painstakingly recreating those boring and 'realistic' moments. I take it seriously that a writer has the power to decide what parts of the story are worth being delivered. It can be tough to decide but conversations... if they're there, make them count. Also, I try not to use them to bend the rules of exposition. While it's okay to let a character explain some finer points, I really don't want them describing what might be way more interesting to play out in real time.

As a fiction author, I can become personally fixated on what I believe to be strengths and weaknesses of mine, though neither of them become off-limits to my story. I certainly want to play to my strengths, but at the same time, those weaknesses could stand to be challenged and reformed as well. While I don't care to subject people to bad writing like subjects for my mad experiments, I find it worthwhile to go ahead and write them, then work out if they should stay or go or just get worked on over time. Play to your strengths, play on your weaknesses. While at some point, I have to make an executive decision for the good of the story, there is really no such thing as wasted effort.

Each writer's journey will differ and I can't say being a published, marketing author makes it any easier. No matter what paths you take, remember to include some room for self-discovery. Even in non-fiction, there's room for that, and not just for those memoirs either. I'm playing with the idea of a how-to-draw book that combines the technical with the intuitive, aiming to make it an experience that doesn't allow for the feeling of failure to inhibit you. To write a book that honest and evocative, I do have to delve into what I used to refer to as 'the zone', that place where you turn off the harsh critic and trade it for the helpful one. This is a place that does require conscious introspection into a mental process.

I don't think there is any such thing as a valuable book written by a completely detached writer. While we all need a healthy dose of logic and reason to create successful stories, we also can't completely distance ourselves from the subjects. Instead, there's ideally a place where our work is neither too precious for criticism nor too detached for emotional response.

In any case, keep at your own personal journeys. Back to editing for me, but think on your own strengths and weaknesses sometime. You may want to reevaluate that every so often, really assess what you found to be stronger or weaker in your writing and ask yourself how you can build from that.

Make Your Story an Onion

No, not indecipherable satire or a tearjerker, although your story might benefit from those too. This time, I'm talking layers. Layers and layers and layers of delicious plot building.

Building those Easter eggs isn't something most people can do effortlessly. Sometimes you have a juicy joke, an unfolding revelation, but the actual art of tucking away those gems of continuing stories can be a tough feat to pull off.

It can also be a clever way to act like you meant to do something that you originally kind of just threw in there. 

Here goes my attempt to help you find those hidden gems and run with it!

The Recurring Minor Character (The Minor Resolution)

Let's make this a comedic example. You've got your main characters in some multilevel hideout and they hear the noise of some guards coming along so they wait it out and end up picking up the end of a really lame conversation.

"It wasn't a dragon, you moron, it was a horse."

"You think I don't know the difference between a dragon and a horse?"

"I think you wouldn't know your mother's mouth from a dog's anus."

"And I'm telling you it was a dragon!"

And you never see them again. Right? While at the time, that moment might have been comedic relief or even a hostage situation for the unfortunate MCs, it may be worth filing for later.

There are many ways you can go with this, but maybe a dragon bursts into the sky and the guy is elbowing his agape friend and proudly confirming he saw a dragon... Or he's just a drunk trying to steal an MC's horse while calling it a dragon (and talking to its hind end at that).

It's a silly example, but if you find that the world starts to feel too sparse, introducing a crowd element through minor facts can be a great way to reward the reader for paying attention.

The Insignificant Object

I believe I actually used an apple as an example in a previous post, but I'll go ahead and play that out again. At one point, you might have a character who seems fixated on a piece of fruit. It probably seems like a frivolous detail and when asked, they might even make an offhand remark that they didn't know apples grew here.

Even if that detail seemed annoying at the time, somewhere down the line, there comes an emotional moment. At first, it starts off a light flashback, maybe that the MC hates apples, but they're there with their sibling, who we know little about but know died young. The MC is annoyed that their sibling loves apples and glares at them. The sibling pretends not to notice and begins to tell a story about how apple trees mourn the people that love them. Some soldiers come and try to take the MC but the sibling throws an apple and the MC gets free. The sibling dies but the MC gets away.

This can go on as long as you like. Apples may take on a significance where they never had one in any of the first instances they are mentioned. After the flashback, the MC may be traveling a familiar road, realizing it is the one where their sibling died. The apple tree is there but it's dead-- well, all except for one oddly ripe apple. Do they eat it and die? Who knows, but you also don't need to confine it to main characters. Maybe one time the apple foreshadows a pivotal scene. Maybe it's a comedic break.

The only important thing to remember is that giving something increasing significance also means you have to close that subplot. If you only have two instances, it usually doesn't create an anticipation plot. Yet if you create a build, you better damn well finish it.

The Clue

I've used this one quite a bit and it can be tricky to pull off without immediately tipping off the reader. After a while, even the most oblivious reader will start to smell it right away. It's important that when you introduce some hint as to a character or object's true nature that you also plant a seed of doubt and even lead a reader's suspicions towards the occasional red herring. You don't want everything to fall so neatly that they immediately anticipate it. Yet there is a sense of reward when they are able to guess something correctly. Not everything has to be a twist.

Sometimes it's what you aren't showing that later becomes the clue. I believe, in The Game of Thrones books, GRRM purposely omits the color of some characters' eyes because it would be a dead giveaway. (The Targaryens, for one, are known for their stunning violet eyes.) Yet the clues you drop are sometimes cryptic and sometimes the characters will even suspect something alongside you. However, it could be narration purposely meant to mislead you.

Certain smells, sounds or even moods can sometimes herald the presence of something familiar, a sort of hidden flag to tell you to look closely, but not be too trusting. I've found more often than not, that observations aren't usually set because the narrator thinks you're too stupid to figure it out. They set them up to weave in some threads that may tangle later.

-----

I kind of built up from simple to complex but an Easter egg can be light and fluffy or deep and murky, popping up to draw your interest or exploding with a revelation. Fitting them into your story is often something you'll probably feel better than you can ever plan. Like candy-filled eggs, they can suddenly stimulate a lull or force the reader to focus more closely.

Creating layers in your story is largely guided by the little details. More often than not, no matter how much you plan, you'll probably find the meatiest bits by grabbing the best opportunities for change. Don't be so married to any idea that it kills your story. So often, people never finish that novel they keep bringing up because they keep cutting straight through the plots. You don't want to maul your layers to dust with too much exposition or purple prose, but when you fixate too much on reaching the plot points, you'll often overlook those little pockets that keep your ideas worth peeling back.

Try a 20 step story of a classic. Rewrite a simple fable like the tortoise and the hare but make sure at least 20 things happen from start to finish. Don't be married to the idea of a race or that they have to be animals at all. Make it a lazy overconfident assassin and a man racing home through a storm to save his wife. See if you can tie in any of those ideas to create hints or Easter eggs. You don't even need to write a formal story for this exercise. The main idea is just to absorb yourself in a mental chain where changes start to take on organic or exciting turns.

As always, your best teacher is trial and error. You don't have to write a certain word count each day to be prolific. I've had great writing days where I simply fixated on how I would relate a conversation I overheard to make the details most interesting or chained together ideas for my books. You don't need to formally commit words to your drafts to develop skills beneficial to writing.

Some writers do benefit from certain disciplines. NaNoWriMo is one of those events where you can use the momentum to push yourself further into habits. You might have tried something before but gave up easily then. In an atmosphere where people are feeding each other's goals, it may take you further.

As an artist, I absolutely loathed having to learn vector drawing but it was a requirement in college. Outside of that environment, I might never have embraced and even enjoyed it.

Story building, especially of a complex nature, isn't only something you should try once you feel you can succeed. It's often this odd perception of skill levels that keeps a writer from valuable learning opportunities. Yes, effective writing is difficult. But why throw red tape at a challenge as if you're not good enough to try it at any time? Aim high, fuck it up, put it away for later. Those fearless attempts make a difference and someday you might find where they fit.

An Ode to Editing

Some people dread it. Some embrace it. Initially, I'm on the fence, but fences are places where observations take root, so it's not a bad place to be.

I started editing for UnSung tonight and once more, I looked at the beginning and felt disjointed. I wanted to say too much at once. I was trying to fit all the nouns into one little sentence, one wordy paragraph, one choppy chapter. Yet in this mess, I also centered and found what I really wanted to say. In this case, I took out the character and set about rewording it to paint the scene before the character introduction found a nice natural spot to nestle in. It not only worked, but the dreaded beginning quickly morphed into the story I demanded from it.

If you're the sort of writer that struggles with beginnings, you probably always will. I do and this is far from my first. Either as a reader or a writer, I've seen them all. It doesn't get easier, but I gave up the perfect cram of nouns and started with building on solid ground. Because in the beginning, it's all loose sand sifting through sweaty, anxious hands. What clings is few, what remains isn't enough to make a decent sand castle with. Yet you can make the accumulation interesting, the bits and pieces start to form. You just have to let go of all you think sand is and start working on what you need it to be. I need these words to lead to castles and I need these characters to build them. As the writer and the editor, I am the benevolent pharaoh and these will be pyramids, modern day tombs and underworld palaces.

Sometimes I even forget what my job is. I get drawn in to this false sense of comfort that I am simply the reader. Yet in that tunnel vision, I find those organic flinches that tell me something isn't right, an intuition that goes beyond just the technical edit and helps me polish the pace, the structure, the flow. I also find those sterile places that need my voice, those opportunities for humor or exasperation or introspection.

The hours creep away. I meant to read one chapter and suddenly it's 2 AM and I'm four chapters deep on the edge of my seat. I should know what's happening; I wrote the damn thing, yet there I am-- edge of my seat, wondering when my heart will slam into the ceiling as the roller coaster car plunges down so fast, I'd swear it jumped the track and any moment I'll crash. Yet I soar because I thought I knew what I wrote, but I had no idea I'd hit the right notes quite so well. I am proud, I am amazed, I am spinning even when the ride gasps where it's done.

Or the crash comes and I'm frowning at the tragedy of rushed and messy and sometimes incoherent words. Yup, I wrote that too. Yet rather than throw it aside for another unfortunate session, I'm combing through, sifting out the treasures and reminding myself once more. Too much, too little; don't see the sand, see what you want it to be.

I'm sure you're arriving at where I'm going here-- that however you feel about those dreaded edits, there's some real gold-mining here. I even pity the people who are so confident in their first drafts that they bypass this sadistic (and masochistic) pleasure of the edit. It's partly attitude, partly experience, partly realizing that your writer brain is absolutely not on stand-by but a valuable and liberating part of the process.

So here's my advice: no matter how much you focus on being prolific or rushing to the next idea because you just have so many or whatever excuse you've made for avoiding it, teach yourself the art of editing. When I'm not working on my own projects, hell, I'd be happy to let you pay me to do it even. In the beginning of my journey, I might have tried to get away with doing it as little as possible, but now, I anticipate it. When I'm celebrating a finished draft, I'm rubbing my hands together at the treasure trove ahead of me in the next phase.

In my experience, a great editor, like a great writer, is adaptable to the process. In the case of self-editing, you're holding court with yourself-- often it's the you that initially wrote it and the you that is deciding if that hard work is really the best it can be. You don't trade the passion of drafting for doldrums in editing. I find my new knowledge to be exciting to work with, like an expert that has the power to change canon with a tap of the keyboard. Because I am.

So, if you need the motivation to tackle every perceived weakness, remember you'll be skipping along the highs of your strengths. You'll be the master of a drafted piece and you'll wave a wand over mistakes, be inspired to add (and delete) scenes, really feel the life pulsing through your ideas.

To me, book releases are far more dreadful. It's that stage that always makes it hard to swallow because it's where you're finally letting it go, where the words are stuck exactly where you left them. Yet don't let that stop you either. While some stories will never give you the confidence that they're ready, others will be more insistent. I always give my MSs one final pass where I tie my hands down and ask if this passes as a reader. If so, it's going to be the best damn indication you can get.

Truly, I hope I can win over more writers to the joys of editing. It's certainly not the first dastardly task that has won me over with time. If my stubborn brain can be won, I have hope for the rest of you!

Be Thankful, But Not Too Thankful

Thankful? Sounds like a great topic to cover for Thanksgiving!

The number of sales you get will rarely ever add up to the amount of people who actually buy it. This was something I came to realize well before I became a published author. In the past I would endlessly gush, give them that feel good response before they'd actually follow through. Yet it would be a response unequal to the actual follow-through and my sales records, humble as they are, always pointed to the reality. They'd gotten their cookie then skipped out.

Over time, I've learned the best way to prompt a follow-through was to deliver a pitch anyway. Let them know how enthusiastic I am about their interest and my work, then ask them to post a public pic to help promote if they do. In that way, I could keep my enthusiasm up regardless of the follow-through and not cringe when it didn't happen. Rather than get my hopes up, I learned to just use it as an opportunity to promote myself and interact, which was how I balanced out the reward system.

Talking about marketing can make my skin crawl. It's a lot about underhanded maneuvers that I just never got comfortable with. Promotion has to have an element of real connection for me or I arouse too much suspicion about whether my work is worth it. That's something I know better than to discuss, something as personal as someone asking me how much money I make. When you display any doubt, you give people room to haggle and bully you out of honest work. I've had people try to ask me to make a complex crocheted piece for less than the cost of the yarn. I've had people who never bought my work message me just to say I was charging too much in-game money (currency you get free just for logging in, at that) for a style they don't like. It's part for the course, but rather than take the bait, I wish them luck and politely encourage them to look elsewhere. I won't undercut myself or another creative by devaluing what I do and neither should you! If your work is worth it to someone, rejoice! If it isn't, put it behind you. Chances are, your work is demanding enough as is and trying to change to please everyone will weaken your work until the quality itself degrades.

Sometimes, a bit of negativity can lead you on a gem hunt you haven't considered. Your outright trolls can unknowingly lead you to something you hadn't considered. Creatives are problem solvers first and foremost so a snide remark can be worth consideration, even if it's in the opposite direction. I didn't start imitating the Dragon Ball Z artwork one person grumbled about wanting, but I did consider adding more variation to my style (although it leaned on realism more than shonen anime). On occasion, I'll even ask someone to throw a challenge at me, something they haven't seen from me (for the record, I did do Toriyama style artwork in high school. It was short-lived because it wasn't what held my interest). Don't automatically take a bitter pill with even outright venom. Throw a little sugar on it and leave 'em salty!

Being grateful if not polite is always where my range tends to sit. However, I WILL gush endlessly when my supporters come through. Erika, one of my dearest friends, always lets me know when she has my next book on the way. Emily, one of my oldest friends, even when she's strapped for cash, she'll ask for my books for her birthday or Christmas from her family. My dad usually gets a copy both for himself and me. Debbie is not only a dear friend but a longtime supporter of my art, even a patron through Patreon! She not only buys my books, she also bought me a congratulations on being published gift, a USB key I keep all of my files on to wear as a necklace. My aunt bought at least the first book and one of mom's old school mates, Bob Halloran, bought the first two for his niece. 

I also know these are it for the print sales, but I track and remember all of the people who come through while I struggle to be taken seriously. These are the people I've wholeheartedly thanked for coming through. I also have friends who share my sales links or allow me to post on their channel. It doesn't matter that they haven't made my work explode; it only matters that they care enough to show some support.

Thanking people when they come through is very important to me. Otherwise, I briefly thank people for their interest or support anyway. I have zero reviews but that's okay too. I don't drain my resources on chasing them down, just focus on my work and the ones who give me a chance. I'm working towards the next big milestone-- completing my adult epic fantasy UnQuadrilogy. I have more ideas lined up. My idea of celebrating is usually jumping right into the next goal. The when of that is in the air since I follow the ideas. 

However you choose to accept your victories, water down what could be a defeat. Humility doesn't mean sinking into depression. The idea of letting someone break me down only angers me these days. No one gets that power. External gratification can be amazing, but keep a reserve of self-empowerment on the ready. In most cases, your detractors don't have the courage you do. Yet even if a famous author tears you to shreds, it's actually never a better reason to stick with it. Hell, run with it! 'Read the book (famous author) said makes them choose to eat cat shit on a dare rather than read it!'

Have any stories to share of how you overcame negative critics? I'm interested!

Pep Talk with Francesca Lia Block

Another day, another NaNo mail and this one hits home.

I can't deny I've devoured the romance genre. I also can't deny that there tends to be a lot of all or nothing that I'm just not into. I'm not looking for simpering maids and I'm not looking for the aggressive bulldozers that fuck their way to some pussy-whipped muscle kitten. I still have a copy of the Highland Velvet series by Jude Devereaux, a series that always set the bar with balanced love affairs. I love romance. I even enjoy writing it, but when I read freebies, I truly end up scanning for the juicy bits because most attempts at plot or conversation are hard chalky cheese.

Early on, when I couldn't quite figure out how to sell my fantasy books, I'd even entertained filing into the romance genre. It's one of the few genres where people just don't expect much of women and we're not accused of being women like it's a bad word. I wanted an easy boost, a break from the pain of rejection and hardship. I wanted a supplemental income so I wouldn't be broke while I pursue my passions.

I tried and it was far more painful. It wasn't me at all. I love to incorporate romance but I can't make it the purpose of my story. Even when I would read deeper darker romances like Danielle Steele's Malice, I didn't find my voice in focusing solely on the heroine and hero. Try as I might, there is a real limit to how far I can even hit the Urban Fantasy mark because I really struggle to use real places. I could pass as an Internet traveler but I don't know the world very intimately. Anne Rice set the bar for vampire romance and I don't even care to try to top that. Memnoch the Devil was a pivotal book for me when, after studying religion, I was battling the realization that I was an atheist that just really wanted to believe in something. And somehow it really painted the Christian mythology in a beautiful interpretation that helped me come to terms with it. 

In fact, I've always known that no matter what subgenre I use, fantasy was my playground. I couldn't do the 'quick and dirty' romance and mainly because I thought it was an insult to the genre to even treat it like an easy mark. Maybe someday I can focus on that, but I'm a fantasy nerd and I need those plot complexities with my character developments that just don't do well with readers that want a simpler story. 

It's shaky ground. As I've said before, it's a shame that romance gets a bad rap. It's a place where women learned about their bodies and their feminine strengths when even public schools wouldn't teach us what we needed to know. It's a genre that can have depth and action and plot gymnastics but still gets hit by literary critics because it's also a playground for lonely people who aren't always looking for intelligent epiphanies, just an emotional release. And I say people because there are MEN, even straight men, who find refuge in these concepts but aren't likely to admit it. Too much of a taboo on what the genre is, after all.

The inability to embrace being primarily a romance writer is my failure. It's just not the priority of my voice. I also understand that the fantasy crowd is also highly resistant to my stories too. One whiff of words like romance or sex and I'm like the plague. A female fantasy writer, unless she's claiming a romance subgenre, often needs to use words like war and weapons and violence because any soft language is likely to fuck over her credibility. Yet I'd gladly suffer through the stupid biases than do any discredit to the romance genre by pretending it's easy or lesser than what I want to do. 

Women can certainly succeed alongside men but often, classic women writers also had to write like men. It's very important for modern women writers to resist these temptations of what we perceive of as 'easy' because we ultimately sweep something under the rug when we are afraid of our own voice. We have to risk being pegged in the wrong genre. We have to risk our work going unnoticed. 

Now the Pep Talk was mainly about claiming your own voice, listening to those inner voices telling you something just doesn't fit your work, but as a woman, I felt a little stab at the personal resonance of considering a niche that I perceived as the only way I'd succeed and get to write what I want eventually.

But no. What did my mom's death teach me? We have now. I can't risk destroying my voice, my experience, my passions, just to maybe sell or maybe fail just the same. 

So yes. Listen to your damn voice. If it demands personal integrity, you can weasel around it all you want, but you'll turn your talents into misery. When you shut away your full potential, you let it shrivel and wilt. You might kill all desire to do it, even form a trauma that gives you paralysis when you even think of it.

Don't kid yourself. No matter what defense mechanisms you may build up, there is no bigger discredit than being anyone but yourself. I am actually rather damn proud that my traumas and my adaptations have given me the ability for great insight as a writer. I can give a sort of depth built from experience that some can only generically emulate. Never take such things for granted. While I can't wish things like drug abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, etc on anyone, the takeaway is that those who triumph often have one hell of a story.

So don't piss on that opportunity. Feed. Your. Voice.

The Unread Writer

Maybe two people read my work that I know of for sure. When I give it away free, I might get six new downloads but no reviews. It's the sort of response that probably doesn't encourage new writers to go for it, but I don't think it's pathetic to admit it.

When you choose to go against the grain, the chance of even amazing work being noticed is really slim. The chances of your friends and family gushing about it is even less. I'm not going to tell you that I'm bitter or defeated because doing it was never dependent on how or when it is received. I'm not immune to it, but it doesn't have enough pull to keep me down either.

I don't have a newsletter, mainly because I know author newsletters usually end up sent straight to spam. I read for other people but never ask them to read my work. I mostly just lose track of time in the excitement of creative pursuits, rarely talking about it but always thinking about it. I don't put any money into it, just time. I don't want to outsource when it's important for me to depend on myself to learn what I know I'm capable of. I add writers to my social media but sometimes I hide them for a while. When I feel the bite of envy, I don't dare shit on their happiness so I walk away and work on myself. I don't get ads or push them aggressively or compare them to Twilight or Lord of the Rings or try to convince people they're the next big thing.

You won't really get a good sense of my voice from my blog that will lead you to know my work in fiction. Unlike most authors, my first books are often not full of my best ideas since I love the slow build, the Easter eggs, the inner dialogue... I'm a lot more focused as a novelist too, where my blogs are often just dumping grounds for thought before I tackle my discipline. I do want people to read my work but I'm not up to lying if they ask if they'll like it. I might say 'maybe' or 'I don't know' because I have no clue who my audience is. I've seen my books pirated and listed as erotic romance as I feared they would. It's a risk anytime a woman writes a sex scene, even non-consensual. There's still the stigma that men can't possibly care to read any intimate thoughts that women might have. Eh, maybe they don't-- it's still juvenile to suggest that they need a trigger warning in the form of mis-categorizing an author into a genre they don't stand a chance in because it's a women's category they won't accidentally read.

I read a lot of articles on the craft of writing and it doesn't really shed any light on what I do. Really, only the 'fantasy' part is central to my work. I intertwine mystery, horror, suspense, humor, eroticism, etc. on a whim and just slap Adult on it to be safe. All the while, I focus on how I can drive people to look at the plot. Or look at it all. As pathetic as it sounds, I've prepared myself to be invisible for the next ten years or more. Because that is still optimistic in a field where most people never make it. Then again, most people give up.

Will passion someday not be enough? It's possible. However, if you read my blog, you know that I annihilated everything that meant anything to me for years. I quit writing, I quit drawing, I quit listening to music... I didn't get it back on a whim. There was school, then I took up crochet again. I started drawing ideas that I wanted to crochet and writing back stories for dolls I wanted to make. It wasn't a decision to do what I loved or to make anything of it-- it was organic and a sign that it was important to me on a deeper level than how I could monetize it. Yet I learned a lesson about placing value on your work. No one will value it if you don't give it a value. (And this still stands if they aren't buying it either!)

It's possible that I'm even afraid of focusing on that aspect and losing the magic once more.  I refuse to work for passion alone. People who give away their work are often smug about it, but they have a stable job that pays the bills or are being provided for by someone who does. It never comes off as passionate or charitable, especially to other creatives, who struggle to convince people that their art does have value and people can't expect it to be free. I've been through these points before, but there's a balance that is important to find here-- somewhere between market value and passion, I truly just want to stay in a place where the desire to create never fades. Yes, money is one of the carrots on the end of the stick. Validation is wonderful too. As long as the ideas keep coming, I want to respect them and feed them and never pretend that any of it isn't important.

The 50K part of NaNo doesn't matter to me. I've done 80-100K in a month, more if you factor in blogs, shorts and jotting down ideas. I want to see the enthusiasm of people chasing their ideas, the trepidation, the sense of purpose. Chasing numbers can cause detrimental anxiety. Been there done that with numbers on the scale. I'm physically in better shape than most people my age, aside from the chronic pain and digestive issues. I'm at peace with being overweight because I know it's the way my body maintains itself. I treat my mental needs the same way. If I need to write, I write. If I need to draw, I draw. What needs to be done will get done when I am ready. 

And probably in a way that few are doing it. One of the reasons I give advice is because it is important that writers have options. When we cycle through all of what is supposed to lead to success and nothing takes, we need to know that the good and bad is that nothing has changed and, damn it, just keep going!

I know that for some, there's a window on the dream. In fact, I fear it too. Life has a way of changing where you are and sometimes other priorities shut you down. Even so, you can't act on urgency or you create unnecessary stress and your work suffers for it. Try to make your time focus on quality. You don't have to be a fast writer. I know how badly we all want to get the work done, how all of the stages can only create more wistfulness to see it to completion. Even so, stop looking at other people's word counts. The high ones often denote a good day and they might disappear into a funk and not be able to or have time to write at all. You might only be able to pump out a thousand words a day, but you're in pace with the person who pounds out 8K one day then doesn't write for a week. Your consistent pace probably also saves you time because you probably don't need to reread from being away too long. You probably also researched more or considered ideas or spent more time with family or went on walks. You might be exactly where you are most effective, so don't kill that with comparisons.

As for being an 'unread writer', I hope I can look back on it and laugh shakily someday. That someday the passion and work will earn a matching response. However, in order to stand a chance of enjoying it, the work must continue. I need to test my ideas and improve myself. That never ends for a creative. There will never be a point where I feel there is nothing left to do or learn. Any attempt at 'relaxing' away from it was hell.

I'm at peace with my path. I'll continue to forge ahead.

When It's Good, It's Good

Despite how trite these words of wisdom are, it is what it is. I could do this forever, but what I'm getting at is that reaching a goal isn't always cause to celebrate. Or at least not for long.

After reaching 50K for NaNoWriMo on the 15th, my story was just on fire. There was no way I was putting it down to go back and edit, not when my current drafting efforts are falling together in ways I hadn't planned. 

The first time I ever heard that people don't find sequels as good as the first one directed at books, I was stunned. Sure, with movies, I get it. There's a whole team of people dumping ridiculous amount of money into a product they hope will start a full-blown franchise. For most writers, we learn that it can take a lot of damp matches to even light a candle let alone hope to set the world's imagination ablaze.

I've said before that I always feel like my first book of a series is weakest in retrospect. I know it's not the best business practice to make it seem lackluster when it's supposed to be the flagship that keeps up the journey. UnNamed excited me. Yet UnSung thrilled me. Working on UnHeard absolutely enthralls me. In a way, I feel like I may want to consider writing the first three books of any series before releasing anything. Why? Because I see a pattern of only feeling completely confident about the world I begin once I've established three books. My first series struck the same chord; in each trilogy, the third book always felt like the strongest.

UnNamed is almost too quick a read despite being nearly 90K. UnSung's massive word count really helped me pace the characters and discoveries and I'm finding the same colorful spread even more fully realized in UnHeard. I won't rewrite UnNamed unless there's some overwhelming call for it, but I feel like I might have thrown in another huge growth and wealth of story if I were going back to redraft it.

Of course, I'm playing with the idea of some short stories. A few branching from UnNamed's history, at least one brewing from UnSung. The UnSung one actually wedges in between UnSung and UnHeard but not in the series format that would make it fit. It would detail an event that will be vaguely mentioned sometimes but completely unnecessary to the main plot. I'm rather a stickler for not developing anything that doesn't link directly to the main plot so it's definitely a spin-off.

All the same, as a writer, I'm embracing the idea that plans are suggestions. I didn't expect to want to keep writing UnHeard. It was supposed to help build confidence in the continuing story but it became an entity all its own.

If I can offer any advice, it's this-- don't squander those hard pulls. Some writers might take that too narrowly. I do see quite a few that post those memes about starting five new stories on impulse but that's not as widely relatable as the Internet would have you believe. I'm never short on ideas, but I don't find those pulls affect me in the way I mean this. Those instant impulses are more along the lines of a hard tug, whiplash away from the scary finish. It's not that I don't have them, it's just that I don't place value on them when what I really want is the long pull.

It's not exactly beginner's advice because, like your first childhood crushes, all of the pulls/tugs feel important. It took years of introspection to understand the weight of impulses, to learn which ideas to flirt with and which to court. The 'years' part is subjective, having little to do with wisdom, age, experience or maturity. You just stop relating to the ones who complain they don't have enough ideas or have too many once you know it. You always have the right amount of ideas and adapt to how they present themselves.

I write almost obsessively despite this cold kicking my ass still because this is a pull and it makes me truly excited to follow it for days on end. If it had been an impulse, some false lead, it would have faded in a couple hours.

Don't mistake this as some statement for the superiority of epic-length novels. Anything that keeps you excited to keep going past a couple hours qualifies in this example. Pulls need time. You can get bursts from poetry or flash fiction but until you're pouring those into compilations, it's just not the same (coming from someone who was a burst writer). Again, if you're using the flirt/court analogy, then you're looking at the difference between a one night stand and a love affair. A text message and a shoebox full of love letters. Bursts are amazing and valuable but if you're lamenting that you'll never finish a novel as something that matters to you, then you're looking for the pull. Until you learn to swat the distractions, the chances of producing those larger goals are really slim.

Think about what else in your life could stand to improve by limiting those pesky impulses. Or just embrace the hot mess. 

For the hell of it, I'll just wrap it up by saying I'm at the 71K+ mark now. It's way over the goal, but why not see if I can make it to 100K?  Certainly seems doable at this rate.

Trial, Trauma, Fantasy-- Find Your Themes

One of the things people never realized about me in my early life was that reality was always as much in my head as the world I share with everyone else. I was teased for being genuinely terrified in haunted houses, clamping my ears as fireworks exploded in light and sound around me, and not really believing that fairy tales weren't real (even if magic didn't exist now, perhaps it was more historical than fantasy). Over time, my head wrapped around these distinctions somewhat, but not from lack of people I thought I could trust forcing me to lay down clear lines between fantasy and reality, lest my own trauma be dismissed as overactive imagination. It hurt that no one saw how I cringed when my abuser hugged me, that no one questioned why I couldn't sleep without a light on. In time, I began to think that maybe they knew but I just wasn't important enough to defend. The illusion that children were protected was never one I got to enjoy. I was meant to feel sorry for a parent whom was a best friend at best, someone I parented or was used as entertainment by at worst. Yet no such forgiveness was available for the child that stumbled through life confused when mistakes were inevitable but unacceptable nonetheless. I reached a resolution with my childhood woes late into adulthood. The apology was made but the damage was done.

Fortunately, as a child, I already possessed an internal world that captivated me. It's possible that without that early trauma, I might not have retreated into myself as I did. I didn't write or draw as an outlet, at least not on any conscious level. I've said before that those places are ones I can't really access in my darkest moods. Drawing and writing became a playground, not just for what I wanted to see, but what I wasn't able to face at full force yet wouldn't allow to haunt me. Either way, I had to reflect on it when the full force of trauma was not new. Extremities are incoherent for me in their throes. It even took me decades to learn to explain how I was gaslighted by a psychopath. They can literally convince you you're crazy and that you don't remember what really happens in your own life.

lol I know-- that got dark fast. I won't apologize, but it gets less morbid. The fantasy genre, after all, was a natural start. I could face darker realities under the cover of fiction. But I could also play in places of whimsy and innocence. And innocence lost. Rather than go into anything too deeply, I'll start hopping around on the themes I care about.

I won't cover mythology/gods, sex, time travel or topics I've covered before. I'll aim for something unique to my usual ramblings (but again, as much as I blog, you'll have to forgive repetition).

Castles- not unique in terms of being loved but new to my topics. Castles and palaces, realistically, were not that cozy of luxuries. In fact, drafts are a problem you hear repeated when it comes to one of its many downsides. Not to mention, very few were of modest size. If the upkeep itself wasn't too expensive over time, then getting from one side to the next was tedious enough. It wasn't uncommon for even wealthy castle owners to huddle into a single wing during harsh winters or even only keep up outside appearances yet opt to only use a small portion of it. Let's call them what they are: displays of wealth and fortresses meant to intimidate. Architectural marvels but I'd need some serious downscaling and modern amenities to make it livable. As a child, there was no practical obsession, only the romanticism of spires, drawbridges, moats and knights on armored horses. While Scotland and Germany have ones I'd realistically love to see, the use of castles in my stories is never romanticized very long if at all. Building do receive sort of personalities in my work, often related to how people envision them. Rather than just a rich vs. poor perception, buildings do have the potential to subtly show the mentality of the observer.

Princesses- historically, we all realize there were really few realities more rotten than that of a princess. I get that, with present dreams of wealth at any cost, the why is lost on many people. Yet princesses were not only property but public figures. They were never given agency nor encouraged to love and privacy was almost impossible. They were groomed and sold for the greatest gain, some not even educated let alone allowed consent with their own bodies. Even more progressive times have never given princesses much choice and even then, it was a slim list rife with expectations. Movies like The Princess Diaries make light of 'choosing a prince' as if age and looks were ideal. It was just as likely a princess would have to marry an abusive old widower with five children older than her or even her own brother. But hey, as a kid, nothing was more romanticized than Disney Princesses, if only for their perfect demeanors and dresses. We were willing to forgive that Beast terrorized Belle and that Snow White was indebted to the prince who kissed her. But true love, amirite?

Seas- not all of my books go into my love of oceans, but when they are present, I am drawn to their potential. Starting at my childhood fascination, most people who know me would think that Myrtle Beach is the origin. Yet my true love started with the deepest unexplored places, namely learning about the Mariana Trench. If it has ever been explored, I admit I don't really want to know. The idea that there might be creatures or secrets where my imagination can run wild is reason enough to accept blissful ignorance. You could try to ruin that for me but in my head, there will always be mysteries worth exploring. Raising African cichlids could be part of it. Even though they are freshwater fish, all fish navigate through water in a way that never fails to fascinate. Seas are places where I might be limited in movement, but there are so many ecosystems and life that dominate it in a way we can only dream of (and I do in a future book, Piscine).

Martial Arts- this isn't something you'll see me get carried away with in writing but every bit of choreography does stem from inhaling Kung Fu movies as a kid. Like some chess players romanticize the sequential movement of pieces (Amy Tan does this a time or two in her books), the names of stances, kicks and styles are my cup of tea. While Jean Claude Van Damme made a stinker with Street Fighter, one of my all time favorite movies was the Quest, a campy movie with a solid plot that makes a real show of different fighting styles. Who can forget Bloodsport? And Jackie Chan's Drunken Fist! I could go on and on but one thing is certain, I'm not a stranger to the beauty of a well written action scene. I try to do better every time it's worth exploring. There a beauty to martial arts equivalent to dancing. Even in Drunken Fist, Jackie Chan managed to make stumbling look like calculated grace.

Magic- magic is easy to tear apart. Without limits or logic, it always seems to fall apart at the slightest nudge. In Harry Potter, Alohomora seemed like a snazzy trick and Avada Kedavra a fearsome one, but what really stops a wizard from opening any door, even if all wizard doors could enchant against it (sucks to be you, muggles)? The only thing stopping Avada Kedavra from being used is... Trust and morality? We're so fucked! The same goes for hiding everything from the muggles. This seems like a really easy rule to rebel against. Hell, even Harry fucked up on accident. I suppose Rowling probably amended this later, pretending she'd already thought it out to save for Pottermore. Or maybe because it was young adult, it was fine to gloss over it. Yet try telling a Star Wars fan that you don't need to explain everything because it's 'kid's stuff' and them's fighting words! Maybe it was just a lovely pothole to slam us out of imagination. Regardless, it makes me consider how I formulate my own magical worlds. Now, as far as childhood goes, what kid doesn't dream of magic in any and every form?  Magic is a tough sell for most adults who do pick apart the mechanics but I also don't find it necessary to explain everything. However, the mechanics shouldn't be big enough to crash Ron's dad's car into. (I can't fault Rowling for her imagination -- big stories can get away from anyone and few are as dedicated as she to reworking the details, even to the point of maddeningly fucking with her own canon.)

Women Who Aren't Born Strong- I feel like this is something that speaks to me most. I rarely have even seasoned or old characters that always seem to have the right tool for every situation. I absolutely do see a need for strong women in fiction, but not bulletproof. Smart women can make dumb decisions. Beauty can make them dull and dependent. The heroines I connect with are the ones that often have to make the most important decisions without experience or help, so I don't make them infinitely lucky nor does 'knowing better' automatically mean they are immune to it when it comes in a different box. In reality, kind women sometimes let people hurt them the same way many times because they try hard not to become bitter or judgemental and think all people are the same. My strong women doubt themselves, sometimes get their ass saved by a man, sometimes finding strength in the wisdom of what they are best and worst at. I can't lift a big TV like my dad can. I have CPS, for one, and even doing yoga, I learned my wrist strength and flexibility had peaked well below even some of my friends that didn't work out. A strong woman doesn't need to be good at everything. A strong woman is a well-rounded woman who makes the best of herself. And sometimes fucks up. Even if you give her the most wretched traumatic past, making it have only a superficial bearing on her perfection in your tale will assure I won't even bother to finish it.

The last point doesn't really have a category, just a personal preference. Just... fuck sadness. I avoid sad movies and entertainment period. I'll take violent, sexy, and sure, throw in some sad moments, but I don't do sad endings and if I spend too much time sinking, I'll jump ship. I can hang with dark to a point. Dark humor can be one of my favorites. I don't like endings that are too saccharine either, so it's not some weird demand that people keep me happy. Yet I've been fooled by enough movies and dramas labeled romance that were just fucking sad and telling me something is sad will guarantee I won't bother. Yes, I write sad here and there, but it's never been a place to leave a final ending. Sadness makes me feel like an abused masochist for pain. I've endured enough to know that I would never choose to feel it if I don't have to. I don't need sad to feel alive. In fact, it can take me to a place of not wanting to be alive.  If you love sad (and this tends to be one of those quirks that women most often embrace), good on you. However, I'll take a rousing, exciting, suspenseful tale.

Just a side note-- I'm not vague about my past because I'm avoiding it. I exercise privacy because I don't have some sick need to hurt other people who could be affected by it. I don't want to poke rabid dogs either. I don't have the means to run if my honesty turns my world inside out. They are a part of me that I do talk about with a very limited audience, but they inevitably bear some weight on who I am and how they feed into my work.

If you are someone who is still struggling with the pain of trauma, please know that there are many numbers to call for help. If you're a close friend, you already know I'm always available and your pain doesn't inconvenience me at all.

Let it be known that my pain does drive me and I have learned to manage it. It's not perfect, but it doesn't get to trigger me as it has become wisdom, caution and valuable for introspection once I've learned to twist damage into something useful. I am not grateful to those who hurt me or give them any credit for making me stronger. That part is in each of us from the start and only you get that fulfillment.

In the Land of Prompts

I'm normally not big on prompts. I'm still on the fence as to whether I'll do Inktober next year, if only because the prompt thing is just not my favorite. My high school days were filled with other kids getting me into trouble by whispering to me asking if I could draw any number of things I wasn't drawing. Cars, ships, planes, dinosaurs... Even thought I know Inktober gives you so much room to play with the word of the day, I still feel that twinge of annoyance I need to get over that now sounds like 'hey, can you draw a tattoo of a bear, eating a bear, eating a bear that's eating Goldilocks?' While I'm sure that it would turn out pretty cool, it would be hard for me to work up the desire to do it. Even if I love you, I don't always have full control of my motivational focus and enthusiasm to finish.

However, it might be partly to do with presentation or just people coming up with prompts that sound like bad Mad-Libs. Not every original idea needs to be done and some are avoided for a good reason. In high school, I might have joyfully taken the writing challenge of: write a story where a ghost obsessed with knitting haunts a mafia boss until it gets to see a kangaroo for the first time. It would have sucked, but if you told me it couldn't be done well, I'd try to prove you wrong. Hell, my teenage ego would even have insisted you were full of shit if you didn't like it.

Okay, the ego might be better managed, but let's face it-- the writers that last are STILL the ones that write even when people tell them they suck.

One challenge I have been taking up are the Young Reader's prompts that come with my word count badges. I pop open my tablet and pound out stories that... well, I may publish them on my blog later, but they aren't part of my book at all. One involved pretending I was my character writing a farewell letter to the author (actually me). It's a huge spoiler if you haven't read the book (don't worry; no one has-- UnSung hasn't come out yet and UnHeard will take another year after that to write and clean up) so... I wouldn't be able to post it for quite some time anyway, but even the second (include an awkward dinner scene) doesn't actually fit into the theme, but was still fun to think up (oddly, I did just write a dinner scene prior to the email, but 'awkward' would have killed the intent).

Perhaps it's because it was presented with a milestone (congratulations for reaching 40K words!) that somehow made it feel like an extension of the reward. I'd pulled out my tablet and hammered it out and I usually loathe typing on my tablet.

Not that I expect every part of writing to come with some little trophy, but self-rewarding is often a motivational tool for creatives. You allow yourself that sinfully fattening favorite coffee or nibble on chocolate or buy yourself a reaffirming treat like a nameplate that says "Krista Gossett, Author." I haven't done that yet but you shouldn't either. It would be really weird if you keep my name on your desk.

It can be difficult to come up with simple but motivational prompts. Writers already know that day-to-day motivation changes with the wind and even great prompts aren't something most of us care to keep up with. Unless it's really doing something for you, then don't force it. As with all things writerly. you're not guaranteed to force your muse to work. Being prolific for most people often requires assloads of time and even if you're not working with said assloads of time, it can be a chore to even get out a couple thousand words towards any main writing project.

Of course, prompts, short stories, challenges-- all of them could have unique palate cleansing properties. As a rule, I never sink into a writer's block mentality unless I've tried all I could to dig myself out. For me, I usually know ten minutes into doing anything if I'm going to warm up to it. If I'm not, I walk away, even if it's a ten minute break before I change tact. Muses can be divas/divos (or is that divx? Nah, that's a file format already...), but you can sometimes warm up to a task by changing how you approach it. 

Maybe you only have an hour that you were hoping to turn into a word sprint. If after 40 minutes, you manage to find your flow, then treasure the 20 minutes you get. Beating yourself up over the struggle to get there is pointless, so crumble up the thought and pitch it in the wastebasket. 

Open File in Word, select New, name it Useless Thoughts, save as docx or rtf, throw it in the desktop wastebasket and enjoy that lovely crinkle sound. The more effort you put into being a smart-ass with a sense of humor, the more chance you'll recover from your own misplaced disappointment.

I'm going to assume that you're awesome because you're reading my blog. I'm also going to assume you're not superhuman and make a lot of stupid mistakes. You're going to be your own worst critic at times and sometimes, to your detriment, your biggest fan. Being critical is always where you'll grow.

So, don't rule out prompts, buuuuut also don't rely on them. Even if you're sure of everything else-- what genre you want to write, the overflow of ideas, your unblocked mind, how many fingers I'm holding up-- there's always room to improve as an artist.

Plus, no one ever wants to hear that your craft bores you because you're so ahead of the game, there's nothing left to learn. Not only do most of those people stop doing the thing they claim to be infallible at so they can't be weighed against their ego, but they're also complaining to whoever didn't unfriend them that everyone who did was jealous.

PSA: No one is really that jealous. In 99.9999% of claims that someone is jealous of them, they're just in denial that they were a total asshole.

That sounds like a prompt though. Write a story where the protagonist is actually jealous of someone. I bet it's harder to pull off believably than you think. It's such a fleeting response, if at all, that I think people mistake it for a grudge. It's impossibly psychopathic in rapid fire...

Winter Wonder What Now?

Positive posts on FB are why I still bother with social media. Rainbows, clouds that look like dragons and middle fingers, hilarious animal videos and the wit of my many friends. I don't even hate that when weather hits people clamor to show pictures of the destruction and look for each other and scramble to make sure their animals are comfortable. Like books, the less the posts are attempting to influence or call for sympathy, the more likely I am to allow myself to find those depths for myself.

But this post is about weather. Shit's ridiculous here and in many other places besides. These aren't old gripes but rather new for the Cincinnati I've spent a good chunk of my life in. The trees around here have no idea when to cycle, the bugs multiple in huge numbers and take over when the cold would have taken care of it-- it's unnatural chaos in nature. 

This spring, there were several damning false starts. Flower bulbs shot up almost immediately at the first sign of melt then stopped again. The trees didn't even try. Until they did, suddenly, and we had some of the worst cases of asthma, respiratory distress, the pollen and mold counts were insane. Just tree sperm everywhere and well beyond the usual spring cycle, into summer. It was actually a milder summer than usual and one without the drought of the year before that turned everything shriveled and brown. There was plenty of rain and yet, the tomatoes just didn't grow in abundance. I still pine for the summer like the one where there more tomatoes than we and the thieving squirrels could handle.

Fall? What's fall? We had about two weeks that felt like it. Leaves finally started turning colors and the nights were good for bonfires. Yet there were and are still a lot of green on the trees.

Then winter happened.

Kind of. Not really. We got snain, what the boys and I call the combo of fat snow flakes and rain. We woke up yesterday, at first admiring the fingers of ice dangling everywhere, not really paying much attention to the big downed branch in the front yard that came down while we slept.

We heard a loud crack, what sounded like someone loudly and poorly opening a bag of potato chips and saw another rather large branch come down. I went outside to look and immediately noticed that every tree still burgeoning with still green leaves looked at least ten feet short, drooping with the sheer weight of ice that coated every branch, stem and leaf. I told the boys we'd get a better look when we went outside to go to school and nearly every fifteen minutes another branch went down.

Reports all over the area reported down branches and even huge trunks, split under the weight of weather that trees here just hadn't evolved to handle. Power lines as well. People started to post about not having power, some getting it back after hours, some going on a day or more. We worried about it too. A couple of branches rest right over our power lines and if the rain had kept coating everything where it froze, we'd be among them.

I was already devising a way to keep my tropical fish alive if it came to it. Luckily, our house still gets hot water and the stove still works when the power is out.

Until the tree gets taken down, I can't say I'm not thinking about the what-ifs. All the same, nature used to be an adaptive cycle that wavered but always managed to balance out. These years have been anything but.

It doesn't matter if people believe climate change is real or that we affect it greatly. There are actual studies that can tell you that not believing we are part of the problem is willful ignorance. If you're only going to make an argument for human comfort, then you can't deny that even what is out of our hands is still something we have to clean up then work to solve. When you suspect that something is killing you, are you really that surprised that rather than being cautious at the first sign, it got worse because you waited for all the evidence to came in?

There's enough. We're fucking up a world we have the run of, even though we also have the means to fix it. We're sniping away at insignificant petty shit and the greed, even brought to spotlight, is never really tackled. We all bitch about it. I do too. And maybe we can't win people over, certainly not by being 'passionate' know-it-all assholes at that.

We're attacking each other over the big unknowns, writing off what nature is telling us clear as day. Even though they don't directly correlate to all arguments of climate change. I'm not going to hoard lists here of every natural and unnatural occurrence as a way to make everyone bow to the whims        of the planet. I don't disagree that the earth does go through drastic natural shifts. Yet don't use those as blankets for a shitty carbon footprint. I won't make a case for being efficient. Just don't be the dick trashing your neighborhood and choosing luxury over harmony every time.

Life would suck if we always let moral judgements be public domain. I get that. Yet denial over the evident, the whole ant and the grasshopper dilemma of not doing shit until it's too late? Don't be that guy. I'm sure even if you are, people still love or tolerate you. It's just disgusting to me that someone like that pretends to give a shit about the seed they spread. People who pretend to guard the sanctity of human life and willfully give their progeny a future full of their table scraps.

Whether you plan on putting these things to thought or not, give your children some desire to figure out how to help ecosystems heal at least. Human intervention in nature CAN leave an impact on human progress. No, you don't have to go vegan or live a joyless life of strict discipline to be mindful of your impact. Encourage and reward those who are doing it. Look at the efforts of permaculture farmers, scientists, doctors. You don't have to be the big change to support it.

I know I'm jumping between two topics that could be muddied as far as how much they actually intersect, but when people start diving down the rabbit hole of climate change, they sometimes brush it off as natural, disregarding that human intervention is just as natural. Our methods of self-preservation and progress are a necessary balance. We can build a better life, but not on the garbage of the broken things left half-working. We tidy the space and learn from the mistakes.

Maybe I give my own species too much credit, for what we can do and what we will do. I live a good life, but we all think that too. I know it's useless to get frustrated when the mess you try to avoid is the mess someone else makes. What keeps me happy is doing what I believe is right for me. I don't police those I love and I don't police the planet. I just sincerely hope we will continue to discuss it.

Because these goddamn trees need some boot camp style weather training at the very least. 

I'm Telling You-- Nothing Like Flying High!

I joked with a friend last night that if I was really dedicated, I could still make it to 50K by the middle of the month. I really didn't intend to actually sit down for the 10+ hours it would take to do it, but my cold-addled brain was the overworked cheerleader I suspected it might be.

50,309 words down by 11:16 PM. You're damn right I did it.

I'm absolutely chuffed about it, clicking my gods-damned heels and fist-pumping carefully because the sloped ceiling is really not room enough to do it without breaking some knuckles.

Still, I'm thinking about my other writer friends, the ones way ahead of me (yup, there are plenty of those) and the ones way behind. Again with the word count... When I said you can ignore it, it doesn't mean to remove it as a motivational tool. It could convince you to stop, it could convince you to keep going, but it could still be strangling the benefits of developing good habits too.

People burn out. Sometimes this kind of thing might have people so paralyzed that they don't even touch a keyboard until the next NaNo sneaks up and sends them into a state of cold panic. Okay, that may or may not be accurate, but writers come in all kinds.

I'm sticking by the assertion that passion needs discipline. With the good days come the bad. They don't balance out and sometimes there's so many of one that the other seems to have abandoned you completely.

I think my momentum does largely come from the setback. Not so much because I wanted to catch that midway ambition as much as I just COULDN'T write for days and I wanted it so, so badly. It wasn't a mental hurdle. I could even stab the right keys when I was poking for them while lying down with a tablet. Voice dictation probably wouldn't even register my voice as human if I tried. All throughout it, I daydreamed (because sleep was not happening much). I passed out and didn't dream and my mind craved the loss by giving me technicolor thoughts.

Yet I wasn't terrified they'd slip through my fingers. I don't regret the things that slip by. What ends up in my stories is what is meant to be there. If it's meant to come back, it will sprout up elsewhere. I'm so full of these damn things and I don't squander any time lamenting what I haven't done, won't be able to do or am not doing. 

I'm doing. Are you doing? Then get to it. Again or for the first time. Float ya boat.

Writing High... Do Eeeeet...

I don't mean 'under the influence', although I'm not against the cannabis lovers of the world (I myself don't enjoy smoking it, but I'm wildly curious about CBD as an option for pain and anxiety).

No, I mean writing on the ass-end of a cold type of high. I might have even mentioned this before since it's simply the bee's knees.

Well, when you put it this way, 'the bee's knees' are actually pretty gross. Which also describes my cold.

I KNOW I've had to mention balloony-head, that little window where you don't actually remember much, but what you do tends to be fantastic. Like you think blacking out drunk will be based on the people who lie about their adventures while doing it. Only legitimately and completely fun. Not embarrassing, waking up in vomit and urine kind of... fun?

Either way, somehow I went from about 35.5K on my NaNo goal to breaking 40K. I not only have no idea what I actually wrote, but I'm absolutely going to pick it up from there tomorrow. It is usually miraculously comprehensible but more sarcastic, I guess. It's definitely something else.

10K more to go. I wouldn't be surprised if somehow, I make that goal tomorrow. Why? Because I'll have no sense of time and it'll just happen if it does. I've done maybe 6-8K in a day on occasion and it's not impossible that between blogging and short stories that I've topped 10K in a day, but hell, why not unintentionally set a new record?

Don't worry-- I'm still babying this cold. I can ill afford for it to get worse, but as long as I'm not dizzy or feeling wretched, writing is much preferred to binge-watching whatever crap Hulu thinks I should watch. Anyone else yell at the Still There? (Or the 'are you still watching name-of-show-because-you-might-be-unaware of' of Netflix) for doubting your abilities to want it to keep going even if you're not watching or there? We all know I'm not all there!

More on whatever comes next in a later post...

I'm Back... Sorta

Despite the balloony-headedness of this stage of my cold, I decided to do some minimal writing today, just to break the annoying tedium of Netflix, tissues and the layers of Vaseline it takes to salvage the results from rubbing these tree-shreddings against my face all day.

So why not get to Justina Ireland's Pep Talk from our NaNo mail today?

lol Writing sucks... Already my kind of pep talk! Like many people, after I get over the butthurt of a harsh reality, what motivates me is often the begrudging acceptance that despite how much certain processes can suck, I'm going to do it anyway. And for the sheer fact that I can't stand wondering what something would be like when I could be trying to find out if it can be done.

The message is pretty simple here. You're probably not going to magically feel better at writing, nor will it become a task that gets easier, but you're going to come back as long as the drive remains.

People might tell you that writer's block is just laziness, fear, an excuse to seek attention, lack of ideas (or the confidence to realize them)... Whatever. I've tried to explore what 'writer's block' is and it's mostly a purely mental place and not one that people can easily suss out for you. In most cases, writing sucks because it's not a magic formula you're always eager to chase, that the words sometimes just aren't there when you have the time for them, or in abundance at the worst possible places (afk, yo!).

No one can tell you that you'll finish every story or book or even want to. Everyone is either writing a book, has a book inside them, or lost their way to doing either. Some people will treat it like it's some luxury that will fill in the tedium of retirement (where they imagine it's not work and more along the lines of sipping mai-tais on some beach while typing away on their tablets-- poof! masterpiece!).

Speak to anyone who's actually doing it. What it takes to reach 5K. 10K. 25K. Every few thousand words, it can even be more difficult not less. Shouldn't it be easier the more you establish? Well, no. Some people imagine that they can first draft their way to a great book then throw it into their spell-checker, but the reality is, we often find our best ideas after some retrospect. The cutting room floor isn't just for film-- we also end up throwing around chunks of text with some really amazing insights that we either have to find the perfect place for or come to terms with the fact that we'll have to save a gem for the next story because this just isn't where it goes.

I did plenty of 2-5K essays for college. The structure that instructors look for may seem strict and at times very boring. I was equally guilty of being wordy as hell just to stretch those word counts as far as they would go. I dealt with jaded instructors that took out their literary pet peeves on me (Gods forbid because I used a John Lennon quote one instructor had seen used many times before and always inappropriately-- made for a good debate though on how artists don't expect their lyrics to mean the same thing to everyone and they can still be used 'appropriately' if the words fit the sentiment.) One absolutely flipped their shit if you used the word 'thing', no matter how much it fit the abstract (again, I defended that you don't always want to take away from the more important subjects by using more powerful words for the insignificant).

Let's just say I was not let down by what these challenges did for my writing. I ended up finding a middle ground with all of my teachers, and namely because I got the message early on that as much as an artist must learn to be adaptable, they should also speak up when they want to stand by a choice. I just as often relented where my argument wasn't strong enough-- I reduced color choices or simplified sentences, all in the name of seeing their point of view as well. There wasn't really a 'better' choice, just the attempt to see if I could make it work well for me. 

One teacher asked me why I used the same font on all of my storyboards for a brand design. Even though I varied the color and mood choices of my mood boards, I used the same font repeatedly rather than playing with different ones. I explained that I created the challenge that the client might have insisted on the font in their logo (since we did lock in our brand logos in a previous lesson anyway) and would want to see how well it played into the different images their brand might want to represent. It would give them the confidence to use it more diversely if I could display its versatility. I did however take his suggestion to only use a border I had made on the title pages since I did agree that they seemed to limit the visual of the brand content.

Realizing that balloony-head is making blogging more distracting than usual, I will loop back around and say this absolutely applies to writing as well. Writing IS a lot of mental gymnastics. Even if writing is all you do (or want to do) creatively, you are still wrapping your head around influences (some people are visual or rely on moods from music and so on), trying to carve out an effective story from the cinematic explosion or burgeoning knowledge of a more complex series of ideas. Even simple stories often need more than a light hand. I certainly know writers that whip through typing, yet these are also usually linear and simplistic, what you might call quick and easy reads. Even then, it's still a deceptive title. I'm a fast typist, yet at my fastest pace, 1K/hr is about the best you can expect from me. If I'm typing my absolute fastest creatively, then a standard novel is at LEAST 90 hours of work. In most scenarios, when you throw in planning, editing and finalizing, it's easily 4 times that. With the 200K+ tomes I've committed to these days, it's no wonder that I'm going on nine months of working on my latest book and it's still in drafting/editing stages. Even though I work very efficiently, these aren't stories I want to put out there without being confident in what they are. It takes every bit of time I give to it, no more, no less.

Soooooo, if writing sucks, you're doing it right. Nothing is won without it glaring you in the face. Repeatedly. Until it borders on harassment. I mean, you REALLY have to hate it to the point where you're coming back like a kicked dog. It's not always going to be work. It doesn't reach a point where the nostalgia of being fun is ever a distant thing, a high you will never reach again. You'll always have those revisit, the whimsy of your first time even. And yes, even the awkwardness of it. You'll sit down and forget what words are, wonder if you've lost your mojo, question your sanity. 

And once you get over the highs and lows, you'll remember it doesn't matter all that much. That neither is really all that necessary. You're not going to be the same person every time you sit down, in the same moods with the same confidence. That's the scary and wonderful thing about those introspective spaces. You intimately get to know every uncomfortable and glorious part of yourself. And, if you're lucky, even lose yourself and simply expand into the possibilities that await.

Color Obsession

I'm not starting this one with any attempt at racial integration (and really arguments involving sexualization/food corresponding with skin color are mentally fucking exhausting to me anyway). No, in this case, I want to poke at how color is used in writing. Namely, starting with a gripe-- the need to use a different color word every time someone describes the eyes, bodily fluids, etc.

Why? Because colors aren't really that interchangeable on some levels. While you CAN compare a skin color to caramel and people can easily picture that hue (whether it's favorable or not), you can't as successfully interchange turquoise, aqua, sky blue, cobalt and any damn blue you want. Whyyyyy?

Number one, and probably like you, the audience doesn't know the difference like it is displayed above. Yet, they'll probably notice that you use a different color every time. Even if you think it might be clever to attach those colors to every mood they have, the reader is probably just going to think it annoying or pretentious. Okay, don't really care about that in the long run, but I will say it irks me that writers think this somehow enriches their writing when it doesn't.

I forget who said it and I'm in free-writing mode to warm up to NaNo, but it may have been Ursula Le Guin but it could be Tolkien for all I keep track (again, please don't take my word for it). In essence, the idea is that repetition is not a thing to be strictly avoided. In an earlier post, I covered this with a sub-heading "Sometimes an apple is just an apple" although that was more focused on someone detailing a fruit to try to be creative rather than it being interesting or relevant. Yet still, it tapped on the idea I'm after here with color-- that it's okay to just use the exact word that you mean once again rather than always finding a similar word to avoid repetition. Don't say 'a round object used to make transportation easier' if you mean a wheel. Simplified words are far more indicative of your intelligence and creativity. Trying to use many similar words interchangeably runs the risk of sending even intelligent readers too far off course of vocabulary knowledge.

As for colors, yeah, you can get away with using turquoise and teal to similar effect. However, traditionally, people do picture turquoise to be a darker shade than teal. As you can see, turquoise and aqua even sit in similar shade groups (but sky blue and cobalt are nowhere close).

I'm not saying not to pull out a 'viridian' or 'canary' in your writing, just be maybe aim to be consistent and even scarce. Let lust darken their eyes or happiness lighten them, but don't always feel the need to find the word for that color or mention it at all. It can just be lighter or darker and 'a shade of green' if you must. Although in actuality, that's a bit wordy, maybe that will convince you to be simpler, vaguer, because it's just not that important to the scene. Many writers will insist it IS important but then get frustrated when their readers constantly point out that it was distracting rather than helpful.

Moving onto blood... yes, it can have meaning in the shade as well. Thin blood is brighter than thick or coagulated blood. Dried blood is brown. However, fresh, coagulated, and dried are all powerful enough words without the ruby, crimson or brown attachments. In cases where the wounded doesn't realize it's blood at all, their perception of shock accompanied by it being warm, sticky or reddish before the realization of pain or property sets in can work to invite the reader to realize it before they do. Being too coy about 'ruby droplets' can infantilize an otherwise powerful scene rather than add mystery. Yet the pulse-born steady gush of a deep wound can add the right effect. Rather than be married to the stream of colorful words, you will still find depth and purpose in the words you more carefully select.

Again, let's refer back to 'killing your darlings.' Sometimes that inspired outpouring of prose will need to be butchered down to simpler elements to consider pace, structure and plot more. There is a reason you find more blog posts concerning those things rather than creative writing. Most creatives come by the minute details naturally, but the experienced writer will cut these down on the revision. Being married to words can be a bitter relationship that muddies the story. One hard rule that is still flexible is that the story comes first. You don't need to bury your voice, but don't let it trump your story either.

In the interest of detail, one way to make repetition less cumbersome is in the presentation of the sentences supporting it. I tend to have a love for towering spires and I also love that the word is exactly the right one. Yet when I speak of their features at times, I'll play instead with the adjectives-- make them catch the sunlight or glitter from the stones they are made of. They're jutting or proud or neglected or crumbling. Even then, I try not to obsess on them in a series of paragraphs and even labor to not give them more prominence than they need. As for whether the word is used twice or more in one sentence? Learn not to let it bother you if you need to use every instance. One of the best places for variation will always lie in the adjectives and verbs. Those are expressly made for the job!

You may have noticed I have a particular obsession with color, but it's something I don't force on my writing either. Unless I'm writing a story about a character that shares this obsession, I'm assuming too much as the narrator. If I need to flex these muscles, I'll write that story, but not every story has to be the vehicle for every bit of knowledge and passion I possess. Epic fantasy especially has no shortage of richness that doesn't need any help to boost the word count. Take my latest finished draft, UnSung, as an example. It currently sits close to the 250K mark and may see a higher count still (there are a couple of short scenes needing added to boost a later plot thread). Nevertheless, I really had to plan and pick to isolate it down to the proper pace for the story. It didn't need extraneous poetic filler or info-dumps to get there. In fact, it would be a hard sell and a tedious story if I'd done so.

Summing it up, don't hesitate to flex your vocabulary, but mind how you use it. Use words that don't require people to run to a dictionary. Even when I use fancier color words, I sometimes expand the context the first time I do. "Those viridian eyes, deceptive in their resemblance to the hills behind my childhood home, were far too cold to harbor any of the warmth from my nostalgia." Save sentences like that for where they can make an impact. Be concise. Be short. Then, hit them with the power of an effective chain. Just like candy loses it sweetness when over-indulged, words can lose their power as well.

Writing is trial and error more than do's and don'ts. Even 'do's and don'ts'  is heavily debated, but it's agreed that whichever style you use, at least be consistent. Some effects are better used sparingly, others will need a stricter hand. You'll get a better feel with this as you butt heads with all those damn 'rules' out there. Go ahead and fight it a bit, but keep in mind, your average FaceBook writing group will endlessly encourage bad habits rather than risk offending you by saying your usage was tedious.

All writers are obsessed with words in some sense. Yet finding your voice will come from your inner critic more than your free-flowing creativity. First drafts are often like falling in love, where every word feels right. So many writers become dismayed by how bad the reread is, but understand that that is a passionate but worthwhile response. Never completely silence the need to do better at least. No matter how you improve, it does you good to embrace the skepticism and use it to strengthen the intent of your stories. It's not because you suck and should give up-- it's because you care enough to want it to be the best you can make it.

It's my hope that you can take away some inner strength and criticism alike. Now I need to beat some fish who keep scaring the shit out of me by knocking over rocks. I swear they do this on purpose just to get my attention, so attention they shall get (even if it's not what they were bargaining for).