May was hectic but productive. I mean seriously.

Short Story (working title “Recalled”) - Officially on the back burner. I’ll probably put what I have on the Patreon at some point for you guys to take a look at.

Criminal From Birth sequel - Still with editor. It’s been rough. Still mulling over the title.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - That serious rewrite of chapter one is well underway! Well, let me back up. Last month I had 1445 words written on draft 1 on chapter 1. I got that up to 2159 and completed it, then started the second draft. Second draft is up to 1236 words, and compared to the first draft, I’m only about 1/3 of the way through!

June’s schedule settled down some, so it won’t be quite as insane and I should be able to dedicate more time to writing, especially since I’ll be on GM break from my usual D&D gig. I’m really finally starting to sink into Subscription Life, getting that itch. 

I believe I’ve touched on this subject a few times, but I wanted to make sure I actually went into it a little bit.

A lot of advice given to writers is to read. Read, read, read. Always be reading, along with writing. 

That’s good advice. But what the heck am I supposed to be reading? Fiction like what I’m writing? Stuff unlike it? Academic papers on psychology? Blog posts on writing?

The short answer is… well, yes. In everything you read, there is going to be at least a little something you can take from it that will make you a better writer.

Granted, everything isn’t going to have the same value for you, but there is always SOME value.
Read fiction that is like yours. I mean seriously. How are you going to write science fiction if you’ve never read anything science fiction before? What kinds of things will your space marines get up to that makes no sense if you haven’t gotten any sort of military experience, or at least gotten some idea what space marines do? How is your magic system going to stand up to scrutiny when you’ve never experienced one from another author? Or a dozen?

Oh no, but then I’ll be derivative of everything I’ve read! Yeah, that’s not how this works. You can always learn what you don’t like about other systems and writers, too. Just because you know how magic works in this world or that, or how space marines work in this universe, it doesn’t mean you have to copy them. There are no rules, but there can be precedents. You can strip layers and pieces off works that have come first, twist other things, completely replace some, and you have your own system. But I bet you may have also come across ideas and uses for resources (like magic or technology) that you never would have considered before. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Read stuff unlike your fiction, too! Seriously. Read histories if you write urban fantasy. Read romance if you write science fiction. Read horror if you write romance. There are tons of writing techniques, plot devices, all kinds of things you can learn from crossing genres. On the small, simple level, your fantasy might have some scary moments. Having read horror can help you on a meta level, knowing how to increase tension to instill dread and fear. Having read romance, your space marine commander can woo his love interest or seduce the enemy commander or alien overlord or whatever.

Academic papers? Yeah, read them! If they interest you, why not? But from a writing standpoint, they’ll definitely teach you specific vocabulary, how to emotionlessly get things across, and there’s always the use of subject matter. I recently did a post on writing what you know. This ties into it. Have interest in cell reproduction? I’m sure you can find ways to incorporate that into fiction somehow. It could be inspiration for an alien race, or a disease that affects magic users, or the basis for a monster. Your specific interests can help inform what you write.

There’s even value in reading very, VERY bad writing. I’ve slogged through more than a few stories and books that were horrible. Poorly edited, not at all fleshed out, just… bad. Sometimes there are lessons to learn in how not to write things. I’ve learned what kinds of things to look for as red flags in my writing mechanics themselves. I’ve seen great ideas executed so poorly it’s a real shame… and I’ve taken away lessons from them. Like how too much self-insertion turns into mental masturbation no one else will get anything from. How trying to hide self-insertion fantasy by making the subject of the book “You” rather than I or an actual main character is just as awful. I’ve read a romance where the majority of adjectives for anatomy are the same couple words… and I’ve learned how NOT to narrow my vocabulary that way. I’ve also read narratives where the author clearly used a thesaurus on far too many of their words in an attempt to sound smart. That backfires a lot. It becomes too much about the individual words then, rather than the whole sentence or paragraph.

Am I perfect? Far from it. I’m still learning. Always am. You should be, too. 
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Read. Read widely. You may not get a whole lot for your horror novel by reading that study on window and door glass energy efficiency, but you might. 

We hear this advice a lot. Write what you know. But what is it supposed to mean? Are people who read modern fiction, set in the present day, doomed to only write the same sort of stories? Are those how enjoy memoirs only allowed to write their own memoir? Or is it something more stringent? You’re a straight white man, so your characters must only be the same? You have spent your career working fast food, so your settings have to be fast food joints?

Fuck that.

First of all, your average person is going to know a lot more than you (or perhaps even they) might realize. We all live in our own little worlds, and they are as varied as the people themselves are. None are the same, though the greater Venn diagrams are complex. My older brother and I had the same locational upbringing. We share a knowledge of the setting we grew up in. Many of the same people are in our shared world… but so much else is different. We both have some musical education, for example, some chemistry. But I pursued further musical education, and he’s a chemical engineer. Already, our “what you know” baskets have changed. He has a wife and children; I do not. That doesn’t stop me from writing characters who are married or who have children.

It goes on from there. But it is so much more complex. Were the two of us given the same sort of basic plot idea, our interests and experiences would have us interpret it differently, create the world of our novels differently.

So what the hell does “write what you know” mean?

It means you have so much at your disposal that no one can write what you can. It means that you have a special combination of knowledge that you can absolutely tap into for a good story.
I’m going to super simplify things here, but let’s put this in terms of something I often come across in my reading and writing: magic systems.

I, by dint of my musical education mentioned earlier, would have a pretty easy time centering a magic system around one of my interests/hobbies. Music. I’m also a chainmailer. I could build a system around that. The metals involved, the dynamics of the weave pattern, how the two mesh: metal and weave. 

Crap, I’m giving myself ideas.

But what inspired this post was another book I recently read for the second time: Babel by R. F. Kuang. Kuang’s magic system in Babel is deeply based in linguistics, specifically the imprecise nature of translation. That’s not something I would even slightly be able to pull off. I enjoy languages, but nowhere near the depth of what it would take to develop a novel like this was.

Once I started thinking about that, how that is a very good basis for “write what you know” it made me think about what wonders are really possible. Imagine a fashionista’s take on a clothing- or jewelry-based magic system. A sleight-of-hand enthusiast’s take on political machinations in a scheming peerage. What could a gourmet chef do with a sci-fi setting, and how would that differ from a line cook’s take, or a caterer’s or baker’s?

The varied interests and skills people have, those earned through curiosity or necessity, give every one of us a unique perspective that could do wonders in the written world. It doesn’t have to be limiting in the slightest; you don’t ONLY have to write what you know.

But your passions equip you to write your own story, one that only you can pull off. One piece of random, “useless” trivia you know has the potential to spawn the basis of a magnificent piece of writing.

Of course there will still be research to do. There is always more to know. But when you’re passionate about what you’re writing, it shows, and you can bring others along with you on it. 
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So write what you know. Don’t hold back your excitement for it. Insects, candy making, agriculture, engineering, whatever it is that has your attention is worth a story.

April was again, very lean, but again, what words I did get out were good.
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Short Story (working title “Recalled”) - I think I’m leaving this one on the burner for now. Once I get some time and revisit, I’ll either finish it or maybe put up what I have for your opinions.

Criminal From Birth sequel - Still with editor. It’s been rough. Still mulling over the title.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - This (and blog posts and D&D) are where most of my writing effort has gone this month. Not as much as I wanted, but good ones. I’m working on the first chapter, feeling out my main character, and I’m liking it so far. I’ve gotten 1445 words written on it! This is going to need some serious rewrite, but I’ve been enjoying doing these immediate rewrites to really set things up properly, get into the details early.

Here comes May. It’s gonna get nuts heading into the latter half of the month and into June. Wish me luck!

I legit don’t know where March went. Between a sudden theatre tech gig that took up most of a week and prepping for con season to really get going, I didn’t manage as much writing as I wanted, but I’ll say the writing I did do was good.

Short Story (working title “Recalled”) - No updates this month. Still at around 1800 words. Crap. This makes two months in a row. I’m at the point I need to go reread what I’ve already done and decide if I actually want to pursue anymore.

Criminal From Birth sequel - Still with editor. It’s been rough. I might have a title though.  Still haven’t decided.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - I only managed to write one more scene, though once again, I wrote it twice. First version was 448 words, second was 781 and again, so much better. More full.

So we’ll say 1224 written on it. I need to do better. My time is about to be at a premium come May, so I really hope to make April better for word-making.

Last week, I wrote about what some of my protagonists would say on meeting me, just as a person. 

I thought I’d take it a bit further and go into what they’d say if they found out I was their author/creator. Not just with protagonists, but other characters I enjoyed writing or thought might have an interesting reaction.

There may be some spoilers in my impressions, so throwing that out there.

Almo (secondary protagonist from Starsigns)

“This is your fault?! You did this to me?”

Almo is one of the characters I honestly think would have a big beef with me at first, but once we talked, would get it. Partly because Almo is a child, partly because Almo is very much sharing a core of my own circumstances. SPOILER - Almo is actually Almira, only because they received a fate they didn’t want to have. Almira thought that simply living as a different person would change that fate, so she started living as a boy. On a very basic level, Almo would get me, I think.

On a personal level, I think she’d understand.

Luc Bertrand (protagonist of The Deadly Studies)

“I wish I could say I was surprised that some metaphysical, multiversical being or whatever had set all this in motion, but I’m really not. Just another god.”

Luc would be most jaded and accepting of being a character, I think. I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t create Luc, but I got to know him pretty darn well after writing 10 novellas about him. He’s surprisingly easygoing and accepting of weird ass shit going on around him. Comes with the gig of being an assassin and having the attention of some deific entities. I’m going with the Luc more towards the end of the series, not the beginning. Young Luc would lose his shit at being directly manipulated into action. The teenager he was would rebel quite a bit at realizing I’m the reason his family died.
Adult Luc would, I think, understand the reasoning. If nothing else, he appreciates a story and would eventually be amused in the long run by the thought that he was interesting enough to have books about him. Cynical, yes, but flattered.

Silen Bassis (protagonist of Criminal From Birth)

“…”

Silen would pose the biggest threat to me, and I wouldn’t blame him. I’ve given Silen a whole lot of shit to process and work through, and I’m not done with him yet. He’s got a severe temper and can be quick to violence whether he sees it as violence or not. He’s also not particularly forgiving, and he wouldn’t see me as even remotely useful. At best, I would get off being ignored and discarded. At worst, I’d be Leeched and left. Silen wouldn’t kill me out of his temper; he’s above that sort of thing. Mostly because he wouldn’t see me as being worth the effort or consequences of killing.

LiveBeans (protagonist of Subscrption Life)

“So you’re, like, the head game developer?”

LiveBeans, or Libby as she prefers to be called, would have a similar reaction to Luc, but with her own twist to it. She already knows she’s under the influence of entities not of a divine source. She’s an AI-driven NPC in a video game and is aware of her place in the world. She’d have no problem accepting and understanding how I fit into her life, but more than anything, I would see her caring less about it than Luc. Luc would at least be interested in getting to know me as a person, if only to try and understand why his story turned out the way it has.

Libby doesn’t have a whole lot of interest in humans. Rather, she’s not particularly interested in the types of humans she sees in the game. Players are far less interesting to her than other NPCs or just the world she lives in. So while she’d understand my role in her creation, she probably would have a whole lot of interest in me beyond that.

I’ve had the idea for this post in my list for some time now, but I’ve been neglecting to write it for two big reasons:

One, I don’t have a firm grasp of my current protagonist yet. I’m talking about a character currently named Libby, the protagonist of my main project, Subscription Life. I knew I needed her, but very nearly the entire time I was outlining the story, she was a massive blank. It wasn’t until toward the end of the outline that her real purpose finally struck me, so that’s part of what I’ve gone back to add into to the first third or so of the outline. But as of writing this post, I haven’t actually written any prose involving her yet (I’m working on the prologue, which she isn’t in) so she’s still largely a blank to me.

The second reason I’ve been putting this off is because… well… it’s been so long since I read any of my other novels that I’m not as close to those protagonists as I once was. Sure, they’re old friends, but I really don’t know them so well as I once did anymore. Some… I don’t even necessarily recall the names of offhand, because it’s been so long out of mind or because I’ve had so many others I’ve created and cast aside as their projects were discarded.

Still, I’m going to bull forward now, stop making excuses, and go through some of my characters I do at least still have some sense of and at least come up with an initial impression they might have of me. Maybe I’ll revisit this in the future once I know more about Libby, but for now, let’s see who I’ve got.

WHAT I’D SAY ON MEETING A.F. GRAPPIN (as a person, not as an author)

Silen Bassis, protagonist of Criminal From Birth and its sequel: 

“So you think you’re special?” 

Silen wouldn’t say much, honestly, but he’d think a lot. Mostly he’d assess if I were a threat, how much of one, and how I might be one. He’d weigh what advantage he could get from having me as a possible tool he could use, but there would be no personal value assigned and definitely no attachment. Not even a friendship. Frankly, he’d probably hate me because I have a more positive outlook on life than he does despite my own trauma. He’s allowed himself to be consumed by it, rage against it specifically rather than grow despite it. We would not be friends.

Cair Gafford, protagonist of Starsigns

“Sure, nice to meet you too.”

Cair and my dynamic, as people, would be strained at first, mostly because of how much like me as a preteen he is. He’s got complicated relationships with most adults and would absolutely not trust me, just because I am an adult. Over time, we could absolutely get along, but the first meeting would be extremely tense. I would have to earn him, which would be totally worth it.

Luc Sebastien Bertrand, protagonist of The Deadly Studies

“Well, you could easily have been one of us, couldn’t you? Wait… no. Not in the long run.”
To be fair, as I’ve mentioned many times, I did not truly create Luc. John G. Walker did, but he gave me the freedom and honor of creating his backstory, which I enjoyed immensely.

Luc is probably the most layered, complicated protagonist I’ve written, and that man would see right through me immediately. Then again, he is a very strong observer and assessor of people, and he’d have me clocked as a schemer from the get-go. But he would also be able to tell I’m not assassin material. Unless I was one of their intelligence agents or a paper pusher. Luc and I could be friends, though a lot of our personal interests don’t align, except for… well, Dungeons & Dragons. On a nerd level and on an LGBT+ level, we would very much get along. Once we got into video games and stuff, we’d be able to hang out easily, but I wouldn’t see it being a friendship between us specifically. More like if we had shared friends, we’d be more likely to hang out in that context: larger gatherings. But we’d possibly gravitate toward one another in those situations.

That’s really about all I can get. Hallac from The Trials of Hallac and Selinde from Empeddigo are so far removed from my memory that they’re little more than outlines. And I don’t even remember the names of the main characters from Mere Acquaintances. 
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I do plan to eventually do one about telling some of my characters I’m their author/god/whatever. Keep your eyes peeled for that eventually!

​I’ve always got ideas percolating, and it’s a crapshoot on whether anything will actually get words put to it or not. Not just books, either. Stories in general. A lot of short stories get started and cast aside. That said, here are some of the ideas currently percolating.

Aside from my current novel project, Subscription Life, of course.

A short story about how laugh tracks were largely recorded 60-70+ years ago and we are constantly hearing the laughter of people long dead.

A short story or novelette about a blood casino, where one wagers blood rather than money.

I’ve been wanting for years to write a “Westarctican novel” centered around the micronation Westarctica that I’ve been involved with for almost 10 years now. I wanted to do a fantasy/magic/conservation kind of thing involving global warming, but now I’m reconsidering doing something fantasy-Bridgerton-esque. Social romance fantasy, but I don’t know if that idea will also end up petering out. It’s not one I’d pursue anytime soon, anyway.

I still want to get back to the magic item novel I was working on. But it needs a serious retooling in general.

Short stuff this week, but those are some of the ideas going on in there right now.

As of right now, the most recent scene I’ve written is the prologue for Subscription Life, and I have mixed feelings about it. It’s incomplete, in that it’s not as… girthy as I want it to be yet. I feel like it’s just skimming the surface of what it could, should, and eventually will be.

That is what editing is for, but I’m honestly not terribly satisfied with it. The main content is there, but it feels… thin. Translucent, like a veil that only kinda shows what’s underneath it. 
I’m not displeased by any means. I’m just not too particularly happy with it. 

The thing is, I’m finding out this is a regular tendency of mine, and it’s one very much at the forefront of my consciousness as the next big personal improvement project I’m going after. 
I don’t commit like I should.

I’m overly cautious, afraid to take real risks with things like I should, too afraid to fail or fall short. This goes for pretty much all my creative endeavors. I’m an okay singer, an okay actor and voice actor, an okay author.

And I’ve been stuck in that “okay” range, at least as far as I can tell, because I hold back because it’s safe. I need to push boundaries more. I need to be okay with failing and doing something again, trying again.

I don’t like rewriting. Even most of my edits are more about word choice and correction. I never really try writing bits of scenes again, and that honestly feels like a pretty big confession for me. Thing is, I KNOW I can do better. I am well aware some of my stuff is extremely bad or lacking. 

Pride is a funny thing, and I’ve both let it rule me and cast it aside arbitrarily in odd ways that don’t really make sense to me. At least I can say it’s not like I write things and want to be able to brag I get it right the first time. That’s a whole level of hubris I’ve never seen the draw of. No one’s perfect.

But I’ve accepted too far in the opposite direction. The okay. The bare minimum. I can do so much better. 

I want to take more of these risks. I want to improve. This is the only way I can, at this point. I need to stop being okay with just getting the idea out on paper and spend more time criticizing where I’ve played it safe as an artist.

I need to not be afraid of failing, of looking stupid or incapable, even if it’s only to myself. Because let’s face it, I’m the one I’m failing to please here. I’m not judging myself that way, but I am still allowing my own self-image to accept what’s not good enough for me. 

I deserve a better me. I want to be him. 

I’m gonna go reread that scene and really tear it apart.

UPDATE: After I initially wrote this blog post a week or two ago, I did go and straight up tried again at the prologue scene. Initial draft was around 1150 words. Second attempt was 1000 words more than that. I did reuse a few sentences I liked, but I tried to cut loose a bit more and really go for it. I have to say there was a marked difference. The new version is far more dynamic and interesting. I know I still can go further, but... yeah. This is the right direction!

GAH SHORT MONTH!!! I still got… a little done.

Short Story (working title “Recalled”) - No updates this month. Still at around 1800 words. Crap.

Criminal From Birth sequel - Still with editor. I need to light a fire under their butt. I might have a title though.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - I HAVE STARTED WRITING! It’s not much yet, but here’s what I have:

I wrote the first scene of the prologue and had it at about 1150 words. In an upcoming free post, I’ll actually talk about that. Long story short, I wrote it again and it came out to 2144 words. So for me, it’s not a lot, but for what I’ve been cranking out lately, it’s a ton, and I’m very happy with it!