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!

​It’s time I was forthright about what’s going on. 

I’m struggling, but determined.

The fact of things right now is that I’m very much a creature of routine and, sadly, I’ve been trying and failing to build one for some months now. One of the biggest problems is that I currently have too much freedom— too much free time— that I can’t seem to make writing take up a lot of that time.

Let me explain. For years, during the highest-productivity eras of my writing career, I have made words regularly, religiously, and well, but that was largely because I was… sort of stealing the time for them. Customer-facing jobs (like the 3 years I worked at as a bank teller) and administrative office positions had me away from comfort and freedom for determined hours of each day. I mean, that’s the nature of a full-time job. Thing is, while in those jobs, I took pleasure in stealing minutes when I could and jotting down sentences or paragraphs. I had one call center monitoring job for a few years that was very low-interaction. We really only “did” anything when there was an issue. It was during that job in particular that the ENTIRE Deadly Studies series was written and published. I pretty literally didn’t have anything else to do, so I wrote. I could pretty much devote at least 10 hours a week to writing. It made me look industrious, typing away. 

You know, the whole corporate “keep your head down” form of working.

Since the combination of burnout and covid work-from-home, I lost both the drive to write and the sort of office-imprisonment excuse to write that much. Now, the burnout is gone, but I’m very much out of practice in sitting and focusing on writing. Or even the stop/start nature of stealing time I used to be so very good at.

Being aware of these issues is a start. I’ve been straining against the inactivity for a while now, especially in the month since I stopped working at the game store I was at, which gave me a bit of the same reliable routine. I was doing all right with these blog posts and everything.

That’s dried up, and I’ve been treading water, barely scraping by, particularly with these free posts. Yes, I have plenty of ideas, but weekly free posts, even as short as these are, is a drain that… should be one. This should be easy, especially since I try to keep them fairly short.

I’m not venting all this to engender pity, or to make it an excuse to cut back on frequency. I really don’t want to do that. But the fact of the matter is that even with my paid content, the vast majority is older material. Even the sequel to Criminal From Birth is material I wrote years ago finally getting attention. Yes, it’s been an editing project, but I’m not putting new words down as much as I’d like, and I am trying to put this out there as a way to make myself accountable. To brainstorm with myself on how I can get that desired productivity back.

Because when I do manage to sit and write words, I feel like I’m writing better than ever. I just… don’t have the metaphorical vice on me making it the primary option of passing time. 

So I just really need to convince myself somehow that writing is the best way to use so much of the time I have available.

To be fair, it does fight with chainmail and string art crafting. I’ve already acknowledged to myself that distractions are an issue, but… I know I can fight those. I’ve been lazy on that front, and I’m putting a lot of effort into pulling away from those bad habits.

This is really only a matter of needing to put more effort into sitting down and making the words. Not when it’s convenient, because there are a lot of convenient time. Just… when I choose to do something time-wasty, I need to reinvestigate my own motives and choices and priorities.

I have so many stories to tell. I need to stop giving myself the bare minimum. I can do better.

For you, my dear readers, and for myself. 

Your patience and understanding, your love, mean so much. I appreciate you more than you know. Shooting for success. Not perfection.

I haven’t been to any writing conferences, but I’ve been to conventions where one of the things I was focused on was writing. For something like 7 years, I was a regular attendee of Balticon. During these years, I became very involved in the New Media track, which was a lot of indie authors, podcasters, and voice actors.

For a number of reasons, I haven’t attended a Balticon since 2019. I miss it very much, but there has been a great shift in my life’s focus since then, and it’s simply not in the cards for me anymore. One of the main reasons is that I no longer run The Melting Potcast, the podcast I did for 5 years with my best friends. It was a writing variety show and still exists out in the aether. Go give it a listen if you’re so inclined.

At this point, it’s been almost seven years since I’ve been to a Balticon, since I’ve so thoroughly surrounded myself with other authors for any significant period of time. I don’t remember a whole lot of details about any specific interactions. I do remember highlights, so I think I’ll dedicate the rest of this post to some of the lasting things I picked up or remember from my author friends and from doing The Potcast. This may be a bit disjointed, but let’s go with the sort of stream of consciousness stuff, shall we?

• If you’re writing genre fiction, or if you’re doing any sort of worldbuilding, consider trade routes and food sources. I attended a fantastic seminar one year about cooking in fantasy, but from the point of view of the actual cooks. Where do your ingredients come from? Would a cold, mountainous region have easy access to honey (not likely) or would they have to import it? Your desert people wouldn’t eat a lot of fish, would they? I think my favorite part of the seminar was when the speaker challenged authors in the audience to come up with a modern recipe, something simple like spaghetti and meatballs, and figure out how one of your cultures would make it. Even down to the water the pasta was boiled in. People really got creative with how they would modify the recipe to suit the available foodstuffs, like yak’s milk or unusual sources for things like starches and vegetables.
• There is a wild amount of value in reading your work aloud. It’s a powerful tool to use in editing, especially when it’s a mechanical/technique edit. It helps find words and phrases that don’t flow well or read awkwardly. You can identify sentences and thoughts that carry on for too long. Hell, reading aloud even helps pick out typos, if you want to use it for that, as well.
• Even the author with the smallest library can have a die-hard fan. 
• Some of the most amazing bits of advice come from random discussions around a fire.
• Give 30 people the same writing idea, and you’ll get at least 30 completely different stories. This was actually one of the founding ideas behind The Melting Potcast. We offered writing prompts and accepted flash fiction submissions based on them. Then we’d showcase 2-3 stories for the same prompt in an episode. A few different interpretations of the same idea. It was truly amazing to experience while doing it.
• Some mistakes are great ideas in disguise. Or at least they can be mildly amusing.

​I’ve kind of talked about this in the past, but I think it’s largely been in other media, so let’s go ahead and discuss it here.

For me, there are two forms of writer’s block: the plot-block, and functional.

The plot-block has been the hardest for me to find ways to overcome. Sadly, it’s also the form I have the most history with. I’ve spoken in the past about the differences in my productivity before and after 2009, when I finally started outlining things. In short, outlining has made it a lot more likely that I’ll finish a project as opposed to starting it and then just… not finishing. Outlining lets me find all the major and medium snags in story prep and planning. I don’t get into serious small details, but anything that might derail the major plot or some medium subplots and all, I can confront in this planning stage rather than writing myself into a corner.

But… just because I’m outlining doesn’t mean these snags don’t crop up. Of course they do. Discovering them in the outlining phase rather than while actively engaged in writing really helps make problems like these more manageable. I’m not losing writing time by struggling to think where to go next. I don’t fall out of the zone or vibe or rhythm of writing because I lack signposts. The outlining gives me signposts, a map to follow. 

So what do I do when developing that map and coming across a plot snag?

My favorite technique is one I read about some years ago randomly online. I wish I could reference the original article, but the fact is I haven’t been able to find it. In short, it was a (current or former) Pixar writer who gave me this tool:

When you can’t figure out what happens, figure out what doesn’t happen instead.

Here’s how it works for me. I get pencil and paper or open another blank text document. The format doesn’t matter, but for me, I need there to be a visual representation to help mark the productivity. If you don’t need it, great. But for me, it’s necessary. This new document is going to be a mental declutter list. 

When I say figure out what doesn’t happen, I mean anything and everything. Say the plot you’re stuck in is about how a trapped character escapes their captivity. But now you’re stuck, almost paralyzed trying to figure out how to dig yourself and your character out of the problem you’ve put them in. 

I just start listing things. They don’t even have to make sense. But list anything that comes to mind and discard it as “not gonna happen.” Aliens don’t come and break him out. He doesn’t find a magical sword to cut his bonds. His god doesn’t appear to him. The magic gem he has doesn’t summon a genie…

Wait… he had a magic gem?! That’s right, maybe I can find a way to use that! Maybe it DOES summon a genie!

I’ve had the answer come that quickly before. I’ve had times where I’m writing random shit down for the better part of an hour, and then something just clicks. Thing is, I have yet to have this not work when I’m in a bind. 

What’s happening (at least for me) is what I’ve said before: decluttering. By actually writing down what doesn’t happen, I’m thinking of ideas but actually removing them from my head through the act of writing/typing them out. This way, those random fragments of ideas that don’t work aren’t just bouncing around in my brain anymore. The cleared space makes room for new ideas to form. But by doing random not-important creativity, I’m activating that portion of the brain, putting it to work to come up with bad ideas. And they inevitably make way for the right ideas to start happening. Sometimes, I’ll remember a detail from earlier planning that just seems to fit (like the gem/genie idea I made up) or I’ll just come up with something else entirely that can solve the problem… but then I realize that just came out of nowhere. But this ties back into outlining. Now that I know I’ll need that solution, I can much more easily backtrack in the outline and seed this new resolution, rather than going back and rewriting a first draft. I haven’t even written any of that yet. So easy to note [DETAILS NEEDED ABOUT THIS ITEM] or whatever the result is.

Give it a try next time you’re stuck or just want to find something unusual to get out of a situation. It helps come up with different options, even when you’re not stuck or blocked.

Functional block is the more frustrating one. And I’m really using that as a sort of blanket term to cover all the sort of normal perceptions of writer’s block, anything that keeps you in a state of just not being able to get words onto the page. I’ll also include burnout in this category, but I’ll talk about that kind of separately.

Functional writer’s block in general I can usually combat by just working on a different project than whichever one I’m stuck on. I bust out a writing exercise, a short story, or something else that activates the same portion of my brain, but maybe uses a different track of it. Like… think of the brain as one of those soda fountains with different flavors that all use the same spigot. Yeah, I need Mountain Dew, but that’s out of syrup. Doesn’t mean I can’t get the strawberry Sprite to pour! It can be stream of consciousness, a writing prompt, an exercise, another project, anything! Heck, sometimes I even resort to a different craft: making something with my hands, dancing in my kitchen, whatever.

Usually, that’s enough for me. Spend enough time on other things, but still creatively, and the urge, drive, or inspiration to get back to that “main” project usually comes back along. If not… well, sometimes you do need to abandon projects. At least I’ve still been productive on other things in the meantime. 

If that doesn’t work, then we go to our last tool (that I have currently). Sadly, this is also the only tool I’ve found that will always defeat burnout in the end. 

That activity is… give it time. 

As much as I spend my life waiting, sometimes that’s literally all there is to do when something is causing you to struggle. I’ve talked before about my own burnout. Still, here’s the story and how time was all I could make work for me.

I spent three or four years mired in a self-imposed schedule to get the entire Deadly Studies series of novellas off the ground. Originally, it was planned to be 7 novellas, but it turned into 10 due to plot expansions to tie it in with its parent series, The Statford Chronicle. I pushed myself hard for those few years, planning the series and then writing, editing, and releasing each novella rapidly. I was basically releasing one every 3-4 months for a few years until they were finished.

The last one came out in September 2019. The final volume, containing novellas 6-10, came out in January 2020.

And I couldn’t write shit after that. I let myself take a break because I was exhausted, but… once COVID-19 hit and I suddenly had a lot more time to do things due to quarantine, I couldn’t make writing happen again. I tried editing some short stories to fit them together into a more cohesive collection so I could release an anthology, and it seemed to be going well. Until I realized I needed to write a few more stories to tie everything together, and the idea just kind of fizzled after a few paragraphs. 

I gave myself more time. By mid 2021 I was working on editing/updating a sci-fi trilogy I already had written. I even got through the first book (this was my fourth draft that needed serious restructure) and it was fine. But book 2, ready for its third draft and restructure, never quite got off the ground. And I haven’t even looked at book 3, which is still in its first draft state. By 2022, I’d sort of let that peter out. I hadn’t written anything new in 2 years and… at this point, I’d already gone through a lot of existential crisis thoughts about maybe I’d completely burned myself out. Maybe The Deadly Studies was it for me, and I’d ruined my writing brain. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d overworked myself into destruction. I don’t compose or play music anymore because I burned myself outt oo hard in college. 

By the end of 2022, I had finally made peace with the possibility of never writing again. 2023 came and went, and 2024 started.

A few months into 2024, an idea came to me out of nowhere, and I started writing an outline. It was easy, and the ideas were good. Better than anything I remembered doing before the burnout. I found myself in tears more than once, relieved that after basically 5 years of not really writing (at best, proofing, revising), I was suddenly creating from nothing again.

Enter 2025 and… well, this website blog and my Patreon stand as proof that I’m writing again. I’m still writing. I tried forcing my way through the burnout, but it was not rewarding. 

I might never have come back to writing. Like I said, I made peace with the possibility of never writing again, but it was a good three years before I even got to that point. Three years of mourning what I’d been able to do so recently, not knowing if I’d be able to repeat what I’ve done before. And then at least another year of it basically falling off my radar. Writing became something I’d done and that I hoped to do again one day, but… I no longer felt like I was less for not being able to do it in the moment. It was a struggle, but not one I couldn’t live with.

It was a magnificent day when the block finally eroded and let my brainriver flow again.

But in short, I have not found any way to force-overcome writer’s block. In any form. You can work around it sometimes, but sometimes the only cure is to wait it out. Patience is a virtue, and sometimes it’s the most powerful tool we have. 

2026 came out swinging, and I wasn’t able to get a lot done on writing because… well, I’ve already talked about it. The Chain Nerd is taking some major priority. That said, here’s where we are as of the beginning of February:
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D&D Single Adventure - I’m going to pull this from the list. As much as I want it to be a priority, it can’t be right now. I may pick on it sometimes as I get the drive. If I finish it, you’ll know.

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.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - THIS IS WHERE THINGS GET EXCITING! I HAVE A FINISHED OUTLINE!

Okay, let me clarify. I have the first draft of a finished outline. What I figured out in the last few chapters adds a new layer of information I’ll need to seed in the first 1/3 or so of the book, so I’m updating the outline to make sure the flow of that story arc, but this is much easier work than straight blank outlining.

First outline draft: 56 chapters (up 21 from last month)

(Hopefully) final outline: 21 chapters (YES, I DID 42 CHAPTERS TOTAL)

This goes pretty quick since I’m just updating the info I already have. It’s more like editing. But once this is done (hopefully this month) I get to start WRITING THE BOOK!
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This sort of question comes up a lot in writing groups and discussions. The answer is simple, but pretty much always the same.
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Write. Just write.

It seems so trite and unhelpful. But it really is that simple. Like any skill, it takes time and practice to get any good, and with writing, that’s literally just making words.

Just write.

You’re going to make mistakes. Everything at every level, from the sentence structure to the meta analysis of the plot, is gonna suck. But you can’t let that stop you. It’s the same for every skill you want to learn. It’s going to start rough and ugly. It’s going to be messy. It’ll not make sense, there will be plot holes. You’ll reuse phrases and overuse words and retell the same thing in different ways and reword the same concept and go over the same details until it’s overdone. You’ll put details on the wrong things and underemphasize what’s important.

But you’ll learn from those things.

Just write.

There’s no point in worrying about agents, publishing deals, or royalties until something’s actually written. Even editing isn’t something you can worry about until you have words on a page.

Just write.

Sure, there’s plenty else to do. Study writing. Read widely.

But nothing is going to come from your desire to tell a story unless you’re actually doing the work.

Just.

Write.

I’ve talked about some of my favorite books before and what they taught me. At this point, I don’t know that I can honestly say I have a favorite author. I’ve read too widely at this point to be able to single out an individual and say they’re my favorite. I’m more likely to focus on one technique or skill and say they do this thing well.

So I suppose that’s what I’ll focus on here. A few authors I like and what they do well. Because all these things they do well are what inspire me to upgrade my own writing skills. So here are a few authors I admire and what I admire them for. Keep in mind these opinions are my own and I neither can nor will excuse any bullshit they pull or believe on a personal level. This is just about the writing.

Robin Hobb - Endings. Holy HELL can Hobb write endings that are satisfying. And I mean that for books and for whole series. I’ve read the Soldier Son trilogy multiple times, and each book is so well contained but the whole series is wrapped up well, too. And then there’s the expansive multiseries series The Realm of the Elderlings. Not only are each book and each series wrapped well, but the final ending to the whole epic is just… epic. I cried so hard, so emotionally sated that I almost couldn’t handle it. Hobb makes it bittersweet but easy to accept the goodbyes readers say to characters, especially ones we’ve traveled with across years and many many books. I’d kill to be able to write an ending one-tenth as satisfying.
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That said, the beginnings aren’t as gripping. Many of them start very slow and take some settling into. But once in, if you’re not hooked, then please don’t force your way through. Every book isn’t for every reader. That’s why we have variety. But if you want a good ending, go for a Hobb book.

Matt Dinniman - Okay, to be fair, I’ve only ready his Dungeon Crawler Carl series so far, but I do have others in mind to read eventually. But from DCC, I can say this man is great at having things happening behind the scenes and revealing them in fantastic ways. He very much keeps in mind that “onscreen” characters aren’t the only ones with agency, and he makes forgetting it your problem. Anything that seems to come out of nowhere has inciting seeds ages ago that you just dismissed because it didn’t directly affect what you were seeing as a reader, especially if it’s through the eyes of your POV character. Dinniman is great at keeping you informed of the small details of things as you need to know them.

I guess I’m also going to mention a small personal gripe I have with each author, so here we go. And oh, is this a total nitpick on my part. So trivial it annoys me that I’m annoyed by it. Dinniman as a couple technical word choices that I can’t help but notice and get a tiny spike of annoyance at the repeated use of the word. The main one is the word “upon.” He uses it instead of the more simple “on” a lot more than anyone else I know. And it seems… so out of character for the narrator, Carl, to use that so much. Similarly, he uses “as” phrases really often. I haven’t gone and one any sort of analysis of how often Dinniman does both these things, but it’s enough that I’ve noticed them both. Might not have noticed if it weren’t for listening to the audiobooks, but yeah, I’ve noticed. Like I said, tiny gripes.

Stephen King - I mean, obviously, he had to be in this list, right? Put simply, King has some great ideas and expands on them well. His beginnings are a lot more gripping than Hobbs’s, that’s for certain. His first line for The Gunslinger is often touted as like the quintessential, simple, gripping first line. That said, once King gets to a certain point, all sense of direction and conclusion just sort of… stop. Often, it’s not until the very last few pages of the book. I’ve read a number of King’s books and… I’m just never satisfied with the endings. So I guess for him, the gripe goes hand-in-hand with my praise. The man has fantastic ideas and really ramps up the conflict to dangerous levels. But it’s always felt to me like he can’t dig his way back out and just… ends things because he’s done trying. 

Let 2026 begin! Here’s where we stood at the end of December.

D&D Single Adventure - Still working on actually getting everything written down.

Short Story (working title “Recalled”) - started this right after Christmas and have a working outline and about 1800 words written. Just need to poke the words more into place and see how it actually turns out.

Criminal From Birth sequel - Still with editor.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - Chugging along and still enjoying! Not a lot to say other than the outlining is progressing. I may be getting close to wrapping up the outline (probably in another month or two, based on the pace I’ve been going) but there will be a lot of filling in details so I might need to go back over things before I start writing it in earnest.

Current chapters in Draft Point Five: 35 (up 7 from last month)

There’s a whole lot of variety in my naming conventions, and sometimes, it varies depending on the story world I’m creating. I was working on a project (that I still may get back to someday, who knows) where the naming conventions for classes were very distinct. Nobility used nature names as part of their culture, mostly because they were certain in their dominance over the world. So you’d see names like Chrysanthe, Quartz, Cirrus, and Mesa. The commoners didn’t have that arrogance in their naming conventions, so I went with more “traditional” fantasy-style names. I did a lot of what I normally do for fantasy: modify normal names.
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Modifying more common or normal names in fantasy is pretty standard for me, as I mentioned. It can be as simple as changing a vowel in an existing name: for the main villain in Criminal From Birth, I just changed the e in Brent to an i, and we get Brint. It can be changing a beginning or ending sound. Silas, with a different ending, becomes Silen. Kerry drops the y, becomes Kerr, becomes Cair to make the pronunciation a bit easier to get right when it’s only read. I’ve seen the name Monica in a book changed to Ronica, and it’s beautiful.

There’s also always the Pern version of blending names. It’s the same sort of blending that get used with shipping characters: you just mash the two names together. In Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books, children are most often named a mashup of their parents’ names. So F’lar and Lessa have a son named F’Lessan. Grab your parents’ names and rename yourself. I could be Kenry, Mareth, Manneth, Kary, or even Marketh.

Honestly, those are my favorite ways to name characters: the letter/sound substitutions or name mashups.

I’m also not above just putting my friends in books, either with their actual name or modifying them. And it doesn’t have to be just one change. Hell, go a few steps. Take a name, find a foreign language variation of it, and riff off that. Like, if you have a Henry, turn it to Enrique, and start messing with that. Spell it phonetically. Onrikay. Drop a sound. Rikay. Make it easier to read. Rickay. Change a vowel. Rackay. Suddenly, Henry is unrecognizable, but you have a usable name.

The point is, it’s no holds barred. I’ve seen unusual and unique names on people in real life. Celebrities names their kids all kinds of weird stuff. So find what you like and name your character that. Just… if you’re naming a real person, give that knowledge some consideration. They have to live with the name. It’s not like naming a pet.

Uh… where did November go? I got some stuff done, but this month really took a toll on me. In-person D&D has picked up, so a lot of my focus has been there.

D&D Single Adventure - Holy cow, ideas have abounded. I currently, as of now, have scenes outlined for two. Just need to write out the details, do test runs, tweak anything that doesn’t work right, and format before I can release them!

Criminal From Birth sequel - Still with editor.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - Chugging along and still enjoying! Not a lot to say other than the outlining is progressing.

Current chapters in Draft Point Five: 28 (up 8 from last month)
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I haven’t gotten any flash or short fiction going this month, mostly because a lot of my working time has gone to D&D prep and chainmail.