Oooh, this one sounds like fun. I have a fair few published works, so let’s just go through the list, shall we?
Empeddigo - This was inspired by two ideas:
The idea of a highly communicable disease used to exert power and control over the mass population.
A genre blend of science fiction and fantasy

The Trials of Hallac - Oh, my epic poem. This was largely inspired by the challenge itself of writing a 5000-line epic poem in 31 days, but my plot and story inspirations were The Odyssey, the thoughts of something similar to the Trials of Hercules, and… Final Fantasy Tactics.

Mere Acquaintances - This was originally referred to as “The Blogject,” because I wanted to write a story that was intended to be released in unedited, first draft form as a serial, sort of an homage to serial published authors like Dickens. I honestly don’t recall exactly how it was inspired, but I always described it as “A bunch of people in a mental institution have multiple personalities. And those personalities are delusional together.”

Starsigns - This novel is one that probably went through the most permutations. It was inspired in large part by Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son Trilogy of novels: Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade’s Magic. I loved her premise on birth order being formative for your role in life and wanted my own take on fighting the fate decreed for you. It was originally intended to be much more adult than it was, but I’m quite proud of the final product.

Criminal From Birth - There is no denying that this had a single source of inspiration: the movie Basic, starring John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s a story told and retold a few times with new details revealed by different tellers, so it keeps changing just how events are reacted to, uncovering the mystery one layer at a time.
I’ll admit I did not pull it off as well as I liked in Criminal, but I’m still pleased with it. Obviously. I mean, I wrote a sequel and will be planning to wrap it up with a third book.
That’s right. I’m not making any promises on timelines, but that’s the long term hope. Book 2 is with my editor, so we’ll see when that gets finished and book 3 happens.

The Deadly Studies - I didn’t have a whole lot of say on inspiration for my novella series, since it’s a spinoff of John G. Walker’s Statford Chronicle series. It’s obviously inspired by a need to fit into the established world of its parent series. By dint of having me write it rather than John himself, it is already set in a Grappin-style flavor, making it a totally different experience than reading any of the Statford books. John says I more than did Luc justice, so I’ll take that with pleasure.
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Subscription: Life (work in progress, working title) - This is my current main project I’m outlining right now, a LitRPG novel that I hope will either be a standalone novel, or at most, a two-book series. A lot depends on how long the outline itself is and how the prose ends up. But this is inspired by the fact I’m a lifelong gamer and have been reading a lot of LitRPG stuff lately. Notably, Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman has been an obsession and huge influence.
S:L is not at all going to be any sort of DCC clone, though. I’m more original than that, at least. And like a lot of other projects that have been started and discarded, no promises that this one will come to fruition. I hope, though.

October was very stressful in a lot of ways. I knew it would be, but it took its punches and didn’t pull any. So very lean month as far as writing is concerned.

Dungeons & Dragons: Bard Campaign - Just because it’s more personal and low-priority than other projects, and it involves the involvement of others, this will be the last regular update on this campaign.

D&D Single Adventure - I have two concepts I’m mulling over and trying to pick which one I want to be my first focus. I think I know which, I just need to do it.
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: 20 (up 2 from last month)
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I’ve also gotten blog posts and writing exercises done, and I’ve got something new coming for all subscribers you’ll see starting later this month!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It was intended as a challenge to writers to write a 50,000-word first draft of a novel in 30 days, specifically in the month of November. That’s 1,667 words a day, if you average it out between the 30 days.

I am not here to discuss the goods or bads of NaNoWriMo, nor to discuss any scandals around its organizers or anything like that. It’s over now, and it was what it was at the time.

This blog post is simply for me to put out my experiences with it, what I took from it, and so on. Any opinions and experiences are my own. I will say upfront that I don’t participate any longer and haven’t for years, but I think you’ll understand why by the end of the post.

I first learned about it in the summer of 2009 and decided I was going to go for it. Knowing my writing habits and tendencies at the time, I knew right away that the word count wouldn’t be the challenge; finishing a story would be. At the time, my finished/unfinished ratio of projects was awful. I did (and still often do) struggle with around the 2/3 - 3/5 sections of writing. I’m great at buildup and setup, and I’m not bad at climaxes, either. But the last push to story crux and the denouement are some of my weaker parts of stories. At the time, I was pretty purely a pantser. That is, I just wrote by the seat of my pants. It wasn’t so much that I wrote myself into corners as I lost interest trying to solve problems rather than cause more.

So I knew going into fall and eventually November that I needed a plan. I needed to try something I hadn’t done before: outlining a project. I would need a map so I didn’t write like 37,000 words and then peter out because I was bored and didn’t know where to go. No, I needed to know where I was going up front.

Long story short, now I’m a huge supporter of outlining. I still allow myself a fair amount of pantsing while doing the writing, but that’s details. I’ve already done a 3-post discourse on my outlining process as it is now, 16 years later, if you’re interested.

Outlining Post 1
Outlining Post 2
Outlining Post 3

Suffice it to say, I’m currently using that method right now, working on the outline for my LitRPG novel, working title Subscription Life.
I digress.

Over the course of the late summer and early fall, I outlined a novel. Come November 1, I started writing it.

I hit the 50,000 word mark on November 9th.

I’m not kidding. I remember it quite vividly, even now. I also recall that there were 3 days I didn’t write at all. I legitimately wrote 50,000 words in 6 actual days. There was still wrapping up to do, some outline left, and I did end up finishing the novel in whole.

That novel was my first published one, Empeddigo. And oh, how I do cringe thinking about it now, but that’s the way with early works. I revised and published it the following year and was poised to NaNo again in 2010.

Over the course of the next couple years, I was a NaNo fiend. I even did NEpMo, which was a random challenge I found in the same vein. That one was to write a 5,000-line epic poem in the month of May. Pretty sure I did that in 2010 as well. That was my second book, The Trials of Hallac. Also pretty cringe, but what are you going to do?

So through 2010, 2011, and 2012 for sure, a lot of my writing life revolved around NaNoWriMo. I went to local write-ins and loved them. The atmosphere was always great, writing sprints were a fun mini-challenge, and it was great to be surrounded by other writers. We’d talk about our projects, hover over our keyboards side by side, and got to know each other a little.
But foremost, it was about the word count.

And that was where it became a problem for me.

I’m VERY driven by numbers, in a lot of ways like I am driven by words. Math is a game. Numbers and words are both toys I use in different ways, but damn do I obsess about them. My drive became in getting higher word counts faster. I made the first week of November a regular staycation so I could just write. I made a big pot of chili the last day or two of October and lived off that while I secluded myself to knock out thousands of words. I strained to break 20,000 words on NOVEMBER FIRST. Never quite made it, but I got close a few times. 10k word days were no stranger to me.

I believe one year, I actually finished NaNo on like day 5. But it got worse. At least twice, I DOUBLE NaNo’d, as they say. Meaning I wrote 100,000 words in 30 days. I even went for a triple NaNo but ended up running out of material. I finished the book draft.

In general, I wouldn’t think such a thing was a problem. I was eating and taking care of hygiene. I went to work on time, did my job, and took care of life outside the word processor.

But I eventually came to the realization that while yes, I was cranking out words like I was running out of time, they weren’t good words. Sure, that’s what editing is for. But damn, was I paring down a LOT. Tons of fluff, unneeded description, rehashing of the same thought or idea, repeated description, meandering conversation. Yes, I know I just did exactly that in the list of things. That’s the point.

I made all those things in search of that ridiculous word count.

I was focused purely on quantity, not on quality.

I could do better, I decided. And that’s when I realized I’d gotten everything I could out of NaNoWriMo. It was great reason to write, but there were also a lot of people who wouldn’t write anything UNLESS it was November, and that wasn’t the best practice. All the wrong lessons there.

I recognized fatigue in myself after that frantic writing, too. Often, I didn’t write another word until the January after, or maybe even February. That was no way to practice a craft.

So I absolutely think there is value in writing challenges like NaNoWriMo. I learned a lot about writing, my own writing tendencies and habits, and how I can function under stress and deadlines. And I did make some amazing words in all that fluff. There was just a lot of the fluff that had to be pulled away. It was the quality I wanted, and if I focused on that, there was no way to hit NaNo for me without being even more stressed. I learned a lot from NaNo, took what I learned, and let it go.
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I used to be a guy who did NaNoWriMo. I outgrew it, and that’s fine. 

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, and I suppose it’s finally time to do it. I’m sure I won’t express the complexities of my opinion well here, so I have to ask for some grace. Also, I want to point out that my opinions are my own, and I’m a flawed person just like everyone else. I cannot and do not think of everything, so I’m sure there are plenty of nuances of this subject that I am ignorant of.

That all said, here’s my thoughts on AI, especially with regards to writing/creativity in general.
It has a place, but generally speaking, I do not think it is art. That goes for AI-written words and AI images.

I don’t want to turn this into a bitter discourse about how so much energy and water are wasted stealing words and art made by actual people, though that is a major concern of mine. It’s cruelty spawned by capitalism and the self-destructive nature of humanity.

There are applications of AI that I am floored by. The possibility of it helping do things like identify cancer early.

Most of my problems with AI are really problems with capitalist applications. Maybe it can be attributed to my lifelong love of science-fiction. I’ve seen and read so many stories of it being used for altruist things: assisting people in everyday chores and even critical medical or scientific analysis.

My gripes are really those of any creative: our work is being stolen, and soulless derivatives are flooding the world instead. It’s not how we’re supposed to live.

What’s even worse is that people like myself are having our written words and artworks judged as being AI-generated when that’s completely untrue.

I know I’m really only repeating a lot of things that have already been said on the subject, by people much more eloquent than I am.
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More than anything, I want to make it clear that I do not use AI in my works in any capacity. Not for writing, plotting, editing, polishing, cover art, or any other part of my processes. And I never intend to.

Ah, the writing version of the chicken or the egg question, huh? Which one spouts in me first, the characters or the plot? I can answer this in one word:
Plot.
But if I left it there, it wouldn’t be much of a post, would it?
So let me delve into it a little. I kind of tangentially touched on this sort of thing a little when discussing my outlining process, but not in any significant way. I really only discussed coming up with significant story points for plot and characters, as a way to help mesh all the arcs and plot points into a cohesive whole.
I would say that 90% of the time, plot is what strikes me first. Ideas tend to be “what if THIS situation?” And that’s what spawns action from me. It’s usually one of two things that gets the idea into my head: either the initial plot hook or the crux of the conflict. For my current main project (working title Subscription Life), the plot is absolutely what sparked the idea. Had nothing to do with characters. That said, once I started creating the characters to go into the story, the plot ideas molded and reformed some to fit the people that would be in the world of the book.
That’s honestly pretty much how it goes for me. The little notebook I have where I jot down ideas is predominantly plot-hook type ideas. “World where,” type premises, or the basic description of a situation. Sometimes, it might even be something as simple as a line of dialogue or idea for a cool location. Sometimes, it’s elements of worldbuilding that strike me first. I guess in some ways, you could count that as a character, if the world is particularly central to the conflict of the story.
On those occasions that the character is the main inspiration for me, though, it’s pretty much never in a way that really makes the character a formed being, so to speak. It’s flighty, and more often a thought like, “the one person in the world who” kind of idea.
More often, though, the plot idea comes first, followed pretty quickly by the character idea. Like in Starsigns, the concept of a culture where your whole life’s path is determined at a fortune telling was immediately followed by the “what about the person who doesn’t have a fate?”
The whole book sprang from that.
Since it’s my current project, a little deeper insight on this subject as it pertains to that specific project. It might interest you to know that my main protagonist was the last main character for me to actually figure out the plot arc for. To be totally honest, that actually scared me a bit. Once I had the basics of the plot arc, I formed my main team of characters: the protagonist and a trio of friends. The three friends’ character arcs came about really easily for me. I won’t spoil things, but in short, I easily managed to basically flesh out the overarcing whole plot just from those three supporting characters’ story arcs.
Like, the whole story. The climax was set, some subplots and all had their place. But the protag was just… a shadow. A placeholder. How could that make sense? Was the spot I had for this Main Character (MC) really even necessary? If the whole plot made sense with just the three friends, shouldn’t one of them be the MC?
I almost went with that thought. Except for one thing that wouldn’t leave my mind: the trio’s stories lacked a real tie. The plot itself lacked its unifying factor:
The MC.
The story needed her. But if all the main conflicts were resolved with the characters I’d created, how did they need her?
They needed a spectator. But that’s boring. No one likes a protagonist who doesn’t take action. I’ve read books where the MC is reactive, even to the point of everything they do has the reasoning of “well, why not?” Those characters do nothing, offer nothing to the reader. There is no service they provide other than to be a vessel for the world to happen to them.
My protagonist couldn’t be this way. She needed more. She had to be at the center of things, actually taking action. She had to be the final piece of the final conflict, the bit that made all the difference and resolved everything. She had to be the ending.
Once I realized that and found out where she fit at the end, it was actually sort of easy to trace her path back to the beginning.
It was odd, honestly. I’ve never had an ending come together before everything else. But oddly enough, it’s the last half of this book that formed first. Normally, I get the first 2/3 easily and the last 1/3 is harder to plan.
I’m very eager to see how this project shakes out in the end. And I really hope this thought process persists to future projects. It’s actually made it really easy for me.

September has been a month of a lot of insanity in all realms: professional, personal, and beyond. I still got writing done, somehow.
Dungeons & Dragons: Bard Campaign - Session #7 fully planned. We haven’t played session 7 yet. In short, no update.
D&D Single Adventure - No progress, which hurts, but I said in July I was kind of waiting to see how modules run for me so I can get a better grip on what others would expect from a written adventure. I’m three sessions in with my first module one-shot coming at the end of October. I just need to get down to it and write.
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: 18 (up 10 from last month)
New Short Story (My Stories) - Same as last month. I got some work done on it, but not enough.
I also did write a handful of future blog posts (trying to get and stay ahead) and started on the 10-minute writing exercises. I’ve done three of those already.

I wasn’t wrong about August being a huge change. With the full-time job again and all, time is a crunch, but the great thing is that I do get some time to write there if the shop’s dead and I’ve gotten my inventory projects done for the day. So there has been progress!
Dungeons & Dragons: Bard Campaign - Session #7 fully planned. No new update. We haven’t played session 7 yet. In short, no update.
D&D Single Adventure - No progress, which hurts, but I said last month I was kind of waiting to see how modules run for me so I can get a better grip on what others would expect from a written adventure. My first session is behind me now and the second comes up tomorrow, so I’m getting that exposure I’ve been wanting.
Criminal from Birth sequel - Guess what! I finished the second draft pretty quickly into August! It’s currently with my editor!
LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - I am getting SO FREAKING EXCITED about this project. I’ve been through a main overarcing outline, as well as 7-pointed the character arcs of 4 main characters (1 protagonist and 3 supporting characters including a secondary antagonist), and I’m into my full outline now, which is my Draft Point Five that I’ve mentioned before in my outlining series of blog posts. I have a long way to go, but I have a strong sense of the ending of this book, which is a first for me. Not just the actual end, but the climax. That’s not normally something I have figured well. But right now, it’s the details of the first half of the book that are sparse. I have an easy time building up, so I’m really hoping this will all go smoothly!
Current chapters in Draft Point Five: 8
New Short Story (My Stories) - Same as last month. I got some work done on it, but not enough. I kinda got obsessed with Subscription Life.
I did get one writing prompt done in August. Not as much as I wanted, but I also did pick another I plan to write, so there’s that. I need to do more exercises, like I said last month. In fact, I've done one already for today's Patron post!

I’ve been writing for a long time. It was in sixth grade that I remember first really getting into words, so that was around age 11 for me. Seventh grade was when I got really serious about it, and in the thirty years since then, I’ve tried a fair few technologies. I’ll briefly talk my history, but the bulk of this post will be about my current uses.
So back in the 90s (ow), I was just a kid/preteen, so I was really just using pen and paper. I might get a chance to type up something on a basic word processor like Microsoft Word, but it was handwritten all the way. I’m pretty sure most if not all of my writing is long since trashed by now, which sucks, but it’s fine.
By the time I went to college in the early 2000s, I had my own desktop computer, and I switched fully to word processors. That would have been Microsoft Word again, and I was on that for quite some time.
When I graduated college and moved into the workforce, I did a lot more writing in simple word docs, like Word Pad and even in an email browser. Probably not my smartest moves, but in downtime at work, I’d write on my work computer and email myself whatever I’d written. By then, I’d discovered WordPerfect and got very attached to it. I think the only reason I had that was because I’d gotten a new laptop and Microsoft Office suite was unreasonably expensive and I wasn’t needing it, so WordPerfect became my go-to. Again, that lasted a few years.
Then things changed.
This would have been… 2009. It’s hard to say when, honestly, but it was somewhere in that summer or MAYBE early autumn, that I started doing NaNoWriMo. I’m sure I’ll talk about that sometime in another post, but the point is I started seriously outlining and needed tools to better manage that planning. It was also around that time that Groupon started, and I was in that “searching for deals” mindset.
Enter some sort of promotion for like 75% off Scrivener software.
I bought like 3 licenses at the time, thinking that it would last me my next three computers. This program looked like everything I needed.
I was correct, which was great. I still use Scrivener to this day, and I’ll talk about that in a moment. What’s funny is that that first license lasted me a VERY long time. After a few years, I finally did upgrade computers, but when I went to activate my second license key on the new laptop, it didn’t work. Cue contacting support. Idiot me didn’t actually properly redeem the codes I’d purchased, so I was out those other two license keys. Not a ton of money, and long past time to be able to do anything about it, but the great news was Scrivener’s license keys are for HOUSEHOLD/LIFETIME. I only ever needed the one. I could put Scrivener on multiple computers of my own so long as I was primary user/owner, and anyone else in my household are the users.
Well, my cats don’t know how to type, but it’s perfect for little old me.
I still have the support email saved with all my info, so I should never have to worry again. Apparently this license/computer switch happened in early 2019.
So yes, I still use Scrivener as my primary writing software. In fact, I’m typing in Scrivener now. All of my novels published to date have been written in Scrivener. I organize my blog posts in it. I organize my short stories in it. When I was running The Melting Potcast, everything was organized in Scrivener.
Oddly enough though, my Dungeons & Dragons work is organized in Obsidian Notes. I bought a single license for that for D&D, but long term, I might end up just putting D&D in Scrivener too. Time will tell. But Scrivener is definitely my go-to word processor and main writing software. Love it.
As for HOW I use Scrivener… honestly, it’s pretty basic. Folders and files. I don’t really cross-reference or link things in it, but I probably should. For a good decade and a half now, I know I’ve been underutilizing what this software can do. But I’ve been very happy with it.
I’ll say right now that I’m not a paid promoter for Scrivener. I’ve just been a user for a long time. It’s inexpensive and a great tool. If you’re interested, here’s their pricing page.
As a side note, I'm still on the original Scrivener, which stopped getting updates a few years ago. Scrivener 3 is the current supported version.
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/store/scrivener

July did not mess around, and August is about to get hectic, but I'm still afloat. I feel like I really worked on making decent use of my time this month. Anyway, here's what's up:
Dungeons & Dragons: Bard Campaign - Session #7 fully planned. No new update. We haven’t played session 7 yet. In short, no update.
D&D Single Adventure - No progress, which hurts, but I'm prepping for my first pro DMing session. I think once I start seeing how modules really work, I'll be better set up to really write my own.
Criminal from Birth sequel - This was where most of my effort went. I got a good deal of time spent on this, all things considered. Second Draft Status: 35 of 37 chapters edited. (5 since last update.) Only two left! Then it's off to my editor. Third draft will be once they're done with it.
LitRPG book (working title Subscription: Life) - Bare bones outline is pretty well done, but there will be a good bit more detail to add as I start developing characters. The prologue is actually already a paragraph long, so there are words to this project. The meat of the story is going to need to be more outlined. The prologue is solid enough for me to have started writing, so I'm thrilled!
New Short Story (My Stories) - I got some work done on it this month! Really trying to finish this one so I can share it, but I didn't quite make it this month.

I need to make some short writing exercises happen. It's been a bit.

A month to write wherever I want, huh? What’s funny is I don’t necessarily dream of writing in other places, or fantasizing about my ideal writing place. I’m such a creature of habit and disassociation that I can write anywhere, as long as I have my writing file in front of me. Laptop, desktop, doesn’t matter. I just need a word file.

Hell, I’ve written by sending myself emails before. I’ve also written bits and pieces in the bathroom on my phone. Frankly, I need to start doing that again.

But that’s beside the point.

The point for me is that I’m not overly concerned about where I write. For a lot of people, the expected answers will be places like:

• Beaches, Mountains, Riversides - wherever a nature view will suit their temperament.
• Museums, Art Galleries - where inspiration is only a few steps away.
• Coffee Houses/Cafes, Busy Plazas, Tourist Locations - where people-watching is abundant
• Totally Secluded Place - where there are zero distractions

I totally see the draw of all the usual answers, and to be fair, my gut response is going to be in that first and fourth category. Probably a secluded mountain cabin with a view. Maybe a stream nearby, of possible.

While I would absolutely love being in that kind of place and situation, assuming my needs would be met for a month via grocery delivery or whatever, I don’t feel like it would do anything for my writing. Sure, I would revel in being steps away from a gorgeous view, but like I said, my writing happens wherever I am, regardless of location.

The biggest draw about this question for me is the promise of a month to just write. The time is what I need, not an ideal location. That would make the biggest difference. Frankly, being in a place I really want to be might be more of a distraction, at least at first until I got used to being where I was.

I guess what I’m saying through all this is that I’m not one of those creatives who has specific wants or needs, or who dreams about certain atmosphere for that ideal creative juice flow. Some people have a routine to get their brains in gear, and that’s fine. The point is to do the making. 

For me, can I just have a fully all-expenses paid month at home, complete with housekeeping and a good cook, so I can focus on writing? 

Thanks!

P. S. - I mean, I’ll take that month in a mountain cabin with good weather and a view if the offer is on the table. Thanks again!