challenges in writing – Page 2

Writers, Mix It Up

I’ve started on the third installment in my urban fantasy series. Everyone writes at different speeds, and I’m somewhere in the middle of the pack, I think. I published my first book in August 2023 and published my second in January of this year. I hope to finish this third installment by the end of next year.

Maybe I am a slow writer, after all, but when you have a job and other commitments, you can’t be a writer 24/7, unfortunately.

Anyway, I’m happy with my work, but after finishing this current project, I think I’ll take a break from Hermes’ adventures. I’m in the mood to try something new. And that’s healthy, I’m finding. Writing about the same thing is kind of like exercising. If you keep exercising the same muscle group over and over, you end up hurting yourself rather than strengthening yourself.

So, I want to mix it up. I want to write different stories after finishing book #3 and stretch my talents. Broaden my horizons and various other cliches. It’ll be fun, and it’s good practice to try something new.

***

My book, The Trickster’s Lament, is currently available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format.

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.“

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

How to Write the Best Novel Ever

Looking for how to be the greatest author who ever lived? Need some quick and easy advice on the quick and easy way to become rich and famous? Just follow these ten tips without question, and you will become an author that nobody will forget! Absolutely not satire!

Plagiarize other writers. Sharing is caring. Besides, they did the really hard part, so why not be efficient? If they didn’t want people using their stuff, they wouldn’t have made it public, now, would they?
Use the most complicated, flowery language you can. Pull words from the dictionary with at least four syllables. Use really big words never used in casual conversation and sprinkle them liberally throughout your story. That way, everybody knows how smart you are.
Don’t use consistent characterization. People aren’t consistent in real life, so why should they be in fiction? Don’t worry if your protagonist acts contradictory to established personality and goals. Just have them do whatever with no real rhyme or reason. It’s not like readers actually care about that sort of thing.
Write maybe once or twice a month. Why stress yourself out? Write whenever you feel like. After all, you can only write well if you’re “in the zone.” Writing every day regardless of how you feel is just plain silly and definitely bad for your skin.
Editing is a waste of time. Reviewing your work for typos, story flow and all that other stuff is dumb. Why compromise your original vision by changing all your hard work? Even worse is submitting your novel to editing by other people. Didn’t your parents teach you to never trust strangers?
Novels are only good if they have lots of symbolism. They taught us that in high school literature class, so it must be true. Symbolism is way more important than storytelling, so make sure everything in your novel is symbolic: the color of people’s clothes, their names, their hairstyle, and especially innocuous, minor details that are otherwise irrelevant to the story. Everything is symbolic and has Deep Meaning™.
Constructive criticism is dumb and bad and should be ignored. If someone doesn’t like something in your book and suggests how to improve it, they’re just jealous and probably want to sabotage you. Surround yourself with people who compliment everything you do and listen to them exclusively. But remember, per tip #5, don’t let them actually touch your book.
Bigger books are better, so write as many words as you can and don’t cut any out. Refer to tip #2. All the hard copy versions of the world’s greatest novels are big enough to be used as doorstoppers. So, obviously, you want to write a huge book with lots of words. NEVER use 3 words when you can use 30.
Draw your own cover art. Why bother letting someone else draw your vision? Save time and money by drawing the art yourself! You know what you want, and it’s guaranteed to be memorable.
Include a gimmick. Everybody writes the same old boring way, so make yourself stick out. Write only in present tense, or make each character’s lines a different color, or write the pages out of order, or write sentences backwards. People like that kind of fun and will definitely appreciate all the extra effort you put in.

Ultimately, it is up to you on whether to make the correct decision and follow this free advice. Remember, this is ABSOLUTELY not satire designed to point out things that can hinder a book’s quality or a humorous article designed to make people laugh. This is absolutely serious stuff and following these steps will make you the best writer in the history of the universe and rich enough to buy a whole nation. Everyone will love and adore you forever as you achieve authorial apotheosis.

I repeat, this is in no way satire, and taking this advice seriously will not lead to you angrily arguing with people over your book’s reviews on Amazon.

And no, I am not crossing my fingers behind my back. My hand is itchy.

***

My new book, The Trickster’s Lament, is currently available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format.

He may be disrespected. He may be kicked about. He may even be falling out with his pantheon. But Hermes is a trickster. He knows how to play dirty in a world that doesn’t play fair. But though he can best man, beast, and god, he isn’t prepared for his wiliest opponent yet: his own conscience.”

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

What Writing My Second Book Has Taught Me

I’ve heard that writing your second book is harder than writing the first. Your first book may be a hit, but it may also be a fluke, a one and done deal. But moving on to the second? Ah, that’s when you find out if you really have the chops to be a writer.

Well, crafting my second book has gone mostly smoothly. The story came together much more easily, I’ve gained a better understanding of the characters and their motivations and personalities, and it’s been a fun ride. Heck, I got it finished in much less time than the first: about a year and a half from beginning to final draft. But I also made mistakes that I didn’t with my first project.

Now, why is that? Why did I order a paperback cover when I didn’t have my final page count ready? Why did I make silly oversights in editing that I only noticed after sending the book in for formatting?

The only answer I have thus far is that I was rushing. I jumped the gun, I got a little too lax, I was so fixed on the end goal that I didn’t pay attention to all the hurdles. I was impatient, and I didn’t even realize it.

Fortunately, I spotted these errors in time and fixed them. Lesson learned.

I thought I’d share my insights here for any other budding authors to read. Impatience is a bane of writers. Maybe you have just the one novel to write in your lifetime. You’ve spent years on it and are eager to finally see it published. Or maybe you have a series in mind, a long-running story told over several books, and you’re ready to move on to the next leg in the journey.

Either way, the temptation to push through and stop paying attention to details is strong. Resist it! A good novel takes time. You have plenty of it to perfect your story, and the copyright page, and the title, and the word count, and so forth. Don’t publish until you know that your book is exactly the way you want it.

Sweat the details. It saves so much trouble in the long run if you do.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Stuck Between Morning and Night

Are you more of a night or morning person?

Ah, the old night/day dichotomy. Do you come alive at night, or do you start the day peppy and excited?

I admit that I get more done early in the day, and I relax more at night. But the cold hard truth is, I’m neither. That’s right, I’m taking a third option. I’m a midday person.

What does that mean? It means I feel most energetic and focused in the smack-dab middle of the day, between about 10AM and 4PM. That’s when I feel really alive and able to tackle any challenge. It’s when I most enjoy writing, when I have the opportunity.

Alas, I usually don’t. Midday is, after all, when I’m in the middle of work and not able to pursue leisure. Sitting in an office chair when you’re bristling with energy and ideas for a new story are rushing through your head isn’t exactly the most pleasant sensation.

But such is life.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Writers, Don’t Go It Alone

Writing is by and large a solitary activity. It isn’t something generally done in a group save for perhaps writing jams and community workshops. However, when writing your novel, short story, poetry, or any other project, you’re probably going to spend the lion’s share of your time by yourself, with only your ideas and thoughts to keep you company on the journey.

However, writing is not an isolated activity, as I have discovered. While writing a novel draft may be done in private, what comes afterward needs other people: submitting drafts to beta readers, finding editors to review your work, maybe even sharing passages with a local writers’ group. Why? Well, partly because we all need a few extra pairs of eyes to see the good and bad in our work that we can’t see ourselves. But we also need a smidgeon of encouragement from time to time.

I don’t say this out of selfishness or self-pity. All writers must build confidence in their work if they intend to publish. But let’s face facts. We all feel discouraged at some point or another. Perhaps we’ve hit writer’s block or we look back on our recent work and want to gag. Or maybe, even though everything is going swimmingly and we’re hitting all our deadlines, we still can’t shake off the inexplicable doldrums we’re feeling. And we need someone to talk to, someone we can trust and confide in.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, writers are not cut off from the world. We need other people, and we need encouragement. Being left alone with only our own thoughts to keep us company – well, I don’t know about you, but as a writer I tend to be a very harsh critic of my own work, always asking if it’s really any good.

Writing can become a lonely journey. Find someone, or a couple someones, willing to stick with you through it all, give honest feedback, be supportive, and most of all, be a friend. Writers shouldn’t live in a vacuum. It’s not healthy (or even really possible), and after all, half the fun of writing is to see people’s reactions to the things we create.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Putting Stories into the World and Learning to Let Them Go

Stories are precious things, especially to those who write them.

We write stories for all sorts of reasons: to tell a message, to work through a grief or hardship, as a gift for friends and family, or simply for the sake of doing so. Regardless of why, stories are very personal things.

And we all have a vision for our stories. We see it for what we want it to be. We see it all – or so we think. And then the moment of truth comes: time to publish. It’s out there, others are reading it, and they don’t see what we saw.

That’s applicability for you. We plan and plan, but readers make the story into something else, because they see themselves in the story. We all see ourselves, and so the narrative comes into focus through the lenses of our own lives.

It’s hard to let go of what we create, and even harder to hear others’ opinions of our work. They claim to understand and comprehend the deep analogies and whatnot, and we tell ourselves, “That’s not what I meant at all!”

It’s life, I suppose. And it’s something all writers will have to deal with sooner or later. But it’s not all bad. The words of readers reveal other lenses, other views and new possibilities. To be a writer is to spend so much time locked up inside yourself. Letting your story go out into the world allows you to see beyond your own mind.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

The Curious Art of NOT Writing the Story

I’m always thinking about writing and how to describe it to people who don’t write. It’s something that is both simple and complex to describe, because like most kinds of art, writing refuses to be boxed into simple definitions. Putting words on paper is what writing involves, but it is not what writing is.

One thing that writing is is the art of cutting away the unnecessary. Putting in too many or too few words is easy; adding just enough is hard. Authors spend their whole lives perfecting that technique.

And then my brain shifts gears and starts thinking: Can the same be said of stories in general? Everyone has at least one good story in them, but then there are those who have dozens, even hundreds of stories. Which ones do we tell, and which do we leave unsaid? In other words, which are the ones worth telling the world?

There are stories published that perhaps should not have been. On the other hand, there are also books written that will never see the light of day, maybe first attempts that authors are content to let sit in their drawer undisturbed (I’m not one of them. I published my first book, for better or for worse. You be the judge).

Some stories are complete in themselves, but get sequels that no one asked for. And some … This may be a strange thing to say, but I think that some stories can stay cozily confined within our own thoughts or just typed out on our computers and taken no further. Not every story needs to be told. But writers do need to write. It’s a hobby as well as a career.

Shifting through all the possibilities, the tons of tales that we think up, and deciding which we will commit our time to writing and which we must pass up on. That’s an art unto itself.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Tips on Draft Writing

Drafts are a vital part of any writing project. Very, very, very rarely is any book released on its first draft. You need to pour over your work many times to make sure it’s ready for publication. But, the question often arises: How many drafts should you write? Three? Four? Eleven? How many is enough?

There’s no hard and fast answer. It depends on the author. Different strokes for different writers.

Even so, I’ve come across a few general tips that can help you decide how long to spend in the drafting stage.

Set yourself goals for each draft. Pick one specific thing to improve for each draft you write. Your first draft -the vomit draft, as I like to call it – is just getting your story onto paper. Your second draft, perhaps, can center around developing story and characterization. For the next one, pay attention to grammar and sentence structure. Whatever you choose, each draft sees definite and specific improvement, and you may find yourself not needing to go through as many as you expected.
Don’t expect perfection. You’ll never get there. Drafting is about improvement, not reaching an ideal but unattainable state of “perfection.” Even the greatest writers make mistakes. Focus on refining and polishing. Every time you go through your story, you’re making it better. Each draft builds on the previous one.
Pace yourself. Sometimes, wrapping up one draft and jumping straight into the next isn’t a good idea. Give yourself a few days to let your subconscious mull over things. A little break can be great for your writing as you begin anew rested and with a fresh perspective. You find yourself more easily spotting errors and opportunities.
You have to publish eventually. If you want to release your book to the public, you will have to stop drafting at some point. You have to tell yourself that your story is ready. Remember: Refining and editing is all well and good, but if you never stop, then you will reach a point where you’re doing more harm than good. You lose sight of the whole and get buried in nitpicks that add nothing. A sculptor who never stops chiseling the marble ends up with nothing but gravel in the end.

Some people love the drafting stage, other people don’t. I find it a useful and interesting process. I not only clean up the chaos of my first draft, but also discover new things about my characters, new storytelling techniques, and just plain mature as a writer. However many you find necessary, remember the most important tip of all: Have fun with it!

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

A Story’s Skin: Setting Limits for Yourself as a Writer

We as human beings don’t like to hear about “limits.” We want to do our own thing without anything holding us back. But consider the breadth of human imagination and all the choices you have as a writer and ask yourself, “How do I even know where to start with my story? Where do I go with it? How do I keep it organized?”

The truth is, stories need boundaries. That’s the difference between a story and rambling. Stories have a point, and they stick to that point. Telling a story about shopping at the grocery store is not going to include what your kids did at school that day. And a story about grocery shopping isn’t going to take as long to tell as, say, the history of Great Britain. Different stories have different limits. But they do need limits.

Some of us like to meander. We have so many ideas and we want to shove them all in. It’s fun to type away at your computer and watch the words flow. But knowing when to stop – ah, there’s the rub.

Here’s a metaphor for you: Imagine your story is like the human body. It’s made of many different complex parts. But all those parts are able to stay together and function properly because of the skin. Skin covers the body and keeps it in place. If we didn’t have skin, we’d just sort of … ooze all over. And who wants that?

It’s the same with writing. You have an idea, or two or three. Great! Now stop. Organize those ideas, don’t add to them. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end. A triggering event, rising action, climax, and epilogue. In other words, stories have structure. And structure, by its very nature, is defined by boundaries and restrictions. They aren’t bad things. They’re necessary for anything to make sense and have form.

Outlining your story ahead of time is a great way to know what your story is about, to know what to put in and what to hold back. Yes, things will shift and change as you go through drafts. But don’t keep adding and adding and adding. Know when to stop and refine what you already have. Put a skin on your story.

If overwriting is a major problem for you, then put a limit on your word count. Something miraculous occurs when you suddenly have a ceiling you can bump your head on.

When we are deprived of the freedom to do everything, we discover a new well of creativity. We choose our words more carefully. We find focus. Words matter more, so we experiment until we find the right ones. We cut away cumbersome paragraphs and sentences. Knowing there’s a cap on our writing makes us pay extra special attention to dialogue, plotting, pacing, and everything else.

Limits are good. They force us to be better writers.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Setting Your Own Pace: The Importance of Not Comparing Your Productivity to Others

It’s so easy to look at the writing community and be amazed at the writers who churn out novels like nobody’s business. A novel per year, two novels, even three! How can anyone hope to compete with that kind of productivity? For those of us just starting out, we may feel a burden being placed on our shoulders. We may feel that we have to “keep up” to be considered good writers.

Well, I say “Phooey” to that. Every writer is different, and we all have different paces at which we write. Some write slow, some fast. And not everyone has a dozen stories to share, or even two. Some people only have one good book in them for their entire lives. My respect to those who publish that one book.

Comparing yourself to other writers, using the accomplishments of others as the measure of your own worth and talent, is a flawed notion. What do you know about the life of those writers? How long have they been writing, and how much time do they have with which to write? And even more importantly, what sacrifices have they made to achieve their output?

I have a day job and other responsibilities. I have friends and a social calendar. As much as a part of me would love to write 8 hours a day every day, the simple truth is that I can’t. I make deadlines, I make an effort to write something every day, but I’m no book-making machine. But I can still be content with my work.

So, if you feel that your worth as a writer is measured by how prolific you are, take a breath and relax. Don’t rush your writing, and don’t seek quantity over quality. A rushed product is messy and rarely 100% of your potential. There is no race, except maybe against the deadlines you set for yourself. Don’t rob yourself of the enjoyment of what you do.

We’re all different. Our writing journeys are different. Figure out what works for you.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

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