Skip to main content

A Writing Update


I'll be honest. I've been putting off writing a blog post for about a week now.

Why?

Between being overwhelmed by the writing projects I'm working on and the fact that I'm querying three different books and getting almost daily rejections, I'm just not in a place where I feel like I can offer any advice whatsoever. What do I think I have figured out that I could possibly teach you?

But then I realized that maybe showing that vulnerability is exactly the thing I could show you. Because we all have it. No matter how hard we try to make it appear as though we have things figured out, no matter how put together we seem to be, we're all still just tearing a piece of our soul and smearing it across a page.

That makes us feel like a raw nerve. Vulnerable. Exposed. 

I feel it every time I put a book out. I feel it every time I read a note from someone who didn't like a story I published. I feel it every time I have a column go live. I feel it a lot. It's a constant.

I think we have to embrace that vulnerability. It's what makes us writers, right? That sensitivity is what allows us to find ourselves in the shoes of others and helps us figure out how to write from their perspective.

Some parts of that feeling can drag you down though.

I have to put those parts of that feeling away and just bury myself in the work. That's why coming and working on this blog post was so hard. I've been burying myself in other things. But it's time to crawl out of that grave. 

So, for this post, I figured I'd just acknowledge how low I currently feel about my writing and pending career and give you an update about what I was working on.

The four big projects I'm toiling away on most are all my own work.

First: Just a couple of days ago I finished taking all my notes on my first readthrough of my fantasy novel (which I'm calling, at the moment The Shadow Aspect.) It's almost 700 pages printed out in manuscript format and it was vital that I went through it sentence by sentence. Maybe that's part of my current vulnerability, too. I'm going through page after page of rough draft and asking myself why I thought this was good enough to put down on paper the first time. I have to remind myself that it's the nature of revisions. I slapped the clay onto the table with that first draft, now I finesse it and really mold it.

Second: I'm working on a science fiction serial. I'm almost 20,000 words and 5 chapters into it. I think I might release it as part of my Patreon. So far it's been a lot of fun. It feels like a cross between Robotech, Flash Gordon, and Star Wars. I've been making the most progress on this and I feel like I can't wait to unleash it on people. On the other hand, I'm currently convinced it's probably terrible.

Third: I'm drafting a novel. It's a horror novel set in my childhood. Thinking and pondering about that has been draining emotionally. To put it mildly, I had a pretty bad childhood. So working through some of these issues and recreating the setting on the page has been another strain on how I've been feeling about my writing. I'm hoping I can be proud of this when it's done, though.

Fourth: My short film isn't going to storyboard itself. So, I'm working on that a lot, too.

There are a hundred other little things I'm working on, too. I've been posting reviews and news at Big Shiny Robot!, I've been podcasting for Full of Sith and Fauxthentic History... I've gotten all my regular freelance work done.

And I've been toiling away at the day job 40 hours a week.

Right now it just feels like it's too much. It probably is. But I don't know of any better way to deal with it but to just keep wading through it. 

I also need to realize that it's normal to feel like this. And it's part of the process. And it happens to everybody.

So, with that realization, I'm going to keep on working.

--

As for my work that's been coming out lately, the biggest piece has probably been my latest Playlist for StarWars.Com. It's all about Captain Tarpals. 

I also wrote a piece on being a responsible nerd adult for Salt Lake City Weekly I'm pretty proud of.

Salt Lake Comic Con is coming up fast, too. I'll be posting my schedule for that soon, but at this point I'm on at least 17 panels and doing at least three live podcasts: an episode of Full of Sith, Fauxthentic History, and Stuff You Missed in History Class.

-- 

As a reminder: You can join my short story Patreon here. 

The Aeronaut and Escape Vector are still out and still need your purchases and reviews. If nothing else, they can use you telling people about them. If you want signed copies, visit the shop here on this page.

As far as my work outside of all this: There's a lot of great stuff on Big Shiny Robot! and Full of Sith for you. 

And please, please, please don't forget to check out any of my books, drop reviews of them on Amazon or Goodreads, and follow me on twitter and Facebook!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 Schedule

It's time for another year of Salt Lake Comic Con and another hectic schedule for me. But! that doesn't mean it's not a helluva lot of fun. I hope you're able to join me at any of these panels. Especially if you like Star Wars. And please, please, please come to my signing and visit. Get some books signed. I'd love that enormously. Here is my Thursday schedule: Everything here is a highlight. That first panel about behind the scenes of the prequels is with Pablo Hidalgo and I'll be asking him questions about what it was like to be there on set for most of the prequels. Then I'll be asking questions of Michael Biehn, who I've been a fan of since I was a little kid. Aliens and Terminator were favorites. If you want to ask him a question, please hit me up on Twitter with it. I will ask it at the panel. And you don't want to miss Fauxthentic History's Infinity Gauntlet live episode. It's going to be soooo good. Here is Friday: ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Missed Opportunities of Days Gone By

“Hello?” I said into the phone, accepting the call from a number I didn’t recognize. “Hey,” the feminine voice on the other replied, as though I should know the sound of her voice. At a loss, I said, “Can I help you?” “It’s Brooke.” Her name stopped me. It couldn’t possibly be her. We hadn’t spoken in years, a decade perhaps. “Brooke?” “Yeah, Brooke Baker. This is Mark, right?” Jesus Christ. It was her. “Yeah, it is Mark. Brooke. Wow. How are you? It’s been a long time since… well… since anything.” “I know.” “So, how are you doing?” “Okay, I suppose…” Her voice belied her words, though. Something was up. “I… It’s just been so long and I guess I wanted to hear your voice.” “I don’t think I had a number for you. Ever. I offered a couple of times, but…” “I was a brat back then.” And that’s how a random phone call turned into a two-and-a-half hour catch-up session. We spoke of everything under the sun: people we still knew, how different we were, h...
14 comments
Read more

Anatomy of a Scene: The Third Man

It's time again to break down a classic scene. One that's well-written and, in my view, a fine example of excellent craft. I've done some of these articles from books (like The End of the Affair   and Starship Troopers ) and other movies (like Citizen Kane , City Lights , Raiders of the Lost Ark , and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ), but now it's time to take a look at a scene from The Third Man . It blends the best of Orson Welles (as he's in the film and drives this scene) and Graham Greene, who wrote this particular screenplay. Before we get to the scene, we need some context. The Third Man is a tale of the black market in Vienna, just after World War II. It's about a cheap, dime-store Western novelist named Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton) and his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles.) Lime offered Martins a job in Vienna, so Martins leaves America and arrives, only to find that Harry Lime is dead. Penniless, without a friend or reason to be...
Post a Comment
Read more