Welcome to The Fictional!
Whether you’re reading me here, on Substack, Medium, Tumblr or elsewhere, all the things you need to know about my writing projects will be found right here.
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Welcome to The Fictional!
Whether you’re reading me here, on Substack, Medium, Tumblr or elsewhere, all the things you need to know about my writing projects will be found right here.
The slog is real, and I totally understand when writers struggle, when you see writers talking about struggling to get 300 words on paper, when writers lament about the editing process, the marketing process, the querying process. This is the slog. The pure joy of writing, like any relationship, doesn’t persist 24/7/365. You have to do the work. You have to want it. You have to put in the time. You have to love it, even when you hate it. Like any good relationship, sometimes writing loves you, and sometime it hates you. And it’s okay.
There are lots of other ways back to writing when you’re burned out, and that’s part of what brought me back. I gave my brain a break. I let all the pressure I put on myself, which I blogged about in the stories linked above, and dove into things that I like and that I know will bring me back around. If you’re burned out, figure out your strategies and get yourself back into the game. No rush. No hurry. There are no deadlines. Just tell your stories.
In 2023, I wrote easily over 100k words. I cranked out tons of other stories and articles, drafting and planning a slew of serialized fiction tales and working on a complete rewrite of the first mystery novel in a series I have planned while also writing the fourth novel in the series. If that wasn’t bad enough, I started rebooting on my website a 150-episode serial I wrote with friends back in 2010–12.
I thought I could do it all, and I won’t say that I still can’t. The ideas are there, and I won’t deny them. All those words, stories, and characters are in my head, waiting for their turn, and I don’t want to deny them. But I did for a minute — well, for the last seven months. I hit a wall, but it wasn’t a wall of energy or a wall of ideas or a wall based on finding a new hobby. This unloved ukulele can attest to that. It was something different.
In the middle of all, I hit the wall of expectations.
AI is a tool, like everything else. How you use it is what matters. I’m using it and having a blast! I can do so many things now that I couldn’t before, and it’s so exciting to have this 360-degree approach to my writing, from ideas to polishing the text to audio voiceover and images. It pushes all my creative buttons, and I like when those buttons are pushed a lot.
A tragic tale of lust and betrayal. After ten years, the story started in 2013 is finally done. Read about how four authors put together a dark fairy tale and it finally made its way to completion.
Dorothy: Locked & Loaded was told by five different authors from 2010 to 2012 delivering 138 episodes over two years!
Anyway, I still have to write the novel. I won’t let ChatGPT do that. But at least if I need an idea generator, then here’s something I can use.
In Crabquake, our heroes Jesse and Haze battle a new kind of insanity — giant crabs morphed by the chromium seeped into Baltimore’s historic Inner Harbor and unleashed by an earthquake on the unsuspecting neighborhood of Fells Point.
Okay, it’s really not going to destroy me. Honestly I can’t do just one thing. I just can’t. Call it ADHD, or in my childhood we called it being “hyper”, but I can’t just do one thing. There are too many stories calling my name in my head, and well, what’s a guy to do? Gotta just tell them all. Fuck it.
At least half of what I write now is considered “serial novel”. I have literally a half dozen in the works, either actively being written and published or being written to be published later or simply just a concept with some of the basics already worked out. I find it to be a fun way to tell a story, and I didn’t realize that serialized novels were such a thing now.
Do not underestimate what your reblogs and words mean, just because you’re not ‘big’ or whatever. Reblogs are the key to creating and maintaining a community of like-minded people, supporters and supportive folks who share interests, encourage each other’s creativity, and engender a feeling of community and togetherness. Reblogs matter.
The best and worst thing about Alice was that she was a bitch. She was a straight loner most of the time, more often than not the hottest thing I saw in any given day, and generally the most frustrating woman I’d ever met; but that’s what I loved about her, and that’s what made just about everyone else want to punch her in the face.