New friends, new writers... Good to meet you!

It seems like the interviews are going to be a pretty fun feature, because I got a lot of interest from all of you on Melanie Chasten Fowler's from yesterday (or maybe it was just the fact that it was Melanie). Thanks to everyone who stopped by and left a comment. A special thanks to those of you who added me as followers! I look forward to some good conversations.

As I've said before, the purpose of this blog was originally to give myself a writing outlet while I was in school, and didn't have time to actually write in my own novel much. Since then I've had several people tell me that they had found some worth in something I posted, and it had helped them with their own writing (I don't claim to be any kind of expert in the slightest). So the blog has morphed into something I think might be beneficial to the writing community. The way I plan to accomplish this is to open it up to everyone to contribute. I know many of you have blogs or websites, and I want to be a support for those. If you have an event or contest you'd like to spread around, let me know. If you have an awesome local writer you'd like me to interview (even if it's yourself), also let me know! Feel free to post any questions about writing you might have in my post's comments, or email me.

If you discover a great website or book that has helped you in your own writing, let me know so I can post it. Throw quotes from authors' blogs at me, notify me if you get published or self-publish. Let's pull some of the great writers here in Utah into the spotlight and get some great books out there!

Becky's Horror Story.

Harmon's toe fell off.

There it was, sitting on his carpet, while congealing blood slowly leaked out of the stump where his big toe should have been. He stared in disbelief, utterly shocked at the sight. A definite ache was coming in waves from the top of his foot up to his knee. He convinced himself to think through his predicament. He'd heard of plenty of smashed toenail cases, where the nail eventually died, disconnected, and left a black and bruised toe behind... maybe this would be the same.

Now he was almost certain he'd seen a monster down the alley behind his apartment last night. He'd stumbled back, and fallen into a puddle of … goop... wearing nothing but sandals. Harmon could see his back of trash out the bedroom window, still sitting on the ground by the dumpster where he'd left it in his haste. He remembered the breath he'd taken, convincing himself just enough that he'd watched one too many horror films that month. He'd gone inside, quickly kicked his sandals into the front closet, and gone to his room, not even turning out the lights. He'd been able to get to sleep, but had not been able to go back out in the dark.

Eyes. He remembered red eyes, and shiny sharp claws the size of his head.

Harmon shook his head to clear his mind and quickly reached with his left hand for the corded telephone on the desk to call for a ride to the hospital. He felt a sudden pin prick at his wrist that made his gasp in pain. The prickling spread like electricity across his wrist and through his palm as he watched with his own two eyes a black ring form where his watch should have been.

Panic rose from Harmon's stomach to settle in his chest and around his lungs. Struggling to breathe in and out, he watched as the skin around his wrist bone peeled back wetly and his flesh was eaten way by an unseen force. Exposed white bone began to crack and pop, splitting away from his arm. His voice caught in his throat; his fingers went limp and his hand severed itself from his arm before his eyes to rest on the dresser, leaving him with a burning stump in mere seconds.

Harmon stared wide-eyed, and released an uncontrollable shout of fear as he reached over with his remaining hand to pick up the severed limb, now oozing red blood into the light wood of his dresser.

Leprosy, zombification, and Apocalypse by aliens all crossed his mind as he raced with his hand out the bedroom door and down the hall. As he ran past the bathroom, his right knee cap popped with such force he was thrown to the ground with a yelp. Unsuccessfully, he tried to catch himself with his severed limb. Harmon's cheek bone fractured at the impact, and his face rushed across the carpet.

White hot fury raged in his left hip where he heard a sickening creeeeeak followed by a slurrp, like tearing apart a cooked chicken leg. Screaming filled his ears as he dragged himself across his living room carpet, reaching, stretching for the front doorknob. There was a throbbing more intense than he'd ever felt in his life. His entire left leg now lay askew, detached six inches away from its rightful place at the base of his hip; the skin on his thigh blackened and bloody, tiny veins and muscles still attached to his body. Following with his eyes a trail of blood from his bedroom, he turned to see his right leg maimed at the knee, laying down the hall ten feet behind him.

Blood squirting from his missing appendages and stumps, moans and grunts spewing from his mouth, Harmon collapsed on his back mere feet from his dead bolted front door. Too weak to speak or call for help; too drained of blood to lift his head. Searing pain filled his side, and a warm wet feeling spread from his stomach.

A soft scraping sound came from the coat closet. Slick, wet sounding footsteps made their way across his entry way just outside Harmon's blackening vision. Seconds passed with Harmon listening to a thick drip, drip, drip like a leaky faucet, just inches from his head. Something breathing hoarsely and deeply.

Harmon felt his life seeming from what remained of his body. Darkness continued to fill his vision, and all he could feel was dull, cold pain. No time to wonder why.

The last thing he saw was the monster chewing on his severed hand.

I want to hear from you! (Not a survey, trust me.)

So the whole thing about this blog is that I'm an amateur. I don't know what I'm doing. Like all writers, I'm feeling my way in the blackness, hoping I don't find a ginger waiting for me in the shadows. I have done a massive amount of studying and research into techniques and advice, but that all comes to nothing if I can't apply it. This, I believe, is something every writer struggles with.

I want to make it obvious (if it isn't already) that I hope to spark conversations and the trading of ideas with this website. I want to hear from you, about your writing, about my writing, with advice and experiences. I want you to tell your friends to come visit me, especially the writer ones.

It's important to network and find other's that share a passion with your own interests. I encourage you to take a look at the other blogs I follow, and read the excellent posts from those writers. And speak up!

The excitement of a new book, and how I learned from the last one.

So I briefly posted that I was moving on from The Sometimes Sword, and I wanted to kind of dig in deeper and explain what I'm doing now.

After an initial decision to leave TSS as a stepping stone and nothing more, I have now amended my way of thinking, and decided to leave it as a work in progress for now, to be picked up at a later (much later) date. Right now I need to focus on improving my craft, and while useful, editing an old story isn't working toward that end.

So I've decided to start a new book, this time in a different way. In the post about My Beginnings, I talked about how I started TSS with absolutely no world building or character development. That was the direct opposite to my first work where I world-builded the crap out of it (and that failed horribly). With this book, I am seeking a balance between the two methods. I want to have a more engaging plot and conflict, along with a more detailed and fleshed out world. This requires some basic world-details and plotting before hand. However, just as with TSS, I want the focus to be character and I will continue to steer toward that. Another important point is that of Discovery with a capital "d". I find that if I world-build too much, I lose my own sense of excitement and discovery as I write and garden the book. So yeah, that's something to keep in mind also.

Really, I want this post to be aimed at what TSS did for me as a writer, and what I can take away from it. I won't go into the specific details, but I want to highlight the process I used to make sure I learned all I could from it.

First, I wrote down a list of fundamental flaws withing TSS. (I used a giant 24x16 whiteboard. I have three of them, and seriously, they are so useful.) Then I had Becky and my alpha readers Travis and Robyn write up a list on another board, this time with everything that was good in the book.

Once I had both lists hanging on the wall, Becky and I went through them and defined the underlying issues/successes of each. I transferred them to a computer document and began to explore the methods of fixing/achieving each. This way, I essentially made a writer's guide for myself, allowing me to build a better book the next time around.

I'm in the middle of some foundational world building, and hopefully at the start of next week I'll begin writing the first draft. I'm excited to start this new project, and hopefully I'll experience the same level of improvement as I did when I first started TSS.

What are you working on right now?

I can't believe I'm doing this....

I have come to the incredibly painful conclusion that it is time for "The Sometimes Sword" and I to part ways. It has been an amazing several months, and I have pinned a lot of hopes and countless hours on this book. However, I have come to the realization that despite my best efforts, "The Sometimes Sword" is at best a step on my journey, and nothing more.


I will continue to write, and as I type this, I am concocting the beginnings of another book, one that will hopefully incorporate all that was good in "The Sometimes Sword", and none of the bad. To be honest, I'm feeling pretty emotional about it, and saying goodbye to these characters will be incredibly difficult to say the least. But, I have to be realistic, and if I ever want to be read by real audiences, I can't cling to something that is fundamentally flawed.


And so I say goodbye to you, Sometimes Sword, you will always remain with me, my first book, my first success, and hopefully not the last. Thank you for teaching me how to be a better writer.


Chale and Astrid, thank you for being my friends.

Writer's Depression is worse than Writer's Block.

So today was supposed to be a post about Setting, and it might still be, but first I want to relate some thoughts about depression. Now, when I say "depression", I'm not talking about the generic kind you take a pill for (though they share a lot of similarities). What I really mean is the feeling of worthlessness (also known as "suckiness") that many (all) writers worth their salt feel at some point.

In fact, it's the very thing I'm battling with with at the moment. It has been several weeks since I did anything meaningful in my book, and it feels horrible.

Everyone has heard of Writer's Block (when a writer sits down to write and simply can't. It may be lack of ideas or something else unknown even to them). Sometimes it's so hard to get past that writers go days or weeks without writing anything. Writer's Depression is similar, but I think it deserves its own category.

You see, Writer's Depression isn't a lack of ideas, or a bad plot, in fact it may be the opposite. The writer's brain may be brimming with ideas, overflowing into his eyes like greasy sweat. But a million ideas do no good if they seem to have no merit. There come times when you look at your work and all you see is crap. Vomited-up bilge from a sea monster that just ate Justin Bieber. It's literally painful to read what you had done at times like this. You can't help but believe that it's all swill, unworthy to be read by the meanest high school jock. There seems to be a physical force holding you back from placing fingers to the keyboard, and a mental revulsion to looking at the screen.

This can come about from many sources. Some people may be learning to write faster than they can actually, you know, write. They look at the last two chapters and cringe, because they've already surpassed their skill from a week ago. (Yes, this actually happens.) Others may know something is wrong with their story, but not be able to diagnose it. This is especially frustrating, and very easy to become overwhelmed by. Sometimes your plot and scenes (even simple ones) become tangled up so thoroughly in your brain that you just want to throw it all away, then burn the dumpster. Sometimes it's the result of what someone else says (this is especially dangerous). If you have others reading your work (such as a writing group or alpha readers) it can be very easy to let their usually well-intentioned critiques bury deep in your heart like poison-tipped arrows. The most innocent remark about pacing, dialogue, or even your writing's voice can make you want to retreat into your shell and block out the world, because you know, everyone's a bunch of ass-hats. You put yourself into what you wrote dang it, and when your readers inspected it, they found it lacking (those jerks). (This is not the way it should be, but sometimes it is, despite our most logical effort. Remember that your work is not you, and it's not your baby. It is a flawed manuscript that you are responsible for improving. It's hard to see it that way, I know.)

There is no easy way around it, no magical potion to wash away the shame of Writer's Depression. There is a nearly physical pain sometimes in powering through it, and heaps of mental agony. I'm not exaggerating one bit, believe me. It can be worse for those that already have a tendency to get "down" about things in the first place (like me). The only solution is to keep on, persevere, and never give up.The pain of doing so is what separates us from the hipster in a scarf at the coffee shop. Said hipster feels nothing but self-congratulation at the amazing work he will produce, and thus does nothing to learn and improve himself. On the other hand, we who experience Writer's Depression can't go on without re-evaluating ourselves and what we produce. This does eventually lead to higher-quality work.

In conclusion, I suppose my point is this: you aren't alone with your thoughts of word-genocide. As much crap as you think your story is, it probably isn't. Don't kill it, but strive to improve it, and keep your head above water. Sometimes you need to take a break, walk away for a few days, or work on something else like a blog (aha, insight!). You'll come back refreshed, ready to cut the crap out, and write better stuff in.

So you want to begin writing, but don't know where to begin? (Part One: Character)

At some point, you just gotta realize what you want. More than that, you need to accept it (as my brother once told me). Some people want to draw comics, others want to paint, some people want to be in a band, and some people want to write. Obviously it's the latter I want to talk about; all you people out there who have a story to tell, even if you don't know it. I'm talking about all you who spend hours day-dreaming about the book you just read, or the people who can't play an rpg without filling their heads with character back story (among other things).

With this post I hope to answer some questions you might have, not just about how you should do things, but if the way you're already doing things is correct. When I first started, it wasn't like I had no idea what I was doing, I was simply in the dark as to the best way to do things (you'll find that there are no right or wrong ways generally). I hope to smooth out some of those worries and most of all, get you started in the wonderful world of writing.

I don't claim to be an expert, but here are some things that I wish I had known when I first started:

Character
To me, it's important to begin with character. The best stories are about people, and what they do, not what's done to them. Writers often spend a lot of time obsessing over this part of the writing process, and for good reason. Your main characters are important in establishing your voice, or the tone your writing will (hopefully) make your work instantly recognizable.


When I started The Sometimes Sword (my novel-in-progress), I had an archetype in mind (ie: the Sage Wizard, the Farmboy, the Evil Overlord, etc.) that I wanted to write about and that was it. I didn't even have a name. So for me, discovering the type of character (see above) was the first order of business. You have to decide who you want to write about. A lot goes into considering this. How many times has the Farmboy been featured? Star Wars (Luke Skywalker), The Lord of the Rings (Frodo Baggins), Arabian Nights (Aladdin), and many others. Its the rags-to-riches, young-hero-saves-the-day story, and we love that stuff. But is it what you want to write about? (For me, it was).


What about the Sage Wizard? This one is almost as easy to list. Star Wars again (Obi-Wan), The Lord of the Rings (Gandalf the Grey, and later White), The Sword of Truth (Zedd), The Prydain Chronicles (Dalben the Enchanter), and so on. While this archetype makes a good side character, feel free to make it your protagonist. There are no rules, just don't copy and paste. Remember, an archetype is one thing, a cliche is another. (Writing Excuses does an excellent job of defining the difference.)


We all know what the Evil Overlord is. Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, Darken Rahl from The Sword of Truth, and many, many others. He is the quintessential bad guy that ruins the protagonist's life and threatens the world or universe or whatever. Very hard to write from their point of view, but feel free to try. The worst that can happen is failure. Really. It's all a learning experience.


There are others (spend some time learning about them), all wonderful types to form your character from. Pick one that resonates with you and find what is unique about your Farmboy (or whatever you happen to choose). You will never write a completely original character, but that's not the point. Just like real people, characters follow certain traits and sometimes stereotypes. It's okay. Just make sure he/she doesn't blend into the crowd.


That brings me to another point, a quick one. Don't be afraid to write the opposite gender, of that's what you want. My first book attempt featured a female protagonist, and though rocky at first, it wasn't as hard as I had thought. My current book shares time equally between a male and female character, and (I've been told) that it works just fine. Go for it. You might just find that you understand more about the opposite gender than you thought.


Moving on to one of my favorite parts of starting a character: names. It doesn't matter. Seriously.


Okay, okay, I'll talk about it. I really do enjoy picking names. It's like having a baby, without the messy diapers and nine months of vomiting. Names help us connect to the person that is the character. It gives them identity. Feel free to experiment and go wild. Have fun. Just try not to obsess over it. Chances are (very high) that you will end up changing even the main character's name. I've done it several times across both books. It happens. Keep in mind also, that you want the reader to be able to recognize the names in your work, and try to keep the apostrophes to a minimum (in my opinion). Another thing to consider is the culture your character is based in (culture is another thing entirely, one I will try to touch on in a later post). If you have a seafaring culture, consider some nautical sounding names, or if your protagonist lives underground, perhaps they have earthy, rocky names. You can't really go wrong, but you can be more right.


One more note on names. If your culture uses surnames, try to think of them before you get 30k words in (just a bit of advice from experience).


Another thing I want to talk about is quirks. I'm sure you have all heard the term, and unfortunately sometimes we get the wrong idea. A quirk doesn't have to be a nervous tick that you mention every other sentence (in fact, please don't). It can be anything that sets your character apart, that makes him instantly identifiable. It could be the way a soldier touches the hilt of his sword, or the way a girl tosses her hair (this one can be overused also, so be careful). Quirks make your characters more human (or elvish, whatever), and while some may be subtle, your reader will pick up on them.


To sum this all up, feel free to start your writing project with a character. Feel free to name them, and spend time doing it. Be aware of what archetype you are writing into, and make them real (remember, unique is impossible). Focus your story on character, and you won't go wrong.


Tomorrow's post will be about Setting. Which I am looking forward to.