Spinwork Blog

It’s about 10:30 in the morning and it feels like its about midnight. Chalk it up to my World Issues professor deciding it would be a good idea to watch Wall-E at 8:00 in the morning instead of a final. Not that I’m complaining–Wall-E’s one of my all-time favorite movies, but one I like to watch after a long Saturday, or when I want to wallow in the movie’s unique atmosphere, not just after waking up from an involuntary all-nighter. The upside is I’m currently blessed with that clarity that comes with 2AM writing sessions, where everything makes that sleepy kind of sense and you’re less inhibited to pursue your muse through the pearly avenues of her perpetual acid trip.

I finally finished Atlas Shrugged last night after a near three-month struggle. I say struggle because Atlas isn’t one of those books you read–it’s one you excavate with heavy explosives. Where the effort in reading it was is difficult to say. It’s a long sucker, to be certain (1168 pages), complete with everything I was taught not to do as a writer–from long, expository passages (60 pages, long) to dragging explanations of character’s morals, sexualities, and stoicism against emotional trauma. Still, when it pulled me in, it pulled me in good, and hundreds of pages would fly by in a blink. I wouldn’t quite say its a page-turner, because there are times I had to reread entire passages with a feeling of, “wait, what the fuck did he/she just say?” The reward of being able to fist-pump on my favorite characters in the end was amazing, though (DANNESKJOLD! REARDEN!).

The book is, without question, one of the most intense, overwrought, annoying, hair-tearing, scalp-shredding, bitter-laughter inducing, inspiring, life-changing books I’ve ever read. There’s something masochistic about reestablishing my reading habit with two, 200,000+ word books in quick succession–books that have earned me groans of “you’re reading Ayn Rand? But she’s so conservative/republican/economically fascist/idealist/reactionary, and her prose sucks.” I don’t read books for their agenda. Every writer has an agenda. I have an agenda. I don’t force it down peoples’ throats, and I don’t swallow when writers try to force theirs down mine.

Virtually every criticism I’ve heard about both Atlas and Fountainhead focused on Rand’s views, and I agree. Rand is an idealist, and her opinion is conservative past realism. Her prose is clunky–although, in her defense, English wasn’t her first language–and not something I’d recommend to someone looking to improve their writing. What hooked me was her focus on character and her portrayals of the ideal man (and woman, in the case of Dagny Taggart), which, although hyperbolic and utopian as the rest of Rand’s themes, had enough “real” for me to latch onto, and sufficient “unreal” for me to suspend my disbelief. In a way, I think it was that hyperbole that drew me in. You can learn a lot from exaggeration. After all, it’s more or less the core of comedy. Apparently it works well in fiction, too.

In the end, its difficult to put into words just what the effect was. There were a lot of parts in the book where I’d read a scene or speech and be like, “I FEEL LIKE THAT SOMETIMES,” or “DAMNIT, I’VE HAD PEOPLE PULL THAT ON ME,” or at times, be  awed that such a complex story could be held together with such ostensible simplicity. Maybe the message and the meaning is meant to be mine alone.

That said, I’m continuing my reading extravaganza. I don’t know what I’m going to read next, but I like blogging about it. It gives me something to talk about that isn’t creatively whorish and expository (a use for this blog!). On my list right now are Slaughterhouse-Five, Anna Karenina, Les Miserables, Scarlett Letter and Stranger in a Strange Land. I should also look into finishing Snow Crash, but I haven’t been in the mood for sci-fi lately.

My semester’s over as of yesterday, closed with a read-and-edit of my friend Will’s book, Imperium, which he’s been working on about as long as I’ve been working on Hellion. It’s been really interesting seeing where he’s come from and gone with his stuff, and I’m really starting to see his story and concepts coming together, which is exciting. I’m just hoping he sticks to it. *stern look*

With the semester closed, the time’s come to do more work on Cloudnigh, which continues to stumble and swell in the relative semblance of growth. I haven’t done any actual writing on it in a few days, as the story seems to be demanding some background notes. Its sort of nice that I can finally identify the feeling of “what the fuck am I doing?” as a reminder to check my notes and see what I’m actually trying to say. When I look at the inspiration of my process, its sort of weird to see where I’ve drawn it from: Ayn Rand, Jonathon Stroud, Phillip Pullman, J.K. Rowling, Herman Melville, Fred Gallagher, my dad. I guess I make it work in my own way. Only now am I starting to realize how adaptable you have to be to plan a project. I’ve approached Cloudnigh in such a different way than I approached Lanternfly.

In that vein, I’m still working on Lanternfly–not as actively as I used to, but still. I’ve got a long term plan for that, and for Shadower. The gig right now is trying to execute Cloudnigh as best I can and see what comes of it as an online project. I’m finally at this place of relative confidence (90% acceptance of failure, 5% raw excitement, 5% stubbornness) where I can start to realistically plot out my course for the next year. With luck, that course will be Cloudnigh.

We shall see.

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Books & Reading, Cloudnigh, Daily Blogging, Hellion, Shadower 2009, Atlas Shrugged, ayn rand, Cloudnigh, fountainhead, Hellion, inspirating, Lanternfly, Rants, reading, reading list, Shadower

A week as has passed since I finished the first draft of Lanternfly and I’m really surprised by how empty I feel without something to do every day. This has got to be the first (and longest) period in the past two years where I haven’t gone to some cafe and sat down to write. When it wasn’t Lanternfly, it was Endoflux, or a short story of some kind, and one of my many tangent projects, and if it wasn’t actual writing, it was conceptualizing. The other day I sat down to look at all the material I have and its sort of shocking–especially the amount of stuff I did in 2007 that *wasn’t* actual writing. Not that I did much of anything writing-related in 2007, but… ah.

According to Erik, the fun part starts with editing. Not that the last 170,000 words weren’t fun, or anything, but the entire effort of actually writing something that I’d eventually have to edit was sort of like coaxing myself to jump off a cliff. In fact, a good portion of the process this time around was writing with editing in mind. I don’t know when, but I came to a point where I just went “fuck it” and started banging away. That really made all the difference, and that’s when I really started having fun.

Now that I think about it, I’m really looking forward to editing, especially since it means I get to revisit and reexplore many of my characters. It also means learning more about the drafting process, and how much room I can give myself in the initial writing. The biggest problem I ran into in the independent study was toward the end where I ran out of time to develop the concepts and characters of the chapters I was about to write. The last three, while decently written, are a complete mess and a prime example of what happens when you don’t space out the bones you throw readers. There’s also the first three, which were when I thought I was writing a story about some girl whose father worked on steam engines in Quebec City and the relationship with the girl’s mother made her run away up there. Well, I still wound up in Quebec City–nearly wound up in Germany, however the fuck that came about–but with a very different story

Something I noticed in writing is that not all the characters came to me fully formed at the end. In fact, one particular character, one who actually used to be the protagonist of the whole damn series, and will assume that role later, is the worst off. In fact, I pretty much ignored his development completely in the first draft just because I had no idea “how much” the reader needed. Now that I’ve got the book down, I’m thinking, I’m hoping, that I can go back and tinker with him a bit and get him how I want. That’s the glorious thing about the drafting process is you can consciously allow a few of these. Or at least, that’s what I think right now. Maybe I’ll wind up revisiting him and shoot myself a quarter chapter after his introduction or something. Fuck.

Last Friday, I had my last meeting with Erik about the independent study. Idiot that I am, I was half asleep through most of it being that I was up late doing things that one should not do when they have to be awake at 9AM. One of the best parts about working with him has been the manner of his encouragement, and caution of holes I could possibly fall into while writing. I think the most important question he asked me was sometime right after we started and he asked why making dreams concrete was important. I sort of sat there for a minute and was like, “wait… what?” And then realized he’d hit on something I hadn’t thought about directly. I had thought about it, but in that really abstract way you do when you’re hashing out an idea and want to leave the specifics out for the time being. In the end, that conversation helped me come up with a pretty important bit of info, and I was able to write merrily again.

There was also a lot of good reading over the course of the study. The two that affected me the most are the ones he gave me about character and the idea of the villain as a catalyst as they taught me to view my characters and my antagonist as humans and not devices. It opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities, not just for the book, but for the series as a whole that I’m really eager to explore.

I could write a million more things about this, and how much fun I had on the first draft of Lanternfly, but I’d be getting ahead of myself. After all, the book’s not done yet and I still have a lot of stuff left to do before I can let anyone read it. What I’m going to do now is enjoy the rest of my “writing vacation,” finish out the semester, see my family and then kick back into things again. And make lattes. Can’t forget the lattes.

Thanks for reading!

Spinner Daily Blogging, Endoflux Theory, Hellion, IS 2009, Short Works 2007, draft one, Erik, IS2009, Lanternfly, Rants, school

After a lovely trip involving spending a night in Chicago O’Hare airport, I’m back in snowy, fresh Burlington, Vermont with a full imagination and keyboard-ready fingers.

I’m slowly reaching that point in Lanternfly where I start tying up loose ends and getting ready to conclude the book. I still only have a general of how things are going to turn out, but I’m pretty confident in where things sit right now. All that’s really needed is a power-drive right through til’ the end. Hopefully things will even out then! ^_^

On a more personal note, the trip to New Mexico did a great deal to restore my energy, both creatively and mentally.  Meeting my birth-mother and sister for the first time was one hell of a surreal experience. There’s nothing like walking into a ski lodge after 9 and a half hours of straight travel to see two people whose resemblance to you is at once vague and striking (in the case of my sister, it was like looking into a mirror). I’ll try to spare you the sappy details, but long story short, the trip went very well and we all walked away feeling quite satisfied and comfortable with each other.

That’s pretty much all I can say for now. While stranded in Chicago I did start work on a short story. Murphy permitting, I’ll hopefully finish it and throw it together for your eyes soon.

Thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging, Short Works Lanternfly, Rants, short stories

Over the last four years, I’ve had a bit of experience moderating and owning writing-related forums in various corners of the internet. I’m all for workshops, and resources up for helping writers. In 2006, I attempted to create my own. What I learned from it, and others is that writing and the internet are incongruous nine times out of ten, due to the rampant elitism and romanticized beliefs that comes from the craft. I swear, the internet is one of the most unforgiving cesspools of arrogance on the planet, and in the case of writers, most of them come from young people who look at writers like Rowling, Meyers, Pratchett and others and falsely construe writing as a goldmine. That the concept of the web lends itself to these fantasies aside, I’m sort of alarmed by the sheer number of people who strut about acting like they’re the future owners of the Newberry Award, or some shit like that.

My creative writing class had a discussion recently where our professor asked us what the point of telling a story was. The debate lasted about fifteen minutes, debating everything from the depth of character, and relating to the desire to live vicariously through the experiences of others, until he finally gave us his two cents–that the idea of telling a story is to have an effect. The answer was so obvious (most of us agreed) that we’d spent the entire time explaining things under that very pretense without realizing that was the answer. I think its needless to say most of us had a “duh” moment after that.

After spending so much time on the internet though, I can’t help but wonder if that’s common knowledge. Recently there was a thread at Inheritance Forums (if you have an account, check it out–otherwise you’re locked out) entitled “Depth of Writing” that discussed deepness in works of fiction. Virtually everybody who posted, aside from defending their work, or talking about it like people actually cared, seemed averted to the idea of allowing their writing to be  “deep.” The first thought that came to my head was, “What, you mean you want your stuff to be shallow, then?” I can’t help but wonder if “deep” is being equated to “thought provoking” in this instance, which if it is, I’m sort of amused that people can say that and attempt to title their work things like, “Deep Depths” and “The Shadow of Darkness”–and other crap that endeavors to sound voluminous and esoteric. That’s not to say profundity and thought-provoking are the same thing–not at all. The human mind, whether through living or entertainment, always forms an opinion on an experience. I tend to find the stuff that hits me hardest takes subtle advantage of that habit and either puts me in some state of moral quandary or self-relative realization. In short, it makes me think–not because of, “oh well hey, that’s deep,” but it’s something I hadn’t considered before.

If fear of provoking a questioning of morals is what aversion to writing depth is, then I officially give up on humanity.

Hypothetically saying that is the case, it’s difficult not to wonder if this unwitting acceptance of one’s state of being has anything to do with the supine nature of our society’s ability to cope with ethical challenges. Of course some degree of ignorance is unavoidable in any society but American culture seems to be founded on dismissing the difficult crap and letting the government take care of it for you—in effect, intellectual taxation without representation—while partaking in mindless enjoyment of the media, which inspires us to fantasize about best case scenarios and escapism.

And so it returns to the opposition of provoking thought in writing. I have to assume that the idea of writing to have an effect really isn’t something everyone knows about or people wouldn’t seemingly be so afraid of doing it. I’m not saying that the only way to affect a reader is to plunge them ass-deep into the river of moral anguish or anything either. All I’m saying is that the phobia exists is something to be worried about.

So how did I start this again? Oh yeah, the internet and writers.

I don’t pretend to be any authority on writing. The only reason I have a blog is to whine about stuff. I don’t force anyone to read it, and lately, after all the crap I’m reading about people acting like their writing is God, I’m tempted to just stop blogging about plot and shit all together and stick to what little advice I feel I can give about structure and what-not. If there is one philosophy I stick to, that any writer should stick to, is that absofuckinglutely nobody cares about your ideas. If ideas sold in writing, those would go to bookstores and not the 300 to 500-odd page manuscripts folks take months to years to churn out. I’m sick of people talking about what they do, how they do it, how they’re different—and then never finishing a damn thing. It’s all in the execution, and anybody who listens to an idiot who can’t even get through the first chapter of their damn manuscript and tries talking about writing really ought to be shot.

That also should include listening to me at this point, so I’ll wrap this up. I’d like to start making a change around here with the stuff I post—if anyone reads it, prolly no one but my blogroll. Lately I’ve been stockpiling some stuff I want to read this summer after I get Lanternfly done. All I’ve done lately is write, but really not read. Besides, I’d like to get out of my “genre” (wait, I don’t believe in genres) for a bit and see what I can let in on my stuff.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Spinner Daily Blogging Rants, the internet

There are days where I wish that I was an artist instead of a writer–or both (is that really too much to ask?). Have you ever had a thought or an image in your head, and all of a sudden you’re slamming whatever’s in front of you and saying, “I WANT TO DRAW THAT”? It happens to me pretty much regularly. Before I even began Hellion–back in 2003–I had this idea that I was going to make a webcomic about a bunch of kids in a metal band who went on wacky adventures. That of course never went ahead because I simply cannot draw, and most of the stuff got assimilated into my other stuff. That, and if I ever did a webcomic, it’d probably wind up or this sort of caliber (you do not want to click it, and if you do, yes, it’s wearing a tophat). That, and anyone who’s seen my handwriting will know I have the dexterity of a drunken turkey.

I think what’s always annoyed me is that the words I come up with for this stuff will never live up to what I see in my head. I guess that’s sort of the catch-22 about writing a book that trades heavily in the concept of dream and perception–you really do have to let your reader do most of the imagining. Its true for any book, really. I forget if it was Erik or my creative writing teacher who said this, but we were talking about movie adaptations of stuff and how readers are usually all “WTF” about how stuff is rendered (lets think of the Inkheart and Eragon movies here). I think I realized there’s a sanctity about being left to the mercy of our visual imaginations because its a way of making the story your own. I know I probably picture Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Goodman Brown much differently than my English teacher did when she first had us read it. Alternatively, I know that I picture the imagery of Opeth’s Damnation album differently than Mikael Akerfeldt did when he wrote the lyrics. In the end, its all up to intepretation.

The reason for this babble is that lately I’ve gotten criticism from two of my professors about “over writing” imagery. Its not even that I’m dragging my feet about it. Writing lately has been going swimmingly (172 pages, 89k, baybay!). I suppose I’m just venting artistic frustrations (wait… I’m an artist?)

Speaking of writing, I’m fast approaching the half-way point of Lanternfly. In six days, it’ll have been a year since I began working on the draft, the longest I’ve kept on a first draft of something and not wanted to kill it or myself. I think I’ve begun to recognize a principle part of my process is seeding my work, and then coming back to unearth the scenes individually in the second. As Erik has told me, the first draft is the hardest part. So I really just gotta stick it out until I’ve got the end-to-end in my hands.

If there is one thing I must stress more than anything to all you other aspiring-novel writers out there–before you wet yourselves with concepts, characters and plot twists, LEARN YOUR PROCESS. If there has been one godsend in this, its been knowing what comes next in the grind. Do not shoot for something awesome the first go around–you will fail miserably. You will write shitty scenes. You will write inconsistant characters. You will want to kill yourself (or maybe that’s just me). No matter what happens, KEEP. GOING.

And so ends my crackpot internet-delivered advice for the day. Keep pluggin’ ^_^

Spinner Daily Blogging, IS 2009 artwork, IS2009, Lanternfly, Rants

There are always going to be times when you write where you find that you can’t, and not because you don’t know what to write. Right now, I’m pretty distracted by a lot of stuff going on in my personal life. Most of it is really too trivial to talk about. The real stuff keeping me from writing these days is school work and my job. And even when I get free time–which isn’t often–I’m usually discouraged by how I have to rush through everything. Right now, for example, I’m working on some stuff for class and I can’t get into it because I know I won’t have time to dedicate myself to it.

At the moment, my goal to close out 2008 is get some pieces done for the site. There’s a new design in the works that I’ll reveal when I’ve got enough done. At the moment it’s not in code yet. Heck–I started it last night. Hopefully I can get a blog-skin working for this thing, too.

Spinner Daily Blogging, Site-related Rants, work-load

Every autumn, without fail, I get into this mood. It’s had its variants over the years, but one thing has always resurfaced consistently: the urge to write an autumn-themed sappy romance with violent indulgences in fiery leaves, scarves, pumpkins, apple-pies and other things that would make anyone who knows the gist of my more serious work want to vomit. I’ve tried this in various degrees over the past three years. One was called Salamander, which inadvertently burgeoned into an epic high fantasy, Autumn Waker, which no demon of any religion or spiritual concept can get me to talk about, and then A Whispered Eulogy. Each one crashed and burned rather spectacularly in one way or another–one collapsed under it’s own weight, another was glanced at by several editor friends who promptly drowned in the hormones and were never seen again, and the last was glimpsed by some before I promptly deep-sixed it somewhere in my folders.

The root of this dreadful disease actually comes from something I experienced in 2004, days before I started the original Hellion (parts of which suffered heavily from autumnitus in its own right). Part of me has been toying with the idea of sitting down and just bloody writing what actually happened that day. Some people have even recommended that I do. But several things are holding me back. I think the biggest one is that the experience still makes me hurt, even four years down the line. Not so much because of anything anyone did, but just the raw intensity of the events. It’s good, I suppose. People have said intensity is the strongest part of my writing. But what do you do when the feelings are so uncontrolled that you can’t think of the idea, even though you love it?

This is a story that’s been trying to escape me for a while. In each of my last works–Salamander, and A Whispered Euology more-so–the story pretty much relives the experience vicariously. There are scenes in the latter that were lifted almost verbatim from what I remember in term so feeling and execution. Part of me wants to open up the document again and throw it back together. AWE isn’t terrible. It’s just written terribly and suffers from “teh sap.” Most of it was extracted from my unconscious in the midst of a writing slump so there are parts where it feels really forced. But then again, most of the good crap from AWE are in The Lantern Fly now. So I really can still write it–and I’m going to.

If I can find the bloody time! Raaaaghaghaghagh.

Another thing about this time of year is that it makes a hermit of me. When I’m in full writing mode–which usually happens in the fall for some reason–I usually shut myself away from everything. That’s difficult when you’re either making lattes or doing homework.

Onwards, upwards.

Spinner Daily Blogging autumnitus, old work, Rants

Whenever I write a first draft, I always have that horrible foreboding feeling that “sooner or later, I’m going to have to edit this shit.” Over the years, I’ve come to realize editing is just as much an art as writing is–doing it good enough the first time that the editing process doesn’t involve being ass-raped by a self-held red pen. When I mean editing, I mean self-inflicted edits–those things you do when you want the story to live up to your own standards before you give it to anyone else to read. This hit me last night when I was doing the tangent segment for Avondalius and I realized, “yeah, there is a large chance I’m going to have to totally redo this bit, add a lot more here, and maybe nuke this paragraph to oblivion even though I spent a half hour getting the wording to sound right. Fuck.”

When doing something like this, one has a tendency to want to completely scrap the scene and write something entirely new.  I had this problem when I was writing Hellion–although, then again, the entire structure of that book was totally hopeless to begin with (you try writing 440 pages–179,000 words–in eight months in one of the most stressful periods of your life and see how editing goes for you.)–starting anew rather than editing what I had. There was a point where Marina and I had a running joke that I wrote a new first chapter every week for the project. I even remember Crimson, a barista friend at Atlantic where I did most of my Hellion work coming up behind me to see me contemplating the words ‘Chapter 1′ written on the top of the page. She shook her head at me and was like, “not again” before walking off. I literally can remember doing 7+ versions of the first chapter.

That actually makes me laugh, considering how my last summer went, where I’d sit in a cafe for five hours staring at a blinking cursor, resisting the urge to scream “FUCK” at the top of my lungs over and over until I was either arrested or tranquilized, or go on a killing spree using my over-sized Inspiron laptop as a melee weapon.  God help any of you if you ever get to that point.

I guess this all goes back to what we’ve been learning in Acting: “Acceptance is Perfection.” When you’re in a scene with another actor, the only way to move things forward is to say “yes, and…” thus accepting what the other actor is giving you, no matter how asinine (last week I was coerced into having alien sex with a 40 year old man). When applied to writing, that would suggest you make sure you give any piece of writing a shot, no matter how much grief it gives you. I can relate there, when one piece of dialogue going wrong has prompted me to rewrite an entire ten page chapter (read: two and a half days of writing) to compensate. Big energy waster. And if you’re a professional up against some kind of epic deadline, that’s going to be even less helpful.

I suppose the trick is working around the good stuff in your work, which is probably why a good editor always points out the good stuff as well as the bad. It allows one to work around the stuff that’s absolute shit (which in my case would be a good 70% of my writing). That’ll be interesting when I finally get around to beefing up Avondalius. If it’s as difficult as I think it will be, I will personally record myself cursing violently for your amusement.

… If anyone reads these. Which I’m pretty sure they don’t. Ah, wasted binary. In other news, I probably should think about sleeping one of these days. If I don’t, my brain will surely explode, and that will lead to less than amusing writing.

Spinner Uncategorized Avondalius, Editing, Methods, Rants

“Write what you know.” – Larry David

“Shakespeare was never a king.” – My Father

For those of you who frequent IF’s Writer’s Hangout, my rants on genre shouldn’t be very foreign. Then again, I do have this blog for stuff I can’t post on either of the forums I go to in good conscience. I guess you could consider this an unabridged blathering of sorts.

What my ‘genre rants’ boil down to is how genre is defined by writers and publishers alike. It seems the majority of fantasy stuff these days draws heavily from Tolkienesque Norse, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon mythology. In fact, some of the stuff I’ve read parallels so closely to Middle Earth legend that I’d swear they were no more than elaborately disguised works of fan-fiction (Inheritance comes most readily to mind). Additionally, some writers, most notably the younger breed, seem to think fantasy is an escape from the banal rules of original writing by throwing a bunch of mindless magic into a contrived “Hero With A Thousand Faces” derived plot structure. That’s not fantasy. Not the sort I’d like to read. The successful stuff is the kind that combines creative use of themes, metaphors and if you fancy, mythology. Given that most of fantasy is the same crap bombasted across book shelves, finding a creative niche theoretically shouldn’t be that hard. For instance, I know a writer on IF, Hresvelger (I hope I didn’t butcher his handle) who writes Mayan Indian inspired work. That’s the kind of caliber stuff I’d want to read.

But writers aren’t delivering. It seems that since the publication of Lord of the Rings, we’ve been trapped in Norse-inspired, faerie-peppered, perfect-elf, dragon-flaming, dwarf-dying fantasy. Honestly, I haven’t read a full-fledged fantasy novel since I took a nipping at Lord of the Flies when I was seven-eight years old. The last fantasy related book I enjoyed was His Dark Materials. The rest I’ve picked up have been unimaginative and unforgiving headaches that try to mimic Tolkien’s “epic prose” style. For lack of a better word, “aslkfjls;afj.”

And then there are those pseudo-intellectual writers who think writing high fantasy will grant them fame and glory like Paolini. I have little respect for writers who write for the glory. Really, there’s little to no glory in writing. In fact, some parts of it can be plain torturous. I’m surprised half of my friends haven’t given me up for dead at times. I say it all the time on the forums I frequent: Paolini’s fame was an accident, and is very unlikely to happen again. I like to distinguish between saying “young writers shouldn’t be published” and “young writers shouldn’t aspire to be published young.” The latter is ridiculous. What writer doesn’t want their work to be published? But writers should stop “going for it” so young. There’s so much room to learn and grow during the tender years.

If you start writing a book and deem it “fantasy,” chances are you’re consigning yourself to attempting to “live up” to a genre whose very implication is creativity, and doing that will only bind you to its perceived norms. The successful stuff out there doesn’t try to live up to anything (With the exception of Pratchett and Pierce. Please kill me now.). It just is. What divides the successful writers from the bad in my eyes are the ones who work to nourish their talent and accept that fame may just occur one day by accident. Glory is always accidental.

So if writing what you know means sticking to fantasy norms, I suggest that writers make an attempt to branch out from this. There is far more you can do that you have never experienced. You only need to look as far as your imagination. After all, Shakespeare was never a king.

Spinner Uncategorized Rants