I set myself a goal to write 31 posts in the 31 days of July, and then slipped a day because Melissa and I wanted to see some movies. Then I slipped another day yesterday because I needed to take a break. Is this a writing failure? How do I reconcile myself to the absolute truth that I set a goal for myself, then failed to achieve it?

This is as good a place as any to talk about writing struggles, and what I’ve done to push through them. Sometimes the way through is with mechanical processes. Other times, it’s more of an emotional journey. I’ll talk about both.

Let me first state that this isn’t purely about dealing with writer’s block. I have two really decent posts that talk specifically about writer’s block. Also, Mary Robinette has an excellent post on the subject. What I’m talking about isn’t so much being blocked as much as being impaired. You, the writer, showed up with the idea, the energy, the time, but you’re still not pushing through for a variety of reasons.

Let’s start with a mechanical process, because it may seem very familiar, and it may look pretty much the same as dealing with certain forms of writer’s block. When I was part way through the first draft of Synthetic Dreams, I felt like I was about to lose the story. For reasons that didn’t pan out, I put Synthetic Dreams on hold for a while, and upon returning, found that I lost my train of thought and my notes were not complete. I had 60,000 words written — words I was proud of and new to be the start of something special — but I didn’t see how to put the rest together.

To solve this problem, I needed to see the story from a high level. I reread everything I wrote, including all of my notes. I created 3×5 cards for each of the scenes, both the ones written and the ones I knew I was going to write. Then I put all the cards on the kitchen table and looked at my story.

It didn’t take too long before I had my Eureka! moment. I saw what was missing, and I saw how I could make the story tighter and more satisfying with some minor adjustments. Armed with this knowledge, I was able to get back to work, and a few weeks later, I had a completed first draft.

Like I said, this is a mechanical process. There was some underlying panic and fear going on. Emotions were high. But I managed to reach into my writer’s toolbox and pull out what I needed to circumvent the panic and fear and find the right path going forward.

Not all writing struggles can be solved with mechanics, though.

When lockdown hit, and all my plans for 2020 were cancelled, including a publishing deal that I was really looking forward to, I despaired. I remember looking at my stories, both finished and unfinished, and thinking, “Oh no. I’m not a writer anymore.” And then I couldn’t write for a while.

I still had an obligation to finish a story, so I pushed through it. I wrote the novelette. It took about 3 times longer than it should have, but I finished it, and it was the most painful writing experience I’ve ever gone through. The story is fine, I think. There is a lot of truth in it, even though it’s about an Air Force squadron fighting fairies and dragons. By force of will, I got through that struggle, and I paid the price for the effort for the next 6 months to a year.

Here’s the thing about writing struggles: you don’t have control over everything, and it’s vital to identify those things that are outside your grasp. I could not control the pandemic. I have no sway over the publishing industry. Not every story I write will please every reader. There are only so many hours in a day.

Once you identify the things you cannot change or control, you then turn and look at the things you can affect. The pandemic may have closed some opportunities for me, but I still had the ability to work on other stories and be ready for the next potential break. I don’t have any influence over the publishing industry, but I can control how often I submit my stories, and I can choose who to submit to and when. I may not please every reader, but I can write stories that please myself.

This month, I set a goal to write 31 posts in 31 days, because I wanted to celebrate keeping this blog open for 10 years. I also wanted to talk about the release of The Repossessed Ghost in an organic way. And also, writing blog posts is easy, while at the moment, working on fiction is hard.

Sometimes the way through dealing with writing struggles is to forgive yourself and give yourself some room to heal and breathe. That’s what I did yesterday, basically. Saturday was a great day in San Francisco, and I walked more than I’ve walked in months, which meant that Sunday I needed to sleep in, watch some mindless videos, and play some video games with my friends.

I think I can still write 31 posts this month. I just need to double post on a couple days. If I do that, things will be fine. Even if I don’t do that, things will be fine. This is another mechanism for dealing with writing struggles: in the face of things outside your control, reevaluate your goals and adjust accordingly.

As I write this, I’m sitting on a train bound for Richmond, CA. When I get there I will switch to the BART and go the rest of the way into San Francisco. I’m doing this as part of a Shut Up and Write group, which is a great way to introduce today’s topic.

Shut Up and Write is a somewhat organic group where writers of all types can get together and do what the name says. There is a larger, over-arching organization to it, but for the most part, it’s managed at the cellular level. Regional leaders and hosts set up sessions, and meetup.com is used to manage times and locations. It’s been going for a long time, and it, or something like it, will continue for a long time more.

I’m not sure how to classify this type of group. There are others like it: headless, wide-spread, generalized groups of writers that are basically providing a platform and excuse for strangers to get together and form temporary or long-term writing groups. Let’s give these types of groups and communities a name: Space Monkeys. I’m choosing this name because the way these groups operate at the lowest level reminds me of Fight Club.

The Pros of Space Monkeys

They are eternal. They are everywhere. They are very general. Whatever you write, it’s okay. You’ll fit in. You might even find other people that also enjoy what you write. Space Monkeys are a great way to meet other writers, and it’s low risk, and low commitment.

The Cons of Space Monkeys

If you’re looking for feedback, you’re not likely to find it with the Space Monkeys. At least, not at first. It’s possible that you and some other Space Monkeys might get together and form a different type of group, but that’s not what it is to be a Space Monkey. When you go to Shut Up and Write, you’re there to shut up and write. In general, Space Monkeys foster shallow connections, and it’s possible you can wind up in a group of writers that have very little in common with you, other than you’re all putting words on a page.

Is NaNoWriMo a Space Monkey Group?

I think that with the way I’ve described these groups, NaNoWriMo is a seasonal Space Monkey. There is a corporate head at the top that makes money off of merchandising, but the sessions themselves are managed at the lowest level by volunteers. It counts in all the ways I described before, with the same pros and cons. It has an additional con of being once or twice a year.

Let’s shift gears and talk about another type of writing community that I don’t see many people talk about. This community appears on social media platforms, such as Twitter, and is less structured than the previous type of community (I don’t want to say Space Monkey again, because I’ve already said that so many times). To really talk about these other communities, we have to comment on Twitter and what a cesspool it is. Groups of writers find each other amidst all the chaos and cat videos and political firestorms. When they find each other, they’ll take to specific hashtags or long threads, and then prosper in spite of everything else going on around them. Let’s give this type of group a fun name, too: Lifeboats.

Pros of Lifeboats

Lifeboats save lives, and these communities act as a shelter in the storm. You can form deep, lasting connections with the other people in your Lifeboat. The people within a Lifeboat tend to create their own vernacular, which looks like inside jokes to people on the outside, but they convey more than just humor. Lifeboats can (and honestly should) convert into other types of groups.

Cons of Lifeboats

The Lifeboat exists in spite of the platform it exists on, so when the platform changes, the Lifeboat can take on water and sink. Lifeboats tend not to last very long. If a Lifeboat lasts more than a couple of years, it’s kind of a miracle.

Lifeboats exist because of the enthusiasm of the people involved. Sometimes, it’s just a handful of people keeping the party going, and when they burn out or get swept up in other matters, the Lifeboat can stop serving its purpose and quietly go away.

More Thoughts on Lifeboats

I have spoke before of WriteFightGifClub on Twitter, which is (or arguably was) a Lifeboat. There is a branch of it on Discord, but a lot of the personalities that gave the group energy have moved on. Also, Twitter has become even worse.

These kinds of groups are more common than one might think. I remember meeting other writers on City of Heroes and World of Warcraft. We were writing short stories featuring our characters and sharing them with each other. These are like tiny Lifeboats that come and go in a blink.

I still haven’t talked about traditional writing communities or writing groups And to that I say: why start now? There is another type of writing community I want to talk about and name. The name for this group shall be: The Disciples.

The Disciples are writing communities that form around another writer, or a group of writers. The head of the community generally has a force of personality, and puts a great deal of effort into cultivating and growing the community. Examples of this type of writing community include Writing Excuses and Gallowglas Army.

Pros of The Disciples

Writers that are Disciples have a common interest, which is the podcast or personality that brought them together in the first place. Disciples can form deep, personal connections, and because of the common interest, they often come together for focused activities, similar to the Space Monkeys.

The Disciples often have many of the properties of other, more conventional writing groups, in that they can provide and receive feedback.

Cons of The Disciples

When the head of the group goes away, so does the group. There would be no Gallowglas Army without Michael Gallowglas. There would be no Writing Excuses community without the hosts of the podcast. Writing Excuses is trying to give the community a longer lifespan by bringing in new hosts, but that approach doesn’t work for every Disciple group.

More Thoughts on The Disciples

These are some of my favorite groups, partly because another common interest within these groups is a huge desire to improve their craft. Michael, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Howard all give master classes on writing. While all of us have different paths as writers, the people I just mentioned have reached high points on their path and are able to offer pointers to those of us that aren’t quite as far along.

Traditional Writing Groups and Communities

I don’t have fancy names for these groupings. There are critique partners, critique groups, and writing groups. Rather than break them into pros and cons, I’ll just describe them and provide hints for how to make them successful.

Critique Partners

This is the smallest group, with the deepest connection. I usually see these as pairs, but people can have more than one critique partner. If there are more than two people trading manuscripts and critiques, then it’s probably more of a critique group, which I’ll talk about in a moment.

I’ve never had a critique partner, though I have wanted one for a long time. You and your ideal critique partner should both be writing at the same level, with roughly the same level of output. You do not have to write in the same genre, though you should be fans of each other’s work.

A good critique partner is a few inches away from being a writing partner, when it’s done right. You need to have a good enough relationship and enough honesty between each other that bad news can be shared right along with the good. A good critique partner should be able to help you be the best writer you can be without being cruel.

The relationship between a writer and an editor can be like this, though that’s a more one-sided relationship. Again, your critique partner should be someone that is at roughly the same place as you on their writing journey, and you should both be heavily invested in trying to make each other excel.

Critique Groups

If critique partners are like a marriage, critique groups are like a family. Critique groups function by keeping all of its members fed with what they need. Critique groups are comprised of three or more people, and they read each other’s work, and provide valuable criticism.

The members of a critique group do not all have to be at the same level or place in their journey, and they do not need to all be writing in the same genre. If we’re being honest, not everyone in a critique group needs to be a writer. However, everyone involved in the group should have some level of appetite for the things the writers are submitting.

I have been in many critique groups, and I am currently in one now. The first group broke apart because we didn’t know how to provide valuable critiques, and we weren’t all getting what we needed from the group. The second group dissolved when the main person hosting it disappeared due to some tragic medical issue (they’re fine, now). The third group is still going, just without me; I couldn’t stand most of the stories I was required to read, and I wound up leaving. I was not a good fit in the fourth group, either; everyone else was mostly writing YA, and since I don’t read much YA, my critiques were of very little value.

The fifth group has been a good fit, so far. We’ve been going for about 3 years now, and we all get along. I like the stories I’m reading. We have a lot of mutual respect. It is very functional.

It may not take you five groups before you find the right one. I’m an odd duck, and a bit of an asshole, sometimes. If I can find a group, anyone can. You just have to keep looking.

Writing Groups

Writing groups are very similar to critique groups, just a little bit more relaxed. Critique groups are generally about the writers helping each other gain perspective on their work. Writing groups can do that, too, but they’re mostly there to provide encouragement and support so that writers can actually write.

All of the groups I’ve described on this page could be called a writer’s group, just like you can refer to a lion or a tiger as a cat. Writing groups can come in any shape or size, and they can have differing goals from each other. If you’re in a writing group and it works for you, you’re doing something right. If you’re in a writing group and it is consistently bringing you down or not giving you need, you should find a different group.

With all writing groups, determine what you want from the group in advance, then communicate it with your group. You can save everyone a lot of time and pain just by identifying problems before they arise. It is not a bad thing to leave a group before it does you or someone else harm. The tragedy would be to stay in a group that is routinely discouraging you and keeping you from writing and improving your craft.

That is all I have to say about writing groups and communities. If I’ve left out any important groups, let me know.

Let’s talk about dragons!

Dragons are to fantasy what starships are to SciFi. The come in all shapes and sizes. They can devastatingly powerful. They can be friendly. They must all be respected.

When I try to describe tropes to someone unfamiliar with the term, dragons are one of my go-to examples. Tropes are the shorthand of the genre, so a fantasy reader does not need to have elves, dwarves, or dragons explained in great detail.

I can separate my writing life into two stages: the mess around part, when I was a teenager with a computer, no internet, and I was tired of the games I had so I messed around with the word processor. This is the stage in my life where I discovered that I loved writing, but I wasn’t any good at it yet. The second stage is the “find out” part, which started about 12 years ago when I decided to take my writing seriously and worked as hard as I could to make it a bigger part of my life. I focused heavily on my writing skills during this time, and it was shortly into this stage of my writing when I started The Repossessed Ghost. I don’t believe I’ve written any stories in the “find out” stage. I remember writing about a dragon when I was a teenager, though.

It was fun! Dragons are powerful and scary, and even when you don’t know what you’re doing, the mere presence of a big, monstrous dragon can provide some weight to your story.

Let’s take a moment to go into some of the different kinds of dragons.

There are the big, fire-breathing, gold-obsessed dragons, like Smaug from Lord of the Rings. I tend to think of these as “classic” dragons, though I think Chinese dragons are older.

There are Chinese dragons, which always looked kind of goofy and silly to me, with their long skinny body and their oversized, lion-like head. I don’t really know much about these dragons, I’m sad to say. I recall them featured prominently in some New Years celebrations, but I’m not sure if that’s an actual cultural item or if it’s cliche propagated by Western culture.

There are somewhat vague dragon-monsters, like Grendell in Beowulf. I don’t remember Grendell or Grendell’s mother being particularly well described, and I might be misremembering the dragon connection altogether, but these dragons have little in the way of personality and are more or less embodiments of evil and maleficent force.

There are shapeshifting dragons, like what you see in games like Shadowrun. These dragons often have strong personalities, and usually appear in a humanoid form. They’re the power behind the power, usually ancient, magical, and conniving.

There are tiny teacup dragons, about the size of cats, and they are adorable.

There are fairy dragons, which are weird and colorful, and also potentially very small.

Then there is The Wheel of Time, where “The Dragon” is a title, and the only presence of what we think of as a dragon is a picture on an ancient flag.

As a trope, dragons save the writer a little bit of description space, but given how many types of dragons there are in stories, the writer should probably be specific when adding a dragon to their story.

I think that’s all I have to say on dragons. One will eventually show up in one of my stories, but I’m not sure when. I doubt there will be dragons in Mel Walker’s world. I have a three book fantasy series that I really want to write, and dragons may be appropriate in that story, but I would need to think on that for a long while.

Today was the day! We did it! We’re here!

Steven Radecki, managing editor of Water Dragon Publishing and Paper Angel Press, the one that thought my story was worth taking a chance on, congratulated me first. Actually, he reminded me yesterday that the release date was coming, which prompted me to post to Twitter and Facebook and other places. Only 9 words:

https://twitter.com/briancebuhl/status/1678900046052610049

My friends and family began celebrating with me on Facebook first. Today, Twitter discovered the post I just embedded, and the writing community has been congratulating me all day. I’m ecstatic!

I heard from a couple of people that the books I mailed out on Monday have already arrived.

Water Dragon posted the release annuoncement and I shared the link on Facebook. Several friends shared the link as well, and people I’ve never seen or met have been replying, “Wow, that’s awesome! I need to read this book!”

Then there was this tweet, unprompted but wholly appreciated:

I'm currently reading The Repossessed Ghost and I'm absolutely LOVING it. https://t.co/qyzYzD5FIG

— Sean R. Frazier, ORDER THE LAST AVAILABLE (@TheCleftonTwain) July 13, 2023

It’s difficult to describe how this feels.

At Baycon, I went into the weekend with the attitude that I was just going to treat the event like a party. I knew I had a signing and a reading, and I was looking forward to being on panels, but I figured that I needed to keep my expectations in check, because I’m an unknown quantity. I believe in my writing, and I think The Repossessed Ghost is great, but why should anyone else that hasn’t read my work think anything of me or my fun little story? I expected the signing to be quiet time, and I figured the rest of the time at the convention would be me blending in and smiling.

Instead, people I’ve never met took interest in my book. Most of the book purchases have come from people that have known me for a while, but there were some strangers that bought my book and brought it to me to sign. That feeling can best be described as a mixture of surprise, gratitude, and exhilaration.

That’s what I’ve been feeling today.

Steven asked me yesterday, regarding today’s official book release, “Kind of anticlimactic since it was already pretty much launched at Baycon?”

It’s not anticlimactic at all! I’m grateful. I’m hopeful. I feel celebrated. I feel alive, like I’m doing what I was always meant to do.

I should publish books more often.

Here is the purchase link directly to the publisher. I think I’m still signing books that are purchased through that link. I will need to talk to Steven about it, as it means the books have to be shipped twice: first to me for signing, then on to the reader. I think Water Dragon gets a better deal when the books are purchased directly from them, but I don’t know how much that matters, and I understand that people have been waiting for the Amazon links to work.

Here is the Amazon link. That’s a good place to leave reviews.

Here is the GoodReads link. This is also a good place to leave reviews, I think. I only just got setup on Goodreads. If you’re there already, send me a friend request.

Thank you again to everyone that helped me get to this point. Some of you have had to put up with a lot from me. Some of you have kept me grounded. Some of you have provided encouragement, which I have relied upon and needed throughout this journey.

And if somehow you have discovered this page for the first time and we are strangers: thank you coming by. I hope you enjoy my book!

Over twenty years ago, much of writing was in the form of playing on Star Wars MUSH. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a bunch of friends playing a text based roleplaying game where we work together to write Star Wars fan fiction. Honestly, it’s a fantastic way to work on writing dialog and deep characterization because the stakes are low and the feedback is immediate. MUSH’s might be a topic for a different day this month.

One of my favorite scenes was with Justine Diamond. We had basically just met and it was early in our times playing together. The scene was brief, but one of the things that makes it stand out in my memory is how we used the weather to punctuate the emotions of the scene. Rain poured out of a blackened, starless sky, and as the dread of the scene began to crescendo, lightning flashed and thunder boomed, exaggerating the monstrous nature of my character and the isolation of her character.

Setting, when done well, is a character in the background of your scenes. As a character, setting is relatively passive, except when the weather comes into play. The clouds might part and a ray of sunlight can beam down during a moment of triumph or introspection. In my previous example, the characters can be pelted with rain or yelled at by an angry sky full of blinding light and fury. The setting can be secretive, with thick fog hiding the way forward.

The weather is the setting acting out in that moment. The seasons, on the other hand, can be a memorable part of world building.

Think about the common phrase associated with the cultural behemoth that is Game of Thrones. I’m sure we all told a friend or a coworker, “Winter is coming.” The seasons in that world work differently, where young children can go all their lives without knowing any other season other than summer, which is where another cheeky phrase: “Oh, my sweet summer child.”

The seasons do not need to be alien to be a part of the world building. Sometimes the changing of the seasons are used by the author to show transition or change, as we saw a few times in the Harry Potter stories.

Unless your entire story takes place inside a space ship, or perhaps a spinning city on The Moon, you might want to consider using the weather and the seasons as a tool in your writing.

On a completely different topic, The Repossessed Ghost is officially out tomorrow. That will be the topic of tomorrow’s post. I’m so excited! I hope everyone that reads it has a good time.

For my day job, I write software to make renewable power projects more affordable. Before that, I worked in life insurance, and before that, managed health care. I sleep much better at night these days.

Climate change is real. I know that what I’m doing isn’t enough, but maybe if enough of us do our part, there can be a future for our children or our children’s children.

We’ve seen hurricane seasons get worse, record high temperatures get higher, and catastrophic forest fires become seasonal events. We have the data. It’s not a fluke. It’s serious. The one planet we can exist on is on fire, and it’s a problem we have to take seriously.

I’m not sure what else to say on that topic.

The Repossessed Ghost doesn’t get into it. It’s a light, fun, urban fantasy that doesn’t deal in particularly difficult topics. It’s escapist fiction which offers a pleasant distraction from the kind of existential dread one might experience when considering climate change and the future of humanity.

Synthetic Dreams, on the other hand, has climate change at the core of its premise. It seems that when I sit down to write futuristic fiction, my imagination rarely comes up with pleasant futures for us humans. Spin City is a little bit more hopeful, but there is implied cataclysm on Earth in the background. That story does not visit Earth, and if I write any sequels, it’s unlikely that I’ll take the narrative to Earth then, either. It’s probably not a very hospitable place.

I’m not the only writer of science fiction that has a hard time seeing us get around the problem of out-of-control global warming. There’s something about the data that when you look at it, and then you look at the rest of the world and the kinds of problems people seem most concerned with, that hope is not the first thing that comes to mind when writing about the future.

Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe enough of us will do what we can to put out the fire on time. I’m not holding my breath, but I am still doing my job.

This is a huge bummer of a post, and I’m sorry for that. Tomorrow I’ll talk about weather as a tool of the writer and it’ll be much more pleasant, but when it comes to the climate and climate change, it’s hard for me to make light of it.

The original planned topic for tonight was “World Building — Festivals, Holidays, and Cultural Touchstones” but I feel like I covered that fairly well just a few nights ago with Celebrations. I might be able to cite more examples in popular stories, but I think it would be more fun to talk about one of my favorite inspirations for stories: gaming.

It is no secret that The Repossessed Ghost is ultimately inspired by a roleplaying game I played in over twenty years ago. My character was Mel, and while he’s a bit different in the book from that game, his voice and attitude are relatively close to what I remember from when I first started playing him.

During the game, I wrote a couple of short stories starring Mel. They weren’t particularly interesting, but it proved to me early on that I could craft a narrative with Mel in the starring role. Long after the game died, Mel remained in my head, begging to be put into his own story. Then with NaNoWriMo 2013, I let him loose. I de-aged him a little and took him back to the very beginning. He did not disappoint me.

So far, Mel is the only character I’ve fully translated from a game to a book, but there are other characters rattling around in my head. There is a trilogy of fantasy stories I would like to write that will feature some of my favorite characters I’ve ever played. It will be a while before I work on that story again, but I trust those voices to be ready when I call for them.

Gaming allows the writer to test out characters in a fun, low-risk way. In the game I was playing earlier today, I’m testing out someone named Connor Smith, a gay blacksmith turned pirate after falling in love with a man that swept him off his feet and whisked him away on adventure. Connor lost his one true love to sirens, and has now found himself the captain of another ship, sailing the Caribbean and trying to avoid dragons. I’m not sure Connor will make it into any of my stories, but I’m having fun with him, and his voice becomes more clear to me every time we get together to play.

Most of my gaming experience is as a player. As a player, I narrow my focus to the narratives, motivations, and voice of a particular character. At the same time, I practice “yes, and” with the other players at the table, while we share the spotlight and create stories together. When running a game, the writer can practice world building and narrative structures, building frameworks that allow the characters to make interesting decisions and drive the plot. These are all skills a writer should hone, whether they play roleplaying games or not.

Gaming does not have to be used to practice writing skills. Writers are going to do that on their own, and the games involved don’t have to be traditional tabletop roleplaying games. I found out this last weekend that my publisher used to play City of Heroes the way I did. Running around in Paragon City, he and his friends would get inspired to write short stories for their characters.

Writers can be inspired by anything, but I find that gaming is particularly good at inspiring narratives, especially when the game leaves you room to fill in the gaps with your own stories.

Michael Gallowglas reminded me recently of the best writing advice he received, which is to live an interesting life so you have things to write about. I believe gaming is a part of that. It’s hard to go out in real life and pull off a heist, or ride a dragon, or slay an evil monarch, or learn to use your psychic abilities to save the world, but that’s the bread and butter of games. And though the events in a game are not real, the emotions those games generate are real, which can make your writing that much more authentic.

The very first post here, In The Beginning…, was posted on July 8th, 2013, a short time after Westercon 66. I talked about how much I love writing, and I gave something of a mission statement: Write every day, and if I’m not working on one of my stories, write something here.

That is a worthy, aspirational goal, which I immediately stumbled over and failed to achieve. I do not write every day. My time management is not that powerful. I think about my stories all the time, and there is some writing-like activity every day of my life, but I have not held with the intent of my mission statement, which is to create or edit words each day.

In the beginning, I didn’t know what I needed. I didn’t know what I was doing. To a certain degree, I still don’t know what I’m doing, but I know more than I did 10 years ago. The key is to find the balance and maintain it. Rather than focus on the word count, focus on the joy. I love writing. It keeps me happy and sane. If I’m experiencing joy and sanity, I’m probably writing enough. It doesn’t hurt to write more, but I don’t need to beat myself over the head if I’m not drafting all the time. Unless I’m under some kind of deadline, in which I need to write faster.

This has been my open journal to describe my journey as a writer. I had nothing published. Now, 10 years later, I have a novel completed, with the official release date just a few days away. I’m working with Water Dragon to get the pre-orders out, and last weekend, I had one of the best weekends of my life, getting to hold my book for the first time, and getting to sell my book to friends and strangers. My friend Mike Baltar, who is currently sitting across from me at this Shut Up and Write, read the book that weekend and told me it was a page turner. Other people I have given ARCs to have messaged me, telling me they’re enjoying it. As I sit here, a slightly damaged copy of the book is resting next to my laptop. I can look over at it from time to time and gather fresh encouragement from it, simply from it existing in the physical world.

These last 10 years haven’t been easy. There have been deaths. Melissa’s sister Patty, and her father, Don. Some people I loved as friends and family are no longer in my life, for various reasons. I’ve battled depression. Truth be told, I’m still battling it, though the last couple of weeks offered ammunition to help fight it.

There has also been joy and blessings. I am extremely fortunate. Privileged. Blessed, if you prefer that word.

In the last 10 years, I have taught High School kids programming in an after school program. I have played in several bands. I have completed 3 novels and dozens of short stories. I have excelled in my work at Trimark. I have survived Covid, President Trump, and some personal trauma that need not be displayed here. I have not let Imposter Syndrome hold me back.

In 1992, someone I cared very deeply about and respected immensely told me that I couldn’t call myself an author until I was published. In 2019, I successfully published a short story in an anthology. That little victory didn’t feel like enough, though. It felt like it didn’t count. In 2023, I have successfully published a novel. Again, it’s sitting right next to me, with the name my parents gave me on the top of the cover and on the spine. I really am an author, now.

Of course, whether you call yourself a writer, an author, a scribe, or a vocabunaut, it’s all the same. It doesn’t matter if people never read your work or if you make the New York Times Bestseller list. Call yourself by whatever name makes you the most happy, and just keep writing. Others might tell you what that one fellow told me in 1992, and if it gets you down, ignore them. If it motivates you to write harder, then let flow the gork.

In order to write, I had to make some sacrifices along the way. Those programming classes I was teaching? That was one of the first things to go. The bands? I had to drop out. During the years where I was most active musically, I didn’t finish any stories. Within 2 years of quitting the bands, I completed 2 novels and several short stories. I want to play music with people, but there is only so much time.

I like to think that if I had more time, I would write more. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? For me to write, I need time, energy, and either motivation or some degree of comfort. Covid hit in 2020 and I lost the energy and the motivation. I pushed through on a novelette for Michael Gallowglas, but it was one of the most painful writing experiences of my life. I had time during the pandemic, but there was a moment where I didn’t think I would write anymore.

I wrote 10 years ago that this was the beginning. Today is not an end. I’m not even sure it’s a middle. I’m still on my journey as a writer. I have achieved a life long goal, but that doesn’t mean the story ends here. I have more tales to spin, more books to publish, more words to put on the page, and more people to reach with my writing.

Let’s keep it going. Ten years down. Who knows how many more to go.

Tonight, let’s talk about celebrations, both from literary and literal perspectives. Because this month marks 10 years of running this blog, I’ll start with ways I’m celebrating in real life, then move into how celebrations can flavor world building.

I’m celebrating this blog this month by writing an entry every month, using topics provided by people I asked on Twitter and Facebook. How do I celebrate 10 years of maintaining this open journal which chronicles my thoughts and feelings on the road to becoming an author? By giving myself more work!

“Brian, you’ve done such a good job that I’m going to make you write an essay every night for 31 days. Yes, you have to.”

It is a way I celebrate, though. I enjoy this. Writing both thrills and calms me, even when the writing is this sort of free and direct speech into a blog. I prefer writing fiction and crafting interesting narratives, but blogging has its charms.

Last weekend, at Baycon 2023, the entire convention felt like a celebration of getting The Repossessed Ghost out into the world. The official release is still a few days away, but people at the convention were able to get the book ahead of everyone else, even those that pre-ordered. There were so many people at the convention that I’ve known over the years that have genuinely supported me and my writing, and most of them bought my book and had me sign it. I defaced their books with my signature and sincere appreciation. Also, complete strangers bought my book and also had me sign it. The whole weekend felt like an out of body experience, where this guy that looks and talks like me was having the time of his life. Baycon 2023 helped me celebrate the release of my book, and it was hard to come back to the “real world” after that.

Celebrations are a part of our culture, both in society and in our family groups. Christmas from family to family looks different. So does Thanksgiving, and Halloween, and the various Hallmark-invented holidays that American culture both celebrates and endures. My family (as in me, Melissa, Bryanna, and Christopher) tends to have more subdued holiday celebrations.

We’re just now on the other side of the celebration of the 4th of July. My family used to go to the mall near Sunrise, where we’d sit on the grass and watch the fireworks show. Sometimes we’d buy fireworks to light up at home, but most years we left the pyrotechnics for others. This year, the kids were off on their own, celebrating in their own ways, while Melissa and I turned on the sprinklers and hoped our pyromaniac neighbors would fail in their efforts to burn down our home. We kept thinking of Melissa’s Dad, that served several tours in Vietnam, and how the loud fireworks were terrible for him.

Our real-world experiences of celebrations can inform our writing, and can make our worlds and our characters more realistic and relatable.

Let’s start with world building. Societies share celebrations. If you’re fictional society doesn’t have regular celebrations or rituals, you’re missing out. With more fantastical settings, the changing of the seasons often have significance, whether its as mundane as a marking of when farming can happen, or whether its something supernatural, such as Death Magic works best in Winter. How did your fictional society rise up? Is there a battle that they commemorate, perhaps by setting fire to an effigy of the dead god that forsook them?

I’ve talked in the past about world building, and how I think authors can get distracted by it and do way more than they need to. When dealing with the setting, you could do worse than having some kind of culturally significant celebration take place when things are happening in your story. Diehard did this and changed what it means to be a Christmas movie. In the cyberpunk novel I’m working on, the company my protagonist works for will definitely have some kind of celebration over the destruction of one of the rival companies, to promote brand loyalty and encourage the workers to stay the course.

Celebrations in stories can enhance the setting, but it can also be part of the plot.

Additionally, how your characters react to celebrations can speak volumes about who they are, and make them more interesting. Does your fearless vigilante eschew holiday festivities because they were an orphan growing up, and they cannot bring themselves to open up during that time because of the pain and trauma they continue to carry with them? Or, maybe your fearless vigilante goes overboard with holiday festivities specifically because they were an orphan, and burying their found family in gifts and food is their awkward way of showing their love and appreciation.

When writing about celebrations to create interesting worlds and characters, we can draw from our experiences and make our writing authentic. This is one of those places where “write what you know” can be used appropriately. By that I mean, you can reach into your own experiences, knowing what it feels like to wake up on Christmas morning, excited to check under the tree for presents you were hoping for. You can impart those same feelings onto your fictional celebrations, or fill your characters with the same excitement and anticipation. Just remember that “write what you know” should not be taken literally.

It’s been 10 years of blogging here. Thank you for stopping by to visit, and thank you for helping me celebrate!

Okay, it’s July 6th, so let’s talk about hydration!

…

I’m… not the person you should listen to about hydration.

Whatever I say here is not medical advice. You should check with your doctor. I’m a writer, which means I have opinions on a lot of different topics, but nothing I have to say about this subject should be taken seriously.

Mostly, I think you should drink when you’re thirsty, and if you’re not thirsty, don’t force it.

I have seen people walking around with a barrel of water, chugging it down like they miss their Atlantean home, and that’s not for me. Maybe it’s good for them? I don’t feel like it’s good for me.

This is rich coming from the guy that gets kidney stones and has high blood pressure, I know, but I don’t think my medical problems have anything to do with me thinking it’s a bad idea to overdo it on the hydration.

Do you want to know how I can tell if I’ve had enough fluid? I look at the color of my pee. If it’s bright yellow or orange, and I’m not taking any drugs that would make it so, I probably haven’t had enough to drink. If it’s closer to clear, I’m doing fine.

Also, I listen to my body. Or at least I try to. I have been known to get distracted, ignore my thirst, and have problems, like kidney stones.

Melissa has lived with me long enough that she knows I can get absorbed in one of my projects or a game and ignore my thirst. She is always trying to get me to drink, and I try to keep her happy.

If you want to drink 8 liters of water a day, go for it, i suppose. Just try to avoid sever hyponatremia. Drink too much water and it will eventually mess up your brain, put you in a coma, and kill you. You have to drink a LOT of water to do that, but it’s happened. On live radio, even.

I probably should drink a little more water than I do. I just prefer my water have a little something in it. Like flavor. Or sometimes coffee. But not caffeine, still.

I think that’s all I have to say about hydration. Maybe hydration will come up in a future story? I don’t know. This was one of the first topics suggested for this month, and I’ve covered it about as well as I’m going to cover it.

In other news, I have a bunch of books that need to go out to pre-orders. I have the list of names, and I can customize them. There is a little bit of bad news, though.

Many people ordered hardback, which is amazing and awesome and I love you for it, but we don’t have enough of the hardbacks to go out this run to cover all the orders. They’re still going to get customized and sent out, but it’ll be about 2 weeks before they’re printed and available. We have enough of the trade paperbacks, though, so those will go out very soon.

The official release is next week, on July 12th. I’ll have more to say about that soon, as well!