I want to quit. But then I don't.

I just got home from w- don't even want to say the word. I left around 11 hours ago at 07:40 AM (it's 6:40 PM now) and that's only because I was able to leave earlier and catch an earlier train. Usually I get home at 7 PM.

I want to quit.

It's not just the sh*tty dayjob. It's the depression and constant boredom that comes with it. Do you know what else? It's the time I don't have if I want to live a life. I am supposed to get up around 06:40 AM if I'm to make the 08:02 train. I'm supposed to go to sleep early... but then where is the life?

I try to squeeze writing in whenever I can (such as now). I get up at 05:00 - 05:30 in the morning for that extra hour and it's f*cking damn hard. (PS: I don't like to swear). It means 7 hours of sleep - or 6 if I still want to have a life and, you know, hobbies.

Yes, many people are going through this. I'm sure. But I'm not many people.

Ok, but, you're talking about writing here, yes? So what's the point of this rant? What has this to do with writing?

Everything.

The dayjob leaves me drained and tired and I just want to curl up underneath the blankets in the 160x200 cm bed and stay there until it all ends. But then... writing.

I get to my desk, which is a safe zone or, let's call it refuge, for me. There's papers all over, drafts from years ago, drafts from minutes ago, some printed out, some scribbled in notebooks, and on top of it all, my kindle. And another notebook (this one half the size of the others). And a green pen. And a blue pen. And another half-size notebook. And my cup. The cup. And my nail clippers (because I don't have the time to go the bathroom to clip my nails.) (PS: don't worry though, the nails, once cut, all get thrown away, properly. I'm not a complete... I'd say pig, but pigs are actually very clean animals.)

Anyway...

This is my safe zone, but until I get there, life sucks.

And then there's the constant doubt about myself

I feel like I'm not good enough, not smart enough. In 2012 I wrote 5 books (a series of 5, about 100k-160k words each) and started 2-3 more drafts. In 2013 and 2014 I wrote about 2-3 books and started some more drafts. In 2015 I managed 1 or 2 books and some short stories. I'm mostly happy with those short stories (also available to read here: ?) and I've struggled to make some of the books work (especially the earlier ones). I finally decided this is it (several times) and dropped those ancient drafts to write something new.

In 2016 and 2017 I did about 1 full book each and several first drafts / new edits of old books. I also wrote more short stories. (Most of which still need to be edited.)

I'm getting to the point where my first drafts are pretty lean. They're understandable (even by people who are not me) and the prose is quite all right. But it's the edits that make me despair. How do I fix something that's broken?

I don't feel like I'm smart enough to do it. I've tried, with those books from 2012, and I'm trying every year. I went through another round just a while ago... but it never works out. Is the trick to drop these and do new projects? Edit something 'younger'? But even then, I'm afraid to fail. I've been putting it off and reading self-help books (some of which are quite good) and writing craft books (still working on a list resource of the best books I found to publish on here) and I've recently started to read 'The Artful Edit' by Susan Bell. I'm 10% in and quite excited.

But most of all, I've started the edit on a project I haven't touched in two years. That's hard and it's harsh, but with the experience (all the failed things) I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's still hard. I'm now beating myself up because... what if I don't manage to get it up to speed? What if this will be another dropped project? It might be. I want to be realistic. I'll waste away at the dayj- even longer.

And then what?

I have other things to edit, it's true.

But what if none of them work? I'm already drained.

What if?

You know what if?

I'll get up even earlier (though not all the time) and I'll edit more. And more. And I'll edit more after that. And more.

And at some point, hey, it has to work, right?

Just like I once got a nice comment instead of a standard rejection back from a short story anthology.

And if it doesn't work? Well, f*ck that. It has to work, and if it doesn't, I'll still do it, because my desk is my safe space, and this is what I chose to do.

JMT


(PS: Hope you have a better day than me! Cheers)

DON'T write every day

Hi

I've been thinking about this a lot and thought I'd make a post about it. DON'T write every day.

Why not??!?!?!?! I hear you scream in despair. EVERYONE tells you to do it! Every writer tells us to write every day!

Yeah... but not me.

When I say I've been thinking about it a lot, I mean obsessively, compulsively. I've studied this stuff. I know my stuff. I've tried to write every day. I did. I swear. Every day, and in the beginning, it was fine, I got work done, it was fun. I wrote 5-10k a day and after a week or so I'd maybe take a day off... then continue writing 5-7k a day. That's most of the day. 9 AM to 11 PM. I did nothing but write and the occasional ten minutes of surfing funny pics online.

I did this for about a year.

Every day. Monday-Sunday with the occasional day off. (Good times, no day job, "studying" at university without going to lectures).

I then... was finished with 3 books and wrote the next... started editing the first... went to the next...

Skip forward.

I moved. I had all the time in the world still, but I couldn't focus on ANYTHING. Never mind for 12 hours like I used to.

Time passed (as it does).

I tried to at least write so and so many words a day. It worked somewhat.

BUT:

and here's the whole reason for this post.

It didn't work ALWAYS.

I get tired. I get demotivated. I realized that some stories just don't want to be written - or at least not by me. I try to force myself... at least 1k a day... at least 500 words a day. Can I do 100 words and say it's an achievement? But it's not. I can do 1.5k in 30 mins fairly easily. Yes, this sounds a lot like boasting, but once I'm into something, the writing flies, and time doesn't.

But it's no good. It's no good to force yourself.

So... why do you tell us this now? Why the sudden wisdom?

You've read last week's post? Yah. That's why. Trying to force myself to write every day (instead of when it was REALLY pressing and I had the STRONG URGE to write) made me burn out. It's done this quite a few times by now and I'm starting to see a pattern there.

So.

Don't write every day.

I know I won't. It makes me crazy. I'm fine taking a few weeks break's between projects... and at other times I'd rather write compulsively the whole day/a whole week/month than force myself to write during those 'down-times'. It's useless. All it does is make me hate ever having chosen to sit down/get up at 5 AM. And that's not an environment to write in.

If you don't want to write, don't. Take a break.

The writing, if it's meant for you, if it's your story to tell, and if you're truly a writer, will come to you. When it is ready. Not when you're trying to force it.

It helped me to realize this (although no doubt in a few week's time I'll be crying and whining about how much I suck again). I hope this helps anyone else too!

PS: don't think this is an easy process to decide. I've been bombarded with write every day for years... and I feel guilty if I don't. But for me, this just doesn't work. I can't force the writing, at least not if I want to be good, if I want it to be coherent. And to be honest, I have way too many ideas in my mind to edit a piece 20 times if it doesn't come out at least decent right away. No single idea is THAT important. And if you only have one idea? Then it's ok that you quit after you're done with it. I can guarantee another idea will show up at you door and knock you over. In time. It might not be tomorrow, or next week, and perhaps not even this year.

But in time, another idea will find you, and you'll catch fire, like you did with that first idea. That's when you write. When you NEED to write, or otherwise, you might die.

Cheers!

I suck at... everything

Hi

I'm not very active here any more (figured it's pointless and I don't like it much anyway) and I'm sorry this will be a bit depressing. See, that's me. A month ago everything was going, if not smoothly, at least well. I finished a book at about 50k words (this is my ninth so far), and, because I don't edit right away but let it simmer, I hopped to the next project. The characters made sense, they did things, for a while. Then the whole project just crashed and burned... like the short stories I have up on KDP. I'm ok with this. It didn't work out, cool. It has some 40k words, but those can be sacrificed. It's an exercise, it didn't work out, plus, I can make a wholly different story out of a part of it. It's not a big deal.

Except it is.

My short story sales are... (dejected sound from low to high). I can't seem to edit the first book I ever wrote properly, and that's a series of 5... which I get back to to agonize over every year or so. I'll "fix it" but get stuck... quit that again, and start something new. This is all fine, all right, but dude, it is so painful. I wrack my mind, heart, soul, and every once in a while, there will be a solution, but it's not right. It felt so pure, writing it and editing it, and anything I do now, because in the five years since I wrote it I've grown up, realized how bad it was, feels so dirty.

But let's get back to the point of this rant, if we can find one.

I feel like I suck and my whole life is pointless. That day job I talked about? Worst job ever. My life? Worst life ever. My writing? ... I think you get it.

Conclusion? I know this'll be over soon and then my life will be fine again. But to everyone who feels the same, this might be relevant. Whatever you're feeling now, what's happened, it won't stay. Life will move on, it'll fix itself. You'll move on with it. And perhaps, you'll even find a plug for this hole in your writing.

Have a good day

THINGS happened... or: Why don't you blog every week like you promised?!

Question:
Why don't you blog every week like you promised?!

Answer:
I haven't been very active lately. It is true.

Life happened. I was getting THINGS done.

What kinds of things? I got a day job. I wrote a new short story of 5k words and am working on more.

So... why aren't you blogging as often as you said you would?

1. (and I think this is the most important) I don't like it. I've tried blogging and it simply didn't work for me. I'd rather say nothing than say a lot of bullcock or force myself to squeeze out some advice about craft that someone else could explain much better (someone who's written a craft book on it for example. I've read a lot of them and can recommend plenty. I feel there's enough material out there already and they've explained it much better than I have the patience for!) Plus... I don't want to bore anyone with stuff I don't really care to blog about. I will however blog when there's a topic I want to talk about and that I feel is important.

2. I'm busy
I'm writing new things all the time.
I don't get time to blog even if I wanted to. I've recently taken a day job and it's keeping me busy 9 hours of the day +1 for the commute. There's no time to blog if I'm also trying to write stories. And I have to set priorities.


I think these are the two most important points and while this post isn't really an apology (though it does suck I have so little time to talk to you guys!) it should explain what's been going on! I hope you're not too disappointed. And hey, here's a little something-bonus! I've read enough books on writing craft to be able to recommend some! So if you have any question, about my stories, craft, et al, or just want a recommendation on which book/craft book to read next, drop me a line, and I'll respond to your email within a few hours! (Days if I'm on holiday... but even then it should be quick.)

I hope you're having a good week... and if you haven't yet... check out the new, awesome cover of my short story "The Hungry Worlds"! You can find the story (plus cover) HERE! Oh and... as always, write a comment if you have something to say!

Here's a great update!

Hi guys

I know it's been a while, and this post will be short. I'm just happy to tell you I've managed to get a cover for one short story (so far) and this is "The Hungry Worlds" one of my more popular ones. I hope you like the cover as much as I do! And the story of course! ;)

Here's the cover... and a link to the amazons! (It might still take a while until it's visible... check back every so often!)

You know what's also cool? There'll be two more short stories out shortly (Ho ho! The twistedness of this sentence) if I can drag myself away from playing The Witcher! More about those two shorts in a bit. :D

You haven't read "The Hungry Worlds" yet? You should. It's gotten the best feedback out of all my stories so far. (Plus, you can read it on KDP, which is also cool.)

I hope you're having a good week and such. I'm quite busy at the moment (two more short stories in the works...) but I'll be posting some more if there's time. Then again... writing stories has to be my priority over writing blog posts. :)

Cheers

(Bonus-ish post!) Novels VS Short Stories

Hello there!

This week's (second! Bonus-ish?) post will be about short stories and their advantage over novels/why they're good writing practice.

Here we go!

I recently planned an epic fantasy story/novel. It was good enough in the planning: cool characters, an intricate plot, a cool setting somewhere between fantasy and sci-fi... etc. But when it came to writing it I got to 40k words... and then realized it didn't work. 9/10 of the characters were zzzZzZz and the plot was tedious in itself. I deleted a lot of words (~34k)... and turned it into a short story instead. It works much better now though it still isn't done yet. The point is: the idea I was trying to convey didn't need three main characters and 5 supporting characters each. It didn't need three main plot threads (which were extremely annoying and tedious to come up with and way too intricate to ever make sense) and a million locations all over the map.

This leads me to my next point:

Do you know the main reason why short stories are so beautiful? (which is also why most people - especially authors - don't take them as seriously?)

* they're short.
This means you can focus on one (or max two) ideas to develop and you don't have to derp around endlessly trying to decide what the best scene for every of your plot thread (say: redemption or revenge or... any of these pesky 'themes' you hear so much about) would be. You can focus on one issue...

*and in many ways this is harder.
Writing good short stories is really hard. I'll give you my own as an example. I write about a short story a week... but not all of them are good and I don't have the patience to edit most of them. This means they're kind of... forgotten easily. The real good ones are usually shorts from one or other 'big project' I'm working on.

So why are short stories so hard?

a) they're short (yes. I've said this already. Let's go back to that first * for a bit.)

*You don't have as much space to develop an idea.
*You don't have any second chances to re-introduce characters and their motivations if they don't entirely work in the first scene scene. The introduction must be done neatly and can't contradict itself as much as a novel protagonist's personality and goals might.
*You have to be precise - very precise... and did I mention coherent? Everything you say and everything cool detail of worldbuilding or character-building or... otherwise needs to be relevant to the story.

b) they're not taken as seriously as longer works -such as novels (but this is only relevant if you care about making money/publishing them)

Why are they not taken as seriously as novels? I think - and this is purely my opinion without much research behind it - this is because they are HARD. They are hard to write and they're (often) difficult to understand (though if the author has ANY idea at all what they're doing they should be clearer than a novel.). They're hard to write because they're so condensed. There's no space to make a mistake as in a 90k novel. They're a lot like film scripts in that way.

Then why are short stories so great?

*they force you to focus
*they're great practice (whether it's about character development, setting, motivation, or goals in general). They're the singlemost great medium in which you can really learn how to write a great book and to make your writing excellent. They force you to sharpen your prose and your style and (most importantly) your thoughts. You can't waste a single word when you're writing a short story. And you'll learn what every scene's purpose is in detail.
*they're easy and quick to read whenever (whether you're traveling to work or getting bored of playing video games...)
*they contain a single important thought that can be absorbed in a very short time and (if the story is well-written) will subconsciously tell you something about humanity (pesky theme cropping up yet again!) or some other issue (also theme) that you didn't know before.
*they're perfect if you don't have a lot of time to read (which makes them highly accessible to many many people... if only they gave it a chance)

Does this make sense? I hope you know more about why short stories are so great now!

However... there is a caveat. I have to give you a little warning about short stories: while they're great to learn the craft (you can learn ANY aspect through writing short stories... except perhaps how to write long projects) they're not as desirable as novels. This has many reasons (which are listed on many other websites) and I'm not going to go into it. Bottom line? Novels are easier to sell than short stories if you're in it for the money/the publishability of your projects.

I hope this helped and you learned something from this post! Have a relaxing second half of the week!
J.M.

Milk it for all it's worth (or: The Folly of Sequels)

Ahoi

1st: I'll likely soon change blogging day to the weekend. There's been developments in my life that might make it difficult to post reliably every Wednesday.

To the post. It'll deal with the necessity and craft-problems of sequels... and also contain a lot of gushing about Stranger Things and Dragonflight (Pern 1 by Anne McCaffrey).
It'll contain major spoilers for:
Stranger Things
Dragonflight (Pern 1)

I've recently finished watching Stranger Things (I know, I know, I'm late to the party). I'm not sure if I want a sequel to it.

Why?

Stranger Things was technically (story-telling technically) brilliant - a self-contained story clearly and concisely written. There are no loose ends (except the slug at the end and where El went with the Demogorgon). Everything is explained. Nothing is wasted. How Will communicates via the lights... How the gate works and why it is there (this was a great moment! I was thinking it wouldn't be explained... and that it just popped up and El can interact with it because... plot!). Even the cliff Hopper warns his colleagues off in one of the first few episodes becomes relevant later on when Troy and whatshisname try to get Mike to jump off of it and El saves him. The radios the kids use, likewise, turns out to be IMPORTANT when Lucas needs to warn Mike et al that the Water and Light maintenance guys are actually bad. In this series, nothing is wasted. Truly, nothing.

It's so tight... so concise... it's brilliant. And that makes me wary of the sequel. How will they top such a great tight plot? What do they intend to do? Ok... there are some loose ends, such as, why the hell Nancy would celebrate Christmas with Steve?! Why did Hopper get into the CIA/FBI (whatever it is) car? What was it he actually promised White-haired-creeper dude whose name I don't remember (Papa)? And why the hell did the writers have to break Mike's heart? Oh and then the slug-thing Will spits out? I can live with all of these things unanswered (except perhaps the Mike-thing because it was gut-wrenching... closely followed by the Nancy-problem of Nancy's insanity! It would be easier to live with had she sworn off both boys and taken some time to develop herself... instead she goes right back to the dude the series's established she doesn't love? What?).

Then there's the fact that sequels rarely work. Take a look at (I don't even want to name it) the Cursed Child. I haven't seen it but I've read the wikipedia page... and it tells me: nor do I want to. In fact, it doesn't just tell me, it yells at me not to do this to myself. I've never read this much bull in my whole life. It doesn't even feel like a real part of the franchise... because come on, it breaks all the rules ever made in the books.

Take a look at the Pern series too. I loved the first book (Dragonflight). It was great. It was exactly how fantasy should be. There were two great main characters, there was a world-wide problem, there were people with their own interests in mind (the Lord Holders) who weren't 'the dark overlord'. The characters acted true to themselves all the time... and in the end audacity won against the terrible non-human threat (who also has a reason to exist, and that's survival, which is probably the most pressing issue to any non-sentient organism). This was brilliant! I loved it! I want to read it again and read it to everyone at home.

Then comes the 'sequel'. I'm ok. It's not terrible... but it doesn't quite hold my attention as much as Dragonflight. Do you know why? Dragonflight was entirely self-contained (as Stranger Things season one would be without the stupid slug Will spits out as a 'teaser'). It solved a world-wide problem with a great climax. Then suddenly... in the second book we're taken back to mundane concerns of the Lord Holders and some bla bla about Oldtimers not being happy and Benden Weyr being difficult and some girl I don't care about being all angsty about some guy I don't care about. There's no world-wide stakes and what little stakes there are should be easy for the main characters to deal with after what they've gone through in Dragonflight. Because come on, you can time travel 400 years into the past... but when there's trouble with Lords Holders (who have no pressure on you at all except your 'honor') they can't decide what to do? What? I then read Dragonsong and Dragonsinger... which were more enjoyable since new characters and it didn't pretend to be a part of the world-shattering 'main series' which goes from bad to worst in The White Dragon (which is a sulky teenage boy turning into a man, the classical coming of age story).

I'm equally as wary about what might happen to Stranger Things... although they have one advantage. They started with a 'minor problem' (Will's disappearance) and it was brilliant. They can build up on this (and I have more faith in the Duffer Brothers et al to manage it than most other writers/producers). They can make the problem more societal the next time (say the whole town of Hawkins is threatened to be sucked into the Upside Down... or the world will end if they can't close/stabilize the portal). This is something they can build up upon. Dragonflight was not. Too many other stories were not. You've already saved the world. What else could be pressing enough/difficult enough to justify the characters' incapability of handling it?

I can guess why there'd be a sequel. Stranger Things had about 8.6 million viewers in the first two weeks (translation: money! Money! Spend all your money!). They'd want to milk this - right? Just like every other writer (hello! I'm talking about most long-running series here) try to squeeze out every last drop of what used to be a perfectly fine one-series/one-movie plot... and in the end destroy it. I'm not saying I'm against the sequel/or against sequels in general (though once the main story is done it SHOULD end). I'm more saying: it's difficult to pull off. Very difficult.

What do you think? Are sequels necessary? Do you actually like them? Leave a comment!
J.M.