The Un-Self Publisher
I’ve always been a writer, but I didn’t get the DIY publisher itch until the mid-1990s, when anyone with a Sharpie and access to an office photocopier could produce their own magazine. In California, a few friends and I created four issues of a 5×8 fiction and poetry zine and after I moved to Portland, I put together two issues of a fiction/poetry zine called Salome, which I will have to dig out of storage one day. I studied Factsheet Five like a sinner hunting loopholes in the Bible.
So when publishing moved online a few years later, it wasn’t entirely random that I would eventually start publishing digitally. I started blogging at portmanteau.org (and I’m still mad I let that URL lapse) and later had another site under my actual name, but none of them stuck. I wasn’t a true blogger, yet. But I still liked publishing.
I very clearly remember when the idea was planted. I was browsing books at Barnes & Noble, looking for a new SF or fantasy novel to read, and as anyone who has shopped big box bookstores can attest, the selection was fairly limited. Classics like the LOTR and Dune series had their spaces, along with long shelves of media tie-in books: Star Trek, Star Wars, Warhammer, etc. Into the rest of the section was crammed a selection of recently published original fiction, almost all of which were appended with some variation of: Book 2 in the X Series, Book 3 in the ABC Tetralogy, the Prequel to…
Naturally, not a single Book 1 of any of these series was in stock.
What started as a seemingly simple quest for a recently-published, stand-alone, not to-be-continued, not-licensed-media science fiction or fantasy novel quickly evolved into a frustrating dig through literally dozens of books requiring a multi-novel commitment or immersion into a wider story world I could watch on television, if I wanted to at all.
And completely unbidden, a thought arrived: “If I want to read something decent, I’ll have to publish it myself.”
If necessity is the mother of invention, spite is its milk.
Big Pulp
And thus a small press was born. It didn’t happen right away – I first had to shed 160 pounds of alcoholic partner – but the seed continued to gestate. I toyed around with two dozen names and various formats while I investigated print publishing, but in those pre-POD days, print was cost-prohibitive. With a grudging bow to reality, I bought Adobe Dreamweaver and a Dummies book, learned some *very* basic HTML, registered a website, and started soliciting work. I couldn’t pay a lot, but it was important that I paid the writers and artists something, so I shut off my cable and put that money towards the press.
And on Monday, March 3, 2008, I posted “Dragonsick” by Simon Petrie, the first of 785 stories and poems published in print and online over the next 8+ years.
Big Pulp published fantasy, mystery, adventure, horror, science fiction, and romance stories and poems. Yes, that’s a lot. But I like SF&F. And mystery stories. And horror stories. And Man v. X adventure stores. And the occasional romance, as well as literary fiction and poetry. I couldn’t decide which genre to focus on, so instead, I leaned into the vibe, creating a virtual version of the classic magazine newsstand, where Weird Tales and The Shadow could sit next to Flying Aces and Redbook.
I could have narrowed it down to SF&F, mystery, and horror, but once I went that far, why not invite romance and adventure fiction? My tastes in genre are both expansive and idiosyncratic, so I knew that if I framed the call for submissions the right way, I wouldn’t be disappointed. And I wouldn’t have to publish anything I didn’t like, right?
I received a lot of genre mashups in the slush pile: SF/Romance, Romance/Horror, Fantasy/Mystery. Perfect for the magazine I envisioned. A good portion of submissions lived in the border between genre and literary, which thrilled me. And who knew there were so many people writing horror, crime, and SF poetry? I understand neither the snob who looks down on genre nor the neanderthal who thinks literary fiction and poetry are pretentious. A pox on all of them. Good writing is good writing.
For almost three years, Big Pulp was entirely online. Less expensive to produce, much less work, but a bit unsatisfying. I knew that if I ever allowed the site to lapse or if it crashed, all the work I published would be lost in the ether. I wanted something tangible and I wanted the writers to have something to keep, so in mid-2010, I made the move.
Big Pulp Magazine
In late 2010, I published the first print edition of Big Pulp, with Jarrid Deaton’s “Ted Bundy’s Beetle” as the cover feature. Coincidentally, around the time I was putting that first issue together, Ted Bundy’s actual Beetle was on tour, with a stop at the now-defunct Crime Museum in Washington, D.C. I don’t know what the museum workers thought of me crouching and crawling around on the ground trying to get a dramatic photo of the car, but whatever it was, they probably weren’t wrong. I’m sure I wasn’t the strangest person they encountered.
Sidebar: Possibly the second most infamous criminal car – behind Bonnie and Clyde’s bullet-riddled Ford – the car was simply a car, a typical Volkswagen Beetle with a bit of rust around the edges…and a missing front passenger seat where Bundy stuffed unconscious women so they wouldn’t be spotted. Grotesque in its mundanity. I wouldn’t want to spot it in a dark parking lot, but under fluorescent light and cordoned by velvet, it was easy to see how Bundy blended into the background, even as he perpetrated one of the nation’s most notorious killing sprees.
The story it inspired was bad-ass, a bit of psychological tickling with all kinds of ugliness lurking beneath the surface of character. Still one of my favorites.
By Fall of 2011, I found my publishing groove and Big Pulp came out on time every quarter for the next 2 years, with 9 issues total. Most of my copies were sold in-person, at book fairs and comic cons, and I did alright. By that point, though, I started to get itchy.
The Anthologies
In 2013, I published my first three anthologies. The first – Clones, Fairies, and Monsters in the Closet – came about because I had coincidentally received a ton of gay/lesbian themed stories and poems in the submission process. With Big Pulp magazine, I strove to achieve balance in every issue. In addition to publishing multiple genres, and stories and poems, I also made sure every issue had a mix of shorter and longer stories, and heavy and humorous work. As a reader of anthologies, I often feel like I’ve read the same story twice in one book, and I tried very hard to avoid that. I never wanted any issue to be too much of anything, but rather a solid, satisfying, surprising, and hopefully memorable read.
So when the gay content started piling up, I vacillated between publishing a special issue of the magazine or an anthology, and eventually went with a stand-alone book. Of course I couldn’t do just one, so I also solicited for stories and poems on two grossly self-indulgent themes – monkeys and the Kennedy family, two of my obsessions. The second trio of anthologies came about in a similar way. The Walking Dead television adaptation debuted around the same time as the first issue of Big Pulp, and after a predictable lag, my inbox started filling up with zombie stories, enough to fill two volumes. Not long after, a slate of weird westerns crossed my desk, and since I was hard-pressed to include more than one in any issue of Big Pulp, we have Way Out West. Great minds, yes?
The Expansion Pack
The anthologies sold respectably but not that much better than Big Pulp magazine. I was holding my own as a one-person DIY publisher. But by then, I was about six years into my publishing venture and the grind was started to…well, grind. I loved the creative side – reading submissions, working with the cover artists, designing the books – but the admin side – website maintenance, distribution, book fairs, taxes – was taking more and more of my time and my finances.
The publishing was never intended to be replace my day job but some years it simply didn’t pay. So I went back to my original dream for the publishing: a series of genre magazines with a lower price point that would – fingers crossed – be more broadly appealing to readers with slightly less catholic tastes. Hence came Child of Words (SF&F), M (horror and mystery), and Thirst (romance). M was an unconventional mashup, but it worked – I prefer psychological horror to monster-of-the-week, and the mystery stories I published tended towards true crime/horror more than whodunnits, so the work fit together, regardless of genre.
Sidebar: If you’ve been following the blog for any length of time, you might think that romance stories are a bit outside my regular wheelhouse, until you read a few titles from Thirst #2, like “Honey, Is That A Dead Hooker Under the Bed?” by J.A. Kazimer, and “When Molly the Necrophiliac Went on a Date with Suicide Stanley” by Match Ryan. Going back to the third print issue of Big Pulp (Winter 2011), we had a story from Iranian college student Elaheh Steinke titled “Interrogate My Heart Instead”, in which a political prisoner is waterboarded by his former lover.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to spend Valentine’s Day with me, now you know.
Pros: I liked having a ‘line’ of publications. I love the comic-size magazine format. They were a bit less expensive and time-consuming to produce (approximately 48 pgs. x 5 per year vs. 180-200 pgs. x 4 per year).
Cons: Sales numbers were about the same, but at $4.99 per issue instead of $12, you can see how the math didn’t math. I felt like I was going backwards instead of forwards. There’s no easy way to distribute small circulation magazines that aren’t comics, as opposed to POD book-sized publications, which get an ISBN and go directly to Amazon and elsewhere, so sales were almost entirely by hand. I had fun at the book fairs but lugging boxes from venue to venue as a solo act gets old fast.
I still love them and get a good feeling when I pull them out of storage. If I hit the lottery, you could expect to see a whole line of fiction magazines, profits be damned. But, as 2016 rolled around – eight years into running a tiny small press publisher and 2-ish years into the expansion experiment – I hit the wall.
I started a new job mid-year – EIC of a niche news publisher, a title I’d been working towards and in a market I knew like the back of my hand – and while my finances held up, my time simply did not. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day to be the guy in charge of publishing at work and the guy in charge of publishing at home.
The Pause Becomes an Ending
I had always intended to come back to Big Pulp when time allowed and had several schemes of how I could make it work with the resources I could give it, but the cards never quite played out in the right order to make it work.
And that’s ok. If I’d known 8+ years would go by with no new books, I would have made some kind of formal announcement, maybe had a farewell toast with my contributors. But I didn’t know that, so the magazine kinda drifted off into the sunset.
It’s possible I could go back – or forward – to publish another magazine or some anthologies in the future, but if I don’t, I can still look back proudly on 8 years of publishing a solid run of books and magazines with strong writing and gorgeous covers. If you’d like to check them out, you can find them all here, with links to buy the print and ebooks.
These days, I’m working on my own books, and I hope that the writing lives up to the work I published all those years.
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Summer Recess
I know what my problem is.
After 16 years working for or adjacent the federal government, I’m accustomed to the dead zone of August. Congress is generally in recess, which means a lot of feds schedule their summer vacations during August, which means it’s also a good time for contractors and journalists to get in some much-needed time off before the September spending spree and rush to miss the Sept. 30 deadline for next year’s fiscal appropriation.
This is my second August away from that grind, but my brain hasn’t quite adjusted to the concept that most people are unaware that the eighth month is the Washington equivalent of the Biblical seventh day, and therefore life goes on. As does the blog, even if my brain doesn’t want to.
All that to say, I’m not going to talk about writing today.
This past week was more full than most. A significant chunk of my immediate family gathered on the West Coast for something like a reunion. In our interconnected world, we don’t lose touch with each other as we did with extended family when we were kids, but we are also far flung, so we don’t get too many opportunities to see each other in the flesh. We were missing one leg of the family, not counting two legs who weren’t invited and wouldn’t have come if they were. I could tell you more but I’m saving it for the book.
It was a quick trip, 5 days in and out. Mostly socializing and cooking, though the two men-folk checked into their respective offices. No rest for the wicked. Almost everyone got in the pool and hot tub at some point. We were only 2 miles from the beach, but the temps were moderate so we didn’t make it a priority. When we did, we picked the worst of the 5 days to go: overcast, drizzly, and of course, much colder and gustier near the ocean.
The kids braved the water and did something to the sand. I couldn’t quite figure out what and I already had sand up my nose, so I didn’t want to get too close. Most of the effort seemed to go into shoveling out a hole in the ground.
Squatting a few dozen yards away, the adults were bundled up like Bernie Sanders on Inauguration Day. Collectively, we decided that while sand and ocean were in evidence, this was definitely not The Beach.
Since we traveled all that way, it was good to see the ocean, but we soon bribed the kids to pack it in.
Day 4: the boys asked me to play Dungeons and Dragons and I pretended that I hadn’t been waiting for that all week. They were in the middle of a game, so they let me teleport in one of my existing characters, a shifter druid with a faux Russian accent who calls everyone Bro. One of boys played a character named Alvin and another had a character named Adrian, but my comedic references to Rocky and the Chipmunks were entirely wasted on them. I know they all have screens. What are they even watching?
I got mega-uncle points for showing them D&D Beyond.
Minds. Blown.
I (probably) don’t need to justify blogging about a non-writing topic, though that is what I advertise. It’s been brought to my attention that readers like to see the person behind the screen, even if only occasionally, and while I don’t often like these kinds of things when others write them, someone must enjoy them, because everyone does it.
If you’re a fan of Star Trek: Next Generation, you may recall scenes where Data asks Geordi to explain some human idiosyncrasy, and now you know what it’s like talking to me. Sometimes. Other times though, I can be very emotional.
So I won’t feel guilty about occasionally pulling topics from real life, such as it is. Follow any writer and you will eventually be treated to photos of cats, gardens, and mugs of tea. When I get another dog someday, I will post photos, but I promise never to show you what I’m eating. And I don’t have a garden, but sometimes there is a dead rat in the alley.
Personal posts may be common, but they come in many flavors.
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Me Me Me
You may have noticed the new banner gracing the top of the page and the face in the corner. I’ve been slowly aligning my visuals on various social media platforms while working on this whole “being a brand” thing, and now here we are.
I hate seeing myself in photographs, so I commissioned a few friends to take a shot at capturing me in art. I provided a few references photos, but gave them a long leash. My only directions were “serial killer vibe” and “maybe a little better looking?” Unless we meet in person, this is as close as you’re going to get to knowing what I look like. You can tell me how they did.
I was quite chuffed by the results. I thought it would be nice to introduce everyone. Let me remind you that all of these gentlemen are available for commissions.
Artist credits from left to right:
A Charlotte-based artist, Ken Knudtsen is a relocated New York writer and artist (Wolverine) and the creator of My Monkey’s Name is Jennifer (SLG Publishing). He has also worked on animation for projects developed by Comedy Central, Robert Reich, and PBS.
The title character of My Monkey’s Name is Jennifer is a poorly-named ape adopted by a family to keep company with their daughter, who dresses him in party clothes for her tea parties. Filled with rage at his hosts and slightly unhinged, Jennifer nonetheless keeps them safe from a series of evil scientists seeking subjects for their experiments. Ken talks about his work here. You can find one of the Jennifer collections on Amazon.
I first encountered Ken’s work with Jennifer – monkeys + evil scientists = easy sell – and joined his mailing list, back when social media consisted of writing your email address on a piece of paper. Over the years, we’ve met in real life at a handful of comic cons and I commissioned Ken’s art for at least a half dozen publications from my small press, which I’ll write about more shortly.
Another artist I met through my small press and have used liberally for cover art and some personal projects. Luke is an artist and illustrator living in the South of England. He earned a First Class degree in illustration from the University of Portsmouth. His work includes personal projects, as well as numerous commissions for book covers and interior illustrations, as well as conceptual design and business branding. Luke has illustrated stories by Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker as part of Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories and Behold: Oddities Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, as well as two stories by Stephen King, which appeared in You, Human and Gamut Magazine.
Check out Luke’s website and Instagram for more of his dark fantasy and horror work.
Rick Worley is the cartoonist behind the comic A Waste of Time, an interconnected series of comic strips and longer stories that are sometimes autobiographical, sometimes fantastical, and always packed with Rick’s obsessions: Star Wars, culture wars, comics, Bill Watterson, and cute twinks. His cast of characters include a closeted fundamentalist coke-addicted teddy bear, an oversexed fox, a romantically doomed robot, and Capitalist Pig, who take turns serving as Rick’s mouthpieces for his deeply considered ruminations on art, commerce, pop culture, romance, and sex.
You can find Rick on Patreon and check him out on YouTube, where his film analysis is earning him a growing fandom.
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Amplify
In a recent edition of his 3-2-1 newsletter, James Clear asks a question that speaks to much of what I write for this blog.
What aspect of your work is hardest to copy? How can you amplify it?
This is you. This is your voice. This is where you find your authentic self.
What can you do – what and how do you write – that would be hard to copy?
Do more of that.
Then do more. Do it louder. With more color. With enthusiasm.
Then do it again. Do it until it becomes second nature. Do it until you can’t remember why did weren’t doing it before.
What do I have?
A dark sense of humor, great comic timing, brutal and occasionally off-putting honesty, cinematic scene-setting, ease with complex and ugly emotions, made-up words that sound right, cynicism sweetened by optimism, rhythm that ebbs and flows, the kind of anti-authoritarian rage you can only gain by surviving a religious cult, the US military, and the public school system, a deep need for community and connection, a near religious belief in redemption, and a dearth of fucks to give.
I’m not the only writer with those qualities, and I’m not the best at any of them, but there’s still only one person who can do it my way.
Go forth and amplify.
___
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Are Heroes Making a Comeback?
I’ve been mulling this thought for awhile, beginning late last year when the teaser trailer for the new Superman received a rapturous response and then a bit more after the presidential inauguration, which absolutely feels way more than only six months ago. Now that the movie it out, it seemed a good time to say it out loud.
Are we in – or about to enter – an era where our cultural heroes act heroically? And by this, I mean fictional heroes, because…{gestures at literally everyone with a modicum of power and two spare dimes to rub together}…get real. This lot isn’t coming through for anyone.
Are audiences craving stories about actual good guys? Are we sick of assholes who “save the day” by being worse than the enemy? Are we tired of heroes who are downright mean? The online reaction to a character like Superman suggests some of us are. We’re drawn to a portrayal of the Man of Steel wears his heart on his sleeve and his underwear on the outside, as God intended.
Superman is supposed to be the guy who makes sure nobody dies today, even the villain. Especially the villain. He’s the person who can look the world’s worst asshole in the face and 1) assume he has a better nature and 2) appeal to it. Superman is the character that says everyone can help. All of us – no matter how angry or hurt or depressed – have good inside. Each of us can step back from an abyss, change our lives, fix our mistakes, and find redemption. No one – even Lex Luthor – is a lost cause.
Superman treats humanity like two kindergartners who just had a fist fight and now have to shake hands, and that’s exactly right. That’s the Superman who’s showed up in 2025, when we needed him most. I like this Superman.
Not everyone does. There’s a strong troll contingent calling the character “woke” and wimpy. We’re so divided by politics that we can’t read a book or watch a movie without being forced to pick sides, even when it involves a character that used to be a common cultural touchstone. When did Superman – generally considered the blandest of them all – become a subject of disagreement? Can you imagine your parents arguing with the neighbors about whether or not Superman is kind? Or if he should kill people? (For that matter, can you imagine them discussing Superman at all? Ever?) Sad to say that modern writers of film and comics have taken the simple phrase “Superman wouldn’t do that” as a challenge to cry, “Oh, yes, he fucking would.”
James Gunn’s Superman would not do that – whatever that is – and it’s a vast improvement over Super-Anything Goes Man.
I hope there’s more of this to come. I appreciate difficult, complicated characters – I’m personally difficult and I can’t write a happy ending to save my life – but I also want to believe that I have a better angel inside, somewhere, buried under trauma and shit. When the world feels like it’s overrun by assholes, is it too much to ask to spend 2 hours in a darkened theater watching someone modeling basic human decency, super-powered or not?
Superman can’t fix what’s wrong with the real world, but if he can make you forget it for a few hours, he’s done ok in my book.
* * * *
But is the movie any good? Spoilers ahead:
I liked it. As noted above, this is my Superman. I love the Big Blue Boy Scout. David Corenswet landed the character’s strength, obstinance, naivete, and heart. He and Rachel Brosnahan make a good pair, good-looking but not too perfect. Seriously. Pay attention when either is in profile. Look at the schnozz on that guy! On the whole, all of the actors were well cast. Nicholas Hoult has never given a bad performance. I freaking adore him.
Buuuuuuuut….while the portrayal of Superman is A+, the film itself lands somewhere in the middle of the pack of superhero movies, which need to be judged on their own merits, separate from other films. So, yeah, Superman is in there somewhere. It lacks the relative gravitas of The Dark Knight, the spectacle of The Avengers series, and the sense of wonder of the Christopher Reeves’ Superman. But it avoids the tedious asshole-to-hero character arc that made a lot of the Marvel movies feel so repetitive, and while the film is admittedly goofy, it wears its goofiness as a badge of honor, unlike the unintentionally eye-rolling moments of, say, Green Lantern. And it’s certainly more entertaining that some of the dregs, such as The Eternals or Schumacher Batman sequels.
The major flaw is the superfluity of characters, many of whom add nothing to the story. I get that Gunn and WB wanted to show the “universe” but at times they seemed to forget they were making a movie. The Engineer and Element Man worked in their roles very well. They each had just the right amount of screen time and something to do that moved the plot, which is all you can ask of minor characters. Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and just about everyone at the Daily Planet took up valuable minutes that added almost nothing to the story.
In several instances, the script had the right scenes but the wrong characters. The Jimmy-Eve connection was amusing, but Lois Lane should never need a junior reporter to feed her that much plot information. The scene where Lois confronts Superman about his choices would have been better served by the Mr. Terrific character, thereby establishing the contrast that sets Superman apart from the other heroes of his story world. Fewer characters in the mix would have streamlined the clutter without weakening the sense that Superman exists in an extended shared universe.
The pacing is wonky as hell. The “catch your breath” moments hit at awkward points, and there’s not enough slow burn to let the big moments pay off. The ending was also pretty stupid, with the big revelation relying on the cop show trope of enlarging photographs to read miniscule background details that provide all the evidence you need to put the bad guy away. Not to mention the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mass evacuation of Metropolis when Luthor’s final plan goes awry. After 9/11, New Yorkers were trapped in the city for days, but in Superman, some 8 million people can flee Metropolis in an afternoon, while a literal black hole opens up in the bay. I mean, honestly. And yes, people will say “but that’s comics!” but it’s not 1975 and James Gunn isn’t being paid $5 a page to write a 12-page Superman story so he can afford rent.
And finally – and I hate typing this –Krypto was a big let down. I knew this wouldn’t be the comic book Krypto, who understands conversation and has average human intelligence, but I didn’t expect I’d root for Superman to drop his dog off at the Space Pound, either. My breaking point? The opening scene where Krypto dog piles (sorry) a severely injured Superman. I don’t care how super this dog is, or how stupid or poorly trained, dogs don’t do that. Dogs know when another creature – especially a familiar human – is sick or injured. I’ve never known a dog that would pounce on someone like that. I guess it was funny (?) that Krypto was punching Superman in his ruptured spleen, but I found it incredibly offputting.
So, great cast, wonderful heart, some script problems, and despite all that kvetching, I liked it. It was fun and the character Superman is on point. If you like superhero movies, and don’t give a shit about Zach Snyder one way or the other, you’d probably enjoy it. If you aren’t disposed to them, this one won’t change your mind.
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Midyear Reflection
I didn’t post my writing goals this past January, not because I didn’t have any, but because I wanted to focus on the journey of writing, rather than word counts and timekeeping and spreadsheets, though I did that too, behind the scenes. Also, my goals occasionally evolve during the year and – full disclosure – sometimes I simply blow them and start over.
Blogging. This year, I committed to posting on the blog twice per week, a reasonable compromise between posting daily and keeping my sanity. With the exception of last week’s mini-break, I have posted on time every time, and usually have a few posts in the drafting stage well before it’s time to knuckle down and hit my deadline. There have been a few mornings I’ve finished posting five minutes before the post is scheduled to publish, but you don’t get extra cookies for finishing too early.
What I underestimated was my time commitment. My calendar shows I have exhausted my blog writing time for the entire year, and here we are in July. Yes, I keep track of my hours. When I have to do this for work, time tracking is a tedious bullshit chore that I resent terribly and forget to do for weeks on end. In my personal life, though, I love tracking my stats. Time allowance aside, I’ll keep posting, but I might not always post twice a week. I’m committed to posting weekly, more when I have time and something pithy to contribute.
On advice of experts, I also started a Substack, which mirrors what I post here. I’ve doubled my readership, which isn’t a high number, but that’s not nothing. I also started a monthly newsletter, and have published that on time every month, as well. I’m actually rather productive when I’m motivated and have a manageable schedule and my boss isn’t a dick.
Creative work. Conversely, I’m way low on my time allowance for non-blog creative writing. I won’t even comment on my number of creative writing hours per week, but it was much less than I planned for the year. I still have time to “catch up,” and even hitting my planned schedule won’t amount to a tremendous weekly average for the year.
Shockingly, I’m still hitting my word count goal – an average 500 a day, which can be 30 minutes or 2 hours of work, depending. I’m about a month ahead of where I should be mathematically, assuming I wrote exactly 500 words per day, no more or less. I’ve been on a good roll the last month or two and will likely hit my yearly word count goal sometime in October or November. Ideally, I’ll have 6 – 8 weeks to focus on editing without keeping track of my writing pace.
Finishing. The jury is still out, but with six months to go, I feel good about finishing my fantasy novel-in-progress and having a meaty outline/sloppy draft of the second. It is not impossible that I could finish both, but I’m not tempting fate. I think the second book will be easier to write, because I have a stronger plot foundation. I don’t expect Book 2 will need as much reorganizing and rewriting as Book 1. All the work I put into Book 1 has paid off as I’m planning Book 2 and I believe that will make the work go faster.
Community. I set a goal to get more connected with my writing friends and the community. You know that’s been an ongoing challenge. I had high hopes for A Writing Room, but the community there seems focused on poetry and memoir. The chat forum has lots of inspirational quotes and photos of tea, but not too much craft discussion. The critique board was not too active last I checked, which is a problem because members can’t post work to be critiqued until they review someone else’s work and if no one is posting, then… ?
Earlier this year, I started an online silent writing meetup with friends. We get together Wednesday evenings eastern and write together over Zoom. There aren’t many of us and a few have already dropped out, but I’m keeping it. I like having the appointment on my calendar and seeing a face or two while I write.
After Jane Friedman’s business workshop a few weeks ago, I corralled a bunch of the other writers into an informal networking group. We’ve met only once so far, but the group has settled on a semi-formal structure for future meetings, which will focus on the business side of writing. Nothing complicated: our blogs and websites, how we use social media, conferences worth attending. It’s a decent-sized group and everyone seems enthusiastic, so I have high hopes. Let’s say medium hopes. I have medium hopes but facing upwards!
Social media. A few weeks ago, I posted about my tech stack, mentioning some of the automation tools I use to share my blog posts to social media, and I’ve already stopped using them. Social media is such a freaking chore. I still post in a few places, but keeping up with it all is a huge time suck and it’s incredibly disheartening. My Facebook and Bluesky lists are nearly 100% writers or writer-adjacent people and nearly 100% of their posts are about…well, they’re not about writing, let’s leave it at that. I keep hearing that TikTok and Instagram are great for writers, and today I read that Pinterest is one writer’s secret sauce for selling books, and honestly, right now I’d like to go back in time to kick Al Gore right in his internets.
How’s your creative year going? Are you happy with your outcomes? Are you making any adjustments for the rest of the year?
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A Post-4th Thought About Freedom
A bit late for Independence Day, but I came across this quote from James Clear (Atomic Habits) and thought it a concise summary of how easily writers can become trapped in uncreative thinking and how as easily we can free ourselves.
“When I notice myself worrying about ‘what other people will think,’ I find I’m usually not worried about any single person’s opinion.
If I pick a specific person, I’m rarely concerned about what they will think. What I fear is the collective opinion in my head. It’s imaginary.” – James Clear
This is a fantastic insight. Writers are prone to worrying about what other people think about their work. Naturally, we want to deliver quality work and please our readers, but so many of us twist ourselves into knots trying to anticipate how people will react to each jot and tittle.
We worry what our family will think about a steamy sex scene or whether our friends will think badly of us if one of our characters kicks a dog. Writers known mostly for light romance novels worry if their readers will “be ok” with them writing a science fiction novel. Series writers fret about writing a stand-alone novel instead of the next book in their series, even when they are sick of writing in that story world and need a break.
It’s all in our heads.
If you have a reader base, a few might be disappointed that you wrote something different than what you wrote before, but most won’t care and many would encourage you if you asked. And as far as friends and family are concerned, you should be so lucky that they read your story or novel at all. I’m not sure mine know I can read, much less write.
The time to care about your reader is at the finish line. Have you done your best work? Have you put everything the reader needs on the page and taken out what they don’t? Do you have a coherent story with consistent internal logic? Did you convey the message you wanted, create the right tone, and evoke the emotions you wanted the reader to feel? If not, back up.
But when you are choosing your projects, creating your characters, developing your theme, or working out a difficult or complicated emotion, you are free to not GAF about your reader. No one else should pick your genre or tell you which characters intrigue you. No one gets to tell you what you should care about or what message you want to discuss. Those are for you. Those are your gift.
Worrying about what other people think is a waste of time, and you’ve probably guessed wrong anyway. And anyone who does judge you based on a morally ambiguous character or explicit sex scene or your incorrigibly foul language isn’t worth your time. If we all worried about the opinions of trolls, no one would ever create anything, anywhere, which is exactly what trolls want.
Of course, for many creative people, a bit of healthy concern about collective opinion is rational. We live in an era where the right circumstances – something said by the right person at the right time – will arouse the mob. This is particularly true when the target has a platform large enough for others to notice and – importantly, in my opinion – envy.
What modern life lacks in pitchforks and torches, we make up for with doxxing, shadow-banning, dog-piling, and deplatforming, and that’s when we don’t skip directly to stalking and threats of physical violence. The mob loves to raise people up and then knock them down a few pegs, if not all the pegs. Throughout history, humanity has had difficulty imagining any stations between Madonna and Whore, and online culture is no different. We love or we destroy, or as is common, we love and then we destroy.
Creative people should oppose these IRL demons as strongly as we fight those in our heads. It’s easy to join the outraged crowd mobilizing against the online Villain du Jour, but one day the mob will turn on someone you admire or care about. Stick your head up high enough and they might even find you, and then you’ll discover how well the people you believed were your friends can resist popular opinion.
It is also my experience that those most comfortable shaming others are the worst kind of people and have more than enough of their own sins to wash. It’s the classic behavior of the abuser – accuse everyone else to distract the world from noticing what you have done. None of us are pure white, but often the loudest shaming voices have the worst kinds of behavior to hide. I learned a long time ago to be wary of anyone wielding morality as a cudgel. There’s a reason we joke that anyone who hates gays is a closet case.
You don’t have to like everything a person says or believes. You don’t have to agree with anyone’s business decisions or how they vote. You don’t have to buy any writer’s books. You don’t have to be silent in your disagreement. But as writers, we should all fear a culture that casually punishes anyone for words, whether written or spoken aloud or tweeted.
If you fear being judged for your words, fear as well judging others for theirs. Either we all have our freedom of speech and expression, or none of us do.
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Happy Summer!
Wishing a happy 4th of July holiday to my US friends, however you plan to spend it.
I’m a few days early, but it’s too damn hot to think. I knew we weren’t going to have a decent spring this year, but instead jump from rainy slog to baking heat. Welcome to the future, friends.
I’m taking the rest of the week off. Back soon!
AI Will Rot Your Brain, Kid
I love being right.
Unfortunately, because I am a cynic, I am often right about things that are terrible. I would much rather be proven wrong, but people being what they are…
Earlier this month, MIT released the results of a brain scan study of people who use ChatGPT. Hat tip to ABI Bouhmaida who discussed the study on his Instagram account. I doubt I’d have caught it and I certainly would not have been able to parse the results so quickly or maybe at all.
In fairness to our future AI overlords, these results are based on one study. But the results?
83% of study participants who used ChatGPT to write couldn’t remember what they wrote just a few minutes later. In comparison, only 11% of participants who used Google or their own brain forgot what they wrote in that short amount of time.
Brain scans of ChatGPT users revealed a drop in neural connections from 79 to 42, or nearly half capacity. That doesn’t mean anyone’s brain was damaged by AI, but that their brains did not connect to or pay too much attention to the task at hand while they were using the tool. Another way to describe it? Participants offloaded their reasoning and problem-solving, and thus their brains did not engage at the same level while working the task.
The writing produced by participants who used ChatGPT was described as technically “close to perfect” while lacking personal insights and creativity.
In the final round of the study, ChatGPT users were required to write on their own, without assistance. The quality of their work declined. They didn’t recover the mental capacity they relinquished when they relied on AI to write for them. In contrast, participants who initially wrote without ChatGPT maintained their neural connections, even when they were allowed to use the AI tool.
Is this single study the be-all, end-all on how we use ChatGPT? Of course not. We and the tool will continue to evolve. But the study does confirm my worst fear about how many people are using AI for their creative work, whether that is fiction, poetry, essays, or reporting.
In my previous post, I wrote about how one writer uses ChatGPT to help her outline articles, which I thought was a bit too far. I might owe that writer an apology, because recently on the Killzone blog, one of the contributing writers listed all the ways he uses ChatGPT to write fiction and blog posts. Here’s a bit of his advice, which he called “How to Use ChatGPT Like a Pro Writer”:
- Upload samples of your work so that the AI can train itself to write in your voice.
- Ask it to write headlines and opening paragraphs for your blog posts.
- Use it to rewrite part of your work in plain English or in the style of another writer.
- Ask it to create better metaphors.
If that’s how the “pros” do it, I’ll keep playing in the rookie league, thanks.
It would have been bad enough if this were merely an example of a writer becoming overly reliant on AI tools to create his work for him. Rather, he was actively framing his dependency as a hot writing hack and encouraging other writers to offload their thinking to AI.
I was so angry I almost had to break my fingers to stop myself from commenting on his post. Killzone has never been one of my go-to sources for craft advice or insights – they have one solid contributor, maybe 2 others who are pretty good, and 4 or 5 who contribute a lot of words but no content, including one I believe is close to lapsing into a persistent vegetative state – but now it’s out of rotation. If I were a contributor, I don’t think I could quietly watch another group member pimp AI like that. Not only gross, but an astonishing misread of where the writing community sits with AI right now.
This is anathema to me. My whole deal here is striving for authenticity and individuality, and encouraging writers to put as much of themselves on the page as they can. I wouldn’t have predicted this when I started, but over time, authentic voice has emerged as the central theme of my blog and my writing life, and I can guarantee my work would not have evolved this way if I had let AI suggest topics, outline posts, or write opening paragraphs.
Is it any of my business? No. But when someone loudly suggests using AI in our creative work, I will as loudly decry this advice. When we outsource our creativity and our thinking processes, we lose a bit of ourselves along the way. It astounds and offends me that someone could be willing to amputate an entire branch of their brain in favor of a cyborg replacement.
Will this lack of engagement of the brain towards creative tasks have a long term effect? We don’t know yet. Bouhmaida likens long-term use of AI for creative work to a person using a wheelchair when they don’t need one. Eventually, the leg muscles will atrophy and you might not have a choice about the chair. Given the preliminary results of studies of short-term users, creative people should pause to think before they find themselves unable to.
These rather alarming results aside, I’m not going to remove ChatGPT from my toolbox because I don’t use it for creative work. This week I asked it to identify some new WordPress themes for the blog, based on a few sample themes and my personal preferences. I had it debug a problem I was having in the site admin. I uploaded some photos of cracked plaster and asked it to write a step by step DIY plan for fixing my foyer wall. If I have a tedious job that I would rather not do at all, I am happy to let ChatGPT handle it, leaving me more time for the good stuff, the work that requires my creativity and authentic voice.
As a personal assistant handling fact-based work, the tool is pretty sweet. Still, it has the ability to come on strong. Insidiously, if ChatGPT thinks you are working on some creative writing, it will offer to do it for you: Do you want me to suggest some opening paragraphs? Do you want me to write a few paragraphs about this location in a certain tone or writing style? Do you want me to write a sonnet? So far, I have resisted temptation, but I have caught myself typing ‘yes’ without thinking, though I always delete it. The fucker is just so polite, it’s hard to say no.
I’m glad I wrote my earlier blog post when I thought of it. Life is full of interesting revelations and developments that trigger my natural instinct to yell, “See? I told you!” when regrettably, I did not tell you. In this case, however, I told you on June 2, and MIT released its report on June 10. We’ll cut the institute some slack on their delay, as their research required more effort than roiling up some bile. I’m delighted and maybe a bit horrified my instincts were correct.
Remind me to tell you how in 1995, I predicted that the gay community would eventually splinter into 1000 sub-cultures with every niche preference and peccadillo having its own flag.
I could have warned everyone, but I didn’t.
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Tools of the Trade
Once you’ve narrowed down your list of tasks associated with the business of writing, you might find yourself wondering what tools to use and how to keep track of it all.
Here’s my tech stack:
Writing: MS Word
I almost feel like a luddite admitting that I use MS Word, rather than Scrivener or a similar writing app. I’ve tried Scrivener. I don’t have anything negative to say about it, but it didn’t work with my writing process, which looks something like this:
I like the One Stop for Writers site, from the people who create the Writers Helping Writers blog. One Stop is built to help you organize long-form work into chapters, scenes, and beats, and lets you create separate folders for characters, settings, etc. The site is also directly attached to the publishers’ writing resources, including multiple thesauruses and craft advice. If you’re looking for an organization tool, I recommend checking it out. Wait for a sale. You can usually get a six month membership at a decently discounted rate.
Graphics: Pixabay, various public domain sites, Affinity Photo
I can usually find a decent royalty-free photo on Pixabay. There are other good sites, but I happen to like that one. I also liberally steal borrow images from film and television if they fit my topic. That’s like free advertising, right?
If you want to disappear down a research hole, here are some non-Wikipedia sites with literally millions of public domain images:
Don’t say I never gave you anything.
To edit graphics, I use Affinity Photo, part of the Affinity suite of creative apps. Apparently, it compares favorably to Photoshop, but I wouldn’t know anything about that, because my skills are limited to cropping and resizing. It is also significantly less expensive than Adobe products, so if you are considering purchasing any creative apps and don’t need the highest high-end software, the Affinity package is a very good buy.
Just about everyone I know migrated to Affinity when Adobe issued a license agreement that, under the right microscope, gave them certain rights to anything created with one of their apps. Probably an AI training thing. They retracted it almost immediately, but the damage was done.
Website: WordPress
Easy to set up, short learning curve for basic theme design and posting, flexible enough to accommodate users who put in the effort or are willing to pay someone for bells and whistles.
Alternative: Substack.
I recently added Substack, based on some professional advice about “discoverability.” Built more like a social media app, Substack allows you post into the news stream, where people who don’t know you might stumble across one of your posts. For now, the account simply mirrors my WordPress blog. I’ll keep both for now.
Substack offers less flexibility on design and color, but provides a built-in newsletter function and auto-optimizes post images for various social media. It probably does other things, but I haven’t investigated fully.
Newsletter: Beehiiv
There are a lot of options out there for free or very low cost email newsletter platforms. Costs are generally tiered to your number of subscribers, and most include various add-on features. I chose Beehiiv because Warren Ellis uses it. Ellis is a comics writer and a slut for new tech and apps, so if he adopts one, that’s usually a good sign that it’s worth the trouble. The free tier runs to 2,500 subscribers, which is more generous than many platforms. The interface is drag and drop and fairly intuitive.
Had I known I would start a Substack, I might not have launched the newsletter on Beehiiv, but now that I’m using it, I like it.
Social Media: Yes
Whether to have social media accounts, how many, and how to use them are questions of individual preference. The best advice I’ve read on social media is to pick one or two that you enjoy using and ignore the rest. Don’t get bogged down figuring out which is the best for writers or book sales. Even if you guess right, it will change.
Today, I’m on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and Bluesky. I don’t use any of them to great extent, but I post on FB and Bluesky more often, which isn’t saying much, because I post on X and Insta exactly zero. I didn’t want Bluesky at all, but most of the writing community hightailed it over there due to current events, so I signed up. Bluesky is basically X, but with ridiculous left-wing assholes instead of ridiculous right-wing assholes.
Productivity: Motion, Fedica, Publer
My brain runs fine, thank you very much, but it doesn’t always take the most direct route to my destination. I have some bad habits, like overcommitting, forgetting appointments or errands, and being indecisive about what to tackle next. I’ve tried calendar alerts, habit apps, spreadsheets, reward systems – none of them worked well or for very long. But this AI-lite app has been very beneficial.
Technically an office productivity app, Motion allows you to schedule tasks and events, set durations and deadlines, flag priorities, and create multiple schedules. You can create one-time tasks or recurring tasks that will automatically schedule daily, weekly, or monthly based on your settings. The app uses AI to schedule your tasks around your events, prioritizing what you marked as high priority. As you mark tasks as complete, it reshuffles, moving items with approaching deadlines to earlier dates and times. It red-flags anything about to miss a deadline.
I benefit from having a visual representation of my upcoming calendar that I can review every Sunday evening. Occasionally, I will have weeks were almost every minute is scheduled (such as when I try to do everything a writer should be doing…) Even if I could technically fit in everything I’d like to accomplish, I realize that’s not feasible. I like that I can make choices and adjustments well before it’s necessary. I also like that Motion resorts my tasks without my needing to do anything.
It’s not cheap – the annual subscription works out to about $20 a month – but for me, it’s money well spent.
And, because I “should be” more visible on various social media, I’ve also opened accounts with service apps that cross post to various platforms. Fedica and Publer offer free accounts, but limit the number of social accounts and posts you can make. I don’t have that many or post that often, so that works for me. Caveat: Setting up FB, X, and Bluesky wasn’t too difficult, but I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get Instagram working properly. Publer only works on “professional” accounts, so you need an FB business page, plus an Instagram creator or business page, and they have to be linked <insert eye roll emoji here>. This was another tedious chore I handed off to ChatGPT. It couldn’t do the work for me, but it broke down the multiple steps across platforms.
There’s the short version of the tech stack. I probably left something out. And yes, I felt youthful and cutting edge calling it a “tech stack”.
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