Tag Archives: narrative voice

The wonders of personal essays

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Today was without a doubt, and beyond compare, one of the most productive days off I’ve had in a while. Exciting apartment maintenance stuff was handled bright and early. I mowed the lawn for the first time this year, which was taxing and horrible but necessary. There was a strong aroma of wild onions all around my yard, however, and it proved to be surprisingly enjoyable. By extension, the lawn mowing became that much more pleasant. After that, and without showering first (not a point of pride for me), I deposited my tax return and used a small portion of it to treat myself. The rest, of course, is planned out for responsible, adult things, but I wanted to have a little fun with some of it. A copy of Majora’s Mask for the 3DS, an Ultron bobblehead, and a copy of Lumberjanes later, I achieved that much.

Funny enough, all of those things are relevant to today’s topic. Continue reading →

Become your own hero

Posted on by under General Writing-Related Posts

And other one-sentence platitudes straight from the School of Shallow-Thinking Drivel-Poop.

I jest.

A very big influence in my writing, which is the same very big thing that can be applied to most any artist and their works, is the works of authors I hold in very high regard. Pratchett, Gaiman, Moore, and so on. People who have written works (books, short stories, and anything else) that have left me wanting to create something just as amazing as what I’d just read. Writing with words blended in such a masterful way that I just had to sit down and get to my own creative processes. This is both a wonderful and treacherous thing as it makes creating a balancing act.

On one hand it would be very easy to follow in the footsteps of one or more of the previously mentioned writers, borrowing bits and pieces of their styles and voices as it suited me. I imagine, with the right level of effort and patience, such writing could yield a very strong end result that would read almost entirely (but not quite) like a work of my own hard labors. Continue reading →

Find your own kind of brilliance

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging

Warning: posting this from my Android phone. Who knows what kind of silly shenanigans will follow?

Short summary of my day, better known as The Movening: I got very little done compared to my goals. This is thanks to me finding a groundhog’s dwelling with my foot, falling back on my left leg, and spraining my ankle quite badly. It’s been a symphony of swearing today. The ankle in question is bundled up neatly in an AirCast. It still really hurts.

I also started rereading Stardust for the hundredth time. There’s something in the magic of Neil Gaiman’s writing that fills me with such a yearning to get off my ass and do some of my own writing. The moving mentality I have seems to blot that out a fair bit, sadly.

And then there are the inevitable pangs of envy. Wanting to be able to create something as fantastically brilliant of my own. Lindsey, beta-reader extraordinaire and terrific writer, told me Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King read like a collaboration between Neil Gaiman and the author of Howl’s Moving Castle. That is, without a doubt, some of the highest praise I have ever received, but it also got me thinking.

There’s nothing wrong with never achieving Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett level brilliance. No matter how much I try, I won’t. What I will, I suspect, eventually manage is to create my own kind of brilliance. Even if it’s never on a massive scale, it’ll be me and the creative style that is entirely mine. That’s something I hope all creative folks can embrace.

Find what you do well. Make it brilliant. Make it your own. Love it and pour your soul into it, and then rip it apart and fix it until you reach such a point where you can’t bear to look at your work anymore. Let it rest, and do it again.

Above all else, be happy with creating something. There are so many other, similar artists out there, but none of them are exactly the same.

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day 42

Posted on by under Misadventures in Fiction, One Hundred Days of Blogging

I’m starting my morning off by enjoying a bowl of cereal while I read through the Spam comments that Phil’s Misadventures in Fiction has accrued recently. It’s oddly entertaining, although the spammers certainly do have nice things to say about my posts. Even if some of those kind words don’t really make a lot of sense from a grammatical standpoint.

Speaking of kind words: the professor I sent Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King off to got back to me with his critique today. It’s not something I feel should be shared in its entirety on here, but I do have to say seeing the phrases “I thoroughly enjoyed it” and “you have great characters” really put a stupid grin on my face.

Meowiarty is hanging out with me while I type this, as he sat at my bedroom door and meowed until I let him in. He may be a touch spoiled, I’m willing to concede, but he behaves like a dog enough and I miss having dogs around…so by that reasoning it should be okay that he’s in here. Probably. I’ll remind myself of that when I’m cleaning cat hair out of my PC’s tower.

Naturally, today’s post will involve 42 in a way. Hopefully not too predictable a way, but we’ll see. Continue reading →

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Thirty-Four

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging

Today can jump off a cliff into shark-infested waters already. Holy shit. It’s been dreadful. I could easily go on about why today was one of many miserable Mondays I’ve experienced as of late (I still maintain we revoke Monday’s status as a day of the week until it gets its act together). I’m going to focus on the positive instead.

For instance: I replaced the handle set-up for my downstairs toilet today. I realize this doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the first time I’ve ever had to do such a thing. Problems like that had a way of fixing themselves at home, or so I seemed to think (the joke is my stepdad got stuck dealing with all of these issues). I’m one minor home repair closer to being a proper, responsible adult. Sort of.

Time for real talk. I’m really freaking hungry, and today was almost bad enough for me to justify using the word hangry. Almost. It sounds too stupid to really justify. Instead of dancing around, I’m getting to the topic now. And then I’ve got an actual fiction writing project for while I wait to hear back from Cary Press in regards to my latest round of what I assume are stupid questions. Continue reading →