Systems Simplify

How long does it take you to write 100 words? I'm sure most of us have never sat down and figured this out, even if we've done it many times. Still, if I asked you to write 100 words in 100 minutes, you'd likely say you can easily do that. 10 minutes? Probably more of a challenge, but not impossible. 1 minute? Unlikely—unless you really work at achieving it. As with most things in our lives, we develop an innate understanding of how long something takes the more we do it. We feel frustrated if it takes too long but accomplished if we can do it faster than normal. The routine becomes subconscious. A tenet of writerly advice is usually "develop a daily writing habit." Why is this? First, it's practicing something that then becomes easier with each iteration. Whether it's a set number of minutes or words each day, the more times you practice this routine, the better you'll get at...
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Writing shouldn’t be solitary

When people say "writing is a solitary activity," they do not refer to the entire process. Yes, nobody but you will sit down and put the words in your head onto the page. I know I've written a lot about how a self-published author can "do it all," but it's important to know the value of community as an author. The best-written works of all time hardly existed in a vacuum. Even if the actual process of writing can be solitary, it can become isolating if we don't connect with others who have this same experience. Writing should be an experience. Not everyone has the same process or hangups, but there are enough similar highs and lows that you can empathize with when you talk about your craft with fellow authors. We understand the highs of selling our work or getting a glowing review as much as we know the pain of writer's block or critical feedback. Sometimes a close group...
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Why you shouldn’t ignore creative burnout

Why you shouldn’t ignore creative burnout

Working on creative projects takes a lot of effort. When things are running smoothly, it’s easy to ignore how many tasks need to be done, especially if you’re trying to accomplish this project alone (as I’ve written about before). But when does it become too much? When can a creative endeavor cross over from pleasure to work? Part of the problem of accumulating creative projects is the desire to work on all of them at once. For some, it’s how they pay the bills. For me, my creative pursuits are meant to be enjoyable hobbies. I understand that some aspects of these hobbies (like editing) aren’t the most enjoyable, but they still need to happen if I want to produce a product I’m proud of. There are plenty of ideas I want to see come to life, but I don’t have the time to work on them all simultaneously. Sometimes projects overlap. I’ve recently recovered from a bout of creative burnout. I pushed...
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Pretend Politics

I just turned 35 a few weeks ago. According to the Constitution, since I am a natural-born citizen of the United States, I am now eligible to run for President. With the latest Presidential election upon us, I thought I’d take some time to figure out what I would change if I were running this country. There’s clearly a lot that could use some improvement. One of the challenges of identifying what’s wrong with any situation is how easy it is to focus only on the symptoms instead of the root cause. One of the most memorable television shows I watched growing up was Connections. This PBS show that aired in the mid-1990s would take random objects/themes and show how they are all interrelated. I loved how these elements of “cause and effect” revealed how interconnected our world is. Nothing is truly isolated. As a scientist and writer, I can explore hypothetical situations. Granted, many of these scenarios rely on my knowledge...
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When did the writing begin?

Before this year began, I decided the idiom of “hindsight is 20/20” was an appropriate chance to reflect on the writing I’ve done over the years. While I managed to collect over 200 pages of my written works from the last 20 years in my latest book, The Ascent of the Writer (available today!), my writing “career” started well before then. I’ve never been one to throw away anything I’ve created. My basement has quite a few boxes and cardboard portfolios filled with all the visual art that I made throughout my elementary education. Among the pencil sketches and finger painting, I also managed to keep some of my earliest writings. These go back as far as 1992 when I was in the first grade. Some of my earliest stories were written in 1992. It’s quite a trip down memory lane reading some of these “stories” I wrote back then. I still remember the inspiration for some of them—some of which were just...
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Why I don’t make a living on my writing

Why I don’t make a living on my writing

Writing is my hobby. I have a full-time job, so there is no need for me to make a living on my writing. Since I do it mostly for fun, I’m not too concerned about making money. Most importantly, for tax purposes, writing is my hobby. Sure, I try to run it like a business by keeping track of expenses and sales, but overall I’m not doing much more than breaking even. This is fine. After all, a hobby is usually considered a “money pit” where you don’t expect to get a return on investment other than the pure enjoyment it brings you (think about other hobbies like restoring cars, reading books, or gardening as examples). A few years ago, I received a review request from someone who had written a book. They were self-publishing and admitted that they were currently homeless and that this book (that they had taken over a decade to write) was their only ticket out of...
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You may already be a writer

About three years ago, I decided that I wanted to take my writing seriously. In 2016, I had a bit of a gap in my self-publishing schedule, having published the Fluxion Trilogy omnibus two years prior. I learned a lot in publishing my first three novels, so this was part of the reason I was taking some time to ensure the future products I published would be of the necessary quality. I was still writing drafts of the books I wanted to write; I just realized it would take longer to get them into polished shape for publication. Since I still wanted to publish the stories I had backlogged, I needed to figure out a schedule where I would release one book a year for the foreseeable future—much like I had done with my first trilogy. This was my definition of taking my writing seriously. Expanding my bibliography of published works every year seemed like an achievable goal, so I started...
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What video games can teach us about writing (1/3)

Art inspires art. Sometimes a beautiful painting can give you an idea for a short story. Perhaps a beloved song is a jumping-off point for a novella. Maybe a great movie can get your creative juices flowing for a book of your own. Art can come in many forms, but one form most people don’t readily recognize is that of video games. I’ve already written about how games like Not Tetris describe my idea-collecting process, but recently I’ve played a few games I would consider artistic enough to pull some lessons into my own writing. Art inspires art. But, are video games art? Video games have come a long way from the days of Pong and Pac-Man. While these games were kept simple due to technical limitations, today’s video games no longer have these restrictions. I think one of the reasons why video games aren’t considered art is that most art is one-directional. You go to a museum to view paintings. You listen to music on your...
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How much should you write?

Writing is my hobby. It is not my full-time job. It is not paying to support my family. Sure, it can make some money on the side, but I generally write to be creative. I have stories and ideas that I want to get onto the page and out to the world. I started writing for fun in college, creating a series of intertwined short stories I wanted to collect into a novel-length book. Nothing ever truly came of these short stories, other than to convince me that they were possible. Then I wrote my first novel. I found it ironic that I didn’t pursue a thesis-based Master’s Degree, but ended up doing nine months of research to write a thesis-length book in roughly six weeks. This was the largest thing I had ever written. Unlike my previous short stories, though, a coupon to get five free proof copies of this book was the impetus I needed to edit and polish...
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An Engineer’s Guide to NaNoWriMo (or how I grew from a newbie to a veteran)

This post was originally written for the NaNoWriMo blog. You can check it out here (it's been slightly modified, but the content's basically the same). I’m an engineer. While most of my colleagues use this as an excuse to keep themselves from writing anything, I argue it’s the reason they need to be the best writers. The concepts engineers can create in their minds still need to be communicated to the world. Concepts never imagined before. Similarly, how many writers are out there with an idea nobody has ever read, just waiting to get it onto the page? As an engineer, I have a particular set of skills—some would say “quirks”—that have helped me over the last eight years of NaNoWriMo grow from just barely finishing to writing rapidly and voluminously. Most engineers are known for their problem-solving skills, and NaNoWriMo presents an interesting problem: how do I write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days? Like most problems, I resort...
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