“The Hole in the System” is based on three things. It’s about a plague of holes. It’s about systems. And it’s about the shopping cart theory, the viral theory that you can determine whether a person is a good or bad member of society depending on whether they return their shopping carts. A post about what inspired me to write it.
I cannot separate the creation of Perceiver from becoming a writer: of growing aware of my place in the world, discovering what I value and fear, and what I need to write.
Major book news, short story news, a review of how I spent my time the first six months this year, and thoughts and feelings about the future.
There is no non-annoying way to champion your debut novel, so forgive me for believing that it’s DAMN GOOD. You can pre-order it on Amazon and read the first chapter on my website (links in post).
Before I can understand something, I have to be able to explain it to myself. In the case of love, the explanation had to be a story. That story was "Singot".
I used to believe that writing for an audience betrayed my authentic self (whatever that was). I was lucky, but also just a little screwed, to have wonderful teachers who encouraged me to write however I wanted, instead of reports on books you have to read for English class, with prompts like, “What is the symbolism behind Johnny shooting his dog?”, usually in that god awful five-paragraph style. Writing was the most fun when I didn’t have to worry about what someone else thought about my Goose Game fanfiction. I didn’t have to worry about people rejecting my stories.
I’m thinking about how I can’t separate doing from being. You are what you do, not what you think. So what have I been doing? I’ve been trying to stick to the productivity routine I had before the pandemic. Thoughts on loneliness and productivity.
I've always found creating good characters rather easy. I created a system to make them consistently great. Why do readers love certain characters?
Having trouble writing while juggling the American pandemic experience? Give yourself up to the higher authority and power of apps. Make it easy to accomplish by setting good habits, and make it hard to fail by automating things that block things for you.
While it was not the year I hoped it would be (was it for anyone?), good stuff did happen. Writing goals, reflections, statistics.