Can’t wait to share my conversation with my next guest, Michael C. Carroll!
Born and raised in Massachusetts’ Merrimack Valley, Michael C. Carroll has always loved storytelling. After graduating from Boston College, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia where he teaches and lectures on the epic poetry that inspires his writing. It was not until his master’s program through the Bread Loaf School of English brought him to Oxford University, that Michael knew he had found the story he would spend the rest of his life telling.
In Professor Francis Leneghan’s tea-scented office, Michael began studying the Old English manuscript of Beowulf. That literary exploration led to his thesis that addresses the allegorical significance of the dragon fight that concludes the Anglo-Saxon epic poem. Not long after earning his Master’s degree, Michael began writing Beyond the Fall of Kings, the incredible true story of the war behind the poem of Beowulf.
Currently, Michael lives in Atlanta, Georgia where—when he is not giving lectures on Beowulf—he can be found making dinner for his wife and daughter, coaching his school’s football and swimming teams, and working through his own translation of the Old English Beowulf Manuscript.
Nicolas and I connected on Twitter. I blogged about that awesome aspect of the sometimes risky social platform because I can now attest that it is possible to meet supportive, like-minded people who end up becoming a writing buddy and friend. Nicolas was one of those happy surprises.
An email dialog ensued lasting many weeks, and today I am sharing that conversation as it occurred, almost in its entirety, which was Nicolas’s creative idea. He is sharing the same on his blog from his perspective. You’ll note, and hopefully be entertained while picking up some great tips, my style of rambling (pardon the long parts!) versus Nicolas’s in-depth style where he provides tons of helpful resources (which I hyperlinked for your reference).
Enjoy!
To get us started, here is an introduction to our conversation from Nicolas:
Author D. L. Lewellyn and I connected over social media, chatting and digging into the writing life, and sharing our respective creative journeys.
Our ongoing conversation covered many topics, like self-perception, writer’s block, plotting vs pantsing, the importance of finishing projects, and building an audience… We discussed our writing processes and shared intel about our respective stories. We pondered where to focus our fledgeling marketing efforts, how to find good beta readers; or work with developmental editors. We shared many writing and marketing resources that we’ve encountered along the way. We talked about the courage to start before you’re ready. We reflected on writing speed, routine, life balance, remote working…
There was initial talk of exchanging blog interviews, but ultimately, we chose to share our take-aways in a more conversational, free-form manner… almost as it took place over our extensive, in-depth series of emails. Then we agreed on publishing our two versions of the conversation simultaneously on our respective blogs.
The result is what follows. Please enjoy! ~ Nicolas
The Conversation:
It all started with Twitter… and grew, and grew…
D:
I wanted to let you know I really enjoyed “Cradle” and so did my husband. I read it out loud to him. How are your books coming? I look forward to your newsletter. Would you like to schedule a blog interview with me? I have a spot open in April.
N:
Thanks so much Darci! I’m happy you and your husband liked Cradle. People reading my little story out loud to each other… that really makes my day!
I would be happy to do a blog interview in April. I’ve done a few of them, and each time is both a challenge and an occasion to dig deeper into some very interesting questions and topics.
Did I mention I loved your story about the Oscarsons? It brought up fond memories! I had an Oscar fish once; it sure was a hungry fellow! Kept watching me as soon as I entered the room, trying to catch my attention, eager to jump out of the tank for a pinch of raw meat. Fell to the floor once, poor thing. But the mishap didn’t calm Oscar down, no! It only made him hungrier.
If you’re of a mind to dig down into the depths of your writer’s psyche to answer a few questions, I’ll be thrilled to interview you on my blog as well.
D:
It would be amazing to exchange interviews! I just hope I can meet the challenge of digging deep for your questions. 🙂
I’m trying to get back to the joy of writing novels this year. I’ve gotten sort of caught up in submitting short stories (got a few too many challenges lined up the next two months, in fact), while the big guys are sitting on the back burner. I made a momentous decision last fall to unpublish my two novels that are two parts of a three part series. They were languishing with slow sales, and I kept modifying them to fit how my third book keeps developing, so I decided to quit trying to sell them and work on finishing the series, maybe even do a repackaging with new cover art and then a big marketing campaign. It’s been tough not having them available any longer on Amazon, but freeing in a lot of ways. Still, I must finish them this year, so the pressure is on. I’m actually nearly done with the third book, just stuck a little and need to get unstuck. (Thanks for letting me ramble about that :)).
And thanks so much for the comments on the Oscarsons! The story didn’t make it through the contest like I hoped, but I was sure someone would relate to my fish couple if they knew anything about Oscars. I used to raise them, so I know exactly what you enjoy about them. They would eat out of my hands. But they would get so big, I had to exchange them at the store over time and start again with small ones. I’m glad your little dude survived his mishap 🙂 They are hardy fish!
N:
Your remarks gave me hints for more questions. Mind if I ask you about how you deal with things like writer’s block, doubt, and not feeling like working on certain projects or aspects of projects, or specific stories? I think all writers face that, and I always love to read another writer’s view on it…
D:
It’s funny you should ask that. I found out through social media posts from the winners of a contest that I wasn’t one of them. It would have been nicer to learn this officially, but it was a brand new contest, so I get it. Still. Gut punch. So, my husband got an earful, and I felt better. That’s probably not the best way to deal with rejection, especially for him. LOL. He definitely has been on this roller coaster ride with me since I started writing fiction two and a half years ago.
But hashing it out and sharing the winning stories with him helped. He suffered through good and bad (in my opinion) stories that way. I try to take an honest look, compare styles, and see where I might improve. My husband is a big help with that because he holds up the mirror, makes me look hard into it, and asks pointed questions I might not ask myself. One of the winning stories really moved me, and hubby liked it, too, so he asked me the hard question, which one did you like better, his or yours? I had to admit the winner’s story was more visceral than mine; it put us right in the scenes, sight, smell, touch, so we could sense and experience the story as well as travel through it. Compelling characters (good or bad) that I cared about. That’s what I strive for.
So, my world got put back in alignment, and I take comfort in the idea that what I think of as good writing is wildly different from what so many others think, and I have to remember it is all subjective. It’s the same for movies and television. There is so much garbage that makes it to top rated shows that I just don’t get . Now, give me a show like Wednesday [Addams], and I’m sold!
I’m nearly to the point of accepting that’s just the way it’s going to be, and I am determined to press on to find my niche audience. (Just hate those surprise gut punches – sometimes I think I need to give up contests – but they do help me to grow as a writer, and a person, for that matter).
All that said (I rambled once again), it hopefully gives you an idea of how I deal with the challenges; react, rant, rail at the world, then get over the emotional dump to the system and learn from it. Regarding writer’s block specifically, I seem to suffer it when I am at the end of the story. I’m a pantser who loves to sit at the keyboard with a single idea and let the story tell itself, and the characters emerge. Then, I might stop in the middle and hash out an outline and purpose for the tale. I can write hundreds of words that way. But when it comes to the end, I think I start doubting that my plot makes sense and questioning everything, which brings me to a screeching halt. Probably, because I don’t have a clear enough plan. So, I’ve collected a few how-to videos I need to watch, then I need to work on planning my stories better with a clearer road map. I would love to know what you do with outlines, story beats and scenes. How much pre-work do you do with your stories?
So, while I finished nearly 800 pages in my series, and published them, then unpublished them, it wasn’t a finish because the conclusion is still waiting and stuck in book three. It’s becoming a big problem. I have three other novels started, with an average 50,000 words each, and they are all waiting for a finish. What I do to work on this is just keep writing, even if it is only going over finished portions again because as I rework those portions, more ideas for my ending take hold. Still, when I get one complete finish under my belt, I will know I have finally succeeded as a writer. Selling them is a whole other set of worries. I guess that is why I love doing the short stories and competitions, because they get finished!
One last thought, I think you are doing it right in that you are building an audience, giving them a glimpse of what is to come with your short story, so when you are ready to launch, you will have a built-in market. That is one reason I am toying with starting a newsletter. It is a good model. Plus, I think I mentioned it on Twitter, but your tagline/description under your signature is very catchy.
Social media is too hard and like beating my head against a wall. Any thoughts about marketing?
N:
So many topics; keep rambling, I love it!
As for deep digging, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I have a hunch the depths reveal themselves on their own terms, and it happens most times when we’re not trying too hard, just allowing things to flow naturally–as seems to come easily to you.
Which brings up a new question. About allowing the writing to flow naturally and abundantly… Do you consider it part of your natural talent, or do you need to culture it, and nurture it? Do you consider yourself a fast writer, or a slow one? Is it better to draft as fast as possible without looking back, or to take our time, edit a little and smell the roses, letting the ideas bubble up and allow the story to come to life… but risk taking too much time?
A few years ago, I had a good routine going on, of doing morning pages each and every day (as proposed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way: three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing without pause, no matter what comes out, first thing every day). Besides helping me catching a ton of fleeting ideas, and helping me plan ahead a bit, and find new avenues for my stories and my life in general, and allowing me to vent out many a frustration and bad feeling… the morning pages seemed to give me a kind of flow, an easiness of letting the words come out without overthinking them.
Lately, I’ve been struggling to go back to that kind of routine, and my writing has maybe become slower. But it has also improved, I hope, as I move forward with my main writing project, and as I work with my developmental editor, and rewrite, and re-think, and basically scratch my head raw and try again and again. I lose my sleep over it all the time, but I remind myself to trust the process, and that I will get there, eventually.
Also, I find it kind of helpful to remember to focus on the process itself, rather than the end result. But it’s hard to do.
My process so far :
Outline, whatever comes out, with what little I know about writing (next to nothing when I started). View it as draft-zero.
Write a shitty first draft for my eyes only. Shitty is the key word here, the attitude to adopt. Or nothing comes out. Also, trying not to edit too much, if at all. (This is theoretical, and I was never able to do that, by the way, so I end up compromising, but still going forward.) Viewing it as a practice round helps too (for real), and reminding myself that no one else but me is ever going to read those shitty words. Since this draft is only “a test”.
Realize that even with a lot of planning and outlining, there is still a lot of seat-of-the-pants improvisation involved. Discovery writing helps me reach for new notions and solutions. Because there’s no end to what I didn’t think of, or forgot, or to new, better ideas that just keep popping up all the time.
Keep reading and learning. A lot: books on writing, blogs, podcasts…
Re-structure. Re-outline.
Re-draft. It’s still a practice round, or at least, I try to trick my mind into believing it is, and make it feel like this is still only a test, no pressure. Because let’s be frank, it most probably is… Or maybe, what if it’s not?
At this point, the writing should be a lot better, if not almost perfect, right? After so much reading, and learning, and practising… Besides, I’ve done some reaching out, and now I’ve got a platform on my hands, with a bunch of followers, and a couple thousand subscribers to my mailing list… So where’s my book? People are waiting, this is taking too much time!
Okay. So I want this to be the final draft.
Get tense. Get writer’s block. Go back to the morning pages–but now they feel like a drag. Change day jobs. Feel like an imposter. Or maybe it’s not just a feeling: I really am an imposter. Flirt with burnout. Get Covid19 in 2022. Take a break. Come back to it. Tell myself it’s a practice, a test, not a performance…
I’m nearing the end of the second full draft of Seven Drifts. It won’t be the final draft, but I think it’s going to be a good stepping point to get to it without having to rewrite everything. Looking back, it feels like the fourth draft. That’s what I’ve been calling it for a while now, because I wrote the first Act four times, changed genres, shuffled sections and scenes around, and made the whole thing into a big mess, like a broken jigsaw puzzle. Broken, but still fascinating.
All in all, it’s a wonderful process. And I like puzzles, so I’m certainly not going to start complaining about this one!
Over the holidays, I reached the end of Act 2, the central part. It feels great to be at the end of it, because it’s a fair chunk of the story, making for half the story’s length. So I started figuring out Act 3 once again, with all the changes and new ideas and problems to resolve that came up while doing the rest.
And now, I’m tackling it. The ending payoff, the last quarter of the story. Oh yeah! That’s an encouraging, exciting place to be.
Talk of rambling!
D:
This was so awesome! Stream of consciousness writing… That’s got to be powerful. You’re giving me quite a list of to-dos! It makes me realize I’m not alone. I have gone through so much of what you are describing. Thank you for bringing it all out so nicely! And your stories sound incredible!
I think we started from a similar place in our writing journeys, and are figuring things out along the same lines almost at the same pace, only parts of it we have switched around. For instance, you got your newsletter and following ahead of time, I published my books first, then learned about marketing and newsletters and even how to write better! I always put my carts before the horse. Just like being a pantser writer, I leap into things. Good lessons came from it and so I’m not complaining, just back-tracking a bit now. I at least have a collection of my short stories up on Amazon to hold my place. 🙂
But the result is we both are experiencing the pressure of finishing our shining stars, you to meet your followers’ expectations and me because I don’t want to leave that hole open with published books I already marketed now hanging out there unpublished.
I ended up feeling like the biggest imposter publishing my books before they were ready (I didn’t know enough at the time to realize they weren’t), but I had a couple friends read them and tell me, “why don’t you publish them?” and being completely ignorant and having it so easy to do on KDP [Kindle Direct Publishing], I did. I had some folks giving me some good reads, reviews, and feedback, but the third book wasn’t done and my writing was not fully developed yet. After making so many changes to them as I wrote the third book, I just thought I’d better not let more copies out in the world until I clean up the whole thing. Then, I got sidetracked with other stories that needed to be written, and then the dang short story competition world. I’m hoping to focus on finishing my series, and I want to publish at least one of my other stand-alone novels this year. But which one? I love them all and the characters and scenes are all inside my head wanting to get out.
My other huge problem? Where to focus my marketing. What fantasy niche do my books fit in? There are so many and most are utterly saturated. It is so easy to get lost. My stories incorporate a lot of different genres. I toy with the idea of either writing to a specific audience for every book, or just letting my stories be and find their own way. After all, they are obviously what I want to write, and that’s where the joy is, right? I think that is another reason I’ve found satisfaction in writing short stories. I can play around with the genres and see where, if anywhere, I might settle. Even on Vocal, the genres are a hodgepodge.
Another issue is I have done it all on my own, no beta readers (only begging friends and family), no editors, content or otherwise. I even did my own book covers, which seem to get good reviews, but yikes! I let everything swing out there on my own. It’s no wonder I felt a need to call a halt and rethink things. How did you get your content editor? Does it help having professional eyes, and is it worth the expense?
Then, there is the time needed for learning. I have such a hard time carving it out and I end up relying on quick doses wherever I can find them (Reedsy is one of my favorites), but mostly I rely on help from fellow writers like you and the feedback I get from story submissions. You have no idea how much I appreciate this exchange. It is my preferred and most valuable way of learning.
As for your questions. I’m going to noodle over them more and continue the discussion later. But for now, I only started writing during COVID (so sorry you got sick with it by the way). The first summer, I read 199 books, and 60 in 2021, and by then the burning need to write my own stories had consumed me. It seems both a long and short time have passed indulging in this passion, but I couldn’t be happier that the bug struck me. I’m getting up there in years, close to retiring from my government job (where I write in a different way so at least I had some technical abilities) and the need to get my stories finished is driven by that as well. So, I’m going to think more about your questions, because I haven’t had time to answer them for myself. It could be that I’ve been unknowingly saving it all up for so many years that I’ll always be able to sit down and write, but that’s not a good enough answer. So, more later for sure.
I had to insert a header image here because what follows is chock full of great writing resources!
N:
So many things to talk about! I can’t believe I’ve been wondering what to write in my blog and newsletter. It’s all there!
I’d like to touch on the world of my story some time soon on my blog. World building is one of my biggest fascinations, and I think it’s a part of my quirks and means of expression. I think the world is a major character in the story, and I’m planning to start revealing more of it soon. Probably after I finish re-writing this draft of the story, I’ll give it one more big round of attention. The city is called Seven. It’s a wonderful place to live, the best place, as the saying goes, and who needs the rest of humankind, right? It’s a huge space city, a former starship, stranded after a battle and journey to nowhere, hiding but making the best of it. It’s configured as a long stack of revolving cylinders, called O’Neill cylinders. It’s a great place to live, but some people, against the main culture and Administration in place, still believe that its main MAHAL drive, 200 years ago, at the time of the Awakening, might have been fixable, or at least replaceable in some way…
But you started before you were ready, and I think it’s fantastic. I read a quick book a couple of years back, called Everything is Figureoutable. The author, Marie Forleo, advises exactly that: Start before you’re ready. (Otherwise, we might never be ready.) So kudos for doing it!
I think it’s what I did too, in some ways. Some years ago I readYou’ve Got a Book in You, by Elizabeth Sims. Simple, down-to-earth advice. Premise: writing a book is easy. Me: Maybe it is, maybe it’s not, but as long as you can make yourself believe it is, then you can do it, and you don’t have to wait.
This is how I wrote my first story, Tides of Cath. Halfway through, I realized I needed to know more about writing, like how to structure the story, and maybe, what’s a scene, that thing I keep hearing about. I didn’t finish Tides of Cath (yet), but I had a good chunk of it, meandering and trying to find its way through a million ideas. So I stepped back, realized it could be a trilogy instead of a stand-alone novel, made plans for it, then realized that another story I had been playing with in my head could in fact be a prequel to Tides of Cath, or a parallel narrative thread set in its far past.
So naturally, I thought it logical to write the prequel story first, since it was going to have a lot of impact on the current one. So I did that. The little prequel story turned out bigger, of course. A full novel. But I wrote it all, all the way to the end.
In the meantime, I kept reading. I spent a lot of time on K.M. Weiland’s blog Helping Writers Become Authors, it’s amazing. And she has this fantastic podcast too (same title), where she narrates the contents of her blog articles, so you can absorb them in the way most convenient to you, even twice if you like, for better understanding. I loved her series of blog posts and/or episodes on story structure, it’s fantastic.
So I did that for a while, going back to the beginning of the episodes, until I was current. Then I stumbled on The Story Grid. I read the book, and I went for the podcast (same title). Again, I binged on three-four years of episodes until I got current. I still follow them both, though my podcast listening time got reduced dramatically when I stopped commuting back in 2020. These two podcasts changed so many things for me!
Start before you’re ready: Are you really saying you published two books and worked on a third one, all in the space of a couple of years during and since the pandemic? I think it’s amazing! It doesn’t matter that you unpublished the books; you did it and it’s awesome! I commend you for the sheer courage to do it in the first place.
As for me, now I know I’m not a fast writer (not so far). Am I a slow writer? I don’t know. To me, bringing my first story, from idea (or no idea) to publishable, is a long process of learning, trying and failing, stepping back and looking back, doing it again, etc. I wish it would take less time, and sometimes I wonder whether I should start another project instead, or focus more on short stories; that would be a great way to benefit from a shorter cycle of feedback loops. But I was drawn to writing longer stories, and this is what I wanted to do, so I guess I couldn’t really help it.
By the way, the Story Grid community is how I met my developmental editor Courtney Harrell. Over the summer of 2018, I enrolled in a 15-week online class called Leveling Up Your Craft, and they had an option to work with one of their editors. On a whim, I enrolled in that too (Start before you’re ready!), and then I perused their list of editors, and I didn’t know whom to choose. But then Courtney appeared on one of the episodes of the podcast, and just like that, I knew I’d be at ease and happy working with her. And I was, so we kept it on after the class was over. It turned out to be a wonderful collaboration. So far, she’s the only person in the universe who’s ever read my drafts of Seven Drifts, barring the few excerpts or seeding ideas I released on my site.
Courtney is enthusiastic and very encouraging. Each call brings a set of new ideas and questions, avenues to explore, even solutions to problems I wasn’t able to find. Of course it’s far from free, but somewhere along the way, I kind of decided my craft was worth investing into. I see it as a business now, even though I have never made a dime from it, not yet. Some people invest a fortune into their hobbies; why not invest some in what I want to become my main activity as I get older?
Speaking of business, or marketing… I believe there’s a simple, easy way to start building our author platforms, step by step, at the pace that is convenient to each individual writer.
There’s a ton of books on that, and I’m sure you’re read many of them already. I trusted Tim Grahl because he was the protagonist of the Story Grid podcast and a kind of hero to me, so I went with his little book Your First 1000 Copies and I listened to his podcast Book Launch. It’s all there, and I like his philosophy. He breaks it down into three parts: permission, content and outreach. He has his own definition of marketing: It’s a matter of being relentlessly helpful, and of building long-lasting relationships. Nothing more to it.
That’s what we’re doing when we grow our mailing list, and send nice things to our subscribers once in a while. The ones who connect will be expecting a book sooner or later. We help people when we provide them with fiction to enrich their lives. We help people when we showcase their work with interviews or guest posts, or share what little we know with them, or just plain share our struggles and wins, so they might connect and empathize. It’s quite simple really! So he advises to start as soon as possible, even years before releasing a book… That’s exactly what he did in the SG podcast: he was the struggling writer asking advice from the experienced editor. A magical combination.
I enrolled in Tim’s online courses, Author Platform 101, How to Launch a Bestseller, and Author Platform in a Weekend. I haven’t finished them all yet. They are very helpful, but not absolutely necessary. The gist of his method is in the book and podcast.
As for The Story Grid, it’s a fascinating story in itself. It started with Shawn Coyne’s book, then Tim Grahl proposed the podcast idea, and it exploded from there. It became a university and a guild with many editors and writers and publications. It grew so big in fact, it became something I find a bit overwhelming. At some point, I’d rather focus on doing the work, and less on just doing courses, so I distanced myself from it a bit. But I’m glad I was able to glean so much from it, and I’m not saying I won’t enroll in more classes in the future. But at this point, I’d rather focus on finishing my book first. Also, there is an abundance of other awesome resources out there, all worth exploring. In time.
Oh, have you heard of Joanna Penn’s podcast, The Creative Penn? Great marketing advice!
D:
I am fascinated by the world of Seven and actually pictured it when I read Cradle, much like you described. Judging by the passion you’ve poured into it and the layers of development, I’m sure it’s going to be epic! Do you have more short stories planned for teasers? I’m realizing after our discussion, that probably many authors got started by jumping in before they were ready. It’s been a fun ride, hasn’t it?
Thanks so much for the abundance of information and advice!! Wow. I checked Courtney’s website. Totally on my wish list to have a consultant like her. But my budget is thin. With nearly 900 pages in this series, it would make for a whopping bill. But I totally agree it’s worth investing in my writing as a career, so I am seriously considering these types of services… someday soon. When I say I want to repackage and republish when the whole thing is finished, getting this kind of help is what I have in mind as well as professional book covers… but at least book covers. I might also have to choose between a line editor or a developmental editor because I can’t afford both.
Up till now, I’ve done all my own editing and artwork with the help of online tools like Autocrit editor (I’m a lifetime member, and love the editing platform. I’ve also done legal and business writing and editing throughout my other career, so lots of training and practice. Still, it’s so easy to miss my own errors, and editing fiction is way different.
Autocrit compares your writing to authors in your genre, or ones you select and gives you data to help adjust where your writing is weak or just needs tweaking, like overusing adverbs, passive voice, pacing, etc. Currently, I enjoy comparing mine to Dean Koontz. 🙂 A huge influence in my writing style goal. Other influential authors are Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, John Grisham, and in the supernatural fantasy arena, Kresley Cole, Jeaniene Frost, Laura Thalassa, and my favorite of all, Grace Draven. I’m old enough to have been influenced by many prolific, traditional romance authors, and that flavors a lot of my writing.
For book covers and promos, I use Canva’s premium tools.
I’m going to have to make a list of all the great resources you just shared and work them into my schedule. I wish I had more to share with you, but literally, my biggest resource has been the huge amount of books in the supernatural genre that I devoured during the start of the pandemic, then absorbed, then felt the burning need to churn into my own style.
I do have one free resource to share, which is Richie Billing’s Fantasy Writers Toolshed. He does a great podcast and interviews authors, etc. But he provides so many free resources in his newsletter on all the things we’ve been talking about. I joined his Discord group and from there is where the Fantasy Sci Fi Writers Alliance got started, which you can learn about on my website. We started a book club to review each other’s books, a short story competition, and other community events and resources. Still, it is a challenge to keep up with it all. Just like you I would love to settle down and just write. Otherwise, how am I ever going to finish my series and other WIPs?
N:
The Autocrit editor platform sounds wonderful; I will definitely check it out, as well as Richie Billing’s Fantasy Writers Toolshed. Sounds great, especially that they also do Sci-Fi.
I’ve used Canva a little bit; it helped me come up with a quick cover for my Cradle scene, but I haven’t dived into the premium, fancy tools yet. From seeing your covers, I can infer they are great, because you did some amazing work there! Your covers are totally professional, in my opinion.
It is true that hiring a developmental editor to edit a 900 page manuscript is going to cost a lot! But I trust you’ll know whether you need to do it or not. Beta readers might be a more practical way to go. I’m not too sure how to find them, though, or how to work with them. I read an interesting article about that once by K.M. Weiland, but I can’t seem to find it again. I think it might have been this one: Helping Writers Become Authors. But there’s a bunch of them!
I still don’t know whether I’m going to pay for line editing and copy editing. I suspect I’ll have to!
I don’t have any more short stories to my name, but I have some ideas that could gravitate around the world of Seven Drifts. I’m considering taking a break from the novel at some point, so I can try to come up with a couple of them. Possibly between this current draft and the next.
So many things to do, so many things to learn, and so many things to consider! I’m loving all of it, by the way, and I know I can do only one thing at a time… so I do that.
D:
It’s so exciting having you share your works in progress and plans because how it comes about, the process, the journey, is what we’re here for today. Thank you! And I can’t wait to see how it all progresses for you.
This week was so busy at work that I didn’t even have time to wish I was writing instead, which is a good thing, actually. It often plagues me, sometimes even waking me up in the middle of the night with anxiety at the idea of running out of time to tell all my stories (and get them out in the world). I think that is a byproduct of taking up writing in my 50s. But I don’t want to rush my age just so I can retire and have more time to write, though in effect I end up doing that. What I need to do now is figure out how to balance it all so I’m content with my progress. That’s a common question I ask in my interviews. I love to learn how people balance making a living with making the time to follow their passion. I have a couple really great interviews lined up this month. Two friends from my writers alliance really put some thought into the questions and gave detailed answers. I hope I get some good traffic to my blog to do them justice. The first one goes up tomorrow. I post on Sundays.[See my Gallery of Guests 2022 for January’s conversations with Madeline Davis and Isa Ottoni]
It’s been a challenge even getting to work with this crazy winter weather. Fortunately, since Covid, I’m set up for remote work and can take advantage of that. My regular schedule is four 10-hour days with Thursday remote, so it is awesome to be able to be home four out of seven days. With the weather (I’m on a couple acres in a rural area where it takes a lot to clear the snow and get out) I have the flexibility to stay home more if needed. We’re getting heavy rain mixed with snow at the moment and that’s not even the bad one. Another atmospheric river is supposed to dump a lot on us Monday. We are ready for spring 🙂 Not to mention getting away from northern Nevada in the winter, maybe for good after I retire in a year and a half. One more winter to go. So many reasons to count down the days… 🙂 [Update – I took an early retirement! My full-time writing dream is in full swing!]
I’ve been thinking more about whether I’m the type of writer who enjoys having the words flow whenever I sit down to write. I never thought about it in depth, other than to recognize I am indeed a panster. And as I’m typing this and the words are just flowing (aka rambling) I’m realizing that has always been my style even before I started writing fiction. I already talked about this a little when I described myself as a panster. I’ve been a panster for every creative endeavor I’ve taken on over the years. You can probably call it a lack of patience because I’d rather “do” than “learn.” Mostly I’ve taken up fiber arts or mixed media art, and Zentangle over the years, and love taking classes. But even in the middle of a lesson, I end up cheating and jumping ahead of the teacher. I’ve gone down the wrong path in a project and annoyed a lot of teachers that way. LOL
So, when I write, I just want to jump in and let things develop, characters included. In my musings on my blog, I talk about my characters being seeded in my brain by aliens, and call my characters my Pod People. I’ve always done everything intuitively and that’s how my characters come about, almost like they’ve lived in my head way before I started writing.
You can see some of my obsessions in About Me which I like to share because I know so many out there have tried it all like me. My message is… That’s Awesome!
N:
Life balance is so elusive! It’s hard to have a clear view, much less a definitive answer on it. I’m constantly struggling with it, adapting, and playing with it, learning as I go.
I used to have a great routine, at least one that worked well for me.
Before the pandemic, we used to have something at work called “pajama Wednesdays.” It was an opportunity to work from home. The idea was that people who chose to go to the office anyway on those days would wear pajamas and share pics. I’m not too much into parties myself, but I had a glimpse of some entertaining office pajama party photos. The trend passed eventually, but the option remained to work from home once in a while, and over time, it didn’t matter too much on what day we did it. That was a few years before 2020.
With COVID, things reversed, and working from home became the norm. It wasn’t a new thing for me, but doing it every day was. I thought it was great, and I still do, but in the process, I lost a few things, like commute time. About two hours a day are spent riding a bus and/or the Montreal subway (we call it the Metro). I didn’t care much for commuting, but what I really miss is the listening time. I got behind on all the great writing podcasts I used to follow. I even got behind on my dev editor calls lately. I try to make up for it with daily walks, and that’s a great idea too, but I’m still short on my daily two hours of listening time. But that’s a detail, no big deal, and with no big impact on my life either. And besides, it means I have two extra hours now, to do other things, right? So what am I complaining about?
Still, my awesome, superhuman writing routine… kind of went down the drain in 2020, and I’ve been struggling to keep the ideas flowing at the same pace ever since. Writing from home every day should have given me more time, right? But somehow, I ended up with less. I still don’t know how to explain it, but I’m willing to give it a try: I used to write for an hour in the morning, most days before leaving for work, then about another hour over lunch, and at least twice a week, I wrote for a couple more hours at night. Plus some nice and long writing sessions on the weekend mornings, usually three to five hours per sitting. And I often took a day off from my job to write more; most weeks in fact. So all in all, I was able to clock between 10 to 20 writing hours per week, give or take.
These days, it’s much less than that. I write for a couple of hours and I get exhausted. Ever adapting, right? So, was it my energy that took a dip, or my stamina, or was it the general anxiety around the world that got to me, or a general lack of stimulation caused by not going out often or long enough, and not meeting people except virtually? One thing I find challenging is to always be in the same place. My writing spot, my living room, my home office and my actual working place… now it’s pretty much all the same.
But I can work and write standing up or sitting down. And I can sit at the old rocking chair by the window that oversees the entertaining, snowy back alley alive with cats and squirrels. I can use little rituals to switch from one situation to the next, like going out for a walk, or working out, or even napping. But still, some days, my brain feels like it aged ten years over the last three, and lost a big chunk of its capacities.
I guess at the end of all things*, what really matters is that we keep our sanity, and keep enjoying life, and that we find satisfaction in watching the progress of our projects, however fast or slow. (* Sorry, I couldn’t help the Lord Of The Rings quote here.)
In fact, I’m actually excited. I’m rewriting the last part of my novel now. That is something, after all the months of revising and re-thinking, and struggling to make sense of that big, sprawling mess of a puzzle! I’m hoping to finish it this year. That book will be so good! Unless it ends up being totally lame… But no doubt it’s my inner demon talking here: doubt. In any case, the only thing I want to care about now is losing myself in the process, enjoying it, and seeing the story evolve as it unravels until the end.
There’s a lot of planning involved in the case of this particular project, and there’s a ton of pantsing as well. I think I’m naturally a pantser, often pining for the good old days when I used to just write and see where a story and its characters would take me. But then again, I’m a plotter too. I have to, because that messy thing needs a whole lotta love (Can’t help it.)
D:
It’s so interesting to see how other writers use a combination of techniques depending on where they are in their progress, or the stream of time. I loved reading about how you switched to what works for you in a particular situation. Makes me know I’m not alone. And wow! We all need those Pajama Days!
I wanted to let you know I posted the announcements for my April guests. I was just waiting for info from my other guest because I wanted to post you both together. Sci fi fantasy is kind of the theme that’s taking shape. So excited!
My other April guest, Dustin Frueh, was so excited about the announcement and being a guest with you, that he posted it on his Instagram after visiting your website. I have a lot of fun matching up my guests when it feels like they have things in common and there is a central theme. In this case, a love of sci-fi and fantasy space opera. It adds a lot to the promos and draws interest to the final posts.
N:
So exciting! Looking forward to it! It’s always great to connect with other fellow authors. I’m in direct contact with Dustin now. Thanks for the connection!
D:
Guess what? I managed to get a story accepted by an anthology publisher, Dragon Soul Press! I took down the selkie story from Vocal (and some others I want to submit elsewhere) and expanded it into a much fuller short story, and it happened to be a good fit for Song of the Siren. That was a big boost to my imposter syndrome. It’s up for presale and releasing in May. I have more stories I’m working on for other anthologies coming up this year.
I also did another Writing Battle competition starting in February and just finished. I made it halfway through the duels until getting cut in the third round. Bummed, but it’s a hot competition. It’s really hard to get past your peers and that’s sort of the point for the contests! I got feedback from ten peer judges and it was consistent enough to really pinpoint where the story needed work. The fifth round is the professional judging. So, lots of good lessons and feedback from readers and that’s who we need to impress, right?
I’m attaching my 1000-word story if you’d like to take a look. I had to use the prompts, lost world (genre), pineapple and zookeeper. The consistent feedback was that the end was an afterthought, which I admit it was. The story should have stayed contained on the pineapple and I could have made that the setting for the lost world and fleshed it out more. Readers really wanted to know more about life on a floating pineapple. Now I know better and will have fun reworking it. But I still think it’s a fun story and it was really fun to write.
N:
Way to go! So exciting, and so impressive! Congratulations on publishing your selkie story on Dragon Soul Press! Congratulations also on the Writing Battle competition!
D:
Thanks Nicolas! This has been so much fun. I really appreciate you shining the light back on me in this two-way interview. What a great concept, and tons of fun. It illustrates the amazing connections that come along when you get out and share with the Writing Community.
You can follow Nicolas and his progress on his epic space opera story featuring a drifting city spaceship, a wannabe sleuth and some murders, a brewing rebellion and an antique wooden treasure chest in the amazing world of Seven Drifts at nicolaslemieu.com. He’s also on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Nicolas’s Bio:
My name is Nicolas Lemieux and I live in Montreal with my wife Marie-Claude in a third-storey apartment overlooking an interesting, green back-alley.
AI Art by D. L. LewellynAI Art by D. L. LewellynAI Art by D. L. Lewellyn
Although French is my first language, I like to write in English primarily. My chosen writing genre is science fiction, principally space opera.
I get my kicks out of dreaming up astonishing worlds packed with a sharp palette of badass, quirky characters who get tangled up in all manners of meaningful trouble. Often funny, sometimes disquieting, always exciting.
I believe stories have the power to stretch our imagination in all kinds of ways. They expand our worldview and give us practical tools for living. They ignite our curiosity on all kinds of subject matters. They make us thirsty for more exploration, more ways to look at the world, more pondering and more discoveries.
I believe each time you dive into a good book, you come out better off at the other end, because you’ve gained a new, flaring spark that will stick with you until the end of times, helping you fend off the pits and falls that might have consumed you otherwise.
Be a badass reader! Read my latest, free story today: Cradle.
You can learn more about Nicolas and his pending series on the fabulous Realm of J.V. Hilliard, Episode 119!
And just to demonstrate how these fruitful collaborations work, JV Hilliard will be on an upcoming Spotlight this summer and I will be on an episode of the Realm! Stay tuned! And thank you Nicolas!
In parting, Nicolas’s version of our conversation includes a sneak peek of my new covers for my series, The Starlight Chronicles! I am excited to announce that I’m set to relaunch my series in May, including a presale date for Book Three, Tigris Vetus. Nicolas has kindly offered to be the first to share, and more details will follow from me next month. But if you want to get a look now, follow our conversation on Nicolas’s blog, where you also can find a great body of interviews with so many amazing writers.
First of all, I want to say I adored Uncle Lauran. I just had no idea… Today, someone asked a question on social media about using multiple pen names…Ode to an Uncle I Didn’t Appreciate as Much as I Should Have Before Becoming a Writer
Born and raised in Massachusetts’ Merrimack Valley, Michael C. Carroll has always loved storytelling. After graduating from Boston College, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia where he teaches and lectures on the epic poetry that inspires his writing. It was not until his master’s program through the Bread Loaf School of English brought him to Oxford…
What a fun conversation. I was so excited to go behind the scenes of this rapidly growing writing community contest phenomenon. Read on and be fascinated and inspired!
An Introduction from Teona
Once upon a time, Max was a software engineer for a large defence company and unhappy in the lack of creativity he was able to exercise in his job. As an amateur screenwriter himself, he had come across writing contests before but knew there was room for the framework to improve. His wife Teona, was coming to the end of her maternity leave and so Max, with the long term goal of making this his full time job, took over as full-time parent by day and used the very little time in between kiddo naps and nights to mould the contest. With iteration after iteration, integrating suggestions from his brother, the writing battle community, and a lot of long nights full of doubt, he has finally gotten to a place where the contest works remarkably well. Battle season nights can now be spent enjoying wine, reviewing feedback and chatting with Teona instead of sweating over the keyboard to ensure the forums that he built from scratch are ready for the next day (yes that really did happen). Now we are in year three, just wrapped up battle number 9 and Teona has been officially “hired.” We are so excited to watch the community grow and thrilled to hear people enjoy the tournament as much on the writers’ side as we do behind the scenes.
A huge thank you goes out to our community and supporters like Darci who make this dream work for us! 🙂
What a great intro! I had to add it here in addition to my announcement page. I can’t thank you both enough for visiting with me today and chatting about Writing Battle. I was intrigued as soon as I saw a post on Instagram, and so glad I signed up for my first battle. After participating in the Autumn Short Story Contest, I was hooked.
I’ve been noodling over how I might describe the highlights and why I enjoy the contests, but there are a lot of reasons. So, I’ll sprinkle my comments throughout our discussion and hopefully capture it all that way.
I know for me, I can get bogged down in the serious work of writing, so I’ll start off by saying, these contests are just plain fun, a great way to remind me to enjoy the writing process.
In your introduction, there are a number of pursuits mentioned, software engineering, screenplay writing, starting up a business, time for parenting, which led to Writing Battle. Can you each share more about your backgrounds and how they shaped the fantastic platform and resulting community?
Max: My background is a bit all over the place. I was super into film and music as a teenager/early twenties, and ended up joining the Navy. I went from that into Computer Science, but always had it in the back of my mind that I would start writing screenplays again. After participating in NYC Midnight and enjoying the peer critique on their forums, I thought – hey, maybe this could work as a writing platform. A writing tournament where it is entirely peer-powered. The thing with programming is that when you are coding all day long at work, the last thing you want to do is code in the evenings. For me anyway! So it was crucial that I dove head first into Writing Battle. Teona going back to work after mat leave facilitated that – where I could look after our then 1 and 3 year old during the day and code Writing Battle at night.
Teona: We were actually just chatting about this yesterday– I think like many other people during the pandemic, we were in search of something. I had just given birth to our second child and as we said in the intro, Max was very unhappy working in his defence gig which was only amplified by working from home. On my side, and I think (hope?) many parents can also identify with this, I got this overwhelming sense of loss of my own identity to the new one in parenthood; I was happy to go back to work as an EEG Technologist to regain some of that “me-ness” and in turn Max was able to continue developing the WB platform. Obviously both of us could work outside the home, but we always agreed that if we were to have children, we wanted someone at home with them (plus childcare costs in Canada are outrageous, especially having two).
Other things we did/tried during the pandemic: Sell our house; join a cohousing community in construction; write and film a pilot concept with friends for a children’s show; serve as a script supervisor on a few short film sets; talk seriously and explore the idea of moving to other provinces, states, countries; start marriage counselling to better support each others’ search for that ever elusive “something.”
Max is the dreamer. I am the voice of reason (read: stick-in-the-mud). We are constantly trying to bring balance to each other which we are really starting to find in our own exploration of what Writing Battle is 🙂 The biggest thing we have enjoyed about WB is that we truly feel part of a really positive community, which I think at the end of the day is what we have always been looking for.
Teona rants a bit if you can’t already tell 😛
Darci. Haha. Ranting (aka elaborating) is what this creator’s life chat is all about. To hear all the exploration that led you separately and together to what participants can now enjoy in the writing community is truly phenomenal. Thank you for sharing that! I was curious if NYC Midnight influenced some of the ideas behind WB. I’ve enjoyed a few of those competitions, too, though I got a little lost in the giant forums. I must say, Writing Battle does a great job giving its participants a community forum scaled to a fun and manageable size. It’s an amazing design.
The wonderful Writing Battle homepage image (the graphics are another attraction) totally has me picturing you two battling at home with pens and paper, and the lightbulb switching on-Why not spread the fun and get a community involved in battling with us? (Thanks for letting me indulge in my imagination.) Have you, Max, designed other software for fun or for your own creativity before Writing Battle? Did you have earlier manifestations/dreams of a Writing Battle-like platform, or was it only a recent realization?
Max: Thank you haha and I never really saw ourselves in that image, but now that you mention it – I can definitely see it! Especially before marriage counselling (ha). The artist’s name is Nikita Mazurov, and does absolutely amazing art. As far as software for fun, no, not really – just for other companies. I was always interested in online games and board games that explored the social interactions between people like Balderdash. I’m going to sound like a huge dork, but I LOVE the tv show Survivor. I think it’s the coolest social experiment. That’s how I look at Writing Battle. It’s really just a month-long social game for writers.
Darci. Believe me getting to the end of the competition twice now has made me feel like a survivor! I can totally see that influence. All those are great elements and exactly the fun tidbits about the creative process I love sharing with our readers.
Besides your own creative mind and lifestyle changes, are there other people, communities, philosophies, entities who inspired you to go for this?
Teona: I’ll chime in here– I mentioned earlier about joining a cohousing community in the pandemic. I think that in the end, even though that lifestyle didn’t end up fully resonating with how we saw our future, there was something there that may have inspired what we saw WB becoming. Positivity, sharing and evolving ideas, supporting one another– these are all pillars of what that kind of environment is enriched with and we still wanted a part of that in our lives despite leaving the cohousing development. I think Max would agree that we joined the cohousing community in search of “our people” and then tried really hard to fit what we thought that meant instead of coming as we are. I think being our authentic selves and full transparency became incredibly important to us through that experience and we hope that WB showcases that.
There is also one person in particular that was an incredible support to Max throughout this experience and that was his brother Alex. Alex was there cheering on and pushing Max to continue in the deepest moments of discouragement. “Just keep going for a few more months… see what happens and reassess.” That on repeat was our focus. One more battle, one more goalpost with more information. Is this viable? Is this worth it? Can this passion project truly become a source of income? Even when that answer felt like a “no” Alex was there believing in WB, believing in his brother.
Darci. Fantastic. Thank you Alex for helping to keep Writing Battle going so we can all enjoy it! And I’m thrilled to hear it’s becoming viable for you as an income, Max and Teona. Here’s to continued success!
You mention the Writing Battle community feedback helping you improve the platform. What were your biggest hurdles in the beginning and your favorite suggestions?
Max: Special shoutout to Leila Poole from the forums and my brother, Alex, who I bounced ideas off of for the entire first year of Writing Battle. It started with 11 participants from the NYCM forum. Leila was one of the first to agree to participate and “got” what I was trying to do. My initial idea for the site was that it was to be Screenwriting-only, entirely free, and people would only pay if they wanted to redraw their prompts. As you can tell, we’ve had to pivot many times to make this contest work and the community feedback has been crucial. It’s hard to pick a favourite suggestion because honestly, the entire contest has been shaped by the community.
Darci: Ah. The ingredients for success and what a win win for the community and Writing Battle.
One aspect of Writing Battle that really stands out is the peer judging. When I first looked into signing up, my initial reaction was, Oh no. I’m not qualified to judge other writing, and wow that’s quite a commitment in order to participate. But after thinking about it, I could see the appeal, the potential to enjoy a variety of writing styles and learn from them, then benefit on the other side of the coin through the responses to my writing. I did experience a little of that with the NYC Midnight forum and now we know how that platform got the ideas rolling, but can you tell us more about the story behind the peer participation?
Max: The initial inspiration came from how valuable I found peer feedback for my own screenwriting, but there’s a bit more to the story – I also found that the judges for writing contests tended to all be cut from the same cloth. And I mean, why wouldn’t they be? It takes a certain type of person to apply to be a creative writing judge. To begin with, you have to think that you’re qualified! So they are typically literary academics that understand the craft of creative writing. There’s nothing wrong with that, and feedback from those folks has value, but they don’t represent the entire readership pool. Far from it. Like you say, it’s a bit intimidating to think about joining a writing competition where you are also a judge. However, if you can read, you can judge. You know what you like and what you don’t like. We believe authors should be striving to write stories that everyone wants to read. Not just academics.
Darci: I for one have benefitted from the feedback in a myriad ways, especially when there is a consistency in the tone or a specific element(s) of the story that gets pinpointed by a majority of the judges. If you can suck it up and take it to heart, you can’t help but grow by leaps and bounds as a writer. Highly recommend the experience!
When you register, there is an opt out of the judging for stated reasons. I’ve been curious. Do you get participants who select that option?
Max: No, very few people select the opt-out option. Last Battle, out of 725 people only 4 selected that option. It’s our way to help folks that may be too busy to read stories that month or perhaps have triggers that would make it too risky to read unvetted stories. All of the extra money goes to members of the community that have chosen to read more stories that Battle. Essentially, it’s a reading fee. But yeah – not very popular. People seem to love to read/judge other stories even if there is some risk involved with triggers.
Darci: You must really dig statistics like that. What a great way to know it’s working.
Now for the details because those are what infuse the Writing Battle platform with fun. I adore it when it’s time to draw my prompts! I love having options to redraw and going through the decision process to determine whether to keep my initial draw, or take a chance on another combination. The fun in this is reflected in the community comments when contestants share how they went outside of their comfort zone to write in a different genre for the first time. That’s happened to me each time (Cannibal Comedy and Lost World). When I read the results of their efforts, I’m blown away every time. Can you give us some behind the scenes on developing the tarot card idea?
Max: I was just always into poker as a kid and I love card games so that’s where the redrawing came from. Writing prompts seemed like a good fit to stick on a card. There’s no fun tarot card story really haha I just thought it would look cool 🙂 glad you like it!
Darci: Awesome! Your fun is our fun.
How do you come up with/decide on the genres?
Teona: A lot of that has been community feedback. We noticed we got the best reactions when we had the wildest genres – as long as they were from a spread of genre categories (plot-driven, spec, comedic, and more serious). Max and I have SO much fun sitting down, drinking wine, and throwing crazy genre ideas at each other. Some are solely to make the other person laugh like Cannibal Comedy. There have been some killer community forum suggestions for this last Battle that will heavily influence our upcoming competitions.
Darci. There’s that image again of you two at the table. Such a great icon. I’m going to have to find more time to read the forums. This is another great example of your creative energy influencing the writing community and bouncing back to you. I love it.
I noticed the prompts are repeated in the contests like they’ve been reshuffled for the new batch of genres. How do you come up with the prompts?
Max: They’re really just from lists that I’ve compiled from the internet, and it’s always amazing to read the stories that people come up with. In the very first battle, there was a prompt type called ‘Things’ and it consisted of every single noun in the English language (which I downloaded from some online dictionary). We’re talking tens of thousands of words that people could draw, but that just made people upset when they drew prompts like praseodymium and had no idea what to write. We pruned that list to around 600 words and called it ‘Objects’ instead of Things haha. There’s still work to do on expanding the other prompt types.
Darci: Oh that’s a great story. I’m looking up praseodymium… hmmm, a mineral from the periodic table. Might have to give it a go. Wait. I have tried that. My supernatural romance series features promethium used to make a weapon deadly to shifters because for some weird reason I wanted to incorporate rare earth minerals into my story. Love it!
I blogged a bit recently after my second contest about how Writing Battle works. I broke it down into stages, which is another fun element; the different ways we can be involved over the weeks as we move towards the final judging. But I admit, I had to describe the peer review (duelling) elimination rounds in general terms because the process is mind boggling. I’m still not sure if my story was eliminated in the second or third round. 😁
My confusion is probably due to my lack of a gaming background or some brainy, techy component I’m missing, but I would love for you to give our readers more on the concept in layman’s terms, so we might understand how it works.
Max: Haha I’m still trying to figure out how to describe it! I’ll do my best.
The first stage has the writer redrawing prompts and writing a story in a short amount of time.
After submission, the contest enters the second stage where each writer becomes an anonymous judge. They are given 10 stories total, but spread out over the course of 3 weeks – given two stories to judge at-a-time. They have to read each of the two stories, give a bit of feedback, then choose a “winner” of the two. That process is called a Duel. Those Duels help progress a massive best-of-five, single elimination tournament. The peer judging stops when the top two stories from each of the four genres have been determined and that brings us to the third stage.
There’s a bit of a fog-of-war until the third stage. No one knows who wrote what or how their story did. The third stage allows the writers to share their story in a semi-public forum called Debrief. Because the peer-judging is over, it’s now safe to reveal yourself (if you choose to do so). You read each other’s stories and comment on them, but this time not anonymously and not in a Duel. We then slowly lift the fog-of-war and reveal the tournament brackets over a week-long period while the industry judges (authors) pick the four winners from the final 8 that the peer-judging chose in the second stage.
Darci: Thank you!
Can you share the gist of the collective feedback you get from the community on participating in the Duels?
Max: I think the initial reaction is something like – “Uhhh wait this sounds like work.” Haha, which is fair! It is a bit of extra work. But by the time the fifth Duel rolls around, I would say in general it becomes their favourite part about the contest. It’s also an unexpected educational tool. You read stories of varying quality and you get to decide for yourself what works and what doesn’t and then maybe even ask yourself why something connected with you. I’ve had a participant in his 80’s tell me it not only changed the way he writes, but even changed the way he reads. I found that fascinating.
Darci: That’s great, and I can relate to my fellow participant’s comments.
How do you find and involve the amazing professional judges?
Max: I just cold-email everyone until I get a response. We’re still trying to perfect that part of the contest.
Teona: I had the exact same question when Max told me the calibre of people he had agreeing to be the pro judges! Like how? You didn’t sell our firstborn right? Haha. He insisted he just cold-emailed them on a whim, ensured me artists were supportive of other artists and that that’s what drove them to support our little cause.
Darci: Haha. So fun to hear from you both on that. And I didn’t expect the cold calling technique though I don’t know why because it’s simple and it works. I’ve employed the “it can’t hurt to ask if you want something” policy many times. That’s how I invited you both to chat with me. 😄
I’m going to put you on the spot here. Do you get to read any of the submissions after they are open to the community?
Teona: YES! And not just after, we read them all throughout the judging stages, keep an eye on our favourites, or on members like yourself who we have developed a relationship with through the community 🙂 We are also sifting through all the feedback during the battle to ensure people are adhering to the rules. Sometimes that requires us to read stories to make sure the judges are doing their part and being fair to their duels by truly reading and providing feedback that directly addresses the stories facing off. On at least two recent occasions, Max has looked over at me at my desk and I was in tears, and he asked “what happened?” and I simply respond “I just read an amazing story that may not have existed without WB and I am grateful to be a part of that” ❤
Darci: OMG. I love it! What a bonus to see what your competition inspires.
It seems to me that the numerous contest opportunities scheduled throughout the year are planned to perfection and run smoothly at this point in time. Any plans for enhancements or additional features?
Max: Always. I am currently rebuilding the website and all of the code from scratch. The new website should be released in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
Darci: Ooh. How exciting! Thank you for sharing that right here on my blog!
The aesthetics of the Writing Battle website are very appealing and inviting. It adds so much to the fun. Who does the artwork/design?
Max: Thank you! I mentioned the artist, Nikita Mazurov, who did the art for the landing page. Design has been the hardest part for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think I (perhaps poorly) was going for a neo-brutalist web design when I first created the site. It’s been fun to learn as I go. The new website is a lot more chill and maybe a little easier on the eyes if you’re on the site for longer periods of time.
I’d like to include one more question on a personal note. Do you both find time to write and create? Max, do you still get to write screenplays? If so, what are your works in progress and goals? What are your tips for balancing it all with life and family?
Max: No writing for me for the past year, unfortunately. I have a few ideas floating around that I still want to explore. I could definitely see myself in a couple of years getting back into it and feeling out screenwriting a bit more. As far as work/life balance, it’s pretty easy when you have a couple of preschoolers running around. They have the tendency to pull you from work to focus on them haha.
Teona: I would never identify myself as a writer. I am better at stream of consciousness writing as a means to organise my thoughts and I love playing with words in doing so but I have never really tried to write a story. Maybe someday 🙂
I don’t know that we are at all qualified to be giving tips about balance. HAHA. Some days are incredibly balanced and harmonious– this is usually following a rare full night’s sleep (our kids have always been terrible sleepers). For a more accurate picture of our “balance” it is kinda just roll with whatever seems to be working that day, hour, or moment, and reassess in the evening to try and make the next day better. Having young kids and an even younger business is no joke but we are having an absolute blast with it all, learning lots along the way and for us it truly comes down to good communication.
Thank you so much, Max and Teona, for visiting today! This has been a blast. You can follow Writing Battle on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to participate in this amazing writing community, but don’t forget to sign up for a battle!
Any parting words of advice to our readers who dream about writing, web design, and finding ways to pursue their creative passions?
Max: Thank you for the thoughtful questions. This has been a lot of fun! My only real advice would be to constantly re-evaluate and not to be afraid to pivot. I think it’s unrealistic to believe that you know what you have before creating your first prototype or draft. Get feedback and see how people use what you create. If it’s writing– then get honest critique and take it to heart. Don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong and pivot towards what’s working for your consumers.
Teona: Max has taught me to reach further than what I believe or perceive to be the edge of possibility. WB is proof of that for me.
My next Sunday Spotlight (March 26) will give us a unique perspective into two amazing supporters of the writing community when we visit with Max and Teona of Writing Battle! We will discuss this phenomenal peer-powered writing competition, how it came about, and the amazing community of writers from around the globe taking part.You’ll get to hear the perspectives from both Max and Teona and be inspired by their teamwork and how they made a dream come true.
After all is said and done, 2022 turned out to be a great year because that’s when I got involved with the Fantasy Sci Fi Writers Alliance (“Alliance”) and met you and many other wonderful hard working creators offering invaluable support, and so many resources.
And you published a fantastic story with Funemployment Press. We’ll talk more about Braza and the Funemployment Quarterly in a bit. But to start us off, Can you summarize your highlights for 2022?
Isa – Thank you for having me, Darci, I love your blog and interviews. This is a great way to get to know new authors and projects. Last week’s interview with Madeline was great, it really inspired me to look at how history can shape our stories.
2022 was the year I came out of my shell, or so to speak. I had been writing for a few years by then, but hadn’t had the courage to show my work to the world. When I found this incredible community in April 2022, everything changed. Their support and unwavering kindness was exactly what I needed to break through the layers of self-doubt I had built around myself. I started sending my stories out and, incredibly, one of them was picked up. Braza was accepted and published in the Funemployment Quarterly Summer edition, my first publication ever and I could never have done it without the Alliance´s help and encouragement.
Also, in December, my story Dea Sulis Minerva got second place in the FSF Writers Alliance Short Story Contest, which was a most welcoming surprise.
I´d say that being able to show what I’ve written, and learning to deal with the “ups and downs” of being a writer was the biggest highlight for me. Successes are awesome, they fuel our confidence and all, but I learnt to cherish every step of the way, even rejections, because they mean I´ve been working towards something I love.
I can already say this month’s conversations with you and Madeline will go down as a highlight for me in 2023. I enjoyed Braza and Dea Sulis Minerva a lot! So, I’m super glad you have come out of your shell. I can’t wait for more. Congratulations again on Dea Sulis Minerva. It had its own elements of history in its setting and mythology. There is more about it below and our audience can click here to read it!
Like so many writers, reading is the passion that started the journey. Your book review reels are awesome, and I enjoy every one of them. What are your favorite reads for 2022?
Isa – There are three books that I discovered through the Alliance and that had a huge impact on me: Awakening, by Lucy A. McLaren and The Worthy, by Anna K. Moss — Dark Fantasy at its best; and Pariah´s Lament, by Richie Billing — a High Fantasy story with an incredibly compelling plot.
What I love most about stories is the possibility of discussing real life issues through the lenses of fantasy. Awakening, for example, has a cast of painfully human characters with real-life struggles that truly resonated with me. Same with The Worthy, when we follow morally-grey characters, rooting for them to change and impact their world in a positive way. I am always amazed by the universes writers are able to craft. Richie´s world is immense — a study in world building.
When I read great books, I feel inspired to do the same.
I also discovered that I love reading short stories, something I hadn’t paid much attention to in the past. E. B. Hunter´s short horror stories are among my favourite reads, and also your Priss Starwillow & the Wolf. I´ve become somewhat of a “fan girl” again, because now I can chat with authors whose stories I love, and that’s something I could never have done before. It is truly awesome.
Thank you for sharing what you love about these books, and short stories, Isa! And I totally agree how wonderful it is to avail ourselves of this community and the vast experience it encapsulates and then have the opportunity to give back. Anna and Eric (E. B. Hunter) chatted with me here last year and I really appreciate revisiting their work through your perspective. I look forward to more of our community visiting me in future. I’ll include the links to all books you mention in the titles.
Richie also offers a Fantasy Writers’ Toolshed Podcast and a huge amount of resources on world building and fantasy writing on his website. He even offers free books if you sign up for his newsletter.
Can you expand on that and tell us your all time favorites?
Isa – I´ve always read fantasy so any book which has magic and compelling characters — I´m in. His Dark Materials, by Phillip Pullman is one the first trilogies I fell in love with and that I still revisit whenever I have the chance. I also love Neil Gaiman. Anything that man writes, I´ll read, but I particularly enjoyed Neverwhere and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Susanna Clarke´s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel makes the top of my favourite reads too, along with Patrick Rothfuss´ still-to-be-completed trilogy, Kingkiller Chronicle.
Since I started writing, and more specifically, learning about crafting stories, I´ve been thinking about what makes a story a good one. What is it that makes us root for the characters we follow, what drags us to these new universes and keeps us immersed in their stories to the point we cannot put a book down until it is over?
I came to the conclusion that the answer is the emotion stories bring to the surface, and that it can only be achieved with characters rooted in their humanity. The world and setting might be interesting, the plot engaging, battles and war nerve-wracking, but without humanity there is nothing. Phillip Pullman, Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke and Patrick Rothfuss are experts in humanity, and I think that is why their stories are great. They make me cry as often as they make me laugh, with characters that are real in every sense of the world: they are real because they cause a real effect in the reader, and they live in our minds and hearts forever.
Wow! I love to get recommendations. Now I’ve got more to add to my TBR. I have to admit, my preferred reads typically fall more into the supernatural romance genre, but I have been slowly building a great epic fantasy story list. You can follow Isa on Instagram for her current reviews and posts.
Isa – I also love a good paranormal romance and great romantic subplots. Give me characters slowly falling in love with each other, and you´ll have me swooning over them. One of my favourite fantasy/romance novels is a duology called The Wrath and the Dawn, by Renee Ahdieh, a retelling of Arabian Nights. Book crushes are simply the best.
Awesome. You made my day, adding a good romance series!
How many books do you average reading a year? Do you like to set goals for the year and if so, what is your goal for 2023?
Isa – I´m a mood reader, as they say, and though I read pretty fast, I don’t have much spare time to do it, while balancing work, writing and, well, living. I genuinely only read what I want to read, and never force myself to finish something I´m not enjoying. I´d say… ten books a year? That’s not a lot, but it doesn´t include rereads, so an average of fifteen in total.
I also read a lot of short stories — a lot a lot. At least one piece a day, sometimes more, which might be flash fiction, drabbles, or longer pieces. I subscribe to flash fiction magazines and get daily emails with the latest releases. Short stories are like little pocket universes where we get to dive in and surface on the other side with a different perspective, a different mind set.
It’s fascinating to realise how a hundred words in a drabble can change your view of an entire celebration. That same awe feeling happened after reading another Neil Gaiman short story Snow, Glass, Apples, a retelling of Snow White. I promise you won’t regret reading it — or you might, because you will never be able to look at the fairy tale the same again.
Another thing that I love doing is beta reading for fellow writers. Stories that are not released yet, in their developmental stage. Sometimes, the briefest ideas can be a lot of fun to work with. One of the most delightful things I find is to discover a new voice who hasn’t even discovered themselves. They share their work with apprehension, not sure if people will like it. Then I get to tell them how amazing their story is, and how much I enjoyed it — it is the best feeling in the whole world.
My goal for 2023 is to read more indie books and find those secret gems — new authors, new voices, new characters to fall in love with.
This reading strategy really makes sense. I for one have experienced and appreciated enormously your generosity in reading my stories. And getting your perspective on your enjoyment and the benefits you get from it is a real treat. I’m sure this will encourage others to engage in the same exercise. Thanks for spreading the love, Isa! And for adding more to my TBR list!
Isa – I have to say, Darci, that our beta reading session yesterday was incredible. I am still thinking about the selkie and her lighthouse man. You craft such a beautiful romance — it’s really hard not to fall for your characters. I look forward to reading more.
Wow! Thank you for that, Isa. Writing powerful romance is my dream. And there is no way I could achieve it without the generous feedback you and the members of the Alliance provide.
When and how did you start writing?
Isa – I’ve been writing most of my life, journals, articles, thesis, dissertations and scientific papers for work. But I had never actually written stories, and definitely not fantasy stories. I consumed them, but also believed I could write something as good as the stories I read. I thought about it, often, crafting tales in my mind before falling asleep, which helped me cope with anxiety and insomnia, something that I´ve been struggling with most of my adult life. I don´t know exactly what changed, but in 2017 something clicked inside my brain and I decided to put pen to paper and write about those characters I had only dreamt about. Things escalated from there.
I certainly hope the insomnia and anxiety have let up on you, and thank you for sharing that. I don’t know if it’s insomnia for all of us, but I have come to understand more about my fellow writers through our community, and the most surprising thing to learn is that many of us are night owls and really could do with a magic pill that allows us to go on without sleep. There is simply too much writing to be done!
Who and/or what were your biggest influences?
Isa – My dad used to tell me bedtime stories every single night: I would not fall asleep without them. But instead of fairy tales or tales meant (and appropriate) for children, I’d listen to ancient mythology, Greek and Roman heroes and gods. Funny enough, I learnt as an adult that instead of being rescued and learning his lesson, Icarus (spoiler alert) actually died after flying too close to the sun. See, my dad would change the endings so I´d not be too scared — or scarred for life.
Mum and Dad were always supportive of my passions, and would take me to the bookshops every month to find a new story, a new book. I grew up in a household filled with books, so it´s not surprising my love of literature. They were, and remain to this day, my biggest influences.
As for literature influences, I´d say the friends I made in the Alliance. After reading E. B. Hunter’s horror stories, I started studying the genre and tried a couple of horror pieces myself. Lucy and Anna are my role models, strong women whose works I desperately love. I want to be like them when I grow up.
And the Masters, of course, Neil Gaiman and his uncanny sense of humour, Phillip Pullman and his incredible world-building, Susanna Clarke and her beautiful prose. Giants, who I hope to walk along with one day.
I’m grinning from ear to ear on this one, Isa. Amazing parents indeed! And it reminds me of my childhood and my Dad. He has a fabulous reading voice, and loved to read me to sleep, mostly the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.
Isa – I do think that is how a reader/writer is born. First we fall in love with the stories, then we seek them by ourselves. If there is love, nothing can get in the way.
What drew you to the Alliance? What do you think are the biggest benefits of belonging to a community of writers? What other communities have you found beneficial to your growth as a creator?
Isa – It was one of those happy accidents, I guess. I had finished writing a novel and had no idea what to do next. While trying to figure out what sub genre my novel was, I found Richie Billing’s page and blog. I subscribed to his newsletter, we started corresponding, and he invited me to join his discord channel. There was where I met the incredible people who would soon become the Alliance.
I believe the biggest benefit of belonging to a community is precisely that: belonging. Meeting people who are having the same struggles as you, who understand your pain, your heart, is something that can change your life forever. It changed mine. I used to feel quite lonely, even when surrounded by people. Friends and family might humour you, listen to your half crafted stories, but they don’t necessarily get what you are trying to do. Being able to have long conversations with someone who is going through the same as you is fantastic. I remember thinking “That’s it, these are my people, here is where I belong.”
A community offers the support we all need to put ourselves out in the world. They offer feedback on your work, help you solve those unsolvable problems that come with every new idea, offer advice on things you are facing or will eventually face.
Richie´s community and the FSF Alliance are the most supportive groups of people I’ve ever seen. Everything I achieved this past year was because of them.
I also find YouTube a great source of learning. Not a community, per se, as interactions there are more difficult and one-sided, but there are great booktubers offering amazing advice over there. I often watch video essays on word building or character development, full classes by the master Brandon Sanderson, book reviews so I’m up to date with new releases, and so on.
As I have never had formal training in fiction writing, I had to find the knowledge I needed somewhere else. YouTube proved to be quite useful, along with reading books on writing, of course. I will eventually enrol in a formal course, that is one of the goals I have for the future, but until then, I will absorb knowledge however I can.
Thank you for sharing all these resources and insights about community! I want to add here as I’ve done in a previous post that the Alliance recently launched its own website, and there are so many good things to explore, like the book club, and short story contests. Isa contributed to its first blog in addition to her winning short story. Check it out.
Now about Braza. Wow! I absolutely adored it. The stories in the Summer Quarterly by Funemployment Press were all fabulous, and I was truly impressed. I hope you have more stories like that planned. How did Braza come about?
Isa – Thank you, I really appreciate that. Braza was a surprise for me, from the beginning to the end. I had never thought I could write a comedy before a couple of jokes spurred in that piece. Who knew I had a sense of humour?
I was thinking about the fantasy genre and its common tropes, how heroes are always trying to slay monsters, and how the monsters would probably oppose being slain. Wouldn’t it be sort of funny if they stated so? A dragon who needed a break and refused to be killed by a silver knight felt like a good place to start. I had a plan, but my characters had a different one, and the ending surprised me just as much as it might have surprised you.
I´m very fond of that story, and ended up calling my dragon Braza, as a tribute to my home country, Brazil (which I dearly miss), and because brasa (spelled with an s) is Portuguese for embers or fire. I really love that story, and I´m really happy you enjoyed it too.
Dea Sulis Minerva is another short story that uses humour to discuss something important, and it got second place in the Alliance contest. The prompt for the contest was God vs. Mankind, and I knew all those bedtime stories from my childhood would come in hand. I had also watched a documentary about the Roman Bath in Bath, England, called Aquae Sulis, and inspiration hit me.
Back then, Romans would worship Dea Sulis Minerva as one goddess instead of two, a combination of the ancient gaelic goddess Sulis and the Roman goddess Minerva. More interestingly, citizens used to ask the goddess for revenge, writing petitions in little sheets of lead called Curse Tablets, and throwing them in the holy spring the goddess dwelt.
The story was there, I only had to carve it out.
Where can we find more of your stories? What are your works in progress and plans for them?
Isa – Dea Sulis Minerva has been published on the Alliance website, so I´d say that is a great place to start. I also keep a blog where I post short stories and news about upcoming publications, so I’d love for you to visit me there. You can also find me on Instagram and TikTok at @isa.ottoni.writes
I´ve been working on a novel, but it’s miles away from being ready for anyone but my writing group. They are the ones who suffer through my edits and help me become a better writer. It´s a passion project, a story I really love, but I still need to improve my writing skills to be able to make it justice. Novels are the hardest thing to write, and I applaud the ones who can make it to the end. I also love writing short stories, so I´ll be doing that and trying to publish as much as I can.
Can you tell us a little about Funemployment Press and how you ended up submitting a story? What is the magazine’s goal and do they have any submissions opening up this year?
Isa – I saw their summer submission call on our discord channel, and ruminated on the prompt for a couple of days. The theme was Sabbatical, and I tried a couple of pieces before ultimately dropping them off. I find that forcing a story to happen does not work for me, so I often try more than one project at a time, feeling them out, and choosing the one I most resonate with. Then, Braza was born, and I was really excited about it while also trying to be realistic. I had had so many rejections until then, that one more would not discourage me, but I deeply hoped it would work out. It did, and I got that most expected email saying “We’re very pleased to accept your work ‘Braza‘…”
I was over the moon.
The editors are incredibly friendly and kind, and it was a pleasure working with them. I got my hard author copy and a second one too because my husband, without knowing about the author copy, bought one to surprise me. Being able to place a physical copy of something I have written among the loved titles on my bookshelf is a feeling I cannot describe.
Funemployment Quarterly holds four open submissions a year, one for each season, and you can check their website for information on themes and deadlines. They ask for science-fiction and fantasy short stories, and according to them “We release quality things, some of which are virtual abstractions, some of which are objects you can actually hold. We hope you enjoy your stay, make yourself at home, and find your time here useful!”
I sure did.
The cover arts are always fantastic and the story selection wonderful. Within the Summer edition I particularly love Academic Emulators, by Franco Amati; When Death Met The May Queen, by Benjamin Thomas; and Azimuth, by Matt Cantor.
No matter what edition you pick, you are in for a lot of fun.
Click wherever Funemployment is mentioned to link to the Press and they are also listed on my website under Communities, Indie Presses.Submissions are open! The Theme is Autonomy.
How do you balance all your pursuits with life and work? Do you have any tips on time management and how to fit in what you love doing with what you must do on a day-to-day basis?
Isa – Organisation is the key, I believe. I have a board on the wall of my study where I place different colour post-its with the different things I have to do throughout the month. That way I can see where my free periods are and make the most out of them. I´m fortunate enough to have a job where the schedule is flexible and I can move things around to fit my responsibilities and my passions. There are days when writing is impossible, and that’s okay, because my board tells me that tomorrow or the next day I will have an entire afternoon just for that.
Different people will have different goals and different needs, but one thing that I believe unite us writers is the passion for our craft. With passion, anything is possible, even carving time out of a crazy schedule. We write because we love doing so, and I think that is enough. If you can write everyday, great, but if not, great too, because there is nothing that will stop you from finding the time to do it.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Isa – I spent most of my adult life setting goals for myself and my career, working like crazy to meet those ideals — and I have achieved what I had set out to achieve. I have reached a point in my life where I’m perfectly content with what I have so I don’t want to stress over my writing too. I write because it makes me happy, so I´ll be happy as long as I’m doing it.
That being said, I do want to publish a novel some day, but if that is going to happen in five, ten or twenty years, I don´t know. Whatever happens, happens, and I will keep writing, keep learning, and keep loving every step of the way.
Thank you so much for visiting with me. Do you have any parting advice for our readers who want to pursue their creative passions?
Isa – Creativity is a strange thing, it may hit you when least expected. I would say that an attentive mind is the key to igniting those creative juices in our minds.
So pay attention. Pay attention to the people around you, to the silly things you watch online, to the changing seasons. Pay attention to the beating of a heart and the flap of a bird’s wing, to the cold of the morning wind and the warmth of the summer sun on your skin.
Pay attention to the world around you, think about it, then make it yours.
For me, inspiration comes in those quiet moments of contemplation, where your mind is still and yet focused, so thoughts spark in your brain and your entire body reacts to it. Did something make you laugh? Write it down. Did it make you cry? Write it down. Did it make you bored? Look again because you´re not paying enough attention.
To pursue a passion is redundant,because if it’s a passion, you will have no choice other than pursuing it. It´s in its nature, this calling that won´t leave you alone until you do what your mind and heart are begging you to do. So do it. Be brave and do it. Even if you´re doing it entirely for yourself – or especially if you’re doing it entirely for yourself.
Then, you go back to thinking about it. What worked, and what didn’t work? What was it that you needed to make it work? Talk to people, ask questions. Leave the self-doubt behind. Follow the advice that works for you, and ignore the ones that don´t. Do you. Be unapologetically yourself. And love every step of the way.
Wonderful! I can’t wait to see more of where your passion leads you, Isa. All the best to you!
Happy New Year! Here’s to an amazing year of new possibilities, meeting creative goals, and cherishing the quiet moments.
One of my goals is to continue with my Creator Spotlight feature, and bring you one or even two guests a month where we chat about a day in the life of a creator. Click here for my January and February guests. For March, an old friend will be dropping by.
Graham Streeter is an American film director, screenwriter and cinematographer.
Graham was raised in northern California until high school, which is when we met. Yep. We go way back. He lived in Osaka, Japan for 10 years while working in film and television. He was the reason I got to travel to Japan for three months, which was a pivotal experience in my life. We were supposed to meet up and travel together, but it didn’t happen. That’s a long story for another day.
He returned to the United States and attended California State University, Sacramento, earning a double degree in international business administration and Japanese, then worked for Nippon Television in Los Angeles as a television field producer and ultimately founded Imperative Pictures in Hollywood.
His 2018 film I May Regret was selected for the San Diego International Film Festival and won the Grand Prix at the Vienna Independent Film Festival.
We’ll be chatting about his journey into filmmaking, day-to-day life as a creator, and his amazing body of work. So, stay tuned!
By D. L. Lewellyn 