Welcome to the 15th (fifteenth) writing club update. Opening Manu Saadia’s Trekonomics to page 15 (“Portrait of the Author as a Young Fan”), we find this fiction related snippet:
When the movie [Star Trek: The Motion Picture] was over, I really, really did not want to leave the bridge of the Enterprise. I had to make that experience last. I still remember that very precise feeling, equal parts wonderment, recognition, and melancholy: this was the place I had been looking for, this was where I wanted to live, this was where I belonged. I had found my promised land. Pity it was all fiction and make-believe.
A pity indeed that the post-scarcity almost-utopia of Star Trek’s Federation is only make-believe. But then isn’t a story an almost-world, waiting to be brought forward by the midwives of action. Maybe casting writers and artists as parents is overstating our importance a little bit… it’s nice to think about, though.
But what I can’t overstate is how great our writers are:
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In the last month I finished my pass of edits on the campaign and started reaching out to find specialists in phytoremediation, environmental restoration, rewilding, etc to get input and to vet what I’ve written.
I also brought on a friend who understands the English language professionally to help with copyedits and (because they’re a TTRPG gamer and GM) to get their input on how the information is presented.
While they worked through feedback I put together some artwork for a scene near the beginning of the campaign:
I also hired someone to make the cover of the campaign book! Originally we were going to handle it in-house but I found an artist who can do the pulp adventure magazine style artwork I really wanted for the cover (something I would struggle with) and who doesn’t use AI (which comes up a lot when you’re looking for an older, distinctive style not many people do anymore). So I’m pretty excited to see what they come up with.
So you’re publishing a campaign book? That sounds exciting!
Yes! Believe it or not that was kind of my goal from the beginning - I only ended up GMing (for the first time!) in order to playtest it. After the first playthrough the devs were very supportive of publishing it and helped a ton with editing.
One of the things they did that I think is really cool was preparing a premade template for people to share/publish their campaigns. I’m kinda going overboard on quality and depth because this is also a kind of manifesto on rural solarpunk and New England solarpunk for me. They really want to share basically any resources people create at whatever level of polish they can manage. The end goal is for FA to be much more community-driven I think. The devs largely limited themselves to worldbuilding Southern California as an example and leave the rest of the world open to the community. We’re setting up a wiki and working on a map that’ll show where campaigns have taken place too!
So I was already using their template which worked really well, though I had to adapt it a bit because my campaign was much more open world than their previous examples. And once they played it, they were interested in publishing it through their channels like the rulebook and the original premade campaigns. So it’ll go up on itch.io and DriveThruRPG someday!
And yeah I’m really excited! It’ll be great to see it out there after all this work, and I’m looking forward to making an interposed, print-ready version so people can bookbind a copy of they want.
Eventually I’m hoping to rework a lot of the plot, setting, characters, and content as a choose-your-own-adventure book which will also be free and bookbinding-ready but I really have to finish this version first!
Oh wow, it sounds kind of more comprehensive than “just a novel” like I’m doing, haha. How exciting!
So last month I said I would try to bring one of my ideas into the world and share it, and here it is: Gallery of the World. It’s kind of rough, and re-reading it now I can see a couple typos I’d like to fix, and it’s kind of got this trademark theoretical style without characters that I’m trying to get away from, but I took my shot and there it is, haha. Critiques welcome.
I’m looking into stepping up my hours of paid work, and maybe finding some freelance for the Winter so I’m not sure how much focus I can devote to writing. But my goal for the next interval of September-October will be to (generally) keep stoking the fires of creative writing, and (specifically) work on the draft for my bio/corp/hell/hope/punk bromance short story (lol maybe I’m piling a little too much on it, but all I have right now are some rough notes and a vibe, so we’ll see what survives once I start in on that draft).
I like the piece, very thoughtful. But the ending confuses me slightly, is it meant to imply the random anonymous artists disappear or stop making art? Or just that named artists cease to be a thing, in that hypothetical setting?
Good feedback, thank you! I see I have an unwritten assumption without realizing it: My idea was that the random art has no artist (though obviously has named artists as influences (Rubens, Mondrian, MCU…)). The art just sort of emerges from everywhere, and then art institutions adapt to commercialize it.
It’s kind of about a lot of things. Since I’ve been working in a gallery, I wanted to talk about the business side and how the “art world” as an institution will not protect artists. It’s also mocking the dream (well, one dream) of generated art, that it absorbs all this art from the world, then spits it back out without the artist.
Art without an artist would be very convenient to a business, since artists are often troubled, or “queer” in some way (to use the term broadly, but also like, actually queer).
Congratulations! I’ll try to read it as soon as I have some time and get back to you with feedback, if you don’t mind.
bio/corp/hell/hope/punk
I think only two of these will survive by the end of it 😂
I’ve not had much time to spend on my untitled science book that I described some time back (essentially “a coherent scientific account of what I can see from the vantage point of my balcony”) - that’s fine, I expect it to be a long process and something I do for my own enjoyment, and it is not meant to cause me to feel guilty if I’m making no progress on it over a stretch of time. And lately there’s been a bit too much on my plate for my limited free time to go to this.
However, I’ve recently had some time to expand on the outline for the book, so I now have a clearer view of what topics I need to write about / research. This should make it easier to just jump into one of the topics and start :)
that’s fine, I expect it to be a long process and something I do for my own enjoyment
Speaking of “vantage points” this is the POV I’m always trying for as well. It’s a challenge not to internalize the guilt of hustle/thrive culture, but glad you’ve got you’ve got a healthy perspective on progress. If nothing else, it just makes existing in the world more pleasant. :)
What’s your approach to outlining your book? Is it like a “vision statement”, or blurb, or maybe a list of sections you want to fill in? Curious because I am also an outliner.
It’s a challenge not to internalize the guilt of hustle/thrive culture
It definitely helps not having any plans of monetization at all. I think if I had an aspiring career author inside me, it would be much more difficult to avoid that guilt. I’ve had such projects before (i.e. doctoral dissertation) that definitely brought up much more guilt when not working on it.
If nothing else, it just makes existing in the world more pleasant. :)
In line with what I wrote above, whenever an activity is for the sake of doing that activity, and not a means to an end, it tends to be much more enjoyable, at least for me :) I have many hobbies that I would love to spend more time on, but would loathe doing professionally.
What’s your approach to outlining your book? Is it like a “vision statement”, or blurb, or maybe a list of sections you want to fill in? Curious because I am also an outliner.
I started with a preface (which I had written previously), which I guess you could call some sort of vision statement. It gives me an opportunity to get my intentions of the book in writing. I then proceeded with a “How to read this book” (which in this case would be useful, as it is not necessarily meant to be read cover to cover). That forces me to think of how I would structure it so that it would make sense for a possible future reader.
What I did now was to outline a list of parts, chapters and sections. That should together be collectively exhaustive of what I want to write (even though it is obviously just a draft, and edits can be made down the line), but it should also be mutually exclusive (i.e. the MECE-principle). If it’s not mutually exclusive, I’ve done something wrong in the proposed structure and I should rethink it. In my last session, I for example realized that I had one part that had considerable overlap with another, even though it didn’t seem like it at the time I wrote it down the first time. That caused me to move the chapters from that part into the other existing parts, with minor modifications to the angle.
While writing the chapter headers, I also jotted down any immediate thoughts I had while thinking about it to serve as a starting point when I jump into it proper. In some cases that would be some phrases I thought of, other times just a list of concepts I know I should include, and in a couple of cases I wrote (parts of) the introduction paragraph for that chapter.
I would not do this for a work of fiction though - I have some ideas for solarpunk themed fiction down the line, and if/when I eventually get to that, I will likely outline the major events of the story first, then try to spread that out on some timeline. From there I would do any required world building (which in this case would be the most fun part) and then start writing. But I have actually some time back written the first chapter of this book without any of those parts in place though, so I am certainly not as structured as I might give the impression of here… :)
You certainly do give the impression of being a very methodical writer, but I understand that for some people structure is simply a tool and not necessarily an all-encompassing way of life.
TIL about the the MECE-principle–that sent me down a fun Wikipedia rabbit hole. Hearing you describe how your arraying your sections really sounds tantalizing, but you’re right in that it wouldn’t translate well to fiction–not unless that fiction were very structured haha. Kind of absurdly so… sort of… fun to puzzle over…
But no! That’s silly. I’m just a sucker for systems, even though what they often amount to in my case is procrastination more than productivity. In that regard, you seem to have a decent handle on the most important part of writing, which is of course, actually committing words to the page.
Thanks for sharing so much of your process. This is exactly the kind of deep diving I hoped to get into with this writing club.
TIL about the the MECE-principle–that sent me down a fun Wikipedia rabbit hole. Hearing you describe how your arraying your sections really sounds tantalizing, but you’re right in that it wouldn’t translate well to fiction–not unless that fiction were very structured haha. Kind of absurdly so… sort of… fun to puzzle over…
If you want your fiction to convey a specific, coherent message, you can of course still structure that underlying message this way so that you end up with well-argued message. The task is then to inject those arguments into the story. I guess this could be used as either a starting-point for the story (i.e. the message being the main reason you write in the first place) or something that can be developed independent of the main story (but then more as some kind of side-snacks? otherwise it could feel forced)
Love this week’s introduction, @[email protected]!
Following many moons of inactivity, I’ve returned. I’m finishing the second of the three parts of my thesis. Looking forward to submission.
Additionally, looking forward to reading this month’s club’s posts :)Great news! Soon the thesis is done, one last leg!
Way to come back with a splash! I won’t congratulate you prematurely, but good job on writing 2/3rds of your thesis. I know the last part of any project is usually where most of the effort goes (the “polish” phase can be never-ending, if you let it!).
Not to get ahead of yourself, but do you have any ideas for what you’ll do after you submit? Or is that a bridge for a future crossing. :)
I haven’t written a report myself yet, so here’s one:
While I’ve been mostly busy with other life things, getting things in order so I can later head back into writing more uninterrupted, I’ve found a fun and while in some ways minor, really exciting change. I’m now working that change into the novels, and I’ve actually done some editing despite being so caught up in non-writing things right now. But in overall, I’m still mostly busy with other things and will be for some more weeks, I think. Hopefully not for too long!
Oooh a change. That is exciting! Does it “solve” any problems with the story? Like does it tie up a loose end, or give you more to write about??
Also definitely relate to being caught up in non-writing things. Life is so full of non-writing things — so annoying! Lol
It’ll give the story more fun vibes for sure 🤩 what’s not to like!!
Something for everyone!! Sounds awesome. :D
As I had predicted, this month has been absolutely hectic and riddled with deadlines; my customary bullet-point list will have to be shifted as-is to October 😓
Not only that, but I’ve been addled with a poisonous idea that can’t leave my brain and I know I can’t write either. It’s badass and it has potential, but the written page would be the absolute worst medium in which it should be told. Maybe I’ll save it for some comic in the future, if life puts some eager artist on my path.
The positive news is that one of the Meteorina short stories will be published in an Italian anthology at some point this month, so I’m glad something is bearing fruit!
The positive news is that one of the Meteorina short stories will be published in an Italian anthology …
That’s great, congratulations! 🎊🎉 I know you were starting to pile up the rejections (very natural for a writer), so glad to hear you’ve got some positive feedback.
I’ve been addled with a poisonous idea …
Ahh the familiar ache of a great idea that arrives, but not at the right time. I wonder if there’s a place where we can solicit artists for their interest in pairing on a project. Maybe Mastodon with lots of hashtags?
