Blogging

I’ll be writing a mix of literary craft essays, opinion pieces, and general process pieces. I’ll be doing one a month, with the focus being on the craft essays. I’ll inevitably refer to my own work, but I’ll do my best to talk about how these techniques come up across all kinds of stories and storytelling so it doesn’t feel like I’m vaguely asking you to go read my work.

My Craft Essays

Taking the craft seriously has taught me many things, one of them being: There’s a lot to learn. Another is that learning is hard. It’s messy, it takes real effort. I’ve learned from learning that you have to force yourself, when there are so many other fun things you could be doing. Like playing Elden Ring.

Essays are a way to synthesize the ideas you’ve been internalizing from the places you are learning from. There’s a fantastic YouTube video from the creator Odysseas called I’m begging you to write essays. It’s sort of a clickbaity title but Odysseas does a great job laying out the purpose of an essay, which at its core is to continue teaching about the topic through writing about the topic.

We’re here to write, and if I want to be able to expand my knowledge on the craft itself, I have to write about the craft.

Opinion pieces

Not everything will be about craft techniques utilized like Chekhov’s Gun (coming soon). I’ve got opinions and this is the space to express them. Example, why won’t modern writers let villains be villains anymore? Looking at you, Cruella de Vil.

Process

I’m an author, and outside of the craft there’s a method to all this madness. When I first started I had questions about file formats, what apps to write in, what equipment to use. And now with the rise of AI, people will want to know about that as well. I’ll be talking about all of it. Speaking of AI, since I’m sure you’re dying to know about it you can start here Here’s how I use AI as an (amateur) Author