E.J. Fisch's Blog

Soooo…this is just a little something I’ve had running through my head for the past couple of years. The first year I thought of it, it was about two days before Valentine’s Day and there was no way I would’ve had time to write it. And then last year, I totally forgot about it until, once again, just a couple of days before. So it found its way onto my writing to-do list, and even though it wasn’t a priority, I’ve taken a break from working on Embers for the past couple of weeks so I could whip this out.

There are a few disclaimers that go along with this:

✸ I recently started putting together this Twitter thread of gifs depicting things that either directly inspired parts of this story or just went with the overall theme. Check it out—I thought it was kind of fun.

✸ Valentine’s Day of course doesn’t actually exist in my characters’ universe, but I figured the subject matter was appropriate enough to serve as a little bit of a Valentine’s treat in our world.

✸ I imagine this little story takes place in kind of an alternate timeline, like if Ronan somehow ended differently and all the characters’ lives returned to normal, relatively speaking. In other words, this story does not fit anywhere in the Ziva Payvan saga as we know it and is essentially self-fan fiction. It’s a fun little snack where everybody’s fine that will help tide everyone over until Embers, where everything is broken and everybody’s NOT fine. 😈

✸ This story has undergone very little editing/revising, and it got a bit out of hand from what I had originally planned, so it’s semi-nonsense. But I think those things are part of what makes it fun.

There is one part of this, however, that’s a callback (call forward?) to something that’ll happen in Embers, but I’ll let everyone sit and speculate about what that might be 😉

▶▶ [READ THE STORY AT EJFISCH.COM] ◀◀

As I move forward into a new year of writing, I wrote a little about how Fracture and Embers wouldn't even exist if I'd ended the Ziva Payvan series the way I'd originally planned.

[READ MORE HERE]

Ladies and gentlemen, after 4 long years, I am pleased to announce that Fracture: Ziva Payvan Legacy, Part 1 will be hitting shelves OCTOBER 28, 2019.

Set 4 years (see what I did there?) after the events of Ronan , Fracture is part 1 of the Ziva Payvan Legacy duology. Its sequel, Embers , is already in the works. My goal at the moment is to have it ready by late next year—regardless, I promise you won’t have to wait another 4 years for it, especially because Fracture admittedly ends on a cliffhanger and Embers picks up right where it left off.

Fracture will be available wherever ebooks are sold, as well as in paperback format (and probably hardcover, eventually). In the meantime, check out the updated page on my site, and add it to your shelves here on Goodreads.

LEARN MORE HERE

I've got another blog post in the works that should be coming through in the next couple of days, detailing why I haven't made much progress on Fracture and why that's starting to change (hint: I've learned something about myself while working on this book, and I'm going to talk about it). Now, you may be thinking, "But EJ, haven't we heard all of this before?" Well, yes, but this time is different...because of the thing I'll talk about in the upcoming post.

In the meantime, I figured it was high time I give everyone something to chew on, so here's a nice, lengthy excerpt for you! I figure if I post enough of these, I'll eventually run out of material, and then I'll be forced to write the book in order to come up with more, right? Riiiiiight?

This is one of the first scenes in the story, found in the second chapter (still in the draft stage, of course). The Alpha team makes a new acquaintance and learns some interesting information about their latest mission... [READ MORE ON MY SITE]

See, I've run out of ways to work "Just Do It" into blog post titles without repeating myself.

But that's the gist of it. And even though I've written on the subject multiple times, it still bears repeating because I still can't get it through my thick skull that just doing it is the only way to actually get any writing done. It somehow comes as a surprise every time.

If you've been following my progress on Fracture and Embers , you've probably noticed I have not, in fact, been making much progress. Even though I was excited to continue the story, I think part of that lack of progress can be attributed to, frankly, burnout. Ronan was such a huge, emotional story, one I'd technically been working on for over two years, and even though I still had all of these plots and characters buzzing around in my head, my brain just said, "What is writing?" and didn't know how to start from scratch. It didn't help that I started a new job and didn't have nearly the free time I'd had in college (jotting down plot notes during meetings somehow seems more taboo than doing it in the back of the room during class...). Obviously I've written something during that time, but I'm almost embarrassed to say that I've only written about 10,000 words in Fracture over the past year. I know, I know, progress is progress, but that's still pretty pitiful.

Long spells of very little -- if any -- progress actually used to be fairly commonplace for me back in the day. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact... [READ MORE ON MY SITE]

I swear this hashtag pops into my head in some context at least once a day, so I thought I'd try to compile a list of some of my most common Writer Problems™. Some of these are specific to just me (at least to my knowledge) while others seem to be fairly universal issues.



1. MEMORY LOSS
Here's a classic. You come up with a good idea in the middle of the night and swear you'll remember it, so you don't write it down. You all know what happens next.

*3 am*
Brain: "yes hello brainstorming time?"
Me: "k but does it have to be now?"#writerproblems

— EJ Fisch (@EJFisch) April 4, 2016

2. INSOMNIA

In the event that you do take the time to write it down, that idea sparks more ideas and you have to also jot down notes for all the rabbit trails that ensue, thus forcing you to stay awake way longer than you'd planned to.
The same applies to "Let-Me-Just-Write-This-Down-Before-Bed" scenarios.



3. PLANNING AHEAD

The moment you start a new story, you find yourself already planning the sequel(s).



4. PLANNING AHEAD II

You also find yourself already playing with cover art designs, despite the fact that you don't even have a complete first draft of the story.



5. COMPULSIVE EDITING

You find yourself mentally editing other people's speech in the middle of conversations and it's all you can do to keep from correcting them when they make mistakes.



6. COMPULSIVE CRITIQUING OF WORLD BUILDING

Every writer knows that one of the tricks to starting a story is introducing enough new information to help readers... [READ MORE ON MY SITE]

I've mentioned a number of times that I used to write solely for my own enjoyment and never had any intentions whatsoever of publishing. As such, when I first wrote Dakiti (and even Nexus), I didn't bother including a lot of world-building information. Sure, I kept all of that written down in a separate encyclopedia-style document for my own benefit, but if all of that information was already in my head, why bother including it in the story if nobody else was ever going to read it, right?

That was actually one of the biggest challenges when I decided to publish. Obviously readers don't live inside my head and thus can't know things unless I tell them, so I had to figure out how to incorporate at least some of that old information without resorting to huge info dumps. Only a small portion (maybe a third of it) actually ended up making into the story; the rest, while interesting, simply wasn't relevant at any point during the plot and therefore would have felt forced or out of place. While I do feel like I did a decent job of avoiding those info dumps, there are some places where I still think I was too vague. Of course that can't really be helped now, and it has all been part of the learning experience, but it irritates me all the same.

Over the past couple of years, I will occasionally get questions from readers about the world of Haphez or aspects of the Haphezian culture, which is great! Feel free to ask any time! But I've also been informed that there was interest in some sort of post that revealed some of that old world-building information that never made it into the story. So without further ado, here are some of my favorite facts, some of which shed some light on things readers actually learn in the story, some of which could probably have at least been deduced from reading the story, and some of which have never been shared before.

[READ MORE ON MY SITE]

Maybe a slightly overly-dramatic title, but whatever.

One of the questions I've been asked a lot (and I see other authors asked this as well) is what music I like to listen to while I'm writing.

Confession: I can't listen to music while I write.

I used to be able to, although it had to just be instrumental music because lyrics were too distracting, but I've gotten to the point now where I spend so much time envisioning things while listening to instrumental stuff that it becomes equally distracting. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it's essentially brainstorming, but I've gotten to where I have to set aside special time for it when I'm not writing. My issue is that a lot of what I listen to are movie soundtracks, so I'm associating the music with a scene other than whatever I'm working on. That, or I've spent so much time listening to my "inspirmental" (inspirational + instrumental) music before writing that I've already formed other stories/pictures to go with it, and they don't match what i'm doing.

My brain is a busy place...

I imagine if I tried to listen to something that wasn't associated with any other thing I knew about, I could do it. Like you know in the home decor section at the store how they have those little music sampler machines next to all the candles and Scentsy™ fragrance packs and stuff? That sort of music. Lots of quiet piano and guitar. Except that pretty much defeats the purpose of the whole "inspirational" part.

So most of the music I draw writing inspiration from has to be listened to at some point when I'm not actually writing. I do, however, love to listen to music while editing and doing artwork. I've said on many occasions that Lindsey Stirling's music promotes efficiency. Trailer music like Two Steps From Hell and movie scores by Hans Zimmer excite me and motivate me and make me feel like I'm doing something meaningful. Back before I came up with the genius idea of just watching Netflix while I worked out, I'd always listen to TSFH and envision space battles and chase sequences and come up with imaginary movie trailers for my characters and books. Once I've made it to the editing stage, I can allow myself to focus a little more on all of that imagery and not worry about it distracting me from the actual story.

And then, like any author, I have of course picked out some songs over the years that *gasp* actually have lyrics that apply to certain characters or groups or pairings. Those also have to be listened to at times when I'm not writing. It's mostly because lyrics = distracting, but also because when I'm listening to these things (and this goes for the instrumental stuff, too) I like to sit and focus and plan/visualize, and it's too hard to multitask.

Without further ado, here are some of the tunes that have been at the core of the Ziva Payvan series, some of which I've had in mind since long before I even considered publication.

[READ MORE ON MY SITE]

They say writers should never throw away any of their past work, regardless of how terrible it is. Writers should keep everything. Back before I was really writing "seriously," I confess to breaking this rule a lot. But as time has passed, and as I've improved in my writing and storytelling skills, I've recognized why that rule exists, and I've done my best to adhere to it. Every book I've written has gotten its own sub-folder within the "Story Stuff" folder on my flash drive. Those sub-folders contain all the usual stuff -- the books in Word doc, .mobi, and PDF format, all the corresponding cover art, etc. -- but they also each feature another "Old Stuff" folder that contains every single draft, outline, and all versions of any troublesome scenes I've ever written. Granted, all of that might be a little bit overkill, and I end up having to cut some of it in order to fit everything onto Dropbox, but whenever I'm in a writing slump or suffering from Impostor Syndrome, going back and reading my old work and seeing how far I've come always gives me a nice self-esteem boost.

Today I'm just going to chat a little about some of the things I've kept over the years, some of the things I wish I'd kept, and why keeping too much has sometimes felt like a bad thing.

[READ MORE ON MY SITE]

Early last year (wow, time flies doesn't it?), I wrote what has probably become my most popular blog post of all time, in which I discussed the fact that so much of a writer's work relies on the principle "just do it." I've met a lot of writers who have the same issue: they spend hours and hours (or even days or weeks) just thinking about scenes, plot structure, or what have you, but they don't actually write anything. If this was a crime, I'd probably be serving a life sentence without parole. I wouldn't say it's exactly procrastination (though God knows I'm guilty of that too), and you're not necessarily accomplishing nothing. A lot of the pondering and considering I do comes in really handy, because it means I have a more definite path to follow when I do eventually get around to writing. But that's the thing -- if you're just sitting there thinking about writing, you're not actually doing any writing.

I'll confess to being in a little bit of a writing funk lately. This happens whenever I get stuck in one of my I-don't-have-time-for-anything ruts (see my last post, Making the Most of What You've Got ). I think back to last year when I was done with Ronan and so excited about everything. With the exception of the ~20,000 words I'd written during July and August of 2014, I wrote all of that 157,000-word monster in just a smidgen under 6 months. I clearly remember diving back into it on January 3 and finishing it June 28. That was during school and everything! And now here I am wallowing around in Fracture and Embers ; I've been messing around with one or the other of them since October (10 months) and between the two of them I have a measly ~34,000 words to show for it. Granted, that's partially my fault, because per the MtMoWYG blog post, limited time means I have to pick and choose how I spend that time, and the sad truth is that writing ends up not always being a priority. I've got Life Responsibilities™, yo.

So see how that difference in progress could be discouraging? It's easy to look at what I'm doing (or more accurately, not doing) now, think "this isn't what it was like when I was working on [previous book]," and get all depressed about writing. That in turn hampers my progress even further and the whole thing turns into a big downward spiral.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: THIS DOES NOT BY ANY MEANS MEAN I'M READY TO QUIT, DELETE ALL MY WIPS, BURN MY EXISTING BOOKS, ETC. ETC. ETC. I FEEL LIKE I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO SPECIFY THAT, BUT I ALSO DON'T WANT TO SCARE ANYONE

And of course it's not like I haven't been making any progress. 34,000 words is much better than nothing, and part of the problem is also that I've been using kind of an experimental jump-all-over-the-place approach that really hasn't been that efficient. I actually have an old, pre- Dakiti Ziva story that I'll be able to partially recycle for the plot of Embers, which will cut down on the amount of planning I'll have to do. And to my credit, I've spent a lot of time picturing all of the scenes in my head, but as I mentioned, that doesn't count for much unless I actually get them written one of these days.

Well, this past week, I had one of those days. I tend to write a lot while listening to presentations or something similar, but since I'm not 100% focused, it's usually tough to write any more than half a notebook page (yes, I write by hand when I'm on the go, especially when it's supposed to look like I'm paying attention or, at the very least, taking notes). I was dabbling in a small, semi-unimportant scene I'd been thinking about a lot lately, and...I just kept writing. The more I wrote, the more the ideas flowed, and the easier it was. When you've gone a long time without making much progress, it can be hard to remember what that feels like. It's an incredible sensation. I ended up with a whole page rather than just half. I went home and typed it all up and then kept going a little further. It still wasn't a lot of progress in the grand scheme of things, but relative to what I'd been doing, it was a lot.

It seems like every time something like that happens, I think to myself, "Wow, it's amazing how much I can get done when I just sit down and do it." And no matter how many times I've done it before, I'm still somehow surprised. Self-discipline is huge for indie authors, even those of us who don't write for a living (maybe even especially for those of us in that boat). There's that same old question people ask about the best way to conquer writer's block, and self-discipline is the answer. Just write. Just. Do. It. It's the only way to generate the momentum necessary to make progress, and momentum is everything. Quality doesn't matter at first; that's what editing is for later on. The important thing is just getting the words on the page/screen.

It's incredible how the answer can be that simple yet that complicated, isn't it? Someone asks you how you beat writer's block. You tell them "Just do it." They think you're joking. But what else are you supposed to do? Just continue outlining and planning? That's fine and dandy, but at some point you're going to have to actually write something.

So Just Do It. And get into a routine. Set goals. Keep track of your word count so you can watch it grow. The more you Just Do It, the easier it will be to Just Do It. That's all there is to it.

♪ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♪ ♫ ♫

I should write a song.