They sit across from each other, coffees half gone, when it comes up.

There’s a difference between training and experience, one says, and that’s what makes art. Art is what you respond to, the human factor. The other agrees that’s indeed the case but, they say, the training will get better and so will the art.

The first one sighs, you’re missing the point. It’s the human experience that informs creativity. No one can write a story like I do. No robot is capable of what I am. But it can emulate what you do, they say. Not the same thing, the first argues, not in a million years. 

But people will buy it, the second asserts. The general public doesn’t care about art or where it comes from. They want to be entertained.

The silence between them stretches. Yeah, the first replies, that’s part of the problem, too.

Hi, I’m Jason and I write stories you might find to your taste. Thank you so much for stopping by. 

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Day At the Dog Races

The revision of the seventh draft of Masque is nearing the finish line. I love this book as much now as when I started writing it over two years ago. I’ve said this a lot but it’s some of my favorite of my writing. It feels like a level up. No matter what anyone thinks of it after I release it into the wild, I’m the happiest I’ve been at this stage of the book. I mean, look:

I really don’t do much social media beyond updating progress with GIFs that amuse me.

Masque, second of All the Devils, is coming soon. I promise.

Butterfly Caught

When I was a baby writer, I absorbed all the “rules” writers I admired offered. Some were published in magazines and reformatted for the Internet, others were sought for content on the Internet. They were easily accessible and widely shared. Authors who blogged regularly offered their rules and there were lots of discussions among writers on the Internet about those rules. Write what you know was always a hot topic. So was show don’t tell and the debate around dialogue tags was endless. Really, endless.

Maybe it still is. Maybe I just don’t hang out in those parts of the Internet any more because I’m busy with life and my own writing. I took in all that advice, processed it for myself and applied what made sense to me. A lot of it still rattles around in the back of my brain but of all the things I follow as ‘rules’ it boils down to this: 

Read outside my genre, read outside my comfort zone, read widely, and write.

And that’s what works for me. I try to write every day because any words gained means I have more than I did the day before. I can’t apply a lot of what full-time writers say are best practices because I’m not a full-time writer, but I adapt what I can to my process. 

So that’s my advice: take in all you can from others, process it for yourself, then use what makes sense. Adapt and evolve over time.

Raise Love

One of my favorite, perhaps essential, tools in my writing is Scrivener. I bought in when it was offered at a discount for ‘winning’ NaNoWriMo* many, many years ago and have used it ever since. It is SO robust that I’m constantly discovering new ways to use it. The word count feature is fun, and setting a session target has helped me when I felt like I needed to work more consistently. The name generator is a terrific source of inspiration. I create a new project for every draft and number them so I can keep track. This makes is easy to copy a scene from one draft into a new one and to consult notes I made across all the drafts.

But with Masque, I’ve been using the cork board feature more, and keeping much better notes in each scene. Adding chapter summaries in the Synopsis as I’m writing or viewing them as a whole helps me discover issues with the plot and fix them definitively then spread the fix by noting it in the other summaries. It hasn’t sped up my process, for sure, but it does help. 

Source: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/use-scrivener-to-edit/ / K.M. Weiland

I’m revising in Scrivener, too, and that feature is terribly helpful. With a click I’m in revision mode and everything I type is in that revision color. When I go through next, I’ll switch to the next revision level and work in a different color. There will be places where there may eventually be three or four colors on a page so I’ll be able to see what changes I made in the last pass. 

This isn’t all the program is capable of, nor is it all I use inside it. Of course, your mileage will vary if you decide to dive in, so – you know – what are you waiting for?

If you want to know more about how Scrivener can be used effectively, once you’re ready to use it, I highly recommend starting with How To Use Scrivener to Edit Your Novels by KM Weiland , where I pulled the above image from.

Only Time Will Tell

And this is me done for this time. The day job and revising Masque are taking up all my time lately, but I think about how we can get back to appreciating nuance in our world. There are so many extremes, so many ‘my way or the highway’ types of thinking that I wonder what we’re really losing by staying so far apart. Society comes from the mid-16th century French word that means companionship and friendly association with others and it’s increasingly obvious that those concepts are crumbling around us into tiny pockets that barely comprise a neighborhood. Integrity is another concept, associated with society in my mind, that is also decaying as a concept. They’re not unrelated, at least, but that’s for another time.

I’m an idealist at my core which is part of why writing is something I do. My generation was taught by Schoolhouse Rock, in between Saturday morning cartoons, that America was a melting pot and the more flavor we put in, the better the ultimate result would be. I recognize that ideal and acknowledge the problems inherent in that time that have continued to today. America isn’t perfect, hasn’t been, may never be. But it’s a good thing when it works. We just have to make sure it works for more of the population than it has in the past. To mix metaphors, striving for the ideal is akin to doing all you can to save the sauce that broke instead of throwing it out and starting over. I’m not ready to give up yet. I hope you aren’t, either.

Read outside your comfort zone. Listen to someone you would ordinarily ignore. Try to see the other side, even if you really disagree with it. Practice some empathy. Hang in there. I’m with you.

I’ll see you when I see you.

*I’m aware of the issues around NaNoWriMo. I participated a long, long time before that stuff bubbled up.