TECH, Uncategorized, WORDS, Writing

Feels Trip

writing I consider myself an entertainer, and I write partially out of the hope of bringing a brief moment of happiness into someone’s life. If I can put a smile on someone’s face, then I consider that a win. Unfortunately, since the overwhelming majority of what I do is online, and I’m just getting started, feedback can be hard to come by and so I never get to see those chuckles, smiles, or groans (at the puns, I hope). I suppose it’s one of the downsides of publishing in the digital world, though I am working on attending more conventions so I can “press the flesh,” as it were.

Thus, when feedback does come along, I feel good because it means someone is reading, even if they didn’t like what they read. If I get positive feedback, then I have a ‘YOU LIKE ME YOU REALLY LIKE ME’ moment. While I do know that people are buying my work based on sales reports, actually hearing from readers always give me the warm fuzzies.

Writing makes me feel good, which makes others feel good, who tell me, which makes me feel gooder and want to write more! Its a happy cycle! 😀

Books, Nine to Five Lives, The Rules of Tech Support, Uncategorized, Writing

More Than Words

writing I have two projects that I haven’t been looking forward to working on, but carry on I must. The first is a fiction story that involves the death of a character and the second is the follow-up to “The Rules of Tech Support.”

The reason I haven’t been looking forward to working on those projects is that working on stories that hit a little too close to home or that are sad can have an effect on me. It may have happened before without my noticing it, but while working on a short story named “The Best Job In The World” for “Nine To Five Lives,” I noticed that I began feeling increasingly angsty at work. I was even more angry and bitter than usual and it wasn’t until I finished the first draft of the story that I got over it.

I talked to a psychologist friend about it after the fact. I asked him: if reading fiction affects people in some way, wouldn’t writing it have an effect on those that write it as well? He agreed, saying that something similar had happened to him when he was writing.

In all honesty, I think I am going to have a harder time writing the second tech support book. While I can easily disconnect myself from a fictional character, I live tech support forty hours a week, which means I can probably look forward to being full of piss and vinegar for the next few weeks. I could stop writing about work, but the insanity that the general public brings to the table is too rich of a vein of material to ignore. I guess I’m stuck!

Con Fluff 2, FURRY, JUST SAYING, Uncategorized, WORDS, Writing

Second Lives

A real stinker

As a creator, you never know how your works are going to be received. Things done on just a whim can become your Next Big Thing while your Magnum Opus sits next to it unloved despite all of the blood, sweat and tears that have been (metaphorically, I hope) poured into it. You release your art into the wild and it’s up to John and Jane Q. Public to sort it all out.

In the same way that ‘stories write themselves,’ characters can take on a life of their own. “Chris the Watchfur” was intended to be a one-off character in a conbook story titled “The Tell-Tale Tie,” which can be found in the upcoming Con Fluff 2. The story and character were inspired by my friend Chris Holm, who took it upon himself to draw the character. A friend also drew the Watchfur as part of an artist Secret Santa, and when I later needed a villain for another conbook story, he made yet another appearance, this time as a supervillian with time-based superpowers. Oddly enough, other characters I have written for the explicit purpose of writing a series of stories with them have not managed to escape the confines of their first story.

Not bad for a one-off character, and a crook, no less!

Books, BUSINESS, Con Fluff 1, CREATIVE, FlipSide Stories, FURRY, JUST SAYING, One Sheet Stories, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories, Tablets, TECH, The Rules of Tech Support, Uncategorized, WORDS, Writing

The Long and Winding Words

writingbear

My last e-book “Con Fluff 1: 2012 Furry Convention Short Story Collection” was released seven months ago, and as the 2013 edition won’t be ready for a few months at the minimum, I feel the need to get another e-book out into the wild. My (virtual) stack of unpublished short stories has been growing and I’m pretty sure that I have enough of them to assemble another e-book.

Since my stories are very short, I have to round up a few in order to assemble a collection of decent length. One early lesson I learned in my Adventures in Self-Publishing is that five stories was not enough content for 99 cents, as evidenced by the thud that ‘One Sheet Stories’ and ‘FlipSide Stories’ made in their respective marketplaces. Luckily, people are buying the longer collections I’ve produced since so I think I’ve figured out how much stuff is enough.

The stories themselves are another matter, though. The longest anything I’ve ever written was about 12 pages. It also took me a little while to get over my habit of keeping stories about a page long due to printing constraints back in the First Storm Manga days. Even when I have a hard limit to work with, I try not to think about length, but even then I’m pretty sure that the thought of ‘is it long enough’ rattles around somewhere in my subconscious.

I don’t know that I have a Great American Novel in me but I’d like to write one eventually. Time will tell!

Books, Con Fluff 1, CONS, CREATIVE, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

Everybody Dies…Or Not!

writingbear Whenever I write a short story with the intention of submitting it to a conbook, I have a tendency to want to write a happy or silly story. I’m not sure why, though it may have something to do with the overall fun atmosphere that I see at conventions. Nearly every large gathering of nerds that I have been to have been joyous experiences, regardless of the flavor of nerds that are present.

Unfortunately, “stories write themselves,” so that happy story might turn into one that is not-so-happy because I had some bad Mexican food or something. When this happens, I will end up either rewriting the story to make it ‘happy’ or shelve it completely in favor of a happy one. I have even had a few instances where I ended up with TWO stories that diverge at a certain point and at othertimes I’m satisfied with the happy story and abandon the other one.

I just feel odd sending a story that doesn’t end with a happy ending or a punchline into such a happy place. I should probably get over it. After all, I don’t think anybody actually reads conbook stories at the con because they’re too busy having fun!

Books, CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, WORDS, Writing

When Do I Start?

A question I often have to ask myself when writing a short story is just when do I start the story. “Well, at the beginning, DUH,” you’re probably thinking to yourself, but things often aren’t that simple.

Since I often have a word limit that I can’t go over, that often doesn’t leave me with enough space to set things up, so the story ends up starting somewhere after the characters, setting, situation, etc, have been established. Oftentimes, though, those details are not all important to the point I’m trying to make in the story, so that’s okay.

Whenever I’m doing a ‘gag’ story, which is fairly often, I really can’t start at ‘the beginning’ (wherever that may be) because starting near the end makes it easier to hide information that is critical to the punch line. The challenge there is making sure that I give the reader enough information so that they understand what is going on.

Start at the beginning? If it were only always that simple!

CREATIVE, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

A “Special Delivery”

I constantly see artist friends posting their art up on various places out on the tubes, and every so often I’ll just browse a friend’s DeviantArt or Furaffinity account to pass the time and to be amazed by their abilities. As can be evidenced by my book covers, I have ZERO design sense when it comes to anything visual.

I happened to be looking at Amanda Coronado’s artwork on DeviantArt and came across a picture titled “Birds of Hermes.” To me, the picture showed two brothers having a cute moment; the younger not wanting to go somewhere or do something his elder was making him do. The smaller one just has that ‘do we HAVE to’ look about him. As the youngest of three brothers, I could easily see myself in that spot.

Of course, a ‘moment’ does not make a story, so the tale begins just before the picture. The two brothers have their moment, but also have a task to accomplish, and from then on it becomes ‘my’ story, which means that hilarity ensues. I titled the story “Special Delivery” and you can read it here.

It just goes to show that you never know where inspiration where come from. I guess I need to go fishing for inspiration in my friends’ artwork a little more often.

BUSINESS, CONS, CREATIVE, FURRY, JUST SAYING, Podcasting, PODCASTS, WORDS, Writing

Oh-De-Lay-Lee

I abandoned trying to keep up a regular schedule with anything creative awhile back. I had originally planned on doing an episode of my “300 Seconds” podcast once a week, but that didn’t even last a month. Likewise, I try to post to this blog once a week. As I’m sure you may have noticed, Dear Reader, that doesn’t happen, either. The only deadlines I can seem to keep are story deadlines for conbooks, and even then, I had a close call not too long ago.

Granted, I don’t have very many readers or listeners or what-have-yous (yet!) but I still feel bad whenever I get behind like this. It also could explain why I don’t have many readers or listeners or what-have-yous. I have cut down on the number of side projects that I have been involved with, but I need to double-down and get cracking so I don’t keep my audience (or potential audience) waiting. I’m just like everyone else: I, too, get annoyed whenever some person on the tubes doesn’t update on a regular basis, and I should strive to not be That Guy.

So to the ten of you reading this, I’m working on it! 🙂

CREATIVE, WORDS, Writing

Stories Write Themselves

My short stories usually begin with an idea that gets expanded into an outline, and then written. While this works fairly well most of the time, sometimes a story will go off into a different direction than I had initially intended.

A fairly straightforward story might jet off into the Twilight Zone or one that was supposed to be funny will become sad. It is often at these times that I will become stuck as I think over just which direction I want to take the story in. Once when this happened, I wrote two stories: one that went off in a silly direction and another one that played out more straightforward, because straightforward had been what I had originally envisioned. Sometimes I will just keep writing even if the story isn’t going in the direction I want it to, just to see what comes out of it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

No matter how much you plan, you really never know where a story will go until you actually start writing it, because as crazy as it sounds, stories write themselves.

CREATIVE, FURRY, JUST SAYING, RANDOMIZER9.COM, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT, WORDS, Writing

Obvious Title is Obvious

I am currently writing a short story that involves a large monster tearing up a city. Having read that sentence, the first thing that has probably popped into your head is “Godzilla.” As it is a furry story, instead of being a giant dinosaur, the antagonist is a giant dog. I have been referring to it as ‘Dogzilla’ for now, but I severely doubt that ‘Dogzilla’ will be the final name of the character.

It’s just too obvious. Being ‘too obvious’ is something that I try to avoid in my stories. It may be because I am afraid of dating them with pop culture references, but more than likely, I try to avoid the easy way out because I like to think that I’m clever enough to come up with something new and witty without figuratively elbowing my reader and going: “See what I did there?” Of course, as is often the case, I may be overthinking it and end up run the risk of being too clever for my own good. That’s a post for another time, though.

“King Dog?” Bleh. I guess ‘Dogzilla’ he will stay until something better comes along.

Eduardo Soliz

IT Guy, short story author, podcaster, and furry!

Tag Archives: Writing