This is just stuff about how I've changed as a writer or a person since the start of this endeavor of writing a science-fiction novel. It is long and personal, but here it is.

First, links, because I have to be a filthy, filthy person about telling people about my work if I want to get somewhere. I probably will do one more round of polish to clean up the remaining couple percent of tiny issues, but since I don't have an editor or beta readers, I think I did well for being on my own. It's free, mostly, so it's not like I'm making anything from this yet, anyway:

• Atypical (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Smashords for FREE!
• Atypical (Saints of the Void, Book 1) iTunes for FREE! (Er, guess I can't link this, so it'll have to be a search and find)
• Atypical (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Amazon for CHEAP! (Because Amazon's lowest price is $0.99)

Let The Characters Live On Their Own

This sounds dumb, but I had to learn not to force my characters into saying cool lines or doing cool stuff just because. This and any other universe I've created lives in my brain, and if I don’t allow it to breathe and be real in my noggin’, it just work work. The discomfort I’ll have while writing dialogue or descriptions will show on the page, and that’s no good. The story is in the action-adventure vein and I wanted to model it a little after my favorite genre models, like Firefly; that means only being cheesy when it's self-aware and not having 80's-action-movie style interactions.

A good example is that my main character is black (or whatever, they don’t use that phrasing in the universe). I started this story a long time ago, and at first he was just some white guy, and every time I wrote for him it seemed off. The words would have been the same, obviously, but the picture in my head felt wrong. Then I sat and waited, thought for a bit, and the first time I described his skin as being dark it fit like a glove and boom!, the character was real.

Another one is a female character that I was having so many problems with for a while during my planning phase. Whenever I’d start putting together some banter with her close friend, I tried to make them jibe and stab at each other like real friends would. One thing I liked was that they would mock each other for their past, and often not long-term, relationships. Every time I wrote something out, it seemed awful. Then I realized that she was not straight, and it started to work effortlessly.

That’s where I had to get to: a point where the character is so alive in my head and so natural that writing anything they do or say is effortless. And if it isn't, delete or fix it so that it works. I did that a whole lot while on the [essentially] final edit of my first book.

Don’t Let Things Stop You From Being Passionate

Right after I started writing this novel, I met a couple of at-first very nice people. They turned out to be horrific nightmares that ruined my life for a while. Unfortunately, because of my artistic depressive tendencies (it’s like I’m a comedian, but slightly less insane!), those people would occasionally destroy my ability to write.

Finding out your “best friend” has been telling people you tried to sexually assault her so she can get attention (along with a hundred other stacks of bullsh*t) will, if you’re like me, make you very depressed. That meant sometimes weeks of either no writing at all, or terrible work that got deleted wholesale, costing me thousands of words worth of time.

I also took far too long during breaks, thinking I’d go a couple of days to structure things better and plan for more content, and end up playing some game or another for way too long. Sure, I recently spent like 170 hours on Dragon Age: Inquisition between a couple of characters, but the book was done, so I was on a small vacation.

The lesson here is to sit and think about what helps and what doesn't. Forgiving multiple people for being absolute, constant psychopaths is fine, but letting them go and turning your back is better for you in the end. Taking time off when feeling stressed or worried about your quality of work is all well and good, but actually figuring out what’s wrong and forcing yourself to sit and work no matter what is better.

Passion is my greatest asset as a creator, and I’ve been forced to learn how to manage my entire life so that I can use it like a loaded pistol rather than a half-broken bb gun. It’s worked, and now I can toil faster, better, smarter, and I’m happier while doing so. Friggin’ awesome.

Control Time and Rewards

Similar to the previous lesson, this has more to do with my awful attention span and short-term memory. I've been able to cultivate those weaknesses into strengths as an artist, writer, and human being, but sometimes I fail miserably while trying to create. I have to learn not to say “okay, I've written for three hours today and it’s early, so time to relax!”

That makes no sense if I want to get paid for this. I have to get more done in a day, pay more attention to my errands so I don’t miss anything and end up worried. I have to think of playing a game or watching a movie as a prize for hard work. Then when I’m done, get right back on the horse. The writing horse. The Logitech wireless writing horse.

Accept The Need To Get Grip

More than anything, this lesson comes down to money management. I’m okay with money because I’m frugal, but that’s a smaller issue that not wanting to go to work. If my job, which sucks ultra-hard, asks for volunteers to take days off because the work load is low, I’ll jump up so fast I might pull a hammie.

That’s bad because I’m not financially secure due to wanting to take jobs that I liked rather than ones that paid well. I have to consider this and any other job I have as “paying my dues” in an almost literal sense. If I have enough money to pay for anything I want (which is not much) or need (also not much), I’ll be able to relax and write or work on other related projects without worrying about anything external.

Do Something To Help Your Professionalism Every Week in 2015

For this, writing doesn't count because what I actually do. I sadly ignore making myself a brand or business or whatever. I got the idea from what Chris Hardwick has called making a “pro-you” decision, and for me it involves thinking further than the words on a page, making my projects a little more connected to me as a person. I need to work on art to add to sections of the book, build a website and separate Facebook page, blog about myself or my process to put myself out there, narrate sections of the book on YouTube, and whatever else I can come up with.

I used to think the writing would do everything on its own, even if I will very likely go nowhere with this stuff (I certainly hope otherwise, but so do a lot of others with more talent). That’s flat-out stupid; I need to do more, and on a sickeningly regular basis. Even if it cuts into my writing time a little, it is a long-term effort that cannot be overlooked.

That's All

That's all. Thanks to anyone who downloads or, even better, reads even a single sentence of my book. There are special thanks to Ryan Davis and Dan Ryckert in there, somewhere. The former because, well, you know. The latter because if that lunatic can write books and do well with them, so can this lunatic right here *points thumbs at himself*.