I think we can all agree that writing is a challenge, as well it should be. It's not everyday that people sit down and hammer out a manuscript, or short story, or screenplay. Writing takes planning, research, careful thinking, and endless revision, distilling down what you have to what you need. With modern digital publishing, a book could theoretically go on endlessly, but that wouldn't necessarily make for a great read. Through writing and editing, the prose has to be pared down to the root, the core message, that tells a story fully without overstepping. This, the basics of writing, doesn't even begin to approach what I feel it takes to be an effective author (for whatever that's worth).

In my personal view, writing should be painful. Not agonizing, not brutal, but rather uncomfortable. "Art through adversity" is a phrase I use often enough, and I believe it to be true. I like to by physically active. I run, I lift, I teach martial arts. I've done these things for many years, and by now they should be easy. In a sense, they are, as I have become accustomed to the pain. But I still push every time to go a little bit faster, a little bit further. To make progress, one has to step outside their comfort zone, to find out where they fail, and then to practice that part again and again until the failure point moves out. Then you start again, chasing down that failure point. I do it in my physical training, and I've learned to do it in my writing as well.

Take, for example, vocabulary. As a base rule I set for myself, I will not use the same adjective or noun within the same sentence. Even using "same" twice now bothers me. If possible, I will not have that word in the next sentence either. I do this because I think it makes the writing more varied and less stilted, and to challenge myself to come up with new and interesting ways of describing scenes and situations. So the aircraft in the first half of the sentence is the plane in the second. In the next sentence I will describe the fuselage and the paint on the hull, all draped over the frame. These are all nouns that are talking about the exact same object, but they make it feel more complete and more dynamic. It's a personal challenge I put to myself, so that I'm not so comfortable writing. I can't sit back and use the same word over and over, unless it's for a particular effect.

Adding to this, when I describe a setting, I push myself to find new facets to focus on, rather than rehashing a similar description. There's a particular author that I am a huge fan of, but when describing his characters arriving in a new city, it's like hearing about the same city we just came from. I share the challenge of diversifying these paragraphs, but that's the challenge I'm seeking. I still struggle with this one, as it's a new one for me, but I know I will come to master it, becoming more skillful and comfortable. Of course, then it's time to move on to the next challenge, to push for that next level. That alone is one of the things I find most exciting about my writing: that next plateau. The push to go higher is a huge draw for me, and I appreciate being able to look at myself and see growth and advancement in my abilities.

It's your writing. You can either embrace the pain and grow with it, or you can just copy/paste that same description you used the last time.


A.C. Harrison
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I admit, I'm terrible at planning. I don't do well with a rigid structure, especially when I'm writing, because it makes me feel trapped or obligated to something I may not be ready to commit to. Some people feel the opposite way, in that they need to know exactly where they are going or else they feel lost. Either approach is fine; what's more important is knowing what kind of writer you are and working down that path, or working to change it if that's what you really want.

For me, my lack of structure can sometimes lead to stagnation, where I don't know what's going to happen in the plot, or how a character is going to get somewhere or do something. It's like standing at the edge of a canyon and seeing the other side, but not knowing how you'll get across without either falling and snapping your neck, or else getting several tons of steel to build a bridge (and I'm no engineer). That's why sometimes I do something that you're not supposed to do: I paint myself into a corner.

I didn't say it was a good idea, did I? As most people know, when you do any job, you should always leave yourself a way out, or else you wind up stuck with nowhere to go. The phrase "paint yourself into a corner" represents the trapped individual who now is surrounded by wet paint and can't escape. Of course, who paints the floor? Maybe don't tile yourself into a corner? But I digress; my main point is that when it comes to writing, painting yourself into a corner can sometimes be a very good mental exercise, and thankfully is easily reversible if it doesn't work out as intended.

What it comes down to is this: when I have a situation (for example, being inside an enemy compound) and a result (escaping said compound), but no method (bees?), I will introduce factors that make things a little more wild than what would normally be expected (bees with rocket launchers?). In the example of escaping the compound, we know that the good guy is going to sneak around, he's going to shoot some bad guys, and he's going to find a way out. But that's not very compelling, nor does it develop the character in the slightest. You could just as easily gloss over that part of the story and not lose anything in the process. Complications in the plan are what make for good reads. No plan survives contact with the enemy, so apply that to your writing.

So what happens if the good guy is injured or otherwise incapacitated? What if he needs to carry something with him, like a child? He can only use one arm, and the kid won't shut up, giving away his position. That's a start and it adds tension. Now we need to risk something. His girlfriend is trapped one floor up, but he needs to go down to get out. Now he needs to be creative, needs to split up his resources. We're getting some excitement now, but we're not really in the corner yet. Okay, one last thing: he's being hunted by the Predator and several aliens at the same time. Too much? Okay, there's a helicopter gunship tracking his movements throughout the building, and he has no chance of escape. Now we're pretty much in a corner, and now you as a writer get to be creative, to explore options, to find out how deep your character can reach inside himself to pull out an unexpected ace in the hole. 

Of course, this doesn't work as well if you already know how it's all going to play out, but in those cases where you're not sure how to proceed, throw something impossible (within reason) at your protagonist, then get crazy with it and see what sticks. The worst that can happen is you laugh at your bad writing, delete the chapter, and lose a day. But when it works, it makes for a gripping read, where the pages fly by as the reader tries to figure out how in the hell Laser McHawkeye will escape the tower of doom while being chased by a crystal dragon, all while playing the magical flute that keeps his heart from stopping.

A.C. Harrison
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I'm not going to lie: writing is a pretty sweet gig. I mean, if you discount the fact that I have made $0.00 in my writing career, I still hold a day job, and I have to delay handling other responsibilities in order to find time, then it's one of the best jobs I could ever think of.

As examples, I recently came across the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, which I proceeded to watch about fifty times in a row for "research."

Even better than getting me in the right mood to work on my books, the trailer does a nice job of summing up in under three minutes the look, feel, and theme of my genre of writing. It's a much better tool than what usually happens when someone asks me what my books are about, and I get to collect myself and start with, "Well, have you ever seen Blade Runner? No? Okay, um..."

Another benefit of being a writer (a phrase I used to hate, but now catch myself using) is the fact that playing the right video games gives me perspective when I'm writing about weapons, tactics, units, and combat, something that is prolific in "Unto Persephone." Or, when not playing video games, I'm falling down a Wikipit, finding out about Russian nuclear submarines that used liquid metal cooling. Read that again.

That's really the fascination for me. Writing is a form of self-expression, but it's also in large part a form of self-discovery and of seeking out knowledge. I couldn't imagine writing a novel without finding out new things about the world around me, where that world has been, and where it's going. A good writer is more interested in finding himself in humanity than selling a single copy of his work. If, when published, my book goes on to be wildly successful, I will be eternally grateful (and lucky, because the chances are slim). But I would have done it anyway, and I would have done it the exact same way. The late nights, the headaches, the revisions. All worth it.

I learned a lot writing "Jupiter Symphony," about myself, about others around me, about life. From that book I learned about my own writing, which got rolled up into "Unto Persephone." It will be interesting to see what carries forward into "The Long Night." Stick around to find out.

A.C. Harrison
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"Unto Persephone" is closing in on 50,000 words, and should be wrapped up in about five or six weeks. Thinking over my progress and what I wanted to discuss today, I felt it important to touch on something that I think stymies a lot of potential writers: originality.