Well, hey… 2026 managed to go off the rails pretty quick, didn’t it?

I totally get it if you can’t get your head around the idea of writing right now. It’s tough to be creative when it feels like you’re trapped in a burning house. But I’m going to soldier on because, well, it’s my job. And the ranty writing blog is part of it.

That said…

It being the start of the year, a lot of us are setting goals of some kind. Things we’re going to achieve. Ways we’re going to change. How we’re going to improve. And yes, maybe some of this is writing related.

There’s a saying you may have heard– change is good. As I may have mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of it. It’s easy for change is good to become a defensive thing, a shield from criticism. After all, if change is good, and I changed something, my change must be good, right? It’s not my fault you can’t accept change.

What I prefer to say is that change is necessary. Change happens, whether we like it or not. And sometimes… yeah, we won’t. Styles go out of fashion. Preferences shift. Standards change. Lines get redrawn. What’s acceptable (or possible) changes. We learn new facts and (hopefully) shift our view of the world to embrace them. Not every change is going to be good, but… things are going to change.

As some of you know, I used to work in the film industry. At various times I found myself working with different producers. Knew a few folks who’d worked with others. And at some point I realized two of them made for an interesting study on creativity. Both of had begun their careers at the same point, making very similar movies and shows, but ended them very differently. And a lot of that had to do with their willingness to change.

Names shall be avoided out of basic politeness, but it wouldn’t take too much digging if you really had to know who some of them were.

At first, Producer One was the more successful by far. By a lot of metrics, the most successful producer of the decade—television or film. And the next decade too. He was the guy behind some filmmaking techniques people take for granted today. I could probably name half a dozen shows he did (or more) and I’d bet serious money you’d know every one of them

But as that next decade started to wind up… this producer started to lose popularity. Y’see… as audience and studio expectations progressed, he was continuing to make what were essentially the same shows in the same way. I worked with him maybe ten years after that point and he was still making the same shows. Same kind of characters, same kind of plots and storylines, insisting on the same kind of shots and edits that had worked for him twenty years earlier. It got harder and harder for him to get projects off the ground because his work just felt more and more dated. Heck, when a few of his earlier, better-known things got rebooted, I heard from a few folks that the studios openly paid good money for him… not to have anything to do with them. To stay away and not be involved at all.

On the other hand, producer B kept growing and changing. He’d been making the same sort of shows at first, but he paid attention to the shifts and changes in what audiences expected. And what filmmakers could do with stories, and what they could do within different formats. He kept making hit shows, because he was willing to learn and grow and change. Maybe more importantly, he was willing to let go of old ways of doing things and old ways of thinking. And that growth kept him relevant. And very successful well into the 21st century.

But I know what you’re saying. Pete, I don’t want to work in Hollywood. Being a producer means nothing to me. What is this all about?

Let me put it to you this way…

I knew a genre author a few years back who talked constantly about how big publishers made so many mistakes and how self-publishing was the only way forward. And a main part of this author’s proof that publishing was doomed was, well, twenty years earlier they (the author) had been huge in their genre. A damned-near superstar. They’d learned how to write at the feet of a fantastic editor in the genre back in the 90s, learned exactly how to do the characters, the story beats, the payoffs. They’d taken those lessons to heart and sold a lot of books back then.

But over the years their sales diminished more and more. When I asked what they’d changed, they were pretty adamant—nothing! They were still writing books just like they’d learned how to in the 90s. The right way. The problem, I was told, was publishers were just chasing new trends and not sticking with what worked. Which is why, they would tell me again and again, traditional publishing was doomed.

And when I tried to gently hint that maybe there was something to learn from some of these new books… well, that was nonsense. After all, they had learned exactly how to write these books. Twenty years ago. From a master. Why would they change?

Y’see, Timmy, it’s tough to be creative when I’m not willing to acknowledge new things. Creation is, literally, making something new. I can’t improve if I’m not open to growth and change.

I’ve mentioned The Suffering Map here once or thrice—my first serious attempt at a novel, finished back in my mid-thirties. And I’ve also mentioned it wasn’t that good. Bordering on bad. For a bunch of reasons. But I’ve gotten better since then. Because I made an effort to learn. To change how I did things and looked at things. To grow as a writer.

Hell, I’ve tried to grow as a person. I’m glad a lot of my views and opinions have changed from what they were when I first started taking this seriously twenty years ago. Or thirty years ago. And sweet jebus, let’s not even talk about being a teenager in the eighties. Sooooooo glad I’m not that stupid kid anymore. He had a lot to learn about so many things.

I can’t do anything new if I’m not willing to try anything new. I can’t be current if I’m determined to stay in the past. And I definitely can’t expect to catch a lot of attention with an idea (or a mindset) that was outdated thirty years ago.

So as we stride forth into this new year, maybe think about letting go of those outdated ideas. The worlds moving on with or without us. Let’s learn some new stuff and do cool thing with it.

Next time, speaking of the film industry, I’d like to tell you about one of my favorite directors I ever worked with.

Oh, and if you’re reading this just as it published, tonight (Thursday) I’m going to be at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego talking with Jeff Rake and Rob Hart about their new book, Detour. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hi!

Until then, go write.

Oh! Hello there. Yes, this is very overdue, isn’t it?

The past month has just been wild. The book tour. Thanksgiving. Three or four vet visits. Two or three doctor visits for me (minor stuff, in the big scheme, don’t worry). Assorted holiday activities.

Oh, and this book I’ve been editing. And another book I’ve been poking at.

It’s still really weird to me sometimes to think I’ve had over a dozen books published. Me! That’s not even counting all the short stories and collections. It’s just… weird.

Which leads me to this (very overdue) ranty blog post. I’d planned to do it waaaay back at the start of November but… y’know, maybe it’s better now, as we’re all starting to think about top ten lists and how much we got done and all that sort of thing. Those can be fun, but I think they can also be kind of demoralizing. It can be rough when you’re trying to find time to write while someone else is pounding out three or four books a year. Heck, even once you’re kind of established, it’s easy to watch people talk about all those end of year accomplishments and feel like… wow, I didn’t do much at all, did I?

One thing it took me a while to figure out was that a lot of us have very skewed ideas of the time frames involved when we talk about “how long things take” when it comes to art and artistic careers. F’r example, when I first started out, people thought I was ridiculously prolific because I had four really solid books (and a bunch of short stories) published in less than two and a half years. But it actually took five years to write all of that. Likewise, right now it looks like it took me three years to write God’s Junk Drawer, since that’s how long it’s been since The Broken Room came out. But I actually wrote three books in that time. You just haven’t seen them all yet. And when those start coming out, I’ll bet you anything someone pulls out the prolific label again.

Like, okay, how often do we (as a society) dwell on how long it was since someone started writing until they sold their first book? Once they decided to do this, how long did it take them to get published? It sounds straightforward, but all of these are kind of tricksy points in time. Like, okay, my first published novel (Ex-Heroes) was written in 2008 but it came out in early 2010. And there were a few novels before that one, but they didn’t sell. For good reasons.

And the starting point? When did I actually start writing? Well, if we use when I started telling stories as an eight year old (using my Death Star playset as a slowly-evolving diorama of Star Wars figures), then from that to first published novel was about thirty-two years. But if we go off when I first actually writing things out on my mom’s typewriter and my first attempt at a “novel” (the often-mentioned Lizard Men From the Center of the Earth), then we’re looking at about thirty years.

Then again, we could go off when I first tried submitting stuff (some just-as-awful comic book “scripts” to Marvel when I was eleven) and then it’s twenty-nine years from starting to write to first published novel. But those were comic book submissions, not novels soooooooooo… I don’t know. Do we count that? Yes? No?

If we want to start at when I actually learned how to submit (whoa, publishers and editors and agents have guidelines? who knew?), then I guess we’re looking at about twenty-two years from “starting to write” to “published novel.

We could also consider the college novel as my starting point, so now it was nineteen years. Or if we use the after college/ moved to California novel it was maybe seventeen.

Also, to be honest, for about seven years in there (while I was working in the film industry) I put books aside and just worked on screenplays. Had some mild success, too, relatively speaking. But like with the comic book scripts… should we count that time? Skip over it? Half-count it as general storytelling?

It was in 2001 that I decided I’m going to go back and finish the after-college novel. Polish it up, actually turn it into something I could submit. I remember the moment I decided it. So if we go from there, it only took nine years to get from “starting to write” to “published novel.”

And, of course, in late 2006 I left the film industry to focus on writing. Fiction and non-fiction. If we want to use *that* as the starting point… well, it only took me two years to sell a novel once I put my mind to it.

See what I mean? Those points are pretty damned flexible. Depending on how we want to look at it—and the story we want to tell—it can look like my career took forever to take off or I did it without much effort at all.

This is true of most books. There are early inspirations and ideas, first thoughts, outlines, drafts. Once we mix in behind the scenes stuff—like the very random amount of time between writing and publication—it’s not hard for people to look very slow or very prolific. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally.

Y’see Timmy, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over those end-of-year lists. I got a lot of stuff done. I bet you did, too. That’s what matters. Not how much someone else got done.

Next time…

Hell, next time is Christmas. And the Thursday after that is, well, next year. But I’ll still try to squeeze in one more post about… something? I’m taking requests, if there’s something you’d like to hear me blather on about.

Oh, and if you’re looking for a last minute gift– hey, maybe a copy of God’s Junk Drawer? No, no, Grandma will love it. Really.

Until then, go write.

It’s once again time to tell tales and make the offering…

Well of course I made it sound ominous. Don’t worry, this is a good thing. Really. Hopefully for you, specifically.

As a lot of you know, my writing career began in Los Angeles. I’d left the film industry to write full time. I was bringing in rent money doing movie reviews and screenwriter/ director interviews. Sold a few short stories. Sold my first novel for a very small advance. My beloved had won a major screenwriting fellowship and was also reading scripts for various contests. Between the two of us… things were usually tight, but we were happy. We were doing what we wanted to do, even if we were living that near-poverty artist’s life some folks likes to glamorize.

But some of you probably know it doesn’t take much for “near-poverty” to become “poverty.” Just a nudge. A late payment from your job. One “whoops” from a clerk that results in a double-charge on the credit card. Sickness. An accident.

Boom.

Poverty.

Not tight on cash. Not, oh we’ll need to cut back for a month or two. Poverty. As federally defined. We were below-the-poverty-line poor for three solid years in Los Angeles, one of those cities famous for its low cost of living. We did our grocery shopping at the 99 Cent Store. Our phone was shut off. We stole toilet paper from the library when we went there to use the internet. We couldn’t afford to turn the heat on. At least twice, off the top of my head, I had to borrow gas money from friends so I could go to work. Yeah, I literally didn’t have enough money to go to work.

That level of poverty means you have an ongoing dread, a sense of being trapped and powerless that almost never shuts off. It means stressing over every interaction with anyone and anything in your life. It’s being painfully aware of what you don’t have and what you can’t do.

Weird as a it may sound, these feelings can get even worse during the holiday season. Because so much of the holidays is about giving, and when you’re poor you just… you’ve got nothing to give. It doesn’t matter how much you care about someone, it doesn’t matter how much you want to do for them. And the reason it doesn’t matter because you’ve got nothing.

And for the past few decades, some folks have made it very clear they’ll judge you because of all this. They’ll see you as less of a person because of your poverty. Because of what you’re unable to do. At every office party or gathering of friends or family dinner. There are some folks judging you for being trapped and powerless.

Believe me, I know how bad it sucks. I’m in a much better place now—thanks mostly to all of you reading this—and I wish I could tell you it all goes away once you’re back on your feet. But it doesn’t. I still feel that sudden sinking in my gut when my card has a glitch at the register. Hell, it just happened a few weeks ago while I was doing the book tour.

So look– if I can help some of you avoid that sinking, powerless feeling this season—the low I felt for those Christmases—I’d like to do it.

Here’s the deal. If you’re in a bad place and can’t afford gifts for your family or friends, shoot me note at my old business email– PeterClines101 @ yahoo.com (it’s also the newsletter’s default email, so if you’re subscribed you can just reply to a newsletter). I’ve got maybe a dozen random copies of my books, and a few audiobook CD sets, too (if that works better for you). I’ll autograph one for whoever you like and mail it out so you have something to give this season. Or I can send it directly to someone else, if you need it shipped. I’ll even gift wrap it if you need that. I’ll do this for as long as the books last, or until maybe a week before Christmas? Want to have time for things to get where they’re going.

Oh, every year a few folks offer read this and offer to chip in and help out. It’s appreciated, but you don’t need to do that. This is all covered. But you could go be fantastic people in your own community. I guarantee, there’s a Toys for Tots dropoff or a food bank within ten or twenty miles of you right now that could really use your offer of help, especially this year.

Just to be clear, sorry to hammer it home—this is for those of you who need some help getting gifts for others. The people who are pulling unemployment, cutting back on everything, and feeling trapped because they can’t afford gifts for family or friends. Also, we’re using the honor system here, folks, so if you’re only trying to save yourself some money or score an autographed book… well, I won’t be able to stop you. But never forget you’re an awful person and you’re taking a potential bright moment away from someone who really needs it this season. And you’ll deserve whatever karma sends back your way. Sorry.

Anyway… please let me know if I can help you out.

Happy Holidays.

So, yes, many last minute things happening, and tomorrow (!!!) is the release of God’s Junk Drawer and the start of me driving up and down the west cost to promote it. Which means there was no ranty writing post last week. And probably won’t be for another two weeks. Sorry.

But until then… maybe I’ll see you somewhere along the west coast.

God’s Junk Drawer is out tomorrow!