Category: ideas

Okay, I know I said I was going to talk about twists, but then… something came up.

Last weekend was WonderCon, and once again a few very talented folks (and me) came together to do the Writers Coffeehouse. If you’ve never been, it’s essentially a bunch of professional writers who are just there to answer your questions. That’s it. Anything goes—writing, publishing, feedback, publicity, editing, contracts, managing this whole hobby/ part-time job/ career/ whatever it is to you. You ask, we answer. Sometimes with a joke or two and the occasional segue.

Anyway, one question we were asked ended up getting, well, a strong emotional reaction from someone in the audience. Not angry. Quite the opposite. No, not happy, either. And I wanted to revisit it because I think the answers we gave out got kind of muddled by a few misinterpretations of the question.

So, all that said… when should we give up on a project? What are the signs or benchmarks something needs to hit for us to say this is as done as it’s going to get? When is it time to drag those first 60K words to the recycle bin and start something new?

To be honest, I don’t know.

Great talk, everyone! Glad you keep checking in on the ranty writing blog. So informative, I know.

I don’t know because this is something absolutely nobody can decide but you. If anyone tries to tell you that you should quit, feel free to ignore them. Tell them I said to ignore them, then go back to ignoring them. I don’t care who they are. Your writing instructor, your significant other, your family member, some professional with a pile of credits, that loudmouth guy online with no credits. I don’t care who they are. Seriously, nobody decides this but you.

Got it?

Okay then. With that in mind… let’s talk about a few reasons I might be thinking about giving up on this short story or screenplay or novel or long form epic poem. I think it usually comes down to four things. Each of these is kind of an umbrella, and it won’t surprise you that there can be overlap.

First is that I’m stuck. Could be a character thing, a particular interaction, or maybe a description. Maybe I just don’t know how to get from point L to point M, even though I had it all outlined. It just doesn’t work for some reason. Or maybe I didn’t have an outline and I’ve got no idea what happens next. Maybe I’ve been stuck for a while now. Possibly a long while.

Second, closely related to being stuck, is that I’ve been polishing this thing forever. Maybe I can always see something else that needs tweaking. Maybe I show it to other people and they always see something that needs tweaking. Writing means rewriting, and I’ve rewritten this whole thing five or seven or eleven times.

Third is that… well, I’m bored with it. Maybe it’s because I’ve been stuck and beating my head against it for ages. Maybe it just doesn’t excite me anymore. I wrote all the cool bits and what’s left is kind of boring. Nobody wants to write something dull and this thing has become dull.

Fourth and finally is that maybe I’ve become a little embarrassed by it. Ashamed, even. No, not because I forgot there were racy parts when I asked my mom to read it. Okay, maybe that. But maybe because I showed it to someone and they didn’t think it was that great. Maybe they told me it sucked. Hell, maybe I asked for feedback and they just ghosted me. I mean, how bad is this manuscript? I thought it was pretty good, but I guess it’s really awful and I’ve been wasting my time…

So that’s four reasons I think most people consider giving up on a project. Let’s talk about each of them and why maaaaayyyybbeeee they don’t really matter. Or maybe they do, in this case. Again, I can’t decide this for you.

First, we all get stuck sometimes. All of us. Yeah, even pros. Yes, me too. It’s really rare that I can’t write anything, but I have absolutely hit times when I just can’t make this sound right or that bit just doesn’t work, no matter what I do. And sometimes it takes a while to figure it out. One thing that helped me a lot was realizing this usually happened with my first drafts and first drafts just… well, they don’t matter. They can be gloriously messy, error-filled, unfinished things with gaping holes in them. Hell, the first draft I just finished up has so many holes in it, if it was a shirt I couldn’t wear it in public. But it doesn’t matter. A first draft is that shirt you only ever wear around your home because, y’know, it doesn’t matter.

If you get stuck in a first draft… skip it. Seriously. Just leave a note to yourself in all caps or brackets or whatever and just deal with it in the next draft. That’s what the second draft is for. Looking at stuff again when you’ve had some time. You’ll have a better grasp of the characters, the plot, and the whole story, and the things that you were beating your head against before will suddenly seem a lot easier to deal with.

Speaking from a lot of experience on that one.

Second, like I just said, everything needs edits and rewrites. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you or themselves. Possibly both. We need to clean up that first draft and then go over the second draft to make sure we didn’t make new problems when we fixed the old problems. But it’s easy for this process to become a trap. Because, yeah, there’s always going to be something else to tweak, something else that could be a little stronger, a bit smoother, and crap, I’ve been doing this so long that reference is a little dated now, isn’t it? Maybe i could come up with a better one…

I tend to do five drafts of a book and then… I’m done. I put it down. At that point I know, personally, that anything I do is just going to be stalling. There will always be something else to fix. And there’s probably always going to be another chance to fix it. So don’t get trapped rewriting the same thing over and over and over again when you could be using those skills to move on to something else. Something better.

Third, yes it sucks when writing turns into work. Yeah, that first draft is filled with energy but then… well, it’s always more fun to make the mess than to clean the mess up. Plus, let’s be honest, sometimes we’ve got this other idea bouncing around in our heads and that one is really exciting.

The truth is, if I’m just doing this for fun… punt it. Move on to something you’ll enjoy more. But if I want to do this professionally—at any level—sometimes I just need to slog through it. I can’t really do anything until I’ve got a finished, polished manuscript, and sometimes that just means… I need to finish it and polish it.

Sorry.

Fourth… this one’s probably the worst because this one can hurt. And it’s really hard to ignore something that’s causing us pain. Sometimes it’s accidental. Sometimes… yeah, it a dick who thinks they’re being funny. Worse yet, they’re openly trying to hurt us. Sometimes with the assurance that “oh, it’s for your own good” and sometimes… because they just want to hurt us.

A few things to remember when this happens. Not every story is for everyone, and I can’t be surprised when someone who doesn’t like genre X has a bunch of issues with my genre X story. Some folks are really bad at vocalizing—or honestly, even identifying—what they think does and doesn’t work in a story. Taking criticism is a skill we need to learn, and alas it’s rare to learn how without taking a few bruises.

But while I’m getting bruised, I need to remember, no matter what anyone else says… this is my story. Nobody knows how it’s supposed to go better than me. Absolutely no one can write it better than me. And definitely nobody can fix it better than I can, because (again) nobody knows what it’s supposed to be better than me.

And one of the best lessons of criticism is… sometimes we can just ignore it. It can be tough, but like I said up at the top, no matter who they are, they don’t get to make the decisions.

So anyway… there’s four reasons you might want to quitting on a project. And four reasons you might want to reconsider quitting. Y’know, if you want to. And even if you do, quitting doesn’t mean deleting all your files and burning all existing copies. If you do decide to quit, you can still change your mind later.

Y’see Timmy, like I said above, nobody can decide if you should quit or not. But if you do, just make sure you’re quitting for the right reason.

Next time, for real, twists.

Until then, go write.

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.

I’m planning out this massive book tour for God’s Junk Drawer at the end of the year and it’s kind of freaking me out in a few ways. Once or thrice now I’ve sort of stopped and quietly shifted my attention to… something else. Anything else. Because then I don’t have to think about how I’m doing all this traveling and signing and talking in just ha ha ha ha like two months. Holy crap, it’s seriously only two months away now.

So let’s talk about something else.

Well, no, hang on. Let’s talk about that. About being a little scared and freaked out. And how it can effect us.

I think a lot of time when people say they have writer’s block, what they really mean is they’re worried that the thing they want to write just isn’t good enough. That their take on it isn’t good enough. Heck, maybe they’re not even the person who should be writing it. It’s not worth doing, especially not with everything going on in the world! Is this page, that paragraph, this sentence as good as it could be? Is this the best way to describe this? Will my writing sell, win awards, or get me mocked on TikTok?

Most of us go through this at one point or another. We start over-analyzing our work and second-guessing everything we put down. And eventually… we don’t so anything. I’ve mentioned the term paralysis by analysis before, which sums this up perfectly. We get so scared at the thought of doing the wrong thing—something that isn’t perfect—that we don’t do anything.

And it’s kind of understandable, right? None of us want to waste time writing the wrong stuff. Putting down a lot of words that we know aren’t the right ones. That’s not how real artists do it.

We’ve talked about this before, though. Not getting it perfect the first time is pretty normal for writing. I need to get past this idea my work should be flawless out of the gate and just admit my first draft isn’t going to be perfect. Maybe not the second draft, either. It’s going to need editing. Maybe lots of editing. Possibly even major rewrites. That’s just the way this whole writing goes.

Once I can admit this to myself, I can get past that block—that fear—and my productivity will go through the roof.

Another cause of writer’s block is a voice issue, or possibly an empathy issue. A lot of us tend to write the way we speak, especially when we’re just starting out. Maybe a little cleaner or clearer, but it’s not unusual for our narrative voice and character voices to use all the same words and phrases and metaphors that we do in our day to day life. It’s normal because it comes naturally. It’s us telling stories about characters who also talk like us.

But at some point—maybe early on, after a few months, maybe a few years in some cases… things stop matching up. We realize that high elf ladies of court and interdimensional aliens probably shouldn’t talk like stagehands from San Diego. They’re not going to see the world the same way a retail clerks from Amherst would. They’re going to have different vocabularies and cadences. They’re not going to sound like me.

And suddenly I’m not writing “naturally” anymore. It’s not that easy gush of words. I need to put myself in a different headspace and look at the world—even this made-up fictional world—in different ways. It takes effort! It’s work.

For some folks this becomes writers block. It’s not that they can’t write, they just can’t understand why it’s become an effort. Because writing should be glorious and effortless, yes? And if it isn’t… well, I should probably wait for the muse to return and the words to flow.

There’s one other big thing that I think can cause writer’s block. And it’s a painful one.

Sometimes people have writer’s block because they don’t have anything to write.

There’s a lot of reasons people sit down and try to write. Could be I have a clever idea, but no real story. Perhaps I just think it’ll be an easy side-hustle to make some money. Maybe I want the adoration for a finished work more than I want to… well, write something.

I know this sounds harsh, but I also know most of us—one way or another—are acquainted with someone like this. Someone who likes the idea of being a writer more than the reality of being a writer. And these folks will talk about being blocked when the truth is they just have no real interest in the act of writing. But I mean if they’re blocked… I mean, that can’t be helped, right?

You may notice one thing I haven’t mentioned is “all this crap going on in my life.” And these days… yeah, there can be a lot of it. It can feel overwhelming and exhausting and oh sweet jebus how do some people find time to write? How is he getting so much done?!?

But that’s not being blocked. That’s just being tired. It’s a self care issue. A scheduling problem. It’s reality, and we’re all living in it (well, most of us). Sometimes, we all have to put the writing aside for a while and deal with, well, life. That’s just the way it goes.

Y’see, Timmy, I don’t really believe in writer’s block. I think it’s just a big, catch-all name we throw over other problems. Fear. Inexperience. Lack of interest. It’s intimidating when it’s a vague concept, but once we break it down and actually identify it, we can address it. And deal with it.

And beat it.

<insert Rocky music here>

Oh, minor segue– if you’re in the San Diego area this Sunday, I’m filling in for Jonathan Maberry and hosting the Writers Coffeehouse at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, noon to three. It’s absolutely free, no requirements, no sign-ups, no minimums, no secret password needed. Just show up and talk about writing, publishing, and some of the weird spots where they overlap (or don’t talk and just lurk). Bring your questions and I’ll try to bring some answers. And if I don’t have them, someone else there probably will.

Next time… okay, I know people are still reading this thing, but I feel like I’m just throwing stuff out there. Much like the Coffeehouse, is there anything in particular anyone would like me to talk about or address? Just drop a comment down below. Otherwise I’ll… I don’t know, give you a top ten list or something.

Until then… go write.

Well, my careful plan for a biweekly ranty blog has fallen apart. As plans always do. Best we can do is move on and try to get things back on track. And by we, I mean me. I’m not expecting you to do any of this for me…

Anyway…

Three or four weeks back I got a newsletter reply (you’re subscribed to the newsletter, yes?) asking about working on multiple projects. Did I tend to do one thing at a time or juggle a few things at once? And if I was a crusty juggler… how did I keep things straight?

This was kind of timely because when I got this question, I’d been working on this draft of TOS but just gotten an email from a magazine editor with suggested edits for a story I wrote back in… May? And I also got an email from Blackstone about some work we need to do on God’s Junk Drawer. Plus there’s this ranty blog and the newsletter. So this past month has had me working on a few different things.

So, yeah, I’m juggling stuff right now. But I think a key thing to remember, for this little discussion, is that I have to. No options. Writing is my full time job, and that means I’ve usually got two or three things at different stages

Now, left to my own devices, I usually just focus on one thing. I’m not against scribbling a few notes or thoughts for potential projects, but I rarely go that far with it. That’s just kind of my process. Also, mental note, haven’t really discussed my process here in a while. Let’s put that on the calendar.

That said… the magazine story was a dream project I’ve wanted to do for many, many years (for a few different reasons) so I couldn’t really pass it up. And I’m under contract with Blackstone, so no putting off those edits. And my agent’s waiting for TOS because… well, it’s the next thing. That’s how the job goes. I write stuff, he finds someone who wants to buy it.

So how do I juggle multiple projects?

Honestly, I’m not really sure.

I think, on a very real level, it’s a lot like any other job. Yeah, right now I’m trying to do payroll but somebody just walked in with a petty cash problem. I’m framing walls but right now we need all hands to unload a truck. I’ve been trying to get the warehouse organized but tomorrow’s the big spring cleaning day out in the store. We all do this, all the time. We’re working on one thing. We need to switch gears for a while. And then we go back to what we were doing before.

Granted, it can be a little tougher in the arts. For me, personally, going from one project to something completely different just means I need to get my head into the story, probably like how an actor (I’m guessing) sometimes needs to get into a role. I don’t need to call on my inner muse or anything, but I usually re-read some of my manuscript and maybe go over my notes. Bigger projects will probably take a little more reading and have more notes (novels vs short stories, for example) but doing that’s usually enough for me to remember what I was thinking and where/how I wanted things to go.

Of course, there are some writers who can flip back and forth with no problem at all. And some who may need a lot more work and effort to get back into something they’d set down. And some who are very much working on one project only and that’s it, from first word to publication. It’s very much an individual thing, and I can’t tell you what kind of writer you are. It’s one of those aspects of writing you’ll just have to play around with and figure out what works best for you.

I think my best tip would be, when I stop working on Thing One, I should be sure to use any of the tricks I’d normally use to make starting the next day easier. Get at least two or three sentences onto the next page. Make an all-caps note to myself right there in the manuscript. Don’t assume I’ll remember anything later—jot it down so it’s definitely there when I come back to it. Plot point, line of dialogue, song in my head, whatever. And if I’m only going to work for a while on Thing Two before going back to Thing One… well, do the same for it.

That’s kind all I’ve got for you there.

Not a super-satisfying answer, I know. Sorry.

But let me spin this another way.

If I wasn’t doing this full time—let’s say it’s the career I’m trying to jumpstart or maybe just something I’m having fun with on the side—I guess a better question might be why am I working on multiple projects at once?

I used to have a lot of different things I was working on. For all sorts of reasons. Shiny new ideas. Trends I’d try to follow. Different formats I was writing in. Fear I was working on the wrong thing and I should spend more time on something like that.

But eventually I realized I was jumping around so much I wasn’t actually finishing anything. Sometimes this was deliberate, yeah. A story idea was going nowhere, so I just moved on to something new.

Other times, though, it was just lack of focus. The minute something needed some actual effort—some serious thought about structure or tension or character motivations—well, that’s when I’d decide to slide over to something else. Keep lots of projects going, right? If this one stalls just move on to that one. Or that one. And then that one. And this one. And oh, y’know what I just thought of…

Y’see, Timmy, while I’m not against working on multiple projects, I know for me, at that point in my career, it became more of a way to sort of dodge really committing to anything, if you know what I mean. And said career moved forward considerably once I focused on one thing and actually, y’know, finished it.

Is that where you’re at? Only you know the answer to that one. But it’s something I might consider when looking at those three or four or fifteen different projects on the desktop.

Next time… well, I’m hoping to get caught up on my reading.

Until then, go write.