February 14, 2025 / 2 Comments

The Audio Audience

I know I said I was going to talk about the first time I met Yakko Warner, but then Bryce asked a question in the comments and I thought, hey, that’s a fantastic idea for a topic. Let’s do that instead.

Bryce wanted to know…

As someone who has had numerous Audible exclusives, can you speak on the difference (if one even exists) between writing something intended to be read silently in your head versus writing something intended to be read aloud? Obviously any book can be read aloud. But when you know or expect that most of your audience will be listening to a narrator tell the story, recorded onto mp3’s, coming through little speakers we shove in our ears, how does that change the storytelling?

So let’s talk about this a bit.

I guess the first thing would be establishing what counts as an Audible Exclusive. Weirdly enough, somebody asked me about this on Bluesky the other day, and it’s a bit of a tricky question because Audible likes to slap that label on a lot of things. For example, I did two books– Dead Moon and Terminus— that were exclusive to Audible in the sense that, for six months, the only place you could get them was through Audible. No ebook. No print. No foreign editions. Nothing else. But after that six months… they spread to other formats.

But there are also Audible exclusives where “exclusive’ just means the audiobook isn’t available anywhere except Audible. For example, The Broken Room and Paradox Bound both had print and ebook versions (from Blackstone and Crown, respectively) that came out the same day as the audiobook. But Audible is sort of a one-stop place, so if they produce an audiobook you’re not going to see it show up on other sites.

Does all of that make sense? Cool. I just wanted to be clear on that moving forward, because it kind of addresses one aspect of the overall question. There’s a lot of storytelling out there that’s always aimed at audio only (a narrative podcast, for example), but it’s kind of rare to be writing a book that’s just for audio. They tend to reach other formats.

So here’s some things I’ve learned that can make my writing better in either text or audio format.

And, as always, these aren’t hard fast rules. They’re more like guidelines. There’s always going to be an exception, a time they don’t apply. But if I’m mostly finding exceptions… maybe I should take another look.

I’ve mentioned repetition here before. It can be a powerful tool, but as I’ve said if I’m not careful repetition can go from clever to annoying really fast. And because our brains don’t process listening and reading the same way, I’d guess in audio format I can reach that tipping point… maybe ten-fifteen percent faster? Like anything artistic, there’s going to be a degree of personal taste/ tolerance in there. But something that’s pushing that line in text will probably step right over it in audio. Which should make me ask, hey, why am I right up against the “annoying” line, anyway?

On a similar note… I’ve become aware of words that rhyme. Talking about the lair over there. Yakko said he was dead. Within sentences or between sentences. Sometimes these rhymes can unintentionally create a weird rhythm, so I tend to look for those and nix them. Unless, y’know, I was trying to create that rhythm. And again, it’ll be just that little bit more in audio. If it’s questionable in text, it’ll definitely stand out when we hear it.

Similar-but-different thing…I also keep an eye out for sound-alike words. There’s words we’d pass over without a second thought in text because they’re spelled differently, but when we’re just hearing them… they can hit a little differently. For example, there was a place in God’s Junk Drawer where I’d used gate and gait in the same sentence without thinking about it. I think it was on my second pass with the editor when I realized how—out loud—this could create a little mental stumble because we’d be hearing the same thing twice. It’s repetition and rhyming combined. Also, this is probably the most “audio only” thing I’m going to mention.

Another thing I’ve become aware is how long sentences can get, and how awkward they are as they get longer. In audio and text, somebody has to read all this. And keep track of it. And actually remember the beginning by the time they get to the end. That sounds a bit silly, I know, but I’ve seen people pride themselves for page-long, grammatically correct sentences (and some that are even longer). Every time my reader has to re-read something (or back up to hear it again) they’re getting knocked out of the story and it’s becoming less immersive.

And let’s talk about a big one. Dialogue. To be specific, dialogue tags. I’ve said before that I‘m a big, big believer in said, and that’s still true. Said is borderline invisible in text. Readers will absorb it and move past it without a thought.

But… when we’re in audio format, this isn’t quite as true. Again, our brains don’t process listening and reading the same way, so hearing said again and again can become repetitive and distracting.

Now, this isn’t to say audio is a good place for all those other dialogue tags. Quite the opposite. I think they might be more distracting in audiobooks because now we have to deal with the aspect of performance. Someone’s actually saying this dialogue out loud, so there’s going to be a slight disconnect if they don’t hiss, shout, exclaim, chortle, whisper, gasp, and so on. How weird would it be for be to say Yakko mumbled when the narrator just… read it? Because a big part of the narrator’s job is making everything clear and understandable.

But y’know what? When I got to work with an audiobook editor, it made me think about how often I need dialogue tags at all. And not just when I’m writing for audio. For text, too.

Y’see Timmy, one thing I became aware of is how often dialogue is a binary, going back and forth between two characters. Back and forth, back and forth. Which means I usually only need one or two dialogue tags at the start and then we’ll be able to follow the conversation. I talked about this at length a while back so I won’t take up too much time on it here, but if anyone wants an update or a refresher, just let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.

Another thing I became aware of was ways to tag dialogue without, well, dialogue tags. If a character has a minor action, I tend to group it into the same paragraph as their dialogue. Something like this…
—————–
Kyle shrugged. “No, but I need to earn a few points with Hideko. She owed Barnes a favor, he needed people who knew the telescopes and the camera rigs to make sure some dumb undergrad didn’t destroy them.”
—————-
See? It’s very clear Kyle’s the one talking, right? Even though technically none of the dialogue is attributed to him.

Also, congratulations! You just got to read part of God’s Junk Drawer nine months early!

To wrap up, you may notice, a lot of these tips/ guidelines come down to breaking the flow. I think flow’s very important in a book, and possibly more so in an audiobook. We’ve introduced a new element—the narrator—between me and the audience, which is one more chance for somebody to pause or trip up and get knocked out of the story. And every time my reader’s knocked out of the story, it’s a chance for them to remember something else they should be doing. Like folding laundry. Or taking out the recycling.

And that’s not a good thing.

Hey, speaking of God’s Junk Drawer… you can preorder it now! Go down to your local bookporium and ask them to reserve a copy for you. Maybe two, just to be safe. If you’re ordering online, get at least three.

On a related note, this Saturday the 15th (tomorrow, as I write this) at 1:00pm I’m going to be at Mysterious Galaxy with a few other authors from Combat Monsters. We’ll be answering questions and scribbling in books. So come by and… y’know, ask questions. Get books scribbled in.

Next time, barring reader requests, I’ll be talking about the first time I met Yakko Warner.

Until then, go write.

January 28, 2021 / 2 Comments

Keeping Our Heads Down

This is something I’ve talked about several times here on the ol’ ranty writing blog, but I realized I haven’t talked specifically about it in, well, many years. Too many years, really. Definitely not since I’ve tried to lean away from the more ranty, accusatory tone I tended to write in back at the start of this.

Look, reading all those movie scripts made me pull out a lot of hair.

I talked a month or so back about the idea of a contract between author and reader. There’s one other aspect to that contract, a sub clause, and I think it’s one of those “so obvious we don’t think about it” sort of things. To be blunt, nobody’s picking up one of my books to hear from me. Or to see me.

I mean, sure, they like a lot of the characters and worlds I’ve created. Some folks probably (hopefully!) like my style enough that they’re willing to try something new from me. But they still don’t want to see me. They want the story, and they definitely don’t want me getting between them and it.

Now, this doesn’t mean I’m going to follow you home from the bookstore and stick my hand between you and the page or sing nonsense in your ear. It’s just that nobody wants me distracting them from the fact they’re reading my story. They just want to sink into that world and get lost.

Yeah, of course, on one level you know I crafted each of those sentences and paragraphs, chose where all

the breaks

should go, but we have this quiet understanding that I won’t be leaning over your shoulder asking “Did you like that? Did you see what I did there? Wasn’t that clever?” You just want to immerse yourself and forget about the world for a little bit. Or at least get to look at it from a neater angle.

That was jarring, wasn’t it? That weird paragraph break? It was only two lines, but it broke the flow for a second, and you stopped hearing my voice and started hearing your own instead. Probably saying something like “was that a mistake? Is he doing beat poetry? Was he trying to do something funny there?”

And this is the worst thing that can happen to a writer. I don’t want you thinking about me. I want you to be thinking about Hector and Natalie and the people they’re running away from. If you’re noticing me, thinking about what I’m doing… it means I’ve done something wrong.

Think of it this way. It’s the difference between the tough guy in a story who commits unimaginable acts of excessive violence to look tough… and the tough guy who doesn’t need to commit those acts. The one we understand is more impressive without seeing a blatant demonstration. Being able to restrain myself is usually more impressive than how excessive I can be. Less of us is more of the story.

So here’s four easy ways I can keep my literary head down.

Vocabulary— When I started out, I know I desperately wanted to show I had a better vocabulary than the average person. Because that’s a hallmark of a good writer, yes? I didn’t want to use common, pedestrian words, the words just anyone would use. I was a skilled anecdotist, after all, not some mere amanuensis.

And let’s be honest—I wasn’t alone. This is a phase a lot of us go through as we’re starting out. We latch onto (or more often, look up) obscure and flowery words for our literary masterpiece, as if we’re going to get a quarter every time the reader has to look something up. And if the reader doesn’t enjoy going to the Miriam-Webster site every three paragraphs? Well that sounds like their problem, doesn’t it? Not my fault you’ve got such a limited vocabulary.

Truth is, any word I choose just to get attention—to prove I don’t need to use a common word—is the wrong word. Any word that makes my reader stop reading and start analyzing from context is the wrong word. I can try to justify my word choice any way I like, but nobody’s picking up my book hoping for a vocabulary lesson. When a reader can’t figure out what’s being said for the fourth or fifth time and just decides to toss my manuscript in the big pile on the left… there’s only one person to blame.

(It’s not them, in case you had any lingering thoughts on the matter)

Structure— Just like obscure vocabulary, convoluted structure’s another common sign of writer ego. One of the most common forms of this is insisting on grammatical perfection. This usually mean a lot of rigid, formal text and very stiff dialogue. It’s when I get so insistent on proving I know the correct way to structure a sentence my words end up sounding forced and artificial. Also worth noting the flipside of this which is insisting I don’t need to follow any grammar or spelling conventions. Punctuation? Capitalization? Those are tired tropes for losers.

The second most common sign is needless complication. I can admit I used to write—or try to write—sprawling, impenetrable prose. Sentences that went on and on. Descriptions that never ended. It took someone two pages to step through a doorway because we had to know what kind of socks and underwear they were wearing and what flavor toothpaste they preferred. If they were mentioned in the text, I had to remind you of these facts and how they were posed at the exact moment they spoke. Believe me, if something could be explained or described in less than ten words, I’d find a way to do it in at least fifty.

And while I never got quite that bad, there are also some writers who choose arcane story structures or points of view or tenses. Just because they can. Things will go from non-linear first person musings to omniscient third person flashbacks to second person song lyrics and then to a telepathic gestalt mind that only speaks in one of those single, three page sentences I was just talking about. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things, in a general sense, but so often they’re not there to serve the story. It’s just an attempt to look cool and do cool things. If I want to do something like this, I should be able to explain why I’m doing it. And the explanation needs to better than “y’know… reasons,” or I’m just going to leave my readers confused and frustrated as they get knocked out of my story again and again.

Said—Sad admission, kind of going with the vocabulary point up above. For many, many years I didn’t use said. Said was, in my opinion, the lowest common denominator of dialogue descriptors. It’s the kind of word used by writers who weren’t going places, writers not destined for greatness, like I clearly was. Not only that, I’d try to never us the same descriptor on a page twice. So in my early work my characters would respond, retort, exclaim, demand, muse, mutter, sneer, snap, shout, snarl, grumble, growl, whimper, whisper, hiss, yelp, yell, exclaim, or ejaculate. 

Oh, grow up. It was a common dialogue descriptor for years. Really.

Of course, once I finally got to sit down and talk with a professional editor and show him a few pages, this was the very first thing he commented on. Truth is, nobody notices said on the page. It’s an invisible word. Yeah, of course there’s going to be times when my characters are hissing or shouting or gasping. But I should save those words for then so their impact hasn’t been used up and weakened. The vast majority of the  time… stick to said.

Names—If used in moderation, names are also invisible. If you think about it, they’re just a shorthand note for the mental image of my character or MacGuffin or whatever. And they help us keep things straight if I’ve got a bunch of people all talking together.

It’s worth mentioning many fledgling sci-fi or fantasy writers feel the need to rename a lot of things. Or everything. Characters have all-new, correct-for-this-world names and so do their pets. And their gods. And their elements. And their system of weights and measures, their money, their units of time…  It’s great worldbuilding, but I’d guess 83% of the time this is just wasted words.  My elaborate sci-fi empire won’t collapse if I call mind-to-mind communication telepathy, but it might if I keep calling it intralobeech, which, as we all know, is short for “intralobe speech.”

Which, as we all know, is telepathy.

Always remember that moderation is key. Even a simple name like Bob can stack up and get distracting really quick. Which is why the ancient ones created…

Pronouns–when those proper names start to stack up, we switch to pronouns.  Just like names are shorthand for story elements, pronouns are shorthand for those names. When nouns start to clutter up my writing, they’re there to leap in and shoulder the weight.  It’s how Hector becomes he, that mysterious island becomes there, and a Hudson Hornet becomes it.

The catch here is I need to make sure my pronouns are clear. No questions exceptionally clear, ‘cause the moment someone gets confused about which her I’m referring to, they’re going to stop reading my story and start studying the page. We’ve all had to do that, right? Feel our way though a paragraph so we’re clear who she is. Or work backwards through the dialogue, trying to figure out who’s speaking which lines. I’m always super-careful with pronouns, because I don’t want that happening to anyone in my books.

Again—pronouns good. Pronoun confusion—bad. And it’s a writing rule you can apply to real life.

So there they are.  Four simple ways to keep our collective heads down so readers don’t see us standing there. Staring at them. Waiting to be noticed.

Y’see, Timmy, every time I make my reader hesitate or pause just for a second, I’m breaking the flow of the story. I’m encouraging them to skim at best, put the book down at worst. My reader should forget they’re paging through the latest Peter Clines novel, hopefully forget they’re reading altogether. And the easiest way to make that happen is for them not to see the writing.

It’s tempting to wave our arms and shout and try to get the reader to admit they can see us, but all this does is ruin things for everyone. It’s like Sherlock Holmes showing how he came to his amazing deductions or a magician explaining their greatest illusion. That moment is when the whole thing falls apart.

As writers, we need to go unnoticed. We want our characters to be seen and our dialogue to be heard, yeah. We want our action and passion and suspense to leave people breathless, absolutely.

But we’re just distractions.

Next time… hmmmmm. Not sure. I’m open to requests or suggestions if anyone has any. If not, I might tell you about a conversation I recently had with someone about getting published.

Until then… don’t let me see you writing.

November 15, 2018 / 2 Comments

The Telephone Game

            Hey, here we are.  Exactly halfway through NaNoWriMo.  How are things going?  Hopefully you’re about halfway through your goals.  Don’t freak out if you’re not.  There’s still plenty of time to get caught up.  You’re going to nail this.
            Anyway, I had an interesting back-and-forth with my editor last month, and I thought it would be worth sharing with you.

            I’ve talked a bit in the past about dialogue descriptors.  They’re one of those things that can be a bit tricky at first.  I don’t want to use too many different descriptors, to the point that I’m distracting from what’s actually being said.  I also don’t want to fall into a habit of using too many proper names, but… I don’t want to overuse pronouns to the point of being confusing.  And really, if I can trim away excess descriptors altogether, that can really pick up the pace.  Unless they’re there deliberately for pacing reasons.

            Not confusing at all so far, right?
            So here’s a wild theory of mine I’d like you to consider.
            And it’s a bit rambly.  Sorry.
            I think, on an instinctive level, we tend to view—or hear, I guess—dialogue as a binary thing.  A back and forth between two people.  Wakko speaks to Dot, Dot replies to Wakko, Wakko replies to Dot, and so on. 
            Because this is such a normal and natural thing for us, it’s how we interpret most conversations.  If I show you a page of nothing but dialogue, the automatic assumption is going to be that it’s between two people.  A to B to A to B.  It’s just how things tend to line up in our minds.
            This gives us a lot of stuff to play with as writers.  If Wakko speaks to Dot, the inherent understanding is that Dot’s reply is going to be to Wakko.  Which means we don’t need to point out she’s talking to him.  Sure, I might need something  if there are five people in the conversation, but when it’s just one on one dialogue, constantly pointing out who’s talking and who they’re talking to this can be… excessive.  I mean, who else could Dot be talking to?  Does she think out loud a lot?
            Likewise, I don’t need to explain that Wakko’s responding to Dot.  I probably don’t even need to say who’s responding.  Again, my reader’s already thinking in a binary mode, so they’ll figure it out on their own.  They’ll probably be glad I’m not spoon-feeding it to them, to be honest.  Again, A-B-A-B-A-B… this isn’t tough for a reader to understand.  I don’t need to label each element of it.
            Now here’s something to keep in mind.

            Have you ever had to do something that’s very repetitive?  Maybe something at work, maybe something for fun.  Stapling forms, ping-pong, folding laundry, even just one of those toys where you hit the rubber ball with a paddle?  Anything where it’s just one-two -done, one-two -done, one-two-done, and so on?
            Personally, I’ve found that the real killer in these situations is stopping to think about what I’m doing.  The moment I consider howI’m whacking that rubber ball again and again and again is the moment I lose my rhythm.  It’s when I stumble and mess up and have to go back to square one.

            I think the same holds for dialogue.  I can keep that back and forth and back and forth going for pages if my rhythm’s good.  It’ll be fast and smooth and just amazing.
            But…
            The moment I give the reader a reason to think about that back and forth of dialogue—any reason—is the moment they’re going to stumble.  And when they stumble, they’re going to stop and have to backtrack.  I’ve knocked them out of the story, and now they’ve gone from reading and enjoying it to… examining and measuring it.
            So during these long stretches of back and forth dialogue, it’s not a bad thing to remind the reader who’s speaking at points.  Especially if there might be something going on with my actionor my structure that might make them question who’s speaking.  Again, I don’t want to risk a stumble.
            Now, going off something I brushed up against above…
            I think things get chaotic in dialogue when there are multiple speakers and the writer isn’t clear about it.  If I suddenly introduce Phoebe into the conversation between Wakko and Dot, this isn’t A-B-A-B anymore.  There’s a random C in there somewhere.  And if I don’t make it clear where it is, it’s going to make my reader stumble and break the flow.  Again, I want people reading my story, not analyzing it.
            So introducing that third element into the conversation is a great place for dialogue descriptors. In fact… I might go so far as to say it’s almost a necessary place for them.  I want to be very clear if it’s A, B, or C talking.

            Y’see, Timmy, we’re always going to keep defaulting back to that instinctive. binary, back-and-forth view of dialogue,.  A-B-A-B.  Unless I’m told otherwise, I’m going to assume the person speaking afterPhoebe is the person who spoke before Phoebe.  So once I’ve got three or four people in the mix, I need to be a lot more careful with where I do (and don’t!) use dialogue descriptors.  I don’t want my writing to get bogged down with them, but I need to be sure it’s always clear who’s speaking.

            Because I don’t want my dialogue to be C-A-C-A.
            Get it?  Poop joke.
            Hey, next week is Thanksgiving.  Which means no post on Thursday and, well… if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know what I’m going to talk about on Black Friday.
            But maybe I’ll do something unrelated and semi-interesting on Monday or Tuesday.
            Until then… go write.
April 27, 2018 / 11 Comments

Workhorses

            Very sorry for the delay. Taxes.  Jury Duty.  Making the New York Times bestsellers list with Paradox Bound.  And that’s just what I can talk about.  The past two weeks have been kind of crazy, and last Thursday was when it all caught up with me.  Well, Wednesday night, to be honest.
            But now that I’ve got my excuses out of the way…
            (did I mention the New York Times bit…?)
            I stumbled across an interview I did with author Jessica Meigs a few years back.  I said something that sounded vaguely profound.  Or, at least something I was trying to make sound profound…

            “I think people like radical new ideas, but sometimes—most of the time, honestly—they just want the basics. There’s only so many times you can go out and have a mesquite-smoked sirloin patty garnished with goat cheese and pine nuts on a croissant. It’s cool, but eventually you just want to have a cheeseburger.”
            If it sounds vaguely familiar, Stephen King’s said something similar a few times.  I think I may have been subconsciously mimicking him.  Plus, I’ve used cooking metaphorshere a few times.  Hopefully it’s not too obscure or vague as metaphors go.
            Now, I don’t watch a lot of cooking shows (used to love Kitchen Nightmares), but I’ve never heard anyone make the argument that we should all eat nothing but gourmet food.  I can imagine how much we’d all scoff at someone who campaigned to ban cheeseburgers.  And if anyone tried to tell me I’m a crappy cook because I don’t make my own pizza dough from scratch, I’d probably laugh in their face. And then not invite them over for pizza.
            But…
            Every couple of months I’ll see some new article about how aspiring writers should use better words. Better descriptions.  Better structures.  Only uneducated simpletons and talentless hacks would use verbs like said or was. You used redinstead of encarmine?  It’s cute that you’re trying to write for grade schoolers…
            None of this is true, of course.  And I can’t help but notice that the vast majority of people who make these declarations… well, they don’t tend to sell a lot of books.  In fact, I’d guess the majority of them aren’t even professional writers. Or even amateur writers.
            It keeps coming up, though. And aspiring writers keep trying to follow it.  And often they end up in this horrible downward spiral, progressing less and less as they try to make every sentence “better.”
            Possibly weird aside.  But it has a point.  Honest.
            There’s a type of riddle that often stumps people—the one with the obvious answer.  Those ones where we stop and think and think because the answer can’t be that simple.  I mean, isn’t the whole point of a riddle to trick you into giving the wrong answer?  So even if the simple answer fits all the requirements of the question, people will convince themselves it’s got to be something more complex and spend who knows how long trying to figure out what that unnecessarily complex answer must be
            When I’m telling a story, there’s going to be lots of times that call for simplicity over complexity.  It’s not uncommon for a short, straightforward sentence to have far more impact than a far more elaborately-crafted one.  A simple structure can be a faster, much more enjoyable read for my audience than a twisting, interwoven one.  And a basic character motivation is going to be much easier for my readers to grasp and relate to than one that needs thirty pages to explain.
            Let me mention two or three basic, solid writing devices that get a bad rap.
            It was/ he was/ she was—If I’m writing in third person, past tense (it’s not as dominant as it used to be, but I think it’s still the most common type of narration you’re going to stumble across), I’ll be coming across this form of “be” a lot.  If I’m leaning toward present tense—and that’s okay, a lot of the cool kids are doing it—I’ll probably see isjust as often.
            There are times was can be the sign of some needed work. Whenever I edit I tend to do a was pass and see how often I can turn things like “Wakko was running” into “Wakko ran.”  But sometimes, after all that running, I might just have “He was exhausted.”  Sure I could be a lot more descriptive and evocative, but there’s also going to be points where “He was exhausted” is quick, gets the information across, and lets me move on to other things.
            Said—The most basic dialogue descriptor there is.  Said is a classic. Quite literally.  People have been using said for almost a thousand years.  And it’s still around and still in regular use.
            I’ve talked about said a few times in the past, so I won’t go into too much here.  I just want to remind you that one of my first face-to-face interactions with an actual, book-buying, money-paying editor was him telling me to get rid of the dozens of different descriptors I was using on every page and replace 95% of them with said.  Let it do all the heavy lifting and save the special words for special occasions.
            Linear Structure—I also talked about this just a few months ago.  It’s very common for linear structure and narrative structure to run side by side.  It’s so common  because it’s the way we’re used to experiencing things.  Our brains are pretty much  programmed to accept stories this way, and if we’re given them in other ways we’ll try to mentally wrestle them into this format.
            Now, personally, I love a story that uses clever structure or devices to move the plot along.  I think most people do. That’s kind of the trick though—I’m using them to move the plot along.  If I have dozens of flashbacks that don’t really accomplish anything, or running the story backwards just because it sounded like a cool idea, I’m just making the story more complex for no reason.  And once my convoluted structure breaks the flow for the third or fourth time, well…
            Again, something like 85-90% of all fiction (numbers pulled from experienced ether) is going to have this very straightforward format.  There’s nothing wrong with it.  I shouldn’t be nervous about just… telling my story. 
            Y’see, Timmy, there’s nothing wrong with simplicity.  Nothing’s inherently good just because of overly-complex structure or incredibly obscure vocabulary.  My writing isn’t automatically better because I decided to use four syllable words rather than two syllable ones.
            And to be very clear—I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with complexity either.  Nothing at all.  There are some wonderfully complex books out there.  It’s when I insist that everything has to be one or the other that problems arise.
            Okay, that’s a lie.  Problems arise all the time.  Hell, I could shut this blog down if that was the only time problems arose…
            My point is, if I insist that everything has to be exquisitely crafted, impenetrably structured, polysyllabic sentences that run on for pages, collected in an order that would stump most cryptography software… my writing’s probably going to be very hard for most people to get into.  It’s going to be tough for it to have any kind of flow.  And it’s going to take me a very, very long time to get that first book done.
            And that means it’s going to be tough for me to have a lot of readers.
            Anyway… I’m going to go watch Infinity War now.
            Next time, enough about workhorses.  Let’s talk about cats and dogs.
            Until then… go write.

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