If you like sci-fi, fantasy, and occasional diatribes on writing and living, subscribe today to get the next post conveniently in your inbox!

Subscribe now

I’ve almost completed my first year at my MFA (dab). I couldn’t have gotten through without the learnings I’ve gained from writing on Substack. So, as a thank you to the community and my subscribers, I want to offer something in return: The collected wisdom of my time so far.

This wisdom isn’t just about Fiction or even Creative Writing. The more I learn, the more I see that everything I do is intimately connected. Teaching, writing, motorcycle riding, working out, project management…it’s all part of the human experience. What’s specific to my realm might just reach across to yours; while this wisdom is primarily for writers, all this stuff may prove useful for any and all human beings with minds and souls.

Also, if you read this, you are instantly an MFA candidate. Congratulations!

Character is Everything

Everything comes down to Character whether or not you’re crafting a sprawling space opera, dealing with difficult coworkers, or riding the bus wondering what your place is in the world. I am specifically talking about human Character, which I think boils out to two other elements: Internality and Behavior.

Thanks to all the smarty-pants writers here in my MFA, I’ve started using this word “Internality” (Is it a real word because MFA students and teachers use it? I MFA and therefore, I am?) almost every day. As I write and live I now ask myself: How do I get at this character’s internal state? How do I understand my own internality? How can I better share and access the internal mindsets of those around me?

It’s everyone’s responsibility to understand human behavior—theirs and others’. It’s a writer’s responsibility to present that behavior in delicious ways, even if your characters aren’t human. This is a strange lesson, as I’ve spent so much of my creative life trying to capture things outside human experience…But the only things that interest bring me back to humanity and exploring it.

Of course, “Character is Everything” is an ongoing experiment. I have failed often, recently. I just wrote a script for a screenwriting class that was technically correct, but came out awful because I missed the mark on both Internality and Behavior. The script left my readers with the kinds of questions one doesn’t want to hear: “Why would he say this?” “Is this line even necessary?” Worse yet, it was funny even though I had no intention of making it funny. This is a lesson for writing as much a living; we get Character wrong all the time. We assume we know someone and then have our whole world flipped around when someone reveals something about their Character.

If there’s one takeaway I want to leave you with, it’s this: Boldly fail with Character.

No Darkness is Out of Reach, or, Raise that Freak Flag

“Write what you know” is one piece of writing advice that’s parroted so often, and I can actually get behind it. For writers and not, this just means using your life experience to create and inspire truth. Doing anything less with your life might be the worst thing you could do to the world. I teach an English 101 class right now and we have very clear learning outcomes. The essential two are these:

Demonstrate rhetorical awareness in all modes of communication

Develop a reflective, recursive, and collaborative writing process

In trying to reach these outcomes, I first teach something called Rhetorical Context. I do this for two reasons: One, so they stay on task and don’t meander. Two, so they don’t overshare with their peers. Not every environment is right for every kind of information. But it doesn’t mean we can’t be ourselves. I want to approach this topic delicately. Many (white, male) writers have abused their privileges of mind to speak for others or even live out terrible fantasies. How do we know this? Well, they end up in scandals. They die and the skeletons barge out of their closets screaming.

That said, I think everyone needs to be free to open themselves up. We see it time and time again: someone who has strong beliefs but no real-life community becomes radicalized. Someone abused or attacked becomes an abuser. These cycles do not end unless we’re willing to build connections for healing. With writing, specifically, this means exploring all of our human experiences and—if the situation is right—sharing these things.

This means writing about what I see in the world: men are actively supporting the patriarchy and trying to take power away from women, how our government is constantly attacking people who are already at risk of losing hope or their lives, how God was not there for my loved ones when they needed him, how difficult and wonderful relationships are, how sex shouldn’t be so taboo, how people should just be allowed to be themselves, how our loneliness epidemic is entirely solvable, how suburbia is probably one of the worst inventions in human history…

For you, this could mean anything. If you grew up in a home where domestic violence was normal, what might that be like to share? If you’re looking around your city and you see a huge need that’s going unfilled, talk about it! If you grew up, like me, wealthy with easy living, what is it like to see the world through your eyes? I will caveat this with one guiding idea: consider your audience. While the world might be used to the rough draft thoughts from someone who just woke up with a Very Important Opinion, it doesn’t mean that you should share that. My favorite word from the second learning outcome above is “Recursive”. This means returning to start, revising, and following an internal system of understanding. In other words, do I know the shape of the ideas I’m trying to deliver? No? Time to revise and adjust. Just saying what I want to say without shaping it is tantamount to shouting. And the world has enough noise as it is.

Is it possible to “Be Yourself” while filtering or censoring yourself within a “Rhetorical Context?” Yes. Absolutely. I can prove it. You do this all the time when driving (or walking or riding a bicycle, etc). You have the way you do things. Other people have the way they do things. If you barrel through your life only doing things the way you want, what occurs? Being yourself in relationship to the world around you is a much truer and kinder version of being yourself. Some might call it conformity. I call it Differentiation.

Perhaps a better way to communicate this is with more questions: Who is the person you are in your most trusted, non-judgmental environment? Are you someone who cusses more? Who spends more time polishing your emails? Who does the dishes even when no one else does? Can you still be that person, doing things the way you do, without hurting others? Can’t you do that with your creativity?

This process of being (and writing as) yourself is a process. It’s a becoming. It’s Liberative. It’s not supposed to be Perfect from the first time or any time. Try this: What three words can you aspire to be?

My goal is to be a Kind, Fun, and Receptive soul. If I can be those in any given context, then I’m very happy.

Fuck with Time and Place (Setting)

I have often felt chained by the prior decisions my past self made. And sometimes those decisions are not easily undone. And besides my internal mindset and external behavior, the only other things I can affect are my Time and Place. I can spend time where I wish or change the setting of where I spend that time. But I can’t really change both at once. Time will always move no matter where I am. A place, once I’m there, will continue to be how it was after I leave. Even riding my motorcycle, I am constantly moving through different spaces and environs, but I can’t physically change what I’m doing while riding (for survival reasons). The illusion of our digital age is that we can control both. We “can” be doing anything, anytime, anywhere. But really, we’re still people in bodies doing only one thing well or multiple things poorly.

Creatively, the same seems to be the same. If you fuck with time (making it sticky, flowy, or irregular like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf), then you must keep characters in one place. Readers (and all people) need something to latch on to. Inversely, fucking with setting requires that time be consistent (unless you’re going for a span of abstraction). What happens when you mess with time and setting in reality and in stories? You lose continuity, causality, and plot. We can only make relationships with ideas that are somewhat salient or concrete. If nothing is concrete, always changing, patternless, then there is no reasoning. Aesthetics and vibes can be an experience on their own, I will say. But in terms of telling a story, or making meaning from the stories of our lives, we need something to anchor us.

If you’re lost, find your anchor. If you’re stuck, change your environment or change the things that you spend your time on. Accepting the power you do have and exercising it will deliver patterns and ideas and change; both for your creative ideas and for your daily living.

Stop Filling, Start Inviting

This wisdom goes two ways: inward and outward. We live in an age of information gluttony. There is little room in our minds. There is also little room in other people’s minds. All of us are running around with no extra space to make relationships between each other and all our information. This is antithetical to Character; We’re not empty voids with infinite space. We’re relational, creative, emotional beings. We’re more like mushrooms than whirlpools; our neurons grow and connect and share energy.

As a teacher, I’m learning this lesson every day. My college students do not have minds starving for my experience and wisdom. They are their own beings with their own wisdom. It’s my job to create the environment of learning, where a mixture of work, group activity, and awkward silence might give some of them the chance to make their own connections. What this requires of me is to set aside my objectives for them. My ego, pride, and ideas on “good writing” come last. Even grammar is not as important as their own learning. Oddly, it seems like I am helping them learn how to teach themselves. I am inviting them to a party of their own learning, where they might make a playground of their minds. We all need sandboxes to play in, but even sandboxes have boundaries. When creativity meets structure, ideas grow.

And so this relates to many things. Mushrooms, writing, college classrooms, and more. I have to wonder if I’m so used to filling up my mind and time with stuff that I don’t really think about what space I’m creating for my own learning and living. My pursuits and fixations don’t always behoove my ability to make connections, which means that focusing and working are hard too.

This might just be a messy diatribe on our digital age. But it seems to matter to everything. Here’s what I wish for myself: Invite things into my world that help me grow; cut out the rest.

To What End?

What is the point of it all? I am always wondering. Where are all my decisions leading? I wish I knew. I know what I want them to lead me to. But what I want changes all the time. I’m beginning to think that goals matter less than doing what seems right in the moment—not just what feels right. I’m talking about passion tempered by experience.

What does it mean to live without outcomes? This might terrify and confuse everyone. I’m not even sure how it works.

When I was working on my first novel, I was so hell-bent on it being the thing to make me a famous author that when it didn’t happen I was crushed. It was in this crushed state I saw things more clearly. My goal was unrealistic. It was a self-serving fantasy that got in the way of loving the work of writing a novel. It was selfish and gratuitous in that way too. My dream only served to massage my ego. Living for one shape of a dream doesn’t give room for life to evolve or change into something better. To those of you who already live flexibly, this is probably obvious. To those of us who hold too tightly to the things in our head, here’s another thought that’s helped me: “I didn’t get what I wanted. I got something better.”

To what end do we do anything? What is the purpose or finish line?

Who knows?

Walk the road and see where your hard work and luck takes you.

In conclusion…

I’m always telling my students to use their conclusion to not only tie things together, but to deliver something memorable and actionable. So, here’s my attempt:

Explore character. Go to your dark places. Use your weird in everything. Mess (fuck) with time and place. Create spaces for invitational relationships. Let go of your outcomes.

And keep writing (and living)!

YOU ARE NOW AN MFA CANDIDATE

These are the books that I read last year - with a little tidbit about the truth I learned from each one. If I could prescribe these books to all human beings, I would.

They go: Book Title by Author, genre; the truth I learned.

I’ve linked the books to the author’s websites and places to buy the books, if you like how they sound. They are in no order of importance. :)

1. Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer, an Eco-thriller;
   We should never lie to ourselves, and we need to make better choices for the health of the world.

2. The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie, a grimdark fantasy;
   Anger and anarchy are the results of selfishness, and my moral compass is not as good as I think it is.

3. The Book of Hours by Raina Maria Rilke, poems written to God;
   In these poems, I found a language for my doubts and fears.

4. Dune by Frank Herbert, a sci-fi novel;
   I am “the chosen one” of my own life. I have power and influence in my sphere.

5. Version Control by Dexter Palmer, a literary sci-fi;
   My life choices are not irreversible. I can always do the next right thing, or, I can change my life’s trajectory.

6. The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton, a summation of Western philosophy;
   There is no escape from my life’s woes, but it is those woes that make life worthwhile.

7. Faith After Doubt by Brian McLaren, Christian philosophy;
   There is a place in my soul for God and hope, even outside evangelical Christianity.

8. Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, genre-blending speculative fiction;
   Love is more powerful than death.

9. Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang, sci-fi/fantasy short stories;
   Short stories are the most provocative art form, and I need to master them.

10. The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, fantasy;
    There is nothing better than a good book. That’s all.

11. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, apocalyptic fiction;
    I have everything we need and want, right now, and I should be grateful for it.

12. Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey, memoir;
    If I want to have joy, I need to say yes to life’s twists and turns and opportunities; that’s livin’, baby.

13. The Hidden Girl by Ken Liu, sci-fi short stories;
    Unless I make peace with my world as it is today, I will be unprepared for tomorrow.

14. Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth, gothic fiction;
    The foundation of my fears is based in the unknown. I fear what I don’t understand more than anything else.

And there you have it!

Looking forward to new books, new truths, and new adventures in 2022!

Best,

Zachary

Share

If you’ve ever said…

“I wish I knew how to write.”

“I have a book idea, but…”

“I’m not a good enough writer…”

Or any variation on these statements, this post is for you.

Truth is, no writer is a writer until they start writing. Even me, someone who loves to call himself a writer and couldn’t live without writing, was once not a writer at all.

Not long ago, I was someone who wanted to write. Who liked the idea of writing more than the actual work of it. For me, the change came when I got sick of the fantasy of writing. I became a writer when I stopped letting anything get in the way of putting my ideas on paper.

In today’s age, everyone has to write. Emails, proposals, presentations, social media posts, all require a certain savvy. But this does not automatically qualify as “I’m a writer” writing. What qualifies is the writing you want to do, thereby bringing your project and idea to life.

I wouldn’t call myself a writer if I didn’t write almost every day. If I didn’t try and finish the story I started or this very blog I had an idea for.

I have a list of ideas to help you start writing. They’re in the order that makes the most sense to me and sort of makes a funnel shape: \/

We’re going to start with motivation and big ideas, then get into the nitty-gritty. I won’t say that everyone needs to follow each step, but I will say that each one can be helpful to everyone who wants to write.

Here’s an overview of my five steps:

1. Choose a direction for your writing.

2. Write what you love and know.

3. Choose your writing tools.

4. Join or start a writer’s group.

5. FUCKING WRITE (pardon the french)!

• Developing the write ideas…

• Word count goals will save you!

This brings us to our first idea:

1. Choose a direction for your writing

Novels? Short stories? Genre fiction like sci-fi, fantasy, romance? Historical fiction? Non-fiction? Essays for publication? Poetry? This list could go on forever, which is exactly how it should be. Everyone, everywhere, should be able to write what they want.

I believe in the power of words, in the act of writing, and the ability of words to change us and create new realities. I love reading and getting caught up in an amazing story, getting carried away to new worlds and ideas. There’s nothing like it. I’ve read books that made me depressed when they were over.

Very few things in life have that same power. That’s the power of writing. To create worlds, to change minds, to take disparate ideas and combine them into something new.

So, ask yourself, what do you want to create?

You don’t have to answer this question clearly to know where to begin. Sometimes you have to start writing to figure it out.

And maybe my next step can help you…

2. Write what you love and know.

Think about your passions, your interests, your ideas. When you read, are you drawn to mysteries or political theory? Do you enjoy biographies or current events? The truth is, you can write whatever you want, so start with what you like. That’s what I did. I loved sci-fi and fantasy stories that ended in tragedy, so that’s where I started.

What do you love? What can’t you get enough of? Think of those things.

The beauty of writing what you love and know is that it can inform your other writing! For example, I love architecture. I use this passion for architecture to describe buildings in beautiful and more precise ways. I can visualize my characters in a creepy renaissance mausoleum or a post-modern plywood cabin. In this way, I can take all the subjects I love and know about and incorporate them into my writing. All ideas inform new ideas!

That’s why it’s important to read, listen, watch all kinds of things. You never know how your brain will recycle seemingly useless information into a golden egg. To write what you love, consume more of what you love. You will be so full of ideas your mind might explode into the next great American novel.

So, write something similar to what you’re most passionate about. Do fan-fiction. Start a beer blog. Whatever it is—write it down. This brings us to the next step:

3. Choose your writing tools and methods.

(These are the nitty-gritty tips that may or may not be right for you.)

When you sit down to your daily word count, turn off your computer’s wifi. It’s the easiest way to block distractions.

Write in a place that’s comfortable but not distractible to you. My favorite places to write (if they’re open) are coffee shops. There’s people around, but I don’t have to talk to them. There’s coffee and snacks, but no dishes, laundry, or TV to hijack my brain.

Okay, okay, but how should you write? As in, what’s the best tool, application, or website? I wouldn’t spend too much time on this aspect of writing, as it will definitely lead to procrastination.

Right now, I use Scrivener. It’s like Microsoft Word on steroids and works the best for me. It offers formatting for whatever kind of writing you want to do. Journal-submitted papers, short stories, poetry, essays, you name it. I recommend Scrivener over everything else. It’s only $49 for a one-time purchase!

The usual writing suspects:

Microsoft Word is great. It’s the original.

Google Docs is also great. Especially for collaboration and sharing.

Pages (for Apple users) is my least favorite. It’s clunky and doesn’t play well with the other word processors. It’s the only child of the bunch.

4. Join or start a writer’s group.

No writer should exist in a vacuum unless you plan to write stuff and bury it in your computer’s folders. If this is you, skip this section.

Every writer that plans on having people read their work needs feedback. The best way to get this feedback, I’ve found, is in a critique group. For your group to work properly, it should have a few characteristics:

- 3 to 8 people (any less than three and there’s not enough diversity of thought, any more than 8 and it gets hard to read everyone’s stuff)

- Meets at least once a month

- Everyone reads each other’s work, offers grammar corrections, thinks up questions, and offers ideas

- At each meeting, the writer is silent while critiques are delivered

These groups can make someone’s decent writing great. They can save a piece from the garbage bin and help the writer get out of a rut. God knows how many times my writing group has pushed me on when I felt like giving up. With the right mix of people, you’ll find other writers who encourage you, challenge your work, and make it better.

Where do you find the people?

Meetups and Facebook can help you find local groups, but I recommend creating your own group. If you announce that you’re starting a writer’s group at work or among friends, you’ll no doubt discover other people who want to write. They, too, might know people that want to write. This process can easily produce enough people for one group of eight, which is perfect.

The problem with joining an existing group is that you don’t know if you’ll jive well with them. It’s a bit like dating. You have to find the right blend of personalities who have similar writing goals to you, otherwise you won’t feel compatible. If you commit to a group that doesn’t suit your goals and interests, then you might find yourself in an unhealthy relationship. This will stifle your writing, fill your soul with resentment, and inevitably lead to a bad breakup.

Do yourself a favor and don’t settle for a writing group (or a relationship for that matter).

My group has consistently met for over a year. We set aside three hours, once a month to go over our work. The week before the meeting, we upload our pieces to Google Docs so everyone has a chance to read them and critique them. Our word count limit is three thousand. Three-thousand words times each person is plenty to read, edit, and make comments on.

And last, but most important…

5. Fucking WRITE!

Pardon the french, but you can’t skip this step. This is the thing that will turn you into a writer [cue fireworks and cocktails]. This is usually the step people stop at. I’m here to help you get over this hump. I will save you or write trying.

I hear so many people say they get bogged down by thinking about their whole idea for their book/story/blog/etc. They imagine writing the entire book, having the blog developed, or their completed essay, and then get overwhelmed. I used to do the same thing and empty the steam out of me before I really got going.

Here’s what I do now: I put the idea down and do some “proof of concept” writing before I ever tell a soul.

That’s right. Nobody.

Developing the write ideas…

As soon as I get an idea I really like, I write as much as I can to get it out of my head. Whether I get down a hundred or a thousand words doesn’t matter. The first draft of whatever I write is bound to change. What’s most important, to me, is to finish a first draft as fast as possible.

This first draft tells me a lot about my idea. I can usually feel out if I like the concept still, or if it’s worth spending more time on. For a short story, I might spend one or two days writing the bulk of the text, then let it sit. If I’m still drawn to it a week (or many weeks) later, then I’ll come back to it with a passion.

Be flexible with your writing, patient with yourself, and let things go if you need to. When I can’t figure out how to make a piece of writing work, I move on to the next idea. Forcing something to work will leave the story starved for freedom.

Word count goals will save you!

Word count goals have pushed me onward when motivation lacked, when I felt lazy, when I didn’t get enough sleep the night before. That infuriating little number is what keeps me focused, gives me persistence.

In martial arts, there’s a drill called Strong First Move. The idea is to nail the first move in a form or technique so the muscle memory kicks in. Practicing the first move helps the mind connect it to the next move and so on. If you hit your daily word count, this becomes the strong first move that your writing needs. As you write more and more, you will become more proficient at writing. Every time you sit at your computer to bust out another chunk, your muscle memory will activate.

I recommend starting your writing project, whatever it is, with a small, achievable daily word count. Five hundred words for stories, blogs, and book ideas. One poem a day for poetry writers. Get yourself to stick to this goal every day for a week. When you’re done, you could have a few solid blog posts, five poems, a complete short story, a first book chapter. It’s a significant and powerful first step.

You will become comfortable sitting and writing for however long it takes to reach your word count goal. It took me three months of writing 1000 words a day (I didn’t have a day job at the time) before I could write 1500 words a day. Three months after that, I could do 2000. Three months after that, 3000. This all started one day when I decided to get down a few hundred words of an idea. You can do the same. But don’t wait…FUCKING WRITE!

Leave a comment

And thus, the end…

To summarize (in a different order):

1. Answer this question for yourself: What do you want to write?

2. Set a word count, pick a word processor, and find a group.

3. FUCKING WRITE (can’t say this enough)!

Questions? Caveats? Reactions?

Subscribe now