Scribe

There's magic, there's witches, they're lesbians. And there you go.

I'm not going to lie. Listening to a Johnny Gamber soliloquy for an hour and a half would have been kind of cool.

Yeah, that might be.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Sure. So I am. I haven't been wanting to stare at a screen when I come home from work because I spend all day long staring at a screen. So I am just finishing up the book Harrow the Ninth, which is a lesbian space opera with lesbian necromancers in space. So it combines all sorts of fun stuff and lots of murder and mayhem. So that's kind of fun. Yeah, it's. It's. It's a little wacky. Some people got confused about it and thought that it was a romance and it. It really is not. There's a lot of murder and death, lots of story fighting, which so. Well, I mean, granted, there is some sexy times in there, but not a lot. And then on top of that, I've been letting Spotify pick some music for me and I. I talked on RSVP last week a little bit about some of the things that had been picking for me, and I inadvertently found some weird Nordic folk chanting stuff. I find it really soothing, but I have to turn it off. When Chris comes into the room, she finds it real creepy. There's this, like, undertone of, like, voices.

It's like Midsummer in your house.

Not. Not quite that bad, but there's, like, lots of, like, weird music going on, and it's. It's. It's so weird. It's like, I. I don't really pay attention to it. It's just in the background, kind of, like, droning. But, yeah, Chris hates it so much.

I'll. I'll send you some links. And then, like, the first time she saw it on the screen, she's like, are. Are they white supremacists? What are you listening to? Like, that's because there's, like, runes and stuff, and several of the bands have come out and said, we are not white supremacists. This has nothing to do. We are not commenting on, like, current political climates. We just are making our folk music that is steeped in history, which we are not.

Ace of Bass.

Yeah. Yeah. So. So, yeah, it's just. It's a little weird. It's a little funky. I'll send you some links, Johnny, because it's. It's weird, and it's just some, like, weird, like, Spotify just. It does not know what to do with me in terms of music. I get really, really weird suggestions. So, yeah, that's. That's been fun and also weird at the same time. And then I am writing with a hacked Squire. I've got this adrift, and I don't know if you saw the pictures. I bored out the little nose cone on it, and it now holds an Energel Pro refill, and it is the smoothest thing ever. So it just took my. My Squire experience and, like, quadrupled it in enjoyability, and it was super easy. I put. I put up a post on Comfortable Shoes Studio about how to do it, and then I've also been using a metallic Staedtler Norica I found over the weekend at Staples. They're apparently an exclusive thing, which means, you know, they'll be exclusive to staples for, like, 15 minutes, and then after that, everyone else will also carry them.

It's more like the Ticonderoga. I can't speak. It's more like the Ticonderogas, but with better colors, if that makes sense. There's, like a. A blackish silvery color. There's a blue, there's a coppery color, and then there's one that's pinkish. So it's slightly better colors than the Ticonderoga. And also Norica lead inside, so significantly Better writing experience than the Made in Mexico Ticonderogas.

Yeah, these have a little bit of that. They're. They're subtle but not super sparkly, if that makes sense.

And I'm getting ready for nano and composition notebooks and I've been working on all kinds of stuff in my work playthrough.

So I've been getting back into. For a long time. I've always had this interest in like magic and sleight of hand and I had been dipping in and out of it. And then several years ago I was working in the city and there's a magic store in Harold Square called Tannen's Magic Shop. They've been around for like 100 years and they were holding lessons and so I was taking lessons there for. It was like a two month. Once a week I'd go there after work. And lately my son has really been getting into magic. We watch Magic for Humans on Netflix, the Justin Wollman show. We actually attended one of his live zoom magic shows, which is really fun. And, and, and my son had a blast with it. And so I've been getting back into it. So I've been reading two, like standard books for card technique, which is Expert Card Technique and Expert at the Card Table by SW Ordnance. And they're. I mean these books are written. I. I think Expert at the Card Table is written in like 1900 and expert card technique was written in 1940. But they, they have withstood the test of time because they are just like these. You want to learn how to do a false cut or a second. A second deal or any of these like cool gambling and magic techniques. These are the books you go to for that. So I've been digging through those because I unlike less and I. I'm so jealous of you because I have not been able to focus on reading for six months and this is the first thing I've actually been able to sit down and read more than two pages of. So that's, that's what I've been really working on. I've got. My office at home is just like I've got eight or nine decks sitting on my desk that I've just been messing around with. And then I've been. This year I'm doing all of my novel prep digitally. Sorry listeners, but I did pull out. I've been working with a Blackwing 24 of which I blew through most of them. On the last nano book I did, and I'm using a field notes. I think it's a lager edition. It's the. The like, dark, reddish brown one. It's. Yeah, I think it's a logger. I can't remember. And then I actually have been using a. As part of a new, like, journaling system I developed. I've been using the old. I don't remember what the edition was called, but it's a Baron Fig Vanguard with the space stuff on it. It's black background with all the red space stuff on it. So, yeah, that's what I've been using.

But.

Might have been it. Yeah. It's got a. It's sort of a pattern. So it's this, like, red line drawing pattern all over. Yeah, that must have. That must have been it.

Yeah, I didn't. I didn't buy this one. Joey gave it to me when we hooked up for coffee one day. He just. He's like, here's to take some stuff. And this is one of the things he gave me. So I've been sitting on a bag. Huh?

Yeah.

Yeah. But no, he. Yeah, so that's been sitting on my shelf for, like, over a year. Two years. And I finally found a use for it. So.

No. Well, because I know when I heard that they were doing it, I was like, they screwed up Sherlock, so I'm not gonna watch this.

Like I was listening to David Sedaris last night. He was doing whatever their, their fiction show is at late at night they do, you know, someone reads a short story. And I think he was hosting it last night, so I was listening to him.

Yeah.

Cool.

Sure, yeah.

Yeah. So I just introduced my latest zine, Useful Journaling. I had a. I'd written a manuscript in like 2012 about basically journaling and art journaling and just shelved it when I decided to go back to school. I just didn't have time to really deal with it. I didn't have time to, you know, take the photographs for it. So I took that and I have torn it apart. I've taken all of the journaling bits and grouped them together in like headings, so like themes. And I'm basically going to do little 16 page pocket size zines that are themed around different aspects of journaling. And it's not just going to be written journaling. So it's going to combine writing and art into journaling. So yeah, I did a, I did a print run of 80 and I didn't expect to sell them all, but I sold them all in a weekend, which is kind of amazing. And I'm going to do. So I did a color cover and I inherited, I inherited my mother gave me when she cleaned out her classroom after she retired a color printer and the process of it moving from her classroom back into her home and then being shipped down to Massachusetts. It's not in the greatest of shape and it was a nightmare to print all of those full color covers. And I went through an entire yellow toner cartridge because it's just like the transfer sheet is all banged up and I basically need to replace the transfer roller in it and then it'll be fine. But it was just like I got this really, really nice, smooth Neenah white. Just the crispest, greatest cardstock. I was like, oh, it's gonna prints so beautifully on it. And it couldn't pick it Up. It was too smooth. It was just like, oh, you think you're gonna get good prints? No, I, I got maybe 10 decent prints on that paper. And then I, I had some old color laser photograph paper and that's what I did the rest of the like 70 copies with. And that actually looks amazing. And it's kind of like a mess as well, which I kind of like. But the next print run of it, I'm gonna do another 50 copies. I'm doing it black and white on a super bright yellow cardstock that I snagged for no money, which is going to be amazing. So, yeah, I, I'm just, I'm really excited about it. I'm having a lot of fun, like learning how to do layout on the computer instead of doing it all by hand. But yeah, so that I'm doing that. And then, you know, I just posted about hacking the Baron Fig Squire to take an Energella refill and a bunch of other changes that are going to come through on Comfortable Shoes, Studio, and all the other stuff that I do. So a lot of stuff in the works.

I used a 18 inch drill bit for wood masking taped to a skewer well, because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to take out too much and I didn't do it too quickly. And my tendency is I'm. If I'm going to do it, I'm going to, I'm going to go in there, I'm going to do it and do it hard. Which sounds kind of, kind of wrong, but. Yeah. So like it forced me to use a gentle hand while I did the boring. Um, and then I really only went down maybe not even a quarter of an inch because I really wanted to leave as much of the nose cone in there as I possibly could because it keeps it from wobbling around. So it still has that really nice fit around the tip of the, of the refill. So it doesn't wobble at all. And then so it feels just like a regular refill in there. And then you do have to cut the. Cut the energel refill down to like 77 millimeters. So.

It really, it was, it really wasn't. It's just like a drill bit and then using like boring it out by hand because it. There's not. You're not removing a lot of aluminum from it. You just like. It's like a tiny, tiny bit. It's like the difference in the size of that tube between the energel refill and the Baron Fig refill is less than a millimeter. So it really, it just taking out a tiny amount of material to make

it fit just enough for clearance.

Yep. Yep.

Nice.

Yeah. And it works really nice. I was, I was like, well I can either really screw up this collectible pen or make it better. And so I was real careful. Made it better.

I do. I have a, I only have two listed but I have a third. I'm going to talk about apologies. So the first one is I. About a month ago I came up with a. Or I released a, a blog post on my blog curiousrat.com about this sort of. It's sort of bullet journaling/GTD system. But it was a way for me to get back into the swing of things with the. I just gotten a new job and I. Oh, congrats. Thank you. And I had been out of work for like six months so it was nice to finally get back on my feet and I wanted a way to keep track of my to do lists on both the work side and the, the regular life side. So you know, laundry and errands and all that fun stuff. So I call it the Work Life Task System. And that's what I was. I'm using the, the Baron Fig the vanguard for. And basically what it is is a, a method of. It's not designed around how much you can get done each day. It's really designed about. Around how much you check your email each day and how often you check your email and how late you check your email during the day. Because what I found was I come from a legal background. I used to, I'm not a lawyer, but I used to work in a law firm and, and with them, you know, if you're not checking your email up until the second you close your eyes at night, you're not doing enough. So to sort of break myself of that habit, I wanted to devise a system that sort of kept me honest about how often I was checking my email. So it's all about recording the latest time you check your email each day and then how late you check it each month and just keeping track of it and trying to get that time a little earlier each day. Time each day, each month, each week. And so the other part of this is a lot of to do lists have. It's a one, a one step system. So you do the task and it's done. But at work. Most tasks are two step. You get the task from someone you work with and then you have to send it back to them. So I have a two step system built into this where not only is it complete on my side, but then it's completely done when I fill in the bubble and send it back to them. So it's totally, you know, free up for grabs. I didn't write a book or anything for it, but it's on curiousrat.com if you scroll down, if you post, it's the one with the star next to it. I was also on a show called Analog Joe. Joe Bulig hosts this show where he talks about all these analog methods and tools and stuff he uses. So he had me on to talk about it and I gave a whole keynote presentation on it. So that was fun. Thanks. And. And then my podcast sitcom, the Shelf Life is nominated for an Audio Verse Award, Best new Audio play Production. For those who haven't heard it, it is a. Each episode's about 10 minutes. It's a sitcom with a laugh track set in a fictional bookstore. And you know, Johnny's been on it, Andy's been on it, Tim has been on it. I Stu from 1857 has been on it. Actually, he's one of my co stars. So that's up for an award. And the last thing is I released my 2017 Nano book as an actual downloadable novel. So it is available for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books and Nook. It's called the Prophet. It's about a. It's a dual POV book told from the perspective of both a young girl in a cult and then the private detective trying to get her out of the culture. And that is available on gumroad, not on Amazon.com because f them and. But you can still get the Kindle version on Gumroad. We'll put a link in the show notes and actually the link to my stuff that is in the show notes, my link tree address has the link to the book in it. So you can get it there too. Cool.

Sure.

Was that. Was it you or Andy who said it looks like you have like a portable Bible with you?

Andy, I think.

Is it Andy?

Yeah, it was Andy last. Last episode.

No, this is. This is like. It reminds me of the Baptist study Bibles.

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like I, they. But they're a little bigger than this too. But it has that same kind of Bible cover feel, so. But yeah.

Well, I mean this is definitely cooler than a Bible cover, but. Yes.

Nice.

I got the forest green, which is more of a like what I would consider because you know, I'm of the 90s. A sage color. It's more sage green than forest green. Forest green is so much darker.

Yeah.

But this is, it's a super nice green color. It's got like, it's kind of like a dusty green.

I really thought I'd hate it. If I'm going to be completely honest, I, I did not think I was going to like it. I thought it was just, you know, just another cover, you know. And I, I use a little hit tefa bag in bag thing that I usually will. Yeah, yeah. It's super nice. You know, it stores everything. It's really like. It just contains things in my bag. So like if I want to like just. I keep my journal in there and then a bunch of writing things and then I'll just grab that and throw it in my bag. I do like this so much. It feels really nice. It feels a lot better than the Lil hit. Lilith. Lilit. How the, how the hell do I say that?

I'm gonna go with Lilith. And so it, you know, it just has a much nicer. It feels like better quality which is good because it's like four times the price. But I like how nicely it holds everything. It just feels really nice. So I really thought. I hate it.

But yeah.

Yeah.

I really like the yellow of the zipper, too. And then when you open it up and where the. Where the pen sits, it's got those. The little yellow stitches. That bracket where the pen sits. That is just. It's a sweet little detail that I really enjoy. It's the kind of stuff Baron Fig does. That's awesome.

Is the zipper good? Because I always find on those kinds of covers, especially near, like, when you zip it up to the top corner and then you try to unzip it, it always gets caught. Is it. Is it like that, or is it smooth?

You know, on any other podcast, that sounds very suggestive.

Yeah.

And I don't want to know why.

Because he's wearing a onesie.

Do they have footies, though, in the footy pajamas?

The trap door in the back.

Oh, yeah,

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

I do not.

No.

When you were in Massachusetts, did you ever become acquainted with building 19? No, it was like a salvage surplus store that was kind of like that. They went out of business through mismanagement and a bunch of other stuff. But it sounds kind of like that, only trashier.

Oh, I've never heard of those.

I was. I was in a Target yesterday and I was just like, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I actually do all my food shopping at 9 o' clock at night now because the Wegmans is open till midnight and I'll go at nine. No one's in there. I get all the stuff I need. I don't have to worry about being around other people because I can't be around other people anymore. I've turned into just a total xenophobe about this.

Yeah.

Which episodes did I get? Episode. Which issues did I get?

That's 1 and 2.

They're cool. I really like how they came out.

Yeah, they're super.

I'm good.

I went before I started.

So did I.

It's a challenge. I think that's. I think that's what really understatement like, pulls me towards it is that it's a huge challenge to do. And also because I'm mildly competitive, it kind of pushes me to finish something that I've started or get something started because I'm big into inertia because once I stop, I don't continue. And if I don't start, I never start. So, yeah, it's a good way to motivate myself to start.

Yeah, I agree with that. I've been sitting out on an idea for a couple years now that I've wanted to write. And I figured, um, you know, why not now? And I think especially this year, it is nice to have something with all of the. The turmoil and all the Sturman drawing going on with COVID and everything, and unemployment. It's nice to have a constant. And this is constant. Like this, this happens every year. Because originally I was like, who. Who wants to do this this year? Like, this is nuts. Like, who would, who would want to dedicate 16, 1700 words a day in November, in 20, 20, of all years to doing this. And then I was thinking more about it, and I was like, well, no, this is. This is the time to do it. This is the thing that'll sort of catapult me back into. And I say this with the highest of hopes and knowing full well how this is going to end for me, but, you know, this is something that'll sort of catapult me back into the productivity I had been missing because I've been. I've been writing this whole time. I write for another podcast, and I'm. I have a deadline to get four stories done every week, but I. To get back into my own writing was impossible. And I. I'm looking at this as. As something I'm hoping to sort of push me back into it.

I think I've taken part in it five or six times, and I think I've won about half of that. I know I lost last year brutally. Just. I got two days in, and then it was just like, yep, work. No work. Work just took over my life last year. And also, you know, I. My mom was diagnosed with cancer shortly. Shortly after the beginning of the month, I think something along those lines. And it was just like, I have no brain for NaNoWriMo right now. Not gonna happen. So. But yeah, what about.

I am an aspirational NaNoWriMo competitor. I always start off okay for, like, the first week. And then, so, like, 2017, I competed. That was. That was the profit that was. And I wrote that one entirely in pencil. That was my first mistake. And I got, I want to say, 25,000 words by the end of the month, which, honestly, writing in pencil for a couple hours a day was not terrible. And I. It. But the problem was because I wrote it in pencil and I refused to use anything else to finish it. It took me two years to finish it. So I finally got it done in 2019, but it just. It took me forever to get there. And Then I've done Camp nanowrimo, which is the one they do in July, which to me is far more sensible. I mean, who wants to do. Who wants to write 50,000 words in the month with Thanksgiving? But, you know, fine, but I've done the one in July. And again, I did it this past year. I did it in 2020 to sort of get me back into writing a little bit and to work on something that I wasn't dead set on publishing. I started this horror story, thriller horror story that I just had an idea for and I just wanted to get something on paper and that was fun. And then this year I'm. I'm doing an actual novel. I plan on querying to agents. So we'll. We'll see how it goes.

So in the past, every year that I've won, I have taken a day off in the early part. So like the second, third, or fourth. And I spend that first weekend front loading my words. So I'll write like 10,000 words in just that weekend just to front load it just so I can. Because I know that if, depending on what happens around Thanksgiving, I might be driving six hours up to Maine, I might be driving two hours out into Western Mass to be. Depending on which family we're visiting and spending time with. Of course, this year, I mean, I know what we're doing for Thanksgiving and getting. Getting tested for Covid before I drive six hours is not really a treat. But so, you know, I, I'm definitely. I have my. I have the second scheduled off. I have a couple of things I have to do that day, but that first weekend I'm going to front load as many words I can into it to hope that I. I can get the 50, 000 words. I am a little less organized this year than I have been in the past. My writing over. So I, I have written on and off all throughout the pandemic. And I've also. Well, so it's. It's. It's not great, Harry. It's not great.

Not great, Bob.

Not. Not doing great things here. I. So I have spent a fair amount of time just staring at the wall to, to, to be completely honest, but I have three, no, four different novels that I've been working on, all written by hand, spread out among composition notebooks and normally at the start of nano. I am. I have an outline done. I know where I'm going with my story this, this time. I. I might just work on some of the novels that I haven't finished yet. I might finish up. I've got one that is ready for me to send in. I know where it's going. I just have like four more chapters that I need to finish and then I can type it and send it in to a publisher that's accepting unagented authors. Well, it's a particular type of publisher. But anyway, moving on from there.

Where's that zipper sound again?

We need sound effects. But anyway, so, yeah, so I don't. I have no outline. I don't know what I'm doing. I. I really just. I don't know what I'm doing other than, other than taking a day off and front loading it. That's. That is that. And that's worked for me every year that I have one. Except for the fact that I don't have an outline this time. No outline.

That's always been my folly in doing this is I've always either gone in with no outline or a very meager, unfleshed out outline. And the last time. So I think when I started the Profit, I had about the first eight or nine chapters left outlined. And after that I just sort of like lost it. I didn't know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to take the story. Um, and this time I've been working through a book called the 10 Day Outline by Louis Jorstad. I will tell you this. I started this back in September. It has taken a lot longer than 10 days, but I'm far better in terms of, of where I am with my story and how I want it to progress. And literally every scene is now plotted out. So even if I don't finish the whole 10 day outline, I have a much better grasp on my characters, on the scenes I want to write, and how everything flows than I have ever had before. And I'm hoping that that will give me the jumpstart I need to really get going and getting words on the page because I honestly spend half the time just wondering like, all right, now what? And then I've written myself into a corner.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can't imagine.

My mind went somewhere else.

Yeah, mine too.

You know, that's. That's really hard, though, because you're. You're building. You know, with a novel, you're living in one world for that month, but with short stories, you're building a new world with every story you're writing. That's got to be damn hard.

I've done it twice. I did it once in, like, 2014, 2015, and then I did it with 2017. The first one was done all with pen, which is much easier, and this last one was done with pencil. In a bunch of the. I think I filled up six or seven of the Baron fig composition books, and that was. That was fun. But that. That destroyed my hand, and I said, never again. So this year it's all digital. I don't care how it's getting into scrivener or drafts or wherever I'm typing it. It's just all digital this year.

Yeah, I've done. I've done it by hand as well. And I also, after I did it, said I would probably never do it by hand again. Although I have written a tremendous amount. I mean, I filled a lot of composition notebooks this summer, and I. I'm not having any. Any unusual wrist or hand issues like I did when I. When I wrote the Nano novel by hand. And I think the difference is that I'm using only really soft, dark pencils, and I keep a dozen sharpened at a time. So I will blow through those, then sharpen them back up, then blow through them again. I mean, I had one weekend where I wrote 25 pages in one day and my hand felt fine. Yeah, I was on a roll. But, like, really, it's been my coping mechanism, if I'm completely honest. It's like I just need to disappear from this reality for a little while.

Yeah, ye, well, I mean, you know what I do for work. So I know all the really bad things that people can disappear from reality and God, if just disappearing into a notebook for a weekend is what I do, then I am one up on life, that's for sure. Yeah, but yeah, it's just, it's been, it's been a way to disappear. And it's like I know that half of what I've written this summer is probably a trash fire. I think only one of the things, one of the novels that I've been working on is actually something that is publishable. The rest of them are just meandering, you know, self congratulatory crap. But it's, it's allowing me to disappear from the world for a little while. And you know, if writing about some vampires and werewolves and other assorted things is how I'm going to disappear, then that's fine with me. I'm good with that. I can handle it.

Do we need that?

Yeah, I mean you're, you're sort of, you're writing under the gun and that's, that's always been my, my downfall is I, I procrastinate. I. You know, I'll have one day like you where I'll get like 5,000 words or even 3,000 words and like all right, I'm ahead of the game and then I sort of slack off a little bit and then I just lose it. And, and when I did it in pencil, I did it so I could use up my, my Blackwing 24s because I wanted to really put them to use. I still have a few left. No, they are not for sale to anyone listening. But, but I really wanted to see because I have so many, like all of us have so many of these damn pencils and I just wanted to enough of them to just feel like I had, there had been a reason I had bought them and I think I used maybe 15 pencils by the time it was all done. So I hadn't even.

It's a lot, but not as much as I wanted to go through. But I also, I end up buying the really, the extra hard, you know, the extra firm black wings. So they take forever to go through anyway.

Yeah.

It just sounded painful. I remember you talking about that. I was like, why would you do that to yourself, Johnny? Why do you hate yourself?

It's better rejection than I've gotten from places.

Yeah. Which I'm like, the first time I did it, I used one of those eight and a half by 11 Moleskine notebooks, the softcover ones. And I was using a pilot high tech three. I went through like two or three of them. And those are great because they're instant dry. It really doesn't matter how terrible the paper is, which they are in Moleskine, but like these flew right across the page. It was really easy going and I got through it in a couple of months, but this last time was just a slogan.

a day off, schedule time Off. I think an outline is super helpful. And if you're planning on writing by hand, don't go for hard pencils. Sharpen up 24 smooth dark pencils and then just go through them and then resharpen them when you're done.

Now you tell me.

Yeah.

Oh, man. Tennessee Red. Yep. Yeah. Tennessee Red or I really didn't. I didn't think I was gonna like the Harvest Pro, but I. Because I tried the regular harvest, which I do not. It's okay. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not a bad pencil, but it's too light for my preferences. But the Harvest Pro, man, that's got a nice core. So Harvest Pro, Tennessee Red, even like some penning gear from Walmart. Those, the ones made in India, like a pack of 48 of those are. They have a really nice dark core and it's smooth. So, you know, they're dirt cheap. You can get a 48 pack for like two bucks. And, you know, no, they're not fancy. But you're not going to sit there and gaze lovingly at your pencil because it's too pretty to use or sit there and sniff the Harvest Pro or the Tennessee Red because they smell really good.

Yeah, I think that's big. Don't, don't get precious about your supplies. I mean, use stuff that's good and that feels good in the hand and you're happy to use. But you know, it's like, don't go to Barnes and Noble and buy one of those large leather notebooks off the back shelf. That's stupid. You know, you write some of the best reviews of composition books. Read Less's reviews and you know, use that to go into Target or Walmart or Office Depot, wherever it is, and buy a decent composition book for a buck and a half and use that. I've got a stock of them in my closet that I've been given to my son and I use them myself. It's great.

Yeah, same, same. I have. I might be looking at 30 of them right now. I, to be fair, I start, I buy 16 every, every back to school season. And then I buy a couple of extras because I just can't. They're 50 cents. I can't help myself back to school. So the one that I do, I buy like, like another five or six of the one that I really like the most. And I will blow through probably five or six of those in NaNoWriMo. If I write by hand, I'm not sure I'm going to or not, but.

It's fine. Yeah, absolutely.

I've got some general writing tips. Go in if you can, with some. If it's not a full outline, some idea of, you know, the story you want to tell, maybe a few little character sketches of, you know, of personality points and just ideas of scenes you want to write. Even if you write it out of order, just, you know, to have something to write. Don't edit as you go. Stream of consciousness. Just keep writing. Set sprints for yourself. Do 20 minute sprints at a time. Use a Pomodoro timer and just, you know, write for those 20 minutes. Take a five minute break, come back for another 20 minutes. You know, you don't have to do it all in 12 hour. Go at a time. You can do it in bursts. And I would say, you know, sign up on the site, find other people who are doing it, keep each other accountable, support each other, encourage each other. I'm in a discord group with other Central New Jersey writers and we talk every day and, you know, I ask them questions. I have a question about how my book ends because I. I'm writing it all one way and then the last chapter sort of spins differently from the rest of the book and I'm like, you know, where, how would you approach this? Find people you can talk to and bounce ideas off of and, you know, help each other out.

Yeah, let me find it real quick because it's not usually marks everywhere, but I don't think I am here.

I'm not sure what I am.

I'm HC Marks. Mine's easy. Yeah, I'm HC Marks.

I think I might be able to

Harper on there.

I think I'm Elsie Harper. I know. Yep. I'm LC Harper.

I, I, you know, I would if I could actually remember some of them. I, I don't know, it's like I commit to them and then I, I kind of forget about them. Did I write up. I'm kind of, I'm trying to look. Let's see if I put in a description. I didn't put in a detail about my last one. I know it was about witches. So there's some sort of witch thing. And I know that the one previous to that, I, I don't think. Well, a couple of years ago, I didn't have the chops to really write it. I did win, but I, at that point, I didn't know what I was doing enough. I hadn't written enough to really get that novel to where it needed to be for it to be something anyone would ever want to read. It is so meandering. There's like magic stuff that doesn't make any sense. There are no rules to the magic and it doesn't like the whole like warring factions in a city and it doesn't make sense. It's, it was a stupid book and it belongs in the drawer where it lives now. It's, it's a sad, sad story. Yeah. So I, other than that, I'm not really. No, I, I've, I know there was like at least one romance that I wrote which probably could be cleaned up and, and actually sold because that's pretty, they're pretty straightforward if you hit the beats. Right. In terms of a romance, it's just getting the personalities of the people appropriate. So, so, yeah. So, yeah, I can't remember enough of them to really give you any good synopsis other than there's magic, there's witches, they're lesbians, and there you go.

Cool.

Yeah. So the, so the, the book that became the Prophet, that was the one I hand wrote in pencil. That one is. It's told from two points of view and it's based on A. It's a fictionalized version of the flds, which is a fundamentalist spin off of Mormonism that if you've ever seen Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, in the first episode when they come out of the bunker and they're wearing those long prairie dresses and their. Their hair up in the bun, that's basically how they dress the women in the FLDS dress. And it's centered. The book is centered around this maniacal cult leader who, um, you know, he lives on this compound in this town that sort of controls everything in the area. And this young girl, her father is excommunicated and she is betrothed to the cult leader as one of his many, many wives. And at the same time, the excommunicated father gets help from a local private detective who has had beef with the. The church. And so the two of them team up to try and get her out and the rest of the family out and take down this cult leader. So that was the first one I had written. And then the one I'm working on this year is. It's literary fiction and it's about this guy who basically he. It's. He hits his 39th birthday and he's so, so depressed with how his life has turned out. And I'm 35. It's not about me. But he's so depressed about how his life has turned out, he gets a gift from his estranged brother, and it's a book from Thomas Jefferson's original library. And as it sort of sends him into this downward spiral of obsession with his legacy and what he's going to leave behind for people to recognize him for. And so he goes on this maniacal quest to basically rebuild Thomas Jefferson's library in his own home. And he, you know, he. He alienates his family, his employers, his loved ones, everybody in this quest and obsession to just rebuild this library for himself and to leave something behind.

It's called Back to the Future. No, I'm kidding.

I mean, I've never read Dune, but I'm surprised. Back to the Future, it's such a staple of pop culture.

I don't know if we can be friends.

Be serious about your writing, but don't take this too seriously. So you know, what you put on paper make, don't, don't try and write crap. I mean, you know, do your best, but also don't, don't feel like you have to adhere so closely to. I have to get 1700 words a day. I have to do this, I have to do that. I have to run myself ragged and, you know, beat this. Because you're, you're doing this for yourself. You're not doing this for anyone else. You're not. There's no monetary prize at the end of this. There's no, you know, you're not going to be gifted anything other than a badge that says I did it. And if that's enough for you, great. But don't feel that you have to, you know, impress anyone but yourself. You know, this is, this is supposed to be fun. This is supposed to be encouraging and it's supposed to make you want to write and not hate it.

Yeah, I have fun with it. I think, like, I'm gonna echo a little bit of what Harry has to say is have fun with it. This is a chance to kind of get ridiculous with your writing. It doesn't have to be serious. You can write a long, meandering, crappy novel about lesbian necromancers or, you know, lesbian, whatever. Doesn't have to be lesbians. That's just my mindset. It's always a theme with me. You know, you can, you can take your story and take it anywhere you want, and it can be fun, it can be serious if you want it to be. But mostly it's just about kind of the challenge of getting those words out and having fun with it and playing with your words and playing with the whole idea of what is a novel. And so I hope everyone just kind of has fun with it and like,

like Johnny did, you know, it doesn't have to be a novel. You know, it could be a bunch of short stories. It could be, don't you think? Poems. It could be. Yeah. It could be non fiction. You know what, Whatever floats your boat, you know. And if you do Camp nano in July, you can set the word count yourself. It doesn't have to be 50,000, which is nice.

Yeah.

Signing up on the website, I feel helps contribute to that. Like, you put it up, put it on quote, paper, unquote, but, you know, put it down and, and sort of announce to the world, like, yes, I'm doing this. Here's the tentative title. And here is, you know, what my story is about. And that's sort of, at least in your own mind, gives you the idea, like, okay, this is sort of a real thing now.

Yeah. I think joining, if this is good stuff. Yeah. I think joining, if not, one of the NaNoWriMo communities on the site, one through Facebook or like, you're. I'm a member of my local group. I never go to any of their meetings because they're such a tight click, but this year they're doing everything through Zoom, so I'm actually going to be able to meet everyone in a. Like, I'm not going into someone's home. So that's like, you know, a. A kind of a nice aspect of it. The. I guess, like, if there's one thing that can be nice about the pandemic is that I think there's a big expansion of what you're going to be able to do in terms of doing writing groups. And, you know, like, I know a lot of people that even outside of nano, when they're writing or they're working, they just get on Zoom and they have people who, who are there with them, holding them accountable for their work. So that's really cool. And there goes one of my neighbors. Yeah. So just, just. I think that. That accountability is super important.

Sure.

I think we've. We've beat this horse enough.

Sweet.

you're feeling creepy, you can find or very brave or not safe. Any you can find me@confortable shoestudio.com RSVP stationarypodcast.com you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, all of the other places. At original lcharper, you can find me.

Yeah, you can find my sitcom the Shelf life@shelflifesit.com you can find the other podcast I co host with Dave kahlo on the 5 by 5 network. It's called homework. So it's 5 by 5 TV homework. And if you want links to my books, my blogs, anything about me me, I believe the link to my IMDb page is also on here. It's linktr EE HCMarks. And you can find me on Twitter at htmarks as well.

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