One-Night-Stand With The Enemy(?)

On Thursday, I started recording an Outcast episode about generative AI, and how there's a lady at the library who uses it to write her book.*  One time, I was pasting two chapters into Google Docs, and it suggested a change to it, and when I accepted, it tried to have AI rewrite it for me.  Not cool, man.  Not cool.

Long story short--at the end of the episode, I thought I would share with you a chapter (or part of a chapter, I dunno how interesting you will find all this) from my new book, and then go ahead and let generative AI "improve" the chapter . . . and see which is better.

So, my questions for you (other than, Does this seem like a stupid idea?) are:

A) Is this something I am going to burn in Hell for?

and 2) Which program should I use for this?  Any suggestions?

*Or is it more accurate to say "write" her book.

Rish Outcast 324: Writers Conference Report 2026 Part 2

Rish finishes talking about this year's conference. Look at me, Gino! It's all for you!

Rish talks about a writer who only managed to write one book in a year, about meeting a Disney director, about letting your subconscious work out plot details, tries to answer a couple of Marshal Latham questions, and what he has now decided is his favorite Disney animated film.

As always, you can download the file by Right-Clicking HERE.

And of course, you can support my Patreon by clicking HERE.

Logo by Gino "Biter's Conference" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 323: Writers Conference Report 2026 1

The yearly writers conference that Rish goes to has come and gone, and somebody somewhere wanted an episode about it. Be careful what you wish for, son.

In this half, Rish asks "Am I arrogant?" He encounters the author of "Dungeon Crawler Carl." He attends a panel by a writer that hogs all the attention, he gets in a bit of a sticky situation, and he goes to a panel with a magical technique to improve your writing . . . or has Rish got brain damage?

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by "Dungeon Crawler Gino" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 315: Door Number Three 1

Rish shares a story from many years ago about a babysitter that discovers a new door in the hallway. It was meant to be a single episode, way back in March or April . . . but then it mutated.

Just like your sister-in-law.

Remember, you can download the file by Right-Clicking HERE.

Don't forget, you can support my Patreon by clicking HERE.

Logo by Gino "Dork Number Three" Moretto.

I Don't Know Where He Gets It

My nephew Kayden asked me what time I went to work on Monday, and if I could help him with his English project before I left.  I asked him what the assignment was, and he told me he had to write a narrative story in the first-person that was at least 750 words and had to have a resolution.

He thought maybe he'd write about a court case with lawyers and a judge, and I asked him, "Do you know anything about courtrooms?  Like, do you watch any shows about that sort of th--"

"No," he said, "you're right, that's a stupid idea."

I told him it wasn't stupid, but that he should probably write about something familiar, like school, or golf, or family, or fishing, or buxom young women that like to wear white t-shirts and suspenders in the rain.

He said, "Okay, sure."  

I said, "Alright, what do you want it to be about?"

He didn't know.  I strongly suspect that's why he wanted my help with it.*

So, I kicked several potential ideas at him, of things I knew he was familiar with, that wouldn't be too difficult to riff on (I may have tossed out that old chestnut "Write what you know"), and he picked a fishing trip with him and his friend and his little brother.  It starts to rain on them, and his little brother goes back to get ponchos and/or umbrellas, so he has the keys, and they're lately locked out of the car because of that.

I gave him a couple of notes, feeding him a set-up that could pay off at the very end of the tale, but mostly letting him write the story. And I was surprised by just how hard that was for him, just how bad he was at it, and how not enjoyable this task was to him. It was supposed to be at least 750 words, and at the two or three hundred word point, he asked if it was okay to stop. We could resume work tomorrow, the day before it was due. But I told him we should push on through to the end, and tomorrow, we could do revisions.

The story, as I said, was about him and his friend and his younger brother going fishing, and they get lost in the woods, and then a bunch of wolves chase them ("bunch" is the technical term for a pack of wolves). And to my surprise, he chose to end the story with the wolves eating his little brother.**

It was a surprise because it's not something a lot of kids--a lot of normal kids, anyway--would have gone for. It instead seemed like something I would have gone for at his age. And a lot younger, if we're being honest. So, was that my influence on him? Was that him writing something he thought would please me? Or is it possible that this sort of twisted morbidity runs in the family?

To my surprise, he wanted it to end with his little brother getting eaten, instead of sacrificing his friend's life, or having all three boys escape.  "Are you going to get in trouble?" I asked, "having it end that way?"

"I can write what I want," he said.  "The teacher said it could be about anything, as long as it was long enough."

Well, it was long enough.  I have to admit that I made matters worse, though, by saying, "How about nobody believes you about the wolves, but later, a farmer shoots one, and when he cuts it open, they find your car keys inside it?"  He liked that idea.

I did a word count when we reached the end, and we were at 864 words, which exceeded the assignment. I saved the file (for once) and told him, tomorrow, we can read it aloud and make whatever fixes it needs, then he could turn it in.

But that didn't happen. The next day, he told me he didn't want to work on it anymore, and that it was only supposed to be a first draft anyway. So, I emailed it to him and he handed it in. And he got 100%, which felt pretty good.***

The next assignment was to do a polish on the story, to fix whatever notes the teacher had given, by Kayden said he wasn't going to bother, as he'd already gotten 100%. Now, I don't know if that means that there were no mistakes (there surely were), or that it couldn't be improved (it surely could be), but if the teacher didn't find anything wrong with it, the boy wasn't willing to put in any more work. So I guess that's where he's not a chip off the old block (do uncles have blocks?). At least not totally.

RBO

*I get that this sort of activity is painful drudgery to some people, but man, it's the sort of assignment I ate up in elementary school, junior high, high school, and college.  In fact, I even thought it was fun walking him through it, though it was a challenge not to try to take over the narrative, or correct him when he said, "Me and Chris kept running as fast as we could" and such.

**Not just biting him, or killing him, or infecting him with werewolfism (the technical term for lycanthropy), but eating him.

***I had worried that the teacher would say, "Uh, no. You need to rewrite it so it has a more appropriate, positive ending." But who knows, maybe he thought it was refreshing.

Under The Big Top World

Last year, Marshal Latham did a very bad thing.  But what I did might have been even worse.

Over at the Journey Into... Podcast, he created a story contest once again inspired by the music of Journey.  This time, though, there was a visual aspect to it all, as he fed the lyrics of each song into an image generating program.  The song I was assigned was Faithfully, the one about a musician on the road, missing his lady love, and most certainly not mutant related.

But this was the image it generated for me:

Circus life, anyone?

So, I wrote a story ("Faithfully") about a man who used to travel around, judging records for the Guinness Book, who has lost his sense of wonder.  And then he goes to a mystifying backwoods circus, and sees Marcelo, the dog-boy.

It's another of those tales that I wrote in a fever, with very little memory of, which is always nice for me to revisit.  It ended up a quite long story, but is it a good one?  Well, you can find out for yourself by listening to this week's Journey Into... podcast episode, where my tale is narrated by the talented (and muscular) Wilson Fowlie.  Click HERE and send all your love along the wire.

2025 Goals - The Road So Far

Wow, we're a quarter of the way through this new year (is it even a new year anymore?), and I guess I'd better take a long look at my goals in a mirror.  Oh, and shave.  I ought to shave.

1.  Exercise 250 Days

I got in 23 in January, 24 in February, and 26 in March, so I'm on my way (73).

2.  Write 25 stories (and finish them) in '25

-1. On Your Side
-2.  Fairest (magic mirror story)
-3.  Plans Best Laid 
-4.  Door Number Three (reimagining)

3.  Put out 6th audio collection
Nyet.

4.  Publish 23 stories on Amazon

I have been very lax on this one.  This is what I have so far:
-1. Reply Hazy
-2. Christmas Day of the Dead

5.  Finish 2 "Lara & The Witch" stories (included in the 25)

-1. On Your Side (whoa, halfway there)

6.  Release "Sins of a Sidekick" novella

7.  Release "A Sidekick To Miracles" novella

8.  Write and produce three sketches ("Webtattler?")
None--didn't even finish the old one.

9.  Put out "Geriatric Protagonist"
Maybe I'll start on it next.

10.  Put out Christmas collection  
It's close to done, I just can't motivate myself to get it across the finish line.

11.  Put out 10 episodes of The Podcast That Dares Not Speak Its Name

-1. The Three D's
-2. A Notebook Found In A Deserted House

12.  Produce some paperback books and take them to a toy sale
Uh oh, I need to do this soon.  Okay, I just ordered some.

13.  Watch 50 Horror movies

Oddly, this one will be the easiest to achieve, even more than exercise (since I can watch a movie with no shoes on).
-1.  Nosferatu (2024)*
-2.  Village of the Damned (1960)*
-3.  Children of the Damned (1964)
-4. 13 Ghosts (1960)
-5.  Hell's Trap (1989)
-6.  Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984)
-7.  Food of the Gods (1976)
-8.  The Ghost Ship (1943)
-9.  The Leopard Man (1943)*
-10.  Talk To Me (2022)*
-11.  Heart Eyes (2025)*
-12.  The Monkey (2025)
-13.  The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)
-14.  The Thing From Another World (1951)*
-15.  Squirm (1976)
(*Denotes particularly good)

New Year, New Book

So, I finally achieved at least one of my New Year goals.  I finally published "Balms & Sears," the longest novel I've written.

I've talked about it one hell of a lot (and for that, I'm sorry*), but B&S tells the story of Alec Ewell, who moves into a new Colorado town with his grandfather, and starts at a new high school.  Alec tries to be a normal student, a normal kid, but he's not normal . . . Alec is a Balm, a person with the ability to heal what he touches.  And that ability has gotten more and more powerful over the years, but it's also gotten him in trouble, because it's supposed to be a secret.  And every time Alec uses the Balm, and is discovered, his grandfather decides it's time to move to a new city, get a new last name, and see if this time, he can get it right.  Because Alec just can't help himself, and there are people in pain no matter where he goes.

So that's the premise, and it could have been just a short story, or at least a novella, but it got away from me, new characters came in, and new subplots lifted their heads, until it was double the length of my first novel, "Into the Furnace."  I don't know how to write a novel, so maybe this would've worked better as a series of short stories, ala Dead & Breakfast and Lara & The Witch (both of which I have written, but not published, novels for).  

It took years to finish this book, so it's only fair that it took years for me to get it published.  But hey, now that this is out of my system, I can start looking for something new to work on.

Check it out HERE.

*Gosh, if only I could talk about it now that it's done, hyping it up on Facebook and Twitter, pushing it to whoever will listen, in attempts to get them to buy it.  Because that's what you have to do in independent publishing, in order to be successful.

No Problem

So, I did sit down and rework my previously-mentioned problem chapter of "Balms & Sears."  There were two moments in there that I felt went too far, and I felt it improved the ending of the book if I nipped them in the bud. 

The thing is, in real life, good people occasionally do bad things, and there are at least a few bad people out there that sometimes do something good (harder to quantify, I know).  But in fiction, because these characters (for good or ill) are all me, I can change my mind, and make things blacker and whiter.  Ultimately, I had this niggling feeling that it was a problem, and I feel better making that change.

Part of the problem is, I've never written a book this big before (unlikely that I will again), and I don't know what I'm doing.  Even now, I worry that it's not all that good, but hey, I've worked harder on "Balms & Sears" than I have on any previous work, so I'm going to finish it and put it out there.  And then you can be the ultimate judge.

I asked A.I. to create me the image of Superman lifting up a schoolbus, and I got this.

Problematic

A saying you hear often in screenwriting lectures is "Kill your darlings," a bit of advice I've heard over the years.  Now, in case you're confused, that's not a reference to what George R.R. Martin does in his novels (where he takes a character you've learned to love and he brutally cuts their throat) or what that lady in your building did when she drowned her kids in the tub that afternoon last February (after all, she caught the oldest whistling the theme to Harry Potter, and that . . . was . . . it).  No, "Kill your darlings" refers to editing your manuscript, revising your work-in-progress, and cutting scenes that you love and/or worked crazy-hard on.*

Sometimes a scene--no matter how proud you are of it--slows the pace, or confuses the narrative, or raises questions that are never answered, and they've got to go, for the good of the project as a whole.  And it can be painful, even heartbreaking, to lose those scenes, hence the Arthur Quiller-Couch ("Murder your darlings")/William Faulkner ("Kill all your darlings") phrase I'm bringing up.

I mention this because, in the home stretch of my novel "Balms & Sears," I recorded a chapter last night that seems to have been intended for the very end of the book (it refers to the climax, which I haven't gotten to yet, and as I was narrating it, I discovered, aside from it being out of place, that it is somewhat (or more than somewhat) problematic.

I don't know either.  But I like it.

Now, "problematic" is a term that has been kicked around so much recently that Big Anklevich and I have grown to despise it, because it can refer to whatever you (or a potential viewer/reader) don't or might not like.  A lot of the times, it's used to mean that something may or may not include sexist, racist, homophobic, bigoted, or closed-minded attitudes from the past, but also can just mean what it started out meaning: something causes a problem in the viewer, reader, or writer.

In my chapter's case, despite me making alterations so it takes place before the climax . . . it features a character doing something that, well, just might be too much.  I don't know, really.  I know that I wrote it around the time that, when I came to the library, I encountered a crazy person that called me "Lizardface" and freaked me out to the point where I thought . . . well, not exactly me at my most charitable.  So, I put it in the story.  The problem is, the scene makes one of the characters--a piece of work, sure--nasty in a potentially irredeemable way.  Since it's my book and I'm close to it, I can't say whether a reader would be alienated or irretrievably lost with that scene, but it's definitely possible.**

I remember a moment in the TV show "Angel" where a character did something that made me decide, "You know, this isn't something I can look past," and it really did taint the series (and character) for me until the end of time.  For thousands (if not millions) of people, when Luke Skywalker tossed away his father's lightsaber and/or milked a sea cow and drank its blue milk raw was an absolutely deal-breaking moment.  I recall people saying that, in comics, the moment where Hank Pym backhanded Janet, or the moment when Peter Parker traded his wife to the Devil to save Aunt May, or the moment when Cyclops left his wife and infant child because Jean was alive again (and then later cheated on Jean with Emma Frost) were irredeemable moments.  For me, there was a page in The Ultimates that not only made me despise Captain America . . . but never read an Ultimate Universe comic again.  And Alan Moore apparently meant what the Joker did in his Batman story "The Killing Joke" to be so egregious that the Dark Knight ends up killing the Joker.*** 

In "Balms & Sears," I wrote a character that (I think) is complicated, and presumably hard to like.  But I fear I may have gone too far, making a character that was meant to be anti-heroic into an absolutely loathe-able villain.  Not really my intention.

So, I guess I'm going to cut that bit out, despite me being absolutely loath to do so (my rewrites almost always include adding things, never subtracting things), and put it away, despite having already recorded it.  I'll have to rewrite a bit, unless I just cut the whole chapter out, but if it helps make the (potential) readers like the characters, then it's worth it.

Okay, on with the countdown (seven chapters to go).

*Or in my case, don't even remember writing, but by gum, they must be important because I spent time creating.

**I had a conversation--a truly vexing one--with a friend of mine recently, regarding the ending to a Lara & The Witch story, where he felt it was excessive or in poor taste.  I disagreed, but what he said stuck with me long enough that I did rewrite the ending, and I think the new ending is almost definitely better.

***It's told in such an oblique way, however, that DC simply let it go, as part of comic continuity, not realizing that that's what happened on that final page of the book.  Heck, I read it myself three times before ever hearing that interpretation . . . and between you and me, despite Brian Bolland's fantastic artwork, it's literally not there.

Still Working Hard (or Hardly Working)

I set two stupid goals for this month that I have been trying not to blow off: writing every day and getting my novel "Balms & Sears" to 75% recorded.

On the first goal, I have BARELY managed to write every single day this month, though the other night, I was falling asleep and I asked myself, "Was there something I was supposed to do today that I didn't do?"  I had remembered to exercise, so I figured I was in the clear, but then I thought of my writing goal, and wrote three anemic paragraphs . . . which may not be great, but still counts.  

I split another chapter in two last night, which brings the total to sixty-three, and I have thirty-eight done.  By my math, that puts me at 60% finished (which is almost exactly six hours long).  If I manage one more chapter every other day this month, I'll finish the whole audiobook, not just my goal of 75%.  

It is exhausting, though.  B&S is the longest thing I've ever written, and I am simply not cut out for this sort of thing.  There are too many characters and too many subplots and I can't maintain it all, much less keep track of continuity.  Nope, when this is done, I'm going back to short stories and the occasional novella, thanks.

Rish Outcast 288: Q&A 2024 Part 2

After a wait of more than a month, Rish answers more questions from listeners*, including insight into the Cheesy Street Chalupa, and presents a short excerpt from his forthcoming novel "Balms & Sears."

*Questions from Rob Broughton, Keith Teklits, Marshal Latham, Letruvia Kambatta, and Brian Saur.

If you'd like to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

Because of Archive.org's problems, this episode was delayed for weeks.  To avoid this, come support me on Patreon HERE.

Logo by Gino "The Answer Man" Moretto.

The Opposite Of Blank

I was talking to Big Anklevich today and found out he's firing on all cylinders (or proceeding on all thrusters, I don't know sports talk) with his new story, already up to six thousand words.  When he asked me how mine was going, I had to return my head to its primary position: hanging in shame.  I had an idea, but no words written, no character names, no ending, no twists, no feelings of creativity, etc..  But he urged me to go for a walk (or run) and think about the story, and maybe I'd come up with something.

I heard once (or thrice) that "A blank page is God's way of showing you how hard it is to be God."*  I've always thought it an idiotic quote, because, what?  God walks around with writer's block?  The whole idea of omnipotence kind of precludes feeling dumb or uninspired, doesn't it?  But ah well, whatever gets you out of bed and on your way to work.

So, cut to tonight, when I went on my run.  Instead of listening to YouTube videos, movie trivia, politics, or talk show comedians, I turned on music (one of those ninety minute compilations that's supposed to make it so you don't have to keep selecting new titles . . . but still has commercials every three minutes).  And that has helped me thinking in the past, so I pushed Play, stretched for forty seconds, and went.

And the ideas just started to flow.  I already knew how I was going to start it, but that solidified as I came up with a character I could get behind (yeah, he's me, as usual, only much, much more successful in life, which puts him at the end of his rope).  I came up with a second character who would be important, and how that would lead to the inciting incident.  thought of a fun twist for the middle of the story, and stopped running long enough to laugh about it.  Of course, I didn't know where the story was going, or how I was going to end it, but I still had half a mile left in my run . . . and right before I reached my street, I knew how I'd end it.  

And though it's not going to win the contest, it's a tale unlike most I have written (except, ironically, the last time I entered this kind of contest), and seems like something I could be proud of.  So, in just a twenty minute run, I felt like I was staring at the opposite of a blank page, and like divine inspiration, the pieces seemed to simply fall into place.

Now all I have to do is write it.  As easy as that sounds. 

*It's a Sidney Sheldon quote that goes, "A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God." 

Taking It To The Mats

More than twenty years ago, Big Anklevich challenged me to write a story based on his premise, which was the first Broken Mirror Story Event.  If you recall, I finished my story, "Monitored Conversation," around a year before he finished his own story, "The Baby Dies - What, Does That Surprise You?"

And that's been the status quo for pretty much all these years (though never with that long a gap in between*).  But not anymore.  No, the sock is on the other glove now, kids, because Big continues to write like crazy, maintaining a steady workman's pace, while I can only manage to fart and watch YouTube with a similar frequency.

A couple of weeks ago, I told him it was time for us to start thinking of another writing contest, something we could do across both our podcasts.  He, disgusted as usual by my suggestion, asked what I meant.  I said, "Oh, something like, Write a story about evil or haunted floormats**, that sort of thing."

The mats on my car look like they've been driven over and dragged a country mile, then put back in my vehicle using a pitchfork, and I keep meaning to replace them, but I'm way too cheap.  A couple of times lately, I've thought they might be cursed and it's high-time to burn them in the backyard, like I'm from West Virginia and it's a class textbook by a woman author.  

And I thought, as I do every week, there's got to be a story in that somewhere.

I wish my mats looked this good.

Well, to my surprise, Big said, "Challenge accepted," and commenced work on it before the suggestion was even out of my mouth.  And not only has he finished his, but it's over twelve thousand words long (the crazy bastage even considered running it in the next episodes of his podcast).

Meanwhile, my story isn't even half that length, is far from finished, and for the third time in a row, just not very good.  Hmmm.

Well done, Anklevich.  Truly, the student had eclipsed the teacher, and has been sleeping with the teacher's wife. 

*Technically, this is not true, as he wrote a story about working at Little Caesar's Pizza after challenging me to do the same, and his was done a couple of years before mine (Big claims that his was written more than a full decade before mine, but I assure you, he is lying).  But that wasn't technically a Broken Mirror Story Event, since we had just said, "We both worked at Little Caesar's?  We ought to write a story about that."

**I realize that "floor mats" is supposed to be two words, but enough is enough--English is constantly shifting anyway.

Winter Breakdown

So, a few months back, I put out my 2020 story "Winter Break," even including it in my Female Protagonist collection.*  I vaguely remember, when I was recording it, finishing Chapter 5 and then noting that I'd designated the next one Chapter 8, a little odd, but just changing it and going on.

Well, this week at the cabin, I found on my laptop a file called Winter Break Chapter 6,7.  I looked at the file, and thought that for sure I'd already incorporated them, but when I read through it, none of it was familiar, and I didn't have the published version to compare it to.

I did have the audiobook version, though, and sure enough, it did not include Chapters 6 or 7 (the narrative just skips ahead, with a couple of paragraphs summing up what happened in the missing section).

Great news.

But this sort of thing happens again and again (and again and again) with me, because, as Big would gladly point out, I don't keep all my stories on Google Docs, where every time I work on one file, it updates on every computer.  And how much extra work has that cost me?  Well, enough to have written a couple more stories, maybe even a couple novels.

But today I'm sitting down and recording those two chapters**, because I just can't let it go.  If it makes the finished products even a little bit better, I guess that's a price I'm willing to pay.

*Oh no, I should be thinking about what I should put in the second Female Protagonist book now.  Do I include a Lara Demming story?  How about one of the Dead & Breakfast tales focusing on a girl/woman?  Maybe put that Princess Leia story in it, since I've never released that other than our podcast?  That story about the girl in college that tells the sorority girls their darkest secrets that I never dared put out because it was mean-spirited?  None of the above???

**After doing it, I found that it involved redoing four chapters, as I now could take out the summary I'd written for one of them, as well as as contradiction this addition created in yet another later chapter.  Such fun.  Except it is kind of fun, to do audiobooks, and nobody MADE me do it; this is all on me.

Now I Am The Master

One of the stories I've never put out to sell was "You've Got A Friend," which I wrote twenty or so years back, in major part to prompt Big Anklevich into writing me back.  

He was busy with work and family and covering up those unfortunate test subjects who mixed spider venom and Red Bull outside of Oakland at the time (suffice it to say that we wouldn't have those freeway signs that tell you what air quality is [not to mention Hepatitis-C] without his contributions), and he kept not answering my emails (this was before texting effectively eliminated both letter-writing and human interaction).  I sent him hopefully-disturbing messages such as "wHy dONt yOu aNSwEr mE, fRieND dARreLL?" and "wHy dONt yOu wANt tO pLaY wiTH mE?"* and eventually, I wrote him an entire scene of a robot forcing a well-endowed man to play boardgames with it, clearly inspired by my friend.

Eventually, he started writing me again, but one day, I took the scene fragments and crafted a story around it, and that story became "You've Got A Friend," which we ran on the 'steef once as an incentive episode.  It's the last story in my upcoming audio collection (the one that's now three years overdue), and it's probably the one I had to work hardest on, trying to make the robot voice convincingly robotic, yet still clear and understandable.

And at the very end, there's a dedication to Big, with the note "who should have written more."

But oh, how the tables have turned.  

As you know, Obi-Wan, Big Anklevich has had his most productive year ever, and has, incredibly, managed to make his word count even on days when he feels tired, unmotivated, ill, and uninspired.  He reached his yearly goal a full four months before his deadline, and even then, he kept on writing.

Me, I can see that somebody somewhere has a head cold (or just hear the mere mention of the name George R.R. Martin), and use that as an excuse not to write.

Once upon a time, Big was my junior . . . but now he has left me far behind, writing more in the past six months than I have in two years.  It's like a movie I once saw, where this dude in black armor says, "I was but a learner; now I am the master."

I think it might have been The Black Hole?

"A wolf remains a wolf, even if it has not eaten your sheep."

*Which had the Sacramento P.D. in quite an uproar before they too discovered texting, and shut down half the department.

DID I Finish Another Story Eight Years Ago?

So, I posted about "Beware Hitchhiking Ghosts" the other day, and how proud I was of my younger self for finishing a story I thought I'd abandoned halfway through.

Well, let's not start sucking each other's d***s quite yet.

I started to format the story, put in chapter numbers and such, check for ___s (which I'll often put if I forget the word for something or a name I mentioned previously) and BETTERWORDs (which I often type after a word that I don't love, but gets the point across).  And yes, it includes a "the end" at the bottom of the document, but about smack-dab in the middle, it included the two dread words "WRITE SCENES."

Nope, I hadn't finished the story.  I had skipped the part where they have a good, sexy time, and jumped to where they haven't seen each other in a while, because the happy part of a relationship is always the hardest for me to write.  So, that means I wasn't done with the story after all.

I did, however, spend about an hour writing a couple of new scenes that would take place during that section, and probably need one or two (or possibly three) more before I would have the gap bridged.  THEN, only then, a Jedi will I be.

Sorry.

I Finished Another Story . . . Eight Years Ago

I was looking through old files today, trying to find a reference to a Broken Mirror story to put in an author's note (Big reminded me we did two other BMSEs that I had completely forgotten about), when I stumbled upon a story I started writing fifteen or so years back about a guy who falls in love with a ghost, namely that ghost from the story where someone gives a girl a ride home, and she turns out to have died on that bridge or stretch of road, x number of years ago . . . on this very night.  You know the one.  I had really liked my spin on the premise--that the character from that story goes back to the bridge to see the ghost again, and again, and again--but I had struggled while writing it, and after a year or so of work on it, I ultimately abandoned it.  Sound familiar?

Of course it does, because it sounds exactly like something I would do.  So, to my surprise, I saw a file called Beware Hitchhiking Ghosts from July 2016, and opened it to see how much of it I'd written.  Was it just the first part?  The first chapter?  The first three or five or eight chapters?*  Oh, I said, to my surprise, and here comes that part: it was finished.  It had a beginning, a middle and a "the end."  And I'd forgotten I finished it.  

Which is extremely good news . . . except that now I'm worried that it's NOT actually done, that I got bogged down with the relationship part, and just skipped to the final chapter, wrote it, and left it at that.  

Except that's not what I do.  It's almost a superstition thing that I NEVER type "the end" unless the story is completely finished.**  So it would be out of character that I'd type that, without doing the heavy lifting first.  And I'm all about character, ain't I?

To be continued...

*That's what I remembered.  

**I also, superstitiously, do not capitalize "the" and "end," for some even odder reason.

Rish Outcast 282: Marvin Haggler

Rish ruminates about Heinlein's Rules For Writing, first readers, and his newest story collection. Then he and Big talk about what a terrible barterer Rish is, and present an interaction they call "Marvin Haggler."

As always, you can download the file by Right-Clicking HERE.

And of course, you can support my Patreon by clicking HERE.

Logo by Gino "Marvin Shaggler" Moretto.

Oh, and here's a link to the various iterations of "Female Protagonist:"

Digital version
The paperback version
Audiobook on Audible
And the hardcover not even my mother will buy

Is This The End?

6/7  I told Marshal Latham yesterday that I was 97% finished with "Sins of a Sidekick," and an hour or so later, I was on my way to the library to see what more I could do.  For once, I didn't dick around on the internet (except to ask it the Spanish words for a couple of terms, so I could make up New Mexico town names), and when the damned over-loud "The library will close in fifteen minutes..." announcement blared, I was about a page away from those two words, so I turned on the speed.

I was there, at the climax, where Ben's adventure is over, and who knows what the next one will hold?*

But, it didn't feel the way it usually does--which is a bright and hopeful sense of accomplishment, a feeling that while I have failed in virtually all arenas of life**, there's this one little corner where I have created something that didn't exist before, and just maybe the world is the better for it.

Instead, I felt nothing.  I had written "the end," but it felt like I had typed it by accident, or way too soon, like I was a liar or a fraud.  Huh.

6/8  So, on Saturday, I went back to the library, opened the file again, and expanded those hastily-written last three paragraphs into a page and a half, pacing out the ending a bit, filling in more detail, tossing in three more lines of dialogue.

And it still didn't feel good, or complete, or satisfying.

Huh, again.

I've mentioned it before: getting to write "the end" is usually the most satisfying part of my writing process.  It's the equivalent of hiking to a high peak and then being able to look down and see just how far you've climbed, or teaching a child to read over a period of months or years then watching him/her read the subtitles aloud on Takashi Miike movies, or working a long stretch of overtime and then seeing the sizable bump in your next paycheck, or summoning a being of unfathomable rage and hate from the netherworld and then watch it attack the neighborhood village, raping and terrorizing and eating children right and left.  

But not this time.

And what does that mean?  

Does it mean that the story is not good?***

  It might.

Does it mean that I've lost that lovin' feeling, oh oh that lovin' feeling, 'cause it's gone, gone, gone?

  It might.

Does it mean that the story is, in fact, not at an end?

  Sure, but I always do a second draft (or a third, or a fourth), but that doesn't keep me from feeling satisfaction when I write those two words.

I just found this strange.  If it don't bring you either joy or a paycheck . . . is it even real?

Something to think about.

6/9  Oh, and it's probably the second-longest gestation I've ever had on a project I've written, from starting it to actually finishing it.  When I completed "Balms & Sears" back in 2022, I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment and relief, because I started that one in 2016 or 2017 . . . and I'd pushed through to the end.

Which reminds me, I vowed to release that this year, and it's already June 7th or 9th or something.  Better get to work.

Guess it isn't the end.

 

*Well, I know, obviously, since I wrote it in 2018, but I was being poetic in asking the question.

**Including blogging, most likely.

***Debatable, right?  But probably, yeah, it isn't good.