Fiction Writer's Thread

[Reynard]

I expect there are more than a few folks here that write fiction, at every capacity from as a hobby to their primary source of income. I thought it would be nice to have an ongoing thread for us to complain and kibbutz.

I suddenly had the desire to write a short story this weekend after many months of writer's block. I have had some heavy work education responsibilities for the last few years (getting a engineering degree at almost 50) that has drained my creative energy. I can see the light at the end of that particular tunnel now, so I can feel the desire to write growing again.

A few years ago I finished my first novel and self published it. It went... nowhere and that really hit my writing confidence hard. I followed it up with a short story collection and with similar results. I haven't quite given up, but I'm close.

 

[Dioltach]

I've been practising my fiction writing over the last few years, and I like to think I'm getting better at it. I even posted a few sword & sorcery stories here, and got a bit of feedback but very few eyes.

Looking back, I should rewrite them, with the skills I have now, and maybe do something with them. Mostly, though, it's just a hobby for myself, to create some order in the ideas swirling around my head.

 

[Reynard]

This is the short story my urge ended up producing. I don't know if it is a story or first chapter or what -- but I do know that it is a first draft, so be kind.

Portal Fantasy Story

Portal Fantasy Story 08-09-24 Gareth came out of the woods when the sun was low. He stopped and took a deep breath, filling his lungs with cool autumn air. Autumn? He grimaced. That long? As he crossed the yard to the cabin’s back door he glanced skyward. There were streaks of red cloud agains...

docs.google.com

 

[RangerWickett]

A few years ago I finished my first novel and self published it. It went... nowhere and that really hit my writing confidence hard. I followed it up with a short story collection and with similar results. I haven't quite given up, but I'm close.

I finished a novel in 2005, tried to get it picked up by an agent for a year, and nada. In hindsight, that was good. It wasn't a great story. Basically just some folks do some stuff. No real theme. Nothing stand-out.

I finished a different novel in 2009, tried to get it picked up by an agent for a year, and nada. Ditto. I did rather like my setting, but it was messy, and it envisioned a not-too-distant future that by now I look back and realize was completely inaccurate.

I've written and, with EN Publishing, released a bunch of D&D adventures, half of which I think are a bit clunky and rough (War of the Burning Sky), and half which I think actually hold up really well (ZEITGEIST). I didn't make much money off them, but I've had dozens of people tell me they had great fun playing them, which feels pretty cool. It's small in the grand scheme of the world, but I managed to do a thing that made a lot of folks happy. There's even one couple that got married because they met in a ZEITGEIST campaign.

Right now I'm nearly done with a novel, which I started writing in 2022. I think this one is actually good.

 

[Reynard]

I've got a decent amount of RPG freelance writing out there and a couple stories, but I really want to sell a novel.

 

[trappedslider]

Right now I'm nearly done with a novel, which I started writing in 2022. I think this one is actually good.

I'm still working on something i started in 2012

 

[Juxtapozbliss]

Hello. Just thought I'd join the thread given the topic. I've self-published two novels and a collection of short writing. I won a literary award for my second novel, A Greater Monster--received a Gold Medal as Outstanding Book of the Year in the Independent Publisher Book Awards the year that I published it, which was 2011. I'm generally an experimental writer. My first novel was an absurdist satire. Wacky and goofy. My second novel is "fantasy," but I describe it as a psychedelic fairytale. It's somewhat like Alice in Wonderland meets Naked Lunch. My third book, The Kickstarter Letters, was published by a small press in Chicago--it was a collection flash fiction, essays and stream of consciousness. It was released as an ebook and a limited edition of 100 handmade hardback books.

I published my first novel when self-publishing was still a very new and rare thing. 1999/2000 time period. I funded my second novel and that third collection with Kickstarter projects. For A Greater Monster, I raised $4,628 on Kickstarter, which paid for a very high quality print run of 1000 copies--plus paid for my book designer, my illustrator and the music composer that I hired. A Greater Monster is also multimedia, with 75 pages of illustrations in it, some graphic design, as well as some original music and animation linked to scenes in the book that is hosted online. The Kickstarter Letters was also funded with a Kickstarter project, I raised $2,756. I've sold about 1500 copies of my first novel and about 2000 of my second. The Kickstarter Letters hasn't sold much at all.

At any rate, that's my experience! My books can be purchased on my website or on Amazon.

First novel, Death by Zamboni:

http://amzn.to/DeathByZamboni

Second novel, A Greater Monster: http://amzn.to/greatermonster
Last collection, The Kickstarter Letters: https://bit.ly/KickLettersEbook

After all that writing, I began spending more time making art instead of writing. I just found I enjoyed drawing more than writing so I switched over to that. And then of course there's gamemastering...which I picked up much more seriously about 7 years ago and have dedicated most of my creative energy to that.

 

[RangerWickett]

This thread got me to work on my novel query pitch. Which helped me clarify a bit of where I need to land the ending of the book. So now it's 3am and I've been writing for a while. Thank you, Reynard.

 

[Dioltach]

On the subject of writing, I've recently read quite a few books on the subject. There are some good pointers out there, but actually I find books about editing - after you've done the first draft - to be far more useful.

 

[trappedslider]

I may or may not have shared this instead of writing