How Creators Have To Cut Corners Behind The Scenes

History is full of proliferate writers. Whether we're talking about Stephen King's ability to churn out a handful of novels a year along with a slew of short stories, film scripts, and editorials, or going back to Victor Hugo's frankly absurd ability to pen one masterful tale after another while leading a sex life that also sounds like the stuff of fiction, there are some people who are all gas, no brake when it comes to their work.

For a lot of us, though? That's just not feasible.

The problem is that, in our modern world, audiences demand that kind of output in order to stay engaged with you. Whether you're putting out books, writing TTRPGs, creating videos, or making some other kind of content for your audience to devour, you need to have a lot of it, and you need to provide it constantly in order to maintain attention.

Which is why you often need to perform some serious sleight-of-hand in order to make it seem like you've always got something new, and to build up your archives of content so you can actually find yourself some breathing room.

It's exhausting, but needs be when the devil drives.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Before I get too far into this week's topic, I want to make one thing clear. Yes, it is possible to write one book, make one video, or write one article that just skyrockets you to success. Maybe it's because you're already a celebrity, and so you have a million followers who are ready and waiting to snatch up your latest creation, leading to you making a hefty chunk of money. Maybe you just happen to hit the market in just the right way, at just the right time, and the zeitgeist decides that you are now going to be the hip creator for this cycle.

Can that happen? Sure. You could also buy a scratch off ticket and win a million dollars a year for life. For most creators out there, you're going to have to write, record, etc., a phenomenal amount of content, getting little spikes in activity here and there as a few new people subscribe, or become fans of your work, and word of what you're doing spreads a little bit at a time.

It's a marathon, and like marathons you have to keep going at a steady pace. And to maintain that pace, we often have to cut some corners to ensure that we can keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Take the above audio drama. The story Russian Roulette came out of my Geist: The Sin Eaters supplement 50 Geists, and it was used as a scene setter for that RPG supplement. I'd already written the story (and been paid for it), which meant that the script for this little audio drama was complete, and just waiting for me to turn it into its final form. This saved me a whole step in the process, and at least a day of work, which allowed me to make the audio drama much more quickly than if I'd had to write the whole thing from scratch, and then create the video for the Azukail Games YouTube channel (which you should check out and subscribe to if you want to see more stuff like this). This is, incidentally, why my audio dramas come from either my TTRPG content, or from my previously published short stories, like 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, which is something I wrote years ago.

This is far from an uncommon way of saving time and energy when it comes to making audio dramas in general, and a lot of video-based content specifically. Many voice actors out there will find stories that are freely available (whether it's fan fiction where the creator gives their consent, or works in the public domain that they can use for free), and they'll dramatize them to quickly add videos to their channel. Again, this saves them the effort of having to write scripts themselves so they can focus on making good dramatizations of these stories. And, to be clear, I'm not pointing this out as a mark of shame. A lot of creators are perfectly capable of writing really banging stories (A Vox in The Void and Niva The Puppet Queen are two that come to my mind), but doing the writing yourself adds to the overall amount of time it takes to produce a video, and it takes a far greater amount of effort, because you've added a whole separate task to the production.

And this doesn't just apply to videos; that's the easy example.

Another good example is one of the earliest TTRPG supplements I wrote for Azukail Games. 100 Random Encounters For On The Road, Or In The Wilderness is just a list of things you could have your characters run into when you're moving from one town to another. From huge ads for nearby inns painted on the side of big, flat rocks, to bounty hunters looking for bandits, to roving bears who seem to be searching for something, there's all kinds of odd little encounters on this list. And while the version linked above is meant to be system neutral, simply providing ideas that can be used in any fantasy RPG, we also released a version for Pathfinder, and another for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition that offered mechanics for certain encounters. These edition-specific versions were quite popular, as well, and over time the publisher also converted the supplement to a version for Zweihander, and another version for Castles and Crusades. Again, these versions have sold all right... but more importantly, it took far less effort to put out these conversions than it would have taken to write an entirely new supplement from scratch.

For me, the ultimate example of this kind of cost-cutting measure will be my book The Rejects.

Get a copy, if you haven't!

I released this book back in 2020. I'd published my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife a year and change before, and I wanted to come out with something for the convention season so my readers would have something new of mine to check out (the book dropped in January, I had no idea the pandemic was coming). Since the other novels I had were in submission, I put together a bunch of my short stories that hadn't found a home in any anthologies, put them together into a collection, and put this out there for folks to check out.

It wasn't no work getting the formatting right, editing all the stories, deciding which order they were going to go in, and so on... but it was something I could do in a month, as opposed to the 10-12 months it would have taken for me to write a whole new novel.

It's All About Time, Energy, and Money

I'm going to be the first to admit that I really wish I didn't have to try to figure out ways to constantly produce fresh, new stuff at a break neck pace for people to check out. I would love to be able to just sit back and put out a novel or two a year, maybe write a long-running audio drama podcast (I mentioned this a while back in "Windy City Shadows," A Chronicles of Darkness Podcast Proposal for those who didn't see it), but the reality is that I don't have the resources to make that happen. I don't have a big inheritance I'm sitting on, I don't have a rabid fan base of thousands of people giving me money every month, and adding up all the royalties for all my work is basically enough for me to pay some of my bills at the end of the month.

As far as writers go, though, I'm still more successful than a lot of folks out there.

And I still qualify for every government aid program out there.

Now, if one of my books spontaneously rose to the bestseller list? Or if I received a film rights contract to turn one of my short stories into a movie? Then absolutely, I could take a deep breath, and focus on those bigger projects. I could dedicate myself to making something a little more in-depth that didn't have to turn an immediate profit because all of my bills would be paid, and I wouldn't need to have the regular monthly spikes to keep my head above water.

But as long as a creator is scrabbling to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors, they need to make things with quick turnaround... and that usually means cutting corners until the thing we're producing is a pretty passable frisbee.

So keep that in mind whenever you ask yourself why a creator whose work you like is making a lot of stuff that feels like it's dipping back into the same well time and time again. And if you can, please support folks that you want to keep making art. Because it's that support that allows us to reach higher, and to make the bigger, more involved stuff like novels, podcasts, and even films that would otherwise be impossible.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Perfect is The Enemy of Done (Particularly For Authors)

One of the major struggles that most writers I've met over the years deal with is the reality that their work will be flawed. Whether it's plot holes, or character edits, or just realizing that only half of your thoughts made it onto the page during your rough draft, staring out at the full scope of what it takes to execute even a short story (to say nothing of novels) can be paralyzing.

One response to this paralysis, though, is to focus so much on tinkering and polishing while focusing on story minutiae that very little forward motion is actually achieved. Because if what you put down isn't perfect, then it's not time to move on to the next section yet.

That is often a trap, though.

There's stages to this... which is unavoidable.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

You Can Be Perfect, But You'll Never Finish

This is something I've struggled with, myself, and it really came home to me with a recent piece I was working on.

As regular readers know, I've done a lot of work with the YouTube channel A Vox in The Void over the past few years. So when the channel reached out to me, and asked if I wanted to work on a Weird War 2 story set in the Pacific theater, I was more than happy to get to work on that project. Over the past month, this led to me penning the story Where The Red Flowers Bloom, a tale about a Japanese outpost beset by something that they've awakened on a tiny island in the Philippines where they weren't supposed to see any kind of action.

And while I'm proud of this story, I can't lie... it was an absolute mess to get through!

Fortunately, this is something I'm used to by now.

Part of the challenge of this story was that I didn't know as much about the Pacific theater of the second World War as I would like. So there was a lot of stopping and starting as I checked common surnames around the time period, ranks in the army, the types of equipment troops were assigned, and so on, and so forth. In addition to that, though, the story is purposefully written without dialogue to facilitate turning it into an audio drama. Lastly, I was trying to keep the story within a relatively tight 4,000 words or so.

And I will be the first to admit, that first draft came out hard, slow, and it needed more than a little bit of polishing once I had it done.

However, something that I want to remind folks of is that forward momentum counts for a lot when it comes to making your story into a reality. Not only that, but if you spend all of your time sweating the details when you're in the thick of the writing, that's when you will often squander your energy by doing a hundred little things instead of putting words on the page. Everything I mentioned, from checking the type of sidearm given to Japanese soldiers during the war, to what a common surname would have been, to reading about the mystery cults of war gods found in some isolated cultures in the region, all of those details were very important to the overall story... but none of those details needed to be present in the moment while I was writing that first draft.

For example, our protagonist's name is Tanaka. I could have just had him listed as 'Steve' and then changed it in post until I finished the first draft and settled on the perfect name. The vehicle used in the early part of the story is a Kurogane Type-95 scout vehicle, but I could have just called it a Jeep for the first draft, and changed it afterward. All of these details are important to the accuracy of the story, and getting the period and feeling right... but sometimes attempting to do research while you're writing leads to death-by-a-thousand-cuts... particularly if you're the sort of writer who (like most of us) will vanish down a research rabbit hole at the first opportunity. Because by the time you clamber out of that hole, all your energy is gone, and you've forgotten where you were in the narrative.

While we should always check and double-check our facts, read over our work, and take all the steps to produce the best project we can, it's important to keep what I said in As a Creator, Learn to Trust The Process in the forefront of your mind. Namely that this is a process, and there's more than one step to it. Get used to allowing yourself not to be perfect during that first draft, because you can always take a bad first draft and improve it. What you can't do, though, is take a non-existent draft, and claim it will be perfect.

It takes practice to do this, but it's a skill worth mastering. Because the first draft is just for getting the story down on paper, where you can mold and shape it. Remember that, and act accordingly.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

A.I. Started With Artists, But It's Coming For Authors

If you've been on social media any time in the past year, you're no doubt aware of the serious situation involving so-called A.I. art generation programs (which will, henceforth, be referred to as plagiarism software). In short, unscrupulous folks have been stealing art, and feeding it into these programs to train them. The computers (who have no real morality) amalgamate all of this art, and then spit out different combinations according to the prompts they're given. Despite the results, and all of the people who herald this as the birth of true artificial intelligence, these are just programs that are sorting and sifting what they've been told, trying to create some chimera out of their data bases that will pass muster.

And while this may have started with art, authors need to get into the trench right alongside illustrators and actors on this one. Because people are already trying to steal our work, and feed it to these bots in an attempt to instantly produce books they can then turn around and sell, regardless of the harm said books may do to authors, or even to those who rely on a text for more than mere entertainment.

Because this is not a fight we want to let corporations win. And they are trying like hell!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

What The Hell is Going On!?

This whole crisis is precipitated by a single fact; creators are seen as an obstacle to getting a product by those in charge. It's why studios don't want to pay actors and scriptwriters, it's why companies attempt to pay designers in exposure, it's why YouTube demands you provide them thousands of hours of free content before they'll share ad revenue with you, and it's why a lot of unscrupulous publishers will attempt to cut royalties to the bone all while encouraging writers to keep putting words on the page. Despite the fact that creators are the ones doing all of the work, the idea is always to ask how a company can pay them even less without losing out on the amount of creative work it has to sell to the public.

From that perspective, this software is the answer to their prayers. It allows them to take all the work that exists (if they're willing to completely ignore copyright law, morality, etc.), feed it into a big hopper, push a button, and have the machine spit out a fully complete work on the other side. Best of all, they can then turn around and start selling that machine-created product without paying a single author, or waiting for a living, breathing human being to finish the job.

And it's not just the big wigs who are acting like this is the death knell of authors as a species. Because while tech bros are strutting around like the fox that got the chicken, those who take an inordinate amount of pleasure at kicking down at creatives while simultaneously building their identities around fandoms and properties, have been braying that now we'll all have to, "Go get real jobs."

Unfortunately, the paint is already peeling off this rusting dream of theirs, and the wheels are making a decidedly awful sound as they get ready to come off.

I predict this going up in a fireball any day now.

The reason is, quite simply, plagiarism software isn't intelligence (artificial or otherwise). It is, in fact, rather stupid. All it can do is regurgitate what's been fed to it, and rearrange that information, attempting to predict what order would make it work best. While it might be able to mimic the style of a particular author, it doesn't have the ability to truly plot a novel, make realistic sounding dialogue, or create anything truly new. These programs are great at doing technical tasks (predicting shopping lists, figuring out based on past data whether a given property warrants a remake, etc.), but they aren't some kind of magic button that produces solid-gold novels that will fly off the shelves (despite some people trying this exact tactic, according to CNN).

This is bad enough when it comes to fiction, but as college students have found out, these programs aren't capable of thinking; they just spit out what they think you want to hear. As such, they'll confidently mess up facts, but write it in a way that seems legitimate. This is what makes things like foraging guides produced by chatbots so dangerous... because sure, a company didn't pay an author to write that guide. They're also trusting in an extremely unreliable collection of 1s and 0s to tell people which mushrooms are safe to eat, and which ones will kill them.

A Note on The Troglodytes

Generally speaking, you're supposed to be even-handed with people. You're supposed to try to see things from their perspective, and to try to reach a middle ground. This is particularly true when you are an author, and your brand is just as much about who you are and how you act as it is about the work you create. However, there are a lot of people out there who aren't actually interested in this conversation, nor do they care about how authors, artists, and others are routinely exploited. They just show up in the comments section to jeer, sling mud, and to howl at you to stop whining and pull yourself up by your bootstraps instead of trying to get paid for doing a hobby.

I will not mince words here. These people are troglodytes, and though they've certainly come out of the woodwork thanks to plagiarism software taking center stage, they've always been here. And, in a practical sense, their opinions have always been irrelevant to creators for one, simple reason.

They have never supported us. They have never cared about us. And no matter what you offer them, or how cordial you are, they are no different than the corporate overlords when it comes to exploitation; they just don't bother putting a pleasant face on it.

I'll give you an example that I feel is relevant, here.

As my regular readers know, I write a lot of TTRPG supplements to pay my bills. Whether it's things like my recent release 100 Sci Fi Bands, filled with musicians to set the scene in your cantina, 100 Superstitions For a Fantasy Setting to help you add a little extra detail to your next DND game, or even something like the popular 100 Merchants to Encounter so you aren't scrambling to make up characters at the drop of a hat, this is where the bulk of my earnings comes from.

And holy shit do troglodytes love to accuse me of being a bot!

It happens at least a couple of times a month, but it has shifted and changed over the past year. At first they accused me of building a bot to promote my work, which I'm not tech-savvy enough to do. As these programs have gained popularity, though, they instead claim that I'm just generating lists using this software and tossing them out there, hoping people are stupid enough to buy them. However, when I point out that a lot of my supplements pre-date the existence of these programs, their tune changes, saying that if they wanted a list like this for their game that they would just download a program and hit the button because it's free.

Could you mimic some of my supplements with a chat bot? Probably. As long as it didn't have to keep certain sets of world rules in mind, build balanced magic items, create unique plot hooks, or even maintain proper grammar, I'd say a bot could make a knockoff of the kind of work I do. And for some people, that would be good enough. They'd rather get bot slop for free, than pay a creator even a few dollars.

Because, and I feel this must be stressed, they do not care. If they couldn't get this resource via a plagiarism chat bot, they would attempt to pirate your content so you didn't get paid, or they would start some kind of forum posting war to try and get the community to do as much work on their behalf as possible. These are the same people who will sneer that they're not going to buy your novel because there's so much content available online for free that they don't need you on their to-read pile, or who will loudly demand that you provide free work for them to somehow prove you're a "real" creator.

There is nothing you can do to convince troglodytes to re-examine their biases, and to empathize with creators. What we can do, though, is try to find people who may not understand the issue, and explain to them what's happening. Showing them how a given issue affects all of us, and how the decisions they make can have repercussions, is possible. Winning hearts and minds on this issue is important, since too many folks just don't get a glimpse behind the scenes when it comes to the life of creative professionals.

Have meaningful, useful conversations with you can, but don't bother with the troglodytes. Stay vigilant, stay loud, and don't give up!

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

The Fight, Flight, and Freeze Instinct (As An Author)

There is an experience that every writer I've ever spoken to has had, but a lot of us don't talk about it. Namely that, when we're faced with actually putting words on the page, most of us have one of three reactions... fight, flight, or freeze. You might be familiar with these reactions, and the various ways they can play out, but in the event you aren't, I wanted to talk about them in an open, honest way. Because while a lot of us may settle on one standard response eventually, most of us will go through these stages at one time or another. We may even have different reactions to different projects, or different situations and sets of circumstances!

It's coming right for us!

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

The Stress Responses of Writers

As human beings, when we're faced with dangerous situations, the millennia-old software that runs our skull jelly kicks in and activates our instincts to preserve ourselves. The problem is that, while these reactions were originally created to help us deal with snakes and tigers, we can often regard our own manuscripts as dangerous threats in the here and now. As a result, trying to sit down and work might lead us to experience several different stress reactions. The ones I've come across include:

#1: Fight

This is, quite honestly, my most common reaction to most stress situations, work included. If I have a project that's stressing me out (deadline is fast approaching, I don't like the way that it's shaping up, or I feel it's not quite in-hand) then the most likely course of action is that I'll brew myself a cup of coffee, boot up the program, and hammer on it until I am satisfied with my progress. Or until it's done.

Honestly, this recent video of mine over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel (which you should check out if you haven't) is probably one of the best examples of this tendency. I ran into a slew of technical issues with it, and it just frustrated me. I could have allotted some time to fix one thing at a time, taking care of it over a week or so, but when it didn't do what I wanted I decided that I wasn't going to bed until it was done. I was up till 3 in the morning, but I slept the sleep of the exhausted and the righteous, my enemy defeated. The story is from my TTRPG supplement Guilds of Sundara, and if it sounds like something you'd enjoy, grab a copy for either Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.

Fight definitely has advantages, namely that if you're the sort of person who tends to come out swinging, it can be very invigorating to feel like you're doing something, and taking on a problem. However, it can consume your attention, taking time away from other projects and responsibilities, leaving you spent and exhausted when you may have had other things that also required your time and attention. Pick your battles if this is a response you have to your writing, and learn to make it work for you.

#2: Flight

There are a lot of folks for whom the best part of writing is all the foreplay. There's the sudden spark of the idea, the world building, the character crafting, putting together story arcs, motivations, weird science, and magic systems. But when it comes time to sit down and write, now the fun part is over; now it's time to actually work.

Escapism is the main thing that a lot of writers do when we get stressed, and if working on one story is not giving us the dopamine anymore, our brains will often try to recapture that rush by doing the same thing with another story instead. This is why a lot of writers will be super enthusiastic about an idea, potentially for years, only to suddenly drop it and move on to something else when they hit a rough patch during the actual writing process that stops them from getting the same fulfillment that it was bringing in the earlier stages.

If this is the way your brain reacts, don't fret. Sometimes it's good to let yourself have a little extra worldbuilding or book plotting as a treat, and this is doubly true if you are the kind of writer that finds fulfillment in these activities. However, it's important to remember not to let yourself get so wrapped up in this other project that you abandon the one you were previously working on. Or, put another way, you should have an occasional cookie, but don't eat the whole pack of them instead of cooking dinner.

Lastly, while this behavior can be disastrous if you intend to be a professional writer, don't beat yourself up if you're just doing this for fun. If you're the only person you're accountable to, then try to keep a little perspective, and be kind to yourself.

#3: Freeze

This is one of the most difficult responses I've seen creators of all types deal with when it comes to stress from their work. It usually happens because they've talked a big game about a project, or they've finally given themselves a deadline, and now this story has become real in a way it wasn't before. There are actual stakes now, and there's a cost that comes if you don't actually finish it. Either you lose out on a check, you disappoint your audience, or you're going to take a hit to your reputation if you don't deliver.

And that can make a lot of us freeze.

This is honestly a problem I had when writing both Blackest Knights and The Final Lamentation this past year. Originally, both of these stories were proposed to the audience for the YouTube channel A Vox in The Void (whom you should go listen to, as several of my stories have been featured there over the past few years), and the audience chose what they wanted to see next. And knowing there was not just a handful of folks, but literally hundreds of people who had weighed in on what stories they wanted to see next, and who were now waiting for me to deliver? I've written 4 novels, 2 short story collections, run 2 blogs for a decade each, and I've been writing professionally for basically my entire adult life... and I'm not going to lie, that put some pressure on me.

I'm very fortunate that the freeze didn't last long (largely because it frustrated me, and that activated my fight response), but the idea of an audience that was actually expecting my work did give me a few days where putting words on the page felt like I was fighting against a higher gravity than normal. In the end I'm glad I pushed through it, but I can also acknowledge that it was at least partially because of all the experience I have as a writer, and that I've got a lot of tips and tricks in my toolbox to help me get past paralysis.

As with the other reactions, take a deep breath. Focus. Be kind to yourself. To use my favorite analogy, if you were lifting a heavy weight, and you felt your grip slip, or your balance go wrong, you should put down the weight for a bit. Dust off your hands, take a drink of water, and come back to it with a stronger, surer grip. Or if you feel something in your muscles twinge in a way it shouldn't, don't be afraid to put it down, and take the rest of the day. It's better to let yourself rest, and recuperate, so you can come back to a project soon, than to strain yourself the wrong way and need far more recovery time than you anticipated.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!