Creative Crossroads

So…today marks the one year anniversary of when I got my critiques for the third draft of my fantasy novel Beautiful Monster. Ever since then, the quest to rebuild it from the ground up has gone…slowly. I’ve written back stories for Honey Valley (the main setting) and the Magetan religion (part of the elven culture). I’ve also created character sheets for anybody with a first and last name so that I can keep their extreme tendencies in check. I’ve taken several trips to Google Land so that I can learn more about the psychological aspects of my story. But as far as editing and rewriting the actual novel goes, that shit hasn’t happened yet. I’m taking plotting instead of pantsing more seriously this time around and I don’t want to fuck up on an apocalyptic scale like I did last time.

But here’s where my creative crossroads come into play. You see, the reason progress has been so slow on Beautiful Monster is because of all the mental exhaustion I’ve been experiencing throughout the year, which I owe to autism burnout, schizophrenic avolition, and the world being a general cluster-fuck of tiring news. Any little bursts of energy I do have are spent on other projects such as book and movie reviews, poetry, shorts, etc. I wear a lot of hats as a writer, but I only have one head. The creative process would be much easier if I was a hydra or a hellhound.

Beautiful Monster is a long-term project that will extend beyond draft number four. The last time I published something tangible on paper was in 2020, when I submitted Emilio & Marigold to the Hollow Hills anthology Raining Cats & Dogs. The last time I published something on my own was in 2018 and that was my third poetry collection Lunatic Justice. I’m not saying I’m in a rush to continue my legacy of publishing, but if Beautiful Monster isn’t going to see the light of day for a long time, it’d be nice to have something to tide me over until then.

I have a backlog of short stories and poems that could easily fit into another collection. I have 78 fantasy shorts, 69 nonfiction shorts, 83 contemporary shorts, and 252 poems that are just sitting in my folder doing nothing. Shorts and poems are less time-consuming to edit and rewrite since there’s less to keep track of than a full-length novel. But I also realize that some of these shorts and poems have aged poorly throughout the years and shouldn’t go into any collection whatsoever. Hell, Keith Richards drinking a jug of expired milk has aged more gracefully than some of my creative writing pieces. 

The best thing to do about this backlog is to hire beta readers to look them over and see which pieces will make the cut and which ones won’t. I’m also keeping my ears open to any suggestions on how the ones that have aged badly can become the best versions of themselves they can be. Don’t kill a bad story; fix it. But as I look at the prices of some of these services, I’m wondering how much it would cost to do fifty micro-stories or a hundred poems in succession, which is how these collections are going to be packaged. Would I be charged per poem or story? If so, how much would fifty or a hundred of them cost if there’s a minimum price? And now I feel like I’m a contestant on the Price Is Right. I better not overbid or else those sad horns will blast in my ears.

Here’s what I need advice on. Should I reduce the number of hats I wear as a writer and focus specifically on Beautiful Monster or should I take a minor detour and put out another collection just to keep my workload from becoming monotonous? Ultimately, it is my decision on what I want to do, but it’d be nice to hear other opinions as well. What do you guys think?

Rolling the Dice

***ROLLING THE DICE***

Last night I had quite the wonderful conversation with one of the CEO’s of Hollow Hills, Aurora Styles. Round three of editing is rapidly approaching for Emilio and the Scratching Post, so the two of us agreed it would be a good time to talk about character profiles. I’m bold enough to admit that creating characters is something that I struggle with. Sometimes my characters are relatable and three-dimensional, other times they’re either despicable as hell (despite being heroes) or bland and boring. Aurora has been writing a long time and has character creation down to a science. That’s because she treats her TV and movie viewings as “study time”. She pinpoints flaws and traits in the TV characters she likes to watch and (either subconsciously or consciously) adds them to her own characters.

Unfortunately, I don’t put that much time and effort into my own character creation. I should. I know now I should. But up until this point, I’d been doing something I like to call “rolling the dice”. It’s actually called pantsing, which is the opposite of plotting. Everybody’s a hybrid of the two when it comes to writing, but for me personally, I would be a plotter for the events happening in the story and a pantser for character creation. My characters would be listed in my pre-writes as a name, a race, and an occupation. The main character of Beautiful Monster was listed as Windham Xavier, Elf Mercenary. His rapist was listed as Shelly Atwood, Human Seductress. With this incredibly limited information at my disposal, I would rely heavily on subconscious influences to flesh out these characters, much to their detriment.

Aurora said it best when she told me that the fiction we consume has the heaviest influence on our writing, whether subconsciously or consciously. This could not have been truer for Beautiful Monster, to use that example again. My biggest influences as a young writer included WWE, Pulp Fiction, Tales From the Hood, The Shield, Pink Floyd the Wall, and pretty much anything where the dialogue is snarky and vulgar. Well, those subconscious thoughts leaked into my characterizations of Windham and Shelly. They swore like no tomorrow. They got angry at little things, not unlike a WWE wrestler. The lengths that they would go to in being vulgar had no limits. The result? Having to completely rewrite the first draft from scratch. Windham and Shelly were hardly the only ones to act this way. Torger? You’re damn right. Tarja? Hell yeah. Orpheus Rinehart? Absolutely. There was no distinction between these characters’ dialogue. If I had quoted text with no names next to them, you’d never know who they were.

My critique sessions with Marie Krepps (the other CEO of Hollow Hills) led to a complete overhaul of my characters while my conversation with Aurora enforced and confirmed everything I should have learned. To use Beautiful Monster as an example again, Windham is soft-spoken and quiet-voiced even during moments of anger. Shelly is a lot more tempting and classy than she was in the first draft. Christian and Kody Savage don’t have any dialogue at all; they’re just a couple of drooling zombie rednecks.

For Emilio and the Scratching Post, the same thing is true: a complete overhaul of characters’ personalities. While I can’t divulge major plot points due to my confidentiality agreement with Hollow Hills, I am willing to give you some appetizers. In the first draft, Sweet Pea (Emilio’s master) was a little brat who disrespected her elders and got away with everything. Now, the newly christened Marigold is a lot more fearful of the villains in her life and that’s something she wants desperately to overcome. Antonia, Marigold’s grandmother, started off as a bland and boring screamer. Now, she’s still a villain, but her eerily calm demeanor makes her more believable. She’s creepy during her coldest moments and a joy to be around when she needs to lie to the public. In Antonia’s case, I stole her characterization from Abel, Trevor Noah’s abusive stepfather in his memoir “Born a Crime”. Yikes!

Of course, Emilio and the Scratching Post (which has the funny as hell acronym EatSP) has only entered round three of editing. There will be more changes. There will be more rounds. The macro and micro aspects will be fine-tuned. This will all be done before June 1^st, when Hollow Hills’s deadline for submissions comes to fruition. June 1^st is also two days before my 34^th birthday. Being a part of Hollow Hills’s anthologies will be the ultimate birthday gift for me. But before I can get to that milestone, I’ve got a lot of work to do…but not tonight. Tomorrow? Maybe. The next day? Could be. But not tonight. I’m physically drained after going for a long walk in the springtime heat. I need to be alert and alive if I’m going to make these macro edits to my manuscript. Until then, I’m Garrison Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain! Or in this case, the scratching post to Uncle Thud’s catnip garden! There’s another thing that needs changing: Uncle Thud’s characterization. We’ll cross that bridge when a new day rises. For now, it’s about taking it easy.

***BEAUTIFUL MONSTER***

In between edits of EatSP, I’ve been writing chapters of Beautiful Monster and I’m currently on chapter twenty, where Queen Llewellyn Xavier is scheduled to make her first appearance in my story. The economic hardships have not been kind to her village. Her crops are covered in blight, her citizens are disappearing left and right, and she still hasn’t negotiated a trade deal with King Lars Stonewall. She’s ready to throw in the towel after so many failures…until a familiar face returns to her village with a traumatizing story to tell…

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Summertime and the living’s easy. And Bradley’s on the microphone with Ras MG. All the people in the dance will agree that we’re well qualified to represent the LBC. Me and Louie run to the party. Dance to the rhythm, it gets harder. Me and my girl, we’ve got this relationship. I love her so bad, but she treats me like shit. On lockdown like a penitentiary. She spreads her loving all over, but when she gets home, there’s none left for me. Oh, take this veil from off my eyes. My burning sun will someday rise. So what am I going to be doing for a while? Said I’m going to play with myself. Show them how we come off the shelf. So what? Evil. I’ve come to tell you that she’s evil. Most definitely. Evil. Ornery, scandalous, and evil. Most definitely. The tension is getting hotter. I’d like to hold her head underwater.”

-Sublime singing “Doin’ Time”-