Hi again wonderful people! I'm back! I promised I would be! I've started with the regular entries again, but my publisher made a few changes to how things work with the agreement. In the past, I posted story updates with special permission and the intent was ALWAYS to eventually have a specialized…
Hi Everyone! Just a quick note. You may have noticed the stories and writing journals have stopped. Nothing's wrong. I don't have COVID-19. I'm not dead yet. Family is happy. Cats are happy. Everyone (except my publisher) is happy. I'm a little behind on the next Sajani story and decided that I'd t…
Choosing the right templates. In 1871 anthropologist Edward Burnette Tylor proposed that mythology and literature often follow a specific pattern. Eventually this pattern would be filtered and added upon by several others and eventually solidified by Joseph Campbell. It would come to be known as th…
Starting your group I usually start these out thinking, “Wow, Chaaya, you’re going to have trouble talking about this for 1.3k words. You’ll be lucky to see 500.” And then I have no problem whatsoever and end up doing an extra installment. Anyway, today I’m going to talk about some things that are…
What to look for There are two reasons I don’t use writers’ groups. The first is kind of obvious to the people that know me. I can’t do a “group” thing. I get very nervous and panic easily and then end up saying things that are tactless even by my standards. Having social anxiety and PTSD just make…
A few reasons why I don’t use them, but maybe you should. A writers’ group is a group of people that get together to discuss stories written by members of the group with the intent of improving authorial skill and assisting to build confidence. Ready for some more black and white style Chaaya? Here…
Don’t fall into these two too common pitfalls. Helix the Fallen asked me to cover a common scam that befalls writers: Vanity Press. I decided to also cover another prevalent scam: literary agents. I’ll talk a little about what is and isn’t vanity press and get into ways to separate the good agents…
Here's your chance! Just got word of this from RP Games. This means there are a total of four open calls for writers out there right now, two for novelists. What is an open call? Some publishers look for a broad range of stories and take just about anything they receive. Some, like RP Games work in…
How to get more for your effort when writing. Today I’m going to talk about improvisation, often called improv for short. It’s an element of the creative process that’s unplanned and spontaneous. In the case of writing, it’s something that comes up as you’re telling the story and (hopefully) enhanc…
Writer Blockhead I do occasionally get asked what to do about writers’ block. I’m one of the last people you should be asking, but I figured I’d put together some information on it. These are things that I’ve seen regularly. I’ve heard of lots of things like writing drills and prompts and well… Tho…
Today I’m going to conclude the series on reader engagement. I'll be talking about using character conflict. This will concentrate on four main types: the unknown, internal, interpersonal, and direct conflict. Like a lot of what I discuss, you’ll find quite a bit of overlap and in most cases, you’l…
Back to where I left off two weeks ago. This’ll probably be a short journal because I don’t have much to say about it… um… I’m not sure that last part is possible. I always have much to say. This week I’ll talk about keeping the reader emotionally involved in the story using conflict. As you’ll see…
I had another topic lined up for today, but my publisher texted to suggest a journal on character development, specifically the difference between history and character. I guess someone requested it, because he yammers on about it often enough, I doubt he needs more. I’ve talked about building lika…
Hi again! Today I thought I’d take a bit of a break from the technical stuff I’ve been covering and get into something that’s a little more philosophical and almost entirely personal based. It’s about creating an emotional investment for your readers. I’ve read a few books and stories (and seen a f…
RP Games is a small company, so this doesn't happen often. As per their own post, here's their open call for submissions. For those not familiar with the terminology, a company like that usually has work done by assigned people, like me, but they find those people by doing an open call for submissi…
As you can tell from the title, I have little boys in my family. Sometimes a writer’ll use different terms than her publisher, even though they mean the same thing. It’s not that one term will always be on the publisher’s side and the other always on the writer’s side, but English being what it is,…
One strange question I get often is (and I’m not making this up): “Are you a planner or a pantser?” Alrighty then… First off a pantser, when I was growing up, was a bad thing and it wasn’t something properly raised people did. In today’s world, it’d be a fast way to make viral news and have every n…
Today I’m going to talk about passive voice in writing. This one is one that I hear people talk about all the time. A lot of times the discussion reminds me of a famous quote from Mark Twain in that it ends up sounding like “something that everyone wants to talk about but, no one wants…” to bother…
I’ll start with a little bit of an apology. Last week’s journal mentioned a macro form of the topic. And then I didn’t really do anything with it. These journals are very much done as stream of consciousness, so I’m amazed I’ve written this many without something like that happening more often. Tha…
As I mentioned in an earlier journal, I'm working on a FAQ to go at the end of the next novel. There's this really annoying question that, honestly, I hardly ever get asked, but apparently someone else does. I think the fact it does get asked so often says a lot for how our media portrays the furry…
I always feel a little like I'm shouting in an empty room, but I know there are a few out there that might be interested in this, the only question is: Will they respond in time? I got the draft layout on Fugitive's Trust just now along with an email saying that we can add between five and fifteen…
Contracts and Writing RP Games is run by someone that's paid close attention to different ways authors can be messed over by publishers and it shows in positive ways. I wasn't allowed to simply sign a contract. I had to show I'd read each clause by giving a summary of it, in writing (in part becaus…
Awhile back I asked my publisher to tell me the most common reason he rejects submissions. There aren’t many right now, being a small company, but he spent some time as an editor of a semi-professional magazine, “The Leading Edge.” At his peak there he says he processed over a hundred stories a mon…
Hi again everyone! I’m continuing my series on suspension of disbelief with a few tips and pointers on how it can affect “mainstream fiction” and will even make a bit of a note of its use in nonfiction. I’ll make use of a few examples and hopefully help you see ways that using these techniques can…
Last week I talked about suspension of disbelief in science fiction and how it can be tricky in a science-based world like our own. Today I'm going to talk about the nuances of suspension of disbelief in fantasy. I'll give some examples from my own work and from some other authors and I'll tie it b…
Hi lovely followers! This will be the first time I post a journal on all three of the furry sites I'm on. Up until this point all my journals were only found on Fur Affinity. I mentioned in my post last week that I was going to talk about something else, but I noticed that my posts about the philos…
I really like the layout and function of this site a lot better than...another site I use. But it's even harder for a writer to get a following here than it is there and it's definitely not easy there. So for now, I won't be using the journal feature much. I do on the other site and I use it to pos…
