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Recent Announcements:
This month I will be interviewing Harlan Guthrie, the man behind the Malevolent audio drama podcast. I can’t wait to sit down with him and talk about all things eldritch horror, podcasting, and the connections between audio drama and prose fiction.
Also, I’m excited to announce I’ll be interviewing Harlan Guthrie of Malevolent, a wonderful eldritch horror audio drama later this month. Updates to come!
I also completed my interview with Cat Voleur early this month, so be watching out for that this summer in ARCHIVE OF THE ODD. Updates to come.
Project Progress:
Sci-fantasy story is back from the copy editor! I’m making the changes in preparation for a second round of beta reading. I made some progress on the scifi story this month, but all other projects are still on second-class status until this one is finished.
Recent Fascinations:
Imposter syndrome is a hell of a thing, ain’t it? For authors it can come in so many forms and at so many different places along the process that it is almost a required right of passage. Every writer feels imposter syndrome at some point. Sometimes it’s when you read someone else’s work and it feels so, so much better than your own. Sometimes it’s when you are working on a project that has you stumped, and you wonder why you even bother. For a lucky few of us it’s when we get published, even just short fiction. We get published and immediately start talking about how hollow it all feels and how we have to chase the next high (Also Known As the TBQ Effect). Then at times, it’s when we edit and wonder what bumbling, pig headed, jackass idiot wrote this in the first place. And whose decision was it to make me clean this mess up? And WHY exactly can’t this idiot just get it right the first time?
If you can’t tell, I’m currently feeling a touch of that last one.
I’m most of the way through a pretty serious edit of my sci-fantasy manuscript after getting it back from the copy editor and, of course, I’m feeling some doubts. My main character needs serious edits to keep her personality consistent, and her love interest required much of the same. I think I’ve got the love interest’s personality straightened out, but I’m not sure I have my MC’s nailed down just yet. Part of me knows I will eventually. I still have another round of beta readers left and another read through by my copy editor, and by the end of it all I know I’ll have everything worked out. Still, though, it’s hard not to dwell on the issues while they’re there on the page.
This is especially true during the editing process, when you’re spending hours and hours hyper focused on the flaws of the piece, trying to find every way you can to iron them out and make everything neat and proper.
Maybe modern review culture is partly to blame, it is certainly to blame for the idea that everyone has to like everything and relate to it for a work to be considered good in the common way. My MC isn’t particularly likable, she’s anxious and headstrong, and aggravating, but that’s the point. This is a single story in her journey, and it’s a journey I want to tell, because it’s one I identify with, regardless of if I like her.
I have to keep reminding myself that even the finished product won’t speak for the entirety of my ability, that it’s a process made up of many people wearing many hats. Most of all, I have to remind myself that there’s no one I’m impostering.
I’m just a writer, and when I’m done it might be good or it might be bad, but It will undeniably be mine.
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