Nonfictional Tales #1; Nothing funny to see here. Probably.
Really, this is just a mundane update. The first!
In mid-august I thought to myself - I’ve been working on this novel for so damn long I’ve lost track of where I’m going. As an aspiring author, with several almost-books to my name, one of the greatest challenges of sitting down to write a novel for the first time (or first novel fourth concept third attempt?) for me is the problem of “When is this #$%@ing thing going to end.”
I’m not much for plotting or outlining it seems.
As a long time practitioner of “stream of consciousness writing,” something I picked up nearly 10 years ago from the “Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron,” continuously writing isn’t a problem for me. I have enormous sums of words to share, some of which are worth reading. The problem that this practise has induced in me is that I rarely actually finish something.
The words just… pile up. I think by my last estimate, I’m around 150,000 words and counting for my work in progress novel “When Gods Dream.” And my best guess is it’ll be another 100,000 words before I hit the spot in the story where I’m comfortable saying “yes, this is book 1.”
Le sigh.
The editing and revision process is going to be a ride.
So I thought, I need to work on this - and committed myself to a project where I would be forced into starting and finishing in the same sitting.
“A short story a day for 90 days.”
A worthy stretch goal in the art of completing a thing.
The idea of stretch goals linked to ‘intentional practice’ came from the book “Grit by Angela Duckworth.” A remarkable book by someone who claims not to be a genius, yet work-horsed herself into winning an award only given to geniuses.
As a lifelong “talented smart kid” who had a tendency to “move on” when things got “boring” this book was a bitter pill to swallow. Evidence seems pretty clear to me now that Talent and Intelligence are overrated… effort is the only thing that lands anywhere worth going.
This thought is particularly striking considering how many absolutely terrible fantasy and science fiction books I’ve read over the years. Hell if they can get published, why can’t I?
Very quickly these short stories piled up, and I realized that I needed to do something with them. Sub-stack seemed like the obvious choice, and I’d been toying with the idea for several months, but now I had content to publish here.
The purpose of the “Tales of the Godswood” is practice telling short form stories, “Setting the stage” for the fantasy novel series that starts with “When Gods Dream,” and experimenting with different kinds of presentation and story telling styles to see what people resonate with these days.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.
Hopefully more, actually, editing isn’t that fun.
So thank you for having come along on the ride so far,
and I hope you stick around to see what comes next.
My plan is to continue publishing at least 1 short story a week, along with images generated through my ongoing arguments with Chat-GPT & Dall-E3.
I’m going to be adding a podcast into the sub stack as well, so that those of you more motivated to hear me tell you the story directly, you’ll have that option available. Hopefully soon, but no promises on when the first one will launch.
I’ll also write one of these updates per month, to tell you how the book is coming along, and how things are evolving on the sub stack project.
For the time being I’m going to be keeping all content on this sub stack free, as I’m not so well-endowed with subscribers and continuous content that I’m comfortable locking things behind a paywall for committed subscribers.
However, I do plan on launching paid subscriptions within the next month. No one is under any obligation to contribute, but IF YOU DO I will love you for it.
Honestly if you like what you read here, and you want to throw some dopamine (and cash) my way to help me, my gratitude will be real. Being a writer in this day and age is not easy.
I haven’t quite decided what those subscription $ numbers are going to look like, and what the perks of subscribing will be, but I’m certain that “Getting acknowledged in a book or podcast” and/or “Free or discounted access to books” will probably be on those list of perks. And full access to the archives for all time.
If you do like the content here, but feel that being a paid subscriber isn’t on your list of to-dos, I respect that.
But may I make an appeal to you? Please hit one or more of the “like, comment, restack or share” buttons on these stories. Building an audience is extraordinarily difficult, and seems to be more-so as a writer of fantasy fiction. So any help you can offer to bring in more subscribers would help me out enormously.
I’m also very interested in your feedback.
Do you like the stories?
Favourite characters you’d like to see more stories about?
Do you like the AI art that Im including with them?
Do you know a thing or two about sub stack marketing that you think I should know?
Got any wild suggestions for how to improve the quality or content of this sub stack?
Are you an artist and want to contribute art to a story?
Want to share your favourite chocolate cake recipe?
I’m curious. Shoot me an email at robingeorge@substack.com. I’ll read them all, cause honestly there aren’t that many of you yet.
Oh - I nailed that stretch goal, and wrote 90 short stories. Many of which you will never read because they’re garbage. Making good short stories wasn’t the goal, just finishing them.
BUT. Enough of them are good. I have nearly a year of stories to share. And I may have accidentally started another book. Or two.
In Gratitude,
Robin George
