Behind the Writing
I cannot progress without a perfect beginning. I need to get that opening sentence exactly right. And then the next one after that. Once I’ve completed a scene, I rework it until I am fully satisfied. I envy authors who can write a messy first draft and fix it later; I simply can’t work that way. That isn't to say I don’t rewrite—once the manuscript is finished, I go over it all again with a fine-tooth comb—but my first draft is a slow, deliberate process.
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I always have an ending in mind, though more often than not, it isn’t where the story and characters decide to take me. I listen to my characters, even when they make mistakes that will ultimately deny them a happy ending. The only story where I genuinely wished for the protagonist to succeed against his own better judgment was 'Planned Obsolescence'. That struggle partly explains why it took me sixteen years to complete it! And, even then, I could only allow him a marginal victory, as that was all the cumulative weight of his poor decisions would permit.
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When I feel stuck, I sleep on it, keeping my phone close to hand. I am constantly surprised by how often I wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 AM with a solution—a line of dialogue or a fully formed paragraph. I jot it down in my notes app, and that becomes my starting point for the next day.
Image inspired by the novella, 'Virtue of Being'
In terms of narrative structure, nothing is done on a whim. Whether it is the tense or the point of view (POV), everything serves a purpose:
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In ‘Oracular Vernacular’, I employed first, third, and second-person POVs in a single story to present the concept of Hivemind as being all-pervasive.
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In ‘Belonging’, I withheld the protagonist’s and his dog’s names until he faced the prospect of a return to society.
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In ‘The Hollow Men’, I switched from first to third-person at the moment the protagonist stopped seeing himself through his own eyes and began to see himself as others perceived him.
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Which stories gave me the least trouble? That would be a toss-up between ‘Life As We Know It’, ‘The Many Worlds of Walter Rudhill’, and ‘I Tell You What’.
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The first of those seemed to write itself, racing toward a final punchline that I hadn’t even discovered when I began writing. The second came down to the character, whose unrelenting drive toward failure made the story’s tragic trajectory inevitable. And the third is probably my most personal story. While it was emotionally difficult to write, the process itself was straightforward—the words flowed in part because I had lived them.
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Finally, when a draft is done, I let it sit—sometimes for a year or more—before reviewing it for publication. This is why many of my stories were actually written long before they became available. For example, the novella Virtue of Being was written over the course of 2022 and 2023, but will only be published in mid-2026 after a final round of review.
Image inspired by the short story, 'Planned Obsolescence'