Episode #309: When The Hard Part Suddenly Becomes Easy

Up until very recently, I always found it really hard to accomplish three particular writing related necessities for my books:

1} A title for the story;

2} Synopsis, both long and short;

3} Tag.

In a timely manner. Didn't matter what I was writing, these particular items always gave me a migraine when it came to actually doing them. At most, I would be able to come up with a title in a reasonable time frame, with the others having to be dragged kicking and screaming. This novella is a prime example of this onerous process.

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With my last novella, for some unknown reason, everything fell smoothly into place: a title, the multiple synopsis and tag took a title of three days to complete. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

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The reason as to why I'm broaching this headache inducing topic today is that I'm just about ready to publish the third of four projects that I had promised myself to work on during my retirement.

To refresh everyone's memory, about six months after I had retired in 2020, I decided to get really serious about my writing. My jumping off point was republishing this short story collection with a new title and cover. By the summer of 2021, I had four other projects lined up, all of which were rewrites in one form or another: the two aforementioned novellas, my fantasy series (see the tag Hot Mess for further details) and the novella that is the subject of today's post.

Back in the mid 2010s, I had self published a novella that I grew to loathe during the next decade: I didn't like the title; the cover was too cartoonist (I had tried a different graphic designer for this go around) and the story seemed to be a little...choppy.

Fast forward to 2023. I had decides to do a major gut to the story by changing the p.o.v., tightening up the word count (I had fluffed it out by adding excerpts from other books), creating a new title and new long and short synopsis. Surprisingly, at least for me, all of these items I was able to accomplish in about three months.

The p.o.v. went from a 3rd to a light present tense; tightening the word count was ridiculously simple, as cutting the excerpts dropped the word count by almost 50%. But the three items that normally induces a major headache for me became very easy to do.

Since this story was ultimately about vengeance, the title took me about a half hours' worth of doodling on a piece of paper; the two blurbs were basically reworked from what I had originally, so the only thing left to do is the tags, which should not be too difficult to complete.

I don't know about you, but I managed to have two completely different experiences when it came to completing the previously mentioned bullet points with three consecutive novellas. The first one I had the usual headaches: title (about a month which involved a couple of polls); long and short blurbs (again, about a month that involved other members of my now ex-writing group) and the tag (that took about two weeks involving just the windmills of my mind).

Basically about 2 1/2 months were spent on those bullet points, which is actually a little below par, like a birdie, for me.

The next two, I managed to zip through, in an aggregate total of for each of one week. With the former, the one thing that I had going for me was that I was so driven to the point of obsession to get everything nailed, which surprisingly enough I did to the wall and beyond.

With the latter, the one thing that I had going for me, was the fact that this was a previously published novella. So the motivation was that I had a very good idea on what I didn't want for a title, for blurbs or a tag line.

The one common thread that all three of the novellas had, was the fact that they were all rewrites of mediocre stories, none of which I was proud of in their original form. Oddly enough, the first one felt like I was using it to practice writing blurbs, tags and titles. Then with the practice out of the way, the two remaining novellas became easy peasy lemon squeezy.

The other common thread that the last two novellas have as opposed to the first one listed is motivation. With the first novella listed, the motivation was sporadic at best. Sure, it was definitely there when I wanted to get it completed and published, but it started wavering when I had started running into, but not through, the proverbial adobe wall when I was trying to complete the aforementioned bullet points. Once it started wavering, it became increasingly difficult to get it back again. Ultimately I pushed through and gave birth to in 2024.

With the other two, the motivation was absolutely there. I was stoked about each story, so I wanted to do my best to complete those three bullet points in the shortest time possible, which I did with my recently published novella. With the one I want to do this year, it was a little different. I had the new title already chosen back in 2023 when I first started rewriting it, and in 2024, it was very easy to take what I had already written for blurbs and re-edit them into something that fit more securely with the overall story.

What it boils down to, at least for me, is motivation. Motivation is the key to whether that bullet point process gives me a migraine, or gives me a good summer breeze blowing through the patio of my mind.

Have a good week everyone!

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #308: Were You Ever Given Bad Writing Advice?

Coffee so mediocre that it didn't want to be open for fear of polluting the air with the coffee beans that were lying around on the ground beneath the coffee bush for a year before someone finally took notice and showed pity on them.

I gotten plenty of good advice over the years in regards to my writing, with the majority of it being indirectly (i.e. reading about it from reputable people) acquired, for which I am very grateful for.

I've also gotten a bit of bad advice over the years, some of which that cost me money and reputation (i.e vanity presses and agents). Others had given me advice that basically cost me time and enrollment in the school of Sunken Cost Fallacy.

Once such piece of advice that in 20/20 hindsight was bad, was to create an author's page. This was suggested to me by my one and only publisher back in 2009, as a way to promote myself and my book(s). Naively, I went along with this suggestion, not realizing until many years later that I could've done the same by simply promoting my regular personal page for my writings.

Over the years that page had more or less stagnated, as it got to be very time consuming in posting fresh content on that page. But earlier this year, I had the ability to cross-post/share from my personal page to my author's page, which in turn generated some mild interest and a few extra eyeballs.

But as we all know, all good innovations introduced by FB must also be taken away because it was a good innovation. So as a matter of record, I lost my ability to cross-post and to share to my page. And thus, I once again found myself with a stagnant author's page that averaged at most, one post a week, which was a link to my latest blog post.

I realize now that creating an author's page was redundant, and I also realize that I should've kept it deactivated when I had the opportunity to do otherwise (not sure if I can deactivate it now w/o messing up my personal page). I also realize that I simply can't abandon the page no matter how much I want to, again we circle back to the sunken cost fallacy that I had mentioned earlier.

So I came up with a plan that if anything, will hopefully make people inquisitive enough to check out my writings and blog: posting my editing/publishing journey as it relates to my five volume fantasy series.

For past couple of weeks, I started writing short blog posts that are less than 200 words in length*, first with pen & paper, then transcribe to the computer before doing the very predictable copy/paste (lesson learned from long ago when I would be halfway through a good FB post, only for my computer to suddenly glitch or me hit a stray button and POOF! no more post).

As of the day of this post, I have thirteen posts completed and ready to be launched. If I couple it with my weekly blog post, I have either thirteen weeks of FB posts (one per week), or six and a half weeks if I add two per week. I haven't quite decided, but I'm leaning heavily towards two per week, if only because I play to start editing in earned this month and I don't want to be writing about the editing of book one when I'm starting on book two.

*fun fact: because I was never able to uncramp my printing from previous decades spent filling out forms with ludicrously small spaces, I gave myself to hard caps for writing these FB posts: maximum of thirteen words per lone and sixteen lines per post. this gives me a standardized  goal of 208 +/- words per post, which translates to one quarter to one third typed.

I'm not sure if I will do this with anything else that I might create in the future, but at the very least I will enjoy shaking my tired groove thing while trying to drum up a few more eyeballs my way. If anything, I have a new pseudo blog to play around with that won't involve any of the inherent stress that this blog sometimes brings to me (general purpose vs one specific purpose).

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #307: One Exception To Total Silence

This was not my view looking out my back door this past Christmas was the brownest brown that you can have in mid 30 degree weather. But one can still dream, right?

As most of you have been able to pick up on throughout the years, I need to have near total silence in which to write effectively and efficiently. I say 'near' because of where my den is located (under the living room), so if I get at least 97%, I'm good. If it drops below that, I'm not so good and I have to find someplace else to write, or blog for that matter.

There was only one time that I had made an exception to rule, and that was strictly due to a plumbing issue that ultimately deposited nearly two inches of water into the basement early summer 2021. So naturally, I had to relocate my computer and printer up to the dining room for the rest of the year.

In addition to those two pieces of equipment being relocated, I was able to save four manuscripts from permanent destruction, so that I would have material to work on.*

*manuscript #1; manuscript #2; rewrite of previously published novella; and my fantasy series.

So here's where the exception comes into play. Dining room is on the 1st floor, with the kitchen directly behind me and the living room directly to my left. Because I do not play well with others when it comes to my writing, we whipped out the headphones, opened up the endless world that is YouTube and went exploring.

Now we didn't just choose any old music to serve as my temporary white noise, we needed music that was completely lyric free. Like the only words I want to hear is someone introducing a song. Because I had an early childhood exposure to classical music (thank you Carl Stalling), classical is what I went for first.

Any possible woodwind or string instrument related to classical, I found every conceivable type of music for. Once I had reached my tolerance level for a particular instrument or composer for that instrument, I moved on to another type of music or instrument, or even obscure stuff like Medieval choral music.

I eventually finished my classical feed bag and moved on to the type fantasy music that one would create for RPGs (aka role playing games), followed by metal bands that would create that kind of music, which was then followed by fantasy music of the ASMR variety (trust me on this one), We soon pivoted to Americana and Bluegrass instrumentals.

I eventually finished my instrumental journey by listening to a few movie soundtracks (e.g. spaghetti westerns), which worked out perfectly for me, as within days of finishing I had to vacate the dining room, as the basement was reasonably cleaned, pipes were fixed and everything was put back in decent order.

I calculated that I listened to nearly two hundred hours of instrumental music of a variety of types stretched across at least a half dozen genres. I came to that educated guess by assuming that, on average, I listened to two hours of music per day, seven days a week, for about five months.

Not since that fateful summer, now going on 4 1/2 years, not one note of classical music (although I do play snippets while running my evening errands) or any fantasy music has knocked at my chamber door. I know it sounds odd, but think of it as having to consume something out of medical necessity for months on end, then when the medical crisis ends, you never touch that item ever again.

There are a myriad of sacrifices that we make when we're in the writing groove, but this was the only time that I had written original material to music for my entire fifteen (and counting) year writing career. Every other time I've listened to music while transcribing, which is another story for another blog post.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #306: Never Getting Into The Groove With Them Again

We can dream of a white Christmas, but realistically, it's not gonna happen here in Connecticut this year.

Over the years, I have lost a lot of respect and tolerance for various members of the creative community who choose to open their mouths and spew forth certain political viewpoints that IMO are not based in reality, or have revealed their true colors on how rotten of an individual they happen to be.

The problem I have is that they have a plethora of progressive platforms that are, in my learned opinion, quite out of touch with the forty odd states that are still grounded in reality, they honestly believe their opinions are righteous and no one can say otherwise.

While I have quite a few bones to pick with a myriad of individuals across an extremely wide spectrum of the creative community, I want to concentrate on the musical side of the aforementioned community, as they are the ones that I pay attention to the most.

This will be a short list, as it will only focus on artists who I have c.d.s of and used to play on a regular basis.

1} Rhiannon Giddens: this exceptionally talented musician, who was a Julliard trained opera singer, fits the usual mold of being an ultra progressive in the increasingly insular entertainment industry, and it got harder for me to reconcile her music with her political views. So about a year ago, it finally hit a point where she posted a political picture that was very sympathize to what all of the college crazies are protesting about. After that, her music simply disappeared from my audio world.

2} Rage Against The Machine: I used to listen to them with some regularity as their music, while overtly political, still resonated with me. That all changes when I found out they supported a cop killer in Pennsylvania, a man who is quite popular in the progressive academic world and Hollywood, and just like previously, I stopped listening to their music.

3} Bruce Springsteen: the older and richer he became, the more progressive and vitriolic his political views and open disdained for the people who actually got him to where his today. Basically, he became just another toady with no independent thought for the Democratic party to trot out as a mouthpiece for their increasingly unhinged views.

4} Hayley Williams: co-founder of the early 2000's alt-rock band Paramour. She's trying to still stay relevant after her fifteen minutes of fame by perpetually bashing those who do not possess her world view, which includes supporting men and women who cosplay each other (I have a very unpopular view on this topic which I will keep to myself). So yeah, I'm not gonna waste my time listening to someone who claims to be open-minded yet somehow wants to ban people like myself from attending her concerts.

And to round out this very short list are The Eagles. The Eagles are no longer a functioning band, but a major conglomo of annoyance with only one original member left. They are, courtesy of that one original member, the epitome of how a band should act when they want to stay irrelevant and undiscovered by a new generation of listeners. Every single anti-consumer act a business can inflict on others they have done with gusto.

Bottom line, due to the abysmal behavior of this remaining original band member, nobody listens to their music by choice. Not on Spotify, which allows you to rediscover the music of your parent's youth, and certainly not at home. I'm sure there's a good percentage of people who now regret purchasing product from this band (myself included), simply based on the abysmal behavior of this conglomo.

So my friends, I sincerely hope you have enjoyed this modest dive into music that I choose not to partake in, either at home or on the radio (commercial/college/internet). Do you have any artists that you choose to no longer listen to for various personal reasons?

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved