Episode #281: Have You Ever Challenged Yourself?

When your brain is emptier than a plastic garden gnome, you know you be in some deep dark dank pit of creative nothingness...

Anywho, today's chop suey special is called "Challenging Yourself", or if you want to tweak a well known movie quote, you can say in the voice of the well known character actor Strother Martin, "Have you ever challenged yourself?"

Specifically, as a writer, did you ever go out of your comfort zone, just to see if you could produce a quality product?

I've gone out of my comfort zone quite a few times over the years. One of the very early instance of me going out of my comfort zone, was to write a clean story.

No, really.

When I first took my writing seriously, I knew right from the get-go that I was going to write adult fiction. While I enjoyed reading clean stories, my warped dark sense of humor and my exploration of adult....topics...in my younger days basically guaranteed that cleanliness in my writing was like men reading Playboy or Penthouse for just the articles: it wasn't going to happen.

But.....one day I decided that I was in a rut and needed to try something completely different to get out of the rut. So during the course of one day (maybe two), I wrote a G-rated short story called "Cedar Mountain". That short story became one of only two short stories that I managed to get published in my career, with this one being in a now defunct e-zine called "Beat To A Pulp". 

Another challenge that I decided to inflict upon myself, was to write a story in the first person/present tense. Now considering that we're all taught almost from day one that we should be writing our stories in 3rd person/past tense, with the occasional foray into 3rd person present tense, writing a complete story in the present tense is usually an exercise in frustration.

I've been known to do bits and pieces of an overall story in the present tense, but except for maybe a viable sliver here and there, I've usually reworked those passages to make them fit better with the overall story. But I had issued myself a challenge, and the challenge was accepted.

And I had just the perfect vehicle to implement my challenge with: a previously published novella that I wasn't too happy about (trust me, there were  A LOT of things not to be happy about). So back in the hey day of that nasty little thingy that made everyone's lives miserable for the first half of the 2020's (including my house), I took that previously written novella and re-wrote it to the present tense.

Definitely were not easy to do, changing everything from the proverbial "I used to be smart." to "I am smart." left it alone for a few years, then tidied it a bit this year, so when all is said and done it will come out as an e-book only. But, the challenge was successfully completed.

Another challenge that I had decided to do early on, and this one pre-dates the previous two listed, was to write a story in the 2nd person viewpoint, which is considered to be one of the hardest view points to write in. I can't really describe it well, but if you click on the link propagated by Google, all will be answered. But just the same, the challenge was accepted.

On the upside, I succeeded in writing two or three one page stories in that particular viewpoint. On the downside, I succeeded in writing, rather badly, two or three one page stories in that particular viewpoint. Also on the downside, there are no surviving paper copies, but one of my old XP or Win7 computers may have a copy or two. Maybe. 

And lastly, there was one final challenge that had multiple parts, of a personal nature, that I decided to accept: write a full blown novel. By full blown, I mean something along of the lines of being a supremely detailed, thoroughly researched, with completely fleshed out characters with just enough sub-plots to keep everyone cohesive without being too overwhelming.

I had actually tried this once before with another fantasy series that ultimately died an inglorious death (that is, I recently unpublished both the print and e-book versions), mostly because I was too much of a keyboard commando, for lack of a better term, to put in the work required to fix it/complete it. But that may change in the future....if I remember what the general plot is/was supposed to be.

Anyways, me accepting this challenge was the perfect nudge that I needed. I was waffling about whether or not I should switch to writing my stories via pen and paper then transcribing to the computer, but after writing about a half dozen chapters by hand for my latest novella and discovering the pros (no major digital distractions or chronic hand fatigue, to name just a few) more than outweighed the cons, I took the plunge.

The rest, as they say, is history, as I completed a five volume fantasy series totaling some 600k words over 122+ chapters, with every single page written by hand before transcribing to the computer, during the 1Q of 2025. Total time spent was almost three years, but it was well worth it. I want to note that I did chronicle this particular journey under the tag Hot Mess, so if you want to check out in greater detail about this fantasy series, by all means check out that tag.

And believe or not, I'm not flying on air, but I have decided to challenge myself once again: this time, taking a recently finished short story and turning it into a novella. And for an added bonus, the short story itself will be the actual ending of the novella. So unlike the fantasy series, in which I had the beginning and a nominal outline for an ending as a non-moving goal post, I have to create an entire beginning and middle to arrive at the completed ending.

I believe that you should always challenge yourself as a writer, because you just never know what you can actually accomplish if you don't actually give it a try.

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

Episode #280: Is My Inertia That Blatantly Obvious?

This is about the only real selfie that you will see on any of the social media platforms that I use. This was taken between 2004 and 2013, as this was used on my very first blog "Cedar's Mountain" (you can find the link in one of the tabs above this post).

Before I get into the topic at hand, I want to make an observation: does anyone find it how remarkably obtuse some spammers can be when they ignore a caption that states comment moderation is enabled and post just the same? You would think that they would program their bots to ignore blogs/websites that have that policy enacted and just hit the ones that don't moderate. Right?

Back to the topic at hand: Inertia.

For the past month, I've been pretty much stuck in a holding pattern with publishing my upcoming novella. I was becoming so afraid of pulling the trigger (aka severely third guessing myself), so I started doing all kinds of things to avoid pulling that trigger. Things like:

1} Getting the short story bug and writing almost one dozen stories for maybe a short story collection in the future, although one of them is calling out to me saying "expand me to a novella", and I may do just that in the future, as soon as I can figure out how to work in that short story.

2} Beefing up my c.d. collection. I've temporarily stopped purchasing music from Amazon, and not because of some altruistic vibe of shopping locally, but simply because current life events have dictated that my frivolous Amazon spending be directed to non-frivolous Amazon spending.

But I did shop locally, as in I supported my public library by purchasing gently used c.d.'s (most of which were $1). I'm always of the opinion that used c.d.'s are the way to go if you're intrigued about a particular artist, past or present, but not intrigued enough to drop $10-$20 on a new c.d. in order to satiate that need.

3} Beefing up my DVD collection. Most of the DVD's that I've purchased came to my attention directly due to pay-cable t.v (e.g. HBO, Showtime, Encore) going through spurts of overplaying movies for a couple of months to gin up interest before taking them out of rotation (before the advent of streaming, most of the major pay movie channels had over a half dozen offspring that required content)

The movies listed are ones that I did not see first run, but saw on cable, which due to overplaying, got me hooked: Quigley Down Under (cool western featuring Tom Selleck); The Shawshank Redemption; Kung Fu Hustle (The gentleman who did the fight choreography for Crouching Tiger and The Matrix did it for this one); Falling Down (in my opinion, a truly underappreciated Michael Douglas film. Fun fact, it was filmed during the King riots of '92); Major League: Back To The Minors (fun fact, the Buzz are based on the real AAA team, the Salt Lake City Bees); and everyone's favorite spaghetti western: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

And finally, 4} re-re-editing a previously published novella. Or, that was the basic idea. Two years is a long time to go from not appreciating the original rewrite (went from the normal 3rd person/past tense to 1st person present tense) to having serious thoughts of leaving the bulk of it alone and just perform some continuity tweaks.

The short version, I have a previously published novella, A Taste of Pain, that ultimately I was not happy with the end product in a myriad of ways. In short, it should've been published as an e-book exclusive, without all of the fluff at the end (e.g. chapter samples of two other books to pad out the page count), which is one thing I'm giving serious thought to. But in regards to leaving it alone, after sitting down with the intent of re-re-editing it back to a traditional voice*, after tackling the first couple of chapters I came to the sobering thought that this story was flowing pretty good in 1st person/present tense view. Like it was a lot more personal/intense in that particular viewpoint than others.

*3rd person/past tense is usually the traditional method. But let me warn everyone, I've actually written stories in all three voices, because you know, I like to challenge myself.

The good news to all of this, is that the reason for the inertia has fundamentally changed. The original reason of being afraid to pull the trigger (my choice) has been replaced by simply waiting to receive the first version of a book cover. Only when I approve the cover for the e-book will the book formatter be able to start the process on their end. Until then, the inertia remains stuck in the same holding pattern, yet now, it's not by choice.

Contentment is a concept that has numerous paths to explore and no single path is the actual chosen one.

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

Episode #279: Sometimes Life Feels Like A Venn Diagram

Believe me, this blast from the very distant past (like early 2000s) kind of matches up with my state of being for this past week.

My life currently feels like a Venn Diagram. For those who need a tiny refreshment of minutia on what it is, please click on the offered link. Everyone else, I apologize in advance for bringing up something that horrified normal people in 2024.

To elaborate just a tad, I had a lot of things going on in the past few weeks in which the only common denominator was me. So, with that being said, let's explore this human equivalent of a Venn Diagram with me being the central connecting point to all four circles.

Circle #1: let's say this one features my recently completed fantasy series "Sister vs Sister". Because of the general state of blue funkiness that I was in, I decided to do one last round of pen edits before I really put it away for the next year or so. Going through that five volume monstrosity didn't really do anything to negate the blue funkiness, because afterwards, I really felt just a little bit...lost. Like an actual hardcore empty nest syndrome.

Circle #2: let's say this one features book reading. Normally I try to keep up with my reading by consuming at least two books per month, but lately, my heart really isn't into consuming books, new or used. As I've mentioned previously, I really had to push myself to finish the book, because even though the topic intrigued me, the content was just...meh. Because it was meh, this 240+ page tome really did a number on me, as I was torn between DNF'ing this bad boy and pursuing the sunken cost fallacy to the bitter end. Suffice to say, the latter was chosen.

Circle #3: this one is a toss-up between two writing related options, so.....Jeopardy? And my answer is, writing fresh stuff. I spent the better part of two months writing nearly one dozen short stories as a distraction to actually doing the item in the final circle. Out of those nearly one dozen stories, one of them had ultimately planted the seed of writing yet another novella, featuring the two main characters from that story. So here I sit, mulling over that particular idea. Or rather, that idea gently nudging me saying, "write me, write me...you know you wanna."

And finally, circle #4: my novella, "To Live Is To Die Young". After completing all of the necessary tangents that are required for this novella {e.g. title and blurbs}, I finally pressed the proverbial Pay Now buttons and did just that, to the tune of $450. Yay me!

So we have four properly labeled Venn slightly illogical circles, none of which actually touch/intersect with each other, but do intersect with yours truly. Which if you really think about it, is quite odd. In theory, all four circles should have at least one thing in common with each other besides the main point, which in this particular case, is me.

But...they do not. Unless you count that they were all vehicles for my procrastination, which really doesn't work for me. Absolutely none of them have a common.....wait a minute.....wait a minute....okay, let me stare at the screen for thirty seconds.....

at this point, G.B.'s legendary muse walks up to him and slaps him upside the head like Moe does with Larry, Curly and Shemp. He promptly slides out of his chair, but is immediately caught by his muse and placed back in his chair. She sternly shakes her finger at him before silently walking away with a swagger in her stride.

Dumbfounded, which is a normal state of being at least once a month for him, G.B. suddenly picks back up where he had left off at previously.

Well, I'll be a McDonald's ice cream cone. They do have at least one thing in common with each other: reading! No, really. Think about it for second: circle #1 requires a boatload of reading since editing is being done; circle #2, no-brainer since a book is being consumed; circle #3, needed to do reading because one has to proof their stories to makes sure there's no typos etc.; and finally circle #4, reading was definitely needed while putting together one monster manuscript for the formatter to begin work on (my formatter of choice requires the entire novel/novella to be one entire manuscript, no matter how many pages/chapters it has in order to create the necessary files for KDP/Print/Non-KDP platforms).

Huh...so we had a come to your deity of choice moment while writing this heartfelt lament featuring the almighty (to some) Venn diagram. Which, if you really give it some thought, is about a bogey over on the golf course of life for me. More often than not, I will arrive at a conclusion a few minutes after the train left the platform, only to belatedly realize that making that stop at my local mom & pop coffee house allowed to arrive at that wrong conclusion, thus missing the train.

So now what this post boils down to is to pay closer attention to your surroundings, because while you're focused on the beauty of the blossom in your hand, you're completely ignoring the vulture standing on the arm of the cacti who is counting down the minutes to when his dinner will be served al dente.

Having good eats is not the same as being good eats. Paying attention to finding a common denominator to the multi-tasking that you're performing can only breed success in the long run. But definitely pursue finding that common denominator early, otherwise the end result will be something like this:

"A blog post that started with good intentions, but stumbled so badly out of the starting gate that it has no choice but to flail its arms in a cartoonist manner while running like Woodstock flies."

Happy Monday to one and all, and to those who are parents, whether dual or single, I sincerely hope you had a very good Father's Day.

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

Episode #278: Procrastination....

Tina, our lovely Chihuahua, who suffers from partial blindness, deafness and dementia, is still living the good life as an elderly doggo.

I've always had issues in doing what was required in order to have an appropriate outcome for a particular task/goal I had set for myself. There were a myriad of reasons for allowing this kind of drama in my life. Sometimes, it was the fear of failure. Other times it was the over-analyzing/over-thinking of a particular action that ultimately caused a serious INaction to occur.

Like self-publishing.

The self-doubt/second guessing that I had when it came to self-publishing was, at times, nearly crippling. But I managed to persevere, mostly by taking seriously small baby steps through every step of the process until I was able to, with confidence, press that shiny yellow button that said BUY NOW! that would activate the final step in the process of self-publishing.

Up until now, that was the process that I had followed, without fail, with my previous self-published books: incremental baby steps until my confidence level was at the acme of my existence, which in turn allowed me to press that shiny yellow button that said BUY NOW!

Now is where the issue of procrastination (to be fair, every time I type in that word, this nifty Rod Stewart song immediately comes to mind) has recently come into play.

I had written a Facebook post a few weeks prior to this blog post on how ridiculously easy, compared to my novella from 2024, it was to create (short blurb, long blurb, teaser, title and ideas for a cover) the ephemera needed for my next novella*. I ended up asking the rhetorical question of, "is it really this simple?"

*note: it took me a total of three hours, spread out over three weeks, to complete the aforementioned items.

Well, the answer is, sadly enough, no it is not that simple. 

I knew complications were being fast tracked when I began researching what other packages I wanted to purchase this time around for a book cover, which was soon followed by what kind of price increase/new content my formatter of choice had listed on her website. At this point, we decided to super-size our value meal and simply embrace the procrastination that was rapping at my chamber door.

How, you might ask? By choosing to finish a book about the Frankish Empire in the time of Charlamagne and perform another round of pen edits to my five volume fantasy series that I had recently completed earlier this year. At the same time.

I was already beginning to stress out financially over self-publishing my novella, even though my finances were in fantastic shape, so I decided that a distraction was needed to take my mind of things (you see where this is going, right?) by reading the aforementioned book. Then when I was really struggling to finish this book, I had the bright idea to perform yet another round of pen edits, because you know, I needed yet another distraction in order to publish my novella.

And PRESTO!, we pulled a rabbit called "Procrastination" out of the hat. It's not cuddly, nor cute, it smokes a celery stick and it's trying to corner the market on main character syndrome.

Being surrounded by procrastination crutches has done wonders for my well being. I mean, what else can I do but lean on them in my times of uncertainty? Right? If I don't, then that can only mean one thing: I actually have to complete the goal that I had set for myself in early June, which was to publish this novella. And I'm not sure if I want to face that faux fear head on just yet.

So here I sit, with three options in front of me to choose from: A} finish reading the book; B} finish the latest round of pen edits; C} publish that novella. But, is there a fourth option for me to pursue? I mean, if you really think about it, the letter D} would be something like this: do all three at the same time. In other words, perform the catchphrase of Larry the Cable Guy and just "git-r-dun."

Pursuing option D would certainly get me moving in the right direction with my novella, since my novella should take precedence over finishing a book that, in a best case scenario, would be automatically renewed by my local public library. And it should take precedence over finishing my latest round of pen edits, since that book series has at least another eighteen months of gestation before I can actually publish it.

Procrastination is a fugly concept to personally experience, because only means that your confidence level isn't what you thought it was, and that simply isn't true. You need to kick it to the curbside, because if you don't, then you'll be perpetually playing the very tiring game called "What If?", and is that a game you really want to play in today's world of "Do It! Now!"?

Definitely something to think about, and it's something that I too will definitely think about as well.

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

Episode #277: Breaking Through That 4th...Wall?

Definitely a blast from the past. We have a well known local farm that (usually) has a produce stand every summer. I haven't seen cows out in the pasture in a very long time, but seriously, how often have you seen cows smack dab in the middle of surburbia?

Last week {May 19th-24th}, I was severely procrastinating working on my latest novella by performing some pen editing to almost a dozen short stories, when I happened upon a particular paragraph that basically broke, if not severely crack, the proverbial fourth wall.

To refresh everyone's foggy Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday morning brain, breaking the fourth wall is when an actor breaks character and steps out of scene to talk to the audience about that particular scene. This is commonly done in movies and t.v. shows, usually with great success, but rarely has it been done in books (at least that I know of. I'm sure I'll be corrected on this point).

The story in question was one that I had to substantially rewrite as the original story was, to a major degree, quite blase. The re-write though, was something else though. As soon as I put fingers to keyboard (this was one of the last few stories that I wrote directly on the computer) something came over me. Whether it was due to the topic of choice, petty revenge, or something else, I suddenly channeled the smarmy/sassy/insufferable side of my personality and wrote like a man possessed.

To be honest, this was one of my better written short stories that featured a lot of tropes that usually populates my adult novels, but toned down to PG-13. But you didn't come here to listen to me brag about my writing. You came here to read about my opinion on breaking that fourth wall. Here is the paragraph in question.

What happens next has been pieced together from both first hand accounts and video that was taken by Dennis during the entire date, thus the narrative voice that is yours truly. What? Do you actually think I was there for all the behind the scenes stuff that’s been going on from the get go? Get real. This is a story that requires you to suspend your disbelief for a brief snippet in time, while yours truly the writer, weaves a fantastic tale of cosmetic karma for your enjoyment.

This stepping out actually takes place near the very end of the story, where the petty revenge is about to unfold in all of its exquisite glory. The entire story was written with a strong narrative voice along with the traditional p.o.v. Additionally, it does have a bit of the first person viewpoint sprinkled throughout.

Personally, I would consider this paragraph to be just the dipping of the toes in a small pond when it comes to something like this. I normally don't see something like this in a lot of the fiction that I read, so I am curious if this is something that is frequently done, or if it's something that is rarely done, simply because there are so many different ways to write/tell a story that breaking the fourth wall simply isn't a thing.

I do enjoy when actors break the fourth wall in movies and television, because I believe it makes the product that more enjoyable to watch.

So let me know of your honest opinion about breaking the fourth wall. Do you try to do it with your writing, or do you believe it's better suited for the stage, the big and little screen.

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