Category Archives: Writing Progress

2025 Recap

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Another year in the books, another year of successes and setbacks. Highlights!

Publications

This year I had two pieces that went the distance. The first was a dream pub in F(r)iction Magazine. Echoes from the Abyss was based on a character from a novel idea I had, and when I saw they had an oceans themed issue I had to submit. And it’s a good thing I did.

The other piece I had published was my first ever poem. By that I mean the first one I ever wrote with the intent to send out. Usually poetry and I don’t get along well, but inspiration strikes whenever it wants. Unanimous was about Ichiro Suzuki and how he should have been unanimously elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I actually heard from one of Under Review’s editors the other day with feedback he’d recently received. He said that someone reached out to him unsolicited just to say how much they liked the poem. Noice. 🙂

Milestones

Aside from F(r)iction, which I consider a milestone as it was my first professional pay publication, I also finished my MFA in Creative Writing this year. I defended my thesis—the first third of a fantasy/mystery novel—and the feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive. One of the comments was that it read like an edited, published novel. I’ll take that any day.

Setbacks

So this is more of a writing inconvenience than a setback, but in the fall I went back to work. The prior year I’d been a stay at home dad with the baby, and I’d been able to write during nap time or if the grandparents wanted a turn with the baby.

Now I’m a middle school special ed math teacher. I’d been hopeful that I could write during prep periods, but those ended up being mostly non-existent. And working at a low-income school… let’s just say that the kids can be draining. By the end of the day, after a full day of school and an evening of my own kids, believe me when I say I’m in no condition to write. What started as 200 pages written over 6 months before work became 6 pages written over 4 months once I started.

I won’t blame everything on the job though. I get distracted with new ideas often. Sometimes it’s a good thing. Just today I finished the first draft of a middle grade novel I’m tentatively calling The Fart Heist. This summer I wrote a two short stories that I really need to get back to as well as an essay that I’m almost ready to go back to.

The essay was about my dad. He died in August and it still is strange whenever I remember he’s gone. It was especially in my mind around the holidays since he used to host Thanksgiving every year and just now at Christmas too. Eventually I’ll get back to it. I don’t know that I’ll ever try and publish it, but it’s something for me at the very least.

Looking Forward

I’m no longer hopeful I can get any real writing done during the school year. Breaks will be nice (most of that middle grade novel was written during winter break), but to finish the novel that was my thesis, I’ll probably have to wait until summer. The toddler will be in day care and the soon-to-be third grader will be able to mostly occupy himself when I need writing time.

I haven’t sent anything short out for a while, so I don’t expect any more lit mag publications anytime soon. Unless something crazy convenient comes up, of course. But I think over the next few days I’ll work on The Fart Heist, hopefully have it ready to send out by the end of spring break, and then I can get back to the novel once school’s out.

Thank to all who visit this site. The numbers aren’t spectacular, but they’re consistent. I appreciate it. I hope you all have a wonderful 2026.

Until next time,

Eric

Accidental Inspiration

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Hey all. This’ll be a quick one. While at AWP I was talking with a horror writer and we were sharing setting ideas. We both have personal history in rural settings, and after I described my setting and a general idea to go with it, he full body shivered and told me to write the story. ASAP.

Now that thesis is in, I think that’ll be a good mental reset before I finish drafting the novel. I’d been thinking about the theme of it, and the tone, and my mind went back to a Stephen King story I’d read ages ago, The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon. In my mind it was a short story, probably because I’d read the pop-up book version. Lo and behold, the actual book was on my bookshelf. Points for being a book collector.

So I grab the book, stick it in my bag for the hotel (my wife has a work event in Kentucky and I’m on baby duty), with the expectation to carve out some time to work on it. Then I see this in the hotel:

It’s not exactly the Overlook Hotel, but the vibes are definitely there. Here I am, planning to read Stephen King, and I walk into this hotel. To top it off, I go into the bathroom, and the shower looks a lot like the one Rosamund Pike uses in Gone Girl to wash off all the blood.

I wanted to write a horror story. Looks like I’ve got plenty of inspiration to work with. Maybe instead of sitting in the lobby downstairs or at the desk in the room, I’ll just camp out in the hallway, cross-legged, and let the periphery mess with my head as my fingers work.

Until next time.

Also, what’s with these libraries in Kentucky?! I feel like they’re doing them very right, or very wrong.

Holiday Bustle

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Happy Holidays to all! If you don’t celebrate, hopefully you at least get some time off. I’m writing this during my last prep period of the year. I managed to kick out 5000 words the other day so figure I can take the time for another post.

First order of business: upcoming publications. On December 26 a short story of mine will hit the internet on Spillwords.com. I’ll probably do another post then to remind you all. 🙂 It’s a Christmas story about a divorced dad trying to connect with his daughter during their first Christmas with just the two of them. There’s kookiness, drama, heartbreak, and that warmhearted feeling you get this time of year. And bananas. Somehow, there are bananas.

I also just signed up to be on the editorial staff of Water-Stone Review, so I’ll have a healthy bit of reading to do over the next few weeks. I’m expecting a wide gamut of genres and themes, so hopefully it’ll be a fun time.

On a non-writing note, I’ve decided to apply for the next season of LegoMasters. That translates to Fall 2025 because of filming schedules. I need to build five sets of my own design for the application, so I just finished sorting the 90000 Lego pieces I’ve accrued since childhood and am partway into the first build (and already running out of the right color of pieces).

Don’t judge yet! It’s not done! If all goes according to plan it’ll balance perfectly on the beak, like those toys from when we were younger. But instead of being three inches across and made from one piece of plastic, it’ll be over a foot wide and made from hundreds. Given my piece limitation, it might not look the prettiest, but the goal is creating that perfect balance. I can do pretty on a different build.

I have faced some other distractions these last couple of weeks, though I like to think them the good kind of distractions. I had an idea for an educational chemistry game for middle and high school and developed that a bit. I fortunately have subbed a few chem classes during that period and was able to get very positive input from chem teachers, so yay!

I’ve also been thinking a lot about AI’s role in brainstorming and story creation. I obviously don’t want it to generate anything, but I think it could be very useful in organizing thoughts and characters and stories and a whole lot more I won’t delve too far into. Based on what research I’ve done, I don’t think AI is sophisticated enough to do what I want, but in a few years…

I’ll close out with the acknowledgement that I tend to bite off more than I can chew. AWP is coming up in just over a month, and I’m a going to send the first five pages out to agents as part of their Writer to Agent program. But that means I have just over a month to get this story into ship shape. While also building Lego. And working. And designing that game. And prepping for a new baby. And running a D&D campaign.

It’s a good thing I don’t have any hair, else I’d probably be pulling it out.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year. Enjoy your time with loved ones and remember that diets don’t count on holidays.

Pre-Thanksgiving Nano Update

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With all the Thanksgiving prep, I’ve written zero words today. Which puts me exactly today’s required words behind on my word count. For me and my Nano track record, not too shabby. The main reason for my staying on track: high school.

High school how? Well, a year and a half ago when the market dipped, I, and many other coworkers, got the axe. Some of us were in the industry more than twenty years. But I had already started my MFA, had talked about making a career of writing. So we decided to give it a shot. But I still needed supplemental income. So now I’m a part time substitute teacher.

High school has been great because for the most part the kids sit on their computers and do their work and I can type away. Middle school… not so much. They’re more fun, but are more hands-on. So, Champlin High… thank you.

As far as content goes, this story has made me smile from inspiration more than anything else I’ve written. Part of that is due to the lack of planning. In general, I’m a planner. My novel I’m taking a break from before editing was meticulously mapped out with bullet points and sub points and color coded post it notes with corresponding sharpies. That was great for always knowing what to write, and I could argue a lot that the during-writing inspiration was instead planning inspiration. But the during-writing inspiration has a different feel to it. An in the moment “god damn I’m brilliant” feel.

For my Nano project, I went into it with four characters, only one of which had any amount of thought into their personality. I had a problem, an antagonist, a few settings, and a couple of moments I knew should happen. That was it.

The result so far is a crazy amount of Wayne Brady caliber setups and payoffs that my subconscious plans without me even knowing it. I’m making character choices that are great in the moment and give me solid foundations for growth and/or defeat. I’ve created a magic system that is both highly theoretical yet completely accessible. I don’t know that I could have done that with my normal planning method.

I’ve mentioned before that I have aphantasia, or a lack of a mind’s eye. This past summer I started playing around with MidJourney to create imagery to reference (examples shown throughout the post), since my brain’s not wired that way. I think I can attribute part of my current success to that as well.

Going into a scene, or thinking about a character, I know what I want to happen, what themes or motifs should exist. By inputting those into MidJourney, I’m provided with images that while they don’t always turn out how I expected, they often provide enough of my expectations that I can use it for repeated reference, but they also serve as spring boards for other tangential thoughts.

With a word count in the low thirty thousands, I’m just over halfway through the story. Of course there are areas that will need some work, but there have been surprisingly few writing sessions where I knew I needed to revisit down the road. I’ve come out of many feeling very good about the results and I’m just hoping that when I re-read it, that feeling won’t change.

That’s all for now. Need to allocate writing time appropriately. I wish my fellow writers good luck in their Nano/WIP, and happy reading to non-writers (I just started The Olympian Affair and am super excited). And of course Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all can spend quality time with friends/family/loved ones.