 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to From the Desk. I have been gone far too long. I did. I've been posting, as some of you know, I've been posting the Away From the Desk panels from the Hoover Public Library's Sci-Fi Fantasy Fest convention that I was a part of. That was a lot of fun. I needed the time to take a break and, you know, look inward, try and figure out where I want to go with this series because I only have so much advice and I want to continue this on as more, and I've said this so many times in the past, as more of a writer's vlog, not the walkie-talkie stuff, but specifically about the writing. So today we're going to be talking about, you know, plotting and pantsing and somewhere in between. So the first topic of discussion is how do you figure out which one is good for you? The way I go about every single project is I just sit down and I start writing. I don't actually plot until the book is over, which sounds backward. I know it sounds backward, but when I get done with the book, that's when I put it away, you know, I put things away for months on end. Like the most recent book that I finished in January, I am just now starting, it is August, I am just now starting to edit that book. I got behind on some stuff this summer, so usually I only let it sit for about six months, but the longer the better. So it's not like it hurt anything. But I have gone through the book and just skimmed what it, you know, what I can remember. Basically what I'm doing is I'm writing out what happens in the book so that I don't, when I go back and I do the first draft, I don't deviate from the actual plot that I created while I was pantsing. I know, like I said, I know that sounds backward, but that's how I do things. As long as usually the plot doesn't change too much. Sometimes it doesn't change at all. Sometimes I completely overhaul everything to make one little plot point work. I think I did that with pennies for the damned, which is unpublished right now. But when it comes back out, when you guys read that one, let's see if you guys can see what happened with that book. There's one section that I got to as I was writing and I got to that section, I was like, Hey, this is the whole book. This is the theme of that book. And that's where my, that's where the passion and the love for pantsing comes into play. I write by the seat of my pants, meaning it's there's a passion and a love of discovery. I'm sitting, I'm writing the book. And as I'm writing the book, I am uncovering the story like a reader for the first time. And that's part of the reason why I write is to tell myself stories, stories that I can't find anywhere else. So how do you know what's best for you? Well, is there a certain joy that you find when you have stumbled across an entire story as you're writing? Or do you find that there's a bigger joy in sitting down and making sure that all of your stuff aligned, you have all your ducks in the row before you even start writing? Now, another thing is, are you a fast writer? Do you like rewriting? Do you like editing? All those things, if you like, if you don't mind rewriting and you don't mind editing and those things are fun for you, I highly suggest just sitting down and, you know, writing by the seat of your pants. Sorry, it is super hot here. It is right now. I don't know what time it is exactly. It's probably eight, nine o'clock at night. Yeah, it's super late. I hope I can still get it up today, Monday. But I'm trying to do it at night because it is so hot out here during the day. Apologize for it being late. But yeah, so if you see me wiping my face, I apologize. I really need to bring a towel out. Anyway, so what do you enjoy most about the writing process? If what you enjoy most is the writing process, the writing of the book itself, I highly suggest just sitting down and writing by the seat of your pants. Now, not everybody is going to be able to do that, of course. I understand that some people need some direction and if you're that type of writer, you should know that you need that kind of direction. You know that you were going to go into something and you have no idea where you're going to go and all you're going to do is sit there staring at a blank page, then yes, sure, plot. There is no right or wrong way to write. And that's where a lot of people get stuck. People get stuck on rules on you can't do this, you can't do that. You can pretty much do anything you want to with writing as long as your grammar and your punctuation and your spelling is proper. You can tell the story any way you want to. You can head hop, you can do all different kinds of things. There are just certain rules that go along with that. But you should never worry about that kind of thing with a rough draft with your first time through. And even with plotting, you can still have that kind of fun. And that's where I was going to get at. If you're one of those people who needs to know where a story is going to go before you can get into it, you don't trust yourself panting, then what I suggest is just doing a very, very thin outline. Let's say basically you're going to say like Bob walks into a room and something happens that gets him to this point. And then at this point, you need to have him over here. And then at this point, Jessica comes into frame or, you know, whatever it is, just a very, very loose outline that doesn't talk about anything about where the direction of the scene is going to go. You just have end points, like you know, you need to get Bob from point A to point F. And all that stuff, B, C, D, E, all that stuff in the middle is where the panting comes into play. So you know, you're going to open up with Bob at a bar, eating beer nuts, but you have to somehow get him into Jessica's bed somewhere down the line, that kind of thing. Or in, you know, burying Jessica out in the woods, who knows, whatever you want to do. Right now, so that's that's my advice for deciding whether or not you want to be a pancer or a plotter so far. And that that's leading me, hopefully, naturally into the next next topic of discussion along the same lines is what I'm doing now. So for the past three years, I have been hoarding material. I wrote a bunch of books back to back to back to back to back. And I'm still doing that. Now, like I said, I write, I write a book, I put it away for at least six months. And then I revisit it. And sometimes I put it away again. But the cycle is always the same. I'm writing one, I'm editing one at the same time, well, different times a day, of course, but I'm writing one, I'm editing one, and then I have one sitting off, you know, out of sight, not even thinking about it while I work on two other books. So there's always three books moving. I am I did the math the other day. And at this point in my career, I am six books ahead. So the book that you are going to be getting next, which is everything is horrible now is I'm six books ahead. I have six books between everything is horrible now. And the book that I started today, Monday, which I'm already 12,000 words into, which is, that's just crazy to me. I haven't written 12,000 words in a single day and forever. I got things flying around. Sorry. But for the past three years, I have been working off of nothing but contracts. I have contractual obligations with thunderstorm books, and a couple other con contracts I can't talk about from other pin names. But as I'm working, I'm having to go through I'm having to do what I've been contracted for. And I have to provide exactly what they asked for exactly what I pitched to them. So I have been doing a very loose plotting lifestyle for the past three years. And it's not really all that fun for me. I'm getting the work done in their good books. I'm having more fun editing them and making them fit together than I than I am having the writing of it. But as of today, the 12,000 words that I wrote were all fun. I had no plot. I had nothing in mind. I just sat down and started writing. Also on top of that, I'm going to be starting a collaboration with my buddy, John Bender. He wrote a novella called Chainsaw. That's all he's published so far, I think. And we'll be starting a book. I'll be starting a book with him. I'm going to be writing every Friday, and then I will send it to him. And then he'll have six days in between to do what he wants with it. But it's called the Sodom Monster. And yes, it's just as goofy and crazy as you would imagine. And yes, Sodom, Sodomy, Sodom Monster. So there's going to be some butt stuff. Just warn you. Anywho, so we're going to have a lot of fun with that one. But at the same time, I'm also writing this other book. I have no idea where it's going. I know characters. I don't even know if it's horror. I mean, that's how that's how loose I am here. And in case you guys don't know, two of my other pen names are not horror or genre at all. It's just general fiction or literary fiction. I write that. Those books take me a long time to write and work on because I have to focus more on the language and the theme. Whereas the Edward Lorne stuff and this another name I write horror under for a bigger publisher, it's not indie or small press. Those books, I can just, you know, I don't have to focus as much on the language. I still try to make it, you know, good, but I don't have to focus as much on on theme and language as I do, let's say, my more literary stuff. So and of course, I do have more fun with the horror stuff because I'm I'm a born horror writer. Anyways, so it's it's really fun getting back into the pantsing side of things. And as of today, I'm not sure what day it is actually, it's August something, let me pull it up, it is August 27, 2018. As of today, all of my contractual obligations are finished. They're all done. So in fact, blue, my buddy blue on Twitter said, tweeted me and said something about the next, the next book or whatever it was. And I said, I don't have anything to sell. I mean, everything that is done is sold. Man, it is hot. And so it's it's scary to be going into this. I mean, this is going into my ninth year as an indie under the Edward Lorne name. No, eighth year, eighth year, 2019 will be the eighth year is as 2011 is when I started under this name. December 2011 was when Bay's End was published. But it's it's weird not having anywhere to go. It's where I'm what I'm going to do next. And as of right now, one of the obligations were for three books, but the first one hasn't been hasn't even been published yet. So I'm I'm I'm worried about how well that's going to go. Because if those three books don't go well, then they're not going to ask for anything else. So I'm hoping those go go well, of course. I'm trying to think of what else is going on in my writing life. The convention was a heck of a lot of fun. Anthony Vaca, if you're watching this, Vega, I'm sorry, you told me how to pronounce your name. And I've already I've already misplaced that in my head. Well, that's a fancy word to say. And I forgot, sorry. But the convention was great. Thank you so much for inviting me. That was a lot of fun. In fact, this is what, you know, I had made there. I didn't actually have the betting of boys available at the convention, which I hated, but it just wasn't ready yet. And I wasn't going to rush it. But the betting of boys is available now. The next book you can expect from me and from thunderstorm, thunderstorm will be publishing. Everything is horrible now sometime in the fall or the winter. And then no home for boys sometime in the winter of the spring, something like that. But right now, oh, and wide release of everything is horrible now should be about, I would say this winter, I can't sell the book myself. I can't publish it in the independently until thunderstorm sells out of theirs. But the first three books sold out before they were even publicly announced. So yay, hopefully everything is horrible now does the same. I also have cruelty and joy coming this November for the Patreon folks. If you sign up before November, when the episodes start, you will get a signed limited edition hardcover from me of cruelty and joy, which is three over 300,000 words, by the way, you will get that for free. If you sign up for the Patreon, all the links are down there in the doobly-doo. But that starts November, I think November 21st will be the first episode, then every three weeks roughly, I'm going to try and make it every two weeks. But right now, the editing schedule that I have locked in is every two weeks. So that's everything right now. If you'd like to tell me where you're at with your writing, or if you need any advice or help with anything, let me know down there in the comments below. But until next time, I have an E, you have an U, it's been from the desk. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!