From the Forge…

Guys…I’ve been writing, but I had to take a week off for work. I went out of town for a conference which is normally prime time to catch up on writing and reading in whatever hotel I’m staying. But not this time. As a remote employee, it was exhausting. Having someplace to be at 8am each morning. Being surrounded by people all day. Then attending social functions in the evening. I packed a backpack and B&N bag, but didn’t write or read a damn thing. Just carried around aspirational notebooks, books, and a laptop. I’m back in a routine though and have successfully dragged my protagonist through the most boring part of Act II. The rest is plotted out and I may actually see the start of Act III on the horizon. Things I accomplished since my last post: a respectable word count (if you forget that it’s been a couple weeks since my last post), an edited short story, and a short story submission.

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Word Count…

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Best Thing I Wrote…

His father sat quiet as Dell, through tears and trembling voice, told the story of getting swindled by the man at the carnival. He hadn’t time to clean up for the dinner Mrs. Haines prepared each evening, so he sat in dusty black work pants and stained white shirt, stroking his mustache as the story unfolded. Upon conclusion, Dell stared down at the wood floor unsure of what to expect. A backhand? His father’s booming voice? Neither arrived, though Dell wished for both when his father rose and approached the dusty trunk in the corner of their home. Dell was never allowed to open it, but he remembered the last time his father did, the outcome of which forced his family to leave their home in Oklahoma for this part of the Midwest. Left behind were more than half his sisters and their families, along with whatever escaped that trunk. Or so he thought. Dell peeked around his father, waiting to see the awful thing escape again as the trunk creaked opened, but instead a leather gun belt with a holstered Schofield rested undisturbed atop a dirty black coat. His father grabbed something from under the coat, slammed the lid, and locked it again.

“Go up yonder. Tell Mrs. Haines we’ll be late for dinner.”

Stamped & Sent…

I submitted The Last Outlaw but I’m not confident. I think it loosely falls into the crime genre, but really it belongs in Western. Know how hard it is to find online lit mags in the Western genre? Near impossible.

The Last Outlaw - Pulp Literature - (in-progress)

Off the Rails - The Atlantic - (in-progress)

Off the Rails - Sewanee Review: Short Fiction Contest - (in-progress)

From the Forge…

I know one person from my high school graduating class who was a writer and I didn’t know it until I saw advertising for her novels on Facebook. I don’t know if she even still writes, but she was self-publishing novels on Amazon before e-readers and Kindle Unlimited. More so, she wrote romance. Not only was she the one person in town who called themselves a fiction writer, but I’m sure she’d be winning at #BookTok today.

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Fifty years before that, my grandmother had a classmate who moved to California and became a science fiction author (probably not in that order). If my grandma read science fiction, it was an accident, but this classmate’s novel sat on her bookshelf my entire life. It wasn’t until I was older that I noticed this book was published by Berkley Putnam, now a division of Penguin Random House. Maybe it was youthful optimism, but I was unaware of how huge and uncommon this achievement was.

Rural Indiana can be a dream killer. Our primary exports are corn, soybeans, and plastic. Our contribution to the region is air pollution. Our largest employers are factories, warehouses, and an oil refinery. You can imagine the bustling art scene in my community and good luck finding that person who has been successful or is willing to even call themselves “a writer”.

In this desert, the internet is the mirage in the distance, offering opportunity not readily available. Networking, finding community, and building an author brand are visible, but kinda hazy and the last things I’ll get around to. I refuse to get back on Twitter, I don’t have Instagram, I rarely use Facebook, BlueSky doesn’t feel like it’s reached a saturation point yet, and Discord feels noisy. Substack may be the only comfy place I’ve found for community-building, but I still don’t know if it’s the best platform for just straight fiction (which is one of the other reasons I shifted this publication toward “the journey” and not “the output”).

But in the past month of hardly writing, I’ve committed more time to building out this publication and reading/liking/commenting on the ‘stacks that land in my inbox week-to-week. I’m not sure where I read it, but the moral of the article was “if you’re not writing everyday, do something writing adjacent”. So during these slow times, I’m committing to community building. Just not on Twitter. Or Instagram. Probably not Facebook either. We’ll see how it goes.

Scraps…

I’ve been typing this transition for the last two weeks, then I gave up and started scribbling on a legal pad, then I went back to typing. I need to move my protagonist along to the next plot point, but also needed a prelude to an important character arriving in Act II. So here we are—my protagonist is meeting with Russ, a surrogate uncle and veteran police officer, who has been around most of his life. They’re engaging in the most small-town, mid-western rite of passage…dining at the local Mexican restaurant, while discussing a dealer who was recently arrested.

“So in 72 hours, you’ve managed to have a fistfight with the Chief Deputy of the Sheriff’s Department, alienate the Prosecutor, and corner the market on defending the indefensible.”

“Clearly, Judge wants to make sure even the worst in town have representation.”

Russ took a big sip from a fishbowl of margarita.

“Your dad would be proud, you looking on the bright side and all.”

I crunched a chip at him. We had our choice of three Mexican restaurants, but only one that was Russ’ favorite. Renata’s was too close to downtown and frequented by the courthouse crowd. Guadalajara Grill was where families went for birthdays with food that had more in common with Chipotle. But El Vaquero was known for its “heavy pour” when Russ ordered Margaritas. Him and Dad brought me here when I was 21 for my first legal shot of tequila, which turned out to be Mezcal from an unmarked bottle Rafael kept stashed behind the bar. That night I learned all Mezcal is Tequila, but not all Tequila is Mezcal. It was like drinking campfire embers. My face turned red and eyes watered as three grown men doubled over laughing. Rafael’s wife, Carmen, came out of the kitchen and took to cussing him in Spanish, which made us all laugh even harder.

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“And the class reunion? You got a positive spin for that?”

“Ave invited me out. It would’ve been rude to say no.”

“Woulda been smart.”

He swigged the margarita like it was a beer.

“This is why I told you to take the money and run. Nobody wants to live here, some of us just do ‘cause we like to bitch,” he said.

“You were serious?”

I sipped my margarita in the awkward silence.

“You show up for moral support today or just to gloat?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

“Neither. I was there for the Walker kid.”

“Were you as confused as the rest of us?”

“Not really. I wanted to see if it happened again.”

I scrunched my face.

“The city’s arrested him a couple times. Once for something similar, shacking up with a girl over at the Briars. Using it as a stash house. Then letting her take the fall. Other time we grabbed him outside city limits with a van full of fentanyl. Both times we were told he was cooperating with the Drug Task Force. No charges filed.”

“Not uncommon around here,” I said. The task force had been using anhydrous thieves and pseudo-ephedrine smurfs since its formation.

“Except they’re not. What the hell are locals gonna do with somebody using crystal meth and twenty dollar bills to insulate the walls of his girlfriend’s house?”

He had a point. That kid didn’t find all that weight on this side of the border.

“What about the Feds?” I asked.

“Not even on their radar.”

Rafael brought two fresh margs and took the empties away.

“Kid a local?” I asked.

“Born and bred. Dad was a real piece of shit. Back when you had to cook dope like a real American, he got us to #3 in the State for meth lab seizures.”

“Holy shit–one guy?”

“One guy.” Russ took a big drink from the frozen marg, then massaged his forehead. “Ugh–Fuckin’ brainfreeze.”

He kept going as he squeezed between his eyes. I chuckled as I thought about Dad trusting this man with our well-being.

“Back then, not every lab seizure equaled an arrest. We’d find ‘em in old farm houses, barns, trailers, hell…there’d be shotgun houses in city limits burning down every other month.”

From the Forge…

I subscribe to Writer’s Digest and Poets & Writers because I need the tips. The print copies arrive, I read them, underline the helpful bits, tear out the pages I may reference in the future, then pitch ‘em. I know the digital copies exist online and I have access to the articles, but after staring at screens all day for work and leisure, I miss print as a medium for info consumption. Both contain advice on craft, author features (traditional and self-published), agent info, and resources, but Poets comes with a good quarter of the magazine dedicated to publications accepting submissions. What really gets me are the ads for all the MFA programs.

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In my area of rural Indiana, though we have nearby state colleges and a private liberal arts college, they barely have a creative writing undergrad program between them. The nearest MFA is at a University two and half hours away—in a different state. I have a full-time job. The days of attending class in the traditional sense are over. Thanks to Poets & Writers though, I discovered these things called “low-residency programs” which are basically structured like online programs used to be where you do all your work during the week, then show up to campus for a weekend or a full Saturday or a stretch of days in the Summer.

I imagine myself attending one of these each time the magazine arrives. Building community, learning from published authors, and leaving with a finished work ready for publication (I’m not sure if that’s how it goes, but I have no frame of reference). Then I think about shouldering additional student loan debt and finding other jobs in my area I’d become eligible for with my newly-acquired degree. I think about the vibe of MFA’s as leaning hard into literary fiction, something I barely read and definitely don’t write. Then I close the magazine and walk away, dejected.

THEN I discovered:

Bought the book (obviously). Joined the community. Signed up for the newsletter. I may even pay an annual subscription, I have no idea. Regardless, it was a unique concept and came at the perfect time when I felt like I was flailing as a writer. Since then, I’ve read, watched, and listened to as much content related to writing as I could find. Between that and ACTUALLY writing, it’s the nearest I can get to an MFA program.

Now—on to finding this thing called a writing community.

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Best Thing I Wrote This Week…

It was in those quiet moments Dell felt remorse, not for the men laid bloody before him, but for generations of kin who would stand alone in the righteousness of their destruction.

I edited a short story in the last week, one that had been kicking around a folder of “finished” work for the past couple years. It’s told through the eyes of a ten year old boy whose father is a sharecropper in the early 1900s. His mother has died. His siblings are older and off on their own. The boy is left to be raised by a father who grieves, drinks, and fails to restrain the violence within.

I’ve been editing this thing in my mind for all of those couple years. It started out way too long with too many characters. Too many scene changes. Too much backstory. The story took place over the course of a day and was easily 3500 words. It’s now down to 1700 and is to a place where I feel comfortable submitting it for publication.

Stamped & Sent…

Another “humble letter” rolled in this week, which I’m not sure I ever explained the origin of that term. It’s a running joke in our household from when we apply for jobs and receive that letter in the mail (now email) "thanking us, but—”. You know…it’s humbling…kinda makes you question your life and educational choices. Well, I treat short story submissions the same way, as letters from editors follow a similar cadence.

“Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work, we are eternally grateful. It was an acceptable piece of writing and under other circumstances, you could’ve been the recipient of $0.06/word. Unfortunately, everyone else in the United States also submitted their short story, so better luck next time.”

Unfortunately, Writer’s Digest: Annual Writing Competition is off the board. But that’s okay…'cause I’m throwing The Last Outlaw of Utopia into the ring any place that publishes crime fiction.

Off the Rails - The Atlantic - (in-progress)

Off the Rails - Sewanee Review: Short Fiction Contest - (in-progress)

Off the Rails - Writer’s Digest: Annual Writing Competition - (Nope.)

After my last post, I decided to start plotting or outlining or sticking post-its on the wall, anything to help find my way through the 2nd Act. For the most part, it’s been pretty successful. I think I’ve arrived at the true mid-point of the story and given my protagonist the perfect “false victory” before things take a turn. I don’t wanna plan too much further ahead ‘cause my notebook will just evolve into scratches and more post-its, triggering my neuroses. A while ago, probably around my first draft, I tried Scrivner for a while and Plottr less so and genuinely enjoyed their features.

Scrivner was great for organizing content and has a ton of places to keep notes/research. You can sketch characters and upload pictures, then move them all around to organize how you see fit. AND…it low-key reminds me of WordPerfect.

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Plottr has some of that functionality as well, but I used it mostly for structure. I write all genre fiction and without any formal education in creative writing, I underestimated the importance of structure.

So, I’ve gone over what I’ve written and retroactively outlined each chapter. Noted important plot points and the “B-story” thread woven throughout as well. Grouped each section by beat. But I’ve decided to stick with my Muji notebooks, instead of the software. They may be messy, but things don’t exist until they’re written down. I’ve never been more organized!

Unfortunately, actual writing had to be sacrificed in the process. Well—it didn’t have to be, but sometimes work sucks and doesn’t understand that it only exists so I can pay bills. As much as I’d love to be one of those people who write every day no matter what ‘cause writing is about perseverance, routine, etc.—I haven’t got there yet. If I wake up and get hit in the face with stress and anxiety, it takes some time to recover and I often don’t “write my way out of it”. In the meantime, I had a convo with my stepson about the importance of writing every day even when you don’t feel like it, even when everything sounds like trash. After that bit of hypocrisy, it’s probably time I learn to multi-task instead of waiting to be “moved” creatively.

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What I Wish I Wrote…

Never read The Martian. Haven’t seen the movie. But my work book club picked this as our summer read and damn, it was good. As I try to “read as a writer”, I’m learning to pay attention to story beats, character development, and tense since those are things I struggle with most. The amount of research Weir must do to make his books scientifically accurate (I assume The Martian is the same and the science is correct) made me wonder if he was an astrophysicist turned author, but after a cursory Google search—he’s a smart guy who does A LOT of research. That alone would’ve made this a fun read, but the slow burn that is our introduction to protagonist Ryland Grace made me say “shit…I only create one-dimensional characters”. Also, I was here for the relationship between Ryland and Rocky—invested. For half the book, I was either nervous about tragic ways this friendship could end or imagined crazy scenarios where they could be best friends forever. If Weir didn’t spend the first half of the book creating a character I cared about/felt sorry for, then I wouldn’t have spent the second half worrying. Sometimes I read a book and I’m all “Imma just quit ‘cause that premise is amazing or that dialogue is crisp”, but this time it was more “I gotta give my protagonist a hobby or a quirk or a better backstory or a pair of cowboy boots.” Whatever it takes to add some dimension.

I’m a “pantser”. I have my characters, their personalities, their flaws, and their motivations. I have summarized the next 4 chapters with a few sentences each, so at least I remember what events should occur when I arrive. I have the broad strokes of Act III and the ending. That’s the extent of my planning and plotting.

This past week, I finished a long chapter, wrapped it up how I wanted, then got 54 words into the next chapter before realizing I had no idea where to go.

How’d I get here? What does this character do next? Why is the supporting cast in this scene? How do I advance time and move them around?

Absolutely no idea.

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Things aren’t great for my protagonist, suffering a physical beatdown in Chapter 17, then a moral beatdown in Chapter 18. I don’t wanna give him a win in Chapter 19, but definitely a break to explore a relationship where the reader will learn some backstory. Then I can get back to advancing the plot in Chapter 20.

This is my life. I make things so much harder than they need to be due to procrastination and questing for dopamine. Projects left undone. Up against deadlines. Always forgetting. Partially realized hobbies. It’s taken so much not to walk away from this novel at the halfway point, blaming a poor premise or even promising to revisit in the future, as justification for why it’s okay. I have short stories to polish and submit for publication. I have this whole “Bounty Hunter” premise I’d like to explore for another novel. What’s even better is that as I’ve been writing this post, a thought entered my head: Why don’t you just plot the damn novel? From this point on…just plan it. Every beat. You don’t have to be married to those beats, but at least you won’t end a chapter with nowhere else to go.

Unfortunately, while I’ve been writing this post, I’ve also worked out which supporting character is going to drag my protagonist from Chapter 18 to where they should be in Chapter 19.

So…I’m gonna go write that and try to forget about having an existential crisis around plotting and planning this novel, my day, my life, etc.

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Words Written Since Last Week…

Stamped & Sent

No new submissions since last week, BUT I have dusted off some serialized fiction from this Substack and researched litmags that publish crime fiction. Unfortunately, I submitted Off the Rails to Ploughshares back in March ( I totally forgot) and received a humble letter in my email last week.

Ploughshares: Emerging Writers Contest - (Nope.)

The Atlantic - (in-progress)

Sewanee Review: Short Fiction Contest - (in-progress)

Writer’s Digest: Annual Writing Competition - (in-progress)

For the last week, I’ve been on vacation in Colorado. It started with a road trip through the Midwest, an overnight in Kansas City, detours in Kansas (did you know Dwight Eisenhower was born in a small town just off I-70? Me neither!), and finally a week-long stay in an AirBnB in a northern suburb of Denver. I normally find these trips inspirational, dedicating time each morning to writing, but something was different this time. Could be the vibe. Or it could be the looming dread of returning to work next week. Or it could be ‘cause we’re going hard on this vacation. It took so long to get here, we’re visiting every town, nearby state, trailhead, and mountain we can find.

Regardless, I haven’t written anything. But I have submitted some short stories for publication and spent ALOT of time driving, dreaming up premises for new short stories or plotting out the novel I wish I was writing now (see last week’s post about Act II). I’ve had this short story idea for years now, since my earliest attempts at writing, about alternate realities. I love the concept of infinite realities where every path we could’ve chosen plays out to its end. I read the Midnight Library by Matt Haig recently and was left with jealousy over his handling of the alternate realities premise. Anytime I try to write something born out of this premise, I end up a quarter-of-the-way through plotting with a “shit…this is Quantum Leap”.

Anyway, this one may have legs without any copyright infringement. I’ll be more confident in that statement after the 15-hour return trip home.

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Word Count Since Last Time…

Stamped & Sent

While I haven’t written anything, I have submitted the only piece of literary fiction I’ve ever written to a handful of short story contests. Here’s the blurb:

Off the Rails follows a disoriented narrator aboard a long-distance train as he drifts between memory, regret, and imagined connection. Through shifting encounters with fellow passengers—some real, some possibly not—the story explores the quiet ache of a life unraveling.

I mean…come on…that screams literary fiction. Also, I don’t know where else it fits, so that’s what I’m calling it. It started at 7500 words in 2020, becoming 3700 words today. Same story, less fat. It’s also the only piece of fiction I’ve submitted that received unsolicited feedback from an editor. I submitted to the Masters Review Winter Short Story Contest a few years ago and thought I was receiving the stock “Thank you for allowing us to read your work, but…” denial. Instead, I got a “We really enjoyed this piece and it was nearly chosen for a runner-up award, but another submission was just cleaner. Great prose and dialogue. But needs trimmed down.” So, I did that and now I have what I believe to be the strongest thing I’ve ever written. I delusionally believe this to the point I only submit it to contests that have cash awards, national reach and maybe an agent-review kicker. In keeping with this strategy, I’ve submitted to the following in June and July (so far):

The Atlantic - (in-progress)

Sewanee Review: Short Fiction Contest - (in-progress)

Writer’s Digest: Annual Writing Competition - (in-progress)

I’ll keep everyone updated as the “humble letters” roll in.

Fun fact: I’ve never reached Act II before. In anything I’ve written. Ever. I give up or hunt for Dopamine elsewhere long before Act II. Much like exercise, I can only walk on the treadmill or cycle or row for so long before I get bored. And this feels a lot like pedaling away without going anywhere.

I’ve been writing a court scene this week. It’s not exciting and doesn’t advance the plot, but it shows my main character stuck in the slog that is Act II. Just like me. From what I understand, this is where I can show the protagonist thriving in their day-to-day or failing at life. Actually, my protagonist has spent most of Act II experiencing the mundane as a public defender (and he’s good at NONE of it); sitting in court for hours, spending evenings with clients at the jail, hearing excuses from the clearly guilty, and negotiating plea deals that keep the system moving. Combine that with a law partner he can’t trust and an old flame that’s burned him more than once, and I have the makings of an Act II that’ll end in a train wreck.

But writing it isn’t fun and advancing the plot without giving him too many wins is proving difficult. Often it feels like his whole motivation of taking over his father’s law practice while trying to expose a decades-long drugs conspiracy gets lost in the mundane. Or his attention (and mine) gets diverted by exploring personal relationships of the “B-Characters” in his life.

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel has been my reference point here. At the start of every scene of what it calls the “Fun & Games” beat, I try to come up with creative ways to make my protagonist feel like they take one step forward, then two steps back. Each win is followed by a gut punch. I’m supposed to decide on his trajectory for the remainder of Act II and as of now…it’s downhill. But while I’m handing out “L’s”, I gotta keep this story moving. Is the key to a murder conspiracy in his father’s old files at the law firm? Who all’s involved? Is it tied to a drug ring operating in the Midwest for decades? How’s my protagonist going to uncover it? Who’s gonna help him?

For the foreseeable future, I’ll be finding new and creative ways to sprinkle answers throughout Act II.

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Word Count Since Last Time…

What I Wish I Wrote

For some reason, I’ve decided on The Shining as my summer read (I reserved it at my public library and expected to get access sometime in 2028…but it showed up two weeks ago). The only Stephen King I’ve read has been one short story and On Writing. Every book of his I’ve ever seen since childhood has been thick as a cinder block and just as dense. At least I thought until I started reading The Shining. I’m sure there are as many devoted Stephen King fans as there are those who say “eh…he’s hit or miss”, but I may be a convert now. I wanted to feature an inspirational quote or maybe some witty dialogue here, but not today. I haven’t flown through a novel this quickly in years and I think that’s why I can’t settle on one snippet because it’s the pacing for me that’s exceptional. Everything feels purposeful; whether it’s the slow-drip of character development, the foreshadowing of tragedy, or a setting that transports. “What I Wish I Wrote” this week really isn’t The Shining, but something that clean.

From the Forge…

Originally, I needed this Substack as a place to workshop fiction and hold myself accountable. I managed a year of serialized short fiction on here (which may be the longest I’ve ever stuck with anything) and connected with numerous other writers doing something similar. I got a little distracted after that first year as I limped into the 2nd Act of a novel.

Then something pretty amazing happened. I managed to get the first half of my novel in front of a literary agent. And I’m gonna be honest, part of me was waiting for the “this is great…how would you like to finish this, be represented, then get published?”. The pessimist in me was a little more “This is gonna be painful.” Turns out…it was a happy medium, which I would not have handled well had I not been submitting short stories for the last five years, receiving everything from stock denial emails to helpful feedback from editors. Turns out, my prose and dialogue were great, but I didn’t know how to structure a story.

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I used the feedback as motivation and with the help of Chat-GPT, I created an MFA reading list for myself. Depending on my workday and the ads in Poets & Writers Magazine, my interest in an MFA waxes and wanes. I already had student loans from a graduate degree I no longer use (now forgiven…thanks PSLF) and with a background in higher ed., I do believe that you can attain the same knowledge by reading, doing, failing, and repeating. So I read all about how genre books are structured, used every supplemental resource I could find, and scrapped fifteen chapters of a poorly structured novel.

Then my doctor discovered an aneurysm near my heart and sent me to Vanderbilt where I had open-heart surgery two months shy of my 40th. I’ve since recovered, but was under the misconception that I would have all this free time to dedicate to reading and writing and completing all the things I’d taken for granted. While I had a ton of time, the body and mind have a weird way of diverting bandwidth away from the things you WANT to do and focusing on the thing you NEED to do…healing.

Regardless, here I am trying to get back into a writing routine and using Substack again to do so. I’ve decided to switch the format a bit, so I can still have my accountability partners, but without the pressure of churning out short stories every week. I’m a slow writer anyway (I started writing this post on Monday and planned to release it Wednesday morning) and this will allow me to share my novel progress, word count, resources, things I wrote, things I wish I wrote, successes, failures, etc. Starting next week, I’m gonna have this thing posted on Wednesday morning. Might add some graphics and headings. May explore some of these new Substack features. Same name though…even without serialized fiction. I love alliteration too much to change it.

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Instead of answering those questions in a flurry of applications or another quiet round of submissions, I decided to make something public. Unpolished. Imperfect. But honest. Serial Smithery is my attempt to write in the open—not just stories, but also the ongoing mess of trying to become a better writer. Some weeks I’ll share short fiction, other times it might be a scene, a scrap, or a reflection on what I’m learning (or unlearning). The point isn’t to prove I’m good at this. The point is to show up and see what comes of it.

And that shift didn’t come naturally. If I wanted to reach real readers, I had to do things well outside my comfort zone. So I made a plan, set goals, identified an audience, joined writing groups (ugh…networking), updated social media (also ugh), told people what I was building, designed a logo, picked a mildly clever name, and—hardest of all—committed to a profile picture.

From here on, I’ll post something—a short story, a scene, a scrap of dialogue, or just a reflection on where I’m stuck and what I’m learning. Some of it will be crime fiction, mystery, or sci-fi. Some of it won’t. But it will always be part of the process. If you love these genres, or just enjoy following a writer’s journey, I hope you’ll stick around. Subscribe below and share if it speaks to you. No grand launch, no promises—just one word at a time.

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