Author Archives: Brian B Baker

About Brian B Baker

I write horror stories, sometimes I bartend to support my writing.

A Thing About Devotion

Featured

Posted on by
1

This topic has come up in my head quite a bit lately and I’m trying to recon with the reasons.

The thought of devotion isn’t only one of religion or spirituality, not even to one’s spouse.

I am devoted to my wife, but I haven’t been devoted to my writing.

Sure I get words on the page, but do they go anywhere? Will anyone eventually read them?

This has been what has been holding me back. I’m devoted to putting words on the page, but not putting those pages in a book.

What is the written word without a book to hold it?

This came up when I watched something the other day.

An author was being interviewed and she said, her first book she did the best she could and published it. There were spelling and grammar errors, but she didn’t care because it was out there.

This has been my blockage, this hasn’t been my devotion.

My devotion has been to write words, not to see them in print. What good is it to write stories that aren’t seen?

I am devoted to improving my writing. I can’t improve without publishing it, no matter the form it takes?

I have written 11 books. Even if they’re shit, why haven’t I published them?

I’m devoted to the act of writing, but live in fear of being published. I have submitted novels, but when those novels come back rejected, I leave them on my hard drive. I don’t do anything else with them.

My devotion has to be two fold. To the writing and to the publishing. I have to want to publish, regardless of the final product. As I’ve said, my wife and I can’t afford an editor. With Covid-19 and my bartending gigs less, we can’t put money into something like that.

What we can do is go over what I’ve written, self-publish it and see where that takes us.

So, I’m going to continue to write stories, but I will write them with a certain collection in mind.

I write horror, it’s what I’m the best at. I will continue to write those stories but now my devotion to them is changed. I will publish this year. I will collect 10-15 stories set with a theme, organize them and publish them.

I have to do that.

I’m devoted to my writing and now to getting things published, no matter what form that takes.

Stressed, frustrated, and losing hope for my writing.

Featured

Posted on by
4

I’ve written 11 novels, close to 100 short stories and I don’t have anything to show for it.

I submitted a novel today, and that’s a good thing, but I’m honestly at the point where submitting has lost its taste and I’m ready to move on to self-publishing.

My wife and I have talked about getting a collection of stories together and publishing those, and I believe that’s probably the best course of action.

I love to write. It’s the only thing I feel I’m good at. I’ve been doing it so long, like with bartending that I don’t know how to do anything else.

I could find a job doing something besides bartending, but I really enjoy it.

As far as my writing goes, I’ve written so many words in the last five years since we moved our kids from Las Vegas to Utah that I’ve made great strides in my writing. I’ve improved so much from the earlier stories after we moved.

The world is different from what it was five years ago, hell five months ago, but I get the feeling that something has to change soon, at least for my writing.

I keep submitting short stories and novels and they keep getting rejected.

I can’t afford an editor, it’s just not in our budget.

My greatest hope is that something I submit gets published but as I lose hope for that, I gain it in publishing it by myself.

Moving forward I’ll probably self-publish a collection of short horror stories. I have a few that I really enjoy and I’m looking for a theme among some of them. I may have one, but I’m still hopeful for my novels, though as I said, that hope is waning.

It’s not about the money, it’s about people enjoying what I write. If I only wrote for money that would be horrible. I can’t see myself doing anything but writing and that I haven’t had a novel picked up feels damaging to myself.

I know I’m wining about things when we’re in a pandemic, all of the racial injustice happening to Black lives, but sometimes I just need to put my feelings down on the page. True feelings.

I hope you’re all well. I will tell you if anything happens with the novel, but I think I’ll be moving forward with finding a throughway with the short story collection. That feels like the best thing to do right now.

Tired,Trusting Yourself, And Learning

Posted on by
Reply

The exhaustion of writing this fast has hit.

To give you an idea, I’ve written 96k in 40 writing days.

The first few days were hectic.

I doubted myself and wondered if I should keep going. I stopped writing for a few days to get my head right. I hit points where I had to take a day to work through things.

Luckily those days weren’t many and out of the 40 days, its been 46  calendar days since I started.

As I said in the last post, I’ve written this one with an outline and a beat sheet. I’ve followed each beat and knew where I needed to be in the story by that beat.

It’s changed I look at writing, how I construct everything about the story. I used to be a pantser and had almost no luck with an outline.

I felt stilted.

Then I realized that I could write to the beat. I could do whatever I wanted with the people in the story as long as I hit the points I needed to and reached the beats within a couple of thousand words, which I’ve done.

When I wrote on Tuesday morning I realized I’d written more in this first draft than I’d written in any of the previous 10 books I’ve written.

It is the longest book I’ve written and I’ve followed the outline and beat sheet perfectly.

It will change how I construct stories in the future as well as how I work on any project going forward.

This project has been more fun than anything I’ve written and felt like it was writing itself for most of the draft.

I know for any project that comes after it, I’ll have to sit down and plan out the beat sheet. The outline will take a minimum of three weeks, and more than likely more.

After this draft is done, it will sit for six weeks while I work on short stories and plan out what to work on next.

There is one major thing I’ve learned from this process.

No one knows you better than yourself. People can tell you what you should write, or what they believe you should write. Maybe even that they think they know you. But the truth is no one but you knows you.

Always trust yourself in your writing and write what you would enjoy, not anyone else.

 

 

 

Long past doing the expected.

Featured

Posted on by
1

I haven’t written on the blog in awhile because I’ve been getting words in the morning and I honestly haven’t felt like it.

Right now is different.

I’ve written novels in almost every genre and I’ve learned what I like, what works, and what doesn’t(for me).

We’re all different which is what I added that little bit on the end there.

I work best with an outline.

I’ve written almost 11 books and the current work with the outline has been the easiest.

Those who know me, or at least think they do, believe that I should be writing horror. I understand their reasons and they make sense until you discuss life with me.

I haven’t had that difficult of time but there have been moments in my life that sucked. We’ve all had that.

On to the unexpected.

I decided to write the current project based upon what I read growing up. Sure I read fantasy and sci-fi. But those were books I had to hide.

The books I read in public were different.

Life a meal and dessert.

The meal was always what I read in public. The dessert was what I read in private.

Now that I’ve nearly completed the first draft of the project, I see where I’ve made mistakes in other books.

I often try to hurry to the end and that’s caused many rewrites.

I’m trying not to do that with this project and as I reach the end I feel there are only a couple of people who will read it but I’m okay with that.

I feel I truly wrote this for myself.