Tag Archives: Writing

Middle Grade & Adventure Fiction, 5/21/26

Posted on by Henry

I received really helpful feedback last year alongside a rejection of Bury’em Deep. The agent said (I paraphrase) that she really liked the story, but wouldn’t represent me because she didn’t know an editor who was looking for it. She went on to say that middle grade was an exceptionally difficult market at present; acquiring editors were extremely picky, and she didn’t have the right contacts for upper middle grade space adventure.

I appreciated her candor. Frankly, I think her position is a good one—if she doesn’t know where or how to sell a work, she’s not the agent for that work. She remains the only agent (in over five years of on and off querying) who has given me such clarity in her response.

But all of that left me wondering: what the heck is ”upper middle grade” fiction? Have I been using the wrong term for my story this whole time?

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Pain, progress, & Truby, 5/14/26

Posted on by Henry

Success! Since my post last week, I’ve prioritized prep work during my writing time. It’s been good. I haven’t had that much writing time, and I haven’t answered all my questions. I definitely shouldn’t jump back to the story yet. But I have identified several problems that were eating at my subconscious, and I may have resolved one of them.

Unfortunately, that resolution could be painful.

This prep work hasn’t felt satisfying in the same way as putting words on the page. Something about the work has even felt a little hollow. It’s like I’m merely whetting my appetite, and now feel even hungrier for “the real deal.” And yes, I agree, that’s unhelpful terminology for reinforcing my prep work habits.

It doesn’t help that I’m spending a lot of time and effort looking at the holes in my hopes and plans. Realizing that something’s going wrong, that I need to cut or make big changes, isn’t precisely inspiring. But every so often, I get little insights—yes, they sometimes hurt, but I’m excited to try implementing them, to see whether they solve even bigger problems that I’d only barely glimpsed on the horizon.

Let me give you an example.

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Cooking, writing, prep work 5/7/26

Posted on by Henry

Here are two scenarios.

First, you’re in the kitchen. You need to make dinner—food for tonight, and leftovers for several days. You’re working from a recipe that you haven’t read before. You haven’t done any prep. You’re sure you have most of the ingredients you’ll need, but you haven’t even pulled any of them out of the cupboard.

Second, you’re in the kitchen again. You still need to make dinner—food for tonight, and leftovers for several days. This time you’re cooking a familiar dish; you know the recipe, you know the flavor palette you want, you know what you’re doing. You’ve already prepped all your ingredients. Each one is on hand, in a bowl or dish or whatever, ready to add when the time comes.

In the first case, you are going to be stressed, and frustrated, and the whole thing is going to take way too long. Forget improvising; you might make changes to the recipe but they’ll be by accident and you’re probably going to burn something.

In the second case you’re relaxed, you’re having fun. You have enough free time and spare brainpower to play around with a few ingredients you thought of as you were cooking. You know what you’re doing well enough that you can track the results of your improvising and experimentation as you go.

If I had a choice, I’d pick the second option every time.

So why do I keep picking the first option with my writing?

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Distractions, 4/30/26

Posted on by Henry

I’ve once more been waylaid by other things this week.

I’m excited to see my friend’s book coming together (she’s working on book three of three). I’ve enjoyed reading another friend’s current work in progress (they’re retelling Lady & the Tramp as lesbian werewolf romance, and it’s great). My own writing has suffered the usual fate of being sidelined by other life duties… and when I do have time to sit down for it, my mind runs off to chase the chores and tasks still undone.

That said, I am changing my current approach to a story I’ve had bouncing around my head for a year. I’m looking forward to ignoring the plot for a little bit, and instead simply focusing on world building and hashing out who some of the relevant powers-that-be are (and what they want). I realized that I’d been chasing story ideas that kept coming to me, without building the foundation that I usually need (and delight in making). I hope that switching approaches will gin up some excitement again and let me focus on the story and its world instead of being distracted by chores.

Well, I should say ‘instead of being distracted by chores when I have time to sit down and write.’ I do still need to do all the other work.

Fortunately, doodling out a few ideas regarding the schemes and motivations of NPCs for my Worlds Without Number game reminded me of just how much I enjoy that side of things. With any luck that enthusiasm will carry over to similar work for a different story. Honestly, I’ll probably use a few of Crawford’s generation tools for my creative process. I’m a little nervous, but I’m looking forward to it.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Posted on by Henry

I’ve finally seen Kubo and the Two Strings, and I loved it.

Yes, the story’s themes are well-trodden classics. Yes, I could see the twists before they arrived. No, I didn’t care—Kubo and the Two Strings knew what it was setting out to do, and it delivered that with skillful and focused storytelling. Plus, it’s gorgeous, and its presentation is stylish as hell.

This is not a perfect movie. I feel a little weird about it. But it is an excellent reference for how to write a good all-ages adventure story with heart. That feels especially true when I compare it to the writing of K-Pop Demon Hunters.

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Project Hail Mary (book and movie)

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I have read the book. I have seen the movie. I love both. Despite this, I find the movie a more appealing piece of art.

Why?

It comes down to emotion.

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Eat your candy! Finding the fun in your games

Posted on by Henry

Eat your candy. ASAP.

I don’t mean your literal candy.

Heck, I don’t eat much candy. When I do eat candy, I eat it in small amounts. Even ice cream, which I love, I eat sparingly.

But when it comes to RPGs I think everyone should eat their (figurative) candy right away, even if that means sharing your character’s “secrets.”

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Crit group, 2/19/26

Posted on by Henry

I have been away from my regular crit group for about a year. Caring for a new baby will do that. I recently started back up again with a smaller group of people who are more narrowly focused on my preferred genres. I love the difference.

In the previous group, there were long lulls between my submissions. We had enough people that taking turns meant there could be a month or two between any one person’s submissions. That delay made it harder to stay in the ‘excited creation’ phase of making progress on a project. It wasn’t the only thing pushing me that way (mental health and caring for other duties distracted me just fine) but it didn’t help.

Now I’m submitting smaller pieces more regularly. This feels like a positive feedback loop rather than simply treading water. I’m still juggling my writing alongside everything else in my life, but it’s amazing what a difference feeling excited after a critique session makes.

This smaller group’s composition makes a big difference too. While the larger group had plenty of good insight and good questions, there was enough friction between the genres I was writing and the comfort zones of the other writers to derail my enthusiasm. This smaller group is composed solely of genre fiction writers with overlapping genre expertise and familiarity with more recent genre fiction. I’m no longer asked to explain a genre, or to explain a secondary world in great detail at the start of a story. This has made the difference between feeling uncertain about a piece after submitting it to the larger group, and feeling excited to improve the same piece after receiving precise and knowledgeable feedback from the small group.

I miss the social space of the old group. I enjoyed the people, and I did receive some useful responses. But this smaller group is so much better at delivering what I want from a critique group, there’s no way I’d go back.

It’s a good enough group experience, in fact, that I’m tempted to invite another writer whose critique has been transformative for me previously. At the same time, I fear adding more people—every additional writer dilutes our ability to respond to everyone every session. I’ll have to talk this over with my friends and see how they feel.

‘Swamp Gangster’ reflections

Posted on by Henry

I’ve written a few (I dunno, maybe ten? A couple more?) stories in the same “swamp gangster” setting that I first posted here back in February of 2016, a post I just called “fiction experiments”at the time. I used that swamp gangster setting to support me through multiple flash fic challenges that year. Those additional stories changed the world a bit from that first post. It has grown more since then.

Despite the fact that the setting is fueled by my own read on a world that’s deep into the suffering imposed by a climate crisis, something about the stories I’ve written for that setting usually gives me hope. I think it comes back to how characters stand up for each other, and how they treat those who would try to screw others over. That social dynamic is, in some ways, fueled by my experience of growing up in Vermont.

These swamp gangsters are pro-social, even when they’re in the business of selling drugs to the community (cue Black Dynamite). They take care of others. They protect their community members (form each other and from the larger world). They lend a helping hand. Why?

I don’t have a good explanation, beyond “anything else would depress me too much” or maybe “I grew up in Vermont.”

The first seems pretty clear, but for the second… let’s go on a side jaunt, for context:

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New Star Trek reflections, Starfleet Academy

Posted on by Henry

We’ve had another week of sickness here in my home. This meant that I missed Arisia, much to my dismay. My apologies if you had hoped to see me there. I hope you enjoyed it without me.

Perhaps this is a good time to reflect on the newest Star Trek show (Starfleet Academy) and the last one I watched (Strange New Worlds season 3).

Strange New Worlds season 3 was…

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