R.R. Campbell's Blog, page 2

‘Tis the Season for… Method Writing?!

Brando. Streep. Pacino.

These are names I found on a list of method actors.

Underwhelmed? I know, but the point here isn’t to explore the particulars of any actor’s career. Instead, it’s to embrace the idea of method acting—or living the role one’s to play—in the realm of writing.

Granted, we can’t always live, step-by-step, a day in the life of our characters in order to understand them, their world, and their experiences to better fuel our writing. I hate to break it to you: no matter how hard you try, you’re not going to become a dragon.

No matter how hard you try, you’re not going to become a dragon.

We may not be able to sprout wings, breathe fire, and hoard treasure, but there are little things we can do to breathe life into our characters.

And I would know: last week, I leaned in hard to a day in the life of the protagonist of my work in progress, Scambait.

Call Me Eric

Eric Amundsen, Scambait‘s protagonist, is a corporate layabout who’s obsessed with the contents of his spam folder. In what most find an annoyance, Eric finds his calling: the more time he spends stringing scammers along, the less time the scammers have to swindle the unsuspecting.

As recent posts will suggest, I’ve been keen to this scambaiting thing for a while, but this last week, for the first time, I thought I’d try it out myself. You know, let’s see what happens when you start actually responding to the contents of your spam folder. That kind of thing.

The results have been, shall we say, fascinating. They’ve been hilarious.

They’ve also been critical for developing a more nuanced understanding of my protagonist.

But first, a word of warning: don’t just start doing this yourself without first taking the proper precautions.

I’ll explore some of the precautions I had to take before engaging the folks in my spam folder below, but this will be a non-exhaustive list. Replying to these emails, downloading their attachments, or otherwise providing them with certain kinds of information can put you and your computer at risk, so, again: do not just start doing this willy nilly.

Method, Step One: Gearing Up

If I were to live the day of a scambaiter, I’d have to think like a scambaiter. This, ironically enough, meant thinking like a scammer, too.

What would a scammer want from me, for example? Well, there’s the obvious personal identifying information (social security, address, phone number, bank account information, etc.), but there’s also the less obvious like IP address, access to my email and social media accounts, and any files of note on my hard drives.

My first steps to better getting to know Eric included:

creating separate email accounts (plural!) specifically for scambaitingpopulating those accounts with personal information, including (stock) photospurchasing and activating a virtual private network (VPN)signing up to receive spam emails



Meet me, Eric Amundsen, a regular normal human who definitely exists.

The last of these, signing up for spam, may raise some brows, but trust me: it has to be done. When you create a fresh email account—particularly when it’s one that isn’t a very common name at gmail, yahoo, or hotmail.com, for example—you’ll get nothing but crickets in your inbox unless you go forth and welcome in the spam.

There are sites that will sign up an email address for nefarious or less trustworthy distribution lists (no, I won’t share their names here; besides, it’s illegal harassment to do what you’re thinking you want to do to that old boss or ex of yours). Once I found those sites, I signed up the (multiple!) email accounts I created for Eric, and then, I waited for the spam to come rolling in.

I didn’t have to wait long.

Method, Step Two: The Baiting Begins

Patience, they say, is a virtue, but who needs patience when dozens of eager scammers are just dying to hear from you? Take a peek at just one of my scambait inboxes only three days after signing up for these lists.

Yes, that is an email from former British Prime Minister Theresa May at the top there.

And these are just active scambaits on this one account. By this I mean these are ongoing conversations, or ones I still think I’ve got a shot at keeping moving through various means.

Some of my favorite moments thus far have included:

Multiple emails from former British Prime Minister, Theresa MayAn ongoing conversation with Odidi, who would very much like to marry me, but must first care for her ailing grandmother, whose healthcare she really needs me to pay forMy pitching a Qatari oil magnate on investing in an amusement park for catsThe introduction email I received that simply reads “me too”

It’s a joy, really, to keep giving these people just enough hope that they might get something from me, all the while getting increasingly more absurd in my replies.

It’s also really damn hard to keep up with.

Method, Step Three: The Distillation

If you’re eager for the particulars of these scambaits, you’ll get them eventually in video form on my (at this time, slightly outdated) YouTube channel, and I may occasionally read some of them live on Instagram like I did earlier this week.

What’s important for this conversation are the takeaways from my early scambait misadventures and how they’ve helped me better understand my protagonist.

My three biggest takeaways from my first week of scambaiting are that it’s a lot of work, an extraordinary thrill, and a surefire way to induce a heavy dose of paranoia into your day-to-day life.

Who knew fun could be so much hard work?

It took me the better part of a Monday morning and a chunk of the preceding Sunday to get everything set up to scambait safely (or as safely as I can manage on my budget). These are hours I could have spent reading and writing (or, let’s be honest, playing Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity) that I instead passed by gearing up for something with an uncertain payoff.

Part of that payoff has proven to include, however, an appreciation for how challenging it is to strike a balance between keeping the scambaiting fun (by slowly messing with the scammer more and more) while also keeping them engaged in the conversation. There’s an art to this, really, and it’s one I’m only beginning to understand.

For my manuscript, these takeaways mean I can now better embrace the pride that my protagonist feels when he pulls off a successful scambait, as well as the sense of inadequacy he feels in the presence of the big-time scambaiters who do this stuff not by email, but by phone.

And, oh—the thrill!

Despite the work required to keep a conversation with a scammer going as long as possible, the cat-and-mouse game behind it makes for an incredible rush. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself traipsing into the living room to start conversations with my wife by saying, “You’re never going to believe what that scammer’s said now.”

I can definitely see how this could become addictive. It’s already proven to be, in fact. I now genuinely enjoy waking up and wading through the contents of my spam folder, just like my main character (though he does his scambaiting while he’s supposed to be working his day job, but that’s an entirely different matter).

Now that I’ve truly experienced the highs of even this low-stakes scambaiting, I can emphasize this more strongly in my manuscript.

Have I completely ruined my computer?

Remember all those precautions I mentioned earlier? Yeah, I took them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry, from time to time, that I’ve somehow botched them, that a scammer will—somehow, some way—weasel their way onto my devices.

This is something I certainly need to play up more in my manuscript, particularly in its middle and final third (if you catch my drift). Personally, this means I’m going to ultimately wind up having to create a virtual machine, which, despite feeling like a greater challenge than I’m willing to take on right now, might prove worth it.

Why? Because it will make my scambaiting misadventures safer and teach me more about what it means to be my main character.

Now that’s what I call method.

What Comes Next?

I know I’ll keep grinding away on my scambaits, but I want to know what comes next for you. How are you going to become your protagonist for a day? What do you think this will teach you about them and about writing itself?

Share your answers in the comments!

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It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

It’s hardly a secret that I’ve had far too many pots on the stovetop since 2019. Dating back to 2018, in fact, I’ve been isolating myself from corners of the community with which I was once engaged, all in the interest of stirring those pots, in reaching nameless, faceless prospective readers who would one day, I convinced myself, pick up my work.

If you’ve followed my journey this year, it’s equally unsurprising to learn these misadventures were little more than folly.

Don’t misunderstand: I’m grateful for the friendships that have blossomed in the aftermath of Writescast Network interviews and in my inbox, but so many interactions over the last couple of years have felt transient and transactional.

And I don’t want transient. I don’t want transactional.

That’s why, earlier this year, I elected to suspend my coaching services. I elected to shut down the Writescast Network. I elected, instead, to focus on my writing.

This may seem counterintuitive. Isn’t focusing on one’s work inherently more isolating than regularly working alongside other writers to help them improve their work? Isn’t it less personal than interviewing them for a podcast episode?

Yes, but also no.

By putting my writing first, I’ve freed up the mental and emotional space I need to truly engage with those closest to me, both within the writing world and without. This engagement has come in many forms, but the one truism undergirding them all is that I’ve had to say yes to bring every last one of them to fruition.

This might seem like a 180 coming from the guy who advocated for the power of no earlier this year. But remember: in that same space, we discussed the importance of yes as well, and we regularly need to say yes to that which is important to us if we’re to embrace it wholeheartedly.

Saying Yes to (the Right Kind of) Community

Let’s not hypercorrect. This isn’t about giving a great big hug to every little thing that comes our way. On the contrary, we need to evaluate that which is important to our creative endeavors—not to mention that which is important to self-actualization—before saying yes.

For me, I’ve taken a two-pronged approach to saying yes.

First, I made it a goal to establish and maintain regular contact with more of the people in my immediate circle. Whether on Twitter and Instagram, through my email inbox, or by phone (text), I committed to becoming and remaining invested in the creatives closest to me.

Has this always been easy? No. We’re in the midst of the holiday season, after all, which, though less complicated as a result of non-existent travel plans this year, has still proven challenging as my wife and I navigate our first end-of-year as owners of Kill Your Darlings Candle Company.

That aside, however, I’m happy to have opened—and kept open—these channels as much as possible during an otherwise difficult time. Those with whom I’ve corresponded and I have been able to support each other directly, consistently, and without that air of transient transactionality hanging overhead.

One might call this friendship. *winks*

The second prong of my approach has been to return to writerly critique groups.

This, much like focusing on my writing, might feel counterintuitive. I did say, yes, that working as a writing coach was too mentally and emotionally exhausting, but participating in critique groups is different. Why?

The stakes are lower, and it’s through critique groups that I can improve my work, too.

By the former, I mean there’s no financial transaction in play. Deadlines are more loose, and the relationships are more personal than professional. And isn’t that what I wanted?

It is, yes. It is.

And the second point—that I can improve my own work by saying yes to those critique communities—has been an even greater boon that I expected: I’m enjoying the reading, I’m improving my work, and, yes, I’m making new friends.

And those friends? They mean more than nameless, faceless prospective readers ever could.

The Final Boon

Among my goals for the final three months of the year was to revisit Scambait and give it a tune up for querying in early 2021.

The good news? Those in my critique groups really seem to be enjoying it thus far.

The bad news? Even within that positive feedback, I’m discovering new ways to sharpen the story that I never would have discovered after limited beta feedback.

So, I revise. I write on. I do this and more, much like I did over the course of the last couple of years, but I no longer do it alone.

You’re here with me now, and I’m with you. After all, it’s dangerous to go alone.

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Reading, Revising, Researching: Three Rs for a Brave New World

Forget ‘rithmetic. This month has been one of reading, revising, and researching, and I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two while focusing on these new three Rs.

And today? Well, I’d like to share what I’ve learned with you.

Reading

Writers must read. We hear this all the time, and with good reason. How are you to familiarize yourself with the genre in which you (want to) write if you’re not even reading that genre? How will you make the most of all your acquired craft knowledge if you’re using it only to shape your current manuscript, instead of also analyzing published fiction?

A friend recently sent me Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. Eileen is the story of, you guessed it, Eileen, a peculiar woman whose miserable, friendless world is turned upside down when a new coworker arrives at the youth prison where she works.

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Two things struck me as I read Eileen. First, it served as a reminder of how impactful the first-person point of view can be; it invites readers to share an intimate relationship with the protagonist. As a device, this can be highly effective, particularly if the protagonist has a strong, standout voice.

Second, Eileen is quite slow to develop. It isn’t until nearly one hundred pages in that this new coworker and soon-to-be friend arrives to upend Eileen’s plan of escaping her miserable life in X-ville (literally what it’s called in the book).

This, to me, felt like it should have been a chapter three event (maybe chapter five, if I’m generous), but there I was, one hundred pages in, finally seeing this great and mysterious Rebecca on the page for the first time.

Writers are fortunate to preside over happy accidents at times, but in reading Eileen, I suddenly found myself at the center of one such accident. Remember Scambait, the novel I’ve been working on about the corporate layabout whose long-deceased father reaches out to him via his spam folder? My most recent struggles with that manuscript have been, wouldn’t you know it, 1) a lack of certainty about whether it needed to be rewritten in the first-person and 2) whether it was too slow to develop.

Happy accidents. Such is life.

Revising

To say it requires a great deal of work to change one’s manuscript from third-person (he, in this case) to first person (I) is an understatement. I’ve had to do this before (When the Stars Conspire, for those of you who have read that manuscript), but I’ve never juggled this particular task while also weighed down by concern over how to proceed with an acceleration of the plot’s pacing.

Thanks, Eileen.

But, after collecting overwhelmingly positive feedback on the current version of Scambait, my original goal was to have it ready to query this spring! Knowing this, perhaps you can understand my reluctance to embrace this new vision for the manuscript.

This Saturday morning, however, I convinced myself I had to at least try.

And so—deep breath—I did.

It went well, mostly, but something was missing. I needed a signpost against which I could measure the pacing issues I sought to address.

Enter Story Genius by Lisa Cron.

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I’ve read Lisa’s Wired for Story and have interviewed her as part of an episode on the Writescast Network, but I never got around to reading Story Genius. Everyone I know who has read it, however, has raved about it, so, trusting their judgment (and Lisa’s), I’ve elected to fall back on both reading and research to help me through revisions.

Research

This brings me to the third of our three new Rs. Reading books like Story Genius and Eileen will or have already certainly helped me with my revisions, but research is so much more than reading.

For example, I recently came to realize that the original research I did into the scambaiting community wasn’t going to cut it, not if I truly want Scambait to shine. The problem? There’s not a great deal of authoritative work written about scambaiting, and even if there were, the landscape is constantly shifting.

Thank goodness, then, for YouTube.

If you’re unfamiliar, scambaiting is the act of calling back those phony tech support (or other) scammers who are always ringing you from fake U.S. numbers. Once a scambaiter has a scammer on the phone (or, in the case of Scambait‘s protagonist, in his email inbox), they then try to keep them on the phone for as long as possible in order to keep them from scamming people who might actually fall for their schemes.

Scambaiting experts like Pierogi of the Scammer Payback YouTube channel take their scambaiting a step further by, as in the video above, finding the scammer’s list of victims on their computer so he can call those victims to tell them what to watch out for in the future.

Now, the protagonist in Scambait is nowhere near as competent as scambaiters like Pierogi, but that doesn’t mean the hours I spent watching scambaiting videos this weekend were wasted. On the contrary, getting more familiar with the work of people like Pierogi, Kitboga, and Jim Browning has helped me better understand my protagonist’s world view.

This, along with the additional details I’ve gleaned from expert scambaiters (as opposed to their lower-stakes compatriots on the r/scambait subreddit) have better equipped me to flesh out some of the protagonist’s antagonizing forces.

And here’s the bonus conclusion at which I arrived late last night: if I’d done all of this research before having written a word, I’m not sure I’d have wound up with a story that’s as engaging as beta readers seem to have found Scambait thus far.

Why? The research would have gotten in the way.

Reading, Revising, Researching: An Ongoing Process

Often, I find writers who do extremely detailed research before ever writing a word tend to focus overmuch on that research in the presentation of their story, which is to say the research actually gets in the way of the story itself. In other words, these writers have spent so much time studying a given subject that they can’t imagine wedging it unnecessarily into the events of the novel as they unfold.

But, by making research an ongoing process—one that’s part of the reading and revising stages as well as the initial drafting stage—we ensure we aren’t tripping ourselves up or letting ourselves get so mired in research that we never write a word of the actual book.

At some point, you just have to get started. At some point, you have to take a risk. But, at all points, you must accept that for your work to be the best it can be, you must read. You must revise. And you must, yes, research.

That’s what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future ,anyway. I’ve got Story Genius to read, Scambait to revise, and further relevant research to conduct.

This manuscript may not be ready to query on the exact timeline I originally had in mind, but I’ll be damned if I won’t be caught reading, revising, and researching my way to getting it back on track as soon as I can.

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I’m Joining the Board of the Wisconsin Writers Association!

I’m thrilled to share I’ve been elected to the board of directors for the Wisconsin Writers Association!

Per their website:

The Wisconsin Writers Association is a nonprofit organization that encourages, educates, supports and promotes writers through its programs and services.

The Wisconsin Writers Association has been serving writers since 1948, and it’s an honor to have been elected to the Craft Development Chairperson position.

I look forward to working with writers within the state and beyond to bring you the very best educational content on the craft and business of writing.

More to come!

On Letting Go: Saying Goodbye to the Writescast Network

Since 2016, the Writescast Network has reached tens of thousands of writers around the globe. You’ve been here as I’ve recorded nearly 6,000—yes six thousand minutes of content for writers, by writers—which means it would take you nearly one hundred hours, or more than four straight days of listening, to start back at episode one and listen through until now.

I’ve loved having the opportunity to speak with so many members of our worldwide writing community. I’ve learned so much from them that it’s impossible to quantify the extent to which they have helped me grow as a writer and better understand the business of writing.

But, believe it or not, it takes 10 to 15 hours of work to produce a single episode. That’s 10 to 15 hours nearly every week spent sourcing guests, preparing interview questions, recording, editing audio (back before I outsourced that), updating the website, managing social media, hosting #WritescastChat, and, well, the list goes on, and none of this is accounting for the facts that I also have a part-time day job to work, books to write, a burgeoning candle company to help manage, and, yes, some people I’d like to spend time with outside the realm of all that is writerly.

As the Writescast Network has grown, I’ve come to realize more and more that this idea of people includes me, too, and that, when working at full throttle to produce a podcast for you nearly every week, this people—in other words, me—must set aside much of what got him to start these podcasts in the first place, that being the writing itself.

So, in the interest of returning to my writerly roots, of putting people over platform—because there is a difference, and it’s one we cannot lose sight off—the final episode of Writescast Network programming will debut on December 11th of this year.

This was, I assure you, not an easy decision to make. Your replies to network tweets and Instagram posts, your emails, and your kind words at conferences (back when those were a thing) have meant so much to me since I sat down for the first time with a microphone and a dream. I will forever treasure the conversations I’ve had with network guests, and I’m deeply indebted to the network’s patrons and sponsors over the years, as well as people like Sione Aeschliman, Ekta Garg, Maggie Derrick, whose extended stints as hosts or guest co-hosts helped me grow and sustain the network. 

The Writescast Network was never the writing community’s most listened-to podcast. We never made any lists (at least none that I’m aware of), and we never topped any charts.

No, the Writescast Network never did any of these things, but it was ours, and we’ll always have that. We’ll always have each other.

Because, and I cannot emphasize this enough, platform is not people. We can and are going to stay in touch, and something new will come from the winding down of the Writescast Network, and rest assured no matter what it is, it’s going to put people first.

So thank you, again, for everything. Write on and write well, always.

A version of this content originally appeared in episode 095 of the r.r. campbell writescast.

Finding Right In a Sideways World

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted, I know, but that doesn’t mean I’ve gone quiet. Since my last post, I’ve connected or reconnected with two critique groups, have added 27,000 words to the first draft of TO HAVE BEEN RICH, and have led a virtual seminar through the Fox Cities Book Festival.

Oh, and SCAMBAIT, the manuscript in the photo below—I received a full request for it over the weekend.

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When 2020 first got underway, an author friend and I were discussing by email how 2020 felt like it might be the year. We both burst onto the scene at about the same time, received our first publishing contracts within days of each other, and this overwhelming sense of momentum and inevitability had us sure 2020 had good things in store.

Then the world went sideways.

But despite the lockdowns, despite mask mandates and cabin fever, the work has continued. It had to if I—if we; you, me, all of us—were going to come out of this okay. Maybe it had to be set aside for a time, sure. Maybe it had to be left to simmer. But in the end, always, our art was and is there for us, and I find that immensely reassuring.

Because for as sideways as the world went this year, there’s still time yet. Don’t count out what days remain. Don’t count out the return of the good fortune you’ve been cultivating. Don’t count yourself out. There are better days ahead.

Who’s Excited for NaNoWriMo? Let’s Check In!

It’s been a while since I’ve shared updates on the actual writing process, and with all of our in-person events canceled this year, I haven’t had a chance to hear from you.

First, I’ll share, but be sure to comment on this post to let me know what you’re up to as well, whether for NaNoWriMo or in general!

Right now, I have two projects as my primary go-tos when it comes time to write. The first, SCAMBAIT, is the story of a corporate layabout who’s obsessed with the contents of his spam folder. In what most find an annoyance, he finds his calling: the more time he spends stringing scammers along, the less time the scammers have to swindle the unsuspecting.

But when his long-deceased father contacts him through his spam folder, his world is turned upside down…

SCAMBAIT has been through a couple of drafts, and its first thirty pages have been read by one of the two critique groups I’m in. A few friends (some of my newsletter’s readers included) have read the entire manuscript, and I’ve received some wonderful feedback on the story thus far! I also recently submitted the project to Pitch Wars, an online mentorship program. We’ll see how things pan out for it this year before I start to query it in early 2021!

The other manuscript I’ve been focusing on is one I’m calling TO HAVE BEEN RICH. The pitch for this one isn’t as tidy as that of SCAMBAIT, but its tagline would be something like:

“Neither of them wants a child, but that won’t stop them from trying.”

This manuscript is, essentially, as fellow author and friend Maggie Derrick recently called it, a millennial’s worst nightmare. It’s the culmination of thoughts on what would become of characters who unabashedly committed themselves to the cultural dogma that has buoyed the prevailing narratives many of my generation have been force-fed since birth. 

Is it angsty? You bet. Is it, in the end, a story about self-discovery, about the triumph of love for oneself and one’s family, no matter the shape it takes? Darn tootin’.

I’m closing in on completing what we’ll call a first draft of TO HAVE BEEN RICH, but it is, after SCAMBAIT, the novel I’ve felt most at home writing. Some new thoughts over the weekend (thanks, Lacey!) also have me embracing a whole new world of possibilities for it, so I’m eagerly looking to finishing this draft and getting into revisions.

That’s what I’ve been up to, anyway.

Do either of these manuscripts sound like they’d appeal to you? If so, which one and why? Share your answer to these questions in the comments below, and don’t forget to tell me what you’ve been working on this year, too!

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The Awesome Power of No (And Yes, Too)

FOMO: It lurks around every corner, in every email.

If you’re anything like me, you struggle with the fear of missing out (FOMO, for the uninitiated). 

FOMO rears its ugly head in social situations, with educational opportunities, and through those limited-time sales you’re served ads for relentlessly on Facebook.

It also shows up all the time in the world of publishing and writing.

Don’t believe me? Well—

Have you ever worried you’re not doing “enough” on social media? Are you concerned not writing today will make all the difference between making it as an author or failing to live up to your potential? Will not submitting to a particular writing contest mean missing out on the acclaim you feel your work merits?

If you weren’t worried before, perhaps you are now.

The thing about FOMO, however, is that it’s a double-edged sword, and it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve realized I’ve been holding tightly to one end of the blade, cutting my own hand open as I brazenly lunge at my writerly FOMO.

In dedicating myself doggedly to slaying my FOMO in the world of writing, I’ve missed out in other ways. I’ve missed out on gatherings with friends (in the pre-COVID days), time alone with my wife, and time alone with just myself (which is, yes, also important).

This is where the power of “no” comes in.

This single word haunts FOMO’s dreams. When we embrace “no,” we reject making choices from a place of fear and instead embrace what we already have in front of us–and sometimes that’s just fine.

And “no?” It’s a word we have to acquaint ourselves with anyway if we’re to make time to write at all. In fact, if you’re dedicated to writing as part of a regular routine, the act of sticking to that routine is already a demonstration that you understand the power of no.

In this way, then, missing out is an inevitability, but it’s one we need not fear.

Instead, if we empower ourselves to prioritize our time based on that which we’d like to say yes to, well, we’re then making these choices from a place of positivity.

I’ve long struggled with saying “no,” but, going forward, I can’t let myself focus on that which I’m saying “no” to. I can’t let myself focus on that which I’m missing out on.

Instead, I’ll view these choices through the lens of that which I’m saying yes to, and I hope you’ll do the same.

No matter how you choose to view the interplay between yes and no, I hope you’ll share with me what it is you’ve feared missing out on as of late. To what have you said yes? To what have you said no? How did you arrive at those decisions, and how did it feel once you made them?

Let me know in the comments!

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Write the Book You’re Destined to Write

Note: this content first appeared in episode 004 of Profiles in Encouragement (below).

On the day after Christmas in 2017, it felt as though my life was destined to change forever. And it was! But not in the ways I might have anticipated when I first slid into my email inbox while on lunch at my place of employment.

I remember reclining, my back against the soft cushion of the booth in which I sat, and taking in the first words of a new email again and again and again.

After assessment of your submitted novel, Accounting For It All, I am thrilled to offer you a contract for publication with NineStar Press. Your talent shines through and I look forward to reading more of your works.

Whew. Even now, three years removed from that email, goosebumps rise on my forearms, but that emotion does not compare to the moment I first read that email. Tears welled in my eyes, and I had to dash into a stairwell, clutching my phone, to keep my co-workers from thinking I’d received awful news instead of amazing news.

I called my then-fiancée, now wife, to share the news, but my voice cracked when she answered, and all I managed to get out was a very shaky “I have news” before the call dropped. She called me back, worried, but once I shared my update with her, all that worry washed away.

Then, with two more contracts for publication arriving in the subsequent months, it seemed as though my career as a published author was set to take off. We were talking book tour, conference gigs, interviews on radio, TV, and in the paper.

It did not, however, work out that way.

The Expectations Game and Ineffective Promotion

Now, a pox upon my name for any portrayal of my journey that insinuates I’m not grateful or extremely fortunate to have been in the position I was in. On the contrary, it’s been my great honor to have found myself in this place. One can hardly complain about the unique joy of holding one’s book in their hands for the first time, of speaking before a crowd and sharing one’s journey from “I think I have an idea for a novel” to becoming a number one new release on Amazon.

But here’s the thing: I deluded myself into believing that just because I wrote it, readers would read it.

I promoted my books, of course, but not in any meaningful, reader-outreach kind of way. I convinced myself that tweets with buy links and pull quotes from New York Times bestselling authors would do the trick. I believed if I spent hours coordinating and scheduling a book tour around my home state that my mere appearance in those places would be enough to drive out at least a handful of readers at each location, all of whom would be eager to hear from a fellow Wisconsinite-turned-author.

If you’re a regular listener to the Writescast Network, however, you know that, in retrospect, I fondly refer to this book tour as “The World’s Saddest Book Tour.” I could go into extraordinary detail about how, despite the graciousness of the bookstore owners and my attempts to promote the events within their communities, nearly every stop proved to be an immense letdown.

I won’t dive too deeply into that now because, well, the details aren’t as important as the takeaway. In the aftermath of the world’s saddest book tour and finding my book sales dwindling, I was devastated.

Awards Season, With Years Between

When award season arrived, I didn’t bother submitting any of my books to awards for which they would have been perfect candidates. Months later, after winners were announced, readers contacted me, confused as to how I hadn’t at least landed an honorable mention anywhere.

Folks, I cannot tell you how sad it made me to email those readers back to tell them I simply hadn’t found my books worth the time it would take to submit them.

A year passed. Another. The news increasingly began to look just as horrifying—if not more so—than the content of the books in my EMPATHY sci-fi saga, Imminent Dawn and Mourning Dove. The third book of five was due out in March 2020, and I rushed, rushed, rushed to get it ready in time for my publisher. If only I could only make another big splash, if I could develop some positive momentum and find new readers, perhaps I’d overcome my hesitations about publishing a book of its nature during times like these.

Then, two months before the book was due to be published, I pulled it. What was the point? If books one and two hadn’t found the readership I longed for, how would book three suddenly churn that up? Besides, I was really disappointed with how, based on restrictions beyond my control, I couldn’t write the third book I originally intended to write.

So it faded. All of it. It seemed the EMPATHY sci-fi saga was destined to fade away, unloved and forever incomplete.

Turning Points, Taking Chances, Making Mistakes

Months later, while scrolling through Facebook, I saw something about the International Book Awards. Immediately, my cynicism kicked in. Surely none of my books were worthy, and, besides, it was 2020. My books came out in 2018 and 2019, so there was no way they would be eligible.

As it turned out, curiosity overpowered cynicism, and I did some digging. Not only were my 2019 books eligible, it seemed, but my 2018 release was, too.

Sigh.

I’m not sure what came over me in that moment: it was a Sunday afternoon, and we were long past the hours I should have allowed myself to work on the weekend, but part of me knew if I didn’t fill out the entry forms and submit the other requested materials that very day, I’d never do it.

So I did. I kicked off all three entry forms, and that was that.

Well, not entirely. I re-read my entry forms and realized that, of course, I made several errors in the information I attempted to submit. Embarrassing.

I swallowed my pride, however, and sent follow-up emails apologizing for my oversights and including corrected information. Not that it would matter: surely these blunders on top of my books’ failure to gain the traction I thought they were worthy of had already doomed my books to wind up in the honorable unmention awards.

I got over my shame more quickly than I thought I would, and soon forgot I submitted my books at all. Spring flowered and wilted, summer rose over the horizon and, by the time July rolled around, the International Book Awards were nothing more than a half-remembered dream.

On the evening of July 22nd, however, I received an email.

“Congratulations!
The results of the 2020 International Book Awards have been announced.
Your book, IMMINENT DAWN, has been honored as a “Finalist” in the “Science Fiction” category.”

The Moral of the Story, of Our Stories

Friends, family, writerfolk: do not give up. Your stories are worth it. You are worth it. Every word you pen can mean something to someone someday, but for that to be true, you have to believe it first. You have to live it first.

So thank you, everyone, for your support. Thank you for your reviews and encouraging emails and for sharing Imminent Dawn with family and friends. I’m ready now, I think, to get back into the EMPATHY sci-fi saga.

Because every writer deserves to write the story they’re destined to write, and every story deserves an ending.

A version of this content first appeared in episode 004 of Profiles in Encouragement. Click here to subscribe to these episodes and never again miss conversations like these.

If you prefer to receive this content in blog or newsletter format, you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter here.

The Intersection of Art and Politics: Prevailing and Countervailing Narratives

Note: this content first appeared in episode 088 of the R.R. Campbell Writescast (below).

I’d like to talk, for a moment, about the intersection of art and politics. Why? Because you asked me to. Well, someone did, anyway, and they did so by visiting writescast.net/hello and submitting their question for me to tussle with.

So let’s check out the full scope of their comment:

Poets have long been moved by social unrest, as have some nonfiction Writers. Do you think all writers, including fiction have a responsibility through writing and discussion groups to respond to social justice and unrest?

First of all, thank you to this anonymous question contributor. It’s an excellent question.

As to whether we have a responsibility—on that, I’m not entirely sure responsibility figures into it. Why? Because art—particularly wordcraft—is often inherently political.

Social Responsibility in Fiction: Two Case Studies

To explore this, we’ll use two unique lenses, namely those of my debut novel, Accounting for It All, and the first two books in my science fiction saga, the Imminent Dawn and its sequel, Mourning Dove.

Let’s start with Accounting for It All. For those who are unfamiliar, it’s the story of an adult-film star turned accountant who finds herself mired in an IRS audit of a money laundering scheme she had no idea she was part of.

If you’re thinking a novel like this would be rife with opportunities to explore matters of social justice, the treatment of society’s most vulnerable, educational discrepancies and how they affect interactions with the government and other groups—among other topics—you’re right!

That’s why, for Accounting for It All, I deliberately chose to embrace the intersection of art and politics or social justice. 

That said, rather than rely on society’s prevailing narratives about those who work in pornography and sex work, I chose to research countervailing narratives that I could use to buoy the themes I wanted to explore and the point I wanted to make about the nature of self-actualization.

Okay, so a lot of big stuff there. Why don’t we break that down further so we can better understand how we might approach this in our own work?

First, let’s examine prevailing and countervailing narratives. Let’s define and discuss.

Prevailing Narratives

Let’s begin with prevailing narratives. These are the stories that a culture tends to tell itself about itself. These often come in the form of value statements or morals that are, intentionally or not, seen as prescriptive. To deviate from these prevailing narratives is, in the eyes of the supposed majority, to betray the values of society itself and to risk becoming an outcast.

Where Accounting for It All is concerned, the prevailing narratives against which our main character, Robin, finds herself pitted are those with which many of us are familiar: that those who partake in the consumption or production of pornography—or otherwise participate in sex work—are deviants, destitute, otherwise unfit to be embraced by society writ large.

In other words, our society has instituted and maintained a series of statements about itself and its values that cast aspersions on those who participate in this line of work. The prevailing narrative is one that says, “Hey, we don’t like this and we don’t like you.”

Countervailing Narratives

Countervailing narratives, on the other hand, are those that challenge society’s prevailing narratives. These are the narratives that come to the fore at times of social unrest, during protests, or oftentimes form the basis for petitions or challenges to long-standing legal or cultural precedent. 

In Accounting for It All, the primary countervailing narrative can be distilled into a single thematic statement: namely, that there are countless paths one might take to self-actualization, but so long as one can find happiness and become the best version of themselves that they can, that’s enough—society’s expectations be damned.

In this way, then, I made an active choice when writing Accounting for It All: I would choose to research, ruminate on, and then write about countervailing narratives surrounding pornography and sex work, and then explore the interplay between society’s prevailing and countervailing narratives through the experiences of my main character, Robin, a young woman from middle America who, feeling desperately out of place among the circumstances in which she was raised, pursues a career in front of and later behind the camera.

Now, was this exploration an easy one to do? No. As one might expect, it’s challenging to find people who are willing to talk about or argue in favor of society’s countervailing narratives when it comes to topics as sensitive as these.

And, after having written this book, seeing it published, and having some distance between myself and the time at which I wrote it, do I still agree with every presentation I made, with every argument I took up, with every facet of the story I chose to include in order to present these countervailing narratives? I don’t know.

But here’s the thing: my thoughts on it now don’t really matter. The readers’ thoughts, however, do. 

Readers and Their Reality

In presenting Accounting for It All as I have, I’m offering readers the opportunity to engage with prevailing and countervailing narratives in a private space and in a fictional world.

The conclusions they choose to reach are for them and them alone; I factor little into how they ultimately interact with that which I wrote. The best I could—and did, hopefully—do, was to write a story that lets the world know these countervailing narratives exist and that there are people out there who are—happily, I might add—actively living them every day. What readers choose to do with these presentations in the end is completely up to them. 

Not All Manuscripts Are the Same

That brings me, actually, to the first two books in my EMPATHY sci-fi saga, Imminent Dawn and Mourning Dove.

For these books, my process was vastly different than the one I employed for Accounting for It All. In these, I had no overt political statement to make or social exploration to perform.

Instead, I wanted to focus on this speculative world in which humankind was going through the first round of human trials for an internet-access brain implant. 

My goals with the EMPATHY series were to put entertainment—things like incredible twists and spellbinding suspense—first and foremost. And this stance is an absolutely valid one to take!

But here’s the thing: as I started writing and as readers started reacting, it was apparent that, yes, even in the EMPATHY series, the dilemmas our characters face create situations where readers inevitably must tussle with moral conundrums that, at times, enter into a political space.

Consider even just one of Imminent Dawn’s perspective characters, the ruthless tech magnate, Wyatt Halman. In his very first chapter, he’s rebuffing attempts from the North American Union government to gain access to the EMPATHY internet-access brain implant he’s developing.

This scene alone is teeming with political underpinnings and statements about the prevailing and countervailing narratives our society tells itself about the nature of power, what it means for something to be in “the greater good,” and whether one person’s ambition should override the will of the people via a government that, at least in theory, has been elected by popular vote.

Whether I want this subtext to be in those scenes or not, it’s there. That the North American Union government exists at all is, in some ways, a political statement of sorts. In other words, the very existence of an alternative government structure forces readers to contend with the possibilities and the problems that might create, and the work, then, wades into the intersection of realms of politics and social justice.

And these explorations need not always be political for us to find ourselves at the crux of colliding prevailing and countervailing narratives.

Prevailing and Countervailing Narratives as Moral Dilemmas

Consider later in Imminent Dawn, when our ruthless tech magnate Wyatt must tussle with the question of whether to shut down his research study. It’s not exactly going according to plan, and that lives very well might be at risk presents an extraordinary conundrum for him: does he shut down the study and forfeit any possibility of ushering in a new age of enlightenment, or does he press on in the name of progress and risk losing lives along the way?

I think our society’s prevailing narrative would suggest the study ought to be shut down, but if a new age of peace and understanding might await on the far side of the trials if they proceed, might it not be worth the loss of a few lives to see that through?

I don’t know. Wyatt, however, has to make a decision, and when he does, readers no doubt are left with strong feelings about him one way or the other, and the ensuing unrest and years-long battles in the name of social justice inevitably consume much of Imminent Dawn and Mourning Dove as those novels proceed.

So What Does This Mean for Us?

The point is this: whether we have a responsibility to explore topics related to prevailing and countervailing narratives, moral proclamations, social justice, or unrest in our work is, in some ways, beside the point.

No matter what we choose to write about, our work will, to some extent, inevitably find itself confronting tough questions.

Because that’s fiction. That’s art. And as artists, that’s what we do.

A version of this content first appeared in episode 088 of the R.R. Campbell Writescast. Click here to subscribe to these episodes and never again miss conversations like these.

If you prefer to receive this content in blog or newsletter format, you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter here.