Author Archives: Alan Edwards

Allow Me to Waste a Few Minutes of Your Time

May 18

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What you are doing, right now, is reading the words that I’ve just finished typing. During the time that you are spending reading them, you could have done a million other things. You could have studied for some important exam. You could have started learning a foreign language that no one has even invented yet. You could have worked on that project your boss dropped on your desk or stared moodily at the ceiling or gotten some more coffee or chatted up that looker from down the hall or whatever. But you didn’t. You’re reading this, and I’m wasting your time.

It’s the highest compliment I can ever be paid. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Philosophizin'

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Listen to Me Bitch About Game of Thrones

May 17

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Well, “listen” in strictly the narrator-voice-in-your-head sense. I don’t anticipate doing any podcasts in the near future (I had actually typed out “never” before getting rid of that, since I have previously sworn that I would never get a cell phone or use Twitter and a whole lot of other things that I then embrace and growl at anything that threatens them. I’m a lousy predictor of my own future behavior.), so you needn’t worry about having to actually listen to my voice, which sounds like the screechy warble of a career monk suddenly asked to recite the Gettysburg Address live in New York City during New Years’ Eve when it’s reproduced through electronic media. Or maybe that’s just how I hear it. God I hate how my voice sounds unless I’m in Game Show Mode and I put on the Announcer Voice, the one I bust out for seminars and other public speaking events. Better to sound like a used car salesman than a hopped-up junkie pulled over for a busted tail-light.

Holy shit, I completely forgot about what I was going to say. I actually had to read the title before I remembered that this wasn’t about podcasts. So, Game of Thrones. I’ll probably start cussing more as we go. I tend to do that. You been Warned. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Rantin' and Bitchin'

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I Am Apparently the World’s Least Organized Writer Ever

May 16

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One of the many cool side effects of coming into contact with a whole slew of authors, indie and otherwise, is being able to hear about the writing process from other perspectives. It’s fascinating (to me) to hear about how people go through the creative process and what they do to keep on track and plot and plan and gather information and organize themselves and all the work that goes into the long painful birthing process. I’ve read about the outlines people put together. I’ve seen in-depth analysis (with pictures!) about the creation of character cards that detail each person’s description, personality, traits, and their connection to the other major and minor figures in the novel all charted on a huge whiteboard. Notebooks, scribblings, collages, all part of an organized approach to writing a novel.

I see this stuff, and all I can think of is: Holy shit, I am the least organized writer of all time. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Kerfluffle

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So, I Googled “Aravan” and Found Out This

May 13

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I use Aravan as my main online avatar name. I don’t want people to know my real name or associate the mild-mannered individual who bears it with the rude and uncouth babblings under that particular nom de plume. Naturally, it would have been smarter to not have my real name plastered all over this site and everywhere else I use the avatar name, but whatever. I still like to pretend. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Kerfluffle

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Professionalism, or Bullshittery?

May 12

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In a short period of time, say the last three weeks or so, I’ve “met” a ton of other writers, self-pubbed and trad-pubbed, through different social media outlets. It’s been an amazing experience. I’ve learned a lot about all kinds of different aspects of writing and publishing, from marketing to cover design to editing and pretty much you-name-it. One little piece of advice I’ve read a few times lately regards an author’s website. The advice stresses that the website must be professional, especially for a self-pubber, since it is an effort to convince anyone who might see it that you are a Serious Writer. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Philosophizin'

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I Am The World’s Worst Writer And I Totally Suck

May 10

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I go through crippling periods of self-doubt when it comes to my writing.  Luckily, at the moment, I am not in one of those trenches of despair where every word I type including “Sincerely, Aravan” looks ungainly and wrong.  Bad word choice.  Probably spelled wrong even though there isn’t another way to spell it.  Tone is flat, metaphors lame, characters boring, setting insipid, point pointless, and everything I’ve ever written should probably just be gathered and burned so I can crawl into the supply closet of some abandoned factory somewhere and never have to reveal my stupid face to the world.

Other days, I feel even worse.

If you’re a writer, or have ever written, or ever plan on writing so much as an email in the future, then I hope you go through this feeling of utter self-loathing several times in your life.  Why?  Because I am a small bitter person who takes some measure of meager self-satisfaction from the joint suffering of others and will take whatever mean-spirited path I need to in order to make myself feel better.  But also because I think it makes you a better writer in the long run. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Philosophizin'

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My Name is Aravan. I Use Bad Grammar.

May 9

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I am a writer, and I have sinned.  I have committed grievous and continuous offenses to all forms of correct English grammar, and I approach the altar as a supplicant, begging forgiveness.  I have let my participles dangle obscenely.  I use Inappropriate Capitalization.  Fragments.  Sentences have been written passively.  I have even succumbed to the strange thrill of writing increasingly complex and hard-to-understand run-on sentences because I love the strange but unmistakable air of someone who’s really trying to hard to say something all in one breath so that it seems like the sentence itself is generating its own sense of manic energy and continues on long after it shouldn’t and would make Ernest Hemingway roll over in his grave if he could manage it.  So I bow before thee, gods of the grammatically correct, and beg your forgiveness.  I have done well with the basic essentials of grammar, I swear, like correct punctuation and sentence structure and things like that, and my spelling tends to be good, so there’s still hope, isn’t there?  I present myself to you humbly and beg and plead for leniency and I promise that I’ll never –

You know what?  Fuck that. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Philosophizin'

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My Speech to Aspiring Writers Everywhere

May 6

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There’s never been a better time to be a writer.  Seriously.

Imagine being back in the Middle Ages.  If you had a story you wanted to write down and share to the world, you’d have to join a monastery, learn how to read and write, spend the next 30 years of your life transcribing the Bible, sneak small bits of paper into your monastic cell so that you could scratch your tale furtively by the light of the one candle you’re allotted per month.  You might finish it before you’ve gone blind, only to discover that no one could read it except your fellow monks, at which point you get burned at the stake for heresy or witchcraft or Overwarm Genitals or whatever else was a burnin’ offense back then.  Oh, and if you’re female, then I am fairly certain expressing the desire to learn to write to begin with was grounds for getting burnt as a witch right off the bat.  Not a good time to be a writer. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Philosophizin'

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The Horror of the Mundane

May 3

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Much horror fiction involves some sort of supernatural agency visiting despair, terror, and suffering on the living.  Most of the rest features depraved mortals whose love of torture and sadism borders on the fantastic.  It’s cathartic for the reader and writer both, letting the fear and worry and stress that builds up during the course of everyday humdrum human existence relieve the pressure.  Stephen King’s Danse Macabre does an excellent job exploring horror in this light – if you like horror at all, you should read it; it’s fun, funny, and informative – and talks about some of the everyday anxiety that ends up being expressed through popular movies and books.  For example, he posits that the reason The Amityville Horror was such a success when it was first released is that it hit a nerve among people going through the financial instability of the inflation-crazy 1970’s (what if your house was haunted and you couldn’t sell it?  The horror!).  He also talks about the 1950’s era of giant bug movies (fear of living in the Nuclear Age) and alien invasions (fear of the Soviet Union).  Basically, it forms a road map of national anxiety as expressed in horror films and books up to the early 1980’s.  The book came to mind after this morning. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Philosophizin'

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Writers as Critics

Apr 29

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I’m a writer.  I make stuff up and write it down for embarrassingly small sums of money.  I don’t write for the money, of course; I write because I like to do it, and sometimes stories nag me until I write them down, at which point they leave me alone and we never have to meet again (Now, I would be happier to do it for regrettably HUGE sums of money, but I guess that’ll happen along anytime now).  I generally like what I write, although there are parts that I hate immensely and other parts that seem to me like a real writer wrote them, one I’ve never met but enjoy reading.  Seriously, sometimes it’s like a stranger wrote something and dumped it in my manuscript.  That’s a great feeling.

However, liking what I write doesn’t make it good, so like any other writer not completely ashamed of what he’s produced I give my work to others to critique.  Sometimes I post it on a forum in a writer’s group, sometimes give it to non-writing friends, other times to writer friends.  I hope for honest feedback and seem to get it (though how would I know).  Since I’m an independent author, I don’t have actual editors to peruse my work, so most of the time it’s fellow writers who give the feedback.

This is great.  It can also be absolutely horrible. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Philosophizin'

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