Just over a year ago I found myself working abroad in Türkiye. Away from family and a bit of time on my hands, I had room for a few extra hobbies.
It was toward the end of COVID and traveling still hadn’t completely opened. My job, working out, and studying the Turkish language only kept me busy for so long. I wanted something better to do with my time than streaming and playing video games, so one Saturday morning I grabbed a cup of coffee, fired up my laptop, and started typing.
Before that day I’d never thought about creative writing, but the words just started to flow. Hours turned into days—then into months—as taking the stories from my head and putting them into words became my new favorite activity.
I always feel strange when I tell people that I just decided to start writing one day out of the blue, but that’s what happened, and that’s the first thing I learned about writing:
It doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you’re writing something.
Take the thoughts in your head and make them tangible. Whether it’s a notebook and pen, a typewriter, a voice recorder, or, in my case, a laptop, only you can get the story out of your head and make it real.
It doesn’t have to be coherent, and it definitely doesn’t have to be perfect, but the more you write, the easier it is to keep up the process. If found that one of my favorite things to do was wake up early and read whatever whiskey-induced things I had come up with the night before. Some of them were genius or hilarious, but most were garbage. However, as the days ran on, the sporadic concepts started to meld together into something resembling a story.
I let a few of my friends read it, and they gave me the encouragement to see it through to the end.
Finally, as I got on the plane to come home to my friends and family, I typed the final scene. I had done it. I had written a book. It wasn’t pretty, but in 80K words, I had created a fantasy world like the ones from J.R.R. Tolkien and Lloyd Alexander that I had worn the pages off as a child.
That was the easy part. When I started writing, I had no intention of ever publishing, but since it was done, I wondered if anyone else would enjoy reading it. There was a problem, though. If I wanted to get my book out there, I would have to get it published, but that concept was as foreign to me as Türkiye was when I first arrived.
With a lack of knowledge, I did what any good millennial would do… I turned to Google. For weeks, I read through every blog, website, and anything else that offered advice on getting my work out there. The more I learned, the more I realized I was unprepared to take on the task myself. Thousands of dollars on several different types of editing, working through social media to develop a following, and competing with thousands of other authors just in the fantasy genre were just a few of the daunting tasks before me.
I needed help, and that’s where I learned my second lesson:
Put yourself out there as much and as often as you can.
I don’t remember how many agents and publishers I reached out to, but I know it was a lot. It took a bit of digging, but the internet had no shortage of agencies accepting submissions.
Most didn’t respond back. A hand-full gave a simple thanks-but-no-thanks. Even a few foreign publishers seemed interested, but I wasn’t ready to navigate those waters.
When I had just about given up hope and started looking into self-publishing, my current publisher, Nef House, asked for the full manuscript. I was beyond excited and within a week, they read my story and came back with a suggestion: We like the book, but have you thought about making it a LitRPG? For those who don’t know, LitRPG stands for Literary Role-Playing Game.
I had read a few LitRPGs and as an avid D&D player, I was familiar with the concept, though completely re-writing my novel was not something I was prepared for. However, the more I thought about it, the more what I had created seemed like it was begging for the RPG elements to be added in.
I realized that if I was writing a story that I wanted other people to read, I needed my book to realize its full potential.
Don’t be afraid of major changes—take the opportunity to make your story better.
I resolved myself to make the book as enjoyable for the reader as possible, so I hunkered down and spent two months changing my novel into a LitRPG. I proudly submitted my updates and started working on books two and three, but the process was far from complete.
Remember when I said I was an amateur author that had never considered creative writing? That was painfully obvious when I got back my line edits. I thought I was at least a somewhat decent writer, but it seemed like every single line had something wrong with it. My spelling, grammar, and punctuation were terrible, but those were the easy pieces to fix. Some of the feedback pointed out major loopholes. Other parts of my book that I thought were crucial actually took more away from the story than they added.
Based on that feedback, here’s the fourth thing I learned:
It’s an incremental process. Embrace the criticism and grow.
I had never had someone take so much time to help me hone a skill—and believe me, writing is a skill. As an engineer, technical writing came easy to me; it’s complicated, but linear and direct. Creative writing is a different monster all together. Character development, engaging dialog, and simply putting the fantasy world in your head into writing are all complicated aspects on their own. Keeping them consistent through an entire novel was a huge weak point for me. However, I learned more in a month fixing those line edits than I had through grade school and multiple college degrees.
My publisher worked with me to turn my book into something that I can be proud to share with the world. I’m now two months out from my release and couldn’t be more excited to have my story out there.
As of this writing, I’m powering through the first drafts of books two and three, and I’ve started writing two separate books in the Sci-Fi and Urban Fantasy genres. I still wake up every day excited to put the thoughts in my head into my laptop and inch my way toward another release.
Bruce Jamison is a debut author with Nef House Publishing with his first release: No Sun Under the Mountain, Dead Again: Book 1. You can reach him at brucejamisonbooks@gmail.com
Henry already died once. Does he really need to do it again?
Now he's a skeleton with a stat sheet, skills, and an insatiable desire to kill humans. Lurking in the very depths of his bleached skull, some remnant of his old self still remains—and it wants to break free just as badly as Henry wants to figure out how he's a skeleton in the first place.
And Henry isn't the only one. Other skeletons are gaining sentience all over Jallfoss. Is there any way back? Any way to break the curse that holds all of Jallfoss in its icy grip?
More humans are coming, and if Henry doesn't learn how to keep himself alive, none of it will matter.