I've found a bit of a rhythm the works for me as far as writing goes. In the past I did all sorts of things, especially sitting in a coffee shop. Or the library! I haven't been to a library in over a year... 

But these days I sit at home with my coffee (BB-8 mug!) and read from a book on writing. Writing Down the Bones is a good one, which I just finished today. More about the writing life rather than how to write, exactly. No one really knows how to write, I think. I certainly don't! I find I have to relearn for each piece. Especially when you have an idea but no clear route to get there. It's kind of like being dropped off on a completely featureless plain and told to find your way home. You know where you want to get to, but not how to get there, necessarily. 

So I write longhand, kind of like a journal but not one that chronicles my life, just talks about what I'm working on. What I need, what I'm unclear on. Then I will take another notebook and do a quick prototype, as they say in board game design, just get something to the table, don't worry about how ugly it is. Can always fix it later if it's worth fixing. This current story I'm working on I think I did mourner five rough prototypes before I finally figured out my way forward. Once I have a pretty confident idea I'll write up a neater, more precise draft in yet another notebook, often switching between notebooks and writing notes and revising and adding stuff.  

Finally I'll open up a document on the laptop and start typing. By the time I get to the typing phase I'm pretty confident that I know how to finish and that it will be a good story, at least a story that I would want to read, which is the only metric I really know how to judge my writing by.

It's not the most efficient, but it works, and it is robust enough that a lot of quality control kind of happens in the process. I do miss the days when I would just open up a new blog post on this very blog and come up with a poem or whatever in like an hour. I have a story in 40 Below Volume 2 that I wrote in one sitting and it didn't require any editing afterwards. I have no idea how I did that! Writing is a complete mystery sometimes. No one really knows how to write and if they say they do, give them a hug (or a virtual socially distanced hug) because in an hour or a day or a week, they will be crying because they will realize they have no idea.

How to make a chapbook and destroy the universe

"The first transport is away. The first transport is away!"

Except in my case it is the first Volume. And there are no rebel pilots to cheer me on and also try to draw AT-AT fire heroically upon themselves. But that's ok, Ahsoka is snorting in her sleep so that is all the applause I need...

I have sent the files for The Ursus Verses Volume 1 away to the printer. If all goes well- and I've already had to do a second try for the text pdf- I should have the shipment in late January. Which gives me just over a month to learn how to make an online store! This whole "making a chapbook" thing has been one steep learning curve after another. Learning mountain, more like. And this post today will be a design diary, sort of like boardgame designers do on boardgamegeek.com all the time. Those are really cool, I think. Hopefully it will be helpful to anyone embarking on a similar project.

In the beginning, there was ignorance. No light whatsoever. I didn't even know what a chapbook was! I was freshly laid off from my coal-mining job I'd had my entire adult life, basically. Because of the pandemic, Michelle and I decided I would not look for another job for a while, so I would be able to stay home in case of school shutdowns and so forth. As a bonus, I was going to do a bit more writing and submit to some lit mags and anthologies if I came across any. Pretty low-key, really. 

One of the email writing newsletters I subscribe to has quarterly contests- flash fiction, poetry, short stories, you know, writerly bread and butter. Back in late September I think they had a contest for chapbooks. I'd heard of them, but didn't really know what they were. Essentially- short, usually self-published collections of poetry or fiction, maybe 25-40 pages. I may not be a novelist, but I definitely have 25-40 pages of poetry and short fiction laying around! Several 25-40 pages worth, in fact. 

I decided to do it! Not the contest, since you needed to actually send a finished product. But I decided to make a chapbook. Several, eventually, but one to start with. The Ursus Verses Volume 1 would focus on the early years of this very blog. Poems and flash fiction and some short stories. I compiled the contents together, a nice mixture I felt of fun stuff. Other than the focus on earlier works (though I did wind up including more recent stuff too), if there was any unifying theme it would be monsters. Lots of monsters. Fun monsters, to be sure. Bears and monsters. They always say to write the book you want to read! I definitely did that.

What order should it all go in, though? That was kind of fun, I did more of a board game designer thing and wrote each title on a scrap of paper. Then I colour-coded them. A pink line along the top if it was a poem. Brown stripe on the left if it was about bears, purple on the right if it was monsters. Etc etc, then I ordered them in a way so that there was a good progression and variety. I think it turned out ok! 

So I opened up Word, the one piece of software I know how to use! Or, wait, why is it all different. I don't understand... why is this not the same as Word 97?? Arghhh!!!!! I literally couldn't even insert a new page at the end of my document, that's how clueless I was. It has been years since I'd even used a computer, my iMac died in 2016 and I just used my iPad and iPhone ever since. Borrowed Michelle's MacBook Air and yeah. I had to relearn how to use frickin' Word. See? You're almost certainly ahead of me in the process if you can insert a blank page in a document. You got this!

Eventually I figured that out, and I wrote an introduction as well as back matter that talked about the genesis of each piece. And that was all it took to make the inside of the chapbook! Took me a while, because I did a lot of editing and even some major rewriting for Swampy Joe and the Plasma Dragon. I'll say... a month? Maybe not quite? In the meantime I had asked on Twitter how to make a chapbook, and River Selkie!! Yes, that River Selkie, aka Denise Ganley, now host of the Heart-Shaped Books podcast, and old- old-school friend of the blog, told me about Vellum.

Listen, friends, Vellum isn't cheap. And it's Mac-only. I thought long and hard but I did finally pull the trigger. Super easy for generating ebooks, which I did in no time after doing the included tutorial. Here is the result of that, a great first step. But my main goal was always a print version.

I only got the ebook version of Vellum, though for a bit more money you can also get the version that generates print editions. I was going to get that version, but this whole time I had also been asking questions and making phone calls and doing my homework. This is what I found- if you want to do print on demand, from a company like Ingram Spark, then the print book version of Vellum should be more than adequate. But I got a referral for a printing company from a local literary magazine, and I called them, and they had never heard of Vellum. Not a good sign. Maybe it still could have done the job, but I didn't want to risk it. They recommended Adobe InDesign, the industry standard, to create a single-page pdf. 

The easiest thing at that point would have been to sign up for Adobe Creative Suite or whatever it's called, but the monthly subscription fee is a little more than this unemployed coal miner was ready to pay. If you can afford it, however, I would say do it. But I chose the Open Source route, and it worked out ok. In fact, as I was writing this post I got the email from the printing company that my pdf was usable so yay! I made it with Scribus.

In the meantime there are all these little details you need to do as you go along, for example you probably need an ISBN, which for Canadians is super easy. I don't know about anyone else, though, but I suspect it is universally easy. Canadians, go here to sign up and apply for your numbers. It's free! But getting a barcode is not free, and you will have to decide if you want one or not.

Also, for the ebook version I just Worded up a logo with one of the included fonts, and well, you can definitely tell that's what I did. Since I intend to make multiple volumes, I decided to commission a logo from a professional. In fact at first I reached out to an Indigenous maker, since that sort of representation is important to me, but I don't know if there was a communication breakdown or what but they ghosted me. So I got a Twitter mutual to make one for me. I love it! And since it's a vector file I can change the colour for each volume, or use it on promotional materials, maybe even make an enamel pin from it at some point. Up to you if you want to make that investment, it will likely be one of your more significant costs, though.

Yeah, so, Scribus. Free. Powerful. Not user friendly. I googled a YouTube tutorial and I was off to the races. I recommend this one, by M.K. Williams. Though I think I will use automatic text boxes next time! I watched it once through, took notes, then opened Scribus and watched it again and just did everything she did. But always I have these little ideas I want to do that aren't covered by the tutorials, but I figured it out, because the tutorial gives you enough knowledge to explore. Prior to watching it I didn't even know how to open a document.

In the meantime my logo file had come, and I had to design my book cover! I'm really lucky in that, years and years ago I had commissioned several artists to make me art for this blog, and so I just secured permission to use those assets for a for-profit chapbook. You will have to decide how you want to go about it for your cover, maybe you make your own, or use stock photos, or commission an artist. Again, that will be a significant expense, but very worth it.

Industry standard is Adobe Illustrator, but I used InkScape and I really like it. Same thing, couldn't even open the file until I sat down and watched some tutorials. Basically this channel, Logos By Nick,  taught me everything I need to know just from watching a bunch of his videos. So good! Fun even. I had no idea, I always thought you had to be a good artist to do this stuff. 

Took some experimenting and getting feedback from friends, but I got my cover. You need to know your page count, and paper weight to determine how thick your spine is, and add that to double the page size to make your wraparound cover image. For me, I needed seven elements: title logo, cover art, my name on the front. Title and name and little Volume number indicator on the spine, and then some back cover art and a blurb. You don't even need that if you don't want! 

I think that's it! Took two solid months and a little bit, and if all goes well I should get the books late January. In the meantime I've been making great progress on Volume 2!

My next step is to set up an online store. Again, I'll be starting from scratch.... I think I'll take a moment to rest first though. We got a puppy and Naia had to do two weeks of homeschooling when her classmate had a positive covid test during all this, and so yeah, I'm tired! 

Any questions just ask in the comments or find me on Twitter @NathanWaddell1 

For that matter, if, after reading this post, you decide it all sounds like too much work, well, I am for hire, depending on your needs. Get in touch. 

And if you want to preorder a copy of The Ursus Verses Volume 1 let me know as well. I'll put you on a list or something. 

I guess we didn't destroy the universe after all. Sorry! Next time. Making the store will probably destroy my universe anyway.

"If your story is about what your story is about, you're in trouble."

 -Robert McKee, paraphrased

I'm writing a story that's pure fun. Getting back to the joy of writing, for me. It's essentially a kaiju story, but hopefully one that's never been done before. It's also a love letter to heavy metal and is all about kick-ass women kicking ass. Among other things.  But at its heart, it is about fighting a monster. 

And that's really it. I realized the main characters don't really grow or change, or have any conflict amongst themselves.... they just start out kicking ass and end up kicking asser. 

The only real challenge for me as a writer has been figuring out how to manifest a giant robot using nothing but the awesome power of heavy metal! I tried googling that but it wasn't as informative as I would have liked. 

So as I write I'm also editing and adding stuff in, that's what we do, right? Write! Right! I think if I add just a touch of a character flaw that can be worked through, and maybe a minor interpersonal conflict, it will be a stronger story. I hope so! I freely admit that characterization has never been my strongest suit as a writer, though of course I'm working on it and hopefully getting better all the time.

The books in the photo have been helpful to me, though it's actually been quite a while since I read them, and I could benefit from a reread of a few of them. Bossk was flabbergasted about the Seven Basic Plots one- as far as he's concerned the only plot that matters is Bossk Gets Bounty.

Are you working on a story? Have any writing weaknesses you're working on?

 4 1/2 Writing Lessons Learned from the Boardgame Design Realm

On Instagram I finally changed my bio away from coal-mining stuff. It now says "Boardgamer. Also a writer." Little bit of modesty maybe in putting writing second, but boardgames is a huge love of mine. I spend as much time as I can get away with playing games, and when I can't I'm still consuming bg-related media, especially podcasts. I dipped a toe in the boardgame designer space though only as, at best, a tertiary hobby. Writing is the thing I am best at so I am choosing to focus on that. But, here are some lessons I've gleaned from over there that I think translates pretty well to the writing life, since both are, after all, about creativity.

1. Rapid Iteration: the doctrine in bg-design is to prototype rapidly. Have an idea? Cobble something together out of lint and whatever other odds and ends you have laying around and get something to the table, just to see if the idea is any fun and worth pursuing. Doesn't have to be pretty- in fact, making it pretty is a waste of time at this point in the process. I have a story in 40 Below Volume 2 that I wrote in one sitting and that didn't require any revision. I know, right? Why can't it always be so easy? I want it to be, but waiting for that to happen is actually hindrance, and I've started just writing a fast first draft by hand in a notebook, not worrying about making it polished at all. This tells you right away if you have a story worth working on. And it counts as writing, I think. Maybe even the most important kind of writing. 

2. Playtesting. There's this one podcast I listen to, the Board Game Design Lab, where if you made a drinking game out of every time they say "playtesting"you would die of alcohol poisoning in like five minutes. Playtesting means getting as many people as possible to play your (now much more polished) prototype so they can give you feedback, including feedback such as 'This game really sucks!'. Once you have a working draft get as many beta-readers and proofreaders as possible before sending it away. This is kind of tricky though, since reading someone's unfinal work isn't a huge priority for a lot of people. In playtesting it's the same problem so the advice is be a generous playtester so that you aren't always saying "hey try my game I gotta go bye!" Offer to read other writers' work. But offer good feedback too, which is a whole skill all on its own, for sure.

3. Play a Lot of Games: this is the best homework ever. Heck yeah I'll play a lot of games to learn about how to make them! The parallel is obvious- read widely. Read lots. Just read. It will make you a better writer. When I was a kid and read The Lord of the Rings for the first time, I immediately wrote my first stab at a fantasy story- it was about these creatures (that looked just like the mystics from The Dark Crystal which I also loved) who had.... ten rings.... and they had to . . . you know. . . probably destroy the rings so the dark lord . . . of course it was crap. Read read read and not just the same type of thing you love already, branch out and read stuff you wouldn't otherwise be interested in. It all goes into your mental cauldron and the soup that comes out is yum and unique to you.

4. Steal, copy, pillage and plunder. In boardgames, there are only so many gameplay mechanics, and though innovation does happen, it is completely acceptable to design a worker placement game about vikings even though there are already a ton of worker placement games about vikings. Maybe replace Vikings with zombies. But you take from here and you take from there and remix it and now it's new. This is ok in the bg industry. 

BUT

4 1/2 Make sure the best part of your game isn't something you stole from another game: Don't just reskin a game and sell it. Plagiarism is bad. As in my example with the ten-ring mystic creatures, simple regurgitation isn't cool. Add something new, something unique to bring to your story. You have a unique voice, and I want to hear it! This advice I can attribute directly to JB Howell, whose game Reavers of Midgard (a worker placement game about vikings!) is pictured below.