Author: Will Forrest

Will writes fiction and non-fiction and is definitely not a robot

Representation matters (so don’t f*** it up)

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

For the first time in my writing life I paid someone to critique a manuscript. It took a week for me to get up the nerve to read the report, because folks, this book is my baby. In a way no book has ever been. There’s something about my main character that won’t let me go. The editor had a similar reaction. In fact, they said some of the nicest things I’ve ever heard about something I wrote. More importantly, they got it: the point, the vibe, the Universal Tropes driving the story.

That being said, the book is not perfect. It may in fact be deeply flawed. Nothing I can’t redeem, and absolutely worth the effort to do so because I want this book to SHINE. If my character Izzy resonates with other readers the way he did with someone I paid to be professionally mean to me, then this might be my first major success. It can’t be held back by a mediocre subplot, wishy-washy supporting characters, and accidental queerbaiting.

That last criticism hurt. With surgical precision, because it was true. For those who haven’t heard the term or perhaps don’t know the meaning, in modern media analysis queerbaiting means to present a character as if they are queer, but never allow them to be openly queer. Worse is when the queer-coded character turns out to be straight. For example Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory: would you have been at all surprised if he had been gay? You know, like Jim Parsons, the actor who played him?

That’s a good indication why queerbaiting is a problem. We see so few queer characters in popular media whose queerness is both present in the story and…not the plot of the story. Because not every story with queer characters needs to be a painful coming out story. Not every Trans character has to struggle with body dysmorphia. We don’t all get rejected by our families. And more to the point, most of the time we aren’t thinking about our orientation. It’s just a fact about us, like the color of our hair and eyes, or whether or not we can stand the taste of coriander. But by not letting characters be openly queer, it traps queer people in this shadow realm of not properly existing in the public consciousness.

Some might argue that the queer agenda is taking up too much air these days. As much as I can speak for the LGBTI+ community at large, we certainly didn’t plan to become ammunition in the culture wars. But the cats are out of the bags, we are out of the shadows, and that’s simply the way of things now.

Which is a lot of words to say, I fucked up. I did myself what I decry in others’ work. Telford seems gay. Possibly asexual. So why did I bend over backwards to make him kiss a girl? Honestly, it was nothing more than carelessness. I am so dialed in on my main character Izzy that I just kind of did whatever for poor Telford. He deserves better. And Izzy deserves my best.

More posts to come on this process, I’m sure. It’s the longest book I’ve ever written and I think it’s going to change my life. If I get it right…

A new fighter has entered the arena

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

First, the good news: the hardest book I’ve ever written is done.  Not done because editing etc but I have finished the so-called Zero Draft.  Writers might know what I mean by a Zero Draft: that ugly, clunky, maybe horrible bunch of words that you have pasted together with spit and prayers in the hope that it tells a story similar to the one you imagined.  I found calling it anything else inhibited my ability to get the dang words on paper.

Now can put “An Inconvenient Earl” aside for a little and focus on, oh, I dunno, anything else on earth.  Like the new challenge I’ve set myself. This one is way more achievable.  Fifty thousand words less than what I tried to write in the second half of last year.  That attempt was side-lined  by post-Covid brain fog, which believe me is real and just as bad as everyone says.  

My humble goal for the first half of 2022 is to reach a total of one million words by the middle of this year.  I don’t mean all at once. I mean since I started seriously grinding at the self-published author game, in February of 2020.  I’m only about 120,000 words away. 

Two novels by June?  No problem.

Oh hey, while I’ve got you here…I’m building a list of pre-release readers for this and other books. Comment or message me if you’re interested in free books for life (and maybe even your name in the credits!)

I’M BACK, BABY

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

That’s it. That’s the post.  I have finally shed the post-Covid brain fog.  And to anyone suffering from “long Covid”: I have tasted a tiny bit of your pain and I offer every bit of sympathy and funding you require to navigate this blameless nightmare.

Ok, here’s the rest of the post, because AS IF that’s all I’ve got to say.

I have hated writing this book.  Every word, every freaking *keystroke* was a gargantuan effort requiring all my will. Up until the last week.  Now it’s a dream come true, the chapters falling together like someone else wrote them for me and I just have to fit them together.  A perfect side character stepped fully formed out of my brain and performed a key role in the story while earning himself a lead role in a future book.

People…this is going to work.

“This” being my delusional but totally achievable dream of making a living from writing what I want. I’m releasing six books this year, not counting the short stories and re-launches.  I’m writing at least four, one of which is going to be done by the end of the week.  I have never felt more engaged with my writing career.

2023 is my year.  Yeah, right, we’re not supposed to say that anymore.  This is supposed to be a year for heaving a sigh of relief.  As a card-carrying Discordian (look it up yourself, ‘kay? Providing succinct answers is as close as we get to a mortal sin) I’ve waited my entire life for this numerological opportunity.  Me and the goddess, we’re lighting this year up like you’ve never seen. 

the soundtrack to my revival: Bop x Subwave’s set from the release party for their album “Renaissance.’ I have listened to this slapper of a set twice a day, every day since it dropped last month.  Tell me you’re a 90’s kid…

New recipes for the uninhibited

a cluster of wine glasses lay on their sides on a white marble counter, dregs of white and red wine in each glass. a little of the red wine has spilled on the marble.
~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

(who wish they were maybe just a bit more inhibited now and then because really, saying yes to everything is sometimes a bad idea)

Part Two of our ongoing series of semi-sarcastic but functional drink choices for people who are trying to reframe their relationship with alcohol, caffeine, and all the other complicated molecules that so radically affect how we think and act.

[Read Part One here]

The Interrupter

The low- or zero alcohol drink that tastes like booze that you drink when you’re already drunk and want to keep drunkening further but know you cannot, for your health and manners. Best served fizzy.

The Cold Front

Whatever medication you say you’re taking so your pushy relatives stop asking you why you aren’t drinking at Christmas.  Please pretend to consume responsibly by faking a minor ailment that won’t lead to a ton of questions.

(All recipes by The Fixer, some fairly insignificant rights reserved)

“Answer me these questions three…”

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

“…because I’m too lazy to search the archived threads”

There are three questions every baby writer seems to ask when they join the online author-verse and start fishing for trade secrets.  I used to answer these questions when I came across them on forums and chats, but they get asked with such regularity that I got tired of doing other people’s homework.  The internet is right there, people.

So please enjoy my arrogantly definitive answers to the three questions I see asked again and again and again:  

1) How do I keep my vague, fledgling story idea protected from being stolen?

2) How do I know if my writing is shit?

3) How do I learn how to write?

  1. How do I protect my ideas?

You don’t, because no one cares about your ideas.*  Honestly, ideas are cheap.  Cheap, cheap, cheap. Any writer with a serious habit will have so many ideas attacking them on the daily that they would have to live forever to write them all. Writers don’t lack ideas, and we don’t care about yours. Your ideas are likely not even as good as you think. They matter to you, and they may lead you to tell the best story you have ever told, but whether it’s some junk scribbled on a napkin, an outline you share on a critique group, or a book you give away as a reader freebie, no one will bother to steal your ideas, because they would still have to go through the effort of taking your ideas and writing a book with them, then making money out of it, which is the real challenge.

2. How do I know if my writing is shit?

Assume that it is. If this is your first attempt, your writing is 99.9% likely to be not the best you’ll ever do. Accept this fact from the outset. Accept that your writing will not match your expectations at first. The only way to get better is to keep writing. So if you have a precious, perfect, magical idea, maybe don’t start with it. Write some junk first. Get good at writing, then start on your Great Work.

Imagine you wanted to become a professional baker.  You don’t go from standing in the grocery aisle looking at the cake mixes thinking I can do better to turning out a six-tier wedding cake overnight.  Particularly if you’ve never made a cake before, you’re gonna have to make a lot of cake in between having the idea to make a wedding cake, and actually serving it. Make those shitty, crumbly, collapsing cakes you need to make on your path to nailing the perfect Genoise. There are no shortcuts. This quote from Ira Glass is another way of saying the same thing.

3. How do I learn how to write?

By writing, and by reading. Read books that are like the ones you want to write. Read well-written books of all genres. Read different books than you normally do. Read books about writing.  

But always be writing.  It’s a muscle, and you have to use it or it shrivels. Books take effort to write, and it’s healthy to assume that your first work might kind of suck.  At least compared to what you will capable of in five years. Read and write and read and write and read and write and read. Repeat until you die.

Writers, what other hugely general advice do you find yourself constantly giving?

*you always own your ideas, even if you haven’t lodged them with a copyright registry.  Please consult legal professionals for more nuance, but having your ideas stolen should be one of the last things a fledgling author needs to worry about.

In Defence of Being Interesting

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

or

When Every Day is Hallowe’en

Though I keep my face off this blog for the most part, should you ever meet me in person, you will almost certainly remember what I was wearing.  To sum it up in a hundred and forty characters or less, my aesthetic ideal is something in the realm of Jay Gatsby’s disreputable cousin, down for the regatta with a cask of bootleg Canadian rum in the backseat of my Studebaker.  Like, when I die, I want to come back as the Arrow Collar Man, dig?

Steal His Look!

My ADHD is the high flicker style, where I benefit from nearly constant stimulation.  My exterior conditions affect me so much that I do best when I surround myself with fun, interesting things to keep my neurons firing.  

Clothing achieves this very well.  Compact, portable, and perhaps the most psychologically rich expression of the human experience, clothes are the first of all first impressions, for when a stranger approaches, long before you can make out their face, you can see what they’re wearing. 

Dressing to be noticed–being deliberately attention-getting–involves a constant negotiation with your fears.  It makes routine the assertion of your right to exist as you wish.  Being thought ridiculous becomes mere background, a given.  We are all ridiculous.  We are all in drag.  Some of us just have more consciously formed personas.  

And people freely give me compliments.  They go out of their way, cross rooms to speak to me, to tell me they like how I look.  This feeds my soul, not because I live for praise (although that’s in there too for this precocious only child of a chaotic family) but because it thrills me to think I’ve made someone happy, just by being myself.  I take it as almost a sacred duty to be able to provide what might be the most interesting moment of someone’s day.

Like being kind to grocery store clerks, being nice to your server at the restaurant.  Nice things are (duh) nice and we don’t get a lot of them in our day to day lives, not usually without being told to pay for it. Being nice costs nothing.  Being interesting, which is really only being fully present in your life, however you choose to shape it, costs you nothing.  

Be as alive as you can, as often as you can.  Wear that shirt you think is too bright.  Buy the hat.  Put on something shiny or sparkly or beautiful today, something to make you happy.

Life is what you make it.  I like making it more interesting.

On the Watchtower 

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

If we were not so frightened

If we didn’t need so

If every home was a homecoming 

And none died gnawing bones beneath the walls

Would we still set these lamps

Still ward the world away?

Yes, Brother

For the woods are deep and pathless

Yes, light them

As we prepare to receive 

Yes,

For the night you lose the path

For the night I set the lamps

For you

(November 2022)

Photo by Gadiel Lazcano on Unsplash

Line poem 5

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

(A Minor Delay)

night 

drop 

drip

light

lost 

stars

of 

desert

roads

reflected

by

dark

skies

rivuletting 

circuits

bearing

our

impossible 

flight 

reprieved

ungravitied 

birdless

blind

(21:12 Nov 20, 2022)

Why choose?

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

Reverse Harem and the (r)evolution of Romance writing

If you aren’t an avid ebook reader, it’s likely you’ve never heard of the genre, which has begun to call itself “why choose” because algorithms are prurient snitches. Yet it’s the strongest trend in self published romance, with no signs of slowing down.

It is also an astonishing indicator of where culture is headed. Because two out of every five ebooks sold are romance, and reverse harem tropes are EVERYWHERE.

So what the heck is it? Nothing more or less than a romance story where the heroine gets ALL the boys. Without having to choose between them, favoring one and only one. Without lying or cheating, with the consent of all the men, which is perhaps the most fantastical aspect of the genre, that three or more cis-het guys could get over their egos enough to get along with their partner’s metamour.

OK so what the heck is a metamour?

It’s the point at which the Why Choose genre gets really interesting. Because, pardon me if I’m wrong, but this is polyamory. A metamour is your lover’s lover. Not your competition, just “the other person who loves the same person as me.”

Meaning the strongest trend in romance writing is a vigorous, fun-loving, open-hearted repudiation of the nuclear family. One of the lynchpins of Western society, blamed repeatedly (and quite sensibly) for maintaining women’s inferior status. Less than half a decade ago, women in the US were being arrested for wearing pants. A wife needed her husband’s permission to open her own bank account. The assumption was nearly universal that all women wanted was safety. That women weren’t sexual, weren’t interested in freedom in being their own person, in existing for any reason besides replicating DNA aka having babies.

Oh, my sweet summer child…

That has never been enough. And hear me out, this is not some Sandberg gaslighting about how every woman miraculously can have it all aka a high paying high pressure job as well as a functional marriage, happy children, and time enough to seek personal meaning. Such women usually have nannies. And they are frequently miserable. The women, not the nannies, though I reckon a fair few of them are less than thrilled with what often functions like a sort of indentured servitude.

This is of course not universal. But that’s the point. Women want different things. Women can finally have what they want. And yes, RH is a book trend. It isn’t a sign of the death of marriage. But it is certainly a sign that the Overton window has shifted hugely in the direction of even more freedom for women. And for men, who must bear the brunt of being denied softness, emotionality, compassion. Who are taught they must defend their tiny tribe against an entire world which wants them dead. Truth is, the world usually isn’t paying attention. Truth is, modern marriage isn’t a siege state. Wives are not chattel, nor are they princesses, to be kept in a tower and denied the world.

Women are raw, and horny, and also nice and pretty and kind, but still red-blooded, salivating, alive. And we are tired of being told what to do.

There is a world filled with possibilities. Even it’s only words on a page or a screen. A world where women get exactly what they want, and men are happy for it to happen. So come on over! Sometimes the grass really is greener even once you’ve hopped the fence.

The Golden Age is Always Tomorrow

~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

There’s a popular illusion that the past was a magically better place, an opinion usually voiced with the words “good old days back when people respected each other” and to this I say: there are no good old days.

Dickens was right, while the past may have been the best of times, it was the absolute fucking worst of times. No more than a hundred years ago, most of us wouldn’t have lived past forty, not (only) because everyone was sick all the time, but because if you weren’t at least middle class, your life was often barely livable. We can’t all have been Napoleon, in other words. Most of us would have been peons.

And no, the 1950s does not qualify. Not while millions worldwide still suffered under the lash of European colonialism.  Not while polio ravaged families and doctors raced to eradicate this deadly virus through mandatory vaccinations. Ahem. Not under Jim Crow, not under McCarthy. There was no golden age. This moment, right here and now, may be our peak, as close as we will ever get, unless we put everything we have into stopping the juggernaut of climate change from crushing everything else.

Your move, humanity.