A horror story about a dark passenger too many of us are forced to chauffeur: depression. Continue reading Backseat Driver: A Short Story Video Reading
Monthly Archives: February 2018
Submitted for Your Approval
Watch me do my best Rod Serling impression to discuss myself and my writing.
Here’s the script:
Submitted for your approval, a blog on writing fantasy, horror, and the myriad of genres in between. Brought to you by a Mister Drew T. Chial, an author voted most likely to be sucked into cyber space, where he now resides.
From this void Drew has amassed a multitude of motivating maxims to share with his following.
He’ll help you cross that colossal cosmic cube that keeps creatives from commuting through the astral plane. In other words, he’ll get you past writer’s block.
Together you’ll beat back the tropes and clichés that plague modern writing, learn what to do if someone has already used your idea, and find out how to summarize an entire story in a single page.
Follow him if you’re looking for a different flavor of inspiration. Follow him if you want articles on writing that go into more depth than mere definitions. Follow him if you like cynically sarcastic satire on the whole sordid scene.
In just one moment you’ll be able to visit Drew Chial dot com. The price of admission: your attention.
Also, be sure to like, subscribe, comment, share, tweet, up vote, reblog, swipe right, ring the bell, follow on social, join the newsletter, back my project, become a patron, and say a little prayer.
For if you do our paths just might cross in the Twilight Zone. Continue reading Submitted for Your Approval
How to Shut Your Audience Out of Your Writing Room
A lot of people imagine a writer’s room to be a fortress of solitude. They picture a crooked citadel where a hunchback feverishly scrawls his quill down a scroll high above the incessant babble of the peasants down below. In his book On Writing Stephen King prescribes such a space:
“When it comes to writing… The space… needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut… There should be no telephone… no TV or videogames… If there’s a window, draw the curtains… it’s wise to eliminate every possible distraction.”
I write in a coffee shop surrounded by pyramids scheme pitch sessions, awkward Tinder dates, and speakers blaring auto-tuned dub step songs. I find the crooked citadel to be a lonely place. I write in public to give myself the illusion of human interaction.
I find a writer’s room to be more of a state of mind. In that sense I do see it as a sacred space where certain distractions and opinions need to shut out for the writer to get anything done. I’ll explain what I mean with characters that are by no means within the public domain. (Please send your cease and desist emails to drewchialauthor.com, thank you.) Continue reading How to Shut Your Audience Out of Your Writing Room
Drew’s Reviews: Annihilation
Drew’s Reviews: Annihilation by Alex Garland and how it differs from the novel by Jeff Vandermeer.
The Words Got Him: A Video Reading
A dark poem about a curse that afflicts so many writers.
About Smoking and Anxiety: VLOG
A conversation about how social anxiety once fed into my smoking habit and a reading of a poem called The Nicotine Always Wins.
What to Do When You’ve Written Yourself Into Your Story: Vlog
It happens to the best of us. You set out to write a story with fiercely original characters, but then a life event compels you to write yourself into the plot. Maybe you just had to get something off of your chest, but now you’re story has a you sized problem… and it might just do something to the real you to deal with it.
How to Pretend to Be A Writer
I’ve been writing in coffee shops for the last eighteen years. I wish I could say I did it for clever creative reasons, like I was dressing my characters in my surroundings, eavesdropping for dialogue, and reading faces for subtext, but really, writing in public just feels less lonely.
At first I entertained the fantasy that a manic pixie dream girl would pull up a stool beside me, glimpse at the wall of text on my screen, raise her eyebrow, and ask, “What are you writing?” (Which did happen… once.) At this point my goals have more to do with my word count for the day.
But I have been that guy, that guy that pitches his stories to baristas washing dishes at the bar, that guy whose day dreaming eyes lingered in the wrong direction a little too long, that guy whose head is so far up his own ass that he gives out his blog address instead of his phone number. You know, that guy, the writer who wears his identity on his sleeve.
Sure, I might have been a caricature, but at least I did the work. I was writing. I was a writer. I did the noun so I got to call myself the verb. Still I met my share of people who did one but not the other: men adopting the persona of a writer as a pretense to hit on women.
I call them “idea men.” They’re fun, charismatic, and commanding. They’ve honed engaging elevator pitches, but they don’t have the attention span to sit their asses in the chair and do the work. Their bibliography is but a theory. They’re the modern equivalent of the medieval minstrel, carrying on an oral tradition for the sake of flirtation.
I shouldn’t let these idea men get to me, but I do. Writing is hard. Finishing a novel is tough, selling it is tougher, letting an editor kill all your darlings can be even tougher still. If you’ve spent years crafting something that didn’t connect with anyone it’s hard to coax yourself to try it again, but those are the responsibilities that come with calling yourself a writer. It takes talent, training, and tenacity (and you’ve still got to get lucky).
It irks me when I overhear a pickup artist slip on the identity of a writer when it’s clear they haven’t done the work. It irks because I’m afraid that’s what other people assume I’m doing. I feel guilty by proxy.
That having been said I’ve written a how-to guide just for the fakers, the idea men, the pick up artists. I dare you to indulge me as I role-play with misogyny (and if this leaves a bad taste in your mouth, that’s kind of the point). Continue reading How to Pretend to Be A Writer
Over Branding: A Video Reading
Budding authors are always told to build a brand, to gain a following, to get their names out there, but what happens when they go too far?
Poetry Today: A Video Reading
Commentary on the state of commercial poetry in the form of a poem that reads like a dis track.