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
Tag Archives: writing
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
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?
How to Get Out of Conversations about Trump by Pitching Your Fiction
How many times has this happened to you: your friends invite you to the bar and you arrive to find an interloper sitting in your chair?
This man, with his half goatee and camouflage cap, sticks out amongst the artistic misfits you usually hang out with. He slams the table, drawing the attention of the wait staff. He enunciates the words ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, like an alien who’s read about laugher and mistaken the onomatopoeia for the real thing.
Your friends look to you with pleading eyes, hostages too scared to signal for help.
The interloper flashes you a nasty sneer, a wolf signaling that this is his deer carcass. When it’s clear you’re joining the table he stands for introductions.
“I should warn you I come with a trigger-warning.”
He doesn’t shake your hand so much as he yanks it by the wrist. He says his name is Tanner.
You have to ask, “So how do you know everyone?”
Tanner doesn’t. He was eavesdropping, interjected himself into the conversation, and played musical chairs until he sandwiched himself between the women. Your friends were just too Minnesota nice to get rid of him.
He’s your problem now. Continue reading How to Get Out of Conversations about Trump by Pitching Your Fiction
When Keeping it Real Online Goes Wrong
If you’ve ever researched making a name for yourself online then you’ve probably been told to build a brand, to simplify your complex personhood into a nuanced little niche that’s easy to digest. If you found yourself having trouble attracting an audience you’ve been told you need to be more authentic, share more of yourself, and get more real.
A lot of writers take this to mean they should chronicle their failures while attempting to make it as an author. Master Yoda does say, “The greatest teacher failure is.” Why not leverage yours to endear yourself to your readers?
But what happens when you volunteer too much information? What happens when your blog becomes your therapy cushion? What happens when you tell everyone your career is fraught with long bouts of depression, nights spent quivering on the floor of your apartment, running the bathroom fan so none of your neighbors can tell that you’re sobbing?
At what point does your depression become your brand? Continue reading When Keeping it Real Online Goes Wrong
The Words Got Him
I found this nasty little poem lurking in my archives. I thought better than to share it at the time I wrote it, but now, well… What the hell? I feel like living dangerously. I dare you to read it.
The Words Got Him
Inspiration struck
In the middle of the night
Then it just kept striking
It didn’t care who it hurt
Sylvia Plath counted sheep in the oven
Anne Sexton lost count in the garage
Virginia Woolf slipped on her favorite coat
And lined her pockets full of rocks
Hart Crane dove in after her
Spalding Gray dove in after him
Then inspiration just kept striking
Hemingway sat at the dinner table
And ate himself a shotgun
Hunter S. Thompson said,
“I’ll have what he’s having.”
Maybe Edgar Allen Poe
Just had a little too much laudanum
But maybe, just maybe
The words got him
How to Be an Anti-Muse
ARTIST’S NOTE: So it looks like I still have some venom I need to squeeze out of system before I can get back to our regularly scheduled program. I like giving writing advice, but sometimes when I look at the state of things in online artistic arenas I want to burn it all down. I realize I owe my readers a debt of sincerity, but if you allow me one more sarcastic tantrum I promise I’ll make it up to you soon.
The Subtle Art of Extinguishing Creative Sparks
Don’t you hate how some people hold onto their artistic ambitions long after they’ve gotten laid for the first time? I mean, come on. They should’ve set that guitar down the moment their backs hit the mattress. You put a sock on the doorknob, strum out a little Wonder Wall, and cast that shit aside. Mission accomplished. Am I right? If someone is still plucking that thing into his thirties there’s something wrong with him.
The same goes for people staggering into coffee houses calling themselves writers, sitting there scribbling into leather bound journals, looking as pensive as possible, hoping some college girl will ask, “What are you writing?” I mean talk about a long con, and the thing I don’t get is why these dumbs schmucks go back to scribbling once they’ve gotten a girl’s attention. It’s like they’re backtracking the wrong way across the finish line.
The worst is when you’re friends with one of these rhyme-scheming stanza stacking wordsmiths, walking around wielding a notepad like a weapon that could go off at the first recitation. You’re a captive audience to their cry for help, forced to give an impromptu theory session under the guise of feedback. The indulgence is exhausting.
You float the idea: What if you channeled all that creative energy into writing a cover letter or technical copy?
Despite all your interventions your friend doesn’t know when to put away childish things. Everyone’s got paintbrushes in their attic, film equipment in their closet, and drum kits in their basement, but he’s still clinging to his hobby like it defines him.
He’s still dreaming about inspiring people with his creations, despite all the grey coming into his hairline. It’s really starting to bum you out.
Well, don’t fret. I’ve developed some tactics to neg your artistic associate into submission. Continue reading How to Be an Anti-Muse