About

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    Hello all.

    It occured to me after completing my first entry and sending it out to all of the socials that it may be good to have a reference post explaining what this is, so this is that.

    Right off the bat, my name is Austyn and I'm an aspiring writer. Outside of the standard middle and high school creative writing exercises, college papers, and the occasional 'fictions' I've written for some of my D&D games, I haven't done a ton of no kidding writing. I've aspired to write a book (a few, actually), but I've found that after a few chapters, I tend to get lazy, feeling as though "the story will come to me eventually, I'll just have to wait until inspiration strikes."

    I've been kept waiting. It turns out inspiration is a fickle friend.

    Recently while browsing Twitter, I discovered that one of my favorite YouTube miniature painters, Dana Howl, not only has a Twitter account, but posts on it daily with the #HobbyStreakDayXXXX tag. I think today marks day 1400, which is mindblowing to me, and when I saw that, I realized that strategy may be a way to break myself out of this tendency toward laziness I've cultivated. I immediately looked up the best way to write on the internet, built an account on Blogger, and got to writing the first thing that came to my head.

    Now, it feels important to address the content on here, what it is, and what it isn't.

    I'm a big fantasy nerd. From Lord of the Rings to Dragonlance to God of War, I dig it all. I'm a big fan of Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Pierce Brown, R.A. Salvatore, and a host of other authors. All of this means that my influences vary wildly, and because I haven't done a ton of writing, I don't feel like I have a voice yet. For clarity, I think that's a good thing. I'm a fan of the fact that I can (at least attempt to) write in whatever style I feel suits a text, but it also means that the entries on here can, and likely will, vary wildly in style and substance. For example, the first post on here, The Beginning of History, is heavily influenced by my memory of Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology, a style which I have never written before (admittedly it has been years since I last read the book, but I recall it is written similarly to how a storyteller may share the stories of the past, filled with authorial notes and repeated words and run-on sentences, shared haphazardly and with no regard for continuity). It felt appropriate for the topic, so I thought it may be cool to write in a similar way. Looking back, especially when recording (more on that later), I found a few spots that bugged me a little bit due to the overuse of words, but I decided to leave it and try to be better next time. That's what should be expected from this exercise.

    Historically, my bread and butter writing style is the bog-standard modern fantasy novel, complete with characters, themes, settings, words, sentences, all the things you'd expect when you crack a new book. That's certainly appropriate in some cases, but I feel like it can get a bit boring, hence this experiment. As stated above, I intend to post here every day, and I plan to write whatever comes to mind. To level expectations:

What this is:

• All of these entries will exist in the same universe, one I've worked on in the past and the one that my D&D games exist in. 
• This is a writing exercise based around taking and running with whatever is in my brain when I sit down. This means that the characters in today's entry may be completely different than those in tomorrow's, and the styles may be totally different. That being said, rest easy, I'll do my best to keep the writing styles consistent between different storylines and things like that. 
• This is a learning experience for me. I'm going to write what comes to me, and I would very much appreciate it if you readers could help me by telling me what you like and dislike. Comments and critiques are vital to me, and I'm not fragile, so if you have suggestions, I'm all ears.

What this is not:

• This isn't a book, at least not as far as I know. My goal isn't to sit down and write ten pages of epic fantasy a night, but to write until I feel like I've reached a stopping point. This may mean a haiku, it may mean a multi-page chapter, it'll all depend.
• This isn't a completely random collection of ideas. I know I've said a few times that "I plan to write whatever comes to mind," but I do plan to see stories through as they appear on the page, so if you see something you like, trust that I will return to it eventually.
• This isn't an edited manuscript. I don't plan to revisit an entry once it's been posted, and I don't have an editor to read through my entries. You may find spelling and grammar issues (though in a perfect world, you won't), there may be continuity problems, there could be anything. If you see anything agregious, leave a comment and make a recommendation. I plan to take the Marvel approach of retconning where I take reader's ideas on ways to fix the continuity, and I'll shout you out if I use your ideas. 

    Finally, I totally get that reading words on a screen isn't everyone's jam, it certainly isn't mine. I prefer paper in hand or an eInk display, but I'm too cheap to print a magazine and too dumb to figure out the RSS feed on my Kindle, so in order to try to sway you toward reading my entries, I intend to record each post and stick a little audio player at the top of each page. Now, it's worth mentioning that I'm no audiobook narrator and I can only reliably do like three different accents, but I'm hoping to also get better at that with time. Rest assured that you're not missing out if you choose not to listen to the recordings, I'm not adding or taking anything away from a post, I'm just putting it in a format I know my wife will consume.

    Hopefully this primer on me and the site has helped shed some light on my goals here. Like I said above, I'm hoping for comments and critiques, so whatever you've got, I'm all ears.

    I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Úir Talamh.

    - Austyn