Wow, have I been in a blogging mood lately! When I want to write but can’t come up with topics off the top of my head, I consult these posts:

• 100 New Blog Topics for Fiction Writers
• 60+ Quality Blog Post Topics and Ideas for Fiction Authors
• A Year’s Worth of Blog Posts for Writers

Today’s topic got pulled from one of these articles–what is the best thing about writing? What is the hardest? I’m happy to share my thoughts with you on this.

The best things about writing

I think one of my favorite aspects of writing is character creation. I love coming up with personalities, strengths, flaws, names, and appearances. Often before a plot comes, a person comes to mind, and I envision them as art as opposed to flesh-and-blood people. I often picture characters like how you see them in anime on those design boards that show different facial expressions and full body drawings, too. Kind of like this:

That’s how they first appear to me, anyway. As I write the novel, they slowly start to become humans in the flesh, but a large part of me can’t shake that anime/manga style art that pops up in my head.

Adding to the joy of coming up with a character’s visuals, personality, and backstory, I would have to add that commissioning artists to do original artwork of your book characters is quite a thrilling experience. I’ve worked with Juhaihai multiple times and honestly, I don’t feel like I want to work with any other artist for rendering my characters. I’m currently saving money to commission artwork of Lily, Andresh, Isabelle, and Aineiron. They’ll all be portraits, and they’ll cost a pretty penny. If I can’t afford it, I’ll just do Lily and Andresh, but I really want to see some of my demons brought to life!

Another aspect of writing that I truly love is coming up with rhyming poetry and lyrics to songs. I know this is not always a reader’s cup of tea and a lot of people skim when they see it, but I feel these enrich the story and help with worldbuilding. George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien are examples of writers who included songs in their books…I’m just hopping on the epic fantasy bandwagon.

I think I like to add poems and songs partly because I miss writing musicals. I try not to have these things appear randomly or for their own sake, but to contribute to the story overall. For example, Son of the Siren had songs because Lirien, a half-siren, sings; Kitra, the fae fox, tells riddles; and there’s a scene where my characters are camped around a fire and trade songs–something we did when I was a child at summer camp.

There aren’t rhymes in Book One of The Name and the Key, but Book Two (The Step and the Walk) has them because Andresh is a literature student and he is studying 400-year-old manuscripts; many of which are written in meter and rhyme to reflect the style of the time period. On the one hand, I feel like I’m showing off a little as a writer, but on the other, bigger hand, I truly believe I’m enhancing the story and using lyrics and rhyme very purposefully.

I think the last thing that I find to be great about writing is reflecting on (and choosing) what influences a manuscript. Movies, music, anime, manga, myths, and fairy tales have rubbed off onto my stories in one way or the other. On top of that, my experiences living abroad in Wales and Japan, and other instances where I’ve travelled, also shape my work. While my voice and stories are my own, I know that not everything is new under the sun, and that familiar things may pop up now and again in my writing (if readers are savvy to catch it). I do not mean this in a plagiarism/violating copyright sort of way. I just like to acknowledge what inspires me, and channel those inspirations into my writing.

The hardest parts about writing

I would have to say planning and plotting the writing is quite difficult for me. I’m trying to curb my pantser tendencies because I know that as fun as it is to sit down and let the book do its thing, writing based on how I feel, writing on impulse, and writing without a plan leads to issues with time management. Essentially, I go on breaks without writing if “the muse isn’t there,” and it becomes much harder for me to meet deadlines. The pressure of trying to turn something in by a due date wears me down, and I feel like a failure if I can’t do what’s expected of me (I still feel guilty about asking Oliver Heber Books for a one-month extension on The Name and the Key).

When I am too stressed out or emotionally fried, I also stop writing. I don’t want this to keep happening, especially since I’m on a tight deadline for books two and three, so I know that I need to hammer out some kind of plot. I made a complete plot for The Name and the Key and mostly followed it; The Step and the Walk is about 3/4 plotted; and The Fear and the Flame is just an embryo at this point with only two plot points in my head. I’m sure as I write The Step and the Walk, more of the plot to The Fear and the Flame will appear, though. I do think I need to try harder with the plots, though, so I can make my deadlines.

Another one of the most difficult things about writing is actually more related to publishing, and that’s making your work visible. Son of the Siren has been out since July 2024 and I only had two decent sales months–the first month of release, and then this past August when I got a BookBub featured deal. It’s not for lack of trying–I spent $3,000 on promotion that ultimately failed to produce results. I have good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, but overall people just can’t seem to find this book and read it. I chose to make The Name and the Key far more romantic than its graduate thesis version in order to try to cater to the market and reader interest more. It’s my great hope that The Name and the Key trilogy will perform better than Son of the Siren, yet at the same time, lead readers to that book. They say having a backlist is what generates sales. I’m shooting for that.

What are the best and hardest things about writing in your experience?