exsilium

Rejection is Good, Actually

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 20:20:03 -0400

Got my first publication rejection as an author. Rejection isn’t new for me. I spent decades writing for film and experienced a ton of rejection there. I’m basically (emotionally) impervious to it at this point. Rejection does not faze me.

I hadn’t intended to chase publication yet. I’m still working on comfortably writing prose and exploring my voice. It feels early to be worried about publication. When I submitted I had just finished working on GREAT. It was only my second short story since picking up narrative writing again, an adaptation of a short film script I never got around to shooting. I was ready to package it up and get it uploaded through the normal channels (Patreon at the time). Finding the open call that I submitted it to was a last minute fluke.

I hadn’t gone searching for it. I was stuck in one of those internet fugues where one thing leads to another and next thing you know you’re two hours deep into reading about abyssopelagic sea creatures. The call bubbled up through one of those ambient wanderings.

It should have already been closed by the time I found it. It had been extended with a new closing date set for the next day. The call itself closely matched what I’d already written with GREAT. I was finding enough little synchronicity markers there that it felt like choosing not to submit would be rejecting the universe. I quickly figured out how to cram the story into a Shunn manuscript template and kicked it out.

That’s not to minimize the rejection or pretend like I didn’t want it to be accepted. I absolutely did. More than that, I wanted it to be good enough, for the publisher to like it enough, that it would anchor the collection as the first, middle, or final story. I absolutely wanted the validation. But I don’t need it. Equally important, I don’t expect it.

There are a lot of reasons it could have been rejected. It could have been for overall fit. The collection of short stories they ended up selecting may have been different enough that my story would have stuck out oddly. It could have been that it didn’t stack up to final selections on quality of writing. It might not have been the style of horror they were aiming for. It might have made sense to go with a shorter piece that was just as good. “Might”, “may”, and “could” are games I could play all day. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter why it wasn’t selected.

I made it to the final round of cuts. There was enough there they felt it was worth considering as part of the collection. That’s enough for me. Rejection isn’t “I’m not good enough.” It is “this wasn’t the right fit this time.” Getting shortlisted is a statement that my work stood out. While I’m still not directly chasing publication, I am pushing out the pieces that I feel have the potential and writing to briefs periodically. The plan is to start collecting rejections. See where I end up and what I’ve learned along the way.

Side note: It’s also worth considering what would have happened if it had been accepted. First publishing foray out and I get accepted? It’s better this way. I’d have turned into a fucking monster.

Free Art (To Make A Living)

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

I have just wrapped up a bunch of changes in my writing. The most visible parts are how I’m presenting my work and how I’m attempting to find a community within that process. Those changes hinge around two fundamental beliefs. The first is that art and culture should be freely available. The second, that an artist should be able make a living from their art.

Arts and culture are the dominant social education. Art has broad exposure, appeal, and capacity. As a consequence, it is the best means we have to build, comment on, and critique culture. It is the storytelling that builds society. It tells us who we are today, who we were in the past, and where we are heading in the future. Art constrained behind financial barriers may still contribute to culture and society, but does so in an inherently asymmetric manner. It transforms art into a luxury and not a public good.

Further, we still treat digital goods like exclusive goods that can be depleted or otherwise rendered inaccsible in the same way that physical books are treated. If they were equivalent we wouldn’t need DRM or the legislation to protect the flimsy digital locks DRM affixes to digital goods. When this performance takes place against highly stratified economic classes and obscene wealth hoarding, when the cost of renting a one bedroom apartment eats up 80% of the income of a person working full time for minimum wage, we make anyone living under economic constraints a de facto member of one of two group:

The poor and unworthy that do not deserve culture.
The criminal pirates who dare step out of their station in an attempt to experience and engage in culture.

The free rider problem in digital goods does not sit on the constrained consumer, but the distrubtion middlemen who gobble up the lion’s share of the income while expending a dismal fraction of revenue to run the infrastructure. I don’t know about you but I’m very tired of “visionary tech gurus” whose primary skills are extraction with a smile and funneling the friend-of-the-lawmaker fees into political campaigns.

Art and culture should be interwoven into daily life. Not special treats and big ticket events. When every avenue is locked by a price tag we lose that. We stop being society and culture in favour of placid consumers subject to the will of publishers and distributors.

There still needs to be an avenue for artists to be able to earn a living from their works. If all art and culture are free then the only people, under a capitalist system, capable of contributing to art and culture are those who have wealth or wealthy patrons. Under that system we only get what is broadly financially viable or whatever propoganda someone with the finances/distribution means wants to cram into your consciousness. This is where the distinction between free and freely available come into play.

Under Patreon I am incentivized to treat all of my work as part of an income funnel with little granularity or nuance in how that work is presented. Materials posted to Patreon are either free or they are locked behind a tier. Individual shop items are individually priced. It is a model that inherently contradicts my combined belief that art should be freely available and support the artist. What’s missing from there is the ability for the individual to pay what they are capable of and what they believe the work to be worth. Patreon does not satisfy my requirements.

The subscription model also feel inherently broken. It creates a trap where the audience continues to pay for something they’ve been specifically promised while the artist engages in riding within that narrowly defined lane. While the artist and the audience may choose to move together, it creates a bi-directional captive relationship. The artist is no longer free to explore unencumbered and the audience needs to continually justify the ongoing expense. Any artists an individual patronizes are ongoing obligations in the form of time and money.

While I’m not against the idea of patrons providing regular support to artists over time, winnowing down the options to just a regular subscription and fixed pricing does not align with my belief that art and culture should be freely available. The best option I can find currently is to move to a pay what you want model.

Through ko-fi and itch.io, I can release work under a pay what you want model unencumbered by DRM. Whatever I want in whatever format I wish. ko-fi continues to allow a subscription model similar to Patreon. If there is an appetite for it and I can provide additional value outside of the works I create, I would be happy to set up a subscription tier based on demand.

Switching from Patreon to ko-fi and itch.io as my primary distribution channels is the beginning of making my work available to anyone who is interested, regardless of financial capacity, while enabling a means to collecting income across multiple streams. For any writing unencumbered by agreements with other parties (publication rights and the like) I will be releasing my work under the pay what you want model with free always being an option for digital files and digital first being the model that I work under when not engaged in agreements with other parties.

Third party digital services, like KDP and Ingram Spark, will be a longer term avenue. They give me a platform to price and distribute my work alongside the pay what you want models on ko-fi and itch.io. This is a long term outlook and will coincide with works at or above novella word count (> 17,500 words) where I can justify traditional pricing within those distribution channels. As above, anything where a publishing agreement is not in place, will simultaneously exist on ko-fi and itch.io under the pay what you want model.

Finally, physical prints. Again, this is where I can justify it with works that at least reach a word count of a novella. I don’t have specific plans here, but I’ve been looking at printing and binding options while lamenting the death of the mass market paperback. There are options through Amazon, local print shops, and DIY. It will largely depend on what my goals are when I get to a position of printing a physical book. That won’t come until there’s an audience for it. I’m writing as an act of expression, not as a print publishing Field of Dreams cosplay.

I don't know if my writing is any good

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:00:00 -0400

As a musician, a filmmaker, a screenwriter, and as an author, I talk to people who share the same interests and drive to create. There is always a lot of enthusiasm about creating, but often less enthusiasm about what they’ve created. I often get some variation of, “I don’t really know if my writing is any good,” or the assertive, “My writing’s not very good.”

There are two common reasons I hear this.

The first is an excuse as to why nothing they’ve done is accessible. You can’t read their work because it isn’t shared anywhere. It’s being kept private because they’re not confident about it and they’re afraid to find out whether others think it’s good or not. As long as it stays hidden there’s a distance and safety there.

The second is pre-emptive. They’ve decided they’re going to share something. Rather than risk being told their work is bad, they get out in front of it. If it doesn’t hit, they were right. It works as an apology for subjecting an audience to imperfection.

The most appropriate response when someone says their writing isn’t any good is, “Who gives a shit?”

Truly, I do not care if your writing is objectively bad. Chances are it’s probably not and even if it is, you’re not mass producing hardcover editions of it and expecting me to pay $50 for the privilege of reading it. You’re sharing something you’ve created with me. Probably because you like me as a person, want to impress someone with what you’ve written, or are hoping to get some feedback. All of which is important. What’s not important is whether you can objectively determine if your writing is any good.

When you are sharing your art with someone it does not matter whether it’s good or not. Being bad at something is the first step towards being good at something. Exposing your work to others allows them the opportunity to help you see the problems and to improve. You can study, reflect, and persist as much as you’d like. Few things help us grow like outside interference or performance.

We have this sickness where we compare ourselves to the best attributes of the brightest and most successful people we know. Except that we are now capable of being connected to absolutely anyone in the world. This means we can pick and choose the shiniest parts of the shiniest people, create an amalgamation that doesn’t exist in the real world, and use that metric that no one can ever measure up to as a cudgel to beat ourselves down.

You have to be willing to be bad at something in order to figure out how to be good.

One of my favourite video genres is backflip fails. It doesn’t matter how unhappy I am, a good backflip fail video will cheer me up every single time. They’re always the same. There’s no variation or deviation from the standard. That’s what makes them so beautiful to me.

Someone attempts a backflip.
It goes horribly awry.
They push themselves up to their feet, typically a little dazed.
They all, without exception, have the same baffled expression on their face.

That confusion tells the whole story.

They’d never performed or attempted a backflip before that moment. Despite this they were absolutely certain they were going to absolutely nail it. They went into it with all the unearned confidence they were capable of carrying and sent it. In their head, they’d already succeeded. The reality that they hadn’t was then incomprehensible to them.

“I don’t know if my writing is any good” is the opposite of this. It is accepting failure before the attempt has even been made. The writing isn’t the failure. Being bad at writing isn’t the failure. The willingness to accept failure is the failure.

There are going to be enough people in your life that will tell you that it’s unreasonable or impossible or that you’re just not talented enough. You do not need to be one of them. If it matters to you, if you care about it, then pursue it. Recognize that you’re going to be bad. You’re also going to create pieces that you think are good. Things that others also think are good. You’re going to think you’ve figured it all out. Then you’re going to make something bad again and wonder if you’ve learned anything at all.

That’s part of the process.

I’m not going tell you that if you just grind you’re going to end up being the artist you dream of being. That’s unreasonable. But I will tell you that if you care about it and you’re willing to actually tackle it you will find places you didn’t realize were possible.

All that’s waiting for you at the end of avoidance is nothing and you deserve better than that.

Weekly(ish) Short Fiction Releases

Sun, 24 May 2026 11:00:22 -0400

When I decided that I wanted to approach writing again I had some problems I needed to solve.

The first was that I didn’t want to write for film anymore. I knew that I wasn’t going to chase filmmaking or try to get scripts optioned. I was never terribly big on selling my scripts and filmmaking simply isn’t a discipline that I love enough to fight through the scrappy years to get to the good to ones.

The next problem was I had spent the last thirty years writing almost exclusively for film. In terms of creating a narrative and telling a compelling story, the knowledge I gained writing for film transfers over. The style absolutely does not.

When writing for film you can’t (realistically shouldn’t) write anything that can’t be displayed on screen. A character’s internal state needs to be made external. Sure, you can have a voice over that explains what the character is thinking or feeling, but it often doesn’t land well and tends to be frowned upon. What the character is thinking and feeling needs to be made concrete through their actions or words. It needs to bleed out into the situations and environments. If you can’t see it or hear it, it doesn’t exist.

My experience with writing prose is minimal.

The Patreon Singles Releases project consists of posting a new story to my Patreon on a loose weekly schedule (aiming for weekly, hard limit of bi-weekly). The goal for these is to write and share a self contained piece of flash fiction. It is an attempt to solve several problems at once.

Getting in the Reps

The first is simply getting in the reps. I have a strong grasp of screenplay writing and I understand my voice in that medium. I don’t have the same understanding when writing prose. By committing to writing and releasing a small, complete bit of writing every week, I’m forcing myself to write pages that I think, at minimum, are approaching a level worth sharing with others. It’s a trial by fire where I either produce or flame out entirely.

The best way that I can think to internalize the conventions and features of prose is to write it. To write a lot of it. Through that writing I will find my voice and build my style.

Building a Corpus

As a screenwriter I wrote at least two dozen feature length screenplays and well over fifty shorts. I built a lot of knowledge and habits over that time that can directly translate to writing prose. It means I can build a similar body of work in the form of short stories and novels.

There is a part of me that has always felt like there’s an endless fountain of words available. No matter how much I write, I will never be done writing. There will always been new characters to meet and stories to explore. I want to get as much of that out of me as I can before I lose the capability to do so.

What I want is work that appropriately matches that endless fountain. Not for the sake of pumping out page after page, but for harnessing the fountain to tell stories to the best of my capacity. A body of work that I am proud of. The breadth of which includes a variety of voices and perspectives. Stories that will ultimately support the larger projects down the road.

And, you know, not for nothing, but proving to myself that I can. I move my way through the world as a perpetual imposter. I have spent so much time starting things just to abandon them after a few weeks or months. The doubt would creep in and I would quit rather than face the possibility of what seemed like inevitable failure. I know that I’m capable. The only thing stopping me from proving it is time and follow through.

Finding an Audience

I know that I have some distinct sensibilities and that they are not necessarily mainstream. I’m not looking to wrap my writing around what I expect a mainstream audience would be interested in. I didn’t audience chase with screenwriting, I’m certainly not going to do it here.

What I’m looking for is the audience for my writing. I’m not some special and unique flower that is so distinct that no one could ever possibly understand my writing, let alone enjoy it. I know there are people who would be interested in my style and subject matter. By writing broadly, while sticking to my voice, I am creating more opportunities to find that audience.

Finding a Financial Platform

I don’t want to gate my writing behind Patreon tiers or purchases. If I want to find a place where I can reasonably write full time, I need a financial platform to work from. While it’s a minimal step forward, creating epubs for each of these stories creates a small incentive for members of all paid tiers. This incentive is retroactive, as all previous releases are available to paid members, and continues into the future as I write more.

It is a baseline to start from as I work to find more ways to interact with and reward a community.

I can also see a future where I make collections of these stories and market those under more traditional means.

Patreon and Ways to Contact Me

If you’re reading this and haven’t been to my Patreon yet, you can find it here: patreon.com/DavidBragg

On Stochastic Parrots

Thu, 14 May 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Call it whatever you want. Use it, if you want. Don’t tell me it’s art. Don’t tell me that I’m wrong for not using it.

I don’t think this is a very controversial take within artistic circles, but as someone who also works (well, worked…) in tech I get to see it forced into every nook and cranny of existence with the expectation that if you’re not using LLMs to do the majority of your work then you’re probably not employable right now.

First and foremost, if you’re using AI as any part of your writing process, from ideation through to a completed project, you don’t want to be a writer. You want to have written. Those are very different things. It is wanting the credit and benefit of completing something without doing the work.

I write because I have stories to tell.

I’ve had an interesting path to get where I am. I moved a lot when I was kid, attending eight different schools from kindergarten to grade 12. The people, places, and situations I’ve been exposed to are diverse and they are mine. Facets of that life come out in everything I write.

I write because I am compelled to write.

My mental and emotional health are correlated to my writing. The worst times in my life are the ones where I’ve stopped writing entirely. It may not be a causal relationship. If it is, the causal direction could go either way. In any case, when I’m writing I am a happier and more tolerable person to be around.

I write to create art.

Writing is gratifying to me. I’ve been in the room with writers who are grumbling and swearing at their keyboards. I’ve spent time talking to people that dread the next project. I don’t have that problem. I’m more than happy to lay down as many words as I need to so that I can come back later and find the pieces that are good.

I enjoy the process of working through the ideas in my head and wrangling them into something interesting and coherent. Discovering where all those pieces point. I want to create works where my voice, my intention, and craft all come together to create something that is more than just words on a page.

I want to share it with other people.

I want the works that I create to be able to take on their own meaning. I want people to read it and be able to extrapolate and apply their own meaning. I want my writing to convey my intentions and ideas better than I would be able to in conversation.

Having written feels great. There’s something wonderful in having something that you’ve created in front of you. An LLM can never fill the place that the process of writing occupies in my life. Since I don’t value expediency over everything else, it can’t offer me anything. It can only take pieces that are valuable to me away.

They are non-deterministic sycophancy engines. Their primary value (to their owners) is in keeping you glued to the chat window. As they’re non-deterministic it encourages you to keep feeding more and more prompts into the slot machine in the hopes that you hit that winning combination. It has endless patience and will encourage and compliment you while the slot machine hits feed you small shots of dopamine.

The more you interact, the more tokens you burn and the more data you provide for future models. The more dependent you become and, oh, aren’t you handsome and smart today.

If you want to write, then write. Otherwise, you’re probably not a writer and might be a gambler.

Platforms and Scenes

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:00:00 -0400

In my first post on this blog, I talked about the annoying thought I’ve carried in the back of my head for more than two decades.

I wished I had the opportunity to just write. The world could go away and I would be able to stop working for awhile. I could focus on writing.

This wish effectively created a two part problem.

The first was that I was gating the thing I wanted, to write, behind something that was never going to spontaneously occur, the ability to not worry about being an adult and having adult responsibilities.

The second was that it was a convenient excuse that allowed me to avoid actually trying. It saved me from needing to write things that could fail publicly. It saved me from proclaiming that I was a writer and being judged on the veracity of that statement. Experiencing life through the perpetual lens of imposter, it was a convenient way to protect myself.

Back to that initial post, I have the time to write right now and I am taking advantage of it. In the process of doing this, I am being aggressively public about my writing. The point is to take all that fear of failure, of being exposed as an imposter, and inoculate myself repeatedly against it.

Which brings me to this article: The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI by Scott Santens

If you haven’t read it yet, please do.

I have championed UBI for quite some time. I’m still on that cause, but it’s not what I want to talk about from that article. At least not directly. The most relevant points from it, to what I’m doing with writing, are a minimally supportive financial platform to work from and a peer scene to work within.

A Platform To Work From

If I want to continue writing the way that I have been, a minimally supportive financial platform is a necessity. I am effectively chasing just enough income to serve the same purpose that UBI would serve. Enough to allow me to write. Not part time. Not when I have the energy. But as a fundamental part of my identity and as the focus of my intention and efforts.

My Patreon is the initial pillar in attempting to build that platform. The goal is have it as a proving ground that gives me a little bit of space to build while limiting the amount of my time that it requires. The goal is to write, not manage a public facing identity and to market myself. Patreon handling much of the process is beneficial in that respect.

I recognize that the potential is there for a Patreon that provides zero income. Given that, I need to consider other methods of income that support writing. I’m still considering what those are. Ultimately, I’d like the writing to be the product and I have a lot of writing before I really get to that point. Writing provides income which supports writing is a long way off. Potential in the never realm.

A Scene To Work In

I’ve had a stark increase in output. I run the risk of burning out the vast majority of potential peers. I know that if I was approached when I was part-time with my writing and someone was firing pages at me as fast as I now need readers for it would have been completely overwhelming.

Not only do I need to find a scene, I need to find one populated with creatives that are similar motivated. When I am writing weekly pieces as part of my Patreon, I’m aiming for flash fiction level pieces, but have already proven that I’ll write a couple thousand words instead and not think twice about it. A reader who might get back to me once a month for a short piece represents a significant bottleneck.

I recently did a reading of my short story GREAT at a Writers’ Open Mic event in Guelph, Ontario. It was a solid event, one that I’ll talk about more elsewhere, but I don’t particularly see a peer group forming there. Not one with me as a member, at least.

Of the writers in the room, I was one of two that skewed genre heavy (Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror) and the other was fantasy. There’s also the issue that Guelph isn’t really local for me. I don’t consider a 45 minute drive a burden, but that’s also because I typically only do it a half dozen times a year. If I needed to make that drive more frequently I’m likely to reconsider that position.

I don’t have a strategy for this right now. I’m looking into local writers’ groups and events. Much of what I’m seeing either fizzled out before covid or shortly thereafter. I find organization websites that haven’t been updated in at least three or four years and event calendars with the same pattern.

Discord servers always ends up in noise and story swap sites become transactional instead of community based. I’m struggling to make those first in-roads on a proper scene.

Thinking Out Loud

I don’t have the answers here. I’m writing all this down to get it straight in my own head and have a launch point to start from as I try to resolve this. There’s a lot of work to start moving forward, but I’ve got some primary directions to begin working toward.

I’m hoping to be able to start answering some of these problems in the future and providing those answers here.

Status Update - Week 18 2026

Sun, 03 May 2026 11:11:19 -0400

Overview

ongoing writing projects
- weekly flash story GREAT has been edited and is done (for now)
- read GREAT at an Open Mic event in Guelph
- short story Corporeal Acquisitions is first draft complete
- weekly flash story Maeve Murray's is nearing first draft complete
- new weekly flash story has been started and is in the exploratory phase for concept
new blog post last week Collect > Outline > Draft
social links have been cleaned up and expanded

GREAT

I sent this piece out to several readers and received solid feedback on it. I also read the story (~1,700 words, so not really flash fiction) at an Open Mic event for writers in Guelph, Ontario. At a high level, I enjoyed the event. I am out of practice in front of an audience and will need to work on that. I also had some interesting conversations and got to hear a variety of narrative voices. I’ll have some more specific thoughts on the event in another post.

GREAT is fully edited and ready to go. The epub has been created and I was prepared to post it to Patreon. Then a random call for submissions showed up. I’m not chasing publication right now, but the submission theme perfectly matched the story. It felt like a missed opportunity if I didn’t submit. The down side is that the submission criteria requires first run projects. This means I can’t post this project to my Patreon just yet.

The call promises follow up on all submissions within 90 days. If the story isn’t selected, I’ll continue on getting this up on my Patreon at that time. If you’d really like to read this before then, drop me a message. I am active on all social media in my LinkStack.

Corporeal Acquisitions

This cosmic horror short story is now first draft complete. Current draft is just under 5,200 words.

A corporate acquisitions and mergers architect goes on solo retreat to a cabin on a private lake in the dead of winter. While planning her next takeover she encounters another predator with similar methods and appetites.

The next step is to edit and get it out to some readers for feedback.

I don’t have any plans for what to do with this story just yet. It’s largely dependent on feedback to determine next steps. I will get some samples of this up on my Patreon over the next two weeks.

Maeve Murray’s

This is the next story in the weekly flash fiction stories. I have a rough draft of this completed. It was originally intended to be a weird horror story. It’s still got those undertones, but morphed and is now fundamentally a relationship and break up story. I’m always a little surprised how things develop throughout the process of writing.

The goal for this is to get it cleaned up, out to readers, polished, and posted to Patreon for next Monday under the Singles Releases Collection.

New Weekly Flash Fiction

I’m still exploring ideas for the next weekly project. I try to avoid going into these with any pre-existing ideas. Finding an idea I want to write is part of this process. I’m currently toying with entities colonizing the individual and dissolution of self against a colonizing super organism.

I don’t know if that’s where I’ll end up, but it’s what has caught my attention currently.

Collect > Outline > Draft

New blog post last week Collect > Outline > Draft. This walks through what my current writing process looks like to get from the blank page to a completed draft. It also details how and why my current system developed.

I’ve resurrected my Bookwyrm account to accompany my GoodReads account.

I’ve also created a LinkStack page to keep all my links in a single place. This should be considered the source of truth for where to find me on the internet.

Collect > Outline > Draft

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:11:13 -0400

When I started screenwriting at 17, I had zero clue what I was actually doing. I didn’t understand the format, I didn’t understand storytelling, and I didn’t understand how a reader would interpret what I had written. I cranked out a terrible 65 page script in less than two weeks, completely by the seat of my pants.

I would be safely into my twenties before I finished my second script.

Over that time period I started a lot of projects. I’d inevitably get lost in the middle. With no obvious way forward, I’d abandon the in-progress project in favour of the new, shiny project that definitely wasn’t going to have the exact same problem as all the previous ones did.

I wrote all the time. I finished next to nothing.

I did have some successes, as time went on. The gap between finished works got shorter, but these were flukes. It was all wildly unpredictable. I had no idea when I started working on a project if it would actually end in a completed draft or not. To make matters worse, my few completed first drafts were such a mess that even approaching the editing process felt overwhelming.

To the shock of absolutely no one but myself, this changed when I started outlining.

Instead of just diving in, I started blocking out scenes. This was helpful. It made navigating my way through the story faster and easier. It made the road to completion more likely, but I still had a predictability problem.

I still had persistent issues with getting through the sagging middle of projects. Instead of writing my way into the middle with no idea of how to move forward, I would outline my way to the middle and experience very similar problems.

This is when I started interrogating my material more. Rather than getting stuck and moving on, I’d start asking questions about the scenario, characters, backstory, and themes of the project I was working on. I found I was answering one question and asking three more.

I came to realize I didn’t understand the stories I was trying to tell. Outlining wasn’t enough. I needed to back up further.

This is when I added the collection phase. It completely changed how I wrote and made my output substantially more predictable.

It starts when I have an idea I want to pursue. It can be anything. I’ve started with a character. I’ve started with a location. A theme, scenario, a piece of dialogue, or a song lyric. It has come from all over the place.

Once I have that initial spark that’s grabbed my attention, I start asking questions about the project. The first one is typically:

What are my constraints?

This is very helpful in screenwriting. If you have a single location and just enough budget for a skeleton crew and two actors, you will figure out quickly how to restrict your project to those limitations.

Constraints also happen to be useful for prose. The length of a project, the genre, the thematic premise, the overarching narrative, and the primary narrative viewpoint are all valid things to consider early on. Constraints help bring the scope of a project into view and make it more manageable.

Going through this process I find it naturally moves towards broad stroke information about my story. Who are my characters? What are their backstories? Where is it located? What’s interesting about that location? What are the big, colourful strokes that may never make it into the final text, but make it a living, breathing organism in my imagination?

The big strokes start suggesting details. Scenarios, dialogue, interactions, inflection points. All of these bubble up to the surface naturally.

Throughout this process I’ll find myself bouncing between constraints, broad strokes, and details. That feels natural to me as well. The more I learn, the more questions I’m going to have. As I answer those questions the story will progressively start clumping together. That when plotting really begins.

Just because I’m plotting doesn’t mean I’m outlining. I’m plotting pieces that connect. Paths that can lead in various directions. I’m not constraining things down to a single path. I’m leaving it open. It allows to me to veer off wildly or to experiment with narrow variations. It’s about exploring options and seeing what converges.

There’s never an explicit point where I choose to stop collecting and start outlining. It’s more like a realization.

The paths I’ve been choosing all agree with each other and there is a broad through line. That’s when outlining really starts for me. The collecting process naturally starts contributing to outlining.

I’ll attempt to keep it as high level as possible to begin with. I’m trying to get the overall shape of the thing from beginning to end. I want to see if it works when it’s all pieced together.

The outline then goes through progressive passes. Adding details as I read through it. Parsing through my collection notes to find interesting pieces that add colour to the outline. I’m fleshing out from high level bullet points to more detailed blocks of text.

Again, there’s not a specific point where I say I’m done outlining and have started writing a draft. The outline process hits a point where I realize the level of detail I’m providing is approaching the same level of effort as just writing the damned thing.

When I initially stumbled upon this process, I stuck it into a three month window. With a full time job and additional responsibilities, I wanted to have enough time to be able to complete a project while likely only squeezing an hour a day in to focus on writing.

I found that collection typically went for about five or six weeks, outlining would take four or five, and the first draft could be knocked out in less than two weeks. That time frame gave me a little bit of breathing room to take days off in between.

I went from finishing a screenplay once every year or two under ideal conditions to finishing four in a single year. All four were individually better than anything else I’d written up to that point. I finished another twelve over the course of four additional years. Out of 26 completed feature film scripts, I wrote 16 of them in a five year span. The prior ten had taken almost 20 years collectively.

This process is now the de facto process for all of my writing. The only thing that scales is the time. For a very short project, I may only allocate a week or a few days.

It’s proving to be useful as I’m tackling prose. Currently, it’s only been tested against flash fiction and short stories, but it’s holding up. I expect when I get to novel length projects, I’ll see benefits similar to when I was writing features. Experience tells me that the benefits are better on longer projects.

If this kind of process appeals to you, I tend to have a few basic recommendations I offer to accompany it.

Pick a time frame. Unless you’re exceptionally good at finishing projects without any time pressure, a deadline is to your benefit. It gives you a goal to aim for. As you finish projects it also gives you information about whether or not your timelines are reasonable for the types of project you’re trying to complete. It makes projecting deadlines more accurate.

The process is typically linear and moves forward, but it doesn’t have to be. Don’t be afraid to jump between states. I’ve backed up from a draft all the way to collection when I realized that there were significant gaps in my understanding about a project.

Find transition points that are natural for you. My work tends to evolve into the next phase. I realize I’m in the next phase rather than choosing to transition. If that doesn’t work for you then don’t do it. Pick a point and use that as your pivot. It can be a target date or when you no longer have any open questions to answer or anything you want.

This is a process that has evolved over time to suit me. Like all my processes, it continues to evolve. Adapt it to suit you. Your processes should benefit you. When a process stops providing value for you, stop using it.

Status Update - 2026 Week 17

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 11:00:51 -0400

Overview

ongoing writing projects
- weekly flash fiction These Are Not My Memories added to Patreon
- weekly flash fiction GREAT is draft complete and out to readers for feedback
- short story Corporeal Acquisitions being written, currently in first draft
- new weekly flash fiction started and in the exploratory phase
set up blog at davidbragg.ca/blog
new accounts set up on Patreon and GoodReads

These Are Not My Memories

New flash fiction piece posted to Patreon. It’s free to read and includes an epub download option for paid Patreon members.

This is the first in what I’m calling the Patreon Singles Releases. Every week I’ll be writing a new piece of flash fiction and posting it to my Patreon this way.

GREAT

GREAT is my next weekly piece. It was completed over the weekend. Just awaiting feedback from readers and then this will go through the Patreon release process.

It was originally written as a three minute cosmic horror short film about right wing indoctrination via random video chat. I liked it as a script and I like it even more as a short story.

My weekly writing is supposed to be flash fiction. GREAT has settled in around 1750 words. A little bit more than what I was aiming for. That said, I’m more interested in following the story than I am an arbitrary word count. That may change in the future, but I’ll worry about that when I get there.

Corporeal Acquisitions

Another cosmic horror short story. It is continuing forward. I know the entire story at this point. I’ve collected all my little bits and pieces into a coherent, high level outline. I’ve started working through the outline on an initial draft.

The outline, in bullet points, was roughly 3500 words. As I’m working through it’s not growing too much. I’m about a third of the way through the first draft and it’s only grown by about 600 words. Expect the completed initial draft to be less than 6000 words total.

I’m aiming to have a polished first draft ready for readers before May 1st.

Untitled Patreon Singles Release

The next weekly flash project has been started. I am currently exploring ideas. I don’t have anything ready to go and am starting from scratch. It lets me work through what’s top of mind and see if there are any stories in there I’m interested in telling.

Published Blog

Set up this blog using hugo to generate a static site. It required a little bit of configuration, but not much. I’m pretty happy with the implementation. I’ve used Jekyll in the past. It was fine, but hugo feels cleaner to me. There’s a lot of similarity between to two.

I’m currently hosting this under my heavyliftingindustries.com domain. It will likely move at some point to its own domain. I’m not in a rush to do that. A new domain will come when I’ve got the income to pay for it.

Patreon and GoodReads Accounts

As I’m working on moving forward with writing, I’m setting up some new accounts to supplement that work. This is being done to have a single lane of focus. I have historically had a lot of interests, hobbies, and paths I’ve chased down. I’d prefer to minimize pollution across those streams.

A Patreon account has been created. The first piece of writing has gone up. It’s a flash fiction piece called These Are Not My Memories. It’s posted in a regular post under the members free tier. I’ve also created an epub download version that is available patrons under the paid tier.

A GoodReads account was created to eventually claim an author account. I’ll get there eventually.

My Mastodon account is a notable exception here. I’m continuing to use that as a primary account and I don’t see any real need to create a dedicated Mastodon account for writing.

Status Update - 2026 Week 16

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 10:39:19 -0400

Overview

resumed work on short story Corporeal Acquisitions
started and completed flash fiction piece These Are Not My Memories
started flash fiction adaptation of short film script GREAT
completed two new blog posts
installed and started using taskwarrior and timewarrior
created template repository for new writing projects
wrote xq tool for extracting questions from files

Corporeal Acquisitions

In 2023 I was looking for a writing outlet and considering revisiting prose. I started working on building out a cosmic horror short story at the time. I had put around a week’s worth of effort into figuring out what story I was telling and building some basic structure.

I’ve resumed work on this project and have a much stronger sense of the story. I’m still organizing and outlining with the intention of starting into a draft this week. I have a loose expectation of when I’ll have a reasonable draft completed, but largely using this to get a sense for how long a project of this length will take me to write.

These Are Not My Memories

The switch from screenwriting to prose means there are a lot of skills to build up. Many of these skills haven’t been exercised since I was a kid. I’m going to need consistent work on those. In that spirit, I’m working to write a flash fiction piece every week. The goal is reps, not polished pieces for release.

The first is These Are Not My Memories.

Like the majority of my writing, there’s an undercurrent of horror. It’s a piece about tech, identity, and capitalism as an uploaded consciousness in a bot with no back ups.

GREAT

Another flash fiction piece that’s just been started. It was initially written as a short horror film about right wing indoctrination. It was originally written to be a low budget, three minute short.

Given the amount of film scripts I’ve written over the years, it seemed like a good idea to see how I feel about the adapting process while continuing my goal of writing a flash fiction piece each week. This is largely a test to see if I’ll adapt more pieces in the future.

Two New Blog Posts

The Time is Now documents where I’m currently at in my writing and the rationale behind switching from screenwriting to narrative prose.

Writing for Flow talks about some of the processes and structures I’ve put in place to ensure minimal disruptions in the writing process.

taskwarrior and timewarrior

I predominantly write at a Linux terminal. This is part of my attempt to minimize disruptions in the writing process. I also like minimal systems to keep track of what I’m doing and how much time I’ve spent on each task.

taskwarrior is a highly functional task list application. I’m using it largely as a source of truth for the projects I’m currently working on. At any point I can bring up my task list and see at a glance what needs to be worked on.

timewarrior is time tracking software. This ties into taskwarrior and can be configured to automatically start tracking time whenever a taskwarrior task is started. I like time tracking as it’s a measurement to see how I’ve performed in the past and to extrapolate how long something new might take me in the future.

Template Repository

I’ve taken a lot of tools from my life as a software developer into writing. Version control using git and source code hosting sites are major ones that I’ll elaborate on my usage more in the future.

I have a consistent, basic structure for my writing projects that includes Makefile tasks and pre-commit tasks for automatic clean up and formatting.

Since I tend to follow the same basic requirements and structure for each project, I’ve created a template of that structure and saved it as part of a repository that can be reused and updated as necessary.

It saves me the repetition of setting things up from scratch or copying and pasting for each new project.

Created `xq` Tool

As I discuss in the Writing for Flow blog post, one of my tools for minimizing the disruption of writing is to drop questions or ideas separate from the current line of thought inline, using the Markdown checkbox (- [ ]). This ensures that questions and notes are captured without breaking my writing flow or requiring large context switches.

xq is a small command line application written in Go that extracts these questions out of a document for me. The default behaviour is that it will extract the questions from a specified input file and append them to a file called open_questions.md in the same directory.

It supports custom input and output files, as well as a flag to keep the questions in the original file while marking them completed (- [x]).

It is a minimal tool created to handle a specific problem.

Writing for Flow

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:40:27 -0400

One of the ways that I try to organize my writing is for flow. For me, that means not having to stop or slow down. Keep my thoughts and keystrokes uninterrupted. My goal is to minimize the amount of things getting in the way of getting the words out.

This is a brief introduction to the systems and software I use. I’ll go into more detail on most of these topics in future posts.

Purpose Driven Software

The primary piece of software that I use for writing is Neovim. It is a mode based terminal text editor. If those words, in that order, don’t mean anything to you, I congratulate you on being a rational and well-adjusted individual.

Everything in Neovim is a keystroke. The whole program is meant to be used exclusively with a keyboard. While it takes some time to learn, it is ridiculously powerful and quick to work with once you’ve adapted.

One of the primary reasons I work in Neovim is to avoid using a mouse. Every time I take my hands off the keyboard I am slowing down. In a perfect world, I never have to take my hands off the keyboard. If I can avoid moving them out of the home row position, that’s even better. Neovim facilitates this effectively.

Minimal Syntax Between Text and Intent

As I’m writing in Neovim, I don’t have access to text formatting in the same way that a word processor offers. I write using Markdown syntax instead.

The majority of my writing is just plain text. For those odd occasions where I want a little more formatting, like headings or the occasional underline, Markdown is lightweight enough that it doesn’t impact my flow. It’s the least amount of friction between the words in my head and the words out of my head.

Avoid Context Switching

The heaviest usage I have of Markdown is with the checkbox syntax: - [ ]

One of the biggest interruptions in my writing has been notes or questions unrelated to the specific thought that I’m working on in that moment. It meant either stopping what I was doing to jot down the thought elsewhere or to power through on my current thought, hoping I don’t forget by the time I’m done.

The checkbox has become my tool for getting those ideas out inline. Rather than try to find a separate place to jot the note down, I add it in the middle of what I’m writing. I’ll start a new line with the checkbox and write my note there.

As soon as I’ve got the idea out of my head I resume working on the thought I was originally exploring. It is guaranteed capture of ideas with the least amount of disruption and context switching I’ve been able to figure out so far.

After my writing session is done, I will then extract all lines starting with checkboxes and append them to a separate file. I typically call it my open questions file. I’ve written a utility application in Go that will extract questions automatically.

Writing is not Editing

Attempting to write and edit simultaneously is the surest path to hell I know of. Correcting a spelling error or a missing word is one thing. Rephrasing or expanding something is editing and I do my best to avoid it at all costs when I’m in the writing process.

Much like with inline questions, if I need to capture an idea I will simply write it inline. If I am feeling like I’ve missed something, got the structure wrong, or want to rephrase, I will write a new version underneath the original version.

I am continuing to move forward by capturing a different way of approaching something. I’m not thinking critically about the way something is being presented, if it’s better or worse. It’s just a different presentation.

I have had projects where I have five or six different approaches to a sentence or paragraph inline. It ensures that all the ideas are captured and I have lots of options to work with when it does come time to edit. I treat this like a bastardization of Postel’s law. I am bold in putting words down and liberal in cutting them away.

Future me, who is more tapped into this project, will be able to parse through the text and figure out the right path forward. The job while writing isn’t to create the perfect gems. It’s to create enough real estate to mine later and discover the gems.

Limited Hardware Is Good

I write on a laptop that makes it difficult to betray myself. It is old, underpowered,the audio doesn’t work, and the battery is in less than stellar condition.

On a full charge I can get about two hours worth of work out of it in a normal session, using normal writing software.

If I open up a terminal emulator, kick it to full screen, and run Neovim there I can get about three and a half hours.

If log into a terminal only session and run Neovim from there I can get up to six hours. That is crazy considering the age and state of this laptop.

The added benefit of a terminal session is that there are no happy distractions. I can’t disappear into a four hour youtube shorts k-hole. There’s no streaming video or social media to scroll. It is just text. It is effectively a digital typewriter.

The Time is Now

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:32:28 -0400

If you’re passively curious what’s going on here, the following paragraph is the tl;dr version.

My name is Dave. I’ve been writing my entire life. My background is deeply rooted in screenwriting. My present circumstances allow me the time to invest heavily in writing. I’m using that time veer off my well worn screenwriting path toward prose. This blog will be where I talk about writing as a discipline, the tools I use for writing as a filthy Linux deviant, and my overall writing process.

If that paragraph satisfies your curiosity, feel free to drop off here. I’ll never know and no one will judge you.

Otherwise, into the thick of things.

As of writing this post, I’ve been unemployed for nearly seven months. Another casualty of tech layoffs and a shrinking job market. My days include a fair amount of skills development, trying to decipher a way back into gainful employment as a software developer. I’m also trawling through the job boards and firing resumes into an ever widening abyss that does not answer in return.

There are limits to how many hours each day I can put into these activities. For my own mental and emotional health, I need other outlets.

While I have a lot of hobbies, writing has always been my primary outlet. The points in my life where where mental and emotional well being have suffered the most have always coincided with periods where I wasn’t writing. I’m not willing to draw a causal relationship, in either direction, but there’s definitely a strong correlation there.

When I was kid I would write short stories or poetry. There was something very appealing about the shape of words and putting those words onto a page. I’ve filled many notebooks and I have fond, frustrated memories of plucking out pages on a typewriter.

The writer and poet was a stark contrast to the disruptive, scattered kid in school.

In grade seven, my gym teacher threw me up against a wall and cocked his fist back, ready to punch me in the face. In grade eight, the same teacher subbing in for an absent English teacher couldn’t reconcile the poetry I’d handed in as being my own work. It was inconceivable to him that the kid he’d nearly knocked teeth out of was capable of anything other than being a distraction and a nuisance.

Side note: I’d changed schools between grade seven and eight. The gym teacher from grade seven became the vice principal for grade eight. It was not a great year for me.

High school is when my writing took a very sharp turn. There were a handful of indie filmmakers cranking out films that spoke to me. That was who I wanted to be. Taking my words past the page and onto a screen. No more prose or poetry. My path was going to be the way of the screenwriter/director.

There are a lot things that I like about screenwriting. The visual writing style always appealed to me. There was no (acceptable) analogue for spelling out a character’s internal thoughts or emotional state. No asides to analyze the present situation for your audience. Ideas needed to be externalized.

There are also things I dislike. A screenplay is not a completed piece. It is a blueprint for a potential piece, that may be realized, in whole or in part, at some point in the future. It’s work that is inherently incomplete. It is dependent upon time, money, and other people to realize. When you are nobody, have no money, and nothing to show for yourself, that means it’s up to you to figure out how to get that completed result.

I love having written a screenplay. Seeing that accomplishment is incredibly fulfilling.

I love being on set. Working with a cast and crew to build something together is always a joy, even when it’s difficult and frustrating.

I love watching my film in a theatre with an audience. I’ve watched my films in a converted high school gym with an audience of six, myself included, and in a sold out 500 seat theatre. Both are fantastic.

It’s the pieces in between that ensured I was never going love filmmaking the same way I love screenwriting.

It’s the pieces in between that limited my filmmaking to a bit more than a half dozen short films. This is despite having written more than two dozen feature length screenplays, over fifty short film scripts, and a handful of one act plays. There was always that sense of things being incomplete. The absence of creating a self contained and whole work.

Throughout all that writing I’ve had a persistent refrain: I wished I had the opportunity to just write. The world could go away and I would be able to stop working for awhile. I could focus on writing.

It felt like I was just scratching the surface of an inexhaustible flood of words. The only way I was ever going to really deal with it was the capacity for it to be the only thing I needed to worry about.

If I’m being honest, that wish was manifest from procrastination piggybacked on the excuse that I would love to write but I’m exhausted from having to work. Doing the adult pantomime was too taxing.

A good amount of that procrastination was fear. If I wrote seriously, then I cared about writing. If I cared about writing, the next logical step would be writing for other people. As soon as other people get involved the possibility of rejection and failure becomes very, very real.

I still wrote. I just did it while hiding behind an inability to make it my whole life as an excuse to half ass it. Pretend like I didn’t have the necessary tools to be serious about it. The problem wasn’t me, you see, it was the conditions. Societal expectations and what not grinding me down. You understand.

I don’t know why it took me seven months, but the time is here. That thing that I desperately wished for across two decades has tumbled into my life. Not under ideal circumstances, but it’s here. All I need to do is run with it.

I have no expectations that writing is going to be something I can sustain myself with. It was implausible twenty years ago and is significantly less plausible now. I also know that I can’t organize my entire life around chasing a tech industry that seems to be more repelled each passing day at the very concept of employees.

I’ll keep looking for work. Keep building my development skills and knowledge. It’s the in-between that I’m interested in.

I’m switching paths. I’m taking myself away from screenwriting and putting my words back into prose. It’ll take me some time to figure out my voice, to sort out the structure and the style. I have the time. I’m going to wrestle every moment I can out of that in-between to do it.

exsilium

Rejection is Good, Actually

Free Art (To Make A Living)

I don't know if my writing is any good

Weekly(ish) Short Fiction Releases

Getting in the Reps

Building a Corpus

Finding an Audience

Finding a Financial Platform

Patreon and Ways to Contact Me

On Stochastic Parrots

Platforms and Scenes

A Platform To Work From

A Scene To Work In

Thinking Out Loud

Status Update - Week 18 2026

Overview

GREAT

Corporeal Acquisitions

Maeve Murray’s

New Weekly Flash Fiction

Collect > Outline > Draft

New Social Links

Collect > Outline > Draft

Status Update - 2026 Week 17

Overview

These Are Not My Memories

GREAT

Corporeal Acquisitions

Untitled Patreon Singles Release

Published Blog

Patreon and GoodReads Accounts

Status Update - 2026 Week 16

Overview

Corporeal Acquisitions

These Are Not My Memories

GREAT

Two New Blog Posts

taskwarrior and timewarrior

Template Repository

Created xq Tool

Writing for Flow

Purpose Driven Software

Minimal Syntax Between Text and Intent

Avoid Context Switching

Writing is not Editing

Limited Hardware Is Good

The Time is Now

Created `xq` Tool