Process on exsilium

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.

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.

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.