Recently, at an author conference in Florida, I sat with a traditional publisher. We talked about the conference, about writing, about the differences between his world and mine. As an indie publisher, my approach and perspective on publishing is very different from his. Night and day, in most ways.

Except where we overlap is in a love for the writing itself.

There are a lot of opinions about self-publishing out there. Over the years I’ve had people deem my work unworthy because it wasn’t vetted or approved by some third-party. They seem to forget that the concept of publishers and editors is a relatively new phenomenon, in the history of publishing—there was a time when all books were self-published. 

But that’s a semantic argument, and one that isn’t going to get us anywhere. In the debate of self-publishing versus traditional publishing, there is no debate. Both exist. Both can lead to success or failure. Both have their merits and their challenges. 

In the conversation with the traditional publisher, it came up that he works mostly with literary fiction. 

“I’ve written a couple of literary fiction books,” I said. “Nothing spectacular, but they were early days. I have an idea for one now, though...”

I stopped, and he encouraged me to go on. And I did so with caution. Because my idea sounds so typical, like the ideas of a million other will-be authors who feel like they “have a real book” in them.

I pitched an idea for a fictionalized story about a very specific part of my own life.

I don’t want to give away the pitch—I’m not yet ready to reveal it to the world. But what I want to do is borrow from various elements of my life and put it into a highly fictionalized novel.

“It’s not a memoir,” I emphasized. “I just had this series of experiences, and I think there’s some story value there. I think it could be inspiring to some people.”

He heard me out and nodded, agreeing. And then he said, “Write something up. I’d love to see it.”

I nodded in return. And then we shook hands and went about the rest of our conference experience. 

It’s been about a month now, and in that time I’ve done something I rarely do—I wrote an outline.

Actually, that isn’t entirely accurate. What I wrote was a treatment for about ten chapters of a book, and I divided that up with headings that read “chapter 1, chapter 2,” etc. That probably technically qualifies as an outline, when it’s all said and done.

Once I had about ten chapters, the treatment stalled. I looked at it and wondered where the story was going to go. It felt like writing to me—the same way writing a Kotler or Kayne book feels. But different, because I was including some details and insights that come straight from my own life.

Or... was that different?

The core of the story, for this book, is an event that actually happened to me, but in an effort to safeguard the privacy (and sensibilities) of the people involved I’ve fictionalized it. A lot. I used some very specific details, but I did more than “change the names to protect the innocent.” If anyone who was there for the live, IRL version of this story reads the book, they won’t have too tough of a time picking out the parts they were there for. But unless they get ticked and start calling things out, claiming to be the subject of this scene or that chapter, no one else on Earth is going to be able to figure it out. They can keep themselves from humiliation or drama by not bringing it down on their own heads.

Also, I really am changing the names to protect the... well, let’s say “subjects.” Because “innocent” is kind of a subjective term in this story.

I know, I know... that’s a whole lot of vague. Be patient, that book will emerge, someday. Though if it goes through the traditional publishing process, that day could be years from now.

Anyway, I had a realization as I was thinking about this book and the treatment I was writing. I was feeling a little weird about the fact that I was digging into the details of my own life, mining bits and pieces and manipulating them into a work of fiction. I had the thought that maybe that should bother me... until....

Until I realized, that’s what fiction is. And I’ve done it all along.

In each of my books, I put what I call “A Note at the End.” It’s effectively an author’s Afterword. I’m not inventing anything new here, lots of books have something like this. But I like to include it as a part of each book because it’s a chance for me to chat frankly and openly with my readers about some of my experiences in writing the book, revealing select parts of my life and experience. It’s a little like this blog, in a way. I may even start re-publishing them here, at some point. 

In those Notes at the End, I often talk about the things that inspired the book the reader has just read. I talk about the research I’ve done, the books and articles and movies and television shows that lent some details to the tale. But more often I talk about my personal experiences, the traveling I’ve done and the people I’ve met, or the thoughts I have on current events. 

Sometimes I talk about the fact that a lot of the experiences my characters have are reshaped versions of my own experience. And while my characters—and their viewpoints, philosophies, attitudes and beliefs—are not “me,” per se, those things come from somewhere inside of me. I consider ideas, and I’m able to look at things from various perspectives.

That’s how I can write about evil characters who do evil things, without having thought or done those evil thoughts or deeds myself. I’m an actor, in that sense, playing a part through the actions and dialogue of a fictional character, getting into their heads, expressing things the way they would express them. 

I can do that because so often in my life I’ve had experiences, thought thoughts, and done deeds that I don’t like. I may not have ever murdered someone, and never would, but I’ve had experiences where someone so enraged me that it crossed my mind. And then, like any sane and rational person, I dealt with it in a productive way. In my case, I usually wrote a scene or two. 

The point here is that I mine my life for material all the time. I borrow from all of my experiences to give my characters some realism, to give them something to do, something to think, something to say. I borrow turns of phrase I’ve used, or those I’ve heard someone else use. There is nothing (entirely) new under the sun.

When I was in high school I went to a newspaper camp at the University of Texas, in Austin. They had a guest speaker running one of the classes, and she said something along the lines of:

“Don’t rape your own history in the name of telling a story.”

That, of course, stuck with me. It’s a fairly shocking turn of phrase, and did the job she intended, making the idea stick with me. And I spent years trying to make sure I wasn’t doing anything remotely like that. It sounded awful.

But now I realize she had a pretty skewed view of the topic. Because a term like “rape” has some shock value, but it isn’t exactly accurate to the experience of the writer. It implies the writer is taking something against another’s will—which is, of course, impossible for a writer to do to themselves. But it also implies a violent act, an unfeeling and uncaring act, a disregard for the meaning of the writer’s experience. It rightfully personalizes that experience, and rightfully advises that you shouldn’t sell your soul just to tell a story. But it makes its error in implying that the writer should never use their own experience to convey something to the reader. 

That’s just garbage. 

As a writer, it’s my actual and literal job to have as many experiences as I can manage, and to translate those experiences into something that can move and inspire the reader. That’s the gig. It isn’t rape, and it isn’t doing violence to my experiences. It’s willing sacrifice and service to the community I love.

Certainly writers must hold back on how much they share from their lives. Some things are sacred, and should always be treated as such. But some things are universal, and in expressing them we can encourage others, teach them how to be more human.

Writers should always endeavor to increase humanity, in themselves and in others. It is, again, our job.

So I mine my own life and experiences for the sake of those books. It’s something I do flagrantly and with great pride. And occasionally, when someone responds negatively to what I’ve shared, that hurts. It makes me introspective and self-evaluating. But that, too, is a good thing. Because “the unexamined life isn’t worth living.”

I live an examined life. It is well worth living. And it is, I hope and pray, helping others to live lives worth living as well.

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YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

I don’t need an office, I just want one.

I’ve been writing for a very long time. I started as a kid, using mostly lined notebook paper and a pencil, but sometimes writing in a little journal adorned with cartoon characters and quirky little writing prompts. 

When I started doing the “serious” writing, the writing I thought of as my work, I still did a lot by hand. I used spiral notebooks and sometimes something fancier, like the little cloth-bound red and black Record book I must have picked up from a grocery store somewhere. My idea of fancy, anyway. 

I’m big on journals and notebooks—I’ve had hundreds of them. Mostly I hand-write things in my little pocket Moleskines, but over the years I’ve collected dozens of leather bound journals, some super fancy, some only kinda fancy. I’ve also filled more spirals notebooks and legal tablets and ring binders than I can count. 

But I’ve always had a hankering for the keyboard. 

When I was in high school my grandmother bought me a Canon Typestar 110 electric typewriter. I was learning to type on those giant, blue IBM Selectrics in school, and the idea of a battery-powered typewriter that would actually allow me to scroll up and edit, in-line, was an amazing novelty. I wrote every school paper and tons of short stories and “first thirds” on that typewriter. “First thirds” is what I call the starter chapters for various novels I began and abandoned over the years. 

Having a portable typewriter was handy, but at school I transitioned to the computer lab and to the computers in the journalism room. And that’s when I discovered the wonders of writing digitally. It wasn’t long after that I managed to snag a Commodore 128 and a dot matrix printer. My essays and papers and short stories didn’t look quite as crisp and clean as they once did, but there was suddenly a lot more of them.

After graduation I started college, and at the same time started working for Radio Shack. This was fortuitous, because I met my good friend Bob, who has been a lifelong pal, and who introduced me to flea markets. And it was at the flea market that I found and purchased my first laptop—a Tandy 1000 that was, at the time, nonfunctional. I paid $25 for it. A steal, even if it was a brick.

I have a background in electronics, so I was unafraid to open that laptop and see what was going wrong inside. It turned out to be something very simple and minor—a tiny short in the circuit regulating power, of the type that someone at a repair center must have made and overlooked. I removed the short with a soldering iron, and bam. Working laptop. Just in time for college English.

My English professor favored a particular word processing program, called Norton Textra, and had ensured that it was available for purchase in the college bookstore. It wasn’t expensive, from what I recall. But it was... glorious.

I had used various word processor programs up to that point, mostly whatever came with my computer. Which probably means something like Notepad, or whatever text editor was there by default. Norton Textra gave me a whole new lease on life, writing-wise. It had features, like grammar and spell check, and even a tool that measured the Flesch-Kincaid readability rating of your document. 

Norton Textra was my word processor of choice for years, until Microsoft essentially overwhelmed the world to become the dominant word processing tool. I was, eventually, forced to trade my beloved Norton Textra for Microsoft Works, and then eventually traded that for Microsoft Word. 

I still miss Norton Textra. Sometimes I Google it to see how it’s doing. 

Since those early days, there’s been multiple technological revolutions. Writing went from being an activity I did while locked in my bedroom to something I could do while sitting at a cafeteria table to something I could do literally anywhere I was. I’ve had an evolution happen under my fingertips, from the humble pencil and sheet of notebook paper to desktop computer to clunky laptop to portable and handheld devices. 

Even on that list, things evolved in astounding ways. At one point I was doing all of my writing on a Palm V with a portable keyboard—this was the era of the PDA, the “personal digital assistant,” which was the precursor of the smart phone and smart tablet. And from there I’ve had so many small, handheld writing tools and folding keyboards and Bluetooth devices, I couldn’t possibly recount them all. 

The current version of all of that, though, is that I have multiple devices to allow me to write in whatever way I need, whenever I need to do it. 

We’re currently on the road full time, so I’ve culled down some of what I had in my home office to be more portable. I was using a Mac Mini as my “office computer,” and my MacBook Pro as my “portable computer.” Because some of the work I do requires more computing power and options than writing requires. But because I’m obsessed with portability, I eventually started writing almost exclusively on my iPad Pro. Its “always-on” internet makes it ridiculously useful for quick research, and for instantly backing up everything I write to the cloud, which facilitates writing on whatever device I need, whenever I need to switch.

For a long while I was traveling to conferences via airplanes and rental cars, staying in hotel rooms just long enough to sleep and shower, and spending most of my time in hotel bars and lobbies. For those trips, I started using my iPhone for writing. All the same software is there, and it’s always in my pocket. 

At first I made sure I always had a folding keyboard or a Bluetooth keyboard with me, to make writing on my phone easier. But at times that’s tough, too. And sometimes I find myself sitting in space or waiting in a line or seated at an event that isn’t keeping my attention, and the urge to write strikes. So I have learned to use the onscreen keyboard of my iPhone, which allows me to write and edit from literally anywhere, literally anytime.

It’s been quite an evolution.

The point is, people often ask me about what it’s like to write from the road. They wonder if I ever feel cramped in the van, or if I ever get tired of having to “find a place to write.” They ask me if I miss my writer’s space, my little home office.

I do. But not for the reasons they may think.

The truth is, I’ve learned how to have an “office anywhere” headspace. 

My typical writing setup, in the van, is to turn the passenger seat around, kick my feet up on a little folding camp stool, and place my iPad on a little lap desk that rests on my knees. It’s probably one of the most comfortable writing spaces I’ve ever had. I may keep doing it, once we’re back in a house full time. 

And of course, I have my iPhone, which lets me write from literally anywhere. 

And to keep distractions at bay, I plug in my AirPod Pros, which dampen outside sound and let me “close the door” to what I think of as my “mental office.” 

This setup is flexible, and portable. Which is exactly what I need. It’s also kind of inspiring. 

I’ve come to realize that I have always preferred keeping my life and work portable. I have always preferred the “write from anywhere” philosophy. And technology has been evolving as I go, allowing me more and better options. It’s been wonderfully accommodating. 

I’m blessed to live in the era I do, but I think that in any era I would eventually have made my writing portable. What is a pocket Moleskine, after all, if not the ancestor of the iPhone? And portable typewriters... those have been around for centuries. I own a couple as collectibles now, and in a pinch I would definitely carry one along with me and set it up wherever I needed to work, if I had no other options.

Office anywhere. Write anywhere. It’s a philosophy that’s allowed me to travel full time and still produce books, stories, blog posts and more. The evolution of my writing life has made given me the flexibility and power to be a writer on my own terms. And that is something pretty wonderful.

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YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!

“Isn’t it kind of cramped in the van?”

When Kara and I first started this whole RV-lifestyle journey, the first thing we did was sell our four-bedroom, 2,800 square foot house and downsize to a one-bedroom 940  square foot apartment. We lived there for almost two years as we figured out the best next step. Eventually we bought a 38-foot motor coach that was just under 300 square feet.

Getting tighter.

And yet, somehow, that motorhome ended up feeling more spacious than the apartment did. Sure, there was some shuffle—we, like a lot of people who go full-time into an RV—made the mistake of trying to transfer our whole lives into the rig. We tried to replicate our house in there, which meant we had too much stuff. And too much stuff meant we were living around our space instead of living in it. 

Over time, we came off the road and got another apartment. This time it was a vast, luxurious two bedroom with about 1,500 square feet. Room to stretch!

About two years after that we decided to move yet again, and this time relocated to an apartment that was referred to as a “flat” in their brochure, which amounted to about 2,400 square feet of townhome living, complete with three bedrooms and a garage. Massive. 

Enter the goldfish principle—you and your stuff tend to expand to fill the space you occupy. And we did. We pulled everything we had out of storage and filled that flat, really settling in and occupying the space. It was comfortable, and we enjoyed it.

We were house hunting when the idea of getting back on the road occurred to us.

We had put a bid in on a house, and we were approved on a loan, and then they came back asking for a bigger down payment. We felt pretty strongly that we could come up with that, if we needed to. Or I could probably have worked some writerly magic and convinced them to stick to the original deal. 

Instead, it got us thinking.

Why were we trying to buy that house in the first place? Did we need more space? No, we decided. It was about ownership, having property. We wanted something that would gain value over time. An investment. 

So... why there? 

If the idea was to be strategic about buying property, about making an investment, why buy in that neighborhood? Why buy in that area? Property values (at the time) were pretty stable. Any appreciation would be fairly minimal. And in the meantime we’d own a place in an area we were constantly road tripping to get away from.

So why not just get on the road again?

Ok, that was part A. And it was enough to get us excited about the idea. 

But part B was all about downsizing.

Kara was always the more nervous one, of the two of us, when it came to living in a smaller space. She likes to spread out, to cook big meals in a well-appointed kitchen, to have plenty of space for projects and creating. I tend to work from a desk. I like to have a space that’s all me, but it can be fairly small and I’d be fine. In fact, in each of the massive home spaces we ever lived in, my office was where I spent the most time, and it was typically one of the smaller rooms in the house. 

But Kara surprised me when we started talking about getting back on the road. She was the one who suggested we put everything into storage and downsize to something tiny. 

We ended up buying a 24-foot camper that was, maybe on the high side, about 180 square foot of living space. Our smallest home yet.

Again, we took too much stuff with us. But at least this time we had the additional of the back of a pickup to cram some things into, so the living space itself was relatively open. And for a few months, we lived in it just fine. We each had our seats at the table, where we could work. We had a cramped little kitchen, but it was enough for Kara to do some cooking. It just turned out that cooking on the road wasn’t really something we cared to do that often. More on that later. 

We were comfortable in the camper. But there was a downside we could never have predicted. 

We had planned all this, bought the camper, moved our stuff into storage, and terminated the lease on our massive townhome, all in the first couple of months of 2020.

Remember 2020?

In fact, the last day of our lease was April 1st. And it was on that day that the whole world suddenly went into lockdown over COVID-19.

I won’t kid ya... we panicked a little. 

Because here we were, effectively homeless, at a time when traveling was sort of frowned upon. Campgrounds we’d planned to visit were shut down. Restaurants and cafes we’d planned to work from were turning people away. Stores we planned to shop in were limiting the number of people who could come in per day, and their shelves were stripped bare. 

We couldn’t find public restrooms. We couldn’t get groceries. We couldn’t find places to park. 

Thank God for Kara’s folks. As much as we hated to impose on them, we really had no other place to go. So we managed to get a storage space for the camper, we grabbed our stuff, and we moved into a single bedroom of their house, about 100 square feet.

We stayed there for two months before things started calming down out in the world. It was still hard to find public restrooms, and you still couldn’t go into restaurants, per se. But things were beginning to open up just enough. And we got on the road again.

We didn’t get far. We stuck to Texas for the first few months. And living in the camper was just fine. Small space, yes. But we were learning how to live in that space.

So one unexpected downside to the camper, though, did come up.

We were parked in a pretty amazing campground in Kerrville, Texas, which is a couple of hours in all directions for anything you might want to do or see. Shopping, dining, activities... all of those things were a trek. And since public restrooms were still kind of hard to come by, and only a few businesses were opening up in reasonable ways, we found we were a little screwed if we were more than an hour or two from the camper. We’d have to ditch and drive back, just to use the restroom or have a meal.

That was when Kara asked, “What if we traded the truck and camper and downsized to a van?”

Downsize. Again.

We were already living in a space smaller than the bathroom we’d had at our last apartment, but sure... downsize. Again.

We were driving back to “home,” to her parents’ place, when we stopped at an RV dealer and took a look at what would ultimately become our new mobile residence. It took some negotiating and some haggling and some dealing, but eventually we managed to swing it. We traded our brand new F-150 and brand new Lance camper trailer and got a brand new Coachmen Beyond conversion van. About 70 square feet.

Downsizing to that space meant getting real. We knew we couldn’t take all of it with us. Not even half of it. Not even a third of it. 

So for about a month we went back and forth from our storage units (plural), loading and unloading, trying and discarding, figuring out what we really needed, what we could get by with, and what had to stay. 

In a lot of ways, even after a year of living in the van and traveling the US, we’re still trying to figure it out. 

I think we’ve gotten to a fairly good place with it, but we still, occasionally, have to reassess. I have a backpack full of production gear, for example, that I’ve barely used. A backpack. And I’m still considering taking out only the things I’ve used and putting the rest in storage, the next time we pass through. The same goes for some of my clothes, some of my tools, and a few other odds and ends. 

You’d be amazed at how little it takes to get by, out here. Living in 70 square feet wakes you up to the fact that all the living space is outside.

And cooking...

Well, we don’t want to eat out all the time. But cooking in the van is a very challenging event. We do have an induction cooktop, and we have pans and pots and utensils. We have a tiny little fridge, though, that can’t hold much more than a meal at a time. So the cooktop ends up being our coffee maker (we heat up water in a kettle and use French presses). 

We do have a microwave, but we don’t use it much. Most of our food is lighter fare, things we can eat straight from the fridge or the pantry, supplemented by the occasional pick-up meal. We avoid fast food, so a lot of those meals come from Whole Foods and grocery stores, and sometimes restaurants.

I’ve taken to cooking on a camp stove, though, which is fun. We do that maybe three times per week, and we typically pick up whatever we’re cooking the day we’re going to make it. 

We aren’t starving.

So living in 70 square feet, we get a lot of comments and questions. “Isn’t it kind of cramped in the van?”

Yes and no.

We’ve learned how to live in this space. We’ve even learned how to be “apart” in the space. Kara tends to work from her bed, where she can set up like a sofa. I tend to work from the passenger seat, which turns around and allows me to kick my feet up on a camp stool and use my lap desk. It works. It’s enough.

But the real breakthrough is that point about all the space being outside.

We don’t feel cramped in the van, because the van takes us to places that are expansive, wide open, vast. I work outside sometimes. We take walks and hikes. We visit historic sites and tour monuments. Things have started opening up out here, so we even go to those cafes and restaurants and coffee shops we were missing.

It’s pretty amazing, how much space you can get out of 70 square feet.

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YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

If you’d like to support me (and see more posts like this) you can do me two favors: First, peruse my catalog of books and find something you’d like to read; and second, join my mailing list to become part of an amazing community of readers and friends I interact with regularly. Thank you for your support!