My Novelistic Methodologies

 

Note: the following text originally appeared on my (now defunct) Substack on August 15, 2026 

The following text is not intended to be viewed as a blueprint for other writers to follow¹. Rather, it is an attempt to both clarify/organize my thoughts and to elucidate the methodologies I typically employ when writing a novel. However, if other people manage to get something out of this (and also if it helps them forge their own methodologies in turn), I won’t be complaining.

Many writers, I’ve observed, often follow strict schedules when it comes to writing novels: writing so many pages (or achieving a certain word count) a day, only writing at specific times of the day, and so on and so forth. I’ve never really been one of those writers, mainly because, as a retail worker, my hours/days off change on a week-to-week basis, so I have to continuously adjust my writing time accordingly. Also, every novel is its own unique challenge, and no two projects are ever the same, so I find that a “one size fit’s all” approach rigidly adhered to usually ends in disaster. Therefore, I also need to be adaptive, flexible, and even at times improvisatory in my approach to each novel. Having said that, over the years I have designed various methods to writing (along with the creation of assorted tools) to at least make the process go by in a smoother, and dare I say, more exceedingly efficient manner.

First off, before starting a novel I do think it’s important (for me at least) to have some idea for a title firmly in place. This is taking a page from Alfred Hitchcock’s book: he would often try to pin down a name for his current movie project early on, because he believed that (to quote Donald Spoto’s book The Dark Side of Genius) “. . . the lack of a definite title gave the production an atmosphere of the haphazard and a lack of focus.” In the case of two of my more recent novels, Harlem Smoke and The Joy of the Worm, I found the proper title well before even setting down a word of text. Granted, it’s not always that easy, and sometimes it can take a while for one to intuitively grasp the title most appropriate for the novel in composition. Still, I do believe it’s a point worth considering when one is just getting started on a project.

Secondly, I do feel that it’s not a bad idea to keep some sort of official journal or notebook handy. This is something I started doing with Harlem Smoke in 2015, and I did it again with my French-Decadent short novel in 2019 and, more recently, with The Joy of the Worm. This notebook will contain important dates (what day I came up with the idea, what day I came up with the title, what day I named such-and-such character), along with a list of milestones (more on that later), notes on the soundtrack (assuming the book will have one), list of things/details to include at some point, character sketches, rough drafts of scenes, and things of that nature. These notebooks of mine aren’t particularly super-organized in the layout of their contents, but the important thing is that the information is there. On the PC itself, I’ll also create a special folder dedicated to the novel in progress, where I’ll keep relevant JPGs, further research material, a subfolder for prior drafts, etc.

(These are the official notebooks I used for Harlem Smoke and The Joy of the Worm)

Next, I’ll often make a list of scenes that I think will be in the book (these might not be ALL the scenes, but at least the important ones), often out-of-order. I’ll then make a second list where I take those scenes and arrange them into a rough chronological order. I’ll then split the list up into individual chapters. Looking over this list of chapters and the scenes that comprise them, I go through each chapter and try to guestimate how many pages in a Word document that chapter will be. By doing this, I can then get a rough estimate as to how long I think the final book will be (in terms of page count). While this may seem to be an odd practice to some, keep in mind that when I wrote books in high school and college it was by hand, on folded up pieces of paper, so I thus needed to plan carefully so that I knew exactly how many pieces of paper I needed to use. Also, I like having a rough idea of how many pages a book is so that I can then set milestones. For example, if I think a book will be 300 pages, that means every 30 pages I’ll be another 10% done that book in question (other milestones I like to track besides each 10% mark is when I reach page 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, and so on, along with hitting the 50,000 word count and 100,000 word count). I have become very proficient at this: I expected the first draft of Harlem Smoke to be 300 pages and it ended up being 292, while I expected the first draft of The Joy of the Worm to again be 300 pages, and it ended up being 302. Generally speaking, with novels I usually aim for around 270-300 pages, sometimes going to 400 but not usually. Again, it all depends on the individual project and that project’s requirements.

(This was the milestone page that I kept for Harlem Smoke)

(Of course, sometimes the special particular needs of a project dictate a slightly different working method. Going into The Joy of the Worm, I knew the book would be divided into twelve main chapters, each being assigned one of the months on the calendar, so in the case of that book I listed the chapters first, then decided what scenes would be in each one. But usually, I start with a list of the scenes).

When it comes to the actual writing of the book, I try as hard as I can to write the scenes/chapters in chronological order, from the first page to the last (one book where I didn’t do this was Confusion, where I wrote the first half in chronological order, but kind of skipped around the second half, an experience I later swore I would avoid in the future). Granted, sometimes I might leave a scene kind of sketchy (with the intention that later on I’ll go back and fill it in in greater detail: a good example of this is in The Joy of the Worm, where in the first chapter there’s a scene set at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: I started writing the book in September of 2025, but didn’t actually visit the museum until July 2026, so for a long time that scene was very vague and almost a placeholder). The important thing is getting the main flow of the book down, so that by the time the first draft is done, the book is essentially complete (though still raw and imperfect and in need of refinement). This was something I picked up on when reading an interview with David Crane in an older issue of Retro Gamer magazine, where (in regards to his game Ghostbusters for the Commodore 64), he described his method of designing a game, by which he would first create the game’s total flow, from the title screen to the congratulations screen at the end, and focus mainly on getting the primary gameplay loop down first, before later on going to pretty it up with the cool little extra details. The point is, the first draft might not be the most elegant pf documents, riddled with typos and unnecessary words and fat to be trimmed, and with skeletal portions that need meat added to them, but what’s important is that, for the most part, it can still be read as a finished and complete story.

Once the first draft is done I’ll make a copy of it on my computer. The original document gets set aside, and the copy I’ll rename to something like “Second Draft – in progress.” With the second draft, I’ll go back and add in a lot of the small details that I neglected to include the first time through, expand sketchy scenes that need expanding, things like that. Just as the character of Morpheus uses various totems of power in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comic book to make his tasks easier, I myself have developed a number of useful tools that help me with the editing process of my books, and which I usually deploy once I reach the second draft stage. One of the first of these is what I call my Word Repetitions List. This is basically a list of words/phrases/dialogue adverbs that I tend to unconsciously use a lot without really thinking about it while working on the first draft. Originally this was just a handwritten list on a piece of paper, and it was getting pretty funky and hard to read from repeated usage, so a couple of years ago I had the brainstorm of typing it up as a document on my computer. Now, I can just print a new copy up whenever I need it, and as I go through the manuscript and eliminate excessive repetitions I just cross them out with a red pen on the printed document (one function of Word that makes this process even faster is the “Search Document” feature on the navigation sidebar).

The first two pages of my Repetitions List, starting with general words and phrases, then adverbs

Another of my favorite tools is my Weird Word List, a document I’ve been adding to on my computer for well over a decade now. Essentially, whenever I’m reading a book and come across a weird/unknown/archaic word, I’ll make a note of it, and every four months I’ll go through this small list of weird words and add them to my master list of weird words. This Weird Word List of mine is currently a 45 page document with over 1800 entries, and with my second drafts I’ll go through the list to see if there are any words on it I can insert into the manuscript, along with also using it to make sure that I don’t repeat any of those weird words more than once. I basically liken this process to a chef adding spices to a meal, and a judgment call is needed as to how many such words is too many. For example, I didn’t need to use all that many such words in The Joy of the Worm: unlike my horror, fantasy, or decadent writings, where I like to use such words to generate a particular effect or to create an otherworldly atmosphere, The Joy of the Worm is set in the more mundane and realistic contemporary world, hence a lot of weird words would seem jarring and out-of-place. So with this most recent book, I kind of held back a little. Anyway, once that step is done, I’ll then do a basic spellcheck on the manuscript.

Two pages from my 45 page Weird Word List document

Finally, I’ll print out the second draft, and carefully read it (usually a chapter a day), using a red pen for corrections or to make notes for myself. Once that’s done, I’ll create a third copy of the manuscript, the third draft as it were, and this will be the corrected edition (where I’ll also add in beginning papers and end papers such as an epigraph page, acknowledgments, the “about the author” page, and so on), along with finalizing the soundtrack (assuming that the book has one). This third draft is usually the one I send to publishers, though sometimes I might also do a fourth draft if I think the project calls for it. But usually I don’t go over three drafts.

A brief note on the soundtrack: it’s probably a good idea not to plan out the book’s soundtrack in detail ahead of time, because then if the project crashes and burns, it can be dejecting if one had assembled a really cool soundtrack for it (this is a lesson I’ve painfully learned many times over the years, so I speak from experience here). So I think it’s a better idea to just start with a few major songs that you know will feature in certain scenes, or which gives you an idea of the book’s “vibe.” Much like Tarantino does with his films, where he tries to find the title song early on because that song then informs the film’s character, I try to do the same with my own books. In Harlem Smoke, the two key songs were “The House That Dripped Blood” by Insane Poetry and “Gimme Hell” by The Jesus and Mary Chain (the latter of which became the book’s “title song”). With The Joy of the Worm, it was “Time To Pretend” by MGMT (which ended up being the book’s “title song”), though “Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish was an important one as well. Once one has made great progress on a book and completion seems assured, then feel free to start adding songs in more detail. Naturally, this only applies if music is called for in a book; with my French-Decadent short novel, this wasn’t necessary, as that book was set in the 1890s.

I hope this gives a brief idea about some of the processes I generally employ when working on a novel. Short story collections are a bit of a different beast so some of these methodologies described above don’t apply in those cases, though the editing process I use is still basically the same for those.

1 Back in 2020, on Facebook + Twitter, I posted a number of helpful tips and advice for aspiring writers, which I later collected on my old Onxy Glossary blog. You can read those here (but keep in mind with some of them I was either being perverse or not entirely serious): https://onyxglossary.blogspot.com/2020/09/james-champagnes-writing-tips-collected.html

Contra No One: various thoughts in regards to the subject of Indifference and its negative effect on a writer's mental spaces

 

Note: The following was originally posted on my (now defunct) Substack on June 19, 2026

“Try hard for a dozen years or more, break your heart half-a-dozen times, go down into desolation and come back up again, and then begin it all anew. A nice life, isn’t it?”

—Arthur Machen, from a letter written to Colin Summerford, 1925

A recent trend I’ve been noticing on the various social media platforms I frequent is that a very large number of writers (some friends, some casual acquaintances, most total strangers) seem to be drowning in an ocean of hopelessness and futility. Many seem to be haunted by variations on the same thought: paralyzed by the world’s seeming indifference, feelings of being a nobody, concerns over “careers” that are stalled or running on fumes, and so on. I’d like to cover all of those concerns, but I should also add that perhaps the most common complaint I see from other writers is how they’re vexed by the question “What’s the point of slaving away at this? No one will care.”

First off, before I even begin to get into all that, as I’ve touched on elsewhere *, the creative process is often a journey worth going on even if nothing comes out of it in terms of fame or riches, because of the powerful and spiritual effects it can have on the soul of the artist who embarks on such an odyssey, an almost alchemical transformation that at times can allow you to see a once mundane world in new and exciting ways. And there’s something, to me at least, that’s very exciting about taking these creations that previously only existed within the confines of my skull and unleashing them out into the wider world, where they’re no longer completely under my control. Suddenly, characters that had initially only lived a limited life inside my imagination are now entering the minds of others and taking on new forms, new dimensions, and new lives. I suppose this is perhaps the greatest gift I can give to my “children.” Also, if the Hermetic esotericists of the 16^th century were right and Man is a Microcosm (or, to quote John Dee, the “Lesse World”) to the Macrocosm that is God, which is to say an image of the Divine writ small, then in the act of creation we emulate the very Heavenly Forces that gave us life. It becomes, in effect, not just an artistic task but an exalted and holy one (though in all probability the materialist would sneer at such an affectation).

Also as a preamble, I should stress that I do not speak glibly here. Like many writers, I’m all too painfully aware of how discouraging and frustrating it can be to slave away on a project, only to finally have it released and watch it seemingly disappear into a void (having said that, my own personal concern is less “who will care about this?” and more “who will even publish this?”). My novel Harlem Smoke, which I perhaps put more of myself into than any of my other books to date, has, over the last seven and a half years, only earned one professional review and a total of ten text reviews on Goodreads. The two short story collections I wrote prior to that have, amongst themselves, no more than six text reviews on Goodreads. At the same time, I don’t truly believe that books disappear into a void. Because they are out there, in the great wild of the world, patiently waiting to be discovered, gems hidden among the dross of society. It’s impossible to say how or why some books get recognized and others do not, and “literary immortality” is a crapshoot. H.P. Lovecraft died believing his work was destined for total obscurity, yet he has achieved a kind of international posthumous fame that, had he been able to witness it, would have left him flabbergasted. By comparison, many of his then more popular contemporaries have mostly vanished into the dustbins of history. Should we not rejoice, then, when the proverbial stone that the builders rejected finds its place as a foundational force within the walls warding the New Jerusalem? 

But to return to the matter at hand . . . Indifference, I’ve found, is often the sword on which many a writer has willingly fallen on. But I feel this is a case of people vastly overrating the Enemy. Put simply, Indifference is not a worthy adversary. Who cares if no one will care? No one is literally nothing, nobody . . . it’s a nonexistent entity, a throne without a tyrant, a paper tiger of an antagonist. And I find it highly doubtful that no one will care. Odds are good that there will be at least a few loved ones (be they of a familial character, such as parents, siblings, or children), along with friends, acquaintances, colleagues and coworkers in the life of the writer that will care about the fruits generated by their creative efforts, and so long as even one person cares, it puts a lie to the claim that no one cares (because “no one” literally means “not a single person”). And by the way, this really only comes into play and becomes a problem when one puts a premium on the flesh (as human beings, in their materialist follies, often tend to do). For who’s to say there isn’t an invisible audience that appreciates the end result of one’s literary endeavors? I think of Thoth, the Nine Muses, Ganesha, Saint Francis de Sales (patron saint of writers), etc. “Who cares? The gods do, darling!”

As for the idea of being an unimportant nobody, this is also a wasteful thing to dwell on. How can you even quantify such a thing? Again, and to reiterate the point above, almost everyone has at least one family member, friend, or colleague who cares deeply about them and/or their work, and I think if you can’t find satisfaction in that, you’ll perhaps never find it at all, because it’s not as if there’s some arbitrary magic number of “fans” where, once you hit that target, you magically transform from a “nobody” to a “somebody.” As for these “fans,” it’s not as if you’ll ever meet, or even interact with, most of the strangers who may buy your book, and this is maybe even for the best. * * I suspect that if the Stephen Kings of the world actually saw some of the people buying their books, they’d vomit in disgust. One careful, caring, and deeply invested reader trumps a million randos (I’m suddenly reminded of a quote from Stalin: “A million is just a statistic”). And if your work can touch even one person on some level and make a difference in their lives, even a fleetingly temporary one, then that’s still one more person whose life you wouldn’t have touched had you never chosen to publish (or put pen to paper) in the first place (and, at the risk of sounding New Age-y, maybe your influencing one person in a positive way causes them to influence someone else in a positive way as well, a ripple effect in which the resulting good vibes have an equally positive effect on a cosmic level). Is there any difference between a doctor who has saved one life and a doctor who has saved a thousand? From the patient whose life was saved, the one is all that matters.

As for “careers,” this is, for the most part, often a pretentious affectation (when I use it in regard to myself be assured my tongue is always firmly planted in cheek), because in all actuality I know of almost no writer who lives solely off the income generated by their books (hence my putting the word in air quotes), and even for the writers who have been published by the major presses, writing is often more a side hustle than an actual viable career. Many writers have fallow periods (again, I speak from experience: there was a long timespan between the publication of Harlem Smoke in January of 2019 and the publication of my French-Decadent short novel in late 2025 where all I could get published were two slim chapbooks and one or two short stories). It’s what you do during those fallow periods that makes all the difference. And sometimes it’s important to have one’s mettle tested (the old bromide about adversity building character), and perhaps these fallow periods are Nature’s way of separating the wheat from the chaff (see, again, the Machen quote posted at the beginning of this treatise). A true writer, one who answers the demanding call of our vocation, presses on, whereas the dilettante wallows in a pit of negativity and misery (a purgatorial state often of their own devising). I remember when Alt-Lit was a thing for five minutes in 2011, and how many of its young writers were being lauded by the trendsetters and gatekeepers as the face of the future of literature. But the sad fact is, many of them were merely content in having the label “writer” harnessed to their name, and living the supposedly glamorous lifestyle that accompanied it (social networking, attending readings, getting their names cited on “hip” blogs, etc.) But the actual hard work of writing books was seen as an impediment, or a necessary evil at best, and oftentimes their books were beside the point, a mere prop or accessory (it’s also possible that the resulting dissolute lifestyle of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll sapped their creative vitality). And I also think of all the horror writers of the “twenty-tens” who capitalized on the (very brief) resurgence of cultural interest in Weird Fiction (mainly in the wake of the first season of True Detective), and how many of these writers were feted by conventions, won literary awards, and so on. But like the Alt-Lit writers before them, so many of them have faded away, vanishing like vampires in the first light of dawn, no longer publishing or, in some cases, even writing. And yet I, who have never achieved even the slightest modicum of fame, endure. What it boils down to, I think, is that for the majority of these dilettante lifestyle writers, once the trendsetters have moved on and become distracted by some new temporary and transient bauble, and the spotlight no longer shines on them (and in many cases, this spotlight was a very shallow source of illumination indeed, the false ensnaring dim light of the Bardo Thodol), they collapse like a puppet whose strings have been cut. But it’s what one does in those periods when the spotlight is off one that reveals the writer’s true character.

As a self-styled Medievalist, I very much subscribe to the idea of Lady Fortune spinning her great Wheel. Many writers are ebullient when they’re at the top of the Wheel and experiencing their salad days (to quote Shakespeare’s Cleopatra), but when the Wheel inevitably spins and they fall from their heights, they allow themselves to be permanently crushed. The true writer, however, takes their lumps (as painful and frustrating as they might be), and clings on for the ride, for like Machen they are hopeful fellows and stoic gamblers (who have adopted the words of A Song of Ice and Fire’s House Martell as their own: “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”), and they have faith that, sooner or later, the Wheel will spin in their favor and they will rise, phoenix-like, and once again be at the top of the world.

I would like to end this treatise with a quote I recently saw someone post on Facebook (in relation to some of the issues touched on above), written by Aleister Crowley in his Autohagiography: “. . . my responsibility to the gods was to write as I was inspired; my responsibility to mankind was to publish what I wrote. But it ended there. As long my books were accessible to the public . . . my hands were clean.” * * * This is, of course, a realistic and admirably pragmatic stance. But having recently read Frances A. Yate’s remarkable book The Art of Memory, I came across another fitting quote, this one written by Giordano Bruno in his 1584 text cena de le ceneri: “Men of rare spirit who have in them something of the heroic and the divine, will climb the hill of difficulty and wring from harsh circumstances the palm of immortality. And though you may never reach the winning post nor gain the prize, cease not to run the race.”

* See, for example, some of my comments on the Neo-Passéism entry related to Artificial Intelligence: https://neopasseism.substack.com/p/ai

* * To use myself as an example, once at work I spotted a customer selecting a book of mine to purchase, and I do not exaggerate when I say that he looked like the kind of man you’d see on the news that gets arrested for keeping corpses in his basement. Unless you’re Bret Easton Ellis, odds are your readers won’t be young, hip and sexy. 

* * * It’s worth remembering that Crowley’s magical motto was Perdurabo, Latin for “I will endure” or “I will endure until the end.” More writers should adopt inspirational magical mottos.

James Champagne's Writing Tips: The Collected Edition

(NOTE: the following series of tips originally appeared on my Facebook and Twitter accounts)

For no real reason, I’ve decided to start typing up some of my advice to writers. I think it’s a worthwhile goal because one always sees such advice online but usually it’s just the same bromides being repeated over and over again (you know, “Type 1,000 words a day even if you have no ideas and it’s crap”), whereas I (hopefully!) approach it from a more slightly askew point-of-view. My only real credentials is the fact that I’ve written a great number of books in my life, some of which have even been published (I also won the Young Author Award twice in my schoolboy days, for what that’s worth), so I like to think I know a wee bit about what I’m talking about. So, with that in mind (and I should stress that these are merely my own opinions):

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #1: Text Appearance

When it comes to typing out the actual text in your word processor of choice (I myself just use the standard Microsoft Word) I find appearance is important. Specifically I almost always use 1.5 spacing and ALWAYS do the justified margins. To my eyes this gives the text a cleaner and more professional appearance and looks more like how an actual book would appear if it were published in the real world. This might seem to some like a pointlessly trivial thing, but I think it can provide the writer with a subtle yet beneficial psychological boost: the leap from “This looks like something that might be published” to something that IS actually published isn’t as big as one might think, and positive thinking is important. . . if you go into a project constantly thinking, “Why am I wasting my time with this, no one will ever publish it,” you possibly create a sort of negative and vampiric feedback loop, and fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy. While on the subject, self-confidence is key: nothing is worse than when you’re reading a book or a story and you can tell that the author has little confidence in their own work, whereas when you read a book that you know is good and you can tell that the author knew that too, well. . .

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #2: Fake It Till You Make It

When I was in my 20’s, in my (ahem) “Chaos Magi(k)ian” phase, I read a book called LIBER KAOS by Peter J. Carroll (of LIBER NULL & PSYCHONAUT fame) and was intrigued by this bit of advice that he gave to the aspiring magician: “In Chaos Rituals you Fake it till you Make it, to obtain the power that a belief can provide.” This useful advice I’ve applied to various areas of my own life, including writing. One thing I like to do is, when submitting author bios to anthologies that I’ve appeared in, to mention the names of future unpublished books as “forthcoming.” I do this even for books that have no publishers lined up and aren’t even really close to forthcoming at all. Why, you might ask?

Well, first off it creates some initial buzz for said forthcoming book. If the reader who reads your story and likes it then reads your author bio and sees you have a new book coming out, they might get excited by that and this will start to generate some positive energy towards it, which I believe the Universe notices. This also stretches into the domain of magic, as well. It’s well-known that I have a deep interest in the history and culture of Ancient Egypt, and the Egyptians of those days were some of the world’s first magicians. The Ancient Egyptians generally believed that words had an almost magical power, that by saying/writing things you could make them manifest in reality, and much of their spells were actually closer to our modern culture’s techniques of self-affirmations (for example: “I will catch many fish today” or “I will not consume my own feces in the Western Lands”). And as Alan Moore noted in an essay some years ago, “Crowley also points out the connection that exists between a grimoire and a grammar, between casting spells and spelling; goes so far as to admit, at one point, that the greater part of magical activity lies in simply writing about it. Clearly there is a reason why Hermes and Thoth, the Gods of Magic, should be simultaneously the Gods of Writing.” Which is a long, pretentious and roundabout way of saying that by listing a future book as “forthcoming” and having it then printed in a book that other people read, other people will believe it as well, and you can almost Will it into existence . . . seriously, I’ve done this 3 times now and in all 3 cases the books listed as “forthcoming” have either been published (or will be published).

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #3: Further Thoughts on Author Bios

Before moving on to more pressing matters, I would like to add a few more thoughts on the subject of writing one’s author bio. Despite my apathy towards minimalism in general, I feel with author bios that it’s best to err on the side of caution and that maybe less is more and one doesn’t want to go overboard. To wit, some writers tend to try too hard to make themselves sound exotic and interesting, which, I think, betrays a lack of professionalism (and I speak from experience here, as in my very earliest publishing efforts I too was guilty of this from time-to-time). I’m reminded of a funny scene from Umberto Eco’s novel FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM, where a character mentions how serious/famous writers tend to have very short and to-the-point bios, whereas neophytes and wannabees have long-winded over-the-top “colorful” entries.

So, I think the ideal author bio should provide a list of one’s previous (and don’t forget forthcoming!) works, maybe mention a few anthologies that one has appeared in and/or any literary awards one has won, and perhaps one or two autobiographical facts (my preferences are usually to mention the year I was born and the state that I live in . . . but for the love of the gods, DON’T boast about your former menial jobs, no one cares that you used to be a line-cook!). It doesn’t take much practice to master the art of writing concise author bios, but it does help to carefully study the author bios in the books one reads (I would refer the curious to the books of Bret Easton Ellis, who I think does this very well). Anyway, I’ve attached to this tip two photographs that I think serve as appropriate examples of the right way and the wrong way to write author bios, with the Pynchon one serving as a good example of an author bio and the Nicolay one serving as a bad one. “Here endeth the lesson . . .”

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #4: Crafting Your Literary Persona

While of course the books that you write are, as should be expected, the most important thing, it doesn’t hurt to spend some time figuring out how you will project yourself to your readers. The first thing you need to consider is your name. If you already have an interesting-sounding name, you’re good to go. On the other hand, if your name is something like Jack Smith or Jane Brown, you might want to look into adopting a pseudonym. Caution is needed here: you don’t want to choose a new name that’s TOO exotic as then it might be hard for the readers to remember. A good strategy is to go with a generic-sounding first name and combine it with a cooler-sounding last name. That mixture of the commonplace with the exotic should create something memorable.

Next you need to consider your literary persona and how you will choose to project yourself to the public. Now, you might be tempted to portray yourself as an eye patch-wearing, Alaskan sled dog racing, ramblin’ gamblin’ “hard man” (with the obligatory bloody receipts in the pockets), but I would advise against it, as the only people impressed by such things are overweight horror neckbeards. One route you COULD take is the alchemical Union of the Opposites, mixing in things that people don’t usually associate together (consider the success of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow character, which had the genius idea of combing the pirate archetype with that of the 70’s rock star). Here are some potential ideas to get you started: Goth cowboy, Victorian steampunk Parrothead, hip-hop Civil War reenactor, PoMo disco crack whore. The possibilities, as they often are, are limitless.

Some modern writers frown on the idea of author photographs, but I’m all for them and highly suggest you do them. Figuring out what to wear for such affairs is beyond the ken of this series of tips, but though I’m not a sartorialist I can at least leave you with this pearl of wisdom: muumuus, turquoise suits, keyboard neckties, and those polo shirts with the little alligator patches are looks that just never go out of style.

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #5: Editing

Many writers will tell you that editing your books should be a process of addition by subtraction, and while there’s some wisdom in this, I follow the Champagne method of editing, which is a process of addition by addition (I’m reminded of an exchange between Frasier and Niles Crane on FRASIER where Niles asks Frasier, “Whatever happened to the concept of less is more?” and Frasier replies, “Ah, but if less is more, then just think of how much more more will be!”). It seems strange to me to go through all the trouble to write a scene, only to exorcise it completely later on . . . a waste of time and energy! Also, I think it’s important to factor in the occult psychoanalytical elements working here as well. Which is to say, maybe there was a sub rosa reason you put that scene in there in the first place that you only dimly understand on a sub- or unconscious level, and that by removing that scene later on you might be actually damaging the psychological power of your MS (again, on a subconscious or unconscious level). So, I would advise you to think very carefully before trimming!

My last novel, HARLEM SMOKE, was around 290 pages when I finished it. But any writer will tell you how hard it is to get things right on the first pass: oftentimes when you first write something the end result can look pretty skeletal, because you’re more focused on getting the main details down and less concerned with aesthetic ornamentation and stylistic niceties (which to me is the “fun” part). Later drafts of my novel ballooned up to 330 pages or so, as I went back and gussied it up with all of the fun little details I missed the first time around (though I DID end up trimming around 5 pages for the final published version, which I really don’t think affected the book in any real way, to be totally honest).

To me, the most important stage of the editing process is hunting down repetitions (which is also one of the final stages for me). I keep a big list of words and word combinations that I find I tend to unconsciously overuse and maybe repeat myself with too often, so (using the handy “search” function of my word processor) I go through the MS and try to cut down on said repetitions. Some examples: “in fact,” “for example,” “needless to say,” “not to mention,” “it just so happened,” “in question,” “after all,” starting too many dialogue exchanges with the word “well,” and so on and so forth. As you write more books/stories and reread your own work you’ll slowly become more aware of which words/word combinations you overuse, and I think it would be helpful if you created a similar list of your own to deal with this problem.

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #6: Dissonant Notes and the Quest for Imperfection

This tip primarily applies to short story writers. Let’s say that you’ve finished your collection and are assembling the contents and after going over said contents you realize that there’s a story or two that are . . . well, maybe not quite “bad,” but also not on the same scale of quality as the other stories. Let’s call these weaker stories “dissonant notes.” Conventional wisdom would dictate that you scrap that weaker story and replace it with a new superior one (thus making your collection a symphony of perfection), but . . . I actually think that’s not a good strategy. Sometimes it can actually be beneficial to keep a weaker story around, as paradoxical a notion as that might seem. Why? Simply because a weaker story will make the GOOD stories shine all the brighter and seem even better when set next to them.

Think about it: in a hypothetical world where everyone is beautiful, “beauty” ceases to exist as a concept (the same could be said for a world where everyone was “good”). Beauty owes its existence to its opposite ugliness (and vice-versa), just as health needs illness, existence needs non-existence, life needs death, good needs evil, Batman needs the Joker, and so on and so forth. Likewise, I would argue that perfection needs imperfection as well, which is why the idea of a utopia is a fallacy. Many people take the imperfections of our universe (disease, war, sexual deviance, evilness in general and so on) as proof of the absence of God . . . but I think the imperfection of the universe is proof that it’s actually a perfect universe (I’m reminded of that scene in THE MATRIX where Agent Smith tells Morpheus, “Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world. Where none suffered. Where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program.”). Or, to quote a famous fictional serial killer, “Typhoid and swans – it all comes from the same place.”

So, to sum up, do not despair over your dissonant notes and imperfections, but rather use them to your advantage!

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #7: Reading Outside the Genres

This advice primarily pertains to those writers working in established genres (be it horror, fantasy, sci-fi, romance, westerns, mystery, or others). Everyone will tell you to read as many books as you can in the genre you seek to write in, and there’s some good advice in that, in that you want to know the tropes and it’s hard to subvert audience expectations if you aren’t aware of the genre’s trademarks (the old “know the rules before you break them” philosophy). The problem arises when one reads mainly just in that one genre to the exclusion of all else. What you risk happening then is that your own endeavors in the genre might become indistinguishable from everything else out there. Sometimes you read a book/story in a certain genre and you can instantly tell what books the author has read, which isn’t always a good thing.

If you want your work to stand out from the rest of the field, you need to broaden your horizons and encompass things from Outside your chosen genre. I recall reading an old Grant Morrison interview from the late 1980’s where he mentioned one of the reasons why his comic books seemed so weirdly different from most of the other stuff out there was because he took the familiar (say, Batman) and mixed it with things that were unfamiliar with the genre (for example, Jungian depth psychology). Stephen R. Donaldson has also had great success with this technique (see his afterword to THE REAL STORY). To cite one of my own stories that follows this path, I would highlight “Chaoskampf,” which mixes Lovecraftian Weird Fiction with the inner workings of Soviet nuclear submarine technology of the mid-1980’s. Seek inspiration everywhere and read everything that crosses your path, not only books but also newspapers, websites, magazine articles (even on subjects you don’t think you’d be interested in), religious tracts, manifestos, technical journals, video game instruction booklets, pornography, cereal boxes, advertisements, and so on and so forth. Essentially, train yourself to be a sponge, constantly taking in data and information that can be utilized for your future projects.

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #8: Cultivating Literary Feuds

While it is a commonly-accepted truism that one can never have enough friends in the writing/publishing industry, all the same I think one should be selective at times. Less advised but equally important is having a couple of enemies as well. If you’re the sort of person who needs to be “liked” by everyone, you might have trouble making it in the world of creative writing/publishing, so I think it’s good to know right off the bat that at some point, if you’re an interesting-enough person with strongly held opinions, you’re bound to rub some people the wrong way. The sooner you accept this, the better off you’ll be.

I think literary feuds are underrated and something of a lost art form (seriously, just Google the words “literary feuds” and you’ll bring up all kinds of funny and intriguing historical stories). As your social circles widen and you encounter more and more writers, you’ll quickly realize (and this especially holds true in the world of genre fiction) that many writers out there are totally boring and blandly inoffensive specimens who are more concerned with networking, careerism and winning points on social media than aesthetics or creating art. Pissing these people off (and it’s astoundingly easy to do, but if you need further tips in this area I suggest you look into the life of Léon Bloy, who made the technique of amassing literary foes an artform) might close off some doors for you, but in all honesty those doors probably just lead to rooms you would never want to ordinarily step into anyway. One is reminded of an old Charles Barkley bon mot about why he and Michael Jordan were good friends: “ . . . because most of the guys in this league are jerks and you wouldn’t want to spend any time with them.”  

Sure, you could strive to be a universally beloved writer like Neil Gaiman, but sometimes being universally beloved can get pretty damn boring. I imagine that enfant terribles like Yukio Mishima, Bret Easton Ellis, Lydia Lunch or Michel Houellebecq (to name just a few) have/had more fun, so I would suggest you look to figures such as them for artistic inspiration. Sometimes negativity and antagonism can be great boons for motivation and creativity, so go out there and make some enemies today!

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #9: Music  

This could be one of my most important lessons. There are a lot of writers that listen to music when they write, and there’s something to say for this approach: it’s good to find music that fits the ambiance of the project you’re working on, and perhaps some of that music’s influence might even seep into the book by a manner of aural osmosis (I’m reminded of a young Hitchcock’s humorous attempt to make a boring script more exciting by leaving it within the pages of an almanac overnight, to see if it could absorb something interesting). I read once that Quentin Tarantino often listens to a ton of music before starting a screenplay to find those initial songs that capture the “feel” he’s looking for, and this is something I do as well (the two most important songs that inspired my last novel, HARLEM SMOKE, were Insane Poetry’s “The House That Spilled Blood” and “Gimme Hell” by The Jesus and Mary Chain, and finding those two songs early on in the process really helped me get a grip on just what kind of book I was trying to write).

Equally important is selecting a “soundtrack” for your book, which is to say, the musical cues mentioned in the text itself. In my writing workshop days in college I had to deal with a lot of whiny little bitches who complained that I shouldn’t namedrop songs in stories because it will just alienate readers who have never heard them. Then after college I discovered the work of Bret Easton Ellis, who used music in his books in much the same way I did, which made me think, “Whose lead am I going to follow here, whiny little college writing workshop bitches or a guy who’s actually been published?” It was an easy choice to make! The beauty of creating a soundtrack for your book is that it gives the reader something to do when they’re done reading it: maybe they could make a playlist of all the songs, or, if they’re old school like me, a mix CD. I even helpfully list the songs in the order they appear in the backs of most of my own books to make this process easier for the reader. You don’t want to go overboard, though: my first novel CONFUSION had over 100 songs, which was way too much: ideally, you should keep it to maybe under 50 songs (which can fill up around 3 CDs, depending on song length). If you’re unsure how to use music in books, some good examples to investigate (besides my own books) are the works of Bret Easton Ellis and GUIDE by Dennis Cooper.

Now, some people might say, “But what if I’m writing a fantasy novel that’s not even set on Earth? How can I do a soundtrack for that?” I’d just say, “Do it anyway!” I mean let’s be real, if your book is anything like most other fantasy books out there then it’s probably just a thinly disguised fantasy version of medieval England anyway, so it probably wouldn’t be the end of the world if you had your characters listening to Nirvana or MC Hammer or whatever. Immersive world building is wildly overrated.

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #10: Don’t Cut Out The Boring Bits!

One piece of advice often bandied about by the “experts” in regards to writing is that you should eliminate anything that doesn’t move the story forward or that comes off as irrelevant or extraneous. One gets the impression that they think the sole reason someone should read a book is to flip through the pages as quickly as humanely possible (maybe they should invest in flipbooks?). In short, to cut out the “boring” bits (even if you happen to find those bits personally interesting). But I say, not so fast!

Human emotions and feelings are like paints employed by the writer, and most of us seek to make our readers laugh, or cry, or scare them, or sexually titillate them, or whatever. Humor, sadness, fear, sexuality, happiness, these are all universal states that most human beings have some experience with. So why is boredom, as valid a human feeling as anything (and something which almost anyone experiences at some point in their life), discriminated against when it comes to literature? Granted, I’m not saying one should overdo it either, but . . . I think one of the things that made Warhol a genius was that he was one of the first artists to really embrace the aesthetic of boredom (mainly in his movies), choosing to often focus (especially in his early films) on banal everyday activities like sleeping, eating, and what have you. And yet those films oftentimes possess a strangely hypnotic quality. And who knows: maybe the stuff in your books that you fear might bore the proverbial “Joe Public” might actually end up fascinating them!

James Champagne’s Writing Tips #11: Odds & Ends

-Within the skulls of each and every one of us there is enthroned a policeman, a judge, a priest, even god(s). I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, as without some type of self-censorship unit in place the world might lapse into an inferno of total chaos. However, sometimes the writer might be forced to slay that cop, execute that judge, violate that priest, and devour that god (metaphorically speaking). “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” as the koan proclaims. Remember that within our skulls there also lurks an anarchist, a criminal, a serial killer, a dictator, and demons of all shapes and sizes. One of the benefits of being a writer is that we are given a creative outlet, a means to exorcise those negative aspects of our character (what Jung would call our ‘Shadow’) by channeling them into our work, thus binding them and rendering them harmless.

-Remember that environments, buildings and interior spaces are characters in their own right and can be just as important as the flesh & blood creations that occupy them. Writing a story or a book is a lot like being a one-person film studio: you’re the screenwriter, the director, the editor, the camera, the costume designer, the sound composer, and more... but never forget that you’re also the set decorator!

-Regarding the subject of research, a common question is, “How much is too much and how much is too little?” Though I see myself as a man of temperance, balance and moderation, I think when it comes to research you should either go crazy and read every book you can on the topic, or do no research at all and just wing it (I myself prefer the former approach). All or nothing, there should be no middle ground here!

-Many writers take themselves too seriously and have no sense of humor about themselves or their work at all. This is, in my opinion, a grievous way to live. I think it’s good to have a healthy sense of humor/an appreciation of the absurd, and to not take oneself super-seriously. If you need help developing a sense of humor, here are some suggestions to help you along, studying the following TV shows, movies and comic strips might show you how to tickle the proverbial funny bone in your readers:

TV Shows: Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, Saved By The Bell, How I Met Your Mother, Mr. Bean, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, Father Ted, The Ben Stiller Show

Movies: Reality Bites, The Great Outdoors, What About Bob?, Clue, Hook, Mrs. Doubtfire, Ernest Goes to Jail, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Meet the Fockers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Roman Holiday, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Wedding Crashers, Ghostbusters

Comic Strips: Calvin & Hobbes, The Lockhorns, Garfield, Doonesbury

-When writing a novel, it can be helpful to set milestones for yourself as a way to gauge your progress. My method is, I’ll start by making a list of all the scenes/chapters I expect will be in my book (which is the closest I get to doing an outline), then go through that list and try to estimate how long each scene will be, so that I can get a rough idea about how many pages the book should be. So, for example, if you think that your book will be 300 pages long, every time you finish 30 pages (which would come to 10% of the book) write it down on a list so you can see what your percentage completed is. As an extra incentive, feel free to reward yourself every time you get another 10% done.

-I think it’s important to decide what your book’s title is early on, because it can give you some much-needed focus. Alfred Hitchcock believed that a lack of a set-in-stone title cursed a film production with a sense of haphazardness and an unfocused atmosphere, and I think the same can be applied to books.

-A good rule of thumb: if you write something that moves even yourself to tears, odds are good that your readers may feel a bit of those strong emotions as well. If by the end of a project you don’t feel anything at all, your book probably won’t stir up any emotions in the reader (though if that’s by design, knock yourself out!) Remember what Franz Kafka once wrote: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

-So you want to write a sex scene but you’ve never actually had sex? Don’t sweat it! Just find a porn clip you like, copy down everything that happens, then change the names and some small details, and voila! You’re good to go! (EDITOR'S NOTE: this point caused some controversy on social media so I should stress I was not being 100% serious with this one). 

-On the subject of author readings: unless you have a really distinctive voice like that of William S. Burroughs or Ted Levine or James Earl Jones, I would advise against it. If you still strongly feel the need to do such a thing, make it less like a typical staid author reading and more like a Nick Land/CCRU mid-1990’s “lecture”: lie on the ground croaking out demon names and channeling Artaud while Jungle music blares over acid rave blob visuals in the background.

-When reading books by other people, always write down unfamiliar words and look them up later. Over the years I’ve assembled a gigantic list of nearly 900+ exotic/unfamiliar/archaic words, which has come in very handy for my own writing projects. Reading the 19^th-century French Decadents in particular has exposed me to many words that I’ve never seen used elsewhere. Archaic/exotic words are to the writer what spices are to a gourmet chef: don’t be afraid to use them (and be sure to assemble your own “Weird Word” list!).

-Finally, even though writing is a mostly cerebral exercise, don’t ignore the rest of your body! If you’re going to be spending a great deal of time typing you’ll want to have strong, well-developed arm muscles. Keep a pair of dumbbells near your work station (I would suggest 10 pound ones) and do some bicep curls every now and then to really develop those arm muscles of yours.