The Purpose

It is of little surprise to most who know me that it has been my dream for years to write a book. Me, a storyteller? Crazy, I know.

For about 6 years I've actively bounced different story ideas around in my head, made quite a few outlines, and even taken a few shots at opening chapters. Unfortunately, I have put relatively very little in the form of actual words-to-paper. The reasons behind this lack of writing have varied in origin and validity over the years, but, once they've popped in my mind some delicious cocktail of undiagnosed A.D.D., surprisingly low self-esteem, and hyper perfectionism have grabbed on to said reason and not let me do any more writing until I've come up with a work around for it.

To understand the purpose of this blog, and what my hope is with it, I must first explain how I got here.

The first book that I outlined came about on an overnight drive to Michigan in December of 2014 while I was buzzing off of some 5 Hour Energy and Rachel was sleeping. Nothing else to do but brainstorm. I developed a full outline for a political thriller that revolved around a presidential election with a populous candidate with no experience who relied upon hackers, a congressional investigation into his opponent that went nowhere, a devoted following that loved how "off the cuff and just speaks his mind" he was, and then lost the popular vote but won the electoral college. Turns out, I'm not so much a fiction author as a future non-fiction author...so I gave up on that one after writing the first few chapters (by hand, might I add), and reality becoming far stranger than fiction.

By this point, I was a full time teacher and was reading more and more young adult novels...

[Tangent #1: if you are a teacher who wants to connect with your students without revealing a lot about yourself, here's a suggestion: laugh with them and consume their media. If student's know you are interested in what they are, it will spread and they will start wondering about your interests. In fact, I have a story to tell about that exact thing.]

...and so I pivoted. What books did I see my students reading? What topics/genres did I find them wanting to talk to me about? If I still wanted to write, what was a book that I would be proud to see my students reading? Naturally, this lead me to my favorite stories in history. After all, I am, in the most basic qualifications of the term, a historian.

However, I didn't just want to tell any historical stories. It wasn't just the ones chosen by politicians to be in the standards, but the ones that I would tell students during my "story time" lessons...

[Tangent #2: so a bunch of teachers are going to scoff at this, but I would regularly do lessons that had absolutely nothing to do with our standards. And I don't mean that they weren't directly related, they didn't relate at all. Students would just come in, take a seat somewhere, leave everything in their bags, and I would just tell them a real story. No notes, no tests, no activity, just a chance to laugh, learn, and ask questions. I loved them. I loved them so much, I eventually started tricking my students by creating lessons that seemed like weird story telling, but then would actually connect to the topic we were studying for. For example: "Today we are going to learn about the origins of Godzilla and Spongebob Squarepants." Yup. That's a real lesson I used multiple times. Why? Because they have the same origin: the United States testing nuclear weapons in Bikini Atoll. But wait, nuclear testing in Bikini Atoll isn't in the standards either, how does that connect to the curriculum on post World War II Japan, their relationship with the United States, and their booming industrial complex? Well, you ever wonder why one of the single most popular Japanese icons of the last half century is based on the unnatural atrocities and evils that nuclear weapons release upon the world, and in the end the humans are the villains? Weird...wonder if it's some sort of political commentary....]

[Tangent #1 of Tangent #2: how good are Godzilla movies? Like seriously. Even the dumb ones are entertaining...and did you see King of the Monsters? "Art" is the only word you can use to describe that film. Every monster's entrance is worthy of a canvas.]

...that drew my students in. These stories were what made me fall in love with history, so why couldn't they do the same for them? So I decided that if I was going to write a book that could be more than just a random story, it should be something different that I could envision my students wanting to read.

From the outset, the only story I knew I had to tell was that of the exploration of Antarctica, and the race to the South Pole. This is my single favorite story in history. I love this story so much that I have asked teachers to let me have their class for a day, just to tell it to them when I wasn't teaching Social Studies anymore. After doing some research, there are a surprisingly few number of books written on the subject, and even fewer are for young adult readers. Most of them were written over 80 years ago and are non-fiction, but I specifically want to write fiction.

Why fiction? Two simple reasons: first, my students would be more interested in a fictitious story based on reality; second, I don't want to be too stressed about being 100% factually correct and accurate. Not that I am going to intentionally shy away from the truth, as the reality of history is entertaining enough, I just want the freedom to say "well, that change made for a better story," when I inevitably get an event or person wrong. Let's just call it a failsafe.

​Thus, a little over three years ago, "Ptolemy's Tales" was born.

Sort of.

Actually not really.

An idea was born. An idea that I could write books about explorer's who shaped our world today. An idea that I could combine my love of explorers, historical repercussions, space travel, and futuristic science fiction. An idea that went through many iterations until everything specific about the original was completely scraped for a different story altogether [perfectionist].

In my defense, the newer version is multitudes better. The newer version quickly became a series in my head, but stayed true to my interests. I just scrapped things like pocket dimensions, worm/black holes, alien lifeforms, and space pirates. While I have read many stories that have used those properties in fantastic ways, they don't improve upon the real stories of any given explorer, so they aren't needed.

Instead, the story is something simpler. A kid with a dream to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of his time in order to help shape the future of humanity, is sent back in time to walk alongside the explorers that helped create his future.

It still can be defined as historical science fiction, but there is far less emphasis upon the science, and more on the historical.

In July of 2018, my wife encouraged me to look into some sort of writing app. Something that would make it easier for me to write anywhere, at anytime, and have the book formatted for easier editing or publication when the time came. I tried a few different, but eventually landed on Werdsmith. It has a subscription fee to it, but if you are an aspiring writer, I recommend it.

​Currently, I have written 25,208 words in Werdsmith. Single spaced, that's roughly 50 pages. Not an amount of writing worth scoffing at for the average adult, but an embarrassingly low amount for someone that wishes to be a writer and has been working in this app for 2 years.

However, what the app doesn't take into account is what I have thought about every single day for the past 6 years. What it doesn't take into account are all the edits, re-edits, scrapped outlines, restarted outlines, scrapped first chapters, restarted chapters, and anything hand written. A day has not gone by where I don't think about the book at least once. If it isn't story itself, its names of characters or organizations. Or, let's be honest, it's one of the other book ideas I have had bouncing around in my head for years but will probably never see the light of day [undiagnosed A.D.D.].

When I started getting writers block on improved outlines and didn't know where to go, I read the book "Save the Cat Writes a Novel"...

[Tangent #3: that whole "there are only 5 stories that have ever been told," or whatever, is absolutely true. But it isn't a genre thing, it's a sequence thing. Your story has protagonists and antagonists. There's only a limited number of ways their battle can end. And to get to that end, good stories follow very similar structures. "Save the Cat" was originally a book about writing movie scripts. It provided story beats with goofy names to help you tell a good story, such as if you have a bit of an anti-hero, make them do something early on that makes the audience recognize they aren't a completely terrible person, i.e. save the cat from the tree. Well, that method was then translated into this book about writing novels. If you want to write or simply want to see how the good story sausage gets made, I highly recommend it.]

...and was pleasantly surprised that my story was already hitting all the major points, but I was missing a few big items. Namely theme. Yes, I want to tell a story, but why tell it in the way I'm trying to tell it and why use a character such as Ptolemy? Started a new outline, but this time wrote with a theme in mind and felt like I hit it on the head.

Next up: time to sit down and write. Again.

​And that's what I did. I wrote the first chapter, trying to set up the world and define the tone of the book.

Hated it. So I did it again. Still hated it.

Went back to the outline, everything looked great story wise. Looked back at the details of the world I envisioned. Those were still on point. That's when I walked away for a bit.

I didn't give up on it, I didn't stop thinking about it, there was simply something wrong and I couldn't see it. That's when I began doing that thing that my mind loves to do, hyper-focus upon something, especially when I'm trying to forget about it.

What is most annoying about this quirk my brain has is that it normally ends up figuring out the problem.

Which of course it did. Tone. I didn't like the tone of my writing. Sometimes I was too goofball, cracking jokes every other line. Other times I was too serious, trying to set the tone for a drama of death and misfortune. Neither of which were necessarily accurate.

That's where I am now. I know the story I want to tell. I know the characters involved. I know why they are there and what they hope to accomplish. I know how one book transitions into another, and how the other reflects upon the first. I just don't have the voice I want to use to tell it.

To misquote Miles Davis, it's going to take time to figure out how to write like myself.

That's where this blog comes in to play. I want to write to write. I don't want to think too much about Ptolemy for a bit, I just want to find my voice.

I'm going to use this blog to try and write a series of short stories to help me find it. I've got some Story Cubes that I will roll to give me ideas and then I will write whatever comes to mind.

As of right now I don't have any set plans for what my criteria will be going forward, but I'm thinking it will be a simple time thing: roll the dice, set a timer, write, then publish. I'm going to try to make this a semi-regular thing, but I don't know what that means just yet.

While I work to figure that process out, my first story will be the one promised in Tangent #1. Navigate to the "Short Stories" page to begin reading.