My Return to Writing Fiction
Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2025 4:09 pm
Returning to writing, and I mean, in fiction, is something I’ve been struggling with for quite some time. It’s not that I struggle to think up worlds, and characters, and scenarios. No, that’s all in my head, all of the time. It’s translated into the music I’ve made, and the things I daydream about … or “night dream” about while I’m at work. But, the process of writing, editing, and publishing, have always been the biggest monster I’ve had to face, because, at least two of those things are mildly, to extremely difficult.
And when it comes to the first draft, I’m always thinking way too hard about it. Instead of just putting words to the page. And it’s so hard to break out of that habit. How do I know? Because I still haven’t broken out of it.
That’s not even to mention all of the procrastinating I do, constantly.
But this was all so much easier … when I still had a mentor. Someone to bounce those ideas off of, someone to steer me in a specific direction, or to tell me to stop fussing over the details, and just write. Let it flow.
Ed passed away in 2018, and I’ll never forget the influence he had over my work.
To just write, though … is such an alien thing, now. It’s been so long, and yet, I have at least three books halfway finished on one of my drives that have just kind of … been there. For years.
The vampire novel, the novel about an android gaining her humanity, and some romance I was writing.
And now, this new thing.
Maybe sometime soon I’ll finish all of it. But I know what I need, and want to finish, now, is the new thing.
The space opera, or space-oriented sci-fi, whatever you’d call it!
I can’t really divulge too much, because I’d hate to see my specific ideas show up in something someone generated and regurgitated into a self published mess they couldn’t even tell you the name of. And, really, that’s the problem with using AI to generate fiction. The people who do it, they’re not putting something out into the world that they know, or have bled over.
It’s these types of people who think that authoring novels is something that can make you a quick buck, but let me tell you.
A buck is about as much as I make per year on my previous works. Not that I’m all that proud of them, anymore. I wrote that stuff in my twenties, and it has zero relevance to my thoughts and ideas as they stand, now, at the end of 2025.
Never-the-less, it is because of these reasons, I’d like to actually query an agent.
But … in order to do that, I need a finished manuscript.
And I need a mentor.
I need a trampoline to throw my ideas at, or something to push me in a direction.
I thought about constructing a local LLM on my PC, since its specs far outpace the minimum I’d need in order to do so, and just see what happens when I throw ideas at a closed “agentic” system. Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot.
But, there’s still the ethical concerns behind that, if there are any. How much fuel or electricity would I be burning on my own PC, if I was just shooting the shit with an algorithmic voice machine. Would it be more, or less than I use when I’m, say, playing Diablo 4?
Maybe you’re thinking, “Hey, join a writer’s forum! Go to a book club!”
I just ain’t like that, though.
I don’t go out and find book clubs to join (although, maybe I should? Heck, it’d get me off of the computer screen every once in a while). And, my last experience on a writer’s forum was with a bunch of snooty yet-to-be-author writers who shunned and belittled me for even thinking that self publishing could be a viable option for those who don’t want to be stuck waiting years for an agent to go, “Okay, I’m interested.”
And then, back to the “agentic” mentor idea. If I were bouncing ideas and thoughts off of a local LLM, would that put my work in a place where it’d be considered “made with AI,” or influenced by it? Would that be ironic, in that a large majority of the story itself has to do with a woman struggling with the isolation of deep space, with only an automaton and a ship-side AI as her companions?
Yeah, it would.
I don’t know, though. I do know, that bouncing ideas off of a remote LLM is a really bad idea. Unless you’re okay with your work being soaked up into a sponge that’ll end up in the hands of someone else. Maybe the hands of someone who’s trying to make a quick penny by tossing something generated into the void that is now self published works.
It’s funny, though, that I’ve come this full circle. From my twenties, shunning the Big Six, and going my own route, to turning forty, and thinking, “Actually, maybe tossing my fully hand-written work into a metaphoric black hole isn’t such a great idea, anymore?”
This is my struggle, though. I’ve spent about an hour writing this post, instead of writing the next chapter in my book.
Welcome to my brain.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/writing/2025/12 ... o-writing/
And when it comes to the first draft, I’m always thinking way too hard about it. Instead of just putting words to the page. And it’s so hard to break out of that habit. How do I know? Because I still haven’t broken out of it.
That’s not even to mention all of the procrastinating I do, constantly.
But this was all so much easier … when I still had a mentor. Someone to bounce those ideas off of, someone to steer me in a specific direction, or to tell me to stop fussing over the details, and just write. Let it flow.
Ed passed away in 2018, and I’ll never forget the influence he had over my work.
To just write, though … is such an alien thing, now. It’s been so long, and yet, I have at least three books halfway finished on one of my drives that have just kind of … been there. For years.
The vampire novel, the novel about an android gaining her humanity, and some romance I was writing.
And now, this new thing.
Maybe sometime soon I’ll finish all of it. But I know what I need, and want to finish, now, is the new thing.
The space opera, or space-oriented sci-fi, whatever you’d call it!
I can’t really divulge too much, because I’d hate to see my specific ideas show up in something someone generated and regurgitated into a self published mess they couldn’t even tell you the name of. And, really, that’s the problem with using AI to generate fiction. The people who do it, they’re not putting something out into the world that they know, or have bled over.
It’s these types of people who think that authoring novels is something that can make you a quick buck, but let me tell you.
A buck is about as much as I make per year on my previous works. Not that I’m all that proud of them, anymore. I wrote that stuff in my twenties, and it has zero relevance to my thoughts and ideas as they stand, now, at the end of 2025.
Never-the-less, it is because of these reasons, I’d like to actually query an agent.
But … in order to do that, I need a finished manuscript.
And I need a mentor.
I need a trampoline to throw my ideas at, or something to push me in a direction.
I thought about constructing a local LLM on my PC, since its specs far outpace the minimum I’d need in order to do so, and just see what happens when I throw ideas at a closed “agentic” system. Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot.
But, there’s still the ethical concerns behind that, if there are any. How much fuel or electricity would I be burning on my own PC, if I was just shooting the shit with an algorithmic voice machine. Would it be more, or less than I use when I’m, say, playing Diablo 4?
Maybe you’re thinking, “Hey, join a writer’s forum! Go to a book club!”
I just ain’t like that, though.
I don’t go out and find book clubs to join (although, maybe I should? Heck, it’d get me off of the computer screen every once in a while). And, my last experience on a writer’s forum was with a bunch of snooty yet-to-be-author writers who shunned and belittled me for even thinking that self publishing could be a viable option for those who don’t want to be stuck waiting years for an agent to go, “Okay, I’m interested.”
And then, back to the “agentic” mentor idea. If I were bouncing ideas and thoughts off of a local LLM, would that put my work in a place where it’d be considered “made with AI,” or influenced by it? Would that be ironic, in that a large majority of the story itself has to do with a woman struggling with the isolation of deep space, with only an automaton and a ship-side AI as her companions?
Yeah, it would.
I don’t know, though. I do know, that bouncing ideas off of a remote LLM is a really bad idea. Unless you’re okay with your work being soaked up into a sponge that’ll end up in the hands of someone else. Maybe the hands of someone who’s trying to make a quick penny by tossing something generated into the void that is now self published works.
It’s funny, though, that I’ve come this full circle. From my twenties, shunning the Big Six, and going my own route, to turning forty, and thinking, “Actually, maybe tossing my fully hand-written work into a metaphoric black hole isn’t such a great idea, anymore?”
This is my struggle, though. I’ve spent about an hour writing this post, instead of writing the next chapter in my book.
Welcome to my brain.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/writing/2025/12 ... o-writing/