Yesterday, I went to the second annual Squonkapalooza in Johnstown, PA. Similar to events like the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant or the Flatwoods Monster Convention in Flatwoods, Squonkapalooza is a celebration of a regional cryptid—the squonk, in this case, which is one of my favorite critters and one I highly recommend checking out if you’re not already aware of it.
One of the things I went to at Squonkapalooza was a talk by Ronald L. Murphy, Jr. on the meaning of the squonk. During the talk he mentioned some of the animals that used to live in Pennsylvania and are now extinct, like the woodland bison and wolverine. There are others that are officially extinct in PA but are still occasionally sighted, like the mountain lion and wolf. As he said it, if you see a wolf in Pennsylvania in 2024, then you’ve seen a cryptid: a creature that shouldn’t exist in a given place, time, or understanding of reality, and whose existence has not officially been proven.
Like I imagine is the case for many people right now, the Olympics has become my default “on in the background” content since it started. Not because I’m particularly passionate about any of the sports involved—more the opposite, in fact. There’s something very intriguing and entertaining about watching sports I normally don’t think about, or seeing things I’m only familiar with from family picnics being played at an exceptionally high level.
Something else the Olympics makes very clear: sports are omnipresent in just about every culture of the world. This has likely been true for thousands of years. From the original Olympics held in ancient Greece to the ball game of the Aztec and Maya, just about every culture we know about had some kind of sport.
Despite this, I think it’s safe to say that sports are among the most neglected aspects of society in creative writing. You can definitely find examples of sports in fiction and poetry, but not nearly to the same degree as other cultural touchstones like food, music, religion, or fashion.
Brownies have always been one of my favorite mythical creatures. Part of this comes from being a natural night owl and introvert; I feel a certain kinship for beings that only work at night and unseen. But they also intrigue me from a metaphorical standpoint. They work selflessly, never demanding credit for doing chores—but that doesn’t mean they’re creatures you can take advantage of. Ignore them too long, or treat them poorly, and brownies turn into bogarts: malevolent tricksters that steal and make milk go sour.
Brownies are just one of the many little people in world myths and folktales. I’m in the beginning stages of a new novel project that will use a variety of little folk. I’ve been reviewing my folklore research in preparation and thought other writers might also find inspiration in some of these lesser-known little people from around the world.
I have a habit of writing a lot of eating and cooking scenes into my stories. This wasn’t something I realized on my own—my writing group pointed it out, and after that I started to see just how often I use food in my fiction.
There are a few different reasons for this, I think. One is that I came of age reading fantasy series like Wheel of Time,Lord of the Rings, and Redwall, all of which feature frequent, detailed descriptions of meals. There’s also the fact that I spent most of my twenties working in food service and in the spirit of “write what you know”, I end up writing a lot of characters who prepare food for a living.
But, most of all, I think food can be a very useful device for fiction writers in both literary and genre camps. One of the presenters at the In Your Write Mind conference last weekend was Tim Waggoner, who gave a talk on writing with an immersive point of view. One point he made was that the strongest senses—sight and hearing—aren’t the most effective for immersing a reader because they’re powerful enough people can use them from a distance, or even through a screen. To activate our weaker senses—scent, taste, and touch—we need to be right in that environment, and this makes the reader feel right there too when you call on these senses.
I just wrapped up my first experience at the In Your Write Mind conference hosted by Seton Hill University’s popular fiction program—quite literally, in fact; I’m on the train back to Pittsburgh as I write this.
You might think, given how many writing conferences and such I go to in a typical year, that the experience would be predictable by this point, but the truth is that past experience has just taught me not to assume anything. Conferences and conventions vary wildly in just about every respect. I’ve been to some that last a single day and others that last 4-5, conventions with 10,000+ attendees and others with less than a hundred. Most have book fairs or exhibit halls, but not all; some are mostly panels, some mostly workshops, some mostly readings, some a mix of all three—and the value I’ve gotten from going to those activities has been just as wide-ranging.
TV, like the internet, is simultaneously among the best and the worst things for a writer. It can absolutely be a distraction that can prevent you from writing if you allow it to be. But it’s also a potentially valuable source of inspiration and ideas, and one that I think gets overlooked because it’s viewed as an unproductive time sink.
What’s great about TV for a writer is that everything on-screen is edited and packaged for maximum viewer retention. It’s a case study in creating emotional hooks, setting up cliffhangers, establishing tension and intrigue, and building characters through dialogue and actions—all things that are very useful for both prose writers and poets.
You can also get more direct story inspiration from watching TV, and not always in the ways you might expect. Here are three prompts that can encourage you to see TV in a more creative way:
I’m going to take a second for a minor brag first, but I promise it’s relevant: I’ve had a pretty solid first half of 2024 when it comes to submissions. So far this year, I’ve gotten 53 responses from publishers: 50 rejections and 3 acceptances, for an acceptance percentage of 5.7%—about a full percent higher than my typical average. Adding in the 4 article pitches I’ve had accepted and the fact that Cryptid Bits came out in February, and I think it’s safe to say 2024 is shaping up to be my best year by far as a writer.
Even aside from the publications, though, one of the main things that has me feeling like I’m building momentum is the fact that 13 of those rejections (roughly a quarter of them) weren’t just the standard form letter. This included a short-list from Andromeda Spaceways, a long-list from TheMasters Review, and a personal from Missouri Review, all places it feels good to hear a nice no from.
Being a writer—or at least, being one who actively tries to get work published—means hearing “no” a lot. I’ve been at this for a while and have developed a fairly thick skin, but even so it can be rough sometimes when the rejections stack up. I’ve had spans where I’ve gotten a dozen or more form rejections in a row, sometimes multiple on the same day, and it can be hard to muster the motivation to send work out again when I’m in one of those stretches—the doubt and imposter syndrome start to creep in, and this is when I’m most likely to self-reject myself out of opportunities, or to question why I’m even doing this in the first place.
I’ve been particularly fascinated by ghosts of late. They’ve always intrigued me to some extent—as an avid horror fan, I’ve enjoyed plenty a ghost story over my lifetime, though I haven’t played with hauntings in my fiction until the last few years. I mostly avoided them because of how widespread they already are. It’s just like dragons, vampires, or zombies—the world already has so many stories about them that they can quickly veer into tired cliches if a writer isn’t bringing something new to the trope.
One thing that sets ghosts apart from other fantastic creatures is that they’re one of the supernatural elements most likely to feature in literary fiction. From Hamlet’s father to Sethe’s daughter in Beloved, there are ample examples of hauntings across the literary canon. I see two potential reasons for this:
A lot of people don’t think of ghosts as speculative. In a 2021 survey, 41% of respondents said they believe ghosts exist, a similar percentage to those who believe in demons. That’s lower than the percentage who believe aliens exist (57%) but much higher than belief in bigfoot (13%), vampires (8%), or werewolves (9%).
Ghosts and haunting are easy ready-made metaphors for emotions like grief, regret, loss, and nostalgia. This is reflected in our euphemistic language for these feelings—you might say someone is “haunted by the past” or that a place is “a ghost of what it once was.” Ghosts are reminders of what used to be, unchanging intrusions of the past on the present.
Their ephemeral nature makes it easier to insert them into a narrative. The “suspension of disbelief” factor is lower with a ghost than something corporeal because the reader has less of an expectation that it would leave physical signs and evidence. This also allows for more play between what’s real and what’s imagined by the narrator, especially in first-person narratives.
