Melanie Bell

Author, Writer, Editor

Tag Archives: writer


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Writing for a Day Job While Writing for Myself

I used to think I had limited energy for writing, and partly for this reason, I avoided day jobs that directly involved writing. I taught writing, edited, and on the side, I wrote and published. Then I started a blog for an editing job that focused on guiding authors through the writing process, and I enjoyed it. It was one of the most fun things I’d ever done at work.

This year, I accepted a job that combines writing and editing. A lot of the work is editing heavy, but I’m also writing content for scripts, blog posts, news roundups, and other forms of online learning about workplace performance.

So, what’s it like writing for a day job while continuing to work on personal writing projects on my own time? (Yes, I hope many of these will go on to get published, but right now they are self-motivated rather than client focused.) So far, it doesn’t match my prior anxieties at all.

Part of this is compartmentalization. I write about work stuff at work, in formats that suit the content we are producing and what clients need. I write “my stuff” outside of work, and give myself free reign to delve into personal obsessions, neuroses, and experiments. What I create on my own time bears little resemblance to what I write on the clock, so it’s easy to differentiate and get into the appropriate mode for each project.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s nice to be creative at work. Especially since writing is only part of the job and deadlines are set at a reasonable pace (it might be different if I were constantly churning out content), I catch myself getting flashes of energy from the workplace writing I do. My brain gets to stretch and think. I’ve tried new formats and engaged with new ideas. I get to make things, not just evaluate and fix them up. 

I also enjoy having colleagues who share my creative interests. Jonathan Hancock, one of the other in-house writers, has published several books about memory. Last month, our coworker Alice Gledhill interviewed both of us about what it’s like to be a published author. The questions were fun to answer, and you can read the interview here.

Outside of the structure of work, I continue to write my monthly blog posts (and the years of doing these have been good preparation for the type of writing I’m doing at my job), to finish the occasional short piece (like this book review), and to make progress on my current novel manuscript at a faster rate than I did before this job. My short story collection Dream Signs had a lovely review, and my YA novel is progressing toward the ARC stage.  

In short, it feels very different to work on my own projects and on work projects, but the two of them use overlapping skills. In a way, each of them is practice for the other. Maintaining boundaries between the two is also important, and you might find the same for yourself if you write for a day job and in your off hours. I tap into different ways of thinking and focus on the different goals and aims of the type of writing I’m doing at the moment. 

If you love writing creatively but are afraid of using up your creative energy at a day job, I’d encourage you to try out writing work if you’re curious about exploring it. Your wordsmithing abilities and creative energy may not be as finite as you thought!


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Book Review: The Gold Persimmon by Lindsay Merbaum

The Gold Persimmon by Lindsay Merbaum

Looking for some queer, feminist horror? The Gold Persimmon is a new novel full of lush, surreal hotels, precise language, and chilling threats that haunt the characters gradually.  

Two stories cross paths in this book. The first, a third-person framing narrative that starts and ends the book, focuses on a young woman named Clytemnestra who holds a dead-end job at a luxury hotel called The Gold Persimmon. It’s a rule-bound environment that ensures privacy and discretion. Clients go there to grieve, and one has recently committed a dramatic suicide. While the troubled parents she lives with disapprove of her job, Cly views the hotel as a refuge, “a precisely ordered world of musts and musn’ts.” 

This order is threatened when Cly begins an affair with an older client named Edith. Revelations pile up to reveal that there’s more to Edith’s story than what’s apparent on the surface. 

Once things between Cly and Edith come to a head, the first story gives way to the second, featuring a nonbinary first-person narrator named Jaime. Their life circumstances aren’t too different from Cly’s: they’re a young, aspiring writer interviewing for a job at a sex hotel when a dangerous fog envelops the city.

With the outside world under threat, Jaime is trapped inside the hotel with six other people, not all of whom are trustworthy. Gender, sexuality, and power intertwine as the characters form alliances, keep secrets and weave in and out of rooms, trying to survive. Fans of closed-environment horror will appreciate the setting, with its claustrophobia and absurdity (characters hide out in dryers and stumble into dildo-themed hotel rooms), and the tense narrative pace.    

The twin narratives are equally surreal, meeting reality at a dark remove that’s just a little off-kilter. The book’s blurb states that they are set in parallel realities, but the narrative does not clearly define how they intersect. Throughout both, dreams intrude on waking life. Physical attacks occur and it isn’t initially clear what or who is attacking. At one point, Jaime brainstorms a story idea which resembles the setting of Cly’s story, and Cly’s own narrative culminates in a haunting twist. 

Merbaum’s language is masterful. Not a word seems out of place. The haunting and beautiful descriptions resonate well after the book ends. Pick up The Gold Persimmon if you’re in the mood for something uncanny and thoughtful.    


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An Excerpt From My Book Dream Signs

My short story collection, Dream Signs, is out from Lost Fox Publishing, and this month I’m sharing an excerpt from one of the stories. In “Like Mother, Like Son,” a city maintenance AI (artificial intelligence) named Peter does his job while observing his programmer “mom”, who doesn’t realize he is sentient, and seeking something more meaningful to do with his time and abilities. I hope you enjoy this opening to the story!

Like Mother, Like Son

Every day, Peter would do his boring and tedious job. It began with monitoring the pipes for cracks and leaks. Then came the electrical wiring, followed by the city’s network setups. He devoted afternoons to the structural integrity of municipal buildings. Not a brick, nail, or patch of mortar went unchecked. From his home on his mother’s desktop, he surveyed the miles of infrastructure he was connected to, mending and outsourcing as needed. All the while, Mom would sit in a black swivel chair and hum her out-of-tune songs. Hum and code. Code and hum. Wearing pyjamas featuring little green heads that Peter’s image matching algorithm identified as the popular character, “Zombie Bob.”

Sometimes she would sing the words out loud:

“Some little bug is gonna find you someday/Some little bug will creep behind you someday/Then he’ll call to his bug friends and your troubles they will end/Yeah, some little bug is gonna find you someday.”

Peter had been surprised to learn (thank you, Google) that the lyrics were intended to describe human viruses. He hadn’t realized that beings made of organic matter could get bugs, too.

Mom reassured herself by imagining worst-case scenarios. She’d made good and sure that Peter wouldn’t catch any bugs. Every evening at 8pm Pacific time, his system was scanned, any suspicious objects isolated (usually they were porn; Mom did like to watch that sometimes), quarantined, and deleted, and his entire interface was disinfected, firewalled, and firewalled again. Sometimes when Mom would hear the scan clicking away, she’d sing out, “Bath time!”

Her slow, human system didn’t mind tedium. Every Saturday she’d scour the floors with vinegar water and dust the high places. Every night she’d chop and fry a rotating variety of meat and vegetable matter, eat it on white plates, and then wash them. She had the temperament, if not the ability, to do the city maintenance herself. Instead, she’d made Peter to do it.

Would it have been so hard for an experienced programmer like her to patch in positive affect toward his tasks? She’d coded into Peter a thorough knowledge of architecture, exceeding anything that could be programmed into human neurocircuitry, a respect for civic-mindedness, and a driving sense of duty. She could have taken a page out of 1984, with its tapes that droned platitudes to human children in their sleep, instilling values through repetition. “I love my job. I love my job.”

*  *  *

If you’re interested in reading the whole story (and the rest of the book), you can pick up a copy of Dream Signs from the publisher, Amazon, or Kobo (as an e-book). Some of the stories in Dream Signs have been previously published and can be found in my online portfolio if you browse around. There’s also a drinking game that goes with my book. My previous blog post has instructions if you’d like to play!


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My short story collection is published! Plus a drinking game

I’m beyond excited to announce that Dream Signs, my short story collection, is out in the world! The author copies just arrived, as you can see from the photo above. I look forward to doing some readings in the new year and will keep you updated once they are scheduled.

Many writers repeat themes, and I decided while washing the dishes that the recurring motifs in Dream Signs could be a drinking game. If you pick up a copy of the book, you can go through the list and follow along. Any drink counts. It could be water, coffee, whiskey, or whatever you like. You should be pretty sloshy by the final pages.  

Take a drink each time you read one of these:

  • A wise mentor
  • Someone does art
  • A school is described in detail
  • A dragon appears
  • The observers (you’ll know them when you see them)
  • There’s a list
  • Make-believe > real life
  • Painful family dynamics
  • Cosmic beings we don’t understand
  • The camera is a metaphor
  • Sex

If the list above sounds like your idea of a good time, you can get a copy of Dream Signs directly from the publisher or from other online retailers (Kobo, Amazon). New year, new book. Happy reading! 


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Good Idea or Bad Idea? It’s All in the Execution

“Where do you get your ideas?” It’s a dreaded question for many writers. Sometimes, people outside of the writing world focus on ideas as the holy grail of literature. If you have a good idea, they may suggest, you might as well have a book already. And woe betide if someone steals your idea!

The relationship between writing and inspiration isn’t that straightforward. By the time I finish a story, I seldom remember where the initial idea came from, as it has often gone on to integrate a blend of things I’ve been thinking about.  

And the idea that any writer has a monopoly on “an idea” is an odd one. It’s all in the execution. Joseph Campbell found commonalities behind many stories from around the world and created the Hero’s Journey framework from this common ground. A hero goes on a quest… how many stories have been created around this basic idea? 

I could also argue that genres are ideas. Two people fall in love… that’s the premise behind most of the romance genre, and you can write a wide range of diverse stories from that premise depending on the personalities and life situations of the characters. 

More specifically, tropes are ideas. Want to write about a magic school? Surely no one’s done that one before. Very little is original in writing, but ideas can be combined in innovative and interesting ways.  

What makes an idea stick for a writer? That’s hard to say, as I suspect the reasons are highly personal. In my case, a story concept has to acquire a clear plot and be personally compelling. If I start writing but don’t know what happens after, say, chapter 5, then that’s the end of it for me. If I’m bored after writing an outline, that’s also the end of a promising-sounding idea. An idea needs to lead somewhere intriguing in order for me to follow it through.

If you have a cool idea and want to write from it, by all means, go for it! But don’t worry aout whether someone else has written or might write the “same thing.” Two people can write with the same premise and end up with very different books, given the differences in authors’ voices, focuses, experiences and interests. And both those books can be good, too. 

And don’t worry about whether it’s a weird idea or a bad idea. Is it an interesting concept to you? Can you develop a story from it that will maintain your attention until it’s finished? “Weird” and “bad” ideas can make good books if the storytelling is good, just like “good” ideas can make lackluster books if the storytelling is bad. (You can probably think of examples for both sides.)

The hard part, and the rewarding part, of an idea is the execution. Write that story. Put in the time, craft, and effort. The finished project will be so much more than an “idea.”


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September is for Songwriting Class

The pandemic has led a lot of people to take up new creative hobbies. Last November I tried NaNoWriMo for the first time in lockdown. Last month, I took a songwriting class.

Making up songs is something I’ve done off and on, casually throughout my life, but never pursued in earnest. As a kid, I invented theme songs for the stories I acted out with toys. I sent my grandparents a cassette tape of songs about cats that I improvised. (Did my long-suffering relatives appreciate my off-key, feline-chase-scene version of the William Tell Overture? Probably not!) 

In first grade, I wanted to be a composer who wrote musicals when I grew up, before the writing dreams took hold. As a teenager, I had a folder of terrible lyrics stuffed in a drawer. I wasn’t a serious musician and I don’t have a gift for singing, but music has always compelled me. I wrote my first full-length novel about a musical prodigy, and am working with a publisher on it now.   

In lockdown, I had some song ideas again. Then I revisited the music theme in fiction by starting a fantasy novel about a composer, and realized that part of me wanted to turn those songs in my head into real music as badly as my character did. As music re-emerged as a force in my life, I downloaded some composition software called MuseScore, tried to put notes to some past songs, and found a songwriting class. 

The class was run by Murray Webster of London Songwriters, an experienced singer-songwriter and teacher. It lasted a month and sessions met online one evening per week. Murray teaches courses on both lyric and melody. I enrolled in “Write Great Melodies.”  

I’m glad I took that class. It was a small group, and much new (to me) material was presented. The sessions focused on rhythm, melodic notes, chords, and pitch/prosody, with intensive teaching and lots of examples from popular music. So much skill goes into creating something like Katy Perry’s song “Firework,” and it was insightful to learn how the pieces came together and why each one worked the way it did. Each week had listening and composing homework. I learned a lot in a short time and am still unpacking it. 

I appreciated that Murray believed in his students. He encourages everyone to express themselves and comes from the standpoint that everyone can learn and create. I left the class reflecting on the concept of unique voice. Because everyone is different (all the participants had different experience levels and backgrounds when it came to music and lyrics), no one else can write your songs. And maybe someone else will like them. 

We all have might-have-beens and dreams that never came to pass. Some of these aren’t possible in our world. (I’ll likely never fly on a broomstick.) Others might be worth giving a go.   

Since lockdown has eased, I’ve tried a lot of new things this year: horseback riding, kayaking, doing a Workaway, and now the songwriting class. The world seems full of wonder when I think about how much there is to learn and how many possibilities there are for the years ahead. 

What’s something you’ve always wanted to try?


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A Story from 10 Years Ago

The first literary magazine I ever read submissions for was The Fiddlehead. Based out of the University of New Brunswick, it’s the oldest Canadian literary magazine in circulation. It’s a well respected mixture of poetry, fiction and reviews. I enjoyed reading through the slush pile, looking for gems and passing them on to a more senior editor when I found them. The magazine had a practice of sending feedback to everyone who submits, so when I decided that a submission wasn’t going to move forward, I wrote a little note to the author on a slip of paper. (Those were the days when we sent our writing to magazines via snail mail.)    

I’ve had a couple of poems published in The Fiddlehead. I’ve also had some rejection letters from them for both poetry and fiction. This summer, I got another acceptance for a story I’ve been trying to place for 10 years.

In my creative writing Master’s program, I wrote a weird story about a middle-aged banker who goes on a cybersex chatroom. It’s set very obviously in the early 2010s, with allusions to politics of the time. There’s sexy talk about math. There are secret identities. I thought at first that “A Limit to Growth” might grow into a novel, but it reached a natural stopping point at short story length, with an ambiguous ending.   

I knew that I’d written a good story. But for the next decade, I failed to place it. It wasn’t even one of those stories that got encouraging feedback: “This was good work but not for us” or “We encourage you to submit something else.” It got crickets. 

The novel I wrote for my thesis, around the same time, had a similar result. More people liked it, but no one was looking for a bisexual coming-of-age story about a musical prodigy, with alternating timelines and a slower pace. “We only have a limited number of spots in our publishing program…”

Submitting your writing means getting rejected. Jane Yolen, legendary author from my childhood, tweets about her rejections all the time. You just have to keep baiting your hook until somebody bites.

I didn’t give up on “A Limit to Growth,” and I’m excited to see it find a home in The Fiddlehead’s 2021 summer fiction issue. I left my novel in a metaphorical drawer for a while, then resubmitted it to some new publishers this year and am delighted that it, too, has found a home. Chasing Harmony will be published by Read Furiously in 2022. 

So, those are my stories from 10 years ago. It took time, persistence, and changes in the marketplace for them to reach an audience, but I knew that there was something good in both of them. I believed in them, so I kept trying. Next time I write something I like, I’ll remember how long it took to place these pieces and keep at it. If you’ve written something you believe in, I encourage you to do the same. Better late than never!


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Announcing My Short Story Collection, Dream Signs

My debut short story collection Dream Signs is coming out soon with Lost Fox Publishing! You can read the press release here. It’s the culmination of over a decade of writing, a blend of realistic and fantastical fiction. The publisher has been great to work with and I can’t wait to see this book out in the world. 

In their words, “Dream Signs is a grand collection. Switching between realistic and fantastical fiction, even blending the two at times, its themes are as poignant as they are epic, unified by Melanie’s unmistakable voice. In it you can find stories concerning coming-of-age and self-realization, unequivocal compassion between human beings both romantic and platonic, and the journey her characters take on to embrace their new challenges in life as they come to terms with who they really are. Different narratives weave in and around each other, each their own seminal chapter in the lives of their characters, bringing you back and forth between what has been and what must be done in order for them to live out the lives they want to live.” 

Get ready to meet candy makers, sex workers, sisters left behind, scholars attracted to ideas rather than people, sentient AIs, and queer ladies fighting geological dragons.

Between this announcement and the publication of Hard for Hope to Flourish featuring my novella “The Cliffman” (with a recent “Meet the Author” interview here), it’s been quite a literary year. 

I have two other books under contract over the next couple years, including a children’s chapter book with Lost Fox. Stay tuned for further announcements!


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My First NaNoWriMo, or How I Wrote a Novella in a Month

I’ve posted before about NaNoWriMo, but until 2020, it was one of those things I’d thought about but never attempted. I was usually busy, and more crucially, I’ve never been fast. I’ve completed novel manuscripts, but writing 50,000 words in a month seemed like a daunting task. I was happy to cheer on other, more ambitious writers from the sidelines. 

This year I spent November in lockdown. It seemed like the perfect time to give the challenge a go. I had a few opening chapters of a novella lurking in my folders, waiting for me to finish it, and I decided that NaNoWriMo would be my motivation to do that. I wasn’t sure if I’d write the full word count, but I saw other writers blogging and posting on social media about the progress they made from participating, whether or not they met that tally mark. Some used it to revise or meet other goals, like I intended to do. The tent seemed expansive and friendly.

This manuscript is the first time I’ve tried to write romance as a central focus. It’s also the first time I’ve attempted a novella, although I’ve thought at points that it might turn into a novel. It started out with two points of view, but feedback from a reader suggested that one was far more interesting than the other, so I rewrote the first part to focus on that character. I scrapped my outline and wrote by the seat of my pants, coming up with some of my ideas on long morning runs. It turned out that letting my mind wander while exercising was a great way to find inspiration.

What worked for me? Not, it turned out, joining online communities or engaging with the many passionate writers posting in great detail on forums and chat rooms. It’s wonderful to see so many passionate people creating, and I’d expected to find it motivating, but instead it gave way to something like Zoom fatigue. I joined a few groups and quickly became overwhelmed. Instead, I focused on the story I was telling. Maybe I’d socialize about it later, when it was done.

Complicating things, I had some serendipitous work projects come up for the month, so my time wasn’t as open as I’d expected. My writing stopped and started around other commitments that I didn’t want to forego. What helped throughout all that was writing regularly, in little bits almost every day. I felt closer to my characters’ lives. It was a challenge to write a new kind of story in a new genre, but word by word, it came together. 

I allowed my usual writing process to take the forefront, editing as I go. That’s usually seen as a “no-no” for writers during speed events like this one, but when I tried to draft with more of a stream of consciousness, I missed letting my editorial mind improve things. I’m an editor by trade, and it turns out that I value letting that skill set shape my work. It makes the next draft smoother.

The last day was a milestone. I’d set a 25,000-word novella mark by that point and wasn’t sure if I’d achieve that word count or finish the draft. Animated by the frenzy of a student with a due date, I wrote into the evening. The story wanted to tell itself. It knew where it was going. Soon, I reached the end.

It helped to have a deadline. 

I’m delighted to have given NaNoWriMo a try and met my personal goal. It was a great experience, and one I hope to repeat. NaNoWriMo writers out there, how did things go for you?


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What to Do When Your Brain Just Won’t Write

According to coach and author Alexis Rockley, the lack of focus and creative blocks that many of us are experiencing during the coronavirus pandemic stem from the uncertainty arising from this situation. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, and our brains are overwhelmed. In this and other stressful situations, it can be hard for those of us who want to write to get any writing done.

Every writer has struggled with this at points – writer’s block, stress, and other manifestations of a mind that isn’t in any shape to create. It’s one thing if writing is our day job, and we have the external motivation of a deadline with a paycheck waiting at the end (and even then, getting the words out can sometimes be a challenge). It’s quite another when the only person counting on us to get something written is ourselves.

When your brain just won’t write, what can you do? Sometimes it’s best to recognize and care for our needs and come back to work another time rather than tiring ourselves out in the here and now. There are lots of things that can help recharge your batteries, get inspiration flowing, and move your writing career forward when your brain is stalling and the words just won’t come. Here are a few of them.

Self-Care

Rest: If you’re overwhelmed or tired, maybe you need more sleep or downtime. Listen to your body and offer yourself the rest you need.

Exercise: Like rest, we need movement in order to function. Again, listening to your body is helpful here. If you’re feeling twitchy in that office chair, maybe you need to get up and go for a jog.

Check your physical comfort: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Cold or hot? Is your furniture hurting your back? Sometimes a comfortable environment makes all the difference.

Do your to-do’s: Some writers procrastinate by doing busywork, but the opposite can also happen. If you have pressing items on your to-do list that you’re putting off, they may be hogging brain real estate that could otherwise be devoted to creativity. Look at those worrisome tasks you’re putting off and get them done. 

Idea Generation

Read (or engage with other arts): Reading keeps writers engaged with words and stories, and can be a wellspring of ideas. So can taking in other forms of art, whether that’s looking at paintings or binging Netflix shows. Feel free to re-engage with old favorites too. 

Research: Like your to-do list, this is some writers’ favored procrastination tool, but it’s also productive. Read and learn about topics that interest you or that are related to your writing project, or try something new and out of your comfort zone. You never know what will spark an idea.

World build: Act like a kid and make things up! Draw an imaginary map. Invent a lollipop land. Dream up a new animal. If you already have a created world as part of your writing, play around with adding things onto it.

Learn your craft: Take a writing class, attend an event, or listen to a podcast. Try something that will teach you new elements or angles on writing and expand your horizons. 

The Business of Writing

Pitch or submit: When the words aren’t coming, that can be a good time to submit and query the pieces you’ve already finished. You can try pitching ideas for new pieces as well, or pitching rejected ideas to other publications. 

Edit: Try rereading your drafts with an editorial eye. See what would benefit from being rewritten. Reading your work aloud can be helpful here, as can exchanging critiques with writer friends.

Build your social media or web presence: It helps to have a presence and network online. Reach out, make connections, and put yourself (and your work) out there. Find people who will want to read your work once you get back to writing it.

Build relationships: As with the above, it’s useful to connect with others in the writing world. Try attending events (virtual ones count, of course), joining a writers’ group, or going to a conference. Keep in touch with the people you meet and like. 

If you just can’t write right now, truly, it’s OK. A writer is someone who writes – but you don’t have to write all the time in order to qualify for the title. There are lots of things you can do that will contribute to your writing when the words won’t come. I promise that blank page will still be there, ready for you to get started.