Word Craft #6: Michael Haspil

As a fellow RPG enthusiast and miniature painter, I can relate to Tor author Michael Haspil. A few things stuck out and especially impressed me from Haspil’s responses, including:

• Good discipline in regards to suppressing impulses to revise or fact-check while getting the first draft down (I need to work on this).
• Redundant and systematic backup (I do this too).
• The use of FATE dice, StoryForge cards, and Nordic runes for inspiration and brainstorming — great idea!

Please welcome Michael Haspil to Word Craft.

-JD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tell us a little about yourself and what inspired you to become a writer.

I’ve been a storyteller all my life. A large part of what made me want to become a writer came from attending military school at New York Military Academy. There, my friends and I played a lot of role-playing games and even made up our own. The school had its own small literary magazine and I submitted some stories. People adored them and that really helped me. I continued writing short stories for my high school magazine “Slant of Light” and I even placed in a couple of writing competitions too. Then I joined the Air Force and, regrettably, I put my pen away for a while. Glad to have picked it back up, though.

What’s your book about?

GRAVEYARD SHIFT is about an immortal pharaoh, who’s been blackmailed into law enforcement in present-day Miami, where vampires are known and are part of society. When someone starts to poison the artificial blood the vampires rely on, he has to take on an ancient vampire conspiracy with the help of some questionable allies to prevent a supernatural genocide.

What author has most influenced you, and why?

Whew, tough question. If I have to keep it down to just one, it has to be J.R.R. Tolkien. So much of his creation has influenced nearly everything I love in a profound way. I’ve probably spent more time in Middle-earth than any other literary setting. I used to draw elaborate maps, which were clearly inspired by Tolkien’s world (if not direct copies) and at one point, I was even teaching myself Sindarin. I adore how nearly every stone has a backstory. We, as the readers, may not be privy to what those stories are, but they are there. In my own writing, I try and do the same thing. Maybe not to the extent of creating my own languages, but I try and consider all the repercussions of a scenario or setting so I can maintain internal consistency.

INSPIRATION AND MOTIVATION

Why do you write?

The primary reason is, honestly, because I don’t have access to a Hollywood studio and hundreds of millions in cash to tell my stories. Kidding. I come up with ideas for what I hope people will think are some really good stories and I have to get them out there somehow. Writing novels sort of gives me full creative control, from casting to sets, to tell the story I would like to, with no budget restrictions. Just tell the coolest story and hope other people like it. Plus, I adore books and consume as many as I can. It’s sort of my way of giving back and contributing to field of stories I love so much. I also can’t get enough of the creative rush I get when I finish writing a good scene. Nothing tops that.

Have you ever taken an extended break from writing? If so, why, and what brought you back?

I did. I took a really long break, but it wasn’t so much a break from writing actually as I just kind of stopped sending work out. I tried my hand at screenwriting for a time and then short stories. I got a lot of rejections. So, it wasn’t anything conscious, I just stopped sending work out. I still wrote however. I wrote extensive fan fiction pieces and then tried my hand at making independent films. The ideas never stopped coming. What brought me back were the logistics of trying to tell stories in other media. It’s almost impossible to make an independent film that will get any traction by yourself. By comparison, writing a novel seemed the way to go. So I took a story that started off as a screenplay and turned it into a novel.

What do you do when you need additional inspiration or ideas?

I turn to gaming and some brainstorming techniques. I have a bank of tricks I use. One of the techniques relies on FATE dice. FATE is a sort of shared storytelling role-playing game. The dice just have pluses, minuses, and blank facings. So if I’m stuck in a scene and have no idea where to take it, I’ll roll out four FATE dice and it will let me know which direction (positive or negative) to take the scene. I also like using what I’ll call creative divination systems, like Marc Graham’s “Runes for Writers” system and StoryForge cards. These systems are a good way to tap into your subconscious and shake some ideas loose. Kind of kickstarting the muse. I also like to use some board games for interesting prompts that might knock a bigger idea free. My go to is a storytelling game called “99 Chances”. It works remarkably well at generating prompts.

Do you finish everything you start? If a piece isn’t working, at what point do you cut your losses and abandon it?

No I don’t. About the end of the First Act, I know. Sometimes, I’ll get a feeling something isn’t working in the middle of the Second Act, but I’ve gotten experienced enough to understand that’s just resistance talking, and I need to press through that point. But usually, if I’m at the end of the First Act and I’m not excited about the story, I can be sure, something isn’t working, and it might be time to cut my losses. I never really abandon stories, however. I keep elements of these stories around and recycle them if the opportunity arises. My current project started out just like that. I’d shelved it for a few years. But parts of the story still spoke to me, so I dropped entire story points, changed the plot and the protagonist, and now I’m back on track.

METHODS AND PRACTICES

How often do you write?

I would love to say, “Every day.” But that would be a boldfaced lie. I manage a couple of times a week and then a few hours on the weekend. I try to get up at about four-thirty in the morning every day and knock out some words before work. Some days, it is just impossible to get up that early. But on the days I do, I generally feel a lot better about myself. It is a fantastic feeling knowing you’ve hit your word count before seven. Then if I feel like writing in the evening, those are just free words!

Do you have a regular time of day and place that your write?

Yep. I have a designated home office (decorated appropriately) and I try to knock out my writing first thing in the morning. I will try not to do anything else before (except make coffee). So, no social media or checking email. Just up, coffee, writing. That’s the plan anyway, which doesn’t always work out.

Do you keep a writing log? What data do you track (word count, session start/end, etc.)?

I don’t keep a log, per se. But I use an app called Word Keeper. Between that and the session tracker in Scrivener, that gives me a good feel on the progress I’m making on any given project. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) helped me set my word count pace at about two thousand words a session. Some days are easier to hit than others. But I think it is essential to keep track of writing sessions and word count so I can manage exactly where a project is headed. It also gives me a good feel for when a scene might be dragging or if I’m writing filler that’s going nowhere.

What elements of your life distract you from writing the most, and how do you manage those distractions?

My primary threshold guardian is my day job. It also involves a lot of writing and on very tight deadlines. It is hard to manage and often eats into my writing time. In fact, the last few months cost me a lot of writing time because of a surge of work at my day job. It becomes especially difficult when other people may not have the same definition regarding work/life balance as I do. Or when they don’t take my writing seriously. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only person that gets it and they can’t understand that some ambitions and achievements lie outside the office. This has cost me professionally and personally.

Things are finally beginning to calm down and I’m slowly building back up to my daily word count and routine. It feels great.

Do you revise as you go, or wait for a complete first draft?

I try and complete the first draft entirely. For me the hardest part is just getting it done. So I have to ignore temptations to go back and make that chapter perfect and make sure that fact is correct before going on. If I’m in the middle of a scene and have an idea that is better than what I’m currently writing, I make a note of it and then continue the scene as if the new idea had been a part of it all along. For me, it is far easier to revise words I’ve already put on the page versus actually putting those words on the page. So I try not to interrupt myself and tell my inner editor to go quiet. Sometimes, it makes for some interesting revisions to decipher notes I’ve written to myself, in stream of consciousness, just so I wouldn’t stop the flow of the words.

Who sees your work first, and why?

Usually it is my critique group partners from the Highlands Ranch Fiction Writers. I tend not to incorporate their revisions until the second draft, but it is nice to get some validation (or not) when something is working or isn’t. And sometimes I will get some great ideas through their feedback. So they are a very important part of my process.

What’s your backup system (for computer files)?

I manually save my files to the cloud (OneDrive and Dropbox) and to my local hard drive after every session. I also have Carbonite (a service that backs up computer files remotely) running as I write. And a couple of times a week, I have a backup program (Acronis TrueImage) image my writing laptop. When I complete an entire draft, I save a copy onto a thumbdrive or removable drive for safekeeping. I also generally print out a hardcopy at that point because I’m paranoid.

Do you have any particular methods via which you communicate with your subconscious mind?

Yep. I like using StoryForge cards, which are a Tarot-like system and Marc Graham’s Runes for Writers, which uses Nordic runes to help guide and shape a story. Both work very well. I also take long showers or go for drives while listening to dramatic and epic music like “Two Steps From Hell”. I find that I always have the best ideas when I have no way of taking notes. But now, I just record them into the voice memos on my phone and transcribe them later. Take that subconscious!

What methods or practices have you used to increase your productivity?

Getting up in the morning and knocking out the word count is some of the best advice I’ve heard and used. I’m far from a morning person. But if you can knock out your word count before having to engage with the world, it works really well. The challenge is just to force yourself to get up right when the alarm goes off. Don’t hit snooze. Don’t sit in bed. Silence the alarm and get up and go. Then, once you’re awake, preferably before everyone else, your purpose is to write, not to surf the web or social media. To write.

Poet Friedrich Schiller was famously inspired by the smell of rotting apples. How important are lighting, sound/silence, smells, and other sensory factors to your writing process? What about caffeine, alcohol, or other mind-altering substances?

Really important. I light incense and set the lighting conditions in my writing room so that most of the light comes from the computer monitor. I might have a candle or my lava lamp going too, but not much more than that. I only light the incense when I’m going to do creative writing. So it is kind of a signal to my brain about what we’re going to do. I also start every session with the song “Intro” by “The xx” and then I try and time it so that by the end of the song, I’m writing my first sentence for that session. I make up playlists for each project with almost a key piece of music for every scene. Sometimes I wind up listening to the same piece of music repeatedly until I finish the scene I’m writing, so I don’t lose the energy or feeling of that scene. As far as caffeine, I’m not necessarily dependent on coffee, but I like sipping on a warm liquid, so coffee, tea, or broth are my go to for writing sessions in the morning.

FORTHCOMING

What are you working on now, and what projects do you have scheduled?

Right now, I’m working on a story about an Army Captain trying to keep her company together in post-apocalyptic Colorado, while battling a fanatic religious cult.

I hope to have it wrapped up and on submission by the end of April.

And I’m also working on the first of many interstitial short stories involving the protagonists from GRAVEYARD SHIFT. This first one is a doozy that doesn’t have much to do with vampires, but with the discovery of a new life form that infects people and absorbs them into a hive mind. Our heroes, being undead, are immune. It’s a lot of fun and I hope to have that in readers’ hands by summer.