Originally Published on Facebook 20 December 2016.

A quarter of a century ago, one of the first editors to buy my fiction noted that my recent submissions had been feeling awfully “safe” — more professional, but timid, in a way my earliest stories had not been.

The question: “When you wrote those first stories, were you surprising yourself? Were you a little appalled that they were coming out of you? With these recent stories, were you feeling more secure?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Well, that’s the problem.”

It was the best writing advice I had ever received.

Because I was focusing almost exclusively on horror in those days, something that fortunately changed as more than half my output then branched out into other areas, I misinterpreted this and produced the most demented and perverted story I had written up to that point, “Scars: A Romance In Seven Acts.” It was eventually published in an issue of something called BIZARRE BAZAAR, and will likely never be reprinted.

But what that editor told me was not a complaint that I wasn’t being sick enough. It was the observation that I wasn’t being heartfelt enough.

When you’re writing, funny moments should make you giggle where you sit. Tense moments should ignite a burning pit in your stomach. Sad moments should make you hate yourself for what you’re doing to the fictional people you love. You should always wonder, “Really? Is this what I want to do?” Your job is to stun yourself with the emotion you invoke, amaze yourself with the wonders you concoct, excite the living crap out of yourself with the action you describe.

As I wrote a seemingly defeated Gustav Gloom rising off his knees and telling Lord Obsidian what he’s been up to, all this time, when he said the words, “That’s not the point of the poem,” I was grinning ear to ear. I was fifty-five in body, ten years old in spirit. I knew the moment worked because it worked on me. Was it too much of a DOCTOR WHO moment? Damn it, I knew it worked exactly as intended, because what I heard in my ears as I wrote Gustav saying, “That’s not the point of the poem,” was indeed the Doctor’s “Basically, Run,” anthem, and I honestly don’t care who knows it.

Take what you’re doing as just a technical exercise in getting your characters from pre-planned Point A to Point B, and readers will be just as academic about the whole thing. I promise you.

Amaze yourself. It’s the very first of your priorities.

Tags: Doctor Who, Gustav Gloom, horror, Life Wisdom, writing | Category Commentary, Fantasy, Gustav Gloom, Horror, Life Wisdom, Science Fiction, Writing