Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
Dispatches tagged as:
the writer's journey (17)

So, once more, and with feeling, here's a recap of the real-time view of what it was like writing a damned novel. (Sneak preview: this was, gobsmackingly unexpectedly, the best writing experience of my life.)...   (read more)

I had a pretty clear vision for what I wanted to achieve with this story. And I executed it. And it was pretty damned hard. Now, a year later, I'm kind of curious how I pulled that off, so I'm going back to have a look at what the process was like. You can, too, below, if by some freakish chance you're actually interested in that....   (read more)

So, as noted, erm, tomorrow, a year after somehow pulling off this prequel spin-off series, I was interested to go back and look at my real-time notes from the process, with a view to understanding how that happened. (Maybe this will be of the tiniest interest to readers or, better yet, help some exhausted, isolated, struggling artist somewhere down the line.)...   (read more)

So, as noted, erm, two days hence, a year after finishing I was interested to go back and try to understand how that all happened. Also a fair little pit of pandemic/lockdown "nostalgia" in this one....   (read more)

This is, perhaps, the final entry in my series of dispatches about "How to Keep Doing It" as an artist....   (read more)

Herewith aftermatter from my new book Black Squadron....   (read more)

And so in my ongoing (and increasingly coherent, and maybe even successful) attempts to figure out HOW TO KEEP DOING IT (i.e. be a working artist, over time, without utterly destroying myself in the process), I came across another book seemingly written personally for me, at the exact moment I needed it....   (read more)

And so in my continuing efforts to try to rebuild and find my way back, I had a strong sense I should next turn to this book, again. I was first turned onto it by my friend Marianne, who had just heard Gilbert speak; and while I would probably sooner eat my own face than actually read Eat, Pray, Love, I dug this book enormously, finding it a wonderful and genuine chronicle of the journey of a committed artist. She's the real deal....   (read more)

This is a book that has been on my radar for a while, mainly because Pressfield swears by it - mostly, he loves the bit where, after multiple #1 singles and Grammys, Cash had a dream where Art calls her a dilettante, and so she sends herself back to school, getting a new voice coach, reading books on songwriting, going deeper, paying attention, changing the way she sang, worked, and lived, all in humility, getting out of comfort zones, "awakened into the life of an artist."...   (read more)

After spending two weeks just taking longer and longer walks out the Thames Path, watching the light fade and trying to remember how to breathe, I've been going back to all the foundational texts (Pressfield, Holiday, McKee) trying to find some way back, some way to rebuild. Unfortunately, while there's tons of great stuff in there about how to get yourself going, there's precious little about what to do when you've been battling for many years, had some artistic and commercial success, and then blow up spectacularly and don't think you can get back in the fight anymore. Here's some....   (read more)

"There's two kinds of despair that a writer can feel, one of which is: I will never make something good... But the second is: nobody could ever make something good. And that's a real despair. And every writer and artist I know has experienced both kinds." - Jonathan Safran Foer...   (read more)

"The haunting Demon never leaves you, the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right."...   (read more)

Brain Pickings's Maria Popova has recently published an anthology of virtually everything she's ever written and collected on writing ("Timeless Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers"), all 116 entries, and I couldn't make myself not spend a little time on it; plus copy out the most priceless bits....   (read more)

Check out ME on the OMG Books Podcast with the very lovely William Oday. Some rather deeper (and more personal) stuff about me and the writing process, including from the grim early days of my writing odyssey. Also, actually, this was my very first podcast interview....   (read more)

"I seen a million writers with talent. It means nothing. It's work, you gotta work, do the f*&^ing work."...   (read more)

It is done. Yes, after six months of intensive story-design work - really, after six years, 14 books, and 1.5 million words building up to this - I sat down and wrote nearly 1/3 of a million words, in about 100 days. (Because I am a moron, and a masochist. But I guess we knew that.) The climax and conclusion of the entire ARISEN epic....   (read more)

about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

THE MANUSCRIPT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
PANDORA'S SISTERS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
DON'T SHOOT ME IN THE ASS, AND OTHER STORIES by Michael Stephen Fuchs
D-BOYS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
COUNTER-ASSAULT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book One - Fortress Britain, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Genesis, by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Three - Three Parts Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Four - Maximum Violence, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Five - EXODUS, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Six - The Horizon, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : NEMESIS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Nine - Cataclysm by Michael Stephen Fuchs

ARISEN, Book Ten - The Flood by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Thirteen - The Siege by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Fourteen - Endgame by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Fickisms
ARISEN : Odyssey
ARISEN : Last Stand
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 1 - The Collapse
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 2 - Tribes
Black Squadron
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 3 - Dead Men Walking
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 4 - Duty
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid
ARISEN : Fickisms ][ – This Time, It's Personal
ARISEN : Operators, Volume I - The Fall of the Third Temple
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