Or,
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Deadline
Starfinder Facts began two years ago because I saw someone making up fake D&D facts and said “Well hell, I could do that.”*
Little did I know that this was going to set into motion a series of events that would lead to me waking up and going “Oh cool, I’m an author! A published author, even!” For those of you that have that same desire and dream, I’m presenting here, in no particular order, some of the lessons I’ve learned.
This is not a How-To guide, because there is no “one path” to becoming anything (especially a creative writer). I am providing my interpretation of my own path, and the advice is being provided not because it will necessarily work for you, but because it happened to work for me.
So: buckle up. We’re in for some chop.
Just Do It.
The first, most important tip: do the work, even if you don’t want to or suddenly realize that it’s hard. As someone with a creative urge, you owe it to yourself to follow through. Worst case scenario: You don’t like it and you can stop dreaming about that idea, because you now know that you don’t like that act of creation (note: this does not mean you don’t like creating. What you’ve learned is that you don’t like creating that thing in that way. This is a very different lesson). Best case scenario? You do like the work and you’ve unlocked a new aspect of yourself to explore and share. Which brings us to tip two...
If An Adventure Drops In Your Notebook, Did It Make A Sound?
Tabletop RPGs are a community exercise, even for those of us who are big ol’ introverts. Even just running your homebrew world for your gaming buddies is a valid way to share your ideas with other like-minded souls - but the more people you share your crazy-ass shit with, the better chances you’ll have of meeting the people who can open doors and help you learn how to go from Weirdo With A Twitter Account to Actually Published Freelance Author. Every person you share your crazy ideas with, in person or online, is one more person who might become a patron, a fan, or an employer. Reference what you make though, and learn the concept of an “elevator pitch” - the 10-second explanation of your high level concept instead of giving them the 10-minute-long detailed outline.
Know Your Audience
One of the first things I did when I started the Starfinder Facts Twitter account was to find all the Paizo names I could think of - not just full-time staff, but freelancers and superfans on Twitter. One of our biggest hits, the Drift Mallard blog post, was inspired by a Lu Pellazar tweet - and sending the link back to Lu wound up getting my goofy-ass work passed around the editor’s block inside Paizo. You never know where you’re going to get inspiration or what is going to take off, so pay attention to industry insiders and maybe you too can get an editor to laugh at something you made up in a 2-hour writing sprint. This also has a direct tie to:
Get By With A Little Help From Your Friends
There’s a lot that’s true: it really is about who you know. I owe a huge amount of my success to being in the right place at the right time: I met Natalie Kertzner in the local Starfinder Society Organized Play scene, who introduced me to Joe Pasini at PaizoCon 2019, who introduced me to Jason Keely, who gave me my first Starfinder assignment. But here’s where the first tip comes in: none of this would have gone anywhere without me having something to show off. Natalie and I bonded over Zigvigix/Historia-7 shipping tweets; Jason Keely opened his assignment e-mail to me with “I love your tweeters!” If you don’t put in the creative work by yourself, then people have no reason to believe you can put in the work for them - and then you have nothing to show off. IT ALL WORKS TOGETHER, PEOPLE!!
Chase Your Passions
The long and short of all of this is that your biggest strength is going to be whatever you’re passionate about. In my case, I found out after a couple of vesk jokes that I had a knack for taking the known lore to unexpected but semi-logical conclusions - or taking an absurd concept and applying rigorous logic to an insane idea. You may have a rigorous mind that’s good at the work of writing (something I lack), or have a knack for truly creative and innovative ideas (that’s not me either - I’m a better remixer than a from-scratch creator). Your talents are going to be completely different than anyone else’s, so all you can do is the work you get excited about, share it, and see who else is a part of your creative tribe.
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And that’s it - or, at least, the parts that are worth sharing. In my experience, getting published is a lot of luck, and it’s a lot of being in the right place at the right time - and putting in the work so that you’ll have what you need when you are in the right place at the right time. So keep being weird, grow your confidence in your unique brand of weirdo, and start recruiting the people who respond to that. There’s your crew, right there.
Be seeing you, space cowboys.
