Artisanal Approaches

I recently heard a podcast interview (Joanna Penn) about being an artisan author, and it clicked so well with what I’m trying to do with my own art.

My thought process is always taking my time with a story, no matter if it’s 25,000 words or 200,000 words. The samples I post here are often rough and unedited. But I comb through my stories with a fine-toothed eye for what it is I want to tell in each story with full intention. Each story might have had 100 drafts as I went back over it repeatedly.

Being an author like this, the focus will always be on quality and not quantity. It also takes the rapid release model and flips it to do the best you can without pushing too many books out at one time.

I must admit this is another reason I will shadow drop novels in the future. Dropping a story I worked on for a year as a bonus tale without warning is something I’ve seen certain companies and artists do in other fields, and I believe it has merit. An artisan author or an auteur novelist has a distinct flavor to their work, so it can’t be mistaken for anyone else’s work, and it might take over three months to make it work to that artisan level.

Rothfuss took a decade and a half to write The Name of the Wind, and that book’s prose is golden.

And we might not always be working on writing. Sometimes we’ll be working with an artist or redoing our covers until something clicks.

For my Orchestrylus Odyssey series, I’ve settled on an aesthetic that should work for the series, so each light novel will have the same look and feel.

For some of my stories, I’ll release them as eBooks only, especially for shorter stories that might be set in a certain world of the Parallelium.

For others, I’d like to do special editions with golden foil and holographic print options. I’d like to do a special edition of Auminous called Auminous Remastered: Illuminated Edition. This novel will be the definitive edition of the story, with some new nuggets of lore and backstory expansion.

For The Symphonist, I will do The Symphonist: Last Crescendo Edition in 2026 with updated content and studio-worthy panels. I do my best, and while that has its charms, it’s best to focus on my strengths.

I’m working on multiple digestible stories set in Orchestrylus, as well as the manuscript for The Voided Promises of Noble Songs. This light novel will end up being around 130,000 words once I’m through writing it, making it longer than The Symphonist’s 84,000 words.

The stories I write will vary in length.

Some stories are done in 35,000 words; others might go on toward 250,000 words.

And working on multiple drafts of different projects at once is refreshing to the psyche.

Our art is ours to make, and thus, external standards mean little.

But I’ve realized I’ve got to step it up multiple notches to find the level I’m happy with reaching as I write fiction.

Focus and intention are the keys to making art that resonates with others. I’ve realized the rapid release model is a bit like McDonald’s, while being an artisan author with my unique flavor is more like wagyu beef. There’s nothing wrong with McDonald’s—and it has its place—but focused intention means zoning in on another level and honing the craft even higher.

To ever greater heights in the next five years.