I mean, I eat well, I haven’t touched alcohol in almost 11 years, and I take pretty decent walks every day. But my muscle mass still hasn’t recovered from the seizure I had a couple years ago, no matter how regularly I lift weights and do moderate exercise. It’s demoralizing for me, as someone who was relentlessly bullied by my father for being skinny, picked on my kids at school for being uncoordinated, who always felt like he wasn’t enough.

If anyone is wondering how badly mistreating a child affects them, wondering how long the pain and the fear and the confusion and the sadness lasts, how it all persists regardless of how much success you have in your life, I’m almost 54. So.

Anyway. I woke up about two weeks ago, and everything hurt: my hips, my shoulders, the spot in my upper back where one of my vertebrae rotated during my seizure and stayed that way for five months. And just to spice things up, a raging headache.

I was, like, “hey, good thing I quit drinking so I never woke up feeling hungover again.”

I’m big on gallows humor.

When I get that physical pain, which isn’t clinically chronic pain, but is practically the same for me, it’s depressing. It’s infuriating. It makes me want to scream. I’m impatient, I’m irritable, and I do not like the person I am.

I dragged myself out of bed, counted that as a victory, and started my day. Coffee, granola, another coffee, my fiber because I’m punk as fuck, a long and considered moment in front of the Chemex as I talk myself out of the third coffee I know will be Officially Too Much Coffee For Wil.

While I was not having too much coffee (water, instead, because I’m a goddamn adult), I began looking at couch to 5K plans. I last did that in 2017 (my best time was 29:59) and I loved it. It really helped when I was living my life as a sober person for the first time, losing the bloat and unhealthy bleh that years of abuse had inflicted upon my body. It was pretty great, watching my body shed not just pounds but a lot of trauma and self-harm as I got stronger and felt more and more like I wasn’t a worthless piece of shit (I was never a worthless piece of shit, to be clear; Depression Lies and trauma is a bitch). When I finally did my race, and I pushed myself like hell for the last few hundred meters to get under 30 minutes, I felt like a warrior. Like, Worf would have been so massively proud of me.

I felt so good, so solid and present in my life, that it was absolutely devastating when I hurt myself one day (hurt my Old, if I’m being technical about it) while I was out, and had to limp home. It was, like, step, step, step, PAIN. My calf cramped up, and before I knew it, it ran up my hamstring and down into the bottom of my foot. I still don’t know how it happened, but I can remember what happened next. This was a over a year before I did weekly EMDR and CPTSD recovery work, so I had not yet handled my lingering anger … and I was fucking enraged. I was so furious that this thing I love, this thing that was helping me reclaim my body and my spirit from literal decades of pain and abuse and motherfucking functional alcoholism was stolen from me, literally yanked out from underneath my feet, while I was in the middle doing it. I didn’t do anything wrong, I thought, and I still got hurt. Jesus fuck, could that be more on the nose?

The incandescent anger I felt, the sense of being betrayed by my own body, the futility of doing anything because some fucking bullshit always fucks it up anyway and it’s never going to get any better … that was a lot.

But I didn’t give up right away. I did my best to work out the injury with massage and other forms of exercise. I just couldn’t get whatever I had injured to tell me what it needed, and neither could the doctors I saw about it. Eventually, I just resigned myself to never running again.

Then my friend, Jenna, who is just two years younger than me, started running marathons. I have lost count but I think it’s got to be close to 50 now? At first, I was envious, then I was inspired, but I was always afraid to take the risk and start again. Sure, it had been a couple years since I hurt myself, and I had done a massive amount of recovery and healing work. I worked on how angry I felt when I confronted my trauma, until I didn’t feel angry anymore. I reparented myself, and lived every day making a conscious effort to be the adult I always needed.

Yadda yadda yadda I got better. I am better. I still have bad days (this year has been so hard, with so much loss and grief), and I get through them. I have good days, even great days, and I don’t take them for granted.

So when I woke up a couple weeks ago and my everything hurt, and I went through my morning routine, I made a promise to myself to get serious about regular, moderate exercise. The big hurdle for me was feeling like I am worth it. After all these years, after all the therapy and all the work, I still struggle to put myself first, to take really good care of myself because there are people who love me who will be really sad if I don’t. (I’m working on being one of those people, but it’s still a struggle more often than it should be.)

I looked at half a dozen plans, and saw the things they all had in common. I deliberately chose the easiest, slowest, you-haven’t-done-shit-in-years plan, set the intervals in my watch, walked out the door, and got started.

My first week of training was so fun! I started out doing 30 seconds of jogging and a minute of walking, for 20 minutes. The first day was easy and fun. The second day, the first half block felt like I was running through molasses before I broke free and settled in. I discovered that Keep Me Fed, by The Warning, was a fantastic companion album for my session. The rest of the week was an absolute joy. I felt accomplished and excited.

I was out for my first run in week two, doing 60 seconds of jogging and 90 walking, almost finished with my penultimate interval. I turned down my street. Step, step, step, PAIN. The exact same thing that happened before.

Are you fucking kidding me? What the actual fuck, Wil’s Body?

I stopped. I breathed. I grabbed a nearby pole and gently stretched my calves and hamstrings. I massaged my leg. Nothing worked. I limped home.

I was so incredibly disappointed, so bummed out, but I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t enraged. I wasn’t mad at myself or the incredible unfairness of this bullshit, all over again. I just limped home, took off my shoes, used the foam roller, and then I sat down and cried.

I cried because I miss Marlowe.

I cried because my body hurt.

I cried because it’s so unfair to do everything right and still my dad doesn’t love me.

I cried because I’m just so totally exhausted by the cruelty and the violence that could have been avoided.

I just cried and cried, as all this grief poured out of me.

None of it made my leg get better, but it was cathartic. And I was grateful for it, because choosing to experience grief instead of avoiding it with anger was a big time goal, something I worked really hard to accomplish.

When I was done, my body still hurt, but my emotional self felt okay. Sure, I was disappointed, but I didn’t get mad about something that wasn’t going to change because I was mad. I spared myself from that experience, and I’m proud of myself for doing it.

I accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to run for at least a week. I took long walks instead, occasionally stopping to do some squats for strength and mobility. I did gentle exercises inside at home, not because I wanted to experience a change in my appearance, but because I felt better, emotionally as well as physically, when I was done. I invested maybe half an hour a day, and it paid off at like 5:1.

Today, I woke up (saw, again, that it still hasn’t happened), ate my breakfast, and asked my body how it was doing. Every department checked in with a green flag, except for my injured leg, which was like “I’m about 96% there, I think.” So I decided to attempt a very gentle rehab walk/jog, just once around the block.

I started Recipe For Hate, walked to warm up, and then did little intervals — very gently — around the block. One lap in, it was a little achy, but didn’t feel like it was going to cramp up again. So I went for another lap, then another, then another. I ended up doing about 20 minutes, just jogging and walking when it felt right.

And when I got home, I felt like a champion. I felt like I’d done something good for my body that I have to live in, and for the me that lives in it.

I have to go back to the beginning, I think, but that’s fine. I don’t have a race on my calendar, and this isn’t a contest or anything. It’s something more special and meaningful to me than that, and I’m really proud of myself for having the ability to understand and embrace that.

I’m worth it. You’re worth it. Whatever your Couch to 5K is, I know you can do it. I believe in me, and I believe in you.

Thanks for stopping by.

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I’m not coming to your town, but I am coming to your computer (or your tablet or your phone or even your TV, I think) on June 7 for a virtual convention that needs a much better name than Couch Con, because at this moment in time, that creates a very specific, very unfortunate, image. (Maybe it will happen today).

Seriously, I hate every name I think of for this. What would you call a virtual convention where I am the guest of honor, the toastmaster, the featured author, and also the only guest? Wil Wheatcon is kind of cute, I think, but I feel like there’s something better. If you have one, would you comment?

The Untitled Wil Wheaton Virtual Convention came out of an unrelated meeting with my friends and partners in crime at Stands about how we wanted to turn some of my designs into stickers. One thing lead to another, and I’m just going to get to the graphic you’ve probably looked at already:

I love going to cons, and spending time with my people. I love sharing how much we love all our nerd shit. I love the safe place we create together. And I know that money is tight for everyone right now, everything costs more than it should, and just the price of a ticket can put a con out of reach for a lot of people. And that’s not even accounting for whatever we spend on merch, art, autographs, and photo-ops.

So a big, big part of my wanting to do this is the opportunity to do something convention-ish, which is way more affordable, at just fifteen bucks. Hell, get ten friends together and everyone can cover the ticket with the change in their pockets. People still have change in their pockets, right?

I have met tens of thousands of people over the years. I know that this is an unscientific, heavily-skewed metric that would fail any peer review, but I still think it matters that the single most common thing they tell me is some version of “I loved your panel discussion. I wish you’d had more time for questions.”

Well, if you’re one of those people, this is probably going to crawl your dungeon. We have as much time as we want, I can take as many questions as I want, and if enough people ask, I’ll even read you some flash fiction I wrote. And we’re offering some break out, private meet and greets, for anyone who wants that experience.

Oh, I’m also going to pull my kitty ears out and put them on for a Wil Wheatcon exclusive autographed 8×10, if that’s your thing and you wanted to add some whimsy to your life.

A few people I know have done this kind of event, and they all tell me that it’s so much fun, so uplifting, and a wonderful way to spend a couple hours together. I believe them, and I’m excited to experience that for myself. I hope you’ll join me!

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There’s a dog on Instagram called Wesley the Chicken Nugget. I adore him, and I love it when his person shares photos and video of him being a dog, so I completely understand how we can love animals we’ve never met. I know that lots of you loved Marlowe, and that comforts me every day.

So thank you, from Anne and me, for choosing to be kind.

I had to take a couple weeks off from recording stories for It’s Storytime (I’ve come to believe that four or five weeks of bereavement leave isn’t unreasonable) but we’re back to work and there’s a new story this week that I wanted everyone to know about.

It’s called To Carry You Inside You, by Tia Tashiro. Here’s my intro:

I grew up in the entertainment industry, not by choice, so I had a front row seat to the abuse and exploitation of child actors like myself. I grew up absolutely terrified of upsetting anyone on the set, robotically doing whatever I was told, so I could just get through it and have one of the precious and rare hours of my childhood where I got to just be a kid, before I was ripped out of childhood and thrust back into a place I never wanted to be.

Today, we are going to visit a future where child actors are still exploited, still used up and discarded, facing an adult life without purpose, that they were never prepared for, because nobody cared what happened to them past an arbitrary age.

We will meet a young woman who is doing her best to assemble the pieces of a stolen childhood into a fulfilling adult life. It isn’t what she wanted, or would have chosen for herself, but she’s doing her best, which is all any of us can do.

This is one of those examples of speculative fiction that I point to when I talk about the power of storytelling that lands on different people for different reasons. This story isn’t about me, but holy shit is it about me. In fact, when I reached out to Tia and asked for permission to do the narration, I mentioned that she captured the experience of being a child actor so perfectly and honestly, she must have some firsthand experience … imagine my surprise when she told me that she didn’t, that she used her imagination to create those moments.

Holy shit. That’s incredible. Please let me know what you think, if you listen.

Anyway, I’m doing my best to promote the show and just let people know it exists, but I keep getting crushed by the algorithm. On Threads, the posts before and after I talked about the podcast have thousands of views and hundreds of interactions, but my post about this episode has like 20 interactions and has only been seen by about 2000 of the 5000000 accounts that follow me. That seems … odd. And honestly, it’s kind demoralizing that one of the few direct ways I have to tell people this exists seems to work against supporting that. I’ve tried letting Bluesky know, and the 13 people who tend to notice me there are excited about it, I’m sure, but it just doesn’t seem to get traction there at all. If anyone reading this has experience bringing something to an audience who will probably love it, but just don’t know about it, I’d be grateful to hear anything you have to say about it.

Last thing, that is explicitly in service of promotion: If you listen to the podcast, you can help me out by rating and reviewing it wherever you are subscribed. The show’s audience is growing slowly but steadily, and I know it isn’t because of me; it’s because listeners are recommending it. That means so much to me. Thank you.

Fourteen years ago, Anne and I went to Pasadena Humane Society to see some of the construction our fundraising supported. While we were there, we chatted with Kevin, who was our adoption coordinator for our dog, Seamus.

Seamus had been part of our pack for about a year, and we were talking with Kevin about how much we loved him, what an incredible dog he was, and how happy and grateful we were to have met and adopted him.

I remember saying, “I don’t think I will ever have another dog who isn’t a pittie. He is so sweet, and affectionate, and so gentle, and …” I stopped because I saw a volunteer walking a puppy toward us. She was tiny and underweight, but she had the biggest smile. I knelt down to meet her, and she did a somersault into my lap, wagging her tail so fast I couldn’t see it.

“Well, they are just like this!” I concluded. Then I loved on that puppy until Anne gently told me it was time to let her walk into the shelter.

I was completely in love with her, that fast. She reached into my heart and never left. The next day, it was Anne’s birthday. We went down to the beach for a long walk, as is tradition. We were approaching the Manhattan Beach pier when I said, “I just need to confirm with you that we are not adding another dog to our pack, because I can’t stop thinking about that puppy.”

Anne told me that she didn’t pet her, because she knew that she’d fall in love, too, if she did. I don’t recall what we said to each other, but Anne called PHS and asked them to put us on a waiting list to adopt her.

A few days later, Marlowe came home with us, and she was my baby girl for over a decade. Even when she was an old lady, she was my little girl.

Just over a month ago, we found out Marlowe had lymphoma. It was so aggressive, it moved so quickly, we couldn’t stop it. We did everything we could for her, but we had to say goodbye to her last month.

I miss her so much, my heart hurts. It’s been a month, and I still look for her everywhere in the house. I’ll be okay, and then something will remind me of her and I am sobbing in a heap on the floor.

This is the first time in my life I have experienced this kind of grief, this kind of loss. When we lost Seamus, at least Marlowe was here for both of us while we grieved (and we were here for her, when she grieved). Now there’s just a big empty house and my broken heart.

I will miss her forever, my sweet little girl.

Yesterday, my narration of The Body by Stephen King (the novella that was adapted into Stand By Me) was released. I have wanted to do this for years, and I can’t believe I never wrote about it here. I’ll address that in the future, because it’s a cool story. Simon and Schuster, the publisher, has been super supportive and enthusiastic about this release. They gave me a whole chapter to share, and it’s at the end of this week’s¹ It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Today, I am the subject of a truly wonderful column in the New York Times that includes interactive clips from my narration, scenes from Stand By Me, and the text of the novella. It’s a beautiful piece that genuinely surprised and delighted me. And it comes just a few days after we were the subject of this incredible essay, also in the New York Times, about our Stand By Me Live tour².

Tonight, Jerry and Corey and I are together on Entertainment Tonight³ to talk about the movie’s theatrical re-release, which starts on Friday.

I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thingy:

1. I had to take last week off, so we are replaying one of my favorite performances, End of Play. ︎
2. This weekend, we are in Anaheim Friday, Seattle on Saturday (see you at No Kings, Seattle), and Portland on Sunday. Tickets are still available for all three shows. ︎
3. In Los Angeles, that’s 7:30pm on CBS, check your local listing to be sure. ︎

This fits into my efforts to slow down and be more present. It’s creating space I desperately need to decompress, get bored, let my mind wander and come back with a fun and creative idea.

Today, I was out for a minute and saw this little art installation on a telephone pole. It was weathered quite a bit; it’s been here for awhile. And it was beautiful to me. It was a few moments better spent than they would have been looking at anything on my phone, or anything I could have been listening to. It wasn’t dysregulating, it didn’t increase my internal DEFCON level.

I chose to experience and appreciate this thing that someone made when they were very much not thinking about me, because it was exactly where I needed it to be, exactly when I needed it.

I took some pictures (using only the camera and nothing else on the phone) so I could remember the moment, and share the art. They’re pretty big, so I’m gonna put them behind a jump.

Art is so important, y’all. Make time to experience it. Allow it to inspire, comfort, and challenge you.

I love public art, and I love the artists who create and install it. Please support your local arts community.

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Florida deserves the jokes we make about it, but my experience when I was there was quite lovely. Every person I interacted with was kind, friendly, helpful. I had an incredible piece of blackened gulf red snapper for dinner one night, my bed was comfy, and I did not have a single awkward or uncomfortable encounter with anyone at the show.

None of that is why this will be one of the most memorable conventions of my life, and I will now tell you why.

Holy. Shit.

I turned to my friend, Leah, who works with me at conventions to keep things running smoothly. “Dude, I have to come do this tomorrow.”

“Okay, we’ll take care of it,” she said.

So Saturday comes around, and I’m signing autographs at my table. Leah taps me on the shoulder and says, “it’s time to go downstairs.”

The excitement that surged inside of me threatened to explode out of my chest like Alien. I told the people who were in the line that I would be right back, I was going to fulfill a childhood dream.

We went downstairs to the photo-op area, and I apologized to the line I was cutting. They seemed to understand, my fellow fans of CHiPs, who also could not believe this was actually happening.

I bounced on the balls of my feet while I waited, and oh shit here comes Larry Wilcox. And he’s wearing a CHP uniform shirt with a name tag that says JOHN! I tried so hard to control my bouncing, but I’m pretty sure I failed.

We made eye contact and I said, “Hi, I’m Wil. I’m a huge fan and I am so excited to take a picture with you.”

“It’s so nice to meet you, I’m Larry.” We shook hands, and I didn’t keep shaking it like I did when I met Henry Rollins thank god.

There was a commotion around the corner, which could only mean one thing. Here comes Erik Estrada, much taller than I expected, and he is wearing a uniform shirt with a name tag that says PONCH.

Dude, it’s totally Ponch. Like, right there, right in front of me, are Ponch and John and I’m so excited I can’t tell if I’m going to burst into tears or throw up or what.

They take their positions on their marks, which are the same marks I had been using just a little bit earlier, and the photographer tells me that they are ready.

This is my chance. This is the one time I get to say this. I take a deep breath, and I say, “I don’t want to take up a ton of your time, so I’ll say this quickly. I grew up in Sunland-Tujunga, and you guys used to film in my neighborhood all the time.”

They looked at each other. “Sunland-Tujunga!” Larry Wilcox said. “We love Sunland-Tujunga!”

“Yeah, it was a great place to grow up. So I loved watching CHiPs, and I loved that I could see streets I recognized when I watched it.

“One day when you were filming, in like 1979, I think, my babysitter went to the set and came back with your autographs for me. I cherished them, until they were lost in a move probably 40 years ago.”

Erik Estrada’s eyes lit up and he flashed me that classic Ponch smile. I took a steadying breath.

“But this is really what I wanted to tell you: I had a rough childhood, with a lot of abuse an exploitation. I was sad and scared most of the time. But whenever you were on my TV, I was happy and I was safe. I loved CHiPs so much. You were the adults I wished I’d had in my life. You guys protected people, you stood up to bullies, and the whole cast felt like a group of people who were always there for each other. I desperately wanted that in my life, and watching CHiPs got me as close to it as I could get. So I really just want to say thank you for your work and for the joyful memories you gave me.”

“Oh, buddy,” Erick Estrada said, “thank you. Come here,” and he pulled me into a warm and loving hug.

“Thank you,” I said, “you have no idea.”

“I think maybe we do,” Larry Wilcox said, very kindly, with a warm smile. Maybe I’m not the first person to share a story like mine with them.

“Let’s take a great picture,” Erik Estrada said.

“Thank you. I’d love that,” I said.

I stood between them, they put their arms around me, and a dream came true for 9 year-old Wil.

They were such kind men. I felt seen and I felt special. All these years later, Ponch and John can still make this weird, sad, scared, little kid feel safe.

I will cherish this memory for the rest of my life.

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I worked on this story for about eighteen months, even though I “only” spent about 12 hours actually writing it. It was a year late, even though it “only” took me three days to write the draft that I turned in. I have never worked harder or longer with fewer words to show for it at the end. But they are good words. I am so glad that I did this, that I put this at the top of my queue and left it there, even when I felt like I couldn’t put two words together, because when I accepted it, I made a promise to myself that I would do the thing,¹ and it was really important to me that I didn’t break that promise, even if it meant that the queue did not move at all, for a year.

I was so excited to do this when I accepted the invitation in late 2023 or early 2024. But the election broke me, and 2025 went from being a year I expected to be all about making not just this thing, but lots of things, to a year that forced me to turn off my engines, divert all power from all non-essential systems to life and mental health support, and run silent until further notice.²

Nearly every day in June and July, I woke up with my body completely dysregulated. It was its own alarm: the terror, the shaking, the nausea and sweating … all of that stuff I became an alcoholic to avoid before I went to sleep at night was now happening to me, ten years sober from alcohol, every fucking morning. And this was even worse than the other thing. Day after day, exhaustion and discomfort helped push my anxiety to record levels, worse than it had been in years. I felt like the ulcer my mom didn’t believe I had when I was a teenager was coming back. I was distracted all the time, constantly crashing into doorways and furniture, forgetting why I walked into every room. More than once, for days at a time, I felt like I didn’t even know myself.

I mean, it was a lot. And I say that as someone who has survived and healed from a lot, you dig me?

The dysregulation was a symptom, I knew that; but why it showed up when it did took a lot of work to uncover, probably because the cause turned out to be a lot of different things³ that ultimately revealed themselves to be a individual parts of a few things that I could look at and work on using EMDR therapy⁴.

EMDR therapy works so well for me, it is advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic. But that magic isn’t a spell that cures everything and turns me into someone I’m never going to be. But it helps so much, and it heals so much, I literally feel pain and trauma leave my body⁵ and then over the next few days, I notice that space to enjoy the good things opens up. For months, now, I have been experiencing moments similar to the first time I heard the birds, as I notice that something which had been hurting for so long, I had gotten used to it, like the smell when you live next to the dump, was gone. And, just like I did then, I marveled that I was able to exist at all with the trauma taking up all that space.

The thing about my healing and recovery is that I can work my way through the level, get to one of those hideous Baron-Harknonen-meets-human-Bender-meets-a-gibbering-mass-of-eyeballs-and-teeth boss monsters, defeat it, and celebrate as I head to the next level … but there’s always another monster waiting behind some currently unopened door that I will have to eventually go through. So I celebrate the wins, but cautiously.

For the last year or so, in the exuberant haze of post-slaying celebration, I would sit at my desk, confident that The Thing was now going to begin filling the empty document. Most of the time, it was a frustrating, demoralizing experience as I dragged words, kicking and screaming, from my mind onto the page. At the end of those days, I’d curse myself and throw it all away. Once or twice, I enjoyed what I wrote, but when I went back to add to it, I realized there was a nice scene or two there, but nothing I could build into a story. Nothing I wrote made my heart sing. I never felt connected to what I had written. Maybe I’d put together one or two or even three nice scenes, but the reason I wanted to write it, the story I wanted to tell, I didn’t know what that was, because I was too distracted, too tired, too … broken.

I. Just. Could. Not. Do. It.

I’m gonna yadda yadda over a lot, because I want to hurry up and get to the fireworks factory. Maybe I’ll come back to it in the future. For now I will say I found myself in the middle of an empty ocean, floundering in the worst storm I’ve ever seen. I had all these instruments telling me how to get out of it, but I couldn’t adjust the sails to use them. I got frustrated, I got mad, I started to get depressed.

Yadda yadda, one day, as I was thrown wildly around by the violence of towering waves, it was like my body, or my Higher Self, or whomever is writing my life took pity on (or ran out of patience with) me and decided to do something about it. One day in late Autumn, it broke the glass and smashed a big red button which delivered this message: You will not be able to make good art, the one thing you want to do more than anything else for the rest of your life, until you slow down and let the healing take as long as it takes. We mean, really commit and do it. Yes, when it is hard. Yes, when it feels like you’re running in place on a patch of ice and if you fall it’s really going to hurt. Yes, when you are afraid. Yes when you are overwhelmed. Yes, yes, yes, you can do this. You must do this.

I heard that, paused, and I listened to what came after. I showed up and did the work. I started to slow down, but the way an overloaded cargo ship slows down over, starting several days out of port before it can think about actually slowing down again to dock without exploding like a Ford Pinto⁶

That brings us to sometime in January. I had been out of the storm and on dry land for a little bit, but I could still feel the motion of that storm, emotional landsickness from a body that didn’t realize the motion was a memory,⁷ but I also felt weirdly aware of how on solid ground I was, and that the discomfort was literally in my head. So I went for some walks, and as the landsickness calmed, all the years of reading books I didn’t feel had helped me at the time, books about storytelling, story structure, character development, writing process, books I read in an effort to get myself from a guy who writes things to a guy who is a writer, all came together at once, and before I realized it was happening, I think I got there. I think I am there, right now. Holy shit.

I have always known that I was mostly faking it, when it came to writing stories. I always felt like I had always had some grasp of the skills, but very little understanding of how to use them. I know that I’m reasonably competent and occasionally even good as a blogger who writes stories about his own life. I know that I can effectively recreate the emotional sense of a place and put you there. That’s not nothing! I’m proud of it and I love doing it! But when I tried to take that particular set of skills and translate them into writing stories of my own that actually say something through characters who grow and change in a story that evolves as I tell it rather than remember it, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t understand something fundamental about the discipline, and I didn’t even know where to look to find it. I think maybe it isn’t one single thing, and maybe it isn’t something that is meant to be easy or even logical in its discovery. At least, not for me. And I’m not even sure I’ve completely put it all together, just that I’ve figured out enough of it to finally get the key to turn in a door I’ve clawed grooves into, trying to brute force my way through it.

I started from the very beginning: What story do I want to tell, and why? A couple days of long, quiet walks later, I knew. It was simple and clear: I want to tell a dark fantasy story about a man who’s been running away from himself for so long, he doesn’t realize that he’s been caught, until it is too late. I want to examine where his greed comes from and why.

Where will I set it? Who is the guy? What happens after we meet him? Is there a twist? What is it? Who wins at the end? I allowed myself to write hundreds of words that didn’t work, knowing that they were getting me to the next hundred words that did, confident that I would be able to clean them up later⁸.

I had such a great time. I felt creative. I felt clever. I felt productive. I felt like I knew what I was doing! I wanted to reach out and tell my friend this was happening, but after blowing so many deadlines, I didn’t want to say anything unless and until it was done.

While I was busy not texting my friend, my friend texted me. They told me no pressure or expectation, they know what I’m dealing with, but there was a week left if I still wanted to turn in the thing. I replied that I would do my best, and mentioned that I’d been working on it, but didn’t go into the rest. I really wanted to stay on target, use The Force, blow this thing and go home.

Late in the day last Thursday, I finished the draft. I looked at it again Friday morning, was happy to discover that it held up, and turned it in with a note that said I thought this was about 90% done, but I needed fresh eyes to look at it, for those things I inevitably miss, or things that are left over from a previous draft that I didn’t notice were still there.

And I waited.

Yesterday, my friend texted me that he loved my story. Shortly after, the editor replied that he had no notes and was ready to publish it as-is. I asked if I could have a day to do a polish and just look it over one last time.

After my coffee and Marlowe’s walk this morning, I opened up my current draft and began reading it aloud. I made cosmetic tweaks here and there, tried out something in a scene that didn’t work so I deleted it all, and was sincerely shocked at how finished it actually was. It was more like 98% there, not 85% like I thought just 24 hours prior. I realized that I was having fun reading it, like it was something I hadn’t written, but was enjoying on its own merits.

That was wild, man.

So, after about 18 months, I “only” spent about twelve hours over “only” about four days working on the thing, but I think I spent roughly 540 days with this story, while it taught me how to be a writer.

What do you mean, Wil? I’ve been reading your blog for 20 years. Of course you’re a writer. Yes, I’ve written lots of things in 20ish years, but I always felt like I was mostly faking it. I could stack story blocks on top of each other, but if the stack got too tall, it always fell over. And even if I was in love with it before it fell, I didn’t know how to put those blocks back in order because I didn’t know why they went in that order, just that they fit together well, mostly by accident.

Something is different, now, and some other ideas that have been sitting on shelves in my creative mind, gathering dust, have begun to call out to me for the first time in years. Two things that I really loved developing but never finished are probably going to be combined into one thing, and I think I may even have a chance at pitching the result to a publisher.

I didn’t notice until today, editing this post, how much my growth as a trauma survivor and my growth as a writer have in common, even though I’ve always known they were linked together in ways I was aware of and ways I was not. It is not lost on me, at all, and it is not even a little coincidence, that I ended up writing a story about someone someone who knows he has trauma to heal, pain to reconcile, but unlike me, he choose to run away from it instead of doing the work. Of course, it’s also just a nice dark fantasy story with a little horror around the edges, too.

None of this was easy, but I believe that nothing truly worth doing ever is. There were times when I felt lost, and afraid, times when I gave up. My god, I gave up half a dozen times. But I got lucky, and the project moved slowly enough for me to catch up.

Now, I have to rest for a minute, but when I’m done, I’m going back to work. I have these stories I want to tell, and I think I actually know how to tell them.

Thanks for reading. I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts in your email, here’s the thingy:

1. Hell, I was excited to do the thing. I had a ton of ideas to choose from, and any one of them would be such a thing! ︎
2. That work is ongoing. I’m going to be on a recovery and healing journey for the rest of my life, with its own storms and calm seas. At the moment, I feel like I have just emerged from one of the must brutal storms I have gone through in a long while to find myself on pretty calm water, so maybe we can think of this as putting into my logbook what it was like to weather that storm, so I’m better prepared for the next one. ︎
3. I almost called them “little” but there are no “little” traumas and I have to remind myself not to minimize my experience, so I’m going to remind you, also. ︎
4. EMDR is science that, for me, is indistinguishable from magic. ︎
5. I know, that’s weird, especially from Captain Skeptic here, but it’s happened enough that I have to accept it, now. ︎
6. I’m auditioning phrases to use when I want to say “slowly and then all at once”. This one probably isn’t getting called back. ︎
7. Stares at camera in Trauma Survivor ︎
8. This is significant for me. I spent so much of my life (and still do, contra best efforts) just terrified that everything I tried to do had to be perfect on the first try, or else my dad would be right about me. It’s damn close to impossible to be creative when I feel that way, and even harder to make myself keep going with “good enough” or even “bad but something”. I’ve worked so hard to stop judging myself, I’m giving myself a footnoted gold star for actually getting there. ︎

This week’s story, Magnificent Maurice, or the Flowers of Immortality, was SO MUCH FUN to narrate. Here’s my intro:

About ten thousand years ago, some cats in Mesopotamia looked at a bunch of humans and thought, “I bet we could trick them into giving us food and shelter,” so they domesticated themselves. As a dog owner who is a member of my cat, Watson’s, staff, I’d say that it worked out pretty well for them.

This week, it is a privilege to tell you a story about one of the greatest cats who has ever lived (just ask him, he’ll tell you), a very special cat, with a very special job. I’m going to straighten my collar and make sure my hair is just so, as I tell you the tale of Magnificent Maurice, or the Flowers of Immortality.

You’re going to love this, especially if you are on staff for one or more housecats. In Patreon, we are celebrating our feline bosses, sharing their full names (Watson’s True and Full Name is His Royal Majesty, Sir Waddington Pottybottoms III, Esq.,The First of His Name, Head of The Complaint Department) and the titles of the songs we sing to them, featuring their names. It’s a lot of fun, and I encourage all of my fellow pet owners to jump in, here, if not there, and share.

Also, before I hit publish and get ready for work, I want to take a minute to thank all of you who listen to the podcast, who have subscribed to our Patreon, who have taken the time and effort to rate, review, and recommend us so we can grow. You are making it possible for me to do this, week after week, and I am intensely grateful to you. It is such a privilege to entertain you, to tell you these wonderful stories, and introduce you to authors you may not know, but I think you will love. And speaking of that, if you missed this, I wanted you to know that Senaa Ahmad, whose The Skin of a Teenage Boy is not Alive was on the pod a couple weeks ago, has a brand new short story collection out called The Age of Calamities (“Written by an inimitable new voice, The Age of Calamities is a genre-defying, mind-bending collection of absurdist, funny, and speculative short stories.“), that is available wherever you get your books.

It is such a gift to do this, y’all. If I can do this as my regular job for the rest of my career, if I never have to go work on camera again, if all I do is tell you stories and promote the Arts, I will be so happy. It feels like that has a very real chance of happening, and that fills me with such joy, I feel like I’m going to burst.

Okay. NOW I am going to go get ready for work. Stay safe, friends.

This week’s story is Wend-Way-Go by Tim Pratt. It was originally published in Uncanny Magazine.

I made a creative choice for this week that I haven’t made before on the podcast, and it was so satisfying, I wanted to talk about it a little bit.

When I was working on Star Trek, one of the adults in the cast — and I can’t remember who, no matter how hard I try — introduced me to the concept of “meeting the demands of the material.” They meant that our job as actors is to serve the writer’s intention, not the other way around. Before we start changing words or rewriting lines, it is our responsibility to do the work of understanding the author’s intent until the scenes work. And if the scene still doesn’t work after all of that, then it is time to talk about making changes. But you don’t go making changes because you’re 15 and don’t yet know what it means to be an actor, beyond following direction.

It took me awhile to process that, and it took me even longer to reliably meet the demands of the material, but I eventually got there and never left.

As a narrator of over 100 titles, my job is easier, more joyful, and more satisfying because I know to listen to what the author wants to say, and then do my best to communicate that through my performance. When it works, the listener doesn’t even know what I did; they just feel the story more completely than they would, otherwise. It’s a pretty great trick.

When we recorded this week’s story, Gabrielle (who directs and produces) and I both felt that the material was making a specific demand, that was also a gift to me: without saying so directly, Tim sets this story in what felt to both of us like South Carolina, for some reason. It was so clear in the text that the narrative character needed to speak in a soft drawl, that supported his fundamental gentleness.

It is a creative risk, to be sure. Accents are tough, and present a unique trap that catches me all the time when I discover I am doing an accent, when I should be performing with an accent.

So it’s exciting and a little scary, but I’m glad I did it. I loved this story, and I hope you do, too.

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