How To Make a Writer
The one where we talk about the stories and people who made us, what to do with creative burnout, and *A BIG OPPORTUNITY FOR FICTION WRITERS*
We made it to see another week!
Have you ever felt real magic in the hindsight moments where you realize how someone’s life story has impacted your own? It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about this week in several different conversations. So KC’s story that they so beautifully shared with all of us this week feels particularly timely and touching to me. I’m eternally grateful that nearly 160 of you creative souls allow us to have a chance to impact your stories every week. Never forget that you have this power to touch others in sharing your own story, too.
Cheers,
(OBA Media Newsletter Editor-in-Chief)
P.S. Scroll all the way down for a chance to share your own story by answering our question of the week. We’ve also got a HUGE opportunity open to all fiction writers!
📑 WHAT WE’VE BEEN CHATTING ABOUT THIS WEEK AT OBA MEDIA:
The Mad Scribe’s Apprentice: Escaping a Land of Lost Souls
Every artist has their genesis, a moment of raw, unfiltered, “Holy cow, I need to get out of here”—the kind of revelation that smashes into you like a brick through a windshield. For me, it wasn’t some starry-eyed awakening in a college lecture hall or a romantic Tarzan-Esque safari in some far-off corner of Africa.
Nah, my grand epiphany was born out of a brutal, merciless environment—an unrelenting lack of everything a person is supposed to have to survive and flourish.
And when I say “lack,” I mean absolute, screaming void. No money. No running water half the time. No electricity. Washing my face, hair, and my drawls in rainwater when the sky saw fit to cut me a break. Wiping my ass with old newspapers, book pages, and whatever scraps of fabric I was willing to sacrifice. (One of those books was The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump, which, in hindsight, is hilarious considering the man went on to become president. The irony would be delicious if it wasn’t so grotesque.)
This was the kind of place where hope came to die: a backwoods, Southern graveyard of ambition where everyone was either scraping by or sinking fast. It was Kid Rock’s “Cowboy”; it had big King of the Hill energy with a side order of Gangland—trailer parks and corner stores, rusted-out cars in front yards, liquor bottles and heroine needles scattered across sidewalks like breadcrumbs, and kids learning to cuss before they could spell their own names. A town that felt cursed, where the air carried the weight of generations who tried and failed to claw their way out.
I learned early on that the only way to survive was to escape—if not physically, then mentally. So, I dreamed hard and hallucinated harder.
When the lights got cut off, I imagined myself as a casino queen under the neon glow of Las Vegas.
When the water was shut off, I pictured bejeweled platinum goblets that refilled themselves on command.
And when the fridge was bare, I imagined feasting like goddamn royalty.
At first, these were just private indulgences, a kind of masturbation for the soul—a mental anesthesia. But then, something shifted. My mind started spinning entire worlds, full of people who weren’t me, places I'd never seen but where absolutely anything was possible, stories that felt more real than anything around me at the time. I had no choice but to start writing it all down.
Somewhere around 2007 or 2008, while still in elementary school, I pounded out my first story. Inspired by The Fifth Element, Tombstone, Rambo III, Resident Evil, Underworld, Blade 2, Demolition Man, Highlander, Steven King's Rose Red, The Scorpion King, Gladiator, Van Helsing, The Cave, The Descent, Doom (2005), Anaconda Blood Orchid, and a hundred other films I probably shouldn't have been watching. With these films as my muse, I sloppily created Blood Drop Odyssey—a fever dream about a post-9/11 soldier from the fictional town of Red Sugar, Georgia, who fought fire djinn in a lost subterranean city full of demons.
The main character of this serial, Saber Rome, died in action and got reincarnated in the Wild West as the son of a Comanche chief and a Chinese assassin-prostitute (Cathouse Darling of Ebon Mesa, Texas). From there, my little story went full-force crackhead. Saber became a fur trapper, a duelist, an outlaw, and eventually monster hunter across England, Mongolia, Siam, Java, The Philippines, & Romania—like Van Helsing but with less brooding and more thrill.
I managed to finish the thing in 2009. It was raw, messy, completely unhinged…and I was extremely proud of it despite all its glaring flaws.
And then, Patrick arrived.
🎧”Let’s Talk Stories” Podcast
Every other week the team here dissects a story mechanic you can use in your writing through a piece of pop culture media. Subscribers to OBA’s newsletter get early access to our newest episode sent right to their inbox.
Catch up on our previous episodes here:
Join our ✨LIVE✨ “After Hours” sessions every Monday here on Substack and our YouTube channel so that YOU can chime in with your thoughts and ask questions about what it’s like to be a creative writer. Stop in and chat with us about good and bad stories and what we can learn from them!
📣 Calling All Fiction Writers—We Want Your Story!
***Submissions are closing April 14th, so don’t wait to get your FREE story audit!***
Are you a fiction writer working on a story? Want a FREE feedback session with professional editors to help you write a story that really sticks with readers? We’ve got you!
Have a story that just isn’t working? A plot that feels off? Characters that don’t quite land? On our new podcast segment “Let’s Fix Stories,” we want to help you fix it. Whether you’ve got an outline, an unfinished draft, a rough first draft, or a stuck draft, are struggling with structure, pacing, character arcs, or just need a fresh perspective, we’re here to help you get unstuck and turn your story into something truly compelling.
💬 Question of the Week
Here’s the deal: we want to hear from you more. No one likes a one-sided conversation, and we believe that creativity is most powerful when we get to see multiple different perspectives! So, our question to you this week based on the topic we’ll discuss next week is:
Does art actually contribute to righting the wrongs and fixing brokenness in our world?
Hit “reply” or comment to drop your answer. We’ll pick some of your responses to feature in next week’s newsletter and tag you there!
CAPTAIN’S LOG
3/23/2025
I think this week calls for a bit of vulnerability.
I’m in the middle of grieving. It’s a strange kind of grief—not the death of a person, but the death of an idea. The death of a belief. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been struggling with the loss of my marriage. It’s been devastating—and not something I ever expected. But what I expected even less was the impact it would have on my ability to create.
Those who know me know my creative mind is my superpower. My ability to tell a story, to share ideas, to connect through imagination—that’s the thing that keeps me alive. When I say I create because I must, it’s not a catchy slogan. It’s gospel. As sacred to me as scripture is to a devout believer.
But with this recent loss, I’ve felt stripped. Stripped of that voice. That fire. My mentor says maybe it’s emotional exhaustion. Maybe. All I know is, for the last few weeks, it’s felt like I’ve been hollowed out. When your marriage ends, it feels like your identity dies with it. The life you thought you were building? Gone. And the part of you that was built with someone else—sometimes it feels like that’s gone too.
Now mix that with trying to build a company. Trying to network. Trying to build a community.
When your relationship ends, you start to question everything. If the one person who promised to love you forever can’t even stand you—how could anyone else? What if every good thing about you was tied up in them?
And so, you stare at the blank page. The blinking cursor. Wondering if the only part of yourself you ever truly loved—the creative part—is still in there somewhere. And nothing comes.
I wish I had a clean answer for what to do when that happens. But I don’t.
What I can say is that this past weekend, out of nowhere, I got hit with a wave of inspiration. The kind I haven’t felt in ages. It crashed into me—loud, electric, wild. It kept me up all night. I created like there was no tomorrow.
The next day, I couldn’t get two words on the page.
And that, I think, is just how it goes.
Sometimes your creativity comes like a hurricane.
Sometimes it comes like a whisper.
And sometimes, it doesn’t come at all.
But if you’re like me—if you’re grieving, if you’ve lost something, if you feel like your outlet has abandoned you—know this: it hasn’t. Let it sleep. Let it heal. And when it’s ready, it’ll return.
If you create because you must, that compulsion will come back. It always does.
It’s who we are.