Hyba Is Writing

Year in Review: 2024 This year, I had to deal with a couple of health issues that had me down for the count for a little while. I dreaded doing this year in review because I knew just how much time had slipped through my fingers as a result! That being said, I was pleasantly surprised with all I had gotten accomplished these past twelve months, and the reminder was as big a relief as it was motivating. The first few months of the year were awesome, and I started off great. Then things went a little awry, and in the last few months of the year, I managed to get back on the saddle, so to speak. Still dealing with the long-term effects of some of those health issues, but taking it one day at a ti January 2024 This was the month of Scareuary ! The first edition of Scareuary was hosted this month, and while there weren't a lot of participants, I was able to write a full draft of two short horror stories ( The Star Seal being the one I chose to write for the write-with-me portion), and w...

Or: Adjusting Your Writing Expectations I'm long overdue for a writing update, but I hope this half-update half-lesson post will make up for my absence, because the truth is, I've been really busy lately. Good busy. Mostly. Alhamdulillah. I'll keep the update short: I've been working on an interactive fiction called The Black Hare , for which I hope to have a full prologue uploaded on itch.io soon. It got delayed by some personal issues, but I decided that since I was late anyway, I might as well be fashionably late and provide my readers with something really cool! So, that's in the works. The cool news is that I was able to write about 38k words for it in November alone! I've also been working on a fantasy novel: The City of Light . It's not as complicated as The Black Hare, because it's just writing on a document - no need for coding or dropping down the rabbit hole researching how to do a very specific thing on Twine Sugarcube v2! No, this fantasy...

Ready to write some horror? February's right around the corner, and you know what that means! Join us this coming February to participate in Scareuary 2025! In this second edition of Scareuary, I've got a brand new selection of writing challenges and prompts. Whether you're a seasoned horror fiction writer or looking to dip your toes into the world of writing horror, this is the event for you. Scareuary 2025 events will include: M-m-monster!! - This challenge asks you to create a monster. Veer away from the well-trodden path of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and other well-known monsters in the horror genre, and try to create a story that revolves around a monster that comes purely from your imagination. How would you design it? What would it look like? What would it represent? Twisted Hearts - For this challenge, consider the ways in which love and horror are linked. What terrors lie in wait for the hopelessly devoted? What fears consume the lovesick heart? What horrors w...

How to start blogging as a fiction author: We begin with the platform. Let's talk about how to blog - or just be online, for that matter - as a fiction author.  Note: If you're on Twitter and Instagram, this isn't really the guide for you, because these social media platforms behave a little differently to what I'm going to be discussing in this set of posts. If you have a website, a blog, a tumblr blog, or a similar kind of platform, then this might be a suitable guide for your needs. So, the first step is actually choosing a blogging platform. Are you going to use Wordpress? Medium? Tumblr? Blogger? Something else entirely? Make sure to make the choice based on a few different factors: Ease of access. You need your blog to be easily found and easily accessible by your audience. Most blogging platforms will list your blog in Google search results, for example, and that's really helpful for getting discovered - but discovery alone isn't going to be enough, and w...

Keeping Worldbuilding Simple Let's get straight to the point: It's easy for things to spiral out of control and become overwhelming when you're worldbuilding. Much like character profiles, worldbuilding can trick you into falling into a pit of details you'll never really need. And even though it can be loads of fun to create entire worlds with their own cultures, histories, festivals, politics, economic systems, ecosystems, architecture, geography, and so on, you generally won't need to actually flesh all of that out when you're writing.  Don't get me wrong - it definitely depends on what you want out of your story and your worldbuilding, and I myself have gone the detailed route before (hence the SPLITE worldbuilding pack). But I have also written enough stories to know that that's not always the case, and is, in fact, the exception, not the rule. So, today's lesson is going to focus on worldbuilding by necessity.  At its simplest form, this just m...

Q: What do you do when you're not writing? Writing - especially if you're writing with the intent to self-publish - is heavy, time-consuming work. It means that when I'm not writing the stories, I'm either revising/editing them, making graphics for them, trying to talk about them online and garner some kind of interest for when I do finally publish them, and so on. I might also be networking, or trying to find a magazine or anthology to submit a short story to. It's a lot of work. In fact, it doesn't really leave you with much room for anything else.  But when I'm not writing, or trying to do the business of writing, I enjoy playing video games, watching movies/series, going out with friends, catching up with my favourite podcasts and YouTube channels, and working on a wide range of other hobbies that I still consider myself a complete newbie in.  I'd like to start doing a little DIY. Some woodworking and carpentry, perhaps. Maybe figure out how to fix p...