Creator Spotlight - William Edwards

The author of The Warthog Report newsletter joins us for some questions

Today’s Creator Spotlight features William Edwards, author of the Substack newsletter The Warthog Report, where he focuses on fiction. I’m happy that William agreed to answer a few questions for us.

Here’s William!

Will Edwards

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When you were a teenager, what did you want to become when you grew up?

A writer and a video game designer, which in a way I've basically accomplished. Not as full on careers, but I have stuff out there. Though for a time I had downsized my ambitions to just writing because I felt that game development was beyond my power. But game development was the original desire. This happened when my age was in the single digits so it's a little tangential to the question, but I can remember one time on my birthday I was allowed to briefly steer a duck boat and the driver made some comment about how I could do it as a job, I confidently replied I was going to be a video game maker. I've pretty much always had these two goals.

Do you prefer writing by keyboard, do you prefer pen and paper, or do you have another favorite method?

Keyboard. Writing by hand feels uncomfortable to me, especially if I grip the pencil for too long. And I dislike the feeling of paper, which I just double checked, ugh. There was also some fine motor control issue that might have gotten me out of handwriting in school, can't fully remember. Basically I have a lot of issues with handwriting and none with typing, so typing is my default.

What's the story of how you came to publish your first fiction (either on paper or online)?

It was back in elementary school on fanfiction.net, at the time the biggest hub on the internet for fanfiction (it's still around and active, but another website has become the defacto hub). The story was a Percy Jackson and the Olympians fanfic that I never continued past the first chapter. Since this was back in elementary school it goes without saying it was bad and I'm fairly sure I've taken it offline, better to keep that in my memories than where others can see it.

Really the story for posting it is a simple matter of reading fanfic and having ideas for some of my own. So the real story is how I discovered fanfic. My sister at least read fanfic so she introduced me to it, I remember it happening in her room. It was during the hiatus in season 3 of Avatar the Last Airbender, the one before the final set of episodes aired. So the first fanfic I read was someone continuing from where the last aired episode left off. Then I read fanfic for other things I was into like Percy Jackson, Lord of the Rings, and Super Smash Bros. Seeing all of those people writing got me writing too.

What's one thing about being an author that most people don't understand?

Hmm, I don't have a good sample size of people who don't understand authors thankfully, probably helps that I went to a liberal arts college. Although as a fanfiction author specifically I haven't had that luck. People have insulted and disrespected it to my face even when they know I write it, acting like they know more about it than the one person in the room who actually reads and writes it. What people don't understand is how damaging that stigma is for young writers. When a specific form of creativity is deemed lesser and acceptable to mock, people who express themselves in that way either stop expressing themselves or stop caring about what others think.

Let's say you love movies and got into indie movies, but seven out of eight times when you bring up indie movies, the other person will act like the only indie movies that exist are low quality porn, and no evidence will convince them otherwise. People who don't know you like indie movies will say things to you like 'do you think the reason all indie movies are bad is because...' and you need to quickly decide whether to challenge it or lay low. Still eager to bring up indie movies around other people? Still eager to make any sort of movie knowing what people think of the ones you already made? Welcome to the world of a fanfiction author. 

As a member of fanfiction communities I've seen the stifling effect this can have on young creatives, and it fills me with a deep rage. I was strong enough to recognize that writing fanfiction and fantasy meant I would never truly receive respect from the general public and decide I was fine with that, but I shouldn't need to be that strong, and demanding that strength from teenagers and younger is absurd. But that's what you demand when you single out the creations of a thirteen year old for mockery in order to get youtube views or retweets.

Oh it appears I accidentally stepped up on a soapbox, I'll just get down from it and answer the next question.

Do you do any writing exercises or other work to further develop your writing skills?

I've done the occasional writing exercise, they're helpful. If you feel like you're struggling with a specific aspect of writing, doing writing exercises focused on that is a good way to improve. Roleplaying as a character from one of my stories also counts as a writing exercise to me, it's helpful for exploring the character and can lead to me recognizing new sides of them. I should probably do more of that.

When I read a book, watch a movie/tv show, or play a video game I tend to be analytical about the narrative. Looking at how other people write stories, even in mediums I don't write for, can be enlightening. The trick is to think about why I feel the way I do about the work and ask questions like if it appears to be an intended reaction. Once you analyze something, it's easier to mimic what makes it work. I seem to learn the most from what frustrates me, and it gives me motivation to not make the same mistakes.

Did you have or maintain any blogs or other online publications prior to starting your Substack newsletter?  If so, can you share some details?

My first experience with blogging was on GameInformer Online, the website for Gamestop's official magazine. Users could post blogs so there was a community around it, I even successfully took part in a challenge where you posted a blog entry for each day of the month. This must have been from late middle school (which is grades 6-8 where I'm from) to mid high school. You can probably guess what I blogged about on the website for a video game magazine. I nearly forgot about those times, this question brought me back.

Also I spent some time on a website specifically for fans of the game Heroes of the Storm and made a blog post there about working up the nerve to try a more complicated game mode (Unranked Draft). And I guess a tumblr is somewhat of a blog. I had one, deleted it, made a new one, used it for a time, and then became a lurker who never posts aside from the occasional time I accidentally hit reblog when looking at something. I still get the odd notification about a post I made being liked or reblogged. I've contemplated abandoning the current tumblr too, I've gotten into some arguments on it and while I stand by my positions there, I don't think it's the image of myself that I want to present or keep around. The ability to both assume another persona and to destroy your own past are each tempting in their own right.

I'm going to count a profile on a website for posting fiction as an online publication. There was my account on a website aimed at teen writers that has now shut down, my original fanfiction.net account, the second fanfiction.net account I made to help bury the first, and my Archive of Our Own (another fanfiction website) account. The fanfiction websites might still see some use from me in the future, but for now I'm too focused on the Warthog Report to do other writing, maybe once I'm a few months ahead of schedule.

There's also my World Anvil. World Anvil is a website dedicated to worldbuilding, it essentially lets you create a wiki to serve as a database for your world. I used it to write about Hybridis, a fantasy world I've been working on for some time. Hybridis is also where Battles Beneath the Stars, the serialized story on the Warthog Report, is set. I want to keep updating my World Anvil with information relevant to Battles Beneath the Stars, but like my fanfiction I'd like to pull ahead of schedule a little more before getting into it.

How did you discover Substack and what prompted you to start your own newsletter?

I'm not sure when the exact moment of going from not knowing about Substack to knowing about Substack was. My dad suggested reading a specific one to me, and my brother writes one, so those were my introductions. What moved me to start my newsletter was a desire to avoid mandatory social media. Social media, especially Twitter, is generally considered mandatory for writers now. Even for traditional publishing I've seen authors say their agents told them getting on Twitter was non-negotiable. Every publishing industry insider I spoke to stressed the importance of starting a Twitter yesterday no matter what form of publishing I aimed for. So I made a Twitter out of obligation rather than out of interest in Twitter.

Then at ProWritingAid's online Fantasy Writers Week event I heard newsletters offered as a way to get word out about your writing without sacrificing yourself to the social media algorithms. So I decided I'd rather be doing a newsletter. Now I think of Substack as the main platform for my writing rather than merely a way to escape Twitter. I still have my Twitter account since it has its uses, but based on the statistics I see in my Substack dashboard, Twitter doesn't work well for promoting myself. Sometimes I don't even bother with tweeting a link to a new post on Twitter. More views is nice, but views give only fleeting pleasure. So far the people who engage with my writing either already know me or come through Substack itself.

What's the origin of your newsletter's name (The Warthog Report)?

Years of psychological torture, by which I mean teasing from my family. My family has a running joke of calling me a warthog, which I think started from me singing Pumbaa's lines in 'Hakuna Matata' from the Lion King ("When I was a young warthog"). Hated it at first, now it's part of my online identity so you can tell I've accepted the joke enough to sometimes go along with it. The lesson here is to be careful about song choices during Disney sing a longs. Strangely, I don't have any strong feelings on Pumbaa after what he indirectly caused.

In an interview, George R. R. Martin implied that he feels like he's been living in Westeros for the past 20+ years, presumably because of the amount of writing, thinking and planning that goes into his A Song of Ice and Fire series.  Do you share any of that feeling about your own fictional works?

It doesn't feel like I live in my works, but I have spent a long time working on some stories, and they're a constant presence in my mind. Hard to feel like I'm living in Hybridis when I'm still actively constructing it. Or perhaps I'm overestimating the literalness of that statement and the constant presence of a fantasy world within the mind is exactly what he was getting at. I've certainly devoted a lot of time to Hybridis, even just in daydreams. Maybe I do live in it.

For most other ideas they aren't as constant in their presence. Though I do have one certain idea that's been a constant companion since middle school, but it has changed shape so drastically so many times that it's too amorphous to live in. It would be more accurate to call that story a reflection of myself, or perhaps it's more like my shadow, something that is always there, mutable, and intrinsically linked to me.

Pretend you wake up one morning and the Internet has been destroyed.  What's the first thing that you do?

This is a vague answer, but panic. I depend on the internet for contact with all of my friends, even ones I know in person thanks to moving to the other side of the country. Losing Discord alone would cost me some very good friends. I couldn't even send my friends a physical letter since I haven't needed to know my friends' addresses in a long time and they don't know my current one. And how many online friends have told you their address so you can send physical mail to them after the internet is destroyed? Even my method for finding potential friends around where I live is searching for local meet ups using the internet. Then you have the broader societal implications of the internet's abrupt destruction when so much relies on it, not to mention the ominous question of why it happened and who did it.

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Thanks to

William F. Edwards

for agreeing to do this interview! Check out

The Warthog Report

!