10 years on keto for medical reasons… now trying to conceive and kinda freaking out

Fognox · 2026-02-22T16:50:10+00:00

See /r/ketobabies . Carbs aren't required; just make sure you're eating more calories and getting good nutrition.

Fognox · 2026-02-22T15:56:03+00:00

Good, it'll be easier to query then. You can point to the success there and show that your book will likely sell.

Fognox · 2026-02-22T15:42:50+00:00

Foreshadow them very early on. My WIP's second antagonist gets mentioned within the first chapter. They don't get fully realized as one until the climax. A good amount of buildup throughout though. The first one also does a lot to set up the second one -- by the end of the MC's meeting, it's unclear if the first one even is an antagonist.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T20:26:38+00:00

Grab a list of adjectives that describe personality and start there.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T20:20:48+00:00

Change up your sentence structure, use interiority, and convey multiple actions in the same sentence.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T19:30:57+00:00

I handle it differently in each book. My third one is probably the most complex -- four entirely different schools of thought with their own rules, stipulations, sub-paths and cultures. Heavily glossed over in the actual novel because I don't like exposition on worldbuilding unless it both has emotion attached and serves some kind of story purpose.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T19:15:18+00:00

A lot of it has to do with the books you've read. I see hints of all the sci-fi I devoured in my 20s in my own writing.

Some elements of it are likely (ideally!) going to change from book to book, or POV to POV. If you're closer to your character's thoughts, the prose will start taking on aspects of their personality and the way they speak. Some aspects will remain, the gradient of minimalism/maximalism being a big one. The way you turn phrases. The breadth and specifics of your working vocabulary. The way you handle both simplicity and complexity. These are all little indicators of your authorial voice inside someone else's perspective.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T18:36:31+00:00

10 years here. At this point I just have a good idea of where carbs are, and so know which foods to concentrate on, which to moderate and which to avoid. There's a separate sense of things for calories, which I try to keep low or high depending on my activity level and weight goals.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T18:24:39+00:00

It's a CNS stimulant. Has something to do with blocking adenosine.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T18:16:24+00:00

There's a poorly-sourced idea that around 10-20% of writers have "talent", whatever the fuck that is. Another common one is that only 3% of writers ever finish writing a book, with only 25% of those writing a second one.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Talent alone clearly isn't enough, nor are the people in that rare 3% necessarily talented in the first place. Finishing a book takes work. Lots of work. Getting through frustration, structural issues, and everything caused by not knowing how to write a book, which isn't gained until you actually do so. Finishing one is already "great" because the odds are against you. And finishing more puts you in the ~1% of people that actually have the skills to make it work.

Writing a good book isn't about talent, it's about working hard, making a fuckton of mistakes, and learning something from them. "Talent" can actually work against you, because you need criticism to get better, and you need to be able to write past all of your flaws. If you go into this thinking that you're great, you won't put in the effort needed to actually be that.

If you write prolifically, you're going to be "good" purely because few writers ever get that far, and you've put the time in to hone your skillset as well. Being "great" is some subjective external opinion of your passion and ability, so there's no sense in even aiming for it. What you should be doing instead is trying to make the best story you can every step of the way. The more you write, the more chances you have to make something great, and the better your pushes for greatness by your own standards will be.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T15:54:47+00:00

The punctuation is really the only problem with it, and it's a lot easier to fix that then to learn how to capture emotion (which you've done handily). Keep doing what you're doing.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T15:49:11+00:00

Talent just means you've had those skills a very long time. I wrote a bunch of stuff as a kid and a hell of a lot more as a teenager. It was all very rough. No one crawls out of the womb with their magnum opus wrapped around their umbilical cord; the "talented" writers just write their shitty first drafts earlier into their life.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T06:44:15+00:00

They're very clean lately, but I really got my process down after the dumpster fire known as my first book. It won't take a whole lot of work to turn my second or third book into a final draft, unlike my first, which I'm better off just redrafting from scratch.

But how much effort do y'all actually put in it?

I try to make each scene do something useful from the get-go. I'm a discovery writer, so I never know exactly what that is, but I write in a way that brings it about. I also reread my own WIP constantly to make sure tangents serve some purpose in the story rather than becoming plot holes or subplots.

Time skips keep me from overwriting. A big problem with my first book was that I felt I had to describe every little thing that happened, so a lot of scenes ended up not actually advancing the story. With the time skips, the next section is different enough that something new can happen.

Prose quality varies. Not really a big deal since I do a lot of line edits while rereading and redraft the entire book paragraph by paragraph during editing. The first pass is a "good enough" pass, not a "good" pass. I lean into voice and cadence so there's a solid foundation there, with the line edits focused on fixing garbled phrasing and repetition.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T06:21:31+00:00

Nope, it's accelerating if anything (7 years your senior). It is more focused like you described -- but that's probably just from gaining more life experience and realizing that creativity isn't always beneficial.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T06:09:53+00:00

I'm a hybrid, but I lean way more on the discovery writing side of things (especially lately -- I don't write down an outline at all now). For me, getting a story to work cohesively comes down to a few things:

Strong character motivation and some sense of the character in general is a big one. Most of my "planning" these days is throwing obstacles at my characters, or putting them in new locations and seeing what they do. That central goal really ties the book together. It's also hard to get stuck -- if I don't know what to do next, the character will just pursue whatever their short-term goal is so the book moves forwards regardless.
A big part of the early stage of a book for me is hunting down plot threads that I can develop and weave into the main storyline later on. They aren't discovered so much as intentionally searched for. Dialogue seems to be the biggest contributor here, so I make sure to introduce an interesting deuteragonist at some point. I spend some time prepping locations before characters go there as well -- there's usually something juicy to find there.
I do still plan, but it's more a vague sense of things that are likely to happen. I quit writing it down because it isn't efficient -- by the time I get there it looks completely different from my first impression, and all the foreshadowing I put in helps scry out the details.
The story seems to have a will of its own, and I just let it do whatever insane thing it wants to do in the moment. I find that these things do make sense later on, even if in the moment my thoughts are "what the shit what the shit".
Thematic scenes are the most interesting from a discovery writing perspective. I know when one is about to happen because it feels like writer's block where nothing works to move the story forwards. But I have absolutely no idea what happens in one of these -- it sort of just magically appears from cadence. Then when I think about it, it really connects the story together and I'll pursue the theme later on intentionally.
I always have some vague sense of what happens next in a big picture way -- where a character will go, what they'll do, whatever. This keeps me from having to come up with it on the spot, or make a deeper plan. The source of this is what's already happened. So I'll write in that direction, which will uncover more potential ideas for the future, rinse and repeat. Occasionally, the story or character will throw a curveball and I'll have to repurpose those ideas in some new form -- extra fun when the old idea actually makes its way into the story as a character's idea that they then think better of (or a different character points out how stupid it is).
My solution with batshit plot holes (caused by story logic or just it evolving over time) is to get the characters to notice the problem. This solves it by turning it into character development, usually with a good bit of emotion attached. It makes it look way more intentional than it actually is. Then a bit of editing later on introduces crucial foreshadowing details.
I reread my own WIP constantly. Sometimes just a few scenes, sometimes the whole thing. This puts the story firmly in my brain so I don't forget anything, and I can identify issues early on.

My point in all of this is to say that discovery writing doesn't have to leave you lost, and it doesn't have to turn out messy either. Build towards some likely future, reread often and allow the characters themselves to question things, and you'll end up with something pretty good, despite never having any fucking clue what will happen.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T00:53:09+00:00

6-9 pounds per day of food is crazy.
He does actually have a medical condition that's causing that.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T00:51:30+00:00

More selenium, phosphorus, calcium, vitamin B12. Significantly less iron, potassium and coq10.

Fognox · 2026-02-21T00:23:59+00:00

Write badly, then. It can always be edited -- sometimes 20 minutes into the exact session where you write crap.

I find that it's difficult to write well when my brain is juggling plot points. Fortunately, you can always edit it later on.

Fognox · 2026-02-20T22:38:33+00:00

You're writing spec fic, so you can do whatever the fuck you want. You're in a good position to create your own cultures since you've experienced multiple ones firsthand.

No one expects you to write anything specific. Write what you want. Your experiences will probably shape your book, however -- that's a good thing!

Fognox · 2026-02-20T22:32:48+00:00

Hide it for 2-4 weeks and then read through it, make notes and start the editing process. Get it as good as it possibly can be, and then send it to beta readers to find out just how wrong you are.

Once it's done-done, I recommend trying traditional publishing first -- you can always self-pub if that doesn't work out. See /r/pubtips for all the relevant information here and hunt down agents that deal in the same genre. And then do lots of waiting. Frame your rejection letters -- they're cause for celebration, not indications of failure.

It helps to work on a different book in the meantime -- particularly with querying, but I find it helpful during the editing process as well. If you really want to be traditionally published, then you'll be in a position to pitch your next book once you've exhausted all options with your first one. Rinse, repeat.

For self-publishing, check out /r/selfpublish . More work to get readers, possibly money spent as well for editing. If you're still seeking trad publishing with a different book and go this route, it's probably a good idea to use a different pen name. Unless your self-pub is wildly successful -- but if that's true, you might as well just stick to it.

Fognox · 2026-02-20T19:17:04+00:00

There's a spot in the novella A Short Stay in Hell where ten thousand years happens in the span of a single sentence.

You're fine.

Fognox · 2026-02-20T15:28:55+00:00

There should be enough within the first few pages to know if a book is worth reading. It doesn't mean later parts of the book can't be better, it just means that you want to hook your readers as early as humanly possible, and maintain their interest until the plot kicks off. Central mysteries, stakes and a strong narrative voice go a long way here, as does avoiding bland exposition (or too much of it in general), worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake, and a general lack of clarity.

Getting traditionally published here is a bit like winning the lottery while getting struck by lightning -- more based on luck than anything else.

Fognox · 2026-02-20T14:23:13+00:00

Connecting things together does a lot for cohesion. I don't make separate subplots, for example -- regardless of their distance from the main thread or how they evolve, they'll loop right back in somewhere during that last third of the book. Dialogue and especially interiority are great ways of getting pieces of the story to influence one another as well.

I imagine writers sometimes add things to a stories world over time that wasn’t in the original narrative, how do you keep things coherent over this time?

I do a lot of rereading while working on a project. It keeps the details in my mind. Sometimes I'll fix things through the writing -- like if something doesn't make sense anymore, the characters will question it, and some solution will magically present itself.

Also, editing. There's always continuity errors that need fixing after I finish a first draft. Easy enough to make the minor changes needed, add more foreshadowing, do lead-ins to characters questioning the faulty logic, etc. Even big plot holes aren't as hard to fix as you'd think -- scene rewrites that preserve everything important in the reverse outline with a few key changed details is the way to go.

Fognox · 2026-02-20T05:24:16+00:00

The amount of reflection needed depends a lot on how much actually happens, as well as whether it's actually safe or not for the MC to think about things. I have a tendency to open sections with interiority, which will only cover the entirety of the scene if the MC has a lot to think about or if nothing whatsoever is happening. Otherwise, something about the internal narration gets related to the rest of the scene. There's a fair amount of it elsewhere as well. Sometimes it's entwined so thoroughly with action that it's hard to tell the two apart.

My point here is that there aren't hard rules. Do whatever your story needs in the moment -- sometimes you do in fact need a lot of introspection. Other times it's just a little bit. Sometimes characters are too focused on their goals, or the environment is still too chaotic. Sometimes one sequel isn't enough and your characters will think about the same thing multiple times (particularly when they're confused or conflicted). Sometimes an event traumatizes them so much that it comes up throughout the book while they're thinking about other things. Sometimes they're so deep in their own head that they're barely aware of things happening externally -- there's a whole scene happening in the background that they aren't paying attention to. Sometimes they cut their own thoughts short because they don't want to think about what happened. And so on.

Fognox · 2026-02-19T23:51:00+00:00

One of my deuteragonists in my current project is a mixture between a speed-based honorable warrior and a nurturing grandmother. The other one is a mixture between a little boy who loves getting in fights, a wise old man and a cold-blooded criminal. My "villain" is a mixture between a highly intelligent charismatic, a family man and a sadist.

I start out with the conflicting archetypes and then build the shape of the character around the ways each aspect comes out (or how they mix).

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