I’ve always enjoyed writing. I believe the quality of writing is dependent on the creativity and quality of the thinking that goes into it in equal measure with one’s mastery of the craft of writing itself. I’m adding having a lived experience and expanded lived experience (which I’ve written about here). Without it the writing tends to lack an emotional connection with the reader, it feels soulless.
I think a lot, but that doesn’t make me a good writer. It does lead me to consider what I know and what I don’t on the subject. From that I try to learn more about what I don’t know and progress from knowing how to write to being a writer to being a good writer.
Consequently, I’m going to update and edit this page as I progress.
Outside of my professional work, I had mostly written blog posts and essays. At the end of 2025 I embarked on fiction writing once again. I wasn’t sure what I’d write about or in what format, but I started thinking of scenarios and characters. It was a start.
In four months, I became invested. I joined a local established writer’s group and a brand new one at my local library. I even completed a 60,000 word first draft of a novel. It is a reimagination of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent.
I was very excited about my progress. And then I had a realization, or several. I didn’t know what my story was going to become. I knew it was prose, not poetry. It was a novel, but what genre?
I wasn’t sure. I knew what I read, what I liked, and what I didn’t, but couldn’t say what genre any of them were. What was the plot type? I hadn’t given it any thought. What was the plot? Which character’s story was it? This might have been the most challenging question. In the original story it was Verloc, the Secret Agent, in my retelling, I wanted it to be Winnie, the Grit Girl, the title character. Did I change it enough to make this happen? I wasn’t sure.
It turned out I didn’t know as much about my book as I first thought, and before I considered myself a writer, I ought to at least know what I wanted to write. I didn’t, or at least I couldn’t articulate what it was I was writing.
After two revisions of my novel, I began to understand a friend’s advice to try short story writing. I started with what wound up being creative non-fiction. In March and April I wrote six short pieces, which helped me focus on character, point of view, and editing my own writing.
It helped me better understand what I enjoyed writing about and how I liked to write.
My Writing Style
I like to write about things I am curious about and often these are related to the tensions and contradictions that drive human behavior. I like to get inside the head of characters and use setting as a character to help tell the story. I want my characters to be observant, vulnerable, and engage in natural dialogue and actions while maintaining emotional restraint in a trying world.
I try to be clear, direct, and honest, which is harder than I thought, because to be honest one must expose oneself emotionally and we are essentially taught not to do that growing up, or at least Generation X was. I strive to write with intention and rhythm. I want to be psychologically attuned to be consistent, calm, thoughtful, and grounded while maintaining realism.
Diction is word choice. Of the many things I learned from Tolkien is that there is a right word for every situation. Being a philologist Tolkien took this to another level. His word choice was not only in current meaning, but in the word’s origin which added depth to his writing.
My own word choice is not as well done as his. I prefer clean, contemporary, and emotionally precise words. I try to remove what is not necessary and reveal what is needed for the reader to understand the character, scene or story.
I want my word choice to feel transparent in the sense that the reader believes anyone can write this until they try and recognize it is not the case. I want my writing to read as effortless and elegant, not jarring or loud.
Closing Thoughts
With three short stories and three creative non-fiction pieces ‘finished’. In my current writer’s bio I describe myself this way:
Ross R. Nunamaker writes character-driven fiction. Leveraging lived experience, place as character, and hope amidst chaos, he maintains emotional restraint while exploring the disconnect between reality and desire.
I’ve learned that about myself in the early stage of my writing career. I knew most everyone could write, but not everyone is a writer. There are many definitions of what makes one a writer. In this day and age, pretty much anyone can say ‘I identify as a writer, therefore I am a writer’.
Anyone can be a published author by self-publishing. There is no gatekeeper in the self-publishing world.
One of the things I value personally is a love of learning and one of the ways I engage that is through what I call scholarship, which is reading, writing, research, thinking creatively, and presenting.
When I say I’m a writer, it is in the sense that I value and enjoy writing. It is personal. The process of writing allows me to engage in scholarship and express my thoughts and ideas. These things are important to who I am as a person. It is a part of my being.
I’d like to one day be published by a literary journal or by a traditional print publisher. To me, the process validates the work being published. If that were to occur I’d personally be comfortable externally being described as a published author and by extension I’d then be a writer of another kind. It would be an additive external condition to my internal state of writing being a part of my being that I value.
More…
South: my writing background.
North: I value writing as a part of scholarship, which allows me to pursue my love of learning, learn more about the Structure of Being.
Ross Raymond Nunamaker 