My Current Big Adventure: Writing a Book

Far more often than not, the answer to the question "Where is Jared?" is un-excitingly, behind a desk.

I'm sure this is the case for many, if not all of us (even the ones who consider themselves the most outdoorsy). I feel like I can say this with relative confidence because I truly believe that being "outdoorsy", and having a strong connection with nature, leads us to be much more creative. For those who consider themselves creatives, there is truly no better place for exercising that capacity than from behind a desk.

Perhaps you are an artist, putting charcoal, watercolor, or oils to paper. Maybe you take photos or videos, you'll spent time out shooting, but ultimately spend much time editing or developing. You might be a maker of any variety, crocheting your next piece of clothing, or putting together a fine wooden chair. For each of us the image that is conjured in our heads when we think of our workspace, our desk, might be quite different. The artist might think of an easel, the maker a workbench, the photographer a dark room, hell for some of us it might just be our couch.

For me it is simply a desk. One I've had for years now. One that can stand (though it rarely does), and is perennially covered in cans, snacks, and random pieces of gear from all of my various hobbies. I work here too, as a remote employee, but I also spend much of my free time plopped down in the same chair, working on something for myself, the light from my red paper lamp, a gift from Madeline, illuminating my nook well into the night. I write these posts here, I edit my videos and pictures here, and lately, more often than not, I have been writing a novel here.

I've been doing this for quite some time, even longer than my desk has been in this particular nook. Secretly tapping or scribbling away, between notebooks, google docs, notion folders, and iPhone notes. I have been trying to let the world inside of my head make its way onto some form of paper, metaphorical or not. In fact, I've been writing in one form or another my entire life. The last time my parents moved, I was in Texas, going through a pile of my saved and collected childhood belongings. Buried in bins I found notebooks filled with pages and pages of writing. My scrawled, childish script putting ideas down on paper, chapter 1, 2, 3... each of them eventually petering out, inevitably ending mid-sentence, mid-idea. Somewhere in each of the stories I had lost interest, or had lost the hope that it might be anything decent, worth finishing. I loved books then, still do, but I absorbed them with vigor and prejudice in my early years, and while I tore through their pages I dreamed of writing one of my own, conglomerating original thoughts with the structure and themes that came out of my favorite stories.

Yet, somehow, I never found the nerve to follow through, never committed to completing the task I so yearned for. Here I was, now in my late twenties, rifling through a repository of the unclaimed dreams my younger self held, realizing it had persisted. I still wanted to write a book!

Maybe it was the miasma of Covid, all of us locked inside, re-introducing ourselves to our long-lost hobbies. Maybe it was my own quarter-life existential problems, reaching adulthood and grappling with the thought of my own mortality, realizing the limitations of a single lifespan. No matter what it was, sometime in the latter half of 2020 I forced myself to start taking writing seriously, to not let it remain a hidden hobby for the rest of my life, but instead to find something that was meaningful that I could share with the world. Stopping myself from the idea of perfection, in favor of the complete.

Now, a little over five years later, I can proudly say that I did in fact stick with that commitment I set out for myself. In the late hours of 2025 I completed my first proper, top-to-bottom, draft of my book.

I'm merely an amateur at writing, I have no formal degree, I have not studied other authors in any real extent, everything I have done is made up, strung together as I go along, simply based on a lifetime of reading. So, when I say "draft", I mean it only in the sense that there are still small tweaks to be made: grammar, prose, structure. In my heart though, the story feels complete.

I wrote it sporadically, sometimes letting large chunks of complete story fall out of me, sometimes laboring over bullet points and dialogue, rearranging them time and time again. Some weeks I would write a few thousand words, some weeks I would write none at all. It was a part time job for me, mostly done in the evenings and early mornings when I couldn't sleep. Sometimes I would dream sections and wake in the morning finding them fully formed in a way I had been struggling to do while awake, sometimes I would completely scrap entire sections I believed to be pivotal.

Before I get ahead of myself, I have to continue to remind my excited brain that it is still just a draft. It's been lightly looked at by a few close friends, but no one has read the entire thing yet (not really even I have done so properly, of course I know the story like the back of my hand, but every read through is tainted by my inability to stop editing minutiae). I know changes will made, probably even decent sized ones, ones that will be hard for me to find, to accept, and that is where you come in.

If you made it this far down in this post I have to assume one of two things...

1. You are a really great and supportive friend
2. You might actually enjoy my writing (Everyone else gave up somewhere around the point where I started reminiscing on my childhood)

So, here is where I make a huge ask, to you who fits in one of those categories: I am looking for "beta readers" of my book. If you have any interest in fiction, specifically science fiction, and the outdoors, I would ask you to consider reaching out to me and taking on this huge role.

Here is a quick synopsis:

The novel follows a boy, Kin, who grows up in a dome city on an unnamed planet colonized by a group of people known as "the founders", who left earth to escape political and ecological unrest. Now, multiple generations after the initial settlement, Kin struggles to understand his own purpose, and finds himself taken in by a small group of adventurers who leave the domes, and brave the harsh world that they inhabit. He grapples with the ideas of individualism, mentorship, and hope while struggling both against the societal pressures of his utopia, and the peer pressure of those he looks up to.

If that caught your attention, and you are willing to read something that is technically incomplete, I'm looking for a handful of people, with a small set of expectations:

1. You read the entire thing.
   1. Ideally in less than a month (there are currently just under 90,000 words which equates to somewhere around 300 standard pages) to give me time to incorporate your feedback
2. You give feedback.
   1. Specifically big picture notes. Does the book feel complete? Do things make sense? Are the characters/dialogue believable? Etc, etc, etc.
   2. I'll handle editing grammar, but as big things change so will the prose, so unless something is egregious you don't need to worry about it.

I don't want anyone to take it lightly, it is in fact electing to give yourself adult homework solely on my behalf, but if you are interested I would be eternally grateful!

If you are interested or excited to read it, but don't feel like this is something you can take on, that is completely okay! I'm going to keep pushing to get it properly published so you can read it in its absolute best form. There is still a bunch of work left, but I'm ecstatic to be this close, thanks so much for following along, and I can't wait for you to read it!