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Alan Wake turned 10 last year. You’re excused for not marking the occasion. I hear there was some other shit going on. But it’s 2021, I’m juiced up on vaccine, and one of the side effects is catching up with everything we missed during the pandemic.

And so: Alan Wake.

A Brief Re-Introduction

This is just a little bit for those of you who are unfamiliar with Alan Wake and for those of you who forgot. I mean, it’s been a minute.

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Image via Markus Spiske

Fear was the fog, creeping about you, winding its tendrils about you, seeping into your pores and flesh and bone. Fear was a girl whispering a word over and over again, a small word you refused to hear although the whisper was a scream in your ears, a dreadful scream you could never forget. You heard it over and over and again and the fog was a ripe red veil you could not tear away from your eyes.

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Last year around March 15th is when our family made a personal choice to stay home due to the rising cases of COVID-19. March 23rd is when Gov. Jay Inslee issued Washington state's first stay home order. It was in place for two months.

Stay home unless absolutely necessary. Only essential businesses will stay open.

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So today we’re going to talk about writing to your ideal reader. I’m sure you’ve head of this concept before. Let’s dig in to some ideas on what that means, and how I think you can approach this concept. I think it can help you out quite a bit, but maybe not in the ways you might expect.

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Hero's Journey via Wikipedia Commons, public domain

Last January, my late-onset agoraphobia took a plunge — I joined a weekly Friday night online group for outsider and transgressive authors to share and critique one another’s raw work. Having little idea what to expect, I was initially on edge; only to be warmly welcomed by some of the most sincere and humble/humbled people I’d met in some time.