Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to William McGinn. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
William, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I have several books written and every one has enough meaning behind it to tell a five-minute speech. One is a series I wrote as a teenager to cope with my fears of becoming a teenager, which turned into the characters growing up alongside me. One I wrote based off a family tragedy, and another I wrote because there was an online community who did amazing things I never could be a part of but always wanted to be. But the project I’m finishing up right now is by far my most passionate project yet. It is a fan-fiction novel in the Sly Cooper universe. Between 2002-2005, there were three Sly Cooper video games released for PS2, and then eight years later, in 2013, they released a new game after the third game ended on a happy note but left the door open for more. That game, Thieves in Time, had some people scratching their heads about why a particular character went from a sweet and caring character to a heartless and menacing one, and it ended on a cliffhanger with the protagonist lost in time. Back in May 2021, I was working on the sequel to one of my books but came up with an idea around the personality change that happened with the character in the fourth game. I then realized I had a great idea to conclude Sly’s long-unfinished story. So I shelved the book I was then writing and started writing the fan-fiction novel. I completed it at over 100,000 words in January 2022 and for the last year I’ve been doing illustrations to give people a real sense this is a story that deserves to be Sly’s next chapter. I originally envisioned about 120 pictures. It is now set at 235, and the book is to be released online in March 2023. It’s called Sly Cooper 5: Promises Made By Thieves. You can watch a trailer I animated for it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85iuzwMQGMs&lc=Ugz3QUhayfqQJ1KRI5d4AaABAg.9kgjO_Ko6ib9knOI1gQasD
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Even though I’ve been writing for years, I’m still working on making a name for myself. My name’s William McGinn, and William J. McGinn is a stage name I’ve started using (my middle name is Johnson, so it’s not a fabrication.) I’m also an aspiring actor, having been in a couple plays and some voice acting roles and a lead role in a big movie (though that last one is still pending in pre-production). I’ve also been an online movie and book reviewer since 2014 when I was 15 years old. I took a hiatus from movie reviewing last year after eight years but still write book reviews. My 8-4 job is I do some communications and most of the social media for my local Boys and Girls Club, or BGC Kawarthas as it’s now called. As for my writing, I specialize in teen fiction, though I’ve also branched out into the adult and playwright genres. No matter what genre I write in though, you can always expect characters and stories with an honest look into the darkness and heartbreak of the world around them.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
These days, after I return home from work I don’t have the energy or focus to do my craft. I may be able to do chores or read or talk, but I need to take a nap to get my creativity flowing again, and that nap often messes with my sleep schedule. When I get up, I then work after dinner usually late into the night because I’m not truly tired until about 1 or 1:30 in the morning, and I find myself having to get up only six small hours later. Some might say that is an unhealthy way to live, but non-creatives often don’t understand how creatives want to reach for their goals while they still can and it is often harder than it at first appears to do so. Life is set up for people today with the expectation that we put all our effort into our jobs and none into our at-home lives, when nothing could be further from the truth. Life is set up to disadvantage creatives because it assumes people have nothing better to do when we arrive home. And it eats away at us because we want to write and we want to audition for projects and we want to put more and more on our plate so we can open more doors, but it’s so easy to get burnt out. Also, sometimes creatives have to abandon projects, and sometimes those projects would’ve been beneficial for someone else or someone else put in their effort too. And the guilt can be enormous. But life sometimes just doesn’t allow enough hours in the day, so the life of a creative is not mentally easy.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I recently started working on making my presence more known on Twitter, but after many people left it due to Elon Musk’s takeover, I’m currently in limbo for if I should still make an effort. Not to mention after I saw the hashtag TransWomenAreConMen trending and Elon promoted the ridiculous and obviously debunked Paul Pelosi conspiracy, I really don’t think the site is a good place to be anymore, if it ever really was. I also really should return to commenting and following on Instagram. But here’s my advice, which you can take with a grain of salt; if you want to build up a presence on social media, you can make a fair few posts, but what people care more about is being heard and being heard by someone authentic. If you comment on something cool, maybe also give them a follow and make sure your comment demonstrates you’ve analyzed and understood what they posted rather than being a fake robot. Leaving a legitimate and thoughtful comment on a post or thread can really rake in the follows. You will likely have more “following” than “followers”, but getting a slight audience and then having it increase when you’re able to get a deal signed is a great way to go. And though social media is a factor, I’ve seen some authors and actors make it big even without a big social media presence at first, so even though you should give the social media world attention, it is far from being everything.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://williammcginn.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wjmcginn/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/william.mcginn.5/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/wjmcginn
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-TyOClkVUsNySAJyZ-zWVw
- Other: https://tapas.io/series/Sly-Cooper-Promises-Made-By-Thieves
Image Credits
All photos were taken, or drawn, by me.