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I’m a hard-ass. (And let’s be honest: maybe a little bit of an asshole.*)
I ride you people pretty hard. I’m like an old man on the lawn, shaking his walker at you interlopers. “Get the hell offa my property! Quit screwin’ around!” Next thing you know, I’m thumbing two homemade rock-salt shells into the breach of a double barrel. Ch-chak. “Old Man Wendig’s gonna make Swiss cheese out of our backsides again! He’s lettin’ the taco terrier out of her hermetically-sealed cage, too! It’s like Jurassic Park, and we’re the goats in the T-Rex paddock!”
It’s just how I roll. I’m trying to get you limp raggedy fuckers in shape. I’m trying to prepare you to not be such slack-jawed slugabeds. Somebody has to rabbit punch your kidneys.
Might as well be me.
But yesterday, one amongst you (she who is named “Kate Haggard”) stood up like Spartacus and said:
What a timely kick in the ass. Here I am staring at a pile of plans and a blank screen wonder how the fuck this character is supposed to tell his story. So I suppose I should thank you twice: once for giving me a new sense of direction and once again for giving me an excuse to dick around for a week while still feeling productive.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Who said I said anything about dicking around? I didn’t say that! I didn’t give you permission to slack off. Dig me a latrine! I need to void my bowels in the earth!
Ahem. Except, she’s right, to a point. Taking time out of the “actual writing” to do this “writing exercise” feels a little like procrastinating. Then again, outlining can feel like you’re wasting time, too.
Wasting time — aka, “dicking around” — can be productive.
Settle down, Spinach Chin, I said can be. Don’t go juicing your trousers.
Let’s identify when dicking around is actually productive.
Time To Go On A Vacay And Drink Mai-Tais From A Hooker’s Uterus
The words “vacation” and “productive” are not two words that go well together. In practice, it feels like, “You got motor oil in my peanut butter.” “You got peanut butter in my motor oil!” “This is poison!”
I call shenanigans. Hell, I call shitnanigans.
I go on vacation, I sometimes write, I sometimes don’t. But my writer brain is active just-the-same. It’s like a mad supercomputer that won’t shut off, this brain. You go to a new place, you absorb. Or, you damn well should be (and you can train your brain to do that, by the by). What’s it look like? What’s it feel like? Listen to conversations. Look at a map. Eat the food. Make love to the wildlife. Check the beaten paths and the unbeaten paths. (But don’t go near the tourist paths. Nine times out of ten, the touristy shit is the bare minimum, lowest common denominator experience. For reals. Tourist experiences are designed to put you in a different place yet somehow make you feel like you’re in your own backyard. You took a vacation to leave your backyard, dopeyface.)
All this stuff is stuff that computes. All this stuff adds up to “details that go into fiction,” and further, are details that lend authenticity. You can’t get that authenticity from Wikipedia.
Vacations are research.
And research is productive.
Go Ahead, Pretend You Can Read, You Goddamn Illiterate
Read a book.
Even for pleasure.
Go on. Read. Relax a little. Kick back. Book up. (And put that e-reader down. Be a grown up. Read a real book like an adult. Reading e-books is like living in a fake house in Second Life or sticking the tip of your winky in a USB port. Can you bludgeon an intruder with your precious e-reader? Hardly. You’ll break the damn thing, and frankly, the reason you have an intruder is probably because he wanted to steal your precious e-reader. No. Huh-uh. You read a real book, Pinocchio. Then come talk to me.)
Reading, as the PSA says, is fundamental.
For writers, it really is.
You should read. Reading for pleasure is productive. Don’t read passively, though — by which I mean, don’t turn your brain off like you do with television. Be aware of what you’re doing. Did you skip a paragraph? Why? Consider the ramifications of that. Too much description? Wall-of-text? Non-essential info? How does the writer write? Always ask yourself: “How would I do this differently?” Not better. Just different.
Anybody who has a published book is someone from which you can learn.
And yet, to the untrained eye — haha! You’re dicking around! Nice work, Spartacus.
Clean Your Damn Office, Professor Stinkbottom
Way back when, Filamena advocated cleaning as a way to get out of writer’s block.
I don’t disagree. In fact, I advocate cleaning your office now and again even when writer’s block isn’t holding your head in the toilet and giving you swirlies.
(This is where you all say, “What was that sound?” And I answer, “That was my wife stifling a laugh because I’m talking about cleaning the office.” And to her I say, “I cleaned it last week, woman!” And then I weep as she hits me with a dish. I deserved it.)
To be productive, we need a place that has some flow to it, a place that has minimal distractions.
Cleaning your office can be a part of that. You want the right books at hand. You don’t want to be all elbowing everything. You don’t want too many distractions within easy reach, either. “Over here, you’ll find my Nintendo DS, my coloring books, my bottle of scotch, my Altoids box filled with amyl nitrate poppers, and my ‘Butt Plugs Of The Serengeti’ collection. This one’s a zebra!”
Clean your office, you dirty mongrel. Me, I sometimes eat at my desk, so, y’know, I have to scrape free the shellac of oatmeal that forms. I have to take a propane torch to the ants. Well, okay, I don’t have to. I know, I know, just one more distraction. Busted.
Become A Social Media Guru And Make Millions!
Okay, seriously, if anybody here claims they’re a “social media expert,” I’m going to pull your brain out through your peehole and your butthole out through your mouth. Then I’m going to wad you up like a sheet of greasy plastic wrap and throw you in a hobo’s burn barrel.
Stop it. Stop it. Nobody’s a social media expert. That isn’t a job. It doesn’t mean anything! It’s like being an expert in fairy wings and Pegasus dreams.
That said, social media is a good thing for the writer.
Even just dicking around on the Twitters — being funny, tossing links, pimping somebody or something — can be productive. Audience-building is more than just acting like a writer. It’s acting like a person. In this day and age of the Internet, the very nature of relationships and friendships are changing — the definition grows muddy, the borders and boundaries fuzz out at the edges. Make connections. Be a person, not just a “creator.” Engage. You aren’t just a marketing machine. Marketing machines are boring.
You have permission to dick around on social media.
Hell, I think it’s a mandate.
Hey! Don’t Abuse The Privilege, Little Monkey!
Obviously, any of this can be abused. And it’ll be tempting to do so. “Chuck said that being on social media is productive. So I’m on Facebook for eight hours straight every day playing Farmstownsburg and looking at people’s ugly baby photos! This baby looks like a hammerhead shark! So not cute! I’m a writer!”
You’re not a writer. You’re a machine from the future designed to waste time.
Everything in moderation, people.
Dicking around should not be a primary component of your career. It must be secondary.
If at the end of the day you’re not staple-gunning your shit-can to the office chair and outputting some word magic, then you’re not being productive, you’re just being a distracted raccoon
(“Ooh! Shiny shiny shiny!”)
(And for the record, I don’t consider writing exercises or outlining dicking around. Though, like with anything, writers have the great propensity to turn even the most valuable habit into a neverending waste of time. “I decided that my fantasy book actually needs to be a fantasy cycle of eleven books, so, yeah. That’s going to take me about, ohh, eleven years to write. I’m such a writer.” Writers engage in work-flavored habits to make it seem productive to onlookers. Outlining for six months is cute and all, and it sure does look like you’ve got your balls to the grindstone, but you just turned “useful behavior” into “jerk-off motion.”)
Now, your turn.
What “dicking around” activities do you count as productive?
And don’t try to sass me. I’ll call bullshit if I think you’re sassing me. Don’t make me gesture at you with my rock-salt shotgun. I’ll do it. This stuff stings, by god. Don’t make me.
(*…Wait. Does that make me a “hard-asshole?” What does that even mean? It sounds like a real problem. I better call a doctor.)
About The Author
ChuckWendig
Chuck Wendig is equal parts novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of the novels DOUBLE DEAD, BLACKBIRDS, and MOCKINGBIRD. In addition, he's got a metric boatload of writing-related e-books available, including the popular 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with wife, dog, and newborn progeny.
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Being a *cough* Pagan-Type person for the most part I’ve discovered that one of Granny Weatherwax’s tenets is true. It’s all “headology.” Magic is in the head, and one thing I read ages ago that stuck with me that you should always always do is make sure the dishes are done and the kitchen is tidied up before going to bed. Think about it. You made a mess at dinner. It doesn’t look too bad. You ignore it all and go to bed. Next morning you stumble out to make coffee and first realize that your kitchen looks like a roach buffet, and you also discover you have to move shit to fit the coffee pot under the faucet.
Your mood, which is tenuous anyway on waking up, tanks.
Keeping your workspace clean is absolutely important.
Yeah. “Social media expert” is a complete load. And it’s not the sticky sexy kinda fun load either. It’s that aforementioned load of rock salt straight up the ass with both barrels.
That said, Kathleen DeVere of Loading Ready Run directed me to a place on the Book of Faces where I could share a blurb on what I use social media for in order to possibly win one of those new-fangled gadgets, the iTampon or something. Here’s what I blathered in her general direction.
I can’t really call what I do with social media a ‘business,’ per se. It makes me almost no money right now. I’ve gotten a couple of donations, but for the most part it’s my day job as a web programmer and occasional copywriter that pays the bills. Let me explain.
I’m an aspiring novelist, ‘aspiring’ here having the meaning of ‘unpublished in long forms since I started writing fiction seriously some ten years ago’. I’ve started a blog, in which I talk about writing, gaming and run a weekly feature called ‘IT CAME FROM NETFLIX!’ that serves as a movie review for movies one doesn’t have to pay through the nose to see. A big reason this has actually worked, and why I haven’t given up, is simple: social media.
Through Twitter, Facebook and the forums of the Escapist Magazine, I’ve been able to promote my writing, interact with people who think I string words together pretty well, and generate interest in future projects. The Escapist is also one of the places I’ve actually been published in any form that yeilded professional attention and revenue, and that wouldn’t have been possible without social media and networking.
Hopefully, in the future, I’ll be able to use social media to promote new works, inform people of appearances or answer questions sent by those interested in what I write. For now, I try my utmost not to bore what few followers I actually have to death. Social media, in the end equation, has been an invaluable assistance in keeping me from doing the one thing that could completely keep me from being successful as a writer: giving up.
Heh. Shitnanigans. I like it.
Research. Ah, sweet, seductive, veiny, purple-headed research. How I love thee. You allow me to hop around the Interweb like a drunken lemur who doesn’t know which way is sideways. When I spend time with you, I get to taste the salty wonder of all the knowledge that the 21st century has to offer.
The only problem is that research is like juggling Uranium-234. One wrong move and the next thing you know, you’ve ruined your sex life: http://bit.ly/6Gxnnz .
I love me some research, but good Christ…tread with caution. Maintain your focus. Don’t get distracted by all of the viral videos, LOLcats, and boobs out there. Nothing pulls you out of “productive mode” quicker than viral cat boobs.
For the most part, everything in this post went through my head. Yeah, yeah, yeah; Chuck is being a writer and telling people about how writes and how great it is to be a writer and don’t you wish you were a writer and blah blah writer blah blah writer writer sorry I can’t talk to you now, my diamond pen-shaped cock ring is distracting me from my balls, blah blah blah writer.
This however, caught my attention:
“my ‘Butt Plugs Of The Serengeti’ collection
I am not even going to say anything about it. It is what it is: magnificent.
More seriously, however, dicking around is a sport in my house. Sometimes, even posting to my blog counts as dicking around. My post today, for example, really served no useful purpose. I got bored of a game after two days and now, blah blah blah. Blogging is the best form of dicking around, I think. Just the act of putting words together into sentences can be a real fucking trial some days. It isn’t that you don’t want to write, it isn’t even that you don’t have something to write about – just fucking putting a subject and predicate together might as well be lifting a ten ton mass. With a string. And the string is attached to your genitals. And your genitals are covered in oysters, and you don’t know how they got there, but you know you don’t like where that pearl is going.
Alright, maybe you like it a little.
The other thing I do to dick around is just go somewhere crowded; it’s also what I do when I am stumbling with a character. A bus, the supermarket (best spot), the food court at the mall, a gay cabaret during a Republican convention; places where you are sure to find a lot of people, talking. Just sit back and listen (don’t make it obvious, I mean, fuck, that would be like stalking). Listening to how people interact and some of their problems, even in passing, gives you amazing insight not only into a character, but into what people are interested in. Intellectually, we can say we are into Lord Byron and Quantum Mechanics. Realistically, we are grabbing our mobiles and texting while sobbing about what Simon called our little princess. She’s America’s Sweetheart, for fucks sake! I like her teeth.
Ahem.
And in case it need be said, the first part of my reply was parody. A nd… scene.
This last weekend my wife and I took a trip to Moundsville WV to vist the State Pen there on a ghost tour. Was some great research in terms of prisons, decaying buildings, and ghosts.
@Scionical
I love to listen to cordless phone conversations on our analog baby monitor. They sound like ghosts shushing blame and snark at each other.
One moment. I’m still laughing at having my name and a comparison to Spartacus show up in the same sentence.
Ok, I’m back.
I guess dicking around wasn’t the best choice of words on my part, but I’m glad you saw what I meant and I’m flattered that you ran with it the way you did. Not only do I do/have done everything you listed above, but I think I could add a fair bit more. By your definition, long drives, people watching, and bubble baths can all be productive as long as your brain is focused on the writing.
By the way, yesterday’s advice has worked wonderfully thus far. I still haven’t quite gotten a feel for this character’s skin, but I now I have a much better idea of how the world he exists in functions. So I take it back: I don’t just feel productive, I am being productive.
@Kate:
Glad to hear it, Spartacus. And thanks for inspiring this post!
– c.
@Julie:
Your job is to record those conversations and post them online.
Do it.
DO IT.
– c.
@Rick:
You are no longer allowed to comment here. Your consistent outfunnying of me is growing weary. I will now have you executed. The only way you’re ever touching the Butt Plugs of the Serengeti collection is when I bludgeon you with the Hippo.
And I won’t wash it first. God help me, I won’t.
– c.
Dude, you are part of the team that made This Right Here and you also wrote This Thingy Here. Let’s also not forget THIS!. So, sir, it would take me precisely eight dicktillion blog comments to out-funny you.
That’s right, sir. You… and you’re beard… just got owned.
Alright, I will admit. I may have to retract that ownage as apparently I can’t type html in worth crap. The first two links were:
http://www.thestoryverse.com/go/
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=80217
I can read! I read all the time! If anything I never hear about what YOU read, Mr. “I don’t know how to read” pants!
I do have one little thing to point out to you that you might find interesting: At United Way of Central Indiana, there is a woman there whose soul job and title is “Social Media Expert.” She gets paid big bucks to update Twitter, Facebook, and the main website just once a day!
How does that make you feel?
Silly boy. Hookers don’t have uteruses. We all know they’re dried up husks inside.
My dicking around? Reading blogs about writing. It feels really productive and I get a hella good tips, but it’s like going to a self improvement meeting at work. Unless I do something with it, it don’t mean squat.
I’m about to dick around to tell you how cool this is. One warning, though. I can’t hope to be as perversely verbose as you are. I am an amateur of cursing, having had it forbidden from my life as a child. It takes experience to curse like you. You manage to massage your words, seduce them onto the page, and then have your way with them while people like me read on like literature-driven voyeurs.
See, the odd thing with me rushing to Google Reader every time I see you’ve made a new post is that I hate role-playing. It wasn’t always that way; I played White Wolf games for years. I just got tired of drama queens and attention whores, and because of all of those years, I can’t stand anything that has anything to do with Vampires. Keep in mind, the White Wolf stuff is good. Sometimes, it’s actually funny. But it’s part of my past, and I’m not looking back. So why am I still here?
Because you kick my ass. “I can’t find the time to write,” I say. Kick. “I’ll just let characters develop on the page.” Kick. “I don’t like oatmeal.” Apply steel-toe to gonads in a forceful fashion.
And now I realize that you’ve been kicking my ass for a while. After all, the game did poke and prod my writer-zit until it formed into the Whitehead of Creativity. Before the word “blog” was ever coined, you were already poised to kick my ass. And now you have, and I hope you continue doing it until I’m beaten, bloody, and published.
That’s the reason that my writing desk is getting moved to the bedroom of our small apartment rather than being three feet from the TV, with a baby gate sprouting from one of the legs. The baby gate isn’t moving with it, either. I will have writing time, and when it is writing time, I will write. I will not watch TV, check on forums, or make sure my daughter isn’t eating the PS3 controller. Obviously, this time will be best preserved for after said daughter is asleep, otherwise I’d be very quick to raise my wife’s ire.
So, thank you, Chuck, for fucking up my world. Now I don’t have any excuses. Damn it all to hell.
What?!? “Social Media Expert” isn’t a real job? Oh, sure. And I suppose “Life Coach” and “Animal Psychic” aren’t real either. Pshh. Whatevs, man. What. Evs.