I did. But you’re still like a lost lamb. Fuzzy knees knocking. Wolves taking down your buddies one by one.

Okay. Fine. We’re not done talking about beards, then. I’ll help you. I’ll help you just this once. But after this, no more. Got it? I can’t hold your hand through this whole “facial hair” thing. You gotta find your own way, Ye Bearded Novitiate.

I’ll tackle the beard-flavored search terms that brought you here (all literally in the last week), and I will address each question or topic as its own entity.

You owe me.

(Seriously. I expect presents out of this. Like a jet ski. Or a bear cub.)

“The Secret Power Of A Beard”

Yes, duh, beards have secret power. Told you this already. You have to find your own secret power. You must look within. I don’t mean within your own mind or any of that hippy-shit, I mean, literally, look inside your beard. Pry its jungled fibers apart with your little girly fingers. Part the facial curtain. I’ve heard rumors, y’know? I’ve heard that some people part the beard hairs, and printed on their chin is a cryptic message. A cipher. A godsdamned riddle. Answer the riddle, and the secret powers of your beard might be unlocked. I’ve even heard that some have found a tiny man there with a beard all his own, a little man clinging to your cheek like a rock climber. This little man may be able to answer your questions even better than I. Or maybe I am that little man. Did you ever think about that? Huh?

Well, start thinking about it. Because it’s awesome.

“Draw Dirty Beard”

I don’t know what this means? Do you mean “draw” as in “pencil-to-paper,” or as in, “in a lottery?” Because if it’s a lottery, I want to know. Where are you entering to win a free dirty beard? That’s a sweet prize. With an extra beard like that, I could… well, what couldn’t I do? I could put that dang beard anywhere. On one of the dogs. On the wife. On a car. On a tree outside, and then the bearded tree and I could have conversations, the kind of conversations two bearded sages would have.

The other question is, what do you mean by “dirty?” Like, a beard filthy with sticks, twigs, clay and perhaps animal blood? A beard slick with chicken skin and bird fat and the sauce of buffalo wings? Or a lascivious beard that gazes at other beards and quietly plays with itself? If it’s the latter, I can’t help you. The beard is not a sexual creature. It can make you more sexual, yes. Facial hair throbs with nascent erotic power. I find that sometimes I’m in the grocery store or the automall or just out in an open field twirling and twirling and twirling and what happens? Ladies flock to me. Like a herd of marbles rolling downhill. They come to me. They touch the beard. They run their fingers through it and then smell their fingers. They try to lick my cheeks, but I’m always waggling my fingers like, “Tsk tsk tsk, nuh-uh ladies, this beard ain’t for you.”

And then together they thrash about and tear at their hair and breasts and — unless I throw a net over them — they leap to their dooms. Over a cliff. Into the churning ocean below.

But the beard itself is not a sexual creature.

So, “dirty” better mean “the filth that binds my facial hairs together.” That’s okay. You can choose your own filth. It’s just one of many ways to customize your beard. Lick an M&M, stick it in there. Or a lollipop. Or rub grass clippings on your face. Motor oil, BBQ sauce, honey, pen ink, whatever works for you.

“My Beard Is Not Full”

That’s because you’re weak.

Moving on.

“Beard Huge”

I like the way you said that. BEARD HUGE. It’s like the way The Hulk would say it. Man, the Hulk should totally have a beard. Did he ever?

Let us consult The Oracle.

Boo-bam! That’s right. Fuck yes! HULK HAVE BEARD. That’s a good beard, too. He’s going to get fish guts all up in that fucker. Good for him.

BEARD SMASH.

BEARD ANGRY.

NOT LIKE BEARD WHEN BEARD ANGRY.

RAAAAR.

*crush*

“If My Beard Could Talk”

If your beard could talk, you’d be the smartest dude or lady in the universe. That beard would tell you everything, because the Ancient Parasite Spirit that is your beard contains the ancestral wisdom of all beards ever. That beard has seen Carthage fall. That beard has seen the first chimp on the moon. That beard has even seen the future. It knows, for example, that in 2042 China will force all of its citizens to become kitchen appliances. Red kitchen appliances. Like Kitchen-Aid. I don’t know that this is true, but I’m just saying. Your beard would. And it would tell you.

You’d be like Biff Tannen with that sports almanac. You’d have too much power.

And then you’d have to be killed. But you couldn’t be killed, because your beard would’ve given you too much power.

So all the men and women with beards would have to form an army and holds hands around you, their linked beard voodoo trapping you like a demon in a summoning circle, and there they would have to remain, forever fixed to that spot. It’d be epic and shit.

Still, let’s be glad your beard cannot talk. Because I got shit to do.

“How To Cut A Beard And Mustache Off Someone Who Is Asleep”

That’s dark. Ye Gods. Why would you do that?

Is this person your enemy? Are they wearing a beard dishonorably? Because, man, you cut off somebody’s beard while they’re sleeping, it’s like you’re hacking off their testicles (or uterus!) and then removing their heart all in the same evil ninja move.

You want to attack a dude’s beard, I say you do it honorably. Beard-On-Beard Combat. You bind the beards together. You each get a rusty knife. Two beards enter, one beard leaves.

But if you really have to do it while they’re asleep, I suggest you don’t eff around. Hedge trimmers, maybe. Or a flamethrower. Or a shotgun.

“Fuck Beard”

Do you want to fuck a beard? That’s a little weird. As noted, the beard is not a sexual creature, and you try to fuck it, that might be beardrape. Which actually sounds like “bear drape,” which is a nickname for pubic hair, but should really be written, “beard rape.”

Ooh! Unless Fuckbeard is your pirate name?

Because that’s a really incredible pirate name. I would join Fuckbeard’s crew. I call the crow’s nest! I call it. It’s mine. Hands-off. I said hands-off. *draws a scimitar*

“Why Has Part Of My Beard Falling Out?”

Again: because you are weak.

And your beard knows it, and it has decided to desert you and find a more suitable host for its throbbing hirsute puissance.

You get awesomer, and your beard will return.

Otherwise, it’s like rats fleeing a sinking ship, friend. You’re just too frail.

(Also, are you the guy who asked “Where Exactly To Insert Penis Into Girl?” I bet you are. Dude. Seriously. Improve your diction. It’s getting embarrassing. The whole Internet is laughing and pointing. First you don’t know where to stick your fishing rod, and now you’ve got patches of facial hair falling out? I’m sad for you and the foreign way you ask questions on the Internet.)

“How Long Should I Wear My Beard?”

Is this a trick question?

As long as you can manage it, friend.

Hey, listen. I’m not saying that Bigger Beard is always equivalent to Better Beard. Right? You have to find what’s right for you. Sometimes, you’re just not ready for a long, crazy beard. Baby steps, man, baby steps. You go too big, too fast, and society just can’t handle it. It’s not that you’re weird to them. You’re just too awesome. You’re like an untrained cowboy on an advanced horse. It’s bucking and snorting and peeing fire and blasting lasers from its eyes like horses sometimes do, and it’s killing innocent people. You’ve got a hold of too much power. It’s like, when you get a job, you have to work your way up through the mailroom. They don’t give you the Chief Emperor In Charge Of Everything Awesome right away. That’d be insane! You wouldn’t know what to do with the power and the responsibility.

Same goes for a beard. You’ll know when you’re ready. You’ll feel it. Your beard will tingle. It’ll tickle your nostrils. It’ll undulate like waves of grain in a reasonable wind. Back and forth, back and forth. It’s telling you something. It’s telling you that it’s time to go to the next level and add an inch to that sumbitch.

When I finally have grandchildren — which’ll be in like, seven years, probably, because even though I don’t even have regular-flavored children yet my seed is strong — I will go Full Bore Crazy Beard. Long, white, flowing. Down to my, ahem, private area. I may even tie my beard to my junk, so to pleasure myself I merely need to nod in my head in the affirmative. Yes, yes. Oh, yes.

If You Have Questions, Just Ask!

Don’t go through the search engines. Just come to me. Proselyte to proselytizer. Initiate to cult leader. The unbearded to the bearded. Ask me. Do you have questions about beards? Head to the comments. Ask me. Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. Okay, I might hurt you if you ask a stupid question, but shit, that’ll totally be deserved. Even you can agree with that.

News-flavored News!

I got shit going on. Nothing particularly world-ending or mind-bending, but it’s some shit, and it’s dang well going on.

First, DIY Days NYC registration is open. You’re going, right? I mean, if you’re anywhere in the Northeast, c’mon. You’re going. I know you are. You want to hear me stammer through a talk about “Using Games To Tell Stories.” It’s going to be exciting. C’mon. Other awesome people (meaning, those far awesomer than I) will be speaking. Ted Hope? Molly Crabapple? Brian Newman? This won’t suck. This will be the polar opposite of suck. Come. Show up. Did I mention it’s free?

Second, you know I’m going to be at SimCon, right? Doing a talk about game writing, and running two games (Hunter and Changeling, I think). It’s in Rochester. You want to go. I know you do. Hell, you live down in this area, I’ll drive you. (Yeah, it’s the same weekend as PAX. Shut up. I can’t go to that, anyway, and neither can you. So come with me, instead!)

Third, I got three words for you: Do. Some. Damage. Not only can you listen to me ramble and mumble over at their latest podcast, but I will be joining them over the next couple weeks to fill in while Jay Stringer goes to rehab to get himself clean. Poor lad’s addicted to those horse tranquilizers popular amongst youths, you see. He’s gone goofy on them, and they need someone to fill in. Since my horse tranquilizer addiction is nicely under control (I can quit at any time), they’re giving me a shot. The podcast, by the way, features discussion around Harvey Keitel’s penis and anal sex between dinosaurs. So, y’know. There’s that.

Fourth, hey! I got freelance work. It’s a goodly hunk from some great folks at a company that makes a very interesting roleplaying game. I’ll talk about that more when I can.

Fifth, hey! That doesn’t mean I still don’t need more work. Line it up, fellas. Seriously. Games? Scripts? Fiction? Whatever you got, pitch it at me. I’m a wordwhore. Stick it in me.

Sixth, you might want to keep your grapes peeled for this. Maybe I had something to do with it. Could be, rabbit. Could be.

Seventh, the script is done. Sixth rewrite of the script is done done diggity done. And I think it works, by god. This was a rewrite from the ground-up. Not a single scene or line of dialogue carried over from the previous draft. We truly killed our darlings with this one — the entire third act? A third act we loved? A third act I still love? It’s gone. Gone, baby, gone. Feels great.

And oh! Hey. Real quick. Codemonkeys. Help me out.

This is what I want.

I want the hyperlinks on this site to be highlighted in black (or dark gray) boxes with white text.

I’ll see if I can dig up the proper example. I had one, and then I lost it like an asshole. Er, an asshole who loses things, not a guy who lost his asshole.

(Ooh, wait! Found it. Example. His are highlight yellow. See? I want that! Help!)

Old Man Winter Can Suck It, And Suck It Hard

It has thawed.

And with it comes the annual Turd Hunt.

See, today I found myself occupied for a good hour, hour-fifteen, wandering the yard in a grid-like pattern, scooping up what look like mummified canned yams. When winter hits really hard — particularly with fucktons of grumpy snow — the dogs go out, the dogs do their business, and it just sits out there. No real way to scoop the poop. The snow eats it. And preserves it for later.

The yard is home to countless ashy piles of dogshit. At least 25% of them also feature what looks to be paper towels and tissues that have wound through someone’s intestinal tract and come out the other side because… oh, wait, that’s exactly that they are. The big dog, Yaga, loves to chow down on paper products, and then when he takes a dump, it looks like he’s evacuating a white, crinkly snake from his haunches.You ever use one of those paper towel dispensers that dispenses the towel in what is effectively a paper rope?

Yeah. It’s like that.

(And when he does the number two, he looks like a dude in a gorilla suit taking a crap. Let that image sit with you for a while. Let it pickle. It’s a good one.)

I got two full Target bags full of (sh)it. Each with the shape and weight of a bowling ball.

But you know what I saw as I scooped the poop, as I flicked the shit? Ants. Spiders. Moths. Living creatures. Er, not in the feces, but wandering around it, in the grass, in the flower beds. And you know what I heard as I woke up this morning? Birds. Motherfucking birds, chirping and tweeting and chattering to one another! Haha! Woo! It’s like someone tied a helium-filled Mylar balloon to my heart — internally, I experience a grand lift, a feeling of spiritual buoyancy. I fucking hate winter. The vitamin-giving daystar hides behind gauzy phlegm skies, and I just want to hibernate. At least for January and February, which are the temporal equivalent of gruel. Gray mush. Long slog. Moist. Cold. Gyeh. Muhhhh. Snergh.

So, Old Man Winter, you can chug a cock. And that cock is a bomb. And bomb blow up.

Because spring has sprung! Sort of! Woo!

The Oscars, Really Really Late!

Oscars!

Who cares?

Once the Oscars are done, does anybody give a shit? Probably not.

Let me just say: it was a fairly boring show, but they’re all fairly boring. Baldwin and Martin actually cracked me up, which I guess isn’t a common opinion. I’m happy with the outcome. Good films got good awards. Not sure any award recipient actually made my spit curdle, so that’s a pretty banner year. The Hurt Locker is an incredible film and deserves what it gets. It didn’t win because she’s a she. It won because she made a kick-ass fucking movie. End of story.

Holy Shit, Tron!

I loved Tron as a kid, but have long since forgotten the joy.

But now?

I am surprisingly excited. Maybe it’s because this is a kick-ass trailer with ass-kicking music:

Lightcycles! Discs! Flynn! Eeeee!

It makes me want to go back and see the first movie. I haven’t looked — is there a good special edition DVD? If you know of one, give a shout.

Because baby want.

Baby want bad.

Lynx! Links! Whatever!

Inexplicably, Julie Summerell says very nice things about me. And about the Internet. She is obviously mule-kicked. You do read her blog, right? She’s a great storyteller. Her personal life, laid bare.

Weddle and Hornor got this Needle Mag going — noir crime fiction, baby. Website: riiiiight here. No, you cannot submit to them, so stop asking them about it.

Will talks about TV, and it is good. I am particularly pleased by his weekly Lost recap, a show I love dearly. His recaps are good stuff. Not obtrusive. Not boggy. Clean. They get to the point. Read them.

Durian Fruit. Taste test. Hilarity ensues.

Tim Burton’s secret formula!

Seth Godin’s blog says: “Try Different!“

An admittedly irrational screed against popcorn! (And I happen to completely agree. Go to hell, popcorn. Popcorn always tries to kill me. It always launches one of those sharp little kernely bits into the back of my throat where it hangs there like an ill-swallowed fingernail chewing. I choke. I cough. I always choke, I always cough. Goddamn you, popped corn. Goddamn you to hell.)

Did you say, “A Leverage Roleplaying Game?” You did, indeed, Internet! You got my letters!

Jason Blair is rocking a new website! Go! Gaze upon it!

It’s true. He proved it yesterday, with a post about writing where he says I provide “penetrating, sharp insights about the craft [of writing].”

Obviously, he does not read terribleminds. Let’s all cluck our tongues at him now.

You should go read his post, though. It’s good stuff.

He talks up some interesting points. Points I don’t necessarily agree with, mind — I think writing can be taught, and I think the rules and advice from other authors is valuable (erm, at least, I hope — if it’s not, then nobody should find this blog to be of any value of at all, unless I’m talking about beards or recipes or grotesque search terms). I keep a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing at-hand because I learn from the insights of other writers.

But, it’s another topic discussed there that gets my bloggery juices a-flowing…

Writing As Mystical Conveyance

Let me be very upfront with all this: I don’t think writing is in  any way mystical. I don’t, or rather, I can’t.

I can’t because this has become something of a personal issue for me. For writing to work, for me to be able to have this career and tackle it day in and day out, I have to look at writing a certain way. These are biases. These are prejudices. These are things that are… intensely specific to me, but it’s how I do what I do.

My father was a blue-collar dude. My whole family was that way. One side of the family were farmers, the other side were coal miners. This is salt-of-the-earth shit. Literally, of the earth. No, I’m not saying my bloodline is that of the Golem, I’m saying that these people worked with their hands; they got dirt and dust in their lungs and in their blood.

I don’t think a single one of them would call what they did mystical, or in some way equivalent to a religious experience. Admittedly, my father’s religious outlook was so simple it was elegant, and it was married to his blue-collar upbringing: “God is in the earth,” he’d say, and that was pretty much that. (As a child, this led me to believe that beneath the rows of zucchini and tomatoes and green beans lay some slumbering deity, the roots intertwined with his mighty beard. I was a weird kid. Shut up.)

To me, writing is no more important than what anybody else does, and in fact may be less important. I’d love to give into the idea that “but we are the voice of society, we are the storytellers, we are…” blah blah blah, but really, when you look at it, who’s more important? Me, the guy with a stack of unpublished manuscripts, or the guy who just fixed my wiring? Or the dude plowing the roads so that everybody can get to work? Or the soldier taking fire, or the fireman saving kittens and children from a burning house, or the dildo salesman bringing all manner of rubbery pleasure to ladies around the globe? It’s hard to feel important when stacked up against the rest of the world.

That’s my worry about ascribing mystical significance to the act of writing. To do that is — for me, not necessarily for John or you or anybody else — a slippery slope.

If I say this is mystical, then I’m effectively saying it’s important.

If those two aren’t related, and I’m somehow able to suggest that “mystical” does not equal “important,” then… what? What everybody does is mystical? Fine, okay, maybe God or Buddha or Midichlorians lurk in the working hands of every man and woman, but at that point, why label it mystical at all? If we’re all special, nobody’s special. “We’re all God’s children!” Sure, uh-huh. Maybe somebody could remind Him? Seems He’s forgotten a lot of his kids. All of us little latchkey bastards.

Further, if we attach mystical trappings to the act of writing, we make it special. We make it precious. Suddenly it’s no longer about work. It’s about the magic, the revelation, the irrationality of it. It’s Zen. It’s two pots banging behind your head — bang! — the noise startling you to enlightenment. It’s searing light, it’s the blindness of Saul to Paul, it’s scales dropping from the eyes.

You go that road, you suddenly give power to a lot of the writing goblins I try to kill. It suggests that The Muse is a viable force, and possibly a very real thing. (Makes sense, right? If writing is truly mystical, then mystical forces must be at work, and The Muse would certainly count as a mystical force.) If The Muse is real, then I must serve her. Then it becomes okay to not write today because… well, The Muse didn’t speak to me this morning. Oh well. It’s just not in the cards, or the bones, or the pigeon guts.

If The Muse is real, then so is writer’s block. In fact, maybe the block is from demonic forces, diabolical threads of evil working into my mind and stealing my precious Word Chi! Begone, Story Imps! The power of Chuck compels you. The power of Chuck compels you.

With mystical significance, my writing is swiftly enslaved by ideas that are external to me. I’m beholden to them. What happens when I sit in front of the computer and I go to type, and it feels like… gasp, work? What if it doesn’t feel like a Zen-bang Jesus-light chorus-of-spirits moment? Do I stop and wait for the mystical shit to hit me? Do I wait for Krishna or Ishtar or The Archangel Jimmy to come and whack me upside the head with the Glowy Writing Stick? Further, what happens when I perceive the moment to be mystical but then I go back and read it weeks later and it doesn’t feel right? Or an editor tells me it doesn’t work? Can’t my defense be, “But it was mystical. My words were God-chosen.”…?

I can’t do it. I open the door to that kind of thinking, and man, I’m fucked. I gotta do this day-to-day. I have to believe that I’m the keeper of the Verbal Voodoo, the Word Mojo, the Jargon Juice. I have to believe The Muse works for me, and that Writer’s Block is just a piss-soaked paper tiger filled with excuses.

And Yet, And Yet, And Yet –

I have felt it. Right? I have felt that awesome moment. I have felt the revelation, the epiphany, the Zen brainsplosion, the Jesus-karate-kicking-my-mind moment. So, I get it.

I just have to believe that it’s me doing it. That it’s coming from my subconscious. That when the words and characters and situations come out in ways I don’t expect (which is not only okay, but encouraged) that it’s because I know the story and I know what I’m doing even when I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing.

I have to believe this is a product of my brain, of endorphins, or synapses doing a 21-gun-salute.

I have to be the god of this little world, otherwise it owns me instead of me owning it.

I gotta be the God in the Machine — the douche ex machina.

Of course, it’s probably worth mentioning that I’m a control freak.

I’m just putting that out there.

“Write what you know.”

A bit vague, innit?

Do we even know what it means? Is it suggesting that we should only write the things we ourselves have experienced? Perhaps it’s saying to write only those things we know in our hearts. Then again, it could be a direction to do your research: what you know is what you learn, and you learn best from sitting down and doing your homework.

What I do know is that this old writer’s commandment has been trotted out time and time again. Long has the writer been dragged to this old tablet. Long has someone pointed a waggling finger at it, silently saying, “This. This is one of the commandments.” If we do not accept it, then our nose is shoved in it — or, rather, across it, the tip of the writer’s sniffer dragged across the peaks and valleys of cracked stone as it inhales the worldly and archaic dust of a rather antediluvian piece of advice.

The big question is: is it even good advice?

Space Unicorns, Dragon Uncles, And A Parallel Dimension In My Underpants

Turns out, when you think about it, the list of Things I Cannot Actually Know is pretty fucking long. I can’t know what it’s like to be a soldier in the Iraq War. I definitely can’t know what it’s like to be a soldier in World War I, or the Peloponnesian Wars, or the Thog Clan Wars battling over the Yellow Monkey Forest. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Samurai, a Renaissance artist, an Islamic scholar, a Latvian prostitute, or Charles Darwin. (…Okay, I maybe know a little something about being a Latvian prostitute, but that was a dark time in my life, man, a dark time.) I damn sure can’t know the things that lurk purely in the realm of imagination — I have never ridden a space unicorn, my uncle is not an ancient dragon, and I have not yet discovered an alternate dimension in my boxer shorts no matter how hard I look.

So, according to the Advisory Nugget in question, those things are all off the table, right? Cleaving to the advice closely leaves me little room for all that nonsense.

Except, that’s obviously a dumptruck heaped with bullshit. Authors have told excellent stories based on subjects they cannot know. Robert Heinlein never went into space. Robert McCammon never endured a nuclear apocalypse. Dante didn’t actually wander into Hell. Those guys who wrote the Bible didn’t actually see Jesus fight the Balrog. (That’s in the Bible, right? It’s been a while. I’m pretty sure it’s in there. He’s all like, “Thou Shalt Not Pass, My Son!”) Never seen a School of Wizards. Never met a glittery vampire. Never personally fought a Vatican conspiracy, or an Evil Sewer Clown, or The Riddler.

Ta-da! Advice, disproved! That was easy. It’s party time! Pants off, everybody! My robot butler will be around in just a moment with a tray of cocktails and lube. The boombox is booming. Let’s kick these jams.

Wait. Wuzza? We’re not done here?

Seriously?

So the robot butler has to…?

Sigh.

*programs the robot butler to head back inside with the lubricant and alcohol*

Fine. Let’s keep talking about it.

So, Wait, Is The Advice Bullshit Or Not?

The advice is not bullshit.

*waits for the gasps from the audience to subside*

No, seriously. It’s actually damn good advice. That old chestnut, that archaic commandment, it’s with us for a reason. The Dude Abides, and that advice endures.

But people have been misconstruing that shit for a long, long time. The advice is ambiguous, but it needs to be. It has an unmoored definition, one that floats this way and that, often just out of grasp. It applies differently to different projects. You need to find the proper definition that fits the story you’re telling.

What are the factors?

The Writer Must Learn To Live Life

That’s number one. Writers, as noted on the Oscars last night, have a penchant for turning into “sickly little mole people.” You know it, and I know it. We hunker down in our hovels, our darkened offices, our moistened caves, and we slowly go blind by the stark glow of a computer monitor as we bang out story after story, write tweet after tweet, and watch one gonzo cat video after another. “I can haz clay and fungus for dinner?” one writer asks the scarecrow he’s made out of plastic Target bags stuffed with the crumpled-up manuscripts of months past. Then he uses his quivering star-shaped nose to search out a cockroach that has unwisely ventured into the room.

Experiences mean something. If the sum of our experiences are, say, our Work-In-Progress, our Facebook pages, our video games, our movies, our Other People’s Books, then we don’t know jack shit. Is that you? Do you fit that definition? Take a good, long look. You might either want to start leaving the house more often or decide that this isn’t the career for you. If that’s the summation of your “life experience,” then I assure you, your work will be pale and sad, as sickly as the mole person you are. Further, it will be derivative. Because all you know is other people’s work. You’re bringing nothing of your own to the table.

That means, get out of the house. I’m not saying you have to leave a life of adventure. You don’t have to fight lions or race snowmobiles or join up as a sniper in some Burmese drug lord’s army. But seriously, go do some shit. Go to the park. Listen to the way people talk. Head to the zoo and watch the animals. At the grocery store, marvel at the colors, the sounds, the smells. Get on a roller coaster. Hit up a flea market. Drive to a nearby town, one you’ve never been to, and just take some fucking notes.

Get away from the computer. Put down that video game. Exit your cave.

And, yes, once in awhile, attempt to have an actual adventure. Go on a vacation. Flee the safety of your firelight and your comfort zone. Hell, we went to Hawaii, which was equally out of my comfort zone and squat in the center of it. It was outside the zone because travel makes me anxious, because I don’t like the beach, because I’m mildly hydrophobic, because it’s a place I’ve never been. It was inside the zone because, fuck, it’s Hawaii. But even still, I was able to take away so much. The sounds, the smells, the feel of the warm air, the weirdness of the culture, the way that you’ll pass a really nice house and it sits next to a ramshackle tin shed that somebody calls home, the way that lava has burned over whole towns but left a few patches of grass and even a few houses standing. Before I went to Hawaii, if I had attempted to write about Hawaii, it would’ve been all wrong. I had the wrong impression. Now that I’ve been there? I can write about it. No, not the same way that someone who lives there could write about it. But dangit, it’s a start.

(By the way, this is an issue that has gone back quite a ways. Chaucer — himself a character in his own Canterbury Tales — had self-deprecating concerns over the writer’s life versus the experiences of others. Truth is, Chaucer had a pretty interesting life, but this was still a fear of his. That, though, is a post for another time.)

Every Apple Has Its Core

Your story has a core. A seed. An essence. That’s sounds like some hippy-dippy stuff, but it’s true. Every tale has a center. A beating heart. It has that thing you’re trying to say. Find the core. Find the thing that will give your story the energy it needs, the feel you want, the driving authenticity that will elevate the narrative.

We’ll talk a little more about authenticity below.

For now, what I’m urging you to do is to pair your life experiences with the core of your narrative.

No, you cannot live the relationship between a samurai and his daimyo. But you can know it. What was your relationship with your father like? Your mother? Your boss? Draw from one or all of those. Find the emotional core. Find the authenticity.

No, you will never live on a mining base on the made-up planet of Cockspore Seven. But you can know the people there. You can know the experience. My family comes from a line of coal miners. Further, I can go visit the towns that are still mining towns. My grandfather died of black lung. Hell, those towns have their own language, the “coal cracker” slang (dictionary here, if you don’t believe me). To find the authenticity, I’m both drawing from my own family and my own life and further doing a little “get out of my cave” research. I’d drive to the town. I’d spend a day. I’d take copious notes. I’d get out of my comfort zone and actually talk to somebody — and trust me, I do not like talking to people. People are weird. They might have knives. And Chloroform. Hell, I do. So why wouldn’t they?

No, I’ve never killed a man with a proton rifle. But I’ve killed animals with one of your so-called “Earth weapons.” I remember the stink of gunpowder. I remember the exhilaration and sadness in equal measure (yes, I killed something! oh shit, I killed something!). I remember the way the weapon kicked. I remember the ringing in my ears. I can bring some of that to the table. I can endeavor to make it authentic.

The Fact About Authenticity

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: strive for authenticity, but you can go ahead and fuck facts in the face. What matters is the sense of reality, not the actual reality. That something feels real rather than how something is real. (Example: In real life, let’s say I’m lucky enough to triumph over adversity by winning the lottery. In fiction, that’s a shitty story. Further, it’s a story I don’t believe. “How convenient,” I’ll say between quaffs of whisky. “That right there is a Deus Ex Machina,” I’ll mutter to my homemade office scarecrow slumped in the corner before pissing my pants yet again. Doesn’t matter that the lottery story happened. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel authentic. Hence, my groggy drunken pee-soaked rage.)

This is central to the piece of advice in question, by the way. Pairing that old chestnut with the notion that we’re striving for authenticity over fact clarifies the commandment. The advice then carries with it some unspoken addenda. Write what you know is not beholden to fact. It’s not married to those things you have literally experienced. It is married, however, to how you bring your experiences to the table.

You will never ride a space unicorn.

But you can ride a horse. Can’t be that different. Haven’t ridden a horse before? Read up on the topic and then call around and see if you can’t get on one of those animals — just to see how it feels and what kinds of behaviors the horse might exhibit.

You will never have a Dragon Uncle.

But maybe you had a weird uncle. Or had a friend with a weird uncle. And you can read up on iguanas. Then you can go to the pet store and watch how the lizards move. One-two punch: your own weird uncle plus iguana = Dragon Uncle!

You will never find a parallel dimension in your underpants.

But you have underpants. Stick your hands down there. Root around, then write about it. And you can read about parallel dimensions. And you know what it’s like to be in an awkward situation, in places where you don’t fit, where things don’t feel right — we’ve all had moments like that, haven’t we? (Of course we have. We’re mole people.) Borrow it. Use it. Find the core.

Can you make shit up? Yes! That’s fiction! That’s the fun of fiction! I love to make shit up. But making shit up can be bolstered by a foundation of authenticity — invisible, undetectable by the audience, but still the thing that holds your imagination aloft and makes it feel real.

(Oh, and let me say it one more time: turn off the video game and exit your home. Listen to the goddamn birds. Watch old people fight. Attack a neighbor with a rake. Whatever it takes. Plus, you need some sun. Seriously. You get vitamins from that shit. Your skin looks like bleached vellum, for Christ’s sake. You’re scaring the dogs. For realsies. Scaring the poop right out of their butts.)

The Pauley Perrette (Abby from NCIS) slash Avatar Na’vi Photoshop mash-up.

By yours truly.

This image will single-handedly destroy the Internet. Beginning with terribleminds.

Welcome to the sucking maw, the hungry void.

I’ve been a regular subscriber to… well, too many magazines, probably. Esquire, Wired, National Geographic, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, Game Informer, uhhh, and probably more. Oh. Entertainment Weekly. Right. And that’s just what I was getting in and around 2009.

I really dig the magazine format. I can pick it up during a commercial break, flip through some shiznit, learn about Portal 2 or read Funny Jokes From Beautiful Women or learn how to cook fish superfast. Of course, I don’t dig the crapsplosion of little subscriber cards — the magazine detonates every time I pick it up, cutting my fingers with paper-cut shrapnel, and I further don’t understand why I as a guy who already subscribes might make use of that wholly antiquated method — but hey, that’s a complaint from like, the ’80s and ’90s. I can practically hear the accompanying Seinfeld routine.

Now? I say, “Fuck it.”

I’m done with magazines.

Boom. Game over. It’s Murder Time in Magazineville. Two bullets in the chest, one in the head.

The strongarm tactics, the greasy sneaky bullshit, the ploys and plots — they gotta go.

We’ve been under the slippery eel tactics of the magazine publishers now for quite some time. They pull all kinds of tricksy shit: “Holy crap! Your subscription’s about to go dark! You cannot live without Pinochle Dogs Quarterly. What will you do? You’ll probably put a bullet in your sad, weepy brain, that’s what. It’s dogs! Playing pinochle! All the time! By which I mean four times a year! Don’t let your subscription lapse!”

Then you check, and you realize that they’ve been doing this to you for years, and you’re paid up through the next glacial epoch. They’re not lying. Your subscription is going to lapse. Just not tomorrow. No, you’ll stop receiving the glossy canine sweetness of Pinochle Dogs Quarterly sometime in the year 2061.

We get so much junk mail from the magazine publishers, it’s insane. Were you to fly over the rainforest, you could probably find a quarter-mile by quarter-mile bare patch where the trees have gone only toward printing the junk mail that comes to our house.

Recently, though, the magazine companies attacked us with two particularly shitty tactics, and these shitty tactics are what’s driving us to hold a funeral for all of our magazine subscriptions.

Those two tactics?

The first? Food and Wine.

The tactic? “Hey, we signed you up for the Special Preferred Subscriber’s Advantage.” (That’s quite a mouthful.) “We guarantee you a hassle-free subscription. We do the work for you by automatically extending your subscription each year for as long as you want. We guarantee to send you advance notice before your new term begins. We will send you a notice that spells out: your rate, your number of issues, and when your card will be charged. If you don’t wish to continue, you can simply cancel before the new term begins.”

Ahh, the piquant odor of lies. It smells like a wet ermine.

What they mean is, “We’re going to triple your subscription price, and then we’re just going to charge that shit to your card, and we’re not going to say one tiny little thing about it. We’re secretly hoping that it’ll get lost among your other charges, and you’ll just drool and gibber and go back to sleep like a good American consumer! We aren’t going to tell you Dick Butkus about any of it! Oh, and when you call? To complain? Yes, we’ll refund your money. But not before keeping you on hold and trying to get you to agree to a lower rate (which is still higher than you paid last year)!”

Mm-hmm.

Pop, pop. Pop.

Two in the chest, one in the head.

The second, even shittier tactic?

Hearst Corporation magazines. In this case, for me, Esquire.

First letter is basically passive-aggressive: “When you ordered your magazine subscription with the convenience of being billed later, we fully believed you would send payment on receipt of the invoice.” Okay, what? We never do the order now, pay later bullsnot. We order, we pay. The letter goes on to say: “Your good standing with us is at risk.”

My good standing? Do they talk about me at the office? “What a gentleman that Charles Wendig happens to be!” they say. Do they have pictures of me on their desk? Am I suddenly losing favor? Do they turn my picture face-down moments before wiping away a lone tear, a tear that tastes of salty shame?

Hrm. Right. Well, we ignored it. Seemed like just some douchey letter. Fine.

Ahh. Then comes the second letter.

This one, a lot more threatening. They tell you it’s going to go to collection. They refer to your “delinquent account.” They say, “take a moment now to settle your obligation with us.” Now, collection is serious. I’ve been there. Years back, I had an apartment, and I moved away while the roommate remained for a couple months. The roommate did not clean the apartment before leaving, my name was still on the paperwork (but not my phone number). They charged a substantial cleaning fee ($25 for each “unclean burner,” so that tells you how steep it got), and the roommate didn’t pay, and it went to collections. Which is when they tracked me down. Collections is full of dickhats, and they will hound you unmercifully and make you feel like a clot of scum caught between the treads of an old boot.

So, when the magazine company says, “Hey, this is going to collections,” I have flashbacks. It’s like Vietnam. Except with less “people dying in the rice paddy” and more “there’s a douche on my phone and he’s threatening my credit rating.” So, erm, maybe nothing like Vietnam after all.

We decided to do a little investigation before blindly throwing money at them.

Ah, first thing we discovered: this isn’t for our current subscription. No, we paid that. This is for a subscription that we haven’t even ordered yet. This is for a subscription earmarked 2010-2011 — wait, what? They’re just trying to force me to renew, aren’t they? I haven’t agreed to anything. I haven’t re-upped my subscription. And now they’re trying to fake me out with bullshit collections? Starting with passive-aggressive letters and then just… dropping the “passive” part of that equation and going for straight-up aggression? For real?

Here I am thinking that we failed to pay for the subscription I’m getting. Oh, no. This is for a future subscription. Months in the future.

Second thing we discovered: they’re doing this to a lot of people. The complaints on the ‘Net from these guys are endless. And it’s been going on for years. Hell, we’re luckier than some — a lot of these complaints feature these letters and a subscription that never manifested in the first place. Or, “I got one magazine, then never got another.”

We called, we canceled.

And that’s what’s going to happen with all the magazines.(Game Informer might be the fluke there, because it renews me whenever I re-apply for my Gamestop card.)

You’d think that, in a day and age when print publishing is already on wobbly legs, they’d try to go above and beyond the call of duty to treat their current customers with respect. Mmm. Guess not. What they’d rather do is try to bend back my fingers until I acquiesce and Cry Uncle.

Hey! No. Not going to do that.

I will do something with my finger, though.

(This is like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel: “Turn to page 36 if you want Chuck to give them the middle finger. Or, turn to page 45 if you want Chuck to stick his finger down their throat and yank out the larynx with a Kung Fu Fishhook maneuver!”)

What’s that quote from Star Wars?

“The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers…”

(Hm. Hey, “fingers” again. It’s a motif!)

Maybe you found me through Twitter. Maybe caught one of my cross-links from Livejournal. Or Facebook? I go there. I link there. Sure. Facebook.

Or, could be you found this website through some particular search engine term.

My webstats track those. I look at them. And from time to time I post about it. Today, it’s time again. It’s time to talk about it. You and me, we need to sit down. Here. Have some oolong tea. The guards will pass it to you through this little Plexiglas window. No, no, don’t worry about that. It’s for my — erm, your safety. Plus, Plexiglas is the future. One day everything will be made of it! I’m just trying to be progressive here at terribleminds. It’s all Plexiglas and flying cars up in here.

Seriously, though. Sit in that chair. We really need to talk. Go over some things. You know? Like, for instance… ohhh, I dunno, the search terms you used getting here? Heck, I know, you were probably one of the upstanding folks who found this space by searching for something innocuous like, “learn how to write dialogue,” or, “scenes from The Wire.” But just in case. Just in case. We should maybe talk about… y’know, some of the other ways you maybe might have come here. Right? It’s okay. I know. You’re feeling woozy. I put something in the tea. A little extra “ooh” in the Oolong. Relax. Breathe. Zen. Don’t shit your pants — I mean, don’t relax that much. But give in to it. Shhhh.

Let’s talk. Y’know, as I unbuckle your pants. For comfort. For your comfort.

Yup, You Heard Me: “Turtle Penis”

It took me a while, but now I understand. See, every day, I get… mm, one or two visitors coming here via the search term “turtle penis.” I did not at first understand why my site even came up in that regards, especially since this phenomenon predates the Eddy Webb “Penis” essay. Ah, but now I dig it. Once upon a time, I spoke about the weird things people eat, and in that post is the term “turtle penis. See, it’s because you can actually eat turtle penis, and were you headed to, say, a getemono bar in Japan, you might get like, turtle penis sashimi or turtle penis soup or… I dunno, candied turtle penis soda.

Thing is, the search term isn’t “turtle penis soup.” Or sashimi. Or soda.

It’s just “turtle penis.”

So, I gotta ask. Why are you looking up turtle penis? School project? Okay. Sure. Trying to gross out a wife or girlfriend? Hey, I can get behind that. I do that! Good times, good times. But, if I were to poke my face through the monitor and come out through the Intertubes on the other side of your monitor, I wouldn’t see a bottle of greasy hand lotion and a box of tissues, right? And a coiled belt on the desk? And turtle posters all over the walls? I’m just asking. I… wouldn’t see that, right? Help a guy out.

Pauley Perrette Versus Avatar Porn

Every day, a secret war unfolds in the back alleys of terribleminds. The Avatar Porn Army rises from the tunnels, their lumpy nude bodies painted electric blue, homemade bows firing off arrows tipped in “alien venom” (really, it’s just hobo spit). They clash with the Proselytes of Pauley, those robe-clad emo-geek NCIS nerds, their hair tied off in Abby-style pigtails. It’s forensic tentacle porn. It’s Goth-freak tribal shamanism. It’s Pocahontas starring Mark Harmon.

People die. Bodies in the streets. Night after night.

Very sad.

No, what it is is a daily struggle of, “Who will win the Battle of the Search Terms?” One day, “avatar porn” nets the biggest views. The next day, it’s “Pauley Perrette.” Some searchers add words to the terms, and I count those, too — porn, nude, bondage, tentacles, rape, blue, free, pics, vagina, hot, tattoos, etc. Hell, someone actually searched for “freelance avatar porn.” Looking for a new career, maybe. I dunno.

If I tally the numbers day-to-day, I see that (to my surprise) Pauley is winning this war. I’m not yet willing to count Avatar out of the running though, as for the last week it’s held some solid numbers.

But I gotta tell you: I get fucktons of views from this. Hundreds of views a day, sometimes. Trust me, I don’t cherish these views. These are worthless views, the SEO equivalent of “empty calories.” I’m not courting these people with posts like this on the sly, wink wink, nudge nudge. They’re not coming here for my writing advice, my sardonic rage, my delicious blog nectar. They’re coming here to pudwhack to Pauley Perrette.

Though, were I to actually combine an Avatar image with a Pauley Perrette image — say, turning Abby into like, one of the sexy blue goat people — man, the views would probably crash the site. It’d be a perfect storm of weirdos. The fusion of those two fetishes could bring down the entire Internet.

Where Exactly To Insert Penis Into Girl?

Really? Is this the central mystery? This is what you search for in Google?

And further, you came here to answer that question?

God help you, son. God help you.

Hey, maybe he’s not looking for an answer so much as an opinion. Right? “Top Ten Places To Stick My Winky!” or something. “Number 10, between the toes! Number 9, the armpit! Number 8…” and so on. Though, were that the case, I’d think the search term would’ve been more like, “What’s the best place to insert my penis?” Right? (Oh, and hey search term dude. Don’t think I missed how poorly you phrased that question. Who are you, Governor Schwarzenegger? “Where exactly to insert penis into girl? Get to the choppah! It’s not a tumor! Hasta la vagina, baby!”)

(Sorry, I couldn’t help it.)

(I’m not proud.)

Just in case someone actually came here looking for an answer to this question, I’ll help.

I’ll offer my wisdom.

Dear 35-year-old-dude who hasn’t yet gone fishing in the love lagoon:

I get it, you have a handful of options when it comes to the placement of your wangledangle upon or within the female body. Let me just say: start with the vagina. It’s the best choice. I know. You’re thinking, “But it’s so obvious. It’s so pedestrian.” It’s like french fries, man. French fries might seem boring, right? But they’re fucking delicious. Nothing beats a good fry, am I right? Vagina’s the same way. It may seem the obvious way to go. It may seem a mundane choice — sure, it’s not as exciting as ear canal or whatever, but its the first best option. You’ll thank me.

And hey! You don’t have to stop there. If she gives you the thumbs-up, you can insert it into whatever cubbyhole she offers.

Read that again, by the way: “If she gives the thumbs-up.” The lady is the gatekeeper to all the PIZ (Penile Insertion Zones). She’s owns those. Not you. So be polite, and wait for the green light. You try to go on a red light, and that’s the kind of traffic violation that properly earns you a chemical castration. Got it? Good.

Regards,

Chucky Wendig, Doctor Of Love

Did that help, 35-year-old-dude? I hope it did.

If you’re still confused, sir, might I recommend this instructional video on “Vajazzling,” by Our Friend, John Hornor Jacobs?

Boiling Face Ouija Board

…uhhh.

What?

What the fuck is that?

“Boiling face Ouija board?”

I’m willing to believe that it’s like, a translation of what they called the “Paranormal Activity” movie in Japan or something.

Even still — how did it get you here?

What does it mean?

This shit will plague me. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe therein lies the horror. I’ll awaken at night and see a hypnagogic hallucination of the Boiling Face Ouija Board Man by my bedside, hunkered down, silent. He’ll clutch a Ouija board to his chest. His face will be a melting morass of third-degree burns, oozing onto the floor like candle wax erupted from popped blisters.

He’ll whisper: They are searching for me.

And then he’ll disappear.

But he’ll keep coming back. Oh, yes. Because that’s what Boiling Face Ouija Board man does. He’s a fucking dick, that guy. Just keeps on showing up. Night after night, until I am driven mad.

Now I’m all scared. Somebody hold me?

Fallout 3 Porn

Because that’s what I want. Sure! In a post-apocalyptic fuckhole where everything is some shade of diseased mucus or iron oxide, where the land is plagued by nuclear scorpions and ghoul dudes and Murder Bots, what I need is a little pornography. Mmm. Super Mutants rocking the stripper pole! Hot, sexy ghoul-on-ghoul action! Nngh! Yeah. Come on down to the Brotherhood of Steel. Know what I’m saying? Steel? Steel? (*points to genitals*) Steel.

What’s most unfortunate here is how I can’t serve these people’s needs. They come here looking for Fallout Porn, and I just don’t have it available. They will be left sorely disappointed. Their sadness will be limitless.

Sorry, search term weirdos. Can’t help you. I just don’t have the droids you’re looking for.

Splooge In Her Womb

Man, what? Is that a thing? Is that a thing you want? Or maybe it’s a thing of which you’re afraid?

If it’s the latter, okay. I mean, I guess that’s a guy fear, right? “Oh, man, my lady is preggo. If we go bang one out, my penis is going to hit the soft spot in the fetus-head and kill him. And if I ejaculate up in there, that little bastard is going to have to swim around in it for like, weeks. That’s not cool, man. Not cool.” It freaks some dudes out, so, fine. Maybe you came here to allay — or confirm — your suspicions. Then again, “splooge” is not exactly a medical term, and further, this ain’t WebMD. I’m not actually a doctor. I know, the lab coat and the shiny speculum maybe suggest that? But I just really dig the costume. And I use the speculum to crack nuts. I mean like, hazelnuts and walnuts. Get your mind of out of the gutter. Freak.

Now.

If it’s a thing you want –

Yeah, seriously, I don’t have it. I don’t have anything here that will help you. Go away. Get out of here. What does that even mean? Splooge in her womb? What? It’s hard to appall me, but you fuckers might just be doing it. Get out of here. I’ve got a shotgun loaded with rock salt. I will bury a load right in your ass.

…man, that doesn’t sound right.

Uhhhh.

*runs away*

Licking Snot While Fucking

Oh, what the fuck? Goddamnit. Really? Really? Snot? Licking? During sex? What? No. No! No.

You get the grumpy hedgehog in an eggcup. That’s what you get. That’s what you deserve.

I won’t even reward you with a discussion. Just get out of here. Just go. Leave. Shoo! We don’t have what you want. We don’t serve your kind here. How did you get here? Why? Why me? Why this place? It couldn’t have even been the Snot Boogie conversation from yesterday because this search term is days ago!

Gah. Gah!

Why? No!

I cannot help you. You’re beyond my assistance. I can’t get this image out of my head thanks to you. It’s hurting my brain. It’s like a worm, boring its way to the heart of the apple. You ass. You asshole. I am comfortable with all manner of terrifying visuals, but snot? Licking? Banging? During? Mah! Fnah!

*shakes head*

I can’t shake the thought out of my head!

Maybe I can drill it out.

Maybe I can use this Makita drill and just… bore the evil out. Trepanation! Right? That shit works! They still do that, yeah? It’s still an approved medical procedure? Seems like a sound, sane way of exorcising the evil spirits that have set up shop inside my head. Yes! Excellent!

Whirr, whirr!

Out, out, damned spot.

*drill meets bone*

*the smell of burning hair, scalded skull*

*laughing*

*drooling*

*thud*

(EDIT: Don’t believe that this is a search term?)

(Ta-da!)

Ahem.

Okay.

Let’s just be up front. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. I’ve had a glass of blackberry brandy. Hey, what? You shut up. It’s basically fruit. Don’t you judge me.

This isn’t normal, the me-being-slightly-inebriated-before-noon gig. So, don’t go scheduling any interventions.

No, the thing is, I just finished a script. Y’know that thing that got us into the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab? Right? The one whose logline reads:

“When a mysterious sleep virus begins to affect the adults in a small rural town, those under 18 find themselves cut off from civilization and fighting for their lives. As weeks turn into months, they must struggle against the infected adults, one another, and their own worst instincts.”

That one? Yeah.

Sixth draft. Total rewrite. A big fat 112 pages. In the bag. Boom.

And holy fuck! I think it reads pretty good. And no, that’s not just the brandy whispering in my ear, dangit.

…

Sorry, I just had to take a moment and be thankful for the life I lead. I’ve been really lucky, you know? I get that. Great wife. Great dogs. Great writing partnership. Novel repped by a great agent. Movie. TV show. Things are pretty dang fine. (This, by the way, is where I leave my house to go get the mail and a tanker truck drives into me because the driver is all goosed-up on meth and we explode and perish and this post become a deep, dark irony — a memorial for all to see and cluck their tongues over. Tsk tsk tsk.)

Where was I?

Right. I want to talk to you about process.

Mostly just a weird rumination, but something that might inform how you approach different projects, forms, or styles.

I write novels completely different from how I write screenplays.

Big-time. I’m not talking about the planning, the outlining, any of that. I’m talking about the in-the-trenches nose-in-the-mud writing moments.

Here’s how I write a novel:

I close off the world. I open the Word processor. I consult my notes, my mind maps, my outlines, and then I put them away.

Then I write. I write like a mad fucker. Piston fingers on clicky keys. I avoid the Twitters. I avoid the Facebooks. Blinders on. Fingers move. Type, fucker, type. I hit three thousand words, I feel lucky. If I can keep going, I keep going. Head down. Write, you shithead. Write. I feel like a machine. I feel like I can’t breathe until it’s done. I don’t look back, either. Forge ahead, ahead, ahead. Full steam. Fuck periscope depth. Dive, dive, dive!

Script-writing? Whole different bag of animals.

I open the script file in Final Draft. I eat some oatmeal. I drink some coffee. I go back and read what I wrote the day before — wait, what? I do that? Really? Yes. Yes, I do. I go back over it, and I correct errors, I adjust dialogue, I clip out extraneous bullshit. (I’m very OCD with scripts. I like them to end at the back of the line, not the front — with a script, every dang line and page matters, too, so it only fuels my compulsions.) Then I press ahead, but I don’t bolt for the finish line. I write… shit, I’d almost call it leisurely. Okay, today was a little different because we’re talking climax-of-the-script, where shit is happening and people are dying and oh-my-god-so-much-mucus (seriously!), so the pace is more clipped, more furious. But in general, that’s not the case.

I write a line. I measure it against other lines. I think about it. I correct. I move on. Line by line, I hold it up, I take a good long look. I adjust. I juggle. I move this there, and that here. I take time out just to consider things. I don’t do that when I write novels. Not saying that’s good or bad — it just is.

I don’t know what I’m to learn from this. I don’t know if one method is better than the other, and if I should attempt to merge them. I’m inclined to say, mmmm, fuck it. What works, works. Each has its own face, and I dare not look away. The process is the process. I do wonder, though — as time goes on, will I write novels more slowly? More methodically? I dunno. It doesn’t feel right. Not yet, anyway.

Time changes a dude, though.

Anyway. Just thought I’d hack that up and hawk ptoo it onto your screens. What is your process? Do you find that you have compartmentalized processes? Separate for separate projects? Styles? Types of project? Talk to me. Whatchoo got, Internets?

More brandy? Really?

Don’t mind if I do!

Det. James ‘Jimmy’ McNulty: So your boy’s name was what?

Kid: Snot.

McNulty: You called the guy “Snot”?

Kid: Snot Boogie. Yah.

McNulty: God. Snot Boogie. He like the name?

Kid: What?

McNulty: Snot Boogie?

[beat]

McNulty: This kid, whose mama went to the trouble to christen him Omar Isaiah Betts… You know, he forgets his jacket, so his nose starts running and some asshole, instead of giving him a Kleenex, he calls him “Snot.” So he’s Snot forever. Doesn’t seem fair.

Kid: Life just be that way, I guess.

McNulty: So, who shot Snot?

Kid: I ain’t goin’ to no court… motherfucker didn’t have to put no cap in him though.

McNulty: Definitely not.

Kid: He coulda just whooped his ass like we always whoop his ass.

McNulty: I agree with you.

Kid: Kill Snot. Snot been doing the same shit since I don’t know how long. Kill a man over some bullshit. I’m sayin’, every Friday night in an alley behind the Cut Rate, we rollin’ bones, you know? I mean all them boys around the way, we roll till late.

McNulty: Alley crap game, right?

Kid: Like every time, Snot, he’d fade a few shooters, play it out till the pot’s deep. Snatch and run.

McNulty: What, every time?

Kid: Couldn’t help hisself.

McNulty: Let me understand you. Every Friday night, you and your boys are shoot crap, right? And every Friday night, your pal Snot Boogie… he’d wait till there’s cash on the ground and he’d grab it and run away? You let him do that?

Kid: We’d catch him and beat his ass but ain’t nobody never go past that.

McNulty: I gotta ask you: if every time Snot Boogie would grab the money and run away… why’d you even let him in the game?

Kid: What?

McNulty: If Snot Boogie stole the money, why’d you let him play?

Kid: Got to. It’s America, man.

Then, out of nowhere, some clown runs up, hikes his pants down, slaps his bepimpled cheeks, and screams: “NUH-UH!”

And then he runs away.

That is not a productive way of joining the conversation. You, my clowning friend, are only interrupting. You are disrupting. Your zit-speckled moon is little more than a brick wall, and this conversation just slammed right into it. Killing all passengers.

What the hell am I talking about?

It’s like this: remember the Ten Rules For Writing Fiction meme that went around? (I did my own list here at the site, in case you missed it.)  Being on the Twitters and the web in general, I have before and since this occasionally run upon a post or a comment that is, in essence, “Fuck you, this is dumb, everybody writes differently, you can’t apply rules to it.” It’s not the first time I’ve seen that. There exists real resistance to people offering writing advice. While I blessedly don’t see it here (because you people are awesome and are not from the standard primate house of grumpy sperm-flinging bonobos) I still encounter it “out in the wild.” It’s this defiant, iconoclastic middle finger to anybody who would dare to posit new ways of doing things or new ways of thinking about things. So, the response is more or less: “That’s bullshit, man.”

Or, put differently, it’s a dude smacking his ass at you and yelling, “Nuh-uh.”

(I won’t link out to any of these blogs. I don’t want to give them traffic, and they have a right to mouth off in their spaces as much as they’d like, just as I have the right to mouth off here to all of you poor bastards!)

Listen, I get it. Nobody can force you to do things. And nobody should tell you that from his mouth comes the One True Way, sang on a beam of light shot from an angel’s mighty pucker. I certainly hope I don’t come across that way. I know I’m a belligerent blowhard. But I always try to temper with that with the idea that I’m only just figuring these things out for myself and vocalizing them. You’re merely along for the ride as I stumble through my own pits and traps and drag my own sorry ass through the weeds.

“Fiction doesn’t abide by rules, man!”

Mm-hmm.

Here’s the thing.

Fiction has rules, actually. Writing has rules. They might be different for different people. Or different for different genres. Or for different languages. Or editors. Or media.

Further, in those gray, hoary margins where no sure rules exist, we can still talk about the potentials, can’t we? We can have a conversation about it? Surely?

I don’t know that I’ve helped anybody. I do know that I have been helped by not just you guys, but by many of the blogs and interviews and articles out there on the subject of writing. Heck, that Tim O’Brien interview from yesterday’s PWS had that great quote (paraphrased: when on the plateaus, head for the mountains). I don’t agree with everything he said, but that one thing was right for me, and I took it, and I absorbed it into my amoebic caul and uploaded it to my chittering hive-mind, and now that shit is a deep-ass part of me. Same with all those Ten Rules. I don’t agree with every rule every other writer put forth. But I found the things I liked, and I made them a part of me.

If I had been a closed door, if I had been grumpy-gussed and vinegar-pissed about all that, I wouldn’t have been open to absorbing any of that. I wouldn’t have been open to learning. No, instead I would’ve just shown my lily white shitcan and screamed “Nuh-uh!” at the top of my ever-loving lungs.

You have to be open.

This is a conversation. A dynamic back and forth. That’s why the Internet is awesome.

And jerkholes like the ass-slapping clown is why the Internet blows.

So, to you jerkholes?

You have three options.

One: Join the conversation.

Two: Listen to, or even ignore, the conversation.

Three: Eat a dick and die.

(Or, put more politely, be a fountain, not a drain.)

(And just to be clear: I’m not talking to anyone here. I’m yelling out into the mighty digital void, y’dig?)