Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

Tag: advice (page 1 of 25)

Advice You Should Probably Ignore

What Flavor Of Publishing Will You Choose?

Should you be your own publisher, or should you find someone to publish for you?

That’s a question that pops up in my inbox often enough it might as well be a coked-up gopher — so, instead of hitting each twitchy gopher with a tiny hammer, I figure I’ll write this one big-ass motherfucker of a blog post to serve as the Mjolnir that will eradicate all the pesky gophers into a fine splurch of bloody mist.

I’m going to answer the question now, up-front, with a somewhat controversial answer.

You should try the traditional route first.

All right, all right, stop yelling, indie authors. Cool your inflamed genitals.

Stop throwing things at my head. Because, seriously, ow.

Let’s offer up a couple disclaimers: first, this is me talking about my experiences and should be viewed as such, and you can of course take my advice or you can wad it up into a ball and shove it deep into a bison’s rectum. You may disagree with anything I say here and have entirely different experiences and that’s all good, dude-bro or lady-bro. I’m shining a flashlight on the path I’ve walked and the things I’ve seen while on it. You may do differently.

Second, I like to approach publishing as a hybridized endeavor, meaning, I do a little bit of everything. Traditional, DIY, crowdsourced, small press, the mystical Akashic Record, stone tablets hewn by the gods, whatever. As such, I am a fan of self-publishing. I do it. I have self-published releases out there. I will continue to self-publish in the future. My self-published releases in 2012 will equate to approximately 20% of my total writing income, which is pretty rad. I will not tell you to never self-publish.

But, I also get to hop the fence and frolic tra-la-la in the meadow of the traditional, as well.

Blackbirds is published via the “traditional method” (which is to say the fiction lay with a publisher in the missionary style and together with a midwife they birthed a book baby in a muddy trench under the eyes of a vigilant god).

In the grand scheme of things, Blackbirds is a fairly small release.

And yet, Blackbirds has been very good to me.

It has an amazing cover.

It’s been published far and wide. Indie bookstores, B&N, airport bookstores, online e-book distributors, and so on and so forth.

It’s received a boatload of reviews across both digital and meatspace. It’s shown up in places like the Guardian, the Independent, SFX, Starburst, Publisher’s Weekly, The Financial Times, io9. It’s got scads of commentary at places like Amazon and Goodreads and even still I get Google Alerts of bloggers talking about discovering the book and digging it.

It made it on a number of “best of 2012” lists.

A number of authors I admire and adore have gotten a hold of the book and told me how much they enjoyed it. Seanan McGuire’s very kind review of the book still gives me a giddy shiver now and again (and further, I’m quite certain it sold more copies of the book).

The book had foreign rights sold in two territories.

The film rights are thisclose to being wrapped up (hopefully this week).

The book ended up in the hands of a different film studio and off that, I was able to pitch a project to them and then to the head of a major film studio. (The pitch went through its paces and didn’t quite land, but gave me great contacts in both studios.)

The book ended up in the hands of a major comics publisher and allowed me to pitch a comic for a character I adore (no word yet on how well that pitch landed, sorry).

The book comes up routinely in conversations with other editors. The book’s relative success has led to other publishing opportunities and deals.

The book has earned me bonafide fans that appear at bookstores and conferences who seem to be (much to my bepuzzlement) genuinely happy to meet me and to have read the book.

The book is a super-weapon that conjures a fire unicorn from the heavens and together we are able to ride on the tail of a comet dispensing food to the hungry and sweet jamz to those without music. …okay, I might be making this last part up. SUE ME. (Please don’t sue me.)

For those of you crass commerce-hounds out there, I will note that a good deal of this has translated into money, as well as that most insubstantial of resources, “exposure.”

Now, the corker:

Most of this in my opinion would not have been possible if I self-published Blackbirds. I would never have gotten such a beautiful cover by the inimitable Joey Hi-Fi. Would’ve never sold foreign rights or film rights or had great reviews that multiplied exposure to the book. I probably wouldn’t have sold as many copies as I had (if sales of Bait Dog are any indication at all). I damn sure wouldn’t be in bookstores. And again, to revert to crass capitalism, I likely would’ve made a lot less money on the book had I gone the DIY route.

Yes, yes, I see you hopping up and down over there — I agree with you. My experiences are not going to be repeatable. Your book may do much better than this, or far worse, in a traditional space. Alternately, if you self-publish, you may end up having the blistering success that many worthy indie releases never seem to find. (Though, I’ll note here that the pot of gold at the end of many self-publishing rainbows seems so often to be a traditional publishing deal.)

So. Okay. All that being said, let’s give some reasons why you should try traditional first.

1) Because all that stuff I just said. Rights, reviews, access, bookstores, authors, $$$.

2) Because submitting to an agent and/or publisher will teach you things about the industry.

3) Because you may receive excellent feedback on your book for free about things that work.

4) Because you may receive similar feedback on your book (for free!) about things that don’t work (and should you end up publishing this way your book will be refined even further by agent and editor).

5) Because if you don’t get a deal, you can always go back and self-publish anyway.

6) Because if you get a deal but don’t like the terms, you can self-publish anyway.

7) Because if you get a deal and take it, and one day they no longer want to publish your book anymore because of sales or because Barnes & Noble shit the bed or because something-something Mayan Flu Gonorrhea Epidemic, you can take your book and self-publish anyway.

8) Because even if you don’t like the Big Six (er, five — or is it four by now?) you still have options to “traditionally” publish with smaller- to medium-size publishers or even with Amazon. Other options exist outside the mainstream, is what I’m saying.

9) Because not that you’re in this racket for respect (writers and respect are like oil and water), but you will get more as one who is traditionally-published than one who is not. Again: not a real good reason, but hey, maybe that sort of thing matters to you.

10) Because a more traditional path to publication may build fans who will then take a risk on your self-published work (where they may before have been averse to it).

11) Because flaming unicorn comet riding. Okay, I said I was making that one up, sorry.

12) Because patience is a virtue writers need to learn and going the traditional path will sure as the sexual charity of Sweet Saint Fuck teach you a mega-uber-ultra-dose of patience.

It mostly sums up to: “It can’t hurt, and it may help.”

Your mileage may vary, of course. Do with this as thou wilt. If you want to self-publish first and only, that’s a path that offers many authors a potential wealth of success in differing ways — so, I’m not knocking it, and I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. I just figure, traditional offers things right now that many writers seek (including cold hard cash), and blah blah blah.

Though, hey, certainly there are reasons to go straight to self-publishing, too: certain genres, for instance, tend to be exploitative toward traditional authors while rewarding indie writers. Further, self-pub allows you to publish risky material in terms of content or format.

Maybe you just got a burning middle finger for authority.

That’s all good. You do as you like. Do what makes you happiest, penmonkey.

*drops mic*

*takes a nap on snoozing unicorn*

How Chuck Wendig Edits A Novel

Recently, I wrote a post called, “How Chuck Wendig Writes A Novel.”

Just after writing that, I threw myself into the churning gears of editing and rewriting not one novel, but three — I spoke a little on Twitter about said editing/rewriting, and I got a lot of folks tweeting at me or emailing me questions about my editing process.

Seems now is a good time to sift through the sand of my process, see what baubles turn up.

Now, two quick things:

First, this is my process. You are not me. (OR ARE YOU? MOM, THE DOPPELGANGER IS READING MY BLOG AGAIN.) As such, this is not meant to be a step-by-step Menu For Proven Success. Every writer’s gotta figure out her own process. This is mine, here to serve as an example and a list of possibilities rather than a do this or perish in the cold fires of ignominy.

Second, I believe that this process is as important, if not moreso, than the actual writing of your first draft. A story may be born in the first draft, but anybody with children will tell you, those baby creatures are dopey as shit. They just lay there. Crying and pooping. But time and teaching is what makes the person, and in editing and rewriting your work you’ll likely find that this is where your story grows up. A tale is truly made in this phase.

Put more succinctly:

Writing is when we make the words.

Editing is when we make the words not shitty.

Now, red pens out! No, no, not red penis out. See, that gets an edit. Weirdo.

Let us begin.

Kick The Story To The Curb And Walk Away

The best thing you can do for the work is get to the point where you forgot you wrote it. Give it enough time so that you can come back to it with only a hazy memory of the thing — meaning, you’re reading the work like some other jerkoff wrote it. You’ll come to it so fresh and so clean. You’ll be more clear-headed about its errors. You won’t needlessly love certain parts that suck, and you won’t automatically hate parts that are actually pretty good.

How much time does this take? I’ve no idea. I’m not you. (OR AM I? Okay, no.) I’d say to give it a month if you can afford it — sadly, I can’t always afford that kind of time, what with deadlines and all. With editing Heartland, Book One, I rewrote it many times over the course of a year, and just now did one more rewrite for the publisher — and in this casew had like, maybe five months before I really had to reopen and look at it again. I wasn’t so lucky with Blue Blazes — I had to write it and rewrite it immediately after. (But when Angry Robot returns the book to me for edits, enough time will have passed for me to come at it clear.)

Stare At It Until Its Weakness Is Revealed

Something is wrong with your story.

Repeat: something is wrong with your story.

I don’t know what. I haven’t read it. All I know is, every story has different set of problems, though certainly some writers cleave to problems particular to them (my problem is frequently plot, and my edits are often about punching the plot until it yields to my demands). What’s the problem with your story? Well. Maybe it’s:

Confusing character motivations. Unclear language. Plot holes. Wonky structural issues. Needless exposition. Boring parts. Shit that doesn’t make sense. An addiction to commas. Conflict that doesn’t escalate. Conflicts that are too easily solved. Inconsistent mood. Incongruous theme. Needs more sex. Needs another monkey sidekick. Parts are written in Sumerian for no good reason. The book is only 300 words long. The book is 300,000 words long. Needs more giant eagles carrying the protagonists around everywhere. Needs fewer awful parts. THE STORY IS DUMB AND YOUR FACE IS DUMB AND EVERYBODY HATES YOU.

Or whatever. Point is, you have to sit and figure out why this thing you wrote doesn’t work — either in part or in total. This is a heartwrenching component of the process, because…

…well, because it is. Because you don’t want anything to be wrong. Because you just spent so much of yourself putting the first damn draft on the page. But you know what? Fuck it. The good news is, just because something’s wrong doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. No problem in a novel is too serious. All can be solved with a most merciless edit.

Get Some Perspective

Let someone else take a crack at it. Sometimes, even after time has passed, we’re just too close to the thing. You don’t want to kill your darlings or, maybe it’s the opposite: you just want to kill all of it with cleansing fire. Let someone else confirm or veto your feelings. They’ll also bring new questions and complexities to the table, too (“I did not realize that Captain Redballs the Bold died in chapter three, but then I have him in chapter six making love to a mermaid”).

I have my agent, who is a wunderkind in terms of sussing out a story’s problems. You may have friends or fellow writers who can help. Or copy-editors or editors or wives or a super-intelligent NASA-bred terrier. But find a trusted outside perspective. Don’t let it all fall to your shoulders.

Track Changes Is Your Best Friend

A tiny note: learn to love the power of track changes. Available in fullest form in Microsoft Word.

It is exceedingly helpful to mark all the changes you make. I turn them on when editing but turn their visibility off at the same time — so, it’s tracking all the changes I make off-stage and behind the curtain. But I can view them at any time. And it’s also a great way to track the comments and tweaks put forth by that person of outside perspective I was talking about, too.

And hell, part of it is just the satisfaction of looking at all your changes by the end and being amazed at the level of work you put into it. Suddenly you’re like:

“Man, I really made this pig bleed, didn’t I?”

How cruelly satisfying.

Work With The Multiple Safety Nets Of Redundant Backups

Also, save a lot when you edit.

And back up your work.

Not once place, but in many.

A cloud backup.

A local, external device.

Tattooed onto your back.

Buried in your yard.

Multiple redundant backups are your best buddy.

Gaze Upon The Coming Task With Terror In My Heart

There exists this moment before I edit where I feel completely overwhelmed. This is, quite literally, part of my process. I get this sense of literary vertigo, like I’m staring over the cliff’s edge into the crashing gears of some giant malevolent machine that I cannot comprehend and that I am sure will crush me into my constituent parts. And in this moment I want to back away and say, “Fuck it, I’m not doing this, I’m done, game over, my work sucks, I’m not a writer, I’m just some asshole, I can’t hack it, I can’t–”

And then I leap over the cliff’s edge and let the gears take me.

And that’s when I find out it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

It’s never as bad as you thought.

Re-Outline That Motherfucker

I outline my work prior to writing.

But, when writing, my work inevitably strays from the outline.

If I had to quantify it (and I will, because you keep shoving the barrel of that gun into my kidneys), I’d say about 75% of my draft survives the original outline, and 25% goes completely off the fucking rails like if Thomas the Tank Engine did a bunch of bath salts and tried to headbutt his way through a collapsed mountain pass.

(Sorry for the Thomas the Tank Engine reference. I have a toddler. I am infected.)

So, I like to take the draft I just wrote and re-outline it. Just so I see the entire thing before me — I want to see the forest and the individual trees. And it helps to pull my head out of the big blobby morass of the novel and see it as smaller, more manageable. I can see its shape. Its contours. I can see all the plotty bits and turns-of-the-tale. It’s a map. A blueprint. A cheater’s guide to a video game. Whatever. I want digestible chunks. Hence: outline.

Re-Re-Outline That Motherfucker

Then, yes, I re-re-outline.

The re-outline details the novel I just wrote.

The re-re-outline details the coming rewrites of the novel I just wrote.

The Power Of Excel Compels You

I use the mighty fuck out of Excel to perform this re- and re-re-outlining process.

Here’s how: I make four columns.

Column #1: Chapter number/name. (This is pretty explanatory, yeah?)

Column #2: Plotty Bits. Meaning, what the fuck is happening in this chapter? I don’t go into great detail, here. Just broad stroke events. “Bob dies. Mary lays eggs in his rectum. Her alien hell-shrimp are born in his colon. Mary exits.”

Column #3: Conflict/Changes. Meaning, I want to know what the core conflict is of this chapter. And I want to know how the story or its characters is changing. I want the sense that the story is moving, that things are happening, that the diagram of the narrative isn’t a flat line.

Column #4: Comments/Questions. Here’s me asking myself questions or making marginal comments — “Should Mary flee the scene now or do her motherly instincts prevail over her new insectile litter inside Bob’s moist bowel-channels?”

Then I duplicate the last three columns (plot, conflict, comments) again. This time, for the re-re-outline. This allows me to see both the current state of the novel and the novel I intend to edit/fix/rewrite/asplode side by side. Very helpful, at least for me.

I Am Shiva

Shiva is the destroyer. But Shiva is also preserver, concealer, revealer, and creator. And that, to me, sums up the entire editing and rewriting process: some stuff you kill with an axe. Some stuff needs to be reborn. Some stuff you preserve and keep — other stuff can only remain if you are able to can tease out the essence of the thing (scene, character, sentence, whatever).

What I’m saying is, after I re-re-outline, it’s time to rewrite. Which means destroying whole parts of the story and remaking them. In the Blue Blazes  I lost an entire main character. Like, I erased her from the tale. Sometimes with a machete, sometimes with a surgical laser. She just wasn’t pulling her weight and so she had to go, and that means rewriting the story — a stitching of the wound, you will — around the holes where she once existed.

Read It

Once you’re done with the big edits, I reread. (Re-outline, re-write, re-read. Lots of re-re-re.)

I read the draft aloud — which is not to say I sit here in my office bellowing fiction all day, which would drive my family nuts and wake Toddler B-Dub up from one of his blessed naps, but I kind of mumble-whisper the words as I sit here. (Which means anybody looking at me from afar probably thinks I’m some kind of crazy person.) Reading your work aloud will allow you to catch a lot of the rough patches in terms of language. And reading the work in general will allow you to catch any problematic bits that remain. It’s like pouring the broth of your work through a strainer and then through cheesecloth to capture those last gnarly bits.

If Necessary, Do It All Again, But Not Before Weeping Softly And Drinking A Lot

Sometimes you gotta do it all over again. Sometimes some of the cancer remains, which means it’s time for another round of surgery, chemo, and radiation. Hell, sometimes a truly frustrating thing happens: the second draft has more problems than the first. That’s okay, though at the time it’ll feel completely defeating. It’s all part of the winnowing. It’s all progress even when it doesn’t feel that way. Because this is you getting to know your story. This is you getting to know more than just this story, but all stories, feeling your way through what works and what doesn’t. It’s all research and development, man. It’s all one big story-hack.

25 Writer Resolutions For 2013 (And Beyond)

Tis that time of the year when the year’s just born — pushed from its temporal womb, squalling and wriggling. That means it’s also time to put forward a list of upgraded attitudes and mission statements for the year ahead. Some of these are for me. Maybe some of them are for you.

I don’t buy that we should rely on a single day to cleave to shame and fix mistakes — but I think the first of the year is a nice temporal marker to push ourselves to re-examine, to evolve, and to keep asserting our ability to kick as much ass as we are able and allowed.

With that said, let’s get to it.

1. Level Up, Ding

Up your game. Always. With every paragraph, every chapter, every script scene and blog post, we should be looking to level up our work and ourselves.  We level up, we gain new weapons in our fight against Shitty Writing (“I HAVE THE ANCIENT SWORD OF THE HAIKU MASTERS, IT IS +1 AGAINST RUN-ON-SENTENCES”) and we face new challenges in the road ahead (“NOW I MUST DEFEAT THE LITERARY AGENT IN BATTLE USING NOTHING BUT A QUERY LETTER AND SOME BAD-ASS DANCE MOVES”). We must never sit on our hands. We must pull our boots out of the mud. We must move forward and improve ourselves and our work. We must better our shit.

2. Let Art And Entertainment Have A Little Creative Love Baby

Once upon a time I thought, my goal as a writer is first to entertain. And that remains true, to a point — but the more I think about it, the more I realize “entertainment” is a lowest common denominator. If my only true goal was to entertain, I could achieve that by uploading a series of YouTube videos where various things hit me in the dick (Frisbee! Coconut! Bowling ball! Charging goat! A goat driving a lawnmower!). A good story connects beyond mere amusement; its tendrils sink into deeper earth, winding around the human heart. Let’s aspire to do more than merely entertain. Let us reach for meaning, for connection, let us present stories with purpose and power. (Or, at the very least, we could write porn. HEY PORN COUNTS SHUT UP.)

3. Cleave To The Human Condition

It’s oh-so-easy to get lost in all the fiddly bits of storytelling. All the plotty twists, all the crafty and conjurous worldbuilding, all the clever turns of phrase, all the wonderful ways to describe a person’s naughty bits (dangle rod love canal wizard’s wand swamp grotto turgid shillelagh lusty sex-pond). Thing is, we write stories for one reason: to talk about people. And we read stories because we want to read about people. Every story is a Rosetta Stone attempting to translate the human condition to the humans gazing upon it with knitted-brow and quizzical sneer. When we as writers drift away from that, we lose what’s powerful about stories: we lose the character. Stories are written by people, for people, about people. I mean, at least until the day comes when they’re written by robots, for robots, about murdering all the meatbags.

4. Face The Fear, Best The Beast

(Man, if those aren’t some of the lyrics to You’re The Best Around, then the 1980s has failed me.) Let every tale be a cage match between you and something that scares you. Death, life, rats, clowns, disease, lost love, parasites, credit ratings, God, Satan, the apocalypse, being awake during surgery, Kentucky, the dark, wizards, tiny children with straight razors in their jam-smeared hands, otters — find a thing that frightens you and write about it. Mine that struggle. Writing with that measure of genuine of emotion behind it creates a palpable effect: the prose grows stronger, the story becomes richer. Think of it as upgrading the story’s megapixels. Every page contains so much more when you write with passion and authenticity.

5. Have A Fucking Point

Every story is an argument. Have the argument on the page. Give it to the audience. Make the case for why love conquers all — or why love can suck a big quivering tube of elf dick. It’s not about being preachy; it’s about threading your fiction with theme and meaning.

6. Embrace The Unanswerable

On the other hand, just as sometimes we go into fiction with an answer already in mind, other times we approach the page with an unanswered question hanging over our heads like a reaper’s sickle. The ending of the tale, uncertain — its conclusion both in terms of event and theme existing as a Schroedinger’s Cat inside the narrative box, the outcome ever in flux. Can love save the day? What is love? Will human monstrousness win out over selflessness? How do I remove this skin tag? Do bears really shit in the woods or do they share a series of secret bear toilets?

7. Stop Letting Passion Ferment Into Poison

Passion can be a paintbrush — or it can be a gun. It can be a warm cup of go-go juice or an icy syringe jacked up with blowfish toxin. Passion is a horse that either carries you racing across the sunlit plains or stomps you bloody into the mud. Creators are passionate people; they have to be. Passion drives us to do what we do. But that passion easily goes septic and next thing you know, instead of pointing it toward our work and our desires, we’re instead letting it fuel some bullshit argument or be the rope that binds us into some crass emotional tangle. Writing the next great story from the deep of your heart is so much more valuable than EGADS SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERTUBES I WILL EXPEND MY CREATIVE ENERGON CUBES ASSERTING MY SUPERIORITY.

8. Lock The Bastards In A Box

We will forever meet those who don’t believe in us, whose apparent goal is to hold our heads underwater rather than teach us to swim. Those are our bastards, and fuck every last one of those human speedbumps. Don’t engage. Shut them out. Close the door and lock it. Let this be the year we populate our lives with people who challenge us and help us be better, not punch us in the balls (or lady-parts) and leave us groaning and gasping in a pile of canine excrement.

9. Read Widely

Our reading habits are creatures of comfort: we know what we like (urban fantasy novels where bad-ass were-dolphin girls wage war against a parliament of sexy demon-priests) and so we hew to those books we know will please us. But again, look beyond the boundaries of entertainment. As we challenge ourselves with our writing, so too should we seek similar challenge in our reading. Read that which you would not normally read. Seek new input. Don’t let your mind grow indolent and complacent, a sluggy psychic blob covered in mental Dorito dust.

10. Know More Shit, You Clod-Headed Ignorasaurus

If we are to assume that write what you know has any value at all (it does, in a sense, and more on that in a moment), then we can also assume that it is our mission as official penmonkeys to know more shit. Your mission: learn more, read more, do more.

11. Dig Into The Dirt Of Your Own Experience

Let’s talk a little about that last one: “do more.” When we write, we tend to write more effectively when we milk the udders of our own experience rather than come to the page cold and unaware. That’s not to say we must literally write what we know — otherwise, every story would be a biographical transcript. Rather, our experiences are filtered through the various sieves and strainers of fiction: we translate and teleport the events of our lives, finding those sensory moments, those essential elements (or elemental essentials), those core authentic “truths.” What that means is: strive to bring yourself to the page. And further, it means to do more. Have more experiences. Travel. Eat new foods. Try new things. Apply it to your fiction. (“Hey, honey, I went to a gangbang last night with a bunch of strangers. Don’t worry, it’s just me bringing authenticity to my novel. Yes, I smell like lube: a detail for my fictions.”)

12. Find Comfort In Discomfort

Fuck safety. Jump, then stitch the parachute on the way down. Comfort is the enemy of good fiction. As an author, seek some measure of discomfort — put it into your work, try new things, challenge yourself to take the difficult path because that is the path that will yield greater reward. Hell, break a drinking glass and pepper your office chair with the shards so that you’re experiencing constant enlightening buttock pain. *receives note from the official terribleminds lawyer* Oh, umm, wait, yeah, don’t do that last part. Just do the other things.

13. Find Opportunity In Change

The winds have shifted. The earth trembles beneath our feet. Genres warp and mash together. Age ranges for reading spawn hydra heads (Middle Grade! Young Adult! New Adult! Adult Zero! Pre-Adult! Post-Toddler! Geriatric Erotica!). The shift to digital is a change. The fact that big publishers are glomming onto big publishers and creating some kind of drug-resistant super-mecha publisher-kaiju is a change. The rise of self-publishing is — drum roll please — a big-ass change. And more unseen changes are surely on the way in the coming year. Each change is bad for those who cannot adapt, and great for those who can. So, adapt. Find opportunity and challenge instead of difficulty and misery. Surf the turning tide.

14. Find Signal In Noise

We can either fill our lives with meaning, or bog it down with distraction. The latter is easier, frankly: it’s so much simpler to lose ourselves to the Internet or video games or stupid arguments or Russian elk porn. But a life of writing requires focus. It demands that we tune out the noise and zero in on the signal. Signal will save us. Noise will drown us.

15. Stop Pooping In The Temple

They say the body is a temple; mine is probably a back alley pawn shop. (“Want to buy a cassette player and an off-brand Samurai sword?”) Just the same, I shouldn’t be savaging the architecture of my flesh with gross indolence and needless diet. The mind and the body are inextricably linked — it’s time to stop dragging down the mind with the negligence of the body.

16. Stop Defining Yourself By What Other People Think

Everybody wants you to be something. Some people want you to be nothing. None of that matters. The tiger in the cage doesn’t think, “The zookeeper wants me to wear this jaunty hat.” He just eats the zookeeper and then pees on that hat. Be the Most Awesomest You-Version that you want to be, and let everyone fall in line behind your ideals. Don’t fall in line behind theirs.

17. Love What You Write, Write What You Love

The thing about writing is, it’s easy to get caught up in work that isn’t “for” us — rocking out some freelance word count, or maybe in a pitch meeting you pitched something on a lark and under pressure (“Uhh, something-something astronaut family sitcom in a future world owned by robots who have not yet learned to love”) and you really don’t like the thing you pitched but now, here you are, writing it for money. You find it miserable and that misery translates. It always translates. The miserable threads wind around each word like a choking vine or a pubic hair caught in your teeth. Here’s how to fix this: first, make sure to save projects Just For You. Write projects that speak to you. But you can also reverse that: you can bring your love to the project at hand even if that project is not one you enjoy. There’s always a way “in.” Always an angle. Always a way forward that you don’t hate. Find that path through. You’ll feel better for it.

18. Be Inspired By All The Crazy Penmonkey Motherfuckers Out There

Jealousy is an ugly thing: it’s bitey like a plague monkey, empty like a mummy’s scrotum. The way we see other writers is sometimes through lenses smeared with the greasy unguent of envy, or worse, we think, “They did it, but I can’t, and now I’m just going to lay down and take a thousand-year-nap on this pillow soggy with my tears.”  Going forward, let your proper response to other writers be awe. Let it be inspiration. Let the collective efforts of a thousand penmonkeys be the fist of wind that punches your sails.

19. Forge Partnerships In The Raw Metals Of Awesome

Time to get shut of the notion that we do this thing alone. The author is always the tip of the iceberg: beneath the hoarfrost waters is forever an unseen pyramid of supporters. Editors! Agents! Book designers! Artists! Other writers! This year, go out. Find one other person in your creative ecosystem. Press your two magic artist rings together — bwing! — and form a partnership. Use that creative energy — and yes, sometimes, creative agitation — to be the fist of wind that… what? I already used that metaphor? Fine. Use that energy to get shit done.

20. Create Before You Consume

We often gain our desire to tell stories from consuming the stories told by others. This often becomes our default mode: we read! We watch! We play! The problem is when it remains our default mode and we never switch tracks from consumer to creator. That’s not to say we shouldn’t still hungrily stuff our mind-mouths with the narrative meals cooked by others — but there comes a time to give our own work that priority. Both in terms of time and in terms of regurgitating staid, tired tale-telling. Your story comes first. All other tales trail after.

21. Write Fiction Red In Tooth And Claw

Punch. Kick. Grab. Bite. Fuck passivity. We don’t get to be paid penmonkeys and crackerjack creators by lying on the ocean floor like a bloated sea cucumber letting food glom onto his turd-blob body. You’re not a morbidly obese shut-in who can order opportunity and creativity from Amazon (delivered with Prime Shipping to your double-wide trailer!). You are shark. You are wolf. You are shark-wolf hybrid with machete-flippers and fire-eyes and a deep and unabiding creative hunger. Creators must take aim at their goals. They must sniff out opportunity and stab it with their steely knives. You want that pound of flesh? You want your novel on shelves, your script on a screen? Move, motherfucker. Or get out the way.

22. Realize: Yesterday’s Gone And Tomorrow’s Too Late

Today is what you have, so use it. Don’t even think about what you didn’t do yesterday. And fuck putting aside things for tomorrow. It’s today. It’s Right Goddamn Now — a sharp dagger stuck in the pages and maps of this very moment. Grab the knife. Start cutting words off the block. Start arranging them into sentences, and start shoving those sentences together to make a story. Don’t look back. Don’t wait. Now is the only time you are promised. Now is the time to create.

23. Just Keep Swimming

Regret is for assholes. Hell, regret is an asshole — a giant flappy asshole that works opposite as it should, vacuuming up instead of purging out, suctioning up optimism and motivation and light and also, the cat. (Poor cat.) It’s easy to get caught in this mode, to have the thought running laps in your head that says, I fucked up, I did something wrong, that thing will haunt me. A query letter with a typo, some pissing match with another author, a book that nobody bought, a self-published tale with a cover so ugly it should be on trial for war crimes. Forget regret. Aim to repair. Seek to reclaim. (And other re- words!) Very little you do will mark you as a Permanent Dickhole or Forever Dumbshit provided you are earnest about moving forward and upping your game. Stop getting caught on the carousel of remorse. Stop turning in circles.

24. Fuck Good. Go Great.

Perfection is the enemy of the good. But does that mean we shouldn’t aspire to be better? Hell no. It doesn’t mean we can’t push ourselves and reach a little further. It damn sure doesn’t mean that we cannot seek to elevate that thing we do beyond the realm of merely “good” and — one hopes — into the stratosphere of “great.” (“THIS MONKEY NEEDS A PROPELLOR. THIS ICE CREAM NEEDS BACON! THIS BACON NEEDS CHOCOLATE! THIS TOASTER NEEDS A PINK FLOYD LASER LIGHT SHOW AND A BELT PUNCH AND THE INTERNET.”) I don’t know what makes something great. More of this? Less of that? A stronger flourish? A simpler elegance? Nobody knows. But that’s no reason not to try, is it?

25. Know Thyself

The biggest and bestest resolution going forward? Know who you are as a writer. This is, I find, the curse-iest curse that plagues us — and it doesn’t just plague us at the beginning of our journey. Oh, if only. It’s a nettling, nibbling, nattering imp riding on our shoulders years into the great egress from our old, uncreative lives. Find your process. Uncover what works for you. Find your voice. Find what you like. Discover why you tell stories. Discover your desires. Find your frailties. Find yourself in your fiction and find your fiction in you. The faster we can start to figure out who we are, how we work, and what we want, the faster we can move forward telling the kinds of stories we want to tell — and the more confident we become in doing it. So ring in the new year by… if not answering these questions then at least asking them, having them staple-gunned to the front of your cerebral cortex. Let your work and career be less of a question mark, and more of an exclamation point. And now for…

26. Shh, The Not-So-Secret Secret Resolution

Write till your fingers bleed.

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500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

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250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING:

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY:

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

25 Things I’d Like To Say To My 18-Year-Old Self

I often describe this website as me yelling at myself from 18 years ago. It’s as true as it is not, I suppose — certainly the blog is also me yelling at me from last week, or from two weeks hence. I like to yell at Past, Present and Future Me and, by proxy, yell at you, too. So, seemed a good time to write a more direct version of that, which is this list. It’s in part about writing but also about a lot of other things. And the secret is, it’s just as much me yelling at myself now to stay vigilant about this stuff as it is about any teenage asshole version of myself. So, crack my skull with an ice hammer, and let’s see what’s inside!

1. This Shit’s Gonna Take A While

Soooooo. You want to be a writer, right? Mm. You’re vibrating over there. So eager. Ready to have all your atoms disassociate and reform you into the complete and total package. You’re like a squirrel with ants all up in his butthole — just itchy to get moving. I have bad news, lad. This thing you want to do? This “writing” thing? Yeah, it takes a long time. This isn’t a microwaved burrito. It’s smoked pork shoulder. A writing career is a long, slow roast. Hunker down for the long haul. Know that you’ll get there. But you gotta settle in. Tame your impatience. At the very least, conquer it with the stubbornness of an old, cantankerous donkey.

2. Kick The Muse

The Muse ain’t your boss, big guy. She doesn’t push you around. In fact, most times, she’s the one who needs a kick. If you sit around and wait for her to show up, you’ll find that the words come only in fits of incontinence: a dribbled splash here, an unexpected pants-stain there. Your Fairy Wordmother dances for you, so shoot at her feet to get her shimmying and shaking. Listen, there might be magic in this writing and storytelling thing. But with that magic, you can either be its slave — or its sorcerer. You can be the one worshipping and appeasing, or you can be the one with the spellbook and the wand. You’re either it’s dog, or its master. The sooner you figure that out, the happier you’re going to be.

3. Focus Up, Motherfucker

You’re a kid, so I’ll afford you some measure of distraction, but eventually you need to stop digesting entertainment and start dishing it out. And not just entertainment, but stuff that digs past the topsoil and into deeper, richer layers of earth (more on that later). For now, slow up on the video games and the MUSHing and the sex… ah, right, you’re 18. You’re trying to have sex all the time, aren’t you? You’d bang a set of dressers if the light was right. All I’m saying is: comes a point when you need to hunker down and focus up. Put away shiny things. Rubber meets road. No, not that kind of rubber. What are you, 12? Jesus.

4. Some People Will Weigh You Down

One of the harder lessons to learn is that some of the people you want in your life are sadly not good for you — these are people you think of as friends or girlfriends or even family. Their best interests are not your own. They don’t mean to, but they’ll drag you down. They’ll point your nose in the wrong direction. You deserve better. And frankly, so do they. Sometimes relationships don’t work out like you think they should. You can’t force it. You just have to cut the rope and float away from one another. Maybe one day you float back into each other’s little patch of seawater. Most likely, you don’t. You’ll both be healthier for it.

5. Anger Only Gets You So Far

Sure, sure, you’re all pissed off at the world. You’re all fire and vinegar, all swinging fists and stompy boots. GRUMPY WASPS AND THIRD-STAGE SYPHILIS. Anger will get you moving — it’s like the first blast from a rocket booster. You want to spite those who said you couldn’t do it? You want to blacken the eye of the world to prove that you deserve to be here? That feeling will carry you for a while. But it’s not sustainable. And it’s not healthy. And — *checks your hands* — sometimes when you don’t have ways of processing how you feel, you punch lockers and fuck up your knuckle. Or you break things. Or you let that anger sit and ferment until it’s just a gutful of acid sadness. Let the anger go. It’s hollow fuel. It’s empty carbs.

5. Shame Is A Half-Ass Motivator

Like anger, shame actually fucking works. It does. Those twin serpents of shame and guilt chasing you down will move your ass forward — it works because you feel bad and you don’t want to feel bad anymore, so you make motions to counter it. But shame is a broken ladder. It’ll get you halfway there but the rest of the rungs are snapped. It’s because “not feeling bad” as a motivation is just enough to get you off the ground and out of the mud but that’s it. You need something bigger, something better, as motivation. You need to want to feel good, not just want to avoid feeling bad. Victory is rarely the product of avoiding internal misery.

6. Mistakes Have Value

You’re going to fuck up a lot. No, no, don’t get pissy — remember, I AM FUTURE YOU. (And yes, we have hoverboards and teleporters in the year 2012. And sex-robots and cyborg dildo attachments.) Here’s the thing: we are the culmination of our successes but our successes are the culmination of our mistakes. Mistakes and failures beget success because we learn from them. Success is a slim margin — a narrow door — and everything outside that door is considered error. And that’s okay. My toddler knows how to walk now — oh, right, you have a kid but we’ll get to him — and the act of getting up and noodling around on those two pudgy cake-pillars he calls legs only happened through lots and lots of experimentation. Translation: he fell a lot. Still does. Into everything. You’d think he was drunk. He looks like Baby Fight Club most days. Point is: you need to fall. Falling is how we learn to walk. It’s painful, but the pain is instructive.

7. Walk Before You Run, Dumdum

Ah! Yes. Speaking of walking — you fall, then you walk, then you run. In that order. (And after that, you earn your cyborg leg-pistons and you can jump over buildings. MAN 2012 IS PRETTY RAD.) This translates to writing: to your gravest disappointment you cannot just spring forth fully formed out of Athena’s head and write a masterpiece novel that will get you a six-figure advance. You will not at age 18, or 20, or 25, or even 36, be the cherub-cheeked darling of the literary world. You’ve got to take this thing in order. You can’t short circuit the skills you need to learn. So-called “overnight sensations” are like icebergs: you only see the tiny peak above water. Below the surface lies an epic glacial mountain representing all the months and years spent pushing the peak above the slushy sea.

8. Figure Out What Actually Fucking Matters

Some shit really matters. A lot really, really doesn’t. Everything can’t matter equally. The loss of a parent does not equal a fight on the Internet. The look in your kid’s eyes does not equal a bad review of one of your books (yes, yes, calm down, you actually get to be a paid professional writer, stop wetting your Iron Man underoos.) You’re going to be a lot happier when you start figuring this out.

9. Wow, You’re An Entitled Little Cockbite, Aren’t You?

Hey, whoa, don’t get lippy with me, kid. I’m willing to forsake a couple of my teeth to knock yours out right now. I got bad news, sport: see this pile of shit with twigs and bugs in it? The world doesn’t even owe you this much. You are not the center of any orbit, elliptical or otherwise. I sound like such an old man but dude, listen, things you accomplish are far better than things that are handed to you. Your first publication (soon!) will be the product of you putting ego aside and listening to some editorial notes and putting in the fucking work. It’s not their job to publish your potential. They don’t owe you a bucket for your word-barf. It’s your job to earn that space. And it’ll feel like the angels are giving you a full-body massage with their thousand genderless eye-nipple mammaries when they do. (Hey, read the Bible, angels are freaky as fuck.)

10. Mister Right, You Ain’t

You’re not right all the time. In fact, every year that passes my estimation of how often you’re right goes down by about… three percent, so at this stage I figure you’re — er, I’m — er, we’re? — in the neighborhood of 40% correct most times (and that number’s shrinking). More importantly, you don’t need to be right all the time. Yours is not the only way. Further, convincing folks of the validity of your argument is not best done with a 2×4 studded with rusty nails. It’s best done with a hand-job using a velvet glove. …okay, hey, shut up, things get kind of weird in your early 20s. Don’t tell your eventual wife about the glove.

11. Only You Can Fix You

You are at or near the point where feeling fucked-up — meaning, depressed or angry or having that hive of bees you call a brain freak out — seems like a badge of honor, like it’s justification to demand things from the world in a Fiona Apple-style THIS WORLD IS BULLSHIT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME STUPID HUMANS meltdown, but it’s not. The way you feel is not unique. And it’s not the world’s fault. Only you can fix you. Stop inflicting yourself on others. Like a weapon, or a disease, or a humpy terrier. I know, “fixing yourself” is easier said than done, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good excuse not to do it. Everything is easier said than done. Suck it up, Strawberry Shortcake. Get right with your head to get right with the world. (Be advised that this remains an ongoing process of maintenance and repair.)

12. You Must Leave The Idea Of Art Behind

For a long time you’re going to hold up the idea of “art” as a defense for… well, all kinds of dippy shit. Don’t like an edit? Art. Don’t want to learn how to write an outline? Art. Want to get naked in the college gazebo while guzzling Irish whiskey and singing AND I WOULD WALK FIVE HUNDRED MILES –? Art. Not an excuse. Set it aside. Focus on craft. Focus on skill. You want to think raw talent and the defense of art are everything and then you want to hold up James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and be all like, “Look! None of the rules apply here!” but here, let me squeeze that blister — You’re not James Joyce, knucklehead. You’re an 18-year-old dumbfuck with a self-importance problem. Splurch.

13. (But Don’t Worry, You’ll Get Back There)

Eventually you’ll figure out that writing isn’t this beast with a single face. You’ll see that writing is craft, and storytelling is something bigger, weirder, stranger. You’ll find the art again, like a sunset through a chemical haze. But it won’t be a thing you can control and it won’t be a defense for anything. It’ll be a thing that has its own measure of skill and talent. It’ll be a thing that other people see better than you. It’ll be a thing that is less ART in all caps and more “an art” all in gentle, unassuming lowercase. You’ll find poetry in language that doesn’t need to be called that to survive. You’ll find that you learn the rules to know when to break them, and you need to break the rules to learn why we have them in the first place.

14. You Will Leave A Wake Of Word Corpses

Behind you will be a miles-long heap of story wreckage. You’ll litter the earth with carcasses of manuscripts finished and unfinished. They will be mostly a steaming trail of eye-watering, nose-blistering manure. This will sadden and frustrate you. Don’t let it. Accept that in each were things you learned that carried you to the next one (“Oh, don’t write a novel in all caps? Interesting“). But also realize that there will come an evacuate your bowels or unplug the fecal vacuum moment (we don’t have toilets in the future, we have vacuums that siphon the waste from your body), a moment when you need to stop flicking your dick and get things done.

15. Creativity Is A Muscle

Creativity is not some external force. It is not the breath of the gods breathed into your mouth. It is neither gift nor entitlement. It’s an intellectual muscle. It needs flexing. It needs exercise. Discipline yields creativity. Whenever you put thought to words and words to page, you’re taking that muscle and making it bigger. (And when you do, you should squint and tell people, “Who bought a ticket to the gun show?” and then tap the center of your forehead and stare at them menacingly.) If you want to think of it as a more magical thing, go for it — think of it as stimulating the elf gland. There. See? Now it’s magical! Because elves!

16. Work Is Not A Four-Lettered Word

*receives whisper from an advisor* Oh, yeah, I guess it is a four-letter word. Fine, whatever. PEDANT. Don’t look at me that way — yes, you’re still kind of an idiot 18 years later. Point is, at this time in your life there is a very strong disconnect between “work” and “creativity.” You associate writing and storytelling with pleasure and desire rather than difficulty and effort. That’ll fuck you up for a while because as soon as a story reveals its inevitable difficulty or feels no longer “fun,” you’ll abandon it like a colicky infant in a cardboard box marked FREE COOKIES. This thing you want to do isn’t easy. Gird your loins. Which is Bible-speak for “protect your genitals from the flurry of karate crotch-kicks life will deliver to your junk drawer.”

17. Happiness Is A Many-Faced Beast, Actually

They say that the Romans had a lot of words for love and Eskimos have a lot of words for snow and Klingons have a lot of words for “why the fuck are you actually learning Klingon,” but writers — and perhaps humans of all intellectual configurations — should compile a great many words for happiness. Writing is happiness for me at this age, but that’s because I modified my definition. At your age, you powder-bottomed squall-baby, you’re upset whenever it doesn’t make you happy at that moment. You’re like a goldfish, unable to remember yesterday or gaze forward to tomorrow. Fuck that. You’re aiming for a deeper, longer happiness. A pervasive satisfaction. That only comes with prolonged effort. It only comes through learning and doing. It comes through finishing what you begin, good or bad.

18. Your Voice Is In There, Somewhere

You will for a long time copy the voices of the writers you admire. Lansdale, McCammon, Brite, Hobb, Denton, Moore. You’ll worry about what they did or do more than what you should do. You’ll try to sound like them. You’ll try to mimic what you love and emulate their success. Eventually you’ll stop. If I could convince you to stop sooner, I would, but maybe you can’t. Maybe it only comes with time and the confidence and instinct born of great effort. But here’s a tip: your voice is your voice. It’s who you are. It’s how you speak. It’s how you think and what you believe. The harder you try, the deeper it hides. It’s a sneaky little fucker. Stop trying. It’ll come out to play all on its own.

19. People Die

Sorry to get morose and bring this disco party to a record-scratching halt, but people die. People you love. People you know. And I don’t mean this in a poetic, Gothy-romancey emo-bullshit way. I mean, people die badly, without much poetry, and one day they’re there and the next they’re not. And that’s fucked up. But it’s also very, very important. Because you will realize that life is not permanent. The impermanence of the flesh is why life actually matters. Yesterday and today won’t ever happen again. Own that. Make progress. Do awesome things. SEIZE THE CARP. No matter how hard that fucking fish wriggles.

20. But Ideas Don’t Have To

People die but who they are and the ideas that form their lives and experiences most certainly do not need to expire. It’s why we write. It’s why we tell stories. Words are idea containers. Stories are our experiences committed to ears and eyes and minds. Books are the best grave markers because they contain so much more than the dates of our births and deaths. That’s why what you write should matter. That’s why you shouldn’t fuck around and waste time merely trying to entertain. Put yourself onto the page. Bleed into the story. Embrace the Viking immortality of having your ideas live forever.

21. Never Confuse Fear With Instinct

Okay, listen. Life is full of these binary pivot points, right? Where you can choose to do something or remain the same. Sometimes, remaining the same is the right choice: there will come a point where you will think about giving up writing because certain dissenting voices in your life suggest it’s the practical thing. But your instinct will tell you that you can really do this, that this shit is real. Sometimes, though, fear masquerades as instinct. It’s good instinct to say, “I’m not going to try to ramp this jet-ski over that feeding frenzy of hammerhead sharks even though it’d be awesome.” It’s bad fear to say, “I’m not going to seize this opportunity because, frankly, it scares me and gives me a rollicking case of the spiritual pee-shivers.”

22. You Have Died Of Dysentery

See? It’s a settlers joke. An Oregon Trail joke. Right? Old school. High-five! … no? No high-five. Whatever. Fuck you. Philistine. THE JOKE IS, don’t settle. Every year presents brand new opportunities to settle for less, to hunker down and get a “real job,” to quit pursuing that which you so desire. Nope. Mm-mm. Don’t do it. Fuck settling. Ride that unicorn to the end of the rainbow, motherfucker. Like I said: life is short. Fear is powerful. Fortify your spine. Cement your genital stamina. Build an exoskeleton of calcified confidence. Do. Not. Settle. That way lies a doorway to regret. It’s a door that locks and has no key.

23. Grow Up

Growing up means taking responsibility for who you are, what you want, and what you’ve done and will do. But growing up is also about knowing when to power down the adult side and let the crazy T-Rex that is your childish side loose on those poor goats in the goat paddock.

24. Haters Gonna Hate, But Diggers Gonna Dig

Haters are everywhere. Even inside in the form of self-hatred, and it’s that self-hatred that magnifies the hate of others. Don’t let that worm into the heart of the apple. Because just there shall be haters, you’ll also have the power of an engaged audience, of people who dig what you’re doing. You will find the audience. They will find you. You’ll arrive together in an orgiastic lovesplosion greased up with the heady lubricant and giddy froth of storytelling. Dismiss hate. Embrace love. Fuck pants.

25. Love Is Your Jetpack

Love, love, love. It’s everything, man. The love of your fans, the love of books, the love of and from your wife, the love seen in and felt for that spark of wonder in your child’s eyes, the love of dogs and friends and characters and ideas and other writers and other stories and love love motherfucking love. Love, as they say, will save the day. It will carry you. It will save you. I know, you’re 18, you’re cynical as fuck, black-coffee-bitter like you’ve seen it all, but you haven’t seen shit, kid. Go ahead and mock. One day, you’ll see. You’ll feel it. You’ll receive it as the unexpected frequency that it is. And it’ll give you reason to keep on keepin’ on.


Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

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500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

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250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

How Chuck Wendig Writes A Novel

This year, I’ve written — *checks psychic spreadsheet* — four novels. Bait Dog, Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits, Dinocalypse Now, and (finishing up this week), The Blue Blazes. I also wrote a novella, Bad Blood, which includes the next appearance of everybody’s favorite vampire-in-Zombieland, Coburn.

By this year I also have — *consults little man who lives in my mind* — five novels out in the world. Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Double Dead, Dinocalypse Now, and Bait Dog. (I apparently like ‘b’ and ‘d’ words. Eventually I’ll write one giant magnum opus called Blackdead Dinodog: The Baited Blood of Bad Bluebird.)

In the next year I am slated to write and/or publish — *polls the bacterial choir that lives inside my colonic labyrinth* — seven more books. Got the three books of my young adult cornpunk Heartland trilogy, got two more books in the Dinocalypse Spirit of the Century universe, have another Atlanta Burns book (Harum Scarum) and the third Miriam Black book (The Cormorant).

I do not list these things as a humble-brag (though, make no mistake, it is a humble-brag, because I am a proud peacock over here), but only to note that somehow, I fell face first into a novel-writing gig. And further to note that, maybe it’s time I wrote a post on exactly how this motherfucker right here — *points to me and the squirming bundle of sentient cilia I call a ‘beard’* — writes a book.

That’s not to say this is how you should write a book. I’m just putting out these breadcrumbs — you may choose another path through this dark forest of novel-writing. People ask me how I do it, so here’s my answer.

This is going to be a long post, so get some tea and bolster your fortitude.

The Idea Skirts Past My Orbital Defenses

The question for writers should never be, “How do you get your ideas?” but rather, “How do you shut them up to get a night’s sleep?” My mind is a moon colony constantly being pelted by little fiery asteroid-ideas. Ideas are not my problem: they fill up the ol’ brain-bucket pretty quick.

The problem is figuring out which ideas are:

a) interesting to me beyond the moment in which they are conceived

b) potentially interesting to other humans who are not me

c) potentially interesting to the giant amorphous blob known as the “publishing industry”

d) about a character in a world and not just a world

and de actionable, meaning, an idea that suggests a book I’m actually capable of writing.

If an idea checks each check-box with a jaunty slash, then I write that sonofabitch down. I write it down on my phone at first (sometimes using voice recognition if I’m driving or walking or playing racquetball or hunting humans for sport), and then later I dump it into a file I’ve created that’s meant to be a storehouse of such potential ideas. For the record, this dump file now looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shelves and shelves of crates and boxes, each a mystery container whose story remains untold.

I Barf Up A Blob Of Incoherent Thoughts

Once I’m ready to take the idea beyond that core seed of an idea (“Wouldn’t it be crazy if a cat was president?!”), I fish it out of its swampy mud-hole and hoist it into the light.

Then I start writing. Nothing concrete. Rarely anything that’s actual story. Mostly just notes and thoughts. And a lot of questions. What kind of cat is it? Is the cat a good president or a bad president? Will the cat have nuclear codes? Will the press discover the cat’s cocaine addiction (SEE YOU THOUGHT IT’D BE CATNIP BUT NOOOO THE CAT IS A LITTLE BLOW-MONKEY) and will that damage re-election chances?

The notes taken at this stage are almost stream-of-consciousness. Sentence fragments, mis-spelled words, grocery list thoughts interspersed in the middle, whatever. It’s just to ruminate on the idea. And it’s also to test the idea in a way. Is there more here than than initial idea? A great many ideas are dead seeds planned in fallow ground — they won’t grow a good goddamn thing. So, this stage of the game is very much about seeing if this thing has legs. Will it walk? Can it run?

The Critical Questions

I ask myself a handful of “cardinal” questions —

What is it about?

The answer to this isn’t about plot. It’s about the deeper, weirder answer. Like, if we were out in the jungle high on some kind of jaguar gland, I’d grab the idea by the shoulders and say, “No, man, what are you really about?” This is me starting to skirt around the idea of theme — the argument I want this story to make.

Why the hell do I want to write this?

If the answer is, “Because it’ll get published,” then fuck that. If the answer is, “Because it’s popular right now and will earn me big money,” then fuck that, too. If the answer is, “Because it’s cool,” then — drum roll please — fuck that. I need more. The answer has to be meaningful to me before anyone else.

Why will anybody care?

Some ideas are for me and for me only. I’d love to one day write them but if I think they’re too personal or too abstract to bring to an audience, I won’t bother. It has to be both a thing that’s meaningful to me and a thing that I hope will be meaningful to the audience, too. This isn’t the type of answer I can really predict; I do not live inside the collective hive-mind that is the aggregated audience. But I can generally spot a story that lives and dies with my own interest in it.

Who The Fuck Are These People?

Characters are the way through every story. As such, they are the most important component of a story — and it’s quite likely by now I’ve already got one or a few characters in mind for the story. Now it’s time to really hammer them into a gory, sticky paste and see what secret truths lie contained in those piles of steampunk gears and sloppy viscera.

Once again I look for some of the same things I looked for earlier: I’ll turn to a series of insane rambling notes turns into a test to see if these characters are interesting and readable. (Fuck likable.)

Just as I need to know what a story is about, I also need to know who a character is. And in the same way the answer must go deeper than, “He’s a cat who gets elected president of the United States.” Again the jaguar-gland shaman grabs me and shakes me and says, “No, man, who is the character really?”

Then the questions of, why do I dig this character?

Why do I think anyone would want to read this character?

What makes the character compelling?

Then: I suss out the characters wants, needs, and fears. What does the character need to keep going? What does the character want — whether consciously or unconsciously? What will drive him as a goal throughout this story? And finally, what does he fear? Obstacles in a character’s path are critical, and some of those obstacles must be bound up with the character’s fears.

Finally, I do a little three-beat character arc for the character. Three words or sentences that are meant to indicate the state of the character across the story — beginning, middle, and end.

Poor cat down on his luck wants to see a change in this country –> elected president, way over his kitty head –> once again a poor cat but now knows the intimate details of the democratic process and oh did I mention he nuked the middle of our own country into oblivion.

The three beats could be fairly succinct — consider the simple mythic arc of Maiden –> Mother — > Crone. Or, as per the vampire in Double Dead, Predator –> Protector –> Penitent. When conceiving of Miriam Black’s arc in Mockingbird my only three notes were: Selfish Vulture –> Pecking Crow –> Reluctant Raptor.

I Write A Pitch

At this point, I write a preliminary pitch. First a logline, meaning, a single sentence that sums the story up. (“A cat is elevated from poverty and is elected president only to learn that cats shouldn’t ever serve in public office because cats are assholes.”) Some call this the “elevator pitch.”

Then I write a longer pitch — under 500 words — that acts like a bigger, blown-out version of back-cover text for the book. Hits key concepts and the larger story without giving much away. In part because I don’t have much to give away — I don’t necessarily have the total story in mind by this point. I’m writing this for me in order to boil the thing down as a simple referential document.

Building Something Out Of Nothing

The Miriam Black books didn’t take much in terms of research or worldbuilding. On the other hand, The Blue Blazes required a good bit of that — but even here I did as little of it as I could manage. Meaning, I did just enough work to get me to the starting line. I know my own crazy habits and I’ll get buried in details if I let myself (“I just spent two weeks reading about the sexual habits of housecats”), so I do the work that needs to be done now. The rest can come as I write, or even in a second (third, fourth, thirty-seventh) draft.

Alpha And Omega

I figure out what I want to be the beginning of the story. And then I figure out its end.

Some folks hate to figure out the ending, because they like to be surprised. (To me this is the same dilemma of whether or not you want to know the sex of your baby before it’s born — to me, it’s still a surprise if I learn that fact at 20 weeks and that gives me another 20 weeks to figure out what kind of clothes to buy the little critter.) To me, the need for pragmatism outweighs my bullshit need for magic while writing. A houseplant survives on water — an actual thing based in reality, not the whimsy of unicorn dreams.

Here’s why I like to have the beginning and the ending in mind: because as I write, my eventual outline will fail me. It just will. No plan survives contact with the enemy and eventually I’ll be somewhere in the middle of the book, spinning wildly in the swampy mire of my own fiction not sure exactly what to do next. And when that happens I will look to the ending and I will say, “I need to go there,” and then I will march the story toward that point and eventually get the outline (which by now may require modification) back on track.

For me a novel is essentially a lesson in drunk driving (DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE THIS IS A METAPHOR): it’s me starting at the beginning and then revving the engine and speeding sloppily and swerving dramatically toward what I’ve conceived to be the ending.

The end doesn’t need to actually remain in place — I can change it as I go.

But it’s a good thing to have in mind as I begin.

Oh! I also like to have some degree of parity between beginning and the end, some elemental or thematic or even physical aspect that links the two together across the space-time-continuum that is the rest of the story. (In the Mookie Pearl short story, “Charcuterie,” it begins and ends with him pulling up at the bar with his friend and boss, Werth. Hint, hint, the novel may have a similar book-end.)

I Start Building The Skeleton One Bone At A Time

Time to outline.

I do not have a single way I outline.

In fact, every book has suffered a different outline than the former.

Generally speaking, I first figure out a four-act structure — beginning, middle 1, middle 2, ending. Two acts lead to a critical plot-changing or escalating midpoint, which then carries us to another two acts.

Then I figure out tentpole moments (aka SHIT THAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN OR THE WHOLE TENT FALLS DOWN AND SMOTHERS US ALL UNDER ITS COLORFUL FABRIC) and then I write the key story beats that get me from one tentpole to the next and to the next after that.

Sometimes I hammer out critical story structure beats I hope to hit (a reversal of fortune, a key betrayal, a battle scene). I’m also always on the look out for at least one HOLY SHIT NO HE DIDN’T moment — some jaw-dropping pants-crapping event or revelation in the narrative that sticks you in the ribs with a story shiv. I like those moments. One of my favorite things is obliterating reader expectations in one fell swoop.

Sometimes This Stuff Lives In A Folder For Months, Years, Epochs

This might seem like the perfect time for me to jump into the story with a speargun and a wetsuit, but that’s not necessarily gonna happen. The Blue Blazes sat at this stage for many months until a gap opened up in my schedule (and, not coincidentally, this gap is just before my deadline to turn the book into my grumpy cyborg masters). Sometimes this stuff incubates in a folder for a while until the time comes.

The God Of The Ancient Grid Calls To Me

Spreadsheets. Used to hate the very idea. Now, I am married to them.

One spreadsheet I particularly require is the one that keeps all my writing schedule on it. I don’t use a calendar — I use Excel. I have the whole year planned out in terms of when my deadlines are and where the books slot in. (Then I also identify gaps and, ideally, figure out how to best use those gaps.)

I always assume I’ll write 2000 words a day and no more than that — by which I mean, that’s what I put on the spreadsheet. That’s 10k a week and, if I’m writing an 80k novel, that’s eight weeks or roughly two months. Now, I tend to write more than that, particularly if it’s a book I’m really feeling (Mockingbird was written in a month), but that then leaves me some padding, which is great.

As I write, I’ll also note in the spreadsheet “real daily word count” versus the 2k “projected” and that’ll show me if I did more or less (and by what amount). Most days are more, but inevitably I’ll have those days where I write less due to the vagaries of human existence (toddler meltdown, holiday, sick day, sentient cat swarm). That’ll give me a far better SITREP as I’m on the ground crawling through the word-trenches.

#amwritingmotherfucker

Then I write.

Nothing fancy here.

I write. I write with my head down. I write linearly, first page to the last page. I write without listening to the doubting voice that tells me I’m a total asshole for even trying this. I write without regard to safety or sanity. I write with the freedom to suck and the hope that I don’t. I write to finish the shit that I started.

Next Pass

I do a pass before I give it to anybody. If I have a lot of time, I’ll do a robust pass and take a lot of notes (almost a truncated process of what I’ve already gone through). If I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll do a Hail Mary pass and run through it with a manic gleam in my eye and a clumsily-swiping word scalpel.

The Agent Pass

The agent is wise. I’m very fortunate to have an agent who was a former editor and who is a smart, smart story-thinker. So, she gets a pass. A very important pass, indeed.

The Editor / Publisher Pass

Turns out, the publisher has, y’know, opinions on the work. That said, my work has at present not undergone any epic changes from a publisher — the draft I send them has by and large been the draft you see in your hands when it’s published. This is, in part, because the agent pass is often a robust one (Heartland, Book One was rewritten many times over the course of a year before submission and by its end, ~50% of the book was drastically rewritten.) And in part, I hope, because I’m not totally shitty.

The Hands Of The Gods

Then it goes out into the world. Outside my control.

It lives. It lands. Hopefully you like it. Maybe you don’t.

But what’s done is done.

And then it’s onto the next one.

Writing forward. Always writing forward.


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Why Stories Should Never Begin At The Beginning

I was in a car accident.

Relax — I wasn’t really. I mean, I’ve had car accidents in my life. None recently. None dramatic.

But, let’s just pretend:

I was in a car accident.

Let’s pretend I’m telling you that, right now. This is me telling you the story. We’re sitting across from each other at a cafe or strip club or on a bench watching squirrels humping. And I say, “I was in a car accident.”

And you say — after that look on your face falls away — “What happened?”

Right here, mark this. Put your thumb on it. Circle it with a fucking pen.

What I don’t say is:

“Well, I got my keys off their hook and then I went into the garage, I got into the car, I sat down, pulled my seatbelt across my lap, inserted the key into the ignition and then turned the key clockwise — or is it counterclockwise? — and the engine revved. Then I reversed out into my driveway and–”

The reason I don’t say that stuff is two-fold.

One: it’s not critical information. In fact, that’s an understatement: none of that information — outside the seatbelt, maybe — is the least bit goddamn relevant. Just isn’t. It’s worthless fol-de-rol. Chaff, not wheat.

Two: it’s boring as shit. This, an even more critical sin. My “getting in the car ritual” — since it doesn’t include like, a human sacrifice or killing terrorists or having dirty sex in the backseat — is duller than a cement floor.

What I do say is:

“I was driving down I-90, and I’m fiddling with the radio knobs and soon as I look up — here comes a garbage truck bounding over the median like a drunken bison, and holy fuck it’s coming right for me.”

Then, from there, I tell the rest of the story. I careened off a guardrail, I flipped the car, I fell through another dimension where my vehicle was stomped to a steel pancake by a Nazi brontosaur, whatever.

The point is that I got to the fucking point.

Look to the way we tell stories in person for critical tale-telling lessons we can use on the page. On the page we seem to have no audience: it’s us looking down the one-way street of a ghost town. But when you tell a story to a live human being, you can behold their body language, can see their eyes shifting and maybe looking for an exit, you can hear the questions they ask to prove their engagement and confirm their curiosity — you have a whole series of potential reflections that tell you whether or not your story (and more important, its telling) is effective. Powerful feedback, right there.

So —

Act like someone is there when you’re writing.

Listening to your words as you type them.

Have you hooked them? Or are they looking for someone else to talk to? Some other story to read?

Have you skipped the bullshit beginning and gotten to the mother-loving point?

By the way, that’s why origin stories are the dullest stories. The Spider-Man Becomes Spider-Man storyline is probably the most boring of all — and made worse because the films keep reiterating the same snooze-a-palooza over and over again. A hero’s origin story is important, but not so important we need it blown into a whole story. It can be a scene. Hell, most of the time it can be a single sentence. “A criminal killed Bruce Wayne’s parents when he was but a boy, and so now he hunts criminals as Batman.” As storytellers we like to imagine that each piece of the puzzle is super-critical because we thought of it — but the reality is, not all story needs to live on the page. Sometimes it lives behind the page. I don’t need to see the electronics behind the screen to be impressed by the image on my television. In fact, it’s more impressive when I don’t know.

Leave the magic intact.

Skip the boring beginning.

Forget the peel. Get to the banana.

Enter the story as late as you can.

That is all.

*ninja smoke-bomb*