My father’s father was a farmer. Sun up to sun down.

My father worked 4AM to 4PM in a chemical-rich pigment factory.

My mother cleaned houses. Day in, day out, back-breaking work.

I am a writer. I sit in a fairly comfy office chair put words down on screens and on paper and I tell stories. And outside my window is a pretty forest and lots of sunlight and my walls are a bright and optimistic green. I have a terrier who sometimes warms my feet (or tries to kill me with her intestinal miasma).

It’s pretty cushy business, this writing gig.

Now, here’s the thing. I don’t think that what I do is not work. It is hard work. It is real work. Stories matter. Art matters. What we do is a craft and it takes some mad combination of skill and talent to both survive and thrive, and I’m not going to take that away from myself or any other hardworking ass-busting wordsmith out there. It can be mentally exhausting. It can leave me worn and tattered and gutted like a rotten stump. Some days the words run free like rabbits. Others are like pulling teeth out of a rabid dog.

Just the same, I think it’s important to find a little perspective. A little… appreciation. Because being a writer — being allowed to earn a living doing what I do — is obscenely delightful, unwholesome in its privilege. I’m a lucky fuck. I’m lucky I don’t have to wreck my body and break my bones and come home dirty and pissed off and ruined doing something I don’t want to do. I’m not saying that there’s not room for complaints. Or room for improvement or examination or a place to talk about our struggles and our fears. But I think from time to time it’s a good idea to stop and sit back and say, “At least I’m not castrating llamas or mopping up the floor at a porn store.” I think it’s a good idea sometimes to say, “This thing we do, it’s pretty great and we’re pretty lucky to be able to do it.” Because it is. And we are.

I’ve noticed something over the last year.

I have fans.

I don’t say this to brag — I certainly don’t know that I deserve to have fans and I know of many great writers who do. But the fact remains that a number of people over the last year have identified themselves to me (via e-mail or tweet or even in-person) as “fans.”

Not readers. Not my “audience.” Not… y’know, people who just follow the blog.

Fans.

It bakes the noodle, it does. What the hell did I do to deserve fans? And just to be clear, I don’t use “fans” as a pejorative — I consider it a somewhat exalted (and certainly lucky) state to have your audience interact with you as more than just a passive audience and as an active and interested fanbase.

Readers help make a book. Fans help make a writer’s career.

So, this is not me looking down on fans but rather, looking up in wide-eyed weird-ass wonder.

Part of the reason this is crystallizing for me is this Guardian article yesterday.

The article, by Damien Walter, asserts that (from the article’s title): “Fandom matters: writers must respect their followers or pay with their careers.” It’s for many authors a rough and troubling assertion — in it is the suggestion that the book (or movie or comic or whatever) is not enough (and, taken to an illogical degree, may not even matter). I don’t know that I’m willing to say that a good book isn’t enough, nor would I put it all on the line to say that you need to have a fanbase or your work will be born into this world DOA.

You’ll also note that, to my shock and awe, I am name-checked in the article. (Thanks, Damien!) Specifically in regards to this blog right here and the success of the next Atlanta Burns book, Bait Dog.

What I will say is that, having fans really really helps. Because you have people who identify with you, who join with your… I dunno, your creative ecosystem, let’s call it. Again, these aren’t readers of a single book or viewers of a single television show. They’re folks who will follow you from project to project, regardless of what it is. I know that I’m a fan of certain creators (a quick-and-dirty list: Robin Hobb, David Fincher, Robert McCammon, Joe Lansdale, Christopher Moore, Jane Espenson) that whatever the hell they do, I’m there. I’m there with a big shit-eating grin and a tub of popcorn and a big wad of whatever money they want. I’m there because I love their work. I’m there because I dig them as creators, too — I think they’re interesting on a level beyond just the work they put out as auteurs.

You might say, “Well, what’s different now? This isn’t new.” And it’s not that the phenomenon is new — I’m sure Aeneas and Homer each had fanbase of which to speak (“I FUCKING LOVE SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS DUDE”). But the opportunity to engage with audiences and earn fans (note that keyword: “earn”) is bigger, now. You can in fact earn those fans long before you have a proper “[insert commercial creative project here]” to release. You have Twitter. And blogs. And Kickstarter. And all kinds of as-yet-unforeseen grottos and cubbyholes online in which to earn those fans one at a time (and that’s how they come to you, I think, slowly, over time). That’s what’s different. Our connectedness makes finding an audience and interacting with them easier and weirder and harder all in equal measure.

And it does mean that there’s an increasing burden to be more than just an author or a filmmaker or a [insert your creative title of choice here]. It means that you may find advantage in doing more than just creating your work in darkness and delivering it out of shadow while remaining hidden. Audience are becoming increasingly interactive. It’s the author’s job — or at least one of the author’s potential jobs — to meet the audience in the playspace, in the sandbox, in the fucking Holodeck that is a growing fandom.

As to how you do that? Well. I suppose that’s a post for another time and I haven’t yet gotten my slippery mind tentacles around it. But I know it involves engagement, authenticity and diversity. And I know that at the heart of the thing it’s still about creating the best damn thing (book or movie or comic or game or animated GIF or pornstache or sentient nano-hive) you can create.

Oh, and just so we’re clear: you guys out there? Who read this blog? And my books? And my insane half-drunk Twitter feed? And who bring me dead chipmunks and chocolates?

YOU RULE.

Thank you.

No, this site did not blackout for the protest.

Wikipedia blacking out? Thumbs-up. They have a global audience. I don’t. I blackout and what happens? I miss a handful of new readers and a handful of new sales. In the all in all, nobody soaks their pillows with tears that I’m gone. Besides, what will I do if not obsessively refresh my blog numbers?

RIDDLE ME THAT, CAPED CRUSADER.

Instead, I’d rather talk a little bit about SOPA and PIPA.

It is, I think, easy to convince writers that anti-piracy legislation is a good thing. And while I’m not stridently anti-pirate (for a number of reasons we can discuss in the comments, chief among them being “I don’t think it matters as much as people think it matters”), I grok those who want to shut down All Pirates All The Time. Pirates are bad, after all. They steal our shit. They plunder our grog barrels. Fine. Good. Yes.

Problem, though:

You done got swindled, sons and daughters of the creative age.

SOPA and PIPA are not about piracy.

They are about control.

See, the Internet is this unruly pubic tangle of possibility. It is raw potential given form and it puts a great deal of power in the hands of the individual (are you listening, creative-types?). Power in the hands of individuals can, in some cases, wrest power from the hands of corporations. And corporations don’t like that, so they go to the government and they pour giant buckets of money into the government’s slavering maw and lobby for legislation and the result is, in this case, SOPA, PIPA, and any other naughty anti-pirate hydra-heads that pop up.

Writers and creatives — again, as individuals — have a lot of opportunity in the Internet Age, in part due to the innovation and distribution the Internet offers, in part due to the social media that connects us all. Harming these by harming the Internet then harms free expression. And that’s no good.

Just to be clear, in case you don’t realize what it means to give corporations power over censorship and the subject of artistic originality, please cast an eye no further to the MPAA, whose arbitrary and often insane ratings of films put out by the film industry help stifle creativity and the craft and art of filmmaking. You really want that kind of control over sites like YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Google, Wikipedia?

No, you do not.

SOPA and PIPA hit the issue with a hammer when what’s called for is a scalpel. (That’s how our government seems to respond to everything anymore, but I suppose that’s a conversation for another time.)

Anyway, others can discuss this matter with far greater aplomb than I –

Visit AmericanCensorship.org to learn more.

In summation:

Fuck SOPA. Shit on PIPA.

Freeze-frame high-five.

CARRIER LOST

“Hey, y’all! Sorry, I didn’t realize that deep-fried butter-stuffed meatballs with a pina-colada-pork-cracklings-crunch exterior dipped in a whiskey-chocolate Dr. Pepper dipping sauce would or could ever give someone like me the diabetes! Oops, y’all! Sorry. Please enjoy my new Paula Deen whipped-cream flavored insulin poppers. And don’t forget to watch my new Food Network show: Paula Deen’s Savannah-Style Down-Home Diabetes Pancreas-Palooza. Starring my four sons, Bobby, Jamie, Baconface and Chondroid Lipoma.”

Dear Paula Deen,

You’re kind of an asshole.

Listen, it’s not that you get on your show and write your little cookbooks and tell people how to basically make like, Butter Salad or Cookie-Dough-Stuffed-Thanksgiving Turkeys or, I dunno, Sugar-Crammed Sugar-Balls (coincidentally my nickname when I attended the Culinary Institute of America, and by “attended” I mean “hung out by the dumpster eating hot gourmet garbage”). This is America. You’re free to eat and cook however you feel is most appropriate, and instruct your audience to do the same.

On the one hand, you maybe should’ve warned people — like with a pack of cigarettes, a casual, “Hi, y’all, if you go ahead and make my scrumptious French-Fried French Toast with Spackled Goose Grease your heart may explode in your chest” may have been welcome. On the other hand, you know what? We’re supposed to be a smart country. If you’re sitting there telling us how to roll up a pumpkin pie and then barbecue it before slathering it with foie gras and whipped marshmallow frosting, I think we’re all educated enough to know that maybe what you’re selling us is not exactly diet food.

We knew your food wasn’t health food.

You knew your food wasn’t health food.

And now you have diabetes.

Or, more to the point, you’ve had diabetes for three fucking years.

To clarify, that means for three years — over a thousand days — you have been shilling your Microwaved Pork Roll Munchiladas and your Bacon-Gorged Jabba Rolls and your Powdered Sugar South Carolina Soul Food Gummi-Bear Casserole and not once have you said, “Hey y’all, by the way, I totally have diabetes, which is a plague amongst Americans, a plague that for many could’ve been avoided if you chose to avoid making foods like my Lady’s Brunch Burger, a hamburger topped with fried eggs and bacon and shoved unmercifully between two pillowy glazed doughnut buttocks.”

That’s where you get me. That’s what chaps my rosebud, Paula. That you knew you had diabetes and refused to tell anyone. Not even because you didn’t feel like you wanted to out your own medical condition but because, let’s be honest, you didn’t want to lose any money associated with the way you suggest people eat. Not money from your shows, from your cookbooks, from your appearances or your ad revenue.

No, instead you waited to tell people until –

Wait for it.

Waaaait for it.

– until you replaced any potential lost income with a fucking Novo Nordisk pharmaceutical deal. Essentially saying, “Hey, my lifestyle actively causes diabetes, but I didn’t want to tell any of you that while you were still paying me to tell you to eat human infants rolled in Cocoa Puffs and sausage fat, and now by waiting three years and announcing a deal with Big Pharma I’m basically telling you that you can live how you want and eat what you want and by god it’s not going to impact the way any of us do anything because Thank the Baby Jesus for mah diabeedus medication!”

(Next up on her show: Deep-Fried Baby Jesus topped with Pork Jimmies!)

Like Anthony Bourdain said yesterday on Twitter:

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”

You know what Paula really said? Quote for quote?

“I don’t want to spend my life not having good food going into my pie hole. That hole was made for pies.” Now, I’m all for silly statements regarding pies and holes, because, c’mon. Fuck yeah, pie. But here she is, a three-year-diabetic, basically telling you, “Well, just because I have diabetes doesn’t mean I have to change the way I eat.” Yes! Yes it does! That’s the whole fucking point!

That’s the message you should be telling people! Gah! Fuck!

Further, on the subject of why she waited three years, she says: “I made the choice at the time to keep it close to me, to keep it close to my chest. I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement. I wasn’t armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God’s time.” Oh. Ohhh. Announcing the diabetes thing late is… God’s fault?

God didn’t give you permission until now? We’re on his time for this kind of shit, are we?

You didn’t wait because of God. Don’t blame this on him. I’m sure he’s up there sitting on his throne made of Dixie cups and human bones and he’s just shaking his head and making frowny-faces.

“BOO, PAULA, BOO,” he’s saying. “YOU HAVE DIABETES BECAUSE YOU FREEBASED HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. YOU DIDN’T TELL THE HUMAN MOO-HERD BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T WANT TO LOSE ANY ENDORSEMENTS OR GET BOOTED OFF YOUR SHOW. DON’T BLAME ME FOR THIS ONE, YOU PLUMP SNOW-HAIRED SHE-DEVIL. BOOOOOO!”

Man, sometimes it’s fun to write in all caps.

Anyway, Paula Deen, you’re kind of an asshole.

I’m sorry about your diabetes, but, y’know, maybe you should’ve told people sooner.

I hope God takes some of your toes. Just a few of them. As penance.

Feel better!

Love,

Little Chucky Wendig, Age Eight-and-a-Half

P.S., please read this great piece by Andrew Zimmern.

P.P.S. Okay, fine, no, I don’t want God or any other invisible space being to remove her toes.

P.P.P.S. What about just a pinky toe?

P.P.P.P.S. OKAY FINE SORRY JEEZ

Dear Humans of the Internet,

As of late, we’ve seen a lot of hoo-ha and fol-de-rol about “legacy” publishing and self-publishing. We’ve seen words like “house slave” and, I dunno, something about frogs and monkeys sexually assaulting one another? I don’t want to look too closely at that one. Eeeesh. Some of the voices think that all this is a-okay and that tone doesn’t matter (a curious exhortation when made by a writer, a person for whom words and tone should matter). Some of the voices recognize that those terms added little to the debate (with others placing most of the fault on those who were offended rather than those causing the offense — “I’m sorry you’re offended” is different than “I’m sorry I caused you offense”).

You know what? Hell with ‘em.

Stop listening. Stop paying attention. Stop shining lights in dark corners. Let the cults tend to their leaders. Let the Jonestowns grow more insular and paranoid and leave them to their invective.

The loudest of those voices are swiftly becoming irrelevant — they keep saying the same things ad nauseum. They have one trick up a well-worn sleeve. The hypocrisy and hyperbole are slopped like gruel on an orphan’s tray. They’ve resorted to, in the best of circumstances, trollish behavior. And in the worst, the behavior and language of bullies. Any points they may have — points that, in some cases, make a lot of sense and others that are woefully narrow — are lost in the eye-rolling rhetoric.

They want attention.

So, let’s stop giving it to them.

They’re going to do what they’re going to do. Which is their right to do so. They’ve got their ideas. They’ve got their opinions. Good for them. Just the same, the discussion has hit a wall. And the whole conversation has become a bit of a circus. Or, worse, a circle jerk. Remember: last one on the cracker has to eat it.

Nobody wants that job.

Let’s also be clear that toxicity and egomania is not unique to self-publishing: I’ve seen many in traditional publishing make brash and unreasonable statements about the DIY thing, too. Don’t let anyone tell you that self-publishing is not a viable part of the ecosystem. It is. It is a legitimate and equal choice where once it was not. Let the zealots on both “sides” have their barbed wire fences and jungle compounds and false dichotomies. Leave them to their eager-to-please sycophants: a manic chorus like the buzz of cicadas.

They’ve got their way.

You find your way.

I’ll talk more about this next week in a post called “Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law,” but for now, just know that every writer digs his own tunnel and detonates it behind him.

(Actually, I see that Will Entrekin has a good post on this today, actually — “There’s No Such Thing As The Publishing Debate.” A good quote from that: “If only we could acknowledge that there’s really no debate about publishing, we could start really helping readers find new writers, and vice-versa, and really, isn’t that what books are really all about, anyway?” Check it out.)

Love,

Little Chucky Wendig

Age 8-and-a-half

Oh, and P.S. –

To the dude on Twitter yesterday who accused me of blocking him because, apparently, I hate self-publishing? I clearly, plainly, certainly do not hate self-publishing. I do not advocate against self-publishing. I have six self-published books. They have earned me not insignificant income this year. (Though, also to be clear, I’ve made more money publishing traditionally and with work-for-hire during the same time frame. Goes both ways.) I, in fact, at the time of your accusation had not blocked you at all and I remain unclear as to how you came to that conclusion. I’ve since blocked you, of course. I’m happy to have a conversation, but I’m not happy to participate in a fruitless discussion where you see fit to fertilize the conversational lawn with bullshit. I don’t brook bullshit — especially when it’s about me or people I respect.

*drops a smoke pellet and disappears like the Motherfucking Batman*

And they should act on that realization.

Why?

Because unless you’re Stephen King, a big-time screenwriter, or Snooki, then the one-percent — corporations in particular — doesn’t give trash-truck full of donkey crap about you.

Writers are not considered part of the larger ecosystem. Creativity and art are afforded little value in today’s corporate culture. It’s a lie, of course — writers are everywhere. Our work is ever-present yet our role remains unconsidered. The written word is a powerful support structure, and it’s everywhere you look. Magazines, billboards, instruction manuals, marketing copy, and, oh, I dunno, the entire Internet. Nearly everything begins with the written word, and yet, despite this significant contribution, writers and other creatives exist as a marginalized group. Further, our support system is eroding.

Bookstores aren’t going away because people aren’t buying books. Bookstores went away because mismanagement by large business entities porked the pooch. Some publishers may go that way, too — and other publishers survive by trying to hammer writers into troubling and unreasonable contracts (which many writers sign because they feel they have no other choice, which is of course where the value of self-publishing makes itself a known quantity).

It’s one thing if you’re a writer inside a company — though even there you won’t find nearly as much value placed on the writer as you could and should — but it’s a whole other bucket of ugliness if you’re out there on your own doing the freelance or indie thing.

Ever try to get a mortgage? Or health care? Or, uhh, you know, a little bit of respect for what you do? Despite our omnipresence and the critical support the words of talented writers provide, we’re often relegated to the same bracket of financial and emotional respect as a Medieval rat-catcher. “Yes,” they say, “we know we need you, but couldn’t you go catch rats in the dark when none of us can see you? Bye!”

The question then becomes, how do you act on it? How do you join the occupy protests?

How do you rebel against marginalization?

First, obviously: join the protests if you’re able.

Second, consider looking at and joining with Occupy Writers: OccupyWriters.com.

Third, and here is the real kicker, the corker, the critical 20: you’re a writer and so the way you occupy is you occupy with words. You write support for the movement. You write your own experiences. You tell stories — true and fictional — about it, because stories have power and stories are subversive and a little bit of subversion is what the world needs right now. Your weapon is the pen and the keyboard, so it’s time to join the war. And this calls to mind two more things:

Number one, and I’m probably not the guy to arrange this, but it’d be great if we had a day — one day soon — to write about being a part of the 99%. Or maybe it’d be a Tumblr. I dunno.

Number two, and this is something that came up online between Monica Valentinelli and Chad Underkoffler (two authors and game designers) and I: it’d be interesting to see an anthology based on the 99% notion — not the movement itself, I don’t think that necessarily needs to be fictionalized — but, rather, fiction about the economic circumstances that lead up to and currently inform this movement. Viet Nam had protest songs. Why not protest stories? As I’ve said before, stories are lies that tell the truth, and that’s no small thing. Can’t there be a way to harness that?

As to what you can do as a writer to not be marginalized? That, I don’t know. What you do has value, so claim value for what you do. Make sure you’re not getting screwed on contracts. Make use of self-publishing — not always, but sometimes, as self-publishing can help you assert greater (though imperfect) independence. Be protected. Don’t get borked by clients who don’t pay. Spread the word to other writers if you’ve found an independent health care provider that doesn’t, at the last moment, slide a shiv between your ribs just as you discover you’ve got a medical condition that mysteriously they now don’t cover. Be a part of a community. Keep your eye on the critical resource that is Writer Beware.

In the end: stay frosty, and help others do the same.

Self-publishers, I’m talking to you.

And I’m talking to the pundits, too. In fact, I’m talking more to the pundits than to those actually walking the self-publishing path. Not everybody. Just a handful.

If you get a little froth on your screen, here — *hands you a squeegee* — just wipe it away.

Here, then, is the core of my message to you:

It is time to upgrade the discussion.

Let’s talk about what that means.

First, it means: we get it. Self-publishing is the path you’ve chosen and further, is a path you believe is lined with chocolate flowers and hoverboards and bags of money and the mealy bones of traditionally-published authors. Self-publishing is a proven commodity. You can stop selling the world on its power. This isn’t Amway. You don’t get a stipend every time another author decides to self-publish. You’re not squatting atop the pinnacle of a pyramid scheme. (And if you are, you should climb down. One word: hemmorhoids.)

Instead of trying to convince people to self-publish, it may in fact be time to help people self-publish well. While self-publishing may by this point be a proven path it doesn’t remain a guaranteed path. In fact it’s no such thing: I know several self-published authors out in the world with great books, kick-ass covers, and they are certainly not selling to their potential. In fact, if they continue to sell as they appear to sell then I would suggest these books would have done much better had they been published — gasp — traditionally. Succeeding in an increasingly glutted space is no easy trick. Every bubble pops. Every gold rush either reveals a limited supply or instead ends up devaluing the gold one finds there. The reality is that it’s going to become harder — note that I didn’t say impossible — to succeed in that space and so it behooves the Wise Pundits With Their Long Beards to acknowledge the realities and help authors do well.

It may then be a good time to acknowledge some of the challenges of self-publishing rather than ignoring them. Filter, for instance? Dogshit. Total dogshit. Discovering new self-published authors is left almost completely to word of mouth or to the marketing efforts of one author’s voice. The discovery of just browsing a bookstore and finding great new stuff to read is gone. Amazon offers little in recompense: browsing there is like trying to find a diamond in a dump truck full of cubic zirconiums. Marketing as a self-published author is a whole other problem: it’s tricky as hell. Half the self-publishers out there still manage to sound like Snake Oil Salesman — myself included — and so why not try to discuss the best practices? Why not talk about the way forward?

Though, actually, let’s take a step backward. Here’s another problem: maybe we should stop putting the publishing cart before the storytelling horse. In self-publishing, I see so much that focuses on sales numbers and money earned, but I see alarmingly little that devotes itself toward telling good stories. After all, that’s the point, right? Selling is, or should be, secondary. The quality of one’s writing and the power of one’s storytelling is key. It’s primary. It’s why we do this thing that we do. Any time you hear about the major self-publishers, it’s always about the sales, the percentage, the money earned. What’s rare is a comment about how good the books are. When the narrative was all about Amanda Hocking, everybody was buzzing about her numbers, but nobody I know was buzzing about how good those books were. Focus less on the delivery of the stories and more about the quality of what’s being delivered.

It’s worth too to try to foster a revolution not merely in format or distribution but also in what’s being distributed. If DIY publishing is really going to assert itself, it has to stop mimicking other publishing. Exhort authors to take risks in format and in genre. This is the time to do some really new stuff — go big, get nuts, let what’s going on inside the story be as iconoclastic and rebellious as the means by which you produced that story.

Really, though, the biggest thing that needs an upgrade is the attitude.

Traditionally-published authors are not slave labor. They’re not idiots or fools. They’ve not made “the wrong choice.” You went one way. They went another. Sometimes your paths converge; other times, they do not.

Yes, yes, I get it. Big Publishing has, in some instances, abused authors who have come into their stable. This is no secret and it is inexcusable. It’s also not a universal phenomenon. And it’s a phenomenon that a good agent — not a shitty agent, not an agent who is more in love with publishing than with authors — can help to protect against.

You do realize that some trad-pub authors are actually… happy, right? Note I didn’t say “happy in the shackles of corporate slavery,” I mean, they’re actually pleased with the way they’ve been treated. They like their agents, they like their editors, and they’re actually earning out. Hell, it’s why you see some self-published authors take traditional contracts when offered — it’s because the terms were right.

Publishing traditionally remains a choice, but many want to paint a false dichotomy as if any who travel that path are deluded slaves or desperate authors — as if self-publishing is an immediate and guaranteed path to success. It’s not. Neither is traditional publishing. You pick your choice, you take your shot, and that’s that.

Not every author is primed to go all DIY on their own asses. Many paint that self-pub choice as an easy one — the obvious choice, the “duh” choice, like you’re some kind of brain-damaged window-licker if you didn’t make it — but the reality is, publishing your own work is a hard row to hoe. It’s more work than many authors want to accept, and I don’t blame them. Covers and formatting and independent editors and marketing and hey-if-you-don’t-mind-I’m-going-to-just-suck-on-this-shotgun-lollipop-for-a-while-BOOM.

Nobody should be punished for choosing either path as long as they walk the path wisely.

Self-published authors don’t like to be dissed by the traditionally-published and the reverse remains true. Nobody’s got a lock on the truth. Nobody’s got their thumb on the pulse of the future (despite how much they love to trumpet their own oracular insight). Yes, things are changing. But the sky isn’t falling — the ground is merely shifting beneath our feet.

Same way it shifted — and continues to shift — in other creative endeavors.

The rhetoric often assumes that we’re all on our own side of the fence, but here’s a newsflash for you: there’s no goddamn fence. You’re a storyteller. I’m a storyteller. Good books are good books no matter how they got to market. You make your choice, so why not let others do the same? Further: don’t be a sanctimonious dick about it. Upgrade your attitude. Elevate the discussion. You should be proud of your own accomplishments and excited that the path you picked was the right path. Go any further than that and you do little to endear anybody toward your imaginary bullshit either/or dichotomy.

We should all be helping one another tell great stories.

Let’s talk to one another not as publishers, but as writers and storytellers.

All of us, wondrously pantsless. And probably drunk.

Amen.

*drops mic off stage, disappears in a cloud of incredulity and oompah music*

Remembering is good, though. Celebration isn’t, but that’s up to us not to turn this into some kind of crass holiday. Point being, I wasn’t going to write anything. And yet, here I am, barking into the void.

You want to know what I remember about 9/11? Here’s what I remember.

I remember driving to work in the middle of town and listening to the radio as it all unfolded. By the time I was getting to work the second plane had already struck.

The entire town was connected that day — as I got out of my car and walked to work I could literally follow the transmission of information. Some people had put radios outside. Some were yelling to one another to tell them what they just heard on the TV. Folks were standing out on sidewalks talking about it. People were bound together in tragedy. (And given what we eventually learned about 9/11, that our leaders had heard the warnings and ignored them, this is tragedy in the truest theatrical sense of the word.) I thought, this is our Kennedy assassination. This is that one moment that defines our generation. The one we’ll always talk about, the one we’ll always feel in our heart and in our bowels and the one we’ll always say, “I remember where I was on that day, when that horrible thing happened.”

And what I remember most is that connection between people.

And how for a good year, we were united in that memory and that experience. We were united in anger and hope and fear and that whole tangled thatch of emotion that came with the two towers tumbling down.

And I remember how that connection festered and was pulled apart. Because our leaders, instead of unifying us, found in that day opportunity. Opportunity to take us to war in that day’s name. Opportunity to pass legislation whose strictures were absurd and whose ghosts still haunt the so-called “homeland.” Opportunity to invoke that day as a campaign slogan.

Opportunity to divide, not unite.

You really think who we are as a nation now — a nation with boots stuck in the sucking mud of a double-dip recession, caught in the middle of a highly disordered and fractured two-party pissing match, afraid of anybody who looks even a leetle bit different than us or who worships in a way that seems no longer profound but only somehow perfidious — isn’t as a result of that day? Where we can’t bring a bottle of shampoo on a plane lest it contain some exotic-and-fragrant shampoo bomb? Where the specter of terrorism overrides the political needs of far greater crises?

I feel like the country went the wrong way after that day. Our leaders could’ve fostered that connectedness and instead exploited the disconnect. And in that gap rose a howling fearful wind.

But that’s them. That’s our leaders. That’s not us.

We are not our leaders. Not anymore.

The message here is that the connectedness we felt then can be reclaimed. As a weird side segue, would you believe that this is why I like social media? The sense of connectedness is robust and even at times profound (see the latest earthquake and hurricane for that, where I felt connected to people who I didn’t even know, who were hundreds of miles away — hell, see Egypt, or London for how people can bond together — the core notion of the Internet is connectedness, after all).

We need to move together, not fall apart. We need to find the bonds that bring us together and make us human, not highlight all the bullshit differences that take our humanity away.

That’s the thing I’d hope people remember today. The solidarity of the nation in that year following 9/11. A time when it felt like we were all in the same boat. Find that again. Trust in your neighbors, not in your leaders. We’re coming to a time once more when we will somehow need to remind our leaders that they must be accountable to us, not us accountable to them. The day of 9/11 is ours, not theirs.

They fear our connectedness, after all. As they should. Our ideas and connections have the power to change the world. That terrifies them. So be connected. Forge the connection with others once more. Talk to people. People you don’t always agree with. Common bonds exist; find them. When we find those things we can move forward again. We can find the things we believe are essential and work to accomplish them. We must not be led by a corrupt body of leadership or by a vocal minority of selfish monsters. We must reforge lost connections. That is how we can once more find truth and hope in a day like 9/11.

Is that what I’m supposed to call you? Mister President? That seems redundant. Why don’t I just throw in “Doctor” at the fore and “Esquire” at the rear and just call you Doctor Mister President, Esquire? We could also staple on “Detective” and “Junior” if that would be an appropriate honorific?

Perhaps we could compromise? You seem to like this word. “Compromise.” In our compromise, I could call you “Mister President” in the way that you like, and you could, ohh, I dunno, manifest a pair of testicles and then show them to us all? That’s all I’m asking for. I would like to see your balls. Because, at present, I’m left to believe that all you’ve got between your legs is a scrotum that looks like a sad, deflated balloon. Or maybe you don’t even have that. Maybe you just have a second butthole down there.

A ragged pucker the Republicans chewed open.

But I know I’m not going to get that. I’m not going to get even 10% of what I asked for.

Thus, I’m not going to call it a compromise.

I think you misunderstand the word “compromise.”

Let me paint another scenario.

Some sort of monster — for shits and giggles, let’s say it’s some kind of orange-skinned weepy homunculus named “Boner” — has taken the village children hostage. We say to the monster, “Hey, Boner, please don’t eat our village children. As Whitney Houston clearly laid out in her song, the children are our future. And so, without children we are also without a future. Please tell us what you want not to eat the children, and we will give it to you. Otherwise, we will be forced to come in there and stab you in the face with some kind of chainsaw-broadsword hybrid which is awesome and will really hurt.”

And Boner says, “RAAR I DON’T CARE I WANT TO EAT THE CHILDREN.”

And then he cries, because Boner cries a lot. I don’t know why. Probably because he’s an asshole. Or maybe he got self-tanner in his eyes and it really burns? Few can say.

We say again, “Please don’t eat the children or we’ll kill you. Tell us what you want to convince you not to eat the children. We are civilized villagers. We can compromise.”

Boner says, “RAAAR I WANT A BUS FULL OF STRIPPERS AND CHEESEBURGERS.”

We get the monster the bus full of strippers and cheeseburgers and he takes them and eats the children anyway. And then we say, “Thank the gods for such a glorious compromise.” And then we shake hands with the monster live on TV as he vomits up the bones of our young, and everybody has a good laugh.

See, I don’t think that’s a real good compromise.

Your definition may vary. In fact, it must vary. Because here it looks to me like the GOP made you swing so far right you make Ronald Reagan look like a stout Democrat. Because you ended up having to regurgitate their own plan back to them and still have them reject it. Because you ended up having to take a mouthful of Tea Party seed live on television with a big greasy goopy smile on your face.

To say the least, I’m a little disappointed.

You were full of all that Hopey-Changey stuff. And that was dangerous because what happened was, you got a lot of people high on the fumes of political possibility and then made sure to confirm that our dreams of moving forward, of attaining new progress and fresh potential in this country, were just that. Dreams. The higher you carried our hopes, the further they had to fall. That breeds cynicism of the highest order.

And hey, listen, I get it. Being the Detective Doctor El Presidente is no easy task. I get that you have to rule in ways that the common man doesn’t understand and that we’re an impatient gaggle of fuckheads. I also get that you have genuinely done a lot of good and I don’t want to be blind to that. But this latest acquiescence moves you from appearing “academic and even-handed” to appearing like Ned Beatty’s character in Deliverance. There you are, a man of the city, bent over a log and having a bunch of ignorant hillfolk plow you from behind, gobbing a stream of tobaccky spit on your back.

And that stream of spit? That’s what you’re calling a compromise. “Well, sure, we’re all getting porked up the baboon basket here, me and the whole country, but look what we got in return!”

Lubrication for an unasked-for rectal violation is not a compromise, Herr Doktor President.

Ultimately, I’m aware that something had to be done and perhaps your back was up against the wall. Then you need to tell us that. You need to be assertive and make clear that we as a nation voted in a bunch of GOP tea party fundamentalists who were willing to burn the house down to make a fucking point. You need to say to us that you’ll keep fighting the good fight. Because what you did in return was get slapped around and tell us that you liked it. That we should like it.

That we should be thankful for such a glorious compromise.

Can you even say that word with a straight face? Compromise?

I mean, hell, I like compromise. I’m all for a nation where the liberals get this, the conservatives get that. I believe that truth and justice usually live somewhere neatly in the middle.

But this? Really?

Can you really get behind a plan that fucks the poor and middle class and helps the richest of the rich? That slaps veterans and old people while giving a continued boost to oil companies?

(See also: “Wake Up, GOP: Smashing System Doesn’t Fix It.”)

Do we as a nation even really know what’s in this goddamn plan? We’re just learning that the EPA is going to get elbowed in the throat. Given that I just moved from a town that had epic levels of arsenic in the water, I’m not excited by the notion that not only will such levels be reasonable but nobody will be looking.

What else got tossed up on the altar of so-called compromise?

As a writer, I think it’s important we understand the definitions of the words we use. And, Dear Commander Lord President, sir, I suggest you find yourself a dictionary.

Anyway. What do you care? We’ll vote for you anyway because the only other choice comes out of a stable of fat-cats, dullards, and crazy people.

I hope you get a second term and use that term to reclaim the stuff you helped us to lose.

I also hope that one day you’ll just get sick of it, and you’ll get on TV and kick over the podium and speak to us like another enraged common man.

But, like I said, maybe we’re done with all that hope and change.

Maybe it’s time once again to settle into the deep mire of cynicism and accept that the plutarchy is well and duly upon us. It’s funny. I always chided my father for such cynicism. He had that attitude of “a little revolution is a good thing,” and stockpiled guns just in case we had to one day take our government back from the government, a government that had long forgotten the fear of its people. I always thought that was nuts, that anybody that held the notion of going up against F-14s with a Remington hunting rifle was not a healthy strategist. And yet, as I get older and I see the parade of puppets put before us in politics, I can see how cynicism erodes good sense and foments that feeling of, well, raging against the machine.

In those ashes, groups like the Tea Party are born. Anger and ignorance and cynicism.

Cynicism that I feel I’m giving into even with this post.

Who knows?

I sure don’t. I feel like I should sit down and apologize to my son. “Sorry, kiddo. Not sure what this place is going to be like for you when you’re an adult. Good luck, is all I’m saying.”

Maybe the Commodore Dauphin Obama will prove us wrong.

Or maybe he’ll just run us through the wringer of another “great compromise.”

Google+ grows on me like a fungus. Like a scaly patch of ringworm, I can’t stop itching it.

I don’t really know why. I think in part I’m scratching to peel away layers, to dig beneath the rashy skin and find the potential buried beneath — because, at this point, I’m growing convinced that some real potential is there. But I’m also growing convinced that most of that potential is too hard to see and isn’t yet manifested.

*itch itch itch, scratch scratch scratch*

Let’s rip through the meat with our fingernails and see what else we find.

Caveat: Twitter Is My Main Gal

Twitter isn’t for everyone. I get that. But it’s definitely my one true social media gal pal. It took the formula put out by Myspace and Facebook and flipped it on its ear. Twitter is the beat poetry version of social media. It’s some crass noisy combination of soapbox-shouting, flea-market-hawking, carnival-barking, stand-up-joke-telling, and haiku-having. It’s got the motion and madness of a city street with all its sounds and smells. Twitter is ever the low but persistent hum. I merely need to tune into its Zen frequencies for a time. It requires no massive investment. It demands little of me. I splash about in its waters like a spider monkey who has never before played in the ocean. Splish-splash.

But — but!

Twitter is shit for conversation.

It’s great for banter.

But conversation necessitates deeper investment, complexity, and nuance… and Twitter just doesn’t do that well. You ever see two people have a long protracted discussion on Twitter? It’s like watching two bricks tumble around in a washing machine. And Zeus forbid that the conversation suck in more than two people. Then it becomes the clumsiest gang-bang you’ve ever seen. (“Is someone wearing an oven-mitt on their dick? Is that a nose tickling my perineum? Who let the peacock in here? It smells like peanut oil.”)

Imagine tuning two different radios to different shows and having those shows “converse.”

Doesn’t really work out so well.

And so, I give you, Google+.

The Googlecrucians Want You To Converse

G+ is setup for you to converse. It’s like one big forum — whereas Twitter and Facebook limit the length of updates and comments, Goo-Goo-Plus has no such interest. It wants you to fill the space with your words, and it wants other people to fill the space, too. “GO AHEAD,” the Lords of Google are saying. “SPEAK AT LENGTH WITHOUT RESERVATION. YOU HAVE THIS ENTIRE BLEAK DESERT OF POWDERY WHITENESS IN WHICH TO BLOVIATE. THE LEASH IS OFF. YOU DOGS MAY RUN FREE.”

And that’s awesome.

In theory.

It’s not quite working for me. Not yet. It can! I can see it coming together and working — while the brownies here are definitely soft in the middle, this remains a beta release and is sure to grow and change.

Here’s the first thing that’s not working for me, though: a big conversation is like a fire circle or a parliamentary session. It’s a rock around which you sit — a stable, single location that people come to where they can join into the conversation or just sit back and listen. This blog functions like that. It’s a static location in the digital space-time continuum — you come to me, I don’t come to you.

But G+ doesn’t work like that. It, like so many other social media sites, is a stream, ever-flowing. Which means the conversations are always moving downstream, which means those conversations are hard to grab hold of, hard to track — it’s like I’m constantly trying to grab hold of a slippery length of intestine and it just keeps squidging free from my grip. (“Squidging” is a word. Say different and I’ll sic the hounds upon you.) Imagine if those aforementioned fire circles and parliamentary sessions were all on rafts, and we were all traveling together down a raging river. Yelling at one another.

The conversations at G+ are just plain hard to track — at least, in my estimation. (I’m kind of a dipshit, though, so keep that in mind.) Harder still when they become big, swollen discussions.

Rob Donoghue — the ever-wise — noted that, at present, G+ is built around people, but what if, instead, it were built around conversations? As in, that’s what you tune into more than the people who host the discussion? Right? That’s how forums work, but forums are often craptacular.

Can G+ give rise to The Ultimate Forum?

Maybe. But it’s not there, yet.

Mostly, I find myself looking at big conversations there and thinking, “I’m glad people are having them.” And then I click away and don’t read the conversation because a nap sounds better.

Ways To Enhance The Conversation

Here, then, are some ways that Guh-Pluh can advance the way the site deals with conversation:

1.) The notifications are too much. The site’s like a needy puppy with these things, constantly getting muddy pawprints all over my — well, not my pants, since I don’t wear those, so let’s just go with “hirsute calves.” Half the time the notifications are about dead useless anyway. “Nobody has added anything to the conversation! Look! +1!” Since notifications have become noise, I’ve tuned them out — not ideal for following the flow.

2.) Threaded (or is it nested?) comments. Allow me to reply to a comment, not just the post. Further, let me break away into little sub-conversations if need be. I pull you three and we go into this other digital room disconnected from the main and we sit there and chat about whatever it is.

3.) I want a rope to pull myself back to the conversation. Blogs are great for this. If I know a conversation is going on at a blog post I like, I can just wander back there with a link. I need that here, too. In fact, Rob Donoghue earlier posted that thing about conversations only in Google-Plus, which means I can’t link to it like a blog. I can’t say, “You, dear reader, go look at that.”

4.) Speakawhich, I pray to Internet Jesus and melt a motherboard on his altar that Google+ does not become a source of blogging. First of all, G+ is, at present, so spare it’s somewhat ugly. It’s a Spartan, utilitarian space with all the flavor of a Communist bread dole. I like that blogs are part of the personalities of their keepers. I don’t mind if they’re “connected,” but so far, reading big chunks of text on Google-Plus is about as pleasurable as reading legal documents. (Sidenote: this is true of e-books, too. I long for the day that the Kindle, f’rex, allows books to have their own look again. It’ll happen, I just don’t know when.) A weird little part of me wonders if we go back to the Myspace-like customization within reason. Which leads me to a site that already does that well…

5.) Tumblr needs to get on over here and inject its Tumblrian DNA into the Googlecrucian experience. I actually like Tumblr a lot, but have tuned it out in favor of Google+ simply because of time commitment. That’s a shame, because Tumblr was something different, where for now, G+ is mostly “more of the same.” (I know, people are going to tell me that G+ is a revolution. Not yet, it ain’t. It’s Facebook 2.0.) Tumblr allows the sharing of content lickity-split, and further, Tumblr allows for connected and easily-customized blogs. Where Tumblr fails is — drum roll please — conversation. And so I demand that G+ and Tumblr have SOCIAL MEDIA BABIES. Go on, you two. Here’s a room. One of you is ovulating — I can smell your Internet ovum. Have some lube. Go at it, jungle cats.

6.) Circles haven’t really worked for me yet. Well, correction — they work to let me break apart my social media flow into littler “radio stations,” so on that front? Total success. But in terms of enhancing conversation, not so much. Part of it is that in terms of broadcasting, I have no guarantee The Circle I Choose is even listening. Going back to that fire circle or parliamentary session image, I’m at the podium but I’m blindfolded. My audience might be nowhere to be found. Sometimes it’s be nice if circles operated like “opt-in” groups — “Hey, this is my book club circle, and we’re all in, and we can all see one another.”

7.) I hate to say it, but I want Wave back. Wave was a great idea that failed to perform. It was like saying, “I’m creating a teleportation device” but what you got was a giant catapult that “teleported” you into a concrete wall. But what Wave promised was actually pretty awesome — “Hey, let’s you and me and whoever else get into this little pocket of Internet space and just fucking communicate.” It was some gallumphing mutation featuring strains of chat, e-mail, and social media — it just failed to come together. I want that back. I want it jacked into G+. I want to be able to pull people into that space and have those kinds of conversations that are disconnected from the larger stream. We shouldn’t have to “follow” each other as circle-jerks to have a conversation.

8.) Bring all parts together. Right now, to me, G+ is a Frankenstein Monster of limbs welded together with lightning but the bolts, staples and solder-marks still show. I don’t know what these pieces are doing together. In a conversation I need the ability to say, “Fuck it, we’re doing a Hangout right now, just you people in this discussion.” I need the ability for Sparks to generate from the chatter I’m making, not from topics I choose. I need the ability to hand-pick people and say, “Let’s get into a space where we can draw on the digital walls like white-space and collaborate on some stuff.” I need it to be more than Facebook.

It Will Be, If The Lords Of Google Will It (And The Creek Don’t Rise)

My estimation of Baby Huey’s Gooey Kablooey (Plus!) has risen considerably since I posted my last rant — but that estimation is based almost solely upon speculation. It’s built on the promise of the site more than the current incarnation. Because right now? It’s just more of the same. I know, I know — IT’S A REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL MED… stop that. Just stop. You can’t make something a revolution just by saying it’s a revolution. I can’t just say, “There’s a revolution in my pants!” and when you get there, it’s just a plain old dangling wang down there. No worker’s rights or health care for everybody — just a regular penis doing regular penis things. Like playing badminton. Or watching the BBC.

Right now Google+ is stumbling around like a newborn fawn because… well, it is a newborn fawn. Again: that bitch is in beta. I have confidence that, if the Googlecrucians continue their devotion to the site, in a year’s time you won’t use it like you use Facebook. It’s just… right now, I’m using it like I use Facebook. Outside of the Hangout (with my Wangout), I don’t see anything all that special at present. That means we’ve a pretty significant redundancy in the system.

I suspect the way we make Google+ better and help them bring these disconnected pieces together is by telling them what we think. The Lords of Google have been responsive so far.

Which is a good sign, and another glimpse of promise.

I thought about putting together a “Google-Plus For Writers” post, by the way, but once again, outside the Hangout, I don’t know if there’s any there there, yet. (Though, it may be worth asking what G+ could become for writers… what would writers want out of it?)

We shall see.

In the meantime, you will continue to find me on Twitter.

Anyway. Feel free to add your thoughts. How’s Gee-Plus doing for you?