Year: 2014 (page 12 of 61)

With acerbic wit and a hilarious voice, Shane Burcaw’s Laughing at My Nightmare describes the challenges he faces as a twenty-one-year-old with spinal muscular atrophy. From awkward handshakes to having a girlfriend and everything in between, Shane handles his situation with humor and a “you-only-live-once” perspective on life. While he does talk about everyday issues that are relatable to teens, he also offers an eye-opening perspective on what it is like to have a life threatening disease.

Last year, as my blog began to grow into the hundreds of thousands of followers, I decided to write a book. Life was surreal as I queried agents, selected an agent, and sold the rights to my memoir to Macmillan. After the initial euphoria of my first book deal wore off, it was time to write. The process was unlike anything I had ever done before, and I learned some things.

[edit — I met Shane at Moravian college some time back when he wanted to talk about publishing and agents with me and fellow area author Paul Acampora, and frankly, Shane already had his shit together, had realistic expectations, and was already more ahead as a writer than I would be for ten years after — and then, when I was down in Florida doing research for The Cormorant, I went to a restaurant and saw a woman wearing a Shane Burcaw ‘Laughing at My Nightmare’ t-shirt and I went up and talked to her and — this long before he had a book — she was a huge fan. — cw]

1. Writing a memoir at 21 is weird.

When I think of a memoir, I imagine an old person lying on her deathbed, recounting stories of surfing with beluga whales and playing blackjack with Michael Jordan. There’s probably a reason I have that image in my head. I think it’s because memoirs are typically written after a person has accomplished great things, or lived an amazing life. Now, not to discredit my own awesomeness (I’m super fucking awesome), but at 21 years old, I still had a lot of life left to live.

The purpose of my memoir is to show how I use humor to cope with the muscular disease that’s slowly killing me. Obviously, there are reasons my story had to be told now, rather than later (i.e. I could croak tomorrow). But sharing my story with the world at such a young age has created some awkwardness because of the details I included.

I wrote about getting a blowjob for the first time, and I still have to look my grandparents in the eye at least once a week. I wrote about an intimate relationship that was alive and thriving at the time of writing, and I made claims about that relationship that one should NEVER make in book format. We are no longer together, as I swore would never happen in my book. I wrote honestly about people who upset me throughout my life. Those people are going to read it, and I have to deal with their reactions.

The whole thing was a balancing act of wanting to give the reader a deeply personal experience, and not wanting to say things that would come back to bite in real life.

I think I handled it okay-ly, but it was still weird.

2. Editing is a strenuous process.

After sending off the first draft to my editor, I naively expected her to come back with a few suggestions and then we’d move on to copy editing.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

No. I’m pretty sure our editing process took longer than the initial writing time.

It was one of the coolest experiences of my life to see the level of editing needed to make a book magic. My editor pushed me to give everything I could to this memoir, and I’m so thankful she did because it made the book about a thousand times better.

3. I can be productive (when I need to be).

I had six months to write my first draft. Piece of cake. At the time I was reading some of Chuck’s writing guides, and I had all these grand illusions of writing for a few hours each day. I will be done in a month, I thought.

Well, I’m an idiot. It turns out that I struggle with being productive when I’m not under the gun. I can say that a majority of my memoir was written in the final month before it was due, while also trying to complete my senior year of college. In the Acknowledgements I thank my family for dealing with moody me during the writing process. That acknowledgement is a wild understatement.

4. Publishing is like crack.

Now that I’ve been through it once, I need more. I’m done writing about my own life for a while, but I’m so excited to get started on fiction. I’ve fallen madly in love with writing over the past few years, and now it’s all I think about. Give me more. Shoot it into my veins.

WE NEED TO COOK, WALTER.

5. My iPhone is a gift from God.

Say what you will about Apple, but the devices they make made writing my memoir possible. I can’t move my arms much anymore because of my disease. I can’t type on my laptop or rummage through printed copies when editing my work.

Over the years I’ve found apps that allow me to use my iPhone as a keyboard and mouse for my laptop. I’ve used organization apps to help myself keep track of the big picture while writing. Apple’s voice dictation allowed me to write even on days when using my phone was tough. It’s incredible what technology has helped me accomplish.

Apple, you should strongly consider giving me a sponsorship of some sort. The U2 album was a nice gesture, but you can do more. I’m thinking a commercial deal with me lying completely naked on a bed of MacBook Airs, with only the iPhone 6 covering my manhood. Actually, better make it the 6 Plus.

And those are some of the things I have learned while writing! It has been a crazy experience, and I’ve loved every minute of it.

Yes.

You.

*waggles accusing finger*

Shut up and write.

No, no, I know. You just wrote me an email and in this email — like in so many other emails by so many other ‘aspiring’ writers — you informed me that you really want to be a writer, but. No, it doesn’t matter what follows after the but. Something about time. Or family. Or fear. Or lack of knowledge. Or lack of practice. Or bees. Or facebees. Or how your hands were gnawed off by winged, mutated piranha leaving you with those lumpy fish-chewed stumps.

I don’t care.

I’m writing.

You’re not.

End of story.

Shut up.

Shut up shut up shut up.

And write.

Sure, yeah, some days it is fucking hard. Some days it feels like performing rectal surgery on a cantankerous bridge troll. Some days writing is running blindfolded through a maze made of pricker bushes. Writing is an act of creation, and creation is hard. It’s volcanic. Tumultuous. These creative atoms smash together clumsily, violently, destructively. You give something to get something with writing.

But also, it’s not that fucking hard.

C’mon, son. Really? Really? I mean, nobody’s asking you to send a man to Mars. You’re not tasked with desalinating an ocean or training a komodo dragon to cure ebola. Shit, I’m not even asking you to mop up some kid’s puke or wait tables at a five-star restaurant. Or a three-star. Or a fucking Hardee’s off the turnpike.

I’m saying, sludge yourself into the ass receptacle and peck keyboard keys like a hungry chicken until it makes words. Tap tap tap. Click click click. Or pick up one of the tools used by our distant ancestors — it is a tube filled with the liquid black souls of all the animals we’ve made extinct — and use this “pen” as a scribe would to etch scribbly heretical word-shapes onto dead tree pulp.

In other words: shut up and write.

Don’t talk about writing. Stop reading about writing. Don’t even come here. This place will be here later. When you’ve done the work. This blog isn’t meant to be your distraction — a warm pool in which to wade so you never have to swim out to the big bad scary ocean. It’s not here so you can feel productive and seem like a writer. Fuck that. No no no no no. You go write. Then you come back here. You gotta start first. Everything else is just masturbation. It’s fuck or walk time, hondo.

Shut up and write.

I really want to be a writer, but…

But.

But what?

But nothing.

It’s on you. You wanna be a writer?

Easy! Write.

Ta-da! Zing! Bing! Bang! Boom.

The writer writes. The writer writes! THE WRITER WRITES.

Hell with aspiring.

To aspire is to expire.

But it’s scaaaaary, you say. Sure, sure, yes, it can be. That sacrificial component can be terrifying. It feels like exposing yourself — some kind of intellectual, creative nudity, like running through somebody else’s mind, naked. Stripped bare. To the skin. Maybe to the bone. What might you say? What might you reveal? Who are you? Who will read you?

I know! I do! And I still don’t jolly well fucking care! Shut up! It’s not like I’m shaking a box of wasps at you. The act of writing isn’t a bedroom closet stuffed full of eyeless clowns — the stink of greasepaint, the honking noses. We can slap whatever metaphors we want on the act: writing feels like jumping out of a plane, oh my oh my, and while that metaphor holds water, it still isn’t actually you jumping out of a plane, is it?

Nobody’s jumping out at you.

No sharks or animated scarecrows with pointy knives.

Write.

Write now, right now.

Shut up.

What’s that? You don’t have time?

Well, who fucking does? Everybody thinks writing is some happy horseshit anyway, and life does not automagically provide you with an allotment of hours in which to creatively dick around, so — welcome to the club. We’re all snatching minutes from the mouth of the beast.

Oh, oh, you’re afraid of rejection. Of course you are. I am too. I hate rejection. Who wants that? Who wants to be told no, this isn’t right, this isn’t good, this isn’t all there. But rejection is how you know you’re doing the work. Rejection means you’re putting words to paper and you’re throwing them out there for all the world to see. Rejection is your battle scars: proof of your fight in the arena. Nobody wants to fall down and go boom but falling down and going boom is how you learn not to fall next time. Or at least fall differently.

Or, is it that nobody respects that you wanna be a writer? Yeah, get used to that. You’d get more respect as a juggler hired out for children’s birthday parties. Who cares? Get shut of it. You’re not doing this for the glory. If this is just some fantasy, pinch off that artery right now. The fantasy of writing isn’t that glamorous, trust me. (If I turned on my webcam, you’d flinch and ask yourself, WHAT KIND OF MONSTER IS THAT HUNCHED OVER IN THE SICKLY GLOW OF A COMPUTER MONITOR OH MY GOD IT’S LIKE A FURRY BAG OF TRASH CAME ALIVE AND DECIDED TO BLOG — JESUS, GOD, THE EYES ARE HAUNTING, THE MOUTH IS HANGING OPEN, I CAN IMAGINE THE SMELL OF DEATH AND COFFEE.)

I want to be a writer, but.

Stop.

Stop there.

And start writing.

You’re either writing, or you’re not. Stop obsessing over all the things that come later. Fuck publishing, marketing, audience, writing advice, writing blogs, tweets, reviews, book covers. This is a pure, untainted time between you and the manuscript. This is unfucked snow. So go, fuck that snow up. Write! Write. Create! Tell stories. Put it down. Carve something out of nothing — you’re given a wide and briny sea of pure imagination, so draw upon it.

I can do nothing for you if you’re not writing.

I can’t make you write.

I can’t puppet your indolent, inactive hands.

I can yell and kick and flail and flounce.

But all this is on you.

Shut up and write. Right now. Literally. Leave this page, go and open a notebook or a word processing program or grab a Sharpie and turn the pale flesh of your left arm skyward and start writing. Write 100 words, bare fucking minimum. No, I don’t care what, though it’s probably better if you aim for something, if you have a purpose in mind — but even if you don’t? Who cares. Pluck those words out of the dark like catching fireflies — fling them into your jar and admire their glow. And then, if you can manage it, write 100 more. And 100 more after that. As many as you can write today and then some. Push! Bite the belt. Swig the whiskey. Grit your teeth so hard you can feel the enamel crack. You’re not lifting a car off somebody.

Point your fingers downward and fling words into reality.

HACK IT OUT.

Then: stop and be proud.

Crush doubt beneath your boot-heel because you’re doing it. You’re writing.

Cackle. Go ahead: cackle. Like a supervillain.

I SAID CACKLE, GODDAMNIT.

And then tomorrow?

Do the same thing.

Don’t tweet about writing. Don’t read this blog. Don’t opine about writing or give writing advice or worry about who will publish your book or oh god will you self-publish or will you find an agent and how will you weather all that rejection and will your book cover just be some girl in leather pants with half-a-buttock turned toward the reader no — stop, quit that shit, stomp that roach, cut those thoughts and those actions right off at the knees.

Tomorrow, write more words until you can write words no more.

Then the next day.

Then the day after that.

Until you’ve finished something. Until you’ve completed the first pass. It’ll be an ugly baby, probably. It’ll be some squalling thing full of slugs and grease, moaning in the mulch. That’s okay. No mad scientist creates the perfect monster on the first go-round.

You’re doing it.

And once you do it long enough, you can say that you did it.

Shut up.

SHUT UP.

Shuuuuuut uuuuuuup.

Halt den mund.

Užsičiaupti!

¡cállate!

And write.

Then you can email me.

Then we can talk.

[NOTE: The below post is not meant to be an endorsement for or a prohibition against guns in the real world in which we all live. It is a discussion of firearms in fiction. Keep comments civil… or I’ll boot you out the airlock into the silent void.]

Guns, man. Guns.

*flexes biceps*

*biceps which turn into shotguns that blow encroaching ninjas to treacly gobbets*

CH-CHAK.

Ahem.

If you’re a writer in a genre space — particularly crime, urban fantasy, some modes of sci-fi — you are likely to write about some character using some gun at some point.

And when you write about the use of a gun in your story, you’re going to get something wrong. When you do, you will get a wordy email by some reader correcting you about this, because if there’s one thing nobody can abide you getting wrong in your writing, then by gosh and by golly, it’s motherfucking guns. Like how in that scene in The Wheel Of Game of Ringdragons when Tyrion the Imp uses the Heckler & Koch MP7 to shoot the horse out from under Raistlin and Frodo, the author, Sergei R. R. Tolkeen, gets the cartridge wrong. What an asshole, am I right?

You can get lots of things wrong, but you get guns wrong?

You’ll get emails.

As such, you should endeavor to get this stuff right. If only to spare yourself the time.

I’ve gotten them wrong from time to time, despite growing up around guns (my father owned and operated a gun store — we were hunters, we had a shooting range at the house, I got my first gun at age 12, etc.etc., plus he was a gunsmith, as well) and despite owning them.

Thus, seems a good time to offer up some tips on how to write guns well, and some common mistakes authors make when using the shooty-shooty bang-bangs in the stories they write. And yes, I’m probably going to get something in this very post wrong, and I fully expect you to correct me on it, YOU SELF-CONGRATULATORY BASTARDS.

Also — keep in mind that this list is by no means exhaustive.

You should go to the comments and add your own Things Writers Get Wrong About Guns.

• Let’s just get this out of the way now — if you want to write about guns, go fire one. Go to the range. Pick up a gun. Use it. This is your first and best line of defense when writing about a character and her firearm. Also, when you’re writing about murder, YOU SHOULD MURDER SOMEONE. Wait, no, don’t do that. I certainly never have! Ha ha ha! *kicks corpse under desk*

• Specificity breeds error. If you’re not highly knowledgeable about guns, then you might be best drifting away from specificity rather than toward it. The more particular you try to be about including details (“Dave held the Smith & Weston .45 revolver aloft and after jamming the clip into the cylinder he thumbed off the safety…”) the more you’re likely to get wrong. There’s value in just saying, y’know, he pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. You don’t have to get masturbatory with details. Admittedly, some genres like that kind of masturbation, but it’s a detail you can tweak later.

• Also masturbatory: All that egregious action-jacking. Characters don’t always need to do some fancy “jack the action” shit every time they’re handling a gun. Some guns need that. Some do not. Doing that will nearly always eject the shell that’s in the chamber, which is only a thing you want if it’s an empty casing and the gun does not automatically eject empty casings for you. Because many guns — like, say, pistols — are very efficient that way.

• No, the air did not stink of cordite. This is so common, it hurts me. Besides it being sorta dumb — I mean, it’s so needlessly specific, it’s like saying someone ate a banana and “tasted the potassium” — it’s also wildly inaccurate. Cordite hasn’t been in use pretty much since the middle of last century. Modern gunpowder is, like cordite, a smokeless propellant. (It’s also not very powdery; my father reloaded his own ammo and I was struck that gunpowder is more like little beads, like something a robot might eat atop its ice cream sundae. *crunch crunch crunch*)

• Revolvers don’t generally have external safeties. They do have safety mechanisms — hard-to-pull triggers, hammer blocks, etc. — but not many with traditional external safeties. (A rare few have what’s called a “grip safety,” particularly on hammerless revolvers, which despite their name aren’t actually hammerless, but merely conceal the hammer inside the gun. Blah blah blah. SO MANY THINGS TO GET WRONG.)

• Nope, Glocks don’t really have the standard manual safeties, either. More on a Glock’s safe action system here. Oh, and yes, a Glock will set off metal detectors. They’re not Hasbro toys.

• This is a magazine. This is a clip. Note the difference.

• This is a cylinder.

• This is Tommy, and he’s thuglife.

• The bullet is the projectile. The casing is the brass beneath it, in which you find the powder. Beneath that is the primer (which is what the firing pin strikes to set the whole party off). The entire thing is the cartridge (sometimes referred to as a ’round’). The caliber is the measurement of the bullet’s diameter. A caliber of .22 is 0.22 inches in diameter. Might also be measured in millimeters, as in 9mm. I’m surprised men don’t measure their wangs this way.

• Shotguns do not use bullets, and the ammo isn’t called ‘cartridges.’ They are called ‘shotgun shells.’ If if contains pellets, it might be referred to as a shotshell. If it contains a slug, probably not. In a shotshell, buckshot is larger pellet size, birdshot is smaller pellet size. Shotgun shells are measured not in caliber but rather, gauge (or bore), indicating a somewhat archaic measure of weight, not diameter. Then there’s the .410 (four-ten) bore. I don’t know why they do it that way. I’m going to blame wizards. Gun-wizards.

• Pistols let you know when your shit is empty. Last round fired — the action snaps back as if to say, “Hi, look at me, I’m no longer firing mushrooming lead at those aliens over there.” So, you can never have that scene where the hero or villain points the gun, pulls the trigger, and it goes click. I know, this robs you of such precious drama. Work around it.

• Guns do not have an eternal supply of rounds. They run out! True story.

• A ‘firearm’ is not a man whose arms are on fire, nor do they shoot fire.

• But that would be pretty sweet.

• Automatic weapon: one trigger pull = lotta rounds. Semi-auto: one trigger pull = one round. But, with a semi-auto, you can pull that trigger very quickly to fling many bullets quickly.

• Most revolvers are double-action, meaning you can pull back the hammer and have a very sensitive, light-touch trigger pull. Or you can leave the hammer uncocked (like a eunuch), and have a harder, more stubborn pull of the trigger. Revolvers that can only fire with the hammer drawn back are called “single-action.” Also, the archaic name for revolver is “wheel-gun.” Which is pretty nifty. Shotguns are sometimes called “scatterguns,” which I don’t think is as nifty, but whatever.

• I’ll let Myke Cole tell you about trigger discipline.

• Holy fuckpucker, firearms are fucking loud. A gun going off nearby will cause a user without ear protection to hear eeeeEEEEEEeeeee for an hour, maybe a day, maybe more. The sound is worse on the shooty bang bang side of the gun than it is for the user behind the weapon.

• Silencers — aka, suppressors — are basically bullshit, at least in terms of what most fiction thinks. They do not turn the sound of your BIG BANG-BANG into something resembling a mouse fart. It carves off about 20-30 decibels off somewhere between 150-200 decibels. The goal isn’t stealth so much as it is ear protection. They’re frequently illegal in the US.

• In an AR-15, AR does not stand for assault rifle, but rather, ArmaLite rifle. An assault rifle is a specific kind of combat rifle meant for service — like, say, an M-16 or AK-47. An assault weapon is a legal term with lots of floating definitions (some meaningful, many not). (Note: I have no interest in discussing the politics of firearms below, as it has little bearing on the discussion. OKAY THANK YOU. *jetpacks away, whoosh*)

• Precision means how tight your grouping when firing at a target — meaning, all hits are scored close together. Accuracy indicates how close those hits were to the intended target. They are not interchangeable. So, if you fired ten rounds at Robo-Hitler, and all ten rounds missed but were in a nice little grouping on that barn wall — hey, precision! If your hits were scattered all over the place and one of them clocked Robo-Hitler in his little cybernetic Hitlerstache, that’s accurate, but not precise. And, ten rounds in the center of Robo-Hitler’s chest is both accurate and precise.

• Many firearms must be “sighted in” for precision and accuracy.

• Nobody turns their guns sideways to fire except dumbshits who like not hitting targets. The sights on top of a gun are there for a reason, as it turns out. IT’S ALMOST LIKE THEY WERE PUT THERE ON PURPOSE. Note: that’s not to say your fiction does not contain dumbshits who do this — it’s just noting that doing this is totally ineffective.

• Most untrained users are neither accurate nor precise with firearms. Particularly if they’ve never held one or used one before. So, that scene where the utterly untrained user picks up a pistol and puts a blooming rose right between the eyes of the assailant 50 yards away — that’s lottery-winner lucky. Now, a shotgun using shotshells — well, you get a spray pattern with those pellets, so that offers a much better chance. (Which is why for an untrained user a shotgun is a smart home defense weapon. Also, a bullet could go through drywall and strike an unintended target — a less likely effect with a shotgun.)

• Bullets are not magically sparky-explodey. They’re not matches. They don’t set fire to things.

• Ragdoll physics are super-hilarious in video games, but someone struck by a bullet does not go launching backward ten feet into a car door. The recoil is largely against the user of the gun, not the recipient of the hot lead injection.

• Actually, an untrained user of a gun might find that recoil particularly difficult to manage at first — a scope might give them a black eye, a pistol might jump out of their hands or (if held too close to the face) might bop their nose. I mean, the reason the butt of a rifle or shotgun is padded is because OW I HAVE A BRUISE NOW.

• Dropped guns do not discharge.

• Hollow-point bullets are meant for damage (“stopping power”) more than penetration — the bullet, upon hitting the tender flesh of the alien, blooms like a metal flower due to that dimple of space in the bullet. It expands, makes a bigger projectile. Which does more internal injury — but doesn’t necessarily penetrate all the way to the other side of the XENOFORM. In theory, this makes the bullets safer (er, “safer”) as they do not pass through and strike other innocent targets. For the alien that just got shot, it is obviously not as, erm, caring. (Hollow point bullets are not really armor-piercing, by the by.) One company does make “Zombie Max” bullets, which is completely fucking ludicrous tying a pop culture phenomenon of fake supernatural entities to actual cartridges, thus enticing children and other goonheads to think HAW HAW HAW ZOMBIE BULLETS WHOA COOL. Zombies are not real, and firearms are not toys.

• Laser guns are rad. PYOO PYOO.

Your turn.

What else?

* * *

The journey to become a successful writer is long, fraught with peril, and filled with difficult questions: How do I write dialogue? How do I build suspense? What should I know about query letters? How do I start? What the hell do I do?

The best way to answer these questions is to ditch your uncertainty and transform yourself into a Kick-Ass Writer. This new book from award-winning author Chuck Wendig combines the best of his eye-opening writing instruction — previously available in e-book form only — with all-new insights into writing and publishing. It’s an explosive broadside of gritty advice that will destroy your fears, clear the path, and help you find your voice, your story, and your audience.

Amazon

B&N

Indiebound

Writer’s Digest

The question I pose is a pretty simple one:

What is the scariest book you’ve ever read?

It doesn’t need to be horror, of course, though I expect a good bit of horror to creep and skulk through. And you can talk about comic books, too, if you’re so inclined.

Note: I’m not asking about your favorite scary book. I’m asking about the one that scared you, or freaked you out, or disturbed you on some fundamental level.

I get more than a little freaked out by serial killer books. Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite is an early one that got under my skin. Recently, worth noting Mister Slaughter, by Robert McCammon — pre-Revolutionary War serial killer tale, with tension so taut it was like a rope around my neck as I read it. Or, consider the last two Lauren Beukes novels: The Shining Girls and Broken Monsters. I’m only halfway through the latter but dang can she a) write and b) freak you the fuck out. For non-serial killer novels, while the film version didn’t spook me, the novel of The Exorcist is a pretty amazing read, and if you’ve never read it, well, now’s the time.

Anyway —

Your turn!

What books have really gotten under your skin?

Maybe it’s not a book, exactly, but a particular scene.

Let’s hear it.

(We’ll do movies next week, and maybe games after.)

Last week’s challenge: From Sentence To Story.

It is apple season, people.

Apple season.

APPLE SEASON.

And with apple season comes a chance to sample a world of weird apples.

Uncommon apples.

Like, say, from this list grabbed at North Star Orchards here in PA.

I want you to look through this list.

You can use a random number generator if you like.

But pick three of these apples.

And include them — not apples themselves, necessarily, but the names of said apples — in your story. They can be included however you see fit: character names, place names, some other worldbuilding aspect, anything and any way you so choose.

You’ve got 1000 words.

Post at your online space.

Link back here.

Due by next Friday, noon, EST.

Pick your apples.

In case you didn’t know —

Paul Feig is rebooting the Ghostbusters franchise with women doing the bustin’ of ghosts.

This with the writer of The Heat, Katie Dippold.

(For the record: I freaking loved The Heat. Not high comedy, and plot holes you could break a leg in, but man did I laugh. I am a tiny bit sad that it seems like it won’t be getting a sequel.)

Of course, with this news, I’ve seen the cry:

It’s a gimmick.

Feig is obviously aware of the criticism, too, because he says:

“I just don’t understand why it’s ever an issue anymore. I’ve promoted both Bridesmaids and The Heat and myself and my cast are still hit constantly with the question, “will this answer the question of whether women can be funny?” I really cannot believe we’re still having this conversation. Some people accused it of kind of being a gimmick and it’s like, it would be a gimmick if I wasn’t somebody whose brain doesn’t automatically go to like, I want to just do more stuff with women. I just find funny women so great. For me it’s just more of a no-brainer. I just go, what would make me excited to do it? I go: four female Ghostbusters to me is really fun. I want to see that dynamic. I want to see that energy and that type of comedy and them going up against these ghosts and going up against human detractors and rivals and that kind of thing. When people accuse it of being a gimmick I go, why is a movie starring women considered a gimmick and a movie starring men is just a normal movie?”

I think this is pretty fucking awesome.

And I think calling it a ‘gimmick’ is a little bit shitty.

Here’s why.

a.) Calling it “gimmick” is very dismissive. A gimmick is a trick, a ploy, a cheap contrivance or tactic designed to get people to buy the product. Putting women in the roles of an iconic franchise is meaningful culturally, in that it’s creating more roles for women. Roles that were once reserved for men. And narratively, it’s interesting, as it lets you tell new stories and attract new audience.

b) Assuming that putting women in the role is gimmicky assumes that women are already in a place of power — it assumes that, “If we do this, this’ll generate ticket sales.” Given how risk-averse Hollywood has been regarding the role of women in film, yeah, I don’t see it.

c) Or, it assumes it’s doing it for the controversy. If making new roles for women — or making diverse roles in general — is controversial to you, that says more about you than about the creators of the work. Also, Hollywood is known for making safe choices more often than controversial ones.

Now, someone might say, with some earnestness, that why Ghostbusters –? Why can’t you create a new cool action-horror-comedy franchise for women, instead? Well, you can (or, at least, you can try). And certainly it’s a noble goal that sounds great in a perfect world.

But here’s why it’s important that it’s this franchise.

Yeah, it’s very nice and good to say that women should be able to have their own iconic roles and not have to get the sloppy seconds of roles established by men. But there’s a danger, there, too — if you say, women can’t be Ghostbusters, or The Doctor, or James Bond, you might really be saying, “These are my toys, go play with your own.” Go find your own franchise is a very good way of dismissing them and saying “but this one’s ours.” It’s also a very good way of ensuring that they won’t get their own movie made or own roles anyway — the sad reality of present-day Hollywood is that it’s easier to make a movie if you have some pre-existing material to build off of. The Ghostbusters franchise is exactly that. It’s a great springboard to tell this new tale.

Plus, putting women characters inside an iconic franchise has meaning because it’s an iconic franchise, one formerly dominated by men. There’s a metaphor, there, if you care to find it, about the workplace — it’s vital women colonize those roles and those spaces reserved for dudes. You certainly shouldn’t say, “A woman can’t be CEO of this company, go form your own company, lady.” Saying that a woman can’t be The Doctor because The Doctor is traditionally male is roughly equivalent to saying a woman can’t be a doctor because doctors are traditionally male. It’s easy to shrug it off because, “oh, ha ha ha, this is just pop culture,” but hey, fuck that shit, George, pop culture is the food we feed our brains. Pop culture is the colloquial language we all speak — it’s the common tongue of the people. We all speak Ghostbuster. We all know the song. We all know the imagery and the story and the icons of it. It’s important for women to be here, not over there.

Anyway.

Them’s my thoughts, do with them as you will.

What I wanna hear from you is —

What women should take the roles? Some of my potential choices include: Mindy Kaling, Aubrey Plaza, Tig Notaro, Katie Aselton, Uzo Aduba, Melissa McCarthy. What, pray tell, are yours?