Year: 2014 (page 5 of 61)

Yoinks. A quick note that the Kindle versions of Under the Empyrean Sky and Blightborn are each a mere $2.00 over yonder hills in the moist and jungley forest of Amazon.

It is a series that features a great many fun things, including but not limited to: People turning into plants, hobos, robot bartenders, teens with way too much responsibility, flying horses, horses that don’t fly, corn pirates, conspiracy, class warfare, diversity, drunken mayors, blood-drinking corn named Hiram’s Golden Prolific, talking birds, arranged teenage marriages, sonic weapons, flying rich people, dustbowl poor people, rebellion, anarchy, love rhombuses and more.

(If you dig Star Wars, well, so do I, and I think it shows in these books.)

I do hope that if you haven’t checked ’em out, you might give them a chance now.

*poke poke*

*stares*

*stares harder*

Also at Amazon, if you’d prefer a physical copy of an author’s books (like my own Heartland books above, or even The Kick-Ass Writer), you can get an additional 30% off by using code HOLIDAY30. (Further details here — ends tonight at 11:59PM.)

This is also your reminder that bookstores — like, actual bookstores — contain some of my books and in fact contain a lot of other books by other amazing authors, and you should totally go to them because that’s where the books live. And yay books.

[edit: actually, while few stores carry my Heartland series, one that does is the amazing Let’s Play Books in Emmaus, PA. They in fact have signed copies available, too. Though they are closed on Mondays, you should still check ’em out when you get the chance. And they will ship books, too. Follow them on Twitter @letsplaybooks!]

*disappears in a shudder of corn*

On November 1st, NaNoWriMo matters.

On November 8th, it still matters.

On November 13th, 18th, 24th, mmm, yep, it matters.

(Thanksgiving? Only pie matters. Do not argue this.)

On November 30th? Still matters!

December 1st?

*the quiet sound of crickets fucking*

Today, it doesn’t matter.

This isn’t a dismissal of National Novel Writing Month. Not at all. I’ve come around to love the spirit around that month — a 30 day descent into the lunacy of being a novelist, equal parts fun and frustration (“funstration!”). A hard dive into creative waters. Let it fill your lungs. Drown in it.

Rock the fuck on.

But right now? It doesn’t matter. NaNoWriMo is just the wrapping, the trapping, the springboard, the diving board. It’s what got you going, but it isn’t what matters.

What matters is you. What matters is the work.

And right now, you’ve got something.

I don’t know if it’s finished or not. Did you win or lose?

Forget winning and losing.

You left those words behind when NaNoWriMo ended. What matters now is what happens next.

Don’t know what happens next? Here. I’m going to tell you. Or, at least, I’m going to give you a general idea of what happens next — a menu of permutations and possibilities.

If you didn’t finish what you started, you’re going to finish it. (Why? I told you that last week.)

And if you did finish it?

You are going to congratulate the unholy hellfuckshitpants right off your body. You’re going to congratulate yourself so hard that you wake up in a New Jersey rest-stop three weeks later smelling of coconut oil. In your right pocket you will find a small bottle of whiskey. In your left pocket, someone’s finger. In your mouth: a half-eaten cookie.

Then, take some time away from the story. Just walk away. Cool and calm like an action hero strolling out of an exploding building. Hide it. Forget it. It’s not a thing that happened. It was a fever dream, poorly-remembered. And here’s where your brain will do insidious things because the brain is an insidious organ —

If you keep thinking about it even though you know you’re not supposed to? Then maybe you have something there. If you put it away and the memory of the thing slides through your fingers like so much dream-sand, hey, that’s okay, too. Maybe this one isn’t the one.

But if it is? Then it’s time to get to work. And the work always begins up here —

*taps center of forehead, which squeaks open on a rusty hinge so a squirrel can poke out, chitter at you, steal your bagel and coffee, then return to its nest inside the skull*

And that work first consists of thinking about what you did. Not in the shameful way, like you tell a child or a dog. Just hover over it, intellectually. Pick at it. How do you feel about it? What’d you like about the process, the story, all of it? What are you obsessing about when it comes to the story? Most importantly: start to figure out your battle plan.

What I mean by a battle plan is this: it helps to have an endgame in mind. Maybe you just want to make this thing awesome. Maybe you want to publish it, or self-publish it, or maybe this one is just a practice go-round, or could be that you’re going to just let it be a thing you share for free, or a story you scavenge for spare parts. Doesn’t matter — all avenues are valid. But noodle on it.

Then, you get to work.

You’re going to edit it, and edit it, and rewrite it, and re-edit it, and you write and rewrite till its right. You can take it slow or you can take it fast. You can fix the little things first or start breaking it all apart by pushing the plunger down on that box of cartoon TNT. Because now it’s NaEdYoShi month — National Edit Your Shit Month.

What you’re not going to do is send it off.

You’re not going to send it to an agent yet.

You’re not going to send it to an editor.

You’re not going to self-publish it.

Most of you know this already. Some don’t, or know it but think they’re somehow different — exempted from the rules. Do not do it. First, it’s rude to the agents, editors, and readers who have to deal with your broken work. Second, it’s dismissive of you and the story you wrote. You took the time to get here, and now you’re going to hurry it out the door? Nobody’s racing you. Again, get shut of winning and losing. This is not a competition. Don’t poison your own name and your own efforts by punting a deflated kickball. You spent all that time prepping these brownies and now you’re going to pull them out of the oven half-baked because you’re hungry? Fuck hungry. Let them finish. Go nibble on something else — which, creatively, means go write a short story or scribble some funny tweets or write an erotic manifesto at Tumblr. Don’t care. Just don’t put your unfinished, half-assed work out there. No half-measures, Walter.

Now, that said:

You’re going to keep working.

You’re going to take whatever time it needs.

You’ll hire an editor if you have to. Or farm it out to some beta readers. You’ll let a trusted loved one poke holes in it so you can patch those holes up. You’ll think about it again and again, a stone tumbling around the inside of your skull (just watch the squirrel), and then you’ll go back to it.

It’s a strange doll, this story, an ugly and uncertain thing: you’ll keep ripping it apart and tearing out the stuffing and stitching it back together again. Until it looks the way you want it to. Not the way anyone else wants. But the way you want. That takes time and effort though beyond the first flurry of activity, beyond the first draft.

See, the creative process doesn’t just stop with the creating part of the process. Creativity isn’t just in the inception of the thing. It isn’t just in the first iteration. It’s the whole journey. It’s creating, it’s thinking, it’s changing and critiquing and fucking it up and fixing it. It’s what you do with it. It’s how you deliver it. Parenting isn’t just birthing the kid — it’s how you raise it, and your creative work is the same way. People talk about the long tail of sales and exposure, but creativity is beholden to its own long tail, too.

Take the time — because as I’ve noted before, it takes the time that it takes. Maybe it happens fast, maybe it happens slow. But everybody wants things fast, everybody expects to just hit publish or just have an agent fall in love with a hastily-scrawled query letter. We try to jump to the end of our journey before we’ve even bought the damn ticket. Don’t do that. Give your story and your process the oxygen it needs. Give it room. Let it wander, stretch, kick over furniture. Let it settle in like a dog trying to figure out the Perfect Pooping Position or how sleeping must first require three pirouettes, a haunch-shimmy, and an ass-lick.

Give it your time. Go through the process. Take the ride.

Then we can talk about how you put it out there. And don’t worry about perfect. Perfect is somebody else’s idea. Just go with your own satisfaction. Be hard. Give it scrutiny. But hell with other people’s metrics. Use your own. Fuck perfect: just get it right.

(May I recommend NaNoFixMo, an online class by Delilah Dawson? Or consider a novel critique by Hugo- and Nebula-winning author, Saladin Ahmed.)

So, here’s where I ask:

How’d NaNoWriMo go for you folks?

Feel free to talk it up in the comments.

* * *

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

Just listed, new merch items:

WRITER JUICE mug!

WRITER JUICE flask!

ART HARDER MOTHERF****R (sfw!) T-shirt!

And my favorite of the bunch:

THE SECRET TO WRITING mug!

Feel free to go and visit the entire Terribleminds Merch Store at Zazzle.

Always check Zazzle.com for relevant sales codes, too.

(For instance, flasks are 60% off with code SUPERFUNDEAL, but that lasts like, another hour only and then I think the deal is gone for the day, replaced by a new one.)

First of all, let me say up front that books make hella good presents.

Because books.

Books are containers of wisdom and imagination.

They are binders of facts and fancy.

BOOKS MAKE HELLA GOOD PRESENTS.

I write books, so maybe you wanna check some of them out.

But, also, maybe you wanna check out some awesome books by awesome people. Books I have loved greatly this year. Books including (but not limited to): Maplecroft, The Girl With All The Gifts, The Incorruptibles, Broken Monsters, The Area X trilogy, The Three, Young God, Cibola Burn (which is holy shit $3.25 right now for Kindle?!).

And, if you’re looking for some deals around these parts:

30 Days in the Word Mines is 66% off (~$0.99) until Sunday, with coupon code 30DAYS.

And the Gonzo Bundle is 50% off ($10) until Sunday, with coupon code GONZOBUNDLE.

Also, Zazzle is having sales today, which means my merch is on sale.

Use coupon ZAZBLACKDEAL for 40% off:

Certified Penmonkey mug.

Art Harder, Motherfucker (NSFW) mug.

Art Harder, Motherfucker (SFW) mug.

Or, same coupon (ZAZBLACKDEAL) for 30% off:

Art Harder t-shirt.

Certified Penmonkey t-shirt.

Now: feel free to drop your own favorite reads in the comments!

On Twitter, #talesfromblackfriday has begun.

(You can find 2013’s, crowdsourced Storified Black Friday saga right here.)

(And you can find my own early contribution to 2014’s edition Storified here.)

If you usually do flash fiction challenges at the site — well, now you’ve got this week’s challenge: Join the fun on Twitter. Or write flash fiction horror stories based around Black Friday. Post today and today only though — this is no weekly challenge. Link back here if you do flash fiction, yeah?

It happens today, folks.

Horror and hilarity.

The love-child of Clive Barker and Christopher Moore.

Tales from Black Friday has begun.

Maybe you’re doing NaNoWriMo. Maybe you’re not. Honestly, I don’t give a pony’s patoot — NaNoWriMo is, always, and has been a bit of a stalking horse. It creeps up on you and you think it’s fun and neat and there’s this whole community vibe and then suddenly a goblin jumps out and bellows: “HA HA SUCKER NOW YOU’RE A WRITER. YOU ARE CURSED!” And then the camera pans up and you shake your fists and screamweep into the rain, because you can already feel the penmonkey hex taking hold in your blood and your marrow.

I may have overdramatized that a bit.

Point is: whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo or not, I want to remind you:

It is vital that you learn to complete what you begin.

Finish. Your. Shit.

I know. You’re stammering, “Guh, buh, whuh — but I’m not really feeling it, I have a better idea in mind, it’s hard, I think I’d rather just lay on my belly and plunge my face into a plate of pie.”

I’d rather do that, too.

I mean, c’mon. Prone-position face-pie? Delicious. Amazing. Transformative.

(Okay, that sounds kinda sexual, doesn’t it? You do what you like with the image.)

But, seriously.

Look at me in my eyes.

In my cold, dead, glassy eyes.

Gaze into the two palantir that have been unceremoniously shoved into my sockets. Do you see what I see? I see you not finishing your story. And I see me shoving you into the colorful ball pit at McDonald’s, except the ball pit isn’t filled with colorful balls, but rather, scorpions and shame.

Here’s why I think it’s essential to learn how to finish what you begin when it comes to writing, no matter how much you don’t want to, no matter how much you’re “not feeling it,” no matter how much pie you have placed on the floor in anticipation of laying there and eating it all.

1. It Trains You

Writing a novel is not a natural state.

Telling stories is — “Hey, Dan, you hear what happened at work today? A guy took a shit in the pasta extruder.” But the stories we tell to friends and family tend to be short, punchy, and very personal. Sitting down and making up a much longer story, and then shaping that story into something resembling a brick, well, that’s a whole other matter. It doesn’t come naturally and so you have to train yourself to write these things. And part of writing them is…?

That’s right, class. Finishing them.

And so you need to develop the discipline and conditioning to complete your work.

2. The More You Finish, The More You Finish

Your writing career can be given over to inertia or to momentum. Give into inertia and you slow down, cowed by resistance into stopping. But over time, writing becomes a bit more frictionless — it never feels precisely comfortable (for me, though I do love it so, I still have writing days that feel like I’m swaddled head to do in itchy asbestos footy pajamas), but it gets easier. You gain momentum. And you keep it… as long as you keep it. It feeds itself. Writing books is a hungry beast — but long as you keep shoveling in the word count, it’ll keep belching out the story. And part of this process is finishing.

Failing to finish means giving into inertia. It means losing your momentum.

3. It Makes You Feel Like, Holy Fuckspackle, I Can Actually Do This

Writing is a little like running. It’s painful and gawky at first. And then later, after you’ve done it a bunch? It’s still painful and gawky. But! But at least you can go farther and you can go faster. Once you hit a certain time or distance, you’ve broken that barrier. Which means you can do it again tomorrow. Finishing your work is a triumphant moment. It’s trumpets and cookies and good drugs and ropes of sexual fluids hanging from the light fixtures like Christmas tinsel. It’s awesome. And crossing that threshold tells you: this is a thing you can do. This is a thing you can do again. You’ve got it, now. You’ve got that little personal milestone tucked away in your pocket or your jewelry box or your butthole or wherever it is you keep your personal milestones.

(I keep mine tucked away in my mouth, like a hamster with a beloved Cheeto.)

4. A Finished Thing Is Imperfect — But Fixable

By now I’ve said it a billion times but: writing is when we make the words, editing is when we make them not shitty. You’re not feeling hot about your draft now, and hell, maybe even after you finish you’ll be like, ennh? But just realize: it’s fixable. You reach the end of the work and now you have the whole blob of clay to work with. You can spin it into anything you want — a vase, a bowl, a creepy ceramic serial killer mask, a napkin holder, a dildo rack. And I promise you with unswerving certainty that if you finish what you begin that when it comes time to fix this lumpy mess on the potter’s wheel, that a shirtless Patrick Swayze will massage you to success.

*receives note*

Okay, as it turns out, the lawyers are saying I can’t promise you that. So it’s not true.

*wink wink*

*receives note*

Okay, they’re saying I shouldn’t wink either.

*elbow nudge*

5. I Won’t Yell At You

I think that pretty much spells itself out. If you don’t finish what you begin, I won’t have to find your house, stand outside with a boombox, and play a screeching cacophony from it that sounds like me drunk and screaming myself hoarse at you for not finishing your work. Also, I might also play a little Quiet Riot, Cum on Feel the Noize just because?

6. It Prevents Authorial Adultery

The other day, Author Chris Holm (@chrisfholm) said on the Twitters that there should really be a German word for ‘being tempted to start a new book before finishing the old.’ Now, I dunno if he meant reading a new book or writing one, but what I do know is that, one of the chiefmost reasons I would once quit writing a book was to start writing a whole other book. (I call this ‘porking the new manuscript behind the shed while the old one wanders around, looking for you.’)

So, I said to Herr Doktor Holm that the German word might be Der Buchehebruch, aka, “Book Adultery.” Or, if you want a more literal translation of my shed commentary: Fick die neue Handschrift hinter dem Schuppen, während die alte um wandert, sucht für Sie. Or, perhaps: Neuemanuskriptwerfenficken.

Whatever.

Point is, a lot of the things we do as writers are given over to habit. We can develop bad habits (chewing our fingernails, failing to backup our work, shed-fucking a new manuscript), or we can develop good ones (the opposite of those other things I just said). Develop the habit that helps you finish your work. Prevent neuemanuskriptwerfenficken by keeping that new manuscript in mind (take some quick notes, write a logline, then move on) while actually finishing your current one.

7. Because Learning How To Write An Ending Is Important

The ending is part of every story. You need to learn to write them, which means… you actually need to write them. A story isn’t a story without its end, just as a snake isn’t a snake if you cut it in half. Yes, that is a dubious scientific assertion, but whatever, it works for the metaphor so leave me alone or I’ll shove you in the scorpions-and-shame-pit again.

Don’t skip this ending. Complete the circuit. Learn how to do this thing.

8. Because Never Mind, Just Finish Your Shit Because I Said So

What else do you want me to say, here? Have you ever read a book? Yeah? Did it have an ending? I bet it did. I bet it didn’t just stop at page 252, with the characters about to storm the Laser Castle to fight their nemesis, Evil Steve. So, what the fuck?

Finish your shit.

This is how this works.

Stories end.

Books reach their apex, then slide swiftly toward their final conclusion. They are a complete object. I mean, who’s going to respect you for not finishing it? Okay, you maybe get one or two of those — “Listen, I’m still finding my footing with this writing thing, I’m going to try something else, see if that clicks.” But I’m betting it forms part of a pattern. People ask, “Hey, did you finish that thing?” And you stand there, slack-jawed, a gassy hiss coming from the back of your throat that eventually resolves into the word “eeeehhhhhnnnnooooo not so much.” And then they nod and smile and say, “Sure, sure,” and then they turn around their roll their eyes and make jerk-off motions and whatever because people are ultimately assholes.

So, seriously.

Finish your shit.

Do it because I say so, if for no other reason.

Do it because if ever we meet and I ask you, you don’t want to tell me you didn’t finish it, because then you will feel my guilty, steely stare. My disgust will wash over you like a tide full of dead jellyfish. It will draw you out, an undertow of great forbidding, abrading you against a jagged reef of of sadness clams and guilt-brine. Then: angry barracuda.

Finish.

*kicks you*

FINISH.

*flicks you in the eyeball*

FIIIIINIIIIIISH.

*steals your coffee, eats your shoes, rage-poops in your chimney like drunk Santa*

Okay I’m going to stop because this is getting really weird. YOU MADE IT WEIRD. Not me.

Weirdo.

(But seriously: whatever you’re writing? Fucking finish it.)

* * *

500 Ways To Write Harder aims to deliver a volley of micro-burst idea bombs and advisory missiles straight to your frontal penmonkey cortex. Want to learn more about writing, storytelling, publishing, and living the creative life? This book contains a high-voltage dose of information about outlining, plot twists, writer’s block, antagonists, writing conferences, self-publishing, and more.

All this, straight from the sticky blog pages of terribleminds.com, one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers (as named by Writer’s Digest).

Buy ($2.99) at:

Amazon

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Direct from terribleminds

Or: Part of a $20 e-book bundle!