Year: 2014 (page 7 of 61)

Writerly motivation is a tough nut to crack. I go and I write a single tweet, I get immediate feedback. Maybe nothing happens, or maybe some people respond. Could be I get some retweets, some LOLs, some digital high-fives, a troll or two. Social media is great because it’s a dopamine rush. I’m a chimpanzee who pokes the button and gets an immediate testicular tickle.

Writing a book is nothing like that.

Writing a book is you spitting in a tin pail once a day. And you won’t even let anybody see it until it’s full. “NO, IT’S MY SPITBUCKET, YOU CAN’T SEE IT YET, NOT UNTIL MY MASTERWORK IS COMPLETE.” *hawwwk* *ptoo* *plunk* “DON’T LOOK AT ME!”

It’s completely self-reflective and self-driven. Wanna know what it feels like? It feels like this:

You write a paragraph on little slip of paper, then whisper to yourself: “Is it any good?” Then you respond, also in a whisper: “I have no fucking idea.” “Oh, okay. Should I keep writing it?” “I really don’t know, please stop talking to me.” “Okay.” “Okay.” Then you use your manuscript to soak up the tears, and discover it’s not even good at doing that.

So, how do you do it? How do you motivate yourself every day to drag your sluggy body up to the keyboard and headbutt the keys until a story is made? Day after day, one month, two month, six month, a year if that’s what it takes? As the actor is wont to ask the director:

“What’s my motivation?”

So, here, then, are some practical thoughts on building your story, one word-brick at a time:

Write First

Seriously. Do it now. Stop looking at me and go write. Here’s the thing — it doesn’t work with everyone’s schedule, and I dig that. But for my mileage, getting up early to pound out some word count helped me to assign priority to it. I’ve noted in that past that we seem to get only so many IEP (Intellectual Energy Points) throughout the day — and we sometimes spend them on unexpected things, like impromptu corporate meetings, family crises, or being hunted in the woods by masked slashers. But, spend those points early on writing, and you never have to worry about losing the motivation to do it later. (Though you might die in the woods hunted by a masked slasher. So. Uhh. There’s that.)

Find Your Process

Sometimes, the way you do things is square peg, circle hole. Which is also the name of my Sexual Memoir. But whatever. Point is, trying to write the way somebody else writes is demotivating. But writing the way you write feels like a well-oiled machine. Also, Well-Oiled Machine is the name of the sequel to my Sexual Memoir. Which I’m capitalizing for reasons that are unknown to me.

Point is? Create a mechanism. Get yourself into the flow. Develop good habits. All these things are motivational generators — momentum creates momentum.

Do Not Fucking Multitask

Multitasking is a myth. Your brain can’t do two things at once because you’re a human and we humans are all unitasking dum-dums. You cannot write and then answer emails and then tweet and then braid your pubic hair. Stop that. Carve out a block of time, whether it’s fifteen minutes or two hours. Use it to write, and only to write. You will make progress and progress is itself motivating. Forward motion. Fuck inertia. To reiterate: momentum creates momentum.

Take Breaks

Do not multitask, but also don’t keep running full-speed into a wall. Take breaks. Move that sack of slugs and rubbers you call a body. Force blood through you — blood is creative lubricant, after all. (Er, not literal lubricant. Weirdo.) Five minutes here and there will clear out a lotta cobwebs tangling up your motivational innerspace.

(Did I just use the phrase “motivational innerspace?” Ugh.)

The Sugar Tickle

Okay, I’m usually pretty clear that hey, carbs are not the greatest thing to be wolfing down when you’re trying to access WORDS and THOUGHTS and THINGIES (see, I just ate pasta, and all I can come up with for that third word is ‘thingies’). You eat a fistful of Snickers and sure, you’ll get that heady sugar rush, but then all that chocolate and caramel will gum up your THINKMACHINE and next thing you know, it’s Naptime in Writertown.

But! But. Snacks of the sugary variety can be nice (in moderation) as a reward for the day’s end of wordsmithing. You finish what you sat down to finish — you hit your daily word count — and that little stab of dopamine in the deep, junkie well of your brain may motivate you tomorrow. Because it remembers. A brain never forgets chocolate.

The Cheerleader

We need cheerleaders in our lives. People who unabashedly love who we are and what we’re doing no matter how kooky it seems. You’re not just dreaming about writing — you’re chasing that dream down with a fucking trident and spearing it to reality’s soil. You need someone willing to champion that and cheerlead you, not someone who will hike down their lederhosen and take a big squirrely dump on what you’re doing. This is real, and you need it to be real, and you need someone willing to acknowledge how real it is. That’s not to say we don’t need critics, too — and our loved ones can be that, too. Cheerleader and Critic are not mutually exclusive. But if you don’t have someone in your life excited to shake their pom-poms for you, find someone, stat.

And don’t forget to shake your pom-poms for them, too.

Read A Shitty Book

Reading a terrible book is really clarifying. “I can do better than this,” you say, excited to prove your supremacy over execrable prose-based poopsmithy.

Read An Amazing Book

Reading an awesome book is really clarifying, too. “I see the power and vitality of this,” you say, realizing how much writing and storytelling matter. Maybe you won’t ever be that good, but reading a helluva good book can be aspirational.

Get Excited About Tomorrow’s Writing

Sit. Stop. Think not about today’s writing but tomorrow’s. Get excited. Formulate plans. “Tomorrow, I’m going to kill a character and it’s going to be tremendous. Tomorrow, the hero wins. Tomorrow, I get to write a scene with an otter manning a laser harpoon. Tomorrow, I get to kill a politician with bees.” Whatever it is, find something in tomorrow’s writing that excites you.

And, pro-tip — if you can’t think of anything?

Then maybe tomorrow’s writing needs to upgrade its awesomeness, yeah?

Fuck It, Stop Looking For Motivation

I don’t have any magic answers.

I’m trying, I really am.

But listen. Listen.

Writing is fucking hard, sometimes. Writing is dentistry on monsters. Writing is trying to castrate a galloping horse with a slingshot. Writing is letting a bull loose in an orphanage.

And there comes a point when it’s like, you either love this, and it motivates you? Or you don’t, and it doesn’t. I can’t manufacture motivation. Neither can you. You can only stir the flames if there’s already a spark there. You can’t awaken a dead fire.

At the end of the day if your interest in writing is born only of little tricks and tips — basically you fooling yourself to write — then maybe you need to look really hard at this thing you want to do.

Writing is contagious madness, a lot of the times. Even when it sucks, you wanna do it. And that, I think, is one of the things that separates the Aspiring Not-Really-Writers from the Really Real Writers — the latter group writes even when it’s hard, even when the motivation is a dry well, even when the inspiration seems like a dead or dying thing. They hook the car battery jumper cables up to the coyote’s car-struck carcass and rev the engine and make the damn thing dance yet again. Seems dead, but isn’t. Every day then is an act of revivifying your own abilities and motivations. The act of writing becomes clarifying to the act of writing. To restate the principle for the third time: momentum begets momentum.

(Writing is like heroin, that way. Heroin leads to heroin. Writing leads to writing.)

Again, that’s not to say you can’t do things to get going. I sure do. But if day in and day out you hate the process and find yourself having to artificially engineer something that isn’t there — it’s worth asking why, at least. Motivation then becomes not this external thing. It’s internal to the process. It’s part of it. Self-generating, self-replicating, a fire that feeds itself.

The best motivation, then, for a writer is to write.

Write when it’s hard.

Write when it’s easy.

Write when life doesn’t want you to.

Write when you don’t want to.

Write when everyone tells you not to.

Write, write, write.

Love the process or hate it. Love the end or hate the end. Let that chimpanzee’s testicular tickle come not with the feedback you get or from what happens when you put it out into the world — but get it just from the act of creation. Putting one word after the next and forcing them to the shape of a story. The act of creation, difficult as it is.

Go forth, right now, and write.

And let the act be the motivation.

NOW PLEASE LOOK AT MY PAIL OF SPIT AND BEHOLD ITS GLORY.

*shake shake*

*slosh slosh*

* * *

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 holidays are swiftly coming up.

A lot of you are writers. Writers with books out. Novels, comics, collections. Hell, we can even expand this to indie games, or Kickstarters, or whatever you want, long as it’s you writing it and it’s something that tells a story.

So, here’s your chance to promote that thing in the comments below.

Tell us about it! Tell us why we should check it out! Get excited.

(And don’t forget to give us a link to click. By the way, giving us links to click may hold your comment in administration for a short time. Do not panic! I’ll administer throughout the day.)

But, this promotion thing: it has rules.

First: keep it short. Like, one paragraph short. And not one of those paragraphs with the size and density of a brick. Keep it lean and mean — back cover copy. A hook in our mouth to drag us forth.

Second: you must also promote another book (or comic, or KS, or game, or whatever) by someone else. So, one of yours, one of someone else’s. Failure to do this may open you to a surly side-eye, straight-up mockery, or a trip right to the spam oubliette.

Comment section is open.

GET THE TO THE PROMO CANNONS.

We’re halfway through the month — the month of furious novel-scribbling and word-barfing. Whether or not you’re doing NaNoWriMo, every month represents an opportunity to carve out new narrative territory, no matter if you’re writing 200 words a day or 2000.

So, I’m gonna put 30 Days In The Word Mines on sale here at terribleminds for $1.99.

I’ll also put the Gonzo Bundle on sale, too. That one, for just $15.00.

SO, two bucks gets you the former.

Or, if you’d rather have eight books instead of just one: fifteen bucks.

This is also a reminder that if you’d rather check out awesome writing books that aren’t only by me — behold! The NaNoWriMo Storybundle is still going. There you get 12 books for $15.00.

So, again:

If you want 30 Days in the Word Mines for $1.99:

Buy 30 Days In The Word Mines

Or, if you wanna check out the whole bundle for $15:

Buy Gonzo Bundle

Sale runs till Wednesday! Prices only available here, direct through PayHip.

Last week’s challenge: The Three-Story Sentence.

So, I saw this thing at Buzzfeed.

21 Stock Photos That No One Will Ever Be Able To Use.

Well, we’re using them now.

Pick one! (Or: use a d20 or random number generator.)

Write a story inspired by that image.

You’ve got 1000 words.

Post at your online space, link to it here in the comments.

Due by next Friday.

(Don’t forget to identify which photo you’re using!)

Ever since Jackie moved to her uncle’s sleepy farming town, she’s been flirting way too much — and with her own cousin, Marcus.

Her friendship with him has turned into something she can’t control, and he’s the reason Jackie lost track of her best friend, Ellie, who left for…no one knows where. Now Ellie has been missing for months, and the police, fearing the worst, are searching for her body. Swamped with guilt and the knowledge that acting on her love for Marcus would tear their families apart, Jackie pushes her cousin away. The plan is to fall out of love, and, just as she hoped he would, Marcus falls for the new girl in town. But something isn’t right about this stranger, and Jackie’s suspicions about the new girl’s secrets only drive the wedge deeper between Jackie and Marcus.

Then Marcus is forced to pay the price for someone else’s lies as the mystery around Ellie’s disappearance starts to become horribly clear. Jackie has to face terrible choices. Can she leave her first love behind, and can she go on living with the fact that she failed her best friend?

Thing One: WRITE A BETTER BOOK

One of the hardest things I’ve been learning as my debut starts to hit shelves is that I can’t really control how well it does. I can’t control reviews, publication timeline, what other fabulous book releases the same week, deadlines, or bestseller lists. I can’t control how much my publishing house invests in my book, whether the concept appeals to readers, or whether YA contemporary is hot right now. Not everyone is going to like a first cousins romance, and a lot of people are going to really not like it. What I can do is write the best book I possibly can—and then to make it even better. “Good enough” is not good enough. If you know you struggle with pacing, don’t let that remain an issue. Tackle it. Resolve it. If you suspect there’s a tension wobble somewhere, dig into the problem. How We Fall had both of these issues, but I didn’t listen to myself and kept plowing on through drafts, revising other things and ignoring those problems because I didn’t know what to do about them. I convinced myself it wasn’t that big a deal, that no book was perfect. Don’t do that. Have the guts to stop, evaluate, and dig into those problems you half-suspect are there. Don’t stop at “good enough.” Go all the way.

My writing, my book, is what I can control. I can become a better writer, I can push myself, and I can write a better book.

Thing Two: BOOKS ARE MADE IN REVISIONS

The first draft of How We Fall was 60,000 words, and it’s now 89,000. The story was there in the first draft, mostly, but it needed a lot of work. In its final version, the mystery is darker, the romance between the cousins is a little more obsessive, and the pacing is much faster. I had to dig deeper into the legal issues of cousin marriage (it’s legal in about half the states, and only considered incest in a few), as well as the ethical and safety issues, and let those pressure the relationship. Between revisions with critique partners, my agent, and my editor, it went through six major rounds of revisions. Even in final edits, it gained a new first chapter and a new final chapter. Revisions made my ugly first draft almost an entirely new book.

Don’t get discouraged when you’re drafting if you’re not seeing magic happen. That magical touch and those insightful moments you see in great books aren’t magic at all. They’re the result of blood and sweat. First drafts are limp and flat and awkward—that’s normal. The depth and layers come as you revise. And revise. And revise.

Thing Three: TEACH YOUR GUT, THEN FOLLOW IT

Writers get told a lot to follow their intuition. And that’s great advice—as long as you’re training your intuition. Good writers aren’t born knowing how to magically write brilliant books. They learn and learn and learn until it becomes second nature. So read, and read a lot. A book a week—or two. Consume, so you can see what’s been done and what hasn’t, and how it was done, and how you could do it differently or better. Read out of your genre to see what those authors tackle, and how they pull it off. Make your own blend. And as you’re reading so much, and reading new and different things, dissect what you’re reading to see what worked, what didn’t, and why. Teach your gut, and then listen to it when it says something is forced or too thin or just right.

Thing Four: KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR OWN PLATE

When I was querying, it was sometimes a struggle to not be jealous when someone else signed with an agent. When I was on submission, it was hard to not be jealous when someone else landed a book deal. Even though I was happy for my friends, it often turned into a “does this mean I’m not as good?” self-defeating little sad-party. And now that I have a book out, there are other authors’ awards, bestseller lists, and publicity and buzz I could be upset over.

But no one else’s success diminishes mine. One of the most wonderful things I’ve been realizing as I find critique partners and connect and blog with other authors, particularly in YA, is that we’re much more colleagues than competitors. Readers can pick up my book, and they can pick up someone else’s, too. Another author’s success doesn’t limit or detract from mine. What does limit my success is me looking at someone else’s plate, and wishing I had what they had, and letting my own work suffer.

Thing Five: STORY IS CONFLICT

A lot of people have asked me why I would write about two cousins who fall in love. I mean, weird, right? And as I tried to write a better book, and revise revise revise, and teach my gut, I started to realize what drew me to the concept in the first place: story is conflict. Usually, the deeper the struggle, the more fascinating the story. We’ve seen that with other forbidden love stories– biracial, cross-cultural, and same-gender relationships, relationships crossing political, religious, and status lines, and just about any other boundary we put up between people. When the conflict is an immoveable fact with deep-rooted prejudices and potential to harm people you love, that’s a significant and difficult struggle. What does this do to your family? What if your siblings get bullied because of it? What if the relationship fails and you’re stuck related to an ex-boyfriend? The issues involved in cousin relationships are a huge part of why I wanted to write about it. It would test my characters in ways not much else could.

Story centers around conflict. Without a problem, there’s no story. A page or chapter or book that lacks conflict is lacking story.

So revisit your conflict, keep in mind that genius writing likely won’t happen in the first few drafts, and train your instinct. Read out of your genre, read a lot, focus on your own successes, and keep writing the best book you can front and center. This career takes blood and sweat and persistence, so keep at it.

***

Kate Brauning is the author of How We Fall (Merit Press, F+W Media), a YA contemporary released Nov. 11, 2014. She grew up in rural Missouri and fell in love with young adult books in college. She’s now an editor at Entangled Publishing and pursues her lifelong dream of telling stories she’d want to read. She’s represented by Carlie Webber of CK Webber Associates.

Kate Brauning: Website | Twitter

How We Fall: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Powell’s

A brief digression on politics.

No, no, I know, I don’t want to talk about politics either. Politics is an ebola tornado: it’s just shit and blood whirling about in a toxic funnel. It’s all gone Biff and George McFly — we don’t like Biff the bully because he’s a bully, but we at least respect him for having the strength of his cinderblock convictions. McFly we can’t respect because he just cringes and needs his son to travel back in time to teach him how to throw a punch. And so we vote to let Biff lead us for a while because at least he gets shit done, even if that means he drives us full speed into a manure truck.

Or something. It’s a tenuous metaphor, but there’s something to it.

Anyway.

Let’s say that you want to actually make some hay with politics.

Let’s say you want to get shit done.

And I don’t mean the current Republican mode of “get shit done,” which is really just to run around at top-speed with a pair of scissors trying to cut up every piece of legislation that they don’t agree with. “NO OBAMACARE. NO NET NEUTRALITY. CLIMATE CHANGE? WHATEVER, CANADA WILL LOOK BETTER AS A BEACH ANYWAY. IMPEACH THE TERRORIST FISTBUMPER. EBOLAGHAZI 2016.” Their only original idea is a Dalek-like bark of EXTERMINATE. It’s a wonder most Republican voters haven’t yet cottoned to the hypocrisy in play within their party’s leadership — they claim to be about small business, but continually enact legislation that supports big business, and actively fight net neutrality and healthcare marketplaces (both of which can reward smaller businesses). They claim to be about small government — “Get out of my healthcare!” — until it’s about a woman and her uterus, at which point every GOP politician grabs a speculum and hastily scribbles an impromptu OB/GYN degree on a Bounty paper towel with crayon. They say government should get out of marriage, but what they mean is that government should be all up in your marriage, particularly if your marriage does not fit the Big Man / Little Lady religious definition, and oh hey aren’t we supposed to be a country free of legislation born of religious definitions no I guess not okay then. (The GOP should always have been the ones leading the charge for net neutrality and for gay marriage. Their opposition is indicative of their divergence from their reported mission — the sting even sharper when you realize that, apparently, conservatives overwhelmingly favor net neutrality.)

And no, I don’t mean the current Democrat mode of “not in the face, not in the face.” Where every success they earn — or is earned by another of their party — is looked on as a shameful gain, as if you just earned money by masturbating for an old clown as he threw crumpled-up hundreds at your bare chest. “DANCE FOR ME, DONKEY BOY.” *fling fling fling*

No, I mean, let’s say you actually want to start moving the needle.

Whether you love or hate regulation by the government, there’s one kind of regulation we all desperately need. That regulation is how money enters politics. That means lobbying. That means campaign contributions. That means SuperPACs. All the things you hate in politics are the top of the weed — but money? Money is the taproot. You wanna kill a weed, you gotta kill the root.

This is all obvious, and I’m ultimately naive for even bringing this up — but I’m nothing if not someone who will bang a hammer on a sheet of tin to hear the noise it makes, and so here we go:

Money imbalances democracy.

I’m not suggestion the presence of capitalism is a problem — I’m suggesting the bleedover of commercial and corporate interests into our political system is the problem.

What I mean is this:

What lines the pockets of a giant company or industry is not routinely the same thing that is in our best interests as individuals or as communities. Climate change is a pretty good example of this: the global heat death of the world is probably going to be, mmm, I’ll say “bad” for all of us. Even if you embrace a far lesser and more drastic version, the upheaval and chaos of the geopolitical system due to even subtle climate shifts is worth addressing for the way that the whip will come back to bloody our own chins.

But, of course, enacting change costs money. And may actively harm existing industries — like, say, Big Oil (which was my nickname in high school, by the way — PASS ME THE ROCK, BIG OIL, someone would cry, and then I’d hit them with a rock and they’d wail and say NO WE MEANT THE BALL WHY ARE YOU SO WEIRD). Big Oil contributes tens of millions of dollars to candidates across both political parties (though with about 3/4 of that going to Republicans, at least in 2010).

You might say, well, okay, but solar and other alternate industries can come in and spend money to gain traction, too — except of course they don’t have as much money which is why Big Oil outspends alternative energy by 10-30 times (in terms of both lobbying and campaign contributions). And, further, if they can’t get the traction, they won’t make more money, and they’ll always be behind the eight ball when it comes to being able to influence the political machine. It in effect creates a kind of entrenched corporate caste system, where industries become calcified — broken only by truly dramatic circumstances.

ISPs are profoundly powerful, and contribute lots to politicians, which is why you see this fight against net neutrality — despite the fact we should probably start looking at the Internet the way we look at our roads, which is to say, they are the intellectual transport by which we arrive at new ideas and new friends and, further, businesses big and small.

The FDA has almost no actual power because most of the power has been taken away by… well, the gigantic food industry who doesn’t want to be punished if they accidentally kill a bunch of kids by getting salmonella-infected chickenshit into a bunch of Capri Sun packets.

Healthcare and insurance are entrenched and embedded and so healthcare for folks is not optimal because it undercuts their ability to make profits on the backs of the unwell. (This is one of the greatest mysteries to me as a citizen — why we are willing to let our government protect us from harm by foreign invaders, but not by harm from invaders to our health and wellness. Of course, there we’re being sold another lie: we deny government intervention in healthcare because we believe the government is inept. Which is proven time and again by politicians who actively seek to prove government’s inherent shittiness by dismantling its functions which thus ensures its shittiness. Welcome to the self-fulfilling prophecy of tea party extremism. Our own governor in PA, Corbett, did this by gutting education and then saying, “Look, look! Education isn’t working! WEIRD, HUH.” Here’s a wacky idea: let’s improve the government services we have instead of hamstringing them and then mocking them for their slowness. Anyway, I digress yet again.)

All of this is because money has weight in politics. It’s not weight you or I have — but it is weight that corporate personages have (and more and more, remember, companies are becoming like people — which I suspect will one day translate into corporate-sponsored VOLTRON).

Further, it means that money can be spent to open the door to allow more money in politics. And every political cycle, that gap gets wider because money can be spent to — again, self-fulfilling prophecy — ensure that more money can be spent to influence politics. This adds more weight to their side of the scales. More power in the political process to them, and a smaller serving to the rest of us. To them, it’s just an investment. To us, the people, it’s a dismantling of our power and the meaning of our influence. We are increasingly a nation of Big Business held up by government which is big, but increasingly ineffectual. Whittled away like a stick by folks like the Koch Brothers, who are the not-quite-invisible oligarchs (or should I say, LOLigarchs! LOL!) of this corporate-sponsored company in which we are allowed to dwell.

And the politicians are married to this system. Money and business first.

We the People second. Maybe third. Or so far down the list we’re like ants underfoot.

And the gap, then, grows.

The rich get richer, and the rest of us have to swim harder. Which is probably a good lesson since we’re probably gonna melt all the fucking ice caps anyway. THANKS, JERKS.

Maybe the politicians love this system. Maybe they feel shackled to it.

No idea.

What matters, though, is that very little else is easy to change until you stick the stake in the vampire’s heart — the heart of how money enters politics. Lobbying, campaign contributions, SuperPACs, etc. If you were to regulate nothing else ever, then regulate that.

It won’t fix everything, not by a long shot.

But my god, the dent it would make.

P.S. read this: “Postmodern Conservatism in 36 Tweets.”