That’s it, that’s the lesson. I said it in the post headline. You can go home now.
OKAY FINE WAIT don’t go home.
So, it is once again National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo, and maybe you’re doing it, maybe you’re not, maybe you’ll succeed at the task, maybe you will be overwhelmed by holiday stress and global chaos, maybe you’ll be eaten by bears, I don’t know you, I don’t know your life.
What I know is this:
When writing, and that’s true for this month or any other month, it is entirely acceptable to blow up your process with a variety of metaphorical explosives. We all think we know how we do things. We think we know how we write. We think we know how we tell stories. Over time we super-glue ourselves to our process, and in fact that process can become a part of us in a problematic way as we mythologize and even fetishize said process. (Weirder still, we will then sometimes attempt to turn our process from mythology and fetish to straight up cult and religion — look no further than any TEN WAYS YOU MUST WRITE, YOU FUCKING HEATHEN lists.) I’m guilty of this as anybody, to be clear! I definitely put a ring on my process and stayed married to it long beyond its value. Hell, the very start of my novel-writing career was born out of me shedding some rather foolish ideas I had about my process and the wifty head-in-clouds notions that governed it at the time.
And now I’ve used ‘process’ far too many times.
Process, process, process. Princess abcess praxis.
*clears throat, tries to escape this linguistic oubliette*
Anyway, my point is ultimately this: you’re gonna eventually hit a speedbump or even a wall where you discover that the Way You Write is simply no longer working. Why that is, I don’t know, because again, I am not you, I don’t know your life. But it’ll happen. And when that does, you have to be willing to change it up. Change when you write. Evening to morning, morning to evening. Change where you write: stop writing in that Starbucks, or fuck, start writing in a Starbucks, write in the Starbucks bathroom, get behind the counter and write your story in latte foam, go sit with a stranger at Starbucks and steal their laptop and write your story on it. Change something. Change the font. Change the genre. Genre the POV, the tense, who the protagonist is. Change the software, ditch the software and write by hand, ditch the notebook and write by carving your story into the dirt with a tame, content-to-be-clutched live raven. If you write every day, try writing only on the weekends. If you write only on the weekends, try writing every day. Write a little every day or a lot one day. Just–you know, just fuck some shit up.
Explode it. Boom.
Will it fix everything? Maybe not. Will it fix anything? Shit if I know. But it’s something to try, because —
It’s the only way you’ll know. It won’t solve every problem. It’s not a magical fix. But every story is different and some demand different processes. Further, you’re a different writer when you start a story than you were when you last finished one–guaranteed, you’re a new person. We shed our authorial skin regularly and sometimes that means you have to do some adjustments. Life is complicated. Our minds are chaos. Our biology is on a roulette wheel. Go with the flow and be willing to come at the story from different directions. Gotta be willing to get messy and get weird with it.
So, whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo or you’re just writing to write–
Go! Get out of here, you scamp. You know the task at hand.
Get messy.
Get weird.
Try new stuff.
*opens the airlock and boots you out of it*
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A small town is transformed when seven strange trees begin bearing magical apples in this masterpiece of horror from the author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents.“
Chuck Wendig is one of my very favorite storytellers. Black River Orchard is a deep, dark, luscious tale that creeps up on you and doesn’t let go.”—Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus
It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something besides the season is changing there.
Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black.
Take a bite of one of these apples, and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing—and become darker.
This is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples . . . and what’s the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful?
Even if something else is buried in the orchard besides the seeds of these extraordinary trees: a bloody history whose roots reach back to the very origins of the town.
But now the leaves are falling. The days grow darker. It’s harvest time, and the town will soon reap what it has sown.
Buy signed / personalized copy from Doylestown Bookshop
Angie says:
God I loved this so much — *wipes tear of laughter* and I needed to hear it. Now I shall go find my proverbial dynamite and blow my shit up so I can do better.
November 2, 2023 — 10:06 AM
Eva says:
Heh heh. I started nano last night NIGHT, at my desk, MY DESK…not morning not a coffee shop. Evening is typically when my brain is kablooey from my real job that pays the bills. Maybe a kablooey brain won’t be as critical as my morning brain.
Thanks for the timely post and reminder that there’s no one way, even when you do this every day.
November 2, 2023 — 11:20 AM
Stephan Foley says:
Hey Mr. Wending I’m a frustrated screenwriter who has been reading your posts. After having spent a ginormous amount of money trying to break into the field, I realized I’m not an ass kisser and the three act structure as well as the over milking of the franchises (?) as well as forgetting that the franchise frenzy started with Original Content (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Back to the Future, E.T. Close Encounters of the Third Kind) made me do an about face and back away from the pursuit of the toxic fumes of the extroverted gas party.
My short script, Dead Sober, won first place at Shriekfest in Los Angeles and then the next year made it to the top five at Screamfest. I attended this dinner in Beverly Hills and it was also a celebration of the late great, Stan Winston of Jurassic Park and Terminator fame. I didn’t win and the woman who did, didn’t bother to show up. I was elated and crushed because I didn’t want to have to stand up and give a speech but the award was designed by Stan and it was a cool hand clutching a skull. I so wanted that award. And of course, being an introvert I was struggling with introducing myself to Mr. Winston but felt I would have been a bother. Huge missed opportunity. Why can’t I have an extroverted button on the back of my neck that I can just push and get over myself?
So I’m now looking into writing books. My bent is horror. Mostly.( not even going to look up “bent” to see if I got it right). I had a bizarre childhood, raised by a father who escaped Capetown, South Africa after he killed a police officer who was attacking his friend. My father was half Indonesian and half Dutch, so he looked extremely dark, being that the Indonesian part won the battle over physical representation. He was listed as black when came through Ellis Island in 49.
He was a theater guy, being that his voice lent itself to opera and stage work. And a foghorn at night when we played freeze tag too long into the evening. He always seemed to be fleeing and when my oldest brother was born, he fled Canada and escaped to California where I was born. Did I also mention he was a violent sociopath?
He ended up working in small clubs in Los Angeles where he created a large brother of mine who seems to be cut from the same cloth and manifests in Missouri. Our Indonesian history seems to have been buried by our father mingling his D.N.A. with people who hail from the small Island of England so I currently pass as a white male, though I am proud of the smidgen of Indonesian ancestry and mention it whenever I can to anybody who’ll listen just so I can share in the path of the downtrodden a.k.a. minorities who bare the historical yoke of racial oppression that is currently being buried in the backyard of this great country.
Anyhow, my dad worked for a mob boss in San Diego named Joey Dagastino. Not sure if spelled that correctly. We went out to his mansion which is , as you would imagine, interiors bathed in vomit worthy reds and greens and things that people of that ilk would think reeked of wealth and pedigree.
I remember my brothers and I stumbling about this mess of a structure, as if a dying vampire tried to have a go at life one more time before death. Statues and pink flamingos and a fountain out back.. We found a Batman helmet and being that that was still on t.v. we relished being this iconic superhero, passing the helmet around, as we wandered about this graveyard of taste. Hard to be Batman, when there are two other annoying siblings vying for hero time as we knew we would have to leave the helmet there because who would steal such a thing from a mob boss’s son?
Anyhow, my dad ended up being the guy who collected money for his new found Goomba. My brother, who is a Frankenstein version of a sociopath, being that he is 6″5″ and violent. His mother and my dad had a quickie which spawned this version of my dad that drives huge earth movers and loves beer. I abandoned him after my last visit when he started to strangle his teenage son and then when I pulled his hands from his throat, turned them on his wife. We spent the next day shopping at Walmart, looking for gifts for his son, who had this beautiful purple bruised necklace around his neck. Everyone acted as if this was normal. The last night, he was drunk and accused me of sleeping with his wife and I chose to get drunk just to survive the last night under the thrall of this hurricane of dysfunction and menace. He is no longer in my life.
The reason I mention this as that his mom would talk about the fact that my dad and she would drive around L.A. with a loaded gun in the glove compartment, searching for people that owed Joey money. She was witness to the beatings, which my dad seemed to take joy in. He was a semi pro boxer back in S.A. and had fists shaped like kettle bells which were attached to a barrel chest and long arms. Just seeing him coming for you must have sent his victims into a frenzy of panic and fear. And then he would come home late at night. Fun, fun fun.
So I know what it’s like waiting for a monster to come down the hallway. So instead of following in his path I turned to books and blossomed as a shy, book reading nerd, who dabbled in really bad magic shows and puppetry. I am proud of my nerd side just as I am of my Indonesian heritage. I feel that this life path has endowed me with a gift of sharing what it’s like to sell tickets to your own beatings. Step right up.
I am currently rewriting Dead Sober as a short story, including two other horror scripts as kind of a collection of short horror. I have joined Interlochen college for the arts and am working with Megan Baxter to turn this script into a story. If I could bend your ear from time to time about craft and such, I would appreciate it. I am going to buy your current novel and am reading your posts with a new focus, having spent too many years in the Gulag of screenwriting. I like the way my creativity careens about the imaginative landscape like an A.T.V. filled with the energy of a young Golden Retriever.
Sincerely, Stephan Alexander Foley
P.S. Mr.Joey mob guy was arrested back in the eighties for running sweat shops in and around San Diego.
November 2, 2023 — 12:06 PM
Ygraine says:
I read your comment and – what a ride! Breathless. Can’t wait to read more of your stuff….!
November 2, 2023 — 3:02 PM
Stephan Foley says:
Hey Ygraine. I think you were talking to me? If you were, thanks. I lived with the man for 18 years and it it left me with an incredible amount P.T.S.D. and a lot of money spent on therapy. Which I think helps deal with the monsters lurking on the edge of night. I just went into my head and sat at my mental projector and dreamed. Are you a writer? Interesting name. I was dusting off my old moniker of Horror Buddha. Might start using it again.
November 3, 2023 — 8:43 AM
Will Humphreys says:
Almost to the end of the audiobook of BRO. Fabulous novel. I will be writing a review. Cheers to whatever processes birthed that crazy and wondrous fruit.
November 2, 2023 — 12:27 PM
Ygraine says:
Your writing never fails to resuscitate me….I feel like a new person.
November 2, 2023 — 2:57 PM
Judy Walker says:
*Semantic Satiation* [semantic satiation, semantic satiation, semantic satiation]
She mutters, as she readies the dynamite. 🙂
November 2, 2023 — 8:57 PM
Ridley Kemp says:
This is probably ridiculously obvious, but I use Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards for this very purpose. A random-ish suggesting to change the POV can make all the difference in the world.
November 5, 2023 — 4:00 PM
Janine G Stinson says:
Stephan, yours is a life full of story fodder. I wish you success.
November 6, 2023 — 1:49 PM
Stephan Foley says:
It’s tough because I’ve gone from three act structure “EXT. DAY-BACKYARD” of screenwriting, clipped, brief descriptions. And now I’m working with Megan out Interlochen and I’m having to start over again. Just the idea that a paragraph can be used as a braking system or and accelerator, depending on how it’s stacked was a revelation to me. And it’s like”duh”. Of course it is. It’s like the story is almost written but I have to stay with the foundation, desperately wanting to move on to the second story. I feel like I’m learning construction and I have to wait for the city to come out and inspect my work.
I try and write in different places. So far, mostly in the kitchen when drinking coffee and cleaning up after my roommate who has mental delay and is on the autism scale. Sometimes in my room. I have a Freewrite which is a nifty computer/typewriter and with my lap desk in tow I’ll park and write in my car, though I’m not exactly a fan of the homeless buzzing my car. Kind of not a great way to write. Can’t really leave the windows open.
November 6, 2023 — 2:05 PM