Author: terribleminds (page 387 of 464)

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July 17, 2012 / 56 Comments

Amongst The New Pulpeteers (Or, “What The Good Goddamn Is ‘New Pulp,’ Anyway?”)

I don’t know what New Pulp is.

But I think I’m it.

Or, in it. Or, part of it. Maybe I’m soaking in it?

Whatever.

A brief hop-skip-and-a-jump history:

The Guardian shouts out the idea of “New Pulp,” shouts out me and Adam Christopher as part of it.

Then, article author Damien G. Walter takes a look at New Pulp at his blog. (There you’ll find a bevy of links and definitions attempting to figure out just what the hell it even is.)

Yesterday, Do Some Damage talked up the notion of New Pulp.

And here we are.

So, just what is New Pulp? By my meager definition, at least?

New Pulp Cares Not For Your Mortal “Genres”

I’ve long admired writers who bend genres to their whims instead of being bent to the strictures of genre — a guy like Joe Lansdale is all over the fucking map in terms of what he writes. Everything from crime thrillers to sci-fi to satire to Southern Gothic to Weird Westerns to whatever the hell wants to come out of his head at any given moment. Sometimes this turbid genre muddiness is found in a single book. Hell, look at Stephen King’s Gunslinger series. What is that? Horror? A little. Fantasy? A little. Western? A little. It’s its own thing, that series. You might describe it using one of my favorite non-words: “unpindownable.”

A New Pulp writer doesn’t know what to call himself. He can’t say, “I’m a thriller writer,” or, “I write crime.”

He just writes. Whatever crazy-ass shit enters his head goes to the page one way or another.

It isn’t just psychic dinosaurs. Or noir tales of moral doom. Or sex, or heroism, or Batman, or serial killers, or steampunk assassins or any of that stuff. It isn’t about what’s written. It’s about what can be written.

New Pulp says, “Fuck genre.” Then it clubs genre on the head like a sailor clubbing an unruly tuna.

New Pulp Has A Hot Flush Of Literary Injection

For all the wars about “genre” versus “literary” (a bullshit line in the sand if ever there was one), I like to think that New Pulp plays a little loosey-goosey with language and story — I sense a faint poetic throughline in New Pulp. In the sense that jazz is a kind of ordered chaos, New Pulp brings a level of noise to the signal — a little messy, a little unkempt, a little wild-eyed with the metaphors and the structure.

I don’t know that the art or poetry is in there on purpose or whether it shows up unbidden.

But I think it’s in there just the same. Unsummoned but present.

New Pulp Is Jackrabbit Fast

New Pulp moves fast. Production. Creation. Fresh fast content. I hate to call it “fast food” — that’s a metaphor that for me doesn’t hold up. Fast food is notoriously shitty: low quality, high churn, “cheap” instead of “inexpensive.”

Better metaphor: food trucks. New Pulp is food trucks. Still fast food, just not in the traditional sense.

It’s street food, but street food produced fast and reliably and with a little of that… sense of poetry and playfulness I mentioned. It’s cheap art. Beautiful trash. And it comes out lickity-quick.

New Pulp Is About Writers Writing

New Pulp is as much about the writer as about what’s written. And the writers of New Pulp are, I suspect, workers. Meaning, it’s nose to the grindstone time — these are authors who aren’t writing only to be read but who are producing in order to pay bills, feed families, keep the goddamn lights on. They’re here to get shit done. A blue collar ethos is on the table in terms of New Pulp, I think.

Which means that New Pulp is a whole lot about the attitude.

New Pulp Refuses Rules, Defies Definition

As much as I’m trying to define it, it keeps squirming out of my grip like a python lubed with Astroglide.

The very nature of New Pulp is that it doesn’t want to be kept in any one box, and maybe that’s its most telling definition of all — that is has no definition. And I like that. I like that a whole lot.

I like when people ask me about Joe Lansdale, I can find something they like which lets me recommend him honestly. I like that when they ask me about Blackbirds I can find something they dig — horror, fantasy, female protagonist, whatever — that maybe gets them interested.

I like that New Pulp doesn’t want to wear any one hat and thinks it looks good in all of them, goddamnit.

Of course, what the hell do I know?

You tell me. What’s New Pulp to you? What should it be? What can it be?

July 17, 2012 / 37 Comments

Ask A Wendigo: “Just What The Fuck Do You Do, Anyway?”

Time then for another installment of, Ask A Wendigo. Or WWCWD. Or Interrogate The Penmonkey. Or Hide The Salami. Wait, that last one might be different? Whatever.

Want to ask me a question about writing or storytelling? Then here’s the link.

Once again, two related questions came in around the same time:

The Mechanical Doctor Anonymous asked:

“Chuck, something that I’ve been wondering about is the mechanics of your writing. I generally start out with pen on paper. I do a little light revision on that paper before typing it into the computer. From there, I save successive drafts as separate files until I’m done. At that point, I keep the separate files, but get rid of the original paper draft. What does your process look like, and how much do you keep after you’re done?”

And Mister Crankypants asked:

“On the subject of “how much do you write every day” your answer is superficial. 2-4k of new content. That’s, what, a few hours, right? Then there’s the blog stuff — maybe a couple more. Take time off for lunch, take a shit, or a shower, whatever. Before you know it the whole day is gone. When does the stone polishing happen? What about the 150k words you wrote months ago & have forgotten about completely? When is there time for that? What about planning? How to you keep track of it all?”

To me, both questions are asking a fairly straightforward — and completely complicated — question. That question is: how do you write? Or, just what the fuck do you do around here, anyway?

Setting aside all the non-writery stuff I do (hover over Twitter like a hungry fly, play with my 1-year-old, stalk and kill mutant caribou, drink coffee, drink gin, gloomily masturbate), I suppose I can get into the nitty-gritty of my overall “process.” But here is where I must throw up (*barf*) a warning:

YOUR PROCESS DOES NOT NEED TO LOOK LIKE MY PROCESS.

What you do needs to be what you do. For me, writing advice is always and forever just a polite suggestion, not a gospel carved in a brick which is then used to bludgeon you about the head and neck.

If something works for you, adopt it.

If something does not work, discard it.

That said, let’s rock.

The Out-Of-Control Idea Factory That Is My Brain

I’ve said similarly before, but the big question one should ask an author is not Where do you get your ideas? but rather, How the hell do you make your ideas stop? Because my brain is like a moon colony force-field constantly being pinged by fiery spears of idea debris. I can’t stop the ideas.

The spigot is busted. The water just keeps running.

I take any ideas that survive the Identification and Scrutinization Process (which is to say, I take a long stare into the idea’s dark heart to see if there’s anything there or if it’s just a hollow wiffle ball rattling around my skull-cage), and I write those down. This is a somewhat broken part of my process because I fail to have one consistent place where I organize this material. Sometimes the phone. Other times a notebook. Occasionally I input ’em right into Word. I completely fail at having my ideas wrangled into a single enclosed space. I do eventually rustle ’em up and throw ’em together, but it takes me far too long to do so.

The good news here is, ideas that continue to bubble up to the surface regardless of their scattershot rag-tag nature are usually the ideas that matter most to me — they demand my attention instead of scurrying away.

The Chalk Outline

I outline because I must, not because I particularly enjoy it. I am a pantser by heart, a plotter by necessity — without outlines, my novels spiral drunkenly toward utter incoherence, breaking like a dropped cookie.

The way I outline is different for every book, but here’s the general gist of it:

I figure out my major story turns, broken out into acts.

Then I start jotting down plot beats — this happens, then this happen, then that, then this. Maria dies. The unicorn ascends to the Aluminum Throne. John steals the Camero. The end. How many of these beats I outline isn’t preset; I just keep going until the thing is done. The beats are generally large and sequence-shaped rather than small and scene-flavored. The key thing is to make sure I hit all my tentpoles — meaning, those plot events that are needed for the story to stand up and not collapse upon itself.

Sometimes I use spreadsheets.

I don’t generally outline much in the way of character or dialogue or even the bigger, broader story — because I have a hard time with plot, it’s important that I get the story sequence down right from the get-go.

Those other pieces I prefer to discover within the outline. Though once in a while I’ll write down three key character elements that mark the arc — meaning, the character’s transition from A–>B–>C.

I outline whenever I have time. Afternoons, nights, weekends. I often outline a number of novels far ahead of the writing; I’ve long had a rough outline for the third Miriam Black book, The Cormorant, f’rex.

The Actual Writing

For writing, I tend to begin at 6AM and end around noon.

As noted, I write 2-4k per day, most days. Toward the end of a project I may see as much as 10k in a day.

I write the actual book inside Microsoft Word, though my (admittedly slow) transition to Mac may see me soon writing a first draft in Scrivener and then porting over to Word for edits.

(If I’m writing a script, I use Final Draft.)

I have to unearth the “proper” font for every project. It’s one of my few writing rituals.

I write nothing in pen because my handwriting looks like the bloody footprints of a wounded sparrow. Or, if you prefer a different metaphor: the sloppy hieroglyphics of a meth-addled Pharaoh. YOU DECIDE.

Upon each new day of writing I like to read over the last scene or chapter just to freshen myself up. At the end of each day of writing, I tend to jot down a couple quick notes for the following day’s efforts.

I also like to stop writing in the middle of a scene instead of at the end. I used to try to get to a conclusion point but I find cutting in the middle gives me unexpected energy to jump back into it.

I work in one file on my actual computer, but I save multiple copies across DropBox, one per day of writing. I also have a backup drive that my file goes to. If I’m feeling particularly paranoid, I’ll email it to myself.

I also save obsessively. Every five minutes I hit the save hotkey. This, erm, “saves” me a lot of frustration.

I do not write new blog content during the week, usually. That’s reserved for the weekend.

To Fix It, You Must Break It

That is a thing I believe about writing and, in fact, most things: to fix something, you sometimes gotta break it. And editing is often about breaking a thing apart — I realize I’m repeating myself, but it’s my bloggy and I’ll reiterate if I wanna: writing is when you make the words, editing is when you make them not shitty.

I edit in the afternoons. A couple-few hours every day, provided I have a project to edit. I do not edit a story as I go, but only after it’s complete. (Once in a while if I identify a problem very early on I’ll do some major rewriting before I finish, but for the most part I find to be productive I have to churn and burn through the draft before I get to the editing phase, where the story is truly born.)

Ideally, I let the story sit for a month or three.

At that point I tend to do a pass on my own, and get a second draft out of it.

I then move that draft onto… well, whoever. Readers. Editor(s). Agent. My toddler. Your Mom. Etc.

I do my own notes and expect notes back using Word’s Track Changes function. Comment bubbles and in-draft redlines are key to my process. No word processor I’ve found has this function down outside Word.

How badly I edit the story really just depends on the story. Blackbirds saw years of writing and rewriting, but when I actually had a finished draft, very little of it changed from that draft to the one that published.

But Popcorn, the first book of my upcoming YA trilogy (“Heartland”), saw a year’s worth of rewriting. I wrote it the month before my son was born, and spent the rest of the year hammering it into shape at the behest of my agent. And the edits I’m sure are far from done — I’ve got new edits coming in from my editor at Amazon Children’s Publishing. (And I’m very excited to see those.)

Post-Coital Shame

A project is never done but there comes a point when I say, “It has to be done whether I like it that way or not,” and deadlines really help to form that critical and creative Rubicon.

When I’m done, I send it off to whoever needs it (agent, editor, a cat in a spaceship orbiting Pluto), and that’s that. I feel a wave of excitement and triumph and sometimes reward myself with “something” (new music, ice cream, a cat in a spaceship orbiting Pluto), and then somewhere thereafter I feel a sense of post-masturbatory shame — like, a great yawning emptiness brimming with the ghosts of shame and guilt and creative undoing, all of which are nicely mitigated by me going back to the beginning (idea! outline! writing! editing!) and riding the storytelling carousel around for another go.

*insert creepy calliope music here*

And that’s it.

That’s my process.

Every book is different, of course.

And every writer is different.

Now go and find your own process. Plant a flag. Buy intellectual real estate.

And dance upon the gassy corpses of anybody who said you can’t do this.

Because fuck those people right in the face-holes.

July 16, 2012 / 11 Comments

Things That Are Happening Now Or That Will Happen Soon: An Update!

Time to wiggle my toes in the waters of Wuzza, Wooza, Wendig?

Here’s what’s going on:

Sabrina Ogden is one of the nicest and most genuine people I have ever encountered in this life (and likely in any other). She’s also a darling book blogger and an all-around wonderful human being. At present, Sabrina needs surgery on her jaw that health insurance will not pay for, and so a bunch of authors have joined an anthology to help her get what she needs. I’m in there, along with folks like Tommy Pluck, Stephen Blackmoore, Dan O’Shea, Joelle Charbonneau, Steve Weddle, and others. The anthology is up at IndieGoGo — “Feeding Kate” — and money raised will go toward paying for the surgery. Money raised in excess will go toward a Lupus charity. Please consider giving even a fiver (which earns you an e-copy of this anthology). Great stories in your hand and a great person helped by your effort.

Have you met Mookie Pearl? Mookie the Mook! Mookie the Meat-Man! You can read a little bit about him here — he’s the protagonist of my short story, “Charcuterie,” which shows up in an upcoming anthology called “The New Hero, Volume I.” Ah, but there’s more. Mookie’s also front and center of my next Angry Robot release, The Blue Blazes, which drops sometime next year. (That’s Mookie at the top of the page; art by the mighty Gene Ha.)

Hey! Look! A new series from Abaddon — Gods & Monsters — with the first novel by yours truly. It’s called Unclean Spirits and you can read more about it riiiiiiight here.

Bait Dog is done and in reading/editing — so far, I think I’m on track to have the book into backers hands by the end of this month, unless everybody comes back to me and tells me it’s a big bag of awful. (If that happens, I’ll spend a few days sobbing into my Hello Kitty pillow then I’ll get back on the hell-beast I call my steed and we’ll ride forth toward a new plan.) Physical copies of the book will take a little more time, obviously, as summoning a digital object into meatspace is no swift task.

Mockingbird, the follow-up to Blackbirds, hits very soon — end of August, as a matter of fact. First review is in the door! The British Fantasy Society says: “There’s a particularly inventive killer and some especially vulnerable girls in danger, and Wendig grabs you by the face and drags you through those 384 pages with the pacing of a craftsman.” You can preorder here at Amazon — other pre-order links as I get ’em.

Next appearance: WorldCon in Chicago (Aug 30 – Sept 3rd), with I believe a book signing at The Book Cellar that Friday night alongside Gwenda Bond, Kim Curran and Adam Christopher!

Then I’m at Crossroads Writer’s Conference in Macon, GA from Oct. 5th to the 7th.

Then I’m at Storyworld in Los Angeles from Oct. 17th to the 19th —

And I remain in LA for the Writer’s Digest Conference West from the 19th to the 21st.

Just in case you missed my promo fusillade: my new writing e-book is out! 500 Ways To Tell A Better Story. $2.99.

July 13, 2012 / 57 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Android And The Wondering Chamber

Last week’s challenge? “The Fairy Tale Upgrade.”

A few weeks back I was playing with that random sentence generator used in another flash fiction challenge, and I got what was, for me, a truly fascinating story-inspiring sentence.

That sentence:

“The noticed android walks past a wondering chamber.”

I don’t know what the fuck that means, but I like it.

So, your flash fiction challenge should utilize this sentence.

In fact, it should be your opening sentence.

After that, you’ve got up to 1000 words to tell the story, whatever that story may be.

Post online at your space, then drop a link here so we can all see it.

Due by Friday July 20th at noon EST.

July 12, 2012 / 17 Comments

Lisa Cron: The Terribleminds Interview

Lisa Cron wants to help you write better not just by teaching you better skills but by cracking open your brain and showing you how it’s wired to tell those stories. Since I’m all about smashing open people’s heads with a rock (though Lisa assures me that’s not how it’s done), here she sits down for an interview. Wired for Story now available! Check out www.wiredforstory.com and seek her on Twitter (@LisaCron).

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

Many years ago a friend of mine was traveling with a buddy. They were down on their luck, and often got so low on money that they only had enough for gas. They never went hungry though, thanks to a tip they got from an aging hobo. Every night they’d pull up behind a hotel banquet room at about ten and go into the kitchen. They’d say that they were on the road and had run out of dog food, and the stores were closed, and could they just have some scraps. It always worked. No one wants a dog to go hungry.

Why do you tell stories?

Because people listen to stories. They can choose whether or not to listen to facts or headlines or “truths” but stories? They can’t help it.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Remember, the reader believes that everything in your story is there on a need-to-know basis, so they assume that everything you tell them is critically important to their understanding of what’s going on. They trust you implicitly on this. That means that when you tell them things that they don’t actually need to know, they’re going to spend time inventing reasons why you might have told them, which means that pretty soon they’re reading an entirely different story than the one you’re writing. And as soon as they figure that out, they defenestrate* the book and go see what’s on TV.

* Oh, one more thing, the bigger the word, the less emotion it conveys — not to mention meaning. Handy case in point: defenesrate, otherwise known as “chucking something out of a window.” I always wanted a real reason to use that word. Thanks!

What’s the worst piece of writing/storytelling advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t outline. If trust your muse and just write, the story will appear.

What goes into writing a strong character? Bonus round: give an example of a strong character.

A strong character is a character who’s conflicted, which means you need to figure out what issue they’re struggling with, internally, before you begin writing. The goal is to dig deep in their backstory, but with the guidance of a treasure map, not by tearing up the whole damn yard. You’re looking for the specific issue that’s holding them back, not everything that’s ever happened to them.

You want to pinpoint two things: First, the event in their past that knocked their worldview out of alignment, triggering the internal issue that keeps them from achieving their goal. Second, the inception of their desire for the goal itself, which tells us what achieving it really means to them.

Only then can you construct a plot that will compel them to either deal with their issue, or give up. Which is why digging into their past is so important. After all, everything a character does is based on how they see the world (just like us, in real life). We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. So knowing how they see the world – and where and why their interpretation is off — not only allows you to write a strong character, but to create a compelling plot that will force said character to actually be strong.

And – this is the brilliant thing – it will tell you what it is they have to learn at the end in order to succeed. In other words, their “Aha!” moment – which is ultimately what the story is about. As T.S. Eliot so elegantly said, “The end of our exploring will be to arrive at where we started, and to know the place for the first time.” A strong character learns to let go of how he or she saw things, and see it fresh, with new eyes.

A perfect example of a strong character who does exactly that, although he seems utterly genteel in present company, is George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!

Books: The book I’ve read recently that grabbed me from the get-go and never let up is a debut novel called Cannibal Reign by Thomas Koloniar. I loved it because beneath its pounding post-apocalyptic thriller heart, beats a nuanced novel about what it means to be human when all bets are off. It’s a visceral ride, and one that allowed me to experience just how precarious our social contract really is. It had never dawned on me that because men are physically bigger and stronger than women, should society collapse, women could easily become fair game. Sure, I might have thought about it, but this novel made me feel it, and that made all the difference. Yep, gonna finally take a self-defense class.

Movies suck. It’s been years since I saw a movie so absorbing that I forgot I was watching a movie. And DON’T get me started on The Avengers; there’s something scary afoot that such a ham-handed, story-less, pointless, ultimately bland-if-you-think-about-it movie would do so phenomenally well. I’m really curious about it. It has no story. It’s about a bad guy who wants power – more power than anyone has ever had, we’re told. Power to do what? To what end? Why? No clue. And the so-called “Avengers”? They never risk anything, nothing ever costs them anything, they don’t learn anything, and everything always works out, so who cares? And the CGI? Sheesh. Half the time I thought I was watching an upgraded episode of The Power Rangers.

These days, I think the best visual storytelling around is in long form TV — The Sopranos in particular – it doesn’t get better than that. I watch it over and over, and every time I see something new. The third and fourth seasons of The Wire are brilliant, (although you still have to watch it from the start for it to make sense). The best current show, I think, is Homeland. Here’s hoping it has a long run.

You’ve been in publishing and in Hollywood: what’s the biggest thing that stories get wrong? What should stories do better?

The biggest thing writers get wrong is that they mistake the plot for the story. In other words, they believe that the external things that happen are what the story is about. The truth is that the external things only happen in order to force the protagonist to deal with an inner issue that’s keeping her from getting what she wants and thus solving the story problem. The moment of realization – the “aha” moment — is what the story is actually about.

I can’t tell you how many manuscripts I’ve read where if someone asked me what it was about, all I could say would be, “It’s about 300 pages.” Not to mention how many screenplays I’ve read where I’ve thought of the author, “Okay, this is the person who’s never seen a movie.” It goes back to Flannery O’Connor’s observation: “I find most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.” My goal is to change that.

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

My favorite word is clobber. I just love how it sounds. Especially in this poem, which my best friend’s entire first grade class collectively wrote for their school paper, The Dixie Canyon Chronicle:

Coconuts, coconuts in a tree

One fell down and clobbered me

As for curse words, I love them all. I love swearing. My favorite? Is fuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK! a word?

And can I add that when used as a verb, fuck is also one of my favorite words? Substituting the phrase “make love” makes my skin crawl. Ditto using “passed away” for dead. Words pack power, to edge away from that power is to edge away from the really interesting part of life, the part we can’t really tame or domesticate. That’s why I don’t trust people who make a point of never swearing.

**Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)**

I love red wine best. But it can’t be sweet at all. I loathe sweet drinks, even a hint of sweet turns me off. Someone gave me a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, and while it was real smooth, it had a slight underlying sweetness that made me crave rot gut (not that I’ve ever had rot gut, mind you, but I watched enough Westerns to know).

But when it comes to mood altering substances, my drink of choice is caffeine. I could easily give up alcohol, but I couldn’t live without coffee — the darker the better.

What skills do you bring to help the humans win the inevitable war against the robots?

I don’t rust.

Wired For Story attempts to train storytellers in “cognitive storytelling strategies” to help them tell better stories by essentially appealing to the crazy science of the brain. What drove you to dive deep into the gray matter of this topic?

Great question! I’d been working with writers for decades, formulating my theory about story, but back then I used “wired” as a metaphor. Sure, I believed it was fact, but I couldn’t prove it. Meanwhile, I’d always been interested in neuroscience, and then suddenly one day every article I read seemed to relate to what I’d always known about how story affects the brain – and even better, why. It was the biggest “aha” moment of my life. In one fell swoop the theory I’d spent years developing, honing and sharpening was revealed as fact. We are wired for story. Understanding what a story actually is and why our brain evolved to respond to it is a game changer for writers.

After my epiphany, I dove into neuroscience in a big way, reading everything I could get my hands on. It’s unbelievably fascinating because, as that movie producer at the beginning of Citizen Kane barks, “There’s nothing more interesting than finding out what makes people tick.” That’s exactly what neuroscience is doing. And you know the really crazy thing? Neuroscience is proving what writers have always known: that the pen is mightier than the sword. Writers are the most powerful people in the world.

What surprises you most about the human brain?

What surprised – and delighted — me most about the human brain is that feelings are physical, not ephemeral, and evolved as the basis of how we determine what things actually mean, and every action we take – “reason” then plays catch up. And here’s the kicker: this is a good thing, rather than what we’ve been taught to believe — that emotion undermines reason. As science writer Jonah Lehrer says, “If it weren’t for our emotions, reason wouldn’t exist at all.”

You can’t imagine the wild glee I felt when I learned this – especially given that our society was built on marginalizing women for being “emotional” whereas real men never let emotion cloud their rational, logical “accurate” judgment. Take that, boys!

And of course this brings us right back to story: just like life, all story is emotion based. Story is about what it costs the protagonist – emotionally – to overcome the internal issue that’s keeping her from attaining her goal, and not about the buildings and bridges she has to blow up to do it.

There exists a glut of writing advice books out there (I should know, having clogged the pipes with my own suspect opinions): why should writers take a second look at yours?

Oh what the hell, I might as well say it straight out: I think every writer should read my book first, before they read any other book. Why? Because it’s not about writing, it’s about story. The trouble with starting with any of the other writing books out there is they tend to focus in on the mechanics of language and writing, or the glory of unleashing your creativity, or both. There’s nothing wrong with that per se (I love your take on writing), but in so many of those books there’s the tacit implication that by learning to “write well” you’ll know how to write a story. It couldn’t be less true.

Sure, learning to write well is a good thing, but only once a writer really understands what a story is – I’m not talking story-structure, mind you – but story itself. Knowing what the reader’s brain is really responding to when they can’t put the book down, and how to craft a story that delivers it, is the most important thing a writer can learn. It’s also the first thing a writer should learn.

Right now, no one else is writing about what I do – in fact, on one else is teaching it. I just finished teaching a nine month master class in novel writing at UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program – these were accomplished writers who’d spent years studying writing, including one who’d just received an MFA from one of the country’s most prestigious universities – and the thing I heard most often was that they wished they’d read my book before they started writing. Especially the woman who’d just gotten an MFA.

Sheesh, self promotion has never come easily to me, and I’m not saying I’m brilliant or anything, just that I’ve stumbled onto something that no one else is talking about – and run with it.

Do you plan to take the storytelling lessons learned and apply them to your own work? Will we see a novel or a film from you?

Maybe! But for now, there’s nothing I love more than working with writers, and helping them wrestle the story in their head onto the page.

What’s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?

I want to take my message about how the brain processes story far and wide. It’s such a game changer, and my goal is to help writers understand what story is before they start writing. The scary thing is that right now, it’s advertisers, right wing politicians and televangelists who really understand the power of story, and how to wield it. I want to change the equation, so that many more writers, the nonprofit world and politicians who need to learn how to use story (Democrats, are you listening?) have that same power.

July 11, 2012 / 47 Comments

Transmissions From Toddler-Town: “Feed Me, Seymour”

Baby B-Dub continues to be an adorable human tornado. He is in many ways the butterfly that spawns the storm and the storm the butterfly spawns. He is chaos theory. He is delight.

I mean, he’s not always delight.

There’s the separation anxiety, and the teething, and the moodiness.

You know. The toddler stuff.

But one of the fun things now is feeding him food that is adult or almost adult in origin — stuff that doesn’t need to be pureed or chopped quite so finely, stuff that he can gnaw through even with his meager two bottom teeth. Sometimes, the kid is a bonafide eating machine.

So, I come to you Parental Humans Of The Internet and I ask:

What do you (or did you) feed your toddlers?

I’m looking for recipes, if anybody is willing to share.