Category: The Ramble (page 133 of 478)

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

* * *

PATIENCE WILL SAVE YOUR ASS

I originally got the idea for this book back in the misty Before Times of 2013 or thereabouts, when the world was slightly simpler. Colours back then were brighter. Birdsong was louder. People went about their business without worrying if they and everyone they loved were under imminent risk of re-enacting Sarah Connor’s dream sequence from T2 because a demented elderly version of Veruca Salt had thrown a spitball at the wrong world leader’s head.

Setting the scene, folks. It’s hard to remember, but there was a Before Time.

In those days, before the seas bent and the oceans drank Melmac, Twitter was a lot more fun. We talked about a lot of stuff that wasn’t vitally important or vitally depressing. One afternoon, a fellow writer friend of mine, the lovely and talented Helena Bell, took a poll asking what she should write about next. The choices, so far as I recall, included:

– Elephants

– Radium poisoning

– Painting

Me being the sassy little contrarian I have always been and will probably be unto my gravestone, I said, “Well, why not all of them?”

And then the idea alarm went off in my head. It sounds a lot like the “Ironside” sting from Kill Bill, for the record.

“… Wait. Shit, no, hang on, I think I want to do that. Can I do that?”

I studied History & Archaeology at university, and my subconscious is a drifting garbage barge of weird historical facts. Occasionally my brain, gull-like, will swoop down and pluck one of these tasty noms half-buried out of the muck. If I’m lucky, it may come up with a couple. Occasionally I think I can make them work together and after much gnashing of teeth and weeping of blood realize I can’t. Seagulls aren’t great gourmands, unless they’re some kind of crazy Ratatouille seagull working part-time in a fancy cocktail bar and boy, that might even be more unsanitary than a rat chef.

In this case, it was a little of both. I knew about the story of Topsy, the elephant electrocuted at Coney Island in 1903. I knew about the Radium Girls, the factory workers of New Jersey & Illinois who succumbed to radiation sickness after their employers let them ingest toxic radium-laced paint in the of their jobs. I had seen elephants wield paintbrushes in their trunks as deftly and delicately as any human artist, trained to paint ‘art’ for tourists and zoo-goers. All these things bubbled to the surface and combined and I knew I had the seeds of a story.

But it wasn’t enough yet. Cool ideas are great. In the age of the Internet, they’re frickin’ everywhere. You can’t click an Atlas Obscura article without getting bombarded by interesting facts that would make a bomb-ass story handled the right way. Here’s the thing, though: That doesn’t always mean you should write a story about them. There has to be more to a story than HERE IS A FACT WITH A HASTILY GLUED-TOGETHER STORY THROWN OVER IT, ISN’T THAT RAD? I’ve read those stories before, and while I get the impulse, nay, the need, to turn your favorite fact about Teddy Roosevelt into a story, a lot of times they’re rushed and aren’t great. The idea has to work in service of the story, not the other way around.

I wrote a couple of early drafts, and they were garbage. The seagull/giant industrial ACME magnet/Katamari of my brain had not collected the right themes, throughlines, and critical plot mass to turn it from a weird mishmash of historical facts into a story worth writing. So I trunked it. I waited. I let it ferment like the finest Kentucky moonshine, the choicest prison hooch. Either it would turn into something, I figured, or it wouldn’t.

it took THREE YEARS for things to finally come together. Three. Fuckin’. Years.

Writing is not a job for the impatient, but I try not to let that stop me. Because then I sat down and wrote it all in two weeks and it was done and it wasn’t a short story, it was a BOOK, and no extensive rewrites were called for. But it definitely taught me to let things mature in their own damn time, rather than rushing out something sloppy and forgettable just to have it done.

That brain-seagull makes a mean cocktail if you let it, turns out.

RAY CATS. JUST—RAY CATS.

A few things finally pushed the initial idea over the edge from “weird and mildly interesting mashup of historical events I desperately want to write about” into a shape and a form that didn’t look like it had gone through a telepod making out with a camel spider. One was the world at large turning from “kinda fucked, needs work” to “WELCOME TO YOUR 24/7 WAKING NIGHTMARE.” I dunno about you, Dear Reader, but it has made me dedicate a lot more thinky-thoughts to the old classics: The pervasive evils of capitalism, crushing feelings of powerlessness, women’s anger, and acts of rebellion and solidarity. Stuff that was already there in massive quanitites, but which suddenly demands a lot more space in my brain a lot more of the time. I also read a really great book on the history of uranium by Tom Zoellner, which you should pick up even if you think you don’t give a good god-damn about uranium. I didn’t! And now look at me, married to a hunk of uranium ore.

Zoellner’s book has a chapter on the ongoing issue scientists have come up against in leaving a warning sign for future generations regarding the heaps and heaps of nuclear waste we still have no solution to discarding other than “I dunno, grab a shovel, whatever.” You’ve probably heard about it before, but if not, it’s a deeply interesting topic that gets everybody from folklorists to anthropologists to historians to linguists involved in its orbit.

Oh, and color-changing cats. Which is the bit I didn’t previously know about, because we don’t talk about just how brilliantly batshit cuckoo bananapants some of the solutions posited have been.

At some point during the early ‘80s—when, I might point out, there was a rather heroic amount of cocaine floating around in the atmosphere—a French writer and an Italian semiotician put their heads together and came up with an idea. Simplified, they figured that humans fuckin’ love them some kitty cats and that doesn’t look likely to change at any time in either the near or distant future. If scientists could somehow breed cats whose coats changed colour when in proximity to radioactive materials, the story of these “ray cats” could be passed down in humanity’s folkloric tradition. Stories and songs would spread the legend and the warning, outlasting scientific knowledge and maybe even civilizations. There’s a great and deeply amusing little documentary about it at The Ray Cat Solution ; it is totally worth 15 minutes of your grim daily slog.

For a number of reasons not even including the part where flashy colour-changing cats would have to be genetically engineered, the whole thing has never seriously caught on with other semioticians. But coming across the tale of the Ray Cat Solution made me think about a lot of things—how we twist stories to our use, how we use animals, how the stories that make up history are passed down and how they shape the narratives of our cultures. Boom, as they say, went the dynamite.

EDISON DIDN’T HAVE A DANG THING TO DO WITH TOPSY, BUT AS USUAL HAS BEEN POSTHUMOUSLY TAKING CREDIT FOR IT

Everything you know about Thomas Edison’s involvement in Topsy’s death is probably horseshit.

The story most of us know is more or less this one: During the War of the Currents, Thomas Alva Edison, noted asshole inventor and archfiend rival slash fucker-overer of Nikola Tesla, electrocuted a disgraced circus elephant—Topsy—and filmed the entire thing to prove that alternating current was way more dangerous than direct. Parts of this are absolutely true. Edison was an A-plus, major league asshole and all-around bad human being who screwed many over during his long and illustrious career. In 1888 he oversaw the electrocution of four calves and a horse at his West Orange laboratory and made sure the members of the press were there to witness it as well. It was cruel and self-serving and the experiment was also used in future development of the electric chair. All well-known, nasty Edison stuff.

Here’s the catch: Topsy’s execution didn’t take place for another fifteen years, well after the War of the Currents and Edison’s crusade had petered out. As far as anyone can tell, Thomas Edison wasn’t even in the crowd that day to see her die. Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, the two showboating owners of Topsy and Coney Island’s then under-construction Luna Park, saw a way to both get rid of the troublesome elephant and drum up publicity for the park’s opening. The cultural confusion arises from Edison’s past as an ardent animal-fryer, combined with the fact that the film crew who shot what would later be known as Electrocuting an Elephant worked for the Edison Film Company.

So, yeah, Edison was a dick, but in this one instance his dickishness had nothing to do with whether or not Topsy lived or died. Other factors and other men signed her sad fate.

RADIUM CONDOMS ARE A THING THAT EXISTED, AND YOUR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS PRESUMABLY BOUGHT AND USED THEM

I knew about the radium craze of the early 20th century. I knew about the tonic waters, the soaps, and the hot springs where people would go to have a nice irradiated soak. What I did not know about—and may God forgive me for this sad oversight—was the radium-laced condoms.

So, backstory: Before people realized that in large enough doses it would eventually snuff you like a candle, radium was considered a healthful and beneficial element. Nobody was quite sure HOW it benefited the human body, or to what degree, but it was new, it was radioactive when that word meant about as much to people as ‘organic’ does today, and it occasionally glowed in the goddamned dark. That was more than enough cause to make it an additive and a selling point in everything from chocolate bars to cigarettes to patent medicines. It was like probiotics, if probiotics eventually replaced the marrow in your bones and murdered you.

And, of course, it was in condoms. Because what good was science if Mankind could not insert Himself into it?

Yes, Nutex actually sold radium-dosed condoms from roughly 1927 until 1940, when the FTC shut them down for ‘false and misleading’ advertising regarding the disease-preventing properties of their product. Now, I’m pretty sure by 1940 the dangers of putting radium into literally everything were more or less known. In 1932 a fabulously rich industrialist’s scion named Eben Byers died from drinking too much radium-laced tonic water and was eulogized by the Wall Street Journal, who ran his story with the headline “The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off”. The first of the sad trials of the Radium Girls was settled in 1928, and the last, in Illinois, didn’t come to a close until 1938.

But it won’t prevent syphilis any better than your competitiors! Stop telling people that! Oh, and (cough) also it may make your junk fall off.

TOPSY THE UNDEAD ELEPHANT WILL HAVE HER REVENGE ON CONEY ISLAND

I have gone on about this at LENGTH in many other places across the Internet, because it’s my favorite thing that I learned and also I learned it too late in the process to actually use it in the book. Which is maddening. I don’t know WHERE I would have used it, but when life gives you furious spectral elephant ghosts in the historical record, you damn well find a place for them to go.

But I didn’t. It’s all on me. And now I have to tell literally everyone I meet about Topsy’s vengeful spirit and how she roams the streets of Coney Island seeking, if not revenge, then the opportunity to scare the bejesus outta some people.

Topsy was electrocuted on January 4th, 1903. A taxidermist took her skin, her legs were turned into umbrella stands, and her 300-lb skull was buried on site. The crowd dispersed and that was that, until a year later when workmen at Luna Park began to see some seriously weird shit late at night.

Quoth the Bristol Banner from March 4th, 1904—and I’m quoting the blurb in is entirety because there is no possible way anything I could write would match up to the real deal:

Elephant’s Ghost Haunts Coney Island and Seeks Revenge on Destroyer!

There’s a ghost at Coney Island—an astral body of huge dimensions that treads the windswept streets of Luna Park, and with clankering chains and hollow bellows turns the heart of the hibernating hot-tamale man to ice. It is the specter of Topsy, the unruly elephant which was electrocuted, come back from the elephant hades to wreak vengeance for its untimely taking off. The apparition made its appearance last Wednesday night, just as the clock in the sleeping quarters of the workmen in Luna Park was striking 12. Antonio PussianI, a ditch digger, saw it first. He fainted. A comrade opened one eye and was temporarily paralyzed. The huge form stood over him, its feet wide apart and its trunk issuing sparks of fire. The eyes blazed, then faded. The place was in an uproar in an instant. Several others witnessed the uncanny thing’s exit and heard shrill trumpetings rising and dying away on the wind, and the rattle of chains. On the following night, the Frankfurter man was seen to drop on his knees on Tilyou’s Walk. He was so scared that he couldn’t tell of the elephant for an hour afterward.

Then reports came in from other places. They were not restful. As the elephant took advantage of privileges accorded to ghosts, doors were no bar to him. He just went through without noticeable squeezing. One laborer, who had drunk two bottles of chianti, said he had seen the beast doing trapeze acts on the tight wire between the top of the chutes and the electric tower. He hung by his trunk and wigged his toes in the vicinity of the base of his proboscis, he said. He is not believed.

Yesterday six laborers, headed by Pucciani, waited upon Hugh Thomas, who sent Topsy into another world, and demanded their pay. Mr. Thomas said the ghost was all hocus pocus, but he paid the men off and came to the city. He’s here yet. At last accounts the elephant was fussing around for its destroyer.

Nobody can ever tell me historical research is boring ever again. I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear it. History is AMAZING, and sometimes it is filled with vengeful ghost elephants.

* * *

Brooke Bolander writes weird things of indeterminate genre, most of them leaning rather heavily towards fantasy or general all-around weirdness. Her stories have been featured in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, Uncanny, Tor.com, and various other fine purveyors of the fantastic. She has been a repeat finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards, much to her unending bafflement. She currently resides in Brooklyn and has the haircut to prove it.

Brooke Bolander: Website | Twitter

The Only Harmless Great Thing: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

YAY THE EAGLES WON THE SUPERBOWL

GO BIRDS

GO IGGLES

There, I have fulfilled my contractually-obligated Philadelphia-area enthusiasm.  Above is a picture of not just a bald eagle, but a motherfucking sea eagle — this one seen in Brisbane at the koala place. Whatever the koala place is called. There’s a place with koalas, and you go there on a boat, and then it’s not just koalas. No, I’m not going to Google it, we’ll just call it… mmm, Koalatown. Or Koalaopolis.

*cue Kristen Bell saying, This is the Koala Place*

Actually, since we’re showing off birds, here are more raptor birds —

(Including, of course, some very Superb Owls.)

This is a Kestral, which is a great name and I think I’m going to change my name to it, Kestral Wendig, don’t @ me.

Here’s Steve, who is obviously high as shit on mice right now —

Steve obviously has a real problem.

All this is of course a very good segue into, HEY, DON’T FORGET, THE RAPTOR & THE WREN IS OUT, YOU WACKY KIDS. Seriously, it features an owl named Bird-of-Doom. I’ve received a number of emails and tweets now about this book, and many of them amount to people both mad at me  while simultaneously asking when the next one is out (hint: January 2019), which excites me deeply. I wrote a book with lots of twists and turns engineered to, ideally, rip your brain and your heart out of your body and maybe force them to switch places. I hope it did as I hoped it would do — no spoilers. (And holy shit, just wait to see the shit I pull in Vultures. Whoof.)

You can grab the book in print or e-book.

If you’ve read it, I very seriously would love a review — one of the ways I get to keep doing the things that I do is when you perform the one-two punch of a) buy my book and then b) review the book after reading it. Part of this is because reviews help others find books, but another part is that more reviews lend strength to the algorithms that help people find the books on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. And it also opens the book up to different kinds of promotional opportunities in the future. Sad that we are in some ways locked to those numbers, but here we are, welcome to The Internet.

People sometimes ask me where the best place to buy a book is — in terms of how much I make, I guess — and I’ll answer now as I always answer, which is, I hope you buy the book from whatever location and in whatever format that gives you maximum pleasure and/or bang-for-your-buckitude. I won’t judge. (Er, long as you don’t pirate the book, then I’mma probably judge a little.) My emotional preference is, when buying print, you buy from your local independent bookstore, because many such bookstores are the true bridge between a reading community and the author — libraries, too, form the same function, and if you’re not buying the book, please request the book at your local library.

I’m adding a local date to THE SKED, by the way — I’ll be again joining the Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde show at Doylestown Bookshop on April 7th at 4pm here in Pennsylvania. Kevin’s launching the last in his Iron Druid series, Scourged — which is the ninth (!) book. So, you should go to that or you will be punished in eternal torment.

I think that’s it for me.

PEACE.

*drops mic*

*on foot*

*gets an ingrown toenail*

And we return with an old favorite.

We shall mash subgenres up and write the weird stories that result.

I will give you 20 subgenres. You will pick two from the list either using a d20 or random number generator (or use monkey knuckles or coffee grounds or whatever), then you will write a short story that mashes up those two subgenres.

Length: We’ll say 1500-2000 words.

Due by: Next Friday (2/9), noon EST.

Post at your online space.

Drop a link to the story in the comments below.

THE SUBGENRE LIST:

1. Revenge Thriller
2. BDSM Erotica
3. Fairy Tale / Fable / Folklore
4. Haunted House
5. Wild West
6. Body Horror
7. Near-Future Sci-Fi
8. Sword & Sorcery
9. Occult Detective
10. Musical
11. Comic Fantasy
12. Urban Fantasy
13. Superhero
14. Bodice Ripper
15. Who-done-it
16. Space Opera
17. Climate Change
18. Medical Thriller
19. Paranormal Romance
20. Artificial Intelligence Sci-Fi

No, really, look, eggshells!

It’s that time of the year where I take a lot of my macro photography indoors rather than outdoors — which usually means seeking inspiration in strange places, like staring into the pantry for a half-hour. Which I’m sure doesn’t look at all weird to my family. When they ask what I’m doing, I just mumble, “Staring at a portal into forever,” and let them wonder.

Anyway, I am freshly returned from the Elgin Literary Fest — ELF! — and thanks to the organizers for having me and the nice folks who came out to see me. I like small conferences like that sometimes; they let you connect with people on a more personal level because you aren’t shuttled from one thing to the next.

Though traveling to the fest created a few minor travel woes, coming back was neat in a couple ways, particularly as it relates to this writing career that sustains me: first, while in the Chicago airport (ORD), I found some of my Miriam Black books at Barbara’s Bookstore near gate E5, and for the first time, I signed them! I’ve been hesitant in the past because I’m still vaguely certain that me putting my name in books actually destroys what little value they already possess — but this time I went up and asked, “Hi, I’m that weird beardo who wrote those books, do you want me to ink all over them,” and the nice man behind the counter knew who I was and was happy to have me sign them. (Maybe he burned them afterward, I dunno.)

And then — then! — on the flight, I sat next to a young guy, early-20s. We didn’t talk during the flight outside of the cursory HEY HI HELLOs and SORRY I ACCIDENTALLY ELBOWED YOU BECAUSE THESE SEATS ARE DESIGNED TO ACCOMMODATE TWO MALNOURISHED TODDLERS.

But then, as we were landing, he turned to me and said, “Can I ask you something?”

Sure.

And he said, “Is this you?”

Then he tilts a magazine toward me.

And there is a two-page ad for Del Rey’s STAR WARS books, featuring AFTERMATH and BLOODLINE, and there is my big ol’ dopey face staring back at me. So, of course, I said, “No,” and he said, “Are you sure?” and then I said, “YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME, COPPER,” and I threw my pretzels in his eyes and ran for the exit, except the door hadn’t been opened to the gate yet so I had to sulk back to the seat.

Okay, no, I said, “Yes,” and then laughed because it was weird.

And then we talked for a little while — he had my books but his brother took them first, he was a huge Claudia Gray fan, he loved the new canon stuff and TLJ (whew), and it was nice. Also a pretty strange moment where someone not only recognizes me, but has a magazine with an advertisement in it. He had just bought the magazine, by the looks of it, in the airport — it was specifically some kind of Star Wars magazine, so I guess that was probably pretty weird for him, too. “I think this guy on the page is also the guy sitting next to me.”

Cool.

What else is going on?

Well, The Raptor & The Wren came out last week — and I’m getting the exact reports I hoped to get, which consists of various shocked and flummoxed and soul-crushed mouth-noises. This book is definitely one of those “twist of the knife” books, so I’m glad my stabby bits landed appropriately. (Seriously, storytellers are monsters and you should never trust us for one hot second.) Launched the book at Let’s Play Books, and that was a hoot. Get it? A hoot? Because there’s an owl on the cover? DON’T YOU JUDGE ME.

If you want a signed copy, Let’s Play Books can get you one.

Otherwise, grab in print or e-book as you see fit.

And here I will make the earnest plea that if you have read my books…

Reviews seriously matter. Please go to your favorite REVIEW RECEPTACLE and deposit your review there, if you’re willing and able. Those reviews lead others to the books, and they also contribute (sadly) to algorithms that make the books show up more strongly in search results. Thank you in advance. Mahalo for your kokua.

I think that’s it.

Now I go, and I begin editing the mega-book that is WANDERERS.

Wish me luck.

*puts on chainmail bra and asbestos pants*

So, yesterday, I went to the airport to catch a flight. I was there appropriately early (I think at this point they ask you to be there 72 hours before your flight), and I waited around and fucked about on my phone. Then I went to the bathroom because boarding was going to begin soon.

When I came out, the departure time increased by 20 minutes.

No big deal. Tiny delay. Doable.

Then the time changed in front of my eyes and it became two hours.

The gate did not announce it (it’s United, after all, which means I should probably just be happy they gave me a seat in the plane and not on the wing), and I went to the counter to see if it was real or just some kinda funky glitch.

The woman behind the counter made a face. Not a good face.

Do they know what’s wrong, I asked her?

Another face. No, she told me, but whispered: I think it’s mechanical.

By now, a small line of people had gathered behind me. (One guy said last four United flights he was on had mechanical trouble, and were delayed or canceled. Another guy told his friend, “WHAT IF WE TRY TO GET ON THE DETROIT FLIGHT, THEN WE RENT A CAR IN DETROIT AND DRIVE TO CHICAGO.”)

Then she said that they were authorized (and told) to rebook passengers where possible — problem is, it was a small airport, so I had to rebook for today, a day later. All told, not a giant woe for me, because the airport isn’t far from my house, and the event at my destination (the Elgin Lit Fest) doesn’t actually require me until tomorrow anyway — so, ideally, all good.

But it did prompt people to share various travel woes, of being stuck in places for hours or days, of dealing with Planes, Trains & Automobiles levels of frustration. So, I thought, that would make a good cornerstone for some flash fiction.

So, do that.

Write a piece of story which revolves around travel woes of some kind.

How you interpret that is up to you. Get inventive. Any genre is fine.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: February 2nd, Friday, noon EST

Write at your blog.

Drop a link to the story in the comments below.

Grant Faulkner is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and he wanted to pop in to talk about those New Year’s Resolutions you might have — especially the ones that might be waning at this point in the new year.

* * *

One day a year or so ago, I was going through some old papers, and I discovered a notecard with my 2003 New Year’s resolutions on it. The depressing thing was that I hadn’t carried out any of the resolutions in the last 15 years: I hadn’t developed a regular meditation practice, I didn’t exercise regularly, and I’d not only failed to lose 5 pounds, I’d gained 5 pounds.

I’m not alone in living a life of good intentions and unfilled resolutions. Approximately 80% of those who join a gym in January with the aim of getting fit stop going by February. My guess is that a similar stat might apply to those who resolve to develop a year-round writing habit.

I have a theory: I think most people give up on their resolutions because they focus too much on the uncomfortableness of the what they aspire to do—whether it’s sweating on a stationary bike or over their laptop—instead of focusing on the why they want to do it. Think about it. Why should you wake up and write when you could immerse yourself in endless entertainments literally available at your fingertips? Why not just binge watch shows on Netflix and eat handfuls of gummie bears?

A few years ago, I met a famous novelist at a conference. He’d sold millions of books. It seemed like he published a new book every time the wind changed direction. As we talked about NaNoWriMo, though, he asked me, “How many novels does the world need, anyway? Why should so many people write?”

I sometimes twitch with churlishness when I hear questions like this. Somewhere within the question, I hear a gate crashing down on people’s creativity. I see a sign, “Don’t presume to call yourself a writer.” I feel a judgment: Why write a novel unless it’s going to get published and made into a product to be purchased and consumed? Why write a novel if you’re not going to make money from it?

The question disregards the spirit that has guided every writer since the beginning of time: the need to create just for the sake of creating. The need to shape the world, see through others’ eyes, tame reality, find oneself, lose oneself—to touch what is magical, astonishing, and wondrous; to exult the possible, to make the strange obvious and the obvious strange. And much more. This need is what we need to remember every day in order to show up at our writing gym and write the story that is demanding to be told.

Such questions dog every writer, though, and they too often smother their creative impulse and prevent them from showing up. In fact, each year I talk to hundreds of people who have perfected a peculiar and disturbing art: the art of telling themselves why they can’t jump in and write the novel of their dreams.

“I’ve never taken any classes. I don’t have an MFA.”

“I’m not a real writer. Other people are real writers.”

Or, worst of all, they say, “I’m not a creative type.”

I call this the “other syndrome” — as in “other people do this, but not me.”

We’ve all been there, right? We open up the pages of a magazine, and we read a profile of a magnificently cloaked and coiffed artistic being—a twirling scarf, moody eyes, locks of hair falling over a pensive brow (an artistic version of that super fit creature with the rippling abs at the gym who makes us feel inadequate). We read the witticisms and wisdom the celebrated artistic being dispenses while drinking a bottle of wine with a reporter one afternoon in a hamlet in Italy. The artistic being tells of creative challenges and victories achieved. There’s a joke about a movie deal that fell through, and then the one that won an Oscar. There’s talk about a recently published book, the one that called to them and gave them artistic fulfillment like no other book ever had.

And, as we sit in our house that is so very far from Italy, and we look across the kitchen, over the dishes on the counter, to the cheap bottle of wine from Safeway, and the phone rings with a call from a telemarketer, just as a bill slides off the stack of bills, we tell ourselves, “Other people are writers. Other people get the good fortune to have been born with a twirling scarf around their neck. Other people get to traipse through Italy to find a fantastic novel calling them. Other people get to be who they want to be—whether it’s through family connections, blessed luck, or natural talent. But that’s not me. That’s other people.”

And you know what, we’re right. The life of an artist is for others — because we just said so, and in saying so, we make it true.

But here’s the rub. Even after negating our creative potential, we’re bound to wake up the next day to a tickle of an idea dancing in a far corner of our mind, a memory that is trying to push a door open, a strange other world that is calling us. We wash those dishes, we pay that stack of bills, we drink that cheap bottle of wine, but we know there’s something else—we know there’s something more.

And there is something more. There’s the creative life. You don’t need a certificate for it, you don’t need to apply to do it, you don’t even need to ask permission to do it. You just have to claim it—and claim it every day by showing up to do it.

It’s not easy, of course. There will be naysayers, those people who think it’s silly or trivial to be a “creative type”, those who think it’s audacious and pretentious for you to write a novel, those who think you can’t do it because you lack the qualifications and the training. Unfortunately, because humans are social beings by design, we tend to measure our worth according to the opinions of others. Opinions that come from who knows where, but most likely others’ own insecurities, their need for you not to fulfill yourself—because if you fulfill yourself, you might make them feel small.

The arts don’t belong to a chosen few, though. Quite the opposite: every one of us is chosen to be a creator by virtue of being human. If you’re not convinced of this, just step into any preschool and observe the unbridled creative energy of kids as they immerse themselves in fingerpainting, telling wild stories, banging on drums, and dancing just to dance. They’re creative types because they breathe.

So, when I’m asked what happens to all of those novels—as if they only matter if something happens to them beyond the wonderfulness of their creation—I always see a world of writers with an unquenchable thirst for storytelling. Nearly 500,000 people, including 150,000 kids and teens, participate in National Novel Writing Month each year. They write because humans are wired to make meaning of the world through stories. They write because stories are the vehicles that we navigate the world with.

You’re a writer because you write. There’s no other definition. Your task as a human being is to find that maker within, to decide that you’re not “other,” you’re a creator. That impetus is what makes life meaningful. After food, shelter, and love, I believe it’s what we need most in life.

So, please, if one of your resolutions is to develop a writing habit this year — to be a writer! — think about your why. Your why will help you wake up early or stay up late to put words on the page. It will help you slay naysayers and elbow aside negativity coming from your Inner Editor. It will push you forward to “the end,” and then onward to your next story. Those mythical “other people” aren’t writers. You are. It all starts with that simple belief.

Grant Faulkner is executive director of National Novel Writing Month and co-founder of 100 Word Story. He recently published Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, where portions of this essay originally appeared.