Category: The Ramble (page 254 of 478)

Let Your Characters Talk. No, I know, we like to be hyper-plot-focused like, if it doesn’t fit into the plot, then murder it in the face. But that’s assuming plot is this rigid, inflexible thing, like an obsidian dildo. It’s not. Plot is whatever happens in the story: a sequence of events. This happens. That happens. Then another thing. In the process: characters talk. Characters are everything, and it behooves you to know them. One of the ways you get to know them is: let them have conversations. About anything. Corn chips and abortion! Lip balm and gun rights! Whatever it is, give them a lot of leash. Maybe you’ll cut a lot of it. Maybe you won’t. But ideally, it’ll help you know these characters more intimately by the end. And if you know? Then we get to know, too.

Have A Point, But Don’t Ever Tell Us. Writing a novel is a game of charades — I’m trying to tell you something without ever telling you something. All my work has a point — a central argument or idea. Sometimes I know it going in, sometimes I know it on the second draft, or tenth, or once its on shelves. But I don’t want to tell you what it is. That spoils the fun and ruins the game. Dance around it. Paint the margins, but leave the core thesis of the work blank. Let the reader get there. Let them stumble into it like someone who opens the wrong door and finds themselves wandering into a secret orgy. Let them be wrong about it, too, if they need to be. Fiction isn’t about absolutes. This isn’t paint by numbers. Good storytelling embraces ambiguity and uncertainty. Good writing isn’t a lecture; it’s a debate.

Surprise Yourself, And You Surprise The Reader. This is maybe one of the best ways to get unstuck that I’ve found, in the most general sense: just when you feel like you’re hitting the wall, face mashed against the brick and you don’t know where to turn, it’s time to surprise yourself. If you’ve anticipated what’s coming, then we might, too. That’s not to say you can’t orchestrate holy-goatfucker moments long before you get to them — you can, and should. But sometimes, you paint yourself into a corner and it’s like, do something really unexpected. It’s like, BOOM, SPACE BADGERS, and jaws hit the floor so hard the tile cracks. (This also means it’s vital to be loosey-goosey with your expectations. Nothing in your story — no moment, no character, no event — is final until that book is printed and in people’s hands. Be willing to change course and redraw the map — I love outlining, but just as no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no outline survives contact with the actual story. Rigidity is the enemy; flexibility is your friend. You know what’s also your friend? Puppies. And whiskey. And ice cream. And a puppy carrying whiskey-flavored ice cream in a little barrel around its neck. *dreams*)

Ten Keywords. Think of ten keywords about the story you’re writing. Or five, I don’t care. They can be anything. Emotions. Plot points. Locations. Write them down. Scribble them on a Post-It note, or keep them open on your screen in a little window, or tattoo them on your head backwards so you can read them in the makeup mirror you keep just to your left. The goal? When you write, glance at them. These are the ideas and elements and motifs you want to keep roughly juggled in the work: not constantly in play, but so that some part of the story always roams and roves back to them. It’s like, LIBERTY / ALBUQUERQUE / WATER RIGHTS / VULTURES / CLASS WARFARE / VAMPIRES / THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE / BROKEN WINDOWS / DONKEY SHOWS / DERELICT SHOPPING MALLS. Peer at these from time to time. They’re meant to form the posts of an invisible fence to keep you and the story hemmed in.

Write Like You Think. This sounds strange, I know, but sometimes the reason writing is so hard for us is that we put all this expectation and distance between us and the words. We want to prettify and make them sound like proper prose — but in that, we’re often hewing to someone else’s idea of what constitutes pretty, proper prose. Hell with that. Connecting with the work more intimately means creating a stronger, more direct conduit between the words on the page and the words inside your head. What’s up here — *taps forehead* — is PURE SNOW. It’s raw, crackling, cuckoo energy. It’s rough, unhewn, and it is decidedly You-Flavored. Pipe that stuff right onto the page. I’m not necessarily talking about straight stream-of-consciousness, here, but I do mean for you to harness the way you think and the way you speak — how you hear language and process it and return it to the world has meaning. It’s the writer’s fingerprint. So press your fingerprint hard onto the page. And if your objection to this is that it’s not pretty, not proper and, ugh, not perfect — well, no duh. First, that’s kinda the point. Second, you have as many drafts as you need to fix it. So, stop putting up roadblocks and expectations between you and the page. BARF BRAIN MATTER RIGHT INTO THE STORY.

*blargh*

* * *

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

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I call it the “Mystery Box.”

Because it is a box. From which radiates — well, who the fuck knows? It’s me. Sitting in it. Every day. A mask over my head with a question mark embroidered upon it. Hammering out words, stories, characters, ideas, all the expected nonsense. Writers exude mysteries. Questions. Puzzles wrapped in enigmas wrapped in crippling-self-doubt and also, sometimes, ham.

Mmm. Ham.

Point is, now I have a place from which these mysteries emerge.

Hence: MYSTERY BOX.

(Though bonus points go to Michelle Sydney Levy, who actually thought to call it “The Myth Lab,” which I love so much it hurts. But I also know that if I get into the habit of calling it this, eventually the tiny human that is B-Dub will go to school one day and say, “My Daddy goes to work in a Myth Lab” and of course the teacher will hear meth lab — which is part of the joke ha ha ha — and then next thing you know it’s cops and FBI and they don’t find meth but they find all these bodies! Wait I didn’t say “bodies.”)

Previous to now, I had an office inside the house — which, admittedly, I adored! It was a corner office. Three windows overlooking our lovely woods. I’d see deer gamboling about. Foxes prancing. Sometimes the people I keep trapped in my cellar would break free and hobble through the trees with their broken manacles dragging behind them and I’d be like, oh ho ho look who thinks they’re going to make it to the road, oh you goofs, and I’d get out the tranquilizer rifle and gently adjust the scope and let all the breath escape my chest as I lightly squeezed the trigger and —

Well, I’m reminiscing.

Point is, I dug that office. I did. Big shelves. A nice closet. I painted the walls this perfectly wonderful nuclear apple green because it gave the room a kind of vibrant, cuckoo energy. And I am admittedly a little sad to say goodbye to that office.

But as those with children know, children are little productivity vampires. They don’t mean to be! They’re delightful in that they pinball around and are not easily contained. (We could stick our kid in a straitjacket inside of a padlocked steamer trunk buried in the cement foundation of the house and Baby Houdini would be naked on the roof in two minutes, shoving LEGO bricks down our chimney. B-Dub was in an actual bed by, what, nine months? Because no crib would contain him.) So, I was managing to get the writing done, but it was more of a, “Chipping minerals out of the walls with my teeth.” Slower-going than I wanted.

And so my wife said, let’s get you out of here.

And I thought, well, here it is, finally. She’s realized that I’m an awful person and has — wisely! — decided to divorce me. Or maybe just straight up kill my ass. That also would’ve been an acceptable answer — really, nobody would blame her.

That apparently isn’t what she meant.

So began the time when we tried to figure out just where I would go, exactly. We bandied about a few options. One was just renting an office — some dinky space somewhere. It would’ve worked, though it would’ve meant obviously driving somewhere every day and dealing with weather and traffic and ew, yucky. (<– privilege).

Option two, and we went down this path for a while, was to take the space above the garage — which right now is a kind of creepy unfinished space that I use as a “mouse killing chamber” (seriously, I just pop open the hatch and then chuck these little green bricks of rat poison up there and the result is this rodent graveyard). If it weren’t for the hantavirus that probably lives and breeds up there, it would’ve worked.

We had a contractor come out and price it for us and… it wasn’t cheap. Plus: there arrived logistical issues. Where would the entrance be? Staircase? What would we do with all the mouse bones?

My wife mentioned off-handedly to the contractor about putting an office somewhere on the property, instead, and he was like, “Yeah, we can do that!” And he got all excited about it and we started scouting spots. Back yard, front yard, in the woods, deep beneath the earth in the Dwarven Ruins of Krongg’nang where the Artificer of Doom sleeps in his Mechanical Cryptwalker? The contractor was geeked. We were geeked. The three of us started talking about it and planning it then he came back to us a week or two later with plans and a rough estimate aaaaaaand…

Holy shit, what? Sixty fucking grand?

And we all had a larf and I said, no, no, really, how much.

The contractor raised an eyebrow and was like, f… forty grand?

And another round of mighty guffaws was had.

He was clearly becoming aware that uhh, yeah, no, we’re not paying that, nor could we pay that. So he went on his way and said he would return with a new design and a lower cost.

In the interim, though, I thought, okay, let’s investigate. Let’s dig deeper. This is kind of a trendy thing now, these silly office sheds. I took to looking at Studio Shed because, oooh, pretty. I gandered at the writing spaces of other penmonkeys: Neil Gaiman’s magic gazebo, Laurie Halse Anderson’s writing cottage, Robert Jackson Bennett’s precious workspace, or this very special writing space (which comes with free shower and lotion as a bonus). And then it was Kelley Armstrong who told me her writing office secret:

Have Amish shedmakers make you a shed.

Then have the same shedmakers convert the shed into an office.

And I was like, “Hey! We have lots of Amish around us. Mennonites, too. Such wonderful beards!” Scads of Pennsylvania Dutch surround us — and here, in fact, I believe I have stumbled upon some kind of shedworkers mafia, because we already have one shed on our property made by a family named Stolzfus. And nearly every shed maker we contacted across the state was operated by or had an employee by the name of Stolzfus, or Stolzfoos. OMG CONSPIRACY, RIGHT. I tried to find out more, but suddenly I saw bright lights in the sky and then woke up in a cornfield somewhere with missing time. I had a big long beard, and it smelled of hay. My name is now Uncle Esau.

Anyway.

We started to solicit some quotes.

And holy crapcakes was it cheaper.

Ah, but here’s the trick: they’re shedmakers, not contractors, not interior designers, so, that means you have to take the reins and basically become a contractor. Some things need to be farmed out — and, further, they’re not really going to design the thing for you, you have to give them help. Lots and lots of help.

Now, an important caveat? I’m a dumbass. Like, I’m smart enough when it comes to MAKING WORDS, but in all other things, y’know, I have the common sense of a coat-rack. And not a very useful coat-rack, either. In fact, as I go deeper down the rabbit hole of my writing career, my common sense seems to be dulling even further. When confronted by a simple problem, I’m often likely to come up with a solution like, “Can’t dragons fix it?” And it’s like, no, no they cannot, because dragons are not real, dipshit. “Vampires?” Exasperation is imminent.

Thankfully, my wife is very smart. Without her, you’d probably find me wandering in the woods, pantsless, starving, covered in burrs and eating my own socks.

So, she took control of the project.

And she painstakingly interfaced with the shed people (god, that sounds ominous — THE SHED PEOPLE). She dealt with the electrician. Permit dude. The HVAC guy. The movers. The Murder Pit digger guy. The ancient shed-gods. All those folks.

Over the last many moons, my wife busted her ass to make the shed happen. She weathered the (several) problems that popped up. She helped me settle on a design that did not look like a four-year-old painted it with poopy hands. Delays and problems besieged — and oh yeah, right around the holidays, too, whee — but then, it happened.

They delivered the shed. And put it together.

You can see the sad, headless snowman watching in horror. Trying to inch closer to find solace from the sun. But no, snowman. You’re fucked. The shed is mine. No melting in the writing shed. No sex in the Champagne room.

Then it took like, a month or more to kick-punch the weather into cooperating so that they could run power, put in the HVAC, establish the laser perimeter, install the sharks, and so forth.

Rough specs:

160 square feet.

Sits on a gravel pad framed out with wood. (Eventually, landscaping will be essential here.)

Beadboard, whatever that is. Board made of bees or beads or something.

Laminate floor.

Split HVAC, LG.

Which means, yes, it has electricity.

The wi-fi surprisingly not only reaches from the house, but is peppy as a coke-addled squirrel.

No plumbing. I, like the bear, will shit in the woods. Or in the house, if I’m feeling particularly motivated that day. I guess I could dig a latrine or something? Whatevs.

There’s an attic. For whatever I wanna put there. Bodies. Guns. Bootleg DVDs. Oompa-Loompas. Liquor. Stacks of otherworldly pornography. Ghosts. Bootleg Oompa-Loompas.

If you’d like a tour of the shed properly…

Here is the exterior.

Then, the one side:

And then, the other side:

The shed has changed my routine in a shake-up where the pieces have yet to settle. I used to roll my ass out of bed like a log off a truck and then would zombie my way downstairs at around 6AM to make coffee in the Chemex and then I’d mummy my way back up to the office where I’d let the spirits of caffeine inhabit my body and will the tired flesh toward the act of making shit up. Plus, I could pop over to the computer at any point in the day. Noon, evening, 3AM, whatever. Now, the system sits away — and lots of little other habits (lunch, for instance) are upended.

The new routine — still evolving! — means brewing coffee in the morning and putting it in this insulated carafe and then stagger-bumbling my way across the winter-smushed yard to the office. It also means that when in the house, I can get email and social media on the phone, but only there (or iPad). Means I’m somewhat less connected, which is a feature, not a bug.

Still have things to do, of course. Landscaping outside to cover the pad. Hang various posters and whiteboards and meathooks. Draw a summoning circle in invisible ink. Put in a couch, maybe. Invite a coven of sorcerers over to bless the place. Install a whiskey dispenser.

You know.

THE YOOZH.

If you wanna know the total cost, well, I’m not going to tell you that. C’mon. (Assume it cost as much as a good used car, or as much as a less good new car. Which, cost-wise, works consider I rarely use a car and the money I might spend on a vehicle went instead toward this — a project that also adds to the value of the property, as opposed to car whose value depreciates by half the first time you pass gas in it.)

So, that’s it. That’s the shed. The mystery box. The myth lab. Already wrote my first 4000 words there on Friday, so it was a hella productive day. And the mailman drove up and stared at me for like, a good 30 seconds. As if maybe I was trapped inside, and needed help? He looked confused.

Sorry, mail guy.

*shrug*

*ties balloons to shed*

*lifts off to kingdoms beyond*

As 2015 is peering around the fringe of the dusty black curtain, waiting for its time on stage, I figured that, as I am a loud, tap-dancing asshole on the stage of writing and publishing, I could get away with mouthily shouting my wishlist for the realm of writing and publishing into the air and hoping someone will listen.

So, this is me, doing exactly that.

*tap dances and shouts*

Dear Amazon:

Yes, Amazon, you know I have to start with you, first. How can I not? You’ve dominated the 2014 news-cycle, haven’t you? Amazon is increasingly the Wonka Factory of publishing: calliope music drifting from its colorful chimneys as great burping tubes upchuck new programs and initiatives and algorithms into the river. Sometimes we stare in wonder at your multiplying glories, basking in the power you’ve given us. Other times we regard you with alien horror, and we whisper to one another, I think they make Kindles out of little dead girls. We know you do amazing things. And we’re also really worried about the things you might do.

So, here’s my 2015 wishlist for you.

1.) Drop the exclusivity on Kindle Select and Kindle Unlimited. Here’s how you keep people publishing with you: just be awesome. Do no evil and be continuously aggressive in being better than everyone else. But forcing exclusivity — and worse, doing so by making the authors (effectively) pay a cost — is really weird, and sounds like you’re hoping folks will buy in without realizing what they’re doing. It’s corrosive and erosive and, ennh.

2.) Okay, let’s say you still wanted to do exclusivity? Fine. Make it a real benefit. Simple and concrete: give better royalties to those who commit only to you. Either bump the current royalty rate or offer some other genuine benefit that is tied explicitly to money.

3.) Kindle Unlimited? That dog isn’t hunting, yet — at least, for my mileage. Sounds like readers aren’t finding what they want there. Writers are finding that their hamstrings have been cut. All of it tied to dubious algorithms that operate behind a very thick veil of smoke and mirrors. The NYT has kind of a hate-boner for you, dear Amazon, but just the same: this article is pretty good at articulating the problem with KU (and the inimitable Scalzi is good at articulating why subscription models for writers make us pee a little in fear). (Or: read this one by Mike Underwood.) If you’re going to keep Kindle Unlimited around, okay — but again, kill the exclusivity, and instead of a generic pool of random made-up money, just pay authors their proper 70% cut (though okay, maybe you increase the “read-through” rate of the book to somewhere between 25-50% in order to make the rental more quantifiably meaningful).

4.) Your pricing window is artificial. Stop forcing it. $2.99 to $9.99 is fine, but you don’t need to restrictively force that pricing window — just give the 70% on everything. The price of e-books will shake out fine because buyers and publishers will wibble-wobble until they find What E-Books Should Cost At This Moment. And besides, you muddy your own pricing waters with Kindle Unlimited. “Keep the price between $2.99 and $9.99,” you say, “unless of course you’re in Kindle Unlimited, in which case do the opposite because that’s the only way you earn well per download.”

5.) The shit volcano is bubbling. This maybe isn’t your fault or responsibility, but the numbers of e-books released on Amazon in particular is increasing at a spectacular rate (and Kindle Unlimited encourages this — because now some authors are breaking their novels apart into bite-sized serial components to take advantage of the smaller payout). I know digital books are not physical books, but it does feel like the metaphorical dam is about to break, here. At the very least, discoverability on your site is pretty fucking close to zero. (And now rumors suggest that those in Kindle Unlimited are given favor in the recommendation engine, which hones the discoverability — but in a very biased direction.)

6.) Speaking of that, your website needs an overhaul. You wanna be Facebook, but you’re looking like Myspace. I half expect blinky glitter fonts. You are the e-commerce site, so — maybe this is just me — but I’d say your shit needs an overhaul. Wanna stay the leader? Look like the leader.

7.) You have so many conflicting, bewildering publishing programs that at this point, I think you’re just disrupting yourself. Focus, Daniel-son. Focus. Sweep the leg! Crane kick! You’re the best around! And other assorted Karate Kid references!

8.) Books are not loss-leaders. That just makes my heart hurt. *one lone tear rolls down cheek*

Dear Big Publishers:

You poor bastards get a bad rap, too. Despite being populated with folks who genuinely love books and, further, being responsible for the larger bulk of meaningful book culture, you catch a helluva lot of flak. Except, sometimes? Sometimes you earn the flak. Sometimes you do things to writers — we, who are supposed to be your business partners, not your employees — that are downright exploitative. So, that means you get a wishlist, too! It’s like Oprah, except instead of handing out Cadillacs, I’m handing out cranky, petulant demands that will surely be ignored!

1.) Quit the sly wink-wink vanity publishing. That time has come and it reeks of sinister mustache-twirling authorial sweat-shops. I’m not saying there’s not a place for you in the interstitial author-publisher realm, but charging exorbitant fees for essentially nothing is Not How Publishing Should Work. You know it, and you’d never tell an actual author friend to do it, so stop doing it. Stop it! Bad Author Solutions! Bad.

2.) Okay, the 25% e-book royalty thing? Gotta change. Someone, please please please, take the move to to change this. Up it. You’ll be heroes. We’ll carry you around the city square — ticker tape and flung candy and consensual sexual favors, ahoy. You make more money on e-books while we, the author, make less. Either up the rate or make it based on list price rather then net price (“net” meaning, on the money after lots of other little fees and percentages whittle it down). If you want to counter self-publishing, and polish your own apple a little: make this one change. We will sing paeans to you. You have my sword. And my axe. And my sweet kisses.

3.) DRM, no. DRM is dum-dum. DRM is that line from Star Wars about how the tighter you close your fist, the more star systems slip through your fingers. Don’t be Darth Vader. Why would you wanna be Darth Vader? Redeem yourself and throw the Emperor that is restrictive Digital Rights Management into the… well, wherever it was that Darth threw the Emperor. The Death Star’s galactic laser toilet? I dunno. DRM, by the way, is how you increase piracy, not decrease it. If you make it easier to pirate e-books instead of buy them and use them however you want — well, what do you think people are gonna go? (Here I will casually note that one of my awesome publishers, Saga S&S, has chosen to go DRM-free going forward.)

4.) It’s time to talk about non-compete clauses. I understand why they exist. I do! You’re still beholden to physical print books and the bookstores that sell them. I understand that if your author, Damien Caine, releases one supernatural thriller with you and a different supernatural thriller with a separate publisher — and these releases happen fairly close to one another — that someone like Barnes & Noble may make the difficult call of stocking one book over another. Still, a lot of your non-competes are overly restrictive — they’re like, YOU CAN’T PUBLISH A TWEET WITHOUT CHECKING WITH US FIRST and it’s like, hey, whoa, ease off the stick, hoss. Writers these days need to make a living and that sometimes means writing diversely across genres, age ranges, publishers, and formats. You gotta allow that or we can’t fucking eat. Okay?

5.) I still feel like there’s a big opportunity for you and independent bookstores. I’m gonna float this idea again in the hopes someone listens: produce special edition copies of some books by some authors, and allow only indie bookstores to sell them. Listen, indie stores are the beating heart of book culture. I believe this. Not all of them are created equally, and some are downright shitty, but the ones that rule are so vibrant and so amazing — they are the petri dishes for book bacterial spread. Sounds gross. Isn’t gross. Is totally awesome. Partner with them. In a big, interesting way. Give them something nobody else does. Reward them for being who they are. Give them a little boost. They need the boost, goddamnit. You need them, too. This math is easy.

6.) When I buy a physical copy of your book, I also want the digital copy. Just… full stop. No more ninnymandering, no more wafflepantsing, no more flimsyjibbing. Yes, sure, okay, I did indeed just make those words up, but you know what I’m saying. Stop delaying this. I know it’s easier said than done. I know I’m just the loud asshole tap-dancing over here in denial of the complicated realities of your business. And I don’t care. Just do it. Get it done. Make it so. Do it. Do it. Doooo. Eeeeet. *bites belt* *gnashes teeth* *drinks whiskey* *punches dolphin*

Dear Writers:

And finally, to you, my dear penmonkeys. You bring good things to the world, but so many of you (me sometimes included) have the business sense of a shit-covered brick.

1.) Exclusivity is to someone else’s benefit, not yours. Meaning: they should be paying you for the privilege. That’s true of Amazon and their programs, and that’s true of big publishers and their non-compete clauses. Big companies are not your pals and you need to approach all these deals accordingly. So many authors are so emotionally invested and excited just to be published that they forget they’re also supposed to be paid.

2.) Hybrid publishing is rad. Do it. Do it now. Don’t wait. Both traditional publishing and self-publishing each come with a set of disadvantages unique to each that are often off-set by the advantages unique to each. Example: traditional pays slow, but self-publishing pays regularly, so money earned as an author-publisher fill the valleys between the larger paychecks handed out from traditional. Another example: it can be hard to generate attention with self-publishing, but in traditional some attention is automatically generated — and it can draw people to your self-published work, too. The two sides feed each other. Like sexy dates on Valentine’s day spooning chocolate mousse into each other’s mouths. Yeah. Like that. Lick the spoon. Do it. Nnnngh. Now put on the pony costumes and join Satan’s orgy room and WHOA THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY.

3.) To reiterate: get paid. Try to walk that line between I want to be read and I want to be paid. I don’t mean to suggest that every word you write should be a quarter flipped into your wishing well — I just mean, the overall goal is to make it somehow sustainable. Writing means being a writer, full stop. Professional writing means getting paid for it. You know how great it is to pay bills with Writer Money? It’s basically the best thing ever. Even better than Satan’s pony-show orgy hour.

4.) Give your work the time that it needs. I know the trend is more faster better now, but seriously: your work takes the time that it takes, and the best work is rarely work that floods the market. At the same time, I do recognize that writing a lot helps you get paid. Again: find the line, but above all else, make sure the books don’t suffer from over-acceleration. Don’t rush. Rushing rarely results in anything good. It’s how you choke, or trip, or ruin your butthole with furious pushing.

5.) Be wary of subscription services. They ain’t all bad, and the idea is sound and maybe good for readers — but we all need to join hands and stand against the evil of the Infinity Stone. … uhh, I mean, against the market force of ‘reducing the value of books to such a state that it’s just a bubbling pot of soup that requires only a cheap ladle for scooping.’

6.) Signal boost others as much as — frankly, more than — you boost yourself. This thing we do is a thing we do alone, at first. But then we have the opportunity to be something larger than ourselves. To join with others and to become a kind of community. YOU CAN BE VOLTRON. Well, okay, maybe not Voltron. But something like Voltron. WRITETRON. COFFEETRON. BOOKOTRON. I dunno. Shut up. No, you shut up. *smacks the keyboard off your desk*

7.) Like I said yesterday: be big and be small.

8.) Be optimistic! After all — evidence shows the book universe is expanding, not contracting. I’ll still posit that this is the best time to be a writer. So many options — so, let’s keep them all in play by exercising as many of the damn things as possible, yeah?

So. With all my flim-flammery out of the way…

What’s your wishlist for 2015?

Resolutions born of the new year are always a curious breed. They’re often criticized as change-filled (but empty) promises born more of the tradition of the date rather than as something you should do daily as part of the normal growth-and-learning cycle of we hairless orangutans prancing about on this little blue green bouncy ball winging its way through space.

New Year Resolutions are perhaps like cards at Christmas: bought, filled with the rote script, placed on a mantle for a few weeks, then inevitably tossed in the bin with the other holiday trash.

It’s true, to a point. But, just the same: one year to the next, one date to another, is a mark in time. Artificial, but hey, all of human society is artificial and it’s no less significant for its invention by us. The year is a bone suddenly broken — snap. And in that sharp shock of transition, if what we get is an urge to change? So fucking be it. The ideal state would be that we change when we need to, not when the calendar suggests it, but let’s also remember that the holidays and the transition from one year to another are vital times to reflect. We build up to the orgiastic rush to Christmas, and then are left with a startling, almost shocking void — all that’s left is cleaning up the wrapping paper and throwing the Christmas Hobo on the bonfire. Ha ha ha, I didn’t say Christmas Hobo, you said Christmas Hobo. I said tree. Christmas tree.

So it is that we reach a time of the year that is indeed very good for reflection. In that reflection, it is reasonable to look back at the year behind us — littering the carpet like so much wrapping paper — and peer ahead to the year ahead. We mark time because it gives us perspective. And we make resolutions because sometimes that perspective yields the desire to be different.

Evolution does not always come on a schedule, but no reason we can’t give it a stun gun in the ass-cheek to get it moving. And so, here I am, once again considering for me — and, if you care to embrace and adopt it, for you — what changes, what evolution, what crystallization of This Thing That We Do, may come with the year 2015.

Writers and other creative folk:

This year, I want you to be big.

And, perhaps puzzlingly, I also want you to be small.

Wait, What The Fizzy Fuck Are You Talking About?

By big and small, I do not mean your physical girth or footprint — I’m not asking you to tromp about like an ogre, or fold yourself up into a paint can. What I mean is that I want you to embrace the curious polarities that often result in being a creative person. We are this very strange combination of preening Narcissist and trembling, knock-kneed fawn. Inflated senses of self, puffed up like a blimp and filled with a sucking void of lost self-esteem. I don’t want you to grab a hold of those parts, though — I don’t find much value in being a bellowing blowhard whose self-importance is so rock-hard (meaning: fragile like spun glass) that every negative review sends him into a paroxysm of pants-shitting rage. The goal here isn’t to become a monster, but rather, to find the power in those two warring aspects — to find function and truth and momentum in what it is to be both big and small.

Being Big

You have to want it, and you have to mean it.

Writing a book and putting it out in the world is an act of ego — not egomania, but the willingness and decision to create a story out of nothing and push it forward into the world is a bold, brash, unflinching act. You say: this story matters, and it matters that I wrote it. It is a demonstration of your belief in the story and the belief you possess in yourself as a writer, storyteller, and a creator. It takes a rather epic set of genitals to write something that’s 300 pages long and then say to someone: “You’re going to sit down and you’re going to read this and you are going to love it the way I love it. You are going to take hours, even days out of your life to read the little ants dancing across the page, ants that make words, words that make this one big story full of people I just — I mean, seriously, get this, I just fucking made them up. They’re not even real. None of this is real! Can you believe it? It’s phantasm and ectoplasm and fairy-spun pegasus shit. It’s all from my own weird-ass brain. I cracked this massive egg, and now I want you to eat what spilled out.”

It’s you as a wide-eyed housecat, shoving forward a half-eaten mouse carcass, its fur sticky with your spit and blood, and you say with intense stare and low mrowl: I MADE DIS. YOU HAVE IT.

How amazing! How presumptive! How… totally fucking psychotic!

That’s you being big.

You get even bigger by writing the stories you want to write. By defying convention and eschewing advice and putting to paper the tale you want to tell. Own it! We worry so much about writing original stories that we forget about the one ingredient that will make all our stories as unique as a snowflake melting into the grooves of a fingerprint: you. You, your voice, your ideas, your experiences: those are the reagents of rare and powerful alchemy — as extraordinary as phoenix feathers! powdered unicorn horn! lightsaber crystals! — that go into your writing.

Be big enough to accept that. Be big enough that your books are your own. Do not flinch. Tell fear to fuck off. Don’t run from your own voice. Be your books. Have ideas. Anybody who runs a blacklight over your books should be able to see the blood and spittle and mysterious fluid spatter you sprayed over the whole thing like a randy skunk.

Be big enough so that the books are yours. So that the books are you, in a way.

Being Small

But you must also be small.

You write this thing, this massive chunk of yourself, and then you offer it up on a silver plate — and here, you have a choice. You can say, this is my work, it is indefensible and perfect, and it is all that matters. Or you can acknowledge that you’re part of something greater. A square in a mighty quilt, a star in a celestial sky, a glint in the Christmas Hobo’s eye. (No, you said Christmas Hobo. I said… uh, something else. *smoke bomb*)

What I mean is:

Be gracious. Be humble.

This Thing That We Do is a right, in a way — but it’s also a privilege. A privilege to be a part of something greater. You’re not stepping on a new planet, here: other people have blazed the trail, tamped down the vegetation, hunted the monsters that would’ve disemboweled you in a heartbeat. Others have colonized your genre. They’re there on the shelves. You can be big enough to have your own voice and to write that voice while at the same time acknowledging that you are not alone: others have been here, are still here, and will keep on coming. Other writers who need your help. Other books that need your championing. Other voices not your own.

Be gracious to other writers. And editors, agents and other publishing professionals. Be appreciative of your readers. Be kind to booksellers and librarians and reviewers (both of whom will help you reach those readers that I just told you to appreciate). Yes, it’s a thing often said that all writers really need is an audience, and perhaps that’s true in the purest of sense — but that’s also incredibly short-sighted, like saying the only thing a Widget-Maker needs is someone to Buy The Widget. It forgets about the truck drivers, the shelf-stockers, the Widget-polishers — it neglects to remember the ecosystem. Writing and publishing is a powerful and weird ecosystem: full of wonderful people who honestly give a shit about books and stories. How amazing is that? They’re here because they love it. Because they accept the bigness of the act of tale-telling, because they respect the need for stories in their lives. Be good to them.

And be humble. You ripped a massive pound of flesh out of your own body with the certainty that it matters — but you can’t go around beating people about the head and neck with it. You’re not the only one doing this. You are indeed the special snowflake: one that forms a blizzard of so many other special snowflakes. The takeaway: you are not alone.

So don’t be alone.

Be small. Be the tiny, glittering, mad fractal snowflake.

Be beautiful on your own, but be part of the blizzard, too.

Eat Me, Drink Me

Be big enough to create a first draft, and small enough to tear that draft to pieces, to write a second draft, then a fourth, then an eleven-hundred-and-fifty-sixth if that’s what it jolly well takes.

(Translation: be big enough to be a writer, but small enough to be an editor. The writer and the first draft is the block of marble and the shape coming out of it. The editor and the resultant drafts are the chisel that chips it away. Big, to small.)

Be big enough to be proud of your work, but small enough to appreciate every reader who picks it up and every bookseller, librarian, blogger or anybody who shares your work with the world.

Be big and ask to be paid for your work, but be small and donate your time and energy and kindness to others — what we are paid, we can help pay back.

Accept that your words are important and that your story matters, but not to the extent that it drowns out the voices of others.

Acknowledge your successes while never letting them be the end-all, be-all.

Be small enough that you are willing and able to fail without letting failure destroy you.

Be big enough that that you stand tall for the things you believe in. But be small, too, so that you can be fast and flexible for when the time comes that you need to change.

Be the writer you want to be, full of power and might and confidence, but one who also is gracious and nice and part of something larger. Earlier I mentioned the stars in the sky, and perhaps there is no greater metaphor, here: each star is impossibly large, a massive shape of fire and gas and light. And yet, when seen at a distance: tiny lights across the night, like sequins cast on the floor, like holes pricked in a dark blanket with a prodding pin. Big stars, but small stars, too.

Be then like the star: both big and small at the same time.

Have a great 2015, folks.

P.S.: Art hard, motherfuckers.

HA HA HA, SUCK IT, 2014.

*flings 2014 in front of a passing subway train*

*a train piloted by 2015*

*splat*

Actually, I shouldn’t be too hard on poor 2014 — while I know many others had a hellish year, I was actually pretty fortunate. The year past was full of good stuff. I did a lot of traveling — Toronto, Vancouver, Tucson, Phoenix, Colorado Springs, and more. Did quite a lot of writing, too: Zeroes, Thunderbird (aka the next Miriam Black book), The Harvest (the third Heartland book), a YA thing (as-yet-unpublished) called Dust & Grim, and I finished up my serialized novella, The Forever Endeavor. Mucho big grande word count, there. Plus: wrote a couple new short stories — “Big Man” for the Dangerous Games anthology, and “Queen of the Supermarket” for Trouble In The Heartland (which is a Springsteen-themed anthology, not one related to my young adult Heartland series). Oh oh oh, and let’s not forget that me and Adam Christopher penned the first couple issues of The Shield reboot for Archie/Dark Circle, thus fulfilling the ancient blood pacts and allowing me to have done work in novels, games, film, television, and now comics. WITH THE GATEWAYS OPEN THE WORLD SHUDDERS LIKE A DYING, FEVER-BITTEN ANIMAL AND ALL SHALL SOON END.

Or something like that.

I wrote about 750,000 words this year, between bookish stuff and bloggy things.

This was also the year I got to share a stage with the likes of Lev Grossman, Erin Morgenstern, Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood to celebrate her 75th birthday in New York. (My life is super-weirdo-amazing, you guys.)

Did I have a writing shed installed? Why yes, I did:

(Haven’t moved into the shed yet — still needs furniture. This week!)

On a personal level, everything has been pretty damn great. B-Dub is growing at an alarming rate, suggesting that by the year 2016 he will be gleefully stomping cities underneath his kaiju feet. Christmas with the tot was a wonderful time — he has now graduated to the BIG KID LEGO sets, leaving his Duplo bricks in the dust. (His first sets in the larger LEGO space were, of course, Minecraft because holy shit is this kid obsessed with Minecraft.) My wonderful wife continues to be fooled by my ruse, and has not yet realized that I am a terrible human being and bearded weirdo. (And this was also the year we took our first family vacation.)

The one personal hit this year was the loss of our little taco terrier, Tai, who wrestled for months with a gastrointestinal disorder that ultimately forced our hand and so we had to put our little poochie to rest. A sad day and I still sometimes hear her little paws clicking on our floors.

One thing I know for sure? 2014 was hella busy. And 2015 will be the same.

But, let’s be honest. That’s a damn good problem to have.

The Books of 2014

Publishing-wise, I had a few books out this year — The Cormorant (Miriam Black, book #3) technically released on 12/31/13, but it didn’t really reach shelves until 2014, so fuck it, I say it’s fair to call that a 2014 book. (Releasing a book on the very ass-crack of the annual transition is not ideal, by the way. Sadly easy for your book to get lost in that fissure.)

Blightborn, the second Heartland book, came out over the summer. It’s a book I’m very fond of, honestly — and no, I don’t say that about all of my books, many are books I’d like to go back and pick at again and again like a monkey grooming its child of ticks and mites. But Blightborn is for me a complete package, and is a book I’m content to psychically let it exist as it is. (I’ll note too that Blightborn is like, two bucks at Amazon right now until the end of the year. So too is the first book, Under the Empyrean Sky.)

At the same time Blightborn released, so did a short story — “The Wind Has Teeth Tonight” — a little $0.99 endeavor that is actually set before the entire series begins, chronicling the, erm, cornpunk mutant-rat-infested meet-cute between Cael and Gwennie out in an old Empyrean corn processing facility.

Finally, I self-published a couple new writing books this year, too: 500 Ways To Write Harder, and 30 Days In The Word Mines. Thanks to all those who came along and checked those out.

Plus, I sold a lot of books this year, too — many of which will come out in 2015.

Which leads me to…

The Books of 2015

What’s coming up?

Well, that’s a darn good question, isn’t it?

January, 2015: Atlanta Burns. My YA crime noir story — Veronica Mars on Adderall, Nancy Drew with a shotgun, Winter’s Bone set in Pennsyltucky. (For those asking, this is indeed a re-edit of Shotgun Gravy and Bait Dog — it takes the two of them and turns them into one more cohesive story.)

First-quarter 2015: the re-release of the first three Miriam Black books come out with Saga, the new SFF imprint under Simon & Schuster. New covers, new polish (meaning, proper copy-edits and formatting). Blackbirds, Mockingbird, The Cormorant both come out in digital first, soon followed by print (I believe trade paperback).

July, 2015: The Harvest, the third and final Heartland novel. After the Saranyu disaster and the rise of the Empyrean Initiative, how will the Heartland recover? Is Cael alive? Will the people of the corn fight back and rise up against the Empyrean?

August, 2015: Zer0es, a hackers-versus-an-NSA-artificial-intelligence thriller. Given a lot of the hacker news that’s going on, I’m pretty excited to have this one come out. Hardcover.

Fall, 2015: Thunderbird, the fourth Miriam Black novel. Hardcover, I’m told!

Fall, 2015: [REDACTED] — nope, can’t talk about this one, yet.

Plus, I’ve got scads and buckets and buttloads of writing to do this year — stuff I’m super-excited to write and finish. I get to tackle new Miriam Black, new Atlanta Burns, a SF-thriller I’ve been geeked to write for years but never had the chance, and that little [REDACTED] thing up there I mentioned, too. Plus I might end up releasing my short story collection (Crass Menagerie) and a story-focused writing book I’ve been working on, The Penmonkey’s Guide To Giving Good Story. And I’m sure some other tricks and treats will trickle in along the way.

The Travel of 2015

Gonna be all over the map in 2015, so, let’s get to it:

4/30: Paradise Lost writing workshop in San AntionioTX.

6/27: Seton Hill University to give a talk

7/15: Camp NECon, Portsmouth, RI: writer guest of honor!

7/23: Midwest Writer’s Workshop (Muncie, IN) as faculty

7/30: GenCon, Indianapolis, IN (Writer’s Symposium; tentative)

9/12: Bethlehem, PA RWA Keynote

9/25: Context 28, Columbus, OH: writer guest of honor

[edit: Context is done, apparently — they had issues with a sexual harassment case that wisely caused the board to dissolve and a new one to form, except now the new one is being blocked and the convention is game over, goodbye, according to Steven Saus]

Probably some other stuff I’m missing there, too, and surely more will pop up.

Most Popular Posts of 2014

The blog hits were up again this year, from around 3.5 million to 4 million — which is, y’know, pretty darn happymaking for me. I’m glad as hell you people have been fooled again and again into thinking I’m saying anything at all of value, and further, it’s nice to see people coming by here and creating a kind of slapdash, impromptu writers-and-other-miscreants-style community.

I published 361 (!) posts.

Top 10 posts of those published in 2014:

1. 25 Things You Should Know About Toddlers

2. A PSA About Nude Photos

3. Not All Men, But Still Too Many Men

4. On The Subject Of Cultivating Empathy

5. Art Held Hostage: Why Sony Not Releasing “The Interview” Is Scary

6. The Cankerous Slime-Slick Shame Pit That Is GamerGate

7. Ten Things I’d Like To Say To Young Writers

8. Ten Things To Never Say To A Writer

9. In Which Amazon Calls You To Defend The Realm

10. Boy Toys, Girl Toys And Other Cuckoopants Gender Assumptions

What’s interesting is that only two of the posts above are writing-related, and only one is publishing-related. Many are all social issuey stuff. Optimistically, maybe people actually give a shit about my opinions or, at the least, believe I’m not a total boner when it comes to talking about larger issues. More pessimistically, some have suggested 2014 was the year of outrage, and maybe blogging about hotter-button issues just gets clicks. (I occasionally get emails from people who suggest I write those posts because they get me advertising clicks. Apparently they don’t realize I don’t have advertising on the site, so the clicks are in no way monetized.)

That being said, some of the actual top ten posts weren’t from 2014 — a post from 2011, 25 Ways To Plot, Plan & Prep Your Story saw a huge resurgence in views this year (~61,000!?) out of nowhere. Other big bumps to posts about aspiring writers, writing horror, writing YA fiction, and on writing your first chapter.

And That’s That — How About You?

Thanks for coming by here and reading the blog and (hopefully) scouting my books, too. Writers aren’t jack shit without their readers, and, in fact, writers aren’t jack shit without other writers, either. So: I am made better by all of you. Except you, over there, in the corner. You’re bringing us all down. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. *gives you the side-eye*

Ahem. So!

How’d 2014 go for you?

What’s coming up for 2015?

The two winners, as chosen by YOUR VOTES, are:

#14 and #26!

and

#14 (Chris V.) and #26 (Erin): email me at terribleminds at gmail!

Plus, we have two random draw winners…

So, #18 and #3 are the random draw winners!

Mandy and Anthony, please hit me up at terribleminds at gmail!

Congratulations, nerdlingers. You guys brought it.

*rains geek particles down upon you*

*it’s really just glitter*

*sorry*