Category: The Ramble (page 318 of 462)

I gush about Gwenda because she’s Gwenda, and she’s awesome, and a helluva writer. Have you read Blackwood? Seriously? I’m eager to tear into her newest, and I imagine, so are you (and if you’re not, you will be). Happy to host her here, answering questions about her newest, The Woken Gods —

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

I am Gwenda Bond, the author of now two, count ‘em two, young adult novels, with a third on the way next year. I also sometimes write other things like feature articles and reviews, and still cling to the honest old-fashioned art of maintaining a blog. I live in a hundred-year-old house that was originally a doctor’s office in Lexington, Kentucky, with my husband (Christopher Rowe, also an author), two unruly dogs (Puck and Emma, not authors), and one unruly cat (Hemingway, named after an author — he came with it).

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH FOR THE WOKEN GODS:

The gods of mythology awoke five years ago. Now Kyra Locke has to navigate scary trickster intrigue in a transformed D.C. to save her dad.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

The twisted innards of ma brain. But, more seriously, I’ve always loved mythology–especially its odder, dustier, less explored corners–and tricksters and urban fantasy. I like secret organizations that have to come out into the light, and I like stories where politics play a role, be they larger societal ones or smaller familial ones. So, this story comes from my own desire–as a reader and a writer–to have all those things at once, plus some monsters.

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

I think The Woken Gods, over the course of a few drafts, really did become my specific brand of weird. Though I hope all the things I mentioned above also interest other people and so will the story. Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World is one of the most significant books in my mental landscape (and The Gift too), the time I’ve spent around politics, the character who keeps people at a distance to protect herself, the value of friendship in many of the kinds of stories I love–all those things went into this book, and the same ingredients would result in something completely different by another writer. I think that’s almost always true of any story. Ideas are easy and general. Execution is hard and specific. (Hopefully. If we’re doing it right.)

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING THE WOKEN GODS?

Do you have some whiskey and an hour or two? I kid. But it was a hard book. There are reasons you don’t see as many books mixing up a whole bunch of pantheons, rather than focusing on one or two, and that’s because it’s difficult to make work. Honestly, the hardest part about this book was getting to the above–the story only I could tell and the story I wanted to tell. It took several drafts, and it only came together near the end, deadline loooooming. I had written in third person past tense, and I realized I needed to scrap it and tell (most) of the story from the first person present in Kyra’s voice, with a few dips into third person present. But once I started over (from scratch! looooming deadline), it finally started to feel right.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING THE WOKEN GODS?

I learned a lot about pushing past fear and panic by tracking the story like a detective, with a singular focus, to shut out the consequences of failing to find it. It would have been easy to be paralyzed, had I stopped to realize the cliff I was about to step off.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT THE WOKEN GODS?

I love my gutsy girl, Kyra Locke, going toe to toe with scary gods, even though it terrifies her and she’s no hero.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

Probably ask for a slightly more generous deadline up front. Lesson learned. Although it worked out, I think/hope.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

Okay, favorite not-too-spoilery paragraph!

“Only a few gods can walk through all time,” Legba interrupts before she can answer. “I am one of them. I was tracing threads back–not with my feet, but with my essence–and I encountered your mother, trapped in a moment. Looking at a terrible thing that had been done, and seeing its ripples. The past is that butterfly halfway around the world, always flapping its wings and causing what happens in front of our faces, Kyra. The past and present are linked. When the link is strong, when it’s trouble, well, that’s what prophecy is.” Mom hasn’t taken her eyes off Legba. He says, “Tell her what you can. Give her a glimpse of why you left. She’ll never ask it.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

I have a book called Girl on a Wire due out next year from Skyscape, about a 16-year-old girl who’s a daredevil high wire walker from a legendary circus family, and who has to team up with her archrival when mysterious accidents begin plaguing her and the circus. I’m super-excited about it.

Gwenda Bond: Website / Twitter

The Woken Gods: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound / Robot Trading Co

I’m editing a book right now. It is its own happy brand of hell — but, for all its hellishness, it’s also a process I dearly love because it’s like purification through flames. It’s a powerful step in storytelling — often, I find that editing is the part where the story is truly constructed.

So, here you go: steps I sometimes go through to get the job done. Other times: I go through an entirely different process. These are not set in stone or meant to be a doctor’s prescription: these are just a handful of options in a relatively sensible sequence to help you get a grip on Forging Your Story In The Fires Of Mount Revision. Do as you will. And good luck, penmonkeys.

Stay sane.

1. Go Do Some Other Shit For A While

Hey, you wrote a book! Yay! Woo! Now go hibernate. Write another book. Travel with the machine elves on a hallucinogenic odyssey through time and space. The goal is to give yourself as much time between I Finished A Book! and I Am Editing That Book! as possible. You need to come to the edit with distance between You and It. You need to arrive as if some other asshole wrote this book. That will give you cold clarity about the story, the characters, the language, everything. You won’t feel nearly as much irrational hatred and absurdly protective love over it. Your co-dependency with the manuscript will be ground into the mud. This is tricky if you’re on deadline and don’t have a lot of time, but you gotta try.

2. Make Sure Some Other Human Actually Reads It And Offers Notes

Other human beings are essential to the editing process. Essential. Otherwise you’re operating in a vacuum. You’re floating in the amniotic goo with just a swollen cord connecting you to the story. You need eyeballs. You need hands. You need the doctor with the ultrasound to be all like, “This baby has three legs, hooves, and Tilda Swinton’s face growing up out of its back.” This other person might be an agent, an editor, a friend, a spouse, a beta reader, a stoned dude on the highway selling oranges, whoever. Just have them read it. And get their notes. Pay them if you must. Sob plaintively. Embrace blackmail.

3. Read Their Notes, Then Put Those Notes Away

They gave you notes. Good. Read them. You’ll hate those notes for anywhere between five minutes and fifteen days. That’s okay. Ride it out. In the meantime, just put the notes away. Hide those fuckers in a drawer and go have a cheeseburger or something.

4. The Re-Read

You need to re-read your book. It’s time. Sit down with it. Print it out and plop it in your lap. Or smear it onto your iPad or computer monitor. Whatever it takes: just re-read that sonofabitch. Do this quickly. You’re not reading for pleasure. Your job is not to savor it like it’s a meal. This is dirty, gnarly, fuck you I gotta get this done time. It’s mercenary. The object behind reading it swiftly is to see the entire picture and that often necessitates burning through it like a garbage fire. The faster you read, the larger the picture becomes, and the easier it is to see all the little and large fuck-ups that will drag your story down like a colostomy bag filled with buckshot.

5. Take Notes Like A Terminator

Your own notes should be cold. Merciless. Equal parts Follow me if you want to live and Your clothes: give them to me now. No emotion. Just the icy crimson stare of a sociopathic robot hellbent on fixing grievous errors (by driving a car through the front of a police station, if need be). Don’t only use the time to highlight stuff that doesn’t work. Highlight the things that do work, as well — stuff that, to you, counts as components of the story that do what they were designed to do. And okay, fine, if you want to drop the emotionless edit-bot motif for a second, feel free to doodle little happy faces or gold stars or tentacled elder gods giving you a thumbs-up (er, tentacles-up) in the margins to indicate: I’m making a note here — “HUGE SUCCESS.”

6. Think Upon Your Sins, Child

You have identified the problems. Now it’s time to conjure the solutions. Sometimes this is easy. “This paragraph doesn’t say what I want, so I’ll rewrite it.” A lot of the time, this can demand a whole lot of staring off into the abyss. “I’ve discovered a rather profound plot hole and to fix it I’ll… wh… I’ll rewrite this one part and… ahhh ehh… I could rejigger — no — I could flip it and switch it — oooh double no — oh I know I think I’ll go eat a cupcake and watch Adventure Time for seventeen hours.” Problems require solutions and so this is the part where you do whatever you gotta do and take whatever time you need to think up the fixes. Take a walk. Take a shower. Sleep on it. Divine the truth from pelican entrails. Find answers. And write ’em the fuck down.

7. Play The “What If?” Game

Here’s the part you will both hate and love. As you’re looking back on your story, play the What If? game. Ask the question: “What if X happened? What if Y went the other way? What if Z was actually an orangutan secret super-agent named Orange Julius?” This is the time for big thinking and absurd changes. Most of these will land with an irrepressible thud. And that’s okay. But once in a while you’ll hit on one that resonates, that fixes a whole bunch of problems in one fell swoop, that changes the story in big ways (but all for the better). It’ll require work, but hey, if you’re not here to work, then you’re reading the wrong blog.

8. Secure A Human Sounding Wall

Talk things out with another human being. In person or on Skype or via telepathic mindbridge. It helps. Even if they’re not a writer. Just to vocalize problems and potential solutions can offer a kind of intellectual and creative lubrication. And that person may be able to push back and offer opposing ideas. If an adult human isn’t available, you can talk to a toddler, a dog, a cat, a ferret, a horse, a door jamb, a hat rack, a Roomba, a cat riding a Roomba dressed as a shark, a mirror, a monkey butler, or a tea cozy with a smiley face knitted onto it.

9. Compile All Notes In A Giant Binder Of Editorial Doom

Put it all together. All the notes. All the problems and fuck-ups. All the proposed solutions and fixes. Jam that stuff into a binder (real or electronic). Look on your works, ye mighty — but do not despair. Because this is what getting shit done looks like. This is the job, and you’re doing it, so have a cookie.

10. Determine Validity Of Notes

Heat up a copper wire and dip it into the petri dish of blood, and if it’s the blood of The Thing, then the human meatbag will suddenly metamorphose — *is handed a note* — okay, that’s from a movie. You know, I was sitting here saying, I think this is from a movie, and sure enough: it’s from a movie. Okay. Deep breaths. Refocus. THERE. Okay, not every note you took or every note you received is going to be gold plucked from a leprechaun’s rectal rainbow stash. Some notes are gonna be great. Some are worth keeping just in case. And others? Ennnh. Meh. Neh. Not so much. Some notes may also disagree with one another (“MORE COWBELL.” “FEWER COWBELLS”). How to determine? Outside, say, a game of chance? Listen: this isn’t math. Gotta go with your gut. Cultivate instinct. Poll the jury of your intestinal flora.

11. Steady Yourself For The Tribulation Ahead

Have an adult beverage. Do some stretches. Pray to whatever ink-stained gods you hold dear. This is a mindset thing. Fuck winter: editing is coming. Editing can be a tough row to hoe: lots of changes, lots of uncertainty, lots of losing things you love and confronting stuff you don’t. It’s easy to panic. It’s easy to pull the ripcord and parachute away before you even begin. Don’t. Editing is where a story is truly told. Steel yourself against the coming hell. Time to work.

12. Outline The Book You Wrote

Maybe you used an outline to write that first draft. Maybe you didn’t. Whatever happened, now you’ve got this giant 300+ page leviathan whose individual components are hard to discern as separate from the whole. So: outline the book you just wrote. A retroactive outline, of sorts. The goal is to see what’s there in terms of story beats, character arcs, plot moments.

13. Outline The Book You’re Gonna Rewrite

Now it’s time to take that outline and reoutline so that you have the book you intend to end up with. Why do we do this? Because it’ll save you a whole lot of work later on. If you just dive into your edits like a drunk going to town on a pie-eating contest, everything will end up far messier than you like. Tweak one thing, another part breaks. Add one character, invalidate three others. Have a plan. A map. Some idea what’s going to happen next. More to the point: it’s easier to fuck up and adjust the story now than it is when you’ve revised and rebuilt the dread leviathan.

14. Have A Plan

Let’s talk about plans, actually. The outline is only one part. You should have some sense of how you intend to approach the edits. Just pick a page and dive in? From front to back? Back to front? Drop acid and rewrite the book from word one in a hallucinogenic stupor of your own devising? Figure out what comes first. And what comes next. (Oh, and use Track Changes. Always make sure you have a record of what you’re changing. You’ll appreciate it later.) Want some options? DADDY HAS SOME OPTIONS FOR YOU. Also, stop calling me “Daddy.” Because, ew.

15. Option: Tackle The Most Heinous Fuckery First

This is the equivalent of being the new fish on his first day in prison and walking up to the biggest, baddest dude in the cafeteria and trying to punch his lights out. This is you exerting your dominance over the story. This is dinner before dessert. The value-add here is that you’re attacking the hardest, jaw-tightenest, teeth-grittiest part of the story first. Everything is cake after this. And it also means that all the difficult fiddly bits are figured out. Easier as you go.

16. Option: Tackle The Easiest Shit First

On the other hand, sometimes you want to start at the shallow end before you go playing Marco Polo in sharkier waters. Pick the easy stuff. Little things that are easy to fix: the equivalent of a shoelace untied or a remote control without batteries. The value: you start fixing little things, you feel productive. You feel good about making changes. And you gain momentum. And by the time you get to the heinous fuckery, you’re like a warrior in an RPG: you’ve leveled-up, you’ve got your Authorscale boots, you’ve got your +4 Truncheon against Editorial Mayhem.

17. Option: Tackle The Thing From Front To Back

You’re just going to start at the beginning and edit front to back till you get to the end and boom, the motherfucker’s done. Value: you get to read how the story’s going to play out to readers and adjust accordingly. You see how all the pieces will slot into place (or don’t, at present). It’s a clean, progressive way to edit, though doesn’t guarantee you won’t have to do some loopbacks to fix things that cascade throughout the draft like a power outage or a tectonic shift.

18. Banish Cut Copy To The Negative Zone

Anytime you cut something: keep it. Snip it from the draft, plop it into another Trash Pile file. Why? Two reasons: first, because if you ever decide, “You know what, that whole paragraph I cut needs to go back in,” then hey, ta-da, there it is. Second, because even if you don’t use it in the current story, maybe you’ll discover something in that narrative midden heap worth rescuing some day — the equivalent of finding a five-dollar bill in the laundry.

19. Invoke The Rule Of Threes

One is the loneliest number, but three is the awesomest number. All things in your story should probably get three (or more!) beats. If I may expound a bit about Chekhov’s Gun (if you don’t know what that is: PLEASE TO CLICK THIS INTERNET LINKY), part of where that theory fails for me is that it assumes two beats: see the gun in the first act, gun’s goes off by the third. We usually require a beat in the middle, though: another reference or glimpse of the gun, something subtle that allows the audience to consciously or subconsciously sense the continuance. Three beats allows any aspect (theme, mood, supporting character, plot component, whatever) to stand on its own. Two beats can feel shallow and convenient (or inconvenient, depending). In your edit, look for places where elements fail the rule of three.

20. Re-Read Again, And Read That Shit Aloud

Time for another re-read. This time: read it aloud. No, you don’t need to stage a dramatic performance at the city park — er, unless you want to, though it’s a good bet you’ll get Frisbees thrown at your head or be eaten by the hibernating bear you woke up with your clunky prose. Rather, sit at your desk, speak (or mumble) the words quietly. Listen for rhythm. Listen to pacing. Words on a page are just proxies for words spoken in our heads and from our mouths. Reading your work aloud isn’t a universal catch-all, but it will highlight a lot of places where the language sounds bumpy, where it hitches and slews toward an awkward, muddy decline.

21. Copy-Edit As You Go

As you re-read and read aloud, copy-edit. Tweak. Poke. Twist. (Reminder again: Track Changes is your friend.) Massage the language as you go. Look for spelling errors, typos, duplicated/repeated words, fucked-up punctuation, awkwardness, fragments, poor word choice, incorrect word use, junk language, tense issues, POV issues, stylistic goofs, unnecessary adverbs or adjectives, passive constructions, wonky metaphors, and anytime you describe someone’s genitals as “turgid” or “tumescent.” Attack. Kill. Repair. Read and repeat.

22. Keep A List Of Pretty Pretty Peacocks

I keep a file. In this file are the photos from my days as a male pornstar, DONNY DONG. I also keep another file, which is probably more germane to this discussion, where I keep a list of crutch words and precious darlings: anything I tend to rely upon as a lazy construction or word choice or character traits, or, or, or. It’s an embarrassing file, in a way, but really useful, because I can search for all this stuff during an edit and say, “Oh, I used the word ‘cock-taco’ seven times in this book and really, that’s a once-a-book word, minimum.”

23. Eradicate All The Pretty Pretty Peacocks If Need Be

As the saying goes, kill your darlings. A darling is often ill-defined as those things in your story that you love, but that’s daft. Don’t kill those things. Might as well say, “Murder your wife, burn your house down, YOU DO NOT DESERVE SUCH THINGS.” No, a darling is something that you love but that cannot justify itself in the text. You write a chapter in the middle of the book that has no bearing on the rest of the book and it drags down the pacing but you love-love-love it, well, that chapter might need two bullets in the chest, one in the head. Behead those precious, preening peacocks. (I list this late in the post because I tend to do this at the very end, often because that’s when I actually have enough context and instinct regarding the draft that I can see those divots and nodules at a healthy distance. That said, it’s something to be aware of throughout the entire writing and editing experience.)

24. Do It All Again If You Have To

One pass might be enough. Might not. Rewrite till it’s right.

25. Submit And Celebrate

You’re done. NOW EAT PIE. Or whatever dessert you hold dearest to your heart. After that: take action. You just went through a special kind of hell — you crawled through burning slime pits, you endured imps biting your sensitive bits, you slid through the sulfur-sluice and emerged bloody and burned with a proper manuscript in your demon-callused hands. Now it’s time to do something with it. Get thee to a literary agent. Or an editor. Or publish that motherfucker yourself. It’s time. You rock. You’re almost there.

Freeze-frame fist-pump: YOU’RE THE BEST AROUND.

*cue end credits*

* * *

The Internet is awesome. With it, you can go up and down the intellectual spectrum, rapidly spreading things you love — from a hipster-ironic version of America’s Funniest Home Videos (“Look! A Youtube video where a guy gets hit in the nuts with a cat playing a keytar!”) to a Wired article on how some dude replaced his head with a high-octane wireless router and now he’s the world’s first human internet server.

Thing is, the Internet is also good at rapidly spreading — and at times magnifying — negative energy, too. Hate, racism, sexism, prejudice, other negativity. And countering those: outrage, which is itself a kind of negativity (though one aimed at positive effect through negative reach).

Outrage is a very real currency on the Internet, as every week gives us a metric fuckbucket of new things to get mad about: “Canada is electrocuting adorable river otters in the streets! In DC Comics’ continuity they just just killed off all the female superheroes in an event called The Gynopocalypse, and they’ve replaced all the female characters with scantily-clad hat racks! Snowden just revealed Project: Polyp, where the NSA has been implanting listening devices in our rectums for the last 30 years! Penny Arcade just said something stupid. Er, again! GUNS HEALTH CARE FAKE GEEK GIRLS CENSORSHIP SOCIALISM AAAAAAAH THANKS OBAMA.”

*skull melts like a chocolate bunny in a microwave*

As of late I’ve felt a little bit of outrage fatigue and, as a result, a kind of outrage-based anxiety — a tiredness of various causes resulting in an unexpected hesitation to dip my feet into the rivers of social media because to do so risks that pinching inside my guttyworks. And this isn’t because I think the outrage is fake or manufactured. Rather, I feel it, too. It’s the real deal. Entirely justified and understandable. Frequently as tangible as a sharp knife turned palmward.

But it’s weary-making.

So, I started noodling on it and when I tend to noodle on something that noodling results in a blogpost of dubious assertions and uncertain ideas. This is the result of said noodling. Here, then, are my thoughts on how to manage and mitigate outrage on the Internet.

Your thoughts are welcome.

Assume That All Outrage Is Authentic

Start from the presupposition that someone’s concerns or complaints are real. Not bullshit. Not faux-genuine. But honestly authentic and coming from a very real place. To assume otherwise requires a very cynical attempt at guesswork where your first step out of the gate is to question everyone’s — even your own — reasons and motives for being upset about something, and it also assumes you know just what the hell is going on inside their heads and their hearts. You don’t know their history. You don’t know what upsets someone or why. If your outrage is real, it’s best to assume everyone else’s is, too.

Just because you don’t like or agree with their outrage is no reason to dismiss it.

Silencing Outrage Is For Assholes

Outrage exists for a reason. We get upset because something has affected us — whether just under the skin or spearing us all the way through our exoskeletons and into our vulnerable hearts. It is completely and utterly shitty to try to take that away from someone: when your only acknowledgment of someone else’s outrage is to suggest that it doesn’t belong, isn’t deserved, and should just get banished from the public conversation, you’re the problem, not the solution. And it’s the same when you have a fire burning in your own belly: there’s nothing more frustrating than having something you believe be dismissed and diminished by another ignorant motherfucker (usually someone who disagrees and hopes that by silencing your outrage they gain a kind of moral upper hand). Do not be silenced. Do not silence others.

Don’t Compare Causes

Prioritize your outrage; don’t prioritize the outrage of others.

You see this a lot. Someone says, “I’m mad about that thing that company did this week,” and someone pipes in with, “YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT SHELTER DOGS (or SEXIST COMICS or RACIST GENETICALLY-MODIFIED HIGH-FRUCTOSE ORANGUTANS), BUT THERE ARE CHILDREN IN SYRIA BEING KILLED.” Which is entirely true. And entirely sad. But one concern doesn’t steal from another. We feel what we feel and we all contribute our part. That has to be okay. Maybe that person doesn’t know enough about what’s going on in Syria. Or they’re so angry they literally cannot parse it. Maybe they talked about it a week ago and you missed it. Hell, maybe they just don’t care that much. That has to be okay, too. We can’t turn the volume up on every issue the world around: that’s a good way to invite a complete and total mental breakdown.

We all compartmentalize and prioritize.

Do not judge, lest ye yourself be judged. And maybe punched in the genital configuration.

Engage Diplomatically With Outrage (Yours And Everyone Else’s)

When you bring a cause or a concern to the world, folks are gonna wanna talk about it. Maybe they agree. Maybe they want more information. Maybe they don’t agree one little bit. But engagement is on the menu — and presumably that’s okay, since that’s the whole reason to mention it in the first place.

Be nice. Don’t be a dick.

You’re a diplomat representing your own anger — but that doesn’t mean your anger needs to be on display. We feel that way when someone disagrees with us, but what’s the value-add there by responding with anger? Responding with honesty, sure. Even frustration, okay. But anger? Insult? Throwing pain on top of pain, countering negativity with negativity?

If you see nothing to be gained by interacting with someone on a particular topic: just don’t engage or allow them to engage you. Ignorance is fine. If you do see value, then engage with as much politeness as you can muster. Because then a wonderful thing might happen: one or both of you might actually (gasp) learn stuff from each other. How fucking goofy-cool would that be?

Your Two New Best Friends: “Block” And “Unfollow”

If someone persists in being an asshole — or if you just don’t want their signal in your frequency anymore — then embrace the power of unfollow or, in extreme circumstances, block.

Yes, social media is frequently in danger of being an echo chamber where we throw out an opinion and our crowd boomerangs it back to us — that way, we learn nothing, we gain nothing, we do nothing. But you’re also not required to tolerate intolerance. You’re not forced to engage with people with whom you will never see eye to eye on any issue, ever. Our social media circles are bigger, more bloated versions of our friend circles in real life. If you wouldn’t tolerate hanging out with them in person for any period of time, why allow them into the digital version of the same? (Online friends are real friends, by the way.)

When Presented With Challenges, Present Solutions

It’s easy to just… you know, be all RAZZAFRAZZA GNNNNRRR BLARGH RAGEMONKEY FURYCHIMP KICK HOLE IN THE UNIVERSE EEEEYAAAAAARGH, but that’s not entirely productive. It’s honest! It’s understandable! But again: what’s the value proposition, here?

Take your rage. Form it into an arrow. Shoot that right into the eye of your enemy.

Meaning, translate your anger into something actionable. Something productive. It’s very easy to point out problems, but more difficult — and far more valuable — to find solutions. Otherwise, all you’re doing is yelling into an empty bucket hoping it’ll fill up. (Spoiler alert: it won’t.)

Charities! Corporate email bombs! Petitions! Boycotts! Voting booths! Whatever it is you feel might make a difference: do that thing, and try to spread it around.

Embrace Outrage In Areas You Influence

This isn’t to say you can’t be mad about stuff outside your sphere of influence and/or control, but you will find it far more clarifying and productive if you embrace the issues that affect you and your community. Fix the things you can fix. Cleave more closely to those spaces that you control and that matter to you directly.

Try To Be Informed

The Internet makes it easy to spread around love and hate, but even more viral is the syphilitic transmission of misinformation. We sometimes get pissed off based on things that never even happened or aren’t even remotely true — “HOLY SHITQUIDDICH, JUSTIN BIEBER STOMPED A BAG OF BABY BADGERS TO DEATH ON THE TODAY SHOW THIS MORNING.” Mmnope, not true, and really easy to fact-check, except we’re all a bunch of gullible slack-jaws half the time willing to believe any chain mail that comes poop-plopping into our inboxes.

I’ve done it.

You’ve done it.

We need to do less of it.

Pay attention. Do a little research. (Hint: if the article comes from some fringe journal — WHITEPOWERGUNLIBERTYNEWS.COM or BLACKHELICOPTERSORGANICPRODUCE.COM — then dig deeper to see if it’s actually a thing other people are saying or if it’s purely the artifice of some whackaloon “Internet news” outlet.) Try not to spread outrage based on bad info.

Be A Fountain, Not A Drain

Counter your outrage by trying to also put happy stuff into the world. Talk about things you like. Share good news! If it’s a picture of a hedgehog in a jaunty top-hat and a serious-looking monocle, for shit’s sake, I wanna see it. WE ALL WANT TO SEE IT.

That hedgehog will make the world a better place.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the outrage and just be a rage-faucet 24/7. That’s not helpful to you. That’s not helpful to everyone else. Mitigate. Countermand the negativity by introducing a little positivity back into the world. Fight back shadows with flashlights.

You’re Allowed An Outrage Vacation

Repeat after me: “I am allowed an outrage vacation.”

Sometimes you gotta just stop talking about it and engaging with it. Sometimes you have to kick back and ignore all the shitty stuff going on because your own mental health is paramount. Maybe that means just not talking about Today’s Problem. Maybe it means taking a social media vacation — a day, a week, whatever you need. Don’t let it pull you apart at the seams. Protect yourself. No need to get some kind of outrage based Internet-specific PTSD. Because again, as I keep asking throughout this post: what’s the value in that?

Last week I wrote a thing about 25 steps one might take to become a proper professional-grade self-published author, but in that post I expressed a little distaste for the term “self-publisher,” and somewhat inadvertently coined a new term: “author-publisher.”

I’d like to unpack that and defend it a little bit.

“Self-publishing” as a term is one I’ve never really liked.

A couple-few reasons:

First, it’s already got a stigma from the guys who printed their own books 10-20 years ago and tried to sell them at farmer’s markets or on their Geocities pages. (I had a guy at an eyeglasses place in the mall push a free copy of his Young Adult Softball Jesus subgenre book — self-published, obviously. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever tried to read. Ironically, I think if I had read it all the way through it would have burned out the eyes that needed eyeglasses.)

Second, it’s clunky in the mouth. Aesthetically, I just don’t like it.

Third, it says nothing about actually writing a book. One supposes that the “self” part makes it implicit, but given that the problem with self-publishing is (or at least was) the failing quality of the material, I feel like we should have a term that explicitly states that first you gotta write a professional-level book. More on that in a moment.

Fourth, “self” is very misleading — the best self-publishers make use of Other Smart and Instrumental Humans in the process. Cover artists and editors and copy-editors and author-wranglers and liquor store employees. Self sounds like you’re doing it all alone. DIY! Except not.

So, author-publisher.

Here’s why I diggit:

First, it sounds like RPG MULTI-CLASS. I’m a warrior-mage! A rogue-monk! A drunken-sorcerer-bard-waitress-wombat-jockey! Author-publisher sounds like you’re buying points in both of these professional classes and you can wear the weapons and sigils of each house.

Second, it’s more accurate. You are both an author and publisher. Why not emphasize both?

Third, I like hyphens.

Fourth, while author is a bit of a pretentious term, hey, fuck it, I think we could use a little pretension. Maybe it’s a word that raises our noses up a little. Maybe it sets a higher-bar to counter the idea of just click publish no really just do it who cares if you wrote the literary equivalent of a Target bag full of old poop-heavy toddler diapers fuck the gatekeepers dude just fling that up onto Amazon man and let the sweeeeeet money come rolling in.

So, there you go:

Author-publisher.

Use it. Abuse it. Discard it. Bury it in a shallow grave by the train tracks.

But I like it.

Here’s a thing that’s happening at Der Wendighaus:

I will soon be the sole provider for our family.

*hold for applause and/or laughter*

My wife has been in a year-long extraction from her job — transitioning from full-time to part-time (for the last year) to, come next month, no-time. She’s doing this to spend more time with our son and to allow me more time for my writing career (and further, the costs of daycare are so high it practically eats away the value of having a job in the first place).

This is, of course, terrifying.

Don’t get me wrong — while I wouldn’t call being a writer the most, erm, stable job one would find, I think I’d made a pretty good go of it. Our finances are in good order. I do well as a writer. Not go buy a boat money, but definitely support my family money.

The scary part comes in that we are losing our health insurance.

And it’s pretty good health insurance we’re losing.

Thus I solicit you, THE HIVEMIND, on the subject of independent health care. We’re in the market — we’ve got an agent who is suggesting Aetna and United to us, and we may lean that way, but not before I explore any and all options. Do you have independent health care? Are you willing to talk about it — problems, pluses, costs, benefits and concerns? Can you confidently speak to me about just what the hell Obamacare is going to mean for us?

HALP PLEASE OKAY THANK YOU

*hyperventilates*

Any advice or information you have: I’m listening. Thanks!

Casual reminder:

Every Thursday, I run ten questions with an author regarding that author’s book.

I tend to run one or two per day. I don’t think I’ll do more than two.

How you get a slot: email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Use the subject header: [Author] [Book Title] [Release Date] [10 Questions]

(Meaning, fill in those bracketed topics with relevant data, please.)

You can solicit me as early as you like, up to a month before your release date.

I will favor traditionally-published books. I know, this isn’t very nice or very fair but if I don’t say that, then I assure you, speaking from past experience, I will get a whole lot of Very Bad Self-Published Fiction Interview Requests.

I will not do 10-Qs for books that are already out. I prefer to keep them in and around the weeks surrounding the actual release. So: new upcoming releases only, please.

I do accept pitches for graphic novels or other forms of storytelling. Books, games, video games, comics, graphic novels, films, television, novellas — as long as it’s professionally produced, I’m happy to hear the pitch and consider the idea (though, again, no guarantees).

If you email me, I will try very hard to email you back.

Once I say yes, I will want your answers two weeks before your interview posts.

I like those answers in a separate file — .doc, .rtf, HTML, something that makes it easy for me to copy into WordPress without wonky formatting. Pulling it from the body of an email can be a Sisphyean task, and I’m totally lazy, so don’t make me do that.

In that file I also want:

Any and all relevant links to your book.

That means: your website, your Twitter, and any Buy Links you want included.

Please also give me or (preferably) link me to a full-sized graphic image of your cover.

Final request:

I get a copy of the book. Preferably physical (and I’ll give you my mailing address if that works). If that fails, a digital copy will do just fine. I prefer to have it before the interview posts.

(I don’t really do guest posts from people by request. Those are only from me soliciting authors who I consider friends or compadres of the website in some way.)

The questions are:

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING [story name]?

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING [story name]?

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT [story name]?

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?