One of the questions I get most frequently over email is this:

What should I write?

The question presumably meaning, what kind of thing should I write? What genre? What story? Maybe it’s the first thing you’re ever going to write. Maybe it’s just the next thing in a long line of written things.

And the answer to this question is simple.

That answer is:

How the fuck should I know?

I mean, I’m not you. At least, not until I get my SOUL TRANSPLANT HELMET working, but that’s at least five years off — maybe seven if Elon doesn’t call me back (seriously, Elon, get your shit together, gimme a ring, Musk). Because I am (presently) not you, I have no idea what you should write. Because the advice of what to write is not a thing that has an easy answer — or, really, any answer. You want the answer to be something concrete, something that is the result of plugging variables in and punching the CALCULATE STORY button, but no such thing exists. You can’t “run the numbers” and end up with the perfect answer (“Ah! I should write — let’s see, mumble mumble, carry the three, put the DNA on the slide, shake the shoebox with the cat inside of it, et voila — I should write The Terminator meets The Gilmore Girls as if written by Mary Shelley. Bestseller status, here I come.”)

It doesn’t work like that.

But what I can do is tell you how I come to terms with what I should write next. Because this isn’t a question just some writers have — it’s a question that plagues us all, I think. It plagues us at the start. It plagues us throughout our career. It plagues n00bs, midlisters, even bestsellers. It plagues traditionally-published authors and indie authors. It is a question I ask myself even as I’m writing one thing because I always need to know what’s next? And what’s next after that? If this book is successful, what else can I write in that vein? If it tanks, how do I move to an adjacent track that still makes sense? Where am I? Why am I wearing pants? Is this a curse? Did I spit in the Pants God’s eye? WHY HAS THOU FORSAKEN ME, OH PANTSLESS PANTHEON

Ahem, sorry.

Here is what I do to determine what I’m gonna write next.

First, fuck your brand.

I know, I know. But seriously, any brand you have in mind is a box, a fence, a limitation. Said it before, will say it again, but a brand is the thing a farmer sears into the ass of his livestock to make sure they don’t stray.

Fuck.

Your.

Brand.

If I thought about my brand I’d never write anything.

Second, it bears mentioning that I no longer write my ideas down. I used to. I used to hoard them like jewels until I realize they weren’t gems — they were bits of aquarium gravel. They’re dross, they’re dribble, they’re just a building material like dirt or concrete. Not valueless! But also not precious. Ideas ping my brain daily the way we’re all pelted by solar radiation. I submit ideas to Idea Thunderdome, and only those ideas that emerge victorious — by which I mean, they are persistent, like carpenter bees thumping against the window-glass — get to stay. And even then, I don’t write them down. If the idea is good, it will continue to percolate. It will bother me. It will live with me, lingering in my head like a beautiful or traumatic memory.

I usually have four or five of these ideas swirling around my head at any given time. Fireflies in a fucking jar. So, when it comes time to figure out what I want to write — I look at these effulgent little weirdos to see if there’s anything there, and if there is, I pluck it out, smash its glowy butt, and smear the bioluminescent innards onto my face like phosphorescent war paint.

If there’s not, or if I remain uncertain, onto step three:

I ask myself two questions.

a) What is exciting me right now? I don’t mean that way — not “in-the-pants-excited,” because if we’re talking about underwear excitement, I’d be writing fan-fiction about shirtless Thor and Cate Blanchett as Hela and also Loki and definitely Valkyrie and, inexplicably, the ghost from Booberry? I dunno. Don’t kinkshame me, you monsters.

No, what I mean is, what’s geeking me out right now? Not pop culture geekery, but topic geekery. You can look through my books and see the things I’m feeling dorky about at any given time — birds! ants! hackers! agriculture! mythology! — and see how that translated into those stories. Basically, I just want to be interested in something, because that gives me a reason to research it and involve myself in it and then be passionate about it on the page.

Like, have you ever been sitting down with a friend or loved one or captive enemy and you’re all like, “Man, I just read the CRAZIEST THING today, Elon Musk and this guy named Chnurk Mandog are inventing some kind of soul-stealing helmet or maybe it’s a body-snatching helmet I’m not really sure?” And you just wanna keep talking about that really cool thing? Yeah, put in a pin in those kinds of topics. If something gets you all nerdy, that’s a thing you might wanna fold into your work at some point, and it can help form the skeleton that will support the flesh of an idea, narratively.

b) What is bothering me right now? I don’t mean “that rash” or “mosquitoes,” but I’m asking you to identify something that’s troubling you. Something that’s making you scared. Or upset. Or anxious. Something that’s scratching at your brainstem like a sick rat. Again, you can look to my work and find the deeper, scarier shit (death! surveillance! artificial intelligence! class warfare!) that serves as my effort to… make sense of it. Not for you. But for me. Fiction is a great way to explore the snarliest, gnarliest depths of That Which Troubles You, just as it’s a great place to explore the heights of That Which Geeks Your Ass Out.

And fiction is best, for me, when it’s combining those things.

If it’s just troubling stuff, it ends up dour, dire, not much fun.

If it’s just the geekery nerdery excitement, then it’s light, or twee, or conflict-free.

The first is too deep, too dark.

The latter too shallow, too bright.

For me, it’s the perfect combination to find the next damn thing to write.

And here you might be saying, WHOA WHOA WHOA, WHY ARE YOU NOT TELLING ME TO CONSIDER MY CAREER, OR THE MARKET, OR TO CONSULT THE ORACLES OF PUBLISHING.

Listen, you can care about that stuff.

Maybe you even should, I dunno. It’s certainly not the worst idea to try to imagine what things might sell and what things might not. But… the reality is, nobody actually knows anything? I’ve made this point before but it demands a return visit: nobody knows anything inside publishing. They can make guesses. Many can make educated guesses based off insight and experience. But there’s no answer. And by the time you actually write the thing that might serve the market, the market will have changed. As I’ve said before, you’re aiming your spaceship at a star that has already burned out — the light from it just hasn’t caught up yet. The market is an unknowable entity. It is a lightless, doom-filled eye whose only language is chaos. It’s Sauron, it’s the Death Star, it’s Kanye West’s Twitter account. My advice is to stay away from it.

And this is where I exhort you yet again to say fuck you to branding. Because branding is you imagining yourself in relation to the marketplace. It leaves little room for you to be you, or for you to explore these questions that are uniquely your own. It leaves room for you to Provide Content, but that’s it. There’s little passion there. Little interest. Little fear. It’s finding a market niche and filling it with whatever narrative widget or story hamburger you choose to provide.

Do not worry about brand.

Worry about voice.

Voice meaning, who you are as an author. What things that speak to you as an author, and that will end up on the page because you just can’t help but put them there.

Of course, all of this is useless to you if branding is exactly what you want. And that’s okay if it is what you want — no harm, no foul, if it makes you happy. But for my mileage, the market is so unknowable, and this career so unpredictable, you might as well give writing to your own needs and desires a healthy shot.

So, when it comes down to the question of, what do I write next?

Return to this post.

Maybe it will help you.

Maybe it won’t.

Can’t hurt to try, though, can it?

* * *

DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Out now!

Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Maybe you’ve heard of it.

You take some bread.

You spread some peanut butter on it.

You put some pickles on it.

You smash that motherfucker together.

And now it’s a sandwich and you eat it.

You’re thinking, as I thought: well, that’s fucking gross.

I mean, shit, I like pickles. I like peanut butter. I am nothing if not a fanboy for bread. But my brain could not get around globbing these things together into a single Combiner Transformer in order to eat it. It seemed like some kind of heresy.

Let’s rewind a little.

The PB & Pickle sandwich got some love thanks to a recent NYT appearance. And initially, I assumed the NYT was just being the NYT, which meant it was offering treasonous nightmare opinions, probably either to troll us or to ruin democracy. And this sandwich definitely felt like a democracy-ruiner.

Just the same, I am wont to chastise my child — you can’t say you don’t like something without first trying it. And in the last ten years, I’ve come happily to terms that most of the things I feared were gross were… nnyeah, actually pretty dang tasty. Sweetbreads? (Spoiler: not actually bread.) Delicious. Spam? Amazing. Sushi? What the fuck was I thinking not eating sushi? Bugs? Hell yeah I’ll eat bugs. I ate a chapulines taco and it was legit wonderful.

Pineapple lumps? SURE.

So, I thought, I can eat this fucking sandwich, and it’ll be weird, and I can tweet about it, and my Twitter feed for five minutes will be a hilarious respite from the neverending DIPSHIT WATERGATE that is the true Infinity War.

I made one:

You can see what pickles and PB I used — the bread was a sourdough.

I made it.

I took a bite.

And whoa wait what the fuck.

It was good.

No — it was actually pretty great.

Here’s why it’s great — first, it does the thing that you might find in, say, Thai food, or some Vietnamese food — you’ve got sour and savory, plus the fattiness of the peanut butter (not to mention the salt), and the pickles bring some nice crunch. It’s eerily satisfying. And it helps then too to decouple your assumption that PEANUT BUTTER = SWEET, because it ain’t. Think satay. Normal peanut butter is savory as shit, we just happen to use it a lot with sweet things, combining it with jelly or chocolate or honey or whatever.

So, then authors-extraordinaire Kevin Hearne and Adam Rakunas said, no no no, you need food lube for that sandwich, and they said the true magic is adding in mayo to that motherfucker —

*record scratch*

What ha ha no, that’s a bad idea, don’t do that, don’t add mayo. Like, what? Who hurt you? How did you get this way? I’m not a mayo-hater, I mean, I’m a white guy, it’s literally in my blood, but at the same time, I’m not cuckoo bananapants. I’m not putting that goop on this already-wonderful sandwich and OH FINE FUCK IT I decided to try it.

Duke’s mayo, of course —

And whoa wait WHAT FOOD FUCKERY IS THIS because…

…because it also was great. Maybe even better.

The mayo was food lube. It made the sandwich even more sandwichy.

So, a week or so later, I ran a couple miles, felt pretty good, decided to have a treat, and weirdly, my mind ran to this sandwich. As a reward. I had been reprogrammed — brainwashed! — by this sandwich to consider it a trophy. My brain said, “That sounds like a way to treat yourself.” So I decided to make one. Except… oh, hey, what’s this? I have some extra bacon in the fridge? Ha ha, okay, listen, I am generally of the belief that bacon is an overdone food fad. “Put bacon in it” is a lazy way of making something hipstery and salty and meaty, and generally a good way to overpower a thing with little nuance. At the same time, it’s… also tasty. Bacon is nummy. I like bacon. And I figured I’d slap some bacon on this mad motherfucker of a sandwich —

And by all the saints and all the sinners, all the gods and all the devils, this is a truly sublime sandwich. It is satisfying on a deeply primal, weird level I can barely begin to describe — salty, crunchy, a bit sweet, a lot sour, it’s like a FLAVOR PINBALL going full-tilt in your happy mouth.

Since then, others have hit me up on Twitter with their attempts at making one of these bastard sandwiches and then eating it — and I’d say 90% of the time, people expected to be revolted, but actually really dug it. A lot of folks also added their own delightful ingredients, too: Spam, bacon-flavored Spam, turkey bacon, other pickled veggies, Miracle Whip, jelly, bologna. And it’s versatile, as well — you can go from sweet to dill, you can use all kinds of different bread choices, different meat, different kinds of peanut or nut butters.

It’s great.

And you have to try it.

You don’t get to say it’s gross until you try it.

Because that’s a lesson even my soon-to-be-seven-year-old knows: you can dislike something after you’ve tried it, but not before. Because a lot of foods in particular seem pretty gross. I mean, cheese? Cheese, if you have never before beheld it, is nasty. My understanding is that some cultures view our consumption of cheese the same way we view the consumption of bugs, or stinky tofu, or rotten fish — I mean, cheese is like, THERE’S A BIG LUMBERING ANIMAL, GO SQUEEZE ITS TEATS, GET THE LIQUID, BUT THEN YOU WANNA CURDLE IT WITH ACID, AND THEN YOU WANNA LET IT SIT WHERE IT’LL GET SOUR AND WEIRD, AND SOMETIMES YOU REALLY WANT SOME MOLD TO GROW ON IT, OR EVEN THROUGH IT, AND SOMETIMES IT SMELLS LIKE A DEAD GUY’S FEET BUT HERE, EAT SOME.

Fish sauce is basically, hey, let fish get so rotten that they liquefy, now, put that rotten fish liquor on some rice, mmm.

Meat is, hey, kill that thing, bleed it out, then press fire to its carcass, then eat its carcass.

Eggs: “Hey, this oblong object fell out of that chicken’s nebulous under-hole, maybe it’s a baby, maybe it’s not a baby, but I’m gonna go ahead and open it up and pour the bird-snot I find inside into a hot pan, get it sizzlin’, see what happens.”

Honey? BEE VOMIT.

So, food is fucking weird.

Get past that.

Make the sandwich.

Try the sandwich.

I’ll wait here. Report back.

It is spring. The flowers are poppin’. It’s raining. I’m getting some nice waterdrop shots. Also my face is full of CONCRETE thanks to the DISCARDED SEX BITS of HORNY TREES. Or something. My allergies are having a lot of fun right now, is what I’m saying. In a social media metaphor, it’s like my sinuses went on Twitter to say they liked The Last Jedi or didn’t like Justice League, and now they’re grappling with endless waves of pollen trolls.

(Curiously, I had a tweet last week go hella viral — we’re talking 40,000 RTs at present, 136,000 ‘likes’ — and boy it brings some fascinatingly stupid people out of the woodwork. I may have to dissect what happened there on the blog this week sometime.)

Anyway.

Freshly announced — I’ll be a special guest at Hal-Con in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is somewhere in the SEA-BRINED WILDS OF CANADA. I am told to expect a thing called a “donair,” so when I arrive my mouth will be open, hungry for this regional food. Which also I assume is just a remix of a doner-kebap? Which are amazing, so, if that’s true, count me the fuck in. Hal-Con is October 26-28th, so, hopefully I’ll see you there.

Let’s see? What else is going on?

There’s this mysterious tweet. Hm.

And that’s it, I think.

Here are more photos.

PLEASE TO ENJOY THEM.

It’s May the Fourth, c’mon.

So obviously the only choice of what to write is:

SPACE OPERA

SPACE OPERA

SPAAAAAACE

OPERAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaa

So, get on that. Whatever it means, it means.

Length: ~1500 words

Due by: Friday, May 11th, noon EST

Post at your online space (“space”) —

Link to it in the comments.

GET THEE TO A SPACESHIP.

As with the earlier post this week about Avengers: Infinity War, I’m gonna buffer in with a metric bootyload of spoiler space in the form of James Joyce, this time in the form of a passage from a significantly less-bullshit book, one of my favorites: Ulysses.

Note that when this passage is over —

THE SPOILERS BEGIN.

Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters’ claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn’t know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters. Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this morning. Was he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed no June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like things high. Tainted game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it no yes or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course aristocrats, then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to keep up the price. Cheap no-one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The élite. Crème de la crème. They want special dishes to pretend they’re. Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat with me. Royal sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw down in the Master of the Rolls’ kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage à la duchesse de Parme. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you’ve eaten. Too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards’ desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive. Do ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn’t mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember. Du, de la French. Still it’s the same fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out of making money hand over fist finger in fishes’ gills can’t write his name on a cheque think he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty thousand pounds.

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.

There. We good?

Okay.

Is Thanos the protagonist of Avengers: Infinity War?

I DON’T KNOW WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME

oh wait I’m the one who introduced the question

uhhh

um

LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN

Is Thanos the protagonist of Avengers: Infinity War?

The short answer is: nnnyyyynnnmmmaybe?

I mean, okay, first it’s important to know that this shit ain’t math. Like, we don’t have codified STORY MECHANICS where you can rip open the source code and look at the evidence for the thing. It’s all floppy, sloppy theorizing, but I’m down for that kinda floppy, sloppy theorizing, because that’s what makes all this story stuff fun to build, dissect, study, and replicate.

First it requires us to define our terms a little.

What the fuck is a protagonist?

Well, ‘protagonist’ is Greek for ‘professional player of the game of tag,’ which is to say, it’s the person in charge of tagging other characters and since Aristotle invented the game of tag (also hide-and-seek, and also a less-famous game called who-can-drink-the-hemlock-first) —

*receives note*

My Greek may be rusty there.

Let’s more hastily define ‘protagonist’ as the ‘main character.’

Except wait —

*receives note*

That’s not it, either.

As I noted in an earlier discussion of Fury Road, the ‘main character’ is Mad Max because, his name is in the damn title, but he’s also not the protagonist, which is Furiosa. She’s the one with an effect on the plot. She’s the one with the problem to be conquered, and the one with the arc, and the one whose point-of-view we’re largely with — or at least the one we engage with most often. The film is her story, but Mad Max is still the ‘main’ character. (Though in a sense he’s also literally a supporting character, in that he uses his body as a support for her rifle.)

Usually, I like to define a protagonist as the ‘agent-of-change,’ and the antagonist as the one who opposes that change — either with change of her own, or in an effort to uphold the status quo. Villain ends up being something different altogether, as is hero, because then you’re dealing with the standard (and occasionally boring) duality of good guys and bad guys. Can the villain be the protagonist? Sure. (See: Maleficent or Reservoir Dogs or The Grinch or, or, or.) Can the good guy be the antagonist? Sure. (The Fugitive!) But where does that leave us with Thanos?

Is Thanos the POV character in Infinity War? Not necessarily — we are not proxy to all the beats of his story. The film doesn’t follow him, mostly — it assumes he’s Off Doing Thanos Shit, and we’re not with him. Is he the character with the problem to be conquered? Nnnyes? Mostly? Probably? He has a mission, though a spectacularly dull-headed one — one that is either a plot-hole if you believe him to be noble or one that instead confirms that he’s actually just a giant genocidal dildo (and a purple one to boot). Is he the one with the arc? Probably. Most of the heroes are either nudging forward their arcs from the past several movies or have no notable arcs to speak of — his is the most complete one, in that we get the full scope of it from the start of the film to its conclusion.

Is he the agent-of-change?

Definitely.

But if he’s the protagonist…

If he’s the agent of change…

That means the heroes, who oppose his change…

Are the antagonists.

Which, if you interpret again as a value-free narrative term — meaning, they oppose his change but are not necessarily ‘villainous,’ then that actually works. Are they also the bad guys? Well, no, obviously not. You can interpret Thanos’ mission as loosely as you like, but there’s few moral codes that assert his dipshit plan is actually the noblest one — he wants to kill a lot of people, randomly, in pursuit of some autocratic magnanimity. He’s a dick. A giant, bloated jerk. He’s the bad guy, and there’s really no way of wiggling out of that, unless you’re also a horrible monster.

It does however reveal the slightly problematic part of the movie which is, for me, the characters are playing defense for nearly 90% of it. Even when Tony, Spidey and Strange opt to “take the fight to Thanos,” they’re just doing what would have happened anyway — going where he’s going. It’s still not active, but reactive, which is the hero mode in this film. They become slightly more active with the intro of Cap, who — using the help of his Secret Avengers — opts to work on Vision’s bling and Shuri it out of his head in order to destroy the stone. They become more active in that, though they ultimately fail, and are forced to a fallback position of reactive. (And it goes toward my argument that, despite filmmaker assertions, this damn sure isn’t a “complete movie” unless you really, really want the movie to positively identify with Thanos as protagonist, main character, and Actual Good Guy. Given that the midpoint of a story like this is usually the All Is Lost turning point, and that point in this film happens moments before the credits, it’s pretty clear this is just one half of a larger story.)

So, again, is Thanos the protagonist?

Maybe? It’s an argument, and one you can support. Is he the villain? Also, probably yeah, unless you’re a dictator and a murderer, in which case, hey, he’s aspirational. It’s a fun way to think of the movie, and maybe intentional on the parts of the writers — the question now becomes: was that effective? Was that the best choice? That is left to you, and to the passage of time, to decide.

(Casual reminder now: if you like this sort of narrative dissection, you can find a whooooole lot more of it in Damn Fine Story, which also unpacks stories like Die Hard, Star Wars and… wait, Gilmore Girls? *checks notes* Yep, Gilmore Girls. Grab in print or e-book.)

Goddamnit.

Fran was like, “Hey, can I have the keys to the blog?” and I was like, “Sure, obviously,” because I’m no ding-dong — I know that Fran knows how to bring the Quality Content, but then I show up for work in the morning and what’s happened? THE WHOLE BLOG IS COVERED IN CRITTERS. Well, somebody is going to have to deal with this. And that’s you, dear reader. It’s you.

* * *

The Museum of Errant Critters

Or (as my friend C.L. Polk dubbed them): Adorable Creatures of Doom

Chuck has been tweeting and blogging a lot lately on matters of Authorial Mental Health and Happiness and that synced up with a side project of mine — drawing some of the brain weasels and head dragons that sometimes set up shop northwards of my heart while I’m writing, working, not working, going to conventions, not going to conventions, etc. Sure there are happier critters around these parts, but Errant Critters are currently easier to trap and sketch for posterity.

When I told Chuck what I was up to, he offered to let me park the Museum on his blog for a little while… and luckily he didn’t ask about care and feeding so I’m just going to leave them here to eat all the food in Chuck’s murdershed.

Welcome to The Museum of Errant Critters – Established somewhere between 1812 and 2018 to catalog and archive mind-creatures that often behave in creatively destructive ways.

Visit our exhibits to learn tips and tricks for Critter Management… (results not guaranteed). In particular, we’ve found that identification and discussion helps with management of many of these critters. At least, it helps with identifying the gnawing sounds in the dark of night.

Despair Narwhal

Migratory and nocturnal, the Despair Narwhal’s sharp horn and plaintive song wake creatives up in the middle of the night with intense feelings of doom. Despair Narwhals, being composed mostly of mist and doubt, often evaporate with a good dose of morning light, application of food, or starting a new project.

The Youcant (extinct)

The megasaurus Youcant once lurked artists studios and creatives’ desks worldwide. Currently extinct, the creature was put out of business by a rapid, global outbreak of Why The Hell Not in 2016.

BrainWeasels

The sharp-toothed brain weasel is a rapid breeder that thrives on grey matter. Usually seen following an infestation of doubt devils or worry worms, these critters’ lifespan lasts as long as you feed them.

Catastrophizing Cormorant

Often found hovering, wings flapping, around the worst possible outcomes. No, worse than that. Even worse. Yep, that one. This bird is sure the worst will happen and demands that you make plans for this outcome, often instead of doing other things. Care and feeding involves a nap, some lunch, and a long look at other possibilities.

Guilt Gorilla

The gravity well near most Guilt Gorillas is extensive and can drag down even a stalwart creative. Feeds on: pre-existing feelings of not doing enough, overwork, and lateness. Distraction devices include planning calendars, reminding yourself to stand up and stretch once in a while, and that yes even you should take a @!%$#@ vacation now and then.

Worry Worms

Numerous, but small, these critters can chew through anything, if left festering long enough. Writing down their names sometimes helps, as does telling them you’ve got better things to do than watch them eat. In some cases, they signify something left unaddressed, but not always the thing they’re chewing on.

Garbage Moths

Attracted to dumpster fires, train wrecks, and twitter, these moths’ bright colors and spectacular tendency to spontaneously combust can devour hours, days, even weeks. When you look back at the missing time, you might not even remember what attracted their interest. Solution: accountability software, net nannies, a trip to a wifi-free zone.

Doubt Devils

Known to frequent conventions, speaking engagements, and presentations, doubt devils, much like their cousin the cartoon tasmanian devil (hired long term by Warner Brothers) like to arrive in a whirlwind about midway through any multi-day event and helpfully repeat back to you a distorted version of things that you said, did, or didn’t do. Cause is unknown, but having a strong desire to be part of a community can be an attractor. Cures include checking in with a friend, stepping away from convention overload for a few minutes, and reminding yourself that almost everyone feels this way sometimes.

Procrastination Platypus

Found lazing in deep task lists, this platypus doesn’t really care what you need to do, it wants you to play minesweeper or maybe just watch some YouTube for as long as possible. Set a timer and do a few minutes of downtime if you’re feeling distracted. The platypus is useful for giving yourself a break, just don’t let it eat your clock.

The Carousel

A master of camouflage, the Carousel is a slowly turning critter that can make you forget your own successes in order to ask you, repeatedly, what have you done lately. Best way to overcome: celebrate your wins, no matter how small.

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Fran Wilde’s novels and short stories have been nominated for three Nebula awards and two Hugos, and include her Andre Norton- and Compton-Crook-winning debut novel, Updraft (Tor 2015), its sequels, Cloudbound (2016) and Horizon (2017), and the novelette “The Jewel and Her Lapidary” (Tor.com Publishing 2016). Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Nature, and the 2017 Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. She writes for publications including The Washington Post, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, iO9.com, and GeekMom.com. You can find her on Twitter (@fran_wilde), Facebook (@franwildewrites), and at franwilde.net.