If you want to be a real writer, like, a really real writer, a writer who does it right, a writer who is officially official and who will earn the respect of the rest of the tribe —

You have to write longhand. Forget your phone. Put your phone away. Your phone is just beaming nonsense into your head — telecommunications chemtrails. Real writers write longhand, on notes stuffed into secret underwear pockets. If you don’t have secret underwear pockets, then you are not a Real Writer. That’s just fact. That’s just science. You write your first draft on notes stuffed into underwear pockets, then you write your second draft carved into a fundamental surface: driveway asphalt, a granite countertop, the stump of an ancient and magical tree. (Hemingway once famously carved THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA into the back of an impudent busboy.) When that’s done, eat some bees. Because writers, Real Writers, definitely eat bees. Writers also all have English degrees, or they all die. It’s like water to fish. We need it to swim.

Also, kill a goat. TRUE writers kill goats. But you gotta kill the goat in a real specific way. You have to get a goat, then yell into the goat’s ear the full text of your first rejection letter. You scream it into the goat’s ear at top volume, then as the goat is reeling from the disappointment borne of such rejection, you seize the moment and snap its neck. (Though Edith Wharton famously dispatched her goats with a blunderbuss full of dynamite.)

Of course, none of this is true.

Because all writing advice is bullshit (though bullshit fertilizes). I’m writing this thing because once in a while we are treated to missives from well-meaning expert writers who have come to believe that The Way They Write is the Only Way To Write, because their process has been tainted by the strong smell of Survivorship Bias. “I survived this way, and so you must, too.”

There exists no one way to write any one thing, and as long as your writing has a starting point and an ending point, I think whatever shenanigans go on in the middle serve you fine as a process as long as it gets you a finished book heavy with at least some small sense of satisfaction. If you’re not finishing your books, you need to re-examine your process. If you’re not at all satisfied with your work, then again: re-examine that process.

And that’s it.

Everything else is just picking out drapes.

If you need a handy flowchart reminder, here’s my ARE YOU A REAL WRITER chart, written by me and designed by Rebekah Turner. Feel free to share!

This week’s challenge:

Gods and goddesses.

Genre doesn’t matter, but I want you to write a story dealing with the divine. A deity! A demi-god! Whatever. Made-up or real, doesn’t matter. From the POV of the deity or from someone having to deal with said deity. Or maybe you wanna talk about a whole damn pantheon.

Entirely up to you.

Length: ~2000 words

Due Date: 3/24/17, that Friday, noon EST.

Write at your online space.

Link back here.

Go forth and confront the divine.

THINGS AND STUFF AND THINGS:

Only a handful of hours left in the expertly-crafted cage-match of Miriam Black versus Suri over at Unbound Worlds. Go vote! And vote for Miriam or she’ll send birds to peck out your kidneys! Props to Michael Sullivan, who wrote Miriam’s final moments with glorious bad-assery.

You wanna read a killer Thunderbird review from Adventures in Poor Taste? Excerpt:

As always, Miriam Black is a dark delight to read; a bizarrely perfect blend of nobility and nihilism, struggling with her own demons as hard as she fights those who would do harm to an innocent person or someone she’s pretending she doesn’t care about.

And similarly, a kick-ass review of Empire’s End from Starburst Magazine, excerpted:

The result is a high octane and swiftly paced affair. It isn’t tight; this is an explosion of events as the key characters find themselves fated to visit Jakku, and the challenges that await them there. Though every character gets their arc, and we get some nice scum and villainy action with the addition of another Hutt to the mix, this is really a battle between two complex and interesting women, one Rebel, one Imperial, both desperate to enforce their will on an ever changing galaxy. Strong stuff. Highly skilled geek and very experienced writer Chuck Wendig has weathered heavy criticism to produce the Aftermath Trilogy. The old Star Wars tie-in books had their own cult following and some heavy investment from the fans. Add to this Wendig’s inclusive and sensible approach to world building, and the series got much more than its fair share of flack.

See? I am a highly skilled geek. I bought five dots in the Geek Skill.

Bonus: I list five rad books at Tor.com with birds in their titles. Go check out my list, feel free to use the comments there (or here) to add your own favorite bird-titled books.

Finally, the image at the top of the post is from a fan — fella named Zach Miller decided to go ahead and conjure up his own idea of what the Moth freighter looks like in the Aftermath trilogy with LEGO bricks. He cannibalized a Falcon build to do so and the result is freaking awesome:

Ooh ooh one more thing —

I’m noodling on starting a newsletter type of thing. TinyLetter or what-not. Ping me below in the comments if you think such a thing would be a) interesting to you or b) why the fuck bother because hey look here at this blog or c) some other random thought or idea that will force its way out of your brainpan and into the comments

OKAY BYE

We are in the path of a bulldozer of a storm, apparently — it’s going to snow Yetis, as I’m told — and so I figure that leaves today as a very good day for you to come over here and drop into the comments. Your purpose? To recommend a book you’ve read recently that you liked. Tell us the name, who wrote it, and why you dug it.

Feel free to throw in comics you’re digging, too, because comics are rad.

DO THIS NOW FOR GOOD BOOK KARMA.

For the rest of you in the path of the snowstorm, good luck, may your power remain forever on, and don’t eat each other like the guys on that soccer team who crashed in the mountains. Also, beware your microwave, because I hear that motherfucker can spy on you, now. Goddamn microwave, WE ARE WATCHING YOU WATCH US.

*microwaves a bunch of forks to punish it*

Once again I am accepting your guesses — what, pray tell, are depicted in the three macro photos above? Pop in your guesses, and the winner gets a prize — THE PRIZE OF BEING AWESOME. It is an intangible prize but one that you may transform into a ribbon or t-shirt or an unending vibe of good-naturedness that will buoy you through life. Your call.

(Number 2 in the photos above is obviously a waterdrop. The guess is actually on what does the waterdrop sit? Hint: I took that photo indoors, not outside.)

Drop guesses in the comments below.

Let’s see, what else is going on?

Well, in February it was 76 degrees. Last week it was in the 60s. It’s now March, and 12 degrees, and tomorrow we’re getting up to two feet of snow so that’s fine, everything’s fine, nothing to see here. (Truthfully, a big cuckoo blizzard in March isn’t unusual around these parts — but the near-80 degrees in February is a wee bit odd. But ha ha thankfully climate change is just a Chinese hoax so don’t worry.)

Hmm anything else, anything else —

OH I KNOW, Empire’s End hit the NYT list again — dropping in at #11. *wiggles*

Also, I dropped some wisdom at Boing Boing on the subject of seven things you probably didn’t know about vultures. I mean, some of you probably knew this stuff, because you’re smart, educated people who are also clearly vulture aficionados like me.

I was on a couple radio shows last week talking BOOK STUFF, so — soon as I have links, I’ll share.

And finally, I’m at Hypable, interviewed about Thunderbird.

If you’ve read any of my books — especially Thunderbird — I’d love a review posted somewhere of your choosing. Amazon, Goodreads, carved into a popular picnic table at your local park.

Thanks all, and have a great week. P.S., If you’re going to be buried in snow, at least die with the comfort that the snow will preserve your body so the robots who govern the future will marvel over it at a museum.

Today, a challenge to you:

I want you to come up with your own monster.

Not a vampire, not a werewolf, not a Loch Ness serpent or a Chupacabra. Something new. Something uniquely yours.

You will create this creature and give it life inside a piece of flash fiction.

Name it. Think about it in context of its environment. Make it a character all its own. You can write something horror, fantasy, sci-fi, or if you wanna take it for a more literary or literal spin, do so. It’s your monster. Take it for a walk where you want to walk it.

Story length: ~1500 words

Due by: Friday, 3/17, noon EST

Post at your online space.

Give us a link back here.

CREATE YOUR MONSTER.