Here is a thing that sometimes happens to me and other authors who feature a not-insignificant footprint online or in the “industry,” as it were:

Some rando writer randos into my social media feed and tries to pick a fight. Or shits on fellow authors, or drums up some kind of fake-ass anti-me campaign or — you know, basically, the equivalent to reaching into the overfull diaper that sags around their hips and hurling a glob of whatever feces their body produces on any given day. The behavior of a shit-flinging gibbon.

Now, a shit-flinging gibbon hopes to accomplish attention for itself. It throws shit because it knows no other way to get that attention. The gibbon’s most valuable asset, ahem, is its foul colonic matter, so that’s the resource it has at hand.

Thing is, you’re not a shit-flinging gibbon.

You’re a writer.

Your most valuable asset is, ideally, your writing.

If it’s not, that’s a problem. A problem with you, to be clear, and not a problem with the rest of the world. It rests squarely upon your shoulders.

If your best way to get attention for yourself is to throw shit instead of write a damn good book, you are a troll, not a professional writer.

Your best advertising for yourself as a writer is to write the best book you can write.

Your best advertising for the last book you wrote is the next book.

Your best boost to your career is to be the best version of yourself. Online, in-person, all-around — summon the ideal version of yourself and present that face to the world, to your potential audience. That is how you earn your audience. You don’t build them. Your audience isn’t a fucking chair. They are a group of people who you can, in part, earn as readers and as fans. (I say in part because you can never please everybody, nor should you try.)

If the best version of yourself is a shit-flinging gibbon, you’re in trouble.

And certainly someone here is saying, But you just said you can’t please everybody, so why can’t I just be a shit-flinging gibbon? Well, you can be. It’s an option. It’s a tactic. It’s just a bad one. It’s one that leads with a broken foot. You’re saying, “I’m a writer,” and yet, you’re not leading with your work. You’re leading with antics. You’re leading with a toddler tantrum. No book will earn the love of a whole audience, but the book is still the point. And shit-flinging gibbons are not excellent sellers of, or writers of, books.

Now, most of you, I assume, are not shit-flinging gibbons. Your judgment is dubious — after all, you come here to read whatever hot piffle comes belching up out of my thought-hole — but at the very least, I safely assume few of you are monkeys who fling poo. And despite this, the overarching lesson is still true: most writing problems are solved by writing.

Having a problem getting traction in the book you’re working on? Write your way through it. Put words on paper. Agitate the writing with writing.

Having a problem even still? Rewrite it.

Having a problem marketing this book? Write the next book.

Having a problem with author drama or publishing nonsense? Distract yourself by, yep, you guessed it, writing something.

Can’t sell this book? Write another book.

Writing is a key to a door. It is a finely-crafted, articulate key. It is the best and shiniest artifact in your arsenal. Yes, you can try to kick the door down. Yes, you can try to bash it open with another author’s head. But your own writing is the best key you have, so use it.

No, it’s not a skeleton key. It doesn’t open all doors. Sometimes the act of writing is also about not writing — about waiting, ruminating, outlining, reading, living, about punching frozen beef, about drinking gin-and-tonics, about hunting whales and ingesting whole hummingbirds and okay you know what, I think I lost the narrative thread here a little. Point being, writing isn’t always about writing.

But the career, overall, is.

This is true however you publish, whatever you write.

Writing begets writing. Writing sells writing.

Writing is an act of doing. It is an act of making.

It is also an act of persevering.

And surviving.

A lot of writers simply can’t hack it, so they quit. The road ahead and behind you is littered with the corpses of writers who just couldn’t hack it. (And spoiler alert, some of them are the desiccated carcasses of shit-flinging gibbons.) They couldn’t deal, so they gave up and gave in.

Writing is you not quitting. It’s you taking a bite and digging your teeth deeper like a cranky-ass bulldog who refuses to let go. It isn’t you being a crap-tossing primate.

Be the best version of yourself.

Let your writing be the guide.

Write the greatest damn book you can write.

And don’t be a shitty monkey.

The end.

Once upon a time I had a vision in my head of what being an author was like.

I imagined that I would wake up at the crack of noon, and I would roll out of bed and then ruminate on the complexities of the past, the present, the future. I would Think Very Hard about Big Ideas, and then I would go to the fertile garden of my word processor and gaze upon the word-seeds I had left the day before, and there, they would bloom, carrying forth the fruit of my Big Ideas — fruit that whose skin would rupture and it would leak the sweet juices of my Pure Nourishing Genius across the page.

Then I wrote a story longer than 2,000 words and became immediately divested of this bullshit notion. To clarify, I don’t mean that writing is not about big ideas, or that storytelling is not a conveyance and mechanism for those ideas, but rather, that in the day-to-day, this isn’t what writing or storytelling is about.

No, it’s about resource management.

Like, we’ve all had jobs. Regular, normal-ass jobs. (Or normal ass-jobs? Hm.) Jobs where you juggle tasks and complete them on time. Jobs where you have to keep track of random shit and make sure some kind of process or production stays orderly. Maybe you put things into a spreadsheet or you arrange widgets and dongles or you make sandwiches as a sandwich artisan.

All good. All normal. No shame in dongle-sandwich management.

Life, too, is this way — my adult life is constantly about managing things. Am I wearing pants? Am I where I’m supposed to be? Have I put food in my body? Where are my pants again? Having a child only increased this, because suddenly I’m worry about a tinier, less-responsible version of me. Is he eating food? Is he eating the right kind of food? Am I committing to his physical, emotional and intellectual nourishment? Where is he? Right now, seriously, where is he? Is he under the couch? He might be under the couch. He might be in the ducts, like John McClane. Did he poop today? This is legitimately a thing you have to think about with kids. Their poop. Did they do it? Did it look okay? Are you feeding them the right amount of poop fuel and is it resulting in proper poopification? You just don’t know. But you always have to check.

Job, life, it’s all resource management. Hell, even video games are like this. Wandering around Mass Effect is a constant act of, “Well, I found another pair of space pants, what do I do with these? I found seven Krogan whatchamafuckits, will I use them to upgrade my sniper rifle or will I spend them for research points in order to build space toilets on this disreputable planet I found, or maybe I’ll just sell them for space drugs.”

Storytelling, I had hoped was different.

Spoiler warning: it ain’t that different.

Writing a story is often just an act of resource management.

What I mean is this:

I am often forced to be focused on basic logistics for a story. My questions are ceaselessly dull. Where are the characters? Can they have gotten there in that time frame? Wait, have they slept? What are they holding? Could they have that? Wait, does that character know enough about that thing to accurately speak about it? What’s today’s date? When is it? Where am I? Where are the characters’ pants? Are they space pants? Do they need seven whatchamafuckits to defeat the seller of space drugs? Did the characters poop today?

Worse, the writing itself is subject to resource management: did I use that word too many times? Should this chapter follow that chapter? Is there a jump in time that will help? Am I establishing a good rhythm, with differently-sized sentences and paragraphs nestled up against one another? Am I breaking this chapter up, or leaving it long, or what? Do I need more space drugs? ARE MY WORDS TOTAL POOP TODAY?

Storytelling has its own abstract resources, too. You want tension, but you don’t want too much of it — overuse it, and it becomes overwrought, listless, expected. Conflict can’t just be one thing, it needs to come in a rainbow of fucking flavors. You never want just one plot, you need multiple plots, driven by stories, circumstances, conflicts creating conflicts, scenes creating scenes. It all has to flow together. It has to have a narrative rhythm just as your words need a rhythm of language. More resources, more management, and more poop, probably, I dunno.

I note this for a few reasons.

First, because it was on my mind and what’s on my mind often gets frothily reduced, like a fine sauce, on this here blog.

Second, because I think it’s important to hold minimal illusions about what the day-to-day job entails, and sometimes this job entails not merely herding cats but rather, WRESTLING MANY HERDS OF THE AFOREMENTIONED CATS, meaning, it requires juggling lots of internal narrative data. We often see writing and story spoken of in this high-minded and occasionally impractical way, but that’s rarely what really goes into the nitty-gritty of it.

Third, because I think maybe a lot of big Hollywood films have actively lost sight of this kind of important resource management, and they treat the narrative resources cheaply to score a lazy impact — so sad when I watch big movies and find a hundred different plotholes or worse, aren’t sure how a thing is actually happening, all because I think the storytellers forgot to track the narrative data. They become so consumed with spectacle that they fail to remember how things need to actually make sense at the most basic level. Storytelling can be about pomp and circumstance, but the moment we stop believing in the basic reality of it is the moment all the pomp and circumstance deflate like a sad erection.

Fourth and finally because you do still need to transcend this — you’re managing resources but at the end of the day, a story isn’t a spreadsheet, it isn’t logistics, it’s something grander, greater, squirmier, stranger. You must get the data and details right, you must force it to make sense, and then you go beyond it. Only when your ducks are in their proverbial row do you transcend those details and find a way to arrange everything for maximum emotional or thematic impact.

But it’s okay that in the trenches, it’s about crude logic and basic arrangement.

Let that be okay.

Don’t sweat it.

Get it right, then go bigger.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find my pants and go buy more space drugs.

* * *

Coming soon:

DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

by Chuck Wendig, from Writer’s Digest, October 17th

A new writing/storytelling book by yours truly! All about the fiddly bits of storytelling — creating great characters, growing narrative organically, identifying and creating theme. Hope you dig it.

Pre-order now:

Indiebound

Amazon

B&N

(Come see me launch the book on October 17th at Borderlands in San Francisco with Kevin Hearne launching the amazing Plague of Giants and Fran Wilde supporting her sublime Bone Universe books! 6pm!)

Here’s a fun thing that happened:

All weekend I’ve taken to doing some random long-needed yardwork, one task of which involved attacking the invasive grasses that have, well, invaded our property. These grasses were once ornamental, procured by someone somewhere — a neighbor, our home’s former owner, some random Forest Hobo — and they bought them from Home Depot or Lowe’s or some other proprietor of invasive plants masquerading as friendly landscaping greenery. They planted these grasses. These grasses spread like emerald fire across the roads, driveways, forests.

These grasses form a pretty significant root ball, too, so they’re incredibly hard to remove.

So, I decided I was going to tackle one particularly massive patch, see what kind of damage I could do. Our weedwhacker with the blade attachment wasn’t working, though — I cleaned the spark plug and checked the filter and whispered the secret words into the motor, but still nothing. I decided to get my very own blade attachment: A MACHETE.

Machete in hand, I went to attack the grass.

I was successful not only in chopping the shit out of the grass, but given how much it has been raining lately, I was able to rip up several of the root-wads right out of the damp earth. (Sidenote: we seem to have stolen the PNW’s weather, as it is unseasonably cold and rainy — right now it’s 60 degrees. In August. Sorry Seattle and Portland! I know that you’re presently on fire and stuff. I blame those wacky climate hoaxsters, The Chinese.)

So, that was good fun, but now I am in pain. The backs of my thighs feel like Ivan Drago has been using them as punching bags. Sitting down is an exercise in sudden, unexpected misery. But it came from being productive, so I’ll take it, and also, SCREW YOU INVASIVE GRASSES.

The next day, a tree fell. And it fell in part across the road, so I went down to take a look — initially I assumed it was going to be one of our ash trees. We have problems with the (also invasive) emerald ash borer around here. (Sidenote: you can inoculate your trees against them, even if the ash borer has already begun to attack the tree. Used to be that it was a thousand bucks per tree, but I guess the patent expired or something, and now it’s produced by other companies for around a hundred bucks a pop. You literally poison the tree to poison the bug. Doesn’t hurt the tree. Kills the bug.) But this tree was very leafy and green, so I went over to it and started lopping some branches and moving stuff off the road, and then I was like, “Hey what are these green berries on the tree that’s weird,” and then I was like, “Hey you know what has berries, poison ivy, and I’ve never seen the berries but this surely can’t be poison ivy, because the leaves are huge, and they’re not in groups of thr… wait no they are in groups of three wait this tree is dead it’s just colonized by so much poison ivy it looks like it’s alive oh shit oh shit.”

I went home.

I scrubbed and scrubbed.

I used gritty soap and then Tecnu soap and then showered.

And this morning my right arm looks like I’m wearing a shirt made of poison ivy.

So that’s fun.

YAY NATURE.

Curiously, though much of my weekend was spent dealing with invasive species (including cutting down invasive Tree of Heaven trees and killing the invasive bug that eats them, the lanternfly), poison ivy is not actually invasive. It’s part of a healthy forest ecosystem, and shores up the ground against erosion. It’s also a fucking shitty asshole dick. *itch itch itch*

*scratch scratch scratch*

SO ANYWAY HEY HI WHAT ELSE IS UP.

I told you about those cool book sales. They’re still ongoing.

You saw Turok #1, right?

And since we’re talking about invasive things, hey, don’t forget that book I wrote about ants, ants, ants: INVASIVE.

Did you remember that I’m at the Writer’s Digest conference in NY on the 18th, 19th, and 20th? I’m on a couple panels — one about worldbuilding and another about building an audience with a blog. (That last one is tricky, and I am likely to offer controversial opinions about both building audiences and making bloggery.)

Also reminder that I’ll be in SF, Portland and Seattle with Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde on October 17th, 18th, and 19th, respectively.

OKAY BRING ON THE MONDAY MACROS

please to enjoy these new photos taken by yours truly

*chops off arm in the meantime*

If you are so inclined, a number of my books are on sale, presently, at Amazon.

You will find that the following books are only $0.99 in e-book:

Atlanta Burns (Book 1)

Atlanta Burns: The Hunt (Book 2)

Under the Empyrean Sky (Heartland, Book 1)

Blightborn (Heartland, Book 2)

The Harvest (Heartland, Book 3).

(Or if you want the series links: Atlanta Burns and Heartland series.)

So that’s like, five books for under five bucks.

In Atlanta Burns, you will find a young girl who goes toe-to-toe with small-town Nazis running a dog-fighting ring.

In the Heartland books you will find bloodthirsty corn created by rich people in their flying cities — and you’ll find the hardscrabble Heartlanders living down below who plan on freeing themselves from their skyborn oppressors. Steinbeck meets Star Wars.

You can also add audio, I believe, to each for $1.99.

Also looks like the Invasive paperback ($5.99) and Blackbirds paperback ($7.13) are both on sale, too — oh! And the Invasive e-book has dropped down to $6.99. So that’s nice.

What I’m trying to say is, go buy my books or I’ll keep bothering you.

*stares*

*stares harder*

*entire face breaks out into hundreds of eyes, all of which stare at you*

*ants rain upon you*

Someone suggested this one to me this week, and I sadly forget who (apologies!) — but there is a Twitter account called MAGICAL REALISM BOT. I don’t know if it’s really a bot or someone is actually creating or curating it, but it doesn’t matter.

Because it is brilliant.

Especially as fodder for flash fiction.

So, go look at it.

Pick a tweet.

Write a short story based on that tweet.

That’s it.

Go do it.

Length: ~1500 words

Due by: Friday, August 11th, noon EST

Post online.

Give us a link in the comments.

The end.

Behold! A guest post from a good friend and a great writer, the mighty man with two first names, Mister Adam Christopher —

* * *

A few years back I was on a WorldCon panel with m’learned host Mr. Wendig and fellow author Stephen Blackmore, and we were tasked with discussing the subject of pulp fiction. I remember having a lot of fun, but I’m not entirely sure we ever managed to get to the bottom of what the term “pulp” actually meant, at least not in the context of modern science fiction. Okay, yes, originally, way back in the 1920s and 1930s, it literally referred to the paper fiction magazines were published on – cheap, low-quality pulp newsprint – and then because everybody in the history of everything is a snob, the quality of the paper somehow became confused with the quality of the stories on which they were printed and pulp fiction became a synonym for, well, crap. This was low-grade mass-produced nonsense for people who didn’t read the important books that other people pretended to read, stories deliberately designed by evil publishing overlords to entertain and enthral and – gasp! – excite.

Heaven forfend stories should be fun.

And sure, a lot of pulp sci-fi was written very quickly – the prolific Gardner Fox apparently wrote ten stories a week, using his morning and evening commutes to outline and his lunchtime to edit. A lot of pulp fiction is, well, not of a high quality, but considering the enormous volume produced – at its peak, reading pulp fiction magazines was actually the number one leisure pastime in America – the hit rate probably adhered to the standard bell curve.

I’d argue that reading pulp sci-fi now is no less entertaining than it was seventy years ago, but while our understanding of science and technology is infinitely more advanced than it was back then, I don’t think that needs to have any impact on our enjoyment of the original material.

More than that, I don’t think it can, or should, stop us from creating new fiction in the same vein. For some reason, there’s a secret rule of science fiction that says it has to be set in the future, but as we should all know by now, writing rules are there to be ignored, if not laughed out of the building.

It was with this in mind that I set about writing a series about a robot assassin working in Hollywood, California, 1965. In the world of the Ray Electromatic Mysteries, the robot revolution came and went in the 1950s – while robots and artificial intelligence were useful things, it turned out that people didn’t like robots taking their jobs, so the whole thing was canned – and Ray finds himself as the last robot in the world. Programmed to be a private detective, he was re-programmed by his profit-motivated supercomputer boss, Ada, to be a hitman, after she figured out that you could make more money from killing people than helping them.

That’s the concept, and it’s a simple one. What was harder was, if you’ll pardon the pun, the execution. Because now I found myself having to write a series of science fiction novels set not in the future, but in the past.

There’s a temptation here to, well, take the piss, as they say here in the UK – to mock or make fun of the genre. To our modern eyes, the science of the 1960s can be both amazing and ridiculously quaint – we managed the incredible feat of landing people on the moon using the most complex machines ever invented, yet a one megabyte hard drive was the size of a small truck and people weren’t really sure that computers had a place in the home.

But I wasn’t writing comedy. Far from it. I was writing Raymond Chandler’s lost science fiction stories, imaginary tales set in the near future of his beloved Los Angeles. To that end, Raymond Electromatic and his boss Ada had to be high-tech, state-of-the-art visions of progress.

To make these stories work, there was only one thing to do. I had to take it all very, very seriously, taking it as an established historical fact that there were robots in the 1950s and 1960s. Some were simple drones or factory machines, but others were human-like, powered by true AIs, able to take over whole sections of industry and business to allow the people they replace live that much-promised life of automated leisure.

From that, I could build the world and my protagonist. Raymond Electromatic was the last robot off the production line, a special project personally overseen by robotics mastermind Professor Thornton. So, Ray was special – more independent, able to live and work alone in the big city. The key to his success was his memory tape, a remarkable piece of hyper-miniaturisation that allowed an entire day of experiences and data to be recorded onto a small reel-to-reel magnetic tape installed in Ray’s chest. At the end of each day, the full tape is swapped out for a clean one, and he can get back to work.

Of course, the side effect of this is that he doesn’t remember anything about what he’s done, but this is the bleeding edge of science. Some obstacles are just insurmountable… and in Ray’s case, having a short-term memory problem is a pretty good insurance policy for their operation. And if Ray is a technological wonder, his boss Ada is nothing short of a miracle. A supercomputer the size of a room, Ada is the brains of the operation – and being immobile, her memory banks have a considerably larger capacity than Ray’s.

But this isn’t a pastiche. Sure, it’s fun – coming up with suitably archaic yet futuristic technology for the books is a blast – but this is science fiction. Ray may be a wiseguy but he kills people for a living, and the seedy underbelly of Hollywood is a very dangerous place.

So what does that make Killing Is My Business? It’s a slice of retro-futurism wrapped inside a hardboiled, Chandleresque crime novel – but it’s also a serious science fiction novel.

Just one set in the glorious future of 1965.

* * *

Adam Christopher: Website | Twitter

Killing Is My Business: Amazon | Indiebound | B&N