Apple-Obsessed Author Fella
That is a bee-fly. It is not a bee, but rather, a fly that looks like a bee. Can you blame the fly? Flies are ugly little raisins. Bees are awesome. Everyone loves bees. If you are a fly, try to look like a bee instead. Bees get honey. Flies get turds. There’s your life lesson. Don’t be a fly. Be a bee. The end.
I’ve randomized 20 titles using this generator.
You will pick one (or random roll with a d20 or random.org number generator).
It will be your title. You will use this title to write a ~1000 word flash fiction story, and you will then post that story at your online space and drop a link to it in the comments below.
Ready?
YOUR TITLES ARE:
Ah, Alex Segura. Author. Editor. Publicity genius. Raconteur. Rocket surgeon. Four dogs in a trenchcoat. What hasn’t been said about him already? Alex has a new book out — Down the Darkest Street, the next Pete Fernandez mystery — and he wanted to stop by and write a blog post about his experiences here, and of course he’s also a new father so the first draft of his blog post was printed out and mailed to me… and it was mostly just pictures of him staring awake into an iPhone camera late at night while a child wails over his shoulder, shellacking his neck with white baby frothpuke. Thankfully, his second draft was better. So, here he us, talking about the role of author, new father, and guy with a book out. How do you balance it all?
* * *
We’ve all been there. Hunched over our laptops, hitting refresh on our book’s Amazon ranking/Goodreads score/Bamboozle status. It’s a week before your novel is out and you’re stretching, STRETCHING for anything you can do to move the needle that one, tiny bit to get it over the hump. To give it that one extra inch of visibility that’ll help it succeed. Another guest blog? Another sponsored post? What will Reviewer X say? Maybe I should email my agent about that one thing….or my editor?
The events have been booked. The interviews have happened. The blurbs have been collected. You’ve done the Twitters and Facebook’d yourself silly. So you sit in a dark room and stare at your screen. You jump as your email signals a new message. You groan when you realize it’s a coupon code for Costco.
Pre-book anxiety’s a killer, huh?
A piercing shriek cuts through our dark apartment. I speed-walk to the bedroom and try to help my wife soothe our seven-week old son back to sleep, hopeful his zzz batting average is higher tonight than it had been earlier in the week.
Oh, right. We just had a kid. Forgot to mention that.
I knew going into 2016 that it was going to be a big, challenging time. I’d finally found a home for my mystery novel series with the wonderful folks at Polis Books. They were not only putting out my new novel, but re-issuing my first. Two books in a year? Ok, I got this. Two books on top of a pretty intense day job promoting and editing comics? I got this, seriously. Two books, intense day job and a baby.
I got this?
I’m going to fast forward past all the stuff you should know already: I love our kid, he’s amazing and cute, the first time he smiled melted my heart and it’s been insanely stressful and exhausting. I’m not speeding by this because I don’t think it’s important – it sure as hell is – but because all of that kid stuff? All the late-night wake ups, the doctor visits that are routine (to them, not you), the rage that comes when your only clean footsie has buttons not a zipper, the barrage of advice you get from everyone – from your closest relatives to the guy at your coffee shop – all of it adds up. It’s intense and each thing, good or bad, feels huge.
Because it’s important. Capital “I” important.
While I can make glib remarks about bringing three babies into the world this year, that’s not true/fair and a disservice to the kid, who is the only actual human we’ve brought into existence in 2016. So, my point is – “Baby Important” puts “Book Important” into super, hyper-focused perspective.
I don’t mean that in a holier-than-thou BOOKS ARE BENEATH ME way. Not at all. Silent City and Down the Darkest Street – those books have my heart in them. I first put pen to paper on my debut almost 10 (!!!!!) years ago. Getting them published has been a long, winding journey – one a lot of authors, I’m sure, can relate to. There’s a lot of me, my life and my ups and downs in there. They’re important milestones for me. Their success is, of course, important to me. But they’re not Baby Important.
What kind of perspective does having a tiny, 12-pound human that depends on you for its survival bring, you ask?
The kind of perspective that allows you to realize when you’ve done enough. You’ve set the plates and utensils on the table and prepared the food. All you can do now is sit back and watch people eat your meal. The perspective that allows you to take a breath, step back and let the chips fall where they may. The books are written.
Like Delilah Dawson said in this very inspiring series of tweets – there’s no top of the mountain when it comes to writing/publishing. Even if I write the bestselling-est of bestsellers, I’ll probably write another book after that, no matter what. The writing, for me, is something I have to get out and process and create. It’s going to happen anyway. I need to write. Would it be great to get billions of people to read my books? Hell yes. But those are the possible perks, not the targets.
And while I can’t say I don’t read reviews, refresh my rankings or spend more time in my email inbox than is probably healthy, I do it less frequently now. Not because I don’t care, but because I’d rather put my phone down and play with my kid.
HAHAHA – wait, you thought it ends there? Not quite. The writing stuff never stops, even when the promotion phase is complete. Case in point? I’ve got a third novel in my agent’s hands and half of a fourth screaming at me to finish. That might SOUND like it’s good – but it also means there’s a lot of writing work to be done, like revisions, copyedits, you name it. The beat goes on. And while taking care of Pete Fernandez, my series character, is nothing like trying to raise a newborn – they are definitely two things that need constant upkeep, in their own way. It’s just about finding the right perspective – and balance.
I hope they get along.
* * *
Alex Segura is a novelist and comic book writer. His Miami crime novels Silent City and Down the Darkest Street – featuring washed up detective Pete Fernandez – are out now from Polis Books. You can find him at www.alexsegura.com or on Twitter @alex_segura. He also edits THE SHIELD from Dark Circle Comics – co-written by some guy named Wendig.
Down The Darkest Street: Indiebound | Amazon
IT IS HAPPENING.
PAY YOUR TAXES.
AND THEN BUY COOL BOOKS ON SALE TO FORGET THE STING OF TAXES.
Sale of eight authors and many many books runs from 4/12 – 4/16!
So, what’s on tap?
First up, from me, you can nab the two MOOKIE PEARL books on discount —
The Blue Blazes ($2.99): Buy Direct | Amazon
The Hellsblood Bride ($2.99): Buy Direct | Amazon
And hell with it, I’ll also discount my eight-book writing bundle from $20 to $10: Gonzo Writing Bundle.
Here’s a rundown of what the other ass-kicking authors are offering:
To the Towers of Tulandan, a Lays of Anuskaya novella – FREE!
The Winds of Khalakovo (ebook) – $1.99
The Straits of Galahesh (ebook) – $2.99
The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (ebook) – $2.99
Also offering 25% off of the trade paperback and limited edition versions
The Woken Gods (ebook) – $2.99
Plague Year (ebook) – $1.99
Plague War (ebook) – $1.99
Plague Zone (ebook) – $1.99
Long Eyes (ebook) – $1.99
Brave New World: Revolution (ebook) – $2.99
Hard Times in Dragon City (ebook) – $2.99
Dangerous Games: How to Play (ebook) – $2.99
Murder at the Kinnen Hotel, a Powder Mage novella (ebook) – FREE!
Ghosts of the Tristan Basin, a Powder Mage novella (ebook) – $1.99
Forsworn, a Powder Mage novella (ebook) – $1.99
Servant of the Crown, a Powder Mage Novella (ebook) – $1.99
The Powder Mage Novella Collection #1 (ebook) – $5.99
The Death of Dulgath (ebook) – $2.99
Also offering 30% off the paperback, hardcover, and limited edition versions
Wheel of the Infinite (ebook) – $1.99
City of Bones (ebook) – $1.99
Okay, before you do anything else, go read what Very Smart Author Jaye Wells says about creative burnout — “Writers Need An Escape Hatch.”
Good?
Done?
Rad.
I have been doing this writing thing professionally for — *coughs into hand* — about 16 years. (And, for another fun number, in a few weeks I turn 40. Holy shit who let that happen?) And if there exists one thing I can tell you with great certainty, it’s that you will one day have to deal with the inevitability of burnout.
Now, burnout is not writer’s block. Writer’s block exists, but it’s not unique to writers and we shouldn’t call it writer’s block because that gives it too much power. Burnout is also not depression. Depression is a lying parasite that lives in your heart and while I am not a psychoparasitologist, I can tell you that treating depression as if it is burnout is a very good way to become even more depressed. It’s like trying to fight quicksand as if it is seawater — you can swim in seawater, but in quicksand, you’ll just kick and flop and sink further into its grip.
Burnout is this, at least for me:
You write because you love it, and then eventually you write because you want it to make you money. And maybe it does make you money: a little, a middle, a lot. You work very hard at writing, but writing is of course never just writing. Writing is editing. Writing is rewriting. Writing is marketing and promo and dealing with agents and editors and publishing and gazing into the swirling vortex of hate-machinery that governs this and really all industries, and the writing becomes tainted in a way by all these other things. It’s as if your love of writing was a cool-ass cigarette boat from 1980s-era Miami Vice: lean and fast and cutting waves like a spear flung from Poseidon’s briny hand. But then over time, all this other stuff gathers on your hull like barnacles. Your rig gets rusty. Boggy. Suddenly you feel like a tugboat dragging a garbage scow through a sloppy tide of medical waste. You’re asking yourself, am I even in the water anymore? Am I beached? Am I on drydock? Is this forever?
A publishing deal goes south? More barnacles.
A book you write lands on shelves and it feels like nobody buys it? More rust.
Every bad review is a remora fish clinging to your side. Every royalty statement that reminds you about unearned advances is concrete drying on your boots. It’s all boat anchors and caked-on mud and an engine that gutters and grinds before it starts in the morning.
Burnout is a kind of creative constipation. You get tired of doing it. The work feels only like work. Clarity seems impossible. The stress outweighs the joy.
You’ll hit it. You might hit it early in your career trying to get published. You might hit it in the middle of your career after all the business baggage has been slung over your shoulders. If you’re me, you might bump up against it again and again with the standard peaks and valleys of the authorial life. I periodically run parallel to burnout like someone running alongside the ocean — if I turn my head just so I can see the shark fins, I can see the rippling lines of a threatening undertow, I can see the SURLY OCTOPUSES OF ENNUI THREATENING TO ENROBE ME IN THEIR TENTACLES AND DROWN ME IN THE BUBBLING DEPTHS OF MY OWN LASSITUDE.
Question is, what do I do about the OCTOPUSES OF ENNUI?
As my nemesis Jaye points out, you’ve got options. Nab a new hobby. Take up yoga or meditation. I like photography, as you might see with my Macro Monday experiments. Take a walk. Take a vacation. Have an adventure. Vent frustrations with fellow writers (seriously, this can be a huge help). Punch a punching bag painted to look like the politician of your choice.
All of those are good at scraping some of the barnacles off.
But here’s my problem with that: those solutions are frequently temporary. It’s like, taking a vacation from a stressful job vents the stress in the short term, but as a long-term solution, it’s total pants. The stress returns. Vapor-lock settles back in. Burnout returns as a vengeful specter — you did not exorcize that hoary spirit, but rather, merely ran away from it and forced it to find you anew in a grim otherworldly game of MARCO POLO.
And so, I seek a deeper solution.
Now, the first piece of advice I give to any writer — young or old, new or seasoned — is learn to care less. Give fewer fucks. Give some fucks! Have the appropriate amount of fucks in your fuck-basket, but know when to thrust up your middle finger and walk away from your stress like a bad-ass walking away from an EXPLODING BUILDING.
Just the same, that advice is imperfect — and incomplete.
The advice to complete that equation is:
WWYL.
And you might say, what the hell does that mean? We know what WWJD is.
What the hell is WWYL? What Would Yakov Like? What Would Yeshua Lick? Where Went Yellow Lump? Walt Whitman Yawping Loudly?
Actually, that last one is pretty good. BUT NO, not even that.
The old chestnut of writing advice is: WWYK, or, Write What You Know.
I counter with: WWYL, or Write What You Love.
Now, I’ve talked about this before, this idea of writing what you love — and I exhort you to read it, if only because I unpack it more there than here. But it’s vital to note its value in thwarting burnout, and that’s what it does for me. It’s my go-to solution. And it is a universal fix — so far! — for the burnout that threatens to gobble me up from time to time.
Here’s why: at the end of the day, you got into writing for the same reason I did. TO MAKE MOUNDS OF MONEY SO BIG THEY CAUSE A TECTONIC SHIFT AND THREATEN TO SET THE EARTH OFF ITS AXIS. Wait, no! No. Bad Chuck. Bad. Let’s rewind. You got into writing for the same reason I did: because you fucking love it, that’s why. I don’t necessarily truck with the idea that writers “need” to write, as if they’re a tribe of gibbering addicts, but I damn sure want to. It’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid. It’s what I wanted to do in college and while working dead-end jobs after college and it’s heckadang what I want to do now. But burnout makes you forget that. It knocks you off your center. Writing is work, yes. It’s a job. But it’s not a job like mucking horse stalls or doing data entry. Writing sometimes feels like digging ditches, but you have to remember: it’s you digging ditches in a magical fantasy land that you control.
You’re mucking unicorn stalls, motherfucker. Then you get to ride the unicorn after.
Go back to the source. Find the well-spring. Hell with what you know. Write what you love. What you love is an infinite cabinet of weird delights. It doesn’t just mean writing about that which delights you — write about the things that vex you. Attempt to answer questions that plague you. Our brains are like pawn shops that, over time, agglomerate cases and shelves of stuff — and that combination of objects and topics and questions is unique to us. It is our authorial voice. It is us as the auteur. We are the sum of all we have gathered to us over the years, and your stories are a most excellent way to take those ideas and fears and delights off the shelves, smash them together, and explore them. Doing this makes work feel less like work. It makes it feel like a playground. Like a sandbox. Like a vacation inside the funhouse that is your haunted head.
And it doesn’t just happen with new work — sometimes, writers are given work. You have tasks. You have freelance jobs. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever. The same thing applies: you can always find your own way into the story. Find the thing you love about the work at hand. Discover what drives you to it. What connects you to the concept and the construction. Assume that the work is a mirror and you’re staring back into it. Find not just what lives in your mind but also what lives in your heart. Then rip it out, juice that motherfucker like an orange, and slather its wet leavings all over your story.
Write stories that express who you are. Write stories that wander in places you want to go or love to visit. Answer your questions. Explore your obsessions. Tackle your fears. You know you’re hitting on something when thinking about a story gives you feels: it excites you, scares you, gives you the vertigo sensation of wondering whether or not you can really write this thing. Be honest. Look under your own fingernails and see what dirt lurks there.
If you’re finding yourself burning out — or maybe even encountering writer’s block — then it’s worth looking at what work awaits you. Are you writing what you love? Have you found the You-Shaped Door into your story? Be you. Be your voice. The story is part of you. Now all you have to do is rip it out and staple-gun it to the page.
* * *
The journey to become a successful writer is long, fraught with peril, and filled with difficult questions: How do I write dialogue? How do I build suspense? What should I know about query letters? How do I start? What the hell do I do?
The best way to answer these questions is to ditch your uncertainty and transform yourself into a Kick-Ass Writer. This new book from award-winning author Chuck Wendig combines the best of his eye-opening writing instruction — previously available in e-book form only — with all-new insights into writing and publishing. It’s an explosive broadside of gritty advice that will destroy your fears, clear the path, and help you find your voice, your story, and your audience.
