I’ve seen the movie — *checks calendar* — 473 times in the theater.

FINE JEEZ NOT REALLY.

But I have seen it three times, and for a person with alarmingly little time, that’s saying something. The Force Awakens has been a big deal around this house, obviously. For one, it ties into a little self-published novel I wrote called SPACE JARS: AFTERPANTS. But more than that, this is the first theatrical release my wife has seen in almost five years. And it was the first theater-going experience for our son, B-Dub. My wife never really had a Star Wars of her own — but now she does. She’s seen it twice and wants to see it again. She has, to my knowledge, never seen a film more than once in the theater.

Like I said: big deal around this house.

(Sidenote, this is why I think you have the effect of some folks being extra-resistant to negativity around the movie, particularly that snarkier brand of criticism. It’s because this isn’t just a movie. In some ways, it’s not a movie at all. It’s a puppy. The fanbase hasn’t had a puppy in a while and now we have one and it’s cute and enthusiastic and lots of fun even though it has its proper puppy flaws, but when a stranger comes and calls your new puppy ugly or rambunctious or gassy or whatever, some folks take that less as criticism and more of an insult. Perhaps not fairly, but emotions are rarely fair, I’m afraid. Star Wars is entangled with a great deal more than just movie culture. It ties into larger pop culture, true, but it also is braided in with friends and family and childhood and — well, that’s a complicated knot is all I’m saying.)

But I wanted to take a look at the film for some of the storytelling lessons it offers — in this case, not negative lessons (of which you could find some, I’m sure), but rather, positive takeaways that might wet your mind whistle when it comes to thinking about your story or other stories or, I dunno, delicious enchiladas.

Mmm. Enchiladas.

*clears throat*

ARE YOU READY, CLASS?

*hands out lightsabers*

LET US BEGIN.

(oh, some light spoilers found below.)

Worldbuilding Can Be About What You Don’t Show

Epic fantasy novels are wont, sometimes, to put all their worldbuilding on display. That’s why some of them are big enough to snap a horse’s neck — I’ve literally read a few that demonstrated roughly 40% story, 60% worldbuilding. Not much actually happens, but we sure do learn a lot about royal crests and dishware and the sacred toe-washing techniques of faraway lands. Some of these books are soggy with details — and that’s a thing people want to read, sometimes. So, it’s cool. It’s not my bag! But if you like it, then go forth and enjoy.

Just the same, one of the things I really adored about the original SW films 30 years ago was that they took a shrugworthy FUCK YOU attitude when it came to providing details. What were the Clone Wars? What the shit is a Bothan? Where did the Empire come from and why do they have such a space-boner for planet-destroying super-weapons? (Answer to that last one: the same boner most Earth countries have for reiterative superweapons, I’d guess. “What’s next, Admiral Bob?” “BIGGER SHIPS BIGGER BOMBS BIGGER BLOW-EM-UPS.”)

The prequels had less interest in that level of mystery. In fact, they worked very hard to answer the mysteries. Which is not a bad thing, it’s just worldbuilding in the other direction — heavier on the “soaking up the details” part of the equation.

The Force Awakens goes back to the storytelling roots of the films 30 years ago, and it just puts shit out there. Why is there a Resistance? Where did the First Order come from? What is that pig thing? (Answer: a happabore.) WHY DOESN’T SNAP WEXLEY HAVE A BODYGUARD MURDER-DROID NAMED MISTER BONES AS HIS ASTROMECH? Okay, fine, that last question is probably mine alone, but whatever. I’m still asking it and I expect our next President to address it.

In fact, let’s take one particular mystery — THE OLD DUDE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE. The movie opens and there is Max von Sydow in a dirt hut with Poe “So Pretty” Dameron, and he isn’t named, we don’t know who he is, and despite being a seemingly vital character, he is immediately executed (er, spoiler!) by Kylo Ben. If you watch the credits or read supplemental material, you’ll learn his name: Lor San Tekka. Supplemental material also provides some other information, none of it properly vital. And you might think that’s a huge gap. Some do, even still, think it’s an issue that the film didn’t explain much. But for me, the movie is an exercise in providing the very bare minimum to get you to the next scene. We don’t need to know who this guy is — in fact, he becomes quite tantalizing a figure given how his language indicates that this very moment is the culmination of his character arc. He hands over the Map to Skywalker and says, “This will begin to make things right.” Whoa, what? What went wrong? Why does he have the map? Why has he been keeping the map secret? What the hell? And then, VZZRAOWKSZZH the guy is torn down like a pair of ugly curtains.

And that’s all you get.

Sometimes, worldbuilding is better in the mind of the audience. It gains strength there. It multiplies like an image in a house of mirrors. Mysteries compel us. Unanswered questions draw us forward. Now, they become frustrating when the lack of answers stop us from comprehending the story, but that’s not what happens here. We know just enough to move forward.

This isn’t a solution for every story, but it’s an interesting test — if you strip out a bunch of the worldbuilding, does your story still work? It’s vital, I think, that it does.

Orchestrating Key Moments Is, Well, Key

Every story has flaws. Flaws are not by themselves bad things — the bugs only become bad when they remove us from the story, and they remove us from the story when they outnumber or outweigh the features. One of the features of The Force Awakens are moments that are almost perfectly designed to be moments you talk about later. Moments you remember. Moments you anticipate on a rewatch. The best stories have these scenes and beats — Die Hard is practically a conveyor belt of those holy shit moments. TFA has several. I won’t name them here because honestly, not sure I have to. (I bet you’ve already thought of at least one.)

It’s interesting when you hear the filmmakers talk about this movie, because you learn that they began with a question: how do we want the audience to feel? Not “how will this make them feel?” But rather, how do we engineer a narrative to stir certain feelings? Feelings of nostalgia and sadness and triumph — the mythic resonance of the old films remixed in a new way?

It’s not just about drawing a map to Skywalker. It’s about drawing a map toward certain emotions. One of the ways that the filmmakers do that, I think, is by plotting these big moments. Not just moments that are exciting (though they are likely that), but moments that are big in terms of the characters — big in terms of their emotional impact on the audience. It’s worth considering how you can do this for your own work. What do you want the audience to feel? What moments will get them to these feelings? How do you draw the map to that?

Characters Who Like Each Other? A Pop Culture Miracle!

Listen, I know we all want Poe and Finn to steam up the windows of an X-Wing with their sloppy tongue-hockey skills — but for my mileage, what’s greatest about all three protagonists is how much they seem to like each other as characters. They meet and near-instantly have a rapport. They may fight or argue, but it feels like a fight between people who intrinsically belong together. They are enthused to be together. It’s not bitter or a struggle to watch them interact — the conflict comes from the larger narrative, not from characters wanting to always choke each other. They have the delight of dogs meeting other dogs. They may be guarded for a moment but then it’s like, WOO I LIKE YOU AND YOU LIKE ME AND LET’S GO HAVE SOME MOTHERFUCKING ADVENTURES. The audience sees this and they feel like a part of it. Like we’re all part of some D&D adventuring group meeting up in a tavern for the first time.

This isn’t appropriate for all story modes, obviously. But for this kind of thing? It’s a great way to smash characters together and then propel them forward on the nosecone of a narrative rocket.

Fuck Yeah, Subtext

There exists a kind of meta-narrative component to The Force Awakens. Sure, the movie is totally about STARS and WARS and AWAKENING FORCE and all that good stuff, but it’s interesting, too, that the characters inhabit a world filled with the junk of the world we left behind 30 years ago as an audience — Rey lives inside a destroyed AT-AT on a planet of debris. She flies an even junkier version of the Falcon through the bowels of a super star destroyer (which, cough cough, is the Ravager from Aftermath). Kylo Ren is a literal fanboy for the Dark Side. He’s got like, a foam finger waving about (DARTH VADER #1! WOO!) and he’s clearly adopted the Dark Side’s fashion sense, too.

Max Gladstone (who wrote a fantastic piece about TFA through the lens of Star Wars roleplaying) pointed out to me that the line of Kylo Ren’s — “It’s just us, now” — is as much about the characters on-screen as it is about the audience. It’s about generational shifts — I’m a parent now, giving over the trilogy to my son. Just as Lucas has given the trilogy over to Abrams and Disney. The film itself has its own tangled messages about parentage, about the effect a parent can have on a child. It’s a coded message to the audience that this is a passing of the story torch, man. This is an old story with new characters. Not a reboot, but also not exactly a sequel. And then you can factor in various culture-leaning feelings — if Kylo Ren is a fanboy for the Dark Side and for Vader, his petulant, pathetic rage-pleas to Rey (“YOU NEED A TEACHER…”) sound a whole lot like he’s calling her a Fake Geek Girl (“…FOR MAGIC: THE GATHERING.”). And you could lean even further that Kylo Ren starts to vibe a whole lot like fans inside pop culture who feel betrayed by the changes of their fandom (“it’s about ethics in Dark Side fashion, that’s all, and also the SJJ Social Justice Jedi are taking over the galaxy and winning all the awards even though they’re a marginal order because really Vader was much more popular…”).

Don’t be afraid to play with subtext. Know your audience and to learn to speak to them not just with what’s overt, but also with themes and ideas buried beneath a layer or two of the story.

Extra Fuck Yeah, Inclusion

I am a white guy talking about diversity, so that should already make you narrow your eyes a little bit, probably — but I think it’s vital to realize that your audience is potentially far more than just, well, people who look like me. Cultural appropriation is its own sticky subject, and as authors, it’s a damn fine idea to make sure we’re not stealing someone else’s story or experience for our own. But, a film like TFA doesn’t have to worry as much about that — it’s a book about SPACE GUNS and GALACTIC WIZARDS and isn’t really in danger of appropriating any kind of actual human culture, which means it has full license to include all kinds of people in its ranks. That has huge meaning. The new film has a much bigger female audience than other films of its genre, and its two other leads are people of color. It’s worth considering as a storyteller if your characters are monochromatic and exclusive rather than inclusive of the audience you have — or an audience you could have if you decided to actually talk to them once in a while.

(Bonus, you know who my son sometimes pretends to be? Rey. And other times? Finn. He doesn’t see why they can’t be heroes or why he can’t look up to them and try to inhabit them — it’s a big change from a pop culture world that usually asks that little girls and children of color pretend to inhabit the stories and arcs of white male heroes.)

And just in case you hear that refrain that inclusion can’t sell — please remember three non-white-male protagonists have led the biggest box office film ever. That’s no small feat, and easily disproves the lie that films with women or people of color are somehow marginal.

Back when I was in elementary school, we used to do that thing on Valentine’s Day where you wrote little crummy cardboardy valentines (often from Your Favorite Brand™) to your other class members and of course you saved the good ones for the kids you had a crush on and of course there were those poor sods who always got way fewer valentines than other kids even though you were supposed to write valentines for everybody. It was cruel and strange and an odd sort of training for being a writer.

Because really, our books and our stories are all paper valentines. We write them and send them out into the world to crushes and non-crushes alike and we really hope you accept them. And we really hope you give us a valentine back.

We are all just authors standing in front of audiences asking them to love us.

Buy our books, yes. But also, love us.

It sets us up for a lot of heartbreak. Which is nobody’s fault; it is what it is. We stick our hearts not on our sleeves but on the paper and then we slide the paper in front of you and watch your face to see how you react. And this isn’t just one to one. This isn’t just us asking one person if they liked our book. It’s cumulative. It’s us asking hundreds, thousands, all the people to dig what we’re doing. Or at least to recognize that we’re doing it. And that can be hard. It is compounded by the fact that as I said in the last post (Your 2016 Authorial Mandate!), we’re all clothes drying on the line — we are not well-protected as a creative species.

As such, it is up to us to protect ourselves to some degree.

Self-care is very important for a writer. Let’s talk some tips.

0. Read This

My cheese-eating co-conspirator Delilah Dawson wrote about this subject. So read it.

1. Recognize Depression

This deserves attention right up front.

Writer’s block is not depression. Depression is depression. It is real. It is a disease (or as some prefer, a disability). It is not fake. You are not making it up. It is not “all in your head.” And worst of all, depression lies. And for the writer, one of its most insidious lies is that depression somehow entangles itself with your work. It twines with the art, like a tumor seeking its own blood flow, and you start to associate the two together. Maybe you come to believe that depression or anxiety is essential for the writing. Or maybe you believe that it isn’t really depression, it’s just writer’s block or some variant thereof and surely the best way forward is to write your way through it.

That can work with writer’s block. That won’t likely work with depression.

Trying to write your way through depression is like trying to run fast through mud. It’s like trying to rid yourself of a headache by punching yourself in the head. It’s a very good way to sink. It’s a very good way to deepen the ache. Do not try to write your way through depression.

Treat depression as depression. Or anxiety or whatever particular flavor you have. I’m not a BRAINOLOGIST, so that means whatever it means in terms of the specifics — but likely, it means going to talk to someone of a professional nature and then potentially either continuing therapy or finding solutions in medication or other life adjustments. But it’s real. It isn’t an illusion. And it isn’t part of your art. That’s how the demon convinces you into letting it stay.

2. You Don’t Owe Anybody Your Attention

It’s the Internet, so people want to yell at you. They want to give you shit or write nasty comments or haunt you like a bad smell on an old jacket. It scrapes away some of your paint, so remember: you don’t owe anyone your attention. Okay, sure, you should probably give it to people who matter: friends, family, agents, editors. (Though even there, if their effect on your is somehow corrosive, worth considering if their presence in your life is a feature or a bug.) Beyond that? You can wall off the rest of the world. You are not required to stand there in the town square and suffer people punting cabbages at your head. That’s not your job. We start to think it is — we come to believe that somehow being an artist also means being out there in the thick of it, and that we should let all the lasers and arrows and angrily-hurled cats hit us dead on like it’s some kind of MOTHERFUCKING ART GAUNTLET, but that’s not true at all. Your job is to make cool stuff. Everything else is secondary. And letting that toxic stuff wash over you isn’t even that — it’s not a job requirement, so feel free to shut it down.

3. You Don’t Need To Read All Those Reviews

Repeat after me: Reviews are not your responsibility.

The critical conversation is an essential one, one that exists between the reader and herself and that reviewer’s own circle of trust — and you are not in that circle.

Reviewers and critics are an essential part of culture.

They’re not, however,  an essential part of you making art.

Reviews won’t do much for you as an author. Admittedly, I read them all, because I am apparently fond of punching myself in the teeth, but I don’t actually get much out of them. The most you’ll get is that some people will like your book and some people will love your book and others will hate the book so bad that they want to shove it up the ass of a irritably-boweled hippopotamus and then detonate said diarrhea monster with a barrel of TNT. Even more complicated is sometimes you find people who love to hate books so much that their hate reviews read more like performance art snark than actual critical discourse. And that’s okay. That’s all part of the deal. You write the thing and then you leave it on a table and people can do what they want with it: they can ignore it, punch it, make out sloppily with it, shit on it, whatever.

You don’t have to watch as they do. It’s understandable you want to, of course — in most artistic pursuits, you get audience feedback pretty quickly. Up on stage, the audience laughs or they don’t. But a book, whew. You sit in isolation writing the thing over a few months or a year, and then it takes a while to sell it and it takes a while to get it out there. Even self-published it’s not like, CLICK BOOM BANG THERE WE GO. I mean, dang, it still takes time for people to read the thing. As such, it’s natural to want to gaze in on the audience to see what they think — but reviews aren’t really “the audience.” They’re a part of it! A vital, necessary part. But they speak for themselves and for their circles. Meanwhile, 90% of your audience is reading the book and having a private reaction. You aren’t on stage. You can’t see them. You have no idea if they’re laughing at the right parts or angrily gnawing on the book for That Thing You Did On Page 214 or what. It’s a mystery.

The problem with looking at reviews is, we’re human. And humans are dumb. Just dumb as a bucket of chimp scat. What I mean is, we are very good at focusing on a little bit of bad and ignoring the massive amount of good. In some ways, this is logical, one supposes. A nice piece of cheesecake with a single rat turd on it will undeniably spoil the cheesecake. But let’s see you have a perfectly nice day, a wonderful day doing whatever it is you love (amusement park, hanging out with friends, eating cheesecake, karate-punching robo-hobos), and then one slightly bad thing happens, our brain does this thing where we remember the bad part, not the good part. That day will always be smeared with the moment of that time when the lady spilled her coffee on you or you got into a fight with a puma or whatever the fuck actually happened. You will drown the good stuff in the sour brine of the bad stuff. Negativity pickles.

Reviews can be like that. Ninety-nine positive reviews can be shitted up by one whopper of a bad review. That’s not good. It’s not logical. And yet, that’s how your brain works, probably because it’s trying to get you to not eat the rat-turd cheesecake. If you find yourself sullied by bad reviews, don’t read them. They won’t do much for you. Move on. Move past. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Let those reviews work their magic as part of a conversation that does not need you in it.

4. In Fact, Get Away From The Internet For A While

Turn it off.

Walk away.

You don’t need it every moment.

It is a firehose. You don’t need to drink from it all the time.

Everything in moderation. Go away. Clear your head. Trust me — a break from the Internet, whether it’s a day or a week or a month, can be super-helpful. Maybe it’s just a social media break, or maybe it’s a GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ALL OF IT break. Either way, it’ll still be here when you get back, I promise. It’ll still have images of Poe and Finn smolderingly staring at one another. It’ll still have cat videos. We’ll keep it warm — go take a digital vacay.

5. Walk Away From The Work

Always be writing.

I’ve said it. It’s a common refrain. And it’s part of my work vibe — I gotta work to pay the bills, and work is writing and writing is work. I do the work and get paid, or I don’t work and get nothing. The choice is easy, most times, because for me, the writing is wonderful. The hardest day writing is better than the best day doing pretty much anything else.

But while generally true, it is not universally true.

Some days are not for writing.

Some days are for thinking about it. Other days are for explicitly not thinking about it at all. Some days are for wandering in meadows, or reading good books, or having freaky sex, or karate-punching robo-hobos.

You can take a break. You can walk away from it. You can walk away for a day or a week or a month. Whatever you need to realign to center. Whatever you need for yourself. (Here, though, the counter argument: don’t stay away too long. A vacation from the art has its own kind of half-life, and eventually the value of that vacation begins to break down and poison you in other ways. Over time you’ll learn when self-care means to write, and when it means to not.)

6. Your Body Is Not A Temple, It’s A Machine

Your body demands worship sometimes, sure. Sometimes it needs ice cream and time on the couch and various erotic latherings. But often it’s best not to view your body as a temple but rather, as a machine. Machines need proper fuel to run. They need clean dongles and well-waxed widgets. (YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, KIDS: CLEAN YOUR DONGLES! WAX YOUR WIDGETS!) You can’t just throw hot sauerkraut into a gas tank and hope the car will run. Machines need maintenance. Your machine needs maintenance, too. Exercise. Eat well. Your brain is part of the machine, not separate from it, and your brain does all the heavy lifting in this whole ARTING HARDER thing. Keep it together. Help your brain by keeping the machine running effectively.

7. Do Not Compare Yourself To Others

No good comes of this. Don’t do it. Everyone has someone else to which they are theoretically inferior. I’m sure even Stephen King stares at a picture of J.K. Rowling in a drawer somewhere that he occasionally pulls out and just stares at in a sinister manner. You are you. Your success is your own. And frankly, in writing, the biggest success is just surviving. Compare yourself only to yourself, and even then, only when it helps, never when it hurts.

8. Have Something That Isn’t Writing

Doodling. Quilting. Theater. Political assassinations. Have something that is not writing. For me, it’s photography. It breaks my brain away from the wordsmithy. It gives me an opportunity to stretch my legs in a different direction and it’s a healthy distraction, not a toxic one.

9. Shove Shame Out The Airlock

Art is often braided with shame. You should be ashamed, we say, if you are not creating. It is what you are and so the best thing you can do is to constantly be regurgitating content. And if you’re not, then time to whip out the ol’ shame bells. CLONG. CLONG. CLONG. Or maybe you get the shame if you’re creating the “wrong” things — and someone is always out there to tell you what you’re doing is the wrong thing, trust me. CLONG. CLONG. CLONG.

Shame feels motivational because we react to it. We clench up at shame and feel like we need to do better, lest the universe or our dead parents or a jury of our peers will be gasp disappointed in us. But shame is a ladder stuck in quicksand. Even as you climb up it, you’re sinking back down.

Shame will do you no good. Excise it from your emotional diet.

And definitely cut out those who would attempt to motivate (read: “bludgeon”) you with shame.

10. Return To The Writing

At the end of the day, sometimes the best thing you can do is shut out everything else and go back to center. Sometimes that means going back to the notebook or the computer and just writing. Maybe it doesn’t mean writing any one specific thing. Could be that you don’t need word count on the project that’s plaguing you, but instead you just need to regurgitate whatever stream-of-consciousness horse-garbage you’ve got going on inside your head. The work can be purifying by itself. And at the end of it all, this is what you are, and the work and the words will light the way.

FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE HAS RETURNED FOR THE NEW YEAR

*flash of lightning*

*crash of thunder*

*angry geese*

I don’t know why there are angry geese here, but they’re probably upset by all that lightning and thunder and maybe me yelling. Whatever, geese. You’re not the boss of me.

Regardless, it’s time for the fiction challenge to return proper, and this week’s challenge is simple enough: I want you to go ahead and click this link.

That link will take you to a page of nine images over at Flickr — nine images that are a sampling of the photos chosen by Flickr’s “interestingness” algorithm.

You will choose one of these photos and use it as inspiration for a 1000-word flash fiction story.

Post that story at your blog or other online space. Then come back here and drop a link to that story in the comments so we can all come and read it. Do not forget in your post or in your comment to indicate what photo (by link) you chose to provide you with inspiration for the story.

You have one week to complete this task or you will be assassinated.

*checks notes*

Sorry, you have one week to complete this task or nothing will happen except that you won’t have written this story or fulfilled this challenge in any way — my lawyers are very keen on me emphasizing the fact you will not be assassinated. Please and thank you.

The story is due by next Friday, noon EST on 1/15/16.

GO DO YOUR THING. And don’t mind the geese. Or the assassin.

That blog title is way too long, but fuck it.

A handful of weeks ago, some presumably well-meaning tickledick posted a comment here at the blog. It was a comment that I chose not to approve because, really, I don’t need your shit, Rando Calrissian. This blog is my digital house, and I don’t let strangers inside just so they can take a dump on my kitchen table, especially so we can all sit around, smelling it and discussing it. But the comment was a splinter under my nail, working its way up into the finger-meat. And then reading George R. R. Martin’s end-of-the-year message about not finishing the newest SOIAF also was something that crawled inside me and starting having thought-babies.

Being here on the Internet is a bit like hanging out on a clothesline — some days are sunny and warm, other days are cool and breezy. Some days it pisses rain and the wind tries to take you, and other days it’s daggers of ice or a rime of snow or smoke from a wildfire or some pervert streaking across the lawn and stropping up against you with his unwanted nasty bits.

Being on the Internet means being exposed.

You’re just out there. A squirming nerve without the tooth surrounding it.

That’s good in some ways because you’re exposed to new people, new ideas, new ways of doing things. You’re not an isolated creature here. You are an experiment being observed and are in turn an observer of countless other experiments, and that makes a subtle-not-subtle push-and-pull. But can also be erosive or corrosive — it can wear off your paint a little bit.

As a writer in particular, it has its ups and downs, too. Here, you’ll find yourself surrounded by a gaggle of ink-fingered cohorts who know what it is to do what you do. You’ll have a herd, a cult, a clan, a tribe. You’ll have smaller communities who know what it is you write or want to write, too, whether it’s young adult or epic fantasy or erotic sci-fi cookbooks. And here on the Digital Tubes, everybody is has an opinion, everybody is an expert. And that’s extra-true with writing. Other writers have their processes and their hang-ups and their wins and their losses, and they share it all. Which is, on a whole, a good thing. Information is good. Camaraderie is good.

That, though, can muddy the waters at the same time. This Person is doing This Person’s thing, and That Person is doing That Person’s thing, and Other Person is really loud about what WILL SURELY WORK FOR EVERYBODY (translation, will probably only work for people who are or are like Other Person). And advice gurgles up around your feet like rising floodwaters. Do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t say that, don’t write this, this isn’t selling, that is a no-no, publish this way, sell that way, don’t publish that other way, drink this, wear houndstooth jackets with elbow patches, drink that, snark here, snark there, with a fox, in a box, wearing socks, eating rocks, with a bear, without hair, anywhere. We have a whole lot of writers trying to figure out who they really are, and in the process, do a very good job at also telling you who you should be in order to conform to their notions of who they want to be. To confirm who they are, it’s easy for them to also confirm who you should be, too. That’s not sinister. That’s just human nature. It’s easier to become something when others are along for the ride. And it’s also the joy of confirmation bias — what worked for me confirms that I WAS RIGHT AND SO YOU ARE A HEINOUS DIPSHIT IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW PRECISELY IN MY FOOTSTEPS. I do it. You do it. Most of us do, I think.

It then gets further complicated once you have readers. Or, Uber Readers, aka, fans. Because they, too, have opinions on you and your work. They will have opinions on your process. And it’s not that they’re wrong, it’s that they’re — no, wait, they are wrong, never mind. They’re totally wrong, because they’re not writing the stories. They’re right about what they want to read and when they want to read it, but not about how to create it. It’s hard to tell someone how to do their job. It’s extra-hard to tell them how to make their art. Because process and prose and authorial intent are all intensely personal to the creator. Personal and twisted further by the pressures of creation and the potential mental stresses that come along with it — remember, a great many writers and artists also suffer from depression or anxiety or other ghosts in the gray matter.

It’s not just one type of writer over another. This is true of new writers who are just finding their way. This is true of mid-career or mid-list writers who are out there in the wilderness surviving, not sure how to get out of the forest just yet. This is true of super-successful authors who are trapped under the magnifying lens of a massively public fanbase — the sun likely focusing into a laser-hot beam upon their foreheads. All artists of every level are exposed here.

Here, now, is the comment referenced at the fore of the post:

“There is no skill floor or ceiling to being a writer. Anyone who speaks a language, who tells a story, can write. To be published is a stricter process that requires an adherence to professional guidelines and to a standard of quality that is dictated by the publishing office. That you’ve been published so many times is no small feat, and I commend you for it.

But having read Aftermath and Blackbirds, I feel that there is…a laziness to your style that you seem to be either unaware of or have come to terms with. It’s difficult to quantify, but it gives me the impression that you don’t value writing as an art. As a job, certainly. But not as a form of expression. Because otherwise you wouldn’t spend 45-90 days on a book. A soul isn’t bared in three months. Professional or no, no book you truly care for should go from start to finish that quickly.

To know an art is to break established rules in the hopes of producing a truer version of your vision. And you certainly break the rules of writing craft. In the first three paragraphs of Blackbirds you’ve disregarded flow, used inappropriate comparisons, and introduced the main character through a mirror scene. And while these things are permissible, they are not the hallmarks of someone who cherishes what he writes.

Great writing seeks subtlety. It’s the words that are unwritten, the descriptions that are inferred, the meaning that comes across through the subtext of what is explicit that writing excels at communicating. But your writing doesn’t ask me to look within myself for answers. It asks me to look no further than the page. And that, to me, is a tragedy. Because we’re all capable of greatness. But greatness comes from being dissatisfied with how things are, and with pushing the boundaries of what you believe yourself to be capable of in order to achieve your absolute best. And even then, you won’t be satisfied. You’ll push yourself further in your next pursuits, because now you’ve touched on what you’re capable of, but you won’t be satisfied.

To release your books in such a short time frame tells me that you’re satisfied, and that breaks my heart.”

I tried for the better part of a week to conjure a more cogent response than “fuck you,” and I got as far as “go fuck yourself.” Like, I tried to go through it once and conjure point-by-point rebuttals — well, no, because of course I value art and art is not beholden to any timetable and it takes the time that it takes short or long and — but eventually my rebuttal dissolves into a gargled cry of “eat a bucket of deep-fried fucks, you squawking chicken-fucker.” With an added, “HOW’S THAT FOR SUBTLETY,” and then a crotch-grab as I cackle and yell, “CHERISH THIS.”

This is someone who wants his vision to be my vision. He has very explicit ideas about how art is made — ideas that, by the way, are provably false. (For writers in particular, looking at the daily word counts of famous writers is clarifying in its sheer variation.) Great writing is not one thing any more than great paintings are, or great music, or, or, or. The variation in art is glorious. The variation in the process that puts the art into the world is equally amazing. Music can be operatic, or punk, or dub-step. A sculpture might be an alabaster goddess or a bunch of fucking cubes stuck to a bunch of other fucking cubes. Food can be subtle and airy or unctuous and heavy or whipped into a foam or shoved between two buns (tee hee buns). Comedy can be a routine that takes years to write, or an improv session that took 30 seconds to conjure.

There’s no wrong way to do it, as long as you’re doing it.

There’s no timetable, as long as you’re taking the time.

Nobody can tell you how you do it. They can only tell you how they do it or what illusions they hold about the process — illusions that often wither under actual implementation.

They can offer suggestions. And you are free to take them, hold them up in the light, and see if there is anything there of value. And if there isn’t? Then you can fling it into the trash compactor on the detention level where it will be ogled and eaten by the one-eyed Dianoga.

That’s not to say there aren’t people you should listen to — a good editor or agent, a trusted friend, a beloved author. But even there, you want to find people who will clarify and improve your process and your work — not substitute it with something that isn’t really yours.

So, in 2016, I advise you to give your middle fingers a proper workout and elevate them accordingly to any who would diminish who you are, what you make, or how you make it. You don’t need to wall yourself off from it, but you also don’t need to be a sweater hanging on the clothesline, either. Get some tooth around that nerve.

Know who you are. Learn your process. Find your way. And don’t let anyone else define who you are as a creator, as an artist, as a writing writer who motherfucking writes.

Happy 2016, writers.

You do you.

*explodes in gory human fireworks*

*darkness*

*starts flipping light switches*

HELLO IS ANYBODY HERE

*swats away cobwebs*

*shoos away the family of trolls that took up residence in the basement*

IS THIS THING ON

*eats old Cheeto found on floor*

*is not a Cheeto*

*is mummified centipede*

Ahem.

Well, hey, everybody.

I think I forgot that I had this thing. But then the blog came to me in a dream, its diaphanous white robe flowing behind it as it reached for me with outstretched arms…

Anyway. I’m back. Maybe not on a full blogging schedule, but a return to form just the same. It was hard — I got slammed after Thanksgiving by the Perfect Shitstorm: pneumonia, deadlines, and holidays. It’s like three tornados converging upon your location at one time, and one of the tornados (the pneumonia) pins you to the ground while the other two get in their licks. Pneumonia, for the record, is a… a super piece of crap. It knocked me flat for one week where I wrote nothing, then a second week where I wrote some stuff, and a third week where I was getting back to normal, and it really took me until Christmas week to find a morning where my wake-up ritual was not “stumble into shower and purge self of bodily humors with flesh-wracking coughs.” Pneumonia is a real asshole, is what I’m saying.

So, that perfect storm actually left me feeling a little crummy about 2015.

And that impulse is very, very wrong.

Because 2015 was fucking rad.

Let’s see.

We got a new Star Wars movie. A really good one.

And I got to jump a claim for a little postage-stamp size of canon connected to the Star Wars universe, writing Aftermath. Then Aftermath officially became a trilogy.

I released Zer0es, and it seems like it did pretty well? (Ooh, it’s still $1.99 for today.)

I finished the follow-up to Zer0es (which is not a sequel, though it does take place in the same universe after the events of Zer0es have happened — let’s call it “sequel-adjacent”). That book is called Invasive (it was Myrmidon, and though I’m sad to lose the original title, I quite like the new one). There’s a cover floating around out there but I’m not sure it’s the official one, so look for something officially official after the new year.

My agent re-sold the Miriam Black books to SAGA Press (S&S), and Blackbirds and Mockingbird have returned to store shelves, with Cormorant on the way in February. This year I also wrote the fourth installment of that series, Thunderbird, which woefully will not be out until 2017 (but then the next three books will be out one right after the other across that year). But, for an extra bonus, the Miriam Black novella Interlude: Swallow shows up in the Three Slices collection, buddying up with work from awesome pals Delilah Dawson and Kevin Hearne.

I re-released my “Nancy-Drew-on-Adderall” YA detective, Atlanta Burns. And I wrote the sequel (The Hunt), which comes out in February.

The final installment of my Heartland trilogy came out — The Harvest — in July. Thus marking the first time I’ve gotten to properly complete a series. (It’s Star Wars meets John Steinbeck, for those interested.) I’m proud of that one, and hope people continue to find the series.

Was able to nab the rights back to my Mookie Pearl books, and re-release both The Blue Blazes and The Hellsblood Bride all by my lonesome.

I got to write for two comics — The Shield with my cohort Adam Christopher, and Hyperion for Marvel, which comes out in February.

(I have a lot of stuff happening in February, apparently.)

This year I think I wrote — lemme do some quick math — five novels, around 500,000 words.

Then, blogging, which this year equaled out to about 200,000 words.

Plus four issues of comics.

Plus a film script this year.

AND PROBABLY SOME EMAILS AND OTHER NECESSARY CORRESPONDENCES.

It’s been a busy year.

Maybe kinda sorta too busy a year.

Not sure 2016 promises much different.

I’ve got two more Miriam Black books to write. (*vibrates with sinister glee*)

I’ve got more comics to write.

Got a new secret writing book shhh to write.

Not to mention one more SPACE WARTS book.

Overall, 2015 was pretty rad. The pneumonia sucked, sure. But I started working in the FULLY ARMED AND OPERATIONAL BATTLESHED this year. Okay, I wasn’t a huge fan of the weird hate parade that ran right up through the center of Aftermath’s release — I still remember being at the midnight release party for the book in Atlanta, and then getting back to the hotel at 1:30AM and looking at the reviews and already seeing a bunch of one-star reviews stacking up. And that continued all through the weekend while I was at DragonCon. It bewildered and rocked me a little, I won’t lie — though, then, ha ha, the book landed on the New York Times list. And those who wanted that to be a fluke, well, it kept landing, and on the USA Today list, too (which it just hit again this past week). Plus it got written-in for the Goodreads Choice awards and hung in there till the last round so ha ha ha *wipes tears away with the contracts for the next two books* I guess thanks for boosting the book, haters. Your festival of crap gives me a reason to keep talking about the book long after I would’ve stopped. Plus, thanks for helping keep the Amazon ranking higher! So, keep the reviews coming if you really want. Keep feeding me, I’ll keep promoting the book.

2015 also saw me travel a whole lot. Various comic-cons and writing things. Lots of bookstores visited and great fans met. Nice too when I get to hang with fellow writer buddies. The family continues being awesome, as well — little B-Dub is smart and sweet and only occasionally like a coked-up orangutan someone let loose in a church.

Let’s hope that 2016 is of equal or surmounting radness, yeah? Keep an eye on releases like Life Debt, Invasive, The Hunt, The Shield, Hyperion, and maybe a couple other surprises. I’ll also be traveling around and will update my schedule as the new year commences.

Be well, all of you.

Your turn, now.

How was your 2015?

What’s on the table for 2016?

Oh, And — Terribleminds In 2015?

Rough blogging stats: 3.3 million visitors, and 8700+ subscribers.

Top 20 (edit, er, 21?) Posts This Year:

This will be spoiler-free.

I cannot promise the comments will be spoiler-free.

Assume that the post will be safe.

But the area below it may be TOXIC WITH SEPTIC STORY SPOILAGE.

Let us begin simply with:

AHHHH OH SHIT I LOVED THIS MOVIE

WHEN CAN I SEE IT AGAIN

PYOO PYOO

VWOMMZ KZZZZH

BEE BOOP BLURBY DOOP

HAHAHA WHEEE

*flails around with a cardboard tube lightsaber*

*trips on scattered Star Wars LEGO bricks*

*falls down*

*pees self*

*composes self*

I’m back. I’m feeling much better now.

And now, a scattered smattering of thoughts in no particular order:

1. This is a love letter to the Star Wars universe — not just the universe, and not just the characters, but all the intangible narrative stuff that surrounds it. It is very much about how Star Wars feels. And how its stories are told. It is positively honorific of that. This is no small compliment when I say that The Force Awakens just plain feels like Star Wars from the first minute. It’s nostalgic, but not in your face about it, I don’t think?

2. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega need to be in everything together. Hepburn and Tracy, Bogey and Bacall — they had such wonderful chemistry together as these two people flung into adventure. Their characters are intensely fun to watch. You care from them from the first moment you meet each. (I would take more Poe Dameron, though — he’s awesome in TFA, but I want more!)

3. BB-8 is my master now. He is like a baby R2D2. He is like a dog and a kitten stuffed inside a roly-poly Christmas ornament. He’s super delightful and elicits pure joy from me shut up.

4. Kylo Ren is a surprisingly effective villain. Tragic and deeper than the trailers lead you to believe. He is far more than just some mustache-twirler. He is vulnerable.

5. It’s worth talking about how much fun this movie is. That is something that must be stated — fun is not as easy as you think to create. It’s certainly not the end-all be-all of the experience, nor should it be. Fun is a shallow metric. But it’s a vital metric just the same. A Star Wars movie that isn’t much fun isn’t one I want to see again. This film plays fun like a fucking symphony. It knows when to nail those moments of laughter and delight, it knows when to hit on tension and when to create those moments where you want to jump out of your seat, holding your head and screaming with fear or laughter or fear-laughter.

6. Some have noted that the film’s story bears a big resemblance to A New Hope, though I’d argue it’s beyond that — this film remixes a lot of beats from all the films of the OT (though very few from the prequels, I find). It feels designed to remind you of Tatooine and Endor and Hoth. It feels keen to echo archetypes and the Death Star and some of the same twists and turns — but then, at the same time, it twists them and turns them in new ways. It is a remix in the artful way, not the warmed-over rehash way — they’re playing the same notes but making a new, unexpected song with it. Myth, actually, works a lot like this, so I’m on board.

7. Sometimes, these beats become overtly fan-servicey, though. Not too many, but there are few moments that feel more like narrative artifice than genuine storytelling all in effort to elbow you in the ribs and say, EHH? EHHH? REMEMBER THAT OTHER THING? WE ARE REFERENCING THAT! RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW! WHAAAAT? ISN’T THAT CRAZY? Sometimes, it works. Other times, it feels like a square peg stomped into a circle hole.

8. The film also occasionally engineers exposition in a way that feels like it’s because the audience needs it — at a few moments, characters exposit even though they should damn well already know what they’re telling one another. And it feels like classic AS YOU KNOW, BOB storytelling. Both characters know the story but we don’t, so somebody’s gotta be a mouthpiece for it. It’s effective in that it does deliver information, but it doesn’t always feel organic.

9. That said, exposition isn’t too heady or heavy — the movie actually doesn’t go out of its way to explain a whole lot. In this way it harkens back to A New Hope. Worldbuilding for me is best when its explanations are cast to the margins — like, A New Hope drops all this stuff in your lap and just expects you to deal with it. “What are the Clone Wars? Enh. Who is Jabba? Whatever. THERE’S SOME SHIT GOING ON YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND, HUMAN.” And then it skips past them, tra-la-la, not caring if you know. That may feel frustrating at first, but that’s a fertile seed-bed where your imagination grows. For years people expounded on what the Clone Wars actually were. It was awesome. And then the prequels came and — okay, listen, this isn’t prequel hate, but it’s worth noting that the prequels took a very different approach to this. The prequels seemed designed to prequelize not just the universe, but to give origin points for damn near everything. “HEY WANNA KNOW WHERE BOBA FETT CAME FROM? OF COURSE YOU DO BECAUSE HE WAS SUCH A VITAL CHARACTER IN THE FIRST THREE MOVIES, IN THAT HE’S A CHUMP WHO GETS TRIPPED INTO A SANDY SPACE SPHINCTER. LET’S PREQUELIZE EVERYTHING. HERE’S SENATOR DIANOGA. HERE’S THE SECRET PLANS FOR THE DEATH STAR TRASH COMPACTOR. HERE’S THE VERY MOMENT THAT HAN SOLO IS MESSILY CONCEIVED.” Episode VII does almost none of this. The 30-year-gap between films is not bridged with a great deal of information. A part of me hopes they never bridge it completely.

10. I get chills thinking of a few moments from TFA. Some real strong OH SHIT moments.

11. Listening to the soundtrack now and I like it a lot, though it didn’t stand out overly much while watching the movie? That may have just been because I was all OH SNAP OH WHEE WHIZBANG AAAAAH. That said, the last track just before the credits is magical. Which is appropriate, I think: this film does the impossible and feels quite a bit like magic. And it represents both kinds of magic: it vacillates between the smoke and mirrors of a magic trick, and then when that falls away it delivers something close to real narrative sorcery — a Jedi Mind Trick all its own.

12. Speaking of snap — OH SNAP WEXLEY. That’s right. Snap Wexley, played by Greg Grunberg, is also Temmin Wexley, from a little book called Star Wars: Aftermath. Don’t believe me? Boom! It’s official now, over at Star Wars Dot Com. This of course is the gateway to getting Mister Bones in a Star Wars movie. I PRAY TO MOVIE JESUS TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

13. A small complaint about the film — it moves along at a breathless pace. That’s good, for a lot of it. I like that it isn’t there to waste our time. That being said… I don’t mind when a film wastes my time earnestly and with purpose. The Force Awakens doesn’t have a great deal of oxygen. The original trilogy is full of oxygen, and sometimes, quite curiously, that’s a function of budget. You can’t do two hours of whizz-bang stuff, so you pack it full of dialogue and character and tension and mystery. Jaws works because the shark was fucked up and so they had to do a lot of stuff with keeping the mechanical shark hidden. With films now, the budgets are big and the possibilities are endless, and this film takes advantage — as such, it races from set piece to set piece, barely pausing to catch its breath. It’s fine, mostly, but sometimes the film suffers from feeling like it needed to pause, slow down, catch some air. Quieter moments. It has them! It does. But overall, the story feels like it takes place over two hours instead of however long it actually takes.

14. The aliens in this movie are on fleek. Whatever “on fleek” means. Most of the alien species are unrecognizable, which is fun. People have screencapped and dissected the cantina scene from Ep IV for years looking for cool aliens — some scenes in this movie will get similar treatment, I suspect. Nice design. The whole film feels that way, too — everything feels used up, worn in, epic when it needs to be, intimate when it doesn’t. I go back to the word organic in terms of how it all comes together. It feels grown together. A forest of trees instead of a greenhouse of potted plants.

15. The spaceship battles are pyoo-pyoo kaboom awesome.

16. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that lightsaber fights happen. And they are jaw-dropping. In fact, one of the fights in this movie is maybe my favorite ever put to film. FOR REALSIES.

17. So, wait, when is Episode VIII coming out? Not tomorrow? GODDAMNIT

AND NOW WE PLAY THE WAITING GAME