It’s that time again where I ask you:

Hey, whatcha reading?

Like, right now. What are you reading?

Are you digging it?

Not digging it?

Why?

It’s booktalk, time, folks. Hell, if you feel like it, tell us too what books you’re excited about coming up. Share the sweet, sweet book-love.

This one is so damn easy.

And yet, so damn hard.

See, coming up with the new and proper titles for stories is a difficult act, sometimes — you either have the title going in (which makes it easy), or you need to think of a title for a story, and that’s when (for me, at least) it gets hella hard. Thinking of a title for a pre-existing story is the one time when I really get vaporlock in my writing. I just sit there, stammering. “THE… THING ABOUT THE STUFF. THE… THE NIGHT THE EVENT HAPPENED. THE HAPPENING. THE STUFFENING. THE SWORD OF THE NIGHT OF THE REVENGE OF THE RABBIT OH GOD THIS BOOK DOESN’T HAVE SWORDS OR RABBITS AND BARELY ANY REVENGE AT ALL.”

I’m not good at titles.

Ray Bradbury was famous for making up a list of titles and then writing stories to match those titles. And that’s a little bit of what we’re going to do here, today.

All I want you to do is come up with a title.

One title.

No more.

Then take that title and plop it into the comments below.

Next week, you will all have a chance to scout out the completed list of titles in the comments and write a story geared toward one of those made-up titles (one you did not yourself invent).

That’s it. That’s all. Easy, and yet, difficult.

GET THEE TO THE TITLEMOBILE

Aftermath is again on the NYT Bestseller list. Coming in at #5 amongst hardcovers.

Second week is actually sweeter than the first. See, first week, you could argue that it’s there because a bunch of folks pre-ordered it and because it’s Star Wars and blah blah blah. And then, second week, you might think that the book would drop off the list like a stone. Mmmnope. Still there. Top five. Second week means people are reading it, liking it, and telling their friends. Second week means the book has a little word-of-mouth.

So, thank you all for the SWEET N’ MUSKY EWOK LOVE.

Some of you have asked what’s going on with those Amazon reviews, and I’m not going to address that right now — I’d rather just bask in the glow of the moment. (That said, anybody who takes a long look at the 350+ one-star reviews hovering around it will discern a number of patterns and repeated words, phrases, and ideas. Maybe someone other than me cares to unpack that.)

The book is in its fifth printing (in two weeks). It’s selling well. The publisher is happy. I’ve got two more books in the trilogy to write, so I’m happy, too.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU WOOOOOOOOOO

*ignites lightsaber and flails drunkenly around garage*

I GOT MY RANTIN’ HAT ON.

*rantin’ hat is actually just a frightened shrieking lemur duct-taped to my skull*

I write a lot. Because I write fast. This is known.

I developed this skill working freelance because, as the saying goes, you have to be two out of three things: FAST, FRIENDLY, or GOOD. I was definitely friendly, and I knew I could be fast. No telling if I was any good or not, but I like to think I don’t suck, despite what that passel of one-star reviews might say on that book we won’t talk about right now.

Ahem.

Lately, though, there’s been some chatter about writers who are prolific and if that’s somehow problematic — Stephen King wrote a fine piece asking if a writer can be too prolific (his answer as a somewhat prolific author is both yes and no), and then came that Huffington Post piece, “Dear Self-Published Authors, Do Not Write Four Books A Year.”

This is the part of the meeting, I think, where I’m supposed to stand up and announce:

HI, MY NAME IS CHNURK MANDOG, AND I WRITE FOUR NOVELS A YEAR.

Now, before anybody thinks we need to take this woman’s article and flay it to pieces — at the end of the day, she’s making a reasonable point that you should be focused on quality over quantity.

The author, Lorraine Devon Wilke, says:

…take your time, work your craft; look for the best possible ways to tell your story and allow yourself time to change your mind, sometimes often, until you know it’s right. Allow your editors time to help you mold your narrative into peak condition. Give your formatters and copy editors time to comb through your manuscript, again and again, to make sure everything is perfect. Work carefully with your cover artist to create the most gorgeous, most professional book cover you can.

Nothing at all unreasonable about that. And it’d be hard to disagree. I mean, what are you gonna say as a retort? “You should rush hastily through your draft, speeding by it so fast you miss all chances to refine the thing into something meaningful, and by the way, editors are just going to slow you down and if you need a book cover here’s a picture of a monkey sexing up a cat so just slap a title on it and you are ready to reap the rewards.”

But before that, she says:

…if your point and purpose as a writer is to take someone’s breath away, capture a riveting story, translate an idea — whether fantasy, love story, science fiction, human interaction, tragedy, thriller, family saga, memoir, non-fiction — in a way that raises hairs or gets someone shouting “YES!”; if you’re compelled to tell that story so beautifully, so irreverently, with such power and prose as to make a reader stop to read a line over just to have the opportunity to roll those words around one more time, then don’t listen to that advice.

When she says “that advice” (the bold part is on her), she’s referring to that which is referenced in the article’s title: do not write four books a year.

So, again, she’s not saying anything patently wrong — I mean, yes, your goals could very well be to rob readers of their breath, or tell an amazing story, or hold court on big ideas. I always say the two biggest and most important goals of fiction is first to make people feel and second to make them think. (A third one, less necessary but still vital, is perhaps to make them laugh, but that’s a discussion for a different time.)

The problem is based in the assumption that quality is separate from quantity.

As in, to write a lot, you must sacrifice skill.

To churn out books, art is lost beneath the whirlpool of your effort.

If you write a lot, she is suggesting, then you cannot be as effective as you want to be — you can’t raise hairs, get readers shouting. You can’t be beautiful and irreverent at four books a year.

To which I cry, HAMFIST AND SHORNGOGGLE.

Neither of those things are actually words, but trust me when I say: they sound good when you yell them aloud. I will allow you some time to practice this now. Shake your fist and yell those words at something that frustrates you. Go on, I’ll wait.

Done?

Excellent.

So, let’s talk about this a little bit.

First up, quality and quantity are not exclusive. You do not sacrifice one to get to the other. Some authors do. Some don’t. Sometimes a book is like baking brownies, which means it takes a certain amount of time to keep baking. Sometimes it’s a smoothie — frothily frapping away in the blender for a quick pulse, pour and guzzle. Blackbirds took me five years to write. All three sequels took me under two months to finish apiece (and I’d argue Cormorant is the best book of the bunch — jury’s out yet on Thunderbird.)

Second, to build off of that, you’re the kind of writer that you are. You have a process. Maybe that process is slowly and painstakingly crafting a novel over many years — a dedication like that of a watchmaker’s artifice. Or maybe instead you prefer write like a squirrel covered in fire ants. And like I said, every book demands its own thing. It takes the time that it takes.

Third, writing a lot does not preclude publishing a lot. You can write a lot with the intent to just flail around and see what coming squirting out of your fingertips. Sometimes, you just write to write. You have to. You write to practice, to fail, to fuck around, to iterate and ideate and have fun with whatever it is that’s driving you batty on any given day. That said, it might mean publishing, too. (I’ve had three new books out this year, plus the rebirth of Blackbirds with a new publisher.)

Fourth and finally, and I’m mighty sorry to report this, but a full-time writing career is not easily maintained by writing slowly. That’s a reality of this business, and it’s true whether you’re publishing traditionally or whether you act as your own author-publisher. No matter the means of production, writing slow offers you less chance to make money than writing fast. Writing money isn’t the only goal, no, and crafting great stories should be paramount. Just the same, you also might wanna pay bills. I know my mortgage is pretty assertive when it comes time to get paid. The bank’ll break my knees if I miss a payment.

So, that’s it.

In short: write as much or as little as you jolly well fucking feel like it.

You do you, penmonkey. YOU DO YOU.

* * *

Miriam Black Is Back (In Print)

Miriam Black knows how you’re going to die. This makes her daily life a living hell, especially when you can’t do anything about it, or stop trying to. She’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, and suicides. She merely needs to touch you—skin to skin contact—and she knows how and when your final moments will occur. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. But then she hitches a ride with Louis Darling and shakes his hand, and she sees in thirty days that Louis will be murdered while he calls her name. Louis will die because he met her, and Miriam will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

“Fast, ferocious, sharp as a switchblade and fucking fantastic.” — Lauren Beukes

Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

We all have days where we sit in front of the keyboard and we’re just not… feeling it. It’s like trying to dry-hump a cardboard box. It doesn’t feel magical. It doesn’t even feel productive. It feels empty, crass, devoid of any value — mechanical and sad. You can barely even get yourself to make the words happen. Your fingers hover above the keys, or you have the pen poised in your grip and you’re just like:

“Nnnnghyeah, you know what, fuck it. Fuck it all right into outer space.”

You think, I need motivation.

And so you — like I have done and still do today — go in search of that motivation.

You try little tips and tricks. You eat chocolate to reward yourself. You read good books and you read bad books in an effort to urge your own prose forward. You set up your time so that you take 45 minutes to write, and 15 minutes for a social media break. You drink coffee. You read writing advice. You pin up motivational sayings around your office — HANG IN THERE, the kitten commands as it dangles from the branch. Another poster shows a winking beagle puppy telling you how awesome you are. On your left shoulder is a homunculus of me made from beard trimmings and whiskey-soaked book pages and he constantly screams in your ear, ART HARDER, ART HARDER, ART HARDER like some maniac zombie parrot.

Nothing at all wrong with trying to find a way to squeeze a little extra juice out of your writing day. We all get there however we get there and if that means chocolate / coffee / whiskey / motivational posters / screaming wendigs / prostate stimulation then hey, you do you.

But asking about motivation is one of the most common questions I get.

It is, in fact, one of the things you hear about from “aspiring writers” (defined here as writers who do not actually write anything but who sure talk about it a lot). I had a neighbor that explained she too would be a writer someday, and she liked to pull over the car and write whenever she was inspired or motivated and one day she’d find the time to write…

Not the first time I’ve heard something like that.

Won’t be the last time, either.

When I’m inspired.

When I’m motivated.

When I find the time.

These, you’ll note, are external things. They exist outside you. Inspiration, spoken of as if it’s launched square into your face via t-shirt cannon. Motivation, delivered as if it’s a random box from the UPS guy. Time, found laying around like spare change in the couch cushions. (Note that if I found extra time just hanging around, I’d probably do the same thing with it as I would with a twenty I found in my pocket: I’d waste the hell out of it.)

You, just waiting to have these things brought to you.

You, passively beseeching the heavens to deliver you unto the prose.

I gave a talk about this a few days ago, and I prefaced the talk by asking the question:

Which would you prefer:

A present you don’t expect, or a present you do? Meaning, a present given to you as a surprise, or a present delivered by the expected schedule (birthday, Christmas, what-have-you)?

Then, a follow-up question.

Which would you prefer:

A present you don’t expect, or no present when you expect one?

Waiting for motivation or inspiration or time — it’s like expecting a present and receiving none. It’s like waking up on your birthday that nobody remembers, and you stumble around all day hoping that someone will spring out of an alleyway and besiege you with delicious cake or slap a gift into your hands except that doesn’t happen.

Nothing comes and you go to bed, unfulfilled and uncelebrated.

Conjuring little tips and tricks — they work. I know they work. I use them. You use them. But you can also rely on them too much. You can use them to the point that they cease to be tricks and they become cheats — it becomes an act where you are constantly trying to fool yourself into writing. You’re looking for fuel, but can I tell you a secret?

You don’t need fuel.

You generate your own energy.

You generate your own momentum.

You’re equal parts solar panel array and the cuckoo brightness that powers it.

The practical way to demonstrate this is to do what you wanted to do in the first place:

You need to write.

Now, this doesn’t automatically mean to write every day — I personally espouse that as a habit because I come out of a freelance writing background, and I have deadlines to hit and bills to pay and so for the career-driven writer, developing the “write every day” habit has value. But everybody’s process is different, and even some career writers write a few days a week and hit the word count hard when they do. The greatest thing you can do for yourself as a writer is to discover, adapt, and forever hone your process.

No matter how often you choose to write, though, being a writer means —

Well, duh, it means writing.

It’s obvious and reductive and yet bears repeating: writers write. But the value of that is not always so obvious. We assume that writers writing means writers are producing content and that’s the end-all be-all of that reward — you make stuff, and making stuff is cool, so yay to that. That, however, is not where the value ends. Writing builds intellectual muscle. It practices the thing you want to do. It helps you improve. It helps you cultivate instinct. It helps you fail faster, and fail smarter, and failing is a critical component to a creative career — in fact, the majority of the bulk fibrous material that comprises a creative career is pure, unmitigated failure.

To crib the warboy chant from FURY ROAD —

I write!

I fail!

I write again!

Word-Boy! Drive your Word-Rig through the fire tornado of your own doubt! Spray-paint your mouth with black printer ink and leap onto the empty page! Witness! Witness! (If I may quote @lorekeating: “OH WHAT A LOVELY PAGE!”)

But the whole writers write thing earns you another benefit:

Writing motivates you to write more.

That sounds strange, and here you are thinking that you need motivation just to start writing in the first place. But let me tell you — you don’t. Sit down. Put your hands around the throat of the story and just start squeezing. Write anyway. Fuck how weird it feels. Forget failure. You think you suck? Yeah, hey, man, we all suck some days. You start to write, though, it lubricates the gears. It’s like feeling too hungry to eat, but then you take just a bit and the nausea goes away. Writing begets writing. Forcing the motivation forges real motivation. Fake it until you make it.

At the end of the day, it feels somewhat demotivational to suggest that all the little tricks and cheats may fail you in the end — but I’d also hope you’ll take heart that, at the end of the day, EVERYTHING YOU WERE LOOKING FOR WAS WITH YOU ALL ALONG. (hashtag wizard of oz.) You have the power. You have the voodoo. You’ve got the ability to motivate yourself. You needn’t look for external things. You want time? Grab it. You need inspiration? Drill it up out of your own heart. You want motivation? Write. Write your way to it, then write your way through it. You are not beholden to anything outside yourself.

You are beholden only to yourself.

* * *

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? Where are my pants?

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.

Amazon

B&N

Indiebound

Writer’s Digest

Here’s a critique challenge:

Post the opening line to your WIP.

Drop it into the comments below. Note that by doing so, you open yourself up to some criticism — but you are also free to discuss other opening lines, too. (And it’s also worth noting that an opening line is in no way the end-all, be-all of a story. While we often like to have perfect opening lines, sometimes it’s more about a perfect opening paragraph or an elegant first page.)

Either way, if you want to play, go to the comments, leave behind your opening line for some constructive criticism. (And those offering criticism — please keep it constructive, thank you.)