Social media can be a scary place, sometimes.

But it can also be a wonderland. Because without social media, I wouldn’t know so many amazing writers. I would have never spoken on stage at Margaret Atwood’s birthday. I would never get into a cold war of kale-related tweets with John Scalzi. I would never have gotten Lar deSouza to draw me on a wyvern with a jetpack:

Or me on the Jaws boat with Scott Lynch, Sam Sykes, and the aforementioned Scalzi:

I sometimes just wish for things on Twitter, and they happen. I say, that book looks neat, and then that book, which is months before publication, shows up at my door.

I know. This is supremely privileged. Not everybody can just shake Twitter and make cool stuff fall out, I do recognize this — but I’ve also seen it happen with so many others, too, whether it’s writers asking for critiques or when fans of authors get to meet and engage with those authors.

Social media can be really, really cool.

Which leads me to:

Project: Redacted.

On September 4th, 2014, I wrote this tweet.

On September 4th, 2015, this book comes out.

Which means that [REDACTED] has been revealed as not the PERFECT STRANGERS officially-sanctioned novelization that I’ve been talking about on Twitter (though one day I will write BALKI’S DAY OF BLOOD, you betcha), but rather revealed as:

STAR WARS: AFTERMATH.

*silent joyful screaming*

(News at StarWars.com. Featuring more info and thoughts from Yours Truly.)

I am writing an official Star Wars novel.

I am writing the first (newly) canonical novel set after Return of the Jedi.

I cannot feel my legs, and I have been drunkenly pirouetting wildly around the house for months, making lightsaber sounds and forcing my four-year-old on a steady regimen of Star Warsy goodness. I am geeking out hardcore over here. I now join the ranks of my homie, Kevin Hearne (who by the way just made the NYT bestseller list with Heir to the Jedi).

The opening crawl for Aftermath, should you care (and I can say no more):

Journey to The Force Awakens.

The second Death Star is destroyed. The Emperor and his powerful enforcer, Darth Vader, are rumored to be dead. The Galactic Empire is in chaos.

Across the galaxy, some systems celebrate, while in others Imperial factions tighten their grip. Optimism and fear reign side by side.

And while the Rebel Alliance engages the fractured forces of the Empire, a lone Rebel scout uncovers a secret Imperial meeting. . . .

Here, have this.

It’s a Storify where I, for little to no reason, put on my ranty-trousers and danced around Twitter, grumping about Your Writing Career. (I’m embedding it below, as well, but embed efforts from some sites can be iffy here at the blog. So, assuming it does not embed correctly, you can use that link above. Feel free to embrace, ignore, or abuse accordingly.)

Writing is a profane act.

I don’t literally mean in the FUCK THIS, SHIT THAT way (though for me that tends to be true enough just the same). But I mean profane in the classic sense: it’s a heretical, disrespectful act. Crass! Irreverent! Writing and storytelling is this… nasty task of taking the perfect idea that exists in your head and shellacking it all up by dragging it through some grease-slick fontanelle in order to make it real. You’re just shitting it all to hell, this idea. You have it in your mind: golden and unbreakable. And then in reality, ugh. You’ve created a herky-jerky simulacrum, a crude facsimile of your beautiful idea run through the copy machine again and again until what you started with is an incomprehensible spread of dong-doogle hieroglyphics.

The end result will never match the expectation.

You will never get it just right.

The idea is God: perfect, divine, incapable of repudiation, utterly untouchable.

The result is Man: fumbling, foolish, a jester’s mockery, a bundle of mistakes in tacky pants.

Nobody is good enough to tell the stories and ideas inside them. I mean that sincerely. The ideas in my head are shining beams of light, perfect and uninterrupted. And when they finally exist on paper, they end up fractured and imperfect — beams of light through grungy windows and shattered prisms, shot through with motes of dust, filtered up, watered down.

But sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes, a beam of light is still a beam of light no matter how diffuse it is, no matter how dirty the light, no matter how filthy the floor is that it illuminates. And when it’s not enough, you keep on trying until it is. Because eventually, it becomes that. The only reason it doesn’t become that isn’t a lack of skill or talent, but giving up before that lack of skill or talent shows up on the page. The only true failure is giving up and giving in.

I write this in response to a colleague who was talking on Facebook about the ideas in his head never matching the expression of those ideas, whether from a lack of skill or talent or intelligence. Thing is, it’s true. My colleague is right. Those things will never match. No matter how hard you try, because the only way to get our stories out of our heads and into your heads we first need to translate them into mundane language. And when you translate one language into another, you introduce imperfections, inaccuracies, misunderstandings. You move the Bible from Enochian angeltongue to Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English and you lose something vital — once, the Bible was about a guy named Dave who saved the Galaxy with his unicorn army. Now it’s blah blah blah something about “Jesus” and “loving one another.” Writing is always this: an adaptation of the sacred into smut. Dragging the divine out of his Sky Chariot and into the human dirt.

But me, I like that aspect.

I like making God into sausages.

I like dragging those angels down into the slurry, dirtying their wings, breaking their harps.

I like translating the beautiful celestial song and grunting it in our human chimp-shrieks.

Because that’s the only way it will ever exist.

Because if there’s one thing that is imperfect about perfection —

It’s that it’s too perfect to live.

It’s unreal. And I don’t truck much with unreality.

Writing unwritten is a promise unfulfilled. I’d rather make the promise and complete it badly than make the promise and never even try. A story untold is a life unlived. What’s the point? If you want to do this thing, you have to set yourself up against unrealistic expectations. You cannot combat perfection because perfection? That smiling, shiny jerk always wins. You do what you do, crass and irreverent as it may be, because committing heresy in the name of art is far better than huffing invisible God-farts and cleaving only to invisible philosophy.

We’re told to do no harm.

But sometimes, you have to trample pretty daisies to get where you’re going.

This also means setting for yourself realistic, reasonable metrics for success. A day’s worth of writing is a success. Finishing the thing is a success. Separate that out from the aspect of professional, business success. You can’t control that kind of success, though you can maximize your luck and that means first finishing what you begin. If you want to create? Create. If you want to write and tell stories, do that. Don’t give yourself over to unkind, cruel standards. Judge yourself fairly. Work despite perfect expectations. Those who try to master perfection will always fall to those who iterate, and reiterate, and create, and recreate. Art is better than philosophy. Creation, however clumsy, is always better than sitting on your hands and fearing what damage they can do.

Kill the perfect. Slay the angels. Fuck the gods.

You’re human. You’ll get it wrong. Everybody gets it wrong.

But getting it wrong is the only way you get close to getting it right.

This week’s challenge?

I want you to click this link: generate random cocktail.

It will, predictably, give you a random cocktail and its recipe.

(If for some reason that link doesn’t work: try this one. It gives you 10 at a time.)

The title of the random cocktail is the title of your new flash fiction story.

You have ~1000 words.

Due by next Friday, 3/20. Noon EST.

Post at your online space. Link to it in the comments below.

I think that what he said was honest.

I think that punishing him for honesty and a sincere effort to do better misses the mark.

I think that what he said wasn’t very smart.

I think there were better ways to say what he said, or what he (probably) meant.

I think I say a lot of things that aren’t very smart, and some of them are probably here in this post.

I think I probably shouldn’t even write this post, but here I am.

I think I am sexist sometimes and I don’t mean to be.

I think I’m going to get it wrong.

I think I’m scared of getting it wrong.

I think I don’t know what I’ll do when that happens, and I hope I’ll be good but maybe I won’t.

I think that one interview answer is not enough to judge the content of a person, nor is it enough evidence to apply a broad-sweeping label.

I think that sometimes writers are better left writing things down rather than speaking them aloud because you can’t go back, you can’t rethink, you can’t edit words that are spoken to, say, an interviewer in what once might’ve seemed an innocuous interview.

I think feminism is more than one thing, and I think sexism is more than one thing, too.

I think it’s important to look for patterns rather than aberrations.

I think we should view people as a spectrum, not as binary black and white.

I think it’s good we talk about these things.

I think it’s sad we tear people down because of these things.

I think it’s critical to recognize that what Smith said will earn him harsh words, but what women say earn them death threats or threats of rape.

I think good people can say the wrong things.

I think it’s important to acknowledge those wrong things.

I think it’s important to still acknowledge that people are bigger than the wrong things they sometimes might say and that we are more than the sum of a single mistake.

I think women are used to being erased and are justifiably angry about that.

I think that women are not aliens, nor mysterious beings, nor bizarre riddles.

I think men should learn to write fully-realized characters, regardless of gender and color.

I think we can all be scared though of getting that wrong and can be paralyzed by it.

I think his comments were an unintended symptom of a larger problem.

I think that criticism of what he said does not amount to bullying.

I think that criticism of who he is, does.

I think that social media can be a scary place sometimes.

I think mobs can form without us realizing it.

I think that shame is a bad way to get people to change and that encouraging them to take their medicine is a good way to get them to not want to take their medicine.

I think that conversation and dialogue is vital, and anger is often righteous.

I think snark is funny, but probably doesn’t help.

I think people can become mean even when they don’t intend to be, myself included.

I think that many snowflakes can fast become a blizzard or even an avalanche.

I think that outrage and anger is real and just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t mean you need to invalidate it.

I think that outrage is not automatically validated by its existence, either.

I think that sometimes the response to a thing can become bigger than the thing.

I don’t think women should be quiet.

I don’t think Andrew Smith should be quiet, either.

I think empathy is a powerful thing.

I think empathy and logic must work in concert.

I think that what I think probably doesn’t amount to much but I think it anyway.

I think Andrew Smith is an amazing writer, a bona fide talent, an irreplaceable voice.

I think he’s a good person who does good things and maybe that matters to you, maybe it doesn’t.

I think that we are the tally of the good and bad things we do and hopefully that balances out.

I think he had a hard life and dealt with abuse and maybe that matters to you, maybe it doesn’t.

I think that authors are not their characters, nor are they their books, but that authors have responsibility just the same — how far that responsibility goes or what it even is, I’m not sure.

I know that I will one day want my son to read Andrew Smith’s books.

I think we can all do better.

I think we all deserve better.

* * *

For your reading: the original VICE interview.

A longer EW interview with him (noting abuse he endured from his parents).

Tessa Gratton’s Tumblr: “Andrew Smith and Sexism.”

Phoebe North’s perspective is here.

Comments are closed. (Little time to do proper moderation.)

Thank you for reading.

As you are a Certified Penmonkey — *stamps your head with the ancient sigil* — you will at various intersections be forced to endure a critique of your work. I don’t mean bad reviews, though those will line up, too, and you will run their gauntlet as they whack you about the head and neck with their bludgeoning sadness.

No, I mean a proper critique. Knives out. Blood on the paper.

You will receive this critique from:

Beta Readers

Friends

Agents

Editors

Other Writers

Probably Your Mother At Some Point.

When I say, you have to make the most out of these critiques, I don’t mean emotionally. Receiving critique for me is — emotionally! — like being a trashcan full of old liquor bottles set on fire. Flames. Lots of fumes. A great deal of shattering. Black, heinous smoke. No, no, I mean there exists a pragmatic side to receiving critique, and it’s not just what you do with the critiques you get but it’s also how you set yourself up for them.

You must maximize this experience.

You must squeeze this fruit of its funky juiciness.

You must milk this beast of its vitalmost lactations.

You must ejaculate —

*receives note*

Ah! See. A fair critique. I’m going to stop there.

Let’s get to the tips!

Behold Its Definition

As always, value exists in defining our terms before we discuss them. So:

Critique is not criticism. Not in its entirety. It is an analysis of the work. A critical, intelligent analysis. It’s not tearing the thing apart. It’s not building it up. It’s breaking it into its constituent pieces, examining them, then putting them back together to see how it all works. It is an assessment, not a hit piece. Editors do not cackle madly upon seeing a story, growing sexually frantic over the chance to maul your work the way a bear might maul a couple of teenagers banging in a zipped-up sleeping bag.

To Receive Critique, Give Critique

If critique is an alien animal to you, if its anatomy is mysterious and impossible to dissect, you will not know the value of what went into a critique of your work — or what to take from it. Thus: perform the ancient art of critique. This can be as part of a, “If you perform an anatomy on my story-corpse, I’ll perform an anatomy on your story-corpse,” but it doesn’t have to be. It might literally be you picking up somebody else’s published book and then… well, finding the holes in that bucket. Where does the work go wrong? Where does it go right? How does the whole thing work? It’s not just about good and bad, but also about figuring out how all the pieces fit.

Learn To Read Critically

All this means, too, that you must learn to read critically. One of the best and worst things about being a writer is that it grants you a kind of narrative X-Ray vision. Over time, after writing a whole motherfucking lot, you start reading stories with the Critical Analysis button jammed permanently ON. You start to notice the Matrix Code behind the world, and you can see the mechanics of the narrative behind the narrative. It sucks sometimes because reading for pleasure gets a helluva lot harder (and this further translates over to any other storytelling medium), but it helps you also gain a new appreciation of the work in front of you. Gone is the pleasure of turning off your brain. Here is the pleasure of being able to crack the bones and suck out the marrow. A pleasure of details, of assessment, of learning to understand and see what you think the writer was going for — you’re no longer in the audience of the magician, wowed by the illusions on stage.

Now you’re a fellow magician trying to suss out the trick.

Practice this skill.

Read everything.

Pick it apart as you do.

Get Critiqued A Whole Fucking Lot

If you want to be a writer: write a lot. Want to run a marathon? Run a lot. Want to make sure you’re the best tiger-fucker the world has ever seen? You guessed it — you are going to have to fuck a lot of tigers. (Sidenote: please do not have sex with any tigers. Tigers are en endangered species and they have had it hard enough without you trying to sex them up. Everything I say here is metaphor. No tiger sexing. Tiger sexting, however, is totally cool. Even recommended.)

What I’m trying to say is, the same thing applies here.

If you want to receive critique effectively —

Then receive a lot of critiques.

It’s like this: you know how the first time you have sex (*not with tigers) it’s really weird, awkward, and there’s that panel of old men behind the Plexiglas holding up your score on yellow notebook paper? Maybe that last part is just me. Point is, the first time you “do it” (tee hee), you don’t really know what you like. Or what your partner likes. It’s like smashing two pork roasts together — inelegant and almost certainly ineffective.

The first time you receive a critique, it’s hard to be sure what to make of it. Is it right? Wrong? And what the fuck are you even supposed to do with it, now? But you get ten, twenty, a hundred of these sets of critical notes across not just one story but several, and you start cultivating instinct. All the practical advice in the world will never trump your gut. But you aren’t born with that, and you have to build up to it.

So: open yourself to critique.

A whole goddamn lot of it.

Know Your Audience

Be aware of who is critiquing you. Blind critique is fine, but it’s also useful to have a sense of the person at the other end of the rope. Example: a literary-minded editorreading your science-fiction story isn’t automatically a bad choice for a critique, but it may color the critique you receive. You shouldn’t dismiss the commentary, but you also shouldn’t let it be the ONE TRUE MESSAGE UNSWERVING IN ITS SCRUTINY. If the agent reading your work reps a lot of science-fiction but not fantasy and your book is fantasy — well, just go in with your eyes open on that one.

Then Choose The Right Audience

Over time, you start to to develop a sense of who you should go to when it’s time to receive critique. A set of editors, a particular agent, a selected cabal of beta readers, the magical word sorcerer that hides at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. You begin to choose your critique partners. Not because they’re your friends, but because what comes out of the partnership are bona fide results. Results, here — actionable results, a map drawn with new directions — are the goal.

Beware Shining Adoration And Perfection

If a critique is all just fawning ecstasy and delight, and your only possible response is to squeegee the love juice off the manuscript’s pages, then you’d better find someone who is willing to tell you the truth. Or, at the very least, be more incisive in their analysis.

No book is perfect.

Truth is rarely kind.

Beware Ultimate Hatred And Destruction

Alternately, you should fear those who just wanna tear your work like, ten new assholes, too. Maybe it’s that they’re the wrong audience for the book. Maybe it’s that they have mis-defined critique and believe that their goal is to rip the story to bloody tatters. Maybe they’re passive-aggress bungholes who delight in the suffering of others. I’ve gotten a few of these in my life (one rejection from a lit journal about twenty years ago exhorted me to quit writing because of how utterly horrible I was). You can do nothing but ignore them. Maybe there’s value in there, but it gets hard to suss out when all you get is just a mouthful of venom.

Ignore hate-fests.

Definitely shove aside any critique with insults and snark embedded in.

Look For Patterns And Potholes

One critique has some value. But several critiques offers you the power of patterns. If three people say the same thing — blah blah blah, that character doesn’t have enough agency, that plot point doesn’t make sense, why is the story narrated by one of those dancing windsocks you see out front of car dealerships? Then okay, that’s worth a long, hard squint. If one person says THIS DOESN’T WORK but nine others say it works? Maybe that’s not so deserving of your attention.

Also worth realizing that critique is a curious animal. We are driven to not only point out deficiencies but then also to fill those deficiencies — it’s a noble goal, but what it ends up being for you, the writer, is that the reader will tell you both a) what’s wrong and b) how to fix it.

Pay attention to a).

But ignore b).

Their solution needn’t be your solution.

Look past the offered fix — they want to paint the room the colors they like.

Take away the message that a fix is needed — but then provide your own repairs.

As Always, Be Willing To Act

Most importantly:

TAKE ACTION.

Critique can be paralyzing. We receive it and then, shell-shocked, we sit and stare at our hands. Or we feel bad. Or uncertain what direction to jump. Uncertainty is a killer. Fear and doubt will hamstring you near the finish line. You’ve already written something. But who said you were done? Now it’s time to take what you’ve learned and apply it. A critique is not purely an intellectual exercise. It isn’t just for shits and giggles.

Always plan to use them. Somehow. Some way.

Act on the intel you receive. Otherwise: what’s the point?

* * *

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?

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