The holidays are a fun time, yeah?

From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, a stretch of joyous merriment! Tinsel and blinky lights! Snow and elves and great meals and good cheer and magic all around.

Which sounds to me like a phenomenal recipe for horror.

The holidays are in fact ripe with horror — meat and candy, mythological creatures who spy on you, winter hellscapes, animated toys. So many options for terror!

And so, that is your job, this week. To write a flash fiction — let’s up the story length to 2000 words — where you write a holiday horror story. Theme it to this time of year and to the holidays nestled in over the next month, and have fun with it. You can be gory or reserved, you can aim for psychological horror or more mythic madness. Lovecraftian? Slasher tale? Ghost story?

YOUR MOVE.

Your story is due by next Friday, noon EST.

Post at your website and link back here.

Ho ho ho horror! On monster, on necromancer, on vomit, on cancer!

Ahem.

Oh! And this is also the time when I recommend the EROTIC HORROR CLASSIC —

Santa Steps Out.

By Robert Devereaux.

Now on Kindle.

It is seriously fucking amazing.

No, I’m not kidding.

The other day, Kevin Hearne and I announced the Nerdtivity Contest. It is, in short, a contest to make a nativity scene out of nerdy, geeky, or pop culturey toys.

It’s a fun contest!

Some folks are not entirely thrilled with the contest, believing it to be in some way anti-Christian.

And a couple folks have asked that we stop the contest.

So.

Here’s the deal.

We’re gonna keep the contest going. And here’s why:

We’re not attempting to denigrate anyone’s religion and we don’t think that placing geeky toys in a manger does any damage to one’s faith or one’s ability to practice that faith. We understand if you don’t want to participate! And, regrettably, we understand if for some reason you feel like this is a very good reason to stop reading this blog or our books. But we believe this does no harm to anyone’s religion (and strictly speaking, a nativity is just a birth scene — we’re not mocking Christianity, nor are we mocking any religion that has any kind of sacred birth at its center).

As a personal note, while it is never my goal to offend, I also don’t particularly mind offending people. I do mind hurting people, and that’s usually my metric for these kinds of things. Am I hurting anyone? Persecuting them? I like to think that’s not what’s happening here. (Further, my books are frequently pretty darn offensive. Hell, this blog is offensive on the daily.)

So: contest is still on!

*blows whistle*

Once upon a time, my wife and I took a cheap empty Nativity scene.

And we turned it into the Nerdtivity.

Then we did it three more times.

I have not done it in five years and I was pondering doing when again.

I pondered so publicly on THE TWITTERS, and there my good friend and bestselling bad-ass author extraordinaire Kevin Hearne said (and I’m paraphrasing here):

“Fuck yeah, we should do a contest.”

And I was like, fuck yeah, we should do a contest.

And so, here we are, telling you to make your own Nerdtivity scene and send it to us. Kevin and I will pick our favorite, and then you guys will pick your favorites, and then for the halibut we’ll also pick a couple random entrants.

THERE SHALL BE PRIZES. What Prizes?

Here There Be Prizes

Grand Prize Winner (one chosen by Kevin and Chuck) gets:

A Complete! Signed! Set! (books 1-7) of the IDC UK editions from Kevin! Such a set doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. Seriously.

A turbo-rare SNACK OF THE SEX MANTIS mug from Kevin: a pulp classic by Beauregard Fat!

One terribleminds t-shirt (either: Certified Penmonkey or Art Harder, Motherfucker)

One terribleminds mug (choice of: Certified Penmonkey, Secret of Writing, Art Harder [NSFW or SFW versions!}, or Writer Juice)

One signed set of the Miriam Black trilogy (Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Cormorant), all in mass market paperback (these versions are going out of print December 31st!)

One signed set of the first two books of the Heartland series (Under the Empyrean Sky, Blightborn), both in hardcover.

Second Prize Winners (two chosen by audience) get:

Any one signed IDC book of their choice from Kevin.

A Rula Bula embroidered polo shirt in either M or XL from Kevin. They don’t make them anymore!

One signed copy of The Kick-Ass Writer

One terribleminds mug (choice of: Certified Penmonkey, Secret of Writing, or Art Harder)

Third Prize Winners (two chosen randomly) get:

One signed IDC book by Kevin (book of your choice)

A shitload of e-books by Chuck (writing books, plus some fiction thrown in)

The Rules

You get one entry. Multiple entries disqualifies you.

Send your photo to terribleminds at gmail dot com.

[Edit: make sure the word “NERDTIVITY” is in your subject header of the email!]

Your photo is due by 11:59PM on the dreaded Sunday the 14th of December.

Kevin and I will pick our favorites that week, and then you guys will have some time to pick your favorites, too. And then we’ll pick the random winners and everyone will celebrate by getting drunk on Kevin’s lawn. I’m pretty sure that’s the plan, anyway?

Contest only open to those in the United States unless you’re willing to front the costs of your own shipping because for reals, that stuff can get hellishly expensive. DAMN YOU, GLOBAL DISTANCE.

The Not-Quite Rules

Your Nerdtivity can be anything, really, outside the norm of the normal Nativity scene, though obviously the intent is to aim for that axis of geeky / nerdy / pop-culturey. Have fun. Be funny. Embrace your own inner nerdtivity. Photoshop is acceptable, though bad Photoshop won’t do you any favors. Really bad Photoshop can be sorta awesome, though, so YMMV.

That’s it.

Any questions, pop ’em in the comments below.

Before we flee, too — here’s Kevin’s Nerdtivity: “The dread lord Morpheus presides over the birth of Neo in the Matrix, who dreams of the Dreaming and Adventure Time while a masked 1920’s Sandman tells him what to fear most in life.”

NOW GO FORTH AND NERD OUT, MY NERDS.

Jim Hines beaned me in the forehead with a d20 and I was out for hours. While I was out, he snuck onto my computer and wrote this post. That pesky Jim! Which is also the name of the sitcom starring Jim, by the way. *plays That Pesky Jim theme music*

Chuck Wendig is known for giving good, blunt writing advice. Of course, he’s also known for writing Baboon Fart Story and for his role in the soon-to-be-released independent film Cock-Waffle. [ed — hey, I didn’t write Baboon Fart Story, I merely conceived of it. — cdw] But I can talk about Chuck’s poor life choices in another blog post. Let’s stick with writing advice for now.

Because it’s one thing to give good advice, but what about all those young writers who desperately need a few scoops of awful advice?

I’m here for you, my friends. Like a flatulent Papio cynocephalus, I have come to fill the air with so much anti-wisdom you’ll be tasting it for weeks. Best of all? It’s all based on personal experience, tested and true and terrible!

Because way back in 1995, I set out to write the continuing adventures of my favorite D&D character. And because I knew all writers made mistakes from time to time, I figured I’d get them all out of the way in that first book so that everything else I wrote would be pure gold.

I’m sure you’re dying to know how I did it. Read on, if you dare!

Step 1.

Start with your favorite character. You know, the one you’ve been playing and building up for years. The one you typed up that gorgeous character sheet for, with artwork you cribbed from the Wizards of the Coast site, and that really sweet Lord of the Rings font, all printed out on parchment-style paper. (You get bonus points if you’ve ever cosplayed the character, or commissioned artwork of them.)

In the case of Rise of the Spider Goddess, it was Nakor the Purple! (The exclamation point was an important part of his name.) Nakor the Purple! was a thief/druid based loosely on a Raymond Feist character. My version was an elf with a bottomless pouch of figs, a magic rapier, and a purple cloak. He was as awesome as a bionic velociraptor in Boba Fett armor.

None of your characters will ever be as awesome as Nakor, but that’s okay. The point is, nothing is more thrilling than listening or reading as someone goes on for 50,000 words about their D&D character.

Step 2.

You know all those notes your Dungeon Master prepares before starting the adventure? Vomit those things directly into your word processor. Infodump the hell out of that sucker!

Spider Goddess was a sequel to a campaign that took our college gaming group more than a year to complete, which meant I had a lot of vomiting to do. I’m talking flashbacks and dreams and flashbacks-within-dreams, not to mention random characters wandering up with no purpose whatsoever except to randomly babble bits of backstory.

Some people would say you should dole out the information as it becomes relevant. Screw those people! You (or your DM) worked hard on all of that research and backstory. You suffered for it!

Your job is to make the readers suffer too.

Step 3.

Introduce the rest of the cast. Don’t waste time with nonsense like character development, backstory, motivation, and so on. They’d all pale next to your awesome protagonist anyway. Just toss in some cardboard bad guys in black robes, a spunky thief, an angsty vampire, an evil goddess, and so on. Maybe a wise monk who knows martial arts, just to round things out.

No matter what happens, do not develop them into well-rounded, interesting individuals. This is your story, not theirs, dammit!

You might want to reference the other player characters from the game, but the other players might not like that. Mention them once or twice, sure. But make sure to do it in a way that’s completely irrelevant to the plot.

Step 4.

Let the quest begin! It’s time for your hero to set out to get to The Place so they can kill Bad Guys and find The Thing!

For Nakor the Purple!, it was an ancient scroll written by a dude with too many apostrophes in his name, destined to help Nakor stop an evil goddess, but first, he must overcome a series of random encounters and obstacles.

Don’t worry about explaining why the characters have to jump through each hoop. For example, Nakor has to flee his home when he’s discovered by bad guys. He retreats to a Mysterious Temple™, after which he returns home again. Risking capture and death. To get rope. I shit you not.

Does it make sense? Who cares? As the dungeon master author, you have the power to railroad these characters through whatever ridiculous or illogical nonsense you want!

Step 5.

Add magic. There are some who would say that the rules used in most gaming systems for magic make no freaking sense when applied to a novel, but don’t let those people spoil your fun. So what if there’s basically no cost to your character’s power, no logical reason they can level up and suddenly start transforming trees into warriors or magically mulch poison ivy into toilet paper.

Your characters’ magic should do exactly what the plot requires. Logic, limitations, and consistency are for lowers. Hell, ignore the gaming system rules too. This is your story, not theirs!

Step 6.

Forget revisions. Forget proofreading. There’s no feeling in the world like finishing a novel, so get to that point as quickly as you can. Remember to give it an awesome title, the longer the better! Something like:

The Prosekiller Chronicles:

Rise of the Spider Goddess

(An Annotated Novel)

For me, there was a seventh step. Almost twenty years later, after publishing ten novels and fifty short stories, I went back and reread Nakor’s story. I cringed a lot. I longed to reach back in time and punch 1995-Jim in the face for his clichés and mistakes and just plain awful writing he spewed out.

And then I decided to publish it. Alcohol may have been involved. If not, it probably should have been. I prepared all 50,000 words, along with an additional 5000 words of commentary, in which 2014-Jim gives 1995-Jim the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment.

Because I think it’s important to acknowledge the bad advice and the awful mistakes. We’ve all written crap. Some of us have written more than others, but none of us are born knowing how to write groundbreaking, bestselling novels.

I hope Spider Goddess will be good for some laughs, and that it might also help new writers to recognize and avoid some of the many mistakes I made. My thanks to Chuck for letting me blather on, and to all you writers out there, remember the most important step of all:

Have fun!

Jim C. Hines: Website | Blog | Twitter

Rise of the Spider Goddess: Amazon | Kobo | Smashwords | Google Play

Yoinks. A quick note that the Kindle versions of Under the Empyrean Sky and Blightborn are each a mere $2.00 over yonder hills in the moist and jungley forest of Amazon.

It is a series that features a great many fun things, including but not limited to: People turning into plants, hobos, robot bartenders, teens with way too much responsibility, flying horses, horses that don’t fly, corn pirates, conspiracy, class warfare, diversity, drunken mayors, blood-drinking corn named Hiram’s Golden Prolific, talking birds, arranged teenage marriages, sonic weapons, flying rich people, dustbowl poor people, rebellion, anarchy, love rhombuses and more.

(If you dig Star Wars, well, so do I, and I think it shows in these books.)

I do hope that if you haven’t checked ’em out, you might give them a chance now.

*poke poke*

*stares*

*stares harder*

Also at Amazon, if you’d prefer a physical copy of an author’s books (like my own Heartland books above, or even The Kick-Ass Writer), you can get an additional 30% off by using code HOLIDAY30. (Further details here — ends tonight at 11:59PM.)

This is also your reminder that bookstores — like, actual bookstores — contain some of my books and in fact contain a lot of other books by other amazing authors, and you should totally go to them because that’s where the books live. And yay books.

[edit: actually, while few stores carry my Heartland series, one that does is the amazing Let’s Play Books in Emmaus, PA. They in fact have signed copies available, too. Though they are closed on Mondays, you should still check ’em out when you get the chance. And they will ship books, too. Follow them on Twitter @letsplaybooks!]

*disappears in a shudder of corn*

On November 1st, NaNoWriMo matters.

On November 8th, it still matters.

On November 13th, 18th, 24th, mmm, yep, it matters.

(Thanksgiving? Only pie matters. Do not argue this.)

On November 30th? Still matters!

December 1st?

*the quiet sound of crickets fucking*

Today, it doesn’t matter.

This isn’t a dismissal of National Novel Writing Month. Not at all. I’ve come around to love the spirit around that month — a 30 day descent into the lunacy of being a novelist, equal parts fun and frustration (“funstration!”). A hard dive into creative waters. Let it fill your lungs. Drown in it.

Rock the fuck on.

But right now? It doesn’t matter. NaNoWriMo is just the wrapping, the trapping, the springboard, the diving board. It’s what got you going, but it isn’t what matters.

What matters is you. What matters is the work.

And right now, you’ve got something.

I don’t know if it’s finished or not. Did you win or lose?

Forget winning and losing.

You left those words behind when NaNoWriMo ended. What matters now is what happens next.

Don’t know what happens next? Here. I’m going to tell you. Or, at least, I’m going to give you a general idea of what happens next — a menu of permutations and possibilities.

If you didn’t finish what you started, you’re going to finish it. (Why? I told you that last week.)

And if you did finish it?

You are going to congratulate the unholy hellfuckshitpants right off your body. You’re going to congratulate yourself so hard that you wake up in a New Jersey rest-stop three weeks later smelling of coconut oil. In your right pocket you will find a small bottle of whiskey. In your left pocket, someone’s finger. In your mouth: a half-eaten cookie.

Then, take some time away from the story. Just walk away. Cool and calm like an action hero strolling out of an exploding building. Hide it. Forget it. It’s not a thing that happened. It was a fever dream, poorly-remembered. And here’s where your brain will do insidious things because the brain is an insidious organ —

If you keep thinking about it even though you know you’re not supposed to? Then maybe you have something there. If you put it away and the memory of the thing slides through your fingers like so much dream-sand, hey, that’s okay, too. Maybe this one isn’t the one.

But if it is? Then it’s time to get to work. And the work always begins up here —

*taps center of forehead, which squeaks open on a rusty hinge so a squirrel can poke out, chitter at you, steal your bagel and coffee, then return to its nest inside the skull*

And that work first consists of thinking about what you did. Not in the shameful way, like you tell a child or a dog. Just hover over it, intellectually. Pick at it. How do you feel about it? What’d you like about the process, the story, all of it? What are you obsessing about when it comes to the story? Most importantly: start to figure out your battle plan.

What I mean by a battle plan is this: it helps to have an endgame in mind. Maybe you just want to make this thing awesome. Maybe you want to publish it, or self-publish it, or maybe this one is just a practice go-round, or could be that you’re going to just let it be a thing you share for free, or a story you scavenge for spare parts. Doesn’t matter — all avenues are valid. But noodle on it.

Then, you get to work.

You’re going to edit it, and edit it, and rewrite it, and re-edit it, and you write and rewrite till its right. You can take it slow or you can take it fast. You can fix the little things first or start breaking it all apart by pushing the plunger down on that box of cartoon TNT. Because now it’s NaEdYoShi month — National Edit Your Shit Month.

What you’re not going to do is send it off.

You’re not going to send it to an agent yet.

You’re not going to send it to an editor.

You’re not going to self-publish it.

Most of you know this already. Some don’t, or know it but think they’re somehow different — exempted from the rules. Do not do it. First, it’s rude to the agents, editors, and readers who have to deal with your broken work. Second, it’s dismissive of you and the story you wrote. You took the time to get here, and now you’re going to hurry it out the door? Nobody’s racing you. Again, get shut of winning and losing. This is not a competition. Don’t poison your own name and your own efforts by punting a deflated kickball. You spent all that time prepping these brownies and now you’re going to pull them out of the oven half-baked because you’re hungry? Fuck hungry. Let them finish. Go nibble on something else — which, creatively, means go write a short story or scribble some funny tweets or write an erotic manifesto at Tumblr. Don’t care. Just don’t put your unfinished, half-assed work out there. No half-measures, Walter.

Now, that said:

You’re going to keep working.

You’re going to take whatever time it needs.

You’ll hire an editor if you have to. Or farm it out to some beta readers. You’ll let a trusted loved one poke holes in it so you can patch those holes up. You’ll think about it again and again, a stone tumbling around the inside of your skull (just watch the squirrel), and then you’ll go back to it.

It’s a strange doll, this story, an ugly and uncertain thing: you’ll keep ripping it apart and tearing out the stuffing and stitching it back together again. Until it looks the way you want it to. Not the way anyone else wants. But the way you want. That takes time and effort though beyond the first flurry of activity, beyond the first draft.

See, the creative process doesn’t just stop with the creating part of the process. Creativity isn’t just in the inception of the thing. It isn’t just in the first iteration. It’s the whole journey. It’s creating, it’s thinking, it’s changing and critiquing and fucking it up and fixing it. It’s what you do with it. It’s how you deliver it. Parenting isn’t just birthing the kid — it’s how you raise it, and your creative work is the same way. People talk about the long tail of sales and exposure, but creativity is beholden to its own long tail, too.

Take the time — because as I’ve noted before, it takes the time that it takes. Maybe it happens fast, maybe it happens slow. But everybody wants things fast, everybody expects to just hit publish or just have an agent fall in love with a hastily-scrawled query letter. We try to jump to the end of our journey before we’ve even bought the damn ticket. Don’t do that. Give your story and your process the oxygen it needs. Give it room. Let it wander, stretch, kick over furniture. Let it settle in like a dog trying to figure out the Perfect Pooping Position or how sleeping must first require three pirouettes, a haunch-shimmy, and an ass-lick.

Give it your time. Go through the process. Take the ride.

Then we can talk about how you put it out there. And don’t worry about perfect. Perfect is somebody else’s idea. Just go with your own satisfaction. Be hard. Give it scrutiny. But hell with other people’s metrics. Use your own. Fuck perfect: just get it right.

(May I recommend NaNoFixMo, an online class by Delilah Dawson? Or consider a novel critique by Hugo- and Nebula-winning author, Saladin Ahmed.)

So, here’s where I ask:

How’d NaNoWriMo go for you folks?

Feel free to talk it up in the comments.

* * *

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.

Amazon

B&N

Indiebound

Writer’s Digest