Apple-Obsessed Author Fella
Just listed, new merch items:
ART HARDER MOTHERF****R (sfw!) T-shirt!
And my favorite of the bunch:
Feel free to go and visit the entire Terribleminds Merch Store at Zazzle.
Always check Zazzle.com for relevant sales codes, too.
(For instance, flasks are 60% off with code SUPERFUNDEAL, but that lasts like, another hour only and then I think the deal is gone for the day, replaced by a new one.)
First of all, let me say up front that books make hella good presents.
Because books.
Books are containers of wisdom and imagination.
They are binders of facts and fancy.
BOOKS MAKE HELLA GOOD PRESENTS.
I write books, so maybe you wanna check some of them out.
But, also, maybe you wanna check out some awesome books by awesome people. Books I have loved greatly this year. Books including (but not limited to): Maplecroft, The Girl With All The Gifts, The Incorruptibles, Broken Monsters, The Area X trilogy, The Three, Young God, Cibola Burn (which is holy shit $3.25 right now for Kindle?!).
And, if you’re looking for some deals around these parts:
30 Days in the Word Mines is 66% off (~$0.99) until Sunday, with coupon code 30DAYS.
And the Gonzo Bundle is 50% off ($10) until Sunday, with coupon code GONZOBUNDLE.
Also, Zazzle is having sales today, which means my merch is on sale.
Use coupon ZAZBLACKDEAL for 40% off:
Art Harder, Motherfucker (NSFW) mug.
Art Harder, Motherfucker (SFW) mug.
Or, same coupon (ZAZBLACKDEAL) for 30% off:
Now: feel free to drop your own favorite reads in the comments!
On Twitter, #talesfromblackfriday has begun.
(You can find 2013’s, crowdsourced Storified Black Friday saga right here.)
(And you can find my own early contribution to 2014’s edition Storified here.)
If you usually do flash fiction challenges at the site — well, now you’ve got this week’s challenge: Join the fun on Twitter. Or write flash fiction horror stories based around Black Friday. Post today and today only though — this is no weekly challenge. Link back here if you do flash fiction, yeah?
It happens today, folks.
Horror and hilarity.
The love-child of Clive Barker and Christopher Moore.
Tales from Black Friday has begun.
Maybe you’re doing NaNoWriMo. Maybe you’re not. Honestly, I don’t give a pony’s patoot — NaNoWriMo is, always, and has been a bit of a stalking horse. It creeps up on you and you think it’s fun and neat and there’s this whole community vibe and then suddenly a goblin jumps out and bellows: “HA HA SUCKER NOW YOU’RE A WRITER. YOU ARE CURSED!” And then the camera pans up and you shake your fists and screamweep into the rain, because you can already feel the penmonkey hex taking hold in your blood and your marrow.
I may have overdramatized that a bit.
Point is: whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo or not, I want to remind you:
It is vital that you learn to complete what you begin.
Finish. Your. Shit.
I know. You’re stammering, “Guh, buh, whuh — but I’m not really feeling it, I have a better idea in mind, it’s hard, I think I’d rather just lay on my belly and plunge my face into a plate of pie.”
I’d rather do that, too.
I mean, c’mon. Prone-position face-pie? Delicious. Amazing. Transformative.
(Okay, that sounds kinda sexual, doesn’t it? You do what you like with the image.)
But, seriously.
Look at me in my eyes.
In my cold, dead, glassy eyes.
Gaze into the two palantir that have been unceremoniously shoved into my sockets. Do you see what I see? I see you not finishing your story. And I see me shoving you into the colorful ball pit at McDonald’s, except the ball pit isn’t filled with colorful balls, but rather, scorpions and shame.
Here’s why I think it’s essential to learn how to finish what you begin when it comes to writing, no matter how much you don’t want to, no matter how much you’re “not feeling it,” no matter how much pie you have placed on the floor in anticipation of laying there and eating it all.
Writing a novel is not a natural state.
Telling stories is — “Hey, Dan, you hear what happened at work today? A guy took a shit in the pasta extruder.” But the stories we tell to friends and family tend to be short, punchy, and very personal. Sitting down and making up a much longer story, and then shaping that story into something resembling a brick, well, that’s a whole other matter. It doesn’t come naturally and so you have to train yourself to write these things. And part of writing them is…?
That’s right, class. Finishing them.
And so you need to develop the discipline and conditioning to complete your work.
Your writing career can be given over to inertia or to momentum. Give into inertia and you slow down, cowed by resistance into stopping. But over time, writing becomes a bit more frictionless — it never feels precisely comfortable (for me, though I do love it so, I still have writing days that feel like I’m swaddled head to do in itchy asbestos footy pajamas), but it gets easier. You gain momentum. And you keep it… as long as you keep it. It feeds itself. Writing books is a hungry beast — but long as you keep shoveling in the word count, it’ll keep belching out the story. And part of this process is finishing.
Failing to finish means giving into inertia. It means losing your momentum.
Writing is a little like running. It’s painful and gawky at first. And then later, after you’ve done it a bunch? It’s still painful and gawky. But! But at least you can go farther and you can go faster. Once you hit a certain time or distance, you’ve broken that barrier. Which means you can do it again tomorrow. Finishing your work is a triumphant moment. It’s trumpets and cookies and good drugs and ropes of sexual fluids hanging from the light fixtures like Christmas tinsel. It’s awesome. And crossing that threshold tells you: this is a thing you can do. This is a thing you can do again. You’ve got it, now. You’ve got that little personal milestone tucked away in your pocket or your jewelry box or your butthole or wherever it is you keep your personal milestones.
(I keep mine tucked away in my mouth, like a hamster with a beloved Cheeto.)
By now I’ve said it a billion times but: writing is when we make the words, editing is when we make them not shitty. You’re not feeling hot about your draft now, and hell, maybe even after you finish you’ll be like, ennh? But just realize: it’s fixable. You reach the end of the work and now you have the whole blob of clay to work with. You can spin it into anything you want — a vase, a bowl, a creepy ceramic serial killer mask, a napkin holder, a dildo rack. And I promise you with unswerving certainty that if you finish what you begin that when it comes time to fix this lumpy mess on the potter’s wheel, that a shirtless Patrick Swayze will massage you to success.
*receives note*
Okay, as it turns out, the lawyers are saying I can’t promise you that. So it’s not true.
*wink wink*
*receives note*
Okay, they’re saying I shouldn’t wink either.
*elbow nudge*
I think that pretty much spells itself out. If you don’t finish what you begin, I won’t have to find your house, stand outside with a boombox, and play a screeching cacophony from it that sounds like me drunk and screaming myself hoarse at you for not finishing your work. Also, I might also play a little Quiet Riot, Cum on Feel the Noize just because?
The other day, Author Chris Holm (@chrisfholm) said on the Twitters that there should really be a German word for ‘being tempted to start a new book before finishing the old.’ Now, I dunno if he meant reading a new book or writing one, but what I do know is that, one of the chiefmost reasons I would once quit writing a book was to start writing a whole other book. (I call this ‘porking the new manuscript behind the shed while the old one wanders around, looking for you.’)
So, I said to Herr Doktor Holm that the German word might be Der Buchehebruch, aka, “Book Adultery.” Or, if you want a more literal translation of my shed commentary: Fick die neue Handschrift hinter dem Schuppen, während die alte um wandert, sucht für Sie. Or, perhaps: Neuemanuskriptwerfenficken.
Whatever.
Point is, a lot of the things we do as writers are given over to habit. We can develop bad habits (chewing our fingernails, failing to backup our work, shed-fucking a new manuscript), or we can develop good ones (the opposite of those other things I just said). Develop the habit that helps you finish your work. Prevent neuemanuskriptwerfenficken by keeping that new manuscript in mind (take some quick notes, write a logline, then move on) while actually finishing your current one.
The ending is part of every story. You need to learn to write them, which means… you actually need to write them. A story isn’t a story without its end, just as a snake isn’t a snake if you cut it in half. Yes, that is a dubious scientific assertion, but whatever, it works for the metaphor so leave me alone or I’ll shove you in the scorpions-and-shame-pit again.
Don’t skip this ending. Complete the circuit. Learn how to do this thing.
What else do you want me to say, here? Have you ever read a book? Yeah? Did it have an ending? I bet it did. I bet it didn’t just stop at page 252, with the characters about to storm the Laser Castle to fight their nemesis, Evil Steve. So, what the fuck?
Finish your shit.
This is how this works.
Stories end.
Books reach their apex, then slide swiftly toward their final conclusion. They are a complete object. I mean, who’s going to respect you for not finishing it? Okay, you maybe get one or two of those — “Listen, I’m still finding my footing with this writing thing, I’m going to try something else, see if that clicks.” But I’m betting it forms part of a pattern. People ask, “Hey, did you finish that thing?” And you stand there, slack-jawed, a gassy hiss coming from the back of your throat that eventually resolves into the word “eeeehhhhhnnnnooooo not so much.” And then they nod and smile and say, “Sure, sure,” and then they turn around their roll their eyes and make jerk-off motions and whatever because people are ultimately assholes.
So, seriously.
Finish your shit.
Do it because I say so, if for no other reason.
Do it because if ever we meet and I ask you, you don’t want to tell me you didn’t finish it, because then you will feel my guilty, steely stare. My disgust will wash over you like a tide full of dead jellyfish. It will draw you out, an undertow of great forbidding, abrading you against a jagged reef of of sadness clams and guilt-brine. Then: angry barracuda.
Finish.
*kicks you*
FINISH.
*flicks you in the eyeball*
FIIIIINIIIIIISH.
*steals your coffee, eats your shoes, rage-poops in your chimney like drunk Santa*
Okay I’m going to stop because this is getting really weird. YOU MADE IT WEIRD. Not me.
Weirdo.
(But seriously: whatever you’re writing? Fucking finish it.)
* * *
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Predictably, Facebook is pretty much a shit-show after last night.
Of course, that’s a glimpse of the privilege I possess, isn’t it? That for me, Facebook is a failed, unreal, intangible place — and I can turn it off, or I can filter out the conversation and look at funny Buzzfeed articles instead, or I can wall myself off and post pictures of my kid and my dog. Ferguson, though, isn’t like that. The rest of the real world isn’t like that. Some folks — again, not me, because I’m white and have a little money — are in the thick of it. They live the things we’re arguing about on Facebook and Twitter and — well, I guess Google-Plus?
(Is that even a thing anymore?)
Just the same, I wanna talk about the response to all of this.
Because that shit-show on Facebook has a way of radiating outward — it’s got energy, it has a cascade effect. It both reflects the world outside it like a mirror that shows the truth and like a mirror that — as mirrors do — bounce an image back into the world for all to see.
What I’m seeing on Facebook is a startling lack of empathy.
It’s so bad I’m surprised people aren’t saying of the rioters or the family, “Just let them eat cake!”
I’m seeing a lot of “what kinds of animals would burn down their town,” or, “see, this is how those people act.” (Pro-tip: calling them ‘animals’ and ‘those people’ is you being racist and shitty.) Or it goes back to the case itself, making commentary on Michael Brown — “Well, he punched a cop.” Or it attempts some kind of equivalency (“Both sides are really to blame, here,” as if one side doesn’t have a whole lot of power compared to the other side). Someone on FB called the townsfolk “domestic terrorists” for rioting, which is, by the way, super fucked up.
Where is the empathy?
I want you to think about it. I want you to imagine being a family who lost their unarmed son in a police shooting. I want you to imagine being in a town full of such families — families who know that they are without power, that at any time one of their own could get shot by a cop a half-a-dozen times and nobody will even send that to trial. (Because, of course, those determining its fitness for trial are all part of the same system of power to which you do not belong.) Imagine that kind of frustration. Imagine being someone who has long existed in a power vacuum like that — lot of other folks were born outside in the world and you and your friends and your family were born in a metaphorical barrel and it’s damn hard to get out of that barrel, because you have walls in place that other people don’t have. You’re asked to climb out of a barrel and clamber over walls that other people don’t even know exist. Imagine being part of a history of this sort of thing, that goes back not just decades but mere hours — an old wound that will seemingly never heal.
Okay, take most of that away and still distill it down to — the police shot your unarmed son, and nobody is going to be called to the mat for it. I mean, take away the race component, take away the “what was the evidence” component, just pretend you’re playing make-believe like a kid and you actually have to imagine someone shooting your child, someone you love and who is your life, and what is your response? Do you shrug and say, “Oh well?” Do you become immediately and comfortably resigned to it?
Me, I’d wanna burn the world down.
And I’d want everyone who was my friends, my family, my neighbors, to do the same.
You kill my kid and — god, just thinking about it is a horror movie to me. The anger I feel at the imagined event is raw, pure, and only a fraction of what I’d feel if it really happened. I mean, fuck, they kill my dog and I’ll be ready to flip cars and set fires.
Just have a little empathy.
Think before you speak.
Try to feel before you speak.
Empathy is key. Empathy is itself a privilege — because we imagine ourselves inside a situation rather than, y’know, actually being inside the situation. But it is one way to use privilege well. To close yourself off from empathy is cruel to others and, honestly, bad for yourself. And if too many people refuse to possess empathy and demonstrate it — then it’s bad for the whole damn country.
(It’s doubly surprising to me when folks who identify as Christian don’t demonstrate empathy. I mean, if you had to distill Jesus’ platform down, it was a whole lot of, “But what about these poor motherfuckers over here? Who’s helping them?”)
Now, surely someone will say, well, I have empathy for the cops. And you should. Being a cop is fucking hard. And it just got a whole lot harder. But remember: the cops are the ones with the guns. They’re the ones with the training to deal with this stuff. (And increasingly they’re the ones with high-test military equipment that they are not trained to handle.) The cops’ jobs didn’t just get harder because of Mike Brown. The cops’ jobs just got harder because of Darren Wilson and because of Bob McCulloch.
I’m not saying you need to have a legal opinion on the case.
But I do ask that you do better. Be kinder. Don’t just think — “Well, to play Devil’s advocate.” Actually try to feel. Imagine. Demonstrate compassion. Cultivate your empathy. And it’s not just with this one thing, with Ferguson and Mike Brown. It’s in all the things. Immigration? “Those people” want to be here for the same reason you want to be here, so maybe don’t be so quick to judge because probably you’d do the same fucking thing. Rape culture? Just a passing glimpse at rape stats is enough to chill your blood. Try to examine where the power is. Try to see how power travels — and how it doesn’t travel. Try to feel for those who have less of it than you. Try to imagine what that’s like — you’re not the rat in the cage who chooses when he gets a food pellet. You’re the rat who gets random shocks.
This isn’t about agreeing and disagreeing, it’s about privilege and empathy.
Use your privilege, and find some empathy.
And then go take it to Facebook.
(Or to your dinner tables at Thanksgiving — because I cannot imagine how some dinners will go on this upcoming Turkey Day. But even that, a privilege — we can worry about family fights at the table instead of riots and cop shootings.)
Try to be nicer, okay?
Is that such a weird request?
[Comments are off.]
So, those of you doing NaNoWriMo — how’s it going? Still in? Not in any longer? What’s the scoop? Is there anything anyone here can help you with to get you past this last week’s worth of feverish squirrel-bitten wordsmithy? Also, feel free to take a favorite sentence or even a paragraph from your work and drop it into the comments below.
Swing into the comments space and talk it out.
Ask questions.
Yell at the clouds.
Drop some mad rhymes.
I mean, if you have mad rhymes to drop.
With one week to go, how flows the NaNoWriMo?
SEE? MAD RHYMES.
Let this be a community sounding wall.
