Some of you are probably like me.

No, not in that way. I’m told this condition is one of a kind and that surgery will correct it enough so that small children and pets no longer tumble into catatonic states upon seeing me.

No, I mean in the way that you sometimes struggle with what to write. Writing is a craft and storytelling is an art so the one part of you wants to just unbuckle all the straps affixing you to this mundane world so that you can leap into the chasm of madness that is creation. You and the Muse will art-fuck until the world explodes into pure narrative.

And yet, this thing we do is also a business. Which means you should proabably be writing Stories That Will Earn You Respect And Also, Sweet Cash Money.

Let’s talk about me.

(HA HA HA because that’s probably all I do here, isn’t it? Sorry about that.)

(Anyway.)

I am presently the author of a handful of published novels.

But, if you will gaze behind me, in my wake you will see a muddy rut filled with the sun-bloated corpses of many other books. Dozens of unfinished ones. At least five finished ones. Some interesting. Most not. All of them lacking in execution and any kind of writerly pizzazz.

I wrote a lot of books that sucked, a lot of books that just plain weren’t “me.” These were books I did not love, that didn’t come from any particular place inside this funky stump I call a heart, that failed to speak to me or speak about me in any meaningful way. They were books I wrote because I was chasing someone else’s ideas of what I should write. I tried writing fiction that seemed respectable and literary. I tried writing novels that would speak to the market, that would sell to some invented segment of the population who likes That Sort Of Thing. I wrote books that were desperate grabs at legitimacy (money, respect, fame, tweed suits with elbow patches, dignity). I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I apparently thought the way to do that was to stop writing the things I wanted to write (which somewhat sullied the idea of being a writer in the first place) and start writing the kinds of things that Other Writers Wrote.

You know: marketable works.

(Translation: derivative works.)

I was walking away from myself.

I was leaving the things I liked, or loved, or that interested me.

Which meant I was leaving my strengths behind.

Which meant I was abandoning my reasons for being a writer in the first place.

So, I’ll exhort you right now:

You should write what you love.

You should write the things that look like your heart, pulled open with prying fingers.

You should walk towards yourself as a writer, not away.

Why?

OH DON’T YOU WORRY, I HAVE REASONS.

Reason One: Because The Market Is An Unknowable Entity

I’m pretty sure that when Lovecraft wrote about gibbering entities outside time and space that, when gazed upon too closely, ruined man’s sanity the way a rock ruins a mirror, he was really writing a metaphor for the publishing industry and the book market. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on with the market. Publishers like to pretend they do, because that’s their job — but they’re still a bunch of old ladies passing around one eyeball between them.

You’ll hear, “Oh, vampires aren’t hot right now,” and then next thing you know, vampires are hot again. They didn’t get that way because the market was manipulated into being that way. The market didn’t randomly countermand itself and spontaneously grow a spate of new vampire novels. This happens because someone, some author, hears vampires aren’t hot right now and says, well, whatever, I’m going to write a vampire book anyway because I think vampires are cool as fucking shit, and then they write it and it hits the market and it does well. And then publishers are like YEAH, WE TOTALLY KNEW THAT VAMPIRES WERE GONNA BE SUPER-HOT RIGHT NOW and then another 100 derivative reiterations (and maybe 10 original iterations) hit the market and punch it so hard that two years later you hear the familiar refrain: vampires aren’t hot right now.

A lot of the truly amazing books are not ones an industry could’ve predicted. Like I said yesterday, Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy is… fuck, I don’t even know how to describe them. Invasive… alternate Earth-punk? No, that’s not right. But it doesn’t feel like a trilogy that chased any market. It feels like a series that stands all by itself in a room of its own devising and design. It’s not following anything. It’s a leader: original, weird, amazing, and (if you’ve read Jeff’s work before) most certainly a product of his voice. (The third book, Acceptance, is also out today. Do your favor and go and read them all right now it’s okay I’ll wait here.)

The work that prevails rarely feels like it chases the market.

The work that gets its claws and teeth into you says, “Fuck you, market. I’m the market now. What? You don’t like that? Too bad.” Then it hits you in the face with a toaster oven and says, “YOUR MOM SAYS HI.”

Okay, I think I took that metaphor too far.

Point is: don’t chase the market.

You’re not a dog running after a car.

Be the car, not the dog.

Reason Two: Because It’s What You’re Good At

In school, teachers make you read books, and if you’re anything like me, you hated that. Because nobody likes art to be some kind of obligation. Art is a thing that calls to you — it’s got gravity and it grabs you by the root and pulls you toward it. The books I loved are the books that I found on my own — admittedly, sometimes by the urgings of others (sometimes, even the urgings of teachers and professors), but almost always with the offering of choice on the table.

Choice. Consent. Compelled by, not forced to.

Writing is the same way, at least for me.

The things you write — that you choose to write, because you want to jolly well fucking write them — are likely things you’re better at writing because you chose to move in that direction. Writing things that don’t really speak to you? I can often feel it. It feels stilted, awkward, a story forced into an uncomfortable shape by an author wearing someone else’s skin. It’s itchy and weird.

That’s not to say you can’t — say, as a freelance writer — take an assignment and own it. You can make work you don’t automatically love into work that you love by pressing your fingerprints into its clay. But even there the message remains the same: in that work, you’re finding what you enjoy and what you’re good at, and putting that into play. Can you go beyond that? Can you play outside your comfort zone? You can and should. But you have to start somewhere, and the core of the work is often taking our strengths and building off of them. Further, improving in less comfortable directions means improving in a way that is desirable to you, not desirable to a market.

Reason Three: Because I Want To Read It

You know what I don’t want to read?

A book you didn’t want to write.

You know what I do want to read?

A book you couldn’t help but write.

I wanna read the book that pops out of your goddamn chest like a goddamn baby Xenomorph. No matter how many Tums you have taken. No matter how many guests you have at your dinner table. You cannot contain it. It’s just — oops, splurch, sorry, that book just kicked open my breastbone like a set of saloon doors and oh, shit, here it is, flinging itself into the room.

A book you loved writing will likely have that love translate over to the page. Don’t get me wrong — love isn’t enough. It also has to be, ohh, you know, not shitty, which means a full-scale editing assault — and trust me, editing is not always a process you’ll love. (That’s the thing about this thing: by writing what you love, I don’t mean, making sure every day of writing is a bliss-fueled romp around the bounce house of your imagination. No matter how much you love the material, some days are going to feel like chewing on a brick. And some days you’ll hate what you’re writing no matter what — the point is to begin with work that speaks to you, calls to you, grabs you by your genital configuration and demands to be written.)

Reason Four: Because This Gig Knows No Guarantees

The saying often goes that one does not become a writer to get rich, which is perhaps a toxic meme further continuing the idea that art isn’t — or shouldn’t be — a way to get paid. (I got into being an author to both Make Up Stories and Make Money For Making Up Those Stories because I happen to enjoy the intersection of art and commerce because in that intersection I can do things like pay bills and buy dinners and hire assassins to garrote my enemies with typewriter ribbon.) Regardless, despite it being a goal, making money or having success as a writer is in no way guaranteed. You don’t get a salary. You don’t hit ‘save’ on the document and get a publishing contract. This is a land where promise is a dry creek.

And so, if you’re planning on stepping into this arena knowing that you may die once your foot hits the dirt, you might as well step forward with a weapon that fits your hand, not the weapon some other asshole told you to carry.

If you’re gonna take your shot, do it with work you care about. Work that says something.

Do it with work you love.

You’re not guaranteed an agent. You’re not guaranteed to find a publisher. You’re not guaranteed sales if you’re a self-publisher, or an audience, or good reviews, or awards, or dignity, or cake.

Not any of it.

So? Go ahead and make it count.

Write what you want to write.

Might as well write what you love.

Reason Five: Because Life Ends In Death

You’re gonna die.

Sorry!

But it’s true.

Dead. Fuuuuuuucking dead.

Some part of the animated meat that comprises you will one day fail. The bone puppet that lives inside you can’t dance forever. You’ll get hit by a car or get soul cancer or a frozen hunk of shit will fall off an Airbus 380 and land on you while you stop to pick up a lucky penny in a parking lot.

Now, maybe some part of you lives on past Bodily Death. Maybe there’s a heaven or a happy hunting ground or some 1-Up Extra Life re-try. I have no idea. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is, knowing that your time on this Hurtling Space Sphere is limited, you should make an effort to live your life — and your art — the way you damn well want to. Do you really want someone to chisel the words MADE MEDIOCRE ART SHE DIDN’T MUCH LIKE BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT THAT’S WHAT SOMEONE ELSE WANTED HER TO DO on your gravestone? Or would you rather them carve in the words: ROCKED IT LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER, WROTE WHAT SHE DAMN WELL WANTED, BOO-YAH, MIC-DROP –?

On second thought, that’s probably too much for a headstone.

Maybe, instead:

ARTED THE HARDEST, MOTHERFUCKER.

Get out there. Write big and bold. Embrace the moments you have.

Write what you love.

Because otherwise: why bother?

* * *

The Gonzo Writing E-Book Bundle:

Seven books. Twenty bucks.

Tomorrow lands the newest by Jeff VanderMeer: Acceptance.

It’s the third and final book in the whoa-dang-wow Southern Reach trilogy.

Now, there’s this meme going around Facebook which is rara avis in that I actually like it (most Facebook memes are thought-excrement) — while some have simplified it as ten books you love, the original meme is, ten books that have ‘stayed with you.’

I like that. Stayed with you.

Clinging to you like a smell.

I’ll do a proper post about this later in the week about my ten books, but I want to explain to you one of the ways that VanderMeer’s trilogy has stayed with me, and it has to do with the forest with which I have surrounded myself.

We have about seven acres of land here, and most of that land is forest.

It’s mostly native growth. It’s old forest, old trees, a healthy ecosystem of birds and bugs and other things traipsing about on four legs (lots of deer, a few foxes, even some kind of… polecat-looking thing, seen only in the distance and by its little side-by-side tracks).

Sometimes I take a walk through these woods.

I find it peaceful.

And I find it unnerving.

In part it’s unnerving because it’s a primal space. I don’t belong there. It is not mine. It’s bigger than me. It’s profound. It feels like I could lay down on the moss and the loam and die and nobody would ever know. Skin eaten. Bones sunken. Roots claiming all of me.

I find it unnerving more because the forest is never properly familiar — it’s not some room with its furniture, its items arranged in a human way. The forest is chaos. It’s new trees and spiny-assed micrathena spiders and deer bones. The forest, too, changes year to year. Storms break trees. Branches drop. Stumps rot. Heavy rains made a furrow in the earth — an impromptu stream. And, strangest still, we have invasive grasses springing up. They’re ornamental grasses — the kind you go to buy at Home Depot or Lowe’s, various Silvergrasses, and these grasses should never have been sold, should never have been planted, because they’re insidious. Day to day you don’t think much about them but year to year more pop up and you find them in strange places, you find them deeper in the woods where they don’t belong. You find them choking out other plants. The grass changes the forest a little bit here, a little bit there, until one day a little bit has become a great deal, until one day you find grape leaves strangling trees. Shiny beetles from far away chewing through leaves. Ticks and thorns alike burying themselves in your skin.

I step into the woods and I don’t always recognize them.

In that moment, I feel panic. I feel disconnected. I feel intruded upon.

And then that shifts: I feel like an intruder.

I feel very human and very small and it’s eerie and uneasy and awesome in the truest sense.

It’s like looking at someone whose facial features drift apart, micrometer by micrometer — not something you notice at first, but then one day you don’t see them for a few months and when next you visit, they no longer look human.

It’s like entering a room you know is yours, but things have been moved. Just slightly. Your potted plant has changed. Initials that aren’t yours lay carved into the wood of the desk. The picture of your family is from a vacation you didn’t take. Everything feels off its axis.

This is the feeling of the Southern Reach trilogy.

You could do a whole masters-level class on how VanderMeer creates a mood.

(And, in an adjacent way, how VanderMeer uses the text and the mood of it to confront things like invasive species or man’s deleterious effect on himself and his environment.)

It’s early on a Labor Day and I assure you I’m not doing this book justice.

You will just have to check the books out for yourself.

*waits*

*stares*

*eyes slowly begin to drift apart as vines push out of mouth*

Last week’s challenge: And, Action!

By now, I suspect you know how this works.

But, just in case?

You will choose two random numbers.

(Use a d20 or a random number generator.)

Each between 1-20.

Then, those random numbers go to the items in the columns at the end of this post.

One for each.

That earns you your title.

You might end up with Elegant Alleyway.

Or the Black-Hearted Eight.

Or the Lupine Last Call.

You can add “The” to the fore of the title, and make the second part plural, if need be.

And that’s it.

You’ve got, ohhh, 1500 words this go around.

Due in one week — by next Friday, noon EST.

Post at your online space.

Link back here.

Now, get to pickin’.

Column One

1. Serpentine
2. Emerald
3. Blood-Stained
4. Interstitial
5. Judas
6. Lupine
7. Reaper’s
8. Merciful
9. Elegant
10. Ceaseless
11. Black-Hearted
12. Gravedigger’s
13. Hissing
14. Bewitching
15. Dead
16. Fifth
17. Monkey’s
18. Dressmaker’s
19. Almost
20. Endless

Column Two

1. Precipice
2. Alleyway
3. Nursemaid
4. Eschaton
5. Confirmation
6. Thunderhead
7. Eye
8. Pincushion
9. Daughter
10. Reward
11. Beauty
12. Locket
13. Chasm
14. Eight
15. Quietus
16. Beast
17. Inquiry
18. Last Call
19. Coil
20. Widow

I get great emails sometimes, emails from writers with amazing questions.

(I also get emails from jerks, too, who want me to promote their books or who hate me because I once said self-publishing had a “shit volcano” quality problem, but really, the great emails stand head and shoulders above these.)

Yesterday, I guess in response to my post about authorial doubt and envy, a reader wrote in and explained that she suffered from depression and that she appreciated that I suggested that depression was a whole separate beast from writer’s block and you can’t combat them the same way. She said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that she saw one doctor who had kinda burned her out on a lot of medication, and now she’s trying to come out of that somewhat and refocus her concentration. But, in the process? Writing is very difficult. She’s good with ideas, but has a lot of trouble concentrating enough to manage the execution.

And so she wanted to know what makes a “real writer.”

The heart of her email was contained in this question:

Can someone be a real writer if certain components can just brush it away?

Meaning, if your ability to execute as a writer is defeated by one’s brain chemistry, can you be a real writer? Or does that somehow take that away from you? Are you a fraud? False, in some way —

A poser?

Now, a few things.

First, this reader knows I’m writing this at the blog, though I did respond to her via email, too.

Second, I’m in no way a Trained Brainologist, and I should barely be trusted to give advice on tying shoelaces or boiling water for ramen noodles, much less on such tricky issues as managing depression or other maladies of the mind and body.

Third, I’ve answered the question before of what makes a “real writer,” illustrated by this handy-dandy zero-fuckery flow-chart.

A more nuanced response may be necessary, though.

My response to the reader was shorter than this post, but I thought I’d jump in here and talk about it because this feels like a discussion that everybody could get in on, given that creative people are given over to many flavors of emotional turbulence.

So, here’s the thing.

I get headaches.

These are not supernatural headaches.

They’re not migraines.

They’re normal, average, everyday headaches.

I do not get them often, but I carry a lot of tension in my shoulders and neck (and, recently, my jaw, which is totally not awesome-feeling), and as a result? Headaches.

On the days in which I have headaches, I find it dastardly difficult to write. Writing becomes an act of pulling crocodile teeth with a pair of blood-slick pliers. It’s hard. Just having a little tiny itty-bitty jerkwad of a headache makes writing significantly more difficult.

And so, it is safe to assume that anything larger than a headache — any disease at all, any pain that is physical or emotional — would seriously hamper your ability to put words on paper. Migraines. Depression. Grief. Addiction. Cancer. Carpal tunnel. Christ, a goddamn cavity could derail your writing train into the hoary canyon of zeroed productivity.

I like to think a headache stopping me from writing on a given day wouldn’t change who I am.

And it shouldn’t change who you are, either. No matter the malady.

You are who you are. You do what you do.

I think we should worry less about what constitutes a ‘real’ writer, which is a thing for other people to worry about. Let them shit their pants over it. The worry over your identity as a writer is only going to frustrate you further. It’s why I always say that approaching depression as if it’s just writer’s block is only going to turn up the volume on all the lies that depression already tries to tell you. It’s only going to make recovery — for whatever your illness — exponentially harder. Sometimes, we do have to push ourselves. We have to do things that we feel are difficult, or scary, or frustrating. But you also have to know that pushing too hard can make you break. And sometimes you have to let yourself heal before you strain, sprain, and snap.

A practical solution is to, if you still want to write but find it difficult, switch gears. Write anything. It doesn’t have to be something to sell. Write a journal. A blog. A comic book. A poem. A random agglomeration of ideas. Write 350 words. Or 100 words. Or shit, ten words. Do what you can, when you can. And don’t sweat what other people think. Don’t sweat labels. Some people want the label. But the label doesn’t matter. It’s just a word. What matters is you taking care of yourself. What matters is you trying to find the way through the darkness and to the light. What matters is you writing when you can, not when everyone else says you have to.

There’s this thing that happens sometimes.

You’re chugging along, doing your thing — and in this case, I mean a creative thing. Maybe you’re a writer, a painter, a cheese-maker, a Brookyln-based hipster widget artisan, a techno-fuck-shaman — then suddenly comes this moment where you catch a glimpse of another human being doing that same creative thing you do. And they’re doing it at such a level, you experience a moment of awe that punctuates the moment before you tumble into darkness. You step onto this grease-slick slope, sliding down through the shadow of envy, doubt, uncertainty. You feel smaller and smaller as you fall farther and farther. You tumble face-first into the revelation of your own inadequacy, your grotesque and unconquerable imperfection, your worst failures —

And suddenly your doubt has the hunger and gravity of a collapsing star.

You feel like you want to go to sleep.

You don’t want to count sheep but instead, count your mistakes.

Again and again, over and over.

You’ll never operate at that level, you think.

You’ll never write with such elegance. Or tell such a glorious story. Or make people think and feel the same way this book has made you think and feel. You’ll never publish as many books. Or for the same amount of money. Or have the same number of readers or win the same awards or have as many fans or be anything at all, ever, ever, ever.

You’ll never compare.

You’re a mote of dust in a giant’s eye.

This feeling is a pit.

It is a slick-walled, vertical pit.

It is lightless and it is empty of anything and everyone but you.

I’m telling you this because I feel it, too, sometimes.

I’m telling you this because some of you have told me that I make you feel that way. Which makes me laugh because I don’t feel I could possibly deserve that, and the belly laughs keep on coming because I feel this all the time when comparing myself to other writers. I’m constantly teetering on the edge of that chasm.

But I try not to fall anymore.

Just as I want you to try not to fall, either.

You will never get anywhere comparing yourself to others.

It seems useful, at first — they represent a goal you can achieve, and that might work if other writers were a bullseye you could hit, or a percentage you could nail. They’re not. Their work is always outside yours. Their work will always be different, and it will always feel stronger than your own. Someone will always be doing better. Sometimes by millimeters, sometimes by miles. Getting published doesn’t fix that. Publishing ten books doesn’t fix it. Awards don’t fix it. They might pad you a little. They might buffer you — a bulwark against the buffeting winds of wild imperfection. But you will always find your way back to that pit. You will always look in the broken mirror of foul water and see a version of you that fails in comparison to others.

Stand against this feeling.

Remind yourself that you are you and they aren’t.

Be clear with your own traitorous mind: they feel it, too. We all feel it.

Step away from the pit by recognizing that while you aren’t perfect, you can always do better. We can commit to improvement. We can challenge ourselves. In this great big creative RPG we can level up in a character class of one — the character class only we belong to. (I am a BEARDED WENDIGO KNIGHT and you are not. Who are you? You’re someone I can never be. And that’s amazing.)

You’ll never be them.

You can only be you.

You can improve yourself in that direction only.

And that direction is opposite of the pit. It’s walking away from the sucking void.

It’s walking toward yourself and your own mighty efforts and endeavors.

I just wanted to say all this because we all go there. And we can all get through it. None of us are singular beings in this feeling. It hits some of us harder than others (and to those who manifest this as bonafide depression, I can only remind you again that you are genuinely not alone). But it’s something we all experience. Doubt. Frustration. Fear. The envy of others. It won’t do much for you. It’s a poison. Stop drinking it. Spit it out.

Step away from the pit.

Be you. Don’t be me.

And create the things that only you can create.

AND THE BLIGHTBORN SELFIES ARE COMPLETE.

We had 18 entries.

All by lovely people.

You can see all the wonderful photos right here.

It is time to pick two winners.

One winner, I pick.

One winner, you pick.

Before I announce my winner, here’s how you pick yours.

Go to the photo album.

Find your favorite.

Each photo is numbered.

And in the comments here, drop the number of your choice (one choice only, please).

That’s pretty much it.

I’ll give two days for voting, and will tally on Wednesday, noon EST.

Now. My favorite?

As always, it’s a hard choice, but at the end of the day I’m always into cosplay — and J.R. Blackwell’s image of herself as a Heartlander amongst the corn is basically whoa-mazing. So, J.R. Blackwell — congrats! Ping me over email, as I’ll need your mailing address for one of the two Heartland-themed Kindle Paperwhites. That image, drum roll please…

Now, time for the rest of you to vote.

Pick a photo.

Go to the comments.

Tell me which one is your fave.

EDIT

Holy crow, that was a close one.

It was a hotly-contested arm-wrasslin’ fest between #1, #4, #12, and #15.

But, in the end —

STEAMPUNK GOGGLES FORAGER WON.

That would be, of course, #1.

So: email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com.