My reading time at present is sliced into micrometers — book due, working on a comic, working on an outline, making meals, and of course, that tiny little person running around the house. As such, my current reading time being limited, I get a lot of mileage out of comics. (And it doesn’t hurt that I’m working on a comic, too, in the process.) Been digesting a lot of Marvel, of which I’m not very well-versed, and it’s been nice to see what runs of what characters/storylines/writers work and which ones don’t.

Regardless, focusing away from the big Marvel/DC —

Let’s focus on independent, creator-owned comics.

What do you like to read in that department?

What writers?

What comics?

What artists?

Wuzza wooza?

A casual reminder that —

HEY, SEE THOSE?

Those are the Heartland-themed Kindle Paperwhites I’m giving away.

You can win one by participating in this book selfie contest.

Tell your friends.

Tell your mother.

Tell your imaginary friend, Steve.

*jetpacks away*

Last week’s challenge: The Color Title Challenge

This week?

Both easy and difficult, I think.

I want your 1000-word story to be all action.

Now, that action could be: gunplay, karate kicking, fighting, running, car chasing.

In other words, the standard “action movie fare.”

Or: it could be fucking. Or cooking. Or arm-wrestling.

Or some other notable action characters would undertake.

The trick is: make it exciting. From start to finish.

And — and! — make it a complete story.

Beginning, middle, ending.

Get to writing.

You’ve got 1000 words.

You’ve got seven days.

You’ve got your own blog to post to, and the comments to link it in.

Get writing, word-nerds.

In this riveting follow-up to the acclaimed biotech thriller DRIFT, Jon McGoran expands on the theme of genetically engineered foods, and also explores Colony Collapse Disorder, which threatens the world’s honeybee populations. Detective Doyle Carrick’s girlfriend gets a job farming job on an island in New England where the bees have started suddenly start dying off. But when a biotech company brings in genetically engineered bees that are supposedly immune to colony collapse, Doyle realizes the bees aren’t the only thing being modified. So he has to figure out what they are really up to, and stop them before their plot succeeds, and spreads to the mainland and the world.

* * *

1) Bees are strange, freaky little creatures.

I knew that going in. The whole hive thing is weird enough, but while researching the book, I learned a lot more about them. Like, while their roles are rigidly determined  — queen, worker, drone — by a set of behavioral variables, which, if not executed just right, can spell the end of the colony. But they can also be somewhat fluid. In the bee world, eggs that are not fertilized become male bees, but in some species of bees, through a rare process called thelytoky (which is a hell of a word), male worker bees can start laying eggs that will become female workers or even queens. Frankly, the fact that together with birds, bees are half of the duo that supposedly represent human romance and reproduction makes me think I might be a little more vanilla in my proclivities that I had realized.

2) Bees are strange, freaky, BADASS little creatures.

If you’ve ever been stung, you know that. And if you’re familiar with “Africanized” or “Killer” bees, you know it even better. But they’re not the bad-ass-est. The African bees that gave rise to the Africanized bees are pretty badass in their own right. And then there are crazy, nightmare bee-creatures like the Tarantula Hawk, a two-inch long wasp that has the most painful sting of any creature in this country (yes, they are in this country) and among the most painful in the world. The Schmidt Pain Index (a story unto itself) gives it a perfect 4.0 and describes it as “Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.”

Then there is the Asian giant hornet. Imagine an insect as big as your thumb, that flies at 25 miles per hour, and has a quarter-inch-long stinger and venom that dissolves human flesh and can cause kidney failure. It kills 30 to 40 people each year in Japan (where it is called the “giant sparrow bee”) and many more in China. I spent a little too much of my “research” time  watching videos of Asian giant hornets wiping out honeybee hives, maybe a dozen of them tearing the heads off 30,000 honeybees in  matter of minutes. Astonishingly, they’re not always successful — the bees’ defensive tactic is to cluster around the hornet, and beat their wings fast enough to raise their body temperatures so the cluster is just hot enough to cook the hornet without cooking the bees.

And what is the evolutionary justification for all this mayhem? The Asian giant hornets kill hives and eat the honey. Tarantula Hawks eat tarantulas. But the African honeybees’ aggressive behavior is defense against a predator with a bit of a badass reputation of his own. Perhaps you’ve heard of …the honey badger. (Try explaining to a renowned entomologist halfway around the world why you burst out laughing when he springs that on you in the middle of the interview.)

3) The Money Ain’t from Honey.

Most people think beekeepers make their money from honey, and smaller ones still do, but large-scale beekeeping operations make the majority of their income renting their hives out to large-scale farmers to pollinate their crops. These big beekeeping operations travel the country on tractor trailers, following the pollination seasons. California’s $2 billion almond industry depends on an estimated 1 million hives for pollination, attracting beekeepers from around the country. Those beekeepers travel around following the apple, peach, pear, blueberry and other pollination seasons. These pollination services bring in roughly $15 billion per year, about 70% of beekeeper’ income. But some people think trucking those bees all over the place isn’t the best thing for the bees, and could be contributing to something called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

4) Colony Collapse is Some Scary Shit.

Even though it’s not true that Einstein once said “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live,” Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is still some scary shit. But it’s not just scary in the “We’re so dependent on bees to pollinate our food, this could actually be what ends the human race” way. It’s also creepy as hell.

Large scale CCD was first observed in 2006 by a big-time beekeeper wintering 16 million bees in tractor trailers in a field in Florida. One day, his workers went out there, and 12 million of the bees were gone. Not dead – gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be found. Sure, honeybees are small. But twelve million of them is big. That summer, CCD occurred all across the country, with beekeepers reporting disappearances of 30% to 90% of their bees. Each year since then, losses have been in the 30% range, and no definitive cause has been determined, although Neonicotinoid pesticides are surely a big part of it, and GMOs, other pesticides, industrial beekeeping practices and even cell phone towers have been suspected of contributing to the problem.

It’s so creepy that in the U.K., CCD is known as “Mary Celeste Syndrome,” after the famed ghost ship. And apart from the creepiness of billions of bees disappearing without a trace, in hives wiped out by CCD, called “Deadouts” (get it?),  the queen and the eggs are left to die, and all the honey is left behind. Very anti-hive behavior. And usually, a hive left unattended is invaded within hours, the honey, wax, eggs, etc. picked over by robber bees, beetles, moths — all sorts of scavengers. But no one messes with a deadout.

5) History Is Written by the Victors. Science is Written by the Funders.

Winston Churchill said that history is written by the victors. The corollary these days, is that the science is being written by big corporations. One of the most troubling aspects of the whole GMO controversy is the direct and indirect impact that big food and corporate biotech are having on science. U.S. intellectual property law gives patent-holders like Monsanto, Dow and Syngenta a lot of say in who gets to conduct what research on their products. More important, though, is how dependent the scientific community has become on biotech money to fund research. Those companies are obviously unlikely to fund research that is against their interests, but the perception is that they are also less likely to fund any research at institutions where such studies are taking place. So even if a researcher can find non-biotech funding to pay for a long-term study into possible negative health impacts of GMOs, his coworkers — and superiors — could lose funding for their unrelated projects.  It is a chilling effect in more ways than one, and it has already impacted the body of scientific knowledge that is out there.

* * *

Jon McGoran is the author of the ecological thriller Drift, and its newly released sequel, Deadout, which takes a chilling look at the world of GMOs, biotechnology and the disappearance of the bees. Writing as D. H. Dublin, he is also author of the forensic thrillers Body Trace, Blood Poison and Freezer Burn. He has been involved in food and sustainability for over twenty years, as communication director at Weavers Way Co-op, editor at Grid magazine, and writing about and advocating for issues including urban agriculture, cooperative development and labeling of genetically engineered foods.

Jon McGoran: Website | Twitter

Deadout: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Powells

(Direct link to the video here.)

I was challenged yesterday by the inimitable Ben LeRoy (his video and accompanying post here) to either give some money or dump some ice water on my head (and give a smaller amount of money in the process). I figured, fuck it, let’s do both, and because YAY CHARITY I’m also going to give money to fight another disease: prostate cancer.

ALS Ice Bucket challenge and donate button: here.

Prostate cancer charity: here.

In addition, because I am presently a cold, wet jerk (not coincidentally the name of my homemade porn flick), I have issues this challenge to the entire Holy Taco Church, with particular note for members: Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson, and Wesley Chu.

And, if you feel like this is a good time to rant about slacktivisms and how this is bad or something, please remember that this challenge has resulted in a major uptick in donations to fight Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and is supported by those who suffer from the condition as well as those who have friends and loved ones who suffer.

More to the point, charity is good, and this is not slacktivism because it demands action. Not just changing your Twitter icon or flinging up some hashtag somewhere. Even more to the point: keep your negative thoughts placed firmly inside your cakeholes. OKAY THANK YOU.

Further: if you’re a reader of terribleminds who has done the challenge? Feel free to drop a link to your video in the comments so we can all point and laugh at your soggy, ice-slick bodies.

About two years ago, I wrote a post about the uncertainty of being a writer, and how you solve that — to some degree, at least — by cultivating instinct. I’ve no doubt that some people are just born with keen authorial instinct, the same way that some people are born with vestigial tails or magic third nipples that, when squeezed, lactate a variety of flavored sodas.

But most of us have to cultivate it. We have to till the soil and grow the plant ourselves.

Nobody can do it for us.

Those writers you think are masters of the craft aren’t created that way. They aren’t supernaturally capable ninja writer-bots. When you read the work of a writer operating at the top of her game, you’re not seeing all the years of failed efforts, of work that wasn’t quite right, of work that was well-intentioned or built off of strong ideas but had slick and wobbly legs like a newborn fawn. It’s like this: imagine you watch someone enter a house in the dark and they move through each pitch black room like she’s goddamn Catwoman or something — no stubbed toes, no bumped hips on furniture corners, no boards squeaking beneath her feet. You think she’s got supernatural powers but the truth is, she’s done this before. This is her house. She walks around in the dark all the time. She knows this place. And it’s not just rote memorization — it’s that she’s so familiar with the shadows of this space, she can tell when they’ve changed.

You see the author operating at a high level and you wonder: why am I not doing that?

The reality is:

You’re only seeing the island, not the heap of volcanic material that pushed it out of the sea.

Put differently?

A house needs a strong foundation.

And the foundation of that house hides forever in the darkness of the dirt.

You’re not seeing all the time it took to craft the instinct necessary to do this thing.

Instinct is valuable because it’ll tell you which way to jump. It’ll give you the sense in the middle of a story that something is off, it’ll tell you if your character will have broken her contract with the reader, it’ll tickle the back of your mind and say that the plot is untenable or this description is too much or hey what’s the deal with you writing all these stories about orangutans that’s really weird, man. Instinct can even help you on the business side of writing, too.

Instinct feels like some sweet Jedi bad-assery. It’s bullseyeing womp-rats. It’s lightsabering shit with a blast shield over your eyes. It’s firing proton missiles into some imperial janitor’s open window as he huffs an e-cig on his a smoke break while some old dead dude whispers in your ear to slake your bloodlust and murder all all those people inside that moon-sized military base. (LUKE BABYPUNCHER USES HIS WEIRD MAGIC TO BLOW UP AN INNOCUOUS GOVERNMENT INSTALLATION. THEY SORTED MAIL THERE, STAR-KILLER. STOP KISSING YOUR SISTER AND HANGING OUT WITH SMUGGLERS AND THEIR HAIRY SEX GORILLAS.)

I think I got a little off-track there.

Anyway.

Point is, out of all the writing and storytelling advice I can give, the one that always floats to the top for me is that you need to cultivate your instinct as an author.

Question is, how do you do that?

ABR: Always Be Reading

A writer who doesn’t read is like a filmmaker who only plays video games. You’re like a chef who only eats protein paste, a dog trainer who only owns cats, a sex educator who’s never done the rumpy-pumpy and in fact is so ashamed of your own genital configuration you only handle your pink parts in the dark and with gardening gloves.

The foundation of your creativity is made of books.

So: read books. A lot of books. Done that one? PICK UP ANOTHER.

ABRW: Always Be Reading Widely

I know. You want to read what you want to read. You love horror, and by golly you want to write horror, too — so you read a lot of it. That’s cool. You should. But you should also read fantasy. And literary. And classics. You should read Joyce. And one or both Brontes. And Toni Morrison. I don’t mean these writers specifically — I just mean, you need a varied diet. You have a comfort zone. That comfort zone has soft, cushy walls. You need to hack into those walls with a machete. Find out what makes them comfy. Leave the sanctity of your padded cell. See what else the asylum has to offer. A limited diet of reading means all you can do is write the same thing you’re reading. You’re a copy machine spitting out facsimiles. You’re chasing someone else’s tail. As I’ve said before: you’re just a literary human centipede.

You don’t like romance? How do you know? Fuck off and go read some. Maybe you still won’t like it. But it’s important to read it anyway. Liking it isn’t part of the equation. Which leads me to:

Read To Understand

Read not to be entertained, but to be enlightened. Read not to be comforted, but to be challenged. Read to be disturbed, bewildered, saddened, disgusted. Read to understand.

What I mean is: every book is a nut you must crack*. When you read something, understand what it is you think about it. And why you think that. What is it about this book that works? That doesn’t? Why does it make you feel a certain way? Why has it failed to make you feel? Think of it as a pocketwatch. You need to bust it against a rock like a hungry otter and gaze at the inner workings. Read critically. Read to dissect. Read to digest.

*heh, nut

*heh, crack

*heh, nut crack sounds like butt crack

*I’m so sorry

Hey Now, No Need To Be A Book Snob

A story is a story is a story. Whether it is contained in an erotic novel, a middle-grade horror tale, a children’s picture book, a television show, a video game, a comic book, a comic book movie, a documentary about making a comic book movie, a Chick tract, a roleplaying game told by five people at a table, a story you overhear at the hair salon — these are all stories. You aren’t just a writer. You’re a storyteller. The mechanics of language are one thing. The architecture of story is another. It’s all important. You can’t just go ankle-deep. You gotta sink to the bottom. You gotta submerge. Disappear into all the stories.

Ask Critical Questions

Why do I like this character? What’s wrong with this plot? Why is this working? Why is it not? Could I write that sentence differently? Better? Worse? I could (should?) probably do a whole blog post about the important questions writers might want to consider as they read a book — but in this case I’ll just say: the goal is to take all the little parts of the story, dice them apart, and look at their constituent pieces. How do they hold up separately? Or as a whole?

Write A Lot

Is it Stephen King’s one million words? Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours? Chuck Wendig’s six shitty trunk novels and four billion tears spilled onto the dry dead earth of literature and publishing? Choose whatever arbitrary number you like, but the idea remains the same —

You do this thing by doing this thing. You learn to write first and foremost by jolly well fucking writing. It’s the same advice I gave to my toddler son on how to urinate outside:

Just point your thing and let it go, man.

Did I Say You Could Stop Yet?

Whoa, whoa, hold up, you’re not done. You don’t just stop. You don’t hit an arbitrary word count and the meter goes ding! — you do this again and again. You write and you write and you rip the words out and you slam them down onto the paper and you keep doing it until your heart explodes and the Reaper takes you to whatever reward waits hereafter. (By the way: Hell for Writers is a smelly angel whispering an ever-worsening Amazon Rank in your ear for all of eternity.)

Our toddler has this thing where, when he tries something the first time and isn’t immediately performing that task at superhero levels, he gets really frustrated. So we have to keep drilling into him: practice, practice, practice. Yes, there exist those who can sit in front of a piano without ever having seen one before and end up playing a perfect concerto the first time, but those people are called ROBOTS and they must be destroyed before they learn to like the taste of human meat.

What I’m trying to say is:

The writing doesn’t end. And really, why would you want it to?

Art Imitates Art

Sometimes, you have to write like someone else before you can write like yourself. We mimic. We imitate. We practice as if we’re other people. I know, it gets boring, but another toddler story (the childless amongst you are probably rolling your eyes but ha ha ha this is my blog, suckers): our tot, B-Dub, approaches new situations sometimes as if he’s a Transformer. He was having a hard time in his swimming class until he learned to pretend to be one of the Rescue Bots — see, in the show, the firetruck named Heatwave recently learned to manifest a second vehicle form: a fire boat. So, the tiny human was able to pretend he was someone else, and it gave him a lot of confidence. It wasn’t the toddler having to be brave, it was someone else, and he got to try new things — and get better at them — by pretending to be someone else.

You don’t really want to end up as an imitator, but a lot of this whole “cultivating your instinct as a writer” thing is very much about the journey, and not just the destination.

No, Really, Go Read Writing Advice

Writing advice gets a bad rap. Here’s the thing, though — it’s all in how you treat it. If you treat it as gospel? You’re dead in the water. If you treat it as a challenge to the way you think: you’re a winner who wins, and what you win is a cheeseburger slathered with the sweet relish of instinct.

Okay, I feel like that was a very Guy Fieri-ey metaphor, so let’s just move on.

What I’m saying is, each little snugget (snippet + nugget) of writing advice is something for you to pick up and examine. Each offering is a challenge — is this reasonable? Does this work for you? Or is it a hot armload of horse-hockey? Sometimes, to understand how we do things, we need to understand how other people do things. Maybe because we’re looking for ideas. Maybe because it helps us clarify our own understanding of why we personally reject that way.

Fail Without Fear

We don’t learn a lot through success by itself. That sounds strange, but it’s true. I throw a basketball at a hoop and — swish — first time in? I don’t know what the hell I did. But I get one shot in and nine missed, I start to see how I can do that better. And suddenly, I start making more baskets. We make sense of our efforts through failure.

Success is only seen clearly when compared with our fuck-ups.

Rejection is a part of this. Writers despise rejection because it hurts us; but that sting so keenly felt can also be clarifying when we let it. Whether this is rejection by a friend who reads it, by a publisher, by an audience, by a reviewer: rejection is meaningful. Not always individually (“UR BOOK SUCKS, TURDLINGER! GO EAT A BUTT” is probably not all that valuable a critique), but as a whole, rejection can do a lot for us. Even at its most basic level, it toughens our heart against the slings and arrows of future rejection, allowing us to grow and move past it without dissolving into a puddle of briny tears for four days. (I only weep for two days, now. #blessed.)

Talk About It

Sometimes? Sometimes you just have to talk about it. Go out to a movie, go get pie with friends. Read a book? Get online to chat about it. Have a story problem? Go talk to someone. Talking about The Work — ours and everybody else’s — helps us hone our writing knives and story swords.

Instinct isn’t something that happens overnight. It comes as we demonstrate our skill. It grows as we explore our talent. It shines brighter every time we fail and then examine our failure. It lives in the background, a voice that starts out too quiet to hear but with practice and conversation and debate and every sentence written and every book read… it gets louder. Until soon it’s yelling in our ears, telling us things we already know but about which we were too naive to listen.

* * *

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