Max Gladstone is a member of Tiara Club, in that he was one of the nominees for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer last year, along with me, Mur Lafferty, Zen Cho, and Stina Leicht. He’s also the author of the Craft Sequence novels and now? Also the creator of a whompingly enjoyable interactive fiction app based on his storytelling universe. This seemed like a good place for Max to come and talk about the lessons learned while writing this epic interactive endeavor. Now hold still, and let him fill you with MAD CRAZY WISDOM.

I don’t outline as a rule.  Or, I didn’t.  But recently I had to learn.

About a year ago, Interactive Fiction moguls Choice of Games asked if I’d like to write a game set in the weird world of my legal thriller fantasy novels Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise.  I said yes, because yes is what you say in these situations.  Cool opportunity?  Paid for writing?  Lich-king lawyers?  Sign me up.  And I wrote a game, which was awesome: Choice of the Deathless hit app stores just before Christmas (that link’ll take you to the appropriate store for your device).  It’s out there now, and while I’m biased reviews indicate it’s excellent and I think you should play it.  (Okay, plugging done.)

I put that bit at the beginning so you know this story ends happily.  Because what follows is a tale of a writer struggling with the practical magic of plots and outlines, and it’s not always pretty.

ALSO HERE IS AN IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER.  This is a personal narrative about how I grew through this one writing project.  Please don’t mistake this for a “How You Must Write” story—everyone who writes comes from a different place, and each writer has her own goals.  But if your history is anything like mine, the journey I’m describing here might be helpful to you.  Then again, it might just be funny.

Long as I can remember, I’ve been a pantser: with character, goal, and milieu in hand, I venture forth into Story Jungle and hack a way through to the El Dorado of a finished draft.  (Though since this is a first draft we’re talking about, El Dorado often looks more like El Pyrite and needs an awful lot of basic plumbing before I can invite friends over.  How much?  I’ve written 160,000 word drafts, added 20,000 words in revision, and ended up with a 100,000 word final manuscript after I cut all the bad stuff.  Not pretty, but it works.  Sort of.)

I’d outlined in the past out of curiosity and necessity, but each time I found the story’s rhythm only when the outline shattered and new characters snuck out from behind the arras. Fine, I thought, that’s how I’ll use outlines from now on: like bamboo scaffolding, strong, flexible, and easy to destroy when necessary.

Those were the days before I sat down to write a game.  And when I say “write,” I don’t mean “write dialogue for”—Choice of Games are choose-your-path novels with a stat screen, taking some gaming DNA from Bioware RPGs and some from the Lone Wolf books of yore and legend.  Choice of Games provides the scripting language; I provided the code.

On the one hand, awesome.  My first computer was an Apple II+; I spent days coding adventure games for that box, using the simplest BASIC anyone has ever used.  “Upgrading” from the II+ to something with a modern GUI felt wonderful, but also as if someone had cut off my legs—I couldn’t program this weird new device, and when I tried to learn, the coding books I found spent a lot more time trying to teach me how to alphabetize a CD collection (Me: “I’m fucking ten!  I don’t have any CDs and if I did why would I want to alphabetize them?”) than how to write a game.  (And yes, eventually I learned how to code simple stuff, though I never recaptured that initial “I can do anything with just what came in the box” feeling.)  So, ChoiceScript in hand, I felt that old joy: I can tell your machine what to do, and I’m going to tell it to tell you a story.

On the other hand—terror.  As it says on the tin, ChoiceScript games are all about Choices.  Fun!  At first.  Until I started work and realized that in practice, each story beat needed around eight possible outcomes, and a success and failure path for each potential answer.  A beat that took 250 words in a traditional short story might need 2,000 words to offer a semblance of true interactivity.

And so the cost / benefit of pantserhood tipped sharply toward ‘cost.’  It’s trivial to cut and rewrite 2,000 words of story because that scene needs to do something else.  Cutting 16,000 words at one stroke gives writers strokes in turn.

So I had to think through the story before I started.  The usual “write what comes and fix it later” approach wouldn’t work.  But I couldn’t outline.  Oh no!  That’s for plotters.  I, on the other hand, like any kid who learned how to program from antique books on BASIC at his local public library, would draw a flow chart.

I started out with a flowchart of choice-diamonds.  What choices did the player face?  What paths could she walk?  Would success here bypass an entire branch of the story later on?  How would other characters respond to her decisions?

I then converted that flowchart into skeletal code, logic and command without dialogue or description.  After a few scenes I felt comfortable enough to write in skeleton-code first, sans flowchart: your Determination needs to be this high for you to win your fistfight with the demon.  Staying awake all night reviewing these wards will impose the following penalty to your Sleep stat, which will in turn make everything a little harder.  In what ways might your law-wizard attempt to depose a goddess, or betray her firm, or romance a fellow junior associate?

After another couple chapters, I’d written enough skeleton code that I could content myself with a short list of notes before I started coding: a line for each choice, a few bullet points for potential consequences, clear scene breaks, and on to the next chapter.

I couldn’t deny it any longer: I was outlining. And it felt awesome.

What had changed?  Necessity, for one thing, but on reflection the outlines I wrote for Choice of the Deathless (and the outlines I’m using for my next book) differed in one huge way from my earlier attempts.  Before, my outlines were bullet lists of scenes:

Joey and Sarah meet Dragon Lord Vorthax.

Vorthax eats Jimmy; Sarah escapes on rocket sled.

Joey wakes up inside Vorthax’s stomach.

Cloud-dwellers save Sarah, nurse her back to health.

Joey talks with Vorthax.

Cloud-dwellers attack Vorthax.

Etc.

That’s okay as it goes—I have a list of setpieces, and I can think of cool stuff to write for each.  What’s missing?

Choice. Or, to put it another way: drama.  That list elides any moment when Jimmy, Sarah, or Vorthax consider their options, stand torn between gut-desire and heart-need, sacrifice one possibility for the sake of another.  In fact, I’ve written the negative space of drama: all of the cool and/or heartbreaking stuff that happens because of choices. But I haven’t written the choices themselves.  They’re an afterthought to the action.

As a result, the scenes in my outline have a sort of loose cause-and-effect relationship but nowhere to go.  The outlines I learned to write for Choice of the Deathless were that negative space.  The cool results, those weren’t nearly as important as the dynamics of the choice.  Let’s add some of that stuff to the outline above:

(Sarah and Joey need to save their Mom, who’s been taken captive by bandits.  Sarah decides they’ll go to Dragon Lord Vorthax, even though they know he has a nasty and carnivorous reputation.)

Joey and Sarah meet Dragon Lord Vorthax.

(Vorthax asks both of them why they’ve come.  Joey speaks up first: he wants power to save Mom.  Vorthax asks what he’s willing to trade for it.  He says, everything.)

Vorthax eats Jimmy. (Sarah runs first, then stops, almost goes back to save her brother; decides she can’t.) Sarah escapes on rocket sled.

Joey wakes up inside Vorthax’s stomach.  (What does he do next?  Jump around inside Vorthax’s stomach & start pulling out wires until the Dragon talks to him.)

Cloud-dwellers save Sarah, nurse her back to health.  (Should Sarah ask the cloud-dwellers to try and save her mother, or Joey?)

Joey talks with Vorthax.  (Vorthax has swallowed the boy to teach him dragon-magic, but this will involve Joey transforming into something not quite human.)

Cloud-dwellers attack Vorthax.  (Does Joey kill the Cloud-dwellers with his new power?  Does Sarah kill Joey to save her new friends?)

Silly, sure, over-the-top, limited in a lot of ways, but also propulsive; each scene has a dramatic purpose.  Thinking in terms of choices rather than setpieces felt like turning my brain inside-out at first, but over time I grew comfortable with the process.  As a result, I wrote better, and faster.  The game’s web of decisions seemed less a danger and more an opportunity—I could hide neat worldbuilding down little-traveled pathways, sneak humor into secret moments, build consistent characters who seemed villains when set up one way and beleaguered heroes in another context, all because I knew basically where I was going and how I wanted to get there.

I’m working on my next book now, taking the outline road with this new approach—building around choices, conflicts, and costs rather than action set-pieces.  Once the dramatic framework’s in place, I think—I hope—everything else will grow in between.  The cool stuff will come, because it will have a reason to be there.

Of course, writing this next book I’ll probably learn a whole bunch that will make all I’ve written here seem quaint.  But that’s the process, isn’t it?  We’re always learning.  Or we should be.  Sometimes, we learn from people; most of the time, we learn by doing, thoughtfully and with conviction.  There’s no hope in waiting to write until we’re already perfect writers.

Heck, when I started writing Choice of the Deathless I couldn’t outline my way out of a paper bag.

Max Gladstone: Website / Twitter

Despite the title, this post on happiness isn’t meant to be the end-of-days gospel on the matter but rather, a meditative rumination listicle by someone who is wildly unprepared and unqualified to discuss the matter in a meaningful way. And yet the notion of happiness — what is it? who can have it? can I buy it on Amazon with Prime shipping? — has been sitting on my metaphorical shoulder for weeks, now, pecking at my brain meats with an insistent beak.

It’s a very unruly topic, of course. Hard to wrangle. Like trying to wrestle King Kong’s scrotum into a gym bag. “I CAN’T DO IT, MIKE, I’M JUST NOT — I’M NOT MANAGING OVER HERE. THE APE BALLS ARE WINNING, MIKE. REPEAT: THE SCROTUM IS WINNING.”

So, here I am. A clueless, inexpert, inelegant dude. Trying to figure shit out. Like, even now, I don’t know that I agree with half of what I’ve written here. And tomorrow I won’t agree with the other half. But it feels like it’s worth talking about anyway. And so goes the list.

1. Nobody Knows What The Fuck It Is

Everybody will try to tell you how to get happy, how to stay happy, how to entice happiness into your lair where you may mate with it, but the truth is, nobody knows what happiness even is. Sure, there’s a scientific notion. And yeah, there exists a dictionary definition. But like I said above: it’s really very unruly. It’s not a thing with clear margins or a fixed center. Is it the ejaculation of dopamine to the center of the brain? Is it a feeling of warm fuzzy bliss? Is it a long con or a short game? Defining happiness is like trying to grab that little piece of eggshell inside the egg goop — it always seems to escape one’s pinching fingers.

2. Nobody Knows What The Fuck It Does

The purpose of happiness is, honestly, a mystery. Does it make us more efficient? More functional? Better in bed? Longer-lasting erections? Will it make me better at video games? (As I get older, I get worse and worse at video games and it’s starting to bum me out, man. If I get digitally-abused by another racist, homophobic 12-year-old, I’m going to smash my Xbox with a mallet.) Evolutionary science through an orangutan lens suggests happiness helps us live longer and breed more. Whether that applies to us hairless apes known as “humans” depends on how you define — and achieve — happiness. Sidenote: I want an orangutan. For happiness.

3. Happiness Is A Choice

As I grow older it become clearer to me that happiness is a thing you choose — or, rather, you choose to be open to it. In much the same way you choose to be open to meeting new people, having new experiences, buying new breakfast cereals, or attempting new acrobatic sex positions (I’m fond of “The Backwards Charlie,” but found that the “Schenectady Oil Burner” resulted in a short and very unpleasant hospital stay). On the daily we are subject to countless extrasolar objects pelting our mental and emotional exoskeletons and we choose what to let in and what to deflect. Often, though, it seems we let in a lot of bad voodoo while for some strangely self-destructive reason rejecting good mojo. You take a walk and you can either be diminished by the cold wind and shortened days or find enjoyment in how it braces you, in how the sun shines through autumn leaves, in the satisfying crunch of boot heels on acorns (like little mouse skulls I mean what ew I didn’t say that shut up). You have to say: “I’m willing to be happy.”

4. Except When It’s Totally Not A Choice

It’s also very easy to say that, though, isn’t it? Happiness is a choice. When you say that, it suggests that a lack of happiness is the fault of the unhappy. Which can be true, certainly (some folks refuse to pry their boots from the mud of misery), but it’s also important to remind ourselves that happiness is also a privilege. If you’re depressed — not sad, not griefstruck, but honestly and undeniably depressed — then “choosing” happiness is a synonym for courting deeper depression because depression feels like a lightless no-nothing-nowhere pit with smooth walls where your choice to escape feels only more fruitless and frustrating. The sick, the impoverished, the downtrodden, the abused — you can’t cluck your tongue and wag a finger and say, “You should choose to be happy.” The choice of happiness, available to many but not all, is a privilege.

5. Use Your Power For Good Rather Than Evil

Like all privileges, we can use them for good, or we can use them for evil (and by evil, I really mean, abject selfishness). Using your happiness for good means trying to make other people happy. Not by forcing it. Not by assuming they have the privilege, too. But by doing nice things for people. And leaving room for their unhappiness, too. Maybe it really is that simple. Our happiness can sometimes come from making other people happy, too — it’s multiplicative, like gremlins thrown in a hot tub. Charity to others can be charity to ourselves. Someone out there is going to cynically note that this is ultimately selfish, and maybe it is, but so fucking what?

6. Part Of A Balanced Breakfast

If we’re to believe in a nutritional pyramid (mine contains COFFEE in bold jittery letters at the bottom), we should also make time to accept an emotional pyramid, too. Happiness is given an importance and made a priority in a way that suggests that other emotions are somehow inferior, that they are errors that must be fixed. As if sadness is a sickness, as if anger is a broken window. As if other emotions are the zero to happiness’ one. But that’ll fuck you up, I think. Expecting that other emotions don’t belong or aren’t healthy is itself pretty goddamn unhealthy. Happiness is just one color in our rainbow. Other emotions are okay. Hell, more than that, they’re necessary. And we deserve our time with them in order to understand them and negotiate them.

7. Sometimes You’re Wrong About How To Get It

There exists a “chasing the dragon component” to happiness, right? It’s like a hit of heroin or your first taste of great coffee or the first time you orgasm on the back of a raccoon while a burly woodsman — well, I don’t need to finish that sentence, because we’ve all been there. Point is, you get that laser lance of dopamine bliss burning through you and you want that again, so you do all kinds of things to get it. And a lot of what we do is short-term shit. A cupcake. Money. A drink. A video game. A romantic night with a burly woodsman. Fight club. Some of these things give you glimpses of the dragon, but rarely do you manage to grab that sonofabitch by the tail.

8. That Great Don Draper Quote

Don Draper, of Mad Men, says: “Happiness is the moment before you need more happiness.”

9. Happiness Versus Satisfaction

I’ve buried the lede a little, but I think what gets to the heart of the problem is that what we really need is satisfaction, but we seek happiness instead. The two are different, in my mind, with happiness being a short-term fix and satisfaction being a long-term solution. The short game versus the long con. We often ask ourselves or are asked by others if we’re happy. Which, day-to-day, can be a kind of toxic question, right? That’s erosive, corrosive, because if at the moment they ask we don’t feel happy — if we’re whittled away by the day’s many stresses — then we say or think oh, shit, no, I’m not fucking happy at all and then that drop-kicks us into a pit of disappointment. That’s how we invite sadness into our house like a mopey, mumbly vampire.

10. The Better Question

The more important question is, are you satisfied? I might not be happy with a day of writing, but I can be satisfied by the book in total, or by the overall work that I’m doing — but focusing on that microscopic aspect of happiness will send me in a tail-spin. I can have a rough day with the toddler, but if I concentrate on  just that — instead of the larger satisfaction with the little wolverine tornado — I end up feeling resentful, or angry, or some other uninvited and presently unnecessary emotion. Crazily focusing on happiness is like constantly checking the temperature of your Thanksgiving turkey: all you’re doing is just letting the heat out of it. Satisfaction, then, seems the smarter measure, doesn’t it? Anything else feels a bit myopic.

11. What The Hell Is Satisfaction, Then?

Satisfaction is a fond feeling over the entire meal, not just a single bite. Satisfaction is a bigger, broader thing — a general sustained sense of okay, yeah, this doesn’t suck that pervades a given portion of your life. You can be unhappy in the moment but satisfied overall. Satisfaction is bound up with comfort and safety and choice; it’s a longer pull of pleasure, stretched out like taffy.

12. The Satisfaction Sacrifice

Sometimes, you sacrifice happiness to satisfaction — or vice versa. Another bowl of ice cream would make you happy; resisting that bowl and hewing to health would earn you satisfaction. It’d make me happy to go play video games, but I got work to do and that work is to write books and blog posts and Sherlock slash-fic — and my work gives me great satisfaction. Happiness and satisfaction do not always shake hands. You have to choose one over the other sometimes, and further, that choice often necessitates balance — satisfaction may seem like the more important one (I’d argue it is), but you still have to find moments of happiness. You still seize moments of wonder and weirdness and dopamine delight. Each played off the other.

13. Follow Your Bliss

That’s a Joseph Campbell thing — “follow your bliss.” He gleaned this mantra from the Upanishads. This notion serves as a combo-pack of that happiness and satisfaction dichotomy (which I’ve discussed as being separate) — suggestion being you gain a kind of rapture from meeting the universe halfway and doing the things you want to do for yourself. You gain happiness by pursuing satisfaction. Or you find satisfaction by pursuing happiness. Or you stumble around in the dark and are eaten by a grue, shit, I dunno, like I said: THIS STUFF IS HARD.

14. Shame Is Half-A-Ladder

Here’s what I do know: becoming happy or satisfied or being a good little blissmonkey is not a function of shame or guilt. You think, oh, I’m going to feel bad for not finishing my work or for eating that candy bar or using the urinal like a sit-down toilet last night when I was all fucking bonkers on Goldschlager and peyote. Shame is a half-a-ladder — it’ll get you part of the way there, and then you’ll still be reaching for the prize like the fox who couldn’t get the grapes. Coming at your goals and trying to find happiness through shame and guilt is a good way to poison what satisfaction you can muster. Success out of shame is like succeeding in spite of yourself. Better instead to do things because of how they make you feel instead of doing things because of how bad failure feels. Let your failures be instructive and illuminating instead of one more reason to feel bad about yourself. Don’t climb that rickety-ass ladder. It’ll break under your feet.

15. Embrace Why You Motherfucking Rule Instead Of Why You Utterly Suck

SCIENCE FACT I JUST MADE UP: everybody is awesome and everybody is shitty all at the same time. Happiness is trying to focus on your qualities above your deficits — and, moreover, trying to turn your deficits into qualities. Look at life like an RPG: you’ve got a series of stats and special abilities and you, as Lord Thromnagon Drumdragon, aren’t going around moping about your “low Charisma score.” You can either embrace your high Strength stats (and thus cleave to your strength of PUNCH MONSTERS UNTIL PUDDING) or choose to focus on increasing your Charisma score so that every shopkeeper and stable boy doesn’t try to poison your feedbag THAT’S RIGHT I SAID FEEDBAG you didn’t know Lord Drumdragon is actually a unicorn well he is shut up.

16. Someone Always Has It Worse

A little perspective goes a long way. Like I said above: other emotions are necessary to possess. Anger can have value. Sadness can be necessary. They don’t always need to be shoved in a bag and set on fire but sometimes the way we feel isn’t helping us. It’s honest! It’s real! But is it valuable? Happiness can at times be a function of just having a little perspective. Being upset because someone got your coffee order wrong or because you missed your train — well, just remember, someone out there has it worse. Probably a whole lot worse.  Not to say your happiness should come at the expense of another’s misery, but it’s worth looking at this singular moment and trying to see if your emotional response has teeth or is otherwise fangless and just gumming you into a state of unnecessary joylessness.

17. Comparisons Fail The Other Way

Looking up the chain and saying “someone is happier than me” is true, but who cares? Someone always has something more than you. That’s how life is. We’re not in balance. Looking to other people’s bliss as comparison is just a good way to stomp on your own. Be happy they’re happy, but don’t fall prey to comparison shopping for your own pleasure. Their happiness doesn’t diminish yours. At worst, it has no effect. At best, their happiness is happiness for you, too.

18. Settling

The act of settling is weird, right? Because on the one hand, if you’re just settling into life like dust on a shelf, bleah, yuck, why? We only get one ride on the bull, folks. Hold on as long as you can — until that motherfucker falls down in a froth. And yet, sometimes you gotta know when to cash in your chips and say, “This is me being comfortable with what I have.” Because you can’t control everything. Life gives what life sometimes gives you: sexy eyes, a goiter, an inheritance, an STD, two kids who love you, one who doesn’t, I dunno. Is it about settling for the things you can’t control, and aspiring to change the things you can? Is it about aspiring in spite of comfort? Is happiness diminished if you seek it in greater quantity or with deeper meaning?

19. Hard Cash Money

Money might make you happy, but I don’t know that it gives you satisfaction. If it affords you security and comfort, that might do the trick. Just the same, plenty of people are rich and miserable. “I HATE MY INGROUND POOL AND ALL THIS COCAINE AND MY EXPENSIVE WEIMERDOODLE DESIGNER DOG.” Everybody’s different, I guess? You just gotta find what tickles your monkey. Maybe that’s money. But maybe — hopefully? — it’s something bigger.

20. Lot Of Shitty Ways To Get Happy

You can do a lot of things to be happy, and many of those things are pretty fucking terrible. Again that battle of happy versus satisfied yawns its duplicitous maw — it’s like, you might be happy tearing someone else down, or sticking a needle in your arm, or sleeping around on your spouse. Happiness in the moment — that short, sharp shock of guhhh so good — is cheap and easy. But it doesn’t last. As I’m wont to say: is the juice really worth the squeeze?

21. The Happy Vampire

Some folks are the living embodiment of schadenfreude, which is a German word that I think means, directly translated, “To adore when the Sausage of Agony is shoved in the mouth of your enemy.” Or something. Point is, like I said above, some people are only happy tearing other people down. These people are called “assholes” at best, “vampires” at worst, and you shouldn’t be one or invite them into your life. Because they’ll cling to you like a thirsty tick.

22. Happiness Is Soylent Green

It’s made of people. Relationships. Friendships. Love. You can pass that shit along, too, tethering yourself psychically to other people by asking them how their day was, by offering them a bit of sympathy or congratulations or charity when it’s called for. We all have these invisible tentacles we can use to reach out and — okay, this is starting to sound a little hentai. Point is, we’re all connected, and you can feed into the positive energy of others or you can steal it from them. (And this isn’t just an IRL thing, either. Anybody who tells you our social connections online don’t have the same weight or value are probably friendless robots from a Distant Century here to rob us of our joy. CLANKING CRAPTRONS.)

23. Physical Triggers

You can do physical things to open yourself to happiness, right? Like focusing on your breathing. Or taking a walk and getting the blood flowing. Or getting a little sunshine because our bodies leech happiness from the sun’s rays until one day the sun is just an empty, lifeless calcified dustball in the sky and then everything grows cold and lightless and — *is handed a note* — okay that’s apparently scientifically inaccurate. Whatever. Sunshine is good for you is what I’m saying.

24. It’s Called A Pursuit For A Reason

The pursuit of happiness. That’s the saying, because we’re always pursuing it. It’s a perpetual chase — a dog spinning around and around, a failed ouroboros who will never clamp down on his own tail (and if he did catch it, what the fuck would he do with it?). Does this mean we’ve overstated happiness as a thing that has value? Should we instead accept that all of life is suffering and move on from there? (That Buddhist principle is a cosmic version of the “underpromise, overdeliver” school of thought, I think.) Is the chase the same thing as the journey? The end is the end but it’s how we get there that matters. Is that the deal with happiness? Is our search for happiness more meaningful than the actual happiness itself?

25. Go With Your Gut

Happiness is some cryptic shit. It’s a chimera. A faceshifting freak in a room of mirrors. It’s wonderful and horrible. It helps us and it hurts us. It hamstrings us and elevates us. It’s a pit and it’s a ladder. It — and its many forms, be they satisfaction or pleasure or bliss — is a thing so intensely personal it’s impossible to let anyone else tell us how to get it, keep it, or use it. I think it’s worth asking yourself, how will I be happy? It’s worth trying to find the path to satisfaction. And I don’t think that path is drawn through careful study or through mathematical findings. You don’t get happy through a pro/con list. (Unless you do? See? So personal.) It’s in your gut. It’s a feeling, an instinct, and maybe at the end of the day the shortest path to unhappiness is to ignore yourself and all the inner voices that are screaming for you to go left, go left, for fuck’s sakes go left and all you do is go right. Go with your gut. Follow your bliss. Give to others without taking. Be you. Be the best version of you. And share it with the world.

Then again, what the fuck do I know?

[Correction, 1/7/14: looks like The Cormorant, published in the US on 12/31/2013, is actually eligible for a Hugo, at least. Angry Robot sends me the following from the org’s constitution:

I released a number of books in the Great Year of Our Tentacled Master, 2013.

And apparently I’m allowed to — expected to? — talk about my award-eligible works.

I was hesitant to even do one of these, given that I feel like if a book is worth winning an award then it’s a book you’d remember, but I had a lot of books out this year — enough where I had to go back and try to figure out what came out when, so one supposes the readership may feel an equal sense of temporal bewilderment regarding my works. And so, here we are.

These are the ones I consider (or care about being) eligible for various awards.

The Blue Blazes, which is a novel about a bad father trying to be a good father and a good daughter who went bad, with this little family drama going down at the juncture between the criminal underworld and the very real mythic and monstrous one. It released with Angry Robot.

Under the Empyrean Sky, which is a YA sci-fi novel that features a crew of teens rebelling against their wealthy skyborn masters in a dusty, crusty cornpunk agripocalyptic dystopia. It released with Skyscape Children’s Publishing.

The Kick-Ass Writer, a book featuring 1001 snidbits and yum-nuggets of cantankerous, slightly pornographic (but always sincere) writing advice. Published by Writers Digest books.

“Birds of Paradise,” a Miriam Black short story where Miriam must solve a murder before it happens in a sex shop. During a hurricane. No, really. Found in The Malfeasance Occasional: Girl Trouble, released by St. Martins.

The two novels would be applicable for Best Novel (Hugos, Nebula, Some Other Award I’m Not Thinking Of), I do believe. The Blue Blazes should also be Stoker-eligible.

The book of writing advice, well, it has some genre-writing advice so could be eligible for, say, Hugo’s “related work.”

“Birds of Paradise,” while in a mystery collection, contains a psychic character belonging to an urban fantasy/horror series, thus eligible in the appropriate genre awards.

And finally, you have me with this website, which one could argue makes me eligible for “fan writer,” since I talk about lots of stuff, re: fandom and the culture within it.

I don’t know. I’m not very good at this.

Anyway — yay! I wrote stuff. Other people wrote stuff, too. Something-something awards.

I’m sure I’m missing something. Or doing this wrong.

Awards are lovely when they happen and doubly lovely when they are born of the efforts of readers, but just the same, I try not to stress about them because of the infinite number of awesome books and authors who have never won an award or seen a nomination. I’m just happy I get to tell stories and support myself doing it, so —

Thanks!

/shamelesstapdance

A brief update about this website:

It will be going on hiatus through 2015.

I’m just kidding.

HA HA HA HA HA

Ahem.

But what will be happening here is that I might slow down on the posts a wee little bit. I’ve been making sure that this blog has at least five posts a week, Monday through Friday, since it relaunched as a WordPress installation. It’s fun, but also takes up a great deal of time.

But I have five novels I have to write in the next year.

And a film script.

And hopefully, a comic series. (That one: not guaranteed.)

So, the plan going forward is that you’ll see one new post on Tuesday or Wednesday, then you’ll see the 10 Questions on Thursday give way to the Five Things I Learned series (also on Thursday), and Friday will remain the day of Flash Fiction Challenges (starting back up this week).

That’s not to say I won’t still sometimes post on Monday or won’t still write an additional post in the Tues-Wed bracket; it just won’t be something I’ll wear my fingers down to quivering nubs in order to achieve. (You also may see more guest posts — not that I’m soliciting open submissions for that, so please don’t send ’em to me. But I am friends with a wealth of wise and weird writers who may sometimes contribute a little brain sauce to the terribleminds stew.)

I will also be releasing a new e-book (maybe two!) about writing compiled from the blog (and you may also see my new author-published short story collection this year, Crass Menagerie). This might also be the year I release my not-quite-cookbook, Revelations of the Bacon Angel.

Anyway!

Thanks all for being here.

*runs around, high-fiving you all*

*gets tired*

*naps*

Various Cormorant newsy-bits!

• Book launch! Next week! WORD Bookstore! Greenpoint, Brooklyn! 7pm. Details here, and please note that you can also buy the book from them either at the store or online.

• I extended the deadline on the Cormorant photo contest (found here) by a week, to Jan 17th, as some folks said their copies were delayed getting to them. Win cool stuff. Books. Coffee gear.

• At present, Amazon is offering the paperback of the book for ~$5.00.

• Also, six reviews there so far. Plus, more at Goodreads. If you like the book, I’d be apple-cheeked and giggle-addled if you chose to tell some friends and leave a review somewhere.

• A very kind review at Tor.com — “Miriam the foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, heroin chic road warrior, the self-styled ‘psychic assassin battling fate’ who is making her way down to Florida….Chuck Wendig dedicates The Cormorant to ‘all the foul-mouthed miscreants and deviants who are fans of Miriam.’ Well, yes. Guilty as charged, I guess, and proud to be. Wendig has once again hit the sweet spot right between disturbing and entertaining. Maybe there shouldn’t be a sweet spot there, but whatever—he makes it work. If you’re a fan of the series, don’t miss The Cormorant.” Thanks, Stefan!

• Related: Blackbirds being free actually seems to have increased sales, not decreased them. It’s just one little data point, but make of it what you will. I appreciate Angry Robot being a cool-ass and brave enough publisher to even consider what to many is an anathema idea.

• I think I’ll have a local PA event here next month, by the way, at the Doylestown Book Shop.

That’s all she wrote.

Hope you’re enjoying the book, and hope you’ll take a moment to share this.

Thanks!

Note: for now, comments are open on this post. Any trollish or truly nasty comments will be drop-kicked into the spam oubliette. Let’s aim for reasonable discussion only this time around.

So, my last — and admittedly ragey — post about spanking garnered more attention than I perhaps expected for a post on Christmas Eve. It went… I believe the word is “viral,” particularly over Facebook. Like a norovirus on a cruise ship, it spread very fast in a very short amount of time.

It inspired a great many views and a whole lotta comments.

Some comments were great. Thoughtful, whether for or against. Some people told stories about themselves as parents or about themselves as children. Some of these stories were honestly heartbreaking (and I suggest you read through the comments on that post).

And then there were those comments that got a good bit toxic. I had to dump so many people in the spam oubliette they were probably corded like firewood down there. Comments that invoked “Obama’s America,” that made eye-popping assertions about school shootings, or that just plain insulted me or threatened me (had quite a few people tell me they were going to spank me, which, you know, thanks, but we’re not that intimate).

Regardless, some folks took me to task — fairly or not, I dunno — for not offering data or solutions up front in the post. I didn’t necessarily think I needed to offer solutions to “don’t spank your children” in the same way that I don’t need to offer solutions for “don’t steal stuff” or “don’t chase rat poison with bleach,” I thought the proscription against spanking in my, erm, unique and fist-shaking way was enough.

But I’d like to address some of that stuff now. In a decidedly less ragey way — some puritanical folk took exception to my use of profanity, and as they are not regular readers of this vulgarity-smeared blog-box, I will happily take all the “fucks” and “shits” and for now put them in a box.

Let’s answer some of the questions or comments about spanking, shall we?

Spanking doesn’t have any negative consequences.

Science would seem to disagree with you. If you Google “effects of spanking,” you are likely to receive a page full of articles and information suggesting that spanking children can have a number of negative effects: it can increase aggression, it can increase depression, it can limit cognitive ability overall, and it can specifically hinder language abilities. Time Magazines’s “Long-Term Effects of Spanking” is maybe worth a read, if only for quotes like: “…spanking sets up a loop of bad behavior. Corporal punishment instills fear rather than understanding. Even if children stop tantrums when spanked, that doesn’t mean they get why they shouldn’t have been acting up in the first place. What’s more, spanking sets a bad example, teaching children that aggressive behavior is a solution to their parents’ problems.”

Or, “Spanking your kids could affect their vocabulary.”

Or, the American Psychological Association’s assessment (spoiler warning: don’t do it).

Or, “What’s the Problem With Spanking?” a post that details the effects of spanking in the child (how it affects their limbic system) and how it also affects the parent doing the spanking.

And on, and on.

I want real data, not interpretations of data.

A reasonable request, given how articles on the Internet can make all kinds of assertions based on flimsy data. Data can be cherry-picked to tell different stories; you ain’t wrong there.

Here’s a study from the CMAJ, detailing over 20 years of research into the subject.

Money quote: “The evidence is clear and compelling — physical punishment of children and youth plays no useful role in their upbringing and poses only risks to their development. The conclusion is equally compelling — parents should be strongly encouraged to develop alternative and positive approaches to discipline.”

Ah, wary of those dubious Canadians, eh? With their maple syrup and their Tim Bits.

Let’s then take a gander at a study from American Academy of Pediatrics.

There you’ll find:

“Conclusion: These results represent a strong test of the links between spanking and a child’s aggressive behavior and vocabulary, using prospective longitudinal models controlling for a number of family, child, and parent variables and earlier child aggression and vocabulary. We add novel information about the role of fathers’ spanking and add to an emerging literature on the effect of spanking on cognitive outcomes.

Future work should focus on providing families a clearer picture of the outcomes associated with spanking and more information about what discipline practices may have the desired effect on improving functioning, so that they can move beyond punishment practices to the incorporation of positive parenting behaviors with the potential to encourage healthy child trajectories.”

But what about the Gunnoe study?

Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe did a study that suggests that spanking your children at a certain age leads to an improvement in performance (school, specifically) and happiness.

If you feel that’s justification enough to spank your kids, so be it.

I might suggest looking at some considerations, though, first. (In brief: it’s a small, unpublished study that acts as an outlier to a far larger body of evidence.)

I don’t trust studies.

Be that as it may, if there exists a body of evidence that suggests that spanking your kids could be harming your kids psychologically, is it worth the risk? Given that spanking is not the only — nor even the best — way to impart lessons or teach respect.

[Insert anti-science rhetoric here]

Then we are at an impass. I like science because it tries to show me the various causes and effects in this universe. But you are eschewing science, which is your right. I hope your denial of gravity allows you to fly, and your ignorance of entropy lets you live forever.

Shine on, you crazy anti-science diamond.

But please don’t hit your kids just the same.

I was spanked, and I’m fine.

And that’s great. But first, that’s an example of an anecdote, or “artisinal data.” Which is to say, it’s evidence of precisely nothing. Some people live through horrific things and actually turn out okay — but that doesn’t make those horrific things laudable, or worth recommending. People who survive cancer don’t say, “Everybody should have cancer because it teaches you to respect life.”

I was spanked, and it taught me respect, and [insert insult or threat here].

I would argue spanking taught you no respect at all, then. Irony, it seems, is alive and well.

My kids were spanked, and they’re just fine.

Again: “artisinal data.”

And also: you don’t actually know that.

Parents are notoriously out-of-touch with their children’s feelings. I bet a great many parents feel a great many things about their children that are a thousand miles from accurate.

But how are my kids going to learn their lessons?

Presumably the same way they do elsewhere: through teaching, compassion, and through consequence and discipline. A lack of spanking does not equate to a lack of discipline any more than a lack of war equates to a lack of diplomacy or a lack of feeding your kids candy equates to them starving. Point is, parents have a plethora of tools in the ol’ parenting toolbox that they can reach for. And that can mean leaving this old, ugly tool in the box.

Not spanking does not mean freedom from consequence or discipline.

Not spanking does not mean appeasement or spoiling.

But how are my kids going to learn to avoid dangerous behaviors?

Again, I might recommend looking in your toolbox for other parenting methods. Children — particularly young children, who are the ones most often the ones trying to lick light sockets or run into traffic — respond to a variety of negative stimuli, and spending any time with said child will teach you these things before long. Spanking needn’t be one of those negative stimuli.

A whack on the ass is better than a dead kid.

Yes, that’s true. Though that’s a bit of a false dichotomy and an appeal to absurd logic. You could also break the kid’s ankles so he doesn’t run into traffic. What? A kid with two broken ankles is better than a dead kid, isn’t it?

The disciplinary spectrum is broad and multifarious. Try something else.

You spank the dog to teach it not to run out onto the street.

That’s actually not true.

That is in fact a very good way to ensure your dog runs out into the street, away from the guy who’s trying to smack it. Why would the dog come to someone who wants to beat it?

It’s not abuse.

For now, let’s assume that “abuse” is a legal definition. And you’re right. It’s not. Spanking is — in this country, at least — legal. I cannot dispute your right to do it, but I can question why you feel it’s necessary. The point for me isn’t that it’s abuse — it’s that spanking your child is hitting your child. Literally. It’s you hitting your child. It’s you undertaking a hostile, humiliating action that would be illegal if delivered to another adult, or in many cases, even an animal. It may not be abuse, but it is you — a big adult-sized person — grabbing a tiny human and raising your hand to them in the guise of teaching them a lesson. Which is not what spanking does, by the way. Spanking delivers punishment, not information. It imparts castigation, not wisdom.

It’s a punitive measure, not an instructive one.

It’s just a tap on the butt (or thigh or wrist or or or). It’s harmless.

If that’s all it is, it’s probably harmless. It’s also probably not particularly effective. The thing that makes spanking work is that it’s a) at least somewhat painful and/or b) humiliating.

That’s how you make spanking effective. At least in the short term, for a certain age range (3-8). Spanking is a quick fix, not a real solution. As noted, while it may correct behavior, it may introduce other worse behaviors as a result.

Consider (here an admittedly anecdotal story, so do with this as you see fit) — when I was a kid, I was yelled at a lot for spilling my drink at the table. (I was, and still am, clumsy.) Being yelled at didn’t stop me from spilling — it made it worse. Because I was so anxious about that singular act I was likelier to knock over a drink than I was to keep the damn thing upright. Spanking works because it instills fear of being hurt or embarrassed — those are not clear-headed ways to actually teach a lesson. It’s a Skinner Box style of parenting — deliver an electric shock so that the kid doesn’t push the wrong button. But your children are not rats or monkeys in a lab. They’re little people. With enthusiasm and intelligence in a great big endless well — a well you can poison.

But the Bible says —

No. Nope. Mm-mm. Sorry.

It says “Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child” and —

No. Seriously. No. Don’t bring that here.

But I’m a Christian and you need to respect me and my beliefs.

I respect that you have beliefs, but I don’t need to respect those beliefs or you for holding them. Listen, here’s the thing, if you’re a Christian, and you cleave toward the kinder, more reasonable side of that spectrum, you have my respect. If you use the Bible like a VCR instruction manual and believe that every line of text is 100% literal and must be adhered to, then we are not going to find a great deal of common ground. The Bible is an agglomeration of stories broken into two larger books — the Old Testament and the New Testament, with the “sequel” book challenging some of the ways of the OT. This is not a book that well-agrees with itself (nor should it): hell, it tells four somewhat contradictory-yet-canonical tales of the dude whose name is titular to the religion.

The Bible says a lot of things and I bet you don’t do them all. It’s got suggestions on how to sell your children into slavery or why you shouldn’t eat shellfish or get tattoos.

And you’re going to take one line from Proverbs as a reason to spank your kids?

Let’s look at more from Proverbs.

“When you sit to dine with a ruler, note well what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony.” — Proverbs 23:1-2.

Do you do that if you feel gluttonous? The thing with the knife and the throat?

Did you know that in Proverbs it’s noted that wine will bite like a viper, and riches will grow wings and fly away like an eagle? That your love and faithfulness must be tied around your neck? Apparently these things could not possibly be metaphor and must literally be true!

When Proverbs speaks about an overflowing cistern whose waters you should not share with your neighbors, do you believe that to be an admonishment against sharing water with your jerky neighbors? Or, in the context of the surrounding text, do you (correctly) see that it’s a metaphor for not sharing your love in an act of adultery?

Proverbs is a man’s instruction to his son, and it is poetic. Complicated and fascinating and sometimes beautiful in its metaphor and in its language (language that is, to be clear, translated through various steps — and language that is often favorable toward men but not toward women).

It was also written a very, very long time ago.

Plenty of Christians do not hit their children, and here are some reasons why.

My parents spanked me and you’re insulting them.

I’m not interested in condemning those who came before us. People did a lot of things 2000 years ago, 200 years ago, even 20 years ago, that we don’t do today because we have things like new information to help guide us. Women used to smoke while pregnant. They didn’t know any better. We used to have asbestos all up in our house. Again: now we know better. Condemning those who came before isn’t the point.

The point is, we have new, better information now. And that new and better information suggests very strongly that spanking ain’t the best course of action for your kids and may have a high cost with too small a payoff.

This is about looking and moving forward with intelligence and wisdom.

Spanking is okay, as long as it’s done with explanation and love.

I’m afraid I don’t believe that, and it sounds awfully close to the same reasons used for husbands to beat their wives and would further seem to help confirm that pattern — that violence is okay as long as they know “I hit you because I love you.” Or “I hit you to teach you a very important lesson.” That’s the lesson you teach a spanked child: that hitting someone is a tool of control and a demonstration of love. What kind of spouse will they be? What kind of spouse will they seek?

Something-something kids today with their hair and their clothes and this is why they’re disrespectful because we can’t spank them anymore. Also something-something school shootings.

Well, first, you probably can still spank them. Legally, I mean.

Also, click this link.

Therein you’ll find that states with schools that allow corporal punishment have more school shootings, not fewer school shootings. You’ll also find that the number of students being spanked or paddled in school every year has gone down — and so has the threat of violence (and to a lesser extent actual violence) against teachers in school. States with spanking in schools also reveal below average test scores and below average graduation rates. And eight of the top ten paddling/spanking states are also in the top ten states of incarceration rates.

Related:

“15 Historical Complaints About Young People Ruining Everything.”

You’re judging me by my parenting choices.

Let’s take judgment out of the equation. You are presently free to discipline your children as you see fit and I can’t stop you. And it falls within the rigors of the law, so you have that going for you.

But I’d hope that you take a moment to read through all of this and before you decide to spank your child again you consider the wealth of information available to you on this great big knowledge-fed beast called “the Internet.” I’d hope that you recognize that spanking may work and may not have any negative effects but it damn well might. And once you’ve done it, you can’t undo it. Those snakes do not go back into the can.

As I said before: your children look to you for a hand to help, not a hand to strike them. And spanking them is striking them. That’s the nature of the act, I’m afraid to say.