You: I made a terrible error.

Me: You tried to punch that coyote again.

You: No.

Me: You huffed wood varnish and got lost in the mall.

You: No. Well, yes, but that’s not the mistake I’m talking about.

Me: You ate all the bacon again.

You: That’s not a mistake. That’s me fulfilling my manifest destiny.

Me: It’s a mistake because when you eat all the bacon, I turn into Bacon Hulk and I rip your puny form to Kleenex ribbons out of sheer, baconless rage.

You: I see your point. I didn’t eat all the bacon, it’s still downstairs, chillax.

Me: Nobody says “chillax” anymore. The new word is “coolquilize.”

You: JESUS GOD WHATEVER can I tell you my mistake now or what?

Me: Bleah, sure, go for it.

You: I’ve been reading other people’s work as I write.

Me: Reading is fundamental. Writers who don’t read are like screenwriters that don’t watch movies, like architects who don’t strop up sexually against elegant skyscrapers, like professional killers who do not admire the work of other professional killers from the telescoping lens of a distant hijacked drone. Writers have to read. It is an essential spice to this broth we’re brewing. Writers who don’t read are missing their souls.

You: Fine, yes, yeah, I just mean — some people have been posting their NaNoWriMo projects. Like, snippets or whole sections and, hoooo heeee unnnnh — *rocks back and forth while massaging temples* — I have discovered through this that I am not good enough.

Me: Oh, god, more of this again. Okay. Huddle up. Writing a story is in some ways an act of obstacle management and you’ve gotta manage all the obstacles accordingly — jump all the fences, hop all the ditches, elbow all your enemies right in their spongy tracheas. One of the biggest obstacles is self-doubt. Doubt is the vampire you invite into your house. Doubt is bedbugs and hobos — it fucking lingers, man, like the scent of cigarette smoke in your curtains, or the odor of cat piss in your carpets.

You: So, what do I do about doubt? It sounds like a demon. AN ACTUAL DEMON THAT REQUIRES SOME KIND OF EXORCISM IS THERE A BOOK A HOLY BOOK PLEASE HELP.

Me: The book you’re writing is the holy book.

You: Wuzza?

Me: Self-doubt isn’t going to just turn to smoke or vapor. Doubt has its teeth in you. And doubt has long fangs. But you have ways of tricking it — or at least neutering it with a pair of scissors. You finish the book, that’s like finishing the exorcism. THE POWER OF WRITING COMPELS YOU. Get to the end of the book and some of that doubt will go away.

You: And during the writing of the book? I still have to get to the end, you know.

Me: You have other ways of diminishing doubt.

You: HELP ME WENDIG BEARD KENOBI YOU’RE MY ONLY —

Me: Just shut up. Okay, first, recognize that everyone gets this feeling. Everyone has doubts. Every writer you read has at one point or another felt like a stowaway on board their own careers — they’re the dirt-cheeked urchin on board the Titanic, hiding below while the deservedly rich dance above. I believe this is true of Neil Gaiman, of Margaret Atwood, of authors who write sci-fi and literary and children’s picture books and erotica and, and, and. Anybody who commits words to paper, professionally or no, feels at times like an alien in their own world.

You: But those people are all really good. Like, they have talent. Same as these other NaNo participants whose work I read — it’s like, these folks have genuine actual OH EM GEE talent.

Me: Talent is at least half-a-bag-of-horseshit.

You: Whoa, no. Talent is a real thing.

Me: No, talent is an idea somebody made up. It’s a noun, and nouns always feel real — like chair or whale — but really, it’s a noun masquerading as an adjective: talented. Talent is not a thing you can measure. I can’t dip a hot wire into a petri dish of blood and expose your monstrous talent. It has no margins. It has no parameters. We see someone who takes to something really well and we call that “talent.” The same way we think half the writers who break out are overnight successes but, in truth, that’s been a decade-long “overnight.”

You: No, I’m not buying this. I’ve known writers who are genuinely talented.

Me: I’m not saying there’s not something to the idea of talent. What I’m saying is, the word is so poorly defined, and its effects so toxic, we might as well get shut of the whole word.

You: Toxic? Like, the Britney Spears song?

Me: That’s a great song.

You: It is. Great covers of that song, too. Yael Naim’s? Or this Mark Ronson ODB version?

*both listen to various covers of ‘Toxic’ for three hours*

Me: That was fun.

You: That was. What were we talking about?

Me: I actually don’t — oh! OH. Talent as a toxic notion. I can explain that. Being told you’re talented is like being fucking cursed, man. I’ve known way too many writers who were plainly more talented than I was, and yet, every last one of them are nowhere in their respective writing careers. Hell, they don’t have careers. Talent seems like a key to a door but it isn’t any such thing, and this is one of the things I really like about NaNoWriMo — all those people who think they can hang tough with a novel because someone somewhere told them they were talented, well, now they’re getting a hard Shotokan straight punch of truth delivered right to the solar plexus: discipline and devotion and skill are a trio that overwhelms any presumed talent any day of the week. You can be as talented as you want, but you still need to sit down, learn your craft and then demonstrate it. Over and over again. If — if! — talent is a real thing, the best that it gets you is that it cuts down the time it takes for you to get to a qualified end result.

You: Fine, then. I don’t know that I have the discipline, devotion, or skill to continue.

Me: Skill comes over time, as does the instinct on how to implement it.

You: Fine okay whatever, then I don’t have the discipline and/or devotion. Still full of doubt here.

Me: More tips to cure doubt, then. Okay: I told you to care less, didn’t I?

You: Uhhh. Maybe? I fade in and out.

Me: Go for a run. Take a nap. A hot shower. Drink some tea. Gobble a hallucinogen of your choice and fight your demons inside the Thunderdome of your own tripping mind. Escape the gravity of your work for an hour, a day, clear your head of all the cobwebs in order to see yourself straight.

You: Sleep, jog, Earl Grey, peyote, okay. Got it.

Me: Talk to other writers, too. Commiserate. Cheerlead. Cry over whiskey.

You: Talk to other writers… okay, got it.

Me: Great! Then you’re good to go.

You: Sweet.

Me: Awesome.

You: Excellent.

Me: Indeed.

You: Yeah, I’mma still quit.

Me: Wait, what?

You: I know. I know! I know.

Me: You got this far and you’re gonna quit? You’re around or over 30,000 words now.

You: I know, I just — I can’t hang with NaNoWriMo. I’m failing at this book.

Me: Failing is fine. Quitting is crap.

You: They’re the same thing.

Me: CLOSE YOUR HERETIC MAW, because no they ain’t. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: you learn from failure. Failure is an instruction manual written in scar tissue. Failure is illuminating! School teaches us that failure is badwrongbad, but life is a constant stream of failures. Personal failures, relationship failures, business failures, creative failures. And in each one we learn something on how to move on, improve, how to flip it and switch it so that next time we get closer. We need failure! Failure is getting to the end and discovering what you did needs work. Failure is how we course correct. Quitting? Quitting is just you rolling over and showing your pink belly. It’s soft. It’s lazy. You illuminate almost nothing with quitting — it’s you taking your flashlight and throwing it against the wall.

You: You’re saying I should grow a pair of balls and get it done.

Me: Balls are actually notoriously weak, far as parts of the body go. I mean, I could catch a wiffle ball in the crotch and double over in misery. The testicles are very sensitive and about as strong as a couple of raw quail eggs rolling around in a set of fishnet stockings. You wanna be hardcore, dang, grow a vagina. Those things are built Ford tough, man. The vagina is like the Incredible Hulk of the human form. It does all the heavy lifting. You ever see a woman give birth to a child? You see that, you’re like, “That thing could lift a burning car if it had to.” If anything, the entire scope of masculine history has been an epic attempt at trying to convince the world that the vagina is tissue paper and our balls are titanium. It’s a huge and ugly ruse.

You: This is a weird conversation all of the sudden.

Me: Oh, please, it’s been weird since we mentioned “coyote punching.”

You: Fair enough. So: I learn nothing from quitting. Okay.

Me: You can learn one thing from quitting: the thing you learn — or that you express, at least — is that you don’t want to do this anymore. And if that’s really genuinely true, hey, okay, no harm, no foul. If you’re this far into the book and you’re like, “You know what? Nope nope nope, writing a novel is for somebody else and I realize now that it is absoflogginglutely not for me,” that’s a meaningful revelation. That’s when quitting has value, when it carries you away from a thing that’s just pissing all over your potential satisfaction with life. But if you think there’s any shot at all, any chance you really want to do this and see this through, then fuck it. Hunker down. Grit your teeth. Carve words into the flesh of the page. And finish your shit.

You: I think I’m going to finish. Even if it’s a failure. Even if I lose NaNoWriMo.

Me: Yes. And remember: NaNoWriMo is some made-up shit, too. It’s not a state law. You don’t actually have to finish 50,000 words by the end of November. This isn’t a game, not really. It’s a book. It’s your book. And it’s your job to finish this draft, whether that means finishing it on November 19th, or the 30th, or December 15th, or March 8th. The only way you “lose” is by giving up. And then it’s your job to take that draft and keep working on it. But we’ll talk about next steps later. Next week, probably.

You: Okay. I’m in for the long haul. Besides: IT’S GETTING LATE. TO GIVE YOU UP. I TOOK A SIP. FROM MY DEVIL’S CUP. See what I did there?

Me: Toxic. Nice.

You: *dances awkwardly*

*vibrates so hard my hands can cut concrete*

HEY HOLY CRAP I WROTE A COMIC BOOK

And now it’s available for you to purchase.

It’s called “Shackletoon’s Hooch,” and it’s based on my short, “I Don’t Drink Anymore.” Art by the incredible Gavin Mitchell. Six pages of Amanda Wynne, bad-ass otherworldly archaeologist trying (and failing) to return to the normal life she left behind. It’s in VS. Issue 9, and also features a story by fellow compatriot Adam Christopher.

The page above is a sample page from the comic!

Thanks to Mike Garley and James Moran for having me on board.

My first comics-writing experience.

But hopefully not my last!

Other Beefy-Flavored News Nuggets

New review of the third Miriam Black book, The Cormorant:

“The plot is strong and weird and fits Miriam like a black leather glove with the fingers cut off. It turns and twists and dives–I sat up all night reading this damn book on my cell phone, for Pete’s sake. It’s well put together, nuanced, and in the end, satisfying–with no easy outs.”

“The writing is a scary, wild, obscene crash of sound and yet there are elements and overtones of Shakespeare and  Rimbaud and Dante hidden deep inside. Miriam Black is a solid taut block of arrogance, anger, and screaming rage–except that when you look back at what she’s actually done, you see a very different person. Someone who wants others to be happy, hates the death that washes around her, and never, ever stops fighting.”

It’s really one of my favorite reviews — not just because it says a metric fuckton of really nice things, but it says them in an interesting way and really seems to get the book. Thanks to Terry Irving for the great review.

Tenacious Reader also offers a lovely Cormorant review right over here:

“I highly recommend this one, I think it may have taken seat as my favorite of Chuck Wendig’s books and put the fourth Miriam Black on my must read list (please tell me there will be a fourth!). So, yeah, go read it. Miriam once again kicks ass.”

The Cormorant has a page on Goodreads, now.

It’s also available for pre-order: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound.

What else?

The Kick-Ass Writer is now out, for those looking for my writing chatter in physical form.

The NaNoWriMo writing bundle is still on sale (six books, ten bucks) until end of the month.

I turned in Blightborn, the second Heartland book, and it’s a doozy.

Should be getting edits back for Bait Dog soon enough, and I’ll start on Frack You, the second Atlanta Burns novel, soon after that.

I’ve other news I can’t yet share, but I did get an interesting script in my inbox a week ago…

*mad cackle*

It’s that time, again.

You want to promote something story-based? A book? A comic? A movie? A game? Here’s where you do it. Drop into the comments below, and give a (preferably short) head’s up to the Awesome Work you did. Hey, include links, too, so we can check out whatever it is you want us to see.

But —

But.

Here’s the caveat.

You must also promote one other thing that is not by you.

That’s your ticket through the door.

Promote someone else.

Promote yourself in return.

Fail that, and I’ll delete your comment. Or worse, kick it into the SPAM OUBLIETTE.

Easy-peasy George-and-Weezy.

Last week’s challenge, I asked you to come up with an opening line for a story.

This week, you’re going to write a story based on one of those opening lines.

(Er, not your own, thanks.)

Look through them:

Choose one.

(Choose one that complies with the original mandate of keeping to 15 words or less.)

A lot of great options in there. (Though, to be fair, a surprising lot of not so great options in this batch. Lots of errors and over-the-limits. People: read your entries before you click SUBMIT. It’ll take you like, 30 extra seconds, I promise.)

Please identify in the comments below which opening line you’ll choose.

I’ll tally and, presuming there’s a winner, I’ll send that person The Kick-Ass Writer.

Then: you write 1000 words using your chosen line. Post at your online space and link back here.

I’ll choose one of the participants (by random) and toss you a copy of — well, I dunno what. I’ll grab something off my shelves and mail it to you. (Or, if you’re international, I’ll give you something digital.)

Due by noon EST on November 22nd.

Get your fingers tapping.

I received this email the other day. I get emails like this a lot, and I always try to respond (though sometimes my lack of time — or lack of a meaningful answer — get in the way of my best efforts), and usually my replies end up being just a few lines. This one, I don’t know why, got a more robust response that even I didn’t really expect, words just sort of tumbling out, and I thought it might be useful or challenging or at least an artifact of curiosity to post the email and its response:

Hello, Mr. Wendig,

My name’s [REDACTED], and I’m a second-year at [REDACTED]. I was going for an Economics major, found that it wasn’t for me (I hated it, and I wasn’t good at it). Now, I want to major in English.

I’ve been hearing these nasty horror stories about writers going hungry, being unable to find jobs, and, recently, I read a blog post about how writers die off almost at the rate of artists in L.A., New York, and… Sedona, Arizona, was it?

I want to try to find a job in the editing or publishing industry because I love books, especially novels (I know, I know, “another one,” right?) and I believe that I have the personality to be successful as an editor or a publisher. That is, if I can get the job first and work my way up in the company.

Actually, my real dream is to become a novelist. Which is a lousy dream to have right now. I should know. I studied the economy for a year and a half (ex-Econ major, remember?).

I feel lost. I feel lost and scared. What I’ve been doing is collecting the life stories of English majors, poets, and novelists to try to figure out how they got where they are as professional writers that get to do what they love for a living. I want to be like them, but I don’t know how to get started on that path. They always tell me that everyone takes a different route, but I want to know some of the routes that I could take. I’ll have to carve out a fork in the road to get to the finish line eventually—I know that—but I want to see how much guidance I can get before I can decide the best route to carve. it’s kinda like an RPG. You go through the village following these routes, and you can follow what the villagers tell you, or you can ignore them, but in the end you gotta take your own path through the creepy, dangerous forest. So. I guess that makes you a villager. Maybe the friendly local village Wordsmithy?

What I’m asking for is your life story, and any advice you might have. I do take the advice that I receive to heart. Please respond; I will appreciate any advice that you have to offer.

Best wishes,

[REDACTED]

* * *

My response, which may or may not be helpful to the author of the e-mail and to you:

Hi, [REDACTED]!

I adore the RPG metaphor.

Don’t be scared.

I mean, you can be a little scared, but that should also come with a little exhilaration.

This is actually a pretty good economy for people who want to do their own thing.

So: after college, get a job. A day job. In publishing or out of it. Take the time when you’re not doing that to write a novel. And if that one sucks, fix it. And if it sucks so bad you can’t fix it, then write a different novel. Do this again and again until you maybe sorta semi-kinda know what you’re doing.

Make sure you have health insurance. When the day comes sooner or later that you won’t have a day job and you’ll be jumping out of a plane, building a parachute from your manuscript pages, we now have the ACA marketplace (which should be working by the time it matters for you) to help you obtain health insurance at a price that doesn’t kill you.

Write every opportunity you can.

But live every opportunity you can, too. We fill our creative coffers by experiencing the world around us. And we spend what’s in those coffers on the page.

Tell the stories you want to tell.

Bleed on the page.

Don’t chase trends — let trends chase you.

Be excited. Love writing. No reason to do this thing if you don’t love it. Don’t just love the result. Love the process. Even when you hate the process.

Learn why satisfaction is more important than happiness. Why long-term bliss means more than short-term dopamine release.

Tell stories about characters, not about plots.

Tell stories about you that nobody knows are really about you.

Write what you know except when that stops you from writing what you want to write — then use it as an excuse to know more and write more.

Worry more about writing good stories than getting published. The publishing industry is just the minotaur in the middle of the maze: the challenge at the end. You still have to get there. You still have to wander the maze in order to fight the monster.

Don’t feel like you have to write just one thing. Write the things that make you twitch and smile and scream and clamp your teeth. Write those things to which your heart and soul respond. Write to your loves. Write to your fears.

Say things with your work. Make the words about something. About more than just what’s on the page.

When you have a novel you love and trust: seek an agent. Or self-publish. Choose a path and then choose the other path later down the line to mix it up. Seek diversity. Aim for potential and possibility.

Hell with the doubters.

Down with the haters.

If this is something you really want to do, do it.

Embrace the fear.

And write.

Good luck.

— c.

Max Gladstone — besides being a bonafide member of Tiara Club — wrote the really crazy-amazing (cramazing) Three Parts Dead (which at present is ohhh, $2.99 for your Kindlemachine right now). He’s also the guy who wrote this bad-ass dissection of Star Wars, suggesting it’s, erm, about a hive-race instead of human beings. You should be reading Max, is what I’m saying. And here’s one shot among many, for here Herr Doktor Gladstone pops in to answer questions about his newest, Two Serpents Rise:

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF. WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

24601!

Seriously, though.

I write books. TWO SERPENTS RISE, which came out this week, and my first novel THREE PARTS DEAD, are set in the fantasy world of late-millennial capitalism: gods with shareholder’s meetings and necromancers in pinstriped suits. When I’m not writing, I fence, read, cook, play board games (tabletop RPGs when I can corral enough friends into the same enclosed space), and develop my immunity to iocane powder.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH FOR TWO SERPENTS RISE.

“Forget it, Jake, it’s Fantasyland.”

Or:

A risk manager for a lich king-turned-water baron must stop fallen gods’ followers from poisoning the water of his desert city. With demons.

Or:

Congratulations! You’ve killed the tyrannical storm god! Only… who will make it rain now?

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

Back in college I worked summers cleaning houses after the renters moved out—scouring all memory of a person from their place with toxic chemicals. We had a white Jeep and rigged up Hulk Hands on the ladder rack up top so whenever we went over a speed bump the hands would say “HULK SMASH!”  One day, Hey Jealousy came on the radio, this Gin Blossoms song about a guy falling apart at his ex’s door, and something about that song clicked in with other ideas I was spinning about fantasy worlds and the downfall of old orders and the rise of new. I had this vision of a guy in his 20s who once would have been a knight or king or Jedi or something like that, but the world’s turned and left him unsure about who he is. Kind of metaphysically stuck outside his ex’s door. And then I piled a whole bunch of soil over that idea and left it to germinate.

The next autumn I met the woman who would become my wife. She’s from Los Angeles, and on my first trip out there to visit her folks I was struck by how different that city looked and felt from anywhere I’d seen before in America. Broad, relatively flat—and thirsty. I grew up in Ohio near Lake Eerie and in middle Tennessee. Droughts were rare. Yet my wife’s always mindful of dripping faucets and running taps and yellowing grass. The more time I spent in L.A. the more its water, and its problems, interested me. The closest city I know of in terms of size and topology and water trouble is Beijing—also big, flat, and thirsty.

When I sat down to write the second book in the Craft Sequence, I wanted to paint a city very different from the vaguely Northeastern metropolis of Alt Coulumb that was the focus of my first book, THREE PARTS DEAD. So I thought of the sort of LA / Beijing metaconstruct. And since the Craft Sequence is about a world stabilizing in the aftermath of global revolution—a world where people overthrew the gods and kicked them out—my Hey Jealousy kid was a good fit for the main character.

So it all goes back to toxic chemical exposure really. Thanks, summer job!

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

It draws off a weird and eclectic set of influences—ecological and political ideas coming off of my time in China, social network and evolutionary biology from scientist friends, comparative myth, activism, a bunch of book research and chats with people all along the socioeconomic and political spectrum, plus too much time getting smashed in Beijing. The odds of anyone, even me, having exactly that set of experiences are pretty small. You could say that about a ton of books, though!

At the same time, I think most readers will see where I’m coming from in this story: the world’s big and complicated, there are no easy answers, no clear bad guys, and we’re all left trying to figure out how to live, and love, and support one another. Also, demon infestations are bad news.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING TWO SERPENTS RISE?

Probably the part where I was working a day job and planning my wedding at the same time. Max, meet fifteen minutes of writing time each day. I wrote the whole thing on an Alphasmart Neo during my commute, and between the hours of eleven and midnight.

At the end of the first draft I had a 160,000 manuscript written in barely-coherent fifteen minute chunks. Which then I had to edit.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING TWO SERPENTS RISE?

Before TWO SERPENTS RISE, I edited my books sentence-by-sentence. THREE PARTS DEAD needed very little structural work—just a lot of language polishing. The disconnected way I wrote 2SR left me with a lot more structural work before I felt comfortable showing it to anyone. I added about 20,000 words to the original manuscript—and ended up right around 100,000 words total, which means I cut about half of the original wordcount.

Half.

So, yes. I learned to edit sentence-by-sentence while writing THREE PARTS DEAD. TWO SERPENTS RISE forced me to get good and comfy with highlighting ten chapters a time and hitting the ol’ delete key. Then, when I started to write the next book, I decided to try an outline. Messed that up, too, but I keep learning!

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT TWO SERPENTS RISE?

I love the city. Dresediel Lex is sprawling low houses and adobe and neon and a skyline broken by giant pyramids left over from the God Wars—temples turned to offices and shopping malls. Faceless police patrol the city from overhead on feathered serpents. Poker players mingle their souls along with their chips. Also, it’s a sports town.

I’m really excited about the characters in this book, too. I loved writing all of them.

I love the sly Giambattista Vico reference I slid in there.

And then the ending, where [REDACTED]. That part’s so cool.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

In my first draft, I tried for a nice, atmospheric start. I wanted more room for the city and characters to breathe than the plot of THREE PARTS DEAD left me.

That’s fine—character development and worldbuilding are both important. But writing TWO SERPENTS RISE taught me that these things work best after I give readers a reason to care.

And then I had to learn a whole bunch of other stuff for the third book, but we’ll talk about that next summer!

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY.

I have somewhere on the order of a thousand children, and you’ve just asked me to choose between them. Curse you, Wendig! Here’s a nice bit:

Three distinct, sharp taps trespassed upon the hush, then three more, then the thud of a bronze-shod staff on stone. The noises repeated. A heavy robe swept over the stone floor.

Caleb held his breath.

The King in Red moved among the cubicles, wreathed in power. The taps were his triple footsteps: the bones of his heel, the ball of his foot, the twiglike toes striking in sequence. “As you were,” he said. No one stirred. Sixty years ago, the King in Red had shattered the sky over Dresediel Lex, and impaled gods on thorns of starlight. The last of his flesh had melted away decades past, leaving smooth bone and a constant grin.

He was a good boss. But who could forget what he had been, and what remained?

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

In the short term, I have an awesome interactive fiction project set in the world of the Craft Sequence. That should debut in December of this year. The fourth Craft Sequence book needs revision, and I have a comics project and another novel (unconnected with the Craft Sequence, though I will return!) on the burner. And the third Craft Sequence book, FULL FATHOM FIVE, comes out in July 2014—watch for it.

Max Gladstone: Website / Twitter

Two Serpents Rise: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound