You: *numb mumbling punctuated by hitching sobs*

Me: You okay in here?”

You: Jesus. You scared me.

Me: I’m sorry.

You: I peed a little.

Me: Like, a real little? Just a couple drops?

You: More than that.

Me: Just a little squirt?

You: More than that.

Me: Well how much are we — oh. Oh.

You: You’re staring at my pant leg, aren’t you?

Me: It’s starting to look like you just came down the log flume ride at an amusement park.

You: I peed a lot. A whole lot. I can admit that now.

Me: That’s a lot of pee. You might want to take a look at your liquid intake? But let’s just… let’s just get past that, for the moment. Let’s address your mumble-sobs.

You: It’s this story! For NaNo NooNoo Repo Weemo or whatever the hell it’s called.

Me: Well, it’s not called that. … Ennh. You know what? Not worth it. What’s wrong with the story?

You: The beginning was pretty cool, right? It was all like whiz-bang, kaboom, shit just happened, oh dang, big problem, characters on the run. And the ending I have planned is gonna be super-cray-cray-ultra bad-ass. It’ll be all like, parachuting ninjas and an exploding blue whale and then the characters will find alternate evil versions of themselves from a dark dimension where everyone wears clothing from the 1980s — like, it’s gonna be fucking nuts.

Me: Sounds like everything’s in good shape.

You: It’s not. It’s not in good shape. My story has swiftly become gorged on the junk food of boredom. His gut looks like a stack of soggy pancakes. All he does is sit on the couch, yawn, pick fragments of snack foods from his belly button, watch Spongebob Squarepants. He’s lost all tension. He’s lost all… motivation. MY STORY IS AN UGLY LUMP LIKE A GIANT WAD OF TRASH COLLECTING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

Me: Ah. The mushy middle syndrome.

You: That sounds accurate. The middle is mushy, all right. Mushy like mud. Mushy like a plate of overcooked peas. It’s just — meh, bleah, blergh.

Me: You need to tighten your story’s gut.

You: I do. He needs to work out. Get fit. Get back in the game. Except, how?

Me: Don’t worry. You’ll get the bottle, little baby. Before I get into specific tips — part of what needs to happen here is a philosophical adjustment.

You: Are you going to put something up my butt?

Me: I’m not a doctor. This is not that kind of adjustment.

You: WHEW.

Me: See, a lot of the advice you’ll read about mushy middles — including advice I’ll give — tends to be plot-focused. Start turning dials and knobs on tension and conflict and mystery and randomly insert MOAR PROBLEMS HERE PLZ. And that’s true, to a point, but doing that can also lend itself to another version of the mushy middle. That version feels exciting because OH LOOK WACKY SHITCRAP IS HAPPENING but none of it has any real bearing on the central characters, none of it reflects your theme, none of it has much to do with story. It’s artificial plot contrivance. It’s you just jackhammering needless event into the tale you’re telling. That doesn’t make for good story. It just makes a mechanical exercise that ends up unwittingly reeking of tedium.

You: You mean like how I reek of pee.

Me: Yes.

You: That sounds bad.

Me: It can be, because the problem isn’t not enough plot. The problem is, not enough character, or character with too small a problem. Or perhaps: I do not yet know my character and her problems well enough, as yet. And so I suggest a focus on — drum roll please! — the characters.

You: I don’t know what that means, “not enough character.” Like, she’s a character, she exists in the story, she’s got hands and feet and stuff.

Me: I don’t mean hands and feet and stuff. I mean that every character has layers, man. Strata piled upon strata. And a story is you pulling apart those layers. To expose. To diminish. To reveal. To damage. It’s like you tearing into a delicious, sticky slice of baklava.

You: Isn’t that the kind of mask you use to rob banks?

Me: That is a balaclava.

You: No, I think the balaclava is an instrument used in an oompah band.

Me: I hate you and shut up for a minute.

You: You’ve got thirty seconds, but okay.

Me: You need to go back to your characters. You need to rip ’em down to the studs and see what’s there. Who are these people? What is their central problem? What has driven them to this journey? Examine the “give-a-fuck” factor — why do we care about them? See, the way you tighten the belt on the mushy middle isn’t just creating conflict by inserting obstacles between them and their goal: it’s creating drama by making those obstacles matter to the characters. Drama is an important notion, so please emblazon it upon your face with a tattoo gun.

You: I admit, I tuned out a little bit there, because my pee-soaked pant-leg is starting to get very cold. Pee is so warm in the beginning it’s almost nice but then it gets icy and I am no longer a fan.

Me: I am disturbed that you were once a fan of pissing yourself.

You: It was a phase. I’m over it. To go back to what you were saying: can I get an example?

Me: Like, it’s one thing to stick your character in an oubliette just as she needs to be saving the day. But it’s a whole other thing sticking her in an oubliette with another character that matters to her — a brother she despises, a nemesis who also needs to escape, an old friend who betrayed her. The oubliette represents a basic physical conflict: an obstacle that must be overcome. But you create a kind of emotional, relationship conflict — aka, “drama” — by putting that other character in the hole with her. It makes it more meaningful. And, frankly, more interesting. But it doesn’t need to just be another character. The drama could be internalized, too.

You: Gastrointestinal distress, you mean.

Me: I mean, when Luke Skywalker ends up in that cave on Dagobah, he’s confronting the fears about his father and, in a sense, confronting himself. Which is of course why, when he chops Vader’s face off, he sees himself staring back. Trippy, right?

You: DUDE SPOILERS

Me: We are well past the sell-by date on Star Wars spoilers, jerk. Here are more examples: The labyrinth that Sarah has to conquer in Labyrinth is very much a labyrinth of her own making — even assuming it’s real and not a dream, it’s the labyrinth she “summoned” by summoning Goblin David Bowie and his magical yam-bag. The same could be said of Coraline, who summons a button-eyed artifice that thinks itself her mother. Characters like Katniss and Ripley are often alone, and their challenges are ones that reflect their survivor nature and are wholly appropriate to the characters (both of whom are kind of lone wolf think-for-yourselfers). And those challenges only get worse for all of these characters. Which leads us to our next important term —

You: Brobdingnagian?

Me: No, it’s —

You: Angiosperm.

Me: Where are you getting this? No, the word is —

You: Capybara! That’s it. It’s capybara. Nailed it.

Me: ESCALATION. The word is escalation.

You: I’m a little let down. I was hoping for ‘capybara.’

Me: If you don’t shut up, I’ll send a rabid one to eat yourface. No, listen, escalation is key to the eradication of the mushy middle. Physical exercise requires escalation — increasing effort, maximizing challenge — and so too must you escalate the conflict and drama that surrounds your characters. Once you’ve identified the problem in the first act — within the first 25% or so of the story — it’s time to turn the screws and twist the knife. It’s not about introducing new overarching conflicts or creating drama out of thin air. It’s about seizing the opportunity to escalate the conflict and drama already present. Turn up the volume. Make things harder on the characters, not easier. John McClane goes from trying to save his wife from terrorists to having to deal with an inept LAPD, a psychotic FBI, an increasingly savvy set of terrorists, bloody feet, reduced ammunition, and hostages who are about to be eradicated (which of course, includes his wife). You take the set-up and core problem of Die Hard — “NY cop who wants to reconcile with his almost ex-wife gets trapped in a building taken over by terrorists” — and then keep escalating that problem. The anchor of that piece is the separation from his wife. It’s true in the sense that they’re separated in career and marriage, and now they’re physically separated by Hans Gruber and his ethnically-diverse not-really-terrorist crew. All the things that happen in the film only widen that gulf and threaten to make the separation of John and Holly permanent.

You: You and fucking Die Hard, jeez.

Me: Die Hard is a perfect slice of narrative cake. It contains all the necessary layers.

You: YOU WANT MIRACLES I GIVE YOU THE EFF-A-BEE-EYE

Me: …

You: I’m ready to go write now.

Me: But I’m not done talking.

You: JESUS GOD SHUT UP but okay fine keep talking.

Me: The point is, keep hurting your characters. Make things harder before you make them easier, and when you do make them easier, make them immediately harder again. Every triumph is beset by two more setbacks. The pain you deliver shouldn’t just be physical. It’s gotta be emotional, too. John McClane’s glass-fucked feet aren’t bad just because they’re bloody and shitted up. They’re bad because his feet are the one thing that can carry him back to his wife. The hurt you bring’s gotta go deep, man. You’ve got to make them really feel it. And to do that you have to know your characters. You have to tailor conflict and drama to the character(s) and to the problem(s) at hand.

You: Cool. Any more tips, Mister-Can’t-Shut-Up-About-Stuff?

Me: Sure. Just when the reader thinks they know where you’re going, go somewhere else. Twist and turn in their grip like a cantankerous viper. (Related: 25 Turns, Pivots, And Twists To Complicate Your Story.) To knock the mud off your boots, try a change of location. Or a POV shift to another character. Or even a jump in time, or a flashback, or the introduction of a subplot. Your story is heading in a straight line, and as I’ve noted before — fuck the straight line. Juke left. Jump right. Zig-zag. Show the status quo a pair of pistoning middle fingers.

You: Switch it up, is what you’re saying.

Me: Yeah. Go nuts. Keep yourself interested.

You: I’ll do that. Hey, can I tell you something?

Me: You don’t need to thank me. I know I’m a big help.

You: That’s not what I was going to say.

Me: What were you going to say?

You: I totally just peed again.

Me: OH GODDAMNIT

Tumblr is basically a sentient computer network that is trying to communicate with us via pop culture memes. At least, that’s what I once assumed, though as a person with a Tumblr, I am increasingly assured that real human beings are behind it.

These days, when you go onto Tumblr — or, as I like to think of it, fall headlong into the bottomless pit of semi-amusement that Tumblr represents — you will indeed see a great deal of pop culture memery, and as of late it is not unreasonable to expect to see a great deal of Thor and Loki pop culture memery in particular. People love Thor. People really love Loki — and they also love his proxy in this human realm, Tom Hiddleston, aka, “Hiddles.”

You might further see the occasional objectification of Thor or Loki. They are topless and sexy and they will be shown for their toplessness or sexiness.

Which, you know, hey: these are sexy gentlemen. If I looked like either of them, I’d be running around shirtless non-stop. I’d be at the bus stop, the grocery store, the drunk tank — just, boom, long hair, no shirt, some oil on my hairless chest, I’d just be —

Shit, I’d just be working it.

Still, you might be the type to think — or even to say, on social media — “Hey, jeez, men aren’t supposed to objectify women, but women can apparently objectify men? We will be chastised for our gaze, but they will not be chastised for theirs?”

And then someone might comment on that particular nugget of social media and add, “Right, and they can ‘ship together two dudes into a gay relationship but if I ‘ship together two ladies into a lesbian relationship, I’m a sexist asshat.”

Thus begins a discussion that essentially looks at the search for equality and suggests that equal is not really equal, whereas one group can get away with a special kind of sexism or racism while simultaneously shouting down the sexism or racism of others. And eventually this all leads to the classic example of, how can black people use the N-word but white people can’t. Or a further devolution might ask why women get feminism but men can’t get dude-ism (see Joss Whedon’s recent misguided repudiation of the word “feminist” for a softball shit-the-bed version of this). Or, even creepier, African-Americans get “black power” but white people can’t have “white power.” And on and on; there exist justifications all the way down.

Abstractly, intellectually, some of this would seem to make sense. Oh, well, sure, if we’re all equal, then we should all be equal in the same way. No double standards here, no sir, no ma’am, that would only undo the very search for equality in the first place.

But like I said earlier, equal isn’t really equal.

Legally, we’re all equal, you know, more or less. We can all vote. We can all drive. On paper, we’re all allowed the same pursuit of life, liberty, happiness, cable TV, iPhones, Tumblr, shirtless Thor-and-Loki. But culturally, endemically, we’re not really equal. White people — in particular, white dudes, and even more particular, heteronormative white dudes with some cash in the ol’ bank accounts — get a gold-standard version of equality. Like, were I to use an airplane metaphor, we’re all allowed to fly and go to the same place, but the heteronormative white dudes get more legroom, free and better drinks, hot towels, all that happy shit.

Or, to go back to that cable TV half-a-joke I just made, okay, sure, we’re all allowed to buy cable TV, but these white dudes are the ones who can afford it (they make more money than women and minorities). And they’re the ones who run the cable companies. And who direct and write most of the shows and star in most of the shows and — well, you get the picture, right?

I mean, hey. Thor and Loki? Both heteronormative white dudes in mythology, in the stories, and reportedly as actors. Thor 2: The Dark World is a film written by a white dude. Directed by a white dude. The poster is a lotta white dudes. The black dude on the poster is ill-seen. The lead actress, Natalie Portman, appears classically demure — a damsel in distress pressing herself against the white dude’s chest as if for protection. (The other woman on the poster appears slightly more bad-ass, though is not shown being bad-ass so much as she’s shown concealed behind the might of Thor.) We can have Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man. But we can’t have a Black Cat film. Or a Wonder Woman movie. You know?

This isn’t meant to be an indictment against any of these films — I’ve not yet seen Thor 2 — but this rambly jumble of thoughts is there to remind you that what we have here is a very strong legacy forged in favor of the heteronormative white dude (heretofore referred to as HWD).

It’s easy to say, “Yes, it’s wrong for men to objectify women and so it must also be wrong for women to objectify men!” — but here, you may find more value in shoving words like “right” and “wrong” off the table and instead replacing them with a different term:

Result.

As in, what is the result?

The result of men objectifying women is stacking more weight on an already imbalanced scale. It’s contributing, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, toward that legacy I’m talking about. A legacy of unequal pay, a legacy of cultural separation, a legacy of rape culture and other forms of victimization. It adds to that legacy while robbing something from a whole group of people.

The result of women objectifying men is — what? Again, not asking about right or wrong but — what happens? I’m still Mister Lucky over here. You objectify me and I still won the HWD lottery. I’m still likelier to get paid more, to get the jobs, to get the kudos, to get to be a hero Daddy, to get to be the rule-setter. I’m still going to have a better shot at being a CEO. Or a politician. Or, or, or.

I point all this out not as a finger-waggling tongue-clucking judge and jury against the HWD. I point this all out as an HWD who has in the past wondered some of this stuff and had go ahead and open his eyes and see that, yes, there’s more going on here than maybe I imagined. It’s hard to see the forest because of all these white dude trees, you know? We like to think it’s keen to aspire to a color-blind world but the result of that is usually that white people are just blind to people of color. Whedon wants us to put the word “feminism” away, but all that would really result in is putting away feminists and, by proxy, those who are female.

So, when it comes to things like men’s rights or presumed double-standards or why we can’t join in on the cultural appropriation of bigoted words — maybe we need to think about the consequence of all this instead of whether something seems right or seems wrong.

More to the point —

Maybe we just need to suck it up and be allies for others instead of allies for ourselves.

Postscript to all this: I’ve been sitting on this for a couple days because I’m always nervous — worried not that I’m going to offend somebody, which is par for the course around here, but because this is sensitive stuff and I’m a certified HWD who has all kinds of secret little prejudices and unrecognized bullshit I’m probably not even aware of. I don’t want to try to play the hero and drum my chest and say, “Now that a white guy has brought this up, we can canonize it.” This is all very easy for me to say, and I’m going to get stuff wrong from time to time because of all this baggage and privilege and the sweet leg-room and free drinks and hot towels. Let me know if you think I’m off here — and, obviously, please play together politely in the comments because otherwise I’ll dump you in the spam oubliette where your shrieks will find no ears.

Second Postscript: I won’t link to the original discussion that led me to write this post, in part because I don’t want to send more signal into noise, and further, it’s already gone, poof, someone took it down. It was a trail I’d followed reading stuff about the Joss Whedon “genderist” speech — and his speech is probably a whole other post for a whole other day.

1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience

Buy From: Writer’s Digest / Amazon / B&N / iBooks / Indiebound

Check the book out on: Goodreads

The Official Description

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? Where do I start?

The best way to answer these questions is to ditch your uncertainty and transform yourself into a KICK-ASS writer. Wendig will show you how with 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.

You’ll explore the fundamentals of writing, learn how to obtain publication, and master the skills you need to build an army of dedicated fans. No task is too large or small for the kick-ass writer. With his trademark acerbic wit and gut-punch humor, Wendig will explain:

How to build suspense, craft characters, and defeat writer’s block.

How to write a scene, an ending — even a sentence.

Blogging techniques, social media skills, and crowdfunding.

How to write a query letter, talk to agents, and deal with failure — and success!

Whether you’re just starting out or you need one more push to get you over the top, two things are certain — a kick-ass writer never quits, and Chuck Wendig won’t let you down in this high-octane guide to becoming the writer you were born to be!

Hey, What The Hell Is This?

This is a compilation of a lot of the “25 Things” post from this here website. It contains a lot of stuff you’ve seen before, plus some new entries (crowdfunding! hybrid authors! writing a scene!). And the whole thing has been revised top to bottom — cleaned up and tightened with the EDITORIAL WRENCH. *ratchet ratchet ratchet*

Oh, and it’s my first writing book in print.

So, if you want my advice in hardcopy? That’s how you get it, thanks to Writer’s Digest.

Wait, Is It Still Super-Vulgar?

My writing talk tends to fall into the “hard-R NSFW” and “occasionally eye-bulgingly profane and probably NSFL” categories. This book ain’t quite as hardcore as all that, and is probably equivalent to a soft-R rating or even PG-13 rating. (The biggest edit in this case was, quite honestly, removing the instances of the word ‘fuck.’ Though I love the word, one hopes my writing and storytelling blather still holds up without that particular dash of spicy lingo.)

I am totally good with having a book of writing advice out there that isn’t quite as naughtily-tongued as this blog, because here some teachers and professors may be more comfortable using this material without having to first attack it with a black permanent marker or camping hatchet.

Why Should I Buy It?

Because, hey, it’s a whole bucket of writing tips in one place.

Because it’s the one way you can get my writing bloggerel in physical form. (Also, now that it has been summoned into this corporeal plane it can be killed by a pitchfork forged from nun-kissed steel. IT IS OUR ONLY HOPE WE ONLY HAVE ONE CHANCE.)

Because it’s nicely organized! And has an index!

Because it refrains from every giving you the One True Way to be a writer and instead prefers the metric assload of options crammed in this here toolbox approach.

Because you want to give something back to this blog.

Because it’s this blog distilled down and oozed forth onto bookstore shelves and HOLY CRAP HOW AWESOME IS THAT? *vibrates through the floor*

Because if you don’t I’ll send this chimpanzee to your house.

Thanks, folks! If you check it out, please enjoy.

If not: would you mind spreading the word via your social media channels or the telepathic tentacle-bundle you share with all your other psychic buddies?

Last week’s challenge: “1667.”

Once again, time to write just the opening line to a new story.

No more than 15 words long.

Plop your opening line in the comment section below. Only one entry, please.

Then, the following week, it will be the task of other writers to pick one opening line that they will use in a new piece of flash fiction.

If you write the line that is most chosen by other authors, I’ll send you a signed physical copy of my new writing book, The Kick-Ass Writer. I’m not doing the picking, so your goal is to write a line that excites other writers enough for them to write a story using that opening line.

Tricky? Could be.

So, get to writing.

You’ve got one week — due by Friday, November 15th, noon EST.

(I’ll send the physical book and pay for shipping if you’re in the United States. Outside the country, you’ll have to front the shipping, I’m afraid, or be okay with an e-book copy.)

I have it on good authority that I don’t need to tell you who John Picacio is. Oh, hello, sci-fi and fantasy artist with a metric fuckload of awards and nominations? He’s put together a helluva Kickstarter that’s got a week left, and I’m honored to have him here talking about his take on the Mexican card game, Loteria. Here he is to talk about it a little and, OOOH PRETTY, demonstrate some of the magnum-sized art-tacular bad-assery he’s bringing to the table this time around:

How many of you out there have heard of the Mexican game of chance called Loteria? Even better — how many of you have played it?

If you know how Bingo is played, then you know how to play Loteria. If you’ve eaten in a Mexican restaurant, then chances are you may have glimpsed Loteria images.

The original game looks like this:

I played it as a kid with my mother and grandma. I loved the icons on those cards. They’re a constellation of the everyday mixed with the otherworldly — a quintessentially Mexican combination.

What would happen if these cards weren’t just cartoonish icons? What would happen if I re-engineered those fifty-four cards with new artwork by me and fashioned them as a deck of Mexican Tarot? Here’s a peek:

Here’s the ‘La Sirena’ card from the traditional Loteria game:

Here’s my ‘La Sirena’ card from my new Loteria:

Here’s the ‘El Pescado’ card from the traditional Loteria game:

Here’s my ‘El Pescado’ card from my new Loteria:

Here’s the ‘El Arpa’ card from the traditional Loteria game:

Here’s my ‘El Arpa’ card from my new Loteria:

Here’s the ‘La Rosa’ card from the traditional Loteria game:

Here’s my ‘La Rosa’ card from my new Loteria:

Getting the idea?

I’ll finish the first dozen artworks before the end of 2013, in time to be featured as my 2014 John Picacio Calendar. I want to finish the entire set of fifty-four artworks by the end of 2014. It will be like climbing Mount Everest, but I’m committed to making this new modern Mexican Tarot into a reality.

It’s going to be an amazing art ride, and I invite you to be a part of it.

You: I suck.

Me: So, NaNoWriMo is going well, then.

You: It’s making me feel like a shitty writer is what it’s doing.

Me: That’s a shame.

You: No kidding. I think this thing I’m writing is crap.

Me: It probably is.

You: That is maybe the worst motivational speech I’ve ever heard. “That thing you’re writing is probably poopshit so you might as well give up and go dunk your head in a bucket of cat piss.”

Me: No, no, don’t do that. If you’re going to dunk your head in any kind of animal urine, you have to specify: tiger urine. Tiger urine is full of magical powers. Tiger blood, too. Actually, all tiger-based fluids are useful for giving you superpowers, including heroic erections and/or powerful labia — like, labia so powerful they can crush steel I-beams with the sound of a thunderclap.

You: Well, I don’t have any tiger piss, all I have is this shitty first draft that I’m going to not finish because I do not want to commit more shittiness to the page and into the world.

Me: See, you’re missing the real opportunity, here.

You: Opportunity?

Me: The opportunity to suck.

You: That sounds like the opposite of an opportunity. An opposurtunity.

Me: Giving yourself permission to suck — even just a little bit — is actually quite freeing. I mean, let’s clarify: you’re writing a first — or even a zero — draft for NaNoWriMo. You could argue that the value of the 50k draft that will be birthed wet and struggling from this process is that you can use it as a very robust outline/treatment for the rewrite. And you’re not relegated to one-draft-and-done. You get as many of these as you like. I think it was Delilah Dawson who said that it’s like a video game with endless lives. You get as many chances as you need to get it right.

You: I just get more chances to suck, you mean.

Me: Sure! Yes! You do. Isn’t that a little bit liberating? Most jobs you get one, maybe two chances, to get your work correct. To thread the needle, to get a hole-in-one, to bullseye that womprat.

You: Bullseyeing the Womprat is the weirdest sex euphemism I’ve heard.

Me: Can I tell you a story?

You: Is it about that time with the gallon of lube, the chimpanzee, and the salad bar at Wendy’s? That story always makes me super-queasy, and yet… somewhat aroused at the same time?

Me: It is not that story.

You: Oh, okay. Then go ahead.

Me: It took me five years to write Blackbirds. And in that time I wrote — jeez, I don’t know how many drafts of that book. Five? Six? They were terrible. I go back sometimes and I look at them, and all I can do is make that face that looks like I’m smelling shit somewhere, like maybe the stink is on my shoe, or my hands. But really, the stink was on those pages. Bloated, meandering story pages. But I needed to write those pages. I needed to suck! I needed to suck in order to learn how not to suck. Any task demands a level of practice and course correction — and what you get out of that is a thing worth more than a monkey made of gold: you cultivate sweet precious instinct.

You: Feeling a little better. Go on…

Me: The thing is, going back and looking at those pages, I can see the twinkling gems buried in all the fetid ordure, too. Like, turns of phrase I’d eventually go on to use, or ideas that would appear in the final draft or in some later book. But all that fetid ordure was part of it. A key part!

You: Sucking is a necessary evil, you’re saying.

Me: Necessary and an almost certain part of the process. If you try something new — running a mile, hitting a fastball, hunting humans for their meat, building a giant doom-bot — you don’t expect to get it right on the first fucking try, do you? No. You do not. But somehow art fails to deserve the same slack in the rope. You can’t write a bestselling novel or paint a Louvre-ready watercolor right out of the gate, yet with inevitable suckitude you’re all ready to burn everything to the ground and go and commit to a life as some cubicle-monkey somewhere.

You: Nothing wrong with being a cubicle-monkey, Mister Judgeypants.

Me: Didn’t say there was! Particularly if that’s what you want to do. But if you want to be a writer, then write. And suck. And write your way through the suck.

You: I just feel like NaNoWriMo concentrates too much on quantity and not enough on quality.

Me: It does. And it’s not an entirely invalid criticism — but, that’s part of its design. Yeah, sure, this process is all about quantity over quality. But to get to quality, you first have to create a quantity. You have to commit to a word count. You have to fill pages. You have to finish this draft to get to the next draft.

You: So, sucking is a kind of gauntlet.

Me: It is. An instructive one. Plus, NaNoWriMo has an Everest-like quality to it. You climb Mt. Everest and get to the top, nobody gives a shit how well you did it. You made it to the top and you’re alive and you weren’t molested by some Yeti and you didn’t fall down some kind of ice crevasse. Finishing a first draft of a book, no matter how sucktastic, is a thing worth celebrating. That’s not the end of the work, not by any stretch, but it’s a strong first foot forward.

You: Still, don’t you think 1667 words per day is kinda demanding?

Me: *laughs so hard he throws up*

You: Why are you pukelaughing?

Me: Because I write 2-3k per day. It’s demanding, sure, but hey: ART DEMANDS.

You: But aren’t you afraid that speed kills quality?

Me: Are you trying to convince me that my work sucks?

You: Wh… uh, well, no?

Me: I see the criticism that NaNoWriMo is all about speed and with speed you lose quality and blah blah blah — that’s a toxic meme. A meme that has literally no bearing on actual writing reality. First: it assumes that speed-of-output is tied to quality. It’s not. It took me five years to write Blackbirds. It took me 30 days to write the sequel, Mockingbird, and I think the second book is far stronger than the first. (It took me about 45 days to write The Cormorant, which comes out soon.) Second: it assumes that, again, your draft is one and done, that you’ll never write another draft. It took me a little over a month to bang out the first draft of Under the Empyrean Sky and a full year of tweaks and full rewrites to get it up to speed. It took me two months to write The Blue Blazes, and two months to edit/rewrite. Every book is different. Every book gets whatever time it needs and whatever time you’re willing to give it. This isn’t science. No equation says a swiftly-written book is just a lump of dross. And nothing says that a bad first draft can’t be written into a fucking amazing second draft. Or third. Or thirteenth. We write till it’s right.

You: This is actually sort of helpful.

Me: Once in a while, I manage.

You: So I’m allowed to suck.

Me: Encouraged, even.

You: So I can be a real writer, now?

Me: The real writer writes. See the graphic at the fore of the post, if you please.

You: Cool. Now, if only you can help me catch up. I’m behind on my word count.

Me: We’ll talk about that one a little later.

You: TEASE.