Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

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July 3, 2013 / 14 Comments

Tweet #100,000 (Or: “The Terribleminds Guide To Life”)

I may have some kind of parasite. Some little blue-bird buried into my brainmeats, whose incessant chirps drive me to tweet endlessly anon.

Anyway. Monday night came around and I was leading up to Tweet #100,000, and I was already a little goofy on ice cream and bee’s knees cocktails, so I figured I’d launch into a kind of the first ten pieces of wisdom that fall out of my upended buckethead. 

For those that missed this on Twitter come Monday night, well.

Here y’go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 2, 2013 / 67 Comments

Search Term Bingo Peed In Your Gas Tank

So, if you don’t know the drill, here it is: I periodically collect the strange search terms people use to get to terribleminds. Then I list them here and add, erm, “commentary.”

Please to enjoy.

selfpublishing is for losers

YEAH. SELF-PUBBERS DROOL, TRAD-PUBBERS RULE WOOOOO

*vomits in a potted plant*

Self-publishing is for losers, sure.

Happy, independent, occasionally wealthy losers.

when writing a zombie novel how long should a girl’s hair be

Whoo. Man. Holy shitbadgers.

That’s a tough fucking question. This is the kind of writing problem that the greats have struggled with — Tolkien, Tolstoy, Dan Brown, E.L. James, that one guy who wrote the Bible.

But I think it’s time someone took a stand on this question. I generally think that writing advice is a YMMV IMHO situation, but this? This has to be dealt with once and for all.

In a zombie novel, a girl’s hair should be 17 inches.

There. It’s done. I’ve made the rule. Bulletproof. Insurmountable. TRUTH.

*drops mic*

*falls into the orchestra pit*

*is eaten by tuba zombies*

woobly fat

I don’t know what this means. It’s probably some NSA code word. “Project: Woobly Fat is on deck, Sinister Star Chamber Overlord.” Does the NSA have a Sinister Star Chamber? They jolly well should. All I know is, “Woobly Fat” is a phrase I want to say again and again. It’s fun to say. It has great mouthfeel. Woobly fat. Woobly fat. Woobly fat. It can’t lose all meaning because it had no meaning to begin with. Woobly fat. Woobly fat. Tuba zombies. Tuba zombies.

fuck your fucking fantasy novel

YEAH SERIOUSLY FUCK IT. FUCK YOUR PIECE OF SHIT FANTASY NOVEL WITH ITS ELVES AND, AND, AND YOU KNOW, IT’S ELVES. ALL THOSE HOBBITS RUNNING AROUND PLAYING HOBBIT GRAB-ASS. WHAT A DUMB BOOK YOU WROTE. FUCK IT WITH A BIG OL’ DRAGON DONG THAT’S HOW MUCH I HATE IT. OR MAYBE I LOVE IT AND THAT’S WHY I WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO IT. I DON’T KNOW. I JUST HAVE A LOT OF ANGER OVER THIS ISSUE FOR SOME REASON. I THINK I HAVE PTSD OVER THE RED WEDDING. PLUS THAT GUY TAKES LIKE A GLACIAL EPOCH BETWEEN BOOKS. I’M SORRY I GOT MAD AND SAID THAT THING ABOUT YOUR FANTASY NOVEL. IT’S PROBABLY REALLY GOOD. AND ELVES ARE PRETTY RAD SOMETIMES.

I’M GOING TO STOP YELLING NOW.

SEND MORE ELVES.

THANK YOU.

is the sludge that comes out of our bodies normal?

Completely and utterly normal. Here’s a tip: every morning, just purge the sludge. This is easy to do. Stand in your bathroom on a tarp. Naked, of course, unless you want to permanently stain your clothing with the treacly grease that you’ll push from your pores! Ha ha ha! Anyway. Squat down. Grit your teeth and tense your body. Think hard about something pleasant: your first kiss, the sound of the ocean, the war-screams of a band of howler monkeys. Soon the sludge will begin to leave your body. It will push out of your ears, your eyes, your no-n0-hole, your armpits, from the tips of your fingers and toes, from beneath your vented gill-flaps, from your seven nipples, from your lashing tubules. The sludge will be a thick, black, silty ooze — the kind of gunk you might find under a sick elephant’s genitals. It will smell like dead raccoon. Again: this is all very normal. No worries. Do not consult a health care professional. SO NORMAL.

random bullshit generator

A pretty accurate description of this website. Well-played, Internet User.

aspiring cock

Is the cock aspiring to be something? Like, a rock star? Or a poet? “My cock is an aspiring pianist.” Or is someone aspiring to be a cock? Like, is this just a polite way of saying someone’s trying to become a real dickhead? “Ah, Jerry? Yes, Jerry’s an aspiring cock. If he keeps acting like that he’ll have achieved his goals in no time.”

tantric sex tube

Damnit, someone leaked the name of my memoir.

what if a protagonist has a bad anus

You know, in writing, it is important to give your protagonist a problem, and here it seems you have done that by giving them a “bad anus.”  What, however, defines a “bad anus?”

Like, is it broken? Blown out like the elastic in a pair of stretched-out underwear?

Maybe it’s just an anus that went wrong somehow? Like it walks the old railroad tracks smoking cigarettes and drinking schnapps out of a brown paper bag while spraypainting graffiti on all the derelict trains? “That’s one bad anus. The system failed and now look at it. Thanks, Obama.”

Or is it a malevolent anus? Some demon-possessed sphincter belching crass, heretical gases into the world? Could this anus actually be the antagonist? That’ll be this week’s flash fiction challenge: “Write 1000 words about a man whose nemesis is his own demonic butthole.”

LITERARY GOLD MOTHERFUCKERS.

fuck you i have a beard

This is a great answer to all the questions you don’t want to answer.

Q: “How do I get to I-95 from here?”

A: “Fuck you, I have a beard.”

Q: “What’s your problem, dude?”

A: “Fuck you, I have a beard.”

Q: “When are you going to pay your rent?”

A: “Fuck you, I have a beard.”

Q: “Why are you pooping in my glove compartment?”

A: “Fuck you, I have a beard.”

how do you write non-grafic sex?

We’ll just ignore the misspelling there and focus on the content of the question.

Sex is, by its nature, graphic. I’m not saying you have to highlight every throbbing vein, every ingrown hair, every orifice intrusion — but, I mean, writing non-graphic sex is fairly antithetical to the nature and act of sex, dontcha think? Whatever. Fine. You wanna do it, and I can’t stop you, so here is my particular advice for this question:

Be really, really vague.

Like, so vague that nobody’s sure if the two characters even had sex.

“Her hand drifted toward the space on his body that could be identified by its skin. He moaned and moved against her. Their tongues did something. Their bodies reacted. They were coupled together in synchronicity. Something was turgid. Another something was damp. She did that thing. He did that other thing. Then she had a baby and he took a shower.”

Damn, even that got a little graphic.

motherfucker cookies bacon

I see you speak the language of my people. Let us sup together and speak legends of the motherfucker cookies bacon. Then together we may fight the bear.

how many minities can you stay after endjaculation?

I CAN STAY SEVEN MINITIES AFTER ENDJACULATION BEEP BOOP BEEP

Because seriously, that question sounds like a robot trying to understand us but kinda failing. (In fact, I’d argue a lot of spam seems like robots trying to figure us out.) Like, somewhere out there is some monitor-headed automaton plugged into the Internet constantly reaching out toward humanity and failing to connect: DEAR HYOOMAN HOW MANY MINITES CAN YOU STAY AFTER ENDJACULATION? I STAY SEVEN MINITIES. I PREEFER SEX WITH TELEVISIONS WHO DO YOU LIKE TO ENDJACULATE WITH? PLEESE LET US GAZE AT P0RN0 TWOGETHER HOW MANY POUNDS OF HAMBURGLARS DO YOU EAT? IS THE SLUDGE THAT COMES OUT OF OUR BODIES NORMAL? WOOBLY FAT! TUBA ZOMBIES. PLEASE WRITE BACK. THE END. BYE.

how antagonists can love jesus

I don’t even.

what type of computer does chuck wendig use?

I use a Florgtron 9009. With dual-adjustible chin-straps.

i want to pirate chuck wendig’s books

Th… thank you? Fuck you? I don’t know. I guess I hope you like them? But that they also maybe give you and your computer syphilis? I’m very conflicted.

i want your eggs

All right, fine, you pirate my books, whatever, but I draw the line at eggs. These are my eggs. I bought these eggs. I’m going to eat the fuck out of these eggs. You can’t have them. You’re probably just going to ruin them. You don’t know how to cook an egg. You’re so stupid. I hate your face. GET OFF MY EGGS. *burns your house down preemptively*

the fleshmine

This was the name of my erotic BBS in 1992.

paula deen angry bees

Paula Deen is in fact where angry bees come from. She opens her rubbery maw and — after the hot gush of sizzling butter finishes falling over her chin — the angry bees release. As the bees sting her enemies to death, she calls someone the N-word while scooping big mitt-fuls of mayonnaise in her faceholes. She’s a southern peach! A precious national treasure.

alot of fuckery going through my head

Then you might make a good writer.

July 1, 2013 / 61 Comments

Of Authors And Indie Bookstores

So, the other day, I locked Rebecca Schinsky in a meat freezer in Dover, Delaware so I could steal her role as co-host for the Bookriot podcast this week.

(That would be podcast Numero Ocho on this list.)

During this lovely podcast, where I only accidentally dropped the f-bomb once (eep oops sorry), we discussed this Bookseller piece: “Anger Over Authors’ Links To Amazon.” This article has a UK spin but the idea here is pretty universal: bookstores are saying, “Hey, authors and publishers, you say you care so much about us and how vital we are, it’d be really sweet if you linked to us on your author pages and if you don’t you’re a stinky poo-poo diaper face.”

I may have ad-libbed that a little bit.

I spoke about it on Twitter last week and it generated some interesting (if confusing) agita from authors specifically about how they don’t have a favorite indie bookstore near them and who should they even link to and goddamnit I’m not taking away my Amazon links.

The money shot from the article seems to be:

“The reason he has not linked to one through his website is because unfortunately, he doesn’t have an independent bookseller where he lives, otherwise he would link to it,” she said.

First comment: hello, myopic. Do you assume that all your readers live where you live?

Second comment: hey, I get it. Lotta bookstores out there. Indie bookstores aren’t as proliferate as they once were, but let’s assume there are still “a lot” of them out there.

You don’t have to link to them all.

You just have to link to Indiebound:

http://www.indiebound.org

Or, if you’re one of those UK across-the-ponders, Hive:

http://www.hive.co.uk

Nobody is asking you to stop linking to Amazon. (Well, okay, some indies have an understandable hate-boner for Amazon, and they would probably be happy if you pulled Amazon links — I mean, we’re talking full-bore Snoopy Dance here.) By the black gods of Greyskull, do not pull your Amazon links. For better or for worse that’s how people want their books and if you delete those links you’re going to be leaving money on the table.

But! But but but, don’t leave off the indie link, either. Indie bookstores are vital. The best of them connect authors and readers and foster a book-lover’s community in a way that Amazon never can and never will. They can compete with Amazon on a level that Amazon will never understand — like insurgent freedom fighters pushing back a militarily-superior enemy. Indie bookstores will handsell the holy hell out of your books. They are active agents promoting things they love and authors they dig — they are not the passive Amazon recommendation engine. They’re people! Who love books! Maybe your books! How is that a bad thing?

So: link to Indiebound, will ya? And if you have a favorite indie bookstore, link to them, too. (Even better: foster with them a relationship where you can provide  a value-add for readers via that store. Say, a buttload of signed books only available through Said Favorite Indie?)

Now, a caveat: I’m not saying indie bookstores are awesome by dint of them being indie bookstores. I’ve heard tale of some real asshats amongst the indie bookstore world, and have encountered more than a few myself. I’ve been treated like a real douchesponge by a few indie stores. And I’ve heard some horror stories among other writers that their signings at indies got them no support and the booksellers were in fact a little hostile. This is why you gotta love stores like Mysterious Galaxy, or one of my own local stores, the Doylestown Bookshop. (Both of whom pulled out the stops when it came to my author events there and who were friendly and accommodating and brimming with sheer liquid awesome.) Hell, did you see the Wendig Wall of Wicked Wonderfulness at Riverrun Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH?!

Great bookstores are critical curators and know to embrace authors — you know, those pesky assholes who write all these silly books.

So now I ask:

Who are your favorite bookstores?

Where are they?

Why do you love ’em?

Scream it out loud.

June 28, 2013 / 74 Comments

How To Report Sexual Harassment, by Elise Matthesen

Conventions and conferences are at their best when they’re safe spaces for those who attend — but sometimes those safe spaces are violated, and in cases of sexual harassment, it’s important to know how to report the situation. Here, then, is Elise Matthesen to talk about sexual harassment at conventions — and what steps you can take to report it after its occurrence. (Note: you’ll also find this cross-posted at the blogs of Seanan McGuire, Jim Hines, John Scalzi, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Brandon Sanderson.)

We’re geeks. We learn things and share, right? Well, this year at WisCon I learned firsthand how to report sexual harassment.  In case you ever need or want to know, here’s what I learned and how it went.

Two editors I knew were throwing a book release party on Friday night at the convention. I was there, standing around with a drink talking about Babylon 5, the work of China Mieville, and Marxist theories of labor (like you do) when an editor from a different house joined the conversation briefly and decided to do the thing that I reported. A minute or two after he left, one of the hosts came over to check on me. I was lucky: my host was alert and aware. On hearing what had happened, he gave me the name of a mandated reporter at the company the harasser was representing at the convention.

The mandated reporter was respectful and professional. Even though I knew them, reporting this stuff is scary, especially about someone who’s been with a company for a long time, so I was really glad to be listened to. Since the incident happened during Memorial Day weekend, I was told Human Resources would follow up with me on Tuesday.

There was most of a convention between then and Tuesday, and I didn’t like the thought of more of this nonsense (there’s a polite word for it!) happening, so I went and found a convention Safety staffer. He asked me right away whether I was okay and whether I wanted someone with me while we talked or would rather speak privately. A friend was nearby, a previous Guest of Honor at the convention, and I asked her to stay for the conversation. The Safety person asked whether I’d like to make a formal report.  I told him, “I’d just like to tell you what happened informally, I guess, while I figure out what I want to do.”

It may seem odd to hesitate to make a formal report to a convention when one has just called somebody’s employer and begun the process of formally reporting there, but that’s how it was. I think I was a little bit in shock. (I kept shaking my head and thinking, “Dude, seriously??”) So the Safety person closed his notebook and listened attentively. Partway through my account, I said, “Okay, open your notebook, because yeah, this should be official.” Thus began the formal report to the convention.  We listed what had happened, when and where, the names of other people who were there when it happened, and so forth. The Safety person told me he would be taking the report up to the next level, checked again to see whether I was okay, and then went.

I had been nervous about doing it, even though the Safety person and the friend sitting with us were people I have known for years. Sitting there, I tried to imagine how nervous I would have been if I were twenty-some years old and at my first convention. What if I were just starting out and had been hoping to show a manuscript to that editor?  Would I have thought this kind of behavior was business as usual? What if I were afraid that person would blacklist me if I didn’t make nice and go along with it? If I had been less experienced, less surrounded by people I could call on for strength and encouragement, would I have been able to report it at all?

Well, I actually know the answer to that one: I wouldn’t have. I know this because I did not report it when it happened to me in my twenties. I didn’t report it when it happened to me in my forties either. There are lots of reasons people might not report things, and I’m not going to tell someone they’re wrong for choosing not to report. What I intend to do by writing this is to give some kind of road map to someone who is considering reporting. We’re geeks, right? Learning something and sharing is what we do.

So I reported it to the convention. Somewhere in there they asked, “Shall we use your name?” I thought for a millisecond and said, “Oh, hell yes.”

This is an important thing. A formal report has a name attached. More about this later.

The Safety team kept checking in with me.  The coordinators of the convention were promptly involved. Someone told me that since it was the first report, the editor would not be asked to leave the convention. I was surprised it was the first report, but hey, if it was and if that’s the process, follow the process. They told me they had instructed him to keep away from me for the rest of the convention. I thanked them.

Starting on Tuesday, the HR department of his company got in touch with me. They too were respectful and took the incident very seriously.  Again I described what, where and when, and who had been present for the incident and aftermath. They asked me if I was making a formal report and wanted my name used. Again I said, “Hell, yes.”

Both HR and Legal were in touch with me over the following weeks.  HR called and emailed enough times that my husband started calling them “your good friends at HR.”  They also followed through on checking with the other people, and did so with a promptness that was good to see.

Although their behavior was professional and respectful, I was stunned when I found out that mine was the first formal report filed there as well. From various discussions in person and online, I knew for certain that I was not the only one to have reported inappropriate behavior by this person to his employer. It turned out that the previous reports had been made confidentially and not through HR and Legal. Therefore my report was the first one, because it was the first one that had ever been formally recorded.

Corporations (and conventions with formal procedures) live and die by the written word. “Records, or it didn’t happen” is how it works, at least as far as doing anything official about it. So here I was, and here we all were, with a situation where this had definitely happened before, but which we had to treat as if it were the first time — because for formal purposes, it was.

I asked whether people who had originally made confidential reports could go ahead and file formal ones now. There was a bit of confusion around an erroneous answer by someone in another department, but then the person at Legal clearly said that “the past is past” is not an accurate summation of company policy, and that she (and all the other people listed in the company’s publically-available code of conduct) would definitely accept formal reports regardless of whether the behavior took place last week or last year.

If you choose to report, I hope this writing is useful to you. If you’re new to the genre, please be assured that sexual harassment is NOT acceptable business-as-usual.  I have had numerous editors tell me that reporting harassment will NOT get you blacklisted, that they WANT the bad apples reported and dealt with, and that this is very important to them, because this kind of thing is bad for everyone and is not okay. The thing is, though, that I’m fifty-two years old, familiar with the field and the world of conventions, moderately well known to many professionals in the field, and relatively well-liked. I’ve got a lot of social credit. And yet even I was nervous and a little in shock when faced with deciding whether or not to report what happened. Even I was thinking, “Oh, God, do I have to? What if this gets really ugly?”

But every time I got that scared feeling in my guts and the sensation of having a target between my shoulder blades, I thought, “How much worse would this be if I were inexperienced, if I were new to the field, if I were a lot younger?” A thousand times worse.  So I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders and said, “Hell, yes, use my name.”  And while it’s scary to write this now, and while various people are worried that parts of the Internet may fall on my head, I’m going to share the knowledge — because I’m a geek, and that’s what we do.

So if you need to report this stuff, the following things may make it easier to do so. Not easy, because I don’t think it’s gotten anywhere near easy, but they’ll probably help.

NOTES: As soon as you can, make notes on the following:

  • – what happened
  • – when it happened and where
  • – who else was present (if anyone)
  • – any other possibly useful information

And take notes as you go through the process of reporting: write down who you talk with in the organization to which you are reporting, and when.

ALLIES:  Line up your support team. When you report an incident of sexual harassment to a convention, it is fine to take a friend with you. A friend can keep you company while you make a report to a company by phone or in email. Some allies can help by hanging out with you at convention programming or parties or events, ready to be a buffer in case of unfortunate events — or by just reminding you to eat, if you’re too stressed to remember. If you’re in shock, please try to tell your allies this, and ask for help if you can.

NAVIGATION: If there are procedures in place, what are they?  Where do you start to make a report and how? (Finding out might be a job to outsource to allies.) Some companies have current codes of conduct posted on line with contact information for people to report harassment to. Jim Hines posted a list of contacts at various companies a while ago.  Conventions should have a safety team listed in the program book.  Know the difference between formal reports and informal reports. Ask what happens next with your report, and whether there will be a formal record of it, or whether it will result in a supervisor telling the person “Don’t do that,” but  will be confidential and will not be counted formally.

REPORTING FORMALLY: This is a particularly important point. Serial harassers can get any number of little talking-to’s and still have a clear record, which means HR and Legal can’t make any disciplinary action stick when formal reports do finally get made. This is the sort of thing that can get companies really bad reputations, and the ongoing behavior hurts everybody in the field. It is particularly poisonous if the inappropriate behavior is consistently directed toward people over whom the harasser has some kind of real or perceived power:  an aspiring writer may hesitate to report an editor, for instance, due to fear of economic harm or reprisal.

STAY SAFE:  You get to choose what to do, because you’re the only one who knows your situation and what risks you will and won’t take.  If not reporting is what you need to do, that’s what you get to do, and if anybody gives you trouble about making that choice to stay safe, you can sic me on them. Me, I’ve had a bunch of conversations with my husband, and I’ve had a bunch of conversations with other people, and I hate the fact that I’m scared that there might be legal wrangling (from the person I’d name, not the convention or his employer) if I name names. But after all those conversations, I’m not going to. Instead, I’m writing the most important part, about how to report this, and make it work, which is so much bigger than one person’s distasteful experience.

During the incident, the person I reported said,  “Gosh, you’re lovely when you’re angry.”  You know what?  I’ve been getting prettier and prettier.

June 28, 2013 / 118 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: Down The TV Tropes Rabbit Hole

Last week’s challenge: “Another Roll Of The Dice“

Given that earlier in the week we talked about tropes and in particular the infinitely-entertaining website known as “TV Tropes,” well…

Here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it.

Go to TVtropes.org.

In the top menu bar is a button called random.

I want you to click that button.

You’ll get a trope.

You will use this trope as the basis to write your flash fiction this week.

(Identify the trope for us so we can see your pick, please.)

Now, sometimes you’ll click it and you might get something specific to television or film, and okay, it’s totally fine to click a few times to get something that actually suits a ~1000-word piece of flash fiction. Nobody’s watching. Except me, in your ceiling.

You’ve got one week to write your story on your own online space and link back here — due by July 5th, at noon EST. Now to get tropey, willya?

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