Apple-Obsessed Author Fella
It sounds like a really horrible Dan Brown knockoff.
It ain’t.
It’s some kind of book publicity site — er, scam.
Because I didn’t give that testimonial.
Nor did, as I understand it, any of the authors there.
My testimonial would’ve included more profanity. And a video of me seductively stroking my beard.
So, just a head’s up.
Scam. Avoid. Awooga, awooga.
Obviously, as you might could tell, I’m tweaking the site here more than a little. It’ll be in flux for the next week or so, I wager — so, until the dust settles, apologies for any wonkiness that happens here.
And, also, I’ve been made aware that the site, as it republished the static pages menu, shit-bombed some folks’ RSS feeds — so for that, another heaping helping of apologies. (The weird part is, I think it sent out some unsent cached contact emails from the Contact Form? Why the fuck it would do that is beyond me.)
I’m going to get my portfolio sorted between today and tomorrow.
Also: the font in these blog posts is too damn small. Anybody know how to up the font size? I was to understand it was part of my blog’s theme settings but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’m obviously going to have to tweak CSS but I am no CSS expert. Thanks again for your patience and help and liquor-hugs.
J.D.’s one of those authors who’s out there in the trenches fighting the good fight. He writes what he wants and finds a way to get it out there, whether that means through traditional means or through DIY channels. Here’s the man himself to tell you what he’s got going on. You can find him at his website: jdrhoades.blogspot.com or on them thar Twitters @JD_Rhoades.
There was this guy. And he lived a pretty comfortable life. Then something happened, and things got pretty scary. He met this girl, and he really liked her, but then things got scary for her too. Things got worse and worse. Some other guy who knew a lot about scary stuff helped him out, and it looked like he might make it, but then a really bad thing happened, and some people got killed, and some other people he thought were his friends turned out to be secretly enemies, and it looked like all hope was lost. But at the end, the guy conquered his fear and the danger and he got the girl. The end.
I see movies in my head that no one’s ever made. I hear conversations between people who aren’t there. I write this stuff down so I can tell people I’m a writer and not someone having a psychotic break.
Other than the obvious (“Get your ass in the chair and write!”), I tell people: always remember that everyone in your book has his or her own story, from the protagonist right down to the cab drivers and delivery guys. Take the time and get to know them, even if you don’t use all of them. You may be surprised when a minor character suddenly takes the stage. It happens to me over and over. Tim Buckthorn, the Deputy in BREAKING COVER, started out as a walk-on. When I was finished, he was a major character. I’m actually spinning him off into a lead. Mimir, the sentient AI in MONSTER, started as a plot device, a McGuffin. Then he became a bit of comic relief. By the end of the book, he takes a much, much bigger role. So big that…
Well, check it out.
“Don’t write (fill in the blank with whatever I happen to be in the middle of writing). No one’s buying that right now.”
Recognizing two facts: (1) No one is a villain in his own eyes–everyone has his reasons that seem perfectly logical and valid to him; and (2) No one is one thing all the time. A complete bastard may surprise you with an act of generosity, or a saint may have a bad day, come home and kick the dog.
Robert Gregory Browne’s TRIAL JUNKIES. First time in years I’ve gotten to the surprise near the end and said “I totally did NOT see that coming, and yet, it makes sense.” Also, Alex Sokoloff’s HUNTRESS MOON. Great, kick-ass female lead.
Favorite word: Kerfluffle.
Favorite curse word: Fuckwit.
Rum and Coke. I started drinking that when I was a club DJ and friendly cocktail waitresses (are there any other kind?) would sneak drinks up to me in the booth. Best damn job I ever had. I’ve had to go with the caffeine free Diet Coke in recent years, though. And give up cocktail waitresses.
I’m a trained and experienced trial lawyer, so I can do that Captain Kirk logic loop thing that ties the robot’s brain in knots and makes smoke come out of his ears until his CPU locks up. If that fails, I just throw buckets of water and hope to short them out.
The value of traditional publishing is they do a lot of the boring, non-writing stuff for you: editing, proofreading, cover design, and especially marketing. The danger of it is that how much of these you get–or whether you get picked at all–is too often determined by factors other than how good the work is. Editors at traditional houses will go on panels and conferences and glibly proclaim “the secret is to write a good book,” then go back and write a dozen e-mails saying “this is a good book, but we don’t think we can market it” or “this is a good book, but no one’s buying this genre right now.”
As for self-publishing, the upside is the freedom. You can write whatever the hell you want, and not have some dewy-eyed recent Ivy League graduate with a marketing degree deciding whether or not it’s “commercial” or “big” enough. The downside is that all that work I mentioned earlier gets done by you, or by someone you have to pay out of pocket. This takes time away from the writing, and it’s easy to let it take up all your time so that you soon find yourself without new product.
I think probably some people in the audience are comfortable with inertia; they’d like to read the same book they loved over and over again. There are some great, strong characters that don’t seem to change much book to book. Nero Wolfe comes immediately to mind, as does Richard Stark’s Parker. But I can’t write that way. Real people change. They take damage, they heal or they bear the pain of their wounds, they grow or they regress as a result of the terrible stuff that happens to them (and if you’re not doing terrible stuff to your characters, why not?) I think resilience in the face of all that is what makes them strong, and therefore interesting.
I wrestled with the decision for a while. I wanted people to know that this was something different from my usual crime fiction. I’d read some accounts by a writer friend of mine who’d gotten nasty-grams from fans of her previous romance work when she switched to crime fiction. Apparently some people, God love ’em, like their favorite writer so much that they’ll just grab the latest title without checking to see what it’s about. But then they get really upset when the sweet romance they expected turns out to be one of those icky, bloody crime thrillers.
On the other hand, I knew there’s some overlap between crime fiction fans and science fiction fans, and I wanted my previous fan base to know that it was me writing about vampires in space. So I stole an idea from Nora Roberts, who also writes across genres. That’s why MONSTER is by “J.D. Rhoades writing as J.D. Nixx.”
Sexy Female Vampire Death Commandos! In Space! With a sword! Werewolves! Zombies! Sex! Violence! Twisted Science! Betrayal! Revenge! WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED?
I live by the words of Indiana Jones: “I don’t know, I’m just making this up as I go.” I’ve recently re-released a couple of short pieces under that sci-fi/fantasy pen name of J.D. Nixx. They’re legal thrillers/medieval fantasy — think Perry Mason crossed with GAME OF THRONES. As you might have noticed, I love doing genre mash-ups. Right now, I’ve gone back to thrillers and the J.D. Rhoades name and I’m writing a follow-up to BREAKING COVER that reunites Tony Wolf and Tim Buckthorn. That’ll inevitably be another self-pubbed piece, but that’s what seems to be working for me right now.
Provocative title, I know. Not meant to be, really. I only mean to be forthright.
This is not a post about whether or not it’s okay to joke about or write about rape.
This is not a post about whether or not it’s okay to joke about or write about murder.
You may have those discussions on your own and I trust you’ll play nice.
This is about how, whenever controversy arises over a rape joke (like, say, what happened the other day with The Oatmeal), there arises the inevitable defense of, “It’s okay to joke about murder but not about rape.”
Or, more to the point, folks don’t get upset about murder jokes.
And yet, rape jokes seem to cause offense — or, worse, cause harm.
It’s complicated. And also true. It’s just like how people within certain groups can use terminology or tell jokes that those outside the groups can’t. That may seem unfair or something unbalanced, but, y’know, sorry. Grow a pair. Be great if life and art and culture were simple; they ain’t.
So, then.
Why is murder okay as a topic of humor but rape generally isn’t? (Or, if you prefer, why is murder not a trigger? Why does murder not make people upset in the same way as rape?)
Here’s the thing:
Murder is an, erm… permanent situation. It leaves behind the victims of those who knew the person. But the murder victim does not himself survive. The dead body isn’t walking on the street, poking around the Internet on his iPhone before accidentally stumbling upon someone making an “I’ll kill you!” joke. (And, for good or bad, that’s one of those first angry threats that children seem to come to — “I’ll kill you!” Something there in how we deal with mortality, but that’s a conversation for another time.)
Rape victims are still with us.
Let’s talk statistics.
In 2008, looks like the United States had 14,180 murders.
In 2005 (sorry, having a hard time finding perfectly equivalent data), the United States had 191,670 instances of sexual assault, and RAINN estimates that the number is now approximately as high as 207, 754 per year. And rape remains one of the most underreported crimes. And approximately 1 in 6 women will experience rape or attempted rape (that number is 1 in 33 for men).
Those victims of rape are still out there. And you don’t know who they are, but one in six? Hell, even one in thirty-three — that’s a fucked up number. And it means it’s pretty likely that a rape joke is going to land in the lap of someone who has been raped or who has suffered the attempt. It’s not just about upsetting those left in the wake of the crime, as you have with murder — the victims of these crimes are here. Awake. Alive. And painfully aware of what happened to them — doubly so when you fling a casual rape joke at their heads.
Rape, sexual assault and even child abuse leave living, breathing scars. Scars that re-open all too easily.
But you know what? Hey, I can argue that it’s okay to joke about non-sexual assault. Or war. Certainly the victims of those shitty awful events are still up and hanging around —
So, here’s the real reason that rape jokes are troubled territory —
Because the rape victims say so.
They get to say that. They get to feel that way. On this, they can set the cultural rules.
It’s not about right or wrong, or logic versus emotion, or arguments of oversensitivity and hypocrisy — you have the free speech to make whatever jokes you want or talk about rape in whatever way you feel is illuminating. But they get to be upset about it. And call you on it. And be hurt by it.
But consider this:
You get to not be a rape victim.
They, however, are not afforded that luxury. Ever again.
That may be the most important consideration of them all.
Sunday night rolls around.
Walking Dead night. So too with Homeland.
I don’t watch the show as it airs; we’ve got a toddler who’s just gone to sleep and it doesn’t seem productive to crank up a show where there’s a lot of undead moans, human screams, and gun-bangs. I tend to watch it a day or three later while on the elliptical. (Maybe that’s my own version of Zombies, Run!)
Thing is, if I get on social media at 9pm — Facebook, Twitter, Circlehole, Sharespace, Lovebooster, or some other social media site I’m just making up — I have to duck because of a small but vocal contingent who feel like tweeting the show. Meaning, spoiling the show. Not merely talking about it or talking around it, but actively like, OH MY GOD, CARL JUST SHOT AND KILLED THE GOVERNOR WITH A HARPOON GUN or THE ZOMBIES ARE REALLY MOON VAMPIRES HOLY SHIT.
(Curiously, I don’t see anyone spoiling Homeland. Hm. That either means: fewer people watching that show or fewer TV geek-types watching and broadcasting their experience. Great show, by the way. Do not miss. The terrorists are really all moon vampires, by the way.)
Ahem. Anyway. This potential spoiler-fest goes on for a couple hours as folks catch up with the show. Hell, the last time the show had some major deaths, it went on all week. Facebook memes kept popping up: big visual punches to the face that my eyeballs simply could not avoid.
I said something about this on Twitter this past Sunday night and I got a lot of folks agreeing, but I also got some folks who were, well, let’s just go with “irritated” that I would dare to suggest that social media was all for me and not for them. One gentleman (after calling me an “asshole”) asserted that I sure seemed to care an awful lot about a TV show and weren’t there more important things to be worried about?
Well, duh. Somewhere out there is That One Thing that is The Worst And Most Important Thing To Be Worried About. I don’t know what it is but I assume it involves an alien invasion where we all get cancer from their unforgiving Martian lasers. Outside of that pinnacle of horror, everything is relative. Hangnails to TV spoilers to broken toes to heart attacks to a bevy of cancers to — well, on and on, until you get to the alien cancer invasion thing. Point is, this asshole (me) wants to make a point about TV shows and spoilers.
You can use Twitter however you want. That’s not for me to say, nor to stop you.
My point was merely, if I catch you doing it, I’ll probably unfollow you. (And, if you call me an asshole, it’s a good bet I’m going to block your ass so I don’t have to hear you jabbering at me anymore.)
Here’s why I’d first politely ask that you consider holding your tongue in terms of spoiling… well, anything within reason (and a reasonable amount of time, as set by John Q. Scalzi, Esquire): because it suggests that you’re the most important person on social media. I get it. You want to talk about what you just saw. But we all want lots of things. I want a pony. I want to punch people sometimes. I want to eat a gallon of ice cream and guzzle liquor every night. But I don’t. I don’t do a lot of things because it’d either be bad for me or bad for someone else. We don’t just follow our every id-driven impulse because: uhh, hello, selfish.
I’m just asking that you cool it on the spoilers.
I suspect that you’d probably not like it if, an hour before the show aired, I called you up and spoiled the shit out of the show for you. Would that be a thing you’d like? *ring ring* “HELLO I AM FROM THE FUTURE MICHONNE IS ACTUALLY A NINJA ROBOT AND ALL THE SHOW IS A DELUSION OF HER DAMAGED PROGRAMMING HA HA HA HA IT’S A REALLY COOL REVEAL TOO.”
See? Not awesome.
Do spoilers actually ruin the show? No. Of course not. A show is the sum of many moments big and small, subtle and overt — but while spoilers do not ruin the show they do ruin certain big moments. Because a spoiler is just a data point. It reveals narrative information without any narrative aplomb: meaning, it exists outside the mode of the storyteller telling that story. It’s just some info-puke that bypasses all the tension and plot and character building up to that moment. A storyteller crafts big moments — spoilworthy moments — in a way to maximize impact. They are the narrative equivalent of a bomb being dropped; the entire episode has often been designed to lead to and showcase that holy shitfuck event.
But then along comes Yelly McSpoilerface who cares nothing for the storyteller intent nor for the rest of the audience watching it.
It’s the TV equivalent of trolling.
You want to talk about the show, I get it.
And it was pointed out on Facebook that television has become strongly focused on the “second screen experience,” meaning, while the show is on, an invested and active audience talks about it. But there exist ways to do that without pissing on those really cool moments. While the “second screen experience” is a thing, so too is the fact that a lot of folks watch the television show at their convenience (DVR, iTunes, etc) and not at the appointed 9PM hour (and don’t forget: other time zones).
You want to talk about it? Find a forum online. Something that’s not the equivalent of “The entire public breadth of the Internet.” Or, if you must be on Twitter or Facebook, talk about things in a way that doesn’t actually specify what happened — I mean, if you’re trying to talk to people who are watching the show at the same time, one assumes they’ll understand when you say, “HOLY TURDBALLS I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY JUST DID THAT.” Right? You have ways of being considerate to others, and that’s what this is about.
Be considerate to other fans. And to a larger, more abstract degree, to the storytellers, too.
Again, you don’t have to do this. You can tell me to go chug a bucket of monkey jizz (SPOILER WARNING: ew). That’s fine. Like I told folks Sunday night, you can use social media however the fuck you want. You can spoil stories. You can be a human spam-bot. You can use it as a platform for your ugliest prejudicial epithets. But it doesn’t mean I have to keep following you if you do choose to use it that way.
I often describe this website as me yelling at myself from 18 years ago. It’s as true as it is not, I suppose — certainly the blog is also me yelling at me from last week, or from two weeks hence. I like to yell at Past, Present and Future Me and, by proxy, yell at you, too. So, seemed a good time to write a more direct version of that, which is this list. It’s in part about writing but also about a lot of other things. And the secret is, it’s just as much me yelling at myself now to stay vigilant about this stuff as it is about any teenage asshole version of myself. So, crack my skull with an ice hammer, and let’s see what’s inside!
Soooooo. You want to be a writer, right? Mm. You’re vibrating over there. So eager. Ready to have all your atoms disassociate and reform you into the complete and total package. You’re like a squirrel with ants all up in his butthole — just itchy to get moving. I have bad news, lad. This thing you want to do? This “writing” thing? Yeah, it takes a long time. This isn’t a microwaved burrito. It’s smoked pork shoulder. A writing career is a long, slow roast. Hunker down for the long haul. Know that you’ll get there. But you gotta settle in. Tame your impatience. At the very least, conquer it with the stubbornness of an old, cantankerous donkey.
The Muse ain’t your boss, big guy. She doesn’t push you around. In fact, most times, she’s the one who needs a kick. If you sit around and wait for her to show up, you’ll find that the words come only in fits of incontinence: a dribbled splash here, an unexpected pants-stain there. Your Fairy Wordmother dances for you, so shoot at her feet to get her shimmying and shaking. Listen, there might be magic in this writing and storytelling thing. But with that magic, you can either be its slave — or its sorcerer. You can be the one worshipping and appeasing, or you can be the one with the spellbook and the wand. You’re either it’s dog, or its master. The sooner you figure that out, the happier you’re going to be.
You’re a kid, so I’ll afford you some measure of distraction, but eventually you need to stop digesting entertainment and start dishing it out. And not just entertainment, but stuff that digs past the topsoil and into deeper, richer layers of earth (more on that later). For now, slow up on the video games and the MUSHing and the sex… ah, right, you’re 18. You’re trying to have sex all the time, aren’t you? You’d bang a set of dressers if the light was right. All I’m saying is: comes a point when you need to hunker down and focus up. Put away shiny things. Rubber meets road. No, not that kind of rubber. What are you, 12? Jesus.
One of the harder lessons to learn is that some of the people you want in your life are sadly not good for you — these are people you think of as friends or girlfriends or even family. Their best interests are not your own. They don’t mean to, but they’ll drag you down. They’ll point your nose in the wrong direction. You deserve better. And frankly, so do they. Sometimes relationships don’t work out like you think they should. You can’t force it. You just have to cut the rope and float away from one another. Maybe one day you float back into each other’s little patch of seawater. Most likely, you don’t. You’ll both be healthier for it.
Sure, sure, you’re all pissed off at the world. You’re all fire and vinegar, all swinging fists and stompy boots. GRUMPY WASPS AND THIRD-STAGE SYPHILIS. Anger will get you moving — it’s like the first blast from a rocket booster. You want to spite those who said you couldn’t do it? You want to blacken the eye of the world to prove that you deserve to be here? That feeling will carry you for a while. But it’s not sustainable. And it’s not healthy. And — *checks your hands* — sometimes when you don’t have ways of processing how you feel, you punch lockers and fuck up your knuckle. Or you break things. Or you let that anger sit and ferment until it’s just a gutful of acid sadness. Let the anger go. It’s hollow fuel. It’s empty carbs.
Like anger, shame actually fucking works. It does. Those twin serpents of shame and guilt chasing you down will move your ass forward — it works because you feel bad and you don’t want to feel bad anymore, so you make motions to counter it. But shame is a broken ladder. It’ll get you halfway there but the rest of the rungs are snapped. It’s because “not feeling bad” as a motivation is just enough to get you off the ground and out of the mud but that’s it. You need something bigger, something better, as motivation. You need to want to feel good, not just want to avoid feeling bad. Victory is rarely the product of avoiding internal misery.
You’re going to fuck up a lot. No, no, don’t get pissy — remember, I AM FUTURE YOU. (And yes, we have hoverboards and teleporters in the year 2012. And sex-robots and cyborg dildo attachments.) Here’s the thing: we are the culmination of our successes but our successes are the culmination of our mistakes. Mistakes and failures beget success because we learn from them. Success is a slim margin — a narrow door — and everything outside that door is considered error. And that’s okay. My toddler knows how to walk now — oh, right, you have a kid but we’ll get to him — and the act of getting up and noodling around on those two pudgy cake-pillars he calls legs only happened through lots and lots of experimentation. Translation: he fell a lot. Still does. Into everything. You’d think he was drunk. He looks like Baby Fight Club most days. Point is: you need to fall. Falling is how we learn to walk. It’s painful, but the pain is instructive.
Ah! Yes. Speaking of walking — you fall, then you walk, then you run. In that order. (And after that, you earn your cyborg leg-pistons and you can jump over buildings. MAN 2012 IS PRETTY RAD.) This translates to writing: to your gravest disappointment you cannot just spring forth fully formed out of Athena’s head and write a masterpiece novel that will get you a six-figure advance. You will not at age 18, or 20, or 25, or even 36, be the cherub-cheeked darling of the literary world. You’ve got to take this thing in order. You can’t short circuit the skills you need to learn. So-called “overnight sensations” are like icebergs: you only see the tiny peak above water. Below the surface lies an epic glacial mountain representing all the months and years spent pushing the peak above the slushy sea.
Some shit really matters. A lot really, really doesn’t. Everything can’t matter equally. The loss of a parent does not equal a fight on the Internet. The look in your kid’s eyes does not equal a bad review of one of your books (yes, yes, calm down, you actually get to be a paid professional writer, stop wetting your Iron Man underoos.) You’re going to be a lot happier when you start figuring this out.
Hey, whoa, don’t get lippy with me, kid. I’m willing to forsake a couple of my teeth to knock yours out right now. I got bad news, sport: see this pile of shit with twigs and bugs in it? The world doesn’t even owe you this much. You are not the center of any orbit, elliptical or otherwise. I sound like such an old man but dude, listen, things you accomplish are far better than things that are handed to you. Your first publication (soon!) will be the product of you putting ego aside and listening to some editorial notes and putting in the fucking work. It’s not their job to publish your potential. They don’t owe you a bucket for your word-barf. It’s your job to earn that space. And it’ll feel like the angels are giving you a full-body massage with their thousand genderless eye-nipple mammaries when they do. (Hey, read the Bible, angels are freaky as fuck.)
You’re not right all the time. In fact, every year that passes my estimation of how often you’re right goes down by about… three percent, so at this stage I figure you’re — er, I’m — er, we’re? — in the neighborhood of 40% correct most times (and that number’s shrinking). More importantly, you don’t need to be right all the time. Yours is not the only way. Further, convincing folks of the validity of your argument is not best done with a 2×4 studded with rusty nails. It’s best done with a hand-job using a velvet glove. …okay, hey, shut up, things get kind of weird in your early 20s. Don’t tell your eventual wife about the glove.
You are at or near the point where feeling fucked-up — meaning, depressed or angry or having that hive of bees you call a brain freak out — seems like a badge of honor, like it’s justification to demand things from the world in a Fiona Apple-style THIS WORLD IS BULLSHIT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME STUPID HUMANS meltdown, but it’s not. The way you feel is not unique. And it’s not the world’s fault. Only you can fix you. Stop inflicting yourself on others. Like a weapon, or a disease, or a humpy terrier. I know, “fixing yourself” is easier said than done, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good excuse not to do it. Everything is easier said than done. Suck it up, Strawberry Shortcake. Get right with your head to get right with the world. (Be advised that this remains an ongoing process of maintenance and repair.)
For a long time you’re going to hold up the idea of “art” as a defense for… well, all kinds of dippy shit. Don’t like an edit? Art. Don’t want to learn how to write an outline? Art. Want to get naked in the college gazebo while guzzling Irish whiskey and singing AND I WOULD WALK FIVE HUNDRED MILES –? Art. Not an excuse. Set it aside. Focus on craft. Focus on skill. You want to think raw talent and the defense of art are everything and then you want to hold up James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and be all like, “Look! None of the rules apply here!” but here, let me squeeze that blister — You’re not James Joyce, knucklehead. You’re an 18-year-old dumbfuck with a self-importance problem. Splurch.
Eventually you’ll figure out that writing isn’t this beast with a single face. You’ll see that writing is craft, and storytelling is something bigger, weirder, stranger. You’ll find the art again, like a sunset through a chemical haze. But it won’t be a thing you can control and it won’t be a defense for anything. It’ll be a thing that has its own measure of skill and talent. It’ll be a thing that other people see better than you. It’ll be a thing that is less ART in all caps and more “an art” all in gentle, unassuming lowercase. You’ll find poetry in language that doesn’t need to be called that to survive. You’ll find that you learn the rules to know when to break them, and you need to break the rules to learn why we have them in the first place.
Behind you will be a miles-long heap of story wreckage. You’ll litter the earth with carcasses of manuscripts finished and unfinished. They will be mostly a steaming trail of eye-watering, nose-blistering manure. This will sadden and frustrate you. Don’t let it. Accept that in each were things you learned that carried you to the next one (“Oh, don’t write a novel in all caps? Interesting“). But also realize that there will come an evacuate your bowels or unplug the fecal vacuum moment (we don’t have toilets in the future, we have vacuums that siphon the waste from your body), a moment when you need to stop flicking your dick and get things done.
Creativity is not some external force. It is not the breath of the gods breathed into your mouth. It is neither gift nor entitlement. It’s an intellectual muscle. It needs flexing. It needs exercise. Discipline yields creativity. Whenever you put thought to words and words to page, you’re taking that muscle and making it bigger. (And when you do, you should squint and tell people, “Who bought a ticket to the gun show?” and then tap the center of your forehead and stare at them menacingly.) If you want to think of it as a more magical thing, go for it — think of it as stimulating the elf gland. There. See? Now it’s magical! Because elves!
*receives whisper from an advisor* Oh, yeah, I guess it is a four-letter word. Fine, whatever. PEDANT. Don’t look at me that way — yes, you’re still kind of an idiot 18 years later. Point is, at this time in your life there is a very strong disconnect between “work” and “creativity.” You associate writing and storytelling with pleasure and desire rather than difficulty and effort. That’ll fuck you up for a while because as soon as a story reveals its inevitable difficulty or feels no longer “fun,” you’ll abandon it like a colicky infant in a cardboard box marked FREE COOKIES. This thing you want to do isn’t easy. Gird your loins. Which is Bible-speak for “protect your genitals from the flurry of karate crotch-kicks life will deliver to your junk drawer.”
They say that the Romans had a lot of words for love and Eskimos have a lot of words for snow and Klingons have a lot of words for “why the fuck are you actually learning Klingon,” but writers — and perhaps humans of all intellectual configurations — should compile a great many words for happiness. Writing is happiness for me at this age, but that’s because I modified my definition. At your age, you powder-bottomed squall-baby, you’re upset whenever it doesn’t make you happy at that moment. You’re like a goldfish, unable to remember yesterday or gaze forward to tomorrow. Fuck that. You’re aiming for a deeper, longer happiness. A pervasive satisfaction. That only comes with prolonged effort. It only comes through learning and doing. It comes through finishing what you begin, good or bad.
You will for a long time copy the voices of the writers you admire. Lansdale, McCammon, Brite, Hobb, Denton, Moore. You’ll worry about what they did or do more than what you should do. You’ll try to sound like them. You’ll try to mimic what you love and emulate their success. Eventually you’ll stop. If I could convince you to stop sooner, I would, but maybe you can’t. Maybe it only comes with time and the confidence and instinct born of great effort. But here’s a tip: your voice is your voice. It’s who you are. It’s how you speak. It’s how you think and what you believe. The harder you try, the deeper it hides. It’s a sneaky little fucker. Stop trying. It’ll come out to play all on its own.
Sorry to get morose and bring this disco party to a record-scratching halt, but people die. People you love. People you know. And I don’t mean this in a poetic, Gothy-romancey emo-bullshit way. I mean, people die badly, without much poetry, and one day they’re there and the next they’re not. And that’s fucked up. But it’s also very, very important. Because you will realize that life is not permanent. The impermanence of the flesh is why life actually matters. Yesterday and today won’t ever happen again. Own that. Make progress. Do awesome things. SEIZE THE CARP. No matter how hard that fucking fish wriggles.
People die but who they are and the ideas that form their lives and experiences most certainly do not need to expire. It’s why we write. It’s why we tell stories. Words are idea containers. Stories are our experiences committed to ears and eyes and minds. Books are the best grave markers because they contain so much more than the dates of our births and deaths. That’s why what you write should matter. That’s why you shouldn’t fuck around and waste time merely trying to entertain. Put yourself onto the page. Bleed into the story. Embrace the Viking immortality of having your ideas live forever.
Okay, listen. Life is full of these binary pivot points, right? Where you can choose to do something or remain the same. Sometimes, remaining the same is the right choice: there will come a point where you will think about giving up writing because certain dissenting voices in your life suggest it’s the practical thing. But your instinct will tell you that you can really do this, that this shit is real. Sometimes, though, fear masquerades as instinct. It’s good instinct to say, “I’m not going to try to ramp this jet-ski over that feeding frenzy of hammerhead sharks even though it’d be awesome.” It’s bad fear to say, “I’m not going to seize this opportunity because, frankly, it scares me and gives me a rollicking case of the spiritual pee-shivers.”
See? It’s a settlers joke. An Oregon Trail joke. Right? Old school. High-five! … no? No high-five. Whatever. Fuck you. Philistine. THE JOKE IS, don’t settle. Every year presents brand new opportunities to settle for less, to hunker down and get a “real job,” to quit pursuing that which you so desire. Nope. Mm-mm. Don’t do it. Fuck settling. Ride that unicorn to the end of the rainbow, motherfucker. Like I said: life is short. Fear is powerful. Fortify your spine. Cement your genital stamina. Build an exoskeleton of calcified confidence. Do. Not. Settle. That way lies a doorway to regret. It’s a door that locks and has no key.
Growing up means taking responsibility for who you are, what you want, and what you’ve done and will do. But growing up is also about knowing when to power down the adult side and let the crazy T-Rex that is your childish side loose on those poor goats in the goat paddock.
Haters are everywhere. Even inside in the form of self-hatred, and it’s that self-hatred that magnifies the hate of others. Don’t let that worm into the heart of the apple. Because just there shall be haters, you’ll also have the power of an engaged audience, of people who dig what you’re doing. You will find the audience. They will find you. You’ll arrive together in an orgiastic lovesplosion greased up with the heady lubricant and giddy froth of storytelling. Dismiss hate. Embrace love. Fuck pants.
Love, love, love. It’s everything, man. The love of your fans, the love of books, the love of and from your wife, the love seen in and felt for that spark of wonder in your child’s eyes, the love of dogs and friends and characters and ideas and other writers and other stories and love love motherfucking love. Love, as they say, will save the day. It will carry you. It will save you. I know, you’re 18, you’re cynical as fuck, black-coffee-bitter like you’ve seen it all, but you haven’t seen shit, kid. Go ahead and mock. One day, you’ll see. You’ll feel it. You’ll receive it as the unexpected frequency that it is. And it’ll give you reason to keep on keepin’ on.
Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?
500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
