Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

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May 28, 2012 / 12 Comments

It’s A Great Time To Be A Storyteller

Happy Memorial Day, y’all.

Very short post today:

It’s a great time to be a writer and a storyteller.

It’s not the easiest time, no.

But it is a great time, just the same.

We have more options than ever.

The Internet has given us tools and connectedness.

Our stories can travel lickety-split with the click of a mouse or the swipe of a finger.

We can connect with other creators and collaborate.

The audience can collaborate with us.

We can publish big, small, or by ourselves.

We have artists and editors and audio techs all within digital reach.

The crowd can fund our efforts.

The web can push them out to millions.

Word-of-mouth carries our signal to circles overlapping circles overlapping circles — many pebbles thrown, infinite ripples colliding, a creative chaos theory given life and form.

None of this is simple.

All of it takes work.

The level of work we have to do is greater — and there remains oh-so-much to learn.

But while the key is heavy and the lock is stubborn, the door that it opens is profound.

It’s a great time to be a writer and a storyteller.

Go write.

Go tell stories.

Go and find your audience.

May 25, 2012 / 86 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: One Random Sentence

Last week’s challenge — “The Paint Color Title Scheme.”

Okay.

Click here right now.

That is a random sentence generator.

You will get a random sentence and you will use it as either the first or the last sentence of your up-to-1000-word flash fiction entry in this week’s challenge. For instance, I got the sentence: “The textual silence swallows against the geometry.” I have no idea what the fuck that means, but it’s great.

Write in any genre.

You have one week. Due by June 1st, noon EST (Friday).

IN ADDITION, I’ll buy a random participant a copy of BLACKBIRDS — mass market paperback or Kindle (your choice). EDIT: Courtesy of the fine cyborgs at Angry Robot Books, this contest is extended to all international participants and shipping handled no matter where you live. Except the moon. We won’t ship to the moon because that shit gets expensive.

Go and write!

May 24, 2012 / 25 Comments

In Which You Interview Me, Part One

It’s high time to finally answer the 80+ questions you crazy people asked me way back when.

I may shorten some of your questions or correct your typos/spelling errors because I am an ass. Accept it.

I will answer a chunkful of these at a time.

Let us begin.

“I really liked Double Dead. Any chance of a sequel?  — A. Wallace

BOOM. It’s called Bad Blood. And it’s outtie like a belly button, yo. I probably shouldn’t ever say that last part again, should I? Hm. Anyway! The book — which is a novella, or rather, an e-novella — is available at Amazon and B&N. It will cost you a mere $3.14.

My crime genre novel ‘London’s Falling’ is going to be published (By UK based Caffeine Nights Publishing) in August this year. I have been trying to promote it on my website can you think of any ways I can really spread the word (even going viral) about the book in the time leading up to publication? — David Byerlee

Damn, David, this is supposed to be all about me! ME I TELL YOU ME *kicks over a lamp, punches a cow, throws a mug of whiskey at a passing motorcyclist, kills a mythological being and feasts on its heart in public nom nom nom*

Anyway, to answer your question:

I have seriously no idea. If you figure out a good answer, let me know. You may want to wrestle author Paul Cornell on television, though, because his novel is also London Falling.

(And it has a very lovely cover.)

About how much money do you make per book per month? I’m just curious just how little or how much money I’ll get. A bad book tends to rank in the millions, whereas an ok book (like yours) ranks in the 100,000s, and an awesome book ranks from 10,000-1. I would just like to know so I can size up my income. — M. Chapman

Aww, thanks for calling my books “ok,” M. Chapman! You really know how to tickle a guy’s heart. As to how much money I make per book per month — well, I’m not really compelled to be that transparent, business-wise. Further, each book earns differently than each other book, and that monthly total goes up and down. And I can’t speak to my traditional releases.

What is the best animation software when making sprites for video games? I have a game I’m developing (we’re currently trying to finding our team of crack game designers), called Aerwood. It’s an RPG, so there’s going to be a lot of Sprite recycling. I have Gimp, so I can create awesomely detailed sprites, but I need to find a good software to make my sprites move. Oh, and anyone who is reading this, there are still jobs in the animation and programming departments. Contact me at mitchapman26@gmail.com (that includes you, Chuck). I’m trying to pay people in %s of the total profits, that way they only get paid well if they work hard, and it eliminates BSing altogether. — M. Chapman

Hey again, Mitch. Um, you do know that I’m a writer, right? As in I don’t… animate… sprites? That sounds like something you do on really good drugs, though. DUDE I’M ANIMATING THE SHIT OUT OF SOME SPRITES UNDER THE WATERTOWER FUUUUUCK.

Ahem.

As a sidenote, Mitch wrote me an email recently, and I feel like reproducing it here because a) it’s contains questions and b) it’s sort of insane.

Hey Chuck I’ve seen you have broken into the gaming industry. But what the fuck do you actually make? The description of your gaming books confuses me. So what are they, guides, dress-up games, how to masterbate on a magical chain saw and live guides? What the fuck is White Wolf? They don’t seem to make actual games, so I don’t think they can call their products ‘video games’ Are they just some lame roleplaying dress-up game like Dungeons and Dragons? Please be hasty answering, as I’m about to lose interest and have much masterbating to do. Don’t judge me! — M. Chapman

Multiple answers: I write things, or, put differently, I make stories. Sometimes those stories are games, which is to say, pen-and-paper roleplaying games like D&D (which is not… a dress-up game). Sometimes I also work on video games or transmedia gameplay. None of this involves “masterbating” or… magical chainsaws? Are you high? Am I high? Also, I hate to judge, but I’m going to judge anyway because that’s just how I roll: it’s spelled “masturbating.” Not “master,” but rather like, “Hastur.” So, if you were wanking it to The Unspeakable God, you might be “Hasturbating.” Hope that helps!

Where can I find that awesome Blackbirds cover as a giant-sized poster for my wall? — Michael

I’ve hidden one in a bunker far below Wichita.

You will have to dig for it.

You may have to kill a man.

You will encounter a three-headed alpaca and each head will ask you an impossible-to-answer riddle.

Only then will you find the Blackbirds poster.

Or you could bug Angry Robot or Joey Hi-Fi about making one.

Or you could pray to Hastur!

#hasturbate

What was the approximate timeline from your finishing your premiere novel, being taken on by an agent, selling the title, and seeing it on shelves? — J.V. Capri

Do you mean Blackbirds? Oof. That’s not going to be a fun answer, but it will be illuminating — I’ve been working on Blackbirds since 2007, I think. So, between then and now is the writing, the rewriting, the destroying-and-rewriting again, the getting an agent, the submission to publishers, the publication. Five years. Now, the sequel, I literally wrote the first draft in a month. Second draft took me a couple weeks. Finishing a final edit now which will be a few days of work, mostly very light. And it’ll be out in August. So the timeline on that book is hella tighter. But that feels right to me. That first book was my “fumbling around in the darkness trying to find my way” book. It was my Shit Or Get Off The Pot book.

How long does it take for you to write a novel – from rough draft to submitted draft? — Amber Gardner

A related question! Answer: different for every book. Blackbirds took several years. The sequel less than two months. Popcorn (book one of the Heartland Trilogy, my recently sold YA series) saw a first draft last May, and a fourth (final) submission-ready draft in… February or March of this year.

Do you, as many penmonkeys seem to do, have a bit of a stationery fetish? — Bex

I do not strop up against stationary like a randy pony, no. In fact, I don’t have much interest in stationary or pens. I appreciate them as objects of beauty and for that I exclude them from my process. They’re too nice to be mucked up with my spatters and sputum.

Did you make a deliberate decision to go balls to wall– say whatever the fuck you want in your social media and writing advice — because it works with the genres that you write, or would it have been impossible for you to rope it in and play quietly? In other words, do you think authors should attempt to match their social media style to their publishing audience or just be themselves? — Sheryl Kee

It’s a little deliberate, and it’s also a little bit who I really am. There came a point when I realized that it was just easier to go with it and accept that I am my voice and my voice is me and that sometimes includes profanity or inappropriate metaphors using unicorns or other glittery creatures of yore. I think authors should match their social media style to their This Is What I’m Like As A Human Being style. Unless that style is, “I’m a snarging douche-swab,” in which case I’d say to maybe roll up a nicer character sheet.

That, by the way, is a reference to the lame dress-up game known as D&D.

Which flash fiction story response to your challenges over the years is your favourite? — James Clark

I apologize, James, but you gotta understand something about my brain: it’s basically a rusty colander. It catches certain big things like, say, the birth of my son or what kind of pie I like to eat, but it misses a great many details, like phone numbers or the names of my thirteen ex-wives or who wrote what flash fiction here at the site. What I will say is, I am often surprised at the quality of flash fiction here. And I’ll also add that any time Dan O’Shea or Tommy Pluck write a piece of flash, I’m going to seek it out as if my eyes were Awesome-Seeking Missiles.

The zombie apocalypse is finally here. You’ve beaten your way into a blessedly full armoury. Weapon/ammunition is needed, fast. Which do you choose?

It’s probably impractical given that it uses a depletable resource, but dang I love me a good shotgun. A nice autoloader — I’ve got a Remington 1100 with a real light synthetic stock that would blow some holes through some zombie meat. Ejecting their pudding brains left and room.

CHOOM CHOOM splurch.

When you edit, do you have a checklist? I.e. something like, search fo ‘ly’, search for ‘to be’ verbs, etc? — Shawn McGee

Nope. I just feel my way along and read it out loud and if it sounds good aloud, then I believe it reads well on the page. That’s just the writing part though — story demands a far longer, harder, weirder look. But again, no checklist there, either. It’s mostly ingrained by now. I poll my intestinal flora.

Have you seen my car keys? — Alan Baxter

I have. And I’m not going to tell you where unless you give me my goat back. And that goat better be unharmed. I don’t mind if he’s covered in lipstick like last time — I can look the other way on that. Return my goat to me and we can have a discussion about where I saw the keys.

Hint: they were laying in a urinal somewhere.

And that’s a good place to end.

Part Two, coming soon.

*crash of thunder*

*dramatic musical chord*

*delighted goat squeal*

May 23, 2012 / 108 Comments

Hive-Mind Me Some Toddler Books

The tiny human is now one, and he’s also now enamored of books.

He has recently become addicted to Goodnight, Gorilla, which is cute as all get-out.

The other day on Twitter, when I mentioned his newfound adoration of this book and many others (and also his abject disdain for Goodnight, Moon), many folks chimed in with suggestions, including this delightful parody, Goodnight, Dune. So, I figure this is a good time to poll you folks with kids —

Recommend for me some good books! Preferably board books, since that’s what the tot likes.

He just turned one.

We need books.

DELIVER UNTO ME YOUR TINY HUMAN BIBLIO-SENSATIONS.

Recommend away!

May 22, 2012 / 77 Comments

25 Reasons You Should Quit Writing

Time for my annual, “Nope, you shouldn’t be writing, quit now, run away, go on, shoo” post. This time, in the form of the “25 things” lists that all you crazy cats and kittens seem to love so much.

1. It’s Really Hard

OMG YOU GUYS. Writing? It’s hard. It’s like, you have to sit there? And you have to make stuff up? For a living? And there’s all this… typing involved. You know what’s easier? Being an adult Baby Huey. Diaper-swaddled. Able to just pee where you sit. Your food liquified into a nutrient slurry and fed to you via a tube pushed through the grate of your giant human hamster cage. Okay, I kid, I kid. Writing actually is work. Intellectually and emotionally. You actually have to sit, day in and day out, and trudge through the mire of your own word count. Quit now. Save yourself from pulling a mental hammy.

2. You Probably Don’t Have Time

Writing takes time you do not possess. You’ve got that day job and those kids and, hey, let’s not forget your 37th replay of the entire Mass Effect series. Your time is all buttoned up in a starchy little shirt. Sure, Stephen King carved out his first novel one handwritten line at a time in between moments at his factory job, but if I recall, that didn’t pay off for him. (He should’ve just stayed working at that factory. Uh, hello, have you ever heard of medical benefits, Stevie? A pension? Lunch breaks? Duh.) Besides, eventually you’re just going to die anyway. Time won’t matter and it’s not like they’re gonna let you read your own books in hell. Better to quit now. Free up some time for drinking and masturbation. Er, I mean, “parenting.”

3. You May Have To Write A Whole Lot

Recently it came out that for writers to survive, they might have to buckle down and write more. Well, that’s just a cockamamie doo-doo bomb is what it is. That means writers might need to write — *checks some math, fiddles with an abacus, doodles a bunch of dongs in the margin* — more than 250 words a day?! Whoa. Whoa. Slow your roll, slave driver! I mean, it’s not like writing is fun. It’s an endless Sisyphean dick-punch is what it is. (See, Sisyphus carried an old CRT television up a dusty knoll, and when he got to the top, a faun punched him in the dick and knocked him back down the hill. That’s Greek history, son.) Write more? Eeeesh. Better to complain about it, instead. Or, better still: quit.

4. I Bet You’re Not That Good

I’ve seen your work. C’mon. C’mon. This is just between us, now. It’s not that good, is it? Lots of spelling errors. Commas breeding like ringworm in the petri dish that is a hobo’s crotch. All the structure of an upended bucket of donkey vomit. The last time an agent looked at your work, she sent it back wrapped around a hand grenade. So, you’ll do what so many other mediocre, untested, unwilling-to-work-to-improve writers have done: you self-publish, joining the throngs of the well-below-average with your ill-kerned Microsoft Paint cover and your 50,000 words of medical waste. Why do that to the world? Have mercy!

5. Hell, Maybe You’re Too Good

Alternately, you might be too talented. Your works are literary masterpieces, as if Raymond Carver, James Joyce and Don DeLillo contributed their authorial seed and poured it on the earth where it grew the tree that would one day be slaughtered to provide the paper for your magnum opus. And meanwhile, someone goes and writes porny Twilight fan-fiction and gets a billion-dollar book deal thanks to the tepid BDSM fantasies of housewives everywhere. You’re just too good for this. As you seem unwilling to write the S&M fan-fic version of The Hunger Games for a seven-figure-deal… well. This way to the great egress!

6. Ugh, Learning, Ptoo, Ptoo

“All you have to do to be a writer is read and write,” they said. Which seems true of anything, of course — “All you have to do to be a sculptor is look at sculptures and sculpt some stuff,” or, “All you have to do to be a nuclear physicist is read signs at a nuclear power plant and do a shitload of nuclear physics.” But then you went and read books and blogs and Playboy magazine articles and the backs of countless cereal boxes and then you tried writing and oh snap it turns out you still have more to learn. And learning is yucky. Ew, gross. Dirty, dirty learning. Not fun. Takes effort. Bleah.

7. Finish Him, Fatality

“I’m writing a novel,” you say. And they ask you, “Oh, is this the same one you were writing last year? And the year before that? And the year before that?” And you say, “No, those were different ones. I decided that–” And at this point you make up some excuse about publishing trends or writer’s block or The Muse, but it all adds up to the same thing: you’re not very good at finishing what you start. Your life is littered with the dessicated corpses of countless incomplete manuscripts, characters whose lives are woefully cut short by your +7 Axe of Apathy. You’re so good at not finishing, embrace this skill and quit.

8. Rejection Will Make You A Sad Koala

You will be buried in the heaps and mounds of rejection. And it’s never nice, never fun. Sometimes you’ll get the cold and dispassionate form rejection slips with a list of checkboxes. Sometimes you’ll get the really mean, really personal ones that stab for your heart with a sharpened toothbrush shiv (I once got a rejection slip early in my career from author and then-editor Thomas Monteleone that pretty much… savaged me rectally). Rejection will ruin your day. And, if you do get published, bad reviews will haunt you the same way. Did you know that every time I get a one-star review for Blackbirds, my eczema flairs up? I get all scaly and itchy and then I’m forced to fight Spider-Man as my supervillain persona, “The Rash-o-man.” (My comic book is told from multiple perspectives!) Anyway. Point is, rejections and reviews hurt. Don’t thrust your chin out so it can get punched. Hide in your attic and eat Cheetos, instead.

9. You Don’t Want It Bad Enough

You have to want this writing thing really bad. Sure, the saying goes that “everybody has a novel in them,” but thank fuck most of those people are too lazy to surgically extract said novel. I’ll just leave this one to the wisdom of Ron Swanson: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”

10. Writing Really Cuts Into Your Internet Addiction

The Internet is like a… delightful hole you fall into, a Wonderland of porn and memes and tweets and porn and hate and cats and porn. I’m always wishing I had more time to just drunkenly fumble around the Internet, feeling its greasy curves and exploring its hidden flesh-knolls, but all this damn writing keeps getting in the way. “Oh, god, if I didn’t have this stupid book to write I’d be tweeting scathing witticisms and scouring the web for free ‘people-dressed-up-as-trees-and-flowers-and-pollinating-one-another’ porn.” (If people who dress up as animals and do it are called “furries,” what are people who dress up like plants? “Leafies?” “Greenos?”) Anyway. Quit now. Free up your time.

11. Writing Isn’t Just Writing, Which Is Super-Bullshit

The title “writer” is the piss-pooriest description of the job I’ve ever heard. Total. False. Advertising. Man, writers have to like… edit, blog, market, learn good business practices, engage in public speaking, train on typewriter repair, cultivate liver constitution, and learn how to select and seduce mates based on the strength of said mate’s health care plan. That’s a bummer. A major bummer. Hell, it’s an ultra-bummer.

12. Rife With Indignities And Disrespect

Admitting to someone you’re a writer is like admitting to them you like to you’re a closet My Little Pony fan, or you’re a self-made eunuch, or you like to have sex with raccoons. Tell someone you’re a writer and she’ll nod, embarrassed for you, and then take a gentle step back so she doesn’t catch whatever cat-shit parasite made you crazy enough to want to be a writer in the first place.

13. Hullo, Mister Fatbody

Writing is a sedentary activity. You sit on your butt all day. The only parts that move are your flitting eyes as they follow the cursor and your fingers as they piston-pound out text. The rest of your body slides inevitably toward atrophy, layers of blubber and gristle slowly wreathing your frame in its salty slugabed deliciousness. You’ll probably get fat and then people will make fun of you and then you’ll die.

14. Back And Eye Problems

In addition to becoming a lumpy word-goblin, you also sit there all day in one chair staring at a freakishly bright square of light and the ant-like words and images that dance across it. Your back will become a quilt of twisted muscle, your eyes like grapes covered in a greasy film. Save your body. Quit now.

15. The Disintegrating Value Of Your Words

The professional pay rate for short fiction is now “a half-of-a-Dorito per word.” The average advance for a novel is a punch to the neck and a nuclear-fuchsia Snuggie. Analysts predict that most self-published works of fiction are trending toward an average price of $0.13 per 120,000-word novel. Which leads to…

16. The Average Salary Is $9000 A Year

The federal poverty level is at $11,170, and the average author annual salary is $9,000 a year. Homeless people earn better salaries. Seriously. If a homeless guy can beg thirty bucks a day, he’ll do better than you. You clearly cannot make a living writing. Studies show that only four writers alive make a living writing, and those jerks have the whole thing sewn up. They’re like the 1%-ers of authors, those dicks. Better to quit now before you find yourself on a ruined mattress under the overpass, eating bedbugs for sustenance.

17. Your Chances Ain’t Good, Hoss

Everybody and their ugly cousin wants to be a writer. You know how many query letter submissions the average agent gets per day? Enough to crush the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. (In fact, that’s how the dinosaurs went extinct: they all wanted to be writers and starved to death. The meteors were just a cruel afterthought by an unmerciful god.) The chances of your work ever being seen — by an agent, then by a publisher, then by an audience — are about as good as the chances of you giving birth to a zebra riding a jet-ski. Which, admittedly, I have seen a few times. And it isn’t pretty. Oh, and don’t forget about…

18. The Septic Tide Of Self-Publishing

Now everybody and their ugly cousin can be writers! All it takes is a hasty lack of afterthought and a shameless willingness to click a PUBLISH button on the Internet. Abracadabra, your poorly-cobbled-together word-abortion is now available for anybody who cares to see it! Am I saying that good authors don’t self-publish? Hell no! Many great authors have self-published. Oh, but here’s the rub: discoverability on the Internet sucks. Trying to discover a new author on the Amazon or B&N marketplaces is about as effective as searching an above-ground pool full of dirty adult diapers for a half-eaten Snickers bar. Your work is just one more diaper on the pile. Or one more candy bar lost beneath the waste.

19. Gatekeepers? More Like Hatekeepers, Am I Right?

You know who’s preventing you from getting published? A buncha jerks. Editors and agents and publishers — all grumpy bouncers at the door of this SUPER-ELITE WRITER’S CLUB and any time you try to come on through they Taser you in the face and laugh as you flounder around in the gutter for an hour. The system is a Rube Goldberg machine that powers itself on your shame. Don’t let the bullies win. Better instead to take a nap and forget the whole thing.

20. Have You Been To A Bookstore Recently?

The bookpocalypse is upon us. All Barnes & Noble sells anymore is coffee and board games, except in the back where you can find a couple Franzen novels and 72 copies of a 1989 Pontiac Grand Am user manual. Indie bookstores appear haunted by the damned — it’s all trauma-bombed eyes and trembling gray shades, each of them willing to show you on the doll where Amazon touched them. I drove by a bookstore the other day and it was filled with feral cats. Caution. Cuidado. Verboten.

21. Publishing Is Now One Big-Ass City-Stomping Kaiju Battle

The Big Six publishers have formed into some kind of drunken papier mache Voltron in order to fight the tentacled galactic e-beast known as Amazon, and all us little writers are getting tromped by their stompy feet. Sure, try to show the world your novel: you’ll get lasered in the face. Better to hide in a bunker somewhere, wait out this monster battle. Your wordsmithy will just get you killed.

22. When The Great EMP Comes, All Our E-Books Will Be Destroyed

Print books are being hunted in the streets like stray dogs. E-books will soon be all books, but then eventually China’s going to attack us with an elecromagnetic pulse or Russia will invent an ion cannon like from Star Wars and then all of our books will evaporate in the data-blast. All your hard work will be lost — ephemeral information cinders on the wind. Why even try?

23. And If Not, The Future Will Be All Writer-Bots Anyway

It’s not going to be long before spam-bots figure out how to produce new content. The next wave of self-published books will be written — sorry, “written” — by a hive-mind colony of self-aware spam-bots. They’ll have titles like “The Girl Who Kicked Over The Cialis Machine” or “Ugg Boots Informational Article Post” or “Ituqxufssjcmfnjoet The Real Estate Computer Repair Warrior.” Don’t get in the spam-bots’ way.

24. You Just Don’t Like It Very Much

I don’t think you like writing very much. Mostly you just complain. Boo-hoo pee-pee-pants sobby-face wah-wah existential turmoil. Writing is hard, publishing is mean, my characters won’t listen to me, blah blah blah. I don’t get the sense you really enjoy this thing, so why don’t you take a load off? It’s not like the pay-off from writing is huge. If it’s just an endless gauntlet of miseries, maybe go find something else to do. I’m sure the nearest bank is hiring. Or, as we’ve discussed, hobos do pretty well for themselves. And hoboing is an unbridled delight! Ask any hobo and he’ll say, “At least I’m not a writer.”

25. Because Some Asshole On The Internet Said So

If you’re willing to listen to me, and my words have given you pause, then you really should quit writing. And there’s no shame in that. Most folks who want to do this thing honestly never will — and maybe it’s best to maximize your opportunity and find your bliss somewhere else. But, if you’re reading all this and all you feel is the repeated urge to come find my house and flat-punch me in the trachea, good for you. If your response is to kick and hiss and spit and assert your writerly rights and then push past me so you can plant your pooper down in the chair to write your aforementioned pooper clean off, then to that I give you a high-five, a chest-bump, and a sloppy open-mouthed kiss (here, have my gum). Because to want to do this thing, you need that kind of fuck you, I’mma do it anyway attitude. And the last thing you need to be doing is listening to some Internet Asshole telling you to give up. Shut up. Go write. Be awesome.


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May 21, 2012 / 102 Comments

Revisiting The Fevered Egos Of Self-Publishing

First, go read this:

“The Man Who Thought He Was King.” About a self-published author who gets kind of… well, crazy? Uppity? I don’t know. I’m not even sure what he’s pissed about, honestly.

Read it? Done? Cool.

One of the biggest things holding self-publishing back is the attitude of some — not all, not most and not even many — but some self-published authors. What you will find in the self-publishing (or DIY or “indie pub”) community is a handful of maggot-chewed bad-apples bobbing noisily in the barrel. They’re loud. They’re entitled. They’re oddly defensive (methinks thou doth protest too much). They often have books that look and read like they were written by a fourth grader on a high-test ADHD drug cocktail.

And they’re more than willing to get up in your face about it.

Don’t be that guy. Don’t be a cock-bag. A douche-nozzle. A righteous scum-topped cup of dickhead soup.

My message to the generic That Guy:

First, learn to write. Not just fiction but, say, forum posts. Tweets. Your own name. Whatever. UR JUST MADD COS I SELL TONSZ OF BOOKS AND YOURE SLAVE TO THE GATEKEPERS is not a compelling — or, frankly, cogent — message. Which leads me to:

Second, stop using your sales numbers as a bludgeon. BUT I SELL FOUR BILLION EVERY TEN MINUTES may or may not be true, but what it most certainly is is irrelevant. Is that how Neil Gaiman tries to end an argument? “WELL I’M A BESTSELLING AUTHOR SO EAT MY POOP.” I suspect he does not. (Though now I secretly kinda hope he does? I would give multiple pieces of my anatomy to have him on YouTube yelling that very thing — a boy can dream, can’t he?) Your sales numbers are not interesting. Nor do they represent a useful data point as the lever in whatever argument you happen to be in right now. Sales are not an indicator of quality. And it’s very difficult to establish if your sales numbers are even accurate. Take them off the table. Stop screaming them in people’s faces.

Third, please be advised that the number of books you write is also not an indicator of anything — certainly not quality. I could, if I chose, write a book a week. Each book would be a festering midden-heap, a clumsy orgy of misspelled words feeling up awkward sentences in the dark in order to give birth to a one-legged moaning monstrosity of a story, but I don’t. Yes, I do believe that authors in the 21st century will find increased productivity useful, but what that doesn’t mean is, “Vomit out as much poor-quality content as you can purge into the world.” Yelling, BUT I HAVE 137 BOOKS FOR SALE, leads people to suspect that you’re just another self-published whackaloon with poor impulse control.

Fourth, stop being mad at “gatekeepers.” Blah blah blah agents, publishers, editors. Every time you yell about traditional publishing it just looks like a dumptruck full of sour grapes. Which leads us all to what is likely the correct conclusion: you self-publish because you were rejected and your peen is in a twist about it, not because you have a great story you want people to read, not because you want the control that self-publishing affords you.

To the self-publishing DIY indie community at large:

Call these screeching moonbats what they are: screeching moonbats. I’ve long said that the self-publishing community needs fewer cheerleaders and more police — meaning, more folks willing to say, “That fruity nutball does not represent me, my work, my ethos, my nation, my planet, my species, or my very molecular structure.” Don’t let them be the loudest voices in your community.

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