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October 25, 2011 / 68 Comments

25 Reasons You Won’t Finish That Story

Writers are our own worst enemies. We will hamstring ourselves with a hacksaw just as we’re getting going, and to that I say: “Oh, hell no.” It’s time to keep an eye out for the landmines and bear-traps we lay for ourselves along the way, those dreaded pitfalls that help to ensure we won’t finish the shit that we started. Whether you’re participating in NaNoWriMo (which always makes me want to say: NaNoWriMo Williams: The Adventure Begins!) or writing a script or a game or an invented memoir about your fictional time as a glue-huffing base-jumper, you need to be aware of those things that might stop you from getting it done.

A lot of this is stuff I’ve said before, mind you.

But I think it’s good to have it in one big-ass mega-list.

Let’s roll.

1. Bad Breakfast Equals Blah Brain

It’s the start of your day, so it’s the start of this list: motherfucking breakfast. What you eat turns into energy for your body and the brain encased in said body. Just as you wouldn’t shove dog poop and old leaves into your car to make it run, you shouldn’t shove heaps of crap into your body and expect your mind to perform in top shape. Protein is better than carbs, and if you do eat carbs, you need the slowest carbs you can get — carbs so slow they need to stay after class. Sugar is your enemy. Processed foods: not your pal.

2. In The Clutches Of The Sinister Distractor Monkey!

A lot of writers — myself included — seem to have the attention spans of a cricket trapped in the bottom of a Four Loko can. I know if I’m not careful I’ll stop what I’m doing and look at Twitter, wander aimlessly around the Internet, get caught in a dastardly (and sticky) web of porn, clean my desk, go snack, build a robot that dooms the world. Hell, just now? I stopped writing this blog post for 15 minutes just so I could stare at light glinting off a penny. You’ve got to cut that shit out. Close the gates. Build a wall. It’s gotta be you and the word count: leave the other barbarians outside the gates, where they belong.

3. Defcon ZZZzzZZzz

A more problematic version of the “distractions” situation grows out of the priority you place upon your writing. It’s not just about being caught suddenly by a distraction, it’s about a longer, larger choice where you consistently place everything else above your writing. When writing comes last, it’ll never get done. Sure, I get it. You just bought a new video game. Or football is on. Or you’ve got housework to do. Or you’ve got this foul-smelling wreath of lint lodged deep in the ridges of your belly button and you must get it out. (Okay, seriously, get it out. Even the cat looks queasy.) In the grand Netflix queue of your life, Writing My Story should be numbers one through ten. Buckle up, shut the fuck up, and make it your priority.

4. That Ugliest Of Four-Letter Words: “Work”

Understand this up front: writing is work. Some days it’s fun work. Some days it’s hard but satisfying work. Other days it feels like you’re birthing a lawn chair from your hindquarters. Just know up front that not every writing day is a hot air balloon ride over a meadow made of happy puppies. Some are. Most aren’t. It’s still better than pushing a broom or sawing cows in half for the beef industry. Er, unless that’s your thing.

5. Ain’t Got No Discipline, You Mumbly Numb-Faced Slugabed

You’re saggy. Sludgy. Out of shape. Discipline is born of habit, and habit ain’t just a thing a nun wears to cover her godly hoo-has. Discipline comes from repeated action and the understanding that you create quantum entanglement between your butt and your chair so that you write — even a little! — every day.

6. You Believe Time Will Make Itself

Time isn’t like a box of gremlins: you don’t make more just by pouring water over their fuzzy Mogwai backs. Further, unless you’re the Doctor, you do not have the benefit of a time-traveling police box, do you? Said it before and I’ll say it again: we all have the same 24 hours in our day. It’s how we slice-and-dice and apportion those hours that matters. If every day goes by and you’re not reserving a fleshy portion of the temporal meat for your writing, well — need I refer to the title of this list?

7. Besieged By External Forces

Life is like a sneaky leprechaun always stealing your goddamn Lucky Charms. Every week is a new curveball that inevitably lands right in the catcher’s mitt known as your “crotch.” This is a battle. It’s you and the conflict of day-to-day existence, battling with bladed weapons for supremacy over Who Controls What. If you let external forces take the leash, then you’re just a bitch peeing where life demands you pee. If you take control, however, then you get to live life on your terms — point being, don’t let life’s bullshit get in your way. No excuses. Write through the pain. Obviously, this has limits — serious health problems, job loss, death in the family. Real problems should be given their due. (Though even then, sometimes it helps to stay writing through even the toughest slog.) Your goal is to set the pace. Claim your life, own your existence. Write in spite of whatever conflict you face.

8. Whip Out Your Harmonica, ‘Cause It’s Time To Sing The Penmonkey Blues

Not sure what it is about writers, but we are a cardboard box of sad little kittens. Lots of depression issues among writers — now and throughout time. Sometimes it’s chemical. Other times psychological. And some writers are just in love with the romance of being sad. Whatever your flavor of the Penmonkey Blues, if you know you lean that way, it behooves you to do something about it. I know, I know: easier said than done. Just the same, this is a self-replicating problem, like a cloud of out-of-control nano-bots: you want to write but you’re sad or depressed and so you can’t quite write and then that just makes you more sad, more depressed. Don’t swirl the drain. Find a way out. Seek help. Fight through it and put the words onto paper. Again, this isn’t meant to suggest it’s easy: but, if you want to finish something, it is absolutely necessary.

9. Expectations Inflated To The Size Of A Moon Bounce

Reality should be tucked firmly into your plan like an acorn in the cheek of a chipmunk. Don’t think you’re going to write a novel in a week. (And for you NaNoWriMo-heads, that might mean understanding you’re not going to write one in a month, either.) Don’t expect your first draft to be a masterpiece. Don’t expect your first book — good as it may be — to sell to a publisher or, if self-publishing, earn big sales from readers. In fact, it helps to have minimal expectations: just put your head down and write. Day in, day out. Write this thing until it’s done. Don’t worry about its future. Worry about the present: because without a finished book, the future won’t add up to a thimble full of mouse turds.

10. An Unrealistic View Of Process

Yes, some authors shit out bestsellers and/or brilliant prose (as the two are not exclusive). Some folks are prodigies, whether it’s at shooting hoops, playing the piano, of being The Goddamn Batman. Let’s assume for a moment that you’re not breathing that rarefied air — or, at least, that you don’t possess the ego to believe such a thing. If we assume that you are not One Of The Greats, then it’s also safe to assume that you’re going to have to hunker down and do like the rest of us hard-working penmonkeys: you’re going to have to perform edits and rewrites to bang this thing into shape. Some writers possess a completely mysterious and magical view of process wherein they believe it’s one-and-done, like they’re just going to align their chakras and birth their story on a beam of light. Won’t happen — and that kind of expectation will kill your prose dead the moment you fail to give yourself the permission to write imperfectly.

11. Comparisons Break Your Mojo

Worst thing you can do is compare your writing — especially writing in its proto-draft form — to a published author, in particular, a published author you admire, adore, and possibly stalk (I see you there in Stephen King’s shrubbery with that vial of homemade influenza — it’s made of love, you’ll say, won’t you please start a global epidemic with me?). That’ll stop you cold. That comparison isn’t healthy. It’s good to aim big: just know that you’re not going to get there in the middle of writing a first draft.

12. Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads

Not every writer needs a plan, but in my experience many believe they don’t need a plan when, frankly, they do. I was that kind of writer: I thought, ha ha ha, stupid people saying I should outline or do preparatory work, those silly assholes with their misunderstanding of my genius. If you find you’re lost in the woods of your own fiction and feel like giving up — it might be because you have no plan. You can retrofit one. Doing that will help put you back on track and give your current writing a jolt of needed organization.

13. The Sixth Sense Says Something Is Screwy

(Fuckadang, say that 4200 times fast. That’ll twist your tongue into a Gordian knot.) Let’s say you’re writing and… something doesn’t pass the smell test. It’s like you’ve stepped into a world where the angles are off-kilter, where the clock runs backward and the milk curdles any time you look at it. It means something is screwy inside your story. Something isn’t adding up. Don’t quit. Go digging for it. Find where you chose the wrong path. Find where the paintings are hanging askew and straighten those fuckers.

14. The Story Isn’t Ready

You open the oven, you take out the brownies and start shoveling them into your mouth and it’s all OH MY GOD THEY’RE SOFT AND HOT AND GOOPY AND IT’S LIKE CHOCOLATE NAPALM AAAAARRGHBLEZZZ. You gotta let brownies finish baking, and sometimes you try to write and you discover that lo and behold, the story just isn’t ready. You haven’t finished planning it. Or just thinking about it. It doesn’t have to be fully-formed, but just the same, you need the Jell-O to set before you take it out of the fridge, you know? Mmm. Jell-O. Cosby sweaters. Mmm.

15. Or Maybe It’s You

Wow. That sounds accusatory. Imagine me pointing at you when I say that. OR MAYBE IT’S YOU. *crash of thunder, shrieking violins* Ahem. What I’m saying is, sometimes you’re not ready yet. I’ve got stories I want to write that are on the back-burner because I’m just not ready to write them. Maybe I’m not mature enough. Maybe I don’t think my “mad skillz” are quite mad enough. I’ve tried writing them too early, and you know what? They don’t come together right, and every time I had to bail on them and write something I was ready to write. This takes self-awareness, but that’s an important virtue for a writer to possess.

16. Bitten Off More Than You Can Chew

Never written anything before? Might be a lot to suddenly take on a 10-book epic science-fiction series starring a dynasty of star-faring moon people. Writing is a thing that takes a fucking bucketload (a bucking fucketload?) of practice and the reality is, maybe you’re trying to go too big, too fast. Maybe write a short story, novella, or lean-and-mean novel first. (That is a benefit of NaNoWriMo, in that it aims to produce a lean draft rather than create some massive wordpocalypse.)

17. Porking Another Manuscript Behind The Old Woodshed

Your eye, it wanders. To the curves and supple milk-flesh of another story. Cheater. Cheater. Stop that crap right now. You go too far down that path before long you will wander away from your current WIP and into the arms of another — and once that happens, you may find that you’ll never go back. You adulterous ink-slut, you. With a pair of another story’s panties sticking out of your pocket. For shame. For shame.

18. Haven’t Answered Any Of The Critical Questions

Ask yourself: what is this about? Why am I writing this? Why will anyone care? Asking yourself some fundamental questions before you write — plus several others while you write — can help keep your nose to the grindstone and allow you to feel settled in both direction and purpose.

19. You Know What? You Just Don’t Give A Shit

Just last year I was writing a book and I got maybe 20% through and a cold realization struck me: I just didn’t give a shit. I don’t mean existentially — I hadn’t lost all ability to care about everything. Just this one thing. The novel wasn’t resonating. The story and characters worked better in my head than on paper. I wasn’t invigorated by it and, instead, felt enervated. That realization will stop you dead. Solution is either to abandon completely or to go back and figure out how to make it so you care — and that usually means digging deep and making it more personal, somehow.

20. Trying To Write To Market, Not Write To Your Own Desires

A variant on “just don’t give a shit” is what happens when you write solely for market. The experience feels cheap and tawdry, like the bad frat-boy cologne hanging in the air like a miasma at a strip club. That’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t write for others: storytelling is communication and isn’t meant to be masturbatory. But the story you’re trying to communicate should be your story, a story only you can tell — not a story meant only for market. Write only for commerce and the story might die on the vine.

21. The Cock-Blocking Road-Block Of Writer’s Block

I maintain the controversial assertion that writer’s block is not a real thing. I’m not saying writers don’t get blocked: it’s just not unique to them and doesn’t deserve its own special name. Just the same, hitting that mental wall will slam up the airbags and spill hot imaginary coffee all over your story’s no-no region. Might I suggest 25 ways to get past the dreaded writer’s block? Oh, I might. I might.

22. Praying To A Muse That Does Not Exist

The Muse is naught but a cruel hallucination: a false face born on vapors rising from a sun-baked highway. Relying on inspiration to strike will help ensure your story cannot, erm, climax. Inspiration is what put you in the chair in the first place, but it’s not what gets you to the end. It’s a twee old saying, but what counts is perspiration. And maybe gestation. And incubation. And frustration, gyration, damnation, elation, libation, and mutation. And distillation and amplitude modulation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation and BY THE PUBES OF HEPHAESTUS I CANNOT STOP. Whew. Okay. Point is: the Muse is bullshit. Stop relying on phantoms and phantasms and write. You are your own Muse.

23. Square Peg, Circle Hole

Nobody wants to hear this, but maybe you’re just not a writer. I wanted to be a cartoonist once. And a rock drummer. I’m not those things because I recognize that I don’t align with those frequencies. Alas.

24. You’re A Quitting Quitfaced Quitter Who Quits

The act that will kill your story is quitting. This post goes a long way to give a name and a face to the problem but at the end of the day what stops you is you — and, in particular, the act of you ejecting from this process. It’s the easiest thing in the world: one day, you just don’t come to the keyboard, you don’t put any new words into the story, and you let the whole thing fade into the warm marshmallow embrace of oblivion.

25. Felled By Fear

The real face — the true name! — behind all this is fear. You’re afraid. Of what? I dunno. That’s on you. Afraid of success. Afraid of failure. Scared of the work, scared of what people will think, scared of not measuring up, scared of putting yourself out there. Maybe you fear how writing will drag your demons into the light. Maybe you fear taking the time, taking the chance, making the effort. Could be that your angst and anxiety has no name and takes no shape and exists only as a soul-sucking fog of uncertain dread. Whatever it is, fear is the story-killer. It’s the slayer of many-a-writer, and either you’re stronger than it and survive, or you’re weak and it feasts on your genitals like a glutton at a pie eating contest. Don’t let fear turn you into its dog. You’re bigger than it, and you send it running for the shadows by defying its crass whispers. You kill the fear by writing past it. You kill fear by saying, “I’m a writer. Bite me.”

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

October 24, 2011 / 17 Comments

Shotgun Gravy: An Excerpt

I’m told by many that they’re really enjoying the book and they didn’t know what to expect and, hey, maybe an excerpt would be wise. Here, then, is an excerpt of SHOTGUN GRAVY, the first Atlanta Burns novella. It’s taken not from the beginning of the book but is 2,000 words from the first third. Check it out. If you like it:

Kindle (US): Buy Here

Kindle (UK): Buy Here

Nook: Buy Here

PDF (Direct): Buy Here

* * *

It’s gone dim by the time Atlanta gets home. Sky the color of a bruised cheek.

Mom’s in the garage, face lit by the little TV she’s got sitting on a cooler. The cigarette between her two fingers has a long, crumbly ash hanging there, smoldering like a snake made of cinders.

When she sees her daughter her face lights up. “We got our check today.” She fishes underneath her butt sitting there on the cot and pulls out an envelope and waggles it around. Then she notices: “Oh, shoot, this is the power bill. Gosh-dang PP&L, they didn’t even read the meter last month. They just estimated a bunch of nonsense. Thieves, I’m telling you. And it’s legal. But we did get our check.”

“Super,” Atlanta says, not meaning it. She moves to head inside.

“It’s funny,” Mom says a little too loudly. “I remember we’d go to the bank, you and I, and you were obsessed with the lollipops they had in a fishbowl by the counter. You wanted the blue ones, always the blue ones. I don’t even know what they tastes like. Wasn’t blueberry. I don’t think anything in nature tastes like that so I called ‘em ‘Windex Pops,’ but Lords-a-mercy, if they didn’t have any Windex Pops in the bowl you would go unhinged, so one time—“

“Great story but I don’t care,” Atlanta says.

Her mother’s face falls like a ruined soufflé. “I’m just saying, I need to go to the bank to cash this. I thought you and me could hop in the Oldsmobile and go into town. Maybe checkout the consignment store. Been wantin’ a new mixer.”

“Here’s an idea. Get a job instead and then we don’t need to rely on you getting money from the state for doing nothing at all. What a crazy idea.”

Then Atlanta goes inside, ignoring her mother’s stunned, stung face.

She slams the door and goes and pops two Adderall soon as she’s inside.

 

* * *

 

The Adderall is good. Real good. The high has no jagged edges. And it does the opposite of those anti-whatevers they gave her at Emerald Lakes. Those little pills, each the shape of a baseball home plate, each the color of Pepto Bismol, softened everything. Life through a Vaseline-smeared lens. It took the pain and smothered it under a downy mattress.

The Adderall takes the pain and straight up ignores it. It makes all the other shit going on so much more interesting, diminishing the pain by removing its bite. That night, she doesn’t sleep because she doesn’t have to. She cleans her room. She takes a walk down the driveway under the midnight moon, notices the windows of light still coming from the cat lady’s house next door, she goes back inside and writes that seven-page paper demanded by that hag, Mrs. Lewis. (Of course, it’s a seven-paged hate-fueled screed written in bold strokes with permanent marker.)

Atlanta even cleans the shotgun. She doesn’t have gun oil so she uses WD-40 and olive oil. She doesn’t have a barrel brush, but she does have a wire clothing hanger that she bends and breaks and corkscrews into a wad of paper towel.

She even pulls back the hammer and goes to clean it, but next thing she knows her heart feels like a jar of moths and it’s like she’s standing on the edge of a building teetering on the balls of her feet—the vertigo threatens to overwhelm her, to eat her the way a bullfrog eats a mayfly.

The shotgun has to go. She slides it under her bed.

For the rest of the night she lays above it, staring at her ceiling with wide open eyes, willing her heart to stop flipping and fluttering.

 

* * *

 

“Psst!”

Whatever that is, Atlanta assumes it has nothing to do with her.

She’s got her locker open and going through the motions—pulling books down off the shelf and letting them tumble into her bag even though at class-time she’ll instead just sit in the back and read her Stephen King novel du jour (today it’s The Stand), collecting that sweet B+—and she’s thinking too about how she didn’t sleep one wink last night and doesn’t feel tired. Sure, the Adderall’s blissful ignorance failed her eventually, but really, that was her fault. C’mon. Getting out the shotgun? It’d be like juggling a couple of hornet’s nests and wondering how you got stung.

Then: “Psst! Tsst! Fsst!”

Again, ignorance is bliss.

She slams her locker shut, takes a long slurp from a Diet Coke.

Motion catches her attention at the corner of her eye.

“Atlanta! Hey!”

It’s Shane Lafluco. That squat little tamale. Shit, is that racist? Dang. Whatever. Shane’s well put together again: Polo shirt, khakis, wingtips, not a hair out of place (so much so it calls to mind the plastic hair-helmets you snap onto LEGO figures, she thinks). He’s hiding behind the water fountain which nobody uses because the water tastes like weed-killer. He waves her over and then ducks into the alcove behind him.

Yeah, no. She walks the other way.

But it isn’t long before she hears the clop-clop-clop of his feet behind her, his little legs pinwheeling to catch up. “Wait. Wait.”

She spins. “Dude. C’mon. Just trying to go to class here.”

“I need your help.”

“Oh,” she says. “Here.” Then she musses up his hair. “High school makeover, complete. Now you don’t look like some kind of rocket scientist golf champion. We’ll call that one a freebie. See you.”

She turns, but he steps in front of her, desperately trying to put his hair back in its well-ordered place.

“No,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I need you for something else.”

“Because me helping you the other day wasn’t good enough?”

“You’ll get paid,” he says.

Through her teeth, she hisses: “What is it you think I’ll do for money, exactly? Just because—“

“Oh! No. No.” A genuine look of panic hits his face like a bucket of ice water. Flustered, he holds up both hands and looks embarrassed. “I wouldn’t—I don’t—no, no, that’s not what I mean—“

“Calm down,” she says, voice low. Others are starting to look as Shane continues babbling. She says it louder: “I said, calm down. Just go. I’ll follow. I said, go!”

 

* * *

 

She recognizes the boy waiting for her at the alcove’s end, sitting there on the lip of a planter where a plastic tree “grows.” Chris Coyne. One of the school’s self-proclaimed “Gay Mafia.” Each of them gayer and more fabulous than the last. She knows a few of them—or, knew them once, since nobody seems all that inclined to talk to her anymore—and they seemed nice enough, though gossipy.

Coyne’s got his legs crossed. His hands steepled in front of him. His chin is up like he don’t give a fuck.

But when he sees her, that veneer of disaffected pomposity vanishes in a powder flash. His face lights up when she enters the alcove, trailed by Shane. Atlanta’s not used to this kind of attention.

She is, of course, immediately suspicious.

“Oh, God,” she says. “What?”

Coyne leaps up, beaming. He starts to move in for a hug but she recoils as if he’s coming at her with a pair of gory stumps instead of hands. He retreats, but the beaming doesn’t quit.

“It’s the Get-Shit-Done Girl,” Coyne says. An eager, excited little clap follows.

“The who?” she asks, incredulous. “The hell does that mean?”

“I told him what you did for me,” Shane says.

“And we all know what you did before that,” Coyne says, laying it out there bold and bright as day, putting it on the table the way someone might drop a microphone and walk off stage. As if she doesn’t understand, he goes above and beyond to clarify: “The thing you did to your step-father.”

Ugh. Was that the story that was going around? Step-father? Jesus.

“It wasn’t my—“ she begins but then says, “You know what, fuck this. I gotta go.”

But before she again turns to escape this situation, Shane is exhorting her to stay and begging Coyne to lift his shirt and “show her, show her what you showed me.”

Coyne takes a deep breath and turns around. He undoes his black-knit sweater vest, and then begins to unbutton his shirt which is an orange so bright she wonders if he’s going hunting later in some kind of gay nature preserve.

When he lets the shirt fall, her breath catches.

Dotting up from his lower back and trailing up his spine are a series of small circular wounds. Burns, she thinks. Each the size of a pencil eraser. They’re still crusty and enflamed. One weeps clear fluid as the scab cracks. The burns go up to the base of his neck—around the point of his collar—but not beyond. Like the attacker didn’t want to show off his handiwork. Like it was a message just for Chris Coyne.

“Cigarette burns,” Coyne says over his shoulder. “They’re particularly, ahh, pesky given the ingredients list in your average cigarette. They don’t heal easy. Did you know in England they call cigarettes fags? Here I am: a fag burned by a fag. Go figure, huh?” His words are glib, brave, but his tone  doesn’t match: his voice shakes a little. He’s trying to cork that bottle, keep the fear from coming out.

It’s a familiar feeling.

He puts his shirt back on. “They went further. They took my pants off. Shoved a bunch of hot peppers up my butt, spackled it over with peanut butter so it held the peppers up in there. Sounds funny, I know, and if it didn’t happen to me I’d laugh, too.”

Atlanta’s not laughing. She says as much. In fact, she’s pretty horrified.

“I pooped blood for a week,” Coyne says, matter-of-factly. Now she sees it: the tears at the edges of his eyes, glistening, filling up, but never falling down his cheeks. He blinks them back, and massages underneath his eyes for some reason. “When they did it, they said… they said that this will teach me that it’s an exit, not an entrance. Ironic given that they were sticking things in my ass, but I don’t suspect that any of these fine upstanding citizens are in line for the Nobel this year.”

“There was more than one, then,” she says.

He nods. “Four of them.”

“And you know who they are?”

Another nod.

“And what is it you want me to do about this, exactly? Against four pissed off gay basher bullies?”

“You took down three bullies the other day.”

Shane grins. “She did. You did. It was pretty sweet.”

“You want me to scare them? Hurt them? Get revenge? That what this is about? Revenge?”

“Maybe,” Chris says. “Yes. I don’t know. What I really want is I want them not to do it again. They told me they would. If I didn’t ‘stop being gay.’ As if that was an option I could select on the menu.” He stares off at a distant point. “Even if they don’t hurt me again they’ll hurt somebody.”

She’s chewing on her lip. This is a bad idea. No good can come of this. Is this who she is? Is this who people think she is, now, or who she should be? Still. Coyne’s face is back to his untouchable, unfazed façade—any sign of tears are long gone. But his hands are still shaking.

Her hands shake too, sometimes.

“I’ll give you five hundred dollars,” he says, finally.

Wow.

She lets that pickle.

She owes Guy $100 for the pills. The other four would be nice to have.

“Fine. Meet me at my house. Today. After school.”

October 21, 2011 / 79 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: “Bullies And The Bullied”

“Five Words, Plus One Vampire,” will soon complete — have you checked out all the flash fiction stories there? Well, why the hell not? Skip to it.

Yesterday was Spirit Day.

A day to support those LGBT folks who are the victims of bullying.

My new novella, SHOTGUN GRAVY, is about this very thing.

So, it seems like this is a good week for you folks to do up a flash fiction challenge based off of bullies and their victims. “Bullying,” then, as a motif. Not just LGBT bullying, but bullying of all shapes and sizes, of all callous cruel and callow flavors. Here, though, will be the trick:

You have only 100 words.

Not 1000.

Nay, only 10% of the normal tally.

I don’t care what genre it is — in fact, more power to you for writing sci-fi, fantasy, crime, whatever. Bullying is an act that transcends. It isn’t just on the playground. It’s in politics. It’s on the street. In schools and old folks’ homes and cities and suburbia and rural tracts and so on and so forth.

You should pop your 100 words right in the comments section below.

I’ll pick my ten favorite and give all ten of you SHOTGUN GRAVY in the format of your choice — PDF, Kindle MOBI, or ePub. Oh, here’s the other challenging bit, then:

You do not have a week.

You have only this weekend.

You’ve got till noon EST on Monday, October 24th to get your 100-word stories into the comments section.

I’ll pick my faves by Tuesday at the same time.

Get to writing, folks.

EDIT:

HOKAY!

Whew.

I hate all of you ’cause you make this so hard.

Here’s the ten folks.

You can contact me at terribleminds at gmail dot com — and I’ll get you a copy of SHOTGUN GRAVY, just let me know in what format.

Rock on, folks. A powerful challenge and you stepped up.

* * *

Suzie – “Not My Fault”

Lindsay Mawson

Thomas Pluck

Darren Goldsmith

Alex Gradine

ZC

Sarah E Olson

Nicole

Ben K

Anthony Elmore

 

 

October 20, 2011 / 34 Comments

Penmonkey Status Report

Okay, first thing out of the gate is —

HOLY CRAP BLACKBIRDS COVER.

If I could bedazzle that, make it pulse, blink, throw in a bunch of interrobangs, have the letters get up and work-it work-it on the stripper pole, Sweet Molly McGoggins, I would. Because it’s a helluva cover.

I’m a lucky dude with a cover like that.

Miriam Black, realized.

Oh so many tiny images contained within that one. Beautiful. Beautiful!

And a cover like that is thanks to the Mighty Artification Powers of Joey Hi-Fi, who also did the award-winning cover to Lauren Beukes’ ZOO CITY (a book if you haven’t read, you need to correct ASAMFP).

Bow down to him.

Thanks to the mighty bibliomantium overlords at Angry Robot for making such a killer cover happen.

Writing Advice Snidbit

Right quick, I posted this on the Twittertubes and the Google-Doubleplusgoods yesterday, and so I thought I’d just pop it up here as a tiny li’l snidbit of dubious writing wisdom:

When writing a 1st draft, duck your head low and bolt for the finish line. Don’t stop. Don’t blink. Follow the map far as it takes you.

Know that the book will be born during rewrites. When you break its carapace and find the true beast beneath the old ruined skin.

It’s okay when your map, the plan, the outline, fails you. That’s good. Sometimes roads are closed for a reason. Don’t freeze. Keep writing.

Remember: slow and steady wins the race when rocking that first draft. Even 1k a day gets you your draft in under three months.

Also, something-something-porn-whiskey-dopamine-killyourdarlings-cthulhu-fthnagn-poop-noise. Now shut up and write.

Do with that as thou wilt. Share! Discuss! Debate! Dispute!

Allonsy, Alonzo!

Why I Write

LA Gilman pointed out that today is, apparently, the National Day Of Writing, and so you can head over to Twitter and use the hashtag #whyiwrite to, well, describe why you write.

For me, it’s simple:

Writing is how I tell stories, and telling stories is how I communicate myself to the world. I am my stories and my stories are me and just as civilizations used mythology to explain themselves and their world, I use storytelling and writing to explain myself and my world, and transmit that idea via the penmonkey frequency to all who care to intercept it. That is, of course, the philosophical side.

The practical side is, Mommy gets a what-what and needs money, and writing is how I get that money. Sorry to crass it up with commerce, but trust me, writing is a pretty fangasmic way of earning a living.

Hop over to Twitter or tell us in the comments:

Why do you write?

Penmonkey Incitement Level Up Ding!

Holy crap, the Penmonkey Incitement is up to 442/1000 copies of COAFPM sold.

Which means we crossed the 400 mark.

Which means I need to give away:

Another postcard.

Another t-shirt.

Another penmonkey critique of someone’s writing.

It also means that after another 58 sales, I’m going to give away a Kindle.

I’m going to wait until tomorrow morning, at this time (9AM EST) to pick the winners, thus giving you folks a chance to get your names into the hat if you haven’t already. Diggit?

So, to those who have procured the book via PDF: you don’t need to do anything.

Those who have procured it via Amazon or B&N, well, you need to make sure I know about it. Send me proof of purchase to terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Also be advised that buying CONFESSIONS or REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY during the month of October also earns you a free copy of 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING. Again, though, if you bought via Amazon or B&N, you need to contact me at the above email address to make sure I know you bought it. I ain’t psychic.

Ch-Chak, Boom! Shotgun Gravy Has Arrived

I’m sure you noticed this, but SHOTGUN GRAVY arrived on Amazon, B&N, and here at terribleminds.

As of this moment, I’ve crossed the 100 sales mark, which is where I hoped to be. The first day was a little tepid but I think that’s because it was a Friday (and a Friday in which a new iPhone dropped — hell, half the day I was trying to get mine activated, so I get it). I’ve gotten emails and tweets from people who seem to not just like it, but really love it, which is overwhelmingly awesome. The story means a lot to me and I hope people take a chance on it.

If it sells steadily, I’d say BAIT DOG is a good bet for December-ish.

If sales hit the wall — well, who knows?

If you find my promos of SHOTGUN GRAVY ever get too loud (they will die back soon enough, I assure you), please poke me in the ribs and politely ask that I cool it down. It’s hard being a self-published author in particular because you’re forced to be a one-man-marketing-machine, and the line between “Helpful Advertising!” and “Annoying Spamfuck!” gets real blurry, real quick-like.

Obviously if you liked the book, please do leave a review and share with your friends how much you dug it.

Inner Views And Udder Links

Hey, look, ma, you can hear my voice at various places!

First up: The Mighty Maven Of Word-Making, Mur “The Murder” Lafferty interviews me over at her podcast, ISBW (I Should Be Writing). Check it out riiiiight here.

Second up: Sexy svelte storyteller extraordinaire J.C. “The Rabbit Hutch” Hutchins has me visit at his site where we dig into some transmedia chatter. Check that out at this underlined linky-thing.

If you have not read the first chapter of DOUBLE DEAD, then you will note that Flames Rising has posted that very thing. Want to preorder? Go right ahead. Coburn is coming.

I’ve got a story in THE NEW HERO (Vol I), featuring a thug enforcer for the quite-literal Underworld, Mookie “The Meatman” Pearl. Robin Laws edited, and Gene Ha did the cover:

…and if you look at the bottom row and see a big dude with a meat cleaver, that’s Mookie. It’s a story I’m really proud of and was a fuuuhuuuhuuuuuckin’ hoot to write. Hopefully the same to read.

I know, right? Two awesome covers in one day.

My khakis, they are shellacked.

October 20, 2011 / 2 Comments

“Mom, I’m Next To Stephen King!” Your Book On Shelves, By Lauren Roy

Ta-da. Mixing it up today with a guest post from Lauren Roy, AKA “Falconesse.” She’d like to say some things to you about getting your book on actual, non-digital bookshelves. Note that Lauren’s talking about any book, be it self-published or otherwise. She is, of course, a bookseller — she’s writing you from the trenches, you see. Feel free to ask her any questions you see fit to ask!

You’ve published a book in dead tree form. Congratulations! Now you’re thinking, “Hey, I’d like to be on the shelves at Joe’s Books.” (We assume, for the sake of this exercise, you’ve passed the test in this post.)

So, how do you make friends with your local independent bookstore and get some of that sweet, sweet shelf-space?

Be part of the store’s community. Shop there. Attend events. Be a friend to that store because you genuinely care about it, not just so they’ll carry your book. Booksellers know the difference.

Offer returnability. Most bookstores buy books on a returnable basis, and at a 40% discount (or greater, if they’re ordering direct from the publisher). If you can’t offer this, buyers will likely balk — if your book doesn’t sell, they’re stuck with it on their shelves and will have to cough up the cash for it. It’s not a good arrangement for the store. You might instead have to work with the bookstore on consignment.

Talk to the right person… In my bookstore days, lots of would-be authors came in and pushed their book on whatever register monkey they could corner first. Usually said monkeys were high schoolers who weren’t making ordering decisions.

Ask to talk to the book buyer… at the right time. If the store is a holiday madhouse and the staff is running on caffeine and fear, now’s not the time to pitch to the buyer.

Yes, I said pitch. You’ve got about thirty seconds to make them want to read your book. Be professional. Be polite. Learn from this.

Have a sample copy available. Publishers create buzz through the help of Advanced Reader Copies. These are released 3-6 months(ish) before the book hits stores. They look like this:

Stuff of Legends

You’ll need to give a copy of your book to the buyer to read. If you don’t want to part with a dead-tree copy, be willing to email them a .pdf, or stick the book on a thumb drive.

Give them time to read it. Your average bookseller’s ARC pile looks like this:

ARC pile 1

Okay, I lied. More like this:

ARC pile 2

Only taller.

Don’t expect them to drop everything to read your book. It’s fair to follow-up (nicely!) if you haven’t heard back in three or four weeks.

Don’t say the A-word. Not asshole or asshat. Amazon. I’m sorry to say this, but if you’ve self-pubbed through CreateSpace, chances are your local indie will pass on carrying your book. It’s like suggesting the mom-and-pop cafe down the street buy their coffee from Starbucks.

Promote the store on your website. Speaking of the A-word, don’t just link to Amazon. If you want your local indie to support your book, send readers their way. Link to them and to Indiebound.

Stand out in a good way. Booksellers get approached by writers all the time. They will quite possibly be ready with a “no” before you even get started. If you’re wondering why, give Chuck’s article another read. Now imagine people who haven’t read that coming in, looming and tittering, or swaggering in with the hard-sell, badgering buyers to represent something that’ll sit on the shelves gathering dust.

I can’t promise you success. It is an uphill climb. But if you keep these things in mind, you might just increase your chances at getting on the shelves.

Additional tips for the commercially published:

Do offer to drop in and sign. If your books are already on store shelves, and you’d like to do a stock-signing for your friendly local bookstore, that’s awesome! Booksellers will love you for it, and if they know you’re John-Hancocking those bad cats, will probably find a way to display them as autographed copies.

However, don’t assume the whole staff knows who you are. While I could probably have named several local authors in my bookstore days, that doesn’t mean I recognized them on sight. Especially since most writers don’t visit their local Glamour Shots every time they visit the mall. Once, a woman came in at closing time, grabbed a stack of books, then brought them up to the register where — without a word to me — she snagged a pen and started writing in them. When I asked if I could help her out (silently screaming What the fuck, lady?), she put on her haughtiest tone and said, “I’m the author.”

If you have a publicist, loop them in — especially if you’ve arranged a signing with the bookstore on your own. There might not be very much that they need to do, but it’s good to keep your team informed. Also, (and this is where I put on my day job hat), if something goes wonky, you’ve got more people looking out for you. Events get listed in publicity reports. Sales reps look at those, or get an email from the publicist saying, “Hey, your store is hosting Joe T. Author in two weeks.” The reps get in touch with booksellers to make sure their orders are in and arriving on time, and can help troubleshoot any stock/credit/shipping issues that crop up. You’ve got a support team at your publisher. Let them help!

Let the stores know what you need. Need a glass of water, a cup of coffee, a certain-colored pen to sign with? Do you want a designated staff member standing by to take pictures for fans, or to write their names on a post-it so you don’t accidentally write Kristen when they spell it Kristin? Do you need someone to play bad cop if a fan’s monopolizing your time? Whatever makes a signing go smoothly for you, tell your contact at the store and they’ll make it happen.

Thank the staff. They’re probably already gushing over you, but let ’em know if they did a good job, too. It’s always nice to hear.

Booksellers and authors make great partners. Hopefully these guildelines will help you turn your friendly local bookstore into your friendly loyal bookstore.

Lauren Roy spends her days surrounded by books and her nights scratching out one of her own. She has just done the math and realized she’s been in the book industry for more than half her life — back in her day, they sold books barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways. Her rambles about bookselling, writing, geekery, and her inability to nurture houseplants can be found at falconesse.com.  She is represented by Miriam Kriss of the Irene Goodman Agency.

October 19, 2011 / 28 Comments

Search Term Bingopocalypse


Time again for SEARCH TERM BINGO, little babies. If you don’t know how this works, here it is: people discover this website via some of the strangest search terms one could imagine. I pluck these search terms out of obscurity and dissect them for gits and shiggles.

Let us begin.

invisible porn ambush

That’s the name of my new techno-mustache Harry Connick Jr. tribute band! Or something.

Okay, though, let’s — reluctantly — remove the word “ambush” from the equation for a minute. Invisible porn. Is that a thing? Can it even be a thing? Like, you have that saying — “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s around to see it, does it still turn into seven cats who determine the fate of the universe?” I think that’s the saying. Whatever. Point being, if the porn is invisible, does it remain pornographic?

If I cannot see the porn, how can it be porn?

Man, this really bakes my noodle. Invisible porn ambush.

It’s probably something Grant Morrison does to people.

is nathan fillion into bdsm

I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s a healthy contingent of fangirls and fanboys who pray to all the heretic gods that he is. Though, to be clear, Nathan Fillion has too strong a jaw to be concealed by a mere gimp mask. You’d probably need like, a welder’s helmet or something.

i am a monkey and you can be so awesome

NO, you-who-are-a-monkey, it’s you who’s awesome. High-five, monkey!

exposition about tigers getting effed

Tiger-effing? Can we all just be adult here and call it “tiger-fucking?”

The act of tiger-fucking is present and active — that’s not exposition. And, as such, I now feel that all popular novels should contain at least some portion — between 10 and 57% of the total manuscript — devoted to the very act of fucking tigers. Though, one supposes you could write exposition based on the act. Like, say, the history of tiger-fucking? Or a dull and listless explanation of the mechanics behind tiger-fucking? (“After you remove the tranquilizer dart from behind the tiger’s ear, lift up the big cat’s tail and…”) Ennh. See? This is why exposition sucks. It takes all the magic out of tiger-fucking.

do you want more eggs you greedy murderer

I just want to go up and yell this at people. “DO YOU WANT MORE EGGS, YOU GREEDY MURDERER?”

I’m sure I’ll discover in the days to come that this is some new tagline for a PETA ad campaign where they equate “People who eat chicken eggs” with serial killers like Ted Bundy. Because if ever there’s a bastion of people with a steady-handed grip on the handlebars of rationality, it’s PETA. Hey, sidenote, did you know that PETA kills dogs? Good times!

why don’t you go ahead and go die movie

Yeah, MOVIE. Why don’t you go ahead and die? With your dumb opening credits? And your stupid ending credits? And your producer! C’mon! PSHH PFFT. Why can’t you just be a book already? You better just suck it, movie. You better go and eat a bag of shit and take a big ol’ dirty dirt-nap. You goddamn movie. With your CGI robosaurs. Your sad devotion to that ancient three-act religion has — *glurk! choking!*

the latest way of fucking

The latest? Like, the really latest-latest? Okay, here it is — hot off the FAX machine. I haven’t tried this out yet, so I don’t know if it works, but hey — you asked for it, pal.

This should work for fuckers and fuckees of all sexual orientations.

The latest way of fucking is to take your sexual partner, right? You lay him or her down on a bed of warm fettuccine noodles. Butter them up with duck fat. Then you cast a magical spell over both of your hands until they become psychic hell-squid. Then you lay down upon your partner and let the squid’s psychic tentacles invade all orifices — this should hyper-charge all of your gnostic particles and trigger a universal synaptic orgasm in the both of you.

This sexual move is called “Tentacles Steal The Happy Gonads.”

Though, on the street I think they just call it “Squidfucking, With Fettuccine.”

hound riders of penney’s pubic hair

Uhhh. Wh… Wha…

See, every time I do a Search Term Bingo, I get one entry that just… leaves me flummoxed. I don’t have a joke. I don’t have a comment. I got nothing. I just look at it and it’s like a hungry abyss, it keeps pulling at me and pulling at me, daring me to try to understand why the fuck anyone would enter that into a search engine. I have to imagine some very intense hallucinogens were involved. Just an educated guess.

tacowhores

Count me among their number. And our number is legion.

TACOWHORES.

This Christmas, on ABC Family.

cures for lung butter

You need some lung toast. That’ll give the lung butter something to do.

Mmm. Delicious.

*crunch crunch crunch*

*cough cough cough*

*crunch crunch crunch*

lady gaga flashes her lady bits

I wanted to include this because this has been the #1 search term here at li’l ol’ terribleminds on and off for weeks. I for one am happy to live in a world where Lady Gaga can show off all her weird womanly portions.

ass sex ass

This is a palindrome.

That is, if the definition of a palindrome is the word “sex” sandwiched by “ass” and “ass.”

Which it’s probably not.

But it should be.

It should be.

slef published books are terrible

Yes, slef-published books are uniformly awful. But that’s to be expected. The Slef are a horrible race — sludgy, grotesque beings. All of them, made of boogers and dog hair. Now, self-publishing — well, okay, that has some hits and some misses, I’ll grant you. But Slef-publishing, ugh. Their books are made of ants. Their poems sung through throats filled with septic run-off. Horrible horrible beings, the Slef.

what wines do writers drink

Ones pressed from the grapes of shame.

blackbirds by chunk wendig

GODDAMN YOU CHUNK WENDIG. That fuckin’ guy is always beating me to the punch with books. Double Dead by — yep, you guessed it, CHUNK WENDIG. Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey by — uh-huh, uh-huh, CHUNK WENDIG. 250 Things You Should Know About Masturbating On Public Transit by — oh, wait, that’s by some guy named Richard Wipe? Never mind. Point is, Chunk Wendig is always out there. Cock-blocking my every literary effort. He’s my otherworldly doppelganger. One day he and I shall do battle for dominance over the Wendig literary empire.

you look really good today

Aww, thanks! How sweet of you to say.

I’ve been working out. My skin has a healthy shine from the bacon grease applique I put on every morning. And my clothes have that mottled “a baby just vomited on them” look. All the rage in Prague!

motherfucking breakfast slush

New, from Nabisco! “Hey, man, what are you eating?” “MOTHERFUCKING BREAKFAST SLUSH, SON.”

Contains 11 nonessential toxic metals and 47 pieces of pulverized plastic packaging. Now comes in new autumn flavors: “Moldering fungi.” “Catshit In A Pumpkin.” And don’t forget, “MAPLE SADNESS.”

how do you know if your a writer

You know how to differentiate “your” from “you’re,” dipshit. That’s how.

virgin riding horse pony of orgasm

This needs to be a velvet black light panting hanging on my office wall. I don’t know what a “horse pony of orgasm” is, truthfully, and I don’t care. Whatever it is, it must be sublime.

Somebody out there? One of you artmonkeys? Draw this. Now. Please? Please.

Actually, I probably need an artist to illustrate a number of STB entries.

im a fucking unicorn no im a table

Well, make up your mind, shapeshifter. Shit or get off the pot. Unicorn? Or table? I mean, sheesh.

behave like a screenwriter

Pro-tip: it involves lots of crying, tons of whisky, and an inflatable narwhal.

Don’t ask about the narwhal.

If you join the Writer’s Guild, you’ll see.

They will make you see.

return of the vagina turtle scorpion

Ehh, this one was pretty good, but not as good as the first one. The original Vagina Turtle Scorpion, from 1974, was a fucking classic, man. A classic. None of that CGI shit. They made the Vagina Turtle Scorpion out of a scale model. Ben Burtt did the sound effects for the creature’s Doom Scream by throwing a bunch of hamsters into a garbage disposal. Controversial at the time. Do you remember the scene where the Vagina Turtle Scorpion — who by now you think is totally dead after his battle with the Screeching Dong Mongrel — rises up out of the desert sands and like, flies up and grapples that dirigible and punctures it with his hell-stinger? It was all, FLOOSH BOOM KAFOOZLE, and all the fiery shitty bits rained down on the ground. That was incredible. It affected a generation of nerds and cinephiles.

The new one just isn’t as good.

And the third one — The Vagina Turtle’s Lament In 3-D — totally sucks super-dick.

iam afraid of seeing someone on webcams

Like, anyone? Or someone in particular?

Maybe that little girl from THE RING. I’m scared to see her pretty much anywhere.

loosen your sfinkter

Holy crap-bunnies, that is the best spelling of “sphincter” I have ever seen. HERE COMES SFINKTER! *accompanied by wicked guitar lick* I want that to be a seriously non-rad late 1980’s hair-metal band.

strain all urine

All the urine? Human? Mammal? Avian? What are you hoping to achieve? The world’s largest collection of kidney stones? I guess that’s an admirable goal. Weirdo.

dingo with umlauts

Isn’t this the lead single by that new band, Sfinkter?

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