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July 26, 2011 / 52 Comments

25 Ways To Become A Better Writer

Time again for another list of 25 — this time, a long hard look at the many ways to press hot irons to the feet of your writing and make it beg to get better. Flip through them, and then should you find you’ve got your own to add, well, hot dang, you know what the comments section is for. Time to measure up, penmonkeys.

1. Practice Makes Perfect, Little Princess

The easiest and most forthright way to become a better writer is, duh, to write. Write, write, write. Write regularly. Get on a schedule, whether it’s 100, 1000, or 10000 words a day. Writing is a muscle, like your biceps, your heart, or your private parts. Don’t use ’em, you lose ’em. And then they fall to the ground and rot like oxidizing apples and are in turn eaten by hungry gophers. Om nom nom.

2. Time To Eye-Fuck Some Books

The world is home to — *does some quick math on fingers, toes, testicles, nipples, and teeth* — 45 smajillion books. Each of them often containing somewhere north of 50,000 words. And new books hit the atmosphere every day. You do not need to read all of these books. But you should act as if that is indeed your task, carving your way through the world’s cumulative body of the written word one tome at a time. If you want to write, you’re coming in at the ground level of these 45 smajillion books written by 33 fnuhzillion different writers. You are a but a mote in the reader’s eye. You want to compete? Read. Learn what other writers are doing. Absorb it with that schnapps-laden sponge you call a brain.

3. Read Widely, Weirdly, Wisely

Here then is the prison that writers build for themselves: it becomes harder and harder to read purely for pleasure. Reading for pleasure often means sticking to a few genres, with a few authors — “Oh, I like fantasy, so I only read fantasy fiction,” or, “I love the Detective Cashew Pepper series by K. J. Staplebottom, and I’ve read up to #47 in the series.” That privilege has been revoked. You now must read widely, weirdly, wisely. Read everything. Move outside your desired library. Read obscure British literature. Read poetry. Read non-fiction. Read science-fiction even though you hate science-fiction. If you want to do what everybody else is doing, fine, read only in your pre-existing sphere of influences. But this is about improving your work, not treading water like a poodle who fell off a boat.

4. Don’t Be A Book Racist

Those who write books are occasionally “book racists.” They pump their fists and espouse Book Power while denigrating other forms of the written word. “TV will rot your brain,” they might say. As if the Snooki book will somehow do laps around an episode of THE WIRE. Books are not the only form of the written word. You may not even want to write books. Branch out. Watch television. Watch film. Read scripts. Visit great blogs. Play games. Don’t be a book racist. The storytelling cults can learn much from one another.

5. Whittle Your Mind Into A Straight Razor, ‘Cause It’s Time To Cut A Motherfucker

Another instance where improving your writing skill may come at the slow erosion of your pleasure. Read and watch stories with a deeply critical eye. Not to be a dick, but to instead ask: “What would I do differently? Why would I do it that way? Could I do this better? How would I write it to improve upon it?”

6. Unclog Those Ears, Wax Boy

Listen. Seriously, get your pinky into that ear, unplug it of all the wax and hair and sadness that’s built up in there and just… listen. We read with our ears as much as with your eyes and so it’s critical you know what sounds good as well as what reads well. Sit down at a bar, listen to a conversation. Turn on an audio book or a radio show. Listen to a stand-up comedian deliver jokes and stories. Write it down if you must — see how it lays on the page. It should lay there like Burt Reynolds with a snake draped delicately across his man-parts. In other news, I bet his man-parts have their very own mustache.

7. Go Forth And Do Shit, My Son

Write what you know means what it says but doesn’t say what it means. You know more than you know. Fuck fact. Embrace authenticity. Writers do not gain a sense of authenticity by sitting at the computer all day jizzing out word-babies. Have something to write about. To do that, you must go out. Into the world. Take a trip. Get in a bar fight. Hunt a white whale. Metaphorically. Please don’t kill whales. They are our benevolent alien masters and one day they’re going to get really pissed and call in an airstrike.

8. Learn What Words Mean And Where Punctuation Goes

Storytelling may be an art, but writing is a craft, and that means learning where commas go, how to spell words (like “clitoral” or “sesquicentennial”), and in general how to put together a fucking sentence. Read yourself some Strunk and White. Flip through a dictionary now and again. Scope out some Grammar Girl. Hear a word you don’t know? Go look it up. Improve your technical skills. It is the bedrock of your penmonkeying and without it, you’re just a punk-ass who won’t eat his vegetables.

9. Be Torn Asunder By Editorial Talons

It helps to submit to editors. Real editors. Tough love editors. Because sometimes your writing needs to get on its knees and have wax poured down its back while it receives a right-good nipple-caning from a whip-like willow branch. Your writing improves in the fiery gaze of a hellish editor. The flames will wick away the flopsweat and the amateurish urine stain. The barnacles will char and fall off. Submit to an editor.

10. Be Ripped Apart By Other Writers

Writers are not editors. (File under D for “duh.”) They have different priorities and different perspectives. (And they’re probably also raging drunkaholics. Editors are nice and drink wine. Writers will drink all the cough syrup at CVS if they can get their ink-stained fingers on it.) Whereas an editor will often highlight a problem, a writer will come up with a solution. That doesn’t mean it’s a solution you want, but it’s worth it to have that perspective just the same. Submit your work to other writers. Demand — with a gun in the small of their back if you must — that they not be kind. Mercy will not strengthen you.

11. Self-Flagellate

Pull up your pants, that’s not what I mean. I mean, you must smack your word count with the horse-whip of scrutiny! You must become your own cruelest editor, your jaw clenched tight with the meat of your own manuscript trapped between your teeth. This doesn’t need to be a consistent mode of operation, but once in a while it pays to take a page of your writing and go at it with a blowtorch, a car battery, and a starving honey badger. Cut your words. Make them bleed. Behold the healing power of bloodletting.

12. Throw Down Your Own Crazy-Ass Gauntlet, Then Run Through It Naked

Set challenges for yourself, then tackle them. Write a piece of flash fiction. Write poetry. Attempt to tell a story in a single tweet. Play with the second person perspective. Write a novel in sixty chapters, each only 1000 words. Treat it like a game where the rules are ever-changing.

13. Highway To The Danger Zone

Related, but different: write into your own discomfort. Escape your plexiglass enclosure and run toward peril, not away from it. Confront your many demons with your work and dissect them on the page. Write in genres with which you’re not at all comfortable. Know your limits, then take those limits, wrap them around a hand-grenade, and shove them up the ass of a velociraptor. Because, really, fuck limits. You wanna be a better writer, you’ll write outside your own proscribed margins.

14. Read Your Shit Aloud

I will pin your arms beneath my knees and scream into your face until I pass out from a rage aneurysm (an angeurysm?): read your work aloud. It will make you a better writer. I promise.

15. Embrace The Darwinism Of Writing Advice

Here’s what you do with writing advice (says the guy delivering a nigh-constant stream of dubious penmonkey wisdom): hunt it down, leash it, read it, absorb it, then let it go free once more. Let it compete with your other preconceived notions about writing. Sometimes the new writing advice will win and become a dominant meme inside your wordsmith’s brain. Other times your pre-existing beliefs will hold true — and will grow more tumescent, like a potent word-boner — through just such a test. You must take in writing advice and test it against your own notions. Tell all writing advice: “NOW YOU MUST FIGHT THE BEAR.”

16. Learn New Breakdancing Moves, Fool

You can’t be coming to the street with your stale-ass bullshit. The Worm? Really? The Robot? Classics, admittedly, but you’re going to get smoked by bigger and better b-boys, yo. So too it goes with writing. You must be willing to try new ideas. Not a plotter? Try plotting. Don’t like flashbacks? So write some motherfucking flashbacks. Make them your own. Try new tips, tricks, techniques. You should be able to say, “I wrote my last novel on the back of a dead hooker. With a Sharpie! Don’t worry, I outlined it first on the chest of my UPS man. He’s still upstairs in the tub! Hey, uh, know anyone who needs a couple kidneys?”

17. I Just Blogged A Little In My Mouth

You often hear, “writers should blog to build their platform,” to which I say, pants, poppycock, and pfeffernusse! (I know. Such a foul tongue!) I say: writers should blog because it keeps them writing, because it exposes their writing to the air of community, because it tests your skill in the open plains. Blogging is further a great place to play with language, to put words out there that aren’t headed to market, that aren’t forced to dance for their dinner. It allows you to use words like “poppycock” and “pfeffernusse.” True story.

18. Interface With Other Inkslingers

Sometimes you have to sit down over a pitcher of moonshine (or a hookah burning with the ash of an 1st edition Finnegan’s Wake) and confab the shit out of that palaver with other writers. Meaning: talk it out. Talk about careers. Techniques. Books you love. Writers you hate. Writer conventions and conferences are good places for this. Just remember: the writers are always at the bar. Like moths to a porchlight.

19. Wade Into The Mire Of Your Own Fetid Compositions

Time travel a little. Go back into your past and dredge up some writing from a year ago. From ten years ago. Read it. Learn from it. Also gauge how well you’ve grown. This can be instructive because sometimes you don’t know in what ways you’ve changed — further, you might identify darlings that repeatedly come up in your writing, darlings that deserve naught but the edge of your editorial chainsaw.

20. Do Not Defile The Penmonkey Temple

Your writing is the product of a machine, and that machine is your brain and body. The higher that machine functions, the better the writing that blubbers and spews from it. I’m not saying you need to treat your body like it’s a white tower of physical perfection — but we’re talking basic shit, here. Move around. Eat a good breakfast. Heroin is not a great snacktime treat. Fine, maybe you don’t need to treat your body like it’s a temple. Just don’t treat it like it’s the urinal in a Wendy’s bathroom.

21. Flex Your Other Artistic Muscles

Take photos. Paint a picture. Play the piano. Macrame a dildo cozy. Muscles work in muscle groups — your writing muscle is part of an overall creative cluster. You gotta work ’em all.

22. Find Your Voice By Not Finding Your Voice

Sometimes improving your writing is about letting go of your writing. Some writers become so obsessed with their voice that they forget they already have it — your voice is who you are, your voice is your natural default way of communicating with the written word. To find your voice and improve your wordsmithy, sometimes it pays to just relinquish ego, relinquish control, and stop fucking worrying so much.

23. Embrace Your Inner Moonbat

All writers are a little bit batshit. We’ve all got some combo-pack of Charlie Manson, Renfield and Bender from Futurama running around in our skulls. Embrace it. We’ve all got a head full of ghosts and gods and it behooves us to listen to them, to let them out and play on the page, to use the madness granted to us rather than deny it and walk the safe and sane line.

24. Veer Drunkenly Toward Truth

Be real on the page. Be you. Know your experiences, know your heart and head and whatever squirting fluids pulse between your bile ducts and put it all on the page. Be honest. Be bold. Don’t fuck around. Only by bringing yourself to the work will you find that your writing truly improves. Let it all hang out. By saying what needs to be said, you will see your writing get better, unburdened as it is by pretense and artifice.

25. I Am Jack’s Desire To Be A More Awesomer Writer

An alcoholic (or any kind of -aholic) only gets better when he wants to, and so it is with writing. To be a better writer you must truly want to be. Open yourself. Test your work. Be willing to change.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

* * *

Want more of the 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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING — $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

July 25, 2011 / 27 Comments

Search Term Bingo And The Revenge Of The Hamster Skin Codpiece

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.

oatmeal fetus

If I ever find a fetus in my oatmeal, I’m going to kick that old creepy grandmother on all the boxes of Quaker Oats and knock that big black hat right off her head.

Also, “oatmeal fetus” sounds like something I would see in a David Lynch movie. ERASERHEAD II: THE OATMEAL FETUS IN THE RADIATOR. David Lynch, you so silly.

hamster skin codpiece

That sounds kind of nice.

Okay, wait, wait, hear me out.

You ever held a hamster? Soft, fuzzy little guys. I’ve never held one against my junk or anything (well, there was that one time in Petsmart, but I was fnorked to the gills on PCP), but I’m betting dollars to dingos that it would be wonderful. At long as the little guy doesn’t get nibbly. So, the next logical step would be to harvest a dozen hamsters for their skin and use the “hamster leather” to make a codpiece. Right?

It’s not like Jesus doesn’t make more hamsters every day. That shit’s right there in the Bible. “And lo, Jesus turned the temple whores into hamsters.” Besides, you ask me, the world has too many damn hamsters. Those little fuzzy-nuts have had it too good for too long.

pretty girls named janae clapping their vaginas

I don’t know why, but this calls to mind some really weird-ass variant of Double-Dutch, except instead of using jump-ropes, they’re jumping over really long vaginas.

You also don’t get to say that very often. “Really long vaginas.” Because that’s generally not how we measure the vagina, is it? We measure it by its grip, really. “That vagina is very tight.” Or, “That vagina is like a breathy grotto from whence an unholy cloud of bats may pour out.” But long? You don’t get that very often. Still, if you’re clapping vaginas, you’d think that the labia would have to have to be like open-palmed hands.

Also, that’s probably the weirdest search term I’ve ever gotten. Top Ten, at least.

Slap slap slap.

You go, Janae One, Janae Two.

You clap those va-choo-chas.

drunk moms peeing

Porn is getting chopped up into dicier niches every day. “Drunk Moms Peeing” isn’t even that weird anymore. Glance around the ‘Net you’ll find single-serving porn sites like:

Men Who Ride Giraffes Naked And Who Are In Turn Ridden By Monkeys In Diapers

Napping Lesbians

Dildos Shaped Like Forgotten Politicians Used To Grout Bathroom Tile

Chicks Dressed Like Spider-Man Banging Dudes Dressed Like Spider-Man

Buttocks Covered In Poison Ivy

Dead Porn Stars

Waffle Dick

when i cut my beard it is hard for me to pee

Uhhh. Wh… what kind of beard are we talking about? Because mine’s on my face. And I don’t pee out of my mouth. I mean, unless you count these blog posts, which are pretty much that.

my baby northern mockingbird isn’t pooping

That is the single strangest euphemism for “erectile dysfunction” ever.

piss lightning shit success

This is the name of my new self-help book. “Piss, Lightning, Shit — Success!”

It will have a followup: “Jizz, Fire, Burrito — Profit!”

is batman a pitcher or catcher

Questions like this are why the Internet was invented by Jesus and William Gibson and Al Gore in a closed session atop Mt. Rushmore. I’ll submit the question first to you, my inestimable audience.

Batman: pitcher or catcher?

The easy answer is “pitcher.” Lot of pent-up shit, that guy. But then sometimes you hear about those powerful CEOs who go to dominatrices to have cigarettes put out on their inner thighs because they like to cede control for awhile, so you kinda wonder if Batman takes rather than gives. I await your answers.

why is my wife a dickface

Probably because you’re a fuckweed. If you would stop being such a massive pube-hair, your wife would have to be less of a dickface to compensate for your utter shitheadedness.

does baby r us sell super soakers?

Because that’s how we feed babies nowadays. Bottles just get easier and easier! Time to administer formula directly to their mouths and out through their buttholes with the new Formula One Super-Soaker. Just hose down your baby with a gallon of formula. Make ‘im big and strong. Like Paul Bunyon. Or that guy who was so hella fat they had to tear the roof off his trailer to get him out.

fancy words to use at random times

“Here you go, sir, your dry cleaning. That’ll be ten dollars and –”

“BOMBASTILOQUENT!”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“VERISIMILITUDE!”

“Uhhh.”

“RESPLENDENT PERSPICACITY!”

“Just take your goddamn trousers. I got the skid-stains out, weirdo.”

“ENCHANTE!”

i’ve eaten so much plastic

Man, me too. Anytime I see plastic, I’m all like, “I want that inside my body.” And I eat the shit out of it. My intestinal tract is lined with plastic nibblings. Food just slides through and comes out the other side, still pretty much intact. Goddamn I’ve eaten so much plastic. Credit cards. Pen caps. Ziploc bags. I ate a whole roll of Saran Wrap the other day. Just gobbled it up. It was horrible. Why do I keep doing this?

IT DOESN’T EVEN TASTE GOOD

Oooh an old Ace of Base CD!

om nom nom

crunch crunch crunch

I CANNOT STOP

what do testicles look like on the inside

Every testicle is like a snowflake, friend. They all look different on the inside.

Mine, for instance, are quite roomy. Together they look like a mod 1960s bachelor pad with a bar that looks like a gleaming rocket. The bartender is a naked lady wearing shiny hip reflectors and an all-glass astronaut helmet. She makes a great Moscow Mule. You hear that? That’s right. “The Girl From Ipanema.” I so love all these pastels. Who wants some petit fours? Oh ho ho, JFK, you’re so funny even though you’re dead!

totorial on how to shoot wendig

The word is “tutorial,” lackwit.

…wait, maybe that’s why you’re looking for instruction on shooting me.

Hmm. Okay, I’ll cop to that. I’m a bit of a pedagogue. I got that word right, yeah? I want to make sure it’s the word that means “strict teacher” and not “guy who touches kids.”

Anyway, sure, you want to shoot me. Here’s how. First you have to find me. I’m probably at the liquor store. I might be hiding in the freezer case, guzzling chilled pinot grigio. Wait till I fall asleep — it’s inevitable, I nap like, every 20 minutes or so — and then take aim at my head and fire.

You should use a really quality weapon.

The best brand, I find, is NERF.

Yep. Use Nerf. Uhhh. Totally deadly, those Nerf darts. Fatal when touched.

chuck wendig in the shower

Now we’re talking. That’s a sexy search term. Me in the shower. Washing my beard with a fist full of Suave body wash. Getting in all those manly nooks and crannies. Using a porous whetstone to scrape all the barnacles free from my body and shed my reptilian undercoat. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. You like my spinal bone spurs. You like my twin crotch-snakes, one of darkness, one of light, each wrestling for control of the world’s fate. Nnnngh. So hot. So wet.

wendig day sex husband

Boy, everything’s just “coming up Wendig,” innit?

This one might be a puzzler to you Americans, which is why I have chosen to include it. Like “the Hoff,” I am very popular in Europe. Over there, they have this thing called “Wendig Day,” and on that day I play the roll of “Sex Husband” (it sounds sexier in German), which is kind of like an erotic and adulterous Santa Claus-type figure? It makes more sense if you’re high. Anyway, so they have this parade, and I come sauntering out in my assless lederhosen and my alpine hat with the peacock feather, and then I give a good deep dicking to all the housewives who have lined up along the Rue de Sexy-Sexy (aka Der Bangenstrasse).

It’s a fun day! You should book a flight.

how to read expiration dates on zachary

Did you turn him over? The date is on his foot. No, no, I know, it’s a little confusing.

The year comes first! Four-digit, not two. That’s where people mess up, I think. The bad news is, Zachary’s expiration date has long been up. Which explains why he smells like spoiled yogurt. Further, it explains why the howling soul-demons are hounding his every step, trying to drag him into Hell where that past-due motherfucker belongs. Were I you, I’d stay the hell away from Zachary.

For reals.

what ails you volleyball?

“Syphilis,” said the volleyball. “I bumped rubber with a dirty kickball beneath the underpass. Now I got the syph. But bad. Don’t tell my wife. And my little baby shuttlecocks.”

letter to baby in wombat

I’m going to go ahead and safely assume you meant “womb,” not “wombat,” but just in case, here would be the letter I would write to that wombat-ensconced baby:

Dear Baby,

Get the hell out of that wombat.

You don’t know where that wombat has been.

If you don’t get out of that wombat right now I am going to leave you in that wombat and drive home and then you’ll never see me again and you and the wombat can have crazy adventures.

You stupid, stupid baby.

Love,

Chuck “Sex Husband” Wendig

will chocolate melt in anus?

It will. Which is good, generally, because that means it won’t stay up there and you won’t have yet another serious of embarrassing X-Rays. “Sorry, doc. It’s an Almond Joy.”

Still, maybe you want a chocolate that melts in your mouth, not in your ass.

Check out Reese’s Feces. The candy favorite of anally-fixated extra-terrestrials across the galaxy!

tits force mission

Man, I used to love this cartoon when I was a kid. I’d get up real early on a Saturday morning and I’d hear that theme song starting. Remember that theme song?

TITS FORCE MISSION

GONNA GET THE CALL

TITS IN DANGER! AT THE LOCAL MALL!

TITS FORCE MISSION

GONNA SAVE THE WORLD

SLAMMING EVIL! AS THEIR TITS UNFURL!

TITS FORCE MIIIISSSIIIIIIOOOON…!

*rad keytar lick*

Such an awesome show. Remember how the team leader, Johnny Tits-on-the-Bottom, would send out laser beams from his nipple-covered keytar? Fuck yeah. And how he had that little space monkey who followed him around? What was that monkey’s name again? I always call him “sweater monkey,” but that’s not it…

Oh, right! The Oh-Bang-O-Tang! Or “Bango The Space Monkey.”

I hear they’re making it into a movie. With Leo DiCaprio playing Johnny Tits-on-the-Bottom.

And Kathy Bates as Bango.

the writing machine of god

It’s called the world. The world is God’s typewriter. And we are his characters.

Actually, I’m just kidding. Just trying to be profound.

God writes on a Tandy 1000 SX.

July 22, 2011 / 6 Comments

Penmonkey Incitement: T-Shirt, Unlocked

And, bam.

The CERTIFIED PENMONKEY t-shirt is unlocked now that we’ve reached the “100” mark for the PENMONKEY REEDUC… er, INCITEMENT PROGRAM.

(We’re now at a total of 430 sold.)

What that means is, this t-shirt —

— will be sent to one lucky COAFPM procurer.

That PENMONKEY will be —

*is delivered an envelope by a whirring Doom-Bot*

Holly West!

Woo! *confetti, applause, buzzsaws*

And, because we hit the 100 mark, that also means: postcard.

That postcard goes to —

*drum roll using the skulls of my foes as drums, Ewok-style*

Lynda Kachurek!

If the both of you could e-mail me to confirm your mailing addresses, that would be super-sweet.

Remember: at certain “incitement procurement targets,” awesome things (like cybernetic Dobermans) are released. If you need a reminder, the releases go according to this handy-dandy chart:

For every 50 sales, a postcard.

For every 100 sales, a t-shirt.

For every 200 sales, a copy-edit of your work (5000 words or 50 script pages).

For every 500 sales, a brand new Kindle.

Also, please note that if you haven’t already done so, you need to send me proof of your purchase to terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com, so the Doom-Bots know to count you in subsequent incitement draws.

Though, if you bought COAFPM as PDF, you do not need to send it to me. I’ve got it covered.

Other Updatery-Doo

If you’re so inclined to know how all the e-books are doing, stick around.

COAFPM (now with 12 great reviews at Amazon, and always seeking more) is doing very well. That $4.99 price point is a strong one. It allows me to see some bill-paying money come in without necessitating epic sales numbers — further, it allows me to do cool contests like the incitement program.

You can read a nice review of COAFPM here.

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING actually has the opposite going for it — I’ve already sold 350 copies in four days (compare that to the 430 sold for COAFPM over two months), but of course at $0.99 you only get 30% opposed to the 70% with slightly higher prices. But that’s okay. This book is meant to whet people’s appetites and force them to grow addicted to my “Chimp-on-PCP” style of writing and further increase in them a desire to don red robes and drink my hypnotic Flavor-Aid. (Remember, everybody: Reverend Jim Jones did not use Kool-Aid. Is it sick that I envision a wife trying to force feed her husband a cup of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid and he’s like “No — no!” and then the Kool-Aid Man comes cannonballing through the tent-flap and he’s all like “OH YEAAAAHH”…?)

Seems like self-published authors are best served by a diversity of product and price point.

I might just be making that up, though. Don’t quote me on it. You do what you like.

IRREGULAR CREATURES, my short story collection, is continuing its “slow and steady wins the race” approach. Getting near 750 sales, so I’m pretty happy about that. I’m even happier about the incredible reviews over at Amazon (38 of ’em so far, all surprisingly kind).

You can find a nice review of IC over at JD Rhodes’ blog.

And I think that’s all, folks.

If you got questions, comments, complaints, prayer requests, or wedding proposals, now’s the time.

July 22, 2011 / 94 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: That’s Right, I Said “Unicorn”

Last week’s challenge — “An Uncharted Apocalypse” — had some amazing stories, so you should go check ’em out. I’m going to take the weekend pick my favorite five and then toss those five folks a copy of my newest e-book, 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING.

I like unicorns.

I mean, not in the sense that I have hundreds of unicorn collectibles on my shelves — *hurries to drop a blanket over my shelves* — it’s just, dang, unicorns crack me up. A pretty white horse with a big horn sticking out of his head and, boom, that’s it. Instant mythological favorite the world around. It’s an absurd animal.

Real reason I talk about unicorns so much — *quick runs to tear down wall of unicorn posters — is that the “unicorn” represents that kind of bullshit special snowflake precious writer mystique, right? The same people who believe a glittery Muse is going to fill their heads with hot notions are the same people who probably believe a unicorn is how babies are made.

Unicorns are just really weird and really goofy.

*darts to closet, slams door before you can see the unicorn cosplay outfits*

Anyway.

Thus, it seems high time to have a unicorn-themed flash fiction challenge.

I want you to incorporate the unicorn into your 1000-word story.

I don’t care how, but you get bonus points for thinking creatively or doing something different with the creature that we haven’t seen or don’t otherwise expect. Bring some attitude to it.

Any genre will do.

You’ve got one week. Friday, July 29th, by noon EST.

Get on it.

Oh! And this week, I’ll pick one favorite.

That favorite will get all three of my e-books.

Peace in the Middle East, yo.

July 21, 2011 / 15 Comments

Laura Anne Gilman: The Terribleminds Interview

Twitter is serendipitous to me, because without it, I’d not have met or communicated with, well, pretty much anybody. I’d be alone in a clawfoot bathtub with a cat. And I don’t own a cat. Point being, without Twitter I’d not have come into range of Laura Anne Gilman, once an editor, now a “write the hell out of some books” novelist. Writers, you best go ahead and read what she has to say. Let the interview commence. (Oh, and if you wanna follow her on the Twitters, you’ll find her @LAGILMAN.)

This is a blog about writing and storytelling, so before we do anything else, I’d like you to tell me – and, of course, the fine miscreants and deviants that read this site – a story. As short or long as you care to make it, as true or false as you see it.

Three days ago the second squirrel arrived. We’d been lured into passivity by the first one, I suppose: it had seemed friendly enough, willing to stay on its side of the screen, not tormenting the cats more than normal. The tree-rats in our neighborhood are bright eyed and thick-coated, finding enough food to eat, supplemented by the little old ladies’ bread crumbs and an occasional abandoned sandwich. You don’t think of them as a threat.

That was before the second squirrel. Before we found the window screen cut away, and the peanut butter jar missing. As well as the smaller of the cats.

[some of this story is true. some of it is not. yet.]

How would you describe your writing or storytelling style?

…. um….. the bastard child of a haiku sensibility and a genre-rific childhood, as raised by literary-minded housecats? Beyond that, I leave it to future scholars to argue about it.

In truth, I’ve had so many influences growing up, it’s hard for me to point to any two and say “there, that’s it.” Hemingway and Roger Zelazny, Dorothy Sayers and Robin McKinley, Robert Frost, Dashiell Hammett, Madeleine L’Engle and Raymond Carver were all on my shelves as a teenager. That was also when I started getting interested in haiku, in the idea of conveying something complex in a deceptively simple visual image or turn. So.. terse but lyrical is my goal, I suppose. Although that conflicts mightily with my love of the semi-colon….

What’s awesome about being a writer or storyteller?

Writing. Head down, full-on, discovery-of-story. The kind of writing that makes you do a chair dance every so often, just because you’re having so much fun.

Conversely, what sucks about it?

Everything else? No, really, the only thing that sucks about being a writer is the fact that so many people seem to think “anyone” can do it, that all it takes is an idea and some time. I’m not sure there’s any other profession that gets that kind of dismissal. Maybe teaching. Which is a sad commentary on how literacy is treated, I guess…

Deliver unto us a single-serving dollop of writing or storytelling advice that you yourself follow as a critical tip without which you might starve and die atop a glacier somewhere:

I have this in the sidebar of my Livejournal, because it’s so damn true:

“You sit down. You tell a story. You do it any damn way it comes out that works consistently for you. You hope people like it. You hope people pay you for it. You do it again. And again. That’s all I got. Zen and the Art of Writer Maintenance. You can cheer me on and I can cheer you on, but in the end? In the end it’s down to how you get your getting done, done. So get it done.”

I say that everybody has their own story of “breaking in” and getting published — it’s like we all dig our own tunnels and detonate them behind us. Any interesting tales from your rise to ascendancy as a creative penmonkey?

I find that a lot of people think that, because I was an editor, my route to publication was easy/simple/fast. Not so much. I sold my first short story to the first market I sent it to – Amazing Stories, back in the 1990’s – but that was it for over a year. And my first original novel, STAYING DEAD, went to all the major genre publishers at the time – seven, I think – and got some nice responses, but nobody was putting money on the table. One publisher asked me to rewrite chapters to see if it would work as a YA, but that didn’t go anywhere. Then I was having lunch with an editor at a brand-new imprint, who had put out a call for historical fantasy – and I had submitted another project there – and I mentioned this book to her. “Send it,” she said. A total flyer, and she had to do some fast talking, I suspect, to get it approved. That was *counts* ten books ago, and we have another two under contract, all in the same universe. Right place, right time, right project. And the right editor. That’s pretty much been the story of my career so far.

You’ve got experience as an editor — so, what’s one mistake you see too many writers making in their manuscripts?

Oh, we’re creative, we make all SORTS of mistakes….. Not trusting ourselves and not pushing hard enough, that’s a big’un. No matter what you’re writing, second-guessing the market and trying to keep it ‘familiar’ is always going to hurt you far more than being “too original” or “too …” anything, really. We’re goddamned WRITERS, we CREATE. Even if you’re writing to formula, twist it! Give the story something new, something specifically yours. Or why bother doing it at all?

Whoops. Starting waving my hands a bit there. Never a good sign. Did I knock over your glass?

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Just one? Without any context? Aww… Verklempt. Mainly because it’s fun to say, and so evocative. Favorite curse word is motherfucker. It’s rounded, with real weight, and conveys so many different meanings depending on the tone of voice used. really, a multipurpose tool.

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

Wine. A crisp, flinty white, or a red with a lot of complexity and depth… I like my wines to acknowledge their tannins, invite them in and make them feel welcome. I can talk endlessly about wine, so this is your warning to shut me up now or that’s all we’re going to talk about for the rest of the interview…

Yeah, I’m known for drinking Scotch* whisky, too, but that’s my ‘working’ drink, when I want to keep focused. Wine is social, expansive.

*and Irish whiskey and American bourbon and…

Fuck it, let’s talk about wine. Recommend me a nice red, but a red that goes well with summer.

For warm weather reds, I like Zinfandel for picnics – it’s a warm, fruit-forward taste that goes well with bbq (I’m talking real Zin here, not that pink stuff they sell.) But that’s a bolder taste, and most folk prefer the lighter reds, that take well to being served lightly chilled (yes, you can chill some red wines). You want something young, with a lowerish alcohol rating (under 12%), ideally aged in steel, not wood. Rioja (Spain), and Beaujolais (France) are the first I’d think of, and then Pinot Noir (France/NZ/US). You could also try a Pinotage (SA).

Recommend a book, comic book, film, game: something with great story. Go!

Leverage (the tv show). Great stories, told not only with words but visuals – the body languages of the actors, the camera shots chosen by the directors, even the choice of stories, and the white spaces in-between, where what they DIDN’T do is strongly implied… it all creates this amazing package that kept me – who usually has a very short attention span when it come to tv – fascinated. And there’s an evolving arc – not in terms of “this is the story,” but “these are the people in the story.”

Where are my pants?

That’s between you and your dog. er, god.

Got anything to pimp? Now’s the time!

Two things. okay, four things, but only two am I really going to be pimptastic about.

The first is DRAGON VIRUS. I’m still not sure if it’s a collection of short stories connected by a narrative thread, or a very odd novella spanning 100+ years. It’s SFnal horror with a literary edge, and one of those projects that are only possible because of small presses (in this instance, Fairwood Press). Not for everyone (if you’re looking for puppies and kittens and rainbows it ain’t here), but the people who have liked it have really really liked it.

The second is Practical Meerkat. This is a weekly column I’m doing for Book View Cafe, the full title being “Practical Meerkat’s 52 Bits of Useful Info for Young (and Old) Writers.” Each week, for a year, I approach a different aspect of writing – both craft and business-side, gleaned form my experience as an editor (15 years) and a writer (going on 17 years now, published). At the end of the year all the essays will be collected & polished into an e-book, so you don’t have to worry about keeping up if life (and writing) gets busy.

The other two things, of course, are The Vineart War, my Nebula-nominated epic fantasy trilogy (the third and final book, THE SHATTERED VINE, will be out in October 2011), and the Cosa Nostradamus urban fantasy series (most recently PACK OF LIES), which combines caper novels and police procedurals with modern magic in New York City. Guaranteed vampire-free UF! You can find samples to read on my website and via my publishers (Harlequin and S&S.) (Also, here’s an Amazon link to all her work — cdw.)

DRAGON VIRUS lives on at a small press. (I’m a fan of small presses — I think they can move and turn fast in response to industry shifts.) Publishing right now is in a crazy place. Care to predict where books and authors and publishing will be in five, ten years? In case you choose not to answer that, I’ll remind you that I’ve strapped a bomb to the underside of your chair.

I’ve been saying for several years now (usually into the ears of people saying la la la can’t hear you) that small press, big press, and digital are going to become equal partners, much the same way that hardcover and mass market did, decades ago (Most people in publishing today have always worked with mass market, but I’ve heard stories about how the hardcover folk panicked at this upstart…much the same way trad publishers reacted at first to digital). One format isn’t going to ‘wipe out’ the other, not the way some partisans are predicting. The companies that survive are either going to pick one and specialize, or learn to spread their costs over both print and digital.

Self-publishing is popular right now, and both the process and the market are chaotic as hell, but in about 3-5 years it’s going to shake out and take its place within the overall publishing structure described above, rather than dismantling it.

The one thing I believe will continue is the role of the editor. Self-publishing is the buzzword now, but the larger that pool grows, the more there will be a need for a story to stand out to succeed. You have to be offer something more than average, more than merely “good,” when there’s competition. The much-maligned gatekeepers were one way that happened – now I could easily see the editor coming back into use as that gatekeeper, rather than a publisher’s brand.

I certainly think that would be a good thing, for both writers and readers.

What’s wrong with fantasy and/or urban fantasy today? Anything you’d like to cast a wary gaze at? If a new writer is looking to work in those genres, where could they go wrong?

Too many people coming in, thinking that UF is A, and only A. The wonderful thing about contemporary fantasy is that it’s incredibly inclusive – you can range from the unromantic tough-edged adventures all the way to the overtly romantic, from dark to light, male and female main characters, big cities or small towns, etc. But too often people identify “urban fantasy” as kickass babe in leather, with vampire/were companion,” and that’s only one slice out of the pie. Mind you, that’s the slice that seems to get all the press… but there’s room for so much more, and if we narrow in, we risk becoming a parody of everything that was originally good and fresh and interesting.

Fantasy has an incredible opportunity to be whatever it wants. You’re not stuck to a specific type of story, or a frame of reference. The fantastical elements should be restricted only by the plausibility of your worldbuilding.

July 20, 2011 / 27 Comments

Of Google-Plus And Circle-Jerks, Part II

Google+ grows on me like a fungus. Like a scaly patch of ringworm, I can’t stop itching it.

I don’t really know why. I think in part I’m scratching to peel away layers, to dig beneath the rashy skin and find the potential buried beneath — because, at this point, I’m growing convinced that some real potential is there. But I’m also growing convinced that most of that potential is too hard to see and isn’t yet manifested.

*itch itch itch, scratch scratch scratch*

Let’s rip through the meat with our fingernails and see what else we find.

Caveat: Twitter Is My Main Gal

Twitter isn’t for everyone. I get that. But it’s definitely my one true social media gal pal. It took the formula put out by Myspace and Facebook and flipped it on its ear. Twitter is the beat poetry version of social media. It’s some crass noisy combination of soapbox-shouting, flea-market-hawking, carnival-barking, stand-up-joke-telling, and haiku-having. It’s got the motion and madness of a city street with all its sounds and smells. Twitter is ever the low but persistent hum. I merely need to tune into its Zen frequencies for a time. It requires no massive investment. It demands little of me. I splash about in its waters like a spider monkey who has never before played in the ocean. Splish-splash.

But — but!

Twitter is shit for conversation.

It’s great for banter.

But conversation necessitates deeper investment, complexity, and nuance… and Twitter just doesn’t do that well. You ever see two people have a long protracted discussion on Twitter? It’s like watching two bricks tumble around in a washing machine. And Zeus forbid that the conversation suck in more than two people. Then it becomes the clumsiest gang-bang you’ve ever seen. (“Is someone wearing an oven-mitt on their dick? Is that a nose tickling my perineum? Who let the peacock in here? It smells like peanut oil.”)

Imagine tuning two different radios to different shows and having those shows “converse.”

Doesn’t really work out so well.

And so, I give you, Google+.

The Googlecrucians Want You To Converse

G+ is setup for you to converse. It’s like one big forum — whereas Twitter and Facebook limit the length of updates and comments, Goo-Goo-Plus has no such interest. It wants you to fill the space with your words, and it wants other people to fill the space, too. “GO AHEAD,” the Lords of Google are saying. “SPEAK AT LENGTH WITHOUT RESERVATION. YOU HAVE THIS ENTIRE BLEAK DESERT OF POWDERY WHITENESS IN WHICH TO BLOVIATE. THE LEASH IS OFF. YOU DOGS MAY RUN FREE.”

And that’s awesome.

In theory.

It’s not quite working for me. Not yet. It can! I can see it coming together and working — while the brownies here are definitely soft in the middle, this remains a beta release and is sure to grow and change.

Here’s the first thing that’s not working for me, though: a big conversation is like a fire circle or a parliamentary session. It’s a rock around which you sit — a stable, single location that people come to where they can join into the conversation or just sit back and listen. This blog functions like that. It’s a static location in the digital space-time continuum — you come to me, I don’t come to you.

But G+ doesn’t work like that. It, like so many other social media sites, is a stream, ever-flowing. Which means the conversations are always moving downstream, which means those conversations are hard to grab hold of, hard to track — it’s like I’m constantly trying to grab hold of a slippery length of intestine and it just keeps squidging free from my grip. (“Squidging” is a word. Say different and I’ll sic the hounds upon you.) Imagine if those aforementioned fire circles and parliamentary sessions were all on rafts, and we were all traveling together down a raging river. Yelling at one another.

The conversations at G+ are just plain hard to track — at least, in my estimation. (I’m kind of a dipshit, though, so keep that in mind.) Harder still when they become big, swollen discussions.

Rob Donoghue — the ever-wise — noted that, at present, G+ is built around people, but what if, instead, it were built around conversations? As in, that’s what you tune into more than the people who host the discussion? Right? That’s how forums work, but forums are often craptacular.

Can G+ give rise to The Ultimate Forum?

Maybe. But it’s not there, yet.

Mostly, I find myself looking at big conversations there and thinking, “I’m glad people are having them.” And then I click away and don’t read the conversation because a nap sounds better.

Ways To Enhance The Conversation

Here, then, are some ways that Guh-Pluh can advance the way the site deals with conversation:

1.) The notifications are too much. The site’s like a needy puppy with these things, constantly getting muddy pawprints all over my — well, not my pants, since I don’t wear those, so let’s just go with “hirsute calves.” Half the time the notifications are about dead useless anyway. “Nobody has added anything to the conversation! Look! +1!” Since notifications have become noise, I’ve tuned them out — not ideal for following the flow.

2.) Threaded (or is it nested?) comments. Allow me to reply to a comment, not just the post. Further, let me break away into little sub-conversations if need be. I pull you three and we go into this other digital room disconnected from the main and we sit there and chat about whatever it is.

3.) I want a rope to pull myself back to the conversation. Blogs are great for this. If I know a conversation is going on at a blog post I like, I can just wander back there with a link. I need that here, too. In fact, Rob Donoghue earlier posted that thing about conversations only in Google-Plus, which means I can’t link to it like a blog. I can’t say, “You, dear reader, go look at that.”

4.) Speakawhich, I pray to Internet Jesus and melt a motherboard on his altar that Google+ does not become a source of blogging. First of all, G+ is, at present, so spare it’s somewhat ugly. It’s a Spartan, utilitarian space with all the flavor of a Communist bread dole. I like that blogs are part of the personalities of their keepers. I don’t mind if they’re “connected,” but so far, reading big chunks of text on Google-Plus is about as pleasurable as reading legal documents. (Sidenote: this is true of e-books, too. I long for the day that the Kindle, f’rex, allows books to have their own look again. It’ll happen, I just don’t know when.) A weird little part of me wonders if we go back to the Myspace-like customization within reason. Which leads me to a site that already does that well…

5.) Tumblr needs to get on over here and inject its Tumblrian DNA into the Googlecrucian experience. I actually like Tumblr a lot, but have tuned it out in favor of Google+ simply because of time commitment. That’s a shame, because Tumblr was something different, where for now, G+ is mostly “more of the same.” (I know, people are going to tell me that G+ is a revolution. Not yet, it ain’t. It’s Facebook 2.0.) Tumblr allows the sharing of content lickity-split, and further, Tumblr allows for connected and easily-customized blogs. Where Tumblr fails is — drum roll please — conversation. And so I demand that G+ and Tumblr have SOCIAL MEDIA BABIES. Go on, you two. Here’s a room. One of you is ovulating — I can smell your Internet ovum. Have some lube. Go at it, jungle cats.

6.) Circles haven’t really worked for me yet. Well, correction — they work to let me break apart my social media flow into littler “radio stations,” so on that front? Total success. But in terms of enhancing conversation, not so much. Part of it is that in terms of broadcasting, I have no guarantee The Circle I Choose is even listening. Going back to that fire circle or parliamentary session image, I’m at the podium but I’m blindfolded. My audience might be nowhere to be found. Sometimes it’s be nice if circles operated like “opt-in” groups — “Hey, this is my book club circle, and we’re all in, and we can all see one another.”

7.) I hate to say it, but I want Wave back. Wave was a great idea that failed to perform. It was like saying, “I’m creating a teleportation device” but what you got was a giant catapult that “teleported” you into a concrete wall. But what Wave promised was actually pretty awesome — “Hey, let’s you and me and whoever else get into this little pocket of Internet space and just fucking communicate.” It was some gallumphing mutation featuring strains of chat, e-mail, and social media — it just failed to come together. I want that back. I want it jacked into G+. I want to be able to pull people into that space and have those kinds of conversations that are disconnected from the larger stream. We shouldn’t have to “follow” each other as circle-jerks to have a conversation.

8.) Bring all parts together. Right now, to me, G+ is a Frankenstein Monster of limbs welded together with lightning but the bolts, staples and solder-marks still show. I don’t know what these pieces are doing together. In a conversation I need the ability to say, “Fuck it, we’re doing a Hangout right now, just you people in this discussion.” I need the ability for Sparks to generate from the chatter I’m making, not from topics I choose. I need the ability to hand-pick people and say, “Let’s get into a space where we can draw on the digital walls like white-space and collaborate on some stuff.” I need it to be more than Facebook.

It Will Be, If The Lords Of Google Will It (And The Creek Don’t Rise)

My estimation of Baby Huey’s Gooey Kablooey (Plus!) has risen considerably since I posted my last rant — but that estimation is based almost solely upon speculation. It’s built on the promise of the site more than the current incarnation. Because right now? It’s just more of the same. I know, I know — IT’S A REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL MED… stop that. Just stop. You can’t make something a revolution just by saying it’s a revolution. I can’t just say, “There’s a revolution in my pants!” and when you get there, it’s just a plain old dangling wang down there. No worker’s rights or health care for everybody — just a regular penis doing regular penis things. Like playing badminton. Or watching the BBC.

Right now Google+ is stumbling around like a newborn fawn because… well, it is a newborn fawn. Again: that bitch is in beta. I have confidence that, if the Googlecrucians continue their devotion to the site, in a year’s time you won’t use it like you use Facebook. It’s just… right now, I’m using it like I use Facebook. Outside of the Hangout (with my Wangout), I don’t see anything all that special at present. That means we’ve a pretty significant redundancy in the system.

I suspect the way we make Google+ better and help them bring these disconnected pieces together is by telling them what we think. The Lords of Google have been responsive so far.

Which is a good sign, and another glimpse of promise.

I thought about putting together a “Google-Plus For Writers” post, by the way, but once again, outside the Hangout, I don’t know if there’s any there there, yet. (Though, it may be worth asking what G+ could become for writers… what would writers want out of it?)

We shall see.

In the meantime, you will continue to find me on Twitter.

Anyway. Feel free to add your thoughts. How’s Gee-Plus doing for you?