Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

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July 19, 2011 / 45 Comments

25 Ways To Defeat The Dreaded Writer’s Block

Switching gears from the “25 Things” series (which is now neatly compiled in an e-book cheaper than a bottle of water of a hobo handy) and segueing into a more practical “25 Ways” list.

I do not believe in writer’s block. I believe it shares the same intellectual space as the bogeyman in your closet, as the serial killer under the bed. The more you fear it, the more it gains power. To be clear, I do believe that writers can be blocked, that writers can have bad days where the intellectual plumbing feels gummed up by an old diaper filled with soggy fruitcake — I just don’t believe this is unique to the writer. Everybody gets blocked. Everybody gets frustrated. Everybody can have a bad day where the brain-squeezin’s just won’t get squozen.

Even still, while the problem may not be unique, the solutions often are.

And so that’s what we’re tackling today.

Ready? Let’s crotch-kick writer’s block so hard, it tastes the poodle crap we stepped in on the way over.

1. Write Through It

You are confronted by a tangle of jungle vines and Amazonian thicket. The only way forward is forward. You have a machete. What do you do? You chop, motherfucker. Take the blade. Start hacking. Won’t be fun. Won’t be fast. But it’s the only way to gain ground. Your first way through writer’s block is just to write. Clench your jaw. Tighten your sphincter. And write. The key is to write badly if you must. Write without regard for quality or care. Flail about with your word-machete until the tangle is clear.

2. Write Through It, Part II: All Work And No Play

This is the same as the first but bears special mention: sometimes it’s not even about writing words in your story, sometimes it’s about just writing. Writer’s block is often about jarring loose stubborn bullshit — it feels like you’re trying to pull teeth out of a meth-cranked raccoon, but that’s an act of finesse. Put down the pliers, get out the hammer. Start swinging. Write crazy. Write big. Write insane. All work and no play makes writer-monkey a twitchy serial murderer. Write one word over and over. One sentence. One paragraph. Don’t worry about what you’re writing. Turn on the spigot. Let the madness flow.

3. The Blood Must Flow

Science lesson. Blood carries nutrients to your brain. One of those nutrients is imagozen, the vitamin that governs our imagination. I may just be making that up. But there’s some truth there: we do need good blood-flow to the brain to think clearly. Been sitting on your ass a while? All the blood and sweet, sweet imagozen is pooling in your ass-parts. Get up. Move around. Take a walk. Exercise. Do some push-ups. Hell, have sex. You gotta love a guy who will tell you to solve writer’s block by “banging it out.” Right? No, seriously, you have to love me. Take off your pants. Mine are already on the floor. LOVE ME.

4. Stick Energy Drink Up Ass, Tighten Buttocks Until High-Octane Enema Occurs

I am not actually recommending an energy drink enema, just so we’re clear. I will not be held liable for the embarrassing X-rays that make it onto the Internet. What I am saying is, caffeine? It’s your buddy. Caffeine can give your brain a much-needed jolt, as if from those electrified paddles. CLEAR. Bzzt. Start with tea. Tea has a mellower edge than coffee. That doesn’t work, try coffee. Mmm. Coffee. Speaking of — *slurrrp*

5. Booze Booze Booze Booze Booze *vomits*

Caffeine creates tension. But maybe what you need is recoil. Could be that you’re just too ratcheted up to write. No problem. Switch your chemical dance partner. From caffeine to liquor. I’m not saying you should make a habit of writing drunk — in fact, I’m suggesting you write merely tipsy. Whatever amount of alcohol lubricates your social gears may also lubricate your writing gears. Just this once. Just to ooze past this block. To get your mind chatting up the birds at the word-bar.

6. Chatty Cathy, Don’t Clip Those Strings

Talk to yourself. Seriously. Use your mouth. Vocalize words. Have a conversation with yourself. Talk about the story. Talk about what’s clogging the pipes. Yammer away like a crazy person. (For bonus points: do so at a public bus terminal.) If you’re so inclined, record the conversation. Label the file, “MY MANIFESTO.” E-mail to all the newspapers.

7. Reach Out And Touch Somebody

Perhaps a masturbatory chat with yourself isn’t quite enough. Fine. Find another human being (or, if you’re reading this after the year 2018, find a sentient appliance bot, like the Dishflenser 500, or the Toast-Aborter v2.0) and have this chat with them. Talk out your problem. Get their input. Human interaction can go a long way toward jarring loose whatever grubby suppository is stuck up inside your narrative butthole.

8. Converse With Your Imaginary Friend

This one will make you certifiable, so don’t perform it in front of any sensitive family members. But take one of your characters, and talk to them. Out loud or on the page. Do a little role-playing. (And any writer who hasn’t engaged in a little role-playing — either the kind with dice or the kind with a librarian’s outfit and an orangutan mask — is missing out on learning how to let your fiction find its path.)

9. Fuck With The Feng Shui

Get up off your ass. Pack up your writing. Go elsewhere. Across the room. To the kitchen table. To a Starbucks. To a Jersey rest-stop. Hell, wander outside, do some writing there. Sometimes just the change of scenery is enough to free the word-demons from their restrictive cages.

10. Tinker With The Guts

You ever get lost while traveling? “We’re supposed to be at the Aquarium. And yet here we are, atop an ancient hill, trapped inside a giant wicker effigy, surrounded by torch-wielding cultists. I think we took a wrong turn somewhere, honey. Sorry, kids.” Sometimes you have to backtrack. Find out where things went awry. So too with your fiction. Read back. Find where you fucked up. Your reluctance to continue writing may be born of the unconscious discomfort that something in your tale is wrong, like a picture hanging askew on the wall. Go back. Straighten the picture.

11. You Need A Motherfizzucking Map

It can be hard to see the forest for the trees when writing a big project. You feel like you’re wandering in the swamp, walking in weeds as high as your ears. Do you have a map? Probably not. Listen, some writers are pantsers. They love to operate off the narrative grid. You may not be one of them. Go back. Write an outline. Beat out the story the way you’d beat a confession out of a perp. Know where you’ve been and discover where you’re going and then go back and write. Sometimes writer’s block is just you missing the big picture.

12. Throw The Map In A Bag And Burn It

Alternately, maybe you need to pants it a little. Maybe you’re too married to an outline that just isn’t tickling your pink parts anymore. Fine. Fuck it. Throw caution to the wind. It’s time to do something dramatic. Christa Faust has a killer tattoo that cuts to the heart of it: “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” That’s a specific example, but you can blow up the story however you choose. Fire! Death! Betrayal! Cataclysm! Deception! Adultery! Whatever it is, take the map you’ve written, wrap it around a hand grenade, and shove it up the story’s ass. CHOOM. Harvest the sweet story blubber.

13. Put Lipstick On That Monkey

Sometimes, a cosmetic change goes a long way. Me? I’m a font whore. I like to find the right font that fits well with my story. Yes, this is ludicrous. Yes, this is a waste of time. Yes, I do it anyway. And once I take 30 minutes to find the right font, the story’s style locks for me. Try it. Or maybe you mess with margins. Or line spacing. Or you choose to write long-hand. Or carve your story into the back of a hooker corpse. Your call.

14. A-Scripting-We-Will-Go

Depart from your narrative, and turn your fiction into a script. Just for now. Just for the part that’s blocking you. Of course, if you’re already writing a script, then do the reverse — switch it up and move into the more languid and longer form afforded by prose. Again, this “switching of gears” can uncage the story-bears. By the way, “uncage the story-bear” is the metaphor I choose when I proclaim I am about to make love. I walk into the room, I scratch my beard, unmoor my pants, and I announce that in a booming voice. I just wanted to let you in on that part of my life. Thank me later.

15. Dear Missus Frittershire

Familiar with the epistolary? Any story that takes the form of a series of documents is considered epistolary. The novel might manifest as a collection of letters, e-mails, newspaper clippings, diary entries, tweets, the ravings of an impudent spam-bot, etc;. Try this out. I don’t mean for the whole story. But for today, try writing through your writer’s block by embracing this form. “Today, my character will write a blog entry.” “I will use the art of the takeout Chinese menu to tell this story.” Shit, you never know.

16. Wander Down An Alley

Er, not literally. I will not be held responsible if you are captured and eaten by Oscar the Grouch. (You gotta watch that guy. Terrible hungers.) Let’s say you’re writing a novel. Let’s say you’re banging your head on that novel the way a bumblebee bats his head against the window-glass. I want you to take the protagonist, or some aspect of the storyworld, and deviate. Write some flash fiction, maybe a short story, some ancillary, tacked-on, doesn’t-connect-directly-to-the-novel story. Indirect, yes. Direct, no. Take today and write only that. It may open doors for the larger project at hand.

17. Kill The Shiny

As modern souls we are besieged by distractions. Text messages and tweets and spam-bots and porn and TV-on-demand and cyber-LSD and digital cupcakes and only the gods know what else. Escape the gravity of your own distractions. Turn it off. Power it down. Use a program like Mac Freedom or Write Or Die. Close the door on all the piffling, waffling, middling bullshit and make sure it’s just you and the word count.

18. Hear A Buzzer, Start To Drool

Tell yourself, “If I write 1000 words, I get [fill-in-the-blank].” Doesn’t matter what it is. Ice cream? Another cup of coffee? An hour of television? A jet-boat made of pony bones? Like I said: whatever. But establishing a reward gives you motivation to do the one thing that really defeats writer’s block: writing through the anguish and coming out the other side. Covered in blood. And smiling.

19. The Penmonkey Diet

Carbs are great if you’re going to be, y’know, using that energy for something like, say, moving your laggardly slugabed body around. But writers live a sedentary existence, at least while working, and so it behooves you not to hoover a bowl of Corn Pops into your gut. Do that and the carbs will only drag you down, make you mentally foggy. Stick with protein while writing. By the way, bacon is protein. Just saying.

20. Hop Around Like A Coked-Up Jackrabbit

Nobody said you had to write your work in order. I like to write in sequence for the most part just because it keeps me on point — but if I’m at a section I’m just not “feeling” that day, I’ll skip around, write something else. “I want to write a fight scene between two stompy robots,” I’ll say. Hell, you’re the god of the story. You may experience it in whatever order you so choose.

21. Get Visual

I like to take photos. Or fuck around with Photoshop. You think I haven’t been vain enough to do up fake book covers for my as-yet-unpublished books? Oh, I have. Point is, sometimes writer’s block is just about flexing those creative muscles on the right side of your brain. Hell, you fingerpaint poop on your Plexiglass enclosure like I do and that counts. Seriously. Look, I drew a monkey! The flies are his eyes.

22. Down The Rabbit Hole Of Research

Research can be a trigger to get you moving again. No matter what you’re writing about, you will always find more to know, and in this case research qualifies as a “good” distraction as long as you keep a relative focus. You play it right, research can be the key that unlocks whatever mental door got slammed shut.

23. Recognize Why You Don’t Want To Write This Part

Sometimes you get stuck on a part and are too stubborn to do anything about it, so you just stand there and stare it down, growling and stomping your feet. Here’s a secret: maybe that part you’re stuck on is a part you just don’t want to write. And if you don’t want to write it, what are the chances that someone might not want to read it? You know what you do? Skip it. Kill it. Move past it. Find another way through.

24. Fuck Off For A Day, Willya?

You get one day. One. Free pass. No writing today. Just flit away, little butterfly. Flit, flit, flit. Clear your head. Have some fun. Tomorrow the work returns. The block, undone. Or it damn well better be.

25. Deny The Existence Of Writer’s Block

If you’re being skewered by a unicorn, the secret is: tell the unicorn he doesn’t exist. If you do that, he’ll disappear in a puff of Lucky Charms cereal. That’s true. That’s fact. Same thing goes for writer’s block. If it’s assailing you, an incubus clinging to your back, you just tell that mythological being that you don’t believe in him. You do that, you steal his power. Suck his breath away. Make him turn to so much vapor. You have to harden your heart and your head against it and believe that the one way through is that old saw that everybody repeats but they always forget: writers write. That’s the one tried and true way through writer’s block. Because a writer who writes isn’t blocked, is he?

* * *

Like this brand of booze-soaked, caffeine-addled, salty-tongued writing advice? Then I might recommend you take a look at 250 Things You Should Know About Writing and Confessions Of A Freelance Penmonkey, both available now. Please to enjoy.

July 17, 2011 / 33 Comments

250 Things You Should Know About Writing: Now Available

Psst.

Psssst.

*gesticulates wildly in or near your field of vision*

I HAVE SHAT ANOTHER E-BOOK INTO THE WORLD.

*receives notes from handler*

Oh. I’m supposed to be more upbeat? More market-savvy? Oh. Oh. That makes sense. Let’s try this.

I SQUATTED IN YOUR DIGITAL TRENCH AND BIRTHED ANOTHER ELECTRONIC WORD BABY.

Better? Excellent.

I give unto thee, 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING.

Let’s right now just get your options for procurement outta the way…

Kindle (US): Buy Here

Kindle (UK): Buy Here

Nook: Buy Here

Or, buy the PDF ($0.99) by clicking the BUY NOW button:


(Note that buying the PDF is through Paypal. Paypal will tell me you’ve procured the e-book and then you’ll get an email from me — usually within 15 minutes — with the book attached. The only caveat is, if I cannot access a computer — like, say, when I’m asleep? — then the file will have to wait until I can drag my draggy ass out of bed and send it to you.)

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…

What In The King Hell Is This?

Remember those “25 Things” lists I’ve been doing? This is those, compiled. With four new lists.

You may be saying, “Gee whillikers, Wendig, that’s not enough to convince me. Can’t you do better?” I can, and will. And also: don’t say gee whillikers. This is a NSFW site, and I demand you use proper profanity like the booze-brined penmonkey you’re supposed to be. Instead of “gee whillikers,” let’s try, “By the fuck-hammer of Odin’s bastard cock, Wendig, that’s not enough to convince me.”

1. A Sticky Faceload of Value Adds

Contained within you’ll find, “25 Things You Should Know About…”

… Being A Writer!

… Writing A Novel!

… Storytelling!

… Character!

… Dialogue!

… Plot!

… Editing/Revising/Rewriting!

And you’ll also find four brand new lists, comprising roughly 10,000 words:

“25 Things You Should Know About…”

… Writing A Fucking Sentence!

… Writing A Screenplay!

… Description!

… Getting Published!

Features such new “things” as:

Beware The Sentence With A Big Ass, I Want To Buy The Semi-Colon A Private Sex Island, The Publishing Dog You Choose To Be, Atmospheric Description Burns Like Alien Syphilis, Too Many Characters Foul The Orgy, and Pricking The Reader’s Oculus With This Grim And Gleaming Lancet.

Now, those pesky mathologists among you will do some quick accounting on the abacus that is your “fingers and toes,” and you will discover that this equals 11 lists, not 10. And 11 x 25 is not 250.

It’s actually 275.

Which means that, yes, the title is a total lie. But let’s be honest — “250 Things” sounds much better. Right? Right. Plus, that way I can say, “25 bonus tips to penetrate your quivering eyeholes!”

Everybody likes bonus shit. You know who doesn’t? Al Qaeda.

2. Cheaper Than A Dollar

You can’t buy much for a dollar in this lifetime. It costs more to buy a jar of goddamn jelly. And if you’re like me, that jar of jelly isn’t going to last long. You’re a jellyhead. I can smell the pectin on you. Look at you twitching for your next fix. Sticky fingers? Mm-hmm. I know the signs. “C’mon, man. I’ll take store-brand! Store-brand! I’m Jonesing for my jam, bro.”

That jelly is temporary. But my Red Ryder wagon full of writing wisdom is forever. Or, at least, it is until the Great EMP of 2016 wipes out the electronic memory of All Computers Everywhere. Oops.

This book is one cent cheaper than a dollar. That’s cheaper than a Lady Gaga single.

(Also note that eventually, I’ll raise the price to $2.99. So get in while the gettin’s good.)

3. If You Don’t Buy It, I’ll Eat This Baby

No, seriously. Look. See that cute cherubic baby? The one who looks terrified? Yeah. You don’t buy it, I’m going to have to eat him. Gobble him right up. Won’t be difficult — he’s very small, and so cute and sweet he probably tastes like a Jolly Rancher candy. Or maybe a churro. Mmm. Churro. Anyway. The point is, I’ve got a baby. A baby who needs to eat, not a baby who needs to be eaten. You can help make that call. For just the price of a cup of cheap gas station coffee, you can prevent me from cannibalizing my own progeny.

If You Are Compelled By Black Magic To Do More, More, More

As always, the two biggest ways of supporting the book are as follows:

a) Tell people via the various social media iterations (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and whatever other social media site comes popping its head out of an Internet bolthole).

b) Leave a review, whether at Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, or your own blog.

I would also be obliged to remind you that I have another book about writing advice, COAFPM, or CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY. I would also remind you that currently my Whirring Doom-Bots have a “Penmonkey Incitement Program,” where the more copies I sell of that book, the greater rewards I give out. For every 50 sales, I send out a postcard. For every 100, I give away a t-shirt. For every 200, I offer a copy-edit of someone’s work. For every 500, I will give away a Kindle. If I sell a billion, I will eat my weight in gold medallions.

What Comes After This?

COAFPM is selling well, and if this also sells well, you’ll probably see more books on writing from Yours Truly. I may also cobble together a small book of humorous essays if I find that interest exists. Finally, I’ve got a series of novellas I plan to self-publish — the first draft of the first is done, now working on edits and an outline for the second novella.

In November, I’ve got DOUBLE DEAD coming out with Abaddon. Then in May I’ve got BLACKBIRDS with Angry Robot. The follow-up to that, MOCKINGBIRDS, will hit… er, sometime thereafter.

My Gratitude Gambols About Like A Randy Goat

Regardless, just wanted to say thanks to any who buy the book and continue supporting me not eating my baby. I mean, supporting my ever-growing bourbon habit. I mean, supporting a lone penmonkey just wriggling through the publishing trenches. You know what I mean.

July 15, 2011 / 81 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: An Uncharted Apocalypse

Last week’s challenge — “The Lady And The Swordsman” — demands your eyeballs.

The Apocalypse.

The end of the world. The end of days. The end times.

Armageddeon Ragnarok 2012, blah blah blah.

We know how the Apocalypse comes, how it all ends. Meteors, tsunamis, earthquakes, plague. It’s been done a thousand times before. Nobody’s really bringing anything new to the apocalyptic table.

Oh, except you.

Here’s your task: I want to see flash fiction set in a very unconventional, never-before-seen apocalypse. A Create Your Own End Times kinda story. Get as creative as you want. I want the world to end — or be in the middle of ending — in a way we’ve never seen before.

In this story, we want the characters to say, “Whoa, we didn’t see that coming.”

Humor, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, tragedy, literary, whatever. Go nuts.

Once again: 1000 words and one week to fill them. Get your tales done by Friday, July 22nd at noon EST. Post them at your blog, then share the link here in the comments.

Tell us how the world ends, will you?

Oh — and this week, we’ve got prizes again. This time, I’m going to pick my five favorite and toss them a PDF copy of my as-yet-unreleased e-book, 250 Things You Should Know About Writing, which is a collection of ten (well, technically eleven, shut up) of my 25 Things lists from this site.

Now: unveil the end of days as only you can write it.

EDIT:

Okay. Jinkies. I finally got through all the stories.

And I’ve picked my five.

It was difficult. I had about ten I really liked, but had to really carve ’em up.

Here, then, are the five —

Samantha J. Mathis

http://samanthajmathis.tumblr.com/post/7670809842/candy-coated-chaos

Brian Buckley

http://briandbuckley.com/2011/07/21/flash-fiction-scissors-with-running/

C.M. Stewart

http://cmstewartwrite.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/grey-goo-flash-fiction-plus-science-fact/

Albert Berg

http://unsanityfiles.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/salt-of-the-earth/

And Sean Riley!

http://jackslack.tumblr.com/post/7838270330/flash-fiction-challenge-shard-of-heaven

You guys, bounce me a message at terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com or use the contact form here at the site and I’ll get you “250 Things You Should Know About Writing.”

 

July 14, 2011 / 11 Comments

Stephen Blackmoore: The Terribleminds Interview

Like I tried to make clear last week — I know some awesome motherfuckers. Case in point? Stephen Blackmoore. Mister Blackmoore is a writer after my own heart. Wit like a lash. He’ll talk booze. He’ll talk games. Best of all, the guy’s an incredible writer. I’m lucky to call him a friend. I’m also lucky to have read both his upcoming DAW releases, CITY OF THE LOST, and DEAD THINGS. The former is going to knock your socks off. The latter is somehow, mysteriously, inexplicably even better — that book is going to knock your head off. And then, with your burbling throathole, you’re going to say, “Can I have some more?” Anyway. Blackmoore — whose blog, LA NOIR, is worth checking out as it details the grim and grimy side of Los Angeles — decided to submit for intellectual processing at the Terribleminds Enlightenment Center.

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.

I had this roommate one time. Squat, little homunculus of a guy from Boston. It was me, him and a mutual friend. So I move in and he’s the Mystery Roommate. He’s away for the first three months I live there. I never meet him. But the Mutual Friend tells me he’s cool, so, whatever.

So, he finally shows up. Nice enough guy. Kind of evasive. He’s been “away” the last few months. That’s all he’ll say. “Away.”

So I ask the Mutual Friend, “Hey, why’s he so weird about talking about where he’s been?” I mean, I don’t care one way or the other, but if somebody doesn’t want to tell me something really innocuous and simple, chances are it ain’t so innocuous and simple.

“Oh,” she says. “He’s been in jail.”

This being news of the sort I’d normally like to have BEFORE I move in with somebody, I ask, “For what?”

Turns out his girlfriend broke up with him about a year before and he shows up on her front lawn coked to the gills, crying and screaming her name.

And naked.

So picture this overweight, pasty white, Jewish guy running in a panic through Mar Vista with his junk flapping in the breeze and a couple LAPD officers on his ass flipping coins as to which one of them will have the unfortunate honor of having to take him down.

Now everybody has a bad turn every once in a while, right? It happens. You’re lonely, your heart’s broken, you’ve just done a couple monster rails of Peruvian flake.

You’re gonna go a little crazy.

As it turns out, though, this isn’t the first time, or even the second. Seems he’s got an issue with, shall we say, self expression.

Now I don’t really give a damn if he’s been in jail or has some issues. Everybody’s got issues. I got no problem with crazy as long as it doesn’t chuck furniture at my head or try to shank me in the middle of the night.

All things considered, though, he wasn’t that bad a roommate.

And the best part about it was that he was really paranoid.

No, really. Paranoid people are great, See, they overthink everything. Spend days figuring out what every little thing means. They’re constantly overanalyzing, trying to figure out all the angles.

That makes them very easy to fuck with.

Mystery Roommate and I had largely separate schedules. Weeks might go by before we saw each other. I’d leave before he got home and he’d leave before I got home.

He had this cheap, cardboard chess set with plastic pieces that he stuck in the living room with the idea that he was going to play with, fuck I dunno, the voices in his head or something.

So one morning as I’m walking out the door, I stop and I move a pawn.

When I get home that night I see that he’s moved a pawn.

So I move one of my pieces. Along the lines of, “I think a Knight on that square would really pull the room together.”

I hate chess. I know how to play it, sure, but it’s like watching golf. My idea of a great chess move is to scream “Checkmate”, kick my opponent in the nuts and light the board on fire. I’m not actually paying any attention to the game.

I won three times.

So one night when our schedules actually synced up he starts talking about chess. Gambits, openings, defenses and I don’t know what the fuck he’s going on about.

Turns out he’s been spending hours at a time analyzing my game. Trying to figure out what I’m doing. What my next move might be. And when he thinks he’s got me figured out, BAM! I change the game on him. One second I’m doing some weird Bobbie Fischer shit and the next I’m playing like a goddamn monkey.

He’s convinced I’m some sort of chess genius.

He asks me what my strategy is.

So I tell him.

Next day I find the torn up chess board in the trash. I don’t know what he did with the pieces, but the garbage disposal never worked very well after that.

The moral of the story? I’m kind of a bastard.

How would you describe your writing or storytelling style?

An unfortunate side effect of Tourettes.

I tend to underwrite. I think a perfectly good novel length is 60-70K words. Not that I don’t like longer novels, I love longer novels. I’m just not predisposed to write them. Comes from writing short stories, I think. And being lazy.

I’m also interested in voice over plot. On the one hand I’ve been accused of style over substance, which I’ll concede for some things I’ve done, but that’s not what I’m shooting for. Sometimes style is substance. A story is a complete thing, not just individual pieces. Voice is an important part of it. It just happens to be the part I’m most interested in.

Bear in mind, I didn’t say I was good at it.

Yeah! Fuck chess! Ahem. Got a favorite boardgame besides chess?

Ah. Games. Yeah.

This is where I let my geek flag fly, right? I used to play a lot. A long, long… long time ago.

Jesus, I’m old.

Anyway, I mostly played RPGs. D&D, Call of Cthulhu. A lot of old school Traveller. When they put the game out in those little booklets instead of one monster rulebook. My first D&D boxed set didn’t come with dice. It came with these little paper chits that you had to cut out and draw from a cup.

You kids and your “dice.” Back in my day we had to calculate range modifiers with astrolabes! And digging through entrails! Why I remember when we had to sacrifice a goat just to figure out our armor class!

But board games? Never really grabbed me much.

Although…

There was this one. It’s a little embarrassing because of the name, but I’ll say it, anyway. Black Morn Manor. I got a lot of shit when that one came out.

One player’s the evil monster holed up in a spoooooky mansion in the woods and the other players are trying to figure out what sort of monster it is. See, there’s an object, wooden stake, voodoo doll, whatever, that can kill the monster. Monster’s trying to destroy it, other players are trying to use it. It’s hidden somewhere on the board.

The challenge is that there’s no board.

Instead, everybody gets tiles for pieces of the manor grounds or rooms in the house that they lay down to build the board as they go. Only the monster player’s got tiles too. While you’re building a straight shot through the house to get to him and kill him he’s turning it into a maze and trying to kill you, too. And if you die you switch to his side.

What’s awesome about being a writer or storyteller?

There’s the “making shit up” bit, which is fun, but better is seeing someone else’s view of it. I think of a story as a collaboration between the writer and the reader with the reader doing most of the heavy lifting. So I try not to be heavy handed with description if I can help it.

I like seeing and hearing other people’s interpretations. I love the idea that someone might come away with something different than I thought of and put their own particular spin on it.

Case in point, my novel CITY OF THE LOST has a cover by the comic book artist Sean Phillips, which is cool. But what’s cooler is that he’s also doing some internal illustrations for some scenes and characters in it.

And seeing how he pictured these characters is incredible. He’s got details on them that I forgot I put in there and even then they’re not exactly how I pictured them. Seeing them through his eyes was both gratifying and a little humbling. Sure I wrote those characters, but in a lot of ways he made them his.

I wanted to do comics before but after seeing what he’s done with them now I REALLY want to do comics.

Conversely, what sucks about it?

Assholes and haters.

I don’t mind them so much when they come after me, but yeah it can sting. Most of the time, though, it can be downright entertaining.

Fun fact: Somebody once put together a blog titled something like “Stephen Blackmoore Is A Big Fat Idiot” because of some unfavorable things I said about her murderer cousin who gunned down two people in an income tax office and fucked off to Wisconsin. Sadly there was only one post IN ALL CAPS BADSPELLINGANDNO PUNCSHASHION beyond the obligatory !!! A few months later she took it down.

I think of that as my, “I have arrived,” moment.

I’m looking forward to my first 1 Star review. I’m taking bets on whether it’s going to be because I a) kill a dog, b) kill a hooker, c) got a gun or Los Angeles fact wrong or d) beat a guy to death with a midget.

You’re entitled to your opinion. I ain’t gonna argue that.

But I hate watching people, particularly creative types, get beat over the head for shit they have no control over or because they pushed someone’s buttons who doesn’t know how to handle having their buttons pushed.

I get pissed off and rant as much as the next guy, if not more, so I get I’m being a bit of a hypocrite here, but I still don’t like it. It takes bigger balls than most people have just to put yourself out there in the first place. Squashing someone like a bug because you got your panties in a twist is just you being an asshole.

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:

Don’t take yourself too seriously. It ain’t worth it.

I’m a bit of a process monkey. You do anything special in terms of writing? Notebook, whiteboard, outlines carved into the flesh of a gimp you keep shackled to the desk? Always curious to see how other writers, ahem, “make the sausage.”

I stare at the wall a lot. Though I’m not sure that has anything to do with my writing.

I’ve tried index cards, mind-maps, Post-Its, a white board, note pads. None of them have ever really worked for me. They all just get in the way. Took a look at Scrivener once and my eyes glazed over.

Though outlining a book works really well for me, I can’t start with an outline. I have to start with a few scenes to help me establish the voice, the characters and give me an idea of what I’m trying to do. For me the outline’s just about plot and there’s a lot more to a story than the plot.

LA Noir is by and large a blog about the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. It’s an awesome place to stop by and read some grisly little tidbits about the City of Angels, and is pretty unusual in terms of an author blog. Where’d the idea for that come from, and why?

I never actually intended L.A. Noir to be an author blog. It just sort of worked out that way.

A few years back I was writing for a community blog called LAVoice. Los Angeles politics, police, education, that sort of thing. It was a cool site, and won a couple awards, but it petered out.

While I was digging up things to write about for them I kept running into crime stories that I found myself wanting to talk about instead.

So I figured what the hell. As far as I’m concerned the best way to show contempt for something is to mock it and if I can’t go around being Batman beating the crap out of pedophiles and drug dealers the least I can do is point and laugh. And there’s a lot to point and laugh at.

Because otherwise it just really pisses me off.

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

Favorite word: “Defenestration” I love the fact that the act of flinging something out the window has happened often enough to require its own word.

Favorite curse word: “Jesus H Monkeyfucking Christ”

I have no idea what the H is for. Hubert, maybe? No clue.

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

Whatever you’re buying.

But if I’m buying I like single malt whisky. Oban, Dalwhinnie, Lagavulin, Macallan, Balvenie. If you can get it there’s this great Tasmanian whisky called Lark that’ll strip the rust off battleships. Until you put a drop of water in it and then goddamn is it smooth. Good stuff.

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

Jesus. Just one? Okay, uh… KISS ME JUDAS, by Will Christopher Baer.

That’s one of those novels I keep going back to. It’s insane, hallucinatory and has one of the best inconsistent and unreliable narrators ever.

Guy goes up to a hotel room with a prostitute and wakes up in the bathtub with a stitched up side and a note saying CALL 911. A pretty standard urban myth goes rapidly off the rails from there as he goes hunting for his possibly missing kidney. Or maybe it isn’t missing and this random prostitute who may or may not actually be a prostitute (or maybe she’s a surgeon, or a nurse, or a professional organ harvester, or a drug mule) is just fucking with him. Maybe she stuffed baggies full of heroin into the hole. Maybe she’s trying to kill him. Maybe she’s trying to get him to kill someone else. Maybe that someone else is her.

Oh, and he’s a cop. Or he used to be a cop before he had a mental breakdown. Now he’s very clearly insane, off his meds and fighting a rampant infection from the (expertly as it turns out) stitched up wound. He goes on for pages about how he’s going to kill her when he finds her and then when he does he decides no, actually he loves her. Or at least really enjoyed the sex. What he can remember of it.

But he still wants to kill her. And get his kidney back, which may or may not be in the cooler she has in her car.

He’s afraid to look.

Things kind of go downhill from there.

Where are my pants?

In the evidence locker. At least until the trial or the zookeeper at the monkey house drops the charges. But I don’t see that happening. I mean, really, in the eye? With his kids watching? That’s just cold, man.

Good aim, though.

Got anything to pimp? Now’s the time!

I gots me a book!

A dark urban fantasy titled CITY OF THE LOST coming out January 3rd, 2012 through DAW Books. It’s been described as “creatively violent.” I mean, how can you go wrong with that?

Here’s the ad copy:

Joe Sunday’s dead. He just hasn’t stopped moving yet.

Sunday’s a thug, an enforcer, a leg-breaker for hire. When his boss sends him to kill a mysterious new business partner, his target strikes back in ways Sunday could never have imagined. Murdered, brought back to a twisted half-life, Sunday finds himself stuck in the middle of a race to find an ancient stone with the power to grant immortality. With it, he might live forever. Without it, he’s just another rotting extra in a George Romero flick.

Everyone’s got a stake, from a psycho Nazi wizard and a razor-toothed midget, to a nympho-demon bartender, a too-powerful witch who just wants to help her homeless vampires, and the one woman who might have all the answers — if only Sunday can figure out what her angle is.

Before the week is out he’s going to find out just what lengths people will go to for immortality. And just how long somebody can hold a grudge.

I just turned in the second in the series, DEAD THINGS, which picks up with a different character in the same world. I have no idea when that will be coming out.

Anything you can tell us about DEAD THINGS?

DEAD THINGS is a follow-up to CITY OF THE LOST. I’m writing the series from the perspective of the world rather than a particular character, so DT has a different protagonist. I like the idea of showing different views of this world and seeing what sorts of stories I can tell in it.

DT is about a necromancer named Eric Carter. He can see the dead, talk to them, manipulate them. He’s on speaking terms with Voodoo loas, demons and the undead. He’s a rarity among mages, which are rare enough as it is. He’s not thrilled with it but he was born that way.

Fifteen years ago Carter’s parents were murdered by another mage and he went a little bugfuck. Took the guy out by feeding his soul to a bunch of hungry ghosts. Pissed off a lot of people when he did it. They gave him a choice to either get out of L.A. or they’d kill his younger sister. He hasn’t been back since.

But now his sister’s been murdered and when he returns to L.A. he finds out that her death was just bait to get him back home.

But who wants him that badly and why? There’s no shortage of possibilities. There’s the guy who drove him out of town, his best friend who he left to pick up the pieces, the mage he killed who might actually have come back from the dead.

And when he runs into Santa Muerte, the patron saint of murderers and criminals who used to be an Aztec death goddess, things get a lot more complicated.

What’s next after COTL and DT? Whatchoo working on now?

A lot of that staring at the wall thing I was talking about earlier.

I’ve got about half a dozen other ideas I’m playing with for the series, incuding ones that pick up with the characters from COTL and DT, though I’ll probably hold off on those. I’m hoping I can keep this going for a while. Really depends on whether enough people like it or not, I suppose.

I’m working on a story bible for the series. Maintaining consistency can be a real pain in the ass. I keep running into the same problem I have with index cards and Post-Its. Referring back to a bunch of dry notes just doesn’t work for me, so instead I’m writing short stories set in the world. So far it’s helped cement some things for me and I might use a few of them as jumping off points for future books.

I’ve also got a collection of short stories I’m toying with releasing on the Kindle, but I don’t know if I’m ready to do that just yet.

Other than that it’s just jotting down ideas here and there. I want to try my hand at a lot of different things. Science fiction, a western, a straight crime novel. Would really love to write for comics and games.

And while I’m at it I want a jetpack and a pony.

July 13, 2011 / 33 Comments

Transmissions From Baby-Town: “Turning Corners”

Let me be your birth control, those without kids: the first six weeks of raising a Tiny Human provide a lesson in small miseries. You have not slept. The pieces of your life — the schedule that holds your sanity together — has been hammered apart like so much peanut brittle and, for added measure, is then thrown into Cookie Monster’s crushing maw to finish the job. You feel like a tooth cracked apart, the raw nerve exposed. Everything feels like the blood test from THE THING: a hot wire stuck in a petri dish of blood, then pop, then monsters, then something has to die screeching in fire.

That thing that’s dying in a fire is your old life.

The old ways are gone.

The old roads are shut.

It is the dawn of a new day.

These are the poo-dimmed tides.

* * *

Raising a baby might as well qualify you for credits in a class called FECAL MANAGEMENT 101. That’s what you’re doing a lot of the time: just managing poop, both literally and figuratively. Very early the poo is nasty. You could shingle a roof or fill potholes with the black tarry meconium. Then it gets a little better. Poop from pure breast-milk is nutty, popcorny, not entirely unpleasant. (I won’t lie. It made me hungry.) But soon as a drop of formula touches that kid’s lips it’s like his gut flora turn into teenagers — the innocence of his bowels is lost, and now his intestinal bacteria are all a bunch of hooligans hanging out under lampposts, smoking noxious cigarettes.

Give the kid formula to supplement and his shit starts smelling like shit.

And the wee one blows ass like a champion. You could push a sailboat with the wind that comes out of his bediapered hindquarters. And kill flowers with the smell.

* * *

Everything was going fine down below, but then suddenly: the specter of constipation.

B-Dub hadn’t gone for… I think it was four days? I know how I feel if I don’t, ahem, take out the biological garbage once a day, so there we are, starting to worry. We think, ye gods, he’s probably swelling up with poop. One day he’ll be like Violet Beauregarde in the Wonka Factory, blowing up like a blimp — except instead of purple, he’ll be the color of caramel sauce. Then he’ll rupture. Pbbt.

So we call the doctor and the nurse says, “Give him an infant suppository,” except she doesn’t tell us that you don’t buy infant suppositories, you buy larger suppositories then cut them up into quarter sticks. And nobody else tells us this either, so we run around like assholes for the evening until finally we come upon the truth and my Mother-in-Law thankfully shows up with what we need.

Giving a suppository to a wiggly infant is like trying to punch a moon bounce — your intended attack always returns. It calls to mind giving a pill to our terrier: the medicine ever comes back into your hand.

Finally it worked. The child purged. And what came out was almost disappointing: no epic flush, no apocalyptic explosion, no crap tsunami. It was just… a normal baby bowel movement. And it wasn’t even constipation, technically. Not like he was pooping little ball bearings or anything.

* * *

Four more days, same problem.

No poop.

Moderate discomfort.

Awesome.

You look online — i.e. gaze into the doom-eye of the mad oracle — and you find that, as it turns out, Every Baby Is A Different Baby. Some kids poop five times a day. Some kids poop once every five days. Some are efficient little processors and don’t need to go all that often — after all, it’s not like they’re eating cheesesteaks and bran cereal every couple hours. They’re on a liquid diet. Most of that can be peed out.

Even still, everybody wants to make you feel like a shitheel because your baby isn’t pooping. Like it’s our fault. “Oh, am I not supposed to store my wine cork collection in his butthole? Oops! Mea culpa.”

The other problem is, apparently you can, Pavlov-style, train your child to poop only with suppositories accidentally. Instead of a dinner bell ringing meaning food, it’s the rectal plunging of a glycerin tab to signal unconsciously that, hey, it’s totally time to take a crap now, thanks.

It’s times like this you suddenly realize, oh my god, this is our lives. We can barely make the time to go to the bathroom ourselves but here we are, obsessing over the effluence of our child.

* * *

For the record, it was just the formula. We cut back and moved him from Enfamil Gentlease to Similac and, ta-da, no more constipation. Stupid razzafrazza formula. Oh, and thank you, doctor, for not recommending this course of action and making sure we figured it out all by our lonesome.

Did I mention we need a new doctor?

* * *

I was eating cottage cheese the other day, holding B-Dub, when he spit up. And I looked at what came out of his mouth, and I looked down at the cottage cheese I was eating, and I was struck by the notion that the cottage cheese companies (aka “Big Dairy”) were probably just repackaging Baby Puke and selling it to us as a snack. I mean, I kept eating it. Whaddya gonna do?

* * *

Our standards for cleanliness have dropped. We’re basically something out of a National Geographic special these days, like, we’re people from one of those tribes only recently discovered. The constant nursing. The origami boulders of spit-up paper towels everywhere. The fact that when I put on a shirt, I examine it not to see if there are any stains but rather, how bad the stains happen to be before I throw it on.

And I inevitably wear it. Because, who’s got time for laundry?

We’ve gone back to some primal state.

* * *

I wear earplugs now when we bathe him. His cries don’t really bother me, but there’s this special horrific alignment when we get him in the echo chamber of the bathroom — his shrieks of horror turn into this pandemonious cacophony, a sound not unlike all of the souls of the damned being thrust into a cauldron of bubbling pitch. For some reason, this sound doesn’t bother my wife as much.

But me? It raises my blood pressure, makes my ears ring, tenses my shoulders into hard bundles.

Only then. Only during bathing.

You’d think he’d like it.

“Oh, hey, I’m being dipped in a gently warm bath and being softly sponged by a beautiful woman whose boobs I see frequently. I think I’ll take a special moment to scream as if I’m being covered by a thousand papercuts and washed in a tub full of Sea Breeze and rattlesnake venom. Everybody good with that? Super.”

* * *

The other day, two fawns played on our lawn while the mother stood off to the side, chewing on some leaves. I wanted to ask her, “Do your babies explosively poop up their backs?”

Nobody talks about that milestone, do they?

First smile.

First word.

First breach of the fecal containment unit.

I almost wish I could attain the “up the back blow-out.” Just to see if I could.

* * *

He won’t sleep in his bassinet anymore. Only sleeps on his mother. Which means she has to rig up this whole thing so he stays laying across the Boppy at night. Which means she basically is developing some kind of Mommy-fed scoliosis, some joint-cracking arthritis at a young age, some mad calcification of her bones. All to support the Little Pink Dictator that rules our life.

Once, I was ruled by an entirely different Little Pink Dictator.

But he’s staying quiet these days. As well he should be. I won’t tolerate any nonsense from him because it’s his fault we’re in this mess. Don’t think I’m not savvy to your games, you little cock-waffle.

* * *

You start to have serious conversations. Conversations that can only happen when you haven’t slept and the baby is inconsolable and the air smells of baby powder and burned nerves.

You start to say, “Maybe we just run away. Hawaii, right? Still in the country. No need for a passport. We live on the beach. Leave the baby here with a note. Our parents will handle it. Or the neighbors. Or whatever homeless person moves into our domicile when we vacate. Is there a rescue shelter for babies? Maybe we can just take him there. I mean, pssh, pfft, we’ll leave some money. For… toys and… baby things. It’ll be fine. Let’s just go. It’s the dark of night. We can just go. We can just leave. Hurry before he notices!”

But he always notices. Because he’s good like that.

* * *

Thing is, it all sounds horrible.

And anybody gazing in from the outside as you are now, anybody who doesn’t have kids, probably thinks, man, that sounds awful. And at times, it is. Even still, you get your moments.

Better yet, around the six week mark we turned a corner. He stopped being Herr Doktor Pissypants all day. He’s alert, now. He smiles when we smile. He babbles at us. He says A-Goo and Ook and he yips like a coyote and howls like a wolf and he laughs when you mess with him. Moreover, not only is he changing, but we’re changing, too. We’re figuring stuff out. We know about gripe water. I know about the Magical Daddy Football Hold. I know that if you take him outside he becomes rapt by all that he sees.

We know to just listen.

The other night we had him laying (not sleeping) next to the bed and he was just… yammering away at whatever ghosts and bugs live in our house. Laughing and yelling and oohing and aahing. And it’s sweet.

We think he’s advanced, of course. Every parent thinks their kid is advanced. They’re like, “OMG LOOK AT THE WAY HE SPIT UP ARE THOSE THE FIBONACCI NUMBERS.” But the way he tracks objects and smiles and says consonants and kicks his legs and tries to push off and stand up and memorizes the stories of Mark Twain (okay, I might be lying about that last part) makes us sure he’s going to be a smart kid. Which is probably more trouble than we’re prepared for, but oh well, so it goes.

We think he’s cute, too. Every parent thinks they’re kid is cute.

But look at that face.

Look at it.

I SAID LOOK AT IT GODDAMNIT — see this gun? Yeah.

Like I said. Cute. Objectively. Shut up.

Point being —

There it goes, that corner we just turned.

We smile and he smiles. I ask him to tell me a story and he burbles and coos. And it all starts to make a weird kind of sense. It all comes together and says, this is why you’re here, this is why you do things, this is why I write and why my wife gets scoliosis and why we work and love and live, and it’s all for him, all for the ever-adorable and totally-advanced Wriggly Napoleon who governs our lives.

Every day, it seems, is a new corner to turn.

Which is terrifying and beautiful in one weird bundle.

* * *

(Required continued reading: “Sailing Over A Year,” and “Dinosaur Vs. Parents,” both by Lauren Beukes, both about her experiences as a parent during the first two years. In short: awesome.)

July 12, 2011 / 3 Comments

Penmonkey Incitement: Postcard, Unlocked

And, a week after we started, the stars aligned, the ancient gods awoke, the Druids once more rose and fell as a people, the seas did churn blood, and COAFPM scored 50 sales.

Which means, the first incentive is unlocked.

Time to send out a postcard.

Except, whoa-hoa-hoa, I’m feeling generous. I’m going to send out two postcards. Because, dang, I just ordered these shiny new PENMONKEY cards, and I want to show them off to people.

Way this works is, I take the emails of everybody who bought the book on PDF and who e-mailed me to show me a receipt from their Kindle or Nook purchase. I line ’em up in a spreadsheet. I use RANDOM.ORG to generate a random number. And that number corresponds to a numbered line on the spreadsheet. Easy-peasy, buttocks-squeezy.

I generated two numbers because, again, I want to send out some motherfucking postcards.

Numbers generated: 25, 102.

Those numbers correspond to:

Gareth Hanrahan (aka “Mytholder!”)

and

Theresa Fisher!

I’ll be contacting you crazy kids over email. Thereafter, the Doom-Bots will usher you toward your “final reward” in the whirring “pleasure saws” and “laser baths” here at the Penmonkey Spa Camp.

Now, yesterday saw a big jump in Those Who Possess The Penmonkey, so we’re already up 62 sales — which means we only have 38 more to go before I start doling out t-shirts. And let me tell you, I got my own CERTIFIED PENMONKEY t-shirt in the mail yesterday? And it’s actually a pretty snazzy shirt. (Ordered from ZAZZLE.)

Do recall how the incitement works:

For every 50 sales, I send out a postcard.

For every 100 sales, I send out a t-shirt.

For every 200 sales, I offer an editorial look at 5,000 words of your writing.

For every 500 sales, I will procure for someone a Kindle.

All for a period of 1000 sales, or one year.

That’s (in theory) 20 postcards, 10 t-shirts, five edits, and two Kindles.

Right? Right. Now, worth noting: this first pick came from a batch of only 126 people, because that’s the number of people who have let me know they procured the book. Those are pretty sweet odds in terms of nabbing the next reward, a t-shirt, but again, remember that it only works if you email me at terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com and throw for me proof that you procured a copy of COAFPM for your Kindle or Nook (again, if you bought on PDF, I already have you counted).

Now, I’m revising my International policy a leetle teeny bit.

For the postcard, I will send internationally.

For the t-shirt, I will send internationally only if the procurer pays the international shipping. Sorry for that, but I just can’t afford the second mortgage to send a shirt to Marquesas or something.

For the edit, I’ll look at anybody’s work no matter where they live, but I will edit to US standards.

For the Kindle, sorry, international folks are SOL. Er, blame Amazon?

In other news, I’m slowly readying my next e-book release, a book based on my 25 Things series found here at the ol’ bloggery-hut.

And I finished the first draft of Shotgun Gravy, my teen-noirish Veronica Mars YA-esque thing starring the “Get-Shit-Done Girl,” Atlanta Burns. So, keep your grapes peeled for that, too.

In the meantime, if I sell more copies of PENMONKEY, somebody gets another postcard and a t-shirt.

To procure PENMONKEY:

Kindle (US), Kindle (UK), Nok, or PDF.

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