Tag: advice (page 1 of 25)

Should you be your own publisher, or should you find someone to publish for you?

That’s a question that pops up in my inbox often enough it might as well be a coked-up gopher — so, instead of hitting each twitchy gopher with a tiny hammer, I figure I’ll write this one big-ass motherfucker of a blog post to serve as the Mjolnir that will eradicate all the pesky gophers into a fine splurch of bloody mist.

I’m going to answer the question now, up-front, with a somewhat controversial answer.

You should try the traditional route first.

All right, all right, stop yelling, indie authors. Cool your inflamed genitals.

Stop throwing things at my head. Because, seriously, ow.

Let’s offer up a couple disclaimers: first, this is me talking about my experiences and should be viewed as such, and you can of course take my advice or you can wad it up into a ball and shove it deep into a bison’s rectum. You may disagree with anything I say here and have entirely different experiences and that’s all good, dude-bro or lady-bro. I’m shining a flashlight on the path I’ve walked and the things I’ve seen while on it. You may do differently.

Second, I like to approach publishing as a hybridized endeavor, meaning, I do a little bit of everything. Traditional, DIY, crowdsourced, small press, the mystical Akashic Record, stone tablets hewn by the gods, whatever. As such, I am a fan of self-publishing. I do it. I have self-published releases out there. I will continue to self-publish in the future. My self-published releases in 2012 will equate to approximately 20% of my total writing income, which is pretty rad. I will not tell you to never self-publish.

But, I also get to hop the fence and frolic tra-la-la in the meadow of the traditional, as well.

Blackbirds is published via the “traditional method” (which is to say the fiction lay with a publisher in the missionary style and together with a midwife they birthed a book baby in a muddy trench under the eyes of a vigilant god).

In the grand scheme of things, Blackbirds is a fairly small release.

And yet, Blackbirds has been very good to me.

It has an amazing cover.

It’s been published far and wide. Indie bookstores, B&N, airport bookstores, online e-book distributors, and so on and so forth.

It’s received a boatload of reviews across both digital and meatspace. It’s shown up in places like the Guardian, the Independent, SFX, Starburst, Publisher’s Weekly, The Financial Times, io9. It’s got scads of commentary at places like Amazon and Goodreads and even still I get Google Alerts of bloggers talking about discovering the book and digging it.

It made it on a number of “best of 2012” lists.

A number of authors I admire and adore have gotten a hold of the book and told me how much they enjoyed it. Seanan McGuire’s very kind review of the book still gives me a giddy shiver now and again (and further, I’m quite certain it sold more copies of the book).

The book had foreign rights sold in two territories.

The film rights are thisclose to being wrapped up (hopefully this week).

The book ended up in the hands of a different film studio and off that, I was able to pitch a project to them and then to the head of a major film studio. (The pitch went through its paces and didn’t quite land, but gave me great contacts in both studios.)

The book ended up in the hands of a major comics publisher and allowed me to pitch a comic for a character I adore (no word yet on how well that pitch landed, sorry).

The book comes up routinely in conversations with other editors. The book’s relative success has led to other publishing opportunities and deals.

The book has earned me bonafide fans that appear at bookstores and conferences who seem to be (much to my bepuzzlement) genuinely happy to meet me and to have read the book.

The book is a super-weapon that conjures a fire unicorn from the heavens and together we are able to ride on the tail of a comet dispensing food to the hungry and sweet jamz to those without music. …okay, I might be making this last part up. SUE ME. (Please don’t sue me.)

For those of you crass commerce-hounds out there, I will note that a good deal of this has translated into money, as well as that most insubstantial of resources, “exposure.”

Now, the corker:

Most of this in my opinion would not have been possible if I self-published Blackbirds. I would never have gotten such a beautiful cover by the inimitable Joey Hi-Fi. Would’ve never sold foreign rights or film rights or had great reviews that multiplied exposure to the book. I probably wouldn’t have sold as many copies as I had (if sales of Bait Dog are any indication at all). I damn sure wouldn’t be in bookstores. And again, to revert to crass capitalism, I likely would’ve made a lot less money on the book had I gone the DIY route.

Yes, yes, I see you hopping up and down over there — I agree with you. My experiences are not going to be repeatable. Your book may do much better than this, or far worse, in a traditional space. Alternately, if you self-publish, you may end up having the blistering success that many worthy indie releases never seem to find. (Though, I’ll note here that the pot of gold at the end of many self-publishing rainbows seems so often to be a traditional publishing deal.)

So. Okay. All that being said, let’s give some reasons why you should try traditional first.

1) Because all that stuff I just said. Rights, reviews, access, bookstores, authors, $$$.

2) Because submitting to an agent and/or publisher will teach you things about the industry.

3) Because you may receive excellent feedback on your book for free about things that work.

4) Because you may receive similar feedback on your book (for free!) about things that don’t work (and should you end up publishing this way your book will be refined even further by agent and editor).

5) Because if you don’t get a deal, you can always go back and self-publish anyway.

6) Because if you get a deal but don’t like the terms, you can self-publish anyway.

7) Because if you get a deal and take it, and one day they no longer want to publish your book anymore because of sales or because Barnes & Noble shit the bed or because something-something Mayan Flu Gonorrhea Epidemic, you can take your book and self-publish anyway.

8) Because even if you don’t like the Big Six (er, five — or is it four by now?) you still have options to “traditionally” publish with smaller- to medium-size publishers or even with Amazon. Other options exist outside the mainstream, is what I’m saying.

9) Because not that you’re in this racket for respect (writers and respect are like oil and water), but you will get more as one who is traditionally-published than one who is not. Again: not a real good reason, but hey, maybe that sort of thing matters to you.

10) Because a more traditional path to publication may build fans who will then take a risk on your self-published work (where they may before have been averse to it).

11) Because flaming unicorn comet riding. Okay, I said I was making that one up, sorry.

12) Because patience is a virtue writers need to learn and going the traditional path will sure as the sexual charity of Sweet Saint Fuck teach you a mega-uber-ultra-dose of patience.

It mostly sums up to: “It can’t hurt, and it may help.”

Your mileage may vary, of course. Do with this as thou wilt. If you want to self-publish first and only, that’s a path that offers many authors a potential wealth of success in differing ways — so, I’m not knocking it, and I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. I just figure, traditional offers things right now that many writers seek (including cold hard cash), and blah blah blah.

Though, hey, certainly there are reasons to go straight to self-publishing, too: certain genres, for instance, tend to be exploitative toward traditional authors while rewarding indie writers. Further, self-pub allows you to publish risky material in terms of content or format.

Maybe you just got a burning middle finger for authority.

That’s all good. You do as you like. Do what makes you happiest, penmonkey.

*drops mic*

*takes a nap on snoozing unicorn*

Recently, I wrote a post called, “How Chuck Wendig Writes A Novel.”

Just after writing that, I threw myself into the churning gears of editing and rewriting not one novel, but three — I spoke a little on Twitter about said editing/rewriting, and I got a lot of folks tweeting at me or emailing me questions about my editing process.

Seems now is a good time to sift through the sand of my process, see what baubles turn up.

Now, two quick things:

First, this is my process. You are not me. (OR ARE YOU? MOM, THE DOPPELGANGER IS READING MY BLOG AGAIN.) As such, this is not meant to be a step-by-step Menu For Proven Success. Every writer’s gotta figure out her own process. This is mine, here to serve as an example and a list of possibilities rather than a do this or perish in the cold fires of ignominy.

Second, I believe that this process is as important, if not moreso, than the actual writing of your first draft. A story may be born in the first draft, but anybody with children will tell you, those baby creatures are dopey as shit. They just lay there. Crying and pooping. But time and teaching is what makes the person, and in editing and rewriting your work you’ll likely find that this is where your story grows up. A tale is truly made in this phase.

Put more succinctly:

Writing is when we make the words.

Editing is when we make the words not shitty.

Now, red pens out! No, no, not red penis out. See, that gets an edit. Weirdo.

Let us begin.

Kick The Story To The Curb And Walk Away

The best thing you can do for the work is get to the point where you forgot you wrote it. Give it enough time so that you can come back to it with only a hazy memory of the thing — meaning, you’re reading the work like some other jerkoff wrote it. You’ll come to it so fresh and so clean. You’ll be more clear-headed about its errors. You won’t needlessly love certain parts that suck, and you won’t automatically hate parts that are actually pretty good.

How much time does this take? I’ve no idea. I’m not you. (OR AM I? Okay, no.) I’d say to give it a month if you can afford it — sadly, I can’t always afford that kind of time, what with deadlines and all. With editing Heartland, Book One, I rewrote it many times over the course of a year, and just now did one more rewrite for the publisher — and in this casew had like, maybe five months before I really had to reopen and look at it again. I wasn’t so lucky with Blue Blazes — I had to write it and rewrite it immediately after. (But when Angry Robot returns the book to me for edits, enough time will have passed for me to come at it clear.)

Stare At It Until Its Weakness Is Revealed

Something is wrong with your story.

Repeat: something is wrong with your story.

I don’t know what. I haven’t read it. All I know is, every story has different set of problems, though certainly some writers cleave to problems particular to them (my problem is frequently plot, and my edits are often about punching the plot until it yields to my demands). What’s the problem with your story? Well. Maybe it’s:

Confusing character motivations. Unclear language. Plot holes. Wonky structural issues. Needless exposition. Boring parts. Shit that doesn’t make sense. An addiction to commas. Conflict that doesn’t escalate. Conflicts that are too easily solved. Inconsistent mood. Incongruous theme. Needs more sex. Needs another monkey sidekick. Parts are written in Sumerian for no good reason. The book is only 300 words long. The book is 300,000 words long. Needs more giant eagles carrying the protagonists around everywhere. Needs fewer awful parts. THE STORY IS DUMB AND YOUR FACE IS DUMB AND EVERYBODY HATES YOU.

Or whatever. Point is, you have to sit and figure out why this thing you wrote doesn’t work — either in part or in total. This is a heartwrenching component of the process, because…

…well, because it is. Because you don’t want anything to be wrong. Because you just spent so much of yourself putting the first damn draft on the page. But you know what? Fuck it. The good news is, just because something’s wrong doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. No problem in a novel is too serious. All can be solved with a most merciless edit.

Get Some Perspective

Let someone else take a crack at it. Sometimes, even after time has passed, we’re just too close to the thing. You don’t want to kill your darlings or, maybe it’s the opposite: you just want to kill all of it with cleansing fire. Let someone else confirm or veto your feelings. They’ll also bring new questions and complexities to the table, too (“I did not realize that Captain Redballs the Bold died in chapter three, but then I have him in chapter six making love to a mermaid”).

I have my agent, who is a wunderkind in terms of sussing out a story’s problems. You may have friends or fellow writers who can help. Or copy-editors or editors or wives or a super-intelligent NASA-bred terrier. But find a trusted outside perspective. Don’t let it all fall to your shoulders.

Track Changes Is Your Best Friend

A tiny note: learn to love the power of track changes. Available in fullest form in Microsoft Word.

It is exceedingly helpful to mark all the changes you make. I turn them on when editing but turn their visibility off at the same time — so, it’s tracking all the changes I make off-stage and behind the curtain. But I can view them at any time. And it’s also a great way to track the comments and tweaks put forth by that person of outside perspective I was talking about, too.

And hell, part of it is just the satisfaction of looking at all your changes by the end and being amazed at the level of work you put into it. Suddenly you’re like:

“Man, I really made this pig bleed, didn’t I?”

How cruelly satisfying.

Work With The Multiple Safety Nets Of Redundant Backups

Also, save a lot when you edit.

And back up your work.

Not once place, but in many.

A cloud backup.

A local, external device.

Tattooed onto your back.

Buried in your yard.

Multiple redundant backups are your best buddy.

Gaze Upon The Coming Task With Terror In My Heart

There exists this moment before I edit where I feel completely overwhelmed. This is, quite literally, part of my process. I get this sense of literary vertigo, like I’m staring over the cliff’s edge into the crashing gears of some giant malevolent machine that I cannot comprehend and that I am sure will crush me into my constituent parts. And in this moment I want to back away and say, “Fuck it, I’m not doing this, I’m done, game over, my work sucks, I’m not a writer, I’m just some asshole, I can’t hack it, I can’t–”

And then I leap over the cliff’s edge and let the gears take me.

And that’s when I find out it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

It’s never as bad as you thought.

Re-Outline That Motherfucker

I outline my work prior to writing.

But, when writing, my work inevitably strays from the outline.

If I had to quantify it (and I will, because you keep shoving the barrel of that gun into my kidneys), I’d say about 75% of my draft survives the original outline, and 25% goes completely off the fucking rails like if Thomas the Tank Engine did a bunch of bath salts and tried to headbutt his way through a collapsed mountain pass.

(Sorry for the Thomas the Tank Engine reference. I have a toddler. I am infected.)

So, I like to take the draft I just wrote and re-outline it. Just so I see the entire thing before me — I want to see the forest and the individual trees. And it helps to pull my head out of the big blobby morass of the novel and see it as smaller, more manageable. I can see its shape. Its contours. I can see all the plotty bits and turns-of-the-tale. It’s a map. A blueprint. A cheater’s guide to a video game. Whatever. I want digestible chunks. Hence: outline.

Re-Re-Outline That Motherfucker

Then, yes, I re-re-outline.

The re-outline details the novel I just wrote.

The re-re-outline details the coming rewrites of the novel I just wrote.

The Power Of Excel Compels You

I use the mighty fuck out of Excel to perform this re- and re-re-outlining process.

Here’s how: I make four columns.

Column #1: Chapter number/name. (This is pretty explanatory, yeah?)

Column #2: Plotty Bits. Meaning, what the fuck is happening in this chapter? I don’t go into great detail, here. Just broad stroke events. “Bob dies. Mary lays eggs in his rectum. Her alien hell-shrimp are born in his colon. Mary exits.”

Column #3: Conflict/Changes. Meaning, I want to know what the core conflict is of this chapter. And I want to know how the story or its characters is changing. I want the sense that the story is moving, that things are happening, that the diagram of the narrative isn’t a flat line.

Column #4: Comments/Questions. Here’s me asking myself questions or making marginal comments — “Should Mary flee the scene now or do her motherly instincts prevail over her new insectile litter inside Bob’s moist bowel-channels?”

Then I duplicate the last three columns (plot, conflict, comments) again. This time, for the re-re-outline. This allows me to see both the current state of the novel and the novel I intend to edit/fix/rewrite/asplode side by side. Very helpful, at least for me.

I Am Shiva

Shiva is the destroyer. But Shiva is also preserver, concealer, revealer, and creator. And that, to me, sums up the entire editing and rewriting process: some stuff you kill with an axe. Some stuff needs to be reborn. Some stuff you preserve and keep — other stuff can only remain if you are able to can tease out the essence of the thing (scene, character, sentence, whatever).

What I’m saying is, after I re-re-outline, it’s time to rewrite. Which means destroying whole parts of the story and remaking them. In the Blue Blazes  I lost an entire main character. Like, I erased her from the tale. Sometimes with a machete, sometimes with a surgical laser. She just wasn’t pulling her weight and so she had to go, and that means rewriting the story — a stitching of the wound, you will — around the holes where she once existed.

Read It

Once you’re done with the big edits, I reread. (Re-outline, re-write, re-read. Lots of re-re-re.)

I read the draft aloud — which is not to say I sit here in my office bellowing fiction all day, which would drive my family nuts and wake Toddler B-Dub up from one of his blessed naps, but I kind of mumble-whisper the words as I sit here. (Which means anybody looking at me from afar probably thinks I’m some kind of crazy person.) Reading your work aloud will allow you to catch a lot of the rough patches in terms of language. And reading the work in general will allow you to catch any problematic bits that remain. It’s like pouring the broth of your work through a strainer and then through cheesecloth to capture those last gnarly bits.

If Necessary, Do It All Again, But Not Before Weeping Softly And Drinking A Lot

Sometimes you gotta do it all over again. Sometimes some of the cancer remains, which means it’s time for another round of surgery, chemo, and radiation. Hell, sometimes a truly frustrating thing happens: the second draft has more problems than the first. That’s okay, though at the time it’ll feel completely defeating. It’s all part of the winnowing. It’s all progress even when it doesn’t feel that way. Because this is you getting to know your story. This is you getting to know more than just this story, but all stories, feeling your way through what works and what doesn’t. It’s all research and development, man. It’s all one big story-hack.

This year, I’ve written — *checks psychic spreadsheet* — four novels. Bait Dog, Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits, Dinocalypse Now, and (finishing up this week), The Blue Blazes. I also wrote a novella, Bad Blood, which includes the next appearance of everybody’s favorite vampire-in-Zombieland, Coburn.

By this year I also have — *consults little man who lives in my mind* — five novels out in the world. Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Double Dead, Dinocalypse Now, and Bait Dog. (I apparently like ‘b’ and ‘d’ words. Eventually I’ll write one giant magnum opus called Blackdead Dinodog: The Baited Blood of Bad Bluebird.)

In the next year I am slated to write and/or publish — *polls the bacterial choir that lives inside my colonic labyrinth* — seven more books. Got the three books of my young adult cornpunk Heartland trilogy, got two more books in the Dinocalypse Spirit of the Century universe, have another Atlanta Burns book (Harum Scarum) and the third Miriam Black book (The Cormorant).

I do not list these things as a humble-brag (though, make no mistake, it is a humble-brag, because I am a proud peacock over here), but only to note that somehow, I fell face first into a novel-writing gig. And further to note that, maybe it’s time I wrote a post on exactly how this motherfucker right here — *points to me and the squirming bundle of sentient cilia I call a ‘beard’* — writes a book.

That’s not to say this is how you should write a book. I’m just putting out these breadcrumbs — you may choose another path through this dark forest of novel-writing. People ask me how I do it, so here’s my answer.

This is going to be a long post, so get some tea and bolster your fortitude.

The Idea Skirts Past My Orbital Defenses

The question for writers should never be, “How do you get your ideas?” but rather, “How do you shut them up to get a night’s sleep?” My mind is a moon colony constantly being pelted by little fiery asteroid-ideas. Ideas are not my problem: they fill up the ol’ brain-bucket pretty quick.

The problem is figuring out which ideas are:

a) interesting to me beyond the moment in which they are conceived

b) potentially interesting to other humans who are not me

c) potentially interesting to the giant amorphous blob known as the “publishing industry”

d) about a character in a world and not just a world

and de actionable, meaning, an idea that suggests a book I’m actually capable of writing.

If an idea checks each check-box with a jaunty slash, then I write that sonofabitch down. I write it down on my phone at first (sometimes using voice recognition if I’m driving or walking or playing racquetball or hunting humans for sport), and then later I dump it into a file I’ve created that’s meant to be a storehouse of such potential ideas. For the record, this dump file now looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shelves and shelves of crates and boxes, each a mystery container whose story remains untold.

I Barf Up A Blob Of Incoherent Thoughts

Once I’m ready to take the idea beyond that core seed of an idea (“Wouldn’t it be crazy if a cat was president?!”), I fish it out of its swampy mud-hole and hoist it into the light.

Then I start writing. Nothing concrete. Rarely anything that’s actual story. Mostly just notes and thoughts. And a lot of questions. What kind of cat is it? Is the cat a good president or a bad president? Will the cat have nuclear codes? Will the press discover the cat’s cocaine addiction (SEE YOU THOUGHT IT’D BE CATNIP BUT NOOOO THE CAT IS A LITTLE BLOW-MONKEY) and will that damage re-election chances?

The notes taken at this stage are almost stream-of-consciousness. Sentence fragments, mis-spelled words, grocery list thoughts interspersed in the middle, whatever. It’s just to ruminate on the idea. And it’s also to test the idea in a way. Is there more here than than initial idea? A great many ideas are dead seeds planned in fallow ground — they won’t grow a good goddamn thing. So, this stage of the game is very much about seeing if this thing has legs. Will it walk? Can it run?

The Critical Questions

I ask myself a handful of “cardinal” questions —

What is it about?

The answer to this isn’t about plot. It’s about the deeper, weirder answer. Like, if we were out in the jungle high on some kind of jaguar gland, I’d grab the idea by the shoulders and say, “No, man, what are you really about?” This is me starting to skirt around the idea of theme — the argument I want this story to make.

Why the hell do I want to write this?

If the answer is, “Because it’ll get published,” then fuck that. If the answer is, “Because it’s popular right now and will earn me big money,” then fuck that, too. If the answer is, “Because it’s cool,” then — drum roll please — fuck that. I need more. The answer has to be meaningful to me before anyone else.

Why will anybody care?

Some ideas are for me and for me only. I’d love to one day write them but if I think they’re too personal or too abstract to bring to an audience, I won’t bother. It has to be both a thing that’s meaningful to me and a thing that I hope will be meaningful to the audience, too. This isn’t the type of answer I can really predict; I do not live inside the collective hive-mind that is the aggregated audience. But I can generally spot a story that lives and dies with my own interest in it.

Who The Fuck Are These People?

Characters are the way through every story. As such, they are the most important component of a story — and it’s quite likely by now I’ve already got one or a few characters in mind for the story. Now it’s time to really hammer them into a gory, sticky paste and see what secret truths lie contained in those piles of steampunk gears and sloppy viscera.

Once again I look for some of the same things I looked for earlier: I’ll turn to a series of insane rambling notes turns into a test to see if these characters are interesting and readable. (Fuck likable.)

Just as I need to know what a story is about, I also need to know who a character is. And in the same way the answer must go deeper than, “He’s a cat who gets elected president of the United States.” Again the jaguar-gland shaman grabs me and shakes me and says, “No, man, who is the character really?”

Then the questions of, why do I dig this character?

Why do I think anyone would want to read this character?

What makes the character compelling?

Then: I suss out the characters wants, needs, and fears. What does the character need to keep going? What does the character want — whether consciously or unconsciously? What will drive him as a goal throughout this story? And finally, what does he fear? Obstacles in a character’s path are critical, and some of those obstacles must be bound up with the character’s fears.

Finally, I do a little three-beat character arc for the character. Three words or sentences that are meant to indicate the state of the character across the story — beginning, middle, and end.

Poor cat down on his luck wants to see a change in this country –> elected president, way over his kitty head –> once again a poor cat but now knows the intimate details of the democratic process and oh did I mention he nuked the middle of our own country into oblivion.

The three beats could be fairly succinct — consider the simple mythic arc of Maiden –> Mother — > Crone. Or, as per the vampire in Double Dead, Predator –> Protector –> Penitent. When conceiving of Miriam Black’s arc in Mockingbird my only three notes were: Selfish Vulture –> Pecking Crow –> Reluctant Raptor.

I Write A Pitch

At this point, I write a preliminary pitch. First a logline, meaning, a single sentence that sums the story up. (“A cat is elevated from poverty and is elected president only to learn that cats shouldn’t ever serve in public office because cats are assholes.”) Some call this the “elevator pitch.”

Then I write a longer pitch — under 500 words — that acts like a bigger, blown-out version of back-cover text for the book. Hits key concepts and the larger story without giving much away. In part because I don’t have much to give away — I don’t necessarily have the total story in mind by this point. I’m writing this for me in order to boil the thing down as a simple referential document.

Building Something Out Of Nothing

The Miriam Black books didn’t take much in terms of research or worldbuilding. On the other hand, The Blue Blazes required a good bit of that — but even here I did as little of it as I could manage. Meaning, I did just enough work to get me to the starting line. I know my own crazy habits and I’ll get buried in details if I let myself (“I just spent two weeks reading about the sexual habits of housecats”), so I do the work that needs to be done now. The rest can come as I write, or even in a second (third, fourth, thirty-seventh) draft.

Alpha And Omega

I figure out what I want to be the beginning of the story. And then I figure out its end.

Some folks hate to figure out the ending, because they like to be surprised. (To me this is the same dilemma of whether or not you want to know the sex of your baby before it’s born — to me, it’s still a surprise if I learn that fact at 20 weeks and that gives me another 20 weeks to figure out what kind of clothes to buy the little critter.) To me, the need for pragmatism outweighs my bullshit need for magic while writing. A houseplant survives on water — an actual thing based in reality, not the whimsy of unicorn dreams.

Here’s why I like to have the beginning and the ending in mind: because as I write, my eventual outline will fail me. It just will. No plan survives contact with the enemy and eventually I’ll be somewhere in the middle of the book, spinning wildly in the swampy mire of my own fiction not sure exactly what to do next. And when that happens I will look to the ending and I will say, “I need to go there,” and then I will march the story toward that point and eventually get the outline (which by now may require modification) back on track.

For me a novel is essentially a lesson in drunk driving (DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE THIS IS A METAPHOR): it’s me starting at the beginning and then revving the engine and speeding sloppily and swerving dramatically toward what I’ve conceived to be the ending.

The end doesn’t need to actually remain in place — I can change it as I go.

But it’s a good thing to have in mind as I begin.

Oh! I also like to have some degree of parity between beginning and the end, some elemental or thematic or even physical aspect that links the two together across the space-time-continuum that is the rest of the story. (In the Mookie Pearl short story, “Charcuterie,” it begins and ends with him pulling up at the bar with his friend and boss, Werth. Hint, hint, the novel may have a similar book-end.)

I Start Building The Skeleton One Bone At A Time

Time to outline.

I do not have a single way I outline.

In fact, every book has suffered a different outline than the former.

Generally speaking, I first figure out a four-act structure — beginning, middle 1, middle 2, ending. Two acts lead to a critical plot-changing or escalating midpoint, which then carries us to another two acts.

Then I figure out tentpole moments (aka SHIT THAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN OR THE WHOLE TENT FALLS DOWN AND SMOTHERS US ALL UNDER ITS COLORFUL FABRIC) and then I write the key story beats that get me from one tentpole to the next and to the next after that.

Sometimes I hammer out critical story structure beats I hope to hit (a reversal of fortune, a key betrayal, a battle scene). I’m also always on the look out for at least one HOLY SHIT NO HE DIDN’T moment — some jaw-dropping pants-crapping event or revelation in the narrative that sticks you in the ribs with a story shiv. I like those moments. One of my favorite things is obliterating reader expectations in one fell swoop.

Sometimes This Stuff Lives In A Folder For Months, Years, Epochs

This might seem like the perfect time for me to jump into the story with a speargun and a wetsuit, but that’s not necessarily gonna happen. The Blue Blazes sat at this stage for many months until a gap opened up in my schedule (and, not coincidentally, this gap is just before my deadline to turn the book into my grumpy cyborg masters). Sometimes this stuff incubates in a folder for a while until the time comes.

The God Of The Ancient Grid Calls To Me

Spreadsheets. Used to hate the very idea. Now, I am married to them.

One spreadsheet I particularly require is the one that keeps all my writing schedule on it. I don’t use a calendar — I use Excel. I have the whole year planned out in terms of when my deadlines are and where the books slot in. (Then I also identify gaps and, ideally, figure out how to best use those gaps.)

I always assume I’ll write 2000 words a day and no more than that — by which I mean, that’s what I put on the spreadsheet. That’s 10k a week and, if I’m writing an 80k novel, that’s eight weeks or roughly two months. Now, I tend to write more than that, particularly if it’s a book I’m really feeling (Mockingbird was written in a month), but that then leaves me some padding, which is great.

As I write, I’ll also note in the spreadsheet “real daily word count” versus the 2k “projected” and that’ll show me if I did more or less (and by what amount). Most days are more, but inevitably I’ll have those days where I write less due to the vagaries of human existence (toddler meltdown, holiday, sick day, sentient cat swarm). That’ll give me a far better SITREP as I’m on the ground crawling through the word-trenches.

#amwritingmotherfucker

Then I write.

Nothing fancy here.

I write. I write with my head down. I write linearly, first page to the last page. I write without listening to the doubting voice that tells me I’m a total asshole for even trying this. I write without regard to safety or sanity. I write with the freedom to suck and the hope that I don’t. I write to finish the shit that I started.

Next Pass

I do a pass before I give it to anybody. If I have a lot of time, I’ll do a robust pass and take a lot of notes (almost a truncated process of what I’ve already gone through). If I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll do a Hail Mary pass and run through it with a manic gleam in my eye and a clumsily-swiping word scalpel.

The Agent Pass

The agent is wise. I’m very fortunate to have an agent who was a former editor and who is a smart, smart story-thinker. So, she gets a pass. A very important pass, indeed.

The Editor / Publisher Pass

Turns out, the publisher has, y’know, opinions on the work. That said, my work has at present not undergone any epic changes from a publisher — the draft I send them has by and large been the draft you see in your hands when it’s published. This is, in part, because the agent pass is often a robust one (Heartland, Book One was rewritten many times over the course of a year before submission and by its end, ~50% of the book was drastically rewritten.) And in part, I hope, because I’m not totally shitty.

The Hands Of The Gods

Then it goes out into the world. Outside my control.

It lives. It lands. Hopefully you like it. Maybe you don’t.

But what’s done is done.

And then it’s onto the next one.

Writing forward. Always writing forward.

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I was in a car accident.

Relax — I wasn’t really. I mean, I’ve had car accidents in my life. None recently. None dramatic.

But, let’s just pretend:

I was in a car accident.

Let’s pretend I’m telling you that, right now. This is me telling you the story. We’re sitting across from each other at a cafe or strip club or on a bench watching squirrels humping. And I say, “I was in a car accident.”

And you say — after that look on your face falls away — “What happened?”

Right here, mark this. Put your thumb on it. Circle it with a fucking pen.

What I don’t say is:

“Well, I got my keys off their hook and then I went into the garage, I got into the car, I sat down, pulled my seatbelt across my lap, inserted the key into the ignition and then turned the key clockwise — or is it counterclockwise? — and the engine revved. Then I reversed out into my driveway and–”

The reason I don’t say that stuff is two-fold.

One: it’s not critical information. In fact, that’s an understatement: none of that information — outside the seatbelt, maybe — is the least bit goddamn relevant. Just isn’t. It’s worthless fol-de-rol. Chaff, not wheat.

Two: it’s boring as shit. This, an even more critical sin. My “getting in the car ritual” — since it doesn’t include like, a human sacrifice or killing terrorists or having dirty sex in the backseat — is duller than a cement floor.

What I do say is:

“I was driving down I-90, and I’m fiddling with the radio knobs and soon as I look up — here comes a garbage truck bounding over the median like a drunken bison, and holy fuck it’s coming right for me.”

Then, from there, I tell the rest of the story. I careened off a guardrail, I flipped the car, I fell through another dimension where my vehicle was stomped to a steel pancake by a Nazi brontosaur, whatever.

The point is that I got to the fucking point.

Look to the way we tell stories in person for critical tale-telling lessons we can use on the page. On the page we seem to have no audience: it’s us looking down the one-way street of a ghost town. But when you tell a story to a live human being, you can behold their body language, can see their eyes shifting and maybe looking for an exit, you can hear the questions they ask to prove their engagement and confirm their curiosity — you have a whole series of potential reflections that tell you whether or not your story (and more important, its telling) is effective. Powerful feedback, right there.

So —

Act like someone is there when you’re writing.

Listening to your words as you type them.

Have you hooked them? Or are they looking for someone else to talk to? Some other story to read?

Have you skipped the bullshit beginning and gotten to the mother-loving point?

By the way, that’s why origin stories are the dullest stories. The Spider-Man Becomes Spider-Man storyline is probably the most boring of all — and made worse because the films keep reiterating the same snooze-a-palooza over and over again. A hero’s origin story is important, but not so important we need it blown into a whole story. It can be a scene. Hell, most of the time it can be a single sentence. “A criminal killed Bruce Wayne’s parents when he was but a boy, and so now he hunts criminals as Batman.” As storytellers we like to imagine that each piece of the puzzle is super-critical because we thought of it — but the reality is, not all story needs to live on the page. Sometimes it lives behind the page. I don’t need to see the electronics behind the screen to be impressed by the image on my television. In fact, it’s more impressive when I don’t know.

Leave the magic intact.

Skip the boring beginning.

Forget the peel. Get to the banana.

Enter the story as late as you can.

That is all.

*ninja smoke-bomb*