Tag: advice (page 12 of 25)

Advice You Should Probably Ignore

November 9, 2011 / 50 Comments

When In Doubt, Just Say, “Fuck ‘Em”

Maybe you’re doing NaNoWriMo.

Maybe you’re just writing a novel. Or a script. Or an epic YouTube video where a guy gets hit in the nuts by a wrecking ball covered in Christmas lights.

Inevitably you hit that point in any project where you feel like you’re in the weeds. Vines tangled around your feet. The forest’s hissed warnings telling you, You’re just not good enough. The mud pulls at your feet. Red eyes stare from the darkness — the pinpointy stares of winged monkeys waiting in the shadows, waiting to swoop in and steal your shoes and, I dunno, probably poop in them or something. (Because winged monkeys are uniformly dicks. Total assholes. And terrible tippers, to boot. I mean, five percent on a bar-and-dinner tab? You go to hell, winged monkeys.)

Point is, the wheels are coming off the cart.

And you start to think, “I could just give up. No. I should just give up.”

Fuck that frequency, homeslice.

I’ll brook none of that babble around these parts. Because around these parts? We finish the shit that we started or we get our precious widdle toesy-woeises broken with a ball-peen hammer. (“This little piggy went to market, this little piggy got thrown into a car crusher where all his tender bones were pulverized into pork dust WHAM WHAM WHAM.”)

Over there, you’ll see a wide open field of lonely writers milling about. Millions of them. Slack-jawed and bumping into each other, sometimes saying, “Oh, let me tell you about my novel,” before voiding their bowels and pawing at one another while making sad moosey noises. Then, over here, you’ll see a much smaller group of writers. Easily a fraction of the wider herd.

You know the difference between the two groups? The big herd never finished a thing. Endless novels begun, and just as many never completed. The smaller group — the ones breathing rarefied air — are those writers who have finished something. Most don’t. That’s the big separation. Most never finish what they start. And you cannot ever be a successful writer if you don’t complete the stories you begin.

It’s the first and most critical step.

And you’re going to finish what you’re doing.

You’re going to do it, because you’re going to say —

(say it with me)

“Fuck ’em.”

Fuck The Haters

A writer encountering dissenting voices is like a fish encountering water molecules — it’s going to happen. And it’s going to hit you from all sides and it’s going to take myriad forms. “Nobody reads,” someone might say. “Being a writer isn’t a career.” They’ll have a list of reasons to check off. Unsteady income, general lack of health care, a supposedly failing publishing industry, whatever. Or maybe they’ll take specific aim at this one task: you can’t finish, why waste your time, that story’s not that good, what a terrible idea, blah blah blah. It could come from family, friends, strangers, even other writers.

Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em right in the eye with a yellowlicious stream of sweet, steamy urine. They don’t get it. They don’t have to get it. It’s not their life. Not their dream. You wanna write this thing, you can’t be bogged down by the naysayers and shit-birds. Maybe they’re jealous that you’re making a go of something special. Or maybe they think they really have your best interests at heart. Tell them it’s not like you’re trying to climb K2 in your fucking underwear. You’ll do what you like, thanks-very-much. Squeeze your teat at them and tell them, “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of me ROCKING THE SHIT OUT OF THIS BOOK. Now have a body-temperature blast of Haterade, hater-face!”

(Haterade is really just pee. So we’re clear on that point.)

Fuck What Everybody Else Is Doing

In NaNoWriMo in particular, it’s all about the community and commiseration of all the nutty wordmonkeys wordmonkeying together. That’s cool. It’s a good thing — if it helps you.

But it can also be a real bummer. On the one hand you see people less than two weeks in and they’re like, “I WROTE 400,000 WORDS — THAT’S EIGHT NOVELS, BITCHES!” and suddenly you can’t help but feel woefully, dreadfully behind. On the other hand you get the tireless self-pity party, “Oh, I’m still behind, oh, I don’t know if I can pull it out of the fire, ohhh, I didn’t write today, muhhh guh fnuh.” Those folks have their own kind of… contagious inertia, their own infectious ennui. You start to think, “Well, if all these people can’t do it, maybe neither can I. And maybe it’s okay if I’m not going to finish because, hey, a lot of writers don’t!” You become attracted to the commiseration. Misery, after all, loves company. (It also loves old lunchmeat. So if you leave out some month-old ham, you’ll find fruiting misery-spores! Science.)

Or worse, you start comparing your first draft to published books. That’s an epic no-no, the kind of no-no where you should be shaken like a baby until you lose consciousness. The midpoint of your first draft need not possess the quality of a book plucked off the shelf. Your first and most significant goal is to complete that which you are writing. Quality is great if it lives in the first draft. If it doesn’t — that’s why Book Jesus invented the “rewrite” process. So, just go ahead and sacrifice a white bull — or at least a nearby homeless guy — to Book Jesus and thank him for his gift to all penmonkeys everywhere.

Fuck what the rest of the writers are doing. Fuck ’em right in the ear with your middle finger, a finger sticky with honey and dipped in wasps. Concentrate on your own world. Blinders on, and write.

Fuck The Industry

“But the trend right now is Young Adult golem romance! But all the bookstores exploded! But the average price for e-books right now is thirty-seven old buttons! GNEAAAARRRGH.”

Thinking about the industry is just going to harsh your buzz, man. So, fuck it. Fuck ’em under the armpit with a cranky Bohemian pit viper. You can worry about the industry — and trends and book prices and what agents want and what the average advance is and which publisher tried to screw which writer and which self-published author just became an overnight success and then took a four billion dollar contract from Amazon’s new “golem romance” publishing company — later. Now is not later, and now is the time to write your book and ride that pony until it dies and then keep riding it till you get where you’re going.

Fuck NaNoWriMo

If NaNoWriMo is working for you — then ignore this.

But maybe it isn’t working for you. And that feels like an indictment against you.

It’s not. Not yet.

NaNoWriMo offers you one path toward completing a novel.

That novel is a short novel by many standards, and the time frame is also a fairly short one. Further, it asks that you write this novel during one month of the entire year and during a pretty shitty month, to boot (Daylight Savings! Thanksgiving! Black Friday! Christmas Shopping! And don’t forget about the Sadie Hawkins Day Under The Overpass Hobo Prom!).

Sometimes you go to the doctor and you say, “Doctor, I got a sixth toe growing out of my left foot and this sinister leftmost toe has a little face on it and it’s trying to convince all the other toes to revolt against me,” and the doctor prescribes you some antibiotics. You take ’em and they don’t work. So maybe he prescribes you an oily unguent and that works for a little while but then the toe grows back, bigger and meaner and now it’s got fangs and a little Viking hat. So finally the doctor prescribes you a meat cleaver and a bottle of cheap Canadian whiskey and that’s the prescription that works.

Every writer, and indeed, every book, demands its own prescription. No, I don’t believe that every writer is a glimmering glittery snowflake — at the end of the day, it’s all about boots on the ground and words on the page, and work is work and we all gotta commit. But how we do that work — pantser or plotter, 1k per day or 3k per day, Scotch or Bourbon, coffee or tea, self-pub or trad-pub — is ours. You can try to cram the square peg in the circle hole but all you get for that is frustration.

So, if NaNoWriMo is the square peg but your book is a circle hole…

Fuck it. Fuck NaNoWriMo. Fuck it right in the word count. Fuck it right in the win conditions. Fuck it in its silly name with a sexual device known only as “The Gauntlet of Hephaestus.”

Fuck Yourself

All that crass and disruptive noise is coming loudest from inside the broadcast station of your own silly head. Those swirling self-doubts. That thorny tangle of fear. The whispers of winnowing confidence, the demons of diminished patience, the ugly ducklings of unease and uncertainty. You’re the one who gives into all this stuff. You’re the one with his hand on the stick, his fingers on the keys, his pen in the inkwell. If you don’t finish this thing it’s nobody’s fault but your own. Take the blame. And then claim the power — because it’s never too late to drive this motherfucker across the finish line.

So, fuck you for not finishing. Fuck yourself in all those moist grottoes where fear clings to the ceiling and the fear guano piles upon the floor. You’re going to do this. Don’t stare at me like that. Don’t give me that look. You’re going to finish that which you began. You’re going to become one of those writers who does what he wants, not one of those pretenders who falls under the wheels of his own bus. You can do this. It’s one word at a time. Many words make a sentence, many sentences make a paragraph, and many paragraphs make a chapter. And many chapters add up to a completed manuscript.

There’s your angry, surly pep-talk from your unfriendly neighborhood penmonkey drill sergeant: head down, nose in the word salad, fingers on the story machine.

You can do this.

You will do this.

This is who you are and what you want.

Don’t stop.

Don’t blink.

Keep writing until the writing is done.

The end.

November 8, 2011 / 30 Comments

25 Things You Should Know About Suspense And Tension

It doesn’t matter what kind of story you’re writing — doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a script, a game, whatever, you’re better off learning how to implement suspense and tension into your work. It’s been on my brain lately, and so it seems a good time for another straight-up “List of 25.” Read. Digest. Comment. And above all else, go forth and write like a motherfucker.

1. True Of Every Story

We assume suspense and tension are reserved for those stories that showcase such emotions. “This is a suspense-thriller about the mad ursinologist who runs around town leaving being enraged bears and the beautiful scientist lady who seeks to undo his sinister plans.” Bzzt. Wrongo. Every story must offer suspense and tension. Will Harry get together with Sally? Will the Millennium Falcon escape the gauntlet of TIE fighters? Will Ross and Rachel finally consummate their love and give birth to the Satanic hell-child that the prophets foretold? Suspense and tension drive our narrative need to consume stories.

2. Predicated On Giving A Shit

A small disclaimer: suspense and tension only work if the story offers something for the audience to care about. If the audience neither likes nor cares to discover the truth about La Bufadora, the Assassin Baby of Madrid, then any suspense or tension you build around this infantile killer will flop against the forest floor like a deer with its insides vacuumed out its cornchute. VOOMP. Just a gutted pelt. Never ignore the Give-A-Fuck factor. And stop fucking with deer and their deer buttholes. Weirdo.

3. Ratchet And Release

Constant tension can be trouble for a story: a story where pain and fear and conflict are piled endlessly atop one another may wear down the audience. Creating suspense works by contrast: you must relax and release the tension before ratcheting it back up again. Pressure builds, then you vent the steam. Then it builds again, and again you vent. This is pacing: the constant tightness and recoil of conflict into resolution and back into conflict. Think of Jenga: you remove a peace and, if the tower remains standing, everybody breathes a sigh of relief. Tension, release, tension, release.

4. Harder, Harder, Haaaaarderrr, Ngggghh

In winding tension tighter, escalation is everything. How could it not be? Tension is about hands closing around one’s neck: the grip must grow tighter for the fear to be there. If the grip relaxes, then the tension is lost. A roller coaster doesn’t blow the big loopty-loop on the first hill. Rather, you see it in the distant. You know it’s coming. Each hill, bigger and meaner and faster than the last. The final hill is the culmination, the climax, a roller coaster loop where you crash through plate glass windows and have jars filled with bees pitched at your head. Mounting danger. Rising fear. The hits keep coming. The Jenga tower teeters…

5. The Bear Under The Table

It’s the Hitchcockian “bomb under the table” example — you create shock by having a bomb randomly go off, but you create suspense and tension by revealing the bomb and letting the audience see what’s coming. The first day of a new school year creates tension not because it’s random (SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER IT’S 4TH GRADE) but because you know all summer long that shit is coming. Also, for the record, I think we should revise the “bomb under the table” example to a “bear under the table” example. Bombs are so overdone. But two characters sitting there with a Kodiak bear slumbering secretly at their feet? Oh, snap! Sweet tension, I seek your ursine embrace!

6. Danger A Known Quantity: The Power of Dramatic Irony

This, by the way, is dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is best friend and old frat buddy to Herr Doktor Suspenseuntension. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not. Suspense is created whether or not the characters are aware of the problem, but if the audience is the only one in on the secret, that may go a long way toward heightening tension.

7. The Question Mark-Shaped Hole In All Of Our Dark Hearts

That’s not to say every quantity must be known: the most refined tension grows out of a balance between known and unknown elements. Yes, the boy knows that the first day of 4th grade is coming, but inherent to that are a number of unanswered questions: did his bully and elementary nemesis Brutus “Smeggy” Smegbottom get held back? What will his new teacher be like? Who will he sit next to? Will Peggy Spoonblossom finally accept his Valentine’s Day card? (Smegbottom? Spoonblossom? The fuck is wrong with me?) The first day of school is a known quantity, but what will happen on that day is not.

8. Always Tell Han Solo The Odds

Han Solo says, “Never tell me the odds.” But we need to know the odds. It’s another component of the transparency sometimes needed to create tension: we must know when the stakes are high and the odds of success are totally astronomically fucked.

9. Save The Date!

Let’s say you’re a total dickhead parent to the aforementioned soon-to-be fourth grader. If you wanted to foment tension in that child, all summer long you’d occasionally remind him: “Hey, summer’s fading fast, kiddo. School’s on its way!” Every once in a while you’d lay on him a little something extra: “Hey, I heard Brutus Smegbottom got a new pair of brass knuckles.” Or, “I think I saw Peggy Spoonblossom down at the mall eating a froyo with her new boyfriend.” You’d needle him. Remind him of his tension. That’s what the storyteller does because the storyteller is a total fucking asshole. The storyteller must occasionally — not constantly, but just enough to keep it hovering, to keep it orbiting — remind the audience that, hey, don’t you fuckers forget that something wicked this way comes.

10. Character You Love Does Something You Hate

An easy way to create tension: when a character the audience loves does something the audience hates. It’s the whole, “Oh, I’m going to go investigate the creepy noise rather than flee from it and load my shotgun and call all the cops.” John McClane jumps off the building’s edge! Harry ruins his relationship with Sally! They mysteriously elect Jar-Jar Binks to the Galactic Senate! It’s a moment when the audience winces. One’s butthole tightens up so hard it could pulverize a walnut. You say, “Oooh. That was a bad call. This is not going to end well.” That septic feeling in one’s gut — the anticipation of worse things to come — is the splendor of effective suspense.

11. Character You Hate Does Something You Hate

Of course, it’s also effective to have a character the audience hates do something bad, too — that, then, is the power of a killer antagonist, nemesis, and villain. That sense of OH GRR GOD SO MAD RIGHT NOW is a powerful one. Tug on that puppet string whenever you need to for maximum storyteller cruelty!

12. Physical Tension Is The Shallowest Of Tension

A threat against one’s life and limb is totally workable — a character in physical danger is a good way to create fast tension. But sometimes you want to go deeper. You want to stab your sharpened toothbrush shiv into the heart and the brain. Emotional tension is the most palpable and troubling to the reader (and that’s a good thing): fear of damaged love and intimate betrayals and irreversible emotional wounds creates a more vibrant and spectacular tension in the audience. It’s cruel, yes. But as noted, it is not the storyteller’s job to be kind. The storyteller should not be a safe haven. She is not to be trusted.

13. The Pain Sandwich

For maximum evil, ensure that the tension is multi-layered. The protagonist’s wife being in danger represents both physical (she might die) and emotional (he might lose her) tension. Apply with the mayonnaise of escalation and the bread-and-butter pickles of dramatic irony for one dastardly sandwich.

14. Personal Suspense Above Global Suspense

Sure. The world’s gonna end. That’s tough. Mos def. I feel it in here. *thumps heart with fist* Except, really, I don’t give that much of a fiddly fuck. I never do. The global threat is never ever (and once more for good measure: ever) as interesting as the personal threat. Yes, all the world is going to die but if that happens so too shall the protagonist’s daughter die. Boom. Personal. Connection. Meaning. Suspense and tension are best when personal in addition to (and ultimately above) the global or cosmic.

15. The Tongues Of Tension, The Speech Of Suspense

How you write matters in terms of creating suspense and tension. If you’re trying for a tension that is fast, frenetic, a tension born of collapsed moments and microscopic beats, then you wouldn’t use big ponderous paragraphs to tell that tale. Just the same, you wouldn’t hope to convey that slow creeping sour-gut dread with short sharp truncated sentences. As with all things, language matters. The architecture of your language means something — are you building a Gothic cathedral, a one-room studio apartment, or the Winchester Mansion?

16. Drug Dealers And Cliffhangers

The storyteller is a drug dealer dealing out pain and pleasure in equal measure — a hard slap to the face and then a free taste of balm and salve to soothe the sting. Once they’re hooked, you keep them hooked with cliffhangers. Not all the time, no, but whenever they might start to pull away, you surge within the audience that sense of suspense by leaving them dangling from the edge of the cliff. “My favorite character is in danger! Who just walked into the room? Is that a Kodiak bear under the table?” Mm-hmm. It is. Come on back and keep reading and keep watching. Daddy Bird will feed you, little baby.

17. Flaws And Foibles And Frailties And Other Awesome F-Words

Character flaws. Use ’em. Excellent tension creators. Knowing that a character has a drug habit or a propensity to break hearts lets us know that at any point they might fall off the wagon and lash out with the whip of their most intimate frailties, sending ruination far and wide. But we must know that the flaw is on the table, or at least have it hinted at — this does not work in a vacuum. You know what else doesn’t work in a vacuum? A vacuum. True story!

18. Agitation And Discomfort

Comfort is the enemy of tension. You want characters and readers alike to remain in a state of agitation and discomfort. Even during times where the tension is relaxing rather than ratcheting up you still want to create a sense of dread and foreboding, using language, circumstance and situation to deepen discomfort.

19. Failure Most Certainly Is An Option

The audience needs to know that things can go wrong. If they become trained by you as a storyteller that you’ll save everything and everyone at the last minute, the storyteller will no longer suspect you of being an untrustworthy malefactor. You are not the reader’s buddy. Failure must be on the table. You must be willing to let things go all pear-shaped once in a while. Tension without fear is a defanged and declawed tiger dressed as a banana. Harmless and deserving mockery over fear.

20. Speak Of Ke$ha And Ke$ha Shall Appear

Sorry. Tic-Toc joke. I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. (And shut up, I actually like that song.) (I SAID SHUT UP.) Never be afraid to use a ticking clock to instill tension and suspense. Character’s only got one week to save the little girl? One day to get the random? One hour to defuse the bomb? Works in any type of story — “The girl of my dreams is about to board a plane in 30 minutes! Can I make it to the airport on time to profess my life and tell her that I got her cat pregnant? Uhh? What? Nothing! I didn’t say anything about a cat being pregnant! Let’s go back to talking about Ke$ha.”

21. Deny Your Audience The Satisfaction As Long As You Can

Storytelling is Tantric. You withhold the audience’s orgasm as long as you can. The audience wants to know that everything’s going to work out, that it’s going to be all right. They want answers. Comfort. Solace. Don’t give it to them. Not until late (if ever). The longer you can hold out on ’em, the deeper the tension digs into the meat and marrow.

22. Look To Your Life For Suspense

Seriously, that example of the first day or school? Or a new job? Or that feeling you get when you speed past a cop car? Or when your mother goes sniffing around your closet and almost finds the leather-clad gimp you keep in there? That’s suspense. Harness those feelings from your own life. Find out what makes them tick. Replicate in your fiction. And seriously: gimps are so 199os. Get a hobo butler like the rest of us.

23. The Fear-Maker’s Promise

Suspense and tension are about fear. Plain and simple. Not just fear in the characters, but fear — actual honest-to-Jeebus fear — in the audience. Find a way to invoke fear and dread and you’ve won.

24. Suspense Keeps Them Reading

This’ll be a future list — 25 Things That Keep Them Reading — but for now, be content to know that effective implementation of suspense and tension will keep them coming back and turning pages.

25. Suspense Keeps You Writing

Thing is, it’s also what keeps you going. Creating powerful suspense takes you along on a journey, too — the writer is not immune to his own magic, or shouldn’t be, at least. If you feel like you’re not engaged or that your own sense of suspense and dread just isn’t in play, then you might need to look at what the problem is. Just as readers need a reason to keep reading, writers need a reason to keep on writing. And you, as writer, are the Proto-Reader, the first line of defense. If the tension is as limp as a dead man’s no-no stick, you’ll feel it. And that means it’s high-time to find a dose of high-test narrative Viagra to tighten everything up.

* * *

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

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

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

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

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

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

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

November 2, 2011 / 48 Comments

500 Ways To Be A Better Writer

Hungry for another double-barrel buckshot of questionable writing wisdom unloaded into your brain-guts? Ohhh, I have just the thing for you, my little ink-fingered word-cobblers.

Available today: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER.

At present, the book is $0.99 — but! That price will go up after one week (around Wednesday November 9th) to $2.99. Those who buy the PDF now are able to select a “pay what you want” price ($0.99, $1.99, $2.99) if you care to pay more for the book. Absurd? Maybe. But you’d be surprised at how often it happens that folks tell me they want to pay more than a buck for books like this. Consider it an experiment!

[Please note: current sale is over!]

Okay, let’s get our procurement options on the table:

AMAZON (US)

AMAZON (UK)

B&N

(A note about buying direct: if you buy direct, I send you the file — er, directly! — via email. This is generally very fast unless extenuating circumstances prevent this. Like, say, if I’m asleep. Or if Paypal delays sending me the head’s up. Or if I experience a massive power outage. You’ll generally have your file within an hour, unless it’s at night, at which point you’ll have it very early in the morning.)

What The Hell Is This?

This is the sequel to 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING, and, as many sequels go, this one is bigger and badder — twice the size, in fact, of its predecessor.

It features 20 “Lists of 25” from the blog-bound pages of this very site.

What lists, you say? Well, here’s what’s in it:

Prologue: 25 Things You Should Know About Writing Advice

25 Questions To Ask As You Write

25 Reasons You Won’t Finish That Story

25 Things You Should Know About Endings

25 Things You Should Know About Mood

25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWriMo

25 Things You Should Know About Queries, Synopses And Treatments

25 Things You Should Know About Self-Publishing

25 Things You Should Know About Social Media

25 Things You Should Know About Theme

25 Things You Should Know About Writing Horror

25 Virtues Writers Should Possess

25 Ways To Be A Better Writer

25 Ways To Defeat Writer’s Block

25 Ways To Fuck With Your Characters

25 Ways To Make Exposition Your Bitch

25 Ways To Plot, Plan And Prep Your Story

The Life Cycle Of A Novel (In 25 Steps)

Appendix 1: 25 Sleep-Deprived And Also Drunken Thoughts On Writing

Appendix 2: 25 Brief-But-Hopefully-Potent Writing Exercises

Now, four of those are brand new and are not found here at terribleminds — Endings; Mood; Sleep-Deprived And Also Drunken Thoughts; and the writing exercises.

All told, it’s around 50,000 words of total content.

None of it is replicated from 250 THINGS.

Why Buy?

Because this is a mega-explosion of thinking and talking about writing.

Got a big bad case of the writer’s block? Exposition a barnacle-crusted colostomy bag around your hip? Don’t know how to cinch that perfect ending, or describe that perfect mood? Doing NaNoWriMo and want a little something-something, some idea-coal for the story-furnace? Or maybe you just want to hear my drunken ramblings about writing? If any of those apply, then this might just be the book for you. Plus, like I said — for the next week, it’s naught but a dollar.

Alternately, maybe you want to support the blog. Maybe you say, “Hey, I come here every week and Wendig hoses me down and delouses my writer-fed delusions and I come away smelling of rye whiskey and — quite curiously — butterscotch, so why wouldn’t I want to throw a couple coins into the ol’ terribleminds coffers?”

Or — or! — maybe you say, “Well, a ding-dang-doo, that is one cute baby. I would love a guilt-soaked appeal to whatever instincts drive an adult’s need to protect a tiny big-eyed human, and if I can contribute money toward this kid’s diapers-and-college fund, then that makes me feel warm inside, like freshly-baked bread.” See? There he is, all dressed as Babyzilla. And, apparently, pointing at his crotch. So much like his father! Which is, uhh, presumably me? I do often dress like a monster and run around town pointing out my crotch, so I’d say the bloodline has manifested itself elegantly.

Those are just three potential reasons to procure this e-book.

Other reasons might include:

A love of profanity!

Syphilitic insanity!

A hatred of money and so you must spend it as fast as you get it!

A zealous love for all things self-published!

An obsessive and ever-mounting collection of e-books!

The beard! THE BEARD!

And so on.

If you procure? Then you have my thanks. If you don’t nab a copy? I definitely do not wish a plague of bed-bugs upon your home. That would be rude of me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to read this book of ancient hexes. Whyfor? Oh. Uhhh. What? No reason. Just buy the book already.

November 2, 2011 / 29 Comments

The Inkslinger’s Invocation: The Writer’s Prayer II

It’s that time. It’s NaNoWriMo.

Not just that, but I know a lot of authors right now rocking big word count and page count on projects unrelated to this month of novel-writing debauchery. So, I thought — hey, you know what? Let’s pluck the second writer’s prayer from the pages of REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY and see if it doesn’t get some folk’s inky juices a-flowing. (The first writer’s prayer — “The Penmonkey’s Paean” — is right here if you care to read it. Feel free to spread ’em around if you think people might like ’em.)

Oh, quick sidenote:

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER is coming soon. (Cover here.)

Anyway. Here, then, is the Inkslinger’s Invocation.

Repeat after me —

I am a writer, and I am done fucking around.

That which has prevented me lingers no longer. I am wind and storm and lightning and I shall huff and I shall puff and I shall blow all the barriers down. Then I will drink whisky made from the fear-urine of my loudest detractors and find power in their disbelief.

I don’t have time. I make time. I reach into the universe’s clockwork brain and I take whatever time I jolly well need. I cobble time out of sticks and mud and the finger-bones of naysayers. I am a motherfucking time wizard and with a wave of my pen shall create universes to conquer. Pockets of possibility. Born of my desire to have them made.

Fuck doubt. Doubt is a goblin on my back. I will reach for him with my ink-stained hands and grab his greasy head and fling him into the infinite nothing. His screams will thrill me. The resultant word-boner shall be mighty, and with this tremendous oaken stalk I shall swipe it left and swing it right and sweep all the road-blocks and brick-walls out of my way.

My distractions whimper and plead, their backs pressed against the wall, but I am no creature of mercy. Triple-Tap. Mozambique Drill. Two in the chest and one in the head. I laugh as they fall because their death clears the way and gives me purpose.

I will put myself on the page. I’m all in, with every card face up on the table. I am my stories and my stories are me. I do not merely write what I know: I write who I am. I’ll reach into my own chest and pluck out my still-beating heart and milk its juices like an overripe grapefruit. Squish.

That’s my blood on the page. The helix-spirals of my DNA wound around every word, every character, every plot point and page number. If CSI came here right now with one of those UV lights, you’d see the spatters and stains of my many penmonkey fluids because I can and will no longer contain my seed. You’ll take my inky seed and you’ll like my inky seed. It is a delightful moisturizer.

I do what needs doing. I ride the Loch Ness Monster through the gates of Carthage. I learn forbidden power words from the Undead Shamans of the Tulsa Underground. I kung-fu-kick a hole in the fabric of space and time and stick my head through to see what exists on the other side. I eat planets. I drink oceans. I piss rivers and I shit mountain lions. No task exists that I cannot accomplish on the page.

I write from a place of honesty. My stories are lies that speak truth.

Nobody tells me who I am or what I can’t do. I tell stories. I write characters. I make true shit up out of thin air. And nothing is more perfect than that.

My doubt is dead.

The dream is no longer a dream.

My desires are made manifest.

This is my reality now.

It’s time to load the guns, brew the ink, and go to work.

Because I am a writer, and I am done fucking around.

Amen.

Happy writing.

November 1, 2011 / 32 Comments

25 Things You Should Know About Writing Advice

It’s NaNoWriMo time.

That means you’re going to be absorbing what might be a metric fuck-dumpster full of writing advice into your daily writing regimen — at least, I assume so, given the way my looky-loos here spike through the roof and launch high up into the night-time sky.

Writing advice and writing chatter is — well, it’s a good thing, from my perspective, but only to a point. And so it seems proper to jump into the month with a look at 25 things you should know (i.e. these are the things that I think) about writing advice. Please to enjoy, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on writing advice, too. Where you go to get it, what you think of it, what kinds of advice you seek, whether you think it’s all bullshit, etc. The comments section awaits your tickling touch.

1. It’s Just Advice

Let’s say you’re trying to get to Big Dan Don’s Dildo Emporium in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I might give you directions and say, “You want to take I-81, but if you’re going around noon, that’s when Big Dan Don holds his Mega Noon-Time Dildo Sale, and traffic gets backed up, so you might want to take the Old Fuzzknuckle Road.” And you might say, “Thanks,” and do that thing, or you might say, “Thanks,” and do something entirely different. That’s the deal with writing advice. Someone is offering you advice. That’s it. Nobody’s handing you a book of laws. Nobody’s beating you about the head and neck with gospel (though they may think that’s what they’re doing). Writing advice proffered is just advice on one way to go with your writing.

2. Put Differently, It Ain’t Math, Motherfuckers

Writing advice is not the product of an equation. “If you do X, then Y will occur” is false in this instance. “If you name a character John Q. Hymenbreaker, your book will be an instant bestseller” is crazy-talk. Writing advice is not about providing certifiable answers. It is about making suggestions.

3. Tools In A Toolbox

Put differently a third time, I like to use the metaphor (mis-typed as “meataphor”) of tools in a toolbox. Every contractor job requires a different tool-set. Today you need a hammer. Tomorrow you need a pipe wrench. The day after you’ll need a high-powered drill-dildo (“drilldo”) from Big Dan Don’s. You’ve got to pick up each tool — i.e. each piece of advice — and weigh it in your hand. Debate its merits. See if it’s going to help you do the job or just get in the way and club you in the nuts.

4. The Only Inviolable Precept

In my mind, only one inviolable precept exists in terms of being a successful writer: you have to write. The unspoken sub-laws of that one precept are: to write, you must start writing and then finish writing. And then, most likely, start writing all over again because this writing “thing” is one long and endless ride on a really weird (but pretty awesome) carousel. Cue the calliope music.

5. The Almost-Inviolables

I should say it upfront: I find the word “inviolable” fun to say. It makes my mouth have fun! Hee hee hee, ha ha ha! Ahem. Right. Some other rules are perhaps worth putting in the “usually true but not necessarily” camp: writers read, writers write every day, read your work out loud, writers should draw on their own lives, if you don’t have caffeine and/or alcohol in your life you will explode and die, etc. But even these aren’t universally proven.

6. Question The Chestnuts

Chestnuts: the new name for boobs? No. No. Why would you even say that? Get your mind out of the gutter. No, by “chestnuts” I mean, “those old pieces of writing advice that you hear as common refrain.” Write what you know. Adverbs give Baby Jesus hemorrhoids. If you write a prologue, an orphan loses his sight. All the “old saws” need to be put on the chopping block.

7. Fuck It, Challenge All Advice

What I’m trying to say is, don’t assume any one piece of writing advice is etched in stone with the whetted bones of your ancestors. Challenge all advice. Try it out. See what flies and what dies.

8. No Such Thing As “Bad” Writing Advice

Okay, fine, some writing advice might be bad (“Staple your manuscript to a starving pony and drop it from a helicopter onto any potential literary agents”), but for the most part, writing advice falls into two categories: “Writing advice I can use,” and “Writing advice that doesn’t work for me.” That’s it.

9. Writing Is A Craft And Craft Can Be Taught

It’s way too easy to say that “all you need to do to learn writing is write and read.” Sure, at the deepest molten core of the thing, that’s totally rock solid. But it also sells this writing thing way short and makes it sound like it’s as easy as fucking Skee-Ball. “Just throw the ball enough times and you’ll learn how to get the big tickets!” Writing has endless fiddly bits and is an ever-evolving practice — it’s a craft, by golly, and it uses language to tell story. That means there’s a lot to know and an unforgiving dumpsterload of questions potential authors have. That’s why writing advice is valuable to some people.

10. What Do You Think Teachers Teach, Anyway?

English teachers? Communication and journalism teachers? Writing teachers? What the heck do you think these people teach? Surfing? Trigonometry? How to properly apply chapstick? They teach writing advice. (And, by the way, therein lies a subtle notion that what they teach is valuable, but by calling it advice, I’m also suggesting it’s not inviolable. You dig?)

11. We’re All Sucking At The Teat

Every writer has partaken of the sweet teat-meats of writing advice. If they tell you different, they’re a lying-faced liar whose pants are totally on fire — whether they take a note from an agent, an editor, a friend, a fellow writer, whatever, they’ve utilized the essence of writerly advice.

12. The DNA Of Writing Advice Hides On The Bedsheets Of Every Story

Here’s another way we’ve all supped at the soup-bowl of writing advice: if you’ve ever read a story and then you took a lesson from that story and applied it to your own, you took writing advice. Because encoded in every story are the lessons that storyteller has learned. Each story is a memetic blueprint for how that author tells the tale. For good or ill, for better or worse. Take something — anything! — from that and that’s a lesson learned, folks.

13. My Work Is The Product Of Reading Writing Advice

My writing — which, for all I know, you think is a smoldering shitwagon of inelegant word-rape — comes to you because of (and in some cases, in spite of) writing advice. I’ve a small shelf of writing advice that I hold dear and I also look back and look upon many writing teachers, mentors and acquaintances who have taught me colon-loads of critical information. And, frankly, who continue to teach me. I’m humbled by that and it’s why I don’t think the practice of providing or reading writing advice is bullshit.

14. Can Be Both Pragmatic And Philosophical

For me, writing advice takes on two faces: first, pragmatic. Pragmatic advice is the day-to-day inkmonkey shit, the “digging trenches” stuff. Here’s how a query letter looks, here’s an exercise to shatter the skull of writer’s block, here’s the problem with your addictive misuse of commas, and so forth. Philosophical writing advice talks about larger issues and questions and talks as much about being a writer as it does about writing itself.

15. A Third Axis: The Professional

A perpendicular in-road to this is that some advice is about writing, and other snidbits are about professional writing — professional writing tends to follow a course detailing how to get published, how to get paid. Here it tends to get a little more strict (the crack of the bullwhip stinging against your tender pink buttocks!) because here certain things remain truer than others. How you deal with agents, how you format a manuscript, what kinds of caffeinated bacon-and-chocolate products will soothe a deranged editor.

16. The Fourth “P”

No, not “golden showers.” Zip it up, piss-boy. I’m talking about “Personal.” Nearly all bits of writing advice are personal. That’s what I do here. It’s me yelling at me first and foremost, espousing my own lessons, exposing my own fears, ripping the scales of my eyes before yours. Advice like this should be personal — it should be the writer saying, “I took this path, maybe you want to, as well. Then again, maybe you don’t, and that’s fine, no skin off my back, I’ll just wander the desert alone, drinking my own lonesome tears to survive YOU MONSTER.”

17. We Need To Talk About What We Do Or We’ll Go Nuts

Writers are goofy-headed moon-units. Total fuckbrains, each and every one of us. Many writers are quite nice. But most are crazy, at least in their own special ways. As such, we’re driven to talk about what we do because — well, it’s what we do. Writers sit by themselves all day, sobbing and drinking vodka and pounding out imaginary bullshit for hours heaped on hours, and so sometimes we like to emerge from our foul-smelling caves and join the communal penmonkey water cooler and talk about what we do. Some don’t like to talk about it, and that’s all good. But many do. And many must.

18. Beware Its Hypnotic Swirl

Writing advice can very well be just another distraction. It can be a waste of time that feels productive — after all, you’re learning! You’re exploring! You’re thinking heavy thoughts critically. Blah blah blah, snargh, poop noise. Whatever helps you sleep at night, slugabed. Truth is, writing advice can be just another slurping time suck stopping you from doing that thing you’re supposed to be doing. What was it, again? OH YEAH WRITING.

19. The Time For Testing Is Complete

Here’s how you make hay from writing advice: you put it into play. Take a thing you just learned, and go use it. Try it out! Write your next thing and see if this tip, trick or technique holds any weight at all. And if it doesn’t? Chuck it into the garbage disposal and listen to it scream as the blades crush its tiny pinbones. Writing advice is fucking worthless unless it actually helps you write better or write more.

20. As Always, Beware Zealots, Fundies, Cult Leaders, And Fevered Egos

The Internet is positively cancerous with the self-righteous, and I have at times counted myself woefully among them — but here, come close, let me whisper this in your ear (ignore my tongue planting my little Wendigo Egg-Babies into your brain) so it’s clear: nobody has answers. They just have suggestions. Guidance. Possibilities. Nobody has a hard and firm answer. Like I said: this ain’t math, son. Those who tell you that it’s their way or the highway are usually selling something. And while I am, admittedly, sometimes selling something, I don’t know any more about writing than countless other writers. I just have thoughts, ideas, and opinions, and you should always be free to take them into your mouth, swirl them around, then choose whether or not to spit or swallow.

21. Why I Do It

I first started talking about writing because, like I said: we have to. It’s like I got a head full of hornets jacked up on trucker meth and they need to get out somehow. It was me talking to me — or, as I’ve said in the past, me talking to my stupid dick-brained 18-year-old self who thought he could get away with a hundred bad habits and be successful (he couldn’t). It has since evolved, though, this thing I do here, because over time I started getting emails or tweets. I get a few a week, sometimes several in a day, and it’s someone telling me that I helped them — maybe to get back into writing, maybe to solve a problem they were having with a story, maybe even to get published. And it’s like — oh. Ohhh. That’s awesome. I’m not so self-important to say they couldn’t have done it without me — please. They could’ve, totally, and probably would’ve. Just the same, I’m honored and happy and positively tumescent to have many contributed in some small way to the ways of other penmonkeys.

22. Evolution From Pen-Monkey To Pen-Neanderthal

Writing advice is allowed to change because writers are allowed to change. Once you absorb a piece of advice, it’s not like you’re growing a tail or a new dick — it’s just an idea. Ideas can change. Don’t be afraid to evolve.

23. On Publishing Advice

Publishing advice is, as noted, its very own sub-species of writing advice. It’s not bad to read it and you’ll find lots of variant opinions on the subject. Just know that Tobias Buckell said it best, and I’m going to paraphrase him here: you can control your writing, but you can’t control the publishing industry, so control what you can control and leave the rest to fate. Stop obsessing about it. I’ll take it one step further to say, you can control your publishing strategy, and that’s it. All advice in this regard is about you figuring out your angle — not the angle of others, not the Prognosticated Fate Of All Publishing Ever. Though, just in case, here: sift through these bird guts, see if you can divine some answers.

24. Life Provides Its Own Kind Of Advice

Yes, you need to write a lot. And sure, you need to read a lot. But those things are regurgitative: it’s just you puking from one mouth to another and back again. Digesting pop or literary culture and then throwing it back up does little for your work — what will elevate your work and make it your own is to live life. Learn from your existence and borrow things from your day to day. Have adventures. Take risks. Put yourself into your fiction. Because life offers a kind of writing advice you just can’t read about — it’s something only you can experience. Like dropping acid and fighting your totem animal for control over the little man that pilots you.

25. Every Monkey Constructs His Own Pen

The story goes that every Jedi constructs his own lightsaber, and every penmonkey constructs his own pen. Meaning, we all find our own way through this crazy tangle of possibility. This isn’t an art, a craft, a career, or an obsession that comes with easy answers and isn’t given over to bullshit dichotomies. We do what we do in the way we do it and hope it’s right. Read advice. Weigh it in your hand and determine its value. But at the end of the day — and at the start of it — what you should be doing is writing. Because thinking about writing and talking about writing just plain isn’t writing.

* * *

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

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

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

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

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

October 25, 2011 / 68 Comments

25 Reasons You Won’t Finish That Story

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

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

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

Let’s roll.

1. Bad Breakfast Equals Blah Brain

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

2. In The Clutches Of The Sinister Distractor Monkey!

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

3. Defcon ZZZzzZZzz

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

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

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

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

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

6. You Believe Time Will Make Itself

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

7. Besieged By External Forces

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

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

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

9. Expectations Inflated To The Size Of A Moon Bounce

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

10. An Unrealistic View Of Process

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

11. Comparisons Break Your Mojo

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

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

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

13. The Sixth Sense Says Something Is Screwy

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

14. The Story Isn’t Ready

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

15. Or Maybe It’s You

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

16. Bitten Off More Than You Can Chew

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

17. Porking Another Manuscript Behind The Old Woodshed

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

18. Haven’t Answered Any Of The Critical Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

22. Praying To A Muse That Does Not Exist

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

23. Square Peg, Circle Hole

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

24. You’re A Quitting Quitfaced Quitter Who Quits

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

25. Felled By Fear

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

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

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

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Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

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And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

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