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Advice You Should Probably Ignore

25 Ways To Unstick A Stuck Story

You’re teats-deep in a story. And it feels like instead of swimming forward, your boots are stuck in the wet mud below. You need something to churn the waters. Loosen the mud. You need to unstick the stuck story.

Here, then — a list of 25 ways to help you do that. Most of these are plot- or story-focused — meaning, practical efforts to open that pickle jar. If you’re looking for solutions that lie beyond that focus and, say, land on you as a writer, maybe check out “25 Ways to Defeat Dread Writer’s Block.”

Now, let’s do this.

1. Form Of: Flopsweat! Form Of: Retroactive Outline!

Sometimes, being stuck is the same thing as being caught at the crossroads of indecision — you don’t know which way the story should jump. Will Bob kiss Mary? Will Mary stab Bob? When does the Ancient Demonlord Humira-Adalimumab reveal himself? You ever open a refrigerator and stare into its depths for like, 15 minutes, completely paralyzed by your inability to decide what to eat? (“Chicken noodle soup? Old ham? New cheese? Daikon radish? AAAAGHH.”) This is like that. So: take the pressure off. Pull yourself out of the word-treacle. Do an outline. If you’ve done one already: re-do it, because this one hit a wall. Outlining can take whatever form you choose: chapter-by-chapter, index cards, mind-map, human centipede.

2. Roadblocks, Speedbumps, Stop Signs, And Angry Dragon Crossings

Obstacles. Conflict. Pain and suffering. Sometimes, being stuck on a story is just because things are too easy. And “too easy” translates to *poop noise* BOOO-RING. Tease out your inner sadist. Tickle the taint of your own psychic Marquis de Sade. You need to start making life harder for the protagonist. Disrupt his quest. Set him back. Put everything you can in his way — and then even more as the story tumbles forward. Hurt him. Move the goalposts. Demand sacrifices. Complicate the journey. Remember, the worst business advice happens to be very good storytelling advice: elevate costs and eliminate convenience.

3. Diversify Your Character Portfolio, Motherfucker

You’ve got all these characters and yet, you’re hovering over one character like a fly over a stinky diaper. Realize that you’ve got a kickass superpower: you can possess and take-over anybody inside the story. With the power of Point-of-View, you can drag us along for the ride. You can shove us into their eyes, their minds, you can force us to piggyback on their experiences past and present. Sometimes untangling a knotted-up tale means looking at it from different eyes: what better eyes than those of the other characters inside the story?

4. Recalibrate The Motivation Matrix

You might be stuck because your characters are strangers to you. And that won’t do: you need to use this time to get to know them. Likes. Dislikes. Favorite ice cream flavor. Panty size. Sexual peccadilloes. And most important of all: motivation. These crazy assholes want something! So, what is it? It’s more than just a base level survival instinct — they need something. The desire, gnawing at them like rabid hamsters. Find out what that is. Once you know that, their path becomes clearer, their decisions certain. The story will move because they will carry it that way — and often straight into the thorny maw of conflict.

5. Jock-Straps And Under-Wire Bras

Your story needs more support. One of the ways we do that is to beef up the supporting cast. A strong and active supporting cast is powerful stuff — all those B-tier players who want to be A-tier. They have their own motivations, their own fears. Let loose a cabal of free-thinking characters into your story, it’s like dumping a sack of coffee-guzzling cats in your living room: shit will start to happen. Motivations cross! Agendas clash! CATS ASPLODE. Plot and story is really just a chain reaction of character motives put into action.

6. Partygoers Come And Go

You’re at a party, old guests exit, new ones enter. Two folks bail to go fuck each other on the fire escape. Two more arrive bringing an eight-ball of coke and a circus bear. Treat your story like just such a party: re-energize the narrative by pulling away from some characters and introducing new ones. A mysterious assassin! A prostitute with dubious motivations! An untrustworthy circus bear named “Mister Tickles!”

7. Sequins Of The Vents!

PLOT IS MADE OF SEQUINS WHICH ARE MADE OF VENTS OOOOH SO SHINY. *receives note* Oh. Okay. Sequence of events. I swear, my life is plagued by homophone problems. Someone says, “Meet me at Starbucks,” I show up at Starbucks and pelt them with ground beef. Anyway. Sometimes, a story trips itself on a snarled-up sequence-of-events, AKA, “plot.” The word plothole is not precisely accurate in describing what’s really happening: a plothole is really a gap in the sequence of events, where that gap would and should feature the proper information that would bridge Point A to Point Z. You say, “I don’t know how Dave gets to the moon, he’s just… there.” You’ve failed to provide the proper connection, to bridge that gap with the necessary narrative data. Simply put: the bridge is out. Which means the journey cannot continue. Find these gaps. You probably already know where and what they are. Fix them now. Writing needn’t be linear. Go back. Add content and context. Fill the holes. Mind the gap. SHINY SEQUINS.

8. The Plot Beneath The Floorboards

Sometimes our stories get constipated because of a too-samey, unvaried diet. You live off of Eggo waffles and buttermilk for a couple weeks, your personal plumbing is going to get boggy. A story is like that: we have one major plotline and it chugs along without any time for anything else, and somehow it seems to grow enervated, slowing down before eventually miring itself in grave ennui. ENTER THE SUBPLOT. One or several subplots perform a powerful task: they create alternate related stories that distract from the larger plot while also making us pine for it. Further, when done correctly, they prove energy and narrative information to the larger plot. The big plot feeds off the little ones. The little stories contribute to the larger.

9. Drop Acid, Have Flashbacks

Consider the reported therapeutic value of LSD, wherein psychologists used to use it to jar loose those mental boulders that are jamming up our brain-canyon. Now, consider the value of running your story through the same gauntlet — meaning, maybe it’s time for your tale to trip balls. Flashbacks. Hallucinations. Dream sequences. Cryptic visuals. Foreshadowing events. All of these force the story to take a (temporary) left turn. Deviations from the expected course, as with subplots above, do a lot to give extra impetus and urgency (and a booster shot of valuable uncertainty) to the narrative. Give your story a little acid. Let it run naked through Wal-Mart, fighting invisible goblins with a soup ladle.

10. The Mysterious Mystery Of The Questioning Quest

Introduce a new mystery. Something that just doesn’t add up. The story seems to be going one way, and then suddenly the protagonist gets a package: a steamer trunk full of severed heads, a strange journal written by a long-dead reanimator, or — *crash of thunder* — A FRUIT-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB DELIVERY THREE MONTHS AFTER THE DELIVERIES ENDED. Okay, maybe not that last one. Point is, jamming a big fucking shiny-ass question mark into the ground like you’re planting the flag on Iwo Jima is powerful: question marks have gravity. They draw us toward them. (If you’re really brave, introduce a mystery to which you do not yet have the answer. That can give you major juice — but it can also sink you further into the mire.)

11. Steal Your Protagonist’s Shoes Then Make Him Walk On Glass

Storytelling is an act of cruelty. We are cruel to our characters because to be kind is to invite boredom, and boredom in storytelling is synonymous with big doomy death-shaped death. So: be cruel to your protagonist. Rob him of something. Something important. Something he needs. A weapon. An asset. A piece of knowledge. A loved one. A DELICIOUS PIE. Take it away! Force him to operate without it. Conflict reinvigorates stale stories. New conflict, or old conflict that has evolved and grown teeth.

12. Someone Isn’t Who They Say They Are

Consider the value of the midpoint twist. No, it’s not a new dance. It’s a bit of narrative stuntery. Stuntery isn’t a word? IT’S MY BLOG YOU SHUT UP OR I’LL THROW YOU OUT AN AIRLOCK. I’m sure I have airlocks around here somewhere. Point is: there comes a time in the narrative when you have an opportunity to take pre-existing elements and twist them sharply. (The next several items on this list actually lend themselves toward that notion.) One option is that someone in the story is not who they say they are. A criminal is actually a cop. A loved one is a secret monster. A parent is a butthole-sucking tapeworm alien from space. Someone’s mask comes off. Someone’s true face is revealed.

13. The Knife In The Back

A dread betrayal! A turn of friend to enemy! Someone betrays the protagonist. Or more than that: betrays the plan, betrays the town, the Earth, the Omniverse. At the last second, he sabotages the MacGuffin Machine! He urinates in the water supply! He steals the protagonist’s keys and throws them in a storm drain! HE EATS THE LAST OF THE LUCKY CHARMS. I’m sure you can think of far better betrayals (murrrderrrr). Any impactful event in a story — particularly one that pivots the tale in an unexpected direction — takes that story and shakes it like a baby. Er, metaphorically speaking. Please don’t shake babies.

14. “No, Father, I Did Not Poop In Your Toolbox. It Was. . . A Ghost. It’s Ghost Poop. Totally From A Ghost. Please Do Not Investigate This Further.”

Someone has a secret. And they’re forced to lie about it. That there is a kick-ass one-two punch combination to give some oomph to an ass-dragging story. Secrets and lies are a simple and surprisingly effective way to introduce fresh conflict born from pre-existing characters and plotlines. Someone is fucking someone they’re not supposed to be. Someone makes a mistake. Someone has a part of a dark past that threatens to be revealed. Lies aim to cover up, but lies beget more lies: deception is a gremlin you get wet and then feed after midnight. It multiplies and turns into an uncontainable monster.

15. Kill Some Poor Sumbitch

Storytelling feels like an act of magic, and some magic is ritualized, and a great deal of ritual magic requires a sacrifice upon its altar. Your story is full of precious lambs — I mean, “characters.” Take one. Preferably one that matters (not, say, “Tom the Cab Driver who shows up for one paragraph in Chapter Four”). Then: off them. As a part of the plot, of course; I don’t mean like, drop a fucking anvil on their heads. But just the same: kill them. Death is a boulder dropped into a lake: it doesn’t just create ripples. It creates waves. It splashes on everybody. It gets still waters moving.

16. Ill-Advised Romantic Pairing

Take two characters who should not be making kissy-kissy (or, fucky-sucky, or, bondagey-wondagey) and make them do exactly that. It works because we know it should not work. Forgive the deviation, but here’s a valuable note: suspense and tension is created when characters we love perform actions we hate. They make mistakes. They choose poorly. They open doors they’re not supposed to open, they steal something we know they shouldn’t steal, they smoosh their genitals up against someone whose genitals should be caution, cuidado, verboten. This works because we, the audience, know to fear certain acts as we (wisely) suspect the outcome will be bad. We love our protagonists. We want them safe! We want them to choose wisely! Which is why we, as writers, work often (and work hard!) to punish the audience through the characters on the page. The “ill-advised romantic pairing” is just one example of a particular path of storytelling which goes like this: “Identify the thing that the audience fears will happen, then engineer that very thing so that it happens in a way that’s worse than they ever imagined.”

17. Keep Throwing The Story Off The Cliff

Dickens knew it. The old pulp serials knew it. Sometimes, you have to keep the audience’s attention by throwing your entire storyworld (plot, characters, ideals) into perilous imperiled peril. And, since you might be considered Audience Zero for your own story, this works when writing, too — constantly drop-kick your story off the cliff’s edge. Make that poor fucker hang there by his fingernails. Create interesting problems. Invoke certain danger. Write your way out of the trap. The challenge may engage all your creative synapses.

18. Raise The Stakes

I like to raise the steaks to my mouth and EAT THEM YUM YUM NOM NOM wait I’m doing it again. Goddamn you, homophones! Ahem. Raising the stakes, narratively speaking, means that the consequences of failure get worse. It means that the task becomes harder. It means that new information makes everything more complicated. You are, in storytelling parlance, “stickying the wicket.” Fine, whatever, nobody says that. (But it makes a charming euphemism for masturbation!) Suddenly the protagonist’s goal isn’t just about saving the love of her life — it’s about saving the world. Or it’s about making a choice: save that love or save the world or find the needle-threading third option that saves everybody. Amp the conflict. Make it harder. Make it cost more. Make it even more important. Boom.

19. Hero Grabs The Story By The Yam-Bag

This one’s simple: a story will suffer log-jam if the hero has been passive. So much relies then on external events it grows tiresome and, in some cases, narratively prohibitive in terms of the effort you have to put into the way the world constantly acts upon him. Reverse that. Time for the hero to grab the story by its story-balls and take control. This isn’t the same thing as making the hero successful — it’s just about making the protagonist active and complicit in the narrative.

20. Threat Level: Physical, Emotional, Philosophical

Your story might be firing on one cylinder, when really, it needs to fire on three: the goals of the protagonist and the conflicts that work against him must cross three axes: physical, emotional, philosophical. Physical: “I am in danger of being eaten alive by a starving were-badger.” Emotional: “But the starving were-badger is my true love, Betty McGoohan.” Philosophical: “If I cannot reconcile this and the story demands I slay my true love, then love cannot succeed in the face of evil and I am forced to accede to a cynical worldview in which monstrousness is ascendant and all my victories are Pyrrhic and were-badgers are neither cuddly nor sexy.” Harness all three axes for powerful story-combo power-up extra-life ding.

21. Sit Down, Right Now, And Figure Out Your Ending

Sometimes, it’s nice to just get in the car and go. Enjoy the scenery. No destination. But other times, you end up just driving in circles and seeing nothing of value. A story is a journey with a very specific function. A story is a journey that has a destination at its culmination — it is not a disconnected series of pretty pastoral vignettes. (“Look, honey, cows. For 300 pages. Cows. Just standing around. Chewing cud. Pooping. Goddamn cows.”) Your journey needs an end point. It needs a thumb-tack in a map that says, “THIS IS WHERE I AM FUCKING GOING.” Sit down. Right now. Figure out your ending. It may not be the ending you use, but you’d be amaze at how unstuck you’ll get when you know what direction you should be going.

22. Play The “What If?” Game

Being stuck in the story often means hovering at a single point and saying, “I don’t know what happens next.” The simplest game to play to get you out of that is to ask “What If?” like, several dozen times, answering differently each time. Write each what if down, even if unanswered. What if he kills the antagonist now? What if he fails and gets captured? What if he snaps and goes nuts? WHAT IF HE BECOMES A MAGICAL OWL-MAN WHO RIDES A STEED MADE OF CLANKING TIN-CANS AND CARRIES A SWORD MADE OF SQUIRRELS? Don’t worry. It’ll get crazy. It’s supposed to. But it’ll set the pot to boil. Somewhere in there, you’ll find the answer presents itself. Like a flower to a bee desiring sweet pollination.

23. Determine The Most Insanely Unexpected Course Of Action, Then Do That Shit

True fact: storytelling isn’t always an act of precision. Time comes, a story’s gotta get messy. Untamed. Unhindered. Sometimes, a story just gets fucking weird, which means you, the storyteller, gotta get weird with it. You say you’re stuck? Fine. Take your story and drop a nuclear narrative event upon it. Change everything. Go crazy. Ruin the world. Make the antagonist the protagonist. Blow things up. Whatever the audience expects would not — could not — happen? Do it. It’ll unseat that stuck story right quick.

24. Kill The Last Ten Thousand Words

Another rather extreme assertion, one that will surely turn your gut sour: go back five thousand — maybe ten thousand — words, highlight, then click delete. You’ll gasp. You’ll gape. You’ll pee five, maybe ten, drops of anxiety-urine. But then: ahhh. A sudden sigh. A giddy elation. Whatever was jamming you up is now gone. You are free to move forward. This seems extreme but consider: storytelling is sometimes walking a maze and walking a maze means hitting dead-ends. When you hit a dead-end, the only solution is to backtrack until you can find the proper path. It is hard. But you will move forward, unfettered.

25. Punch, Kick, Think, Then Write Your Way Through It

You’re stuck? Poor you. Fuck it. It’s a mental thing. Don’t give in. Think through it. Karate-punch the story. Kick it in the teeth until it yields. You’re the boss. Worse comes to worse: write around the gap. Got a section where you don’t know what happens? Write in 144-point font: WHO THE FUCK KNOWS? FIGURE THIS FIDGETY SHIT OUT LATER and then write the next section. A stuck story might be you feeling stuck when really, the story’s zipping along just fine. And even if there really is a problem, you can’t always identify the problem until you’re done the whole damn thing. So: you’re stuck? Fuck it. Fuck you. You’re not the horse. You’re the rider. The one with the spurs, the buggy whip, the carrot at the end of a stick. Make it move. Get it done. Your words are a battering ram: knock the door down and walk on through.


Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

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

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

25 Motivational Thoughts For Writers

With NaNoWriMo about to storm surge the writer (and wannabe-writer) community, this seems a good time to both tickle your pink parts and jam my boot up your boothole in terms of getting your penmonkey asses motivated. So, here goes — 25 motivational thoughts for writers, starting in 3… 2… 1…

1. You Are The God Of This Place

The blank page is your world. You choose what goes into it. Anything at all. Upend the frothy cup that is your heart and see what spills out. Murder plots. Train crashes. Pterodactyl love interests. Vampire threesomes. Housewife bondage. Demon spies! Cake heists! Suburban ennui! You can destroy people. You can build things. You can create love, foster hate, foment rage, invoke sorrow. Anything you want in any order you care to present it. This is your story. This is your jam.

2. Infinite Power, Zero Responsibility

Not only are you god of this place, but you have none of the responsibility divine beings are supposed to possess. You have literally no responsibility to anyone but yourself — you’re like a chimp with a handgun. Run amok! Shoot things! Who cares? There exists this non-canonical infancy gospel where Jesus is actually a little kid and he’s like, running around with crazy Jesus wizard powers. He’s killing them and resurrecting them and he’s turning water into Kool-Aid and loaves into Goldfish crackers — he’s just going apeshit with his Godborn sorcery. BE LIKE CRAZY JESUS BABY. Run around zapping shit with your God lightning! You owe nobody anything in this space. It’s adult swim. It’s booze cruise.

3. The Rarest Bird Of Them All

The easiest way to separate yourself from the unformed blobby mass of “aspiring” writers is to a) actually write and b) actually finish. That’s how easy it is to clamber up the ladder to the second echelon. Write. And finish what you write. That’s how you break away from the pack and leave the rest of the sickly herd for the hungry wolves of shame and self-doubt. And for all I know, actual wolves.

4. You’re Not Cleaning Up Some Sixth Grader’s Vomit

You have worse ways to spend a day than to spend it writing. Here’s a short list: artificially inseminating tigers, getting shot at by an opposing army, getting eaten by a grue, mopping the floors of a strip club, digging ditches and then pooping in them, cleaning up the vomit of nervous elementary school children, being forced to dance by strange dance-obsessed captors, working in a Shanghai sweatshop making consumer electronics for greedy Americans, and being punched to death by a coked-up Jean-Claude Van Damme. Point is: writing is a pretty great way to spend a morning, afternoon, or night.

5. Abuse The Freedom To Suck

Writing is not about perfection — that’s editing you’re thinking of. Editing is about arrangement, elegance, cutting down instead of building up. Editing is Jenga. Writing is about putting all the pieces out there. It’s construction in the strangest, sloppiest form. It’s inelegant. And imperfect. And insane. It’s supposed to be this way. Writing is a first-time bike-ride. You’re meant to wobble and accidentally drive into some rose bushes. Allow yourself the freedom — nay, the pleasure — to suck. This is playtime. (Or, as I call it: “Whiskey and Hookers” time.) Playtime is supposed to be messy.

6. And Embrace The Authority To Be Fucking Awesome

It’s your rodeo, hoss. You have the authority to write with confidence, to puff your chest out, to slap your ink-smeared genitals on the table as you utter your barbaric yawp. Aim big. Go bold. Don’t hide from your own most kick-ass desires. Don’t unfurl the story with hands trembling from the fear of what others will think. You have the power to do different. Yours is the authority to choose the road with your name on it. Write the story the tangle of desires and neuroses that comprise you so desire: A love affair between a man and a parking meter! A civil war between robots and other robots! A SPACE OPERA STARRING ROOT VEGETABLES. Fortune favors the bold. And being fucking awesome favors being fucking awesome.

7. You Can Clean Up The Mess Later

Writers are afforded the glorious possibility of endless do-overs and take-backs. Every draft a new chance to go back and clean up messes and untangle the tangled wires that hide beneath the narrative. Can you imagine that privilege in real life? “Hey, when you go outside today, anything you do can be undone and the whole day can be recreated.” Holy crap, the day you’d have! Bath salts and dolphin sex, car crashes and muddy graves. I’d have an orgy at a candy factory. (So sticky!) I’d kill someone just because I could. I’D EAT DEEP-FRIED LIPO FAT AT A COUNTRY FAIR SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF AMERICA. If I didn’t like it, I’d go back and wipe the slate clean, start over again. That’s your story. Your story is a madcap day whose minutes and hours subject to your whims of rewriting — or unwriting.

8. A Room Full Of Starving Story Addicts

For all the dire predictions about writing and publishing, I’m going to make a promise to you: the audience is waiting. They’re a subway car full of twitchy story tweakers going around and around, looking for any stop that will give them good story. They’re there for you. They’re waiting for your tale told. Writers often feel like they’re just sobbing into the void, but the audience will hear your plaintive cries, young storyteller. You may feel like a story flunky, but be sure that the audience is full of story junkies. Hey, snap, that rhymed and I didn’t even mean it to. FUCK YEAH WORDS.

9. I’m Talking About Motherfucking Ice Cream, Son

You are allowed to live a reward-driven life. You want me to motivate you? Go motivate yourself. (That is not code for “go fuck yourself,” unless I don’t like you, then it totally is.) Set a various goals and when you hit them, do something nice for yourself. I mean, the goal shouldn’t be, “Every time I write a sentence, I get an ice cream cone,” because that sir is a high-speed rail straight to the heart of Diabetesburg. But hit your mark of 2000 words a day? Write a chapter? Finish the book? Accept how kick-ass that is and reward yourself. It’s okay. You have my permission. (As long as you don’t bogart that ice cream. Dick.)

10. Nobody Else Writes Like You

When all your force fields and filters are down, when you’ve stripped yourself of your presuppositions and your fears and needs and your pants, you discover that nobody in the world writes like you. Nobody has your ideas. Nobody has your narrative memetic code. You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake, no. But your writing — your writing is your fingerprint. Your voice is yours and yours alone.

11. We’re Totally Built For This

Someone will look down on you at some point (or, if you’re me, at frequent points throughout your day) for being what you want to be. Writer. Author. Artist. Storyteller. Here’s why that’s a dumpster full of shitballs: we are built for this. One of the things that lashes us all together with rope and chain and psychic plasm is our desire — nay, our sacred fucking need — to tell stories. We’ve been doing it since we drew Neanderthals chasing unicorns on cave walls. We tell stories about the weather, about work, about family and friends, about pets and sex and about that time that friend we have at work had sex with his pet python while a hurricane raged outside. This is what we do. You’re just codifying it. Making it real.

12. One Word After The Other

The technical side of writing — by which I mean, the physical act itself — is one of the easiest things you can do. It’s literally one word placed after the other with some appropriate punctuation thrown in between breaths and ending thoughts. Yes, it gets more complex once you start thinking about narrative, character, meaning, text versus subtext — but for now, fuck all that. Just breathe. Let the tension go out of you (not so much you pee yourself). This is like LEGO. One block upon the other. One word after the next.

13. Just Write 100 More Words

A frequent phrase said when I was a child or a teenager: just ten more minutes. Meaning, it was time to go to sleep (as a child) or time to get up for school (as a teenager) and all I wanted to do was avoid sleep (child) or sleep longer (teenager). As a writer, play the same game with yourself: you want to give up, close the notebook, save the story? Just 100 more words. That’s all. Push yourself just a little. A hundred words ain’t much (it’s about the size of this text block). And you’d be amazed at how 100 words just isn’t enough.

14. This Is How You Get Better

Writing is a muscle: the more you use it the stronger it gets. Writing is like a dog: the more you train it, the smarter it becomes. Writing is like one of your orifices: every time you allow a bigger object to be inserted within (pinky, buttplug, fist, cucumber, wiffle ball bat, railroad tie) you train it to gape wider the next time. …okay, maybe not so much the last one. Still: writing begets writing. You may not be great — or even good — now. But effort yields fruit. Fruit you may later jam up your ass for pleasure. Wait, what?

15. The More You Do It, The Easier It Gets

It’s not just about getting better. It’s about it becoming easier. More natural. More intuitive. The act of writing cultivates both calluses (a metaphorical hardening the fuck up, Care Bear) and instinct (where your decisions as a word-captain and story-slinger are less the product of rigorous thought and more the result of you just having a gut feeling and going with it). Hard at first. Easier over time.

16. You Are Not The Omega Man

You are not alone. You are not Lonely Writer Person on Planet Nobody. We all get what you’re going through. We know your triumphs and terrors. The future of writing will be us uploading ourselves to The Cloud (probably on Amazon’s servers), our spirit animals glomming together to howl a single song, but for now, we’re all located at our individualized story pods, cranking out the words by ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone. We have community. We have shared understanding. Reiterate: You are not alone.

17. Your Love For Writing Is Enduring And Imperfect

Some days will be great and other days will be hard. Some days you will love the thing that you’re doing so intimately and so completely that you feel like you achieved some kind of narrative orgasmic apotheosis, whereas other days you will feel nothing but septic hate gurgling in your empty belly and every word slung will feel like a brick flung into your own nose. Your love for this thing you do needn’t be there every day. Every day won’t feel like winning the championship. But the love endures, imperfect as it is.

18. It’s Okay That Some Days Are Really Fucking Hard

Some days are difficult. The words feel like dead fish flopping out onto a dirty floor. Hell, maybe they don’t fall out at all but feel like they must be yanked one by one, the act both painful and slow, as if you’re extracting teeth. Some days are shitty. Is what it is. All writers go through it. You want to do this thing then don’t look at the shitty days as a problem: see them as a challenge that prove your pudding.

19. Writer’s Block Is Not A Real Thing

You can be blocked. Everybody gets blocked. But it’s not special. It’s not unique to writers. It doesn’t deserve its name or the credit it receives. More importantly, it isn’t a physical thing — it isn’t a gorilla with a croquet mallet who smashes your hand every time you reach for the keyboard. You can get past it. You think past it. You write past it. You kick it in the teeth and step over its twitching body.

20. How To Imagine The Haters

If there is one thing we have learned upon this old Internet of ours, it is: haters gonna hate. You will ever have disbelievers among your ranks, those who pop up like scowling gophers, boring holes through your well-being, your hopes, your dreams. It is very important not to prove the haters right. It is very important to know where to place the haters in rank of importance, which is to say, below telemarketers, below any television show on TLC, below crotch fungus and garbage fires and anal cankers. Imagine the haters herded into a pen. Eaten by the tigers of your own awesomeness. Then digested. Shat out. And burned with flamethrowers. The only power you should afford the haters is the power to eat curb.

21. Multiple Shots At Goal

Just as you get multiple chances to fix a single story, you get multiple stories to fill your life — as many as you care to cram into your days, months, years. Our lives are a series of stories untold, and it’s up to you to tell them. This one might not be successful. But the next one might.

22. The Leprechaun’s Gift

At the end of this rainbow are whatever rewards you want. Money? It’s there. Some say writers don’t earn out, that you can’t make a living doing this thing that we do. That’s a quiver of broken arrows: don’t sling it over your shoulder. I do it. I know a lot of writers who do it. So can you. But it’s not just money at the end: it’s self-fulfillment. It’s love. It’s confidence. It’s the things you’ve learned about yourself, about the craft of writing, about the art of storytelling. You never know what you’ll find until you climb that motherfucking rainbow. (One time I found a cardboard box of vintage porn and tasty grilled cheese sandwiches.) Writing is a journey. Each story just one leg of the trip. So start walking.

23. You Are Your Only Enemy

You have no enemy but yourself. You’re the only one that brings a story into existence, or, as it may turn out, fails to engineer that existence. Your enemy is not your spouse, your kids, your boss, your neighbor, your dog, your mother, your buddy. It is not time, work, addiction, distraction. It is not video games or Twitter, Facebook or television. Your enemy is fear. And indolence. And lack of discipline. And: uncertainty. And: lack of self-esteem. And all those things live inside your heart and your head. That’s hard to hear at first, but the trick is, that means you have the power to sweep all that shit off the table until it clatters and shatters against the floor. You’re the only one standing in your own way so, knock down your own worst inclinations and get to it. Disclaimer: actually, unicorns are frequently the writer’s enemy and if you got a unicorn problem best thing I can recommend is to call a priest. You can’t kill those things with weedkiller. And they deflect bullets with their horns. That’s no lie. Unicorns are pesky assholes.

24. This Matters

Story matters. Writing is important. Stories make the world go around. Many things begin as words on a page. It matters to the world. And it matters to you. Don’t let anyone rob you of that. Don’t rob yourself of it, either. Don’t diminish. Don’t dismiss. Embrace. Create. Accelerate.

25. Um, What Are You Still Doing Here?

Uh, hello? You should’ve bailed on me ten list items ago. What the fidgety fuck are you still doing here? Whatever it is you want to write — novel, script, short story, blog post, haiku out of fridge magnets — go forth and do it. Don’t wait for me. Don’t wait for all the answers. Don’t wait for permission, motivation, inspiration. It’s time to saddle up and gallop forth — through the white dust and the red sand, through the darkness of your own fears or inadequacies and into the light of a tale told to completion. Quit lookin’ at me. Quit looking for reasons. Quit dicking around. Close this browser and go tell a story, willya?


Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

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

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Why Writers Must Beware Quackery

Long story short:

Hey! I’m back from both Storyworld and Writer’s Digest Conference West in Los Angeles and I’m refreshed and apple-cheeked and full of vim and vig… okay, no. I’m actually kinda jet-lagged and dung-brained. My sincerest wish is to go back to bed and crawl into it and not wake up for like, mmm, three days.

But, oh well. WRITER GONNA WRITE.

Anyway. These two conferences — very different animals. The first brings together people of multiple paths and persuasions (writers! techies! advertisers! filmmakers!) whereas the former brings together mostly writers, and writers on a very particular path — which is to say, the path that leads to the shining temple on the hill called “The Publishing House.”

Generally speaking, conferences can be great experiences for writers new and old. Both in terms of the community you forge, the lessons you learn, and the liquor you consume in great heaping quaffs.

Wait, did I say “liquor?” I meant… er, “wisdom.”

Still.

Still.

A writer’s conference is rarely a straight arrow toward said wisdom. It’s a maze, actually — a kinky tangle of pathways, many of which in my eyes are dead-ends. By “dead-ends,” I mean, the path stops moving forward as it get stuck on some bad information or troubling advice that  makes it sound like you’ve already reached the end. There at the dead-end is a chair and a typewriter and a feeling of having made it.

Put more succinctly, these conferences always contain a measure of bullshit.

Some of this bullshit is harmless.

Some of it — to the writer willing to accept it — is actually a little bit dangerous.

Dangerous in that it will set you back rather than spring you forward. Dangerous in that it has all the air of medical quackery — untested answers that sound like truth and promise result (published book! robust boner! magic tonic!) and often require you to shell out some cash to get a taste of what sounds like the nectar of the gods but is really like, 7-Up and hull cleaner.

Five things to watch out for, then. Both at meatspace conferences and online.

Ready? Let’s rock.

Beware Answers Over Options

Here’s how this works: you, as a writer newly walking the path of penmonkey novitiate, have no idea what the fuck is going on. Right? It’s a lot to digest. Fuckbuckets of information. Data overload. So, you think, “Okay, I just need to get my bearings here. I need a map. Or even the torn corner of a map. Or at the bare minimum I need like, a compass so I know just where north points.”

Then you go to a conference like this and — hey! Look!

Other writerly humans! Pointing the way with big foam fingers!

Many of these people are helpful.

Many of them are sirens inadvertently willing to crash your seaswept dinghy into the fucking rocks.

Here’s one of the ways you can tell: they’re not there to present options.

They’re not there to present a rounded picture of the unfirm realities of publishing. They’re not willing to tell you that the whole thing is a maze: they’re willing to tell you that they have the path through it. They exist to present a single face to the entire writing-storytelling-publishing ecosystem, revealing an alarming and overly simplistic lack of diversity.

More to the point, they have The One True Way instead of saying:

Hey, Look, There Exists A Whole Lotta Ways And I’ve Done One And Others Have Tried Others And Success Is Not An Easy Equation Where A + B = Bestselling Inkslinger And I’m Sorry But It’s A Lot More Complicated Than You Hope But That’s Actually A Good Thing, Too.

Some folks will try to cover up one or many forks in the road. Or, worse, they’re focused on what happens so far down the road that you start to feel like it’s always about the singular end result rather than the diverse paths to that end. (Again, too many at these conferences want to talk about How To Get Published rather than How To Write Something Worth Publishing. It’s be like an architect learning first how to handle permits and cut ribbons before learning how to put buildings together.)

Beware Absolutes And Guarantees

DON’T EVER SELF-PUBLISH.

DON’T EVER TRADITIONALLY PUBLISH.

YOU HAVE TO HAVE AN AGENT.

AGENTS ARE EVIL.

YOU HAVE TO BLOG/TWEET/GOOGLE HANGOUT/SHILL YOUR NAKED GYRATING BODY AT THE HIGHWAY’S EDGE IF YOU’RE EVER GOING TO ACTUALLY BE A PUBLISHED WRITER AND THERE’S NO WAY TO BE A PUBLISHED WRITER UNLESS YOU BLOG/TWEET/GOOGLE HANGOUT/SHILL YOUR NAKED GYRATING BODY AT THE HIGHWAY’S EDGE.

Writing advice often comes in absolutes.

Do this. Don’t do that. This is 100% true 100% of the time.

It is, of course, a fucking sick-bag full of rank malarky.

(God, can we all just take a moment to thank VP Biden for bringing that one back? Malarky? I also want “cockamamie” to make a robust return, so let’s all collectively work on that.)

I’ve said many a time that every writer seems to dig his own way into the publishing mountain, then detonating the tunnel behind him. I’ve heard so many weird ways into the various industries the only clear revelation is that there is no clear revelation. Few absolutes (outside maybe “finish your shit, dumdum”) hold any water at all and can be disproven at a moment’s notice. This is, of course, the danger of when “writing advice” becomes “proclamations of authorial truth.”

Beware Anybody Without A Single Fucking Meaningful Credential

Writers without great success — or any success at all — are totally allowed to talk about writing. We all want to talk about it. Even those without publishing contracts have information and ideas that may be valuable.

That’s not the same thing as letting those people up on a stage to talk to you about How To [Insert Writerly Task Here]. There’s a difference between talking about writing and presenting yourself as an expert on writing, and yet somehow there exists a great many of the latter — self-proclaimed experts who want to tell you all these great industry secrets or all these tried-and-true paths and yet appear to have neither exploited those secrets nor walked any of those paths.

They are offering theoretical information gussied up to look like pragmatic practice.

They’re not doctors, yet they’re selling medicine.

Again: quackery.

You gotta treat this stuff a little bit like science: these self-proclaimed experts have to prove their mettle, first. And one aspect of this burden of proof comes in the form of, “Oh, yeah, I’m actually a writer with some success, not just another jackhole with an unfounded opinion.”

Beware Anybody With Something To Sell

Listen, I get it. We’re all shilling something. I certainly sell books-on-writing (though 90% of that information is also free here on the blog), so I’m by no means pure. But some conference speakers are very clearly agenda-based and they are pushing an agenda not because it’s good for you but, rather, good for them. It’s the same problem with fad diets and social media gurus — people promising enlightenment and success (and worst of all, get rich quick tips) largely in order to line their own pockets.

That’s not to say anybody with a writing book is bad news. I mean, I’ve read a handful of writing books that I love and to this day cradle to my bosom as I open them up just to read snippets of smart passages.

But, anybody selling anything should at least get a wary eyebrow raise. And when in combination with a lot of these other “beware, beware, beware, awooga, awooga, awooga” elements, it should paint a picture of caution, cuidado, verboten. The colors of a venomous toad, the rattle of the snake’s tail.

Beware The Quick-And-Easy Fix

I am a proponent of increasing your speed as a writer. It’s becoming one axis of survival — a swiftness of production and of the prose you produce. But a lot of the solutions often feel like quick fixes or bad spackle jobs — you get from them the informercial vibe that all you have to do is Perform This Technique And You’ll Be A Writer In No-Time! It’s less about write faster (which is an easy and fairly basic prescription) and more about get published faster (which is an impossible thing to gauge unless you’re self-publishing and therein I’d politely note that speed often exists often in antithesis to quality).

The Sum Up

I’m not saying that every speaker at writing conferences or conventions is dubious. Far from it — many are actually brimming over with really good ideas and information not from 30,000 feet but from right there in the mud and the blood of the battleground.

What I am saying is, you will also go to these things and hear a lot of bad information robed in the clothes of promises and solutions and prescriptions and you have to be prepared to go into any conference or open any blog post or book on writing advice wearing the impenetrable armor of the skeptic. Writing advice should never be about absolutes or unequivocal answers but about potential paths, about options and suggestions and actual experiences. And a lot of this falls to you, the writer.

Because you need to go in with your eyes open. And you need to go in not being so hungry for answers that you’re desperate to embrace what any homeless person tells you is truth. It’s on you to be smart, be practical, and not let the quacks get their… uhh, well, I was going to go with “teeth in you,” but ducks don’t really have teeth, so let’s just go with, “don’t let the quacks gum you to death with their pond-slick bills.”

25 Things Writers Should Know About Conferences And Conventions

Con season is almost over, so that tells me it’s a most excellent time to write a post about con season! Right? Right? Fellas? Where you goin’, fellas? WHATEVER FINE JUST LEAVE.

Anyway.

I figured that writers go to conventions and conferences year-round, so it’s a good idea to talk to you penmonkeys about what to do there, what to expect, where to find me drunk at 3AM (hint: parking garage inside a duffel bag). If you’re looking for more general “con etiquette” stuff, I might recommend this wise post by the most excellent Colleen Lindsay: Convention Etiquette For Fans, Pros, And Exhibitors.”

1. Hint: The Writers Are At The Bar

Let’s just get this one out of the way right now: if you’re wondering where the writers are, they’re at the bar. No, seriously. I’m not saying they’re there getting lit up like a Christmas tree — despite the myth, not all writers are rampant liquor pigs — but the hotel (and/or nearest) bar is a place of social aggregation for the word-herd. We’re all at the watering hole, watering our, uhh, holes.

2. Know What You Want Out Of It

Go to a conference or convention with a goal and a plan to achieve that goal. (That goal should not be: “Stowaway in Neil Gaiman’s luggage so you can return with him to his magical story-land,” or “Discover whatever tugboat George R.R. Martin is captaining and steal it for a joyride.”) Honing your craft? Discovering publishing options? Just there to geek out with your freak out? Have the end result in mind and arrange your conference (talks, panels, booth visits) accordingly.

3. Purpose #1: Go To Up Your Game

One of the “primary purposes” of a conference or convention is to hone your authorial blade. Our weapons all grow dull and rusty with over-use and sometimes you go to these things hoping to whet them against the many stones present. The goal is to get better. To learn new things. Our brains need new information, and conventions and conferences (heretofore referred to as “cons”) will give you that.

4. Purpose #2: Go To Meet People

Another primary purpose is just to meet people. Writer seems a solitary job and, of course, it is. We shimmy into our musty, fetid author pods, shut the door, then hook our skulls and fingers up to the electrodes that connect us to the Galactic Story Blob where we operate in total isolation (well, that’s how I do it, anyway, you probably have a “desk” with a “computer”). Still, writers need community. They need other writers. They need agents and editors and marketing dudes and, above all else, they need readers. So, cons are great places to meet people. It’s about forging connections both business and personal.

5. Human Meets Human, Not Writer-Bot Plugs Into Publishing Receptacle

Worth repeating: when I say “connections,” I don’t mean in a purely business sense. Trust me, your con experience is going to be at its weakest when you approach it as All Business. I’ve seen those writers and they’re always “on.” They’re also very irritating, like buzzing fluorescents with a horsefly constantly tapping against the bulb. Go to make friends. Or at least acquaintances. Hear their stories, tell a few of your own. Connect on a human level, not in a “LET US FORGE COMMERCE ARRANGEMENT” way.

6. You Should Totally Say Hello To Your Favorite Writers

I speak as a writer who is deliriously excited when a reader (or for me the rara avis, a “fan”) comes up and says hello. Not only does it stroke my constantly inflating-and-deflating ego (it’s like the lungs of a tired old horse, I swear), but it also confirms that, hey, this thing I’m doing is actually reaching people. I know some writers — er, really, “authors” — don’t want anyone to come say ‘boo’ to them, but you know what? Fuck them. That’s fine for like, the grocery store, but they’re at a con. If you’re a pro at one of these things, appreciate your readers, don’t elbow them in the neck and shove past. Readers are how we get to exist.

7. But Seriously, Don’t Be A Fuckin’ Weirdo About It

Okay, yes, go say hello to your favorite writermonkeys. But, hey, also? Don’t be a crazy-pants asshole about it. Don’t dominate their time. Don’t get pushy. Don’t be rude. Don’t be mean. Don’t cling like a dingleberry. Don’t challenge them about typos or plot points. Let them eat in peace. Let them pee in peace. Let them sleep in peace. (Everything else is probably fair game.) You want them to respect you so you have to respect them in turn. That’s the human contract. That’s how we all win the game is by being respectful to one another instead of just splashing douche into each other’s eyes again and again.

8. On The Subject Of Book Signings

Deserves special attention: some authors don’t want to sign books outside of designated signing periods, and that’s understandable. An author who will generate a line around the block doesn’t want that line generated when he’s trying to cross the lobby to get a bottle of water or when he’s outside the hotel trying to hide a couple hobo bodies. Others, however (like, erm, me), will sign books whenever you thrust them upon us. Hell, I’ll sign body parts, pets, children, other people’s books, souls. I’ll sign anything except, say, checks. Point is, know your limits, respect the authors. Double-true: don’t ask them to sign like, a suitcase full of books. Triple-true: we appreciate it when you have us sign books to someone specific rather than a generic autograph which then vaguely suggests you’re gonna turn around and sell that shit online.

9. On The Subject Of Being Creepy

Deserves extra-special attention: don’t get stalkery, don’t corner anybody of any sex, don’t inappropriately touch people, don’t get suggestive or act rapey or be in any way threatening toward others in a violent or violating manner. “But she was dressed in duct-tape bra-and-panties,” is not a good reason to get grabby. They’re not hookers. Trying to look sexy is not an invitation for you to get sexy with them anymore than me wearing a shirt with a bullseye is good enough reason to fire an arrow through my chest. Be conscious of acting creepy, scary, grabby, etc. Bonus reading: on creepy creepers who creepily creep.

10. Don’t Get Stupid Drunk

At a con, people drink. And drinking means getting a little silly. Silly is good. Silly is fine. Nobody expects you to have a couple gin-and-tonics and drive a car, operate a firearm, or negotiate peace between two warring galactic races. But don’t be a rum-sodden barf-bag, either. If you can’t feel your teeth and you puke in my lap, you’ve got a problem. You don’t want writers, agents or editors remembering you as “That dude who got blitzkrieged on Jager-bombs and took a shit on a plastic fern in the hotel lobby.”

11. You’re Not Actually The Expert

Pet peeve time! Unless you’re actually on the panel, assume you’re not the expert in the room. It is not your time to shine, you crazy diamond. Ask questions, but let other people ask questions, too. And also: don’t be “that guy” who just raises his hand and then stands up and makes a statement like everyone’s here to see you. “Well, I think the state of space opera is blibbedy-blobbedy-bloo and I disagree with…” HOLY CRAP SHUT UP. This is not an Internet forum, Selfish Guy. You don’t have to enlighten us with your “genius.”

12. Arrive Early For Things

Pet peeve again! Coming into any event late is a dick move. I’ve done it, and I regret having done it. You make noise. You distract. For some reason whenever someone comes in late they always maximize the disruption, too, like, they’re carrying a stack of rattling dinner plates and have cymbals between their thighs and then stagger in and trip over a projector cord and accidentally start an electrical fire. Eeesh. Seriously, get their early. That helps you get a seat, too, so, yay.

13. Ask The Right Questions

I talked this past week about how you should ask the questions about story before you ask the questions about publishing, and what that means in a practical sense is that you should goasking questions regarding your place in the process. That’s not to say you can’t get ahead and ask a curious question or three about advances and contracts and how to enrage a literary agent, but what I’m saying is, use the conference to help you get a handle on the next stage, not three stages down the way. One step at a time.

14. Purpose #3: Pimp Your Shiznit In Appropriate And Approved Pimp Channels

Another purpose: to sell thine wares, story-slinging troubadour. You got books or other items of cultural output you want to pimp, awesome. Go forth and do so. But a suggestion: try to stick to approved commercial channels. Don’t just like, set up a tarp in the middle of the lobby to sell your self-published bag of shi — I mean, magnum opus to passersby. Yes, we all gotta make a buck and buy dinner but as always, be respectful of others and don’t act like an only child who always gets to do what he wants, others-be-damned.

15. Nobody Wants To Hear About Your Book (Unless They Do)

At game cons, the joke is always, “Nobody wants to hear about your character.” (Seriously, we don’t.) At writing cons, the joke is, “Nobody wants to hear about your book.” (No, seriously, we don’t.) Now, I may eventually want to hear about your book but only after we’ve connected on a human level. Assume that I don’t automatically see you as just a bag of skin meant only to transport the intellectual meat that is your novel. I assume that like me you’re a person with parents and a job and favorite ice cream flavors and a penchant for deviant-but-consensual sex acts. I don’t care about your book until I care, at least a little bit, about you. If someone wants to know what you’ve written or are writing, they will ask.

16. Clean Your Body, You Musky Stank Beast

A convention (larger geek/fan contingent) tends to have this problem more than conferences (larger pro-level academic contingent), but I’ve experienced it at both: wash yourself. Uh, daily, please — hell, more than that if you have to. Cons are often warm. You’re jostling with people, running around, and you end up in close quarters (like, say, elevators). You will leak sweat. You will start to smell like a glob of Edam cheese left in a jockstrap under a heat lamp. Scrub the algae and barnacles from forth your hull, you stinky little garbage scow. Oh, and brush your teeth. The hell did you eat for lunch? Old fish and cigarettes?

17. Escape Conference Gravity

Leave the con at some point. At least once. If you’re somewhere new — small town, big city, jungle cult compound — get outside and go see something. The real world always counts more than the “artificial gravity” that is any conference or convention. Even if you go do base-level tourist shit and eat at a restaurant everyone tells you you have to eat it, it’s at least something.

18. Pros Should Act Like Pros

This list has been directed toward attendees, but here’s a message for pros: you are professional, so act professional. That doesn’t mean you need to be always in “paid author” mode, but it does mean you should maintain a standard of etiquette and, as with everyone else there, not act like a wheelbarrow full of fatty ego and emotional manure. Respect attendees. Be kind. Be nice to volunteers, too, who are — uhh, duh — volunteering their time in part for you. Be awesome even in the face of “not-awesome.”

19. Some Writers Are Paid, Many Are Not

Many of the writers speaking at cons are not paid. Some are. Most aren’t. Know that going in: they are often themselves volunteering their time. It’s not like they’re going back to the hotel room to roll around in cash.

20. Some Writers Are Also Total D-Bags, Just So You Know

It’s a shame, but sometimes that “beloved writer” of yours is a total cock-bird. We don’t get into this gig having to pass a politeness test, so some authors end up being gruff, grumpy, sour, otherwise shitty people. Sometimes it’s temporary: maybe they’re having a bad day. Sometimes it’s a permanent affliction. Let it go. You can choose to vote with your dollar, but don’t be a dickhole in return. Let the storm pass.

21. Elevator Pitches And Pitch Meetings: Meh?

Take this one with a grain of salt — or, if you prefer, an entire salt mine — but I’m not sure that pitch meetings or having your elevator pitch ready to fly is the most important thing in the world. It’s probably worked for some, but…? Eh? I’m going to go out on a limb and say, skip the pitch meetings. Instead, meet agents and editors elsewhere. And meet the authors of those agents and editors. Regarding your elevator pitch: listen, it’s a very good intellectual exercise to distill your story down into a single 10- or 15-second sentence. Again, I don’t know that it’s ever been the deal-maker, but when people ask, it’s kind of you to not bludgeon them half to death with the hammerblow of a ten-minute plot synopsis.

22. Do Not Thrust Your Manuscript Upon, Well, Anybody

I see people handing out manuscripts — like, hand-printed, hand-bound manuscripts, fraying like a mouse is using them as nesting material — all the time at conferences and conventions. Worse, they’re handing them out to people who can do nothing with them. “Here, random author, you are an author and I am an author so let us commune over my novel, THE GORGONZOLA PERPLEXITY.” Don’t do this. Not ever. Stop. Keep that manuscript in your pants. First, this is the digital age. If I want your novel, hey, look, a PDF file. Don’t try to make someone carry your printout in their luggage. Second, what do you want them to do with it? Most authors don’t want to read unsolicited material (hint hint stop emailing me this stuff) because of a hoary host of unholy reasons. You know what I’ll do if you hand me your manuscript at a conference? I’m going to roll it up and thwack you across the bridge of your nose.

23. Do Not Hand Out Ugly-Ass Amateur Hour Business Cards

Your business card sucks. Printed at home. The ink is bleeding as if you dropped it in a puddle outside. It’s got a Cheeto fingerprint on the back. It smells of — *sniff sniff* — flopsweat and wine coolers. Here’s the thing. Business cards are already a dubious value proposition for writers. Freelancers may find good use for them but “author-types,” not so much. This is, after all, the days of a thing called the Enternit, or the Wide Whirled Web or whatever, and so it’s pretty easy for people to find you online. A business card needs to be a nudge in that direction. Name; incredibly minimal note as to your role; contact information offline; contact information online (which includes how you want me to find you on social media). If that business card does not appear on par with the kind of card, say, an actual businessperson would use, just throw it away, because that’s what I’ll do. Oh, one more tip: only give out a business card if someone asks. That means they’ll use it. Otherwise, just thrusting it upon them means it’ll end up lining someone’s hamster cage.

24. You’re Probably Paying Money, So Take Advantage

Cons aren’t cheap. So milk them for all they’re worth.

25. Talking About Writing Is Not The Same As Writing

The fourth and final purpose of going to these things is to get your ass reenergized. The con should be the intellectual equivalent of jacking yourself up (up, not off, weirdo) with a Red-Bull-and-fire-ants enema. It should get you back in your chair pounding the keys and working the story like a goddamn wad of pizza dough. What that means is, go to the con and then return to use what you learned. Revitalize! Harness new information! Going to cons can, like so many things in our penmonkey lives, feel productive when really, it’s not. It’s only productive if you take the raw ore you just chipped off the psychic walls and refine that shit into precious stones and glittery gems and sweet, sweet crack-rock. Always remember that talking about writing is not the same as writing. You built the staircase. Now you best walk up it. Otherwise, what’s the point?


Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

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

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

NaNoWriMo Cometh: A Terribleminds Primer

This past weekend, I spoke at the Crossroads Writers Conference in Macon, Georgia. I’ll presumably get to a full recap eventually (wherein I explain a weekend where I encountered people like: my first nervous fan, a former dominatrix, Delilah Dawson with her 1989 cell phone, Nathan “Baby Goose” Edmondson, Robert “Not-An-Accessory-To-Murder” Venditti, and various other awesome humans).

I also met Chris Baty, who is of course the big brain behind NaNoWriMo.

Now, I have my reservations about NaNoWriMo (which I pronounce “wree-mo,” as in, “NaNoWriMo Williams, The Adventure Begins”, even though it is, I’m told, technically “wry-mo”). I think like with all “get-thee-to-the-writery” initiatives, it’s a perfect fit for some and for others an anchor around their ankles, so you just gotta know what’s right for you and what works and not blame yourself when what’s really going on is you’re just adhering to a process that isn’t really your process.

Square peg, circle hole, and all that.

So, that being said, I also know that National Novel Writing Month gets a helluva lot of you up off your leafy, moldering bed of sadness and shame — and anything that forces you to shake off the barnacles and get your ass out to sea is good by me. (Actually, Baty had a good Grace Hopper quote comparing writers to seafaring vessels: “A ship in port is safe… but that’s not what ships are built for.”)

Anyway.

So, first up, I figure I’ll ask: who’s doing NaNoWriMo?

Have you done it before? What was your experience?

What are your hopes and reservations for doing it again?

Also — here’s a list of ten posts here at terribleminds that maybe, just maybe, will help you start to prep for the coming tide of furious frenzied cram-a-holic novel-writing come the month of November.

25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWrimo

25 Things You Should Know About Writing A Novel

25 Things To Do Before Starting Your Next Novel

25 Ways To Plot, Plan, And Prep Your Story

25 Things You Should Know About Story Structure

25 Things To Know About Writing Your First Chapter

25 Ways To Fight Your Story’s Mushy Middle

Shot Through The Heart: Your Story’s Throughline

The Inkslinger’s Invocation

And, finally:

The Secret To Writing

Now, you may also know that I have a number of writing books available.

This month and next I’ll be offering a couple specials on said books, should that tickle your most private of private parts. And of course, I hope that it does. *tickle tickle*

The two specials for the month of Rock-Out-With-Your-Cocktober-Out are:

THE NUMBERLY BUNDLE

You can buy the PDFs of:

250 Things You Should Know About Writing

500 Ways To Be A Better Writer

500 More Ways To Be A Better Writer

and 500 Ways To Tell A Better Story

For just $7.50 (normally, it’d be $10).

This only works if you buy direct, please note, by using the link below.





Or, you may instead want:

THE PENMONKEY INITIATIVE

If you procure both Confessions Of A Freelance Penmonkey and Revenge Of The Penmonkey during the month of October, I’ll send you one of my other writing books (i.e. any of the above 250 or 500 “lists of 25” books) for free. That does not require direct procurement from me. Here all you need to do is email me proof of purchase to terribleminds at gmail dot com and let me know what book you and and, boom, I’ll send you the link to download. Dig? Dug.

Thanks, all, looking forward to hearing from you crazy ink-mad story-devils.

25 Ways To Get Your Creative Groove Back As A Writer

Sometimes, writers get out of the groove. They lose their voodoo. This isn’t just writer’s block — hell, you might even still be writing. But it feels hollow, unrewarding, like it’s not just giving back what you put in.

You need your creative mojo back.

Which means, another list of 25, comin’ right up.

(Some of these, I figure, also work toward writer’s block, if that’s a thing you believe in.)

1. Read Outside Your Comfort Zone

By “comfort zone,” I mean that room inside your head where it’s all pillows and chocolates and footy pajamas, with gamboling puppies and a vending machine that dispenses only liquor and cupcakes. On the wall of our comfort zone is a shelf of books and these are the books representative of the many categories we already prefer to digest: “I read: presidential autobiographies, graphic novels about talking animals, and the genre of ‘paranormal bromance.'” Comfort, however erm comfortable it may be, is not a great thing for creativity — so, escape this mind-realm of plush luxury and go read books you’d never ever read. Wouldn’t ever pick up a book of travel essays, or one about food culture, or a young adult novel? New books mean new input — and that means new inspiration. By the way, dibs on ‘paranormal bromance.’ HANDS OFF.

2. Re-Read A Book You Love Utterly

Fuck it. Instead of escaping your comfort zone, let’s nest deep within its pillowy folds. Grab a beloved book off your shelf and re-read it. Re-discover why a book like this made you want to be a writer in the first goddamn place. Let it fill you with its power (worst pick-up line ever) as it did many years before. Let it bring you back to center. Books you love are like a flashlight in dark times.

3. Read Something Utterly Shitty That Somehow Got Published

I read a script recently. It was a script that had been optioned (though never made), meaning, it was a script that someone out on the Leftmost Coast paid good money for. Like, probably more money than I’ve ever made in a year. Or ten years. OR MY WHOLE SAD INK-FINGERED LIFE SHUT UP. Anyway, point is: it was not very good. I mean, I won’t go so far as to call it genuinely shit-tacular, but it was… well, you know how fast food is often wildly mediocre? Yeah, that. Its mediocrity enlivened me. It told me, “I write better than this. I will write better than this.” It was a horse-kick to my motivational centers.

4. Achieve Narrative Conclusion, Gleefully Shellacking Your Brain-Pants

Take a teeny tiny project — a poem, a short story, a flash fiction challenge, a series of tales told in ten tweets, whatever — and finish it. I’m going to make up some science now, so, put on your Reality-Defying Goggles. Ready? Finishing any creative project releases a chemical in your brain called Hopamine (pronounced “hope-a-meen”), aka “Triumph Squeezin’s” or “Victory Fluid.” By stimulating the gland that releases this creative hormone, you further stimulate the rest of your brain to want to seek that feeling again and again, like a drug addict chasing a high. Meaning: the more projects you complete, the more projects you complete.

5. The “Just For You” Project

That sounds like a really weird euphemism for masturbation. “Hey, what are you gonna do now?” “Gonna go upstairs, initiate a just-for-me project.” *grabs a box of Kleenex and a soup can filled with ballistics gel* Anyway. Sometimes creative lockjaw happens when you’re too busy doing work for everybody else and you’ve saved nothing for yourself. Pick a project, small, large, whatever, that’s something you want to do. Doesn’t matter if anybody else thinks it’s a good idea. Fuck the naysayers. Completing work that’s satisfying to you will tickle your creative muscles. And hey, there’s another masturbation euphemism if you want it.

6. Write Outside Your Comfort Zone

Remember your “comfort zone?” Cuddly unicorns and that Carly Rae Jepsen poster on the wall? Let’s just set fire to the whole place. Ignore the unicorn screams. (And shit, do they ever scream.) Earlier I advocated reading outside your comfort zone, so now it’s time to write outside of it. Pick something you’d never write, and try it. Don’t worry about finishing it — this is an exercise, not a job. Write romance, or hard sci-fi, or a film script or the marketing materials for a new drug called “pink meth.” Whatever. Sometimes you have to come at creative logjam from a whole different angle to break it apart.

7. Public Lewdness, I Mean, “Public Creativity”

Put your work out there for all to see — probably online, but somewhere, somehow in the public space. Which is to say, get a blog or whatever, and start writing so that the world can see. It’s a stunt, of sorts, and normally I don’t advocate this as a way to exist normally, but here’s what this does: writers are used to performing behind the curtain. We sit in our offices, completely nude. We drink a can of Red Bull, kill a goat, powder up with some Gold Bond, then we write. Nobody’s watching. But you start writing in public, it’s the equivalent of getting on stage. People are watching what you do more closely. It feels like walking across a tightrope without a net. While high on really weird drugs. Anything to drop-kick creative ennui.

8. Stop, Collaborate And Listen

Writers are traditionally loners. Like Pee-Wee Herman, and serial killers. (Actually, would it have surprised anyone if the character of Pee-Wee turned out to be a serial killer? That talking Playhouse Chair probably eats the fucking bodies.) A writer is used to operating in a lawless, non-reactive land. Change that. Collaborate with someone. On a story, script, comic, whatever. Engage in an act of creative agitation. The give-and-take of collaboration constantly forces you to bat back new ideas and reactions — it’s not always easy, but it’s frequently productive. Even if just to retrain your brain to be all arty and stuff.

9. Gun Down Your Creative Routine In The Streets

You do things a certain way, right? Wake up. Eat a bowl of Yummy Mummy cereal. Get dressed in jammy-pants and a FUCK YOU t-shirt, then go to Starbucks with your laptop and pretend to write as you stare hatefully at all who enter. Then: lemon meringue pie, and finally, bed. Your status quo needs to change. This is emblematic of how narrative works (a story is often born from the disruption of status quo), and so it is emblematic of how the writer sometimes must work, too. Change it up. Write somewhere different. Write in a new way (on a new word processor, with pen and notebook, in your own fluids). Do something different. Shake lose the barnacles you’ve gathered while floating inert in the murky harbor of your undoing.

10. Have A New Experience

Spontaneous generation does not exist. Fruit flies are not born out of thin air, nor is our creativity. We need fuel. We need stimulus. Like Johnny-5, we need input, motherfucker. Part of what fuels our creative expression is the life we live and the experiences we have, so there comes a time when you need to have some new experiences. Moroccan food, ziplines, mountainous ascent, bar fight with strange people, sex with strange people, Mezcal bender, civet-shit coffee, BDSM, ride a deer, kick a robot, something, anything. Have  new experiences. Adventures both big and tiny. It’s all paint for the palette, man.

11. Get Out Of The Goddamn House, You Mumbling Shut-In

“Locked-in syndrome” is where your body can’t move but you can see and experience everything going on around you, and metaphorically, writers are like that. We get locked in to our offices, our homes, our lives. (Don’t tell me you haven’t thought at least once about trying adult diapers. Because you are a liar-faced lie-bot from a future made of liars.) Sometimes, to build off the last entry, you just need to get out of the fucking house. Like, with some regularity. Though one supposes an entry featuring the word “diaper” should not also feature the word “regularity” in a different context, but whatever. I’m a rebel, Dottie.

12. Get Some Class, You Surly Miscreant

Wait, no, sorry, I mean, “take a class.” As in, go learn a new skill. Doesn’t have to be related to writing — in fact, better if it’s not. Learn Photoshop. Or wood-working. Or robot-taming. Imagine if you will that we are characters in a role-playing game and we have an unlockable “skill tree” where new new avenues of experience open up by completing sometimes unforeseen challenges. This is like that. You learn something new, it opens up new pathways into your creative life you did not expect.

13. Exercise Your Indolent Sloth Carcass Of A Body, You Indolent Sloth Carcass

While you’re out, maybe move your body around. Jiggle your sludgy flesh in a way that simulates “not dying from sheer torpidity.” Sometimes our mental shutdowns are related to physical concerns. Maybe you just need some fucking exercise. Walk. Run. Bike. Swim. Lift something heavier than your iPad. Fight a mountain lion. Hunt your fellow man. Whatever. Just move that ass.

14. Also: Stop Eating Like A Drunken Goat

I’ve advocated this before and I will do it again, right here, right now: stop eating assily. Not a word, “assily,” but I said it because I’m allowed to make up new words because I have my Pennsylvania Writer’s License. To repeat: sometimes mental shutdowns are related to physical concerns. And physical concerns can come from diet. Maybe you’re eating too many carbs and not burning them off (contributing to “brain fog”). Maybe you’re allergic to something and yet you still keep eating it (OH GOD I LOVE EATING DONUTS DIPPED IN CHOCOLATE MILK AND SNAKE VENOM WHY ARE MY LEGS NUMB). Change that diet.

15. Address Mental Health Concerns

To get serious for a moment, a lot of writers suffer from various mental maladies. This is entirely common and writers suffering under such afflictions are in no way alone. Problem is, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees in just such a state and it’s harder to differentiate what’s a problem with, say, a story and what’s a problem with, say, your own psychic and psychological landscape. Trying to fix creative problems when you have larger concerns is like trying to fix a plumbing problem by headbutting a toilet. It will be painful and frustrating so always address your own mental health first. This is easier said than done, but that doesn’t change the fact that it needs to happen before anything else falls in line.

16. Create Story Maps

Pick a book you love off the shelves — or, if you’ve got a wild hair (wild hare?) up your ass, grab one you hate. Whatever. Read it. But read it critically. (“Critically” does not mean, “Look for the bad stuff.” It means, read beyond entertainment. Apply critical thinking skills to your book-absorbing process. The Internet has separated us into FUCKITY-SUCKS or SHITSTORM OF AWESOME camps, and that is not critical thinking, that is base level Neanderthal tribe-making. Er, rant over.) Map the story. Outline it. Figure out what’s happening inside the tale. Track character arcs. Look at the narrative from a sky-high height. Get a measure of the mechanics. Sometimes just seeing how a story comprises all these interlocking pieces helps stimulate your own grasp of the task at hand. Also, wait, do you have a rabbit up your ass? Can we address that?

17. Bucket Of Book Titles

Go the Ray Bradbury route: just start writing out awesome-as-fuck book titles. One after the other. Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred. This bizarre-o menu of non-existent books will almost assuredly start filling your head with stories connected to them.

18. Cavalcade Of Characters

Sometimes stories are too big. We just can’t get our minds around them and we fritz out, sparking and hissing like a broken Roomba clogged with Chinese food containers and jizz tissues. Breaking stories into pieces and playing with the pieces first has the fun of, say, playing with action figures. So: just create some characters, almost like in a roleplaying game. Don’t worry about larger stories, just start making names and some personalities to go with them. Some will stay supporting characters, others will emerge as bigger personas. And soon, stories will emerge from the pile: order out of chaos.

19. Open Defiance! The Flames Of Anarchy!

Middle finger extended — now point that gesture-of-anarchic-defiance toward All The Rules You’re Supposed To Follow. Write something that exists as a contrarian’s rebellion against What You’re Supposed To Do. Like, if you write a romance novel, there’s all these rules and tropes, right? So: break ’em all. Or, you’re not supposed to write in Second-Person-POV, or no Epistolic Novels, or, Don’t Break The Fourth Wall, or, or, or. Gather up as many rules as you care and execute them in the town square. It feels good to break the rules. “Should Not, But Fucking Did It Anyway” is a powerful creative aphrodisiac.

20. Art Harder In A Whole Other Direction

Sometimes we unlock creative potential by performing other creative tasks. Photography or music or macrame or crayon drawings or amateur porn movies or whatever it is that makes your grapefruit squirt. For me, photography kickstarts my visual and metaphorical centers, which helps my writing.

21. Write Your Life

Take time, dig deep, and write about things that actually happened to you. Trust your gut — the stories and events and characters that rise up first are the ones you should go with. This isn’t for anyone else. This is for you. This is like creative mining, just digging down into the loamy 8-bit soil of your Minecraft Mind, not sure if you’ll find iron or diamonds or empty out into a vast and unexpected cavern of possibility. Our creative lives come from somewhere, a culmination of who we are and what we love, and this is exploring the former part. This is opening up the who we are portion of the experience. Sometimes you need to tease it out. Sometimes you blow open the mountain with suicide-bomber bighorn sheep. Open the way, even if pain lurks there. Hell, especially if pain lurks there. Pain is our bread and butter.

22. Tell A Story In Images

Take images. From online. From in magazines. From advertisements. FROM INSIDE YOUR OWN DISEASED SKULL. Wherever. Cut ’em out and collect ’em and, one day, gather them up and try to use them to tell a story. String them together. Find a narrative. Finding narrative in unlike places — those unanticipated narrative connections — is a meaningful exercise in terms of getting back on the creative horse. And a “creative horse” is, of course, a pegasus.

23. Fail

Failure feels like an ending, but it’s not. I will continue to assert that fail is profound. It is both deconstructive and instructive at the same time. If you look at failure just the right way, failure is no longer a wall, but a door. Actually, hell with that metaphor: failure is a bottle rocket gooey with Icy Hot shoved deep into your no-no-hole and lit on fire with a signal flare. Failure can create in you the drive to do better, to go bigger, stronger, crazier — and the simple act of failure can realign your creative stars.

24. Quit For A Little While

Walk away from the creative life. For a week. Maybe a month. However long you need. I don’t advocate giving up easily — so, let’s just call this a vacation. We put upon ourselves undue pressure and sometimes the best way to vent that pressure is to pop the lid, let the steam out, and go do something else for a little while. The creative tapeworm will one day start coiling and roiling within, taking little nibbles here and there to let you know it’s time to get back to it.

25. Quit Moaning And Mount Up, Motherfucker

At the end of the day, here’s the best way to get your groove back, creatively speaking: work your tailbone to a rounded nub. Shovel story upon story, smash words into other words. Quit worrying, cut the bitching, and do what needs to be done. We sometimes feel like our authorial voodoo is flagging — but work begets work, and effort (even when it feels like you’re pushing a fold-out couch up a craggy mountain pass) will beget creativity. Work is in many ways like the act of planting a seed: tilling the hard earth is no easy task and the time it takes may seem like it’s wasted, thrown into an earthen hole, but one day that little motherfucker starts to sprout, and then the hard work gives way to the natural processes that are blessedly inevitable.


Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

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

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF