Tag: advice (page 21 of 25)

This shall be the culmination of this month’s Penmonkey Boot Camp, wherein I take a more, erm, “aggro” tone with you fine young upstarts. This post in particular is juicy with NSFW-isms, and may in fact be NSFL, or “Not Safe For Life.” Those with frail constitutions, weakened aortic walls, or little wormy egos in pink Barbie dresses should probably just skip this and go somewhere to glumly masturbate. If you find yourself offended during this post, I apologize. Please see me after class, I will hand you a Xanax.

I’d like to thank you for coming today.

It doesn’t really matter why you’re here. Could be that you find my dubious writing advice somehow useful (“He just told me that writers write! Genius!”). Could be that, instead, you find me a hateful little gnome and want to know if I’m secretly planting conspiratorial codes about you into my work (“This whole blog post is a ROT13 cipher about my weird nipples!”). Maybe you just like watching me body slam the plexiglass walls of my enclosure and leave poopy handprints everywhere (“I think that one looks like a turkey”).

The point I’d like to make today is that, holy shit, I really enjoy yelling at you guys. It just gives me a total boner. And I don’t mean a real boner. I mean a — oh, hell with it, yes, I mean a real boner. A good firm — grr! — baby’s arm kind of erection, you know? With a little fist on the end you can use to punch out goblins.

POW.

I enjoy yelling at you in part because it’s also me yelling at me, and that is also one of my favorite pastimes. I figure I’ve got a lot to learn yet about This Thing That I Do With The Pen And The Ink And The Storytelling and I learn best through hateful booze-soaked tirades against myself and others.

Oh, did I mention I’ll be drinking during this post?

I’ll totally be drinking during this post.

At the moment, the drink of choice is Basil Hayden’s Bourbon.

If I were singing a song I’d say, “sing along,” but instead I’ll pause and also ask you to pause and say — hey, go get a drink. Drink along with me. Won’t you join me? Do it. Yes. Nice.

Good? Got a cup of the ol’ sauce in hand? Right on.

Think of this like a Gallagher show. Get a tarp or a rain-slicker or steal a fucking sneeze-guard from the salad bar at Wendy’s (preferably one speckled with minimal phlegm-flecks). Beware my froth.

Now — hold still while I yell at you, goddamnit.

Stop Cheating On Your Manuscript With New Ideas!

What a word-slut you are. There, on the desk, is that sad lonely manuscript. And what are you doing? You’re out behind the shed, cornholing some new idea, bending over some pretty young thing with big “characters” and pointy “plot points.” You adulterous whore-badger. Listen, I get it. The one thing that really feels like it can derail a novel is the wandering eye of other awesome ideas. But you better learn how to deal with that. That is, in part, what writers are. We’re idea antennae, constantly receiving insane frequencies from beyond the margins of our brain. If you can’t manage that noise, you’re fucked. Stop acting like a hyper-sensitive spider-monkey with fetal alcohol syndrome. Calm down. Manage your new ideas. Your ideas won’t amount to a hill of beans if you can’t take one and drive it like a herd of cattle toward execution. Shelve new awesome ideas. Marry the manuscript, and divorce it only when it’s yielded to your marital creative power. New ideas, take them out of your brain, write down some notes, stick them in a jar and pop them on a shelf. Now write the thing you were supposed to write.

Stop Slagging On Editors Or Agents, Cock-Waffle

Editors? Rule. Agents? Rock. Fuck the narrative that says they’re part of big publishing and they don’t care and blah-de-blah-de-blippity-bloopy-bloo. (Too much with the hyphens? Too bad! Ha ha! Bourbon!) You may have some gnawing scarab stuffed up your ass about gatekeepers, but seriously, grow up. I’m happy if you take the indie path, but editors and agents are not your enemies. They’re good at what they do. Moreover, given the state of the industry it’s not like they’re doing this so they can finally afford their own personal robotic colonic technicians. They do it because they care. Because they love it. They’re in this for the same reason you are: because they really like books. Yes, yes, fine, the world is home to some shitty agents and editors. They’re the exception, not the rule. End of story.

Of Course You Suck, We All Do, Get Over It Already

I don’t care that you think you suck or you’re having trouble writing or gosh this manuscript is haaaard. Shush up, Nancy. I know you suck. I suck, too, a lot of the time. But I don’t want to talk about it, and I damn sure don’t want to hear about it. Be a fountain. Not a drain. Or some other twee cliche bull-snot. Be positive. Be awesome. Own your role as storyteller. Stop sniveling. Do the task at hand. Your purported suck-fest doesn’t make for compelling reading. And you know what? Writing’s not even that hard. You know what’s hard? Kidney stones. You know what else is hard? Being born in oppressive country where the people have no food and no freedom. You know what’s really hard? My bulletproof abs. Okay, shut up about my abs. I know they have the firmness of a bean-bag pounded to a pulp by a ceaseless parade of dry-humping college students. You keep quiet. My point is, writers get the glorious chance to constantly rewrite. You have the ability to forever up your game. You’re telling stories. It’s pure. Perfect. Weird. Wonderful. Stop complaining about it or I will choke you with a sock full of your own teeth.

Shut Up, It’s Okay That We Talk About Writing

Writers are going to talk about writing. Get over it. Nobody said you had to read it. Nobody said you had to pay any attention at all. But I’m tired of the narrative that writers shouldn’t talk about writing. Listen, writing? Publishing? It’s some crazy shit. And we’re all crazy for doing it. If some of us don’t think about it or talk about it? Our skulls will rupture and monkey-demons (or demon-monkeys, I gotta be honest, I was never clear on this point) will escape. You don’t want that to happen, do you? Hell, you ever hear the phrase “talk shop?” This is that. What’s next? “Hey, teachers, stop talking about teaching. In fact, just stop teaching, teacher. It’s like that band says, leave those kids alone.” Every job I’ve been at, you know what they talk about? The job! Because it’s fucking relevant! Fnuh! Bbbt! See what you made me do? Now I’m just typing sounds. I’m not even making the sounds. I’m typing them. That’s the first sign of clinical insanity. I’m going to be over here still talking about writing sometimes. Don’t like it? Here’s my butt pucker. You can give it a little smoochy kiss and then hit the door. HA HA HA THAT’S NOT A DOOR IT’S A GREAT WHITE SHARK YOU JUST GOT SERVED

And Sweet Motherless Goat, Writers Are Cranky

YOU CAN’T SAY ANYTHING oh — damn, caps lock still on. Ahem. You can’t say anything anymore to other writers without someone getting their nipples into knots. You talk about traditional publishing, self-publishing, price, character, content, review, platform, and somebody out there is going to hike on the ol’ cranky-pants and cinch the drawstring good and tight. Mention something, anything about writing or the industry and somewhere a writer is quaking with inchoate rage or sudden venomous snark. What happened to having a reasonable response? It’s no longer, “Hello, I do not agree with you and here’s why,” but rather becomes “HOLY SHIT WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT MY MOTHER? No, no, I see what’s happening here, you said that thing about how science-fiction should be considered as important as literary fiction but what I heard was, your mother fucks hoboes on CSPAN.” Hell, haven’t you read the news? You say the wrong thing, something called a “YA Mafia” will hunt you down, shit in your mouth, then write nasty teen novellas about you. Holy crap, writers get so mad about stuff! Why are we so mad? What is wrong with us? Is there something wrong with our adrenal glands? Does writing cause mood cancer? Everybody, just chill. Yesterday in baby class they taught us soothing noises, and apparently that means I get in your ear and go SHUHHHHSHHHHHH SHHHHHHHH PSHHHHHHH FSSHHHHSHSHHHHHH. So. Imagine I’m doing that. Feel better? Of course you do. I am… the Penmonkey Whisperererer.

OMG YOU GUYS BOURBON

This bourbon — Bourbon? Capitalized? — is delicious. I was always a Scotch guy, you know? But, mmm. Bourbon is nipping at Scotch’s tartan heels, it is. You know what else is awesome? Bluecoat Gin. Best gin I’ve ever had. And it’s not only American, but it’s Pennsylvanian, and we do shit right in Pennsylvania. Hello? Soft pretzels? Cheesesteaks? Yuengling? The Amish? Hatred? We’re good at so much. Yesterday, the makers of Bluecoat, Philadelphia Distilling, sent me a box full of goodies. Big bottle of gin? Little bottle of gin? Little bottles of vodka and absinthe? And a hat? Yes to all of the above. Thanks to them for sending a writer alcohol. Smart move. Customer loyalty, earned.

Commerce Is Not A Dirty Word

Writing for me is a business. It doesn’t have to be for you. I don’t care. You can write My Little Pony fanfic for all of eternity — and, if my vision of Hell is accurate, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing. I need to make money with my writing. If I don’t, I cannot feed myself, my wife, and my upcoming spawn, then I will have to stop writing. So, it’s something I need to think about. And talk about. It’s not a dirty word. Try to make me or any other writer feel like a shit-heel for having to earn out and I will collapse your trachea with a broom-handle. In fact, let’s get shut of a whole bushel basket of dirty words — social media, self-pub, pantser, plotter, theme, fuckface, literary, young adult… wait, wuzzat? “Fuckface” is a dirty word? Are you sure? Says you. Pfft. Pssh! Whatever. Point is, just because you don’t dig on something or don’t consider it important doesn’t mean that other people don’t. You’re allowed to not dig on it. Just don’t be a fuckface about it. Now go back to stroking your My Little Ponies. IN HELL. (See? Cranky! Bourbon!)

That Greek Semen Lady Isn’t An Emblem Of Anything

(Sorry, what? It’s Greek Seaman? Is there a difference? Oh. Oh! There is? Really? I always thought my little man-seeds were actually tiny ocean divers. With the big bell-helmets? I had biology all wrong. What were we talking about again? Oh! Oh, right. Crazy author lady.) The other day, some cranky froth-badger got on the Internet (first mistake) and responded to a somewhat negative review of her self-published novel (second mistake), and then kept on responding (third, fourth, fifth, etc. mistake). The post — found here, if you care — went viral pretty fast among writers, publishers, and editors. The narrative that resulted initially was, “This is how not to act like a professional writer,” but then morphed into something about self-published authors. No! No. The Greek Semen lady isn’t an emblem of anything but total farking space-bats who get on the Internet and act like, well, total farking space-bats. “But this is why I don’t trust self-published writers!” No, this is why you don’t trust lunatics. Plenty of self-published writers act like very nice, generally sane folk. And plenty of “traditionally-published” authors have gotten on the Internet (first mistake) and ranted at reviewers or said stupid shit or made asses out of themselves. This lady isn’t a standard-bearer for anything but unprofessional whackaloons. She doesn’t deserve your heaps of scorn, nor does she deserve this much attention. Stop rubbernecking and move on.

Thinking About Publishing Is Like Having A Brain Parasite

We think too much about publishing. And it’ll drive you nuts. (Actually, that might explain why so many of us writers are cranky.) Seriously. You gaze into the abyss, and that abyss not only gazes back, it’ll flick a lit cigarette in your eye. “Oh my god, advances are down. I have to write a query letter. What are the royalties on e-books again? Borders is closing? Barnes and Noble stock is down? I could self-publish! I could make some cover art with dried pasts and Elmer’s glue. What are the trends? Young adult paranormal dystopian giraffe porn? Vampiric zombie dieselpunk middle-grade romance? Will Oprah like my book? Why is my mouth filled with blood? OH MY GOD I BIT MY TONGUE OFF.” Guess what? All this publishing crap doesn’t matter. I mean, okay, it matters, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t pay a little attention. But a lot of the time, it’s like watching the news. You can’t personally do a lot about what you see on the news. Same with publishing. Books aren’t going extinct. So write one. If it’s good, it’ll have a place to land. But not if your head explodes from thinking too hard about publishing trends, first. Which leads me to…

For God’s Sake, Shut The Hell Up And Write Already

Your task is to write.

Write! Write write write write write. Write every day. Write until your heart flops out onto the desk like a bloody catfish and thrashes around, squirting your creative blood all over the wallpaper.

The only way through is to write.

Learn how to write better. Then write some more.

And keep on writing until you explode and die.

…

And there you go. A super-soaker full of my unfocused rage, sprayed in your face like projectile vomit. If you feel so inclined and are equally full up of such wanton and incalculable vigor, stomp on down into the comments and leave your own deposit of weasel scat rambling pejoratives about writers and writing.

Again, should you find yourself offended, I’d casually remind you that I am including myself as a target of my own sputtering spit-up because I’ve done most of this shit once upon a time.

If you remain offended, then you can now have your Xanax.

This way to the great egress.

*drops mic, walks off stage, falls into the orchestra pit, dies*

You whip the old nag with a coat hanger.

“Move, you dang horse!” you shout, frothing over with piss and vinegar. You kick it. You pitch pebbles at its head. You hook cables to a car battery and stick ’em up its equine nether quarters and jam some voltage deep into the beast. And still it doth not move. Not a whinny. Not a tail-flick. You nicker at it. You pull your hair. You mumble something about this is why cars replaced you dipshits. You give up and stomp off.

Are you done? With your little poopy-pants hissy-shit-fit over there?

First, that’s not a horse. It’s not even a dead horse. It’s just a bundle of old blankets. You’re embarrassing yourself. Everyone can see what you’re doing. Plus, your underwear is showing. Tighty-whiteys? Really? With your name and the day of the week stitched in the hemming? For shame.

Second, that bundle of old blankets is a stand-in for something else. Come on, don’t lie. You’re a desperate novelist (or screenwriter or transmedia cyborg) and that heap of smelly fabric is a representation — a living emblem — of your stalled-out story. The old nag just won’t move and you think, “Well, you can just nuzzle my turgid teat, you stubborn old coot of a tale.” You lay blame upon it, heaping sins atop the pile the way they used to fill up old goats with present sins. But it’s not the story’s fault. It’s your fault. The story doesn’t exist outside you. Your characters don’t do things you don’t want despite what so many writers will tell you. It’s all you. That hill of nasty blankets will only move if you pick them up and move them. It’s your story. You have authorial agency.

Your story has stalled out because you stalled out. You are the reason that yet another unfinished novel will get shoved into the teetering tower of forgotten stories, reverse-Jenga-style.

And I’m here to jumpstart your heart-shaped derriere and shove your brain back into the game.

Your manuscript needs a cranked-up jolt of adrenalin. For that, I got a buncha tips to jam into your aorta. The first bunch is all about you as a writer and changing your habits. The second batch is about things you can do inside the story to kick free the story scree and get the whole thing moving again.

Think of this as a narrative laxative.

Flip It, Switch It

Sometimes, our brains get vaporlock. We’re idiots, us writers. A gaggle — nay, a mighty parliament — of OCD assholes. A handful of “stupid writer tricks” will go a long way into fooling yourself into overcoming your own tangled web of foolish fuck-brained folly. Here’s one: make a change as to your writing habits. Maybe for a day. Maybe for a week. Do you normally write in your office? Go write at the dining room table. Or at a Starbucks. Or at a Hungarian bathhouse. Do you write in the morning? Write at night. If you write on a laptop, switch to a desktop, or an iPad, or write a chapter long-hand. Sometimes, jostling your habits shakes loose some of the bad juju that’s gumming up the novel.

Discover Your Incubation Chamber

I have three primary incubation chambers: the shower, the lawn-mower, and outside taking a walk. No, these are not the places that I secretly masturbate. Sure, you could diddle your happy buttons on a riding mower, but dang, man, I have a push mower. Plus, I don’t need the squirrels judging me. No, an incubation chamber is my fancy made-up term for “a place you go or a practice you undertake where you can zone out and think.” In other words, you need to find time to let the story incubate. Take time. Bandy some shit around. Play the “what if?” game. “What if my protagonist became his own grandfather and then committed suicide inside Hitler’s bunker?” A good place to incubate stories? Right before bed. Set your brain like a slow-cooker. Introduce a problem or question, then go to sleep. Low and slow like beef brisket, bitches.

No Author Is An Island, Dumbass

Don’t internalize. Contact somebody. Call ’em. Write ’em. Just have a chat to discuss. Creativity lives on agitation. Call up a writer buddy and tell her the problem and see if you can’t work through it. Doesn’t have to be a writer, either. Any conversation can free it. Surely you have friends? You’re not just some mournful cave troll, right? Who do you normally call with your problems? If you were to call somebody and say, “Hey, okay, so. Ahhh, here’s the deal. I have four dead strippers. I am goosed to the nines on mescaline. This isn’t my shirt. And I think I’m on the Disneyworld monorail. What do I do?” — who would that person be? Identify them. Whoever it is that would help you with four stripper corpses is also the same person who can help you talk through your novel’s plot problems. Frankly, put that dude on your payroll, but quick.

A Little Dab Will Do You

Dear sweet chemical intervention. Hey, I’m not advocating illicit substances, but I do think that sometimes a mildly modified state of perception can be a win for a writer. It can be the machete to cut down through all the built-up bullshit inside your story. Caffeine is good to get the pistons firing. Liquor is good not necessarily during writing, but I’m not averse to a little responsible drinking after-hours where you can jot some notes down in a notebook or puzzle out some story problems in conversation with a buddy while under the influence of some adult beverages. Exercising releases other powerful chemicals, too, which can be good. Maybe take a little St. John’s Wort? Or eat a piece of chocolate for Chrissakes. Just a little stimulant. Bzzt. Zzzzt. Zap. No meth, though. I mean, seriously. You ever see a meth-head? Ghouls.

Write A Masturbatory Love Letter

You loved this idea once upon a time. You adored the book. I know you did, because we made fun of you on the playground. “You and the novel, sittin’ in the tree. H-A-N-D-J-O-B. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the Tijuana donkey show.” I think that’s how the rhyme goes. Anyway. This sounds super stupid, but bear with me: you need to fall back in love with the novel again. Write a letter. Or an email. Or a goddamn postcard, I don’t care. Start reminding yourself the things you loved about this book. Jot down why you wanted to write the thing in the first goddamn place. Surprise, surprise: you’ll find old reasons, yes, but you’ll discover some new reasons to love it all over again.

Envision The Cover

This? The epitome of shallow, but fuck it. I know, blah blah blah, you’re writing the book because you love the story, but sometimes you can’t help but look forward and get geeked while imagining some silly future shit. “On my wedding day, angels will descend from heaven and bring with them seven harpsichords.” “When my son is born, a wise shaman baboon will proclaim him the chosen one to rule the jungle.” “The first time I have sex, the hooker I nail will have two vaginas, and one of those vaginas will dispense chocolate coins.” So, hey, if what gets you going is looking forward and thinking, “Man, this book is going to look bitching on the shelves at Your Favorite Indie Bookstore,” then do that.

Boom Goes The Dynamite

Blow something up. (In the story.) Plunge the plunger. Light the fuse. Stephen King did this in The Stand, by the way, to jump start that stalled novel. He couldn’t quite figure out how to move the story forward and felt that the characters were… well, lost. So, in the second act he blew up the Free Zone with dynamite. Now, you don’t need to rely on an actual explosion in the text. “Explosion” is just another way of saying “Some properly dramatic shit that shakes everything up.” A murder. A breakup. The assassination of Santa Claus. The next Biblical deluge. The appearance of a cyborg orangutan from the future.

Feng Shui That Motherfucker

Feng Shui is probably bullshit. “This room has no flow. The chi is getting all gummed up in my heating vents. I need a mirror on that wall. I need something red on the opposing wall. In the corner? A duck carved from lava rock. In the other corner? Tom Arnold. And from the ceiling fan we must hang ribbons woven of my own chest hair and dyed with the blood of the infidel.” Still, there’s something there that’s altogether less mystical. “Hey, the arrangement of this room isn’t right; things feel off.” That can happen in the novel. So, rearrange some stuff. Start the novel at a different point. Change the flow. Move the timeline around — Chapter 5 is now Chapter 2. May require a little rewriting to bridge it, but just some minor rearrangement can feel productive. Rewriting and readjustment can be good voodoo.

Flip It, Switch It: Part II: Revenge Of The Switch-Faced Flippenator

Another flip, another switch. Change the point-of-view. Change the tense. Maybe you’re writing in third-person but it feels like you’d write it more easily in the first. Or, could be that writing past-tense isn’t as urgent as what you’d get out of the present. Yeah, sure, this requires rewriting, but, uhh, shut up. Nobody said this shit wasn’t work. Look at it this way: sometimes you gotta break something to fix something.

Turn Left And Take A Narrative Day Trip

Deviate. Deviate big. Start writing in a different direction. Pick a new character to follow. Explore some untold aspect of the storyworld. Create a sub-plot out of thin air involving submarines and the Christmas gifting habits of human-squid hybrids. See that door ahead? Forget it. Turn left and kick a hole in the wall. Walk through that. No, you may not use this stuff. Or maybe it’ll open up the novel in the same way that knocking down a wall in your house might open up a room. You gotta try something.

Shut Up And Put Your Back Into It

Alternately, if none of the above crap works, just shut up and do the time. Write through it. Flail about like a beached carp on your keyboard. Vomit words. Make shit up. Spasm. Smash together sentences with the grace and aplomb of a drunken moose. Writing isn’t magic. The end result may feel that way, but it’s just putting one word in front of the other. Do that until you feel the novel find its groove. It’ll happen. I swear. You might even go back and look at those vibrating word-spasms and think, “That was actually better than I thought. I expected literature on par with the holy books penned by a tribe of trilobites, but this is at least on the level of what a headless chicken could manage if you stuck a fountain pen in his neck stump.” There’s this feeling in exercise where you hit the wall but then, if you keep pushing past it, you suddenly get a surge of go-juice again. This is like that. Keep writing until you’re out of the dark and into the light.

Oh, and stop whining about it.

Howabout you, word nerds? What tricks do you use to fool your brain into lubricating the arthritic joints of that sluggish nag you call a manuscript? Share and share alike.

I catch flak periodically because my writing advice on this site kind of pinballs and ricochets around — I’ll say one thing one day, and another thing another day. My advice vacillates. Well, of course it does. Writing advice is not math. It is not laser-engraved in a titanium plate. Writers are beholden to very few inarguable rules. This isn’t 2  + 2 = 4. It’s 2 + 2 = anything you jolly well want it to be.

I have opinions. Those opinions change because I’m a human being with a crazy brain. Further, I am a writer, which means my already-crazy brain is shot through with whiskey, syphilis, and magical parasites. Writers are not born. They’re made. By eating contaminated lunchmeat at a very early age.

Plus, I really like playing Devil’s Advocate. Not for any intellectual reasons — it’s just, hey, the Devil’s awesome. He’s all like, “Check out my suit, it’s Versace,” and then he’s waxing his demonic ‘stache and buying me a sweet-ass margarita machine in exchange for my soul and then next thing I know he’s tickling my lips with the tines of his trident and he’s like, “Yeah, go on, put it in your mouth. Put it in there. Suck it. Show the Devil how you suck it.” And I’m like, “That’s weird, Satan. Your trident tastes like maple syrup and sadness.” Then I run and cry but he will always find me.

Wow, that went off the reservation, didn’t it?

Point is, it’s time to play Devil’s Advocate. I thought, for poops and chuckles we could bandy about some classic “old chestnuts” of writing advice and see how accurate or useful they really are. From time to time it’s good to flip it and switch it, look at things from a different perspective. Let us begin.

Writers Write (Run In Your Stupid Wheel, You Crappy Little Hamster!)

Damn, I opened with this one? Man. This one’s gonna be hard to refute. I mean, this is the backbone of the writer’s life, isn’t it? And isn’t this that one piece of super-critical advice that separates the wannabes from the definitely-dos? I guess the thing here is that writers are more than the sum of a day’s writing. Writers are editors. Writers are marketers. Writers are thinkers. A given day of “writing” might constitute redrafting, outlining, answering emails, drinking Bourbon, wrestling with bonobo monkeys, pimping your work, book signings, imaginary laser battles, and, of course, endless sobbing.

(Related: “Writers Don’t Do That“)

Write What You Know, Lest Everything You Write Be Inauthentic Piffle

This is bad advice in that it really doesn’t say what it means. Generally, simpler is better, and brevity is the soul of wit and all that bloo-dee-bloo. But here the advice is better written as:

“Write what you know, but make sure you recognize that you know a lot more stuff than you think you know and that in the struggle between fact and fiction, what matters is authenticity instead of hard data, so, no, while you’ve never been in a laser battle with a cyborg orangutan that doesn’t mean you haven’t undergone battles like hey remember that time in 9th grade when you and Roger Tyvock got into that sissy-slap fight in Mr. Grabknuckle’s Phys-Ed class, so in other words, bring your real life human experience into your fictional storytelling and mostly you should be fine. And when that fails you, go fuck around on Wikipedia for 15 minutes. Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades!”

But I guess that advice is too long to fit on a cross-stitch sampler.

(Related: “Write What You Know, Yes Or No“)

Adverbs Are Like Pus Globules Exuding From Satan’s Nipples

Yeah! Fuck adverbs! Fuck them lustily and fuckily in their ears! … oh, wait, I’m supposed to be playing Devil’s Advocate. Uhhh. Okay, listen, adverbs aren’t the bad guy, here. Writers who overuse adverbs are the bad guys. Adverbs are fine — ‘The toad hopped swiftly from plate to plate’ is a not unreasonable sentence, nor is it a sentence devoid of rhythm. But, ‘”Go eat a dick and die,” Tony said crankily’ feels clunky (he said, clunkily) and frankly, unnecessary. Adverbs are okay when they’re not redundant and when they don’t break rhythm. Keep them away from the word “said.”

Writers Must Be Voracious Readers: Bibliovores Say: “Nom Nom Nom”

Yes. But. But. This, like all things, demands balance. Lots of writers — like, say, Chaucer — used to struggle with the notion of whether it’s more important to go out and live a life and find stories out there or whether it’s more important to sit at home and read. Here’s a bold proclamation from the Luciferan Advocacy Council: it’s more important to go out and live your life. Books aren’t telling you new stories. They’re also not telling you your stories. I mean, sure, if you just want to retell everyone else’s stories, by all means, sit at home and read. Okay, settle down — I’m not saying don’t read. But you don’t need to be some kind of gibbering bibliophile buried under books to be a writer. Read what you love, then go out and live your life.

Open With A Bang Or The Reader Will Fall Asleep And Drool On Your Book

Here’s why this is nonsense. The Bestest Actionest Action Movie Of All Time, DIE HARD, does not open with a bang. It opens with a dude on a plane getting advice about his toes. You need to open with character awesomeness rather than event and explosions. Here’s why opening on a bang is dangerous: because it assumes action, and action only matters when we give a rat’s right foot about the characters involved. Now, you can create that kind of sympathy in that action scene, sure, but it’s tricky. Just make sure that the character is what’s getting the full attention in those opening moments. From the first sentence we need to care about the characters in any work — film, novel, game, pornography, pamphlet, placemat, what-have-you. Though, don’t take this as an excuse to write some boring-ass ponderous intro, either.

Skip The Boring Parts Because The Reader Is Like A Crack-Addicted Housecat

Well, it’s hard to disagree with this — would anybody say, “Leave the boring parts in?” Anybody who says that hates the audience. And anybody who hates the audience should have their nuts burned with lava.

The only trick here is judging which part of the work is boring. It’s hard. Don’t judge this in the first draft because in the first draft, you’re swirling down the drain in the hate spiral. You might hate something or find a piece boring that, frankly, is no such thing. Let a second read reveal that. Let editors reveal that. Let a hot cup of ayashuasca tea reveal that during intense hallucinations while also leading you on a jungle odyssey spirit quest where you eventually conquer and make love to the Jaguar Queen of Xibalba.

“Only Use The Word Said,” He Said

Yeah, mostly? I’d say, 90% “said,” 10% “some other entirely appropriate word.” I’ve gone with protested, asked, exclaimed, stammered. But you start wandering too far afield — “I love pie,” he ejaculated — and the reader’s just going to think you’re a weirdo.

Prologues? More Like “Prolapsed Anuses!” Am I Right? High-Five!

Ennnh. Eh. Okay, isn’t this just because a lot of prologues suck? That’s why the rule exists in the first damn place. Because mostly, they’re garbage. “Here’s 2000 words that don’t immediately relate to the next 2000 words until you realize that later I’ve connected them but that doesn’t happen until the end of the book and I am like the preening peacock, don’t you like my elegant plumage?” Prologues are often a case of stunting, or writers showing off, and that’s not that much fun for the audience.

But that’s not to say prologues automatically suck balls by dint of them being prologues. Or that you shouldn’t use them. One of my favorite books, LAMB (The Gospel According To Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal) by Christopher Moore has a very short, simple, and hilarious prologue. It works in the context of the piece. That’s the key — does it work? Then use it. Does it not work? Well, duh. *smacks you in the chops* Then don’t use it. I’d say, don’t let a prologue be your default state. Write the book. If it needs a prologue, it will be revealed to you. Possibly in a dream after fornicating with the Jaguar Queen.

If You Touch A Thesaurus, You Will Get Monkey Gonorrhea

I fucking love the thesaurus. Not because I want to constantly look for the next ten-cent word but rather because my brain is total shit. I am constantly like, “What’s the word I’m looking for here? What is it? It’s a word, right? That means… this thing. I’m looking for a word about this thing.” Finally, my wife is like, “Taco?” And I’m like, “Yes! Taco! This is why I married you.”

Sometimes, you need the right word, and you have a word that’s close but not dead on, and so you go to the thesaurus. And you shouldn’t be punished for that. That’s just sad for you. And by you, I mean me.

Defeat Indefatigable Rules!

Hey. You. Yeah, you. Your turn. Lob up a classic chestnut of writing advice, and let’s see if we can’t all dismantle it with our cynical, skeptical knives. Slicey-slice! Dicey-dice! Chestnut salad!

(Welcome back to Penmonkey Boot Camp, ink-heads and word-punks. Once again it’s another dose of over-the-top tough love shoved unmercifully into your pie hole. As always, any dubious advice I dispense here should be taken not with a grain of salt but, in fact, an entire salt mine. Please to enjoy!)

Fact:

Writers are liars.

We are liars of such a magnitude that our pants are not merely on fire, but rather, they immolate in a bright hot flash, sacrificing themselves to some dark and ancient word goddess.

We don’t mean to be, I suspect. It’s just part of the craft. Authors spend their days and nights constantly making shit up. We become masters of verbal chicanery, of fictional legerdemain. Sure, some writers say, “Ah, but with our fiction we secretly tell truths,” which I suppose is true, except those truths are wrapped in a dense layer of deception. It’s like handing you an appetizer and saying, “It’s prosciutto!” which is true, except for that little bundle of prosciutto is wrapped in a foul purse made from a moldering horse scrotum.

Best thing we can do is try to keep our lies contained neatly within our work and not let ’em live outside of it — though that is sometimes easier said than done. Our lies sometimes creep out of our fiction and get inside our heads like an insidious parasite taken on by accidentally ingesting flecks of cat poop. That’s when it gets problematic, when our lies become not a staple of our work but rather about our work.

And so it’s time to shine a flashlight in dark corners and call out the lies we writers tell to ourselves, to one another, and to the rest of the world at large. Let’s see if any of these sound familiar. (They certainly do to me — I know I’ve told most, if not all, of these whoppers once upon a time.)

“I Write Only For Me.”

Bzzt! Wrongo, you wannabe Emily Dickinson, you. I’m sorry, are you tweeting from your dark, musty attic where your parents have squirreled away Grandmother’s Victorian tampon collection in the hopes that one day it, like Beanie Babies, will see a resurgence in market value? The very act of writing is an act of communication. Communication is an act between two or more people. You don’t write for yourself. Shut up. Shut it. Shh. What, do you write a poem and then sit and read it to your toesy-woesies? This little piggy went to market, and oh, by the way, here’s my 10-book fantasy epic, The Fyre Lords of Slogmarn?

Stop lying. You don’t write only for yourself. Writers write to be read. Go ahead, say it again — I will grab your slithery forked tongue and knot that fucker up good and tight so you may not speak that lie anew. We should be thankful writers write to be read by others. That attitude has produced some — really, all — of your favorite books. This lie exists perpetuated by authors who are afraid to be judged by an audience. It exists to make them feel bulletproof — “Oh, you didn’t like that? Well, I liked it, and I write for me, so please enjoy my two middle fingers thrust upward, each kissed with a tincture made from my own tears.”

Stop that. Stop that right now. Join the rest of the world. Communicate with your audience.

Come down out of the attic, for Chrissakes. Still telling this lie to yourself? Fine. Then here’s your challenge: write in a notebook. Never show it to anyone. Die atop a mound of said notebooks in 100 years.

The End.

“It’s Okay That I Didn’t Write Today. Or Yesterday. Or The Day Before That.”

Nope. Nuh-uh. Not buying it. “I spent a day just chilling out, getting my head around this book, man.” No, you spent a day playing video games and drinking nail varnish to help kill your shame. I’m not saying every day has to be a 5,000-word slam-dunk-home-run-goal-unit-score-point-palooza, but if you didn’t put down 500 words of story, or a handful of editorial comments, or some notes, you didn’t accomplish Dick Butkus. It is a cliche for a reason: writers write. Is it the only thing they do? No, psshh, of course not. But isn’t it the priority? Writers live in their heads so often, you need to lance that boil. Writing is an act of trepanation; free the demons with the power drill of your choice. (Er, not literally. Put the drill down. We’re speaking in good old-fashioned metaphoricals here, y’see?)

Sad reality: we are all one day closer to death. If that day does not put you one day closer to finishing your manuscript, your screenplay, your transmedia epic opus, then this day of life is wasted.

We only get one go-round on this crazy carousel. Like I said the other day, that word count ain’t gonna autoerotically asphyxiate itself. Time to tighten that belt, word whores!

“I Just Don’t Have Time To Write.”

Lies! Filthy, septic lies! You have the same 24 hours in your day as I do — the question is, how do you choose to fill them? I’m growing weary of the narrative that goes like, “Chuck, you’re going to have a kid soon — say goodbye to your writing time, loser.” What? Seriously? Nobody says that to someone with an office job. “Hey, cubicle monkey, you’re going to have a kid soon — guess you’re going to have to quit your job.” Ohh, sure, okay, because my not writing is going to feed my child? I can conjure nega-words from the ether, and each word-not-yet-written will be like a draught of angel’s milk sating my son’s infant hunger.

I am fully aware that my sleep is going to get bombed out and any illusion of having an adult schedule is going to get squashed beneath a mound of dirty diapers. That doesn’t mean I stop writing — it just means I reapportion my time accordingly. Here’s the deal: nobody has time to write. Writers have to make time to write. You must take a meat cleaver and hack off a gobbet of your day and set that chunk of temporal viscera aside and say, “This is when I will write.” Maybe it’s two hours. Maybe it’s fifteen minutes.

Stephen King wrote some of his earliest work in tiny snippets in the middle of his work day.

You must steal time like a thrifty, thieving magpie.

“I’ll Write Later!”

You won’t.

Write now.

End of story. Or, hopefully, just the beginning.

“This Helps Me Write (And I Need It).”

You don’t need caffeine. You don’t need diet soda. You don’t need meth, heroin, video games, German poop-porn, an iPad, unicorn blood, the love of a good woman, a clean desk, probiotic yogurt, cat videos, Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, Tumblr, healthy self-esteem, double rainbows, a special pen, a lucky shirt, your blog, someone else’s blog, this blog, the word “blog.”

The only thing you need is you, a semi-functioning brain, a story, and a way to tell it.

Oh, and an ergonomic chair. Okay, you don’t need it, but shit, you could damn well use one.

“I Don’t Care About Money.”

Oh, aren’t you fucking special. You’re above money, are you? You have transcended the need to exist in this material world? “I write my inky words on paper and then I eat that paper and live within the ether of mine own storytelling!” Hey, good for you, you crazy little Bodhisattva, you. I tried not paying my mortgage and when you do that, the bank sends ninjas.

I do not have the luxury of caring naught about currency.

This lie is the sneaky mule-kicked cousin to, “I Write Only For Myself.” It is once more a deception sold by those who want to excuse their work not selling, who want to make themselves feel unique or somehow above other writers (“those greedy hacks!”) because they don’t care one whit about getting paid — it’s all about the art, you see. Mind you, this is a lie of artistes, not artists. Artists need to eat. Starving is neither glorious nor honorable — in fact, it’s not even that interesting, trust me.

Remember: Shakespeare got to get paid, son.

You don’t have to care about being rich. But you damn sure better care about money. As said in the past: your writing has value, so claim value for your writing.

“I Have To Build My Platform First.”

Sure you do, as long as you don’t mind getting up onto it and having nothing to say.

“I Don’t Need A Platform”

Sure you don’t, as long as you don’t mind mumbling about your project from down in that muddy hole.

Your first priority is writing. That’s the first barbarian banging at the gate. But it’s not the only one. Having a platform is like having a dinner table — the most important thing about dinner is making the food, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need somewhere to eat it.

“Oh, Drat, My Creative Spark Has Been Extinguished.”

Translation: “Ye Gods, someone has hanged my imaginary friend by the neck until he perished!”

Working on a long-term writing project is like marriage, and the creative spark is analogous to romantic love (or, rather, boner-inducing sexual magnetism). The creative spark is just the thing that gets you together with your work the same way that your goggle-eyed romantic need for rumpy-pumpy is what got you drawn into the marriage. But it is not the thing that sustains.

Get shut of this notion and stop telling yourself — and everybody else — that you’re clinging to this ludicrous and wholly imaginary idea. You don’t need it. Push past it. Keep writing.

“I Never Find Writing Advice Helpful!”

*rolls eyes*

You’re just that good, are you? You are a perfect Beryllium laser, cutting through the bullshit and crafting the mightiest tale to ever grace the minds of men.

Your work leaves no room for improvement, it seems. Well-done. Now, tell your son Jesus to come back to Earth and start cleaning up the mess we’ve all made.

Every writer needs advice. Maybe it’s about commas. Maybe it’s about query letters. Maybe you don’t turn to books or blogs but rather to a friend. Could be that you find it just by reading books you love again and again looking for the secret advice buried within. But everyone needs advice. Don’t pretend you’re somehow outside of it. Don’t act like merely the act of writing is enough to improve itself.

Hell with your cranky meme! Down with this lie!

*voids bowels upon it*

“I’m Just No Good.”

Quitcher whining! The time for your boo-hoo ballyhoo is done. Here then, is the proclamation: shit or get off the pot. Really truly think you’re no good and won’t be any good and cannot write past the nagging self-doubt? Then stop being a writer. Right now! Let go. Loosen your mental grip on the notion and let it float away, downstream, where it will soon be eaten by angry carp.

Or — or! — shut up about it and keep on kicking ass.

If you keep writing, it’s because you’re good enough to keep writing. Stop telling the lie to yourself and to everybody else that you’re just not good enough. Maybe you’re not great. And certainly you have room to improve. So, drum roll please, improve. Don’t whine. Don’t cry. Don’t wonder how your diaper got full and then moan about it without ever taking it off. You’re good at something. You’re an author, a writer, a storyteller — yours is the power of the divine. No deity got where he was going by blubbering about the ice cream cone he just dropped. Write, motherfucker! Write like you give a shit! Write without doubt, without fear, without lies — those, I assure you, will come in time.

You are good enough. Snap the neck of your self-doubt.

And write.

“Insert Penmonkey Deception Here”

What lies do you tell yourself? Why do you tell them, and how can you be rid of them?