Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

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Stuff About Writing

August 23, 2011 / 80 Comments

25 Things Writers Should Know About Social Media

1. The Devil’s Trident

Social media has three essential prongs of activity: broadcast, rebroadcast, conversation. This is true for everybody, not just writers, but it’s worth noting just the same. I say something or repeat something someone else said (broadcast/rebroadcast), and from that social seed-bed, conversation may arise.

2. Be The Best Version Of Yourself

Writers and other creative-types often seem to believe that they need to become someone different online, that they cannot be themselves lest they not find a publisher, not get work, not sell their book, not collect sexy groupies, etc. To that I say, bullshit! And cock-waffle! And piddling piss-wafers! Be yourself. That’s who we want. We just want the best version of you. Scrape the barnacles off. Sit up straight. Smile once in a while. But you can still be you. Uhh, unless “you” just so happen to be some kind of Nazi-sympathizing donkey-molester. In which case, please back slowly away from the social media.

3. Put “Brand” And “Platform” Out Of Your Fool Head

You are not a brand. Social media is not your platform. The world has enough brands. You are not a logo, a marketing agenda, a mouthpiece, a Spam-Bot. Approach social media not as a writer-specific tool (keyword: tool) catered only toward your penmonkey self and see it instead as a place where you can bring all the crazy and compelling facets of your personality to bear on an unsuspecting populace your audience. People want to follow other people. People don’t want to follow brands.

4. Communicate With Other Human Beings (And The Occasional Spam-Bot)

Put the “social” in “social media.” Social media needn’t be a one-way street. A real connection goes both ways. Talk to people. Chat. Converse. Discuss. Share ideas. Don’t be one of those writers who uses their social media channel as a bulletin board announcing naught but their next signing, book release, or $0.99 bowel movement. Don’t aim only to be heard but to open your ears, as well. (Oh, and I’m totally kidding about the Spam-Bots thing. Don’t talk to Spam-Bots. Eradicate them with extreme prejudice. Perform the “honey-pot” maneuver — draw them to you with keywords like “real estate” or “ipad” and then EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE with the vim and vigor of the Daleks.)

5. Guide Them Toward Your Sticky Embrace

Having a blog, website, or online space where you establish an authorial “base camp” is a great thing. It allows you to own your content, track stats, post long-form material, and be whatever it is you need it to be. I use this site for writing stuff, baby babble, recipes, and pagan Lithuanian pornography. Can’t see the porn? You haven’t unlocked the special content. Enter Konami code. Password is: “TheWhoreOfVilnius.”

6. Determine The Tools In Your Toolbox

Find different uses for different social media. Facebook is pretty light on writer-stuff for me. Google+ is good for longer-form discussions. Twitter is really where it’s at for me — it’s where I get the most conversation and connection. Then the blog is the central tentpole to the whole goddamn circus. Maybe you use Tumblr. Or some as-yet-unknown social network, like Wordhole or iPalaver or Friendhammer. Anything except LinkedIn. I mean, c’mon. LinkedIn is the scabby venereal disease of social media.

7. Breed Positivity And Share What You Love

Writers are content creators, and so it behooves us to share what we love. You’re generally better off showing positivity rather than sowing the seeds of negativity. For the most part, the Internet is a monster that thrives the rage of countless disaffected white people, so I don’t know that it does a writer good to be a part of that noise. Your audience cares more about what you’re into rather than what you’re not. After all, I don’t particularly care for a lot of things. Most things, really. If I spent all my time talking about them, I’d be little more than a septic social fountain spewing my bitter froth into the world.

8. Show The World You’re Not A Raging Bonerhead

The Internet is like hot dogs: it’s made of lips and assholes. A writer does well to set himself aside from all that and use social media to reveal that he is, indeed, not a giant bucket of non-contributing human syphilis

9. Kill Them With Kindness

Connection, not conflict. Communication, not combat. Don’t get into fights online. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re getting into an argument with a Nazi-sympathizing donkey-molester. Because, seriously? What an asshole. But nine times out of ten, getting into a snit-spat-tiff-miff-feud-fuss-or-fracas online doesn’t make you look like a shining prince of social media. It just makes you look cranky. Note the difference between “friendly, chummy disagreement” and “pissy Internet rumpus.” The former? Fine. The latter? Not so much.

10. Variety Is The Spice Melange Of Life

…and is essential to the creation of the sandworms, as well as the diet of the wandering Fremen. Wait, what? This isn’t Frank Herbert’s DUNE? Oh. Oh. Sorry! What I’m saying is, divvy your social media existence up. Don’t talk about any one thing. It may not be critical to chop everything up into neat percentages, but just vary the content of your broadcast. Ensure that you do more than share links. Contribute original thoughts. Add conversation. Say something. Just keep the commercials — i.e. self-promotion — to a necessary minimum.

11. Be An Escort, Not A Whore

Speaking of self-promo… the reality of the modern writer’s existence is that self-promotion is inescapable. Whether you’re published by the Big Six or published or by your buddy Steve out of his mother’s basement, you’re going to have to serve up some self-promo. Social media is your online channel for this. It has to be. And it isn’t a dirty word — if I follow a writer, I want to know that their new book is out because I may have missed that news. I just don’t want to hear it 72 times a day. And there’s the key to self-promotion — like with all things (sodomy, gin, reality TV), everything in moderation.

12. Just Say No To Quid Pro Quo

Controversial notion: do not re-share something purely as a favor to someone else. I know — it’s an easy favor to make. “You shared my link, now I share your link. In this way, we tickle each other’s pink parts.” The thing is, if one is to assume you are a writer to trust, then those who listen to your social media broadcasts want to know that the information you share is, in a way, pure. If they believe that the things you’re saying are motivated only by mutual social media masturbation, then you’ve gone and ruined that. Share things you think your audience wants to hear or things you believe are worth sharing. If all you’re doing is echoing links endlessly, what separates you from just another Spam-Bot?

13. You Don’t Build Audience, You Earn It

Lots of writers look at their follower tallies like they’re experience points in a role-playing game, like with every MilliWheaton earned you hear a “ding” and then gain +4 against 4chan or a new Save Versus PublishAmerica roll. Your audience isn’t just a number. It’s a whole bunch of actual human beings. Humans who don’t just want to be sold stuff or yelled at but who want to interact and be amused and enlightened — and who want to amuse and enlighten in turn. Earn your audience, don’t build it. They’re not dollar signs. They’re not credit you can spend buying vintage porn on eBay.

14. Followers Are Not Fans

It’s easy to believe that, pound for pound, those who follow you and read your broadcasts and interact with you online are automatically the same people who are going to buy your books, pimp your stuff, and become super-fans. Bzzt. Wrongo. A retweet or Facebook “like” or “Re-G” on Google+ (that’s what I’m calling the re-share feature over there) is free. The investment to procure your wordsmithy is a whole different level of commitment. That said, these people are all potential fans. It’s your job to make that happen.

15. As A Storytelling Medium

Use social media to tell stories. Real stories or fictional ones. Hey, if my three-month-old baby has an epic diaper-breach and manages to defy gravity and shit up his own back and into his hair, I’m gonna tell you about it. Talk about your life. Or use Twitter to write micro-fiction. Or empower your blog to experiment with telling old stories in new ways. Experiment! Do what you’re bred to do: write.

16. My God, It’s Full Of Words

Social media is, as noted, full of words. Words that must be written. You’re a writer, so tackle social media — from Tweets to Blog Posts to Friendhammer Epistles — with all the grace and aplomb you would give to any of your writing. In other words, let social media demonstrate your abilities as a writer. Use punctuation. Capitalize. Write well. Learn to engage in brief spaces. This will help you be a better writer.

17. The Self-Correcting Hive-Mind

Social media self-corrects. Many find this uncomfortable, but it’s an excellent memetic Darwinism. If I tweet about, say, my three-month-old’s poosplosion, inevitably I’m going to come across people who don’t want to hear about that. Eventually they may say, “This guy talks a lot about poop,” or “Boy, he sure says ‘fuck’ a lot,” and then they stop following me on Twitter or stop coming here to terribleminds. It’s regrettable, but that’s the nature of life. Social media is a frequency that people can tune into or turn away from. That’s normal. Let that happen. Don’t get mad at it. Embrace that kind of course-correction.

18. Dip Your Ladle Into The Brain Broth Of Social Media

Writers need to know things. So ask those in your social media world. Say, “I need a good book on wombat husbandry for a novel I’m writing,” or, “Can anyone recommend good writing music?” or, “If I were to write a stage play based on the Twitter stream of Kanye West, would anybody beta-read it for me?” Don’t be afraid to ask for things. And don’t be afraid to answer when others ask. Again: communicate.

19. The Water-Cooler For Writers

I believe it was game designer and writer Jeff Tidball who said he sees Twitter as a water-cooler for stay-at-home freelancers, and I think he nailed it. Writers don’t have the ability to hover around a water-cooler and talk to other writers most times, and so social media fills that function. It’s a great way to connect with other penmonkeys and creative-types and engage, interact and amuse. It’s important for writers to know other writers. It’s how we get book blurbs or find out what bottle of Bourbon we should try. Used to be you had to travel to conventions and conferences to do it. Now you can do it at home. Without pants.

20. Gaze Into The Whirring Gears Of Industry Machinery

You can use social media to do more than connect with writers. The entire industry is out there. So go and watch. And then partake. Follow agents. Ping publishers. You can watch trends unfold and see what agents are looking for (or what mistakes people are making in their queries). It’s a great place to interact with the industry as a person-who-is-a-writer, not merely a writer-shopping-a-product. Though, I must pass along a critical warning: gazing too long into the publishing industry is like dropping a fistful of acid and then staring into a backed-up toilet for days. You will starve and go mad.

21. Behold Zen Serendipity

Open yourself to the social media experience. Don’t be one of those walled-garden scrod-boats who follows like, 10 people but has 10,000 followers. Put your ear to the ground like Tonto. Listen to shit. Pay attention. Let the sweet serendipity and weird waves of connection wash over you. People are each their own little rabbit-hole: grab a thread and follow it down into the dark, and just as you might use Pandora to discover new music or Amazon to discover new books, use social media to discover new people. Without people and their thoughts and their stories, writers are just lonely weirdos screaming into an empty closet.

22. Appreciate Your Audience

Your audience follows you and rebroadcasts you and that’s a very nice thing. So appreciate them. Interact with them. Respond to them. I don’t mean to say, act as God from on-high acknowledging the little people — I mean, you’re them and they’re you and social media is a powerful equalizer. Appreciate that they take the time to listen to your nonsense day-in and day-out. That’s pretty cool of them, innit?

23. Crucify Gurus And Stab Them With Your Mighty Spears

Anybody who wants to charge you a bunch of money to “optimize” your “social media skills” is selling fool’s gold. This stuff isn’t hard. It ain’t fucking math. At its core, social media is really, “Talk to people, and try not to be a dick.” That’s true for writers as it is for everybody else.

24. Go Old-School

Every once in a while you need to unplug and embrace some old-school social media: go outside and talk to people. Go to a bar, a book signing, a game store, whatever. Engage with fleshy 3-D meatbags!

25. Remember That You Need To Escape Its Gravity

In the end, social media has uses for the writer. But it also runs the risk of becoming the Sarlacc Pit: a giant evil desert vagina that draws you in with its tentacle porn and slowly digests you over the course of many millennia, not allowing you to make any progress on that screenplay you’ve been writing for the last 16 years. Your priority is to write stories, not to fritter away hours on Facebook or dick around on Adult Slutfinder or pretend like LinkedIn is anything but a giant digital boat anchor. The most important thing a writer should know about social media is that it is not the crux of the penmonkey’s existence. What matters most of all is that you write great stories. So what are you doing hanging around here?

* * *

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

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

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

August 17, 2011 / 32 Comments

The Life Cycle Of A Novel

Were you to take a freeze frame snapshot of my current writerly existence, you would find a still image of much juggling. No, not bowling pins, chainsaws, and rat terriers but rather a flurry of writing projects — and, as it turns out, a goodly portion of those projects are in fact novels.

BLACKBIRDS is at the publisher. I just finished the first draft of something with a codename POPCORN. I’m in the midst of doing a final editing pass on DOUBLE DEAD. I’ve got word count down on MOCKINGBIRD. I’ve got a bucket of notes on a little something-something called THE BLUE BLAZES. I’ve got the first novella in my Atlanta Burns series done with the second in the conception phase.

All this fails to mention the dozen-plus novels existing across various outlines and synopses.

Fuck turtles.

It’s novels, all the way down.

And so I thought, for those of you looking to write novels, that this was a good place to pause and have a look around. Let us gander at the wondrous miracle that is the birth and life of the common novel.

1. Crash Of Cymbals

An idea falls from the sky. A burning nugget of possibility tumbling out of the bleak black nowhere like a meteor. It slams into your brain. “A goblin love story! Wacky hijinks with two space detectives! The presidential campaign and political ambitions of the common Corsican nuthatch!” The idea blooms swift, like a rose in super-fast-forward. “This will be my opus,” you think. “A big advance. Book awards. Respect.”

2. Sinister Plotting

You plot and scheme to whatever level grants you solace. Maybe you write a 400-page “story bible” for a 350-page novel, a treatment so thick you could bludgeon a Cape buffalo with its weight. Maybe you just write a single index card in thick black Sharpie featuring some cryptic phrase that only makes sense to you as the storyteller: “CHRISTMAS SKELETON FAILS THE LSAT.” Hell, maybe it’s all in your head.

3. The Cold Vacuum Of Space

The blank page. Tabula rasa. Endless possibility. A million-billion ways to jump with the first sentence, first paragraph, first page. A finger hovers over the keyboard; it swiftly retracts as if stung. No. Yes? No. It’s like standing on the wing of an airplane in mid-flight. The wind. The empty air.

4. Hyperventilating

Panic attack. “Oh, Christ, I can’t do this. What do I do? The first page has to grab them. It has to grab them by pubes and perineum. The first sentence alone has to fucking sing. I don’t know what to do. What to say. I can’t feel my legs. Am I dying? Is it hot in here? Cold? My lips are numb. I can feel my teeth. Is this a palsy? Did I have a stroke? OH GOD WHAT IF I FUCK THIS PAGE UP.” Cue lots of sobbing and twitching.

5. The Eagle Has Landed

Swift is the realization that the first page doesn’t have to be perfect; it merely has to be functional. And suddenly, it’s like uncorking a bottle. A bottle which contained a rambunctious demon. Time to write.

6. The Tango Of Mirth And Shame

Day by day, a roller coaster. A whirling dance. Some days it’s 4,000 words that unmoors from your heart and soul the way a glacial shelf will suddenly shudder, crack and fall. Other days you barely carve off 1,000 words, and each word feels like a tooth ripped from the jaws of a snarling poodle/alligator hybrid (new on SyFy, THE GATORDOODLE). Some days you’re high on your own stink, huffing your word-fumes in a brown paper bag. Other days all you get is a swirling hate vortex living in the space between your heart and your gut, threatening to eat both. On Tuesday you’re king of the castle. On Wednesday you’re a fraud and a fool who will be found out. This way, that way, this way, that way…

7. Lost In The Woods

Late middle of the book. Everything’s come undone. You feel unfettered. You’re a lone pair of underpants hanging on the line, flapping in the wind. Where to go next? Does any of this make sense? It’s all coming apart. You’ve no sense of things. No grasp of placement. The character seem like strangers. The plot seems foolish. You can’t find the thread, can’t see the throughline. Is this a swamp? Where are your pants?

8. The Nattering Of Goblins And Crows

A chorus of goblins and their crow-faced consorts stand just behind you, whispering new ideas in your ear. They smell your confusion. “Don’t write that,” they say. “Write this.” And they parade before you a cackling Conga line of shiny new novels. It’s a ruse. A trap. They’re the sirens drawing you away from your current work and toward the crushing rocks of ruined productivity.

9. Beethoven’s Ode To Joy

You see the light. You find the path. You karate-kick the sirens in the face, stab the goblins, shoo their crows — you’ve found your way. Possibility and potential once more reveal themselves. Churn forward.

10. The Water Breaks, The Baby Is Coming

Writing the ending is you, duct-taped to a mining cart as it speeds down through the underdark, faster, faster, you can’t stop it now if you wanted to, it is what it is, the ending shall be what the ending shall be, you’ve lined up all the dominoes, they fall as they must, the hand-brake is broken, you emerge. The ending is written. The manuscript broadcasts its inchoate existence to the world.

11. Bliss

Oh my God. It’s done. It’s done. Ha ha! Ha ha ha! HA HA HA HA HA! Eeeee! Woo!

12. Ennui

Oh my God. It’s… it’s not done. Is it? This was just the first lap. It’s all uphill from here. Oh. Oh, no.

13. Overwhelming Dread

The realization hits like a nail from a nail gun: you’ve got a lot more work to do. The boulder must be pushed up the rock again. And again. And again. Your book is a boat anchor whose chain is wrapped around your ankle. It weighs you down. It’s a brick. A bludgeoning brick. Bricks and boat anchors and boulders, oh my. Dread assails you. Fatigue nibbles at your marrow like an army of tiny chipmunks.

14. Exile

Fuck that novel, you say. You piss on it and shove it in a drawer. You can’t stand to look at it anymore lest you kneel and sing a technicolor hymn to the porcelain god. Fuck that novel right in its wordhole.

15. Wake Up In Tijuana And Realize It’s Time To Go Home

It’s been weeks. Maybe months. You’ve been whoring it up with short stories, blog posts, social media, Facebook games, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, a fifth of vodka, and a drilldo named “Mister Sprinkles.” You stumble back into the house, and there it is. It’s escaped the drawer. The pee stains have dried to a crisp sepia crinkle. You pick it up. You reconcile. Your exile is complete.

16. Second Draft

You’ve got a meat cleaver, a micro-torch, and a jar full of maggots hungry to eat dead flesh. The second draft commences. Repeat after me: to fix something, I must first break it.

17. Third Draft

The third draft is there to fix the mistakes of the second. The second draft went the wrong way. Somehow the second draft just fucked things up worse. You walked the maze again and this time the minotaur didn’t just eat you, he sat you down for a long talk about a time-share. Then he made you do his taxes. Then he made love to you. Then he killed you. The third draft now has to walk the maze again. Beware of minotaurs.

18. Seventh-Fifth Draft

OH MY GOD SO MANY DRAFTS. You didn’t know writing a novel might need this much tweaking. What the novel is now looks nothing like what the novel was then. Same characters, same idea, same story. Roughly. But so much else is different. Every pass a new tweak. Writing, plot, theme, plot, new character, plot, writing. Dizzy-making. Still. By the end, you stand atop the hill next to the boulder. You suddenly realize: it didn’t roll down this time. You made it to the top. You and your boulder friend. From Sisyphean to Herculean. From impossible to improbable. From victim to hero. Holy fucking shit.

19. The Reader’s Report

Don’t get too excited. The reader has to weigh in. Maybe more than one reader. Stuff you were sure worked didn’t. Stuff you were sure didn’t work did. Up is down. Cat is dog. CRAP MORE DRAFTS.

20. The Editor’s Cocked Eyebrow

Don’t put that rage boner back in your pants. Because now a proper editor is going to look at it. Someone with a real critical eye. Someone who knows things the readers don’t. Someone who’s done this before. This is the forensics pass. Where the editors shines a UV light over the whole of the manuscript and shows you all the hidden blood spots, jizz drops, and other uninvited fluids.

21. Draft #3000

You’ve run the gauntlet. You’ve carried the novel through a hundred doorways ringed with fire. The work has been forged and reforged. Purified and refined. It is as good as you can make it. It is time.

22. The Novel Goes Off To War

Go forth, little novel. Duct taped to the novel are all your hopes and dreams. The novel flies far and wide. Agents big and small. Publishers big and small. Or maybe you do it yourself — get the cover together, format the book, and send the book to one of the many e-book marketplaces. The book must dance for its dinner, sing for its supper, suck dick for its dessert.

23. The Passing Of One Geologic Epoch

Nothing moves fast. Takes forever to hear back from an agent, then hear back from a publisher. These are books. Not Chicken McNuggets. It takes time to write them, and it also takes time to digest them. Even putting the book “out there” yourself isn’t fast. And the response isn’t overnight. Everything is slow. It is the forming of stalagmites and stalactites — one mineral drip at a time. A game of inches.

24. Conquest Or Castigation

YAY! You got published! Or BOO, you didn’t. Or maybe you got published and didn’t sell. Or maybe you got an agent but no publication. Or maybe you’re a bestselling author with a Rolls Royce literally cobbled together from rare first edition novels. You came and conquered, or you arrived and were promptly crushed by Hannibal’s elephants. Or you fell somewhere in the middle, in the hoary zone of the midlist. Or maybe you’re almost there, if only you’ll do three or four (thousand) more drafts…

25. Reflection

You look back over the last seventeen years — the length of time it took to get all this done — and ask yourself, was it worth it? Was it really truly worth it? Will you ever do this again? You can think you won’t. But you will. Of course you will. This is who you are. This is what you do. You couldn’t stop if you wanted to. You are writer. So get back to work, will you? This life cycle won’t live itself.

* * *

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

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

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

August 16, 2011 / 55 Comments

The Secret Menu Of Writing Advice

I love that restaurants have secret menus. Go to In N’ Out burger and order an “Animal Style,” you get a mustard-slathered patty with grilled onions, sauce, extra pickles, and cheese all globbed onto the patty. Feel free to order the Red Eye, Black Eye, or Green Eye at any Starbucks. If you go to Burger King and ask for the “Suicide Burger,” they will deep fry a patty made from the ground up meat of a euthanized hobo.

That last one might be wrong.

Point is, I think it’s a fascinating snidbit, that restaurants have these secret menus for those “in-the-know.”

So, let’s pretend that here at terribleminds you will find a secret menu of writing advice.

You may be saying, “Well, what the fuck does that mean?”

And I’d say to you, “Don’t say ‘fuck.’ We don’t talk like that around here.” And then we’d all have a good laugh and yell “Shitcake fucksplosion!” right before we freeze-frame high-five.

What it means is, I’m going to give you the real honest-to-Jeebus writing advice, slid to you across the table in a non-descript brown envelope. Like, if you take all the other bullshit I say on this site, duct-tape it to a goat and then push that goat off a cliff, you could still get by on the things I’m about to tell you.

Here, then, is the secret menu. Please enjoy your order. Drive around.

Write Big And Write Bold Or Go The Fuck Home

We get one go-around on this here carousel. Then we’re dead. Maybe we reincarnate. Maybe we float around the clouds with wings on our backs. Maybe we’re just meals for maggots. But we still get one life.

And that life is too short not to take risks and long to live with an output of weak-kneed, limp-noodled, utterly derivative, safe-as-houses storytelling.

Write what you want to write. Write what you need to write. Write what engages you, what interests you, what gets your blood pumping and your jaw tight. Because what else are you going to do? Play it safe? Write what everybody else is writing just because everybody else is writing it? What’s the point? Why bring nothing new to the table? Why fail to bring yourself and your passions to the page?

Write urban fantasy because you want to write it. You want to write astronaut porn? Suburban murder mysteries? Arthouse tales of North Korean sexual repression? Fuck it. Buckle up, and write it.

No, you may not find a market. No, that book, script, show or game may not be selling right now, and it may not sell ever. I didn’t say this was good publishing advice. But it is good writing advice. Because if you write big and write bold and write the things you want to write, you’re going to produce stronger material than if you wrote somebody else’s story in somebody else’s voice. Trust in your instinct.

(And here’s the other thing — no, a publisher or agent may not want Thing Thing You Just Wrote, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t find the story’s niche — and your own audience. Times, they are a-changing.)

Bleed From A Place Of Honesty

Cut your heart out of your chest, clutch it in your fist, and slam it down onto the paper. That is the real meaning of write what you know, which is probably better written as, write with total fucking honesty.

Take all that shit that lurks inside you, all your fears and wants and experiences, all your neuroses and psychoses and loves and loathings, all your hopes and dreams and memories, and inject ’em into your work.

For fuck’s sake, say something with your fiction. Your father hit you? Spend a year homeless? Can’t get it up in bed? You’d kill a man just to walk on the beach? Use it. Use it! You have this monster-sized equation inside you, like something from one of those movie scenes where a lunatic mathematician scrawls out a nutso whiteboard full of numbers and symbols. Every part of this equation is just one more piece of you that builds up to this moment, this “you” that exists.

Bring that into your work. Feel something when you write. Find the bridge between you, the characters, and the story. Bleed on that page in a way that makes you vulnerable. I don’t care if you’re writing about vampires or space hookers or frustrated housewives, put yourself in there. I don’t mean, “be the character,” I mean, dissect all of who you are, and ejaculate your DNA into every cell of that story.

Always be telling your story, even when it’s not your story.

You’ll be amazed at how clarifying that can be.

Character Is Everything

Audiences care about characters more than anything else. I don’t have any math to prove this, I don’t have any facts or data and like most things, I’m just making it up. But I believe it to be true just the same.

Character matters more than anything else. We will follow a good strong character through all their torments and trials and triumphs just to stay with them for another five minutes, five pages, five comic panels. The plot can suck corpse-teat, the theme might be muddier than waters stirred up by a catfish orgy, but if you give us a kick-ass character, you might still find us hanging on.

A great character is transcendent. A powerful vehicle through a story. In fact, a story is really just that — the experiences of a character through a given narrative. That’s a wonderful thing. Simple and elegant.

Concentrate all your firepower on writing a great character. Not necessarily a likable character, either. Worry instead about giving us a character who draws our gaze and demands our undivided attention.

Give us a character we will live with and will die without.

ABC: Always Be Calibratin’

Never stop getting better. It’s as simple as that. Know who you are as a writer, and always find ways to recalibrate and improve your work. Every day is a brand new chance to kick a little more ass.

Writing Is A Conversation We Need To Have

I’ve long said that you need to write to be read, while others have said you should write for yourself. The truth here lives where it nearly always lives — somewhere smack in the middle.

Otherwise, therein lurks a false dichotomy. Because guess what? You can — and should — do both. Of course you should write for yourself. That’s what most of this post is about, frankly — it’s about putting yourself out there, about tailoring your work to your tastes, and about loving what you do.

But you also need to write for an audience. You should write to be read! Why? Well, what the fuck is writing for? Writing is a form of communication. It is, in a way, a conversation — and an important one — between storyteller and storytold. It’s not masturbation. Writing demands the ego to say, “The story I want to tell is an important one.” And you spend the time and the effort to put it out there. Why? To what end?

That old doofy koan of “If a tree falls in a forest and blah blah blah *poop noise*” could just as easily be written as, “If a storyteller tells a story and nobody’s around to hear it, who gives a shit?”

Storytelling is communication, conversation, and contract. It is between creator and audience, and then after the story is told, between the audience and the audience. That’s a powerful thing.

When Something Isn’t Working, Do Something Different

One suspects that is fairly self-explanatory. Outlining fails to produce a finished draft? Fuck the outline. Current writing schedule manufactures only drivel? Write according to a new timetable. Only the most insane people keep trying the same thing when it produces a poor result, and yet that’s so often what writers do. When one tool fails you, pick up a different tool. That hammer won’t cut that board. That chainsaw won’t cure Polio. If the road is closed, build a new road.

Let The Love Of Your Work Be Your Primary Reward

Put differently, love your work, don’t work to be loved.

I don’t care what you’re writing — a novel series, a film script, a freelance RPG, a television show, a web-comic — you damn well better love what you do. Because otherwise? You’ll fail. Maybe you won’t make the words happen. Or maybe they’ll happen, but they won’t dance. The satisfaction of the work, the love of the craft, the power of the art, has to sustain you.

Because little else will. Not the money (haha), not the respect (HAHA), not the health care (HAHAHAHA snort *vomit*). It’s gotta be you out there doing this thing that you do because you love it, because you can see yourself doing nothing else, because this is who you are and who you shall be. If you hold any illusions or fears that This Is Not You, get out of the game. It’s just not worth it.

If the love isn’t there, then you shouldn’t be, either.

* * *

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

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

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

August 15, 2011 / 60 Comments

Penmonkeys, Promos, And Updates, Oh My

*tap tap tap*

Is this thing on?

From today (Monday) to one week from today (next Monday, Aug 22nd), if you buy a copy of CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY, I will comp you a PDF copy of 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING. If you buy the PDF of COAFPM, I’ll just send you a copy of the other e-book automagically. If you buy COAFPM via Kindle or Nook, you will need to email me at terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com with proof-of-purchase. Easy-peasy boop-und-squeezy.

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock and avoiding my irritating broadcasts, COAFPM is a mega-ultra-head-crushing tome of writing advice. By yours truly. (But I assume you knew that much.)

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

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

Now, if you want updates as to what I’m working on? Or where you can find me?

Let’s see…

I’ve got a new White Wolf project in the works that I’m developing — a little something-something called A House Divided. I’m also on as writer for another WW project down the road, as-yet-unmentioned.

I’m hammering out MOCKINGBIRD, the sequel to BLACKBIRDS.

I just finished the second (and presumably final) edit on DOUBLE DEAD.

The first Atlanta Burns novella — SHOTGUN GRAVY — is cooling its heels while I plan the second and third novellas. Then I intend to release them one after the other, a month or so apart.

The film continues baking. Zeroing in on casting. Saw some cool new storyboards for the piece.

Got a second film moving into treatment phase this week.

The TV show remains defunct.

I’ve got a short story — one of my favorites I’ve ever written, thanks to some direction from editor Robin Laws — in a collection called THE NEW HERO (vol 1). Just saw the cover from Gene Ha, and wow.

Have various other novels in various other stages of possibility.

Contemplating various things:

a) Starting work on a comic project

b) A Kickstarter project for an anthology of really cool writers doing really cool things.

c) Seeing if I can scare up some video game work.

d) Seeing if I can’t scare up some new transmedia work.

(Which reminds me: as always, if you have work for me, I remain eager and available.)

Now, your turn.

Throw out some updates. How’re you doing? Whatchoo working on? Share with the world.

I wanna be excited about your stuff.

August 11, 2011 / 13 Comments

“New Ideas Are Like Shiny Jewels,” by Dave White

Oh, sure, everyone wants to know where a writer gets his ideas from. Ideas are great. They must come from this magical little place inside your head. Or a box. A box you keep under your desk. No one else gets ideas like this. Writers must love getting ideas.

Wrong.

Guess what?

Ideas are both the best and worst thing about writing. They can be fantastic when you’re stuck. And they can be hell when you’re busy.

Case in point, I’m flush with ideas right now. I’m a teacher, so I get a lot of my writing done in the summer. This summer, with no strict deadline intact, I decided I’d try something different. Knowing that I have writer’s ADD (Ooh look a flashy thing.  Hey, wait! What’s up on Twitter?) and can only work on one project at a time for about 2 hours, I thought that I would revise the manuscript I’m working on in the morning. In the afternoon, I’d start a brand new manuscript. I have strong ideas for what needs to happen to both, and it seemed like a good way to keep myself writing every single day. And it’s been working great so far. I’m making major progress on the revision and I’m getting 1,000 words down consistently on the new piece of work.

This is great, I thought.  I’m on a fucking roll.  By the time school starts, I’ll have enough done that I can wrap up my revisions first and the move right into the next project, which will be at least a quarter of the way done—first draftwise. I was loving this. Feeling really, really productive. Feeling like a writer.

Then something weird happened last night. No, not that kind of weird. Get your mind out of the gutter. Just… weird. Writer weird. I don’t have enough time for all of this stuff in my head weird.

Shut up.

Anyway, I was sitting around thinking about my favorite TV shows and movies and the way the best shows, movies, and books twist your expectations. They come up with a great hook and get you to speculate about what’s going to happen for the better part of your watching or reading experience. They get you excited about what happens next right from the start. And I was wondering how I could do that with my own books. Especially the ones I was working on.

And then…. Oh crap… I had a brand new, fucked up, great freaking idea for a new book.

This is the sort of thing that halts writers in their tracks. New ideas are like shiny jewels in a display case. They always look better than what you have. Their perfect, something that’s going to sell a million copies, win you awards and get made into movies. They want you to look at the piece of crap your working on (And it’s usually only a piece of crap because you’re in the process of making it a lot better.) and toss it out the window and start anew.

That’s not a good thing. (Yes, I can hear you. “Oooh, the big writer man is scared of shiny new ideas.” Just keep reading.)

If you stop to work on your brand new idea, you’ll never get anything done. You’ll never finish a manuscript because you’ll be starting all over. A writer has to know what to do with a new idea when he or she’s working on something already.

There are two things I usually do. (Hey, what’s new on Twitter? Wendig is shouting again… sigh.) One is put the idea away and save it for later. I have about three good ideas to start novels and one really good idea for a short story put off the to the side waiting for me to write them. I might get to all four, I might only get to one of them. I don’t know.

But they’re sitting around waiting for me. If you write ‘em down, you won’t lose the ideas, and—even better—the ideas may have a chance to mutate in your mind and become something even more solid.

The other thing I try to do is incorporate said new idea into what I’m working on. It’s happened about 16 times in the manuscript I’m revising. It’s as if my subconscious knows the book needs something and keeps trying to add to it. Your subconscious knows why it’s coming up with these ideas and where they belong. It’s up to you, the conscious writer, to figure it out. (Yes, writing isn’t magic. I know. I was sad too when I heard this.)

But the most important thing is, don’t let it slow you down (Hold on, Twitter check again). If you want to be a professional writer or a published writer or whatever the proper term is these days, you have to finish. So, occasionally you have to put an idea away for later.

No matter how shiny that jewel is behind the case. No matter how green the grass is on your neighbor’s lawn. I like my neighbor’s lawn too, but if I had it, I’d still have to mow it. (I think that metaphor works. Or am I mixing metaphors. STOP CHECKING TWITTER!)

I digress.

Anyway, I guarantee you this, once you buy that jewel and start to wear it, a new prettier one will show up right behind it, and you’ll want to wear that one as well.

Dave White is the author of the e-book exclusive WITNESS TO DEATH (criminally underpriced at $0.99, says Chuck, so go buy it), as well as the Shamus Award nominated novels WHEN ONE MAN DIES and THE EVIL THAT MEN DO.  He lives and teaches in New Jersey.

August 10, 2011 / 167 Comments

What It’s Like Being A Writer

Okay, you know how Muggles don’t get what it’s like being a wizard? And how crazy people don’t know what it’s like being sane and sane people don’t know what it’s like being crazy?

Those who are not writers do not know what it’s like to be a writer. Ask someone who is not infected with the Authorial Virus (Types A through G) what a writer does and you’ll probably get a blank stare. Then that person will noodle it and shrug and say, “He sits up there in his room with his My Little Ponies, pooping fairy tales out of his fingertips for ten minutes. Then he masturbates and talks to people on Twitter.”

Masturbate? Well, fine. Everybody’s got a lunch hour, and it doesn’t take me 60 minutes to eat a damn sandwich. Nothing wrong with exploring my own body with various textures and food products. As for Twitter? Hey, you go and mill around the water cooler like a bunch of thirsty water bison, and I go and mill around Twitter like a digital version of the same.

But I do not defecate fairy tales out of my fingertips. If only the act of writing was quite so simple as all that.

(And, by the way, leave my ponies out of it. They didn’t do anything to you.)

Point being, it’s time to take this big callused toe of mine and drag it across the sand. There, then, is the line. On this side is me, the penmonkey. On that side is you, the… I dunno. Pen-muggle. Shut up.

What I’m trying to say is, this is what it means to be a writer. Got people in your life who just don’t grok the trials and tribulations of the everyday word-chucker? Show them this.

I Swear On The Life Of Word Jesus, It’s Actually Work

This one sucks because you know what? I get it. I’ve tried explaining to people what I do, and at no point does it sound like work. “Uhh, well, I wake up at 6AM and I get my coffee and then I get in front of the computer and I… make stuff up… and then I try to convince people to buy the things I just… made up.” It sounds like the world’s biggest scam and explains why so many people want to be writers.

I might as well have said, “I sit out in a sunlit meadow and play Candyland with a bunch of puppies.”

Let’s just clear this one up right now:

Writing is work. It’s not back-breaking labor, no — though, by now I probably do have scoliosis (and a Deep-Vein Thrombosis whose clot-bullet will probably detonate in my brain) — but it is mind-breaking just the same. I can sit here for hours metaphorically head-butting the computer monitor until this story — or article, or blog-post, or sex-toy instruction manual — bleeds out across the screen. And then I have to keep fucking with it, keep hacking it apart and juicing my skull-meats until it all makes sense. Everything else is emails and spreadsheets and outlines and porn and shame and homelessness.

Am I doing work on par with fire fighters or soldiers? Fuuuuu-huuuu-huuuck no. But neither are you, Mister Cubicle Monkey. Or you, Target clerk. So. You know. Hush up.

All I’m saying is, no, I don’t need a “real job” because I already have one.

I Promise You, We’re Actually Accomplishing Something

Someone might ask, “Oh, what do you write?”

So, you tell them.

“Can I read it somewhere?”

You tell them, no, you can’t. It hasn’t sold yet. Or it’s in production. Or it’s headed toward publication. Or you have an agent but no publication. Or it’ll post to the web in three months. Or it’ll hit shelves in a year.

Or, or, or.

And then you get that look. The nod. The polite smile.

What they’re saying is:

“You go up into your room, you hide yourself away for hours every day, hunkering down over your computer until your spine crackles and your fingers buckle from carpal tunnel, and you stare at that screen and write word after word after word, and you have… nothing to show for it? Nothing at all?”

Well. Uhh. Sorta.

Just the same, it makes us want to kick you in the snack drawer.

The Two Reactions

I tell someone I’m a writer, I get one of the following two reactions. Ready? Here goes.

Number One: “Oh. A writer. Uh-huh. Well, that’s great.” They blink and offer a kind of dismissive or incredulous smile, as if I just told them I was a cowboy or a space marine. Occasionally there exists a follow-up question. “So, you write, like, what? Books?” And that word — books — is enunciated as if it’s a mythical creature, like they’re asking me if I spend all day tracking Bigfoot by his scat patterns. Another follow-up question is, “Like Stephen King?” (Or, insert some other famous writer — possibly the only writer this person has ever heard of.) Yes. Just like Stephen King. I write horror novels about Maine and sometimes stop to roll around in big piles of cash.

Subtext to this is: That’s precious. A writer! Adorable. So, what’s your real job, again? Some thick-headed dick-mops actually possess enough gall to ask that question. “Yeah, but what do you do for money?”

Number Two: “OH NO WAY A WRITER?” Their eyes light up. Their mouth slackens. They act like they’re encountering… I dunno, a celebrity, or someone who broke through the fence and now runs free with the other ponies. “It must be so great,” they might say, as if it’s really awesome not being sure where your money will come from next or how you’re going to pay for that appendectomy you’ve technically needed for the last four years.

That one has some follow-ups, too. First, again, “Oh, like Stephen King?”

Second is, “OMG I’M A WRITER TOO.” They almost never are. My neighbor hit me with that one when we lived at our last house. Regaling me of tales of her One Novel that she never actually finished because She Has To Wait For Just The Right Mood. “My kids always know when inspiration has struck because I have to pull over to the side of the road and get in the zone and just start writing.” Yeah, because that’s how it works. I pay my mortgage with one unfinished novel. Turns out, you can bank inspiration and collect interest. That’s how I’m going to pay for my appendectomy! With the sweet wampum of inspirado.

Do any other careers earn this reaction? “OMG I’M AN ACCOUNTANT TOO. I sit at home and budget out how much money I have for weed and Doritos. And when inspiration strikes, I balance my checkbook.”

“OMG I’M A CHEF TOO, I just microwaved a can of Beefaroni.”

“OMG I’M AN ASTRONAUT TOO I totally just climbed a tree and looked at the moon.”

Don’t get me wrong, I like the second reaction over the first, but both are dismissive and misinformed.

Know this, non-writers: no, we’re not special, but we’re also not big dough-brained children, either. Put us somewhere in the middle between “jobless trilobite” and “second coming of Stephen King.”

We Try Very Hard To Be Normal

When writers dwell in their element — usually meaning with other writers or other creative-types — you can sense it. The freak flag flies up the pole. The whiskey comes out. The inappropriate jokes fly.

We laugh. We cry. We commiserate.

But when we’re amongst the, ehhh, ahem, pen-muggles, sometimes it feels like walking on unsteady ground. Like we’re going to be found out. Like eventually they’re going to snap their fingers and say, “Ahh, right, right. You just sit around in your underwear and tell stories to yourself, don’t you? I get it now.” Because that’s the vibe you get from some people. From family, from acquaintances, from those nearby.

“A writer lives there,” they may say in hushed whisper.

I’ve had this with other neighbors. You meet them for the first time, they say, “Oh, I sell cars, what do you do?” And you tell them. And the inevitable question is, “Oh, what do you write?” And the answer is, well, uhh, I write about vampires and zombies and goblins and psychic girls and corn-punks and monkey sex and I have a blog where I curse a lot and I also write games and books and…

By that point, they’re probably pulling their children closer. Hugging them to their hip. Just in case I decide to go all vampire-zombie-goblin on them. Just in case I’m some kind of serial killer.

And I want to say I’m not, but it’d be a half-hearted denial. After all, in my mind and on the page I’m constantly thinking of ways to torment and eventually execute characters. Which leads to…

Weird Shit Goes Through Our Head In A Swiftly-Moving, Never-Stopping Stream

I am ever lost in the fog of my own imagination. I don’t mean to suggest that this is what it takes to be a writer — after all, that fog of imagination is about as tangible and real as a pegasus fart. Just the same, I remain lost there for six minutes out of every ten, the grinder constantly turning, the gear-teeth chewing my mind-meat into usable ground brain-beef.

I need you to know that, non-writer, so when you ask me a question — “Would you like fries with that? Do you want us to change your brake pads? Did you take out the trash? Did you realize that the house is presently on fire?” — it explains the unfocused gaze, the faint moving of the lips where no sound comes out, the chewing of the inner cheek. It’s not just me being an idiot. I’m merely thinking of how to properly execute an invasion of New York City from the Hollow Earth, or trying to imagine the best way for a character to escape an undying serial killer, or pondering what happens when true love turns to bitter rage on a distant Saturnian mining colony.

It’s why my response to your question is usually a mumbled, “Wuzza?”

This is why writers must try very hard to live strong external lives.

Otherwise, we’d turtle inward, living only the myriad lives inside our own heads.

Here, Then, Is Your Soapbox

Sound off, authorial types. Let’s say you’re talking to a non-writer. What do you want them to know about being you? About being a writer with all your crazy writer ways? Scream it so the cheap seats can hear.

* * *

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

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

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

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