Tag: writing (page 25 of 33)

This past week, I caught an article that ping-ponged around the Intersphere where author Jody Hedlund explains — nicely and wisely — ten ways to support authors you love.

It’s a great post. Hedlund lists a lot of strong ways that speak toward what I was saying a few weeks back (“The Care And Feeding Of Your Favorite Authors“). Even still, I thought, “Surely that can’t be it, right? Readers and fans don’t need to stop there. Writers are needy little sumbitches. Yes, good, leave a review. Sure, okay, get the local library to stock the book. All great ideas. But the author is a fragile orchid under glass. The author needs special attention.”

And so, I thought, let’s add some options to that list.

Thus I give unto you:

Ten more ways to support the authors you love.

Beginning now.

1. Backrubs And Sponge Baths

Writers have all the posture of Gollum after a tequila bender. We’re basically cave crickets. Blind. Pale. Bent over. Covered in the excrement of the bats that dangle above us. This is not conducive to producing good writing. Science Fact: ideas start in the brain, then travel down the spine (via Monorail, like at Disney World) and are then carried out to our dominant arm and hand where we take the idea and write it down. This is science. This is medical truth. If we’re all hunched over like some kind of Scoliosis Monster (one of Jim Henson’s less-popular Muppets), then the Monorail crashes. The idea is left bleating like a lost llama, unable to reach our hand.

We need backrubs, people. Shoulders. Neck. Deep-tissue. Hot rocks. Happy endings. And a sponge bath wouldn’t hurt, either. Someone needs to wash the Dorito powder out of our hair. It’s not a good look.

If you don’t want to be the giver of the massage, no worries. Hook us up with a gift certificate to the nearest shady Asian Massage Parlor. I’m sure Groupon has a deal going.

2. Lay Gifts At Our Feet

Have you ever met a writer? Sure you have. They’re the guys sitting in subways ranting at you about “reptile overlords” and trying to get you to drop some change in their quivering palms. We’re not wealthy people. The latest average advance on a novel is $17 and a pack of Virginia Slims cigarettes.

We need your support. So buy us stuff, for Chrissakes. Shower us with presents.

A nice casserole, maybe? (We’re surely hungry.) Some warm socks so our toes don’t freeze (and get eaten by rats)? Printer ink? (We like to huff it.) New MacBook? (Cult of Apple!) A pony? (Like I said: hungry.)

3. Build A Fan Page

Authors like to know they have fans out there — not just readers, but full-on fanatics who tilt their ears so that they may hear our every brilliant whisper. Build us a fan page to show your love and, more importantly, ceaseless devotion. I’m not just talking about, say, a page on Facebook. That’s nice and all, but c’mon, really? That’s amateur karaoke right there. No, we’d like something… bigger. Buy a web address. Get a host. Put up a whole sycophantic Tiger Beat spread of us online. Pay the hosting fees. Hire a web designer. And for Sid and Marty Krofft’s sake, get some Flash animation up in that bizzotch.

Flash animation is all the rage. It’s like, boom, intro cartoon. Violins. A phat breakbeat. A chorus of angel MCs slinging a rap about how awesome we are. The sun rises. Becomes our head. Our mouth opens. Rays of word power shine out. Destroy the world. Then we eat the stars. Finally, the whole thing morphs into an advertisement announcing our latest book, movie, blog post, pamphlet, or tweet.

4. Take Over Bookstore Displays

You go into… well, I was going to say Borders, but you go into a Borders you’ll be attacked by troglodytes and killed for your meat. Those are dead zones, now. Let’s go with Barnes & Noble. You go into a B&N and there, all around you, are book displays offering the hottest new releases of the world’s most mediocre authors. Dan Brown’s The Giuseppe Conundrum. Nicholas Sparks’ Song In A Bottle To Remember. Snooki’s Hot Homunculus Nights. The book displays are like idols built for blind, idiot gods.

Those authors don’t need book displays, though. When Mitch Albom releases The Five People You Pee On In Hell, people know it’s out. They’re coming there to buy it. They don’t need a special display.

You know who needs those displays? Your favorite mid-list authors, that’s who. Go to the store. When nobody’s looking, clear out the latest “someone-who’s-not-Tom-Clancy-wrote-a-book-with-Tom-Clancy’s-name-on-it” book. Hide them in the self-help section. Then take your favorite author’s books and re-fill the display. With some markers, duct tape and construction paper you can complete the advertisement.

Your favored author will thank you.

5. Become An Enabler

Writers need writer juice. If it’s before 9am, we need coffee. If it’s after 9am, we need liquor. If it’s after 9pm, we need pulverized Ambien stirred around a glass of lemonade (aka “Daddy’s Special Tonic”).

So for the sake of bibliophiles everywhere, buy us a cup of coffee. Get us a drink. Slide us a kilo of snow-white Columbian nose candy. Procure for us a phial of rare dodo’s blood.

Enable us. Only then can we write the words you want us to write.

And when that goes awry…

6. Now You’re An Addiction Counselor

When you find us slumbering in a sleeping bag filled with our own vomit, it might be time to get us off the “stuff.” We might need someone to sit with us as we detox. We’re definitely going to need someone to empty the bucket. It won’t empty itself. (Well, it might, like if our leg spasms and we kick it over.) Who else is going to help us navigate the ever-trembling line between hallucination and reality? Who will scrape the milky remnants of our dodo’s blood high as it exudes from our pores?

Oh, and when we get back on our feet, all cleaned up and loving Jesus, you’re going to need to buy our lame duck never-as-good-as-it-used-to-be-when-we-were-tripping-balls-on-dodo-blood books.

7. Be Like Annie Wilkes

We should be writing.

We’re probably not writing.

Whatever we’re doing, it’s the wrong thing. You know how George R.R. Martin’s not our bitch? Well, maybe he could use to be somebody’s bitch is all I’m saying. Authors need motivation.

And that’s where you come in. Ever read Stephen King’s Misery? Then you’ve got the right idea. Call us a dirty birdy. Cut off our thumb, pop it on a cake. Chop off a foot and hobble us like an escaped miner.

8. Get Your Wallets Out

I heard an apocryphal bit of data that suggests authors rarely sell a thousand copies of each book. You sell a thousand, that’s a good sign. So, help an author out, and buy a thousand copies. Be a pal.

If our book is, mm, say, ten bucks, then it’s no thing for you to buy a thousand copies, right? What, you don’t have a spare ten thousand clams hanging around? Were you gonna buy a boat or something? Ohh, must be nice. Mister Boat-Buyer over here doesn’t want to support literacy. You’re out there on the frothy churn-capped tides, guzzling Pernod Fils and getting sexual favors from mermaids. Meanwhile, we’re eating Chef Boyaredee out of a can.

A can that will soon become our only toilet.

Way to go. Way to destroy an author’s dreams just because you won’t shell out ten grand. WHATEVS.

9. The Cult Of Personality

It’s one thing to toss us a kind word. Maybe say something nice about our books. Our hair. Our creamy, majestic thighs. It’s another thing entirely to recruit cult members to live in a compound in the woods, a “church” where you worship the center of your religion: us. That’s right. Time to get serious. You want to do something really special for your favorite author? Two words: Jones. Town. That ended well, right? I’ll admit I kind of faded out by the end of that story, but I’m sure it involved them all sipping Kool-Aid in the jungle and singing campfire songs. So nice!

Point is, we need your love. We need your adoration. We need you to build hollow wooden effigies of us, trap our enemies inside, and burn the whole thing on a sacrificial pyre.

Don’t be afraid to get inventive. Pyramid schemes. Mind-control drugs. Book clubs.

10. Pre-Order The Book

Okay, fine, fine, here’s a real one that Hedlund didn’t cover: pre-order the author’s books (says the author with a book on pre-order). I’ll just be lazy and repeat what I wrote last month:

“Why pre-order, you might be asking? Pre-ordering is good for the publisher and great for the writer. The publisher gets an idea of preliminary demand and can produce accordingly. The writer also gets a boost — your pre-orders send a signal to the publisher that, hey, this writer is worth holding on to. So, we author-types appreciate your commitment.”

And there you have it.

Ten more ways to rain adoration and adulation upon your favorite authors.

If you have more ideas, toss ’em into the comments.

It is the question that plagues us: “Where do you get your ideas?”

What a strange, stupid question. Isn’t it? The very query seems to suggest that we receive all our ideas from some external source. People ask you that question, you just want to reply, “Uh, I don’t know, my fucking brain? Where did you ‘get’ that dipshit question?” Then you want to kick them in the colon and shove them down an escalator. Well. Maybe that’s just me.

Still, most of the time, we’re polite, and we stammer through some made-up answer that still lends writing the veneer of magic others feel it deserves. You may find yourself at times stymied on how to approach this question and offer an answer that satisfies the interrogator, and so here, today, I intend to do you a service. I have listed a handful of answers to this question that you may borrow and utilize in your own daily life. Hell, use them in interviews. You have my permission. (Or, add your own in the comments!)

So, here goes. Where do writers get their ideas? Select your favorites. Trade them with friends.

Shady Men In Trenchcoats

“I got a guy. What? You don’t have a guy? You need a guy. An idea guy. Here, you can use my guy. He roams, this guy, roves all over the city, but you’ll find him. You call this number. Sounds like a Korean laundry service. Tell him what you’re looking for on the answering machine. Then you’ll get a call back, and he’ll tell you where to meet him. The pier. The warehouse. The gator farm. The dildo shop. I gotta warn you, though: this guy, the idea guy? He’s not cheap. I mean, you can get the shitty leads for just pennies. He’ll sell you Rio Rancho for a quarter. But if you want the premium leads? The real ideas? You want the Glengarry ideas? Well. Then it’s fuck or walk, am I right?”

Navel-Gazing

“I get my ideas from –”

*showcasing hands orbit your belly button like you’re Vanna White profiling a shiny toaster*

“That’s right. I get them from my belly button. The omphalos, friend. You think they come from up here –” *taps temple* “– but it comes from down here.” *pops thumb into belly button, swirls it around* “All day long, man, it’s like, it’s like ideas just stick to you. They’re coming at you from all directions. Like pollen on the wind. And eventually, they work their way into your belly button and collect there. The flotsam and jetsam of good stories. Stick your finger in. Scoop out an idea. Here, I’ll do it now:”

*wriggles index finger in greasy belly button*

“Oh! Oh, look: SPACE PIRATE.”

*another dip into the ol’ belly hole*

“Here’s another: FALLS IN LOVE WITH.”

*pop*

“ROBOT JESUS. See? See that? That’s an idea, my friend. Space Pirate falls in love with Robot Jesus. It’s like Romeo and Juliet all over again. I smell a bestseller. I also smell dryer lint.”

Down In The Dark

“I procure my ideas from the goblin-folk. They mine them down in the crusty underlayers of the hidden hollow earth, chipping them free from the rock walls with pick-axes made from the bones of forgotten writers. They’re a feisty lot, what with their dread widgets and malefic gew-gaws, but it’s worth the price.”

WTF?

“I get them from the Macy’s perfume counter.”

Uh-Oh

“I kill people, bash their heads open with rocks, then eat their brains.”

Sweet N’ Sexy

“All my ideas are the products of an unholy union between myself and a willing unicorn sex partner. After three months the unicorn gives birth to my little squalling idea babies.”

Ciphers And Codes

“TIME Magazine. Pick an issue. Any issue. Turn to page 34. Rotate the page. Look at it in a mirror. Spray yourself in the eyes with a blast of refrigerator-chilled Windex. No! Don’t blink away the tears. Stare through the tears. Read the last paragraph on the page that you can see. Write it down. Then reverse all the letters. Take this code and run it through a ROT 13 cipher generator. The resultant response is the idea. Use it wisely. Oh, also, flush your eyes with cold water. If the burning persists, call a doctor.”

WTF? (Part Two)

“Otters.”

Magpies

“I steal that shit from other writers. I read their books and then I’m just like, ‘Yeah, awesome, a girl develops crazy psychic powers at a Prom, boom, done, thank you, Mister Stevie King, whatever, asshole.'”

Creepy

“I get them from you when you’re sleeping.”

Ideas Lasting More Than Four Hours

“Seriously? You really want to know? Boner pills. That’s right. You swallow a fistful of dick pills, you start to see some really crazy shit behind your eyelids. Even better if you’re goofed up on Ambien to begin with. All writers do this. How do you think Mark Twain got the idea for Dracula? Ambien and dick pills. They teach you that when you get your MFA in Creative Writing. But I’m giving you this pro-tip for free because that’s the kind of stand-up dude that I am. By the way, got any boner pills? I’m Jonesing over here.”

This Is The Future

“I have a robot. I give him poker chips and infant blood. He gives me ideas.”

Not Very Nice

“I get them from your mom’s vagina! Boo-yay!”

Social Media Guru

“Twitter.”

Aw, How Quaint

“A jaunty fennec fox in a monocle and a hat made of an old sousaphone comes to my house every Tuesday. He brings me a bottle of milk, a cassingle of Prince’s Batdance, and one new idea written on a fortune cookie fortune. Then he leaves again on his mechanical pony.”

May The Force Be With You

“George Lucas and I have kinda of a partnership thing worked out. I inject bacon fat into his neck-meat, and he e-mails me all his leftover ideas. We signed a collaboration agreement. It’s all good.”

WTF? (Part Three)

“A head shop in Des Moines.”

Or, The Truth

“We don’t steal our ideas from the gods. We don’t receive them from magical transmissions. We don’t earn them as badges on Foursquare. We see things in the world — in our friends, in our loved ones, in the forests and oceans, in magazines and books, in ourselves — and our brains set to work on these things behind the scenes like a dog whittling away a cow femur with his ever-gnawing teeth. The whole damn universe is our frequency and our brain is the antenna. Our ideas aren’t externally-driven. The process is an internal one. No Muse. No idea factory. No lightning strike from above. The same place you get your ideas — whether it’s an idea to have lasagna for lunch or to masturbate to The Barefoot Contessa — is the same place we get ours. We get them from our own crazy minds, man. That’s it. It’s not that exciting, but that’s really it.”