Kevin Strange's Blog: Strange Sayings - Posts Tagged "writing"

I'm not sure when being prolific became a goal for me. Growing up, even after high school when I first fell in love with cinema while managing a chain of porn shops, I never paid attention to the fact that some of those filmmakers had made dozens of films over long decades.
Sometimes my partner, D.F. Noble, jokes about writing some shitty young adult novel so we can retire.

I have no interest in retiring.

So when did that become a thing for me? When did the idea of creating continuously until my body breaks down and prevents me from creating anymore come about?
I'd been aware of Stephen King's long career. Of Woody Allen's insane work rate. Of Bob Dylan. But none of that meant anything to me until I sat down and wrote my first script.
I hated it.
I sucked. I felt like a kid trying to draw a full color comic with crayons. So I bought a bunch of books on writing. I learned what everybody learns. To be good at writing, you have to write. A lot. All the time. And you have to read. Everything. So I wrote another short film script and actually produced a short film. Hated it. So I made another. Sucked, but not as bad. So I wrote a feature film script. God awful.

As of today, I've written and directed nearly 20 short films. I've written and directed 5 feature length films with another half-dozen film scripts that remain un-produced. I've written a short story collection, three novellas and two novels. And I still learn every single time I sit down at my computer and start a new story.
My friends who grew up with me --the blue collar, small town folk who think people like me are just stubborn idiots who won't grow up and get a real job-- slowly started to notice there was something special going on when month after month, year after year, I was still churning this shit out.

I've never had writer's block. My biggest enemy is staying focused on one project to completion before the next movie or book jams its way into my brain and takes over my focus. And I had no forethought or intention of creating in this way.
I know filmmakers who are still selling a movie they'd made five or six years prior. I know authors who wrote one book, one time, and that was it. They were done. That's crazy to me. Maybe it's about self doubt. The idea that I still haven't made “The Movie” or written “The Novel” that defines me as an artist, that will live on beyond my natural lifetime. Maybe these folks have and did.
But I don't think that's the case.

I think George Carlin wrote a new comedy album every year because he was always endlessly trying to find new ways to communicate his ideas to people. The whole notion of quitting any form of work once you've acquired a certain amount of money is a nasty idea to me. It's loathsome, it's the product of lazy minds, or of people who choose to do work they hate, just for a paycheck.
Carlin didn't need the money, Steve Jobs didn't need money at all when he was dying and still worked at Apple until three days before his death. Stephen King has famously sold the movie rights to his manuscripts for a dollar. That's not wealth motivation. That's a personal yearning for communication.

And somehow, completely unbeknownst to me, I possess it.

As I push forward through my third novel, I'm already outlining a fourth and fifth. I've already come up with a title to a new short story collection that may not see the light of day for another year. I'm bouncing ideas for new anthologies off my partners. I have unfinished business in my film making life that keeps me up at night. There are still scripts that beg me, deep into the long dark hours, to be shot and edited into real movies.
When does that stop? Does it ever? I hope not. I hope that overwhelming monetary success (should I ever be fortunate and lucky enough to see such a thing) doesn't kill the hunger inside me to create better, stronger art, faster and faster.

The list of prolific authors is endless. There's no way that, at 32 years old, I'll ever catch up to, or match the output of authors who've been at this for twenty years longer than me.
But I can work every day, every month, every year at becoming a better author, at putting out more books than the previous year, of topping my fastest novel turnaround. These things drive me, they excite me, and they exist inside me without my permission.
Being prolific isn't a choice. You either are, or you are not.

So, it's National Write a Novel in a month, month. I've been seeing this thing posted all over the internet. Basically, a bunch of amateur, non-writers attempt and mostly fail to write a novel in 30 days. There are widgets and social networking plug-ins to allow you to show all your buddies your progress as you race against the clock to write a book.

This is not how you write a book.

I understand the sentiment. Why should anyone nay-say a fun exercise in writing that can only lead to more literacy and awareness of reading and writing?

Because it's a fucking stupid way to promote literacy.

I tend to liken everything to fighting or building. Disciplined skills practiced over time lead to meaningful results. You don't say, “I can't win a kickboxing fight” without first training kickboxing. You can say you WON'T or don't want to win a kickboxing fight, but not that you can't. You are just as capable as any other healthy human, if you're willing to master the discipline.

Same goes for building a house, which is the more appropriate metaphor for writing a novel. Both writing your own novel, and building your own dream home are American Dreams. Things any self-respecting American plans to do at some point in their lives.

Only most Americans don't have clue one how to do either, and will fail miserably when and if they finally muster up the gumption to give it a go. And here's why:
We're a group of self-entitled, nancy-pants, adult children who believe that things are just supposed to happen for us, without any hint of discipline or craftsmanship on our part.

I used to say, back in my film days, that 80% of indie films die in production. Every horror fan wants to direct a horror movie. And with digital technology, any horror fan can. A lot try, most fail. Why? Because they don't know how to build a movie.
And most of these people who participate in this nonsense novel writing month thing, they don't have clue one how to build a book. If you decided tomorrow that you were going to build a house, just cause Grandpa built the one you grew up in, and whatever grandpa can do, you can too, just because—well, you're gonna fail miserably.

Before you build a whole freakin house, you've got to remodel your basement. Add a few rooms down there. Learn how to build door frames, lay carpet, run wiring, add a bathroom and learn plumbing. Maybe turn your garage into an extended family room. Then build a nice work-shed out back. It wouldn't hurt to hang out with some carpenters and help them build a few houses, too, before you decide to tackle the job yourself.
Sounds like common sense, right? Well then why don't people use this same basic logic when it comes to writing a novel? I think the answer is two fold. First, the markets for short stories have all but evaporated, and most adults that now want to write a novel, have rarely, if ever, seen a short story collection or anthology in a bookstore, and therefore don't understand that any novel writer worth his/her weight in words, started off writing butt-loads of short fiction first.

Secondly, much like indie film making, the advent of Kindle/eBook self-publishing allows for any dim-wit with a word processor on their laptop to think they're the next Charles Dickens.
All of my fellow writers out there understand exactly what I'm saying. In a lot of ways, I'm preaching to the choir, and regurgitating what's been written thousands of times in self help how-to-write-for-dummies books. But I'm not writing this blog for you guys. I'm writing it for all the people out there who struggle, and fail, time and time again, to write their first novel.
I've only just now become aware of just how MANY of you there are out there, as posts about national novel month spring up all over the social networking sites. I'm seeing things like, “I don't know what kind of book I'm writing. Suspense maybe? We'll see as I get further along.” And, “I've been planning my novel for 6 months, I don't want to just puke it all up in one month!”

What? What?

Just like kickboxing, or house building, there are disciplined elements that go into novel writing that must first be recognized, then learned, then mastered. Elements like plot, pacing, character development, subplots, climaxes, conclusions. These elements don't just appear as you write. They must be understood in advance.

I don't outline to the extreme that some people do. I think over-outlining can lead to writer's block, or just a general loss of enthusiasm for a project, if all the fun has already been laid out clinically before you've even put your first paragraph to paper. But some form of outlined structure has to be present before your book can become anything except another 75,000 word rant left to fester and die in an obscure folder on your desktop.

Everyone writes differently. There is no “right” way to write a novel, just as there is no “right” way to build your house. It's art. Take liberties. Think outside the box of tradition. But if you're failing over and over again, year after year while playing Hemingway for National Write a Novel Month, then you need to really think about learning the rules before you decide to break them.
For me, I like to know my title, my first line, and my ending before I'm comfortable digging in to a book. You may write completely differently. But if you don't even understand what kind of conflict your main character is facing,--or how they will change as people because of it--before you start your book, you're destined for failure. And for you over-planners who are afraid to write too fast? You can't master a breath-taking spinning back kick by sitting around thinking about doing it for 6 months. You have to kick that bag every single day. Over and over again until you're throwing kicks in your sleep.

A good writer who writes every day will know what I'm talking about when I say that after a really good day of writing maybe 5k or more, I'll dream in prose. I'll narrate my own dreams in paragraph form. You'll never be a good writer, or probably ever finish a book, for that matter, without practicing every single day.

The best way to do that, to learn these elements, to recognize plot structure and the elements of good fiction is to write short stories. Instead of trying to write a novel in one month, try writing ten short stories in ten months. Make them no longer than 10 thousand words. Then, by the end of the ten months, you'll have 100,000 words. A novel's worth of characters, plots, antagonists, beautiful landscapes and shocking conclusions. Do that for two years. Get yourself 20 shorts stories written and you might find a weird thing happening.

Your stories will start to bust out of that 10 thousand word cage. Now your stories are pushing 15k, then topping 25k. Your plots are becoming more intricate, your characters are practically jumping to life, right off your page, and best yet, you're actually getting good at this! You go back and read some of your most recent shorts and you realize that they're not half bad. Somewhere along the way, you've become a pretty decent fiction writer.

What's that? It's National Novel Writing Month again? You only have to have 50 thousand words? Well your last short was 27k. You can do that. Hell, you've already got an idea in your head for a great story. This time? This time you're going to finish.

Hey Gang, I'm writing a new story for an upcoming Lovecraftian Anthology for StrangeHouse and I wanted to share the first thousand words with you because I think it's a pretty hilarious little tale. I'm excited as hell to put this out early next year. So here we go, the first thousand words of "McHumans":

Synopsis: After Cthulhu awakens and destroys civilization as we know it, humans are used as slaves and food by their new slimy, submerged masters. One such young man, Ricky, works at an undersea fast food joint where he's forced to kill and cook other humans for the Deep Ones to eat. But he has a plan. His restaurant caters to the Big Man himself, and if Ricky's plan works, he could pull off the unthinkable: Killing Cthulhu.


McHumans
by
Kevin Strange
An Excerpt


I'm Ricky. I'm a human being. A slave. Food for my watery masters. How those masters came into power is anybody's guess. All I know is, one day I was jacking off to videos of the pink Power Ranger, and the next, the whole planet was flooded, and giant monsters were dragging those of us lucky (unlucky?) enough not to die in the initial onslaught down into the icy depths below.

They call themselves the Deep Ones. No two of them look exactly the same. They're evil, vile things, but they can talk and think just like you or me. I guess because they're aliens from another dimension—at least that's what people say. But people say all kinds of crazy shit now, and it's not like we have an internet down here or anything to fact check. So you just sort of take people's word for it most of the time. These aliens hate us and want us all dead. Why they hate us so much, I'll never know. But they do. They love to torture us and eat us. They're real sadistic fuckers.

Take my job, for example. I work in one of their subterranean cities beneath the ocean. How these cities existed without our knowledge before the great flood? Another question I can't answer. There's a lot of those now. Questions. And not many answers. We're all too busy surviving...
Oh yeah, my job. I work at a fast food restaurant that specializes in fresh flesh. Fresh human flesh. As in people are butchered here and then we garnish their meat with little pieces of seaweed and coral and shit. As a joke, those of us who work here call it McHumans. And guess who they make kill people? That's right. Me.

Last week I had to kill my buddy Sam. He used to work here, too. In fact, he was the first person I met after I was dragged down into the murky depths. Everybody else that works here told us not to get emotionally attached to anyone cause this sort of shit happens all the time, but we didn't listen. We both liked comic books and death metal. And what else is there to do but talk to each other when you're living in a waterlogged death camp just waiting for your number to come up, anyway?

Three other people work with us on the night shift in the kitchen. Karen, a smokin' hot little redhead who tells the best poop jokes in the joint. She has Cerebral Palsy, or whatever. It's not that bad. It doesn't fuck up her face or the way she talks. Her hands are kind of curled up and one of her legs bows in when she walks. Her spine and neck are curved all funky, but other than that? Top shelf pussy. Sometimes when the others think we're off having a smoke break, I fuck Karen in the walk-in cooler. It's kinda weird, fucking a crippled girl, the whole cooler full of dead bodies, but hey, you take what you can get in this hellhole.

Then there's the huge, fat, black dude we call Chef. You know, like the dude from South Park? Only this Chef isn't all full of inspirational speeches and joy, no this guy is a miserable, hate-filled racist. He's got a gigantic, oily nose that looks like a brown pickle and he's missing one of his front teeth. He's worked here the longest and he says he loves it. Says he couldn't think of a better place to be than in a kitchen chopping up white people all day. But we know he's lying. He was a preacher in Detroit before all this happened. He just puts on the angry black man routine to keep from losing his shit. We all have our ways of dealing with the stress of death and misery hanging over our heads every second of every day.

Like Ty, the final member of our crew. He deals with our living nightmare by dressing up like a woman—wigs, makeup, the whole thing. But the weird part is, he's still got a big brown beard and doesn't talk with an effeminate voice or try to make us call him by a woman's name. No, he just dresses like a chick. He's called a Transvestite. I only know this because my sister used to be in a Rocky Horror troupe. Now my sister's dead.

So anyway, one minute me and Sam are swapping stories about fucking chicks back in our other life while we strip the skin off a pair of arms in the kitchen with the rest of the gang, and then bam! In comes our boss, a really funky looking crab-thing with a huge white spiral shell covered in nasty barnacles. The way his big eyes sit on top of their stalks, Boss Crab, as we call him, always looks like he's surprised or in a state of shock. He has a name, hell, they all have names, but fuck trying to pronounce those multi-syllable, too many consonant things. We have nicknames for all of them.

Well, he storms right up to us, gives us both the once over with a look of astonishment, the whole time his little crab mouth parts moving a mile a minute—his disgustingly long, thin tentacle whiskers waving around, tasting the air, or whatever it is they're used for—when he reaches out with his enormous red claw, grabs poor Sam by the neck, and drags him into the back room. The killing room.

A couple seconds later, Boss Crab screams for us to come back there, too.

Click Here to read part 2!

My name is Kevin Strange. I'm a director, a producer, an actor, a film editor, an author. I've written, produced, directed, and starred in more than a dozen feature and short films. I created a production company in 2005 called Hack Movies with no money, no skill and no professional help whatsoever. By 2010 I produced and directed 7 films that saw DVD release, only one of which was ever picked up by a legitimate distributor in a very limited release.

In 2012 I created a publishing house called Strangehouse Books with no money, no skill and no professional help. By 2013 I've overseen the publication of 6 full length books with another dozen to be released before the end of the year. This includes the editing, formatting, typesetting and graphic presentation including the layout, design and commission of art for each and every book.

Not a single one of these movies or books was created to exploit a trend, cash in on a fad, or enter a hot market. In nearly a decade of devoting the majority of my time and effort to the creation of art, I have never ever made a single dime.

I've felt like a god, usually right after a project has been completed and all of the pieces have fallen into place, when my vision has finally come to fruition and is ready for its audience to see it. I've had moments of crushing doubt that made me want to quit and regret every second I've spent doing this. I've felt like nothing, zero, a loser, a bum, an overgrown child, a helpless man-baby. Usually after a project has been released and fails to capture the attention of the millions of fans I know it deserves.

I'm a 5 time college dropout. On paper I don't have the skills to even operate a forklift. I work jobs far below my intellectual level, am managed by kids barely more than half my age without a tenth of the management and organizational skills I possess. I've never once made over 30 thousand dollars in a single year, sometimes not even that much in two years. I've lived with family and friends until they resented me. I've lost more friends than I can count due to my controlling nature and unwillingness to choose human loyalty over my art.

My parents either don't know or don't care what I do with my life. My high school friends think I'm a child who refuses to grow up. I don't own a home. I've never owned a car younger than 15 years old. I'm 33 years old this year and if I get sick with something serious like cancer, I will die. Guaranteed. The number of people in my life that would actually be at my side if this were to happen are few enough in number to count on one hand. Truth be told, that number might be zero.

Yet, I have never compromised my artistic vision, no matter how many people pressured me to do so. I have no children, But I have no debt. Not a single solitary penny of it. I will never be a commercial artist. I will probably never have any money. I will almost assuredly die scared and alone. But every single one my creations was brought into this world with no filter, no compromise, no fear of social stigma. Love them or hate them, they are REAL art, the way art should be produced.

Should I never make another film or write another book, I've left my mark on this world. My identity, my hopes, my dreams, my fears, my passion, my lust, all lay within the contents of those dvds and between the pages of those books for as long as there are content devices to view movies and read books. I will live on and maybe one day enough people will see my movies and read my books that all of this will have been worth it. Maybe enough already have. What's the difference between affecting and inspiring one person or one million people. Is there a difference?

Even if I make another dozen movies and write another 50 books, I will never change my process, filter my beliefs, change my attitude or bow down to a corporate master for the sake of trends or fads. Money, fame, professional accolades, nor societal pressure will ever take precedence over the pure, unfiltered creation of my art, no matter the consequence. My name is Kevin Strange, and this is my life.