Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 152

The Inevitable Black Friday Deals Because Deals Mmm Deals

First of all, let me say up front that books make hella good presents.

Because books.

Books are containers of wisdom and imagination.

They are binders of facts and fancy.

BOOKS MAKE HELLA GOOD PRESENTS.

I write books, so maybe you wanna check some of them out.

But, also, maybe you wanna check out some awesome books by awesome people. Books I have loved greatly this year. Books including (but not limited to): Maplecroft, The Girl With All The Gifts, The Incorruptibles, Broken Monsters, The Area X trilogy, The Three, Young God, Cibola Burn (which is holy shit $3.25 right now for Kindle?!).

And, if you’re looking for some deals around these parts:

30 Days in the Word Mines is 66% off (~$0.99) until Sunday, with coupon code 30DAYS.

And the Gonzo Bundle is 50% off ($10) until Sunday, with coupon code GONZOBUNDLE.

Also, Zazzle is having sales today, which means my merch is on sale.

Use coupon ZAZBLACKDEAL for 40% off:

Certified Penmonkey mug.

Art Harder, Motherfucker (NSFW) mug.

Art Harder, Motherfucker (SFW) mug.

Or, same coupon (ZAZBLACKDEAL) for 30% off:

Art Harder t-shirt.

Certified Penmonkey t-shirt.

Now: feel free to drop your own favorite reads in the comments!

#talesfromblackfriday

On Twitter, #talesfromblackfriday has begun.

(You can find 2013’s, crowdsourced Storified Black Friday saga right here.)

(And you can find my own early contribution to 2014’s edition Storified here.)

If you usually do flash fiction challenges at the site — well, now you’ve got this week’s challenge: Join the fun on Twitter. Or write flash fiction horror stories based around Black Friday. Post today and today only though — this is no weekly challenge. Link back here if you do flash fiction, yeah?

It happens today, folks.

Horror and hilarity.

The love-child of Clive Barker and Christopher Moore.

Tales from Black Friday has begun.

Why It’s Important To Finish Your Shit

Maybe you’re doing NaNoWriMo. Maybe you’re not. Honestly, I don’t give a pony’s patoot — NaNoWriMo is, always, and has been a bit of a stalking horse. It creeps up on you and you think it’s fun and neat and there’s this whole community vibe and then suddenly a goblin jumps out and bellows: “HA HA SUCKER NOW YOU’RE A WRITER. YOU ARE CURSED!” And then the camera pans up and you shake your fists and screamweep into the rain, because you can already feel the penmonkey hex taking hold in your blood and your marrow.

I may have overdramatized that a bit.

Point is: whether you’re doing NaNoWriMo or not, I want to remind you:

It is vital that you learn to complete what you begin.

Finish. Your. Shit.

I know. You’re stammering, “Guh, buh, whuh — but I’m not really feeling it, I have a better idea in mind, it’s hard, I think I’d rather just lay on my belly and plunge my face into a plate of pie.”

I’d rather do that, too.

I mean, c’mon. Prone-position face-pie? Delicious. Amazing. Transformative.

(Okay, that sounds kinda sexual, doesn’t it? You do what you like with the image.)

But, seriously.

Look at me in my eyes.

In my cold, dead, glassy eyes.

Gaze into the two palantir that have been unceremoniously shoved into my sockets. Do you see what I see? I see you not finishing your story. And I see me shoving you into the colorful ball pit at McDonald’s, except the ball pit isn’t filled with colorful balls, but rather, scorpions and shame.

Here’s why I think it’s essential to learn how to finish what you begin when it comes to writing, no matter how much you don’t want to, no matter how much you’re “not feeling it,” no matter how much pie you have placed on the floor in anticipation of laying there and eating it all.

1. It Trains You

Writing a novel is not a natural state.

Telling stories is — “Hey, Dan, you hear what happened at work today? A guy took a shit in the pasta extruder.” But the stories we tell to friends and family tend to be short, punchy, and very personal. Sitting down and making up a much longer story, and then shaping that story into something resembling a brick, well, that’s a whole other matter. It doesn’t come naturally and so you have to train yourself to write these things. And part of writing them is…?

That’s right, class. Finishing them.

And so you need to develop the discipline and conditioning to complete your work.

2. The More You Finish, The More You Finish

Your writing career can be given over to inertia or to momentum. Give into inertia and you slow down, cowed by resistance into stopping. But over time, writing becomes a bit more frictionless — it never feels precisely comfortable (for me, though I do love it so, I still have writing days that feel like I’m swaddled head to do in itchy asbestos footy pajamas), but it gets easier. You gain momentum. And you keep it… as long as you keep it. It feeds itself. Writing books is a hungry beast — but long as you keep shoveling in the word count, it’ll keep belching out the story. And part of this process is finishing.

Failing to finish means giving into inertia. It means losing your momentum.

3. It Makes You Feel Like, Holy Fuckspackle, I Can Actually Do This

Writing is a little like running. It’s painful and gawky at first. And then later, after you’ve done it a bunch? It’s still painful and gawky. But! But at least you can go farther and you can go faster. Once you hit a certain time or distance, you’ve broken that barrier. Which means you can do it again tomorrow. Finishing your work is a triumphant moment. It’s trumpets and cookies and good drugs and ropes of sexual fluids hanging from the light fixtures like Christmas tinsel. It’s awesome. And crossing that threshold tells you: this is a thing you can do. This is a thing you can do again. You’ve got it, now. You’ve got that little personal milestone tucked away in your pocket or your jewelry box or your butthole or wherever it is you keep your personal milestones.

(I keep mine tucked away in my mouth, like a hamster with a beloved Cheeto.)

4. A Finished Thing Is Imperfect — But Fixable

By now I’ve said it a billion times but: writing is when we make the words, editing is when we make them not shitty. You’re not feeling hot about your draft now, and hell, maybe even after you finish you’ll be like, ennh? But just realize: it’s fixable. You reach the end of the work and now you have the whole blob of clay to work with. You can spin it into anything you want — a vase, a bowl, a creepy ceramic serial killer mask, a napkin holder, a dildo rack. And I promise you with unswerving certainty that if you finish what you begin that when it comes time to fix this lumpy mess on the potter’s wheel, that a shirtless Patrick Swayze will massage you to success.

*receives note*

Okay, as it turns out, the lawyers are saying I can’t promise you that. So it’s not true.

*wink wink*

*receives note*

Okay, they’re saying I shouldn’t wink either.

*elbow nudge*

5. I Won’t Yell At You

I think that pretty much spells itself out. If you don’t finish what you begin, I won’t have to find your house, stand outside with a boombox, and play a screeching cacophony from it that sounds like me drunk and screaming myself hoarse at you for not finishing your work. Also, I might also play a little Quiet Riot, Cum on Feel the Noize just because?

6. It Prevents Authorial Adultery

The other day, Author Chris Holm (@chrisfholm) said on the Twitters that there should really be a German word for ‘being tempted to start a new book before finishing the old.’ Now, I dunno if he meant reading a new book or writing one, but what I do know is that, one of the chiefmost reasons I would once quit writing a book was to start writing a whole other book. (I call this ‘porking the new manuscript behind the shed while the old one wanders around, looking for you.’)

So, I said to Herr Doktor Holm that the German word might be Der Buchehebruch, aka, “Book Adultery.” Or, if you want a more literal translation of my shed commentary: Fick die neue Handschrift hinter dem Schuppen, während die alte um wandert, sucht für Sie. Or, perhaps: Neuemanuskriptwerfenficken.

Whatever.

Point is, a lot of the things we do as writers are given over to habit. We can develop bad habits (chewing our fingernails, failing to backup our work, shed-fucking a new manuscript), or we can develop good ones (the opposite of those other things I just said). Develop the habit that helps you finish your work. Prevent neuemanuskriptwerfenficken by keeping that new manuscript in mind (take some quick notes, write a logline, then move on) while actually finishing your current one.

7. Because Learning How To Write An Ending Is Important

The ending is part of every story. You need to learn to write them, which means… you actually need to write them. A story isn’t a story without its end, just as a snake isn’t a snake if you cut it in half. Yes, that is a dubious scientific assertion, but whatever, it works for the metaphor so leave me alone or I’ll shove you in the scorpions-and-shame-pit again.

Don’t skip this ending. Complete the circuit. Learn how to do this thing.

8. Because Never Mind, Just Finish Your Shit Because I Said So

What else do you want me to say, here? Have you ever read a book? Yeah? Did it have an ending? I bet it did. I bet it didn’t just stop at page 252, with the characters about to storm the Laser Castle to fight their nemesis, Evil Steve. So, what the fuck?

Finish your shit.

This is how this works.

Stories end.

Books reach their apex, then slide swiftly toward their final conclusion. They are a complete object. I mean, who’s going to respect you for not finishing it? Okay, you maybe get one or two of those — “Listen, I’m still finding my footing with this writing thing, I’m going to try something else, see if that clicks.” But I’m betting it forms part of a pattern. People ask, “Hey, did you finish that thing?” And you stand there, slack-jawed, a gassy hiss coming from the back of your throat that eventually resolves into the word “eeeehhhhhnnnnooooo not so much.” And then they nod and smile and say, “Sure, sure,” and then they turn around their roll their eyes and make jerk-off motions and whatever because people are ultimately assholes.

So, seriously.

Finish your shit.

Do it because I say so, if for no other reason.

Do it because if ever we meet and I ask you, you don’t want to tell me you didn’t finish it, because then you will feel my guilty, steely stare. My disgust will wash over you like a tide full of dead jellyfish. It will draw you out, an undertow of great forbidding, abrading you against a jagged reef of of sadness clams and guilt-brine. Then: angry barracuda.

Finish.

*kicks you*

FINISH.

*flicks you in the eyeball*

FIIIIINIIIIIISH.

*rubs sand in your mouth*

finish finish finish finish finish

Okay just now I’m realizing that ‘finish’ is also has a vaguely sexual connotation so I’m going to stop because this is getting really weird. YOU MADE IT WEIRD. Not me. I’m fine. I’m normal.

Weirdo.

(But seriously: whatever you’re writing? Fucking finish it.)

* * *

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On The Subject Of Cultivating Empathy

Predictably, Facebook is pretty much a shit-show after last night.

Of course, that’s a glimpse of the privilege I possess, isn’t it? That for me, Facebook is a failed, unreal, intangible place — and I can turn it off, or I can filter out the conversation and look at funny Buzzfeed articles instead, or I can wall myself off and post pictures of my kid and my dog. Ferguson, though, isn’t like that. The rest of the real world isn’t like that. Some folks — again, not me, because I’m white and have a little money — are in the thick of it. They live the things we’re arguing about on Facebook and Twitter and — well, I guess Google-Plus?

(Is that even a thing anymore?)

Just the same, I wanna talk about the response to all of this.

Because that shit-show on Facebook has a way of radiating outward — it’s got energy, it has a cascade effect. It both reflects the world outside it like a mirror that shows the truth and like a mirror that  — as mirrors do — bounce an image back into the world for all to see.

What I’m seeing on Facebook is a startling lack of empathy.

It’s so bad I’m surprised people aren’t saying of the rioters or the family, “Just let them eat cake!”

I’m seeing a lot of “what kinds of animals would burn down their town,” or, “see, this is how those people act.” (Pro-tip: calling them ‘animals’ and ‘those people’ is you being racist and shitty.) Or it goes back to the case itself, making commentary on Michael Brown — “Well, he punched a cop.” Or it attempts some kind of equivalency (“Both sides are really to blame, here,” as if one side doesn’t have a whole lot of power compared to the other side). Someone on FB called the townsfolk “domestic terrorists” for rioting, which is, by the way, super fucked up.

Where is the empathy?

I want you to think about it. I want you to imagine being a family who lost their unarmed son in a police shooting. I want you to imagine being in a town full of such families — families who know that they are without power, that at any time one of their own could get shot by a cop a half-a-dozen times and nobody will even send that to trial. (Because, of course, those determining its fitness for trial are all part of the same system of power to which you do not belong.) Imagine that kind of frustration. Imagine being someone who has long existed in a power vacuum like that — lot of other folks were born outside in the world and you and your friends and your family were born in a metaphorical barrel and it’s damn hard to get out of that barrel, because you have walls in place that other people don’t have. You’re asked to climb out of a barrel and clamber over walls that other people don’t even know exist. Imagine being part of a history of this sort of thing, that goes back not just decades but mere hours — an old wound that will seemingly never heal.

Okay, take most of that away and still distill it down to — the police shot your unarmed son, and nobody is going to be called to the mat for it. I mean, take away the race component, take away the “what was the evidence” component, just pretend you’re playing make-believe like a kid and you actually have to imagine someone shooting your child, someone you love and who is your life, and what is your response? Do you shrug and say, “Oh well?” Do you become immediately and comfortably resigned to it?

Me, I’d wanna burn the world down.

And I’d want everyone who was my friends, my family, my neighbors, to do the same.

You kill my kid and — god, just thinking about it is a horror movie to me. The anger I feel at the imagined event is raw, pure, and only a fraction of what I’d feel if it really happened. I mean, fuck, they kill my dog and I’ll be ready to flip cars and set fires.

Just have a little empathy.

Think before you speak.

Try to feel before you speak.

Empathy is key. Empathy is itself a privilege — because we imagine ourselves inside a situation rather than, y’know, actually being inside the situation. But it is one way to use privilege well. To close yourself off from empathy is cruel to others and, honestly, bad for yourself. And if too many people refuse to possess empathy and demonstrate it — then it’s bad for the whole damn country.

(It’s doubly surprising to me when folks who identify as Christian don’t demonstrate empathy. I mean, if you had to distill Jesus’ platform down, it was a whole lot of, “But what about these poor motherfuckers over here? Who’s helping them?”)

Now, surely someone will say, well, I have empathy for the cops. And you should. Being a cop is fucking hard. And it just got a whole lot harder. But remember: the cops are the ones with the guns. They’re the ones with the training to deal with this stuff. (And increasingly they’re the ones with high-test military equipment that they are not trained to handle.) The cops’ jobs didn’t just get harder because of Mike Brown. The cops’ jobs just got harder because of Darren Wilson and because of Bob McCulloch.

I’m not saying you need to have a legal opinion on the case.

But I do ask that you do better. Be kinder. Don’t just think — “Well, to play Devil’s advocate.” Actually try to feel. Imagine. Demonstrate compassion. Cultivate your empathy. And it’s not just with this one thing, with Ferguson and Mike Brown. It’s in all the things. Immigration? “Those people” want to be here for the same reason you want to be here, so maybe don’t be so quick to judge because probably you’d do the same fucking thing. Rape culture? Just a passing glimpse at rape stats is enough to chill your blood. Try to examine where the power is. Try to see how power travels — and how it doesn’t travel. Try to feel for those who have less of it than you. Try to imagine what that’s like — you’re not the rat in the cage who chooses when he gets a food pellet. You’re the rat who gets random shocks.

This isn’t about agreeing and disagreeing, it’s about privilege and empathy.

Use your privilege, and find some empathy.

And then go take it to Facebook.

(Or to your dinner tables at Thanksgiving — because I cannot imagine how some dinners will go on this upcoming Turkey Day. But even that, a privilege — we can worry about family fights at the table instead of riots and cop shootings.)

Try to be nicer, okay?

Is that such a weird request?

[Comments are off.]

NaNoWriMo: One Week To Go

So, those of you doing NaNoWriMo — how’s it going? Still in? Not in any longer? What’s the scoop? Is there anything anyone here can help you with to get you past this last week’s worth of feverish squirrel-bitten wordsmithy? Also, feel free to take a favorite sentence or even a paragraph from your work and drop it into the comments below.

Swing into the comments space and talk it out.

Ask questions.

Yell at the clouds.

Drop some mad rhymes.

I mean, if you have mad rhymes to drop.

With one week to go, how flows the NaNoWriMo?

SEE? MAD RHYMES.

Let this be a community sounding wall.

I Am A Racist And I Am A Sexist And Probably Some Other -Ists, Too

This is one of those posts I’m a little bit afraid to write, which at least is the sign of an interesting post, and occasionally the sign of a post that needs to get written. I’m hoping — ha ha heh heh ahem gulp fingers crossed — it’s the latter. (It’s also a way long post, so, erm — sorry?)

Hi, I’m the Internet’s Chuck Wendig, and I’m a racist.

And also a sexist.

And probably a handful of other “*-ists,” too.

I know. You’re saying, “Chuck, but you’re a feminist. And you speak out on Twitter against things like this.” Which is accurate. I do. And it doesn’t change my core assertion that I am these things.

Like, I’m not a super-racist. I don’t have a white robe with a peaked hood. I’m not some kind of uber-sexist, where I have some secret library of Pick-Up Artist books because I think women are actually just here to be the breeding stock for powerful men like myself. (Please note that I typed “powerful men like myself” with an eye-roll so dramatic I got dizzy and fell out a window.)

The thing is, I don’t believe these things at all. I’m not a conscious, overt racist or sexist. In fact, consciously, overtly, I’m against those things. I actively oppose them (though probably not as much as I should, and definitely not as much as I’d like).

And yet, I’m still racist and sexist and other -ists.

A lot of it is internal. Little knee-jerk reactions that speak to old, irrational, utterly dumb preconceived notions and prejudices — like ghosts that haunt the psychic hallways, ghosts I thought were exorcized but who still linger in interstitial spaces. (Want an example? When you walk the streets of New York, you hear a lot of different languages spoken. This is an awesome thing, ultimately, but once in a while I hear my father’s voice in my head: “Speak English.” And it’s like, whoa, where the fuck did that come from? How do I know they don’t speak English? How do I know they’re not trying to learn? Why do I give a shit at all? Half the people in this country that were born here don’t speak English well enough for me, so what the hell, brain?)

A good example is how I looked at my bookshelves a couple years ago and was like, “Yeah, wow, that’s a lot of white male authors on my shelf.” It was an error that needed to be corrected. Not because the books I had were bad, but because I was missing out on great stories and powerful voices — my reading experience was incomplete. My perspective was limited.

But it’s not always internal, either. Occasionally it’s woefully, regrettably external.

Sometimes, a thing just pops out of my mouth. Like a cork. My wife will be like, “You know, that was maybe a little sexist.” And I’ll be like, blink blink blink, whoa, okay, you’re right. I like to think I’m this enlightened guy and then it’s like — oh, yeah, no, I still say ignorant stuff.

Actually, the most recent one for me was transphobia. Like, up until a handful of years ago, I had no idea how transphobic I was. It wasn’t even a thing I recognized. I’d use trans slurs thinking they were totally fine. “Tranny” is a word I used, thinking, well, gosh, it’s just a shortened version of transexual or transgender and that’s cool, right?, not actually taking the time to remind myself that most slurs are insidiously simple like that. Many are just shortened words or quippy nicknames — harmless on the surface, but they’re knives that cut deep. And worse, indicative of use by powerful oppressors who don’t deserve to be the ones to give other people nicknames. (If you don’t understand this phenomenon and you think those words aren’t harmful, imagine you’re a kid, and a bully gives you a nickname that’s just an off-kilter version of your own name. It’s not your friends giving you the name, it’s someone who wants to — and maybe does — abuse you. Even a shortened, simplistic nickname is toxic, cruel, meant to mock you and steal your power.)

This seems like a dumbass idea to admit these things. I mean, the smart thing to do might be to just shut the fuck up about it, quietly fix the hole in the boat, and float on down the river. But this feels important to talk about. It feels useful to admit. Because I think a lot of folks have boats with holes in the hull that they don’t even know about. And here you might be saying, what’s this about? Well, part of it is spurred on by the Daniel “Lemony Snicket” Handler thing that happened at the National Book Awards. (Short version: in giving an award to Jacqueline Woodson, he then made a racist joke about watermelon. He has since apologized and donated money — here’s the wrap-up.) Part of it is just, y’know, confessional. It’s a hard topic and shitty things like this are good sometimes to drag out into the air and the light if only because that’s how you see them and how you (individually and collectively) deal with them.

So. Back to me, because after all this is a blog and blogs are pretty much me, me, me.

Why am I a racist, sexist, *-ist? Why are a lot of us that way?

I think this comes from a handful of places.

First, how we’re raised. Were my parents racist, sexist, homophobic, all that? You can bet your ass they were. Listen, real talk time? I grew up hearing the whole catalog of slurs. From my father, at least. At dinner, in the car, everywhere. Not just the slurs, but the stereotypes, too. It’s easy to blame him and shake my fist at him — but first, he’s dead now, so I’m pretty sure that yelling at the grave will do little good except rile the zombies that dwell there. Second, ennnh, there’s only so much you can do to change other people. You can try. You should try. But the generations who came before me are fucked up in a whole unholy host of ways. Often because of what trickled down from the generations that preceded them — old ways and ideas are inherited like genes.

Second, it comes from the media. The media is very good at kicking up dust. We’ve long gone past the point of the news offering up news — it’s framed as entertainment but even there, that word doesn’t quite fit. Our media is built around attention, and conflict, and drama, and while those things are quite lovely in our fiction, they’re straight-up toxic when it comes to our culture. The media is driven by the privileged status quo and it reflects that. After 9/11, Islamophobia was at a major high (and remains prevalent). Because the news media is very good at putting forward a narrative that carries that cultural phobia forward — it’s not that what they’re reporting is always untrue, but rather, that it’s a lie of omission. You get white people on TV all the time who are doing wonderful things — “Look at this Mayor, saving a cat from a tree. Look at this firefighter, fighting fires. Bake sale! Rescue dogs! White people doing white people good!” But when Islam pops up in the news, it’s pretty much, y’know, “ISIS AL QAEDA OSAMA (wait he’s dead) SHOE BOMB BEHEADINGS FEAR THE MUSLIM MENACE (we didn’t say that but wink wink no really be afraid).” They don’t often show, “Look, here’s a Muslim guy who opened a museum or who patches potholes for his community.” I mean, they don’t even show, “Look, here’s a Muslim family who stays quiet and has jobs and pays their taxes just like you, so for fuck’s sake, relax.” They tweak that twinge in your gut that, when you’re about to get on a plane and you see a guy in a turban (spoiler warning: he’s probably Sikh), your buttcheeks clench up and you think, OH GOD HE’S A BOMBER, even though that makes literally no sense and is pure, distilled kneejerk racism.

The news has been stirring the transphobia pot for years. “Eddie Murphy was caught with a transsexual prostitute,” and they make it seem like it’s the strangest, creepiest thing in the world. The prostitute is painted as inhuman, alien, someone very distinctly Other. And no one in the media at that time countered that narrative.

(And by the way, don’t think that this media problem is limited to news. Look at most of the winners of Survivor and — mmm, yeah, most of them are white, because of course they stack the show with white people and white people tend to vote out the people of color. Most of our dramas and comedies are predominantly white and straight and frequently male-driven, too. Films? Yep, same problem. I mean, how many women directors are out there? Or women comic book artists? These mycelial, fungal threads are all up in our media culture.)

Third, power structures. Institutions have ingrained power structures and nobody wants those to change. The people in power (who are predominantly white, male, straight) want to remain in power and so they keep people who look like them and act like them in place. It’s like an oblique form of nepotism — no, those other people aren’t your actual family, but when it comes to all these -isms I’m talking about, they’re wink wink like your family.

Fourth, laziness. I think humans are fundamentally lazy. Challenging a worldview doesn’t seem like a lot of work compared to, like, digging a ditch, but breaking one paradigm and replacing it with another takes psychological effort, and we’re not always very good at it.

And here you’re saying, well, I’m excusing the -isms. Right? By identifying causes outside of me, I’m blaming those structures and those institutions which means I can wipe my hands and say, whew, and go back to being whoever I want to be. I can look at the scraggly, unkempt lawns of my neighbors and use it to excuse why my lawn is scraggly and unkempt, too.

But I’m not excusing it.

I’m just trying to say that it comes from somewhere. It’s important to recognize things like that so we can deal with them — individually and, yes, culturally.

Because there’s a fifth thing, an umbrella cause to it all, and that’s privilege. Privilege is pretty easy to see in action — if a straight white dude walks into an Institution of Power (a bank, a college, a TV station, whatever), he has a statistically better chance of finding success there than if he were some combination of not straight, non-white, and non-dudely. Look at it this way: amongst Fortune 500 CEOs, most of them are white guys. So, you either have to admit that there’s a privilege to the power structure or you instead have to opine that white dudes are just better than everyone else, which is fucked up and hyper-privileged and oh, hey, shame on you. (And the same goes with the disproportionate incarceration of black men in the US prison system. You either have to admit that there’s a continued privilege to being, well, not a black guy when it comes to the law, or you have to be a shitty person who says, “Well, maybe it’s just because white people aren’t criminals, haw haw haw,” which, y’know, fuck you for saying that. The privilege is up and down the road for people like me — we get the education, the jobs, the money, the guns, the assumptions of innocence, the breaks, all of it.)

The freaky thing about privilege though is that it’s blinding.

We just don’t see it.

It’s like an accent we don’t hear (“Me? I don’t have an accent. It’s you that sounds weird”). It’s like failing to recognize our own stink.

Privilege is often invisible to those that possess it.

This is due, I suspect, to a few things.

One, a lot of folks with privilege are not perfectly privileged, and so it becomes a whole harder to see and then admit. Like, if you’re a white male who has a shit job and not a lot of money it’s hard to recognize your privilege — in part because you have less of it (in RPG terms, money adds bonus modifiers to your existing Privilege Score).

Two, because guilt is often a hidden thing and we don’t make a lot of effort to drag it out into the light. Inherently we recognize privilege (“That cop let me go, and he wouldn’t have if I was black”), but then do a lot of intellectual squaredancing to cover that up (“Buh, whuh, well, it’s not the color of my skin it’s that I drive a nice car and I work hard and was friendly and lots of other reasons that are actually only indicative of my privilege and ahh crap there’s that word again”). Or worse, you don’t recognize it because, “Oh, see, he gave me a ticket, too, so, hah, privilege isn’t real.” Yeah, okay, sure, you got the ticket, but you didn’t get shot, did you?

Three, an unconscious desire to keep our spot. A meme went around Facebook recently (I know, I know) that showed how one teacher demonstrated privilege by giving everyone in the class a wadded up piece of paper and asking them to shoot a basket into the trashcan at the fore of the room. And the people in the back had a hard time making the shot, but the people at the front had it easy. (I’d also add in the axis that says with every new aspect of privilege you gain — white, straight, male, money, etc. — you get another shot at the basket.) The people at the “front of the class” don’t want to move their seat. Exposing privilege — showing a rigged system — is exposing the benefits you have received. That makes folks uncomfortable.

Four, we’re frequently surrounded by a total lack of diversity — in our schools, in our social circles, at work and in the media — that it’s hard to even figure out that privilege is a thing that exists much less it’s a thing we possess.

Five, the status quo is easy to see, but difficult to see what makes it problematic. The way things are presently often feels very normal — “it is what it is.” Inertia. Acceptance. Reality.

Though, once you see privilege –

Man, you see it everywhere.

(Same goes for rape culture. At first you’re like RAPE CULTURE ISN’T REAL, but once you have your eyes opened to it, it’s like, oh god we live in a horrible reality what the fuck is wrong with us.)

So, what’s the point of this whole post?

You know, I dunno. I’m not saying anything particularly new or revelatory, I realize. I just think it’s important to admit these things — because once you kick over the log and see what squirms underneath you can take to addressing it. But you can’t deal with it until you do that. I’m a privileged guy. I don’t always recognize my own ignorance — in fact, the ability to not recognize it and to continue on like nothing happens is itself part of privilege. I don’t say any of this to excuse it or to just push past it, but rather to shine a light on it. It’s why we need diversity. It’s why we need to challenge ourselves and others to do better. It’s why “outrage” sometimes matters — it’s very easy to feel “outrage fatigue,” but that in and of itself is a privilege because some people have to live that outrage every day. We can just turn it off, but others? It’s there, 24/7.

What’s to be done?

I don’t have any great answers.

I’d say it’s important to listen.

It’s critical to signal boost.

It’s important to believe what other people tell us when they say they’re victims of these -isms that plague us individually and institutionally.

It’s vital to recognize our own privilege and — counterintuitively — work against it.

And I think we need to pass the good ideas onto our kids and not the shitty prejudices that came to us from generations before.

Like I said earlier, we look to other people’s unkept lawns and use it as an excuse not to keep our own, but that’s all twisted. We should do the other thing. We should keep our own lawns in the hope that it encourages others to keep theirs in return.

We gotta do better. And hope others join us.

I’m obviously a writer, so for me, it’s important to see diversity in writing and publishing — and not just in the half-a-nod “We need more white guys writing diversity into their books,” but also in the writers themselves, and within the industry. As such, I now point you to:

The We Need Diverse Books Indiegogo campaign.

I politely ask that you go there, give a little something.

And as I’ve said in the past, maybe take a gander at your own bookshelves, too. And your own work, And, if you’re in the publishing industry, look to your own hallways.

Anyway.

Thanks for reading.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Superheroes Plus

Last week’s challenge: Oh, We’re Gonna Use These Photos, All Right.

First up — a point of administration. I never picked the random winners from the three-sentence challenge, so I’m doing that — *checks watch that doesn’t exist on my wrist* — right now.

Three winners:

Brenda (sleepingseeker)

mandybroughton

Taylor Johnson

You three — email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Now, onto this week’s challenge.

I want you write a superhero story.

Except — then I want you to mash it up with another subgenre.

You can choose one on your own, or roll randomly from this list:

Splatterpunk Horror
Locked Room Mystery
Space Opera
Urban Fantasy
Erotica
Epic Fantasy
Cyberpunk
Dieselpunk
Noir
Haunted House

You’ve got 1000 words.

Post at your online space, link back here through the comments.

Due by next Friday.

UP UP AND AWAY, WORD NERDS.

Jessica Leake: Five Things I Learned Writing Arcana

Amid the sumptuous backdrop of the London season in 1905, headstrong Katherine Sinclair must join the ranks of debutantes vying for suitors. Unfortunately for Katherine, she cannot imagine anything more loathsome—or dangerous. To help ease her entrance into society, Katherine’s family has elicited the assistance of the Earl of Thornewood, a friend and London’s most eligible bachelor, to be her constant companion at the endless fetes and balls. But upon her arrival in London, Katherine realizes there will be more to this season than just white gowns and husband hunting.

Through her late mother’s enchanted diary, Katherine receives warning to keep hidden her otherworldly ability to perform arcana, a magic fueled by the power of the sun. Any misstep could mean ruin—and not just for her family name. The Order of the Eternal Sun is everywhere—hunting for those like her, able to feed on arcana with only a touch of the hand.

But society intrigue can be just as perilous as the Order. The machinations of the fashionable elite are a constant threat, and those who covet Katherine’s arcana, seeking the power of her birthright, could be hiding behind the façade of every suitor—even the darkly handsome Earl of Thornewood.

* * *

You can have a lot of babies during the book publishing journey

I wrote Arcana when my first baby was six months old, got pregnant with my second baby while querying, found my amazing agent a few months after my second baby was born, got pregnant with my third baby while on submission, and had the final manuscript due right before my third baby was born. Three years… three babies. ONE book.

Moving sucks

This shouldn’t be news to me, really. I’m pretty skilled at moving—I had to move 5 times before I was 11 (Dad was in aviation) and 3 more times after that—but I’d never had to deal with moving not once but twice with two babies, another on the way, and a book deadline. Let me set the scene: my family and I moved back to SC after a brief 4-year stint in Birmingham, AL, but we were renovating a house, so we had to move in with my parents for 6 months until it was ready. My book was out on submission during this time, so I was keeping busy with packing and moving and deciding what should go into storage and oh yeah picking out every detail for our newly renovated home that had been gutted down to the studs…plus caring for a 9-mo-old and a 2-year-old…and then finding out I was pregnant with my third. And that was when my book sold and it was time to move into our new house and decorate and nest and prepare for baby number three and also get Arcana ready for my editor. Looking back, I’m unsure how I didn’t go completely batshit crazy. But I wouldn’t change a thing.

Naptime is a requirement

I’m pretty sure it’ll still be a requirement even when my kids are well past that age. Have you ever tried to write—or concentrate on anything—with a toddler, preschooler, and a baby around? Here’s what you can do to mimic the experience: start writing a scene—really immerse yourself in it—now, in the middle of a beautifully worded sentence, jump up and do random chores—these will signify the numerous requests your children will come up with while you’re trying to write (Where’s my bunny/blankie/favorite toy? I have to go potty. I want some milk. I want some water.) Be sure to wander long enough that the sentence has completely disappeared from your head. Now, sit down and try to pick up where you left off. Type one letter, and then jump up, knock over a glass of milk and clean up the mess. When you finish cleaning it up, start to sit down, and then realize the baby is about to grab a cord to chew on. Scoop up the baby. Now try to write again…maybe another word or two. And now the baby is fussing. He’s hungry. Sadly save your work—all the while trying to soothe your baby—and close your laptop. Know that they have won. Writing while they’re awake is futile.

1k/day is my word count goal of choice

This seems to be the perfect number for me: enough that I feel productive, but not enough that I feel overwhelmed. I write with this goal in mind, but it’s with the understanding that as I get toward the end of my MS, I will write about 5 times that in a day—I will write like a crazed fiend during naptime, bedtime, and every stolen moment in between. Along the same lines, I had to make it a requirement for myself to meet my word count quota for the day before I could do anything fun. New book I couldn’t wait to read? I had to finish writing for the day. Twitter and FB posts to respond to? Not until writing was finished. I’m like any other writer, though—a lot of times I fell into the black hole of social media and squandered my precious writing time on funny memes and cute baby pictures.

Never end the day’s writing session at the end of the chapter

I found that it caused way too much anxiety for the next day’s writing goals if I had to begin the session by starting a brand new chapter. And by anxiety, I mean I dreaded writing the next day—I knew my writing time was limited, and that I couldn’t afford to spend the majority of it staring blankly at my computer screen. With Arcana, I had a loose outline in my head, but I’m more of a pantser than a plotter, so I didn’t have every chapter mapped out from the beginning. I knew I had to get smart about where I ended a writing session for the day—even if it meant going over or under my word count goals. So if I ended the session at the end of a chapter, I would force myself to start the next chapter—sometimes just a few notes to myself, but anything that would make the next session easier.

* * *

Jessica Leake has been in love with historical England ever since her first literary crush: Mr. Darcy. After embarking on a quest to bring her own intriguing and headstrong characters to life, she decided to quit her day job as a clinical therapist and spend her time weaving arcana with words.

She lives in Greenville, SC with her brilliant husband, three painfully cute children, and two mischievous dogs.

Jessica Leake:   Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Arcana:   Amazon | B&N | IndieBound | Powell’s | Indigo

We Can Do This The Easy Way Or The Hard Way

About 2, maybe 3pm every day, I hit a wall. Hell, it’s not just a wall. It’s a mountain. NAP MOUNTAIN. With craggy peaks of sweet torpidity, with mighty spires of somnolence. I hit the mountain, and find a small mountain town called Sleepysburg, and there my body is just like, “Fuck this, fuck all of it, fuck you, just — just give into the glorious miasma of lethargy.” And then I lay in the marshmallow streets and stick to the taffy-molasses puddles and –

Well, you get the metaphor. I nap. I fucking nap hard.

Sometimes it’s a 15 minute power nap. That’s usually all I can manage with a toddler running around. Once in a blue moon I manage a deeper dive, and I fall into what could only be described as a nap chasm — me falling into a crater of pure unconsciousness. I can fall into this crater for two hours. I can lose part of my life in this thing. I wake up and forget my name for 15 minutes.

This desire to nap — it times out with the weather.

I look outside, I see gray blah. Like a choir of ashen ghosts joined hands and filled the sky. Everything bleak and blasted and wet and cold. When that happens, my body is all mm blankey and pillow so warm and just shut the crap up and nap already you foolish mortal.

See, but –

When the weather was warm, I’d sometimes use that time to run.

And I remind myself, you should do that now.

And my brain is like BUT BLANKEY

And my brain is also like hey, you should run

And my brain is then like PILLOWS SWEET PILLOWS

And my brain is back to no, but what about running

And my brain screams JESUS CHARLESWORTH CHRIST RUNNING IS TIRING AND YOU’RE ALREADY TIRED SO WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO HAPPEN IF YOU RUN, DINGWHISTLE, YOU’RE JUST GONNA GET MORE TIRED SO STICK WITH THE PLAN ALREADY

And today, I was like, yeah, whatever, you might be right but I’m gonna go get on the dumb elliptical anyway, and then I sashayed my grumpy bear body over to the elliptical and clambered onto it, and before I knew it I did a good three miles while I watched a back episode of Gotham. (Which, incidentally, I think is getting better with every episode. Still have a couple to go, though. No spoilers, or I spray you with hot cat urine.)

I did it.

And I wasn’t tired anymore.

I was actually feeling pretty energized.

I took a quick shower and I was ready to conquer the world.

I made a bad-ass dinner and ran around with the toddler and here I am, writing this blog. And now I’m reminded that every day, when I hit that wall, I’m making a choice. I’m deciding whether or not I’m going to take the easy way or the hard way. Am I going to give in, or push back?

The easy way would’ve been to nap. The easy way would’ve been to exude all my willpower from every pore in my body in an aerosolized mist and then just flump down on the bed and that’s that.

The hard way was to admittedly do something not that hard — it’s not like I had to go fight in a war or wait tables at a busy Manhattan restaurant — but it was still a lot harder than napping.

The easy way would’ve paid off in the short term. Immediate pleasure-spike.

The hard way paid off bigger in the end.

The easy way is the short con. The hard way is the long con.

The long con almost always pays out better.

I mean, okay, this isn’t universally true. If one choice is, “Walk over to that picnic table and eat a delicious slice of pie,” and the other harder choice is, “Enter that bouncy castle over there, the one full of hunger-mad raccoons,” yes, granted, the easier choice is truly the wiser one. Picnic Pie over Raccoon Injury any day of the week.

Certainly it’s worth looking at if the harder choice is also the smarter choice.

But in general, y’know, it’s always worth taking the time to make that assessment.

Sometimes the short walk will get you there faster. But sometimes the longer walk is the prettier, more interesting walk — and it’s the one where you have more time to think, get more exercise, see new things. Like two Yetis making love on a hammock made of human skin.

Park close to a store — easy to head inside. Park far away — longer walk. Seems dumb. Isn’t dumb. Again: more exercise. More blood flow. Better chance of seeing something funny happen in the lot, too, like a couple seagulls fighting a preschooler over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I’ve never seen that. But I want to see that. I bet that’s amazing.

Fast food is easy. Home cooking is hard. But, y’know, about a thousand bazillionty times better. For you, for your family, for the Pink Slimecubes that must be destroyed in the dungeons beneath Ronald McDonald’s clown-vomit murder factory.

Art is like this, too.

It’s harder just not to create art than it is to actually sit down or stand there and commit. It’s easier to think about creating something, or to talk about creating something, than it is to actually will yourself to that act — a very difficult, transitional, sacrificial act. It’s easier to think about stories or dream stories or imagine your published stories than it is to actually carve them letter by letter across a piece of paper. The thing about the easy way, though — the thing that’s seductive — is that it’s a known quantity. We know what we get out of it. We’ll get it quickly and without complication and likely with great (if momentary) pleasure. The hard way is a question mark bolted to an iron door. The door will be hard to open and the path beyond it, potentially treacherous. Its reward is unknown, uncertain, and seems counter to what we really want in the first place. You’re tired? Nap! Ta-da! Why would you run when you’re tired? How dumb are you?

Except, it’s not dumb. It pays off.

Sometimes, you do have to take the easy way. Sometimes, you really need a nap, or a cookie, or a day off from whatever it is you’re doing. That’s okay. You can push too hard. Bend too far and you can break. But just the same — sometimes you really have to push.

So, push.

Stretch.

Run.

Create.

Fuck it.

Hell with the easy way. Dying is the easy way. Living is the hard way.

So keep going.

Keep running.

Keep living.

Keep making cool stuff.

[insert NIKE swoosh logo here]

How To Motivate Yourself As A Writer

Writerly motivation is a tough nut to crack. I go and I write a single tweet, I get immediate feedback. Maybe nothing happens, or maybe some people respond. Could be I get some retweets, some LOLs, some digital high-fives, a troll or two. Social media is great because it’s a dopamine rush. I’m a chimpanzee who pokes the button and gets an immediate testicular tickle.

Writing a book is nothing like that.

Writing a book is you spitting in a tin pail once a day. And you won’t even let anybody see it until it’s full. “NO, IT’S MY SPITBUCKET, YOU CAN’T SEE IT YET, NOT UNTIL MY MASTERWORK IS COMPLETE.” *hawwwk* *ptoo* *plunk* “DON’T LOOK AT ME!”

It’s completely self-reflective and self-driven. Wanna know what it feels like? It feels like this:

You write a paragraph on little slip of paper, then whisper to yourself: “Is it any good?” Then you respond, also in a whisper: “I have no fucking idea.” “Oh, okay. Should I keep writing it?” “I really don’t know, please stop talking to me.” “Okay.” “Okay.” Then you use your manuscript to soak up the tears, and discover it’s not even good at doing that.

So, how do you do it? How do you motivate yourself every day to drag your sluggy body up to the keyboard and headbutt the keys until a story is made? Day after day, one month, two month, six month, a year if that’s what it takes? As the actor is wont to ask the director:

“What’s my motivation?”

So, here, then, are some practical thoughts on building your story, one word-brick at a time:

Write First

Seriously. Do it now. Stop looking at me and go write. Here’s the thing — it doesn’t work with everyone’s schedule, and I dig that. But for my mileage, getting up early to pound out some word count helped me to assign priority to it. I’ve noted in that past that we seem to get only so many IEP (Intellectual Energy Points) throughout the day — and we sometimes spend them on unexpected things, like impromptu corporate meetings, family crises, or being hunted in the woods by masked slashers. But, spend those points early on writing, and you never have to worry about losing the motivation to do it later. (Though you might die in the woods hunted by a masked slasher. So. Uhh. There’s that.)

Find Your Process

Sometimes, the way you do things is square peg, circle hole. Which is also the name of my Sexual Memoir. But whatever. Point is, trying to write the way somebody else writes is demotivating. But writing the way you write feels like a well-oiled machine. Also, Well-Oiled Machine is the name of the sequel to my Sexual Memoir. Which I’m capitalizing for reasons that are unknown to me.

Point is? Create a mechanism. Get yourself into the flow. Develop good habits. All these things are motivational generators — momentum creates momentum.

Do Not Fucking Multitask

Multitasking is a myth. Your brain can’t do two things at once because you’re a human and we humans are all unitasking dum-dums. You cannot write and then answer emails and then tweet and then braid your pubic hair. Stop that. Carve out a block of time, whether it’s fifteen minutes or two hours. Use it to write, and only to write. You will make progress and progress is itself motivating. Forward motion. Fuck inertia. To reiterate: momentum creates momentum.

Take Breaks

Do not multitask, but also don’t keep running full-speed into a wall. Take breaks. Move that sack of slugs and rubbers you call a body. Force blood through you — blood is creative lubricant, after all. (Er, not literal lubricant. Weirdo.) Five minutes here and there will clear out a lotta cobwebs tangling up your motivational innerspace.

(Did I just use the phrase “motivational innerspace?” Ugh.)

The Sugar Tickle

Okay, I’m usually pretty clear that hey, carbs are not the greatest thing to be wolfing down when you’re trying to access WORDS and THOUGHTS and THINGIES (see, I just ate pasta, and all I can come up with for that third word is ‘thingies’). You eat a fistful of Snickers and sure, you’ll get that heady sugar rush, but then all that chocolate and caramel will gum up your THINKMACHINE and next thing you know, it’s Naptime in Writertown.

But! But. Snacks of the sugary variety can be nice (in moderation) as a reward for the day’s end of wordsmithing. You finish what you sat down to finish — you hit your daily word count — and that little stab of dopamine in the deep, junkie well of your brain may motivate you tomorrow. Because it remembers. A brain never forgets chocolate.

The Cheerleader

We need cheerleaders in our lives. People who unabashedly love who we are and what we’re doing no matter how kooky it seems. You’re not just dreaming about writing — you’re chasing that dream down with a fucking trident and spearing it to reality’s soil. You need someone willing to champion that and cheerlead you, not someone who will hike down their lederhosen and take a big squirrely dump on what you’re doing. This is real, and you need it to be real, and you need someone willing to acknowledge how real it is. That’s not to say we don’t need critics, too — and our loved ones can be that, too. Cheerleader and Critic are not mutually exclusive. But if you don’t have someone in your life excited to shake their pom-poms for you, find someone, stat.

And don’t forget to shake your pom-poms for them, too.

Read A Shitty Book

Reading a terrible book is really clarifying. “I can do better than this,” you say, excited to prove your supremacy over execrable prose-based poopsmithy.

Read An Amazing Book

Reading an awesome book is really clarifying, too. “I see the power and vitality of this,” you say, realizing how much writing and storytelling matter. Maybe you won’t ever be that good, but reading a helluva good book can be aspirational.

Get Excited About Tomorrow’s Writing

Sit. Stop. Think not about today’s writing but tomorrow’s. Get excited. Formulate plans. “Tomorrow, I’m going to kill a character and it’s going to be tremendous. Tomorrow, the hero wins. Tomorrow, I get to write a scene with an otter manning a laser harpoon. Tomorrow, I get to kill a politician with bees.” Whatever it is, find something in tomorrow’s writing that excites you.

And, pro-tip — if you can’t think of anything?

Then maybe tomorrow’s writing needs to upgrade its awesomeness, yeah?

Fuck It, Stop Looking For Motivation

I don’t have any magic answers.

I’m trying, I really am.

But listen. Listen.

Writing is fucking hard, sometimes. Writing is dentistry on monsters. Writing is trying to castrate a galloping horse with a slingshot. Writing is letting a bull loose in an orphanage.

And there comes a point when it’s like, you either love this, and it motivates you? Or you don’t, and it doesn’t. I can’t manufacture motivation. Neither can you. You can only stir the flames if there’s already a spark there. You can’t awaken a dead fire.

At the end of the day if your interest in writing is born only of little tricks and tips — basically you fooling yourself to write — then maybe you need to look really hard at this thing you want to do.

Writing is contagious madness, a lot of the times. Even when it sucks, you wanna do it. And that, I think, is one of the things that separates the Aspiring Not-Really-Writers from the Really Real Writers — the latter group writes even when it’s hard, even when the motivation is a dry well, even when the inspiration seems like a dead or dying thing. They hook the car battery jumper cables up to the coyote’s car-struck carcass and rev the engine and make the damn thing dance yet again. Seems dead, but isn’t. Every day then is an act of revivifying your own abilities and motivations. The act of writing becomes clarifying to the act of writing. To restate the principle for the third time: momentum begets momentum.

(Writing is like heroin, that way. Heroin leads to heroin. Writing leads to writing.)

Again, that’s not to say you can’t do things to get going. I sure do. But if day in and day out you hate the process and find yourself having to artificially engineer something that isn’t there — it’s worth asking why, at least. Motivation then becomes not this external thing. It’s internal to the process. It’s part of it. Self-generating, self-replicating, a fire that feeds itself.

The best motivation, then, for a writer is to write.

Write when it’s hard.

Write when it’s easy.

Write when life doesn’t want you to.

Write when you don’t want to.

Write when everyone tells you not to.

Write, write, write.

Love the process or hate it. Love the end or hate the end. Let that chimpanzee’s testicular tickle come not with the feedback you get or from what happens when you put it out into the world — but get it just from the act of creation. Putting one word after the next and forcing them to the shape of a story. The act of creation, difficult as it is.

Go forth, right now, and write.

And let the act be the motivation.

NOW PLEASE LOOK AT MY PAIL OF SPIT AND BEHOLD ITS GLORY.

*shake shake*

*slosh slosh*

* * *

The journey to become a successful writer is long, fraught with peril, and filled with difficult questions: How do I write dialogue? How do I build suspense? What should I know about query letters? How do I start? What the hell do I do?

The best way to answer these questions is to ditch your uncertainty and transform yourself into a Kick-Ass Writer. This new book from award-winning author Chuck Wendig combines the best of his eye-opening writing instruction — previously available in e-book form only — with all-new insights into writing and publishing. It’s an explosive broadside of gritty advice that will destroy your fears, clear the path, and help you find your voice, your story, and your audience.

Amazon

B&N

Indiebound

Writer’s Digest