Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 154

The Breadcrumbs At The Beginning Of The Story

I went to a really great writer’s conference in the Mythical Lands of Canada (the MLC) last week, the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. And, while there, I did these so-called “blue pencil” sessions, where I read the first few pages of a writer’s manuscript and they sit across from me, watching my face and trembling as I sharpen my knives on their shoddy craftsmanship. Except, a couple of things happened: first, I had no blue pencil, so I had to instead try to mark-up their manuscript with the blood of the innocent but of course blood isn’t blue but red so that’s disappointing; second, I did not encounter any shoddy craftsmanship. The attendees of this particular conference were operating at a higher level than I had reckoned — which is great!

That said, I found one common thread — a singular critique — that I was able to apply to each and every manuscript I encountered. That common critique is about beginning your story. Given that this month is the vaunted-slash-dreaded NaNoWriMo, a post on beginning your tale thus seemed to be appropriately fortuitous.

So, here’s the truth:

You’re probably fucking up the beginning of your story.

And the beginning of your story is the most vital part. The start of a story carries an undue burden. Imagine that your story is a pack mule, except that it is the animal’s forehead — or even it’s dopey muzzle — that is expected to carry the load. All that burden is shoved to the front of the beast, and so it is with your story.

Sure, sure, Patience is a virtue. Blah blah blah.

It is also not a virtue many readers — including myself — possess anymore.

Reason? We have scads upon plethoras upon cornucopias of entertainment choices available to us. Games, movies, television, cupcakes, religion, politics, porn whatever. Even inside the realm of books (how wonderful does that sound? A WHOLE REALM OF BOOKS) it’s not like our choices are thin on the ground. One book sucks? Ten more will gladly fill its space, barfed up by the giant book-regurgitating monster known as The Publishing Industry.

I am brutal when I read the first page of a new story.

My patience is literally that long — as long as one page. This is not a bomb with a trailing fuse, folks. This fuse is about the length of a human thumb — a short fizzle and a fast detonation. That detonation sounds less like an explosion and more like me going, NOPE, then pitching the book over my shoulder into the dumpster I always keep immediately behind me. (This is awkward when I realize that yet again I have thrown my iPad away because I was reading an e-book.)

So, by this point, I have probably exhausted your own patience by putting such a long lead on this post, but hey, screw it, this blog is free. HAPPY TO REFUND YOUR MONEY, MISTER COMPLAINYPANTS. *makes it rain with Monopoly money thrown at your head*

Ahem.

What I mean is, you’re probably asking:

So, how exactly am I fucking up the beginning of my story?

I will not count the ways.

But rather, I will offer you a metaphor that hopefully will clarify the work that the beginning of your book must do, and further will hopefully obviate the sins you have committed. You monster.

It’s like this:

You, the writer, are leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.

You are walking backward from the reader, trying to get the reader to creep toward you.

You never quite want them to catch you.

Instead, you want them to follow you through the dark forest — this tangled labyrinth — that is your novel, your story, the architecture of the tale you’re trying to tell.

If you leave too many breadcrumbs — meaning, you just dump a cup of them on the ground — the reader will stop right there. They’ll hover over the spot like a starving duck and they’ll just peck at the ground. Which sounds fine (hey, the reader is fed and fat and happy, quack quack), but it means the reader isn’t progressing. A fat belly means a bored duck.

If you leave too few breadcrumbs — meaning, you space them out too far apart, you’re too spare with these little crusty boulders of secret delight — then the reader will follow along but suddenly get lost. In the dark forest they will not be able to see the next breadcrumb. They will then spin around in the shadows, looking for a way forward, and they will not find one. Confused and lonely, they will most likely be eaten by a grue.

In both instances, the reader will put down the book.

(Always assume that the reader is looking for a reason to go do something else. They want to put down your book and go read another one. Or go eat some Cheezits or play a video game or go fuck a houseplant — whatever leisure time activity one prefers when nobody else is watching.)

It is your job to entice the reader forward. To tease and tantalize — story is, in this way, a kind of seduction. (And here I note that breadcrumbs are about the least tantalizing thing in the world, and if someone were to try to seduce me with breadcrumbs I’d probably grumpily urinate on the ground like an offended bear and go trundling off in the other direction. So perhaps this metaphor is better if we imagine Elliott trying to urge E.T. forward with a trail of Reese’s Pieces. Me, I’d probably follow a trail of little bourbon bottles, but I’d get too drunk by the middle of the forest and would probably end up sleeping in the woods, soiled in my own tears and whiskey-sweat. This digression has gone on long enough, I suspect, so we’ll just stick with “breadcrumbs.”)

You’re trying to ensure that the reader is interested in taking the next step, but never precisely satisfied when she gets there. You want the reader to want more. To need more. To continue following you into the maze, driven by the hunger you have stoked.

Now, later on in the book, you can start changing your pace. You can move more quickly, or more slowly, expecting the reader to keep up. You can leave more breadcrumbs here, and fewer there — because by then, the reader is already in the maze. They’re invested in the untangling of the narrative. With a good, balanced opening, you are literally buying story credit that you can spend later on riskier, bolder maneuvers inside the tale. (Though even there, you can overspend — but that is a conversation for another day.)

So, practically speaking, what are these breadcrumbs?

What are their narrative equivalent?

Assume that they’re shaped like little question marks and exclamation points.

Question marks are, as noted, questions — who is this person? What is wrong? Is this a conspiracy? Who are those strange creatures? What is that robot doing to that chicken? As I am wont to say: the question mark is shaped like a hook for a reason. Set the hook right and it embeds in the cheek of the reader and pulls her along.

But a story — particularly the opening — can’t just be questions. It’s not a fucking interview or an essay test. You also have to balance it out with answers, because answers lend us context. Except here, the answers cannot be wishy-washy. The context given cannot be soft-hearted. Answers must be bold, compelling, interesting. This is why they are exclamation points rather than question marks — you’re excitedly declaring things! This is sturm and drang — truth and consequence. Someone dies! An explosion! Doom! Event! Not mere happenstance or coincidence but holy shitcookies, look at this thing and this other thing and that robot and that chicken!

Exposition is too talky. It gives away too much. It’s why we cannot begin a story with backstory, or with explanation — it’s all answers, and it’s all milquetoast.

But we also cannot begin with a void of context, either, because then we’re lost.

Too many breadcrumbs.

Or too few.

We entice with mystery, conflict, drama. Every compelling character is a breadcrumb. So are the actions of those characters. Great writing is a breadcrumb all its own (though not nearly enough of one). On page one I should be seeing the willingness to have things happen and to ask questions. Set the hook with mystery. Reel it in with great event driven by strong characters.

What’s your seduction? How will you compel readers forward? What will seduce them on page one to read to page ten, and then to 20, and then to 50, 100, and all the way to the end?

How will you get readers lost in the maze of your fiction?

A Scampering Peregrination Of NaNoWriMo Writing Tips

1. The first draft is for you. Subsequent drafts are for everybody else. So, write this one the way you want to. Do what thou wilt. Be selfish. Grab at the story with greedy paws.

2. ABI: Always Be Interesting. Not just to others — write what interests you.

3. If you feel yourself getting bored, change the story so that you aren’t. Motivate yourself through chaos, unpredictability, and interest. If your own interest in the story hits a wall: blow shit up. Go cuckoo bananapants. Surprise yourself.

4. It’s easier to write your word count earlier in the day than later. Early means it’s out of the way. Later means you’re racing against the clock. Racing against the clock makes for good fiction (OH MY GOD THE SQUIRREL IS GOING TO EXPLODE IF WE DON’T JIBBER THE JABBER IN TIME). It makes for unpleasant writing, however.

5. Be kind. Share. Talk. Engage in the community. Offer your own tips. Be the best version of yourself in the process and write the song that lives in the glitter-shellacked eerily-vibrating Music Box you call a ‘heart.’

6. Characters are everything. Focus on them. Characters make plot by doing things and saying things. Do not staple plot to the story. The plot grows inside the story based on the actions of interested and interesting characters. Story lives in how characters address (and fail to address) their problems. Plot is skeleton, not exoskeleton.

7. Give less of a shit. Relax. Ease off the stress stick, cowpoke. You’re not Superman saving a busload of precious orphans. You’re writing a novel. You can still give a shit — but set aside the baggage and expectations. You’re not Humanity’s Last Chance.

8. Don’t compare yourself to anybody else. You do you. Let them do them.

9. Don’t cheat on your story with another story. Don’t go porking another manuscript behind the WORDSHED. (See, it’s like woodshed — oh, hell, never mind.) Got another idea for a story? Of course you do. The test of a writer is staying on track. You’re committed. Married. Don’t cheat. Put a ring on it. Those other ideas can have their day: write down a quick logline or synopsis, then shut the notebook and get back to work.

10. Of course it’s work. Expect it to be. Let it be work.

11. Of course it feels like you’re lost. We all feel that way. You’re not alone. Nobody knows what the fuck they’re doing. We’re all pretending. We’re all our own imaginary friends lost in a realm of our own devising. It’s what makes this thing so weird and so exciting. Fuck it. Keep going.

12. Don’t worry about being original. Originality is overrated. The one thing that’s unique about your story is that you’re the one writing it. Your voice is the original thing.

13. You don’t chase your voice. You are your voice. Your voice is the way you speak, the way you think, the ideas you have. Your voice is the thing you find when you stop looking for it.

14. Need a throughline? An invisible thread on which to hang your tale? Consider theme. Theme is the argument your story is making. Theme is what your work is about. It’s what you’re trying to say. It’s what you believe. It’s what the story is telling people. Theme is a strand of spider silk. It can connect everything — the grand unification argument of storytelling.

15. Concentrate more on things happening in the story. Worry less about what happened. Stories are most engaging in the present and suggestive of the future. The past is useful, but can fast become a boat anchor or a full colostomy bag hanging too-heavy on the hip. The story is people saying things and people doing things. Explanations, expositions, backstory, internal monologuing: don’t be a narrative hoarder. Let go of as many details as you can.

16. Write down only those things that carry you — and the reader — to the next part of the story. Anything else is just gum sticking your boot (and theirs) to the sidewalk.

17. The three shits easy plot generator: characters want shit, so they do shit to get what they want, and then shit happens in the process. Motivation. Action. Consequence.

18. Every character believes herself to be the main character. Every character is the hero of her own story. That includes antagonists. That includes supporting characters. This belief held by all characters puts characters in contention with one another. And plot is created from the result.

19. Yes, it’s hard. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be awesome. Stop being afraid of difficult things.

20. Protect your writing time. Someone wants to take that away from you, you gotta do the Gandalf jam. Plant your feet. Slam your staff (note: not a euphemism for a penis) against the ground. THOU SHALT NOT PASS. Or, THOU SHALT NOT TAKE AWAY THE TIME I HAVE RESERVED FOR THIS TASK I CONSIDER IMPORTANT SO EAT A GIANT CHRISTMAS STOCKING CRAMMED WITH MIDDLE FINGERS YOU JERKY MCJERKERSON.

21. Consider the story’s stakes. What can be won or lost by the characters? The story is the characters betting on something. What happens if they bet too big? What happens if they lose the bet? How do the stakes of different characters oppose each other?

22. You are your own muse. You make your own motherfucking magic.

23. It’s okay if you fail as long as you learn something from it.

24. It’s also totally okay if NaNoWriMo isn’t for you. It wasn’t really for me. It’s not for a lot of people. Sometimes it fits. Sometimes it’s trying to headbutt a square peg into a circle hole. Sometimes it feels like you’re trying to cram an end-table up an asshole. Just because it isn’t for you doesn’t mean novel-writing isn’t for you. Draw your own map if the one you have in your hand doesn’t take you to the pirate’s treasure.

25. Fuck ‘em if they don’t believe in you. Your book isn’t a precious fairy. It needs nobody’s faith to fly. It doesn’t even need your faith right now. It just needs you to do the work. So: do the work.

* * *

30 Days in the Word Mines: a series of daily tips, tricks, and thoughts to get you writing that story that squirms inside your viscera and longs to escape.

Amazon | B&N | Buy from terribleminds | 8-book bundle

The Goodreads Awards: Shameless Pandering

It is once again that time of the year — the Goodreads Best Books of the Year awards have returned to the Web for 2014. They of course contain a lot of really rad books (Annihilation! The Girl With All The Gifts! Cibola Burn!) Alongside some great authors (Marko Kloos, John Scalzi, Jonathan Maberry, Scott Sigler, Laini Taylor, Laurie Halse Anderson, Stephanie Perkins, Richard Kadrey, Ann Leckie!).

For my mileage, it’s also missing some super-good books, too.

Where is Kameron Hurley’s Mirror Empire?

Or Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters?

Or Cherie Priest’s Maplecroft?

So, this is also your annual reminder that during this first round (which runs until November 8th), you can write in candidates across the many categories.

And this can also serve as your annual shameless tap-dancing by me where I casually elbow you in the throat and remind you that, hey, I might have some books that are eligible for said write-ins, including The Cormorant, and Blightborn. No pressure, of course. Except the pressure that reminds you that I actually physically die if I don’t get onto the Goodreads Awards every year, and my resurrection is always an ugly, viscera-caked mess, and nobody wants that. NOBODY.

*stares*

What I mean is, go vote for cool books.

Because yay, books.

*rises from the gore pit, screaming*

Two Writing-Related Questions For You

In which I pose two writing-related questions (with various related sub-queries).

First: what are your strengths when writing? What do you feel that you do well? Why do you do it well? How would you tell others that have trouble doing what you believe you do well?

Second: what are your weaknesses? What gives you difficulty? Why do you think that is? How can you improve this thing that gives you the shivering shits and the fretful fits?

(Writing can be about the language, but I’m also including storytelling in all this.)

I ask these things in part just to evaluate what we do, and how we do it.

I also ask because maybe, just maybe, you can help each other.

Community, and all that.

*hands out straitjackets and thorazine*

*locks the asylum doors*

DISCUSS.

You Have Permission: My NaNoWriMo Pep Talk

The fine folks who run National Novel Writing Month asked me to do a pep talk.

They liked it well enough to make it the lead piece kicking off the month.

So, here goes:

Imagine being allowed to do something you’re not supposed to do.

Imagine you’re given the keys to a mud-bogging Bronco, or a dune buggy, or a Lamborghini. And then, you’re pointed toward a field. A soccer field outside a high school, or maybe just a wide open grassland. Nobody there. No kids playing. No animals frolicking.

In fact, right now, nobody is here to see you at all…

Read the rest at NaNoWriMo.org.

NaNoWriMo Challenge?

This week: no flash fiction challenge.

(Don’t worry — next week, we’ll be back!)

This time around, feel free to use this post as a general one-stop shop for discussing NaNoWriMo — and, even better, if you’re so willing, to link us to your wordsmithy in the first week. Show us what you’re writing! Doesn’t start till tomorrow, of course, but you can still use this as a crossroads for sharing conversation, content, difficulties and progress reports.

If you’re in — say hi!

Go forth and rock.

Now Available: 30 Days In The Word Mines

Hey, look.

A new writing book.

All original.

Nothing taken from the blog.

From the book description:

30 Days In The Word Mines takes you on a month-long journey of writing, offering pages filled with practical writing tips, motivational throat-punches, and ruminations on the craft of writing and art of storytelling. Whether you’re running with National Novel Writing Month or just want to hunker down and write to see just how far you can get, this book will help you every step of the way with a new tip, trick or thought every day of the month-long journey. From the mad mind behind terribleminds comes an original companion book to help you navigate the maze of writing every day. Good luck, and art harder.

Wanna check it out? It’s $2.99 at:

Amazon.

B&N.

Or buy direct from Payhip.

Buy 30 Days In The Word Mines!

Or — or! — I’m offering it as part of my Gonzo Big Writing Bundle.

Twenty bucks gets you (now) eight books.

Buy Gonzo Bundle!

And that’s the deal.

Hope you check it out — this one’s a bit of an experiment for me, given that it’s a little more focused in terms of content, and again, is not material that originated at the blog. (The exception is the appendix, which features my Big 350 zero-fuckery writing plan.)

Enjoy!

*climbs into submarine*

*descends into the ink-sodden sea*

Cover Reveal: Atlanta Burns!

You don’t mess with Atlanta Burns.

Everyone knows that. And that’s kinda how she likes it—until the day Atlanta is drawn into a battle against two groups of bullies and saves a pair of new, unexpected friends. But actions have consequences, and when another teen turns up dead—by an apparent suicide—Atlanta knows foul play is involved. And worse: she knows it’s her fault.

You go poking rattlesnakes, maybe you get bit.

Afraid of stirring up the snakes further by investigating, Atlanta turns her focus to the killing of a neighborhood dog. All paths lead to a rural dogfighting ring, and once more Atlanta finds herself face-to-face with bullies of the worst sort. Atlanta cannot abide letting bad men do awful things to those who don’t deserve it. So she sets out to unleash her own brand of teenage justice.

Will Atlanta triumph? Or is fighting back just asking for a face full of bad news?

Releases January 27th, 2015.

Pre-order now!

Sam Sykes: Fear, Love, And Fantasy Fiction

This is a guest post by Sam Sykes. 

I don’t know how he got in here.

Please call 911.

* * *

What was the first fantasy book you got hooked on?

Go ahead. Think back on it. I’ll wait.

I see your fingers hovering over the keyboard, trembling like they did the first time you ever touched a high school crush. They’re probably all sweaty, too. Gross, but understandable, because I bet each and every one of you had a thought that you might be embarrassed by what you’re about to type.

Maybe you were about to type The Belgariad by David Eddings. Maybe you were about to type Legend by David Gemmell. Maybe you were about to type Dragons of Spring Dawning by Weis & Hickman.

And just maybe you were a little bit embarrassed by it.

That’s okay. I’m not judging. For the very longest time, I was embarrassed by this stuff, too. When I first got published and people asked who my influences were, I thought the answer I wanted to give would sound…what? Childish, maybe? Not serious? Illegitimate? Whatever it was, I hastily mumbled some generic catch-all Tolkien titles that I thought would fit the bill and changed the conversation.

For some reason, I was really terrified by the thought of people knowing I used to read Drizzt novels.

Yeah. Drizzt. Lonely outcast of drow society, rejected by both the surface world and his own kind. Driven to good in a world that expects him to do bad. Wields a pair of badass scimitars and throws his magic cat at a thousand orcs while fighting three-headed liches while being watched on by sexy frost giants holy shit what am I saying.

I don’t really blame myself for being worried about what people might think about me for that. I feel like a lot of fantasy — readers and writers alike — have this latent fear of not being taken seriously. We’re mocked by mainstream literature, we’re made fun of by a lot of press, the word “nerd” is still (rarely) thrown around as an insult.

Basically, I think a lot of people are already embarrassed by fantasy without us being embarrassed by ourselves.

It took me three books to arrive at this conclusion. Three books of trying to figure out how to be edgy, how to be tough, how to really, really change this genre so that it would finally be taken seriously (because naturally, I surmised, who else would do it but me)?

And at the end of those three books? I think I kind of missed Drizzt.

I mean, I liked what came out of this era of fantasy: I loved the morally ambiguous characterization and the political intrigue and whatnot, but I was growing increasingly burnt out on cynicism and bleakness and hatred.

I missed swordfights. I missed monsters. I missed magic cats and badass scimitars. I missed three-headed liches and sexy frost giants. I missed magic and mayhem and I missed witty banter and romance. I missed being excited by fantasy.

True, those aspects aren’t for everyone. And it’s true that there are some skeezy elements of older style fantasy: whitewashed casts, unnervingly rigid morality systems, women characters who don’t get to do much, a rather alarming pattern of justifying the mass slaughter of other races.

These aspects, I am keen to leave behind and not revisit.

But there’s a certain thrill to some aspects of fantasy that I think a lot of people put behind them for fear of appearing childish, juvenile, immature, whatever. And somehow, they’re the aspects that sounded great when I wrote them down. If I could get those again, while leaving all the gross parts behind, I think I’d have something nice.

This is what I thought when I started writing The City Stained Red.

I wanted to write something that made me happy again. I wanted to do all the stuff I love doing: fights and awkward relationships and monsters and demons and magic and shit going wrong and people trying to do the right thing and sometimes failing and exploring lost civilizations and treasure and all that cool crap.

So I did.

And it was pretty great. The City Stained Red is my strongest work yet and I’m amazingly proud of it.

And somehow, it wasn’t shallow. It wasn’t immature. It wasn’t not serious. It was me. It fit.

So, now I want to ask you this: when’s the last time you had that same feeling?

We, as authors, always give the same advice to aspiring writers: “Write what makes you happy! Write for yourself!” And that’s good advice. And it’s damned easy advice to put into practice if you don’t consider all this other stuff.

I mean, even if we weren’t considering the mainstream heckling of fantasy, there are other aspects to consider. We don’t write in a vacuum: we’re always considering what else is out there, how we’re going to leave our mark. And leaving a mark is arguably the most important thing a writer needs to do past getting enough money to feed themselves.

And speaking of money, “write for yourself” is a strong sentiment, but “write what gets you paid” is also pretty hard to argue with.

But for as deep a conversation as this could get and for as much as we can talk about improving ourselves as writers and making careers out of writing, we should also focus on the most important question.

Does writing make us happy?

Does the thought of not writing terrify us?

Or does it not even occur to us because what the fuck else would we do?

These are questions that demand honest answers. And the honest answer must come from another question: what do you love? What do you have to write? What story must you absolutely tell?

And why haven’t you written it yet?

I’m sure there are a lot of answers to that last bit. But we really can’t afford to go into them. I’m running out of time and eventually Chuck will wander back here and wonder A) how I got into his house, B) what I’m doing on his computer and C) what’s all this pink stuff I’m covered in.

So I want you to be honest with yourself. I want you to find out what you’re afraid of and what you love. And then I want you to write about it. And then I want you to keep writing until it is done. I want you to do this for yourself.

And if you get it published, that’d be nice, too. I’d like to read it.

* * *

Sam Sykes is the fantasy novelist who covered himself in some kind of pink slurry that he used as a lubricant to shunt his way through Chuck Wendig’s ductwork, like some grease-besodden John McClane. He is tired of your bullshit and likes pugs but not in the way you want him to like pugs, y’know, it’s not a love thing, so stop sending him all those pug figurines for that glass menagerie of pug figurines you think he has but he doesn’t have, you presumptive person, you. Also, Sam Sykes is not writing this bio, but Chuck Wendig is writing this bio, so whatever, sucker.

Sam is the author of the newly released The City Stained Red: 

A long-exiled living god arises.

A city begins to break apart at the seams.

Lenk and his battle-scarred companions have come to Cier’Djaal in search of Miron Evanhands, a wealthy priest who contracted them to eradicate demons — and then vanished before paying for the job.

But hunting Miron down might be tougher than even these weary adventurers can handle as two unstoppable religious armies move towards all-out war, tensions rise within the capital’s cultural melting pot, and demons begin to pour from the shadows…

And Khoth Kapira, the long-banished living god, has seen his chance to return and regain dominion over the world.

Now all that prevents the city from tearing itself apart in carnage are Lenk, Kataria, a savage human-hating warrior, Denaos, a dangerous rogue, Asper, a healer priestess, Dreadaeleon, a young wizard, and Gariath, one of the last of the dragonmen.

This book is presently a mere $1.99 (?!) in e-formats:

The City Stained Red: Amazon | B&N | Kobo

Sam Sykes: Website | Twitter 

Digging Ditches Or Casting Spells: On Magic In Writing

Here is a modified version of the keynote speech I gave to the very wonderful Surrey International Writer’s Conference this past weekend, should you care to check it out. It’s been slightly rejiggered and reformatted to fit a proper blog post rather than a banquet speech.

* * *

There’s a war going on.

No, no — it’s not the war between self-publishers and the traditionally-published. Not a war between lit fic and genre nerds, not a clash betwixt authors and reviewers and the authors who, ahem, stalk the reviewers. This isn’t a war between you and me because frankly there’s way too many of you and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t last fifteen seconds.

This isn’t even a war outside this blog.

It’s a war inside here.

*taps chest*

Inside the rusty bucket of fireplace ash I call a ‘heart.’

And even then you’re saying, “Oh, I know what he’s about to say. He’s about to talk about the war between cake and pie,” but there I say, nay, nay, that is not what I mean. (Besides, that is a Cold War, long locked in a permanent state of stalemate. Just as you think pie has clenched it, cake rises from the darkness of defeat, sporting frosting that tastes like buttercream and vengeance.)

The war I’m talking about is a hot war. Active and alive, fought even now as I write this blog post.

This war is about magic.

This war is about whether or not this thing that we do is somehow magical.

(And by “this thing we do,” I do not mean publishing. Oh hell no. Publishing is purely the making of sausage. Publishing is a gray and lightless place. Publishing is Mordor. Publishing is the inside of Gollum’s mouth: sticky and fishy and bitey.)

No, what I mean is: we sometimes think of writing as being a precious thing. A magical talent, an otherworldly commodity. When talking about writing we sometimes speak of things in a magical way, right? THE MUSE COUGHED INTO MY MOUTH AND FILLED ME WITH HER PRECIOUS BACTERIAL WHIMSY. Or, MY CHARACTERS DIDNT LISTEN TO ME, NO SIR, THEY JUST WENT OFF AND DID THEIR OWN THING, LIKE A GANG OF ROGUE CHIMPANZEES LET LOOSE IN A SHOPPING MALL HA HA HA SILLY SENTIENT CHARACTERS I’M JUST A PAWN IN THEIR GAME.

Trust me — I get it. I even want to agree. Our writing certainly feels magical, right? It has the sense of the ritual about it — the occult, the arcane. Conjuring something from literally nothing. The act driven by little reagents: the right pen, the proper font, the perfect coffee mug. The act further driven by sacrifices big and small: things laid on the altar of the act like our time, our tears, our sanity. (I mean, because c’mon: writers are cuckoo bananapants. I would posit that as writers we are each crazier than an outhouse owl. Which is of course an owl trapped in an outhouse. I think we can all agree that is an owl we do not want to meet because that owl wants to fly but all it can do instead is huff outhouse fumes in a dark crap-closet poop-prison.)

With writing, we all feel like little Harries and Hermiones running around:

“SCRIPTO NOVELIOSO!”

*shoots words out of magic wand*

Ah, but see — I was not raised with magic in mind.

My father was not a man given over such foolish notions. He was a man of fundamental things: dirt, wood, hay, the bang of a hammer, the growl of an engine. I remember at a young age asking him about God and he shrugged and grunted: “God lives in the Earth and makes the plants grow.” I was like, whoa, really? Is that true? Here I was picturing an actual deity lurking beneath the unturned earth, ready to shove corn stalks and blackberry briar up through the ground. And he gave me this look like I’d been donkey-kicked and was like, “Jesus Christ, how should I know? Now hand me that wrench.”

My father’s answer to things was not ‘magic.’ It was HARD MOTHERFUCKING WORK. God forbid you tell him you were bored. “Go build something. Mow the lawn. Move that box.” He would utter that dreadful curse: “Bored? Oh, I’ll give you something to do.” He literally — and this is a true story — told me one time to dig a ten foot long ditch, three feet deep, in the yard. I did it. Are we laying pipe? Hiding a snake? Burying various body parts? Then he covered it back up again. I was like, what the crap are you doing? Why did I dig that hole?

He said: “Sometimes you just need to dig a ditch.”

When the day came that I made it clear I wanted to be a writer, I’m pretty sure his ass clenched up hard enough to snap a piece of metal rebar. Writing was a soft job. A writer’s hands were soft hands. My father’s hands were no longer hands: they were just bones wreathed in callus. (Actually, a note about my father’s hands: he was missing his pinky finger, because he smashed it in a log splitter, and instead of paying the doctor to cut it off, he did it himself with a pair of bolt cutters to save some coin and, apparently, aggravation. By the way,there’s no writing advice analog there, no storytelling metaphor buried in that — seriously, do not cut off your own finger with bolt cutters. That’s a PSA from me to you. You can thank me later.)

So, I took his grumpy ethos of GRRRR HARD WORK with me to into the word mines and I told him, you’ll see, I’ll work hard, I’ll make it big someday. (And I think he was like, YEAH YEAH, LEMME KNOW WHEN YOUR LITTLE HOBBY MAKES YOU CUT OFF YOUR OWN PINKY FINGER.) And then that was that for how he felt about my career choice.

So, a big part of me is very much anti-magic when it comes to this thing we do. Anyone presents a romantic, misty-eyed narrative about writing and my knee-jerk response is, SHUT UP. WRITING IS JUST DIGGING DITCHES. ITS YOU CLEANING OUT THE CREATIVE HORSE STALLS. ITS ALL HORSE POOP AND HEAVY SHOVELS. SHOVEL IT! HORSE POOP!

*thrusts shovel full of horse poop at you*

It’s easy to see how magical thinking can hurt you, as a writer. By giving over your writing to the fates, the gods, the muses, and in that, you remove your own agency. You cede control of the work — of the creation of the work — to forces beyond you, absolving you of all responsibility. I had a neighbor who talked about wanting to be a writer, and she said that she’d do it but she just had to “find the time,” but that when she did she would do it because she was inspired — she’d be hit by a “bolt of lightning” and even if she were driving her grandchildren around she’d have to pull over on the side of the road and just write it all down. Which of course sounds lovely. Inspiration! Bolts of lightning! So dramatic! Also sounds like a really great way to never write a goddamn thing.

With magical thinking, if the ritual isn’t perfect, if the proper sacrifices were not made, if the magical elves who live under your desk are not appeased — then the work never gets done. I can assure you right now: every day of writing does not feel like magic.

(Some days feel like an act of violent proctology on an angry goat.)

And don’t even get me started on editing. If magic was an essential to edit your book, I’m not sure a second draft would ever ever EVER get written. Editing can be a bewildering slog. It can be a dizzying run through a hedge maze at night. The only magic felt there sometimes is a nightmare magic — imps and incubi hounding your every step.

Leaving writing as a magical act further suggests that those that can conjure the creative power are somehow more special: given over to a sacred gift, born of a proper bloodline or under an alignment of authorial planets. Writing too hard? Hm, must not have that old wordslinger magic! You’re not a proper ordained priest in the Inkolyte Brotherhood. Oh, what, you think anybody can just write? What are you, some kind of Lutheran? Get your weird manifesto off my door, anarchist.

But even still, even in those comparisons…

Little hints of magic. Sparks in the dark.

And so then the battle flares up again: I like magic. Magic is neat. I want this thing we do to be magical because it explains so much — it explains the serendipity of a good day’s work, it explains when your characters seem to have minds of their own, and it explains what happens when you get a really great book that grabs you by the sticky wicket and won’t let go. Imagination and creation are so volcanic, so pyroclastic, how can that not be magic? Stories shape the world. Writers have power. What I’m trying to say is:

GODamnit, I want to be Gandalf.

Why can’t I be Gandalf?

WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME.

One day, I too shall have a Gandalfian beard.

*slams down giant pen against the earth*

THOU SHALL NOT PROCRASTINATE

*wrestles the fire demon of authorial distractions into a chasm*

Ahem.

Still, though, much as I want to be Gandalf — Gandalf was special. An elevated class. A proper wizard. I’m no wizard. I’m just a regular old human tub-of-guts. It feels like magic, but it can’t be magic — can it? Maybe there’s something there, I think. I wonder, then, is it less about casting a magic spell or giving yourself over to mystical forces, and is it more a magic trick? Is it artifice and illusion? Less Gandalf and more Penn and Teller? What we see as the audience at a magic show seems impossible: the rabbit in the hat, the girl in the box. But the magician isn’t given over to that magic. The magician knows the trick. The magician created the mechanism by which to fool US into thinking that what we are seeing is real.

So, which is it? Spellcasting magic? Just a trick? Purely the product of hard work?

Let me tell you about three times where this thing that we do felt magical truly for me.

One: me, the year 2010. I spent five years trying and failing to write what would become my debut novel, BLACKBIRDS. I have a screenwriting mentor at the time — because that’s what you do, right? You want to be a novelist, go get a screenwriting mentor? — and he sits me down and tells me to outline the book that I am unable to finish. And I say HO HO HO no silly Hollywoodman, we AUTHORIAL TYPES find our sails filled with MUSE BREATH, not with the crass and gassy winds of your pedestrian outlines. And he says, no, shut up, do it anyway, and so I gnash my teeth. Grr. And bite the belt. And punch frozen meat. And then I do it. it. Holy shit, I do it! Suddenly, I have a plot. I have an ending! And a month later, I have a novel.

Two: another writer’s conference. Not long after Blackbirds has come out. I’m coming out of a banquet a young woman hurries up to me and she’s shaking and quaking and I’m suddenly worried about her. Is something wrong, I ask? Seems she’s nervous about meeting me. And I think, oh, god, what has she heard? What did I do? Is she about to serve me a subpoena? She’s totally about to serve me a subpoena. But then she says she’s a fan, she loved my novel BLACKBIRDS and it made her want to be a writer and I think, oh my stars and garters, I think this is my first bonafide fan! (And then I think: I should probably tell her to learn restaurant management or lockpicking skills or anything but writing.)

Three: this memory, a few years before the other two. My father is still alive, before the prostate cancer would come to claim him. I’m in Colorado visiting his new house, for he had just moved out there to retire, and as with the war between cake and pie I feel like my father and I have forced a stalemate. He doesn’t approve of my career choice but he grudgingly acknowledges it and I acknowledge his grudging acknowledgment and life moves on. Then comes a day on this trip where he introduces me to a close friend and neighbor, a man named George. And George proceeds to dictate my career to me thus far: all my successes, all of my projects, none of my failures. And I ask him, how do you know all this? Are you stalking me online, George? Though I am always flattered by the attention of older gentlemen — *bats eyelashes* — you don’t seem the type. He seems surprised and says, “Well, your father told me all about it, of course. He’s really proud of all the things you’ve worked to achieve.”

*jaw does not hang open so much as it unhinges and falls to the dirt*

Well, holy shit.

There. Magic. Punctuating the darkness like little fireflies.

Three times that are not exhaustive. Just three snapshots among many.

What all this tells me is that:

The act of writing is not magic.

But it sure has its magic moments.

And why does it have those moments?

It has them because of us.

See, the truth is, no war is going on. These different ideas — magic as spellcasting, magic as trick, writing as a product of hard work — come together to tell the whole story. It’s hard work that allows us to tirelessly practice and reiterate our tricks. It’s hard work and indeed sacrifice that allows us to sometimes conjure those moments that remind us that writing starts as fingers on keyboards and words on pages but can end up as something so much stranger and so much greater than we ever anticipated. We are the magicians and wizards, but it takes a helluva lot of hard work — not from the outside, but from the inside, magic drawn up from within like water from a well more than it is hoped for like a bolt of lightning — to clinch the spell, to perform the illusion.