Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 160

Hillary Monahan: Five Things I Learned Writing Mary: The Summoning

There is a right way and a wrong way to summon her.  Success requires precision: a dark room, a mirror, a candle, salt, and four teenage girls. Each of them–Jess, Shauna, Kitty, and Anna–must link hands, follow the rules . . . and never let go.

A thrilling fear spins around the room the first time Jess calls her name: “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. BLOODY MARY.” A ripple of terror follows when a shadowy silhouette emerges through the fog, a specter trapped behind the mirror.

Once is not enough, though–at least not for Jess. Mary is called again. And again. But when their summoning circle is broken, Bloody Mary slips through the glass with a taste for revenge on her lips. As the girls struggle to escape Mary’s wrath, loyalties are questioned, friendships are torn apart, and lives are forever altered.

A haunting trail of clues leads Shauna on a desperate search to uncover the legacy of Mary Worth. What she finds will change everything, but will it be enough to stop Mary — and Jess — before it’s too late?

1) Scary is personal.

What scares me doesn’t scare you. Or the person next to you. Or the person next to that. There is no one novel, no matter how well written, that will absolutely get under an audience’s skin. There is no penultimate monster that will send people scurrying for bibles, holy water, and a nightlight. While people can respect how well-crafted a horror book is and appreciate relatable characters, original premise, and perfectly staged monster scenes, sometimes the scares just won’t scare. Fear is steeped in psychology.

I find this premise fascinating. For example, I have a friend who can watch any zombie or ghost movie without issue. The Exorcist made me climb the walls, he could not grok why it was such a big deal. However, we watched The Strangers — a movie about a home invasion — and he was scarred for weeks. The fantastical will not bother him. Realistic horror will get him every time.

Another friend loves zombies movies/fiction, but if you put a ghost in front of him he can’t stomach it. “If I can’t physically attack it to save myself, it scares me.” A horror author doesn’t know the audience’s push buttons. She can only go forth with what she sees as scary and hope others share her particular flavor of twitchy.

2) Scary is pacing dependent.

You can argue that all stories are pacing dependent, but to me, horror will fall flat quicker than other genres if tension is not maintained. Every one of my favorite horror novels starts small and snowballs into hideous by the end of the story. THE SHINING delivers a nibble of creepy at the beginning and escalates to some ghost activity, then major ghost activity. By two hundred-and-something pages in, Danny Torrance is being chased by an army of topiary animals and I’m trying not to vomit with fear because HOW DID WE GET HERE? WHY, STEPHEN KING, WHY?

The seed of dread needs to be planted early and steadily nourished so it can flourish into a Pee-Your-Pants Tree over the course of the pages. If the book stagnates and dips, the reader loses that uncomfortable tingle at the base of her spine. Without a foundation of creep to build upon, the mood is shot and the book fails.

The pendulum can swing the other way, too, though. Too much gore and people will see it as splatter porn. While some folks appreciate viscera dripping from the ceiling, it can desensitize the audience to the atrocities. After a while, they all blend together and will no longer evoke those much sought after trauma stares.

3) Horror tropes are plentiful. Use with caution.

Tropes exist in every genre, but horror tropes are particularly prominent. The creepy music box, the thing in the mirror reflection that wasn’t there the moment before, the haunted doll. These tropes, when spun on their heads, are fun. Horror lovers appreciate a good tip of the hat. They love fresh takes on old themes. However, using too many tropes? Or using them the exact same way someone else presented them? Derivative and stale. The audience gets that corpses look like corpses and there aren’t too many variations on the theme. What will differentiate the good piles of walking rot from the bad are the less-explored details.

The smells. The sounds. The odd tics.

And then there are the problematic tropes. The promiscuous girl who is murdered after she’s shown us a whole heaping helping of her bouncing sweater parts. The person of color who is never, ever allowed to make it to the end of the movie/book (or, if he does, is then shot right before the credits roll because Screw You, Night of the Living Dead.)  Yeah. If these tropes died in a fire, I’d be okay with that.

4) Kissing and horror go together, but not always well.

This seems to be more of a YA thing. When a protagonist is fearful for her life but spends more than ten percent of the story thinking about kissing, there’s something weird going on. I don’t care if I’m holed up with RDJ, Sofia Vergara, and Tom Hiddelston. If there are zombies coming, my girl parts have to wait a damned minute. All the makeouts in the world won’t matter if a dead thing’s munching on my spleen.

I readily recognize that having a relationship in horror can up the stakes. The potential loss, the fear of not only losing your own life but the life of a partner. I hate using another King example, but he’s the grandpappy of horror for a reason—Fran and Stu in THE STAND? Okay, I can deal with it. It worked. But remember that THE STAND had a trillion pages so King had the space to pull that off. In a shorter book, too much focus on DOES HE LIKE ME and not enough on HOLY GOD THE TENTACLE BEAST JUST ATE CHARLIE detracts from the danger. It also borders on illogical.

5) Urban legends and local lore are fascinating.

Bloody Mary came to prominence in the 1960′s. Over in England, she was a toilet bogey associated with the dead queen. In the US, her story got wonky. She’s not always Bloody Mary—sometimes she’s Mary Jane. Sometimes she’s a mother mourning for her children (a more traditional Lady in White type ghost.) Sometimes she’s associated with the Salem Witch Trials. Sometimes she’s a student who died in a school and wants to torment the living for having the audacity to breathe. The only common thread is a blackened bathroom, a name said three times, and a ghost in a mirror.

When writing MARY, I did a lot of research on the legend and found myself studying the Hockomock Swamp in Massachusetts (which is where the fictitious town of Solomon’s Folly is located.) It’s a marshland in southeastern MA that spans four or five towns and considered one of the most haunted places in New England. Not coincidentally, it’s where King Philip’s War was fought back in the 1600s and thousands of people died.  All sorts of weird claims have been made about the place, the most entertaining of which is the whole yeti thing. Like, there have been enough yeti sightings in the swamp that I’m pretty sure the yeti have built condominiums and play golf in there. Ghosts, phantom swamp gas, old gods, Indian curses—all part of the local lore and it’s amazing.

 * * *

At night, when the lights are dim and the creepy crawlies scuttle around in the dark, Hillary Monahan throws words at a computer.  Sometimes they’re even good words.  A denizen of Massachusetts and an avid gamer dork, she’s most often found locked in a dark room killing internet zombies or raging about social injustice.

Hillary Monahan: Website | Twitter

Mary: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Emmie Mears: Five Things I Learned Writing The Masked Songbird

Mildly hapless Edinburgh accountant Gwenllian Maule is surviving. She’s got a boyfriend, a rescued pet bird and a flatmate to share rent. Gwen’s biggest challenges: stretching her last twenty quid until payday and not antagonizing her terrifying boss.

Then Gwen mistakenly drinks a mysterious beverage that gives her heightened senses, accelerated healing powers and astonishing strength. All of which come in handy the night she rescues her activist neighbour from a beat-down by political thugs.

Now Gwen must figure out what else the serum has done to her body, who else is interested and how her boss is involved. Finally—and most mysteriously—she must uncover how this whole debacle is connected to the looming referendum on Scottish independence.

Gwen’s hunt for answers will test her superpowers and endanger her family, her friends—even her country.

* * *

Lesson the First: Be Yourself

This is the first full story I ever wrote:

It’s admittedly brief. But even as an almost-thirty-year-old human-shaped thing, I’m rather impressed with its themes. There’s an obvious moral in there about, you know, not peeing on people or sentient flowers, but there’s also undertones of vengeance and retribution and a certain dash of whimsy that I rather like to this day.

When I scribbled that little comic in 1989 or so in an Alaskan apartment, I don’t remember feeling like I had a flash of brilliance or that one day I’d win a Nobel Prize for literature or anything. There was joy in creating – and of course, the gleeful satisfaction of making a pee joke.

It was another fifteen years or so before I came to understand that the stories I wrote and bled onto hundreds of pages of 1s and 0s on a decrepit laptop as a teen could be, in all seriousness, a viable career choice.

Lesson the Second: Do What You Gotta Do

My high school guidance counselor, a panic-prone man in the waning days of the 20th century, was a big fan of the “flipping burgers” threat. “If you don’t go to college, you’ll be flipping burgers! BURGERS! FLIPPING THEM!” he’d squawk, then run out of the room cackling and leave the rest of us scratching our heads wondering how that threat would play out in a one-stoplight rural Montana town that had exactly one place that served burgers at all. Would we all be forced to crowd behind the register and take turns with the spatula and grease-spatters?

I never found out. Because of course, even once I realized that writing stories did, in fact, pay some people money, I went to college for other things. I followed the advice of the Wise Grown-Up Sorts in my life and got a degree. I graduated a year late in the illustrious, economically booming year that was….2008.

Take that, Mr. Counselor Man. I don’t flip burgers. I hand them to people for dubious amounts of money. BOOYAH.

Lesson the Third: Write Crap Sometimes

By that point, I had completed a novel that I thought would change the world. (Feel free to cackle at me like my old guidance counselor.)

I eventually came to realize that said novel was actually a festering turd, and then later that even “turd” was giving it too much credit, because turds have some structure to them.

Through that time, I started writing the sequel, which was half turd-like in the sense that by the time I finished the second half of it, I’d learned enough to actually give it some structure. Or literary Imodium. Do with that metaphor what you will.

Lesson the Fourth: Know Thyself

My mind did a funny thing in the years between 2008 and the completion of my second novel in 2011: decided that writing might actually be the only thing I could do to simultaneously keep what was left of my questionable sanity and possibly earn a living that would allow me to stop slinging beers for a living. And because I slung beers for a living, it wouldn’t have to be a good living – I’d settle for one that allowed me to keep my now-normal routine of treading water and slurping it down various throat-tubes when breathing got boring.

After all, Sallie Mae was coming for my soul, because I had of course followed the decree of my elders and gone to university.

Let’s pause for a second. If you’re expecting this to go to a “NOW I MAKE VERITABLE FOUNTAINS OF MOOLAH AND WEAR NOTHING BUT GOLD LEAF WOVEN INTO CARDIGANS,” let me disabuse you of that notion immediately.

Lesson the Fifth: Do What You Love, Goddamn It

I’ve yet to make a single penny to pinch and hug and love and dub George.*

I might never make enough single pennies to feed the gobbling Sallie Mae monster (or, alternatively, to bury my high school guidance counselor whilst other former classmates flip burgers onto his head). The point isn’t that, after this long slog from my comic strip debut to my actual prose debut, I can see people queuing up to chuck money at me money for stories.

The point is that after several years of working jobs I really hated, I found one I could tolerate that allowed me to expend my mental energy on something I love. I might not always adore the people who sit at my tables and watch me run up and down the stairs for one beer at a time because the four of them get more of a kick out of ordering one beer every three and a half minutes than allowing me to get all four in one trip. (What would be the fun in that?) But I get avoid seeing 6 AM’s obnoxiously chipper face. I work three doubles a week and have three or four days off per week.

It’s not gold leaf cardigans, but it pays my bills. It sometimes gives me inspiration. It sometimes makes me new friends who like to geek out about Doctor Who and play tabletop games. When I’m home, I get to curl up with my cat (see exhibit B) and tell stories.

That’s what makes this whole thing worth it. I don’t have to give a flying fire-bellied toad of fucks that my degree will probably only be useful in future survival situations as kindling. I don’t have to feel bad when peers buy homes I can’t or won’t ever afford. I don’t have to worry that I missed my calling and got stuck in a career that drained me of creativity. Even though handing someone a burger isn’t glamorous or particularly lucrative, the only bottom line I have to worry about is the bottom line on a page full of words I made.

I still get that gleeful joy of creation, of making something up that wasn’t there before. Spinning yarns and universes, tales and talismans. Part of being a grown-up writer is maintaining the wonder of a child regardless of whether you make money for the stories you tell, beyond the employment history on your resume, in spite of the degrees you earned and use – or don’t.

So do the thing. More importantly, do what you need to do in your life that allows you to do the thing. Books only sort of grow on trees these days – you have to plant them yourself. Learn. Get better. Evolve your word-making craft.

I myself have come a decently long way from that first comic strip. I moved on from pee jokes…to wedgies.

Because I’m a fucking grown-up.

* * *

Emmie Mears was born in Austin, Texas, where the Lone Star state promptly spat her out at the tender age of three months. After a childhood spent mostly in Alaska, Oregon, and Montana, she became a proper vagabond and spent most of her time at university devising ways to leave the country.

Except for an ill-fated space opera she attempted at age nine, most of Emmie’s childhood was spent reading books instead of writing them. Growing up she yearned to see girls in books doing awesome things, and struggled to find stories in her beloved fantasy genre that showed female heroes saving people and hunting things. Mid-way through high school, she decided the best way to see those stories was to write them herself. She now scribbles her way through the fantasy genre, most loving to pen stories about flawed characters and gritty situations lightened with the occasional quirky humor.

Emmie now lives in her eighth US state, still yearning for a return to Scotland. She inhabits a cozy domicile outside DC with two felines who think they’re lions and tigers.

Emmie Mears: Twitter| Facebook

Masked Songbird: Amazon

The Pixel Project Reddit AMA — End Violence Against Women

Ahoy!

I’m joining up with the Pixel Project this month — “a virtual nonprofit helping make the world suck less for women and girls by raising awareness, funds, and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women” (um, can I get a HELL YEAH?) — and I’m alongside a gaggle of amazing authors like Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson, Joe Hill, Robert Sawyer, Jasper Fforde, etc.

Today is a Reddit AMA with several of us authors, so check that out.

Also, I’ll be doing a Google Hangout on September 14th, 8PM EST. (Schedule here for all authors.)

The “Read for Pixels” fundraising pages are up at IndieGogo and Razoo.

Fundraising rewards have a Skype chat with me and an e-book bundle!

Want to see the project breakdown for funding? Here it is.

Please check it out!

More info from the Pixel Project:

Your support will help make an impact on 3 levels:

Level 1 – Helping efforts to shift the Global Perspective on Violence Against Women:

“Read For Pixels” is held in support of the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign through which we are working to accelerate the end of Violence Against Women (VAW) by re-characterizing it from a “women’s issue” to the human rights issue that it really is. VAW impacts families and communities regardless of gender. Men may be responsible for most violent acts against women, but decent, non-violent men far outnumber them and have largely remained silent on the issue. For VAW to end, these men need to be involved in efforts to end the violence.

The Pixel Reveal campaign intends to do just that by triggering conversations about VAW worldwide and inspiring men and boys to take action to stop VAW in their communities.

Level 2 – Keeping anti-Violence Against Women work alive and kicking, grassroots style!

Violence Against Women is a cause that is chronically underfunded despite the global severity of the issue.

The $1 million we are aiming to raise via the Pixel Reveal campaign will be shared between The Pixel Project and the U.S.’s National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

It’ll help keep both organization’s respective anti-Violence Against Women campaigns, programs, and projects alive and thriving.

Level 3 – Helping Reach Your Communities To Get The Conversation Started

We’ve listened to many folks over the years who wish to help stop the violence but don’t know where to begin.

Therefore, as part of the outreach efforts of “Read For Pixels”, we’ll be providing all “Read For Pixels” donors with a special virtual toolkit – a set of links to resources for you to learn more about violence against women, how to start the conversation in your communities (and with the men and boys in your communities), and how to help victims and survivors of domestic violence and rape.

If folks wanna know more, feel free to check out:

Read For Pixels
The Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign
The Pixel Project
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

A PSA About Nude Photos

“If you don’t want nude pics leaked, don’t take nude pics with your phone —” *Tasers you* *steals your shoes* SHOULDN’T WEAR SHOES BRO

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) September 1, 2014

I wrote that tweet yesterday in regards to the celebrity nude photo thefts.

(It’s not a leak. Nor a scandal. It was theft, kay? Kay.)

It’s had over 4500 retweets since then.

A tweet that goes that far and wide tends to get a response that is equally far and wide, and so of course I’m getting a lot of tweets from people (let’s be honest: dudes) who are like BUH BUH BUT UHH THAT’S WRONG BECAUSE SOMETHING SOMETHING FALSE ANALOGY SOMETHING SOMETHING SECURITY AND HEY REMEMBER YOU SHOULDN’T PUT NUDE PHOTOS ON YOUR PHONE IF YOU WANT THEM STOLEN.

Basically reiterating the same thing I was attempting to refute in the first fucking place.

If that is your response, may I take this moment to elucidate an academic retort:

Fuck you.

Fuuuuuuuck you.

Fuuuu-huuuu-huuuuuuuuck you.

Please: now allow me to grow multiple arms like Shiva the Destroyer, and further, do note that at the ends of each serpentine arm you will find a middle finger, thrust up so that each finger is straining in an angry, arthritic fashion to convey the telepathic disdain I have for your bullshit, hypocritical, falsely equivalent opinion.

I think people should be allowed to take nude photos of themselves.

I think nude photos are rad. I think not taking nude photos is rad. I think whatever you want to do sexually or artistically is a-okay as long as its enthusiastically consensual — stick a carrot up your ass, if you want, while banging your genitals with a tambourine. Whoever you are, however you identify yourselves, I live in a world where I want you to have both the freedom to do what you want in this manner while simultaneously possessing the privacy to do it as you see fit.

Any violation of that is just that: a violation.

It is a crime. An actual, honest-to-that-blind-lady-with-the-scales crime.

It is not rape, but it is deeply demonstrative of rape culture because it is an act that exploits a woman and her body without her consent. And then, as if to vigorously rub salt into the wound with the heel of one’s callused hand, the judgey-faced shitty-assed judgments of countless men follow in the wake of the violation: victim-blaming, slut-shaming, Puritanical finger-waggling.

“If you don’t want nude pics to get into the world…”

“Something-something security…”

“Sure, sure, it’s a crime, but still, you have to know realize that…”

Shut up.

Shut up shut up shut up shut up.

If you do that, you are on the side of evil, not the side of good.

Oh, I know. You’re pretending that you have people’s best interests at heart.

You want to remind them that the phone they carry is a vulnerable device.

It’s basically a boat with a sprung hull. Anything might leak into or out of it.

So, you think that anything you have put on your phone is suspect? Or your computer or tablet? If I steal your banking information, or your credit cards, or your e-mails, or pictures of your wife, your kids — well, hey, that’s your fault. You plugged in, bro. You shouldn’t have driven on the Information Superhighway if you don’t want to get run over by a couple joy-riding hackers, right?

And hey, driving on the actual highway is pretty dangerous, too. You shouldn’t drive because you could get hit. Sure, I mean, a drunk driver shouldn’t drive drunk – but it’s kinda your fault too because you had the audacity to leave your home. Leaving your home is dangerous. Your whole body is basically a gelatinous jellyfish, just an animated sack of bones and meat quivering its way through life. If you don’t protect yourself — guns, armor, various Mad Max-ian spikes and chains — then you can expect all kinds of violence. You’re not at all secure out there. Your flesh isn’t protected by a password. It’s your fault if you get beaten up. Oh, they stole your wallet, too? That’s what you get for putting all that vulnerable money inside a leather flappy thing ensconced within the soft downy pockets of your dumb acid wash jeans.

What’s that? I just punched you in the face?

Okay, yes, that’s a crime. Admittedly! Admittedly.

But you probably also should be wearing a helmet.

Your face is very vulnerable to the security exploit of my grumpy fist.

Of course, nobody’s saying those things.

Because nobody thinks those things.

Crimes are not a thing we deserve just because we exist in this world.

And yet, that’s what people (ahem, again, mostly dudes) are saying, here. This is the digital equivalent of, “Look at what she was wearing.” A woman is raped and we ask all kinds of questions as to what she did to engender the act — did she protect herself? Was she dressed conservatively enough to thwart the unstoppable sexual aggression of men? Was she in a place — like a seedy bar, or a Ruby Tuesday’s, or any street in America — where rape sometimes happens?

If I see a cake in a window and it’s sufficiently delicious-looking, can I take it?

And when I do take it, will someone ask the bakery: well, how did you decorate it? Was it too delicious-looking? The icing is very enticing. Too enticing, really. Can you blame the thief? How can one control such base and vital hunger? You probably should’ve locked the case. Or hidden the cake behind a secret door. It’s at least partially your fault the cake was stolen. Make uglier, less delicious cakes, next time – ?

One response read:

‘…and i know i wouldnt bank online without the numerous security checks and verification systems they use.’

Well, yes, of course, but nude photos are also protected by the numerous security checks and verification systems afforded by using your phone. They didn’t staple-gun their photos to a nearby telephone pole. The photos weren’t public.

Another said:

‘Im not ‘Blaming’ but security is your own responsibility. Do you keep your money in a bank, or hang it from a tree?’

Were the nude photos hung from a tree? No, they weren’t. So, shut up.

Another called me an SJW, which of course stands for ‘Social Justice Warrior’ — a fascinating term that I guess is somehow supposed to be bad? Like, “Ew, social justice is gross, and also being a warrior for social justice, oh, yucky, blergh, fighting for things you believe in is such a jerk move. Trying to make the world a better place for society with justice is pretty weird! I mean, unless you’re one of the Avengers, because they’re great. Especially that hot red-headeded one with the naked pictures on line — did you guys see these?”

*Tasers you*

*sighs over your twitching body*

It’s ugly out there, folks.

Can’t be a woman online. Or worse, playing games — gasp!

Can’t be a black dude in a convenient store.

Can’t be transgender… well, pretty much anywhere.

You’ll get judged. Deserving of a crime by dint of some perceived deviation.

How you’re dressed. The color of your skin. The choice of your gender identity.

When you judge someone for taking nude pictures on their phone — and you suggest that what they got was, if not deserved then at least expected — you’re a sexist shit-ferret. You’re not really making a point about security or the porousness of the Internet. You’re making a judgment based on that person’s choices. You’re judging the act of taking naked photos rather than the theft of the photos. You’re putting the onus of the crime on the victim and not the criminal because — really, this is why, I swear! – you don’t agree with their choices. Prurience must be punished. Sex is a sin. Where is their shame, you ask? Such shamelessness is provocative. It provokes a criminal response which basically makes the sinner culpable for their own victimization.

Stop it.

Cut the Puritanical crap.

A crime is a crime is a crime.

It is not invited.

You don’t deserve it because of your lack of clothes or because you chose Apple as a brand.

You don’t deserve it because you’re a celebrity.

Nobody deserves it.

If you suggest otherwise: congrats, you’re now part of a culture of rape, misogyny and sexism.

*Tasers you again*

*throws you out the airlock*

Why You Should Write What You Love

Some of you are probably like me.

No, not in that way. I’m told this condition is one of a kind and that surgery will correct it enough so that small children and pets no longer tumble into catatonic states upon seeing me.

No, I mean in the way that you sometimes struggle with what to write. Writing is a craft and storytelling is an art so the one part of you wants to just unbuckle all the straps affixing you to this mundane world so that you can leap into the chasm of madness that is creation. You and the Muse will art-fuck until the world explodes into pure narrative.

And yet, this thing we do is also a business. Which means you should proabably be writing Stories That Will Earn You Respect And Also, Sweet Cash Money.

Let’s talk about me.

(HA HA HA because that’s probably all I do here, isn’t it? Sorry about that.)

(Anyway.)

I am presently the author of a handful of published novels.

But, if you will gaze behind me, in my wake you will see a muddy rut filled with the sun-bloated corpses of many other books. Dozens of unfinished ones. At least five finished ones. Some interesting. Most not. All of them lacking in execution and any kind of writerly pizzazz.

I wrote a lot of books that sucked, a lot of books that just plain weren’t “me.” These were books I did not love, that didn’t come from any particular place inside this funky stump I call a heart, that failed to speak to me or speak about me in any meaningful way. They were books I wrote because I was chasing someone else’s ideas of what I should write. I tried writing fiction that seemed respectable and literary. I tried writing novels that would speak to the market, that would sell to some invented segment of the population who likes That Sort Of Thing. I wrote books that were desperate grabs at legitimacy (money, respect, fame, tweed suits with elbow patches, dignity). I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I apparently thought the way to do that was to stop writing the things I wanted to write (which somewhat sullied the idea of being a writer in the first place) and start writing the kinds of things that Other Writers Wrote.

You know: marketable works.

(Translation: derivative works.)

I was walking away from myself.

I was leaving the things I liked, or loved, or that interested me.

Which meant I was leaving my strengths behind.

Which meant I was abandoning my reasons for being a writer in the first place.

So, I’ll exhort you right now:

You should write what you love.

You should write the things that look like your heart, pulled open with prying fingers.

You should walk towards yourself as a writer, not away.

Why?

OH DON’T YOU WORRY, I HAVE REASONS.

Reason One: Because The Market Is An Unknowable Entity

I’m pretty sure that when Lovecraft wrote about gibbering entities outside time and space that, when gazed upon too closely, ruined man’s sanity the way a rock ruins a mirror, he was really writing a metaphor for the publishing industry and the book market. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on with the market. Publishers like to pretend they do, because that’s their job — but they’re still a bunch of old ladies passing around one eyeball between them.

You’ll hear, “Oh, vampires aren’t hot right now,” and then next thing you know, vampires are hot again. They didn’t get that way because the market was manipulated into being that way. The market didn’t randomly countermand itself and spontaneously grow a spate of new vampire novels. This happens because someone, some author, hears vampires aren’t hot right now and says, well, whatever, I’m going to write a vampire book anyway because I think vampires are cool as fucking shit, and then they write it and it hits the market and it does well. And then publishers are like YEAH, WE TOTALLY KNEW THAT VAMPIRES WERE GONNA BE SUPER-HOT RIGHT NOW and then another 100 derivative reiterations (and maybe 10 original iterations) hit the market and punch it so hard that two years later you hear the familiar refrain: vampires aren’t hot right now.

A lot of the truly amazing books are not ones an industry could’ve predicted. Like I said yesterday, Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy is… fuck, I don’t even know how to describe them. Invasive… alternate Earth-punk? No, that’s not right. But it doesn’t feel like a trilogy that chased any market. It feels like a series that stands all by itself in a room of its own devising and design. It’s not following anything. It’s a leader: original, weird, amazing, and (if you’ve read Jeff’s work before) most certainly a product of his voice. (The third book, Acceptance, is also out today. Do your favor and go and read them all right now it’s okay I’ll wait here.)

The work that prevails rarely feels like it chases the market.

The work that gets its claws and teeth into you says, “Fuck you, market. I’m the market now. What? You don’t like that? Too bad.” Then it hits you in the face with a toaster oven and says, “YOUR MOM SAYS HI.”

Okay, I think I took that metaphor too far.

Point is: don’t chase the market.

You’re not a dog running after a car.

Be the car, not the dog.

Reason Two: Because It’s What You’re Good At

In school, teachers make you read books, and if you’re anything like me, you hated that. Because nobody likes art to be some kind of obligation. Art is a thing that calls to you — it’s got gravity and it grabs you by the root and pulls you toward it. The books I loved are the books that I found on my own — admittedly, sometimes by the urgings of others (sometimes, even the urgings of teachers and professors), but almost always with the offering of choice on the table.

Choice. Consent. Compelled by, not forced to.

Writing is the same way, at least for me.

The things you write — that you choose to write, because you want to jolly well fucking write them — are likely things you’re better at writing because you chose to move in that direction. Writing things that don’t really speak to you? I can often feel it. It feels stilted, awkward, a story forced into an uncomfortable shape by an author wearing someone else’s skin. It’s itchy and weird.

That’s not to say you can’t — say, as a freelance writer — take an assignment and own it. You can make work you don’t automatically love into work that you love by pressing your fingerprints into its clay. But even there the message remains the same: in that work, you’re finding what you enjoy and what you’re good at, and putting that into play. Can you go beyond that? Can you play outside your comfort zone? You can and should. But you have to start somewhere, and the core of the work is often taking our strengths and building off of them. Further, improving in less comfortable directions means improving in a way that is desirable to you, not desirable to a market.

Reason Three: Because I Want To Read It

You know what I don’t want to read?

A book you didn’t want to write.

You know what I do want to read?

A book you couldn’t help but write.

I wanna read the book that pops out of your goddamn chest like a goddamn baby Xenomorph. No matter how many Tums you have taken. No matter how many guests you have at your dinner table. You cannot contain it. It’s just — oops, splurch, sorry, that book just kicked open my breastbone like a set of saloon doors and oh, shit, here it is, flinging itself into the room.

A book you loved writing will likely have that love translate over to the page. Don’t get me wrong — love isn’t enough. It also has to be, ohh, you know, not shitty, which means a full-scale editing assault — and trust me, editing is not always a process you’ll love. (That’s the thing about this thing: by writing what you love, I don’t mean, making sure every day of writing is a bliss-fueled romp around the bounce house of your imagination. No matter how much you love the material, some days are going to feel like chewing on a brick. And some days you’ll hate what you’re writing no matter what — the point is to begin with work that speaks to you, calls to you, grabs you by your genital configuration and demands to be written.)

Reason Four: Because This Gig Knows No Guarantees

The saying often goes that one does not become a writer to get rich, which is perhaps a toxic meme further continuing the idea that art isn’t — or shouldn’t be — a way to get paid. (I got into being an author to both Make Up Stories and Make Money For Making Up Those Stories because I happen to enjoy the intersection of art and commerce because in that intersection I can do things like pay bills and buy dinners and hire assassins to garrote my enemies with typewriter ribbon.) Regardless, despite it being a goal, making money or having success as a writer is in no way guaranteed. You don’t get a salary. You don’t hit ‘save’ on the document and get a publishing contract. This is a land where promise is a dry creek.

And so, if you’re planning on stepping into this arena knowing that you may die once your foot hits the dirt, you might as well step forward with a weapon that fits your hand, not the weapon some other asshole told you to carry.

If you’re gonna take your shot, do it with work you care about. Work that says something.

Do it with work you love.

You’re not guaranteed an agent. You’re not guaranteed to find a publisher. You’re not guaranteed sales if you’re a self-publisher, or an audience, or good reviews, or awards, or dignity, or cake.

Not any of it.

So? Go ahead and make it count.

Write what you want to write.

Might as well write what you love.

Reason Five: Because Life Ends In Death

You’re gonna die.

Sorry!

But it’s true.

Dead. Fuuuuuuucking dead.

Some part of the animated meat that comprises you will one day fail. The bone puppet that lives inside you can’t dance forever. You’ll get hit by a car or get soul cancer or a frozen hunk of shit will fall off an Airbus 380 and land on you while you stop to pick up a lucky penny in a parking lot.

Now, maybe some part of you lives on past Bodily Death. Maybe there’s a heaven or a happy hunting ground or some 1-Up Extra Life re-try. I have no idea. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is, knowing that your time on this Hurtling Space Sphere is limited, you should make an effort to live your life — and your art — the way you damn well want to. Do you really want someone to chisel the words MADE MEDIOCRE ART SHE DIDN’T MUCH LIKE BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT THAT’S WHAT SOMEONE ELSE WANTED HER TO DO on your gravestone? Or would you rather them carve in the words: ROCKED IT LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER, WROTE WHAT SHE DAMN WELL WANTED, BOO-YAH, MIC-DROP –?

On second thought, that’s probably too much for a headstone.

Maybe, instead:

ARTED THE HARDEST, MOTHERFUCKER.

Get out there. Write big and bold. Embrace the moments you have.

Write what you love.

Because otherwise: why bother?

* * *

The Gonzo Writing E-Book Bundle:

Seven books. Twenty bucks.

The Eerie Resonance Of The Southern Reach Trilogy

Tomorrow lands the newest by Jeff VanderMeer: Acceptance.

It’s the third and final book in the whoa-dang-wow Southern Reach trilogy.

Now, there’s this meme going around Facebook which is rara avis in that I actually like it (most Facebook memes are thought-excrement) — while some have simplified it as ten books you love, the original meme is, ten books that have ‘stayed with you.’

I like that. Stayed with you.

Clinging to you like a smell.

I’ll do a proper post about this later in the week about my ten books, but I want to explain to you one of the ways that VanderMeer’s trilogy has stayed with me, and it has to do with the forest with which I have surrounded myself.

We have about seven acres of land here, and most of that land is forest.

It’s mostly native growth. It’s old forest, old trees, a healthy ecosystem of birds and bugs and other things traipsing about on four legs (lots of deer, a few foxes, even some kind of… polecat-looking thing, seen only in the distance and by its little side-by-side tracks).

Sometimes I take a walk through these woods.

I find it peaceful.

And I find it unnerving.

In part it’s unnerving because it’s a primal space. I don’t belong there. It is not mine. It’s bigger than me. It’s profound. It feels like I could lay down on the moss and the loam and die and nobody would ever know. Skin eaten. Bones sunken. Roots claiming all of me.

I find it unnerving more because the forest is never properly familiar — it’s not some room with its furniture, its items arranged in a human way. The forest is chaos. It’s new trees and spiny-assed micrathena spiders and deer bones. The forest, too, changes year to year. Storms break trees. Branches drop. Stumps rot. Heavy rains made a furrow in the earth — an impromptu stream. And, strangest still, we have invasive grasses springing up. They’re ornamental grasses — the kind you go to buy at Home Depot or Lowe’s, various Silvergrasses, and these grasses should never have been sold, should never have been planted, because they’re insidious. Day to day you don’t think much about them but year to year more pop up and you find them in strange places, you find them deeper in the woods where they don’t belong. You find them choking out other plants. The grass changes the forest a little bit here, a little bit there, until one day a little bit has become a great deal, until one day you find grape leaves strangling trees. Shiny beetles from far away chewing through leaves. Ticks and thorns alike burying themselves in your skin.

I step into the woods and I don’t always recognize them.

In that moment, I feel panic. I feel disconnected. I feel intruded upon.

And then that shifts: I feel like an intruder.

I feel very human and very small and it’s eerie and uneasy and awesome in the truest sense.

It’s like looking at someone whose facial features drift apart, micrometer by micrometer — not something you notice at first, but then one day you don’t see them for a few months and when next you visit, they no longer look human.

It’s like entering a room you know is yours, but things have been moved. Just slightly. Your potted plant has changed. Initials that aren’t yours lay carved into the wood of the desk. The picture of your family is from a vacation you didn’t take. Everything feels off its axis.

This is the feeling of the Southern Reach trilogy.

You could do a whole masters-level class on how VanderMeer creates a mood.

(And, in an adjacent way, how VanderMeer uses the text and the mood of it to confront things like invasive species or man’s deleterious effect on himself and his environment.)

It’s early on a Labor Day and I assure you I’m not doing this book justice.

You will just have to check the books out for yourself.

*waits*

*stares*

*eyes slowly begin to drift apart as vines push out of mouth*

Flash Fiction Challenge: Let Fate Choose Your Title…

Last week’s challenge: And, Action!

By now, I suspect you know how this works.

But, just in case?

You will choose two random numbers.

(Use a d20 or a random number generator.)

Each between 1-20.

Then, those random numbers go to the items in the columns at the end of this post.

One for each.

That earns you your title.

You might end up with Elegant Alleyway.

Or the Black-Hearted Eight.

Or the Lupine Last Call.

You can add “The” to the fore of the title, and make the second part plural, if need be.

And that’s it.

You’ve got, ohhh, 1500 words this go around.

Due in one week — by next Friday, noon EST.

Post at your online space.

Link back here.

Now, get to pickin’.

Column One

Serpentine
Emerald
Blood-Stained
Interstitial
Judas
Lupine
Reaper’s
Merciful
Elegant
Ceaseless
Black-Hearted
Gravedigger’s
Hissing
Bewitching
Dead
Fifth
Monkey’s
Dressmaker’s
Almost
Endless

Column Two

Precipice
Alleyway
Nursemaid
Eschaton
Confirmation
Thunderhead
Eye
Pincushion
Daughter
Reward
Beauty
Locket
Chasm
Eight
Quietus
Beast
Inquiry
Last Call
Coil
Widow

Blightborn (Heartland #2)

And the second book of The Heartland Trilogy is now out in the world.

Your procurement options are:

Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

It is also available on Kindle Unlimited (which you can try for free).

Feel free too to check out the books or add it on Goodreads.

What’s It About?

This is the second book in my YA Heartland trilogy: a cornpunk agripocalyptic dust-topia where a handful of teens from the earthbound Heartland decide to take the fight to the rich masters who float above their heads in grand island cities called flotillas.

For folks who like: Star Wars, Bioshock, John Steinbeck, the Hunger Games.

The first book is Under the Empyrean Sky, which you can check out here. A Tumblr user (aka a “Tumbrian citizen”) took a book selfie with the first one and said of that book: “This book has corn, corn pirates, the war against bloodthirsty corn, corn people, family tension, runaways, arranged marriages, PoC, and a gay character whose personality isn’t based solely on his being gay, and I have never been more proud of taking a selfie with a book.” I am very happy about this. (Though I’m now seeing the Tumblr user is deactivated, which also makes me sad? Hm.)

The second book seriously ups the ante. More characters. More POVs. (More female POVs, too, if that’s the sort of thing you care about.) We leave the corn and get to see what goes on in the skies. And we also get glimpses of a much larger world. (Incidentally, the book is almost twice as big as the first one in terms of actual word count. I like big books and I cannot lie.)

The official description is:

He’s heading toward the Empyrean to rescue his sister, Merelda, and to find Gwennie before she’s lost to Cael forever. With his pals, Lane and Rigo, Cael journeys across the Heartland to catch a ride into the sky. But with Boyland and others after them, Cael and his friends won’t make it through unchanged.

Gwennie’s living the life of a Lottery winner, but it’s not what she expected. Separated from her family, Gwennie makes a bold move — one that catches the attention of the Empyrean and changes the course of an Empyrean man’s life.

The crew from Boxelder aren’t the only folks willing to sacrifice everything to see the Empyrean fall. The question is: Can the others be trusted?

They’d all better hurry. Because the Empyrean has plans that could ensure that the Heartland never fights back again.

Chuck Wendig’s riveting sequel to Under the Empyrean Sky plunges readers into an unsettling world of inequality and destruction, and fleshes out a cast of ragtag characters all fighting for survival and, ultimately, change.

Why Check It Out?

Because you like adventure and twists and turns and evil corn and floating rich people and pirates and mutants and robots and Pegasuses and robot Pegasuses.

Because you care about issues like genetic engineering, agriculture, class warfare, wealth disparity, global warming, and Pegasuses. (What? I’m pretty sure Pegasuses are a proble. A pest animal, like whitetail deer or rats, right?)

Because you buying my books is how I get to keep writing this blog.

Because it’s a book for teens and adults. And Pegasuses.

Because I’m really proud of it. No, seriously, I’m very happy with it.

Because, dang, the e-book is not even four bucks, and the KU free trial lets you read it free.

Because, no, seriously, this book has a Pegasus. More than one, actually.

(Even if you don’t check out the book, I’d sure appreciate you spreading the word.)

What Are People Saying?

Tea Talks Books says:

Who, precisely, is the hero of the story is another question, and one that I’m not sure I can answer. Is it Gwennie, who won the Lottery to escape the Heartland, found that all it meant was more drudgery, and decided to do something about it? Is it Cael, desperate to rescue his beloved Gwennie and his runaway sister Merelda from the Empyrean, all the while fighting a curse of his own? They, and several other characters, all get a chance to narrate, and while this could seem clumsy in the hands of a less experienced writer, Wendig keeps all the perspectives distinct and the pace brisk. One thing that I particularly like is that even his minor characters all have heroic qualities – we have Merelda, who makes her dreams reality but finds them hollow; Lane, who wrestles with homophobia and the clay feet of his idols; Rigo, who loses his leg but finds his strength; Davies, whose daughter is worth more than his revenge; Balastair, whose past is full of secrets and whose present is a seemingly-impenetrable wall of frustration; even Boyland and Proctor Agrasanto (reminded me of Monsanto, which is probably a coincidence…), whose antagonistic natures contain seeds of loyalty, devotion, and self-sacrifice. Every one of them has a character arc I’d be willing to spend a whole novel following.

Melanie Meadors says:

Something that stood out for me about this book as I read it is Wendig’s treatment of his younger characters. There is no talking down here, no weird older author’s take on teens. This is an author who understands the way a seventeen year old thinks, and tells it like it is. Wendig’s respect for his subjects is clear. There is no annoying whining here, like I’ve noticed in several other YA books I’ve read. These are characters who teens can be proud of, who they can sympathize with. Sure, they have their rough moments, but they take action. They make mistakes, but they learn.

Michael Hicks says:

Blightborn is a heftier, more serious work than its predecessor, and Wendig is clearly crafting an epic trilogy of terrific scope with this series. It’s also quite a bit darker, which is pretty common in middle entries – the stakes are higher and the threats more formidable. The Initiative, which is teased a bit before finally being revealed in the book’s third act, is a horrifying manipulation that perfectly illustrates the evil and grandiose ego of the Empyrean rulers, and their sense of entitlement. Wendig has also planted a good number of compelling seeds that will bear beautiful fruit come book three. I’d expect the conclusion of this story to release next year, but damn if that’s not going to be a long, brutal wait. Alas, that’s life in the heartland.

Book Sidekicks says:

Wendig wields his third person narrative like a Kung Fu Master of Words. He doesn’t just put one action in front of another, trudging on through the scene from beginning to end. He gives you a 360 degree view, pulls the characters off the page and makes them tap-dance on your brain.

His action scenes are like watching a movie who’s director shot it from four cameras and spliced it together after the fact to make a homogenous scene. The action builds and builds in one character’s perspective and them BAM right when you want–NEED–to see what happens with that character he shifts gears to another characters. Sometimes picking right up where the last left off, sometimes a few moments prior, but the action doesn’t stop. It flows, seamlessly.

Books, Bones and Buffy says:

As usual, Wendig’s writing skills are top-notch. He’s one of the few authors I’ve read that really understands rhythm in prose writing—he knows when to hit the beats, and he knows when to pause. It’s the kind of writing you want someone to read out loud to you.

Dangerous Dan says:

Blightborn picks up where Under the Empyrean Sky left off. Cael and his pals are on the run. Gwennie is on the flotilla and sees Cael’s sister. Rigo’s father, Wanda, and Boyland Barnes Jr. are part of a posse looking for Cael and his pals. Things quickly spiral out of control from there.

I don’t want to give away too many of the nuts and bolts of the plot or reveal too much of what happened in the last book. I will say that all the threads of the plot advance quite a bit. The new characters of The Sleeping Dogs, the peregrine, Harrington, Eben, and the Maize Witch are all pretty compelling. Not one of the characters emerged unscathed. Who would have thought Cael’s father was so interesting back in the day?

500 Ways To Write Harder

How To Buy

Buy Direct From Terribleminds ($2.99)

Buy As Part Of Seven-Book, $20 Bundle ($20.00)

Amazon ($2.99)

B&N ($2.99)

Book Description

“Chuck Wendig’s Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey is full of the kind of writing advice I wish I’d gotten in school. Practical, brutally honest, and done with the kind of humor that will make it stick in your brain. Whether you’re a veteran writer or new to the craft, you’ll find something useful in here. Plus he says ‘fuck’ a lot, so, you know, there’s that.”

– Stephen Blackmoore, author of Dead Things

500 Ways To Write Harder aims to deliver a volley of micro-burst idea bombs and advisory missiles straight to your frontal penmonkey cortex. Want to learn more about writing, storytelling, publishing, and living the creative life? This book contains a high-voltage dose of information about outlining, plot twists, writer’s block, antagonists, writing conferences, self-publishing, and more.

All this, straight from the sticky blog pages of terribleminds.com, one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers (as named by Writer’s Digest).

This book contains the following chapters:

25 Bad Writer Behaviors
25 Hard Truths About Writing & Publishing
25 Steps To Becoming A Self-Published Author
25 Steps To Edit The Unmerciful Suck Out Of Your Story
25 Things To Do Before You Start Your Novel
25 Things You Should Know About Antagonists
25 Things You Should Know About Conventions & Conferences
25 Things You Should Know About Metaphor
25 Things You Should Know About Narrative Point-of-View
25 Things You Should Know About Outlining
25 Things You Should Know About Worldbuilding
25 Things You Should Know About Young Adult Fiction
25 Things Writers Should Beware
25 Things Writers Should Know About Traveling
25 Turns, Pivots and Twists To Complicate Your Story
25 Ways To Be A Happy Writer
25 Ways To Get Your Authorial Groove Back
25 Ways To Survive As A Creative Person
25 Ways To Unstick A Stuck Story
25 Writer Resolutions
Appendix: 50 Rantypants Snidbits Of Writing And Storytelling Advice

The Writer And Depression

I get great emails sometimes, emails from writers with amazing questions.

(I also get emails from jerks, too, who want me to promote their books or who hate me because I once said self-publishing had a “shit volcano” quality problem, but really, the great emails stand head and shoulders above these.)

Yesterday, I guess in response to my post about authorial doubt and envy, a reader wrote in and explained that she suffered from depression and that she appreciated that I suggested that depression was a whole separate beast from writer’s block and you can’t combat them the same way. She said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that she saw one doctor who had kinda burned her out on a lot of medication, and now she’s trying to come out of that somewhat and refocus her concentration. But, in the process? Writing is very difficult. She’s good with ideas, but has a lot of trouble concentrating enough to manage the execution.

And so she wanted to know what makes a “real writer.”

The heart of her email was contained in this question:

Can someone be a real writer if certain components can just brush it away?

Meaning, if your ability to execute as a writer is defeated by one’s brain chemistry, can you be a real writer? Or does that somehow take that away from you? Are you a fraud? False, in some way –

A poser?

Now, a few things.

First, this reader knows I’m writing this at the blog, though I did respond to her via email, too.

Second, I’m in no way a Trained Brainologist, and I should barely be trusted to give advice on tying shoelaces or boiling water for ramen noodles, much less on such tricky issues as managing depression or other maladies of the mind and body.

Third, I’ve answered the question before of what makes a “real writer,” illustrated by this handy-dandy zero-fuckery flow-chart.

A more nuanced response may be necessary, though.

My response to the reader was shorter than this post, but I thought I’d jump in here and talk about it because this feels like a discussion that everybody could get in on, given that creative people are given over to many flavors of emotional turbulence.

So, here’s the thing.

I get headaches.

These are not supernatural headaches.

They’re not migraines.

They’re normal, average, everyday headaches.

I do not get them often, but I carry a lot of tension in my shoulders and neck (and, recently, my jaw, which is totally not awesome-feeling), and as a result? Headaches.

On the days in which I have headaches, I find it dastardly difficult to write. Writing becomes an act of pulling crocodile teeth with a pair of blood-slick pliers. It’s hard. Just having a little tiny itty-bitty jerkwad of a headache makes writing significantly more difficult.

And so, it is safe to assume that anything larger than a headache — any disease at all, any pain that is physical or emotional — would seriously hamper your ability to put words on paper. Migraines. Depression. Grief. Addiction. Cancer. Carpal tunnel. Christ, a goddamn cavity could derail your writing train into the hoary canyon of zeroed productivity.

I like to think a headache stopping me from writing on a given day wouldn’t change who I am.

And it shouldn’t change who you are, either. No matter the malady.

You are who you are. You do what you do.

I think we should worry less about what constitutes a ‘real’ writer, which is a thing for other people to worry about. Let them shit their pants over it. The worry over your identity as a writer is only going to frustrate you further. It’s why I always say that approaching depression as if it’s just writer’s block is only going to turn up the volume on all the lies that depression already tries to tell you. It’s only going to make recovery — for whatever your illness — exponentially harder. Sometimes, we do have to push ourselves. We have to do things that we feel are difficult, or scary, or frustrating. But you also have to know that pushing too hard can make you break. And sometimes you have to let yourself heal before you strain, sprain, and snap.

A practical solution is to, if you still want to write but find it difficult, switch gears. Write anything. It doesn’t have to be something to sell. Write a journal. A blog. A comic book. A poem. A random agglomeration of ideas. Write 350 words. Or 100 words. Or shit, ten words. Do what you can, when you can. And don’t sweat what other people think. Don’t sweat labels. Some people want the label. But the label doesn’t matter. It’s just a word. What matters is you taking care of yourself. What matters is you trying to find the way through the darkness and to the light. What matters is you writing when you can, not when everyone else says you have to.