Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 195

The Way We Talk About Pop Culture

When I was a teenager, I would’ve judged you for your pop culture predilections.

I would judge you based on what you liked or didn’t like.

If you liked a movie I thought was stupid, I thought you were probably stupid.

If you liked a book or TV show or whatever that I also liked, I assumed we could be friends.

I believed I held objectivity in my hand. My opinion felt like a glorious hammer and given half a chance I’d smack you with it to teach you a lesson about the failure of your personal tastes.

It was a jerky, self-righteous viewpoint. It was me squinting at you through my asshole, not through my eyes, and I think now — not then, sadly — I know where it was coming from.

I thought at the time if you didn’t like the things I liked, how the hell could you like me?

It came from a sad and uncertain place within — a place notorious to teenagers, I suspect. Those years I was plagued by a lack of self-esteem and a fundamental kind of anger over that perceived weakness, and what happens sometimes is we see a hole and we try to fill it. We fill it with distractions and we cram it with a papier-mâché version of ego that looks like confidence but is really just a shitty origami boulder, flimsy and hollow. It’s a stop-gap measure, a finger in the hole of a dam crack, a gym sock stuffed in a shotgun wound. It’s triage, in a way.

I figure we all have this in some measure — it’s not just teenagers, of course. We all get these holes, holes in how we feel, holes in how we perceive ourselves. And we patch them hastily, hurriedly, without much concern for what we’re shoving in there to fill those pits and fissures.

Point is, what happened then is when I found the things I loved — books and films and games and TV — I used them as standard-bearers in my army, I saw them as representations of me, extensions of myself. I bound myself up with them like a sailor lashing himself to the mast of a ship in a hard storm.

So, when you insulted those things, I felt like, you insulted me.

You didn’t like them, you didn’t like me.

And if you did like them — or could be made to see the error of your ways — then we were pals.

Like I said, bullshit.

But that’s part of the toxic thread that runs through pop and geek culture, I think. I don’t say that with any lack of love for geekery — I’m still a geek about a lot of things and I love to love things because hell, I think it’s cool as fuck to love stuff. We should celebrate the things we love! Nothing wrong with adoring the work of an author or a particular film or a modern classic television show (I’d argue this is a Renaissance of television right now).

It’s cool to like stuff.

Just the same, it’s really important to disentangle yourselves from that stuff.

And it’s important we look at the ways we talk about pop culture.

See, I understand that you have Very Strong Opinions about that Pop Culture Thumbtack stuck in the great big corkboard of our Geeky Heritage. Like I said: totally cool. You should! You should be encouraged to love the things that you love and to have reasons to love them. Hell, you don’t need reasons, either. You can just love something unabashedly, flopping and flipping around on it like a kid at a fucking Bouncy Castle. “I LOVE THIS AND I DON’T KNOW WHY,” you can say, a blissed-out look on your face. I adore your adoration. I love that love.

Embrace your bliss monkey.

You’re also allowed — encouraged, even! — to not like stuff. While I don’t know that “hating” something is valuable, at least in the sense that, say, That New TV Show is worth the hot irons of your internal furnace, but hey, you feel what you feel. Once again, unless you’re a paid critic, you’re allowed to dislike something without any rational or cogent reason presented. You can just be like, “Man, that show Homeland just, it just, gnaaaarghle vvvzzzzz ahhhhhh. You know?”  And then you flounce about and angrily eat a churro. CRUNCH CRUNCH FROWN.

Here’s the thing.

When it comes to pop culture –

Someone is going to dislike the things you dig.

Someone is going to adore the things you don’t.

And that has to be okay.

Is it worth discussing? Of course. We should engage in conversations about the stories that we shove in our media-hungry mouths! We should be free to talk about why we like things, or dislike things, or even better, why we liked some stuff and didn’t like other stuff and oh hey look a nuanced opinion. Engaging in thoughtful dissection of why something works for us or fails for us is really valuable! It helps us discover more things we like. It lends us a greater understanding of the things we consume beyond them being mere entertainment.

But here’s what it comes down to: when we talk about this stuff, we need to maaaaaaybe ease off the stick a little bit. Fandom can get a little intense, moving beyond passionate nerdery to codependent geekery. We feel so intimately toward some of this stuff you’d think we created it, or that we represent the creators in some big way. This is a time of big pop culture releases: the end of Breaking Bad, the start of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a brand new Stephen King. The way some folks talk about Joss Whedon suggests they’re part of a Whedonesque hive-mind, representative spore cultures of the Original Whedon Mother Patch.

And you’re not. You’re not him. You’re not his television show.

You’re not your favorite novel. Or that beloved movie. Or a game that just came out.

(Related: Gaming Community, We Have To Talk Again, a post about toxicity and bullshit objectivity when it comes to game reviews — in particular how folks reacted with intense bat-guano vitriol around a mostly positive review of GTAV, not an unabashedly positive review.)

We should be encouraged to discuss our pop culture feelings.

We should never, ever argue about them. Or insult folks. Or tell them how they should feel.

Everything you think and feel about that book, that show, that game, that cupcake, that sunset, that proctology exam — it’s subjective. Subjective as in, I am the subject of this sentence, and this is how I personally experienced something.

(Now, all that’s a little different if you’re a critic — I mean, a real, actual, professional critic. But if what you’re doing is just talking about stuff on Facebook, believe me when I tell you: that’s not criticism. Nor should you expect that everyone surrounding you on social media is capable of dissecting the moving parts of art or pop culture. Besides, criticism is very rarely about THIS WAS GOOD or THIS SUCKED BALLS, so let’s stop confusing what proper critical theory accomplishes with what a review does.)

Stop defending your choices. Defense implies you’re going to war for the pop culture property — as if Breaking Bad or Iron Man or the books of George R. R. Martin somehow need you as a knight for the realm. This isn’t a battle. No stakes on the table.

Stop defending. Start discussing.

Stop being so invested in your pop culture that it makes you upset when someone likes something you don’t, or when someone hates something you love. It’s not personal. Joss Whedon isn’t your child. Neil Gaiman isn’t your Mom. You’re not dating Harry Potter. (I KNOW YOU’RE NOT BECAUSE I AM YOU STAY AWAY FROM HIM *hiss*). Those with different pop culture opinions than you aren’t aliens. They’re damn sure not enemies. Instead of trying to Prove Your Point and Force Them To Agree, why not have a conversation about it? Try to learn about what makes them tick. Try to suss out how the mechanics of story — and world, and character, and so on and so forth — affect different people in different ways. Stop thinking it’s awful when people disagree with you, and start thinking that it’s interesting, instead.

Because it is! It is interesting when people don’t agree. Of course we don’t all have the same tastes — why would we want that? We don’t all need to be unified.

A hive-mind would just be sticky and weird.

A diverse storytelling and pop culture environment exists because of these varying, many-headed tastes. This is a feature, not a bug.

Be polite about it. Be cool about it. Be excited, engaged. Don’t be venomous. Don’t be an asshole. (Damn sure don’t be a venomous asshole, because ew.) Love what you love! Dislike what you dislike. Don’t insult. Talk about it in ways where you seek to become enlightened and aware instead of in ways that suggest the other person just took a shit in your soup.

It’s normal to feel intimately connected to our stories and to those who like the same things we do. Stories have power! They possess a potent gravity. Just don’t let it grow tribal. Don’t throw up walls because of it. That’s how the purity of geek culture gets dragged through the muck, and that sense of tribalism and cultishness is what spawns things like the Fake Geek Girl bullshit meme or threatening people over reviews.

Hell, it goes beyond just geek culture. A lot of the problems my Dad and I had when I was a teen and beyond came when I stopped partaking in the things he loved. He loved to hunt and as a teenager, I wasn’t all that into it. I loved computers and books and he didn’t touch or even understand either of those things. A wall separated us as a result — if he loved hunting and I didn’t, well, shit. He felt insulted. Just as I felt insulted that he didn’t understand computers or read books. Neither of us tried talking about it. We were just pissed. And it stayed that way for –

Well, too damn long, really.

By the time we started fixing it, starting finding a way to appreciate each other beyond our interests and stop being so angry all the time, he only had a few more years of life and now he’s gone and — what? Was it worth it? Shit, I know, that’s an extreme example (and someone out there is like WAY TO BRING THE MOOD DOWN, DEBBIE DOWNER), but it stands to follow that we gotta be a little less wrapped up in the things we like.

That guy likes beer. Another person likes wine. This lady likes cake, some dude likes pie. You like the paddle, I like the whip. Football, baseball, foozball, fuckball. We can’t let these preferences compete. We can’t let them be subtractive to our relationships.

Don’t we have enough real things to worry about?

The government?

The climate?

Meteors?

Miley Cyrus’ sentient parasitic tongue?

NOW LET’S ALL HOLD HANDS AND MAKE OUT

*lurches toward you, mouth open*

The Terribleminds Pumpkin Carving Contest

I WANT YOU TO CARVE A PUMPKIN.

Whoa, sorry, a little early for the aggro ragebadger capslock thing.

I want you to carve a pumpkin.

And I want you to somehow incorporate one of my books (physical copy of said book, or if you feel like rigging your Kindle all up in there, hey, so be it).

Here’s how this works:

You will carve a pumpkin, for It Is The Season Of Pumpkin. This will be a jack-o-lantern of some stripe: one assumes you’ll carve a face into/onto it, though if you’d prefer to carve a tableau from one of my books, hey, more power to you if you got those mad gourd-carver skillz.

That’s right. I said skills, but with a ‘z.’

I’m a writer, I can make brave decisions like that.

ANYWAY.

You will carve this pumpkin and it can be carved however you see fit, and you will then place one of my books in and around the pumpkin (next to it, into it, on top of it, underneath it, but visible somehow) and then you will get out a camera of your choosing and snap a picture.

Then, you’ll send me the photographic evidence to: terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com.

You can be in the photo if you’d like.

You have roughly one month to enter.

This contest concludes at 11:59 PM EST on October 31st.

As they say on Survivor, Wanna know what you’re playing for?

Well, I’ve got two prize packs. The Big Stack Of Books prize is for the picture that I like the most. The Miriam Black Is Back prize is for the picture you all like the most (and we’ll take the first week of November to vote for your favorite photo).

The Big Stack of Books prize is:

A big ol’ stack of autographed books from Yours Truly.

That means nine total books:

Under the Empyrean Sky (hardcover)

Blackbirds (mmpb)

Mockingbird (mmpb)

The Blue Blazes (mmpb)

Double Dead (trade paper)

Unclean Spirits (trade paper)

Dinocalypse Now (trade paper)

Beyond Dinocalypse (trade paper)

Bait Dog (self-pub hardcover)

The Miriam Black Is Back prize is three books:

You’ll get digital copies of the first two Miriam Black books (Blackbirds, Mockingbird).

And you will receive a very early digital e-copy of The Cormorant.

The rules for this whole affair are as follows:

You will take a picture of your carved pumpkin with one of my books present in the photo.

You will send me that photo in the allotted time frame (before 11:59PM EST, Oct 31st).

I will be posting all photos to Flickr for display (though I will not own the photos in any way).

The first week of November will be used for voting and winners will be announced just after.

You will enter only once. Multiple entries will disqualify you.

If you are in the United States, I’ll front the shipping.

This is open to international participants, but if you win? You have to front the shipping. (I apologize, but man, shipping a big-ass box of books internationally can be onerous.)

You can be in the photo if you want.

The jack-o-lantern does not need to be carved in any specific manner — long as it counts as a jack-o-lantern, we’re good. Though, obviously, bonus points for creativity, horror, hilarity, or tying the pumpkin in some way to one of my books or characters.

(Results of the last photo contest for The Blue Blazes here.)

NOW GET CARVIN’, YOU FIERCE-FACED PUMPKIN-WRANGLERS.

Dystopian Cornpunk Agpocalypse For $1.99

My YA novel, Under the Empyrean Sky, is $1.99 today for your Kindle.

It features an oppressive wealthy government lording over the hard-working commonfolk of the farflung corn-choked Heartland and the teenagers who go on an adventure to fight back against the Sky Bastards who tell them who to marry, where to work, and how to live their lives in the dirt and misery of a failing world.

It’s got: hobos, piss-blizzards, teenagers drinking whiskey, robots, humans growing plant appendages, secret gardens, smoking, sex, hover-boats, slingshots, bloodthirsty corn, and more.

Why is it $1.99 today?

Not sure! Let’s call it a “Government Shutdown Hey Look It’s The Dystopia” special.

Either way, I’m working on the sequel (editing) right now: Blightborn.

Hope you check this out and diggit. If you ever wanted a good way to support this blog or my work as a writer, tossing two bucks into the coffers and checking out this book isn’t the worst way. (Or, at the very least: tell folks about it!) Thanks, and please to enjoy.

The Tea Party Smoke-And-Mirrors Ponyfucker Express Magic Show

I underestimated the Tea Party.

I really did. Once upon a time I thought, “Oh, hey, look, a gaggle of angry folks forged in the fires of a down economy and stirred up by passionate dipshit politicians. Ha ha ha, look at those silly misspelled protest signs! Oh, they think Obama is Kenyan Hitler, that’s so adorable. Hey, Bible misquotes! It’s like Tea Party Bingo up in this motherfucker.”

But time has permitted me a new perspective:

The Tea Party is actually pretty genius.

I mean, selfish as shit. Possibly possessing a few virulent strains of actual human evil. But really: genius! Like, if they weren’t such assholes, I might respect what they’re doing.”

Because what they’re doing is running a magic show full of illusions and tricks. They’re orchestrating a long-form confidence game, eyes on a distant prize.

Their bread and butter is not the political process but rather the illusion of one.

It’s all chicanery and legerdemain. Performed in service to what may be a creepy agenda. That agenda? To dismantle the power of the government and to reward private interests — not just in the systemic, “I want to bolster capitalism” sense, but to literally reward corporations and the very wealthy people who run them. Oh — and at your expense.

One. Big. Con.

The kind that might make David Mamet soak his britches.

Consider, for example, Ted Cruz’ filibuster — or, sorry, his “filibuster,” because it fucking wasn’t actually a fucking filibuster. Oh, sure. He called it that. The news calls it that. But it wasn’t. It was a really long speech organized and agreed upon by Harry Reid, meant to end at a preordained time and without having any effect at all. It let him prattle on, energizing his base, preaching from the pulpit, giving the illusion of having a practical and sustained effect when really he was just appeasing donors and speaking to his audience. He holds up a turd painted pink tucked in a hot dog bun and says, “Eat this delicious hot dog.”

And we all take a big shitty bite.

Consider, for example, how they claim to be a grassroots organization supporting the interest of the common American, but don’t really like to talk about who’s bankrolling all this shit (Rupert Murdoch, Koch Brothers, Dick Armey), all “big business” proponents who are happy to dismantle any and every safety net and regulation that keeps the actual common Americans from falling into a dark, hopeless pit.

You want a really great example? Consider the Philadelphia School District.

Which will close down in the next two years.

A whole school district, entirely or largely shuttered.

Think about that.

Now, think about how this sort of thing happens.

Pennsylvania elected, for some mysterious fucking reason, a Tea Partier as governor, Tom Corbett. (My opinions of Corbett are best understood as a series of angry vomiting sounds and rage-fueled poop noises.)

Corbett cuts a billion dollars out of state education. (This year’s budget is a little kinder, adding $50-some million to the pot, but that’s stuffing Band-Aids into a sucking chest wound what with massive shortfalls and deficits. It’s just enough to keep the schools open this year.)

You gut education and then say, “Hey, jeez, education isn’t looking too good? It’s like these teachers can’t teach! The system is failing!” Well, of course it is, jerkhead. You just stole the oxygen from the room and then are yelling about how folks are too weak to breathe.

So, with education gutted and 100% more ineffective than it was before…

PA invests money into a consulting group to examine how to make the school district more efficient; as a result the school district decides the best way forward is to allocate nearly a billion dollars toward a flush of charter schools — schools that are publicly funded but unregulated and privately operated and, oh, in Philadelphia, now mired in a series of scandals.

So, already we’ve taken money reserved for government operation of schools and thrown support in for private schooling entities.

Fine, except for the fact those must hurt by this are the underprivileged — meaning, lower-income, frequently African-American or minority students. (Here’s an interesting post as to why charter schools are bad for the urban poor of Philly and Pittsburgh.)

There exists, of course, a correlation between poor education and increased crime.

So, you reduce educational offerings, you increase crime.

Sounds bad.

Except:

Increased crime means increased prisoners.

Increased prisoners of the “non-white, urban” variety — people who almost universally vote Democrat. People who, once inside the prison system as having committed a felony…

…can no longer vote.

Like I said: pretty genius.

(This will be doubly genius if Pennsylvania starts to eventually do the Tea Party lean toward privatized prisons. Haven’t gone that way yet, far as I can tell.)

Point is, all this is a dog-and-pony show, a smoke-and-mirrors display to get you to Think One Thing so in order to accomplish Another Thing Entirely.

Which leads us to what may be a government shut-down.

Over the deficit.

Oh, wait, no — it’s not really about the deficit.

It’s about Obamacare.

But it’s also not really about Obamacare, either — because the ACA is actually based off of a conservative plan. They lie, screaming about government-run health care and death panels and other ludicrous myths about health care reform, all a series of easily-debunked lies uttered in order to continue supporting a Byzantine, obfuscatory system of piss-poor health care that presently fills the coffers of insurance companies who thrive off of our ignorance and confusion. (Translation: insurance lobbyists want to make sure that the insurance companies continue to get paid as much as they can, because that’s frequently how Giant-Ass Companies work. Which is fine, as long as our politicians are interested in helping individual Americans more than they are Giant-Ass Company Profits.)

And so they aim to shut down the government.

And possibly damage the economy in the process.

All to cry foul over health care reform that passed through the entire Democratic process without fail. It passed all three branches of government. And yet, this group of sore losers wants you to think they’re supporting the common American whose grandmother will be put on some death panel pogrom list where Obama personally shoots them in the back of the head.

The real rub is, what it does is show us — and the world — that our government is broken.

And that’s what the Tea Party wanted all along.

They operate from within — like cancer cells (or terrorist cells?) — undermining the very thing they claim to work for. They don’t want a functional government. Government big or small is the enemy. (A “post-democracy?”) The GOP tends to be more moderate in their view of government, but therein lies another genius illusion of the Tea Party, which is that they’re Republican. Spoiler alert: they’re not. They’ve just embedded themselves in that party like a tick under the skin because that’s how they ride their way into power. (And moderate Republicans are starting to figure this out, I think. Like someone who realizes far too late they invited a vampire to dinner and now he’s in the house and he’s eating all the pets oops oh well sorry.)

All a series of illusions.

Trickery to make you think they’re working for you.

A con game run on the common American.

Never mind that the common American is the one who gets hurt by a shutdown. Who gets fucked over by a damaged economy and unregulated, rampant corporate interests. The one who gets screwed by lost education and who gets thrown into a bloating prison system as a result.

The Tea Partiers wear our clothes and they sound like patriots, but they don’t give a weasel’s dick-whiskers about this country or the majority of the people in it.

They’re sexist. They’re racist. They care nothing for the young or most of the old.

They are the party of the Old White Dude Who Wants To Do What He Wants, So Fuck You.

They want to ride this horse until it breaks down and dies.

They’ll sell America to the first buyer.

They’re not the hostages.

They’re the hostage-takers.

*ends rant*

*takes a nap*

(Final note: I’m gonna leave the comments open, but should they get hairy, I’m closing ‘em down. I’ll likely not have time to respond to comments. I wanted to rant, and so, I ranted. I’m busy enough where I probably shouldn’t have even carved out the time to write this post, much less get mired in discussions about it. Also to clarify, I’m not anti-GOP, nor do I think the Democrats are the shining party of goodness here to save the day on a galloping golden steed. I tend to vote pretty moderate — leaning toward moderate politicians of both parties — and I have my back up about the NSA and drone-strikes and all kinds of other shit Obama approves on a daily, but this rant rose up after reading about the potential shutdown.)

One Week Till Australia

In (roughly) one week, I’m going to get on a series of planes and time travel to Brisbane for GenreCon. (The schedule is at that link if you’re actually going to be there. And, in fact, if you’re going to be there, you should make sure you come say hi! Don’t be afraid! I do not bite unless I’m really drunk or unless I’ve contracted some kind of koala chlamydia.)

One of my plane flights is a 16-hour flight from Dallas to Brisbane.

Sixteen holy-shit hours.

I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything for 16 hours. Longest car trip was maybe 14? Jeez, I dunno. Point is, I’m going to be in an economy-sized seat (thankfully on an international flight, where the planes are bigger and with them, the seats) for a very long time.

And then, the inevitable jet lag.

Anyway, as I like to do, this seems a good time to crowdsource tips. Where I exploit you, my fabulous readership, by drilling a blog post into your brain and tapping your sweet, honey-like knowledge. The questions then, that I’d like to ask are:

a) Survival tips for a very long flight?

b) This very long flight seems like a good opportunity to digest great gulping mouthfuls of delectable pop culture medicine. As such, I am soliciting your opinions for interesting movies, TV shows, comic books, novels, and games to shove into my brain holes. In particular: noodling wolfing down entire seasons of television, as that seems to be an option.

c) How to deal with jet lag?

d) BRISBANE. My trip to Australia is 10 days, though due to the Time Travel Laws, I will actually only be Down Under for seven. As such, I’ve chosen to remain in and around the Brisbane area, so I’m narrowing down my “What To Do In Australia?” question to, “What To Do In Brisbane?” Essential sights, experiences, foods, what-not.

And there you have it.

Thank you, humans.

Screw you, robots.

That is all.

(Oh wait, that’s not all. While gone, by the way, terribleminds will remain in operation, its forges burning bright with the kindling of wonderful guest posts.)

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Cooperative Cliffhanger, Part Two

Last week: the first part of this very challenge.

A lot of you wrote stories featuring cliffhangers — meaning, the stories are incomplete. The audience and the authors dangling off the precipice. Time to change that.

Your task?

Pick one of the unfinished stories from last week and finish it.

No, you may not pick your own story. Jeez.

You’ve got the usual 1000 words. Due by next Friday, October 3rd. Post at your own online space. Link back here. (It may be helpful if you identify the author and original link of the first story part you choose. We may wanna read the first part again.)

Complete the stories.

Solve the cliffhanger.

Write What You Know: Roasting That Old Chestnut

Write What You Know.

So says the advice.

Four words. A tiny prescription.

But like the TARDIS, it’s much bigger on the inside.

That piece of advice is one of the greatest and worst writing advice nuggets in the history of all writing advice nuggets. It’s brilliant! And it’s right! And it’s frustrating! And it’s wrong! It’s open to ten kinds of interpretation. It can be a springboard to launch you through a story. Boing! Or it can be the wall you hit. BOOM.

It contains multitudes.

I’ve spoken about it before.

And I want to speak about it again.

Here, then, are five recent thoughts on the subject. Do with them as you will: read them, respond, rub them on your nude flesh, stomp on them as if they were skittering roaches.

Better Written As “Write What You Understand?”

On the strictest read, Write what you know sounds like a command to commit to paper only those facts and events you have personally experienced or studied — you played baseball, you studied the Revolutionary War, you’re an astrophysicist, and so all your stories must weave in these three things lest you be writing from a place of dire inauthenticity where readers will be able to smell your bullshit from 100 yards and they’ll pull your shirt over your head and laugh at you as the neighborhood dog humps your supine form. This is nonsense, of course: writing fiction as autobiography is limiting and boring.

But the advice can’t mean that. How absurd would that be?

It’s not about what facts you know.

It’s about a deeper understanding.

What it is, I think, is that in the writing of fiction — whether you’re writing about a broken marriage, a troubled assassin, a tribal war between the moonicorns and the comet-ponies — you’ll be writing about moments that will be strengthened by drawing on elements of your life. It’s about the things you understand, not merely the things you “know.” You understand what it’s like to come from a broken home. Or to fix a tractor. You remember losing your virginity, or your first taste of alcohol, or that time you killed a guy with a box full of syphilis-mad weasels. You get things. You internally understand stuff that is both specific to you but that also draws an emotional and intellectual bridge out to a larger readership — like, somewhere in your life you probably experienced heartbreak. The way you understand it is implicitly your own, but at the same time, nearly everyone has some explicit understanding of love torn asunder.

Your job, then, is to draw from that — to plunge a narrative hypodermic down through the amber casement of your memory and suck out the sweet DNA so you can inject it into your story. It’s not hewing only to facts. It’s about finding those moments from your life that will enrich your fiction with deeper, stranger, more personal — and yet potentially also more universal – details. You are, in a sense, trying to breed emotional familiarity through intellectual honesty.

You’re tying a moment in your story to some understanding from your own life. Which means you’re tethering yourself to the audience — placing your story in a context they can understand, in a way that enlivens the narrative and maybe speaks to their own experiences, as well.

We’re not supposed to steal from other people’s work.

But we can steal from history. From mythology.

And even better, from our own lives. WE CAN STEAL OUR OWN MEMORIES AND TURN THEM INTO MEAT FOR THE STORY MACHINE.

How fucking awesome is that?

Watching My Wife Read My Work

My wife, as a spouse is wont to do, will read my work, often next to me in bed at night. (She’s also a fantastic editor, by the by.) And as she reads, sometimes I’ll catch a movement of her head and I’ll notice a sly, sideways glance in my direction. And when this occurs, I know why.

It’s because she just found a moment in the story she knows is true.

Even though it’s a fake-ass made-up bullshit-ride of a story, she finds things in there that she knows are true. Moments snatched from my life and plugged into the fiction. Sometimes it’s a small thing: a word, a turn of phrase, an article of clothing, a taste of food. Other times it’s taking a story or a piece of one from my life and finding the appropriate contextual slot to cram it into. It’s maybe 10-20% of a book (more in some cases, less in others), almost a kind of storytelling punctuation, but I think the real value is that you’re putting yourself on the page.

You are there in the story.

Not as a character.

But as a ghost, haunting over the narrative proceedings.

A Key To A Locked Door

Many authors treat write what you know as a punishment levied against them. Like it’s a problem. But rather, I like to think it’s a solution to a problem — a key, in fact, to a locked door.

Consider: you hit your head on something in the story. Some plot point. Some low-hanging story obstacle. You don’t know how to move forward with a character, or a theme, or whatever. The maze seems unsolvable; the labyrinth, closed. So: look to your own life. It’s never a guaranteed solution, but you may find that something in your life, your history, answers the problem. A person you know. A thing you experienced. A feeling you understand with great intensity.

Sometimes, you are the key to the door.

And you are the sum of the things you know.

An Admonishment To Know More

If we assume that part of it really is about facts — like, say, “Don’t write about the Civil War unless you actually know some shit about the Civil War, dingbat” — then we can safely say that write what you know is not a restriction on your writing, but rather a suggestion that you can always know more, dumbass. Go learn more stuff! And write about it.

Or Perhaps: Write What You Love

Maybe value also exists in saying that we should write not just to our experiences and our understanding, but also to the things about which we feel passionate about. Maybe it means we should lean toward those things that we love (and to an opposite degree, the things that we hate, that cause us pain, that scare the Holy Jesusballs out of us), including them in our work. Or, to a lesser degree, the things that interest us. In school, we tend to do better in subjects we like, and I suspect the same is true in our fiction: we probably tell better stories when we’re writing about things we dig (and we probably know more about the things we dig, too).

So. There you go. Five slapdash thoughts.

Awaiting your own in 3… 2… 1…

Dear Publishers,

Hi there, publisher!

I’m an author. Maybe you know me? I’m the Internet’s “Chuck Wendig.” AKA, “That Guy Who Curses A Lot In Interesting Ways.” I write stories. I have a beard composed of thousands of self-aware cilia that whisper those stories in my ear, stories I then transcribe for the world to read.

You’re a publisher. Or a person who works in publishing. Or a robot in the humanless future scouring ancient blog posts to try to discover exactly how people went extinct (spoiler alert: iOS9 became self-aware and killed us all).

I like you.

I think you do the Story Lord’s work in bringing books to to the world. People can bag on you all they like, but I say, without you and the authors you publish, my life would be a hollow, smelly carapace — like a turtle’s shell if you first scraped out all the vital turtley bits.

And that word, “vital,” applies to you. You are vital. A vital part of the ecosystem. A critical and competitive keystone of the entire book-reading, book-loving, book-smelling, book-humping culture. I love books. You publish books. So let’s be best pals, yeah? *cuts palm with a Swiss Army Knife, offers to shake your hand* LET US SEAL THIS FRIENDSHIP IN BLOOD.

Ahem. Sorry.

Still, as much as I like you, I think it’s time we had a conversation. I’ve noticed some things you do that, frankly, I think you could be doing better. Admittedly, I’m just an outsider — a rogue ronin author stalking the dustblown wastes, writing my stories during the day underneath collapsed highway overpasses — for at night I must flee the Yowling Hell-Warblers and their motorcycle riding Coyote Men. I’m an outsider who, I admit, is probably ignorant to The Way Things Really Are Inside The Publishing Machine.

Just the same, I’m going to opine loudly.

Because that’s how I do.

Let’s talk about you, you silly scamps, you.

DRM Is For Assbadgers

I get it. You like DRM. You think it’s valuable in staving off waves of book-thieving pirates.

And, hey, DRM by itself is not toxic. DRM is like GMOs or lasers or hybridized bat-shark-wolf monsters: fine on its own until someone comes along and implements it poorly.

And, for the most part, DRM is implemented poorly.

DRM is dumb. DRM does not work. DRM is the Empire is tightening its fist, which only forces more star systems to slip through its fingers. You know how our war on terrorism basically begets more terrorism? Like, someone blows up our shit, then we blow up some Yemeni daycare thinking that an Al Qaeda higher-up is hiding there, and then all the people affected by the blown-up daycare suddenly think, “The US kills kids so now we’re gonna be fight the US with tooth and nail?” Meaning, our war on terror just creates more terrorists?

Similar situation with DRM (with way fewer dead people, to be clear). You don’t want books to be pirated; you implement DRM. DRM mostly just pisses off regular users who suddenly have reduced access to the thing they thought they owned. They decide to become pirates, instead, because it’s easier and it gives them the access to the content in the way that they want it.

DRM creates — and then challenges — pirates.

It punishes regular readers.

I Will Buy The Physical Book And You Will Give Me The E-Book

No, really, I’m not kidding. You tell me, “You buy a hardcopy, we’ll give you an e-copy,” then I’ll take that deal every time. Practically and financially, this makes sense: I’m buying the story from you in one container (the hardcopy) already. You might as well give me the story in its more ephemeral, digital non-container (aka an e-book), too. It’s a great value. And it encourages that physical distribution chain we all love so much. I said a while back, “If you don’t do this, Amazon will,” and drum roll please, they have, with Kindle Matchbook. (And one of my publishers, Angry Robot, will now do this in the US with Clonefiles.)

Don’t worry, there’s still room for you at the party. Ever hear of a bookstore called “Barnes & Noble?” Could be a shot in the arm of their book business (and their Nook business). Plus, I keep hearing about these little magic pockets of book-love called “independent bookstores”…

Partner With Independent Bookstores

Indie stores are awesome. (I mean, in theory. Some suck ass, just as some fraction of everything and everyone sucks ass.) Indie bookstores want to sell books and spread the book-love around. And you, as publishers, are purveyors of those very books. Partner with them.

I don’t just mean, “Let them sell your books.” I mean, “Let them sell special editions that only they can sell.” I mean, “Let them sell e-books in new and interesting ways, such as on USB keys or by (as above) selling them with the physical editions.” Give them access. Opportunity. Unique entries in the canon and culture of sweet delectable bookishness.

Libraries Are Our Friends And, Also, Vital

You know another way that a lot of people learn to love books? Libraries. I mean, how awesome is a library? It’s a BIG BUILDING. Filled to the fucking ceiling with BOOKS and people who will help you find MORE BOOKS. It’s a book playground! A wonderland of reading and learning and fantasy and drama and information! And it’s great for people who can’t afford books. (Like, say, a whola lotta folks in this occasionally wibbly-wobbly fucky-wucky economy of ours.)

Help libraries. Help them. They’re customers. But even beyond that, they’re the drug dealers of the book world. They’re the ones giving out free samples of your work (which, to be clear, they paid for) and fostering a love of stories and a culture of books. Libraries are Willy Wonka factories where they make new readers instead of weird-ass child-endangerment candy. (Seriously, the government needs to step in and shut Wonka down. Last I heard he was drowning kids in a corn syrup river or something. He’s like a fucking Batman villain, that guy.)

Don’t obstruct their e-book lending library. Don’t make the library’s job more difficult. Help them! Give them aid and succor in this horrible time when our government has a real boner for this “austerity” bullshit (austerity sounds nice until you realize it’s a lot what happened when the Titanic sank — the rich people get their boats, the poor people get eaten by ice sharks). Do you want libraries to be places where people just get to use the Internet for free? Do you want libraries to just go away? No! You don’t! Libraries rule! Librarians are the curators of our culture!

HELP LIBRARIES.

GODDAMNIT.

Mmkay? Mmkay.

Change Starts From Within

SFF right now is going through a lot of growing paints in terms of straining its white dude diapers and trying to figure out how to accommodate, well, Those Who Aren’t Heteronormative White Dudes. This is a good thing. We’re starting to see that there exists a whole audience who maybe isn’t being talked to — this is good for society but also makes financial sense, too, because untapped audience is an audience who isn’t yet spending money with you.

A lot of this change happens inside publishing. It starts with hiring people at all strata within the industry from a variety of life experiences and social configurations.

Please do that! Thanks!

A Ten Dollar E-Book Is A Little Bit Of Bullshit

“BUT IT COSTS AS MUCH TO MAKE AN E-BOOK–” you start to say, and I cut you off with a frowny look and a cat’s hiss. Listen, I don’t care what your justifications are for selling an e-book at a price above ten dollars. You’re trying to slow the flight from the physical distribution model, maybe. Or maybe it’s just that you don’t know yet how exactly e-books fit into the staggered chain of release from hardback to paperback.

What I know is, a mass market paperback does not cost ten dollars.

Nor should an e-book. Ever.

I learned a very important lesson from author Maurice Broaddus at Worldcon this year, and it was this: if someone is saying or doing something you don’t like, threaten to pee on them. Threatening that seals the deal, gets the job done. So, publishers: if you keep offering $10+ e-books, I’m gonna pee on you. On your shoes. Your socks. On the legs of your khakis. God help you if you’re sitting down because then I can get better reach.

Cheaper e-books. Or I pee. On you. That’s the choice.

*stares*

*drinks a big glass of water*

*stares harder*

Authors Are Your Partners, Not Your Bangladeshi Climate Change Refugees

I’ve been happy with my publishers. I know a lot of authors who are happy with theirs, too, and who have signed smart contracts (usually through the intervention of their agents) and who are doing just fine. I also know authors who have seen (and sometimes signed) onerous contracts that are exploitative and nasty. Little clauses and line items that knock an author down at the knees. You try to grab rights that should never be yours, or offer up Byzantine rules so confusing and labyrinthine it’s like a math puzzle for MENSA meth addicts.

Here’s an actual line from an actual publisher contract:

“If you sell 4,312 copies, your percentage goes from 17.5% to 25%, unless it’s a Harvest Moon, in which case you are to be visited by three editors who will offer you three rare minerals and if you choose correctly than you will be allowed to pick your cover artist but the publisher will also claim eternal copyrights to your work in Bulgaria, and also if four trains leave Penn Station at 4:22PM, each carrying seven constipated random penguins –”

Okay, I might just be making that up.

So, let’s go back to the time where we all remember that publishers need authors to publish. Let’s also note that self-publishing has become a Very Real Thing and a Bonafide Actual Option, which means that even as the Big Six becomes the Big Five, you still have competition — competition in the form of authors who choose to become author-publishers, instead.

As such, it is best to approach authors as if they are a partner in this endeavor (as they are) and to bring value to that relationship instead of acting as if they’re making iPhones for you in a Brooklyn sweatshop. What I’m trying to say is –

Publishers: I like you! Do you like me? Then let’s get book-married. Because that’s what this relationship is: sure, it has a business component, but given that we’re both at our core bibliogeeks of some stripe or another, it looks a helluva lot like a marriage. You’re not my boss. Nor am I yours. PUT A RING ON IT. *mashes cake into your mouth*

Authors Need Some Motherfucking Data, Stat

Let’s assume you agree that we’re your partners and not an expendable resource like so much authorial lumber. Let’s also assume that while you will handle the lion’s share of Big Marketing, you will, just the same, expect us writer-types to do some more interpersonal marketing and to go on book tours and such in order to connect with our once-and-future audience.

To do this? We need data.

Constant, accurate, capable data.

Where are we selling? How much? To whom? What bookstores dig us? What bookstores have never heard of us? Where will we have the most effect? How’s Twitter at selling books? Facebook? Google Hangouts? If I get naked on YouTube, will that sell books? How many of my readers are bespectacled bearded men like myself? Are any of them ultraterrestrials from the Hollow Earth, and how best can I serve our chitinous subterranean secret masters?

Two things to note, here:

First, if you keep data from us, it might seem as if you’re trying to hide something. Again, we want to feel like partners, not like employees. What you know, we should also know.

Second, if you don’t give us the data, then — repeat after me – Amazon will. (That should become your mantra in the coming years, by the way.) And so enters a fundamental question: do you want us to see Amazon as our first ally, and not our publisher? That’s what Amazon wants, I’m guessing. So: help us. Data helps us sell books. And that is part of the point, right?

Stop With The Sneaky Vanity Publishing Stuff, Because, Ew

Archway Publishing, from Simon & Schuster. Author Solutions from Pengdom Ranguinhaus. Amongst others. They all offer self-publishing opportunities to authors for frequently absurd prices. Mmmyeah. No. Here’s the problem:

First, that’s actually not self-publishing anymore. Really, like, not at all. It’s actually just regular publishing, except now you’re charging me for it instead of paying me for it, which is so fucked up I can’t even discuss it without my words devolving into a series of BUH DUH WUH stuttering.

Second, self-publishing doesn’t actually cost that much money.

Third, signing up with these services often wildly exploits the author.

It’s bad news. It’s ugly business. And it just gives ammunition to those who say that publishers are giant Sarlacc pits ingesting authors and digesting them over the lifetime of their contracts. I get it. You’re a business and you want to do businessy things. But this? This is not how you do it, at least not without dirtying your blouse in the process.

Self-Publishing Is Calling From Inside The House

Author-based publishing is here and it’s not going anywhere. Author-publishers are all up the attic, like squirrels. I think over time that traditional publishing and self-publishing will start to squish together in a big wadded up ball, like a bunch of socks in the dryer. And that’s a good thing. Hybrid authors will become more of an important presence — authors who recognize that both paths offer unique benefits and increase audience and competition.

But that doesn’t easily happen when you see things like the vanity publishing stuff, mentioned above. Or when you see how some publishers are reticent to offer print rights separate from digital rights (print rights and print distribution, be advised, is where author-publishers still can’t get a great foothold). I think you’ll find continued value in treating the new class of author-publishers not as competition or as a vein of ore to be exploited but, again, as partners. And that means crossing the bridge and offering them some of the things they’re maybe used to getting: input on cover design, higher percentage rates (which means reduced advances, most likely), a measure of unprecedented control.

Authors are no longer as hungry for that big break — because, with electronic distribution becoming so easy, so accessible, so free — they can do it for themselves. Doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a good idea to do so (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t). The mere fact that the option exists as opportunity is enough for you to sometimes change the dynamic, to present new ways of partnering with authors going forward.

Publishers are still a critical component to this entire thing. They offer whole buildings full of people who love books, love authors, and who know a whole lotta important things about this bath salts Thunderdome called “publishing.” Hell, most traditional publishers have forgotten more about this industry than most author-publishers have yet known. But that isn’t enough. Not anymore. Relationships must evolve. The business models must change. Authors are starting to drive the bus — sometimes, okay, yes, off the cliff, but that’s where you can help. But you can’t help if the relationship isn’t equitable. If it doesn’t make sense.

Let’s cast our eyes forward together.

Let’s be nimble.

LET US SEAL THIS FRIENDSHIP IN BLOOD.

I mean, uhh, let’s publish some books together!

Author Naming And Shaming: A Quick Comment

There’s a post going around naming-and-shaming authors who have reportedly bought favorable fake reviews from the likes of Fiverr.com — I’d encourage you to note that the post has no evidence of tomfoolery and also zero comments. I tried leaving a comment but, along with others, am apparently held fast in permanent moderation.

(No, I’m not going to link to it. No point in generating traffic for these folks, which for all I know is exactly what they want in the first place.)

I can believe that some authors do pay for reviews of that ilk (which to be clear is wholly separate from paying for legitimate reviews from the likes of Kirkus or Publishers Weekly, which invites an entirely separate conversation), but this post has no evidence to support it and feels ultimately like a hit piece. Plus, some of the names? Throwing stones at giants.

I’m not saying authors don’t sometimes behave badly (they do!), but you also can’t just SAY STUFF and have that be MAGICALLY TRUE (or, also, legal).

For the record, all my reviews — while occasionally solicited in the form of me flailing my arms to the general public and saying “I’d sure like some reviews!” — were not paid for by me, my publishers, my beard, or any other human or non-human proxy. All my reviews are free-range, grass-fed, zero-antibiotic, with no high-fructose corn syrup. No animals were harmed in the making of my book reviews, except for that one llama, AND HE KNOWS WHAT HE DID.

Semi-related — whenever there’s a kerfuffle I get people emailing me or tweeting at me for my comment. So, on the whole Goodreads thing where now they’re clamping down on (read: deleting) reviews that talk about authors but not books, I’ll just say this: that’s the right of Goodreads (or Amazon, now), since they own the space and can dictate the nature and tenor of the reviews left there. It’s not censorship (though it will be called this) because censorship is a whole different animal. It’s Goodreads’ lawn, and they can dictate what you do on it. Your concern over any changes is reasonable and understood and such concern should be met with finding (or, best case scenario, forming) a new place for book and author review.

I have occasionally found Goodreads to be a toxic place for authors, but I have also, far more often, found it to be interesting and enlightening, so hopefully all this will shake out in a pleasing way and we can all hold hands and do the maypole dance once more. Or something.

Now I go back to my edit-cave, where I am sinking beneath the tides on my edits of Blightborn, Book Two of the Heartland Trilogy. Wish me luck. *kersploosh*

Please Ban My Books As Loudly And Obnoxiously As You Can

I have come to the decision — since it is banned books week, after all — that my books are vile, wretched specimens of American pop culture. They prominently feature:

Crass profanity!

Caustic violence!

Gratuitous sexual exploits!

CHILDREN ARE READING MY BOOKS.

I’ve seen these children. On the playgrounds of America. Smoking cigarillos and drinking high-fructose corn syrup right out of the bottle. In each of their hands, a copy of Blackbirds, or Blue Blazes, or the gateway drug, Under the Empyrean Sky — a book I wrote specifically to hook the youth of America on my disgusting meth-candy prose. My god, who let me loose on the bookshelves? My books are a virus! A horrible, salacious virus featuring sex and drugs and sexy drugs and druggy sex and naughty words and cigarette-smoking and surly teenagers and knives and guns and whiskey and sentence fragments and rampant metaphors and –

FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

My books rend innocence the way cats claw sweaters.

So, I think the only solution is to ban them.

Ban them noisily! Loudly! In public! Get together your boycotts, your petitions. Call the news media! Call the principal of your school! CALL THE PRESIDENT OF THESE UNITED STATES. Buy several copies of my books — as many as you can carry! — to get this wretchedness off the shelves (the equivalent of sucking snake venom from a viper bite). Then stack up all those books and burn them. On television, if possible. Get pictures! For USA Today.

Kidnap Matt Lauer. Force him to understand. (Don’t forget to kidnap a cameraman, too.)

My books are a toxin.

A sexy, sassy toxin. That will ruin teenagers. And turn you all into sexy drug zombies.

I know the time is now.

Buy my books. All of them.

And then ban the crap out of them.

I eagerly await you doing the right thing.

I eagerly await all the banhammers and burnination.

*stares*

*waits*

*noisily sips Earl Grey tea*