Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 223
January 25, 2013
Flash Fiction Challenge: Choose Your Motif
Last week’s challenge: “Photos of Impossible Places.”
Motif.
What, is it, you ask? Besides someone explaining that they have plenty of chompers in their mouth? (Wait for it, you’ll get it. I’ll just stand here while you… ah, good, you got it.)
A motif is not a theme.
It is not a mood.
It is a recurring element. A repeated symbol or overarching image.
(Birds are a motif found in my novels Blackbirds and Mockingbird.)
So, today, I’m going to give you 10 motifs.
You will choose one. Randomly, either by d10 or by random number generator.
This motif will be a significant symbol or element in your story. Symbolically and/or literally.
I’ll also toss in two other categories: setting and subgenre.
Choose (randomly or otherwise) one from each.
You have, as usual, up to 1000 words. Post at your site, link back here.
Due by Friday, February 1st, noon EST.
Ready?
Motifs
Birds
Skulls
Blood
Eyes
Snakes
Swords
Water
Storms
Mirrors
The Moon
Subgenre
Dystopia
Erotic Fantasy
Noir
Paranormal Romance
Comic Fantasy
Cozy Mystery
Transhumanism
Ecothriller
Wild West (In Space)
Mythpunk
Setting
A train
A virtual reality world
A king’s bedroom
A labyrinth
Inside the mind of another character
An amusement park
A restaurant in space
A villain’s volcano lair
In the chamber of the gods
Route 66
January 23, 2013
Ten Questions About: The Explorer, By J.P. Smythe
I adore loving a book I shouldn’t have any business liking. On paper, The Explorer really isn’t a book for me. But it just proves that good story and strong writing transcend genre, so when the very-wise Kim Curran said, “Try it!” I recognized that she was smarter than I am and I did as she suggested. It’s a brilliant book — funny, desperate, desolate, sad, all in equal measure. Here’s Mister Smythe to tell you all about it –
TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?
I’m James Smythe. I write books, the latest of which is an SF thing called The Explorer. I’ve also worked on video games (doing story, narrative design and level design) and I teach Creative Writing at a university in London.
GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:
Cormac Easton is the first journalist to travel to space. The crew he’s with all die, and he’s left alone, slowly dying. Unless, of course, he can find out how to stop it…
WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?
A few things. One was me thinking about loneliness and quiet, and wanting to write something set in the loneliest place that I could contemplate. That place turned out to be space (though it could have been the bottom of the ocean – I’ll save that for another time.) The lonely-theme tied in with a life-long love of SF, and a desire to write something that felt like the books I read when I was a kid – or, at least, the way that I remember them.
And I’m getting older. I know it’s a cliché, but I think a lot about age, about what’s happening to my body. I became interested in how the body collapses, and how this thing we generally try to look after only becomes our worst enemy. There’s some of that in the book as well: the nature of time, and how it works with our body to betray us.
HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?
I think there’s a lot of me in Cormac. A lot of his dreams and hopes and fears, they were things that I felt when I was younger; and a lot of how he looks back on his life feels true to my own considerations of who I am and what I have done with my life. I know it’s not the be-all and end-all, but he makes up a lot of who this novel is, and I think that maybe only I could have written him the way that he is.
Also: his obsession with teeth. I have good teeth. All of them, nice a straight, blah blah. I am absolutely fucking terrified of them, and dentist, and of anybody touching my teeth. Or looking at them, even. If I’ve written this book right, there’s teeth-related stuff in there that should make anybody with a similarly odontophobic nature (the fancy word justifies my stupid fear) feel exactly the same. Honestly, I shuddered when I was writing those bits.
WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING THE EXPLORER?
Getting inside Cormac’s head. He goes to some much darker places than I do, and he contemplates things that – touch wood – I hope I never have to contemplate. Trying to see my way into his situation was tough at times, especially because I did feel a sense of empathy with him. He’s an asshole at times (as we can all be, I think) but he wants to be better. He wants to do what’s right. And when you throw nasty stuff at a person like that, sometimes it’s hard to see how they’ll react. And sometimes, their reactions are the hardest part of all.
WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING THE EXPLORER?
A lot about space and physics and science that I subsequently ignored. I wanted to write something where the science wasn’t necessarily real science. Instead, it had to serve the narrative. That’s what I remember pre-Space Race SF novels doing: they went to Mars in ships with gravity, and they bounced around on the planet and then they jumped over a mountain. The Explorer never gets to those extremes, but every decision made was informed by a) the reality of the situation and then b) whether that worked with what I wanted to put Cormac through in service to the story.
WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT THE EXPLORER?
I love the rest of the crew. I tried to make them so that it didn’t matter who they were, where they came from, what they did: everybody is equal, and everybody (unfortunately) meets the same fate. How they deal with it is different, of course. We’re all broken, and what I put them through breaks them all further and in different ways. I hope that The Explorer is like novels I love to read most, regardless of genre: a story about people, about humanity, just dressed up on a spaceship to nowhere.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?
Well, the nature of the story means that I can sort of explore that in another book. Short answer: everything. (And nothing.)
Process-wise? I would almost definitely make the science correct, or at least explained my decision better through the narrative. A few readers haven’t liked what I did with it – or have thought I just got it wrong – so maybe I didn’t make that clear enough. For most readers, they’ve gone with it. Somebody has described the book as science-fantasy (as Star Trek is) and that’s a label that I absolutely embrace.
GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:
“I always said that the thing I was saddest about, when they had pretty much stopped printing paper books, was that I couldn’t tell how long was left until the end. I could find out, but that feel, that sensation of always knowing was gone. I used to love the way that the cluster of pages grew thinner in my hand, how I could squeeze it and guess the time it would take until it ended. I loved endings, when they were done well: I loved knowing that it was finished, because that was how it was meant to be. An ending is a completion: it’s a satisfaction all in itself. “
WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?
My next novel is a very different beast: called The Machine, it’s about a woman whose husband has his mind wiped by the titular Machine, and how she tries to rebuild who he is. The Explorer taught me a valuable lesson when writing it: if you embrace the darkness in your story, it hopefully never feels overwhelming. When I began writing it, I was almost afraid of it, tentative in how I dealt with the darker aspects of the story. But the darkness can be used, and it can enhance, and hopefully I’ve used that lesson in The Machine.
And then, after that, the sequel to The Explorer, this time next year. I love it when a sequel subverts what you expect from a story and takes it to a different place entirely. Hopefully this will do exactly that.
The Explorer: Amazon/ B&N / Indiebound
The 9th Circle Of Hell Is Called “Mattress Shopping”
Four years ago, we bought a mattress.
We did as everyone suggests: we went to the store, camped out on it for a little while.
The saleslady of course just hovered like a hummingbird, staring at us while we tried out the new bed. I don’t know if she thought were going to try to do the rumpy-pumpy or something, but she just stood there. Staring and frittering. Still, the test totally worked.
It was the most comfortable bed on which I’d ever draped my torpid form.
My wife and I both looked at each other and were like, “Yes. Yes. This is our new bed.”
The bed was a Sealy latex mattress. A “Tranquil Sea” mattress. Which is a silly name, because the last thing I want to do is sleep on the ocean, tranquil or no. The sea moves. It hungers. It has sharks and giant squid and Dagon’s babies hiding down in the watery dark. Sleeping on the ocean will not give me comfort, but that’s how these product names are. (We’re also shopping now for paint colors, and paint colors are named even more hilariously. “Hobo Bindle.” “Regrettable Mist.” “Bedbug Ordure.” “Griefstruck Juniper.” “Peacock Cloaca.”)
We took the mattress home.
It was wonderful.
For a while.
But it wasn’t long before we noticed a slight… give to the material. We were slowly sinking into the mattress. At first, that was kinda nice. “It fits me like a glove!” I said, laughing as I shimmied my body down into the warm embrace of our new bed.
Eventually, however, those slight depressions turned into a pair of inescapable ditches. Which then turns the middle of the bed into a giant hill, like it’s some kind of Anglo-Saxon burial mound. (I’m fairly certain that Oswald killed Kennedy not from within a building but rather from the berm rising up from the center of our shitty mattress.)
Of course, when you’re up off the mattress, the deep furrows are not so plain to see — and despite being only four years into a 10-year-warranty, we’re pretty much fucked because when the Mattress Bastards come to measure the depth of our uncomfortable rifts, they will discover that each trench is odd but not dramatically odd and so, sorry, fuck you, stick a mattress coil up your no-no-hole, please enjoy your latex slumber-condom, nerds.
Point is, now we’re back to shopping for a new mattress.
Which, as you know if you’ve ever done it, is a descent into a realm of lies and madness. Memory foam! Innerspring! Flippable! Not flippable! Latex! Sleep Number! Futon! Koalafur! Foetal leather! Soft! Medium-soft! Medium-firm! Firm! Super-firm! Mild! Medium! Habenero Spice!
One mattress at one store — “This is our Endless Whisperer Pillow-Top model” — is actually different from the same-named mattress at another store. So it’s not like you can price compare on most of these, unless you want to buy a Tempurpedic, which are apparently wonderful but also cost as much as a used car.
Plus, they ask you all those questions. “Are you a back sleeper? Side sleeper? Butt sleeper? Do you have sciatica problems? Spinal disorder? Will you be having ‘the sex’ on this bed? Doggy-style? Missionary? Cincinnati Tugboat-style? Do you sleep eight hours? Nine? Four? Do you like to be stung by bees while you sleep, or not stung by bees? Do you eat in bed? Smoke in bed? Have you ever killed a man? Can you help me dispose of this body?”
Eventually, you answer all the questions and they direct you to what is the most expensive mattress in the store, some Astronaut Bed stuffed with the lavender-scented hair of orphaned children, and you tell them, “But I don’t want to pay $6700 for a new mattress,” and they’re like, “But there’s a 700,000-year warranty,” which sounds great until you realize that the warranty basically only covers incidents where the mattress turns into an actual monster from Hell and tries to eat you. (Our mattress has only turned into a metaphorical monster.)
So they direct you to the cheapest mattress just to be a dick, and it’s basically a pallet of bricks draped in a musty tablecloth, and they’re like, “That’s called our ‘Spinal Shame’ model and it’s $300. It has a 17-minute warranty,” which again, who cares, because the warranties are dogshit.
Then there’s all the upselling — pillows and frame and boxspring and dust ruffle and bondage saddle. Then you have to work on the price to get it down because of course the all-important mattress industry is like the car industry (because surely a mattress is as complex an object as an automobile!) and you’re suddenly haggling over price because this mattress has coils 2mm smaller than that other mattress and blah blah blah.
Then maybe while you’re standing there you Google some reviews and half the reviews talk about how the mattress killed their mother and half of them say it’s the best thing since angel nipples and next thing you know, you’ve panicked and fled the store and continue to sleep on your own crapgasmic mattress until it dissolves beneath you and you buy a fucking sleeping bag because fuck it, that’s why, just fucking fuck it.
So, what I’m saying is:
Hey, what mattress do you have? Do you like it?
We’re thinking about Ikea beds because some folks recommended them. Sleep Number sounds interesting, but I’ve read so many bad reviews (“The air pump stopped working and it filled our bed up with air and we floated off to a magical sky kingdom where giants made us into sex toys”). Tempurpedic is a possibility, but now of course you have a hundred different models of varying costs and questionable difference. HELP ME, INTERNET.
“Rooting For The Bad Guy,” by Myke Cole
Myke Cole is a writer you should be reading. He’s a damn nice guy. He’s intense as anything. He’s built like an M1 Abrams but he won’t use his might against you. He’s also a helluva writer, and his new book, Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier, is out on January 29th. (Amazon / BN / Indiebound). Follow him on Twitter @MykeCole.
One of my first guest blog posts as a professional writer was on why Reality TV was worth watching. My point was that we humans aren’t all that far removed from our monkey ancestors. There’s still a chord in us that wants to sniff our neighbor’s butt, eat the bugs out of their hair and fling a handful of poop when we get pissed. Which is why Reality TV is so popular – it taps that monkey gene. We’re fascinated by ourselves.
The more I read in genre, the more I think about that. In the blog post, I talk about Darth Vader. I talk about Gollum. I talk about Amman Jardir and Jaime Lannister. Since I wrote that post, the hits keep on coming. I met Caul Shivers in Joe Abercrombie’s BEST SERVED COLD and RED COUNTRY. I met the Warden, lord of the seedy underbelly of Daniel Polansky’s LOW TOWN. I met Jorg, the cruel child monarch of Mark Lawrence’s KING OF THORNS.
These are some bad dudes. We’re not talking about a little temptation or some harsh language. One is a drug-addicted crime lord, whose scheming put innocent people under the dirt. Another is a true butcher, who delights in torturing his victims. Another is a murderer, plunderer and ravager.
But I love them and I root for them in a way I never did for the good guys of my youth. When I wrote that guest post I thought it was just simple interest in the flaws of others, the literary equivalent of Reality TV Schadenfreude, but now I think it’s more than that. When I was a kid, it was Frodo and Bink and Allanon (really, Terry Brooks? Seriously? You named your leading Druid after a 12-step program?) The biggest problem with these guys was an excess of earnestness. They were, to quote Motzart in Milos Forman’s Amadeus, “so lofty they shit marble.” That was enough for a kid as yet untested by the world. I hadn’t really failed at anything, not in the soul-deep ways that adults do. I could identify with the saints of the fantasy canon.
But I can’t anymore. Here’s the thing: Deep down, everyone has that special failure, the one time in your life when you truly blew it: zigged when you should have zagged, let fear take the wheel and drive, done the crime but not done the time. Sure, it’s usually not as extreme as Jamie Lannister pushing Bran out a window, but it feels that way to us. We carry it like an oyster carries a grain of sand. It rubs at us, digs grooves in us. It wears us down. It makes us feel unworthy of the childlike resolution of Samwise Gamgee.
We need real heroes. We need protagonists who are as broken as we are. Because nastiness is only one thing these leading roles have in common. Effort is the other. They’re all striving, reaching, pushing to be better people, to make right what they’ve done wrong. They want to put their mistakes behind them, scratch some good out of the landscape they’ve scarred with their passage. And sometimes they succeed, maybe not always, maybe not in big ways. They build their legacy by inches. It’s not just about Schadenfreude. It’s about redemption. Because. Drama accentuates everything. Good stories raise the stakes. The flaws of the Jorgs and Jaimes and Wardens and Caul Shivers of the world far eclipse my own. But they’re trying, and sometimes, succeeding. Every so often, that grain of sand inside the oyster’s shell turns into a shining pearl.
And if they can, well, then maybe so can I.
Maybe we all can.
January 21, 2013
25 Hard Truths About Writing And Publishing
Despite the promises of certain snake oil salesmen promising to sell you a magical unguent that — once slathered upon your inflamed nethers — will assure that your book gets published, no actual formula for success exists. If it did, a book would go out into the world and either fail utterly or succeed completely. All editors would want to take it to acquisitions. All readers would snap it up from bookshelves both real and digital with the greedy hands of a selfish toddler. But it ain’t like that, slick. One editor may like it. Another will love it. Three more will hate it. The audience will run hot or cold on it for reasons you can neither control nor discern. This is an industry based on the whims of people, and people are notoriously fucking loopy.
2. One Big Collective Shrug
More to the point, just as the industry starts first with opinion, it ends on what is essentially guesswork. It’s not so blind and fumbling that industry insiders gather in a darkened room to examine the cooling entrails of New York City pigeons, but just the same, nobody really knows what’s going to work and what’s not. Their guesses are educated, but I suspect that nobody anticipated that 50 Shades of Grey was going to be as big as it was — that must’ve been like finding out your Fart Noise smartphone app sold a bajillion copies overnight. They don’t have a robot they consult who tells them: BEEP BOOP BEEP THIS YEAR EROTIC FANFICTION IS THE SMART MONEY BZZT ZING. ALWAYS BET ON BONDAGE. BING!
3. They May Like Your Book… And Still Not Buy It
Trust me on this one, you can get a ton of editors who love your book who won’t touch it with a ten foot pole. That’s disconcerting at first, because you think, “Well, you’re an editor, this is your job, you are in theory a tastemaker for the publisher, and here you’re telling me you love the book but wouldn’t buy it with another publisher’s money.” You’d almost rather they just send you a napkin with FUCK NO written on it. But then you realize…
4. It’s All About Cash Money, Muthafuckas!
At the very end of the day, publishing is an industry. That editor gets a paycheck. Everybody there gets a paycheck.When a book does well? Folks get paid, keep their job, maybe even get raises. Books do shittily, people get paid, but no raises, and some poor bastards will be punted out onto the sidewalk. It’s overly cynical to suggest that people in publishing don’t love their jobs. Generally, they do. Most folks I know inside that industry do this because they love books, not because they want to be rich. But despite what some politicians will tell you, companies are not people. And companies like money. Oh, and at the end of the day? Self-publishing is about money, too. Success is marked by books that sell well, not by books that were “really good but nobody read them.” Art must operate within a realm of financial sufficiency.
5. About A Billion Books Are Released Every Week
As I write this sentence, 50,000 more books will be released into the world like a herd of stampeding cats. By now, I think the books are actually writing other books in some self-replicating biblio-orgy of books begetting books begetting books. All in a big-ass mash-up of ideas and genres and marketing categories (MIDDLE GRADE SELF-HELP SCI-FI COOKBOOKS will be all the rage in 2014). Between the publishing industry and self-publishing, I think more books are born into the world than actual people (and just wait till one day the books become sentient — man, forget SkyNet, I wanna know what kind of Terminators Amazon is probably already building). Your book is sapling in a very big, very dense forest.
6. Online Book Discovery Is Wonky As Fuck
Browsing for books online feels like being thrown into a dark and disorganized oubliette of information — like you’re the extension arm of some epic-sized claw machine and whatever you find, you find, and that’s it, don’t ask questions, just take your book and shut up, reader. Music discovery is good. Movie discovery ain’t half bad either. But books? Man, it’s either something I hear about from another human, or fuck it, your book is left to the whims of chaos theory.
7. Indies Can’t Get No Respect, Yo
Go up to somebody on the street. Tell them you’re a writer. Provided they don’t then laugh in your face or Taser you in the ta-tas, which response do you think will earn more respect? “A publisher bought my book,” or, “I self-published my book.” It’s the former, and that’s how you know that indie-publishing, despite its many strides, is still seen as the lesser creature. Self-publishing is designed in a way to allow for anything to be published at any time. That’s not to say there are not wonderful self-published books. I’ve read many. And will read many more. But while some will tell you, “cream will rise to the top,” I’ll counter with the reiteration that book discovery is broken. You’re just as likely to discover some great new novel as you are some dude’s shitbucket Tolkien rip-off (“AND THEN THE HARBITS ASSENDED MOUNT DHOOM AND THREW HTE WIDGET OF SARRONG INTO THE SEA”). And until that’s fixed, the mighty morass of the indie-pub world will be ever-present.
8. Self-Publishing Is Easy When It Should Be Hard
Self-publishing is easy. Or, more to the point, self-publishing badly is easy. Which is why a lot of people do it, of course. Self-publishing well is a whole other bag of coconuts.
9. All The World’s Entertainment Is Your Competition
It’s easy to believe that other books are your competition. They are in a very loose, very general sense, sure — certainly at the stage of acquisition, anyway. But readers aren’t a one-book-a-year type. They read lots of books. Their attention is finite and they can only pick up so many books, but generally speaking my book is not competing with your book. No, what you’re competing against is everything else that’s not a book. Movies! Television! Games! Your brain lights up like a fucking full-tilt pinball machine when it’s stimulated by the blitzkrieg of sound and noise. And let’s not forget how you’re competing with scads of totally free content. Blogs! News! Youtube videos of some guy getting hit in the nuts by a surly cat riding a dirtbike! HA HA HA I DON’T NEED BOOKS I HAVE SURLY DIRTBIKE CAT TO MAKE ME FEEL GOOD
10. Slower Than A Three-Legged Donkey
Traditional publishing is sloooooohoooooaaaooooo — ZZZZZZzzZZzz *huh wuzza where am i*– oooooow. It’s slow like an old man gumming a steak. It’s slow like a 1200 baud modem downloading the entire run of Downton Abbey. You could get a publishing deal in 2013 and not have that book on shelves until 2015. They built the Pyramids with more pep in their step.
11. Barnes & Noble May Be Shitting The Bed As We Speak
It may be doom-saying, but after Borders imploded, any tremor in the B&N paradigm is a worrisome one. Sales are down. Some stores are closing. The Nook isn’t doing as well as everyone wanted it to. You go into a B&N and you see a whole middle of the store devoted toward coffee and board games and lawnmowers and bath towels — all the books keep getting pushed toward the edges. So, there’s one big bookselling avenue possibly closing off. The optimistic view is that — fingers crossed — kick-ass indie bookstores will rise to fill the gap, offering an experience you can’t get elsewhere. High-five, indie bookstores. Let’s see your war-face!
12. Trends Matter, Except Also, They Totally Don’t
Trends matter at the point you a) sell to a publisher and/or b) publish your book. Right? If “young adult robot erotica” is hot right now, if you have a book of young adult robot erotica at either of those points, hey, good for you. You’ll probably get a bigger advance. You’ll probably move some copies. That said, it’s very difficult in publishing to capitalize on a trend outside either of those moments because, like I said, publishing is slower than molasses crawling down a Yeti’s asscrack. And trends are unpredictable. Trying to nail a trend in publishing is like trying to knit a sweater while jumping out of a plane. On fire. Covered in squirrels.
13. Your Online Followers Are Not Also Book Buyers
Publishers will tell you, you have to blog. (Because nothing sounds more exciting like someone forcing themselves to blog every day based on somebody else’s marketing proclamations! “Today I’ll blog about… let’s see… drinking gin and crying into my hands.”) They’ll say: “Get on Twitter. Use Facebook. Build a Companion Circle on Friendopolis.” Fine. Only problem: your online followers are not automagically your book readers-slash-buyers. HUMBLEBRAG TIME: I have almost 17,000 Twitter followers. NOTSOHUMBLEBRAG TIME: I do not have 17,000 readers.
14. A Big Advance Means Big Expectations
“Woo hoo! I got a big advance! Six figures, baby. Time to buy that jet-ski and that pet narwhal so we can go have crazy adventures out on the open sea while my book hits shelves and people check it out and… wait, what? My book’s out? And it’s not… selling that well? That’s okay! I still have my six figure advance! And the next book will do better! I’m sorry? Poor sales make it harder for me to be profitable? Because they invested a lot of money in me they’re not going to get back? So now I’m going to have a hard time publishing my next book unless I accept a lesser advance? WAIT STOP REPOSSESSING MY NARWHAL NOOOOO MISTER HORNY COME BACK.”
15. The Name Of The Game Is “Royalty”
The royalty is the real name of the publishing game. (Well, the real name of the publishing game is: “Alcoholism,” but whatever.) Yes, that advance is lovely, but it is an “advance against royalties.” The royalty — meaning, roughly, how much you get per book sold — is how you earn out that advance and become profitable. A better royalty means you earn out faster.
16. That Honey Boo-Boo Middle Grade Self-Help Sci Fi Cookbook May Be What Gets Your Little Tiny Literary Novel Published So Shaddap About It
I know, we all like to grouse that they just gaveanother book deal to Snooki or a publishing imprint to Grumpy Cat. Hard crotch-kick of truth: these books pay for a lot of the other books that don’t earn out. The existence of some Kardashian “fashion detective novel” not only does not hurt your own book but probably helps it exist in the first place.
17. War Of The Megapublishers
The publishers are super-blobs coalescing into one mega-ultra-super-blob. I assume they’re doing a kind of slow-mo Voltron thing so they can battle what they perceive to be the kaiju cyber-monster that is Amazon, but at the end of the day, when two big publishers become one, that’s not good news. Reduced competition. Cut staff. Fewer authors in the stable. Soylent Green in the cafeteria. In five years, there shall be but two publishers: RANGUIN SCHUSTER PENGDOMHAUS and HARPER MCHATCHET INCORPORATED. They will battle. We will lose.
18. People Are Going To Steal Your Book
The current generation is used to open access, not restricted ownership. Someone is going to gank your book. They’re gonna gank the unmerciful fuck out of it. And you’re either going to be mad about it and flail or you’re going to find a way to deal and even make it work for you.
19. People Are Going To Hate Your Book
You will get bad reviews. You will want to respond. Repeat after me: “I will not respond. Because responding to bad reviews makes me look like a doofus with poor impulse control. Because one bad review is not the measure of my book. Because I don’t want to reveal to the world how my self-esteem is the equivalent of one of those teacup poodles that shakes and pees anytime anyone comes near it.” Okay, that’s a lot to repeat, you can just nod and smile.
20. Eventually, Someone Is Going To Try To Dick You Over
Publishing is chockablock with bad deals. Not just the scammers — though, of course, those are out there, All Hail Writer Beware. Oh, no. You’ll see good and venerable publishers occasionally trying to slip a truly toxic deal past the bouncers. Sign that contract, next thing you know you’ll have offered up your next seven books for the price of one. You’ll have offered your house for orgies and your mouth as an ashtray. This is why we have agents. The agent is there to say, “This clause, the one about eating babies, we’re going to say no to that one.”
21. You Are Now In Marketing And Advertising, Congratulations
Publishers expect you to handle some of the marketing and advertising brunt. Doubly true if you are your own publisher. Problem: nobody knows what works. Like I said: all guesswork. And yet, there you are, the author standing all by himself, trying to peddle his intellectual wares with naught but a single clue as how to do it. So you stand on all the social media corners, shaking your word-booty, trying to seduce readers. The burden is at least in part on you.
22. Word-Of-Mouth Is The Only Surefire Driver
The only truly certain way a book gets properly “advertised” is through memetic transmission — aka, “Word-of-Mouth.” (That sounds like a disease all writers get. “I got a bad case of the word-of-mouth. There’s… no cure. Cue the Sarah McLachlan music.”) Only problem: nobody knows how to manufacture or stimulate word-of-mouth. (It’s definitely not the same way one electrostimulates the prostate gland. I’ve tried!)
23. Writing A Lot And Reading A Lot Is Not A Magical One-Two Combo Punch
You’ll hear a lot that the only advice you need is to read and write. Writing well — and the next step, publishing your work or getting published — is the product of a lot more than just those two things. Practice and effort matters. But contextualization and reflection are key. Further, writing a good book and then getting that book out there requires a skill-set beyond reading and writing, or the world would be full of kick-ass penmonkeys, wouldn’t it?
24. It’s Really Hard, Luck Matters, And Frustration Is Guaranteed
Writing and getting a book out there — whether through a publisher or via your own intrepid go-get-em spirit — is a tough row to hoe, Joe. And luck factors into it: you can certainly maximize that luck, but just the same, publishing requires that spark of serendipity. Frustration is imminent. You’ll hear things, see things, and have to deal with things that will make you want to headbutt a plate glass window. You’ll want to give up. Don’t. Because:
25. A Lot Of This Is Just A Distraction
Learn the ins and outs of publishing. Do not not be ignorant of them. But if you’re not careful, gazing into the dread eye of the publishing industry will become a distraction — one that’ll give you the icy shits every couple weeks as some new wave of dubious news hits the wire (OH GOD AMAZON GAINED SENTIENCE AND IS DOWNLOADING AUTHORS INTO ITS CYBERMIND). Further, the publishing distraction feels like productivity — it’s not like you’re sitting around watching cartoons and eating microwaved pot pies. You’re keeping up with the industry, by gum! Yeah, and you’re also not writing books. Know your industry. But don’t get bogged by it. Your book can’t succeed if your book doesn’t exist in the first place. Concentrate all fire on that Star Destroyer, mmkay? You can’t control publishing. You can’t control the audience’s reaction to your book. Control what you can control, which means: write the best book that lives inside you.
Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?
500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY:
$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:
$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:
$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING:
$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY:
$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY:
$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF
Monday Question: WTF WIP?
Last week I was editing The Blue Blazes, back from the Metal Men of the Cranky Cyborg, and in this WIP (work-in-progress) I found the following, erm, puzzling sentence:
“He sat on the toilet, dwarfing.”
The scene takes place in a bathroom, yes.
Nothing scatological.
But I have no idea what this sentence means.
It certainly… conjures some fascinating images. (And leads to the new Tolkien-esque euphemism for pooping: “BRB, I’m going to go throw some dwarves into Moria.”)
The editor was wise enough to place a very lengthy note next to this sentence, which if I recall correctly went on and on and looked something like this:
“???”
Seems to sum it up.
Every once in a while we find a sentence in our WIPs that make no goddamn sense at all.
So, that’s the question.
What curiously broken sentences have you found inside your work?
January 18, 2013
The Kick-Ass Writer: Coming Soon To Bookshelves Near You
I arrive on the back of my digital horse bearing news!
So, I get a lot of folks who ask about a print version of my writing advice.
Well, guess what?
Writer’s Digest will be publishing The Kick-Ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience, by yours truly. It’ll reprint a bevy of my “25 things” lists, with also a handful of new ones to provide some fresh content!
(I’ll also be speaking at the Writer’s Digest East conference in NY in April.)
Not sure of a publication date. I’ll update you when I have one!
HA HA HA I’VE FOOLED YOU ALL AND CONVINCED YOU OF MY LEGITIMACY –
Er, I mean, I’m glad my dubious writing advice will offer value to readers on bookstore shelves.
Or something.
Thanks all for coming along for the ride.
More as I know it! Eeee!
*jumps up and down, snaps ankle, cries in the mud*
Flash Fiction Challenge: Photos Of Impossible Places
Last week’s challenge? Spin the Wheel 2.
This week a really fascinating link went around, and in it were 25 (er, 24) real world photos of places that looked entirely otherworldly. Click that link. Take a peek.
Now, I want you to use one of those photos as inspiration for your story.
That doesn’t mean you need to use the exact setting of the photo (though you can).
But inspiration, definitely.
When posting the story link below, don’t forget to identify which pic you used.
You have 1000 words.
You have one week to do it (due by 1/25, noon EST).
Any genre will do.
Write the story at your online space, then link back here.
Now go visit some strange and impossible places, will you?
January 16, 2013
Douglas Wynne: The Terribleminds Interview
A little while back a gent named wrote me and asked me to read his novel for purposes of potential blurbage. I was very clear with him as I am with those who ask that question that I am bogged down in the mud of my own my work and it’s not likely I’ll get around to it but send it anyway, blah blah blah. He sent me a copy. I read the first page. Then, next thing I knew, I was 30 pages deep. That book was The Devil of Echo Lake, and that gent was Douglas Wynne. Here he is. Find him at his site here, or on the Twitters @Doug_Wynne.
This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.
I’ll give you a sequel to the story Margaret Atwood answered this question with when you interviewed her recently, but I’m picking it up a few hundred million years later…
Once upon a time there were tribes of monkeys who hurled their own excrement at each other to declare territory. Sometimes, when the shit slinging failed to make the point, they would even stain the ground with each other’s blood to mark territory. After many millennia of this sort of thing, one of these tribes acquired the magic of language—probably by eating strange mushrooms that blasted open new parts of their brains—and they started using words, symbols, and excretions of ink to declare their territory. We’ll call this tribe, The Pen Monkeys.
Then, one day, under great pressure, the Pen Monkeys did something truly amazing; they used their pens to scratch out equations that enabled them to build a rocket ship. Within this gleaming phallic shaft, they at last escaped the gravity of their bloody little planet and ventured out beyond the finite resources they had always squabbled over. These brave, bold monkeys soared to the moon, a luminous orb that their ancestors had mistaken for a god. And upon landing, they planted a flag to declare it their territory.
Why do you tell stories?
I probably have a narcissistic drive to defy death and leave a mark declaring my psychic territory.
I tell stories because I love chasing an idea down the rabbit hole and seeing where it goes, and I also just seem to be built to play with words, to try and sculpt ideas with them. I suck at math, but words and me get along well. Most days.
Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:
Don’t wait and don’t stop. Okay, that’s two. It’s two-for-one day.
Don’t wait for the perfect idea, don’t wait until you’re sure of how to tell it, don’t wait until you know how it ends, don’t wait until you’re a better writer to start telling the story you want to tell.
Work will inspire ideas. Work will find a way forward, and work will make you a better storyteller and a better writer. Waiting won’t.
And then, when no one wants what you’re selling, remember that you are the only one who can stop you. Keep working on something new while you keep polishing and pitching something you believe in. Don’t stop, and don’t wait.
What’s the worst piece of writing/storytelling advice you’ve ever received?
Probably the idea, so popular today, that you should leave out or cut everything that isn’t totally essential to the fast forward motion of your plot. Great stories, even very short ones, are enriched by some of the same details and sidetracks as real life. The advice is insidious because on one level, it’s pretty solid, but taken too far, it’s harmful.
What goes into writing a great character? Bonus round: give an example.
A good character has to care about something, but a great character should care about more than one thing. That’s where conflict comes from. I don’t much care for the bi-polar conflict of what the protagonist wants vs. what the antagonist wants. I like characters—even minor ones—who have a variety of concerns, who need to make hard choices and figure out their values because they can’t have everything and something significant is at stake. That’s what life is like.
A recently read example for me is the narrator from Stephen King’s 11/22/63. He spends 700 pages fucking around in the 1950’s and trying to help (but often hurting) all kinds of people he meets along the way toward possibly preventing the Kennedy assassination. He falls in love with the era, and he falls in love with a woman, but none of it felt tangential to me. It felt compelling because he’s a guy who cares about things big and small.
He’s also made interesting by a character detail that contradicts all of that evident caring, and it’s dropped in the first sentence of the book: he doesn’t cry.
Where does The Devil of Echo Lake come from? Why that book?
After playing in bands and then working as a recording engineer, I knew I had things I wanted to say about music and the music business. I wanted to explore the tensions and temptations that musicians often deal with: egotism vs. empathy, art vs. industry, and even the fine line that a creative person might straddle between paranoia and the truly paranormal. It helped me to sort out some of my own unresolved issues in an entertaining way.
The book feels, for lack of a better term, very authentic — you were a musician, yes? Got any good rock-and-roll stories?
Yeah, they’re all in the book. Seriously, I threw every rock and roll anecdote I’ve ever heard or lived through at the wall in writing Echo Lake. Then I cut a lot of it out to focus the story, but there’s still a fair amount of dark rock humor in there.
After my band broke up, I decided to infiltrate the music biz by going undercover as an assistant engineer at a big studio, hoping to meet A&R guys and producers and give them my song demos. It didn’t work out, but I got a great book out of the experience. There were some Spinal Tap moments. My first day on the job, I got to watch a fresh faced British rock band light up with glee when they arrived at the studio and were handed a wad of cash by their producer. Their unanimous reaction was, “Greenbacks! Right, let’s go buy a motor bike and a gun!”
Describe the road that Devil of Echo Lake took in terms of getting published.
I thought the book might be ready for a publisher after the fourth draft (WRONG), so I spent a couple of years sending out query letters to agents, and collecting rejections. It can be weird trying to asses a book’s weaknesses when people are rejecting on the basis of maybe the first five pages, maybe the first fifty. But I do recommend that first time novelists go through the grind rather than rushing to self publish. For me, the process really refined the manuscript, especially the opening section. I kept polishing and trimming it until there were more requests for the full manuscript, and more rejections with detailed notes. That really helped.
Then I started submitting to a few small presses. JournalStone was open for submissions to their 2012 Horror Novel contest, and I liked that they just wanted the full manuscript without any awkward query or synopsis in which I try to demonstrate that my story isn’t a cliche without spoiling the plot twists and secrets that make it unique.
The Devil of Echo Lake tied for first place, and they signed me to a three book deal. Ironically, right before signing with JournalStone I finally had an agent interested, but by then I didn’t really need one.
You seem to want to write across multiple genres — what is the value of that, and what is the danger?
I guess I’ll soon find out.
I’m pretty confident that most of what I want to write will fit comfortably under the horror umbrella. But I don’t want to repeat myself, and I think the value of trying different sub genres is that I won’t get bored. Hopefully, neither will readers, but the danger is probably that if you like what I did last time, you might not get more of the same.
However, as a reader, if I like an author’s voice and vision, then I don’t really care so much about genre, I’ll follow them. China Mieville is a great example of that. He has written steampunk, detective noir, weird western, sci-fi, etc. But it all has his indelible stamp on it because when he plays with a genre, he never does the predictable thing with its tropes.
Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!
I can’t believe I’m going with a TV show, but for my money there is no better story banging around out there right now than Breaking Bad.
Favorite word?
Maybe “ephemeral.”
And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?
I like “cunt.” I like how the sound of it has a concave quality with a bit of suction and punch that mimics the meaning. And I like that it might be the only curse left in American English with such power that it’s still used very sparingly.
Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)
Guinness! And yes, Wynne is an Irish name.
What skills do you bring to help us win the inevitable war against the robots?
I wish you had asked about the Zombie Apocalypse because I have a few years of training in Samurai sword under my belt. True fact. But if it’s robots, don’t look at me… we’re fucked. Maybe I can convince them that they need humans to produce rock n roll.
What’s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?
My next book is almost finished. It’s a crime thriller with some historical elements related to WWII and the Japanese American internment camps. It features a really scary serial killer, a family in jeopardy, and much higher body count than my first book.
After that, I want to write something that’s firmly rooted in the dark fantasy end of the spectrum. I have a notebook full of big, intimidating, controversial ideas I need to grapple with for that.
Brain Squeezin’s
Random thoughts in 3… 2… 1…
* * *
You can buy a whiskey called Writer’s Tears. I don’t know what it tastes like. But if it were in any way authentic it would taste of ink and flopsweat, of the brine of insecurity and the heady broth of ego. It would have a nose of shame and a finish of triumph. It would feel like book pages on your tongue. It would burn the doubt out of your belly.
It’s probably not that good.
* * *
One flavor in a writer’s liquor cabinet should not be sour grapes. It’s easy to look at those more successful than us and feel that acrid twinge of jealousy that says they’re better than us, that twist of the intestines that says they don’t deserve it. Thing is, you’ll always have someone who’s earned more, by dint of deserving it or by luck or by the sheer fortune of having plunged teats-deep into unknowably trendy waters.
You’ll always have someone with another zero on their advance. With more reviews. With a better cover. With a greater command of prose. Better shelf space. Better percentage on e-books. More awards. More Twitter followers. Cooler hair. Nicer beard. (DAMN YOU AUTHORS WITH NICER BEARDS THAN ME. I WILL FIND YOU AND SHAVE YOU AND SALT THE EARTH. Ahem.)
It’s easy to get caught up in it. To splash around in the warm, green waters of envy. It’ll do you no good. Sour grapes are a kind of slow-acting poison. Look upon other writers and be inspired. Inspired by their success. Inspired to try to do better yourself. High-five them, don’t kick them in the junk drawer. More to the point: don’t kick yourself in the junk drawer with all those stupid, worthless, poisonous feelings. Celebrate, don’t denigrate.
* * *
We’re all going to die, so what the hell. The flu’s going to kill us one day. Not this flu. The next one. Some bat is going to fuck some monkey and their little bat-monkey baby is going to kill and eat an exotic possum and in this nature red in bat-wing and monkey-tail mess some mosquitoes are going to have a fucking field day and grab the new zoonotic Super-Flu virus and carry it to the far-flung corners of the world where it will destroy 9/10ths of humanity.
* * *
Schaden-flu-de.
I see some people getting a little cocky over their flu shots. Some folks get sick and it’s like, “OHH, IF ONLY THERE WAS A WAY TO STOP THE FLU OH WAIT THERE IS SHOULDA GOTTEN YOUR FLU SHOTS DUMMIES.” You probably shouldn’t think that way? First, because, you know, it’s not nice. “You have flu, and I am going to mock you for it,” is not particularly nice. It’s just chastising a gut-shot man for not wearing a bulletproof vest (“OHHH IF ONLY THERE WAS A WAY TO STOP BULLETS HAR HAR”).
Second because, umm, the flu vaccine doesn’t work like other vaccines, exactly. It is an imperfect creature — worth getting, but depending on which study you read they’re only 60-80% effective, and that’s only if they prevent a strain programmed into the vaccine (which does not include the Super Possum Flu that will obliterate us all). One study even suggests it’s not all that useful for kids under two or adults over 65. Article also notes:
“The perception that current [flu] vaccines are already highly effective in preventing influenza is a major barrier to pursuing game-changing alternatives.”
Plus, there’s a whole spate of flu-like sicknesses that aren’t flu.
Meaning, the vaccine does diddly-poop against them.
(Then there’s the norovirus, where you geyser your internals out the front and back for days!)
So, yeah, definitely get that shot — but don’t expect that it’s going to save you from the flu. And don’t relish in the fluey-ness of others. Because that’s what dicks do.
* * *
Then again, maybe it’s the unkillable gonorrhea that’ll get us all.
Slather your wangly bits in kevlar, folks.
* * *
“Slather” is a really good word.
Other good words: “Plethora.” “Hoarfrost.” “Scintillate.” “Frisson.”
* * *
Dan Brown has a new book out.
I mean, on the one hand: whoop-dee-doo, I guess. But it’s low-hanging fruit to go after him, or Meyers, or even the 50 Shades of Grey series. Let them be. Whatever. Snooki writes a cookbook and we all lose our shit but I figure that the Snooki-money and the Dan-Brown-geld bring in enough cash to keep publishers around, publishers that can then spend a little of that money on trying out new talent. That’s perfect-world-theorizing, of course, but sometimes I like to pretend we’re in that world. It makes me feel warm and cozy and like everything’s possible.
Like I’m wrapped in the warm skin of a bat-monkey hybrid.
* * *
Indie writers will point that out a lot. “Traditional publishers release garbage too.” Like that’s a reason to excuse it in your own world. “John took a shit in the water fountain, so why can’t I?” Besides, even a Snooki book or the eventual publishing arm created by some monster-blob lab-created monster born of the DNA of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga (GAGABIEBER BIEBERGAGA IA! IA! FTHAGN!) still puts out books that are at least crafted with the bare minimum of quality in mind. I mean, it’s still a pile of shit, but it’s shit lacquered with gold leaf, by golly.
* * *
Are we still mad about them using that word, “indie?”
Language changes. Each word is not a single bullet.
Multiple meanings are okay. Words only mean what we need them to anyway.
Besides, a self-publisher is still a publisher, independent of all the others.
* * *
I like Lena Dunham. But a lot of you sure seem to hate her.
* * *
Teaching B-Dub certain words is an act of diminishing returns.
Me: “Say ‘ladder.’”
B-Dub: “Adder!”
Me: “Say ‘lllll-adder.’”
B-Dub: “Arble!”
Me: “Lad-der.”
B-Dub: “ADOBOBBODOOBO.”
Me: “LAD-DER.”
B-Dub: “SLARTIBARTFAST.”
* * *
I think our 20-month old is better at the iPad than I am.
* * *
Last night I made roasted strawberry slash creme fraiche ice cream.
I’ve only had a taste (ice cream is a weekend treat), but my face exploded with joy.
I cannot recommend the Jeni’s ice cream cookbook enough.
* * *
I think I miss Mitt Romney.
Like, I don’t want him to be president, but he was such a hilariously tone-deaf goon.
He needs a reality TV show. I’d totally watch that show. Especially if it put him in awkward situations his LEGO hair-brain couldn’t handle. Like teaching an inner-city school or… having to have empathy somewhere for someone. He’d short-circuit! Cue the laugh track.
* * *
I don’t get the Big Bang Theory.
This is not to say you should not enjoy it.
I don’t really buy that it’s “blackface” for nerds, exactly — it does seem to celebrate laughing at them more than with them but to me the issue is, I just don’t know that I find it funny? (Further, I’m not a fan of laugh tracks. It’s a thing with me, not with you.)
Ever see the videos where they cut the laugh track from shows?
I’ve seen some debate that suggests Community is better than BBT, blah blah blah, and while I don’t know that it’s better, I certainly prefer (read: adore) Community. But I think the difference is that maybe, just maybe — and this is only if these designations matter to you or carry any weight at all – BBT is more for “nerds” and Community is more for “geeks.” I haven’t really sussed that one out yet, but maybe there’s something there?
Maybe it’s just that I don’t think I’m smart enough to be a nerd.
But I’m comfortable being geeky?
* * *
I didn’t get Seinfeld, either.
* * *
I’m really enjoying The Mindy Project.
And Happy Endings is the funniest show you’re not watching.
* * *
Mister Doyce Testerman takes aim at steampunk and all the other -punk subgenre categorizations. I’m not sold. I’m sure some things labeled “steampunk” are not as anti-establishment as we’d like, but for the most part — provided we’re not just talking steampunk as a fashion accessory — I see threads of anti-authority middle-finger punk attitude in there. Then again, maybe I’m just protecting myself since I continue to refer to my upcoming YA series as “cornpunk” (which came out of a joke, honestly but there it is).
* * *
It’s no secret that I am a fan of the artist Poe, who disappeared due to all kinds of awful record label bullshittery a while back. (Poe’s brother, by the way, is Mark Danielewski, author of House of Leaves, and her album, Haunted, has ties to that novel.) Lo and behold, I had no idea she popped up on the grid back in the fall with a tiny little new song:
* * *
I also like this video. And the song, obviously.
* * *
And this is my jam.
* * *
I should shut up now.
Have a nice day, everybody.
