Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 226

Yes, Virginia, You Can Be A Paid Writer, Too

I think I bummed some folks out last week with my “hard truths about writing and publishing” post. The goal, of course, was not to send you under your desk, blubbering into a bottle of cheap vodka while warming yourself by the fires of your burning manuscript, but rather, to present the sometimes harsh realities that you will need to overcome.

Or, as I am wont to put it, it was to teach you to harden the fuck up, Care Bear.

Just the same, I’d like to now apply the ice pack to your bruised cheek.

For all the seeming hopelessness of the publishing industry and one’s entry into (or around) it, it’s actually not at all hopeless. Difficult is not the same thing as hopeless, nor should we assume that “difficult” translates to “so hard it’s not worth doing.”

If you want to be a writer, fuck anybody who tells you differently:

It’s worth doing.

Not just because of some namby-pamby selfish “Waah it’s what I want” tantrum but rather, because stories make the world go around. Because stories can change us — both the reader and the writer. Because writing is everywhere: nearly anything that’s ever happened has happened because someone wrote some shit down. And also –

BECAUSE FUCK YEAH, WRITERS.

So, that being said, I’d like to note that (in the voice of the get-rich-quick infomercial), you too can make money at writing. No, seriously. I’m not fucking around. We writers like to go on and on about how it’s a poor man’s game and writing is a thankless job and here we are eating ramen noodles out of a hobo’s codpiece and we have the same hourly rate as those poor bastards who built the Pyramids, blah blah blah. But that’s just melodrama because, hey, we writers trend toward it like drunks veering toward the nearest bar. (Conflict is our bread and butter, after all.)

In terms of making money as a writer, I do all right. In fact, I’m doing better every year.

And I think you can, too.

And so, I figure, it’s time for some general tips on not just being a writer but, rather, being a professional writer. Further, being a professional writer who can do more than just buy an annual steak dinner with your earnings.

Here we go.

Speed: Learn to write with some zip in your fingers. A thousand words per hour is a good base level and not at all difficult to achieve.

Competency: It should go without saying that being a professional writer requires being a writer and storyteller of some competency. Some “full-time” jobs allow you to train a skill whilst on the job, whether we’re talking about mastering Excel or artificially inseminating cranky ostriches. Writing is unfortunately not like that. Which then leads to…

Time: Learning to write well and with some speed means this takes time. Do not expect to be one of those “overnight successes,” a creature as rare as a Bigfoot riding a unicorn on a saddle made of leprechaun leather. A writer’s so-called “overnight success” is just the tip of the iceberg exposed, while the rest of the writer’s time and effort and narrative R&D exist in a massive glacial mountain beneath the darkened waters. Just because the writer appeared on the world’s radar doesn’t mean that poor fucker hasn’t been working his fingers bloody for quite some time.

No, Really, I Mean It: This can be a slow process. It was about a ten year journey to go from “freshly-minted, ruddy-cheeked penmonkey” to “battle-hardened full-timer with stories wound into his bloody beard-tangle.” Be ready to invest the time and effort.

Per Word: The base level professional rate for a writer is five cents a word. This number hasn’t changed for the last twenty years — a troubling lack of  development there, but it is what it is and we’re just going to have to work with it.

Average Novel Advance: That’s around $5000. If we are to assume that the average novel length is around 80,000 words, then a novel earns at a slighter higher rate than what I noted above — a bit over $0.06 / word.

Hourly Rate: If you combine all the above, what you find is that writing 1000 competent words per hour at that base level rate earns you around $50-60 per hour before editing. (Editing dings that a little, though the more competent a writer you are, the less editing will cut into your time. Though no matter how competent you become, editing should never equal zero-percent of your time. You are not perfect. Good editors are like gold. Shut up and take your medicine.)

$41,600: That is your magic number. It is an annual salary. It is not a rich person’s annual salary. But it’s comfortable enough. At fifty dollars an hour, that requires you to work 16 hours a week. This is, of course, overly simplistic. It does not factor in editing, marketing, blogging, tweeting, drinking, flagellating yourself, masturbating, or general pantsless mayhem. But, given that the average workweek is 40 hours, devoting 16 hours to only writing leaves you with 24 hours in the week that can go toward all that other authorial twaddle.

Behold, The Novelist: That 16 hours a week translates roughly to 16,000 words per week. Which translates to five weeks worth of work to get the first draft of an 80,000 word novel complete. (Yes, this is easier said than done. We’re talking perfect world scenario, here, but one that becomes more achievable with an increase in those two fundamentals mentioned earlier: time and competency.) This translates to ten novels a year. Which is ridiculous and you’re not going to do it. You probably can’t write that many a year, and you almost certainly cannot sell that many a year. Which puts our annual salary in a bit of a bind, doesn’t it?

The Language Of Investments: A bit of a sidetrack, for a moment, so bear with me. It’s a little stodgy to use the word investment, but fuck it, it works, and we use the words that work because WE ARE WRITER, HEAR US ROAR OR MAYBE WATCH US WRITE I DUNNO YOU SHUT YOUR GODDAMN WORD-FACE. One’s writing career — the efforts, the time, the stories themselves, and the writer that culminates through all of that — should be seen as an investment. Pay in early, it yields bigger as time goes on. You will earn more as time goes on and as you become more capable — and as you produce more work and gain more audience and garner new contacts in your industry. It’s like a role-playing game. You eventually level up and gain weapons like THE BATTLE-SCYTHE OF STRUNK-WHITE (+2 against stylistic errors).

Diversify Your Portfolio: Okay, back to the problem at hand, which is that writing ten novels a year is not sustainable, nor particularly marketable — but, by the same token, that old-school “write one book a year” is problematic in that it doesn’t get us to our target salary. What this means is you should be prepared to write across a variety of media and platforms. Train yourself to write comics, games, television shows, films, articles, VCR repair manuals, whatever. The value here is that income arrives from multiple sources and that should any one source dry up, you have others on which you may depend.

The Danger of Self-Publishing: Self-publishing is all risk. You put something “out there,” it may earn you anywhere from, ohh, zero dollars to eleven-billionty dollars. Publishing through a traditional publisher offers a reduced royalty but a stable advance — meaning, you’ll earn your five grand or more regardless of whether you ever sell a single copy. Certainly you’ll find those who have made serious bank off of self-publishing, but the nature of the risk (i.e. the chance to earn very little at all) means it’s not a stable path toward the annual salary. This is a “slow and steady win the race” post, not a “fingers crossed let’s jump out of the plane and build our parachute on the way down” post.

The Self-Pub Numbers: Self-pub advocates speak of the Amazon 70/30 royalty split (70% to the author) as the golden reason to self-publish. That rate is notable, considering traditional publishing royalties are less than the reverse of that (meaning, sub-30%). But, that percentage isn’t everything: 70% of $100 is worse than 25% of $1000. E-books as your only vector of sales is doable, but risky — physical books are still over half the sales. Trad-pub gets you there and on bookshelves, and as such, royalty isn’t everything. I can keep 100% of my royalties if I sell out of my garage, but one assumes I’m only going to end up selling to squirrels and hobos that way.

And Yet, Here I Am Telling You To Self-Publish: Behold, the hybrid approach that I often tout as being the best way forward for the average penmonkey: yes, I think you should try traditional publishing first (for a number of reasons). But I also think you should self-publish on the side. Self-publishing is great for stories too risky to entice a traditional publisher. Short story collection? Novella? Serialized content? Insane manifesto? Transmedia smut pamphlets? Living memes that can reprogram the human brain with but the push of a button? Point is, that royalty rate I note is indeed still a good one, so this will let you take advantage of it without relying entirely upon it. Use the self-pub environment as an experimental laboratory.

On Writing For Free: Writers, like hikers, can die from exposure. Writing for free has value but you have to have to be able to see that value and ensure that it’s not a meaningless risk: anyone who asks you to work for them and promises exposure is whistling lies through their asshole. As I have said before, if you’re going to be exposed, expose yourself: control the message and the release. When in doubt: don’t write for free.

Attitude: It’s worth noting that your attitude through all this is very important. Writer’s block doesn’t exist, but general malaise and depression and disinterest do, and those must be combated. Further, you gotta treat this like work. Meaning, like a job. Few people let life get in the way of their work and yet so many wannabe professional writers let life get in the way of their writing — treat it like a career, not a hobby, not a creative pursuit, not an obsession. If you treat it like a career, it will eventually yield the fruits of a career.

ABW, Always Be Writing: All of this only works if you write a whole lot. Like, all the fucking time. And when you’re not writing you’re performing tasks that are in support of your writing (which is the basis of the entire career). You descend every day into the word-arena and kick a whole lotta ass while you’re in there. Some days you lose the battle, but over time, you win more and more. You’re painting with shotguns. You’re taking multiple-shots-at-goal.

Always. Be. Writing.

…

And that’s it. Time, effort, competency, instinct, diversity. Not easy to do, but also not as impossible as many would have you believe. You want to be a paid professional writer — full-time, not starving or pooping in a tin-pail like some hobo in a barn — then it’s totally doable.

Now get back to work, penmonkey.

 

How Not To Ask For Blurbs

Asking for blurbs is, for me anyway, a very uncomfortable thing. You’re often asking peers or even your own authorial heroes to carve out precious time to write you what amounts to marketing copy. I have to blacken my Shame Sensors with the heel of a heavy boot just to get up the gumption to ask another author for a blurb. (Further, I’ll be asking for blurbs very very soon on my YA book, which is already making me itchy because I always feel like such an ass.)

I am now in the weird position of having authors ask me for blurbs.

This is totally fine and further, a totally awesome problem to have.

I have blurbed books gleefully and will continue to do so because YAY BOOKS.

Just the same, here are a few tips. Ready? Here we go.

When you email someone, be polite.

Use words like, “please,” and “thank you.”

Do not write an email that sounds like it assumes the blurb is forthcoming.

Or, worse, like they owe it to you.

That’s not to say you have to slather up the potential blurber’s nether-anatomy.

Just be polite.

Understand it is a favor of time and effort and act accordingly.

Do not be a human spam-bot. Be a fountain, not a drain.

Mass mails are not a good way to ask. Neither are public social media channels.

Finally, when the potential blurber gets back to you and says, I can’t or won’t do that, sorry, good luck, your response shouldn’t be a two-word:

“Why not?”

Because when you ask that, you’re going to get a less-than-pleasant response.

I don’t mean to put anyone off of asking me or asking any author.

But a modicum of politeness and grace goes a long, long way in this industry.

PLEASE THANKS BYEBYE.

*runs off to psyche self up to send out mails that ask for blurbs aaaauuugh*

Monday Morning Question: What To Do With Star Wars Episode VII?

As noted, I heard about new Star Wars and I was originally a little bit “meh.” That is, until I realized that the new film is going to be coming into my son’s life at around the same time that the original film did for me. Suddenly I envisioned some kind of crazy father-son generational sharing thing where we can both high-five over our own respective trilogies and, I dunno, frown at that weird “prequel” trilogy that keeps hanging out in the corner and throwing up in a potted plant. Right? Right. HA HA HA STUPID JAR-JAR HIGH-FIVE, SON.

Anyway.

So. Disney has the films. Michael Arndt is writing.

And, until proven otherwise, J.J. Abrams is directing.

This is not a post about J.J. Abrams directing. (For the record, I think it’s a good fit. He appreciates the magic and mystery of storytelling, and to me any weakness he may have had has leaned toward the script side of things, and that shouldn’t a problem here.)

What I want to talk about is what you or I would do with the new Star Wars film. A pontification, if you will, of what direction to send the new films. This is always dangerous territory because you set up expectations and then when a thing doesn’t meet your needlessly elevated expectations, you get mad (“I bought this dog but I wanted a duck, ZERO STARS”).

Still, fuck it. I am geek, hear me yawp.

Here’s what I’d do with the new Star Wars films, should anybody let me near them.

• The films must continue the generational advancement of the Skywalker clan. Which means: Luke or Leia’s gotta have kids and this film has to be about one or several of them.

• Let’s see a female protagonist all up in here. A Skywalker daughter.

• Doubly interesting if it’s Leia’s daughter. Luke more in the background. Hey, why not?

• Since we’re getting all progressive up in here, I think it’s time to banish the racist miasma that hangs over the films (particularly from the prequels) and cut all the white-washing. White-washing is a big thing in film (“Hey, that character’s black but in the film we can make them white for no other reason except we’re all white and yay whiteys!”), and if Star Wars proudly does no such thing, maybe it’ll lead by example.

• Fuck politics. Listen, I give the prequels credit for actually being unusually on-point in terms of our own political situation here in the country, particularly post 9-11. Good job. Except, it was really, really boring. Listen, politics make for a great Extended Universe thing. I’ll read your Star Wars novel/comic/pamphlet about galactic politics (okay I won’t), but in the films? Cut it out.

• Let’s make it about adventure. The original trilogy has a great sense of adventure to it — dire, suspenseful adventure, but adventure. The same kind of adventure you feel in the Indiana Jones movies. The kind you don’t feel in the prequels. I want that back. Like, the first trilogy has the vibe of a D&D group coming together – cleric, rogue, paladin, whatever. MORE OF THIS PLEASE.

• No Mara Jade. Actually, let’s ditch the Zahn prequels. I love them. I do. But, yeah, no.

• Fuck that green-screen. Okay, listen, I’m not an idiot: while I think the new Evil Dead film should be given big bloody high-fives for (apparently) filming without any CGI at all, I know in a film like Star Wars you’re can’t escape CGI. But what’s on film is nearly always more effective when the CGI compliments a real set with real objects and real people. No more “actor talking to a tennis ball on a stick that will eventually be replaced with some jabbering alien.”

• Plus, you’ve seen that “photos of impossible places” post, right? Pick three of these places, and film some awesome shit there. You don’t need to invent whole new places with CGI. The real world is full of alien landscapes. Tatooine = Tunisia, remember?

• Also, the style shouldn’t be all glitzy-shiny. Keep the trashed-junk motif of the first three. It felt more real. You can polish it up a little, but it’s been a generation — still okay to showcase a galaxy climbing out of the hole dug by an oppressive Empire.

• Minimal Jedi. The original trilogy highlights the power of the Jedi by minimizing their presence — hell, Anakin Skywalker really did “balance the Force,” because  he basically left the world with two light-side dudes and two dark-side dudes. Then the prequels come along and it’s like EEEE JEDIGASM but before too long it just looks like a bunch of cosplayers running around with glowy boners. Let’s not fast-forward to a time where suddenly it’s Jedi-palooza.

• Write it like a young adult story. Coming of age, whatever. Teens with teen problems.

• I don’t see how you can’t have the Sith as the enemy in some capacity — Sith and the Dark Side are inescapable. But what else? Is this about a resurgent Empire? I feel like we’ve been there, done that. They’re not going to be building a third goddamn Death Star, I mean, c’mon. So, who’s the enemy? What’s the conflict? Emperor’s dead. Vader’s dead. Death Star went kaflooey. The Empire felt pretty gone to me. But evil never dies. The Dark Side remains. So…

• To go back to the teens thing — value in a Jedi Academy story? In the Harry Potter mode? The drama of young Jedi soon compounded by a sinister conspiracy?

• If anyone in the film says “Midichlorians,” I’ll karate kick a theater usher. That poor guy.

• You need all the old actors and characters, but keep all but one to the sidelines. One of them can serve in an Obi-Wan like capacity — the old mentor, Gandalf coming into the world to help save it. The obvious choice is Luke, but damn if I don’t wanna see a cantankerous Han Solo fill that role, instead. But but but — if Luke is sidelined and this is about Leia’s kids then Luke can be the “crazy uncle,” ala Ben Kenobi. Hmm.

So, with all that said –

What would you want to see in the new films?

What would you do, if you were in charge?

Monday Morning Question: What To Be Done With Star Wars Episode VII?

As noted, I heard about new Star Wars and I was originally a little bit “meh.” That is, until I realized that the new film is going to be coming into my son’s life at around the same time that the original film did for me. Suddenly I envisioned some kind of crazy father-son generational sharing thing where we can both high-five over our own respective trilogies and, I dunno, frown at that weird “prequel” trilogy that keeps hanging out in the corner and throwing up in a potted plant. Right? Right. HA HA HA STUPID JAR-JAR HIGH-FIVE, SON.

Anyway.

So. Disney has the films. Michael Arndt is writing.

And, until proven otherwise, J.J. Abrams is directing.

This is not a post about J.J. Abrams directing. (For the record, I think it’s a good fit. He appreciates the magic and mystery of storytelling, and to me any weakness he may have had has leaned toward the script side of things, and that shouldn’t a problem here.)

What I want to talk about is what you or I would do with the new Star Wars film. A pontification, if you will, of what direction to send the new films. This is always dangerous territory because you set up expectations and then when a thing doesn’t meet your needlessly elevated expectations, you get mad (“I bought this dog but I wanted a duck, ZERO STARS”).

Still, fuck it. I am geek, hear me yawp.

Here’s what I’d do with the new Star Wars films, should anybody let me near them.

• The films must continue the generational advancement of the Skywalker clan. Which means: Luke or Leia’s gotta have kids and this film has to be about one or several of them.

• Let’s see a female protagonist all up in here. A Skywalker daughter.

• Doubly interesting if it’s Leia’s daughter. Luke more in the background. Hey, why not?

• Since we’re getting all progressive up in here, I think it’s time to banish the racist miasma that hangs over the films (particularly from the prequels) and cut all the white-washing. White-washing is a big thing in film (“Hey, that character’s black but in the film we can make them white for no other reason except we’re all white and yay whiteys!”), and if Star Wars proudly does no such thing, maybe it’ll lead by example.

• Fuck politics. Listen, I give the prequels credit for actually being unusually on-point in terms of our own political situation here in the country, particularly post 9-11. Good job. Except, it was really, really boring. Listen, politics make for a great Extended Universe thing. I’ll read your Star Wars novel/comic/pamphlet about galactic politics (okay I won’t), but in the films? Cut it out.

• Let’s make it about adventure. The original trilogy has a great sense of adventure to it — dire, suspenseful adventure, but adventure. The same kind of adventure you feel in the Indiana Jones movies. The kind you don’t feel in the prequels. I want that back. Like, the first trilogy has the vibe of a D&D group coming together – cleric, rogue, paladin, whatever. MORE OF THIS PLEASE.

• No Mara Jade. Actually, let’s ditch the Zahn prequels. I love them. I do. But, yeah, no.

• Fuck that green-screen. Okay, listen, I’m not an idiot: while I think the new Evil Dead film should be given big bloody high-fives for (apparently) filming without any CGI at all, I know in a film like Star Wars you’re can’t escape CGI. But what’s on film is nearly always more effective when the CGI compliments a real set with real objects and real people. No more “actor talking to a tennis ball on a stick that will eventually be replaced with some jabbering alien.”

• Plus, you’ve seen that “photos of impossible places” post, right? Pick three of these places, and film some awesome shit there. You don’t need to invent whole new places with CGI. The real world is full of alien landscapes. Tatooine = Tunisia, remember?

• Also, the style shouldn’t be all glitzy-shiny. Keep the trashed-junk motif of the first three. It felt more real. You can polish it up a little, but it’s been a generation — still okay to showcase a galaxy climbing out of the hole dug by an oppressive Empire.

• Minimal Jedi. The original trilogy highlights the power of the Jedi by minimizing their presence — hell, Anakin Skywalker really did “balance the Force,” because  he basically left the world with two light-side dudes and two dark-side dudes. Then the prequels come along and it’s like EEEE JEDIGASM but before too long it just looks like a bunch of cosplayers running around with glowy boners. Let’s not fast-forward to a time where suddenly it’s Jedi-palooza.

• Write it like a young adult story. Coming of age, whatever. Teens with teen problems.

• I don’t see how you can’t have the Sith as the enemy in some capacity — Sith and the Dark Side are inescapable. But what else? Is this about a resurgent Empire? I feel like we’ve been there, done that. They’re not going to be building a third goddamn Death Star, I mean, c’mon. So, who’s the enemy? What’s the conflict? Emperor’s dead. Vader’s dead. Death Star went kaflooey. The Empire felt pretty gone to me. But evil never dies. The Dark Side remains. So…

• To go back to the teens thing — value in a Jedi Academy story? In the Harry Potter mode? The drama of young Jedi soon compounded by a sinister conspiracy?

• If anyone in the film says “Midichlorians,” I’ll karate kick a theater usher. That poor guy.

• You need all the old actors and characters, but keep all but one to the sidelines. One of them can serve in an Obi-Wan like capacity — the old mentor, Gandalf coming into the world to help save it. The obvious choice is Luke, but damn if I don’t wanna see a cantankerous Han Solo fill that role, instead. But but but — if Luke is sidelined and this is about Leia’s kids then Luke can be the “crazy uncle,” ala Ben Kenobi. Hmm.

So, with all that said –

What would you want to see in the new films?

What would you do, if you were in charge?

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

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

james-smythe.com

@jpsmythe

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.

 

25 Hard Truths About Writing And Publishing

1. This Industry Is Alarmingly Subjective

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?