Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 228

Ten Questions About Your Story

Here at terribleminds, it’s time we do interviews a little differently.

I want to use the interviews to showcase a story rather than its author.

Now, on the one hand, I really like showcasing the author. Highlighting a storyteller of some medium is a fascinating look at who we are and how we all have variant processes — but the change is necessary for, I think, two reasons:

One, I just don’t have the time to craft the individualized questions for other writers and storytellers anymore. It’s not that it’s some epic time-sink, but I’m looking at a year forward where I have meager splinters of time available to me.

Two, and perhaps the more important reason, I want to specifically showcase a project you worked on that people can check out right now. You have a book coming out? Fuck it, let’s talk about the book. Plus, that allows storytellers to come back here multiple times to talk about multiple projects, which is a thing I quite like about, say, Scalzi’s Big Idea posts.

That’s not to say I won’t do interviews crafted more toward a storyteller than a specific project — but those will be far less common, I think. This is the way forward.

Interviews will still post on Thursdays as usual. I’ll do one a week.

You want an interview? Then here’s how it works. (And again I’m cribbing from Scalzi. If you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.) The rules are:

1) I’m looking for any kind of storyteller with a project to showcase. I assume this will trend toward books and the authors of said books, but I’m happy to talk to comic writers, screenwriters, game designers, whoever. Open to any genre, too!

2) In terms of authors of books, please know that if you’re a self-published author, your chances are slimmer. That’s not to say I don’t think indie is a valuable and meaningful option in terms of publication, only that when I do these things I receive a boat-load of responses from self-pub authors, many of them demonstrating what could kindly be called “questionable talent and/or story.” A story published by a traditional press, even a small one, tends to have met a certain set of standards that self-published works are not required to heed.

3) You need to hit me up no later than one month before your book drops. The earlier you let me know, the earlier I’ll get you on the schedule. I’ll try to get you close to a date of release/publication if possible, though if the schedule starts to fill up, then THE FATES HAVE SPOKEN. Oh, and yes, you can have an agent, editor, publicist, etc. contact me.

4) How do you reach me? Email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com. The subject header should be in this format: TEN QUESTIONS AT TERRIBLEMINDS [Author Name] [Name of Story]. The body of the email should give me a sense of the book, whether it’s flap copy or something else you’ve written to describe the book. Also: please identify your release date. Er, not “from prison.” I mean, the date your story releases to the world like a flock of doves in a Prince video.

5) If the stars have aligned, then I’ll give you the questions (which can also be found below) and I’ll fit you with a set of shackles — er, I mean, a date your interview will land here at terribleminds. I’ll need the answers to your questions the week before they post (i.e. the Thursday prior). I’d also like a copy of your book. E-copy is fine, though print is preferable.

6) Send me the questions and answers inside a document. I don’t need HTML formatted text or anything — .doc or .rtf will do fine.

7) Make sure to send me along any links pertinent to the project. Got a website? I want that link. Got a Twitter account? I want that, too. Also give me any pertinent “buy” links — Amazon, B&N, Indiebound, whatever. I’ll get them in there at the bottom of your post. I’ll also need a link to your book cover — I don’t need the actual file, as a link to the graphic will do fine.

A few notes:

I prefer to stick to books that are new — meaning, I’m not interested in a post regarding work previously published. Them’s the breaks, word-nerds.

Also, don’t just, y’know, answer the questions and email them to me assuming I’m totally gonna bite. I have no idea how robust the response will be to this, but I can’t guarantee a slot.

It’s also possible you’ll write me and I won’t write back. I’ll try to. I promise. But, time may be against us. Or you may accidentally end up in a spam folder. Or I may be trapped under a heavy object, slowly being pecked to death by starving geese. Shit happens, is what I’m saying.

Why would you want to do this?

Well. Terribleminds isn’t the worst exposure you could have: this past year saw just shy of three million views here, with around 8000 daily readers. And that number is going up, not down. Plus, the readers of this site tend to be other writers and readers who dig storytelling in its myriad forms: books, games, films, comics, pornographic manifestos, what-have-you.

So, there’s the rules. Feel free to drop any questions in the comments.

And here, now, are the tentative ten questions all y’all storytellers will answer:

Ten Questions About [Your Book, Film, Comic, Manifesto, Etc]
Tell Us About Yourself: Who The Hell Are You?
Give Us The 140-Character Story Pitch:
Where Does This Story Come From?
How Is This A Story Only You Could’ve Written?
What Was The Hardest Thing About Writing [Title]?
What Did You Learn Writing [Title]?
What Do You Love About [Title?]?
What Would You Do Differently Next Time?
Give Us Your Favorite Paragraph From The Story:
What’s Next For You As A Storyteller?

A Sad End To A Small Small Thing

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Last year I did some script work for a friend’s documentary — the film, called “Small Small Thing,” details the struggles of a very young Liberian girl who was dealing with the troubling medical and cultural ramifications of having been raped. Further, it framed this struggle in the larger context of Liberia’s own cultural turmoil. It was a powerful story and I was very honored to have some small hand in its telling. Olivia’s on-screen presence was of a girl very animated, very active, and with a bright future ahead of her.

I’m sad to say that the girl has passed away.

As an end note to this, let this be a reminder as to why we need progressive attitudes and legislation toward rape and sexual assault lest we backslide and become a place where rape is a shame put upon the victim, not the rapist.

The press release by the filmmakers is below.

Subject of child rape documentary dies

Olivia Zinnah, 13, of Monrovia, Liberia, the subject of a documentary “Small Small Thing” produced by Take My Picture, LLC, died Dec. 20, 2012, from long-term systemic complications after being brutally raped at age 7.

The documentary, which recently has been submitted to 50 independent film festivals worldwide and will premier this spring, chronicles Olivia’s life struggles and horrific physical complications resulting from rape. Her death is a tragic conclusion to years of unsuccessful attempts at coordinating her care despite being under the wing of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s government and the United Nations.

“Olivia was brave beyond her years facing her terrible dilemma with super-human courage,” Liberian U.N. Ambassador Nathaniel Barnes said. “Perhaps her life, though short and tragic, was intended to provide us with valuable lessons.”

The documentary creators agree.

“I hope the release of ‘Small Small Thing’ will pressure the Liberian government to find Olivia’s accused rapist and bring him to trial,” said film producer/director Jessica Vale. “Olivia was Liberian, but her voice is global. How many times, in how many countries does this have to happen for people to pay attention?”

Vale discovered Olivia at JFK Memorial Hospital in January 2009 along with a visiting husband-and-wife OBGYN team from New York City – Ann Marie Beddoe and Peter Dottino. Olivia was suffering from a severe fistula, infections and malnutrition. She was gravely ill and her condition had been deteriorating for two years. Liberian surgeons initially attempted to fix the fistula but botched the surgery.

Her mother, Bindu, did not originally seek medical attention for the girl because their remote tribal village diagnosed her as a victim of “witchcraft.” After two years, Olivia was brought to JFK where Dr. Wilhelmina Jallah, head of OBGYN, determined Olivia’s injuries were a result of rape. At that time, Olivia named her cousin John as her attacker, who was in his twenties at the time of the incident.

The family and John denied the accusations, shunning Olivia and Bindu from their village, forcing them to live at the hospital.

American surgeons operated on Olivia, saving her life. They gave her a colostomy bag and determined the fistula was so severe it could not be fixed until she was 16 years old and her body had matured. Olivia and Bindu were then sent to live at a safe home for rape victims.

January 2006

President Sirleaf was elected the first female President in Africa. She ran on a pro-woman platform. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work on women’s issues, yet rape is still the highest reported crime in Liberia. Approximately 80 percent of the victims are younger than 15 years old and many are as young as a few months old.

July 2009

Sirleaf was made aware of Olivia’s case. Her Ministry of Gender said Sirleaf felt Olivia’s fistula should be repaired, despite U.S. surgeons’ direction otherwise. A Liberian surgeon attempted another repair, and afterward it was publicized that Olivia was improving. However, the surgery only made her injuries worse.

August 2009

Olivia and Bindu were once again living at JFK Hospital. Documentary producers tried to secure Olivia passage to the U.S. The Ministry of Gender agreed to give her a VISA, but only if her U.S. surgeons could get their hospital, Mount Sinai, to agree to provide medical care. Mount Sinai denied all requests.

2010-11

Olivia was living full-time under the care of Dr. Jallah. Olivia’s mother felt she could not properly care for her, and returned to her village with her other children. Olivia attended school and showed signs of physical improvement.

2011

Another surgery was attempted to reverse the colostomy. It is unclear who did this surgery, but it was not her U.S. doctors. Bindu dropped all charges against John, the accused attacker.

October 2012

Olivia returned to live with her mother in their Liberian village.

U.S. surgeon Ann Marie Beddoe is contacted by the U.N./WHO to inform her they have decided to give Olivia a VISA to the U.S. for medical care. Beddoe is told Olivia will be taken “under their wing.”

December 2012

Olivia was rushed to JFK with a bowel obstruction. Dr. Jallah was unable to get approval for emergency surgery. Olivia’s condition worsened and U.S. doctors insisted Olivia receive an operation to save her life. Days later, Olivia finally undergoes a colostomy surgery, but it was too late. She died two days later at 13.

The filmmakers who created “Small Small Thing” hope sharing Olivia’s story will raise awareness that our global rape epidemic affects children as well as adults.

“Unlike so many rape victims around the world,” Offenbac said, “Olivia did not die an invisible death. I hope her fearlessness in life inspires other survivors to break their silence and speak out.”

Search Term Bingo: The Revengification

I don’t really know what happened, but for a long time, my site stats had a gaping hole where all the weird-ass search terms used to be. Suddenly people were finding this site using mostly-respectable search terms (though still quite a few seeking Dolly Parton’s boobs and Kenny Rogers’ penis). It of course saddened me greatly — and then, suddenly, a hot fresh lunatic spike of totally whacked-out search terms!

So, I’ve been collecting them for yet another…

SEARCH TERM BINGO.

Please to enjoy.

why are you an antagonistic person?

BECAUSE FUCK YOU THAT’S WHY *flails*

harry potter is bullshit

Man, I know, right? I was watching that and I was all like, “Yo, this is a fascinating documentary,” and I told my wife, “I think I want to send our son to Hogwarts, that seems like a pretty cool school and plus it’s like, in England and everybody in England is smart. And oh, they can all do magic and shit.” And my wife looked at me and said, “I want a divorce,” and I was like, WUT. Turns out, Harry Potter is total bullshit. FML.

i serve you in business metaphors

And I serve you in motivational platitudes. YOUR MOVE, INTERNET.

all writers have horrible lives

Entirely true. For instance, my every day:

I write my fingers to the bone, literally, as a sweaty man in a wife-beater who stinks of cigars and hoagie oil lashes me with a thistle branch. Then I get my lunch break, where I scoop protein-gruel into my mouth using a dirty piece of cardboard. By night, my body aches and is covered in suppurating pustules, and I am forced to lick the deodorant deposits dangling from the sweaty man’s armpit hairs. Then I cry myself to sleep on a plywood shipping pallet.

ALL LIES. Being a writer is awesome. Don’t buy all that tortured boo-hoo nonsense. That’s just to elicit sympathy. Here’s what we get to do all day: make shit up. If I want, I can spend my writing hours telling stories about leprechaun soldiers fighting a war against orangutans riding mechanized pterosaurs. I can write a story about a sentient salt shaker who goes on adventures with his praying mantis buddy, Steve. I can write about rainbows and puppies, or buzzsawed heads and looping coils of eviscerated bowel. And I do all of this from the comfort of my own home, where I lounge about sans pants, drinking coffee or liquor or munching on bath salts or whatever. IT IS THE MONKEY’S MAMMARIES, or whatever the kids say these days.

my wife got fucked by a ghost

Are you sure it wasn’t an albino? That’s a thing, now. There’s a whole porn site dedicated to this trend — mywifebangstrendyalbinos-dot-net.

But, okay, let’s say it’s true: your wife has had carnal relations with a specter of death.

First: you need to make sure she’s not preggers with Ghost Babies. Ghost babies are real jerks. They cry all the time. They barf up this hellacious… well, I don’t know what it is, but it’ll strip the flesh off a kitten. Which is perhaps appropriate, since they also eat the souls of kittens.

Second: check to see if you got that on video. YOUTUBE MONEY. That’s all I’m saying.

Third: you should see if she’ll acquiesce to a little quid pro quo and allow you to also have spectral sex with some randy apparition. It’s only fair. She gets to wraithbang. You get to wraithbang. This is just good manners.

Fourth, and finally, call an exorcist.

how do i know if something is a metaphor?

Press a burning match-tip to a petri dish filled with its blood: if the thing is truly a metaphor, it’ll screech and grow spider-limbs and try to eat your face. Or I guess you could just ask it.

people say i should write a book

People say all kinds of nonsense. People are really quite stupid and frequently wrong.

Besides, haven’t you heard about how awful a writer’s life is? Sheesh.

different methods of fuck

Ahh, yes, the different methods of fuck. North-fuck, South-fuck, wet-fuck, dry-fuck, thunder-fuck, corkscrew-fuck, unicorn-fuck, cake-fuck. Really so many to choose from. The ancient Sumerians had 72,000 methods of fuck, which is significantly higher than the 450 methods of fuck allowed by our founding fathers in the American Bill of Fuck (aka, “The Cockstitution,” or, “The Decockleration of Vagipendence”).

does Santa have a big cock?

Big as an elf. Curved like a candy cane. Smells oddly of “reindeer.”

why do writers like whiskey?

Because it numbs the pain of our horrible lives.

Why do you think we like whiskey? Because it fuels our fingers with the warm amber heat of potential. Because in every drop of whiskey is a story swirling. Because it’s what our authorial forebears drank. AND BECAUSE IT IS DELICIOUS.

chinese 5 spice in my penis

Here’s what just happened: I read this, and my penis left my body. It detached itself from its Velcro harness (who knew?), packed a hobo bindle, and hopped a southbound train. I guess he thought I was going to insert Chinese Five-Spice into his one good eye? Can’t ask him now, he’s gone. On the plus-side, I now sing in a very lovely castrati choir!

voodoo doll karate

Perhaps my favorite “method of fuck.”

what does cockwaffle mean?

I DUNNO ASK YOUR MOM

BOOM HAHAHA YOUR MOM

IT’S A YOUR MOM JOKE

THOSE ARE STILL COOL RIGHT

RIGHT

SHIT

SORRY

YOUR MOM SEEMS VERY NICE

I DIDN’T MEAN TO HURT HER FEELINGS

I LIKE HER COOKIES

WAIT THAT’S NOT A METAPHOR FOR ANYTHING

COCKWAFFLE IS REALLY JUST A METAPHOR

OH GOD IT JUST GREW SPIDER LIMBS AND NOW IT’S TRYING TO EAT MY FACE

AAAAUUUUGH

TELL YOUR MOM I LOVE HER

noooooooooooo

*dies*

have cloacas

Take two, they’re small.

Also, the full saying is, “Have cloacas, will travel.”

immortal babytown

Ahh, yes, the land of the ghost babies. A town on the edge of forever. An undead babysburg of wailing, gray-cheeked wraith children. Led by their infernal mayor, Earlesque Plasmodium, Esquire. You don’t want to pay a visit to Immortal Babytown. Though, they have a very nice croissant shop at the corner of Phantasm and Eidolon Avenues.

i have very large balls

Everybody on the Internet does.

how to become a proffectinal author

Sounds like you’re already good to go.

spam in my time of dying

This is my most favorite Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.

is the “i got your nose” game mental cruelty?

It totally is. I still have PTSD from when adults constantly stole my nose when I was but a wee-child. These days if anyone reaches for me with a pinching thumb and forefinger, I lose my fucking marbles. I spin around in circles. I pee. I cry. I clutch at my face to protect my nose which always somehow ends up returned to my face as if there’s some kind of nose-returning fairy working on behalf of tortured children worldwide.

So, maybe stop tormenting children with that game, huh?

Though, I suppose it’s better than the “I got your whole face” game.

That one is really traumatic.

cool ways to introduce a monster into the story

Here’s ten quick cool-ass ways to introduce a monster into your story:

Have him drive up in a bass-thumping Geo Tracker.
The monster pops out of a cake, nude.
Give him a clever catchphrase. Like, “Hello, I am a monster, it’s nice to EAT you.”
FOOMP — he explodes out of a t-shirt cannon.
One of the main characters is about to have a baby but it’s not really a human baby but rather a monster baby (ghost baby) and it’s all like, “Holy crap! A monster just came out of my uterus! Ha ha ha, you pulled a fast one on us, you crazy monster.” And then everybody has a laugh and goes to Arby’s.
He surfs on a comet! BOOSH, SUCK MY COMET DUST, HUMANS.
The monster is working the coffee counter at the cafe the protagonist frequents.
The protagonist’s ex- is like, totally dating the monster. “His name is VORSHAK THE EMASCULATOR, and we’re in love, Jim.” Then the protagonist has to race against the clock and against his own selfish instincts to stop the wedding before she marries Vorshak! Dramedy gold!
Friend request on Facebook.
He eats everybody then spends the rest of the story feeling bad about it.

YOU’RE WELCOME. I’ll send you an invoice.

i’m going to enjoy this online porn

And I’m going to enjoy you enjoying that online porn as I hide in your shrubs.

How Chuck Wendig Edits A Novel

Recently, I wrote a post called, “How Chuck Wendig Writes A Novel.”

Just after writing that, I threw myself into the churning gears of editing and rewriting not one novel, but three — I spoke a little on Twitter about said editing/rewriting, and I got a lot of folks tweeting at me or emailing me questions about my editing process.

Seems now is a good time to sift through the sand of my process, see what baubles turn up.

Now, two quick things:

First, this is my process. You are not me. (OR ARE YOU? MOM, THE DOPPELGANGER IS READING MY BLOG AGAIN.) As such, this is not meant to be a step-by-step Menu For Proven Success. Every writer’s gotta figure out her own process. This is mine, here to serve as an example and a list of possibilities rather than a do this or perish in the cold fires of ignominy.

Second, I believe that this process is as important, if not moreso, than the actual writing of your first draft. A story may be born in the first draft, but anybody with children will tell you, those baby creatures are dopey as shit. They just lay there. Crying and pooping. But time and teaching is what makes the person, and in editing and rewriting your work you’ll likely find that this is where your story grows up. A tale is truly made in this phase.

Put more succinctly:

Writing is when we make the words.

Editing is when we make the words not shitty.

Now, red pens out! No, no, not red penis out. See, that gets an edit. Weirdo.

Let us begin.

Kick The Story To The Curb And Walk Away

The best thing you can do for the work is get to the point where you forgot you wrote it. Give it enough time so that you can come back to it with only a hazy memory of the thing — meaning, you’re reading the work like some other jerkoff wrote it. You’ll come to it so fresh and so clean. You’ll be more clear-headed about its errors. You won’t needlessly love certain parts that suck, and you won’t automatically hate parts that are actually pretty good.

How much time does this take? I’ve no idea. I’m not you. (OR AM I? Okay, no.) I’d say to give it a month if you can afford it — sadly, I can’t always afford that kind of time, what with deadlines and all. With editing Heartland, Book One, I rewrote it many times over the course of a year, and just now did one more rewrite for the publisher — and in this casew had like, maybe five months before I really had to reopen and look at it again. I wasn’t so lucky with Blue Blazes – I had to write it and rewrite it immediately after. (But when Angry Robot returns the book to me for edits, enough time will have passed for me to come at it clear.)

Stare At It Until Its Weakness Is Revealed

Something is wrong with your story.

Repeat: something is wrong with your story.

I don’t know what. I haven’t read it. All I know is, every story has different set of problems, though certainly some writers cleave to problems particular to them (my problem is frequently plot, and my edits are often about punching the plot until it yields to my demands). What’s the problem with your story? Well. Maybe it’s:

Confusing character motivations. Unclear language. Plot holes. Wonky structural issues. Needless exposition. Boring parts. Shit that doesn’t make sense. An addiction to commas. Conflict that doesn’t escalate. Conflicts that are too easily solved. Inconsistent mood. Incongruous theme. Needs more sex. Needs another monkey sidekick. Parts are written in Sumerian for no good reason. The book is only 300 words long. The book is 300,000 words long. Needs more giant eagles carrying the protagonists around everywhere. Needs fewer awful parts. THE STORY IS DUMB AND YOUR FACE IS DUMB AND EVERYBODY HATES YOU.

Or whatever. Point is, you have to sit and figure out why this thing you wrote doesn’t work — either in part or in total. This is a heartwrenching component of the process, because…

…well, because it is. Because you don’t want anything to be wrong. Because you just spent so much of yourself putting the first damn draft on the page. But you know what? Fuck it. The good news is, just because something’s wrong doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. No problem in a novel is too serious. All can be solved with a most merciless edit.

Get Some Perspective

Let someone else take a crack at it. Sometimes, even after time has passed, we’re just too close to the thing. You don’t want to kill your darlings or, maybe it’s the opposite: you just want to kill all of it with cleansing fire. Let someone else confirm or veto your feelings. They’ll also bring new questions and complexities to the table, too (“I did not realize that Captain Redballs the Bold died in chapter three, but then I have him in chapter six making love to a mermaid”).

I have my agent, who is a wunderkind in terms of sussing out a story’s problems. You may have friends or fellow writers who can help. Or copy-editors or editors or wives or a super-intelligent NASA-bred terrier. But find a trusted outside perspective. Don’t let it all fall to your shoulders.

Track Changes Is Your Best Friend

A tiny note: learn to love the power of track changes. Available in fullest form in Microsoft Word.

It is exceedingly helpful to mark all the changes you make. I turn them on when editing but turn their visibility off at the same time — so, it’s tracking all the changes I make off-stage and behind the curtain. But I can view them at any time. And it’s also a great way to track the comments and tweaks put forth by that person of outside perspective I was talking about, too.

And hell, part of it is just the satisfaction of looking at all your changes by the end and being amazed at the level of work you put into it. Suddenly you’re like:

“Man, I really made this pig bleed, didn’t I?”

How cruelly satisfying.

Work With The Multiple Safety Nets Of Redundant Backups

Also, save a lot when you edit.

And back up your work.

Not once place, but in many.

A cloud backup.

A local, external device.

Tattooed onto your back.

Buried in your yard.

Multiple redundant backups are your best buddy.

Gaze Upon The Coming Task With Terror In My Heart

There exists this moment before I edit where I feel completely overwhelmed. This is, quite literally, part of my process. I get this sense of literary vertigo, like I’m staring over the cliff’s edge into the crashing gears of some giant malevolent machine that I cannot comprehend and that I am sure will crush me into my constituent parts. And in this moment I want to back away and say, “Fuck it, I’m not doing this, I’m done, game over, my work sucks, I’m not a writer, I’m just some asshole, I can’t hack it, I can’t–”

And then I leap over the cliff’s edge and let the gears take me.

And that’s when I find out it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

It’s never as bad as you thought.

Re-Outline That Motherfucker

I outline my work prior to writing.

But, when writing, my work inevitably strays from the outline.

If I had to quantify it (and I will, because you keep shoving the barrel of that gun into my kidneys), I’d say about 75% of my draft survives the original outline, and 25% goes completely off the fucking rails like if Thomas the Tank Engine did a bunch of bath salts and tried to headbutt his way through a collapsed mountain pass.

(Sorry for the Thomas the Tank Engine reference. I have a toddler. I am infected.)

So, I like to take the draft I just wrote and re-outline it. Just so I see the entire thing before me — I want to see the forest and the individual trees. And it helps to pull my head out of the big blobby morass of the novel and see it as smaller, more manageable. I can see its shape. Its contours. I can see all the plotty bits and turns-of-the-tale. It’s a map. A blueprint. A cheater’s guide to a video game. Whatever. I want digestible chunks. Hence: outline.

Re-Re-Outline That Motherfucker

Then, yes, I re-re-outline.

The re-outline details the novel I just wrote.

The re-re-outline details the coming rewrites of the novel I just wrote.

The Power Of Excel Compels You

I use the mighty fuck out of Excel to perform this re- and re-re-outlining process.

Here’s how: I make four columns.

Column #1: Chapter number/name. (This is pretty explanatory, yeah?)

Column #2: Plotty Bits. Meaning, what the fuck is happening in this chapter? I don’t go into great detail, here. Just broad stroke events. “Bob dies. Mary lays eggs in his rectum. Her alien hell-shrimp are born in his colon. Mary exits.”

Column #3: Conflict/Changes. Meaning, I want to know what the core conflict is of this chapter. And I want to know how the story or its characters is changing. I want the sense that the story is moving, that things are happening, that the diagram of the narrative isn’t a flat line.

Column #4: Comments/Questions. Here’s me asking myself questions or making marginal comments — “Should Mary flee the scene now or do her motherly instincts prevail over her new insectile litter inside Bob’s moist bowel-channels?”

Then I duplicate the last three columns (plot, conflict, comments) again. This time, for the re-re-outline. This allows me to see both the current state of the novel and the novel I intend to edit/fix/rewrite/asplode side by side. Very helpful, at least for me.

I Am Shiva

Shiva is the destroyer. But Shiva is also preserver, concealer, revealer, and creator. And that, to me, sums up the entire editing and rewriting process: some stuff you kill with an axe. Some stuff needs to be reborn. Some stuff you preserve and keep — other stuff can only remain if you are able to can tease out the essence of the thing (scene, character, sentence, whatever).

What I’m saying is, after I re-re-outline, it’s time to rewrite. Which means destroying whole parts of the story and remaking them. In the Blue Blazes  I lost an entire main character. Like, I erased her from the tale. Sometimes with a machete, sometimes with a surgical laser. She just wasn’t pulling her weight and so she had to go, and that means rewriting the story — a stitching of the wound, you will — around the holes where she once existed.

Read It

Once you’re done with the big edits, I reread. (Re-outline, re-write, re-read. Lots of re-re-re.)

I read the draft aloud — which is not to say I sit here in my office bellowing fiction all day, which would drive my family nuts and wake Toddler B-Dub up from one of his blessed naps, but I kind of mumble-whisper the words as I sit here. (Which means anybody looking at me from afar probably thinks I’m some kind of crazy person.) Reading your work aloud will allow you to catch a lot of the rough patches in terms of language. And reading the work in general will allow you to catch any problematic bits that remain. It’s like pouring the broth of your work through a strainer and then through cheesecloth to capture those last gnarly bits.

If Necessary, Do It All Again, But Not Before Weeping Softly And Drinking A Lot

Sometimes you gotta do it all over again. Sometimes some of the cancer remains, which means it’s time for another round of surgery, chemo, and radiation. Hell, sometimes a truly frustrating thing happens: the second draft has more problems than the first. That’s okay, though at the time it’ll feel completely defeating. It’s all part of the winnowing. It’s all progress even when it doesn’t feel that way. Because this is you getting to know your story. This is you getting to know more than just this story, but all stories, feeling your way through what works and what doesn’t. It’s all research and development, man. It’s all one big story-hack.

Monday Question: The Books Of 2013?

Here’s what I want to know today:

What book (to be published in 2013) are you most excited about reading?

And, of course, the obligatory: why?

If I may add one to your list: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, which I’m in the middle of reading right now and it is a right jaw-dropper of a book. Scary stuff, a thriller so tense you’ll crack your teeth from clenching your jaw. Beukes has a great voice, one that has matured profoundly from the already-excellent Zoo City; if I had to compare it to another author’s writing I’d say that with this book Beukes is like the love child of Stephen King and Peter Straub. Which is not to say it’s like the books they worked on together but rather if both of their minds were smooshed together and this was the resultant prose. But even that doesn’t cover the tension of the tale or the beauty of her writing.

Here’s how I know it’s a great book — I can’t stop thinking about it. Like, I read a lot of books and it’s not as common as I’d like where, when I put the book down, I continue to think about it the next day. With this book, though, I do. I get that ache in the back of my mind, and I find this itch to drop whatever I’m doing and get back to reading the book.

It’s also a book that far exceeds my own writing. And, as a writer, you can have two responses to that: destructive jealousy or the rectal rocket-booster of inspiration. I’m choosing the latter.

So, that’s a book I think you might wanna add to your 2013 list.

Because it’s fucking amazeface. Is that a thing kids say? “Amazeface?”

IT IS NOW.

(You can read the first chapter here.)

Back to the question at hand:

One book.

In 2013.

You’re looking forward to it.

Name it, tell us why.

I’ll hang up and wait for your answer.

CARRIER LOST

A Loose Proclamation About Terribleminds

Gonna shake things up just a teeny-tiny-titty bit here at terribleminds.

I’m going to put the blog on a loose “schedule.”

That way, you know what you’re getting on any given day.

And I know what I’m writing for the week ahead.

This is not going to be carved in the obsidian walls of Satan’s palace or anything — if I get a wild laser beam up my ass, I may decide to shift the order one week to sate my demonic urges.

But, here, then, is the schedule going forward:

MONDAY: Baboon Pornography
TUESDAY: Some Stupid Shit About Writing
WEDNESDAY: A Microsoft Paint Drawing Of Genitals
THURSDAY: Full House Fan Fiction
FRIDAY: Baboon Pornography

Right? Sound good?

*receives a sudden flurry of emails*

Oh. Okay. Some of you are on board with the baboon porn, but most, not so much. Whatever. Some of you clearly hate change. And monkeys. And porn. And that means we can’t be friends.

Fine. Fine. Chrissakes. The things I do for you people. Let’s try this again.

The new-new schedule:

MONDAY: A Question Posed To You, The Terribleminds Audience, For Discussion Purposes
TUESDAY: Some Totally Insightful Shit About Writing
WEDNESDAY: Wild Card Anything-Goes Day (Rant! Recipe! Monkey Porn!)
THURSDAY: A Terribleminds Storyteller Interview
FRIDAY: Flash Fiction Challenge

Good? Yes? Are we in accord?

SEXCELLENT.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Spin The Wheel

First up, a little administrative work:

I picked the random winner from the last challenge, “The War On Christmas.”

BLUE LYNX is that winner.

Blue Lynx, contact me at terribleminds at gmail dot com. Kay? Kay.

With that outta the way, it’s time to BEGIN ANEW.

*dun dun dun*

Here’re the rules. I’m going to give you three categories. You will pick randomly from each category, maybe with a d10 or using a random number generator. From your choices, you’ll have 1000 words to write some flash fiction. Post this fiction at your online space. Link back here. Due by Friday, January 11th, at noon EST.

Here, then, are your categories:

Subgenre

Fairytale Fantasy
Post-Apocalyptic Horror
Superhero
Police Procedural
Military Sci-Fi
Kaiju
Dieselpunk
Conspiracy Fiction
Splatterpunk
Southern Gothic

Setting

An abandoned Wal-Mart
An underwater alien ship
The tropics
Limbo
A meth lab
The Golden Gate Bridge
On the surface of a comet
A Nevada brothel
Inside a virtual reality world
A nightclub in Hell

Must Feature

Talking animals
Magical foodstuff
A straight razor that never needs sharpening
One or several time-travelers
Mummies
Nanotechnology
A vigilante
A dead body
A blizzard
A mystery box

 

Eric Beetner: The Terribleminds Interview

I met Eric Beetner recently when he and Monsignor Blackmoore were kind enough to have me read some Miriam Black at the LA Noir at the Bar, and Eric read a slam-bang piece of grimy, gritty crime fiction that assured me he’d be a natural fit to talk about his work here at the site. I’ve hooked the car batteries up to his manly components — let’s see what he says when we turn up the juice, yeah? (You can find Eric at his site, or on Twitter @ericbeetner.)

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’ve been thinking about this true story since my recent birthday. See, when I was born, I nearly died. I had a fairly common disorder where both my parent’s blood types got into my system, despite being different types. Basically this means my blood is passing by what it sees as a foreign substance as it flows through my veins and it attacks. Red cell vs. red cell. It can be fatal, especially in a tiny baby. There is no telling blood to just get along.

So I was plucked out of utero early. My dad loves to recall the day. This was 1969 (yeah, I’m old. What of it?) right after it became commonplace for dad’s to be in delivery. On the day it so happened that a half dozen med students were there as well to see the possibly tragic birth. Apparently when I emerged all the students collectively leaned forward with their notepads to gawk at the freak.

There was a wall chart for the new-to-the-process dads. It ranked your baby on a scale of 1 to 10. I was a 1. I had my fingers and toes – that was it. I didn’t cry, didn’t respond to stimulus, which at the time was still a hearty smack on the rump. I was discolored, limp, and generally sad to look at. So sad, in fact, the good folks at the hospital chose to dispense with routine and not take a photo of me for the records since they thought there would be no way I’d survive.

Little did they know my Nana was a nurse for an OB/GYN. She enlisted the help of Dr. Frost and they set about swapping my blood through transfusions. In my 20s I found a clipping my dad saved from the local paper in Iowa City where the hospital put out a call for blood donations. Kinda like a pre-internet Craigslist ad. So my blood was replaced with donations from family friends and some total strangers.

It ends with my favorite thing that has ever been said about me. After many transfusions, but no guarantee I would come out of this anything more than a vegetable if I lived at all, my parents met with Dr. Frost. Keep in mind she was a family friend.

They asked what the prognosis was. Dr. Frost said, and I quote, “Well, at this point, Eric is salvageable.”

I life my life in a daily struggle to justify the hard work and sacrifice of total strangers and the feeling I’ve let them all down by not becoming president or a doctor or astronaut. They all banded together to save a floppy little fetus so I could go on to make up stories and make TV shows. I’m grateful and guilty in equal measure every day.

Why do you tell stories?

I spent a lot of time alone as a kid. My parents divorced when I was 3 or 4. I went with my Dad and he worked full time. My sister and I were the classic “latch key” kids, with hours alone at home after school to fill with some sort of self-created entertainment. In a pre-internet, pre-cable TV world I had to invent my own escape. I’ve always seen storytelling as a way to take myself to other places and other times. I guess that notion has stuck with me. I’m never bored. I know how to entertain my brain if nothing else in my environment is doing it for me. That leads to storytelling, at least it did for me. I subscribe to the notion that if you’re bored then you’re boring.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

I hate giving advice on writing. I know you love it, Chuck, and I know a lot of people have benefitted from your advice. The thing I like about what you tell people is that it is all practical. You don’t tell people how to come up with stories, because you can’t teach that.

That said, I think any advice I’d give is along those same lines. If you want to write – write. Don’t fucking talk about writing. Write. Don’t talk about what you’re planning on doing or what you’re in the middle of doing. My rule is you’re only allowed to speak of it when it’s done. Nothing in the world is more tedious to me than someone talking about a project they’ve been “working on” for years.

And when you finish that thing you’ve been toiling over, start again. Keep writing. Don’t stop and wait for people to discover what you’ve already written. Try to take the stance that the best thing you’ve ever written is the next thing you will write.

What’s the worst piece of writing/storytelling advice you’ve ever received?

Write what you know. That story up top there is about the most interesting thing that has happened in my real life and that all transpired before I was a week old. If I only wrote what I knew I’d be fucked.

What do you like writing more, short fiction or novel-length? And, the obligatory: why?

If I had to pick I’d probably end up somewhere in the middle, like novella length. I’m an impatient person. Not like, prescription for Ritalin impatient, but I like my stories to move along. I blame TV and movies. I work in TV as an editor so my whole job is to sit and watch images moving quickly all day, and to make them move even more quickly. To trim the fat. And with movies, it is possible to see how a fully fleshed story can be told so economically. So most of my books are on the shorter side, relatively speaking. I doubt I’ll ever write anything at 100,000 words or above. On a solo novel I’ve only ever gotten to just over 70K, and I like it that way.

I’ve written a few novellas like Dig Two Graves and my Fightcard books around 25-27 thousand words and those feel right to me in many ways. Not that I could have done The Devil Doesn’t Want Me in that amount of time.

Shorts are fun, but the novel is a more engrossing experience to read and to write. I do like being able to take a character through many paces and develop the changes characters go through. Ultimately I’ll fall back on the idea that a story is the length it “should” be in order to get the idea across. I’ve read flash fiction that does that and many people seem to think George R.R. Martin needs all those pages to tell his story. Both are valid. My preference is to go a little shorter though.

Most underrated crime author nobody’s reading?

Hey, I’m perfect for this since I was voted Most Criminally Underrated Author in this years Stalker Awards. So, the real answer is probably someone even I don’t know about. I’d love more people to discover Jake Hinkson, but that’s only a matter of time. He just announced a new novella which had me so excited I squealed like a little girl. There are several writers on the cusp who don’t have novels out yet, but will, like Keith Rawson, Matt Funk, Jimmy Callaway. [I second that emotion. -- c.]

I’m always amazed Steve Brewer isn’t a best seller. He writes so much I haven’t been able to keep up, but I’m such a fan of his standalones like Bullets, Boost, Bank Job. It seems like every writer at some point gets compared to Elmore Leonard, but Brewer should be on anyone’s shelf if they like Leonard.

Of course I still wish there was more of an appetite for classic pulp writers beyond the big three of Cain, Chandler and Hammett. Guys like Harry Whittington, William Ard, Fredric Brown, Day Keene. Even writers still with us who started in that era, or the tail end of it anyway, like Robert Randisi, Ed Gorman, the early Lawrence Block novels.  

Your protagonists are, as they should be, troubled folks — what’s the trick to making an unlikable protagonist work?

It is tricky. In one of my early novels, One Too Many Blows To The Head (cowritten with JB Kohl) I had a guy who did some very morally questionable things and I got worried that people would be turned off by him. But everyone who read it (all six of them) really rooted for Ray and were on his side. I think if you give readers enough of a real life emotional hook to latch on to, they will adapt to the character’s particular moral code pretty quickly. Lars in Devil kills people for a living, but no one has ever told me they think he’s a sadist or a psychopath. His actions in rescuing a young girl and using his skills to protect her give the reader a reason to be on his side. Plus, if the person is funny, charming and fun to be around you can get away with a lot. I can write the head of a charity for blind monkeys and orphans and make him an unsympathetic asshole as much as I can write a criminal who you’d want to sit down and have a beer with.

The master right now of this is Johnny Shaw. His novel Dove Season literally made me teary with the father/son relationship he built with what could otherwise be a potentially jerky character who makes bad choices. I’m reading his second novel Big Maria now and he’s doing the same damn thing, making me feel so unbelievably deeply for some of these characters that I’ll follow them anywhere down whatever criminal path they take and still be rooting for them to make it out on top. He’s like a magician. I’d say he underrated too, but he selling like hotcakes filled with crack.

Where does The Devil Doesn’t Want Me come from? Why is it a book only you could’ve written?

I think it does come down to that notion of writing about a guy with a big moral deficit, in that he’s a killer, and making him sympathetic, relatable, human. I like to think its one thing I’m good at. I had so much fun in the book with the other hitman, Trent, who is a douchebag. He’s the opposite of Lars as a person and he gets punished for it in the course of the story. I just abuse this kid to humiliating levels, and it was a blast. And the readers, I’ve been happy to learn, are loving his humiliation. Does that make the readers evil people who want to see a guy get his nose ring torn out? No. They just know who they like better (Lars) and who deserves to get a kick in the balls (Trent).

Could it only have been me? I like to think my voice comes through. I don’t know that I’m 100% unique in any way, really, but in the same way that I’m average height, average weight, brown hair, brown eyes, I get mistaken for other people a lot, I’m not unique in any way. But to people who know me, I’m one of a kind. I’d like to think if people read my work, they find something unique about it.

What goes into writing a great character? Bonus round: give an example.

Relatability maybe? Every character has to have something a reader can latch onto. It doesn’t mean they have to like your character, they just have to recognize some sign of real human life in that person.

As an example I’d go with Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. You don’t like at all the things that Lou does in that story, but his actions are explained and justified enough in the twisted logic of his own brain, that you relate to his sick world view.

Likewise people from another era like Old Red and Big Red from Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range series. Here is a narrator from a time and lifestyle that I have no relationship with, but the voice in those books is so wonderfully rendered that I end up completely relating to them.

And OH! a perfect example is Megan Abbot’s The End of Everything. I have not been a thirteen year old girl ever in my life, but by the end of that book I felt like I knew what it was like to be that girl. A blend of perfect little details and universal truths made that a great example of making me, the reader, relate to someone completely different from myself.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!

I’ve worn out my recommendations of Hell On Church Street by Jake Hinkson, so I’ll avoid that. (whoops) I’ll give another shout out to Sunset & Sawdust by Joe R. Lansdale

Why didn’t more people get into Carnivale on HBO? I loved that show. More people need to discover that one.

I love a good documentary and I was completely blown away by Life In A Day. And you might not expect it from me, but I think the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up and Sing is brilliant.

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

I love words for their sound as much as meaning. Discombobulate. Reticent. Curmudgeon spring to mind.

I blame Samuel L. Jackson (or maybe Tarantino) for Motherfucker completely eclipsing the more simple and refined “Fucker”. Try that some day, pull out a plain old “fucker” and see if it doesn’t get much more of a reaction than motherfucker.

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

I am, sadly, one of those jerks who doesn’t drink the booze. I am a serious hot chocolate snob though. I make my own at home and it’ll put hair on your chest as fast as any bathtub hooch you’ve ever had. I use good chocolate (Valrhona, Green & Blacks, Vosages) and I use a lot of it. It’s more like a melted cup of chocolate mousse. I also like to add extras like a few butterscotch chips, a crushed graham cracker for thickness, sometimes a shot of hazelnut syrup. Seriously. I’ll make you one. It’ll change your life. You’ll never touch that Swiss Miss crap again. Oh, and I use half and half. Not water. Not simple milk. I’m in it to win it. I drink a lot of this when I write late at night.

What skills do you bring to help the us win the inevitable war against the robots?

In many ways I am as cold and calculating as our robot overlords. I don’t get overly emotional or sentimental so I’m good in a crisis. I’ll do what needs to be done and not lose my head, even if the right thing to do is leave your ass behind while the rest of us go for higher ground.

What’s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?

Just tonight before I started this I finished another novel. That makes five that are as of now unpublished. So I got the goods to go on for a long while. I get annoyed at the glacial pace of publishing so I need to relax. My new novel The Devil Doesn’t Want Me needs to live a life out there without another book stealing its thunder. But soon . . . very soon . . .

I do have more stories coming out in anthologies. I’ll be in the Atomic Noir collection they are giving out at Noircon this year (and selling on Amazon) I’ll be in a new antho called Hoods, Hot Rods and Hellcats that is coming soon as well as Beat To A Pulp: Hardboiled Vol 2 and the upcoming Crimefactory anthology Lee, which is all stories about Lee Marvin.

(Check out Eric’s books here.)

On The Subject Of Time And Self And Cynicism: Or, How I View Resolutions

This is of course the time of the year when frowny-faced naysayers tell you your resolutions are stupid and why are you waiting till today to make them and keep them, as if your today must conform to their today, as if your decision to evolve or change or Do Something is somehow offensive to them. It’s the same cynical thing you hear at Valentine’s Day — “I don’t need a day to buy flowers for my wife,” they say, which is true, but of course they probably don’t buy flowers for their wives on any other day anyway.

People are resistant to the idea that we should change, that we can better ourselves, whether it’s on the first day of the year or the third or the 51st or the 345th. They will tell you your resolutions are stupid, but of course they’ll continue on making no changes for themselves and wearing their cynicism like an ugly hat proudly displayed.

Yes, of course, January 1st is an artificial construct, an imaginary knife-slash in time. But it’s your day just as it is theirs. If you want to use this day to make a change, do so. The cynicism of others needn’t be a big dead bird hanging around your neck, too.

Go forth. Change if you want. Try if you must. High-five your own optimistic instincts.

Even in failure we learn.

25 Writer Resolutions For 2013 (And Beyond)

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Tis that time of the year when the year’s just born — pushed from its temporal womb, squalling and wriggling. That means it’s also time to put forward a list of upgraded attitudes and mission statements for the year ahead. Some of these are for me. Maybe some of them are for you.

I don’t buy that we should rely on a single day to cleave to shame and fix mistakes — but I think the first of the year is a nice temporal marker to push ourselves to re-examine, to evolve, and to keep asserting our ability to kick as much ass as we are able and allowed.

With that said, let’s get to it.

1. Level Up, Ding

Up your game. Always. With every paragraph, every chapter, every script scene and blog post, we should be looking to level up our work and ourselves.  We level up, we gain new weapons in our fight against Shitty Writing (“I HAVE THE ANCIENT SWORD OF THE HAIKU MASTERS, IT IS +1 AGAINST RUN-ON-SENTENCES”) and we face new challenges in the road ahead (“NOW I MUST DEFEAT THE LITERARY AGENT IN BATTLE USING NOTHING BUT A QUERY LETTER AND SOME BAD-ASS DANCE MOVES”). We must never sit on our hands. We must pull our boots out of the mud. We must move forward and improve ourselves and our work. We must better our shit.

2. Let Art And Entertainment Have A Little Creative Love Baby

Once upon a time I thought, my goal as a writer is first to entertain. And that remains true, to a point — but the more I think about it, the more I realize “entertainment” is a lowest common denominator. If my only true goal was to entertain, I could achieve that by uploading a series of YouTube videos where various things hit me in the dick (Frisbee! Coconut! Bowling ball! Charging goat! A goat driving a lawnmower!). A good story connects beyond mere amusement; its tendrils sink into deeper earth, winding around the human heart. Let’s aspire to do more than merely entertain. Let us reach for meaning, for connection, let us present stories with purpose and power. (Or, at the very least, we could write porn. HEY PORN COUNTS SHUT UP.)

3. Cleave To The Human Condition

It’s oh-so-easy to get lost in all the fiddly bits of storytelling. All the plotty twists, all the crafty and conjurous worldbuilding, all the clever turns of phrase, all the wonderful ways to describe a person’s naughty bits (dangle rod love canal wizard’s wand swamp grotto turgid shillelagh lusty sex-pond). Thing is, we write stories for one reason: to talk about people. And we read stories because we want to read about people. Every story is a Rosetta Stone attempting to translate the human condition to the humans gazing upon it with knitted-brow and quizzical sneer. When we as writers drift away from that, we lose what’s powerful about stories: we lose the character. Stories are written by people, for people, about people. I mean, at least until the day comes when they’re written by robots, for robots, about murdering all the meatbags.

4. Face The Fear, Best The Beast

(Man, if those aren’t some of the lyrics to You’re The Best Around, then the 1980s has failed me.) Let every tale be a cage match between you and something that scares you. Death, life, rats, clowns, disease, lost love, parasites, credit ratings, God, Satan, the apocalypse, being awake during surgery, Kentucky, the dark, wizards, tiny children with straight razors in their jam-smeared hands, otters — find a thing that frightens you and write about it. Mine that struggle. Writing with that measure of genuine of emotion behind it creates a palpable effect: the prose grows stronger, the story becomes richer. Think of it as upgrading the story’s megapixels. Every page contains so much more when you write with passion and authenticity.

5. Have A Fucking Point

Every story is an argument. Have the argument on the page. Give it to the audience. Make the case for why love conquers all – or why love can suck a big quivering tube of elf dick. It’s not about being preachy; it’s about threading your fiction with theme and meaning.

6. Embrace The Unanswerable

On the other hand, just as sometimes we go into fiction with an answer already in mind, other times we approach the page with an unanswered question hanging over our heads like a reaper’s sickle. The ending of the tale, uncertain — its conclusion both in terms of event and theme existing as a Schroedinger’s Cat inside the narrative box, the outcome ever in flux. Can love save the day? What is love? Will human monstrousness win out over selflessness? How do I remove this skin tag? Do bears really shit in the woods or do they share a series of secret bear toilets?

7. Stop Letting Passion Ferment Into Poison

Passion can be a paintbrush — or it can be a gun. It can be a warm cup of go-go juice or an icy syringe jacked up with blowfish toxin. Passion is a horse that either carries you racing across the sunlit plains or stomps you bloody into the mud. Creators are passionate people; they have to be. Passion drives us to do what we do. But that passion easily goes septic and next thing you know, instead of pointing it toward our work and our desires, we’re instead letting it fuel some bullshit argument or be the rope that binds us into some crass emotional tangle. Writing the next great story from the deep of your heart is so much more valuable than EGADS SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERTUBES I WILL EXPEND MY CREATIVE ENERGON CUBES ASSERTING MY SUPERIORITY.

8. Lock The Bastards In A Box

We will forever meet those who don’t believe in us, whose apparent goal is to hold our heads underwater rather than teach us to swim. Those are our bastards, and fuck every last one of those human speedbumps. Don’t engage. Shut them out. Close the door and lock it. Let this be the year we populate our lives with people who challenge us and help us be better, not punch us in the balls (or lady-parts) and leave us groaning and gasping in a pile of canine excrement.

9. Read Widely

Our reading habits are creatures of comfort: we know what we like (urban fantasy novels where bad-ass were-dolphin girls wage war against a parliament of sexy demon-priests) and so we hew to those books we know will please us. But again, look beyond the boundaries of entertainment. As we challenge ourselves with our writing, so too should we seek similar challenge in our reading. Read that which you would not normally read. Seek new input. Don’t let your mind grow indolent and complacent, a sluggy psychic blob covered in mental Dorito dust.

10. Know More Shit, You Clod-Headed Ignorasaurus

If we are to assume that write what you know has any value at all (it does, in a sense, and more on that in a moment), then we can also assume that it is our mission as official penmonkeys to know more shit. Your mission: learn more, read more, do more.

11. Dig Into The Dirt Of Your Own Experience

Let’s talk a little about that last one: “do more.” When we write, we tend to write more effectively when we milk the udders of our own experience rather than come to the page cold and unaware. That’s not to say we must literally write what we know — otherwise, every story would be a biographical transcript. Rather, our experiences are filtered through the various sieves and strainers of fiction: we translate and teleport the events of our lives, finding those sensory moments, those essential elements (or elemental essentials), those core authentic “truths.” What that means is: strive to bring yourself to the page. And further, it means to do more. Have more experiences. Travel. Eat new foods. Try new things. Apply it to your fiction. (“Hey, honey, I went to a gangbang last night with a bunch of strangers. Don’t worry, it’s just me bringing authenticity to my novel. Yes, I smell like lube: a detail for my fictions.”)

12. Find Comfort In Discomfort

Fuck safety. Jump, then stitch the parachute on the way down. Comfort is the enemy of good fiction. As an author, seek some measure of discomfort — put it into your work, try new things, challenge yourself to take the difficult path because that is the path that will yield greater reward. Hell, break a drinking glass and pepper your office chair with the shards so that you’re experiencing constant enlightening buttock pain. *receives note from the official terribleminds lawyer* Oh, umm, wait, yeah, don’t do that last part. Just do the other things.

13. Find Opportunity In Change

The winds have shifted. The earth trembles beneath our feet. Genres warp and mash together. Age ranges for reading spawn hydra heads (Middle Grade! Young Adult! New Adult! Adult Zero! Pre-Adult! Post-Toddler! Geriatric Erotica!). The shift to digital is a change. The fact that big publishers are glomming onto big publishers and creating some kind of drug-resistant super-mecha publisher-kaiju is a change. The rise of self-publishing is — drum roll please – a big-ass change. And more unseen changes are surely on the way in the coming year. Each change is bad for those who cannot adapt, and great for those who can. So, adapt. Find opportunity and challenge instead of difficulty and misery. Surf the turning tide.

14. Find Signal In Noise

We can either fill our lives with meaning, or bog it down with distraction. The latter is easier, frankly: it’s so much simpler to lose ourselves to the Internet or video games or stupid arguments or Russian elk porn. But a life of writing requires focus. It demands that we tune out the noise and zero in on the signal. Signal will save us. Noise will drown us.

15. Stop Pooping In The Temple

They say the body is a temple; mine is probably a back alley pawn shop. (“Want to buy a cassette player and an off-brand Samurai sword?”) Just the same, I shouldn’t be savaging the architecture of my flesh with gross indolence and needless diet. The mind and the body are inextricably linked — it’s time to stop dragging down the mind with the negligence of the body.

16. Stop Defining Yourself By What Other People Think

Everybody wants you to be something. Some people want you to be nothing. None of that matters. The tiger in the cage doesn’t think, “The zookeeper wants me to wear this jaunty hat.” He just eats the zookeeper and then pees on that hat. Be the Most Awesomest You-Version that you want to be, and let everyone fall in line behind your ideals. Don’t fall in line behind theirs.

17. Love What You Write, Write What You Love

The thing about writing is, it’s easy to get caught up in work that isn’t “for” us — rocking out some freelance word count, or maybe in a pitch meeting you pitched something on a lark and under pressure (“Uhh, something-something astronaut family sitcom in a future world owned by robots who have not yet learned to love”) and you really don’t like the thing you pitched but now, here you are, writing it for money. You find it miserable and that misery translates. It always translates. The miserable threads wind around each word like a choking vine or a pubic hair caught in your teeth. Here’s how to fix this: first, make sure to save projects Just For You. Write projects that speak to you. But you can also reverse that: you can bring your love to the project at hand even if that project is not one you enjoy. There’s always a way “in.” Always an angle. Always a way forward that you don’t hate. Find that path through. You’ll feel better for it.

18. Be Inspired By All The Crazy Penmonkey Motherfuckers Out There

Jealousy is an ugly thing: it’s bitey like a plague monkey, empty like a mummy’s scrotum. The way we see other writers is sometimes through lenses smeared with the greasy unguent of envy, or worse, we think, “They did it, but I can’t, and now I’m just going to lay down and take a thousand-year-nap on this pillow soggy with my tears.”  Going forward, let your proper response to other writers be awe. Let it be inspiration. Let the collective efforts of a thousand penmonkeys be the fist of wind that punches your sails.

19. Forge Partnerships In The Raw Metals Of Awesome

Time to get shut of the notion that we do this thing alone. The author is always the tip of the iceberg: beneath the hoarfrost waters is forever an unseen pyramid of supporters. Editors! Agents! Book designers! Artists! Other writers! This year, go out. Find one other person in your creative ecosystem. Press your two magic artist rings together — bwing! — and form a partnership. Use that creative energy — and yes, sometimes, creative agitation — to be the fist of wind that… what? I already used that metaphor? Fine. Use that energy to get shit done.

20. Create Before You Consume

We often gain our desire to tell stories from consuming the stories told by others. This often becomes our default mode: we read! We watch! We play! The problem is when it remains our default mode and we never switch tracks from consumer to creator. That’s not to say we shouldn’t still hungrily stuff our mind-mouths with the narrative meals cooked by others — but there comes a time to give our own work that priority. Both in terms of time and in terms of regurgitating staid, tired tale-telling. Your story comes first. All other tales trail after.

21. Write Fiction Red In Tooth And Claw

Punch. Kick. Grab. Bite. Fuck passivity. We don’t get to be paid penmonkeys and crackerjack creators by lying on the ocean floor like a bloated sea cucumber letting food glom onto his turd-blob body. You’re not a morbidly obese shut-in who can order opportunity and creativity from Amazon (delivered with Prime Shipping to your double-wide trailer!). You are shark. You are wolf. You are shark-wolf hybrid with machete-flippers and fire-eyes and a deep and unabiding creative hunger. Creators must take aim at their goals. They must sniff out opportunity and stab it with their steely knives. You want that pound of flesh? You want your novel on shelves, your script on a screen? Move, motherfucker. Or get out the way.

22. Realize: Yesterday’s Gone And Tomorrow’s Too Late

Today is what you have, so use it. Don’t even think about what you didn’t do yesterday. And fuck putting aside things for tomorrow. It’s today. It’s Right Goddamn Now — a sharp dagger stuck in the pages and maps of this very moment. Grab the knife. Start cutting words off the block. Start arranging them into sentences, and start shoving those sentences together to make a story. Don’t look back. Don’t wait. Now is the only time you are promised. Now is the time to create.

23. Just Keep Swimming

Regret is for assholes. Hell, regret is an asshole — a giant flappy asshole that works opposite as it should, vacuuming up instead of purging out, suctioning up optimism and motivation and light and also, the cat. (Poor cat.) It’s easy to get caught in this mode, to have the thought running laps in your head that says, I fucked up, I did something wrong, that thing will haunt me. A query letter with a typo, some pissing match with another author, a book that nobody bought, a self-published tale with a cover so ugly it should be on trial for war crimes. Forget regret. Aim to repair. Seek to reclaim. (And other re- words!) Very little you do will mark you as a Permanent Dickhole or Forever Dumbshit provided you are earnest about moving forward and upping your game. Stop getting caught on the carousel of remorse. Stop turning in circles.

24. Fuck Good. Go Great.

Perfection is the enemy of the good. But does that mean we shouldn’t aspire to be better? Hell no. It doesn’t mean we can’t push ourselves and reach a little further. It damn sure doesn’t mean that we cannot seek to elevate that thing we do beyond the realm of merely “good” and — one hopes — into the stratosphere of “great.” (“THIS MONKEY NEEDS A PROPELLOR. THIS ICE CREAM NEEDS BACON! THIS BACON NEEDS CHOCOLATE! THIS TOASTER NEEDS A PINK FLOYD LASER LIGHT SHOW AND A BELT PUNCH AND THE INTERNET.”) I don’t know what makes something great. More of this? Less of that? A stronger flourish? A simpler elegance? Nobody knows. But that’s no reason not to try, is it?

25. Know Thyself

The biggest and bestest resolution going forward? Know who you are as a writer. This is, I find, the curse-iest curse that plagues us — and it doesn’t just plague us at the beginning of our journey. Oh, if only. It’s a nettling, nibbling, nattering imp riding on our shoulders years into the great egress from our old, uncreative lives. Find your process. Uncover what works for you. Find your voice. Find what you like. Discover why you tell stories. Discover your desires. Find your frailties. Find yourself in your fiction and find your fiction in you. The faster we can start to figure out who we are, how we work, and what we want, the faster we can move forward telling the kinds of stories we want to tell — and the more confident we become in doing it. So ring in the new year by… if not answering these questions then at least asking them, having them staple-gunned to the front of your cerebral cortex. Let your work and career be less of a question mark, and more of an exclamation point. And now for…

26. Shh, The Not-So-Secret Secret Resolution

Write till your fingers bleed.

Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY:

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500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

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500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

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250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING:

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CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY:

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REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY:

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