Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 229

Flash Fiction Challenge: “The Last 1000 Words Of An Non-Existent Novel”

This challenge is a strange one. It came to me (IN A DREAM okay not really in a dream) and I thought, “Well, that’s a bit curious, innit?” So, I figured I’d float it, see who grabbed hold.

I want you to write the last 1000 words of a non-existent novel.

In other words: “the ending.”

Now, you can be a bit meta with this — the ending in your mind may be a tidying up, a denouement, or you may instead choose to write a climactic end moment before imaginarily closing the curtains.

Also, those 1000 words are a loose set of guidelines. Could be 500, could be 1500 — whatever you need.

So, get to writing, folks.

I’ll send a random participant an ART HARDER, MOTHERFUCKER mug, provided you’re in the United States. If you’re international, I’ll send you an e-book. Or naked pictures of myself rubbing food into my beard, whatever you prefer.

Your deadline is noon EST, Friday, December 7th.

Now let’s bring this utterly fake book inside your head to a close.

Terribleminds Merch: Mug And Shirt, Motherfuckers

It’s time to do a test run on some merch, see if it’s worth doing this in a bigger way (posters, hats, dildo cozies, hunting vests, chainsaws, Blu-Rays, Manta Rays, moon carvings). So, here’s the deal.

This sale only goes until tonight, say, 8pm EST.

I’m going to sell a mug.

And I’m going to sell a shirt.

This is what goes on the mug:

Or, the inverse:

The t-shirt on the other hand, looks like this, and has the terribleminds logo on the back:

The shirt comes in adult sizes: S, M, L, XL, 2X, 3X. Men’s or Women’s. (2X and 3X is $5.00 more.)

EDIT: For some reason the XL option isn’t showing up on the actual drop-down button? (Making and editing Paypal buttons is a bite in the scrotum.) If you order, either add a note to the invoice asking for XL or send me an email at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

The Penmonkey design is by the glorious Amy Houser.

The mug is $20. ($15 + shipping)

The shirt is $25. ($20 + shipping)

I have a Certified Penmonkey t-shirt and a mug (though not yet an Art Harder mug) and both are very nice.

Order through Paypal below.

Shipping right now only to the United States, please. (If there’s a real response to this and it’s worth the time, I’ll blow that out and include international territories. Diggit? Duggit? Good.)

Price includes shipping.

They will be ordered today and arrive ~10 days.

Questions? Drop ‘em in the comments.

Sale now over! Thanks all for checking it out.

Why My Brain Is Goo, And Other Updates

Yesterday, I crossed the finish line on The Blue Blazes, my next Angry Robot novel in which I write about the conflict between the criminal underworld and the Holy Shit There Are Monsters Living Beneath Our Feet Actual Underworld. The man in the middle is Mookie Pearl, big thug, bad dad, and ugly motherfucker, who finds both sides playing against the middle — and in the middle is the entire population of New York City.

It’s just shy of 100,000 words, my longest novel yet.

I wrote 10,500 words yesterday alone.

The book took me a little under two months to write.

I have no idea if it’s total ass or not. You stare at a painting long enough, eventually, it’s just a blobby mess of colors. That’s the book to me, right now: just an array of words, their quality and context unknown.

I think it’s good. Or at least okay. I know it has some problems I look forward to fixing in the next draft or two. Hopefully you’ll dig it — it’s a little more straight-up urban fantasy for me. High-action, lots of criminal goings-on, lots of weird monsters you won’t find elsewhere — no vampires or werewolves or vampwolves or wizardvamps or sexy succubi, but you will find gobbos, trog-bodies, cankerpedes, roach-rats, milk-spiders, Snakefaces, Vollrath, and the Hungry Ones. And a strange man named “Candlefly.”

The character of Mookie Pearl, by the way, comes out of a short story I wrote called “Charcuterie” that will (er, hopefully) one day be published in this anthology right here. (At this rate, I’m almost wondering if the novel will be out before the short story.)

I’ve heard some awesome news on the cover that will tickle your pink parts as it did mine.

You can, at present, pre-order the novel (which you could apparently do even before I finished it) over at Amazon and BN.com. I’ll assume the date of May 28th is pretty firm? Good stuff.

Holy Crap, io9 Reviews Mockingbird

“All those plot gears do not turn in a wholly straightforward way. What appears to be a simple “find the serial killer” story at first delves down a few blind alleys before unraveling in a bizarre and stunning way. And even when the story does move in a linear manner, it’s highly entertaining.”

That, from Ed Grabianowski’s review of Mockingbird over at io9!

I know the first Blackbirds review was fairly influential for getting people into that book — I heard from a lot of people who told me that review was how they heard about the book and why they bought it. Hopefully this review will do similarly. Check it out, if you’re so inclined.

Interviews

I have a new batch of interviews I have to get caught up on now that I’m done writing Blue Blazes (and I move into editing Heartland, Book One, and writing Beyond Dinocalypse) — though, I’m thinking that after this batch I might change how interviews are handled here. They’re a fairly small thing but even still, they require just that much extra work from me to write up a second round of questions and read as much of the originating author’s source material as I can muster — I ultimately find that with the writing and blogging I already do, it’s a tricky sitch to force myself back to the computer to go that extra couple of inches.

I’m noodling turning interviews into something more along the lines of what you get with Scalzi’s Whatever — a series of ten questions, say, about a given upcoming release (book, game, film, comic, etc) and the storyteller behind that release. Same questions for everybody, no follow-ups. Thoughts? The other solution would be to have authors write a guest post, instead — something tied to the unofficial mission statement here of talking about story and process and all that jazz, but I think the interview is a greater chance to bring the funny? Fuck, I dunno. Comments, questions, complaints, prayer requests, death threats?

In Which I Slather Myself With Homemade Ice Cream

I have an ice cream maker now, ho ho ho.

(That, written on my t-shirt not in blood but smeary chocolate.)

I made Nutella ice cream as my first attempt and it was guhhh drool sputter.

So good.

Recipe here, except I substituted cream for the milk and added an egg yolk.

Now it’s your turn to give me ice cream recipes and ideas.

Soon, A Merch Test

I will soon sell a few selected pieces of merchandise for a limited time.

Just to see if it’s viable.

Eyes peeled, terribleminders.

Here’s How You Flush Your NaNoWriMo Efforts Down The Crapper

National Novel Writing Month does not matter.

Not now. Not that it’s (almost) over.

It mattered before, sure.

It’s what stuck you in the ass with a stinging thistle. It’s what got your crap-can out of bed to pound keys and make the morning word sauce. It lit the fire. It sent the smoke signals whirling up into the sky.

Good. Great. Excellent.

Now it’s gone and — what?

Now: it’s artifice. Seeds on the wind. A placebo drug with a real effect.

I did an unofficial uncounted version of NaNoWriMo this month — not because I felt like playing along but because I had 30k written in the latter half of October and needed another 50k to finish a novel for deadline. So, quite conveniently, I had the proper word count to slot into November. (For the record, I’ve since written over 50k, as the novel’s running a hair longer than expected.)

Here’s how I could fuck that all up:

I could assume that November is the only authorized time to write a novel.

I could take the 50k I wrote and be done with it.

I could stop writing beyond the margin of the event.

I could leave the manuscript as the smoldering pile of word puke that it probably is.

I could choose to save it from the fires of a scorching edit.

I could choose to keep it away from agents and publishers and readers.

I could let it lay like a half-a-fish on a sun-baked dock. Rotting. Drawing flies.

I could let it be game over, goodbye.

The point is, writing is never about that one segment of time in which you write the first draft. It’s certainly never about 50k, which barely counts as a novel in most practical instances (here is where you chime in and tell me about all those novels that were only 50,000 words long and I say yes, yes, that’s true, but those are the exception rather than the rule, but thanks so much for playing).

Simply put, writing is rarely about writing.

Writing is about thinking. And planning. And rethinking and replanning. Writing is about rewriting. Writing is about breaking it all apart and putting it back together again. Writing is about running it through the gauntlet. It’s about editing. About criticizing. Writing is about the craft of putting one word after the other and then stacking them atop one another. Writing is about the art of the story. Writing is about the crass and unpleasant dance of commerce. Writing is about you first, and the audience ever after. Writing is about sharpening the words and honing the tale until it is as sharp as a thumbtack.

Writing is about more than that one month.

Writing is about more than the first draft.

Your work continues. Hell, the work just begins. You fought the first battle of a very long war.

Fuck winning. Hell with losing. This isn’t over by a long shot.

So: here’s what I’m asking you:

How’d it go?

And what’s next? Do you have more to write?

Then what? What’s your plan?

How Chuck Wendig Writes A Novel

This year, I’ve written — *checks psychic spreadsheet* — four novels. Bait Dog, Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits, Dinocalypse Now, and (finishing up this week), The Blue Blazes. I also wrote a novella, Bad Blood, which includes the next appearance of everybody’s favorite vampire-in-Zombieland, Coburn.

By this year I also have — *consults little man who lives in my mind* — five novels out in the world. Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Double Dead, Dinocalypse Now, and Bait Dog. (I apparently like ‘b’ and ‘d’ words. Eventually I’ll write one giant magnum opus called Blackdead Dinodog: The Baited Blood of Bad Bluebird.)

In the next year I am slated to write and/or publish — *polls the bacterial choir that lives inside my colonic labyrinth* — seven more books. Got the three books of my young adult cornpunk Heartland trilogy, got two more books in the Dinocalypse Spirit of the Century universe, have another Atlanta Burns book (Harum Scarum) and the third Miriam Black book (The Cormorant).

I do not list these things as a humble-brag (though, make no mistake, it is a humble-brag, because I am a proud peacock over here), but only to note that somehow, I fell face first into a novel-writing gig. And further to note that, maybe it’s time I wrote a post on exactly how this motherfucker right here — *points to me and the squirming bundle of sentient cilia I call a ‘beard’* — writes a book.

That’s not to say this is how you should write a book. I’m just putting out these breadcrumbs — you may choose another path through this dark forest of novel-writing. People ask me how I do it, so here’s my answer.

This is going to be a long post, so get some tea and bolster your fortitude.

The Idea Skirts Past My Orbital Defenses

The question for writers should never be, “How do you get your ideas?” but rather, “How do you shut them up to get a night’s sleep?” My mind is a moon colony constantly being pelted by little fiery asteroid-ideas. Ideas are not my problem: they fill up the ol’ brain-bucket pretty quick.

The problem is figuring out which ideas are:

a) interesting to me beyond the moment in which they are conceived

b) potentially interesting to other humans who are not me

c) potentially interesting to the giant amorphous blob known as the “publishing industry”

d) about a character in a world and not just a world

and de actionable, meaning, an idea that suggests a book I’m actually capable of writing.

If an idea checks each check-box with a jaunty slash, then I write that sonofabitch down. I write it down on my phone at first (sometimes using voice recognition if I’m driving or walking or playing racquetball or hunting humans for sport), and then later I dump it into a file I’ve created that’s meant to be a storehouse of such potential ideas. For the record, this dump file now looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shelves and shelves of crates and boxes, each a mystery container whose story remains untold.

I Barf Up A Blob Of Incoherent Thoughts

Once I’m ready to take the idea beyond that core seed of an idea (“Wouldn’t it be crazy if a cat was president?!”), I fish it out of its swampy mud-hole and hoist it into the light.

Then I start writing. Nothing concrete. Rarely anything that’s actual story. Mostly just notes and thoughts. And a lot of questions. What kind of cat is it? Is the cat a good president or a bad president? Will the cat have nuclear codes? Will the press discover the cat’s cocaine addiction (SEE YOU THOUGHT IT’D BE CATNIP BUT NOOOO THE CAT IS A LITTLE BLOW-MONKEY) and will that damage re-election chances?

The notes taken at this stage are almost stream-of-consciousness. Sentence fragments, mis-spelled words, grocery list thoughts interspersed in the middle, whatever. It’s just to ruminate on the idea. And it’s also to test the idea in a way. Is there more here than than initial idea? A great many ideas are dead seeds planned in fallow ground — they won’t grow a good goddamn thing. So, this stage of the game is very much about seeing if this thing has legs. Will it walk? Can it run?

The Critical Questions

I ask myself a handful of “cardinal” questions –

What is it about?

The answer to this isn’t about plot. It’s about the deeper, weirder answer. Like, if we were out in the jungle high on some kind of jaguar gland, I’d grab the idea by the shoulders and say, “No, man, what are you really about?” This is me starting to skirt around the idea of theme — the argument I want this story to make.

Why the hell do I want to write this?

If the answer is, “Because it’ll get published,” then fuck that. If the answer is, “Because it’s popular right now and will earn me big money,” then fuck that, too. If the answer is, “Because it’s cool,” then — drum roll please — fuck that. I need more. The answer has to be meaningful to me before anyone else.

Why will anybody care?

Some ideas are for me and for me only. I’d love to one day write them but if I think they’re too personal or too abstract to bring to an audience, I won’t bother. It has to be both a thing that’s meaningful to me and a thing that I hope will be meaningful to the audience, too. This isn’t the type of answer I can really predict; I do not live inside the collective hive-mind that is the aggregated audience. But I can generally spot a story that lives and dies with my own interest in it.

Who The Fuck Are These People?

Characters are the way through every story. As such, they are the most important component of a story — and it’s quite likely by now I’ve already got one or a few characters in mind for the story. Now it’s time to really hammer them into a gory, sticky paste and see what secret truths lie contained in those piles of steampunk gears and sloppy viscera.

Once again I look for some of the same things I looked for earlier: I’ll turn to a series of insane rambling notes turns into a test to see if these characters are interesting and readable. (Fuck likable.)

Just as I need to know what a story is about, I also need to know who a character is. And in the same way the answer must go deeper than, “He’s a cat who gets elected president of the United States.” Again the jaguar-gland shaman grabs me and shakes me and says, “No, man, who is the character really?”

Then the questions of, why do I dig this character?

Why do I think anyone would want to read this character?

What makes the character compelling?

Then: I suss out the characters wants, needs, and fears. What does the character need to keep going? What does the character want — whether consciously or unconsciously? What will drive him as a goal throughout this story? And finally, what does he fear? Obstacles in a character’s path are critical, and some of those obstacles must be bound up with the character’s fears.

Finally, I do a little three-beat character arc for the character. Three words or sentences that are meant to indicate the state of the character across the story — beginning, middle, and end.

Poor cat down on his luck wants to see a change in this country –> elected president, way over his kitty head –> once again a poor cat but now knows the intimate details of the democratic process and oh did I mention he nuked the middle of our own country into oblivion.

The three beats could be fairly succinct — consider the simple mythic arc of Maiden –> Mother — > Crone. Or, as per the vampire in Double Dead, Predator –> Protector –> Penitent. When conceiving of Miriam Black’s arc in Mockingbird my only three notes were: Selfish Vulture –> Pecking Crow –> Reluctant Raptor.

I Write A Pitch

At this point, I write a preliminary pitch. First a logline, meaning, a single sentence that sums the story up. (“A cat is elevated from poverty and is elected president only to learn that cats shouldn’t ever serve in public office because cats are assholes.”) Some call this the “elevator pitch.”

Then I write a longer pitch — under 500 words — that acts like a bigger, blown-out version of back-cover text for the book. Hits key concepts and the larger story without giving much away. In part because I don’t have much to give away — I don’t necessarily have the total story in mind by this point. I’m writing this for me in order to boil the thing down as a simple referential document.

Building Something Out Of Nothing

The Miriam Black books didn’t take much in terms of research or worldbuilding. On the other hand, The Blue Blazes required a good bit of that — but even here I did as little of it as I could manage. Meaning, I did just enough work to get me to the starting line. I know my own crazy habits and I’ll get buried in details if I let myself (“I just spent two weeks reading about the sexual habits of housecats”), so I do the work that needs to be done now. The rest can come as I write, or even in a second (third, fourth, thirty-seventh) draft.

Alpha And Omega

I figure out what I want to be the beginning of the story. And then I figure out its end.

Some folks hate to figure out the ending, because they like to be surprised. (To me this is the same dilemma of whether or not you want to know the sex of your baby before it’s born — to me, it’s still a surprise if I learn that fact at 20 weeks and that gives me another 20 weeks to figure out what kind of clothes to buy the little critter.) To me, the need for pragmatism outweighs my bullshit need for magic while writing. A houseplant survives on water — an actual thing based in reality, not the whimsy of unicorn dreams.

Here’s why I like to have the beginning and the ending in mind: because as I write, my eventual outline will fail me. It just will. No plan survives contact with the enemy and eventually I’ll be somewhere in the middle of the book, spinning wildly in the swampy mire of my own fiction not sure exactly what to do next. And when that happens I will look to the ending and I will say, “I need to go there,” and then I will march the story toward that point and eventually get the outline (which by now may require modification) back on track.

For me a novel is essentially a lesson in drunk driving (DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE THIS IS A METAPHOR): it’s me starting at the beginning and then revving the engine and speeding sloppily and swerving dramatically toward what I’ve conceived to be the ending.

The end doesn’t need to actually remain in place — I can change it as I go.

But it’s a good thing to have in mind as I begin.

Oh! I also like to have some degree of parity between beginning and the end, some elemental or thematic or even physical aspect that links the two together across the space-time-continuum that is the rest of the story. (In the Mookie Pearl short story, “Charcuterie,” it begins and ends with him pulling up at the bar with his friend and boss, Werth. Hint, hint, the novel may have a similar book-end.)

I Start Building The Skeleton One Bone At A Time

Time to outline.

I do not have a single way I outline.

In fact, every book has suffered a different outline than the former.

Generally speaking, I first figure out a four-act structure — beginning, middle 1, middle 2, ending. Two acts lead to a critical plot-changing or escalating midpoint, which then carries us to another two acts.

Then I figure out tentpole moments (aka SHIT THAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN OR THE WHOLE TENT FALLS DOWN AND SMOTHERS US ALL UNDER ITS COLORFUL FABRIC) and then I write the key story beats that get me from one tentpole to the next and to the next after that.

Sometimes I hammer out critical story structure beats I hope to hit (a reversal of fortune, a key betrayal, a battle scene). I’m also always on the look out for at least one HOLY SHIT NO HE DIDN’T moment — some jaw-dropping pants-crapping event or revelation in the narrative that sticks you in the ribs with a story shiv. I like those moments. One of my favorite things is obliterating reader expectations in one fell swoop.

Sometimes This Stuff Lives In A Folder For Months, Years, Epochs

This might seem like the perfect time for me to jump into the story with a speargun and a wetsuit, but that’s not necessarily gonna happen. The Blue Blazes sat at this stage for many months until a gap opened up in my schedule (and, not coincidentally, this gap is just before my deadline to turn the book into my grumpy cyborg masters). Sometimes this stuff incubates in a folder for a while until the time comes.

The God Of The Ancient Grid Calls To Me

Spreadsheets. Used to hate the very idea. Now, I am married to them.

One spreadsheet I particularly require is the one that keeps all my writing schedule on it. I don’t use a calendar — I use Excel. I have the whole year planned out in terms of when my deadlines are and where the books slot in. (Then I also identify gaps and, ideally, figure out how to best use those gaps.)

I always assume I’ll write 2000 words a day and no more than that — by which I mean, that’s what I put on the spreadsheet. That’s 10k a week and, if I’m writing an 80k novel, that’s eight weeks or roughly two months. Now, I tend to write more than that, particularly if it’s a book I’m really feeling (Mockingbird was written in a month), but that then leaves me some padding, which is great.

As I write, I’ll also note in the spreadsheet “real daily word count” versus the 2k “projected” and that’ll show me if I did more or less (and by what amount). Most days are more, but inevitably I’ll have those days where I write less due to the vagaries of human existence (toddler meltdown, holiday, sick day, sentient cat swarm). That’ll give me a far better SITREP as I’m on the ground crawling through the word-trenches.

#amwritingmotherfucker

Then I write.

Nothing fancy here.

I write. I write with my head down. I write linearly, first page to the last page. I write without listening to the doubting voice that tells me I’m a total asshole for even trying this. I write without regard to safety or sanity. I write with the freedom to suck and the hope that I don’t. I write to finish the shit that I started.

Next Pass

I do a pass before I give it to anybody. If I have a lot of time, I’ll do a robust pass and take a lot of notes (almost a truncated process of what I’ve already gone through). If I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll do a Hail Mary pass and run through it with a manic gleam in my eye and a clumsily-swiping word scalpel.

The Agent Pass

The agent is wise. I’m very fortunate to have an agent who was a former editor and who is a smart, smart story-thinker. So, she gets a pass. A very important pass, indeed.

The Editor / Publisher Pass

Turns out, the publisher has, y’know, opinions on the work. That said, my work has at present not undergone any epic changes from a publisher — the draft I send them has by and large been the draft you see in your hands when it’s published. This is, in part, because the agent pass is often a robust one (Heartland, Book One was rewritten many times over the course of a year before submission and by its end, ~50% of the book was drastically rewritten.) And in part, I hope, because I’m not totally shitty.

The Hands Of The Gods

Then it goes out into the world. Outside my control.

It lives. It lands. Hopefully you like it. Maybe you don’t.

But what’s done is done.

And then it’s onto the next one.

Writing forward. Always writing forward.

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

Bait Dog: $1.99

Hey, check it –

For today — yes, yes, blah blah, CYBORG MONDAY or whatever — my novel Bait Dog (which also contains the novella Shotgun Gravy) about a troubled teenage detective-slash-vigilante named Atlanta Burns is $1.99.

Snippet of a review from Govneh, aka “The Russian:”

“This story is absolutely gripping. In true Atlanta style, our heroine willfully and knowingly throws herself into situations that are way over her head, armed with nothing but a sharp tongue, uncooperative attitude and at times, a shotgun. We watch, helpless, as she slowly digs herself into a deeper and deeper hole. Throughout, however, she remains unwilling to compromise what’s right for what’s easy. When presented with a chance to erase her mom’s mortgage woes, to get one of the big players in town off her back, to remove herself from a volatile situation, Atlanta bargains the way Atlanta knows how-a big Fuck You with a shotgun shell.

Wendig does well writing Atlanta both a petulant teen and an unwilling hero. On one hand she’s surly, she’s rude, she can’t cope with her emotions and gets an F+ in ‘plays nice with others’. On the other, she’ll go to hell and back for her friends, she’ll stand up to the bad guys and she’s not afraid to sacrifice to make sure people pay for what they’ve done. Atlanta is strong but Atlanta is broken; she’s a social pariah but the hero of the freaks, the geeks  and the outcasts. It doesn’t alwaysjust get better, sometimes you have to make it better and if you need help, Atlanta is there.”

You can nab it at:

Amazon US.

Amazon UK.

Barnes & Noble.

Or buy direct using the button below.

This Pot Roast Is Your God, Now

It’s time for turkey to eat a bag of ducks.

*checks notes*

Oh. Dicks. Dicks.

Whatever.

Thanksgiving is over. Kaput. Time lurched forward this year with the speed and grace of a fast-running zombie rather than a slow shambly one, and as such, the Turkeypocalypse (in which many turkeys are summarily slaughtered and ascend to their final resting realm of Gobblheim) is over.

We’re done with turkey. Till next year, gobblers. Sayonara, you big fat dummies.

It’s time to move on. Time to put that holiday behind us. Time to put away childish things.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR POT ROAST.

For a long time I didn’t “get” pot roast. I mean, I understood its nature — it is a roast of meat that you cook inside a pot. I’m not mule-kicked. I grokked the core concept. But every time I did a pot roast it came out tough or dry or it lurched out of the pot and tried to bite off my face (though there I admit I misunderstood the concept as a piranha roast, which is apparently a whole different thing that nobody ever does). I used to do it in the crockpot and the fact that it came out dry puzzled me — how can something bathed in meaty juices come out dry? (Answers: cooked too long, wrong cut of meat, crockpot too hot…)

But I have since perfected the pot roast. I mean that. It is perfect. It is a shining example of meatliness. It is the Platonic ideal — a pot roast that can comfortably be placed upon the altar and given to the god of your choice as a gift without fear of being smited or smoted or… whatever the word is.

The great thing about this pot roast is, for a family of, say, three, you get to eat it for three whole days. The pot roast continues to feed you. It’s like self-replicating manna! The perfect food.

Here’s how:

Get yourself a big slab of chuck roast. Three to five pounds.

Take your magma-cube (aka “oven”) up to 275F.

It’s time now to punish some vegetables for being vegetables and not being meat. Take two onions, four carrots and two stalks of celery. Cut the onion into rough pieces. Peel the carrots and chop them into two-inch lengths. Cut the celery into smaller slices — quarter-inch. Sure, fine, you can wash the vegetables first if you want, but I personally find that a little sprinkling of e.Coli does a body good.

*checks notes*

Okay, it actually does a body bad. Apparently, wash your vegetables.

(Cowards.)

Now you want to take a heavy pot or a Dutch oven (HA HA HA DUTCH OVEN) and slap that motherfucker atop the fiery doom circle (aka stovetop) on medium. Splash into the pan a little squirty-squirt of olive oil. Once it warms up, pop the vegetables in there. (If you’re patient, you can do them in batches. Onions, carrots, then celery. Or you choose the order, I don’t give a fuck.) Get a little color on them. Scald them for their transgressions. This’ll maybe take you five, even eight minutes.

If you’re feeling sassy, cook some minced garlic in there too.

Whilst that is happening –

It is time to handle our meat.

Once again, not a masturbation euphemism. I am in fact troubled by how often you think I’m talking about masturbation and how often I see you ripping your pants off like a child freeing a Christmas present of its crinkly wrapping, but that is a discussion for another time.

For now, get out the chuck roast.

Wipe it down with a little olive oil.

Then coat it with a sprinkling of black pepper.

Then some garlic powder.

Then comes the salt. I don’t want you to be a coward with the salt. This is not the time for craven curs. I want you to salt the ever-living shit out of that pot roast. Lots of salt. On all sides. I mean, you should still be able to see meat beneath that salt, but trust me: salt is your friend. Except when it kills you by hardening your arteries and turning them into dead little twigs, but that’s later in life.

Veggies done? Good. Rescue them from danger.

Now it is the meat’s turn to suffer your wrath.

Brown it on all sides. Since the roast will most likely be in the shape of some kind of… drunken sludgey cube, you have roughly six sides that need a little color. Hurt it. Make it beg for mercy. Let its fat squeal and pop.

When each side is sufficiently browned — say, three to five minutes on each side — take it back out of the pot. Put it on a plate. Let it sit there and think about what it’s done to deserve this fate (a fate that, don’t tell the meat, ends in your belly). While that’s happening, it is time to deglaze the pan. Splash some red wine — no, not red wine vinegar, not broth, but motherfucking red wine, you goddamn teetotaler — into the still-hot pot and as it starts to bubble up, use a metal scrapery-thing (spatula, flipper, spoon, ice scraper, robot claw) to loosen all the charred meaty bits from the bottom of the pot. Now put the meat back in there. Listen to it shriek and blubber as you lower it back into the heat.

As the vegetables hang nearby, chuckling at the torment you visit upon the quivering block of meat, point at them and say, “YOU’RE NEXT,” and then cackle madly as you upend them over the roast.

Now, it’s time for fluids.

One-and-a-half cups of coffee, into the mix.

Then: one-and-a-half cups of beef stock. Or broth. Or some liquidy part of the cow as long as it’s not, say, urine. What’s wrong with you, trying to cook your roast in cow pee?

You’re lucky I still let you hang around here, mutant.

Here’s the only seasoning you need (since you salted the very soul out of that roast):

Herbs de Provence.

It’s my secret weapon in things like this. Any time I think I need rosemary and thyme, I instead think, “Well, let’s bring them and all their Frenchie friends to the goddamn party,” and I reach for the Herbs de Provence and then I take a swig of whiskey and a hit of acid and I wake up in Reno for the 57th time covered in greasepaint and blood. Then I haul my way back home to start it all over again.

Whatever.

Herbs — say, two generous pinches — atop the meat and veggies.

Cover the pot.

Shove it in the oven.

Roughly one hour per pound of the roast, though I sometimes tack on another five minutes per pound of the roast because my oven is a bit finicky that way. You do what your oven commands. Unless that oven commands you to like, feed it babies. That’s a defective oven. You learn that after two, three babies and it keeps wanting more, more, more. “MORE BABIES,” it roars with hot breath. Jerk.

When it’s done, take it out.

Should be fork tender. May even fall apart with gentle prodding, like a Girl Scout under intense Guantanamo interrogation. Now what do you do? Jesus Christ, do I have to tell you everything? You eat it. Preferably with your bare hands like some kind of feral hobo.

Though, should you choose to be civilized and incorporate it with a meal, it goes very nicely over mashed potatoes. And the vegetables are soft and lovely. Pillowy, I might say, were I the type of person to use the word “pillowy.” AND I AM.

The great thing is, this is three to five pounds of meat that you will not eat in a single sitting.

So, next day? Make sure to save all those sweet meat drippings in the fridge. Take it back out, once cold, and you can free it of its fatty crust. Into a smaller pot you make a roux (two to three TBsp of butter with equivalent amount of flour), let it golden up, then pour upon it the de-fatted drippings. Bring to a boil, stir till it thickens. Add, if you care, a bit more black pepper and then a splash of heavy cream and it will make the kind of gravy that will cause an angel to betray God and join Satan’s gravy-loving army.

Or: POT ROAST TACOS.

Or make a hat out of it.

I don’t give a shit. You do as you like.

All I know is, at the beginning of all this, the meat was your peon, your minion, your slave in earthly fealty. But by the end, the cosmic tables will have flipped. This pot roast is your god, now. Bow down and offer it praise. Consume its body as you would any avatar of the divine.

OM NOM NOM

IA IA POT ROAST FTHAGN

In Which I Smother You All In A Bathtub Brimming With Thanks

It’s Thanksgiving, y’all. Though a good part of me refuses to believe that to be the case and assumes I’m the victim of some grand illusion where it’s really the first week of November. ENJOY THE LARF, JERKS.

Point is: no real post today except to say I am a thankful motherfucker. I’ve got a good life. My family rocks. Our new dog is a delightful dumdum. I’ve got a writing career for the foreseeable future. I’ve got you people — the ones who come here and the ones who read my books (and the crossover in that wonderful Venn diagram). Frankly, this life I have doesn’t properly exist without you.

Yes, you.

No, not you. You stay over there in your corner. Put a shirt on. And stop molesting that pumpkin pie.

So: to all my readers: a heaping helping of gratitude ladled upon your head like so much gravy.

And to all the writers I know: you kick ass. You inspire. Keep on keepin’ on.

High-five, all.

Now I’m gonna go do some calisthenics do get myself in prime-time turkey-gobbling shape.

Chris Baty: The Terribleminds Interview

Chris Baty, ladies and gentlemen: the founder of NaNoWriMo is here just in time to save you and your novel. I met Chris as the Crossroads Conference down in Macon, GA, this year, where the both of us were guest speakers of the con (and what a kick-ass con it is), and damn if he isn’t the nicest and most inspiring dude. Which tells me he’s probably a serial killer, but that’s okay. Who isn’t? Chris harnessed the power of his niceness and inspiration and focused them on an interview here at terribleminds. Find his site at chrisbaty.com, and you will find him on the Twitters @chrisbaty.

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.

Almost a decade ago, one of the most active members of the NaNoWriMo message boards died in a car accident. I’ll call her Mary. Mary lived in a small town in Michigan, and on New Year’s Eve, she was driving alone on an icy road when a deer jumped in front of her car. She swerved and skidded, slamming into a tree. We learned about the accident when the executor of her will posted a note about her death on the NaNoWriMo forums.

Everyone was stunned. Mary had been a vital, hilarious presence in the NaNoWriMo message boards. She’d always gone out of her way to be encouraging to everyone, and had been particularly generous with younger participants. Mary had a lot of virtual admirers spread out all over the country, and none of us really knew how to deal with her sudden absence.

A week later, the first bit of weirdness appeared. A fan of Mary’s had posted in the message boards, saying she’d contacted the mortuaries in Mary’s town because she’d wanted to send flowers to the funeral. And none of them were hosting a funeral for Mary.

Thinking “Mary” might have been a pen name (or that Mary was being buried elsewhere), this person called Mary’s local newspaper to get the details of the woman killed in the New Year’s Eve crash. Which is how she learned there had been no New Year’s Eve crash.

This weirded everyone out. I sent Mary an awkward email asking, in essence, if she really was dead. She didn’t respond. Shortly after that, a longtime member of the NaNoWriMo community decided to take matters into her own hands. She found Mary’s phone number online and called it. To her surprise, a woman answered.

“Mary?” the caller asked.

“Yes?” the woman said.

The caller hung up and immediately posted details of the interaction on the NaNoWriMo site. Mary’s sister, who had never posted on the site before, responded quickly, saying that she had been packing up Mary’s house and had answered the  phone. The name thing had been a misunderstanding.

This was fishy enough that, by the time someone found Mary alive and well and posting on another other message board one week later, most of us had already accepted the fact that she’d faked her death, creating the executor and sister to sell the lie.

It was an unforgivable stunt. But as a writer, I had to give Mary grudging props. She’d woven a ridiculous plot twist into the story of her life, and artfully deployed a cast of supporting characters to make it believable. We’d been sucked in by it. Our anger over being so thoroughly manipulated was only slightly lessened by the knowledge that we’d managed to expose her fiction.

As the scandal was dying down, I went into the admin area of the NaNoWriMo site and checked the IP addresses of all the key players in the story. Sure enough, the Executor’s account had the same IP address as Mary’s. The sister’s did as well. I was kicking myself for not checking this earlier.

Then, on a strange impulse, I looked up the post by the woman who had accidentally unraveled Mary’s story by calling the newspaper.

It had also come from Mary’s IP address.

I checked the forums posts from the person who first called Mary at home.

Ditto.

Dumbstruck, I checked all of the other NaNoWriMo accounts involved in the fracas, and they were thankfully coming from places far away from Mary’s small Michigan town. They were legit. Right?

I didn’t know. At that point, Mary’s reach seemed limitless. She’d been brazen enough to kill off one of our community’s beloved heroines and then bring her back to life as a monster. It was brilliant and awful, and for years afterwards I asked myself the question: Who does that sort of thing?

I wish I knew.

Why do you tell stories?

Well, this is going to sound weird after the above tale, but I really like to make people laugh.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Make the most of your novel-writing time by only polishing prose that you’re relatively sure will end up in front of readers’ eyeballs.

I’ve found that stories can change a ton between the outline and the first draft, and they can shape-shift again between the first and second drafts. Novels are slippery buggers, and we usually have to write all the way through them a couple times before we pin down exactly what they’re about and how best to tell the tale.

This means that big parts of our early drafts will usually need to be demolished or completely reconfigured to make room for the mind-blowing, award-winning, bestselling creatures our books are destined to be.

Getting rid of utilitarian prose is hard. Getting rid of  polished, bookstore-ready chapters packed with hilarious dialogue and eloquent descriptions will make you want to die. It can be so demoralizing that we can get all Golem-y about it, holding on to our precious sections even when we know they’re sapping strength from our books.

No matter how long you postpone your fine-tuning, you’ll still end up having to cut some golden prose—everyone does. But if you let sentence-fixing and dialogue-bettering be the cupcake you reward yourself with for making it all the way through one or two drafts, I think you’ll be happier (and more prolific) in the long run.

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

I feel like at every writer’s conference there’s a tough-love expert who gets up and tells everyone to quit. They lay out the dire economics of the publishing world. They talk about how the field is already overcrowded with aspiring writers. They say that, unless you’re among the .1% of writers who are so committed to your craft that blood spurts out of your eyeballs on the days your don’t write, you should just pack it in.

I know it’s coming from a place of wanting to protect people from getting hurt down the line. But we’re all adults here. Life is short. Writing is fun. Why would you discourage anyone from doing it?

How does a writer combat demoralization during writing and editing?

Argh. Yeah. That’s such a great question. I’ve watched some of the most gifted writers I know abandon promising manuscripts just because they lose momentum on them.

This is why I think they should teach the dark arts of project management in writing classes.  If I were teaching that class, my first lecture would be on the Five Truths That Will Make You Less Likely To Kill Yourself or Your Book During the Writing Process.

Truth # 1: Books take longer to write than you think they will. (This one is especially hard to accept for those of us who wrote our first drafts in a month.) Some of the most toxic frustration we dump into our writing process starts with unrealistic expectations about how quickly we should be able to revise our books. Think of your book as a house that you’re building alone. Eventually you’re going to have this supremely satisfying moment where all your friends come over to your finished place and sit in your new hot tub out on the beautiful deck and marvel at your talent, discipline, and vision. To reach that glorious hot tub moment, though, you have to schlep a lot of bricks. It takes time, but the best things always do. As long as you’re continually pushing forward on the project, you should never beat yourself up about how long it takes to finish it.

Truth #2: Momentum is everything. Isaac Newton’s law that objects in motion tend to stay in motion is deeply true when it comes to book building. The more frequently you write, the easier each writing session becomes. Characters work hard for authors who visit them often.

Truth #3: Your book will get better. If you’re feeling despondent about your story, know that many of the things bothering you will be fixed by the time you get to the end of your current draft.  Appreciate your book for what it will become, not what it is now.

Truth #4: Nothing gets done without deadlines. Schedule the hell out of every draft. Share those deadlines with other people and ask them to check in on your progress. Even as you cut yourself slack when the book’s overall timeframe shifts (see Truth #1), be sure to move heaven and earth to hit each mini deadline.

Truth #5: You deserve treats. Celebrate every bookish milestone by doing (or buying) something nice for yourself. Don’t wait until the house is finished to raise a glass to yourself and everything you’ve done.

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

I love characters who are great observers. Characters who have simple, true insights into themselves, the people in their lives, and the world at large.

As a writer, these are hard to pull off because we have to first come up with the insights and revealing details and then sneak them into the brains and mouths of our protagonists in a way that seems natural to them.

I’m reading The Leftovers by Tom Perrota, a book about life in a small suburb after a rapture-like event has mysteriously claimed a quarter of Earth’s population. One of the characters is a teenage girl whose mom has run away with a Christian doomsday cult that has popped up after the Sudden Departure. Here’s a passage about the girl.

“She missed everything about the woman, even the stuff that used to drive her crazy—her off-key singing, her insistence that whole-wheat pasta tasted just as good as the regular kind, her inability to follow the storyline of even the simplest TV show (Wait a second, is that the same guy as before, or someone else?). Spasms of wild longing would strike her out of nowhere, leaving her dazed and weepy, prone to sullen fits of anger that inevitably got turned against her father, which was totally unfair, since he wasn’t the one who’d abandoned her. In an effort to fend off these attacks, Jill made a list of her mother’s faults and pulled it out whenever she felt herself getting sentimental:

Weird, high-pitched totally fake laugh

Crappy taste in music

Judgmental

Ugly sunglasses

Uses words like hoopla and rigmarole in conversation

Nags Dad about cholesterol

Flabby arm Jello

Loves God more than her own family”

So many rich details that say a lot about who the mom and daughter are. Nice one, Tom.

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

Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres has such a strong story that not even the abysmal movie adaptation staring Nicholas Cage could completely ruin it. Such a great book!

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

“And,” when placed at the start of a sentence, is probably my favorite thing in the universe. (Thank you for your use of it in this question, by the way.)

Curse word: Pants. British people say it. Hilarious!

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

My friend Jen makes a deceptively simple bourbon drink that I would take with me to a desert island. Here’s her recipe:

Pour into a tall shaker filled just over halfway with ice…

2 oz Bulleit Bourbon
1/2 oz simple syrup
1 – 2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir aggressively for 20 – 30 seconds to chill and slightly dilute the drink. Taste. Adjust as needed. Place a large ice cube in a glass and pour over.

Peel an orange slice over the glass (you want to get the oils from the peel) and use it as garnish.

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

I can make weapons-grade coffee.

Where did NaNoWriMo come from?

I’ve always been full of bad ideas, and NaNoWriMo was just one in a series of questionable endeavors that started with me emailing my friends and saying “Hey, what if we all got together and…”

The 21 of us that took part that first year really loved books, but none of us knew much about writing them. From my work as an editor, I’d seen writers pull off miraculous feats when given impossible deadlines. So I jokingly named the challenge “National Novel Writing Month” and came up with the 30-day deadline and the 50,000-word goal (scientifically calculated by counting the words of the shortest novel on my bookshelf.)

To help make the whole thing less scary, we all got together after work and on weekends to write. That camaraderie, coupled with the stupid deadline, gave all of us the high commitment and low expectations that turn out to be a godsend when you’re writing a first draft of a novel. We had a great time and wrote delightfully craptastic (but promising!) books.

It turned out to be kind of a revelation for me. And I knew that if we could do it, anyone could do it. The next year, I put up a website and invited more people to take part. It just started growing from there.

Would you change NaNoWriMo or evolve it in any way?

I think a great next step would be coming up with a fun, collaborative adventure that makes novel revision easier (and less lonely). I know NaNoWriMo HQ is working on a plan for that now, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

What is your NaNoWriMo experience?

I’ve done it every year since 1999. Of the thirteen drafts I’ve written so far, I’ve really loved four or five of them. But even the ill-fated books I’ve buried in my back yard have taught me a ton about writing. I would have thought I’d be sick of it by now, but the process of knocking out a first draft in a month is somehow still just as fun as it was back in 1999.

You’re now promoting a series of posters, right? Where do these come from? What should writers take away from them?

I’m a big graphic design nerd, and I have an endless appetite for cool posters with encouraging messages on them. (My favorite, framed on my living room wall, says “Done is better than perfect.”)

I stumbled on a really neat poster project last year called Advice to Sink in Slowly and it inspired me to team up with illustrators and create some you-can-do-it posters for writers.  I have them printed at a press near my place in Berkeley, and then pack and ship all of them out of my living room (which is now permanently imbued with the aroma of printer’s ink and paper.)

How go your own efforts at writing a novel?

Good! Right now, I’m waist-deep in my NaNoWriMo novel about a monster who finds a VHS tape and sets out to return it. In December, I’ll say goodbye to the monsters and go back to revising my YA novel about a boy who discovers a secret buried beneath his town.  I’m working on the seventh draft of that book, and I’ve been schlepping bricks on it for a long, long time. The end is in sight, though, and I’m hoping to sink into that hot tub this spring.

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

I’m trying to finish that young adult novel and two screenplays.

As soon as I do that, I’m turning my full attention to the robot apocalypse.

Failing Versus Quitting (Or, “Your Lack Of Confidence Is Neither Interesting Nor Unique”)

I have, as of late, been trying to beam shining waves of positivity, bathing you in the golden light of rah-rah-you-can-do-it vibes, hugging you in the enveloping arms of cheerleadery awesomeness, making out with you and using my ovipositor tongue to plant in your esophagus seed warts of raw confidence.

But the time for such kindness is over.

The time for my boot to destroy your rectum has begun.

Don’t think I don’t see you over there. Trembling in the corner. Moping. Sniffling. Your pants bottom soggy from the cooling urine beneath you. You’re a writer. Or you “want to be” a writer. And you’re staring off at an unfixed point in space, and in that unfixed point is a gravity well that draws forward your motivation, your confidence, your authorial hopes and dreams.

And then you get on Twitter. Or Facebook. Or the NaNoWriMo forums. Or you grab your cat. And you tell them all how you’re not going to be able to do it. How you’re not good enough. Or you make up some other excuse: kids, time, wife, life. And everybody nods and smiles and tells you it’s okay, and they pat your hand while condemning you with a single thought: Pfah. Writers. Or worse, they put quotation marks around that word — “writers” — because in their hearts they know you’re not the real deal.

And so, you plan to quit. Just this book, of course. You’ll quit this one. Start another some day.

You begin a doubt circuit, a loop of explanation that explains it all away, that fills the holes, a medicated ring of self-made gauze that eases the sting and comforts the blow of quitting. This book was never going to be good enough. I haven’t learned enough! I haven’t been enough places. I haven’t hob-nobbed. I don’t know the right people. This computer is too slow. I need a better word processor. Scrivener sounds good, but that’ll take me time to learn. I need to read more writing advice. I’m just gonna get rejected. Publishing is cannibalizing itself anyway — just last week all the Big Six publishers got together to form a giant space arcology and when it’s complete they’ll leave Earth with all the writers and nuke us from orbit. Agents are going extinct. Novelists can’t make a living. Who cares? This book was stupid.

The whole thing is stupid.

I’m stupid.

I’m giving up.

Yeah, no.

Shut up.

Seriously. Shut the fuck up for a minute.

Take that voice — the jabbering jaw inside your head, the one spouting excuses and explanations, the one barfing up a septic toilet-bowl of toxic reasons, the one attempting to ascribe value to your shame, to your lack of confidence, to normalize all your fears and make them acceptable — and choke it off. Close its windpipe. Crush its trachea. Cram a brick in its throat if you must.

It’s not okay to shellac over your failure with excuses.

Failure is necessary. But quitting is not the same as failing.

Failure provides powerful lessons. It affords insight. It allows you to have a whole picture that you can one day hold before you and say, “I see what’s wrong with this picture, now.” Quitting is standing there with a half-a-picture. An incomplete image. And more to the point: an incomplete lesson.

Failure is stepping into the street with a gun at your hip and standing across from your foe — clock strikes noon, she draws, you draw, bang bang, gunpowder haze, smoke clears, and you drop while she keeps standing. That’s failure. You drew. You fell. Maybe you live to fight another day. Maybe you learned something about the next time you need to draw that gun. And everybody knows you fought with honor.

You did the deed. And the deed is done.

Quitting is you hiding in a fucking rain barrel while the gunslinger passes you by.

Failure is brave. Quitting is a coward’s game.

What, you think you’re the first writer who doesn’t think he can do it?

Uh, hello, please to meet every writer ever. We’re all fucking headcases. We all hit a point in every piece of work where we hate it, hate ourselves, hate publishing, hate the very nature of words (“Marriage? What a stupid word what’s that goddamn little ‘i’ doing in there FUCK THIS HOO-HA LANGUAGE IS STUPID I QUIT”). We all bang our heads against our own presumed inadequacies and uncertainties. Writing and storytelling isn’t a math problem with a guaranteed solution. It’s threading a needle inside our heart with an invisible string strung with dreams and nightmares.  We are afforded zero guarantees.

You got… what, you got writer’s block? A crisis of confidence? I have good and bad news for you, hoss: you’re not alone. Good thing is, others have gone through it. Bad news is, others have gone through it and they’ve come out the other side of the shit tunnel with a completed manuscript in their trembling hands. Some writer has inevitably had it far worse than you do and they still managed to spin straw into gold and get the job done. They had less time than you. They felt worse than you. Their crisis-of-confidence was more profound than yours. And they still managed.

I mean, sure, a lot didn’t manage. And now they’re piles of smoking wreckage by the side of the road as faster cars pass them by. Fuck them, we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about you. And you’re going to keep on keepin’ on. You’re not just gonna pull over, turn off the car and starve to death. You’re gonna push that pedal to the floor. You’re gonna make the rubber hit the road. You’re going to finish this goddamn motherfucking sonofabitching journey even if you end up in a different place than you planned.

You can feel good about failure. Failure means you did something. You finished the story even if it wasn’t what you’d hoped. Failure means you’re learning. Growing. Doing.

But quitting — man, you don’t get that with quitting. With quitting all you get is a box full of puzzle pieces that don’t connect. You get a shattered mirror. You get a handful of dirt even the earthworms don’t want.

In storytelling, we say we want characters who are active over passive.

That’s you. You are the character in this story.

Quitting is passive. It’s letting go of the steering wheel.

Hell with that. Be active. Grab hold. White-knuckled.

Here’s what you’re going to do:

You’re going to suck in your gut. You’re going to lift your chin. You’re going to put on a big pair of shit-stompy boots and you’re gonna stomp on all the shit that’s in your way. The only thing you’re quitting today is the idea of quitting.

Repeat after me: It’s not okay to give up.

Again: It’s not okay to give up.

In all caps, now: IT’S NOT OKAY TO GIVE UP.

With more profanity: FUCK QUITTING.

With more incoherent rage: GNAARRRGHBLARG QUITFUCK KYAAAAAHH

I don’t want to hear about you quitting anymore. If I hear about you giving up, I’m going to modify a laser pointer to increase its intensity and I am going to laser shut your pee-hole. And then you’ll just urinate inside yourself and all you’ll be is a big ol’ roly-poly rumbly-tumbly sloshing skin-bag of wee-wee. Like that girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, except filled with her own urine instead of blueberry juice.

It’s time to take it to the limit.

1980s montage style.

Punch beef. Tear a car battery in half. Jog in lava. Lift a John Deere tractor.

Because you can do this.

Maybe you’ll fail. Maybe you’ll succeed.

But at least you know you never quit.

Now, shut up and get back to work. Miles to go before you sleep.