Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 231

In Which I Am Interviewed, And Captured On Film Like The Sasquatch

I am interviewed!

On video, no less. Which is always an awkward experiment that I hesitate to punish you with — but there it is, just the same. I assume you’ll forgive me. Just stare into the beard. It makes all things better.

Warmer.

Fuzzier.

Anyway. I talk about all kinds of stuff: traditional publishing versus self-publishing, metaphor, horror, outlining, porn. I round the bases. I cover all the essential elemental elements and essences.

Thanks to Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn for having me.

If you don’t want to watch the video, you can catch a text recap at her site, which also features an audio podcast version. Please to enjoy.

The Key To It All: In Which Pocoyo Explains The Power Of Story And Imagination

 

(Link in case you can’t see the embed.)

The toddler loves this show, Pocoyo.

Oh, fuck it, who am I kidding? We love it. Shut up. That cartoon kid’s cute. The duck’s awesome.

Don’t judge me, Judgey McJudgerson.

Anyway.

The above episode: I want you to watch it. I mean, I’m going to spoil it here anyway, but it’s worth your eyes. It’s like, five minutes long or something — just hunker down and commit the time.

Done?

Done.

If ever there’s been something that explains the mighty power of the imagination, it’s this episode. Pocoyo gets a key with the promise that it will open pirate’s treasure — the chest that he eventually discovers the key will open is in fact just filled with more keys.

More keys that open more treasure.

The key opens treasure and the treasure is MORE KEYS.

Holy crap. That’s it.

That is the endless bounty of the imagination.

That is the power of story. One key that leads to more keys — and each key the promise of a new journey, a new story lived, experienced, and then told. A series of doors and chests and the journey to get to them and get through them. Doors and chests that cannot merely be opened but must be unlocked. And what’s powerful is the story surrounding how we unlock those chests and doors.

Fuck yeah.

That is all. You may now go about your day. I just wanted to point you toward this.

Time To Participate In Democracy, American Humans

We are, as a people, fairly smart folks.

It’s easy to think we’re all stupid — we do, as a whole, some profoundly stupid shit. (We invented the Slanket. We watch Honey Boo-Boo. We drink soda from a 7-11 “Thirst Aborter” cup that holds more liquid than an elephant’s gastrointestinal system. We eat Funions.)

But all in all, we’re pretty fucking snazzy in the smarts department. I mean, uhh, hello — we invented the Internet. And cat videos. AND MOTHERFUCKING DEMOCRACY.

So, let’s all just take a moment and high-five ourselves.

Done? Good.

Let’s also admit that, though we are smart, we’re also selfish. We tend to our own needs first — and, to a point, those needs extend to our self-identified tribes, which may be a unit as small as a marriage, or a family, or a town, state, country, religion, geek clique, whatever.

And yet. For selfish people, I notice that quite frequently, we vote against our own best interests. Which actually seems to defy the notion that we are selfish, but aye, here’s the rub: we are often convinced that our own best interests are something other than they are.

We are, in a sense, seduced.

Seduced by a kind of fantasy.

That fantasy is, quite frequently, that we are one day going to be the kings of the castle. That we will be wealthy-ass motherfuckers rolling on a gooshy-wooshy waterbed filled with Goldschlager and covered in cash. We will one day live in the big house on the hill. We’ll have investments out the pee-hole. Simply put –

We vote like we’re one day gonna be rich.

It’s not impossible, after all. Class mobility is a very real thing. We don’t have castes. Our economic status is flexible. We’ve heard countless stories of someone pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, even though nobody’s boots have fucking straps anymore and if they did we’re probably look at them like, “What the fuck is wrong with your boots? OH MY GOD TIME TRAVELER GET ME MY GUN.”

Funny enough, nobody ever seems to acknowledge that class mobility is a two-way street.

So, a suggestion:

Maybe it’s time to stop voting like you’re going to one day be rich.

Instead:

Vote as if one day you might be poor.

Get shut of the myth that being poor is automatically the fault of the person suffering. I’m not so naive as to say that our fortunes are never our own doing — I’ve known plenty of people who have shot themselves in the ass again and again, earning and owning theirmisfortune. But I’m also not so daft as to suggest that sometimes? Shit happens. A tree falls on your house. The company that has employed you for 20 years suddenly shits the bed and dies, leaving you without work. A loved one dies. Car crash. Identity theft.

Bad luck. Get fucked.

Tell me: do you want to vote for a candidate who only takes care of you in the boom times? Who is there when things are good? Who doesn’t offer you a hand up so much as a pat on the back for being successful? Or is it better instead to vote for a candidate who will help you stand up when you’ve fallen? Who tries to put in place a safety net for before you fall? Who recognizes that sometimes awful things happen to not-awful people and that we need to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves?

Vote like you’re one day going to be poor.

Vote like one day you might lose your health insurance and then get sick.

Vote like one day you might get hit by an earthquake. Or a tidal wave.

Or, I dunno, I’m spitballing here — a hurricane.

Because it can happen to you. And it can happen to your friends. And family. And neighbors. And strangers.

It can happen to any of us.

Needless to say, I’m voting to re-elect President Obama. Because I think out of the two candidates, he’s the guy who’s going to help this country when it’s down. And that’s where we were four years ago. We were tumbling down, down, down the rabbit hole of recession and, at the bottom, depression. Things are, by my eyes and by most metrics, better now than they were four years ago. More to the point: our country didn’t crash into the wall and leave a trail of smoking economic wreckage littering the ground.

I’m not some Big Government guy — but I recognize that government has its place. And I believe that place is to help us when we need it — it’s easy to bemoan socialism or government programs and hand-outs when you’re not a person who can benefit from them. It’s easy to say the government should stay out of our way — but then one day you need Medicare for our aging parents, or unemployment, or ten gallons of free gasoline from FEMA so you can keep generators on for just one more night.

I’m also in favor of Obamacare. I’m a writer and a freelancer. I look forward to having real choice and cost control when it comes to my health care and health decisions.

Has Obama been the perfect president? Did he make good on all that Hopey Changey goodness? Maybe not. Certainly our president has fallen down on the job a number of times. But I still think he answered more of his campaign promises than anyone ever expected. And I don’t think he should be punished for not taking this country from zero to 60 in terms of the economy — any improvement is good improvement. Four years ago we were hurting. Four years later we shouldn’t expect everything to be an economic boomtown.

Now: if you feel that the one who will help you when the chips are down is Mitt Romney, more power to you. Message is still the same: go out and vote. Let democracy have its place. As wildly imperfect as it may be.

Oh, and do read up on your local elections, too. The economy may not trickle down as many once said — but politics sure as hell trickle up. And yes, I know, things don’t technically trickle up but let’s pretend there’s no gravity. SHUT UP WITH YOUR ACCURSED WITCH SCIENCE. We’re playing with metaphors over here.

What I’m trying to say is –

Get out and vote.

(Thanks to my wife for helping crystallize some of these thoughts.)

Battle Song Of The Storyteller

I am a storyteller and I will finish the tale I am telling.

The gods have chosen me as its speaker.

My story has weight and value. It is worth more than a chest of gold, more than a pair of magic boots, more than a cool laser gun that goes pyoo pyoo pyoo, more than a ride on the back of a surfboard unicorn. My story’s merit cannot be measured. All that matters is that it matters.

It matters to me. This is my story. This is my jam. One of many that live inside my heart. My heart is a bell: I ring it and you listen to its mighty peal. My heart is a geode: I crack the stone with the heavy hammer of my effort and you are captivated by the crystal within. My heart is a heart: bloody and pulsing and an engine of life driven by the drum-beat of one story after the next, and then, and then, and then.

(And then.)

I am the story’s master.

I am the story’s partner.

I am the story’s slave.

No part of the story may hide from me. I know this story like I know the back of my hand. Like the back of my hand as it strikes the gum out of my enemy’s mouth. Like the back of my hand as it gently caresses the cheek of my lover, who may be a man, who may be a woman, or who may be some hermaphroditic moon-person whose body is a hundred quivering pseudopods and dripping orifices.

I know this story like I know a moon-person’s pseudopods and orifices.

I control the measure of this tale. I pull the levers. I thumb-punch the buttons. I have all the keycards and access codes, all the blueprints and treasure maps. I can keep them close. Or I can throw them into a campfire and laugh as they crackle and burn and turn to char.

I see all the pieces of the story. The characters dance when I say dance. They fight, they fuck, they forgive.

I laugh.

I set the tempo. I control the pace. I make the mood. I state my case. I speak my heart.

I control it.

It controls me.

I do this because I must. Because my soul is an ungoverned stagecoach, the horses galloping toward the cliff’s edge. My fingers yearn to put words on a page — the itch and desire lives in the hinge of each knuckle. My tongue wants to touch the roof of my mouth, my lips want to form the grunts and clicks and susurrations of this myth, this memoir, this comedy, this drama, this dramedy — I am driven to do it, obsessed with its shape, compelled to know what can never be known. Drama is my lord. Conflict my lady.

I am story’s whelp. Its cur. Its sub. Its bitch.

Story is loa. Story is spirit, ghost, god. It rides me like I am its goddamn and god-chosen horse.

No one owns my story but me. But my story owns all who hear its telling.

My story is a cardboard box that could be anything.

My story is a knife slipped between your ribs.

My story is the sweet juice of an overripe fruit flowing over your lips. Down your chin.

My story is a spaceship burning up as it punches through the hot intangible shell of a planet’s atmosphere, a glacial shelf cracking and sliding into the ocean, a gorilla on bath salts loose in a preschool.

My story is nipples and tongues, fire and ice, tits and ass, heaven and hell, this and that.

My story is a blasphemous ululation that forms chaos into order and breaks order into chaos.

My story is want, need, fear, hope, hate, truths, lies, coffee, whiskey, earth, space, diamonds, death, life, fluids, flux capacitors, cats, fire, sugar, pancakes, batteries, floodwaters, twist-ties, flavored lubricants, throat songs, scrambled eggs, severed heads, newborn babies, hungry goats, lusty satyrs, worms in the dirt, birds in the sky, clouds that become rabbits, rabbits that become were-rabbits, were-rabbits that sit down at a breakfast nook and point guns at our hearts and demand that we tell them a story, story within story, story creating another story, story spinning into the pieces of a hundred other tiny little stories –

I don’t know what the fuck my story is.

But I know that it is more than ink on a page.

It’s blood. And spit. And sweat. And milk.

The story is whatever I want it to be.

Anything at all. Open season. Empty page. Tabula rasa. Solve-for-X.

I am a storyteller and I swim in possibilities.

I am a storyteller and I command the ideas to get in line and march as I say.

I am a storyteller and the audience belongs to me as much as I belong to them.

I am a storyteller and I will nail this narrative to the wall.

I am a storyteller and I will write the tits off this motherfucker.

I am a storyteller and this is my sexy party, yo.

I am a storyteller and I am the story told.

I am a storyteller and I will finish the tale I am telling.

The Penmonkey Chalupa Supreme: For Charity!

So, a hurricane punched the East Coast in the butthole last week.

We got off fairly light here at Der Wendighaus. Around three days without power, five without real Internet, a cell signal coming and going like ghosts in the rain. A lot of trees down, but none on the house (though if these monster storms keep rolling through year after year, our woods will lose its “wooded” designation). The rain was surprisingly mild — didn’t even get water in the basement.

Mostly, we were overtaken by our most dull-witted of enemies: boredom.

But a lot of the country got totally slapped down. Particularly across New York and New Jersey, though some parts of Pennsylvania and Connecticut and other states got really hit hard.

The hurricane also coincided with the start of NaNoWriMo.

No, I’m not suggesting the two are related –

OR ARE THEY

*flash of lightning*

Okay, no, they’re not.

Still — with NaNoWriMo comes my reminder to you that I have writing-related e-books for sale.

I’ve written:

Confessions Of A Freelance Penmonkey

Revenge Of The Freelance Penmonkey

250 Things You Should Know About Writing

500 Ways To Be A Better Writer

500 More Ways To Be A Better Writer

500 Ways To Tell A Better Story

So, I thought, sales from those books should contribute to charity.

Thus, all profits from those books sold during November via direct sales (i.e. sold through this website using PayPal) will go to — drum roll please — charity. (And no, Charity is not some stripper I knocked up in Tulsa.) I will split the charity money: half to the Red Cross for hurricane relief, half for prostate cancer (ala Movember), as prostate cancer is what robbed me of my father and I know many who have suffered from it.

You can buy the above books individually and directly at the menu bar above.

Or, you can buy them all in one fell swoop.

You can buy the Penmonkey Chalupa Supreme package, which gives you all six of those books for a price you determine. (Regrettably, I can’t have you literally set your price as one can do with the Humble Bundles, so there’s a drop-down that lets you choose from $5, $10, $15, $20, $25, $50, or $100.)

You buy it, you get a Dropbox link. Ideally very quickly, though I’ll caution that PayPal has been getting slower at sending out notifications to me. Contact me if not received within 24 hours (hit me at terribleminds at gmail dot com and I’ll get you all fixed up).

That’s all she wrote, folks. Hope those of you still stuck in the mud of Hurricane Sandy Asshole are working your way free and are safe and sane. Hope those of you stuck in the mud of NaNoWriMo are kicking the mud off your boots and writing like mad motherfuckers.

To buy the Penmonkey Chalupa Supreme package…

 




CHOOSE YOUR FATE




Five-Spot $5.00 USD
Tenner $10.00 USD
Five Plus Ten $15.00 USD
Andrew Jackson $20.00 USD
Why Thankya $25.00 USD
Wow, Really? $50.00 USD
Um, Holy Crap $100.00 USD






 

Amazon’s New Carpet Bomb Review Policy: Author Against Author

Typing this on a phone, so forgive my brevity.

It appears as if Amazon thinks — likely as a result of the sockpuppet scandal and the “buying reviews” thing — that authors should not be allowed to review other authors.

The troubling assertion here is a patently false and dangerous one: that writers compete with writers. We do not. We compete with other forms of media, perhaps. We compete with ourselves. But one book is not an enemy of another book. One author does not enter Thunderdome with another. We are part of a community. Sometimes on purpose. Sometime by dint of having our books enjoyed by the readers of another’s books.

This policy has the subtlety of a drone strike — taking out an office building of innocents to kill one dude. Got a rat problem? BURN THE HOUSE DOWN.

A better policy would be to HAVE a policy that can be regulated and enforced. Like, say: no sock puppet reviews. No abuse. Allow reviews to be flagged, investigated, and handled one to one.

I like Amazon as my new publisher. And yes, abuse exists and must be curtailed. But this is a rough policy. May I suggest we all write to them and suggest sanity and scalpels instead of a giant orbital laser? This has all the delicateness of the US “drug war.”

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Body

(Writing this post on my phone — forgive its brevity.)

Your story this week?

Gotta be about hiding a body.

That’s the only limitation.

1000 words or less.

Due by 11/9 at noon EST. Post at your online space. Link back here.

Now go and write.

25 Motivational Thoughts For Writers

With NaNoWriMo about to storm surge the writer (and wannabe-writer) community, this seems a good time to both tickle your pink parts and jam my boot up your boothole in terms of getting your penmonkey asses motivated. So, here goes — 25 motivational thoughts for writers, starting in 3… 2… 1…

1. You Are The God Of This Place

The blank page is your world. You choose what goes into it. Anything at all. Upend the frothy cup that is your heart and see what spills out. Murder plots. Train crashes. Pterodactyl love interests. Vampire threesomes. Housewife bondage. Demon spies! Cake heists! Suburban ennui! You can destroy people. You can build things. You can create love, foster hate, foment rage, invoke sorrow. Anything you want in any order you care to present it. This is your story. This is your jam.

2. Infinite Power, Zero Responsibility

Not only are you god of this place, but you have none of the responsibility divine beings are supposed to possess. You have literally no responsibility to anyone but yourself — you’re like a chimp with a handgun. Run amok! Shoot things! Who cares? There exists this non-canonical infancy gospel where Jesus is actually a little kid and he’s like, running around with crazy Jesus wizard powers. He’s killing them and resurrecting them and he’s turning water into Kool-Aid and loaves into Goldfish crackers — he’s just going apeshit with his Godborn sorcery. BE LIKE CRAZY JESUS BABY. Run around zapping shit with your God lightning! You owe nobody anything in this space. It’s adult swim. It’s booze cruise.

3. The Rarest Bird Of Them All

The easiest way to separate yourself from the unformed blobby mass of “aspiring” writers is to a) actually write and b) actually finish. That’s how easy it is to clamber up the ladder to the second echelon. Write. And finish what you write. That’s how you break away from the pack and leave the rest of the sickly herd for the hungry wolves of shame and self-doubt. And for all I know, actual wolves.

4. You’re Not Cleaning Up Some Sixth Grader’s Vomit

You have worse ways to spend a day than to spend it writing. Here’s a short list: artificially inseminating tigers, getting shot at by an opposing army, getting eaten by a grue, mopping the floors of a strip club, digging ditches and then pooping in them, cleaning up the vomit of nervous elementary school children, being forced to dance by strange dance-obsessed captors, working in a Shanghai sweatshop making consumer electronics for greedy Americans, and being punched to death by a coked-up Jean-Claude Van Damme. Point is: writing is a pretty great way to spend a morning, afternoon, or night.

5. Abuse The Freedom To Suck

Writing is not about perfection — that’s editing you’re thinking of. Editing is about arrangement, elegance, cutting down instead of building up. Editing is Jenga. Writing is about putting all the pieces out there. It’s construction in the strangest, sloppiest form. It’s inelegant. And imperfect. And insane. It’s supposed to be this way. Writing is a first-time bike-ride. You’re meant to wobble and accidentally drive into some rose bushes. Allow yourself the freedom — nay, the pleasure — to suck. This is playtime. (Or, as I call it: “Whiskey and Hookers” time.) Playtime is supposed to be messy.

6. And Embrace The Authority To Be Fucking Awesome

It’s your rodeo, hoss. You have the authority to write with confidence, to puff your chest out, to slap your ink-smeared genitals on the table as you utter your barbaric yawp. Aim big. Go bold. Don’t hide from your own most kick-ass desires. Don’t unfurl the story with hands trembling from the fear of what others will think. You have the power to do different. Yours is the authority to choose the road with your name on it. Write the story the tangle of desires and neuroses that comprise you so desire: A love affair between a man and a parking meter! A civil war between robots and other robots! A SPACE OPERA STARRING ROOT VEGETABLES. Fortune favors the bold. And being fucking awesome favors being fucking awesome.

7. You Can Clean Up The Mess Later

Writers are afforded the glorious possibility of endless do-overs and take-backs. Every draft a new chance to go back and clean up messes and untangle the tangled wires that hide beneath the narrative. Can you imagine that privilege in real life? “Hey, when you go outside today, anything you do can be undone and the whole day can be recreated.” Holy crap, the day you’d have! Bath salts and dolphin sex, car crashes and muddy graves. I’d have an orgy at a candy factory. (So sticky!) I’d kill someone just because I could. I’D EAT DEEP-FRIED LIPO FAT AT A COUNTRY FAIR SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF AMERICA. If I didn’t like it, I’d go back and wipe the slate clean, start over again. That’s your story. Your story is a madcap day whose minutes and hours subject to your whims of rewriting — or unwriting.

8. A Room Full Of Starving Story Addicts

For all the dire predictions about writing and publishing, I’m going to make a promise to you: the audience is waiting. They’re a subway car full of twitchy story tweakers going around and around, looking for any stop that will give them good story. They’re there for you. They’re waiting for your tale told. Writers often feel like they’re just sobbing into the void, but the audience will hear your plaintive cries, young storyteller. You may feel like a story flunky, but be sure that the audience is full of story junkies. Hey, snap, that rhymed and I didn’t even mean it to. FUCK YEAH WORDS.

9. I’m Talking About Motherfucking Ice Cream, Son

You are allowed to live a reward-driven life. You want me to motivate you? Go motivate yourself. (That is not code for “go fuck yourself,” unless I don’t like you, then it totally is.) Set a various goals and when you hit them, do something nice for yourself. I mean, the goal shouldn’t be, “Every time I write a sentence, I get an ice cream cone,” because that sir is a high-speed rail straight to the heart of Diabetesburg. But hit your mark of 2000 words a day? Write a chapter? Finish the book? Accept how kick-ass that is and reward yourself. It’s okay. You have my permission. (As long as you don’t bogart that ice cream. Dick.)

10. Nobody Else Writes Like You

When all your force fields and filters are down, when you’ve stripped yourself of your presuppositions and your fears and needs and your pants, you discover that nobody in the world writes like you. Nobody has your ideas. Nobody has your narrative memetic code. You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake, no. But your writing — your writing is your fingerprint. Your voice is yours and yours alone.

11. We’re Totally Built For This

Someone will look down on you at some point (or, if you’re me, at frequent points throughout your day) for being what you want to be. Writer. Author. Artist. Storyteller. Here’s why that’s a dumpster full of shitballs: we are built for this. One of the things that lashes us all together with rope and chain and psychic plasm is our desire — nay, our sacred fucking need — to tell stories. We’ve been doing it since we drew Neanderthals chasing unicorns on cave walls. We tell stories about the weather, about work, about family and friends, about pets and sex and about that time that friend we have at work had sex with his pet python while a hurricane raged outside. This is what we do. You’re just codifying it. Making it real.

12. One Word After The Other

The technical side of writing — by which I mean, the physical act itself — is one of the easiest things you can do. It’s literally one word placed after the other with some appropriate punctuation thrown in between breaths and ending thoughts. Yes, it gets more complex once you start thinking about narrative, character, meaning, text versus subtext — but for now, fuck all that. Just breathe. Let the tension go out of you (not so much you pee yourself). This is like LEGO. One block upon the other. One word after the next.

13. Just Write 100 More Words

A frequent phrase said when I was a child or a teenager: just ten more minutes. Meaning, it was time to go to sleep (as a child) or time to get up for school (as a teenager) and all I wanted to do was avoid sleep (child) or sleep longer (teenager). As a writer, play the same game with yourself: you want to give up, close the notebook, save the story? Just 100 more words. That’s all. Push yourself just a little. A hundred words ain’t much (it’s about the size of this text block). And you’d be amazed at how 100 words just isn’t enough.

14. This Is How You Get Better

Writing is a muscle: the more you use it the stronger it gets. Writing is like a dog: the more you train it, the smarter it becomes. Writing is like one of your orifices: every time you allow a bigger object to be inserted within (pinky, buttplug, fist, cucumber, wiffle ball bat, railroad tie) you train it to gape wider the next time. …okay, maybe not so much the last one. Still: writing begets writing. You may not be great — or even good — now. But effort yields fruit. Fruit you may later jam up your ass for pleasure. Wait, what?

15. The More You Do It, The Easier It Gets

It’s not just about getting better. It’s about it becoming easier. More natural. More intuitive. The act of writing cultivates both calluses (a metaphorical hardening the fuck up, Care Bear) and instinct (where your decisions as a word-captain and story-slinger are less the product of rigorous thought and more the result of you just having a gut feeling and going with it). Hard at first. Easier over time.

16. You Are Not The Omega Man

You are not alone. You are not Lonely Writer Person on Planet Nobody. We all get what you’re going through. We know your triumphs and terrors. The future of writing will be us uploading ourselves to The Cloud (probably on Amazon’s servers), our spirit animals glomming together to howl a single song, but for now, we’re all located at our individualized story pods, cranking out the words by ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone. We have community. We have shared understanding. Reiterate: You are not alone.

17. Your Love For Writing Is Enduring And Imperfect

Some days will be great and other days will be hard. Some days you will love the thing that you’re doing so intimately and so completely that you feel like you achieved some kind of narrative orgasmic apotheosis, whereas other days you will feel nothing but septic hate gurgling in your empty belly and every word slung will feel like a brick flung into your own nose. Your love for this thing you do needn’t be there every day. Every day won’t feel like winning the championship. But the love endures, imperfect as it is.

18. It’s Okay That Some Days Are Really Fucking Hard

Some days are difficult. The words feel like dead fish flopping out onto a dirty floor. Hell, maybe they don’t fall out at all but feel like they must be yanked one by one, the act both painful and slow, as if you’re extracting teeth. Some days are shitty. Is what it is. All writers go through it. You want to do this thing then don’t look at the shitty days as a problem: see them as a challenge that prove your pudding.

19. Writer’s Block Is Not A Real Thing

You can be blocked. Everybody gets blocked. But it’s not special. It’s not unique to writers. It doesn’t deserve its name or the credit it receives. More importantly, it isn’t a physical thing — it isn’t a gorilla with a croquet mallet who smashes your hand every time you reach for the keyboard. You can get past it. You think past it. You write past it. You kick it in the teeth and step over its twitching body.

20. How To Imagine The Haters

If there is one thing we have learned upon this old Internet of ours, it is: haters gonna hate. You will ever have disbelievers among your ranks, those who pop up like scowling gophers, boring holes through your well-being, your hopes, your dreams. It is very important not to prove the haters right. It is very important to know where to place the haters in rank of importance, which is to say, below telemarketers, below any television show on TLC, below crotch fungus and garbage fires and anal cankers. Imagine the haters herded into a pen. Eaten by the tigers of your own awesomeness. Then digested. Shat out. And burned with flamethrowers. The only power you should afford the haters is the power to eat curb.

21. Multiple Shots At Goal

Just as you get multiple chances to fix a single story, you get multiple stories to fill your life — as many as you care to cram into your days, months, years. Our lives are a series of stories untold, and it’s up to you to tell them. This one might not be successful. But the next one might.

22. The Leprechaun’s Gift

At the end of this rainbow are whatever rewards you want. Money? It’s there. Some say writers don’t earn out, that you can’t make a living doing this thing that we do. That’s a quiver of broken arrows: don’t sling it over your shoulder. I do it. I know a lot of writers who do it. So can you. But it’s not just money at the end: it’s self-fulfillment. It’s love. It’s confidence. It’s the things you’ve learned about yourself, about the craft of writing, about the art of storytelling. You never know what you’ll find until you climb that motherfucking rainbow. (One time I found a cardboard box of vintage porn and tasty grilled cheese sandwiches.) Writing is a journey. Each story just one leg of the trip. So start walking.

23. You Are Your Only Enemy

You have no enemy but yourself. You’re the only one that brings a story into existence, or, as it may turn out, fails to engineer that existence. Your enemy is not your spouse, your kids, your boss, your neighbor, your dog, your mother, your buddy. It is not time, work, addiction, distraction. It is not video games or Twitter, Facebook or television. Your enemy is fear. And indolence. And lack of discipline. And: uncertainty. And: lack of self-esteem. And all those things live inside your heart and your head. That’s hard to hear at first, but the trick is, that means you have the power to sweep all that shit off the table until it clatters and shatters against the floor. You’re the only one standing in your own way so, knock down your own worst inclinations and get to it. Disclaimer: actually, unicorns are frequently the writer’s enemy and if you got a unicorn problem best thing I can recommend is to call a priest. You can’t kill those things with weedkiller. And they deflect bullets with their horns. That’s no lie. Unicorns are pesky assholes.

24. This Matters

Story matters. Writing is important. Stories make the world go around. Many things begin as words on a page. It matters to the world. And it matters to you. Don’t let anyone rob you of that. Don’t rob yourself of it, either. Don’t diminish. Don’t dismiss. Embrace. Create. Accelerate.

25. Um, What Are You Still Doing Here?

Uh, hello? You should’ve bailed on me ten list items ago. What the fidgety fuck are you still doing here? Whatever it is you want to write — novel, script, short story, blog post, haiku out of fridge magnets — go forth and do it. Don’t wait for me. Don’t wait for all the answers. Don’t wait for permission, motivation, inspiration. It’s time to saddle up and gallop forth — through the white dust and the red sand, through the darkness of your own fears or inadequacies and into the light of a tale told to completion. Quit lookin’ at me. Quit looking for reasons. Quit dicking around. Close this browser and go tell a story, willya?

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

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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

Favorite Horror Novel

It’s Halloween.

Of course, that means I want to know about your favorite horror novel.

Past or present.

Not the best horror novel –

This isn’t precisely about quality.

It’s about the ones you love. The ones you re-read.

The ones that scare the unholy ghost right out of your skin.

Start recommending.

(For the record, while I don’t know that it’ll count as my favorite, I’m finally reading Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill and that’s got a bonafide creepy vibe going for it. Really spooky stuff. You also can’t go wrong by reading, uhh, anything by Robert McCammon. But start with Swan Song, since we’re talking.)

Hurricane Stories

So, I’m writing this Monday morning, and I’m taking this week’s “list of 25″ (25 Motivational Thoughts For Writers) and casually boot-nudging it to next Tuesday. Because, I’m going to hastily assume that some 5-10 million of you crazy kids in the Northeast have been shuttered by the gale-force winds and squirrel-drowning rains of STORMVIATHAN.

Hell, for all I know, I’m currently in a house crushed by falling trees, a house without power, a house where I’m forced to sit under a shattered roof with wife, son, old dog, and new puppy and eat like, cold soup out of a can. Mmm. SO GOOD.

Anyway, so here’s just a post to pop in and say — hey, how are you doing in the hurricane? Let us know what’s up in your neck of the woods. Hell, tell us a story. True as you care to make it. A story about storms you’ve seen or witnessed. Let the comment section turn into whatever you need it to turn into it. (Or, if you’re all buried under a brand new lake and exist without electricity, feel free to ignore it completely.)

Good luck to those in the path of Stormviathan.

Be well. Stay safe and sane. Say “hi” if you find the time.