Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 235

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?

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

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.

What The World Thinks Of Writers, Apparently

I, on a lark, was looking for synonyms or slang terms for writer.

Above was what I found at Thesaurus.com:

That doesn’t speak well for what the world thinks of writers.

(Never mind the faintly racist implication of putting “Gypsy” there.)

It adds up, I suppose. I’ve encountered the attitude quite frequently that we’re a bunch of wifty slugabeds, high from huffing our own delusional dreams — writer as synonymous with lacking good judgment.

Interesting, if a little troubling.

And, of course, at the core of it, a nugget of truth. I’ve met many-a-writer who are basically undisciplined wannabe’s — dilettantes, as the list points out — who claim to be this thing but never really do enough to support that claim. Talk about writing in the same way one might talk about moving to the islands, or building a boat, or learning how to macrame the cat. (Is that a thing?)

They talk about it. But never seem to write.

Not much to say here except:

Hey, let’s go out and prove ‘em wrong.

Fuck talking. Start writing.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Game Of Aspects (Halloweenie Edition)

Last week’s challenge, “Five Ingredients Make A Story,” is right here.

First, a little bit of housekeeping — time to announce the winner of the last two winnable challenges!

The Game of Aspects: Shiri Sondheimer! Won for her story: MEAL.

For the “Scary Story In Three Sentences,” I declare Joe Hart the winner for this one:

“I’ll see you in little bits!” Allen called over his shoulder as he made his way to the entry of the house.

“What?” his wife asked over the hum of her hairdryer.

“You heard me,” Allen said nodding to the man with the fire axe as they passed each other in the hall.

Congrats! Both of you should email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Now, let’s jump into this week’s challenge.

Get your d10s or your random number generator, word-cobblers.

It’s time for another game of aspects.

Three categories — this time, a mix of Horror Subgenre, Conflict, Setting and Must Feature Ingredient.

You know the drill:

Choose one from each category. I’ll offer the variant rule that you may ignore one category if you see fit.

The way you choose one from each category is either a) you just fucking pick one because you are the master of your own destiny b) you roll a 10-sided die or c) you use a number generator like this one right here.

Write a piece of flash fiction up to 1000 words.

Post at your online space.

Link back here.

Due by noon on October 31st, which is not Friday, but rather, Wednesday.

And it’s Halloween, so.

Let’s rock.

Horror Subgenre

Ghost Story

Splatterpunk

Aliens

Erotic Horror

Vampire Fiction

Southern Gothic

Weird Tales

Psychological Horror

Lovecraftian

Horror-Comedy

Conflict

Nature Attacks!

Man Versus His Own Waning Sanity!

Trapped!

Besieged By The Enemy!

Broken Home!

Revenge!

Apocalypse!

Lost!

Love Gone Wrong!

Evil Awakens!

Setting

Insane Asylum

Small Town, America

Abandoned Space Station

Old Silver Mine

Carnival

High School

The Jungle

Strip Club

An Airplane Mid-Flight

Beneath The Sea

Must Feature Ingredient

Parasite

Scarecrow

Succubus / Incubus

Sentient Fungus

Blood Magic

Creature From The Moon

An Ancient Curse

Stage Magic

Cannibals

An Evil Doctor

Seeking New Victims, I Mean, Subjects For The Interview Chair

And I’m slowly running out of interview subjects once again.

This is not, by the way, a blog post soliciting authors to email me for interviews. That happened last time and the resultant avalanche was mighty. (I literally still don’t know if I’m un-buried; I’m sure I missed emails and failed to respond to people accordingly, and if that happened, you have my apologies. I literally got many hundreds of emails, which surprised the crap out of me. I was woefully unprepared.)

What is this, then? This is me, asking you, the audience here, who you want me to interview.

I figure, hey, last week I managed to get Margaret Atwood. Any storyteller below Atwood on the Authorial Chain of Being (which is, I think, most everyone) is fair game at least for me to ask. Right? Right. Plus, this blog gets ~250k hits a month these days (which is why I’m starting to pay with blood for the privilege of someone else hosting it), so I’ve got that going for me.

So. Big picture, little picture, whatever:

What storytellers do you want to see me interview here?

They can be storytellers you love, or know, or who you think are appropriately controversial.

And don’t feel limited to just authors.

Game designers! Filmmakers! Comic folks! Transmedia practitioners!

Now, you may still be saying, “But I’m a storyteller and I want to recommend me, me, me.”

Okay, fine.

Here’s how you do it if you still want to solicit an interview at this blog.

You email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com with the following subject line:

[terribleminds-interview] Your Name + Your Project

(Meaning, duh, type out your actual name and your project name.)

I also demand a copy of whatever project you’ve got going on. E-copy or physical copy fine.

I am quite unlikely to publish interviews with self-published authors unless you have other published credentials or some manner of kick-ass sales numbers or some other success story worth talking about. I apologize for this but the majority of those emails I had to (unsuccessfully) wade through were from self-published authors. It was… not pleasant.

So, there you go.

Now, to finish up: we’ve got interviews ideally coming in from James Finn Garner, Jake Bible, Mike Underwood, and Alex Hughes. But, as noted: will still need more to carry us past the holidays and into the new year, so jump into the comments and get to recommendin’.

Oh! Another question, actually.

If you have new questions you’d like me to ask all interview subjects, toss them into the comments, too. With the new batch of interviews I’ll probably once more update my initial 10 questions.

The Eerily Inexplicable

So, a little while back I asked you about your personal “glitch in the Matrix” moments, which is really just another way to ask you about the really bizarre-o shit that’s happened to you. Stuff you just can’t explain.

I love that stuff. I don’t like the pre-fab ghost stories anymore, the old wraparound urban legends that cycle back – I like the stuff that actually happened. Stuff that weirds you the fuck out even still when you think about it. And, it’s Halloween, so it seems like a really cool time to get back into it.

Once again I ask:

What weird stuff has happened to you? From hauntings to Fortean encounters to straight-up uncategorizable spookiness. Share and scare, baby, share and scare.

Why Writers Must Beware Quackery

Long story short:

Hey! I’m back from both Storyworld and Writer’s Digest Conference West in Los Angeles and I’m refreshed and apple-cheeked and full of vim and vig… okay, no. I’m actually kinda jet-lagged and dung-brained. My sincerest wish is to go back to bed and crawl into it and not wake up for like, mmm, three days.

But, oh well. WRITER GONNA WRITE.

Anyway. These two conferences — very different animals. The first brings together people of multiple paths and persuasions (writers! techies! advertisers! filmmakers!) whereas the former brings together mostly writers, and writers on a very particular path — which is to say, the path that leads to the shining temple on the hill called “The Publishing House.”

Generally speaking, conferences can be great experiences for writers new and old. Both in terms of the community you forge, the lessons you learn, and the liquor you consume in great heaping quaffs.

Wait, did I say “liquor?” I meant… er, “wisdom.”

Still.

Still.

A writer’s conference is rarely a straight arrow toward said wisdom. It’s a maze, actually — a kinky tangle of pathways, many of which in my eyes are dead-ends. By “dead-ends,” I mean, the path stops moving forward as it get stuck on some bad information or troubling advice that  makes it sound like you’ve already reached the end. There at the dead-end is a chair and a typewriter and a feeling of having made it.

Put more succinctly, these conferences always contain a measure of bullshit.

Some of this bullshit is harmless.

Some of it — to the writer willing to accept it — is actually a little bit dangerous.

Dangerous in that it will set you back rather than spring you forward. Dangerous in that it has all the air of medical quackery — untested answers that sound like truth and promise result (published book! robust boner! magic tonic!) and often require you to shell out some cash to get a taste of what sounds like the nectar of the gods but is really like, 7-Up and hull cleaner.

Five things to watch out for, then. Both at meatspace conferences and online.

Ready? Let’s rock.

Beware Answers Over Options

Here’s how this works: you, as a writer newly walking the path of penmonkey novitiate, have no idea what the fuck is going on. Right? It’s a lot to digest. Fuckbuckets of information. Data overload. So, you think, “Okay, I just need to get my bearings here. I need a map. Or even the torn corner of a map. Or at the bare minimum I need like, a compass so I know just where north points.”

Then you go to a conference like this and — hey! Look!

Other writerly humans! Pointing the way with big foam fingers!

Many of these people are helpful.

Many of them are sirens inadvertently willing to crash your seaswept dinghy into the fucking rocks.

Here’s one of the ways you can tell: they’re not there to present options.

They’re not there to present a rounded picture of the unfirm realities of publishing. They’re not willing to tell you that the whole thing is a maze: they’re willing to tell you that they have the path through it. They exist to present a single face to the entire writing-storytelling-publishing ecosystem, revealing an alarming and overly simplistic lack of diversity.

More to the point, they have The One True Way instead of saying:

Hey, Look, There Exists A Whole Lotta Ways And I’ve Done One And Others Have Tried Others And Success Is Not An Easy Equation Where A + B = Bestselling Inkslinger And I’m Sorry But It’s A Lot More Complicated Than You Hope But That’s Actually A Good Thing, Too.

Some folks will try to cover up one or many forks in the road. Or, worse, they’re focused on what happens so far down the road that you start to feel like it’s always about the singular end result rather than the diverse paths to that end. (Again, too many at these conferences want to talk about How To Get Published rather than How To Write Something Worth Publishing. It’s be like an architect learning first how to handle permits and cut ribbons before learning how to put buildings together.)

Beware Absolutes And Guarantees

DON’T EVER SELF-PUBLISH.

DON’T EVER TRADITIONALLY PUBLISH.

YOU HAVE TO HAVE AN AGENT.

AGENTS ARE EVIL.

YOU HAVE TO BLOG/TWEET/GOOGLE HANGOUT/SHILL YOUR NAKED GYRATING BODY AT THE HIGHWAY’S EDGE IF YOU’RE EVER GOING TO ACTUALLY BE A PUBLISHED WRITER AND THERE’S NO WAY TO BE A PUBLISHED WRITER UNLESS YOU BLOG/TWEET/GOOGLE HANGOUT/SHILL YOUR NAKED GYRATING BODY AT THE HIGHWAY’S EDGE.

Writing advice often comes in absolutes.

Do this. Don’t do that. This is 100% true 100% of the time.

It is, of course, a fucking sick-bag full of rank malarky.

(God, can we all just take a moment to thank VP Biden for bringing that one back? Malarky? I also want “cockamamie” to make a robust return, so let’s all collectively work on that.)

I’ve said many a time that every writer seems to dig his own way into the publishing mountain, then detonating the tunnel behind him. I’ve heard so many weird ways into the various industries the only clear revelation is that there is no clear revelation. Few absolutes (outside maybe “finish your shit, dumdum”) hold any water at all and can be disproven at a moment’s notice. This is, of course, the danger of when “writing advice” becomes “proclamations of authorial truth.”

Beware Anybody Without A Single Fucking Meaningful Credential

Writers without great success — or any success at all — are totally allowed to talk about writing. We all want to talk about it. Even those without publishing contracts have information and ideas that may be valuable.

That’s not the same thing as letting those people up on a stage to talk to you about How To [Insert Writerly Task Here]. There’s a difference between talking about writing and presenting yourself as an expert on writing, and yet somehow there exists a great many of the latter — self-proclaimed experts who want to tell you all these great industry secrets or all these tried-and-true paths and yet appear to have neither exploited those secrets nor walked any of those paths.

They are offering theoretical information gussied up to look like pragmatic practice.

They’re not doctors, yet they’re selling medicine.

Again: quackery.

You gotta treat this stuff a little bit like science: these self-proclaimed experts have to prove their mettle, first. And one aspect of this burden of proof comes in the form of, “Oh, yeah, I’m actually a writer with some success, not just another jackhole with an unfounded opinion.”

Beware Anybody With Something To Sell

Listen, I get it. We’re all shilling something. I certainly sell books-on-writing (though 90% of that information is also free here on the blog), so I’m by no means pure. But some conference speakers are very clearly agenda-based and they are pushing an agenda not because it’s good for you but, rather, good for them. It’s the same problem with fad diets and social media gurus — people promising enlightenment and success (and worst of all, get rich quick tips) largely in order to line their own pockets.

That’s not to say anybody with a writing book is bad news. I mean, I’ve read a handful of writing books that I love and to this day cradle to my bosom as I open them up just to read snippets of smart passages.

But, anybody selling anything should at least get a wary eyebrow raise. And when in combination with a lot of these other “beware, beware, beware, awooga, awooga, awooga” elements, it should paint a picture of caution, cuidado, verboten. The colors of a venomous toad, the rattle of the snake’s tail.

Beware The Quick-And-Easy Fix

I am a proponent of increasing your speed as a writer. It’s becoming one axis of survival — a swiftness of production and of the prose you produce. But a lot of the solutions often feel like quick fixes or bad spackle jobs — you get from them the informercial vibe that all you have to do is Perform This Technique And You’ll Be A Writer In No-Time! It’s less about write faster (which is an easy and fairly basic prescription) and more about get published faster (which is an impossible thing to gauge unless you’re self-publishing and therein I’d politely note that speed often exists often in antithesis to quality).

The Sum Up

I’m not saying that every speaker at writing conferences or conventions is dubious. Far from it — many are actually brimming over with really good ideas and information not from 30,000 feet but from right there in the mud and the blood of the battleground.

What I am saying is, you will also go to these things and hear a lot of bad information robed in the clothes of promises and solutions and prescriptions and you have to be prepared to go into any conference or open any blog post or book on writing advice wearing the impenetrable armor of the skeptic. Writing advice should never be about absolutes or unequivocal answers but about potential paths, about options and suggestions and actual experiences. And a lot of this falls to you, the writer.

Because you need to go in with your eyes open. And you need to go in not being so hungry for answers that you’re desperate to embrace what any homeless person tells you is truth. It’s on you to be smart, be practical, and not let the quacks get their… uhh, well, I was going to go with “teeth in you,” but ducks don’t really have teeth, so let’s just go with, “don’t let the quacks gum you to death with their pond-slick bills.”

Books That Have Left Their Mark Upon Your Heart

A good book tends to do two things in unequal measure:

It makes you think.

It makes you feel.

It’s the latter I want to ask about today.

Tell us about a book that made you feel something. That affected you deeply.

Tell us what it is, by whom, and how-slash-why it affected you.

To pause for a moment and to define “affected” — I don’t mean something glib like, “It bored me.” Yes, that’s technically an effect, but not what I mean. I mean a book that cut deep. That made you feel griefstruck or giddy, that somehow birthed in you an emotion or effect not normally expected. A book that punches hard. A book that leaves scars or tattoos, big or small. That broke your heart, or maybe mended it.

I’ll hang up and wait for your call.

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