Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 254

25 Things Writers Should Know About Agents

(Note: this post relates mostly to fiction authors seeking literary agents, though certainly has some bleed-over regarding those with screenplays or non-fiction proposals or what-not.)

1. No, You Don't Need An Agent

Let's just get that out of the way right now. You do not require an agent to survive or be successful in this business. If you are without an agent you will not be shot in the streets by roving gangs of publisher-thugs. It is a myth that you cannot get published or produced without an agent to get you there. You may want an agent. (I have one, and am happy I do.) But you do not, strictly speaking, require one.

2. Do Some Due Diligence

Heh. Doo-doo. Ahem. What I mean is, do your goddamn homework. Agents get a rap for being elitists or gatekeepers or whatever, but you have to have some sympathy for what they do: they basically open their digital doors to whatever anybody wants to send them. An agent says, "I represent literary fiction," and just the same they get flooded with sci-fi and screenplays and kid's books and long-lost Tesla blueprints and insane schizoid scrawls written in crayon and possum vomit. The agent's job half the time is to pick through the mud-glop slurry to try to find the few potential pearls hidden deep in the mire. If every writer did research and learned to target the right agents for their manuscripts, the whole thing would probably run a lot more cleanly. So: do your research. Why willingly advertise yourself as a total dickbrain?

3. Put The "Social" In "Social" Media

Many agents are on social media. (And one might wonder why you'd want an agent who isn't on social media.) Follow them. Find out what they're looking for. Discover whether or not they're closed to submissions. See if they have any pet peeves (like, say, you snail-mailing a query filled with glitter and a "mysterious white powder"). You can even — gasp — ask them questions.

4. (But Please Don't Stalk Them)

The rules of our polite society still apply. Don't be crazy. Don't be an asshole. Act like a professional. Do not hide in an agent's shrubs or sneak onto their fire escape. C'mon. Don't be weird.

5. If They Say Jump, You Ask, "Can I Do A Karate Kick To Show You My Moves?"

Individual agents ask for individual things. This one wants the first chapter. That one wants the first five pages. A third doesn't want any part of your manuscript until requested. A fourth asks that you send him a query while the moon's in Sagittarius and then only via snail mail and using a query letter scented with the musk glands of a pubescent ermine. (Though why you'd want an agent who still only accepts queries via the Pony Express is between you and your Penmonkey Jesus.) If you're going to query a specific agent, perform the particular tasks that agent requires. Your mother thinks you're a rare and beautiful bird. An agent just thinks you're another cuckoo.

6. Repeat After Me: "Money In, Not Money Out"

You do not pay an agent. If an agent asks for money to look at your submission or anything like that, you can be sure he's either a) a scam artist or b) really bad at his job. You want neither of these things. Your relationship to an agent is the same as it is to a publisher: money in, not money out. They help you get paid, and an agent takes a cut of that. Easy-peasy stung-by-beesy.

7. My Query Formula

I split my query into three portions: the Hook, the Pitch, the Bio. All bookended by the usual pleasantries and greetings and gratitude. The Hook is a single-sentence logline that is meant to grab the agent by the short-and-curlies. The Pitch is a subsequent paragraph exploding out the Hook (synopsizing in a single paragraph as opposed to a single sentence). The Bio is a very short closing paragraph about you. You want to keep the whole thing contained on a single page, which means around 350-400 words max. You want to write with confidence, but not ego. You do not want to presume to tell the agent how to do the agent's job. Simple. Direct. Clear. Confident. And again, blah blah blah, don't be a dick, don't be crazy, this is a professional document, etcetera and whatever. Oh: QueryShark. And AgentQuery. Love both.

8. Agents Are Trained To Smell Your Flopsweat

Another note about "confidence:" agents have powerful sniffers and can smell the stink of your desperation from three blocks away. I've read too many queries that have a wishy-washy vibe, that come spackled with fear and uncertainty and bring this sense of laying prostrate before the pedestal and hoping to be allowed to make with the slobbery ring-kisses. If you think your work is good enough to query, then write the query with that kind of authority. If you don't think that it's good enough to query? Then it probably isn't, so don't waste their time. Or, more importantly, your own.

9. Agents Have Seen Everything, But They Haven't Seen You

Agents have seen it all. They are the first line of defense in the war against Bad Books and Shitty Storytelling. It's a wonder that some of them don't just snap and try to take out half of New York City with a dirty bomb made of radioactive stink-fist query letters and cat turd manuscripts. That's a scary thought: they've seen everything already. But the one thing they haven't seen is you. Just as I exhort authors to put themselves on the page of their stories, I say the same regarding your communication with potential agents. Described more directly: you have a voice, so use it.

10. The Polite Reminder

You will at times send out a query and hear nothing. Many agents will suggest a response time on their agency websites or social media pages, and most are reasonable (though every once in a while you read a whopper: "You will receive a response to your query sometime after the year when we first settle on Mars and start flying to work with jetpacks"). If you pass this window of time and have not heard anything, a very short and polite and totally not-crazy reminder is entirely appropriate. If you don't hear anything after that, well — maybe time to write that agent off and concentrate your fire on another star destroyer.

11. You Manuscript Is Not Half-a-Dick

Do not try to query an incomplete and unedited manuscript. Don't. Don't. Seriously. Behold my steely gaze and my all caps blog-making: DON'T. You wouldn't try to sell somebody a half-eaten cupcake. You wouldn't wave around a half-a-dick. If you're fortunate enough that the agent requests a full manuscript, you best be ready to deliver on that delightful demand. Oh, and make sure it's formatted correctly, okay? I don't know that an agent will toss your shit in a trash-can just because the manuscript font is Times New Roman instead of Courier (I think mine was in TNR, actually), but they will ditch it if the formatting makes reading it feel like you're burning your eyes with lit cigarettes.

12. Agents Are Readers

It's easy to imagine agents as iron-hearted gatekeepers guarding the gates of Publishing Eden with their swords of fire: marketing angels serving the God of the Almighty Dollar. Most of the agents I know and have met are readers first. They do this because they love this, not because it pays them in private jets and jacuzzis filled with 40-year-Macallan Scotch. They like to read. They love books. Which is awesome.

13. That Said, This Is A Business

Agents are called upon to make business decisions, too. That's the sad fact of the penmonkey existence: your wordsmithy may be top-notch, your storytelling may be the bee's pajamas, but if doesn't seem like it'll survive in the marketplace, then that's just how the dung-ball rolls. They make these decisions based on what one assumes is past experience, current trends and a dollop of gut instinct. Just the same, it doesn't mean they're right — it's not like they run your manuscript through a Publi-Bot 9009 and he BEEP BOOP BEEP computes the chances of your manuscript being a success or failure. Rejections from agents that suggest the story and writing are solid but they're not sure it'll sell is a sign to do one of three things: keep querying, try out some smaller publishers, or self-publish.

14. Your Heartbreak Is Their Heartbreak

Agents understand rejection. They have to — they go through it same as you do. They rep authors and the books of those authors and they write pitch letters same as you write query letters and they send those letters out to editors and they go through rejection same as you — they may be one step removed (as in, an agent did not write the book) but they've invested time and patience and blood and sweat into it, too. A book they rep gets rejected is sad for them same as it's sad for you — and not just as lost money.

15. Hot Author-On-Author Action

Author referrals matter. They are not the end-all be-all of everything, but I know of many authors who ended up with agents when another author recommended them. That said, don't cozy up to authors on the sole hope they'll refer you to an agent — that's a little sleazy. You gotta at least buy them drinks and dinner first. Me, I demand nothing less than a Tijuana panther show. What? Donkey shows are so passé!

16. A Deal In Hand Is Better Than A Bird In Hand Because, Y'know, Bird Poop

This is one of those paradoxical conundrums like, "Every job requires experience but a job is the only way to get experience." The story goes that it's easier to get an agent if you already have a deal, but of course a lot of publishers don't offer deals to unagented authors. (Further twisting the nipple are the stories that pop up: "I had a deal in hand, went to agents, and they still turned me down.") If you can get a deal pre-agent, then it's a good time to get an agent — but, just the same, don't believe anybody who tells you that it's a necessary component. I, among many authors, did not have a deal in hand and yet still have an agent.

17. The Bones Of Literary Agents And Dodo Birds

Are literary agents going to go extinct in the New Publishing Media Regime? Fuck if I know. What am I, an oracle? Sure, I sometimes huff printer ink and decipher the secret hidden meanings in coffee grounds and mouse scat, but that doesn't mean I have a good answer here. My guess is that agents aren't going anywhere, just as the whole of the publishing industry isn't going anywhere. It may slim down. It may cull those who are not forward-thinking. It may force them to adopt new roles. But I do not believe literary agents are on the endangered list. Now pass the printer ink. DADDY NEEDS TO GET GOOFY.

18. Some Agents Are Total Dickbags

Rant time. Some agents get the reputation as cold and callous rainmaking gatekeepers because they act like it. Not every agent is the shining embodiment of good-hearted book-reading do-it-cause-we-love-it folk. Some agents won't write you back. Some will snark off about authors on social media (agents, seriously, please don't do this — just as you wouldn't want an author to do this to you, you shouldn't do this to an author). Some will string you along. When I went out to agents with BLACKBIRDS, I was a little amazed that while agents demand professional behavior, several chose not to be professional in return — and we're talking agents who belong to big agencies, not like, some sleazy bookmonger from Topeka. Some strung me along. Some requested full manuscripts while at the same time forgetting I ever existed. Some responded six, even eight months after I already had an agent. I'd say somewhere between 10-20% of my total experience with agents was negative. The occasional agent is an unprofessional prick.

19. (But That's Just The Way People Are)

One bad agent doesn't make all agents bad. I've seen reprehensible actions by publishers. I've seen asshole authors and woefully unprofessional self-publishers. Don't let bad examples be representative of the whole.

20. Pick Proper

Just gonna put this out there: a bad agent will do more harm to your career than no agent at all. You should find the right match. Find an agent with whom you get along. Consult your intestinal flora.

21. A Good Agent Cultivates The Author

A good agent cares about the author, not just about the author as a delivery system for a single book (or, perhaps, a single book that comes inconveniently paired with the author). The right agent has your career in mind. The right agent buys you liquor and puppies. Okay, maybe not so much with the liquor and puppies. But if any agents are reading this, I'm just saying: let's all get on board the liquor-and-puppies train.

22. A Good Agent Defends The Writer Against The System

I don't mean to get all Rage-Against-The-Machiney on you, but the traditional publishing system can, at times, be a bit predatory. This is by no means universal but once in a while you hear a real horror story about an author who ends up signing a contract that basically guarantees that if his book makes it into print he has name his first son after the publisher and if the doesn't become a NYT bestseller the author has to come and wash his editor's car. An agent defends the author against such predation. The agent helps the author not just get a good deal but the best deal.  The agent makes sure the author doesn't get fucked.

23. A Good Agent Is Savvy Toward The Future

Agents who look down on new media? BZZT. Agents who look down on self-publishing? BZZT. Agents who are afraid of digital? BZZT. Authors need to be much more versatile and media-savvy in this day and age to survive, and agents have to do the same. Don't sign on with a backwards-looking agent. You want an agent who knows how to duck and roll, not stand there and get punched.

24. Sometimes, You Need To Break Up

If your agent isn't working for you or you're not simpatico with the agent, maybe it's time for an old-fashioned break-up. It happens. It has to be hard to do (I've never done it and have no reason to do so), but why stay in a business relationship that isn't serving either of your needs? Just don't send a drunken text at 3:30 in the morning. Have some class. Go there in person and throw a potted plant through their window! (Okay, maybe don't do that either. What do I know? I'm drunk right now!)

25. One Word: Symbiosis

The relationship between writer and agent is a two-way street. While it's true that the agent works for you and you don't work for the agent, this is still a relationship based on mutual gain — neither is the other's bitch, but both should listen to and respect the other, even if it is the author who has final say (as it is the author's life and career). I'm not suggesting that the author is crocodile and the agent is little bird who picks the croc's teeth, but I am suggesting that each feeds off the relationship in positive ways. If you find that the relationship isn't symbiotic, then maybe it's time to take another look at #24, dontcha think?

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Your Own Personal Glitches In The Matrix

Man, I dunno who sent it to me (apologies, Twitter, last week was a demon from beyond the Hell Dimension, and my brain is notoriously like a sieve), but I caught wind of this thread at Reddit:

"Tell me your GLITCH IN THE MATRIX stories."

(Core idea: remember that Deja Vu cat-replication scene in The Matrix? Meaning, something weird and inexplicable becomes a sign that the program is glitching on you.)

Go there, revel in the creepy weirdness.

And then, since I'm fascinated with this stuff, feel free to share (here, ideally) your own weird-ass incomprehensible Fortean "Matrix-Glitch" moments from your own life. Had any totally bizarre-o shit happen? Why not share? Disseminate your own weird-ass Creepypasta for all to see!

Flash Fiction Challenge: "Random Photo Story"

Last week's challenge — "Three Sentences For Bear71" is up. I'll keep folks updated on that page if any are selected and incorporated into the Bear71 experience at the Sundance Film Festical.

This challenge?

Pretty straightforward.

Go here: http://bighugelabs.com/random.php

It will pull up six random Flickr photos.

You will choose three of these photos and incorporate them into a single piece of flash fiction.

Be sure to give us the links of the three photos as well as the link to your story.

You've got 1,000 words.

You've got one week (Fri, Jan 27th, noon EST).

The Chuck Update

You want an update? I gotcher update right here, pal.

• Have you told the world yet how you're going to die? New Tumblr. Curating fears and fantasies about our deaths. Go there. Tell me about your death and how you envision it. THIS IS HOW YOU DIE. As a sidenote, received a butt-ton of entries for that — if yours hasn't shown up, it's possible it's in the queue. (Also possible it was a little too out-of-theme. Some entries were fun but were more about cheating death than death itself, which felt like — well, it felt like a cheat. Go figure.)

• Maybe you saw yesterday, maybe you didn't, but Abaddon Books has asked me back into the writer's stable, even after that… incident with the donkey ("Chuck Wendig Returns To Abaddon"). And what will Chuck — er, me — be doing? First up is a sequel to DOUBLE DEAD called BAD BLOOD. Your favorite vampire-in-zombieland is back, this time in e-novella format. Second up is I'll be writing a novel to spearhead a new urban fantasy series called GODS & MONSTERS. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about that. Thanks to Abaddon for inviting me back!

• Oh, one other tidbit there from that blog post — DOUBLE DEAD was the fastest-selling Abaddon title of 2011? Mine is the face of joy at news like that. Very exciting stuff.

• New "Penmonkey Incitement" count — we're up to 737. Which means we passed both the 650 and 700 marks, which means it's time to give out two more postcards and one more t-shirt. (More information on the Penmonkey Incitement promotion right here.) I'll pick in the next 24 hours and email folks who won — so, if you're looking for a shot to nab a free postcard or t-shirt, remember to procure a copy of COAFPM and be sure to let me know about it at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

• GIMME SHELTER, new zombie anthology. I've a tale in there, along with great stories by Tee Morris, Mur Lafferty, Filamena Young, Phillipa Ballentine, David Hill, Pete Woodworth, and more. Out now!

• Slowly but surely putting together that terribleminds Kickstarter.

• Those asking about the next Atlanta Burns book, BAIT DOG? I'm noodling making it a full novel instead of a novella. Feels like there's so much more to it than the novella I've written, so I might blow it out and go bigger with it. Keep your grapes peeled.

• Got edits back on the next Miriam Black book, MOCKINGBIRD. Eeee! And ow! And eeee! And ow!

• Looking for DINOCALYPSE NOW news? Done by the end of the month. Ish. Easily one of the most challenging things I've ever written. Worth it, I hope. But a serious challenge. Go ahead: ask me why!

• My "25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing" post went very, very viral. Like a rampant case of chlamydia it spread like fire across the writer's net — in two weeks it's become the biggest post ever here, and led to this site easily blowing up the previous record for views in a day, week, and month. Glad everybody liked it, and thanks everybody for spreading it around.

Your turn. What are you up to?

Why SOPA And PIPA And Other Anti-Piracy Bullshit Measures Matter To Writers

First and foremost, let's just put it out there –

No, this site did not blackout for the protest.

Wikipedia blacking out? Thumbs-up. They have a global audience. I don't. I blackout and what happens? I miss a handful of new readers and a handful of new sales. In the all in all, nobody soaks their pillows with tears that I'm gone. Besides, what will I do if not obsessively refresh my blog numbers?

RIDDLE ME THAT, CAPED CRUSADER.

Instead, I'd rather talk a little bit about SOPA and PIPA.

It is, I think, easy to convince writers that anti-piracy legislation is a good thing. And while I'm not stridently anti-pirate (for a number of reasons we can discuss in the comments, chief among them being "I don't think it matters as much as people think it matters"), I grok those who want to shut down All Pirates All The Time. Pirates are bad, after all. They steal our shit. They plunder our grog barrels. Fine. Good. Yes.

Problem, though:

You done got swindled, sons and daughters of the creative age.

SOPA and PIPA are not about piracy.

They are about control.

See, the Internet is this unruly pubic tangle of possibility. It is raw potential given form and it puts a great deal of power in the hands of the individual (are you listening, creative-types?). Power in the hands of individuals can, in some cases, wrest power from the hands of corporations. And corporations don't like that, so they go to the government and they pour giant buckets of money into the government's slavering maw and lobby for legislation and the result is, in this case, SOPA, PIPA, and any other naughty anti-pirate hydra-heads that pop up.

Writers and creatives — again, as individuals — have a lot of opportunity in the Internet Age, in part due to the innovation and distribution the Internet offers, in part due to the social media that connects us all. Harming these by harming the Internet then harms free expression. And that's no good.

Just to be clear, in case you don't realize what it means to give corporations power over censorship and the subject of artistic originality, please cast an eye no further to the MPAA, whose arbitrary and often insane ratings of films put out by the film industry help stifle creativity and the craft and art of filmmaking. You really want that kind of control over sites like YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Google, Wikipedia?

No, you do not.

SOPA and PIPA hit the issue with a hammer when what's called for is a scalpel. (That's how our government seems to respond to everything anymore, but I suppose that's a conversation for another time.)

Anyway, others can discuss this matter with far greater aplomb than I –

Visit AmericanCensorship.org to learn more.

In summation:

Fuck SOPA. Shit on PIPA.

Freeze-frame high-five.

CARRIER LOST

Bitches Don't Know About Paula Deen's Diabeedus

"Hey, y'all! Sorry, I didn't realize that deep-fried butter-stuffed meatballs with a pina-colada-pork-cracklings-crunch exterior dipped in a whiskey-chocolate Dr. Pepper dipping sauce would or could ever give someone like me the diabetes! Oops, y'all! Sorry. Please enjoy my new Paula Deen whipped-cream flavored insulin poppers. And don't forget to watch my new Food Network show: Paula Deen's Savannah-Style Down-Home Diabetes Pancreas-Palooza. Starring my four sons, Bobby, Jamie, Baconface and Chondroid Lipoma."

Dear Paula Deen,

You're kind of an asshole.

Listen, it's not that you get on your show and write your little cookbooks and tell people how to basically make like, Butter Salad or Cookie-Dough-Stuffed-Thanksgiving Turkeys or, I dunno, Sugar-Crammed Sugar-Balls (coincidentally my nickname when I attended the Culinary Institute of America, and by "attended" I mean "hung out by the dumpster eating hot gourmet garbage"). This is America. You're free to eat and cook however you feel is most appropriate, and instruct your audience to do the same.

On the one hand, you maybe should've warned people — like with a pack of cigarettes, a casual, "Hi, y'all, if you go ahead and make my scrumptious French-Fried French Toast with Spackled Goose Grease your heart may explode in your chest" may have been welcome. On the other hand, you know what? We're supposed to be a smart country. If you're sitting there telling us how to roll up a pumpkin pie and then barbecue it before slathering it with foie gras and whipped marshmallow frosting, I think we're all educated enough to know that maybe what you're selling us is not exactly diet food.

We knew your food wasn't health food.

You knew your food wasn't health food.

And now you have diabetes.

Or, more to the point, you've had diabetes for three fucking years.

To clarify, that means for three years — over a thousand days — you have been shilling your Microwaved Pork Roll Munchiladas and your Bacon-Gorged Jabba Rolls and your Powdered Sugar South Carolina Soul Food Gummi-Bear Casserole and not once have you said, "Hey y'all, by the way, I totally have diabetes, which is a plague amongst Americans, a plague that for many could've been avoided if you chose to avoid making foods like my Lady's Brunch Burger, a hamburger topped with fried eggs and bacon and shoved unmercifully between two pillowy glazed doughnut buttocks."

That's where you get me. That's what chaps my rosebud, Paula. That you knew you had diabetes and refused to tell anyone. Not even because you didn't feel like you wanted to out your own medical condition but because, let's be honest, you didn't want to lose any money associated with the way you suggest people eat. Not money from your shows, from your cookbooks, from your appearances or your ad revenue.

No, instead you waited to tell people until –

Wait for it.

Waaaait for it.

– until you replaced any potential lost income with a fucking Novo Nordisk pharmaceutical deal. Essentially saying, "Hey, my lifestyle actively causes diabetes, but I didn't want to tell any of you that while you were still paying me to tell you to eat human infants rolled in Cocoa Puffs and sausage fat, and now by waiting three years and announcing a deal with Big Pharma I'm basically telling you that you can live how you want and eat what you want and by god it's not going to impact the way any of us do anything because Thank the Baby Jesus for mah diabeedus medication!"

(Next up on her show: Deep-Fried Baby Jesus topped with Pork Jimmies!)

Like Anthony Bourdain said yesterday on Twitter:

"Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later."

You know what Paula really said? Quote for quote?

"I don't want to spend my life not having good food going into my pie hole. That hole was made for pies." Now, I'm all for silly statements regarding pies and holes, because, c'mon. Fuck yeah, pie. But here she is, a three-year-diabetic, basically telling you, "Well, just because I have diabetes doesn't mean I have to change the way I eat." Yes! Yes it does! That's the whole fucking point!

That's the message you should be telling people! Gah! Fuck!

Further, on the subject of why she waited three years, she says: "I made the choice at the time to keep it close to me, to keep it close to my chest. I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement. I wasn't armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God's time." Oh. Ohhh. Announcing the diabetes thing late is… God's fault?

God didn't give you permission until now? We're on his time for this kind of shit, are we?

You didn't wait because of God. Don't blame this on him. I'm sure he's up there sitting on his throne made of Dixie cups and human bones and he's just shaking his head and making frowny-faces.

"BOO, PAULA, BOO," he's saying. "YOU HAVE DIABETES BECAUSE YOU FREEBASED HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. YOU DIDN'T TELL THE HUMAN MOO-HERD BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T WANT TO LOSE ANY ENDORSEMENTS OR GET BOOTED OFF YOUR SHOW. DON'T BLAME ME FOR THIS ONE, YOU PLUMP SNOW-HAIRED SHE-DEVIL. BOOOOOO!"

Man, sometimes it's fun to write in all caps.

Anyway, Paula Deen, you're kind of an asshole.

I'm sorry about your diabetes, but, y'know, maybe you should've told people sooner.

I hope God takes some of your toes. Just a few of them. As penance.

Feel better!

Love,

Little Chucky Wendig, Age Eight-and-a-Half

P.S., please read this great piece by Andrew Zimmern.

P.P.S. Okay, fine, no, I don't want God or any other invisible space being to remove her toes.

P.P.P.S. What about just a pinky toe?

P.P.P.P.S. OKAY FINE SORRY JEEZ

25 Things Writers Should Start Doing

Consider this, if you will, a sequel to the gone-viral post, "25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now)" — sort of a mirrored-reflection be-a-fountain-not-a-drain version.

Now, a warning, just in the rare instance you don't come to this site all that often:

Here There Be Bad Words. Naughty profanity. The sinner's tongue. Lots of "eff-this" and "ess-that."

If you're not a fan of profanity, no harm, no foul. But you might want to turn your tender gaze away before your eyeballs foam up and ooze out of your poor innocent head.

Please to enjoy.

1. Start Taking Yourself Seriously

This is a real thing, this writing thing, if you let it be. It's not just about money or publication — it's about telling the kind of stories only you can tell. Few others are going to take you seriously, so give them a 21-middle-finger-salute and do for yourself what they won't: demonstrate some self-respect.

2. Start Taking The Time

Said it before, will say it again: we all get 24 hours in our day. Nobody has extra time. You must claim time for yourself and your writing. Time is a beast stampeding ever forward and we're all on its back. Don't get taken for a ride. Grab the reins. Whip that nag to go where you want her to go. Take control. Hell, pull out a big ol' electric knife and carve off a quivering lardon of fatty Time Bacon all for yourself. (As a sidenote, the Germans had a name for that phenomenon: Zeitspeck. True story I just made up!)

3. Start Trying New Stuff

Branch out. Get brave. Look at all the ways you write now — "I write in the morning, sipping from my 64-ounce 7-11 Thirst Aborter of Mountain Dew, and I pen my second-person POV erotic spy novels and it earns me a comfortable living." Good for you. Now punch that shit right in the ear. Okay, I'm not saying you need to change directions entirely — what kind of advice is that? "Hey, that thing that works for you? Quit doing it." I'm just saying, mix it up. Make some occasional adjustments. Just as I exhort people to try new foods or travel destinations or ancient Sumerian sexual positions, I suggest writers try new things to see if they can add them to their repertoire. Write 1000 words a day? Try to double that. Don't use an outline? Write with one, just once. Single POV character? Play with an ensemble. Mix it the fuck up. Don't have just One True Way of doing things. Get crazy. Don't merely think outside of the box. Set the box adrift on a river and shoot it with fire arrows. Give the box a motherfucking Viking funeral.

4. Start Telling Stories In New Ways

Another entry from the "Set The Box On Fire" Department — with the almost obscene advances in personal technology (the smartphone alone has become more versatile than most home computers), it's time to start thinking about how we can tell stories in new ways. A story needn't be contained to a book or a screen. A story can be broken apart. A story can travel. Your tale can live across Twitter and Foursquare and Tumblr and an Android app and Flickr and HTML5 and then it can take the leap away from technology and move to handwritten journals and art installations and bathroom walls and — well, you get the idea. Let this be the year that the individual author need no longer be constrained by a single medium. Transmedia is now in the hands of individuals. So give it a little squeeze, and find new ways to tell old stories.

5. Start Reading Poetry

Poetry? Yes, poetry. I know. I see that look you're giving me. "What's next, Wendig?" you ask. "We all hold hands and dance around the maypole in our frilly blouses and Wonder Woman underoos?" YES EXACTLY. I mean — uhh, what? No. Ahem. All I'm saying is, all writing deserves a touch — just a tickle — of poetry. And do not conflate "poetry" with "purple prose" — such bloated artifice has no room in your work.

6. Start Saying Something

You are your writing and your writing is you, and if you're not using your writing to say something — to speak your mind, to fertilize the fictional ground with your idea-seed in an act of literary Onanism — then what's the damn point? You have a perspective. Use it.

7. Start Discovering What You Know

Ah, that old chestnut. "Write what you know." Note the lack of the word only in there. We don't write only what we know because if we did that we'd all be writing about writers, like Stephen King does. (Or, we'd be writing about sitting at our computers, checking Twitter in our underwear and smelling of cheap gin and despair.) The point is that we have experience. We've seen things, done things, learned things. Extract those from your life. Bleed them into your work. Don't run from who you are. Bolt madly toward yourself. Then grab all that comprises who you are and body-slam it down on the page.

8. Start Writing From A Place Of Pain

You also know pain. So, get it out there. Don't build a wall and hide from it. Scrape away the enamel of that tooth and expose the raw nerve — meaning, it goes into what you're writing. Our pain is part of what makes us, and if we speak to that honestly in our writing, the reader will get that. Audiences can smell your inauthentic contrivances like a dead hamster in the heating duct. A reader wants to see their story in your story. They want to relate their pain to the pain on the page, and if that pain isn't honest — meaning, it isn't born out of experience or empathy — then your work will come across as hollow as a gutted pumpkin.

9. Start Upping Your Game

I don't care if you're good at what you do. I don't care if you're great at what you do. You can always improve. You can always be better. You know what happens to people who tread water? They grow inevitably weary and then they drown and hermit crabs use their body as a sex playground. That's a fact. I read it in the New York Times. If anybody knows facts, it's them.

10. Start Buying New Skills For Your Character Sheet

"Writer" is a piss-poor name for what we do because that verb, to write, comprises only a portion of our professional life. It'd be like if you called auto mechanics "brake light technicians." Sure, they fix brake lights. But they also change oil and replace alternators and counsel troubled married couples. (What? My guy's really good. Don't judge me.) Like I said quite some time ago, writers have to edit, market, manifest business savvy, do math, hunt and capture wayward editors in the windswept tundra, and so forth. Further, fiction writers utilize all manner of absurd skills in their work. Writing about a hired killer? Why not learn how to use a gun? (Trust me, firing a gun and reading about firing a gun are two very different things.)

11. Start Cultivating Your Sanity

You're crazy. No, no, it's okay. I'm crazy, too. We're all a little bit unhinged. Hell, I'm one broken screen door away from drinking a fifth of antifreeze and driving off a highway overpass on a child's tricycle. Writing is not a particularly stressful job — I mean, you're not an air traffic controller or an astronaut or some shit. Just the same, it's a weird job. We hunker down over our fiction like a bird with an egg and we sit there alone, day in and day out, just… making up awful stuff. People die and hearts are broken and children are stolen by van-driving goblins and all that comes pouring out of our diseased gourds. So: cultivate your sanity. Take some time to de-stress your skull-space. Take a walk. Take a vacation. Drink some chamomile tea and watch the sunset. Chillax. That's the new thing the kids are saying, right? "Chillax?" Yeah. I'm up on my lingo. Chillaxin' is the hella tits, Daddy-o!

12. Start Escaping The Insidious Gravity Of The Black Hole Known As "The Internet"

The Internet is a time-eater, eating your hours in great gulping swallows. The Net has value, no doubt. Great for research. Ideal for communication and distribution. Pristine for pornography. Just the same: it's not your priority. Your priority is to write, so you need to jam a metaphorical rocket booster up your hidey-hole and blast your way out of the Internet's gravity, at least until the wordsauce is made.

13. Start Going Places

Get the hell out of your house. Open the door. Kick out a window. Escape. Go somewhere. I don't care if it's the corner store or the island of Kauai or Mount Kilimanfuckingjaro. Writers are often too insular. They think those two oft-cited pieces of writing advice — "Put your ass in the chair and write" and "read a lot" — are all it takes. Bzzt! Wrongo! You've got to see a bit of the world. Have some adventures. Experience what's going on around you. Become a part of the whole crazy machine. Let it fuel your wordsmithy.

14. Start Reading More

You need to read more, too. Bury your nose in a book, or, I dunno, lick a Kindle or whatever the equivalent would be. And don't just up your reading quota: read more broadly, more completely. Read beyond comfort or entertainment. Jump the genre fence you've built for yourself. Read history and sociology and pick up a romance novel and flip through some children's books and read some classic works and — well, you get the idea. Just read, wantonly and without regard. And with a keen eye toward all the fiddly bits.

15. Start Helping Other Writers

We may not be an official community with like, trials and hazing and union dues, but we certainly are a de facto one. We all need help and so it behooves us to ask for it and give it in return. As I am nothing if not a rampant self-promotional strumpet, I'll just leave this here: 25 Ways For Writers To Help Other Writers.

16. Start Working Like A Motherfucker

You want to write? Then it's time to work. Work isn't a bad word. Work may be a four-letter-word, but you know what? I like four-letter words. Commit to the effort. Give your work the due it deserves. If someone asks what you're doing? Don't tell them you're writing. Don't say you're telling stories or penning the Great American Novel. Tell them, "I'm working. I'm down in the word mines breaking my brain to bring this ink into the world. Now shut the door and get me a quad-shot espresso." Don't just put your nose against the grindstone: rub your entire naked body against the grindstone. And then film it. And put it on Youtube.

17. Start Making Your Own Opportunities

You can't just sit in your attic and hope that opportunity will find you there, writing your stories amidst the Christmas decorations and creepy dolls and Tibetan yak-bone butt-plugs. Opportunity does not find the writer; the writer finds opportunity. And when the writer cannot find it, he reaches for the doll-heads and the wrapper paper tubes and the yak-bones and he makes his own damn opportunity. I hate the word "proactive," but fuck it, it's spot on for what I'm talking about — be proactive. You make opportunity by writing the best stories you can write and then putting those stories out there for editors and agents and readers. Don't wait for permission. You know who needs permission? Children and cowards. And, thankfully, robots. For now. For now.

18. Start Self-Publishing

Note again the lack of the word "only" here; you should not only self-publish. But you should self-publish something. It grants you a new channel to release your work and reach new readers. It teaches you different skills. It lets you show all those jackholes with their sloppily-edited crap-stain indie efforts with Comic Sans and Papyrus covers how it's done, son. This year: self-publish. Do it. Try it. Taste it. You'll like it.

19. Start Diversifying

You know what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket? Your basket doesn't have room for other awesome shit. Like figs. Or G.I. Joes. Or yak-bone dildos. Right? Right. A writer these days thrives on diversity. When one vein of word-heroin dries up, you've got others that keep on feeding your habit. Over here it's freelance articles and other there it's short stories and that way lies a novel and beyond that is the ad copy you wrote for Big Steve's Booty Barn (the finest low-cost brothel in the good state of Nevada!). Plus: many fingers in many pies means maximum pie deliciousness. Because, fuck yeah, pie.

20. Start Valuing Your Work

If you don't value your work, why would anyone else? End of story.

21. Start Doing All That Shit You Said You'd Always Do

If you calculated all the people in the world that have at one time or another said the words, "I'm going to write a novel," or, "I'm going to pen a screenplay," you'd have to invent a brand new number. A number that would break the backs of all other numbers. Everybody says they're going to write this or write that — well, it's time to put up or shut up. This year: you're going to do it. You're going to take one of those projects you've always wanted to do and you're going to punt that sonofabitch to the top of the pile. You're going to give it priority. End the fantasy by making it a reality.

22. Start Taking A Long Look Forward

A writer without goals is a writer who ends up lost in the woods. Probably without pants. And dining on possum scat. You know that jerkoff question they ask you at job interviews: "Where do you see yourself in ten years?" That question has value to authors. Set a realistic course for yourself and start knocking down some milestones one by one. Focus up. Gain clarity. Don't just wander around without any idea of what you hope to accomplish. Envision your entire career. Then start working to make it motherfucking so.

23. Start Writing What You Want To Write

For some, life is short, for others, it's unmercifully long — however it shakes out, take some time to write something that matters to you. Something personal. Something you want to write as opposed to something you have to write. We only get one go-around on the Great Hot Wheels Track that is life, so why not manage some slick jumps and loopty-loops before your car flings off into the oblivion beneath the couch?

24. Start Having Fun, Will You?

I tire of writers who don't enjoy what they do. The next writer I see who mopes about being a writer gets attacked by bees. I mean, if you're not writing because you love it, then why do it at all? The fat stacks of cash? The primo health care plan? The yacht full of supermodels?

25. Start Doing

Simple. Sweet. To the point. Writers need to be generative creatures — so, start doing. Start creating. Start telling stories. Start making it happen. But then, the corollary to that: finish what you started.

What will you start doing in 2012?

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Recently Discovered: Portlandia

I am in love with Portlandia on IFC.

Now, IFC is weird in our house: Verizon makes it a subscription-only channel and we do not subscribe. And yet, somehow we can still see it? I don't know. I blame techno-djinn. As should we all.

IFC has been very good with the making-funny, given that there is where I also discovered Whitest Kids U Know (streaming on Netflix, and the Dinosaur Rap is necessary viewing).

Anyway, point being, I'm a bit late to the game here, but Sweet Jeebus, Portlandia is some funny shit. I'm not particularly aware of Portland culture, but it matters little — the show walks this bizarre line where it first puts hipster culture on a pedestal and then pelts it with Pabst Blue Ribbon cans until it falls off and breaks. On Saturday Night Live, I generally can't stand Fred Armisen — and yet, here, he's allowed to, I dunno, become his comedy self and go Full Tilt Weird with it. And it works. By god, it fucking works. (Oh, and his comedic partner in crime is, somewhat mysteriously, Carrie Brownstein from totally rad grr-grrl band, Sleater-Kinney. So, there's that.)

If you don't have IFC, Portlandia still streams on Netflix.

In the meantime, I leave you with this:

 

 

Flash Fiction Challenge: "Three Sentences For Bear71″

Here's your challenge.

Choose one of the following wild animals:

Bear

Wolf

Deer

Cougar

Mouse

Eagle

Bighorn Sheep

Mosquito

Now, write a three-sentence story from the perspective — first person POV — of that animal.

You are encouraged to anthropomorphize the animal — meaning, the animal acts and thinks as a human would. It's okay to write about the animal as an animal, or the animal in the animal's expected spaces, but it's also fine to think outside of the box (a spy story featuring a cougar, a science-fiction story starring a wolf, a morality tale starring a mouse, etc.).

Any genre will do.

The stories should be PG-13. No sex or gore or strong profanity.

I know. Unusual for this site.

And here's why:

Bear71 is a documentary and installation about the life and death of a tagged grizzly bear and the surveillance that surrounds this bear. The experience will present at Sundance New Frontier this year — information here — and the best stories of this bunch will become a part of the overall installation (they may, for instance, show up at the installation itself or be included as a part of the Bear71 social media outreach).

Why submit a story? It's for a good cause and a poignant storytelling experience.

(Also, you retain all rights to your story and can do with it as you wish.)

You've got one week — till January 20th, noon EST, to get your stories in.

To submit: please post your three-sentence story in the comments below. Make sure to include a name to receive credit and/or a Twitter handle where appropriate.

Go forth and write.

How To Self-Publish So It Benefits Readers?

Yes, yes, fine, we know that self-publishing benefits the author.

It gives writers greater control and a greater financial stake in each sale and it forms a direct relationship between between said writer and that writer's readers.

Yay! Huzzah! Let's all dance around the tetherball pole and give each other playful buttock slaps.

*slap*

*slap*

*ooh!*

*slap*

It's just — wait a minute.

Hold up, hold up, hold up.

*slap*

I SAID HOLD UP, JIMMY.

Goddamnit, Jimmy. Thank you. Sheesh.

We've thought about the one side of that equation — the writer — but nobody seems to be talking about the other half of that. Nobody's talking about how self-publishing benefits readers.

The reason?

It doesn't. Not yet, and not directly.

If anybody's left out in the cold when authors self-publish it's readers. Yes, they reap some benefit — if they've an author they love then it's all the better to have that author not bound up in a situation where it takes him 15 months from the completion of a novel to the publication of that novel. It also ensures that the reader's money is going in greater steaming lumps to that author. So, in this way, fans are rewarded.

But regular readers? Not so much.

Now, some of this falls to Amazon and B&N, admittedly — curation and filter of indie books (and, in fact, all books) is awful. Sorting through books on those sites is about as much fun as sorting through a jar of marmot pellets looking for that one good Junior Mint. That doesn't mean, however, that self-published authors can't take some responsibility for the work they're putting out in the world.

Let's just say it now and say it proud, trumpeting it so loudly that You All The Way In The Back can hear: this should be the year that self-publishers take responsibility. For themselves and their work as well as the larger body of DIY work existing out there in the world. Let this be the year that indie writers step into Thunderdome armed to the teeth with all the best weapons and armor. (Instead of, say, a mop handle "sword" and a flak jacket made from Schlitz cans.) Let this be the year that you do the work and take the time to get your books up to speed so that self-published books become indistinguishable from any other book on the shelf. Because, let's be honest: 8 times out of 10 you can spot a self-published book a mile away.

Let this be the year that self-publishing serves readers as much as it serves writers.

How can it serve readers?

Here's a few ways (and use the comments to add your own):

Treat Readers Like Customers And Clients

One thing that traditional publishing offers authors is a thing most don't realize: a buffer. Formatting error? Not the author's fault! Weird marketing? Not the author's fault! Ugly cover? Not the author's fault!

To a publisher, a reader is a customer. To a writer, the reader represents audience.

Ah, but in this situation, the writer hath become a publisher, like some kind of literary Transformer (cue crunchy transforming noise), which means the buffer is gone and the excuses are cast to the wind like so much dried semen flower pollen.

Writers will self-publish best when they embrace the mind-set that readers are no longer just readers: they are a customer and client base. You're not freelancing for a magazine, now: you're freelancing for the greater body of readership, and that means trying to please and appease however you — and they – see fit.

Put Together A Good-Looking Book

I'll totally admit that self-publishing has come really far. Doesn't change the fact that a surprising number of self-published books still maintain as much aesthetic value as me rolling around in hot garbage and then splatting my pale, waste-besmirched body on an empty canvas. Also doesn't change the fact that many are deeply riddled with errors — not a couple here and there born of formatting problems but errors born of writers who wouldn't know what they were doing if you broke their noses with a copy of Strunk & White.

(And stop redirecting. If any of you are about to type into the comment box, "But traditionally-published books have errors too!" then I will tie you down and give you an Angry Crayfish enema. That's not an excuse. Getting into a slapfight on the playground doesn't become magically okay because those kids got into a slapfight, too. One crime does not make equivalent crimes suddenly acceptable.)

Get a cover that doesn't look like a warty dick. Find a strong editor. Train yourself to be a better writer after every book — grow, excel, learn your fucking trade you fucking animals.

Ooh, sorry. I think I was snapping into Alec Baldwin mode, there.

Point is: put together a good-looking book.

And part of that means: write well.

Quality Over Quantity

In DIY-indie-micro-self-publishing, quantity serves the writer. The more work you shotgun blast into the world, the more work you have to sell (and further, the more legitimate your work appears — "There's so much of it!"). Readers, though, are often treated to a bunch of half-baked half-ass material.

Stop giving them the half-ass. Give them the full ass. The total booty. The complete rumpage.

Take the time to earn their trust by offering works of maximum quality.

Stop treating self-publishing work like it'll have to be "good enough." Be the best, by gum, by golly.

CUE KARATE KID MONTAGE.

Best Practices, Motherfucker

Most industries have an unspoken (or, sometimes, totally spoken) list of best practices. Meaning, the ways for those industries to be jacked up to Maximum Awesome. When I worked at the library, I did marketing and one of the programs I helped put together was a best practices for libraries to serve an aging population. The list wasn't all, "Make sure old people have their own water fountains because they smell like rose hips and pee," or, "Ensure the library has a handicap ramp; oh, it doesn't have to be near a door or anything, you can put it on the roof for all I care, we just need to have one somewhere so we don't get yelled at."

They don't call it a Bare Minimum list. It's a list of Best Practices.

So much of self-publishing seems devoted toward bare minimum.

So, for your audience, put together a list of your own personal best practices.

Targeted Cheerleading

Stop rewarding bad behavior. When the dog pees on the carpet, the dog is duct-taped to the couch and forced to watch  a VHS tape of his many indiscretions with this latest urinary mistake added to the pile. The dog is not given a ham bone and happy good-boy ear-scratches.

Cheerlead — by which I mean, recommend heartily — those self-published books that meet not just the minimum standards of quality but that exceed them. And those books that don't? Fuck 'em. I'm not saying you have to go full court press and ridicule them in the town square, but stop high-fiving them just because they're self-published. Which leads me to…

Leave The Tribe

You're not a tribe. Self-publishers are not "together." But a lot of them act like it — "An attack on one is an attack on all!" — and that's not only insane, but bad for readers.

Here's the thing, and this isn't meant to be a jab at unions, but when "indie" writers act like they're banded together, it runs the risk of feeding on all the worst inclinations of a union. They all serve one another as customers and recommend each other endlessly and, most problematically, issues and concerns are hand-waved away by the tribe. Instead of embracing a body of people Doing It Wrong, we should be examining those who are Doing It Right.

Put more crassly, readers aren't served by the self-publishing circle jerk.

All they get for their efforts is a bad case of spooge-eye.

If you want to come together, do so to be the best, not the worst.

Feel free to re-queue that Karate Kid music video.

Take Risks In Storytelling

Traditional publishing has become more risk averse over the years (though to suggest they take no risks at all is a suggestion born from a person who never takes a trip to the bookstore) — it's why you see a lot of the same thing on shelves. It's why the same cover is rehashed again and again. Same tropes, same genres, same narrative copy-pasta.

One could argue that this is just fine for readers — it's what they want, it's what they buy, and publishers are just bolstering the trends. I'd argue the opposite: setting trends and taking risks is what really rewards the audience. The rise of Stephen King was not because horror was really popular before he came around. Horror was a non-starter prior to King. King popularized that genre and helped to make it huge. He wasn't chasing trends — he was the trend.

Problem is, self-publishers end up doing More Of The Same. Look at a lot of self-published work and it feels alarmingly similar to what's already out there. So much of it can be described as a rip-off of something else.

Time to step up, self-pubbers.

Time to start taking risks. Time to stop following in the well-worn paths and carve out your own.

That will ultimately serve readers.

Take Risks In Format

Format needs risks, too. Traditional publishing is in love with the novel. The bigger novel, the better. Certain formats were non-starters: novellas, short stories, poetry, etc. Risky formats were not rewarded. Hell, they never even made it to shelf half the time — wasn't worth the printing. E-readers have changed that (and, I'll add here: e-books were a risk in format and see how that paid off?).

Explore different formats. Readers are a diverse bunch and can be served by various experiences — it's time to stop serving them standard continental cuisine. Time to introduce some new flavors.

That might even mean storytelling experiences that leave the book.

(I'll talk more about transmedia and self-publishing later.)

Go forth. Experiment.

Sell Directly

Not ever reader has the same e-reader, and not every reader wants to buy from Megabeasts like Amazon or B&N. Sell your book directly. It provides a fresh option for the audience in terms of procurement.

This is one that actually also serves the author. You hear a lot of "OMG YOU GOTTA PUB WITH AMAZON BECAUSE 70% ROYALTY OMG," but you don't hear a lot of, "OMG YOU SHOULD SELL DIRECTLY BECAUSE 80-90% ROYALTY OMG." But that's the reality. To give perspective, of all my self-published book sales last year, about 5-6% was with B&N. But almost 30% of my sales came direct from this blog.

Pay attention. Offer direct. Readers want it, and it pays for you, too.

That's called a "win-win" situation.

Discover What Traditional Publishing Is Not Offering

This goes back in part to the "risk" discussion but, for me, deserves its own special corner of this here bloggerel. What is it that traditional publishing isn't offering? No, no, not to the writer. We know that already. What aren't they offering to readers? Where is there a deficit, a void, a secret and totally vulnerable thermal exhaust port into which an author-slash-publisher could in theory launch a proton torpedo?

Discover that, and you'll know in part how to serve readers above serving yourself.

Your Turn

How can self-publishing serve both writers and readers?

Sound off, you crazy little wordomancers, you.