Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 267

Transmissions From Baby-Town: "The Elmo Problem"

Elmo.

Fuuuuuckin' Elmo.

By this point, the Baby Formerly And Still Actually Known As "B-Dub" is four months old. He's a smiley, gurgly, farty beast. He grabs his feet. He shoves everything into his mouth. With his mouth he chews, he chews hard, his gums crushing my index finger daily. (Yes, he's probably starting to teethe already.) He sleeps, but not much. He's awake frequently. He's very alert. He now laughs. That's a delightful sound whose gravity is inescapable: we will do anything to make the baby laugh. Smack self in crotch with hammer? Drive car through a K-Mart? Kill so many nuns their bodies stack like firewood? Whatever you need, B-Dub. Just laugh for us. Just laugh.

I recognize already the danger of this path: a path many parents have gone down, a path where they work against good sense to keep their own children happy — no matter how little it helps them or the aforementioned children. There they walk, pandering to teenagers or adult children in order to win their friendship. Desperate and pleading and chasing the dragon just the same. Just love me, angry teenager. Just love me. And also, stop throwing food from the refrigerator at my head. Unless that makes you happy! Does that make you happy, angry teenager? What do you need? A sandwich? A dirt bike? A Taser? A hobo I purchased from the hobo black market? OH MY GOD I NEED YOUR APPROVAL

I can quit any time.

After all, our kid is a mere four months old and if I could bottle that laugh, you would buy it.

Here, listen:

Laughing Baby from Chuck Wendig on Vimeo.

See? You'd buy it. Right now.

Point being, we are happy to have an amused four-month-old rather than the occasionally epically cranky four-month-old. And one of the things that amuses Baby B-Dub is when we put on Sesame Street.

I grew up with Sesame Street. Loved it as a kid, and pretty much love it even still. This is Jim Henson we're talking about. These are Muppets. Who doesn't love Muppets? Al Qaeda. That's who doesn't love Muppets.

I understand the prevailing wisdom that says very young children shouldn't watch television, and for the most part, Baby B-Dub faces us while we watch the Tube of the Boob. But we let him watch Sesame Street. I was pleased to turn it on and discover that it has not gone the way of other programming, which is to say, flashy ADD can't-hold-an-image-for-more-than-a-few-picoseconds. Hell, watching some of Sesame Street I'm reminded of how ADD I've become. I watched one the other day that had Snuffleupagus suffering with a sneezing problem and by the end I was checking my watch. "Let's wrap this shit up," I'm saying.

B-Dub, though, he's rapt. He'll brighten when Big Bird comes on. He'll talk to Abby the whatever-the-fuck-she-is. Fairy? She's a fairy, right? Hell, soon as that new guy Murray shows up, B-Dub's in. He's invested.

And then, of course, Elmo shows.

It's inevitable. It happens every episode. And the baby loves it. Elmo is a bright spot in a dark day, Elmo is a dollop of red whimsy, a giddy supernova, a blob of ketchup on a really great hamburger.

That is, it's all those things for him. For the baby.

For me, Elmo is a fly inside my ear. He's a broken fingernail, a bearded psychopath who won't leave my TV.

Part of it is… part of it's the laugh. This is like, a… a Joker-tormenting-the-Batman laugh. I tried to mimic the noise of Elmo's laugh with my own mouth and I woke up two days later just outside of Carson City, Nevada, covered in scorpions and cradling some guy's severed foot in my arms.

Elmo's mouth is the mouth of madness.

I try to get my head around Elmo and I feel woozy. I mean, okay, Elmo's kind of like, a little kid, right? He represents the children watching. He's playful and weird and frankly, a little bit stupid. (But that's okay because he's always learning. I guess. I dunno. Shut up.) So, why is it that Elmo lives alone? Who let Elmo have a house? Is he renting? Did he take advantage of a down market and buy a place? Are kids allowed to buy houses on Sesame Street? Jesus Christmas. No wonder we're in the middle of an economic crisis. We let monster toddlers procure real estate. Great lesson, there. Someone call Tim Geithner.

Another great lesson: Elmo speaks in third person.

"Elmo this," and "Elmo that." Who does that? "Elmo's fur is dyed with the blood of a hundred other Muppets!" Elmo cries. Then giggles as invisible hands tickle him.

Yes, please, Elmo, teach my son to refer to himself in the third person.

And why is Elmo asking a baby about anything? Every segment of Elmo's World generally orbits a specific topic: doctors, bugs, cats, merkins, Lemon Pledge, torture porn, the methamphetamine epidemic, lasagna, whatever. Every part of the segment goes toward exploring the topic. Which is fine, in theory. Elmo sings a song, which is essentially Elmo just yammering the topic's name over and over again, often set to a Christmas carol. Elmo talks to his fish, Dorothy, who often imagines Elmo in weird get-ups (Elmo is a caterpillar! Elmo is Rapunzel! Elmo is a cranky dominatrix!).

And then, inevitably, Elmo talks to a baby. He doesn't refer to this baby by name. He just calls it "baby."

"Hi, baby! What do you think about D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, baby?"

In response, the baby gurgles and spits up and tries to eat Elmo's proboscis.

And then Elmo laughs: "Ha ha ha, you're so stupid, baby. Babies don't know about early silent films that were also used as recruitment tools for the Klu Klux Klan! You're just a baby! Ha ha ha!"

Why? Why? Why do you ask a baby, Elmo? That baby doesn't know jack shit. That baby never knows jack shit. You're not helping anybody. And frankly, you're embarrassing that poor baby. You know what happens to the babies that end up on the Elmo's World segment? They get put up for adoption. Or sometimes they get turned into cat food. That's true! I read it somewhere. The parents are so ashamed of their stupid babies — stupidity exposed by that sinister fiend, Elmo — that they have little choice but to go on without them.

I think I read it in Newsweek.

Anyway.

None of that, none of it, worries me more than –

Yes, you guessed it.

Mister Noodle.

Or Mister Noodle's brother, Mister Noodle.

Or any of the foul miscreants from the dread Noodle clan.

Here's the thing.

I'm pretty sure Mister Noodle is a kid-toucher. I know he's a weirdo. He's definitely an idiot.

But I think he's got a thing for kids.

And given the fact that Elmo appears to be a kid, this adds a whole creepy vibe to the Elmo-Mister Noodle relationship. Let's break it down a little bit and you can see what I'm talking about.

Every segment, Elmo opens his window (which for some reason is a struggle and the window resists Elmo's attempts — possibly because the window has Elmo's best interests at heart, which is good, because Elmo is a three-year-old who lives on his own because his parents probably died in a house fire that Elmo himself set). When Elmo opens his window… there stands Mister Noodle.

Mister Noodle waits for Elmo to do this. He hangs out outside Elmo's window. All the time!

Staring. Lingering. Waiting.

Just the other day I watched one where the window opened and, as always, Mister Noodle stood right outside the window. But here's the kicker, and this is not a joke: he was touching his crotch. Seriously! Not kidding! His left hand was hovering over his crotch. As if he had been interrupted. As if, had Elmo waited only 30 seconds longer, we would've caught Mister Noodle with his, erm, "mister noodle" out.

This segment-within-a-segment always goes the same way. Elmo asks Mister Noodle to expound upon the current topic du jour, and Mister Noodle spectacularly botches any implementation of said topic. If the topic is about brushing your teeth, Mister Noodle will shove a toothbrush up into his brain (don't worry, there's not much going on up there). If the topic is about dogs, Mister Noodle will try to leash and walk a hot dog. If the topic is about molecular microbiology, Mister Noodle will concoct a devastating flu plague that eradicates the Muppet population (the "Fozzy Flu," they call it).

Then, some disembodied child's choice — not Elmo — castigates Mister Noodle for dicking it up again. "No, Mister Noodle, we don't eat 9-volt batteries. Silly Mister Noodle."

Finally, Mister Noodle comes closer and…

… well, he frequently touches Elmo.

Like, one episode was about doctors. And Mister Noodle was fucking around with a stethoscope. When he finally learned how to use it, he walked to the window and used it on Elmo. Fine in theory, but it's the way he uses it. He lingers on Elmo's chest. He slowly draws the stethoscope's head down and circles it there like he's trying to do more than just hear this Muppet's dubious heartbeat.

But here's the really creepy example.

One segment was about "skin."

Yes. Skin.

A serial killer topic if ever there was one. I'm just glad Elmo eschewed singing the "skinning a hooker" song.

Anyway, so around rolls the Mister Noodle sketch and of course Mister Noodle has to lean inside Elmo's window with his blank eyes and his creepy mustache. And then Elmo says, "Slip me some skin!" which already is a red flag, because here I think Mister Noodle is going to go all Buffalo Bill and open a suitcase filled with tanned human flesh, but what happens instead is worse. Mister Noodle slowly, tenderly drags his fingers up Elmo's wormy puppet arms — seriously, it's like, a sensual touch — before finally caressing Elmo's hairy palms. Then — then! — it's time for "backrubs." Because there's nothing like teaching your small children to give and receive backrubs from weird adult neighbors. And the backrubs are, again, sensual. These aren't manly backrubs. They're not silly. They're blissful, erotic massages. Mister Noodle seriously actually embraces Elmo from behind.

Eventually that segment ends with Elmo singing the "skin" song, which is Elmo saying SKIN SKIN SKIN over and over again set to the tune of "Jingle Bells," and then a book floats nearby, a book that I am led to believe is bound in some kind of skin, and Mister Noodle dances outside, obviously giddy.

My child is eventually going to go to school and there they will tell him about "Stranger Danger" and then he'll come home and watch Elmo get caressed by this mutant who may not even be Elmo's neighbor. For all I know, Mister Noodle just lives in the bushes, having escaped some kind of… facility. Does Elmo run? Does Elmo say no, then go, then tell? No. Instead Elmo lets Mister Noodle kiss his neck while Elmo munches away on M&Ms that smell like weird chemicals. Good job, Sesame Street. Nice work there.

So, that's what I see as the "Elmo Problem."

Anybody else? Just me?

I'm doomed, aren't I?

Writers Must Kill Self-Doubt Before Self-Doubt Kills Them

It's insidious, this thing called doubt.

You're sitting there, chugging along, doing your little penmonkey dance with the squiggly shapes and silly stories and then, before you know it, a shadow falls over your shoulder. You turn around.

But it's too late. There's doubt. A gaunt and sallow thing. It's starved itself. It's all howling mouths and empty eyes. The only sustenance it receives is from a novelty beer hat placed upon its fragile eggshell head — except, instead of holding beer, the hat holds the blood-milked hearts of other writers, writers who have fallen to self-doubt's enervating wails, writers who fell torpid, sung to sleep by sickening lullabies.

Suddenly Old Mister Doubt is jabbering in your ear.

You're not good enough.

You'll never make it, you know.

Everyone's disappointed in you.

Where are your pants? Normal people wear pants.

You really thought you could do it, didn't you? Silly, silly penmonkey.

And you crumple like an empty Chinese food container beneath a crushing tank tread.

Self-doubt is the enemy of the writer. It is one of many: laziness, fear, ego, porn, Doritos. But it is most certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, in the writer's rogue gallery of nemeses.

You let self-doubt get a hold of you, it'll kill your work dead. You'll stop in the middle of a project, then print the manuscript out for the sole purpose of urinating on its pages before glumly eating them.

You mustn't be seduced by the callous whispers of the doubting monster at your back. To survive as a writer you must wheel on the beast, your sharpened pen at hand. Then you must spear him to the earth.

Here, then, are some revelations that will help the everyday inkslinger slay the dread creature.

We're All Part Of The Self-Hatred Quilt

Everybody suffers under the yoke of self-doubt. Everybody. Creatives especially. You really think that Neil Gaiman doesn't find the gnomes of doubt nattering at his back? Or Stephen King? Or Steven Spielberg? Or Snooki? Self-doubt has the singular power to make you feel very alone indeed, as if you're the only sad motherfucker in the universe feeling like he's not worth a damn. It's bullshit. A ruse.

Admiral Ackbar knows what it is: that shit's a trap.

You're not alone. We all get it. The difference is that some writers pull their boots out of the hungry mire and others sink deeper and deeper until they're caught in an inescapable nest of old Druid bones.

You Get Multiple Go-Rounds On This Carousel

Writers are afforded a gift few others have: the wondertastic, majestariffic, splendiferous do-over.

Self-doubt is handily eradicated when you give yourself permission to write badly. I mean, okay, this isn't a permanent permission slip: it's just a day-trip to the Shit Museum, a hall-pass to the Turd Closet, but you have to let yourself karate chop doubt in the neck and step over his twitching body as you step boldly into the breach to write some occasionally awful awfulness.

Because you are also afforded the chance to go back. And fix it. And rewrite it. And fix it some more.

It's like the writer gets one giant infinite roll of duct tape.

Dude, Seriously, You're Not Curing Cancer Over Here

Put differently, you're not exactly saving lives. You're not pulling children out of burning buildings or shooting Osama bin Laden or curing a global pandemic. You're a writer. Self-doubt for those other guys is life-threatening. They fuck up, people die. You fuck up, the the ink on your manuscript bleeds from your blubbering tears and you put on a couple pounds from wolfing down three boxes of strawberry Pop-Tarts. (*chew chew chew* ARE YOU THERE GOD ITS ME DIABETES)

Doubt evaporates when you realize that what you're doing isn't some epic quest. I'm not saying storytelling isn't important. It is. Real important. But lives don't hang in the balance.

Calm down. Take the pressure off.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Put down the Pop-Tarts.

Failure Is The Snake That Bites His Own Tail (And His Tail Tastes Like Shit)

There's that whole Yoda saying: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to George Lucas endlessly tinkering with Star Wars where he makes Luke step in a squishy pile of Wampa waste, inserts a series of Darth Vader dance scenes, and ensures that the Tauntaun shoots first."

I have my own version of that, which says:

"Self-doubt leads to failure, and failure in turns leads to self-doubt, and the two tango together, punching you in the butthole again and again until you can no longer defecate productively."

That's the horrible thing about self-doubt: it convinces us that our own failure is inevitable, an unavoidable recourse based on our own screaming lack of talent. But failure isn't inevitable, and in fact failure is created by a fear of failure and by our certain uncertainty we possess about our own ability to succeed. Writers engineer their own failure with such grace and elegance it's almost impressive.

Remember: failure is not a foregone conclusion.

Piss in the face of that sentiment.

Time And Practice Are Two Of Doubt's Mightiest Foes

Sometimes self-doubt comes from a real place, a revelation that you're just not ready. The problem isn't this revelation but rather how writers react to it. The reaction is: OMG NOT GOOD ENOUGH MUST EJECT OR DIE. What a terribly unproductive reaction. Or, more accurately, over-reaction.

Can you imagine if that was our response to all the things in life? "I tried to bake my first cake and it turned out gluey and unpleasant, so I set fire to my kitchen and walked away as it exploded behind me."

You can't do that. That's insane. You're not going to be perfect right out of the gate. Time and practice will improve your mojo, and an improved sense of one's mojo will go a long way toward mitigating doubt.

I mean, this doesn't happen overnight. "I practiced for a week. WHERE IS MY CONFIDENCE COOKIE?" is not a useful question to ask. We're talking years upon years of this: but the good news is, it's not like a switch gets flipped. This is gradual: over time, the light of your increased abilities beats back the shadows of your own doubt. Time and practice are the medicine that heal the anal fistula of your raging insecurity.

I went too far with "anal fistula," didn't I?

Clear Your Head Of All Those Boggy Tampons

Sometimes you just need a short term solution. Take a walk. Have some tea. Read a book. Talk to a friend. Go jerk off. Eat a cookie. Run on the elliptical. Pet a dog. Go to the park. Give a sandwich to a homeless guy.

Get perspective. Sometimes doubt is just a tangle of vines and cobwebs and you need to chop through them and go to clear your head. Easy Peasy, George and Weezy.

Turn That Frown Upside Down Until It's A Curved Blade With Which To Cut Doubt's Throat, Then Watch That Doubting Asshole Bleed Out On Your Carpets

Turn self-doubt against itself. Don't let it be a weapon against you: let it be a weapon against itself. Self-doubt can occasionally be clarifying: it might be a red flag that says, "Okay, you know what? Something just ain't right. Is this the best character arc? Do I need to rejigger these scenes? Am I sure that a rock opera about Anton van Leeuwnhoek, the Father of Microbiology, is really the best move here?"

The key is to let doubt be clarifying rather than muddying. It's important to know that the doubt isn't yours to carry. It's not about you. You needn't doubt your own abilities but rather some aspect of your current work that feels like it's not coming together. Here your self-doubt serves as the standard-bearer for those instincts rising up from your gutty-works. Follow your heart.

Thus, self-doubt helps you improve, which in turn helps you defeat self-doubt.

That's some ninja shit. That's like, reversing the energy of the attack. You are a goddamn self-doubt killing machine. You take self-doubt and evaginate that sumbitch.

And yes, "evaginate" means to "turn something inside out." To turn it tubular.

In other words, to turn it into a vagina.

Be honest: it's shit like this that keeps you coming back to terribleminds.

Validation Comes From Within

In the end, here may be the most important factor: don't go looking for validation elsewhere. Don't look for it from friends, loved ones, publishers, editors, agents, mailmen, or cats.

External validation isn't a bad thing. It just isn't what you need. Because it matters little that they believe in you if you don't believe in yourself. Confidence must blossom from within, a corpse-flower redolent with your delightful stink, a stink you find captivating, enlightening, empowering. The confidence you find elsewhere is hollow, a ladder made of brittle twigs. At the end of the day you'll never be sure if those around you are just wrong — or maybe they're lying! — or maybe they're suffering under the depredations of some wretched brain parasite that tricks them into liking mediocre things! — and that just means you're opening yourself to other forms of doubt.

And doubt needs to go suck a pipe. Doubt needs to take a dirt-nap.

And the way you do that is by finding your own way. By fostering your own confidence.

Because just as doubt is one of the writer's greatest enemies…

…confidence is one of the writer's most powerful friends.

Your turn, word-nerds.

How do you defeat the doubt within?

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

25 Things Writers Should Know About Theme

1. Every Story Is An Argument

Every story's trying to say something. It's trying to beam an idea, a message, into the minds of the readers. In this way, every story is an argument. It's the writer making a case. It's the writer saying, "All of life is suffering." Or, "Man will be undone by his prideful reach." Or "Love blows." Or, "If you dance with the Devil Wombat, you get cornholed by the Devil Wombat." This argument is the story's theme.

2. The Elements Of Story Support That Argument

If the theme, then, is the writer's thesis statement, then all elements of the story — character, plot, word choice, scene development, inclusion of the Devil Wombat — go toward proving that thesis.

3. Unearthed Or Engineered

The theme needn't be something the writer is explicitly aware of — it may be an unconscious argument, a message that has crept into the work like a virus capable of overwriting narrative DNA, like a freaky dwarven stalker hiding in your panty drawers and getting his greasy Norseman stink all over your undergarments. A writer can engineer the theme — building it into the work. Or a writer can unearth it — discovering its tendrils after the work is written.

4. Theme: A Lens That Levels The Laser

Knowing your theme can give your story focus. If you know the theme before you write, it helps you make your argument. If you discover the theme before a rewrite, it helps you go back through and filter the story, discovering which elements speak to your argument and which elements are either vestigial (your story's stubby, grubby tail) or which elements go against your core argument ("so far, nobody is getting cornholed by the Devil Wombat").

5. Do I Really Need This Happy Horseshit?

Yes and no. Yes, your story needs a theme. It's what elevates that motherfucker to something beyond forgettable entertainment. You can be assured, for instance, that 90% of movies starring Dolph Lundgren have no theme present. A story with a theme is a story with a point. No, you don't always need to identify the theme. Sometimes a story will leap out of your head with a theme cradled to its bosom (along with the shattered pottery remains of your skull) regardless of whether or not you intended it. Of course, identifying the theme at some point in your storytelling will ensure that it exists and that your story isn't just a hollow scarecrow bereft of his stuffing. Awww. Sad scarecrow. Crying corn syrup tears.

6. Slippery Business

I make it sound easy. Like you can just state a theme or find it tucked away in your story like a mint on a pillow. It isn't. Theme is slippery, uncertain. It's like a lubed-up sex gimp: every time you think you get your hands around him the greasy latex-enveloped sonofabitch is out of the cage and free from your grip and running into traffic where he's trying desperately to unzipper his mouth and scream for help. Be advised: theme is tricky. Chameleonic. Which isn't a word. But it should be. It jolly well fucking should be.

7. For Instance: You Can Get It Wrong

You might think going in, "What I'm trying to say with this story is that man's inhumanity to man is what keeps civilization going." But then you get done the story and you're like, "Oh, shit. I wasn't saying that at all, was I? I was saying that man's inhumanity to cake is what keeps civilization going." And then you're like, "Fuck yeah, cake." And you eat some cake.

8. Mmm, Speaking Of Cake

In cake, every piece is a microcosm of the whole. A slice contains frosting, cake, filling. Okay, that's not entirely true — sometimes you get a piece of cake where you get something other pieces don't get, like a fondant rose, but really, let's be honest, fondant tastes like sugary butthole. Nasty stuff. So, let's disregard that and go back to the original notion: all pieces of cake contain the essence of that cake. So it is with your story: all pieces of the story contain the essence of that story, and the essence of that story is the theme. The theme is cake, frosting, filling. In every slice you cut. Man, now I really want a piece of cake.

9. Grand Unification Theory

Another way to look at theme: it unifies story and bridges disparate elements. In this way theme is like The Force. Or like fiber. Or like bondage at an orgy. It ties the whole thing together. Different characters, tangled plotlines, curious notions: all of them come together with the magic motherfucking superglue of theme.

10. Put Down That Baseball Bat, Pick Up That Phial Of Poison

Theme can do a story harm. It isn't a bludgeoning device. A story is more than just a conveyance for your message: the message is just one component of your story. Overwrought themes become belligerent within the text, like a guy yelling in your ear, smacking you between the shoulder blades with his Bible. Theme is a drop of poison: subtle, unseen, but carried in the bloodstream to the heart and brain just the same. Repeat after me, penmonkeys: Your story is not a sermon.

11. No Good If Nobody Knows It

The poison is only valuable if the victim feels the effects. Your big dick or magical vagina only matter if people can see 'em, touch 'em, play with 'em, erect heretical idols to their glory (mine is cast in lapis lazuli and a nice sharp cheddar cheese). So it is with theme: a theme so subtle it's imperceptible does your story zero good. It'd be like having a character that just never shows up.

12. Triangulating Theme

Ask three questions to zero in on your theme: "What is this story about?" "Why do I want to tell this story?" "Why will anyone care?" Three answers. Three beams of light. Illuminating dark spaces. Revealing theme.

13. As Much An Obsession As A Decision

The auteur theory suggests that, throughout an author's body of work one can find consistent themes — and, studying a number of authors, you'll find this to be true. (Look no further than James Joyce in this respect, where he courts themes exploring the everyday heroism of the common man competing against the paralysis of the same.) In this way theme is sometimes an obsession, the author compelled to explore certain aspects and arguments without ever really meaning to — theme then needn't be decided upon, nor must it be constrained to a single narrative. Theme is bigger, bolder, madder than all that. Sometimes theme is who we really are as writers.

14. Theme Is Not Motif

I'll sometimes read that theme can be expressed as a single word. "Love." "Death." "Plastics." Let me offer my own one word to that: bullshit. Those are motifs. Elements and symbols that show up again and again in the story. Motif is not synonymous with theme. "Death" is not a theme. "Man can learn from death" is a theme. "Life is stupid because we all die" is a theme. "Sex and death are uncomfortable neighbors" is a theme. Death is just a word. An inconclusive and unassertive word. Theme says something, goddamnit.

15. Mmm, Speaking Of Cake, I Mean, Motif

That said, motif can be a carrier for theme: theme is the disease and motif is the little outbreak monkey spreading it. If your theme's making a statement about death, then symbols of death would not be unexpected. Or maybe you'd use symbols of time or decay. I mean, it has to make sense, of course. A theme about what man can learn from death is not well-embodied by, say, a series of microwave ovens.

16. Theme Is Also Not A Logline

A logline is plot-based. It depicts a sequence of events in brief, almost vignetted, form. Plot embodies breadth. Theme embodies depth. Theme is about story, and story is the weirder, hairier brother to "plot."

17. Piranhasaur Versus Mechatarantula

In English class, I was often told that theme could best be described as X versus Y. Man versus Nature. Man Versus Man. Man Versus Woman. Fat Guy Versus Hammock. Of course, English class was frequently fucking stupid. Once more I'm forced to call bullshit. Theme isn't just you, the writer, identifying a struggle. That's not enough. Theme picks a goddamn side. Theme asserts predictive outcome. It says, "In this struggle, nature always gets the best of man." It predicts, "That hammock is going to fuck that fat guy up, for realsies." Theme does more than merely showcase conflict. Theme puts its money on the table.

18. Take That Question Mark And Shove It Up Your Boothole

So too it is that theme is never a question. "How far will man go for love?" is a question, not a theme. Theme isn't a big blank spot. Theme is the fucking answer, right or wrong, good or bad.

19. It Is The Question, However, That Drives Us

Plot can carry theme by asking the question — like the aforementioned, "How far will man go for love?" — but then it's theme's job to stick the landing and, by the end of the story, answer the question posed. Theme comes back around and demonstrates, "This is how far man will go for love." It shows if man will go into the whale's mouth and out the whale's keister, or it shows it man has limitations, or if man's love can be defeated by other elements (greed, lust, fear, microwave ovens, wombats).

20. Of Turtleheads And Passing Comets

Theme might end up like Halley's Comet — once or twice in a story, it emerges from hiding and shows itself. The blood test reveals it and The Thing springs forth from flesh. In this way, it's okay if the theme is plainly stated (often by a character) once or twice in the story. Forrest Gump tells us that life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get. (And the film is like a box of chocolates, too — all the shitty ones filled with suntan lotion and zit cream.) The opening line to Reservoir Dogs could be argued to give away the whole point to the movie: it is, after all, a metaphor for big dicks.

21. Do Your Due Diligence

Read books. Watch movies. Play games. Find the theme in each. This isn't like math. You may not find one pure answer to the equation. But it's a valuable exercise just the same. It'll teach you that theme works.

22. Your Audience Might Not Give A Shit (But That's Okay)

Theme may not be something the audience sees or even cares about. Further, the audience may find stuff in your work you never intended. Like that old joke goes, the reader sees the blue curtains as some expression of grief, futility and the author's repressed bestiality but, in reality, the author just meant, "The curtains are fuckin' blue." It's all good. This is the squirmy slippery nature of story. That's the many-headed hydra of art.

23. Not Just For Literary Noses Held High In The Air

Just the same, theme isn't a jungle gym found on a playground meant only for literary snobs. Theme speaks to common experience and thus is for the common reader and the common writer. Theme isn't better than you and you're not better than theme. Like in Close Encounters, this is you mounding your mashed potatoes into an unexpected shape. "This means something." Fuck yeah, it does. That's a beautiful thing.

24. A Weapon In Your Word Warrior Arsenal

How important is theme at the end of the day? It's one more weapon in your cabinet, one more tool in your box. It is neither the most nor the least most important device in there — you determine its value. My only advice is, it helps to get floor-time with every weapon just so you know how best to slay every opponent. Play with theme. Learn its power. I mean, why the hell not?

25. For Fuck's Sake, Say Something

You want theme distilled down? You want it reduced like a tasty sauce? Theme is you saying something with your fiction. Why wouldn't you want to say something? Big or small, simple or complex, as profound as you care to make it, fiction has the power to do more than just be a recitation of plot events. Your work becomes your own — fingerprinted in blood — when you capitalize on the power of storytelling to speak your heart and soul. Take a stand. Put your big dick and magic vagina on the line (figuratively speaking) and let theme be a bold pronouncement of confidence, a message encoded in the DNA of an already-great story.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Flash Fiction Challenge: Another Three Sentences

"The Numbers Game" — last week's challenge — demands your eyeballs and appreciation.

At some point this week, I crossed 6000 followers on Twitter.

Which means: I'm going to send out some more terribleminds postcards, each with a piece of writing advice just for you. Penned by me. In the heartsblood of a magical white bull.

Okay, maybe not that last part.

Here's the deal: I'm going to send out three postcards.

I will send them anywhere in the world.

In addition, the three winners will also receive one of my e-books in PDF format. (Winner's choice.)

But you gotta work for it.

Last week's challenge was brief — 100 words! — and this week's is going to continue down Ole Brevity Lane and ask you to write a piece of flash fiction that is, drum roll please:

Three sentences long.

This can be in any genre. Any subject. No limitations beyond size.

Three. Sentences. Long.

Post directly in the comments below.

You have until Monday — yes, Monday, as in September 26th — at noon EST.

Then I shall pick.

Greg Stolze: The Terribleminds Interview

Mister Stolze and I share a freelance-flavored past, in that both of us did substantial work for White Wolf Game Studios, and periodically add more to that resume. He's since done a great deal of his own game design work and, in terms of both games and fiction, was kickstarting his own stories before Kickstarter even existed. You can find Greg at his website here, and Twitter at @GregStolze.

Why do you tell stories?

It beats honest work. In all seriousness, I think this world is a better, brighter place with me as a novelist than as a brain surgeon. Writing stories and designing games are the only tasks at which an objective observer would say I excel, unless you put in noncommercial tasks like "being a loving husband" or "getting lost even when driving to a location I've visited dozens of times."

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Hm, I'm trying to think of something that isn't just a ripoff of Anne Lamott. I actually cut 'n' pasted her article at this link so I could send it off any time anyone asked me for writing advice. Summary version: Don't be a writer if the process is just an implement of success for you, instead of the reason you do it. If you don't write the way an alcoholic drinks — compulsively and at the expensive of many other good things in life — you probably won't go far or like where you stop.

Or I could just rip off Justin Achilli's advice of avoiding the word "will" like it's radioactive cyanide. It was part of his grand, glorious crusade against passive voice. Passive voice is when you phrase something as "X happened" or "X was done" instead of the more active "Y did X." Passive voice sounds all weaselly, like you're trying to obscure responsibility. "Mistakes were made." "There were discrepancies in the vote count." "The body was found in the lake." Sounds like abashed bureaucrats mumbling into their shoes. Compare with "I made a mistake," "The vote machines couldn't make the tallies come out even" or "So there I was, minding my own business and trying to get a picture of a snowy egret when suddenly I find this fucking BODY in the lake!" Mm, engaging!

What's great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

Getting to make stuff up all the time is pretty great. I have a brain like a butterfly, flitting hither and yon and never settling for long. Also, my brain spreads beauty and joy to all who behold it, which is why I'm saving up to have my skull replaced with a clear, strong polymer, probably Lexan(tm). Also, nobody knows where my brain goes in the rain.

What sucks about it? Hm, the publishing industry was a tough nut to crack when I was starting out and is currently undergoing cataclysmic upheavals that could well leave the landscape littered with the shattered corpses of once-proud dead-tree juggernauts. In the shadows of the bodies, nothing moves but tiny, furtive, hair-clad figures composing fan-fiction.

You're a Kickstarter ninja, always kicking and starting fiction or game projects. What do you like about the Kickstarter model? And didn't you kind of do this way back when with your "Ransom" model?

What I like about Kickstarter is that it enables my laziness. I don't have to track who paid me or how much and, if things go pear-shaped, I don't have to do refunds. They take credit cards so I don't have to, and provide a nice platform where I can upload my videos and posts without swearing at HTML for hours. They take their percentage, as do the credit card companies, but what'cha gonna do?

The Ransom Model was, in some ways, crowd-funding before it was called that. For me, a TRUE Ransom (as opposed to them bitch-ass frontin' ersatz pseudo-Ransoms, many of which I have run) works on the notion that "If I get $X, the already-completed work becomes free for everyone." The D…iS! fundraiser isn't a Ransom as much as a pre-order. The nice thing about ransoming, especially for short stories is (1) once it's free, I can point people to links and say, "Look, go there and get free reads. If you enjoyed 'Enzymes' or 'Two Things She Does With Her Body,' you'll probably like this next story I've written" instead of having to explain what's brilliant about the story without being able to tell the whole thing. You know how people try to get you to work for free, saying "Oh, you'll get so much valuable exposure!" — a line that most sober college students can see is bullshit when a guy at Spring Break waves his camera at them, but which inexplicably works some times on artists and writers. Now I can get all the valuable free exposure I want, on my terms, and get paid for it. Also, I keep my clothes on.

Advice for authors or game designers looking to "kickstart" a project that way? Lots of Kickstarter projects out there: any way to stand out?

Kickstarter emphatically DOES NOT CREATE DEMAND. That's your job. It can turn trust and goodwill into money, but you have to give people a reason to want it. Having a good promotion video and intriguing sell-text will get you partway there, but you also have to hustle your ass off getting the word out any way you can. It's not like an ATM. Expecting it to do the work for you is like putting a hammer on top of a board and wondering when your scrollwork-engraved cabinet will be done.

What are your thoughts about the publishing industry as it stands — agents, editors, publishers? Is that a road you hope to travel? Or are you all up in the DIY model?

I have a horrible, horrible psychological block regarding agents. I mean, I've sent in my share of query letters — to be brutally honest, probably a little less than my share, but I've struck out every time. I take it too hard, and when the rejection arrives, I ask myself "Why did I piss away all that time and hope and effort researching the agent, finding out what she likes, crafting the approach letter, editing the approach letter, then spend 2-3 months biting my nails before the brush-off? I could've written, edited, promoted and self-published a $500 short story in less time, with less heartache AND been happier with myself."

It's a phobia. I used to feel that writing an agent query letter was like eating a piece of my own death. Now I feel it's more like eating death, vomiting it up, eating the vomit, shitting it out, and then somehow eating my own shit-death-puke. Which is not the agents' fault. I'm sure many of them are lovely, lovely people. But life is short. Approaching publishers directly is just as bad. I met a local publisher personally, gave him my card, shook his hand, spoke politely with him after his talk to my writer's group and, afterwards, shyly sent an email about maybe, possibly submitting a novel if he wanted to see it. That novel is "Mask of the Other." I'm quite confident that I'll have it available for sale before he ever gets back to me.

Add in the current publishing climate, and there are days when getting an agent looks like hiring an interior decorator when your house is burning down. That said, I'd love to have someone else do all the editing, layout, promotion, marketing, shipping and distribution for me. Still. Here we are. It would have been nice to have had the option, I guess.

What are the differences between writing game material and fiction? You prefer one over the other?

It's the difference between making a guitar and playing one. When I write game material, I'm trying to be some kind of invisible helper elf, enabling others to create their stories and do what they want. When I write fiction, I'm telling the story exactly the way I want it to go (mostly). Both have their charms. I loved writing stories even before I started gaming, but gaming loved me BACK before fiction really did.

You are a storyteller with children. Having only a four-month-old, I know that's not easy-peasy-diaper-squeezy, so: how the fuck do you do it?!

Set manageable goals. Understand that writing is going to take a hit. Personally, I found a place near my house where I could park my toddlers for something ridiculous like $4 an hour each at the Eola Community Center. Now the rules were that I had to stay in the Center and they'd come and get me for diaper changes, and they wouldn't hold a kid for more than two hours at a stretch, but if you plan ahead, you can get 1100 words written in an hour. Now, of course, they're in school all day. So just work towards that, Chuck.

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

I'm kind of partial to "Ah." Also "fuck-pole," which I think is underutilized.

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

In the summer, I like a G&T like this: Fill a tall glass with ice, crush a quarter lime in it, fill that with tonic (the kind with quinine) almost to the top, then a double-shot of Tanqueray on top. Stir and drink. But when I ran out of gin and didn't want to run to the store, I replaced the gin with one shot of Grand Marnier and one shot of Jose Cuervo tequila. I called it the "Grand Killya," but don't let that stop you from trying one.

Or you can go with two scoops of ice cream, a tiny drizzle of chocolate sauce, a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream and a shot of Frangelico hazlenut liquor in a blender. Smoothy-fy it and drink on the back porch while trying to get a grip. I call that one "Home-Made Prozac."

In the winter though, I've been trending towards aquavit — it's like liquid rye bread that makes you sleepy.

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

For writers, I recommend Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveler… even though it's distinctly aimed at you, the reader. No, literally: The book is written in the second person, and details your adventures as you try to get your hands on an unmangled copy of 'Italo Calvino's new novel If On A Winter's Night a Traveler…' It hilariously explodes the book trade, publishing, literary analysis, the entire reading experience and especially, especially writing. There's a wonderful scene where two writers find out they're at the same resort. One's a highbrow literary lion who agonizes and thrashes over every line, every word, every phrase. The other's a bestselling thriller-monger who "produces books the way a vine produces pumpkins." There's a beautiful woman reading by the pool, and each of them is agonized by the thought that she's reading the OTHER writer's book. That, in my experience, is the literary life compressed into a single image.

What skills do you bring to help the humans win the inevitable zombie war?

I'll be honest with you Chuck, most of my training has emphasized hand-to-hand combat with humans, paying particular attention to ligature strangles. Sure, I did some Okinawan kobudo back in the day, but I suspect I'd be best used keeping the survivors from turning on one another. You know, some sort of "Are you going to give Katy her Skittles back or do I have to put you in the sleeper hold again?" kind of arrangement.

You've committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.

Two beer-boiled elk sausage bratwursts with horseradish mustard, one with carmelized onions and sauerkraut, one plain, each served on fresh-baked, lightly-toasted split french rolls. A bottle of Jhoom beer and a G&T as described above. Home-Made Prozac for dessert. Yeah, if I'm going to get a dose of Edison's medicine, I'm not bothering with a balanced meal and I'll want to be as smashed as possible.

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

Let's see. SWITCHFLIPPED is out now, that's right here, and I've been shilling that all the livelong day. The fundraiser for Dinosaurs… in Spaaace! is ticking down and I'm hoping like hell that makes it. It's making me anxious, so I'll probably go for shorter, smaller and cheaper stuff for a while — perhaps drumming up the cash for a SWITCHFLIPPED print run.

After I clear those decks, I've got Mask of the Other, which I'd call a "military horror novel" — a squad of US soldiers stumbles across the wreckage of Saddam's occult weapons program in 1991 and gets entangled with the Cthulhu Mythos demimonde. Within that frame, it also deals heavily with modern-day ghost towns. Parts are set in Varosha — pictured in these links:

http://woondu.com/images/strange/varosha-ghost-town-cyprus/varosha-ghost-town9.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielzolli/2440928047/

http://greekodyssey.typepad.com/my_greek_odyssey/images/2007/04/12/forbidden_zone_2.jpg

Varosha's a neighborhood in Cyprus that was abandoned during the Turkish invasion in 1974, and during the occupation, the Turks just fenced it off and said, "No one goes in or we shoot them." Other parts are set on the island of Hashima:

http://amazingtourismtraveling.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Ghost-town-Hashima-Island-Gunkanjima-japan.jpg

http://static.omglog.com/uploads/2009/10/hashima-island-decaying-city-photos-555×371.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yw3j8kNsVyE/TctfQGbxhyI/AAAAAAAAEuw/iKpeMUUTUoE/s400/hashima01.jpg

…which was basically a town built on top of a coal mine on an island the size of a few football fields. It was very suddenly evacuated and abandoned… in 1974.

That's all true or, at least, internet-true. I asked myself, "what would make people abandon cities on islands in 1974?" and came up with some HPL-style answers. That's the novel.

Way off on the back burner, I'm thinking of open-developing a new set of RPG mechanics and ransoming out polished versions of them in a sort of "fantasy science" setting — nice short chunks, maybe 10,000 words like the REIGN ransoms. That might work better than big stuff like D…iS! That project's called HORIZON, so keep an eye peeled.

"Get A Real Job"

As you may know, REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY is on sale (a mere $2.99) — it's been selling well and I'm up over 200 copies, which is just fine by me. The book features an autobiographical open which talks about my life and all the crazy shit that adds up to the writer's existence — van crashes and strap-on-dildoes and lessons in profanity with my father and my father's death and all that. It aims to be equal parts funny, sad, and enlightening all in one fell swoop. Anyway, I thought it might be best to give a taste of that intro (which is around a 10,000 word piece) as I think it's one of the things that plagues most writers — this persistence that they should get a "real" job. I assume many artists and creative-types go through it. Regardless, here then, is a snippet of text from ROTPM. Please to enjoy, and please remember that procuring any of my e-books is what helps this blog stay in existence. And it's what keeps me drunk and eating cheeseburgers on my office floor.

* * *

Writers will hear this a lot: "You need a real job."

As if writing is a job on par with "unicorn tamer," or "goblin wrestler on the Narnia circuit."

Even still, you hear it often enough, you start to believe it. I got kinda beaten down after college. I'd written two crap-tastic novels. I'd been hired for a bunch of bullshit writing work that was as pleasant as a dildo violation or a van crash. I was starting a lot of work that I just wasn't finishing.

I felt like I had tires spinning in greasy mud. Couldn't get traction. Spraying shit everywhere. The dream of being a writer was fading—a wraith in the fog I could not grab and could barely see.

My father was one of the voices in the "real job" chorus. He got me a "real job" at the plant where he worked. Want to know what that job was? I stood in an abandoned wing of a dirty factory all day attending to a giant 20-foot-tall pyramid of file boxes. I would pull down a file box. I would take the thick-as-my-thumb files from within. Then I would run the whole file through a giant industrial shredder I named:

THE BITCH.

The Bitch chewed through these files like she was a wood chipper in a former life. GGRRNNNGH. GRRRAAWWW. VBBBBBBBNNNGGGGT.

All day long. Eight hours. That noise. Destroying documents that may or may not have been documents people did not want the EPA to see.

After one day of doing this work, I came home filthy and smelling like weird chemicals.

I knew I had to quit. But quitting meant telling the boss. And the boss was my father.

Desperate, I drove around that night, looking for something, anything, literally hoping that a job would magically fall into my lap. And lo and behold, it did.

I found a discount bookstore setting up shop about 10 minutes from my house. They were just opening and needed workers to unload and shelve books. Books. Books. Fuck, I thought, I love books!

I went in that night. Met the manager, old Greek guy from Philly named Pete.

He said he liked me. Hired me there on the spot.

He hired me as the assistant manager.

Now, here's the thing. The bookstore was only going to be there for summer and fall and then close up shop. It was always meant to be a temporary thing, but fuck it, a job was a job.

And it was the best job I have ever had.

It's not just that I was surrounded by books. I've worked other bookstore jobs and they bounced between "ehh" and "fuck this noise." But this job was different.

This job had Pete.

Pete was, like I said, Old Greek. Built like a sagging brick wall, head like a melting lump of Play-Dough, Pete was not what you would think of as a reader. But he did read, and he read a lot: lot of crime, lot of thrillers. (Lisa Scottoline, I recall, was one of his favorites.)

This was not Pete's first bookstore rodeo. In fact, this one was rather cushy because a lot of the discount bookstores he opened were in the city—often in shitty parts of the city. He in fact was once shot while setting up just such a bookstore, taking a bullet as the place was robbed—prematurely, as it turns out, because they didn't have any cash on hand yet. Pete he was proud enough to lift his shirt in the store and show off the pair of bullet wounds on the front and back of his egregious trunk (the entry and exit wounds, respectively).

He took a bullet for books.

Because, he said, books matter. And he liked his job. Worth the bullet. Proud of it.

Fuck yeah.

It started to get me riled up about writing books again. Here's a guy who took a bullet for books. Here's a guy who was not dismissive of me being a writer but was in fact excited by it. To top it all off, every once in a while if Pete and I were on shift together he'd tell me to go around the store, pile up a single box with books I wanted, and then quietly go out to my car and ease it into my trunk. "I'm the manager," he said. "You're the assistant manager. It's fine." He let me essentially steal boxes of books from the store. Just wander away with them and take them home. Like so many lost puppies.

That summer I read a epic fuck-ton of books. It was glorious.

But Pete, man. Giving me all those books. All that storytelling energy, and there I was at its nexus. I bought all the Gaiman Sandman run. I read lots of obscure horror. I bought scads of weird reference materials, all of which I still own and still use (Dictionary of Phrase and Fable? Lawd's yes). Pete took a bullet for books.

Because stories matter.

Holy shit.

Suddenly, I started writing again.

It was good to emerge from that low place. Once again another lesson lurks in the weeds: writers will often have these moments of doubt, and you need to find your way out of that. You need to march your doubt out into a field and put a .357 round in the back of its head. Let its death soak into the earth, grow the wheat, make bread from its blood. Because, for real, fuck doubt. Fuck doubt right in its wax-clogged ear.

25 Virtues Writers Should Possess

1. A Wild And Unfettered Imagination

This one goes up front: the bubbling turbid stew that comprises your brain-mind combo must possess an endless array of unexpected ideas. Your head should be an antenna receiving frequencies from the furthest-flung reaches of Known Creative Space. You want to survive, you've got to have an imagination that won't lay down and die. That fucker's like a North Korean 9-year-old: up all night, smoking cigarettes, working his fingers to the bone. He never cries. He only works to make the pretty baubles.

2. Discipline

Given that we're creative types prone to art-o-leptic fits of imagination, if we're given no leash we'll just wander off into the woods to create our masterpiece. Where we are promptly eaten by bears. Imagination is the fuel, but it's a fickle and volatile fuel. It needs a channel. It needs a furnace. It needs discipline. Discipline to wake up, to weld your shit-can to the chair, to squeeze out word-babies, to do the work.

3. Optimism

The only way you're going to stay on target is if you believe this thing you want to do can actually happen. It can. It really can. But like with elves and Jesus, you gotta believe. Otherwise, the magic dies.

4. Realism

By the same token, realistic expectations are the order of the day. You think you're going to walk out the door with a script and the mailman is going to buy the rights-in-perpetuity for a million bucks, you're off your meds. A good reality check now and again keeps your optimism from messing your pants with endless squirts of premature wheejaculations.

5. Pessimism

Here's where you say, "Wait, wuzza? Wooza? I'm supposed to be an optimist… and a realist… and a pessimist, too?" Yes. Yes! Yes. Writers without a healthy dose of pessimism will find themselves bent over an end table with a bad publishing contract rolled up and shoved deep into their colonic grotto. A little dollop of distrust in humanity will serve you well. I'm not saying to be selfish. But do protect yourself.

6. Sticktoitiveness

I've always said that no matter the flavor of your writing career, it's basically you putting a bucket on your head and running full force into a brick wall. Again and again. And in the end it's either you or the wall. Any success is going to be in part due to dangerous levels of persistence and stubbornness.

7. Honesty

Writers are liars who use those lies to tell truths. Let that boil your noodle.

8. Confidence

Put your work out there and find pride and power in what you do. Be assertive in your language, sure-footed in your prose. Why would anyone want to read anything if it has all the backbone of a cup of sun-warmed pudding? Go forth. Kick ass wearing oiled leather boots made from the rent pages of your own super-fantastic manuscript, a manuscript written on the flesh of your adversaries. It doesn't need to be ego-fed to be confident. Though I'd rather read the work of an ego-bloated megalomaniacal Narcissist than a weak-in-the-knees ehhh-mehhh-pbbbt insecure writer-whelp. Insecurity is no pleasure to read.

9. Thick Skin

Your body shall be a road atlas of misery by the time you're ten years into a writing career. The slings and arrows of rejections. The bullets and flying glass of editorial notes. I'm still picking metaphorical gravel out of my elbows and knees. Want to survive in this gig? Your skin better be tough as a Brooklyn phone book.

10. Humor

If you can't laugh in this business, you'll cry. And then you'll evacuate fluids from all orifices. Then you'll be kicked in the South Crotchal Region by an itinerant donkey before dying. Humor's also good to put in your work. People like a laugh now and again. It can't all be turbulence and pathos and frowny faces.

11. Responsibility

You will have deadlines. Someone might ask you to turn in a synopsis. Or an outline. Or an edit. Do these things. Do as they ask. Do them on time and according to parameter. Your readers, too, will want things. They will want your attention. They will ask that you provide them with quality. Give them what they ask (within reason). Know your responsibility. Fulfill that responsibility. Do not be a stinky dickwipe.

12. Appreciation

A wee touch of humility and appreciation will go a long away. Appreciate your audience. Appreciate that you can do this thing that you do without getting your hands cut off by an oppressive fundamentalist government. Appreciate the words your forebears have flung into the firmament. Appreciate the work, the opportunity, the general aura of overall pantslessness. Because seriously, pants are for jerkholes.

13. Coffee

Fuck you, coffee IS TOO a virtue. Do not deny me this. Do not dare!

14. Business Sense

Writers have all the business sense of a gin-drunk wildebeest. But it pays to know something about something when it comes to business. Know enough not to get fucked. Know enough not to fuck yourself.

15. A Critical Eye

You can't be all wide-eyed and dopey-smiled. Your gaze must be razor-honed. Your mouth ever in an uncertain sneer. To know how to write well you know how to write poorly, which means you have to identify poor writing in yourself and in others. It's no longer your pleasure to be entertained; it is your job to be suspicious, dubious, and ever-critical. Turn your brain off? Not likely. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage. Rage. Against the dying of quality plots, compelling characters, and magical stories.

16. A Willingness To Do Evil

Okay, settle down, sermonizers. I don't mean in real life. But your job is one of mighty evil. Evil splashed across the page in great heaving buckets of torment and blood. You're not a nice monkey. Not to the fictional people that gambol and preen upon your manuscript pages. It's your job to fuck those people over and up. Your evil shall know no bounds. Your cruelty is the engine of conflict. Yes. Yessss.

17. Patience

In the time it takes for the light from a supernova star 10,000 light years away to reach our eyes here on earth, you still might not have a project pass through all the proper channels and put a paycheck in your hand. This industry often moves slower than a legless caterpillar rolling up a rocky knoll. Be ready for that. Exercise patience. Find other acts of wordsmithy to fill those gaps. Breathe in. Breathe out.

18. Tact

You're going to deal with publishers, writers, readers, fans, and it isn't all going to be newborn puppies and pina coladas. Tact goes a long, long way. This is shorthand for, "Don't be a fuckweasel."

19. Discomfort

Discomfort is good. Discomfort is that stinging nettle at the cusp of your butthole telling you that sometimes you need to get up out of that chair, kick down the walls of that box you're in, try something new. Discomfort drives you forward. A little taste of dissatisfaction makes you crave bigger and better. Comfort is nice. But comfort is overrated. Flee that zone now and again. Truth lurks in conflict.

20. Courage

Have the courage to go forth and do not what everybody else is doing but what you're doing. Have the courage to put yourself out there. To give a big neon middle finger to those who will inevitably disrespect and misunderstand your choice to be a storyteller. Invoking your craft and creating art (in a perfect world) is an act of bravery. Of putting all your sensitive bits on the cutting board.

21. Liquor

GODDAMNIT IT IS TOO A VIRTUE. I will break this vodka bottle over your head if you try to take this away from me. Or if you try to take my vodka away from me. Daddy needs his potato juice.

22. Tranquility

Sometimes you need that Zen place. Find the blank chalkboard, the tabula rasa, the motherfucking no-mind. Mow the lawn. Listen to the rain. Thousand-yard stare. The story sometimes lives in this place.

23. Loyalty

A good writer finds his loyalty to be a raft on which he can float in even the most turbulent storm-tossed seas. A raft with a beer cooler. And a snack machine filled with bacon. You've got to be loyal to your own work: no taking another manuscript out for a little rumpy-pumpy behind the shed when you're supposed to be working on another. And be loyal to your own ideas, too. Stick to them. Stand by them. Finally, other writers. We're a tribe of individuals but a tribe just the same, and that means this whole thing we do is made of people. Loyalty matters to them, to you, to the whole lot of us farking moonbats.

24. Ten Pounds Of Crazy In A Five Pound Bucket

Speaking of farking moonbats: we're moonbats because we need to be moonbats. I mean, really. To want to do this thing? To want to have this life? You gotta be a little bit — and by "little bit" I mean "project a massive crackling force field of" — crazy. Crazy is defense. Crazy is enlightenment. Crazy is the act of doing differently. For the record, I don't mean "crazy" to be, "please go masturbate at the salad bar" or "to stop the voices you will first have to kill every third member of British Parliament." I mean crazy as in, to have that electric vibe pushing you to put the words on the page and to create stories unbidden from the empty ether.

25. Love

The most important thing. You gotta love what you do. It's the only way you'll make it through. This is not a safe nor sane journey. It's not a career choice for most normals. It's also not a road that offers a whole lot of initial reward: you step into the breach on the whiff of a promise, on the potential for success, and so it is that the only prize you'll find early on is the love and passion and satisfaction for what you do. Without all that, what's the fucking point? You don't love it, then being a writer is no different than pushing a broom or making a corporate nest surrounded by four fuzzy gray cubicle walls. And by the way, why are cubicle walls fuzzy? Are they draped in the pent of some dull, listless monster? Some bleak hell-cow wandering the world's uncharted swamps? Whatever. Fuck it. The point is: love this thing you do and you'll have all the reward you need. Except vodka. Because despite my many letters to Congress that shit still costs money.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Guess What? Pig Butt

I will now make love to your mouth.

Uhh.

Let's try that again:

Let my meat make love to your mouth.

Hrm.

Okay, forget all that, what I'm trying to say is, I'm going to give you now three recipes, and these three recipes will comprise your dinner at some point this week. Trust me, you'll do it. You'll do it, and you'll like it. You'll like it so much, you will give me money. And a gift basket. A gift basket of hookers. Because that's how good these recipes are. Are you ready to receive my culinary insight? My gastronomical penetrations?

My meat in your mouth?

Step One: Pulled Pork From Pork Butt

Contrary to its name, pork butt — or "Boston Butt" — is not actually the ass-end of the pig. It's the shoulder. They called it that because they used to store and ship it in barrels called "butts." Either that, or they thought it was funny. "HA HA HA you're eating butt," those randy old New Englanders would say. And then they'd say "pahk the cah in the gah-rage wicked smaht" and "go sox" before throwing tea into a harbor.

Anyway. You're going to need a big round rumpy-pumpy of pork butt.

Select a pork butt that is around three or four pounds.

Take it. Coat it first with a lacquering of olive oil.

Then coat it with a liberal smattering of:

a) kosher salt

b) chili powder

If you're so inclined, wrap it up in Saran Wrap. Which, for the record, I am incapable of using. Because seriously, fuck Saran Wrap. The way they package that stuff is for assholes. Foil? I love foil. The cutting teeth of the foil box work as designed. Pull foil, tear down, riiiiip, blammo. Piece of foil. But the cling wrap shit, the teeth are on the opposite side. So you have to tear upwards. And the boxes aren't sturdy enough for this. They bend and warp and the teeth aren't sharp enough and the wrap resists, it resists as if it has a mind of its own. By the time I'm done putting Saran Wrap over something so simple as a mixing bowl, I've pulled out half the supply of cling wrap and it's all bunched up over the top and it's lost any semblance of static cling. I might as well cover that mixing bowl with one of my son's diapers.

Of course, my wife wields cling wrap like a ninja. She walks over — riiiiiiip — then places then cling film over the bowl like she received training in a Shaolin kitchen somewhere. Lesson: she's either been training with Buddhist kung-fu cooks or I'm a total dipshit. I'm leaning toward the "kung-fu kitchen" theory.

What I'm saying is, give the pork butt time to absorb the salty chili-ey goodness.

Now go to your grill. Turn that bitch on, then prep for indirect heat. Make sure the grill hangs around 300 degrees. If you have the ability to utilize smoke, that's your call — for this recipe, I did not. Oh, and if any charcoal purists come over here and try to tell me you can't do this on a gas grill, I will have my Shaolin wife come karate chop you in your gonads. A good gas grill will serve you well. Like a hound. A hound made of propane and metal and melting fat who breathes fire and chars animal-flesh.

You could probably do this in the oven, by the way. Same deal — 300 degrees.

But seriously: the grill does this better. I'm not fucking around. Don't think that I am.

Anyway.

Get your pork butt HA HA HA HA HA butt. Just shut up. Shut up and go get it. Take it. Put it on the grill — indirect! not over flame! — and then close that bad bitch up.

Come back in five hours.

Step Two: The Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

This is not a red pepper coulis, exactly, but fuck it, you can call it that and I won't tell. I won't sick the gourmand police on you. Foodies will not descend from helicopters to punch you in the mouth.

You're going to need some things for this.

You're going to need one sweet onion.

You'll need one large or two smaller tomatoes.

Then you're going to need a fuckload of sweet peppers. (A fuckload is equal to one pound.)

Red, yellow, orange, whatever. I like the little guys, but your mileage may vary.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Chop coarsely. Curse while doing so. Call someone's mother a "whore-biscuit" or "canker-nipples." While disparaging someone's mother, also be sure to remove the seeds from the tomato and the peppers because, ew. Who wants to eat a bunch of seeds? Squirrels, that's who. And I assume you're not a squirrel. If you are, and you're all up in my blog chewing the wiring and depositing your foul little squirrel pellets in the programming, I will shoot you with my .410, which is my squirrel-killing gun. And it's also my chicken-killing gun, just in case you're one of those. Because chickens are dickheads.

Put all this stuff in a roasting pan over foil, get it good and lubed up with olive oil, and then liberally sprinkle with some salt and some Herbs de Provence. Yes, seriously. Hush up and do it, for Chrissakes.

Put in oven for one hour, or until you start to see the peppers darken around the edges.

While cooking, stand around, smelling that smell. Mmm. So good. Rub yourself. Just a little bit. Not to be gross or weird or anything. Gentle circles. Mmm. Yeah. So nice.

Ding. Hour's up.

Veggies out of the oven, let 'em cool, then pop 'em in a mixing bowl.

Get your immersion blender, penetrate the sauce with your whirring doom-stick, and blend the shit out of those veggies. Metaphorically. The veggies should contain no actual shit. If it does, then you need to check yourself. You need to say, "What's wrong with me? Why did I put feces in my food? Why did I sabotage myself again? I'm not a success. I'm my own worst enemy. This is why my wife left me."

When you blend, you don't need to blend it to a complete slurry. I like it with some pieces of pepper still floating around. Give it a little texture. Your call, though. You do what you like. It's your sauce.

Now, add to this sauce two things:

a) 1/4 cup of creme fraiche (or sour cream if you're, y'know, a hillbilly)

b) 1 TBsp of softened cream cheese.

Stir. No need to blend. Just stir. Not with your finger. Or your penis. Put that away. You should really see somebody about that. Always sticking your extremities into moist foods.

Cool in fridge until meat is meatified.

Step Three: Corn Done Two Ways

This is like a Choose Your Own Adventure game where every adventure ends in corn-a-licious delights rather than, say, getting eaten by Snarveling Moon Beasts or some nonsense like that.

Get four ears of corn.

Cook 'em however makes you happy. Boil them for 8 minutes, grill them for 15 minutes, char them, whatever works for you. Just make a decision and cook the fucking corn already.

Then: de-corn the cob. Or un-cob the corn. I dunno. Cut the corn off the cob. Serrated knife FTW.

Option #1: CORN SALSA. Take the cut corn and put it in a mixing bowl and add in there: salt, pepper, one diced tomato, a de-seeded and chopped jalapeno, some melted butter, and the juice of one lime.

You could, quite seriously, add a splash of tequila in there. "Margarita Corn Salsa." Awesome.

Option #2: CREAMED CORN. Chop up one small sweet onion or a handful of shallots and put 'em in a skillet to soften them in butter — dice up a couple-few cloves of garlic in there, too. Throw the corn in there after about five or ten minutes (when onion is beyond translucent and nice and soft). Milk the cob, too. (Pork pulled from pig butt? Milk the cob? Meat in mouth? No wonder they call it food porn.) By milking the cob, I mean, scrape your knife down the cut cobs and get the rest of that "corn juice" out of there. Into this goes salt, pepper, and whatever herbs you have laying around. Oregano and parsley are nice here. But you could go with those Herbs de Provence, again, since you're lazy and you already have them within reach of your greasy hands. Then mix in there two TBsps of creme fraiche again. Or sour cream. You pedestrian.

Sticking The Landing

Remove pork from grill. It will be crispy on the outside and unctuous on the inside. Pull it apart with your mind. Barring an unforeseen lack of psychic powers: tongs and fork.

Slap the pork on buns. (Butt? Buns? Goddamnit.)

Glob a dollop of that roasted red pepper sauce on there.

Put some Corn Your Own Adventure on the side.

EAT LIKE A FUCKING CHAMPION. Snarl and pound the table in delight.

Don't forget to order me my gift basket.

Flash Fiction Challenge: "The Numbers Game"

Here's a number's game for you.

I'm going to give you five words.

You must choose three of these words and incorporate them into a story.

That story may not be more than 100 words long. I didn't say 1000. Rather: one hundred.

The five words, chosen by Random Word Generator:

Enzyme.

Ivy.

Bishop.

Blister.

Lollipop.

Again, you have 100 words only.

You may post your story directly in the comments if you so choose. Alternately, feel free to deposit them in your own post and drop a link to said post in the comments. Your call, Cochise.

You have until next Friday, September 23rd, at noon EST.

I will pick three of my favorites. Those three will get my short story collection IRREGULAR CREATURES (with thirty-nine 4- and 5-star reviews at Amazon) in either Kindle or PDF format.

Choose your three words. Spin them into 100. BTFO, emmereffers.

Elizabeth Bear: The Terribleminds Interview

Let's be upfront, here. Elizabeth Bear's bibliography is such a long read you don't know if it will ever end — it goes on for days, like an eternally unfurling scroll. But there is, of course, a reason for that — she's hella-talented and even better, multi-faceted when it comes to genre. "E-Bear" — which is the nickname I call her when she's nowhere near me because the last time I called her that she hit me in the face with a hot pan — kindly offered to strap herself into the whirring psychotropic machine that is the terribleminds interview process. Thank her for coming by. Check out her website — elizabethbear.com — and follower her on Twitter (@matociquala).

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

It was on a Tuesday afternoon that Rudolfo finally exploded. But it wasn't Tuesday itself that made him explode, or that somebody had used up the last of the creamer and he had to drink his coffee burnt and black, or having been up all night with a colicky baby. No, it was his eczema, which had started flaring up again and was driving him mad, inch by itching inch. He fought the urge to explode for a good long time, using calming breaths and meditation techniques, but eventually it all became too much for him.

He sat down on the office floor and put his fingers in his ears. His colleagues stepped back. One of them nearly called a manager, but first had to run down to Accounting with some paperwork, and by then it was all over.

Four minutes and six seconds later, the top of Rudolfo's head blew off. There was a column of smoke and a good deal of noise, but no fire.

Human Resources showed up about half an hour later to collect the corpse for recycling.

It's always the little things.

Why do you tell stories?

Compulsion. To justify my existence. To maybe let somebody else know they're not as alone in the universe as they seem.

You're a veteran penmonkey, as anybody who's seen a list of your credits knows. Pick a favorite tale out of your venerable cabinet of stories and tell us why you wrote it.

Hah! Veteran penmonkey in output, maybe, but not in years. My first novel was published in 2005, after all. I'm still a wet-behind-the-ears novice, in a lot of ways.

But… okay. I think my best story so far is "Sonny Liston Takes The Fall," which is part of my Promethean Age continuity, where very subtle and treacherous magic infests the real world and goes largely unnoticed. It's about sacrifice and savagery and bloodsports, and the Corn King, and martyrdom, and how as a society we demonize people who fall on the wrong side of the race line, the class line, the political line. Sonny Liston was a boxer, the heavyweight champion of the world–and sort of the Mike Tyson of his day. But he wasn't a boogeyman and he wasn't a hero; he was a human being, made up of the usual assemblage of heroic and monstrous traits that comprise us all. And he helped change the world.

Now you've got to talk about one of my favorites — "Shoggoths In Bloom." Where did that come from? It's hard to bring anything inventive to Lovecraft, I think, and you not only threw me for a loop but also managed to bring in issues of prejudice and slavery. Why did you write it?

("Shoggoths in Bloom")

My friend and fellow writer Amanda Downum is *also* a jewelrymaker. Several years ago in Wisconsin, she presented me with a lampwork bracelet named "Shoggoths in Bloom." And I was like, "I could write a story with that title."

I grew up on Lovecraft. And there are things about his work that I still love — its existential bleakness, its sense of horror arising from the fact that the universe actually doesn't give a good goddamned about us, humanity. I think he tackles that with a tremendous honesty.

But I think it's impossible to engage with his work without engaging with its problematic aspects, which include racial determinism and prejudice and some class issues that are just as revolting.

So "Shoggoths" is my response to some of the unquestioned stuff in Lovecraft that I suspect he might have eventually interrogated a little more thoroughly himself, if he'd lived long enough to gain some perspective on his own unthinking prejudices. I may be giving him too much benefit of the doubt there, but I think of–for example–the contrast between the conventional sexism in early James White and what he was writing at the end of his life, and I want to at least remain open to the possibility that Lovecraft could have benefited from the mallet of perspective, eventually.

You write across many genres. Any advice for genre writers?

Stick to one, if you can.

At least to start with: it's easier to build a career that way. I think I've confused a lot of people, and if I'd kept writing near-future cyberpunk adventures indefinitely, my sales numbers would probably be a hell of a lot better now.

On the other hand, I wouldn't have the critical recognition I've garnered, so…

What would you say is wrong with modern genre fiction?

Absolutely fucking nothing. I think the field is richer and more inventive than it's ever been; we have a diverse cohort of skilled and subtle writers coming up; and SFF has entered the mainstream in a big way. I keep telling people that this is the Rainbow Age of science fiction, and by god there is some *brilliant* work being done, building on the shoulders of the golden age and the silver age and the new wave and the cyberpunks and the urban fantasists. The spiritual children of Roger Zelazny and Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany and Joanna Russ and Fritz Leiber are kicking *ass* all over the place, quite frankly.

I think, critically speaking, we have a bunch of issues, though. We waste an awful lot of time pissing circles around subgenres and attempting to assert the moral superiority of one sort of SFF over another, and that's a very human but utterly ridiculous activity.

I do think that one thing we're missing is some recognition for the necessity of gateway science fiction. We lavish a lot of critical attention on books that are extremely dense and challenging — as impenetrable to somebody coming in to the genre as a new reader as improv jazz would be to an easy listening radio fan. This is not to say that the genre doesn't *need* books like BRASIL or THE QUANTUM THIEF or THE COLOR OF DISTANCE or BLINDSIGHT, because of course we do. That's the absolute cutting edge of the genre, the idea-and-eyeball-kicks coming fast and hard and unrelenting.

But we *also* need books that can train a reader in the skills necessary to follow THE QUANTUM THIEF. That's one thing I'm enjoying about, for example, Robert Charles Wilson's recent work. My favorite book of his is still BIOS, which is slim and savage and unrelentingly SFnal… but I think JULIAN COMSTOCK can appeal to and educate a wider readership, bring them into the fold as it were. And it's still a damned fine novel.

I think Nalo Hopkinson is another excellent example of a crossover artist. Her work can be read as literary fiction, but the genre edge is there, and it's handled in a way that opens doors for readers. I think THE SALT ROADS is one of the best SFF novels of the young century, and it has wide crossover appeal.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

"Tell the truth." But tell it slant, as Emily Dickinson advised. Nobody likes to be preached to.

You've dispensed some writing advice. Now I have to ask: got any publishing advice for new writers?

Right desk. Right day. Right story. Write better.

Also: the only thing about publishing that you can control is the quality of your output. So make it good. *g*

What's great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

It's the best job in the world. I get paid to tell people entertaining lies. Unfortunately, I don't get paid very much, and the checks show up irregularly.

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

Favorite word: "sesquipedalian." Runner up: "floccinaucinihilipilificatrix." Favorite oath of displeasure is probably "mother pusbucket." Which isn't technically a curse word, but it feels very satisfying to say. [ed. -- my favorite word is *also* "sesquipedalian." -- cdw]

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

Good Scotch, preferably an Islay. Caol Ile is nice. Lagavulin. Mmm, Scotch.

My favorite cocktail is a Manhattan variant with Amara subbed in for vermouth, and orange bitters. It's called a "Manhattanhenge," and as far as I know was invented at peche, a wonderful quirky bar in Austin.

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

This year, the book I am selling to everybody is Caitlin R. Kiernan's THE DROWNING GIRL: A MEMOIR, which I read an ARC of and which will be out early next year. It's a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and also a masterpiece.

What skills do you bring to help the humans win the inevitable zombie war?

Canning and pickling. Also, I can handle a rifle and a bow.

You've committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.

Sushi omakase with a really good chef. There's something very awesome about sitting back, drinking sake, and watching somebody create art with food all on his or her own inspiration.

Of course, that would probably go over the $15 limit on last meals for convicts…

Sushi. SUSHI. Sushi! What do you like? I'm only a yellow belt in the Ways of Sushi, so I have to solicit recommendations where I can get 'em.

In the hands of a really good chef, I have yet to find anything sushi-related that I will not eat and enjoy. I particularly like, however, sweet scallops, salmon skin hand roll, unagi (doesn't everyone?), tobiko (which is flying fish roe), and yellowtail. These days, I'm trying to limit myself to species that aren't overfished, however. Oh, morality, how you collide with baser appetites…

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

I am currently avoiding working on book 2 of an epic fantasy trilogy set in an alternate central Asia (if most Western fantasy is set in not-Europe, this is not-Eurasia). That's my big project right now.

Book one, called RANGE OF GHOSTS, will be out from Tor in March.

I'm also involved in an ongoing nifty online storytelling collective called SHADOW UNIT (www.shadowunit.org) with such people as Emma Bull and Holly Black. It is pretty cool, and I encourage anybody who likes modern-day science fiction horror to check it out.