Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 67

Sometimes It’s Okay To Quit Writing The Thing You’re Writing

I talk a good game.

I say the right words, the right motivational words. I say, don’t quit! I say, keep writing that story, finish your shit, end what you begin, you can do it, and then I shake my pom-poms (which may or may not be the nickname I have given to my buttcheeks), and rah-rah-rah.

And it’s not bad advice, in the general sense. Of course you have to finish your shit. If you start writing a story, you’re best also trying to end that story. And that’s for a lot of reasons: it’s because we need to know that we are capable of ending what we begin, it’s because the ending of a story is a vital component to learn, it’s because so many writers never finish what they start, it’s because we need that little dopamine hit of stumbling drunkenly over the finish line.

It is, as a rule, a pretty hard and fast one. Most of writing is not given over to rules carved into the schist and bedrock, but this one? It’s pretty damn close, right?

Finish.

Your.

Shit.

Except.

Wait, what? Except what? What the fuck, Chuck? Didn’t you just say this was a hard and fast rule? Carved into schist, whatever the fuck schist is? What is schist, anyway? Is it poop? Rock poop? “Oh no, I schist myself,” the boulder said, ejecting a rattle of little pebbles out of its craggy crevice. Or is it crevasse? Is any of this important? Are you talking to yourself, Chuck? Am I talking to myself?

Who am I?

Who are you?

Man, this post has already gone way off the rails.

Let’s refocus:

Sure, finish your shit.

Except, sometimes, you have to quit.

Now, I don’t mean in the larger scheme of things — I don’t mean, QUIT WRITING, YOU SUCK. You may! Suck, that is. I certainly did, once upon a time — and I may yet still. I think the reason to quit writing overall is that you don’t really like it very much, but it’s damn sure not because you aren’t good at it, because not being good at a thing is the precursor to getting good at the thing.

No, I mean, sometimes you have to abandon a story.

You gotta cut bait and let the fish have the worm.

It’s okay.

Here’s why you quit a story, I think —

a) You’re just not ready. Or it’s not ready. Point is? Something’s off. The stories we write aren’t all surface — the writing of a tale is rarely the sum total of the work that goes into it, and very early on in my life and career I hadn’t figured this out. I’d get an idea and I’d instantly run to the page and scribble scribble scribble and then be mad at myself because what was on the page was half-formed drivel. Shallower than a thimble of spit. What goes into a story is often a whole lot of foundational thinking and feeling and internal arguing — a kind of quality assurance testing, a weird narrative Thunderdome-of-Ideas. Like brownies, a story needs time to bake. Pull them out too early and it’s just goop. (Though: maybe delicious goop.) If you’re building a house, so much of that architecture is about establishing a strong, unshakeable foundation — even though that foundation is something the homeowners will never see. It’s hidden beneath the dirt, but without it, the walls tumble, the roof falls, the house crumbles. Sometimes you just haven’t laid the foundation of the story.

b) It’s just not any good. Now, this one is tricky as hell, because we remain the worst judges of our own work, especially when we’re in the thick of it. I routinely am certain that the thing I am writing is APOCALYPTICALLY BAD, and then the next day I feel like it’s THE BEST THING I’VE EVER WRITTEN, BY GOSH AND BY GOLLY, and sometimes I feel those two contradictory feelings multiple times in the span of a single hour. But! As you develop a good writing habit and a steady instinct for this stuff (an instinct sharpened largely against the whetstone of practice), you start to get a gut check for this stuff. And if you go days, weeks, 200 pages and you still think, this really isn’t coming together, then it’s time for a strategic retreat from the work.

c) You’re not having fun. This one, too, is tricky, because writing isn’t always an act of eating cotton candy while happy puppies squirm at your feet. Some days are purely reserved for shoveling earth. Some days are like pulling bad teeth. That’s normal. It isn’t always fun. Hell, it isn’t often fun. But there’s also an evaluation you might make — again, after some time with it — where you realize, you’re just not enjoying this. It holds no surprises for you. It feels rote and routine, and if it feels that way to you, it may very well feel that way to a reader. Once again, a strategic retreat is called upon.

d) Something better comes along. I don’t just mean a shinier idea — no, shinier ideas are the norm. They will constantly parade themselves before you. As I am wont to say, the question we ask writers shouldn’t be, “Where do you get your ideas?” but rather, “HOW DO YOU MAKE THEM STOP OH GOD THEY WON’T LEAVE ME ALONE PLEASE ARE THERE DRUGS TO HELP ME OR DO YOU HAVE A HAMMER I CAN HIT MYSELF WITH OH GOD I AM A CONSTANT IMAGINATION ANTENNA it’s so noisy please send cotton candy and puppies.” What I’m talking about is a confirmed, paying gig — like, I’ve quit one project because it was an uncertain thing, and I took the sure thing gig. But but but, the caveat to this is, do the mental calculus. Don’t just take a paying gig because it’s a paying gig if you’re not immediately desperate for the work or the cash. Sometimes it’s best to hunker down over the thing you care about instead of the thing that pays.

All of this adds up to an understanding of a sunk cost fallacy — just because you spent time writing something doesn’t mean you have to spend time finishing it. Yes, it’s good practice. Yes, there are myriad reasons to do so. But sometimes, you gotta give it the heave-ho and move onto something that feels better, feels stronger, something that sits on a more robust foundation.

Now, to tell a brief story —

I started a novel maybe… three, four years ago. I loved the idea, but halfway through it, it just wasn’t coming together. It didn’t feel right. And so I did what I am loathe to do: I abandoned that shit on the side of the road like a colicky baby. (Please do not abandon actual babies, by the way.) I hated it. I felt bad. But it felt like the only way — writing the story wasn’t just digging ditches, it felt like digging ditches to nowhere, for no purpose, just reshuffling dirt molecules for the sake of doing so.

And I sat on that broken, dead story for the last three years.

Thing is, it wasn’t dead after all.

Some grave, grotesque stirring of life still lurked inside it, and now here I am, about to re-start the story all over again. Because I figured it out. Years of having this goddamn seed stuck in my teeth, I finally tongued it hard and worked it out, and now I’ve got my hands around it.

It will be a proper novel still.

Now, the rest of my writing life is one where I wrote five novels before I ever began and have abandoned a few finished novels since getting published. And if we’re talking straight-up unfinished-as-fuck quit-ass novels, oh, man, I am like a serial killer of novels. I have left behind me a wake of story corpses, chopped in half before they ever lived a full life. So, I’ve quit many stories, and here I am, still writing. It didn’t kill me. It didn’t kill my work.

I quit shit, and yet onward I go.

Because even though I quit some stories, I still didn’t quit writing stories.

And that’s my message to you —

Sometimes, you have to quit writing a thing.

As long as you don’t quit writing all the things.

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DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Indiebound  /  Amazon  /  B&N

Why Writing A Series (Especially As A New Author) Is Really Goddamn Hard

You may have heard of, or even experienced this scenario:

*inserts VHS tape into player*

*ancient afterschool special begins to play*

I wrote a book!

An agent took me on.

A publisher is interested…

Oh, holy shit, they’re going to make an offer! Ha ha! This is it! This is the dream.

The agent emailed me the offer.

It’s a —

Whoa.

WHOA.

It’s a three-book deal!

They say my book needs to be a series, a trilogy, and they want to buy the whole motherfucking trilogy, oh fucking yes, I am the GOD OF WRITING, this is amazing, I am amazing, my agent is amazing, the publisher is amazing.

*fast forward VHS tape*

Oh, this is great, my first book is coming out this week. I AM SO EXCITED I AM PISSING GLITTER. Plus, the publisher has put in a little time and money, and they’ve asked that I really develop my platform and my brand and we’re doing some Goodreads giveaways and — all while I’m writing the second book! Which comes out in the next 6-12 months! This is so cool!

*fast forwards some more*

Oh.

Well. Um. The book came out!

That’s good. But it… I mean, it didn’t do slambang numbers, and not sure if I’ll earn out. Maybe over time. That’ll be fine. Meanwhile, I’ll just… I’ll just keep plugging away on this second book.

Though, I need to admit, it’s… hard. It’s a little harder writing this second book knowing that the first wasn’t a big deal. Just emotionally it’s a lot, but hey — fuck that. I’m an author. I’ve got a three-book-deal, and I know for sure that the publisher believes in me and that the second book will get a nice extra push and —

*fast forwards*

I just got an email and the publisher isn’t really entirely behind the second book. They love it! They’re happy. But they’re also not… committing my attention to it because they feel like the money and time they gave to the first book should be enough but how are people going to find the second book if they haven’t found the first book? Is it magic? Are we relying on magic? Are there wizards? And it’s not like the second book can somehow sell more copies than the first, probably…

Well, that’s okay. Each book has a long tail and they’ll generate attention for one another and just having them on bookstore shelves will be a win!

*fast forwards*

Okay, sooooo, ha ha ha, turns out, bookstores set their orders based on the sales of the last book, and in fact they often cut those orders by 25-50%, so the first book not doing so hot means they haven’t ordered as many copies of the second book annnnnd

I’m sorta writing the third book now, a year later

or I’m trying to write the third book

and

it’s hard, it’s really hard

I’m writing this book

this third book

and I worry it’s just going to go kerplunk into the publishing toilet

but without the splash

just a flush

and then the void

and what about when I go to get my next book deal

and they look at the sales of this series, my first

what will happen

is this over just as it’s beginning?

*pops out VHS tape*

*spins chair around, sits on it in uncool Captain America-style*

So, here’s the thing.

The above scenario is a little pessimistic — and even if it happens, it’s important to recognize that it’s not the end-all be-all situation. You’re published, and though no book is guaranteed, your foot is in the door and I’ve found that publishers are not overly punitive regarding the sales of a first series. They’re not operating in bewildered isolation; they know the score. They know it’s hard. And if the next idea is a good one, they’ll offer again.

Though, they’ll probably offer with another series.

And here’s my caution —

Committing to a series, especially for a debut or new-ish author, is tough.

It’s tough for a lot of reasons.

a) It’s tough because of the spiraling situation above. Sales of a first book are no guarantee, and now you’re in for three books long before you know how the first has done. You will likely be in the middle of writing a second or third book by the time you figure out the first has done… you know, not that great. It’s not necessarily that your publisher won’t support that first book — they may, they may not. But they probably won’t throw much support behind the second or third book, on the hopes that the attention investment they put into the first book will carry it. If they don’t have an innovative strategy to grow the series — and some publishers do! — that series is, well, literally a series of diminishing returns. Which, yes, might mean cut orders from bookstores, or higher remainders, or whatever.

b) This feeds a secondary situation — some readers are growing gun-shy when it comes to investing in and keeping up with book series. They prefer not to buy a series until it’s complete — they’ve been burned before, you see. By authors who haven’t finished the series, or by a bookstore that stopped carrying the books, or by a publisher that ended a series early. And ironically, this situation in return re-feeds the first problem: if readers don’t commit to buying a series book by book along the way, then it’s even likelier that a bookstore will stop carrying it, that a publisher will stop publishing it, that the writer will keep writing it. This is the PUBLISHING OUROBOROS, a snake biting its own tail, slurping up its own body like a serpentine noodle.

c) Writing a series is… actually hard. Here you’re a debut writer and you’re tasked not just with one book, but three — and not just three books, but one story split thrice, a trilogy. I don’t to say this is advanced story math, exactly, but it’s also not basic shit. This is at least an intermediate level-up (ding), and I’m tempted to say it’s a swim forward or drown scenario, which is true, but it has the added complication that the success or failure of a book is not entirely reliant on you, the other. What I mean is, there are so many other factors that go into making a book leap into people’s hands or die on the shelf — marketing, promotion, cover design, placement, bookstore love, librarian mojo, zeitgeist, simple fucking luck — that now you’re forced to do this dance with three books, not one. It’s vital to realize this is a commitment on your part — like getting a new job and being told you can’t just quit if it doesn’t work out. “Welcome to Dave’s Churro Repair, new employee, please sign this contract confirming you work for us for at least two years!”

d) The commit to write a series or trilogy or whatever the configuration is a commitment often made before you’ve done it. That’s okay, and certainly there’s a certain pleasure to writing on spec — here’s the idea (which is nearly always in part a lie!) and now I am paid money to write it. But again, for a new author unused to the trials and tribulations of a writing schedule with a theoretically tight deadline, this can actually be pretty fucking tough. Again, this is thrown into the deep end stuff — HEY THANKS FOR THE BOOK, the publisher says, NOW WRITE TWO MORE IN THE NEXT 9-12 MONTHS. Which is phenomenal if you’re practiced and ready; less awesome if you have no idea what the fiddly fuck you’re doing and you’ve got kids and a day job and a weird habit of showing up in people’s houses with a chair and a VHS tape in order to lecture at them. Also, you’re dressed as Captain America. Freak. But also it’s kinda sexy? Shut up.

So, what do you do?

Well, I have no idea.

If you’re in SFF or, really, any kind of genre, it’s probably gonna come up. And when it does, you just need to be prepared for how to deal with it.

You could —

Talk to your agent. (And/or, the editor.) If the book isn’t something you want for a series, you need to own that up front. Be clear. It’s okay to not write or pitch a series, and it’s okay to be clear that this is a standalone. Wanderers (out July 2019!) is a book that is for me, very distinctly a standalone. Admittedly, a huge standalone (280k), but it’s one book. I had people ask if I could turn it into a duology or a trilogy — and yes, I could have, but no, I sure as fuck didn’t. The publisher believes in it as one book, and honestly, the pressure that alleviates is astounding. I don’t have to worry about 2-3 years worth of book releases in one story — it’s one and done, baby. And the second book in the deal is also a standalone, which is a new chance to succeed or fail rather than several books staple-gunned together into a giant authorial raft.

Plan for a series only if it merits a series. Again, worth talking to your agent and editor with the idea that the first book stands alone but has series potential — in other words, if it does well, you will commit to a series. If it doesn’t? Then you’re not on the hook for a few years of writing, editing, and promo. Note that a series benefits a publisher more than it benefits a writer, often, so, go in with clear-eyes and firm demands.

Self-publish. Self-published series do well — and self-publishing one book also gives you a reflexive ability to see if more books are demanded or if it’s time to cut bait and run. No publisher will demand you write more of a failing series because, drum roll please, you’re the publisher. Of course, that’s also the downside: you’re the publisher, not just the writer. Considerably more work on your part, but if you’re good at that kind of work or know how to pay the right people — go for it.

Write all the books first. Write the series first. If it’s a trilogy, write the trilogy before trying to publish. If it’s a longer series, write the first three books, at least. Or, bare minimum, plot the books robustly, so that when the contract comes in you’re not rushing to figure out the story beats on a longer series.

Suck it up and enjoy the ride. Hey, getting books published is awesome, and fuck it, you can just roll with whatever punches this industry throws at you. At least you know they’re coming, right?

p.s. Pissing Glitter is my CIA code name, don’t @ me

* * *

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THE RAPTOR & THE WREN: Miriam Black, Book 5

Miriam Black, in lockstep with death, continues on her quest to control her own fate!  Having been desperate to rid herself of her psychic powers, Miriam now finds herself armed with the solution — a seemingly impossible one. But Miriam’s past is catching up to her, just as she’s trying to leave it behind. A copy-cat killer has caught the public’s attention. An old nemesis is back from the dead. And Louis, the ex she still loves, will commit an unforgivable act if she doesn’t change the future. 

Miriam knows that only a great sacrifice is enough to counter fate. Can she save Louis, stop the killer, and survive? 

Hunted and haunted, Miriam is coming to a crossroads, and nothing is going to stand in her way, not even the Trespasser.

Indiebound  |  Amazon  |  B&N

Macro Monday Chases The Spotted Lanternfly With A Hammer

This motherfucker here is the spotted lanternfly.

On the plus side, it’s kind of pretty. The gray, stained-glass, fingerprint wings — and underneath them, which this does not show, you’d find a vicious splash of red, which at least makes them easy to identify at a distance. For when they fly, that red really pops. The fire of little lanterns.

On the minus side, they’re an invasive species making a fast, fast foray into Pennsylvania. They have a hunger for another invasive — the assy-smelling Tree of Heaven, which is a weedy tree that pops up like unwanted backhair — and if that’s all it were, it would also fall neatly into the plus column. Sure, jerk bug, eat the jerk tree, huzzah. But they also hanker for grape vines, apple trees, peach trees, I think walnuts trees, too? Last year, I’d seen a few of them here and there. This year I’ve seen ten times that amount, and last week we went to the wildlife conservancy to hike and look for butterflies, and while there, we probably saw… 50? 60? All in just a couple hours.

So, they’re here, and we crush them whenever possible. I’ve heard tell from Twitter pal Rebecca Seidel that maybe a little diluted Dawn dish soap with water can kill them. Worth a shot.

(Thanks, Rebecca!)

And of course, all this is happening as slowly-but-surely we lose a ton of wonderful ash trees thanks to the emerald ash borer. We’re inoculating some of our nicest trees because the cost of inoculation per tree per year has come down from $1000 to $100, but it’s also no guarantee.

Good job, mankind. Spreading invasive species, like a jerk.

I suppose this is where I do the thing where I’m like HEY HEY HEY I WROTE A BOOK CALLED INVASIVE and it’s sorta about invasive species, if by “invasive species” you mean “Frankensteinian man-made skin-harvesting ants who take over the island of Kauai.” Anyway, blah blah blah, buy Invasive, in print or ebook or audio, please and thank you.

Also, looks like Damn Fine Story on e-book is down a bit in price ($8.49).

Anyway.

If you want another buggy macro, here is the head, or maybe the butt? of an io moth caterpillar, replete with a waterdrop cradled in the spines. Those spines, by the way, will give you a nasty passive sting. They blend in perfectly with our redbud tree, and so it’s easy to brush along one and get stung. I haven’t, as yet, though our tree guy got a sting — some say it’s equivalent to a bee sting, others claim it’s far worse? DO NOT HUG THE CATERPILLAR.

Or, if you’d rather a caterpillar who is a wee smidgen friendlier, here is the caterpillar of the snowberry clearwing hummingbird moth, a cool moth whose wings are, well, literally transparent in places. This one is an adorable little sushi roll, and was very delicious HA HA what no I didn’t eat the caterpillar YOU ate the caterpillar shut up

Here, this caterpillar you can hug. I mean, gently. Or maybe you should just let the caterpillar hug you, I mean, what with those ADORABLE WIDDLE CATTYPILLOW PAWS OMFG.

Ahem.

Anyway, I guess that’s it for now.

BE GOOD, HOOMANS

*vanishes in an ostentatious display of pixels*

Michael Pogach: Five Things I Learned Writing Dystopias in the Age of Trump

[image error]In tomorrow’s America, belief is the new enemy. Faith in anything other than the State is outlawed. Rafael Ward has nothing else to believe in anyway. He’s content to teach the revised, government-approved narrative of history and collect his paycheck.

Ward’s life changes when an outlaw Believer named MacKenzie shows up at his door demanding his help. She insists he’s the key to finding the fabled Vase of Soissons, a Dark Age relic prophesized to return faith to the world. Or destroy it. Only when they are within reach of their goal, however, do they discover that the Vase is not at all what they thought.

The Spider in the Laurel, Book One in the Rafael Ward series, is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

The Long Oblivion, Book Two in the Rafael Ward series, is now available in paperback and ebook.

* * *

TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION

“…because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t,” Mark Twain concluded in his famous quote. Truth is insane. Nobody predicted the 2016 election results. Nobody predicted a world in which it’s better to deny a tape exists of you doing something horrible than it is to simply deny doing that horrible thing. Yet here we are. You remember the meme, don’t you? “I wasn’t expecting the park rangers to lead the resistance; none of the dystopian novels I read prepared me for this.”

Truth is wacky. It’s stunning. And when it snowballs into the shit show of conscienceless asshats running things in Washington these days, it can be downright paralyzing. That’s where fiction comes in. Because fiction does have to stick to possibilities, it is our great release and our great inspiration. It gives us Frodo and Samwise. It tells us Rey can be the daughter of nobodies rather than another damn Skywalker. Reality is oppression and denying science and internment camps. Fiction is dystopias. And dystopias can be toppled. They can be redeemed. The first thing I’ve learned writing dystopias in the age of Trump is to not be afraid of reality. Yes, reality is dark and foreboding, but that’s what makes it the perfect crucible for inventing the hero we need.

PLAY ‘WORST CASE SCENARIO,’ NO MATTER HOW SCARY

Think of writing a novel like making a movie sequel. Reality is Part 1. Your book is Part 2. Are you going to up the ante Michael Bay style and make bigger explosions and add robot dinosaurs? Are you going to do it like Aliens and scare the shit out of Bill Paxton till he’s babbling “game over” like a college freshman during finals week? Your job as the author is to imagine the worst-case scenario for your ragtag band of plucky heroes. Part 1 is a political party saying they want to cut spending. Part 2 is you imagining life after the elimination of all healthcare, welfare, and public works. Part 1 is a little man screaming about living space. Part 2 is George Lucas putting the Nazis into space and giving them the Death Star.

Things can always get worse. An author’s job is to imagine what that “worse” is. What if, I suppose in my Rafael Ward series, it’s not a tyrant oppressing the people? What if it’s the people themselves begging for oppression? What if they rise up after a terrorist attack by and demand the government keep them safe by volunteering to have all their freedoms stripped away?

The second thing I’ve learned writing dystopias in the age of Trump? Be brutal. Be Machiavellian. Kick your hero in the teeth with the worst reality can offer. Don’t worry; they can take it. And so can we.

FICTION IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN TRUTH

Would we have had flip phones if it weren’t for Star Trek? Would we have the Taser if not for Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle? Better yet: Would Trump be able to deny saying things he’d literally tweeted days earlier if not for Orwell’s Ministry of Truth?

Control the narrative, and you control the truth. Control the truth, and you control reality itself. The common thread in the first three things I’ve learned writing dystopias in the age of Trump is simple and terrifying. Truth and fiction feed on each other like Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, eating its own tail, until it’s impossible to know where one ends and the other begins. When you can no more trust reality than you can the reliability of a Paula Hawkins narrator, you’ve got a dystopian regime.

KEEP YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR

If ever there was a time to keep up our sense of humor in America, it’s now. Make a screen saver of all those Joe Biden memes. Or watch a good comedy like Nicolas Cage’s The Wicker Man (what do you mean it’s not a comedy?!). Point is we have to laugh. It really is the best medicine. And who knows how long we’ll be able to afford this particular prescription with the way our government treats health care as the second greatest threat to national security behind immigrants (breaking news: North Korea has fallen in this week’s POTUS-approved power rankings of worst threats to America down to #83; meanwhile Russia remains dead last for the 72nd straight week).

Comedy reminds us of our humanity. It makes us vulnerable, and in doing so it connects us with others. That connection is imperative for an author. It doesn’t have to be a series of fart jokes in your grimdark novel. But readers can feel it when we write without that tiny, ironic glint in the eye. They know something’s missing when we forget that life is ridiculous and so is blowing your nose then putting the handkerchief back in your pocket. And, damn it, it just feels good to laugh, especially when you don’t want to. Don’t forget this as authors, as readers, and as human beings.

DON’T QUIT

The final thing I’ve learned writing dystopias in the age of Trump is that no matter how much the news or social media or your Uncle Floyd in his MAGA hat worry, scare, or depress you, you have to push on. Take a break if you need to. Shut off the television or place your phone on silent or tell Uncle Floyd you can’t make it to his annual Bowling and Funyuns Bash. But don’t let politics, school shootings, internment camps or whatever else stop you from doing what you need to do. Protest. Donate. Call your state rep. Go for a run. Paint. Write. Hug your kids. Go to the movies. Resist, big or small. Stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Be the inspiration for the hero you want to write or read about. Because if no one resists, they win. If no one resists, it’s not a dystopia at all.

* * *

Michael Pogach is the author of the Rafael Ward series — The Spider in the Laurel and The Long Oblivion. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and daughter and has an empty space in his garage for his next motorcycle project.

Michael Pogach: Website | Twitter

The Long Oblivion: Amazon | B&N

Originality Is Overrated In Authorland

I meet a lot of writers, young writers particularly, who feel like they don’t have anything new to say, no new stories to tell, no new ideas.

Now, for me, ideas are mostly shiny, plastic dross. When you first find them they look like emeralds on the beach, a rare fossil, an Important Discovery —

But most of the time, they’re just cheap trash dressed up to look nice. They’re tequila-shined Mardi Gras beads that escaped the gutter, somehow. Maybe that’s unfair to ideas, because ideas are the seeds from which most stories germinate, but even there, consider that when you plant a seed and the resultant plant begins to grow, it looks the fucking same nearly every time.

It’s a little stem.

It’s two leaves.

A sprout, that’s all.

(Seriously, it’s this shit right here.)

And growing a plant out of a seed is both an act of generative power (I DID IT, I BASICALLY HELPED CREATE LIFE) to the crushing reality that what you did is so common it’s disgusting (I PERFORMED A BARE MINIMUM ACT THAT EVEN A CHILD COULD ACCOMPLISH).

And writing a book or any kind of story — or really, making any kind of thing at all — is a lot like that, too, especially right when you start. I HAVE BEGUN AN AMAZING JOURNEY, you think, seconds before you decide, JUST LIKE MILLIONS OF FAILED DIPSHITS BEFORE ME OH GOD I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING OH SHIT THIS GROUND IS SO WELL-TRAVELED IT’S A PAVED, BRIGHTLY LIT PATH, THERE ARE SIGNS AND DOG POOP STATIONS

FUCK FUCK FUCK

And it’s at this point that some writers, myself included, experience a kind of narrative, existential vaporlock. You freeze up. And the worry comes that you’ve nothing to add to the canon of ideas, that whatever story you’re going to tell isn’t particularly original. Surely someone has told a story like this.

You’re right. They probably have.

In the history of storytelling, it’s very, very hard to have an entirely original take on something. When you’re pitching a book to an agent, or when your agent is pitching a book to editors, you might be asked what the “comp” titles are — meaning, what books are like it already. And in Hollywoodland, pitching a story is often you trying to feign originality by smashing up two pre-existing properties — “It’s like Terminator meets Gilmore Girls! It’s Pinnocchio, but set on the Titanic — in space! It’s as if Spongebob Squarepants took the meth from Breaking Bad and found himself living destitute in a pineapple just outside Nightmare on Elm Street!” And it’s a very cliched thing, and I assure you, having pitched film and TV on the Leftmost Coast, it’s also a very real thing. If you don’t distill the property down to those two or three already extant stories, they certainly will, and it can feel weirdly disheartening to find out that your story is considered to be as original as two unoriginal things staple-gunned together.

And so at the start of the work and at the end of the work, the originality is in question.

For many, this is troubling.

Don’t let it be.

I consider there to be very few Actual Truths in writing, in storytelling, in making cool shit — but this, I think, comes as close to Actual Truth as I can muster.

Every story has one original thing about it.

And that original thing is

You.

That sounds like some goofy-ass self-help shit, I know, but trust me, you’re it. You’re the thing. You’re the Original Idea, the Important Discovery, the One Untold Tale, the Unexplored Path, the Savior of Narnia, the Sword of Damocles, the Revenge of the Sith wait I’m getting carried away, sorry, sorry. Ahem. Moving on. Point is, it’s you. Look at it this way —

You’re a bundle of unexpected genetics. Two people fucked, and they made you. And to make each of them, two other people fucked, and on and on and on — you’re at the bottom of an inverted pyramid, the nadir of an unholy host of genetic material that has scrambled itself up and guaranteed that you are a random, uncountable confluence of atoms. And that’s just the genetic side.

On the memetic side — the side of ideas and information — oh my sweet fucking hell, are you ever an infinite, irreplicable* maze. You are a labyrinthine tangle of wants, desires, fears, experiences, anxieties, certainties, questions. You’re the sum total of the places you’ve been, the people you’ve met, the things you’ve seen. And you complicate that when you go more places, meet more people, see new things. You never get simpler. You just get more complex. Your uncertainties grow. Your maze grows larger even as you travel it. You’re an amazingly weird, bizarre, wonderful bundle of wires.

(Now, I don’t want you get a big head about you — yes, all writers are precious snowflakes, but also, acting like a precious snowflake will make somebody melt your ass right quick. You’ll be a microscopic puddle before too long.)

I think a lot of writers — again, younger writers in particular, and I certainly didn’t realize this when I was younger and trying to write — is that this unique aspect of the work (i.e. You) is not something to be avoided, but rather, something to enthusiastically pour into the work. You should put yourself in there. Wholly and without reservation. Complicate the work with your uncertainties and worries. Address your questions and fears. Don’t just breathe ideas gently into it — summon your ideas as a gale-force wind and they’ll blow the sails of the story in the way that no plot twist or fight scene can.

That’s okay. That’s as it should be.

The story isn’t you.

You aren’t the story.

But you’re in there as much as you want to be. Invisibly, perhaps, but vitally just the same — suffusing it as you see fit. Don’t worry about originality in plot or genre or whatever. Worry about bringing yourself into the world, onto the page, into the story. Write what you like. Write what you want to read. Tell the story and use the voice in the way that only you can tell it.

You’re the One Original Aspect, and that cannot be beat.

*not a word but should be

* * *

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DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Indiebound  /  Amazon  /  B&N

Macro Monday Brings The Tale Of The Mantis And The Serpent

See anything in that photo?

Sure, sure, you see a praying mantis.

But look again.

Up from the mantis. Up, up, up.

Yeah, now you see it.

I didn’t see it when I first stopped to take a cameraphone pic of the mantis — that photo there is not the camera pic, by the by, but from my DSLR — and it was only as I got in close did I see the garter snake scoping out Princess Stinky, the Mantisfriend. I was like, shit, this is a literal metaphor playing out — a snake in the goddamn grass, would you look at that.

I figured, oh, well, nature red in fang and mandible, and I assumed that some Mother Nature was about to happen and the mantis was gonna get got. But then I wondered: hey, some mantids can eat birds, and maybe this little green lady can like, do some Mantis Martial Arts and crush the snake’s head with one of its spiky limbs? Shit, who knows. Nature is fucked up.

I revisited the scene again and again — the snake crept closer and closer. The mantis seemed vaguely aware of it. And then — the snake retreated? To the bottom of the grass, here:

So eventually they just faced away from each other like a pair of roommates who were irritated at one another. And then eventually the snake slithered away and the mantis remained. And remains still — I just passed her on the way here. (I assume it might be a her — she’s getting kinda bulbous, which is usually a sign of a lady mantis, not a dude mantis.) Rosemary Mosco on Twitter pointed out too that the snake’s eye is blue, which is a potential sign that it is

a) ready to molt

and

b) possibly half-blind for the moment until it molts

So, maybe the snake was never scoping out the mantis. Maybe it was asking for directions.

Nature. Like I said: fucked up. Even snakes get lost!

Let’s see, do I have any book news?

Yes!

Wait, is it anything I can share?

Shit, I can’t talk about this comic book, or this other secret thing, or… ennh, anything else?

Wanderers has a loose release date, now — July 2019? So, less than a year, now. Some Station Eleven slash The Stand epic-sized goodness coming your way, then, but for now, the long wait until release… it’s killing me because I want you to have it now?

But we will all just have to be patient.

I think that’s it for today.

GO FORTH AND SLAY MONDAY, FRANDOS

Rachel Caine: Dead Air, And Abstract Darkness

This a story about why I read true crime, and why I write thrillers. A true story.

It starts out a normal night working the desk at my dorm in college. Big place, over 1,000 coed residents in it on seven sprawling floors. Normally, there would be two people working the desk around the clock.

That night, after midnight, it’s just me.

At one a.m., a man who lives in the dorm and was, until recently, dating a friend of mine (also a dorm resident) drops by to talk for a while about a movie we’ve both seen. In the process, he asks me if his ex-girlfriend is in her room. I tell him she’s gone on a date.

Okay, he says, and puts an envelope on the counter. Then he walks away.

The envelope says TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. I hesitate. Is it to me? What the hell? I finally open it and read it as he heads down the hall toward his room.

In it, he states he plans to get a shotgun and sit beside her dorm room door, and once he sees her coming, kill himself “so she’ll never forget what she did to me.” He also implies that she might not survive either.

I call police immediately, and alert the dorm manager. The manager asks me if the man has a shotgun with him now. He doesn’t, as far as I could see. The manager asks me to follow the man at a distance and see if he’s really armed.

And, foolishly, I agree. I’m eighteen. I think I know what I was doing.

I do not.

The man sees me on the way back to his room and stops to talk to me as if nothing odd is going on. Then he opens his room door, picks up a shotgun sitting inside, and points it at me. He tells me to get into his room.

I obey.

I sit down, and he closes and locks the door. I tell him I’ve already called the police and they are probably already here and on the way to the room. He nods. For the next thirty minutes, he explains to me why he’s doing all this. He says he likes me. He doesn’t think that I should be in the middle of what he calls “his troubles.” I have no idea what else he says during that conversation; all I can remember is if he moves the shotgun toward me again, I’m probably going to die. I ask him to please put the gun away, because he’s scaring me. He shakes his head, but he keeps it aimed off to the side. It’s between us, but not threatening me directly.

Not yet.

Someone knocks on the door and asks if I am inside. It’s another dorm employee. I say yes, and ask my captor him if I can go. He says I can. Somehow, I walk calmly to the door, open it, and go outside.

The other dorm employee pulls me past the police line.

The man in the room surrenders without a fight. The two of us, the dorm employees, are sent in after to confiscate anything from the room that the man might use to harm himself or others … and why the police let us do that, I have no idea.

Half an hour later, my friend comes home from her date. She’s alive. She survived. And honestly: I’m not sure she would have if I hadn’t opened that note.

To Whom It May Concern didn’t have to concern me. But I’m glad it did.

That night was when the world changed for me. What I’d seen in that room baffled and terrified me. It was an introduction to a world where people weren’t what they seemed to be.

So … true crime isn’t just stories to me. It’s emotionally and psychologically valuable material about the world around me. When I read about crimes and criminals and victims, I’m trying to come to terms with those moments in my life where my view of humanity … shifted. And that shift? It might have saved me on more than one occasion.

I still remember the moment when my tire blew out on a Dallas freeway at midnight twenty years ago, and I had to park in a dimly lit stretch of shoulder to change it. (I was fully capable of changing it.) Three cars stopped. Two held men who were polite and took my word that I didn’t need them to rescue me.

The third man was different. When I waved and said, “I’m okay, almost done,” he didn’t stop coming toward me. There was something in his body language, something relentless. Every account of women murdered or raped in situations like this one ran through my mind. I stood up, faced him with the tire iron in my hand, and said, “You need to turn around now. I’m fine. Please leave.”

He kept coming.

I told him, “I’m not giving you the tire iron.”

He kept coming.

I backed up, took out my cell, and called 911. I held it out to show him the call.

He stopped. He called me a filthy bitch. Said I was a paranoid whore who deserved to be raped and left to die. I stood there, not moving, until he was back in his car and driving away. Then I shakily told the 911 operator that I was okay, but I gave her the license number of his car. I never heard back about him; maybe he was just an angry guy who never hurt anyone. But I’m still convinced that reading true crime stories, and having a reasonable understanding of how to read signals, saved my life that night.

I’ve since read a lot more true crime and it’s helped me understand the vast, dark range of human behavior. I listen to true crime podcasts for the same reason … to try to put some kind of context around the horrible things people do. And, in some sense, prepare for the worst.

It’s probably also why I write thrillers. Thrillers can be as grim, as terrifying, or as inexplicably horrific as the real cases, but when I write that scenario, I can control the narrative at last. The potential victim can escape. The killer can be stopped. And the scales can be balanced. Thrillers are, to me, a way to shape the story in a healthier way than often happens in real life.

Writing the Dead Air project with showrunner Gwenda Bond and cowriter Carrie Ryan was a real revelation, because although I’d thought that my brush with darkness was unique, turns out we three all have some level of insight into the darkness around us, and we were able to bring that sense of tension and fear into the story. It’s built around a rich background of Kentucky horse racing (Gwenda’s local knowledge!) and the lengths people will go to in order to find justice (something Carrie’s well-versed in). Plus, we all have an intense interest in podcasts that break down crimes and motivations, so we were all in agreement from the beginning about how we wanted this story to feel.

Dead Air is an ambitious dual offering of serialized novel and dramatic audio performances, all for one low subscription price. It also has a stand-alone podcast by the main character that tells the story of a “solved” murder that may not be quite as solved as the rich and powerful would prefer. We’ve been thrilled to work with the amazing publisher Serial Box, who has a wide variety of serialized novel/audio projects like Tremontaine and Bookburners you might also enjoy.

So how many degrees of separation are you from real murder? I’m only one … four times over.

It’s best to keep it in fiction.

Rachel Caine is the NYT, USA Today, and #1 internationally bestselling author of more than 50 novels, including the new Stillhouse Lake series. Her first thriller, Stillhouse Lake, was a finalist for Original Paperback Thriller from the ITW Thriller Awards, and is currently a finalist for Best Thriller at Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Awards. She’s on social media and can be found at rachelcaine.com.

About Dead Air:

Welcome to Dead Air, where M is for midnight, Mackenzie…and murder. 

Mackenzie Walker wasn’t planning on using her college radio show to solve a decades old murder, but when she receives an anonymous tip that the wrong man may have taken the fall, she can’t resist digging deeper. It doesn’t take long for Mackenzie to discover gaps in the official story. Several potential witnesses conveniently disappeared soon after the murder. The victim, a glamorous heiress and founder of a Kentucky horse-racing dynasty, left behind plenty of enemies. And the cops don’t seem particularly interested in discussing any of it. But when the threats begin, Mackenzie knows she’s onto something. Someone out there would prefer to keep old secrets buried and they seem willing to bury Mackenzie with them. Thankfully, she’s getting help from a very unexpected source: the victim’s son, Ryan. The closer she gets to him, however, the more important it is for Mackenzie to uncover the truth before he gets buried alongside her.

Read or listen to weekly episodes of the serial novel Dead Air from bestselling authors Gwenda Bond, Rachel Caine, and Carrie Ryan, and then check out Mackenzie’s podcast for a uniquely immersive experience. Does the truth lie in the serial, the podcast…or somewhere in-between? Subscribe to the serial here. Check out the podcast on iTunes, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Cover Reveal: John Hornor Jacobs, The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky

Pleased today to reveal the cover to John Hornor Jacobs’ newest — a novella of cosmic horror, and you can read the description below and check out the cover above. But first I feel that JHJ’s other work is deserving of a mention. Obviously, the world is made of writers. We’re fucking everywhere, like mosquitoes, and it’s hard to sort through the cloud of us winged things to find a creature of some beauty — a pretty moth, a fancy-ass butterfly. Sometimes we miss out, and sometimes a winged thing of especial beauty avoids our discovery for a time and —

Well, this metaphor has gotten away from me, so I’ll just speak it plainly: Jacobs is probably one of the best writers you’ve never heard of. His work is imbued with that really powerful thing that goes into all excellent stories from excellent storytellers, and one day I am convinced the world will figure that out and catch up — I mean, we’re talking the level of a Stephen King, a Robin Hobb, someone whose work is just right a lot of the time.

(See also: Kameron Hurley. Another perhaps unappreciated favorite of mine.)

I don’t know precisely where to tell you to start with JHJ, but my favorites are the Incorruptibles, the start of a trilogy that is an infernal mash-up of Lord of the Rings and the Gunslinger. (Print, or eBook.) Actually, I see the Incorruptibles is $3.99 right now for the eBook, so. Or try The Twelve-Fingered Boy, a YA tale of a boy in a juvie prison who discovers that he possesses a very special kind of power — and here, think a YA Shawshank paired with the X-Men, and you’re close. (Print, or eBook.) Both are trilogies, so you get a lot of bang for your buck, too.

Now, though, time to focus up on the novella —

The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky

Having lost both her home and family to a brutal dictatorship, Isabel has fled to Spain, where she watches young, bronzed beauties and tries to forget the horrors that lie in her homeland. 

Shadowing her always, attired in rumpled linen suits and an eyepatch, is “The Eye,” a fellow ex-pat and poet with a notorious reputation. An unlikely friendship blossoms, a kinship of shared grief. Then The Eye receives a mysterious note and suddenly returns home, his fate uncertain.

Left with the keys to The Eye’s apartment, Isabel finds two of his secret manuscripts: a halting translation of an ancient, profane work, and an evocative testament of his capture during the revolution. Both texts bear disturbing images of blood and torture, and the more Isabel reads the more she feels the inexplicable compulsion to go home. 

It means a journey deep into a country torn by war, still ruled by a violent regime, but the idea of finding The Eye becomes ineluctable. Isabel feels the manuscripts pushing her to go. Her country is lost, and now her only friend is lost, too. What must she give to get them back? In the end, she has only herself left to sacrifice. 

The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky asks, How does someone simply give up their home? Especially when their home won’t let them?

* * *

You can check out JHJ’s website, or find him on Twitter.

Pre-order The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky now.

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Yes, You Can Pronounce GIF With A Soft-G Or Hard-G, Settle Down, Francis

“Hey, can you send me that JIF file–”

“HA HA WHAT DID YOU SAY? DID YOU SAY JIF.”

“Yes, JIF file, it’s a–”

“HA HA LOLWUT IS IT A JRAPHICS INTERLACED FILE? I WAS THINKING OF HAVING SOME VEGETABLES TONIGHT, MAYBE SOME JREEN BEANS WITH MAYBE SOME JARLIC AS SEASONING. WHO SHOOTS FIRST, IS IT HAN SOLO OR JREEDO? WASN’T IT FORREST JRUMP THAT SAID LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES? HA HA HA YOU DUMDUM IT’S GIF, HARD-G, BRO. LIKE ME. A HARD-G.”

“Oh. Okay. Hold on I need just to push this button.”

*trapdoor opens under Mister Hard-G, and he feeds the alligators in the pit, and his last words are, BUT ARE THEY CALLED ALLIJATORS HA HA OHH GOD THEY’RE EATING MY INTESTINES*

So.

Let’s talk about this.

I ranted a bit on Twitter this morning but feel like this needs to be carved into the digital space that I own, aka, this blog.

I ran a BBS when I was a kid — a bulletin-board-system, for those baby nerds not in the know. I did this unbeknownst to my parents, actually; I had a phone line that I essentially took over and plugged into my computer so instead of talking to people on the phone like a normal teenager, I was Proto-Internetting with Local Randos as a SysOp. (Sidenote: parents, keep up with technology or your kids are going to be able to do loop-de-loops around you. Just a tip.) I ran a few different instances, Telegard, WWIV, and the names of the BBS changed from Shadowlands to Bizarroworld to — shit, I forget the others. Whatever! I was vaguely plugged into computers and proto-hacker culture, I modded my own computer, I hosted warez and early bitmap porn and all that fun stuff. I then later became a Systems Technical Manager or some shit — meaning I was a one-man IT department for a (get this) fashion merchandising company. I also ran web stuff for a company that was basically just an advanced form of illegal radio payola, I worked for an internet provider, I did a lot of techie stuff despite not having a real techie background (I went to school for readin’ and writin’ dontcha know, what with all these fancy bookmathings I put out.)

And I, along with the people I worked with, pronounced GIF file as JIF.

It’s just how everyone I knew said it.

JIF. JIF File. Like the peanut butter. Like the saying, back in a jiff.

And then somewhere in the last 10-15 years, from the Shadows of Mordor, arose a peculiar kind of pedantry about it — yes, the acronym stands for GRAPHICS INTERCHANGE FORMAT, and it was said, with great certain gusto (or jreat certain justo?) that because of that hard-G word at the fore, the acronym just also be pronounced with the same unswerving, unyielding G.

Like gravity, you could not fucking deny it. It was suddenly Nerd Law.

And that’s fine if you wanna pronounce it that way.

Just don’t lecture about it.

Here’s why:

You’re wrong.

Not about your pronunciation! Again, I don’t care how you pronounce it, long as people understand what you mean. You’re wrong about your logic — you are writing a logical check that the history of language cannot cash.

You are asserting that acronyms must be pronounced a certain way based on the pronunciation of the words that form that acronym.

So, what about YOLO?

You Only Live Once.

The O in Once is pronounced… Wuh. Wunce.

So, do you pronounce it YOLO?

Or YOL-WUH?

What about LASER? Yep, laser is an acronym.

It stands for:

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

I’ll bet though that you pronounce laser with a z-sound for the s, right? But that’s wrong, by the logic of hard-G GIF, isn’t it? Should be pronounced lay-sser, like you’re Cobra Commander. (Or, if you’re really cuckoo bananapants about that pronunciation, layster.)

SCUBA stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

But you probably say scooba not scuhbba, right?

What about…

JPEG?

That’s right, let’s talk about another graphical file format. The JPEG, like the GIF, is a pretty popular file format in the graphic/photographic space. And I’m gonna go ahead and make a brave, bold guess that you pronounce it JAY-PEG, right? And here you, imagined verbal sparring partner, will snarkily note that the G in JAY-PEG is that hard, turgid, erect ‘g’ because the G in JPEG stands for Group.

But what about the other letters?

JPEG = Joint Photographic Experts Group.

So, the P in JPEG is a soft Ph-sound, meaning, an F-sound.

So…

Surely, surely you will now pronounce it JAY-FEG, right? I mean, by your unswerving logic and infallible grammatical reality, you cannot possibly continue to pronounce it JAY-PEG, right? Except you will. Because that’s how people pronounce it.

Listen, I get it, in this day and age we like to have hard and fast answers about stuff, and we especially like to be haughty and know-it-ally when it comes to the English language, but the English language is a baby carriage stuffed with hot dogs, set on fire, and pushed down some steps toward a a bouncey-house full of schnauzers. It’s a fucking mess. Rough! Cough! Dough! Bough! Are any of those words pronounced the same? Why no, no they are not.

If I say JIF file and you say GIF file, we both understand what the other means, and that, ultimately, is the point. So, be not superior — soft-g or hard-g adherents — and accept that both ways are perfectly fucking fine, thankayouveddymuch.

Now please buy my books! Have you considered Damn Fine Story, which is pronounced Dammun Feen Storf, or Blackbirds, which is pronounced Fook-birbs, or maybe Invasive, which is pronounced Sir William Hottentot Schmeebly Fidget Junior? Have a great* day!

*jreat

Macro Monday Is A Crab Offering You A Quest — Will You Heed The Call?

The crab offers you a quest. Do you take it?

ANYWAY HEY HI HELLO what is up, my frandos.

So, some nice news —

Damn Fine Story is now out on bail!

*checks notes*

wait, no

Damn Fine Story is now out on audio!

There, that’s better.

It’s read by Patrick Lawlor, who does a very good job of… well, essentially pretending to be me? So, if you’re one of the people who have been waiting for this book on audio, we gotchoo covered.

Also, DFS continues to sell really well? So thank you? In BookScan, it has now outsold Zer0es — which is no small feat. Given the e-book of Zer0es, that still remains one of my biggest books in terms of total sales, alongside the first Miriam Black book, Blackbirds, but to see DFS do so well in its first year of release has been heartening. And I just pitched its sequel to Writer’s Digest, so, we shall see. It would be a more genre-focused version of DFS, some Advanced Level Story-Fu dealing with sci-fi and fantasy and horror and maybe a little mystery-thrillery-crimey goodness, too. Here’s hoping WD takes the bait, so I can have an excuse to do more obscene, absurd footnotes.

And speaking of that, I got to hang out at the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC this past weekend, and got to meet Jeff and Ann Vandermeer and hear Walter Mosely speak (which is sublime, lemme tell you) and it’s always great connecting with writers of every level and age and publishing experience. Thanks for coming out and listening to me jabber.

And now, for some more wistful photographic remembrance of the PNW —