Hugh Howey's Blog, page 11

Happy New Year

I’m sitting here in Tasmania, on the other side of the world from the small farming town in which I grew up, reflecting on the wild adventure my life has become. This past year was one of the best of my life, even as it contained some of the most difficult things I’ve ever wrestled with. My father is bravely battling cancer. The country I love is taking what I feel to be massive steps backwards. I’ve spent many a dark hour thinking about what’s slowly slipping away.

But I also think about all the good to come. The next generation of young adults are more amazing than the last, and this trend seems universal and without end. The world and my country have survived far worse. There are great trends to focus on, such as the imminent death of coal and the ascension of cheap solar. Or the healing of the ozone layer. There are always problems to fix, but we should appreciate the problems that we solve along the way.

I spent a month of my year in the Galapagos, and my father joined me. We swam with giant sea turtles and hiked lava tubes with blue-footed boobies. This was just a year after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean with my dad. How many kids are this dumb lucky that they get to spend forty days straight with a parent — and a best friend — fulfilling a lifelong dream?

There is always good in the bad. I wrote a short story about this once. In the wake of losing my beloved dog, in one of my darkest of places, I began a novel that would eventually be about the redeeming power of hope. When I sign copies of WOOL for readers, I almost always write “Dare to hope” inside. The original self-published version of WOOL was dedicated to: Those who dare to hope. I think it’s the bravest thing we can do, have hope. 2018 should be a year in which we remind ourselves of this.

Bright days are ahead. They will follow nights that seem cold, dark, and lonely. This is how it’s always been.

I hope we can remember to share the good moments without it seeming that we aren’t aware of all that’s grave and serious. Laughter, joy, and positivity are critical now more than ever. Michelle and I are working on a website to celebrate just these things, a place of respite and peace where deep breaths can be enjoyed, quiet contemplation pursued, positivity embraced. It’s not a retreat from the world and its serious issues, but a way of regrouping, of fortifying ourselves for the good fight, and for appreciating the progress already made.

What I appreciate every day of my life is you. Not a single day goes by on Wayfinder that I don’t pause and appreciate what your support and readership have meant for me. It has made it possible for me to fulfill a lifelong dream of sailing around the world. Right now, that crazy book I wrote so many years ago, is in the top 100 on Amazon, still selling strong, still gaining word-of-mouth, still finding new readers who dare to hope. Thank you for that.

I look forward to the adventures ahead. I just put the finishing touches on my first draft for a WOOL TV pilot. An embarrassment of amazing offers have poured in, after getting the adaptation rights back from Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox last year. This project was always meant for TV. I just never had any hopes of anything actually getting made. I went with a big name, and a big offer, for the big screen, all because I never thought anything more would ever happen. I was too afraid to hope.

I’m going to try harder in 2018.

Thanks for everything. For the rest of January, WOOL will cost a measly $1.20. This novel has probably never held more societal significance than it does right now. I look forward to the new connections it makes with readers, the new friendships it brings, and the adventure it might take us along very, very soon…

Thank you for everything, and have a Happy New Year,

Hugh Howey

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The Value of Reading

Five years ago, I made the novelette WOOL available for free. Permanently. This is the short story that launched my career as a writer, and I wanted to make it available to as many readers as possible. When I discount my books, or make them free, I think about conversations I’ve had with authors about how we value our works. What I think is just as important as the value we place on our art is the value we place on its enjoyment.

Not everyone can afford to sate their reading habits. Library cards, used bookstores, and friends’ bookshelves are part of how we get by. There’s also Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, where most of my works can be found and read by KU subscribers. For everyone else, I try to keep my ebooks priced as low as possible. It’s not that I don’t value my craft; it’s that I value your readership.

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This Cyber Monday, I’m blowing out my prices even further. Why? Because I can. The first novel I ever wrote, and still one of my favorites, is Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue. It’s free all week. Grab it now and save it for later. I lowered the price on the rest of the series to $2.99 for each book. These are rip-roaring sci-fi operas that millions of readers have enjoyed. You can get them all for the price you’d normally pay for a single novel.

The WOOL series is also on sale. Shift and Dust are an insane $1.99 today only. And so is the WOOL Graphic Novel. As is one of my personal favorites, the absolutely disgusting and poetic I, Zombie. The Sand Omnibus novel is also $1.99 for a day only. Beacon 23 is only $1.49! The Hurricane and Shell Collector have been knocked down to $2.99. As is fan-favorite (and my sister’s favorite) Half Way Home. You can pretty much get my entire body of work for the cost of a single hardback.

On Friday, I noticed a surge in sales as readers unboxed their new Kindles. But even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can read these ebooks on pretty much any device with the Kindle app. Or you can order the paperback or audiobook if you please. It’s all up to you. If you’ve already read them all, feel free to share the news with a friend, or go see what other deals you can find. Most of all, keep reading. It’s what I value the most.

Also: Some very cool news coming your way soon about a new project I’m cooking up. It’s been inspired by the unbelievable reaction people have had to my Wayfinding series. This is a collection of works that I haven’t promoted much; it’s been a passion project that has somehow found its audience on its own. The first part of the series is free all week, and I look forward to sharing more about the ideas you’ll find in these books. Stay tuned!

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The Devastating Consequences of Blind Worship

Living on a boat is a life of constant troubleshooting. There are always at least a dozen things not working on the boat, and often one broken thing leads to several cascading issues. One electrical short can create a nightmare of confounding variables. It reminds me of my years spent repairing computers at Tandy. When a computer system is a mess, what you hope to find is a single issue that clears up many of the problems in one fell swoop. When I’m overwhelmed with a number of things that need fixing, I look for a common cause to sort out first.

A lot of people feel overwhelmed right now, people on both sides of the aisle. Our society feels like a confusing and jumbled mess. I say this as an optimist, as someone who reads a lot of history and sees all the amazing progress we’re making. But I’m also an idealist, which means our progress never comes as quickly as I’d like. I know that we’ll fix almost all of our issues eventually — the arc of history points in this direction — I just believe the quicker we hasten toward that goal, the more suffering and discomfort we’ll alleviate along the way.

Toward this end, what are the handful of primal causes for many of our issues? Can we find an electrical short here or there, or a bug in our programming, that will sweep away a lot of problems all at once? I certainly think this is the case. I think humans are simpler than we often assume. We were designed or evolved (take your pick) for a more primitive time. Drink, Eat, Sleep, Defend, Reproduce. All of our complexities spill out of the interplay of these very simple drives. The problem is that many of the things that used to benefit us in the past cause us a mountain of trouble today.

I write about these causes and effects in my Wayfinding series. This blog post is a preview of an upcoming entry, but writing the piece is proving so useful to me in understanding current events that I want to get the gist of it out now. The gist is this: Blind Worship had enormous advantages in small tribal societies, but it is leading us wildly astray today.

Blind obedience makes sense in small tribes, when you need to coordinate and act as a group. The tribes that adopted or evolved this ability would win out over tribes that were fractured. Sure, there’s a chance the group is led astray and makes a mistake. But the group that’s always bickering, debating, and in-fighting stands very little chance of making a winning move. They have themselves to overcome before they can compete with others. You can think of the tribe with blind worship as a single cell that has roped in its mitochondria and cytoplasm to function as a holistic whole. The tribe without blind obedience is wrangling internally, as external threats plan their next move.

Like most of our primal impulses, what made sense thousands and millions of years ago no longer serves us well today. The legacies of these impulses now waste our time, rile us up, fill us with anxiety and depression, and have us looking to the wrong causes to solve our ills. Blind worship of tribal alphas, both female and male, are a massive problem, one we need to be aware of, discuss, and work to fix.

We need to train ourselves, encourage each other, and teach our kids to not look up to people. We need to learn to look across at one another. Learn from each other, admire the accomplishments of others, celebrate our mutual weaknesses, and do it all from an even pool that more accurately reflects the complexity and messiness of humanity.

Blind Worship is the root cause of many of today’s most disturbing headlines. When we worship celebrities, who are just actors reading lines in front of a camera, it gives them power that they do not know how to wield and that we do not know how to defend against. Would an actor tolerate a stranger molesting him or her? No. But when it’s another actor with a bigger name, someone they look up to, they are often frozen to resist. Would a child tolerate a stranger fondling them? Not as easily as when it’s a priest, who they’ve been told can do no wrong and to look up to and respect.

Culture arises from the interplay and contribution of a million little decisions. Rape culture arises the same way. It’s the inaction of friends when someone says something abusive. It’s a parent being proud of their teenage daughter for winning the affection of a much older politician. It’s the fear we all have to talk about these things with our children, our parents, our religious leaders, our spouses, and each other. My own hesitation to write about this on my blog contributes in some small way to rape culture. Silence is the worst killer, because it’s so innocuous, so difficult to notice, and so easy to add to.

I don’t know if it’s supposed to be derogatory or not, but I’ve been called a Social Justice Warrior in my social media feed a time or two. Social. Justice. Warrior. Three words that all sound awesome. I’ll take it. But sometimes being a social justice warrior can itself contribute to rape culture. When we jump down the throat of someone who is trying to talk about these issues, and saying and doing positive things, but they left a letter out of LGBTQ, or they used the wrong pronoun, we are creating a culture where people are scared to speak up for fear of getting shouted down. And in that silence rape culture thrives. So that’s something to overcome. We need to have this discussion, even as we brace for those looking high and low for some way to be offended.

I know someone who works for a company rife with rape culture. One of the biggest names in the sexual-molestation news right now is associated with the company, and employees are in a tizzy about how to handle the new allegations coming out every day. The few who have spoken up in the company are being hounded for it. People higher up the chain of command do not want to believe the accounts of a dozen victims, and an admitted reason for this doubt is the power the abuser wields. This is how rape culture thrives. It’s clear as day.

Here’s the thing about blind worship and rape culture: We all contribute to it. When we fawn over a celebrity, we add our oohs and aahs to their collective power. The power of that person’s professional and social connections all depends on our blind obedience. It will be almost impossible to do away with this effect, but I don’t even see us trying. Instead, we all do the very wrong things that make the problem worse.

We tell our children to respect adults. Why? We should teach our children to respect themselves. We should teach them to respect those who respect others.

We teach our kids, and we tell ourselves and others, to blindly follow our religious leaders. Why? We should challenge our religious leaders so they can help us unravel the mysteries of our actions and the contradictions of religious texts and human experience. If they are wiser than us, let’s make them prove it. Challenge them. Question them. Do their answers make sense?

We tell ourselves and each other that actors are brilliant. Why? Because they’re good at pretending to be someone else? At reading lines that someone wrote? Yes, their craft is difficult, and we should applaud when it’s done well, but that applause has nothing to do with who they are as a person. That requires digging deeper. The question I have is why we don’t similarly extol the brilliance of doctors, scientists, farmers, and bricklayers. Is it because we aren’t inundated with their faces on our screens? Does blind worship require us to first recognize a person’s visage? What bits of our internal wiring are not prepared for a billion of us to recognize the same face, and all add to their collective worship? Because that piece of crossed wiring is leading us astray.

Trump is president largely because of blind worship. His name was already a brand, and his face became even more recognizable through reality TV and the inordinate amount of coverage his campaign received. This worship is so strong that he can reverse every position that got him elected, and his base does not shift. He’s an actor reading lines. No one cares about the content. We are programmed to follow the alpha male, to not doubt their decisions, because this gave us power as a tribe, the ability to compete with other tribes, to move as a single cell, the way flocks of birds find safety in numbers. It worked so well for millions of years that we remain imprisoned by this impulse today.

Every day, we should work to untangle our blind worship of others. This should be an active pursuit, like the flexing of a little-used muscle. We should elevate ourselves and everyone around us to the same level, as we lower our blind positive esteem of strangers. This does not mean we should not admire those who deserve it, but we should think long and hard about what we admire and why. Do they make the world a better place? Do their actions inspire us? How do they treat others? Do their words and points make sense? And then we should remain vigilant, continue to challenge that person and ourselves, and be open to changing our esteem in a moment.

We know that this works, the changing of culture through the application of a million tiny forces. We changed the culture of cigarette smoking from something cool to a pariah, and we did it partly through smart legislation. We made it illegal to advertise a legal product on TV, in magazines, and at sporting events. That decision, to regulate a legal product, will save millions of lives. Culture can shift, but we need to first recognize where our culture is wrong and what we hope it will become.

Perhaps the most controversial viewpoint that I hold today is that the blind worship of our military leads to senseless slaughter. When we thank everyone for their service, and salute anyone with a uniform, we create a death culture to go along with our rape culture. We create a culture where kids see us perk up at the sight of anyone with an assault weapon. For generations, this has been going on. Is there any wonder why those kids grow up to lust after AR-15s? Is there any surprise that the country with the largest military, a country where not a single politician and very few citizens speak up about our fetishizing of this military, is now the country with the most guns?

We all contribute to this. Soldiers deserve our pity, not our respect. We should feel sad that they exist, that they are necessary. We should recognize that the world can remain safe with far fewer of them. We should want them home, moving into civilian life, getting therapy for what we’ve put them through. Death culture has got to end, and it ends by stopping our blind worship of everyone in uniform. We don’t know them on an individual level, any more than we know actors on a stage or athletes on a field.

How many athletes are forgiven for unspeakable crimes? Spousal battery. Animal fighting. Rape. Assault. Murder. Our worship of celebrity athletes allows them to continue along these destructive paths. It’s only when they seem to disrespect an object of our even greater worship that we criticize them. Everything wrong with blind worship is found in this paradox: a rapist standing with his hand on his heart is a hero; the soldiers on honor guard who killed children overseas is a hero; but the man on his knees, thinking about his fellow citizens killed on the streets, is somehow a villain.

Athletes, actors, elders, priests, soldiers, politicians, millionaires, CEOs, doctors and lawyers, none of them deserve our respect simply for being these things. They earn our respect with every action and word. Just like everyone else. I think this short in our wiring leads to an enormous amount of heartache and societal destruction. A lot of the tribalism and in-grouping and out-grouping arise from this single primal cause. We give too much power over these people who are strangers to us, and that power pervades society like a fog, making it more difficult and dangerous for victims and witnesses to speak up.

It’s easier said than done, right? How do you ask a sports fan to not get goosebumps when he sees a star player on the field or out on the streets? How do you convince someone to not date an actress or an athlete by saying it won’t change their lives, when it most certainly will change their lives? How do you defy your boss when we all know that who you know leads to promotion, wealth, and power? How do you get a believer who wants to avoid going to hell to dare doubt their preacher?

I contend that it happens gradually. We spiraled out of control, and now we need to slowly spiral back down to earth. It comes through a million little decisions and interactions. It begins by breaking the silence and by changing the existing noise to a different channel. If you agree, and these points make sense to you, or you have your own twist or something to add, then I urge you to share this or your own thoughts with everyone you know. I urge you to work every day to look up a little less to people you don’t fully know, and elevate more those whom you do. Those who truly deserve it.

You can start with me. I’m a hack who wrote some bestselling books, but that tells you jack all about who I am. Assume I’m the worst. I’m certainly no better than you. But I do believe in the rightness and logic of my thoughts here, and I think we can make the world a better place by applying them in our daily lives and our interactions with others. Judge these ideas and take them, make them better by adding your ideas, find something to agree with or critique here.

Remember that progress is made through doubt, not surety. Doubt your elders, your priests, your celebrities, your soldiers. Doubt the biases we’ve built up over the years. Teach our children to be skeptics. Try and learn for ourselves how to be skeptical. Let’s reel in these primal impulses that have led us astray and march forward on an even plane of mutual and well-earned respect. There’s a better culture in our future no matter what; I truly believe this. It’s only a question of whether we get there late or early. I say let’s hurry the fuck up.

 

 

 

 

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This Needs to End

A second Hurricane Harvey swept across the country last week, leaving behind anguish, confusion, and a flood of tears. The Harvey Weinstein story follows closely after the Bill O’Reilly story, the Roger Ailes story, and the Bill Cosby story. Hollywood loves nothing more than remakes. But this story has got to end. Now.

At a conference I attended this past weekend, several attendees shared their experiences in Hollywood’s culture of rape and harassment. Their confessions were met with sadness, anger, support, hugs, outrage, tears, and most importantly: hope. It feels like the terror and abuse that women have suffered for thousands of years may be coming to a head. Powerful men who abuse that power are starting to see consequences. But this alone won’t be enough.

The #MeToo hashtag is trending again, after actress Alyssa Milano revived it on Twitter with a call for anyone who has been abused. What has followed has been a chorus of voices like a gathering wind. We are at Category 5 levels of fed-the-fuck-up. But our outrage alone won’t make it so that no woman will ever again be harmed; the culture that allows and ignores this has to come crashing down so that these stories become the exception rather than the norm.

There are things we can do. Things men can do, women can do, parents can do, young adults can do. It starts with this conversation we are now having. It starts and ends with our voices. This movement is 100% the result of women who have the courage to speak up. We need to make sure we build a climate in which they feel safe for doing so. These recent high-profile firings help. The fact that we are now believing these women and applauding their courage helps. For too long we have doubted their stories. For too long the consequences have been worse for the victims than the abusers. That needs to change.

Speaking up is the hardest thing to do. There are a million reasons to stay quiet: fear of losing a job; the shame of being victimized; the confusion of what in the world happened and why; the lifelong inurement of a million small abuses heaped up until the horrific almost feels normal. Some of these fears keep those who witness the abuse quiet as well. More men and women who see this happening need to have the courage to speak out. And there’s a truth we need to accept and have a conversation about.

The truth that we need to confront is that men are creeps. We are all creeps. Every man has the potential to abuse women. Every man. It’s the way we talk about them from our teenage years on. It’s the way we leer at them, or turn our heads to check out a stranger on the street. It’s the way we make women feel uncomfortable walking down the sidewalk, so they have to stare straight ahead, even as they can feel our eyes on them, and they think to themselves, “Don’t look. Don’t look. Just keep walking.”

We all wish the world was a certain way — a safe world where evil is the exception rather than the rule — but wishing will not make it so. Only action and communication will. The reality of the world is this: rape is common and sexual abuse is rampant. This is a fact. The statistics on college campuses alone are sobering, and these do not capture the full extent of the problem. One in four women will survive rape or attempted rape while in college. ONE IN FOUR. College campuses, where the privileged and progressive supposedly gather.

Or how about the firestorm of rape that follows troop movements? The allies in WWII raped their way through Germany, with hundreds of thousands of “heroes” abusing their victims from a position of power, taking advantage of those they were meant to assist. A large part of the problem is that we lionize those perpetrating rape. It’s sports stars, CEOs, troops, fathers, priests, coaches, uncles, all the people we are told to respect.

How about we try to respect women for once? Just this fucking once. And then let’s make that respect a habit so that it lasts. So that this hurricane doesn’t sweep by, and we clean up after it and put our ugly houses back in order. Let’s rebuild from the ground up and try something new.

Men, try to understand that your advances are NOT FUCKING WANTED. Just because you want to have sex with anything that moves, understand that women are far more selective, and that your assumption should always be that they don’t want it. They’ll let you know when they do.

Don’t honk your horn at women on the street, or call out the window at them, or whistle, or make catcalls. Mock your friends who do. Have a talk with them. Let them know that’s someone’s daughter, mother, sister. Make your friend or co-worker feel like shit when they crack a joke. If you even see their eyes wandering, or one of those knowing grins, tell them to keep their eyes to themselves. Tell them this isn’t cool. It isn’t right. These little habits should be treated the same as a racial epithet.

It sucks that parents have to have these conversations, but I think they do. Every daughter needs to hear that men are creeps and that they should stick up for themselves. They need to know to expect this behavior, and to practice what they’ll do when it happens, so they don’t freeze up in shock. We practice safety drills in other walks of life for this very reason, so that our response to danger is an ingrained habit. Stop drop and roll. Know the nearest exit. Brace for emergency landing.

From the earliest age, girls need to be taught that every male is a potential predator. It doesn’t matter how cute, or successful, or good at sports, or wealthy — the very things they are going to be attracted to are the things that allow men to feel powerful and abuse that power. Every male is a potential threat, a grenade, a landmine. If you’re a guy reading this and you are offended, fuck you. It’s time for us to be uncomfortable. It’s long past time. I’m okay with every woman assuming the worst about me if it means they’ll feel safe. You should too. If you’re not willing to feel that way, then you’re part of the problem.

Girls need to know that when something happens, it’s okay to talk about it, to press charges, to demand repercussions. Which means it falls on us to make sure there are repercussions when something does happen. The judicial system and the public sphere need to rally to this cause. Serial rapists like Bill Cosby should not walk free. Our adoration of men in power should be seen as a danger sign, not a free pass. It’s that adoration and trust that allows much of the abuse that happens. Men feed on their positions of power. We shouldn’t be surprised when a coach, celebrity, priest, president, CEO abuses someone. Didn’t you hear Trump brag about this? Power and wealth have to become warnings, not smokescreens. We have to hold these people accountable.

Don’t ask why women haven’t spoken up sooner. It’s hard to admit to being abused. I know. You are ashamed, confused, scared. There’s a wild mix of emotions, unique to each case, and you cannot understand someone else’s victimhood. No one can. Each case is different. But it’s not uncommon for women to want to control the narrative to feel better about what happened, maybe even try to convince themselves they weren’t a victim. It can take years to know you were raped. I know. And when you realize it, you won’t know who to tell. And you’ll have seen over and over how some other accuser can have their life ruined while the abuser suffers nothing. Ask Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton how they’re faring.

The abuse isn’t just between strangers, not by a long shot. It’s between family members, co-workers, fellow students, and those in courtship. Hey guys — SILENCE means NO. The only thing that means yes is yes. I’ve been too paralyzed to stop abuse before, both while experiencing it and while observing it. The only way to make sure you aren’t a part of the problem is to check in with partners at every new step along the way. Ask permission before you touch someone that you’re dating, before you even hold their hand. I promise you that it can be romantic. Check in as you lead off first base, thinking about second. Even better — let her be the baserunner. Slow the fuck down. Give her time and space to let you know you’ve gone too far.

The other part of this conversation that we must have is the biological underpinnings of our worst behaviors. Evolution predicts this culture of abuse and rape. Belief and faith in gods does not. Raising our kids, and creating a culture, in which we believe in the divinity of human beings gets us in trouble. Evolutionary theory warns us to expect an imbalance in sexual urges. The reward to men for impregnating a dozen women is dozens (and then hundreds, and thousands) of copies of that drive as their DNA is passed along. There’s very little physical cost in the labor and upbringing of those children. We see this impulse throughout the animal kingdom.

The cost to women is nine months of pregnancy, a painful and dangerous childbirth, and huge expenditures of time and resources in the upbringing of the child. This is why women are pickier than men. It’s why they don’t want your advances. Men can’t seem to grasp this; we dream of the day that a woman sees us on the street and asks us for a quicky. Our y-chromosome-diseased brains can’t conceive of a woman’s brain wherein this is not okay. So we need the constant reminder. We need it early and often. Mothers need to tell their sons what it feels like to be a girl. Fathers need to warn their daughters what it feels like to be a boy.

Is it uncomfortable to confront these truths and have these conversations? Hell yes. Are there exceptions to these accusations of manhood and womanhood? Of course. Should we continue to endanger women because of our discomfort? Hell no. Should we continue to endanger women because someone out there says they are male and they’ve never had bad impulses? Fuck no.

Almost every woman has a #MeToo story. Almost every single one. That failure is on all of us. We have to admit that this is a problem, commit to building a better environment, and continue to speak up. We have to keep the conversation going. It should be a conversation that every child hears and hears often. Do not trust those in power. Do not trust men to know proper boundaries. Speak up when you’re even mildly uncomfortable. Humiliate those who are attempting to humiliate you.

And for men: Understand how unwanted your advances are — how terrifying and revolting they are. Learn from an early age how to treat women with respect, how to be wary of any power or leverage gained in life, how to speak up and humiliate your friends, colleagues, and superiors when you see them crossing any line. We should have a zero-tolerance policy for this. It can be done. We’ve made progress in shaming smokers, and those who drink and drive. We can have the same impact on sexual abuse.

My heart breaks for every woman who has endured this. My heart breaks for every woman I’ve ever made uncomfortable. I hope we can all do better by you. I hope we can build structures that make us impervious to these thoughtless, ugly, terrible hurricanes, until we run out of names for them.

 

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If You Like Bookstores…

I’ve spent a good chunk of my life in bookstores. When I was a kid, I made loitering in bookstores an artform. There were holes in the carpets of my local Waldenbooks in the shape of my butt. Later in life, I practically lived in the Barnes & Noble my mom managed. That lasted until I started working in my own B&N throughout my college years. After a career in yachting, I worked in an indie bookshop while working on my novels.

I spent much of these working hours dreaming of opening my own bookstore one day. I had a vision of what a bookstore could be. When I worked in my last bookshop, Amazon was already the 900 lb. gorilla in the bookselling biz, but I knew there was a way to coexist. People still wanted to wander in and discover something new to read. Curation and physical browsing were the advantages of small shops. My beloved Waldenbooks went out of business because of the failure of their parent company. I blogged years ago that this was a premature death. I also blogged about my ideal bookstore. I thought I’d have to build it one day.

Thank goodness, someone beat me to it.

On 34th street in Manhattan, between 5th and 6th, there’s a bookstore like no other. If you think Amazon’s foray into bookstores is a bad idea, or a loss leader, or just a place to showcase their electronics, or a fad that will crash and burn, you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

I didn’t quite know what Amazon’s play here was. I didn’t know what to expect when I dropped into the store. What I found was a revelation. And if you’re traveling to New York, you should add this shop to your to-do list. If you love bookstores, you’re going to love what Amazon has built.

Every book in the store is face-out. Every book in the store has a 4+ star review average. The shelf talkers (those little cards beneath the books) have a blurb from an online customer review. There are no prices on the books; you pay the current price on Amazon, which is almost always lower than the list price. Both times I visited this store (and I went to the one at Columbus Circle as well), the place was packed. These shops are going to make Amazon money; they are going to sell tons of books; they are going to become the recognizable bookstore chain across the country and probably around the world.

You know it the moment you step inside.

The hallmark of a successful bookstore is simple: It pairs readers with books they’re excited to read. What Amazon has done here is nothing short of brilliant: They’ve reduced the number of books available to the shopper. Where B&N and Borders would assault you with choices (and yet rarely have the particular book you were looking for), Amazon is going against the grain of their online bookstore, all while leveraging the big data mined from its online shoppers. The paradox of choice is that it disinclines us to choosing at all. Research shows that too many options causes shoppers to walk away empty-handed. At this shop, it feels like you can’t lose. Every book is selected to please. And Amazon knows better than any other bookseller which books are pleasing readers the most.

One of my favorite sections in the store reminds me of the “also-boughts” on Amazon.com. You know, the books suggested beneath whatever book you are currently browsing. The way they laid this out is brilliant: you’ve got a column of widely popular books on the left side of a bank of shelves, and on the rest of each shelf you’ll find several books you may not have heard of that are similar, or that share a theme. If you’ve read any of the books on that shelf, the other books will probably appeal to you.

This was my job as a bookseller for years. A customer would come in and say they loved THE HUNGER GAMES, and I would walk them to a book that I liked that I felt was similar. My skill at matching book and reader depended on my breadth and depth of reading. In the Amazon bookstore, you’ve got millions of people walking you through your shopping decisions. Every customer review, and every purchasing decision have gone into the curation of this store. On top of this, there’s an editorial staff making decisions with fewer of the biases of a New York Times bestseller list, and less of the corporate ills of merchandising dollars. Just. Great. Books.

Oh, and some questionable ones:

There’s a great children’s section that takes up an eighth or so of the store, with comfortable carpet for young butts to wear holes through. There are chairs to sit in to read with a loved one on your lap. There are unique sections with clever themes, and a New York section in this store, so some of the local curation that B&N never got right. The devices, of course, are here, but what amazed me is that they’re less intrusive than most of the Nook spaces I’ve seen in B&Ns. And far fewer games and toys. This is a bookstore built by people who love books. Cynics often accuse Amazon of not caring about books, and I challenge them to visit this store and cling to that myopic view.

I used to give a talk about the history of bookselling, and I closed the talk with my rock, paper, scissors theory of bookstore disruption. In this theory, small bookshops were disrupted by big box discounters, whose selection and pricing advantages were too much to compete with. Curation was not enough to retain customers who wanted better selection and lower prices. Then Amazon came along with far greater selection and even lower costs, and the big box discounters were hammered. This has led to the resurgence of small bookshops with their expert curation and physical locations.

The Amazon bookstore changes everything. Now you’ve got even better curation, but with the same online prices. You’ve got a shop where no customer loyalty card is needed, because the register knows you’re a Prime member the second you swipe any card you’ve used on Amazon. You’ve got a bookstore that will improve your online recommendations even as you shop offline. Perhaps the best part for me, as someone who is looking to discover new books that I’ll read on my Kindle later, you’ve finally got a bookstore that encourages you to whip out your phone to take pictures of the covers of books. I was 1-clicking new reads to my Kindle right there in the store!

I came away from my first Amazon bookstore with a book in a bag and five other books downloaded to my Kindle. I also walked out onto 34th street with a smile on my face. This bookstore was nothing short of a revelation. I understand where Amazon is going with this, and it isn’t just a shipping hub, or an advertising play, or an electronics showcase. Those are ancillary benefits. What this is is simply a company that sells more books than anyone else who saw — even better than I did — how to sell more of them. How to please even more readers.

Now, when I pull into New York harbor on Wayfinder in a couple of years, I won’t need to open my own bookstore. I’ll just come fill out an application at this one. Or maybe at the shop in downtown Brooklyn that I hope they’ve opened by then.

 

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What a Book is Worth

There is something otherworldly about a book, something absolutely magical. This one simple container is somehow full of unlimited potential — you never know what awaits inside. What will you learn? What world will you be transported into? Whose life will you inhabit?

Nonfiction books teach us new facts, but the real magic is fiction. Here, we zip another’s skin over our own bones and suddenly see through their eyes, learn what it feels like to be someone other than ourselves. Fiction imparts the gift of empathy. It’s also a vehicle for satire, for warnings, for reflection, and most importantly . . . for hope.

An obsession for books binds millions of us together, all the avid readers and book collectors. In antique stores, we’re the ones ignoring the furniture and trinkets as we rummage through piles of musty tomes. We’re the ones at dinner parties standing in front of shelves and running our fingers across a stranger’s spines. We steal glances at jackets on subways. Used bookstores are mandatory stop signs. Piles of books stand like teetering monuments in our homes and on our bedside tables. Floor joists creak, bookshelves groan, and we sigh in contentment to be surrounded by all these stories and bound words.

My dream job was to work in a bookstore, something I was able to do in college and again while trying to make it as a writer. I couldn’t believe I got paid to open boxes of brand new books fresh off the press. I got to arrange them prettily on shelves. I also had the pleasure of working as a book critic, which lead to publishers sending me an unrelenting stream of advanced copies right to my door. Books newer than new! Not even out yet. I read and reviewed a book a day and still couldn’t keep up. The teetering monuments around my home grew taller, and I covered every wall of my house with bookshelves.

At some point, it becomes a fetish. The heft and feel of an old leather-bound book sends chills through me. I remember when Barnes & Noble came out with faux leather-bound books of old classics for $19.95, and I wanted them all. Poe, Swift, Shakespeare, Twain. I would gladly pay a premium for books I’d already read, just because they were more booky than other books.

I won’t admit to having a problem, because I don’t see it as a problem. Books have defined and shaped my life. I always had one in my hand as a kid, and these days I pick out my clothes based on my reading habit. When I try on a pair of cargo shorts, the first thing I do is make sure my Kindle slips easily into the lower right pocket. That’s my holster; there’s an entire library locked and loaded.

Transitioning to ebooks was not easy for me, I’ll admit. I resisted. But the advantages eventually won me over. My Kindle allows me to read more books, more often, and more affordably. I started traveling for work, and now I could take plenty of books with me and also buy more from anywhere in the world. Living on a boat, this portable library is crucial. It also means a lot of thought and care goes into which physical books I keep. Most of my reading takes place on my Kindle, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop loving books. If anything, my appreciation has grown.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about books and the book trade. As a reader, a bookseller, a writer, a publisher, an editor, and as a book designer. I ask myself questions about the value of books, the value of reading, the cost of publishing, and sometimes these questions lead me to weird answers. I’ve blogged about much of this over the years, and I’ve shared my strange ideas about books and bookselling as I describe my ideal bookstore or what I think publishers should do to reverse their falling fortunes.

My quest to understand the value of a book and reading has led me down many different and unusual paths. When it comes to my own work, I’ve long embraced piracy. I don’t see piracy as any different than a friend borrowing a book from a friend, or a single book making its way through a household or a school classroom. To me, the value is in being read. The danger is in losing an audience. I do not speak for other authors or condone stealing in general; I’ve just never had a problem with it when it comes to my own works.

I also think books are both priceless and that they should be free if possible. I love the Gutenberg Project, where you can download out-of-copyright classics at no cost. This website and an old ereader means a lifetime of reading and learning without spending another penny. My bestselling work of all time – the story that allowed me to become a full-time writer – has been free for years. You can get it here for nothing.

But I also believe in supporting writers and paying what you can for a good book. When authors try to give me their books for free, I usually decline and buy a copy for my Kindle. I’ve paid more than cover price for an early edition, or a signed copy, or an especially beautiful binding. I guess I think books should be readily accessible to all, and those who can afford to be patrons should support the medium and the artists. And this is precisely the world I believe we’re heading towards.

Small bookstores with full-price books are rebounding, largely because affluent readers understand the value of these bookstores in their communities, and they are choosing to pay extra to keep them open. Amazon, meanwhile, is doing gangbusters with their discounted print book sales, ebooks, and Kindle Unlimited, because not everyone can afford current retail book prices, and not everyone lives close to a bookstore. Different needs and different means for different readers.

If you haven’t heard of Kindle Unlimited, it’s basically an all-you-can-read book binging buffet. $9.99 a month to access a metric ton of ebook electrons. Programs like this place a very high value on reading by making more reading affordable to more people. And here is where the bizarreness of my philosophy on books arises: A high value for reading means a low price for books. A high value for books means the opposite.

Here’s a Venn Diagram for avid readers and book nuts:

On the right side, you have people who decorate their house with books they’ll never read (There’s actually a company that sells books by the linear foot for decorating your home. They arrive in all kinds of foreign languages. Beautiful and unreadable). On the left side, you’ve got people who will gladly mainline books into their neck veins once Amazon perfects the technique; these are the readers who are causing ebook and audiobook sales to explode while print sales stagnate.

And in the middle, you have addicts of both. Here is where I think we’re missing some potential in the book trade.

The publishing market is bifurcating between those who are obsessed with reading and those who are obsessed with books. While there is common ground between the two sides, important differences remain. I know people who read several books a week, year after year. They can’t afford to buy full-priced books to support this habit. Libraries, used bookstores, ebooks, free books, Amazon discounts, and programs like Kindle Unlimited are what they need. If you look at this bolded list, you’ll see all the things publishers regularly complain about. And yet these are the readers publishers need the most. Again, these readers can’t afford their habits any other way.

The right side of the Venn Diagram also thinks of reading as a defining characteristic of their lives, and quite rightly. Reading a book is an enormous investment in time. These people might read a dozen books a year, or twenty books a year. Spending full price at the local bookstore, and working through a chapter a night, these readers attach a lot of significance to reading and to books. They have home libraries. They’ve even read half of what’s on their shelves. They can’t resist a bookstore and always find something new to purchase. They just wish they had more time to read. They aspire to be like the first group, but life gets in the way. Publishers absolutely adore these readers and their value systems, even as these readers constitute a dwindling percentage of publishers’ profits.

The difference between these two crowds explains some conflicting headlines. You may have seen that most people still read physical books. You may have also seen that most books sold today are ebooks. These two facts are neatly explained by the fact that ebook readers consume far more books per person. It doesn’t matter how many people prefer physical books if they’re only buying a handful of them a year. A handful of books is a slow week for the group on the left side of the diagram. And ignorance of the existence of this group explains much of the ignorance and confusion within the book biz.

But what about the group at the intersection of these two groups? That middle slice of the Book and Reading Venn Diagram? Here is where you find the people who are both obsessed with reading and obsessed with books as objects. Here is much of the YA crowd and young readers in general, where solid objects provide highly prized substance for the expression of their individual selves. Here is where people who love one book in particular seek out signed copies, old copies, and multiple copies. This is a crowd that ebooks can’t sate. For this group, current print book standards are falling short. In the pursuit of profit margins, the margins within actual books are suffering. Fonts are shrinking, whitespace disappearing, paper and bindings getting cheaper, some formats disappearing altogether. Choices in print books are diminishing.

It need not be so.

Always one to experiment, I decided to take these ruminations and questions and put them to the test. I started asking myself what I would pay for my favorite books, the ones that truly shaped me. Years ago, Barnes & Noble showed me that I would gladly pay $19.95 for a fake leather-bound copy of a book that I could otherwise legally download and read for free. That’s amazing when you think about it. It speaks to the value of the book as an object. The reading aspect costs nothing. The $19.95 is all about the packaging. How far can we take this?

[image error]There’s a Harry Potter hardback box set that comes in a special chest and sells for around $130. This doesn’t seem unreasonable at all to fans of the series. For some of my readers, hundreds of dollars for a first edition of WOOL seems reasonable to them, even though the ebook is free. This got me thinking about print-on-demand technology not as a route to cheap and quick, but as a route to one-off and exquisite. A technology that publishers have avoided and frowned upon is one that they could instead use to cater to that overlap in our Venn Diagram.

Print-on-Demand (POD) means unlimited or zero copies, and both ends of this spectrum are important. Unlimited means never running out as demand goes up. Zero means not wasting a penny if there is no demand at all. POD is an end to guessing what readers want and constantly getting those guesses wrong.

Check out this Print-on-Demand book:

That’s a copy of MACHINE LEARNING, a complete collection of my short stories. It will be released on October 3rd by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in hardback, paperback, and ebook. It was edited by John Joseph Adams, who also came up with the idea of publishing it. Before now, my short fiction has been scattered to the wind, published in so many places that I doubt anyone other than my mom has read them all. Some of these stories used to exist only on my old website; they became unavailable when I redesigned my homepage. Two of the included stories are brand new for this collection.

In addition to the stories, I wrote new thoughts about what each story means to me, or what I was thinking about or going through when I wrote them. These tidbits follow each story, and I think they add something to the reading experience. For those who are familiar with my work, you know how much the short fiction medium means to me. My success as a writer has mostly come through my short stories. I doubt any novel over my career will ever be as meaningful to me as this collection.

Which is why, when I needed to print out a proof copy of the manuscript to look over the final draft for changes and typos, I decided to do something a little different. Instead of going to Kinko’s and binding this as cheaply as possible (my normal practice), this time I went all-out. I tried to marry my love of the contents with an exterior to match. And here’s what I learned from this project:

I learned that I would have paid a week’s wage for a book like this, if it was the right book. As a bookseller, I used to make $10 an hour, and I worked thirty hours a week. Yeah, I was poor. But I spent what money I had on books, and I would’ve paid an entire week’s wage for a copy of ENDER’S GAME that looked like this – a one-of-a-kind hand-bound leather edition of my favorite read, signed by the author if possible. And I would’ve treasured that book for life and passed it down to a loved one. I’m one of those book freaks. I don’t think I’m alone. And I think it would cost precisely zero dollars for publishers to target this demographic using print-on-demand technology and by employing the fine folks who are keeping the art of bookbinding alive.

Here’s how I would make it work: I would convince a publisher (or a number of them) to enroll a ton of books into this program. I would especially go after the books that have sold millions of copies and have meant so much to so many readers. But really, just make every book available. It costs nothing, and millions of books are someone’s absolute favorite of all time. I bet every self-published author would add their works to the mix, and I bet Amazon would include their imprints as well.

The next thing you do is sign up a handful of book binders and crafters to meet whatever demand arises. I think you could get the cost of these books down if the people making them had steady sales. The crafter I used was Lindsey of BooksForAllTime. Lindsey is a true artist, and working with her was an absolute joy. I got to pick out the leather, the type of paper, the design on the cover, the gold leaf inlay, all of it.

So the program would work like it does with BooksForAllTime: You pick out your favorite book, customize it to your delight, and it shows up on your doorstep a month or two later. Slow. Expensive. The opposite of ebooks. But tapping into the same market of avid readers. That overlap in our diagram.

You might only own a dozen of these sorts of books in a lifetime. Or perhaps just one. Maybe you make a wishlist of your favorite books and make that list public for friends and family, so they know what to get you for Christmas or your birthday. Perhaps you have book clubs and programs that send you books on your wishlist every three months. Whatever you can afford. Maybe authors order one of each of their releases to have a library of their own books on display in their homes.

These books might cost $200 to $400 bucks apiece. Crazy? Then you aren’t part of the crowd I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of the crowd that collects these slowly, saving up, to see a row of Harry Potter books on a shelf that look like they came from Hogwarts itself. A Tolkien trilogy that even an orc could love. A Foundation Saga that could last from one foundation to another. The ultimate copy of Dune, Cosmos, or To Kill a Mockingbird. Eventually, after decades of a reading and collecting life, a small bookshelf of absolute treasures emerges. If you’re smiling at this imagery, then you are the crowd I’m thinking of.

But here’s where it gets very interesting: What if the author agrees to take a very small slice of that sale, a slice that would still be double the amount they make for a hardback (say, $3.00). And what if the publisher agrees to take the same measly cut (this would be a first). And what if the retailer did the same?

In other words: What if the book binder kept most of the profit?

Why would this make sense? Because I think there would be enough demand for these books to employ a good number of book binders like Lindsey. I think keeping the price of these books as reasonable as possible would expand the number of people who fit into the middle of the Venn Diagram. These exquisite books will expand the love of reading, the fetish for books and stories, and they’ll last for ages.

The ridiculous and ultimate fantasy is that we parlay the untapped money in the pockets of book lovers worldwide, and we move that money into the pockets of people whose jobs are being displaced or upended by changes elsewhere in the global economy. Books being bound in developing countries. Books being bound by former coal miners. Would global demand for bespoke books be enough to move a million leatherbound titles a year? If so, that’s a living wage for thousands of people. Much more if you’re talking about developing countries.

This might sound crazy, but community bookstores are made possible in part by the willingness of some readers and gift shoppers to pay extra for something they love. The reason books make such great gifts is that we feel like we’re buying something that is good for the recipient, as well as bringing them joy. Parents of book-loving kids know what this feels like: it’s like having kids who beg for their veggies.

Imagine buying a loved one a book they’ll cherish forever, and knowing that the person making the book is having their life changed as well. Imagine spreading the joy of reading and the joy of books by using a technology that removes the risk from publishing, that allows us to create something not cheap and expendable, but rather exquisite and irreplaceable.

When I’m done with this book, I’m going to do what we often do with physical books: I’m going to pass it on. It’ll be a gift to someone who has furthered my writing career. If you want your own copy of MACHINE LEARNING, you’ll have to settle for the regular hardback, paperback, or ebook, which you can pre-order here. Or if you’re interested in something leather-bound and special, I own the print rights to lots of my works. Maybe Lindsey could make you a special edition of MOLLY FYDE AND THE PARSONA RESCUE or HALF WAY HOME. Or perhaps other indies will open their works, and other bookbinders will get in on the fun.

This won’t be for everyone. Just the nuts in the middle.

So what would your favorite book be worth to you?

 

 

Anyone who’s interested in their own custom book, give Lindsey a shout. She’s amazing to work with. If you do want one of my books printed with her, and I own the rights, I’ll provide the PDF to her free of charge. All the proceeds will go to Lindsey.

Below are some pictures Lindsey sent me of my book in progress. Lindsey does this full-time and supports herself with her art. I am admittedly an old romantic and a dreamer, and one of those dreams entails hundreds of Lindseys out there making books that last for lifetimes, bringing joy to readers, spreading the love of books and literature, and supporting an artform that flourishes rather than fades.

Thank you for my book, Lindsey!

 

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Writing Insights Part Three: The Revision Process

Welcome to the third entry in my four-part series on writing insights. In the first part of this series, I listed the things I wish I’d known before aspiring to become a writer. The second entry was all about how to get through the rough draft. Now I’d like to discuss how to improve your rough draft to get it ready for publication.

Many of the points in this section deal with the craft of writing. You may wonder why these are brought up after a rough draft is complete. Shouldn’t you learn to write before you begin writing? I wish it worked this way, but it doesn’t. You learn by doing, not reading about doing. Rough drafts require skills beyond the skill of writing. They are about endurance and stamina. They require willpower and force of habit. Many phenomenal writers can’t complete a rough draft and never will. This is why much of the writing advice out there is really just motivational advice to get you through that first draft. More “You can do it!” rather than “How-to.”

This is exactly as it should be. Once you know you can write a novel, you can learn through the revision process how to write a better novel.

Having said that, all of these insights are meant to be read at any time. If you haven’t written your first word, I would recommend reading this entire series before you begin. There are insights about the publication process in the next section that may influence how you structure your rough draft. And if you’re working on your tenth novel, there may be something in here that helps you see the writing process in a new light. Or you may see what’s missing from this advice and share your thoughts, which will help me and others in our writing processes. With this series, I mostly have in mind the aspirational writer, someone who is where I was ten years ago. So it assumes nothing and attempts to help anyone starting from scratch.

Before we get to the revision insights, I want to start by congratulating those of you who find yourself at this point of the writing process. It’s an amazing accomplishment. I’ll never forget the day I finished my first rough draft. I happened to be visiting my mother and sister at the time, and that night we went out for a celebratory dinner. A USB thumb drive containing a backup of my work sat on the restaurant table as we ate. I didn’t want to let that manuscript out of my sight! I still didn’t believe it. For the next week, I had to stop myself from telling perfect strangers that I’d written a novel. I also realized during this week that I had no idea what to do next. I’d worked so long and so hard to get to this point that I’d never researched the rest.

Here are the ten things I wish I’d known, sitting at that dinner table all those years ago…

 

Insight #21: Don’t rush to publication.

For many writers, getting the rough draft complete is the hardest part of writing a novel. It can feel like you’re done at this point, and you might want to get the project out into the wild so you can start on something new, or so you can get some feedback, or see if it’ll be the runaway bestseller that you hope it might. These impulses lead to tragic mistakes. New authors will often submit a manuscript to agents before it’s ready; or they’ll self-publish before the work is truly done.

Now is not the time to waste all the effort you’ve put into your rough draft. Now comes the fun part. The next step(s) will involve perhaps a dozen full passes through the work. Yeah, a dozen or more! Each pass will gradually smooth away rough spots and errors. It’s like taking a roughhewn hunk of lumber and turning it into a polished piece of furniture. You’ll start with heavy grit sandpaper and work your way down to wet-sanding a typo here or there.

The beauty of the revision process is that this is where you’ll learn to become a great writer, much more so than in the rough draft stage. The techniques you pick up as you shore up your story and polish your prose will carry over into the next rough draft. Because of this, the writing process will get easier and easier. The revision process will become faster and faster.

I’ve heard some writers suggest that you should step away from a rough draft for a length of time, but I never understood the usefulness of this. When I finish a rough draft, I celebrate for a day and then go right back to the beginning of the novel to start the revisions. There are a handful of main things I want to accomplish with the first pass: (1) I want to plug any missing sections (scenes or chapters I skipped). (2) I want to make the prose more readable and improve the flow between sections and chapters. (3) I want to give the characters and my world more depth and detail. (4) I want to tighten the plot, add some foreshadowing, close any logical holes.

Now is also the time to think about how you plan to publish this work, which is the area we’ll cover in the fourth and final part of this series. If your rough draft is a 300,000 word epic fantasy tome, and you want to publish this with a major publishing house, your revision process is going to involve cutting that draft up into three novels to create a trilogy. This will require some plot restructuring. One of my keenest insights that I possess now, which I didn’t appreciate when I started writing, is that how you publish will influence what and how you write.

In the next section, we’ll also discuss how insanely easy it is to publish these days, and this is why some patience is required. In the old days, you didn’t have a choice but to be patient. It could easily take several years (if at all) to bring your book to market. Now it takes a few hours. I want to convince you to take longer. At least ten revision passes before you submit to agents or self-publish. I promise you’ll be glad you took this advice.

 

Insight #22: It is often easier to rewrite from scratch than it is to revise.

Before we discuss revising, it’s worth pointing out the alternative: rewriting. Yes, I hear your collective groans. We just got done writing the rough draft, and now we have to start a scene or chapter from scratch?! From a blank page?! Can’t we just move a few words or sentences around and be done with it?

Usually, you can. The revision process mostly involves massaging what’s already in place. But there are times when revising actually takes a lot longer than a rewrite. Understanding when this makes sense, and being brave enough to tackle these challenging moments, is often the difference between success and failure. I’ve seen entire manuscripts abandoned and/or destroyed because of this fatal oversight.

This is especially true with the opening chapters of a manuscript, which are the most important chapters for hooking your audience, whether that audience is an agent, a reader, or a publisher. As you wrap up your rough draft and go back to the beginning, now is the time to explore rewriting as well as revising. You know your story and your characters more fully now. Your writing skills have improved through the hours and hours you’ve invested in this project. Maybe your opening feels a little stale. Or you wonder if the story shouldn’t start with a different scene or a different piece of information. You can try revising, or you can open a blank document and see what kind of opening chapter you would write now. It’s a fun exercise. You might surprise yourself.

This technique works wonders, and it works throughout your novel. You can peel off any scene or chapter or sentence and try it again from scratch. There have been times when I’ll spend hours trying to get a chapter or paragraph just right, then pound out something new in a fraction of the time that’s far cleaner and better. Our existing words often get in the way. Learn to step around them and try something new.

This fits well with the last insight from the previous entry in this series, about writing lean. The beauty of writing lean is that you spend more time adding material, and less time wrestling with the pain of deletion or the discomfort of massaging the wrong words into a different order that isn’t much better.

 

Insight #23: Great books are all about pacing

To become a better writer, it helps to understand how the delivery of words affects a reader’s mood and their retention of information. The most important tool in this regard is pacing. Pacing can mean different things in different contexts. The next few insights are all about pacing in one way or another.

Let’s start with the importance of overall book pacing and construction. It can help to consider extreme scenarios in order to arrive at more general truths. For instance, imagine a 300 page novel with no chapters or scene breaks. I’m sure they’ve been written or considered by people eager to break rules and convention. I imagine they are nearly impossible to read. Why? Because our brains are built to absorb ideas in chunks and to process those chunks individually.

We experience things in the moment, move those experiences into short term memory, and then perhaps to long term memory. If we get too much information all at once, we can’t process it well (or at all). Chapters and paragraphs signal an opportunity to file away what we just absorbed and prepare to absorb another chunk. This is why paragraph length is critical for flow and retention. If possible, paragraphs should be of similar length, each one containing three to seven sentences. This can vary depending on how long or short the sentences are (more on that in a bit). And this rule can be broken to great effect. Those effects are diminished when the rule is ignored altogether.

Short paragraphs stand out – but only if used sparingly!

And long paragraphs have their place in our stories, especially if the desired effect is to ease the readers brain into a somnolent state, like the sing-song of a lullaby. Proust was a master of paragraphs like these; they went on for pages, and were full of sentences that stretched line after line, full of clauses and lists, huddled together between commas and semi-colons and dashes, all with the combined effect not of conveying concrete information and facts, but to get the reader in a certain mood, perhaps to make them wistful, to deprogram their concrete minds so they were ready for the dream-state of Proust’s expert meanderings; in this, the words become like music, more notes than ideas, and the reader’s muscles themselves relax, a hypnotic trance ensuing, perhaps at the risk of losing them to literature’s great nighttime enemy and thief: sleep.

Practice both types of paragraph structure and pacing. Look for examples in your own reading. Ask how the authors you admire are affecting your mood as you read their prose, and then ask the same questions as you revise your rough draft. Chop up that long paragraph into two or more. Be frugal with your short declarations so you don’t rob them of their power. Treat your words like lyrics and listen for the song they sing.

 

Insight #24: Find your cadence between action and reflection

The pacing in the previous insight deals with how words are lumped together. Their physical structure, if you will. There’s a second kind of pacing, and this one deals with the actual content and type of words used. It’s the flow between action and reflection, and it’s especially crucial for works of fiction.

Action scenes don’t necessarily mean gunfights and car chases and alien invasions. An action scene can be an argument between two lovers. It can be a fierce internal struggle as a character decides to leap or step back from a metaphorical ledge. Action scenes are anytime something major is happening in the plot or to the characters. The reader is usually flying through these passages at a higher rate of speed, eager to see what happens next. Most often, these scenes have large blocks of text and less dialog, but that’s not always the case.

Reflection is what happens after the action. It’s when characters absorb the change that’s happened and plan what comes next. Period of reflection also give the reader a chance to absorb what’s happened and to guess or dread what might happen next. This is the cadence of your book, the rise and fall of action and reflection.

Now, if an entire novel was written with nothing but action, it would make for an exhausting read. And if a book consisted of nothing but constant reflection, it would be difficult to wade through. In the former, you would have change in your plot but not your characters. In the latter, you would have change in your characters but no plot. Every book should contain some balance between the two.

That doesn’t mean the same balance. A literary novel will typically have lots of reflection and very brief spurts of action. A genre novel will have lots of action and shorter pauses for reflection. I haven’t seen a definition of what makes a work “literary” that I fully buy, but maybe this fingerprint of cadence comes closest. It could be why many genre fans can’t read literary novels, and why many literary fans can’t abide genre works. It doesn’t matter if the genre works are as well-written as the literature – there’s simply too much happening. Not enough reflection. I would argue that pace defines these books far more than content. Which is why some great works of science fiction, like THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS or THE HANDMAID’S TALE, read more like literary novels (and are often shelved as such).

As you revise your work, look for places where the action goes on too long and consider inserting a pause for reflection. Let the characters catch their breath in an elevator, crack a joke or two, or tend to some wound or primal fear before you pick up the pace again. Similarly, look for anywhere that characters are ruminating too long and figure out how to spice things up. If you’re bored with what you’re writing, chances are a lot of readers will be bored as well. Make a gun go off; a car backfire; someone in the neighboring booth get the wrong order and pitch a fit; a zombie pop up that has to be dealt with, anything. And if you feel like you’ve gone on long enough, there’s always the em dash and a sudden exit—

 

Insight #25: Don’t repeat yourself. Unless it’s deliberate. And then repeat yourself carefully.

Alliteration and repetition are both an important part of pacing, and they both highlight the importance of grasping reading psychology. Readers love repetition when it is deliberate, for extra punch, for added stress. But our minds trip over accidental repetition, as when the same words appear too near to one another in a paragraph or chapter accidentally.

The psychology of this is strange, and it varies slightly from reader to reader. Common words can appear throughout the same sentence or paragraph without tripping the reader up. Uncommon words draw attention to themselves. If the reader sees a rare word twice, part of their brain will perk up and draw attention to the second sighting, which breaks the flow and distracts them from the content or emotional impact of the sentence. One of the most common things you’ll see from a good editor is similar or same words highlighted if they’re too close to one another in a manuscript. The editor will suggest changing or deleting one of them. This is always sound advice.

Repetition, however, can be extremely powerful if wielded appropriately. Play around and experiment. Pay close attention as a reader to see when you trip up and how you might have avoided that mistake in your own writing.

 

Insight #26: Reading is aural

I find it fascinating that we can hear ourselves think. When I was very young, I had a hard time telling if this was indeed the case. When I read silently to myself, am I “hearing” those words in my mind? Or am I just thinking them? What seemed to settle the question for me was the ability to hear various accents in my head. I could think with a British accent, or a French accent, which meant the words didn’t just have meaning, they had pitch and inflection and all the properties of sound.

This is why cadence is so important when it comes to writing. It’s why the long paragraphs mentioned (and demonstrated) above have a powerful effect on us. This is also how we can hear our characters’ voices, and why it’s important to make those voices distinct. Common writing advice includes the importance of observation: sit and watch crowds and make note of how they move, how they dress, how their features look. This is great advice. But we have to observe with our ears as well.

Some of your characters will have gravelly voices. Others will have a slight lisp. They should have accents and vocal tics. Be sure that all of your characters don’t have your vocal tics, or they’ll all sound the same. You want these voices to jump out, so try to exaggerate the differences between their voices in your own head. The common mistake is to leave them all sounding the same.

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Another mistake writers make is to leave out all the background noises that bring a scene to life. Pay attention when background noise is done well. A great example is the novel THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET by David Mitchell. Birds and street-sweepers, mischievous monkeys, the rattling of the wind, all of these things set the stage and help break up the dialog and narrative passages. They also help bring the world to life and make it real. Read this book, and you’ll become a better writer; I guarantee it.

The musicality of silent reading is why punctuation is so powerful. How much pause do you want readers to take? This power lies almost entirely with the choices you make. Liberal usage of commas – and there’s no hard and fast rule on many of the comma choices we make – can change how a sentence sounds in one’s head. The em dash (as used above) is super powerful. So are parentheticals as in the previous sentence; the beauty here is that a parenthetical provides not just a pause, but a hint to the reader to say these words softer, almost like an aside. The semi-colon in the previous sentence keeps things flowing more than a comma but less than a period. And going without punctuation as in the previous sentence, when I could easily have added one or two commas, rushes you right through.

The last sentence in the above paragraph could easily have been written without the middle clause and the two commas that encase it. It wouldn’t change the content or meaning, it just provides an example of what the sentence before it didn’t employ. Each of these decisions is a branch; everything sounds different depending on which one we go down. One of the most powerful skills a writer develops over time is the ability to “hear” these various choices in advance and choose the best one in each scenario. At first, it’ll require typing out several versions of each to see which you like best. Read each choice both aloud and silently. Eventually, you’ll make these choices without realizing it, and your writing will grow stronger.

I’ll say it again: Practice. Take a chapter you aren’t thrilled with and rewrite it from scratch, going for a more breezy style or a more punchy one. Write scenes that don’t have anything to do with your work in progress. Athletes do this all the time. They play a game of HORSE to improve their shooting form. They take a hundred free throws in a row. Actors will sit in front of a mirror and go through different moods and inflections; writers should do the same. Sit down and write a car chase, a bar fight, a sex scene, someone losing their job, someone getting their dream job, someone wishing they could quit their jobs. Do these things to play with your pacing and punctuation. If you go these extra lengths in your writing career, you’ll see dividends. I promise.

 

Insight #27: Zoom down into your character’s eyes.

Remember those posters that became a fad for a while, the ones that looked like tessellations of shapes but held hidden scenes of dinosaurs and dolphins? Kiosks in malls sold them. People would crowd around them and stare and stare, and then bust out laughing or gasp in surprise. Because if you crossed your eyes just right, 3D images popped out of nowhere. And then they’d disappear. You’d fight to get them back.

When you write your fiction, do you see the words on the page, or the events you’re describing? The chances are, you mostly see the words. I want to convince you that you can see both. And that the more you practice, and the deeper you fall into the flow of writing, the more often you’ll see just the action, and the words will disappear.

When you find this flow, you’ll write with astonishing speed and clarity. This is a truth that surprises most non-writers: On the days that I write the most, I have to edit the least. Quantity and quality often come hand in hand. I’ve written 10,000 words in a single day and had to edit very little of it. I’ve had other days where I agonize over 300 words and use none of them. Some days I get my eyes crossed just right. Other days, I’m staring at words.

The voice and tense you choose have a huge impact here, and we’ll discuss them next. More important perhaps is the zoom level you pick. You have to pinch-to-zoom your manuscript at times. If you are writing a fantasy novel, and you start with a prologue, you might want to zoom way out and write with a detached omniscience about the history of the land, the coronation and death of kings, the foment and ravages of war. If you are writing a thriller, you might start off your story by zooming in to write down the barrel of a gun, deliberately leaving out-of-view the larger context (like who is pulling the trigger). My advice is to stay as zoomed in as you possibly can. See the world through your characters’ eyes at all times.

Video games usually come in one of two perspectives. One perspective is the isometric view; it’s a third-person view above the action and at an angle. Unfortunately for many writers, this is the default view we assume when we write our first novels. I think it’s a huge mistake. We end up describing events and scenes as they appear, rather than as they feel. We give too much context about the layout of the scene and the action, and not enough context about the emotions and feelings of those experiencing those actions. If you feel like you’re seeing your story from this isometric, over-the-head view, stop writing and zoom back in.

The other videogame view is the first-person view, and this is what we’re after with our writing. Push down into your characters’ skulls. See the novel through their eyes. What are they thinking? What’s going on in the background? Are they hungry? Scared? Excited? Cold? Angry? Do they have any lingering aches? Is their mind wandering? Did they miss-hear something and need it repeated?

Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of describing events to the reader. Live through those events yourself and help your readers do the same.

 

Insight #28: Play with Tense and Voice until you find the right combo for each work

Tense and voice are basic writing concepts, but they merit mention here. I can’t count the number of times I’ve written a story in one tense or voice and had to revise the entire work to a different tense or voice. It happened in the previous entry of this series when I needed to write a quick chase scene. I thought it might be useful to share the before and after, so you can see the difference.

In past tense:

Marco bolted out the back door, Sarah right behind him. He could hear bar stools and tables toppling, had that last image of Marco reaching for his gun, and now every nerve in his body was waiting for a shot to ring out, for Sarah to cry she’d been hit, or to feel the punch and burn of a bullet slamming into his body. He urged Sarah ahead of him, knowing being shot would hurt less than seeing her go down. The end of the alley was a forever away. Footsteps pounded behind them, one of the goons yelling for them to stop or he’d shoot. Sarah swerved left and threw her shoulder into a shut door, the wood cracking. As the first shot rang out, Juan threw himself against her to shield her body with his. The both of them crashed through the door and into a busy kitchen. Men and women in white turned and gaped, but there was no time. Juan and Sarah scrambled to their feet and kept running.

And now in present tense:

Marco bolts out the back door, Sarah right behind him. He can hear bar stools and tables toppling, has that last image of Marco reaching for his gun, and now every nerve in his body is waiting for a shot to ring out, for Sarah to cry she’s been hit, or to feel the punch and burn of a bullet slam into his body. He urges Sarah ahead of him, knowing being shot will hurt less than seeing her go down. The end of the alley is a forever away. Footsteps pound behind them, one of the goons yelling for them to stop or he’ll shoot. Sarah swerves left and throws her shoulder into a shut door, the wood cracking. As the first shot rings out, Juan hurls himself against her to shield her body. The both of them crash through the door and into a busy kitchen. Men and women in white turn and gape, but there is no time. Juan and Sarah scramble to their feet and keep running.

Present tense is more powerful when we want to leave the outcome in doubt. Past tense often spoils the fact that the narrators lived to tell their story. Even worse, past tense can lose some of the immediacy of action. Anyone who has watched a taped sporting event versus a live sporting event can relate. Knowing that a thing is happening right now is a powerful feeling. But there are times that past tense just feels more apt for a particular story. Many writers are more comfortable writing in past tense, so they default to this. Whatever you choose, be consistent through each scene or chapter (in most cases, the entire book). And choose deliberately.

Voice is another major decision, one that can change in the revision process. This is a laborious amount of editing, so it’s best to think on these things early. But don’t be afraid to try both and see which one works better. There are myriad combinations of voice and tense. Some combinations are more off-putting than others, but this doesn’t mean you can’t make them work. The HUNGER GAMES books are written in first-person present tense, which many find difficult to read. Millions of fans of the books disagree. Here’s my chase scene again, this time in first person:

I bolt out the back door, Sarah right behind me. I can hear bar stools and tables toppling, and I see that last image of Marco reaching for his gun. Every nerve in my body is waiting for a shot to ring out, for Sarah to cry that she’s been hit, or to feel the punch and burn of a bullet slam into my own body. I urge Sarah ahead of me. Getting shot would hurt far less than seeing her go down.

The end of the alley is a forever away. Footsteps pound behind us, one of the goons yelling for us to stop or he’ll shoot. Sarah swerves left and throws her shoulder into a shut door, the wood cracking. As the first shot rings out, I hurl myself against her to shield her body. The two of us crash through the door and into a busy kitchen. Men and women in white smocks and hairnets turn and gape, but there is no time. Sarah and I scramble to our feet and keep running.

First-person present tense is great for reader immersion, but don’t rely on it. The number of sentences that start with “I” can be grating to the reader, so you have to work hard to mix it up. And the advantage with third-person perspectives is that we can move between characters from chapter to chapter. There’s also the nagging doubt that our narrator doesn’t survive their adventure, that the reason it’s told in third-person is because it has to be; the protagonist doesn’t make it. Third-person can be just as immersive if we write it zoomed in, as we mentioned above. Give us their thoughts and perspective, and it feels almost like we’re writing in first-person:

Juan hadn’t felt love like this since high school. Since Amanda. Turning over his arm, he studied the scar there across his bicep, the jagged raised whelp with the staggered row of dots to either side. She had told him to stop being a baby, to hold still, but he’d seen the way her hands shook as she threaded the needle. He remembered the blood on them both. There was only so much numb in the world when thread is making its way through flesh, skin puckering up as it’s pulled tight, the girl you love twisting her face up in concentration and worry, and you trying your damnedest to not pass out. Only so much numb in the world . . . What Juan wouldn’t do for some of that numbness right now.

In this example, we remove the reader from the POV by making it third person, and we remove events from the present by describing something about the past, and we write it all in past tense! Normally, these choices would create distance and reduce immersion. But is the passage above any less immediate? It feels like it’s through Juan’s eyes, even though it refers to him in the third person. Details and zooming work miracles, and they balance out our decisions about voice and tense. Speaking of details…

 

Insight #29: Details, details, details.

It has taken this long to mention my favorite writing technique, and now you’re in for it! Details turn stories into works of art. Details make us believe the stories we’re told. The number one thing that separates a serviceable writer from a great writer is the level of detail they achieve. We’re going to go through several examples here to kick your attention to detail up several notches.

Before we do, I want to stress why details matter. Our brains are wired for telling and hearing stories; there is some good research to suggest that this is a foundational feature of the human brain. We are storytelling animals. Some of these stories are true, and some aren’t. Some are meant to warn us of danger, some stories are meant to just give us information, and some stories are designed simply to entertain.

When stories are full of little details, we tend to believe them. Especially if those details make sense, and we don’t think the person telling the story would know to make those details up. Con men and practiced liars are great at sprinkling in details to distract from their overall fictions. Fiction writers should take note.

Let’s look at some common mistakes I see in early novels. These are problems you might find in your own work. These problems arise because the author cannot see the details of their world and their characters. The absence of these features call attention to the fiction. They create a backdrop similar to the one in the film THE TRUMAN SHOW, a feeling of all façade and no substance.

– The main character has no job and seems to never have had a job. You see this in a lot of YA. The character’s job – according to the author – is to allow the plot to happen to him or her. The character cannot possibly know about the plot that’s going to unfold, so this bit of convenience distracts us. Our brains can tell there’s something wrong, something missing.

– Entire branches of the protagonist’s family are missing. Anyone not central to the plot is absent, or paper-thin. Grandparents especially. This is because many authors don’t know how to include details without distracting from the plot. Great writers sprinkle details in a way that make the plot easier to understand, rather than distracting.

– Characters in poorly written novels often feel naked and empty-handed. When most of us leave the house, we have to plan what we wear, and we hunt and double-check that we have a handful of important items with us. In many freshmen novels, the character only has the plot to attend to. Out the door they go, furthering the plot along. Again, this often comes from improper zoom, inattention to detail, and not thinking about characters while away from the keyboard. As the author, you might know the protagonist is out the door to meet the girl of his dreams, but he only knows he’s going grocery shopping. Have him prepare and think accordingly.

– Food, water and their disposal. We eat, poop, and piss a lot. Characters in fiction never seem to. You don’t have to capture every instance, but you do have to include enough. Keep your characters hydrated! Make them stop the car and pee in the woods, the wind causing shadows to dance on the forest floor, the sound of something large moving through the branches, hopefully a deer. Food and its disposal are a great chance for reflection and cadence. No one does this better than George RR Martin, but you don’t have to take it quite so far as he.

– Give your characters scars, both physical and emotional. Too many characters are inserted into a plot as a blank canvas on which to drape some action. Their next love is their first love. Their next injury is their first injury. This is because not enough time has been spent daydreaming about these characters, their pasts, their families, their experiences. ROMEO AND JULIET starts with Romeo pining for his last love. The pattern of his fickleness tells us depths about him that a one-time love affair would not (and more about the Bard’s view of love as well).

– Behind-the-scenes knowledge. I read a book recently in which a character went on a talk show. One of the details mentioned was the choreography of cameras dancing and weaving beyond the bright lights, and it not only painted the scene for me, and what it must feel like to sit up there, it made me suspend disbelief because the author was sharing a detail that I realized must be true that I don’t often think about. Small details like this are what make it difficult to be a great writer; you need to know a lot of things about a lot of things. This is why a wide variety of experiences, jobs, reading, travel, and other types of media consumption make for a better writer.

– Totems and object origins. Does the character have a favorite piece of jewelry? Is their car a hand-me-down from a friend or relative? Is there a secret place they keep the things dear to them hidden? The more details like this that you sprinkle in, the more you’ll find use for them later in your plot. Just the mention of an uncle who gave your character their beater of a car might inspire you to bring that uncle in for a greater role down the road. This is the amazing thing about sprinkling details throughout your novel: Each one is an instance of pure imagination, and intricate plots are built on them. The best part is: when you use some detail for later inspiration in your novel, you’ve set up the original mention as a nice bit of foreshadowing.

During the revision process, I’m always looking for places to add detail. In my chase scene from the last section, I originally didn’t have the chefs in the kitchen wearing white smocks and hairnets. With just a few words, we can paint a scene more vividly. In a fast paced action scene, only certain highlights might stand out. We might not see that one of the chefs is tall and thin, another short and squat, one holding a colander, another stirring a steaming pot. But we’d notice they’re all dressed the same, because a group of strangers rarely are. We might notice all are wearing hats or hairnets. Or that one is holding a knife, because our adrenaline is pumping. Which details we choose to add are important. Think about what would stand out to your character if you were in their shoes.

One last example of detail, this one on how to interrupt your action. The world does not come at us linearly. When people talk, they rarely do so in complete sentences. They finish each other’s sentences, cut each other off once they understand the gist of what’s being said, incorrectly hear some words and make mistakes or have to ask for clarification. And some details interrupt the flow of the plot. A plot on rails stands out as being inauthentic. Send characters down dead-end alleys, literally and metaphorically. Use interruptions to sprinkle in backstory, foreshadowing, and missing details.

For instance, your detective might be chasing the bad guy when her grandmother calls to ask her to help with her computer. The detective doesn’t have time right now. You never have time for your grandmother, she might hear. Oh, okay… And she walks her through sending an attachment to another relative, all while trying not to lose the killer. Diversions like this add depth and realism. They wake the reader up. Make sure your story has a few.

 

Insight #30: Get help!

Every writer has strengths and weaknesses. You might be a whiz with dialog, but you can’t write action scenes that feel gripping. You can build amazing worlds, but you can’t create characters that leap off the page. There are hundreds of small skills that add up to one great writer; no one starts off good at all of them.

Getting many different perspectives on our works during the revision process will not only improve the drafts, they’ll improve the writer. It’ll make subsequent novels better, and they’ll require less editing. Join a writing group in your area; form one if a writing group doesn’t already exist. There are online editing groups out there as well. These groups often exchange rough drafts, and each member makes notes to assist the author. Take this process seriously. You’ll learn much through another author’s strengths and weaknesses. They’ll teach you much in return.

[image error]Read about writing, especially while you’re in revision mode. One of my favorites is EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES by Lynne Truss. It’s a hilarious book about grammar that will clean up lots of technical mistakes, leaving room for your editors and critique partners to comment more on story, characters, and pacing.

Find a loved one who can be an honest critic. My mother has been a wonderful collaborator over the years. She never hesitates to tell me where I can improve a story. It also helps to know when she’s confused, when I’ve left out too much information, or perhaps where I added too much detail.

When the revision process gets to the last stages, and you’re reading along looking for typos and rough edges, rope in some beta readers if possible. Some authors employ dozens of beta readers, but this is only easy to do once you have a following. Starting out, you might have to cajole friends into helping. Whatever you do, don’t be worried about “giving away” your work or your ideas. If you’re this far along in the process, you’ll know by now that execution is the difficult part. Ideas are the cheap bits.

 

Those are my top ten insights on the revision process. If you’ve made ten or twelve passes through your work, and you’ve had some editorial assistance to find the things you missed, you should have a nicely polished draft of an interesting story clearly told. Now what? How do you get as many readers as possible? Or as many sales? Or win awards? Or ensure the best chances of making a livable income?

The final part of this series has those answers. But before we get to the ten things I wish I’d known about publishing my books, we’re going to put the revision insights covered here into practice. Next up is a supplement to this series where I edit some of your works and discuss the reasons for the changes I made. Stay tuned for that.

 

The post Writing Insights Part Three: The Revision Process appeared first on The Wayfinder - Hugh C. Howey.

Writing Insights Part Two: The Rough Draft

In the first part of this series, I listed some of the insights I wish I’d known before I set out to become a writer. Those insights might not be equally useful to all people, and that same warning applies here as we dive into the writing process. I’m sharing these simply because I think my twenty years of fruitless endeavors might’ve been a whole lot easier if I’d known a few things before I got started.

To me, the rough draft is the most difficult part of the writing process. Revising and publishing are the fun and easy parts. I know many other writers also struggle with their rough drafts. The idea for the story is exciting, and the first chapter leaps right from the fingertips, but things quickly bog down. Excitement wanes. Doubts creep in. The inner critic takes over.

I hope to help you through this process as much as I can. We’ll pick up the numbering right where we left off.

 

Insight #11: Your Rough Draft Doesn’t Have to be Good

If you take only one insight away from this part of this series, please let it be this one. Nothing stifles creativity and production like the inner critic who shows up too early. I’m going to repeat this, and I strongly suggest that you make it your daily rough draft mantra:

My rough draft doesn’t have to be good.

The entire next entry in this series will be about how to revise rough drafts and make them better. But that process is impossible if the rough draft doesn’t exist in the first place. The most important thing in all of the writing process is to get an entire story down on paper. This is the first goal as a writer. Don’t let anything get in the way of that goal. Remind yourself of this every day.

I like to think of it as gathering clay. You can’t sit in front of a potter’s wheel and turn air into a vase. You need a wet lump of clay to work with. The rough draft is that wet lump of clay. Every day you sit down at your computer and force another sentence onto the screen, you are creating that clay. This comes first. It’s okay if it’s messy. You’ll fix it later.

 

Insight #12: Write all the way to the end before you revise your beginning

Related to the above, you have to write all the way to the end of your story before you start revising the beginning.

I’ve seen this mistake trap far too many a writer. Revising is easier and more appealing than writing new material. Sitting down in front of the computer, the writer recoils from the awful empty whiteness at the bottom of the document, and their eyes scroll up to the last thing they wrote. They are tempted to improve what they’ve already written instead of pressing forward into the unknown. This is like being lost in the woods and deciding to dress up a clearing rather than hacking your way out to open air. Novels and adventurers die like this.

Forget what you’ve written. Plunge forward. Even if there are continuity issues, plunge forward. You can bridge gaps later. If you want to change the name of a major character, just switch to the new name and leave the old names as they are. You’ll fix it later. If you start your search-and-replace now, you’ve given yourself an excuse to stop writing for the day. If you need to look up the name of a town, enter a placeholder and keep writing. If you get on Google, you may stop writing for the day. Your goal is to cut that trail all the way to the end, however rough a trail it is. You’re going to pave it and make it beautiful later.

This is worth repeating to yourself every day as you sit down at your keyboard: You must write to the end of the story. You must make progress toward that end today. A sentence, a paragraph, a chapter. You must push the story forward, forward, forward. Don’t stop until you get to the end.

 

Insight #13: Know what you’re writing

Writing to the end of your story is a whole lot easier if you know where you’re going.

Far too much is said about outlines, pantsing, plotting, and the preparations made before the rough draft is written. One of the things I’ve learned is that there are elements of all these methods in every writing style. When you write an outline, you’re doing it by the seat of your pants. And when you meander through a story as a pantser, you are often following established outlines about character arcs and the hero’s journey absorbed through years of entertainment. Outlines contain leaps of imagination and sparks of sudden inspiration, just as wandering stories are far more constrained than we like to admit.

The best stories, however, know where they want to go. This is different from the best prose, and the best plot twists, which often strike the author like a sucker punch in the flow of daily writing. The two aren’t to be confused. The difference can be seen in the TV show LOST, which had moments of pure brilliance that were undone by not having any clue where it was going when it got started. It made for a gripping view at times, but an overall dissatisfying experience for many. The theme of the entire show was cobbled together in the last few seasons. Its meaning was layered on like icing. You should aspire to bake your meaning in right from the beginning. The plot is the thing, and the literary flourishes are the icing.

Knowing how your story unfolds requires time away from the keyboard. Quiet time. You may need weeks or months of daydreaming about your story before you’re ready to write. My best stories had this in common: I knew the final scene of the novel before I got started. I knew where everything was going to end up. This can be as simple as knowing the girl and boy are going to end up together. Or that the murderer is going to be caught. Finding love and finding retribution are adequate goals for stories, but I would call them just barely adequate. Even better is finding love by overcoming the odds of specific ghosts in one’s past. Or getting retribution while also resolving an internal conflict about justice, or gender, or race. The theme should be something important to you. The theme serves as the bones of the novel even more than the plot. It will keep you focused, motivated, and power you to the end of your rough draft.

I’ll give you an example here, and more examples in the next part of the series, which will dive even deeper into the craft of writing. Let’s say I want to write a young adult novel about a teenage ninja girl who falls in love with a young pirate boy. Obviously there are going to be jokes in the novel about peglegs and parrots, and how someone’s wardrobe tends to be heavy on the color black. There will be swashbuckling ship scenes and some sneaking around in the dark. Our young ninja will learn that climbing a mast is a lot like climbing a tree, and that pirates make kinda-okay ninjas if they can learn to keep their mouths shut for one hot minute (and if you can convince them to shower so no one smells them coming). And here is the germ of the story’s theme: Things as disparate as ninjas and pirates have a lot in common. It’s possible to challenge our biases and discover these commonalities.

This is not a new theme. It’s not new because it’s an important theme. It’s one worth repeating, and it can really power a novel forward. There’s a lot of conflict baked right into the plot. It doesn’t matter if the reader has seen the theme before; they haven’t seen it in this context. It doesn’t matter that they know the conflict will be resolved; what matters is the suspense of how it’s resolved.

The detective almost always solves the case; what’s gripping is how she puts together the clues and avoids getting shot by the bad guy in the process. The boy and girl almost always end up together in the end; what’s exciting is seeing the obstacles that crop up along the way and how they overcome them. Find a theme that interests you and mold your story around this. Or daydream about your story until the theme presents itself. Understand the final scene in your story, how your characters have changed, how the reader might feel about those characters and about your story on that last page. Writing is a gradual process of taking one step after the other. It helps when you know where you’re going.

 

Insight #14: Plot is king. Prose is pawn.

There are two elements to writing that are often in conflict with one another. The first of these elements is plot, or the dry facts of what happens in a story, where it happens, whom it happens to. The other element is prose, or the words chosen to describe these events. Finding the perfect balance between the two is the key to writing your best novel.

The biggest problem I’ve seen with writing advice and writing classes is that they spend too much time teaching prose and not enough time teaching plot. The result is a cadre of authors who write well about nothing. The problem with this is that the vast majority of readers value plot far more highly than they value prose. This isn’t just borne out by the commercial success of genre works over literary works, but also by the conversations people have about the novels they enjoy. They discuss the characters and what happens to them. Far rarer are those readers who gush over their love of Proust’s florid sentences.

The best writing, without a doubt, combines great writing with a great story. It’s absolutely possible to have both. Justin Cronin made the leap from literary writing to genre writing without losing his fine touch with words. You can certainly have both, but the story should always come first. A gripping story told clearly, so the reader understands what’s happening, is the primary goal. From this base, a great writer can sprinkle in as many wonderful analogies and turns of phrase and beautiful descriptions as she likes, so long as she doesn’t distract from the telling of the story.

When writing a rough draft, the truth of this is critical. Rough drafts are often like detailed outlines, so that the author can see the entirety of their novel. The prose is punched up in the revising. And over time, the writer will get stronger both in plot and prose, so that the rough draft needs less work in the revision process.

 

Insight #15: Write in your own voice

The best way to kill your chances as a writer is to attempt to write like one. We all fall into this trap. When pounding out a Facebook post, or a comment on a forum, or an email to a friend, we write like the wind. The words tumble right out, and the meaning we hope to convey is succinct and clear.

And then, when we sit down to write a novel, we trip over our words as we try too hard to sound like someone we aren’t. I don’t know why we do this in the beginning, but the sooner we get over the impulse, the better. Write that rough draft as though you’re composing an email to a friend about a story you heard. Use your own voice. The subtleties and nuances of this voice will grow over time. For now, keep it simple.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be creative, or witty, or use the fullness of your vocabulary. It just means that you shouldn’t strain yourself as you write your rough draft. You shouldn’t try too hard to be flashy.

Continuing my love of basketball analogies, think of your rough draft as learning to dribble up and down the court. You don’t start by trying to dribble between your legs and around your back. Your first goal should be to get to where you can dribble without looking down at the ball. Make your writing comfortable and second nature before you get fancy. Just get the story down.

I’m going to give you a few examples. Below are the opening sentences of my hypothetical young adult novel about a young ninja who falls in love with a pirate. The first opening:

Anya woke up on the day of her final exam. If she passed, she would finally be a ninja, just like her father and her grandfather. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she failed. She slowly got dressed, careful to lace everything tight. Loose fabric can get one killed. And today would start a long life of trying very hard to not get killed.

Here’s a second opening:

Anya’s thoughts raced like buzzing bees as she woke up and slowly donned her jet-black ninja uniform, complete with split-toed shoes and her tenth degree blackbelt. The sun lanced through the open bedroom window, reminding her that she was late for her final test, the test that would mean she was finally a real ninja, like her father before her, and her grandfather before him.

And a third one:

Anya was nervous. And ninjas weren’t supposed to be nervous. Maybe that’s because she wasn’t a ninja yet. Today was the day, the final test. If she passed, she’d be a full-fledged ninja like her father and her grandfather. Today she would make them proud. Or she would die trying.

In the first example, I’m just dribbling the ball up the court. Nothing fancy, just the dry facts and plain descriptions. I’m telling a friend a story. In the second example, I tried to emulate what I remember from old habits and what I see from some writers who are just starting out. The temptation to get flowery. It’s not a terrible opening, but it would be more difficult to revise. The ending has punch, but it’s too cliché. And in the third example, I show what happens when we concentrate on the prose and not the plot. You almost forget the details of what’s happening because of the awkward pacing of the sentences. Readers drift off when they run into writing like this.

Of course, all three openings work okay for a rough draft. Remember that this isn’t what the reader will see in a final book; it’s just whacking a hole through the underbrush. So why is the first example the clear winner? Because the first example took very little thought and time to write. I spent twice as long on the second one, and three times as long on the third (and hated the last two even as I played with them).

I’d like to add that if you’re reading these with the critical eye that you’d give a finished novel, you’re already forgetting the important insights from above. The point here is not perfection or even good. The point is to get to the scene where the girl ninja meets the boy pirate. Playing around with the prose does not get us there. Dribble the ball up the court. Make a layup. We’ll work on fancy passes and slam dunks later. For now, find the style that allows you to make progress. It’s usually the simplest one. That’s your voice.

 

Insight #16: The constant application of pressure works miracles

If you remember back to the last part of this series, insight #3 was that a career in writing is a marathon, not a sprint. As a hopeful author, you need to take the long view of your career and trust in the process. There are no shortcuts. You might have to write a dozen novels before you break through. This same bit of patience will get you through your individual rough drafts as well.

I want to tell you about making it through my first rough draft, the thing that changed to allow twenty years of frustration to suddenly morph into success after success. Those twenty years, you see, were spent wishing I was a writer, rather than spending my time writing. The same might be true for you. We spend hours and days and years wishing we were getting writing done, while not writing.

What changed for me is that I started writing every single day. This simple habit allowed me to write two or three novels a year, where before I couldn’t complete a novel in a decade. I learned to form this habit by writing daily book reviews. I had a self-imposed deadline that forced me to write by the clock, not when I felt inspired. You can’t wait for the muse to strike. You have to sit her down and make her work with you.

When I saw how productive I could be writing for an hour or two every single day, I decided to try – once again – to write my first novel. This time, it worked. I didn’t take a day off. I didn’t worry if it was a great draft. I knew from my daily book reviews to trust in the revision process. But the most important thing is that I carved time out of my very busy life and filled that time with nothing but writing.

We all have that time. For me, I gave up the hours I spent playing videogames and watching TV. I kept the time spent with my family, the time I spent hiking, and going to work, and cooking, and household chores. I just gave up some passive entertainment and replaced it with writing-as-a-professional entertainment. I soon found myself going to sleep earlier and waking up when the house was nice and quiet to write before the sun came up. Perhaps you find your writing hour after everyone has gone to bed. Or during your lunch break. Make it consistent; make it daily; make it happen.

 

Insight #17: Most of the writing takes place away from the keyboard

Each one of these insights feels to me like the most important advice there is when it comes to writing. I have a hard time ranking them in order. But this one deserves a place near the top.

What used to kill my writing process were the hours spent staring at an open document not knowing what to write next. Writing should not take place behind a keyboard. Your computer has too many ways of distracting you, and nothing puts on the pressure like a blank page and a blinking cursor. The time to write is all the quiet hours spent away from the computer. This is a challenge, because we have become allergic to quiet time. The aspiring writer needs to fix this immediately and with absolute stringency.

Quiet time means driving to and from work or school without the radio on. It means wearing earbuds on the subway but not playing any music. It means taking up yoga or meditation. It means putting an end to perseverating on conversations with friends and colleagues that aren’t productive. Our minds race, no doubt. Keep your mind racing on your novel. Not only will this help with writing, I believe it helps in general.

For instance, instead of going over conversations I wanted to have with my boss, beyond the usefulness of such thoughts, I started listening to conversations between my characters. While doing rote tasks at work and home (cooking, dusting, shelving books, mowing the lawn), I thought about the next scene in my novel, or fleshed out the world a bit more, or thought about what my characters are really like. The goal was to know my next scene before I got back to the computer. I especially found that the time I spent in bed, waiting to fall asleep, was very useful for thinking about my story.

What began to happen is this: Rather than sit down with dread in front of a blank page and a blinking cursor, I raced impatiently to grab my laptop to hammer out the details that I’d already seen in my imagination. As the writing began to take place away from the keyboard, I started to see writing as if I were watching a movie over and over, with the movie becoming perfectly clear, and now my job was to describe the film to someone who hadn’t seen it. Soon after I started writing this way, I began to get compliments on how vivid my writing felt. I kept hearing the word “cinematic.” I was no longer placing words in some particular order to generate a scene; I was living inside the world and transcribing it on paper.

To achieve this, I can’t stress enough the need to cut distractions out of your life. Give up Facebook cold turkey if you must. Stop grabbing your phone every time there’s a lull in the world around you. Embrace the quiet. We used to have hours of quietude in which to indulge our imaginations. It’s possible to return to this. The things we give up will pale before the conquest of bringing a new story out into the world.

 

Insight #18: Don’t be surprised when you get caught at the crux

In rock climbing, there’s a name for the most difficult part of every climb. It’s called the crux, and it’s where most climbers fall. Getting past the crux is the most critical step in completing the route.

It seems like every novel has a crux, and they all happen roughly in the same part of the story. About three quarters of the way through the novel, it’ll feel like the plot is losing steam. Your heart isn’t into the story like it once was. The middle part is stretching out too far. You know how the story ends, but you can’t quite see how to get there from where you are. For the rough drafts that manage to survive beyond the first few chapters, this is next place they’re likely to falter. Don’t be surprised or dissuaded if it happens. It’s normal. The problem is that you’ve reached the most important part of the story, and you don’t know how to make it through.

Often, the problem is that the story has gone down the wrong path. Part of you knows this, but this part of you can’t communicate any of the details to the rest of you. You just sense that the story has headed off in the wrong direction. The solution here is painful, but it’s the least painful of all the ways out: You often need to go back to the last place you felt excited about your story and start over from there. This isn’t revising; it’s branching.

To ease the pain, copy and paste the text that isn’t working into a new document and save it. Chances are you’ll never look at it again, but it’s less painful than outright deletion. This is an insight I’ll discuss in detail in the next part of the series, and it helps to mention it here: it’s easier to write from scratch than it is to revise what can’t be fixed. While it hurts to start over, you’ll save time in the long run. It also helps to realize that a dead end in the thicket is not useless. Each plot idea that you realize doesn’t work narrows your options and refocuses your writing on what will work. What doesn’t help is staring at a blank page or old writing that you aren’t happy with. Start over; write another dead end; keep exploring.

 

Insight 19: Your story will have a familiar structure

Overcoming the crux and writing to the end of your novel is easier if you understand and embrace the structure of most plots. There are generally three parts to every story, whether it’s a novel, a short story, an epic saga, a film, a TV show, even a piece of flash fiction.

You have the first act, where the world and characters are introduced and the stakes are set. Here, the reader gets to know what the main characters are aspiring to accomplish or overcome.

In the second act, those main characters encounter obstacles that make it seem as if they won’t succeed. All hope is lost, whether it’s catching the bad guy, finding true love, or defeating the alien horde.

In the third act, by some change they undergo or some personal growth they achieve, our protagonists overcome their obstacles and reach their goals. They solve the case, get the boy, or slay the dragon.

There are very good reasons for these formulas. Turning our noses up at them is the quickest way to fail as a writer. Rather than be avant-garde and buck tradition just to be different, or feel like it’s best to do things like they’ve never been done before, it’s far more useful and fascinating to understand that these structures have existed for thousands of years across countless cultures – and why. When things are this pervasive, it signals some deep root beyond culture and more likely in our DNA. It could be that we tell stories to warn and to inspire. Perhaps stories that follow these patterns are more easily remembered and are the most impactful.

Whatever the root cause, it seems that the crux we discussed most often occurs during the transition from the second act to the third. Here we are writing about the odds our characters overcome and how they manage to pull this off. What clues does the detective unravel? What does the farm girl discover about herself? How does the boy nearly lose the girl but resolve that conflict in the end?

Knowing how to tackle the crux ahead of time is the best option. But if you do get stuck, walk away from the novel and spend hour after hour daydreaming of as many solutions and paths as possible. Seize upon the one that gives you a Eureka! moment.

In my pirate and ninja love story, perhaps it’s the moment where Anya turns the tide in a ship-to-ship battle she was told to stay out of, and here she learns that her training works just fine in the sunlight, where she can be seen. That being a ninja and a pirate is about being brave and making moral choices. And that everyone has told her to stay hidden all her life, to the point that her confidence requires a mask. Perhaps my Eureka! moment while daydreaming all of this is that Anya has been known by her pirate friend both as a ninja and as herself, and she fears he only loves her ninja side. When she decides to remove the mask, she sees her true self for the first time.

Yes, this story has been done before. And there’s a reason for that. Don’t we all fear that the people we love wouldn’t love us back if they could see what our most critical selves see? Maybe Anya realizes that her pirate friend must have those same fears. The crux isn’t the moment she takes her mask off; it’s the moment she realizes he’s been wearing a mask of his own all this time. The crux isn’t when she incapacitates White Beard without killing him, showing a mercy she was never taught. The crux is when she tells her new boyfriend that it’s okay to be scared. That courage is only useful if we are afraid. Maybe the final test to becoming a ninja is an assassination, and when she refuses to kill White Beard, and reveals all of this to her pirate boyfriend, she fails the formal test and succeeds at everything else. Here, we’ve subverted the expectations of the reader (that she’ll pass her final test) while satisfying an age-old structure about the hero’s journey. The test she starts the story worrying about is one she passes by failing to complete. And rather than becoming a pirate, or her lover becoming a ninja, they both become ninja pirate-hunters, setting sail together looking for foes, always at night with black sails flying so no one can see them coming…

Once you know your crux, you can see the light through the thicket. The way out. And the writing comes easy. Keep the writing easy, keep thinking about your story when you’re away from the keyboard, making writing a daily habit, and write like you’re talking to a friend. Do these things, and you’ll get your rough draft complete. And when all else fails…

 

Insight #20: It’s okay to skip entire scenes and chapters

I saved this insight for last, because it’s so closely related to the next part of this series, which is all about revision. There are two primary ways of writing a rough draft and revising it into a completed manuscript. The first method is to write a “fat” rough draft, and edit out the unneeded parts. You might write 120,000 words and whittle it down to 80,000 for publication. The other choice is to write “lean” and flesh it out as you revise. You could start with a 50,000 word rough draft and layer in detail and extra chapters and scenes until you hit 70,000 words in the final pass.

Each writer has to discover the method that works for them. Try both if you like. But from my experience and observations, I see far more writers fail when they opt for the “fat” writing style. Not only do you put in more hours than needed, but you end up with sections of the story that don’t belong but that you hate to get rid of. Sections that break the flow for readers, and break your flow as a writer. A bloated manuscript is almost guaranteed to be rejected by agents and publishers, and less likely to be finished and recommended by readers.

There are more advantages to writing lean than I can list here, but perhaps the greatest advantage is that you save elements of your writing for after you’ve seen the completed work. This allows you to layer in meaning and depth to your characters with a better understanding of their full arc. It means better foreshadowing and richer themes. We’ll get to these techniques in the revision process in the next part of this series. What bears mentioning now, as you work to complete your rough draft, is that you should celebrate skipping scenes and entire chapters instead of getting stuck.

This goes back to insight #12 about forging ahead and getting to the end of your story. This goal is so important that you should embrace leaving bits out rather than getting bogged down. I promise it’s okay! Perhaps you have an exciting foot chase you want to write, and it comes after a tense scene in a bar where a fight is about to break out. You can’t quite see the bar scene yet, but you know how the foot chase is going to lead to the next chapter and beyond. It might be time to skip ahead and keep your momentum going.

Before you do, make a note of the scene you’re leaving behind. I use the word BOOKMARK a lot in my rough drafts, capitalizing the word so it jumps out (and easy to search for when I start my revision process). Here’s what I would do in the example above:

BOOKMARK (Bar scene where Juan and Sarah realize they’ve been set up by Marco and his goons. Sarah creates a distraction and tells Juan to run. He does. Sarah follows, with the goons on their heels)

Marco bolts out the back door, Sarah right behind him. He can hear bar stools and tables toppling, has that last image of Marco reaching for his gun, and now every nerve in his body is waiting for a shot to ring out, for Sarah to cry she’s been hit, or to feel the punch and burn of a bullet slam into his body. He urges Sarah ahead of him, knowing being shot will hurt less than seeing her go down. The end of the alley is a forever away. Footsteps pound behind them, one of the goons yelling for them to stop or he’ll shoot. Sarah swerves left and throws her shoulder into a shut door, the wood cracking. As the first shot rings out, Juan hurls himself against her to shield her body. The both of them crash through the door and into a busy kitchen. Men and women in white smocks and hairnets turn and gape, but there is no time. Juan and Sarah scramble to their feet and keep running…

 

And so on. Rather than get hung up on a scene I can’t fully see, I move on to one where I know what happens. The beauty of this is that bridges are easier to build when both shores already exist. Now I can see the bar scene more clearly. I know what has to happen to get to the chase scene. Even better: I am now very motivated to plug that gap. When you write scenes you love, you’ll want to link them all together. When the future bits of your story are hard to see, you’re less interested in writing to meet them.

Once you see the potential in skipping scenes, the demarcation between pantsing and plotting truly disappears. Someone who writes an outline is simply creating a rough draft where every scene is skipped. You make dozens or even hundreds of little notes as you jot your way to the end of the story. And then you begin the revision process by turning those notes into bridges, linking each one up to the next. Pantsing, then, becomes nothing more than very detailed outlining. Just as outlining is little more than bare-bones pantsing.

One of the most successful techniques I’ve found for my own writing is to skip ahead to the end and write the final scene early on. You can even write your last chapter first. This gives you a destination for all of your other scenes. It tells you what the stakes are, what the emotional impact of the plot will be. Even if that final scene doesn’t survive the last edit, and you replace it with a new scene you write from scratch, it doesn’t matter. Use scene-skipping as a way to create the parts of the story that motivate you to write more, all the way to the end, until your rough draft is complete.

 

Once you’ve done that, you’ve finished the hardest part. Up next is the revision process, the subject of part three of this series. There, we’ll discuss how you can make your rough draft sing.

The post Writing Insights Part Two: The Rough Draft appeared first on The Wayfinder - Hugh C. Howey.

Eusocial Bifurcation: Why Not Getting Along Makes Perfect Sense

Does it feel like we’re at war with ourselves? Like the world is split into two groups, and we can’t stop fighting? It might feel like this is getting worse and worse, despite the civil wars and world wars of the past. But what if the constant fighting across these great societal divides is not a bug in our genetic programming? What if it’s a feature?

It has been said that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. This was said, in fact, by an Eastern Orthodox Christian whose paper of the same title makes the case that God must’ve employed evolution, as all the evidence fits too neatly for anything else to make sense. Evolution is likely the most tested and most useful theory in all the sciences. Among its many surprises are that the things that appear broken to us from one perspective make complete sense from another. Altruism is one example. It might seem weird to expose yourself to a predator to save members of the tribe, except that members of the tribe share your DNA. The individual gene is the thing controlling the action. From its perspective, a warning to the group makes perfect sense.

What if the clash between political parties also makes a kind of sense? Across hundreds of cultures, and throughout time, groups of people have often divided into two camps. What’s striking to me is how often these camps are almost perfectly balanced. Numerous votes in the past decade have been decided by mere percentage points, whether it’s US elections, the vote to “Brexit,” the decision to deal with the FARC by Columbians, and dozens of others. These are issues often decided between Conservatives and Liberals, and the balance between the two is eerily maintained, akin to the way nature maintains a balance of sexes. Well what if our political predispositions are similarly determined? And what if these differences have their use?

The short version of my theory is this: The best way to make copies of a civilization are to have a group split in two, with one choosing to stay put and the other opting to embark to a different place to give something new a try. The former group is inherently conservative. The latter is more radical. The force between them is a repulsive one. It’s like the rooted palm tree that drops a coconut into the ebbing tide.

If this is correct, we might expect conservatives to admire an existing strong and central power. They would admire and attempt to emulate the tribe’s Alpha Male. They would look to the past and attempt to preserve existing institutions.

Liberals, on the other hand, would idealize a fractured social strata and attempt to undermine the Alpha. Their focus would be on an ephemeral future. They might follow a charismatic rebel in striking out on their own if there’s a welcoming niche nearby, or they might attempt to attack and drive out the existing power structure to replace it with something new. In either case, the repulsive force between the two sides is like similar magnetic poles, driving them apart. What we see as strife is just nature making copies of cultures with slight differences between them, minor “mutations,” if you will.

 

The legendary biologist E.O. Wilson coined the term “Eusocial” during his study of ants. Wilson noticed that a handful of extremely successful groups of species (ants, bees, termites) shared traits found almost nowhere else in the animal kingdom. These traits included caste structure, job specialization, and n0n-sexual group members. This combination of traits made eusocial organisms the most successful multicellular organisms on the planet. And Wilson thought he saw elements of eusociality in humans as well.

Humans are also radically successful organisms, having spread to almost every niche on the planet, including one small enclave off the planet. We have dreams of living beneath the seas and around other stars. Our advantages also lie largely in job specialization. Instead of each of us fending for our calories, we use trade to free up members of the group to do highly complex things extremely well. Our eusocial nature has been called into question, however, due to the perceived lack of asexual members. I’m not so sure that’s correct.

Eusocial animal species all have sexual roles, but perhaps humans do as well. I’ve blogged about this in the past, asking whether or not homosexuality needs to be seen as an aberration or an adaptation. Homosexuality is found in all cultures and throughout human history. As high as eight percent of the human population may be homosexual. Again, this is right across every culture surveyed all around the planet. Its consistency points to something other than social origins. In addition, some other percent of humans are asexual, perhaps a much smaller percent.

We don’t call worker bees “unnatural,” yet we mistakenly presume that all humans should desire the same roles in family creation and rearing as the majority. How many “natural” workers exist among humans who have never been allowed to live their lives completely free and unfettered? We know that homosexuals have to stay in the closet; could asexual people be living there as well? Raising kids they love but never felt compelled to have?

The number of people who are able to abandon their children (women and men) suggests this might be the case. Even more telling is the growing number of people who decide not to have kids as the social stigma of such a decision declines. In Japan, this decision is not merely one of having sex and taking precautions, it is a real lack of sexual desire to begin with. A new generation is emerging that would rather not bother. Perhaps this impulse has existed beneath the surface. We might be seeing the hidden worker class arise as the social pressure from the reproductive class diminishes.

All this points to E.O. Wilson being right about our eusociality, and many other biologists and anthropologists being wrong. It raises an interesting question: Another trait of eusocial organisms is their limited colony size and the way they reproduce on a structural level. Ant and bee colonies do not persist by simply growing as large as they can. Rather, they divide and split up into duplicate colonies. Ant colonies might send out a new queen. Bee colonies have several strategies: they will send out mating queens, swarms that include queens and drones, or they’ll simply split the hive in half if it gets too big. It depends on environmental factors and pressures.

Human social groups also seem sensitive to size. Beyond a certain number, we can no longer keep up with the various relationships between tribe members. Robin Dunbar first researched this number and found it to be somewhere between 100 and 250 members. The most common number assigned to “Dunbar’s Number” is 150. But the science isn’t as exact as that. The hypothesis I raise here is that humans operate in the same fashion as other eusocial animal groups: We multiply on a social level, as well as on an individual and cellular level.

 

Think for a moment about the various levels of reproduction: Cells divide by building a wall right down their middle, dividing their components in half, then pinching apart and becoming two. For single-celled organisms, this means creating a viable competitor, another creature just like yourself that will search for the same limited stores of food. Creating competition and potential warfare might seem crazy, but attempting to survive without making copies is even less viable. It’s the individual genes attempting to persist, and they succeed by spreading as far and widely as they can. This means making copies, however painful the process.

On the level of the organism, we do the exact same thing. We make copies of ourselves that we will have to also compete with, perhaps even war against. My hypothesis is that we make copies on a societal level, that we undergo Eusocial Bifurcation just like ant and bee colonies. Our cultures get bloated, or we have enough members to form two tribes, and so we break in half. This increases the number and variety of our tribes, which increases the chances of survival as environmental pressures emerge. It also creates adaptability, as we mold our societies to fit a wide variety of environments (harsh deserts, mountaintops, plains, islands, etc).

Some confusing aspects of human nature make sense in light of this hypothesis, like our propensity to war with those we most resemble. It doesn’t make sense to make copies of cultures completely unlike our own. That would be the cultural equivalent to being cuckolded. It makes far more sense to divide among the most homogenous groups possible, to make copies most like each other. This would explain what Swift satirized in Gulliver’s Travels with his big-enders and little-enders (the former eat boiled eggs starting at the big end; the latter from the little end). These two groups of Lilliputians warred with and loathed each other, even though their main difference was simply how they ate their eggs. Swift was of course mocking Protestants and Catholics, whose main difference at the time was whether the communion was literally Jesus’ flesh and blood or simply a metaphor. For this, thousands of humans were slaughtered, tortured, and killed. The eusocial bifurcation hypothesis would see this as an attempt by the colony to duplicate itself, but the environment not allowing it due to space constraints.

The environment will hardly allow social bifurcation today. There aren’t many places left to move to! Millions of years of evolution did not plan for this endgame, as it was never in sight (evolution doesn’t work that way). The “plan,” as we like to anthropomorphize evolutionary forces, was to make as many copies as possible, never to actually stop. It’s up to the environment to make us stop, whether by lack of food, an explosion in the number of predators, or lack of space. Through science, we’ve eliminated the first two constraints. With science, some are working on the last.

Is it any wonder that people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are building arks with their steely bows pointed for the stars? We’ve been doing this for tens of thousands of years. I’m sitting in Tonga right now, which was populated by seafaring astronauts long ago. These would’ve been the progressives, who had a beef with the tribal authority and new ideas about how they would do things. They split off as neatly as a bee or ant colony and settled wherever they could find green purchase.

My travels through these islands have highlighted numerous examples. Take the island of Palmerston, where a man and his three wives absconded and started their own tribe, a tribe that persists today with the same triad structure of three families, with rules of mating between families but not among them.

Eusocial bifurcation among humans would explain in-grouping and out-grouping, especially among similar groups, as mentioned earlier. I wrote about this in my Wayfinding entry on tribalism. Motorcycle advocates split between those who ride choppers and those who ride sport bikes. Boaters split between those who like power boats vs. those on sailboats (and split further between sport fishers and cruisers, monohulls and catamarans). The more we have in common, the more tension we feel. The various sects of Islam, Protestants vs. Catholics, college football fans vs. pro football fans, boxing fans vs. MMA fans, attest to this. Even Muslims and Christians, which share much of the same history and legends, feel greater antipathy due to their similarities than either feels toward Hindus or the Hopi. The similarities make it more difficult for us to get along, not easier. Eusocial bifurcation explains this. It would predict this. Popular theories that rely on xenophobia predict the exact opposite of what we actually see. We may fear the “other,” but we loathe the similar.

If there’s anything to take from this, it’s that our annoyances, irks, and hatreds are signs of similarity rather than differences. Those we disagree with and wish to get away from are those we have the most shared history with. Just because evolutionary forces are attempting to drive us apart doesn’t mean we have to allow it. We can choose to overcome the repulsive effect and form attractive forces instead.

Evolution thought of this long before any poet did. When the environment threatens multiple colonies, or the colonies contract to the point of near-death, cooperation often ensues. We see this among humans. Environmental disasters and outside attacks bring embittered foes together. We drop our inner walls and link our outer ones. For a brief moment, the many cells become one again.

Perhaps this is a muscle we can flex, so that it becomes deliberate rather than autonomic. Maybe we can choose to come together more, despite the burgeoning size of our colony attempting to drive us apart. Or maybe the only way to true happiness is to give in to the desire and break into smaller and smaller groups so temperatures drop back down to normal.

If we settle planets around other stars, it will not stop this evolutionary process, not if my hypothesis is correct. Not long after landing, once the group reaches Dunbar’s number, it will find an excuse to divide. A splinter group – despite the wishes of the conservatives who say the landing zone is the only place fit for a village – will break off and progress elsewhere, ever curious, ever prodding, forging into a harsh environment for the thrill of it, or due to the desire for more freedom, perhaps the freedom to worship something as slight as which end of an egg to crack first.

Were the Pilgrims not astronauts? Were not the Tongans?

The other option is to reduce our knowledge and social contact with surrounding groups. Perhaps it isn’t global trade that is driving temperatures up; perhaps it’s global awareness. Imagine states and counties and cities with little knowledge of the outside world. Contained intranets. No global social media. No national news broadcasts. Within these enclaves, we zoom our awareness right down to the several hundred people closest to us, almost to Dunbar’s number. Create disparate tribes, but allow the edges of these tribes to exchange goods and ideas. Keep the distribution and trade networks, but with more ignorance of what lies beyond.

This goes against all liberal ideals, so it takes some imagination. There have been tribes who supposedly had limited trade with almost no contact with their trading partners. Food left on a flat rock was replaced with spear points. Imagine a science fiction world where a small community outside Detroit picks up resources and turns out electric cars, never seeing who is dropping off or picking up, and the other side not seeing anything either. Wealth is generated without knowledge of the trading partners. Perfect silos are formed.

Is this dystopia or utopia? I don’t have a clue. It would be utopia for conservatives, who want to retain existing structures and wall off the outside world. It would be dystopia for those who yearn to climb over walls rather than build them. In which structure are both sides happy? According to eusocial bifurcation, such a question is folly. Both sides are not meant to be happy. Both sides are meant to be miserable. Just like the pain of a cell pinching together and tearing in half; just like the agony of childbirth.

 

Knowing why we are miserable is the first step toward gaining a semblance of free will. Confusion about our misery compounds that misery. And our attempts to remedy our unhappiness just leads to frustration, as nothing gets better. We become like the doctors who bled George Washington to death, wondering why their ministrations weren’t making him better. They thought more bleeding would do the trick!

An example I use in my Wayfinding series is hormones. Menstruation is accompanied by hormonal surges that affect moods and desires. Some women feel a nesting urge and suddenly want to rearrange furniture, paint walls, or shop. Some become irritable. Men on hormone therapies, or who take testosterone and steroids for muscle-building, commonly fly into rages. That we are so susceptible to chemicals in our bloodstreams calls free will into question. What helps is understanding where these behavioral changes are coming from.

When a doctor prescribes hormone treatments, she cautions her patients to expect some behavioral changes. Later, when these changes take place, and moods feel bewildering and out of control, the patient is reassured and calmed by those earlier warnings. Without that warning, different reasons would be concocted for the change in mood. Now, we’re not irritable because of a pill we took, but because of our spouse or our boss. Disastrous consequences arise from these imprecise rationalizations of our behaviors.

Many a fight has been averted by a woman knowing her hormones are temporarily changing, and so not to assign too much credence on a fleeting mood. Or a spouse knowing their partner has had too many drinks. Awareness is the key to exerting free will. What if everyone in society was aware that in-grouping and out-grouping, tribalism and fear of those similar to us in most ways, was merely an attempt by evolution to make copies of our societies? Would understanding our discomforts cause us to behave more reasonably with one another? Would more power boaters exert the muscles required to wave at sailboaters (and vice versa)? Would motorcyclists wave to each other, and to those on Vespas, understanding that all enjoy the thrill of freedom and the joy of the open road?

Ignorance of these forces certainly doesn’t push us toward a resolution.

One last example highlights all of these points, and suggests that Eusocial Bifurcation may be stronger than a mere hypothesis: Primate groups in the wild remain small in number, so they need to employ genetic mixing by swapping members with adjoining tribes (just like on Palmerston). In some species, it is the male that moves out of the home tribe to the rival tribe, finding a mate and settling there. In other species, it is the female.

This is a very strong source of tension within the individual, as you might imagine. The bond of family must somehow be broken, and the desire to bond with strangers (which normally present a danger) must take its place. This is as bizarre a change as a caterpillar becoming a moth, or an organism changing its sex in adulthood. And yet it happens with regular frequency. The survival and health of the species depends on it.

Seeing this across all primates, it makes sense to look for the same adaption in humans. Our closest genetic primate relatives achieve genetic mixing by exchanging female offspring. In humans, it is so common as to become cliché that girls war with their mothers after puberty. It is usually a brief period of time, and thankfully not all mothers and daughters undergo the same severity of a break, but too many mothers have watched their little angels turn around one day and scream, “I hate you!”

Could it be that the same repulsive effect that drives primate offsprings to neighboring tribes also drives human offspring to date the wrong type of boy (or girl)? Another cliché that’s too often true: dating the very last partner your parents would want you to see. Someone from the “other” tribe. If there is truth to these ideas, it would not only explain a lot, it would offer the same solace our doctor provides when she prescribes a hormone pill. The same solace a woman finds from a menstruation calendar, or a man who knows he’s taking testosterone. Imagine a generation of mothers and daughters getting through puberty with warnings of what’s to come, explanations for why they might want to date someone who could be a terrible fit. Rebellion, the social psychologists today like to say. Genetic mixing, the anthropologist might explain. Which explanation is correct requires more research. Which answer defuses tensions and which one inflames them seems obvious to me.

So here’s the hope within this hypothesis: Knowing what eusocial bifurcation entails gives us the best chance of ignoring its poisonous effects. It gives us the best chance to overcome our primal instincts of division and replace them with the exercised muscles of compassion. Those we rail against are often those most like us. Perhaps we can learn to love ourselves more, see what we have in common with the “other,” and then reach out a hand to them as well.

 

For more of my thoughts along these lines, check out my Wayfinding series on Amazon.

The post Eusocial Bifurcation: Why Not Getting Along Makes Perfect Sense appeared first on The Wayfinder - Hugh C. Howey.

Writing Insights Part One: Becoming a Writer

I started writing my first novel when I was twelve years old. I was thirty-three when I completed my first rough draft. That’s twenty years of wanting to do something and not knowing how. Twenty years of failure and frustrations and giving up.

A big part of the problem is that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know which questions to ask, much less who might have the answers.

These days, people write to me as if I know what I’m doing. Or like I have a shortcut to success. I’m not sure either is true. One thing I’ve learned is that luck plays a massive role. But what I do have are some insights today that I wish I’d had twenty years ago, tips and pointers that might’ve saved me a lot of headache and heartache if I’d known them sooner. Maybe it’ll help some aspiring writer out there if I jot them all down now.

I’m going to share what insights I have in four parts. The first part is a list of all the things I wish I’d known about becoming a writer before I set out. The second part is tips and tricks for completing that first rough draft. In the third part, I discuss the important art of turning a rough draft into something worth reading. And finally, I share some tips on how to get your story out into the world.

These are my insights now that I’ve written over a dozen novels, sold a few million books, been published in over forty languages, and have seen all angles of this complex industry as a reader, bookseller, writer, editor, and publisher. My first novel was published traditionally through a small press; I’ve self-published many on my own; others are with some of the biggest publishers in the world. I give this advice knowing how much it would’ve been worth to me while understanding that it all might be worthless to you. I only have my own experiences and observations. I wish you all the best of luck.

 

Insight #1: Anyone can become a successful writer; the only person who can stop you is you.

I spent twenty years stopping myself from becoming a successful writer. The biggest obstacle I faced is thinking success meant selling a ton of books, which meant writing something that millions of readers would enjoy. As I began writing my first attempts at a novel, watching the sentences form on the screen, I knew the words weren’t good enough, and so I stopped in order to spare all those readers from what I was writing.

The problem is that I had the definition of “successful writer” all wrong. A successful writer is one who finishes what they start while striving to improve their craft. It’s as simple as that. And the only one who can stop you from doing this is you.

Imagine if NBA all-star Steph Curry attempted to learn to play basketball with a million people watching. Or if the first pickup game he ever played was his only chance to land an agent and get signed to an NBA team. This is the pressure writers put on themselves, and it makes no sense. Basketball players will put all the hustle and energy into a thousand practice games before they ever get a shot at turning pro. Most will spend a dozen years playing almost every day of their lives before they make it onto a high school or college team. Writers should have the same expectations. Perhaps you write a dozen novels before you write one that blows you away or becomes a bestseller. The point is to finish them all. Play all four quarters. Steph Curry played a thousand games to the end before he turned pro. Every game he finished was a success. He didn’t stop himself, and neither should you.

 

Insight #2: You can’t compare your rough draft to any of the books you’ve read.

If you’re just starting out as a writer, there’s a good chance that you’ve never read a rough draft in your life. So don’t compare what you’re working on to what you’ve read from your favorite authors. Their rough drafts were nowhere near as wonderful and polished as the final product that you loved as a reader and that made you want to become a writer. Just like you, they had to get the words down on the page first. And then they had to go back and rewrite much of what they wrote, several times. At this point, they probably gave it to their spouse or a friend to read, and that person saw lots of room for improvement. Which meant another revision. The same process took place again with their agent. And then their editor. Each time, the rough draft got better and better. So will yours.

The books that made you want to become a writer were rewritten and revised as much as a dozen times, with the input of several other people. You don’t get to see all of the mistakes and boring bits – all of that has been cut away. It’s just like when you take a thousand photos on an epic vacation and only share the thirty or forty very best ones. This is what it takes to be a successful writer: You have to learn how to write the good and the bad all the way until the finish. Trust the revision process. No one will have to see your rough draft but you. And you can’t revise a work to perfection until it already exists. So make it exist.

 

Insight #3: There is no special qualification required.

I used to think writers belonged to a special club that had all sorts of requirements for admittance. You had to graduate from a special school, or live in the right city, or own a turtleneck. Nothing could be further from the truth. The best writers have the most diverse backgrounds. They come in all ages, all genders, all races, all sexual persuasions. They all have unique things to say. Anyone can be a writer, if they put in the work. Like most things in life, it takes lots of practice. How much practice you get is entirely up to you.

I first started dreaming of being a writer after reading Ender’s Game. I was around twelve years old. This novel blew me away, because the heroes of the story were children my age. It made me think there were no limits to what I could do. At the end of the novel, there was a brief biography of the author, Orson Scott Card. I was shocked to read that he lived in my home state, North Carolina. I always thought writers lived far away in little shacks in the woods or tall glass towers. I always thought kids had to wait to be adults to do amazing things. This book got me thinking that both assumptions might be wrong.

Related to this insight is the idea that there are too many novels out there in the world. This is rubbish. There are always readers agonizing that they can’t find something great to read. Maybe your next book will fill that void for a reader. Or it’ll be the book that leads to the book that fills that void in many other readers. Either way, there should be joy in the act of creation. My mother started knitting for the pure joy, then grew her talents until she was giving away works, then having people pay for them, and then owning and running her own yarn shop. The lady at the farmers’ market you buy tomatoes from started gardening to see if she could. Steph Curry enjoyed shooting hoops with his dad and grew hooked on the sound a perfect swish makes. There is nothing wrong with starting something as a hobbyist and asking for compensation for your art. We can all turn pro whenever we like.

Let the readers decide if you’re worth supporting with their time and money, not the cycicism of other writers who don’t want you playing ball with them.

 

Insight #4: The best writers are the best readers.

There aren’t any shortcuts around this. Successful writers read. They read a lot. And the best writers read a wide variety of books. It’s impossible to stress the importance of this insight. When aspiring authors ask my advice on making it as a writer, this is my most common first response: Read.

Writing is a lot like singing. There’s a musicality to good writing, and I don’t mean florid writing like you might encounter in a literature course. I mean the simple flow and cadence of sentences, how they run together, how long paragraphs should be, how much dialog to sprinkle among the action (or action among the dialog). Every sentence in this blog post is an example. I listen for the rise and fall of stresses, the iambic pentameter, mixing short punchy sentences with long comma-filled breezy ones. It should come naturally. You don’t want to even be aware that you’re doing it. Eventually you won’t.

Of course, your style will be different than my style. This is called “voice,” and we’ll talk more about voice and constructing sentences in the next part of this series. For now, it’s important to know that you’ll have a very difficult time creating pleasant prose without absorbing years’ worth of it first. Books are like tuning forks. We hear the pleasant ring of words on key, and it helps us recognize when our own pitch is a little off. The avid reader will know when a sentence needs more tinkering.

It would be convenient if we could dismiss this advice and say, “I’m going to write my own way, rules and tuning forks be damned.” But it doesn’t work that way. There are millions of effective voices and styles, but all share a common framework. Just as there are an infinite number of songs in a single guitar, but that guitar needs to be properly tuned. The way we tune our writing instruments is to read, and to read as writers. Recognize sentences that make you smile, or think, or laugh, or cry. Pore over them. Ask yourself how this writer made you care about the protagonist, or feel revulsion for the antagonist, with so few words. Where is the conflict in the story? How are the characters different at the end of the novel? This is the craft that we’ll discuss in the next part of this series, and it’s what we should look for as readers.

It’s never too late to start. And it’s impossible to do too much of it. Above all, branch out. I wrote my first novel after months of reading and reviewing detective and crime fiction for a friend’s website. These were not my preferred genres, but I was reading and reviewing a book a day. I learned so much about intricate plotting, misdirection, tension, danger, and the crafting of horror. These elements now appear in my young adult novels, my science fiction, my romance. Every type of story has many elements of all other types of story. Study all the genres deeply. You may even uncover a new passion or write a completely different kind of novel.

It also helps to not be too deeply immersed in the types of stories you want to write. If you only read within your writing genre, one of two things will happen: You’ll write something derivative and unoriginal, or you’ll be so terrified of doing this that you’ll be closed off to exploring themes that your colleagues are also delving into. Both are terrible risks.

As a science fiction author, I’ve found it better to read non-fiction. Many of my story ideas come from newspaper articles and the latest works of science and philosophy. History books are a great inspiration, because they reveal the cultural patterns that forewarn the future. Satire is impossible without a deep understanding of history.

Romance novels benefit from books on psychology. A thriller featuring a tortured couple gets new layers by reading self-help books meant for those going through a divorce. Even fiction authors have to do research. Certainly read enough in your genre to understand what readers expect (even if your goal is to defy expectations). But don’t get trapped. The more adventurous you are with your reading, and the more avidly you read, the stronger your writing will become. There is no better writing advice than this. All writing advice, in fact, presupposes the truth of this: that we must be readers first and foremost.

 

Insight #5: This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Despite what appears to be exceptions to this rule, writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You don’t sit down, bang out a rough draft, and watch the money flow in. Your first novel will quite likely not be your best. When I was starting out, I gave myself ten years to see if I could make this work. Ten years! The plan was to write two novels a year, twenty novels in total, hoping that eventually one of them would be decent.

I get emails all the time from writers who have heard this advice from me and credit it for the success they eventually found. It helped them to not give up. It’s exactly what this philosophy did for me. It also allowed me to concentrate on the writing and not the promoting. Promotion is a waste of time until you have enough material out there for each one to feed on the other. It’s not like those books are going away or growing stale. Wait until you have five or six novels published before you start to spread the word. Pour every spare minute and every ounce of energy into the writing while you can.

This is one of those bits of advice you simply must trust and believe in. I was lucky to stumble upon the truth of this early on in my career. These last two insights truly distill what a writing career is all about, and the simplicity can blind us to the quality of the advice: Read and write. Just keep doing this and you will surprise yourself.

 

Insight #6: Whoever works the hardest will get ahead.

This insight is for those who measure their success as a writer by readership, sales, and the ability to make a full-time living from their craft. The biggest, most daunting, terrible, awful truth working against this type of success is this: There are only so many readers. It really is as simple as that. If there were twice as many books being consumed, there would be a lot more seats on the bus to successville. Ten times as much reading would be even better. You’d have ten times the chance of making it as a writer. There’s a lot we could do as a society to increase the number of readers, but that’s a blog post for a different time.

Because of the limited number of readers, and the ever-growing number of distractions and hobbies that aren’t reading, only a limited number of people can find an appreciable audience and make a living with their writing. But there’s good news as well: A larger share of the readers’ dollars are now going to writers, which means more writers today can make a living than at any time in the past. The other bit of good news is this: Not many writers are willing to do what it takes to make that living. Which opens the door for you.

I know a lot of people who make a living with their writing. Many of my close personal friends are among those who do. And this isn’t a self-selected sample, where I end up meeting other writers at writing conventions, so all my friends are successful writers. What I’ve seen happen over and over is people who want to know how to get this done, and then go out and do it. What they all have in common, bar none, is a work ethic that borders on obsession.

This is true of all careers with more dreamers than open slots. Going back to sports, imagine the number of times Lionel Messi kicked a soccer ball off a brick wall, passing back and forth to himself, while his friends played Nintendo or watched TV. Successful people find a joy in the thing they do that allows them to do more of it than their peers. I guarantee I’ve read more books than 99.9% of aspiring writers. For many years of my life, I had a goal of reading a book a day. I did this throughout college and most of high school. And when I started writing, I carried the same obsession into my craft. I joined a writing group, read writing theory and advice, and wrote two to three novels a year, plus many shorter works.

This meant getting up at four in the morning to write before work. I wrote over my lunch break. I wrote all weekend. I revised my rough drafts a dozen times. I hired, traded, and begged for editing advice. And I’m not even a good example of proper work ethic. I have friends who write, revise, edit, and publish a novel a month. Year after year. I have friends who have published over fifty novels in their first handful of years of writing. Both of my friends who publish a book a month make millions of dollars a year, and they are among the best writers I know when it comes to craft. I can’t put their books down. They pass like Messi.

When I hear writers brag about how little they publish, or how long it takes them to finish a novel, I hear Steph Curry brag about how little he shoots hoops, or how he only practices once a year. I turn on the TV to watch athletes who obsess over their craft. I admire writers who have the same level of obsession. This is what anyone who wants to make a career at writing should expect from themselves. Stop listening to anyone who brags about how little they write and how much they procrastinate. Surround yourself with the Messis and Currys of the writing world.

Please note here again that making a career at writing is very different from being a successful writer. They’re two different goals. Successful writers are out there completing works and making those works available to readers. These writers might dream of making a living one day, but unless they are outworking everyone they know, their chances are slim. A dream is not a plan. There’s nothing wrong with writing for the pure joy of creation. There’s nothing wrong with shooting hoops with friends, or playing in a community basketball league and wanting to win every game without ever being paid one dime. Know your goals, and know what it takes to achieve them.

 

Insight #7: Competition is complicated

It might be true that there are a limited number of readers, and that you have to outwork your peers to turn writing into a career, but that doesn’t mean we’re all in competition with each other. We’re only competing to a certain degree, and then we’re in cahoots. Believe it or not, this is a team game.

Steph Curry played for Davidson College, not far from where I grew up. I watched him play college ball. Steph was competing with every player on his team, and every player in his division, for a spot in the NBA. But once he made it to the NBA, he was now reliant on not just his teammates but on his opposition to advance his career. The better Lebron James played, the more spectators and the more money Steph Curry enjoyed. And vice versa. Every NBA superstar grows the pool of viewers, hence advertising dollars, and so all NBA pros benefit.

I see a lot of writers get this wrong, claiming it’s a zero-sum game and we’re all competing with each other. This is nonsense. None of us can write fast enough, or a wide enough variety of material, to please all readers. We rely on our fellow pros to keep interest in the hobby high. JK Rowling did so much for all writers when she increased the number of young avid readers. I rely on my colleagues to keep people reading while I’m working on the next book. Just as Steph and Lebron both work to keep ratings high, advertising dollars flowing, and salary caps increasing.

The biggest fear NBA players, team owners, and executives should have is that viewers might change the channel. The real competition at this level is the NFL, MMA, CNN, the great outdoors, and so on. The paradox is this: You compete up to a point, and then you rely on each other. This means it’s never too early to foster great relationships with fellow writers. Which leads me to the next insight…

 

Insight #8: Be helpful and engaged

If there’s a shortcut to writing success, it’s here. Be helpful to other writers, and you’ll find your generosity will pay dividends. It’s not the reason you should try to be helpful, but it doesn’t hurt to know that being a good person will be rewarding. I’ve seen it over and over in this industry.

One author I know was a brilliant illustrator. While still working on his first novel, he started helping indie authors with their cover art. He did much of this work for free, and then for much cheaper than he should, all because something most of us find difficult came very easily for him. His generosity and kindness made him incredibly popular. When Jason Gurley finished his novel Eleanor, there was a long line of people eager to give it a read, offer blurbs, and promote the hell out of it. Your novel still has to be good, of course. But you won’t believe how difficult it is to get even family and friends to read your work. Writing good material is a necessity, but it isn’t enough.

Another friend of mine got her start by being a beta reader for other writers and later an editor. You could learn how to format ebooks and offer this service. Or start a blog reviewing and promoting new releases (I’ve watched several bloggers move into writing; it was my path as well). You could join a few writing forums and contribute as much as you can to the helpful discourse among writers. Be yourself. Be kind. Form relationships. Share your journey. Soon you’ll meet and get to know those who want this as badly as you do. And if you’re lucky, you’ll find yourselves on opposing teams one day, realizing that you are now both colleague and competitor, but that you only go as far as you can lift each other up.

 

Insight #9: Know your readers

My first reader was my cousin Lisa. Other people had read my rough drafts and manuscripts before her, but Lisa was the first person who – under no obligation to read my work – sought it out, loved it, and started asking for more. She also – crucially – began telling all her friends how much she loved my debut novel and asked me if she could send copies to them. At the time, my book was just a Word document. I told her to feel free to send it to anyone. By the time I received a book deal and had the novel ready for pre-order, Lisa had dozens of friends and family excited about the release and securing their copies.

When Lisa talked about what she loved in the book, I listened. As readers began leaving Amazon reviews, I read them closely. I started a Facebook page primarily to connect with readers. I’ll never forget the day I friended my 1,000th reader and realized I was reaching well beyond friends-of-friends. Now I was connecting with strangers from all over the globe. Cultivating these relationships, and giving back every ounce of the love and passion that was streaming toward me and my works, was profoundly satisfying and paid enormous personal and professional dividends.

Connecting and getting to know your readers is critical. Set up platforms that allow this as early on as you can. The important thing is to make it easy for readers to find and connect with you. Don’t waste time trying to win over new readers by spamming social media; this does not work in a sustainable manner. Instead, spend your creative energies writing more works. And use your downtime to connect with the readers you already have. Other readers will come. It all starts with one, like my cousin Lisa.

 

Insight #10: Know your industry

My last insight is a peek ahead at the final part of this series, but it’s one of the things I wish more aspiring writers thought about before they began honing their craft. The writing industry is a business. Whatever your goals and aspirations, you should learn as much as you can about how books are made, distributed, sold, published, edited, translated, purchased, read, shared, and recycled. Working as a bookseller gave me an advantage that I didn’t appreciate until many years later. When I realized how little most writers knew about their industry, I was shocked at first and then later dismayed. Dismayed, because I saw how many writers were taken advantage of or disappointed simply by not knowing very much about the field they’d devoted their creative lives to.

Most students who go into medicine have at least some idea of the work that will be involved, the hours, the expected pay, the time it will take to get through their residency, the fact that they’ll be working graveyard shifts before they ever catch a whiff of their own practice. Before they take on several hundred thousand dollars in student loans, they look into what an anesthesiologist might expect to make in the state of Indiana upon graduation.

Very few aspiring authors know how much they’ll earn from every paperback sale. Or that most works of fiction are now purchased as ebooks. Or that most physical books are now purchased online. If the goal is to sell enough books to raise a family, the dream should be to have a great online presence for one’s books, and to concentrate on ebooks. However, if the goal is to place books into bookstores and submit for awards in particular genres, the plan should be very different. Understanding these choices and managing expectations will be the subject of the fourth part of this series. For now, my advice is to start learning as much as possible. Read Publishers Weekly, The Passive Voice, Kristine Rusch, JA Konrad. Spend time in bookstores. Follow authors who blog about their experiences. Know what you’re getting yourself into.

 

Those are the top ten things I wish I’d known before I got started. Next up, I discuss what I wish I’d known about finishing my first rough draft. Maybe it’ll help you, however far along your own writing path you happen to find yourself.

 

 

Bonus Insight:

Many of the challenges and frustrations you’ll encounter along the way are the exact same as those felt by every other writer. The exact same. Writing requires long stretches of uninterrupted concentration. This sort of time has always been difficult to carve out. We have children, pets, and spouses who require our attention. We have day jobs to work around. We have the stress of bills, mortgages, student loans, rent, empty gas tanks, empty stomachs. We berate ourselves for not writing more. We judge ourselves when our works don’t sell. We watch as other writers get ahead, as markets change, as retailers come and go.

Every generation of writer thinks that their challenges are unique, and that every other cohort of writer had it easier in the past or will have it easier in the future. That’s because the past highlights those who succeeded there, and their success seems to have come all at once, without the failures, frustrations, and challenges that all writers feel in the moment. The present for a struggling writer is certainly suffering, but this never stops being true. It’s always been true.

The only thing that truly changes over time is the stories and rationalizations that we tell ourselves when we feel these universal pangs of self-doubt, envy, and exhaustion. We tell ourselves it’s because Barnes and Noble is killing indie bookstores. Or that it’s Amazon destroying B&N. Or that it’s Amazon introducing a new program. Or the Nook not doing enough to compete. Or James Patterson and his stable of co-authors. And so on and so on and so on.

The excuses and the stories we make up vary. The challenges don’t.

The fact is that the writing landscape today is as vibrant and viable as it’s ever been in the history of mankind. Authors have more power and control over their careers than ever before. They have more access to readers, to each other, to foreign markets, to the tools of publication, and to the infinite manufacture of goods at almost zero cost. Ten years ago, it was almost impossible to reach readers. Ten years from now is a complete unknown. Seize the day, my friends.

 

 

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