S.A. Hunt's Blog, page 3

Stranger Danger

Inspired by one of my new favorite shows, Stranger Things, I've done a new 80s-pulp-inspired cover for Malus Domestica. It should be live on Amazon's Kindle listing in a day or two. I don't think I'm going to do the paperback cover, though, because (a) it's a pain in the ass, and (b) so many people like the old cover.

Let me know if you'd like this as a poster, and I'll put it up in my Zazzle merchandise shop.

Diversity Is Not a Bug

Recently I was informed that my books are too diverse to be considered for re-publication by a major publisher because my subject matter (and the fact that Amazon has seen fit to slot my work in the LGBT Fantasy category without my input) is too controversial and not mainstream enough.

Unfortunately, I don't write "mainstream." I don't write to appeal to middle-class cisgender straight white men between the ages of 18 and 35.

I don't write safe.

I write strong women. Women that pursue their goals, dreams, and romantic interests be that straight, gay, or else without being Prada-devil harpy-bots, because that's what real women are doing. Young women that wield swords and grenade-launchers without being reduced to centerfolds for the Chad demographic. Young women that fight their abusive fathers without being screaming Wendy Torrance dishrags, by dousing them in their beady eyes with pepper spray until they shit their abusive pants. Aging women that are valued for their minds and their skills and their strength, because there are a hell of a lot of those in the real world that don't get nearly enough credit, or get more credit for maintaining their good looks instead of their contribution to important societal dialogues or scientific frontiers.

I write transgender men that could magically turn you inside out, but are too afraid to let anyone know their female deadname because their occult cabal is a toxic patriarchy.

I write people that had to relearn how to walk after getting their leg blown off, who had to relearn how to live after letting their best friend kill himself.

I write magicians with chronic pain that use their last spoon to help their friends by conjuring hallucinatory monsters, even though they don't even feel like getting out of the car. I write men and women with aged bodies and missing limbs that are every bit as capable as the rest of the cast without turning every situation into inspiration porn. Have you ever wanted to fall in love with an amputee? I did that. I have reviews bearing that out. Have you ever wanted to kick the shit out of an amputee? I can do that too. They're people just like you.

I write gay characters that are more than hand-flapping comic relief or lascivious sexual jaguars, gay characters that out-shoot and out-perform every hard-charging hetero in sight, bad-asses that just happen to be gay instead of the other way around, because those are real people. The armed services are crammed full of them, whether the armed services likes it or not, and they deserve a little time behind a fictional ironsight.

I write children that have to take care of their alcoholic parents, have to wake them up for work and chide them into putting on clothes and have to feed themselves, kids that do this without being reduced to a tear-jerking Sally Struthers UNICEF ad, kids that will brook no stupid shit from ignorant adults, kids that will defend their friends with their lives.

I write men and women that are sidelined and ridiculed and threatened and endangered because of their schizophrenia or kleptomania or because they're a woman, or old, or because their skin is the wrong color. People that have to live their lives being called faggots and sluts and niggers and pussies and idiots and crazy and "confused" because of the way they were born or because of things that were done to them. People that keep their mouth shut for fear of ending up dead in the river, shot dead in their cars, beat to death in the woods somewhere, dragged behind a pickup truck, gunned down in an Orlando nightclub, in prison for lack of mental healthcare, or found hanging from a tree in a park in 2016 Atlanta. I do it because they all deserve to see themselves between the pages of a book, and I'm not talking about the local mugshot rag sold at the gas station down the street. I write those characters because they are real and that's how they show up on my doorstep, and I couldn't change them even if I wanted to, because they will fight me tooth and fictional nail.

And I label my books with cues of diversity like #wndb and "LGBT" and "female protagonist" so these people can more easily find them. I cast a wide net.

If including those people dooms me to a life of obscurity in self-publishing or relegated to the bargain bin, berated and punched-down by conservative readers and pundits, and if traditional publishers are waiting for "safe" books because real life and real people are not lucrative, then you'll find me in the void. Because I know those shadows will be full of people like best-selling Star Wars author Chuck Wendig and G. R. R. Martin and John Scalzi and Marvel and a thousand other writers and publishers who aren't afraid to shun the sharp-edged cardboard cutout demographic of white male America.

Diversity is not a bug. It is a feature.

I'm a Turtle

People without depression don't understand that when you've been clinically depressed since you were a little kid, and the majority of your thought processes for the last 20 years have usually been something like "I wonder if anybody would miss me if I went into the woods and hung myself, or laid down on the highway," or "why am I invisible," that over time it colors your personality.

Or, rather, it sucks the color out of it.

Being depressed my entire life has ensured that I am not a type-A personality. I'm not a hard-charger. I plod.

People can't wrap their heads around it. I had a back-and-forth with someone last night that had me ready to go outside and split logs because I simply could not seem to convey this to them. "You need to remove the words 'can't' and 'won't' from your vocabulary!" No, I've just been so deep in my own head for so long that I know what I'm capable of and what I'm not, and denial doesn't make that self-understanding go away.

This isn't to say that I'm lazy. Or that I have no ambition. Or that I don't deserve the things that I have ambition for.

It's that after the anti-depressants I got in Herat, now that I'm no longer generally depressed (outside of the occasional dip in morale), I operate on a lower, slower plane than many people. I don't wear bowties because I hate looking ridiculous. I don't wear bright colors because they bother me. Candy-red and mustard-yellow shirts and pants make my ass itch. I function on a different, more somber, more introspective plane.

I want things. I go get things. I've written five books in as many years, and none of them are under 100,000 words. I just don't do it at 90 miles an hour like that guy in the question-mark suit in the informercials about government money. I'm not very good at jogging, but I can walk all day. I tried to jog to town the other day in 95-degree heat and ended up walking most of it. I came back staggering like a drunk with blisters on my feet, but I came back.

I vibrate at a lower frequency. I rumble. I lumber. I'm a turtle. I never stop. I may not get there today, but I will always get there.

Symptoms and Treatments of Writer's Block

Writer’s block can be a serious issue for writers.

Left untreated, it can cause a drinking problem that might require intervention. Writer’s block can also be a sign of a more serious medical problem. That's why it is very important to know how to spot writer's block in your writer and how to treat it. Luckily, there are a number of measures you can take to alleviate writer’s block.

Look for signs of pain during your writer’s work sessions. If your writer exhibits signs of pain while trying to produce work, it could be a symptom of writer's block. Look to see if your writer makes painful faces, arches their back, or cries while trying to write.

Keep in mind, however, that writers often strain during writing sessions because their mental muscles are underdeveloped. If your writer strains for a few minutes and then produces a normal paragraph, then everything should be okay.

Keep track of your writer’s workdays. An indication of writer's block is long periods without writing anything. If you're concerned, try to remember when your writer last wrote something.

It isn't uncommon for writers to have several days in between writing sessions. Typically if your writer doesn't produce any writing after five days, this could be a cause for concern, and you should contact your doctor.

If your writer is more than thirty years old, contact your doctor if it has been more than two to three days between writing sessions.

Examine any work that your writer produces. Even if your writer is writing, she still may be suffering from writer's block. Look for the following characteristics in your writer’s manuscript to determine if she may be blocked:Small, pellet-like syllables.Characters in dark-colored, black, or grey clothing.Dry dialogue with little to no development.
Watch for any signs of blood on the keyboard or on the writer’s clothes. A small tear in the sensitive blood-brain barrier may have occurred from your writer forcing the passage of a difficult chapter.

Increase your writer’s fluid intake. Writer's block is often caused by a lack of fluid in the digestive tract. Offer the breast or bourbon more frequently than you have been, up to every two hours.

Use your foot. If dietary changes aren't effective, you can try using your foot. This is swiftly but firmly placed into your writer’s anus and helps motivate them to write. These are only meant for occasional use, however, so do not administer your foot without first speaking to the writer’s agent.

Try massaging your writer. Try massaging your writer’s tummy in a circular motion close to their navel. This may offer some comfort to your writer and help motivate them to sit down and write. Try bicycling their legs to see if this helps.

Give your writer a warm bath. This may help him to relax enough to allow work to continue. You can also try placing a warm facecloth on your writer’s tummy.

Seek emergency medical care in serious circumstances. Writer's block can be a serious problem if paired with certain symptoms. Rectal bleeding and/or vomiting can indicate alcohol poisoning, which is a life-threatening condition. If your writer exhibits writer's block with these symptoms, visit the emergency room as soon as possible. Other concerning symptoms include:Excessive sleepiness or irritability.Swollen or distended abdomen.Loss of appetite.Decreased urination.Making crazy-ass nonsense blog posts about writing.

No Superman

Sorry about all the ranting and raving this week.

I spend like 16 hours a day sat here looking at the internet and it's sort of like spending too much time in the pool - you start to get all wrinkly and sore. And when the water is wholly comprised of news about innocent people being murdered for idiot reasons, the sore is a lot more sore than usual.

I'm thinking about severely limiting my internet time. To both help me concentrate on writing, and to keep from reaching critical mass again. I'm learning that there's only so much news about mayhem and carnage I can take before my Superman complex overwhelms me and I just get so angry that people are endangering their children over such stupid shit.

So helplessly angry. All it would take is some common sense, a collective come-to-Jesus moment, and we could stop these weekly news flashes about 20, 30, 40, 50 people dead at a nightclub / school / mall / airport / Walmart / wherever. We could stop burying eight-year-olds and wives and best friends.

Being available on social media isn't helping me sell books anyway.

The engagement is there. It's nice being present and reachable as an author, and just yesterday I got a surprise FB message raving about my first book. But there's almost zero word of mouth going around. My plug posts get reshared a few times by those stalwart lot of you but it's mostly just shouting into the void; there's never a sales bump when I do them unless somebody with a lot of followers (10,000+) reshares them.

Since I can't publish anything new until my agent sells my current projects to a publisher, there's not really anything new for me to push anyway. I finished Malus 2 over the winter and I'm still waiting for the untenable glacier of publishing to slowly creep over me before I can do anything with it.

I'll always have access to my email; I have Gmail whitelisted in my net-blocker app. But as for FB and Twitter, I'm having a hard time listening to all the pain pouring in from every angle and repressing the urge to shout right along with them.

Seeing so many assholes saps my motivation. Makes it hard to justify creating things for people who are so goddamned selfish they hold their firearms in higher regard than the basic human right outlined in the Declaration of Independence, "the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

Well, it's hard to pursue happiness when you're dead from a rifle bullet to the chest. And it's too dark in a coffin to read a book. And it's hard to be happy when that's all you see, day after day, all day every day. Just weekday mayhem, and this all-singing, all-dancing chorus line of constitutional heroes that prize death over life.

Never mind that almost none of them have actually had to personally end a life, and have no idea what that moment is like. But many of them crave it. Too many fetishize it. There was a motto in my old Army MP unit ten years ago: "Make The Head Flop". This was usually accompanied by a casual finger-gun to the face and a whispered Pow!

Death, the ultimate trophy. Giving it, getting it, doesn't matter to those that embrace it.

You can try and justify all that death all you want, pulling statistics and news stories out of your ass, and it's still going to be death that you did not, and cannot, stop by yourself. Thousands of deaths that it's statistically impossible and realistically infeasible for "good guys with guns" to stop. Dozens of deaths every week. Every day.

There ain't enough 2nd Amendment to go around.

You aren't Superman, your untrained hillbilly uncle isn't Superman, your Veteran next-door neighbor isn't Superman, children sitting in class and elderly teachers and gay kids dancing at a nightclub who wouldn't know Sig Sauer from Jack Bauer sure as hell ain't Superman, and I'm not Superman either.

So I think I might have to plug my super-ears for a little while, or I'm going to lose my mind...because everybody's waiting for a Superman to save us from ourselves, and there ain't one.

Lousy Book Covers

​I was about to say something to the effect of wishing indie authors would have some respect for their own books and stop putting crap-ass covers on them.

But you know what? Fuck that.

​My covers look good and folks trust my books because of them, so if you want to keep sabotaging yourself and giving the majority of your sales to me and the other authors that give half a rat's bony ass about presentation, you go ahead.

Abusive Relationship 3

<< Part 2


WHEN I GOT INTO Afghanistan, I discovered that even after all the training I’d already gone through, the daily drills, the classes, the spending entire days in Powerpoint presentations and doing computer-based-module tests until my eyeballs were ready to fall out, my squad and I were doing something I’d never been trained on a day in my life. I hit the ground 100% ignorant. I ran myself ragged trying to learn my new job. My workstation was three computers, a desktop and two laptops, each one with different systems and intricate satellite-map and data-entry programs.

That Christmas, with my newfound Army wealth of combat-zone pay, I bought my new wife several things she’d been wanting, including a vinyl turntable. She Skyped herself opening her presents and she was so happy about them I cried my eyes out at my computer, sitting on my bed in my tiny housing unit. Jekyll was so fucking happy, and it made me absolutely ecstatic to see it.

Soon I got the hang of my squad’s toolset—so well that I was running circles around both my squad sergeant and my lieutenant, and teaching officers in other Afghanistan duty stations advanced functions in the software suites. I did so well that both my other squadmates, my squad sergeant and our LT, got stuck coming back from leave and left me by myself for a few weeks, and I did okay without them. I ran the office all by my lonesome.

I was on top of the world and having a lot of fun, pushing myself to excel at this demanding new job. I passed my PT test—no easy feat now that I was in the mountains, several thousand feet above sea level now—and retroactively earned my promotion.

T/Jekyll was happy, as far as I could tell. We had regular Skype sessions, and I bought interesting trinkets to mail home to her—a tea service carved from marble, a pretty metal vase, a necklace made out of lapis lazuli beads the size of gumballs, a lovely Afghan tunic that was too small but looked beautiful anyhow.

T let me know that she understood now how much the Dragon had fucked us up, and that she was getting fit and losing weight in preparation for my return. That didn’t really matter to me—I’d never really focused on her weight in our relationship, and to be frank my first wife was big too—but I was glad to hear about it nonetheless. The healthier Jekyll was, the happier Jekyll would be, right?

She also said that she had gone to a doctor about her hormones now that she had money for it, and she was treating her PCOS and whatever it was that was making the Dragon show up. She had moved us out of the Cottonwood complex and into a larger, better apartment in Anniston, and purchased a truck without my knowledge and without talking to me about it. I didn’t think much of it since her 4-Runner was on its last legs and we needed a vehicle anyway. Hell, the radiator was for the wrong model and I’d had to strap it in place with bungee cords.

Things were looking up.

I came home for mid-tour vacation leave and we had fun, and in the words of Bill Engvall, lots of hot pig sex. We saw Insidious at the theater, which left me afraid of dark doorways the whole two weeks.

While I was home, the realty company claimed that there was some discrepancy with the house’s owner and that we’d have to move out of our rental, but they put us up in a much, much nicer house up on the mountain, in the upscale part of town, and only charged us the same amount of rent that we’d been paying for the smaller place.

I was excited. The new house was fantastic and everything was going great. I could not wait to get home and start my new life with my new wife, in this amazing house, with most of a year’s worth of combat pay.

I headed back out of the country once my leave was over and got stuck in Kuwait for a few weeks while I waited for a flight back to Kandahar. I ended up basically hitchhiking from Kandahar in a wide crescent across the southwest of Afghanistan, finally flying into Camp Arena in a helicopter with the door open, which was one of the most amazing things that had ever happened to me. I got to see my duty station from the air, as well as several miles of countryside in every direction.

Once I’d gotten back to my camp and settled back in again, T admitted to me over Skype that she hadn’t just slept with her ex, she’d slept around with ten guys.

Ten individual human beings.

Ten.

Ten guys. Eight before my mid-tour leave, including her ex, and two after.

That psychological rabbit hole got deep. I mean, the bottom fell out. I took the firing pin out of my rifle and gave it to my squad sergeant because I was having suicidal ideations again. Nothing I’d done, nothing I’d said had been able to save me—not the breakdowns, not the agreement to the truck and the new apartment, not the promotion, not the hormone therapy, nothing. Absolutely nothing had saved me from the Dragon.

I’d done everything I could and Hyde was still fucking me on the other side of the planet.

My lieutenant ordered me to start seeing a shrink in the adjacent duty station, and since I couldn’t do anything about Hyde from Afghanistan, I started trying to get my shit sorted and focused on Jekyll as much as I could. They put me on Zoloft.

Probably didn’t take it as seriously as I should have, because I told them during a session that I liked to sneak around in the dark like Batman, which was true to an extent; Arena was a night-blackout base, which meant that after the sun went down you were blind without a flashlight, and it was fun doing ninja-commando stuff and trying not to be seen.

I’ll be straight-up with you, when I first started going to the shrink I just went for the free snacks; there was a table in the waiting room where people had left a bunch of care package stuff.

Also, the shrink’s office was in Camp Stone, which had a US chow hall as opposed to the disgusting NATO chow halls on our base. Every time we went I loaded up on iced coffee and junk food. Believe me, ask around. If any vet you know or can find has ever served on Camp Arena, they’ll be happy to tell you about the bony, scaly fish at the Italian chow or how the Spanish chow hall kept the supply of Cornish game hens about even with the local population of alley cats.

After a while, I took the therapy seriously and it started doing me good—as before, I had forgiven T (what else was I going to do from the other side of the world?) and I just wanted to go home and try to start over with a clean slate. This would become my mantra for the rest of my tour, later crystallizing into a diamond resolve, a single-minded drive to JUST GET HOME. JUST GET HOME. JUST GET HOME.

Then at some point that summer, T told me she’d lied.

Lied about almost the whole thing. Nearly everything I was upset about, everything that was giving me suicidal thoughts, everything that was getting me in trouble with my superiors, just evaporated into thin air.

Wait, what?

Eight of those ten guys—the real two being her ex, and another guy—had been a lie. A total fiction. I was dumbfounded. Why? Why did she tell me she’d slept with eight more guys when she hadn’t? Was two not enough?

WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING.

I don’t remember the answer I got, but I dimly recall snatching my headphones off and throwing them across the housing unit, scaring the hell out of my squad sergeant. When I try to remember it now, I get the faint idea that she didn’t know either. I think she dropped the call right after she told me.

Seriously, look. I’m not the jealous type. It made me upset, of course—who wouldn’t freak out? But I forgave her earlier that year

(don’t cry, I’m coming back)

and made plans to start over. I never did hulk out and scream at her, threaten to kill anybody, any of that macho patriarchy crap. But for real, by then I was low-key batshit 24/7. I was a pot full of crazy constantly on a low simmer.

On top of that, a little while after the headphone thing I was moved away from my sergeant and into another CHU with a fellow Specialist who had a propensity for pissing in empty soda cans and leaving them in stacks and clusters around the housing container, like a chapel full of candles in a 90’s rock-ballad music video. I had to move in while he was at work, and it was down to me to haul all of those piss-cans out of there by myself.

I’ll be honest, after the bullshit I’d been dealing with lately it was almost a relief to handle, almost meditational. By comparison it was Easy Mode.

One day the lieutenant gave me another PT test (we’d been doing them once a month, for some reason) and I failed the run by a fraction of a fucking minute. I shit every brick in the Middle East and threw my water bottle in sheer frustration, earning another write-up. I’d been getting written up for the minor breakdowns I’d been having regularly since going into theatre, thanks to Hyde’s/T’s long-distance IV drip of gaslighting plus the stress of my on-the-job training for a literally life-or-death job.

I guess I finally just bent a little too far and broke.

He finally had me swapped out with another soldier and sent to the HQ, because USFOR-A (the top Afghanistan brass) wanted to send me home and this was their under-the-table way of keeping me in country. I spent the rest of my tour hanging out in the command tent with no official duties, just sitting around on Reddit and trying to get back into the writing scene, occasionally escorting Afghan janitors into the head shed and doing other menial tasks. So thanks to this gaslighting psyops bullshit, I got thrown out of the most fulfilling 9-to-5 job I’d ever done (and done well) until the writing thing a couple years later.

But even after all of that, I was looking forward to getting home. At this point I was humming like a live wire. I was in constant fight-or-flight mode.

You know the part in action movies where the caves / base / compound / building is self-destructing, everything is falling down around the hero’s ears, and he’s making that last mad dash for the exit? That was me for about the last three months of my tour, including the month I spent on Fort Gordon in the transition unit, weaning myself off the last of my Zoloft. My head down, metaphorically and emotionally running for the nearest exit. I didn’t know what I was going to find when I got home, but all I knew was that I wanted to get home before I flew all to pieces or before my future ex-wife burned the house down with all my shit in it. It was the home stretch and I was mentally hauling ass.

In the end, they wanted to kick me out of the Army altogether for being crazy. As part of my mandatory evaluation, I had to talk to the psychiatric officer at Eisenhower Hospital on Fort Gordon.

We sat down in his office (the window of which had a sturdy-looking mesh across it, which I’m sure had something to do with the several stories’ worth of air between his office window and the parking lot), had a rather pleasant conversation about whether I was screwball or not, and he sent me back to the barracks with a clean bill of mental health. He didn’t see a thing wrong with me.

When I got back to my room, I took a two-hour shower as hot as I could stand it while watching Dylan Dog: Dead of Night on TV in the bathroom mirror reflection.

That winter was the second time in my deployment I ate Thanksgiving dinner at a hospital. The first was at the hospital behind my transition barracks on Fort Hood the year before. I was more than ready to get home and see my family again, and salvage what I could of my marriage.

Finally, I piled on the bus to Alabama for several hours of watching the world roll by.

If you’ve read my book The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree, you know roughly what happens next: I got off the bus (in Oxford, as opposed to Lexington in the book), called my wife and literally asked her to come get me, and she drove out from some other man’s house to pick me up. Then she took me to what was supposed to be our house, but which was cold and had an empty fridge (a fridge I paid for while I was gone). And she left me there by myself, with nothing to eat, a new truck I couldn’t pay for, and a thousand bucks in my bank account.

As you can probably guess, I would much rather have had my life more closely mirror Whirlwind than it did. I swear to whatever god you worship, Reader, I would have given anything to have cast away my Earthly existence and walked off into a fantasy parallel dimension without so much as a glance back.

This novel was largely a form of therapy for me, and three books in this series later, I feel like I’ve exorcised most of my demons.
*   *   *
​
I ended up having to get my own divorce, because T moved to North Dakota with her new boyfriend.

The dealership, or somebody, came to tow the truck away. I never paid for it (or, rather, never finished paying for it, since what had been paid on it came out of my combat pay), or the car she got in my name after ditching the truck. I don’t know what happened to those debts, but I haven’t received any mail about them in a while.

Fuck them. Fuck all of them. Even if I had the money to give them, I’d fight them tooth and claw.

Anyway.

I’m not sure how to end this. When I started writing it I wanted to use it to explain how the internet is a lot like a psychologically abusive relationship, but after typing it all out, the thought of doing that feels like ending a very long and thoughtful eulogy with a shitty joke. I might save it for another, separate post, though.

But I just wanted to demonstrate how it’s possible for a man to be the receiver in an abusive relationship, to show you what it can be like in a psychologically abusive relationship that’s very hard to get out of regardless of gender, and to try to do a little more demon-exorcising.

Thank you for reading to the end; I hope it wasn’t too whiny or anything, and I’m sorry if you think it’s “mansplaining.”

Bear in mind, I’m not the MRA type at all either—I love women to bits and pieces. I was raised by a single mother and love her and my sister, and now I love my sister’s baby daughter just as much as, if not more than, I ever loved them. I love my girlfriend, a card-carrying, glasses-wearing geek that’s putting her own computer together.

Most of the fans of my books are women, very intelligent, intellectual, beautiful, fierce, kind, talented women, and oh my god I love them so very much.

I am surrounded by women and it’s great.

And I want them to have every opportunity to succeed every bit as equally as men, and to see themselves represented faithfully in the media, both journalism and entertainment.

But I just wanted to get this four or five years of bullshit out of my head where it’s not poking me with its sharp edges, because it’s so very large and jagged and my head is so very small and soft.

Again, thank you for reading this. If you want to get in on my self-prescribed therapy and go on a few adventures with me, I’d love to have you along. Come grab one of my books and help me keep the lights on so I can continue to work on fixing myself by playing with my literary action-figures.

Peace and love.

​​


​

Tips and Tricks for Writers

Hello, everybody! If you’re here, you must be wondering who the hell I am.

But if you’re not, you might be interested in some writing wisdom that I’ve picked up over the years. Some of it may be as useful to you as it was to me, before I was committed. ____________

​
“If you want to be a writer,” says Stephen King, “you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” This is absolutely true. Read. Read everything, good or bad. Read the good stuff to learn techniques that work, to see how an effective, realistic character is created, and to see what well-written dialogue looks like. Read the bad stuff to know what not to do, to cultivate a sense of what bad writing feels like, and to motivate yourself with the thought, “I can do better than this shit, and it got published.”

Keep a notebook on you at all times to write down those world-changing ideas the instant you have them, because if you rely on your short-term memory, you’re going to lose all those brilliant plot twists and book premises.

If you think you are losing control of the story, shout out what you want to happen next very loudly. The power of suggestion can be very useful.

Smells can also affect your work. If someone is cooking bacon early in the morning, you may write about bacon. Try to fill your room with smells that remind you of what you want to write about. 

If you want to get any writing done, get rid of the internet. This is a must. Get offline.

Show, don’t tell. This means: don’t tell me Charlie got in the car and went to the grocery store--show me Charlie’s shoes crunching across the driveway, the zip of his seatbelt, the glare of the midday sun in his face, the cold and slightly spoiled air of the corner grocery store.

Use cheese.

Clearly delineate for yourself what times of the day you are going to write, and when it is time to stop, stop. Even if you are mid-sentence. Soon you will begin to anticipate what you get to write the next time Writing Time starts, and you will find yourself chomping at the bit to get back to the story.

Drink fluids. The amount of words that are released while writing are related to the volume of fluids that are ingested. That's because narrative is water-based, and narrative is the fluid that helps lubricate the way for your story. The body needs two to three liters of water a day to function properly. Drinking more fluids should therefore increase your word count.

Dry grass, leaves, pine needles, manuscripts, wood shavings, and small sticks are great for starting fires.

There is a time and a place for telling, but you have to understand where it’s useful. Think of your book as a movie--where would a montage go? Where would a time-lapse go? Use telling to push the narrative through long blocks of time where nothing much happens--training sequences, long drives, late-night hours where your character is waiting for something, just milling around the house watching TV and staring out the window.

Try holding your breath for short periods of time as you write.

You can actually buy bugs, have them shipped to you, and release them into your office to do the dirty work for you.

Dress in clothes that match the colors of the area around you.

Relax and be positive. Writer’s block is as much a physical issue as a mental one. Try not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by labeling yourself as incompetent in any way. Approaching your manuscript with confidence, self-respect, and a positive attitude rather than fear and self-doubt can make all the difference.

Trust your beta-readers--those folks that get the first look at your material--but learn the difference between a legitimate issue and subjective taste. Often it’s the most commonly mentioned issues that need to be addressed; things you only hear once or twice can probably be chalked up to personal preference or something that’s been misread. Weigh every answer, but think “big picture.”

Develop ways to check that you are writing. Stories can sometimes be very close to real life. Therefore, it can be difficult to realize you are writing. Develop ways to recognize a manuscript from reality. Every few hours during the day, ask yourself or someone around you, “Am I writing?”

Prepare your body. Do three sets of ten jumping jacks. Jog around the block (about half a mile).

Watch for bacteria everywhere.

To make writing feel like less of a chore, take a bubble bath, or wear a little slip that makes you feel hot.

You will probably always feel like a fraud. It’s part and parcel of being a writer. Embrace it, because it will keep your head from swelling when your readers start gushing praise at you at three in the morning. Besides, working from a position of inferiority can improve your craft--the new recruit that’s never handled a rifle will work to shoot straighter than the one that boasts of years of hunting and thinks he has nothing to learn.

If you feel too good about yourself, make a post at Reddit.com. That’ll nip that shit in the bud real quick.

Before you officially start writing, get a checkup. Ask your doctor about vitamins that have folic acid, which helps protect against some grammar errors, such as passive voice. Folic acid works during the early stages of a manuscript, so that's why it's important to make sure you're getting enough folic acid even before you get started.

Safes often contain money or ammo.

“Write what you know” isn’t “write about what you know.” It doesn’t mean ‘write stories only about technical things in which you are a subject matter expert.’ A lot, and I mean a lot of people misunderstand this. WWYK means that you should infuse your writing with life experience and invest your characters with emotions you’ve felt yourself. If your hero just lost the love of his life, think back to your very painful divorce and use that heartbreak to make your reader feel every inch of your hero’s pain. If your heroine is about to have a car accident, think back to the sensation you experienced during your own car accident--the heady, sinus-throbbing slam and buckle of steel, the cymbal-crash of breaking glass, the way your forehead bounced off the steering wheel.

Don't flail around or start breathing quickly if you can't write; simply lie back as flat as you can.

Unless you're truly desperate, never drink unpurified water. Water is icky.

Query rejections are not failure. You don’t fail until you stop trying. Rejections are just signposts on the road to success, stepping-stones, experience points. You wouldn’t quit halfway through a ball game just because you’re not winning, would you? Then why would you give up on your dream of writing just because a couple of agents wouldn’t accept you? Keep on playing.

Never write alone. Always go writing with one other person who is a strong writer, if not several other people.

If you just can’t write in your normal place, pick up and move somewhere else. Sometimes a change of scenery or an uncomfortable perch can jog your creativity. For me, it’s a barstool at the chopping block in the kitchen, or a picnic table at the park.

Tighten the muscles around your anus for a few seconds, then release. Do this exercise in ten repetitions three or four times a day to improve your word count. Try to build up to ten-second holds.

Don’t be afraid to hurt your characters. No threat = no tension. No tension = bored reader.

Margaret Atwood says, “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” Don’t be afraid to write crap--no first draft is perfect, and you can fix its problems in the edit. Photographers take hundreds of photographs just to get maybe twenty good pictures. Famous paintings are layer upon layer of mistakes and second-guessing. Music and films go through stage after stage of post-processing. Your novel is no different.

Kick your soda habit. Not only is soda rich in high fructose corn syrup that's bad for your liver, but it's also bad for your writing. Compared to writers who drink no soda, those who drink more than a quart a day had 30% lower word counts.

The reader should have at least one character to identify with and cheer for. If everyone in the story is a despicable asshole or sad sack, who cares if anything good happens to them?

Never sneak into people's homes, especially at night. Even if they are your friend. The cops won’t take “research for writing” as a legitimate excuse. Remember that you can't put your hands over your eyes and think you are hidden.

Most of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is outdated, disingenuous bullshit. You can learn much of what you need of grammar by reading widely and often. Anything you miss will, I guarantee you, be thumped into you by whoever reads your shrieking tempest of a manuscript.

Look at yourself. Notice your hands, feet, legs, etc. Remember that you are doing this for them.

Speaking of your bodily extremities, if you’ve been sitting for too long, try this stretching exercise. There's good evidence to suggest that regular physical exercise is beneficial in increasing word count.

Sit upright with your left leg extended in front of you.Point your toes straight ahead. You should feel the muscles in your left leg tighten as you stretch your toes.Bend your right leg and place your right foot flat on the ground.Keep your right foot pointing straight ahead.You will need to rotate your left arm 180 degrees. Place your left arm behind you, with your palm flat on the ground. Try to get your arm directly behind you.Place your hands by your ears, palm down. Make sure your fingers are pointing towards your feet, and your elbows are pointing towards the ceiling.Stretch your right arm in front of you, just over your knee, with your palm facing up.When you can grab your ankles with your hands, lift both your upper and lower body off the ground.Your right foot should be next to your left knee. Kick your right leg over your body.With both hands on the ground, keep moving your left leg over your body, and kick your right leg off the ground. Make sure you have enough momentum to get your legs over your body, and onto the ground behind you.Use your right leg to help you push off the ground and kick your left leg up and over your body.Keep your left leg straight as you move it off the ground, and think about moving it directly over your body. Don't let your left leg or right arm sway to the sides; keep them straight.Keep your leg as straight as possible and lower it to the ground. As your left foot reaches the ground, your arms should be pointing straight up into the air.Shift your weight to your back leg and point your toes forward.Lie down on your back and extend one leg in the air.Repeat until brown on both sides.

Simply stuff newspaper, dry grass, and leaves under your clothes and you'll be retaining significant amounts of body heat when you need it the most. You can do this to almost all of your clothing, from head to toe.

Write about your environments or settings as if you are describing the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen to a blind man that has a plane to catch. By that I mean, speak lyrically but be concise. If your protagonist is eating an orange, the reader should turn the page with the smell of citrus still in her nostrils.

Consult a doctor if you think you have writer’s block. This is not something you can treat yourself. As well as treating the infection and inflammation, the doctor will want to run tests to establish the underlying cause of the problem.

Writer’s block is a combination of fear and entertainment. It usually happens because you are not bored enough and you aren’t trusting the words. You are distracted because you’re busy trying to entertain yourself with something other than your writing. Turn off the internet, point yourself away from a window so you cannot look out of it, and entertain yourself with your work. Try to visualize the scene. Look for the most prominent aspect of the scene--the first thing that pops into your head when you picture it--and describe that. Trust the words! Grab the most applicable one and slap it into the page without fear! Once you’ve got that first sentence down, the rest gets a lot easier.

Mark Twain says, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be,” but if you just leave it out altogether, you’ll save the both of you a hell of a lot of work. Mark Twain was kind of a dick.

Do not tell anyone where you will be; you do not want to be disturbed. Even if you are writing in a shack in the mountains. If you get hurt, just remember that adversity breeds character, and character makes for great writing!

Cultivate a strong mental constitution. Do not let assholes discourage you from doing what you need to do, whether they are internet trolls, nasty Amazon reviewers, or your uncle Brad that thinks you should be doing something worthwhile with your time, like whatever it is he does for a living.

Take a piece of cloth like a bandana and soak it in urine. Wrap it around your head.

If writing was easy and made a lot of money, everybody would be doing it. If writing was impossible and you couldn’t make any money at it, nobody would be doing it.

Many people enjoy becoming something that will allow you to experience the universe differently, like an alien, bird, or fish. If you want to shape-shift into a dog, go down onto your hands and knees. Start barking, and wag your tail. Pretty soon you'll feel your hands turn into paws and your face will change. Rub your hands together. This can distract you from the sensations of your actual body. Stare at yourself and will your skin to change and form into the shape you desire. Whatever you think of, make sure that it's something that doesn't turn you on sexually in any way.

Your story must make sense, unlike real life, or this article.

Hemingway says, “Write drunk, edit sober.” This means that you should write without inhibition--push all the words out of you like shit through a goose. Once they’re out, that’s when you break out the pooper-scooper and sort them out.

For those of you that have decided to give up, remember that crystal meth can be quite lucrative. ___________
​Well, I hope these suggestions were able to help. Some of these prescriptions may not apply to everyone, as any great glob of guidelines are apt to do, but they certainly worked for me. Most advice, especially in this industry, is highly subjective and even the most authoritative literary luminary can be halfway full of it. It is up to you to try anything and everything, and find what works for you!

​Be brave! Be confident! And don’t forget, if it doesn’t work out, you can always run away and join the circus.

Gotta Get Up to Get Down...

...and you gotta get bored to get creative. Today's blog post comes from Reddit, where a user commented on a post I made to ask me about motivation:

Malvarik
every time i see one of your posts i really want to get writing but i just cant find the motivation. Would you say there's a way you deal with a lack of motivation to write?

S. A. Hunt
Nowadays I have two sources: (a) if I don't write I don't eat, and (b) if I don't write anything, those fans won't have anything to read. This second one also presents itself as a need to "wow" the readers or get one over on them. It's so fun when people message you at 1AM to shit a brick at you because of a twist you wrote.

But in the beginning--and, really, it still applies--there was only the need to see how the Story continues. I think it's a mixture of curiosity and discipline. The curiosity, for me, comes from the flashes of scenes I get in my head. I need to see them on the page! I need to see them all arranged in a row! I need to see how the story goes! You gotta find a story that really interests you and characters you can't help but love, even when they're evil. Think of that feeling you get when you're reading a novel series like Dark Tower and you just need to know what happens next. Dream up a character you're really interested in, really emotionally invested in. Now put them through the wringer, throw them into the shit, and see how they get themselves out of it.

Once you've arranged a hell of a lot of words on the page for a certain amount of time every day, the discipline comes on its own.

To achieve that, it really helps to be bored. Gotta get rid of distractions. You know how you daydream a lot when you're on the toilet, or standing in line, or in the shower, or lying in the bed trying to sleep? That daydreaming is your creativity knocking. That daydream state is what you need to hook your writing-sleigh up to and start whipping that keyboard-horse. Those moments of "how would I stop a bank robbery if it happened in this bank right now" is your brain slipping into a narrative state. The next level below that is the Groove, the Flow, or what's called the Writer's Trance. And that's where you want to get. But you have to put down the words to get to that point, and to put down the words you have to trust them. Look for the first word that pops into your head when you imagine the scene you want to write, and type that down. Then type the next word in the sentence. Then type the next sentence. Then type the next paragraph. Then the next page. The next chapter.

Anyway, basically, I find that a lot of the lack of motivation comes from too many distractions. You're too entertained to entertain yourself.

Why I Don't Support Idris Elba as Roland Deschain

Okay, look. Imagine, you're in your forties, it's Christmas. Time to hop on a plane and go visit your family.

But when you get there, your grandmother is somebody you don't recognize. She's taller. Younger. A completely different race. The grandma you grew up with favored floral prints and blue jeans, but this lady's wearing a pant suit. The grandma you knew wore bifocals, but this one isn't wearing glasses at all. Her sweet potato casserole isn't the same either. Your grandma's name was Mary, but this lady's name is Sarah.

What the hell is going on? Who is this woman? She's very sweet and not at all unpleasant to spend time with, but she's not your grandmother. This isn't the woman you spent the last forty years growing up with. This isn't the woman that helped change your diapers and feed you when your mom had to work. This isn't the woman that took you to the zoo when you were a kid and started your lifelong obsession with reptiles. This isn't the woman that slapped you for calling your brother a moron when you were twelve.

It's like aliens abducted her and carelessly replaced her with someone that didn't even make sense. Have you lost your mind? Have you developed a delusion?

The worst part--no one else seems to care. Well, except your uncle Dave, and he's as weirded out as you are. And your cousin Sharon seems to have noticed as well, but everybody else? They're fine with this bizarre impostor. Most of them prefer this stranger to the original. They say she's even more grandmothery than your actual grandmother was. In fact, some of them are getting angry at your accusations and want you to leave. You feel like you're taking crazy pills.

Even your grandfather is okay with it--in fact he's more than okay with it: you just saw the two of them dancing their stiff little jitterbug in the kitchen and his hands are all over her.
​
I know what you're probably thinking. You're probably thinking it before you've even started reading this article: you're a racist! You don't want Idris Elba to play Roland just because he's black!

And you'd be wrong.

His race has very little to do with my rationale for not wanting Elba to play Roland. Indeed, I wouldn't want Chris Hemsworth to play Roland either. Or Danny DeVito. Or John Goodman. Or George Clooney. Or Neal McDonough. Or Charlize Theron. Or Daniel Craig. Or Chris Pratt. And all those people are all white as fuck.

It's because none of them are Roland Deschain.Chris Hemsworth is the right height, but he's too young and the face is wrong.DeVito is about the right age, but he's too short and Roland isn't bald.Goodman is probably the right age, but the face is wrong and Roland is much skinnier than that--he's been walking through the Mohaine Desert for God knows how long. Thousands of years? Roland needs to look like he's halfway to roadkill.Clooney is close, but he doesn't have the personality and he's too handsome.Neither does McDonough, though he has the blue "bombardier eyes". He's also blond, though they could darken his hair--but he's got a babyface. He looks like the brother from Mary Poppins. If he shaved he could probably get carded for cigarettes.Charlize Theron has the personality down like a motherfucker (just look at Imperator Furiosa), but Roland Deschain isn't a woman, though I could very much love a different story about a Charlize gunslinger.Daniel Craig has the eyes and personality, and they could dye his hair, and he might be old enough, but his face is wrong.Chris Pratt is the right height, but everything else is wrong.
None of these people are the Roland that lives in the books and in our hearts. None of these people are the Roland that Michael Whelan painted for the covers of Stephen King's four-decade, 8-book magnum opus. People grew up with this series. It's damn near a religion for some folks. People have tattoos of these characters, their symbols, and the things that they say.

This isn't some third-rate back-alley property nobody cares about.


​Roland is a tall, lean man that appears to be between 45 and 60, with pale blue eyes, a weatherbeaten face, and dark hair. He's white, or a similar race (Latino? Italian?). He's earnest, grave, and driven. His actions are dictated by a need to "set right," a man that straightens picture frames in strange motel rooms. He's not necessarily "handsome," but he bears at least a vague physical similarity to Clint Eastwood. That last one I can dither on--there's not a whole lot of folks in the business other than Clint's son Scott that look like him, but if they were going to cast Scott I feel like they already would have. And he's too young anyway.

Idris Elba has the personality. He's got that down to a T. But he doesn't have anything else. He's not Roland, he's someone cosplaying as Roland.

You see what I'm saying yet? I could probably list every actor in Hollywood that shouldn't play Roland Deschain, right here in this blog article, and it would take three months and be 100,000 words long, and 3/4 of the actors in the list would be as white as a snowman's asshole.

Look, they're going to have to rewrite the story to accommodate Elba. Half of The Drawing of the Three and The Wastelands is Susannah freaking out because she's been stolen by a white man out of a reality where she's very iconically battling with prejudice against blacks. Thanks to a mental illness caused by a brick to the head from Jack Mort, she's controlled by a deviant personality called "Detta Walker" and throws tantrums like some kind of insane witch-demon. Detta slings insults at Roland like "honky muhfuh" and "white-bread" and "greymeat." A lot of that dynamic between her and Roland and Eddie, and her personal character growth, centers around her taking control of herself from Detta and becoming one whole person again. That's not going to make a whole lot of sense if Elba is Roland. Take that away and what is Detta Walker going to rage against? That she's being pushed across the beach in a wheelchair by one of the sexiest black men on the face of the planet?

If you're going to rewrite the story that extensively, you might as well just keep on going. Let's just remove Jake, we'll never be able to shoot fast enough to keep his actor from growing out of the role. Why not have Oy be a thirty-foot-tall robot that turns into a Mustang with TruckNutz and eerily human lips? Instead of having Eddie be addicted to smack, let's turn him into a neckbeard and have him complain that he was abducted to Mid-World instead of Equestria. I look forward to the scene where he's lying on the ground sweating and shivering because he can't find any wifi.

Yeah. I think I like that. While we're at it, let's have Michael Bay produce it and Uwe Boll direct it.

​You listening, Sony?