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Writing Style

That blog title is way too long, but fuck it.

A handful of weeks ago, some presumably well-meaning tickledick posted a comment


here at the blog. It was a comment that I chose not to approve because, really, I don’t
need your shit, Rando Calrissian. This blog is my digital house, and I don’t let strangers
inside just so they can take a dump on my kitchen table, especially so we can all sit
around, smelling it and discussing it. But the comment was a splinter under my nail,
working its way up into the finger-meat. And then reading George R. R. Martin’s end-
of-the-year message about not finishing the newest SOIAF also was something that
crawled inside me and starting having thought-babies.

Being here on the Internet is a bit like hanging out on a clothesline — some days are
sunny and warm, other days are cool and breezy. Some days it pisses rain and the wind
tries to take you, and other days it’s daggers of ice or a rime of snow or smoke from a
wildfire or some pervert streaking across the lawn and stropping up against you with his
unwanted nasty bits.

Being on the Internet means being exposed.

You’re just out there. A squirming nerve without the tooth surrounding it.

That’s good in some ways because you’re exposed to new people, new ideas, new ways
of doing things. You’re not an isolated creature here. You are an experiment being
observed and are in turn an observer of countless other experiments, and that makes a
subtle-not-subtle push-and-pull. But can also be erosive or corrosive — it can wear off
your paint a little bit.

As a writer in particular, it has its ups and downs, too. Here, you’ll find yourself
surrounded by a gaggle of ink-fingered cohorts who know what it is to do what you do.
You’ll have a herd, a cult, a clan, a tribe. You’ll have smaller communities who know
what it is you write or want to write, too, whether it’s young adult or epic fantasy or
erotic sci-fi cookbooks. And here on the Digital Tubes, everybody is has an opinion,
everybody is an expert. And that’s extra-true with writing. Other writers have their
processes and their hang-ups and their wins and their losses, and they share it all. Which
is, on a whole, a good thing. Information is good. Camaraderie is good.

That, though, can muddy the waters at the same time. This Person is doing This
Person’s thing, and That Person is doing That Person’s thing, and Other Person is really
loud about what WILL SURELY WORK FOR EVERYBODY (translation, will
probably only work for people who are or are like Other Person). And advice gurgles up
around your feet like rising floodwaters. Do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t say that,
don’t write this, this isn’t selling, that is a no-no, publish this way, sell that
way, don’t publish that other way, drink this, wear houndstooth jackets with elbow
patches, drink that, snark here, snark there, with a fox, in a box, wearing socks, eating
rocks, with a bear, without hair, anywhere. We have a whole lot of writers trying to
figure out who they really are, and in the process, do a very good job at also telling you
who you should be in order to conform to their notions of who they want to be. To
confirm who they are, it’s easy for them to also confirm who youshould be, too. That’s
not sinister. That’s just human nature. It’s easier to become something when others are
along for the ride. And it’s also the joy of confirmation bias — what worked for me
confirms that I WAS RIGHT AND SO YOU ARE A HEINOUS DIPSHIT IF YOU DO
NOT FOLLOW PRECISELY IN MY FOOTSTEPS. I do it. You do it. Most of us do, I
think.

It then gets further complicated once you have readers. Or, Uber Readers, aka, fans.
Because they, too, have opinions on you and your work. They will have opinions on
your process. And it’s not that they’re wrong, it’s that they’re — no, wait, they are
wrong, never mind. They’re totally wrong, because they’re not writing the stories.
They’re right about what they want to read and when they want to read it, but not about
how to create it. It’s hard to tell someone how to do their job. It’s extra-hard to tell them
how to make their art. Because process and prose and authorial intent are all intensely
personal to the creator. Personal and twisted further by the pressures of creation and the
potential mental stresses that come along with it — remember, a great many writers and
artists also suffer from depression or anxiety or other ghosts in the gray matter.

It’s not just one type of writer over another. This is true of new writers who are just
finding their way. This is true of mid-career or mid-list writers who are out there in the
wilderness surviving, not sure how to get out of the forest just yet. This is true of super-
successful authors who are trapped under the magnifying lens of a massively public
fanbase — the sun likely focusing into a laser-hot beam upon their foreheads. All artists
of every level are exposed here.

Here, now, is the comment referenced at the fore of the post:

“There is no skill floor or ceiling to being a writer. Anyone who speaks a language, who
tells a story, can write. To be published is a stricter process that requires an adherence to
professional guidelines and to a standard of quality that is dictated by the publishing
office. That you’ve been published so many times is no small feat, and I commend you
for it.

But having read Aftermath and Blackbirds, I feel that there is…a laziness to your style
that you seem to be either unaware of or have come to terms with. It’s difficult to
quantify, but it gives me the impression that you don’t value writing as an art. As a job,
certainly. But not as a form of expression. Because otherwise you wouldn’t spend 45-90
days on a book. A soul isn’t bared in three months. Professional or no, no book you
truly care for should go from start to finish that quickly.

To know an art is to break established rules in the hopes of producing a truer version of
your vision. And you certainly break the rules of writing craft. In the first three
paragraphs of Blackbirds you’ve disregarded flow, used inappropriate comparisons, and
introduced the main character through a mirror scene. And while these things are
permissible, they are not the hallmarks of someone who cherishes what he writes.

Great writing seeks subtlety. It’s the words that are unwritten, the descriptions that are
inferred, the meaning that comes across through the subtext of what is explicit that
writing excels at communicating. But your writing doesn’t ask me to look within myself
for answers. It asks me to look no further than the page. And that, to me, is a tragedy.
Because we’re all capable of greatness. But greatness comes from being dissatisfied
with how things are, and with pushing the boundaries of what you believe yourself to be
capable of in order to achieve your absolute best. And even then, you won’t be satisfied.
You’ll push yourself further in your next pursuits, because now you’ve touched on what
you’re capable of, but you won’t be satisfied.

To release your books in such a short time frame tells me that you’re satisfied, and that
breaks my heart.”

I tried for the better part of a week to conjure a more cogent response than “fuck you,”
and I got as far as “go fuck yourself.” Like, I tried to go through it once and conjure
point-by-point rebuttals — well, no, because of course I value art and art is not
beholden to any timetable and it takes the time that it takes short or long and — but
eventually my rebuttal dissolves into a gargled cry of “eat a bucket of deep-fried fucks,
you squawking chicken-fucker.” With an added, “HOW’S THAT FOR SUBTLETY,”
and then a crotch-grab as I cackle and yell, “CHERISH THIS.”

This is someone who wants his vision to be my vision. He has very explicit ideas about
how art is made — ideas that, by the way, are provably false. (For writers in
particular, looking at the daily word counts of famous writers is clarifying in its sheer
variation.) Great writing is not one thing any more than great paintings are, or great
music, or, or, or. The variation in art is glorious. The variation in the process that puts
the art into the world is equally amazing. Music can be operatic, or punk, or dub-step. A
sculpture might be an alabaster goddess or a bunch of fucking cubes stuck to a bunch of
other fucking cubes. Food can be subtle and airy or unctuous and heavy or whipped into
a foam or shoved between two buns (tee hee buns). Comedy can be a routine that takes
years to write, or an improv session that took 30 seconds to conjure.

There’s no wrong way to do it, as long as you’re doing it.

There’s no timetable, as long as you’re taking the time.

Nobody can tell you how you do it. They can only tell you how they do it or what
illusions they hold about the process — illusions that often wither under actual
implementation.

They can offer suggestions. And you are free to take them, hold them up in the light,
and see if there is anything there of value. And if there isn’t? Then you can fling it into
the trash compactor on the detention level where it will be ogled and eaten by the one-
eyed Dianoga.

That’s not to say there aren’t people you should listen to — a good editor or agent, a
trusted friend, a beloved author. But even there, you want to find people who will
clarify and improve your process and your work — not substitute it with something that
isn’t really yours.

So, in 2016, I advise you to give your middle fingers a proper workout and elevate them
accordingly to any who would diminish who you are, what you make, or how you make
it. You don’t need to wall yourself off from it, but you also don’t need to be a sweater
hanging on the clothesline, either. Get some tooth around that nerve.
Know who you are. Learn your process. Find your way. And don’t let anyone else
define who you are as a creator, as an artist, as a writing writer who motherfucking
writes.

Happy 2016, writers.

You do you.

explodes in gory human fireworks

I am sick with some kind of plague, so you will have to endure the reek of my
crankypants.

ENDURE IT.

shakes crankypants at you, bathing you in rage-stink

Anyway.

I read an article. (God, it always starts that way, doesn’t it?)

Many of my kind have shared this article.

You can read this article here. It is dumb.

The tl;dr of that article is kids being encouraged to cut out simple words in favor of
more complex ones. “Expressive” words. Showy words strutting their butts around like
pretty pretty peacocks. Sometimes they’re not just encouraged, but rather, punished for
failing to do so.

I CALL HORSESHIT AND SHENANIGANS. HORSCHTNANIGANS.

Listen, I get it. I love language.

Language is a circus of delight. It’s like a buffet of food. You don’t always want to eat
meat and potatoes. You want to try new things, and encouraging kids — or adults! — to
find new ways to express themselves is a win. The breadth and depth of our language is
a rich garden with loamy soil. All manner of things can grow up and out of that bed of
linguistic nutrients.

Here, though, let me quote a few passages from the article:

English teachers were once satisfied if they could prevent their pupils from splitting
infinitives. Now some also want to stop them from using words like “good,” “bad,”
“fun” and “said.”

“We call them dead words,” said (or declared) Leilen Shelton, a middle school teacher
in Costa Mesa, Calif. She and many others strive to purge pupils’ compositions of
words deemed vague or dull.
“There are so many more sophisticated, rich words to use,” said (or affirmed) Ms.
Shelton, whose manual “Banish Boring Words” has sold nearly 80,000 copies since
2009.

Her pupils know better than to use a boring word like “said.” As Ms. Shelton put it, “
‘Said’ doesn’t have any emotion. You might use barked. Maybe howled. Demanded.
Cackled. I have a list.”

and

Now he automatically hunts for more picturesque language. “Rather than saying, ‘This
soup was good,’ you can say something like, ‘The soup was delectable,’ which really
enhances it,” Josh instructed. “It gives it sort of this extra push.”

One recent afternoon after school, Josie and Josh agreed to take a stab at editing famous
authors, starting with the closing words of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “….yes I said yes I
will Yes.”

Head down, her pigtails brushing the paper, Josie examined the phrase and then
suggested a small amendment: “…yes I hollered yes I will Definitely.”

and finally, oh god

Robert C. March, a writing teacher at Atkins High School in Winston-Salem, N.C.,


stands by his list. He has banned “I,” “you,” “we,” “why” and “it,” among others. Mr.
March makes clear on his Web page that he means business: “Any banned word, or
contraction, that appears in a work submitted to me will count as -5 (minus five) points
off the total grade.”

Holy shit, what.

The gall to edit James Joyce.

The ego it takes to claim that simple words are ‘dead’ words.

The cruelty of punishing kids for using common, everyday, essential words.

This isn’t about expression.

This is about elitism — about embracing some faux-literary divide and stepping over
one-penny blue-collar words so you can instead reach for the five dollar words in the jar
on the high shelf.

The problem here is that it assumes our expression is limited by the simplicity of our
language. It is not. You can express complex ideas with simple words. You can tell
whole stories or give voice to complicated emotions with language that is clear, direct,
and confident. The soup is good is a fine fucking sentence, I’ll have you know. It is
clear. You don’t need to say ‘delectable’ because delectable is a fancy-pancy froo-froo
word, one that is arguably redundant. You’d be better off directing kids to learn how to
express themselves not with more complicated words, but rather with complicated
images, metaphors, ideas. If a teacher feels that “the soup is good” fails to go far
enough, have them describe how good, or how it makes them feel. Why is it good? Why
do you like it? How does it make you feel and to what does it compare?

Context is more meaningful than painting up your words to be pretty.

Pretty words are often very nice, indeed, and also very hollow.

Characters say things and do things and nothing about that limits the power of
either. What a character says and does is far more significant than how that character
says or does it. The language is there to serve the idea, to give it clarity and beauty. The
idea is not there to serve at the pleasure of the language. Don’t let the words gum up the
meaning of what you’re trying to say.

I mean, for fuck’s sake. Sure, once in a while a character will yell or bark or spit a word
out like it was something foul on the tongue. Once in a while a character will be
pompous enough to believe food should be called ‘delectable’ because a word like
‘good’ could never be sufficient. Certainly big words are not to be avoided just because
they’re big words — but we should cleave to them because they are the right words, not
simply large and fancy and ever-so-precious. I’m using some fancy words here in this
post. I do it because I like them but more because I think they are appropriate. They
serve me. They create and enhance meaning.

Most of the time, simple words will do.

Simple words can be strung together to form complex sentences and complicated ideas.
Some of the most astonishing poetry is the most straightforward — not the showiest, not
the splashiest. That is what we should be striving to teach kids — and, further, to teach
upcoming writers. Expression is more than the sum of word choice. And word choice is
not garish makeup to slather across your paragraphs and pages just because you think it
was too crude and not pretty enough. Don’t punish kids because they aren’t high-
falutin’ enough for you. Sophistication is not well-demonstrated by purple prose. Work
harder. Think bigger. Eschew the elitism of language.

Otherwise, fuck you.

Is that simple enough for you?

Writing is a profane act.

I don’t literally mean in the FUCK THIS, SHIT THAT way (though for me that tends to
be true enough just the same). But I mean profane in the classic sense: it’s a heretical,
disrespectful act. Crass! Irreverent! Writing and storytelling is this… nasty task of
taking the perfect idea that exists in your head and shellacking it all up by dragging it
through some grease-slick fontanelle in order to make it real. You’re just shitting it all
to hell, this idea. You have it in your mind: golden and unbreakable. And then in reality,
ugh. You’ve created a herky-jerky simulacrum, a crude facsimile of your beautiful idea
run through the copy machine again and again until what you started with is an
incomprehensible spread of dong-doogle hieroglyphics.

The end result will never match the expectation.

You will never get it just right.

The idea is God: perfect, divine, incapable of repudiation, utterly untouchable.

The result is Man: fumbling, foolish, a jester’s mockery, a bundle of mistakes in tacky
pants.

Nobody is good enough to tell the stories and ideas inside them. I mean that sincerely.
The ideas in my head are shining beams of light, perfect and uninterrupted. And when
they finally exist on paper, they end up fractured and imperfect — beams of light
through grungy windows and shattered prisms, shot through with motes of dust, filtered
up, watered down.

But sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes, a beam of light is still a beam of light no
matter how diffuse it is, no matter how dirty the light, no matter how filthy the floor is
that it illuminates. And when it’s not enough, you keep on trying until it is. Because
eventually, it becomes that. The only reason it doesn’t become that isn’t a lack of skill
or talent, but giving up before that lack of skill or talent shows up on the page. The only
true failure is giving up and giving in.

I write this in response to a colleague who was talking on Facebook about the ideas in
his head never matching the expression of those ideas, whether from a lack of skill or
talent or intelligence. Thing is, it’s true. My colleague is right. Those things will never
match. No matter how hard you try, because the only way to get our stories out
of our heads and into your heads we first need to translate them into mundane language.
And when you translate one language into another, you introduce imperfections,
inaccuracies, misunderstandings. You move the Bible from Enochian angeltongue to
Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English and you lose something vital — once, the Bible
was about a guy named Dave who saved the Galaxy with his unicorn army. Now it’s
blah blah blah something about “Jesus” and “loving one another.” Writing is always
this: an adaptation of the sacred into smut. Dragging the divine out of his Sky Chariot
and into the human dirt.

But me, I like that aspect.

I like making God into sausages.

I like dragging those angels down into the slurry, dirtying their wings, breaking their
harps.

I like translating the beautiful celestial song and grunting it in our human chimp-shrieks.

Because that’s the only way it will ever exist.

Because if there’s one thing that is imperfect about perfection —


It’s that it’s too perfect to live.

It’s unreal. And I don’t truck much with unreality.

Writing unwritten is a promise unfulfilled. I’d rather make the promise and complete it
badly than make the promise and never even try. A story untold is a life unlived. What’s
the point? If you want to do this thing, you have to set yourself up against unrealistic
expectations. You cannot combat perfection because perfection? That smiling, shiny
jerk always wins. You do what you do, crass and irreverent as it may be, because
committing heresy in the name of art is far better than huffing invisible God-farts and
cleaving only to invisible philosophy.

We’re told to do no harm.

But sometimes, you have to trample pretty daisies to get where you’re going.

This also means setting for yourself realistic, reasonable metrics for success. A day’s
worth of writing is a success. Finishing the thing is a success. Separate that out from the
aspect of professional, business success. You can’t control that kind of success, though
you can maximize your luck and that means first finishing what you begin. If you want
to create? Create. If you want to write and tell stories, do that. Don’t give yourself over
to unkind, cruel standards. Judge yourself fairly. Work despite perfect expectations.
Those who try to master perfection will always fall to those who iterate, and reiterate,
and create, and recreate. Art is better than philosophy. Creation, however clumsy, is
always better than sitting on your hands and fearing what damage they can do.

Kill the perfect. Slay the angels. Fuck the gods.

You’re human. You’ll get it wrong. Everybody gets it wrong.

But getting it wrong is the only way you get close to getting it right.

<a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/01/06/five-stupid-writing-tricks-
starting-now/"># Five Stupid Writing Tricks Starting… Now

Let Your Characters Talk. No, I know, we like to be hyper-plot-focused like, if it


doesn’t fit into the plot, then murder it in the face. But that’s assuming plot is this rigid,
inflexible thing, like an obsidian dildo. It’s not. Plot is whatever happens in the story: a
sequence of events. This happens. That happens. Then another thing. In the process:
characters talk. Characters are everything, and it behooves you to know them. One of
the ways you get to know them is: let them have conversations. About anything. Corn
chips and abortion! Lip balm and gun rights! Whatever it is, give them a lot of leash.
Maybe you’ll cut a lot of it. Maybe you won’t. But ideally, it’ll help you know these
characters more intimately by the end. And if you know? Then we get to know, too.

Have A Point, But Don’t Ever Tell Us. Writing a novel is a game of charades — I’m
trying to tell you something without ever telling you something. All my work has a
point — a central argument or idea. Sometimes I know it going in, sometimes I know it
on the second draft, or tenth, or once its on shelves. But I don’t want to tell you what it
is. That spoils the fun and ruins the game. Dance around it. Paint the margins, but leave
the core thesis of the work blank. Let the reader get there. Let them stumble into it like
someone who opens the wrong door and finds themselves wandering into a secret orgy.
Let them be wrong about it, too, if they need to be. Fiction isn’t about absolutes. This
isn’t paint by numbers. Good storytelling embraces ambiguity and uncertainty. Good
writing isn’t a lecture; it’s a debate.

Surprise Yourself, And You Surprise The Reader. This is maybe one of the best ways to
get unstuck that I’ve found, in the most general sense: just when you feel like you’re
hitting the wall, face mashed against the brick and you don’t know where to turn, it’s
time to surprise yourself. If you’ve anticipated what’s coming, then we might, too.
That’s not to say you can’t orchestrate holy-goatfucker moments long before you get to
them — you can, and should. But sometimes, you paint yourself into a corner and it’s
like, do something really unexpected. It’s like, BOOM, SPACE BADGERS, and jaws
hit the floor so hard the tile cracks. (This also means it’s vital to be loosey-goosey with
your expectations. Nothing in your story — no moment, no character, no event — is
final until that book is printed and in people’s hands. Be willing to change course and
redraw the map — I love outlining, but just as no battle plan survives contact with the
enemy, no outline survives contact with the actual story. Rigidity is the enemy;
flexibility is your friend. You know what’s also your friend? Puppies. And whiskey.
And ice cream. And a puppy carrying whiskey-flavored ice cream in a little barrel
around its neck. dreams)

Ten Keywords. Think of ten keywords about the story you’re writing. Or five, I don’t
care. They can be anything. Emotions. Plot points. Locations. Write them down.
Scribble them on a Post-It note, or keep them open on your screen in a little window, or
tattoo them on your head backwards so you can read them in the makeup mirror you
keep just to your left. The goal? When you write, glance at them. These are the ideas
and elements and motifs you want to keep roughly juggled in the work:
not constantly in play, but so that some part of the story always roams and roves back to
them. It’s like, LIBERTY / ALBUQUERQUE / WATER RIGHTS / VULTURES /
CLASS WARFARE / VAMPIRES / THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE / BROKEN
WINDOWS / DONKEY SHOWS / DERELICT SHOPPING MALLS. Peer at these
from time to time. They’re meant to form the posts of an invisible fence to keep you and
the story hemmed in.

Write Like You Think. This sounds strange, I know, but sometimes the reason writing is
so hard for us is that we put all this expectation and distance between usand the words.
We want to prettify and make them sound like proper prose — but in that, we’re often
hewing to someone else’s idea of what constitutes pretty, proper prose. Hell with that.
Connecting with the work more intimately means creating a stronger, more direct
conduit between the words on the page and the words inside your head. What’s up here
— taps forehead — isPURE SNOW. It’s raw, crackling, cuckoo energy. It’s rough,
unhewn, and it is decidedly You-Flavored. Pipe that stuff right onto the page. I’m not
necessarily talking about straight stream-of-consciousness, here, but I do mean for you
to harness the way you think and the way you speak — how you hear language and
process it and return it to the world has meaning. It’s the writer’s fingerprint. So press
your fingerprint hard onto the page. And if your objection to this is that it’s not pretty,
not proper and, ugh, not perfect — well, no duh. First, that’s kinda the point. Second,
you have as many drafts as you need to fix it. So, stop putting up roadblocks and
expectations between you and the page. BARF BRAIN MATTER RIGHT INTO THE
STORY

I’m not sure precisely the connotation — I’m hoping its more, When you’re a Jet you’re
a Jet all the way rather than ooh somebody needs a spanking. Maybe it’s a combination.
Maybe I’m James Dean in a soggy diaper? Danny Zuko who can’t share his toys with
the other children? Maybe I’m Judd Nelson in the Breakfast Club, except also, I shoved
a PB&J in Mommy’s purse.

Anyway.

Getting quoted at TPV is usually a little bumpy — understandably, as my views don’t


always line up with the views of the commenters there. I think a lot of indie authors still
remember me for my “self-publishing shit volcano” post (though sometimes I wonder if
they actually read the post because I like to think that the post contained a very even-
handed and honest look at the effects of a perceived lack of quality in that space). But
this time around, getting quoted was — at least, so far — relatively painless.

But, then I saw some comments by mega-uber-indie-author Hugh Howey:

I hope so. He’s too nice a guy to go down in history as the person peeing in everyone’s
art and telling them it sucks.

I don’t think that’s what he meant, but it’s what he was famous for for a while there.

… and …

He’s a really bright guy and a great writer. If he dropped the weird bad-boy schtick and
just wrote his thoughts, he’d be one of the more important thinkers in publishing. I don’t
think he knows how to back off the schtick, though. Which makes you wonder: Is he
going to talk like that in another 20 years, when he’s into his 60s?

Working really hard to be hip is like getting a lot of tattoos. It’s hard to age gracefully.

(Which is to say, I feel I finally understand the comment, ‘damning with faint praise.’)

Obviously, I can’t control how people perceive me. Or this blog, or my books.

What I can control is what I put out into the world.

And so I thought, I’m going to take a moment to do what blogs were really meant to
do…

Which is to talk about me, me, ME.

maniacal laughter

rolls around in own stink for a few moments while you stare, awkwardly
stands up, dusts self off, looks shameful like a dog that just ate its own mess

Ahem.

Sorry.

I’ve seen it suggested in some places that what I do here — the way I write, the attitude
I put out, the overall frothing writer honey badger hobo vibe — is somehow
orchestrated. That despite the ire I reserve for the topic of author ‘branding,’ this is
actually my brand and it’s a very conscious one and all of this is (depending on who you
listen to) either well-constructed or clumsily forced. It’s either a very nice mansion or a
square-peg violently hammered into a circle-hole by me, an angry man-toddler venting
venom and vulgarity.

I want to make one thing abundantly clear:

This isn’t artifice.

This isn’t a mechanism.

This isn’t my brand.

It isn’t, as Hugh suggests, my schtick.

This? Is me.

The way I write on this blog is the way I think. I have this space for me first, for you
second. The dopey fuckery and wanton dipshittery that I ladle onto these blog pages are
here because I like them that way. I like wonky metaphors. I love creative profanity. I
really enjoy writing in a way that is both (hopefully) thoughtful and completely batshit.
I write this way because I think this way. I don’t really act this way in public, of course,
because it’s a very good way to get Tasered. And when people meet me for the first
time (as I’ve noted in the past), I don’t scream “YO MOTHERFUCKER” before
spitting in their gaping, gasping mouth. I’m fairly polite in public. An introvert playing
at extroversion — or, at the least, an introvert who finds himself extroverting once he’s
comfortable with people.

And at this blog, I’m very, very comfortable.

This is me kicking off my shoes and kicking up my feet. Letting the beard grow
all mangy and wild, like a snarling carpet of moss or an old, hunger-mad coyote. This is
me, comfortable. I’m comfortable with you and, presumably, most of you are
comfortable with me since a not unreasonable number of you show up here daily. (And
thank you for that. Seriously.)

I write the way I think.

Sometimes I turn the volume up. Sometimes I turn the volume down — and, in my
books, I turn it down because there the voice is different. (Despite all this not being
artifice, I do remain in control of all the knobs and levers that govern my voice.) But
this is my playspace. This blog is for me, first and foremost, and hopefully there are
enough folks who gain some kind of intellectual, creative or profane sustenance from
these pages to make the juice worth the squeeze.

I’m not trying to be “hip.”

(Is that really a word people use anymore? “Hip?”)

(I still like “rad,” honestly.)

Sure, sometimes I can come across as harsh — a little too much gravel in your wine, a
few too many bird bones braided into my silky, luxuriant face-pelt. It is a fair critique to
say, “Well, if you didn’t call that post ‘shit volcano,’ maybe you wouldn’t have upset
people, and with a nicer title, maybe those people would’ve read the post.” Yeah,
maybe. But I did it, and I’d do it again. Because ‘shit volcano’ is funny. Because I liked
titling it that way. You might have already gotten this far in the post and wish I
wouldn’t do these weird parenthetical asides, or the fake-actions-sandwiched-betwixt-
asterisks, or the eyebrow-raising metaphors. Sure, I get that. But I’m going to do them
anyway. And, when I’m harsh, it’s because that’s how I feel and because I’m trying to
portray the path ahead with all the bumps and thorns that lurk ahead. (Though, for the
record, I don’t see myself as “peeing in everyone’s art and telling them that it sucks.” I
like to think of this blog as a very supportive space of writers of all stripes. Your
creativity and creation is vital, and nobody should tell you otherwise. That said, once
you start to charge money for something, ennnnh, you’ve gone from creativity to
commerce — and there, the attitude changes a little bit. All that is, of course, between
you and your personal deities. But all told, I don’t think, we can all do better is a
particularly poisonous message, unless of course, you find comfort in cromulence.)

My mission at this blog is as follows:

a) to enlighten and inform, and when that fails:

b) to make you laugh, and when that fails:

c) dazzle and bewilder with inventive profanity.

The fail state of that last one is, you and me maybe just don’t like the same things.

And that’s okay.

Hell, that’s awesome.

What kind of a goofy world would it be if we all liked the same things? Or we all
agreed all the time. It’s important to have different voices and different ideas. Sid and
Marty Krofft, could you imagine if I was the dominant voice in writing and
publishing? What an ugly pony that would be.

Just the same, this place is my voice.

These are my ideas.


Not a brand, or a schtick, or a lie, or me trying to be hip, or be a “bad boy.”

If you’re going to hang around here, this is what you get. (Sorry, Hugh.)

You’re gonna get the NSFW/NSFL language.

You’ll get all my kooky ranty-pants ideas.

You’ll probably see a lot of CAPSLOCK and italics.

Absurdity will be rampant.

I am likely to poke more fun at me than I do at you.

I will squeeze things in parentheses and between asterisks.

Sometimes things will be in lists.

I am likely to reference any of the following: hobos, unicorns, various woodland


creatures, dildos, forbidden sex acts, beards, fluids, volcanoes, toddlers, Transformers,
and of course: lots of blathering bloggerel about writing, storytelling, publishing,
language, and all the mortar that holds those particular bricks together.

This is it.

This is me.

I hope you like it.

If you don’t, that’s okay.

But this is still gonna be it, and this is still gonna be me.

And by the way I think tattoos are cool, even on 60-year-olds.

Now, if you’ll excuse me — BAD BOY AUTHOR COMING THROUGH.

writes a novel while riding loud motorcycle

flicks lit cigarette into a trash-can full of awful books

slams your head in a dictionary

throws beer cans at your head as you go into a library

autographs books in bat blood

flushes your manuscript down the toilet

tattoos entire text of Finnegan’s Wake on back


poops on your blog

flies away on a jetpack made of unicorn bones

explodes

1. A Series Of Word Choices

Here’s why this matters: because both writing and storytelling comprise, at the most
basic level, a series of word choices. Words are the building blocks of what we do. They
are the atoms of our elements. They are the eggs in our omelets. They are the shots of
liquor in our cocktails. Get it right? Serendipity. Get it wrong? The air turns to arsenic,
that cocktail makes you puke, this omelet tastes like balls.

2. Words Define Reality

Words are like LEGO bricks: the more we add, the more we define the reality of our
playset. “The dog fucked the chicken” tells us something. “The Great Dane fucked the
chicken” tells us more. “The Great Dane fucked the bucket of fried chicken on the roof
of Old Man Dongweather’s barn, barking with every thrust” goes the distance and
defines reality in a host of ways (most of them rather unpleasant). You can over-define.
Too many words spoil the soup. Find the balance between clarity, elegance, and
evocation.

3. The “Hot And Cold” Game

You know that game — “Oh, you’re cold, colder, colder — oh! Now you’re getting hot!
Hotter! Hotter still! Sizzling! Yay, you found the blueberry muffin I hid under the
radiator two weeks ago!” –? Word choice is like a textual version of that game where
you try to bring the reader closer to understanding the story you’re trying to tell. Strong,
solid word choice allows us to strive for clarity (hotter) and avoid confusion (colder).

4. Most With Fewest

Think of it like a different game, perhaps: you’re trying to say as much as possible with
as few words as you can muster. Big ideas put as briefly as you are able. Maximum
clarity with minimum words.

5. The Myth Of The Perfect Word

Finding the perfect word is as likely as finding a downy-soft unicorn with a pearlescent
horn riding a skateboard made from the bones of your many enemies. Get shut of this
notion. The perfect is the enemy of the good. For every sentence and every story you
have a plethora of right words. Find a good word. Seek a strong word. But the hunt for
a perfect word will drive you into a wide-eyed froth. Though, according to scholars,
“nipplecookie” is in fact the perfect word. That’s why Chaucer used it so often. Truth.

6. No One Perfect Word, But A Chumbucket Of Shitty Ones


For every right word, you have an infinity of wrong ones.

7. Awkward, Like That Kid With The Headgear And The Polio Foot

You might use a word that either oversteps or fails to meet the idea you hope to present.
A word in that instance would be considered awkward. “That dinnerfornicated in his
mouth” is certainly a statement, and while it’s perhaps not a
technically incorrect metaphor, it’s just plain goofy (and uh, kinda gross). You mean
that the flavors fornicated, or more likely that the flavors of the meal were sensual, or
that they inspired lewd or libidinous thoughts. (To which I might suggest you stop
French-kissing that forkful of short ribs, pervhouse.) To go with the food metaphor for a
moment (“meat-a-phor?”), you ever take a bite of food and, after it’s already in your
mouth, discover something in there that’s texturally off? Bit of gristle, stem, bone,
eyeball, fingernail, whatever? The way you’re forced to pause the meal and decipher the
texture with your mouth is the same problem a reader will have with awkward word
choice. It obfuscates meaning and forces the reader to try to figure out just what the
fuck you’re talking about.

8. Ambiguous, Like That Girl With That Thing Outside That Place

Remember how I said earlier that words are like LEGO, blah blah blah help define
reality yadda yadda poop noise? Right. Ambiguous word choice means you’re not
defining reality very well in your prose. “Bob ate lunch. It was good. Then he did
something.” Lunch? Good? Something? Way to wow ‘em with your word choice, T.S.
Eliot. To repeat: aim for words that are strong, confident, and above all else, clarifying.

9. Incorrect, Like That Guy Who Makes Up Shit When He’s Drunk

Incorrect word choice means you’re using the wrong damn word. As that character says
in that movie, “I do not think it means what you think it means.” Affect, effect.
Comprise, compose. Sensual, sensuous. Elicit, illicit. Eminent, immanent, imminent.
Allude, elude. Must I continue? Related: if you write “loose” instead of “lose,” I cannot
be held accountable if I kick you so hard in your butthole you choke on a hemorrhoid.

10. Step Sure-Footedly

Point of fact: the English language was invented by a time-traveling spam-bot who was
trapped in a cave with a crazy monk. Example: The word “umbrage” means “offense,”
so, to take umbrage means to take offense. Ah, but it also means the shade or protection
afforded by trees. I used to take the second definition and assume it carried over to
the people portion of that definition. Thus, to “take umbrage” meant in a way to “take
shelter” with a person, as in, to both be under the same shadow of the same tree. I used
the word incorrectly for years like some shithead. If you’re uncertain about the use
of any word, it’s easy enough to either not use it or use Google to define it (“define:
[word]” is the search you need). Do not trust that the English language makes sense or
that your recollection of its madness is pristine. It will bite you every time.

11. The Barbaric Barf-Yawn That Is Your First Draft


This is not a hard or fast rule (hell, none of this is), but in my highly-esteemed
opinion (translation: debatable bullshit mumbled by a guy who thinks “cock-waffle”
should be a part of our collective daily vocabulary), you don’t need — or want! — to
refine your word choice in the first draft. That initial draft is, for me, a screaming
weeping blubberfest where I just want to cry all the words out without any care in the
world how they get onto the page. Second and subsequent drafts, however, are a good
time to zero in on problems big and small. Don’t spend your first draft scrutinizing
word choice.

12. Verbs: Strong Like Bull

For every action you’ll find a dozen or more verb-flavorsof that action. You can drink
your coffee or you can gulp, sip, guzzle, or inhale it. You can run down the street or you
can jog, bolt, sprint, dash, saunter, or hotfoot it. You can have sex with someone or you
can fuck ‘em, hump ‘em, make love to ‘em, or ride ‘em like Seabiscuit in a gimp mask.
(Do they make gimp masks for horses? To the Googlemobile!) Use a strong verb that
clarifies the action and makes sense in the context of the scene. A hostage escaping his
kidnappers isn’t going to scamperaway — he’s going to barrel, hurtle, bolt, or if you’re
a fan of not-fixing-what-ain’t-broke, he’ll run like a motherfucker. If the base-level verb
gives you maximum potency and clarity, then use it.

13. “I Like Playing With My Cats!” John Ejaculated From His Mouth

Mmmyeah, one caveat to the “strong clarifying verb” thing — it doesn’t apply to
dialogue tags. No, no. Don’t resist. Hold still. Stop trying to chew through the duct tape.
I know you want to your characters to yelp, blurt, scream, gibber, shriek, murmur,
mumble, babble, explain, exhort, plead, interrupt, erupt, exclaim, and
ejaculateconstantly, but don’t do it. Do. Not. Do. It. Rely on “say/said” 80-90% of the
time. You can, when seeking variety and clarification of action, use another dialogue
tag.

14. The Verb “To Be”

Am. Is. Was. To Be. Will Be. Whatever. I’m not one of those who will tell you to cut
out every instance of the verb “to be” in all its simple-headed forms because sometimes,
simplicity is best. And yet, overuse of that verb may weaken your writing. Look for
instances where the verb can be replaced by a stronger one or where it adds needless
roughage to a sentence. “Barry is playing with himself in the corner” is better as “Barry
plays with himself in the corner.” If you say, “It is my opinion that Rush Limbaugh
should be stuffed with dynamite and exploded like a beached whale,” you’d be better
off with, “I believe Rush Limbaugh…” instead. Oh, and if a sentence starts with “there
is” or “it was,” you should attack that sentence with lasers.

15. The Word “Specificity” Is Really Fun To Say

No, really. Try it, I’ll wait. … Are you done yet? Specificity. Specificity. Spehhh-
siiiihh-fiiiihh-sihhhh-teeee. Anyway. Moving on. Words help us define reality — nouns
doubly so. Creature? Animal? Mammal? Cat? Panther? Housecat? Tomcat? Russian
Blue? The North Canadian Spangled Bobtail? There I charted specificity to the point
where it became useful and then crossed over into absurd bullshit. If I tell the reader that
the cat is a “housecat,” we all get it. But if I say that the cat is a “Lambkin dwarf cat,”
only a handful of cat geeks are ever going to grok my lingo. Aim for specific, but
realize you can get too specific.

16. The Strong Spice Of Adverb And Adjective

Sometimes, a verb or noun just doesn’t tell the whole tale. I can say “housecat,” but I
mean, “calico kitty with a sprightly attitude and a penchant for meowing loudly.”
Calico. Sprightly. Loudly. These all modify the verbs and nouns present in order to
paint a picture. Adverbs and adjectives provide both a deeper sense of specificity while
also providing flavor or color to the world. They’re a strong spice. Use when you need,
not when you want. Say what you mean and no more.

17. Adverbs Are Not Your Mortal Foe

Writers often bandy about that old crunchy nugget of of penmonkey wisdom — NO
ADVERBS — as if it is bulletproof. As if a gang of adverbs shanked that writer’s
mother in the kidneys as she stooped over to water the hydrangeas. Adverbs are not
birthed from the Devil’s hell-womb. They’re just words. Did you know that “never” is
an adverb? As is “here?” And “tomorrow?” You can rely too heavily on adverbs (and
amateurish writers do). You can also use adverbs that are unnecessary or that sound
clunky when staple-gunned to the end of a sentence. And adverbs paired with dialogue
tags will often chafe one’s taint, but that doesn’t mean you need to hunt down every last
adverb with a spear-gun.

18. The Thesaurus Is Not Satan’s Own Demon Gospel

The thesaurus is not a bad book (or, these days, website). I love the thesaurus because I
have a brain like a rust-eaten bucket — shit slips through all the time. I’m constantly
snapping my fingers saying, “There’s a word that’s like this other word but not quite
and OH SHITDAMNIT I CAN’T REMEMBER IT WHO AM I AND WHY AM I
WEARING LADIES’ UNDERWEAR?” So, I turn to the thesaurus not to look for a
better, fancier word but instead to find the word my feeble mouse-eaten brain cannot
properly recall. It is not the thesaurus that is the root of all evil but rather the love of the
thesaurus that urges writers to commit the sin of pompous word choice. It is not a
crutch; do not lean upon it.

19. Big Words For Tiny Penises

Smaller words are nearly always better than big ones. Big words put distance between
you and the reader. Each added syllable is a speed-bump. Don’t use word choice to
sound smart. Don’t talk circles around the reader. Your job is communication. Is your
story a bridge between you and the reader — or is it a wall?

20. The Jingly Jangle Of Jargon

Jargon is when you rely on technical or area-specific terminology to get across your
point. Jargon uses a limited vocabulary to speak to a small circle of people, and this is
true whether you’re talking about some aspect specific to knight’s armor, a scientific
theory, or the manufacture of space-age dildo technology. The test is easy. Ask
yourself, will most people know what the fuck I’m talking about? If yes, carry on. If no,
either use plain-spoken language or take the time to explain that shit you just slung into
my eyes.

21. The Plumber Versus The Aristocrat

Certainly you have some leeway in terms of choosing the correct words for your
expected audience. If you’re writing a novel about baseball, nobody would fault you for
using a metric crap-sack of baseball terminology. You’ll certainly write different prose
if you expect your audience to comprise plumbers instead of an aristocrats. Still, you’ll
find value in reading to be read widely, not just by a subset of potential readers.

22. Junk In The Trunk

I’ll admit it: I love junk words. They are the greasy hamburger of prose, delicious to me
and plump with empty calories. Effectively! In theory! Very! Happen to! Point is! You
know? They offer minimal — if any! — functionality. Hunt them down with merciless
abandon. Stomp them with cleated shoe until they squeal.

23. From The Department Of Redundancy Department

The repetition of one or several words can have a potent effect — but what happens a
lot of time is, you repeat words accidentally. “The day was hot and heat vapors rose off
the ground. The heat sapped Quinn’s energy.” Hot, heat, heat. A reader will trip on such
repetition. And then he’ll fall down some steps and break his coccyx. Man, “coccyx”
sounds like some kind of dinosaur bird, doesn’t it? THE MIGHTY COCCYX SWOOPS
TO FEAST ON THE BABY TURTLEBUGS. I dunno. Shut up. Don’t judge me.

24. The Sound Of Words Matter

Words play off other words. Together they form rhythm. Choose words that pair well
together, like red wine and steak. Or Pabst Blue Ribbon and hipster shame. Or heroin
and delicious urinal cakes. Shakespeare knew that rhythm mattered and so chose words
that slotted into iambic pentameter. The way you hear the rhythm of the words is to read
your work aloud. Do that and you’ll find the flow — or, more importantly, find what’s
damming the flow so you can fix it with proper word choice and sentence construction.

25. You Will Be Judged On The Words You Choose

Consider word choice to be a test posited by the audience. Make errors (lose/loose),
they will see you for the rube you are. Write by relying on big words, heavy jargon and
purple prose and they will see you as sticking your literary nose in the air. The result is
the same: they will close the book and then beat you to death with it. They are also
likely to violate your pallid carcass with various kitchen implements.

Write to be read. Choose words that have flavor but do not overwhelm, that reach out
instead of pushing back, that sound right to the ear and carry with them a kind of
rhythm. Write with confidence, not with arrogance. Don’t be afraid to play with words.
But be sure to let the reader play with you
One of the questions that’s been driving me of late is, “Just what the hell is an author’s
voice and how does he find it and what does he do with it once he has it? Does it make
smoothies? Can you shout a dragon out of the sky like in Skyrim? Would you eat it with
a goat, would you eat it in a boat?” So, I figured I’d take to the Bloggery Zone and see
if I couldn’t conjure 25 things I think about a writer and his voice.

Behold my insipid majesty on the subject:

1. One Word: “Style”

The traditional definition of a writer’s “voice” is, simply put, that writer’s chosen style.
“John Q. Snarlmonkey writes with snark and panache, using tons of ellipses and lots of
capital letters and made-up words. I love Snarlmonkey’s voice.” Voice equals style.
That’s the easy answer.

2. Except, Okay, Fine, It’s So Much More Than That

Seriously, fuck easy answers. Easy answers are for babies and oxygen-starved kittens. A
writer’s voice is an incomprehensible and largely indefinable combo-pack of — well, of
just about anything. Style, dialogue, tropes, themes, genres, sub-genres, ideas,
characters, stereotypes, archetypes, word choice, grammatical violations, and so forth.
Anybody who tells you that David Foster Wallace’s voice does not include his
obsession with footnotes should be shoved into a cannon and fired into the mouth of a
great white shark. Voice is not one thing. Is is, in fact, the summation of a writer.

3. Revised Definition, Then

The writer’s voice is the thing that marks the work as a creation of that writer and that
writer only. You read a thing and you say, “This could not have been written by
anybody else.” That is voice.

4. That Makes It Yours, Which Makes It Awesome

If you believe that old chestnut, no original stories exist and every character is just a
remix of another character who came before. Maybe true, maybe not. What the fuck do
I know? I’m a writer, which is another way of saying, “Makes poor life decisions.”
What I do know, however, is that a writer gets to own her voice. It’s hers and hers
alone. It is her fingerprint, her retinal scan, her indelible and never-replicable identity.
The craft of being an author is knowing all the elements that go into a good story. But
the art, ahhh, the art is in the arrangement. And that arrangement embodies your voice.
How can you not love that?

5. Sometimes Voice Defies Penmonkey Law

I’m just going to say this: sometimes a writer’s voice breaks The Rules, capital T,
capital R. A writer makes certain stylistic choices and those choices may be objectively
incorrect. That may — key word: may — be one of the strands of memetic material that
runs through the DNA of an author’s voice.

6. Don’t Mistake Bad Writing For Good Voice


That being said, bad writing is bad writing. Any stylistic hangnails should be minor and
made with full awareness of why they need to exist: don’t write like a shit-heel and call
it part of your writer’s voice. Crap writing is indefensible. Try to pull that one over on a
seasoned editor and they will stab you in the gonads with a red pen. And you will have
deserved it.

7. You Can’t Force It

Forcing your voice is a futile endeavor. Like trying to hammer a cat through a
mousehole (which is totally not some weird new sex move, by the way — UNLESS IT
IS). Voice is a component of practice and maturity. Same way you can’t concentrate
really hard to make puberty come earlier (“Grow, pubes, grow!”), you cannot artificially
and prematurely discover your voice. Writers must cultivate patience (or perhaps
patience’s rude and grumpy cousin, stubbornness). You’ll get there. Your voice will
come.

8. “It’s A Trick. Get An Axe.”

You can try to trick your voice into appearing early, try to overwrite or use purple prose
or engage in stylistic flourishes that plum don’t belong. Don’t bother. It’s just peeing
with someone else’s dick — it’ll feel weird and alien, like some critical component does
not belong.

9. We First Must Mimic

When you first start writing, you write like those writers you read most frequently.
Maybe you mean to. Maybe it’s an unconscious thing. But don’t fight it. It’s all part of
the process.

10. Other Authors Are Spun Into Our DNA

Eventually we stop miming the style of others, but along the way we still break off parts
of other authors and graft them to our own styles. Some parts must be kept. No harm in
that — we shouldn’t be upset with our influences. Why turn away from those who got
us here? Those whose voices mattered most? As long as their voice does not take over
our own, we’re good. It’s okay if we are in part the culmination of other voices. Like I
said before: the art is in the arrangement.

11. This Shit Takes A Long Time

You don’t find your voice overnight. It doesn’t just appear like the fucking Tooth Fairy.
I don’t know that it’s a function of time or a function of how much you write or some
mutant hybrid of each, but it’s a slow discovery. You’ll catch glimpses of it once in a
while, and you’ll cultivate it without even meaning to — and then, one day, it’s like,
boom. Your balls drop and there it is: your voice. Or, if you’re a girl, your… vagina
blooms? I don’t know what happens with your lady-parts, having none myself. I should
get a set, just to see.

12. Evolution And Mutation


Your writer’s voice, like your real voice, changes. One day you’re all fresh-and-
squeaky, and then calendar pages whip off the wall and suddenly your voice is scratchy
and dry like you’ve been gargling watch parts and cigarette butts for the last ten years.
Read any given author over a period of time and you see this — you can witness the
Auteur Theory in action as their voice squirms and shifts.

13. Beware The Cardboardization Of Your Work

Some will try to beat your voice back, like they’re thwacking a tiger with an umbrella in
order to urge him back into the bush. (Also not a weird new sex move.) Again, if you’re
confusing bad writing with good voice, okay, fine, let others — be they agents or
editors or readers — judge your voice and find it wanting. But also beware what
happens when they want to milk your words of what makes them special in order to
make something more marketable. Your voice is one of the strongest and most
complicated weapons in your arsenal. Do not give it up without a fight. Poll your
intestinal flora. Check your gut. You’ll know.

14. Not Just How You Write, But Who You Are

We assume voice to be a thing built of technical components. That’s it, but only part of
it. Your voice is also who you are. How you bleed and spit and scream on the page. You
are your voice. Your voice is you.

15. The Sexy Tango Of Honesty and Authenticity

Be honest. Be forthright. Be authentic. You believe things. You know things. You
question things. All this crazy shit needs to spill out of your head and end up on the
page and in that — in the choices you make, choices that come from questions only you
could’ve ever asked — your voice will bloom. Like a vagina. A blooming, fragrant
vagina. I might be confusing “vaginas” with “flowers” again.

16. What You Add Versus What You Subtract

It’s easy to suggest that a writer’s voice is what’s there when you write unbidden,
unrestrained by the shackles of grammar or good taste or, y’know, sobriety. But your
voice is not only a summation of those things you let out the door — it’s also a
calculation configuring those doors you keep closed. It’s about subtracting as well as
adding — pruning as well as cultivating. Voice can be a matter of writing small just as
easily as it can measure the boldness of your stroke. HA HA HA STROKE
MASTURBATION um, nothing.

17. Look To Your Body Of Work, See The Voice Emerge

Voice is not just the result of a single sentence or paragraph or page. It’s not even the
sum total of a whole story. It’s all your work laid out across the table like the bones and
fossils of an unidentified carcass.

18. Listen To Your Voice — No, I Mean Your Actual Voice


There lurks an intimate connection between the written word and the spoken word. We
pretend it’s not true, as if the written word is somehow higher up in the food chain,
somehow more exalted, but that’s a big brass bucket brimming with bullshit. Language
exists initially to communicate from person to person — it is born of speech and sound.
Words aren’t just symbols: they’re really how we say things. And so it is that your
actual voice matters in this regard. Listen to what you say and how you say things: your
authorial voice lurks in this. You should endeavor to write at least in part how you
speak. By doing that, you capture the essence of how you say things. Related: always
read your work out loud.

19. The Banshee’s Scream

Voice matters. Voice is important. But at the end of the day, if it takes your story and
drowns it in a hot stockpot of scalding soup, then you’ve done yourself a disservice. In
the Great Cosmic Chain Of Telling Bad-Ass Motherfucking Stories, voice is
subservient to story, not vice versa. Voice helps you tell the story at the same time story
helps you find your voice. But no matter what, story is the pinnacle, the zenith, the
apogee, and other words that mean the “tippy-top” of the narrative mountain.

20. Regular Like A Morning Constitutional

Consistency in voice matters. It should day to day, page after page, hold together. The
only way this fails is if you’re uncertain. If you lose your shit. If you freak the fuck out.

21. Don’t Panic

Breathe easy. Loosen your mind sphincter. Don’t panic. It’s like with sex — think too
much and too hard about it, you’ll short circuit a synapse and put the kibosh on the
mood. Serenity serves the writer’s voice.

22. Where Writer’s Block Is Born, Screaming And Keening

I wonder if writer’s block is actually a thing born of not yet knowing your voice. If
we’re here to assume that part of a writer’s voice is knowing what to say and how to say
it, then not being sure of — or comfortable with — one’s voice would lead to the fear
that spawns the poorly-named writer’s block. It seems sensible. Then again, so did
running through that Arby’s naked last night, sauced to the gills on ecstasy and wine
coolers. Maybe I’m not the best guy to listen to on what’s sensible.

23. Eventually You Stop Being Afraid Of Yourself

Writers are at the outset a scared species. It’s not our fault: we’re told that it’s a bad idea
and unless we want to prepare for a life lived inside a palatial piano crate we should just
buckle down and become accountants. And so I think there’s a lot of bad psychic
voodoo that clogs the works, and until we start to clear that out, it’s really hard to find
out who we are on the page and what our voice looks and sounds like. Finding your
voice is then synonymous with losing the fear of not just writing but of being a writer.

24. The Confidence Game


Confidence is key. I’ll say no more than that: confidence is key.

25. Don’t Write Like Anybody Else

At the end of the day, take the opportunity to write like you want to write. Actually, it’s
weirder and deeper than that — what I really mean is, write like you need to write. Your
voice might be a component of confidence, but it also might be an accumulation of
obsessions and foibles and fears and frailties and all the crazy moon-unit shit that makes
us who we are. I’m going to quote from another terribleminds commenter, found last
week at “25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now)” — Amy
Severson said: “When I finally realized that I was never going to write like the the
authors I loved and just started writing how (and what) I wanted to, it was like someone
blew out the little candle I was huddled under and flipped the switch on a dozen
spotlights.” I think that says it all about a writer’s voice, don’t you?

1. A Wild And Unfettered Imagination

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

2. Discipline

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

3. Optimism

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

4. Realism

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

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

6. Sticktoitiveness

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

7. Honesty

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

8. Confidence

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

9. Thick Skin

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

10. Humor

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

11. Responsibility

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

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

13. Coffee

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

14. Business Sense

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

15. A Critical Eye

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

16. A Willingness To Do Evil

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

17. Patience

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

18. Tact

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

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

20. Courage

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

21. Liquor

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

22. Tranquility

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

23. Loyalty

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

24. Ten Pounds Of Crazy In A Five Pound Bucket

Speaking of farking moonbats: we’re moonbats because we need to be moonbats. I


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

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

<a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/11/03/a-scampering-peregrination-of-
nanowrimo-writing-tips/"># A Scampering Peregrination Of NaNoWriMo Writing Tips

1. The first draft is for you. Subsequent drafts are for everybody else. So, write this one
the way you want to. Do what thou wilt. Be selfish. Grab at the story with greedy paws.

2. ABI: Always Be Interesting. Not just to others — write what interests you.

3. If you feel yourself getting bored, change the story so that you aren’t. Motivate
yourself through chaos, unpredictability, and interest. If your own interest in the story
hits a wall: blow shit up. Go cuckoo bananapants.Surprise yourself.

4. It’s easier to write your word count earlier in the day than later. Early means it’s out
of the way. Later means you’re racing against the clock. Racing against the clock makes
for good fiction (OH MY GOD THE SQUIRREL IS GOING TO EXPLODE IF WE
DON’T JIBBER THE JABBER IN TIME). It makes for unpleasant writing, however.

5. Be kind. Share. Talk. Engage in the community. Offer your own tips. Be the best
version of yourself in the process and write the song that lives in the glitter-shellacked
eerily-vibrating Music Box you call a ‘heart.’

6. Characters are everything. Focus on them. Characters make plot by doing things and
saying things. Do not staple plot to the story. The plot grows inside the story based on
the actions of interested and interesting characters. Story lives in how characters address
(and fail to address) their problems. Plot is skeleton, not exoskeleton.

7. Give less of a shit. Relax. Ease off the stress stick, cowpoke. You’re not Superman
saving a busload of precious orphans. You’re writing a novel. You can still give a shit
— but set aside the baggage and expectations. You’re not Humanity’s Last Chance.

8. Don’t compare yourself to anybody else. You do you. Let them do them.
9. Don’t cheat on your story with another story. Don’t go porking another manuscript
behind the WORDSHED. (See, it’s like woodshed — oh, hell, never mind.) Got another
idea for a story? Of course you do. The test of a writer is staying on track. You’re
committed. Married. Don’t cheat. Put a ring on it. Those other ideas can have their day:
write down a quick logline or synopsis, then shut the notebook and get back to work.

10. Of course it’s work. Expect it to be. Let it be work.

11. Of course it feels like you’re lost. We all feel that way. You’re not alone. Nobody
knows what the fuck they’re doing. We’re all pretending. We’re all our own imaginary
friends lost in a realm of our own devising. It’s what makes this thing so weird and so
exciting. Fuck it. Keep going.

12. Don’t worry about being original. Originality is overrated. The one thing that’s
unique about your story is that you’re the one writing it. Your voice is the original
thing.

13. You don’t chase your voice. You are your voice. Your voice is the way you speak,
the way you think, the ideas you have. Your voice is the thing you find when you stop
looking for it.

14. Need a throughline? An invisible thread on which to hang your tale? Consider
theme. Theme is the argument your story is making. Theme is what your work is about.
It’s what you’re trying to say. It’s what you believe. It’s what the story is telling people.
Theme is a strand of spider silk. It can connect everything — the grand unification
argument of storytelling.

15. Concentrate more on things happening in the story. Worry less about what
happened. Stories are most engaging in the present and suggestive of the future. The
past is useful, but can fast become a boat anchor or a full colostomy bag hanging too-
heavy on the hip. The story is people saying things and people doing things.
Explanations, expositions, backstory, internal monologuing: don’t be a narrative
hoarder. Let go of as many details as you can.

16. Write down only those things that carry you — and the reader — to the next part of
the story. Anything else is just gum sticking your boot (and theirs) to the sidewalk.

17. The three shits easy plot generator: characters want shit, so they do shit to get what
they want, and then shit happens in the process. Motivation. Action. Consequence.

18. Every character believes herself to be the main character. Every character is the hero
of her own story. That includes antagonists. That includes supporting characters. This
belief held by all characters puts characters in contention with one another. And plot is
created from the result.

19. Yes, it’s hard. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be awesome.Stop being afraid of difficult
things.

20. Protect your writing time. Someone wants to take that away from you, you gotta do
the Gandalf jam. Plant your feet. Slam your staff (note: not a euphemism for a penis)
against the ground. THOU SHALT NOT PASS. Or, THOU SHALT NOT TAKE
AWAY THE TIME I HAVE RESERVED FOR THIS TASK I CONSIDER
IMPORTANT SO EAT A GIANT CHRISTMAS STOCKING CRAMMED WITH
MIDDLE FINGERS YOU JERKY MCJERKERSON.

21. Consider the story’s stakes. What can be won or lost by the characters? The story is
the characters betting on something. What happens if they bet too big? What happens if
they lose the bet? How do the stakes of different characters oppose each other?

22. You are your own muse. You make your ownmotherfucking magic.

23. It’s okay if you fail as long as you learn something from it.

24. It’s also totally okay if NaNoWriMo isn’t for you. It wasn’t really for me. It’s not
for a lot of people. Sometimes it fits. Sometimes it’s trying to headbutt a square peg into
a circle hole. Sometimes it feels like you’re trying to cram an end-table up an asshole.
Just because it isn’t for you doesn’t mean novel-writing isn’t for you. Draw your own
map if the one you have in your hand doesn’t take you to the pirate’s treasure.

25. Fuck ‘em if they don’t believe in you. Your book isn’t a precious fairy. It needs
nobody’s faith to fly. It doesn’t even need your faith right now. It just needs you to do
the work. So: do the work

<a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/10/29/digging-ditches-or-casting-spells-
on-magic-in-writing/"># Digging Ditches Or Casting Spells: On Magic In Writing

Here is a modified version of the keynote speech I gave to the very wonderful Surrey
International Writer’s Conference this past weekend, should you care to check it out.
It’s been slightly rejiggered and reformatted to fit a proper blog post rather than a
banquet speech.

There’s a war going on.

No, no — it’s not the war between self-publishers and the traditionally-published. Not a
war between lit fic and genre nerds, not a clash betwixt authors and reviewers and the
authors who, ahem, stalk the reviewers. This isn’t a war between you and me because
frankly there’s way too many of you and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t last fifteen seconds.

This isn’t even a war outside this blog.

It’s a war inside here.

taps chest

Inside the rusty bucket of fireplace ash I call a ‘heart.’

And even then you’re saying, “Oh, I know what he’s about to say. He’s about to talk
about the war between cake and pie,” but there I say, nay, nay, that is not what I mean.
(Besides, that is a Cold War, long locked in a permanent state of stalemate. Just as you
think pie has clenched it, cake rises from the darkness of defeat, sporting frosting that
tastes like buttercream and vengeance.)

The war I’m talking about is a hot war. Active and alive, fought even now as I write this
blog post.

This war is about magic.

This war is about whether or not this thing that we do is somehow magical.

(And by “this thing we do,” I do not mean publishing. Oh hell no. Publishing is purely
the making of sausage. Publishing is a gray and lightless place. Publishing is Mordor.
Publishing is the inside of Gollum’s mouth:sticky and fishy and bitey.)

No, what I mean is: we sometimes think of writing as being a precious thing. A magical
talent, an otherworldly commodity. When talking about writing we sometimes speak of
things in a magical way, right? THE MUSE COUGHED INTO MY MOUTH AND
FILLED ME WITH HER PRECIOUS BACTERIAL WHIMSY. Or, MY
CHARACTERS DIDNT LISTEN TO ME, NO SIR, THEY JUST WENT OFF AND
DID THEIR OWN THING, LIKE A GANG OF ROGUE CHIMPANZEES LET
LOOSE IN A SHOPPING MALL HA HA HA SILLY SENTIENT CHARACTERS
I’M JUST A PAWN IN THEIR GAME.

Trust me — I get it. I even want to agree. Our writing certainly feels magical, right? It
has the sense of the ritual about it — the occult, the arcane. Conjuring something from
literally nothing. The act driven by little reagents: the right pen, the proper font, the
perfect coffee mug. The act further driven by sacrifices big and small: things laid on the
altar of the act like our time, our tears, our sanity. (I mean, because c’mon: writers are
cuckoo bananapants. I would posit that as writers we are each crazier than an outhouse
owl. Which is of course an owl trapped in an outhouse. I think we can all agree that is
an owl we do not want to meet because that owl wants to fly but all it can do instead is
huff outhouse fumes in a dark crap-closet poop-prison.)

With writing, we all feel like little Harries and Hermiones running around:

“SCRIPTO NOVELIOSO!”

shoots words out of magic wand

Ah, but see — I was not raised with magic in mind.

My father was not a man given over such foolish notions. He was a man of fundamental
things: dirt, wood, hay, the bang of a hammer, the growl of an engine. I remember at a
young age asking him about God and he shrugged and grunted: “God lives in the Earth
and makes the plants grow.” I was like, whoa, really? Is that true? Here I was picturing
an actual deity lurking beneath the unturned earth, ready to shove corn stalks and
blackberry briar up through the ground. And he gave me this look like I’d been donkey-
kicked and was like, “Jesus Christ, how should I know? Now hand me that wrench.”
My father’s answer to things was not ‘magic.’ It was HARD MOTHERFUCKING
WORK. God forbid you tell him you were bored. “Go build something. Mow the lawn.
Move that box.” He would utter that dreadful curse: “Bored? Oh, I’ll give you
something to do.” He literally — and this is a true story — told me one time to dig a ten
foot long ditch, three feet deep, in the yard. I did it. Are we laying pipe? Hiding a
snake? Burying various body parts? Then he covered it back up again. I was like, what
the crap are you doing? Why did I dig that hole?

He said: “Sometimes you just need to dig a ditch.”

When the day came that I made it clear I wanted to be a writer, I’m pretty sure his ass
clenched up hard enough to snap a piece of metal rebar. Writing was a soft job. A
writer’s hands were soft hands. My father’s hands were no longer hands: they were just
bones wreathed in callus. (Actually, a note about my father’s hands: he was missing his
pinky finger, because he smashed it in a log splitter, and instead of paying the doctor to
cut it off, he did it himself with a pair of bolt cutters to save some coin and, apparently,
aggravation. By the way,there’s no writing advice analog there, no
storytelling metaphor buried in that — seriously, do not cut off your own finger with
bolt cutters. That’s a PSA from me to you. You can thank me later.)

So, I took his grumpy ethos of GRRRR HARD WORK with me to into the word mines
and I told him, you’ll see, I’ll work hard, I’ll make it big someday. (And I think he was
like, YEAH YEAH, LEMME KNOW WHEN YOUR LITTLE HOBBY MAKES YOU
CUT OFF YOUR OWN PINKY FINGER.) And then that was that for how he felt
about my career choice.

So, a big part of me is very much anti-magic when it comes to this thing we do. Anyone
presents a romantic, misty-eyed narrative about writing and my knee-jerk response is,
SHUT UP. WRITING IS JUST DIGGING DITCHES. ITS YOU CLEANING OUT
THE CREATIVE HORSE STALLS. ITS ALL HORSE POOP AND HEAVY
SHOVELS. SHOVEL IT! HORSE POOP!

thrusts shovel full of horse poop at you

It’s easy to see how magical thinking can hurt you, as a writer. By giving over your
writing to the fates, the gods, the muses, and in that, you remove your own agency. You
cede control of the work — of the creation of the work — to forces beyond you,
absolving you of all responsibility. I had a neighbor who talked about wanting to be a
writer, and she said that she’d do it but she just had to “find the time,” but that when she
did she would do it because she was inspired — she’d be hit by a “bolt of lightning” and
even if she were driving her grandchildren around she’d have to pull over on the side of
the road and just write it all down. Which of course sounds lovely. Inspiration! Bolts of
lightning! So dramatic! Also sounds like a really great way to never write a goddamn
thing.

With magical thinking, if the ritual isn’t perfect, if the proper sacrifices were not made,
if the magical elves who live under your desk are not appeased — then the work never
gets done. I can assure you right now: every day of writing does not feel like magic.

(Some days feel like an act of violent proctology on an angry goat.)


And don’t even get me started on editing. If magic was an essential to edit your book,
I’m not sure a second draft would ever ever EVER get written. Editing can be a
bewildering slog. It can be a dizzying run through a hedge maze at night. The only
magic felt there sometimes is a nightmare magic — imps and incubi hounding your
every step.

Leaving writing as a magical act further suggests that those that can conjure the creative
power are somehow more special: given over to a sacred gift, born of a proper bloodline
or under an alignment of authorial planets. Writing too hard? Hm, must not have that
old wordslinger magic! You’re not a proper ordained priest in the Inkolyte Brotherhood.
Oh, what, you think anybody can just write? What are you, some kind of Lutheran? Get
your weird manifesto off my door, anarchist.

But even still, even in those comparisons…

Little hints of magic. Sparks in the dark.

And so then the battle flares up again: I like magic. Magic is neat. I want this thing we
do to be magical because it explains so much — it explains the serendipity of a good
day’s work, it explains when your characters seem to have minds of their own, and it
explains what happens when you get a really great book that grabs you by the sticky
wicket and won’t let go. Imagination and creation are so volcanic, so pyroclastic, how
can that not be magic? Stories shape the world. Writers have power. What I’m trying to
say is:

GODamnit, I want to be Gandalf.

Why can’t I be Gandalf?

WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME.

One day, I too shall have a Gandalfian beard.

slams down giant pen against the earth

THOU SHALL NOT PROCRASTINATE

wrestles the fire demon of authorial distractions into a chasm

Ahem.

Still, though, much as I want to be Gandalf — Gandalf was special. An elevated class.
A proper wizard. I’m no wizard. I’m just a regular old human tub-of-guts. It feels like
magic, but it can’t be magic — can it? Maybe there’s something there, I think. I wonder,
then, is it less about casting a magic spell or giving yourself over to mystical forces, and
is it more a magic trick? Is it artifice and illusion? Less Gandalf and more Penn and
Teller? What we see as the audience at a magic show seems impossible: the rabbit in the
hat, the girl in the box. But the magician isn’t given over to that magic. The magician
knows the trick. The magician created the mechanism by which to fool US into thinking
that what we are seeing is real.
So, which is it? Spellcasting magic? Just a trick? Purely the product of hard work?

Let me tell you about three times where this thing that we do felt magical truly for me.

One: me, the year 2010. I spent five years trying and failing to write what would
become my debut novel, BLACKBIRDS. I have a screenwriting mentor at the time —
because that’s what you do, right? You want to be a novelist, go get a screenwriting
mentor? — and he sits me down and tells me to outline the book that I am unable to
finish. And I say HO HO HO no silly Hollywoodman, we AUTHORIAL TYPES find
our sails filled with MUSE BREATH, not with the crass and gassy winds of your
pedestrian outlines. And he says, no, shut up, do it anyway, and so I gnash my teeth.
Grr. And bite the belt. And punch frozen meat. And then I do it. it. Holy shit, I do it!
Suddenly, I have a plot. I have an ending! And a month later, I have a novel.

Two: another writer’s conference. Not long after Blackbirds has come out. I’m coming
out of a banquet a young woman hurries up to me and she’s shaking and quaking and
I’m suddenly worried about her. Is something wrong, I ask? Seems she’s nervous about
meeting me. And I think, oh, god, what has she heard? What did I do? Is she about to
serve me a subpoena? She’s totally about to serve me a subpoena. But then she says
she’s a fan, she loved my novel BLACKBIRDS and it made her want to be a writer and
I think, oh my stars and garters, I think this is my first bonafide fan! (And then I think: I
should probably tell her to learn restaurant management or lockpicking skills or
anything but writing.)

Three: this memory, a few years before the other two. My father is still alive, before the
prostate cancer would come to claim him. I’m in Colorado visiting his new house, for
he had just moved out there to retire, and as with the war between cake and pie I feel
like my father and I have forced a stalemate. He doesn’t approve of my career choice
but he grudgingly acknowledges it and I acknowledge his grudging acknowledgment
and life moves on. Then comes a day on this trip where he introduces me to a close
friend and neighbor, a man named George. And George proceeds to dictate my career to
me thus far: all my successes, all of my projects, none of my failures. And I ask him,
how do you know all this? Are you stalking me online, George? Though I am always
flattered by the attention of older gentlemen — bats eyelashes — you don’t seem the
type. He seems surprised and says, “Well, your father told me all about it, of course.
He’s really proud of all the things you’ve worked to achieve.”

jaw does not hang open so much as it unhinges and falls to the dirt

Well, holy shit.

There. Magic. Punctuating the darkness like little fireflies.

Three times that are not exhaustive. Just three snapshots among many.

What all this tells me is that:

The act of writing is not magic.

But it sure has its magic moments.


And why does it have those moments?

It has them because of us.

See, the truth is, no war is going on. These different ideas — magic as spellcasting,
magic as trick, writing as a product of hard work — come together to tell the whole
story. It’s hard work that allows us to tirelessly practice and reiterate our tricks. It’s hard
work and indeed sacrifice that allows us to sometimes conjure those moments that
remind us that writing starts as fingers on keyboards and words on pages but can end up
as something so much stranger and so much greater than we ever anticipated. We are
the magicians and wizards, but it takes a helluva lot of hard work — not from the
outside, but from the inside, magic drawn up from within like water from a well more
than it is hoped for like a bolt of lightning — to clinch the spell, to perform the illusion.

The Grand Adventure To Find Your Voice

I completed a really cool interview over at 52Reviews, and there I answered a question
about voice, and the answer, I think, may be of some use to readers here. Go check out
the interview, as I talk a bit about writing craft and The Blue Blazes and also about
pointing guns at ponies. (Don’t worry, the pony is still alive. Sheesh.)

Anyway, here’s that quote on voice:

“Every author decides to go on a grand adventure one day, and that grand adventure is
to find her voice. She leaves the comfort of her own wordsmithy and she traipses
through many fictional worlds written by many writers and along the way she pokes
through their writings to see if her voice is in there somewhere. She takes what she
reads and she mimics their voices, taking little pieces of other authors with her in her
mind and on the page.

Is her voice cynical? Optimistic? Short and curt, or long and breezy? She doesn’t know
and so she reads and she writes and she lives life in an effort to find out.

This adventure takes as long as it takes, but one day the author tires of it and she comes
home, empty-handed, still uncertain what her voice looks like or sounds like.

And there, at home, she discovers her voice is waiting. In fact, it’s been there all along.

Your voice is how you write when you’re not trying to find your voice. Your voice is
the way you write, the way you talk. Your voice is who you are, what you believe, what
themes you knowingly and unknowingly embrace.

Your voice is you.

Search for it and you won’t find it. Stop looking and it’ll find you.”
Writing Style 2

<a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/02/27/writing-exercise-describe-one-
things-ten-ways/"># Writing Exercise: Describe One Things Ten Ways

Last week’s challenge: Random Song Challenge

First up: an administrative detail. For those who took part in the Voicemails From The
Future challenge — Reggie Lutz, you won a chronofact from the proceedings! Bounce
me a message to terribleminds at gmail dot com. Yay!

(Er, edit: I don’t need everyone to write me an email. Just Reggie, thanks!)

Now: onto the challenge.

This week — not a flash fiction challenge so much so much as an experimental writing
exercise. I want to do these from time to time just to keep things fresh around here.

So, here’s the drill —

I want you to take one thing and describe it ten different ways.

That thing can be… anything. An object. A person. A sensation. A place. An


experience.

But I want you to focus on it and describe it multiple ways. Ten, as noted.

Each no more than a sentence of description.

(Feel free to choose a real world thing. Say, a lamp in your corner, or the flu you had
last week.)

Differ your approaches in how you describe this thing.

Try pinballing from abstraction to factual — from metaphorical to forthright.

The goal here is just to flex our descriptive muscles a bit.

An example? After jogging the other day, I had a peculiar feeling in my face and I — as
I am wont to do — went through the various ways I might describe this feeling. It was a
hot pulsing. Like my heart was in my head. Like I was a goldfish inside an aquarium
and some kid was tapping on the glass. Like both the basketball dribbling and the court
on which it bounced. This is just a thing I do: I see a person or experience a sensation
and I ask: how would I describe that?

Try it out. Pick a thing. Ten different descriptions.

Feel free to do this directly in the comments or at your blog (post a link).

Got till March 7th, noon EST to jump on in.


Go

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