Nine Things For Writers to Let Go Of

I don't write much about my woo-woo practice here. I write a little in my other blog from time to time (and there may be more coming), but it tends to be something I am circumspect about around most folks. Usually my reaction when I talk about anything like being genderqueer, pansexual, non-monogamous or pagan—when folks demand to know "what does THIS have to do with writing,"—is probably the opposite of what they intended. It makes me want to write about that stuff MORE. But my practice is mostly personal and I don't like to proselytize.  

However, last night was the "long moon." (Also sometimes "cold moon" or "oak moon.") It's the last full moon before the solstice. That's an astronomic term, not just for us new age folks who like to wank off with our moon water. And whether you consider lunar cycles to have any particular spiritual significance or would just prefer to consider a social psychological practice, the long moon is a time where a lot of people ritualistically let go of the fetters and thoughts that no longer serve them.

For me, it's a tricky practice. I don't just let go of every terrible event or relationship or moment that's ever happened to me. Some of those experiences have galvanized me, and sometimes the worst things I go through end up leaving this indelible goodness in places and ways I could never have expected. And as I tried to carefully edit my list, I started to realize how well some of the ideas I wanted to let go of mapped onto my own career and creative life.

So I came up with a list for writers.

[Before we go ANY further, I want to take a moment to talk about the gaslighting effect of toxic positivity. Letting go of that which no longer serves us is NOT THE SAME THING!

We're not going to always look on the bright side. There's no benefit to feeling guilt over negative emotions. Just because "it could be worse" does not mean it isn't bad, or a person should never feel bad feelings. Not everything will work out, and the universe is cold and uncaring—not your secret conspiratorial pal. (The tendency for everything to work out is more accurately described as privilege.) Not everyone gets a happy ending. And on top of the ways in which negative emotions are ignored and shamed, toxic positivity can fountainhead a whole movement that tries to whitewash systemic and systematic injustice with "love and light" and call any attempt to accurately recognize such injustice as "negativity." 

For some folks, some of the items on this list cannot be simply willed out of existence no matter how intense one's spiritual practice. Some will require years of therapy. Some need meds. Some of the items on this list (in some cases all) will be made worse by mental illnesses, and just wishing them gone on a particular full moon night won't fix the problem. Some may be chronic in the lives of a number of writers, and they will spend a lifetime working around them. I make no value or moral judgements about anyone's ABILITY to let these go. But if they can be released, a writer will be better for it.]

1- Perfectionism

Spoiler alert. It'll never be perfect. You have to find the sweet spot of "as good as you can get it for what you're trying to do" and then let it go. If you're trying to write a literary masterpiece, maybe you put in a few more drafts than if you are punching out the 15th popcorn novel in a series so that your fans will buy it up and keep your rent paid for the next six months. But whatever you're trying to accomplish, at some point, it's reached its glass ceiling of limited returns. And that's when it's time for you to do what all artists should do, and move on.

Perfectionism just leads to anxiety, procrastination, and a fear of failure that will stymie ANY progress.

Make it as good as you can (for what it is). Done is better than perfect. 

2- Comparative Benchmarks of Success

There will always be someone with a more widely read blog or better selling novel or who is just a little further along in their career. To say nothing of the Stephen Kings and Neil Gaimans and Colleen Hoovers who eclipse us all with their phenomenal success. This has never been clearer to me than having entire MFA cohorts gawking at my relative success while I try to justify the expense of eating at Panera for the second time in a week. I bet Stephen King gets Panera as often as he….okay, maybe best to let this go.

We are absolutely SOAKING in a commercial culture that wants us to compare ourselves to each other. (Often so we'll buy a product that'll make us feel better about that comparison—see below.) But these comparisons lead to feelings of envy, depression, and are inextricable from a certain virulent sense of entitlement about what we are due. Better to focus on the work and how to continue forth with the best possible effort day after day.

3- Rampant Materialism

Look, there's a whole movement that tries to shame poor people for going to the emergency room or for eating anything but beans and rice. Fuck that. FUCK IT. We all require safety, which includes food security, shelter, medical care, and not worrying about the clicking noise that the only car available we have to get to the job two towns over has started making. There are an awful lot of people who have nothing to cut out of a budget and who have to do what they can to make ends meet. Believe me. I walk a neighbor's dog for a few bucks anytime I want Panera. 

But there is a level of materialism that a writer could do without. This is not a well-paying career until/unless one is well established with a LOT of work in the rearview. Everything from being secure on a tighter budget to not having to work long hours at some job that takes you away from writing will be served by not letting a never-sated lifestyle obsession dictate the unending quest for more and better stuff.

4- Limiting Beliefs/Negative Self-Talk

You can't do ANYTHING you set your mind to, no matter what the cishet white male motivational speaker with the six-figure salary says you can. And acknowledging systemic and systematic injustices and inequalities in a world rampant with both is not somehow what's holding folks back. No matter how clear the thought, or how many candles are lit, no one can manifest themselves out of real-world limitations. 

But there is a needle to thread, especially for a writer. If you give oxygen to your catastrophic intrusive thoughts, you create a reality in which these objectives are just as impossible as you believe them to be. If you keep thinking that you can't write that book or no one will ever want to read you, you are very likely to talk yourself out of even trying. Then you definitely won't get it done. 

Sometimes there's a fine line between blithely spewing rainbows up people's butts and a simple belief that you can accomplish something worthwhile if you keep trying. (Maybe not exactly what you wanted, but something.) Not every positive thought has the ability to alter your reality…but ironically, most negative ones actually do.

5- Concern for the Opinions of Others

Please understand that I'm not telling you to go publish your unedited NaNoWriMo novel because other people's opinions are useless. I'm not telling you that you don't need an editor or peer feedback or to listen to anyone. You have to be willing to listen to some people.

But it's up to you who.

If you sit around and worry about the opinions of everyone, you'll never get it done. It's just too damned scary. MOST people won't like what you do. People won't like your style. They won't like your content. They won't like your politics. They won't like your philosophy. They won't like your adherence to a style guide that puts in the comma when they wouldn't have. They won't like your adherence to a style guide that leaves out the comma that they would have put in. They won't like that you said "fuck." They won't like your joke about cishet white dudes. They won't like that you eat at Panera. There are eight billion people in the world, and even if you somehow manage to reproduce the outrageous, phenomenal, unthinkable success of She Who Shall Not be Named and sell 500 million copies (which is far from being LIKED by everyone who buys a copy, BTW), you still will have 15/16ths of the world basically unimpressed by you. MOST people aren't going to like you. And if you sit around caring about all of them, not only will your simple act of expressing YOURSELF suffer, but you'll never find the people who will think you're great.

6- Your Past Failed Goals

You either hit them or you didn't. 

Kudos if you did—or got close. 

If not, don't dwell on it. Get up. Dust yourself off. Set new goals—perhaps slightly easier ones. This is a new day/week/month/year. 

I wanted to be published by 30…then 40…now I'm thinking 50 might be a stretch. 

But if I let my failure at 30 define me, I'd never have a writing career. Hell, if I let my failure to write two articles a week during my cancer recovery define me, I'd be sunk. 

If you aren't failing at goals from time to time, your goals are too easy. Set new ones. 

7- Saying Yes to Everything

Protect your writing time. 

Protect your writing time.

Protect your writing time.

I can't tell you what your priorities in life are. Family? MMORPGs? Sex parties? Dating? Eating at Panera? Off-road mountain biking? But if you say yes to EVERYTHING, there's nothing left for writing. It's really that simple.

8- The Excuses

We've all got them, and most of them suck.

You'd be harder pressed to find someone who DOESN'T think they have a book in them…along with a list of excuses as long ass their arm for why they haven't written it. 

If you don't want to write, don't write. That's okay. No really, that's really, really, REALLY okay.

If you do want to write, you have to let go of the excuses.

[Insert a Panera joke here.]

9- Hubris

Negative self talk is one thing. Thinking you don't need an editor or that your first draft is ready after a quick edit is another. Get rid of both.

If you want to be a writer, you have to let go of the idea that you are a gift to the written word. You need an editor (maybe two). You need to revise. You need to trust the process and rewrite rather than just polish your first draft. You need to get messy.

If you just want to self-publish, admire your own book on your own bookshelf, and never even sell enough to buy lunch at Panera, don't let me get in your way. But if you want more than your pressured-into-it friends buying your novel, you need to release your ego.

A Writer's Guide to Working At Home (Part 2 of 3)

We're jumping in straight from 

Part 1 

So pop back there if you want the introduction and the first few suggestions.

And apologies for the long break between part one and two. I managed to GET Covid 19 (at least I'm 90% sure of it) and it was a bit over a week for recovery.


Though you may be seeing a lot of memes and macros telling you to fuck the idea of getting into a working mindset as a capitalist trap, and that you should definitely be spending your social distancing time in pit-stained sweats and PJ bottoms eating Froot Loops on the couch by pouring them into your mouth and then taking a swig out of a gallon jug of milk, a few of you might be wondering if there's maybe a more effective way to knock out a day's work from the living room.

If that IS you, rock it, Boo. Feel how you feel! May the brie smell of your day-three taintswamp give you strength to know no productivity that isn't done by crossing animals. Be the fabulous, magnificent, effervescent languor avatar you have always known you could be if you JUST had the chance. Transcend in your glory.

In all seriousness, it will be enough that you make it. You do not have to listen to those cultural messages about productivity and usefulness. This isn't a vacation or even a sabbatical to write a book. This is a global pandemic.

However, I know a few of you have work you HAVE to get done, and some of you might want to maybe find some middle ground between cultural Orcs behind you singing "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way*" and emerging in ten weeks from the longest period without work you've had in your life without so much as another couple of chapters on your steampunk zombie novel written. Also, I don't want to overstep my bounds or anyone's glorious attempt to reach their couchpotato final form, but there may even be a couple of you ready for the psychological advice that being sedentary for days at a time might be making your mindset worse.

(*It's a metaphor, okay? It's just a really weird and clunky one!) 


3-Love It When a Plan Comes Together *puff cigar* (or "What would you say...you DO here?")

This is one of those things that more people should be doing IN GENERAL, but let's talk about it strictly in terms of Work From Home™ and writing.

Look, I know we live in a corporate culture where "being self-motivated" is some brilliant buzzword that everyone sticks on their resume, but it's just....bollox. It's not true. People are TERRIBLE at motivating themselves. We all want to be fabulous self-starters and most, if left to our own devices, do what we need to do and want to do and have a really hard time with anything we don't really want to do. We need direction, guidance, and a deadline, or we'll just sit there playing Minecraft and saying we aren't sure what to do.  It's a rare skill set to be able to kick one's own ass into motivation. That's why everyone wants it on their resume.

It's not a bad thing necessarily. Most of you only have to think about how your job was the last time the boss wasn't there. You probably goof off a LOT on those days. Probably the entire office didn't quite get as much done. It doesn't make you a shitty worker. We all work better with external motivation. (This is the entire reason that capitalism requires poverty––why it is considered "socialism" to just "give away" housing and food. If we did, there would not be an inexhaustible source of cheap labor on the edge of homelessness and starvation willing to do almost anything to survive.)

Well, writers don't have external motivation. We have to learn to be our own bosses. Some of us (like me) get a little carried away with that role and demand more from ourselves than we would anyone else ("Hey, me, what's happening? Yeeeaaah. Listen, me. If I could just get me to do those TPS reports, that'd be great. Thanks a bunch, me." *sips coffee*)

You may have some external deadlines pressing down on you to help. ("I need the DeLaney reports emailed to me by noon!"), but chances are if you're going to be mostly riding your own ass (sadly, not in the fun way, hur hur), you are going to need to learn to set some goals.

The best and easiest way to do this is to decide WHAT you want to do each morning before you start (or if you prefer, as your last task of the night before). You can always add things to this if you whip through it by noon (or shit....go enjoy the afternoon off if you can!), but it will at least give you a sense of what you want to accomplish so that it doesn't take you a week to do four hours worth of work. For the maximum effect, try S.M.A.R.T. goals because "writing two pages on the DeLaney reports by noon" is always going to be easier to accomplish than "getting something done today."

3b- This Can Help in the Other Direction Too!

If you're outrageously good at self-motivation, this will keep you from doing too much.

It's too easy to sit down and "work" without the slightest sense of what that means. I don't know how your job shapes out, but I'm pretty sure that if you have the ability to work from home, it's not likely that you finish up the last thing and you are done. That tends to happen only in the kinds of jobs that cannot be done from home.

Chances are if you're working from home, you work in a job where there is ALWAYS more to do, more you could be doing, or something you could be doing better. You could streamline those files. You could redo that spreadsheet. You could write that report and get it in early so that you can...start another one.

There's no sense in working more than you would if you were at a job with breaks, random co-worker conversations, a meeting or two a day, six trips to the water cooler, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, shitting on company time, and a you-shaped-hole-in-the-wall-at-5pm.


4- Gaze Upon the Countenance of Mother Nature! (Or "Green shit is good for you, yo.")

Look, I'm not telling you to go become a mountaineer or go ragehike something like Half-Dome tomorrow. If you used to hiss at the daystar and hate the impudent audacity with which it ROSE and SHONE every day, you don't have to change your lifestyle, but I'm guessing most of you usually had at least a few opportunities to go from here to the sandwich shop, eat lunch at a picnic table on the second-floor veranda, walk around the block, or go out and clear your head in the little courtyard with the weird corporate art. Or sit in a place with a decent view, even if you were behind protective glass.

To someone, somewhere, this is some deep, deep shit.

Okay, let's start with the basics. Sun is the best way to convert cholesterol into Vitamin D (not the "hur hur" kind) which is essential in absorbing calcium. It's also being increasingly understood to be important for...wait for it...mood regulation. Which means if you're not getting the D on the regular, you might be feeling a bit depressed. (Oh, come on! Is there ANY chance I wasn't going to make that joke?) Some research goes as far as to say that just opening some windows and trading out your house's dust, mold, insect waste, dander, and such for some outdoor air can help with serotonin production.

poorlydrawnlines.com

Damn it, Jim, I'm a writer, not a doctor, and it's not like the Google searches on this turn up the best of sources, but with a few exceptions, most people just don't feel good if they stay inside all the time. People who feel like crap have a hard time getting work done. So it will actually be a good thing for you to get out of the house a bit if you can. Take a little walk (properly distanced, of course) and enjoy some fresh air for a few.

If you absolutely can't get out the door for a few minutes a day, a Seasonal Effective Disorder (S.A.D.) lamp can help, and definitely make sure you're getting enough foods high in vitamin D (like salmon or egg yolks).


5- "That's Not My Working Chair!" (Or "Carve out a spot.")

The most important six inches in my entire apartment exist between my Mac Air and my gaming laptop. (The most important five inches on the other hand is––you know what; this is getting out of hand.) Same desk. Same chair (I just roll it over to the right). But worlds apart.

Ne'er the twain shall meet.
Cathamel the Muse dragon sees to it.

Your mindset is more attuned to geography than you're probably ready to deal with. It's the reason you can switch rooms and forget what you were thinking of, but if you go back into the old room, you'll often remember. It's the reason that as soon as you come over the hill on the way to the next town over, you start thinking of how good that one restaurant is.

And it's gonna mess with you when you try to work from home.

You've got all those spaces that are for other things. If your couch is for relaxing, that's not a good work spot. If you basically only sleep in bed, even propping yourself up, you're going to be tired. If the kitchen table is where you eat, you're going to be hungry all the time.

We writers learned long ago to carve out a spot that's just for working.

Yes, but non ironically.

It would be great if there were always an office or a study or a room of one's own. But even just a part of the table that's for work will do. Remember, you probably don't have to do this for more than a few months, so a temporary spot will work nicely. And in fact, it can even be a time-sensitive spot if you're really strapped for space. ("From 9am-5pm, this end of the table is for Mommy. You all need to clean up breakfast by 8:50 and it will be reopened to dinner prep at 5:15. Mommy's wine does not count as food.") But someway, somehow, you need to carve out a little space that puts you in "work" mood/mode.

Also, it can really help to make it your space, especially if you're doing the thing where it's only yours for a certain time. Put up a clock or bring out a lap surface. Play the music you have at work. Stick up a picture of your kids. Little things can trick your brain faster than you might expect.

I'm still getting my swing back after having Covid-19 and dealing with a lot of isolation psychology issues (which includes rampant ADD), so I'm going to change this into a three-parter. 

So...

On to Part 3

25 Jackwads Who Show Up On Every Post About How to Write Something Oft Problematically Portrayed

Whether it's how to portray an asexual or trans character with some humanity and nuance, what gustatory adjectives people of color are getting tired of reading every time their physical features are described, how tired readers are of having sexual assault be the backstory of so many "strong female characters," or an indigenous culture that is tired of being reduced to a handful of tired tropes and clichés about archaic melee weapons and broken English, you can't post advice on how to be a better writer of certain groups without the usual suspects showing up to put their jackwaddery on breathtaking display.

For me, of course, this happens on my Facebook page, but you can watch such jackwad reactions unfold on Reddit or Tumblr or anywhere someone might have the brazen nerve to write up a list of suggestions for how writers could be a little more sensitive about what they're writing.

This is just an example of what I'm talking about.
It's not comprehensive, and a couple of people have even
said they think it misses some things.
But the important thing is they want to add nuance to it for
EVEN BETTER representation.

Of course, these jackwads are telling on themselves when they holler like this.

You notice they don't say it's BAD advice or that it's inaccurate. They do not simply quietly ignore it. They leverage their social power to make sure, in a very public way, that they mock the very IDEA of more positively representing another group.

Most people who see advice on how to better portray a demographic would delight in tucking that advice into their pockets and use it to write a better character. But these folks don't want to write a better character. They want to write the same old trope-laden-cliché bullshit again and again without thinking too hard about it, and without having to hear a peep from the folks who don't like seeing negative schlocky portrayals over and over again. And the reason the same couple dozen or so arguments show up over and over again like clones of the thousands before is that this is a script of a power dynamic. They may not be the "Capital B" Bigots of the highest order with transparent and naked bigotry but they aren't willing to expend the effort to unpack how representation matters and tropey portrayals contribute to cultural misconceptions and legitimately harm people's lives. Whether they are just dedicated SQuiDs or genuine asshole bigots who know better than to say the quiet part out loud, they are jackwads who immediately begin to defend their right (and to hear them speak of it, practically their OBLIGATION) to portray people with the worst sort of writing.

1. That's not really a thing.//No one really thinks that.//What a load.//BS. It's difficult to imagine a less logical position (particularly from someone who most likely holds themselves in quite high esteem for being a "rationalist") than to look at a post by a person with a zillion jubilant replies of "THANK YOU" and to then assert that "no one" thinks that, it isn't real, or it is somehow being faked. Logically that statement was wrong with one person and became absurd with dozens and hundreds. Such replies really are the most basic (and I do mean BASIC) response by those with social power when they encounter something they don't want to exist. They simply deny that it does.
2. Who cares? Isn't it a little obvious who cares? Do you really need help with this one? I mean there's the post and all its replies. You have usernames and everything. I know what you really mean WHO CARES THAT I THINK MATTERS (and you probably want to unpack how assholish that is of you), but if the people tired of seeing folks like them portrayed badly, their family and friends, folks who care about good representation, writers interested in not being cliché wranglers, [*inhales deeply*] and discerning readers are not enough to make YOU care, see above about unpacking your assholery.
3. This is censorship. It takes a special kind of entitlement to believe that a post handing you advice on how to voluntarily write a better character IF YOU SO CHOOSE is somehow censoring you. You know you can just go right on writing your shitty portrayals, right? No one's going to stop you. It might not even stop your book deal, and if you're willing to stay off the internet, you may not ever have to have your tender fee-fees even wibble. Or are you using that special meaning of "censorship" so common among the powerful where it means "I have had my attention drawn to something I do that someone doesn't like, and I'm going to blame them for having the audacity to mention it." (Because you might want to consider how pathologically ABUSIVE that is....just in general.)
4. Don't tell me how to write. Oh you mean you're not interested in writing better characters? You don't want more nuanced, human, and authentic portrayals of groups other than what you consider "default human" (probably white, probably male, probably cis and het)? You are content to use clichés and tropes and be kind of a lackluster mediocre writer? Strange corner of the internet to be hanging out if you don't like writing advice. Very strange indeed.
5. Why so political (all of a sudden)? Calling the request for good media representation "politics" tends to reveal that one is probably white, cis, het, and usually male, just so you know. People tend to think of politics as this avoidable esoteric category of activity that doesn't affect every aspect of their lives when they aren't in the groups who have a strong vested, possibly life-or-death interest in political outcomes. These are lifelong struggles for some folks, and the fact that people these issues don't affect relegate them merely to the realm of "politics" is intended to be an insult. (As if the higher virtue is to be apolitical––a decidedly privileged perspective.) It's probably also not "all of a sudden."  You are just noticing it for the first time. Possibly because a lifetime of effort spent carefully consuming media in which you never had to notice it before (or could ignore allegories all damn day) is beginning to fall apart.
6. Why are we pandering? I know you mean that word to be "bad" but consider that you're saying you don't want to gratify or indulge someone who simply wants to see a better representation of folks like them in your medium. ("You could write people like me better. Here let me give you a very simple primer on how." "NO! I shan't pander to your desire for....moving and nuanced portrayals. I want only to be a cheap hack of a writer who trades in overdone tropes and bigotry.") We "pander" because that's what good writers do. We care about getting a portrayal that isn't a caricature. If you want to be a shitty writer, go sit in the corner and never let anyone tell you how you could better describe humanity.
7. Maybe I just won't write them at all! I suspect the folks in question would absolutely like no representation better than bad representation. However, since I know you'll be right back here with big tears after you get your first reviews that NOW everybody's upset that your writing is homogenous and has no diversity, maybe you should recognize how spectacularly, breathtakingly petulant it is to respond to some macro with a couple dozen bullet points worth of advice by taking your ball and going home.
8. You need a REASON to make the character like this at all. Oops. You just told on yourself. (Again.) You have now admitted that you have a "default human" in your head. So strip away all the characteristics for which one would need a "reason" (race, some gender other than cis, maybe sexuality), and what have you got? Is it a straight white dude? Does everything else need "a really good literary reason"? So I ask you: what is the "reason" for having a straight white guy? Why do you need a "reason" to have a member of humanity represent the vast and varied diversity that humanity has to offer? 
9. I don't mind X, but it shouldn't be the person's whole character development. It's sort of funny (not really) the way 8 and 9 move in pairs like the Sith. Make a character incidentally from a group and you had no "reason." Make their identity in that group part of the story and "you're making it all about THAT." It's almost as if—bear with me here—there's something else going on. It's ALMOST as if—bear with me—they can't win. Only some absolutely perfect (to them) representation that is neither too trivial nor too vital can ever count. Besides…..it is painfully apparent that status quo warriors demanding a marginalized identity not be part of character development have had few or zero friends from these groups. These folks may have other things going on, but the world around them is going to force them to make that decision over and over and over and it absolutely becomes part of their character. JFC, get a non-token friend or something.
10. No wonder no one bothers. So many rules! It's just sooooo hard not to offend someone. Most of these posts are a half dozen to a dozen things literally listed in bullet points. They are a handful of pitfalls to avoid. It's time to pull up your big kid pants and fortify. You learned all the Pokemon in a weekend and the rules for Blitzball so you could get ALL the Ultimate weapons; you can piece this together and stop conflating your unwillingness to be a better person with the difficulty of actually learning how to do so.
    
11. It's what sells, cupcake. Get over it. Is it, though? The outrageous success of things like The Ancillary trilogy, The Broken Earth trilogy, The Inheritance trilogy, The Handmaid's Tale or movies like Wonder Woman or Black Panther, and even better representation in once-lilly-white franchises like Star Wars seem to.....challenge this assertion. Positive representation sells well if for no other reason than it will be GOBBLED up by the folks who get to see themselves represented accurately for a change.
12. That's why I write SF/F. Yeah, no one is actually fooled by this, and SF/F readers are not exactly slow on the metaphor uptake. If you are othering a race in science fiction or fantasy, particularly in EXACTLY the way that some actual group in our society is othered, your cunning dodge will not be as cunning or as dodgy as you think.
13. How about I just write a good character? How about you DO? Here's a list of ways to do exactly that and avoid writing a shitty cliché. That's what you meant, right? Because literally that's what the post is trying to help you do. Isn't it funny (not really) the way people walk past thousands of generic writing advice posts/articles/pages about how to portray a character with absolutely nothing to say, but suddenly have a great and abiding concern for the quality of portrayals when the discussion shifts to good representation.
14. That's just how it is. Stereotypes are based on truth. (Sanitizing this horrible thing is bad.) Think really hard about this one––how do you know that? You're looking at a post or macro or something by someone who is straight up telling you this isn't true (or this has some nuance that we'd like acknowledged), and it probably has a zillion responses from other people in that group saying "Yes, thank you" or "YES!" or something like that. So what exactly are you basing your belief on? 
15. This is just how we talk about it. This is how WHO talks about it? Other people who are not in this group? White people describe a lot of other folks using food descriptors (almond eyes, mocha skin, olive complexion) and are told repeatedly that it's fetishizing and would they please stop doing it. "But other people do it," they whine. No, other WHITE people do it, continue to do it, and don't really stop. And maybe that's the problem that is being addressed? 
16. This PC garbage is just a trend. If by "trend" you mean that people have been screaming about this for their entire lives and you have recently had to be exposed to it because the advent of social media democratizes voices and prevents you from living in a curated world that is sanitized from the reactions to bad portrayals, then...sure. "Trend."
17. It's historically accurate. You see this a lot when people want to have no people of color in their vaguely European-based (ish) fantasy stories or they want to subject the women to all sorts of sexual assault. First of all, it's probably not as accurate as you think. I don't know what history you're writing, but even a casual look at primary sources is probably going to alter what you THINK is true about history, probably from reading too many stories like the one you want to write. The time of lily-white Europe where no one came up from Africa to trade or maybe settle simply doesn't exist. Further, you're standing there with a straight face talking about a land with dragons and magic and potatoes (look it up), but saying you want to be "historically accurate" about the sexual violence and racism? 
18. What is appropriative about X? Appropriation probably could be (and has been....and will be again) its entire own post, and it is, at best, a super complicated issue where you're never going to get a monolith of agreement from any given group. But if someone is taking the time to tell you something makes them uncomfortable because they think you are appropriating their culture, you can't just Jedi mind trick them by saying "No no. It's appreciation." It's not that you can't include whatever the hell is anyway. The book police won't come and arrest you. You'll just have to deal with angry reviews and think pieces called: "We need to talk about [that shitty appropriative aspect of your novel]." What you really want, and what you need to come out and be honest and open about, is that you never want to have to hear about it and you think pretending you don't understand will work. But if you can wrap your head around "stolen valor" or your friend getting an A for copying your homework, you already GROK it. You just don't WANT to grok it. 
19. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean everybody else doesn't. Well, I can think of at least one group that isn't covered by "everybody." And if you want to cater to people ("pander," you might even say) who like their representation full of clichés and dehumanization, you may want to consider that you are facilitating OTHER jackwads who mostly just want to spend less (no) time examining their prejudice and bigotry.
20. This is just forced diversity. Yes. The post in question reached through the Internet and jammed an assault rifle through your monitor and up your nose. You no longer have free will to ignore it, use your scroll wheel, write what you want, or just go on about your day with a smile and a Coke. You must now add well-represented characters to your book (you poor lamb). Your decision to be a better writer and human has been taken from you. What HAS the world come to?
21. They should learn to be less fragile. Like not freaking out at a post suggesting that they could be doing better? Or do you mean even MORE "less fragile" than that? I'm not sure you know what "fragility" means, but standing up to the power structures of people with social power, "the way it's always been done," and the sheer unadulterated jackwadery of internet anonymity to say "you are doing this wrong, and I'd like you to do better" isn't actually "fragile." Have you seen the comments on these posts and how much abuse these people take for having suggested they and theirs could be written better? These people are fucking getting the "Daaaaaaamn" nod of respect from Karna and Atalanta. 
22. You're the real bigot to even bring this up. No, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. A world sequestered from the very mention of groups and their concerns only benefits people who don't ever want to THINK about the impact of their portrayals or feel bad if their representation is bad. (And it is.......bad I mean.)
    
23. It's just a story. Of all the people in the world, a writer should know better. A writer should know that there's no goddamned thing as "just a story." Media representation has everything in the world to do with how folks are perceived. Lest we forget that every pinnacle of human achievement and every atrocity we commit to the dungeons labeled "Dark History" all began with the justification....of a story.
24. How about I write what I want? You already CAN write what you want, jackwad. That's the whole point. No one's going to stop you. They're just going to talk about it (and you) when you're done, so if you don't give a shit what they say, do whatever you fuck you want. All someone has done here is have the audacity to wish for better representation and provide you with a primer on how to do that. If the idea that you could take five minutes out of your schedule to learn how to write a better character is so anathema that you have to get in their face for doing so, and make sure they know you absolutely won't even consider their advice, you might want to get back to unpacking that assholery. (And mediocre writing, TBH). 
25. If you want to see that, why don't you write it yourself! Well, first of all, they do. And in case anyone is keeping score, the same jackwads suddenly get fifty thousand shades of sensitive to where and when and how their group is portrayed in such work. But also they have more hoops and hurdles to go through to get such a work published. Because gatekeepers will turn around and say all this same bullshit. And while "write your own book" has been the response of many to the suggestion that they're getting something wrong, it's never EVER been a particularly good look coming from someone with power sneering at someone without.

So remember the other day when you were asking me the definition of irony......

9 Writerly Things No One is Going to Give You (But We All Need) [Part 2]

Return to Part 1

A Detailed Roadmap 

I'm afraid no one's going to be able to tell you exactly what to do. No matter how much you want them to. And they're not just being dillholes.

They can't.

Even if they wanted to, they couldn't.

Not their personal blueprint, their personal style, their personal process, their personal circumstances, nor even personal magic is going to work for anyone but them. It won't work for you. It would like trying to order the same thing someone else does at a restaurant all the time––eventually you're hungrier than they are (or less hungry), they love cilantro but it tastes like soap to you, you don't really want something swimming in gravy, you're allergic to what they order two servings of... 

Okay...you get the idea. That metaphor is probably working too hard.

You might be able to extrapolate some useful information ("Based on careful study, I have begun to suspect that a key ingredient for a successful writing career is....actually writing! Further research needed." **Do that in a Patrick Stewart voice for maximum effect**), but you won't be able to get the same results in the exactly the same way, and you may not even want to. By the time you reach the first milestone, the entire landscape will have changed. The way they got where they're going can inform your journey, but it can't determine it.

Of course, nowhere is this incompatibility more apparent than in the advice that writers who established their careers 15-25 years ago are giving modern upstarts. While an ambitious starting writer can submit short stories to every venue until they have a cover letter impressive enough to snag an agent who will take a chance on their novel, and push inexorably toward a book deal, that is actually a far less likely path to book deal these days, to say nothing of the path to publication readers, fans, and enough income to be a working writer. Today, one can establish a six-figure career without ever encountering a gatekeeper. Frankly, these days, only discussing traditional publishing is very narrow, limited, and borderline shitty advice.

Now you have self-publishing (that is not just vanity press), print on demand, e-pub, apps, a billion online venues, blogs, and ways to monetize it all from Patreon to Kickstarter to Kindle Unlimited. Social media works for name proliferation, but do you use one (if so, which one?) or do you use all of them a little? (Because if you try to use all of them a lot, you're just going to end up being a full-time social media manager who barely has a minute to actually write.) Where is your audience and how are you going to find them? And what will you do when the social medium you like turns out to be morally reprehensible?

Even with fewer dramatic differences than traditional vs. non-traditional publishing, no one else can tell you exactly what to do to "make it." (For example, I'm not going anywhere near traditional publishing for ideological reasons, and I'll probably avoid Kindle and Amazon if I can.) The industry is changing faster than the between-the-walls dimension in House of Leaves. The path I took five years ago is already far less effective, and you wouldn't get the same traction out of it today. The market niche I accurately predicted six years ago has closed up (though there is a new one that still exists). Facebook has throttled their content so I'm not sure I'd have almost a million followers even after five years if I started today. ALL social media is experiencing huge tectonic upheavals because of its role in electioneering, hate speech, and trying to comply with FOSTA-SESTA laws. Eight hundred million people left Tumblr when they banned certain hashtags related to sexuality and porn. All the kids today think Facebook is a fossil. But Instagram is not a great place to build an audience unless you're already famous or ready to put in a bazillion hours building your "brand." And if you do go traditional, how do you separate your writing time from your submission time? How many venues do you shop something before you dramatically revise it? What is your ratio of "safe" to "stretch" submissions? Do you try to shop a novel without a portfolio (it can be done but it is much, much harder)? Do you work for years so that you get a great agent or just enough that someone new to the business knows you're serious and will take a chance on you?

It would be so great if someone could just tell us exactly what to do next. Exactly how to make the magic alchemy of success transmute effort into fans and dollar signs (or whatever it is we're after). But no one can. And no one is holding out on you if they don't. The best thing we can do is point towards the horizon and say, "Read a lot. Write a lot. Don't stop. Beware the groove."

Concentration/Focus

Okay, knowledge drop: for some of us this isn't entirely accurate. There are some nice medical doctors who can give us little pills that help with the ability to concentrate/focus, so sort of some people can kind of give this to us after a fashion, so let me make that caveat through a bullhorn before we go any further.

Me, I got addicted to my pills and started sleepwalking and taking more pills IN MY SLEEP, and they made me want to masturbate all day and it all got a little weird, and so these days I have to rely on caffeine, vigorous walks, and visualization exercises, and some....uh...

You know, maybe I'm veering a little off course.

Narrator's voice: "Though told twice, he did not stay on target."

And yet, with or without pills, one of the greatest struggles a writer goes through is applying their ass liberally to the chair of their choosing*, and getting the fucking work done. Although, a determined writer might be able to write a novel, longer work, or have a successful writing career fifteen minutes or thirty minutes at a time over the course of who knows how long, most people who hit those bellwethers have a breathtakingly similar experience to report: they concentrated on their writing for hours. Multiple hours. Often (usually) LOTS of multiple hours in a row.

(*Metaphor chair could be a standy up desk. I just got one of those. It's AAAAAAAWWWWWWSOOOOOME!)

No one can hand you a can of concentration that you can chug. No one can bust out a package of focus for you to slather yourself in. You need it badly, but the only way you're going to get it is the discipline of sitting down time after time (preferably day after day) and turning a little bit of time into a little more and a little more and a little more. It will eventually become rote, then habit, then feel strange to miss, but nothing outside you can make you love writing enough to blow past all those voices that are going to try to talk you out of it.

Enough Real Talk

It's way too easy to find someone who will take an industrial-sized leaf blower, fill it with unicorn farts, and blow rainbows straight up your ass so that you become distended and rainbows come pouring out all of your mucus membranes. "If you can believe it, the universe will listen to you!" "The only thing between you and success is focusing the actualization of your imagination." "By synergistically manifesting your quantum desires, you will ebb the perturbations of the ether to obey your focalized imaginifications."

On the other hand it's just as easy to find people who apparently think they're from the distant future where we've lost the robot war, are enslaved and being milked as batteries but without the cool simulated sex party, and the only thing to do is take your dreams, jam them into an industrial mixer vat, and turn it up to fifty because there is no point in even trying. "You can't make it as a writer ever." "No matter what you do, you will fail because it's too hard." "Give up now while you can still spend your youth in gothic spandex and get laid without spending six weeks trying to coordinate your schedules."

It is ALSO easy to find a whole fucking epic metric shitton of people who are willing to "SELL" the one thing that is "clearly" holding you back. Novel formatting software? A grammar check? An ergonomic keyboard? A yoga ball for a chair? Baby I gots what you need.

Slightly harder to find is real talk. The talk that threads that needle. The talk that acknowledges a tough industry with a LOT of submissions and a crowd twenty deep outside every door who think writing is their ticket to fame and fortune. The talk that says you can probably have a modest career.....if that's even what you really want, but you're probably going to have to give up some things to get there. The real talk that tells you that some people pursue art casually or as a dedicated hobbyist or never pay a bill from their wordsmithing or make side-gig money, but never quit their day jobs. Real talk that tells you that for 99.9% of writers, it takes years of practice and probably double-digit years of reading voraciously to be a writer. But also that it's not impossible if you're willing to work hard.

Most people have an agenda. They want to get you to buy something. They want you to give up like they did. Or they just want you to keep coming back because they make you feel so inspired by talking about your dreams and never getting around to mentioning the work.

But whether it's a blog about writing, some good advice, or an editor that knows how to cleave that middle ground, finding the real, down-to-earth talk is something writers can't get enough of.

Motivation

No one is going to make you want to sit down and do the work. You can get your ass temporarily ridden by external motivation if you are in a writing program and your grade depends on writing. You might get a little hit from the William-Wallace-Braveheart-speech caliber inspiration posts (especially around NaNo). Maybe your mentor or a mom who never thought you were good enough can say "You got this, kid" in a tearful scene where they finally stick something you've written on the refrigerator and it's totally not weird even though you're now in your forties.

But ultimately, all that will fade. No one can actually give you sustained motivation. You have to find that for yourself. In the nooks and crannies. In the success of others. In the faces of the children. In the sighs of lovers in some wild group sex. In untempered rage that you still have some motherfuckers to prove wrong. In the voice of that professor who told you maybe to find a more attainable dream.

Or maybe that's just me. In any case, you have to find your motivation to sit down day after day after day and keep putting in the work. In rage, and hope, and habit, and sheer force of will. No one can find it for you.

Nerve

BOLD OF YOU TO ASSUME ANYONE WANTED TO READ YOUR SHIT! (But assume you must!)

You have to have some nerve. You do. And no one can give that to you.

I mean, if you want to write for yourself alone in journals that Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman will try to piece together after your seven sins killing spree, then maybe you don't need any nerve, but if you want it out there, read by people, an audience, maybe a fan or two...or possibly a little niche, then yeah, you need nerve. You need just the tiniest bit of gritty, non-supported, ever-so-slightly arrogant faith in yourself.

All writers suffer from imposter syndrome. The ones that don't are almost always dreadful writers and often not-such-awesome people either. The rest of us have bad days and less-bad days. But at the end of those days (at whatever relative level of badness they involved), we proceed as if we have something worth saying. We continue as if somewhere out there someone wants to read our shit. No one can give this to you. No one will ever tell you for the gagillionth time that they want to read your work and then you're "over it." No one will ever take away the feeling that you are a pretentious fuck for presuming you have anything to say and assuage the need for some courage.

And even though you're absolutely wrong (pretty much always at least one someone DOES want to read you)....putting oneself out there takes nerve. No one's going to give it to you, but you need it just the same.

A Writer's Resolutions: A Template for Setting a Kick Ass New Year's Goal

[CN: For discussing weight loss as a bullshit metric.]

A goal is a dream with a deadline.

-Napoleon Hill

That's some deep stuff right there. Dreams and deadlines and shit. Deeper than the punch in Kill Bill II. Hella deep.

I'm not one for Gregorian calendar resolutions myself. I did a bunch of I-am-one-with-my-year's-journey reflections and some rebirth commitments on the solstice, and I set a bunch of blog goals usually when Blog has a birthday in February. (Six this year! Can you believe it??? My little baby!) But I know a lot of folks out there look to the new year for recentering and reaffirming goals, and a lot of writers make resolutions about their writing.
So I'm here to tell you how to take your New Year's Resolutions (or any long-term writing goal, really) to Bruce Lee levels of even-kicked-Chuck-Norris's-ass awesome.


1- Pick a goal you can control. 

It's fine and well to have goals like getting published or making that first paycheck, but you really need to put those in a different box. It's the box of shit that is nice to hope for and the box you can influence, but is ultimately out of your hands. You can't control who decides to publish you or how much money you make or FB's throttling algorithm or how many followers you have on Twitter.  What you can control is things like how many submissions you make or how many pages you write or how many agents you query. So pick the goals you are completely in control of, and it is likely that with that much determination (and a little bit of luck), the "plausible dreams" will attend to themselves.

2- Pick a goal that isn't bullshit. 

Time to be honest with yourself. Brutally, mercilessly honest. The Van Damme-in-the-final-reel-of-Bloodsport honest. If you just had a baby and work a full-time job, your novel isn't getting written this year. Or next. Or likely the one after that. You need to pick a goal that you can reasonably hit and that isn't total bullshit. You can't query an agent every day for a year (not unless you want to do no other writing), but you can probably do two a week.

Most of these bullshit goals, I can't name for you. Only you know your limits, Grasshopper. How fast do you write? (I don't write very fast. I produce a lot because I work eight hours a day or more.) How much emotional rejection can you handle week after week? Is it really possible to write AND revise your entire novel in one year if you have a full time job, or will you have to settle for drafting it? If your goal is bullshit, then all you'll ever at the end of the year is the feeling of failure and inadequacy. If you pick a reasonable, attainable goal, that you can legitimately achieve in one year, you can be feeling quite like Sing at the end of Kung Fu Hustle.

3- Pick a goal you can measure.

Personally, I hate weight loss goals, and the whole idea of the beauty, health, and fitness industry hanging so much on a number that has nothing to do with any of those three things, so take a massive grain of salt as I use this perennial cliché of people vowing to lose weight every new year to illustrate a point. While some people are so sucked into society's crap that they actually care what the actual number on the scale is, most have far more delphic underlying goals like wanting to feel better or get back into shape or look hot naked. And while I would strongly encourage such people to set goals like how fast they can run a mile, how quickly they can take the stairs at work, or...well, finding partners who know they already look hot naked, many goals gravitate around that useless number on the scale because it's easy to measure. Easier than blood pressure or number of push ups in an hour.

Picking a goal that you can measure is key in setting a good goal. You want to know you hit it. You don't want to "give it to yourself" some days and let your self-loathing dictate that you missed it and suck on others because it's vague. You don't want to write "more" or "better." If you wrote ten pages last year, writing eleven pages would be "more," but that's probably not what you had in mind. Making your rough draft "better" is fine, but you can't really measure that. Technically if you find one missing comma, it's "better," but I'm guessing you won't be sitting here on Jan. 2 in 2020 having added one comma and think: "This was a good year!" Revision is hard to quantify, but not impossible to measure. You can say you're going to put something through all the levels of editing: content, structural, copywriting, proofreading (and add a sensitivity edit if your book involves content you want to make sure you get right like race).

Give yourself a number of pages, a number of hours, a number of words. A measurable bellwether that you can objectively determine success or failure and that requires no subjective judgement.

4- Be as specific as you possibly can about your goal.

Want to mush out a goal and feel more defeated than post-Seagal Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege? Give it no specificity.  Don't sit down and think about your approach. Just spend 30 seconds splattering out some meh-defined goal and then act like surprised Pikachu next year when you're not really any closer.

It's really hard to hit a goal if you don't know what the goal is, and that includes if you only sort of kind of know what the goal is. You look like you're genuinely drunk and just stumbling around uselessly. Not at all like you are the deceptively effective weapon that is Jackie Chan in Drunken Master (I and II). If you have some vague goal like "finish my book," hit that thing with a high-powered, orbital specificity beam.

When you say "finish my book" do you mean that you want to draft it? Or is what you really mean that you want it finished and headed towards self-publication? If the latter, you need to think about finishing the first draft in five months, the first major revision in two more, probably a second major revision in another month, a full content editing with an editor in one month, and structural editing in one, and copywriting and proofreading in month 11, and just enough time for beta reading in the 12th month before you start formatting your proofs. That gives you a much higher level of specificity for what you're going to be doing in June than just "finish my book." Or if it's traditional publication December might involve querying agents (beware that they often ignore queries in from Dec-mid March because of NaNoWriMo, and you might want to lead with the fact that this isn't a NaNo novel in your cover letter).

If you have a timed goal of writing a thousand hours of fiction this year, it's not enough to sit down to a computer and then tab over to Facebook and argue politics for two and a half of them and then take write a paragraph. You need to come up with a goal that is specific to what you want to accomplish. (If any writing is acceptable as practice, then arguing politics is great as long as you're writing something.) If your goals are publication based, include how many submissions you'd like to make and hours that you're going to need to spend researching your niche.

The more specific you can be, the better your chances of hitting your goal.

5- If it's not already, break that fucker into 250 bite-sized pieces that each follow rules 1-4. 

No, not 365. NOT 365.

Also not 350 or some shit like that. This is a whole year and you are a mammal. You can't be on all the time. Shit's going to go down. You're going to get sick. You're going to need rest. Life is going to kick your ass like it's Michelle Yeoh and you're a dragon trying to hide (or maybe a tiger trying to crouch--whatever.) You're going to want a fucking day off. Make time for it. Fold it in, and be a reasonable human being who sets reasonable goals.

Hey, if you want to work every day and have your goal knocked out by mid-August, get on with your bad self and be kick ass like Tony Chiu-Wai Leung in The Grandmaster, but for now, we're going to assume that you're going to take one day off a week and make allowances for being sick, being too damned busy, or needing time to grieve a loved one or something.

If you're a seasoned vet writer who hits the wordsmith daily and never so much as takes a day off, then you can break it into 300 pieces.  On the other end, if you know you're going to lose roughly a day a week to chronic illness or mental health shit, do 200 instead.  Tweak as you will....but no bullshit.

Now here's where you have to be more kick-ass than Jet Li in Once Upon a Time in China II: You have to make all your little 250 daily goals conform to the first four parts of this list. Each day, your tiny goal has to be something you can control, something you can measure, something specific, and something that isn't bullshit.

Your little goals have to be things you can control. You're not going to be able to control getting ten Twitter followers a day or produce two pages that your spouse thinks is great. Like your big goal, focus on things you have control over.

Your little goals must be measurable. You might want to revise your book completely in one year, but if each day you sit down and go "Eh, I did a couple of pages...whatever," you're going to end out the year feeling like Jet Li at the end of Hero. (OW!)

Your little goals must be specific. Down to the page count or the word count. The more specific they are, the better. Don't rely on a vague sense of progress.

If [Your Goal] ÷ 250 is bullshit, set an easier goal. And that means that if you think "That's technically possible on paper, if..." NOPE! Set an easier goal. "Technically possible" works for four or five days and then you can't keep it up. (Just ask 80% of NaNoWriMo competitors each year.)

Your reaction to this daily goal should be "I can TOTALLY swing that! That seems almost......too easy." And maybe it is and you amp it up next year, but for now that's your baseline goal and there's nothing stopping you from doing more if you want to be like Po in Kung Fu Panda. But whether your goal is hours or word count or pages or steps towards a finished novel or includes steps like submission, revision, or working with editors, keep each daily part small and manageable and keep at it.

And by next year, you will have hit your goal.

9 Writerly Things No One is Going to Give You (But We All Need) [Part 1]

In the world of writers, we ask for a lot of things from other people––book deals, money, a few more minutes of WiFi and power outlet riding before the barista demands we buy another cup of coffee....  But there are are things no one can ever give us, things no one ever WILL give us, and things the world will do its very best to take away from us if we let it. We writers always and forever have to find these things, make these things, create these things from sheer force of will, forage for these things from the blistering fires of our own determination, and hunt down these things, wound them, track them until they collapse from exhaustion, pounce on them, and bury our teeth in their jugular, worrying them until they....uh.....

Um....proverbially of course.

So here are a few things that no one is ever going to give you.

Permission-

No one is going to give you permission to be a writer, to write, to declare yourself a writer, to give up your day job and go for it even if you need fifty-three side gigs to keep the electricity on. No one is ever going to say "Lo [insert your name here], thou art now a writer." There is no cabal that you will stand in the middle of and they will use force lightning to sear your flesh with The Mark of the Writer™.

No teacher. No mentor. No parent. No other writer. No Facebook page. A million people could give you encouragement, but no one will ever give you permission. You have to take it for yourself.

Yeah, you might have to check in on yourself with some brutal honesty and make sure you're not trying to fake it until you make it in a self-deceptive way if you're trying to BE a writer more than you actually write, but even that is between you and you. You are never going to find anyone else who will decide that you have done enough and usher you into the VIP lounge.

Validation- 

You can get validation, but let me let you in on a little secret: it'll never be enough.

Unless….

Unless you forge that shit One-Ring-to-Rule-Them-All-Style and just decide for yourself that you are valid enough to rock rock on like the magnificent Cheat Commando you really are. Most writers deal with impostor syndrome at some point and many deal with it a lot. It doesn’t matter if they scribble furiously in journals that they systematically burn when full, if they just tossed off their first anonymous fanfic, or if they are New York Times best sellers.

Even at the other end of the scale where you have those arrogant snots who strut around and say “genius can’t be taught” are really just insecure and expressing it in a different way. The truly self-confident have (perhaps temporarily) found the way to validate themselves. No one can do it for them.

Time- 

JK Rowling macro replaced with extreme prejudice.

People will only do one thing when it comes to your time.

Take it.

No matter how much they love you. No matter how supportive they are. No matter how much they relate to your artistic eccentricities. Don’t worry. It’s not their fault. That’s the way the universe unfolds according to physics. You will never walk away from an encounter with another human having GAINED time. Unless they flit through your life like a shade, they can only ever take your time. Though the rare benevolent angel might find ways to free up some time commitment on a writer’s plate, all will take somehow from somewhere.

The real shit sundae of it is that most are not so kind. They take without consideration. The blunt and odious may say shitty things like “But you don’t have a real job,” as they demand your help with airport rides or call in the middle of your writing time, but even the best intentioned will likely wonder if writing can’t be moved around. They will act as if because your schedule is flexible, your time isn't important. 

It gets even shitacularer-er! The true demon here is not another person. It lives in the beating hearts writers themselves and fills their days with activities that push their writing to inconvenient or implausible times, assuring folks that it’s no big deal and they can take a few minutes (or a few hours) to do something “just this once.” Surely I can do five hours of writing from 8p.m. until 1a.m. (even though I go to bed at 11 and my brain checks out for any task more involved than watching The Walking Dead after 9p.m.).

No one will give a writer time. Writers have to take it. They have to hoard it. And they have to guard it with ferocity oft reserved for Black Friday sales. Which is why you have to go out and look for that shit in the backwoods like the world's most motivated truffle pig, gather it into tight bundles, put on woad paint, and bare your teeth and set up Aliens-style motion sensor auto-firing machine gun turrets at anyone who comes close. Time may very well be a writer’s single most precious resource and the one most people feel most entitled to take in bits they think are no big deal. No one can give you time. It marches on no matter what you do. So fight for it.


The Advice That Will MAKE You Write-

No one can give you this because it doesn’t exist.

It. Does. Not. Exist.

Writers quest for this advice like it is The Holy Grail. Some go on great expeditions, seeking the knowledge of the writers who have come before. That somewhere, some writer, some motivational speaker, some creative will have that one gem of insight that will blow away all the excuses, all the rationales, all the distractions and the angels will sing out in an immaculate chorus, and sitting down to write will never be hard again.

They nod sagely when every single one of them says some variant of "Put your ass in a chair, and write daily." And then they go to find the next writer and ask them the secret.

There IS no advice that will make you write. You have to treat it like a job (and you may have to do this for years before it actually is a job). You get up. You write. You get better at it. You keep going.

On to Part 2

10 Addenda to "Write Every Day" (The Article Some of You Have Been Waiting Your Whole Lives For)

I know how badly some of you want this. I know because I hear it every single time I offer up the advice to write every day, and I am descended upon by the locusts of comments and PMs by the teeming millions who insist that I am single-handedly destroying their will to do anything creative.

Well, here it is. Finally. After all these years.

Yes, "write every day" might be the single most useful nugget of distilled wisdom for a writer with the ambition to make money smithing words, and yes, it is shockingly ubiquitous––bordering on universal––among the household names of authors whose careers most want to emulate. (Unsurprisingly it is aggressively denounced most and loudest by a scrum of writers you're far less likely to have ever heard of or read.) It is as close to panacea as writing advice gets for the frustrated careerist who can't seem join the fhqwhgads in taking it to the limit.

But there is nuance, there are caveats, and addendums exist. So here are a few, particularly for those of you who have been salivating for years trying to come up with any reason you can imagine to NOT write every day.

1) Most writers don't actually mean EVERY day. 

Rare is the day I write nothing at all, but almost every weekend I limit myself to a couple of hours. We all need time off to recharge our neurotransmitters. Even Stephen King, who put out his latest novel in toto during the time I was writing this article's introduction, suggests that a "Very Serious Writer™" could do six days a week.

"Every day" is metonymy. It's a shorthand for saying "six days a week and maybe an hour on the seventh" or "every day unless you're working 12 hours at the restaurant because that's ridonkulous." Or whatever.

Most writers are talking about the expectation of achieving career caliber results with career caliber effort. You wouldn't expect to be a world famous surgeon if you came in to work a couple of days a month when the spirit moved you. You wouldn't expect to be a professional athlete if you only came to practice twice a week and didn't like being harangued about the days you missed. You wouldn't expect to be in a professional orchestra if you didn't come to rehearsal when you weren't feeling it because it "made it feel like work." But no one expects you to work 70-hour weeks or never ever take a day off. Most writers probably mean a five day work week. Or maybe they mean six days. Or they might mean seven days a week, but not eight hour days. But almost all of them know that humans need to rest to achieve peak performance.

Except Stephen King. That guy's off the hook.

2) Writing every day isn't necessary for most writing bellwethers.

Want to be a writer? Write. Earn your er. There is no set amount of time you have to be writing every day and no one is the arbiter of who gets to be a writer. No one will tap your shoulders with a sword and knight you with legitimacy.

Want to make money? Start small. Write some short stories and start flinging them out at paid venues. Listen to the crit you get back with rejections and don't be too good to make those changes. Might take a few years and it might only be your cell phone bill worth of payment, but eventually something will probably stick.

Want to be published? Easy peasy. Finish your shit. Edit it. (Please for the love of God, edit it.) Publish it through any number of self publishing routes. Hold it up in triumph. You might even sell a few copies if you are willing to market.

Want readers? Start a blog. Do fanfiction. Write thoughtful posts on Facebook or Tumblr about topics that excite you or answer questions on Quora. Gain global readership, probably in only a few months.

Want a book deal? You're in murkier water, but it can still be done, especially if you're not expecting a big five contract for your first novel. There are a lot of traditionally-published authors out there who don't write every day. Maybe they have a day job, only one or two titles on the shelf, and have to promote almost every weekend at local conventions as part of their contract, but they get to sit on panels and hold up their books for the world to see. You'll probably need a few more drafts and some heavier editing, and you might need to break down and work at least a part-time schedule. But it can be done.

Now, if you want to quit your day job or be famous or rich...you might have to think about writing every day (or at least most days), but most things writers say they want out of their writing (readers, money, to make a difference in just ONE reader's life) don't actually require daily writing to achieve.

3) You have to consider your limitations.

Not everyone has the ability to write every day. And it is straight up ableist to fail to recognize those factors, and can be detrimental to one's own health to try to ignore them. Don't make your life worse because some writing advice is trying to be Mickey Goldmill/catch-the-chicken about telling you the One True Way™ to "make it." You've got better things to do with your time....like rearrange your sock drawer.

While the writer so harried that they can't yield up fifteen minutes for a dab at some writing might be rare, not only does it exist, but other limitations do as well. Physical and mental health can prevent the would-be-everyday writer from getting their prose on. That's okay as long as a writer is devastatingly honest about not letting their limitations become their excuses. They may have to manage their expectations and work smarter, but it can be done.

4) Writing every day doesn't necessarily mean writing a lot.

If you want to get a novel published in fewer than thirty years, you probably need to put in some solid hours pumping those words out, but every day doesn't have to be 2500 words or ten pages or eight hours or some other Herculean bellwether that would daunt all but the King (the STEPHEN King). The primary reason I don't like Nanowrimo isn't because it encourages daily writing; it's because 1667 words a day for a month is fucking bananapants outrageous. (And don't think my irony lobe didn't notice that it's some of the exact same people so pissed off that I don't like Nano who are so pissed off I want them to write every day.)

The purpose of writing every day (especially at the same time every day) is to establish a habit of creativity and a routine of writing. There are a lot of imperfect metaphors (inspiration is a habit, a muscle, a Fox who likes roses...), but the brass tacks of this shit is that if you write every day for a while, you'll start generating ideas more easily when it's writing time. The writers beleaguered by writing blocks and inspiration exoduses are most often allowing their "muse" (if you'll permit the conceit) to control them instead of learning how to work the other way around. The reason so much advice is about simply sitting down and getting to work is because when your brain (the slippery jerk it is) knows it can get out of legitimate hard work simply by telling you "Yeah...I'm just not feeling it today, boss," it's shockingly going to not feel like it MOST of the time. When it knows work time is when it gets to work whether it likes it or not, it starts to play nice and work well with...well, YOU.

As little as twenty minutes a day can achieve this routine of creativity. And if you're doing a few hours five or six days a week, you  can easily have "placeholder" sessions on the weekend that are only a few minutes of work, just to keep the habit strong.

Tomorrow we just do a few sit ups, kay?
Say five hundred?

5) Not every day has to be a grueling session on your work in progress.

Write a letter or an email and take an extra minute to think about your word choice. Do a post for Tumblr and give it the ol' razzle-dazzle. Spend an extra ten minutes punching up the language on that thing for work. ("Dearest boss. Forsooth has thy wont of a performance review gained favor in thine heart?"  Okay, maybe not that much.) Compose a poignant thought in so few words that you still get to use a Facebook background even though it's hella deep. Write your grocery list as a sex poem to your partner. (Hint: eggs rhymes with legs...just sayin.) Drop a page or two into your journal that no one will ever read. Reply to a comment on another blog with a truly thoughtful reply. Options are limitless for how to do some writing in a given day without necessarily opening up your WIP and pounding out five pages like you are Sasquatch from Animal Mechanicals*.

*Look, I watch TV with a 4-year-old, okay? 

You probably don't want to leave something you're working on for too long or it will start to get stale inside your head, but a little bit of time away won't hurt, and may even make the heart grow fonder.

6) Some days are like a jog to stay sharp.

See, that's a simile since it uses "like" or "as"...

In a lot of ways, I was probably fortunate to have been in band for middle school and high school (and later, choir as well). I learned a lot about how to achieve the artistic results one desires and the effort it takes to get from here to there in terms of hours, days, weeks, months, and years of dedicated effort.

Sure, you don't practice every single day. But if you want to be the first chair (which let's face it, the published authors are totally the first chairs of the writing world) you better plan on practicing for most of them. And if you don't practice a little over summer vacation, you actually kind of suck when you get back--you spend all of September just getting your mad skillz to where you were before you left. You can't stop honing the pragmatic skill of writing or you'll actually get worse. You'll go backwards. Your edge will blunt. Your skills will atrophy. Your prose will funktify.

And if you want to be Yo-Yo Ma or play with the (Insert Big City) Philharmonic, you bet your ass you practice a LOT most days, and a little almost every single day of your life. Fortify and stay thirsty, my friends.

However, just like the athlete who does some jogging and cardio during that off-season month when they're not practicing six hours a day, or the musician who plays scales and arpeggios to hang onto their muscle memory when they've got a few days off before the rehearsals kick off for the next show, the day may come where you might not work on some major thing. Maybe you just want to not lose your edge. So maybe you do a half an hour of writing instead of four hours or you just write a few paragraphs instead of five pages.

You're just trying to keep fit. (See, it's a metaphor there since there's no "like" or "as"....)

You're about to pay serious money to see us because we practice even on the days if feels like work.

7) There's no reason to do any of this more than you want to.

Doing art should fulfil you. It should bring you, if not overarching joy, at least a sense of catharsis.

If you don't want to write, put down your pen or computer and STOP WRITING. Seriously. That's all you have to do. No one is going to judge you. (If anything, they judge you for trying TO write most of the time.) No one will be disappointed. The rest of this is just you getting defensive that the world will not deem you A Really Real Writer™, and that's fucking crap anyway. Write exactly as much (or as little) as you want to––as brings you joy and fulfillment in this life.

I wrote a whole series of articles about how you really don't have to write. You don't have to BE a writer. You don't have to write for money. And you don't have to write for your day job. You decide your own level of involvement. And if that isn't daily writing, more power to you.

There are more reliable ways to get rich. Faster ways to get famous. Easier ways to have fans. The only reason you should be writing is because you love writing. If you're working hard to find reasons not to write, then just don't worry about it. Go have a great life playing first-person shooters and binge-watching Marvel shows on Netflix. If that's what brings you the real joy why are you mucking around with something that makes you miserable and you'd rather avoid? Most of the working writers around you are treating writing like the highest priority of any given day. One of my partners calls writing my "primary relationship." These writers are looking for the ways to work some wordsmithing in. They're trying to find excuses TO write.

The reason you hear the daily writing advice so often is because it comes immediately after someone, usually in a Q&A, speaks with purple prose about their deep and abiding love for writing and asks "But HOW do I get all these things you have?" of a writer with a career. And these authors they demand the secrets from answer honestly, in the only way they know how. Writers who want to "make it" (usually without having a real sense of what that is for them) want to have writing careers, and then expend an extraordinary amount of effort attempting not to treat writing as if it were a career. If that's not what you want, find your own path and do it just exactly as much as brings you bliss*.

(*Just know that you'll probably be right back in the same place if you get pissed off that you're not a famous novelist in five or ten years.)

8) The "Be a writer" trick.

Okay, here's a trick you can use, but you have to use it sparingly. It's like trying to get in shape but doing a handful of pushups instead of your whole exercise routine. If you do this every day for two months, your triceps might be swol, but the rest of you is going to function about the same. Similarly if you try to "be a writer" instead of actually writing more days than you don't, eventually you're just going to be really good at thinking about writing and not at actually doing it.

But every once in a while...you don't actually have to put ink to paper. You can think about a character or how you would convert a scene into language (consider the specific words you would employ). You can think deeply about your story and ponder. You can BE a writer.

This is not the kind of thinking you do in the movie theater between the trailers. This is deep and profound introspection, and while it isn't as good as a writing session, sometimes that'll do, Donkey. That'll do.

9) Hang the advice, be brutally honest, but always do what works

Imagine if you showed up at the track and everyone who could run as fast and long as you wanted to be able to run gave you the same advice about how to warm up and how to train and that you wanted to do some resistance training. But then there was this group of out-of-shape people who got winded walking half a mile at even a brisk pace, but who had no end of things to say about the THEORY of running versus strolling that went against those runners who were already doing what you wanted to be doing, and happened to be exactly the advice that kept them from ever really working up a sweat (or improving).

Are you following my fantastically-difficult-to-decode metaphor so far?

You should always do whatever works, even if that has you ignoring the can't-fucking-fail advice like Write Every Day™.  But you should also be brutally honest with yourself about whether advice doesn't work or you don't WANT it to work.

You're a human. One of your design features is to be able to talk yourself into pretty much anything if you want it badly enough. You WILL lie to yourself to rationalize playing more Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus instead of sitting down to work. And if you aren't ready to deal with your lying little liar self, you'll be totally fooled.

People who don't want to write every day come up with a shitton of reasons that "Write Every Day" is not good or practical advice, but when you check back in on them ten years later, most are still still on that same novel (maybe even the same chapter) and telling you that the published authors don't know what they're talking about.

But, seriously, you do you.

If you work better doing 16-hour weekends, sally forth and tally ho.

If you work better writing every other day, kick ass and take names.

If you work better in sporadic fits and starts, rock out with your....well whatever you have, out.

The only real rule here is can you get away with it?

Though for the sake of that writing career, which perhaps you are frustrated isn't further along, you might try checking to see if those ideas (of how much better you work) are accurate. Because most people who say "I work better when I blah blah blah blah" have not ever really tried anything different. What they are telling you isn't what makes them most productive. What they are telling you is what makes them most comfortable.

Which leads me to my last point.

10) And when you're done with all that shit, try giving it a try.

Here's a suggestion.

Try.

Give it a year. Shit, give it six months.

Write every day (or six days a week). See what happens. Set aside a time and unless blood is fountaining out of your body, sit down and write for an hour.

Or a half-hour.

Or do one of the things on this list but with conscious deliberate mindfulness of writing. But mostly try to do some writing every day. Don't make it too easy.

And see how that changes the landscape in just a few months.

Maybe you notice that you're getting better. That your creativity is flowing more naturally. Maybe you notice the quality of your prose improve. That slow days when you used to be unable to craft a single word start turning into merely disappointing low-word-count days of not great but some productivity, and the rare gushes that come bursting out of you from time to time, you are better able to harness, yoke, and channel for a week or more. Maybe you notice that you are better able to metabolize your thoughts into language and writing is just becoming easier for you. Maybe people stop taking your work with a resigned sigh and say "When's your next chapter going to be done?" Maybe you notice that you are accumulating a whole lot of work and some of it isn't half bad. Maybe you notice that novel....well, you kind of finally made some progress on it.

Chances are you work like every other creative person (spoiler: we're pretty much all creative people). Chances are you get better at things by doing them (rather than by NOT doing them).  Chances are that routine and habit will work on you the way they do most other writers and artists. Chances are you are not the special snowflake who works so differently that you must be an anomaly of nature. Chances are if you do what every other artist has since the dawn of time when they get to work, you're probably going to get pretty similar results.

But hey....maybe you were right all along and you just work better when you don't write every day. Maybe the writing world with its sodding advice owes you a coke. Still, how will you EVER know, if you don't give it an authentic, legitimate, sincere try?