Fortune Cookie Wisdom XIX

You do not have to choose between supporting authors and using libraries. I love that you want to support authors, but I absolutely positively promise you that libraries are completely fucking AWESOME for authors. They buy actual copies. Then they lend them out. Then they replace them as needed, which includes buying more copies if the book is popular. Then they notify other libraries of what's getting checked out, and THOSE libraries start buying copies. And the whole while, anyone who is legitimately checking out those books might develop an interest in having a copy for their very own or exploring the author's backlist. Plus the librarian might be recommending your book to people who come in asking about "suchandsuch" a genre with "soandso" of a style. 

A really good literary argument could be made for the fact that the director is a play's "narrator," who does all the work ahead of time so that the story "tells itself," and in fiction there IS a narrator who is telling the story. So if you are willing to give up your narrator, you might want to write drama. If you are not, fiction. 

If all the factors are aligned against you and it seems like the hosts of heaven and hell themselves are trying to keep you from writing, and despite that, you just keep finding the time to do something, and you just keep pushing, and you just keep not giving up, when all those factors go away, THEN your productivity positively explodes. All that work and discipline during the hard times was like running across the beach with cement shoes. Suddenly you put on sneakers and get on solid pavement and the hard work and discipline muscles propel your unfettered feet like you have those little Hermes winged shoes or something.

Failure is the background radiation of most artists' existences. I can't think of a single artist I've ever personally known who's kept to a schedule for more than a little while or reached all their deadlines (external or self-imposed) or finished anything longer than a few-hour project––other than maybe freelance work––exactly when they thought they would. Certainly not any who I've read about (except maybe Stephen King on cocaine, and maybe we shouldn't get into that as a legit exception).

You are going to fail. You ARE. You have to get back up if you want to be an artist. You HAVE to get back up. 

Folks, I haven't been shy about the fact that I think NaNo puts galaxies of emphasis on only specific parts of writing, that what you end up with might be a phenomenal accomplishment of which you should be Luke-After-Star-Wars proud, but it is by no stretch of the imagination a novel that is ready for publication. Holding onto that discipline of daily writing instead of taking the next eleven months off may not definitely get you to your goals, but it is a capital idea.

You can't win em all. Some days you have to look at the clock after a longer shift than you thought at your second job, and two appointments and a nap that you WOKE UP FROM after 8pm, and just say "It's not happening today." 

Summoning creativity on demand requires one to control their muse instead of their muse controlling THEM. And that requires discipline.

 

The answer to the question of how to "make it" doesn't change. (I do try to get people to explain what they mean by "make it," although the answer is usually to be a comfortable working writer with a flourishing career.) There isn't a shortcut to this success. But folks will ask it over and over again like one day someone is going to say, "Look, actually, the answer is Omega 3s. It was never write every day. We were lying, and you finally broke us with the 7 billionth time you asked the question. Just eat more fish."

Even with clouds and triple redundant backups and USB thumb drives and everything else, you're probably going to lose some of your writing. And if the only reason you're writing is because you have put so much into it, that sunk cost moment is going to be a rough one. If the only reason you were slogging on is because you'd come so far, you will find yourself leaning over one heck of a psychic volcano. 

It's normal to be upset. To flip a table. To abandon a project. Maybe even to give up for a while. But what happens then will be the most interesting part. Did you write because you had all this effort sunk into it? Or did you write because not writing was terrible or because that story was desperate to get out? Have the reasons you write been obliterated, lost in some pixel (or ink) graveyard? Or will you come back to the page for the same reason you did before?

If you want to see who is mistreating authors, look at Amazon (and don't forget the publishers). Price fixing, denying authors their "commission" unless the Audible subscription came from a certain URL, slashing royalty rates, denying more and more money to the author whether you go big five or independent because the entire industry landscape is dotted by various distribution monopolies. They're Kaiju trying to smash each other's market share and authors get trampled underneath. 

Editors are your friends. They are the healer in your raid party. They are the medic in your platoon. You can't do it without them. (You technically might be able to, but you shouldn't. I mean you really really really shouldn't.) I can't stress enough how important they are for even a veteran writer. We all have ideas we could be expressing better.

A lot of writers have the problem that they don't have a platform. They write perfectly well and then they don't or won't self-promote. And even if they're still stuck in the last-generation model of traditional publishing, they aren't spending enough time having release parties, going to readings, or pounding the pavement to put their books on consignment in bookstores. (Usually because they have this mythical idea that good writing will sell itself and a true artiste never gets dirt under their fingernails. All bullshit, BTW.) So they have this really good ability, multiple novels, dozens or hundreds of short stories, often PUBLISHED work--occasionally even in prestigious venues--and no one knows about them.

The key to motivation is to need as little of it as possible. 

The key to THAT is to make it a habit.

Yes there are folks who deal with so much executive dysfunction that they can't brush their teeth, but you don't often run into those wanting to find the inspiration to keep doing it. 

Can't get enough fortune cookie wisdom?  There's years' worth here. 

Fortune Cookie Wisdom XVIII

The number one cause of writer's block is not trusting the process. It's when you think your first "first sentence" has to be absolutely perfect that you freeze up. When you truly accept that you're going to change it fifty times, the stakes are low enough that you can just start.

All writing is political. Even if you are trying to write in a completely and deliberately apolitical way, what comes through is complacency and comfort with the status quo. "Nothing is wrong, so let's not talk about it!" is absolutely a social and political stance. Look around you at the world. What do you see? Inequality? Injustice? Inhumanity? Poor people? Rich people? Exploitation? What does the political landscape look like? Who is getting screwed? Whose story is being ignored (or more likely shouted down) by others? And whose lives are pretty good so that they would want to avoid those topics at any cost? What are the truths we cling to, and how do they depend greatly on our own point of view? How are the stories of who we are and how we got here shaping and framing the way we look at (and avoid looking at) things?

You can enjoy writing exactly when and how and where and for as long as you want as a hobby, and even fling stuff around when you want for some spending money, but the minute you want writing to be your paycheck, you're going to spend some annoying-as-fuck days doing shit that isn't writing and you don't want to do.

We treat our brains like they're these psychic entities that live on other planes of existence that can only be reached by astral projection from the psi-vortexes within our skulls but our brains are right there with us not getting enough sleep, hurting from stress, and feeling kind of sick when we eat too much greasy food. Exercise a little (if you can). Eat decently (if you can). Drink enough water. Take your meds (if you can). Your brain is an organ. It's pretty awesome, but it has never NOT been a part of your body.

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.

A body count will never raise the emotional stakes by itself, and it's usually bad writing to try. You have to rely on other tools––and better writing.

A lot of people feel a lot of different ways. And that's all okay. There are no wrong answers when you're sheltering in place, worried about the entire world but especially Nana and your friend who had chemo and radiation for Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma five years ago, and watching your leadership strategically NOT CARE how many people are going to die so that Game Stop and Starbucks can open back up right away. It's okay to not be okay.  In fact, you probably shouldn't be okay.  We're deep in uncharted waters and someone used the map back to normal as a quick fix, back when we thought we were going to run out of toilet paper forever.

One of the problems with our deepest and darkest anxieties is that we let them hang out in dark corners and imagine that they are huge and insurmountable. We listen with half an ear or try to distract ourselves or cover our (proverbial) ears and refuse to listen as soon as we realize that they are voices we don't like. When we only get part of the message, it becomes so easy to imagine that the rest is even worse. Sometimes we make fears and anxieties a hundred times worse by letting them live in shadowy corners where we can imagine they are so much more powerful and have so much more to say than we've ever even heard.

Fans are not friends. They can become friends, but most will come and go very capriciously. More so than people you meet through regular channels. It is important that artists and entertainers who are beginning to touch that spark of fame keep themselves protected by not assuming (initially) that those relationships bear resemblance to true friendships, no matter how much adulation or seeming intimacy pours out from them.

When we book nerds go to see movies, we can accept that (if we're lucky) we're going to see a bit of audio/visual media roughly similar to the book we like with some familiar moments that hopefully cleave close to the spirit of its source material. But we're not going to get "THE BOOK ON SCREEN™," so it's important to remember that we're watching the movie for a MOVIE'S sake and that it's an adaptation.

Content/developmental editing is probably the hardest to deal with, the most expensive per page, and THE. MOST. IMPORTANT. for your fiction. You need someone who is able to identify what's not working in a story. You need someone who doesn't KNOW your character to tell you if they're making sense or not. You need someone who doesn't understand the plot to tell you they're confused. You need someone who isn't in your head to point out that your words aren't doing what you think they are. THEN you fix the commas. 

You don't even have to lie in order to frame a narrative. You just have to decide where to start, where to stop, and which parts to leave out. By not letting certain people speak for themselves, suddenly you have a story that is factually accurate, but not truth.

Reading with compassion is the great equalizer when it comes to trite advice like "write what you know." (None of us know what dragons or space cruisers are like, but writers have been doing just fine with them by using their reading, empathy, and imagination.) Because given time, a good reader can "know" almost anything. Not because we go through the experiences ourselves, but because those who do often write about them. And we have the whole of human experience at our very adept fingertips.

Yes, there are influences that are unearned advantages of birth and cannot be controlled, like being a cishet white dude, or being raised middle class by formally educated parents. There are a few things that are like "force multipliers," like having social media outreach, nepotistic connections in publishing, or some entirely-unrelated-to-writing fame. But no one ever EVER "made it" without working outrageously hard and probably pretty close to daily.

Not a racist who walks this Earth does not justify their behavior with STORIES. Not a single misogynist. Not a single transphobe. Not a single bigot. It might be stories their parents told them. It might be lies repeated so often they accepted them as truth. It might be narratives they never unpacked that come from poor representation in media. But it's stories all the way down, and that is part of the reason fiction can be so fucking powerful.

I know it's shitty to realize that you probably won't establish a writing career if you don't overdo it at LEAST a little, and everyone has to find their own peace with that and their personal strategy for surviving capitalism. Probably most people you ever knew who were fantastically good at something overdid it a little. Had long days. Worked weekends. Gave it more gas than the folks who wanted a functional work/life balance and a robust set of complementary priorities. And while you absolutely want to make sure you know that writing (or art of any kind) is work even when it feels like it isn't, and that you factor in enough self-care to safeguard your health both physical and mental, you also have to understand that you are your own "boss" when it comes to writing, and your ambitions are directly tied to just one fucking metric asston of hard work.

GIVE ME MORE FORTUNE COOKIE WISDOM

Fortune Cookies XVII

The ability to control the narrative of how we got here, where we're going, what values are important, what ideas are ridiculous, who is evil, and who we ought to make fun of is social control the likes of which makes the Chinese algorithm system of "good citizenry rating" look like amateur hour.  

No one is ever, ever, EVER going to give you permission to be a writer. You have to give it to yourself.

More than any one thing that separates working, professional, paid, or "successful" writers from those who struggle with the frustration of not being where they want to be, it is this: the former group respects the process. They know they may have to completely change the story. They know they're going to have to get peer review. They know there will be complete rewrites and tons of revisions. They don't try to gut out one perfect draft and then fear to have it critiqued. 

Writing and storytelling are two very different things. A lot of anxiety and angst could be avoided if we gave that idea some room to breathe. The height of every ambition should not necessarily be to be a novelist. 

We've all picked a dream and an industry with a notoriously high failure rate, so when we fall flat on our faces (and we will), we better love writing for its own sake. Because little else is going to pick us up and dust us off and keep us going knowing that another ass-kicking is right around the corner.

Hiroyuki Sanada will be playing the part of your writing goals.

The resilience to criticism so many celebrities have is not a mark of their cynicism or some corruption of their humanity. Simply, it is the fact that they are targeted twenty, thirty, forty times a day or more with vitriolic projections and if they didn't have that armor, their heart would break.

If your shit gets rejected, before you have an existential crisis that you don't have what it takes or some shit, first think of all the usual suspects like (too much) length or ignored submission guidelines that have nothing to do with the quality of your writing and affect rejection/acceptance much more than prose.

Most working writers didn't get there because their schedules and the planets somehow finally aligned perfectly and afforded them the time to write. They got there because if something got in the way of their writing time, they kicked its ass.

If you're an artist who needs to ask for money (say if you're crowdfunding for your livelihood), don't mollycoddle your audience's sensibilities. Just come out, tell them you need their financial support, why, and ask for money.

No one can tell you how to "make it." The industry is changing so fast that a decade is an eternity and what worked five years ago will be less effective today. Don't be afraid to take advice but adjust it on the fly. The only basics you MUST stick to is to write a lot (and read a lot) and put your writing out there.

The best thing you can do in any negotiation for your writing/editing/artistic skills (whether you plan to give away your labor or not) is to know your value. 

No one can give you time. They can literally only ever take it because that's how time works. If you're lucky, you might have a few very understanding people around you who will make sure you are protected from others taking it or that they themselves take your time only when you have it to give, but most of the world––even most of your loved ones––will not understand this. Your writing time will not be "real" to them the way a job might be. They will act more like they interrupted you playing video games. They will call/visit/ask/goad/cajole/temp you for attention of some kind or another unless you erect flesh vaporizing laser frontiers and Aliens motion-sensor auto turrets around that time. That's on you.

Classics are usually well-written and valuable for a writer to read once in a while, but don't get too hung up on them as the end all. What makes a "real writer" is writing. 

I must have more of these amazing Fortune Cookies!

Chris's Fortune Cookie Wisdom for Writers XVII

Editors are like therapists. Some people need to hit an unforgiving wall of heavy-hitting feedback. Some need to find one who knows how to aikido their bullshit. Some are ready for "This totally doesn't work" and some need "I'm not sure what you're trying to do here..." If they're too mean, you shut down. And if they're too nice, your shit doesn't get EDITED––you just feel better about it. Trust me that you can pay a lot less per hour to just get validating compliments. Shop your editors!  

To get those amazing themes that work with the other elements of the story, tease OUT what you find  in revision, don't shoehorn them IN right away trying to be hella deep. 

It's an incredibly frustrating thing to want to be a writer and be told to read more. Unfortunately, it is like doing scales in music or warming up before sports practice. It's a fundamental part of the process. What feedbackers usually mean when they suggest going back and reading a lot more is that there are LOTS of fundamental, core problems in one's writing and it indicates that one has a very difficult time intuiting the difference between bad and good writing.

If you think of a writer's career trajectory as similar to a doctor's for time-to-viable trajectory, you will be in good shape for how much effort it's going to take. You can substitute reading and hard practice for undergrad degrees and MFA's but you have to be The Punisher Season Two brutal with yourself about if you're putting in full-time caliber effort or diddling while you play Total War games until 3am. Four years of undergrad.  Four years of medical school. Three to seven years as an intern/resident years as an intern/resident. That tracks with the five years of solid effort at writing before you're making more than a pittance and three to seven more before you can pay the bills.

You have to read all the time. Trying to just write is like trying to only breathe OUT.

This isn't writing advice, but maybe it's communication advice. If someone's asking about best dates, you should really check and see if they mean best FIRST dates. Because they probably didn't want to know about the threesome and the MDMA even though that's deffo the one.

If you want to dream, dream. Have fun. If you want to reach your objectives, the trick is setting goals that are realistic, within your control and measurable.

You have a relationship with your writing that needs as much emotional labor as a real one to flourish. Although unlike most relationships with people, writing will still be there after you leave for five years, have a spring/fall romance, and buy a convertible. 

You know writing every day doesn't have to mean six grueling hours on your work in progress. Add some sparkle to an email. Make a Facebook post. Write in a journal. Knock out thirty minutes. Just keep your craft sharp for the days when you CAN give it more.

When Facebook throttles your content (and they will), just remember how well you did when people actually saw your stuff out there and had the option to click on it. Facebook wasn't making them click your link. It was just ACTUALLY showing your link to more people. They chose to read it. You're doing better than you think. 

No one will ever give you the permission you seek to go be a writer. You just have to do it.

Human beings tell stories. In really, really real ways, human beings ARE stories. History is a story of how we got here. Politics is a story of who gets what and when. Polemics is a story of what we ought to find important. Most human beings exist as the main character in a story about their lives. Everyone has a story about you they tell other people. When you die, the only thing left...is a story about who you were. Everything is stories. The words that will stay are written down. Writers are some of the most powerful people to ever exist. 

When you see advice you don't like, instead of saying no, unpack WHY your saying no and what you feel like you're risking to give that advice a good-faith try. You often discover something about yourself and what you most need to be doing by considering what you are avoiding.

The seep of culture has some powerful messages that are pretty rough on artists. And that's before the STEM cheerleaders come out and act like the humanities are soft and for losers. Most artists have a day job or three, and the art they do make has its own messages of value (or lack thereof) even if it does not profit them with a monetary value that is easily expressed by how much someone would give them to possess their creations. 

Keep reading. Keep writing. Don't give up. You got this.

MORE FORTUNE COOKIE WISDOM

Social Justice Fortune Cookies

"Holy fuck, these are some huge ass fortune cookies
to hold entire paragraphs inside!"

You got your social justice in my fortune cookies! You got your fortune cookies in my social justice! Two great tastes that go great together? 

It's depressing that so many fail at it, because really SO much of social justice comes down simply to this: Listen and pay attention when people are describing their own lives to you. Apologize sincerely when you fail to do this. 


I've long avoided this direct comparison because I really want to explore it in the book I'm writing, but fascism is the social analogue to abuse. Insults that genuinely hurt blown off as just jokes. The victims will be blamed for their mistreatment. The abuser will cast themselves as persecuted––even by outrageously lying. The SLIGHTEST response is framed as unreasonable and the actual abuse. Praise and superficial charm will be heaped upon "proper" behavior. Convincing people they are completely wrong about reality is an integral part of keeping them feeling crazy and ungrounded. Naming what is happening will incense the abuser/fascist rather than give them pause about their actions. Even mentioning that something was painful is likely to cause a worse reaction, "what about," and an attack posture instead of a consideration of impact. Guilt trips. Intimidation. Explosive anger and backlash. Constantly citing how other people totally agree with them and think they're right. Keeping so many things happening that the victim can't find their center about any ONE issue. There's gaslighting. It gets worse and worse even as a cycle of ups and downs leave the victims numb.

And a whole lot of people will stand on the sidelines (people who claim they care very much) saying "Why don't you make up. They're not THAT bad. Maybe you kind of deserved it."

Insisting that either both sides are just as bad isn't just intellectually indolent, it's actually a fallacy. (It's called the "Middle-of-the-road fallacy" because the fallacy naming folks were getting tired of latin at that point.) So if you think you're being all astute and superior to abdicate any sort of stance against bigotry, supremacy, exploitation, you're not. Your intellectual rigor is right there with your moral turpitude.

It is functionally meaningless to the people being harmed whether or not every. single. one. of the people who voted for Trump personally holds some open animus of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. They handed someone who was ALL those things the executive power over perhaps the most powerful nation on the earth even when he told them the first things he was going to do with that power would be to hurt people and they did it BASICALLY because he promised them a raise. Nor was there a "great referendum" come midterms after people saw what his presidency was actually going to be like compared to his campaign: all of the "it's just for show" bigotry and none of the "he will care about this" promises. Pretty much this is exactly what half the electorate either secretly agrees with or doesn't care enough about to stop.

Interesting that the rise of "all this PC stuff" coincided almost exactly with a revolutionary new medium where everyone had equal access and could create content without the censoring and editing power of almost exclusively cis, het, white, male gatekeepers. Every person had much greater ability to reach beyond maybe a roomful of folks who already shared most of their views within a medium where people could find their own voices from a position of relative safety. 

Then...."all of a sudden"....everyone was offended all the time.

Fellow privileged folks (cis het white dudes in particular): Not every space was made with "converting us" in mind. Not every conversation is intended to convince us to join the cause. Not every person is an ambassador trying to "do themselves a favor." But the ubiquitous, nearly universal, expectation of these things in every time and in every place and of every person is absolutely part of the problem.

How come if a book has diverse characters, it's just "pandering" to those groups, but if it has almost literally nothing but cis het white characters, it's NOT pandering to cis het white people? 

Does that seem right to you?

Snarking about identity politics IS identity politics. It's just like most shitty things done by folks with privilege: surrounded by a cultural invisibility cloak, fueled by hypocrisy, and fully charged with a double-standard field. Consider this: what do you get as you strip away "identity politics"? Strip away racial politics. Sexuality politics. Gender politics. Ability/access politics. Neurodivergent politics. Whose concerns are you left with?

The answer isn't "no one's." It also isn't "normal" people's. Or "regular" people. And it isn't "default humans." Or "everyday Americans." The answer is ABLE-BODIED NEUROTYPICAL CIS HET WHITE DUDES. Snarking about identity politics is just making everything about THEM with a little sociolinguistic magic trick that makes it sound like they're doing the opposite.

Dear dude,
I hope you spent like an hour on that three-page screed you dropped on WAW's FB Messenger because I deleted it and banned you without reading another syllable as soon as I saw the words "misogyny isn't real," and it warms my heart to think that you wasted all that time.

White dude: *writes seven paragraph screed about why social justice concept is destroying America*

Also white dude: "Sorry, I don't have time to Google that."

It doesn't matter how erudite, elevated, and chin-strokingly reasonable your case might be, if you ONLY apply it in one direction along a power differential. It doesn't matter if we're talking about deeply examining the nuance of cops while lumping all protesters together, testing the fake geekness of only gamer girls, or pointing out the way gender expression challenges gender essentialism only when dealing with trans folk. It's all the same. 

You might as well be giving out literacy tests at voting booths.....but not to whites. One bigot just thinks they're being logical.

"You have made an enemy this day, Chris Brecheen. Your insistence on posting something that makes me think about status quo portrayals within my own writing pretty much EVERY week or two is unconscionable–I mean, that's almost one percent of your posts! I shall take my like and go home, leaving you with a mere 885 THOUSAND followers left. I could have been your biggest fan if you'd just never posted anything that I dislike. What do you think about that, Chris? What. Do. You. Think. About. THAT!"

Ad hominem is only a fallacy if it's being offered up AS or IN PLACE OF an actual argument. It's entirely possible for someone to be wrong AND an asshole.

Please don't tell people of color, LGBTQIA+, disabled folks, poor people, folks with chronic illness, immigrants, or even women that everything is going to be okay. Shit just got is real for anyone who's not a cis het white guy making decent money. Shit just got has gotten really, really real. Of course shit's real for everyone, but shit just got has gotten life-threateningly dangerous to folks on the margins of our society. Hate crimes are going to skyrocket have skyrocketed now that emboldened white nationalism has won a legitimate election, there are kids in cages, right-wing terrorism is on the rise, trans folks have been erased (literally from the WH policy pages), free press is called the enemy of the people, and the list just goes on and on. Don't be a splainy gaslighting asshole because you want to turn some frowns upside down.

Your ability to stay calm when academically debating someone's experiences and possibly their very humanity is an indicator of your disinterest and your privilege––not your objectivity.

I can't speak for anybody else, but on my ballot initiatives, there was a measure for low income housing, homelessness prevention, a measure proposed by the mobile rich that would hurt school property values, a measure for children's hospitals, a measure trying to expand rent control, homelessness services, an attempt to kill a gas tax that pays for road maintenance, mental illness housing, a measure that would let (or not) dialysis companies gouge their patients, a labor dispute that was written by a shitty EMT company to avoid paying its workers, and half a dozen judges up for reelection––including a FIERCELY anti-LGBT one––on top of, of course, all the people who would be governing me and representing me whether or not I consent to it and the possibility of putting some stop energy in front of our march toward fascism. So while I empathize with and often respect people who march to different drums, I trip up on the idea that it "doesn't matter."

"My rights are just rights. YOUR rights are identity politics, boutique issues, and going to lose us another election." 

-Guess who

Link to some fortune cookies ABOUT WRITING.

Fortune Cookie XVI

You may need side gigs to pay for your cell phone and keep the car gassed up, but it's pretty fucking sweet that day you realize that you could just be a writer and at the very least, you wouldn't die.

There seems to be two ways to harness your muse to work when you want to. One is to write at the same time every day and most writers seem to swear by this. The other is to spend a few months sitting down to write for a half an hour at any and every time of the day until you train yourself to write any time you want. This takes a lot more front-loaded effort.

Like many people, a writer may have folks enter their orbit because of their work that you are interested in romantically/sexually/whateverly. Be careful! Of course, a power differential is unethical to exploit, but this is for YOUR protection as well. Even when you are sure someone is not starstruck and their consent is totally informed, they may be projecting who they think you are onto you or idealizing you or not really seeing you as fully human.

Sometimes you have to put that thing you're sure is brilliant in a drawer and walk away. Take the lessons you've learned along the way, enjoy the experience, and start on something else. Maybe you come back some day, or maybe you realize that's not the best idea. It may be the first real darling you have to kill.

Your best time management skill is self-knowledge. Do you write better on deadline? Without? A soft deadline? Are you a fast writer or is your progress plodding? Arrange your deadlines accordingly.

"Writing is like exercise" is an imperfect metaphor, but it at least conveys that the way to improve is to establish discipline and routine.

I can't speak for everyone, but for me, imagining my negative inner voices as actual people strips them of their power. Imagining my inner critic as one of my past abusers is particularly effective. "Fuck you, I'm going to nail this shit."

When it comes to writing, you are what you read. Read nothing but Twitter and you will probably start thinking in 280 character chunks. Read nothing but political rants, and you will probably start thinking in partisan polemics. Read nothing but FB, and you will try to be cute and pointed, but probably not nuanced or informed. Broaden your diet. Digest some good stuff.

Don't sit down to write a book or a chapter or even the best paragraph ever. Just focus on one word at a time.

It's very hard to write when life isn't going well. (And sometimes it's just impossible.) But if you can gut out a FEW words under adversity, you'll be that much better when things are bending your way.

I simply can't get enough of these Fortune Cookies!

Fortune Cookies XV

Writers would probably mind far less that folks argue with their advice about how to succeed (like writing every day) if they didn't get hit up so often for exactly that advice like they'd done something magical that required a trick.  

If you're going traditional publishing, get an agent. I don't know how much simpler to make that advice. They'll pay for themselves, give you editing advice on what to change to get sold, and keep you out of some bleary-eyed intern's "slush pile."

We all have to decide our level of involvement and give ourselves enough time to be human that we don't hit points of limited return, but it is probably no coincidence that generally the people who are making a living writing are usually the ones who overdo it....at least a little.

If you like this blog, you should probably drop a buck a month* on its Patreon, so I can keep writing it without needing 30 hours a week in side gigs just to keep the lights on. It'll mean I write more!
(*Or more!)

In a capitalist economy, all artists who want to survive by doing art have to promote themselves. An artist with no reach might be a genius but they will still be hungry or teaching typewriter maintenance if they are too good to get out there and sell themselves. And whether you pound the pavement begging bookstores to put copies on consignment, attend every literary even to make a name for yourself, or just find your audience on social media, it's work––just like everything else in this business.

You can get stuck easier than you think doing something you don't really want to do because you're in a job that's "technically writing" or because you think "it couldn't hurt" your professional development to take every opportunity. Be careful.

You don't have to be the best to make it. Sometimes you just have to be the one who gets back up once more than everyone else.

Talent might be real, but good luck even defining what it is, never mind ever seeing it make half the difference in your writing that hard work does.

Actual, Literal Protip: Don't trash the collaborators who make your book come into the world with things like cover art. They worked hard too, shit like that goes viral fast, and it'll probably do your career some very real damage.

Most people absolutely, positively love writing more than anything....but not that much.

Fanfiction is done for the love of writing. It's done for the fun of creation. For the enjoyment of the craft and the characters and their journeys. It is done without regard for payment of any kind and often despite social censure from judgemental little snots who paint them all with the same brush and call them parasites, but who, in all likelihood. aren't doing half as much of their "real" fucking writing. Hating on fanfic is like so much elitist twaddle that belies the fact that its own supercilious snobbery is unable to feel superior without tearing something else down. It's the same "I don't read that crap" all over again repeated (loudly and often) as a marker of class and sophistication by those who don't want to be seen enjoying something "beneath them."

I don't know what it's like to be "famous," but I do know what it's like as you approach that event horizon: people stop treating you entirely like a person, so it might be helpful to keep your public and private lives quite separate.

Think about all the writers you know––I don't mean personally know, but all of the writers you're aware of. All the writers you can imagine. In all the world. Not just working writers but the hobbyists, the bloggers, the poets, the trade writers, the journalists, the ones gearing up each year for NaNo or toiling away with unsatisfied ambition. Everyone with a self published book or a single title they wrote through a small press. Hundreds of thousands? Maybe millions? Now imagine the writers on the shelves with names you recognize and careers you want to emulate.

BUT HERE'S THE CATCH--NOW GET RID OF ALL THE DEAD ONES.

How many are left? A few hundred? Maybe a thousand? It's fine to write exactly as much and as hard as brings you bliss, but keep this in mind when you manage your expectations. This is analogous to being an olympic athlete of the writing world–one of the world champions of our age in writing, and those folks don't get there by training a couple of hours on the weekends when they are inspired.

I can't get enough! I need more fortune cookie wisdom!

Fortune Cookie Wisdom XIV

Social issues are political. Political issues are social. The personal is political and the political is personal. Only those safe from nearly all political consequence box "politics" away as some special category of thought. A writer can either be political, intentionally apolitical or blithely oblivious...which–guess what?–the latter two are also political positions in favor of the status quo. 

An autocorrect error takes two seconds to fix. Being the kind of elitist, pompous, probably ableist and classist, and maybe even racist snot who thinks an autocorrect error is a great thing to make fun of someone over takes a lot longer to fix.

Sometimes what you need isn't to tell yourself you're going to write and not check Facebook all day long. Sometimes you need to tell yourself you're going to write and not check facebook for just twenty solid minutes.

A lot of people think they want to be world-renowned writers, but many of these folks don't realize just how much even the smallest amounts of fame translate into audiences who feel they're entitled to time, attention, energy, and entertainment that is exactly what they want it to be.

If you like an artist or entertainer who is mostly doing their schtick for free (like a blogger or a fanfic writer), it would really be a great idea to toss a pittance their way so they can keep doing it. A dollar a month might not seem like much to you, but they'll add up for the artist, and day jobs cut into creative time like you wouldn't believe.

For everyone who announces they are no longer your reader because you wrote something they don't "like," someone else will show up because they liked what you wrote. Just be true to yourself and your art.

Traditional vs. non-traditional publishing is, at this point in history, largely a personal choice in terms of money and number of readers. One can traditionally publish poorly edited crap or clean up a self-published book so that it is error free and hire a professional artist to do the cover. The compelling factors in such a decision should be the "validation" of being noticed by Gatekeeper Senpai and the publishing world vs. creative control, instant-er gratification, and needing to learn how to wear a few other hats oneself (like how to promote a book online or how to format text for a Kindle). It is no longer a question of "real" vs. "fake."

Fanfic: writers who know they will never get paid, who face little or no renown and often even stigma, creating art that they are passionate about just for the love of doing so. I'm sorry, what's not to love?

All artists are flawed. But most artists are breathtakingly honest about those flaws. The artists who deny their flaws, claiming they are particularly virtuous in some regard, are the ones whose falls from grace are often breathtaking plummets.

When your days are 14+ hours long and you're double booked on pet sitting, don't be afraid to do some jazz hands and hit it hard on the weekend.

Not enough fortune cookie wisdom?  Come get more!

Fortune Cookie Wisdom XIII

That's a pretty nice prescriptivism you've got there. Be a shame if someone linguistically drifted all over it.  

Writers give different advice to different people. The young hopeful who is desperate to emulate their success often gets a less-fluffy kind of advice than the perfectly content hobbyist.

A lot of writers put their writing on the back burner when their life becomes difficult. I'm not here to judge that decision, but what I can tell you is the more difficulty you write through, the more you can turn around and use difficult times as fuel.

It turns out disdain for self-promotion and treating money like it taints art is a pretty good way to be unknown and unpaid....but that's about it.

Write a lot. Read a lot. Don't give up. That'll get you pretty far when you realize everything else is variations on a theme and frosting.

So much of writing is in revision. Revision is the beating heart of good writing. Writing that first draft is hard, but rewriting and revision is where a work transforms from a malformed idea roughly in the shape of a story into something worthy of fiction. And nowhere is writer's block more common than in those who don't respect the process, think they have to get it right on the first try, and sit frozen trying to find the perfect words.

Forget the idea of "you better have a good reason" when it comes to defying conventions or advice. Every writer thinks their reason is the best reason since the dawn of reasons. Instead consider the concept of "earn it." Learn why that advice exists and how to work around it.

There are a lot of people in this world who, when they give up on something, will then tell you that you can't do it. And they absolutely intend that sentiment to break you. That will be their goal: to beat the will to write right out of you. Not accidentally. Not tough-love-gone-wild. Not because advice is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Just because they see you loving something that they don't have a relationship with anymore.  

Just so you know: watching you fight descriptive grammar is kind of like watching Road Runner cartoons. Prescriptivism will be playing Wile E Coyote

There's this old Simpsons where Homer wants steak and completely doesn't listen to Marge tell him that money's too tight for steak. (For some reason, I can only find the clip in a bad quality video.) I can't fathom why, but I always think of this when starting writers go out searching for some advice that isn't "write every day" like somewhere out there exists some magic advice that will circumvent treating their career aspirations with career-caliber effort. ("That guy said we had to write every day. Let's ask the NEXT writer on the panel....   Steak?")

Can't get enough? Need MOAR FORTUNE COOKIE WISDOM?

Fortune Cookie Wisdom XII

Image description: Individually wrapped fortune cookies.

Greetings from Denver!

It's been a long time and we have LOTS of fortune cookie wisdom built up.

See....if you were the first writer in the whole damned world to think of that, you might be onto something. But now that it's a trope, a cliché, and overdone like Uncle Cecil's hamburger patties, maybe you want to think twice.

Everyone fails. And eventually, everyone fails HARD. The interesting part is what happens next. 

The most common root cause of writer's block is not trusting in the full writing process. As soon as you don't have absolute certainty that you're going to have to rewrite something half a dozen times, you begin to be paralyzed in front of the blank page, trying to get it perfect on the first go.

Millions of artists are unknown, uncelebrated, and uncompensated. They paint, compose, play instruments, sing in the shower, dance in their living rooms, carve wood into faces, fold paper into cranes, decorate wreaths, take pottery classes, snap pictures, doodle, and even write in ways that fulfill them but aren't intended to be consumed by a wider audience. Even those who display or perform their art often do so for their communities or their loved ones. They act season after season in theaters where the ticket price might go towards the strike party. They sing for town concerts for little more glory than the mayor being honestly impressed. They write fiction online for forums where their best days are a couple of emails telling them their words are really appreciated. Not every art has to be about "making it."

Shutting off my brain and "just" enjoying something are usually actually mutually exclusive.

I don't fucking understand why some rando writers will spend 100 solid hours researching the architecture of Byzantium brothels so that they can write a two page scene, but balk at reading a couple of books by women of color to understand how they view the struggles for equality a bit differently than most white men.

The reason so many people ask how to be a writer instead of how to write is that the former is what they really want. And when they hear that it really just involves doing the later, they shop the question around, tirelessly searching for someone who will tell them that the answer isn't to read a lot and write a lot.

I know writing is a lifeline. I've known that since my last major adult relationship of over a decade started to fall apart. I've known that when I tried to process my mother's alcoholism and eventual recovery. I've known that since I started to realize almost all my stories were in some way about redemption. I've known that when I faced the moments over and over in college–working two jobs to get by and studying every extra minute of the day–when it would have been easier to give up. I've known that since I was young that I needed writing like some people need to talk about their day or unwind in front of the TV.

Perhaps the strangest among the claims of the "edgy" are those on a Facebook page about writing trying to insist that mere words have no real power. Words don't need to rip your flesh off like an X-men superpower to cause real harm.

You don't have to make daily writing so hard. Writing is a skill. It's like playing basketball, playing the cello, or playing World of Warcraft. If you don't do it, you get rusty. If you don't do it for long enough you kind of start to suck again. If you do it a little, you don't really improve and people who are trying hard will pass you like you're standing still. If you do it every day, you'll get better. If you really push yourself to be the best you can every day, you improve remarkably in a relatively short time.

See, there's nothing wrong with wanting dedicated time or a desk or even a room of one's own. But here's the take home and there's no getting around it: For most people, it's never really one thing. It's always one MORE thing. Once they get a laptop, they need a desk. Once they get a desk, they need a room. Once they get a room, they need uninterrupted time. And on it goes.

If your soul burns to write. Write. Don't wait for the opportunity to be perfect or that one obstacle to go away or the time when work isn't going to be so rough or the kids to go to school or the planets to align or to get that snazzy laptop or when you can dig out the old sewing room and make it into an office. Find some time and space and write. Because one thing you absolutely positively unequivocally do not have an endless supply of is tomorrows. It's later than you think.

Navigating getting paid is the fish fork of the art world. And the bourgeois anesthetized art world that it creates, afraid to acknowledge that art is work, and artists don't all have trust funds and rich spouses, suffers for its lack of voices.

If you write, you're a writer. That's the part that changes your life. That's the part that opens up your world. That's the part that makes a difference. That's the art and the catharsis. That's the part that makes you feel whole when the bottom falls out–as it will do because life is kind of like that. If you write unpaid, unread, in your room for the sheer joy of it, ferreting your pages into the back of a drawer.... YOU. ARE. A. WRITER. Everything else is just frosting.

Not enough! Need more fortune cookie wisdom! 

Fortune Cookie Wisdom XI

The longer I do art, the more I think that JUST after hard work and persistence, the next most valuable trait an artist can have is the ability to crash right through their own imposter syndrome like the Kool-Aid pitcher.    

Oh yeah!

More people need to learn the formula of plot, actually. Most people's problems isn't that their plots are formulaic. It's that their plots don't exist. 

Mental illness is not homologous to evil. Before you have an antagonist simply be "crazy" consider who that stereotype hurts to be perpetuated and reinforced one more time and how lazy the writing is that doesn't come up with a more compelling motivation for villainy.

When you fall–and you will fall–get back up. 

Little advice? If you're in this for money, fame, or groupies, you really need to do something else. This just isn't the way.

Your role in fiction is to tell the starkest truth possible by weaving a tapestry of lies.

If I had one random, non-writerly bit advice to give to writers trying to cut their teeth in the digital age, it would be this: read the article/book/whatever before you reply to it. Read the book. Read the thing you're criticizing. I can't even tell you how foolish that makes people look. If you haven't read it, shut your sound tube, and have a fucking taco. (Or stop moving your phalanges, whatever.)

Look you do you, but every writer who has a career arc one might emulate has written daily and encouraged would-be writers to do so. And I've never once had someone give me feedback that they tried writing daily and it "destroyed their creativity." (Actually the opposite.) That's only something you hear from people who haven't done it yet. So you do you...but maybe also do the math while you're at it.

Don't take it too hard if someone tells you your Nano draft is steaming shit. It's not like that's somehow vastly different from every other first draft.

Your inspiration is basically a muscle. If you sit around waiting for it to work, it will pretty much only twitch from time to time as an involuntary reaction to stimulus. If you put that thing through the paces every day, it will be Herculean and move mountains at your whim. 

You're going to develop a voice as you write. It will be as unique as your actual voice, and those who've read you will recognize you as easily and quickly as they would if they picked up the phone and heard you speaking.Let that voice come out, and don't let too many people insist that they know better what your voice should be or to shape it to their own vision.

Grammar is the Matrix. You exist inside it, it's everywhere, you breath it, and you have to know what it is and how it works to be a writer, but some of its rules can be bent and others can be broken, and if you want to jump across the building and make someone say "Woah..." when they read you, you're going to have to know exactly when to ignore its physics.

A lot of writers like writing, even for its own sake. And they want to be Writers (capital W). But here's where things get tricky. The work between those two points is phenomenal, painful, and at times down right humiliating, and if you don't slog into the horror of it, you're just masturbating with the keyboard. Masturbating isn't a bad thing (don't get me wrong, I'm sex positive here–we should all be having a good wank far more often), but it's definitely just for oneself. But the thing is is perfectly plausible to spend a lifetime writing and never be published. (Or self-published but never bought outside of close circles.) You have to do the right kind of work too.

Caffeine and writers have a sordid, tangled history, and it's possible you can jump start some creativity with some, but too much burns you out in a game where slow and steady wins the race, so don't make it a big fun one-upmanship to prove how badass you are.

If you only write when you're inspired, your muse is in control of you (and not the other way around). And your muse abandons anything that starts to look a little too much like work. 

The worst writing in the world comes from thinking the readers need to be told what to feel.

Shhhhhh. Come here. No, no closer. Closer!  Do what ever works. Always.


NOT ENOUGH!!! NEED MORE FORTUNE COOKIES!

Fortune Cookie Wisdom X

Even staler fortune cookies.

Remember, when I say it'll take about ten years (on average and roughly) to make the kind of money that might pay bills, I'm talking about ten years of the most intense, dedicated, rejection-filled writing you've ever done. Not ten years of sitting around, dreaming of being a writer but not writing. 

Grammar is like fashion. There are absolutely people who overdress and get pretentious about judging, but if you don't care at all, eventually you show up to a formal event in stained sweat pants, and people draw their own conclusions.

Creatives generally have to be even more careful about overdoing it than other people. It's not just an equation that you can keep adding to as long as you haven't reached 168 hours a week. There are intangibles in play. The first thing that exhaustion affects is our self-motivation. And also pretty high up on that list is creativity.

Toddlers don't even pause if they fall; they just get right back up. It isn't a thing. They don't doubt themselves. They don't wonder what they're doing or whether they should be walking at all. They don't feel bad or wonder whether learning to walk is worth it. Falling is just the cost of doing business. We could learn a lot about writing from toddlers.

Speaking of toddlers teaching artists. Everything in their world is new and exciting. And that's exactly the mentality an artist needs.

Cold hard reality time: you're never going to make it as a writer without lots of work. A decade, maybe two, of really hard work. The sucky part is that it is entirely possible to put in that decade or two and still not make it. So you better love the writing for its own sake.

A Time to Kill. The Tales of Peter Rabbit. Fifty Shades of Grey. Orbit. Still Alice. The Tryle Trilogy. The Martian. What do all these books have in common? They are wildly successful best sellers....that were originally self-published. Don't EVER give up.

If you're having a bad day or a bad week or even a bad month, you're not alone. Just keep sitting down and doing the work; the words will return.

With the exception of a few authors and works, most of the canon--certainly almost all of it in history or from other cultures has been crafted without the benefit of any MFA programs. People just read a lot and then wrote themselves.

The peaks and valleys of being an artist can sometimes suck, but the best thing you can remember is that it's normal. Every time you go into one of those crippling self doubt spirals, remember that you are a writer, an artist, a creator of worlds. Soon you will emerge from the ashes of your own self doubt, blazing in glory, arms akimbo, and vaporize everyone who doubt you with your explosive awesomeness.

We can't all be warriors. Others have other strengths, and fight in other ways. 

I need MORE fortune cookies!

Fortune Cooke Wisdom IX

Even Staler Fortune Cookies

Proper grammar that muddies meaning is like proper manners that make your guest uncomfortable–both deeply, profoundly miss the point.  

Unfortunately most writers need to have a run in with bad criticism, a scathing review, multiple publishers' rejections, or horrible sales of their self-published work before they're ready to get help or take advice. Perhaps more unfortunately most writers never get to that point. They simply exist in a never-challenged state of believing their own abundance of talent.

It's tough for those on top of social hierarchies (white, men, heterosexual, etc...) to write about the marginalized groups. Listen to their stories with empathy instead of incredulity and treat them (as a character) with humanity instead of as a stereotype.

In almost every meaningful context, "talent" is functionally no different than hard work over time.

Hard work is vital to a writer's success, but downtime and relaxation is important too.

Irrational font hatred is so chic. So you should go ahead and have extreme feelings of rage over Comic Sans. It makes you look cutting edge and extremely balanced.

Let that %#@$%ing dress be a lesson to writers that different people LITERALLY perceive the world differently and will work very hard to get their perception validated, and that your characters should reflect that. Having every character be a reflection of you is critically untruthful writing.

Remember that not everything that is "generally true" about writers and writing needs to make you personally defensive. It's okay to be a notable exception. But do consider the possibility that it might be itching your brain because it struck a little too close to a nerve.

Bloggers beware: making every sentence its own paragraph is as mentally coherent and emotionally impactive as writing one big paragraph. The only advantage is that it's slightly easier to read.

Normal people just don't toss each other into walls as part of conflict resolution.

I'm going to do that "Year of Non Cis/Het/White/Male authors" exercise. Except I'm planning on giving myself one or two "cheat" books each month, and then extending the exercise by 30-40 years.

I need more fortune cookies!!

Fortune Cookie Wisdom VIII

Even staler fortune cookies. 

The problem is that we live in a world where most people think there is some "bingo" idea that is worth money and work doesn't matter. While the truth of the meritocracy is more complicated than its myth of work=success, it's never the ideas that make money; it's their execution. 

Live a new schedule for a few days before figuring out where your writing is going to fit in. No schedule will ever really be quite how it looks on paper.  

No writer is immune to the effect of people not respecting their writing time. The trick is to pack a flamethrower and flash your best murder eyes.

Creative writing programs are not a waste of time, but be ready to deal with a lot of things that aren't actually writing, and be ready to spend a lot of money for things you could have reproduced with self-motivation, 100 hours on Google, and some sincere feedback.

A generation of writers exists now who fetishize the physical book as the pinnacle of writing success. Despite the fact that physical book publishing is descends into greater obsolescence, market shares have shrunk, and it has become far more difficult to achieve success through traditional publishing, they still believe physical books, book deals, publishing contracts, agents and such are more "legitimate." I'm not here to judge their route but I am here to cheer that there is no longer just ONE route, and I will not stop pointing out that unless one is fabulously well established as a writer already, traditional publishing will lead to fewer readers, more logistics, less writing time, and less money. It is no longer the path.

Agents might be strange writer-hating creatures who live in caves with booby traps and acid pits, but if you're going through traditional publishing, you need one.

If you don't think a million page views and a regular paycheck takes the curse off of people who insist I'm not a "real writer," let me divest you of such absurdity.

If you want to be an elitist, classist, ablist, (and often racist) anal sphincter, be a pedantic jerk about "proper" grammar and assume things about people's intelligence based upon the fact that their dialect doesn't match yours or their eduction wasn't as stellar as yours. On the other hand, if you want to be a widely-read writer, it's in your best interest to learn which rules the group in power favors and break them only with care and consideration.

Every writer you envy (and most you've never heard of) have sacrificed something for their writing. Family. A "real" job. A social life. Something. It's not that you'll never publish or never make money doing something casually for a few hours on the weekend, but the writers who fill our bookshelves have all had to put something on the altar of writing.

People will Google your name the minute you hit the public sphere. Make sure they don't find your Friendster account from ten years ago with the Emo Julia Moore™ poetry phase.

If the answer to "Why do you write?" is money, fame, groupies, really hot birthday threesomes, or basically any reason other than "Because I love the act of writing for its own sake," you might want to quit now. There are better and easier ways to get all that other stuff.

I need more fortune cookies!