Introducing: NOT Writing About Writing

If you've been paying close attention over at FB or watching my updates here with a keen eye, you may have noticed that I started to cross post links to a new blog that I'm writing.

Well today, our "soft opening" is over, and it is with much fanfare and the tooting of many trumpets that I would like to present:

NOT Writing About Writing

Not that I don't love reminding everyone that our narratives are probably the most powerful means of social control that exist, but trying to tie the connective tissue of every SINGLE not-really-about-writing post with "The Narrative" was wearing a little thin, even for me. So now I can just get the shit off my chest.

I won't link every post here, but some of the ones that do particularly well (for whatever value of my current average traffic "particularly well" is) I will keep in an ongoing list.

I've paired up with a developer who is trying to get something going that he hopes will be a cross between Medium and Patreon; free (as is all my writing) but with an option to support certain creators. Most of the functionality is still in its pretty initial stages, but hopefully this goes someplace interesting.

Those of you who remember back to the dedicated Social Justice Bard blog, this isn't that (although it edges a little more that way than WAW will). It's also personal thoughts, media reviews, and basically anything that's a little to long for Facebook and not really about writing.

Freeze Peach- Why freedom of speech is not freedom FROM consequence or entitlement to medium.


[Note: All the "introduction" stuff will disappear in a couple of weeks and this will just be the landing page for some of the more popular articles.]

Twenty Questions

The questions might be long but the answers aren't.....usually.

We answer a lot of questions here at Writing About Writing and most take time, energy, and nuance to be a full post. Publishing. Craft. Process. Personal questions to me. They're all covered. And if you'd like to get one answered send them, like all questions, to chris.brecheen@gmail.com and make the title "WAW MAILBOX."

But not every answer needs an entire post to respond to. Even stacking two three or four at a time won't really end up with a full length post, so when we've gathered up enough of those quick-to-answer, we'll bundle them all together and toss out one big run––usually by theme if we can make one or a "pairing" work. If your question is more of a quickie than a put-on-Marvin-Gaye-and-take-your-time type, it just may show up in one of these posts.

June 28, 2018 Theme: Personal/Meta

July 9th, 2018 Theme: Process (And leftover personals)
July 21st, 2018 Theme: Publishing/Blogging/FB and Social Media
Dec 14, 2018 Theme: Meta

The Renown Margin

I am not famous.

But I do have a following that is growing, a public persona that some people recognize, I run into strangers who know who I am, and have attracted enough attention that not every interaction is free of awkwardness and sometimes discomfort. Millions of people have read my work, and at the edges of my pedestrian perception of the world the edges have begun to crinkle toward something resembling fame.

This blog was always meant to be educational on the surface and the meta level, both in being writing about writing as well as a real-time disclosure of what I find that works (listicles like woah), what I find doesn't (posting college essays), and what deals are strangely Faustian (hello Facebook). You see the excruciating glacial progress. No overnight success stories here. If I start to carve out something, you will see how it took me years of writing every day to get there. You will watch me improve from old articles to new. You will see my career as it happens.

And now the first glimmers of something like fame are included in that career. People who see me not as a person but as a filler for things (both good and bad) and as someone who has something they desperately want. So here are the articles about that.

Intro
Groupie Threesome Jokes and other Problematica (Mailbox)
Public and Private
Unfriended
The Armor I wish I Didn't Need
Eleven Reasons Fame Probably Doesn't Look Like You Think, Part 2, Part 3

VLOGS

[The text in the brackets will disappear in a couple of weeks....

Well now you know.

I am, and always will be, primarily a writer, but I've begun to dabble in a few different projects just to see how it goes. Vlogs are easier for some to engage in, may extend my audience base, and have a different energy than writing, so they may help me to have a bit more time for other writing. (Here's hoping.) W.A.W. isn't going to change format or anything. I just might put one post a week up as a vlog, and if I don't like it, I'll stop.

I'm also vlogging for Ace of Geeks. This will only be every other week, and not strictly related to writing. However since Writing About Writing is your one stop shop for any project I'm doing, be it other blogs, fiction, or anything hosted elsewhere, I will start a new menu for The Reliquary, and keep all of my vlogs in one space. If one of my AoG vlogs has something (even obliquely) to do with writing, I'll make a small post about it here.]

All of my vlogs in one place.   

Writing About Writing Vlogs

Did you forget the monthly polls?

Tenacity

Ace of Geeks Vlogs

10/26 Boycott Starwars 7 was "Just" a Troll

Amy Echeverri

Adults ask silly questions of children. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" A writer. A teacher. Adults nod sagely and tell the children that they're good kids, very good kids, here's a biscuit.

But here's the thing. Amy didn't understand that the adults were asking about her career. She thought they meant what she wanted to be. Not do. And Amy wanted to be a writer. Or a teacher. Maybe both, chuckled wise adults, cracking wise about the notion of the impoverished teacher and the penniless poet.

Amy continues to careen around all the meanings of a sentence and choose exactly the wrong one. Or the right one. It's a mystery. It does give her a skill in her technical writing career -- she can predict uncannily how a befuddled user will read text wrong. It's good to have a career that a kid can tell the folks about. Details about her smut writing career make for quietly uncomfortable family suppers. Meanwhile, her personal writing includes novels, role-playing games, live-action-role-playing games, and scripts for graphic novels. She'll write pretty much anything.

Amy is a writer. You can find her technical writer profile at LinkedIn.

The Mailbox: Guest Blogger Amy Puts Down the Smack
Making Bank as a Writer
Red Ink, Manuscripts, and a Multiple-Stabbing Victim
Wikipedia Mindreads. Kinda.
Practical Sacrifice

Claire Youmans

It is my great pleasure to introduce Claire Youmans as Writing About Writing's first regular guest blogger.

Claire Youmans has published several books and written more than that. She's sailed oceans, owned horses and is currently ensconced in the Southern California mountains where she is writing, skiing, and messing about with boats. She's originally from Seattle but prefers snow and sun to rain. She travels extensively in Japan, and elsewhere, and is thoroughly enjoying writing The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy series of children's books, for 4th grade and up.


Introducing Claire Youmans
The Devil's in the Details
Don't Go Breaking My Heart
When Procrastination Isn't Your Fault
The Story Teller
What Comes Next?
Discipline/The Real Deal
Be the Audience
7 Reasons to Love E-readers for Kids
NaNoWriMo: Moving From Wanna-be to Pro
Three Points on Process
Indulge a Little Fetish
Three Benefits of Researching Fiction
Why Should I Give it Away?
The Message Trap
Research and Trust
Changing landscape--again
Ch-ch-ch-changes: The Dragon Sisters

Also check out her blog and FB page and available books here:

http://claireyoumansauthor.blogspot.com

www.tokigirlandsparrowboy.com

Facebook:  The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Toki-Girl-Sparrow-Boy-Claire-Youmans/dp/0990323404/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

*Please note: I pay all my regular guest bloggers what their traffic brings in, even if it's only a few cents, however that only accounts for ad revenue. If you want part of your donation to Writing About Writing to be earmarked Claire, please make a note of that in the space that Paypal (to the left and top) gives you for notes, and I will make sure she gets it.

The Junk Room

This is where we keep all the "other" articles. You know, the ones that don't quite fit neatly into other Reliquary categories. A few of them are sort of about one thing, but there aren't quite enough to start another full menu. Most are just don't really belong anywhere else, but we just can't bear to throw them out.

It's a little messy in here. I tried to stack the articles neatly along the walls at first, but then people just threw a bunch of crap in. (I mean why do we even have a giant can of hamdingers with a "Don't tell Joel" note on them. That's weird, right?) I keep meaning to get in here and organize, but something always comes up.

Please watch your step. It's starting to get a little crowded down here.


First Post
The Trouble With Short Stories
My Name is Chris and I Use Two Spaces
Three Last Ubergeeky Words of Warning About NaNoWriMo
Three Bits of Insight and Three Implications from Mark Lawrence on Reddit
J.K. Rowling Talks About Failure (and I blather about it a bit too)
In it for the money?  Do something else.
Art, Life, and Support Mechanisms
Recognizing Real Opportunities
Maple and Vine (A Not Quite Review)
An Open Letter to Lynn Shepherd 
The Humanity of Nuance

Writers and Politics Be careful when dealing with politics. The truth is a casualty of political writing.  Avoiding politics entirely isn't the answer.  But there are reasons to be cautious.

Grounded Parents

[The text in brackets will disappear in a few weeks. When I'm working on a piece for Grounded Parents, it won't actually show up until later on that week, so those days I will do a little emcee job for whatever the last article was, and encourage people to watch their social media if they want to see the one I'm working on as soon as it goes up. (So watch W.A.W. on social media if you want to see the G.P. article I'm working on currently.)]

In addition to my snark writing (about writing) here at Writing About Writing I try to write with some regularity at Grounded Parents. I don't write enough to make my editor happy, but somehow not quite seldom enough for them to have puffer-fish mutant ninjas throw me to the curb and release the Titan-enhanced hell hounds on me either. (Although, honestly, I don't understand why not.)

Grounded Parents is a group of 37 incredibly talented writers (I don't know why they put up with me). They are the most educated, intelligent, empathetic, and genuinely good people I have ever had the honor of working with. We write about subjects from social justice to GMO hysteria through the lens of parents' eyes. We tackle subjects from bullying to those stupid memes about how kids had it better in the 70s and everything in between. And with the exception of the snarky creative writing major who doesn't know how to toe the skeptics' party line about midwives, we are very good at what we do.

At Grounded Parents I talk more about my home life, my family, being a "parent," and even though it's still written with pseudonyms, there are fewer superheroes and more banality. Here are the articles I have written for them:

I Am Not a Parent
Look at That Tree
Grounded Midwives
A n3wb in the Childbirth Controversy
Enter the Househusband
ZOMG Baby Smiles
To Co-Parent or Not to Co-Parent
Maybe I'll Just Shut Up
I Delight in Your Pigeonholing Failure
Be Glad Your Housespouse Isn't Union
The Ideology of Skepticism

Ace of Geeks

Writing About Writing is not the only blog I write for. Ace of Geeks is a blog where I take a stroll away from writing, and dip a little further into the pure geek side of my life. It's where I talk about video games, science fiction movies, and role playing (of the non sexy variety), and generally write with a wonderful group of geeks and friends and an editor who in his own words wants to be "Wil Wheaton."

Ace of Geeks puts out a M-Th blog (to which I contribute at a pathetic "once in a while" pace very roughly averages out to once a month) and a weekly podcast on Fridays where they talk everything from non-traditional publishing to the latest video game play in's to interviews with geeky icons to discussions about deeper themes in movies. They extend to all the Great Warm Hug of Geekdom™.

Here are the articles I've written for them:

10 Reasons Gamergate Has Failed
How Video Games Made Me A Better Person
I GOT TO DO A PODCAST!!!!! (Here is a follow up to that podcast I wrote.)
"Fake Geek" Is Not the Problem With Fake Geek Girls
Bioshock Infinite: Your Argument Is Invalid Part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Movies Deserve to Be Done a Second Time
Why I Will Never See Ender's Game (Possibly Ever)

In Memoriam

An entry on Writing About Writing might
be just a tiny bit less impressive than
this memorial.

[This is our latest new menu to go into The Reliquary. Everything in italics will disappear in a few weeks.]

Not every writer we lose can be celebrated here at Writing About Writing, or this blog wouldn't be a whole lot more than Writing About Recently Dead Writers. However, sometimes the light of a writer's words were so bright and so brilliant that the whole world flickers and dims just a tiny amount at their passing. I try to say a few words about such writers, and all those posts will end up here.

Gore Vidal
Nora Ephron
Ray Bradbury
Seamus Heaney
Maya Angelou
Leonard Nimoy
Carrie Fisher
Peak Orangosity

The Very Basics

Not everyone is ready to dive into the subtle nuances of word choice's affect on tone or the difference between close and distant narration. Some people need to know what's the difference between first person and third or what irony means. Before we can appreciate the subtle ways in which a good setting echoes the theme, it might be important to know what both of those things are. Before we can talk about how effective it can be to have the direct characterization through a focalizer be in conflict with the indirect characterization of dialogue, it's going to be important to know what focalizers, indirect and direct characterization, and dialogue are.

These are articles with some of the very basics. For the starting writer, the vet who wants to brush up on the fundamentals, or just the old hand who isn't sure they know what everything is called, these articles will help spell out some of the things experienced writers sometimes assume all writers know.

Point of View
The Very Basics of Submitting
Writing Query Letters

Types of Editing

Social Justice Bard

Let me grab my lute and tell you about "the narrative."

• Social Justice Bard That insult may not bother us the way you intended
• Why I'm a Social Justice Bard (Not a Warrior)
• Coming Out As Feminist If you don't like the word "feminism," you should start here.
• That Feminist Crap
• Changing the Creepy Guy Narrative One summer day on BART.....
• "Creepy Guy Feedback" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4  LOTS of feedback to the article above.
• Elliot Rodger and the MRA/PUA on Writing
• Opting Out: My Dubious Future in Traditional Publishing I may never have a book on your shelf.
• The Really Hateful Hate Mail Some real sexist gems in here.
• Why Others' Stories Matter
• The Mailbox: Why is the Publishing Industry so Whitewashed?
• 20 Shirtstorm Narratives and What's Wrong With Them
• On Social Media and Social Justice
• The PC Police (Mailbox)
• A Year of Diverse Authors (Cue Literary Frenzy)
• Controlling the Narrative (A Case Study Within Baltimore)
• Deconstructing more Baltimore Narratives
• Helping the Purple People (How Privilege Changes The Story)
• On The Stories We Tell
• Flipping the Script
• Christian Terrorism is a Story You Don't Hear
• But They're Just Words
• A Call For Civility
• The Narrative of White People on Racism
• On Guns and Mental Illness and the Stories We Tell
• Think of the Children
• Trust the Police?
• The Narrative of Normalization
• SJB vs. Milo the Troll
• SJB and the Curious Case of Representation
• Social Justice Bard and The Status Quo Defenders ("SQiDs")
• Joss Whedon and the Art-Artist Divide
• SJB and the Tale of the Nazi Sympathizer
• Words Fucking Matter
• Be My Guest (But Remember You're My Guest)
• 25 Narratives We Hear After Every Mass Shooting (And Why They're Total Bullshit)
• Social Justice Quickies (Mailbox)
• Why Didn't You Report It
• Fireside Thoughts
• A Midterm Autopsy
• Social Justice Fortune Cookies
• Ten Flavors of Gamergate Fail
• It's NOT Just Words

For more social justice, check out Social Justice Metaphors

If you'd like to support me as a writer, there are multiple ways to do so, and I welcome that support as I have skyrocketing rent and insurance like everyone else, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't "fund" my social justice writing in a vacuum. That's not why I do it. I have my reasons for not being able to be a full-fledged "social justice advocate/activist/writer/warrior," and I refuse to be making a paycheck off of these struggles that are not mine. I'll do these Social Justice Bard posts no matter what. I promise. If the gestalt of my writing appeals, great, but if you only want to see more social justice posts, please donate to the causes themselves (BLM, SPLC, Planned Parenthood, Equality Now to name just a few) or writers–particularly women of color–who are writing about their own struggles.  Thank you.

Old and Unimproved

[Note: this entry will soon become the latest menu in The Reliquary, so all the text here in the brackets will disappear in a couple of weeks.]

Well, I'll TRY to Google free-to-use images for
 "Old and Unimproved" but I'm sure there won't be anything useful...
Oh.  Um.  Okay, that works!

As of this writing, I've been blogging at Writing About Writing for almost two and a half years, and some of my earliest articles are showing their age.

They need sprucing up–a few more jokes, more inappropriate sexual humor, more stock images with hilarious captions, reformatting in some cases, and some of them were from a time before I fully realized that internet attention spans mean that a twenty page article should be at least ten separate posts.

Like anyone is going to still be awake after the third paragraph unless there's some werewolf on vampire erotica going on.

As I go through and repost these crusty old relics, most will simply be revised with a new coat of paint–the changes made right on the old article. Some, however, will be changed so drastically that they basically become entirely new articles. Their friends won't recognize them at the store and will say "Oh my God it IS you!" in that way that people who've been to the gym love and people who've had kids hate.

I'd like Writing About Writing to remain, among other things, a real-time demonstration of the writing process. In the same way that I hope people are noticing that I've been at this for years and still make less than a Malaysian sweatshop worker hour per hour (so that they never think it was overnight success should I achieve something more notable), I would also like to be transparent about the power of revision and how much a writer can improve with daily practice. So if ever I alter an article fundamentally, I'll put the original version here, that people might be able to take a look at it.  I'll also put the New and Improved version next to it.

If you don't think writing daily will make you better, take a look at the shit I was putting out just a few hundred days ago. And speaketh: "Lo! Verily thou wast most shittacular! Yea, but behold, thou art now slightly less shittacular."


O&U: The Trouble With Writing Short Stories  N&I: The Trouble With Short Stories
O&U: One Book To Rule them All      N&I: One Book to Rule Them All 
O&U: A Writer Goes to Burning Man  N&I: A Writer Goes to Burning Man
O&U: No Apologies                              N&I: No Apologies: A Defense of Speculative Fiction

Evil Mystery Guest Blogger Menu

Whenever I'm unpublished,
I stop being unpublished and be awesome instead.

Hi everyone,

As part of my ongoing service to tell you the secrets of success (and there are secrets, my friends so don't let anyone sell you on that "hard work and lots of reading" crap) I have bundled all my articles together in the same place, and placed them with the other guest bloggers.

Because fuck Chris, that's why.

Oh and don't worry. There will be more posts coming; I promise. I'm not afraid to divulge the actual secrets of being a successful writer even though established authors hate me for spilling their trade secrets. And don't worry about me getting caught either. The SciGuy will never be able to keep me out of the computer system because that idiot Chris doesn't realize I'm operating right under his nose.


The Worst Best Advice About Getting Started
The Worst Best Advice About How to be a Famous Writer
How to Publish your NaNoWriMo Novel Right Away
The Mailbox: Best Answers Ever
The Worst Best Trope Advice
The Worst Best Writing Advice About Reading
The Worst Best Tips for Writing People of Color
AWESOME Cookie Wisdom

A Writer's Life

Do we REALLY want to know about THIS guy?
Really?

Chris is a total tool who lives the life beyond the persona through which this blog is written. I don't know why you wouldn't rather have me talking about threesomes or tentacle anime instead, but apparently non-W.A.W. Chris has some sort of strange appeal.

No accounting for taste, I guess.

Most of the time Monday entries are not much more than what's going on in my life or something that happened that week, and will not be here.  If you feel some sort of strange compulsion to dig through my exploits at that level of detail, you can follow the "A Writer's Life" tag or use the archives tool.

However periodically I write something that is more about me as a person, or I write about some sort of major event in my life. These are the biggies. Warning: superheroic realism and creative non-fiction are not unheard of.

Let's Get Personal                                                                        An Introvert's Birthday
Daily Dose of Demon Dueling                                                      Our Newest Little Crime Fighter
Why I Left Islam                                                                           Enter the Contrarian
A Pound of Flesh/An Ounce Returned                                          Over The Hill
Coming Out As Feminist                                                             My Life Just Got More Complicated
Opting Out: My Dubious Future in Traditional Publishing         A Writer Goes to Burning Man
Why I Literally Can't Even                                                          Through: The Only Way Out
On a Slow Week                                           
Sabbati Terminus Manibus Jazzicus                                           Paying the Bills Through Writing
Page Turn/A Dream Realized                                                      A Writer's Time
Major Meta Update 2018                                                            Peak Orangosity
Atop Death Hill

The Writing Process

 #6 is obviously groupie threesomes.
Also, clearly this is a metaphor for creativity,

and not just a licence free image for the word

"process."

Generally, there is a great deal of confusion about the difference between process and craft.  A lot of people who enjoy writing and have a refined process, are not particularly good at the actual craft (like me) and a lot of people who are quite adept at craft struggle with the process for their entire lives.  Many excellent writers have written only a few stories, and cannot motivate themselves to write more.  Or they write brilliantly, but only when under deadline for a class.

Very often the trouble here is that writing well is only half the story and usually only a small portion of the difficulty most writers struggle with.  If the technical skill of writing is not married to a good sense of process, then what you end up with a very good writer who does not produce very much.  Indeed, most writers have more difficulty just sitting to write than they ever do with the prose itself.  (Although, unfortunately, most writers focus on learning the technical skill almost the exclusion of working on their process.)

While concrete imagery, dialogue, or characterization are craft elements, how many times to draft, when to write, how important research and how to sit down and produce every day is process.  These are articles about the process of writing and whatever insight I have gleaned about it.

The Lessons of Brande.  Dorothea Brande's book Becoming A Writer is the best process book that I know of.
1 One Book To Rule Them All (And With Oversewing Bind Them).
2 Cultivating internal dualism.
3 Morning writing
4 The Floating Half Hour of Writing

Do What Works For YOU It's not just a concept in martial arts, but about writing in general.
The Witching Hour When Magic Works Write when you enjoy writing, not others.
Free Writing--Why it Rocks There's actually a neurological reason
Should I Outline? (Mailbox) Authors have mixed feelings.  I weigh in.
Revision Land (Mailbox) Charlie the unicorn goes to the magical Revision Land
When to Revise (Mailbox) What to do when revision feels like not writing


If you're enjoying this blog, and would like to see more articles like this one, the writer is a guy with a rent and insurance to pay who would love to spend more time writing. Please consider contributing to My Patreon. As little as $12 a year (only one single less-than-a-cup-of-coffee dollar a month) will get you in on backchannel conversations, patron-only polls, and my special ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

Folks Worth Checking Out

Other Blogs I Write For
NOT Writing About Writing- A blog where I share some of my more personal, political, and non-writing thoughts.
Ace of Geeks- [This blog is on a indefinite hiatus]
Grounded Parents- [Retired, but several articles remain.]


Friends Worth Visiting

Book Snippets- Microblog with great quotes from great books
Anita M King's Writing Window- Blog of a fellow writer.  Lots of good creative prompts here.
That Blond Mom- Blog of a friend, journalist, and working writer.

It is My Honor to Introduce...

A list of articles from Writing About Writing's more....meet-on-the-street-able guest Bloggers. (The others are very shy....and also live in my brain.) Writers of skill, talent, and some even the ability to pay the bills with their smithed words who have blessed W.A.W. with their incredible insight.

And there's always room for one more!

If you want to join the few, the proud, the elite and blog here at W.A.W., just check out the conditions and drop me an e-mail.(chris.brecheen@gmail.com)  If you write a few articles, I'll even give you your OWN menu.

Lauren Avjean- Writing Survival Characters: A Undeadly Epiphany
Diane Glazman- How to Survive the End of Your Novel
Shannon Hilson- 3 Things No One Ever Told Me About Writing for a Living
Amy Puts Down the Smack on a "You Don't Have to Write Every Day" Advocate
Laura Shefler- The Man with the Golden Pen
Jana Misho- What I Learned From Writing My First Novel
Wayne Doust- The Dream
Shana Chartier- How to Be a Writer Without Writing Every Day (And my reply)
Arielle K Harris- This is Not Real

The Best of the Mailbox

If you want a question answered on The Mailbox, just put "For The Mailbox" in your subject line in an email to chris.brecheen@gmail.com.  I will use your first name unless you tell me explicitly that you want me to use your whole name and/or you would prefer to remain completely anonymous. I can't promise I'll post everything I get, that I'll respond to abject wankery, or that I'm going to keep posting every anonymous attempt to hurt my feelings if I have anything else to use instead, but if you write a thoughtful question or comment--even if it disagrees with me--I'll will honestly do my best to try to get it up here and write a little something in reply.

If we ever get to a point where there's just too much mail to answer it all, I'll pick the best questions and comments (which I promise won't simply be the most complementary).

Rage Against the Brecheen: Hate mail--and my response to it--does so well, it deserves its own menu. Come see the teeming millions of the internet (usually anonymously) try to take me down a peg or two.

The Not So Best of the Mailbox: Not every mailbox is destined for greatness.  Some of them have ended up down in the basement.

Twenty Questions: Many questions don't need a whole post just to answer, so I bundle them up and send them on their way in one big post.

The Best of the Mailbox
Comic Sans                                                                              That "What the Author Meant" Meme
My Top Three Achievements                                                   Bits and Pieces
Grammar Questions I Have No Business Answering               Revision Land
What Does "Good Writing" Look Like                                      Proposal vs. Proposition
Giving Thanks and the Oxford Comma                                    Writing Every Day
Unsupportive GF's Wrath and My Stance on Grammar            Facebook Questions
The Value of TV/Movies to a Writer                                         Speech to Text Software/Season2
What Do I Want From Writing About Writing?                          Just How Much Do You Make?
Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel                                             Should I Outline My Book?
Why can't I make money?  My friends like me                         Whatever Works
Overcoming Inertia/ Sans Love of Writing                               Critique Groups
Strangely Inappropriate Non-Writing Questions                      Traditional vs Digital Publishing
"Creepy Guy Feedback" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4              Little Kid's Grammar
Feedback and Follow Up (Q's about past Mailboxes)              Coming Out As Feminist
Is There Anything GOOD About an MFA?                             Questions From Facebook
Is Dead Poets Society a Shitty Movie or What                      The W.A.W. "Chris's" Persona
Why Is the Publishing Industry so Whitewashed?                 What is avant garde?
How Do I Describe Things?                                                     Tropeception Part 1 Part 2
The PC Police                                                                         Cultural Appropriation
Character Driven Zombie Stories                                           Jones and Pratchett on "Real" Literature
What About Harper Lee's New Book                                     How Do I Write A First Sentence?
I Just Can't Write                                                                     Writing For Income
When to Throw in the Towel                                                  This "Populist Writing Philosophy"
Social Justice Quickies                                                           I've Lost That Loving Feeling
The Lesser Writer
                             


Can't find what you are looking for? Or maybe just can't get enough of these amazing answers? Send your questions along to chris.brecheen@gmail.com and I'll answer as many as I can as fast as I can.

Silly Fun

I'm willing to stretch the connective tissue of what constitutes writing "about writing" pretty damn far when there's a cheap laugh to be had.

Cause I love cheap laughs.  

So sit back, relax, enjoy the giggles in the links below, and try not think TOO much about how little this actually has to do with writing.  I'll try to dance on the connective tissue while doing jazz hands in a sparkling leotard so that we can all pretend the pretense is totally there.


Rationalization HO!!!!

The Horror Trope that Nearly Killed Me                               Playful Perky Pi Period Pi Pun Pictures
Star Trek: TNG Satire (Tropefic)                                         Sonnet 23--My Forbidden Love
Shakespearian Humor: Why Character IS Plot                     Searches that have led to W.A.W.
Giving a Big Hand for Adam Licsko's Latest Project           Jokes About Writers and Writing
Hitler Doesn't WANT to Write Every Day!
Misunderstood Shark is Misunderstood
Disneyland: A Reading Photolog