The Floating Half Hour of Writing (Lessons of Brande)

Part one about Morning Writing.

As I mentioned before, I haven't had writer's block in fifteen years.

I also haven't had the slightest trouble sitting down to write when ever I want in over a decade.  Morning.  Night.  Middle of the day.  I can sit down and the words are there, waiting for me...like I'm Willard and they're my red-eyed friends.

Sort of....

This is not because I am, in any way, special.  Professor X didn't try to recruit me when he heard I hadn't had writer's block. ("I'm forming a special team, and maybe you can write press releases for them...or something.")  And when me and Peter Petrelli got paired up as Laser Tag teammates in the tri-county championship bout, he didn't walk away saying to his brother, "Nathan, it's amazing!  I just don't get writer's block anymore!"

I'm just a normal dude.  I learned to overcome writer's block.  You can too.  Not because I am yet another white, heterosexual, male from middle class America telling you that anyone can actualize their visualizations if they just prioritize their positivization or some shit.  But just because creativity is a muscle and I know how to do "push ups."

I owe it all to Dorothea Brande, my number one posthumous peep--homey among homeys--who has written the single most useful book about writing that anyone could ever own: Becoming a Writer.  I don't know a simpler way to put this: if you are serious about being a writer, read this book.

Read it a lot.

Today, I can sit down to a computer at any time of day and write quickly and fluidly for hours.  Sometimes my brain doesn't cooperate about WHAT I'm writing and my gothic punk emofest characters end up having a food fight with the mashed potatoes and deciding to go to Disneyland for a funnel cake instead of cutting themselves, but at least I'm writing.

I also definitely have times where I write longer, better, and more creatively than others.  But Becoming a Writer can help you bridge the gap between staring at a blank screen for four hours and at least writing something--even if it's not going to procure you any accolades or conclude in the acquisition of "hella scrill."

The basic premise of this book, in modern parlance would be best summarized as "Stop being your muse's butt-boy."  And if they ever ask me to write the jacket for the next edition, that's exactly what I'm going to say.

"Do you go for weeks at a time without writing because you just aren't 'feeling it'?  Have you written one good story, and can't seem to think of anything else?  Have you written nine manuscripts in two years, but they're all basically the same book over and over again?  Did you take a $30,000 dollar MFA because you can't make yourself write unless some professor tells you it's due next monday?  Sound's like you're your muse's butt-boy.  Buy this book and learn to turn the tables so that instead you become like the wonder twins--except, like, with powers that don't suck.  Creativity is a muscle.  This is your workout routine!"

So the first step of Brande's boot camp for becoming a writer is the incorporation of morning writing.  Until you do that, your muse is just going to stand over you in bondage gear, holding a riding crop and shaking its head that you are not worthy of its pleasures.  Once you start doing morning writing, you won't switch places in the power dynamic, but you will become more equal--you might link arms and together go jump the hilly brush.

Once a writer puts the morning writing into practice, they will find their creativity gushing as soon as they wake up.  It'll be addictive. They'll wake up jonesing for it. They'll get cranky and irritable if they can't have it.  They'll start making up excuses to people around them, and hiding it with increasingly transparent lies.

"Me?  No...I'm not going to go write whatever comes to mind no matter how absurd or banal.  Don't be ridiculous.  Tabula Rasa?  What's that...some kind of tower defense game?  I want to check e-mail.  And Facebook.  And maybe play some Starcraft and...uh Minesweeper.  And look at porn.  Oh man...I'm totally going to look at porn. Just me and some crazy Asian cheerleader FMF porn! I'm not in any way going to just go write whatever comes into my head for the next thirty minutes to an hour.  I mean...who the hell does that, right?  Okaygottagobye!"

This is great.  You can feel the creativity flowing within you.  But it's not enough to feel it.  Control!  Control! You must learn control!  Learn to write when want to you do, you must.  (This is why Yoda doesn't use a lot of dependent clauses.)

Seriously Chris?  Obi Wan in the last article.  Now Yoda.
You do know writing isn't ACTUALLY The Force, right?

The next step is to control when it happens.  This will give you the power to call on your muse when you want it.  We can't always control when we write, and "it's not the right time" is an excuse.  You can crutch on morning writing if you don't move on.  Trust me!  (No seriously....TRUST ME.)  The voice of experience speaks to you now. Because even the best of us have dental appointments or loved ones on busses hijacked by penguins.

It takes 3 grown men to control how fucking creative I am!

Cause here's the thing about morning writing.  It's a gushing flow, but it's not under your control.  All you are is the conduit for whatever comes spewing out.  Your fingers are just acting as the medium for all the flotsam in your addled morning brain.   It's like a firehose spraying everywhere. You're still your muse's butt-boy, just in a different way.  This is like the dog waking you up to go for a walk.  If you've ever done an exercise routine at the same time everyday, you know what happens...you start to crave it at that time an feel lazy during others, and every fitness expert tells you to mix it up when that happens.  Creativity is a muscle too.  Time to mix it up.

The next step is to get control of the faucet.  Or...to teach the dog to go when you walk them.  Or to teach the muscle to work when and how you want it to.  Or...whatever metaphor you prefer to describe having the words come to you naturally the minute you sit down...on YOUR schedule.  Also, you need some level of control over what you write about.  Being able to conjure forth words is awesome.  But that ability has limited use when you blaze blindly within your soul only to write a "Fuck You" letter to all the Republicans who were mean to you on Facebook yesterday because you decided to "share" that Moveon.org meme.  That's not so useful.

So here's what you do.  You start to write for a half an hour every day, but you do it at random times during the day.

First of all, you stop doing your morning writing.  Just go ahead and scratch your track marks for now, and let people think what they'll think.  It might be easiest for you if you scheduled your first few floating half hour times for fairly early in the day.

Clear your schedule ahead of time.  Make sure you'll be home and with access to your writing tools (whether you normally use longhand or a computer does not matter).  Make sure nothing is going to interrupt you.  Take some care with this because you will actually TRY to find times that won't actually work so that you can sabotage yourself.

Brande calls this half an hour of writing a "debt of honor."  That's because she wrote Becoming A Writer about a hundred years ago.  Today what we will call this is ONE OF THE HARDEST THINGS YOU WILL EVER FUCKING DO; I'M SO NOT KIDDING.

You will want to move that half hour SO bad.  If you decided on 12-12:30 for a given day, you will think there's no reason not to do it from 12:15-12:45, or worse that you can just do it that night.  You will find yourself finding a million things that come up and feel urgent RIGHT before your half hour comes due.  You will find so many good, legitimate, wonderful reasons to not write at the allotted time.

In time you will call me.....master.

You can't fuck around with this.  This is your brain trying not to work.  This is what happens when creativity starts to feel like effort.  This is why you can find a half a million web pages with people saying they don't want to write every day because then it starts to seem like an obligation or a job.  (But let me tell you a little something about those obligation yahoos.  Writing once a week for hours and hours at a stretch is an obligation.  Writing every day...that's a habit.  And habits don't burn people's flesh like holy water to a vampire the way that these "Don't make it a CHORE!" types act like it burns them.) Your muse is struggling like a stallion being broken and it has no trouble commandeering your brain's ability for rationalization to help it worm out of this task.  Your excuses will be spectacular--they will impress even you.

Stay true!  Don't let anything deter you.  Ignore even a ringing phone unless you're expecting an important call.  (Though, why did you pick a time you were expecting a call to schedule your half hour, hmmmmmmm?)  Unless blood is fountaining out of your femoral artery or your kid is missing a limb (that was there earlier in the day), you sit down when you said you would, and you write for thirty minutes no matter how much it hurts. Your muse will kick. It will scream. It will act like you're trying to put it to bed at seven while there is a Disney cartoon special on NBC.

Be strong.

Kiddies, this step is so serious that Brande actually says to give up if you consistently can't make yourself do this half an hour.  Your desire to write is not able to overcome your brain's games and your inherent desire not to write.  Now I don't know if Brande gets to say that with any authority, but it's worth considering.  If you can't even sit down and write during the half hour you picked the day before, maybe she's got a point that you don't really want to be a writer.

The next day, you pick a different half hour.  Your brain starts its struggle all over again.

Move it all around.  Obviously you can't do your half-hour while you're at work or asleep, but you could do it during those times on your day off.  Do it early, late, midday.  Do it when your favorite show is on.  Later on, you can do it when you know you'll be tempted by distraction, just to show off how l33t you are.  But no matter what, sit down and write for a half an hour.

Do this for a month or two.

You'll know when you're done.  Might take three weeks.  Might take four months.  For most it's a month or two.  But you'll know.  Because suddenly...there won't be a fight about that time.  Your muse won't struggle.  It'll join you in knocking out some writing.  You'll cut through your own bullshit like Bruce Willis with your katana of righteous discipline, sit down when you're supposed to without any excuses or attempts to postpone, and find words come easily and smoothly.  Short of some asshole with four mechanical arms tossing a car at your head, nothing will break your concentration.

Now...you and your muse aren't struggling against each other ever time you sit down.  Now, when you say: "Muse Powers Activate!" your muse says: "SHO-NUFF!"

Now you and your muse are equals instead of your muse saying each time you try to work: "Bitch please, you're sullying the pleasure of my art.  Go get me a spiced pumpkin caramel macchiato.  Skim milk.  Two pumps.  Light steam.  And don't forget the cup holder you prat.  I nearly burned my pinkie last time."

These two exercises--morning writing and the floating half--will clear away 95% of what most people call writer's block.  You will write fluidly, whenever you want to.  And if you do your level best to write at the same time every day, you should find that your creativity is there waiting for you and you can easily think of WHAT to write, eliminating the last 5%.

If you find yourself having trouble down the line, returning to these foundational exercises for a week or two will usually get you writing again.  Your muse is like the fox in little prince; part of it wants to be tamed.  You may slip, but it is not because your muse hears the call of the wild.  It's usually because you haven't been exercising regularly like you should.   I have at times discovered I'm starting to slump into difficulty, and gone back to morning writing and the floating half.  Within a week or two, I'm back to being able to write when I want to.

I don't want to do the creative equivalent of The Gun Show here, but I have no trouble writing.  I sputter when I'm starting, and then things take off, but I never sit down and stare at the screen, and I never peter out after two hours.  The things that make me stop writing are usually hurting knuckles or eye strain.  But look, I'm not trying to tell you how awesome I am.  I've stared at my share of blank paper, and I couldn't always write anytime I wanted to. I'm not some freak like Marilynne Robinson with her "benevolent insomnia." (Seriously, if I meet her I'm going to go Sylar on her ass to get that ability.)

Wait.  THAT is Marilynne Robinson????
She looks all nice and stuff.  I can't go Sylar on HER.
Maybe I'll just ask if she  does any breathing exercises or something.

The only reason I haven't had writer's block or trouble writing when I sit down to do so is because I have followed Brande's exercises.  I am made up of the same spiral chords of DNA that anyone else is.

They work.  I promise.  Or if they don't, maybe you've figured out something important.  But this isn't just a case of "They Work For Me."  I don't know a writer worth their salt who doesn't echo many of the ideas over and over again.  If you line up all the authors with multiple credits to their name and a successful life of writing and all the authors with no credits, long periods of writer's block, and perhaps a single book they can't seem to reproduce, you will notice that one of the most consistent things that differentiates them is how they view the importance of writing daily and getting control of their creative flow.  All Brande has done is codify those observations into articulated insight and give us exercises that work to exercise that creative muscle, so that it's performing when we want it to, and not knocking us around with some muse version of restless leg syndrome.

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Star Trek: TNG Satire (Tropefic)

A totally random picture of a show that is in NO way related to the satire below.

Can the crew get past a giant shark blocking their path?

[What does this have to do with writing about writing?  Um...it's uh.....a study in tropes!  That's it.  That's the ticket. 

Unfortunately, since Star Trek: The Next Generation and all the characters therin is trademarked by Paramount and its affiliates, and this blog technically makes money (two whole cents yesterday!) I'll have to fiddle with the knobs a little on the names in this medium, so that it conforms to the legal rules of satire.  So the title of this post is just about the introduction here.  The title of this piece is....]  

STAR WRECK

Captain’s log; supplemental, Stardate Season 5 Episode 2341 point 2

In our travels to Lagornden core to deliver vital medical supplies to some race that apparently can’t deal with any other member of Sunfleet except me, we have encountered what appears to be a giant shark—a predator native to Earth oceans, and Earth’s past—in the Sellowt cluster, a region of space known for its treacherous stellar geography and the specific course that must be taken to navigate through it successfully. The shark is blocking our route through the cluster and appears to be ready to defend the pass. Thus far we have only questions, and few answers.

USS Capitalize Bridge

Captain Pickhard: Is it possible this is something other than a shark. A hologram or a ship built to resemble a shark.

Datum: The entity *is* biological, sir. Scans do not show any indication of holographic energy patterns. I am reading a bio-energy signature indicative of what one would expect to find in a large aquatic biological entity. Though it defies everything we know about biology, it does appear to be a shark.

Spiker: How is that even possible?

Datum: Unknown, sir. At this point there is not enough information with which to formulate a hypothesis. I am capable of creative thinking only within the last six minutes of an episode or if I go insane.  I'm very creative when I'm the bad guy. However, as I appear to have no alien entities, nanites, broken servos, come-back-to-me-my-son recall signals, missing morality chips, holodeck western bleed or evil twin brothers whispering in my ear, we will have to wait thirty-two minutes and fourteen seconds for any out-of-the-box solution to come from me. 

Spiker: Go to yellow alert. Raise the shields.

Pickhard: We need to know more about this shark. I’m not exactly sure yet how I’m going to turn this situation into a parable of late 20th century social issues. I’ve got to make a moralizing speech before the fourth commercial break.

Bev Crushim: I’ve adapted our ship’s sensors to perform medical scans, Jyawn-Loonk. It is a genetically identical to the species of shark known as the Great White that went extinct in the early 21st century due to overfishing and pollution.

(Pickhard looks thoughtful.)

Datum: Doctor, I find your conclusions…questionable. The presence of the shark in space—rather than within salt-water—and its preternatural size would tend to suggest the hypothesis that it actually a shark highly improbable.

Bev: And yet…it is a shark. Right down to the DNA. It’s a big shark…in space. I can’t explain it.

Captain Pickhard: Mr. Datum, can we maneuver around the shark?

Datum: The shark has matched our maneuvers exactly, Captain. The pass is narrow enough that it can effectively counter any move we make. It appears to be able to....swim faster than our impulse engines can react.

Spiker: Would we be able to leave the pass? Maybe navigate through the Sellowt Cluster another way or go around?

Datum: Leaving the pass at this point would require impulse and low warp navigation that would add 4 days, 20 hours, 4 minutes, and 20 seconds to our arrival time even if we accelerated to maximum warp when we cleared the Cluster. Going around would add even more time, even though that makes no sense whatsoever given the velocities involved.

Captain Pickhard: Unacceptable. That is far too long for the…oh whoever they are who are going to die if we don’t deal directly with this shark. Our sense of urgency has been established and we have an obstacle. Suggestions?

Fordy LaGorge: I’ve been working on a theory, Captain.  If I can boost the anular confinement of the computer's navigational matrix I may be able to modify the Capitalize's shield emitters to boost the warp bubble in a way that will allow us to exploit the fact that space is--well, I know this is radical but hear me out--...three-dimensional. I’ve been working on simulations on the holodeck with holo version of Dr. Leah Brahms....all night. Here is what we’ve come up with: if I can incorporate the third dimension of space into our navigational matrix, there isn’t really any reason we should have plot elements like passes or blockades that are based in planetary, two-dimensional geography. I’m working on a way to go up or maybe even down instead of through the pass. But my research is tied in with my inability to get a real date and character development, so it’s going to be at least the whole episode before I realize that I need to just be myself. I will be happy to give you scientific sounding babble for any other objectives you might want. 

Dee Anna Troit: (aside to Dr. Crusher) He always did do best with hollow women.

(They giggle)

Spiker: Go to yellow alert. Raise the shields.

(Datum and Eastly Crushim look back at Riker.)

Datum: Commander....you have already ordered both these actions.

Spiker: Oh sorry.  It's pretty much my only job.  Sometimes I forget.

Warfle: I suggest a full photon torpedo spread at the shark with phaser burst in attack pattern delta along with a deflector dish nucleonic burst like we fired at the Borg while simultaneously performing the Picard maneuver and ejecting an overloading warp core…into the shark’s face.

Bev Crushim: Warfle we don’t know the shark is dangerous. This is a new life form.

Warfle: (flares nostrils) It is an OLD lifeform, Doctor. You said yourself, it was just a shark. They are very dangerous--the perfect predator. In 20th century earth the chances of being killed by a shark were much greater than that of being killed by a terrorist attack. You can see how seriously our ancestors took THAT threat. We must treat this threat accordingly.

Datum: You may be erroneously combining all animal attacks, lieutenant. The hippopotamus is by far the most dangerous large animal–though statistically speaking the mosquito is far more likely to cause death, and while the chances of dying from terrorism were shockingly rare, but the shark is less deadly than horses, crocodiles, elephants, the blue ringed octopus, tigers....

Dee Anna Troit (aside): I guess it's fortunate we didn't run into a space hippo. 

Bev Crushim (also aside): Or a space mosquito.

Datum: ...dear, Portuguese Man'o Wars, bees–

Warfle: ENOUGH! It's a shark. Universally understood to be a killing machine and all around bad ass. 

Bev: Yes, Warfle, but it is in space, and we don’t know how or why.

Warfle: With all due respect, doctor. Sharks have no honor. Neither do any Klingons except me, but I still think it's important to keep up pretense. They are…magnificent and beautiful, but mindless predators. We cannot compromise the security of The Capitalize. The shark has…..many teeth. 

Bev: Just because something is a predator and because it might attack out of instinct doesn’t mean we have the right to just destroy it. I am required to be nothing but an archetype for the Hippocratic oath, and that means arguing for life no matter how dangerous or threatening it may be. 

Captain Pickhard: Agreed. Warfle, I'm going to cockblock your suggestion, because...let's face it...that's all I ever do with your suggestions.  But don't worry...you're still totally a symbol of diversity and cultural respect....and stuff.  We will just ignore that culture's every input since we're better. We will attempt to find a non-violent solution.

Warfle: But Captain—

Captain Pickhard: Mr. Warfle, your objection is noted. I appreciate your concern. I share it. Keep a full weapon’s lock on the shark’s face. But let’s not provoke it and resort to violence only as a last resort. I want to try to communicate with it, if possible. If we can determine its needs, we can try to provide those needs in a way that doesn't hurt anyone, and allows us all to coexist. It is not evil. It is feeding. It has as much a right to be here as we do. 

Spiker: Dee Anna do you—

Pickhard: “Yes, the systematic wiping out of predators may have been a way we handled things in our incredibly ignorant past of incredible ignorance. But we do things differently now. We are enlightened—unless, of course, we happen to be cocksure, arrogant admirals who embody all the failings of the late incredibly ignorant 20th century US military warhawks, but other than that…totally enlightened.

Fordy LaGorge: Except for Warfle.

Warfle: (nostrils flare...more than normal) 

Pickhard: I would argue that this life form has as much a right to exist as we do. It is as much a part of nature as we are. We have NO RIGHT to destroy entire species as we see fit. If we are going to place ourselves above nature as it’s vicegerents, a slippery slope to begin with, then we have as much a duty to protect that nature as a right to manipulate it. We cannot allow ourselves to think that we are more important than anything else…even though we would perish as a species if that weren’t wired into our biological imperative. 

Spiker: Shields up!

Datum: Commander, you have already ordered the shields raised.  Twice. Unless we send an away team to the shark or it transforms into a ‘severe hottie,’ I think your input this episode has reached its denouement. 

Pickhard: Can we communicate with it?

Datum: We have been hailing the shark on all known subspace frequencies—even though we’ve established that there are infinite numbers of those, so that is technically impossible.

Pickhard: Suggestions?

LaGorge: If I can boost the annular dechion emissions beam I may be able to calibrate the neucleogenic resonance harmonics to a reverse polarity of the sharks brain wave amplitude patterns, and set up a reverse ionic cascade that would allow us to use the holodeck to talk directly with the shark’s brain by entering it's dreams, as long as--for some reason--we also lock ourselves in with no escape for two hours. It could make for a great holodeck-out-of-control episode. We haven’t had one of those in at least two months.

Pickhard: How long would it take to cali...rev...to....do that thing you just said?

LaGorge: (blowing out breath like he's really actually thinking since Levar totally fucking rocks as an actor) Since this is a moral lesson episode instead of a character development one, I’d say….about four times longer than we have.

Pickhard: *sighs* Dee Anna, do you sense anything from the shark? Is there any way we can communicate with it…telepathically?

Troit: It’s an animal captain. It has no intelligence. I sense hostility and violence, but not any sort of higher consciousness. I do think it’s hiding something, but--as always--I can’t tell you what, or I would blow the pacing.

Spiker: I’ve heard that non-Betazoid ship’s counselors are also capable of saying that everyone in the damned galaxy is ‘hiding something.’

Troit: Look this isn’t one of the few episodes that highlight the fact that I am actually somewhat capable instead of just a conduit for every psychic species that wants to demonstrate that the 24th century still has consent issues like woah and hitch a ride in my body. I’m sorry that I can’t give you anything else. I’m a bad plot hole on the best of days, Bill Spiker. At least I’ve accepted MY archetype.  Have you? The shark is hiding something, okay??

Eastly Crushim: Captain, I have calculated a series of short warp jumps that the shark should be unable to react to. If we execute Eastly Theta Seven, we should be able to trick the shark, with the first warp jumps, and then jump OVER it with subsequent jumps.

Spiker: Sort of like a feint.

Troit: I’ve heard that non-bearded first officers are also capable of repeating everything everyone else says layman's terms. In fact, I’m fairly certain that being the character who repeats the plot in a simple way has some kind of....literary precedent.

Spiker: I hate you Zimzadee. I hate you so very, very much.

Pickhard: Mr. Datum, could Eastly’s plan work? We’re the flagship of The Conglomeration, and we have the best officers in all of Sunfleet, yet I am—again—about to go with the plan of a kid whose every burst of hormones make us all regret ever giving him that uniform.

Datum: I believe so, Captain. I have checked his calculations. It does appear that the best solution may be to...jump the shark.

Pickhard: Well then...   Make it so!

10,000 Thank you. Yes YOU!!!

My dearest peeps,

I honestly didn't think I'd be writing this entry until Thursday or Friday.  I thought I had more time.  But then 20 Ways To Sabotage Yourself As a Writer started getting hits.  (~in my best Neo voice~ "Lots of hits.")  Last night, things got a little crazy.  Maybe not jello-shots and "I've-never-been-with-another-woman-before" crazy but definitely more interesting than they've ever been around here.  I woke up (for some damnable reason) at 7:30 this morning looking at total pageviews that were over double what I'd ever gotten before.  In just the hour from 6-7, I had more hits than my best days a month ago.

12 hours from posting this and this number is 1,105.

That traffic is coming in from Stumbleupon.  As you can see from this screenshot, a few people have given it the thumbs up as they stumble their interests with A.D.D. alacrity.  (It's an absolutely kick ass site.  You should go sign up for it if you haven't already. Seriously.  It's the best thing to happen to the web since browsers.)  I was excited a couple of days ago when it crept up towards a hundred.  Last night it was around 130.  Then...something happened.  I don't know what. And now it's in a bit of a feedback loop.  Hits are pouring in and the number you see here is going up by 40-50 every hour.  I don't know how long it'll last or how many hits I'll have when it achieves an equilibrium, but it's exciting.

This journal is going to reach 10,000 page views in the next couple of hours.  Unless the traffic that the post in question is generating simply stops suddenly, which I doubt, I'm going to click over 10k around the time I start getting hungry for lunch.  I could quibble over some of those hits being me back before I knew not to track my own page views, but as a ten-digit-primate, I'm going to get much more excited about random bellwethers in base ten than something weird like 10,117.

And here's the important part: I couldn't have done it without you.

I'm not going to put this post on Stumbleupon, (though I suppose someone else might).  Anyone here would be here because they're actually reading my blog...at least a little.  It's you guys I want to thank.

I know...  I know...  The most exciting thing for most of you in my hitting 10k views is that I'll stop announcing every thousand hits like it's some huge ass deal, and you won't have to put up with another bit of sentimental crap like this until I'm at 100k.

But I really want you all to know how much you mean to me.

A few months ago, I graduated from San Francisco State University.  That is to say that I was mailed a piece of paper.  They asked me to come to some honors dinner ceremony, but I would have had to wear my cap and gown, and they didn't have bacon, so naturally I stayed home and read The Hunger Games instead.

And despite doing my best to give attention to my professors that could be most accurately expressed with a negative number, I seemed unable to leave the institution without absorbing a few bits of information that all seemed to point in one direction.  Everything in the publishing industry is changing, and writers need to change with it.  It's tough to grow up thinking the path is "Short stories---->Cover Letter---->Manuscript---->Agent---->Publisher---->Book Deal" and just about the time you're getting serious about being able to write someone comes along and says that's not really the way anymore--that doesn't work as well as it used to, and there are other ways now.  But I couldn't get past the fact that so many people who didn't have their head locked in some smell-of-books sentimentality were saying the EXACT same thing.

So I listened.

I set up a blog.  My short fiction is going up here.  Everything is free to read.  And when I start to get manuscripts cleaned up and professionally edited I will see what my options are for publication, but if I do go the self publishing route, I'll make them as cheap as I'm able to.

Since I was ten years old, all I ever wanted to do was write for a living.  That's all I ever wanted to do.  And even though with all this sound and fury my estimated earnings are only $ .27 for the day, that's up hundreds...even thousands of percent from the penny I would make every two or three days in the past.

This traffic coming in is fantastic and I'm really excited about it, but it's you guys that have taken my breath away.  There were days when I started where I had ten hits.  And I know some of you just clicked on links because we were friends and you wanted to be supportive.  And you can't ever know how much that meant to me.  I watched posts double in traffic because one of you shared it with your friends, and I just about wanted to cry.  And I wanted to hug every damned one of you for not sending me a "Jesus FUCK, Chris!  Enough with the damned self-pimp spam!" message.  And I know a few of you diligently clicked on a few of your favorite articles for Stumbleupon pretty much only because I asked you to.  And to whomever figured out how to send an anonymous Paypal donation, that single dollar brightened a dark week, and kept me pounding keys like John Fucking Grisham for days.

You were all great friends to me through the start of this chapter.  You were the kind of friends I'm honored and proud to call my peeps.

The fact that I'm standing here now watching a positive feedback loop is because of all of you.  These hits might be coming in from all over the world (and they are according to Analytics), but you guys brought me here. The fact that I didn't give up months ago is because of all your support (and possibly your angelic restraint in not unfriending me).  The fact that I saw growth enough to wonder if I shouldn't be figuring out new ways to get out there, and even decided to sign up for Stumbleupon in the first place is because of you.  Whether the blog will go back to modest numbers or takes off into the stratosphere, I can't say.  But wherever it's going, I owe it all to you, my peeps.

Thank you,

Chris Brecheen

Potpourri, Poll's Product, Plus Persuasive Petitioning and Plentiful Possibilities

It's a perfidious ploy to practice parallel patterns of patter play to persuade participation, but people's predilections produce a predictable passion that are proximate to the particular prowess for such pizzaz.  Plus....it's pleasing.

Blogsational!- Lots of blog news--I'll try to keep it as short and sweet as possible and get on to the potpourri.

Broke 9000 pageviews yesterday.  Since I started putting things up on Stumbleupon the 1000's have been coming every few days.  I can't believe how amazingly things are going.  I know it's small potatoes, but I'm up 100% from a month ago and 500% from two months ago.  Y'all take my breath away.

Well, it looks like I'm going to Burning Man!  I've been there ten years running, but the cost seemed prohibitive this year.  Then an angel from on high gifted Supportive Girlfriend and me some tickets, and it looks like we'll be there after all--at least from Thursday through the weekend.  I might be able to figure out how to make the scheduling function work, but what is more likely is that Writing About Writing will take a break for a few days. I'm sure some B.M. themed entries will be showing up both before and after.  If I had LOTS of readers, I would utilize the scheduling feature, but right now my page views are almost entirely dependent on my cross-posts to G+, Facebook, Livejournal, and Stumbleupon, and it would be a shame to have four articles that got no traffic because I wasn't around to pimpify myself.

What is Burning Man?  What a great question!
I shall now write a fifty thousand page article next week as an answer.
Aren't you so glad you asked?

So...here are the results of the poll about structure vs. spontaneity.  Clearly I need to figure out how to distribute bacon through the internet...spontaneously. So while I have accounting try to work bacon-focused R&D back into the W.A.W. budget at only 40 cents a month, I will work on putting up another poll soon.

The worst part:....there wasn't actually even a comment on 8/3's entry. ~sigh~

So even though I vaguely remember something from my Math For Liberal Arts class about sample sizes or standard deviations or something, I'll totally assume that everyone who voted represented an accurate sample.  You can look forward to a LITTLE less structure and a little more Oh My God, Krook Is DEAD!!!  (It'll take some mighty fine nerds to get that one without Google.  Are YOU up for it?)

Really not how I want to come across.
Really.

Debbie Downer Time- Every six weeks or so I'm going to tell you guys there's a donation button over on the right, and I'm going to feel REALLY dirty while I'm doing it. But Unsupportive Girlfriend is going to make me get a "real job" if I can't monetize writing, so I'll let you know it's there. It's right above that awesome, and totally-not-photoshopped picture of me and it uses Paypal.  I'm not begging, but it's there if you find yourself with hundred dollar bills pouring out of your pockets and the sudden realization that WAW has provided you countless hours of entertainment, you could make a writer's month with only a dollar or two.  Also, there are lots of ways you can help a writer try this newfangled method of "going for it" that don't involve cash.  You can turn off your ad-block for JUST my blog.  (I'm not asking for clicks, and I could lose my blog if I did. I'm JUST saying you might turn off the adblock.) The ads are for cool things like self-publishing, MFA programs, the latest sci-fi books, and video games.  Of course, sometimes the ads are for Special K....and in Spanish, but crawler bots make mistakes too!  Maybe you see something interesting.  Or...you know....maybe you really like mucho mas K Especial para el desayuno.  Either way...that would help.

You can also help me get out into the blogoverseonetosphere by sharing any articles you might like.  I really like Stumbleupon since it matches interests with surfers in a non-random way and gives me a long slow trickle of hits on my more popular articles.  (You have to sign up, but after that it just takes a click, and it's pretty damned cool if you haven't tried it already.  Seriously.  It's a lot of fun!) But really, any media where you give me a shout out is awesome.  I'm still just getting started here.  Some days I'm still happy to break triple digits, and I average about ten cents per hour of work at the moment, so any signal boost of ANY kind would be awesome, especially if you go back to one of your favorite oldies and give it a shout out or a "like"/"+1"/"stumble".  I don't want to be a total whore about this; I just don't think most people who don't run a blog themselves understand just how much even a single "Like" or "+1"button (or ESPECIALLY sharing) actually DOES make a difference.

Okay, enough of the NPR telethon stuff.  I won't make you go through that for another six weeks or so.   I'll take a quick shower to wash out the stench of sellout from my pores and you guys ponder this next question.

What do you think are the best books in the Speculative Fiction canon?

You can have any definition you want for "best."  Most foundational.  Most literary.  Most popular.  Funniest. Whatever.  I know a thousand of these lists exist online.  I want answers from YOU.

*Please answer here.  A lot of my friends who know me put answers in the places I cross-post like on the G+ thread or Facebook, but it's tough to keep track of them all.  My blog is undiscovered enough to support anonymous comments (until that becomes a problem) so you don't even have to sign up for anything to throw me your opinion.

*Please limit yourself to 5 books.  We can all come up with an endless list of good books.  What's tricky is when we have to think of the really really best ones.  Because then we start to think about why.

*Depending on how much feedback I get I'll make a poll of books I haven't read.  (If I get a lot of feedback it might have to be only the titles that show up in multiple lists or most frequently.)  Anyway, you guys vote on what book I should read.

And I will break out my A game to lit analyze that badboy.  I will analyze the shit out of it.  (Hmmm...maybe that's not the best turn of phrase I could possibly use in that context.)

Potpourri-

I'd like to give a shout out to one of my friends who is a professional freelance writer, Shannon Hilson, and her blog The Creative Cat.  This is a really insightful blog about the trials and tribulations of freelance writing--both the highs and the lows.  I've never met her in meatspace but I've virtually known her for going on six years, and she's paid the bills with writing that entire time, so she's a consumate professional to the every definition of the word.  Her blog was an eye-opener to me in a world where writers are dying to whore themselves out for the tiniest exposure.  I highly recommend it to anyone who might be interested in freelance writing or who thinks that writing is writing is writing, especially if you are of the mindset that that if you're doing sales copy or web content, at least you're writing.  Her experience might surprise you.

Book hangover is a problem I've never had.  But I do sometimes take a ten minute after finishing one book but before starting another.  I often eat something savory.  Like chili-cheese fries.

Mmmmmmm.  Chili-cheese fries.

Excuse me just a moment.

Here are the "Walked into a bar" jokes that English nerds REALLY want to see.




50 Creative Ways to Make Your Blog Popular is not particularly creative nor will it make your blog all that popular.  It might make your friends hate you a little bit though.  Seriously, this should have been titled The Same Ten Decent Pieces of Advice that Everyone Has Been Posting Everywhere On the Net And You've Already Read Plus 40 Things I Came Up With in the Five Minutes Before I Started Typing.  (Though that might not fit in the title field.)

Don't worry.  I'm totally not going to cry that this post has been viewed over two hundred thousand times.  I'm NOT!

The tears are from the onions in my chili-cheese fries, okay?

You've totally read this joke before.  But have you read it in handwrity-font with a purple background?
I think not.

If you're going to be prescriptive about grammar, you might as well not half-ass it.  Ryan Gosling won't let you down.












A writer with skill and talent possesses a phenomenal power to articulate with skill and grace what others can't.  As the Chik-Fil-A debacle went viral over Facebook, and people started posting all kinds of articles and memes that were unkind (at best) and usually the worst sort of human demonstrations of how not to be empathetic, two articles by someone both Christian and gay shone like a beacon through all that BS as a demonstration of what kind, compassionate, but also CLEAR writing can do.

The first article about how hurtful it is that people actively support CFA.
The second article about the response he got that Christians don't hate gays.

This is not how life works.
But when someone comes to a gaming convention, and plays in a 1920's LARP wearing a school-girl outfit with a six inch skirt, it's fun to imagine that it might be. 

[Do you want to be featured in potpourri along with a few words from me about how awesome you are?  Do you know a great writing link that I should share? Please send it to me at chris.brecheen@gmail.com, and I will post it along with a shout out singing your praises (unless, of course, you don't want one).  There are four caveats to this.  Please read them before you send me stuff.  If I've posted anything that you feel is "yours" (or "your client's" --eeep!) please just tell me what you would like me to do.  Most everything here that doesn't have an embedding code within its source is some kind of meme, so it would be quite difficult for me to do proper attribution.]

Random Creative Writing Terms Beginning With the Letter G

Creative Writing Terms Beginning With F


Genre- French for "types" or "classes."  At one time it had a single meaning within literature, breaking down fiction, drama, and poetry.  Around 1950, pople got really interested in labels, value judgements, and whose artistic preferences made them better human beings compared to their neighbors (since owning a car was no longer a way to tell), and the word started to refer to certain kinds art as real and certain kinds of story telling conventions as genre.  It started with archetypal story modes (comedy, romance, tragedy, and satire) but went on to form the bedrock of the idea of genre fiction--a label applied to specific themes, archetypes, character types, plot lines, settings, and even writing conventions that can be used to classify specific types of literature.

In the music department, they got over the whole "rock-and-roll-isn't-real-music" thing and instead turned to a conversation about quality.  But it's only been 70 years, and we're talking about English majors here.  Give them time.  These guys still have candlelight vigils that end in drunken brawls and puke-drowned corpses in the city's gutters over the fact that they eventually lost the preposition-at-the-end-of-a-sentence war.

Today the word "genre" rarely means poetry/fiction/drama unless you're signing up for a class at uni. Generally they refer to the different types of conventions in storytelling that form a sort of contract with the reader--Science Fiction, Romance, Western, Horror.  In many ways they function similarly to grammar--providing a structure in which to derive meaning and with rules of various importance that can sometimes be broken for effect.  The conventions which have emerged as most agreeable to academia and the literary world are those of literary fiction (hence its name).  And this genre is touted as being "real" literature or "serious" literature.  In fact, much like Americans don't think they have an accent or natives who aren't really able to identify their culture, some might think literary fiction is misclassified as a genre of its own and instead refers to "anything without genre."  This is demonstrably untrue in both form and content.

Golden Age- Everything was always better back in the old days.  People really miss wiping their asses with leaves, eating the same thing every day, and dying at forty.  Literature is no exception, and almost every art and genre of art has a "golden age" when it was really awesome and so much awesomer than it is today.  The Golden Age of detective fiction, the Golden Age of science fiction, the Golden Age of...well, you get the idea.   There's even golden ages of comic books, Hollywood, Loony Tunes, and porn.   Let me write that again.  THERE IS A GOLDEN AGE OF LOONY TOONS.  (I'll give you a second to get that.  I mean really GET it, man.)  I wouldn't get too hung up on the idea that you've missed out on the best life had to offer.  Except maybe the porn.  You are in SOME thing's golden age right this second, and I bet you don't feel any different or glow or catch bullets with your teeth or anything.  So unless you're like me and you're deliberately trying to engineer the golden age of blistering hawt threesomes, you should probably just chillax.

Gothic- The word gothic means very different things depending on if you're talking about pop-culture, literature, or folks who kicked Rome's ass, so be careful.   The term Gothic broadened its umbrella of meaning first through architecture--it came to mean any Germanic architecture and then any medieval architecture using those pointy arches and flying buttresses (which are most useful for making 12 year olds giggle).  Many of the formative writings that took place in these type of buildings took on the label of Gothic literature or Gothic Romance--the later because they were almost the direct descendants of Romantic literature.  What differentiated these Gothic stories from the Romance before was their mood.  Secret doors, decaying castles, deep dungeons, and a lustful villain trying to make it with an innocent heroine characterize the gothic.  These lustful villains are the progenitors of today's "nice guys" often seeing their efforts as a sort of "courtship"--kind of like like if Petruchio had had a dungeon and wolves.   Phantom of the Opera is a quintessential novel of this type.  In many cases the Gothic was the bridge between the romantic and modern rationalism as supernatural elements turned out to have natural explanations much like all the Phantom's tricks were explained (in the Leroux novel).  While we could perhaps make an interesting case that Romantic fiction became the Detective Fiction genre as it transitioned through the Gothic literature, that's probably a bit much for a glossary.

In modern culture, besides people in black lipstick and fishnet sleeves who are starting to lean towards the shortened version of "goth," the term has come to indicate more of a stylistic atmosphere in a work.  Victorian clothing, dark themes, personal horror, corruption, disturbed psychological explorations, and macabre events are all common elements of the gothic.  Very often the themes of suppressed heroine appear again and again, and it is no coincidence that many of the best gothic authors have been women in very male-dominated cultures.

Though the combination of meanings could make for a good show: She's a rational-thinking German with high arches and a moth eaten wedding dress.  He's nice guy who wears black lipstick, fishnet sleeves, and listens to Covenant and Skinny Puppy.  THEY FIGHT CRIME!!!

Grammar- The structural rules that govern the construction of clauses, phrases, and even words in a given language that include morphology and syntax (and phonology with spoken language).  Outside of linguistics this term tends to include semantics as well (with an absolutely charming proclivity to utterly ignore pragmatics, I might add).  But if you aren't familiar with linguistics, you can use the word the way most people do:

THE RULES!  Punctuation, spelling, parts of speech, clauses, phrases, tenses, when to use whom even if it makes you sound like a prat.  That kind of crap.  While language is almost identical to culture, and people learn it unconsciously from those around them and know the rules intuitively, there are also several parallel efforts to codify single sets of rules as correct.  (In much the same way that there is an effort to codify a single culture as correct.)  This is why grammar is sometimes used in its linguistic meaning and sometimes  referred to as something called "high school grammar."  There is an eternal struggle between those who are descriptive and prescriptive about grammar that I've written about at length.

Grok- Heinlein coined this phrase, so his sinister agents still scour the far corners earth waiting to be enraged on his behalf by heathens who dare to use the word "wrong," but I live life on the right on the edge, my friends, so let them come.  LET THEM COME!!!  (Except for milk past the expiration date--I don't fuck around with that shit.)  I use the word as it tends to come up more in internet forums to be REALLY *GETTING* something.  This is best understood by imagining someone who is really, really stoned saying it: "No man.  It's not just getting something.  It's like, really really GETTING it, man.  Like...in your soul, man."

When I use this word--and believe me, each day I do several exercises in front of a mirror intended to expunge it from my personal lexicon--I tend to mean a level of comprehension that includes empathy.  Not intellectually understanding something or familiarizing yourself with something so that you can beat it in an argument, but really understanding it at a level of compassion that most people will never achieve.  Most of us never really leave our own shoes when we're "walking a mile in someone else's."  We can't deal with the paradox of existing in another paradigm, so we evaluate it through the lens of our own.  Writers really have to get over that.  If we can't portray people with whom we disagree emphatically in all their humanity, we should hang up our pens.  When I use Grok, I mean letting go of one's own paradigm to exist in another, and having that compassion.

No man. That entry doesn't cover it.
   I mean...like REALLY getting it, man.

Creative Writing Terms Starting With H

Quotes on Tenacity and Resiliance

Motivational Posters for Writers:
Often replacing key words with "write" is necessary.

One of my friends is going through a tough time.  Someone gave something she'd written some pretty devastating feedback--the kind of feedback that has very little to do with the writing itself and everything to do with an attempt to hurt the writer as a person.

It's tough not to internalize those kinds of things. Humans can hear good feedback a hundred times, but they'll fixate on the one bad.  We all know the stereotype of the devastating hottie who is told she's beautiful ten times an hour but fixates on the one comment about the size of her earlobes or something.  We probably know someone like that.  And it's funny (sort of) because it's true.

The fear that we are talentless hacks is always out there.  Every good writer has it.  (It's the ones that don't have it that you have to worry about--writing two or three books a year and self publishing without an editor.  ~shudder!~)  It lurks just past any sense of self esteem a writer may have developed, waiting to strike....ever patient. Authors with multiple best sellers and critical accolades often report that they still have days where they feel like a huge sham and that someone is going to see through their bullshit at any moment.

You'll never get over it.  Just let go of the thought that you ever will. You'll never get that MFA and feel like you're officially a writer.  You'll never publish that one last story that finally slays this demon once and for all.  There's no bellwether of arrival into the great club of "Writers" (tm), and no Rubicon to cross dividing the lands with and without self doubt.  You just have a long, slow, metamorphosis in which--within moments of quiet self-reflection--you'll realize that these feelings are happening with less frequency and strength.

But you just gotta keep going, though the knowledge that you are just starting, through being an amateur, through the feeling that you would rather play video games today, through the idea that writing as work would "taint" your joyous art into "a chore," through the feeling that you suck beyond the telling of it, through the loving half smiles your friends and family give you when you ask what they think of your novel, through the deep sighs of professors and published authors when you ask if you have a shot, through the feeling that everyone complimenting you is just being nice, through the rejection letters, through the bad reviews, and even through the occasional comment from cowards who don't have the courage to tell you to your face that what they probably really hate is themselves for giving up a lot sooner than you did.

Because, here's the thing, and I know of no way to get around it.  This shit hurts.  It hurts BAD. It hurts worse than root canals.    It hurts like that first real break up.  It hurts like an eight year marriage ending in infidelity.  And there's nothing in the fucking universe thing that's going to make you want to stand back up and keep going...

...unless not writing hurts even more.

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

Octavia Butler

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

Maya Angelou

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and Determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On” has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race.

Calvin Coolidge

Guy Goodman St.White Reviews The Divine Comedy--More Genre Nonsense

Good Evening.  Guy Goodman St.White here, and I'll be your exceedingly British-accented host.  I do want to apologize for that little tantrum I threw last month.  I may seem to be completely poised most of the time, but sometimes I go back to my primate origins and I simply want to fling my feces at terrible writing and howl.  How can I seriously be the only one who understands what actual good writing is?  I guess here in the Ivory Tower we just know what everyone ought to like, even though they don't. Some days it's just so difficult to wake up in the morning and face the cold, hard truth about just how much speculative fiction makes up the canon, and how well-intentioned, but ultimately ignorant, troglodyte plebs actually feel that much of this speculative tripe is literature.

You know what REALLY involves speculation?
What happens after we die, that's what.

Case in point, the works of Dante Alighieri are largely considered to be one of the greatest works of world literature and Italy's preeminent work.  This is of course, the opinion only of those who tolerate protagonists running around in perhaps the most unrealistic setting an author could possibly write: the afterlife.

You would think 12 century Italy didn't have any seedy buildings which Dante could have grounded an actual meaningful work of realism.  Surely in Italy of all places there are stories of sexuality in question and intolerant parents! Instead, since he couldn't be arsed with a genuine exploration of realism, he insisted upon clinging to the most unrealistic journey he could conceive of.  Literally.

Though Dante's Inferno is the most oft cited, referenced, and read of his works, it really comprises only 1/3 the work.  Each of three canticas (each with 33 cantos) describe a different part of the afterlife--hell,  purgatory, and paradise in true genre style.  He has dead poets as guides, meets people long dead, presumes to know who's going to hell (a list which seems intended chiefly to offend everyone ever), and basically stumbles around in a Thomas Aquinas theological infomercial.  The whole thing is supposed to be some allegory for approaching God--as if that's a theme for real literature.

Genre crap drips off of every one of the 14,233 lines of this abomination to real literature.  Honestly folks, there isn't much further you can get away from the human condition.  If this had been about death itself, we might have had something to work with, but it's about what happens after that...which is as far from human experience as a setting can really get.

I mean that in absolutely the most literal sense and not as hyperbole.  This journey of religious wish-fulfillment high fantasy into a place no one has ever been or ever will be, meeting people no one has met or ever will meet again, and doing things no one has ever done (and we only pause from saying "or ever will do" because of the death threats) is as divorced from realism as is possible to write about.  Apparently Italy's preeminent literary author can't even figure out that realism is what makes for real literature.  So instead we end up with preeminent Italian speculative crap that is actually so damned unrealistic that it makes me yearn for the gritty settings of an elven castle or an intergalactic cruiser to get the taste out of my mouth.

Plus....it's not even that funny!  You would think any "comedy" worthy of the label "divine" would have a FEW more humorous bits.

And people think this Dante hack could write.  That's the real travesty of this whole thing.  It's a good thing I'm so damned educated and I can tell you all why you're so wrong to enjoy speculative fiction.  It's a very, very good thing indeed.

Again, I'm Guy Goodman St.White, and thank you for joining me here on Writing About Writing.  Please join me next month for another segment of Speculative Fiction Sucks Balls: And Not In the Good Way.  Good night.