Misery Podcast (Pop Culture Confessions)

I was in a podcast! Pop Culture Confession's Podcast, to be specific!

We've got something a bit different this week (and out of order because of holiday timing), but I was in a podcast and we talked about Misery. 

It was the movie, not the book, we were chatted about, but I got to be a part of it to bring in some of the writerly perspective (that my impostor syndrome can't believe they think I have).

This week's confession is so big we had to call in an expert! For the final episode of Spookytober, Chris Brecheen of Writing About Writing joins your three hosts to talk about Misery, which (yet again) Amanda and Hannah have never seen. Thankfully, we've got a Certified Writing Expert on hand to answer questions like: Is losing your life's work worse than having your ankles sledgehammered? How realistic are Paul's writing rituals? What does a greasy protein bar have to do with good writing? And more!

Here's the episode I did on Misery.

All 19 episodes (and counting) of Pop Culture Confessions are available on iTunes

You can also follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pcccast Or on Facebook.


Will I be in YOUR podcast?  Sure. Just drop me a line and if it's about writing in some way (or maybe social media outreach), I'll be happy to schedule something.

I put this up today because it's Halloween and the last chance to be spoooooooopy, but tomorrow expect the results of our poll to go up (and Friday we'll start gathering nominations for the next one). Which means IT IS ABSOLUTELY YOUR LAST CHANCE TO VOTE!!!!

Moving Day

*two buff guys carrying a box that says "VLOGS" past much of the Writing About Writing staff*

Chris: That definitely goes in the pile.

Cedrick: You sure?

Chris: Three posts a week? We're not going to have time to get back to VLOGS. Some things have got to go, my eight-armed friend. It's time to clean house, and some things have to go.

Cedrick: Do you have to get rid of it though?

Chris: A lot of this stuff will still exist. And we might even make more. We'll just fold it into other posts. I mean, do we really need a whole category and menu and stress over something we've written three articles about in the last seven years?

Cedrick: Some of the guest bloggers are a little nervous.

Chris: Well, some of them should be. I need you to fire Twizlefizzlepop and The Pointer Sisters.

Cedrick: WHAT??

Chris: Come on. They were totally our most problematic segments.

Cedrick: Yeah, but....

Chris: Look, both of them had great input. I liked them. But if we're cutting our posts down by about half, we have to be honest about the fact that we weren't really doing them anyway. And a bit with a book recommender who used to be a pimp before becoming a feminist was ALWAYS going to be a tough sell. We have to get rid of some of this stuff. It was just....raw ambition.

Leela Bruce: You know what getting rid of The Pointer Sisters means?

Chris: I believe it means....you're back on protest hiatus because of the "sausage fest" that is the guest bloggers around here.

Leela Bruce: The ones that exist outside of the compound are great, but the ones that live here....

Chris: I got it. Too many dudes dudily duding up the place.

Leela Bruce: As long as we're on the same page. And I don't have to kick open your door.

Cedrick: Please call it a dor. We honor the great Dor around here.

Leela: How can you HEAR what I call it?

Cedrick: I just can. Now....Chris...are you sure about firing those guest bloggers?

Chris: Let's be real. Three posts a week. We weren't getting to them anyway. And we can fold the links into a Potpourri if we really want links. It's time to make tough choices. At six posts a week, we could pretend we were getting around to all that stuff any minute. At three....we gotta be more––oh hey (*shouting at the movers*) no...NO! Leave The Mailboxes where they are, those aren't going anywhere.

Mover: You have stars all over the Social Justice Bard stuff? What's that about?

Chris: Okay, I need two of those boxes put into my car. I'm going to pretty much move them over to Facebook and Tumblr; keep them there, but one box stays here. We're not getting rid of it completely.

Mover: Chicken soup?

Chris: Pile.

Mover: Grounded Parents?

Chris: Pile.

Mover: Ace of Geeks

Chris: *deep sigh* Pile.

Mover: Ivory Tower?

Chris: Defending or attacking? Actually it doesn't matter: pile.

Mover: Fortune cookies?

Chris: Keep. Those shouldn't even be in boxes. What the hell?

Mover: Glossary?

Chris:  Unnnnnngh.....let's pretend I'm going to finish it––keep.

Mover: And you want everything else? Prompts? Product reviews? Polls? Patreon appeals posts where you beg for money each month because otherwise you'll have to keep going on a zillion side gigs and have less time to write? [By the way, this is it for this month, so please sign up to throw us a dollar or five a month if you like what we do here so we don't have to keep doing a zillion side gigs to keep the bills paid and can do more writing...for YOU!]

Chris: Keep it all. Unless you can get rid of the Jurassic-Park-Style velociraptor on the third floor with the eye laser.

Mover: *blinks in anime*

Chris: Yeah, okay. I should probably not press my luck since you're willing to be paid for this job with only cheese.

Mover: And Pizza Hut coupons. Very important! I'm a big fan of cheese, but if me and my whole crew can't upgrade our medium pizzas to larges for only a dollar, we're out like trout.

Chris: Wouldn't want that.

Mover: No.

Chris: Okay then.....AND Pizza Hut coupons.

Mover: That's it, then. We're all done.

Chris: Okay, well, if that's it, let's get this show on the road.

*the boxes have all been loaded up on a boat which Chris pushes out to sea
Leela Bruce produces a bow and quarrel arrow, lights it, and fires a burning arrow into the boat, flames ravenously consume the boxes and boat as it floats further out to sea*

Chris: From the imagination we came. From hopes and dreams...and ambitions. From stories we were given life. And to the imagination we will return. From now, till the end of time. We therefore commit these stories to the deep.

[Thank you all so much for your support through this transition. Please consider Patreon if you like what I do and want to be a part of the NEXT conversation about future projects.]

Twizzlefizzlepop's voice from burning boat: This is deeply uncool!

Faith and Priorities by Claire Youmans

I now live in Japan, and my books — The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy series, with five published and one in the works — are set in Meiji-era Japan. How good is that? 

It’s darned hard to get a visa to live in Japan, nearly impossible if you don't have a job or attend school full time. I found a new bit of law and slipped in for a couple of years.

Permanent residency is extra-hard. It takes ten years of non-student residency to get PR unless you can somehow meet a “points” requirement to fast-track yourself.

I took a very high level part-time job with a school hoping to get myself fast-tracked for PR using a new program I am developing. I have lots of “points," but I cannot work enough to create the “points" I still need through Japan-based income.

Today, I started crying because I was in so much pain from getting across town on a commuter-time train for my single half-day of hands-on teaching. Last week was so bad that my single half-day kept me writhing for two more. I enjoy the work. The program is interesting and important, something Japan needs. I get out, I meet people, I learn things, it’s fun. But I am old and handicapped. I try to ignore those factors, but they are true, and that’s been brought home to me recently. I can’t do this. I certainly can’t do this and be a productive full-time writer.

I used to travel to Japan a couple of times a year for research, but that’s not something that’s viable for me anymore, if I can’t even manage being shoved into a sardine can commuter train for half an hour. It’s time I acknowledge that and make sure my priorities are in order and my life reflects that as best it can.

My top priority is my writing. That’s obvious to me. Further, I need to have faith in it, and that’s now obvious to me, too. I need to have faith that I can renew my visa when the time comes, four more times if necessary. I need to have faith that my books will sell generally, will actually be translated, will sell well here, and that my semi-fictional universe will expand and grow, maybe in the direction of anime and film — to some extent, its natural home. I need to believe in my work, my talent and myself. I need to always remember my writing is my top priority, and make these things so.

All too often we as writers get caught up in the day to day. We get caught up in other work, family, kids, school. Our priorities can’t be like those of other people. We are writers, and writing must come first on our priority lists.  We must arrange our lives around it, so we can do it and keep on doing it, because it’s important. If we don’t believe in ourselves and our work, we might as well stop now. This isn’t an easy life. I can’t say if it’s one we chose or if it chose us, but we must have faith in ourselves and our work, and make sure it’s our top priority. 


Also check out Claire's blog and FB page and available books here (book one in the series is always free!!!):

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

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Last Call to Vote (Best YA book or series not by a cishet white man pre 2000)

What is the BEST young adult book (or series) written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQIA+ community before 2000?  

Please follow this link if you're wondering why this poll has some particular limitations.

With everything going on with major restructures, maybe you forgot we were running a poll, but we didn't forget and the results will be up probably next Wednesday.

Everyone gets three [3] votes, but as there is no way to "rank" votes, you should use as few as you can stand.

The poll itself is in the lower left at the bottom of the side menus.

If you're on mobile you can scroll ALLLLLL the way to the bottom and click on"webpage view" to see the side menus and get to the polls.

Fall 2022 Update Schedule

While most of you just click the link I put on social media when you see that something I have written interests you, there actually IS an update schedule here, and as we enter a new phase of Covid, we are implementing perhaps the biggest, most significant update schedule change in the history of this blog. 

Note: In addition to everything below, which will set up the schedule I am trying to achieve, I am going through a number of transitions from a reorganization of childcare time to recovering fully from cancer and surgery. I'm doing the best I can, and sometimes that's coming up a little short.

I made a major change at the end of 2020. For my ongoing mental health and for my other long-term writing projects (fiction and some compilation e-books of our best articles). I am putting the days of seven posts a week and 70-hour weeks in the rear-view for good, and moving into a more quality > quantity phase of the blog. 

Yippee ki yay!

Writing About Writing consists primarily of one guy who takes care of a couple of kids, tries to keep up with some domestic stuff, is writing a novel, posts on another blog, posts a LOT on his Facebook wall, and sometimes does really wacky shit like try to play a D&D game with friends or get laid or something.

He's also a working writer, though, so he better stop making a bunch of excuses and make with the clackity clack. 

This is the schedule we will generally make an effort to keep. I say "make an effort," but I have to be honest about four things. 

1. I have written posts from my bed with 102°-fever or from coffee shops out of state while on vacation or during hospital visits to people with cancer, so it is very likely that no matter what happens, you will still get more than a couple of posts a week, and I really really really do mean MAKE AN EFFORT.  
2. I am absolutely balls at keeping on top of WHAT gets updated on WHICH days, and I am likely to start Tetris-ing the posts for the week if I SNEEZE too hard. 
3. I am still working through the full effects of the global pandemic, including the massive, unrelenting, fully permeated burnout that comes from 18 months of 70-hour weeks. (At least one more vacation in the next month or two is badly needed, and after that I'm going to take them on a more reasonable schedule than I did for the first decade of this blog.)
4. I have mostly—BUT NOT FULLY—recovered from stage two colon cancer and the resection surgery to remove a tumor.

Thanks to my patrons, I have been able to quit part-time teaching, pet sitting*, and cut back on the amount of nannying I do as a side gig to focus more and more on writing. If you would like to help us write more and better updates, even a dollar a month helps me budget.

*I still have a couple of close, super-easy clients, so you might see me post about this stuff, but I don't run all over the Bay Area anymore.

Facebook Writing and Social Justice Bard

Most of my major writing ends up on this blog, but some of my more throwaway thoughts don't. If you particularly enjoyed our Social Justice Bard posts, I still have many bees in my bonnet.

I invite you to follow my Public Facebook Page (you can friend it if you send me a message, but it might be better if you follow it for a while first––unfiltered me is not everyone's cup of tea). I post somewhat more "political and partisan thoughts" there (rather than just social ISSUES) and also often post "proto-versions" of what later become full blog posts (if you're interested in seeing how those things develop). [There's also personal updates and nerdery there.]

I also have another blog called NOT Writing About Writing that I periodically update (once or more a week pre-covid, but now it's a couple of times a month in wild fits and starts), write personal updates, and post political thoughts that don't really tie into writing but that also aren't really short enough for Facebook.

Everything I ever write for any medium (and reruns of my best stuff) gets cross-posted to that Public Facebook Page, so join me there if you want to see everything I write.

Facebook Page Maintenance

Running my Facebook Page of over a 1.1 million followers as well as maintaining all the OTHER various social media (which is essential to the fact that I get to be a working writer) is basically a part-time job in and of itself. It just happens to be spread out so that the work happens in five-minute increments throughout the day, pretty much hourly, almost any time I'm not asleep. 

Mostly I've just done this AND my writing and not really acknowledged the ways in which the aggregate of all these five minutes here and there impact a weekly writing schedule. 

Prepare for More of the W.A.W Meta Plot

Just a quick note: if you've been around for a while (or have dug through a lot of the first-year articles), you may have noticed that we have sort of a running plot and bizarre cast of characters here at Writing About Writing. We're going to be getting back into these kinds of posts.

There is a shame spiral that I get into when I feel like I'm not updating enough, or significantly enough, and I feel like the meta plot posts are "too fluffy" and too fun. So I am more likely to try to push myself to post something significant. (Which is ironic because I'm then more likely to not make it and have to push back the post altogether.)

However my readers have CONSISTENTLY and UNSWERVINGLY said that they like these types of posts and that they make the experience of me writing an ongoing blog more cohesive instead of just being the occasional article they want to see. So I'm really really really going to try to shut off that part of my brain that is insisting that my meta plot posts are phoning it in, and post them more often.

THE UPDATE SCHEDULE

Monday

BEHIND THE SCENES (and an accountability post)

While I would love to get a blog up on every day that I'm clacking away in front of a computer, I also have a significant "behind the scenes" obligation to the folks who keep the lights on around here that takes time and energy. Ironically, if I give these kinds of rewards some dedicated time, I'm not only going to be better about doing them, but also about the blogging itself—they both have a way of distracting me from the other as I get overwhelmed and sit in front of my computer, unable to move in either direction because I feel like I'm letting down the other.

However, I consistently have parts of this job that don't involve dropping a forward-facing blog.

• Once a month I cannibalize a day of blogging to write my Patrons a newsletter, and now that the pandemic is mostly winding out of the Shelter In Place phase, four times a year, I'm going to need to write TWO newsletters. 
• I absolutely need to spend a day or two every month just doing admin stuff for Writing About Writing (like catching up on emails, cleaning up menus, and the like), or it gets SO far behind, SO quickly. As it is, I sort of imagine we're going to take a year to "dig out" of the stuff I just put up.
• My Patreon tiers are perpetually in need of their rewards. Whether it's an early-access post or just a selfie from one of my hikes, I need to attend more consistently to the folks who are devoting their financial resources to my ability to be a working writer.
• Also, I have a couple of other writing projects that require my time and attention.
• From time to time when we are having a VERY busy week and need a second day to clear out the admin issues so that they don't back up, you might see the easier of the two admin posts go up on a Tuesday, but mostly I'll be working hard in the background.

You WILL see an accountability post on most Mondays. I'm going to restart posting progress on other projects, and I will let everyone know what I'm working on behind the scenes. But it will be more of a bullet point memo than a post.

Tuesday

OFF!

While technically no "off" day is truly off (even the weekends) as I take my own advice and write every day, having Tuesdays off from the responsibility of posting an official blog represents all the hours I work on other jobs. I have spent far too long beating myself up because they don't "count." Not only will taking time off to acknowledge these things be better for my mental health and "overworked" meter, but they will allow me to attend to both them and my writing without feeling like I'm neglecting the other and getting overwhelmed because I'm not spinning all the plates perfectly.

So after much garment rending and self-reflection, and some deep thoughts about how much I will take on if I let myself, I have decided to take a three days off free and clear. (Although, as I mentioned, I'm always writing—this is more about the obligation of getting a post up than whether or not I actually "write every day" like the advice I give.) 

Of course, I would give any human being on earth the same advice and would tell them they were being too hard on themselves if they didn't take it, so this is absolutely a case of thinking basic self care doesn't count for me. However I have two work factors that impact my writing schedule:

• Childcare side gig (7-10 hours a week)
• Facebook Maintenance (10-12 hours a week)

I mean that should probably be two or three days off by the number of hours, but obviously, I'm not going to take THAT much time each week. I'll stick to one day (Tuesdays) and try not to feel too guilty about it.

Wednesday

We need (at least) one dedicated day a week to kind of take care of what I call "jazz hands," although it might be better described as "admin-ish stuff that HAS to get done at some point." It's not necessarily Total Fluff™, but it usually isn't exactly a new article either. 

The review of the best posts we did in the month prior takes up a post. Often we have some kind of announcement or meta news about what's going on or coming up. You might also see a single entry for the long-forgotten character lists or an update to one of the menus (along the top of the page).

Wednesdays will typically be the days that get cannibalized for Patron newsletters, fiction, or anything else that needs my priority attention.

Thursday
We have a number of "types" of posts that are just a little lighter fare. Everything from SHORT Mailbox questions to our aforementioned meta plot posts to personal updates. Not necessarily admin or "jazz hands" but probably a little less "chewy/crunchy" than Friday posts.

Friday

Fridays, for the most part, will be The Big Post™ of the week. If you're here for the hard-hitting writing advice (with the occasional examination of how language and narrative play into broader social issues), Friday is the day to tune in. Longer Mailboxes, full craft, process, and sometimes even style articles.

NWAW

I used to write posts for NOT Writing About Writing and either drop them on my usual days off or post on both WAW and NWAW on the same day. I'm no longer going to be doing this. If I drop something on NWAW, I'll put a notice up on WAW that that is the writing for the day.

The Two-Post Commitment

Some weeks aren't going to go down like clockwork, and they might be front- or back-loaded with side gigs or other commitments. My writing career is also starting to open up occasional opportunities of interest like conventions, speaking engagements, interviews, or podcasts. On the advice of my doctor, I'm trying to be better about the (literally) health-shattering 60–70-hour weeks I was working, and I'm working to whittle that number down a lot closer to 40. That's a needle to thread when you are your own boss and you know that people will lower your income if they don't feel like they're getting enough of the content they want. I can't promise every week will go down as smoothly as three posts like end-of-the-week clockwork, but I will try really hard to get three posts up each week, and I can just about promise that I will at least do two. They might just be posted off schedule––landing on a Saturday or Sunday, for example—but barring illness, injury, or fabulously unforeseen circumstances (which I must now admit would absolutely include cancer and/or surgery), I will try hard to hit three and at least do two.

The Return of the Monthly Dedicated Novel Writing Time Increase

You may have noticed that any effort to take blogging time to give to my novel was COMPLETELY on pause during the early parts of the pandemic (and then went on pause again as I recovered from cancer/surgery). But now it is back. The hardest thing I've tried doing as a blogger is keeping my fiction at a high level of priority. It's SO easy to just write a blog, call it a day, and go put my feet up. And blogging is what I'm getting paid for, so it's even easier.

But...as much as I've surprised even myself by discovering how much I fucking love blogging, I do want to write fiction too. Finding time as much time for both is impossible, so I have to borrow from Peter to pay Cliché. While I am getting traction out of writing an hour or so of fiction first (so that then I still have to do the blogging in order to do "a day's work"), there may still be times where the needs of fiction completely take priority over blogging.

I'm firmly in the "Write Every Day" camp. But how much I write, what I write, and what I'm impassioned to write can sometimes still be a creative ebb and flow of being at my Muse's whim.

I'm also going to try something new and interesting. Each month I'm going to take an ADDITIONAL, cumulative day off to sequester myself and work on my book (as well as possibly other fiction). This isn't the only time I'll be working on my book, but I'll be diverting my blogging time towards it as well. I'll start with one day in September, and then two in October, and three in November and four in December. I'll reevaluate how things feel to my patrons at four extra days off each month—at that point I would either be updating only twice a week (if I spread the days out) or taking a full week off every month (if I took them all at once). It might depend on how close I am to finishing or a draft or something.

Hopefully, I'll have something to show for these days off by the time Patrons might begin complaining that I'm not updating enough, but I hope that the transparency and gradualness both help in that regard.

Vacations

I've learned that I need some regular time off to keep my energy levels and output high when I AM working. Expect me to take a few days to a week off every quarter (three months) or so. Trust me, you might get a few less posts, but it'll keep the ones that go up much fresher.

Yule

You know that two weeks that starts a few days before Christmas and kind of goes until the third or the fourth of January? Yeah, I don't work that. It's busy enough. I can barely figure out what day it is most of the time. I'm rubbish. Don't ask me to get posts up. 

Election Week

I'm adding something that I basically realized today (I first wrote this on 3/5/2020). I'm going to take a break in our "regularly scheduled program" during election weeks. Midterms, primaries, obviously the presidential ones. I just need to acknowledge that the writing that happens will be on other blogs (like NWAW) and in other places (like my Facebook page) and that unless I am backing someone polling at 90 points, it's very, very, VERY likely I'm going to have at LEAST one day where I need to go back to bed into a pillow fort with ice cream.

More posts?

There MIGHT occasionally be a fourth or even fifth (?) post in a week. Usually this will happen when I need to cover some ground on "blog business." (Like when I revise an old article so much that it deserves a fresh post, update a menu, write a new answer for our F.A.Q., or otherwise do something that needs to get done, but doesn't fit into our usual posting schedule). In this case, you might see an extra post pop up from time to time on the weekend or two in one day. Fiction will also usually go up independently of our regular schedule. It's less likely to happen these days, while I'm really struggling to get back to the old posting frequency, but it used to happen a lot.

Reminders:

• I'm writing this blog in real time, so there will be problems with updates in real time. I still watch kids for seven to twelve hours a week. Plus my host body occasionally succumbs to these pesky Earth illnesses and requires dental and medical maintenance to serve me well. And every once in a couple of blue moons I even just take a damn day off with no preplanning. So those three posts might not always happen like clockwork or may involve going off the rails of my usual updates. Until my Patreon pays ALL the bills, my reality is that I sometimes have to prioritize paid gigs.
• I maintain a Facebook page for this blog that has over a million followers. From time to time a post I put up may intersect with a social issue, or just tick some people off, and then all the dillholes come out to play, and I have to spend a day basically babysitting the comments. I don't love it, but it has to be done or the bigots will chase off the people who I actually WANT to be there.
• This flexible update schedule should also cut down on the thing where I'm apologizing to absolutely fucking nobody that it's Thursday and I've yet to put so much as a taco video up. (MMMMM tacos.) I know that some people are annoyed by how often I apologize, and the rest don't really care. But this also settles my own inner overachiever. As long as I get in all the entries that week, my readers (who have literally never said anything in six years about my update schedule) and myself can give me a break.
• I invoke the Anything Can Happen™ real world excuse. In ordinary times, I usually have a couple of "emergency blogs" tucked away, but after surgery, I chewed through them as fast as I could tuck them away. So any bump in the road hits the blog update schedule in real time. Health complications might crop up suddenly and have me needing to do a sudden, unexpected several-hour shift or even an overnight...or maybe even more. Trust me, I'm going to feel ten times worse about missing a post than all of my readers combined. 
• Admin Long-weekends at least once a month will still be a thing, but instead of "we might have an admin long weekend this month," I'm going to assume we WILL have them, and maybe we might have a POST. Since I'm not working Tuesdays and this would normally fall under the purview of a Monday "Behind the Scenes" post, I will take the first Wednesday of each month off. 

Also......folks, if you like what I do, support your "local" artist. (In this case "local" means more independent, amateur, and two-bit than literally down the street.) The pandemic is not yet over, there's still a long phase of transition to work through, and I'm not in a financial position to completely give up my childcare side gig or pay someone to take over the admin of my Facebook page (both major time sinks that pull from my writing hours, but cannot be avoided without losing income that I don't yet have to spare). 

If you want to help me focus on writing (without all the side gigs), yeet a few dollars into that "tip jar" at the top left, or even better yet sign up to be a monthly patron through Patreon. (You'll also get in on the back-channel discussions about posting schedules, big changes, and upcoming projects.) I have bills to pay like any other starving artist, and though my schedule is a lot better than it was three years ago, even a dollar a month (just $12 a year) will go a long way.

Note: Hi there, Mr. Elephant. I guess we should address you.

So....yeah. I ABSOLUTELY KNOW that there is a pretty loud contingent of "Who Cares!" from the other side of the Internet, and I'll give you all a nod if this isn't your cup of tea. It's cool. You do you. Posts such as this one are not my least popular kinds of posts (that honor is reserved for meta posts about why there's no regular post…for some reason), but on the other hand, not every post can't be the barnburners of me replying to social justice hate mail.  

However, I'm not going to stop posting my update schedule…every single time I adjust it.

One of our mission statements is to keep "The Process" transparent and give you updates in real time, so there will always be an occasional hat tip to the meta. I want people to understand that writers struggle with their own productivity, schedules, and discipline. We are constantly dissatisfied with how much we're writing (or not) and trying to redefine ourselves, fiddle with the knobs, and find that perfect air/fuel mixture of writing vs. all the other parts of our lives. I want folks to see that someone who is making a paycheck doesn't have all the answers. I want them to see how their work/life balance matters, and how easy it is to fall into working TOO much or not enough, and either one causes problems. I want them to see that a successful blog doesn't require nine updates a week (and, in fact, that's too many). And I want them to see how artists are constantly struggling to get it just right because we are at once human with our ambition and drive, but also human with our INCESSANT need to eat and have shelter. We don't just eat rainbows and shit brilliant prose. Even if a follower or fan never uses my own update schedule or productivity demands on myself as a formula for their own success, let it be a comfort realizing how flawed and human working writers can be.

I want you to see how messy and non-magical it all is.

Atop Death Hill (Personal/Meta Update–MAJOR CHANGES)

Pictured: Death Hill probably.
Actually pictured: half dome.

Probably every kid has a Death Hill.

I don't mean that probably every kid has some metaphorical analog to Death Hill. I mean literally 90% of kids probably had at least one hill somewhere in their childhood called Death Hill That's how kids name things. Ridge of Doom. Slaughter Creek. Massacre way.

When you're thirteen, the world is in danger of becoming a lot more pedestrian than you hoped it would be, and that sense of adventure is hard to come by.

My Death Hill was a bike path on a half developed (and then abandoned for some reason) housing tract. The ground was level at the top and level at the bottom and on the hill between them a flattened section of the dirt hill made a passable bike path. We all knew a friend of a friend from the town over whose cousin had totally died on Death Hill. And each of us was sure we were the only one lying about personally knowing that kid.

Let me drop some truth though: even though my personal Death Hill was conquered back in the eighties before kids would be caught dead wearing helmets, I'm pretty sure you would have to strap some sort of explosive device to your bike to do anything more than skin your knees and forearms but good. Perhaps....perhaps there was some grain of truth to the legends, but Broken Arm Hill didn't have quite the same gravitas.

I would be the first of us over Death Hill that day. I was always racing where angels feared to tread––more a testament to my foolishness than bravery as private property, high security government contract campuses, and the occasional not-abandoned building were on that list. That day would be no different. And halfway down Death Hill, when I realized for the first time, it was possible I wasn't actually going to crash (unconsciously reinforcing some formative lesson about risk versus reward) I felt like I had smiled at the face of mortality.

What I remember most was looking over the edge. It was probably a 45 degree angle at the outside, had been pressed pretty flat, and might have been an elevation change of 20 feet at most, but when you were looking down it for the first time it felt like half a mile straight down....with jagged outcroppings ripe for the impaling. We all looked over the edge for a long time until, one by one, we found our courage.

Today I'm looking over a new edge.

Writing About Writing (and my writing career) is about to undertake the most major change it's ever had since this blog's inception. We're not just fiddling with the knobs this time. We're going back in to rebuild some of the core assumptions about content.

This last week I didn't get much posted, but over at Patreon, the back channels were alive with chatter. ("And tier rewards too if you want to get in on that!" he said with his best salesman pitch.) This is part of a longer conversation I've been having with those who help keep the lights on around here (and me fed) about what they'd like to see from me and how often. A few months back, I posted a question about quality vs. quantity. As always, I was harder on myself than my patrons would even dream of being.

The short version is I've been working too hard. I've had no appreciable work/life balance as I slam out 50,60, and sometimes 70+ hour weeks. I was perpetually reminding myself to take it easier (and finding I actually had difficulty doing so). Probably chasing blog analytics helped me not feel like such a fuck up after what pragmatically amounted to a divorce, but it also affected my mental and sometimes physical health. It was just so easy to keep going...to always be behind and overwhelmed. Then you don't have to slow down and listen to the voices.

This is as much a process happening between me and my therapist as it is a blog reorg.

Also, and perhaps most frustratingly, I ran out of time to cannibalize for ever more writing, and still wasn't getting to the writing I wanted to be doing. I've been so busy writing blog posts (and doing all the various behind-the-scenes maintenance) that I wasn't getting time for the fiction projects I want to be doing including a VERY overdue book a lot of people were very generous about Kickstarting.

There was no "Coming to Jesus Moment" but over the last two months, I have realized the center wasn't going to hold. To criminally mix metaphors, I'm pedaling a flying machine that is overloaded and I'm pedalling faster and faster and faster but still losing altitude. The problem isn't how fast I'm pedaling. The problem is I need to jettison some baggage. So I checked in with my 200+ bosses, and now I'm going to be majorly altering the structure of this blog.

You can see the latest poll results in that screen cap above, of course, but this wasn't my first poll on the topic (I've sort of been asking the same question in different ways for several months) and I've gotten a lot of good feedback from Patrons and friends over the last few months.

• I'm too hard on myself.
• No...way way WAY too hard on myself.
• Seriously, fucking stop being so hard on yourself, Chris.
• If I want to keep internal deadlines, fine, but no one else––even the people paying me to write––really gives a shit, so I really don't need these "Mea Culpa!" posts describing how behind I am.
• Writing six posts a week and shooting for seven is overwhelming to followers. It's TOO much and is actually STRESSFUL to try to keep track of a blog that is so prolific. 
• Quality over quantity will merit out.
• People give me money because they support me as an artist and a writer, not because they expect to see "output" from me like I'm a factory worker.
• Pretty much unless I disappear for weeks, that support will remain.
• People know fiction isn't going to go up at the same speed and they're okay waiting.
• I need to consider my political ramblings on my personal Facebook page to be writing. I put in hours on some of those posts. They count.
• Folding in downtime should be considered an essential part of my process. I write better and write more interesting things when I'm refreshed.
• Many of you have mentioned that the QUALITY of my writing is noticeably better when I am taking regular breaks.
• Really dude, way too hard on yourself.

I'm going to modify the Patreon goal tiers and change the update schedule officially for Wednesday's post, but we're going to go to a M-W-F update schedule with only occasional T-Th-Sat light and fluffy, jazz hand shenanigans. You can expect our hard hitting post to land FRIDAYS. I'll still be writing, but I'm absolutely going to be clearing out more time for me, and I'm going to be prioritizing other writing projects.

*stares over the edge a little longer*
*deep breath*
*hits publish/pushes off*

Here we go...

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

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

Um....proverbially of course.

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

Permission-

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

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

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

Validation- 

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

Unless….

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

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

Time- 

JK Rowling macro replaced with extreme prejudice.

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

Take it.

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

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

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

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


The Advice That Will MAKE You Write-

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

It. Does. Not. Exist.

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

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

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

On to Part 2