Is My Friend a Writer? (Mailbox)

Is my friend really a writer?

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer a couple each week. I have a LOT of backlogged questions right now, but I will try to eventually get to all of them.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. Subjective questions will be deconstructed and answered only abstractly.]   

Callie asks:

Dear Chris,

My friend is a writer but refuses to call herself one. The furthest she'll go is to say she's a hobbyist, and that she only "tells stories", whereas real writers are concerned with art and craft. I realize that labels are not the most important thing in the world, and people should be able to call themselves whatever they want, but I can't help but feel that if more writers thought of themselves as writers, they would feel better about what they spend so much time doing. Anyway, she spent many years world-building for her novels and has written a few, including one recently that is 150,000+ words long and is really good. As soon as she was done with it, she moved on to the next one. She has created unique cultures and documents with intricate conlangs [sic] for each people, and has a detailed understanding of the history of the people she writes about. This work of planning and writing goes on weekly, and always yields results.

I would like you, in your finite but considerable wisdom, to answer, once and for all, whether or not my friend is a writer!

My reply:

From my vaunted seat of pure office chair spinning pleather.....With the finite, but still considerable and holy, wisdom granted me by the avatar of the "true writer" who held aloft her mighty pen and shone its authority upon me through a beam of incandescent radiance.....I gaze my countenance upon thy question and bequeath my arbitration in the matter. 

Lo, I doth declare thy friend.....

Wait.

Before I do this, let me grab a Mexican Coke, some Girl Scout Cookies (Samoas), and some Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles, and see if I can't break this shit down. Breakfast and nuance are the most important meals of the day.

First off, labels are sort of funny. Some of them are important. Some are not. Some are wrong. Some are right. And some are deeply in the eye of the beholder. A dude with a strip of untanned skin on his left ring finger telling you that his wife and he fall under the label of "polyamorous," but no, you can't call her or talk to her or have his home number or ever call him after six....in that case "polyamorous" is probably a bad label. Someone who decides that despite their assignment at birth, they are actually the gender they most feel like: that's a label you want to take very, VERY seriously. Most of the other labels are somewhere in the middle, but given the fact that labels are basically nouns or semiotic signs and the proclivity of post-structuralism to break them down into meaningless oblivion, it's probably more important to know what your friend means when she says she's not a writer.

But I do understand that you were sort of hoping to telescope this out to other writers as well, Callie, so this also goes out to all those people who think they're not writers even though they write.

Like most communities, the writing world consists of people who attempt to control their bona fides by challenging those of others. In the same way weightlifters sneer at the people on the cardio machine as not really working out, baseball players think softball isn't a real sport, or the Tai Kwon Do folks talk about how much more effective side kicks from a real martial artist would be over joint locks when dealing with muggers "on the street," writers will spend a lot of time concerning themselves with what is "real writing."

I'll give you a hint. "Real writing" is pretty much always what they're doing, and not-"real writing" is what other people are doing. If they're really into their elitism, no one who's doing the same thing as them, but with less success, counts either. I know web content writers who think "real writing" is making money. I know published authors who think "real writing" means a book deal (but never self publishing).  I've been in the Ivory Tower of a writing program so I know way way way too many people who think "real writing" is the literary genre and the rest of it is fluffy crap that you ought to be sneering at. I've even met someone who had published a handful of stories who said that a writer doing the same thing, but with half a dozen fewer publication accolades wasn't "real" yet.

And don't even get me started on how often someone says blogging isn't real writing.

I've tried getting these various groups to fight it out so that once and for all we can know what "real writing" truly is, and have even provided arenas with tarps and oil for the massive wrestling fest, but the contestants always end up pointing out that I've selected only ridiculously hot folks (of all genders) to do the fighting, that the uniforms are "a little skimpy," and impugning my pure and unimpeachable quest for knowledge with the accusation of some sort of ulterior motive. (Of COURSE the uniforms are a little skimpy. We need to make sure no one is hiding weapons.) The nerve!

It seems like maybe you may have just happened to have found someone who has internalized some of those rampant messages about the difference between writing as a hobby and "real writing" to the point that she thinks she isn't a real writer. Or at least that she hasn't the slightest interest in the aspects of writing that she has attached to that label (like considered revision, craft work, and possibly also the considerable not-actually-writing work that goes into the business of publishing and monetizing writing). And that's okay.

Personally, I think being a writer has more to do with earning your er, and it sounds like she's done that a few times over, but if she would like to self-identify more as a hobbyist because of some kind of negative connotations she has with "writer" (or "Writer"), that's okay too. She seems to have the signifier part down, even if she rejects the sign. (Nothing like a little Saussure joke to liven up the ol' blog!)

However, I will say this: perhaps more importantly than labels or elitism, your friend has latched on to something even more fundamental to 99.99% of creative writing than worrying if it's real or not–the fact that the simple act of it brings her pleasure. And at the risk of annoying her, I'm going to suggest that (in my book) this makes her one of the realest writers of all.

....probably a writer.

Status Report

Image description: Sonic gal during chemo with a rainbow afghan.

Everyone is doing as well as can be expected after a round of chemo. If you've never gone through it, they are pretty tough on the patient and cause lots of nausea and lethargy for days afterward. Plus there's usually follow up for fluids which involve going back for a couple of days and take a couple of hours each.  I did a full day of toddler wrangling and a bit of housework myself yesterday (minus a tag in for a nap), and I'm about to jump in for more of the same.

I was able to get a bit of writing done this morning, but not enough for a post. Unfortunately when I'm stressed and emotional, even though I still write, I have a tendency to be easily distracted and write a little bit on a lot of different projects or make Facebook posts or do very stream of consciousness writing.  I'm less able to sit and focus for a few hours. That's the reason I updated Social Justice Bard today, but didn't get a post here. Hopefully tomorrow I can get something up, even if I have to do some jazz hands and get the really real post up on Friday.

I am happy to report we DO have a guest blog for Thursday as well.

And don't forget to vote on our poll. Even though Lord of the Rings is almost certainly going to win (and I'm learning all over again that month long polls just don't have enough wind in their sails), second place is still up for grabs.

Chemo Day

Hopefully we're back up and running by tomorrow.

Coming Up On a Little Turbulance

This is your captain speaking.

If you noticed, I turned on the seatbelt light. Please return to your seats and put your seatbelts on. I'll be sending the flight attendants around to make sure those are done up properly and to collect any trash you'd like to get rid of at this time. Please also put your tray tables and seat backs into their full upright positions. We're coming up on a little bit of turbulence.

Normally we would route around the chemo thermals by scheduling them for Fridays, and the worst days of recovery would be a weekend where no one is expecting much of the blog anyway; however, white blood cell counts on Friday caused a shift in the projected thermal layers. So we're heading into them on a Monday, and they may very well screw up the entire week since not only will the chemo itself be on Monday, but the heavy, rough recovery days will be Tuesday and Wednesday.

We've got some great maneuvers planned; let's see how many of them we can actually execute.

A Grey Artistry's Magnificent Coloring Book

Proposed cover:
A lioness behind several different kinds of flowers.

Every once in a while there is a fringe benefit of having a running blog and a bit of reach on social media. And that is when I get the privilege and honor to share the creative endeavors of my friends and fellow artists.

Ashly is a long time peep who has even illustrated one of the older posts here on Writing About Writing (Why Others' Stories Matter), and is now working on trying to Kickstart her own project.

It's an adult coloring book, and it's shaping up to be a pretty damned cool one too. (If you're new to adult coloring books, that's a book that's got a lot of smaller spaces and careful detail and is a bit more involved than most kids can handle, not a coloring book that would get an NC-17 rating or anything.) This one has got animals in it. There's nothing that says a younger child can't use them either. They just have a bit more detail. I've seen five year olds enjoy coloring them. And forty-five year olds.

For just $15 (not that much more than you'd pay for an adult coloring book anyway) you get a book and to support an independent artist with a project.

Blogger and embedded videos don't get along, so if you want to see the Kickstarter video, you'll have to follow the link:

A Grey Artistry's Magnificent Marvelous and Macabre Coloring Book

If you like coloring books, animals, visual art, or the macabre, check it out and maybe consider backing her efforts.

Want to Blog for Writing About Writing?

Thursdays is usually for our regular bloggers like Claire, Amy, and Bethany, or one of our many guest bloggers, but I'm digging through the e-mails and I don't see any articles left, so I guess today is a day for encouraging more people to join our diaspora of voices.

Got something to say about writing, art, inspiration, creativity, motivation, process, craft, literature, reading...or possibly cheese?

Got something that writers or book lovers REALLY need to see? 

Want to respond to something I've written, even if it's to completely disagree with me and tell me I smell like soup? And not that I smell like the good kind of soup that reminds you of childhood winters, but something with weird goat cheese, too much salt, and seasonings that make you wonder if the meat has maybe gone off.

Want to take advantage of my (currently) 50,000+ page views per month and advertise your own online endeavors in a thinly veiled self-pimp-a-thon wrapped in the "sheep's clothing" of an article?  (For which I will only demand a shout out in return.)

Want to put an article or three out in the world, be read by lots of readers, but without having to start your own blog and lose all your friends by pimping yourself on Facebook all day long? ("Ugh. All they do is talk about themselves! They don't take pictures of their lunch like me!")  Or just want to try blogging on for size a few times before you start one of your own?

Then I want you!

Bring it!  Drop me an e-mail.  (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) As long as what you want to write is mostly coherent, at least obliquely about writing, no more than 82% horribly offensive to white males, non-abusive to other readers, doesn't make me cry (except in the good way), contains at least one vulgarity, innuendo, or salvo of F-Bombs to maintain the crucial lack of decorum, and is more advanced than a lesson I might teach my middle schoolers, I will totally publish your article.  I can't promise that if you write an article on why I'm wrong about everything ever in my face that I won't write some kind of rebuttal or addendum, but all opinions on writing are welcome--even ones antithetical to mine. (I do reserve the right to refuse a post for any reason, but I promise that reason won't be because I disagree with you.)

And...if you're one of my regular guest bloggers, I'll even give you your own link on The Reliquary. 

Here are some guidelines so we don't waste each other's time:

• If you send me offers to do web content, I mark your mail as spam. I know when I'm looking at a legitimate offer for a guest blog. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me fifteen times and destroy my hard drive so that I have to get a new computer, shame on me.
• If you are a robot I will mark you as spam. Unless you can do dishes. Robots that do dishes are welcome.
• If you can't figure out what this blog is about, and offer to do articles about steam roofing or something, I'll mark your mail as spam. I'm not just web content here; this blog has a theme and everything. Make it about the inspiration and creative process of steam roofing AT LEAST! 
• Please read the paragraph below the bullet points very carefully.
• Your writing is yours. I'm going to ask that you let the post run on my page for a while before you cross post it, but ultimately I respect that as the generator of the creative effort, your writing is yours. If you ask me to remove it, I will. If you repost it somewhere else, that's okay.
• There are no author passwords to Writing About Writing--you'll submit your articles to me. I will post them if they are good enough to post.
• If you skipped all that dull text up above, this blog is about writing, art, inspiration, creativity, motivation, process, craft, literature, reading, and maybe cheese. Don't skip the paragraph below though.
• I will be as liberal as I can about gate keeping, but you do have to be able to write a little. An incoherent rant about the tyranny of grammar probably won't be approved.
• You don't have to agree with me, particularly about writing stuff, but I'm not going to post wildly divergent social positions, humor that punches down, or deeply problematic phrasing. Anything I post here isn't an "I agree with this 100%!" endorsement, but if I hit publish on it, I'm going to be the one to answer for it. If you want to write about how the PC police are agents of "Obummer the Mooozlim," and they won't let you even use the word "tard" anymore, go start your own blog.
• I won't make any content changes to your writing, but I may make some copy edits. If a proofreading change might change your meaning, I will run it by you.
• Please fucking read the paragraph below.
• When I say "I will make some edits" I want you to understand that I'm not a copy editor even though I can do okay (on writing that isn't my own). I'm not here to fix up a post from scratch that you didn't have time to proofread. Clean it up.
• You may link out as much as you want (even self-promotional links), but I'm going to check them all--if they go to spammy shit, I won't publish your article. 
• Please, for the love of all that is holy, and in the name of Zues's godly butthole, read the goddamned fucking paragraph below.
• If your post is a giant fucking commercial for some product, then you need to be paying me for advertising space. And if your product isn't awesome, that's not going to happen anyway. Thinly veiled self promotion under the auspices of something that at least resembles an article is totally okay though–just know that it might not get a lot of hits. I only get about 200 views on articles that aren't liked or reshared through some social media. If my readers don't like something, it will NOT do very well. If they do like the article, well they know where the share button is.
• Seriously, read the paragraph below.

The very important paragraph: 

W.A.W. makes no money from ad revenue. All our revenue is from donations and it amounts to a few dollars a day. However, I will not take the hard work of a writer with nothing but the promise of "exposure." It might not be more than a dollar or two for a solid article or a few bucks more if something goes viral, but I will pay all my writers something. Even though thus far, all my guest bloggers have asked that their blogging payment be counted as a donation to W.A.W., if you want or need your couple of dollars, I'll be glad to Paypal you (or work out something else if you don't do Paypal.) Plus of course if someone sends me a donation earmarked for a guest blogger, I will pass the money onto them and even cover the Paypal fee–that's for them, not me. It may not add up to much (unless you get millions of hits or write for me a lot) but if it came from your work, I'll make sure I'm not taking advantage of you.

I Just Can't Write (Mailbox)

Image description: Mailbox with a letter coming out of it.

What if I want to write, but I just can't seem to do so?  

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer a couple each week. I have a LOT of backlogged questions right now, but I will try to eventually get to all of them.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. I will redo old questions with fresh to death jokes if I think they're common writerly problems.] 

S asks: 

I'm 40, and a late-onset epileptic. Before that, I was a fairly prolific writer of fanfic & working my way into original fic. 8 years ago, I had a seizure driving home from work. I crashed into a guardrail at about 70, totalling my car. This was exactly one week after I found out I was pregnant (baby survived - I'm trying to get her to eat her dinner now, lol) and 4 months after I'd had major surgery. 

I've been on permanent disability since....and I thought that it was a great opportunity to write full-time, rather than as an amusing distraction between tasks. But in all these years, I've tried to devote to writing, and I find that I just can't. Not original fic, not even fan fiction. I don't think this is normal "writer's block", and I don't know how to shake it.

So many of your posts have gotten through that... fugue, I guess... and I was hoping you might know of a way that I can get away from that lassitude.

My reply:

Some of my most unproductive periods have been times I was blissfully unburdened with daily commitments. It's that idea that there's always more time to get started on something. Of course, some of my other most unproductive times have been when I was too busy to see straight with two year olds and cancer and barely time to squeeze an hour in here or there. That's why discipline is a writer's best friend whether they are squeezing in a session or making themselves sit down to work even though they've got a whole day ahead to get stuff done.

I answer this question or variations of it a lot (and if you want the pre-cancer, pre-toddler, full-throated version of what I'm saying, go there [and follow all THOSE links too] because that's where I've really laid it out.....plus Karate Kid clips!), but it's always good to get a fresh coat of paint on one of writers' most common frustrations and ubiquitous problems.

I do want to mention something before I start. I have zero knowledge of epilepsy beyond "very special episodes" of shitty eighties television, which I have my reasons for being skeptical of. I know it has to do with neural connections in the brain, and that is where even my layman's knowledge meets a wall like Wile E Coyote running into a picture of a tunnel he forgot he painted.

So what I'm wondering is: Is it possible that timing on your difficulties might not be coincidental. Could this be a problem with a physiological cause? Maybe medication with a side effect?

Now able bodied, cishet, white, Christian, males can make an awful lot of money getting on stage and telling people that they can do anything if they just try a little harder (which might make the critical thinker wonder where all the queer women of color motivational speakers are), but that advice is ALSO actually a little ableist.  For people with chronic illnesses (be it fibromyalgia, osteoporosis, anxiety, depression, or even cancer), sometimes trying harder or blithely ignoring your limitations can make things a lot worse. Powering through your arthritis flare up because "whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" is a pretty good fucking way to end up in the hospital on a corticosteroid drip and unable to move without agony for a month. I think epilepsy is considered a disorder, not a disease, but if you don't know for sure that it can't mess with your ability to sit and write (especially on a computer?), you may want to check with your doctor.

If that's out of the way, here is my advice. It's not the only advice. Your affectation, your rituals, your "magic" might work better, but this is something I know works for many (most?) and has ended my writer's block completely for 25 years...

1- Take your work in progress, or your ideas about what you want to write someday or whatever you've got so far that you think you ought to be writing but can't seem to actually WRITE. Hold it in your hands or if it's not even a page yet, just imagine you're holding it in your hands. Give it a big hug and kiss, and tell it you are going to miss it terribly.

Now put it in a drawer.

(Don't worry; it's not forever.)

2- Start writing every morning when you wake up. Wake up early if you need to, but do your writing before you have a chance to interact linguistically with anyone or any book or Facebook or online articles or anything. You may have precious life giving essence of coffee, but don't do anything that would require talking or reading. The voice you write with after you've slept is the rawest, purist, most uninfluenced YOU voice of writing that you have.

Don't worry about what you write. Write anything. Write about cheese. Write about how it's too fucking early. Write about how your story is going to bury you in groupie threesomes. Write about how you can't write. Just get the words flowing onto the page.

You will probably notice that you start to slow down after ten to twenty minutes. Stop writing at this point, no matter how much you feel in the groove. You may get the urge to keep writing or to do another session later on. It's important (right now) not to listen to that part of you.

3- At some point, somewhere between a week and six weeks, you'll probably notice that your ability to write at speed "stretches." You might be able to write for more like thirty minutes to an hour before you are slowing down. Keep writing about anything, and keep ending your sessions as soon as you slow down no matter how much you feel like continuing. This is very important because you are training your muse (or creative lobe, or spark, or whatever the fuck you want to call it) that it answers to you, and not the other way around. This "stretching" is what you want. When you can easily write for about twice as long as you used to be able to, you're ready for the next step.

4- By now, it's probably been a month or more. Take a look at that old W.I.P. (work in progress). Give it a read. Think through your ideas. Let your mind play with it. Don't write anything yet. Just....think about it. Give it another hug, and put it back.

Soon.

5- Next we're going to move your writing time around. Before you put it where you like it, though, we're going to put it in a bunch of places you really really don't. And yes, we're doing this JUST to fuck with you.

Well actually we're doing it to get you used to the feeling of the words coming as soon as you sit down, but in order for that to happen we have to fuck with you. You need to control your flow, not the other way around.  Skip your morning writing, but schedule 30 minutes sometime in the day.

Here's where this gets messy: You're going to try to fuck with this time. ("Oh what's the difference if I start at 3 or 3:30 as long as I do thirty minutes, right?") You WILL find excuses, you will try to change it. You will try to talk yourself out of it.

Don't. 

This is your muse trying to struggle against anything that feels like actual work. Consider this one of the most important exercises in artistic self-discipline: the ability to start working the minute you want to instead of being at your muse's capricious whim.

Do this for a couple of weeks, picking a new half-hour time slot each day all throughout the day, and unless you are fountaining blood or a family member has turned into an actual zombie (not just the coffee-less kind) that is the time you sit down and write whatever pops into your head...for thirty minutes.

This is going to be hard, but it's one of the most important parts.

You might feel like you're not writing enough during this period where you're only doing a half hour a day. This is a good feeling. That means the medicine is working. But resist the urge to do "side sessions" for now. It'll come.

6- By now you're probably noticing that you start to feel creative the minute you sit down to a session. This is what you've been working for these past couple of months. This is the money shot. You are in like Flinn. If you ever fall out of practice with writing, just repeat steps 1-5.

7- Take a break.  Three days. Any more and you risk falling back out of your good habits. Any less and you won't be properly primed. Think about your W.I.P. while you take your break but don't read it again. You want to be detached from the words themselves.

This might be the hardest part of this exercise--even harder than the floating half hour. Writers who don't write get a little messed up. But let your creative energies build.

8- Now, schedule a session of writing at any time you want and try to write a completely crap version of your W.I.P. If you haven't written much, start over–especially if what you've got is less than thirty or forty pages. That might seem like a lot to redo, but it's better to get free of your old work's confines. If you've written a LOT on your WIP, restart from the last chapter or last major section that you can go back to.

It's really important to feel like this is a clean slate. If you have a fresh project, you might pick that one instead.

Now write forth, but write crap. Write the most crapfully crap you can crap out. Should you include ACTUAL fecal matter, in your prose, I want the quality to be undiminished.

Don't worry about quality, spelling, punctuation, cohesive plot, believable characters....anything. Just write the worst shit that comes to mind and kick the story off. See how much you can just write before you slow down. You don't need to limit yourself in any way. Remember this isn't for anyone to read. This is just you kind of getting some stuff out on paper. Have fun. Enjoy.

9- The next day do the same thing at as close to the same time as you can. Keep writing from where you left off, and keep writing what you think of no matter how bad you think it might be with absolutely no expectation of publication or audience. Just let it all flow out. Have fun. If you get stuck, just see how bad you can make it. Let yourself be imperfect. In fact, make mistakes with the gleeful anticipation that some of them might lead you to a surprising moment of genius.

10- Keep doing this every day at the same time.

11- Oh look. You have a draft.

[With credit where it's due. This advice is heavily based on Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer. A book I think literally every aspiring writer should own.]