The Dark Side of the Moon

If you're following this blog close enough to notice an interruption in our update schedule (but not stalking me well enough to know what's going on in my life), then let me tell you what's about to happen. I triple booked myself with pet sitting and THEN I'm heading to Texas for a few days, and so Writing About Writing is going to be slipping into Jazz Hands mode for a while.

Don't worry. I've actually be holding back on some of my more Jazz Handsy posts in anticipation of this time, so you're still going to get a lot of fresh-to-death content.

Though there may be an opportunity on the horizon for a side gig that doesn't require so much running around, until Patreon is covering a few hundred a month more, I'm stuck saying yes to jobs when they come up in order to be able to have a car and buy food that isn't refried beans and grits.

I've still got big articles–many already half written or more (including tomorrow's offering)–and I will bring you as much as time will allow, try to write on the plane, find time in the cracks....all my usual tricks. This is by no means a hiatus, nor will it be as fast-and-loose as we get around here every summer while I teach summer school. We're going to do everything we can to keep our signal strong, but you may lose us for a minute as we go behind the moon.

But I wanted to let you know if you see a higher ratio than normal of Potpourri, Plot, and Fortune Cookie type posts, it's not me trying to pull any shenanigans. I really am driving all the hell over the bay area to take care of cats so that I can buy a premade salad and eat some leafy greens.

So Very Chad (The Post With Appeal)

**

*Pan in on the Writing About Writing compound*

*Arms of an Angel begins to play*

*Chad and Sally Struthand stand there looking sincerely into the camera. Chad glances nervously around, and pretends he's not looking at a note card in his hand*

Voice off camera: "....don't know how to edit so don't fuck up this take."

Chad: "Hello there. I am Chad. You...may remember me from the incident with the power saw in December. I'm feeling much better these days, and the surgeons down at UCLA really are miracle workers. I may have cut off my sense of entitlement, but at least I still have my sense of humor."

Sally: (pauses) "So would you say that you're happy to be back at Writing About Writing, Chad?"

Chad: Oh right. Yes. Yes I would. I would say that. That I am happy to be back at Writing About Writing. I would say that."

Sally: "Do you love eighties pop culture references and thick layers of sarcasm with your writing advice? Sure. We all do."

Chad: (glances at his hand again) "Well for less than a cup of co...co....fee-fee. (whispers) What the hell does that mean.

Sally (steps in front of Chad and looks right at the camera) "It means you have a chance to help this blog. It doesn't cost less than a cup of coffee per day. It costs less than a cup of coffee per month. Just one dollar can make a world of difference to that one special blogger."

Sally: Sign up to be a patron at PATREON, and we'll take care of the payment processing costs on our end.

Chad (trying to step out from behind Sally): "And if–"

Sally (not letting him): "And if you send five dollars a month, we'll send you pictures of your blogger along with thank you notes and updates on their progress. It will be impossible to forget how you're really directly helping.

Does Writing About Writing like bigger patrons? Sure. We all do.

But even though we picked up nearly 20 new Patrons last month, we only gained about $8. That's because one–just one–big patron couldn't afford to keep supporting us at their previous amount. Life happens. Writing About Writing is hoping to find a robust ecosystem of small patrons–just $1 or $5 a month–to help keep us going. And to help us keep bringing you more and better content.

That small amount pools with others' small amounts to help pay for life saving medicine, food, shelter*...and also possibly the occasional Kindle book or Steam video game. It's also possible that that eight dollars may have gone to the movie ticket to Black Panther. It makes a big difference to a starving artist.

So we know you want to get that correspondence degree in gun repair, but if you've had a few minutes of entertainment each month, maybe consider signing up for a small donation to help us keep entertaining you.

There's no obligation. Patreon makes it easy to cancel at any time.

Of course you can also make a one time donation through our Paypal or Venmo accounts."

Chad: "Uh....yeah!"

*music fades and camera pans out*

(*Not actually a joke. My medical insurance, rent, and groceries budget are all made possible by donations, which are the only way I'm able to keep paying the bills by writing.)

(**Shameless emotional appeal post calls for a puppy that clearly needs your love.)

As always, these appeals posts (which I only do once a month so they aren't spammy) don't really get a lot of reshares and likes no matter how hard I try to make them entertaining, so if you don't have a dime but still want to do us a solid, toss me a +1, upvote, like or whatever.

Best Dystopia (Diverse) [Reminder to Vote]

What is the best dystopia written by an author other than a cis het white man?  

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

Current margins are still narrow. 

Only a week remains on this poll, and then we're going to start gathering nominations for our next one (and trying to claw our way back to a poll a month schedule). Don't forget to take a moment to vote for your favorite.

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.

Writing About Writing Staff Meeting

Real Chris: The meeting of the Writing About Writing staff will now come to order. 

Leela Bruce: We do a lot of things. Coming to order really isn’t on that list. As you well know.

Real Chris: Fair enough. If we could, however, come to some semblance of taking turns screaming, that would probably be sufficient. And does anyone know where Guy Goodman St.White is?

Ima Lister: He’s drunk.

Real Chris: Altered states of consciousness were specifically listed on the not-a-decent-excuse-to-miss-this-meeting column.



Ima Lister: No I mean he’s passed out in his bunk.

WAW Chris: You’re the one who took five years to wrap up that plot thread and subsequently transformed what should have been a “very-special-episode” caliber problem that we wrapped up in a few weeks into full blown alcoholism that has been the elephant in the room for years.

Real Chris: Okay, we’re not going any further with this kind of attitude.


Evil Chris: You're the one who has let every plot point you introduced in 2013 just fester. And when's that Skyrim article coming, huh?



Real Chris: Look, you…..ingrates. There was cancer and babies and diapers and moving and pet sitting and.... And shit. Literal and metaphorical shit. Up to my eyeballs. There was just so much shit.

Sparks: Particularly your productivity. (high fives Leela Bruce)

Real Chris: Quick reminder. Y’all are figments of MY imagination, and I can shut you down by binge watching Supernatural pretty much any time I want.

Prudence: Or as an alternative, how about you get to the point and we won’t go on strike for the NEXT five years.

Real Chris: Fine. Fine. Okay. Look. So…as you know, out there in the real world, I am no longer making coupons and government cheese as payment.



Sage: We’re getting RAISES!

The Sci Guy: Finally an R&D budget.

Ness Lessman: My office will have walls!

WAW Chris: Nobody’s getting raises! Except for Ima, not a damn one of you has given me an article in years. YEARS. Until I get some posts, all’yall can take your “Extra Topping At No Extra Cost” Dominoes Pizza coupons and grouse somewhere else.

Joy: Wait did someone get paid in coupons AND game birds?

Real Chris: You know with other writers, arguing with their characters is more of a metaphor….

Evil Chris: I bet they also know that having three of themselves in a given scene is bound to be a little confusing.

Grendel: SHUT UP! EVERYONE! Shut up. Or my mom will cancel sloppy Joe’s night, and I’ll stop serving double portions of mashed potatoes….even upon request.

*silence*=

Real Chris: Okay. Well it’s not weird or anything that Anglo Saxon monsters are running the kitchen in the compound in my mind that I’m currently talking to at the meta level.

Justice: Just one of those things. (Grendel and his mom glare)

Real Chris: So anyway this money comes from donations–patrons actually, they’re called. And it’s enough to pay the bills even. And these Patrons, who pay my bills, have….god help us all…specifically requested more of….

*pause*



Real Chris: *sighs*

Real Chris: ….all of you.

WAW Chris: Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Real Chris: Yeah. I don't get it either, but that's what they asked for.

Ima: There's a list of reasons why this can't be accurate. Number one....

Real Chris: I took a poll, okay! They want more articles by each of you. More advancement of the weird meta plot. More running jokes and gags. More weird fluff posts. Ninjas. Octorians. Strange plots. Dimensional travel. The whole nine. They have specifically asked for more of you. And they pay my bills.



WAW Chris: Shit maybe you all ARE getting raises.



Real Chris: So prepare yourselves. Everyone here is about to get tapped–including Guy Goodman, so let him know. There’s not going to be anymore of this: “Everyone’s talking spoilers about Jessica Jones and I haven’t seen it yet so I can’t do that article this week,” excuses. You’re all on alert. Shit’s about to get weird.

An Act of Faith (Personal Update)

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.  

-E.B. White

I want to tell you a story, but before I tell you this story, I have to tell you another story.

This story can be inspirational if you want or didactic if you prefer. It can be whatever you want.

It is a story of the wee child Chris.

I've wanted to be a writer since I was ten. I remember the exact moment–a finish-the-story creative writing Halloween prompt that I turned into a ten page mystery. (TEN PAGES!!!) From that moment on, the how of it might go in and out of focus (from writing with all the *cough* free time I would have teaching choir to trying to take a year off to slam out a debut novel while still in my twenties), but I always wanted to be a writer.

Which turns out to have been less important in the grand scheme of thing than this: I always wanted to write.

At that age I just wrote happily about brain eating monsters from outer space and scientists who could save the earth with squirt guns using their "liquid laser" formula–which if I had to guess was a plot point that had a lot more to do with my new squirt gun toy than anything–and didn't care much about where the commas went. But as I got older, the emphasis on grammar loomed like a shadow in my mind. I worried a lot about my failings. I had trouble spelling and trouble learning the formal rules of grammar.

I would later learn that I had a mild form of dyslexia and off-the-charts ADD. Both had gone hidden into my adulthood for a myriad of reasons (from the fact that I was reading and writing so much that I was not making "typical" mistakes that would indicate learning disorders to parents who thought everything was a simple matter of my motivation).

Now our story moves on to my young adulthood. Where I'm struggling to be a writer, but not really at all sure how to make that happen.

The Hungry Writer Games™ begin as soon as you leave high school. Each high school produces fifty or so would-be writers. They all are sure they're going to make it. Every one has equal levels of yearn. They all are vaguely contemptuous of all the others.

Then the attrition begins.

Dan gets a "real job" at 60 hours a week. Never writes again. Celia gets some "realistic" feedback from her mom's agent friend and gives up. Mark technically doesn't drop out, but that NaNoWriMo manuscript tucked into a drawer hasn't seen so much as an edit in ten years.

During my twenties, platforms like Livejournal were all the rage. (Hell there was a time there in the late 90's and early 2000's where LJ handles were actually part of how you introduced people here in the Bay Area. "This is Chris. He's Dicedork on LJ.") One of the things I was increasingly self-conscious about spending hours a day reading my friends was that my writing didn't stack up. That's a tough tough pill to swallow when the north star of your dreams since ten years old has been to be a writer.

Okay, can I level with you? "Didn't stack up" is putting it mildly. Honestly....I wasn't a good writer. Like, I was actually kind of bad at writing. At some level, I was even aware of it. A few of my friends have admitted to me in the years since that they really didn't know how to broach the subject...

I don't mean like one or two friends. I mean like...a dozen.

Okay, this story is getting long and you're all going to be skeletons at your devices soon, so let me try to speed up the money shot here:

I was sure–just 100% sure–that the thing I wasn't good at was rooted in my poor command of grammar. If I could figure out what a participle was or how to avoid passive voice, I'd be better at writing. If I could just learn the difference between an infinitive and a gerund, the prose would come more naturally. I vacillated between outward contempt at "rules" and "prescriptivism" while inwardly being sure that if I could just grasp a few more rules, I would be a good writer.

Years went by.

This story doesn't have one ending. It has a few. Life is sort of like that sometimes. But let me lay them down end to end.

• When I went back to school to study Creative Writing, I was immediately noticed by my freshman composition teacher and he recommended me to the tutoring program at the community college I was attending. Turns out I was better at grammar than I thought. I was comparing myself to a lot of very skilled writers instead of worrying about myself. I ended up being a second language teacher for a decade because of that tutoring gig.
• Being a tutor, I discovered I actually DID know most grammar. I just didn't know all the labels and the formal structures. (You DO kind of have to learn that shit to teach it.) But reading avidly for 25 years, I had a pretty good ear for what sounded right. And most of the weird rules were in dispute or British vs. American or only something your blue haired high school teacher would give a shit about.
• I learned more about grammar from taking a linguistics class in my upper division than from all the grammar books and high school lessons combined. It's amazing how much the subject/object passive voice paradox makes sense the minute someone explains to you what an AGENT is. 
• In tutoring and teaching I learned to develop a healthier relationship with grammar as something very important (and occasionally critical to the intent of meaning) but not actually the beating heart of writing. Far less important than how to structure an argument or support a point.
• Pretentious "Who needs grammar anyway!" me learned the very important difference between bending or breaking a rule for effect and not knowing it in the first place.
• Through it all, I kept writing.

Now, for a much shorter Story Number 2.

Recently I reposted a couple of articles from the early days of the blog. They had errors in them and a couple of folks who are kind enough to watch out for those sorts of things emailed me to let me know about the corrections. One was even a "revision," but I hadn't caught some of the mistakes in it.

And when I got those emails I thought about my twenties and young Chris struggling so hard to try to learn the grammar that would unlock the doors of "good" writing. 

There wasn't one. 

One day the feedback started to change. One day my friends said "I was worried, man, but now I'm not." One day a professor, in a strange moment of gravitas handed me back a paper and said: "Don't stop writing." One day a friend gave me some money. Then a stranger. 

I'm here now, making money as a creative writer–enough to technically pay the bills (with some side gigs so that I can have the occasional Chipotle run), not because I'm brilliant at grammar or never fuck up (HA!). I make fewer errors per article these days, but I still fuck up more than any blogger I've ever seen. Every single post has at least a couple of doozies that I end up editing after I've hit "publish."

I'm not here because I had "talent."  In fact, I rather sucked.

I'm not here because I went to a great writing MFA program. Just SFSU undergrad English major with emphasis in Creative Writing.

I'm not here for all those reasons that The Hungry Writer Games™think of as important.

Yet somehow every writing goal I had as wee Chris is in my rear view mirror because for thirty years on, I have never stopped writing. I kept writing even though my friends could barely stomach my prose. I kept writing even though I knew other people were better. I kept writing even though the decades were stretching on and I hadn't made a cent.

I'll save you the "lesson" here. It should be pretty obvious that I'm talking about myself but also about anyone else worried about talent or particularly anxious about subjunctive mood or the twelve tenses. As important as grammar can be, I didn't get better because I learned some rule.

Just know that E.B. White was right.

Writing isn't a trick of grammar.

It's an act of faith.

A Writer's Time (Personal Update, A Writer's Life)

A thing happened today.

I can't get into it much or I'll end up in one of those uncomfortable Truman-Capote-just-wrote-about-his-friends conversations. Maybe someday it'll show up in a story with all the names changed or I'll write about it looking back through time's soothing lens....and casualties. Suffice to say that it was one of those days that reminds me that one of the hardest parts of being a writer–whether you're working for a living or just an avid hobbyist–is going to be impressing upon everyone around you of the value and importance of your time.

It seems this will be Folksy Wisdom Week™ for that is the way things are shaping up with all these half written articles, so let me just go now and put a piece of straw in my mouth today and shift it from one side to the other as I gaze contemplatively at the horizon.

If you're a writer, this thing you want to do–this alchemy of words into emotions and experience and soaring heights and depths of despair–it requires an ingredient (in VAST abundance) to facilitate the transmutation:

Time.

So much time.

Oh my god, so much time.

Decades of reading. Years and years of practice before the skill has matured. Hours to get a simple paragraph perfect. All for that chance to turn twenty-six letters and some punctuation into poignant, sharp crystal meaning within another's mind.

I don't know a writer who doesn't struggle with finding more time. A friend who writes as a hobby can't get her husband to take her seriously when she says that she absolutely needs an hour or two on Sundays. A novelist colleague tells his day job twice a month that he absolutely can't work more than 30 hours and gets scheduled anyway or pressured to come in early or to stay late. One of the people I follow who is a working writer regularly has friends and family contact her during the day because that's when she's available–even though she's told them repeatedly that, aside for emergencies, she's not. One friend constantly has those around them asking for time-based favors like RIGHTNOW help with resumes,  rides to the airport, grammar questions that amount to a quick tutoring session, or their emotional labor on issues.

These people moving in on your time don't mean to. They're basically good people. They really do love you and want to nurture your dream (well....most of them). They want to be supportive. They just see time differently than writers do. They see those open oceans of time in your schedule and don't realize how many "good productive sessions" you've got planned. Or they see you looking off into space and assume you are just frittering away the hours. They know that you're "home all day" and don't read that the same way as if you were at a job with a boss. Most of them wouldn't be able to wrap their head around setting aside two hours to read. Reading is something to do during leisure time when there's nothing else going on not an activity one considers part of a dedicated regimen of career improvement (on top of giving it most of the Netflix/TV/Video Games time).

They certainly don't understand that a question that pulls you out of a thought and out of a sentence or a paragraph and out of a whole direction of concentration (whether reverie or rumination) and even out of pages of direction can derail you for minutes or even hours while you search to get back that thread.

And this is why, with unswerving consistency one of the bits of advice that almost every writer rings in with (after reading a lot and writing a lot) is protecting one's writing time.

Find it. Grab it. Build a fence around it. Put barbed wire on the fence. Scowl at the people on the other side of the fence. You have to make others understand because on their own, they just won't get it.

Whether hobby or career, writing isn't something one can do hastily with any potence. And so the time for writing must be at least as valuable to a writer who has to motivate themselves to sit down and work day after day as an employee's time is to a boss. And just like a writer has to get their own ass to work and set their own goals and be their own boss, they also have to be the one making sure they themselves show up on time, they themselves don't leave early, and they themselves don't spend the whole time doing something else.


Would your boss be okay if you just sat on the phone for an hour or so? Would your boss be okay if you took the day off to run your friend to the airport and feed their cat?  If you cruised in late every single day and left early? If you took personal calls all shift? If you spent two or three hours a day answering emails and facebook messages?  But when you're your own boss, no one's going to chase these people off except you.

That's why writers–serious writers anyway–have to sequester their time and sequester themselves and then protect those things with motion tracking auto-turrets like in the extended cut of Aliens. (That shit was badass.) We don't get bosses. If we're lucky we have a cranky editor or publisher glowering at us after an unproductive week, but the day to day accountability is still on us.

Grab your time fellow writers. Don't let it go. We won't get any more allotted to us and we need a LOT of it to be this wild and wacky thing we want to be. Be cranky. Be angry. Don't be abusive or anything, but if the worst thing someone learns is that it's really not a good idea to interrupt your writing, that's probably okay.

Best Dystopia [Diverse Poll]

What's the best dystopia written by someone other than a cishet white man*?   

We've got twelve titles from your nominations with equal numbers of "seconds" so we're not going to run any semifinal rounds this time, but there are a lot of great books to choose from. This one won't be easy!

If you have any questions about why this (and a year of our polls) are deliberately attempting to account for a usual lack of diversity, please check out this post.

I'm Spock-eyebrowing a couple of these titles. They're clearly more in line with horror and/or sci-fi than dystopia, but as with most polls, I will err on the side of inclusivity, and the folks who vote will have to decide if they agree.

The actual poll is on the left hand side at the bottom, beneath the "About The Author" section. Mobile viewers will have to go to the very bottom of their page and switch to "Webview" in order to access the poll.

Since we have a profusion of titles and a lot of powerhouses, everyone will get four (4) votes.

There is no way to rank votes, so please consider that every vote beyond the first "dilutes" the power of your initial vote and use as few as you can stand to use.

This poll will be up for a week and change, which means your IP logging will expire (after a week) and folks will be able to vote again. Since I cannot stop shenanigans, I encourage as much of it as possible. Vote early. Vote often.

*I tried on my Facebook page to word this inclusively ("by a woman or a POC or a member of the LGBTQ+ community") but pretty much the same number of Squiddies came to cry bitter tears about the double standard either way, so whatevawhooldes.