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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Miss Me? (Evil Chris Returns)

It's about that time. Did you miss me?

Actually we're running a little late here. Usually I'm up and running before the spoopy wee ones take over the neighborhood in their Avengers and Disney costumes. This year, though, Chris (that's the dogooder version who lives above me) has the entire compound on heightened alert because of the Evil Mystery Blogger and I had to spend several hours convincing them that, yeah, I'm totally evil, but I'm evil in a likes-Nano, makes pop culture references that aren't thirty years old, does "the shocker" non-ironically, steals-all-the-Tootsie-Rolls-out-of-their-variety-pack kind of way, not that I want to give a bunch of shitty advice to sincere and dedicated starting writers kind of way. In the immortal words of Starlord: I might be a total a-hole, but I'm not a complete dick.

If you've taken the advice Goody Two Shoes Chris gives about Nano, give yourself an extra hit of bite sized 3 Musketeers and an extra peanut butter cup or two. Go enjoy your lackadaisical paced November and guilt free Netflix binges with everyone else and give us a thirty day break from all your fucking preachy bullshit about how Nano isn't real writing, would you?

We're trying to get some shitty writing done here, okay?

If you're determined to go through with Nano, I'll keep Chris and his "dire warnings" and "heartfelt caution"off your radar for the next thirty days. (It's easy enough to run interference when you don't mind welding someone's metal door closed for a few hours.) I'm trading in his sanctimonious bullshit for a foam number one glove, some pom poms, and if you play your cards right, a pleated skirt in our school colors.

Don't forget the Final Ten Item Checklist before tomorrow!!!

I'll be your emcee for the next thirty days.

Let's fucking do this thing.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

April's Best

Oh man. I knew I was behind on these, but I had no idea. Expect to see more of these in the coming weeks as I try to catch up. Eventually I will begin to update the running menu I posted a few days ago.

Here are the top three articles from April that will go on to immortality in our Greatest Hits.

Logan: Why Character Matters 
Part review and part lesson about writing from the latest and last Hugh Jackman-as-Wolverine movie.

Five Steps to Motivational Rejuvenation (Mailbox) 
Antonio asks how to get one's motivation back for a project that has been put on hiatus.

When to Throw in the Towel (Mailbox)
G wants to know when it is


Honorable Mention:

WAW's Facebook Page
This technically got more pageviews for April than any other post, but part of the reason for that is that it goes onto Writing About Writing's Facebook Page every month or so and continues to accumulate hits.

Friday, October 27, 2017

25 Things to Let Go Of If You Want to Write Creatively for Money (Part 3)


Return to Part 2

-or-

All the way back to Part 1

17- Your obsession/disdain with the market
We already talked about chasing trends.

Yeah, don't do that. Just write what your heart yearns to write.

Your lifeline through all the years of bullshit to that first paycheck for creative writing is going to be doing something you really, truely love and believe in–writing something you truly WANT to see in the world. It's hard enough to reach the finish line when you're excited about the story you want to tell. If you sell your soul trying to write something that's already been written because that might be what's selling, you're more likely to burn out before you finish, end up behind the curve on the whatever trend you were chasing anyway, and never make a dime.

There's a time to learn the business end of your trade. But obsessing about it before you've actually written anything is absurd.

Image description: Zoolander meme; text: "Dystopian novels in present tense
with strong female characters..... so hot right now"

In addition, there this whole OTHER way to be beholden to commercial fetters that will fuck you up. If you want to struggle all your life in ignominy, you can grouse about the market all you want and complain about "the garbage that sells" and hate everyone who ever gets a book deal.

Go ahead. Believe that the reason you aren't swimming in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck is because all readers everywhere have cheap tastes and all publishers ever publish is crap. They wouldn't know good if it bit them in the ass, amirite? Clearly you are FAR too good to sully yourself by learning things like the advantages of non-traditional publishing, how to make changes that will improve your manuscript's marketability, or the value of social media self-promotion in today's world.

Obviously your cover letter wasn't ignored because it was three pages long. It was because the big five are only interested in money. Obviously you aren't famous, not because you're tossing out manuscripts onto slush piles that still need a final polish instead of hiring an agent, but rather because no one appreciates the sophisticated way your setting worked with your theme as kinetic landscape.

No no. Of COURSE anyone who makes money has simply sold their soul. Except you. You deserved every penny.

On the other hand, if you actually want to MAKE money, you might try learning the basics of the industry in which you work instead of being too good for it, and understanding the major changes that are happening right now. Yes, write what your passion burns to write and don't try to put the cart before the horse, but also be prepared to figure out ways to tweak it to make it more marketable without sacrificing your artistic vision.

Image description: A box for now (no checkmark)
and a box for later WITH a checkmark
18- Those myriad reasons tomorrow is better
You have a million reasons you can't start today. I mean, of course you want to write, but you can't actually start today. These aren't excuses for not writing because, yes, you're totally going to. Just. Not. TODAY.

Your waiting on your new laptop. You want to get an ergonomic keyboard. You've heard that writing in Scrivener is where it's at–gotta figure out how to get that. Gotta run to Palo Alto to take care of some pit bulls after you take the three year old to the zoo so better to just call today a wash. You've got to dig out the junk room to make way for your office–can't start until that's done. You work today so it would be better to hit it fresh tomorrow.

Much like your excuses (part 1), I'm not here to judge.

But if you want to make money, you find a way, and you start right now. When your boss needs a thing or you have to turn in the paper to pass a class, you find a way.  It probably wouldn't even occur to you to come to your boss or your professor the next day and say that you just can't possibly even get started until you dig out the junk room (unless you flunk a lot of classes and get fired a lot). If you want to make money writing, you can't depend on some external force to prevent you from procrastinating. You have to stop the cascade of "tomorrow"s and put your ass in the chair.

When you're writing for your own ambition (rather than under a job's deadline or something), there's nothing there doing a hip check on your bullshit–you can just keep on procrastinating until one day the doctor sits down with you and tells you the news is "really bad." I mean you might have an editor who will call you and ask where the hell your next chapter is, but if you do, you probably are already making money and why are you reading this silly article anyway?

You might not get paid for all the writing you do (which is a cold reality of this gambit), but you're absolutely never ever EVER going to get paid for the writing you don't do, so you might as well start today.


I submitted my first short story earlier today,
but I still have to go to work! The fuck?
Image description: Man in a suit 
looking impatiently at his watch.
19- Your goddamned impatience already 
Conventional wisdom suggests it's about a 5-10-year slog from the point where you first try in earnest to be a working writer to the moment you make some really real money. And the low end of that basically only counts if you consider paying maybe ONE bill "really real" money. You might start getting paid a little sooner with non-traditional publishing (especially if you are willing to publish snarky listicles on a blog), and you can probably shave some time off of this if you are über-dedicated or live in a rent-free situation and can give it full-time job caliber effort, but between the day you start flinging yourself out there and sharpening your craft on the whetstone of rejection and feedback, to the day you call your day job boss (or hang up your riding crop for that last side gig) there's probably going to be something pretty close to ten years. Exceptions are few, far between, and the ones that might spring to your mind are almost always actually writing non-fiction (memoirs in particular). And that's if it was actually them writing at all.

Take it from someone who has done some ghost writing.

[For the record (and because this blog exists as a real-time demonstration of a career arc in creative writing), Chris has been putting up one article a day on average for six years. He has written somewhere in the neighborhood of five THOUSAND pages (most of it crap), which does not include journaling and side projects (some of which have never seen the light of day) and this month was the very first month he could have covered his bills (with absolutely no frills like brand name peanut butter, and with zero spending money) from just writing.]

So if you want to make money, you can't look around after two months and say "Jesus fuck, I've submitted like a hundred short stories. A HUNDRED!!!  Where are the Benjamins??" After revising that novel for a year you can't throw in the towel because, fuck it, you tried. You can't give up at two years because the grand total of all your sold material barely covered your matinee movie budget for a month. Three years in and you're still pulling down $50 a year in blog ad revenue doesn't mean it's time to switch to politics and porn for pageviews. Four years going and you're barely making your cell phone bill flinging out short stories like an octopus on speed. You need to know that you're actually only approaching the halfway point.

This joke is über funny if you get it.
Otherwise.....sorry.
Image description: Giddeon Graves from Scott Pilgrim saying "Two hours!"

And this might be an aside to this particular article, but this is one of the FUNDAMENTAL reasons that if you're going to try to make it as a writer, you better love writing a lot more than the idea of being a writer. It's an awfully long haul if you're not into it for its own sake.

Because if you do all that, and you read a lot, and you had some ability to write going in, and you've worked hard (and yes, maybe just the tiniest touch of je ne sais quoi––which I hesitate to call "talent"), there's a decent chance that at 5 years, you might get the first kind of money that opens up some options like cutting some hours from that day job or going from four to three side gigs. I can't tell you for sure how fast (or even if) those doors are going to open up to you, but that's about how long you have to keep knocking on them before it's even a possibility.

However I can absolutely for certain tell you how much you will make if you give up before this point.

Full comic (it's awesome but other comics there are NSFW):
https://oglaf.com/blank-page/
20- Florid bullshit about inspiration 

Nope.

"Yeah but I–" Nope.

"If I'm not feeling inspired –" NOPETY NOPE NOPE WITH NOPE SAUCE!

"It becomes a chore and–" Mr. Worf, arm the nopedos. Mr. Data, get us out of here Nope factor nine!

Look, Chippy, inspiration is awesome. Straight. Up. AWESOME! When it hits, you'll do a fourteen-hour session without noticing you haven't eaten. You'll rock a week solid of those eight-hour days that land like a sledgehammer from start to finish. Even your imposter syndrome will look around, impressed, and say "Holy fuck!" Trust me when I tell you that inspiration is my drug of choice and I would do two lines of it before every session if it came in powdered form. I GET it.

And that is a great guiding philosophy for if and when to write if you want to be a hobbyist. (Which, just so we're clear, is really okay.)

But if you want to write for money (particularly more than just Steam Sale money), there's absolutely no getting around this: Not every fucking day is going to be rainbow unicorn farts. Just like any other job that you do for money, some days you don't want to be there but you have to, and if you call in every time you aren't feeling it, you either have no job or have no paycheck pretty fucking quickly.

Some days are going to suck and you'd rather do just about anything including clean the bathroom with your tongue than punch some words out. And instead of flying high at the end of the day with dilated pupils singing Dancing Queen, you just sort of step away from the computer smelling like swamp ass and disappointment.

But you do it anyway. Because sometimes jobs are like that.


Image description:
Two people each with a laptop, tablet, and phone
21- The hypnogourds
That sound you just heard was ten million people grabbing pitchforks and torches.

(Nah, I'm kidding. I don't have ten million readers. It was just like twelve, but they're right outside my door and EXTRA pissed.)

Jesus Buttlicking Christ, don't worry. I don't mean all screen time ever. And I don't mean you can't write on your computer. You're just going to have to make some tough choice about your priorities.

To be a writer of the caliber that makes money, you pretty unswervingly have to do two things more than a goodly fucking chunk of most other human beings in all the world.

Read. And write.

Now I know math is not the strong suit of most writers (I myself took a class called "Math for Liberal Arts" in which my final was an oral presentation on fractals) but if our sixteen waking hours a day are filled with Netflix binges, video game marathons, and enough Facebook to cause Pema Chödrön to want to play some Candy Crush, we are in trouble.

And while this might feel like it falls into the realm of time management in general, a lot of writers who are pretty good about turning down social events and having no lives to speak of still have a couple of particular problems they need to take a hard, critical look at. Like fucking around on social media when they're on their computers or watching TV and playing video games instead of reading.

Point blank: you're not going to make money from Facebooking, and trying to write well without reading is as absurd as trying to only breathe OUT. Most writers who want to be Writers™ (with a capital W and a little TM symbol) would be a lot closer if they let go of at least 75% of their screen time.

22- Your vague desultory dreams 

Image description:
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous poster
Dreams are fun. I'm particularly a fan of the one with the completely sold out book signing, the wall of people gushing about how amazing they found my every word choice, the intellectual discussions with people who noticed some of the subtler choices I made regarding language, setting, and symbolism, and the two hot fans who each invite me to their room after I'm done and at first they're really annoyed by the presence of the other, but when they discover that one has a bottle of champagne and the other has a game of Rotten Apples and they're both a little into each other, they decide to try to get along....and....um....maybe another time.

When you dream, there's no specificity. No measurable outcome. No deadline. No realism. You can just yearn to "be a writer" without any concrete sense of what that really even means or how to go about getting there. Maybe you think about how great it would be not to have a day job. Maybe how cool it will be when you're pulling down six figures from your spectacular career. Or maybe you think about how you will tour the talk-show circuit and razzle-dazzle 'em with your writerly charisma (because writers are nothing if not great social extroverts who never make asses of themselves under intense pressure in situations where they can't go back and revise).

If you've got no particular urge to write as anything but a dilettante, dream away, and enjoy. I'll let you borrow a few of my old dreams from the 90's. (There was one where I spent a plane ride next to someone who was reading my book.....) However, if you want to make money writing, you need to trade those dreams in for goals (preferably SMART(S) goals) and get your ass to work on the execution.

First of all, there are some studies showing that too many unrealistic fantasies can actually get in the way of finding the motivation to achieve goals. But even if that weren't the case, consider this in terms of any other career you can think of: If you want to be a doctor, you start taking pre-med classes and/or find a medical school. You don't just sit around and imagine what your life as a doctor will be like. If you want to be a lawyer, you start applying to law schools (or if you're not that far along, you start getting a four-year degree–law schools really like physics and philosophy majors). You don't just daydream about how your objections will bring all the judges to the yard.

23- Your fear
You have to let it all go.



Erm.....hopefully your first book doesn't go quite as badly as Neo's first jump.

Well, letting it go is sort of true. You never really "let it go," when it comes to the fear, but you can kind of learn to turn it into a flea and put it in a box and mail it to yourself and when it shows up, hit it with a hammer. You have to just do it afraid. Yes, some people will hate your writing. Some people will hate YOU. Some of them will pierce you with exactly the horrible gaze that calls out every one of your writing (and even personal) flaws with nightmare precision. They will be absolutely everything you are terrified of.

If you want the scrill, you have to put your work out there anyway.

I'm not going to sit here in my vaunted glass house and tell you that your fear isn't justified or it isn't that bad. Hell, if anything, you're probably low-balling it when it comes to the antipathy that comes from being a known writer. (The folks who want to take someone down a peg or two who's succeeding where they want to be are legion.) But if you can't let go of that fear.... If it holds you and paralyzes you or sends you indefinitely back to the page for "one more revision"..... If it delays forever the moment of truth (either in the form of never taking that first big leap or succumbing to overwhelming doubt with every subsequent project that effectively craters your long term productivity)......

.....You won't make money.

No one is going to pay you for your book that you are afraid to publish. And no one ever quit their day job who published one book every decade.


Image description: A pickle saying that they're kind of a big dill.
Get it? DILL.
Never mind.
24- About half the people who liked you when you were a struggling unknown
They just won't be into you anymore....and that's okay.

I can't tell you why, but not all of your original fans are going to be there for your first platinum album....er platinum book....cover....whatever the writer equivalent would be.

Maybe they hipster liked your old stuff better. Maybe as you found what worked to a broader audience, you phased out something they originally really liked about you. Maybe they would have grown tired of your voice either way because people just outgrow art and artists sometimes. Maybe they kind of enjoyed supporting you when you were a completely unknown underdog who was kind of "theirs," and now that you're not struggling in obscurity quite so much, they aren't as interested. Maybe they grew as people and now they want to read Proust and sip brandy.

Maybe they'll surge back when you hit something that resonates, or they just need a break and they'll come back with an epic "I knew them when!"

The point is even if you knew why they drifted off (you never will), you have to let these folks go. Tearing yourself apart about what you might be doing to keep your smaller-than-cult following is a tremendous amount of wasted spirit. Understanding that devotees will come and go (and sometimes come back again) is part of being an artist.  You don't necessarily have to sell out to the mainstream to make money, but you have to let go of the hope that you will only ever "accumulate" aficionados, and nowhere will that ebb and flow be more apparent than with those original folks (many of whom you probably can name) who liked you when no one else did and who you probably have a great affection for.

25- Some other shit you'd rather keep

Wheel of Fortune is a much different show these days. (I hear they don't even turn the letters anymore. What's up with THAT?) But once upon a time, the winner of a round would then go into the "prize room" and spend their winnings. But even if they bought no vowels and got some epic spins, they couldn't buy everything. If they wanted the $350 dollar barbecue, maybe they couldn't pick the color TV. Or if they couldn't go home without that pig, they were going to have to sacrifice the food dehydrator.

Only you can do you, but your life is like the the prize room in Wheel of Fortune.  Or if you prefer, it's like one of those memes where you have a limited budget and you want to build the best superhero team.

Prof X, Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Black Panther, and Deadpool,
then spending the extra three dollars on a microwavable chimichanga to boost morale.

"And the first thing this team will take down is the a-holes who don't think women can be leaders or 
technicians, that Wonder Woman won't kick their ass for pricing her at two bucks, that Black Widow 
wouldn't kick The Punisher's ass up one side of New York and down the other, or that Tony Stark 
is somehow worth over twice as much as the King of the most technologically advanced country 
in the Marvelverse."

Except this is about writing.

So think about it this way: Hobbyist writing is a dollar, writing to be published is like three dollars, and writing for money, let's say five dollars. Make it your only career and you're up to $8. Now you have other things you're going to want to buy. Things like a family. Things like a sex life. Things like peeps. Things like other hobbies. Things like a career that require full-time hours (because even if you spend that $8 on "career," you have to do that for five to ten years before it'll pay the bills). Things like video games. Add three dollars for a toddler. Add a dollar if you are in a raiding guild.  I don't know what you're going to choose, but if you're serious about that writing something's got to give.

You have to let go of something. It's up to you what.

But none of us––NONE of us who make money creative writing––gets out unscathed.


Writing About Writing is and will always be free, but if you'd like to get great articles more often, support my creative and intellectual labor, and help me keep food on the table, please consider a dollar a month (or more) toward my Patreon.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

The SEO Content Writing Wisdoms (Mailbox)


[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 a week.  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. And I will absolutely do more jokes and jazz hands than answers if I'm pulling into the station at like 10pm on a Thursday night.] 

Just a quick reminder before I get going that I'm still looking for questions–particularly if I told you I would be answering your question and then forgot. I didn't forget, but I did lose the "Notes" file that had all the questions in it.

JG asks:

Ok, so I decided to turn down another annoying content writing-type thing, since I know it would just demotivate me (even though it would at least earn me tiny moneys) to attempt to focus on writing I actually enjoy. I want to get that spark of writing back that I had as a kid (though, considering how quickly I wrote my stories perhaps I was never really as focused, dedicated or motivated to write as I like to think of myself.) However, I am in a serious writing funk. Like... I have ideas but everything is coming out like chunky sour molasses vomit. What the hell. So basically I want to focus on writing fiction and nonfiction I enjoy not so much the SEO and copywriting stuff I've been trying to force myself into.

Can you give me the wisdoms?

My reply:

I am like the Pez dispenser of wisdom! It's kind of novel the way you it comes out of me, but it's really not that great, and after you're done, you sort of wonder if there isn't literally anything else you might consume to get what was lacking.

Hmmmm. This metaphor ended up in a different place than it started.

Well anyway, you're on the right track with how to get you writing out of the chunky sour molasses vomit zone (it's totally a thing). SEO and content are jobs. That's all they are and they should be treated as such. Yes, they're technically writing jobs in that you will have to employ things like words and sentences with punctuation and verbs. They may even, in some small way, be creative. However, like a chef who hates to cook at home or a housekeeper who tolerates kind of a mess, one of the problems with doing this sort of work if you want to be writing creatively is that it can use up your writing energy.

You have taken the first step in getting out of this quagmire of "technically I'm writing."  I lift a glass to you.



The problem is pretty simple. A lot of folks who want to be writers fall into one of two pitfalls. Either they think most writing is created equal (it's not), and they're getting good practice and honing their skills because writing is writing is writing. Or they think that making money writing is the total fucking promise land and nothing will matter once they are wordsmithing for a paycheck.

(Before you ask, yes, I've done this kind of writing. No, I didn't like it. It paid [not well], and I quit pretty quickly. So I do have some idea the demands of this sort of work and how it is compensated.)
Both of those pitfalls have one really trixy bit of bullshit complicating them as dismissable: And that is that they are technically true.



Yeah, I said it.

They are true. Kinda. Maybe. For a while.

The problem is that each has a point of limited returns and they're probably a lot sooner than you think. In the case of practice and proficiency, a writer can probably learn most everything that could possibly be useful to their creative writing in less than a month of doing content writing or SEO work. Anyone who needed to learn anything more wouldn't likely have gotten the gig in the first place.

As far as "technically I'm writing for a living," it's kind of awesome. Then you realize that when you get home and look at the screen, the last fucking thing in the universe you want to do is more goddamned writing. You want to read trashy Robert Asprin novels, watch The West Wing, and beat that fucking last level of Majesty.....or maybe that's just me. Point is, most writing jobs sap creative writing energy, and even when they don't they can really affect the "mode" in which one writes. (And banal informative sentences that are very easy and repeat key words often is actually a really shitty way to write creatively.)

Now whether or not you are okay with the fact that your job writing is sucking your creative writing's will to live is a personal choice. Some people happily do their not-creative-writing careers for years and years and love the shit out of it and still talk about how some day they're going to write their novel. Others (like me) quickly realize not only is it not the writing they want to be doing but it's DETRACTING from the writing they want to be doing, and get the hell out of Dodge.

The Suck Kut will be playing the role of your totally writing job.
Garth will be your creativity.

If you are really good about writing as a habit, and a small break wouldn't turn into a long or indefinite one, I would take some time off. Get the writing SEO content out of your system completely. Do a lot of reading instead. You'll probably be chewing at the bit to get to something creative in only a week or so. If you don't want to take time off, I would at least try to give yourself a palate cleanser–maybe a week of LIGHT writing, heavy reading, with a lot of free writing and prompts without trying to do an official project–and see if the words have a less molasses vomit feel when you're done.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Best Modern Fantasy (Quarterfinal 4)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years?  

It's time for our fourth and final quarterfinal for the best modern fantasy poll. Not a lot of fanfare or ado. Just go vote so we can get on to the semifinals and hopefully a new topic by December.

Everyone will get three (3) votes. The top four titles will go on to the semifinals.

The poll itself is on the bottom left of the side menus, below the "About the Author."

For mobile users you click on "web page view" and then scroll ALLLLLLLLLL the way to the bottom.

These quarterfinals will only be up for few days each (less than a week) so vote quickly that we can move on without losing momentum.

Best Modern Fantasy (Quarterfinal 3 Results)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years? 

Here are the results of our most recent quarterfinal poll. The top four names will go on to the semifinals. And fourth and final quarterfinal poll will be up later today. (So stay tuned!) We have to keep going so we can fucking finish this abomination of a poll before the older books literally fall off eligibility. Plus it might be nice to squeeze in one more poll before Apophis hits.

Text results below.


Night Watch- T. Pratchett 446 64.36%
Harry Potter- J.K. Rowling 134 19.34%
Hounded (Iron Druid Chronicles)- K. Hearne 25 3.61%
The Mercy Thompson Series- P. Briggs 23 3.32%
Keys to the Kingdom- G. Nix 20 2.89%
Uprooted - Naomi Novik 18 2.6%
The Night Angel Trilogy- B. Weeks 14 2.02%
The Hollows Series- K. Harrison 13 1.88%

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Best Modern Fantasy (Quarterfinal 3-Last chance to vote)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years? 

Gotta keep going flipping these over so it doesn't take forever to get through this poll, so tomorrow I'm going to post the results of this poll and put up the last quarterfinal.

So you have one more day to vote.

Don't forget you get three (3) votes, but that there is no ranking, so using as few votes as possible is better.

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

I'm told if you're on mobile you have to click "webpage view" then scroll alllllllllll the way to the bottom, you can find the poll.

Monday, October 23, 2017

Official Schedule Change

Just a quickie to announce an official schedule change starting now.

Time was, a post that went up on the weekend, or even too late on west coast hours, would get noticeably less traffic than its bank hours counterparts. However these days weekend posts are not appreciably less page viewed. Particularly "slow burn" topics that get a lot of search engine traffic months and even years later.

I've also consistently been asked to do job two (nannying) on Mondays–often for the entire day. And somewhere to the east of here there is even a tabletop Star Wars game that will fire back up when my players are done with our hiatus. All on Monday.

With that in mind, I'm going to make official what I've been doing impromptu for weeks now. I'm going to start taking Monday off and writing a post on the weekend instead. Our current Patreon level still means six updates a week (at least two of which will be "meaty") but my week will start on Tuesday.

Here is the new schedule. I'm not going to repost the whole thing for such a small change.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

2017's Greatest Hits by Month

[Everything in the brackets will disappear in a week or two...

Today I'm just doing a little bit of menu clean up which means creating a stub for the 2017 year for The Best of W.A.W. ]

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October
November
December

Friday, October 20, 2017

Fortune Cookie Wisdom XIV

Social issues are political. Political issues are social. The personal is political and the political is personal. Only those safe from nearly all political consequence box "politics" away as some special category of thought. A writer can either be political, intentionally apolitical or blithely oblivious...which–guess what?–the latter two are also political positions in favor of the status quo. 

An autocorrect error takes two seconds to fix. Being the kind of elitist, pompous, probably ableist and classist, and maybe even racist snot who thinks an autocorrect error is a great thing to make fun of someone over takes a lot longer to fix.

Sometimes what you need isn't to tell yourself you're going to write and not check Facebook all day long. Sometimes you need to tell yourself you're going to write and not check facebook for just twenty solid minutes.
A lot of people think they want to be world-renowned writers, but many of these folks don't realize just how much even the smallest amounts of fame translate into audiences who feel they're entitled to time, attention, energy, and entertainment that is exactly what they want it to be.


If you like an artist or entertainer who is mostly doing their schtick for free (like a blogger or a fanfic writer), it would really be a great idea to toss a pittance their way so they can keep doing it. A dollar a month might not seem like much to you, but they'll add up for the artist, and day jobs cut into creative time like you wouldn't believe.
For everyone who announces they are no longer your reader because you wrote something they don't "like," someone else will show up because they liked what you wrote. Just be true to yourself and your art.
Traditional vs. non-traditional publishing is, at this point in history, largely a personal choice in terms of money and number of readers. One can traditionally publish poorly edited crap or clean up a self-published book so that it is error free and hire a professional artist to do the cover. The compelling factors in such a decision should be the "validation" of being noticed by Gatekeeper Senpai and the publishing world vs. creative control, instant-er gratification, and needing to learn how to wear a few other hats oneself (like how to promote a book online or how to format text for a Kindle). It is no longer a question of "real" vs. "fake."
Fanfic: writers who know they will never get paid, who face little or no renown and often even stigma, creating art that they are passionate about just for the love of doing so. I'm sorry, what's not to love?
All artists are flawed. But most artists are breathtakingly honest about those flaws. The artists who deny their flaws, claiming they are particularly virtuous in some regard, are the ones whose falls from grace are often breathtaking plummets.
When your days are 14+ hours long and you're double booked on pet sitting, don't be afraid to do some jazz hands and hit it hard on the weekend.



Not enough fortune cookie wisdom?  Come get more!

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Best Modern Fantasy (Quarterfinal 3)

That feeling of secret shame when you
realize that you're rooting for the bad guys
chiefly because this dude looks like
Danny Rand.
What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years? 

Today was long, hard, double booked, 12 hours at my other two jobs, and involved getting my ass just fucking KICKED by A.D.D., so I'm not going to do much more than tell you that quarterfinal three of our poll is up, and it's up to you to decide which three titles will be joining Harry Potter (obviously) in going on to the semifinals.

Everyone will get three (3) votes. The top four titles will go on to the semifinals.

The poll itself is on the bottom left of the side menus, below the "About the Author."

For mobile users you click on "web page view" and then scroll ALLLLLLLLLL the way to the bottom.

These quarterfinals will only be up for few days each (less than a week) so vote quickly that we can move on without losing momentum.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Best Modern Fantasy (Quarterfinal 2 Results)

The pet sitting double book started today, so it might mess with our update schedule through this weekend. (I'll still get you six posts for this week. I just might need to put that last one or two up over the weekend.)

In any case, here are the results of our most recent quarterfinal poll. The top four names will go on to the semifinals. And the new poll will be up tomorrow. (With a post to follow if I'm on fire but not until Friday if I'm less....on...fire.)

Thank you for the incredible turn out. I hope enthusiasm stays stoked.

Text results below.




Malazan Book of the Fallen series- S. Eriksen 433 35.06%
Small Gods- T. Pratchett 256 20.73%
Song of Ice and Fire- G.R.R. Martin 123 9.96%
Neverwhere- N. Gaiman 116 9.39%
His Dark Materials- P. Pullman 105 8.5%
Mistborne- B. Sanderson 82 6.64%
Farseer Trilogy- R. Hobb 68 5.51%
The First Law trilogy- J. Abercrombie 52 4.21%

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Writing Prompt: Short and Timed

The place I'm currently cat sitting has some pretty gnarly parking laws around it. I can try to find a place a few blocks away or move my car every hour. Today I've been doing the latter and I might keep on for the duration of the trip.

Why? Because I get to have short, timed, focused writing. I come in. I set my keys back down. Maybe have a drink or use the restroom and it's about 45 minutes until I need to move my car again to avoid any hint of impropriety before a zealous meter reader who marked my car the second I walked away cruises back through like a t-rex sniffing the air.

A timed writing exercise is nothing new–you've probably done a thousand of them before, but what often gets overlooked is how useful they can still be to a seasoned writer. It's too easy to look across an "entire day" and push writing back and back and back until it's in this tiny corner. Or to sit down to an "hours long session" and spend the first half of the time futzing on Facebook or playing Gardenscape because those hours stretching out gave you a sense that there was much more time. We tend to question ourselves less under deadline and push ourselves harder. Plus it's easier to put off distractions for "a few minutes" than it is to be good about them all day.

Then suddenly, with your back against the wall, a few minutes worth of work actually gets done. Certainly vet writers have their days where it all just falls into place, but they also have their fits and starts too. Sometimes it's just a lot easier to think about sitting down to write for a half an hour than an afternoon.

That's where timed speed drills come in.

PROMPT:

Use your current work in progress provided it is a first draft. If your WIP is not a first draft, pick something else or start something new. It's important that you not be working on something where you mull over a word choice for several minutes, but rather a piece where you're trying to get it out onto the page. Set a timer for NO longer than 45 minutes. The "sweet spot" will be somewhere where you will feel the pressure and your mind won't wander, but also before you can become overwhelmed and then bored by writing at a heavy pace. Most season writers will be able to do 45 minutes easily–resist the urge to do more. Newer writers may have to do less, but less than ten minutes is probably too short.

Set your timer and begin to write. You don't have to scribble furiously. This isn't necessarily a free write (where the "pencil must keep moving") but you do have to keep writing. No checking other tabs or doing anything else for that 45 minutes. When you're done you can do whatever you want: Facebook, check your phone, research, "research," but for now just keep making words.

Bonus points:

  • Depending on how fast you write, you can make this prompt extra intense by giving yourself an ambitious word count but don't make it so high that you're flinging words like a free write. The trick here is to get yourself writing at a clip you usually only do under pressure, not necessarily to just fling spaghetti at the wall.
  • Take a break and do another timed exercise in a few minutes. See if you can have a truly spectacular session in timed chunks with definite breaks instead of one overwhelming glob.
  • Play around with how long you can write before you start wasting time. Find out what your own sweet spot is.

Monday, October 16, 2017

Best Modern Fantasy (Last Call for Votes)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years?  

My hope is to futz with the usual update schedule this week and ratchet up the intensity of posts as the week progresses (and as time becomes more accessible), I'm double booked on pet sitting* and my nanny hours are higher than normal this week, but there should be time after tomorrow night to do some heavier posts that'll land at the end of the week.

*I know. I know. I said I wouldn't. I have already turned down some jobs that would double book me. This happened to be an emergency for a friend.


There are only a couple of days left for our second semifinal for best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years. On Wednesday the results will go up (and later that day, the next semifinal round). I don't want this poll to go on for months more, so the quarterfinal rounds are going to be quick.

Don't forget you get three (3) votes, but that there is no ranking, so using as few votes as possible is better.

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

I'm told if you're on mobile you have to click "webpage view" then scroll alllllllllll the way to the bottom, you can find the poll.

Friday, October 13, 2017

The Renown Margin


I am not famous.

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

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

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

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

Thursday, October 12, 2017

A Strange Obstacle

I started this just a few minutes ago as a "note" to a mailbox I was going to try to write (letting folks know why it wasn't going to be two mailbox responses today), but things have deteriorated in the last few minutes and this is going to have to be today's post...

It looks like I'm also going put up something light and fluffy tomorrow instead of the planned conclusion to 25 Things to Let Go Of If You Want to Write Creatively for Money. That post is mostly done but probably needs another four to five hours of solid writing and two or three more of revision before I'm ready to post it.

I'm experiencing sort of a unique writing obstacle here today. I live in the Bay Area about an hour from the fires that have made national news (not sure about international news). Basically fires usually skirt the edge of cities, but the city of Santa Rosa is a 200k population center on the border of the wilderness. There have been some fatalities and a lot of homes have been completely destroyed. In some cases, whole communities are unrecognizable but for the burnt out cars, chimneys, and major appliances dotting the rubble. An hour is no big deal to drive for a lot of the bay area's social events, and I know many people up that way. Most evacuated at some point. Some have lost everything.

As worried as I am for chosen family and upset about the fates of my friends, that is not the obstacle. The obstacle is actually the smoke filled air. It's really bad. (I mean REALLY bad.) When the winds shifted south, we got tons of smoke haze, and the air quality has gone to shit. I'm inside with the windows shut and already nursing a bit of a headache but the forecast is that it's only going to get worse. It's making it hard to focus on writing, so I think today I'm going to sit with what I've written on Triexta so far, and rest my burning eyes as often as I can.

What I'll try to do is make up for it this weekend when I'm pet sitting in Alameda. They get a bit more of the bay breeze, and the air quality might be better there. (It's not today, but they might be set-up to recover faster than anywhere else I can drive to in less than an hour.)

Writing is like flossing. (And really, we're only talking about writing with some sort of ambition of "making it" rather than just personal hobbyist fulfilment.) But yes...like flossing. It's your daily habit that matters-not the one day you miss because of extenuating circumstances. But just remember when the excuses start to include things you probably could work around rather than just things you can't, you might be on a downward spiral.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Best Modern Fantasy (Quarterfinal 2)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years?   

I randomize the titles that go up against each other, but today fate has decided that the choices are from a whole lot of heavy hitters and personal faves. It's going to be a rough round as these goliaths slug it out.

Everyone will get three (3) votes. The top four titles will go on to the semifinals.

The poll itself is on the bottom left of the side menus, below the "About the Author." 

For mobile users you click on "web page view" and then scroll ALLLLLLLLLL the way to the bottom.

These quarterfinals will only be up for few days each (less than a week) so vote quickly that we can move on without losing momentum.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Best Modern Fantasy (Quarterfinal 1 Results)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years? 

The results are in for our first quarterfinal round. (Just a quickie today as there is both much more to write and much to do that is not writing in order to try to catch back up to the Red Queen Race of life.) Thank you so much to so many for participating.

The top four will be going on to the semifinals. The next quarterfinal round will be up tomorrow.
Text results below.



The Kingkiller Chronicle Patrick Rothfuss 56 21.46% 21.46%
Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan 52 19.92% 19.92%
The Graveyard Book- N. Gaiman 49 18.77% 18.77%
Stormlight Archives- B. Sanderson 40 15.33% 15.33%
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell-S. Clarke 22 8.43% 8.43%
Who Fears Death N. Okorafor 17 6.51% 6.51%
Kushiel's Legacy- J. Carey 13 4.98% 4.98%
The Magicians- L. Grossman 12 4.6% 4.6%

Monday, October 9, 2017

Happy Indigenous People's Day

Reminder: we can't get the staff here at Writing About Writing to come into work on bank holidays (even if we offer them double coupons), so these are always days off here at the blog.

Which is damned good timing because I needed it.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Intro: The Renown Margin


Today I'm going to start a new "segment" here on Writing About Writing. (A new menu for The Reliquary, a new series of posts, a new tag. The whole nine.) I'm writing this post by way of an introduction. You'll see the menu stub go up in the next couple of days, and likely the first article on this topic soon since it's on my mind.

It's a segment about what it means to have a public persona that has begun to be recognizable in more than a casual way to some people. About what it means when your work is enjoyed by folks you've never met. About meeting people through your writing. About encountering strangers who are excited to meet you, and the good and bad parts of being recognized by one's work.

I am not "famous."

And this is not a "Do you know who I am?" moment.

I might be paying the rent with writing, but I'm still cat sitting in order to keep my Prius gassed up, so I don't want anyone to think I've hit the bigtime or have delusions of grandeur.

However, I am writing this blog for, among other reasons, to create a transparent career arc of my experiences both blogging and writing in general. This blog is a daily check in on triumphs as well as trials and tribulations. It is a testament–in real time–to how much work and writing will demand, but also to the possibility that it can offer. The most common question working writers get is some variation on "How can I get to where you are?" and for me all I have to do is point at this blog. The patient reader can see my work develop, my style refine, my prose improve, and my many, many, MANY failures along the way.

I have a Facebook page with close to 2/3 of a million followers as of this writing. This blog has nearly four million page views. I regularly send out thoughts through my public Facebook profile that are shared by hundreds or even thousands. And some of those numbers affect the kind of attention I get back.

A new thread has entered my writing life. One that, in the interest of transparency, I will try to tell you about. For better and for worse, an audience has gathered, and that has begun to affect me, my work, and my personal life. At first it was a comment here, an introduction there. A PM about a post. A friend request because "you wrote that thing." A gushing fan* excited to meet "behind the scenes" me. And not so good things happened as well. My work began to be savaged. My personal emotional safety wasn't always regarded as a human with needs rather than a writer with a platform. People I didn't know started striking up intense and immediately intimate conversations with me. That is to say nothing of hate mail and even death threats. Some friends and family want nothing to do with the attention they get by proxy. People have projected a lot of things onto me including what I can only assume are some powerful demons. And in some ways many have made it clear that they think work and even my existence exists only for them. And I have reacted to them, withdrawing further into a private and public life dichotomy. Ignoring comments. Not getting back to messages.

*And believe me it feels really, really weird to call anyone fans.

Each of these things, rather than being an anomaly, has begun to happen more and more. I've been recognized now a half a dozen times by total strangers. People have solicited my autograph. Complete strangers have told me that they are going to marry me. Folks have started talking to me about something I wrote without saying hi first. And some people have gotten quite upset that I've not lived up to their unrealistic expectations of me. All of this is totally surreal, but I have no reason to expect, unless I stop writing altogether, that these trending lines are going to reverse rather than continue.

I once heard fame for a writer described in an interesting way: "It depends on what room you're in." That is to say that unless you're a Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, a lot of people probably don't know exactly what you look like or don't particularly care. Some people know exactly who I am and what I do and couldn't give a shit. If you're in a room of your readers, a lot of people might be very excited to meet you. If you're in a random room, you probably are just one more stranger. It's not like being an actor where you can't go to the store in peace. But it has begun to be......a thing.

I think a lot of people think they would enjoy being famous. Not enough to really work at it, but they imagine it as being a boon to their life. That most everything would be exactly what they are now except better, cooler parties, more interesting friends, maybe the occasional restaurant owner who says "your money's no good here," everyone will like them, and maybe it'll be easier to get a date on a Friday night (Bwahahaha!). The problem is they forget the other stuff. Even when that's not all bad, those fun bits are tempered with people who think I can do things for them (either substantive like actual promotion of them or their causes or something more ephemeral like I'm able to elevate their station or that somehow gravitas will rub off on them...or something), that I owe them something, that my work exists purely for their sole entertainment and no one else's, that they are entitled to my social time and energy, that I am not fully human, that my privacy doesn't need respecting.

And the death threats....

As with most things, I can't promise a lot of advice, but I'll share what I can, and maybe give you a few pointers about what not to do the next time you're geeking out over meeting someone who's got you a little starstruck. Maybe a few more about what I learn from muddling about how to compartmentalize your life if you start to find your work gaining an audience. So I hope you enjoy some insights and maybe a nugget of wisdom or two about what it means to be starting to see something that kind of resembles fame crinkling the edges out there on the horizon.

Sort of.

Ish.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Don't Forget to Vote (Best Modern Fantasy Semifinal 1)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years? 

I'm recovering from my trip today (and almost a whole day spent in transit yesterday), so today is just a quick post reminding folks to vote because there's only a couple of days left.

Fair warning that tomorrow will probably be jazz hands. Just because it usually takes me more than the day of to get a solid post up and I'm honestly trying to be good and relax today instead of descend into my writer workaholism. Next week I'm home and back on schedule and you'll see some mailboxes, solid posts, the end of that listicle, and more.

There are only a couple of days left for our semifinal for best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years. On Saturday the results will go up (and either later that day or Sunday the next semifinal round). I don't want this poll to go on for months more, so the quarterfinal rounds are going to be quick.

Don't forget you get three (3) votes, but that there is no ranking, so using as few votes as possible is better.

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

I'm told if you're on mobile you have to click "webpage view" then scroll alllllllllll the way to the bottom, you can find the poll.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

The Truth About this Last Month (Personal Update)

My secret ingredient?
Having some fucking time!
If you've enjoyed the higher quality and greater frequency of "solid" posts over the last month, I have a confession to make....

There's a reason I've been able to write a little harder and faster these last few weeks than during much of the last two or three years: I haven't been outrageously busy.

There have been a couple of pet sitting gigs, and right this second I'm wrapping up a week in Texas with my mom, but for the large part, whether it was teaching, double booking pet sitting gigs, or just needing to be on as a nanny, I was facing down thirty hours of work (before I wrote a word) in the last couple of years.

And this month you finally got to see what I could do when things weren't so chaotic and busy.

Yes, posts have gotten shifted around, and I haven't done every article I wanted or planned on (for example, I'm probably going to have to push the conclusion of my current three part article from this Friday to next), but it's been a lot better. The vacation season is over, so not as many pet sitting gigs, and the nanny hours have dropped since the kid is in preschool. Which is all probably good because of that "exhaustion" diagnosis. But mostly it's afforded me the time to slam out some solid writing on a more regular basis.

If you have enjoyed this pace, and particularly if you want to see even more (including a better pace on fiction offerings), you can absolutely help that happen:


Throw a dollar a month (or maybe a little more) at my Patreon.

My financial realities mean I'm not really making enough to live on long-term. I can just barely keep things going right now by patchworking three jobs together and doing a shoestring budget, but I'm putting off a lot of questions (both shorter term like how to deal with a car that will eventually need more than just maintenance, all the way to retirement that I'm not saving for at all right now). Expenses are coming, and when they hit, the first casualty of having to do something reliable for cash is going to be the robust updating schedule that I hope you've enjoyed.

Plus you get awesome rewards–rewards that start with being a part of backchannel discussions (and occasionally polls) as well as a voice I listen to when I want input including upcoming projects and get more awesome from there. And of course there is the warm and fuzzy feeling that you are helping support a better world by supporting a writer and artist whose writing (even fiction) will always be free.

NOTE: If you'd like to support me as a writer, I welcome that support as I have skyrocketing rent and insurance like everyone else and might like to live in my own tiny studio some day instead of sharing a two bedroom with three people, but PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't "fund" my social justice writing in a vacuum. (My political snark I don't mind getting paid for, though those thoughts often dovetail.) I don't do the social equality part of my writing for money. I have my reasons for not being able to be a full-fledged "social justice advocate/activist/writer/warrior," and I refuse to be making a paycheck off of these struggles that are not mine. I'll do these Social Justice Bard posts and call out privilege on my Facebook no matter what. I promise. If the gestalt of my writing appeals, great, but if you only want to see more social justice posts, please donate to the causes themselves (BLM, SPLC, Planned Parenthood, Equality Now to name just a few....) or writers–particularly women of color–who are writing about their own struggles and without whose hard work I would never be able to articulate such ideas. Thank you.