The Mailbox: Best Answers EVER.

The worst best advice ever: How much revision should I do? Do you have any suggestions for how to improve my grammar? I feel like I just don't have talent. How much reading should I do if I am serious? You make $1200 a year and growing--how can you complain?  

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will intercept them and answer them for him (because he is a total tool).  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.]    

Hi all! Your white knight here to drop some really real wisdom on you about how to be a writer, and kick start your career faster than the comments get ugly on an online post about feminism. I have intercepted your e-mails, and now I will answer your questions with some actual advice instead of that tripe Chris likes to dispense about work ethics and revision and shit. 

Mark asks: 

How much revision should I be doing on my NaNoWriMo novel?

The only reply you need:

The real question you should be asking, Mark, is how many editors the publisher is going to assign your book once they read how fucking awesome your idea is! Because when you're a winner, people come to you. When you're a loser, you go to them. And when you're a complete and total loser, you do their job.

Work on the idea, Mark, not the writing. Anyone can write. Not anyone can come up with a killer concept.

Writing isn't a skill. It's a talent.

My daddy used to tell me if something was worth doing, it was worth doing right. So if you've spent some time thinking about this idea, you shouldn't need to revise it at all. That's why you wait for inspiration and write a perfect draft when you sit down the first time. Otherwise you'd just be writing a bunch of crap. Wait for inspiration before you sit down, and then you only have to do it once because it's a good idea.

Oh sure, it's going to need a polish for grammar, and a few loose ends. That's what those pedant word nerds are for. Revision is for people who didn't do it right the first time.

Work smarter, not harder, Mark.


Lisa asks:

Do you have any suggestions for how to improve my grammar?

The only reply you need:

Here's my suggestion: Fuck grammar. Grammar is for tools.

Writing isn't grammar. Writing is art. You don't have to be some fucking English teacher to be an artistic genius. Grammar is a bunch of stupid little rules.

Grammar is only important to people who are going to become copy editors or Professional Tweet Responders (PTR's as I call them). In other words, the people who will be assigned to clean up your genius novel. Let them do the pleb work. It's your job to come up with the great ideas. And once they see how awesome your idea is, they won't care if you've left out a comma or two.

You=genius. Them=grammar. Got it Lisa?

It's all descriptive anyway, right? I mean if enough people say literally can be used before hyperbole, then that's what happens, so who cares if you're wrong. Just tell them what you meant. You don't need to learn the conventions or why rules are being broken by some groups or how to impress the eight or nine people who actually care about this stuff. Let them go be stuffy somewhere else.

What's important is your ideas. If they are off the hook inspired then you will have a million pencil pushing nerds crawling over each other to fix your grammar for you. If you sit around and learn what a participle is, you're never going to come up with those genius ideas in the first place.

Who the fuck thinks writing is about being some grammarian?


Moira says:

I feel like I just don't have talent. I wrote a story for NaNoWriMo this year, and then I wrote a sequel to it in December, but in January I stopped writing, and now I can't think of anything new.

The only reply you need:

It's possible you don't have talent, Moira. Not everyone does. But you managed to write two novels in two months, so I'm guessing you're at least kind of a genius.

Welcome to the club.

Look there are a bunch of fucking stupid a-holes out there who would suggest that the reason you can't write right now is because you stopped writing for a month and a half like it's some kind of thing you have to do every day or it will go away. Like a muscle that's out of practice or something. They're going to tell you to get back to daily writing or some shit.

They'll probably also tell you that one month is too fast to write a novel and that you need to rewrite it and then revise it. They're just jealous motherfuckers who want to tear down your crowning achievement.

Fuck them in their earholes. And don't be dejected that you aren't equipped to do it naturally Moira. Even if you were a dude, I would recommend doing it with a big glass dildo.

These people think writing is a skill.  Writing is not a skill. It's a talent.

What's going on, Moira, is that you can't be genius all the time. You have to let your inspiration recharge like a tesla coil after a really hard discharge. (Or me after a six-shot marathon of epic sex, if you know what I mean. [Call me.]) Creativity isn't a muscle or a habit. It's a gift that comes down from on high. And if yours gave you two novels in a row, you're going to have to wait for it to recharge.

I strongly suggest you relax. Let your batteries recharge. Send your two novels off to publishers (several publishers at a time) and start getting them to fight over who will publish you. Don't worry if they send them back--true genius is hard to recognize. In the meantime watch some Game of Thrones and start a wishlist on Amazon for all the shit you're going to buy when you get your advance checks and royalties start rolling in.


Lance asks:

How much should I be reading each day. I am serious about wanting to be a published novelist.

The only reply that matters:

Reading is not that important to being a writer. What you need--what you really need--is talent. The people who tell you that are the ones who want you waste a bunch of time reading that you could be using to come up with more ideas for awesome books.

If you're reading more than a couple of hours a week, it's way too much. Use that time to network, brand, get your talent recognized on Reddit and Tumblr because that's what's going to supercharge your career--not some stupid book.

If you want to relax with some entertainment, watch movies, play video games, and read comic books. Those will inspire you and teach you about narrative arcs and stuff. They are way more useful to a writer than reading.

That and talent.


Anonymous asks:

You make like $1200 a year. That's enough to buy a computer or go on a nice vacation. How can you still tell people that isn't very much??!!??!!??[sic] God I know so many writers who haven't made anything yet. You are spitting in their face.

My reply to Chris's question:

Chris is right to think this is pathetic and not worthy of his time. Writers shouldn't go in for those small payouts. It should be one massive payday or gee tee eff oh.

$1200 might sound like a lot of money all in one place, but you've got to understand that Chris gets this over the course of an entire year. That means he makes about $100 a month. Well he spends 25-30 hours a week on this stupid blog. So really if you break that down to hourly, he's making about a dollar an hour or less.

What a tool!

If he were a real writer, he would write a book and go make a million dollars.

Don't Forget to Vote!

February's Poll has lost a little steam. Partially because I'm not running around the internet hectoring people into voting, but mostly because The Princess Bride took an early lead and left the other movies in its dust. Yes, yes, let's all take a moment to act shocked that Rob Reiner's fricken immortal classic is probably going to be voted the best adaptation and surreptitiously whisper that we're pretty sure those people just watched the movie and didn't really read the book.

Got that out of our systems? Good. Because there's still every other position on the poll still to figure out, and some of them are neck and neck.

However, the runners up are all in a massive close race for second, and that could be anyone's game. So if you haven't voted yet, care deeply about those second placers, or just want to round up twenty friends to topple The Princess Bride, you have just a little over a week left to vote.

The poll itself is on the left hand side of page all the way at the bottom of the sub menus there.  It's long and thick and black and somewhat innuendoish. Everyone gets three (3) votes, but there is no ranking so using all three "dilutes" their potency.

Just remember this is a poll about movie adaptations, not the movies themselves. While every movie must change some things, did the adaptation stay as true as possible to the source material? This is NOT just a poll about which movie you liked most.

Also....prepare to gear up for the write in portion of March's poll. We will go back to one of the first polls I ever wrote here on Writing About Writing, but with a twist of breaking down further by genre and breaking it into decades. So hang on to your thoughts for now (the actual post will go up in a couple of days) but in the meantime consider the best SCIENCE FICTION series OF THE EIGHTIES.

A Pound of Flesh

This is a story only a few people in my life ever knew until today. It had a limited share on Livejournal many years ago, but was only ever shown to a few.

This is a story about Art. Not about art with a little a, but about the proper noun. The Biggest of Dills. The real McCoy.

Art.

People think Art is an abstract concept, with a little "a," but artists know that's completely bullshit. Art is real. She lives. She breathes. She devours souls and shits effervescent beauty. Her merest gaze can strike one down with ecstatic paroxysms of inspiration. And she watches her followers like the capricious gods of old demanding sacrifices and proof of loyalty.  She's all kinds of ragingly jealous.

And if she only asks for your first born son, you got off light.

Art might allow some to casually worship her for fun or enjoyment. She may extract no price for this. Go ahead and write for fun once or twice a month. Go ahead and draw with no ambition. Go ahead and join a community theater troupe or your local church's choir. She will allow this. She can be cool and detached and aloofly benevolent to her dilettantes.

But from her high priests and priestesses, she will always come eventually, approach with sinuous steps, stretch her glorious wings across the sky and ask, "Just how much do you love me?"

This is the story of the first time Art came to me, and how I failed her.

When I was in college (the first time), I was a music major with emphasis in voice going to one of the better colleges in the state for music instruction. I stood in front of stodgy white men with lips curled into moues of pre-rejection, sang my heart out, and they nodded--clearly unimpressed--and yet welcomed me into the Bachelor of Arts in Music anyway. There I learned about musical theory, listened to chords and intervals, practiced piano, and sang so much, so often that my throat burned.

It wasn't just hyperbole--I had a developing cyst on my vocal chords. A pisser of a diagnosis for a voice major. That is when Art came and gave me a choice.

However, this story is not how I overcame adversity. This is the story of my failure.

When the ENT diagnosed me, I was actually relieved. I remember running out of the office and jumping into the air with one fist raised high, Flash Gordon style. I had been going nuts trying to keep up with that degree. Theory lab, personal training, choir, and keyboard training were all one unit classes, mandatory to the major, but required four or five hours a week each to keep up with.  Theory itself was three units and easily took 10-15 hours to keep from floundering. I had a GE class too. I think it was critical thinking. I started out okay, but my music kicked my ass so hard, I didn't have much left over.

But the huge one was The Northridge Singers. Singers was a terrible freshman-savaging monster that knew no mercy or remorse. It was the Grendel's Mother of my schedule.

My first semester a guy named Ax ran the class. We sang a Magnificat and a half a dozen other songs. It was beautiful. It was everything I ever wanted out of a choir. The time commitment ran about 10-12 hours a week. It was intense for a one unit course, but we focused on parts training, and I had the time to learn each piece. Our performances were spectacular and they ranged from Palms Springs to Santa Barbara. My step-father looked at me after my first college concert with the first look I could describe as something other than I-am-obligated-by-faux-fatherhood-to-be-here pride and said, "I'm sort of glad you stuck with this singing thing. It gives me an excuse to hear some actually good music."

But Art was watching. Art didn't want me getting too cocky.

Art had not yet asked me to pay the toll.

John Alexander came back from sabbatical my second semester. He turned that class into a nightmare. Perhaps, in truth, Ax turned the class into an idyllic fairy tale. Either way, the class that I had fallen into bed with and told that I was starting to have "very real feelings," grew cold and slipped a hand around my throat.

Here I was, a freshman voice major, with masters students in music who were admitting that things were "way too fucking intense." I spent hours a week trying to parse the music he handed to us. Not one piece or two or three, but half a dozen every time we met. He just kept giving us more and more. He kept telling us we'd be put on the spot to sing our parts in front of the class. I was sight reading pieces levels more advanced than I'd previously ever performed with extensive rehearsal, and he wanted the songs all but memorized by our next meeting.

I tried desperately to keep up with the pace of the choir, but I didn't have enough piano skill to practice on my own, and I needed more time to assimilate pieces than a single run through. By the time it came to a head I was spending 20+ hours working on that one unit class every week. That in addition to a full fourteen other units, a forty-five minute commute, a girlfriend and a weekend job.

Art asked me, in a voice I could almost hear, how much I really wanted to be a musician. "Demonstrate to me how much you love me," she demanded. "I desire to know your dedication."

I hemmed. I hawed. Art would have none of it. She pinned me under her merciless talon and repeated her demand: "Show me how bad you want it!" She leaned in that I might smell the fetid wind of rotting artists' souls on her breath

I got my cyst diagnosed without my parents knowing. They still don't know (well, I suppose they do now).  They just thought I dropped out of school. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't tell my girlfriend. I didn't tell my friends. I didn't tell my teachers. I didn't tell John I-am-the-antichrist-before-a-concert Alexander. I didn't tell a counselor or the school.

I just stopped going.

I didn't have a plan. At first I just stopped going to my music classes. What would have been the point? I didn't want to look John or my voice trainer in the eye. About a week after that, the full weight of all those wasted units hit me. I'd been at school for an entire year and had two G.E. classes to show for it. Utterly dejected, feeling like a failure, and with no vision about the future, I stopped going. I wouldn't be back for over a decade.

Art gave me a choice when I had the diagnosis, though at the time she was wearing the skin of a young Ear Nose and Throat specialist named Dr. Peterson.

It was a developing cyst. I was lucky to have felt it right away, and come in. If I stopped overusing my voice it would diminish on its own. But that meant no singing. If I wanted, they could perform a minor surgery and remove it. In either case it would come back if I overused my voice again.

I had to chose a life of only singing or a life with almost none. If I chose to sing, I had to treat speaking like a rare gift--the doctor told me to imagine each word cost me a quarter. I would have had to be virtually a mime except for singing and training. If I chose not to, I had to be careful to even reign it in when singing along with the radio. To this day, I can feel it bubble up if I've been really belting out Javert in Les Miz or something.

I let go.

But the fact was, I wanted to let go.

When I quit, I just stopped going. I drove off every morning in my boxy Suzuki Samurai like I was going to school, drove down the road, and played Super Metroid with my friend Shawn. It was strange because I could have walked in, head held high, and handed them my doctor's note without another word. They would have grumbled and nodded and signed all those units into Incompletes and let my G.P.A. survive the hit. I could have walked away with honor.

At the time I convinced myself that maybe they would pressure me to have the surgery, and I didn't want it. But that was fucking bullshit. It was also a clue. But it was definitely fucking bullshit.

I wasn't afraid that they might try to talk me into sticking with this art–this art I was signing onto a lifelong commitment for. God forbid they wonder if I wouldn't have a minor procedure in order to keep going with something I professed floridly to want a career doing.

Art had set the price, and I couldn't pay.

That cyst was just fortuitous timing. It was a metaphor burning at the back of my throat. I got what most artists never get--one clear, unambiguous choice. Most artists face a long road of tiny choices day in and day out in which their priorities become painfully obvious only over time and often despite their passionate declarations to the contrary. I had no ambiguity to hide behind.

I did not want to be a musician badly enough to inconvenience my life. It wasn't them I couldn't face; it was me.

My parents found out I wasn't going to class when my voice trainer called my house to see where I was. My friends found out when my mom let it slip in front of them. My girlfriend didn't find out until after we'd broken up. I lied to all of them in a way that made myself look worse, and part of me liked that. When my parents yelled at me or my friends shook their head and rolled their eyes it felt right. I deserved it. It hurt good.

Because I had failed. Truly. Spectacularly.

I ruined that hobby for myself by pursuing it that way. I loved singing. I loved music. But Art doesn't want to know if you love something like chocolate ice cream. She wants to know what you'll give up for it when she leans you over the volcano. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But eventually she'll want to know.

I didn't love music in the way that I love writing. I didn't need to be as good as I could. I didn't wake up singing and think about singing all day and get kind of depressed if I wasn't singing an hour or two a day at least. I didn't tear off on singing benders that could last hours. There wasn't passion. There wasn't fire. I wasn't pursuing music because I yearned and burned; I was pursuing music because it was fun enough and I wanted to have a paycheck while I wrote. I wanted to teach high school choir as a meal ticket and stumble home each night and weekend to my word processor. (You know, cause teachers have all that free time.)

But Art doesn't play those half assed games. You have to want more than anything else in the world to placate her.  She'll demand work and toil and so much sweat you feel like your pores are fountains. And that is your minimum. Then she comes and asks you for things....

.....like your speaking voice.

Art will allow you your garage band or your habit of doodling or your finished NaNo draft.  Art will let you strum a guitar or keep up with the chord progression of a song on piano. You may keep your hobbies. Art has no qualms with her casual followers.

But speak of careers and passion and "making it," and Art yanks her head towards you with a sniff like a predator who has seen movement in the corner of her eye, and she fixes her gaze upon you, and she thinks of what she will demand from you as tribute.

Sometimes people ask me about my writing time or ability to struggle on even though I'm making only $100 dollars a month, and they are a little indignant that they don't have that time or ability. "Well of course YOU can dedicate your life to writing. YOU don't have a career or kids. You don't have all these bills. You are Mr. Luckypants McAdvantageface!"

That's true.  And I have a lot of unearned privilege too. But some of those unfettered places of my life are true, in part, because I did not always fail Art. There are certainly parts of my life that I owe to unearned advantages and parts that were very lucky breaks (like being a househusband for room and board during the years when writers typically make no money) but I have also made difficult choices to get here as well.

When Art returned, I was no longer a musician. I was a writer, and I wanted to be a writer.

"You know I shall not be kind," she said. "You of all people know."

"Yes," I replied. "But writing is different. This one I do want." I swallowed.

Her pupils dilated.

"Ask." I said.

"Oh I shall," she said, a gleam in her eye brightening into a twinkle. "I shall."

She asked me to leave a career. I did. She asked me to go back to school to improve my ability. I did. She asked me to work less as a teacher. I did. She corrupted the files of all the writing I'd ever done in 20 years and told me to start over if I really loved it that much. I did. She asked me to be a nearly forty thirty-two year old man with no car who technically rents a room. I did. She asked me to have a deplorable financial situation when it comes to retirement. I did. She asked me to give up on dating folks all but some mythical close friends who loved to bang, but would not take up too much of my time and energy. I did. She asked me to give up my social life. I did. In a way--in a very round about way that I will perhaps write about some other time--she asked me to give up my marriage for her. I did. She even asked me to give up on being a father--I didn't have to take an existing child to an altar to sacrifice it, but she let me know by showing me young families around me that I would have so much more time and energy if I gave up on having a family.

And I did.

Heaven help me–for I do have some regrets–I did.

Art forces us to tell her what's important to us. Sometimes she asks in a series of a thousand choices that end up with us working 30 hours a week from home and having the rest of the time to write, and sometimes she uses an Ear Nose and Throat doctor as a meat puppet to give us one climatic decision.

But she always comes eventually.

You don't find artists of any measure of success who don't have a story of giving something up for the Art. They all have a path they couldn't take. Whether they deny themselves a family or just have trouble emotionally connecting to those they did or whether they gave up a social life or just chewed through friends because of their mercurial nature or whether they gave up a career or advancement or something. They all had choice they hated to make. A sacrifice. Art came eventually for all of them.

All of them.

The question isn't if you love Art. The question is what will you give up to be with her.  And the worst part is, and there's no getting around this (at least not for artists):

She's worth it.

There's a kinda, sorta, follow up/sequel article here: An Ounce Returned

Down at R&D

Chris Brecheen: Okay, dude, you just said a bunch of words that have no meaning to me. I don't know what a poleronic transistor is. I don't know what a antinutreno pulse wave does. On my best days, I am capable of finding my computer's on button by the third try. What I want to know is if we can get Writing About Writing back up and running. It's just dead air right now.

The Sci Guy: I think so. I can probably regain posting ability to make sure that something goes up tomorrow, but it'll have to be something you've already written. By Thursday I should have regained our primary interface module so you can write new posts. But, it'll probably be the weekend before I can go through every line of code to see if they dropped some kind of Trojan horse in the system that will let them hack the signal.

Chris Brecheen: I thought this wasn't going to happen anymore. You promised me that you would quit poking around in the quantum universe shards looking for a timeline where your dead girlfriend didn't die for at least long enough to make sure our security was air tight.

S.G.: Our security is airtight.

C.B.: You do know what the definition of is is, right?

S.G.: Probably better than you do, Mr. Writer man. Our firewall should be impregnable. Your password even has a number in it that isn't an E replaced by the number three. And the internal security involves retinal scans, hand print ID, and voice code recognition. Which isn't bad considering my budget for R&D is ten dollars a month, and my salary is supposed to come out of that amount.

C.B.: Obviously there's something--

S.G.: What I've been telling you for the past several months is that this isn't an external security issue. We could have the best security in the universe. What you need is someone who can deal with internal espionage. The instigating computer came from the primary level of Writing About Writing.

C.B.: So...someone left a window open?

S.G.: Jesus you're an idiot. No. Triple redundant ion cannons would prevent anyone from clearing the run up to the compound. No one left a window open. I'm telling you there's a rat in the house. We have a traitor. It's one of us. Tend to your knitting. The call is coming from inside the house. Do you get it?

C.B.: Damn...and I was just about to add Pudding Pops in the cafeteria because everyone's been working so hard.

Technical Difficulties

This is Chris Brecheen, the head writer here at Writing About Writing...

~sounds of farm animals~

We are experiencing some

technical difficulties.

I'm not sure what's going on, but the Sci Guy thinks we may be under another cyber attack.

I hope this is a temporary thing, and we're back up and running by tomorrow when I will tackle a very important question from Eugene about how to write when smeg--

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

Question: Do You Really Have to Write Every Day to Be A Writer? (F.A.Q.)

The original facepalm.

Short answer:

No, you have to write to be a writer. 

Long answer:

More than any other process claim I make here at Writing About Writing, this one causes spontaneous bowel voiding, and makes people grab their pitchforks and torches and wander around the Bay Area killing people who look like they might be pretentious writers in the hopes that one of them will be me.

The thing is, I have never actually said that writing every day is necessary for someone to be a writer. I don't spend my time bequeathing that title on the worthy or denying it of the unworthy. I have more interesting things to do with my precious number of finite breaths — like rearrange my sock drawer.

You are a writer if you "Earn Your ER."

Folks, I know this is a little TL;DR, but please listen. Just this once. Just for shits and giggles. Just so you can put on your hipster glasses and tell people you knew I wasn't really telling people they had to write every day "before it was cool." Just pay attention this one time.

I don't have time to read the history of the Teal Deer!
TL:DR

Write. Don't write. I don't give a fuck. 

I mean I DO give a fuck, but only if you want to write. (It's like the old joke: How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb has to want to change.) If you want to not write, I don't want to put some undue pressure on you. I don't want to make demands of your mind and body that are unrealistic. I don't want you to do writing so much that you hate it.

I want you to be fulfilled in life. I want you to get what you want out of the rat race. I want you to succeed.

If you want to be a writer. I give a fuck only in so much as I give a fuck about all of you, and I want to help you make that dream come true. If you fantasize so hard you wet yourself about BEING a writer, I have some pretty good advice for you about how to get there. Because that used to be me, dreaming hard and sitting around not writing — in love with the idea of being a writer.   

But if you don't actually want to write, don't write. There's no glamour in this job. Very little fame. A pittance of fortune. Writers are not rockstars. If we achieve ANY of those things, ever, it will only be after years and years of toiling away without them (and there are easier ways to achieve any of them). There is absolutely no reason to write other than for the sheer love of writing. 

You don't need permission not to write. You don't need absolution. You don't need approval. You might need to get over this idea that you're a writer, or more likely, you ARE a writer, but you might need to get over this idea that you're going to ever do it as a day job. But that's between you and you. You don't need to make excuses that no one believes anyway. All you need is to put down the pen and not write.

Writing is not the kind of activity you should be doing if you don't actually want to be doing it. If you want write "more than anything else in the whole wide world," and you have these fantasies of getting rich and famous because you're the next Stephen King or Danielle Steele, I promise (pinky swear) that it won't happen by sitting around NOT writing.

Seriously, I promise.

Really.

What I (actually) tell people is that, like any art, and really any highly technical skill, writing every day is the best way to improve. Musicians practice. Artists sketch. Actors rehearse. And the better the musician/artist/actor, the more they do these things. Only in writing do you find this sense that the artist should sit around and wait until the heavens open up and grant them inspiration, as if it is genius and mere talent rather than work that makes good writers.

The most insidious part of this harmful little narrative about genius is that even if a writer who isn't working regularly should become inspired, they may not have the skill to do anything about it. They were sitting around when they should have been learning the skill and craft of writing. Now they've got a great idea and they really suck at expressing it.

None of us practiced because that would ruin the magic and make it feel like work.
Hope you enjoy the show.

Inspiration is cheap.

Go find someone who doesn't have a book or a movie script in their head.

Go find someone who doesn't have few chapters saved to a zip drive or tucked into a drawer, or even a rough draft — that's actually the more difficult task. Human beings are creative. It's part of what makes us human. The ability to convert an idea into little black marks and have it still be good when someone (who doesn't want to sleep with you) reads it — that is the real trick.

Practice is essential for any skill. Professional athletes don't sit around on the couch waiting to be inspired. And they don't make the major leagues without a zillion hard-ass practice sessions before their big day in front of the talent scout.

The artists we admire, the ones we love, the ones we want to emulate, and who we fantasize that our own careers will follow the trajectory of — they invariably worked very, very hard. I can think of maybe two authors who didn't write like they're running out of time and who had a very small body of works achieve such great success that they basically built an identity as a writer upon them. [F. Scott Fitzgerald and Douglas Adams] Everyone else writes (or wrote) constantly and reads when they're not writing. They didn't play video games and tell people on the chat forums that writing every day makes it feel like work...and then one day they just had a great idea, slapped it down during NaNoWriMo and became rich and famous. 

That's not how any of this works.

So the advice to write every day is for people who really want to improve, those who want to make writing a career, those who want to be published novelists, who possibly even want a following and fans, and certainly those who want to be among the notable fiction writers of a generation.

If that's not you, then do it as much as you want to be doing it and quit when it no longer brings you fulfillment.

Would you like to know more....?

I may have said something like this before to an anonymous hate-mail sender.

And once when I was telling people they really don't have to write.

And at least once when the teeming millions assured me a writer doesn't really have to write every day.

And guest blogger Amy (a really real writer) once brought down the hammer on the "don't have to write every day" crowd.

Lifting a Glass to the Patron Muses

Apollo knew how to hook up a tensome???
Man those Greek gods had game!

I've written before about The Patron Muses and their extraordinary role in my writing. Though I hope for a little help from a lot of people in making Writing About Writing a better blog, taking the writing quality up a notch (through editing), and providing fiction (even longer works someday) free of charge, the way things actually tend to work out is that a small group of people absolutely blow me away with their amazing generosity.

Of course I want to reiterate that every donation and supportive word take my breath away. I have even been honored by someone who said they admired my work before they tore me a new one for one particular article. I've felt moved by a few dollars and an accompanying word that given twins on the way (twins!) that's all the person had to give. Many of you have caused my breath to catch in my throat with just a few dollars. (There's even a vague sense of guilt and unworthiness when I get donations on the days I write those damnable appeal posts asking for it. ("No, I'm sorry. I was too pushy. I don't deserve this!") If I'm ever wondering what the hell I'm doing, I just look at my Paypal history, and suddenly I remember.

MY FANS ARE THE BEST!!
(Our picture getter guy thinks because he's union,
I won't fire him for shit like this.

I used to think it was kind of goofy how every artist in the world thought their fans were the best.

Now I know exactly why that happens.

However, even among my complete adoration for the fans of Writing About Writing and my work, the patron muses have a special distinction. There's no dollar amount at which one becomes a patron muse or any specific action one takes. They simply go beyond my ability to express my appreciation in any other way. Alisha (who Cathamel considers her number two) showed up one day last year wearing W.A.W. t-shirts that HADN'T BEEN INVENTED YET and regularly donates amounts that make me write to make sure there hasn't been some sort of mistake, or that her husband isn't in the bedroom packing a bag to take the kids to his mothers over it.

The others have established their places in other ways. Some have set up a monthly donation at an amount that causes the air to get dusty every single time I get an e-mail about it. (THE AIR IS GODDAMNED DUSTY, OKAY!!!) Some have been with me since the beginning with a donation each month. Some have put an amount in my account in one go that must have felt like passing a kidney stone. Some have simply been a non-stop source of social media proliferation--liking and sharing and +1ing like crazy in a way that really helps W.A.W. find new readers.

One even assures me that if it weren't for the thousands of miles between us, I would at least have one groupie.

~sniff~ It's the little things.

The thing is, there is no exaggerating the impact of these displays of generosity on my writing life. If anything, I will never quite do them justice, and I can't underscore enough how much these folks have meant to me. There have, quite literally, been moments of dark desperation, when I made five cents the day before, and I didn't get any prewriting done, and I'm looking at eight hours to just get "one more article" up, and I've wondered why the hell I'm trying so hard on something.

And then I remember the people out there who had faith in me.

Sans sexual tension so far....mores the pity.
If you don't get the reference, go get it.
Seriously, it's like one of the funniest shows ever.

And it's like I can't NOT keep going. I have to do right by them. And an hour later when I'm typing away, and it's because of them, I know I can never really thank them enough. There are a lot of cheesy cliches I could fall on here, and the worst thing about it is that they're all true. "Beacons in the darkness" might make y'all throw up in your mouths a little, but it's also kind of accurate.

And on that note, I have a new inductee to their ranks: Tracesea. I realized a couple of days ago that for months on she's made donations, offered up awesome encouraging words, and helped me over on my Facebook Page by engaging on so so so so many posts--which without getting too much into the logistics of how Facebook sucks, is incredibly helpful in helping those posts be seen by more people.


Also, just to give everyone a heads up, pretty much all of the patron muses have specifically asked for more fiction. They are kind of...well patrons, so even though I'm not exactly surrendering creative control, they definitely have my ear on what they'd like to see.  So there may be some "Work in Progress" signs up in the coming weeks (where there should be articles) while I work on some stories.