Kickstarter Update

I woke up to over $10k pledged to my Kickstarter. (http://kck.st/1TV2MQp)

I would say something cliche like "I don't even have words," but then you all might doubt that you had put your faith into the right writer because that's kind of what we do....

Read the full update through our Kickstarter 


Also, the current flex goal we're working on involves cover art and professional help with formatting (so there's still a chance to back this project and make it even better):


Flex Goal #5 $12,500 (Looking good Triexta. Looking real good!) Often one can really tell when they're looking at a self published book. The cover is nondescript and there are numerous formatting and kerning errors in the print. They just don't look as good as the books from a publisher.  At this level I will commission a piece of professional artwork from A Grey Artistry for Triexta's cover. I will also solicit professional assistance in making sure that the formatting of both the e-reader and the print on demand version is as close to professional quality as I can get.

Truthsome Liar (Part 2)

Image description: Firefly logo

Reminder: We are currently in week two of the Fortnight of Ultimate Doom™, which is in the Month of Unquestioning Horror™, firmly ensconced in the Six Weeks of Countless Tiny Terrors™all of which is in the Year of Absolute Shitfully Shit™ (Heck, even though it's the exciting kind of stress, the final hours of the Kickstarter are contributing.) While Writing About Writing's systems will begin to come back on line one by one starting in about a week when family clears out of this house, and continuing on through the end of radiation, the culmination of summer school, and finally my move, right now we are hitting the textbook definition of JAZZ HANDS pretty hard and trying hard–oh so hard–not to simply put the blog on hiatus.

So I'm going to continue my post about a dream I had recently.

(Serenity spoilers ahead.)

Continued from part 1

There are a few of things to understand about my Firefly dreams.

One is that Malcolm Reynolds always knows I'm dreaming....but I don't. That's extremely weird for me. In fact, I can't think of another dream I've ever had where one of the characters knows I'm dreaming but I don't. I often know I'm dreaming, and can even control myself to some degree, and once in a blue moon, I can control and direct the dream itself, but not my Firefly dreams. I'm always deep "in character" in those dreams. But Malcolm always knows the truth. He's the one who explains to me what's going on, usually to tell me that I need to wake up and get to writing.

The second is that I fly the ship and flying the ship seems to me to be a metaphor for creativity. Some dreams seem to have Wash and Shepherd Book alive, and in some I sort of am Wash. And in some he seems to have experienced his fate at the end of a ship to ship harpoon, but regardless, I'm flying the ship and my proficiency is linked to my writing life. "Here's something you can't do," I say before I post a viral article Shirtstorm.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about these dreams is that there are two forces we are constantly trying to avoid–forces that are ever working against us. The first is the Alliance. And the Alliance is a boring real world. It's paying bills. It's working a day job. It's dental appointments. It can be temporarily avoided but never escaped. It is a throbbing nexus of bureaucracy and the inevitable encroachment of the mundane into my world. It's constantly encroaching and no matter how far we go, we can feel its reach. When I am feeling my writing being syphoned off by too many appointments, kid watching sessions, and unfortunate banal conversations about the length of toilet spigot parts, I may dream about being detained by the Alliance or losing a shipment because the Alliance held us up. And of course ultimately if they ever find out we're harboring fugitives they desperately don't want to lose, we'll probably all end up in their custody forever.

The other force has also to do with time, or rather the lack of it, but it isn't full of bureaucracy and procedure. It is a never sated maw that wants to suck up every writing moment and leave me a failure. It wants to ruin me in its wake and scuttle the ship. Unlike the inexorable, high profile metastasizing of the Alliance, this force moves unseen. It slips behind the umbras of moons and through the magnetic interference of planetary poles, threatening me from every corner and it will destroy Serenity's ability to fly (my creativity) if given half the chance and kill us all. It is savage and it will take no prisoners.

Rather I should say THEY will take no prisoners. Reavers.

So my dream picked up right about at the third reel of Serenity. And in standard dream logic it was somehow post Wash and different even though it was using a lot of the same lines and moments.

"Bastard's not even changing course," the operative said.

Image description: Serenity movie Gif

"Mal, I can't fly between them both," I said. "I can't do this."

"Son, I can fly well enough to aim this rig," Mal said.  "If I didn't think you could get us down in one piece, you wouldn't be in that chair."

"I don't...." I said. "I can't...."

Mal put his hand on my shoulder. "Do you know what 'Alea iacta est' means? It means we're stuck between Alliance and Reavers and they both mean to end our trip a little sooner than'd be my preference. If anyone can get us away from the reavers without landing right in the Alliance hanger bays, it's you. Don't live in the shadow of other pilots. You tell YOUR story."

"My STORY?" I said, growing confused.

"You got this, Chris. Now wake up and write like a leaf on the wind."

He paused and blinked. "Just...you know....maybe not that exact expression."

Then I woke up.

The Best of the Mailbox (A Tour of Menus)

Image description: USPS public post box.

If you want a question answered on The Mailbox, just put "For The Mailbox" in your subject line in an email tochris.brecheen@gmail.com .  I will use your first name unless you tell me explicitly that I can use your whole name and/or you would prefer to remain completely anonymous.  I can't promise I'll post everything I get, that I'll respond to abject stupidity, or that I'm going to keep posting every anonymous attempt to hurt my feelings if I have anything else to use instead, but if you write a thoughtful question or comment--even if it disagrees with me--I'll will honestly do my best to try to get it up here and write a little something in reply.  

If we ever get to a point where there's just too much mail to answer it all, I'll pick the best questions and comments (which I promise won't simply be the most complementary). 

Rage Against the Brecheen: Hate mail--and my response to it--does so well, it deserves its own menu. Come see the teeming millions of the internet (usually anonymously) try to take me down a peg or two.

Comic Sans                                                                              That "What the Author Meant" Meme
My Top Three Achievements                                                   Bits and Pieces
Grammar Questions I Have No Business Answering               Revision Land
What Does "Good Writing" Look Like                                       Recant. Reflect. Refine.
Giving Thanks and the Oxford Comma                                    Writing Every Day
Unsupportive GF's Wrath and My Stance on Grammar            Facebook Questions
The Value of TV/Movies to a Writer                                         Speech to Text Software/Season2
What Do I Want From Writing About Writing?                          Just How Much Do You Make?
Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel                                             Should I Outline My Book?
Why can't I make money?  My friends like me                         Whatever Works
Overcoming Inertia/ Sans Love of Writing                               Critique Groups
Strangely Inappropriate Non-Writing Questions                      Traditional vs Digital Publishing
"Creepy Guy Feedback" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4              Little Kid's Grammar
Feedback and Follow Up (Q's about past Mailboxes)              Coming Out As Feminist
Is There Anything GOOD About an MFA?                             Questions From Facebook
Is Dead Poets Society a Shitty Movie or What                      The W.A.W. "Chris's" Persona
Why Is the Publishing Industry so Whitewashed?                 What is avant garde?
How Do I Describe Things?                                                     Tropeception Part 1 Part 2
The PC Police                                                                         Cultural Appropriation
Character Driven Zombie Stories                                           Jones and Pratchett on "Real" Literature 
What About Harper Lee's New Book                                     How Do I Write A First Sentence?
I Just Can't Write                                                                     Writing For Income
                              


Can't find what you are looking for? Or maybe just can't get enough of these amazing answers?

Not every mailbox is destined for greatness.  Some of them have ended up down in the basement: The Not So Best of the Mailbox.

Needed: You

Two quick reminders as I do a quick pass through the blogoverse on my way back to the pages of some fiction I'm trying to get out.


First....we are in the last week of my book's Kickstarter.

And we're trying hard to get this bad boy done or close to done about a year from now (instead of several months to a year longer). It's looking pretty good for our second flex goal, but we could still use your help. And don't forget that even a couple of dollars will get you on our mailing list.

Second, please vote in our first semifinal for best non-European fantasy setting.

The first round of reader-nominated choices is in the poll at the bottom of the right side.

The Truthsome Liar (Personal Update)

Image Description: The word "Firefly"
against a parchment background written in a
golden illuminated flowing cursive script

We have achieved peak stress here at The Hall of Rectitude. The guest halls are filled beyond capacity with visiting superheroes. Cancer treatment goes on. And of course right now I'm about 1/3 the way through summer school.

Plus I'm trying to write some fiction in the last few days of promoting my Kickstarter so I can point to those stories and say, "See look, I can write if you give me a chance."

That means we have also achieved peak JAZZ HANDS!!!

As usual, I will do everything in my power not to put the blog on hiatus or miss days, but it could get a little fluffy around here on T-W-Th for the next few weeks. Once some of these stressors start clearing out, and my Kickstarter is over, I will begin bringing all systems back online one by one.

In the meantime, I'm going to tell you about a dream. Actually, I'll probably tell you about it on Thursday (since right now I'm still short a guest blog post). But in order to appreciate it, the first thing you have to know is that I started to have Firefly dreams about three years ago, and this was the first one:

I was a member of the crew (during the show, not post-movie) so the whole ship was alive. And I remember having this sense that I wasn't exactly sure what I DID in this group. I mean Jayne was the gun guy and there was a medic and the spiritual guidance, but I didn't seem to have any particular niche.

We were searching this huge, ostentatious house for the bits to what I think will make the Lassiter actual function (dream logic got a little fuzzy on the details here but the fencing value would skyrocket if we could get it working.) Of course, being the hardened criminals we are, we each have our bags of...um....not so laser-gun spoils that we've collected from around the house. While Jayne has quite the collection of foodstuffs and a pair of pistols named Castor and Pollux (NO idea where the fuck in my brain THAT came from), I have gathered up e-readers and fuzzy blankets. Inara had two objects d'art that she had actually recognized. Kaylee was trying to wheel a swanky toolbox from the workshop.

Mal starts to round us up and tells us it's time to go with a fairly huge sense of urgency. Everyone's asking him if he heard that the police were coming on the wave or something, and he just keeps saying no but hurrying us on. "Mission's over. Because I said so. Any folk don't wanna get left, get back to Serenity double take."

I asked him what was the damned rush, and he looks at me: "You are. You're the truthsome liar. You gotta wake up and get to writing so that folks like me can make a go of it. It's time."

And then I woke.

To be continued.....

How Many Books? (Mailbox)

Image description: Mailbox with the word "books" on it.

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will try to answer a couple each week. I have a LOT of backlogged questions right now because my life is a dumpster fire, but I will try to eventually get to all of them.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. Don't forget that I can be a little bit snarky.]    

Robert asks:

How many books do I have to read before I'm allowed to write a book?

My reply:

I sort of wonder about the wording of this question, if writing is really for you, but stick with me through the reasoning part before you just call me an asshole and throw your laptop across the room, okay? Maybe I'm way off base.

Here's what you do Robert. Pull out a notebook or laptop or something and start writing a book. Make it a really ostentatious beginning by putting "Chapter 1" in great big letters on the first page. It's really important that you sit down intending to write a book, or at least thinking that you will. It won't work if you only ever intend to write "Chapter 1." You have to have the intent to go forward with the whole novel writing business.

Then wait.... Listen. Shhhhh.

Do you know what you hear?  Nothing. No footsteps pounding up the stairs? No hovercraft outside the window? No clickty click of little spiders? Do you know why you can't hear those things, Robert?

It's because the writer police don't exist.

You're "allowed" to do whatever you want, which includes trying to write without reading very much. You'd certainly be in good company...or at least lots of company. No one will try to stop you if you sit down to write a book before having read some specific bellwether number of books. (Achievement unlocked: "I can haz writing?") They might advise against thinking you're going to pen a bestseller if they sort of can't remember the last time they saw you curled up with a book, but "allowed" is probably not going to be an issue.

Okay, so maybe you didn't mean "allowed." Maybe you meant when is it advisable or recommended. When will your Aunt Gertrude stop making that clicking noise behind her teeth, wagging her liver-spotted fingers in your face, and saying "If you want to be a writer, Robert, you're going to have to read a lot more than you do. A lot more, young man."

Unfortunately you're also not going to find a formula. It would be really cool if such a thing existed: "At one thousand books you may write a short, genre novel, but to tackle literary fiction, you will have to read at least eighteen hundred and fifty books, including half from dead white guys. Trilogies require no less than 2500 books." Different writers will absorb the lessons of the works they're reading at different speeds. I've been reading voraciously for thirty years on and I'm only recently feeling like I've developed enough of an ear that I feel confident in my ability to write a sustained work of fiction like a book.

Not that I haven't written manuscripts. (Because I was "allowed" to do whatever I wanted.) I've got about six finished "books" in my "drawer of memorabilia" But they are very stilted. They are very rough. My friends read them at my insistence and did that, "I love you but..." smile when I asked what they thought. And a large part of that was that I just hadn't yet developed a relationship with language to make it do what I wanted. I was like a painter who sees tremendous visions in their heads, but still needs to learn how to make the colors and the lines and the brush strokes work for them before what's on the canvas will match.

What I can tell you is that most writers, the vast majority of writers, like 99.9% of writers read prolifically. They read constantly. They have stacks to-be-read and plow through 100 novels a year. I read hours a day of online material (articles and blogs) but I still plod my way through forty or fifty books a year. I spend a good four or five hours a day just reading.

This overlap between writers and readers is certainly not just a very strange coincidence. But it's also not a causal relationship. Most writers do not read with the intention of becoming good enough writers like Burgess Meredith is telling them to catch the chicken. ("Understand Ulysses Rocky. Anyone who can understand Ulysses can get published by Apollo Creed.") They read because they love it. They read because their world is words. As all the best chefs began as connoisseurs, so are all the best writers voracious consumers of words.

Of course what this question is sensitive to is just how much better the writing is of someone who reads a lot. Reading means absorbing writing techniques from the masters and the moderns alike. Consuming others' writing–what is good (and especially by reading what is terrible)–gives writers a honed ear for word choice, phrasing, clause mixing, pacing, dialogue, conflict, characterization and more. Reading gives writers a sense of vocabulary and of how to express things they're imagining in words. It gives them the tools to describe things with concrete detail instead of telling the reader how to feel.

But even so they don't read FOR all those things. Reading is not the regrettable cost of doing business to be a writer. A writer might push themselves to read more because they feel like they're slacking off, but they probably enjoy it once they've made the time for it. They read because they love it.

I'm really not sure what it is about writing that brings out this dynamic of reluctant readers among would-be-writers. It seems to make as much sense to have breathers who like to exhale only. Filmmakers know they have to watch tons of movies. Painters know they have to look at lots of paintings. Musicians are constantly listening to music. Everyone drinks deeply from the well of the art they wish to be good at to have a sense of what they like, of what is considered good, and of how not to do things that don't work. But also just because they love it.

If you want a good sense of good writing and a soft number on the estimate side, Robert, I'd say about a thousand books at a rough minimum. At a book a week that's about twenty years of prolific reading to form the solid basis for a sense of words that will serve you as a writer. You'll probably find that even the very few successful writers in their early twenties have read at least that much. But I would also encourage anyone serious about writing to continue a steady diet of ongoing reading as well.

It would probably be easier if there were writer police, and they simply informed us when we were "allowed" to begin writing. ("Our records indicate that you have read your 1237th book. You may now begin writing.") But for most serious writers the actual answer to the question of how many books one must read to be a writer is closer to: "I hope many, many more."

My Fiction (A Tour of Menus)

Image Description: Hands of a woman writing on a laptop.

In an ongoing effort to promote my Kickstarter (to write a book over the course of the next twelve months), I'm sharing the menu of my fiction, so folks can see what my more polished writing is like and what sort of style they would be supporting.

There's not much of it yet, but I'm working on that. In the last days of the Kickstarter, you can expect to see two or three more bits go up. A stand alone piece, and the final part of A Demon's Rubicon. Plus if there's time, the conclusion to something silly I was doing with superhero realism about eighteen months ago.


Sometimes, when I'm not writing about writing, I actually do some writing.  And I'm going to post some of it here.  How much depends on its success.

All material labeled "By Chris Brecheen" at Writing About Writing is the exclusive property of Chris Brecheen. It is intended solely for the non-commercial use of visitors to Writing About Writing and may not be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of Chris Brecheen–with the following single exception: Users are permitted to print out a singe copy of the material for their private use. They may, however, under no circumstances whatsoever reproduce or retransmit any such copies in any form or by any means without the express written permission of Chris Brecheen.

Users are welcome (and highly encouraged) to link to any and all pages at Writing About Writing, and to provide the URL for such links to other persons by any and all means.  As long as such means aren't deplorably violent nor do they exploit fuzzy puppies or cheese makers. Users may, however, under no circumstances whatsoever link to any pages at Writing About Writing within so-called "frames" or employing any other format that may mislead users as to the origin and location of Writing About Writing, or that could in any way suggest that the author of these works was anyone other than Chris Brecheen.

Also, if you enjoy one or some of these stories, please consider a donation of a dollar or two to fund future offerings of fiction on Writing About Writing.  I'll put all my fiction here if I can scratch out a bit of money doing so--even the longer stuff.

Shorter Works

Fiction
Falling From Orbit- July 2012
Penumbra- October 2012
The Look- March 2013 Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Creative Nonfiction
A Demon's Rubicon- May 2013 Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Waking From Nightmares (A little stream of conscioiusnessy. Not my best, but it fits best here.)
A Pound of Flesh- Another piece that isn't QUITE just expository. An Ounce Returned

A Little Different (not everything here is "fiction" in the strictest sense of the word, but it's quite creative)

Hypocritical Heartwarming (Season One Finale)- December 2012 (Here is the Season 1 Recap)
Falling From Orbit (Live Action Role Playing Game)

NOTE: One of the unusual strengths of this medium is that it can be changed, and I intend to exploit that.  Why write in a brave new world if the benefits of that world must be ignored?  While I won't change themes or characters or big stuff on a story once I hit "publish," what I can do is get in there and fix a grammar or spelling error or tighten up some wording on a rough sentence.  So feedback is encouraged!  If you're reading this, consider yourself a beta reader!