MOVING!! Be back Tuesday.

I'm guessing I'll need Monday for unpacking, so I will see everyone with bells on and a running start on Tuesday.

Don't burn down the internet while I'm gone and don't forget to KEEP WRITING!!

Your Post Here?

We seem to be down a guest post today, so let me remind everyone that I would love to publish your work.  While "meaty" posts, weekend posts, even two posts a day will be returning to Writing About Writing soon, Thursday is always a day for guest posts. 

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

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

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

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

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

Then I want you!

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

And...if you're one of my regular guest bloggers, I'll even give you your own link on The Reliquary (unless you'd rather I didn't).

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

• If you send me offers to do web content, I mark your mail as spam. I know when I'm looking at a legitimate offer for a guest blog.
• If you are a robot I will mark you as spam. Unless you can do dishes. Robots that do dishes are welcome.
• If you can't figure out what this blog is about, and offer to do articles about steam roofing or something, I'll mark your mail as spam. I'm not just web content here; this blog has a theme and everything. Make it about the inspiration and creative process of steam roofing AT LEAST!
• Please read the paragraph below the bullet points very carefully.
• Your writing is yours. I'm going to ask that you let the post run on my page for a while before you cross post it, but ultimately I respect that as the generator of the creative effort, your writing is yours. If you ask me to remove it, I will. If you repost it somewhere else, that's okay.
• There are no author passwords to Writing About Writing--you'll submit your articles to me. I will post them if they are good enough to post.
• If you skipped all that dull text up above, this blog is about writing, art, inspiration, creativity, motivation, process, craft, literature, reading, and maybe cheese. Don't skip the paragraph below though.
• I will be as liberal as I can about gate keeping, but you do have to be able to write a little. An incoherent rant about the tyranny of grammar probably won't be approved.
• You don't have to agree with me, particularly about writing stuff, but I'm not going to post wildly divergent social positions, humor that punches down, or deeply problematic phrasing. Anything I post here isn't an "I agree with this 100%!" endorsement, but if I hit publish on it, I'm going to be the one to answer for it. If you want to write about how the PC police are agents of "Obummer the Mooozlim," and they won't let you even use the word "tard" anymore, go start your own blog.
• I won't make any content changes to your writing, but I may make some copy edits. If a proofreading change might change your meaning, I will run it by you.
• Please fucking read the paragraph below.
• When I say "I will make some edits" I want you to understand that I'm not a copy editor even though I can do okay (on writing that isn't my own). I'm not here to fix up a post from scratch that you didn't have time to proofread. Clean it up.
• You may link out as much as you want (even self-promotional links), but I'm going to check them all--if they go to spammy shit, I won't publish your article. 
• Please, for the love of all that is holy, and in the name of Hera's left nipple, read the goddamned fucking paragraph below.
• If your post is a giant fucking commercial for some product, then you need to be paying me for advertising space. And if your product isn't awesome, that's not going to happen anyway. Thinly veiled self promotion under the auspices of something that at least resembles an article is totally okay though–just know that it might not get a lot of hits. I only get about 150 views on articles that aren't liked or reshared through some social media. If my readers don't like something, it does NOT do very well. If they do, well they know where the share button is.
• Seriously, read the paragraph below.

The very important paragraph:

W.A.W. isn't making very much money article per article. I can't offer more than a couple of dollars. (Most guest bloggers ask to include it as a donation, but that's never expected.) If your article brings in heavy traffic, we will figure something extra out so I'm not taking the hard work of a writer with nothing but the promise of "exposure." Plus of course if someone sends me a donation earmarked for a guest blogger, I will pass the money onto them and even cover the Paypal fee–that's for them, not me. It may not add up to much (unless you get millions of hits or write for me a lot) but if it came from your work, I'll make sure I'm not taking advantage of you.

Do Authors Need Expensive Cover Art? (Mailbox)

Image description: The closest thing
to an 80's mailbox our image intern
could find. We should fire him.

[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. Oh and I. Am. BACK.]    

Sonja F asks: 

Do you need to pay lots of money for a cover artist to make your cover?  

I'm going to assume this question is about self-publishing because if you go through a big five publisher cover art is actually one of the decisions that is typically taken away from the writer (sometimes to no small amount of resentment).  Small print presses usually can't afford really snazzy covers, so you just get a single image (maybe a photograph) and the title. It doesn't look great, but small presses use other ways to sell books than by looking good in big bookstores.

Sonja, this question caused me to have a flashback. And I mean a flash-way-back. 1985 way back. The shoulder pads were big and the hair was even bigger. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were somehow even bigger than the hair. Marty McFly was hopping into his Delorian for the first time on the big screen*.  And if you started to "Do the Mario" a fair number of people would actually sing along. And while the three hundred and twenty five season run of Full House was a couple of years out, Growing Pains and Family Ties were laying some of the groundwork. Your intrepid but terribly cute writer was even terribly cuter at the venerable age of....um....y'all aren't any good at math are you?

*True story: if Back to the Future were made today with the same relative time frames, Marty would be going back to the 80's. Marty would actually be going back to AFTER the original movie's main timeline took place. Feel old yet?

But I need you to understand the nature of this flashback because it went all the way to this horror show called Kids Incorporated. (It's probably best you don't click that link, TBH.) And when I say something is bad "for the eighties," I desperately need you to understand that we didn't have nine million cable channels and Netflix. This shit was up against shows like Small Wonder and Manimal and still made me cringe.

Kids Incorporated is kind of what would happen if you took Glee, reduced the median age of the kids by eight years, removed the sexual tension and replaced it with bangles (that's the bracelets OR the group), just had actors do atrocious lip synching instead of actual singing (which was still regularly just a little flat and awful), stripped it of any attempt at all to have socially relevant plot, made it one of those shows that came on after the cartoons ended on Saturday morning and you only got to see when your parents were too distracted to kick you out to go play, and puffed everybody's hair up by about eight centimeters. Other than that, just like Glee.

And yet a couple of those FUCKING SONGS decided, despite playing in front of my pre-teen sensory input systems exactly once, to bore their way into my consciousness for all of time. One such shitty songs was the culmination of a childhood of being finger waggingly reminded, warned, chided, and castigated not to judge books by their covers. It is not a thing that can be described. Not with words I possess, and I possess a decent lexicon of words. Perhaps the eldritch language of the Old Ones can fully describe its horror, but English cannot. It must be experienced.

I probably should have told you this before you hit play, but one week after you watch this video for even a second, a wannabe with pink tiger-striped capri pants and black lace forearm covers will crawl out of the well of the Smurf village, then through your monitor and karaoke "Like a Virgin" to you.

Anyway, I better get to the point. This post is in imminent danger of going off topic, and we wouldn't want that.

The point is that this was generally prescriptive advice given to little kids who didn't like the simple embossed title (and maybe author) of "boring" books. And maybe behind that there was some overarching advice about snap judgements based on appearances. But the fact was–and still is, despite all the things that have (thankfully) changed, we all do it.

Or I guess what I'm trying to say is that after we get that advice, our response is: "NOT!"

Let me give you an example. You see a cover. It is an airbrushed picture of a woman with a look of ecstasy being leaned back by a shirtless dude with rippling pectoral muscles who is quite apparently not in a state of disbelief about what may or may not be butter. Do you need to read the back to figure out if you want to read this book? Do you need to read a hundred pages to give it a good faith try? Or are you pretty sure you know what's coming? How about if you see a dude in a flight helmet and a picture of a space battle? Or a dragon?

Yeah, any of these could be the pinnacle of their genre and I'm not dissing genre. If you haven't read Lord of Scoundrels or Shane because of the obvious genre of their covers, you're missing out some really good books, but it doesn't mean we don't judge. Grabbing a book because "Oh, cool. Spaceship!" is a judgement too. And every book a little kid brings you to read has been thoroughly judged by its cover.

These days we may even do more of that cover judging than we used to. Though thankfully this may mean we don't have to look forward to a Glee cover of this particular Kids Incorporated gem, it also means that writers hoping to self publish should be even more aware of how their cover art can affect their sales. Even though the publishing industry is going through changes that are generally exciting and new voices are finding audiences and artists are monetizing in ways that don't require problematic gatekeepers, a cover tells us a lot about a book in just a few seconds, mostly about its quality. A book with a plain or shitty cover is a big signal that the book might have been kind of slapped together or hastily rushed through publication. What else was rushed? The copyediting? The revision process? Is this a book worth taking a chance on at all? It will probably greatly affect who will buy your book without some kind of heartfelt endorsement or friend recommendation. (One that doesn't involve them saying "Psyche!" at the end.)

But don't take MY word for it. Look at some of these terrible covers. Just be ready with some bleach so that when your done you can do one of those bleach enemas. On your eyeballs.

I don't know if you need to pay "lots of money" Sonja. There are certainly artists who will do commissions for book cover art at a rate that would be very reasonable, especially if they are struggling to launch their own burgeoning career. You may even come to some mutually beneficial deal with them for an exchange. Just remember they're a struggling artist too, and don't take advantage of them or pull that "for exposure," crap.

But if the question is if you should take your cover art seriously and do what you can to make it look eye catching and professional quality, yes you should. It's the first thing anyone will ever see about your book, and none of us paid a damn bit of attention to either the finger wagging or this festering pimple squeezing of a video. Folks are going to take ONE look at your book and judge the fuck out of it. It may well be the only opportunity to get someone to open up and read a few lines. And they will absolutely think that schlocky art is indicative of schlocky writing. And then they will say your book is grody to the max and will avoid you like The Noid while wondering: "What's your damage, Heather?"

Best Non European Fantasy (Final Round!)

What is the non-European fantasy Setting?  

Our final round is live!  

Eight names culled from 16 of your nominations have come to the final round for you to decide which non-European fantasy setting is the best. Please don't forget that we're talking about books, not their lovingly created movie renditions.

This poll will only run until a week or two into August (as long as it takes to get nominations for our August poll), and then hopefully we'll be back on the 1 month = 1 poll track. 

The poll itself is on the lower left of the side menus–just below the "About the Author."

Since I can't really stop shenanigans, I welcome all the shenanigans. The main one is of course that Polldaddy tracks your IP for a week so you could vote from multiple computers or vote again after a week, but people have also enlisted friends, family, and even author forums or Facebook communities to join in the fun. Vote early. Vote often.

Quickie on the Fly (Personal Update)

I do NOT drool.....I'm pretty sure.
Image description: Me...asleep. (Except I was totally not really asleep; just posing.)

Just a quick one today. We woke up to a car blocking our driveway and I might did need to tag in early since no one can actually drive away from here with child in tow (but everyone still has to go patrol).

This weekend, starting around Friday at noon, I worked 42 hours. I let you figure out the math on that one. So I'm a little tired. Exhausted really. (Is there a word bigger than exhausted? I'll coin one: ennerhaustevated. I'm ennerhastevated.) Needless to say, I could use one...last...spectacular flurry from the hands of Jazz.

And a nap.

So while I am almost giddy at the fact that I'm literally on the LAST DAY of summer-schedule-imposed writing limitations, I actually need to extend this bullshit by 24 more hours.

Then tomorrow, up will go the final round for the non-European fantasy poll, and I am working on some actually real content for Wednesday. (I told you this old baby could still fly.)

Best Non-European Setting (Poll Results Semifinal 2)

Thank you to everyone who voted in our poll. The top four names from each semifinal will go on to the final round (which I will put up Monday [and save the Mon post for Tuesday], so that the poll doesn't run too far into August). I wish there could have been a bigger spread between fourth and fifth place, but I had to get 'er done.

Unfortunately, I am running late for my teaching job, so I can't do much more than post the image. Fortunately this is my last day of teaching and of jazz hands blog posts and daily writing that gets funneled into journals and Facebook posts since I don't have the time to really write something crunchy.

Of course, I'm taking a three day weekend as promised to rest and recuperate. (I won't even be putting a menu up tomorrow–expect radio silence.) Also, I'll be moving next week, so I'm a little thin on promises for exactly when Writing About Writing will fire up the old schedule in earnest, but if all goes well, time seems like it will not be my enemy after this weekend.


Text of image above:

Lord of Light–Zelazny 9 25.71% 25.71% Monkey and The Monk A. C. Yu and Wu C. 6 17.14% 17.14% Haroun and the Sea of Stories–S. Rushdie. 6 17.14% 17.14% Throne of the Crescent Moon–S. Ahmed 5 14.29% 14.29% Who Fears Death–N. Okorafor 4 11.43% 11.43% Tales of the Otori–L Hearn 3 8.57% 8.57% The Fox Woman and Fudoki K. Johnson. 2 5.71% 5.71% 

Best Non-European Fantasy Setting (Don't Forget to Vote)

What is the best non-European Fantasy Setting?   

Please don't forget to vote in our current semifinal round for best non-European fantasy setting, the results of which I will tabulate tomorrow. (I'll put the final round up first thing next week.)

Everyone will get three votes (3). The top four names will go on to the final round. Before you simply vote for your favorite four, consider that, as there is no ranking of those four votes; each vote beyond one dilutes the power of your choices a little more. So if you have a genuine favorite–or pair of favorites–it's better to use as few votes as possible.

The poll itself is on the left side, at the bottom of the side menus.