My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?
So the write-in nominations have been tabulated, and here is the poll for best stand-alone science fiction novel.
The poll itself is in the usual spot on the left hand side of this blog, just under the bio of the pretentious writer--which is under The Reliquary. It should be right near the bottom of this entry on the left--near the comment box
I had to remove a lot of the write in entries in order to create a reasonably sized poll. The one book that got a "second" nominations was added, but all other nominations were only listed once. So I had to decide which of the twenty way tie for second place would make it to the poll.
So here is how I decided what made it and what didn't:
If you wrote a nomination as a response to the X-post for the entry (on either G+ or Facebook) I didn't take the nomination. They were good nominations, but I mentioned in the [original post] that I would favor the nomination written as a response to the post. I need people to come to the site.
If you wrote multiple suggestions but expressed doubt that one of your suggestions might fit the poll (usually because it's was--or became--part of a series), I went ahead and took your OTHER suggestions. If you ONLY wrote a suggestion that you weren't sure of, I probably took it regardless. But as long as you gave me alternatives, I favored them.
If you wrote more than two suggestions for "the best," after scratching my head briefly as to why you thought a half a dozen novels were "the best," I assumed they were in order of preference. On the original page, I asked for a single title…MAYBE two, so those of you writing in between 3-6 titles, I picked the first two UNLESS…you did something I mentioned above. (One person suggested three titles but expressed doubt that one fit the pole, so I took the other two.)
You can vote as many as three times--just in case you simply can't decide between books. However, you don't NEED to vote all three times, and voting thrice mathematically "dilutes" the impact of all your votes.
This must be because the increased upper body strength makes for an easier time vacuuming under heavy things. Right? ....RIGHT?
Have you ever spent a day--or perhaps a couple of days--digging into the deep cleaning chores of your house? Maybe you wash both sides of the windows, vacuum behind the couches, dust the stuff above eye level...that sort of thing. I mean you really tear into that motherfucker like you are a rabid wombat or something. Every big cleaning task you can think of is done, and you look around hoping to have that victorious feeling that comes only from a totally clean house...or from standing on a two-story pile of zombie bodies with a shotgun in one hand, a chainsaw in the other (and maybe a hawtie or two of your preferred gender hanging off of your legs). And you gaze around and look at your handiwork.
But fuck if the place doesn't still look like a total mess.
Fortunately for me, I now have extensive househusbandry experience, so I know exactly what is going on here. You did the big stuff. But most of what people look around and see isn't actually the big stuff. It's the little things. (And now that I've written that the Danny Elfman soundtrack to Wanted is going through my head, but given it's lyrical applicability to the phenomenon I'm describing, let's run with it.)
The good news is that the little things won't take you as long as the big things. Breeze through a room gathering up shoes, dirty dishes, beer bottles, used needles, little tiny baggies, razor blades, hand mirrors, and anything that might link you back to the hooker buried in the back yard, and you're pretty much done.
This blog needs me to do a lot of little things. I've got a poll I will be putting up today. I have a tab in the pages (up at the top) that has needed some attention for months. I need to add the subject of Friday's mailbox (writing every day) to the F.A.Q. I've got some creative writing that I've been meaning to polish and post. I'm still not done tagging the old entries. I'll get some posts up every day--including some meaty stuff--so I'm not bailing on substance, but I want to toss the schedule this week (the updating schedule being, ironically, one of the things I need to update).
It's a good week for it. I'm in semester's end crunch at work over at Diablo Valley College. The students are getting a little freaked out about finals and this is usually the time in a semester where I don't know exactly when I'm going to need to spend an extra chunk of time talking one of them down from a bell tower. The end of the semester is always when strictly scheduled stuff gets really hard to keep up with, so giving the finger to the schedule for a week or so will keep me from ending up in a rubber room gently petting my half used roll of paper towels and telling everyone who looks at me to stop trying to fry my only remaining synapse.
"Chris," you ask, "why does this make you a sad panda?"
Good question! I'm so glad you asked. I will explicate the reason for my disconsolate state of ailuropoda melanoleuca...ism.
In a magical wonderful fairy world of unicorn rainbogasms and nymph threesomes, there would be some books that would win. Not just win on a technicality, but really, actually win. They would get onto the poll because they had multiple nominations. I would cull the list of those titles that only got one nomination. (Or you know, as long as I'm going with the pipe dream, I'm going to go ahead and ask for those titles that only managed to get double digit nominations.) It is clear which titles deserve to get into the poll, and no one loses on a technicality.
Sadly, pretty much every title got only a single nomination. None of the write ins even got seconded. This forces me to cull the list with the previously mentioned criteria like "who wrote in sooner rather than later" and "who replied directly on the blog page instead of on the G+ or Facebook pages" (where I cross post my blog). I know I said that would be a criteria if I ended up with ties, but when it's a fifteen way tie for last place, it feels a little...sad pandaish.
I hate to see so many books culled on technicalities.
So I'd really really love to get a few more write ins from you all, especially if they are to second some of the excellent books that have already been nominated. Even if you nominated your own book, feel free to go through and commend the wisdom of other people's choices.
So there has been some confusion and I've gotten some questions about the "stand alone" criteria It doesn't mean it CAN'T be part of a larger body of works; it means that it can be fully appreciated as a work without needing the context of the book before it and without leaving the story unfinished. For example Star Wars could stand alone as a story without its sequels or prequels, but The Empire Strikes Back is considerably easier to follow if you have seen Star Wars and obviously isn't concluded at its end. Many books have been written as a single book and later added to or are desecrate enough that they act as stand alone books. Dune would easily stand alone as a single story even though like eighty multi-generational sequels came afterward. The Hunger Games could be a stand alone book since the last two bottles of the trilogy were clearly written after the success of the first. The Fellowship of the Rings would not be. (Though The Hobbit could.) Any of The Chronicles of Narnia could stand alone. Mostly though if you feel like it could stand alone, go ahead and nominate it. I trust your judgement. If you thought Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone stood alone I would accept that, and if you thought it didn't, I would accept that too.
You don't have to write every day! [Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer them each Friday. 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 don't be afraid to throw your friends under the bus for the entertainment of...dozens, perhaps hundreds.] An unending deluge of anonymous commenters write:
-You know you don't have to write every day to be a writer. That is absurd....
-...Why do you and so many writers insist on daily writing? Some people don't write nearly as well if they turn creativity into a burden.
-...You're lucky. You can just sit around and write all day. I have a full time job, a wife and three kids, and there's no way I can write every day. It's easy for you to give this advice from where you are.
-Your [sic] an idiot. Writing everyday [sic] makes writing into a chore. If I wanted another job, I would work two jobs. I am less creatave [sic] if I try to sit and make myself do it everyday [sic]. I hope you know your [sic] destroing [sic] people's creativity.
-Why do you think writing has to be such a sacrifice? I'm sick of hearing people talk about writing like, if I don't kill myself writing every day, I'm never going to be good enough.
-When my muse is on break, forcing it produces drivel. I write better if I wait until I have something to write...
My reply(replies):
More than any other idea I espouse here at Writing About Writing, the idea that a writer should write every day seems to make people void their bowels and howl at the moon. As if telling off some nineteenth rate blogger is going to fundamentally alter the creative process or the acquisition of artistic skill. My descriptive grammar gets a few prescriptive grammarians wound up about how I could ever defend the misuse of literally or the "technically-a-word" status of "irregardless" within a just universe. My constant references to threesomes have gotten me a few uptight moral replies, including one woman who promised to pray for my soul. I even have a email in my archives from a guy who sincerely expressed the hope that I am [redacted] and [redacted] with a baseball bat that has been dipped in epoxy and then glass because there is no excuse for Sonnet 23 being my favorite. (Yeah...think about that for a minute.) But nothing seems to bother people as much as the idea that they should be writing every day. Given the way it keeps coming up, it's clear that 1) people are not really reading to what I write about daily writing, and 2) people really, really want permission not to write.
Clearly, the answer to this question clearly needs to go in the FAQ. Not that anybody really reads that, but it makes replying to such things easier if I can just link a URL and say "This is covered in the F.A.Q." And if it was a nasty enough anonymous comment I can say "Not only is this in the F.A.Q. but also feel absolutely free to douse yourself in chum, and read it from within the piranha tank, so that as you edify yourself as to what I actually wrote, you will simultaneously
....wait what am I saying??!!? I love the world and shit. I'm generally non-violent. You people are getting to me.
However, before I do mount the stuffed head of this question on the FAQ, I want to televise it's demise in a Mailbox, where people might actually see it. I'm sure this won't put the issue to bed, and new people will come crawling out of the netwoodwork to respectfully disagree with cogent counter-points tell me I am worth less to them than that gunk that collects around the base of the water fountain spigot.
But what the hell; maybe it'll buy me a week off....
First, let me switch to the largest font Blogger is capable of doing without me knowing how to code HTML. Let me also underline, italicize, and boldificate this next statement so as to emphasize it as much as I am able:
IF YOU DON'T WANT TO WRITE, DON'T WRITE.
You don't need my permission.
You don't need to convince anyone.
You don't need to run around the internet looking for writers to assuage you of your guilt.
You don't need to build a shrine to the two or three authors who didn't write every day (like Douglas Adams) but achieved success.
You don't need to do anything....including write.
Look, my ubercivil anonymous cadre.....the list of reasons to sit down and write creatively is short--very, very short. It's not for the fabulous paycheck. It's not for the glamour. It sure isn't for the devil's triangle threesomes, lemmie tell ya! Pretty much the only reason to do it is because of that spark that has moved artists to the act of creation since the dawn of time. But if your motivation not to write is greater than your motivation to write, don't write. You don't have to come up with a bunch of half ass excuses that no one believes anyway.
Just don't write.
Watch TV. Read. Take a bubble bath. Sit on Facebook for an hour arguing gun control. Go have a social life. Get out of the house. Jump the hilly brush. Watch a meteor shower. Do whatever the fuck you want. No one is twisting your arm to write, and if it feels like that, you might be writing for the wrong reason.
Do what everyone who is not driven by the infuriating impulse of creating has done with their free time since humanity was young and don't worry about it.
So let's play a game of Myth vs. Reality. Really this should be more appropriately titled "Bullshit that I never actually said" vs "What I actually did say," but that's not as catchy of a title.
MYTH VS. REALITY
Myth 1: You have to write every day to be a writer.
Reality: Actually you have to write to be a writer.
If you earn your ER, you are a writer. That's it. There aren't any other hoops to jump through to achieve that title. There isn't some set amount you have to write to be a writer--either daily or total. There isn't even some celestial medieval knight in glowing armor who comes down from the heavens holding a swordpen to knight you as "a writer."
Are their people who want to be writers and don't write? Yep. Are there people who call themselves writers who actually manage to do some wordsmithing only once a month or so? Yep. Are there people in love with their high school dream ofbeing a writer much more than they are the actual act of writing. Yep.
And if the Writer Police went around helping Scott Pilgrim win duels by using their Dewriterizing Ray for Writerly Violations, you might have to worry. ("Talking about your novel isn't writing, bitch!" ~fires~) But since being a writer doesn't give you psychic powers, the title is largely self-policed. The only person you have to convince that you're a "writer" is you. Heck, you can even ignore your friends who never see you reading or writing and give you the Spock eyebrow when you insist you'll be published soon.
What I may have said that is kind of like this: I don't actually even say this at all. I let other writers say it for me. Tons and tons and tons and tons of other writers--both contemporary and long dead. And what they are talking about isn't just "earning your er," but the advice about how to be all you can be. (Whether your goal is literary quality, fame, or just paying the bills with fiction.) The more successful a writer is, both in terms of renown and being able to pay the bills with their art, the more likely it is that they are going to extol daily writing--especially for those who also want to be successful. This advice is actually so ubiquitous when it comes to successful writers who give writing advice, that it takes some pretty epic special-snowflakeness to think that one is above it.
OR....I may have pointed out that artistic skills decay with disuse. Pick up an instrument after a month of not playing, and you're rusty. Try to sing, and you'll find your voice out of practice. Pick up something to draw with and it'll take you some time to get your groove back. Do any of these things only once or twice a month for years, and your skill will decrease noticeably. Writing isn't any different. It is an art with a technical component of skill and craft. If you let it go fallow, your ability will decay. If you "practice" daily--like any other damned skill or art in the entire world--you will get better. And if you don't, you won't. Writing every day--even just a little--keeps you sharp. You should probably write every day if you want to get better.
OR....I may have been talking about how the creative process is like a muscle. It works if you work it. Pretty much your unconscious/muse/inspiration/whatever-you-want-to-call-it will stop giving you the high quality mojo just the minute what you're doing starts to resemble work. That's why people who wait to be inspired usually wait for so damned long. But creativity studies, writers since time immemorial, and every other kind of artist pretty much all have observed the phenomenon that if you put in the work every day (and you try to do it about the same time each day.)
BUT....people take hiatuses. They write like it's a job (five days a week). They take vacation days. They write some paltry thing on days they work and clock in their hours-long sessions on the weekends. Writing a little something every day is something most writers talk about because it works but the closer you get to it, the more success you're going to have and there is a rainbow of diversity in the "close" situations.
Myth 2: You will never get published/paid/rich/famous if you don't write every day.
Reality: Lots of writers, who write less frequently, get published.
Fewer get paid. Even fewer get paid an amount they could live on. Almost none get rich. The tiniest handful are famous. But lots are published.
Check the facts. They're sobering, but not bleak. And unless you want to be a working writer, they are pretty reasonable. And why would you want to not do something (mostly) daily that you intend to be your day job anyway? Do you go to work once a month?
Most of these writers making money and getting published would still consider it pretty important to write consistently, but there are lots of authors who don't write (mostly) daily. You may not have heard of very many of them (Douglas Adams would be a notable exception--he was famous for how long his hiatuses were), and most of them probably have day jobs even if they're working as editors or something, but there's no glossing over the fact that they have a book on some stranger's bookshelf with their name on the cover, and that's pretty fucking awesome.
What I may have said that is kind of like this:If you made a big pile of published writers who write every day (or very nearly) and published writers who don't, you would start to notice something almost immediately about those two piles--I mean other than the fact that writers have almost no sense of fashion and that making big piles of people is a little cruel and a lot hard to organize. With one or two exceptions, everyone with a name you recognize would be in the daily writing pile. With one or two exceptions everyone for whom writing is their day job would be in the daily writing pile. With one or two exceptions the authors in the "don't need to" pile would probably not be writers you've heard of and have only published a small amount. (Maybe a book or two or three that you probably wouldn't recognize.) You would walk around your piles and (respectively) say: "Hey Faulkner, hey King, hey Rowling, hey Bradbury, hey Asimov, hey Butcher, hey Doctorow. (And then moving to the next pile)....um...hey....uh...I don't recognize you guys."
The more books someone has published, the more likely they are to advocate writing daily. Almost no one who doesn't write daily has more than a few books that have done well (either literarily or commercially). It is almost spooky how predictable this trend is even after hundreds of years. Take a look at this article about the daily routine of writers. Notice that the one thing these DAILY routines have in common is that they involve writing. Many of them are regimens clearly meant to focus the writers on their writing.
It's almost like writing might be work.
My first instinct when I see a bunch of successful people doing one thing and a bunch of less successful people doing the opposite is not to think that this is just a strange coincidence with no bearing on the success. If you were in any other career, this sort of evidence would be a no brainer. (Imagine that you were at a job where everyone who got promoted to management--with one or two exceptions--wore a suit and tie, but the dress code said you could wear jeans and a t-shirt. If you wanted a career instead of a job, how could you possibly ignore that?) Basically the more successful you want to be at writing the more you will almost certainly have to make writing a daily habit. But the great Rubicon of publication will not demand daily writing as an offering.
Myth 3: I just sit around all day with nothing better to do than write. Reality: Honestly, it is only my pristine sense of decorum, and the general impeccable timber of tact I like to set here at Writing About Writing that prevents me from being explicit about how offensive this is and what horrors I hope are visited upon you by circus clowns with extremely poor personal hygiene. I write between 4-6 hours most days, work as a househusband, and teach ESL at night classes at a local community college. In a given week, I put in 40-50 hours (by the numbers) on those two jobs BEFORE I ever sit down to write. The idea that I just have time to kill is more ridiculous than my fantasy of...well look, I'm pretty sure that many people wouldn't even fit on a bed.
What I may have said that is kind of like this: Last night I did something I rarely do. I spent the evening playing King of Tokyo with friends--I actually got out of the house and enjoyed social time with other humans. But here's the punchline: I knew this article was going to take a long time to write, so I brough my laptop with me to my friends' house, and I did a little bit of writing between my turns. Any time my kaiju monster was quietly hanging out in the suburbs becoming king by attrition, I was jotting down some ideas and points to put into sentence form.
I wasn't even fully able to enjoy an evening out without bringing my work with me. They have names for people like me.
If I have any time to "sit around and write," it's because of the decisions I've made in my life up until this point. I don't have a "real" job (which means I don't make "real" money either). I live with a couple and exchange room and board for housekeeping. It's convenient, but I definitely earn my keep. I work two nights a week for spending money. I don't have a car. I don't have kids. I don't have a social life to speak of. Pretty much my life if a support mechanism for writing. Before you get too jealous of my four hour block of time, ask yourself if it's worth your career, your family, your social life, and most of your discretionary income. [2019 edit: Most of this paragraph is obsolete, but you get the idea.]
You can't just envy the good stuff.
If you've got a career and multiple kids, then you probably can't have as much time to sit and write as I can--at least not for the next few years years. You would need a T.A.R.D.I.S. and a vasectomy/tubal ligation gun, and The Doctor would almost certainly end up asking you some pretty pointed questions. Also, no one is suggesting you give your kids a straight razor and matches to keep them busy while you write or let Disney raise them. However can you really say that there is absolutely no time you could find, even daily, if you made some changes to your life? (You probably didn't think you had time to spare before kids came along either, but they are such an urgent priority that you find a way.) Can you really say that there is no period of time that you plunk down in front of the TV every night? No way you could push your bedtime back a half hour or rise a half hour early? No way you could start packing a lunch and use your break to do some writing? No way you could write on public transit? No way you could tighten up your weekend chores so that it takes three hours instead of four? No way you could watch fifteen cute cat videos instead of thirty? No way you could cut out some video games, Facebook, or emails? No way you give up some creature comforts and take a pay cut to be able to leave work sooner? No way you can secure a couple of hours on the weekend by skipping a social plan with someone? It's actually incredibly rare to find someone whose schedule is so busy that they can't carve out a half hour to an hour if it is a priority to them. The problem is, most people have other priorities.
If you want time to write, make writing a priority.
Myth 4: Writing should be a horrible sacrificial burden somewhat akin to crawling across a field of glass shards into an ammonia pool. If you are not left broken and bleeding by it, you simply have not given it enough. The altar of writing demands your free time, your social life, your downtime, and even your very soul! Reality: Writing should be fulfilling.
If you're a happy hobbyist, enjoy.
You decide your own level of involvement. If you don't want to write every day, you don't have to. No one is going to call the Pretentious Hotline on you. If you don't want to write when it "feels like a chore" you don't have to. If you want to wait for the rainbow of magical inspiration to come to you instead of working to establish a creative rhythm on your terms, you can. If you write once a month, and that act of creation makes you happy, but more makes you miserable, then how is this even a question? Like I said, we're not doing this for the glory.
Not everyone even CAN write every day. To make that prescriptive or 100% inflexible is ableist.
For as long as there has been art, there has been a wide continuum of dedication to it. Not every painter spends 16 hours in their studio like Picasso, and not every musician practices for five hours a day like Yo Yo Ma. Writing isn't any different. I don't write ten pages a day like Stephen King or 12+ hours a day like J.K. Rowling. I'm a lightweight compared to them--mostly because I'm not ready to give up what little downtime I have.
Now, if you're running around feeling vaguely unsettled because you hit a round-number-birthday but you're still not a novelist, or if you want to be one of the famed writers of your generation, you might have to consider a greater dedication to writing. Artists and entertainers have always been completely obsessive about their craft, and you aren't likely to achieve as much as they have without giving an equal amount of effort.
I can't control how much a career in writing is going to demand, whether it's ableist, unfair, or requires you abandon your life/work balance. I can only describe what those who have succeeded before you have given.
Consider this: these great artists rarely have balanced lives. They rarely practice moderation. Their marriages fail. Their lives suck. Their health isn't always that great. This blinding obsession isn't necessarily something to strive for.
All that said, if writing every day "kills you," you probably should either give up on the idea of doing the talk show circuit or immediately see your physician. I hear there's a cream....
What I may have said that is kind of like this: If you want to write as your career, you will probably have to do some work. From tech writers to freelance writers to bloggers (who make real money) to novelists to journalists, writers who write for a living have one thing in common. They write just about every day. That's their job. You wouldn't last very long or make much money at any job where you came in when you felt like it, left when it started to feel like work, and refused to do the parts you didn't like. The word for that sort of activity is "hobby." Writing isn't going to be any different. If you want it to pay the bills, it's going to feel like "a chore" from time to time.
You wouldn't last very long or make much money at any job where you came in when you felt like it, left when it started to feel like work, and refused to do the parts you didn't like. The word for that sort of activity is "hobby."
The reality of financial success through writing is that it takes a lot of hard work, and an agent or a publisher doesn't really care about your excuses for why you're not writing no matter how valid they are. And don't be fooled by the myth of your talent or genius either. Creative ideas are actually quite common--it's the work to realize them that isn't. And if a publisher or agent is deciding between you and your don't-harsh-my-creativity's-squee manuscript and someone who put in twice as much work as you on the manuscript and three times as much work as you when they were still mastering the craft, the decision is going to be very easy.
And all the nasty notes in the world to bloggers like me aren't going to change that reality.
Now if you really like writing, the bad parts are fulfilling in different ways. Even if you have the shittiest, most difficult day you've ever had, and you ache and are covered in melted marshmallow, you hold your proton pack to the sky when all is said and done and you shout "I LOVE THIS JOB!!" There are days I want to go back to bed, hunt Deathclaws in Fallout: New Vegas, Read Watership Down....ANYTHING but write, but I know if I just get up and get going I'm going to be happy I did, and the next time I am not in the mood will be a little easier.
The video below is about music, but if you try really hard, I'm sure you can think of some parallels. And you can read the quotes below (by a couple of writers you might recognize) while you watch it.
You must write every single day of your life.
-Ray Bradbury
I write nearly every day. Some days I write for ten or eleven hours. Other days I might only write for three hours. It really depends on how fast the ideas are coming.
-JK. Rowling
I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning.
-William Faulkner
Inspiration usually comes during work, not before it.
-Madeleine L’Engle
Aim for 1000 words a day, six days a week.
-Stephen King
If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.
-Margaret Atwood
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
-Jack London
If you wait for inspiration to write; you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.
-Dan Poynter
Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
-Jane Yolen
Don’t let a single day go by without writing. Even if it’s garbage, if garbage is all you can write, write it. Garbage eventually becomes compost with a little treatment.
-Anonymous (but a famous quotation)
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining…researching…talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
E.L. Doctorow
Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective.
Ernest Hemingway
I write the first sentence and trust in God for the next.
Laurence Sterne
Writing a poem is discovering.
Robert Frost
If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.
Derek Walcott
However great a man's natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.
Robert Frost
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Connolly
The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
Ezra Pound
I try to leave out the parts that people skip.
Elmore Leonard
Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
Lillian Helman
Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of them…Avoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation.
Jacques Barzun
You must write every single day of your life…You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads….may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
Ray Bradbury
Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
E.L. Doctorow
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly…Once you've got some words looking back at you, you can take two or three - throw them away and look for others.
Bernard Malamud
If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
Toni Morrison
To be clear is the first duty of a writer; to charm and to please are graces to be acquired later.
Brander Matthews
…your reader is at least as bright as you are.
William Maxwell
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau
Writing is an adventure.
Winston Churchill
Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.
Allan Gurganus
... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.
Anton Chekhov
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Robert Benchley
A writer lives, at least, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes.
William Sansom
Whether or not you write well, write bravely.
Bill Stout
The writer's duty is to keep on writing…
William Styron
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.
D.H. Lawrence
The first draft of anything is shit
Ernest Hemingway
Use the right word and not its second cousin.
Mark Twain
Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.
Robert Penn Warren
You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.
Doris Lessing
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time…The wait is simply too long.
Leonard S. Bernstein
I seat myself at the typewriter and hope, and lurk.
Mignon Eberhart
The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.
Hi all, Twizzlefizzlepop here and I promised you all that I would never recommend a book thathadbeenturnedintoamovie. Wellthisisabookthat.....
~deep breath~
Sorry. I got a little excited there. I have to remember to talk slow to you non-gnomes. Humans and your super slow metabolisms can't handle the speed of my unadulterated awesome. Especially since I recently got some gold teeth bling and I can't quite talk right yet.
Today I want to pimp one really fine ass book: World War Z by Max Brooks.
I promised you all that I would never recommend a book that had been turned into a movie. That's why I want to recommend World War Z to you before Hollywood and William Bradley of the Pitt Clan has a chance to absolutely mangle every wonderful page of it. I know it's under the wire, but it still counts. The movie is pretty undoubtedly going to suck the fuzzy purple banana of Hollywood hackery. It might have zombies, but so did 28 Weeks Later and that blew so much knob it made Jenna Jameson look like an amateur, so don't be fooled. Production rumors for this film are like watching a train full of babies crash into a plane full of children's cancer ward transfers...who are all holding balloons filled with alternating chlorine or ammonia gas....in slow motion. I mean I'd love to be wrong, but it looks like this movie is going to suck so hard that vampires (and I mean the old Bela Lugosi types, not these sparkly whack jobs or the angst ridden types) will say "Daaaaaaayuuuuuum!"
But the book....the book is awesome. For the book, I definitely have to get my pimp on. So if you'll excuse me for a moment while I don my purple-feathered fedora.
World War Z is listed as a novel, but it is probably better characterized as a set of contiguous short stories and vignettes from within the same setting--each a first person narration, and many from particularly dramatic moments in the war. Though it is tied together through the motif of a journalist gathering "the personal stories" from the war, and though there is timeline continuity to the stories, none of the characters actually meet each other, nor are any of the stories related directly to any other. From an officer aboard a Chinese nuclear sub, to a pilot downed behind the zombie-free zones, to a soldier on the front lines of the counter-offensive in the U.S., the reader gets to see the overarching history, but at the same time does so through a patchwork of separated first person narrations. In terms of setting and some themes, it might work as a novel, but in regards to characterization, plot, and many of the individual thematic struggles, it really is a collection of short stories.
You can already see how the format wouldn't lend itself easily to a movie. Vignette movies don't do very well unless they're very cleverly edited (like Love Actually--which might actually be a bad example since all those stories had tie ins with all the others). The need for movies to condense stories is particularly brutal to short stories. Likely, many of the World War Z vignettes would have to be scrapped, leaving fans disappointed, newcomers a bit confused and box office sales in a flushing toilet. That or they would do what 20th Century Fox did to that abomination of a movie, I Robot, and just take the name of the title and like one character to generate buzz for a travesty of a movie that is (at best) vaguely related to the source material. (I mean...it did have robots, I guess.) Based on the IMBD description of the movie (due out in lateish June) it will be butchered--butchered worse than the last John I had who didn't pay his overdue fines.
Max Brooks's novel deserves better than to be passed over by untold legions of people thinking "Yeah, but the movie sucked King Kong's scroat man." You owe yourself to read this book before the movie comes out so that the love is firmly ensconced in your heart and will weather the trial by fire.
These short stories are awesome. They explore both ARMAGEDDON and PERSONAL HORROR of zombies and deal well with zombies as both a virus instead of a predator (like vampires or werewolves) but also as a symbol for the loss of individuality. But mostly what he nails is the fact that zombies are never the real threat--we are. These aren't the campy villains of a George Romero or Peter Jackson movie either--slipping and sliding on an ice rink or having sex and little zombie babies--they are genuinely terrifying creatures described by Brooks with one horrifying detail after another. There are moments that sent chills up this little gnome's spine, and believe me that this little gnome has read his fair share of books. KnowwhatImeanyesyoudo.
Is the book perfect? No. The voices of the narrators are a little too similar, so it's hard not to imagine Broooks as every one of his characters (kind of like Hannibal in The A-Team where you can totally tell that all his "disguises" are George Peppard). Also there are a few details of the war that are a little too skimmed over. Brooks usually does a good job with exposition--leaking details as if the imagined audience shouldn't be unaware--but some parts of the overarching plot are a little too vague. It is easy to imagine that Brooks (or his editor) took a story or three out of the anthology and a bit of the important exposition went with it.
Still, Brooks's real genius throughout the book is his social and political commentary. He really took the time to consider a realistic reaction from different countries, and you will most likely find yourself struck by just how plausible the stories feel. From the corporations selling placebos in the U.S. while the government denies the scope of the problem to the complete walled isolationism of Israel, to the denial of anything wrong at all by China because that is where it started, every reaction to the zombies seems to have been actually considered by Brooks through a modern historical lens. I stopped several times to think, "you know, if it ever did happen, it is not unreasonable to think that this is how it would unfold." In a fully technological world, it is not the zombies that would be the biggest problems but our reaction (or lack of reaction) to them.
And I can personally attest to the fact that not one person tries to take their blood pressure while they're being chased.
You know it's a good book, or I wouldn't be pimping it, but this is still a fairly new segment, so I'm really going to be pimping only the best. If you like zombies--or you just want to know why people like zombies so much--this book is a must. Don't make me use my "Bust a Cap" power which is on cool-down and ready to rock. If I weren't a staunch feminist, and if books were women, World War Z would be one of my very best hos.
We're overdue for a new poll here. I think after the epic scope of the last one and it's three months of quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals a moment's respite was needed. Also, I kept asking people what the new poll should be about and getting back the sound of crickets on a lonely stretch of late-summer Michigan backroads. But I think I'm going to go with the epic and the respite when I tell the story.
Yep, it was just too epic. We needed a break from all the epicness.
So our last poll was about Science Fiction/Fantasy series. As was pointed out, it probably should have been one or the other, but what was intended as a whimsical little poll turned into the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny. This time let's talk about stand alone books. And let's limit it to SCIENCE FICTION. The book can be the start of a series (or even in a series) as many books that did well eventually had sequels written when one wasn't first intended. It has to also stand alone as a single work. (So no ending on a cliff hanger.) For example, Star Wars would be a stand alone movie, but The Empire Strikes Back would not.
What is the best stand alone Science Fiction novel?
You may use any criteria you wish. Most foundational. Most literary. Most fun. Best sex scene that I used to fap to because we didn't have internet when I was a kid. Or even some combination of these factors that only you know in dark places that you don't talk about at parties.
You may also define Science Fiction however you wish. I'm not going to police the meanings of the sub-genres, so unless your submission is WAY off base (like Spell For Chameleon or something), I will pretty much accept that you have your reasons for calling it Science Fiction. (Just know that eventually we'll do a poll for fantasy, superhero fiction, alternative history, horror, utopian/distopian, and surreal/weird/other, and maybe even other main genres if there's interest, so if you love a book that seems like a square peg for science fiction, you can save it for later.)
I'll be putting the following books up for consideration.
Left Hand of Darkness--LeGuin 1984-Orwell (which is alternative history NOW, but was science fiction when it was written) Slaughterhouse Five--Vonnegut
But three choices do not a poll make, so I need you all to write in some suggestions that will join them on the poll. Please limit it to one choice or perhaps two if you are torn and simply cannot decide. But this is for best novel, so choosing which one is best is part of it. I'll probably put the poll up this coming weekend.
I'm not going to do multiple rounds this time, so which novels go up will depend on how many times something gets nominated. If there are ties, I will weigh more heavily those who responds HERE (instead of on FB or G+), and those who respond first.
And lastly, these lists tend to be ABSOLUTE sausage fests, so please pleaseplease feel free to nominate women authors. There are some faboo writers out there with voices outside of the white male paradigm. Butler, L'Engle, Shelly, Atwood, LeGuin and more have written wonderful science fiction that is worth considering.
So the write-in nominations have been tabulated, and here is the poll for best stand-alone science fiction novel. 
If you wrote a nomination as a response to the X-post for the entry (on either G+ or Facebook) I didn't take the nomination. They were good nominations, but I mentioned in the [original post] that I would favor the nomination written as a response to the post. I need people to come to the site.
