Experience Points

I’ve mentioned experience once or thrice over the past few posts, and I figured it might not be a bad thing to blather on about. It’s one of those things we all talk about and acknowledge, but also all like to believe we’ve got enough and don’t need any more. Mostly because... well, how much is enough? How do you even measure experience? Are there real-world units of experience?

Anyway, let me toss out a few things we can all think about. Like this story you may remember. It’s funny and I’ve told it before.

As it says in the little bio over on the right, I’ve got really old New England roots. I mostly grew up in Maine, but I spent my high school years down in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Yes, with the Rock and the Mayflower and all that. One of the big tourist attractions there is Plimoth Plantation, a sort of ongoing LARP museum/interactive show of the original colony in the year 1627. Likewise, all the actors there are playing specific, actual historical figures from that year. You can walk in, talk to the different “residents,” and they’ll answer questions about what they’re doing at the moment or “current events.” Sometimes, depending, they’ll also ask about your odd and extremely improper clothing (young lady, are you showing your shoulders?!? In public?!?)

(weird fun fact—if you’ve ever seen that late ‘80s movie Warlock, the whole “Boston Colony” sequence they show at the beginning with the little town is actually Plimoth Plantation)

Anyway... a friend of mine from high school worked at the Plantation. They assigned her an age-appropriate historical role, and part of that role was getting married at the end of the summer to another character, Experience Mitchell (ahhh, Puritan names). The thing was, my friend kinda had a behind-the-scenes thing for another Pilgrim. So on the big day, she told me one of her co-workers gave her a “wedding gift” in the changing room, a t-shirt that said...

            Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

It was a clever pun, yeah, but the phrase stuck with me because... well, it’s true.  If you talk to anyone who’s considered experienced, it’s because they failed or screwed up. Probably a lot.

Now—somewhat back on track—in one of the Sandman books, I remember someone (I think it was Eve?) told Matthew the Raven that everyone has at least three great stories in them. This is true, but I think there’s also an unspoken corollary there which is just as important. And it gets ignored a lot.

Yes, we all have at least three great stories in us, but we also have all have lots and lots of bad stories in us. Dozens of them. Maybe even hundreds. We have awful characters, contrived plots, cringe-worthy dialogue, and some incomprehensible structure. We’re not even going to talk about those horrible twists or the very awkward sex scene.

Yes, I’m saying we. I’ve written sooooooo much bad stuff none of you are ever going to see. My third grade attempt at a novel, Lizard Men From the Center of the Earth.  My middle-school sci-fi novel.  My Boba Fett and Doctor Who fan-fiction. My junior high fantasy novel.  My high school werewolf-detective novel.  My college novel, The Trinity.  My after-college-moved-to-California novel, The Suffering Map. And mixed in there are a ton of comic scripts, short stories, screenplays, and I think even one solid attempts at a stage play. Thousands of pages.  Thousands of hours of work.

And pretty much across the board, all that work sucks.

It sucks on different levels, for different reasons, but don’t doubt that most of it sucks hard. I spent weeks and months and years in one case writing stuff that should never again see the light of day. I’ve got no problem admitting it. In fact, being able to admit it let me move from being a random dabbler to a serious writer. I spent about twenty years digging through all those bad stories and found the good ones underneath.  Maybe even one or two great ones.

Writing all those stories was my experience. I had to get them out. Whenever you hear about an overnight success or an amazing “first” novel, odds are that writer’s got a really long string of awful work behind them. Sure, there’s always a chance they really are an overnight success—sometimes those great stories are right on the surface, the way a prospector might kick over a rock and find a gold nugget just sitting there. But for the most part, becoming a good writer means a lot of, well, not getting what you want. Doing the work and then doing... more work.

Y’see, Timmy, there’s an all-too-common belief that just finishing something means it’s good. I mean, I made it all the way through to the end on my first try. That’s a lot of writing. That novel must be worth publishing and being read, right?

But the truth is, the vast majority of first novels are awful. And that's okay. The second ones are pretty bad, too. Ex-Heroes was my first published novel, yeah , but it was my seventh-and-a-half attempt at writing one. And, as I hinted above, I’m really glad it was the first one people saw.

Because that junior high fantasy novel... jeeez, less said about that one the better. So embarrassing. On so many levels.

Sometimes we pour our hearts into something, spend weeks or months or even years on it, and we still don’t get us what we want. But at least we get some experience. If we admit we need it.

Next time, I think I want to talk about what was happening a few days before this.

Until then... go write.

Thank Your Rich Uncle...

Happy Birthday to me. Well, belated birthday. Monday was a day of action figures and LEGO sets and many games and drinks with my fully vaxxed friends. It was a wonderful way to turn <<--DC REBOOT-->> years old.

Anyway... now that I am somewhat old and wise, I wanted to take a moment to blather on about something that’s been itching at my brain for a while. And I know it's going to be a touchy subject for some people, so I'll try to tread lightly.

MFA programs. Why do these things even exist?

See! I told you it'd be touchy! Just to be clear right up front, this is absolutely not a swing at anyone who made it through an MFA program and got a degree. I know MFA writers are popular punching bags for some people, and this is not one of those posts. I’m a huge believer that pretty much all education ends up being useful (even if not always in the way it was intended) and I’ve got massive respect for anyone who actually did it. I enjoyed my four years at UMass, but I also know I wouldn’t’ve had the stamina (or the resources) to make a graduate degree happen. So this is, again, not coming down on anyone who scraped and clawed their way up through a higher level of higher education and came out on top.

You absolutely rock. Seriously. Never doubt it.

The people who gave you that MFA though...

Probably a good point to mention before I get going is none of this has been triple-checked or peer reviewed or anything like that. But within my own experience--including a degree of research specifically about this--I haven't found anything to contradict any of it. Like, a disturbing number of things line up with this half-assed theory I’m about to present to you.

So... one of the main reasons writers and other artists tend to get the liberal/ fruity/ beatnik type labels is because, traditionally, if I wanted to learn one of these fields I just did it. People didn’t go to school to learn how to write, they just wrote. They dropped out of “productive society” and wrote a lot. For the vast majority of folks this meant finding a dirt-cheap apartment in a city close to publishers (to save postage costs), drinking cheap booze, having cheap affairs, and skipping two meals a day to pay for supplies. Eventually (hopefully) I learned from experience, got better, and then people started to pay me. That’s where the stereotype of the starving artist comes from—most of these folks went hungry while they learned their art. I talked about this at length a few birthdays back...

Yeah, if I was really lucky I might find some kind of mentor to show me how to hold a brush, where to hit the marble with the chisel, or to read the first half page of my story and offer a dozen notes right there. But these were kinda few and far-between. I mean, think about it. In terms of any general population (pick your favorite city or state or country) there are only going to be so many successful artists. So out of that limited number, I need to actually find one of them, and it needs to be someone in the field I want to study, and they need to be willing to offer some sort of mentorship, AND they need to have space/ time for me, personally. I mean, there’s probably hundreds of other people looking for mentors too, right? It absolutely happened, no question... but it probably didn’t happen a lot, just applying a little common sense.

Now the reason people had to learn this way is universities and colleges didn’t teach the arts. No painting or dance or acting or writing. Really. They were professional institutions. People went there to learn engineering, medicine, chemistry, law. You know... real jobs.

Worth noting there were a very small number of these schools with writing classes. But even in those cases this wasn't something you got a degree in. It was just a side thing—some exercises to maybe help you write a better closing speech for the jury.

And yes, I know—there were a few specialist art school out there. Very few, comparatively speaking. The odd music academy or dance conservatory. But this wasn’t considered higher education. It was—at best—more like we’d consider a vocational school. And if you think about it, that kind of makes sense. Sure I can teach you how to write notation for sheet music and how to blow on a flute. But I can’t teach you how to compose the song in your head. And as we’ve talked about here many, many times, somebody can’t teach you the “correct” way for you to write. We all need to figure that out for ourselves.

So what changed? How did writing (and the other arts) suddenly become a “teachable” thing? Well, two things happened. Actually, one thing happened, but a second thing had a very powerful impact on that first one.

In reverse order, the second one was Nazis. Hate those guys, right? In case you missed that week of  grade school history, in the mid-late 1930s a right-wing fascist group gained a ton of power in Germany and made life miserable for pretty much everyone in Europe. And a lot of people in Africa. And Asia. Eventually the US joined in the fight (to quote Eddie Izzard, “after a couple of years, we won’t stand for that anymore!”) and sent sixteen million people off to fight.

After WWII, a lot of folks—like with WWI before it—were just left wrecked by the scale of it all. The things they’d done. The things they’d seen. I mean, by the numbers, the odds were you saw someone die every single day. For maybe four years. So when the war ended, most US servicemen got a slow boat home. A deliberately slow boat. So these soldiers had time to breathe, to look at the waves, and to talk. Most importantly, to do it with a bunch of people who’d just gone through the same things they did.

And when they got home, that first thing I mentioned was waiting for them.

Y’see, the US Government had come up with something called the GI Bill. WWI (and its aftermath) was still fresh in a lot of folks’ minds and everybody wanted to make sure this new wave of veterans were taken care of when they came home. So the government said “When you finish your tour, go to college on us! We'll cover it.” Because it was a win-win for the United States. We’re taking care of veterans and we’re making more doctors, engineers, and scientists. Wooo! Yay us! We rock!

So these guys got home, Big Government pulled out the big checkbook and said “Congrats on surviving--what college do you want to go to? What do you want to study? Law? Medicine? Rocket science? We’re going to need some more rocket scientists pretty soon.”

But a bunch of these guys said “Y'know... I think I might just take a year or three off and process all this some more. Work through it. Maybe write a book or some poetry, put some of this stuff in my head down on the page while I try to figure out what I'm doing next.”

Now this wasn’t the first time Uncle Sam had heard something like this (again, WWI just thirty years earlier). So he shoved the checkbook back in his pocket, put a firm hand on these guys’ collective shoulders and said “Good on you, man. You go do what you need to do to get right.”

And that would’ve been it. Except... suddenly the collective colleges and universities of America said “Whoa, whoa, WHOA! You promised us all this GI Bill money! You said hundreds of thousands of soldiers were going to be signing up for college!”

”Yeah,” said Big Government, “but they don't want to be doctors or lawyers now. They just want to write a book about their experiences.”

”Well, let's not be hasty,” said the CEO of All Colleges. “I mean we... we've got writing... programs.”

"You do?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. A whole department. Several departments. They could absolutely get a degree in... in the arts. In fine arts, even! You just write those checks, Big Uncle Sammy, we'll have everything ready by September.”

Worth noting my friend M.L. Brennan (college professor and vampire author) heard this line of thought from me a while back and pointed out all of this continued (arguably got a lot worse) in the ‘90s when college loans became a serious for-profit business. Higher education became less about, well, education and more about making money. So it’s not surprising MFA programs multiplied like bunnies shortly after that. You want to go to college for what? Yeah, sure, we’ve got a program for that. Just sign your loan papers...

And that’s how writing became something that's taught. Colleges and universities just wanted the money. Which also meant now they needed to make up rules and guidelines and formulas to try to teach all these things. Because if there weren't any rules, they wouldn’t be able to issue grades and some students couldn’t do better than others. Which would mean this “degree” I got is... well, kinda pointless. Maybe even worthless.

Which brings us to the last thing I'm going to say about MFA programs—their abysmal success rate. Seriously. For most college degrees (of any level), we say “making a living at it” is more or less the end goal of getting the degree. If I go to school to be, say, a high school teacher, and 83% of us in that program become high school teachers, that’s a pretty successful program, right?

With that in mind, as another friend, Kristi Charish, has pointed out... what would you think of a school where less than 5% of education graduates end up making a living as teachers? What could we say about an engineering program where only one or two students out of the entire graduating class actually become engineers?

I mean... seriously, does that sound like a successful program? A terribly useful degree? Especially if there are dozens of other people becoming successful teachers or engineers without that degree? I mean, Kristi told me at her school the science department had produced more successful novelists than the MFA program.

And again, I want to stress, this isn’t about the people who got those degrees. As I said at the start of this, I’m impressed by anyone who makes it through a graduate program. And I absolutely think some useful learning can come out of it.

But if someone’s about to make that choice, I’ve got to be honest... I’d tell them it’s probably not worth it. They might get something out of it, yeah, but odds are they could get that thing somewhere else. Probably a lot easier and definitely a lot cheaper.

Also again... none of this has been rigorously reviewed. There could very well be a dozen facts I missed just sitting out there, ready to tear this whole chain of thought apart brick by brick. And if so, please give me those facts. I’m always glad to know more.

Next time... I want to talk about the story that happens five years later. Or really, the opening that happened five years ago. 

Until then, go write.

Hatching The Plot

I haven’t had to come up with an idea in weeks because all of you keep asking questions. And I’m really grateful because my attention’s been split, like, nine different ways lately so having one task where I’m just being told what to do is kind of relief. Seriously.

That said... we did the Writers Coffeehouse at WonderCon again this year (many thanks to Sarah Kuhn, Stephen Blackmoore, Fonda Lee, and Greg van Eekhout for taking part) and tried to answer a lot of your questions about writing. But after we finished recording, I realized someone had sent a question I hadn’t seen. Probably because social media algorithms tend to be jerks. Anyway, Tomasthanes asked...

”How did you learn how to plot? Did you take a course? Did you work through 50+ spreadsheets? Are you ‘gifted’ and just do it? What does the product of your plotting look like?”

Personally, I think there’s a bit of a mystique element to questions like this. Some of you may remember I’ve talked once or thrice about the difference between the textbook ability to write and the ability to compose a narrative. A simple analogy I’ve used is the difference between being able to cook and being a chef. It’s something I think a lot of us come to realize on some level when we start really examining this whole writing thing in a serious way.

However—and this is just my thoughts on this, don’t take them as gospel truth—I think this realization can also backfire on us for a bit. Some folks assume there must be some specific “pro level” they need to achieve for every aspect and element of writing. They must absorb the life-energies of ten other writers and then they'll know how to pick the grade-A ideas and create master-class characters and have, I don’t know, gold star spelling ability.

Truth is, most of these skills and tools work the same way on the expert levels. It’s just that those folks have more experience using them. It’s like thinking chefs get some kind of special knife that lets them chop faster or make interesting cuts. It’s not any different than the knives you or I probably have. They’re just more experienced with it and have learned a few tricks that work well for them.

And when it comes to plotting... the truth is, most of us already know how to plot. We learned from comics and cartoons and movies and fairy tales yes maybe even from books (wilder things have happened). We understand the basic chain of cause and effect that makes up every story.

So I don’t think it’s so much learning how to plot. It’s just figuring out how to get better at it. Finding a workout routine that works best for us, whether it be working through 50+ spreadsheets or... something else.

Anyway, here’s an easy something else for you to try.

Think of a story you loved as a kid. Not in the YA range, but more single digit. Maybe it was a book or a comic, possibly a movie or TV show. Something you know you loved.

Here’s the catch—it needs to be something you loved then, but you’ve since revisited and discovered it’s not as great as you remembered. Maybe it feels a little goofy or simplistic now. I mean, it might just be flat-out stupid. A plodding structure, a complete lack of worthwhile challenges, painfully obvious clues for the transparent "mystery.” I bet if you’re the type of person who reads these little rants, you can think of at least one story like that, right?

(I know I can)

So... think about how that story’s bad. Why is it silly or goofy? What would need to change, structure-wise, for it to be better? Something more suited for an older, somewhat more savvy audience?

Does it begin at a good point, or does it need a new one? Is there some sort of antagonist? Should there be? Are there real stakes? If not, what needs to be done to the story to increase them? What did our hero do to accomplish their goals? Were they actually challenged? Is there a satisfying ending? Or at least, satisfying in terms of the story I'm telling?

If you can explain why alongside any of these answers, even better.

A lot of these tweaks will probably also mean making adjustments to my characters. They might need to be a little more complex to justify some of their decisions and actions in the story. And that means they may end up having an arc of some kind, a story, and well, I’ve talked about that feedback loop. Plot pushing story, story driving plot, which lead to the plot again having an effect on the story...

Whoa! Hey, look at that. We’re plotting stuff. Just like the professionals do.

Will this be perfect? No, probably not. Like I said up above, there is an experience aspect to this as well. Some folks might have a knack for it, others may need a little more work, but none of us are going to be phenomenal at it right out of the gate. Maybe not out of our fifth or sixth gate. But it’s not because we don’t know how to do it. It’s just because we’re still figuring out our way of doing it.

And speaking of doing it...

Next week I’ll be trying to finish a huge pitch document for this new project, so I’m probably not going to have a post for you. Unless one of you gives me a really amazing question that I feel compelled to answer as soon as possible. But check in here anyway and I may have a cartoon or quick thought for you.

Then after that... clowns. Probably.

Until then, go write.

Critical Hit

            Okay, first of two posts this week, as promised...

            So a while back at the LA Writers Coffeehouse we were going to talk about criticism.  All the directions it can come from.  What it’s like from either end. How to put it out there.  How to receive it.  We never got around to it there, so I thought I'd talk about it here.

            Just to be different, though, let’s approach this from the tougher angle, in my opinion.  Giving criticism.

            I know that’s hard to believe—that giving criticism can be the hard part.  I mean, just check out any social media site.  Over the past week or so there’ve been tons of people offering critiques of... y’know, different stories.  Often for free. Usually unasked for.

            And, most of the time, not very good.

            Criticism—actual, constructive criticism—is a bit more than ranting online.  It’s being able to state quantifiable, true, relevant facts about a work.  There are a lot of folks who consider themselves critics who really just... spout their opinions a lot.

            I saw one of these recently.  Directed at me.  Someone had read one of my books, loved the first two thirds, but then it had an “action-packed, nonsense finale” that the reader didn’t like.  Which was a shame, because the rest of the book had been pretty good.

            I’ve talked a bit about this before, one of the first things to learn about giving criticism..  Me liking or not liking something isn’t really criticism.  It’s irrelevant.  That’s just a subjective opinion.

            This can be a tough thing to figure out sometimes.  It took me years to be able to separate my opinions from actual facts and observations about the story I was reading.  There are a lot of books and movies I didn’t like, but I can also acknowledge that doesn’t make them bad.  It just means they’re not for me. 

            So that’s lesson one in offering good criticism. Separating my opinion from actual facts.  Anyone can say “this sucks.”  If I’m trying to offer valid criticism, I need to be the person  who can explain why it sucks.

            And remember—“I didn’t like it” isn’t a reason.

            This should bring us to the second point about giving criticism.  It should be constructive, not destructive.  The goal isn’t to rip something apart, it’s to explain why and how it can be better.  Yes, sometimes this might mean a couple blunt, harsh truths will need to come out.  But even these don’t need to be designed to make the writer cry for weeks.  If that’s why I offered to critique someone’s work, well... I’m doing this for all the wrong reasons.

            Here’s a good rule of thumb.  I shouldn’t point out problems if I can’t offer some kind of actual solution.  This is also a good way to figure out if this is an opinion-vs.-criticism issue.  It’s tough to change opinions, but if something’s actually wrong, it shouldn’t be hard for me to figure out some way to fix it.

            Keep in mind, this doesn’t have to be a good solution.  My editor—a very high ranking editor at Random House—freely admits he’s great at spotting problems, awful at coming up with solutions.  But he’ll always have an answer whenever I ask about something.

            And I shouldn’t offer these solutions unless the writer specifically asks for them—it’d be rude of me to start explaining how someone else should be writing their story.  I mentioned helping a friend with her travel book a while back, and twice or thrice in the notes I’d point out an issue and say “I have an idea that might help with this—let me know if you’re interested.”

            Which is a great lead in to my third point.  If I’m going to offer criticism, I should know what I’m talking about.  This is a tricky one, because it means a lot more than “I read a book every week” or “I’ve seen every Best Picture winner.”  It especially means more than “I just want to read it early.”

            Being able to offer a good critical analysis means being able to juggle a lot of hats.  I need some actual knowledge and understanding of different structure forms and grammar.  I need to have read more than two or three “how to write a bestseller” books.  It wouldn’t hurt if I’ve sat and thought about this knowledge and absorbed it a bit.

            And just book-learning isn’t going to cut it.  I also need a lot of practical experience.  Lots and lots of reading.  Not just the classics. Not just the NYT bestsellers.  Not just the "good" stuff.  I need a broad-yet-solid background in the subject matter—no one should be asking me to read their hospital-based romance, and if they do I should be clear up front this isn’t quite my area of expertise.

            There’s also an empathy issue here, too.  I’ve mentioned a few times that writers have to have a good sense of empathy—if I can’t put myself in other people’s shoes, I’m going to have a tough time as a storyteller. Same goes for critiquing a story.  I need to be able to see what effect the writer’s going for and be able to predict how people are going to react to it.  If I can’t do this, my whole critique is going to collapse.
            And that brings us to the fourth and final point.  This one’s going to sound obvious.  If someone’s going to trust me with their work, if I’m going to tell them I’ll critique it... I should.  They’re asking for feedback and I should make an honest effort to give it to them.  There’s few things more frustrating for a writer than waiting weeks for feedback and getting a one line email that says “Yeah, I liked it.  It was fun.”

            You may laugh but...  I’ve had beta-readers do that.  Which is why they’re not beta-reading for me anymore.

            Likewise, comments that are too vague to help... don’t really help.  I shouldn’t be writing things like “I saw a couple typos—you’ll probably catch them next time through.”  Again, if I’m doing a critique, I should be noting all this stuff.  Getting caught up in it isn’t an excuse—I’m not supposed to be reading this for fun.  I should take my time and do it right.  As the man says (paraphrased), treat them the way you’d want to be treated.

            Now, with all that said... here’s two positive things about giving criticism.

            One is that it doesn’t need to be stiff. Unless I’ve been hired as a professional, I’m reading/critiquing for somebody I know.  Possibly someone I even consider a friend.  I can have fun with this.  It can be conversational.  It can be funny/snarky/flirty whatever.  I don’t need to change my relationship with someone to offer them criticism.  They want it from me, not from Professor Huffy von Formalnotes.

            Two is that... well, I don’t have to read it all.  No, I don’t.  Really. I’m not getting paid, I’m not doing this as part of a formal submission... I don’t need to read all 815 pages. 

            At least three or four times I’ve read books for friends who wanted feedback and forty or fifty pages in it was clear there were... inherent issues.  Things that weren’t going to change.  Things that were going to kill the book’s chances if an editor or agent read those first fifty pages. So I stopped there.  I gave them all the notes I’d made up to that point, and then explained the bigger problems I was seeing.  And that was it. My time is valuable—and so’s theirs.  They don’t need to read twenty pages of notes from me repeating the same things over and over and over again.

            And again.

            There you have it.  Some tips to giving better criticism.  Maybe even a few tips about dealing with it if you read around the edges a bit (and follow some of the links).

            Next time... well, we’re closing in on the holidays, and after all this criticism we could probably talk about some good stuff, yes?

            Until then, go write.

Our Aluminum Anniversary Post

            So very sorry I missed last week.  There were copyedits.  I got about 3/4 of a post done in my spare time, but I was never quite happy with it, and then last Thursday was here and gone.

            And now here’s Thursday again.

            As it turns out, though, this turned out to be a fantastic bit of lucky timing.

            This, my friends-students-lurkers-haters-et al, is the 400th post here on the ranty blog.  Yep.  Four.  Hundred.  I know that doesn’t really mean much, in the big scheme of things.  There are some folks who post way, way more frequently than I ever will.

            Still, though... that’s a lot of random writing rules and advice I’ve been spouting out over the years.  Granted, there were a couple of amusing pictures mixed in there, plus I’ve revisited the same topic a few times, but...c’mon, it’s a pretty cool milestone.

            Okay, fine. You’re not impressed.  How about this, then...

            Sunday, it’ll be ten years since I first started said ranty blog.

            TEN. YEARS.

            To put that in perspective, the first Iron Man movie, the one that kicked off the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe?  That was nine years ago.  Ten years ago nobody’d heard of Breaking Bad or Fifty Shades of Grey.  Hell, ten years ago nobody’d ever heard of Sarah Palin.

            To be honest, nobody’d ever heard of me, either.

            Probably also worth mentioning there’ve been a little over 770 comments posted here in that time. So many thanks to all of you who’ve stumbled across this pile of rants. It’s always nice to know I’m not shouting into the void.

            Ten years.

            This revamp’s long overdue, yes?  Blogger’s overhauled many of its formats. A lot more of you are reading this on tablets or smartphones (something else that would’ve been a mystery ten years ago).  This whole page could be a lot more mobile-friendly.

            Plus, let’s be honest. I’m ten years older. Some of you are, too.  Most of you are going to be.  The white-text-on-black setup wasn’t helping anyone.

            Soooooooo... Whadda you think?

            Okay, talk about that down in the comments. Since we’re looking at a big momentous anniversary (and did anyone get me an aluminum ring?  No!) and I’ve been doing the Writers Coffeehouse for over a year now, I wanted to be clear on something.  I’ve kind of talked about this on and off, but it struck me it might be worth saying in really clear, absolute terms.

            I am not a writing guru. 

            Hell, forget guru, I’m not much of a writing teacher.  I’m barely a writing adviser.  Most of the Coffeehouse folks can vouch for this.  At best, I’m kind of the old writing hermit up in the hills.  You can ask me questions and I’ll shake my fist and shout some kind of answer, but I’d guess at least half the time my answer won’t work for you.  Probably closer to 2/3 of the time.

            That's the Golden Rule I've mentioned here once or thrice.  Writing is a very individual, very personal process. What works for me might not work for you. It definitely won't work for him.

            So... how is that different from being a guru?

            Well, because I’m admitting it might not work.  Not for everyone.  I’m telling you that up front.  There is no “right” way to do this.  At best, we can pin down some methods that work better than others and a few more that are more likely to hinder than help.  But past that...

          Okay, I’m going to tell you a really old, really stupid joke.  I apologize in advance, but it’s kind of important.  Ready?

            A man goes to the doctor’s office.  He holds his arm out, rotates it counter-clockwise at the shoulder, and says “Doc, it hurts like hell whenever I do this.” 

            The doctor looks at him, shrugs, and says “Don’t do that.  That’ll be twenty dollars.”

            Yep, twenty dollars for a doctor’s visit.  Told you it was an old joke.

           Now, on a basic level, the doctor has taken care of the patient’s problem.  And it’s kind of a win-win for the doctor.  If the man keeps doing it and the pain persists, he’s going against the doctor’s orders and the doc was right telling him to stop.  If he doesn’t do it and there’s no pain, then the doctor was right telling him to stop.

            The catch here, of course, is that the doctor hasn’t actually done anything.  And that’s how a lot of gurus operate.  They know how tough it can be to succeed in this business, so they charge a lot of money and offer foolproof advice.  Foolproof in the sense of it can’t fail, because the advice is not to do anything.

            I used to see this mentality in the film industry a lot.  A script will normally go through what they call “clearance.”  It’s when a lawyer or legal assistant goes through the screenplay looking for possible legal issues, usually with names, addresses, and prominently mentioned items.  Is this character name common, or is there only one person with this name in that city?  Should someone bitch and complain about Microsoft products by name on screen?  The clearance people are supposed to do some research and then give everything a thumbs down (because you might get sued) or a thumbs up (you’re in the clear).

            Guess what, though?  About nineteen times out of twenty, they just say don’t do it.  Don’t use that name, don’t mention that product, don’t refer to that person.  No matter what it is, you might get sued, so don’t use it. 

            Y’see, Timmy, if I tell you not to do something and you don’t, there’s no problem—I was right.  If I tell you not to do it, you do anyway, and nothing happens, then you were lucky—and I was right.  If I tell you not to do it, you do anyway, and  you get sued... well, I told you not to do it.  It’s not my fault.  No matter what the actual outcome is, by saying no, I’m always correct. 

            This is what I see overwhelmingly from gurus (both prose and screenwriting).  Rather than actually teach anything, far too many of them just give lists of what not to do.  Don’t do flashbacks. Don’t use passive voice.  Don’t take too long to introduce characters.   Don’t have your inciting incident any later than page nineteen.  Don’t use “we see.” Don’t use “said.”  Don’t do voiceover in scripts.

            And, again, they’re never wrong, because saying no is always correct.

            On the other hand, I try to explain how these things work. Of course you can use flashbacks.  Introduce characters whenever it’s appropriate for your individual story.  And please, please, please try to use “said” more than any other dialogue descriptor. These devices wouldn’t exist if they didn’t work—they would’ve died out centuries ago. Actual centuries.  It’s just easier and quicker to say “don’t use them” then it is to explain how to use them correctly.

            Especially if said guru doesn’t know how to use them correctly.

            There’s another way I’m different from a guru.  I have actual, recent experience.  Not references or testimonials—experience.  I honestly can’t tell you the number of self-proclaimed experts I’ve seen who haven’t had a single sale in their chosen industry in years.  Assuming they’ve ever even had a sale.  One of my favorites was a “script doctor” I’d never, ever heard of (keeping in mind, I worked in the film industry for fifteen years and then reported on it for another five) who assured would-be clients that he’d worked on lots and lots of big box office films... none of which he was allowed to name for confidentiality reasons. 

            Remember, real professionals don’t have testimonials—they have credits. Recent credits.  Every industry changes over time.  Publishing, filmmaking, programming, farming—all of them.  The longer it’s been since I’ve done something, the less likely it is that my knowledge of said industry is any good.  You might remember a couple weeks back I mentioned I wasn’t going to offer screenplay advice anymore because it’d been a while since I actively did anything in the film industry.  I don’t want to mislead anyone with out-of-date advice about how to put a screenplay together. 

            Yeah, there are still format posts here if anyone wanted to go digging (look, here’s one), but it’s also clear these aren’t current.  So I’m going off the basic assumption that if someone finds their way here, they’re smart enough to think twice before blindly following something from a year ago.

            I mean, let’s just approach this logically.  If Wakko really knows how to write a novel that publishers will pay half a million for... why is he nickel-and diming you and me? Why are we paying him $500 for a three-day weekend course when a film studio might give him $750,000—plus residuals?

            Don’t get me wrong.  There are a bunch of very talented, very experienced people out there offering writing advice and asking for a couple of bucks.  I personally know at least half a dozen writers who’ve put out books of writing tips and advice.  I’ve toyed with the idea myself.  But, again, they’re all professionals.  Offering writing advice is a side business, not their primary one. 

            Which is, y’know... writing.

            And that brings me to my last point.  It’s not a hard fast rule, but I’d say it’s a pretty solid rule of thumb.  Most of the professionals who offer writing advice... just offer it.  They don’t want a huge amount of cash up front. They’re not asking $85 for a self-published textbook.

            The reason for this is pretty simple.  The vast majority of us who’ve made it up here to the top half of the ladder only got here because we got help and encouragement from other professionals along the way.  I can look back and know I only made it here because of advice and tips I got from several writing professionals along the way, almost all of whom gave me that advice for free (one was a college professor—and a two-time Pen/Faulkner winner with nine books to his name at that point).

            The question I need to ask myself is... is that big pile of don’ts from somebody with no experience worth $650?  Or maybe a grand?  Hell, is it even worth fifty bucks?

            And that’s why I’m not a guru.

            And it’s part of the reason I’ve been writing out suggestions and tips and not-so-gentle nudges here for the past ten years.

            Again, thanks for being here.

            Next time, I’ll probably prattle about words, like I said I was going to do last week. Or maybe I’ll talk about this really cute foreign exchange student I knew in college. One of those things.

            Until then... go write.

Dealing With Blockage

            This week, I wanted to talk a bit about a familiar malady we’ve all heard of—writer’s block.

            It happens to all of us. Y’know, four out of five writers experience writer’s block at some point in their career.  Almost 83% on average end up...

            Okay, that’s not true.

            None of it.

            I’ve got to be honest. I fall into the same camp as Isaac Asimov and Piers Anthony.  I just don’t believe in writer’s block.  Sorry.

            Now, let me be clear.  Yeah, there are days that I hate writing.  Of course there are.  This is a full time job for me, and guess what—like everyone else on Earth, there are days I hate my job. 

            Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a fantastic job, it’s the job I’ve wanted pretty much my whole life (aside from brief dabblings with “astronaut” and “giant robot pilot”)... but there are days it frustrates me. There are days I pull my hair out. There are days I still worry if I’m good enough, days I fret about my future, and days I wonder if I should’ve just sucked it up and found another job as a prop master.

            But... I never have writer’s block.

            There’s always something I want to write.  I never have a shortage of words or ideas.  I never stare at the screen and can’t come up with anything.

            I think--and this is all just my opinion, so YMMV—that writer’s block is kind of a made up thing, like the muse.  It’s an easy excuse not to write.  When I see people online talking about being blocked for months or years... I have to be honest, I just don’t buy it.

            I think writer’s block tends to boil down to three very real, very relatable things...

            First is a voice issue.  Or maybe an empathy issue.  Kinda the same thing, for our purposes here.

            Let me explain.

            A few weeks ago at the Writers Coffeehouse, we talked a bit about voice.  I think—especially when we start out—a lot of us tend to write the way we speak.  Maybe a little cleaner or clearer, but it’s not that odd for writing patterns to match up with speech patterns.  Our narrative voice uses all the same words and phrases and metaphors that we do in our day to day life, because that comes naturally.  Makes sense, right?

            Thing is, when we go to write... things stop matching up.  If we’re any good at this writing thing, we recognize that high elf ladies probably don’t talk like office drones from Dallas or check out clerks from Portland.  They’re going to have different vocabularies and cadences.  They’re not going to sound like me.

            Suddenly I’m not writing “naturally” anymore.  This takes effort!  It’s work.  It means I need to put myself in a different headspace and look at the world—even my fictional world—in different ways.

            I think this particular form of writer’s block eliminates a lot of folks from the pool, one way or another. Either they keep going, writing dozens of different characters that all sound pretty much the same... or they give up because they can’t make them sound different.  And those folks will talk about being blocked. How they couldn’t get the ideas to flow or the characters didn’t want to come out or something like that...

            The second thing behind writer’s block is fear.  Plain old-fashioned fear. 

            I’ve talked about this before.  I think a lot of times when people say they can’t write, it’s more that they’re worried the stuff they are writing isn’t good enough.  Is this page, this paragraph, this sentence as good as it could be?  Have I used the best words?  The best description?  Is this the best way to phrase this?  Will this win me a Pulitzer or get me mocked on GoodReads?

            I think most of us go through this phase at one point or another.  We start over-analyzing our work and second-guessing everything we put down.  I’ve mentioned the term paralysis by analysis before, which I think sums this up perfectly.  We get so scared at the thought of doing something wrong—something that isn’t perfect—that we don’t do anything.  We freeze up.  We get... blocked.

            But we already know the solution to this one, too.  It’s just admitting that my work isn’t going to be perfect the first time out.  Perhaps not the second, either. It’s going to need editing.  Second and third and fourth drafts.  Maybe even full rewrites.  That’s just the way writing goes. And once I realize this—once I can really admit it to myself—I can get past that fear and my productivity will go through the roof.

            And this brings us to the third thing behind writer’s block. And this is the tough one. The hardest one to deal with.

            Sometimes people have writer’s block because they don’t have anything to write.

            There’s a lot of reasons people sit down and try to write.  Sometimes they think it’s easy.  Often they have a clever idea, but no real story.  Maybe they want the adoration for a finished work more than they want to... well, finish something.

            This sounds harsh, I know, but I think most of us know someone like this.  Someone who isn’t suffering from writers block, they just like the idea of being a writer more than the reality of being a writer.  Because the reality is that this isn’t easy—it’s a lot of work.  Some people just aren’t cut out for it.

            And look, if that’s you... this is a good thing.  Personally, if this isn’t what I’m made for, I’d rather know sooner than later.  Maybe I love writing as a recreational thing, but I’m just not geared to do it professionally.  That’s how I am with cooking.  And drawing.  And cosplay.  And running.  I like it, I have some rough talent for it, but I freely admit I’m not mentally wired to do it as more than a pastime.  If I hit a rough patch... well, I just shift to something else.

            Like some folks do with writing.

            Y’see, Timmy, if you ask me, writer’s block is really just a big, catch-all name we throw over other problems.  Inexperience.  Fear.  Lack of interest. It’s intimidating when it’s a vague concept, but once we break it down into an actual issue, we can address it and deal with it.

            And beat it.

            Next time, I’d like to talk about the type of story I’m working on.

            Until then... go write.

Imposter!

            Look!  We’re a day early because tomorrow I’m going to be cooking and watching a lot of my favorite black-and-white movies.  Joy!

            Well, not all joy...

            I need to get something off my chest.

            I’m a fraud.

            Seriously.

            I would guess, on an average week, this idea runs through my head five or six times (by odd coincidence, I tend to work five or six days a week).  The notion that I’m a complete fake who’s kind of stumbled into this life off sheer luck more than ability.  I re-read my new projects and wonder if they’re good or if I’m just deluding myself.  Maybe I don’t know a tenth of what I think I know—a textbook case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. 

            I sometimes wonder if the next book is going to be the one where my small fanbase gives a big shrug and says “ehhhhh... I guess he’s burned out.  Time to move on.” 

            I fret a lot about whether or not my publisher’s going to dump me as a writer, too. Well, not dump me, but just decide this latest contact will be... well, the last one.  Same with my agent.  He has some much, much bigger clients than me, and it’s not irrational to think he might decide his time and efforts are better spent focused on them.

            You may have heard of people feeling this way before.  It’s called imposter syndrome, and it’s really common.  I get it all the time.  Chuck Wendig gets it.  Victoria Schwab gets it.  Pretty much every writer I’ve ever talked to at length has copped to it. They’re plagued with self-doubt. They question most everything they write.

            (You didn’t think Hemingway drank that much because it was fashionable at the time, did you...?)

            I’m not saying this to freak you out or feed your insecurities.  I’m hoping it reassures you a bit.  We all feel this way sometimes.  Yeah, even those of us so-called-pros who are doing this full time.

            There are two reasons people get hit with imposter syndrome, in my so-called expert opinion.  For what it’s worth.  And they’re kinda related.  It’s almost the same thing, really.

            First is that, once I hit a certain stage in my writing, I start to see certain things.  I can admit to flaws in my work.  Of course, once I admit problems might be there, that also opens me up to imagining and creating problems. 

            As it happens, imagining and creating is what most writers do.  We’re good at it. Sometimes we do it even when we don’t want to...

            Second is fear.  I think imposter syndrome is a lot like writers block.  The act of creation—of pulling something out of my head and setting it down on paper—can be terrifying.  If you think about, it’s really common for people to talk themselves out of doing scary things.  Think of a couple times in your life when you had to do something that scared you.  How often did you end up thinking something along the lines of “ I can’t do this! What was I thinking?  I shouldn’t be here!”

            I can think of three or four times that sort of mantra ran through my head, all long before I became a full time writer.

            There’s a flipside to this, too.  The folks who are utterly, 110% confident their work is perfect, and that they absolutely should be professionals.  The ones who have no doubts at all.

            And yet, for some reason... they’re not.  They don’t make sales. They don’t get deals.  Usually because of gatekeepers or antiquated systems or something.  Definitely not because of them.

            I’ve run into a few folks like this. You probably have, too.

            Y’see, Timmy, I shouldn’t look at imposter syndrome as a problem.  Oh, it sucks, yeah, and it can lead to one or three stressful days or nights. But really it’s a sign of my maturity as a writer. It shows that I’m open to the possibility my work isn’t perfect, which means I’m open to improving it.

            And improving it is the big goal for all of us.

            Next time I might shout at you real quick.

            Until then, go write.

A Win-Lose Situation

            Okay, believe it or not, I’m actually somewhat ahead on ranty blog posts right now.  Three weeks ahead.  But I want to put it out there again that suggestions and requests are always welcome.  Or just general comments. 

            Without them I’ll just keep blabbing away about whatever comes to mind.

            For example...

             A few weeks back I blabbed on about art, especially the tendency in art stories to make characters as miserable as possible.  That idea bounced around in my head for a while.  The other day it hit another idea, and once they were next to each other I knew how to explain this.

            When we’re starting out as people, and as writers, we tend to look at things in very black and white terms.  Something is positive, or it’s negative.  Good or bad.  That’s it.  The idea of something being mostly good, despite having some bad in it, doesn’t tend to cross the mind as a first choice.  Or that a villain could be anything less than 100% evil.  White hats and black capes, right?

            I can be honest.  I used to do this a lot.  I think most writers do. It’s an experience thing.  None of us ever think we’re doing it—we’re all wise and worldly, after all—but the truth is it’s just a stage the majority of us go through as we’re learning to tell stories.

            If I had to make a guess, I think this is why a lot of these artistic stories tend to be so negative, especially the ones by beginning writers.  The only visible choices are all positive or all negative, and if they were all positive there’d be nothing for anyone to talk about. Soooo...

            The characters in these stories just have awful, pathetic lives.  They have bad jobs for low pay where they’re unappreciated and have horrible bosses.  They hang out with boring friends and have bad relationships and unenthusiastic, unfulfilling sex with barely-adequate partners.

            Sound familiar?

            While this can work on a very simple level, it’s just not a great representation of the real world.  Yes, the world is a messy place, full of compromises and mistakes and a lot of people trying to do the best they can, usually under less than ideal circumstances.  Bad things do happen to good people far too often, and some folks just never seem to get a break.

            However...
            There can be a lot of bad, yeah, but there’s also a lot of good.  Friends and family who help out.  Random sympathetic strangers.  Even just sheer luck. Sometimes—maybe just once or twice in our lives—we stumbled across just what we need at the exact moment we need it.

            The simple truth is, life is a mix.  It’s very rarely all good or all bad.  And that holds in fiction, too.  A good story is rarely going to be all of one or the other.  My characters need to succeed (we don’t want to be following losers), but success doesn’t always mean getting the sexy love interest, finding the treasure, or triumphantly winning the battle without physical or mental scars.

            Great example—we’ve all heard the story about the day Oprah gave everyone in her audience a luxury car, right?  Fantastic!  Nothing but positive there, right?

            Except...

            In the weeks to come, many of these people were begging her to take the cars back.  Seriously.  Did you know you have to pay taxes on big prizes like that?  What do you think the tax is on a $60,000 luxury car?  And do you want to guess at the minimum insurance payments?  The attempt to make all these lives better actually made many of them worse.

            You’ve probably heard similar stories about lottery winners.  At first they’re thrilled to win all that money—who wouldn’t be?  But then you hear stories about how people start to look at them differently and act differently. They’re no longer Yakko from work—they’re Yakko the multi-millionaire. And every time they don’t pick up the tab or don’t chip in or don’t offer to help, the looks change a little more.  Seriously, check it out—a huge number of lottery winners say it ruined their lives.
         Remember that classic story “The Monkey’s Paw,” where no matter what you wish for there’s always a negative twist to it?  Ursula K. LeGuin did the same thing in The Lathe of Heaven, about a man whose dreams shape reality.  And if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you may remember the Game of Rassilon, where those who win shall lose, and those who lose shall win.

            Alas, even with all these examples, it’s not always easy to see this.  Definitely not easy to write it.  Multi-layered success is a challenging thing, and—as I mentioned above—it takes a degree of experience to pull it off.

            Simple experiment. Take your favorite book or movie.  Odds are it’s got a happy ending, right?  At least a mildly-positive one?

            Now—find the bad things.  What did it cost the protagonist to get to that happy ending?  Ruined relationships?  Compromised morals?  Lost job?  Property damage?  Bodily damage?  Maybe even a death or three?  I’m willing to bet there was a price.  Probably even a big one.

            Winning rarely comes without some losses.  Losing isn’t always the end of the world.  And my stories should reflect this.

            Next time... it’s Halloween.  Time to sit around the campfire and tell... well, some kind of scary story.  We’ll figure out what.

            Until then, go write.

You Want To Know What I Think?

            I really like this title, even though it makes me think of the conservative talk show host in V for Vendetta.

            So, a question was posed in the comments a few weeks back—how do you deal with criticism?  Specifically, how do you tell good, useful criticism from questionable opinions, and how do you weight those opinions to tell which are worth listening to and which are just... well, wrong.

            I think that was the question, anyway. If I’ve completely missed it, Chris, feel free to point and laugh at me in the comments. Until then, though, this is what I’m going with...

            This is kind of well-timed, too.  Back in May I handed in my new book to the publisher, and near the end of the month I got back notes from my editor.  Lots of notes.

            Pages of notes.

            I won’t lie.  It stung.  It never feels good to have someone pull out lists of reasons why months of work needs... well, even more work. 

            Here’s the thing, though.  He was right on about 85% of what he said.  And I knew it.  My editor’s a smart guy, and he picked up on a lot of things—small things, really—that didn’t work in the story. But these small things snowballed into three or four big problems. 

            (Which I am now about halfway through fixing...)

            So... how did I know he was right?

            Assuming I’m actually open to receiving some honest criticism, one thing I can immediately look for is if this criticism is objective or subjective.  Is it a factual, provable point, or is it just a reader’s opinion.  If I use the wrong spelling of canon, drop commas in weird places, or don’t have a single transition anywhere... these are real problems that have a right or wrong answer.  This is objective criticism, and if I’m going to get argumentative about something like spelling, well... my writing career is going to take a while to get going.

            Which takes us to subjective criticism.  This is when my editor or beta readers express their opinions on my writing.  And opinions can be taken with a grain of salt. Or several grains.  Sometimes a spoonful.

            For example, some opinions are informed.  My agent doesn’t think this is a good time to try selling an urban fantasy book.  He spends his time talking to different editors and looking at recent market trends, so he’s probably got a pretty good sense of things.  That doesn’t mean selling a UF book right now is a guaranteed failure, but it’s probably a good way to approach things for now.

            On the other hand, some people’s opinions are a bit... less informed.  I think zombies suck.  Maybe you could give her a dog?  Or a cat?  I feel like this sex scene could be cut.  Have you considered ending the book on Chapter Six and just making it a novella?  Have you considered giving this up and going back to investment banking?  These are all critical statements, but there’s nothing backing them up except one reader’s opinion.

            And don’t get me wrong.  Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, and their opinion is (usually) totally valid.  But at the end of the day, some opinions carry more weight than others.  Neil deGrasse Tyson’s opinions on moon colonies carry more weight than mine, even though I once did a whole month of research for a zombies-on-the-moon book.  Pretty much every woman on Earth has better thoughts than me about the struggles, barriers, and sexism they encounter as a woman.  On the plus side, my opinions on G1 Transformers and Micronauts carry more weight than my brother’s (he was more into sports when we were kids...and as adults, too).

            But how do I tell objective feedback from the subjective stuff? There are so many rules and accepted standards!  It could takeyears and dozens of drafts to learn them all!
            Well, here’s one easy rule of thumb.  If I’m giving you feedback for something, and my notes have a lot of phrases beginning with--

            “I think...”

            “I feel...”

            “This didn’t do it for me.” 

            “I just don’t...”

            --my critique probably isn’t that objective.  Just because my personal reading preference may be for casual dialogue, implied sex and violence, or clever twists doesn’t automatically mean these things are right for a given story.  And it doesn’t mean a lack of them is wrong.  So when I’m saying “I think you need this,” I’m not offering advice based on facts or rules, just off my own thoughts and feelings.

            However...

            Yeah, there’s always a however...

            As I’ve mentioned before, some people will try to soften the blow with criticism because they don’t want to hurt my feelings when I read their notes. So even though they’ll have a perfectly valid, solid point to make, they’ll lead it with one of those phrases I mentioned above.  “Not 100% sure, but I think you may want to check if Schwartzenagger is the correct spelling.”  I’ve done this to other writers.  Readers have done it to me.  It’s just human nature.

            Except...

            The flipside of this is the people who don’t realize they’re just voicing their opinions or some half-understood advice. And these folks will declare with absolute certainty that I must change this character’s name or move that comma or turn all my zombies into witches because, seriously, who still writes about zombies?  It’s over, people. Witches are the new hot thing.

            So when I’m wading through my feedback, I need to be able to sort good opinions from bad ones.  And real objective criticism from heartfelt opinions.  That’s part of my job as a writer.

            Now, all that being said... there are times someone’s personal opinion might hold a little more weight.  If some producer wants to pay me to rewrite my screenplay to include an alien love-child, or to rewrite the main character of my civil war slave story to be a white guy...that’s their call.  If a publisher wants to buy my Agent Carter fan-fic with all the names and a few genders swapped, I probably won't tell him no.  If someone wants to pay me actual money to do something that could very well ruin my story...  well, getting paid is nice.  A lot of writers cover their monthly bills that way.  Especially in Hollywood.

            Y’see, Timmy, the bad news is that a huge amount of knowing how to sift through criticism and make these choices is just plain experience. It’s the ugly process of writing, getting feedback, rewriting for the feedback... and realizing two or three drafts later some of that critique could’ve been ignored.  Then having this happen again... and again.  And again.  The only way to learn this is through writing and rewriting and learning exactly how all of this word-stuff fits together and then writing some more and having it suck a little less.

            Also, it’ll help a lot if I read more.  Lots of things in lots of genres.  If I can name a hundred manuscripts that have done the same thing as mine with a character, with structure, with dialogue, that’s probably a good sign that what I’m doing is acceptable. But the only way I’m going to know that is if I’ve read lots and lots of material. 

            By the same token, if I read a hundred books a year and not one of them has done what I did with dialogue... well, it might mean I’m a visionary, but odds are it means this isn’t really an acceptable practice.  If I find one or two out of that hundred that do it, they’re probably the exception than proves the rule.  Again, though, the only way I’ll know is to read.

            Yeah, this sounds like a lot of work.  It is. I didn’t figure all this out overnight, or even in the eight or nine years since I started this blog.  This is actual decades of experience, stretching back to the early ‘80s when I first started screwing up this stuff with fanfic, comic book scripts, and lizard man stories.  And I screwed up and got rejected a lot.

            As I’ve mentioned before, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

            Speaking of not getting what you want...

            There will be no post next week because I’m going to be down at San Diego Comic Con.  If you happen to be there Saturday, though, I will be part of a panel on worldbuilding and storytelling, so you could show up and mock me in person.

            And I’ll probably put up a few photo tips to make up for the lack of actual post.

            When we do meet again, though, I’d like to talk about chefs.

            Until then... go write.