Nathan Ballingrud is a phenomenal author, and his blog on writing has been hitting them out of the park lately. This latest post had at least one bit that resonated for me strongly:
God knows there are times we think we’re geniuses, but I think most of us spend a lot more time convinced of our own unworthiness. That can fill the mind with a killing ice. What you have to do is nearly impossible. You have to write anyway. You have to have faith that you’re wrong.
Every observation you make in your daily life has potential for becoming grist for the mill of your writing. I never can tell what will strike inspiration in a story. I never can guess what thing will end up popping up in a story. A writer’s career is about their experiences bleeding onto the page, a few words at a time.
The best way to prepare for being a writer is to live a rich life. Also, read everything you can get your hands on.
Remember, it’s those little details that bring fiction to life. The false memories. To plant them in the first place, you’ve got to have had them yourself.
So what’s the weirdest personal experience you’ve ever cannibalized for use in a story? Mine has to be taking the way my grandparents were always lending money to my aunts and uncles and using that relationship as the foundation for a kind of redneck mafia family. That’s in my novelette “Work, With Occasional Mole Men” that comes out later this year from Gigantonotosaurus.
Let’s say you’ve just finished writing a story. You don’t know whether people will like it or not. You don’t know whether it’s good, or bad, or just mediocre. It might sell, or it might languish in slush piles until you trunk it. Your story is full of potential energy, and you’ve yet to give it that nudge off the cliff, out of the nest, and into the wider world.
When the story starts falling, that’s when a lot of angst kicks in. Hold on a second. Today, I’d like you to think about what you’ve accomplished before that.
You just wrote a story, the most important unit of knowledge of our species. You knitted something into existence out of thought and experience. You made up entire people. Sometimes, you have made up an entire world, or worlds, or even universes, with strokes of the keys. It has a plot, composed of rising action, climax, denouement, and maybe some even fancier parts. You said something you needed to say, whether you meant it or not. Creating a story is the synthesis of a dozen different ideas and concepts. There are more moving parts in a story than there are in an antique watch.
Regardless of quality, or success, what you did was amazing. Nobody else can do what you did, exactly the way you did it, even if they set out to deliberately do so. Right or wrong, you added something to the world that wasn’t there before. It has value simply by existing. Immeasurable value.
Who cares if it doesn’t tell the time right yet? You just made a tiny little pocketwatch out of words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Celebrate the magnitude of that, just for a little bit.
I’ve been swamped with design work this week, having taken on a rush project on top of some already existing projects, so my blog writing time has shriveled up like my under-watered lawn. Today, you’re getting a quick word of encouragement on publishing, particularly for the aspiring writers out there. Pros—you can sit this one out.
Sometimes, the odds of getting published seem daunting, especially when it feels like everyone around you wants to be a writer. Thanks to the internet, writing skills are more important than ever. Nobody really wants to dig ditches for a living, and writing seems like easy work from the outside. And when you look at how many professional short story slots there are in a given year, or how many novels each publishing house buys, it can make you wonder, “what makes me any different?”
What makes you different, among other things, is you’re actively pursuing your goal. The odds are against the people who say “I’d like to write a novel some day,” not you. You’ve learned your manuscript format, and you’re submitting your work regularly. You’ve learned how to write (or not write) a cover letter. You’re practicing craft, you’re reading anything you can get your hands on. Each active step you take, your odds get better. Eventually, the odds end up tilting in your favor.
Behind every story of a writer’s “over night success,” there’s a writer who spent 5, 10, 20 years banging their head against the wall, falling down, and getting back up. It’s not a game of chance. Just like heart disease, you can take steps to prevent or encourage the probability of it happening.
As my friend Charlie Finlay once told me, “there’s always room at the top.”
So hang in there. Your greatest asset is stubbornness, and if you’re reading this, you’ve most likely got that in spades. And I’ve never met a successful writer who wasn’t as stubborn as a god damned mule.
Yah, mule!
When I first began writing in earnest, I didn’t believe in writer’s block. You know how it is. When you’re completely lacking in self-consciousness about your works, it’s much easier to get things done. Doubt hasn’t entered the picture then, nor a dozen other ever-present concerns, experience-driven instincts, and mild phobias that you develop with time. These things are internal-process barnacles that form as an outer crust on the hull of your creativity. They weigh you down a bit, but when the wind is right, you sail straight enough despite them. The sailing is smooth and easy at first without them, but you probably have no real destination in mind, and the sailing is so smooth that it’s downright boring to any passengers along for the ride.
Since my days of proto-writerhood, about 8 years ago, I’ve discovered that writer’s block is real enough, and not only that, it comes from a variety of causes. Because writing is a damned boring thing to talk about literally, I’m going to flog this naval metaphor as I explore the forms of block I have encountered in my years at sea. (The irony of me relying on this—me, the kid who didn’t see the ocean for the first time until he was 19—is not lost.)
windThe most common block to my writing is a lack of wind in my sails. The driving force behind my work goes away, and leaves me in the Sargasso Sea of the blank page. Why does the wind abandon me? Why does the wind do anything? The factors are too complex to pick apart. The wind of my inspiration can come from a lot of different places, mostly deep internal aspects of my self that I don’t really feel comfortable examining too closely. It feels like fragile machinery that would be too easy to disturb when it’s working right, and when it’s not, I never want to risk tinkering for fear of breaking something completely.
When faced with a lack of inspiration, I shut down almost entirely as a writer. I sit in mySargasso Sea and pass the time as best I can. Read, watch TV. Sometimes, I draw.
When I’m clever, I remember the goddamned boat has oars, and I heave to as best I can.
Right now, I can’t even find where I put the oars, but that’s another story entirely.
Oops, steered this one wrong. Now I’m stuck in the muck, marooned on the rocks. I write myself into a corner often, especially when I don’t have a clear idea of where I’m headed—when I’m writing for the fun of the journey and not the destination.
The best way for me to avoid this is to know where I’m going ahead of time. For a while there, after conceiving of a story, the very next thing I attempted to do was envision the point or the finale. What would it build to? With that in mind, I could set sail. And if I saw a better destination along the way, there was no reason I couldn’t change course! My plans or outlines are never set in stone. They’re there just to keep me from the rocks.
Sometimes you set sail with a story made of little more than a vague idea and a half-sketched out character concept. And it isn’t until you’re in deep waters that you discover your initial concept is full of holes (made by the wormrot of the implausibilitus, inconsistentia, or been-there-done-that-allia species). Now you find yourself sinking, maybe bailing for your life with a little hand waving, but the boat’s taking on the waters of disbelief and some of your passengers aren’t going to see the journey to the end. “No thanks,” they say as they dive off and swim back to shore. “We’ll take the next one.”
I scuttle a lot of story boats this way deliberately. The initial rush of an idea, those hard fast winds that come early; too often, I would set sail immediately without any planning at all, buoyed by the excitement of the freshness of it in my mind. More often than not, when I discover the flaws in my half-assed idea, I would sink the whole thing and move on. I’ve probably abandoned five times as many story ideas as I’ve ever finished. I was a strong swimmer in those days, but now I would just as soon arrive in a leaky boat and start work on patching.
I try to never patch-edit while I’m working on the first draft. That’s a sure fire way to end up completely bogged down.
When things aren’t going well, the crew, made up of internal-editors, voices of self-doubt, and so on, they tend to get rowdy. Sometimes, even when things are going well, they’re a noisy bunch, and it’s tempting to give in and listen to the nasty bunch of swine.
If I had my way, I’d make them all walk to plank at the start of a voyage, but they’re not completely worthless. Best to gag them, tie them up, and throw them into the hull until you’re done with your maiden voyage, I say.
My friend Jay Lake calls his subconscious Bob, but I tend to call my subconcious “Potatohead,” because he’s really not too bright. Sure, he’s creative and all, but he doesn’t have any concept of the realities of being a human being. Impractical, is what I’m saying.
But when it comes to sailing, Commander Potatohead was born into a life at sea. He may not know how to balance a checkbook or even earn a decent living, but the bastard knows how to sail better than I ever will.
I don’t always give him his due. Me, Captain Ego, I want to be right all the time, want to be in charge. I don’t like listening to the seasoned advice of Mr. Potatohead who really knows these waters better than anyone. When you fail to listen, you often end up with a mutiny on your hands, marooned, or stuck in a Sargasso Sea. Again.
That’s not even taking into consideration the difficulty of communication! While I speak the Queen’s English, Commander Potatohead speaks some patois that I’ve never even heard of before. I’m pretty sure he originates from somewhere in Polynesia—some obscure island nobody has ever heard of. So we can’t really talk. We resort to drawing vague pictures, gesturing wildly in some ridiculous game of conscious/subconscious Charades. And worse, we don’t keep the same sleep schedules, so we have to leave messages for one another on scraps of paper, rope, whatever we can find.
Frankly, it’s amazing we have ever completed a voyage together at all.
* * *
But we have. And I’ll be damned if I am going to let any of these things get in my way to completing my journeys in the future. I don’t care if I make it to the other side leaking like a sieve, tied up and held hostage by the crew, being slowly inched over the edge by a Commander Potatohead wearing an eye-patch—I’m going to make it.
When I look at creative block in the abstract, it’s much more intimidating. Abstract concepts aren’t easily defeated, but when I concretize the idea into a giant tuber wearing an eye-patch, it suddenly seems so much easier to overcome.
Maybe that will work for you too. Yarr.
Writing is a Sail Boat, And I’m Stuck on the Reefs
I am not attending WorldCon (AKA Anticipation) this year. Last year was great, and I met a lot of really interesting new people, and got to meet some people in the flesh for the first time like John Joseph Adams (whose collection The Living Dead was nominated for a World Fantasy Award this week! Congratulations are in order). Why am I not going? Well, there’s the financial reasons of course, but there’s also a little dispute I had with the Canadian Border Control back in 1986 involving the illegal importation of furry porn. I’m not allowed to talk about it, but suffice to say, I can only travel to Canada under pseudonyms such as Harrison T. Merriweather. And now I can’t use that one. Canada’s agents are everywhere.
It’s rather too easy for the seasoned con veteran to end up in a bit of a rut when it comes to cons. “Find a seat in the bar and leave only for your panels” seems to be the writer/editor/publisher’s way. I think they sometimes actually take in food in a solid form over the course of the convention, but I have no evidence of this.
I’ve decided, as a service to the convention goer, to provide this helpful list of activities you can participate in to make your convention-going experience that much more interesting.
Anyone else have any ideas to make those lucky folks attending WorldCon have a more “fun” time?
TheLaunchPad Astronomy Workshop has been held three times now, each summer in Laramie, Wyoming. This project is the brainchild of Jim Verley and astronomer/SF writer Mike Brotherton. The goal of the workshop is to help expand the audience for science literate fiction and other popular endeavors. This year, we not only had science fiction writers in attendance, but also comedians and poets. Utlimately, I think it would be great to have some screenwriters for film and television attending as well. Especially considering how much we harp on Armageddon during the workshop.
The goal of the workshop is not to turn you into an Analog–style hard SF writer. The goal is to make sure you understand some of the basics of astronomy so that, even if you’re writing fantasy, you can get those details right. So that maybe you will *want* to write a story about the phases of the moon or about orbital mechanics in some way. Each year, several straight-fantasy authors attend and get just as much out of it as the nerds like me who already have a decent amount of astronomy science under our belts. I even had one major misconception of mine corrected. About the Earth’s axial tilt.
It’s a week of intense classwork, telescope viewing when the weather works, fun meals, a hike, and generally just getting to socialize with amazing people (many who happen to be writers). It will feel like, to quote Gord Sellar, a “pig has shit galaxies into your head.” Ultimately, it’s knowledge, and knowledge has a way of making you a better, richer writer.
When applications open up again next year, I will post about it here, and I expect all of you to flood Mike and Jim with applications. Heh heh.
When I first started writing seriously, I kept a little text file on my desktop where I would rapidly jot down ideas for the premises of stories. Eventually, this turned into a notebook that I tried and failed to carry around. Then it turned into a collection of random documents on Google Docs. It’s current incarnation is a folder on my EverNote account.
With evernote, I can record voice notes, type ideas in on the computer or my phone, include photos, and more. Pretty much anything I want to remember and have accessible from anywhere, I throw into Evernote these days, and that includes story ideas.
But I wanted to talk about the importance of capturing more than just the premise for stories. I’ve started trying to capture any kind of fascinating tidbit that I think might be useful at some point. When I see a person with a trait that I think would make an interesting concept for a character, I put it in. Collect everything, because I am finding that when inspiration is running a little low, these notes can be the kernel of creative energy I need to steamroll through a project.
I also carry around a flexible-cover Moleskine notebook, and I do jot down story ideas in here, but I also use that for website thumbnail sketches, doodles, and more. Because I do all my writing on a computer, it works very well for me to have this central, searchable tool for my random bits of ideas.
Somtimes, writing a story is like playing Katamari Damacy. You just keep rolling the sticky ball of your brain around until it accumulates enough junk to let you go to the next level.
This is still happening from time to time with my work for Escape Pod. I had kind of thought by now that arguing with an editor over their comments in a rejection letter was commonly considered a bad idea to be avoided at all costs, but I’m still getting these at Escape Pod. Let me put it to you all straight.
Nothing makes me more disinclined to purchase your work than you arguing with me about me not buying a story.
There are a lot of minor mistakes you can make as a slush writer. I overlook most of them. For instance, we get sent things as attachments when our guidelines call for them to be in the body of an email. I might mention it briefly to the submitter, but I don’t hold it against them much. There are so many differing e-submissions systems that I can understand why this happens. No big deal.
But when you decide to quibble with an editor over the points of his or her rejection letter, you’re crossing a professional line. You are entitled to your opinion. It’s a good thing if you have enough faith in your story that you will continue to send it out, because one editor’s opinion doesn’t amount to much, which is why I say my editorial comments are not intended as writing advice.
The main thing it will lead to is an editor not providing you any detailed feedback at all. We will simply write form rejections for your work from then on out. Because nothing is more annoying to me, at least, than someone deciding to bicker over a rejection. It’s not going to change our minds. It’s only going to make you look worse. So we’ll stop giving you points to quibble with. This is not good for you. We don’t want to do this.
It is a no-win situation for the writer.
So just don’t do it. Stick to creating your editor voodoo dolls and slagging us off to your cats. Take out your frustrations another way, even if the editor is dead wrong. It doesn’t matter.
And another thing– I would rather not see replies, even short thank yous, at all. It clutters up my inbox, which I work very hard to keep organized, and your continuing submissions with us is thanks enough. Tack what you want to say on to the cover letter of your next submission. I would prefer that.
Oh, and finally, one last thing– it does you no good to send me story after story after story when I’m reading them quickly, when you get rejected every time. You should cool it and wait a bit between submissions. Probably want to wait and let me forget about how I rejected 3 stories in an hour. Because I do notice, and I know other editors do too, especially with e-submissions at ‘zines with relatively fast turnaround times. Nick Mamatas even had a submissions limit. I’m considering implementing one if this keeps up. At the very least, you’ll stop getting such rapid replies.
Quaero_verum asks:
You’ve probably already written about 1,000 posts on it already, but motivation is my sore spot at the moment. As in, “sit thy butt down and just write!”
Also, when I do write, I sit and stare at the blank white screen for a lonnnng time. I am finding it hard to even churn out “free-writes”.…
My advice to you is simple. Don’t force it. If you’re going through a period of low motivation, you may need to recharge your creative batteries. This is something that I’ve had to learn the hard way.
Creative energy is a very poorly understood topic in my experience. Some manage it very well and are able to be consistently, highly productive. See Jay Lake write a novel in a handful of weeks. Others struggle for a decade. The product isn’t necessarily better in either case.
It’s very important to give your self opportunity to write. But if you don’t write, it’s not necessarily because you’re lazy. Your energy could be low. You might not have anything to say right now. Maybe you’d rather draw, or take a photograph to express what you’re feeling. Who knows. The important thing is not to beat yourself up.
Lastly, I’d like you to go watch this presentation by Amy Tan from the TED Talks recently. She talks about how we percieve creativity, and she makes some very interesting points.
Do any of you have any further advice on the subject? I’m really curious to hear what others think about creative energy. It’s a topic that I’m only just starting to develop some theories about, especially as it pertains to my own work.
My story “Groob’s Stupid Grubs,” a story of a goblin’s hopes for his idiot children, is available in Black Gate 15.
I recently finished the first draft of a YA novel called Takedown Notice set in the net-mage universe of my stories “Captain Blood’s B00ty” and “One Click Banishment.” What happens when the Magical Association of Atlantis finally gets the upper hand against the net mages in the spell program copyfight?