I’ve got a new store from which I intend to sell downloads of my fiction (and perhaps a few other goodies in the future). If you’re interested in an epub of my story, you can buy “Work, With Occasional Molemen” in the store.
If you run into any trouble, let me know. Consider the shop in “beta” for the moment.
If you prefer to shop on Amazon, the story’s going through their approval process and should be ready for purchase in a day or so.
The reviewers at Tangent Online have deemed my story “You Have Been Turned Into a Zombie By a Friend” a recommended story for 2011.
I am, of course, quite honored to be in such esteemed company, and am very pleased that Mr. Kevin R. Tipple remembered it fondly enough to mention at the end of the year.
Having finished the book yesterday, I haven’t really had time to conceive a concept for the next piece to work on, so I just did some stretching with a flash piece. For a prompt, I used Chuck Wendig’s flash challenge. It’s mostly a bunch of nonsense, but “mostly a bunch of nonsense” describes this blog pretty well, so I thought this would be a good place to squirrel it away.
“Excuse me,” said the man looming over me, his figure silhouetted against the setting sun. “Might I join you?”
Started, I bolted upright in the deck chair. The ereader I’d bought from the ship’s fabricator slipped from my lap and clattered to the deck with a deadly cracking sound. I sighed. I’d only paid two hundred yen for it, but the extras on the cruise had added up faster than I’d planned, and I didn’t have nearly enough cash left to buy presents for my cubiclemates when we put in at the last port in San Diego, before heading back west across the Atlantic.
I was irritated with the stranger right from the start. “I was reading,” I said pointedly, hoping my stern demeanor would cause him to turn tail and run. “Now I’ve lost my place and I’ll have to buy another one of those.”
“You were dozing,” he said. “But I can understand how the two acitivities might be confusing.” He sat in the deck chair beside me, ignoring the fact that I hadn’t actually given him permission. He reached down and handed me the broken reader. “I’m afraid this took a bit of a tumble.” He smiled.
Now illuminated in profile by the dusk light, I could make out his dimpled chin and startling blue eyes. I might have actually warmed to him if it hadn’t been for the deal breaker.
Do you know the difference between a toupee and a wig? I’m not sure I do, except that this man was wearing the most ridiculous, off-putting, and obvious wig I had ever seen. His eyebrows were a dark brown, but the wig was a pale blonde, curly and just a little long, completely in contrast to his olive skin and linear features.
The sight of it disarmed me utterly. I opened my mouth to tell him to shove off, but I couldn’t say anything at the sight of that awful wig. I laid the fractured reader across my lap absent-mindedly, unable to break my stare.
He continued to smile. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but your mobile phone has been flirting with mine all afternoon. I thought it might be time to introduce myself. I am Han.”
I blinked, and reached down to pick up my shoulder bag. I dug through towels, sunscreen, and other crucial beachwear to find my phone. It had turned bright pink and was startlingly warm to the touch. The screen lit up and showed that I had seventy-two Flirt-IMs.
“OhmygodIamsosorry,” I said, switching the phone off. I knew I was blushing as pink as the phone. “I can’t for the life of me figure out how to shut off that feature. I didn’t think it would have service out on the water…”
Han laughed. “Don’t worry–it happens. I can take a look at it and help you, if you like. But does that mean you’re not actually looking for a companion for dinner this evening?”
“I…” If I could get him out of the wig, he might be something nice to look at over the artificial crab legs and tofu butter. “No, it doesn’t mean that,” I said, returning his smile.
“Not a no, but not a yes, either. I see something is holding you back,” he said solemnly. “It’s my shirt, isn’t it? I know, it’s atrocious.”
His shirt was completely unexciting–the typical Hawaiian style that men on these kinds of cruises always wore. I laughed. “No…”
He squeezed one eye shut and scratched his nose with his thumb. The expression reminded me of a boy I dated briefly in prep school. He had been… talented, we’ll say. “It’s my forward nature, isn’t it? I should have approached you more timidly to start.”
“No…”
His face took on an impish grin. “What then could it possibly be?”
I shrugged. “I’m just not sure you’ve really sold me on what you have to offer. I know your name, and I know you think you’re a clever sort. Maybe you are. But what else do you bring to the table, Han?”
He laughed at that. “Let me guess. You work in mergers and acquisitions?”
I nodded, surprised that I’d given it away so quickly.
“Well, you’re in luck…” he paused helpfully.
“Soon Lee,” I said.
“You’re in luck, Soon Lee,” he smoothly continued, “because I happen to work in marketing. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s how to sell a product to a discerning consumer.”
“Oh, how dreadful,” I said with a sly grin of my own. “That’s one strike against you at the start.”
“I think you should be honest about a product’s flaws, so the consumer doesn’t think you’re trying to pull on over on them,” he said.
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow.
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. I never mention a product’s flaws. They’re usually self-evident. Damn, why did I tell you that?” He had a bit of a dazed look to him now. I could have gone for the kill then, but I was interested to see where our conversational path might lead.
“Please continue,” I said.
“I am an accomplished conversationalist, and securing my attendance is considered a coup in the dining parties of Bejiing. I play cards and tennis equally badly–I won’t even have to pretend to let you win. I run marathons every month, and this gives me a certain amount of… stamina. I like taking my time.”
“Your innuendo is a bit strong,” I said, holding my nose.
He shrugged. “I thought it would insult you if I didn’t make the barest attempt at it.” He stared at me earnestly, waiting for a reply while I desperately sought one.
Finally, I blurted it out. “What’s with the wig?”
“What wig?” he asked, face blank.
…and that’s why I had dinner alone again that night.
No, not the ending of all things in which Xenu returns and battles a Scientologist-built Voltron piloted by John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, and Beck. That’s scheduled for summer 2012.
The ending we’re talking about today is that of writing the final chapters of my first book.
I know, I’m disappointed too. But what are you going to do?
I wish I could tell you what changed a little over a month ago that broke my writer’s block. Maybe my father’s death faded into the past finally enough that it didn’t haunt me anymore when I took to the keyboard. Maybe stepping down from my anti-anxiety medication allowed my brain to recover its suppressed creativity. Wouldn’t that be a huge pain in the ear if we have to be anxious to be creative?
Or it could be that I finally learned how to capture my focus. I think it’s this one.
It’s no coincidence that the very first thing I did after getting my new MacBook was to install the Scrivener demo. I’ve heard Mac-based authors gushing about this program for years, and so I wanted to check it out. And I noticed this little button called “full screen” mode. So I clicked it.
Have you ever been to an opera, or a ballet—some place where the audience is incredibly appreciative of the show? And you’re sitting in the audience and everyone is chatting and suddenly the lights dim a bit. And a hush rolls over the crowd. A moment later, the music begins. If you were an alien observing the situation, you might think it was the hush that summoned the music, and not the reverse.
That happened in my brain when I opened up the “Full Screen” mode. I hadn’t realized how much any computer is a ball of distractions to me. Twitter, Facebook, IMs, emails, RSS updates. I could spend my entire day feeling very productive dealing with all of the various information streams that I’ve set up for myself. And you’d like that, wouldn’t you Twitter? You minx.
The hush rolled over me and I heard a faint voice in the back of my brain, in the very back rows. A crazy person began to shout—or, it would be more appropriate to say that he had always been shouting and I had been unable to hear him.
I brought him up on stage, and gave him the floor. He conducted, and my fingers played.
BAM, I had a story that has troubled me for several years. BAM, two more followed in quick succession. I say BAM, but what I really mean is I spent several hours a day hiding in the corner of a coffee shop to remove even the physical distractions of my home environment, launched Scrivener, and worked. But compared to the struggles of the past few years, the stories were practically Athenian in nature.
I resolved rather quickly to ride this donkey as far as it would take me, and so far, I haven’t missed my count of a thousand words a day, although I got close a couple of times last week when I had bad days unrelated to the writing. I even tried to give up and stop, but I felt so ill at the idea that I got out my laptop at 11 PM despite being exhausted and I wrote sitting on the couch while my wife watched Glee. Glee, for fuck’s sake! If anything should have been able to assault my newfound focus, it would be that … show.
Most days, I do between three thousand to five thousand words, which is why I am right now 3 chapters away from finishing a 60,000 word novel. When you realize that I have been writing at least 3 or 4 hours a day to manage that, it probably sounds a lot less impressive. Still, I’ll take it.
It’s kind of a crap novel, if I’m being honest. But it’s mine and I no longer doubt that I’m capable of doing this. This biggest question I have always faced has not been “can I write a good novel?” but “can I write that many words at all?” And now I know I can. I’ll have this draft wrapped up by Sunday or Monday at the latest.
As far as quality, they say writing is when you put words on the page, and editing is when you make them good. Unfortunately, I’m even worse at editing than I am at writing. But I am as pigheaded as… god, my brain is almost completely devoid of analogies right now. We’ll just say I am stubborn. It was never a question of that, but of endurance. So I will beat the manuscript with sticks until it sucks less. And if that doesn’t work, then I will kill it with fire, piss on the ashes, and start a new one. Because that’s how I roll now.
And yeah, I don’t know that I recommend to anyone else that you write a novel in 3 weeks. Unless you want to; in which case I say, close this browser window, unplug your internet, and start typing.
Write like the devil is chasing you. Write like you have terminal cancer. Because you might. You never know. And if you don’t, then that in and of itself is a gift from the universe, telling you, “make something with this time you have.”
Write it now, write it hard, and write without fear or doubt. Just jump.
It’s not the end of the world if you fall. The landing is almost always a soft one. But don’t be surprised if you start flapping your arms. Frantic at first, then with purpose, and before you hit, you take flight.
And if you don’t, then there’s always painting, or music. Or sex. Awwwww yeah.
Something happened. I can’t say what, because I have no idea. Last Monday, I decided to set aside some afternoon time to write at least 1000 words. I wrote 3000. I decided I would try to do this every day. I had one false start and threw out 3000 words, but by Friday, I had finished a 10,000 word science fiction story called “Powell’s Fortress of Books.” I think it turned out pretty well. We’ll see what folks think of it—I have it out to some first readers. If you’re interested in giving it a read, leave me a comment with an email address and I’ll send you a copy.
Saturday, I started a little rural fantasy called “The Ninth Door.” I finished it this afternoon at a little over 6000 words, and while the structure is just a tad off, I have edits in mind to fix that I will make here in a bit before making edits on a story I have coming out in Fantasy later this year. Happy to send this on to people interested in reading it as well.
So that puts my 8 day productivity level at about 19,000 words, for those who are counting. This is more than what I was doing at my peak when I first started breaking in, before my dad died and I went into a prolonged fallow period.
I don’t know what’s changed, but I sort of feel like I’m just along for the ride. My creativity right now feels like a goddamn bucking bronco. I’m just trying not to get thrown.
Tomorrow, I will start another rural fantasy. This one’s about Viking gunfighters! How awesome does that sound?
December 2 Writing.
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
(Author: Leo Babauta)
Yeah, so I’m behind on the calendar on these. At some point, I’ll do a day that catches up on all of them. Anyway, to the prompt.
At first, I thought I would be a smart ass and write “sleeping” but when I gave it a moment’s thought I realized that my dreams contribute signficantly to my writing. So the sad truth is that I have to admit that playing video games is the main thing that doesn’t contribute to my writing. Lately, especially, given my mild EVE Online addiction I’ve developed. There’s something really appealing about how I can send my money out to make more money in that game. It would be great if in real life I get enough money to do that. I guess they call that investing. It has the makings of a fun game for me. Well, it is a fun game as part of EVE.
Can I eliminate it? Should I? I can definitely cut back, but I also need to allow myself down time. While I play, my mind wanders, and giving my brain a chance to wander helps make sure it doesn’t get too worn down. So no, I’m not going to eliminate it. But I am going to start limiting my time. Perhaps no more than 10 hours a week, or something along those lines. This will require some concerted thought. Perhaps while clearing out a Guristas nest.
Actually, I’ve been thinking that my sudden EVE playing might be an extinction burst designed by my subconscious to keep me from moving forward on my novel. I’m still working on the book. I have given myself a deadline to have a working outline by Jan 1. Let’s see now if I can stick to it.
I have a new story out titled “One Click Banishment” in Way of the Wizard and you can read it online for free! As you can see from the cover, you have to buy this anthology. If not because I am in it and my story is awesome, then because holyfuckingshit look at all those names on the cover.
This is the second story set in a world where young, geeky wizards secretly share and pirate magic over bit torrent sites, working to wrest the control of magic from the stodgy old Magical Association of Atlantis, aka MAA, or Big Mother. The previous story was also published by JJA in a pirate-themed issue of Shimmer. If you’re looking to read that one first, you have a couple of options over on my bibliography page.
These stories are excuses for me to trot out various kinds of nerdy knowledge. I was very much inspired by the kinds of stuff that Cory Doctorow writes when I write these. I have a title for a third one I’m thinking about writing, “The Beast From Port 666.”
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one! If you do, tell your friends. If you don’t, DON’T TELL NOBODY.
I’ve been a big fan of Genevieve Valentine ever since I first started reading her hilarious reviews in various places around the web. I wasn’t surprised at all to find out later that she was an accomplished fiction writer as well. Her short stories have been uniformly excellent.
This past week at World Fantasy, I had the pleasure of hearing Genevieve read from her work not just once, but twice. First, she read from her upcoming novel, Mechanique.
Wow. The reading blew my socks off, and I commenced to beg Genevieve for an advance copy of it. I didn’t want to wait to read the rest of it. I wanted to read it on the spot. It’s steampunky without being annoying like I’m finding so much steampunk lately (partly the reason I haven’t done any Dr. Roundbottom in so long), and it’s got a circus in it for God’s sake! You gotta get this one preordered, and luckily, you can, because it’s up on Amazon already.
The second reading was from the fantastic Living Dead 2, an amazingly beautiful zombie story set on Coney Island (I think). Genevieve knocked this one out of the park as well.
Get in on the ground floor before she’s hugely successful. This way, you can tell all your friends, when you’re waiting in line for her to sign your book, that you liked Valentine’s work before it was cool to like it.
God damn, was this past year’s Launchpad workshop full of amazingly talented people or what? I mean, you had the multi-talented (but sadly accident-prone as of late) novelist and comics writer Marjorie M. Liu, and Genevieve, and JJA, Monte freaking Cook, a fantastic games writer—I have to stop here before I just gush all over the internet. And Kelly Barnhill, whose new book I’m about to talk about now.
I managed to hear a great reading by Kelly this weekend as well. I’m not one for middle grade fiction usually, but this reading was so unique and interesting that I’m eagerly looking forward to picking it up. The Mostly True Story of Jack has this lovely midwestern feel that I find so rarely in books for younger readers. The writing crackles with playfulness, and Kelly’s reading sold it all very nicely. Go, preorder both these books!
I always come back from these conventions so charged with excitement and this year was no exception. I also heard great readings by Vylar Kaftan Jeffrey Ford, and even JJA himself reading from a couple of stories in The Living Dead 2 as well. There’s so much great work being done. I wish I were independently wealthy and could spend all my time reading all this great work by others. And maybe squeezing a word or two of my own out from time to time.
Maybe I should cut down on the TV a bit and get a little more reading done. We’ll see.
It occurred to me this morning that ideas are skeletons upon which I hang the rest of my stories, like so much meat and gristle. Before I can write one word, I need a central structural framework of the idea.
I am the paleontologist of my subconscious. I dig and poke in so much muck of the mind, but sometimes I strike upon the outlines of something unusual, something I’ve never seen before. You see, I am not interested in reconstructing ideas of the same species as another I have already done, so each is examined, identified, and if a known quantity, left for someone else to excavate.
It’s only once I have that skeletal idea with its odd protuberances, fanciful fins, and striking spurs that I can begin the process of reconstructing the whole of the beast, layering on the muscle of plot, the skin, scales, or fur of description, the nervous system of characterization.
That’s not to say that the creature lives when I’m done. More often than not, it collapses under its own weight, wheezes once or twice, and expires. But we try, as they say.
So how about you?
This past week, I completed the first draft on not one but two short stories, each targeted at some upcoming anthologies. The second story was written over the weekend, and while it wasn’t written completely with my newer, more deliberate process, it’ still turned out pretty good for a first draft. Next, to polish the hell out of it until it blind astronauts in the ISS.
So much of the difficulty in writing for me lies in overcoming a basic inertia. Sure, sometimes I get stuck, but the problem more often than anything else is just getting started.
Taking a long break from writing is easily the worst thing I can do with my process. The more regularly I do it, the easier it is. So for the foreseeable future, I’ll be making time to write every single day. The ball is rolling now, and I don’t want it to slow down or stop. Starting blogging again played a not insignificant part in overcoming that inertia, so thank you very much for reading, commenting, and making it generally feel like it’s worth the effort. You are the best.
So that wraps up this week’s self-indulgent “me me me” post. Tomorrow, we’ll get back to the business of providing something useful to you. Do you have any good news to share with the rest of us?
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
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?