Writer's Conferences: Not the Best Invention

I just read this guest post over at "Girls With Pens" and it pretty much confirmed what I've always thought about writer's conferences: they're not as necessary as they'd have us believe.


I usually avoid book/writing festivals, but I did once attend one. I was in school at the time and got roped into introducing an author (weirdly enough, the author was none other than Randall Wallace, the guy who wrote the screenplay for "Braveheart"). But I high-tailed it out of there as fast as possible afterwards.


Because I've never completely understood writer's conferences.


Let me back up. I do understand their essential function: to bring lots of authors and agents and book readers together to network. The same way scientists hold conventions in their fields of specialty, etc. I get it. But what I've always resented is how people portray them as ESSENTIAL to becoming a published author.


Don't get me wrong. Most writers I've met are nice people. Actually, they're usually more nice than the average person. I enjoy their company usually. Where I have a problem with my fellow writers is that I'm an ultra-competitive writer, and I assume that any other writer worth his salt is the same way. So it doesn't exactly make me want to jaunt off to my local convention center and hang out with a thousand of them.


It's like the Hemingway character says in Woody Allen's masterpiece "Midnight in Paris" when he refuses to read Gil's novel manuscript, saying that he hates it before he's even read it:

If it's bad, I'll hate it because I hate bad writing. If it's good, then I'll be envious and hate it all the more. You don't want the opinion of another writer.

It's like this: I've read 16.3 billion books. I've written a few unpublished novels, short stories, and screenplays. I've edited a billion reams of other people's writing. I know, probably better than most agents, what good writing is. Ok, maybe I don't know what the hottest thing on the market is, I don't know how to sell a million copies of a book. But I know what good writing is, and that should be the most important job of any writer.



All that hooey about workshopping your writing? The supposedly conventional wisdom that says you have to fork out hundreds of dollars to get people to look at your work? Not necessary. It's like Cormac McCarthy says about teaching writing (and I'm paraphrasing):

Instead of talking about writing, we should use that time to write.

This is why, in my opinion, self-publishing is such a revelation. No more schlepping across the country dreaming of a chance encounter with an agent at a drinking fountain or whatever. No more pushing your stuff onto other people who won't give you the time of day.


No more desperation.


Instead, you can start working your tail off for yourself, and whether you succeed or fail, you'll have no one, and I mean no one, to blame but yourself. To me, that's the best luck a writer could ask for.

Fiction is the Best Way to Tell the Truth

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I want to be a writer. Or if I even want to be a writer. There are a trillion infinity reasons not to be a writer: it's a massive pain in the neck, it's a lonely thing to write all by yourself, if you haven't published something by the age of 30 people start looking at you like you're a gorgon, etc.


But then I stopped feeling sorry for myself and thought about the reasons why it's great to be a writer.


And nothing came.


Until I hit on this: writing is just about the only time in life you get to be totally honest.


Honesty is the best policy, right? Whoever made up that saying should be thrown into the deep end with cement water wings. Because if you're always honest, you will not live a comfortable life. For instance, people don't want to hear your "honesty" in the office:


"Hey Jane, you look really dumpy today. Did your whiny son keep you up all night because you don't show him enough outward signs of affection?"


No. You will be summarily fired. And you can't even be honest with your own family. Not even about the little stuff.


"Dad, let's drop the charade. I hate Duke basketball."


Your dad will look at you like you just kicked him in the solar plexus. I repeat: you cannot be honest.


Except when you write, that is.


When you write, all of the rules change. You can make the most outrageous, easily falsifiable claims ("Gee Nate, it looks like that asteroid made of gouda cheese is on a collision course with the planet Hamglubla!") and no one can say a darn thing about it.


Not that the above sentence drips with honesty: alone, it's a totally meaningless string of words. But if you couch it in the context of reality--say, if the cheese-filled asteroid is going to destroy a planet where people kill each other because they can't control their tempers--then you know what? It's good that that stinkhole of a planet blows up, because people need to be kind to each other.


Just try saying "people should be kind to each other" to your friends, and watch their faces drop. Witness the awkward silence that ensues. Before long, if you persist in your campaign for kindness, society will force you to go live in a hippy van out in the desert somewhere. Dress your mantra up in an apocolyptic vision of a cheeseball evicerating a whole planet, however, and now you've got their attention.


When else can you get away with such honesty? I'll tell you when: never. This is why you should be glad you're an artist, if an artist you are. Chin up.

Great Shot Kid! Don't Get Cocky

That's the best single line from "Star Wars Episode IV." Luke Skywalker has just obliterated one of the TIE fighters that are swarming around the Millennium Falcon, and he can't believe his luck. He flashes a childish grin and says, "I got him! I GOT HIM!" But in six little words, Solo brings him right back down to earth.


"Great shot kid! Don't get cocky."


I love that scene. So I'm biased. But to me, it's a perfect metaphor for writing. You can write a great turn of phrase, or your main character can do something cool and unexpected that takes your breath away, and there's a part of our brain, a very human part, that thinks it has just seen shades of the next Grace Paley.


Which, let's be honest, is probably garbage.


Take me for example. I had a great writing day today. I mean super-fantastic-megasweet. The words flowed, and I filled up page after page, rattling off sentences as if only by sheer force of typing I would fend off an asteroid headed straight for earth. It was a tremendous writing day. I feel immensely satisfied with it.


Which is why I need to shut my trap and get right back to work tomorrow.


As a younger writer, I would've taken tomorrow off. Basked a little in the afterglow of my achievement. Slept in till noon and then watched basketball all day long.


Not anymore. There's no time for that kind of complacency. You wrote like Toni Morrison on speedballs today? Great. Bully for you. Now get down from your high horse before it bucks you off. Sit your keyster right back down on that lumpy office chair you got at Staples ten years ago for $19.99 and start pounding the keys.


And you can bet that your magnificent contribution to arts and letters from yesterday will soon be a long lost memory. And that's OK. It's as it should be. You take the good with the bad. You take your lumps. Just hang in there and keep writing. And then, some day, you'll be done.

Breaking News: Self-Pubbing Is Nothing To Be Ashamed Of

I got a Kindle a few months ago. I knew I'd love it, but never expected to fall so hard for it. I love buying good books for cheap and then buying more. There's something inherently American about that, isn't there? Finding a good deal and a good author, all in one fell swoop.


This is what self-pubbing is all about.


Two of my current faves, Kendall Grey and J.L. Bryan, fit this category to a T. If you're anywhere near twitter and plug "indie author" into the search criteria, undoubtedly you've run across them. They're prolific tweeters. I love their brand of writing: incredibly copious attention paid to details and motivations, a mastery of the language, and a great sense of humor.


Alas, if we play the odds, these good writers probably wouldn't have been published by legacy publishers. Maybe they would've, who knows? But odds are, no. They write in genres that are packed with other writers (dystopian young adult/speculative/urban fiction), and they're relatively new authors. Without the kindle and self-publishing, I never would've found them. Or rather, they never would've found me.


Which leads me to my premise: there is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with self-pubbing.


I know, I know. Your mother hates the idea. Aunt Suzy says you didn't pay all that money for college just to publish drivel. Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave. Whatever. Listen, you've got to get yours. You've put a TON of effort into your writing. You've sacrificed sleep and time with your loved ones. You write on the bus and subway when every normal human being is trying to catch a few extra Z's. You've missed all of Season 15 of The Bachelor. And all just so you could put in the extra effort necessary to make your WIP perfect. Now, it's time to reap the rewards.


And I don't mean reap in the sense that you only make 17% on the sales of your book and don't get to choose your cover art.


Um, no.


What I mean is you need to self-pub. Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm insane. It's taken me almost two years to get to the point where I'm almost done with my first draft! OK? So I'm assuming it'll take me at least another year of editing to get it to the point of where I won't be embarrassing my family's good name by releasing it in book form.


I want to be rewarded for this Hurculean effort. This is only logical.


Even if it only takes you 10 minutes to write a novel, I still say self-pub unless you get some massive advance from a publisher. Just do it. And then use social media wisely (don't tell me about every time you get a drink of water, in other words) and work hard to sell books. This is the advice I'm giving myself, too, by the way. Because we're all in this together.

Past the Giving Up Point

Well, I've passed that point in the writing process where I usually give up. That, in and of itself, is an accomplishment. By this time--that is, towards the end of the first draft if not before--is where I look myself in the mirror and ask the eternal question:


Can I see myself spending the next couple of years with these characters?


The answer, more often than not, is no. If "no" is my gut reaction, then I scrap the whole project. I know what you're saying: So you spent the whole last year writing this novel, and now you're just tossing it? What a waste of time!!


Au contraire. Any amount of writing you do is good experience. It keeps your brain limber and the fire of creativity stoked in your heart.


What it comes down to is this: I believe that if you become bored of your characters and/or story, it translates to the page. And the last thing you want to do is bore your audience. Now, if you're near the end of a first draft that's several hundred pages long, you should not make this decision lightly. If you've written that much material, chances are you cared about your story for a long time before something went haywire, and it's probably worth your time to reverse engineer the thing to see where it went off track.


But if you dig to the heart of your manuscript and still find a rotted pit where the heart's supposed to be, then you're probably wasting your time trying to extract it from the jaws of death.


What's the longest thing you've written but decided to scrap? Mine was 612 pages long. Beat that!


Oh, and by the way: Happy New Year!

Finish It, Already!

Have you ever gone out to eat and, though your waiter was great, bringing your food quickly and not badgering you with rounds of, "How is everything?", he/she totally dropped the ball at the end by taking forever to bring your check? This happens to me over and over again, and I'm starting to see a parallel in my own writing.


I have a problem sealing the deal.


I've written 500+ pages of my first draft, and the more I write, the further away the endzone seems. Why is this?


Well, one explanation is that I don't want to short-change my future audience by tacking on a hastily-worded ending. Believe me, I want it to be over. Writing a first draft is a brutal, ego-pulverizing experience, and the sooner it's over, the better. But I'm weighing that desire for a coup-de-grace with the certain knowledge that if I speed through this stage, I'll have to revisit it in the second draft anyway, so may as well do it right the first time.


But man oh man, do I want this madness to end. The original date I'd assigned myself to have the first draft done was July, and I've obviously blown that. Now my sights are set on January 1st, which is my new, no-holds-barred deadline.


Writing for only one hour per day makes meeting deadlines especially dicey, though, so we'll see how it goes. But I could use some encouragement. Anyone else out there know what I'm going through?

Genres are Not Four-Letter Words

Most writers want to be John Steinbeck. I don't mean that they literally wish they could write about Cannary Row all day long; no, I mean they aspire to grandiose goals, just like Steinbeck. His most memorable quote, as far as I'm concerned, is when he was asked to describe his book "East of Eden" and he said (and I'm paraphrasing), "It's all in there."


By "all", my professor at the time said what Steinbeck meant was that all of his aspirations as a writer were contained within its covers, all of life and its vicissitudes. In other words: everything.


That's a grandiose statement, but if you've ever read "East of Eden", you'll see that it spells out what was probably Steinbeck's view of life in a pretty straightforward manner, albeit wrapped in Biblical imagery.


This is what so many of us writers start out wanting to do from an early age: explain the world as we see it. Tell parables others can learn from. Be the wise man/woman others search out for guidance. We want more than anything to wrap our arms around the impossible immensity of life and show everyone the beauty of it.


But honestly, those days are over.


True, we still have Jonathan Franzen, and a few others of his ilk, but his kind are few and far between. Unless you're a genius and you also get lucky, your tomes aren't going to be seen by anyone but the mealworms who eat out the pages as they sit moldering in your desk drawer.


Which is why it's a good idea, if you haven't already, to try to become the master of a much smaller domain.


Far be it from me to tell you to aim low -- you should still try to be a great writer. But specialize. Don't be afraid to be weird, to create characters that are outside of our everyday realm. And don't apologize for it.


From everything I've read, in the age of the internet, specialization is the new watchword. Try to be the best (insert genre here) writer you can, introduce us to inimitable characters conjured out of your sub-subconscious. And for the love of all things holy, don't stray into fifteen other genres before you get really good at the one genre you really want to master.


I mean, it's a free country -- write what you want. But it seems like unless you stay laser-focused on a single genre, you won't make much money, and it'll be harder to maintain your craft. I'm just telling you this because it's the strategy I've decided to implement after careful consideration, and I'm very optimistic about it. It'll be interesting to see if I can stay focused, considering my average attention span of 5.2 seconds. But we'll see.


What do you think? Is this is a good or a bad strategy? Am I thinking too small? Give me your take.

Pilot Your Own Ship

If you lack the iron and the fuzz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

The longer I live, the more true this statement becomes. But lots of people fail to live up to it. Why? What I think happens too often is not that people fail to understand the value of taking ownership of their lives, and it's not most often the case that unforseen circumstances crop up that bar them from taking control (though certainly this does happen): the single biggest stumbling block that stops people from piloting their own ship is impatience.


Everybody loves the idea of being in charge of themselves. I mean, who wouldn't want to chart their own course? It's when they go to implement this mantra in their life, however, that the trouble starts. People make a few changes--maybe they refuse to do some project that would've meant spending extra time at work, maybe they decide to finally sit down and write that novel they've been meaning to write--and then, voila! they expect to wake up the next morning a changed person.


Doesn't work that way. No, the choice to master one's own life is only the beginning. It's realizing you're on the wrong path, deep in a dark, shadowy forest, and then deciding to double back to where you saw the path fork off in the other direction. It's an a-ha moment.


To be sure, it's an important decision, and one not to be taken lightly. But that's all it is: a decision. It will take some doing to get back to the fork in the road, because it will undoubtedly be beset by fallen limbs and cracks and strange creatures with flashing eyes.


And doubt. Oh yes, there will be doubt. Because you will have gone so far down the wrong way that, in a weird way, at least, you'll tell yourself, you know what's there; at least you know there are no forest fires the way you just came from.


It's the devil you know.


You'll be tempted to throw up your hands and turn tail and head back down the road most traveled because it's just easier (so says your lazy side).


But if you just ignore those doubts, push them down, recognize they're just your over-protective mother's voice ringing in your subconscious, if you keep pushing toward that other path, you'll gain confidence. You'll realize that the felled trees can easily be climbed over, that the scary animals are just raccoons, that really, the only thing scary about the forest is the darkness and darkness cannot last forever.


We're stubborn-minded creatures. How do you think we outlasted the Neandertals, who science tells us were probably smarter than our ancestors? Because we don't like to be told what to do. We like to think that we know what's best, and even if the odds are stacked against us, there's a little insane whisper of a voice inside us that says everything will be all right.


So make that voice work for you. Only tune into the one that says you can correct your course. Even if it's the weakest of all of your internal voices, pay it heed. Because it's often the quietest voice that's the most self-assured.

Why First Drafts are the Best Drafts

I'll probably get run out of town for saying this, but I love first drafts. They're by far the best drafts I ever write of anything. No, they're not grammatically correct, and granted, they go on and on in weird directions that often, upon second glance, make no sense. But still, I love them more than any other draft, even the final one.


Let me explain.


Writing a first draft is about saying "yes." Most of the time, we are forced to say "no" -- when shopping, when taking on projects at work, when trying to decide between seeing a movie or getting coffee. "No" shapes our experience much more than "yes" does, overall.


And yet, when we sit down to write, we can say "yes" to anything. ANYTHING! Think about that for a minute. True, you don't want to start off writing a book about werewolves and end up writing about the stock market crash of 1929. That would be a pain in the ass.


But barring that, you can write about anything you want. So why would you censor yourself? I see authors outlining their brains out, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do in general (I mean, truth be told, I write up general outlines when I write), but my advice is to not let outlines box you in too much.


For instance, with the wip I'm working on now, I deviated from my outline on page ten or so. I refer to it now and again, but for the most part, I haven't looked back. I realized early on that most of the groundwork I'd laid no longer served the story that was emerging from my imagination.


And that's the important thing to remember, in my opinion: an outline should serve your imagination, help to organize it a little better. It shouldn't work the other way around, where your imagination has to take a back seat to rigid organization.


Saying "yes" means that you have to be ultimately flexible, able to accept new ideas and write them down without questioning them. And also, you have to be prepared for your draft to take longer than one associated with a strict outline would take.


But what you get in return is so much cooler.


I barely ever question ideas in a first draft. They come from a mysterious room in the dungeon of my brain, from behind a door that's been bricked over and covered with wallpaper. Somehow or other, little chinks of mortar have chipped off, and when I write, a faint breeze starts to blow out of the room and straight into my fingers.


This air has been bottled up for so long, told that it must live in darkness at the bottom of a pit ten thousand feet deep, that you can barely feel it coursing through you. But it's there, all the same. So what a pity it would be stamp it out.


A lot of people never make it out of the first draft stage. I've abandoned lots of projects before finishing even one draft. We all do it. And I think I've mostly done it because I didn't see how I could finish those drafts, given the chaos that had broken out in them. But looking back, I really wish I'd hung in there, because there's no telling how beautiful they could've been if I'd just kept opening myself up to what they could become.


Say "yes" as much as you can, especially in your first draft. You'll end up with lots of unusable stuff, but you'll also end up with cool ideas that never would've occurred to you had you stuck close to your outline.

Nostalgia, Thy Name is Autumn

It's turning out to be a gorgeous fall here in DC. This town, to my mind, is a gross, cement-lined mosquito nest of seething humidity for 3/4 of the year. On top of that, it's filled with busy-body technocrats who dress head-to-toe in black/gray/grayish black clothes. Honestly, you sometimes don't know whether you're following a funeral procession or people on their way to work.


But come fall each year, a cool wind blows in, the trees blaze up into reds and golds, and the whole place becomes awesome.


Nostalgia, thy name is Autumn. Hell yes it is.


I've always liked the Autumn. It's a time of death before renewal. There's something instructive in that. Something that lets us know on an intuitive level that after the Fall comes a rebirth of sorts. It unsettles us with its burst of beauty, its shrivel and decay, and its promise of a new, brighter world to come.


As authors, it's important for us to understand nostalgia. We should respect it, not toss it aside as base sentimentality. Because to me, the best books tap a reader's well of pleasant recollections, most especially from childhood. We should open our minds to what we've loved and lost, and try to recapture it in our writing. Because others will sense this sharp, sweet sense of loss too, and it will remind them of their own humanity if we do it right.


Communining with others in this most human way is what great writing is all about. Whether you're writing a post-modern novel or a picture book, your vulnerability has to be on every page, in every word. And nothing will make you feel more vulnerable than the pinch of nostalgia.

Don't Force Your Ending

That's what I keep telling myself. I want so SO badly to be done with the first draft of my wip--I'm in the midst of writing my first YA fiction fantasy saga-ish book right now--but, alas, I'm not finished.


I'm ALMOST finished. But I haven't entered the last period, haven't printed off drafts for my beta readers to sink their teeth into yet. I'm writing the penultimate battle scene at the moment, and there are still two major sequences to go after that.


While it would be super convenient to just hurry up and contrive some ending and slap it on there, I can't allow this. Because books, once they get going, take on a life of their own, and you cannot suffocate that life. It just has to wind down of its own accord.


And let me tell you, it's taking its sweet time.


I can feel I'm close. It's kind of like at night, when all of the lights are off. You stick out your hand because you know the bathroom door is close, it's only a few inches away, but you can't quite see it.


Not to equate my book with a bathroom. But you get the point. If you're in a similar position as me, realizing that even once you finish your book you still have months of edits ahead of you and, doggone it, wouldn't it be better to just finish the draft and get it into your readers' hands asap?--don't succumb to this urge.


Finish what you started. Give your book/story/play some space and let it end the way it's supposed to end. Otherwise, your readers will sense that you tacked on an ending. And that's a huge mistake because it makes it seem like either A.) you don't have a very firm grasp on the internal universe of your story, B.) you're in it for the money and are just cranking stories out like some book-writing machine, or C.) you just got bored and said, "To heck with it."


Why would a reader stick with your book if you weren't even willing to? Haste makes waste. So do the right thing!

What to Do When You Feel Like Giving Up

Don't.

Keep fighting.

Unless it's driving you crazy, then take a break. But don't give up entirely. If you're breaking your neck to write three or four blog posts a week, just write two. What's the big deal? Will the world not be as interesting without one or two of your blog posts each week? No it will not.


Because the world is just fine without you.


But that's all it is. Just fine. You'll make it much, much better by producing your art, but let's face it: the world will not explode into a billion bitty pieces because you didn't tell us how many pages you wrote last night.


Which is liberating! It's not negative in the least. Nope, it takes all the stress away. I think when people get all stressed and down about not having achieved enough, they forget that even when people achieve a lot, these achievements may linger on in the memories of their kids or friends or colleagues, but after they die or go insane, unless they're very, very lucky, not many people will remember what they did.


After all, do you know who invented the can opener or who developed modern atomic theory? No? These were massively important inventions. And no one even pays homage to these titans anymore.


Sure, you might write something that transcends the ages, but odds are you won't. And even if you do, you may be ridiculed in your own lifetime, or, if the stars are shining on you, your books may go unread only for some nerd to stumble upon your masterwork in the future and, through sheer force of nerdy intellectual will, get you some mad props.


I'm not going to sit here and tell you why you should write—there are lots of reasons to write. But for me, I couldn't bank on the slim hope of getting famous or rich from writing to sustain me spiritually. I want to write for the sheer happiness it (hopefully) will bring people. That may sound hippyish and cloying, but it's true. What other more tangible goal can there realistically be?


The point here is not to give up. For even trying to become a published writer, you are awesome. Scale back the work if you have to; there's no shame in that. Heck, I only blog twice a week nowadays. No, I'm not burning the world up with followers (thanks, by the way, to my loyal band of 6!), but I also don't have a product to sell right now (am working on that), so whatever. Forcing yourself to spew up content is like telling an elephant to sit on an almost-empty tube of toothpaste: sure, something will come out, but it won't be much, and you will have angered a three-ton animal in the process.


I used to think I had to be all over Twitter every third second in order to catch eyeballs, but the weird thing is, when I take a couple of days off from tweet-land, I often come back to find that I have more followers.


Sure they're spambots...but they count too, dammit! Don't you dare dismiss spam. And that's not entirely true, some of them are actual people. So.


Don't give up, intrepid ranger! If you just can't think of a subject to fill your weekly quota, embed a cool-ass YouTube video. Or a timely picture like this one. Do something to let us know you're still kicking.


Don't quit!!

Stop Trying to Justify Yourself

If I could go back and say one thing to my 25-year-old self, it would be this: stop worrying about what people think of you. Everyone else is not you. You have needs that the vast majority of them don't. You need to fill yourself up with words and then write them out. You need the ocean. You need the open sky and you need people to be nice to you. You need to feel the brush gliding across the canvas. Stop worrying about what other people think you need.


And for cripes sake, stop trying to justify your life to everyone!


Because they'll never get it. They're not you. All they need to be happy is a job that makes them feel special. A nice car. An XBOX and golf every other Sunday. A big title; a fat raise.


Your needs are important, despite what they may say. They'll call you flaky. They'll say you have no drive, no plan for life. How wrong they are. You know exactly what you need, and you must banish any guilt you feel for needing it. You need to express yourself. Why? Who the hell cares why? You need it, OK? Stop trying to explain the unexplainable. Just do.

Books Will Write Themselves

In the not-too-distant future -- maybe after you and I are gone, but maybe not -- I predict that books will write themselves. Not all books will be automatically written, but lots of them will be. I'm not big on predictions, but it's just the way I see things going. Not to worry you, but, you know...prepare yourself.


Over the weekend, I was discussing this idea with a friend, and they practically punched me in the face. "What a stupid thing to say!" my friend chided. "And how depressing!" See, I don't think it's that depressing a notion. It could be seen as a negative thing, obviously, or it could be seen as an opportunity.


The vast majority of people who read in this country (which is not all that many, anymore) probably read books that they feel won't demand much mental energy. It's hard to blame them; with folks working longer hours these days, most are fried by the end of the day. They don't want to come off working the late shift at Denny's and dive into "War and Peace." I get that. No arguments here.


But what this means is that more books will be produced to suit their low-bar needs. After a while, if you take this line of thinking to its logical end, formulas and algorithms will be devised so that a weary soul will be able to sit at a computer, type in their favorite book titles and authors, their genre of choice, a few themes they want to read about, and maybe a time period, the computer will do the math, and then it will export an instantly-written book to their e-reader. The whole thing would take less than five minutes and they'd get a book custom-written to their preferences.


This is where we're headed. Heck, James Patterson doesn't even write his own books anymore. In this new era of high-speed digital customization, I can't imagine the market dictating anything else; it's the most convenient process in the world for readers.


Of course, there will still be people who want to read books written by actual human beings. Though there may come a time when computers out-pace humans at piquing reader's imaginations (I cringe just writing that), I have to believe a cadre of hard-core readers will remain who will want to go the traditional route. So it's important to establish yourself as an author who can deliver consitently good, thoroughly-edited books. Because you can bet the book writing programs of the future won't make typos, and you'll be competing with a smaller pool of writers for this sought-after audience.


(Note: I say "you" here, but it may be your grandchildren who have to worry more about this.)


Look: it's fine to want to write books in order to get rich. This is a free country. But I write because I want to communicate and I want to increase my ability to have empathy for people. Because reading is all about building our capacity to feel empathy toward others. This should not come with a price tag. You can write for lots of reasons, but to me, the best reason of all is to make the world an easier place for people to love each other.

How to Beat the Apathy Monster

Hey all, I've been unplugged for the past few days. It was nice to take a break, but I'm happy to be back. While I was away, working hard on my WIP every free second I got, I was thinking about how there's nothing worse as an author than to be unpublished. I know this feeling first-hand because, well...I'm unpublished (outside of a few magazine articles). Telling people you're working on a WIP doesn't cut the butter. People want results. They don't think you're a "real" writer unless you've put yourself out there and published.


Which I get. Fine. You can talk about Emily Dickinson all you want (the great American poet had less than a dozen poems published in her lifetime, and yet she's been hugely influential), but no one is going to think you're the next Emily Dickinson. This is America, baby. We want results.


Enter: the Apathy Monster. Unpublished authors are stalked by this blood-thirsty predator. Some published writers are as well, but not as many. The beast is mostly bred from within: it's fertilized by self-imposed, unrealistic expectations, grows in the womb of our self-doubt, and comes to term when we most need to keep faith in ourselves. Thinking that all our hard work might go unnoticed is one of the most desolate feelings in the world. It derails people for years, making them question why they continue to put themselves through this.


The monster scares us so badly that we forget all the great lines we've written, all the wondrous forms we've painted, and worry only that people--if they notice us at all--will only notice our flaws.


Not that I'm a successful artist (yet), but my sense of this is that successful artists know they can't eradicate this hopeless feeling. So they don't even try. My guess is that they accommodate this emptiness, even use it to inform their work. Because I don't care who you are, whether you're the MVP of the Super Bowl or a window washer working up on the thirtieth floor, you have self-doubts. The wise artist understands this common human thread and weaves it into their work. In doing so, people recognize themselves in the work and connect with it.


Don't dismiss your doubts. Don't bury your fear of the Apathy Monster. Don't judge your feelings while you create because you can't allow your focus to waver. If you can befriend the monster, build him a little efficiency suite in your heart, then we'll all be better for it.


I'm here to tell you that you can succeed. I have crushing self-doubt sometimes, too. Don't worry. In fact, this past week there were a few moments where I felt like quitting. But we can't ever quit. There are too few of us artists to begin with.


You can do it.

The Creator's Manifesto

I've added a new page up above in the menu there. It's called "The Creator's Manifesto." As I say on the page, I don't much care for the word "manifesto", given its connection to politics, but it's a useful shorthand so I'll go with it.


I felt the need to outline some of my reasons for staying creative even when the world seems hell-bent on derailing you. Often times, when I feel like throwing in the towel, it's because I feel like I'm never going to be successful and make tons of money and prove to the naysayers that I'm a brilliant thinker.


But then I have to check myself. Success and failure seems like too rough an equation when it comes to art. The real reason we should make art is for others, not because we seek riches for ourselves. We should want to impart our wisdom/sense of humor/insights to other people so that they can become better people.


Usually, this does the trick for me.


Do you have core reasons for being an artist that you grapple onto for support when you're feeling down? Let me know.


Update: I wrote this manifesto late last night, and in retrospect, I think a lot of it had to do with my reflections on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 being today. In listening to the radio all morning and re-watching old footage of the attacks taking place, I'm reminded of how utterly hopeless and sad I felt that day, and in the months afterwards.


I was living nearly 2000 miles away from Ground Zero at the time, so obviously I wasn't directly impacted by the events. So I'm only speaking for myself here and not anyone who was directly affected. In my opinion, the only appropriate response to acts of horror like Sept. 11th is love. Do what you love every day. Be nice to everyone. Create art for the benefit of others, so that your love will spread around the world.


Some people think they can't do anything in response to 9/11. They feel weak, even ten years on. But the truth is, we can do something. We have the strength to drown out the sadness. We must align ourselves so that we project love into the world through our art. Unhesitating love is the best response to hate. We have to trust each other again.

The Value of Toothless Tonya

Being a hard worker does not make one great. After all, Mao Tse-Tung loved to roll up his sleeves and get to work, and Josef Stalin -- a busy beaver if ever there was one -- was a renowned workaholic. But there is something to be said for the art of work. Hard work gives us writers the opportunity to come out of our shells, to understand how real people really talk, to get a sense of their aspirations and their misery. And it humbles us, showing us that we must put in the hours day in and day out, that what we accomplished yesterday matters little next to the demands of the present.


These days, though, our society's reverence for hard work has waned, even as people are working more hours. I heard an NPR segment on Monday about meaning of Labor Day, and something clicked. E.J. Dionne, the writer and guest who'd written a Washington Post article on which the segment was based, argued that we no longer praise workers for their hard work, but instead we deify capital, i.e. money.


And I realized that's true. And also that it's sad and stupid, because people are working their ever-loving asses off right now and that wealth is being transferred to the super-wealthy, and if that keeps up, things will get bad. But I also realized it's stupid because, from the persepective of a writer, so much great literature has come out of examining the lives of workers: "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (if you haven't read this book, please do), the U.S.A. trilogy by Dos Passos, "The Jungle." And it's enduring literature, because almost everyone can relate to the characters in these books, regardless of time period or geography.


And anyway, like I was saying before, working hard -- whether that be at a minumum wage job or as an engineer -- gives us writers a window into how the world actually works. Hedge fund managers may think they understand how the world works, but they don't. They're up too high. No, that's not real life. Who would want to be way up there where the air is so thin?


I've worked a trillion minimum-wage jobs in my lifetime: bag boy, administrative assistant, waiter, bus boy, front desk worker at a hotel, mowing lawns, flipping pizzas -- you name it, I've done it. Once, in college, I worked as a bouncer (which is hilarious if you know how non-confrontational I am) and at the end of each shift, it was my job to clean the vomit out of a huge, trough-shaped urinal with a mop. Yes folks, that's how I paid for books and rent my senior year of college. The crowning glory of my four years in higher ed. Cleaning puke.


But what's interesting is that, at the time, my friends (all of whom also had crap jobs while working their way through school) and I looked at our jobs as badges of honor. We inevitably worked beside "townies" (people who'd spent their whole lives in the tiny town where our college was located), and we all wanted not to seem like jack-asses to them. So we tried our best to fit in, enduring last-minute schedule changes to give Toothless Tonya more hours, putting up with derisive laughs from folks who'd been making pizzas since age 9.


But all of this worked to my advantage. I now know how people other than myself think and feel, I know their hopes and aspirations and I know how they can suck sometimes. Which helps me when creating realistic characters. Because if you don't have the ability to deeply empathize with someone who's completely different from you, then you cannot create rounded, interesting characters.


So if you're stuck in a dead-end job or if you're a recent graduate, and if you like to write, try (I know it's hard and it sucks, but try) to see your current situation positively. Because who knows? Your boss Bernie McBastard may find his way into your book someday.

Keep It Simple

Lots of people want to rule the world. They want to be the most influential person on the block, the mogul, the alpha dog. They make dozens of podcasts to support their blog, tweet fifty times a day to win people over to their cause, shoot and edit enough videos to put Spencer Gordon Bennett to shame. This is great if you have a trust fund and can afford sinking huge chunks of time into what, in the end, can only be described as a monumental project in self-absorption.


I think you see where I'm going with this.


I just read Konrath's latest blog entry, and it resonated with me. Those people who Spielberg-up the place always seem like dogs chasing their own tail to me. It's amusing to watch for a while, but pretty soon you start getting dizzy just watching them go, go, go. And I start to wonder: how much time are they really spending on the product that all of these props are meant to promote?


To me, the simplest advice is the best advice: stay focused. If you have a product to sell that lends itself to a massive world-building effort, then (judgmental?) people like me will be more forgiving. But I have yet to read the book description that warrants an all-out sensory assault.


Not having published a single book, I realize my advice holds about as much weight as a rice cake being eaten by a ghost in a zero-gravity chamber. But seriously, please concentrate on writing good books. If done right, a book will do the job of launching us into another world. You won't need smoke and mirrors to do that. Trust that your audience will appreciate your words and not need an IMAX experience to bring them back wanting more.

The Horrible Danger of Boredom

More than anything on this blog, I want to give you encouragement. Not give you advice so much: mostly I want to inspire and reassure you. Most of my language will be sheathed in writer-speak since I'm a writer and I don't know how to give, say, a firefighter encouragement to do a good job (other than, you know, avoid the fire). But you can take what I say and apply it to any number of jobs, hobbies, what have you.


I try to avoid giving you preachy advice because I've found that everyone approaches writing differently. I've cobbled together my approach over years of trial-and-error, so how can I expect you to take what I say as the end all, be all?


That said, I want to give you some advice.


I was watching Sofia Coppola's movie "Somewhere" last night, and from the first frame, my writer brain started blowing steamboat whistles of disapproval. Literally one minute into the movie, I was so bored that I wanted to turn off the TV. Three minutes in, I was locked in the fetal position. Five mintues in, I wished the house would crash down on me, ending my suffering.


What could be so bad, you ask? I kid you not, for the first five minutes of the movie, Stephen Dorff (the weirdly-cast star of the movie) gets into his Ferrari and drives around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around a dirt track. There's no music. No effects. Whole stretches of dead time where all you're staring at is a blank sky. It's the stupidest five minutes in film history, and it comes right at the beginning. Honestly, after that point the movie could've been Star Wars and I would've hated it.


It called to mind some wise advice a professor once gave me: he said that if I ever depicted a character being bored a story, I should NOT let the reader be bored by it. As academic as my teacher tried to be, some little speck of him understood that fiction writing, at bottom, is not neuroscience or astrophysics, it's not geology or anthropology: it's entertainment. To allow a reader to get bored is the worst mistake a writer can make.


"But if I want my book to be realistic, I have to include pockets of boredom," you might argue. "That's how life really is." Exactly! And it's from those pockets of boredom that we're trying to escape when we open a book. So don't, for crying out loud, let boredom seep into what is meant to be a form of escape.


This is what Coppola got hugely wrong with her movie. According to IMDB, the film is about a movie star named Johnny Marco (Dorff) being bored between projects. He takes care of his daughter, but a big priority of his is to stave off boredom between movies by partying and driving around in his fast car. Can you imagine pitching this film to a studio exec? "See, this movie is about boredom. That's why it's revolutionary!" No. A movie about boredom is bad enough: at least make the character's attempts at fighting it interesting. But no, this is cinéma vérité, where we have to feel Johnny's tedium, get inside his ennui and, in the end, wish for oblivion.


No, no, NOOO! All this does is make the audience bored. It's not deep, Sofia: it's just a waste of time. Which you never want your audience to come away thinking! I only watched 20 minutes of the movie, but within those 20 minutes, Johnny was shown either falling asleep or conked out in bed half a dozen times. Ugh. Stephen Dorff seems like a nice enough guy, but I don't want to watch him chain smoking and zonked out in his jeans for two hours.


Never, ever, on any account bore your audience. They have waaaaaay too many other things to be doing than reading your boring-ass book. If you want to be experimental, then have at it. Be the next Dos Passos or Gertrude Stein. Just don't expect anyone outside of a small, insular group of brainiacs to appreciate your work. For my money, you should want your reader to identify with heart-pounding moments, not moments of extreme boredom. Give this movie a pass, and please, please learn from it.

The Art of Gratitude

Gratitude is an art form. You have to work hard at it every day or else, just like any acquired skill, you'll forget how to do it. It's also like a relationship in that sense. It's easy to be flush with gratitude when times are good; it's when times are rough that you have to remind yourself how lucky you are.


What does gratitude have to do with writing? A lot. No, I'm not talking about an author's gratitude for their fans. That's important, of course, but you have to lay the groundwork first. If you're a successful writer, then kudos to you. Gratitude for fans becomes a much more meaningful notion at that point, so you're ahead of me there. But if you're like me, someone who's just hitting their stride with their writing, then things are still hazy on the fans front. So leave that aside for the moment.


And as for gratitude you may day-dream about for your as-yet-unrealized literary success (from time to time, I imagine myself being interviewed by Charlie Rose about my most recent literary smash success, so I'm as guilty as anyone), let's ignore that for the moment, too. Because there's no guarantee that all of your hard work will pay off in the form of critical accolades, and even if it does, that doesn't always translate into lots of money.


So forget about success and failure for a moment. Are you still with me? I know it's hard to stop thinking about success because we're programmed in this society with the need to achieve, achieve, achieve. That's fine for some people - for some, material success is like water to a fish. But for those of us who believe there's more to life, let me offer one simple piece of advice:


Be grateful for your interest in writing.


I'm careful to use the word "interest" here instead of "love" or "passion", because, in my opinion, at least in as much as they apply to writing, I think the words "love" and "passion" are over-used. What is it that Jack Nicholson once said about acting? If it's fun you're doing it wrong? That's my opinion on writing.


Not that it should be torture. There are moments when your mind seems to be hooked into some story-making machine, and those moments, for me, are divine. But they don't happen all that often, and in my experience, there are long stretches where I have to force myself to write when I really don't feel like it.


So forget about "love" and "passion". Just be grateful that the universe imbued you with an interest in the written word. Not that it gave you some pass to love words unconditionally (it's your job as a writer to control words, not to let them run free - to be too in love with words can be a problem), but be happy that it said, "All right, I think I've made enough Wall Street traders and tax attorneys and defense lobbyists and televangelists...what we need now are some writers!" And then you were born.


This is something to be extremely grateful for. You get to tell people's stories. Maybe not actual people's stories (unless you write biographies), but the stories of people who represent all of us in some way. This is a priviledge, even if you never get paid one penny to do so. You get to fill your free time with playing make-believe. Isn't that awesome?


And who knows if you're any good? Honestly, the word "good" as it's used in regards to writing is, again, useless. Being grateful for being a good writer is like being grateful for having "good" hair. If you have curly hair and you happen to be the kind of person who likes curly hair, then it's a boon; if you have curly hair but want straight hair, then it's a curse. And even if you like it, some days it just poofs out and you can't do anything with it. I'm fully aware that I'm a guy saying this, but whatever: I have curly hair and sometimes it's cool and sometimes I want to burn it off.


Ahem. My point here is that you have nothing to do, ultimately, with the curliness of your hair. It is what it is. It's how you approach it that matters.


Listen, some people will like what you write and some will not. There's no way to ever tell if you're "GOOD". But what makes a lot of sense is to be grateful that you have an interest in it (even if it's just a hobby for you, it's still important work you're doing).


And I'm not saying be grateful for what you're not; you shouldn't say, "Well, at least I'm not a window washer" (nothing against window washers). Just be happy that you have such a human-centric, empathy-building interest. If you can be grateful for this, you will always be successful.