250 Things You Should Know About Writing (2 page)

About The Author

The Internet is 55% porn, and 45% writers. You are not alone, and that's a thing both good and bad. It's bad because you can never be the glittery little glass pony you want to be. It's bad because the competition out there is as thick as an ungroomed 1970s pubic tangle. It's good because, if you choose to embrace it, you can find a community. A community of people who will share their neuroses and their drink recipes. And their, ahem, "fictional" methods for disposing of bodies.

A lot of writers try to skip over the basics and leap fully-formed out of their own head-wombs. Bzzt. Wrongo. Learn your basics. Mix up lose/loose? They're/their/there? Don't know where to plop that comma, or how to use those quotation marks? That's like trying to be a world-class chef but you don't know how to cook a goddamn egg. Writing is a mechanical act first and foremost. It is the process of putting words after other words in a way that doesn't sound or look like inane gibberish.

Some writers do what they do and are who they are because they were born with some magical storytelling gland that they can flex like their pubococcygeus, ejaculating brilliant storytelling and powerful linguistic voodoo with but a twitch of their taint. This is a small minority of all writers, which means you're probably not that. The good news is, even talent dies without skill. You can practice what you do. You practice it by writing, by reading, by living a life worth writing about. You must always be learning, gaining, improving.

I have been writing professionally for a lucky-despite-the-number 13 years. Not once -- seriously, not once ever -- has anyone ever asked me where I got my writing degree. Or if I even have one. Nobody gives two rats fucking in a filth-caked gym-sock whether or not you have a degree, be it a writing degree or a degree in waste management. The only thing that matters is, "Can you write well?"

Luck matters. It just does. But you can maximize luck. You won't get struck by lightning if you don't wander out into the field covered in tinfoil and old TV antennae.

Nobody becomes a writer overnight. Well, I'm sure somebody did, but that person's head probably went all asplodey from paroxysms of joy, fear, paranoia, guilt and uncertainty. Celebrities can be born overnight. Writers can't. Writers are made -- forged, really, in a kiln of their own madness and insecurities -- over the course of many, many moons. The writer you are when you begin is not the same writer you become.

Your journey to becoming a writer is all your own. You own it for good and bad. Part of it is all that goofy shit that forms the building blocks of your very persona -- mean Daddy, ugly dog, smelly house, pink hair, doting mother, bagger-bitch at the local Scoot-N-Shop. The other part is the industry part, the part where you dig your own tunnel through the earth and detonate it behind you. No two writers will sit down and tell the exact same story of their emergence from the wordmonkey cocoon. You aren't a beautiful and unique snowflake, except when you are.

Yours is the power of gods: you say, "let there be light," and Sweet Maggie McGillicutty,
here comes some light
. Writing is the act of creation. Put words on page. Words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to 7-book epic fantasy cycles with books so heavy you could choke a hippo. But don't give writing too much power, either. A wizard controls his magic; it doesn't control him. Push aside lofty notions and embrace the workmanlike aesthetic. Hammers above magic wands; nails above eye-of-newt. The magic will return when you're done. The magic is in what you did, not in what you're doing.

Treat it with respect and a little bit of reverence. Storytelling is what makes the world go around. Even math is a kind of story (though, let's be honest, a story with too few space donkeys or dragon marines). Don't let writing and storytelling be some throwaway thing. Don't piss it away. It's really cool stuff. Stories have the power to make people feel. To give a shit. To change their opinions. To change the world.

Value is a tricky word. Loaded down with a lot of baggage. It speaks to dollar amounts. It speaks to self-esteem. It speaks to moral and spiritual significance. The value of your wordmonkeying has a chameleonic (not a word, shut up) component: whatever value you give it, that's what value it will have. You give your work away, that's what it's worth. You hate your work, that's what it's worth. Put more plainly: what you do has value, so claim value for what you do. Put even more plainly: don't work for free.

It's not the gatekeepers. Not the audience. Not the reviewers. Not your wife, your mother, your baby, your dog. Not your work schedule, your sleep schedule, your rampant masturbation schedule. If you're not succeeding at writing, you've nobody to blame for yourself. You're the one who needs to super-glue her booty to the chair. You're the one who needs to pound away at his keyboard until the words come out. It's like Michael Jackson sang: "I took my baby on a Saturday bang." ... no, wait, that's not it. "I'm talkin' 'bout the man in the mirror." Yeah. Yes. That's the one.
Shamon
.

Write like you write, like you can't
help
but write, and your voice will become yours and yours alone. It'll take time but it'll happen as long as you let it. Own your voice, for your voice is your own. Once you know where your voice lives, you no longer have to worry so much about being derivative.

Put differently, harden the fuck up, soldier. (And
beard the fuck on
, while we're at it.) The writing life is a tough one. Edits can be hard to get. Rejections, even worse. Not everybody respects what you do. Hell, a lot of people don't even care. Build up that layer of blubber. Form a mighty exoskeleton. Expect to be pelted in the face with metaphorical (er, hopefully metaphorical) ice-balls. It's a gauntlet. Still gotta walk it, though.

Even the roughest stone is made smooth by agitation, motion, erosion. Yeah, the writing life can be tough, but it needs to be. Edits are good. Rejections are, too. Write with a partner. Submit yourself to criticism. Creative agitation can serve you well. Embrace it. Look into that dark hole for answers, not fear. Gaze into the narrative vagina, and find the story-baby crowning there. ... okay, too far? Too far. Yeah.

Agitation is good. Being an agitator, not so much. Be an asshole to agents and editors, editors and agents will treat you like an asshole. Be an asshole to other writers, they'll bash you over the head with a typewriter, or shiv you with an iPad in the shower. Be an asshole to your audience, they'll do a thing worse than all of that: they'll just ignore you. So, for real, don't be an asshole.

Writing is the priority. Write the best work you can write. That's true. But it's not all of it, either. Writing is ever an uncountable multitude. We
wish
writing were just about writing. The writer is editor, marketer, blogger, reader, thinker, designer, publisher, public speaker, budget-maker, contract reader, trouble-shooter, coffee-hound, liver-pickler, shame-farmer, god, devil, gibbering protozoa.

They say it's "who you know," which is true to a point but it doesn't really get to the heart of it. That sounds like everybody's the equivalent to Soylent Green -- just use 'em up for your own hungry purpose. That's not it. You want to make friends. It means to be a part of the community. People aren't step-stools. Connect with people in your respective industry. Do not use and abuse them.

You've got all the words in the world at your disposal, and an infinite number of arrangements in which to use them. So don't be boring. Who wants to read work that's as dull as a bar of soap?

Clarity is king. Say what you mean. You're telling a story, be it in a book, a film, a game, an article, a diner table placemat. Don't make the reader stagger woozily through a mire just to grasp what you're saying.

Everybody tells you that to be a writer, you have to read and write a lot. That's true. But it's not all of it. That'll get you to understand the technical side. It'll help you grasp the way a story is built. But that doesn't put meat on the bones you arrange. For that, you need everything
but
reading and writing. Go live. Travel. Ride a bike. Eat weird food. Experience things. Otherwise, what the fuck are you going to talk about?

Stop stressing out. You get the one thing few others get: a constant array of do-overs. Writing is rewriting. You know the saying, "Drink till she's pretty/till he's handsome?" This is like that. Edit till she's pretty. Rewrite until it doesn't suck. You have an endless supply of blowtorches, hacksaws, scalpels, chainsaws, M80s, and orbital lasers to constantly destroy and rebuild. Of course, you can get caught in that cycle, too. You have to know when to stop the fiddling. You have to know when to get off the ride.

It's all too easy to start something and not finish it. Remember when I said you were legion? It's true, but if you want to be separated from 90% of the other writers (or "writers" depending on how pedantic you choose to be) out there, then just finish the shit that you started. Stop abandoning your children. You wouldn't call yourself a runner if you quit every race your ran halfway through. Finishing is a good start. Stop looking for the escape hatch; pretend your work in progress just plain doesn't have one.

There's only: advice that works for you, and advice that doesn't. It's like going to
Home Depot
and trying to point out the "bad tools." Rather, some tools work for the job. Most don't. Be confident enough to know when a tool feels right in your hand, and when it might instead put out your eye.

We're all just squawking into the wind and nobody really has the answers. Except you, and those answers are only
for
you. Everybody else is just guessing. Sometimes they're right. A lot of times they're wrong. That's not to say such pontification isn't valuable. You just gotta know what weight to give it.

The hard boot is better than the tickling feather when it comes time to talk about the realities of writing, but at the end of the day, the thing that gets you through it all is hope and optimism. You have to stay positive. Writers are given over to a kind of moribund gloom. Can't let the penmonkey blues get you down. Be positive. Stay sane. The only way through is with wide-open eyes and a rigor mortis grin. Don't be one of those writers who isn't having any fun. Don't let writing be the albatross around your neck. Misery is too easy to come by, so don't invite it. If writing doesn't make you happy, you maybe shouldn't be a writer. It's a lot of work, but you need to let it be a lot of play, too. Otherwise, what's the fucking point? Right? Go push a broom, sell a car, paint a barn. If you're a writer, then write. And be happy you can do so.

Let's get this out of the way right now: if you start a fucking novel, then plan to fucking finish that fucking novel. Your hard drive is not a novel burial ground. It's like building your own Frankenstein monster -- robbing a grave, stealing a brain, chopping up the body -- and then giving up before you let lightning tickle that sonofabitch to life. The true author finishes what he begins. That's what separates you from the dead-beats, from the talkers, from the dilettantes. Don't let dead metaphysical weight slow you down.