The show is on Surf 1700 Flagler Beach Radio (FlaglerBeachRadio.com.) I listen in on the TuneIn Radio app. It’s not a podcast so you can’t listen to it later.
What’s my favorite Stupid Thing recently?
I have several to choose from, but I bristled when someone said, “I can’t imagine doing all that by oneself.” The implication of the tone and context was it couldn’t be done or be any good.
Answer: I don’t do it alone. I have a lot of help.
Unlike most podcasts, this is live radio with an active forum so you can comment and ask questions in real time. In that way, it’s a social media thing, too. Authors Tim Baker and Armand Rosamilia will answer questions in between busting each other’s — so, hey! See you tonight!
You’ll get a lot out of it, plus laughs. Don’t forget to bring your own Stupid Things suggestions.
The term “hack”, as discussed in this space recently, usually refers to someone, typically writing to tight deadlines, who is churning out words with no love for his or her work. I don’t think that applies any writer I’ve ever met, no matter the project. Every writer is optimistic as they begin a new book. We tell our spouses and girlfriends and boyfriends and basset hounds, “This will be the one that will really wow ’em. If you leave me now, you’ll miss out on all the glory, my accolades and a mention on the Acknowledgments page, so you better stick around.”
Here’s why “hack” is a poor term:
In This Plague of Days, I write about a zombie apocalypse. Maybe that sounds silly to you, but I fell in love with the characters and there are genuine emotional, serious and thoughtful moments. It’s complex and it’s not what you expect. Just as I attempted to do with my hardboiled hit man in Bigger Than Jesus, I played outside the expected conventions. I tried to do something different with the genre.
But here’s the thing: That doesn’t make me unique.
Every writer I know is reaching to the best of their ability to write something awesome, different and engaging, no matter what they’re writing. We try to write the best tweets we can, for Thor’s sake! Certainly we’re aiming for at least that clever when constructing a narrative beyond 140 characters.
We’re all looking for a special turn of phrase or a new twist on an old cliché no matter what we’re writing. We’re searching for ways to entice and delight readers. We love language. We tell stories. I’ll leave it to readers to decide the degree to which we succeed, of course. However, when a reviewer dismisses any writer out of hand, based on their choice of subject, as a “hack”? I reserve the right to dismiss that review. I don’t think the term elucidates anything. A book takes too much work and time for us to aim low.
Say it with me and feel it: “Writing a book is among the least cynical things you can do.”
As a person who, more than once, has been dubbed “Mr. Cynical”, I speak with expertise. We may fall short, but we’re all shooting for the outer moons of Andromeda and to prove our dead moms wrong. Even if the reader thinks they’ve read it all before. Especially when that niggling voice of doubt in our heads tells us, “Some people are really going to underestimate what I can do with this material. I’m going to melt their eyeballs with my fair-bitchin’ prose.”
I suggest we all take each book on its own merits instead of painting with push brooms (and read the sample before you buy to avoid disappointed expectations.) Please don’t say this or that writer is a hack. That’s insulting and too easy, for starters. Besides, like plague viruses, authors evolve, too. Maybe you dismissed Stephen King’s Pet Sematery, but if from that judgment you dismiss all of his work, including The Long Walk, you haven’t read The Long Walk.
It is fair to say a particular plot device is hackneyed, but don’t generalize about all our work. Every author I know, me included, gets better with each new book. Disastrous experience beats the weakness out of us.
What other terms should we be careful about using? To the jargonator!
1. “Commercial”: Does that mean you liked it but felt you shouldn’t? (This is the worst, most disingenuous reaction, last spotted on The Slate Culture Gabfest. That’s right! I’m calling you out, Metcalfe. You’re so meta-snarky, you might be David Plotz.)
Does commercial really mean mass market paperback? With the advent of ebooks, that seems a dated reference.
By commercial fiction, do you mean it tells a ripping story that’s less based on character? Hm. All writers want to make readers care about their characters, so that seems a tad empty.
By commercial, does the critic mean the author wants to sell a lot of books? “How base and singular! No person of character wants that! Are you not of independent means, Monsieur Writer Peasant?”
2. “Muscular” prose: The author is a minimalist, idolizes Hemingway and probably does not possess a MFA from the last thirty years. An obvious attempt to damn with faint praise.
3. “Workmanlike”: Same as #2, but with even fewer syllables in word choice. The critic thinks they’re getting away with being snooty, but we can read the code and the classism isn’t that subtle. Both #2 and #3 are really authorial choices, not burdens to grow past.
4. “Literary”: This means less plot and more exploration of inner worlds when not used as a euphemism for “pretentious.” Certainly this indicates that you’ll leave the book out on the coffee table to prove to the in-laws or tonight’s date that you’re deeper than you seem.
But all authors strive for literary flourishes at the very least. When we’re in composition mode, no premise sounds so tired that we can’t hit it at a different angle, make it great and spin it fresh. I know of no writer, no matter how tight the deadline or how little they are paid, who sets out to write crap. You might say it’s not to your taste. The author might even call it crap…later, after a few more books. But as we write? We’re all Hunter S. Thompson and Margaret Atwood and Kurt Vonnegut rolled up in Shakespearian dreams of legacy, love and respect.
We may fail, but we are artists.
Our hearts are in the right place.
Are you reading with an open mind?
Is your heart in the right place?
Have you dismissed something you haven’t read without even reading the sample?
Well, no, not you, of course, Gentle Reader of this Blog.
But, you know…them other jerks what don’t respect us none.
1. Nobody cares about your book at first, even if you think they should. Even if you think they care about you, they’re indifferent. It’s maddening. For you, each book is a magical dream made real. For them, “Nice hobby, but so what?”
2. Since typing looks a lot like writing to the casual observer, you don’t get extra respect for being a writer from a lot of people. Anybody can type, so don’t think you’re special. “Who do you think you are, anyway? You think you’re better than me?” Oh, they won’t really say that. That’s silly. But some may as well say that by the way they’ll treat you.
3. A lot of people can read, but don’t. They care even less than the casual observers in Items #1 and #2. I don’t understand these people. Why live? It’s a mystery.
4. Some people do read, but they’re jealous of those who write. Read any one-star review that seethes with the venom usually reserved for a pedophile’s first night in prison or a family reunion. Yeah. Those people.
5. You and your family will make sacrifices for Art. Your kids’ friends will be able to afford nice vacations, cool stuff and the latest technology. Your kids won’t get that stuff, though they will get an in-house example of someone daring to follow their dream and buck conventional expectations. At least cover the basics somehow: food, shelter, clothing and good minds.
6. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, pursuing the arts is a great way to disappoint your parents. Don’t expect them to understand. That’s presumptuous and unfair to them since they (probably) love you. It’s not that they don’t want you to succeed as a writer. They want you to take that accounting job because they don’t want to see you suffer. They don’t understand that the safe job they want you to take will hurt you in ways that last, too.
7. The first book that consumes your energy and attention which you poured your heart into? Odds are, first attempts aren’t that great. But no matter how many books you write and no matter how big you get, someone will say you can’t write. In fact, the bigger you are, the more negative messages you’ll get. (If so, congratulations! You’re reaching a wider audience.) That cost-benefit analysis works in your favor, but at some point you might still consider antidepressants, booze or illegal substances or too many brownies. Avoid self-medicating. Write more instead.
8. Sometimes betrayal arrives from unexpected sources within your circle of friends or family. This will hurt most and saps your creative energies. These incidents often lead to divorce or more heated arguments at family reunions. The alternative is you’ll quit and hate yourself because you are no longer being you. Anyone who forces you to choose between them and your passion is gangrenous. Amputate.
Another thing I learned just today:
If you’re being a dick, that doesn’t mean I’m thin-skinned.
9. Writing is harder than it looks, especially before you start. It’s more fun than it looks after you start. Begin.
10. Somehow, at least some readers will find you. You probably won’t even know what you did right, exactly. But there will be readers and even fans. Super-uber-robo fans that so get you, so love your work? Well…you’ll wish those negative friends and family understood you as well as these strangers. Don’t sweat it. You’re making new friends through your fiction.
Treasure your readers. Love them. Inspire them. Nurture them. Entertain. Make them laugh and cry and hit them with love and surprises.
When you succeed, make sure everyone who tried to put you down on your way up finds out. You’ll care less about how they hurt you by then, of course, but not so little that your vengeance won’t be delicious.
~ I am Robert Chazz Chute. I write about funny hit men, autistic teens and humans versus zombies versus vampires. But mostly I write about the caprice of vengeful gods. I create gods in my own image.
How does poetry help your prose? Why is poetry still important even though so few people buy it? Here’s why:
1. To paraphrase comedian Greg Proops: “Because George Bush and Dick Cheney. That’s why.” Poetry is a salve for our minds and times.
2. To take off on the Coleridge quote: Poetry is the least words in the best order. Capture a scene with fewer brush strokes and the reader will appreciate the efficiency of your storytelling.
3. From “A Late Walk” by Robert Frost:
And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words.
To capture images with imaginative language that illuminates the scene in the reader’s mind, practice by reading and writing more poetry. So much prose is linear to the point of telegraphic minimalism. I love a spare writing style, too, but there’s room for art as long as the story remains unobscured. The point is not to make the reader work harder to see the picture you’re painting, but to grasp it all in a pleasing way. Many readers won’t notice how you’re doing it, but they’ll feel what you’re doing. Prose shows, true, but poetry engages.
4. I have a penchant for dark poetry. It’s fun and I found a way to integrate it into my zombie apocalypse. Sure that sounds insane, sure, but here’s what I did:
All the chapter titles in This Plague of Days make up a long, dark poem with clues to the plot. There’s a secret in This Plague of Days no one has yet guessed. I’ve offered to name characters after the first three people who guess right. So far, the secret remains undiscovered. (To see the entire poem for each season, you can find all the verses in the paperbacks. In the ebooks, search “Table of Contents”. If you care to guess, DM me on twitter @rchazzchute and keep the secret so Season 3 remains spoiler-free.) Here’s a piece:
Miles away in the Last Cafe,
We count every cost, each rueful day,
But knowing will not lessen the surprise
when you see the truth beneath the guise.
The puzzle is not Death, but Life Neverlasting.
The answer is under the stars and moon shadows casting
Now in paperback!
Light, revelation and fearful truth
The stuff of old age and disappointed youth.
In dreams we find the connection to what will last,
what won’t survive and what’s best left in the past.
~ from Season 2, Episode 2 of This Plague of Days
5. Read poetry for the pure love of language.
The more you read, the more sensitive you become to the sound of rhyme and the beat of meter. Power lies where the syllables fall and ring. Poetry doesn’t have to be dense, flowery or meaning-adjacent, communicating only by approximation. Poetry’s gift is in its precision. Poets choose their words carefully. Writers of prose can, and should, choose their words carefully, too. Do it right and even a grisly dismemberment can reach high lyricism.
6. Play with words because it’s fun. Unless you insist, poetry doesn’t have to rhyme.
Work it right and find the time
to light up your readers’ minds.
With a little poetry to your prose,
fans will love the words you chose.
7. Poetry doesn’t have to be dusty and academic.
Check out a poetry slam on YouTube sometime. You’ll see, hear and feel raw emotion communicating points and pictures. When I want to hear a modern poet who writes imaginative rhymes that fit together, tight and smooth as puzzle pieces, I listen to Eminem rap.
That’s the sort of poetry that still sells, but I love it all no less.
Season One of This Plague of Days is the siege. Sutr-X was the pandemic. Sutr-Z’s next and it’s coming for you and the Queen’s corgis.
1. Good characters have secrets they are trying to keep from the other characters. For instance, there is no major character in my zombie apocalypse, This Plague of Days, who does not guard a secret that’s contributing to the hullabaloo. Plenty of room for conflict there. Secrets are hard to keep and the longer they’re kept, the bigger the explosion when the secrets are revealed.
2. Good characters do not get along. In This Plague of Days, the matriarch is a Christian. The patriarch is atheist. They love each other, despite their differences, but it makes for some friction and they cope with problems much differently. They also begin to come closer to the other’s position, so rather than getting preachy, it’s an exploration of how people cope in a crisis. These details make them relatable so readers care about them.
3. Good characters have competing motivations. In Bigger Than Jesus, my Cuban hit man kills for love. Competing characters want power, sex, money and vengeance. All those characters are after the same thing for different reasons, so tension is built as allegiances are broken.
4. Good minor characters don’t know they’re minor characters. Everyone is the star of their own movie. If your henchmen might as well have the labels “Heavy #1 and #2”, give them more life history. I have a bad guy, a drunken marauder, in Season One of This Plague of Days you don’t really get to know. He wears a wedding dress into battle (stolen from the protagonist’s mother.) It’s a brief brush stroke that lets the reader figure out the rest as to where that guy is coming from while fuelling reader outrage.
Now in paperback!
5. Good characters are conflicted and can change. Sometimes, real people do in fact do something uncharacteristic. That makes them interesting. To make this believable, give them good reasons to change their behavior. With enough correct and detailed context, you can make the reader believe an out of character choice is logical at the time. Let a bad guy aspire to be a hero. Let a hero do something petty, just for spite (and the joke.) People who are too sure of themselves are often boring, unimaginative, predictable. I hate predictable choices in plots, don’t you?
6. Good characters, even heroes, make bad decisions that make them more interesting. As with #5, context makes this work. The reincarnation of Battlestar Galactica is a perfect example. You were probably rooting for the human heroes in the show, but they made terrible decisions all the time. Overall, that didn’t make them bad per se. It made them less predictable, more interesting and more human.
So, for instance, victims who are chronically bullied are tragic figures. Push that victim too far and they can fight back believably. If the bullied person overcorrects and becomes a bully or a killer, or fights back and fails, that’s even more interesting. The reader will expect them to triumph. You could give them that happy ending, but don’t deliver it too quickly or in a way they can anticipate.
Click it now to get a huge short story collection of dark fun. On sale now for only 99 cents. Love it? Give it a review, please.
7. Good characters have conversations. I’m already mentioned Tarantino recently as the apex writer of tangential dialogue, but there are many examples. Think of Tony Soprano’s conversations with his therapist or all the geeky arguments about Star Wars and comics stuffed into Kevin Smith movies.
Bigger Than Jesus, for instance, is stuffed with movie references. I didn’t do that just for the jokes. I did it so readers who were uncomfortable rooting for an assassin would discover they shared a lot of common ground with my luckless Cuban hit man. The Hit Man Series works because, despite what he does for a living, Jesus is always trying to escape his life in the Spanish mafia. He’s actually very funny and loveable. Throw in a tragic childhood and all those little conversations really aren’t tangential at all. They’re the key to the character’s choices. That connects him to readers.
8. Good characters have depth. Anybody can write a scene with two hit men disposing of a body. I’d write that scene with the details you’d expect, I suppose, but I’d have the assassins argue over the Obamacare while pouring concrete.
In This Plague of Days, we learn how a deadly octopus leads to Dayo’s migration to England. When the Sutr virus outbreak hits and Buckingham Palace is attacked by zombies. I want you to know who Dayo is and why she got that way. You don’t have to do a ton of research to give every character a rich family history (and if you do, I don’t suggest you use it all.) Give us just enough to make them feel real and just enough for us to feel like we’re witnessing a friend’s death when you murder them horrifically. (Attention Plaguers: I’m not saying Dayo will die in Season 3. I’m not saying she won’t. I’m not saying. You will find out her last name in Season 3, but that’s all I’ll promise.)
My luckless hit man is a funny guy in big trouble.
9. Good characters have physical problems. Most heroes in action movies get a scratch high on the forehead, even after a couple of hours of near misses, crashes and mortal combat. Picture wounds in most any old movie with Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford. All that fighting and not one chipped tooth? Really? Not one broken hand after all those haymakers? That’s why everyone remembers Jack Nicholson’s cut nose in Chinatown. He dared to look bad for the camera.
In Bigger Than Jesus, Jesus Diaz has the snot beaten out of him from the beginning. I’m trained in pathology, so physical ills turn up a lot as I give characters more barriers to their goals. I made the hero of This Plague of Days an autistic selective mute. In Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart’s goals wouldn’t be so tough to deal with if he didn’t have…you guessed it…vertigo. In Rear Window, he’s got a leg in a cast when the villain comes to kill him. Mo’ problems = mo’ thrills.
10. Good characters are familiar, but not necessarily archetypal.
Shiva, in This Plague of Days, is the Snidely Whiplash of the story. She’s a big character who, in the movie, will be played by Helena Bonham Carter or some dark beauty from Bollywood who isn’t afraid to chew the scenery. The whole moustache-twirling bit is archetypal. However, when her secret is revealed, we understand why she wiped out a major chunk of the world’s population and why she thinks she’s doing the right thing as a bio-terrorist. Her motivations are pure even though any sane observer sees her as pure evil. Before we’re done with This Plague of Days, you may even feel sorry for her. Sure, she’s a vain bitch, but so’s your sister and deep down, you still love her.
Here’s the thing about familiarity.
I don’t suggest you do as Larry David did, modelling the character of Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld on an actual person. That sounds like a lawsuit in the making. However, take your crazy Aunt Sadie’s Red Rose Tea figurine collection and make it the fancy of the brutish pro wrestler you saw on TV once. Take information, life experience, Wikipedia and expertise you possess and put it in the blender of your imagination. Find their combinations and permutations. Come up with something new, familiar, yet not clichéd. Don’t make your character recognizable as a family member because Aunt Sadie will sue. She’s crazy, remember?
We are surrounded by fascinating characters. Write them and build something fresh.
Click here to get Higher Than Jesus, #2 in The Hit Man Series
~ Robert Chazz Chute is a complex character, better suited to minimal human interaction. However, I’m friendly on Twitter. Follow me @rchazzchute. I tweet about writing, books and publishing.
When I was in elementary school, we were forced to write stories to themes that were never of my choosing. I remember using the cliché, “If not for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all,” repeatedly. Then I used a pun on the words “mourning” and “morning”. Twice. My teacher didn’t have a lot of hope for my literary ambitions. Yes, those were dark days growing up in the village.
Flash forward.
I’ve written ten books and Season 3 of This Plague of Days is in the works. What happened so this became possible? How did all my writing days get bright? If you had a happy childhood (Editor’s note: Is that possible or are you just being sarcastic?), I suppose you could foster the writer’s mindset by using your imagination.
Failing that, grow a writer like this:
1. Mom read to me. I don’t remember it, but she was insistent that if I had any success with words whatsoever, I had her to thank.
2. Mom was a stickler about language and wasn’t shy about correcting us in front of company. Yes, it added another dimension of nastiness to Thanksgiving and Christmas. The only respite came from shutting up or getting it right. Since I couldn’t seem to shut up….
3. Mom loved crossword puzzles and we did them together. A crossword puzzle was like half-time at the Superbowl for us. It let us take a necessary breather from all the fighting. (We’re Irish.)
4. There were always books all over the house and my parents read voraciously. Love of reading must be osmotic because I rebelled against everything else they thought valuable. Fortunately, the town wasn’t so small we missed out on a library. That would have been barbaric.
5. My parents helped me appreciate books so much because, seriously, childhood in rural Nova Scotia? Brimstone. Sulphur. Country music.
Later, while reading Dante’s Inferno in university, I looked for the circle of Hell where bad children crawl under the bed covers and cry because they don’t have books into which they can escape. If you concentrate on the words on the page, I learned you can block out the twangin’ and a-fiddlin’.
6. My parents owned a video rental store. I watched a staggering number of movies of all sorts (not just porn.) Movies teach storytelling, especially when they’re bad. Poorly executed movies stir the writer’s imagination as to how you could have saved the film if only you worked in Hollywood. For instance, what if the guy who comes to the door isn’t a plumber or a pizza delivery guy, just to change things up?
7. Needing a break from me, my parents gleefully sent me off to a good school with a good program where I studied the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history. I was in the Foundation Year Program at the University of King’s College where I learned to appreciate how much I didn’t know. It’s the sort of education where you get to read classics voraciously. Who can afford the tuition for this sort of thing anymore? They’re focussed on getting a job, instead. I don’t blame anyone for that, but it is a loss.
I also studied journalism in university. I can’t say that really helped my writing all that much, but it did fuel my outrage and sadness indirectly, so that’s helpful.
9. My father loves language, but without my mother’s more conventional take on proper English usage. Instead, conversation is peppered with creative idioms only he seems to use. “You’re jumpin’ around like a fart in a mitten,” for one instance. That’s pretty creative. Dad does not use clichés. Good policy.
10. Growing up in a small town, everybody knows everyone else’s business. It’s one of the things I hate about small towns, but in that microcosm is enough material, weirdness and human friction to fill a lifetime of book writing.
That same small-town claustrophobia informs the stories in Murders Among Dead Trees. Gossip threw lives open, baring truths that are hidden when you have the comfort of not knowing your neighbors. Despite close proximity, there were still adulterers who dared to mess around without the courtesy or smarts to carry their affairs down the road into the next town. Everyone’s family medical histories were fair game and everybody was pretty damn judgmental about everything. Nothing was happening, so teasing was a team sport. Unsolicited advice was rampant. Violence was common at school and bullying couldn’t exist because “it’s the second punch that starts the fight.” If you were too polite, you must be weak. No weakness was left unprobed.
In cities, people die in repetitive ways. Where I grew up, mortal dangers were less predictable: farm equipment chomp with metal teeth and sea caves fill with fast, icy, tidal water. And then there were the hunting accidents.
In high school, the guy who sat next to me in grade nine math was mistaken for a bear. Up a tree. Wearing hunter orange. If he’d been murdered in an urban drive-by scenario, at least we could have blamed stupid gang violence. Instead, an excitable hunter killed him. One good thing about a developing writer in a small town: you get all the details about the guts and gore. From the drunken car accident that crushed my childhood playmate to blow-by-blow descriptions of every fight, somebody always tells one person. Then it’s all over town.
Tips and inspiration for the writer’s journey to publication.
An unhappy childhood in a small town is an excellent incubator for a mouthy brat who dreams of escaping to the big city one day and leaving it all behind.
Except, in my fiction, I never managed to leave it behind. I’m still there, righting wrongs, writing vengeance, and dreaming.
~ Robert Chazz Chute writes horror and suspense. Now you can guess why. See all his books here.
A friend of mine has a strict rule about writing: “Remove it from the manuscript if it sounds like writing.”
Writerly = Bad
Some sentences do call attention to themselves. It’s not supposed to be a good thing, but I don’t think it should be an unbending rule. To me, it’s a guideline reminding me that story always comes first (but we should enjoy ourselves along the way.) It’s up to the creator to make an informed choice about the narrative and the reader will decide if they groove on that choice.
In film, sometimes a director will take you out of the movie’s illusion by putting the camera somewhere unexpected, lingering, shaking or going for some special effect that reminds the observer, “Hey! You’re watching a movie!”
That can happen when you write something in such a way that it reminds the reader,
“Hey! You’re reading a book!”
Maybe the prose is beautiful, but some will accuse you of writing purple prose, being too precious or being maudlin. But many readers aren’t just readers. The best readers are also lovers of language. They want the reading experience to transcend mere delivery of information. When they read your writerly passage, it transports them.
I write a lot of action scenes, but I make sure to balance out the action with pauses so the reader can catch her breath before being thrown into the next chasm.
We’re pushed to begin in the middle of the action and make the pace fast. However, too many beats in too short a time sacrifices character development. Lose that, and we don’t care about the action scene.
Dare to go deeper so the bad guys don’t devolve into “Heavy #1” and “Heavy #2” come through the door with guns. You may or not remember details of the scene in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson take down the guys who stole from their boss. However, film buffs can recite the lines from the drive to the shoot out. Remember? “Royale with cheese.”
Take time to build tension. There are scenes (yes, even in novels about the zombie apocalypse) that pause to show how people and their relationships are changing. Sometimes the pause is a great chance to write something for comedic effect. If you can make them laugh on one page and cry on the next, they’ll love the story more.
We can use our words to communicate the power and depth of the ocean and of personalities. We can show happiness and tragedy in a few brush strokes or we can dare to go deeper sometimes, reaching for the uneasy metaphor. Readers appreciate a story that explores emotional range with developed characters they care about.
My friend, the hardliner, says, “Never sound writerly!”
“But dude!” I replied, “Sometimes it’s only the elegant turns of phrase readers remember. It’s the flourish that captures the detail that makes the scene memorable. Without a little reach in description, I feel like I may as well be tapping out the story on a telegraph.”
“You’re just writing a zombie novel,” he said. “That’s not what they’re expecting.”
“No book has to be just anything. Any writing can turn the dial up to eleven and sound epic with the right twist on the expected. We aren’t supposed to give them what they expect. That’s mundane.”
“Okay,” he said, “just don’t make it sound too writerly. You know what I mean.”
“I promise I’ll delete it if it’s too obscure or gets in the way of the story.”
There are many distractions between your bed and your writing desk. Some suggestions to discipline the monkey mind:
1. Well, write in bed then! (Pee bottle or diapers optional.)
2. Work on a computer without Internet access. Unplug the modem or get your pet rat to chew on the wires if necessary.
3. Get your spouse to activate the parental controls (so they have the code). Congratulations! Your distracting porn addiction just vanished.
4. Commit to scheduling writing time just as you would a doctor’s appointment, the gym or any other important job. You know your writing is important work, too, right?
5. Make your commitments public. Failure yields public humiliation. Success gets you a reward. Make a bet with a writing buddy or do writing sprints in social media. Report your progress, or lack of it, so you’ll do better tomorrow.
6. Defend your writing time. Wield dual ice axes, if necessary. A sign on that door you close marking your designated writing time makes a clear stand. Your writing retreat does not have to be an expensive, remote cabin in the Rockies. It’s as nearby as the word, “No.”
7. Get out of the house and write elsewhere: Starbucks, the library or at your day job. (Write on your lunch hour if the boss keeps close tabs on you.)
9. Unplug and go write the first draft by hand. Some writers feel the words come easier when they’re connecting brain to arm to hand to pen to paper.
10. Work with your biorhythms, but find your sweet spot when your focus is best: late at night or early morning often allows you to work without interruption.
11. Got a writing group? Shape it so you can make it do double duty: make it a day care club. When my kids were little, playdates (and their nap time) were opportunities to get work done. Communal babysitting gets the kids entertaining each other and allows the writing to continue when you organize and rotate the playdates from house to house.
12. Protect your brain. This goes beyond time management. For instance, when you notice you need a nap after eating bread, take the hint. Maybe it’s the gluten making you sleepy. Thanks to a helpful reader, I’m trying a couple of products from Onnit.com and I do feel and think better lately. Exercise doesn’t just get blood to your body’s muscles. Better blood supply revs up brain muscle, too. Since dumping processed foods, losing weight and upping exercise, I’m sharper. The walls are alive, I see into souls and I write harder and longer.
13. Just start. You’re full of resistance and distractions and excuses at first, but once you begin, the words and worlds will begin to flow. Set a timer and tell yourself you’ll write for ten minutes. What? You can’t take ten minutes? Sure you can. Don’t be a weak whiner! Take ten minutes. By the time the timer goes off, you won’t want to stop.
14. Write in short, energetic bursts. Like going to the gym, many people feel they can’t do anything worthwhile unless they have big blocks of time to commit to their projects. For many of us who don’t have that luxury (and hardly anyone has that luxury) we’re actually sabotaging ourselves with that attitude. Consistency works better than bingeing in the long-term.
15. Take a course, go to a conference or read a book to energize yourself and get excited about writing again. We moan too much about writing and forget how fun it is until we’re back to doing it. If you aren’t having fun writing, you must be doing it wrong.
BONUS
Most important, remember why you’re doing this. Hold on to the Why so you’ll overcome obstacles to the How. You are not merely a consumer. You’re a productive writer, pursuing your dreams and telling stories for fun and profit. Don’t put your dreams aside only so others can achieve their goals. You’re important, too.
1. We discount one-star reviews because of their typically venomous, dismissive hatred yet we read every one.
2. We strive to get on big media to help sell, but not much media is big anymore and it won’t move the sales needle anyway.
3. We hope to be picked up by old traditional media, but we’d connect with our audiences better and get more time, for free, going after podcasts.
4. We’re putting ourselves out there, daring to dream big, but get discouraged by people who do neither of those things.
5. We get jealous of the success of other authors when we should learn, emulate and be inspired.
6. We say “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but that’s what covers are for.
7. We spend time thinking about being a writer instead of writing.
8. We all hope to catch fire with our first book, but if success came today, many of us would be unprepared for it and wouldn’t have anything else to sell.
9. We spend months or years on our manuscripts, but many of us aren’t taking a few minutes to make sure our hard work is safely backed up (in two different ways.)
10. We call it self-publishing, but it’s a team effort and the author who truly tries to go it alone is a fool or a monster.
We’re currently inundated with new year’s resolution memes and people are already asking, “Have you broken your resolution yet?”
Jeez! How weak are we? Are we the same species who fled comfy, lice-ridden cities to cross oceans in rickety, wooden boats without valet service to chop down trees and to make room for the I-95? Um…I might have skipped over hundreds of years of slavery, a few assassinations and some other historical events in that brief summary, but you get my point. Be stronger, with the dumb, pioneer spirit and distressing testicular fortitude of your ancestors.
The solutions to broken resolutions are pretty much the same every year.
Here are varieties of bad solutions you might recognize:
1. Tech solutions: Get a Fitbit to lose that weight because that which is not measured doesn’t get changed. Write it all down. (Good start! Keep going!) When you stop writing it down, you’ll look up to find yourself, inexplicably and magically, transported to the pizza parlour. Blink again and you’re in the ice cream parlour. Weird. (Bad end.)
2. Psychological: Love yourself more, because, I mean, like…wow. Think how you’ll look in that hot, red tube top, sir! (Corollary: How about I love me more the way I am right now and eat an entire ham smothered in chocolate and soft serve ice cream? I’ll wear that same tube top, but as a headband.)
3. Political: Let’s form another committee about that. We can get your proposal on the agenda two weeks after the sun explodes, on a Tuesday afternoon, at about the time we table it forever, for the drifting in space holiday.
4. Demented political: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps you moochers and takers! (Even though pulling oneself up by the bootstraps was originally meant ironically since it’s a physical impossibility which, if possible, would deny gravity and allow us all to float.)
5. Philosophical: Why? Why? Why? Why didn’t I choose a major that led to employment?
6. Social work: Don’t ask why, dummy! Ask, Why not?
7. Evangelical: Jesus, by all depictions, was a really chiselled jock. And He wouldn’t eat an ice cream cone. (But how many carbs are in manna?)
8. Journalistic (1960 to 1990): Let me tell you about the obesity epidemic (good) and the glory of low-fat diets that were tried for decades and failed miserably (stupid).
9. Journalistic (1990 – present): Let me scare you to death over the latest food fad while we watch this stooge for the sugar industry debate a squirrel on water skis. (All stupid.)
10. Dream Journaling: I’ll watch The Secret again and again and if I wish really hard and we all clap our hands, Tinkerbell will live and I’ll hate myself a fraction less.
11. Personal trainer logic: You weren’t born with a thin person’s metabolism like me, therefore you’re a lazy slob.
12. Coaching a la The Biggest Loser: I will respect you as a human being, but only after you lose the weight. You losers disgust me! What? You thought “Loser” in the title was ironic?
13. Drama coach: Show us what your new life will look like through the magic of interpretive dance!
14. Medical: I’ll tell you to lose the weight. What? How do you do it? Nobody really knows for sure…but go do that.
15. Systemic solutions: The status quo is All. Go back to sleep. You will be assimilated.
16. Obligatory Stoner cliché: Don’t rock the boat man, cuz nothing changes and The Man is keeping us down. The plaid pattern on this couch is, like, deep, man.
17. Optimistic: We can rise above the status quo. We never have personally, but darn it we will! Just because, that’s why!
18. Pessimistic: If we change for the better, I’ll have to get a whole new personality. That sounds like a lot of work.
19. Educational: Study all the theories about how to change. Write another thesis. We’ll reach a conclusion when you’re quarter past dead, which, to be fair, is much faster than #3.
20. Capitalistic: Irrelevant. Who has money anymore?
21. Socialistic: I can change as soon as I get everyone else on board and get approved through a consensus of a vast number of people who don’t understand my problems.
22. Tyrannical: Do as I say! Oh, crap, I’m shot.
23. Vegan Yogic: I’m already perfect in every way. The enlightened need not change. And you? Still eating food with a face?
24. Nike Vulcan Logic: I do not understand why you do not just do it, you moronic human.
25. Captain Kirk Logic: Screw the Prime Directive again! No consequences! But first, hey, green girl! Do you come to this space bar often?
26. Dr. Who Logic: We’ll fix your current circumstance by going back in time, except that will just make more timestreams and, you being you, I suspect you’ll still be miserable. Worse, at some point my lovely, adoring assistant will age, get married off to some half-wit who isn’t me or be murdered by an alien.
27. Fatalistic: Nothing changes. Why bother? Though…yeah, I would like to get out of my parents’ basement before I’m 40. But that could never work. No one’s ever succeeded at changing anything ever.
28. Pollyanna: Don’t change. You’re beautiful. I’m beautiful. Everything is beautiful. Just keep those red and green pills coming or for the love of god lobotomize me!
29. Good Will Hunting: It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.
30. Irish Mom: It’s your fault. And your father’s.
31. Man Logic: When I look in the mirror, I look pretty good to me.
32. Woman Logic: When he looks in the mirror, he has no &%$@!! idea what I put up with.
33. Internet Logic: Buy this white paper for just $24.95 and you’ll be thin, rich, famous and dating a Kardashian by Tuesday night! (Bonus offer: The surprising secret to whiter teeth and upward mobility through animal husbandry!)
34. Great Santini Dad logic: I’m very disappointed in you. Do you even know how much those cello lessons cost? And where is that cello now? You’re no Yo-Yo Ma. Just a yo-yo, huh? More pushups will fix you, you big baby! You’ll thank me after I’m dead!
35. Mom logic: Have some more substitute love casserole and pay no attention to what your father says. I mean, look at him. Gawd!
36. Bureaucrat logic: I’d be interested in your problem, but my retirement is only, like, thirty years away so fill out these forms…
37. Cop logic: Everybody’s guilty and, as we all know, jail fixes everything so…
38. Surgeon’s logic: If cutting won’t solve your problem, you don’t have a problem.
39. Comedian logic: But if I fix my life, what will I do for an act?
40. Swiss logic: What is wrong with you people? Just stay out of it.
41. Whiner logic: I would change but it’s so hard. I didn’t think it would be this hard. Let me tell you about it over a huge dessert coffee, which I deserve because I must celebrate each tiny triumph or self-medicate my ego for every minuscule setback.
42. Toxic Logic: I knew you’d fail and I can’t tell you how joyous it is to be here to quantify my I told you so in excruciating detail with a heavy dollop of condescension.
43. YouTube Commenter: You suck and this is a colossal waste of time, which was just made more colossal because I’m taking the time to make a hateful comment here. (And, by the way, I’m a raging bigot with no life who hates everyone and everything but me.)
44. Amazon reviewer: Good job! Four stars for a solid effort.
45. Goodreads reviewer: Good job! Three stars for a solid effort.
46. Grammar Nazi: Everything would be great and this post would be funnier if not for the 150 mistakes, both real and imagined.
47. Actual Nazi: I feel zee term “Grammar Nazi” devalues my life’s vork. My life’s terrible, terrible vork.
48. Self-help industry: I can definitely help you change your life. First walk across these coals at my seminar in Fiji, buy all the books which pretty much say the same thing, join the cult and accept the idea that encouraging words + semantics = “new, revolutionary mind technology”.
49. Outsourcing: I can’t get to the gym and take care of the kids and do my job, but there’s this slave in Malaysia. She doesn’t speak English, but she can listen to the kids over the phone while she works out.
50. Life Coach #1: Just say no. It worked when Nancy Reagan told…oh…right.
51. Life Coach #2: Say yes to Life! Cuz when Jim Carrey said yes to everything in Yes Man, he uh…didn’t he help Luis Guzman with a guitar or something?
52. Breaking Bad solutions: “Science, bitch!” And meth. Lots and lots of meth.
53. Chuck Norris: “He doesn’t need a weapon. He is a weapon.” Um…I don’t see how that is a solution to my —” “Because he’s Chuck Norris, that’s why!”
54. SpongeBob Squarepants: Meth, obviously. Lots and lots of meth.
55. Pet cat solutions: When you die because you did not seek to fix your life, I’ll be eating your fat corpse before it’s cold. And don’t think of me as your “pet.” You’ve got it backwards.
56. Glee solutions: Let’s sing about our pain and marry insanely young so we’ll always have lots of pain to sing about.
57. TV exec solutions: We filmed the worst people we could find so your life looks and feels much better, even though we’re paying these awful reality stars more per minute than you make in a year.
58. Podcast solution: We can talk about it. We’ll talk about it again and forget we talked about it before.
59. Talk therapy solution: Pretty much the same as #58.
60. Dr. Phil Solution: Drawl insulting Texan idioms at you until you promise to change just to shut him up.
61. Oprah Solutions: (This snarky remark deleted because, Jesus, she’s Oprah! She comes off soft and spiritual, but she’s Oprah, for God’s sake! She could have me and all of you killed just for reading this!)
62. Bond movie solution: Cool soundtrack, but don’t model your life after a guy who always gets captured by an impossibly rich, cartoonish villain in a cheap suit.
63. Cher in Moonstruck:
Logical solutions:
Make better choices on an ongoing basis. You probably already know what you need to do. You know you need to make a plan and follow it consistently and not quit when you fail. Because you will fail. But if you put more checks in the “did it” column instead of making longer “to-do” lists, you’ll win in the longterm. Commit.
And finally, especially for writers:
Whatever you commit to doing first will get done.
If you aren’t writing, start and do that first,
before all the other demands of the day get in the way.
Set the alarm clock for early. See you at the desk.
C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m 