1. Running Away
Right here is your story. Your manuscript.
Your career. So
why the fuck are you running in the other direction? Your writing will
never chase you — you need to chase your writing. If it’s what you want,
then pursue it. This isn’t just true of your overall writing career,
either. It’s true of individual components. You want one thing but then
constantly work to achieve its opposite. You say you want to write a
novel but then go and write a bunch of short stories. You say you’re
going to write This script but then try to write That script instead.
Pick a thing and work toward that thing.
2. Stop Stopping
Momentum is everything. Cut the brake lines. Careen wildly and
unsteadily toward your goal. I hate to bludgeon you about the head and
neck with a hammer forged in the volcanic fires of Mount Obvious, but
the only way you can finish something is by
not stopping. That story isn’t going to unfuck itself.
3. Stop Writing In Someone Else’s Voice
You have a voice. It’s yours. Nobody else can claim it, and any
attempts to mimic it will be fumbling and clumsy like two tweens trying
to make out in a darkened broom closet. That’s on you, too — don’t try
to write in somebody else’s voice. Yes, okay, maybe you do this in the
beginning. But strive past it. Stretch your muscles. Find your voice.
This is going to be a big theme at the start of 2012 — discover those
elements that comprise your voice, that put the
author in your
authority. Write in a way that only you can write.
4. Stop Worrying
Worry is some useless shit. It does nothing. It has no basis
in reality. It’s a vestigial emotion, useless as — as my father was
wont to say — “tits on a boar hog.” We worry about things that are well
beyond our control. We worry about publishing trends or future advances
or whether or not Barnes & Noble is going to shove a hand grenade up
its own ass and go
kablooey. That’s not to say you can’t identify future trouble spots and try to work around them — but that’s not
worrying.
You recognize a roadblock and arrange a path around it — you don’t chew
your fingernails bloody worrying about it. Shut up. Calm down. Worry,
begone.
5. Stop Hurrying
The rise of self-publishing has seen a comparative surge forward in
quantity.
As if we’re all rushing forward to squat out as huge a litter of
squalling word-babies as our fragile penmonkey uteruses (uteri?) can
handle. Stories are like wine; they need time. So
take the
time. This isn’t a hot dog eating contest. You’re not being judged on
how much you write but rather, how well you do it. Sure, there’s a
balance — you have to be generative, have to be swimming forward lest
you sink like a stone and find remora fish mating inside your rectum.
But generation and creativity should not come at the cost of quality.
Give your stories and your career the time and patience it needs. Put
differently: don’t have a freak out, man.
6. Stop Waiting
I said “stop hurrying,” not “stand still and fall asleep.” Life
rewards action, not inertia. What the fuck are you waiting for? To reap
the rewards of the future, you must take action in the present. Do so
now.
7. Stop Thinking It Should Be Easier
It’s not going to get any easier, and why should it? Anything
truly
worth doing requires hella hard work. If climbing to the top of
Kilimanjaro meant packing a light lunch and hopping in a
climate-controlled elevator, it wouldn’t really be that big a fucking
deal, would it? You want to do This Writing Thing, then don’t just
expect hard work — be happy that it’s a hard row to hoe and that you’re
just the, er, hoer to hoe it? I dunno. Don’t look at me like that. AVERT
YOUR GAZE, SCRUTINIZER. And get back to work.
8. Stop Deprioritizing Your Wordsmithy
You don’t get to be a proper storyteller by putting it so far down
your list it’s nestled between “Complete the Iditarod (but with
squirrels instead of dogs)” and “Two words: Merkin, Macrame.” You want
to do this shit, it better be some Top Five Shiznit, son. You know
you’re a writer because it’s not just what you do, but rather, it’s who
you are. So why deprioritize that thing which forms part of your very
identity?
9. Stop Treating Your Body Like A Dumpster
The mind is the writer’s best weapon. It is equal parts bullwhip,
sniper rifle, and stiletto. If you treat your body like it’s the sticky
concrete floor in a porno theater (
that’s not a spilled milkshake)
then all you’re doing is dulling your most powerful weapon. The body
fuels the mind. It should be “crap out,” not “crap in.” Stop bloating
your body with awfulness. Eat well. Exercise. Elsewise you’ll find your
bullwhip’s tied in knots, your stiletto’s so dull it couldn’t cut
through a glob of canned pumpkin, and someone left
peanut-butter-and-jelly in the barrel of your sniper rifle.
10. Stop The Moping And The Whining
Complaining — like worry, like regret, like that little knob on the
toaster that tells you it’ll make the toast darker — does nothing.
(Doubly useless: complaining about complaining, which is what I’m doing
here.) Blah blah blah, publishing, blah blah blah, Amazon, blah blah
blah Hollywood. Stop boo-hooing. Don’t like something? Fix it or forgive
it. And move on to the next thing.
11. Stop Blaming Everyone Else
You hear a lot of blame going around — something-something
gatekeepers, something-something too many self-published authors,
something-something agency model. You’re going to own your successes,
and that means you’re also going to need to own your errors. This
career is yours. Yes, sometimes external factors will step in your way,
but it’s up to
you how to react. Fuck blame. Roll around in
responsibility like a dog rolling around in an elk miscarriage. Which,
for the record, is something I’ve had a dog do, sooooo. Yeah. It was,
uhhh, pretty nasty. Also: “Elk Miscarriage” is the name of my indie
band.
12. Stop The Shame
Writers are often ashamed at who they are and what they do. Other
people are out there fighting wars and fixing cars and destroying our
country with poisonous loans — and here we are, sitting around in our
footy-pajamas, writing about vampires and unicorns, about broken hearts
and shattered jaws. A lot of the time we won’t get much respect, but you
know what? Fuck that. Take the respect. Writers and storytellers help
make this world go around. We’re just as much a part of the societal
ecosystem as anybody else. Craft counts. Art matters. Stories are
important. Freeze-frame high-five. Now have a beer and a shot of whisky
and shove all your shame in a bag and
burn it.
13. Stop Lamenting Your Mistakes
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you fucked up somewhere along the way. Who gives
a donkey’s duodenum? Shit happens. Shit washes off. Don’t dwell. Don’t
sing lamentations to your errors. Repeat after me: learn and move on.
Very few mistakes will haunt you till your end of days unless you
let it haunt
you. That is, unless your error was so egregious it can never be
forgotten (“I wore a Hitler outfit as I went to every major publishing
house in New York City and took a poop in every editor’s desk drawer
over the holiday. Also, I may have put it on Youtube and sent it to
Galleycat. So… there’s that”).
14. Stop Playing It Safe
Let 2012 be the year of the risk. Nobody knows what’s going on in the
publishing industry, but we can be damn sure that what’s going on with
authors
is that we’re finding new ways to be empowered in this New Media
Future, Motherfuckers (hereby known as NMFMF). What that means is, it’s
time to forget the old rules. Time to start questioning preconceived
notions and established conventions. It’s time to start taking some
risks both in your career and in your storytelling. Throw open the
doors. Kick down the walls of your uncomfortable box. Carpet bomb the
Comfort Zone so that none other may dwell there.
15. Stop Trying To Control Shit You Can’t Control
ALL THAT out there? All the industry shit and the reviews and the
Amazonian business practices? The economy? The readers? You can’t
control any of that. You can
respond to it. You can try to
get ahead of it. But you can’t control it. Control what you can, which is your writing and the management of your career.
16. Stop Doing One Thing
Diversification is the name of survival for all creatures: genetics
relies on diversification. (Says the guy with no science background and
little interest in Googling that idea to see if it holds any water at
all.) Things are changing big in these next few years, from the rise of
e-books to the collapse of traditional markets to the the galactic
threat of Mecha-Gaiman. Diversity of form, format and genre will help
ensure you stay alive in the coming entirely-made-up Pubpocalypse.
17. Stop Writing For “The Market”
To be clear, I don’t mean, “stop writing for specific markets.” That’s silly advice. If you want to write for the
Ladies’ Home Journal, well, that’s writing for a
specific
market. What I mean is, stop writing for The Market, capital T-M. The
Market is an unknowable entity based on sales trends and educated
guess-work and some kind of publishing haruspicy (at Penguin, they
sacrifice
actual penguins — true story!). Writing a novel takes
long enough that writing for the market is a doomed mission, a leap
into a dark chasm with the hopes that someone will build a bridge there
before you fall through empty space. Which leads me to –
18. Stop Chasing Trends
Set the trends. Don’t chase them like a dog chasing a Buick. Trends
offer artists a series of diminishing returns — every iteration of a
trend after the first is weaker than the last, as if each repetition is
another ice cube plunked into a once strong glass of Scotch. You’re just
watering it down, man. Don’t be a knock-off purse, a serial killer
copycat, or just another fantasy echo of Tolkien. Do your own thing.
19. Stop Caring About What Other Writers Are Doing
They’re going to do what they’re going to do. You’re not them. You
don’t want to be them and they don’t want to be you. Why do what
everyone else is doing? Let me reiterate:
do your own thing.
20. Stop Caring So Much About The Publishing Industry
Know the industry, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. The mortal man
cannot change the weave and weft of cosmic forces; they are outside
you. Examine the publishing industry too closely and it will ejaculate
its demon ichor in your eye. And then you’ll have to go to the eye
doctor and he’ll be all like, “You were staring too long at the
publishing industry again, weren’t you?” And you’re like, “YES, fine,”
and he’s like, “Well, I have drops for that, but they’ll cost you,” and
you get out your checkbook and ask him how many zeroes you should fill
in because you’re a writer and don’t have health care. *sob*
21. Stop Listening To What Won’t Sell
You’ll hear that. “I don’t think this can sell.” And shit, you know
what? That might be right. Just the same — I’d bet that all the stories
you remember, all the tales that came out of nowhere and kicked you in
the junk drawer with their sheer possibility and potential, were stories
that were once flagged with the “this won’t sell” moniker. You’ll
always find someone to tell you what you
can’t do. What you
shouldn’t do.
That’s your job as a writer to prove them wrong. By sticking your
fountain pen in their neck and drinking their blood. …uhh. I mean, “by
writing the best damn story you can write.” That’s what I mean. That
other thing was, you know. It was just metaphor. Totally. *hides inkwell
filled with human blood*
22. Stop Overpromising And Overshooting
We want to do everything all at once. Grand plans! Sweeping gestures!
Epic 23-book fantasy cycles! Don’t overreach. Concentrate on what you
can complete. Temper risk with reality.
23. Stop Leaving Yourself Off The Page
You are your stories and your stories are you. Who you are matters.
Your experiences and feelings and opinions count. Put yourself on every
page: a smear of heartsblood. If we cannot connect with our own stories,
how can we expect anybody else to find that connection?
24. Stop Dreaming
Fuck dreaming. Start doing. Dreams are great — uh, for children.
Dreams are intangible and uncertain looks into the future. Dreams are
fanciful flights of improbability — pegasus wishes and the hopes of
lonely robots. You’re an adult, now. It’s time to shit or get off the
pot. It’s time to wake up or stay dreaming. Let me say it again because I
am nothing if not a fan of repetition:
Fuck dreaming. Start doing.
25. Stop Being Afraid
Fear will kill you dead. You’ve nothing to be afraid of that a little
preparation and pragmatism cannot kill. Everybody who wanted to be a
writer and didn’t become one failed based on one of two critical
reasons: one, they were lazy, or two, they were afraid. Let’s take for
granted you’re not lazy. That means you’re afraid. Fear is nonsense.
What do you think is going to happen? You’re going to be eaten by
tigers? Life will afford you lots of reasons to be afraid: bees,
kidnappers, terrorism, being chewed apart by an escalator, Republicans,
Snooki. But being a writer is nothing worthy of fear. It’s worthy of
praise. And triumph. And fireworks. And shotguns. And a box of wine. So
shove fear aside — let fear be gnawed upon by escalators and tigers.
Step up to the plate. Let this be your year.
