Fortune Cookie Wisdom for Writers IV

It is easier to do most things than it is to just sit down and write.  That's why you see so many people planning, outlining, thinking about characters, considering, and preparing to write and calling it writing.  That's why you see a lot fewer people actually writing.  It's why unpublished writers are always going on about how important these activities are, but the more successful a writer is, the more likely they are to advise writers to simply write.

It's pretty easy to say something published is crap.  It's pretty easy to discount all the work that went into it. It's pretty easy to imagine you could have done it. But you didn't.

If you can show me a single language where prescriptivism has prevented linguistic drift or mitigated the need for footnotes in texts that are hundreds of years old, I will gladly use a time machine to go tell Saussure he was full of crap.

Trying to "make it" as a writer (or really as any kind of artist) requires a certain level of dogged faith in oneself.  Not the blind hubris that you are an unsung genius, or the delusions of grandeur that prevent you from acknowledging criticism or noticing that no one likes your work, but simply the belief that you have something worth sharing and some people are going to enjoy it if you can just find them and they can just find you.

Life is too short and success is too uncertain to worry about trying to write what is going to sell. Write what you're dying to write.

The prose of writers who "don't like to read" is extremely self-indulgent.  It reads a little bit like walking into a social group that uses a lot of inside jokes or one with echo chambers that don't permit contrary opinions.

It's okay if you want to verse yourself in a version of English that has fifty to a hundred years worth of anachronisms in it.  That's kind of cool actually.  But if you insist everyone else play by your rules and act like a real asshole if they don't, your fortune is to die alone.

The only real mistake you can make is to quit.

If you're ever unconvinced that linguistic prescriptivists are similar to religious purists, pay attention to just how long it takes them to call someone doing something they think is wrong a "heathen."

Before a writer who wants to be a "successful writer" (be it famous, rich, or just paying the bills with writing) embraces a rationale for not writing daily consider this: as difficult as it can be to become a successful writer who writes every day, how much more difficult must it be to become a successful writer who doesn't?

Most writers block is performance anxiety.  When you truly accept that the first draft is crap, you get over writer's block pretty quickly.

High school grammar is....well it's like a lot of things you learn in high school.  It's basic.  It's very fundamental.  It's an important start.  But if you think that's all there is to it or you that you've gotten the whole story, if you can't learn to accept any new information, or even if you just think every high school learned it the same exact way you did, you look pretty foolish.

Warning: Strange Days Ahead

Writing About Writing's Update Schedule Might Become a Wibbly Wobbly ball of Updatey Watey, Posty Wosty for a while.  

So as I mentioned earlier, I'm teaching summer school and that starts this week.  In fact, today I appear to be discovering that writing lesson plans a substitue could work from (if needed) is a little harder than my regular amount of prep.  Plus there was some orientation thing that I needed to go to--which is always a drag for me since my one way commute is usually as long as an orientation. The good news is I only need to do one orientation and one set of lesson plans for all six classes.

Summer school is Tues/Wed/Thurs.  This might play a little havoc with my update schedule, but I should still be able to get the same amount of posts up.  They just might happen at irregular times.  So if Writing About Writing experiences a couple of missing articles over the next six weeks, you're probably just going to get the same content sometime that weekend.

You should count this update.  My longer "Monday-normal" article will probably be up by Wed or Thurs.

Poll Results: More Fiction

Bacon wins again, but at least I got some data.

I want to thank everyone who voted on the poll about whether or not you'd like to see more fiction (or if you wanted the blog to continue as per normal).  Obviously things were too close to say that either option or the other was the runaway favorite, but that, in and of itself, tells me something.  Even the low poll turn out and more attention to goofball answers tells me that a lot of people don't have a horse in this race.  

And you all were quite lovely for not picking the options that would make me cry.

Though I figured it would go one way or another, the fact that it didn't tells me is that I was probably right to approach my fiction the way I had intended to originally--even after I found that The Hall of Rectitude was expecting a baby and time might be at a premium.  There might be a bit more fiction at the expense of a few regular articles, but for the most part, I'm going to work to keep the posting schedule pretty consistent unless I'm working directly on something.  

And who knows...while it's probably unrealistic to expect Writing About Writing to become financially viable in the next year, I see some improvement almost each month, so there may yet be an opportunity to drop some of my other job commitments and give that time to writing.  With househusbandry, that may involve getting a little bit of help for a couple of hours during the day, but it amounts to the same thing--the more I can make here, the more this can be my job.

Tangentially--I think I'm probably going to leave even the "short" polls up a little longer after this one.  Encouraging people to vote often means going on social media to ask for votes.  Done three or four times over the course of a month and once right before I close the poll, it can be... noticeable to those who aren't that interested in my blog, but on a timetable of only a week, it seems like that's all I'm posting over and over again.  

It was getting obnoxious even to me.  

My next poll going up (probably Tuesday or Wednesday since I really am going to try to take tomorrow off) has to do with longer works of fiction and how you might like to see them handled--specifically with regards to what you might feel more inclined to support financially.  So let that tease your brain a bit.

The Mailbox: Strangely Inappropriate Non-Writing Questions

What religion am I?  How tall am I?  Am I in some crazy open relationship?  

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer them each Friday.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox.  Do remember that all questions should be about writing...at least a little bit. (Art, inspiration, creativity, process, craft, blogging, reading, books, literature, linguistics, or grammar could also apply.)] 

Sampson asks: 
What religion are you?  The reason I am asking is because your blog seems like it is the misguided product of someone who has not found Christ.  You speak of fornication, threesomes,

sexual perversion, and curse constantly, even being directly blasphemous to God and his son Jesus Christ.  I tell you this out of love, but this sort of behavior will cause you to burn in the lake of fire. I beg of you to renounce your evil ways and accept our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ into your heart.  [Then about a week later....]  I see you have not responded to my invitation to find salvation in Christ.  You can harden your heart if you wish, but I must ask you this--what if you are wrong?

My Reply:

A better question might be: "What the hell are you doing reading my blog if you are this dogmatic about your Christianity?"  If you think writing about "fornication" is a sin, what in the name of Gabriel's butt hole would make you keep reading after the first twenty seconds or so?

Sampson this is a blog about writing, and this is not a writing question.  So please slap yourself on the wrist at your earliest convenience.  Though it turns out I think a "non-writing-question" day might be kind of fun as a once-in-a-blue-moon thing, I gotta tell you that I would normally just ignore this sort of thing, especially given how insulting and disrespectful it is to me.  I know--because I've met a couple of people like you before--that it probably won't much matter to you if I answer your email with anything other than, "Holy Magdaline-cock-sucking shit, Sampson! I have seen the light!  Hand me that loincloth and some free health care; I'm going to do what Jesus would do!"

But maybe some of my other readers will get a kick out of it.

Just for you Sampson, all the pictures in this entry
will be about perverse fornicating threesomes.
Just. For. You.

I'm a pretty open minded guy, Sampson.  If you show me a fact or a figure or some kind of evidence that is at odds with the way I understand the world, I try to change my view--not ignore the evidence.

But when I start to hear things that sound a little strange, I conversely expect a greater amount of evidence.

Here's an example: if you told me your girl cat was orange, I'd probably believe you even though that's rare.  I would just take you at your word because that's all the evidence I would need for something I knew was unlikely but possible.  If you told me your girl cat was naturally purple, I'd want to see a picture or maybe even meet the cat.  The stranger claim required further evidence.  If you told me your cat was a purple saber toothed tiger, I would insist on seeing it and probably bring a zoologist with me because that claim is very extreme, and I would want lots of proof.

See how it just makes sense that the stranger the claim gets, the more proof I'll need?  If you tried to show me a picture of your purple saber toothed tiger, I would probably just think you had used photoshop.  I would need more proof because the claim was harder to believe.  The crazier your story gets, the more proof I need.

Welcome to the unspoken #4 of my mission statement....

So if you told me that even after you shaved your head, you had the strength to jump thirty stories straight up from a sitting position, do a back flip and land balanced on your erect cock, I would ask you to show me.  If you wouldn't, or couldn't, I would just assume that you were exaggerating....a lot.  Probably no amount of insisting that you were telling the truth would convince me.  I would need to see it.  That is because the claim is extra ridiculous.

Basically, the stranger your story got, the more proof I would ask for in order to believe you, and the less likely I would be to just take your word for it.  No matter how shocked or offended or hurt you acted that I didn't believe you could jump thirty stories onto your cock, I would still want to see it.  And if you had a book written by someone I had never met that said, "Sampson can do a thirty story jump onto his cock and if you don't believe it, you are an asshole with dingleberries," I still wouldn't believe it.

Because anyone could have written that.

So when you start telling me about an invisible omnipotent omniscient bearded dude that is one but also three, talking snakes, 2000 year-old Jews who were God giving birth to himself, healing people, coming back to life, giant fish, time freezes, walking across water, transubstantiation, and resurrection, my need for some kind of actual evidence (beyond just the story itself) goes way, way WAY up.

Story of my life.

Higher even than the cock jumping thing.

So it's not that I spend time and energy believing that you're wrong, Sampson.  I don't believe either way, and even if I did, my belief wouldn't make something true any more than it would make a fake photo of a purple saber toothed tiger real.  (Neither does your belief, for the record.)  It's just that I haven't seen evidence that would convince me that the entire Bible wasn't all just one writer's crazy six-day shroom bender, and I'm not credulous.  I'm not saying it WAS a six day shroom bender (mostly because I don't fancy enraging two billion followers).   I'm just saying I haven't seen a critical mass of evidence that would overcome my incredulity, and since the claims are extraordinary, the quality evidence (or rather lack, thereof  leaves me skeptical.

So to sum up--if all the Bible were saying was that Jesus had an orange female tabby, no problem.

If, at some point, real evidence turns up, come back to me.  I have changed my mind on half a dozen issues I felt very deeply about when I discovered they were based on false assumptions.  I would change my mind about metaphysics too.  Just don't forget it's going to take a lot of proof to match the size of these claims.

As for "What if I'm wrong..."  Well, what if YOU'RE wrong, Sampson?  What if the Muslims are right and you are angering God every time you invoke Christ as the son of God?  What if the Jews are right?  The Hindus?  The Jains?  The Sikhs?  What if only the Tibeten Buddhists have the right path?  Do you offer blood sacrificed to Janus or spin yourself while saying the 99 names of Allah?  Do you make an offering to Neptune before crossing an ocean, or invoke Thor and Odin on stick carvings?  Do you think God lives on another planet named Kolob?  What if Ishtar is the only real goddess, and my quest for threesomes is my fast track to heaven?  You already know what it is not to have faith Sampson.  You already know what it is to evaluate the claims of a religion through critical thinking and to dismiss them as ridiculous. You already know what it is not to fear a deity's reprisal because you don't think that deity really exists.  You do it every single day to hundreds of gods without a second thought.  The only difference is I'm doing it about YOUR god, and that's got your panties in a twist.

In which case, you need to get the fornicate over yourself.  It's a big world Eurocentric ethnocentricity is so last millenium.

Yeah, yeah.  I know.  The difference is you actually right and all those other religions are wrong.  I had the same discussion about pluralizing "toward" last week, and it went about the same way with about the same caliber of arguments.  When you have a bellwether that's better than "because I say so" or "because I was taught that way" or basically proof that isn't the same proof they have that you're wrong, we'll totally talk.

A lot of atheists would call this need for proof atheism, but I don't label myself that way.  Agnostic isn't really quite right either.  And I've had a Sufi insist my beliefs are more truly Muslim than most of the Islamic world (not sure about that one either).  Regardless, here's another threesome picture with some bestiality thrown in.

This can work.  Just let me do the talking.

As for what I do believe (or think, or contemplate occasionally when I'm laying in a field and staring at the stars) I only give out that information to people who pass inspection--of course I have special hours for that (and only keep the schedule posted for a select few).



Anonymous asks:

How tall are you?

My reply:

Man I really hope this is so you can properly size the sex doll you're making out of a composite of my pics and not so you can figure out where best to set the swinging axe blade trap on my front door.

Actually those are both creepy--even for me (which is really saying something).

Oh Sampson,
 you didn't think I was done just because we're on to the next question did you?    

I really really really have no idea what that has to do with writing.  I can sort of relate to just casually asking me how tall I am out of curiosity, but when you send me an e-mail labeled "W.A.W. Mailbox" I have to wonder.  I suppose I might some day have a "non-writing questions" themed mailbox, so here is the answer:  I'm 5'6"

That's short enough to be aware of how many women in our society have a "four inch rule" (so they can still be shorter than him in their heels), and how many people literally overlook short people--not just figuratively.  But I've spent most of my life not really giving a crap about it much because I have a brain that can get me noticed even all the way down here, being the last to know when it rains isn't really that bad, and I have mad oral sex skills.


Deenahee asks:

Are you in some crazy sex commune or an open relationship?  You talk about your girlfriend like she doesn't care that you're always trying to hook up with other women, and it seems like you live with like three women and another guy who aren't just roommates.  It's all very strange.

My reply:

Care?  Deenahee she's usually out there trolling the clubs for me.

I also talk about how I have two girlfriends, one of whom is totally up for being the first groupie in my groupie threesome, so that should answer your question right away.  (They look exactly the same, have almost identical fashion sense, and I've never seen them together, but they are two completely different people.)  I would never do the other members of the Hall of Rectitude though.  That's just a way to bring unnecessary drama into the crime fighting.  After Phoenix banged The Paladin on Moondancer's bed without changing the sheets, the whole team's response time to bank robberies just took a nose dive.   So we keep our commune crazy-sex free.  (And not free crazy sex--at least not after the spatula incident.)

How you doing over there, Sampson?
You sorry you asked yet?

We superheros have to stick together though.  That's definitely true.  Whether we are preternatural geniuses or mutants or just love guns way way way too much for the SF/Bay Area, the world fears what it does not understand, so we band together in a comitatus of platonic love that has nothing to do with massive riotous orgies.  Seriously.

My man-crush on Uberdude has never crossed the Dare Not Speak It's Name Rubicon, and if I had KNOWN that night with Latexia was sloppy seconds, things would have gone very differently.

Very differently indeed.

I totally appreciate that you're paying attention, though.  It's just....if I told you everything at once, you wouldn't stick around for Season 3, Sampson might blush, and I wouldn't be able to make money selling the decoder rings when I do my tell-all expose about how I slept with Oakland's most prominent crime fighters.

Sharing is Caring. Link Pimp.

This strangely random picture perfectly compliments
this strangely random entry.

I'm giving y'all a quick link pimp today because I usually take Tuesday's off, but this week I had some news to share.  I'm still working to bring you the next installment of my creative non-fiction, and tomorrow's Mailbox from an evangelical Christian, among others, should be...interesting.

But before I share a couple of links that writers might appreciate...

PLEASE VOTE!!

I'd ask you all to take a moment to go down to the bottom left where you can see the sleek, black poll there with the radio buttons.  It'll take about ten seconds and it will help me a lot with deciding where to allocate my writing spoons.  I can't keep up this pace (not for two dollars a day) AND write lots of fiction AND teach classes AND be a housekeeper AND be Uncle Joey from full house.  If I were making $1000 a month, I could cut some of that other stuff out, but I'm about $950 short.

Did I mention there's a bacon option??  There is totally a bacon option.

I'll probably take the poll down tomorrow or Saturday.  And I will be disappointed if the results are as close as they are now.  I was sort of hoping for a clear winner.

Stephen Spielberg says the movie industry is about to implode.  Pay close attention to what he's saying though.  Sound familiar?  It should.  Echos of this are happening all throughout the art world.  Yes, even in writing.  And this is pretty close to what the music industry has already gone though.  Niche markets are important, and they are being ignored in favor of the broadest possible marketability by mega-industries.  But niche markets are starting to gain popularity through back doors.  Which isn't entirely unrelated to....

Self-Published e-books reach 20% of market share. In case you don't know market share is money being spent, not what's available out there.  That's a fifth of the money spent on genre being spent on self publication.  This is not a flash in the pan, my friends.  And as a friend pointed out when I posted this on Writing About Writing's Facebook Page, crap has always existed in published works.  All this has removed is the gatekeeper and what they (with their largely homogeneous bias in taste) think is crap worth shoveling out because it might sell, and literature worth putting out even though it might not sell.  Self-publishing is removing their opinions from the matter and letting the readers decide.

Also...I told you so.