I just finished reading “Gentle Writing Advice” by Chuck Wendig.
I really appreciated it. It takes a far different approach than his previous “Damn Fine Story” and several other books on the craft that are a little bit more hard-nosed. And maybe it’s being a dad, or maybe it was the pandemic, or maybe it’s the general political state of things, or the environment, but I also found myself more receptive to this tone of advice. I’m an Army vet with several tours (which side note… I find myself always making this joke on Veteran’s Day: I’m a vet but don’t thank me, I don’t even like animals…which is hilarious. But of course I do actually like animals, more than people in fact).
I’m also the former COO of a big manufacturing facility. Often my self-advice has been around the Stephen Pressfield model of “ass in chair” and “write or die” kind of mentality. REAL HARDCORE SHIT BRO.
I hadn’t been writing a lot for myself. My job is writing and I get paid pretty well for it, which many can’t say. So I feel fortunate. And I also feel depressed because it feels like the stuff I LIKE to write is just a giant pile of rejection. I’ve been so busy with work, I haven’t been writing any fiction and getting in my own head about whether I will actually “make it” (whatever the hell that means at whatever moment I’m thinking it). And also… we’re all gonna be replaced by the AI soon. It was a super good time for me to switch to writing full-time ay?
Side note: Fuck anyone who thinks that writing a prompt is an equivalent artistic act as actually drawing, writing, or whatever. Part of the endeavor is the act. I think some of the tools are neat, but man… I see the writing on the wall. Big business does not give a shit about artistic endeavor. It care’s about selling more cheeseburgers and gas and whatever.
I’m sayin, it was good timing for this book to show up. And thanks, Chuck. I’ve only met you once. But you seemed like good people and I do like your books.
Anywho. I wrote a lot of notes while reading the book. So SPOILERS.
But a lot of these things are non-sequiters. Just thoughts that accompany the text. It ended up being this weird daily therapy session for myself outside of my normal journaling.
Here they are:
Target is also a machine made of flesh and goo… at least that’s how I imagine it.
Is reading this book self-care or procrastination? I often use reading about writing as procrastination for writing. And I do subscribe to a certain old school PAIN IS MY FRIEND, ASS IN CHAIR kind of mentality about getting the words done AND YOU’RE ASKING ME TO be kind to myself and not destroy myself BUT ISN’T THAT WHAT AN ARTIST DOES? (yes this is tongue in cheek). DON’T YOU TELL ME TO BE NICE TO ME. I WILL TAKE YOUR ADVICE BUT WILL I BECOME SO NICE TO ME THAT I HATE ME FOR THE SORT OF PERSON I’M BECOMING?… you kind, glad-handing, so and so Matt! (if that’s your real name me).
My flesh machine car wagon muscle truck would be a Pontiac Fireturd.
You cannot polish a turd. But you can roll it in glitter.
I can’t really write in public either. Not seriously. I can do notes. I end up people-watching and writing what I observe. And getting mad about anything I hear because I can’t shut out the world and no matter the quality of speech, content of conversation, intent, who is speaking, everyone kind of sounds like a self-important squawk machine (self included…I realize the irony as I write this shit) when you’re not involved in the conversation. “Oh really, Sonja, you don’t like the sauce? And neither does your brother Steve?” …You dumb bastards that are probably fine people and I’m just being mean.
On writing at home.
I’m lucky enough to have an office with a locked door where I can keep folks out while I’m writing. BUT at my old house I just saddled up to the dining room table every day.
That said, we had a shed at the old house and there was this weird second room attached after the fact to the back of it. It was only accessible from another door on the rear. You couldn’t see it from the street and behind the shed was just wilderness. Whoever lived there before us, or before them took the old front door to the house and placed it inside out as the door to this rear shed room. Because it was put on inside out, it looked like it was lockable from the outside, and the old mail slot, I just started calling the “food slot” because obviously that’s where you keep prisoners. Obviously.
It was weird. I don’t have any more information about that.
I assume that these days, the more I look around, the natural state of the human body is submerged in recycled people goo while we generate energy for the machines. I am not ruling out simulation theory. We’re starting to look like a machine-learning algorithm experiment anyway.
I don’t have anything clever to say about creative outlets (maybe a mall for artists?). I think creatives stay curious. Curiosity leads you to many things. I personally don’t know how to just dabble in a topic if I find it interesting. I go whole hog into something, buy all the stuff, read all the books, try to do all the things, imagine myself a life where I run away and start doing the thing where I can finally start my TRUE DESTINY! SO LONG KIDS DADDY WILL BE RIGHT BACK I JUST NEED TO GO OUT FOR THIS PACK OF SMOKES…
I like:
Playing music — both listening and making
Drawing
Reading — duh…nonfiction, fiction, comics, magazines, blogs, newspapers. ALL OF IT BABY.
Engine tinkering — I have an old motorcycle that needs constant care.
Exercise
Walking around places.
Birb watching — BIRBS (much more fun to say than “birds”)
Watching movies and tv
Going to shows
Cooking & Baking
Gardening
Video Games
Staying up late slightly tipsy, reading, listening, and watching things that make me cry hard.
STAY AWAY FROM MY SHAME CHUCK. YOU CAN GO AFTER EVERYONE ELSE’S SHAME BUT NOT MINE. I SUCKLE AT THE SWEET TEET OF PAIN WHICH DRIPS THE MILK OF SADNESS AND REGRET INTO MY MINDHOLE …no hole is too kind… MY MIND….PIT! WHERE THE ART IS IN MY SAD MAD PLACE!
Sigh Twitter.
No one sees my shit since Elmer Fusk took over unless I tag someone directly. I don’t really know what to do anymore as it relates to social media. There was a time when I was just starting out where I didn’t know what to do after I wrote something. And I didn’t have many friends who took my “cute hobby” seriously. So going and forming bonds and community, even through Twitter was really important. It allowed me to meet people, learn so much, go to conferences, author events. I felt like I was finally in it. Now it’s dead. And it’s hard. Because nothing really has replaced it yet. I only had like 400 ish followers. I only followed 200 ish people. But it was important to me. Now I get like 20 impressions on something I share. Part of that is the algo. Part of that I’m sure is my public bashing of Elmer and each policy and Twitter Blue, etc.
And don’t get me wrong, the #writingcommunity got annoying after a while. Not everyone, but a lot of folks in there just came off like used car salesmen trying to sell used cars to each other — I learned quickly that the other writers are not necessarily your audience and that is just a business revelation.
And then there were the polls about what’s your MC’s favorite color and dumb shit like that. Or people getting overly vindictive about follow for a follow and all the behaviors that got created in these mini-communities. A new writer would come in who wasn’t experienced with social media and just think that was what they were supposed to be doing based off of their limited interactions. Very interesting from an anthropological standpoint.
But anyway.
Every query I’ve ever sent for the three books I’ve written and twenty-some odd short stories/essays I’ve ever sent, and one completed comic book issue have been rejected. The first book definitely deserved it. It’s a garbage pile of a book. I’m proud of it. Because it proved that I could write a book. But it’s bad.
I’m comforted in Chuck’s having 5 trash books before getting there (pubbed). I still beat myself up though about my measly efforts. The endless stream of rejections starts feeling like a rejection of me. And I’m externally a cliche “big tough guy,” but it’s still hard. I also make a living writing because I get paid to write and ghostwrite for people, so it feels extra like, well, I guess it’s ME that’s the problem sometimes since I have a kind of validation in a way, that I can write at a professional level. It’s just usually not anything that I give a “real” shit about.
Not that I don’t care about the work stuff. I do quality stuff, which sells things for people. And it does the job well, which is why they pay me well. It’s just not MY stuff. I want “my stuff” to be pubbed, represented. But I also want more people other than me, the straight, cis white, male to get their chance, too. It’s also important to me that when I am repped, I’m repped by people who feel the same way about that (diversifying publishing), which ironically makes me less likely to be picked up by them. It’s fine. It’s something that I’m navigating that I have to square, because selfishly I still want MY chance and I can get a bit depressed about it all. I AM NOT “PATTERSONING” and saying “wahhhh it’s so hard to be a white guy in publishing right now,” because I’m sure I’ve still got it pretty pretty pretty goddamned easy compared to pretty much literally every other group and I acknowledge that. I still just really want to write things and have people read those things in a way that feels fulfilling to me.
“Be kind to yourself and your writing, because there’s no guarantee that anyone else will be.”
Great advice. Sometimes hard to take.
Thank you for specifying which POS you meant. However, inevitably at every restaurant or store I ever worked at (starting from McDonald’s), we did refer to it as the other POS. A piece of shit point of sale, if you will.
On turtle fucking. There are a few juicy videos of tortoises and turtles fucking (respectively, although why not?). They make hilarious noises and get into it way more than you’d think a turtle or tortoise would. Google is your friend here.
On fonts. While I eventually convert to whatever “best practices” manuscript font is required, I opt to write in Garamond. It soothes me.
Let’s discuss “barnstormin frogstopper of an idea” for the sake of it.
My ideas come from Santa. He delivers them once a year. He tells me to write the things I want from him. I write that I want him to give me ideas. He shows up and tells me to write the things I want from him. It’s a vicious cycle.
On seeing, the visible light spectrum, and colors. I’m fascinated by the limited spectrum we can view. Even when we use a tool to view something it still merely translated into something our rods and cones can process. There are other colors and it’s just impossible for us to perceive them. The place where I was COO was an engineering and manufacturing facility specializing in custom fiber optics devices. I was steeped in optical engineering and metrology. Ah to have one or two more cones and rods. Mind blown.
On heartburn. I once went to the er because I had heartburn that felt like a heart attack and so I also had a panic attack.
I used to try and construct weird rituals around writing. Place/time, number of words, new software, new hardware (Freewrite Traveler IS pretty neato). New fountain pen, nice notebooks etc. Building long streaks. But all of these things are crutches in a way, too. Like a way of excusing not writing if something is amiss. So is researching your topic. So is reading about writing (here I am).
Some of the ritual was also me trying to “look the part” so that I could feel like I was actually a writer. Which is silly, but it kind of worked? It’s true in a way. Like you need to give yourself permission to be the thing. Then once you do the thing, you are the thing. It still just feels silly sometimes when I say to someone else, “I am a writer.” It feels false.
Sometimes I lean too hard into the “writing is not writing.”
Seriously fuck lawns. Fuck blowers. Fuck mowers. Fuck …I wanted something really bad that rhymed with mowers and blowers and sprinkler systems. But just leave the fucking leaves alone. At least fucking do it once a month instead of say twice a week up and down every lawn in my neighborhood while I’m trying to write!!!!!!!!
I think that I have more of a hesitancy to write unlikeable people now than when I was younger.
This is because:
1. I want to be liked.
2. I worry people might mistake the work for me.
3. I worry about getting it wrong. I like diverse characters, and I stay kind of vanilla sometimes because even though I’m being mindful, I don’t want to be “that” guy.
I think I also have a false sense of some things because of the corner of social media I was hanging out in. I like to think that those left leaning circles are better off than their opposite, but it was still largely outrage producing (and there is A LOT to be outraged by, I get it). Anyway, so my reality was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the publishing landscape in this microcosm community. There are in reality, few writers and publishing people compared to non-writers and non-publishing people. And the folks I dealt were still a very small percentage of that small slice. So I got a very specific and narrow view. But that view, for a time, in my head was the “reality” of writing and publishing.
The moral is, that I have to just write what I want to write (still being mindful), and ask people that I trust for advice (preferably someone who could be affected by the writing), if I am trying something new.
On show, don’t tell. Sometimes you just have some shit to TELL people.
“Culinarily” is fun to say.
On my age. I know. I know my age doesn’t matter. Everyone knows that some folks get going later. I get it. Just keep swimming. “George P. Famousauthor wasn’t published until he was 82.”
BUT sometimes let me just pity myself a little. I’m nearly 40 and so sometimes, sometimes, it feels too late. I’ve been trying for soooooo long. I know it’s not really that long. But sometimes sometimes it’s just SIIIIGGHHHHH.
I feel like I can do a ton of things compared to average Joe. But none of them super well. Like I play piano and guitar and drums okay. I draw okay. I write okay, etc. I know a lot of this is imposter syndrome.
I have never once really felt like other writers were my competition…except once in a creative writing class in college. Guy’s name was Todd or Tadd or one of those fuckin names. He just took it all too damned serious. I mean I take it and took it seriously too. I love writing. Here I am.
But this kid…and for context, I started my undergrad after the Army, so I was a bit older. He was a kid maybe 19, sophomore. He just ripped everyones shit apart and had this dire, bland, overly serious prose that was so “indie and brilliant” that no fuckling audience could ever understand it…a true fucking artist. Anywho. I was civil, but in the back of my head I wanted so badly to see him slip on a goddamned banana peel if only to get him out of his head.
Honestly, sometimes I feel a bit jealous when another writer announces they’ve been repped or that their book is coming out. But I swallow that and turn it around and always positively congratulate them. That feeling of jealousy is my own issues just being shitty, and I acknowledge that for what it is. They aren’t however, competition. If you write well, and you make it, there’s room for everyone.
On my cousin, George and having writer community:
I was venting rto my cousin George about my job versus trying to break in with fiction via one of my manuscripts or my comic book over dinner.
He’s a very successful NYT bestselling author, who has created a superb graphic novel series “The Olympians” (12 books in total), several other awesome works, and is working on a new series now “The Asgardians” now. We’re all so proud of what he’s done.
At any rate. He was saying to me “Man I wish I knew what to tell you” (about breaking in).
And I was like “George, you don’t need to tell me how. I know it’s different now and always different for everyone. It’s on me and the powers that be to break in. I’m just happy to be speaking with someone who understands how much this shit actually means to me. Like really means.”
Not just the outsiders, even the kind ones who pat you on the head and say, “Oh, that’s cute, your little hobby. You’ve written a thing.”
On that god damned #writingcommunity again. Started off good for me but then just became a circle jerk of platitudes and self pubbed authors trying to sell their self pubbed books to each other instead of their actual audience.
It actually became unhealthy. That community, even the ones I really supported became a weird echo chamber at time that sometimes just made me feel bad about being me. And that’s fucking weird. I do that all on my own. And then there was a few times that I did a cringey virtue signal, which, just don’t do that. Sometimes the best thing to do is just shut the fuck up because even if you think the right thing, you don’t add anything to the solution by flapping your jaw just to make yourself feel better.
Have to rely on the work.
Sometimes it just drives me nutes per the nature of my paying job that aside from writing, editing, querying…maybe learning in a course, conference, etc. that there is no other concrete action I can do other than write more and query more.
For work when I write a document and put it out in the world, there are metrics of success that I can use to temper the next thing I write or do. In fiction, without already being repped, not so much. Write, edit, query, pray, love, eat pray love edit, eat eat eat meat eattt meeeeaaaat.
When I read “You can’t just be facedown in a puddle of your own work for all existence,” my first reaction is to do that and scream “CAN’T I!” YOU’RE NOT MY BOSS!
This one is a legitimate question I have to ask one of my writer friends that I can’t believe I haven’t. Like I think I know the answer but it feels dumb to ask.
In querying initially, agentless me HAS to pick a genre/audience/etc. I imagine though someone with representation and a good editor has a little more leeway here. Like you can ring up your agent or editor and go “Hey I wrote a thing, but I’m not sure where it goes. Can you help me figure it out?” Whereas if I say that, it’s a pass (which I don’t but sometimes no matter how many query letters I’ve had critiqued and courses I’ve taken I always feel shaky about).
Moon herpes….that’s code for werewolf isn’t it? It only flares up every 29.5 days or so. But the fleas are annoying.
My wife said something about writing for 8 year olds (my eldest is 8) and I confessed that honestly even a lot of my adult stuff is driven from that subconsious bedrock level by what I would have thought was cool from 8-12 years old.
Writing as play, pffft. PFFFFTTT. The old ‘fun’ gambit. As if. Grow up.
On weird snowmen:
I as a more mature and wise individual would NEVER find anything like this humorous anymore but in my youth I may or may not have taken the carrot and eyes of a snowman I passed and made him a real snow MAN if you know what I’m sayig.
I have to remind myself to write what lives in my heart and not trick myself that I’m doing that in the guise of something else — it’s easy to trick myself under some superficially served thing that you’re doing the right thing.
I appreciate a good reference to “The Thing.” Top 10 horror movie for me.
I’ve finished the book. And also have watched some birds today. I live in a great area for it. Incidentally aside from the two crows that come by and feed nearly daily, my favorite bird is the titmouse. It is a cartoon walking around int he world.
The book was excellent. And I feel like I just need to get back to it (writing). I like writing. That’s the core of it. I need to remember that. I do this to try and do the things that inspired me in the first place. To see if I can do that trick.
I don’t know why, but I actually need to do it. Something chemically changes when I don’t. I hate when I feel bad about where I am with my writing because then there’s just this terrible down spiral of feeling like shit for not writing, but feeling like the writing is shitty and no one likes it and therefor I’m shitty and no one likes me so why bother. So then I don’t. So then I feel bad all over.
But I need to be nicer to me. And I think a lot of us do. I’m glad Chuck wrote this book. It helps.