"I Want to Write!"

Recently, a coworker's friend's fifteen year old daughter (confused yet?) said she wanted to write. My coworker asked me if I could help her out a bit. My response?

"Sure!"

My expression?

OhgodwhydidIreplywiththatnowIhavetomovetoAustraliaandchangemyphonenumber.

But not for the reasons you might think.

In no way am I going to balk at a fifteen year old deciding she wants to write. I started "professionally" at around that same age (which I already told you about). However, any fifteen year old dreaming of publishing their first manuscript at fifteen years old and becoming a rich-successful novelist with the combined incomes of Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, Veronica Roth, and Cassandra Clare, is going to be more than a bit heartbroken.


Which is why I warn people that...

1. I have to be mean (even though I don't want to)

Lots of people in the past have asked me for help, or have asked for help from anyone willing to on open discussion areas on the Internet.

Problem is, I have to be mean.

Not out of spite or hatred, of course I mean, if a little kid ran up to me with a crayon drawing of their house, I certainly wouldn't say "The house is not orange, there are more windows than that, the roof is hovering, your tree sucks, we don't own a space ship or a dog who can pilot one."

Unless it's actually fanart of Laika?

However, writing isn't a kid's crayon drawing. At its harshest writing is a profession whereupon you release a product that you expect people will pay money for. If you release an inferior product (meaning crappy writing) then people are not going to pay for your goods and services when there is a wide array of said product elsewhere.

In a lot of ways I have to be mean in order to spare you the real mean people.

I've done it before. The phrase "brutally honest" comes to mind. People post little snippets of their work, usually a first chapter, and ask for help. I come in and say "Nope nope and nope. Don't do this and this and this." Unfortunately 9 times out of 10 that person never wrote again as far as I'm aware.

That 1 person of the 10 though, his response? "Holy crap, you're right!" And that's toning it down a little.

The point is, your fans that are sugarcoating your writing skills (be they your parents, your BFF, your New Age Aunt who encourages you in all endeavors) will get your writing nowhere.

All families are required to have at least one New Age Aunt.

Being mean to yourself is a double-edged sword. It keeps you grounded and your ego in check, but it can also reach a destructive point. The latter is what I see more often than the former, your inner mean self is so mean that it causes you not to write anything at all.

This is why you practically need a designated Brutally Honest Person for your writing. Someone who will point out every flaw, but you know you can trust them because they want to help you.

The problem is, I have to be mean (in the eyes of the writer, their fans, their BFF, their New Age Aunt who has decided to put a Feri Witch Curse on me). I'm not, by nature, a mean person, but I put on my Big Girl Pants and hope the writer has theirs on too.

Being mean, however, is made difficult because...

2. I'm shy

Yeah, like a lot of  authors (or runaway best-selling indie videogame creators), I'm incredibly shy. I'm more than shy, I'm downright awkward. I spent two entire years in college with my eyebrows clear up into my hairline because it's apparently my listening face. Also, I bite my tongue by accident a lot, which can cause be to sound like I pronounce certain words like an idiot. I also get kind of pale when I'm talking to someone at length whom I don't know. This is all compounded by the fact that, when I panic, I stutter a little. On the whole I'm betting it's pretty funny to watch, like a dog pressing his face against the window.

I halp wif yur writing. Hurr durr.

Of course, all of this is made pointless to me and the person I give mean/shy/awkward/honest advice if they don't do exactly what they're wanting to to. That is...


3. You have to have already be writing

If someone ever says to you "I want to be a writer!" the first thing out of your mouth should be:

"So what have you written?"

99% of the time you're going to get "Um..." That's a really popular book title, that "Um." In reality there are a lot of what I call the Armchair Author. To write we sit in a chair...

A chair at Starbuck's with a frotha-mocha-lattechino if you're a hipster.

But I use the phrase Armchair Author to mean the same as Armchair Activist. Armchair Author means you want to be an author, but you spend so much time daydreaming/talking to people about wanting to write that you, as a result, don't write. Even before I had Dusted finished I could claim a whole slew of writing that I'd done, people were generally either impressed, or were too busy telling me to write about their ideas.

This is one of my fears in trying to help someone. I ask them "So what have you written?" and their reply will be "Um..." with an implied "Nothing" because they haven't written anything.

That's like saying "I'm having trouble learning how to play baseball."
"Well how often do you play?"
"Um..." (with an implied "I never have before.")

This leaves it too open-ended. There is an endless amount of things they could be having trouble with: hitting the ball, catching the ball, signals, keeping score,

The "No Crying in Baseball" rule.

For writing there is: character descriptions, area descriptions, action scenes, dialogue, chapter breaks, editing, publishing, first-second-third person perspectives.

These are just basics, we can delve further and start using more direct examples: Chekhov's Guns, red herrings, forshadowing, Mary Sues, cliches, plot devices, deus ex machina, dream scenes.

It goes on and on the deeper in you go. It's basically trying to visualize every line in a Mandelbrot Set in its entirety:

(The song that aptly accompanies the video drops an F-bomb, careful!)

Let's Try Something Different

Last week I went on a trip to Boise for a One Republic concert. Rather than make an ordinary blog post I decided to try something new, so I made a video.

For those of you not interested in seeing my face (with those dead eyes, toneless voice, camera moving between shots, stutter....I'm getting off track here) a video with just the concert is below.

Enjoy! (or mock, either way it was made for entertainment.)

Being in the Writing Chair

I used to read every piece of writing advice I got my hands on and would treat it like a holy sanskrit. That is, following it to the letter. Enough reading and, of course, I ran into information that was contradictory. I would always worry because I had no idea which one was the "right" advice and which one was wrong.

Along with your personality affecting the type of genre you are going to write (which, for those of you who suffer from 10+ days of amnesia, I mentioned in my previous post), it is also going to affect the writing habits you will have.


You have to read all kinds of writing advice and filter between "That makes no sense," "That makes sense," and "That makes sense to me." It's the "to me"s that are compatible with your writing personality.

What if you don't have any "to me"s yet? You find out by experimenting. Try one method and, if you find it's not working out well, try another.

Being an alcoholic like ye olde poets is neither recommended nor healthy.

That said I'm going to offer some contradictory advice about two versions of a Writing Chair works for you.

Be Free Little Bird!

Years ago I read writing advice that said not to tie yourself down to one special writing setup because it can cause Writer's Block.  "I can only write in my bedroom with Bach playing in the background," you'd say. Problem is, setting up that exact atmosphere is difficult, so you often don't get the chance and, thus, don't write. Instead, leave yourself open to any gap you possibly can, be it ten minutes or two hours. Laptops are handy for just such a thing.

Or...

Situate Your Brain

I used to have a lot of trouble sleeping. This led to long nights that, actually, let me come up with a lot of cool ideas for writing. I've read lots of stuff for insomniacs but what helped me the most was not to use your bed for anything other than sleeping. Don't read in bed, don't watch TV in bed. Your bed is not an awake-time place. It is for sleep only. That way, when you lay down in bed your brain goes "Oh, we're in the Sleep Place. So it's time for sleep!" rather than it becoming confused.

Brains are, ironically, really stupid.

I apply the same for writing.

Contradictory to the previous advice, I wait until a specific time of day, set myself down in a specific chair, and put on some atmospheric music. This says to my brain "Hey, it's time to write!" and I either get writing or sit back and work my way through a scene in my head for a couple of minutes.

So, try both of them out for a while, and decide which Writing Chair works best for you.