Storytellersunplugged

By David Niall Wilson

There is a venerable ritual in the halls of wordsmiths everywhere that I thought, considering my current odd and pretty pleasant situation, would be worthy of a bit of thought. What better place to record those thoughts, and who better to share them with?

One of the images we all have of successful authors is the tabletop full of books piled up next to a drink glass sporting an umbrella or a well shaken (never stirred) martini, and a long line of smiling, eager faces stretched off into the distance. The author is chatting up the crowd, smiling a lot, and signing his John Hancock across the pristine pages of his current bestseller. In the line, the ranks of the faithful hold white-knuckle gripped books with a variety of covers – the writer’s past – brought to him for an ink anointment and the chance of a few words about a favorite story. Somewhere in the lot is a young guy with bad hair who stares at the ground a lot. He’s hoping to find the courage to ask if his idol will read something he’s written. Another arrogant prick somewhere near the middle intends to try and bully the author into showing something to the agent that made him famous.

That’s the image I had, anyway. I used to see it in movies, even in cartoons, and during the early years of my life there was nothing to dissuade me of the truth of it. I saw one or two famous people sign books. They had the lines, and in those days none of them was important to me, so I never got into the line, and was left with my misconceptions. Now, of course, all of that has changed.

Signings are a nightmare for me, most of the time. I always get enthusiastic up-front support, followed by mediocre advertisement of the event and a small to middling to non-extant crowd on game day. The last signing I attended, a local bookstore owner asked me to come because the other guy was nervous. It was his first book, his first signing. I agreed.

I arrived to find that “other guy” and his wife had brought boxes of wine and squares of cheese. OG was a college professor. He was expecting his colleagues to show up, and was nervous beyond belief. He started on the boxed wine early. Every ten minutes or so, his wife, who was obviously already spending the huge money her author husband was about to start raking in, kept urging him to read from his work, though there were only three or four people there, all of whom came with the OG family. Another professor did show up, from a different school. He came to talk about his own crazed book involving time travel and future Baptists. OG – by the way – published his book with a very plain, very forgettable cover through Publish America. He actually asked me if I’d been paid for my books by my publishers, and seemed uncertain that this ever really happened. I didn’t stay long. I signed and sold one book. As far as I know OG sold one book as well, to the same guy – the other professor.

None of this is really what I’m here to write about, though. I want to talk about signing books. I want to talk about how cool it is to personalize the final product, the thing you slaved over, marketed, edited, revised – and waited far too long to see. It’s a very interesting sensation, and not everyone handles it the same way. Some people quickly scribble something vaguely resembling the first letter of their name and some ripples onto the page. Some people write personal messages to each and every person they sign for. Some have cute little “remarques” they add – spiders dangling, or skulls surrounding their names, and others always use a particular color of ink. I like that sort of thought in something signed to me. I like that they care about the few extra words they are adding to their book enough to take time over them and make them as memorable as possible.

I don’t always do that, of course. When I get a sheet of names for an anthology I sign fast and hard. My name will get lost in the Stephen Kings and Peter Straubs anyway, and no one is standing by, eager to get my name scribbled in their book. They don’t mind, but it’s less important (usually) than the rest. Now I face something different, and I have to tell you…it actually made me smile.

The other day I got a box in the mail from a publisher. I have a signed limited novel coming out later this year. The book has gorgeous cover art done by a close friend, will be beautifully bound and well handled, and people are shelling out a good bit of cash to own a copy, not because Stephen King is in it, but because they want something I wrote. The box contains 500 signature sheets. These aren’t just plain paper, or a page with border and a number line at the bottom – the publisher commissioned my friend the artist to create a unique signature page for me. They are gorgeous, and I intend to spend some time on them, using a calligraphy pen, and to do my best to add to something already impressive, knowing each signature will eventually be shelved next to similar books signed by others equally proud of their work and their words. These aren’t the sort of books people buy to read on the subway, but books people buy because they love the feel of leather covers and the scent of acid-free paper. And, for whatever reason, they have deemed me worthy.

That was the start of my week. Today, I got two more boxes in the mail. These came all the way from Cardiff in Wales. They are copies of my short story collection, “Defining Moments,” and about half of them are going on from me to a bookseller and then on to collectors. These stories comprise decades of my life, and the process of choosing them from the hundred and fifty or so possibilities was both unique, and rewarding. This book means a great deal to me, and, of course, I’ll be signing all those that aren’t already signed. Then they go on to the artist (the same as on the other book, my pal Don Paresi) and they will get small “remarque” sketches on their title page, making them even a bit more special and collectible than they were before, and on to collectors and readers literally worldwide. People who want to read my words…and keep them. People who want me to scribble in their new book.

Then, to top it off, I got an e-mail from fellow author Matt Cardin today. He was cheerfully informing me that the signature sheets for an anthology he and I are both in were winging their way to me as he typed. I sat, and I laughed, and today I bought another pen.

Someday, I suppose, I’ll lose the edge off the sense of wonder this process still brings me, but not this week. Not today, or tomorrow. I can imagine John Hancock signing important documents, and I can imagine the things I sign are important in their own right. I try to picture that flowing script and the bold lines of his name, and to be worthy of the moment.

I may never get my tabletop full of bestsellers, or a line headed out the door filled with people dying to talk to me, but I know that there are books on shelves with my name scribbled in them. There are others with short notes, greetings, haiku and lines of poetry. There are a couple with odd little pictures that came to me on the spur of the moment. Some of them are cherished. Some of them are forgotten. Every one of them was a moment I spent at an odd, writer’s altar, sacrificing ink to the memory of my own words. It’s a connection between myself, and the book, and when it’s a personal inscription, it’s a connection through the book to the reader. It changes the way they hold the book, how they view it, for better or worse. Some will, of course, rush off to see if it’s worth a buck on eBay, but others will want to read it more than they did, and they’ll enjoy the experience in a slightly different way. When they open the book, they’ll see the name and maybe they’ll remember how it got there. I can always dream.

After all, we remember how John Hancock’s signature got to be the icon for this phenomenon in our country, and not a one of us stood there and watched him do it. For a couple of days I’m going to be channeling John Hancock…and smiling.

Until next time,

Onward,

DNW

By Dick Hill

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL is a term often applied to Mark Twain’s book chronicling THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. The work deserves that name. I can’t remember how many times I’ve read it, but I just finished recording it for the third different publisher. None of these publishers know, of course, that I would have done it for free.

I enjoy and admire all of Twain’s work, with Letters From The Earth a particular favorite, but the story of Huck and Jim and company is the one I value most. In it, Twain taught me more about hatred and humor , ignorance and innocence, downright nastiness and upright nobility than I could have the insight to so accurately perceive on my own in a lifetime. It’s been almost half a century that the book has been a part of my life, revisited often, an unfailing source of wonder and joy and rueful recognition. Not to mention the fact that recording it, bringing to life Huck and Jim and the Duke and the King et al present the greatest and most rewarding challenge I could ever hope for. I imagine it’s somewhat akin to what it must be like for a professional golfer to play St. Andrews, or a violinist to get their hands on a Stradivarius or Amati.

From Twain, I head immediately into a piece of non-fiction, GUT FEELINGS:The Intelligence of the Unconscious, by Gerd Gigerenzer, which promises to be quite fascinating, with a pair of mystery/cop novels after that, then ROBINSON CRUSOE, a memoir by two members of the original Band of Brothers made famous by Tom Hanks’ film, and after that FOLLOW THE MONEY: How George W. Bush and the Texas Republicans Hog-Tied America, by John Anderson. I had originally been offered a biography of Dick Cheney, but demurred. I gladly accepted the replacement for that time. And time is the issue at hand.

I count myself blessed to have gotten to a point where I am offered much more work than I have time to handle. I love the work itself, and I now can pick and choose projects, which are now recorded from my home studio with my wife Susie directing and engineering and keeping me honest. We thank whatever powers that be daily for our situation, and given the fact that it’s only the last few years we’ve been able to put money aside for our old age (at 60, I’m not sure just when I’ll decide that has arrived, but I do believe it’s not all that far off) we feel we need to take advantage of our position and work just as much as we can. We also cherish the opportunity to spend time with grandkids, and to do a little to help the kids out. All of which, in my own graceless and long-winded way, has led me to the realization that I must withdraw from being a SU contributor. Sara’s examination of deadlines provided a well-thought, well-written, and at this moment, highly ironic read for me. I look forward to her future offerings, and to continuing to visit and see what the rest of the regulars gift us with, but given the amount of time it takes this reader to write, and the fact that time is a disappearing commodity, I’m going to have to sign off with this last offering. Thanks to you all for the chance to participate and learn, especially to Dave and of course to Rick.

I have a deadline.

My fourth book, Summerdown, is due August 1st. I honestly don’t know if it’s going to be finished in time. So, since it’s the first thing on my mind (also the second, third, fourth, and fifth), I’m going to introduce myself to storytellersunplugged by talking about, hey, deadlines, and the things I am learning as I struggle to meet this one.

It is, of course, the hallmark of a professional writer to meet his or her deadlines. To do so calmly. Cheerfully. With a song on his or her lips!

Well, okay. Maybe not that last bit.

The first thing to remember in dealing with a deadline is to stay calm. They can smell fear. Also, your productivity is better if you aren’t in a state of gibbering panic. Therefore, it’s better not to let yourself get too worked up, no matter how far in the hole you feel like you are. Perspective is important, not least to keep you from behaving like a drama queen in front of friends, family, and random passersby.

(And by “you,” of course, I mean “me.”)

No matter how important your deadline is, the world will keep revolving if you miss it.

Really.

Try for some Zen, if you can.

The second thing to remember in dealing with a deadline is not to compare yourself to other writers. Especially, god help you, to your friends. There will always be someone who writes faster than you do, or whose first drafts are cleaner. Or both. And what you have to accept is that this information is MEANINGLESS. How fast other people are writing their books has no relevance to your book. You are not in competition with them, and using other people to beat yourself up is unfair, both to you and to them.

Sometimes, in order to accept this, you have to tell yourself that those other, faster, better, prettier writers are space aliens. This is okay, as long as it gets you to Stop. Comparing. Yourself. To. Other. Writers. Some of my dearest friends are space aliens to me right now.

Zen is also good here, if you can find it.

The third thing to remember in dealing with a deadline is to listen to the book. Do not let the mob in your brain chanting DEADLINE DEADLINE DEADLINE drown out the things you need to hear. If the book is taking a wrong turn, you need to figure that out at the intersection, not twenty miles down the wrong road. If that means you have to stop while your backbrain figures out how to tell you what’s going on, then stop. It will save time in the long run, and you will hate yourself and the book less.

In other words, it’s the book that is the point of the exercise, and it is the book that, ultimately, you are accountable to. Do not forget that in the clamor.

The fourth thing to remember in dealing with a deadline is that you can do this. Set goals. Make them reasonable. Allot yourself breaks and rewards. Novel-writing is an endurance sport. You can’t do it in a sprint. Do whatever it takes to stay both consistently productive and relatively sane.

Meet your deadline if it’s humanly possible. But if you can’t, it’s your job to come as close as you can. Not to waste your time and your editor’s time with your writer angst and Woe is me! Be professional even in your failure, and make it as minimal a failure as you can. Even after you lose the race, you still keep running.

And, yeah, work on that Zen. It’s gonna come in handy.

by Wayne Allen Sallee

You can thank Mr. Wilson for reeling me back in from the troposphere. Last month I had fully intended to do an entry about how writers, at times, have to write on the holidays–May 28th was Memorial Day–but I was in the middle of a private meltdown. Almost all my stories are thinly-veiled autobiograhical, so one day I’ll email everyone a nice story about a crazy bald guy blah blah blah.

Needless to say, Dave told me not to bail on SU, that I had something to bring to the table each month like everyone else, and to not think of the 28th as my day to write an essay, but to think of it as another blog entry. You know this guy was in the military, he would not let me leave this place. (Not saying its Iraq or anything, of course). So here goes:

I had to put on my Robert Mitchum CD to get settled after coming in from work. I couldn’t get Rascal Flatt’s “Life Is A Highway” out of my head for hours. I didn’t hear it on the radio today, I didn’t watch CARS with my nieces, I DON’T DRIVE, so why its in my head (or was, until Bobby the Mitch started singing “Thunder Road”) is beyond me.

Most of what I’m typing here was written down while I worked at the graphics shop this afternoon. Call me Jonny Analog, I still write things down as my first draft. After I fill a notebook, I send it to someone. Once I sent a journal to Peggy Nadramia (editor of GRUE) and she called me, thinking I was going to jump off a bridge because I had parted with something so important. Its almost funny, because now I can write my deepest thoughts (or my purpleist prose, and there I go making up yet another new word, recognized only by me), and “burn” them on a disk or simply email them to several dozen people. Or post them as a blog entry. This is my brain. This is my brain online. Any questions?

I had a specific topic in mind when I titled this post. I’ve been proofreading my past. I wrote a novel back in 1992, THE HOLY TERROR. Later this year, Midnight Library will publish a mass market 15th Anniversary edition of the book, with a new Forward by me relating how page 243 languished in my word processor for 68 days because I was hit by a car after leaving my doctor’s office, and how I wrote in snippets between operations on the mangled bones in my only good limb, my left arm, and when I couldn’t write, Yvonne Navarro received the supreme pleasure of typing chapters after deciphering my Demerol-slurred voice on an old-timey cassette recorder.

The book is set in downtown Chicago during the winter of 1989–I was hit by the car on March 18th of that year–and so many of the buildings and local iconography like Gold Coast Dogs that I mentioned are gone, replaced by parking garages for the high-rise condos next door. Its not like rereading, say, PROTOTYPE by the illustrious Brian Hodge. There is nothing directly definable within those pages as, say, the city streets in my book, but I remember Brian as he was writing the book, hell, I knew him before his second novel saw print.

But there is a weird sensation to again read a book by someone you know closely, as I do Brian and Beth. I look back to the early to mid-90s when there were no computers or dozens of area codes, and I’d receive letters from other Brian, Beth, and other writers on dot-matrix printers. Then the Pentium chip came along and I started falling behind everyone else in the sense of keeping in touch. Technology is my worst enemy. One of my stories, “Mitch,” is available as a podcast and I barely know what a podcast is. I’ve never seen one, except when someone burns one for me on a CD. However one burns a CD (just kidding, I’m not the Unabomber when it comes to these contraptions).

One of the extra AOL screen names I have is DrMilesBennel, after the main character in Jack Finney’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. One by one, my friends became sucked into cyberspace, pods pulsating as they grew beneath the computer desk in each home. I was no longer in the race, keeping pace with handwritten script, rather moving along with one typing finger, two on a good day. Never mind the pain caused by the fine motor function of touching the keys. (I can lift an eighty pound box, as I did earlier this afternoon at work, with no problem whatsoever, yet typing a word with three syllables–for example, syllables, ha ha–sends shards of glass into my neck and back).

I’m an old coot nearing the age of 48 and don’t care to use voice activation software because, well, because I tried and the damn program still isn’t that big a help (it can’t quite grasp my stuttering words which I do when spasming), and also because after I’m dead I’d like whoever is left reading my work realizes I never tried to do things the easy way. Mind you, I’m not pissing and moaning now. Certainly, I wish it was fifteen years ago and the world itself was a little bit simpler, conventions were a hell of a lot cheaper to attend, not just me trying to type and sell my stories to print magazines not e-zines or whatever they were called when this whole internet thing started.

I finally got a new friend of mine to submit a story for some werewolf anthology (online, of course, not an actual #%$#%$ book). She emailed me back all worried that she hadn’t heard anything back and was certain that her story was reviled. This was TWO DAYS LATER. I explained how it was Back In The Day, feeling increasingly older with every sentence. Sure, it was the first time she had sent out a story, but it shows the immediacy of everything now. If I am writing a new story, I’m not looking at my email for at least a week, never mind answering any of it. Its not that I can’t multi-task, its that I’m too damn slooowwww at doing more than one thing at the same time.

Oh, gee, look at the time. I suppose I’ve taken up enough of yours for this month. I don’t think I’ve written anything that the collective readership can learn from, I just did what Dave said and approached this as if there were a bunch of us sitting around a table in between panels at some unnamed convention.

Though its OK with me if someone starts the legend of a bent over bald guy named Jonny Analog, an urban myth who shambled from town to town, babbling odd stories about having to use self-addressed stamped envelopes and ink pens and other things from the dark ages.

Wayne Allen Sallee
jonalgiers@aol.com

So.

Confession time.

I…am not a “real writer”.

Oh, sure, I’ve written. I’ve published literary criticism, book reviews, RPGs, video games, humor, and six months’ worth of columns in a Korean-language video game magazine. I’ve done short fiction, tie-in novels, and a chapter in a book on game writing that was enough to get me branded an enemy of Art by one blogger who took particular exception to the pragmatic approach I was espousing.

But until now, I had never been through The Process. Yes, the magical, mystical, shrouded-in-layers-of-haze-like-the-Eleusinian-Rites- as-recast-by-the-writers-of-Dr.-Strange process of publishing a novel, at least from the author’s side. Yes, there were those four tie-ins, but a subtle program of researching The Process (Sample approach: “Hey, Jim, what’s it like publishing a novel, huh?”) gave me the rough outlines, nay, the parameters. Mystic terms like “ARC” and “galley” – which, contrary to my belief, is not where they chain writers who miss deadlines to oars and make them row book publicists around the Tyrrhenian – slowly became part of my vocabulary, and I learned enough to at least pretend to know what I was talking about.

But until now, I had never, in the words of Eric Idle, you know, done it.

As of this point, however, I have. With my first original novel, Firefly Rain, coming out in January, I have begun to experience all of the steps it takes to turn a Word file into a novel. And let me tell you, I had no idea what I was in for. It has been educational, interesting, and at times, terrifying. Above all, however, it has been a process, a ritual of completion that marks the transformation of an idea into an honest-to-God book.

And now, thanks to my editor at Wizards of the Coast Discoveries, the talented and infinitely patient Susan Morris, I’m going to take you with me through one of those ritual steps – just one – in this case, the reading of the galley proofs. Think of it as a public service, so that you, too, gentle reader, can know what you might someday be in for – or can laugh at what you’ve already been through.

And so, without further ado, the Blogging of the Galleys, as it was, or is, or might have been:

***

6:30 PM – The doorbell rings. Roughly eight and a half seconds pass between the last sound dying away and my sweeping the door open, and in that time the UPS deliveryperson has dropped a package on my doorstep, pelted down the walk, and driven as far as Charlotte. In other words, they are nowhere to be seen. On the step, a large box. Correction – as I pick it up, it’s a large and heavy box. Ominous thumping sounds come from inside as its weight shifts.

6:38 – The box is finally inside. The shipping label tells me it’s from Susan, so I ask my wife to get me a knife from the kitchen so I can open it. She responds that she’s not letting me have a knife when I’m doing anything involving my writing. Score one for the wife.

6:45 – A pile of paper the approximate size and shape of a Quonset hut slides out of the box and onto the air hockey table. Yes, we have an air hockey table. No, I don’t think it’s stable enough to support the weight of the proofs for long. I scoop them up and hurry upstairs to my office.

6:47 – Stop at top of stairs. Catch breath. Remember to note this for posterity, realize that posterity is going to think I’m a goober, keep going.

6:48 – Realize I forgot to strike the stuff about the stairs from the record. Say a mental “screw it” and throw the pile down on my desk. The desk makes a noise like a lovesick moose in protest. I very rapidly clear four months’ worth of bills, two empty Jones Soda cans, and a pile of Stan Ridgway CDs off the remainder of the desktop to make room and reduce the load.

7:04 – Melinda pokes her head into my office and asks what my plans are for the evening. She sees me instead poking at the proofs with a stick, making sure they are not going to attack me even if provoked. “You are very silly,” she says, shuts the door, and goes back downstairs, where she and our summer houseguest, her nephew, can engage in some heated bonding over the “Face-Melters” level of Guitar Hero II.

7:05 – I stare at the galleys. Right. Going to get started any second now. Going to go through this sucker line by line and nail it.

7:10 – Still staring.

7:15 – Still staring. I think it’s staring back. Cripes, it didn’t seem that long when I wrote it.

7:30 – I’ve won two games of Freecell, lost six, and downloaded a significant portion of the Drive-By Truckers’ back catalog on iTunes, on the premise that it’s good music to get me in the mood of the novel. The Freecell games, I have no excuse for.

7:45 – Page one. It’s a good start.

7:50 – I’m through the prologue and the first chapter, which had taken the brunt of a lot of the rewrites and debate. It reads well. I mark one sentence for a change and move on.

7:56 – First embarrassing spelling mistake of the evening! I howl my anguish at the uncaring stars, then write it down and move on.

7:57 – Second embarrassing mistake of the evening.

7:58 – Third embarrassing spelling mistake. I resolve not to mention spelling mistakes in the blog any more.

8:06 – Up to chapter four. Downstairs, they’re doing co-op on Rush’s “YYZ”. I turn up the Truckers.

8:14 – We reach the landmark “first howlingly bad Bible error” of the night. It’s actually just a juxtaposition of two names, no doubt caused by doing revisions far too late at night in a Montreal hotel room, but even so, letting this one get through would be Bad, with a capital “Suck”. Gingerly, I note it.

8:17 – No bolt of lightning has struck me down. I continue editing.

8:21 – It’s quiet downstairs. Too quiet. Why are they not distracting me, damnit?

8:35 – Through chapter six. As a reward, I take myself downstairs to get a can of soda, then lurch back up to my cave like a morlock on a booty call lest the dreaded Guitar Hero riffage tempt me to abandon my labors.

8:47 – I knock over the can of soda. A rivulet of bubbling brown fluid lurches toward the “unread” pile. I swipe it away, and build a temporary retaining wall out of old Spanish-language promotional bookmarks for Vampire: The Dark Ages. They’re laminated, they can take it.

8:56 – Crisis averted, desk dried, soda removed to a safe distance.

9:03 – I get back to that ‘proofing’ stuff I’m supposed to be doing. Chapter seven, and I find myself reading, as opposed to casting a gimlet eye on my still-inchoate prose. On one hand, that’s a good thing. I mean, if I can get caught up in it after spending more months than I want to think about living in the novel’s headspace, that tells me that it’s a pretty good story. On the other hand, it’s not helping me do what I have to do. I backtrack fifteen pages and go over them again.

9:16 – A hundred pages in and no sex scene yet? Who wrote this thing?

9:23 – The hero drinks a beer. He does that a lot, I’ve noticed. I clamp down firmly on the urge to go downstairs and emulate him, on the grounds that it probably won’t help my proofreading much, if at all. Also, I’ve got better beer in my fridge than the character’s got in his, and I don’t want him getting jealous.

9:40 – Melinda, the aforementioned and incredibly patient wife, sticks her head in my office. “Are you done yet?” My answer sounds like a sasquatch with his paw in a blender. She shuts the door again.

9:57 – Page 150. So far, so good, but I’m suffering grad school flashbacks. The last time I read something this closely, I was living in Boston, forty pounds lighter, and still inclined to do amateur theater.

9:59 – Amateur theater flashbacks. They will pass, they will pass.

10:04 – Hey! There’s acrobats in the book. Big ones. I didn’t write in any acrobats! Where did the acrobats come from?

10:08 – Suddenly realize that somehow writing assignments from one of Melinda’s writing classes have gotten mixed in with the manuscript. For ten minutes, I have been assiduously providing notes on someone’s senior thesis. The scary part is that the paper isn’t even the same size. Clearly, the focus can be relaxed a little bit. Just a smidge.

10:10 – Notes file is officially clean of any comments about acrobats.

10:14 – Get idea for short story idea about acrobats. Start writing it down.

10:16 – Fling pencil across room, accidentally terrifying one of the cats. No notes about other stories allowed until I’m done with this one, damnit.

10:24 – Six other story ideas have made themselves known in the last eight minutes. Bastards!

10:30 – Page 200. Either I’m picking up speed, the novel’s getting better, or I accidentally grabbed that beer after all.

10:36 – Find some new typos. Me and my big mouth. Err, blog. Err, blouth. Whatever.

10:42 – I check the clock. Nearly three hours in. My neck and back feel like Lionel Hampton’s been using them for practice. My sympathy for authors of Jordanesque fantasy dagwoods goes up several notches.

11:04 – Melinda again. “Are you done yet?” “Grrr.” “Are you coming to bed?” “Grrrrr.” “Do you want me to help?” “Grrr…oh God, yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I mean, err, Grrr!”

11:22 – Past the 275 page mark and picking up steam. I think my characters want to get rid of me. They’re afraid of more edits.

11:34 – 300! Woohoo! This part of the novel will now defend Thermopylae against the Persian hordes!

11:37 – Read last comment. Sigh. Go downstairs for more caffeine. Inhale it. Get more. Carry it back upstairs. Place it carefully away from remaining 75 or so pages.

11:39 – Inhale additional caffeine. Wonder where helping verbs and articles have gone in my blogging.

11:44 – So far, I have come across spelling mistakes, a mislabeled character, one embarrassing factual error, one situation that, if left unchecked, would pit the content of my novel against the laws of physics, and evidence of a marked disdain on the author’s part for consistency in italicization. Which is to say, so far, so good. I have a brief urge to look at the draft of the manuscript I submitted, just for the sake of comparison, then ruthlessly squish the notion. I’m fairly certain that if I try it, I’ll be turned into a pillar of salt. Even if I’m not, I’m already engaged in spending the evening hunting for my own mistakes. I’m reasonably certain I don’t want to find the countless hordes that were there in the earlier, pre-editing, Neanderthal phase of composition.

11: 48 – Getting there. Time to knuckle down. Also time to correct my sudden, intense semicolon addiction.

11:52 – I stash some of the semicolons for later. I can quit using them any time I want, you know. I just like complex syntax.

11:59 – Page 350. It’s the height of the action. Things are exploding, explanations are being explained, dogs and cats are living together [editor’s note – Not really. The cats are reserved for the short fiction.] I find myself feeling a little twinge that it’s going to be over soon. This, I think, is also a good sign.

12:14 – Last chapter, excuse the prologue. One more typo, one more doubled space between words. Things are winding down, and so am I.

12:27 – Melinda again. She knocks, then asks how it’s going. “Done,” I say,” looking at the list of edits onscreen. I save the file and reverently tuck the pile into the corner of the desk. She looks at me, looks at the proto-book, looks at the serried ranks of empty Coke Zero cans lined up on my desk. “You’re going to do it again tomorrow, right?” I nod. “Right.”

by Janet Berliner

During a variety of moves, I’ve given away more than 6,000 books, but not to worry. Between what I kept and what I’ve accumulated, I still have a few thousand more. Every now and then, I wander around my personal library and allow myself to be carried away by the memories of the books: where I bought them; why I bought them; what made them special enough to keep. My shelving system would, upon examination by a stranger, seem entirely haphazard, but to me there is an internal order to it. In my bedroom, I have three small racks. Two of them hold the books I must always have close enough to touch, like “Tale of Two Cities,” “The Idiot,” and “Madame Bovary.” The third is jammed with the next books I intend to read after Vonnegut’s “Timequake” and Adichie’s “Half a Yellow Sun.”

The last time I sallied forth into library lane, I stopped at a particular cluster of books that had no reason to be shelved together except for this. Stepping backwards in time. . .

Some years before his suicide, on a blustery November Saturday, I interviewed writer Jerzy Kosinski at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. The C.P.A. is usually a gathering place for balletomanes, opera buffs, chamber music enthusiasts and soft shoe fans. The auditorium holds close to three thousand people. I thought there would be seats to spare, but almost the full three thousand showed up to pay homage to books and authors during a free “creative encounter” between contemporary authors and their reading public. I had been to one of these happenings before and had been fortunate enough to meet Louis L’Amour, a man with a grand sense of humor, Jessica Mitford, a proper lady, and Wallace Stegner whose literary reputation scared me half to death.

My second time around, I stood in line at eight in the morning, twisting my body to grab the rays of the sun as it struggled to break through the early fog. There was a line of people a mile long behind me, made up of the very young and the very old, and those who, like me, fell somewhere in-between. I looked at them and rejoiced at the victory of books over Saturday morning cartoons and electric blankets.

Perhaps, I thought, library shelves would continue to hold paper visions of Man after all.

The day’s motivation was to sell books, with the promise of being able to get them autographed. Kosinski was by no means the only scheduled author. Irving Stone was there, too, and, among others, Sydney Sheldon, and Melvin Belli, attorney turned author. I was determined to meet all of them–Irving Stone because the only book I had taken with me to read on my journey from South Africa was The Agony and the Ecstasy, Sydney Sheldon because of his extraordinary sales numbers, and Jerzy Kosinski because his writing seemed to speak directly to me.

Walking into the first autographing session, it was impossible to overlook the fact that the line for Belli was a steady five people, while the one for Mr. Stone went twice around the room. As I stood there, wondering whether or not to return later, it was impossible not to notice Belli’s strident response to the people in his line. Mr. Stone, on the other hand, though almost blind, was ever the gracious, soft-spoken gentleman.

My ornery streak burst forth.

I stood in line, waiting to see Melvin Belli. In my hand, I held Irving Stone’s book. Reaching Belli’s table, I put the Stone novel in front of him, held out my hand, and said, “Nice to meet you Mr. Stone.”

He half rose from his seat. “I’m Melvin Belli,” he roared.

Everyone turned to look and listen.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, as sweetly as I could. “I should have known the long line was for Irving Stone.”

An hour or so later, I met the real Mr. Stone. He graciously signed his book and talked to me about his longstanding writing and marriage partnership with his wife, who sat protectively close at his side. He told me that she was, at the very least, his personal editor, his partner, and–now that his eyesight was failing–his eyes as well.

Sydney Sheldon said to me, “I lie on the sofa in semi-darkness and wait for the voices to come down from the ceiling. When they do, I snap my fingers and the first of four secretaries with empty notebooks files into the room. When I have finished dictating, they type up my words, clean them up, and send out the next best seller.” I had recently read one of his books and had commented in a review that it felt as if it had been written by five people. Hearing what Sheldon said, I understood my reaction and felt vindicated.

Neither Sheldon nor Stone were particularly exciting speakers. Kosinski, however, was a painted bird of another color. Everything about him was, if not distorted, then deliberately larger than life. In fact even his signature included an exaggerated profile of his prominent proboscis. Much of his time on stage was spent in an effort to clear himself of the accusation of seeking out or manufacturing horrors in his life for the purposes of sensational writing. He did so by stringing together a series of true-to-life anachronisms: edible panties; colored contraceptives; a listening device sold to children over eight for the express purpose of eavesdropping at a distance of up to 200 yards; and another device, this time for children over twelve, claiming to allow them to see through walls.

“If Kosinski had written these things into his books,” the author said, talking about himself in the third person, his tone of voice was surprisingly lacking in bitterness, “his critics would throw up their hands and declare him a fiend.”

Finally, this Technicolor man told the following story against himself. One time, he said, he stood in a Manhattan bookstore and watched a woman choose one of his books and hand it to the salesman to be rung up.

“I’m the author,” he said, walking up to the woman. “She took the book back, flipped it over, compared me with my photograph and decided against it. Pity,” he went on. “She was a handsome woman.”

Later, I asked Kosinski why he hadn’t asked the woman what had changed her mind. His answer was to shrug and repeat, “Pity. She was a handsome woman.”

With the exception of “Being There,” Kosinski resisted allowing his books to be translated into movies. I asked him why. “Because my characters are too deep and complex to be transferred correctly to the screen,” he said. His work would not translate to the screen, he insisted, until he decided to write about “A character without character.”

He reached out for the book I held in my hand, drew the familiar caricature, signed the book, and closed it. Before handing it to me, he pulled a card out of his pocket and slipped it into the signature page. “My private number,” he said. “If you’re ever in New York, call me.” He looked up at me intently. “You won’t call, will you?”

I shook my head.

“Who are you anyway?” he asked.

I handed him my card. It had a book in the top, left hand corner and read, Professional Media Services: Editing, consulting, teaching, ghostwriting. Under my actual name it read, writer.

“Yes,” he said, placing the card on the table. “But who are you?”

I took the card back, turned it over, and wrote the letters WFA-AJI. Beneath that I added, White female African-American Jewish Immigrant. As I handed it to him I said, “I’m a writer, an immigrant, and one of your greatest admirers.”

“Me, too,” he quipped.

It would be unfair to him not to add that he laughed and corrected himself, though I think he really is one of his own greatest admirers.

Either way, I found his discussions, both on stage and off, witty, intellectual, and indicative of a man whose ego insisted he expose his own and humanity’s weaknesses to the world.

So there it is, the reason behind that cluster of books by those particular authors. Now that I’ve written this, maybe I’ll shelve the blog and give away those books.

Or not.

By Stan Ridgley

I’ve read with interest the most recent essays by my colleagues, particularly the powerful message sent by Rick Steinberg on being true to one’s inner voice and vision rather than seeking external “inspiration” and validation.

Another colleague cut against the conventional grain in sharing that he does not write every day. Of course, I don’t write every day either, but I believe that I should. And so I admit that I violate this dictum.

And given my overly cultivated conscience, I carry guilt upon my shoulders rather than assuage that guilt by simply penning a few lines here and there each day.

What do these two previous essays mean to me? Why do I connect them? They offer nuggets that resonate with me and remind me of verities that I learned . . . and sometimes must relearn from time-to-time.

Here is what I mean.

A decade ago, my own attempts at novels were technical masterpieces (in my own mind) and emotional wastelands. Well-researched, but barren. Think of an incredibly written technical manual posing as a novel. In self-pity, I even took on the sobriquet the Titan of Technocratic Prose, although as is the case with self-pity, only one person on this earth would indulge me by addressing me with this monstrosity.

Rick’s essay brought to mind my own odyssey of attempting to write what might sell or what might interest a particular audience next year. A forlorn exercise that results in a hollow story and unsure characters who strut stiffly rather than amble confidently.

And so I began the difficult task of investing myself in my fiction. That may sound peculiar and obvious. “Of course you invest yourself in your fiction!”

Well, no.

There is no “of course” to it. It requires a degree of honesty with ourselves that some of us achieve more readily than others. I suspect that it is a difficult task, not just for me, but for many folks.

And so I now write with far more abandon than before. Not picking and choosing words carefully, but lashing them onto the page with what I believe to be honesty and sincerity, pouring them out in anger or in love or in puzzlement or in joy or in hurt.

And then I go back – “of course” – to edit. But not to strip the heart and feeling from my sentences.

Which brings me to the second point mentioned by a colleague, namely that of the writing habit (and its first cousin, the bane of “writer’s block).

I do believe in the writing habit, although it is, sadly, a habit that I’ve had no trouble breaking. But I do not believe in “writer’s block.”

The two phenomena are connected in this way: The daily writing ritual, whether a commitment to write for time or for word count (for 1 hour or for 1,000 words), is the finest antidote to the myth of writer’s block that I’ve encountered.

You see, I used to believe in writer’s block. But that changed when I sat down for the first time to fulfill my commitment, but had nothing to say.
Nothing.

But it was either write or sit idle.

And so I began writing something.

Anything.

One sentence after another. Paragraph to strained paragraph. I used my characters’ names. I created new settings. I delighted in pulling scenarios out of–- . . . well, I pulled them from wherever scenarios reside when we scribes aren’t using them.

And I discovered – 1,000, 3,000, 5,000 words later – that I had created some of my best stuff. Sure, I had to throw out five or six hundred or even a thousand words of chaff.

But a core of great material remained. Certainly, it was great stuff by my measure, perhaps not yours. But it satisfied me, and it dispelled for me once and for all the myth of writer’s block – I understand it now as a mere psychological construct that can easily be beaten rather than succumbed to.

And so these two nuggets that I write about today are, indeed, linked: 1) Investing my work with what is uniquely me, without external stimulus contrived of attempts to outguess the market, and 2) Writing daily and doggedly.

They work for me, and, at bottom, that is what counts.

Adopting a method that yields results and then making it one’s own.

(You learn something new every day. Brian saved this in Blogger as a draft days ago — when I posted it, it posted back on the day when he created it! Here it is again - DNW)

The other day I read a fantastic essay by Ray Bradbury called Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds. According to Locusmag.com (Stories, Listed by Author), Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction (edited by J. N. Williamson for Writer’s Digest Books) originally published this essay in 1987, but you can find it reprinted in Mr. Bradbury’s non-fiction book, Zen in the Art of Writing. *This book is at the top of a short list of books I consider essential.In this essay, Mr. Bradbury passes on some lessons from his own life. I’ll share a few of them with you here, but I won’t take credit for them. Ray Bradbury, one of the true geniuses in the writing business, deserves full credit. His book is a treasure chest of anecdotes, ideas, and encouragement.

Here and now, I will try to pass on a few of those gems without borrowing heavily from the text of the abovementioned book. It will lose something in translation, so I urge you to go out and buy Zen in the Art of Writing.

Run Fast …
“In quickness is truth.” - Ray Bradbury.

Speed is a writer’s friend. When you find an idea or the thread of a story, you must grab it at once and take off with it. Leave all questions, concerns, doubts, and other bogeymen in your dust. Write down what comes, and quickly, before inspiration wanders away to favor another with its bright grin and manic energy. By taking and running, you can finish a short story in a single night, maybe two, or a full novel in a few months. You will also get your story in its purest form, free of navel-gazing, second-guessing, and the creative confusion that comes with considering what your fans, editors, reviewers, detractors, relatives, and mates will think of it.

You are writing the story for you and no one else.

What you’ll end up with, and I know this from personal experience, is one butt-ugly first draft, but that’s just fine. Ugly first drafts are what rewrites were invented for. The rewrites are where you let others in (literally or figuratively), and if you want others to enjoy your story, this is where you should consider their opinions and input.

That first draft, however, is all you, baby! Running through a landscape of your imagination’s choosing; running so quickly you feel like you’re flying. You know you might trip up and fall on your face at any moment, but you’re having so much fun you hardly care.

Stand Still …
“Be a chameleon, ink-blend, chromosome change with the landscape.” – Ray Bradbury.

Not just pretty words, but sound advice, and a way to avoid a trap I always seem to fall into when trying to find inspiration.

When pressed for inspiration, I tend to look inward for, to my emotions and experiences, my philosophies and fears. My inner-self, sadly, is a well I all too often find shallow and dry. I’m not even going to think about what that says about me as a person. It’s too depressing to consider.

Be a wallflower. Shut up, sit back, and watch the world move around you. Watch strangers in the park, on their commute to work, arguing, laughing, crying. Take some time off from your grim Cradle-to-Grave death march, and see what you’ve been missing. Your city or town, your neighborhood, your favorite restaurant; the world is a strange and interesting place filled with strange and interesting people.

Lie down in the grass and watch the clouds move across the sky, changing shapes as they drift with the wind, divide, dissipate, converge. See anything interesting in them?

You will if you watch long enough.

No only will you often find direct inspiration in the world around you, something amazing will happen while you’re looking the other way. Your own well will begin to fill again, and the next time you look into it, you may be surprised by what you find.

Word association.

This is a game, or maybe more like an exercise, that Mr. Bradbury writes about, and which appears to have become the seeds of some of his best stories. It’s simple as hell, too.

Get some paper. Get a pen. Write down the first word (albatross) or pair of words (The Spider) that comes to mind. What does that word make you think about when you look back at it? Chances are there is a reason that word was rolling around in your head, something old, forgotten and dusty, just waiting to be found again.

On the other hand, maybe there is no reason at all, but what the hell, just go with it.

I’ve put my own small spin on the word game, making three lists of words; things I hate, things I love, and random things, an object or person that happens to cross into my vision at that moment, or maybe just a brain-fart.

When you have your lists, pick one thing from each list, a love, a hate, and something from your random list.

Here are my three - The Letter (random), birds (loves), and strangers (hates).

These three things, poured back into the mixing-bowl of my head, combined to become a good idea for a story.

Indulge me and try it yourself.

If it doesn’t work for you, it was no big waste of time or energy, but if it does work, don’t thank me.

Thank Ray Bradbury. It all started with him.

Brian Knight

*List of essential non-fiction works
Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style
Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing
Stephen King’s Danse Macabre
Stephen King’s On Writing
Edo Van Belkom’s Writing Horror

By
Richard Steinberg

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process,” Vincent Van Gogh

Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered if there was someone out there looking back at you wondering the same thing? Have you ever felt the pain that rises out of that place deep within yourself that you deny existence to, which chokes off your spirit, your belief, your hope? Have you ever stood – surrounded by people you know, by strangers, in the midst of a throng of life – and known you were completely alone?

Do you then – at the height/depth of that doubt and misery – sit down and create?

Welcome to the Artist’s Soul.

Suffering, searing emotional pain, failed relationships, failed ambitions, psychic scar tissue, self-doubt, and personal travail are not requirements to be a successful person in the arts. There have been many – too many to name here – that have led wonderful lives; far from any of the conditions mentioned above who have not only been successful in their artistic endeavors, but often fabulously successful. We see their names almost daily. Hear their stories constantly and often they are held up as the example:

LOOK AT M.E. HAPPY! OVER THERE, SEE I.M. GREAT! LOOK AT THE MONEY, THE ACCLAIM, AND THE COMFORT THEY’VE ATTAINED FROM A CAREER IN THE ARTS!

A career in the arts.

As opposed to being an artist.

I don’t begrudge them a penny of their millions or a moment of their fame. But neither will I call them artist.

Because their work has no soul; and after its brief flight in the lower atmosphere it will fade from view. And in a few years – two, five, ten, twenty – will be forgotten, cast aside as if it had never existed in the first place, because it has no connection to its audience.

The Artist’s Soul is what connects them to the rest of the world. It is the thing which transcends the experience of a white, male, raised in the upper middle class, Jewish, American writer to allow him to have a reader base in Japan, Bulgaria, Guatemala, Germany, and twenty-eight other countries around the world.

It is the magic that allowed a British civil engineer to create a series of novels that have never received great acclaim . . . but have not been out of print since their original publications, beginning in 1920.

It is the ethereal greatness of the works of the son of a glove maker in England that cause him - over four hundred years later – to still be one of the most read authors on every continent of the globe today.

The Artist’s Soul.

The Writer’s Soul.

How do you find that soul, connect with it, entreat it to become your collaborator so that your work might connect with other souls out there staring into the sky also praying/doubting companionship?

Christopher Morley felt he never did.

Once the collaboration is established, how do you care for that soul so that your work doesn’t become bitter, poisoned, so wrapped up within itself that it becomes virtually unrecognizable to any other?

Sylvia Plath was eventually suffocated by her slowly failing efforts to do so.

The first step, actually all the steps in one, is not to try.

My mother had a friend, an extraordinary ninety-three year old woman who lived in amazing harmony and grace in a two room cabin among the Northern Prescott Fern and Calico Oak of Lake Josephine in northern Montana. Cut off from the world, from most of modernity, there were only her and her friends: the gray wolves.

Each night for weeks on end, she would take fresh meat and put it around the grounds in front of her porch. Then she’d sit back and gently play her guitar till she was tired and fell asleep.
And after weeks of waiting, Maggie saw her first wolf step rather tenuously into the clearing. Eventually, on any given night there were five to seven wolves there, chowing down on her USDA Choice.

But here’s the thing: it wasn’t that they had found an easy meal with little risk in comfortable surroundings. Rather, they brought Maggie into their community. Stayed around the cabin, made a ruckus when anyone approached, sometimes interposing themselves between the woman and others they perceived as threats.

Maggie did the things necessary to attract the wolves, then left herself open to living with them.

Are you making a careful study of the New York Times Bestseller Lists to see what’s selling? Reading Publishers Marketplace to see what kind of books publishers are buying right now? If you’re not an agent, cut it the hell out! I could no more write a Janet Berliner novel than she could a Thomas Sullivan novel or he could a David Niall Wilson novel or he could a Richard Steinberg novel. We are who we are.

Are you?

Don’t try to be the next John Grisham or Judy Blume; Audrey Schulman or Caleb Carr. Don’t. When you sit down to work decide what it is you want to write about. Not the genre, not the setting, not the style or length. Certainly not what you think people want to read. Because if you’re anything like me, every time you figure out where it’s at, it’s usually someplace else.

It.

That thing that comes from deep inside you (often a place where the hurt mixes with the hope in kaleidoscopic images that might turn you to a pillar of salt or of the community) that drives you on. The issue or circumstance or condition you are most driven by. Maybe the thing you feel most passionately about but are terrified of expressing out loud. The concept that is real and dimensional and ugly/beautiful and that you know like you know the position you shift to in the moments before falling asleep. The thing that is a weight bearing column of your very being.

Write about that. Be true to that.

Set it however you want. Mask it, camouflage it; paint it with colors that bear no resemblance to you and your life if you like. That’s fine. But stay true to its heart, and eventually you’ll hear a twig crack, a soft paw fall on damp leaves. You’ll look up to see a pair of strange but familiar eyes regarding you from behind the brush, or in the dark just beyond the window the lamp glares on and thereby obscures.

Now go back and rewrite what you wrote. Make sure that with all the wallpaper and blusher, cool stuff and highly marketable plot points, your IT hasn’t been diluted into near unrecognizability or lost entirely. You have something to say, I promise you that, make sure you’ve said it. Demand of yourself that this truth or horror be fully expressed before you call the work: “done.”

Then, you’ll see your writer’s soul step fully into view in all its magisterial perfection and peculiar odium.

But be careful, because it stands on the balls of its feet, ready to leap away; back into the unreachable zones if you don’t nourish it at least to the extent it nourishes you.

Soul’s are like that.

Now, to keep contact with your Writer’s Soul, to make it more and more comfortable so it comes all the way over, curls up around your feet making happy sounds . . . do it again.

And again.

And again.

This is the place you must live. If your writing is to reach off the page or screen and connect with an unknown soul somewhere they call: out there, you must regularly reach inside yourself, force open the door that leads to your nightmares and dreams, and rip out great bloody hunks of yourself to add to the pudding of your work. Write commercially, write obscurely, but if your ink is seasoned with the viscera of your being you’ll be writing with your soul, from your soul, to other souls and at that moment (in the glory of one soul touching another) there will be your victory.

It hurts.

Sometimes it hurts a lot.

It can be embarrassing, distressing, intensely uncomfortable and just plain awkward. So, when it is, you have to make a not simple decision: which is more important to you, your personal comfort in a society that may never understand you, or writing a story that will connect with others simply because it is written in the universal language of the soul?

That decision will not always be easy to bear.

The Reformed Sexual Rapscallion and The Gracious Autumn Breeze are getting married in a couple of weeks. Together, they make a gentle symphony of rainbow colors and muted three in the morning saxophone solos on a dark urban street of forever possibilities.

I was almost there once; then, the lady said to me one night: “You care more about your writing than you do about me.” To which I answered: “Uh, yeah.” The ungraciousness of my comment still rankles me today.

However, I cannot deny the truth of it.

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world,” C.S. Lewis

I am a writer.

As Hugh Lofting was a writer.

I am an artist.

Like William Shakespeare was an artist.

I am God’s megaphone.

I commit myself wholly, in detail, without reservation or hesitation to confront the things I believe are wrong (in society, in the world, in me) and to reinforce the things I believe are right (in society, in the world, occasionally in me.)

And I do not wish, advocate, or even suggest that any of you out there, dear gentle readers, follow the road I have. It is soaked in the blood of apostasy and blessedness. Littered with boulders of surety and the remains of doubt. The path always leads up hill and the climb gets harder day by day.

But there is one other truth about the path of art, particularly of a writer’s art, that I will share with you.

The path leads to others.

And reaching others – soul to soul – is why I’m walking it.

And you?

Believe!

Sometimes, as a writer, I read books or columns of writing advice, much like what you can find in many of the essays here on Storytellers Unplugged. Although I have a degree in Creative Writing, I figure there’s always something new to learn, and at the very least I can see how other published writers handle the job and maybe take something from their experiences.

Most times, I find myself nodding my head, agreeing with what I read. It’s rare to unearth an epiphany this way, but often I think, “It’s great that someone codified in writing something similar to what I do.” Knowing that others work like I do can be comforting.

Then there are times I just have to wince then look away. That happens when someone declares something to be so that I just can’t agree with. Writing is an art. We all come at it from different angles, and there are few absolutes, especially when you’re talking about the process. All anyone ever sees is the end product, and that’s what counts, not how you get there, right?

Here’s the one that gets me the most, and I may be cast out as a heretic for disagreeing with it: Write every day.

Hey, it sounds like great advice, and I’m all for getting into the writing habit. I’ve just never managed it myself.

That may sound suspicious from a guy working on his 11th published novel (Blood Bowl: Rumble in the Jungle, due out this December from the Black Library) in the last three years, but it’s true. While I love writing fiction, especially novels, I still make most of my money as a freelance game designer, both for tabletop and computer games. So, writing fiction isn’t something I do every day.

Sure, I write e-mails, rules, examples of play, blog posts, and more, but fiction uses different muscles than those things. Tackling a novel, even, is a far different experience than pounding out a short story.

Instead of writing fiction every day, I prefer to hit it in strong, sustained bursts. That may come from the fact I write tie-in novels, which are generally under tight deadlines. As Max Collins said on the IAMTW mailing list once, “We are not sprinters. We are not long distance runners. We sprint long distances.”

I don’t think I’ve ever taken more than three months to write a novel. I once wrote a 95,000-word novel in 16 days, including a day off for Thanksgiving. The last day, I clocked out after writing 11,000 words.

And I like it that way. I enjoy being able to devote every bit of creative power I have to a single project. I work on many different things in the course of a year, and it’s easy for me to get them confused if I try to juggle them all at once. I’d rather hyperfocus on each in succession.

Of course, I do this full-time, so I have that luxury — if you can call a career built on serial obsessions luxurious. It’s what works for me. Figure out what works for you, then do that. Rinse. Repeat. Relax.