Category: experience

Old person pop culture reference.

If you’ve been following along the ranty blog these past few months, or maybe subscribed to the newsletter, you may have picked up on a few subtle hints that the past four or five months have… not been great here. Sickness. Sleepless nights. Anxiety. Lots of stress.

Lots of stress.

One thing that’s helped me get through it is stories. This might not exactly be a surprise, but I love a good story. Reading them. Listening to them. Watching them.

But let’s face it, that should sort of be a default for us, yes? We take in material to produce material. Input—output. If I want to build muscle, I need to eat a lot of protein. If I want to grow nutritious food, I need soil with lots of nutrition in it.

And if I want to write… look, it only makes sense that I have to read, yes? Again, input, output. No input, no output. We have to feed the machine.

That’s why, even with all the crap that’s been going on in my life, I’ve still read twenty books in the past nine months. Plus a bunch of comics and short stories. And I was glad to do it. Hell, I definitely wouldn’t’ve been able to write half of what I did this year without these pauses to rest and recharge with some good stories.

Now, the reason I bring this up every now and then is… well, every couple of years I tend to see some”pro” or “coach” insist that “real writers don’t have time to read.” Time reading is time you should be writing, they’ll say. And the folks saying this sort of thing, politely, tend to be the people who like to talk very loud and very confidently.

Despite being, y’know, 100% wrong.

I mean, this is kind of like saying real drivers don’t have time to stop for gas. I’ve met lots of professional writers, interviewed a bunch of them, and read about even more. And the one thing they pretty much all have in common is… they love stories. They love input. Seriously, check out some of your favorite writers and see how often they’re talking about other books, shows. movies. They all love stories.

Also, quick pause here. I’m going to talk about “reading” a lot in the next dozen or so paragraphs, but I don’t want you to think this is some screed about “only the printed word counts” or anything like that. Audiobooks count as reading. And ebooks. You don’t like ‘em, fine, that’s you. But they count as reading.

I’m a big believer that a writer should have a regular diet of works in their chosen field. I think it lets me keep up on what’s currently out there and what’s been done before. Plus it also… well…

Look, I think a lot of the folks who push this view are coming from a place of “I took classes. I‘ve read textbooks about this. I know how to write!” And that’s great. I’m all for educating yourself and learning the rules. For the most part.

But as I’ve mentioned here before, writing isn’t really something you can teach. Never has been. Because all of us are going to be telling our own stories in our own ways, and my process isn’t your process and it’s definitely not his process. All these classes teach us is the baseline rules. They’re showing us how to avoid the easy, common mistakes.

It’s not until I start reading and exposing myself to lots of other work that I really start learning how to break those rules. That’s when I begin to see how what would be a mistake there is brilliant here (and vice versa). How great writers sometimes use the fact that you, the reader, also have a grasp of the rules to guide you through their story in mischievous ways.

But again, I have to read. To expose myself to that beyond-the-basic material. It’s a knowledge vs experience kind of thing.

Having said that, let me give you a few little provisos experience has taught me.

I know some folks try not to read similar things while they’re working on a project because they don’t want to be influenced. I think it’s fair to be a little concerned about that. But I also think this just serves as another bit of learning for us. Figuring out if we’re doing our thing or just copying someone else’s. Most of us learn by copying to some extent or another, but I think we’re also very aware of it and notice it happening pretty quick.

(I was going to tell you a whole story about how I inadvertently turned my weird western into an episode of Old Gods of Appalachia, but it’s just a little too long. Trust me, funny, relevant, very educational and relatable)

I also think sometimes this idea, trying to avoid influence, gets taken to an extreme and that’s where some of the “don’t read” mentality comes from. Don’t read. Don’t listen. Don’t watch. Definitely don’t talk to other writers!

Again, just my opinion, but I think this kind of advice ends up as more of a punishment. You’re a writer—don’t enjoy the written word! Don’t watch shows or movies with your friends! And while I know there’s some folks who believe being a writer is all about suffering, I’m a big believer that if my personal process makes me dislike writing, or openly hate it… maybe I’ve got a sucky process.

Read. Read everything you can. Read in the genre you want to write in. Read related genres. Read that genre you have zero interest in and see what the writers are doing there. Read that bestseller you can’t stand and try to figure out why it sold almost a million copies.

And as a bonus–you’re supporting other writers. And your local bookstore. Or maybe your local library. It’s all a win.

Next time, I want to talk about spelling. Yes, again. It’s been a while.

Until then, go write.

Wanted to try out a sort-of new analogy. Congratulations! You’re all my test subjects.

I’m going to make a bit of a leap here and assume most of you reading this know how to drive. Just, y’know, basic driving. A car. A pick-up. Maybe some of you even know how to drive a motorcycle.

I’m also going to assume most of you have a degree of experience at driving. You’ve been doing it for a while. Yeah, there’s a chance one or two of you are still in high school and only just got a learner’s permit, but the general vibe I get here in the comments—and from my readers in general—is most of you are solidly in the “adult” demographic, which means I can say you’ve probably been driving for at least a decade. You’ve got a license and got a solid feel for it. We can put you behind the wheel of a car and you can follow the rules of the road.

Of course… well, let’s have a little moment of honesty here. We’re all friends, right? We trust each other to a certain degree? And we can all admit that maaaaaaaybe we don’t always follow the rules of the road.

No. No we don’t. Come on, we said we were going to be honest. Okay, look. Quick show of hands. Just put your hand up, nobody else can see it. Well, I mean, all those people there at work, but they don’t know why you’re doing it. If they ask, tell them you’re stretching.

How many of us have broken the speed limit in the past week?

Don’t nitpick. It doesn’t matter if you were only going five miles over or that there wasn’t anyone else on the road at the time. Going over the limit means you broke the speed limit. So put your hand up if you’ve done it in the past week.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Oh, of course I’ve done it too. I’m not lording it over anyone.

I’m sure more than a few of us have also failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. Made a U-turn we weren’t supposed to. Let’s not even getting into signaling for turns or lane changes.

Now here’s the thing. We all know this is wrong. We know we’re breaking the rules. But we keep doing it. And a lot of the time, we get away with it.

Why?

Well, a lot of it ties back to the experience thing I mentioned up above. Yeah, we were all taught the rules by a relative, in a drivers’ ed class, or maybe from a friend. We had to demonstrate we knew the rules to get our license.

And most of the time we need to follow the rules. I can’t just decide red lights and stop signs don’t apply to me anymore and plow through ‘em all at full speed. Eventually that’s going to catch up with me. So to speak.

But the thing is, once we’d been out on the road for a while, we started to see there’s still a degree of flexibility. Like driving on the freeway. Ten, fifteen miles an hour over? It’s breaking the rules but it’s also… just kind of accepted. We all do it.

Because we’ve all learned when and where it’s acceptable to break the rules of the road. When it’s going to make my driving experience a little faster or easier without hurting anyone. We know we can be a little excessive on the freeway, but we should probably rein it in a bit in school zones and parking lots. Making that u-turn on an empty road in the middle of the night isn’t the same as making it at lunchtime in heavy traffic. We understand why why it’s okay to do it here, but not here.

Let’s have one more moment of horribly honesty. Some folks get caught speeding and get a slap on the wrist. Other people get large tickets. Or worse. The ugly truth is, some people can get away with breaking the rules just because of who they are. Doesn’t mean the rest of us get to break them in the same way. Sucks, but that’s the way life goes sometimes.

And yes… there’s definitely someone out there who taught themselves how to drive and didn’t bother getting a license and drives 83 miles per hour past the school and the police station every day and they’ve never gotten a single ticket. Hopefully it’s clear this person is a rare exception, not a role model. Please don’t follow their example.

Now, hopefully you see where I’m going with this.

Y’see, Timmy, there are rules to writing. Absolutely, no questions, no arguments. There are rules, we need to know them, we should be able to pass a basic test on them. And a lot of the time we’re going to have to follow these rules to some extent or another.

But…

Once I’ve done this for a bit, I’ll get a sense of when and where I can bend those rules. Or break them. Or flat out shatter them. And I’ll know I’m totally, 100% justified in doing it. I’ll be able to tell you exactly why it’s okay. Yeah, the rule says do this, but I’m doing this because it’s better for the dialogue, the flow, the suspense, or what have you.

I definitely don’t want to break a rule and then just say “ehhhh, I don’t know why. I just felt like breaking it. Shake things up a bit, y’know? I’m disrupting storytelling.”

That’s not going to go over well.

Next time…

Well, there’s a whole aspect to this rules thing I just barely touched on, so next time I think I’m going to talk about why Doctor Watson told all those stories about his old roommate.

Until then, go write.

I stumbled across this old train-of-thought document a few weeks back, which I guess I’d written out… looks like sometime early in lockdown? Maybe in response to some social media discourse of the time? I don’t know. But parts of it struck with me and I’ve been flipping it over and over in my mind, so I thought I’d share it with you.

I’m kind of 50-50 on writing instruction, for lack of a better phrase. All those articles, lectures, books, and blog posts that tell you what/ when/ how/why to write. Which probably isn’t a great thing to confess here on the ranty writing blog. But really, I think if you look at most of that stuff with a critical eye, we’d find there’s a lot of good stuff you can get out of them, but also a lot of useless stuff, depending on our particular situation. Some might even be classified as harmful.

And it struck me that part of this is that “writing instruction” covers so much stuff. I mean, we all probably had a bunch of basic writing classes in grade school, right? Everybody had those. But maybe you also had creative writing classes in high school? Not the same thing. And I had a class in college that tried to teach writing, but also another one that tried to teach you how to be a writer.

Hopefully you can see the subtle nuances in all of these. I try to make it here a lot of the time. This blog is about writing (turning the idea in your head into a finished manuscript) but overall I tend not to talk as much about writing (the life, the career, the source of 83% of my stress and worry).

So let me tell you about a few writing classes I took. One in high school, two in college.

Also probably worth mentioning up front, I’d been writing for years before that first class. It was all garbage, sure, but I’d been writing and submitting and getting professional feedback. I’d already collected a good number of rejection letters from assorted editors at Marvel and a few different fiction magazines.

Class #1 was high school. In retrospect I’d call it harmless. It was approached more as a potential hobby than anything else. The teacher gave us writing prompts, would give us simple deadlines, taught us some bare bones stuff about character and imagery and critiques. But there wasn’t any in-depth discussion of anything, art-wise or career-wise. This would’ve been spring of ‘87– no public school was going to encourage a kid to go into the arts. Writing wasn’t a real career, after all.

I stumbled across one of the stories I wrote for this a few months back. It’s a kind of fun, fairly predictable story about two little kids (almost) being tricked into letting a monster loose. I remember the picture he showed us that inspired it, too

Class #2 was junior year of college. In theory, a general creative writing class. In reality just a bad experience overall. I liked a lot of my classmates, but the instructor had very literary aspirations. He talked a lot about ART and berated anyone in class who wasn’t trying to write the great American novel. I wrote a sci-fi/ horror short story for one assignment and was told (loudly) in front of the class that it was just mass-market garbage. If I was just writing to entertain—if I wasn’t trying to change people’s lives with my words—I was just wasting everyone’s time and should probably leave.

There wasn’t much instruction in this class of any sort. It was really just a critique group where the instructor encouraged people to be as harsh as they could with said critiques. All in the interest of “making them better writers,” of course. I ran into one of my classmates a year later and she told me she’d kind of given up on writing after that…

(fun fact—the story the instructor tore apart in front of the class was called “The Albuquerque Door,” about an experimental teleportation gateway gone wrong, and I always liked it even if he thought it was nonsense. It was (eventually) the inspiration for a book…)

Class #3 was my final semester of college. It was simply amazing. I was lucky enough to spend five months with John Edgar Wideman as a professor at UMass. Yeah, we’re naming people now that it’s a really positive experience. He made me look deeper at my writing and showed me how real life could still be the foundation of the strangest characters or situations. He was also the first person to point put that sometimes writing meant not sitting at your desk. It was good to shake things up now and then. Today… you know what, let’s just go down the hall to another classroom. I think 216 is empty. Today we’re going to have class under that tree out there. Today… everyone’s 21, yes? Let’s go get a drink at the bar in the campus hotel.

I have to add Professor Wideman was also the first person to ever tell me he thought I was going to be a successful writer. Direct, flat out, no qualifiers. My writing was very good, I could do this.

So… what’s the point of this stroll through my memories?

Every one of these classes was titled “Creative Writing,” even thought there was a huge range in what the instructors were offering. And what they delivered. Some were teaching about writing, others touched on being a writer, and really none of them were about writing as a paying career. Depending on what I was looking for—or needed—they could’ve been absolutely perfect or a complete waste of my time. Or even worse, the thing that makes me decide I hate writing.

I think, when we approach any kind of writing instruction, we should be really clear about what we need and what we’re hoping to get. And if it’s possible, maybe get a better sense of what this book/ class/ site/ conference is actually offering. If I’m really invested in the art and nuance of writing, a course about how to game the social media and Amazon algorithms to promote sales probably isn’t for me. If I want to work on going from my first draft to an edited second draft, a book of writing prompts and encouragements won’t be of much use to me. And if you just want a couple people to tell you your writing isn’t horrible and you should keep at it…

Well, you definitely didn’t want to be in that junior year writing class I was in. I should’ve dropped out. You could’ve too, and we could just go encourage each other at the Bluewall.

Anyway, next time I wanted to talk a little bit about Rashomon. I seem to recall you liked that movie, yes?

Until then, go write

Did you know most Olympians run the 100 meters in about ten seconds. Seriously. Ten meters per second! Men tend to come in a hair under that, women just a bit over, generally speaking. Usain Bolt’s held the record for about fourteen years now with a time of nine-point-five-eight seconds.

So we can say that taking part in an Olympic event requires about ten seconds and then you’re done.

That’s not much of a time commitment at all, is it? One sixth of a minute and I can call myself an Olympic runner? Makes you wonder why more people don’t try it.

Of course, we all know it takes a lot more that ten seconds, even for someone as fast as Usain Bolt. There’s probably going to be months of training for that one specific event, not to mention years of work before that. Most of the major runners were probably training two or three hours every day while they were still in their teens.

So it’s not really about the ten seconds. It’s about all the years before those ten seconds. That’s what makes the ten seconds possible. That’s how you get to the Olympics.

And we understand that. It takes time to be good at something, It’d be silly to think otherwise. Running. Cooking. Dancing. Painting. Brain surgery. There’s some folks who may have a knack for it, may start a rung or two up the ladder, but everybody has a climb ahead of them. Nobody decides they want Olympic gold and just walks out onto the track at… well, wherever the Summer Olympics are this year. Paris? Really? Okay.

Anyway, you can guess where I’m going with this, right?

A while back I saw a self-publishing website talking about how easy it is to write a book. They’d broken it all down into math. According to them, it takes an average of 475 hours to write a novel. Just under twelve standard work weeks to complete a book. Not even three months.

Now, in all fairness, that’s about what it took me to write the first draft of –14-. But this number’s very misleading. It doesn’t count all the hours I put in before writing this book. There were only a handful of outline pages, sure, but that was still a few weeks of random scribbling and thinking. Not to mention all the books I wrote before it. Yeah, they count. Do you think Usain Bolt went straight to the Olympics without running one other race? D’you think he didn’t learn anything from those earlier races? That they didn’t help him?

I think (he said, pulling out his thick cardigan and pipe) there’s a lot of folks out there trying to convince us that time doesn’t matter. That spending time to get good at something is wrong. You shouldn’t have to practice at writing. You already know all the words! Just throw ‘em down and put that first draft up on Amazon! Why wait? Why listen to those gatekeepers who tell you you’re not ready for the Olymp– sorry, to be published! Ignore them and publish now.

What’s that? Don’t even know all the words? Well double-screw those gatekeepers. AI will write the story for me. That’s just as good as me writing it myself. I mean, if Usain Bolt sells me his gold medal, it means now I’m the fastest man alive, right? And I didn’t have to waste any time with all that “years of practice” nonsense. Heck, he doesn’t even have to sell it– AI can just copy his medal and now I’m the fastest man alive. It’s that easy. And heck, if AI copied his medal without permission and just stuck my name on it, well… I mean, I’ve still got the thing saying I’m the fastest man alive. That counts, right?

Whoooo. Sorry Getting a little warm in here. The ranty writing blog’s feeling especially ranty today, isn’t it?

Look, my point is, if you want to do this… don’t be worried about time. Yeah, it looks like she did something so much faster than you or he just popped up out of nowhere, but usually those numbers are just what’s on the surface. You’re only seeing a small part of the writing iceberg. We all had to put the hours in. You’re going to have to put the hours in.

I’ve mentioned here again and again how much writing I’ve done (and still do!) that nobody’s ever seen. So many half-completed (or fully completed!) books, comics, stories, and screenplays. So much stuff. But it’s all experience. It’s training.

Because you’re never going to make it to the Olympics without training.

Next time, I’d like to talk to you about paint. And Arabic grammar.

Until then, go write.