Category: Schwab

November 27, 2021

Small Business Saturday

Hey there! As I have several times in the past, I thought I’d take a moment at the holidays to mention some of the books I’ve read and enjoyed this year by much more talented authors. If you’re still wondering about what to get that certain someone, you could go hit your local bookstore, browse around a bit, and maybe find a few things from this list they might enjoy.

Or maybe you’ll just find something on your own. That’s the fun of browsing in real-world bookstores.

So, in no real order…

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir – we’ll start with an easy one. If you haven’t somehow heard, Andy’s latest is (surprise) just fantastic. The tale of an (accidentally) lone astronaut’s desperate attempt to save the Earth. It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s incredibly smart while being ridiculously accessible. Absolutely anyone will enjoy it. Yeah, even that grouchy uncle who doesn’ tlike sci-fi stuff.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab—I’m a sucker for stories about memory and identity, and this book approaches it from the opposite side. What if it wasn’t your memory but everyone else’s. What if no one could ever remember you? What if they forgot you the moment they couldn’t see you? What kind of life would this be? And what if that life never, ever ended… ?

Bottle Demon by Stephen Blackmoore—every year Stephen writes a new book about necromancer Eric Carter and every year it ends up on this list. This most recent one is, hands down, his most amazing, and probably the most emotional, too, as Carter deals with an army of golems, an irate djinn, and the completely mysterious and unexpected resurrection of… well, himself.

King Bullet by Richard Kadrey—if you’re one of those people who waits for the end of a series to start reading, well, I guess this is a good day. Kadrey brings the Sandman Slim books to a close with one last Stark adventure and a truly magnificent ending that feels perfectly fitting while also being somehow completely unexpected.

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland—I’ve read a lot of zombie books out of a very broad genre, but this book manages to be fresh and very fun, picturing an alternate world where the American Civil War is disrupted by a mass zombie outbreak, and young women of color are trained to be bodyguards against the undead for “proper” women. I liked it so much I recommended this one for our Last Bookstore dystopian book club.

The History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel—a wonderful tale about aliens and their very long-game plan to shape the Earth’s assorted space programs to prepare us for… something. It’s one of those books that’ll teach you a lot of history even as it entertains you.

Madi by Duncan Jones, Alex deCampi, and too many fantastic artists to list here—this graphic novel is set in the same world as Jones’s films Moon and Mute, and asks what happens when a government super-cyborg decides to retire, especially when their body’s loaded up with proprietary software and hardware that requires ongoing maintenance and updates. It’s kind of like the weirdly fun baby that came out of a threeway between The Transporter, Crank, and The Bionic Woman.

Hard Reboot by Django Wexler—it’s a love story about a pair of women trying to rebuild a giant robot so it can compete on the giant robot pit-fighting circuit. Seriously, what more do you need to know?

Reclaimed by Madeleine Roux—remember what I said about memory and identity? Seriously, it’s like Madeleine wrote this book just for me. A group of people agree to be test subjects for a procedure that can erase traumatic experiences from your memory. But how much of who you are is defined by those experiences? What kind of person are you changed into once they’re gone? And how would you go about fixing that change…?

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig—this is a beautiful, brutal book, and it’s almost tough to recommend because it hit a lot of nerves for me, personally, that are probably going to be raw forever. That said, it’s a wonderful book about choices and consequences and how they make us who we are.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells– people have been telling me about the Murderbot books for ages, so I’m really late to this party. You may already know this but if you somehow didn’t… wow, what a fun read. The story of a security android that figures out how to hack its own code, inadvertently becoming an independent being and now stuck guarding a group of scientists on a survey mission.

Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle –another one I’m really late on but goddamn. This was one of the first books I read in 2021 and it’s still hands down the best. There just aren’t enough adjectives to describe how fantastic this book is and on how many levels. Lovecraftian horror grounded in real-world horror and it’s just brutally beautiful.

And those are my personal favorites for the year. I may add to this list over the next week or two, depending on how my current reads go. Please feel free to add any of your own must-reads down in the comments. I’d also shamelessly remind you that you can find a lot of my own books at your favorite local bookstore, like The Fold, Paradox Bound, or the Ex-Heroes books.

I’ll also take this moment to remind you of my Black Friday offer, just in case you missed it earlier. Please feel free to get in touch if you think it might help you out. And please—it’s not about if someone needs it more than you. It’s just about if you need some help.

Oh, and if you happen to be at SDCC Special Edition this weekend, I’m going to be hosting the Writer’s Coffeehouse on Sunday at 11:30, room 32AB. Ninety minutes of random tips and facts from me as I try to answer all your questions about publishing, writing, and anywhere those two might overlap.

Happy holidays. Probably back to all our usual stuff next week.

BlackmooreEx-HeroesholidaysIrelandJonesKadreyLaValleNeuvelParadox BoundRouxSchwabWeirWellsWendigWexler
June 22, 2017

In This Club We Have One Rule…

            I wanted to talk about writing advice a bit.  The good stuff and the bad stuff.  I just did a few months ago, yeah, but this is a little different. 
            This time, I want to talk with you about taking those words to heart… or not.
            Here’s an ugly truth about writing advice. 
            I’d guess a good 40% of it is just people telling you what worked for them.  Here’s how I do characters, here’s how I do dialogue, here’s how I plot, here’s how I write fifty pages a week.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with this advice—it clearly worked for that particular professional.  It’s just a presentation problem.  It assumes every writer and project is like every other writer and project.
            Still, that’s better than the 50% of people who are bellowing advice that hasn’tworked for them.  The only thing sketchier than someone  with a lot of credits insisting “this is how it’s done” is somebody with no credits insisting “this is how it’s done.”  Or somebody who had a credit twenty-five years ago.
            What? A twenty-five year old credit should still count?  I mean, on one level I agree with you—it’s a credit.  But it’s a credit from another era.  Seriously.  Johannes Guttenberg may be the father of printing, but he’s not going to be much help if my Brother 5-in-1 gets a paper jam.
            Let me put it in these terms.  Let’s say we were talking about computers. Let’s say I knew someone who’d been a kinda-known name in computers twenty-five years ago. And hadn’t really done anything since.  How seriously would you take their advice about computer engineering?  Or programming?  Or breaking into the industry?
            Actually, I take it back. There’s one thing worse than somebody with no credits insisting “this is how it’s done.”   It’s when somebody with no credits wants money to tell you “this is how it’s done.”
            Anyway, that leaves us with, what… 10%, roughly?  Math isn’t my thing.  What’s that last ten percent of advice?
            You’ve probably seen it. It’s the folks saying “try this.”  Or maybe they’re a couple of provisos before or after their statements.  I’ve mentioned the idea of this here a few times.  It’s called the Golden Rule.
            No, not that Golden Rule. I made this one up.  The Golden Rule is one of the core things I try to put out with all the writing advice I offer here.  It goes something like this.
What works for me probably won’t work for you.
And it definitely won’t work for that guy.
            You see, writing is a very personal thing.  In the same way I can’t say “urban fantasy is the best genre,” I also can’t say “writing 500 words before lunch every day and another 500 words after is the key to success.”  Because it’s not. 
            Oh, it might be for some people, sure, but it isn’t for everybody.  There are people who write in the afternoon.  There are people who only write in the morning.  Some like massive outlines, some like very minimal ones.  If you ask a dozen different writers how to do something—anything—you’re going to get a dozen different answers.  Because we’ve all found what works for us.  That’s the golden rule.
            There’s a joke I’ve used  a couple times to explain this.  If the only time you can write is Sunday afternoons, and the only way you can write is standing on your head, wearing that “enhancing” corset you bought at the Ren Faire last summer, using voice-recognition software, but doing this lets you write 15,000 words…
            Well, that’s fantastic.  Seriously.  I know professional, full-time writers who don’t always get 15,000 words down a week.  I can maybe hit those numbers once a month.  If that’s what it takes for you to do it, and you can do it consistently—power to you!
            See, at the end of the day, how I write my book doesn’t matter.  Perhaps I write first thing in the morning or maybe late into the night.  I could work exclusively on a laptop, on my phone, on a typewriter, or on yellow legal pads with a #2 pencil.  Maybe I reward myself after every thousand words with half an hour of reading, a video game, twenty minutes of exercise, booze, sex, whatever.  Do I do one long, constantly reworked draft or two dozen drafts each with a few minute, specific changes?
            However I do it, that part of writing doesn’t matter.  As long as I’m working, I’m doing fine.  People can insist whatever they want, but at the end of the day it always comes down to the golden rule.

What works for me probably won’t work for you.
And it definitely won’t work for that guy.

             I don’t write books the way Victoria Schwab does.  She doesn’t write books the way Andy Weir does.  Andy doesn’t write like Sarah Kuhn.  Sarah doesn’t write like Chuck Wendig.  He doesn’t write the same way as Kristi Charish.  And she doesn’t write like me.

            And none of us write like you. We don’t have your habits, your preferences, your thoughts, your goals.  We’re not telling your story your way.
            Which is why you shouldn’t worry about writing like us. Sift through all the hints and tips.   Learn which ones do and don’t work for you.  Don’t worry if four of the six people above do X, find out if X works for you.  Find your way to write.
            And if your way happens to involve a corset… hey, who am I to judge?
            Next time… I want to talk about babies.  I hate those guys.
            Until then… go write.
adviceCharishgolden ruleKuhnrulesSchwabWeirWendig
November 23, 2016 / 1 Comment

Imposter!

            Look!  We’re a day early because tomorrow I’m going to be cooking and watching a lot of my favorite black-and-white movies.  Joy!
            Well, not all joy…
            I need to get something off my chest.
            I’m a fraud.
            Seriously.
            I would guess, on an average week, this idea runs through my head five or six times (by odd coincidence, I tend to work five or six days a week).  The notion that I’m a complete fake who’s kind of stumbled into this life off sheer luck more than ability.  I re-read my new projects and wonder if they’re good or if I’m just deluding myself.  Maybe I don’t know a tenth of what I think I know—a textbook case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. 
            I sometimes wonder if the next book is going to be the one where my small fanbase gives a big shrug and says “ehhhhh… I guess he’s burned out.  Time to move on.” 
            I fret a lot about whether or not my publisher’s going to dump me as a writer, too. Well, not dump me, but just decide this latest contact will be… well, the last one.  Same with my agent.  He has some much, much bigger clients than me, and it’s not irrational to think he might decide his time and efforts are better spent focused on them.
            You may have heard of people feeling this way before.  It’s called imposter syndrome, and it’s really common.  I get it all the time.  Chuck Wendig gets it.  Victoria Schwab gets it.  Pretty much every writer I’ve ever talked to at length has copped to it. They’re plagued with self-doubt. They question most everything they write.
            (You didn’t think Hemingway drank that much because it was fashionable at the time, did you…?)
            I’m not saying this to freak you out or feed your insecurities.  I’m hoping it reassures you a bit.  We all feel this way sometimes.  Yeah, even those of us so-called-pros who are doing this full time.
            There are two reasons people get hit with imposter syndrome, in my so-called expert opinion.  For what it’s worth.  And they’re kinda related.  It’s almost the same thing, really.
            First is that, once I hit a certain stage in my writing, I start to see certain things.  I can admit to flaws in my work.  Of course, once I admit problems might be there, that also opens me up to imagining and creating problems. 
            As it happens, imagining and creating is what most writers do.  We’re good at it. Sometimes we do it even when we don’t want to…
            Second is fear.  I think imposter syndrome is a lot like writers block.  The act of creation—of pulling something out of my head and setting it down on paper—can be terrifying.  If you think about, it’s really common for people to talk themselves out of doing scary things.  Think of a couple times in your life when you had to do something that scared you.  How often did you end up thinking something along the lines of “ I can’t do this! What was I thinking?  I shouldn’t be here!”
            I can think of three or four times that sort of mantra ran through my head, all long before I became a full time writer.
            There’s a flipside to this, too.  The folks who are utterly, 110% confident their work is perfect, and that they absolutely shouldbe professionals.  The ones who have no doubts at all.
            And yet, for some reason… they’re not.  They don’t make sales. They don’t get deals.  Usually because of gatekeepers or antiquated systems or something.  Definitely not because of them.
            I’ve run into a few folks like this. You probably have, too.
            Y’see, Timmy, I shouldn’t look at imposter syndrome as a problem.  Oh, it sucks, yeah, and it can lead to one or three stressful days or nights. But really it’s a sign of my maturity as a writer. It shows that I’m open to the possibility my work isn’t perfect, which means I’m open to improving it.
            And improving it is the big goal for all of us.
            Next time I might shout at you real quick.

            Until then, go write.

editingexperienceHemingwayimposterSchwabtipsWendig

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