“Good Evening”

  • by jenred micro-fleece pajamas
  • no one could touch me, not even myself!
  • Prime Minister’s Question Time
  • you want them to smell
  • competitive sort of interaction

“Good evening and welcome to Prime Minister’s Question Time. I’m your host, Margaret Thatcher. The first question tonight comes from Rune Skelley who tweets, “Prime Minister, I’m in the market for a quality pair of red micro-fleece pajamas. What should I look for when shopping?”

“Well, Rune Skelley, the most important thing is that you want them to smell new, and not as if they had been worn during any competitive sort of interaction with a member of the opposite sex. I’m sure you understand what I’m alluding to. I myself used to own a pair of Union Jack micro-fleece pajamas and eventually, after many long nights in Parliament, they smelled so badly that no one could touch me, not even myself!”

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Bad Advice

r-avatarWriters get a lot of advice. Most of it is bad.

Because of basic economics, the bulk of the advice that’s available is aimed at aspirants and novices, and that turns out to be the biggest factor in why so much of it’s awful. Some of the bad advice starts off life as good advice for neophytes, which goes bad once you progress to a more advanced level. It holds you back.

Grammar pedantry accounts for a giant pile of iffy admonitions, but as we gain confidence most of us tune that stuff out. Novices do need more structure (sorry, novices) but we should all aspire to start breaking the rules someday. On that day, you will find it’s suddenly a lot harder to locate any kind of guidance (sorry, no-longer-novices).

Some bad advice is just bad advice no matter who you are, and the beginners accept it because they don’t know any better. We were all beginners once, we all heard these toxic notions over and over, and as our craft develops we tend to keep believing — and spreading — these horrible ideas anyway. So, let’s try to not do that so much anymore.

What’s the worst advice writers get?

“Write what you know.”

If you happen to know things that are fascinating, then by all means write them. Otherwise, follow along as we think this through and see how it can drag you down. Let’s say you used to work in a restaurant, so you know the details of a working kitchen. You think you should be able to render it quite vividly, so you include it in your story. The fact that you spent all those hours in that environment actually has nothing to do with your skill in portraying it, but let’s agree that the scene-setting you produce is marvelous. Is it really all that interesting? Did your story honestly need to have a line cook character, or did it bow to your urge to write about his workplace? Readers need a reason to care about it, and “it’s a thing the author knows” doesn’t qualify.

Certainly we’re allowed to write what we know. But the better advice would be to write what you don’t know. Go learn! Stretch! Take wild guesses, make stuff up. That’s what writing is. Look outward, not inward. Write what someone else knows, letting it become something you know. And then it will become something your readers know.

 

Carla Fondly Recalled

  • k-avatarfirst missionary journey
  • a zen-like joy
  • condemned to the eternal fires of hell
  • a victory ode
  • when men met and sat
  • One has to eat!

Carla fondly recalled her first missionary journey, and even more fondly her first doggy journey. Thinking about those moments brought her a zen-like joy.

“As in, like, joy?”

“Yes, Darla, close enough.” Carla knew she shouldn’t try to explain such things to her little sister, as the poor girl invariably came away moist and bewildered. If she kept it up, Carla feared she’d be condemned to the eternal fires of hell.

Anyway, it was time to take a break from composing a victory ode to when men met and sat outside her bedroom door like patients in a porno waiting room. To dinner! One has to eat!

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Everything About Felicity Was All Brown

  • by jenrolled her beautiful eyes
  • like some patient livery cob
  • suddenly declared unlawful
  • no other password
  • the beautiful dog’s friendly attention
  • as plainly as the geese
  • causing an obstruction in the shaft
  • interposed his elegantly marked body
  • in the crepuscular twilight
  • WOW! Is she dragging!
  • such petty jealousies
  • all brown, brown eyes, brown hair

Everything about Felicity was all brown, brown eyes, brown hair, brown tobacco-stained teeth. She wore a brown velour jumpsuit and brown leather boots. Erasmus thought she dressed that way to hide her beauty from the eyes of men, to prevent such petty jealousies as she must have experienced in school when she no doubt turned the heads of her friends’ swains. It was for very similar reasons that Erasmus had covered his body with detailed black tattoos. Such subterfuge did not fool Erasmus, who saw her sensual attractiveness as plainly as the geese flying overhead and honking in the crepuscular twilight saw the small pond in the woods as their pit stop for the night.

“Why must those horrid sentries be causing an obstruction in the shaft?” wailed Felicity.

WOW! Is she dragging! thought Erasmus. Felicity was usually stoic in the face of such disappointment. She must be completely exhausted to break down like that. They knew when they signed up for the Amazing Race that there would be frustrations, but nothing had prepared them for this task, in which they were required to navigate their way through a disused emerald mine in Myanmar. Much to their chagrin, the team had just found themselves back at the entrance and had gone outside for some fresh air and to pet the large black dog that was chained there.

“Are you certain you know no other password?” Erasmus asked.

Felicity rolled her beautiful eyes like some patient livery cob who had lost all patience upon learning that horses had been suddenly declared unlawful.

“If I knew another password,” she grumbled, “don’t you think I would have mentioned it?”

Her despair drew the beautiful dog’s friendly attention, and it demanded to be petted. Erasmus felt a flair of jealousy and interposed his elegantly marked body between Felicity and the animal.

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Brainthunder and Brainlightning

r-avatarFor Rune Skelley, most brainstorming happens after there’s already some kind of idea in place. We use it to give shape to the clay, to get from the initial weird image or abstract notion to a narrative, and find the ways our multiple weird ideas can connect. The ideas themselves are usually found things in Kent’s or Jen’s minds. They can be discrete, like a name or a personality quirk, or they can be broad, thematic.

We do not, so far, have a shortage of weird things volunteering themselves for consideration, and we’ve learned to be more patient about chasing after them. Our first novel’s struggle from its early drafts to its current polished state left us sadder but wiser. We’ve been there, we know how it is. Sometimes an exciting idea can be too intense to keep inside, or you might be afraid it won’t be there later. It fills you with urgency to write, which is a good thing. Use that energy, but don’t lunge right into prose. That’s what notebooks are for.

Or conversation. Sharing the idea with your writing partner is often synergistic. You might hear in their response a whole new reason to love what you’ve come up with. Or, you might hear why it’s best to just walk away from some of them. That kind of answer is a gift, too. It lets you move on to the next, better, idea.

It’s often said “there are no bad ideas when you’re brainstorming,” but with a writing partner you can toss out that patently false axiom. That rule is meant to make shy people feel emboldened to speak up in front of a group, which shouldn’t be applicable in a writing collaboration. You can’t be shy with each other, or pull any punches. One of the best things your partner can do is challenge an idea with which you might be infatuated, not to shoot it down but to flesh it out. Helping you find new angles to look at it from.

Solo brainstorming pushes you back toward the “no bad ideas” rule, which means you know your list contains bad ideas. If you don’t have a full-time writing partner, at least get a brainstorming buddy.

Doesn’t Do To Enter A Stressful Occupation

  • k-avatarpressed up close, I’d imagine
  • plagued by depression and anxiety
  • vices are often hid
  • in front of the wall safe
  • that’d be the day!

Doesn’t do to enter a stressful occupation if you’re already plagued by depression and anxiety. But my shrink said what I needed, what would break my downward spiral, was excitement. He was just using me to perpetrate espionage on his chief rival down the street, but he explained it like this: safecracking would be therapeutic for me, and our doctor-patient confidentiality would protect me in the event that my shrink somehow ran afoul of the law.

“You’ll love it, once you try it. The trick will be getting you to stop!”

That’d be the day!

So now I’m curled into a ball in front of the wall safe in the rival shrink’s pitch-black office. I’m pressed up close, I’d imagine, trying to slip into the wall itself in my desperation to hide. I just know I’ve tripped some kind of alarm and the cops are racing to the scene. My shrink wasn’t using me after all. He was just trying to get rid of me. Throwing me to the wolves.

I pull myself together, and pull myself up the wall until I’m standing, staring at the dull metallic surface of the safe I’m now determined to defeat. My hearing is heightened by a lifetime of paranoia, making the action of the lock as plain as speech. Gifts are often hid within burdens, as vices are often hid within virtues. The safe clicks softly open, and I behold the scent of chocolate chip cookies.

The note on the plate is addressed to me.

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“I Ain’t No Mau-Mau”

  • by jenI ain’t no Mau-mau
  • said the flabbergasted writer
  • breast of alligator
  • inflection the echo of the heady times
  • actor-robots never panic

“I ain’t no Mau-mau,” said the flabbergasted writer as she declined the breast of alligator proffered by the mute servant. Even to her own ear her voice had a tremulous inflection, the echo of heady times sweeping the tropical capital where she was currently on assignment.

The prime minister was making an elaborate toast which the translator translated as “actor-robots never panic.”

The writer blinked in confusion.

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One Is The Loneliest Number

r-avatarHow do solo writers do it?

Our evenings lately have been spent sprawled on the big leather sofa with the laptop and a small mountain of meaningfully marked-up copies of our manuscript. One of us (usually Jen) wades through all of the critiques while the other (usually Kent) mans the laptop, adding comments and making edits to our master copy. Jen interprets all the line-edits and deciphers everyone’s handwritten comments, directing Kent to the proper parts of the manuscript so that together we can discuss the proposed changes.

It’s slow going, and we generally only manage one or two chapters per night. Each of those chapters is gone over with a fine tooth comb (hey baby, that is one fine tooth-comb you’ve got there!) four or five times as we consider the feedback from all of our beta-readers. Working with a partner makes something like this bearable, oftentimes even enjoyable. It’s hard for us to imagine this part of the process as a solo author. Who do you talk to about whether a suggestion or complaint is valid? Who do you high-five when a passage works exactly as you planned? Whose shoulder do you cry on when a passage doesn’t work at all? And most important: who do you send for snacks and refills of fortifying beverages?

The writer’s life can be a very solitary one, but with a writing partner it doesn’t have to be.

Everything Was Up For Grabs

  • k-avatarin such a cloister
  • from card tricks to chicks
  • like the truck says
  • she understood. She always did
  • no longer limited to swimming through gray jello

Everything was up for grabs in such a cloister, from card tricks to chicks. You just had to know what to say to the Sister in charge. You had to kneel, and tell her these four little words, “Like the truck says.”

She understood. She always did.

Then you followed her down a long, oppressively hot corridor. You smelled roses, and you heard crying behind closed doors. You followed the Sister in charge, and your eyelids itched and your ears started ringing, because you were so close. Just a few more steps and you’d be no longer limited to swimming through gray jello. Color and texture would be returned to your existence. For a while.

Unless that was the wrong kind of hilltop building, and the Sister in charge wouldn’t understand. Maybe there’s only the one cloister where it works that way.

But you go inside to see what’s up for grabs.

 

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Under the Full Glare

  • by jenthe full glare of publicity, with
  • the ambassador opened his mouth
  • Sweet Samantha
  • Your poor people was overwhelmed
  • the shifting cluster of rocks in that part

Under the full glare of publicity, with video cameras broadcasting his every word and gesture, the ambassador opened his mouth to offer his condolences to the Prime Minister. “Sweet Samantha,” he began, but instantly regretted the term of endearment. He started again, but was so flustered by his faux pas that he lost some of his hard-earned fluency in sweet, sweet Samantha’s native tongue. “Your poor people was overwhelmed by the shifting cluster of rocks in that part of the colony.” He faltered, too dismayed to continue.

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