COB Journal: My Writing Process

This is my first but hopefully not last blog hop slash whirlwind spin into the creative process.  I've read an entire bookcase of tomes about the writing process, some good, some meh, but all have helped orient me to the details of the craft.  Many thanks must go to fellow writer, Twitter colleague, and maven of cutting wit, Susan Kicklighter, for sending you crashing through my front window.

Susan's excellent and very entertaining insider view of her writing synthesis can be found at this Tumblr post.  Thank you, Suzie K!

1.  What are you working on right now?

Right right now, I'm finishing the last couple of scenes of a short story called Dead Air, Dying Sky, and if this was a Hollywood schmooze-fest in the back room of the Viper Pit, the high-concept pitch would be Zombie Pilots Over Tulsa.  Which was, in fact, its original title before I hijacked the narrative and took the whole thing in a different direction so that it became less Sharknado and more Jaws.  The title had to go, it was just too tonally inconsistent, and the last thing you want to do as a writer is mislead the audience, violate that implied contract.

My Own Private Oklahoma...

The story itself should be ready for prime time in about another week as I write this, fingers crossed.  The project began just a couple of weeks ago after two fellow writers, Teresa Hawk (her website is found here) and Eric Keys (his website here), basically Twitter-dared me to do it after hearing the title.  It was just one of those zombie-story brainstorms that took on a life of its own, no pun intended.  Sometimes you just have to follow that flash of inspiration down into the rabbit hole.  It can lead you to some pleasantly surprising places.

I'm really proud of this particular little number because I have never written at such a fast writing pace and come up with what I think are a very effective set of scenes which form a prequel to my upcoming novel whose title I am still mulling.

Besides that, I'm also in the middle of another short story and two novels which I am aiming to finish by the end of September or early October, in time for Halloween.  At my age, I have to push myself to keep writing and finish because the ideas just keep coming, and if I don't commit them to their digital homes, they'll go out into the street and start mugging people for cash and recreational weed.

2.  How does your work differ from others in the genre?

Funny thing.  Some time back I picked up a copy of The Secret History of Science Fiction, which is an anthology of authors whom people don't normally associate with sci fi, and one of the contributing writers, T. C. Boyle (who penned the excellent Descent of Man), said art "is supposed to be unconventional" and he wants "to be taken to a different place every time."  Now, in that same blurb, T. C. was kind of an asshole because he called genre readers "morons."  And I certainly don't mind calling him an asshole if he is not going to mind calling me a moron.  (Laughs).

I find it laughable that he didn't seem to realize, or didn't care, that he was being included in a book specifically marketed for genre readers.  But more seriously, he was addressing the general issue of predictability in fiction, which I don't think is a failing exclusive to any genre or literary work in the first place.  We've all sat on that couch staring at a plot twist on a TV show or reading a key exchange in a scene and said, "Oh come on, there was a better way to do that!"  It's that impulse to do it better which drives me and fuels that creative engine.  All of us have it.  We are all born with that instinct to improve ourselves and what we see and hear.  And when it comes to creative writing, some of us just want to actually put that baby out on the highway and drive it, and see where it will take us.  Because we know there is a better way to do that.

3.  Why do you write?

Wow, this one is tricky.  I used to write because I wanted to tell stories.  But the stories were very poor quality, maudlin in many cases, and the narrative was making all those fundamental errors that rookie writers make.  Shifting points of view within a single scene, collapsing and summarizing important scenes while dragging out minor ones, dialogue that meandered and didn't accomplish much of anything.  By all indications, I should have never been that creative sperm which found that egg called Writer's Digest.  But that magazine opened up my mind to my mistakes, made me read books about the craft of writing, excellent and everlasting-truth books like Gary Provost's Beyond Style: Mastering the Finer Points of Writing.  I did so much reading back then.

The first rule is we don't talk about writer's block.

But back then, I wanted to write in order to make money and become famous.  Which are still perfectly valid goals.  They just aren't mine anymore.  I highly recommend to any writer who will listen to me, go out and download a free copy of Michael Allen's The Truth About Writing (or I can e-mail the free PDF copy that the author himself provided to anyone who wants it).  It is a sobering look at not just the publishing industry, but one's chances of becoming rich and famous in that industry.  His special dose of reality took the pressure off my mind of becoming rich or famous, and to just concentrate on that bottom truth which was the essence of my creative impulse: I write for a sense of self-satisfaction.

And you know what?  My writing improved; my ideas improved.  I didn't care if a particular story would sell in a chosen category at the Barnes & Noble Superstore.  I don't care if anyone ever reads my stuff.  I want to feel that I was able to write what I wanted, when I wanted, and how I wanted.  And I feel that I've actually reached that point, the tip of that hierarchy of need that Abraham Maslow started calling "self-actualization."  Creatively, it is the most liberating feeling in the world, so Maslow must have been on to something.

And that's why I write.

4.  How does your writing process work?

These days the creative seizures are happening so often I've started timing them to see how far apart they are.  Everything is inspiring me and I am literally near my laptop as often as possible, and when I feel a flash of something, the germ of an idea, the notion of a narrative, the spinning web of language and imagery, I commit it to its digital realm.  It may be nothing more than one sentence or it may be several scenes of a story.  But if you are serious about writing, you absolutely positively cannot afford to ignore that creative voice, because if you do, it will start to go silent.  You don't lose it, you can never lose something like that, but it becomes harder to find if it goes silent for a long time.

Everything else is just scheduling and coordination: when you write, how long you write, where you write.  Those things all vary depending on everyone's lifestyle, so it doesn't behoove me, or them, to get into any of those details and start making recommendations as if suddenly someone out there is going to say, "Oh shit, so I need to write first thing in the morning!"

Don't get me wrong, I am reluctant to say that those habits are not important, because they are in a tangential fashion, but the most important thing is to commit to paper (or MS Word document, or Scrivener binder) those little hobgoblins of ideas that won't stop yammering at you.  They are the left-brain part of you trying to get out and expose their private parts to the world.  They are the part of you that makes you unique.  From those raw materials, you will hammer out your future novel, poem, short story, script, play, music video, etc.  Listening to and following an idea is the hardest element of writing to master, I think.  The words?  The words will come, subject then verb then direct object.  Don't stress out over style, it will come eventually.  Grammar is important, but only because bad grammar causes distraction, and you can't afford distraction when you are storytelling.

And one last thing: make sure you finish what you start.

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Well that was fun, it's only almost one o'clock in the morning in my neck of the woods.  Again, thanks to Susan Kicklighter for this great chance to stretch my writer's legs and chat with the denizens of the digitalsphere.

The Five Ways James Patterson's Opinion Can Kiss My Ass

I was originally going to just call this piece the five ways James Patterson can kiss my ass.  But to be fair, I've never met the man and don't think I need to spew the anger that far.  He may well be a decent guy who tips the shoe-shine boy and volunteers at his Knights of Columbus chapter.

But his opinion is a different story altogether.

I like writers.  All kinds of writers.  I also like meeting all kinds of new people (i.e. non-writers, atheists, Fortune 500 CEOs, NASCAR fans, Satanists, and former supporters of Lyndon LaRouche), and meeting all of them at least from the relative safety of my computer monitor.  Which is why I rarely take critical stances against another writer's thoughts, feelings, inclinations, and so forth.

By Blaues Sofa [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

But a few days ago, noted bestselling author James Patterson essentially called out e-book writers and Amazon's Jeff Bezos for initiating "the biggest quality drought in the history of novel writing."  In an article posted on CNN's Opinion page here, Patterson bemoans the pricing schemes and market dilution of what was once, to him, a well-oiled machine.

See, there was a "long-term, sensitive ecosystem" in place.  Hardbacks are responsible for the agents getting their bigger office and heftier signing bonuses.  Everything from the copy editor's new PS4 to being able to finance junior's braces before basketball season is upon them, it's been on our shoulders all this time.  We just had no idea of this delicate framework.  And the balance must be restored to that "dusty old world" for the sake of all those mouths that need feeding and those escrows that need closing.

Anyone can read the article for themselves; I won't belabor or repeat the points he is making and the view he is implying, though it muddles and meanders at times.  Suffice it to say that e-book writers appear to be a pox on the land.  Patterson's view is that e-books have cheapened and commodified the market by being channeled into a "product category" in the "Everything Store."  (Seriously, if Bezos wanted it to be an "everything store," he wouldn't have called it Amazon; he would have called it Ozymandias Now, or maybe the Democratic National Convention).

He defends big publishing, saying that he's been leaning on them and they are getting better, and they even "quaintly" let their employees work half-day Fridays in the summer.

Half-day Fridays! There you go.  I'm sold, man, I'm ready to rip off these digital shackles, slap Jeff Bezos' bald head, and say "See ya, bub!"

Not so fast, Mr. Patterson.  Here are my five little bullets:

Retort # 1:  I started shopping at Amazon.com because they could ship a book to me overnight.  Obscure, hard-to-find titles that my local bookstore didn't stock and couldn't get for me for several days.  I dealt with snot-nosed punk-ass kids and snooty, self-righteous cashiers who didn't care about my reading preferences or that I needed a certain book as a gift for someone like right away, and if they couldn't figure out how to properly search their computer inventory, they just shook their head and said, "We don't carry it."

Amazon.com succeeded because this other sensitive ecosystem you hail didn't value me as a customer.  They were the only game in town for decades, and they knew it.  But even more perniciously, they acted like it.  Those days are gone now, and good riddance.

Rejoinder # 2:  I still shop online for books about half the time because these quaintly publishers encourage it themselves.  The in-store prices at a brick-and-mortar store for a current hardcover remain more expensive than the online sale prices.  And even if I make a purchase from that store's online website, they will still charge me more for an in-store transaction than for an online order of the same physical title (and that may or may not include free shipping, since that's how they sell annual "club" memberships).  All I can get out of the managers about this nasty turn of events is that it's the company's "market model."

Your publishing partners figured out soon after the Amazon.com explosion that they had better get ahead of the curve on digital publishing and online ordering.  They adapted to reality; so should you.

Repartee # 3:  Hachette is the greedy bully on the street that wants to upend the e-book pricing scheme on its head.  That's my view.  And for what?  For the ability to sell e-books for $14.99 and $19.99?  No one, and I mean no one, is going to pay $14.99 for an e-book.  Not when I can wait a year or two and find their physical presence in the remainder section for half that price anyway.  If the true goal of this was to drive the consumers away from e-books and go back to the hardcovers, then what a reprehensible way to alter consumer behavior.  I'm sure the marketing geniuses who majored in Price Theory and Applications are tripping over the rubber plants in the conference room to point fingers at each other on that one.

You also forgot to mention in your article that Hachette was already caught with its hand in the cookie jar to fix e-book prices at a higher ceiling, along with HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.  Those interested can read more about the settlement here on the Publisher's Weekly website.  (And maybe you can name your next book "Along Came the Department of Justice.")

Riposte # 4:  I don't long for the days of condescending gatekeepers -- neither the agents who made me wait three months so they could reject my submission with a form letter, nor the publishers who increasingly rejected direct submissions and fed the cycle of agency.  Who knows how many promising writers succumbed to the grind and gave up the chase?

I don't long for the days when a publisher would flat out demand changes because the story didn't fit the market, or the genre.  Go read Michel Faber's excellent Under the Skin and tell me if it's a love story, a science fiction story, or a study of the human condition.  Because Faber has seamlessly intertwined all three into one with that fine work.  The big houses would have told Faber, "What's with all this driving around?  I'm thinking shopping malls, connect with the tweens, you know?"

J. A. Konrath is a successful writer and folk hero of indie self-publishing with an excellent blog at http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.  (Go check out his recent blog posts for his very incisive take on the whole Hachette controversy).  Konrath waded through twelve years -- twelve motherfucking years -- of almost 500 rejection slips for his first nine novels.  Hats off to Konrath, because I would have likely quit after the third or fourth novel.  Anyone who has invested serious time in a novel knows how much of your energy and commitment it uses up.  It's time not spent living with loved ones, pursuing happiness in other ways, and all that.  You would have us return to this system, Mr. Patterson, while you sipped cognac from a glass by the fireplace and listened to the dirty unwashed pounding at the gates?

By J. A. Konrath (self-timer) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Reply # 5:  My last thought is one that you referenced yourself, Mr. Patterson.  So you championed for "at least a half dozen titles" to your executives, did you?  Well, all due respect, I don't want to need a James Patterson to champion my book.  Because for every Kazuo Ishiguro who was recognized for his talent, there must have been a thousand others of equal talent who didn't have you cheering on the front lines, or even on the sidelines.  For every Remains of the Day, there were thousands of other works which deserved to be read, everything from That Summer in Newport to Zombie Biker Bitches Come Undone, which might not have been your cup of tea, but they might have found an audience nonetheless.

Just say it out loud already: You were part of an elite reading club, and you chose who got to tug at the brass ring next.  Those days, and that so-called ecosystem of yours, belong in the history books.  Why do you think Hollywood is mining the rich creative content of comic books and fiction that bends and challenges genres?  Is it because audiences want more stories about lawyers and reporters and retired FBI agents on the verge of breaking a shocking conspiracy?

I'm not an Amazon.com cheerleader.  I'm not saying that their system is perfect, or that it's the right fit for what all writers are looking for.  But while you want to compare revenue streams, remember that Jeff Bezos -- not Simon & Schuster or HarperCollins -- is the new kid on the block, and he achieved his revenue stream the way every entrepreneur does it: find out what the consumers want and deliver it.  Amazon.com challenged the traditional delivery systems of bookselling and made the old guard wince and take note, and then start scrambling to catch up.  And now?  Now the mudslinging, right?

So whatever, dude.  Every editor worth his or her salt readily agrees that there are no days numbered for traditional book publishing, only that consumer behavior has changed to accomodate e-books.  The bottom line is that money saved is money saved.  I don't question the business decisions of brick-and-mortar shops selling me all the stories that only fit into their categories, but I certainly don't let them talk me into spending extra dough just because they're offering free WiFi in their Starbucks section, and I won't let a multi-billion-dollar media conglomerate tell me that $14.99 e-books are the new black.