Writing

About ten years ago, I started playing guitar. I’d always wanted to learn, beginning back in high school when it was still the ultimate in cool. But I am a very lazy person, and the costs in terms of time and money turned into one of those things that I never got around to. And even when I came into possession of a cheap, hand-me-down acoustic guitar I didn’t do anything serious with it, because the idea of actually engaging a tutor to learn seemed like an impossible social leap, and the Internet did not quite exist back then so there wasn’t a guitar channel on Youtube to do some self-learning.

After hearing me whine about this, The Duchess finally bought me some lessons and forced me to go, and it was awesome. I actually learned to play! And then, because of who I am, I decided I wanted to start composing and writing songs. I downloaded some software and bought some equipment, and set up my own little desktop studio, complete with drum apps and midi keyboards, and I began making music.

Terrible, horrible music.

Beginner’s Crap

Look, any time you start a new activity or discipline, you’re bound to suck. No one just picks up a guitar and understands instinctively how to shred. It’s the same with writing, really—your early efforts are going to suck with a capital ‘S.’

But when I recorded my first recognizable song, I wasn’t depressed because it sucked. I wasn’t aware that it sucked, at least not on one level. On another, very sober level, sure, I knew it was awful. But there was a part of me that was just so jazzed that I’d done it, that I’d created a song, a composition, all on my own, that I was super excited about it.

It’s the same with writing. That first story maybe sucked, but I wrote it anyway, and I was so excited to have finished a story I didn’t dwell on whether it was any good or not. I kind just assumed it was good and moved on to the next story.

That last bit is the key—the insane overconfidence that makes you think that the thing you just wrote is actually awesome, even if it is objectively not. Years later, you might come across that story and realize with dawning horror that it is, in fact, terrible. But that’s something for Future You to deal with. In the present, the key to creating is to just assume what you’re doing is great and worry about making that conform to reality later.

Everyone’s first attempts suck. It’s okay. And yes, sometimes your later attempts suck, too.

Writing a story is all about balance. You have to provide the reader with character backstories, world-building, a plot, and a clear protagonist who has a clear goal that is obstructed by a clear antagonist. Okay, maybe it doesn’t have to that clear—some writers make a beautiful meal out of subtlety and uncertainty—but in general you have to give your reader something to hang onto, a relatively clear path to follow.

For a lot of writers, they take that to mean they have to establish the protagonist/antagonist dynamic very early on and then structure the plot immediately around that conflict. Like, if your hero is introduced in Chapter 1, your villain has to show up in Chapter 2 and there has to be a clear conflict between them right away.

This isn’t true, though. In fact, it’s perfectly okay to obfuscate your central conflict, and it’s perfectly okay to take your time defining the protagonist/antagonist relationship—or to even change it in the middle.

The Hate You Give

There isn’t any rule that says you have to set up your central conflict right away. I’ve started re-watching Deadwood in anticipation of the film they’re finally releasing, offering fans some much-desired closure after all these years. And what’s interesting is that exactly none of the central conflicts that will come to define the series are set up in the first episode in any but the smallest of ways. There are lower-case ?c’ conflicts there, but none of the main-event conflicts, and you’d be hard pressed to put your thumb on who, exactly, the antagonist or protagonist is going to be.

There’s a lesson there. Letting your characters and setting breathe a bit, trusting your readers to find interesting what you find interesting about your universe—these are good instincts. Rushing into declaring a thumb war between two characters just because you feel under pressure to get your conflict set up is bad writing, or at least it often is. Can you make the argument that many novels are successful because they don’t waste time setting up the conflict and the protagonist and antagonist? Sure! Of course. As I’ve often said, there are no rules. All that matters is that you can pull off what you seek to achieve.

The point is, don’t put artificial pressure on yourself to gin up a conflict. It’s okay to take your time, and it’s okay to bury that lede a little—just have a plan. Having a plan is pretty much the answer to every writing problem out there, just like two fingers of whiskey is the answer to just about every personal problem I’ve ever had.

It’s an absolute truth that first drafts in general suck, whether we’re talking about the first draft of a single line or the first draft of an entire novel. First stabs are rarely polished and sensible, and are frequently so awful as to be the basis of scientific proof that you cannot and should not write.

The Electric Church was my second published novel, and both my third and 17^th completed novel (the first draft was my third novel, but the version eventually published 14 years later had a lot of water under the bridge and so was really a wholly separate novel). And believe me, all that work was necessary—and I’m saying that as a guy who generally likes his first drafts. The fact is, first attempts are often terrible, because you’re feeling your way through the darkness—you don’t yet know what’s going to work. There’s a lot of daylight between theory and practice—in your head, some literary technique or trick might work, but when you try to put it to paper it all falls apart.

This can be a low point for a writer. You have a great idea, you start to work on it, and then you realize it’s not working. It might, in fact, be terrible. The real trick here is to be okay with that. The trick is to embrace the suck.

The Only Way Out is Forward

The hardest thing to do is realize that your work isn’t great but keep going. Embracing the suck isn’t just about understanding that early efforts are often ragged and imperfect. The real secret is to resist the urge to toss everything you’ve done and start over, because that’s the recipe for never finishing a project. It’s perfectly reasonable to want to toss everything into a garbage can and set it on fire when you realize your work sucks, but the legit secret to making progress is to resist that urge.

The trick is, revise, don’t restart. If you’re someone who gets frustrated the moment your prose isn’t 100% pure gold, if you get stuck re-writing the first sentence a thousand times, if you abandon projects at the halfway point because they’re not what you imagined initially you’re going to struggle to finish anything, because the way you get that prose as close to perfect as possible is to finish a draft, then go back to the beginning and polish. And then repeat.

Full disclosure: As noted above, I’m not much of a reviser. I tend to like my drafts—but I do revise. My revision efforts tend to be pretty focused; while I like 75% of my draft, the 25% I don’t love is usually threaded throughout the whole thing, and I address it. If I have a section in the middle of a chapter that is obviously not working, I don’t just toss the whole chapter or novel out—I struggle through it and leave it behind. Then I go back and work on it.

Of course, some writers do restart every time they drift from the mark, and they also produce plenty of publishable material. That last part is the key—are you finishing stuff? Do you have polished, publication-ready material at the end of the day? If yes, you can ignore this. You do you. If no—ask yourself if you need to lower the bar for a first pass.

I apply this to liquor as well, of course. Sometimes you order a dank beer that is absolutely awful, and some people give up and order something else. I push through. In other words, I am the hero in this situation.

So, I watched season one of The Umbrella Academy. I’d never read the comics, and so went in pretty cold, aside from knowing that the lead singer of My Chemical Romance wrote the original comic stories. And it’s a pretty fun series if you’re into superhero stories!

It’s also a great place to discuss a specific writing challenge that comes with superheroes, which goes like this: Just as we’re all dying from the moment we’re born, every super-powered character has to be neutered at some point the moment you create them.

With Great Power Comes an Equal and Opposite Power

The problem is obvious, right? When you have a character who has an incredible power, they can slice through plot problems. In The Umbrella Academy, the kids all have powers, but one character is a cut above: Allison, who can make people do anything she wants by saying I heard a rumor. That’s a pretty potent power; after all, she can stop the villain at any time simply by whispering in their ear.

And so, the moment she’s created, she has to be smothered, or else nothing makes sense. When you create a hyper-powerful character you have two basic choices: One, you can neuter them somehow. Two, you can create a villain that is equally powerful. That’s it, and they both have problems.

In The Umbrella Academy, they chose option one. SPOILERS: They were clever about it in the bulk of the series; Allison is guilty about using her power throughout her life to get what she wants, and super guilty because she used it on her own daughter to get her to go to sleep. That’s a believable motivation for not using your godlike powers every five minutes. Later, when the true adversary is revealed and Allison must as a character start unleashing her power, however, they have to stop it or the story ends with one episode to go as Allison just says I heard a rumor you’re gonna take a five-year nap and that’s it. So they injure her vocal chords, essentially rendering her immaterial to the story, which kind of sucks.

Option two is also kind of boring, because when your villain has the same abilities and powers it turns into a slugfest. A boring trading of blows that amounts to two drunk guys having a fist fight in the parking lot of a 7-11.

So what’s the solution? Frankly, the solution is to not play the game. Don’t create a character whose powers are so incredible they can solve any plot problem you throw at them. Give their power a flaw, or a limitation, or a steep price to be paid. This way you can avoid having a mind-controller character who literally controls zero minds during the big final battle in your story.

Like a lot of folks, I’m a broadly creative kind of person—I just like making shit up, in a wide variety of media. The fun of making stuff doesn’t necessarily require talent; I make videos and music and sad, misshapen things around the house using editing, composition, and carpentry skills that run the gamut from mediocre to nonexistent, but I don’t worry about the end result much. I just enjoy making stuff.

So, one reason I’m a writer instead of a musician or a furniture-maker is the fact that I’m good at writing, whereas I am … not good at those other things. I might enjoy making music, but I’m not good at it, and that’s okay.

But you know what, there’s another reason I write instead of some other creative expression: The lack of collaboration.

Me Myself and I

To put it bluntly, I hate working with other people. I hate having to offer up my ideas before I’ve polished them, and I hate having to fight and push to get things the way I want them. I fully recognize that this process of having to defend your ideas is healthy, and often results in better work. When you’re forced to defend every idea, you have to up your game.

But I don’t enjoy it, so I don’t do it.

The great part about writing is, you don’t need other people. Or special equipment. Or software skills. All you need is a writing implement and some ideas. That’s awesome. Even if I had some special talent aside from writing—which, it’s worth repeating, I do not—writing would attract me because it’s so old school you can literally do it with a piece of charcoal and a rock. Nothing gets in the way—not screens, power failures, or the annoying tendency of people to have feedback and alternative takes.

Of course, the real epiphany always comes late in the essay: The fact is, the collaboration comes in the writing game, it’s just kicked down the line. Because once you convince someone to represent or buy your work, the notes come. The edit letters. The comments in the margin. The tracked changes. Whether I like it or not, selling your work usually means opening yourself up to collaboration.

But, there’s a crucial difference. When I am forced to collaborate later in the process, I’ve sold the damn thing. I have a fair amount of confidence that it’s pretty good. Which not only makes the act of having to interact with other people (shudder) much easier, it makes it much easier to push back on feedback and take a stand on the intention behind your writing choices.

Of course, my other secret weapon is my social awkwardness and charming personality, which combine to ensure that no one wants to collaborate with me twice.

The fact that all writers steal is common knowledge. Naturally this doesn’t mean we’re all breaking into each other’s literary vaults[1] and literally stealing pages of pure prose gold, or that we’re plagiarizing the shit out of each other[2]. It means we’re all constantly evolving and developing our style and the tools we have at our disposal for telling stories by reading other people’s work and getting blown away-cum-jealous of what they pull off, and then trying to steal those techniques and ideas.

Far from a shameful display of artistic emptiness, stealing from other (usually better) writers is a time-honored tradition. But it’s easy to flippantly say that good writers borrow and great writers steal without actually explaining how one goes about stealing something like another writer’s technique. Here’s how I often do it when something I’ve just read impresses me, entertains me, or simply gets me excited.

STEP ONE: EXERCISE

The first step for me is usually a simple exercise involving copying the technique in question, usually by writing a slavish and unoriginal short piece that mimics what I’m stealing really, really closely. This is usually a whole short story in which I play with the narrative trick, Voice, or other aspect of the inspiration material I’m trying to nail down.

These stories are usually not great, or even good. The focus on the technique means other aspects of the story (yanno, plot, character, setting) get short shrift. What you want to accomplish here is mastery of the specific technique.

STEP TWO: ADAPTATION

Once I feel kind of comfortable with the specific technique I’m trying to steal, the time has come to try and bend it a little so so it fits into my own personal approach. If you don’t do this, after all, you have a very odd piece of writing that doesn’t really fit in with the rest of your work. Also, if you can’t bend it to your own specific goals, are you really in control? It’s kind of like owning a standard shift car when you don’t know how to drive a stick shift.

You can pursue this in a few different ways. One, you can revise the story or piece you just created, working to make it your own now that you’ve replicated the technique you’re stealing. Two, you can start something new or begin a fresh revision and insert the technique. Sometimes I like to start a new scene in a WIP that explores this new idea, even if it doesn’t really match the previous work I’ve done; I can always revise it later.

STEP THREE: BOREDOM

Eventually, the goal is for the thing you’re stealing to become just another boring part of your toolbox and repertoire. This usually requires using it constantly in your new work, even in places where it is glaringly obvious that it doesn’t belong. A sudden stream-of-consciousness sequence in the midst of a gritty detective noir? Oh, I’ve done that.

Once the tool becomes boring, you own it. It’s yours. When you’re no longer excited about it, it’s because it’s just one more tool among the many you have.

And that’s the saddest part of this writing gig. It’s really about draining all the wonder out of a bunch of magic tricks, until one day you know all the secrets, and have nothing left to say with them.

God, I need a drink.

——————–

[1]Do you not? How does one live?

[2]Although in all fairness I have drunkenly shouted I AM STEALING THAT when having drinks with other writers.

My memory is broken and always has been, although it took some time for me to figure this out. Where some folks worry that one day they will be old and will realize they can’t remember why they’re standing in the kitchen in their boxer shorts, that’s how I’ve been since I was born. The past, for me, is formless and vague. I can remember things from my past, of course, but they’re not, like, lived in. I remember things in a detached, academic way.

I also lack any kind of attention to detail. The present sluices through me like a confusing existential wave, and I often barely retain enough information to present myself as a somewhat capable and competent adult as opposed to, say, a shrubbery. This means that my daily interactions are fraught with more stress than they should be, because I am always owlishly trying to make up for my lack of attention to detail with charm and trickery:

THEM: … so, Jeff what do you think of that?

ME: (completely uncertain where I am or what we’ve been talking about or who these people are or why I am sitting at a conference table with 37 people in suits with a stack of papers in front of me and a tuna sandwich in my shirt breast pocket) Uhh …

<and tosses stack of papers into the air>

ME: Everybody dance!

It’s incredible I manage to make it through a day without being committed to an institution. But you know what? My lack of attention to detail actually helps my writing.

Wait, What Was I Saying?

Detail can be confounding for writers, because there’s a sweet spot between too much detail and empty prose that conveys nothing of the flavor of your setting, nothing of the subtleties of your characters’ reactions to things. For folks who have a mastery of detail and great memories, who can conjure up the way something felt or smelled or looked in a precise moment, there’s a huge amount of data they can potentially pour into their writing. And writers usually start off putting way too much detail into their writing as they seek to conquer verisimilitude through sheer volume of words.

Me, since all of my memories are like those scenes in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where the books are all white with no words because Jim Carrey’s memories are being sucked out of his head, I have the opposite—and, I think, easier—problem: I have to go hunting for more detail to pour into my scenes because, frankly, I can’t remember anything.

It also frees me to, you know, make shit up. I never have to negotiate with myself over whether it’s playing fair to describe something in a way counter to how I actually experienced it, because I can’t remember how I experienced, typically. That basically gives me permission to just imagine it however I want and write it that way. The takeaway is that details are just tools. They’re just bits and pieces and you get to decide how many—if any—your scene or story requires.

For me, I figure it’s probably two, three years tops before I have full on facial aphasia, and I spend all my time watching the same TV show over and over again. Which means I better get cracking on this book.

Writing anything more than a piece of flash fiction usually requires that you flex several different tools in order to get the story over the finish line—description, dialogue, exposition, and, depending on the kind of story we’re talking about, action.

Action scenes can be a challenge. Just like a film director who edits the scene so frenetically the viewer has no understanding of the spatial relations, a writer can botch an action scene, rendering it confusing or, worse, unexciting. In fact, one of the easiest ways to screw up an action scene, whether it’s a gunfight, hand-to-hand combat, or a chase, is to model your scene mechanics on a visual medium. We’re all trained at this point in the 21^st century to imagine our scenes as movies, but you have to take a more literary approach if you’re going to sell your action.

Ouch

The key here is to avoid the Superhero Problem. We’ve all seen action scenes in films where the hero takes a beating that would leave any normal human a smear on the floor, but the hero just shrugs it off and comes roaring back. Even in recent entertainments that have tried to introduce an element of realism—Atomic Blonde, say, or Netflix’s Daredevil with their out-of-breath heroes struggling to find the strength for one more go-round—still have the hero exhibiting ludicrous amounts of energy and strength, not to mention a tolerance for pain and injury beyond mere mortals.

That’s not really the problem, of course—these are superheros or superspies, after all, and the audience isn’t really looking for realism, I don’t think. The problem with this approach is really how it lowers the stakes. If your combatants can’t really be hurt, if no amount of exhaustion will stop your heroes, then why will your reader care?

The trick is to remember that you’re writing, not filming. Convey to your reader how it all feels, how it affects them. Make it personal. If your protagonist conveys agony and exhaustion, you’ll be better able to sell desperation and courage. And you’ll also seize better control over the blocking and staging of your scenes, because you’ll be ‘seeing’ everything through your characters’ eyes.

Plus, if you’re like me and walking up the stairs leaves you winded and nauseous, having your characters be exhausted all the time will feel more real, and thus you’ll be more invested in the writing.

I recently read the first book in Josiah Bancroft’s Books of Babel steampunk fantasy series, Senlin Ascends. It’s a great book and I’m excited to dive back in with the next books in the series. Obviously this sort of fantasy might not be your cup of tea, but the book made me think about a specific aspect of worldbuilding that applies to my current WIP: Holding back.

It’s early days in my own new novel, and I’m pantsing it pretty enthusiastically right now. But I do have a general idea of where I’m headed with this story, and despite not sitting down to craft a history or any kind of detailed study of my fictional universe, I have some definite ideas about how this world evolved into what it is, and what’s going outside the specific concerns of my characters and the setting. It’s just that I won’t get to a lot of it for a long time—maybe not even in this book.

The Long Game

And that’s okay. In Senlin Ascends, Bancroft drops a bunch of references to aspects of his universe that never pay off in the first book. I assume they’ll pay off in the sequels as he develops those ideas—but maybe he won’t ever really get into it. And that’s okay.

When I’m excited about a fictional world I’m building I have to fight the urge sometimes to just dump it all on the page as I’m going, to hurry up and get it into the story. Because I’m excited about these ideas, and part of me worries if I don’t explore them immediately I’ll forget them, or at least many of the details. But there’s good reason to wait—one, these sorts of unexplained details tantalize and get your reader excited about what’s coming. Two, these sorts of unexplained details deepen your universe and cement the illusion of reality you’re going for, because there’s always more to discover. And three they act like a pressure valve—if you ever get stuck in your main story, you can just veer off to explore that weird thought you had 40 pages earlier.

That urge to just get it all out is pretty powerful, but a lot of writing is what not to include. In fact, the ability to self-edit your work in real-time is sometimes all that separates what’s publishable from what’s not. As is the ability to not make all your main characters a guy named Jeff whose superpower is charm.