Craft and Draft: Be a Tool

The kids are all abuzz with the saying, “don’t be a tool” with the obligatory “bro” or “brah” or “son” perfunctorily tacked onto the end.

I say screw the kids.

Be a tool.

A lot of writers (and hopeless creatives in general) assume that their brain is the one and only thing they need to succeed. In defense of that theory, it is the source of all your ideas, the seat of your talent, and the mother of all of your ingenious invention.

But the brain is only the Dewalt cordless drill of our creative toolbox. We have tools all over us. In fact, we are made out of tools.

It would be pretty difficult to write without your hands. Sure, there are things like Dragon out there, but at the end of the day, I don’t know one writer who doesn’t rely heavily on the ten or so fingers at the ends of his arms to bring his stories to life. But do you take care of them? Are you careful about where you stick them, what your pour onto them, or what they do while you’re asleep?

Until very recently, I was a nail biter. The moment the tips of my nails got longer than 2mm, I gnawed them to bloody nubs like some deranged mental patient in an independent Canadian horror film. My fingers constantly hurt, and I’d be forced to keep band aids on them, which in turn impacted my writing.

I finally realized how stupid I was being and kicked the habit. I went to Target and bought some $3 nail hardener which also tastes like a mixture of cranberry juice cocktail and roadkill, just in case my resolve lapsed. I applied it daily and let my nails grow, only trimming them with a set of nail clippers when they looked uneven. The added bonus: my finger nails are now bright and shiny like a Disney Princess’s tiara. I am bootiful.

Suddenly, magically, my fingers don’t hurt! I can write for hours and hours without worrying about that raw cuticle I ripped into the side of my thumb. All because I took the time to take care of my hands, my tools.

That little anecdote is just one, somewhat graphic, example. You wouldn’t leave your nice expensive Craftsman table saw that you “borrowed” from your neighbor 9 months ago out in the rain, would you? Then why would do something similar to your body?

Deep down, we all have this image of these amazing writers and artists who lived the dream and created mind-blowingly brilliant work after six lines of cocaine and a fifth of Jameson. Unfortunately, this is not reality. Most of the people who lived like this crashed, and crashed hard. Think Hemingway, Capote, Thompson, Kerouac, Poe, Fitzgerald, Joyce, etc. While a few drinks may loosen your mind-muscles, a lifetime of binge drinking will not result in success unless you were born with some supernatural talent and an immune system to match.

You’ll never get to the height of your creativity if you feel like crap. It’s that simple.

If you eat something that makes you feel like shit, your writing is going to be shit. If you have no energy because you’re out of shape or haven’t been sleeping well, your writing will have no energy. If you’re feeling dejected and pathetic because you don’t believe your art is any good, your writing will deflate, curl into the fetal position, and cry all over itself.

To be great you have to work hard, and to work hard you have to feel great. It can be difficult to eat right and exercise all the time, but you have to try. Little things make a big difference. When considering that Five Guys double cheeseburger, opt for a salad from Sweet Green instead. When you’re sitting waiting for that slow ass elevator, remember that the stairs would get you there faster, and you’d feel better. When you sit down to clack away at the keyboard, these little choices will seep from your body through your fingers into your writing, and it will be better, because you are better.

You have been given an amazing set of tools. Use them and take care of them. Don’t leave them out to rust.

Drilling a pilot hole is like the first draft, and drilling the…nevermind, this analogy is going nowhere.

Craft and Draft: Dialognostics

We’ve had a heart-to-heart about characterization. We’ve talked birds-and-bees about the ins and outs of drafting. We’ve danced, and laughed, and had one too many beers.

Now let’s talk about the tongue of good fiction: believable dialogue.

I find there are two main camps on this issue: those who think dialogue is stupidly easy and those who think dialogue is brain-bustingly difficult. I fall somewhere in the middle. Some characters seem to voice themselves naturally as I write, while others drool on themselves and grunt when trying the most basic of communication.

In concept, dialogue should be easy. You’re making your characters talk. To each other. Or themselves. We, as humans, talk to each other all day everyday. How hard is it take what is a perfunctory exchange and put it down on paper?

Really. Damn. Hard.

Dialognostics

(My theme accidentally shrank my pictures. I’m working to fix the CSS. In the mean time, feel free to click the images for full sized, readable versions.)

Fictional dialogue isn’t real human dialogue. As Gary Provost so aptly put it, “Dialogue is real speech’s greatest hits.”

Think about how you speak for a second. Even if you are the most intelligent and articulate sum’bitch in your postal code, you’re bound to drops some “ums” and “likes” and awkward pauses into your daily speech. These do not translate well onto the page, and make your writing seem crude and unpolished. This in turn “breaks the dream” for your readers, and makes them lose interest.

So you need to make your characters hyper-articulate to keep readers interested. Every sentence they utter should be intentional, clear, and character defining. I’ve even heard (and like the idea) that the very first thing your character says in your story is a snapshot of their personality.

Doesn’t seem so easy now, does it?

Let’s cover some common errors that turn terrific tales into tongue twisting terrors of tentacular torture.

1. Unqualified dialect

It may be tempting, as you build a world or place a story in a certain locale, to give your characters some regional spice by giving them clever accents. Unless you know that specific dialect perfectly (as in, you grew up immersed up to your neck in people speaking that way) avoid doing this.

It is incredibly difficult, and more often than not confused/distracts/offends your reader. See below:

A ‘lil cockney rhymin’ slang ain’t nevah ‘urt no one, no hows.

What we often forget as we craft our worlds is that our readers are smart. They can fill in blanks we leave behind, and will, if we let them. If your reader knows the story is set in an English-speaking suburb of Medieval France, you can bet your pants that they’ll automagically give the characters French accents, just because that’s how the human brain works with patterns.

If your setting is ambiguous (or nonexistent in real life, like in high fantasy or science fiction) then you can qualify the dialogue very early on by adding a tag like, “Anytime, mon cheri!” said Julius, his creole-like accent spilling through his clumsy pronunciation. 

But seriously. Only do this is you have balls of titanium alloy and a pen made out of powerful ancient writing dust.

2. Inappropriate announcement

I’m very guilty of doing this; making characters say things to let the reader know a key detail, when the character already knows this detail and would never say it out loud.

It’s like a very heavy-handed soliloquy that just doesn’t work. These tend to slide themselves in during scene climaxes and endings, where you’re trying to reveal a universal truth or some story defining idea that your protagonist learned during their journey.

For example:

Needs significantly more explosions to live up to Mr. Bay.

In this case, pink Space-Lady wouldn’t need to say this out loud (to herself or anyone else) because she would have already drawn that conclusion in her head. It is your job as a writer to figure out how to make this message come through in the extra-dialogue writing, be it exposition or plot action.

You can try to have a symbolic event that passes this message along, or have your character find and read a note, giving us an omniscient view into her thoughts and in turn making the announcement seem less “here’s my awesome story defining idea let me shove it down your throat with some lemon juice and calamari.” There possibilities are near endless, but avoid a “Deus Ex Machina” moment by giving your reader a trite, obvious statement directly from a character.

(My “note” suggestion is highly dependent on the Point of View (POV) you’re working from, but that’s juicy writing-meat for another educational cookout.)

3. Inconsistent voicing

In a short story, it isn’t that hard to give a character a voice and have it carry over 3,000, 5,000, or even 10,000 words. You definitely have to pay attention, but since your narrative arc is relatively small, you only need to keep a voice consistent for a short period of time.

When you try to keep a voice consistent in a novel, things get all maple syrup really quickly. As the plot quickens and thickens and character motivations change, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep their voice inline with their established personality, but also situation appropriate. Even the most bubbly cheerleader is going to slightly change her tone when the werewolf lumberjacks and clawing at her door, but you, as the master of the universe, need to make sure she still sounds like the same cheerleader.

This get stupid-complicated when you bring in three, four, five, or ten characters in the course of a story. One out of place piece of dialogue that contradicts the characters established personality and motives can change (read: ruin) that character’s impact on the story:

The Uruk’hai are misunderstood creatures.

The easiest way to keep track of each character’s voice is to simply draw a picture. Or make an Excel speadsheet if you’re as nerdy as I am. Write down the “default” voice for each character, and then compare that voice to each scene.

For example – Johnny McTurnip Boots [default]: Melodramatic, kind of stupid. Johnny McTurnip Boots [when the monsters attack]: Overly emotional, panicked, has the stupidest suggestions for escape.

He’s the same character, but his voice changes appropriately per the scene he is in. I highly recommend visual aids to help organize your characters and scene, especially if your story is so complex it would make weaker men wet their brain-pants.

4. Poor placement and dialogue overdose

Dialogue fills two main roles in fiction: it gives your characters directly attributable voices and it speeds up narrative. Conversely, exposition can give insight into characters, but it also slows down the pace of the narrative.

While it seems logical to have your characters speak whenever they need to say something, counter intuitively, this may not be the best idea. If you’ve got a scene that is very, very dialogue heavy (say, 100% dialogue) your reader is going to blow through it very quickly. If you place that scene at a crucial point in the story, you may inadvertently cheapen what was supposed to be a poignant and heartfelt.

Ever notice that “Godot” has “God” in it? Whoa.

Balancing dialogue and exposition also keeps the reader interested as you’re weaving action, backstory, setting details, and unique voices into the writing all at the same time.

Try reading your story out loud. Are there places where you seem to warp through a section at lightspeed, skipping the Romulan fleet altogether and putting the entire Federation at risk? Do you find yourself switching between two characters so frequently that you can’t remember who is what or when or where?

You might find that you can break up your dialogue with some action and it will still be just as effective. Jumble the pieces if you have to. You can always Ctrl+Z.

5. Cliches and tags

Neither of these are so important to warrant their own section, but while I’m rambling, I figured I’d mention them.

Captain Rumbeard had always wanted to be a Belgian chocolatier, but his father would have never allowed it.

Avoid making your characters say thing that you hear other people say often, like “he’s a thorn in my side.” Instead say, “he’s jabbing at my innards with his pointy stick of annoyance.” Pass your draft to someone else and tell them to circle anything that seems familiar. Chances are, most of what they circle will be accidental cliches.

Be sure to also properly tag your dialogue. In my first novel (attempt) I used them very sparingly, and at some points, not at all. My beta readers were very confused. Drop little phrase like “said Stevie Mufflington” if it is unclear who is speaking, or if no character clearly identifies the other. You almost never need to use anything more than the past tense of say (said), but very judicious use of stronger words like “exclaimed” or “barfed” can work, if they’re not overused.

My last note is to openly talk to your characters. You know deep down what good dialogue sounds like; you’ve already read it and seen it on the screen. You may want to do this behind closed doors. Starbucks patrons don’t take kindly to you have a two-way conversation with completely imaginary people (who just so happen to be giant lizards who work on an oil rig).

Speak up. Write down.

Craft and Draft: Building Castles

Not all of these posts are going to include Lego. Just most of them. Maybe I’ll do some in Minecraft to mix it up a little.

This post piggybacks off of my previous post about characterization, but is more focused on complete drafts.

Building Castles 

As one of my enthusiastic classmates was waxing poetic about her experience revising her latest fiction piece, it struck me that the entire Draft Development Cycle (DDC) builds on itself. You’ve got all of the details, characters, and settings in your head, but they are raw, disorganized.

There is some strong magic swirling around the craft of writing that hides the creative process. Unlike master painters whose every brush stroke can be witnessed and studied, excellent writers seem pull their stories and skill out of the ether, as if it is an extension of their very soul. Young writers often don’t see the missing piece; the years and years of practice and patience and persistence. 

This leads to disillusionment.

Like when you imagine an amazing picture of a bear riding a snowmobile firing laser blasters at robot dinosaurs, expecting it to look like this:

Why yes, I did Photoshop this myself. Thanks!

But when you finally draw it, it looks like this:

Yep, drew this myself.

See? Disillusionment.

As is the case with any creative art, it takes time to refine your skill and eventually master it.

As a writer, you have a singular advantage over painters and sculptures and sidewalk chalk drawers: your art is infinitely malleable. First draft sucks? No worries! Just rewrite the parts that suck until they unsuck. You can never make a mistake that can’t be rectified.

Drafting is like playing with Lego. You start with a blank, flat green board, have all the pieces you could ever need in a big plastic bin next to you, and can build anything you want. For this example, let’s say you want to build a picturesque castle. You imagine the castle in your head, and get to building.

1. Zero Draft

This is the very first draft of your piece that comes oozing out of the primordial goo that is your psyche, malformed, unsure that is should even exist. I call it the “zero” draft instead of the “first” draft, because chances are your main theme is underdeveloped or completely missing at this point. This is the draft where you let your brain shift the gears while you carelessly slam your foot down on the accelerator. As to be expected, you might crash and burn and suffer horrible injuries, or at least swerve wildly around the roadway, endangering everyone and everything around you.

The zero draft of your Lego castle would look something like this:

They told me I was daft to build a castle on the swamp, but I build it all the same.

It’s not not a castle, but it’s certainly not something you’d like to defend during a siege. But you’ve got a start, the bones, the basic structure of the castle, even if it’s little more than a pile of rocks with a flag at this point.

2. First Draft

After you’ve taken some time to evaluate the structural integrity of your castle, you can rewrite your zero draft and fix a lot of the problems. You can add content, remove stupid fluff, flesh out characterization, and really right the ship. Don’t go too crazy with fixing grammatical stuff at this point; you’re more concerned that the mortar of the castle will hold, than what color heraldry you’re going to put into the great feast hall.

The first draft of your Lego castle could look something like this:

This is what I imagine the front gates of Riverrun looks like. But you know, with more walls.

It’s a lot more castle-esque now. There is still a gaping hole in the back of the structure, and your guards would demand hazard pay to walk along those ramparts. But at least a drunken peasant could identify it as a castle now, which is a step in the right direction.

3. Draft X

The next draft is actually a series of drafts, in which you tweak your content, have other people read it, question character motives, and ask probing plot questions. This is when you build a tall tower for your gaoler, only to tear it down when you realize you don’t even have a dungeon. This is when you fill in the murder holes you added just behind portcullis because your kingdom isn’t, and will never be, at war. This is when you learn about your story, and can play with character desires, tweak dialogue, and repair any of those major plot holes that have been sucking the narrative into a mire of confusion and triteness.

The Draft X castle could look something like this:

What manner of man are you that can build a castle without rock or wood?

Or like this:

That is no Orc horn!

Now you have a castle to write home about. Unless the castle is your home. Then your letter won’t go anywhere. You can see that the walls are strong, and you’ve even made room for windows and arrow slits. The roof has taken shape, and you have staircases connecting the scenes for your characters to walk up and down.

It is important that even though your castle looks pretty good, you don’t stop. Stopping now would be like running a 100-yard dash and stopping at 95 yards. It’d be like baking a delicious cherry pie for 45 minutes when the recipe called for 60. It’d be like dressing yourself in the morning but intentionally not putting on pants. Don’t stop yet, you’re not done, but you’re almost done.

4. Final Draft

Getting here takes time and effort, so if you’ve made it: woot to you!

Now is when you get to really dissect the language of your story, correcting unintentional passive constructs, replacing boring verbs with explosive ones. This is also the time to adds bells and whistles; flesh out characters and setting descriptions, re-pace your action scenes, and de-mushify the romance.

Eyes to text as comb to hair.

This is what your final draft would look like, if it were a castle:

The horn of Helm Hammerhand shall sound in the deep one, last, time!

Now you can pitch it or post it or sell it or just bask in the glow of your hard, tedious work.

Just remember: a castle (much like Rome) isn’t built in a day. Even the best architect needs to plan out how he uses his materials, which stone goes where, and how many beams are needed to support the weight of the roof. If your piece isn’t what you expected it to be, draft and draft again. The bin with the all the Legos is right next to you.

Dig in. Build. Draft. Create.

Craft and Draft: Character Counts

I’m starting a new series on LitLib called, “Craft and Draft.” It’s going to be an out-loud, unfiltered learning experience for me that I hope others can benefit from as well. It’ll be focused on the drafting and revision process and all the crazy magic-voodoo shit I’m learning in grad school!

The great thing about the contextual ambiguity and synonymous nature of the words in the title is that I can use them interchangeably to talk about writing or beer. I am so clever.

Hope you enjoy. These posts will be filed under the “Literature” and “Writing” categories for future reference.

Disclaimer: I am a 26 year old male and still have a childlike infatuation with Lego. I also take bubbles baths when I’ve had a rough day, almost cried when Will Smith (Dr. Robert Neville) had to kill his dog after it got infected, think hydrangeas are pretty flowers, and know all the lyrics to That’s What Friends Are For by Dionne Warwick and Friends.

Deal with it.

Character Counts:

As happy productive authors, we all want to be parents to our characters, raise them up right, and teach them to hate the things we hate. But characters (and to a lesser extent personal voice in nonfiction) aren’t our children. They are our creations.

Authors don’t birth them and then guide them through life, letting them form their own theories and build an understanding of the universe through empirical trial and error. Hell no. We force their beliefs onto them without even asking, telling them what they’re passionate about, what they think about certain philosophical quandaries, and how they ultimately view the world.

We’re like Christianity, but with even crazier stories.

Therein lies a problem. We have to make these characters, and for them (and by extension our stories) to be good, they have to be believable. It is surprisingly difficult to completely flesh out a character, and new writers (like me) will often create Frankenstinian abominations where we meant to create maidens fair.

Stage 1: A Hero is born, sort of

In your planning phase, you might make a character biography. At this point, your character sounds awesome. He’s got a dark, messed up past, his beard is just the right length to be manly without being crazy, and his story arc makes Luke Skywalker’s seem like a lazy Sunday afternoon cruising around in an X-wing.

You imagine your characters looking and acting like this:

This is a rare deleted scene from the ill-fated Game of Thrones vs. Pirates of the Caribbean crossover.

But when you re-read your scene/chapter/short story/cocktail napkin notes, your protagonist seems more like this:

I say there, Monstrosity! Do you know the times?

I mean, it is kind of identifiable as some sort of humanoid, but there are some major problems here. One: his period-inappropriate tricorn hat is on fire. Two: He has two heads, one of which is completely black and has no face. Three: He has a sophisticated breathing apparatus on his chest, but also has a wooden leg. Four: His left arm is not attached to his body.

This is an extreme example, but my point remains. It is very difficult to properly build your character the first time around. He’s going to come out with conflicting motivations, bad dialogue, missing limbs, and possibly even a flaming hat.

But that’s OK! Now that you’ve got your scene, and see that your character clearly needs literary medical attention, you can work on fixing him. It is a habit of mine to dump as many details as possible into exposition, trying to give the character a voice and make him seem human. This isn’t a good idea. Learn from my mistake. The more details you have, the more there is to keep straight, and the more likely your character will seem like his brain doesn’t work correctly.

Stage 2: The Hero goes on a really boring journey

The great thing about word processors is that we can erase with reckless abandon. After revising and simplifying, you character might look like this:

Now he looks a little more…is that a lemon meringue pie?

He’s starting to resemble something that could possibly be confused with a human from a considerable distance!

The hat is still wrong, but at least it isn’t on fire. The parrot was inexplicably replaced by a pie. The technology in his chest still doesn’t match his wooden leg, but at least his arm is reattached.

Better. Closer. Warmer.

Still needs work, though. No one wants to read a story about a pirate/robot/pie shop owner. Do they?

Stage 3: The Hero descends into the underworld via a very, very long escalator

As you continue to revise, your character’s personality and thoughts may evolve requiring that you change major plot points or key exchanges with other characters. This sucks, but you have to do it. Trying to mash a scene or piece of backstory into the main narrative just because you like it normally doesn’t turn out very well. Re-write, re-hash, re-calculate, revise.

You’ll probably notice that your entire plot has changed along with your character. This is normal (for me at least). Run with it. Give in to your demons. Let the story do some of the work itself.

Something that often happens when you do a significant amount of rewriting is that completely new elements and characters get added to the story, which is simultaneously great and awful.

By now, your hero might look like this:

A midget alien, a wizard-deckhand, and a pistol wielding monkey walk into a bar…

The good news is that your hero is a believable human at this point! Some of his wardrobe choices are still a bit odd, but at least now his actions are in line with his motivations, and his dialogue is setting appropriate.

The bad news is that you can’t see how sweet he is becoming, because you’ve added vertically challenged aliens and sharpshooter monkeys who distract from your main hero. Supporting characters should do just that: support. They don’t need to be as in-focus as your protagonist, so feel free to cut back on them if they seem to be carrying too much word-weight.

Stage 4: The Hero returns and brought cheap, crappy souvenirs for everyone

By now, you’re sick of revising. But revising is like running; you can’t have ripped, washboard abs if you don’t do the cardio.

As you’ve pared and simplified, your hero becomes someone readers can relate to, because he’s not a bloated ideal or a hollow husk. He’s got skills and flaws, and all kinds of interesting history that lends to his being a character people attach themselves to. He might not be a Jamie Lannister or a Muad’dib, but he’s a certifiable human being.

Well done! You’ve accomplished the hardest part of characterization: making your reader want to read because your hero is innately interesting without being archetypal.

Your finished product may look something like this:

Simple is safe. That pistol doesn’t look very safe though.

He’s not flashy, but he doesn’t need to be. He’s complete, recognizable, relatable, and lovable (or hateable).

Moral of the story: Revise until you want to vomit. Then go vomit and revise some more. It is an idealistic pipe dream to expect your work to come out perfectly in one draft, so expel that from your mind now. Keep rewriting until you understand why your first few attempts at characterization failed so badly, so you can avoid those same mistakes in the future.

Rewriting counts as writing, so don’t feel like you’re not writing just because you’re revising. Yea. That makes sense.

Craft and Draft: Books As Diet

I am haunted by the ghost of Jack LaLanne; his ethereal form jogs along side me, offering unsolicited, frankly terrifying fitness advice. His ecotplasm shudders and shifts as he tells me about correct form. Sometimes, late at night, I think I see his specter doing leg raises at the very edges of my periphery.

Before he leaves, he always tells me his favorite quote: “Exercise is King, nutrition is Queen, put them together and you’ve got a kingdom.”

Thanks, Jack. Sleep well sweet, fit prince. But seriously, leave me alone.

If my blog is my gym, then my books are my diet. They are the fuel for my writing, the literary calories that I ingest so that I can burn them off through vigorous finger movement.

Like normal, people food, not all books are created equal. Some are healthy, some are unhealthy. Some make you feel good, some make you feel bad. Some sharpen your mind to a perfect, number two pencil point, some turn it into a pile of amorphous goo, hardly capable of ordering something off of the dollar menu.

The key is moderation. It’s OK to cook up a burger with big thick Twilight patties, smothered in a fat-laden sauce made entirely of puréed Call of Duty fan-fiction. Just don’t do it all the time. Balance it out with a nice salad of mixed Susan Orlean with Joan Didion dressing. A nice George R.R. Martin smoothie topped with Tolkien berries makes for an excellent boost to your creative immune system.

Much like the old adage, “you are what you eat” the books that you read shape your mind and your skill. You will start to emulate whatever you read, subconsciously, whether good or bad. Much like your hot, toned body will become a sagging ruin after too many plates of bacon cheese fries, your mind will become an insipid, trite mess if you only feed it plot holes, bad grammar, and inconsistent characterization.

“You are what you read.”

Whatever you read, be critical. Train your eyes to find what is working, but also what is grinding the entire piece to a halt. Question assertions, look for substantiation. Don’t take anything at face value (Mitt Romney is a werecrocodile? I’d like to see some sources, mister). The more active you are when you read, the faster you’ll find what makes good writing good. And the faster you’ll be able to replicate it in your own writing. And the faster you’ll be fabulously rich and famous, doing book signings at Books-A-Million on the weekends.

Most importantly (if you are a writer) you have to write just as much as your read. The very basic principle for losing weight is “calories in < calories out.” It’s nice to sit and read and gather hundreds upon thousands upon millions of great ideas, but if you never sit down and commit them to Word doc, they’ll remain ideas until your brain decides it doesn’t need them any more. Or until you drink one too many beers on a Friday night.

Jack LaLanne was secretly a writing teacher. All of his advice about fitness and nutrition is applicable to our craft as well.

Make your blog workouts count. Read well.

Build little libraries everywhere. Don’t actually eat any books. You’ll probably get pretty sick.

Craft and Draft: Blog As Gym

I never really liked going to the gym. Too many sweaty dudes scamming on make-up caked ladies. Too little actual working out.

But I’m not afraid to sweat, and I didn’t mind the concept. A place where you can go, free of distractions, designed and built for one purpose: self improvement.

We live (and write) in a place so exploding with distractions that is amazing we get anything done. If I had a clock that counted the hours I’ve wasted after being sucked into the soulless void of the internet, I would be terrified to look upon it and despair. With so much great existing content, so many other good writers adding new content, and so many beers to drink, it is a wonder we find type time to sleep, never mind write.

This is where my blog becomes my gym. I come here to write for the very sake of writing. To test new techniques, try new genres, fail at being funny. I write lots and lots of other things on the side, in hopes that someday my writing will be good enough that someone will pay me for this drek. It’s a gym for my mind and my fingers, a place where I can keep my writing muscles toned and sexy.

I’m not running a marathon here, I’m just on the treadmill.

We all need to train. Our minds, like our bodies, like our creative bits, need to be used to grow. The one piece of writing advice that seems to resonate across the entire universe of the craft is that to get better at writing, one must write. And write a lot. Write until fingernails are rimmed with blood and eyeballs sear from LCD burns, until your mind no longer recognizes gibberish from rhetoric and your loved ones fear for your sanity.

This is how you will improve. Lots of sets, lots of reps. Reading is good too, but it doesn’t work the core.

If you’re feeling like you can’t get past that frozen wall of writer’s block, maybe you’re just out of shape. Maybe you’re trying to lift a bar loaded up with 350 lbs when your current max weight is closer to 150. Maybe you just aren’t ready for that burly personal trainer carrying around the gallon jug of water yelling at you to “Push it” when you aren’t even really sure what you’re supposed to be pushing.

That’s OK. Lighten up your workout and train some more. You’ll find that after a while, your writing will be stronger. Cliches will crumble at your feet like decaying Roman ruins. Clever phrases will spring from your mind like a newly born Athena from Zeus’s throbbing skull. You will be able to write better, for longer, and most importantly, it will be easier.

You will get better, but you have to train. You have to sweat.

Go hit the gym. I’ll see you out there.

C’mon, push it to the max! Feel the burn! Master your ass! ONE. MORE. PARAGRAPH.

Review: Yards Brawler Pugilist Style Ale

The first one was easy. The second, hardly a challenge. By the third, I needed a breather, but I wasn’t finished. I was just getting limber.

I had counted eight shadows milling about the tavern door. Three had remained while five moved to places unseen. I assumed at least two would make for the creaking back door, and at least one would remain ahorse, waiting to run down any person foolish enough to run.

I didn’t know if Mortimer was upstairs or down, or hidden in some alcove beneath the ancient wooden floors. I decided it best to not let these men find out. I mouthed two silent prayers to the Old Gods; one for me, and one for the men I was about to kill.

Crouched near the front door, I slid a long dirk from its leather sheathe and held it backwards against my right forearm. With the other, I grasped a tiny sliver of metal; a needle-like blade that I used to kill without much mess. As the first man stuck his head in the door, just behind his make-shift torch, I thrust the needle upwards into his neck, severing the tiny bundles of nerves near the back of his spine.

He hit the ground hard, his muscles dead and only the wooden floor to catch him.

The door flung open under his weight and a second man darted in to catch the first. He was greeted by a flash of folded steel, and a gaping wound across his face. A second quick strike to his lower back sent him into the long sleep.

With two down, I rolled behind a support beam near where the locals had been drinking. Strong wind blew through the open door, extinguishing the two lanterns near the bar and on the hearth. The fireplace whipped and danced, feeding on the gust of oxygen. The entire tavern was bathed in a low light.

An assassin’s playground.

A third man moved near the doorway, but kept safely behind the frame of the door, trying to peer into the darkness beyond. As I eyed him, I heard movement near the back door. Seconds later, it burst open, rotten wood splintering across the room. A quarrel from a well aimed crossbow grazed my shoulder, ripping my leather chest piece and tearing the soft skin around my collar bone.

I flung a dagger in response. Blade over hilt it rolled, until it found a new home lodged permanently in the eye socket of one of the men storming the back entrance. I drew my short sword. The element of surprise was gone and my off-hand was injured and bleeding. This would come down to steel on steel, that is, unless one of these cowards brought a gun.

The man at the front entrance had stepped into the tavern, his long cavalry sabre glowing with a surreal power in the torchlight. I knew he’d have a hard time swinging that big a blade indoors, so I let him tip-toe forward, looking for me with long swings of his flame. The second man near the back had retreated at the sight of my dagger sticking from his friend’s skull.

As I decided who was the next victim of my knives, I heard glass shatter on the upper floor. The two I had not accounted for must have scaled the side of the building and broken their way in through a second story window. As the man with the sabre turned to look at the stairs, I made my move. My first stroke met a timely riposte. As he swung to counter, his long blade caught a piece of wood in the rafters. Unable to dislodge it, my sword easily pierced his stomach and chest; an upward thrust that hit more organs than it missed.

His body slumped and died, the sabre shaking where it stuck in the crossbeam.

I darted up the stairs, ignoring the man at the back door. Mortimer was no fighter. He may be able to kill a man, but against someone with any kind of training, he’dbe an easy target. The upstairs was pitch except for the glow of the waning moon. I heard two men whispering, one trying to give commands, the other arguing with him. Their talking gave away their location. Their pointless banter was as good as a death sentence.

The first fell before I had even stepped in the room, my needle finding a soft spot near his ear. The second lost a hand as he rose it to parry, and fell screaming before I silenced him permanently. Mortimer was not upstairs. This tavern had no obvious cellar, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hide secret places, left over from the Plague Era and Oliver Cromwell’s reign.

I sat for a second to catch my breath and wipe the blood from my blades. There were two left by my count, one downstairs with a crossbow, and a man atop a horse outside. I quickly peered through the broken window to see a man on a huge destrier. It was a powerful, gorgeous horse, with a black mane and a chocolate coat. I wanted to avoid hurting the horse if I could; my last horse had died to a volley of muskets and I longed to ride a powerful steed again.

I waited at the top of the stairs to see if the crossbowman dared to follow me up. My earlier attack had left him sheepish, and I’m sure he had by now seen the devastation I had left on the tavern’s floor. I couldn’t chance rushing him; as much skill as I put behind my short sword, a crossbow had range, and I knew this gent could fire it well, given the chance.

I pried the top off of a tobacco barrel near the pantry at the top of the stairs. Wrapping two lengths of shipping twine around it, I made a make shift shield and braced it against my weakened off hand. All I needed was one chance; once chance to catch his bolt, one chance to close the gap. A crossbow was lethal, but dangerously slow to reload.

It was over quickly. The bolt pierced the top of my shield and before the man had even drawn a second quarrel, he lay dead. I unstrung the shield and threw it down, admiring the quality of the bolt lodged in the wooden slats. It was a shame to kill a fletcher of such skill, but fletching was a dying art, giving way to gunsmithing and the black powder arts.

Before I bothered searching for Mortimer, I knew I had to do something about the horseman trotting lazily outside. He could not have known what had happened inside, short of the scream of the man I dismembered upstairs, so I had time to think. I watched him closely through a downstairs window. He moved back and forth on his huge beast, a two-shot pistol in one hand, the other on the reins.

I hated guns. Cowardly devices that required no skill but could kill with impunity. I wanted the man dead, but I also wanted his horse. A makeshift pike would not suffice; it would put me too close to his pistol, and might hurt the horse. He was too far away to rely on a thrown dagger, and my skill with a crossbow was admittedly lacking.

Instead, I filled an old clay growler with the lamp oil from the lantern near the bar. I ripped off a small patch of cloth from my already torn tunic and shoved it into the top of the bottle. The temporary fuse lit easily when held over the open fire of the hearth and I had only seconds before the bomb exploded in my hand.

At the sight of the fireball created from my cocktail, the horse reared in fear and sent its rider sprawling. As he fell, I sprinted until I couldn’t feel my lungs, short sword out, sharp, and ready. By the time I was on him, he had regained his feet, and saw me, blood in my eyes. He lowered his pistol, but was never able to fire.

I wiped my blade on the grass. A queer silence fell over the tavern, a silence that can only follow a bloody, angry battle. I broke it as soon as I knew no men were left alive.

“MORTIMER!”

I heard nothing for a few minutes expect the hooting of an owl and the crackling of dropped torches.

“MORTIMER!”

At the second shout, I heard a loud “thunk” and the sound of footsteps across a wooden floor. At the doorway appeared my fool brother wearing a tricorne hat and wielding a pathetically small dagger.

“Is it over?” he squeaked.

“Yes, brother. You’re lucky I arrived when I did.”

“I’m so glad you got my message; they’ve been hunting me since Dunwich.”

“Who has been hunting you?” I knew Mortimer was in trouble, as usual, but not what kind of trouble.

“Them.”

He said this as he moved towards the corpse of the horseman. He dug through his small clothes, searching for something. At last, he pulled a small leather fold free and threw it at my feet.

A Scotland Yard Badge. Special Investigator Albert Haynes, Directed at his King’s authority.

A lump formed in my thorat.

“Mortimer…what have you done?”

9 out of 10.

When blood meets beer, beer turns red. And bloody.

How to read 1000 pages in two days

Having trouble finding time in your busy schedule to read all of those awesome books on your “awesome books to read” list?

Follow my simple guide, and you’ll be plowing through Fifty Shades of Grey and the Twilight Saga is record time!

How to read 1000 pages in two days:

Things you’ll need:
-A book (or books)
-Working eyeballs
-Light
-Beer (anything cold)

Step 1: Have a massive, sudden storm demolish the power grid/infrastructure near your home

Something like this should do:

Tis’ but a scratch.

Step 2: Read, because you have nothing else to do

It is best to distract yourself from the heat and lack of any creature comforts by reading something riveting that takes place somewhere cold. I chose A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin. The Frostfangs and The Wall didn’t sound so bad when I was roasting myself in our void of AC.

Step 3: Continue to read until you fall asleep 

While you’re digging through drawers looking for your LED book light in the waning daylight, find some way to keep your beer cold. I recommend stealing some ice from your neighbors, filling a martini shaker, and shoving your beer in there as a make shift wine-bucket.

Good luck to everyone in the DC Metro Area still without power. May your batteries never die and your candles burn long.

Land Rovers make good pole support, apparently.

Review: Troegs Sunshine Pils

He wore a wide-brimmed hat to keep his fair skin out of direct light. Long sleeves covered his existing, blistering burns, and he sweat like a mobster taking a polygraph. His thick white clothes were his only armor against the rays that bombarded plant, stone, and man.

His garden was wilted. The plants struggled to grow with what little water they were provided, and lost most of it to the heat of the day. The shade of his wooden shed gave them some respite, but the sun moved quickly and consistently. He lost a whole row of beets to a wildfire a few weeks earlier. He sat and watched as their above ground leaves burst into flames, spontaneously combusting under the midday sun. All that was left were blackened husks. The fruit below the earth dry and hard, unfit for human consumption.

But still he farmed, or farmed as best he could. The animals had perished long ago, and the few cacti and longrasses that could survive the summers make for bland, unsatisfying meals. He dug his rows at night, when the temperature dropped to a tolerable one hundred and three degrees. This was the only time the ground was breakable; he’d ruined 3 good shovel trying to crack the crust of baked clay that covered his land during the daylight hours.

An eye dropper was his watering can. Each drop he placed was precious, so he made sure each plant got only what it needed to not die. The arid soil gulped each drop greedily, and he prayed that it would seep low enough to nourish the parched roots. The plants survived through his meticulous care, but they did not thrive.

One night while digging a row for the tomatillo seeds he had found in his basement, his shovel struck something hard. The reverberations rushed to his shoulders, causing him to drop the shovel and grab his right arm in pain. As he slumped to the ground, he could see the edge of what he had struck. Something big. Something metal.

The next night, he ignored his rows and began to dig up the newly found object. It could be anything from what he could see of it; an old car, a chest, a washing machine, or even part of some left over military ordnance. He worked unrelentingly to unearth whatever it was; this find was the first thing to break his routine in a number of years.

It took a week of nightly digging, taking a few hours each night to drop water on his existing plants, to dig a hole big enough to get a true sense of the thing. It was rectangular and heavy, roughly the height of a man, with the outline of what appeared to be two hinged doors, caked with dirt. He dared not open it. He feared its power.

The thing became an object of worship and wonder; a monolith that he admired as much as he feared. The world had been destroyed by the evils of men and machines, and it was entirely possible this massive metal block was a weapon that would put a quick end to him and his little patch of struggling life. But something inside of him burned to know its secrets, burned like the sun in the middle of the day, burned like the nuclear clouds that drifted across the planet.

The fire inside overwhelmed him one evening. He found himself standing in front of his god, shovel stuck in the crack between the doors, ready to pry them open and meet his maker. He stood at the ready for hours. Finally, with a breath of despair, he put his weight against the shovel. The doors swung open easily. He was hit by something he hadn’t felt since he was a just a boy.

Cold.

Smoke accompanied the drop in temperature, and he stood for a minute shocked at the relief he felt. Large bricks of smoking, translucent material sat in the bottom of the opening behind the doors, radiating a refreshing coolness. In the bright moonlight he strained to see what else was inside. It was a cavernous thing, this cold metal box, but the only thing that sat on a shelf in the middle were 6 brown bottles, all near freezing and almost painful to the touch.

He knew bottles from his childhood. He removed one and carefully used the shovel to remove its cap. A small hiss let him know its seal had stayed intact. He pressed it to his lips.

The rest he poured onto his plants.

9 out of 10.

It is incredibly difficult to take a picture of direct sunlight.

How to Shamelessly Steal an Idea (and plug a great blog in the process)

The key to good writing is reading. If you’re not out there, scanning every piece of verbiage you can get your hungry little eyes on, your writing will suffer. The goal is to subconsciously emulate other good writers until your own writing kicks significantly more ass.

To that end, to be a better writer, read everything. Read shampoo bottles. Read ads on the Metro. Read the fine print of EULA until you get bored. All writing has merit; whether it be teaching by example or serving as a warning.

I read quite a bit. The majority is of the nonfiction type; news, periodicals, satire, essay. The minority is fiction, TMZ, and most importantly, blog.

Not that I avoid reading blogs as a rule, I’m just very picky about what content I digest. Probably psychological damage from reading one too many bad blogs over the years. Post Traumatic Blog Disorder. Either way, my list of preferred blogs is surprisingly short.

But Ed, over at The Dogs of Beer, is on my “read as soon as it is published” list. I find his posts engaging, entertaining, fresh, and funny. So much so, that I’ve stolen his idea and added a bit of my own flavor.

I have an odd way of building and fostering a writing community.

A Daily Schedule for Writing a Blog Post:

Things you’ll need:
-Fingers
-A computer (and the internet, obvs)
-A partially functional brain
-An understand of a QWERTY keyboard layout
-A camera
-Beer (Sam Adams Whitewater IPA is a great choice, especially if your wife bought you a 6-pack recently because she is that awesome)

7:00 AM
The best ideas come in the shower. All that water washes the glue from your brain, forcing it out of your nose and down the drain. Once cleared, ideas grow. If you’re like me, you’ll have about 50 malformed, awful ideas before that one decent one hits you.

If the shower doesn’t work, try staring blankly at something (like the document you’re supposed to be working on) for a while. If that also doesn’t work, steal an idea from someone else but give them credit.

8:30 AM
Ideas are great and all, but the devil is in the details. Brood over your idea on your commute to the office. Feed your newly born thought-baby with all the anger you develop sitting in traffic.  Let it run wild and grow wings until your idea is a gelatinous blob of meta-ideas and you can’t really make sense of any of it. You can sort all the rest of that stuff out later.

9:21 AM
Drink coffee. Lament living in a country where drinking beer in the morning is socially/professionally/ecumenically unadvisable. As you burn your tongue, think of a great opening line to the blog post you haven’t even titled yet.

9:59 AM
Realize you’ve done very little work so far because you’ve been thinking about your blog post and how you can’t taste anything anymore because you’ve seared your tastebuds. Furiously work on something for thirty minutes to catch up. Get distracted midway through reading XKCD and Penny Arcade.

11:01 AM 
Finally get around to logging into WordPress. Bask over the tens of hits you got since you last logged in. Stare at your “views on your busiest day” number and sigh deeply. Be sad that you’re not fabulously rich and famous.

Create a new post. Spend 40 minutes thinking of a witty title that ends up not being very witty at all.

11:41 AM
Title your post. Write down your opening line if you can still remember it.

12:31 PM
Lunch. Something with avocado. Talk to some people on Gmail.  As you nom-nom-nom down your avocado/provolone/tomato monstrosity of a sandwich, write the opening paragraph of the blog post in your head. Laugh at how funny you have convinced yourself you are.

1:01 PM
Try to remember all those funny things you thought of when you were eating. Quietly curse your boss for distracting you with “work”, when you’ve got important blog posts to write.

3:55 PM
Wake up from your Excel-induced torpor and realize that your blog post is all of 13 words long at this point. Cry inside. Try to type something, anything, in an attempt to feel productive. Re-read what you’ve written. Think that it’s not so bad. Re-read. Delete. A lot.

5:43 PM
Continue brooding over the idea in your head. Yell at traffic. Shake your fist at nearby cars. Make inappropriate eye contact with the people in the adjacent lane. Apologize to your wife for the string of obscenities you just let fly.

6:21 PM
Have a sudden flash of energy. Write, write! Let the words pour from your fingers like an IPA into a pint glass. Also pour yourself a beer.

7:33 PM
Finish blog post. Stand and cheer triumphantly. Realize you have no picture to go along with the post. Look through your existing pictures for something relevant. Find many pictures of cats, but not much else. Look for your DSL-R. It is probably under the couch. Don’t ask why.

8:13 PM
Rush to capture a cool picture in the coming twilight. Keep slightly adjusting your F-Stop as the sun slowly sets.  Say, “eh, good enough” after you’ve taken 35 of the same exact picture. Go inside. Put Benadryl Gel on your bug bites.

8:19 PM
Upload your pictures. Pour another beer. Don’t rinse the glass, that would take too long. Remind yourself that the smell near your beer fridge won’t go away until you clean the cat litter. Give the cats a stern eyeing and tell them to stop pooping, because it is grossing you out.

8:39 PM
Edit your post.

8:40 PM
Insert your picture and think of a witty caption.  Finish your post, but forget to add tags, select a category, or turn on auto-share. Also forget to hit “Publish.”

9:30 PM
Play video games while thinking, “Man, what a good blog post.”

7:03 AM
Look at your blog stats. Realize you never published your new post. Hit “Publish.” Hope no one noticed.

Rinse and repeat! J. Carney: Tag, you’re it.

As per 7:33 PM, here is a completely unrelated picture of a large spider.