Positive or Negative Advice: Which is better?

Which is better, positive or the negative feedback?

I'll tell you, since I ask. It's negative feedback.

I'm talking about proper negative feedback, the sort that helps you be a better writer.

For instance, my editor tore up my run-on sentences. She tore into my weaker constructs, and forced me to be precise and clear on my scenes.

It was the first time someone had given me negative feedback. Truly. People have said they don't like my writing, or said they didn't like that story, but that's not feedback -- that's an opinion. Fine, I say, you're ugly.

When folks tell me they like my writing, it inspires me to write more, and I can tell it's a clean spot in my work.

But you know the best compliment of all? It's when a fierce critic says nothing at all.

Take my editor. Please.

It was during my final edit for Out of the Great Black Nothing (see sidebar). My editor ripped up every chapter. It was a bloodbath. If you've ever been gutted like a fish, you'll know what I mean.

Except for one chapter.

It happened to be my favorite chapter of the book.

She read it through without a mark. She said nothing about it, except she moved to the next chapter and continued working that filet knife in and out, in and out.

Anyway, I stand by my belief that negative feedback is what makes you a better writer -- properly fed back, that is.

What do you think? Is negative feedback the best way to improve? Not just for writing, but for any activity you are trying to master.


- Eric

What About a DUAL POV?

So what do you think about this: A dual Point-of-View.

I'm experimenting on my latest piece with twins, using a "their" POV. I'm not sure how it will work, but I'm hoping that if/when I separate them, and the POV becomes his and hers, it will have a lot more impact, both on the characters and on the reader.

It will involve head-skipping between them, and maybe some omniscient POV. In fact, when I read it now, it sounds very omniscient. I want them to be symbiotic, since this is why they are so special -- they are two halves of one whole.

So long as a scene is written in a clear way, head-skipping and omni can (and do) work, even in modern stories. It's a YA-slash-Adult fiction, so I don't think I'll be judged too harshly for head-skipping or going omni.

What is your take? Have you ever experimented with a POV like this?

- Eric

Education v. Intelligence

It is my firm belief that education teaches the intelligence right out of us.

Be careful what you learn. Be careful from whom and from where you learn.

Question everything. Everything.

Remember that a "well-educated" person is only as smart as the second-year grad student who wrote the book for the professor so they could maintain their tenure.

I'm not saying you shouldn't educate yourself. It helps to share knowledge. The problem is this: two-thirds of a human is water. Water has no capacity for intelligence. So it stands to reason that two-thirds of everything you learn from your fellow water-bag is unintelligent. It's bunk.

I'm drinking Smart Water right now. I'm not learning a damned thing. I'm not sure I trust another flesh-bag of water to tell me what I need to think.

It's the sorting out of bad v. good learning that makes you intelligent, not the learning itself. Only one-third of everything you learn is valuable, statistically speaking.

Pick carefully.

And remember Edison and Einstein both abandoned traditional education. Einstein preferred to study on his own, and Edison was kicked out entirely as being too dull to learn.


- Eric

Note to self: Chill out!

This is a post regarding stress.

Stress often begins with money. We stress about money, because in today's society, we use currency to purchase food and shelter that allows us to survive.

And if you run out of money, you die!

At least, that's how it feels. More likely you will wind up in a smaller house, or apartment, or on your buddy's couch for a while.

If it isn't money, it's relationships. As a moderately social organism, humans require a fair amount of companionship. It stinks when you don't have a companion. You get lonely. You get bored.

And if you get lonely and bored, you die!

Not really, but that's how it feels sometimes, especially if your heart got broke all hard and stuff.

And if it isn't money, and it isn't a relationship, it's work.

Work is married to money, and they're in bed together, but when they have sex, work comes first and leaves money unsatisfied. Money, out of low self-esteem, cheats with Uncle Sam, but he's a user and a liar, full of empty promises and racked with venereal disease. So she seeks out creditors and bankers, who give her shiny things she thinks will bring comfort, but they nibble away at her until she's been turned from green paper into a sixteen-digit piece of plastic with a magnetic slide reader on the back.

And yet we beg for work when it's gone. Why?

Because without work, You will die!

So now I give you, and I give me, some advice that might save your life.

The first piece of advice is this: Breathe. Drink. Be comfortable.

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I say that, because there are only four things you need to survive: Air, water, shelter, food.

In that order, though water and shelter are often swapped. Note that FOOD is at the end of the list! How often we feed for comfort, eh.

Air is always the first thing you need. All human (and mammalian) life dies from one single cause: lack of oxygen to the brain.

So get some oxygen to your brain! Then drink some water. Then find a comfortable shelter, such as a couch or a fluffy bed.

Then get food, but only if you're hungry.


The second piece of advice is this: Enjoy.

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Do something you enjoy doing. I hit the gun range, or the gym, or take a nap or a walk. Yours may be a cup of tea, or splurge and get a massage!


The third piece of advice is this: Have lots of sex.

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This is easier said than done, folks. But if you have a willing partner, and you beg long enough, and offer something expensive in return, and convince her you will die without it, maybe she'll give in, just this once, if you hurry it up so she can get back to her game of Angry Birds.

Ah, the most wonderful words in any language: Fine. Lock the door.


The fourth piece of advice is this: Escape!

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It's about an escape, really. You might read a book, or play in the garden, or do what I do, watch a movie.

Nothing like a round of Zombieland or Beerfest to change your mood.


The fifth piece of advice is this: ??

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You tell me, but if all the above doesn't work, this is where I usually earn my MD and initiate the self-medication procedure. Stat.



- Eric

Fame, fortune, power! Gimme gimme!

So if any of you still believe that fame, fortune, or power can bring you happiness, I would rank you as either comatose or naive.

I have to assume that if you are reading this, you are not comatose. Which leaves only the latter, and if you are naive, then watch E! True Hollywood Stories, or watch The Aviator about Howard Hughes, or remember Elvis or Julius Caesar.

See, it's like this. I'm an engineer, and as an engineer, it's my job and my nature to look for correlations. While the data I have is anecdotal, I do make some conclusions based on what I've seen.

And what I have seen is this: There is no correlation between personal happiness and the following: how much money you make, how powerful you are, or how famous you become.

Maybe there is some correlation, as seen in this article: $75,000 Can Make You Happy. I'll give you that. If you make too little, you can stress about day-to-day basic needs.

But as you cross that threshold and start making huge bucks, you buy a bigger box in which to store more stuff. That's what George Carlin says: That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff.

With all that said, I know many of my friends and fellow writers and fellow artists are after that all-powerful big-league signing bonus, a huge mansion, and your name as a household word.

You might not admit it, but that's kind of where you are angling. I admit it. I want some of that.

But I will say this: I really don't care about money. I have enough that I don't hurt, and not so much that I have to guard it and fess over it.

Fame never has suited me -- I prefer anonymity, to be honest.

Power has almost no power over me. With power comes great responsibility. Have you ever really thought about that quote? It's true. If you're the World President, then you have to worry about the entire world. Man. Can I get a capital-bold FUCK THAT!

Amen.

So if it isn't about fame, or money, or power, what is it about, then?

For me, it's about personal satisfaction. It's about entering a person's head and changing the way they think. It's not about Character Arc for me, but about ~READER~ Arc. I wrote about Reader Arcs a year ago, here: Reader Arcs.

I want the reader to be a little bit different when they put down my work. I want them to be a little bit better, a little bit more curious, a little bit more open.

That's what I want.

How about you? Why are you doing all this? What do you want, really?


- Eric

My excuses! What are ~yours~?

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Excuses excuses! We all have excuses. It's the old adage: Excuses and assholes, everyone has them.

So in that spirit, here are a few of my excuses, used for writing, working out, eating well, avoiding the drink, and being a responsible, mature, human male.

I'm tired!
Classic, right. I am tired. I'm exhausted right now. But that's no excuse. Get more sleep next time; take a pill; drink some coffee; but quit whining and get off your excuse! (Note: Excuse is synonymous with ~ass~, so, well, there you go, get off your excuse, see.)

It's boring!
Lots of things are boring. Sleep is one of them. So are vegetables. Sometimes when you do something boring, it's good for you. If it needs doing, do it. Quit making asses. (Note: Ass is synonymous with ~excuse~...)

I don't enjoy it!
Boy, now you sound like an old wife, don't you. Boo hoo. If it's something you said you would do, and you promised you'd do, do it. Believe me there is no greater satisfaction than doing something well that you hate. Cleaning the house is a classic example, with scrubbing the tub and shitter being the most-hated chores. It sure feels good to sit on a clean potty, now doesn't it.

I don't fee well...
Drink some juice and get to work. Slacker.

I'm too busy!
You're busy because you keep making assholes rather than finishing your projects! Get off your excuse, close out some actions, and you'll be surprised how un-busy you are in just one day.

I left my good brain at home!
My son used to say this when he was five or so. He said he had multiple brains, and sometimes he used the wrong one. For once, I can't argue with this excuse. I mean, if you have the wrong brain, there ain't much you can do about it.

All right, enough about me. What about you? What are your excuses du jour?

This post brought to you by Eric's inner voice, which right now is saying, Get me 1250 words today, slacker-boy!


- Eric

Politics and your image

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Here is the question: Should you post political thoughts on your blog?

What about in your writing? Your poems? Your songs?

Should your paintings or drawings or photographs be politically motivated?

The answer is simple: Only if you mean to.

If you insert your beliefs into your writing, do so with panache and subtlety and a great deal of intentional intent.

As an example, in the movie Blind Side, the character played by Tim McGraw makes this remark, after meeting the ultra-liberal Kathy Bates: "Who would've thought we'd have a black son before we knew a Democrat?"

I personally wasn't sure what to think about that line. I'm still not sure what to think about that line.

You might believe I am against bands who are anti-establishment, but there is one key rule they all follow: They are politically neutral in that they hate or love the country, not the people in it.

They do not force their audience to choose sides!

Green Day and Marylin Manson, for example, hate the system. Toby Keith sings songs about patriotism and the American way.

They express opposing beliefs without forcing the audience to choose sides.

They do not attack individuals, or specific groups such as Democrats or Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives.

You as the author (or artist) should always be on the same side as your reader. The person reading your blog, listening to your song, inspecting your artwork, watching your movie, has signed a silent contract that states you will not attack them.

Never -- NEVER -- force them to choose sides!

As an example of how ~not~ to express your political beliefs, I give you The Dixie Chicks and their attack on Bush. When they singled out Bush, they alienated their conservative fan base.

It only takes one post, one line, one concert, to ruin your career.

Be careful during this election year. The blood will boil. Resist the temptation to blog on politics, and certainly don't force your audience to choose between you and their beliefs. That's why we have Political Pundits (PP).

How about you? Are there political biases in your writing/artwork? Should authors/artists avoid becoming too politically polarized? Do you have more good or bad examples?


- Eric

When are you ~finished~ with your book?

Q: When are you finished with your book?

A: Not even when you die.

Many authors celebrate the completion of their novel after the first draft. A fine example of this fictionalization is Stephen King's Misery, where his MC lights a cigarette and has a glass of wine following the last page of his first draft.

I think we are all smart enough to know the first draft is not your finishing point.

But how about after your first revision?

Again, most of us know you'll at least need two good passes to produce a readable manuscript.

How about after the editor gets through destroying everything you wrote, gutting you like the little fishy you are and feeding your guts to the gulls and laughing as she rips out your spine!

Well, it might sound like you're finished, but you're not. If the book goes to publication, you're just getting started. See, you'll have marketing to work on, and readings, and reviews, and so forth.

So maybe you're finished with that book after it's been in print a few years, right?

Wrong.

Again, we'll go back to King and I'll mention that I only recently read his book 'salem's Lot.

That was his second book, originally published in 1975, and as you can see, he's still not finished with it!

Alright, what about this: You DIE.

Are you finished with your book then?

Nope. A fine example of this is Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

His original draft had been cut from 220kw to 160kw.* After his death, they found his original in his archives, as submitted to the publisher, and released it as "THE ORIGINAL UNCUT VERSION of the bestselling classic."

So even if you die, you might not be finished with your book.

There have been endless rewrites of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and of Shakespeare's plays, and of Homer's work, and you can keep going on and on and on if you like, but I feel my point is driven home.

The fact is this: You are ~never~ finished with your book. Your book is borne into the world and will live on with a life of its own.

As someone once said, I never finish my work. At some point, I just stop working on it.

How about you? Thoughts on this point? Do you feel like you are "finished" with one of your pieces?

- Eric

* Source: Stranger in a Strange Land forward, reprint 1991

Are babies just like drunk people?

Let us analyze that statement, just for fun. I have a baby, so it makes me wonder, see.

First off, I will challenge the reader to dispute that babies and drunks don't waddle the same waddle. It's a back-and-forth almost-tumble that makes you wonder if they aren't walking down the aisle of a bus going sixty down a bumpy winding backroad.

When they kiss, it's all slobbery.

Neither one is afraid to piss in public.

Everything is hilarious. Bodily function-noises -- e.g. the Zurburt or the Rasberry -- are fan favorites.

They want to ~touch~ everything.

Either one is prone to scream in the middle of Wal Mart.

I wouldn't trust either one to drive a car or a golf cart. That's a good one, eh!

Both throw-up on themselves and think nothing of it.

Both will walk through the house naked, or out into the yard for that matter.

You can't understand a dang thing either one says!

How about you? Any other similarities I missed?


- Eric

And finally we release "Out of the Great Black Nothing"

Finally, after a year in draft and edit, and two years in concept, I release my debut novel: Out of the Great Black Nothing

My author interview is here: Eric Trant Interview

I don't know what to say, other than I feel like I lost and gained something special. It's sort of like getting married, having a child, or losing your virginity. It's the end of one and the beginning of another.

I am a published author. How about that.


- Eric

What do you say when people ask?

So I went to a family reunion this weekend and guess what happened? Everyone asked about my writing.

They asked about work and the family, sure, but they wanted to know about my short stories and forthcoming novel.

What's it about? they all asked. Where can I buy it? Do you have business cards? Where is your website? When will it be released?

That's when I went Fudd on them and started stammering. I had no idea what to say!

It embarrassed me. I don't like discussing my work, because when I say it out loud, it sounds (to me) ridiculous.

God love my wife. She started talking me up, and hearing her talk relaxed me. Then I started talking easier about the story lines, and after a while I felt more like I was networking than visiting with family.

It was weird to hand out business cards to my family. But they took them, and I think they are genuinely excited about the book.

The business cards, of course, were for my business, not for my book and writing, and I looked as be-Fudd-led as I felt.

So I give you this as advice, as well as myself, regarding the arting of writing.

Get some business cards

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There's a thought, eh. I will probably generate a logo for myself. Speaking of which...

Logo?

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Not sure on this one. For me, yes, I will create a logo. If you do it yourself, keep it simple, with as few colors as possible, and don't go changing it every few weeks. Make sure you can zoom in or out without losing resolution. You will need Photoshop if you are serious about it, or you can find free logo companies online.

Know your long and short

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Be ready with a one-sentence blurb about your book. My blurb it this: It's about a redneck in a spacesuit who sits in a lawn chair and stares at the moon.

Then you can field questions after that little intro. I need to practice more.

Website and email

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If you don't already, get a website and an email. I use my business email, and I own the website www.EricTrant.com and redirect it here.

Have a central location for all your work

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I keep track of my work and publications right here on this blog. I try to make it easy for folks to find and purchase my work.

Be professional on your blog

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Too late for that one, eh.


Anyway, enough about all that. I need to polish my marketing and conversation skills so I am better prepared in the future.

How about you? Have you been taken off-guard about your current career and dream pursuits? Do you stammer when they ask what it's about and how it's going?

Buh buh buh, buh-da, That's all, folks.


- Eric

How much money do you need, anyway?

Man, I got this one figgered to the penny. I need $4.00 mil. That's it for life.

I calculate with the cost of living adjustments, I would need just that much to survive to eighty-something, and by then I should be good and dead, assuming I continue to follow the American diet and breathe Dallas air.

$4 mil. Anything after that is fluff on my cake, and fluff only makes you fat.

I see these corporate guys/gals making hundreds of $mils and I think, Man, how many zeroes do you need to be happy?

Six? Seven? Eight? NINE! TEN like Gates and those Middle Eastern Princes with their diamond-studded Mercedes?

Damn.

You realize, of course, that zero is a physical representation of a NULL, and that it has no mathematical value or function, other than relocating the decimal. It is, in fact, living proof that man does not understand the universe, because there is no such thing as NULL. God did not create a NULL. He laughs at zero as I laugh at infinity and mankind's infinite ignorance about its own mathematical and scientific dysfunction.

We are wrong, way wrong, and I laugh with God.

Ha.

Therefore, no matter how many zeroes are in your income, it is still a NULL. It is more and more nothing in your offshore bank account.

If I had $4 mil, I'd pay off my house and what little other debt I have and stash back the rest. I would be free to retire, see, that's the point.

I would drive my old Tahoe into the ground -- and for you greenies out there, hush up yo mouf in advance. I know it's a gas guzzler. I figger the faster we burn it, the faster we'll learn it's true value. You only miss it when it's gone.

What was it the Indian said about fish? We'll only worry about over-fishing after we eat the last fish.

Anyway, have you thought about how much you need? What is your cut-off point? Do you have one? If you don't, you'd better figure it out, because you don't want to be one of those corporate greed-olies who think they need bigger and bigger boxes in which to store their stuff.

George Carlin said that: A house is a box with a lid on it in which you store your stuff.

Me, at $4 mil, I open my own local brewery, work in my underpants from home and in my brewery, and if you drink in my brewery, you drink without your pants, because that's how I roll. I drink what I don't sell, and sell what I don't drink.

I will call it Club Garson for personal reasons, and we will play indoor soccer on the off-days. Pantsless.

No garage full of Maseratis and Porches and other unpronounceable cars could ever be better than that.

Is it Porche or Porch? I sit on one and drink and talk to the moon, and on the other I run off a cliff and burst into flames. Which one, tell me, do you prefer?

Plus, my wife is hotter than most rich guy's wives, and she loved me way before I had $4 mil.

In fact, I have no idea why she loves me, but she is gorgeous, and you just can't buy that, now can you.

What's that limit, folks? Where is your cutoff?


- Eric

What do you want as a writer?

What is it you want, as a writer that is?

Do you want money? Fame? Notoriety?

Me, I'll tell you what I want, since you asked nicely.

I want to be loved.

I brought the cheese, you bring the crackers, eh.

But really, that's what I want. I want to be that lingering aftertaste, that euphoric moment after you wake up from a vivid dream.

I want to be one of those authors who people discuss fondly, and say, Man, I liked that story. It resonated. I related to that character. Remember that one scene where the woman sewed her arm back on, man that was cool.

I don't know if that will bring me anything other than internal satisfaction. If so, that's fine, I suppose.

See, I mentioned in an older post that one of my readers gave me a statue of Percy Freebottom, a character I created who is all dreamer, and all he dreams of is writing his name in the moon. The reader bought me a 12" statue of a spaceman, and had the name Freebottom stenciled on the lapel pocket.

He said when he and his wife were at a baseball game on a full moon night, his wife looked up at the moon and said, I wonder if Percy wrote his name yet?

That's what I want, folks. I want to resonate. I want to vibrate deep in your cockles.

Anyway, what is it you want, and are you finding it yet? I am. One reader at a time, I'm finding it just fine.


- Eric

Candyland's Post

Just wanted to say how amazed I am at the outpouring of goodwill over at Candyland. I've been following her for a while, and she's humorous, insightful, well-written, and deeply honest. There aren't many bloggers who could post what she posted without sounding ingenuous.

Candyland: Lower than a rapper's pants

I'd also bring up Mr. 3QE himself, Matthew MacNish, The QQQE, for drawing in so many people to Candace's place. Nice job, Matt.

Go read her post. I've read it quite a few times. She's having trouble with her new baby and could use a little hope thrown her direction. And couldn't we all use that sometimes!

Here's a quote to get you started:

From pregnancy, he's been a needy baby. It started with the loss of fluid near his head causing me to be in and out of the hospital (= monumental bills piling up), then he died at birth. Thankfully was brought back to us but it was not without issues. He's had problems with different formulas and medications which they attribute to reflux. After we got our sweet Sully home from the hospital, his condition has only worsened.














- Eric

Back to the HOUSE OF PAIN!

So I bought a Kindle last week. I know, I've railed on the little electro-beast, how it is actually more expensive and less convenient than a book, but now that I went over, now that I indulged, now that I dropped $200 bucks on an Amazon Kindle 3G, I have to admit that I love that little knucker.

It hasn't left my side. I'm afraid I'll leave it in the potty and my son will drop it in the toilet. He's one year old next week. My wife warned me, she said, You better not leave that Kindle in the bathroom like you did your books. Daz (that's our son) is going to drop it in the toilet.

So I try not to leave the Kindle in the potty. I think I'll miss that the most, leaving books laying around the house, next to the bed, at my desk, in the car.

But I was wrong about the convenience of a Kindle. Boy was I wrong. I downloaded some free books from the local library and finally bought the first book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I returned the other three library books after the first chapter -- the first few pages, actually, I didn't make it any farther -- but I did make it through an old HG book called The Island of Doctor Moreau. I forgot how creepy that book is.

BACK TO THE HOUSE OF PAIN! ARE WE NOT MEN!

The point is, I'm hooked on the e-book. I'm not sure how short or long-lived this little obsession may be -- perhaps the novelty will wear off after I drop it and it shatters into a hundred tiny Kindle-bits, each bit worth approximately $75 USD, with one large piece worth just over a $100.

Anyway. Off to read my new Kindle! Maybe now I can finally get caught up on some of Roland Yeoman's books. Dude, you are a writing machine! (He's on Amazon, FYI, just over 10 books and counting.)

- Eric

An Honest Lie Vol 3: Justifiable Hypocrisy

So the latest Honest Lie short story anthology is on sale. You can't vote for me, but poke around and VOTE for Donna Hole or Stephanie Loree here. The author with the most votes gets a BOOK DEAL! If you buy a book from one of their portals, they get more points. Click their name to see an excerpt and buy, and click mine (but buy from one of their portals) if you want to see a bit about my short story (which is not that short) titled Melvin Gee's Short Trip to Hell.

Read through some of the author interviews here: Life at OHP.

Anyway, now I need to update my links on the side. This publishing crap is a lot of work!

Click the picture. I do believe the kid is GUARDING the playground, not attacking it. This is a common scene in third-world countries.

Also, I should have my full-length novel, Out of the Great Black Nothing, in print this quarter. It's about a redneck in a space suit.


- Eric

When Life Imitates Art: Larf?

This post is about dead children, specifically your dead children, my dead children.

(That's my son on the right, in the picture, shopping for Halloween costumes.)

I'm not sure why I got the hankering, but in early September the worms started digging and what they dug up was this: A bunch of little bones.

I'm talking shoe-box sized bones and tiny skulls with an open fontanel.

Early September, mind you. I suppose it's the thought of winter that brings in those thoughts. God, I wish it were winter already. I'm sick of the heat, and we need some rain in Dallas. (God, if you read this blog, SEND RAIN!)

Anyway. The worms dug up the muck and I started a new novel, one that had been incubating for about nine years, and it sho-nuff has some dead children in it.

It's full of death and suffering. Not in a depressing way (I hope), but in a realistic and heartfelt way.

Now, onto the Life Imitating Art subject, or Larf, as I'll call it. That's Larf, you'll all say one day, Larf's a bitch, Get a Larf, meaning Life + Art.

Get it?

I will, of course, receive no credit for coining this term. And Larf goes on.

So my dad died last week. Don't worry, he didn't ~stay~ dead, but he was dead as your granny's virginity for about two minutes.

Some big black guy, I didn't see him, broke my father's chest pumping blood manually with his heart. Pop's heart stopped after he had some stents put in. He was in the ICU already, otherwise he'd be in a nice box today, wondering why the hell his lips were sewn up to his gums.

(Pop is alive and well. They got his heart beating and it's beating still. Sorry if I confused anyone!)

Larf, eh. I'd been writing about death for about a month, thinking about it, and then it glove-slaps me in the face and touts me.

But wait, there's more!

A neighbor of mine lost his daughter. She died and stayed dead. She was 25 and had a masters degree, a magna cum laude track record, and cancer that ravaged both the first and second livers she tried.

I'll share with you someone else's Larf, which is here, which is beautiful:

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More Importantly. It's Annie's blog, Quiet Commotion.

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I read this and like so many of Annie's ad hoc poems, it scraped my neck just at the base of my skull, there in the primal parts we share with birds and lizards and cavemen alike. True words, she wrote, true and old as granny's virginity.

Why do I think that last part is so damned funny?

I'll also share something I wrote in my current piece. It's a POV I tried out in a couple of scenes, see if it fits. It's second-person present tense. It seemed appropriate.

I wrote this about a week before all the death (both permanent and temporary) around me.

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Nothing prepares you for the loss of your child.

When you get pregnant, out come the doctors and nurses and Lamaze specialists. They show you how to change diapers, how to nurse, how to push and breathe during labor. They tell you what the baby should eat and warn you against the toxicity of eggs and honey and bovine milk, seemingly benign things unless you stuff them into your little baby.

There are stores dedicated to clothing your baby. Entire sections of the local grocery are filled with baby necessities, fluids for when they are sick, bibs for when they drool, plastic seats for when they ride in your car. Friends and neighbors pour into your yard when you release blue or pink balloons into the sky and announce your baby's gender. People clap and cry and cheer your baby's arrival.

It is different, though, when you lose your baby. People grow hushed and cover their mouth and turn away. Sure, they send food for a few days, but after that gesture, afterwards, after the afterlife where there is no life after, after you find the baby stiff in the crib for no good Goddamned reason, after you find him nose-down in the kiddy pool in a few inches of water, after you find her behind the couch with a marble in her throat, after you find him on the dining room floor with a bullet in his head. After the friends and neighbors and family send food and maybe attend the funeral, if there is one, because sometimes, if the baby dies in the womb, they don't even do that.

After all that you are a pariah. You are a topic of conversation. These conversations begin with the words, "Have you heard about," and end with the words, "I can't imagine."

All the stuff in-between those two phrases is a garbled mess of nods and hand-waving.

There are no classes about how you breathe. There are no doctors or nurses who rush to your side to guide you. There are no shelves in the store dedicated to burial clothes. Hell, there aren't even greeting cards, maybe one that reads, "So sorry you lost your toddler down Old Man Johnston's well. Better luck next time!"

People don't discuss it with you. They discuss it all right, but not with you, not anywhere near you. They shun you as if you are diseased, because you are diseased.

You are ostracized and condemned and moved to the other side, wherever the hell that is, probably near hell because that's how it feels. You are one of them, one of the others, one of those who lost their kid, so tragic, and have you heard about, and I can't imagine.

God gives you no reprieve. He allowed His son to be mutilated and killed and so great is God's love that He gave His only son so that you may be saved. Your son died for no greater purpose. He died for no reason at all, and yet you are charged to bear God's deepest grief.

You are not God. No one worships your dead son, and let's not forget God didn't handle the grieving all that well Himself. After three days He couldn't take it anymore, and He raised His son back to life.

Ah, it's good to be God.

---

Anyway. Larf it up Fuzzball, Larf all you want, Larf with me not at me.

I have a wire crossed somewhere, you know. I tend to laugh when I should cry. There's a picture of me in the ER with a bone sticking up from my shoulder (not quite poking through the skin, but almost), and I'm smiling like I just won a six-pack of Shiner 102 beer.

I have a hard time crying, see. All I can think is Larf Larf Larf when it all goes to shit.

Maybe Larf is a better term, eh.

Have you ever had a Larf moment, where something you wrote came to pass? Do you look back on your old words with new experience and think, Dang, that was spot-on? (or Dang, what an idiot I was!) Did the second-person present tense work?

- Eric

PS. My first wife miscarried our second attempt, about two months in, after we had already told everyone and scheduled a sonogram and named her Hannah. I had to flush my burger-meat daughter down the shitter, because that's where she came out. I didn't laugh at all that night, and I don't laugh now thinking on it. I dredge up that pain when I write, and God help me if it had happened when she was 7 years and not 7 weeks. In all seriousness, heartfelt prayers for anyone who's lost a child of any age, be it in the womb or out.

Orphans: Why do we love them?

So I'm writing a novel with my kids. We're in the fun phase -- drafting characters and brainstorming ideas.

I call them idears, and we keep them in a black book I call My Little Ocean. The Ocean used to be pocket-sized. Now it's a leather-bound journal.

Anyway, we're drafting the characters, and I keep coming back to orphanizing the two kids.

See, you need two kids, a boy and a girl, same as I have at the house. I'm not making them twins. The girl is older by a year.

And I keep killing off their parents. Sometimes one or the other parent is alive, but usually the kids are somehow abandoned.

And I got to thinking how common that is.

Luke Skywalker was an orphan. So was Harry Potter. Little Orphan Annie and the kid in Great Expectations were orphans. Superman was an orphan. Megamind and Metroman were orphans. Percy Jackson was semi-orphaned, had an estranged father.

I could go on, but you get the point so go on your own dang self. The thing is, we orphanize our children in YA lit.

Why is that, I wonder?

I still don't have the answer, but I'm beginning to let that question fester. I look back at my own stories and realize I have a novella about orphans. Never thought about it.

There's something romantic about an orphan, something magical, something that gets the gears turning and makes us automatically relate to them.

Why do we relate to kids without parents? Why is it so easy to demonize step-parents and victimize step-children? I have no freaking clue. You tell me.

But we do relate. Maybe it's that coming-of-age thing, where we all sever from our parents and become ourselves.

Oh, Spider-Man was orphaned, too. So was Batman, and in fact his orphanization caused him to morph into the Dark Knight.

Gads, that's an easy thing to think up orphaned heroes, isn't it.

You tell ME! Why are orphans so common and desirable in literature!

Meanwhile, I'll be drafting my own set of orphans. They have [expletive] eyes. Shh. Don't tell anyone.

- Eric

Viscerality: What is too much?

Dear Knuckers:

Like many of you, I have some stories that are deeply emotional that deal with traumatic experiences. They aren't gory per se, but they are disturbing stories.

For instance, one of my earliest shorts is called Digging. I have never tried to publish this story because I believe it is too visceral, too primal. But when I let people read it the response is consistent -- the story resonates. It disturbs. It has the intended effect, which is to show an ugly underbelly, the snake's belly, the scaly underside beneath the coiled head and body.

Specifically, Digging deals with incest. Oddly enough, that's a story so common among writers that publishers specifically say: No incest, no rape stories.

I say: Why not?

They answer: Too visceral. Too disturbing. Readers want fiction, not reality.

And yet and yet the Digging story got two responses that I remember in particular.

One was from an English teacher and she said this:

---

Your unapologetic brutality was disturbing.

---

The other was from an Army Ranger, one of those special force types who is the real shit. He's a Captain now, and he's a cutout Tom Clancy character a lot like Chavez. If you know who Chavez is, then you know what I mean, and you know I mean this guy is no bullshit. When he bought his house, for instance, he made sure he had a clear path of egress to gun down anyone who invaded his stairwell, even aligned the rooms such that he wouldn't be shooting into his daughter's bedroom.

I camp with him once a year or so and he brings a full trauma kit and a well-beaten rucksack and somehow he still convinces me to carry his fucking water for him so he has room for his camp chair.

Yeah, that guy. He read an entire batch of short stories and commented on one story only, one word, and it was Digging and it was this word:

---

Damn.

---

So I ask you my fellow writers and knuckers specifically, is it too visceral to write what is real, what is savage, what is the basest in our skulls just above the spine. Doesn't the blood flow up through the neck and through the primal parts first, before it branches out to the thinking gray-matter that really doesn't matter at all?

I ask this because my current piece, the Marty piece, the one I alluded to here -- Dead Characters -- is primal. It is unapologetic.

It is real. It is savage.

It is visceral. It involves a mightily abusive and dysfunctional family unit. It involves rape and murder and personal treason.

Is that too much? Am I crossing lines here?

What do you consider too much? I don't mean ~gore~, I mean primal emotions. I don't appreciate gratuitous gore and won't write it. I mean primal and savage acts that leave a taste -- literally -- in the back of your throat when you read them.


- Eric

Dead and Resurrected Characters

I think all my characters are zombies, or vampires, or something undead and permanent.

See, I can't let go of them. I wrote this blurb, which I'll post for you to torture your eyes on, back in 2002. That's, like, TEN YEARS AGO. Almost. The date stamp says September 5, 2002.

Man, that's weird. It's like the anniversary date for the birth of this character. I wonder if there's something in this season that puts this shit in my head every year, because I have never forgotten Marty.

What's even weirder is I haven't messed with this story, with Marty, in forever, in YEARS, but last night that little bastard with no warning dove into my worms and started digging and throwing dirt until I had to get up and let him write a stupid outline for the stupid book so he'd shut his stupid mouth and let me stupid sleep.

Which I didn't sleep, of course, not a drop or a wink, not last night. It's like that when you see your next book waiting to be writ.

This guy, Marty, he's a blurb. He's a ghost. He's an undead boy with a big-ass knife and he will not let me forget him.

Queue the scene, stage left, hit the music.

Working Title: The Idear

---

It could have been something he'd imagined, one of those pipe dreams kids come up with late at night, under the covers with a friend and a flashlight. He'd played it over and over in his head until it seemed real enough. And here he was, holding a knife as big as his arm. The blade alone reached from his elbow to his wrist. Holding it near his face to see that yep, sure enough, it's real all right, real as Jeannie's tits.

"Hey, Sugar, what you got?" That was Gus. He was the leader of this little troop, six boys in all, and they called Marty Jameson Sugar because that's what his mom had called him once.

Marty hated being called Sugar.

Marty stuffed the knife under his shirt. The blade was rusty and it didn't look sharp. He'd take care of that later. "Nothing," Marty answered. "I ain't got nothing."

"Liar!" Gus said. "I saw you put something under your shirt, sugar-boy, let's s—"

"I ain't got nothing!" Marty said. He turned and put his feet under him, running despite the danger of having a blade so close to his heart (his mom would belt him for sure if she caught him running with a knife).

Marty was faster than the other boys—except for Danny, he was the oldest—and Marty sprinted around a stack of old tires, between two stripped-out Volkswagons, and ducked beneath a tower of fifty-gallon oil drums. He clambered inside one of the barrels before Danny rounded the corner behind him. The rest followed, all running past Marty. Silent as a rabbit, Marty waited until he heard Gus scream, "He went over to the crane!" before climbing out of his hole.

Marty drew the knife from his shirt. The blade was wide and long, a true Bowie knife, with a busted fake-ivory handle that had broken halfway down the length of the grip. Marty tucked the knife into his belt so that it both looked and felt like a sword on his hip. He raced home, stopping only once to lift a piece of corrugated tin and claim a beat-up wire grinder brush he spotted. He could use that to clean the blade.

***

The next day it rained, huge drops that fell straight-down without wind and without thunder. Marty sat in the attic next to the window as if beneath a waterfall, hidden behind clear sheets of water as the rain rolled over the eaves. He sat in a toddler's chair, one he'd found crammed into the corner of the attic when they'd moved in a year ago. The wicker seat was chewed-through, and the sharp corners of the broken straws sometimes poked him, but its legs were strong enough that Marty could lean back as he worked. The overhead light had long ago burned out and never been replaced. So Marty sat near the window. The cascading rain somehow amplified the light here.

Marty's fingers bled from where the wire brush had stabbed him; the wild-haired brush wasn't designed to be held, it was designed to spin on a grinder. He had taken a piece of his jeans (the part left over after his mom had made cut-offs) and used the fabric to pad his hands. It worked well, and during the past few hours, Marty had scraped most of the rust from the blade, and saved the rest of his fingers.

According to his mom's scale, the one she kept hidden beneath the bathroom towels so she didn't have to look at it, the knife weighed over a pound. The weight sat heavy in Marty's lap.

In his pocket was another weight, this one a few ounces he'd lifted from the knife-drawer in the kitchen: a battered and chipped whetstone.

Marty held the knife up in the shimmering light. "You're almost clean," he said. "Then I'll put an edge on you that'll cut through glass."

***

---

How about you? Any new or resurrected idears yet?

- Eric

PS. This blurb was used during a blogfest at some point. Just saying.

Characters we CARE ABOUT

In response to Julie Musil's Building Characters post. Read it and come back here or read it there. I really don't care which you do, satisfy yourself because I know you will anyway -- that's what knuckers do.

---

All right, missy (Julie), you just touched on something that's been nagging at me these past few months, and in fact has nagged me for many months across many years across many many stories for all the time I've been a-writing.

Here's the nag: ALL characters are important.

Every. Last. One.

If you ever dismiss a character as unimportant, that is you as the writer's fault for not being more sympa/empathetic.

This point was hammered home to me recently when I read Vonnegut's Breakfast for Champions.

I always sensed that everyone was equally important, but V pointed this out in B&W and even drew a human anus to make his point.

That's true. Read the book if you don't believe me.

Your #7 and #9 are the two that got me -- extraneous and non-care-abouts.

There is no such thing as non-characters in your story, anymore than there is such a thing in real life.

We all have agendas. We are all important. We are all meaningful, and if you forget that point you'll alienate your reader who just happens to be a cocktail waitress at a dive bar that you as a high-pedestal author do not think is important.

You see the point, yes? You see the left hook in that comment?

Give your characters respect. Give them your love. You are their God and Creator and Savior.

If they pop up, even tangentially, they are your creation and deserve your respect and affection.

Or murder them. Someone else said that, too, murder your darlings.

But they're your darlings. Nothing unimportant about them, so lay them on the slab and bleed them, but cry about it when you do.

- Eric

ps: I love Julie's site. If you're not on there, go there, join, and make her your friend. Here is the link: http://juliemusil.blogspot.com

Writing with the kids

So I'm writing a story with my kids. It's not just any story, it's THE story.

It's magical.

It's whimsical.

It's outer-space and out-of-this-world. It's no-limits and no-holds-barred.

It is a ninja monkey who is NOT a monkey, he is a primate by God, and he kicks your ass if you call him a goddamned monkey.

It is the Ultimate Banana. It is zombies and space ships and everything we want it to be plus an extra heaping of upside-down spray-it-right-in-your-mouth nitrogen pressurized bottle of whipped cream.

It is a leather-bound notebook and a stack of pictures drawn on wide-rule notebook paper, a conversation in the car, a deep study in the boy's room beneath the ceiling fan click-clicking.

It is wonderful.

It doesn't say ass or goddamned, though. It's a kid's book. Keep it clean.

The point is I'm sharing my writing experience with my children. I share it with my family. I share it with my relatives and my co-workers. I believe that if not now, then maybe later, when people describe me, they won't say, Eric was a Chemical Engineer from UT Austin, a quality engineer, a process/product/device/test engineer, or a programmer, or a mathematical samurai, or a short white guy with a big nose.

They'll say, Eric was a writer and a story-teller and was incredibly good-looking.

It was his blue eyes, the women will say, and they'll wish I wasn't dead and secretly hope I will come back and seduce them into an army of undead concubines.

My kids will remember the stories we wrote and told and tell the ones we never wrote.

My son said about the story we're writing, Daddy, do you think we'll be millionaires?

Probably not, I said. I made $85 bucks on my last story. That's the sum total of my career in writing.

Sweet! my son said. We can be hundredaires.

Do you share with your family? How will they describe you? Will you be a hundredaire author?


- Eric

Your Author BIO: Straight-Talk from my Editor

Have you ever written an author bio? If you haven't yet, you will, eventually, because if and when you get published, the publisher is going to ask for a couple of things.

The first thing is this: Your signature. Sign here. And here. Initial there. Here's your copy of the contract, looking forward to doing business with you.

And it is a business for the publisher -- ain't no art in publishing, you knuckleheads.

Now the next thing they'll ask for is a clean draft. They'll probably do a quick read and ask for long edits and send it back to you. Mind you, I'm with a small publisher, so this leg of the process will vary proportionately with larger publishers, but Open Heart Publishing, local to Dallas, has been professional and by-the-book as far as I'm concerned. I imagine the only difference between drafting with OHP and drafting with Harper-Collins will be length between edit responses, and the depth of the personal and professional relationships.

That's a theory.

So while you're drafting and re-drafting and reading and re-reading your piece, the editor will ask you for a couple more things.

We need a headshot for your bio, says Ms. Editor. (Her name is ME, by the way, and her blog is here: An Honest Lie Speaks.)

Okay, you answer. I got a picture from last spring break, just need to clip out my wife and kids from the pose.

Take a new one, ME says. You alone. It doesn't need to be professional, but you need to be the only one in it.

Okay.

And we need a bio, she says. Between one and two hundred words for your short story in the AHL volume 3 anthology, and another one about three-hundred words for your novel.

Okay.

Can you get this to me tomorrow? she says.

I guess.

I'll take that as a yes, she says. She then promises to share a beer with you once we get the damned things in print, and off you go to write your bio.

The picture is easy. Grab a beer and a clean shirt. Head to the back yard with the wife. Snap. Done.

But that bio, that ever-loving bio, that freaking fracking macking bio...

There's the hard part, folks. Who the hell are you? How do you sum up the complexities of YOU in three-hundred -- or two-hundred, or one-hundred -- words or less?

I won't share my bio with you, but I will share some of ME's invaluable editorial feedback.

And I quote, where I got too flippant and personal about my non-writing activities and family and such:

---

Be careful here – you are shifting too much focus away from your writing. Everything that is “in addition to” or “aside from” takes away from your writing career time. You don’t want to inadvertently sound like your life is so filled with other priorities that writing takes a back seat. Writing has to be and remain primary focus.

---

I ping-ponged ME a bit on the personal aspect (we communicate primarily via email). I wrote that I want to establish a personal connection with the reader in my bio, and that's why I include the personal aspects in it.

ME responded to that point like this:

---

I agree with you on the personal connection being important, but we always have to remember the potential publishers and agents who might come across our work, and be ready with the bio info they'll want to know.

On the personal part of the bio, for the novel, I have made a couple of alterations. Below is the revision. I have taken out "unbelievably beautiful" wife - this is a bit more personal and intimate than should be included in a bio (remember, a bio is a resume, not a personal journal).

---

Here is another response from ME, earlier in the pinging and ponging:

---

That's a good bio, and those are great photos. I think we'll use the photo of you on the chair looking right (yours, not viewer's).

I'd like to see something a little different on your bio. I'd like to take the personal info down to one or two sentences top, include your other writing credits, and talk about your blog and anything else you've been doing in the field of writing. 100-200 words is about the size we need.

Would you mind?

Bios should always focus primarily on credits, even if they were the same credits from the last bio. You want to work towards getting as many credits as you can, and as many writing related projects. After that, when you get new credits or projects, take out those that are less spectacular in order to add new credits/projects.

---

You see what I highlighted, yes? Are you paying attention?

I was, and I do pay attention to ME. She makes sound points and backs them up. I tell her she has hollow-toothed venomous advice that strikes like a bite to the neck.

But it's a good strike. It's a good feeling. She injects you, the author, with a jolt of reality that is meant to make your writing BETTER.

Here's another diddy from ME, when I originally included my email in the bio:

---

Never ever include contact info in your bio. Your bio can and will be seen by the world at large and you don’t want a way for perverts or stalkers or other harassers to be able to contact you. You can refer people to your publisher or agent, but never give your own contact info. Delete next sentence. I have deleted same reference from short story bio.

---

And now, in summary, for those of you knuckers who skim to the bottom and skip all the good stuff I write:

---

 o Focus on your writing activities

 o Your bio is your resume

 o Focus on writing credits (include significant non-writing, such as a patent, which I always include)

 o Do not share personal contact information

---

Listen to ME's advice. When you write your bio, remember what ME says.

Just don't get sour if she leaves a little smidge of a mark just above the shoulder and below the ear.

Do you have bio advice? What does your editor say?


- Eric

PS: If you find this advice helpful, you should thank ME at her blog: An Honest Lie Speaks. All email responses are used with her permission.

Half of Something, or All of Nothing? You Choose.

Have you ever watched the show Shark Tank? People with NOTHING approach investors with their idea, and the investors either purchase a chunk of the person's product, or turn it down outright.

What amazes me is that people turn down the investment offers.

Not enough, the people say.

You want too much of my company, the people say.

My company is worth more, the people say.

And then these people turn and walk out of the Shark Tank with the exact thing they walked in with: NOTHING!

Now, if that's not a capital-bold WTF moment, I don't know what is.

Folks, your company is only worth what someone is willing to pay. That's it. It is NOT a million dollar company, or a $100 million dollar company, or a $1 billion dollar company, until someone says it is and slaps down a check.

Until then, your company is worth squat shit and diddly, in that order.

Now, project this onto writers, and aspiring authors, and those of us hocking our words to publishers and agents.

You are the company. Your writing is the product. You are trying to sell it to investors who plan to make money off your work, and they want their cut.

I occasionally run across authors who say they turned down an offer while they wait on something better.

I see authors who say their book should be HUGE, and they plan to secure HUGE up-front bonuses from the publishing houses, from their editors, from anyone who helps them with their magnificent book.

As if by sheer will of force they plan to add value to their product!

I see people, and not just authors, who would rather have 100% of nothing instead of 50% of something!

I avoid these people in business. I avoid them in my personal dealings. I avoid them outright.

They call themselves dreamers, risk-takers, entrepreneurs, and they scoff the world for not seeing the true value of their product, be it a book or a new-fangled contraption for whizzering your gizzard on Shark Tank.

I can't even watch Shark Tank anymore. The investors make an offer, the person turns it down, and the investors laugh and mock the person and say the same things I am thinking: What was that guy thinking? He'll never make it without a business partner. He'll never make it without us!

He wants 100% of nothing, because in that warped and demented dream-state thinkering, the product (book) is worth a hundred bazillion dollars.

I see Dr. Evil: One millllion dollars!

I shake my head. I drink my beer.

I move on looking for that investor (publisher) who is willing to take 100% of nothing and turn it into 50% of something. Size doesn't matter, because something beats nothing.

A rich man commented on game shows, how people tend to keep going once they have a significant amount of cash. That's money in the bank, you idiots! he said. Cash out! A $20,000 profit is more than the $1 million you didn't win! Why can't these idiots do math!

So don't be one of those idgets that rich people make fun of. Don' be that person who, when someone hands you the moon, you say, BUT I WANT THE SUN!

No no no. Please no. Success is found in bites and nibbles, not one large chunk, and it damned sure doesn't happen on the first offer of your first book.

Do you keep your expectations reasonable? I don't mean small, I mean reasonable. Are you willing to let go of your baby and take what someone offers?

Do you realize and accept that your product (book) is only worth what someone will pay?

- Eric

Show Me, Tell Me

Let me get this off my chest. I'm well-aware of the rule that states a writer should show, not tell.

Show the story! Don't tell the story! Yes yes yes, I've heard it over and over. Preach on, little parrot, preach on.

But let me tell you something about telling.

See, there's something you can only do with telling, and it is this: Bond the reader to the character.

For instance, let's take the security guard floating in my beer as I ponderize this post. It's dark beer, Delirium Nocturnum, whatever the hell that is, and it has 8.5% alcohol. That's nearly twice a Bud Water's content, or at least today it is, and there's a security guard in it.

Guard the Showing

---

She sits behind a half-round table stacked with split-screen monitors showing each of the cells in the city jailhouse. One bank of monitors reads Holding Tank. Another bank reads Shakedown. Another reads Visitation.

And so on. (I borrow this from Vonnegut, who I am reading at present, all hail V)

A cup of coffee with a lipstick ring sits half-empty next to her hand as she types. She types a name into the computer: Harold Banks.

She types Harold's weight and height and the date he arrived in the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

---

I'll stop there. I was showing, not telling. I told you nothing about her, not even her name. I guess I could have shown you her nametag, but I didn't want to ~tell~ you her name. That's telling, not showing.

And this is exactly -- EXACTLY -- what you get with movies and videos and those damned old moving picture thingies. You get SHOWING, not telling.

Now, sometimes you do get telling, even in the movies. We hear it as a narrator's voice, the author, a character, someone filling you in on the details, someone ~telling~ you the details.

Let me re-hash that security guard scene with a little snip of telling, not showing.

Guard the Telling

---

Henrietta Beecher Snowe scooped up the stack of papers from this afternoon's processing frenzy and laid out the first one face-up next to her keyboard. Jackie, the day clerk, had called in sick and since the officers didn't know how to use the new software system, and since Henrietta had all damned day to kill watching nothing but three-dozen holding cells and Google her name, the task fell on her to perform the day's data entry.

And today had been unusually busy.

It started when Jack Keller, the local busy-body and town drunk, was run over by a dump truck hauling a load of pea gravel. Henrietta had gone to school with the driver, Harold Banks, and had once offered him a sticky-finger behind the band hall after one of the football games. Henrietta played flute. Henry had been a percussionist. Now he drove trucks and ran over drunks who happened to be stumbling along the side of the shoulderless road just outside of Jefferson's Grocery and Deli.

Jack Keller, of course, had been killed. The truck's back tires had squeezed his head like a brown grape and left his brains skid-marked along the side of the road in a gray-matter snail trail.

Henry had tested positive for alcohol, not surprising given he was driving on the shoulder in the first place, and Larry Timbers, one of the day officers who worked nights over in Beaumont, found a bag of cocaine under the driver's seat. Henry rolled the truck, spilling the gravel up and down Poskie Street proper, and that's when things got interesting.

And so on.

---

Do you see the difference? I told you one story.

I showed you the other.

Yes, I agree showing is the best way to show a story, but telling is the best way to tell a story.

You need both. The showing moves the present-tense action along. The telling fills in the details and the background.

The ~telling~ is the critical point in writing. It's when you bond the reader to your characters.

The ~telling~ is what you do not get with a movie.

The ~telling~ is what people miss when they see a movie adaptation of a book, when they look at you and squint and say, The book was better.

Why? you ask.

I don't know, they say. It just was. I got inside their heads better.

This comes up because I'm editing, and my readers keep asking me to ~tell~ them about the characters. I was trying to show show show. I'm thinking now that I showed too much and told too little.

Don't be afraid to tell. It's how you bond to the characters! It's how you make the reader care about what happens to them!

How about you? Do you have that strange detestation of telling that afflicts so many writers?


- Eric

Pity Reads: Why they are a BAD thing

Do you know what I mean by a Pity Read?

It's like a Pity Fuck. You know what that is, right? We've all had one or offered one (I assume, unless you are a particularly prickly sort who never gives out those good-bye adios vaya con dios love fests just before you break up).

I'll refer to the one as PR, and the other as PF, for simplicity and to reduce the vulgarity, as if that matters to me. It doesn't, but I do it as courtesy to those light-hearted souls.

Often in a relationship, One person is more in love than the Other. Since this is an unbalanced relationship, it is doomed as a one-winged bird a-flapping with the left wing and a-scratching his ball-feathers with the right.

The One wants nothing more than to soar up into the sky and shit on something clean. The Other is busy trying to find bird-balls, which it soon will realize don't exist.

So in the end, just before the dooming occurs, and maybe a few times before, the Other (who is less in love, the scratcher) offers the One (who is more in love, the flapper), a good old-fashioned banging pity fuck.

Other doesn't enjoy it.

Ironically, neither does the One.

It's a lose-lose situation.

Even if it's a guy, he may not be into it. He'll give it a few good thrusts, but then he leaves with a lazy salute, hasta la vista, and he jumps off the balcony onto the carport and rolls into the back of a truck and walks buttoning his pants and pulling on his shirt across the parking lot. He forgot his damned shoes but he'll never go back for them because he doesn't need to -- the One is on the apartment balcony tossing his shoes and socks down after him and screaming to the world how small his Johnny is and that she's glad she gave him herpes.

Now, flip it and Godferbid it's the woman offering the PF, because folks, this can be quickly boiled down into a bone fide long-term guilt-trip, or even worse, a date-rape accusation.

Either way the PF is a bad thing. It's not a safe way to end a relationship, nor is it a healthy act to indulge in.

Doing something out of pity is a sure way to reduce your own personal worth.

So what's that got to do with writing, and reading?

I'll tell you, since you asked politely.

I call it this: The Pity Read

It's when you ask someone to read your book, or your story, or maybe they ask to see it and you show it.

Now, just as one person disliking your pelvic thrusts doesn't make you a bad lover, neither does one person disliking your writing make you a bad writer.

It just means you didn't do it for them. You weren't their thing. They're not into you. No hard feelings, it's me, not you, but not really.

But the reader, the Pity Reader, the PR, is your friend, your confidant, your spouse, your relative, your co-worker, your online buddy.

And since they are your friend, they trudge through the piece. They ache their eyes against your blasphemous words. Your phrase makes them want to peel their eyeballs like the skin of a plum. My God.

My God.

It's not bad, they tell you later, after their Pity Read, as they run through the parking lot buttoning their pants and pulling on their shirt.

Not bad at all.

The first thing wrong is this: They gave you dishonest feedback.

The second thing wrong is this: They will tell their friends.

Oh Lord in Heaven, do you see why this is the Gonorrhea of writers? Not only does the Pity Reader mislead you about your writing, but they then sabotage you with would-be readers inside your own circle.

So I tell you this: Avoid the Pity Reader like the clap!

This comes up because I am at present soliciting beta readers for my novel, and I tell them this, without exception:


I only want you to read this if you want to read it. If it doesn't grab you, put it down. You won't hurt my feelings. Even if your feedback is that you got through the first twenty or so pages and didn't like it, it's not your bag, no problem. That's feedback. That's what I need to know.

And I only want you to be a beta reader if you want to be a beta reader. Just because I asked doesn't mean you are obliged.


Or something like that.

I recommend you do the same thing with your betas, and with your readers, and with anyone inside your globosphere who offers to buy or read your work.

Read it not because you know me -- read it because you like what you're reading.

I say the same thing to you, my online buddies -- only read me if you enjoy this sort of fiction, and for Godsake don't buy me if you don't think you'll like it!

Because I don't need your pity.

What do you tell your readers? Buy my book or I'll cut you!


- Eric

Moot Argument: Pantsing and Plotting

Should you pants it? Should you plot it?

I've seen that argument over and over, I've even indulged in it myself. Now I think it's a moot argument.

See, either way you put in the same work. Here's the reality.

Pantser

---

• Draft
  
• Plot
  
• Develop Characters
  
• Revise
  
• Revise
  
• Revise
  

Plotter

---

• Plot
  
• Develop Characters
  
• Draft
  
• Revise
  
• Revise
  
• Revise
  

Do you see it? All I did was re-order the process. There is no reduction or increase in the work! In fact, you can even go further and insert those three Revise steps in different locations. For instance, this is closer to my actual process:

 Eric's Process

---

• Draft
  
• Revise
  
• Develop Characters
  
• Revise
  
• Plot
  
• Revise
  

I tend to revise as I go. You may increase or decrease those Revise steps, but certainly you'll never find a short-cut! Not for a well-written and understandable body of work. If you go through fewer than THREE deep revisions, it is probably an under-written book.

What are your thoughts? I really don't care, because your opinion is moot, as I just pointed out, but I ask out of courtesy.

- Eric

No BACKSPACE! An Experiment

Thi s is an experiment. I am for this post going to use no backspace, no edit, no delete, no spell-checker, no undo, and no do-overs.

See, this is how the OLD generation used to do it. Often (stricke that), b

Okay, start over.

Before typewriters, tehy even had to d write out their work by hand. If they fucked up, they had to scratch it out and type over it.

They had to think about what was going on the page before it every lef t their mind and fled down to their fingers. They had to capture thoughts directyl in raw form, unadulterated, mutilated, deformed as they were, and slam i them onto the patper before they got away.

What did this do for the writersz/?

I'll tell you.

It forced them to do something we tell ourselves every day to do: KEEP WRITING!

They didn'gt get bogged dowin in the infinite edit loop that so many of us suffer from.

They didn't write a paragraph, nuke it, re-write it, nuke it , and so on ad foreverum.

No. They had to trudge on. Misspellings be damned. Fat fingers go to hell. So the muse stopped talking, who cares, keep writing, because there is no go-back and revise that prior page.

You must write FORWARD, not backward.

That's how they did it, with pens and typewriters and stnen stencils.

Maybe that's why we don't have the great writers anymore. Maybe we delete all our best stuff. Maybe theo power to edit has destoryed the muse and shut her up.

So i I encourage you to try this experiment. Type up a blog freestyle, no edits, no revisions, NO BACKSPACE, and esee what pops out.

I may even do this with my next picee. It makes for a lot of spellchecking, but it may also forsce me to really slow down and think about what I am writing. Who noknows. Maybe I'll even write something brillian t and NOT erase it!


- Eric

PS. I am not going to proof-read this. Type and SEND to the blogosphere! I'l l read it when it's on the site. Good luck with your own, if you so choose to accept teh challenge.

JK Rowling, the Pomeranian, and Me

I watched the JK Rowling story tonight on Lifetime. I now know how to properly pronounce her name, and what the J stands for.

I also learned a couple of other things, and at one point I started crying. It was a man-sob, nobody saw it, and I held the Pomeranian up to my face to shield my eyes and I don't think anyone noticed, except maybe the dog and she won't talk, but I cried nonetheless.

Hold on. I gotta fetch a beer. Grab one, too, will you...

Ah, okay, better. I'm drinking a local brew, a "Munich-Style Helles Lager" that tastes a lot like feet. I bought it not knowing how it tastes, but I'm a soldier, by God.

Now, back to the Pomeranian tears.

I knew Rowling had submitted an even dozen times, a wonderfully magic number, before being accepted.

I knew she had been a welfare mom and I know how rich she got off the book.

(I take the show as fact, so please excuse me if the show is incorrect.)

What I ~didn't~ know is that she was top of her class in high school, and that she didn't get into her college of choice. That sort of got me, because I was top of my class, and I didn't get into my college of choice.

No big deal, though, that happens to everyone. It's called reality.

The scene with her dad, though, when he explained to her, and I paraphrase, "You can't be a writer! You'll live off the state. You need to do something practical, like math--" and that's where I broke down, right there during that sentence, at that word, that's where I picked up the Pomeranian and held her to my face and let her lick my forehead.

See, because I was top of my class, I earned the valedic scholarship. I began majoring in Biochemistry-Pre-Med at the University of Texas at Austin.

After my freshman year, I changed my major to Literature-slash-Philosophy, intending to study books and Greek mythology. Maybe it wasn't Philosophy, but it was something like that, Greek Mythology maybe. I don't remember, because it didn't last but a couple of weeks.

I went home and as always at the end of the semester sat at the bank in front of my scholarship benefactor and explained my grades and my plans and how I intended to spend their money.

"I changed my major," I said.

"To what?"

"Literature and philosophy."

Man, I remember the look on his face, those steepled fingers. My aunt worked at the bank and it's a small town and everyone knew me and my parents and my brother and cousins and God help us all, my Grandparents, who practically shut down the bank every time they stopped in to chat. My aunt sat at the desk next to him, but she wasn't there just now.

"Literature," he said. It wasn't a question.

And let me pause here. He was a good guy. He died a little after I got out of college, and the advice was sound, but it was a helluva a thing to hear. There were no malice in his words.

He shook his head. "You can't major in literature," he said.

"Why not? My mom is a librarian. She has a library science degree and taught English. I've been reading since I was in the womb. I'm a shoe-in."

"I won't argue with that," he said, and he couldn't, because he knew mom and he knew how freaking smart she is. "But you can't major in literature. You're too good at math. Not everyone has that talent. You need to major in something you can make a living at, like math or science."

Now, I'm eighteen just turned nineteen, an April baby and sober to boot, because I didn't start with the booze until I hit my 21st birthday, on the day, and haven't stopped since. But I didn't possess the emotional fortitude to handle what he had just said.

Hell, I knew I was good at math. Math is easy. It's just numbers. I like it all right, but that's not what I was angling at. He'd just hit me in the head with a bag of Stephen King books, It maybe, or Pet Cemetery.

"I'd really like to be a writer," I said to him.

"I'm not saying you can't, but you need to major in something we can invest in. Literature is a bad investment for this endowment."

"What does that mean?"

"It means, Eric, that if you major in literature, I'll stop funding your scholarship."

Hells on a stick, that got my attention. I was a poor white boy scraping through college on scholarships and work-study and loans. If I lost the scholarship, it was game-over.

The word FUCK went through my mind, but I didn't say it. I knew he was bluffing, and he was bluffing (I assume), but I got the point.

"All right," I said. "What should I major in?"

"Have you thought about engineering?"

I left the bank, and I left town, and I drove home. Home was Austin since I stayed, keeping my job, and so I went back to Austin and up to my brand-new adviser and said, "I can't do literature. I have to change my major."

I can't even remember if the adviser was a he or a she. It only lasted a couple of weeks, such a short-lived and fucking BEAUTIFUL relationship. I felt for those few weeks like I had wrapped God around my finger and He was doing MY bidding.

One of my senior gifts, from high school, was from my Aunt, the one I consider the grandmotherest of my relatives. She bought me a Brother Word Processor. I wrote this story for her and she was kind enough to tell me it was a great story. I don't remember what all I wrote on that thing, but you had to write a paragraph and then print it, something like that. You couldn't write but maybe 500 words at a time, but at least you could edit before you typed. I went through a lot of ribbon and I have no idea what I wrote, but I fucking wrote by God.

I lugged that thing up to college my Freshman year, left my drum set at home but I took my Brother Word Processor, and I banged on it every once in a while. I submitted to Playboy. They turned me down, which didn't surprise me, because like any good writer, I know and accept that I SUCK.

I hacked my way through that Freshman year in Austin, and at the end of it knew science was a good gig and all, but it was the Brother Word Processor that I looked forward to, not my HP calculator.

I was tried and tested, and I found my gig. It wasn't math. It was writing. It always was writing. Always from the beginning of always, and when the teachers read my story, or the girls passed around my stories, or people cried when I wrote, there I was with God on my finger again, a white-robed ringlet nodding up at me saying, "That's what I created these fingers for, boy. That's what I created you for!"

And I get to the bank and the scholarship benefactor, and I'm told it just isn't the right thing, forget your talking finger-God.

So I said FUCK YALL! and dropped my Lit major. Romeo just dumped Julie, baby! End of story!

I had already scoped out Chemistry, Organic Chemistry (which I loved, but didn't want to major in it), Biology, Zoology, and the other softer sciences.

So I went a few buildings down on campus and rang up the math prof. We talked about actuarial science, which is statistics and I still love statistics, but I didn't want to major in it. It sounded too easy, actually, and I was good at math, by God, I needed to use my talent, not squander it analyzing stats for insurance companies!

I tried physics, but that science has always seemed somewhat impractical to me. You learn so much about things that may or may not be true, that you probably can't prove, that nobody will believe, that are untrue not long after you learn them, but trust me, there really are black holes we just can't see them. I'm a PHYSICIST, BY GOD! I JUST SHAVED SHRODINGER'S CAT WITH OCCUM'S RAZOR!

Yeah, whatever.

So I went over to the engineering department. Civil, Mechanical, Aeronautical (one of my current characters is an Aero Eng), they didn't sound tough enough, and so I kept on a-moving.

I finally whittled it down to two majors: Electrical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.

Me and electricity never have been tight, but my whole family is in the oil field, so I chose Chemical Engineering.

Plus, everyone said Electrical and Chemical Engineering were the hardest majors on campus, and to be honest, the EEs at work still raise their eyebrows when I tell them I'm a Chem E, sort of a Holy Shit look, and then they expand my personal space a few feet.

I figured Chemical Engineering would suffice, and it would use my aforementioned God-given math skills to my benefactor's liking, and so I called him up, told him of my change in major, and he said, "That's more like it."

"Fuck yeah, it is!" I didn't say that, but I thought it.

And so here I am, a Chemical Engineer who has NEVER quit writing.

I am a writer. I always tell people that first, after a father I am a writer. I work days as an engineer, but I am a WRITER.

And when I saw that scene in the Rowling story, where her dad said, "Writing is too impractical. You're too smart. You should major in something like math."

Man, I broke down and dabbed my eyes with the Pomeranian's belly. They only have eight nipples, you know, not ten like big dogs, or at least that's all I could find on her and I just checked again.

Anyway, we've all had those moments, haven't we, where people say, DON'T BE A WRITER!

"Sure," they say, "go ahead and write. I love your stories and all, but don't quit your day job."

Even writers say that. Family, friends, everyone.

Because that would be so impractical, wouldn't it. People don't even read anymore.

How about you? Have you ever been discouraged from being a writer? Do you have God on your finger, or is He shaking his head because you are doing something you were not meant to do?

Thank you for reading this post. It was somewhat of a torrent for me.

And don't quit writing. For the love of finger-loving God, don't quit writing. Not now, not ever.


- Eric

Have you met Mr. MacGuffin?

(Image from http://www.macguffinpodcast.com/)

I learned something recently when my publisher beta-read my piece and said this:

"The MacGuffin side story about other Percy needs to be seen and not talked about."

Now that sentence didn't make a bit of sense and I had to look up MacGuffin. I thought it meant buffoon or prankster or some such, which still didn't make sense.

Here is what Wiki says about Mr. MacGuffin:

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

I always called Mr. MacGuffin my story question, the thing that propelled the reader from the beginning to the middle and on to the end.

As Wiki said, Mr. MacGuffin is that Maltese Falcon of your story, that thing everyone is focused around obtaining.

I've been intuitively adding MacGuffins to my stories, but now I have a name for him!

Or her. Or it.

In this case, my latest story, working title Out of the Great Black Nothing, I have the MacGuffin of the other Percy.

With that in mind, I beefed up my first scene and added scenes and inserted details here and there.

I put a name on my story question and it jumped to life! I feel like Shelley's Dr. Frank when he finally bottled lighting.

Until I put a NAME on it, the MacGuffin had no face, no identity, just an implied existence that I found hard to press under my thumb and make it BEG to be read.

I rotated my story around this point, the story question, that thing driving every character in the story to act the way they act. It is the central motivation, that ~thing~, the piece of Kryptonite, the Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth, that mystery and tickle and itch that every character is killing to scratch! It is the propulsion that keeps the reader turning!

It is the MacGuffin.

Thanks to my publisher Mr. Debrin Case for educating me and introducing me to a term I had somehow all these years overlooked.

I now share that knowledge with you, in case you missed.

He extends his hand, Mr. MacGuffin. Take it. He's a good guy.

- Eric

Asking WHY: A Vampire's Dichotomy

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the difference between smart and genius is the asking of WHY.

Why why why.

Smart people know how to do something. It's the genius who understands why it's done that way.

So I've been wondering why it is that vampires are the sensual monsters, the sexual killers. They suck your blood and that's downright gruesome, but for some reason we still want to schlep em.

And my why-thinking has brought me to this, which may not be all that original of a thought, but it's where I arrived. Vampires are sexy murderers owing to their dichotomous nature.

See, the vampire kills you, but gently. That's a contradiction. Many times the male (historically the vamps are overwhelmingly male) seems downright gentlemanly. Ma'am, he says, I would like to please suck your blood.

He then takes the woman in his arms, kisses her a few minutes, and then sticks his fangs in her carotid and gets his rut.

But it goes deeper than that, which is where I think most people stop.

See, the vamp also has fangs. They're sharp and gruesome. Werewolves and all sorts of monsters have fangs, and even for the vamp the fangs are intimidating, scary, and always at the fright-scene the vamp reveals the fangs before the scream.

But unlike most monsters -- say, a werewolf with its hairy maw, or the freak-monsters with its gruesome visage -- the vampire's fangs are housed in a succulent mouth, perky lips, inside a beautiful face.

Do you see the dichotomy there? Terror inside beauty.

It's the same with their claws, which the vamp usually grows as demanded by need. Sharp claws, but soft hands and gentle fingers.

Total dichotomy.

They remain young and beautiful in many renditions, and in other manifestations are allowed to morph between beauty and beast.

Often the bad-guy vamp, if there is one, is old, wrinkled, and sexually undesirable. Why do we do this, authors I mean, why do we make him (usually a him-vamp king) so old and wrinkled and gnarly?

It's to remove the beauty of him, to make him undesirable, to squash that dichotomous nature and make him all monster and no beauty.

Now where am I going with all this? I've been thinking of vamp-whys for a while, now, because I want to create a monster like a vampire, but who is not a vampire. I want the desirability and sexual attraction invoked by the vampire myth, but for my own unique monster, my own creation. Nobody wants to mount and ride Frankenstein's jock.

But what if Frank had been built from perfect body parts and groomed to be a gentleman?

See how that works? Even Hannibal Lector in his grotesque insanity maintained a strong sex appeal, with his understanding of Claire and his succulent and classical high-class behavior.

Me, I'm making women-monsters. I look back at my work and see sexually desirable women doing much of my killing. Weird how that works, a man's mind bent on finding the perfect villain, that perfect spider who satisfies and eats me afterward.


- Eric

First Final Draft Complete!

Ah, I am ending the blogatus. Hiatus. That's what I mean. A hiatus to blogging, a blogatus, get it?

I've been focused on work, baby, work, wife, work, kids, writing, work, house, vacation, and work.

Holy crap. Even on vacation I have to work. I'm working right now, and then off this weekend on another short jog into Oklahoma to drop off my boy at summer camp.

But but but but BUT!

But I finished my first final draft. It is actually the 5th version of the completed text, and the 18th version overall.

Now it's in for edit, and the revisions will increase all the more. I've looked at that piece so many times I think I hate it now. Watch the same movie twenty times in a row. That's how it feels. Ugh. A break will be nice.

I hope to visit your blogs soon. I miss everyone and as always regret the neglect. I hope summer finds you all well and good.

By the way, I am at present at a trade show, in my lonely booth, alone, drinking some free beer and abusing the free wireless access. That's how I roll.


- Eric