Category: Writing Advice – Business & the Writing Life

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

This Is My Goddamn Mountain

I want to write a story that hits you like a shiv to the gut. I want to get inside your head and fuck with your shit. I want to take a thing that seems familiar and make it seem weird and new. I want to finish this story; this novella; this book. I want to do better, creatively, professionally, strategically. I want to figure out this blogging things and deliver better content here. I want to get more stuff out there. I want to do more with the stuff I’ve already written. I want to write a bunch of stuff I haven’t had a chance to write yet: a comic book; a short-story collection; a whole host of story ideas on my hard drive. A whole bunch of novels that I still don’t quite know how to pull off. I want to walk into a bookstore and see a bunch of books with my name on it on the

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

There Is Nothing Surprising About a Writer Getting Rejected (Even JK Rowling)

THE SET-UP STAGE ONE: JK Rowling releases some of her rejection letters from the Robert Galbrath books via twitter. STAGE TWO: Bloggers and journalists everywhere write articles and posts about this, because pretty much anything Rowling does is news these days. She’s JK-Fucking-Rowling, after all. STAGE THREE: Every fucker everywhere starts talking about extraordinary it is that JK-Fucking-Rowling – one of the best-selling novelists of all time – still collects rejection letters. STAGE FOUR: I lose my fucking mind and plots a world tour where I can visit every writer who used such a phrase and shake them by the neck while screaming “NO. IT. FUCKING. ISN’T.” until they swear they will never do it again. THE ARGUMENT: THERE IS NOTHING EXTRAORDINARY ABOUT REJECTION Not mine. Not yours. Not JK Rowling (particularly not when she’s writing as Robert Galbrath and no-one knows yet). We want it to be news because, as a culture, we’d like to believe that extraordinary talent will conquer

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

In Search of a Deliberate Error

Still waiting on the laptop to come back from repairs, which means my internet access is largely dependent on an old desktop and the wifi hotspot on my phone. It’s been ten days, which means we’re heading into the outer limits of the time I was quoted. Were I the kind of guy who believed such quotes, I would estimate that I’m back online (and blogging regularly) towards the middle of next week. Because I know my history with computers, I figure it will be me and the phone for another week or two. at the very least. Still, one of the advantages of being laptop free is that I’m catching up on a whole bunch of reading. I spend a lot more time with a tablet while the computer is out of commission, which means it’s relatively easy to slip into the Kindle app and catch up on some of the ebooks I accumulate for travel reading. This week’s reading is

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

How to Get the Most out of a SF Con as an (Introverted) Emerging Writer

Around this time last week, I suggested rather strongly that if you were a SF type – and particularly an SF writer – you might want to consider registering for the Australian National Science Fiction Convention being held in Brisbane over the Easter long weekend. Some of you, being astute types, may have glanced at the website and wondered to yourself why, exactly, is this event full of fans useful to me as a writer? It’s basically just people getting together to talk about the books, films, and TV shows they love? How am I going to get something out of that to advance my writing career? Peeps, I’ve got your back. First, it’s important to understand how closely tied the writing and fandom community is in SF. A lot of great SF writers came out of the fan culture of the fifties, sixties, and seventies to become prominent names in the field. They’re still the place where new and

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

The Unenviable Hell of a Bad Breakfast

The Dancing Monkey 2016 request continues, with a topic that is near and dear to my heart: THE UNENVIABLE HELL OF A BAD BREAKFAST I am old enough to remember a time when Australia wasn’t a breakfast culture. ‘Course, I am old enough to remember a time when the arrival of McDonalds upon our shores was a big deal, and a time when a cappuccino was a fancy-ass coffee. We’ve grown up, in the last thirty years or so, and somewhere along the line we became the folks who are all about our goddamn breakfast. Try to get a group of friends together for dinner, in Australia, and you will have an endless array of maybes and alternate dates, everyone hedging their bets. Break out: “Meet me for breaky somewhere?” BOOM. Everyone is all fucking in. It helps that our cafes got really good at breakfast and coffee over the last twenty years. I can think of three cafes within walking distance

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Let Us Talk About The Ways You Finish Your Stories

So, back on Monday, I was all thou shalt not be a dude who learns to play the opening of Stairway to Heaven. Go forth and finish your shit. That was in response to Elizabeth’s suggested topic for the 2016 Dancing Monkey series. Today we look at that idea in more detail, courtesy of a request from the inimitable Lois Spangler. Her requested topic: Finishing a thing (project, story, etc.) Right then, let’s get into the guts of it, and talk about actually finishing things. ONE: DEFINE “FINISHED” Not a facetious question, and I’m not trying to be cute. If you’re struggling to get things finished, perhaps it’s time to sit down and figure out what finished really means in this context. More importantly, whether your concept of “finished” is getting in your way. Here is the thing about creative-types: we have this tendency to take something minor that needs to be done, then subconsciously extrapolate outwards to a point

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

You Track Your Submissions (and Rights) Because Its Good Business

Yesterday I posted about tracking your unfinished work and the major advantage that comes from taking a story all the way through to the end. Today I handle the other half of Elizabeth @ Earl Grey Editing’s query: TRACKING YOUR SUBMISSION (AND YOUR RIGHTS) Tracking your unfinished works is a personal decision. No-one is going to care if you just shove all your work into a folder and forget about it, and it’s not going to affect anyone but you. You do it because it makes life easier. Tracking your submissions, on the other hand, is a core requirement of the writers business, particularly at the earliest stages of your career when you’re doing things on spec. Basically, this one is non-optional if you’re writing to have a career. When you submit a story or a novel, you record where it’s gone (ie the magazine and publisher) and when you sent it. When they send you a response – positive

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

You Track Unfinished Drafts to Make Them Finished Drafts

Today we kick off the 2016 Dancing Monkey series, where I post a series of updates based upon requests from you, the loyal Man vs. Bear audience, about specific topics and themes to cover the fact that I have absconded to parts unknown and have no internet access. We kick off with one of the last topics requested, because it turns out it was the easiest to answer: Elizabeth @ Earl Grey Editing asked me to talk about tracking stories, both finished and unfinished.This is one of those topics that will get split in two, because I have thoughts and opinions and a tendency to write a whole lot of words. YOU NEED TO TRACK (AND FINISH) YOUR UNFINISHED WORK If I’m honest, the system you use doesn’t matter. Notebooks. Excel spreadsheets. Lining up files in a folder on your computer, or a filing cabinet packed to the gills with drafts and finished folder. I’ll talk through my process towards

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Low Pressure Creative Projects

Of all the processes I was dubious about, when it came to applying the principles of Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative to my writing, the idea of Unnecessary Creating was the top of the list. The idea behind it seemed so inherently counter-intuitive – when you look at your work week and plot out the things that need to be done, spend an hour every week working on an Unnecessary Creating project that has no deadline and no paid component. Basically, even if your job is getting paid for your art or creation, do a little extra that is just for you. Something that puts you in touch with the passions that fuel your work, and disconnects you from your creative edge. A place where you can try new things, develop new skills, explore fringe ideas, and take as long as you need to get it right. If you’re interested, this blog post and this podcast on the Accidental Creative website talk about

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

How Do You Know When It’s Been a Good Day at the Word Mines?

The title is not a rhetorical question – as I track my writing hours and achievements over the course of 2016, the question of what constitutes a good day is starting to become intriguing. I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week. When I started this year, I had a rough goal I wanted to hit: six new pages in the notebook a day, on average, so I would have time to do other things. Some of those things were writing related – redrafting, managing email, blogging here – and some just in terms of having a life. Doing my laundry regularly would be a welcome change. Six pages a day, on average. It might not sound like much, but it adds up to nine notebooks worth of writing a year, which in turns adds up to four novel drafts and change. I was happy with that goal in January. Forty-six days later, it has fallen by the wayside. Not because I’m

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

When in Doubt, Maslow the Fuck Out of Your Creative Process

ONE: MASLOW THE FUCK OUT OF IT My friend Laura Goodin has a saying: Maslow the fuck out of it. Actually, that could be a lie. She has something similar to this, but I can’t remember if I’m inserting the profanity or the profanity was there when she deployed it in our most recent conversations.  If I’m wrong, the intent was definitely something close, and I will owe Laura a beer and an apology. Life would be much easier if I actually copied down the interesting things my friends said, exactly, on the basis that I will one day want to write a blog post around their adages. But for our purposes, lets go with this. Laura Goodin has this saying: Maslow the fuck out of it. Near as I can gather, the saying come from her years working with emergency services, where she would train new recruits in the best way to respond to a crisis. When in doubt, work your

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Ambition and Creative Angst

Let’s not dance around this fact: there are works I have out there, in publishing land, that I am less proud of than others. No, I will not tell you which ones. No, I will not confirm your guesses. No, it’s probably not the work you’re thinking about. In public, you try not to denigrate your work. For one, it’s stupid to tell people, well this, it’s not my best, is it? For two, it’s stupid to tell someone who likes that work, well, you’re kind of a sucker for liking it, ain’t you? People like what they like. When they like your work, you shut your bloody mouth and say thank you, like a grateful person should when they’re getting paid to make bloody art. But still, those works exist. Occasionally, in the company of other writers and artists, you will venture so far as to mention your fear that what you’re doing right now is shit, or that what you’ve done in the