just shut up and write

I’m in my pajamas (the most comfortable pieces of clothing known to man) and sitting in front of my computer to write. I’ve decided to take care of a few things, to go back to square one and find something I’ve misplaced. I’m going back to the basics, to just writing for the sake of writing. Well, as it happens, I’ve come across a random link that took me to another and another (needless to say, I was caught up in another productivity-eating Internet vortex of doom) and ended up in Chuck Wendig’s website, TerribleMinds.

Chuck Wendig is the author of delightfully twisted books like Blackbirds, Double Dead, and Mockingbird. He also writes short stories which he gives away as Totally Free Shit.

In said website, Wendig dispenses writing advice that definitely perked me up on a particularly shitty night. Here are the parts that felt like somebody with cleats is repeatedly dropkicking me in the face while another douche is punching at the general area of my kidneys:

(If you want the complete version without any annoying side comments from me, check it out here: The 25 Things I Want to Say to So-Called “Aspiring” Writers.)

1. No More Aspiring, Dingbats

Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It’s as ludicrous as saying, “I aspire to pick up that piece of paper that fell on the floor.” Either pick it up or don’t. I don’t want to hear about how your diaper’s full. Take it off or stop talking about it.

This is why I’m in my pajamas. In front of my computer. Writing.

6. Yes, It Always Feels This Way

You will always have days when you feel like an amateur. When it feels like everybody else is better than you. You will have this nagging suspicion that someone will eventually find you out, call you on your bullshit, realize you’re the literary equivalent of a vagrant painting on the side of a wall with a piece of calcified poop. You will have days when the blank page is like being lost in a blizzard. You will sometimes hate what you wrote today, or yesterday, or ten years ago. Bad days are part of the package. You just have to shut them out, swaddle your head in tinfoil, and keep writing anyway.

I’ve always had this Emperor’s New Clothes feeling, waiting for somebody to finally point out that… What he said. Learning that I’m not the only one with this near-psychotic paranoia makes me feel a whole lot better. And yeah, I need to know how to make a tinfoil turban.

8. Finish Your Shit

I’m just going to type this out a dozen times so it’s clear: finish your shit. Finish your shit. Finish your shit.Finish your shit. Finish your shit. Finish your shit! FINISH YOUR SHIT. Finish. Your. Shit. Fiiiiniiiish yooooour shiiiiit. COMPLETO EL POOPO. Vervollständigen Sie Ihre Fäkalien! Finish your shit.

In the vernacular, tapusin ang iyong tae [citation required]. Kidding aside though, I’d have been caught, charged, and sentenced to rot (having pled guilty or having had lame excuses), had this been a law. I procrastinate, lose interest, and sometimes, downright forget. So yeah, finish thine shit I shall.

11. What I Mean By Rules Is –

Writing is a technical skill. A craft. You can argue that storytelling is an art. You can argue that art emerges from good writing the way a dolphin riding a jet-ski emerges the longer you stare at a Magic Eye painting. But don’t get ahead of yourself, hoss. You still need to know how to communicate. You need to learn the laws of this maddening land. I’ve seen too many authors want to jump ahead of the skill and just start telling stories — you ever try to get ahead of your own skill level? I used to imagine pictures in my head and I’d try to paint them in watercolor and they’d end up looking like someone barfed up watery yogurt onto the canvas. I’d rail against this: WHY DON’T THEY LOOK BEAUTIFUL? Uhh, because you don’t know how to actually paint, dumb-fuck. You cannot exert your talent unless you first have the skill to bolster that talent.

Exactly.

12. Oh, The Salad Days Of College!

Why are the days of our youth known as “salad days?” Is “salad” really the image that conjures up the wild and fruitful times of our adolescence? “Fritos,” maybe. Or “Beer keg.” I dunno. What were we talking about? Ah! Yes. College. Do you need it? Do you need a collegiate education, Young Aspirant to the Penmonkey Order? Need, no. To get published nobody gives a flying rat penis whether or not you have a degree. They just care that you can write. Now, college and even post-grad work may help you become a better writer — it did for me! — though, I’d argue that the money you throw into the tank getting there may have been better spent on feeding yourself while you just learn how to write in whatever mousetrap you call a domicile. You can only learn so much from someone teaching you how to write. Eventually you just have to write.

This means a lot to me. The lack of collegiate education aside,

20. Your Jealousy And Depression Do Not Matter

All writers get down on themselves. It’s in our wheelhouse. We see other writers being successful and at first we’re all like, “Yay, good for that person!” but then ten minutes later we get this sniper’s bullet of envy and this poison feeling shoots through the center of our brain like a railroad spike: BUT WHY NOT ME? And then we go take a bath with a toaster. Fuck that. Those feelings don’t matter. They don’t help you. They may be normal, they may be natural, but they’re not useful and they’re certainly not interesting.

Oh yes, the debilitating depression of writing. This I know all too well, and it’s something my friends have come to know quite intimately. This is sometimes called whining – I don’t like it, and neither do my friends, bless their patient hearts, and I try to keep it to a minimum. Some of the time, at least.

23. Learn To Take A Punch

Agents, editors, reviewers, readers, trolls on the Internet, they’re going to say things you don’t want to hear. A thick skin isn’t enough. You need a leathery carapace. A chitinous exoskeleton. Writing is a hard-knock career where you invite a bevy of slings and arrows into your face and heart. It is what it is.

I like to believe that this is why I went into boxing (it may have been to learn how to throw a punch, but you learn how to take a punch somewhere in between too so mission accomplished either way!).

 

So yeah. I’ve been properly reschooled in finishing my shit, taking punches, and the pointlessness of depression, I will now shut up and write.