Michael Grant's Blog - Posts Tagged "i-don-t-know-what-tag-to-use"
Bluff Your Book
I've written or co-written a big pile of books. Most of them are in series, sometimes quite long series. ANIMORPHS was about 10,000 pages. GONE about 3,000. So I'm generally involved in writing some big, long, involved narrative which is supposed to come together in each book, then make sense overall. I don't always hit that mark, but I do more often than not. So you might begin to suspect that I know what I'm doing.
I do not. At least not at any conscious level where I could sort of outline my notions of how a book or a series is constructed. I only did a semester of college and at that point life was all about getting baked and trying to get girls to like me, so, zero writing classes. Don't get me wrong, I do kinda, sorta wish I knew the theory of it all, but at the same time I'm more glad I didn't. I think you're either a person who reads the IKEA instructions or you're the kind of person who thinks 'Hell, I got this.' I always think I got this. If I were on a plane and the flight attendant announced the pilots were dead and asked for volunteers who thought they might just be able to land a 747, I'm just the kind of dumbass who would raise his hand.
And I would land the damn plane.
No, I wouldn't.
But. . . maybe.
See, that's the kind of arrogance you cannot learn from a book. My writer friend Andrew Smith applies the word 'swagger' to me with some frequency. A former girlfriend used to complain that I would always burst into any room like I expected all conversation to stop. Katherine (Applegate) says that everything I say comes out sounding like the voice of God. It's a very useful trick. Well, not to use on her, she actually knows me and whatever act I put on she's a tough, tough audience. Very low susceptibility to bullshit, that woman.
When Katherine first said we suggested we should give up our exciting careers in home and office cleaning and become writers, I immediately agreed, and immediately assumed I could do it. I was a 34 year old ex-criminal, a high school drop-out, cleaning people's toilets on Cape Cod and I thought, "Become a writer? Eh. Why not?" Some might describe that kind of thinking in polysyllabic psychological terms meant to step carefully around the word, "crazy."
But here's the thing: it worked.
The Catholics have this idea that when your faith goes through a rough patch you should continue acting as if you had faith. Fake it till you make it. I don't know of any statistics that can tell us whether more people fail while faking it, or whether more people fail because they never get the nerve to even try. But I think we all intuit that it's the latter. The two great killers of writing ambition are lack of talent and lack of confidence. If you don't have talent as a writer, well, find some other talent to exploit. Or just learn and work and be a decent human being, you know, one of the people who actually keep the world turning. But if you think you have some talent, and you want to give writing a try, and what's stopping you is lack of swagger, that's just sad.
Michael Grant's helpful advice for fear: Whatever you're afraid of, carry the narrative forward in your head. Explore the possible outcomes. Rank them by probability. Exclude the insane ones: there will be no zombies. And now look at what you have left, your list of 'what's the worst that could happen?' See that list? Is there anything on that list that's going to kill or maim you? Is everything on that list, however unpleasant, survivable? Then quit sniveling, you big baby.
Here's the worst that can happen to you if you want to write, and want to get published: they can say, "No." That's it. Publishers do not send hit squads around to your house. They say, "Nope," and you do a bit of cursing, and indulge in a cocktail of hatred and self-loathing, and then an actual cocktail or six,* and guess what? You're not in Aleppo with barrel bombs dropping on you, are you, so STFU.
If you want to do it, take the chance. If it works, excellent. If it doesn't work after giving it a good try, well, as a wise fellow waiter (yes, waiter not writer) once told me long ago, "Sometimes you just take your beating."
* a) If underage donuts work just as well and, b) if you're under age and you're already giving up, maybe just a wee bit more tenacity?
I do not. At least not at any conscious level where I could sort of outline my notions of how a book or a series is constructed. I only did a semester of college and at that point life was all about getting baked and trying to get girls to like me, so, zero writing classes. Don't get me wrong, I do kinda, sorta wish I knew the theory of it all, but at the same time I'm more glad I didn't. I think you're either a person who reads the IKEA instructions or you're the kind of person who thinks 'Hell, I got this.' I always think I got this. If I were on a plane and the flight attendant announced the pilots were dead and asked for volunteers who thought they might just be able to land a 747, I'm just the kind of dumbass who would raise his hand.
And I would land the damn plane.
No, I wouldn't.
But. . . maybe.
See, that's the kind of arrogance you cannot learn from a book. My writer friend Andrew Smith applies the word 'swagger' to me with some frequency. A former girlfriend used to complain that I would always burst into any room like I expected all conversation to stop. Katherine (Applegate) says that everything I say comes out sounding like the voice of God. It's a very useful trick. Well, not to use on her, she actually knows me and whatever act I put on she's a tough, tough audience. Very low susceptibility to bullshit, that woman.
When Katherine first said we suggested we should give up our exciting careers in home and office cleaning and become writers, I immediately agreed, and immediately assumed I could do it. I was a 34 year old ex-criminal, a high school drop-out, cleaning people's toilets on Cape Cod and I thought, "Become a writer? Eh. Why not?" Some might describe that kind of thinking in polysyllabic psychological terms meant to step carefully around the word, "crazy."
But here's the thing: it worked.
The Catholics have this idea that when your faith goes through a rough patch you should continue acting as if you had faith. Fake it till you make it. I don't know of any statistics that can tell us whether more people fail while faking it, or whether more people fail because they never get the nerve to even try. But I think we all intuit that it's the latter. The two great killers of writing ambition are lack of talent and lack of confidence. If you don't have talent as a writer, well, find some other talent to exploit. Or just learn and work and be a decent human being, you know, one of the people who actually keep the world turning. But if you think you have some talent, and you want to give writing a try, and what's stopping you is lack of swagger, that's just sad.
Michael Grant's helpful advice for fear: Whatever you're afraid of, carry the narrative forward in your head. Explore the possible outcomes. Rank them by probability. Exclude the insane ones: there will be no zombies. And now look at what you have left, your list of 'what's the worst that could happen?' See that list? Is there anything on that list that's going to kill or maim you? Is everything on that list, however unpleasant, survivable? Then quit sniveling, you big baby.
Here's the worst that can happen to you if you want to write, and want to get published: they can say, "No." That's it. Publishers do not send hit squads around to your house. They say, "Nope," and you do a bit of cursing, and indulge in a cocktail of hatred and self-loathing, and then an actual cocktail or six,* and guess what? You're not in Aleppo with barrel bombs dropping on you, are you, so STFU.
If you want to do it, take the chance. If it works, excellent. If it doesn't work after giving it a good try, well, as a wise fellow waiter (yes, waiter not writer) once told me long ago, "Sometimes you just take your beating."
* a) If underage donuts work just as well and, b) if you're under age and you're already giving up, maybe just a wee bit more tenacity?
