The Witch's Brew- The Writer and the Living Dead, Part Two of Four

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds..."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius. I like the way it rolls out. Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius."  Wile E. Coyote

*****

Sometimes you just have to scrape them off the windshield.

Zombie writers.

The ones who shuffle mindlessly down the street with nowhere particular to go and the only word they can spell correctly is "hungry."

But they should have seen it coming.  This reporter saw it coming.  Writer's rear ends are getting much larger.

They drank the witch's brew, the one labeled "I don't have to leave this chair.  Google will save me."  So now they wander the literary streets wondering why their writing doesn't ring true.  Doesn't sound authentic.  Sounds kind of like it was made up.  Actually, it was made up.

Worse yet, Hemingway was right.  People that never leave their writer's chairs get kind of big on the back end.

"This is great," one zombie-ized writer told me.  "I can write stories that happen anywhere in the world.  I don't have to travel, I just use Google Earth."

She asked to remain anonymous, so I'm leaving her name out of this interview so I can blackmail her later.  I mean use it to advantage later.  I hope she doesn't read this.

"But do you truly get a feel for that country?"  I asked.   "Enough for your reader's to trust you?  To allow you the convincing narrative authority enabling them to suspend their disbelief and enter completely into your story?  And do you have to keep eating Doritos while we talk?  Don't they have a million calories per bag?"

She twirled a wild lock of red hair and smiled.

"Honey, most of my readers watch Keeping up with the Kardashians.  The rest of them actually don't believe Dancing with the Stars is rigged.  And I can eat all the Doritos I want, dear.  I just ordered the Brazilian Butt Makeover so calories don't count.  It said so on the infomercial."

"You don't seem to like your readers," I observed.  "You get all the information in your books from Google and infomercials.  Is that why you have a Ginsu knife as the murder weapon in one of your murder mysteries?"

"I love my readers.  My readers worship me."

"But you don't really go out and experience life so that you have something to share with them.  How can they trust you with matters of emotional truth if you don't really have a life?  You never seem to leave your computer chair.  Aren't you just recycling third party information?  Why don't you get up from your chair and see and smell the towns you're writing about and talk to the people you're writing about?"

She actually recoiled in her chair.  I felt terrible.  Clearly I'd reminded her of past experiences, where she actually saw her friends instead of Facebooked them.  Times when she actually walked city streets to know what they were like.  Those were the days when she knew the nuantial difference between the word "mean" as it was used in "mean city streets" and as a participating adjective in the movie title "Mean Girls."

I was about to apologize when I saw her on Facebook cutting and pasting conversations.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Collecting dialogue for my next book," she said vaguely.

"You don't write your own dialogue?  You cut and paste it from Facebook conversations?  You have no feelings, no writer's heart.  You can't write about reality," I screamed,  "if your only reality comes from a computer monitor.  Dialogue should come from your created character's heart!"

Without looking up she said, "You get some good dialogue off of Twitter sometimes, but you've got to really look hard."

I left the interview with a journalistic epiphany- when zombie-ized writers throw themselves against the windshield of your life, this journalist says to just keep driving. 

Sex and the Writer- Part Two of Five

You have to have it if you want to write.

It's hard to find because it's hiding somewhere between cliche and moral blindness.  But you have to have it.  You really have to want something.  You have to lust after someone or something in order for people to want to read what you write.  It's that simple.

Lust puts us in motion.  We have to move to get want we want.  We have to move to be interesting.

Lust keeps us focused.  

Really, you can only lust after one thing at a time.  Multi-tasking is a myth for writers.  A writer can "what if" their story to death.  What if this, what if that?  What if we just stay on point and tell the story?  But writers are creative.  After all, we're just making this stuff up.  So how do we keep the story on track?

Lust takes care of that.

Lust prioritizes.

Have you ever videotaped yourself while you're writing?  Do you  seem consumed with passion when you type?  Does your intensity threaten to melt your keyboard?

Or do you look boring?  Maybe you are bored.  Maybe you're writing the way you do when you you're having sex while watching television over your partner's shoulder.

Maybe you don't really love your story.  Maybe you aren't really obsessed with bringing your characters to life.  Maybe they aren't really your friends and lovers or enemies.

You could use a little lust in your writing life.

Your story could, too.

New Cover Art

Here's the new cover for "Tainted Blood."  What do you think?

Steampunk & "The Ghost Box"

My new book "The Ghost Box" is ready for print layout and cover design, for a release date early next spring.  I don't know how many books a year the rest of you write, but two or three is quite enough for me, I think!  James Patterson produces an average of 230 books per year, but I believe in all honesty that he is not a human being, but an organized work farm of alien laborers from the planet Profit.

I'd love to hear from the rest of you what your average yearly word count is.

The  covers a mixture of three genres- Steampunk, Paranormal and Science Fiction.  Maybe we should call it "Dark Urban Fantasy" and leave it at that.

"The White Death" is well underway, and is a mixture of Steampunk, Lovecraft, and Science Fiction.  A seatbelt is required when reading the book.

Next year, though, I'm sticking with one genre category per book.  How about you?

"So You Want to Write a Novel"- a Masterwork by dwkazzie

The Best Discussion on Being a Writer Ever

(Wish I'd Written This, but Hat's Off to You

dwkazzie, Whoever You Are!)