Write Good or Die
Above my desk is a post-it that reads "Write Good or Die". It's been there for years now. Even when we move house, I box it up and stick it up once we've unpacked. The stickiness on the post-it is long gone. I think I stole the phrase from a book on writing I once read.
Lately I've been thinking that the phrase is wrong. Trying to 'write good' is a mugs game. It's not how it's done. I'm thinking it should read something more like "Write Lots or Die" or even just "Write". The unsaid implication with the last one being 'stop wasting time and just get on with what you need to do.'
I think a lot about writing. Probably more than I end up writing. And so The Author Is Dumb has been birthed. Why this newsletter is called The Author Is Dumb? Well, that's for next time.
I started writing when I was a kid. Long before I ever had a laptop. Long before I ever had to worry about working a day job and making ends meet. I remember being in second grade and having a teacher tell us we needed to write a two page story after we had gone on a field trip. A whole two pages, which as a 7 year old is just about the most daunting thing ever.
That night I sat down and the words just poured out of me. I didn't know it at the time but little 7 year old me had hit flow. I ended up with 12 pages. Of course, we're talking 12 pages in the handwriting of a 7 year old so it was probably all of about 3 dozen words.
I didn't realise at the time that writing was rewriting (we'll get there). Or that when it comes to assignments you should probably try and hit the word/page limit (this would continue to be something I could never get away from, much to the chagrin of my lecturers when I was doing my Masters). No. I felt alive. In a way that I hadn't until then.
So I handed it in and I got a great mark (as much as marks are a thing in second grade). I was a writer now. It’s what I told all the adults around me that I was going to be when I grew up.
Over time, that changed slightly. At various points I wanted to be a filmmaker (no one reads anymore they said). I still kept up with the writing though - who doesn’t love a writer-director? I wrote novels and novellas (variously described as boring and offensive and funny, which is a niche if nothing else). I wrote articles.
What I realised was that there are a lot of people that will tell you they can teach you to write but not many (if any) that actually can. Thing is, a lot of what people talk about when they say they're teaching you to write is just process.
I used to love reading interviews with authors in the Paris Review. I thought (as do/did many others) that if you listen to enough authors talk about their craft that by osmosis or some sorcery, I could become like them.
Thing is, knowing that Balzac wrote standing up for 3 hours at a time after spending half an hour crammed into a suitcase to, you know, get into the right headspace... that doesn't actually teach you anything about writing. For sure, you could mimic the process but that doesn't tell you anything about the work.
Which is a flippant way of saying that you show me someone that tells you they can teach you how to write and I show you someone that is a charlatan or delusional. Which is, I guess, somewhat flippant also.
So if you're here thinking that I'm going to get you from not having written anything to selling a million books a year, then you may as well unsubscribe. Hell, if I knew how to sell a million books a year (even if it was some devalued kindle thing where I was making $0.66 a book) then I wouldn't be here either.
Instead, The Author Is Dumb is going to be your weekly-ish refuge where we can discuss the writing game. Sure, there will be some level of mechanics that I talk about. Structure is never a bad thing to know about. There'll be stuff about character and world building. I'm not a huge fan of writing prompts but there will be writing exercises – there probably isn't much point in any of this if we aren't endeavouring to write a lot more and think about how we're writing.
I'll talk about publishing and markets. In my day job I'm a data analyst (currently, I used to interpret legislation for a living, what can I say, we all contain multitudes), so there will probably be some math involved when those subjects come up.
Beyond those building blocks, there may be other topics we cover. I used to be a film critic, so don't be surprised if film comes up. I think US politics is the ultimate bloodsport, but I'll try and stay away from covering that as much as I can. In my spare time I use open datasets to map out conflict events, which is a serious downer and probably best left to other newsletters.
What will definitely come up is Lunch Eater. That's the book I'm working on at the moment. I'm going to try something new with that. It's not uncommon for authors these days to serialise their works. If you look here on Substack you can find enough that are doing it (including Chuck Palahniuk – I'll reserve my judgement on that until I start getting into the It's A [Good] Thing series down the track).
Which is fine but kind of uninteresting (I like serialised fiction, this is just another revenue stream for it, which isn't groundbreaking). Instead, what I publish from Lunch Eater here is going to be an experiment. You're going to see everything from the first draft onwards. When the chapters drop, they'll be unfiltered and unedited.
Writing is messy. I think we forget that. I want to bring that back. Seeing how a book is written, warts and all, isn't going to teach you how to write a book (much like seeing an album made won't teach you how to make an album) but it may give you an idea of what not to do. The ways that an author runs into pitfalls.
Plus, and this is exciting for me, I'll take your input on board. Which isn't to say that I am going to let the plot dictated by my readers (though who knows, perhaps if this goes well and I do it again next year, we could end up with a crowd sourced novel, which could be fun weird something).
If the Lunch Eater experiment sounds like your bag, then you'll need to be a paid subscriber to The Author Is Dumb. I have no issues with free subscribers but this is going to be something special. Or at least something (failing in public is never not something). The first few chapters (probably 3, definitely at least 2 because the prologue alone won't give you any idea of where the book is going to head) will be available to all so you can see whether you want in or not.
Founders will receive a hardcover of the book when it is published. I'm considering doing paperbacks for non-Founder paid subscribers but the jury is still out. [Note 1]
Paid subscribers will also have the option to let me read their writings. I'm not saying I'll be your editor (though hit me up if you're interested and we can discuss arrangements) but I'm happy to read what you're writing (or what you've written) and give you some feedback. Who knows, if it really gets me buzzing (and that does happen) then I might even write about it in one of the newsletters. Obviously permissions will be sought from you.
More than all of that (the writing banter, the think pieces, Lunch Eater, the gifs of which there will be many), this will be a community. If you're reading this then you are as much a part of this journey as I am (a bit of foreshadowing for next time). Never hesitate to reach out to me or call me out on something, I may not respond immediately (if you have 3 small kids, a full time job, and are trying to stay on top of a newsletter and can tell me that your KPI for response time is an hour I'll ask you when you sleep) but I will respond.
Until next time remember that writing is messy, reading is important, and write every day.
You can hit me up on twitter @swinevibrations.
[Note 1] Sometimes books don’t work out (we’ll talk about failed novels at some point I’m sure). Lunch Eater could be one of them. If that’s the case, Founders will receive a hardcover copy of whatever ends up being my next book that is published.