Chuck Wendig - The Kick-Ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience

Nothing in this book is true.

None of it comes from the Hand of God. He didnt thrust His big grumpy finger down through the clouds to etch these proclamations in stone tablets.

No Muse is whispering them in your ear.

They are not immutable laws scrawled outside English classes or bookstores.

These are not regulations.

This is not gospel.

This is not a math problem by which X + Y = a perfect story.

These are not rules.

This is a book of writing advice. Which to say, its just a bucket of ideas that are at least half-nonsense. A bucket of ideas that serve as tools. And not every tool is meant for every job. And not every craftsman finds the value in every tool.

We test our tools. We pick them up. We feel their heft, their grip, their ease of use. We tinker. We see if theyll fix our broken widgets or adjust our off-kilter thingamabobs. If they work, we put them in the toolbox for when we need them. If they dont work, we throw them in the dirt and walk away.

Thats all this book is.

Its a book of ideas about writing. Tips. Notions. Tricks. Thoughts.

Tools.

No writing advice is bad advice.

And no writing advice is perfectly true advice, either.

Writing advice either:

a) Works for you.

or

b) Does not work for you.

And thats okay. Thats how its meant to be.

Advice is just as it sounds. Mere suggestions. If I give you advice on how to get from Point A (the taco stand on Broad Street) to Point B (the other taco stand on Maple because hell yeah, more tacos), you can choose to listen to me or not. Im not holding a gun to your head. Maybe you know a better way. A secret way. Maybe you dont care that your way takes longer maybe you want the scenic route. Its just advice. I offered it. You like it or you dont. It works or it doesnt.

The goal isnt to deliver truth unto you. The goal is not to inflict my ways and rules upon you. The goal is to make you think. We should think about what we do. We should strive to improve ourselves. We should hope to fix the things that dont work for us and better the things that do. What we do is an intellectual and creative pursuit, so why not take some time and noodle it? Talk about it? Bat it back and forth like a cat with a ball of yarn?

At the end of the day or, at least, the end of this book youre going to pick up some things and tuck them away or youre going to leave them by the side of the road and move on. Just as every Jedi constructs his own lightsaber, every penmonkey makes his own quill which is to say, we all have our own ways of telling stories, our own voices and our own styles, our own ways up the publishing mountain. We have no absolutes. We are given no guarantees.

Well perhaps thats not entirely true.

I have one piece of immutable advice.

And that is: Finish what you begin.

Because the best piece of writing you never finish is always inferior to the worst piece of writing that you did.

Enjoy the book.

Mind the language; it gets a bit naughty.

Ill see you on the other side.

The Internet is 55 percent porn and 45 percent writers. You are not alone, and thats a thing both good and bad. Its bad because you can never be the glittery little glass pony you want to be. Its bad because the competition out there is as thick as an ungroomed 1970s pubic tangle. Its good because, if you choose to embrace it, you can find a community. A community of people who will share their neuroses and their drink recipes. And their, ahem, fictional methods for disposing of bodies.

A lot of writers try to skip over the basics and leap fully-formed out of their own head wombs. Bzzt. Wrongo. Learn your basics. Mix up lose/loose? Theyre/their/there? Dont know where to plop that comma or how to use those quotation marks? Thats like trying to be a world-class chef without knowing how to cook a goddamn egg. Writing is a mechanical act first and foremost. It is the process of putting words after other words in a way that doesnt sound or look like inane gibberish.

Some writers were born with some magical storytelling gland that they can flex like their pubococcygeus, spewing brilliant storytelling and powerful linguistic voodoo with but a twitch of their taint. This is a small minority of all writers, which means youre probably not that. The good news is, even talent dies without skill. You can practice what you do. You practice it by writing, by reading, by living a life worth writing about. You must always be learning, gaining, improving.

I have been writing professionally for a lucky-despite-the-number 13 years. Not once seriously, not once ever has anyone ever asked me where I got my writing degree. Or if I even have one. Nobody gives two ferrets fornicating in a filth-caked gym sock whether or not you have a degree, be it a writing degree or a degree in waste management. The only thing that matters is, Can you write well?

Luck matters. Sorry! But you can maximize luck. You wont get struck by lightning if you dont wander out into the field covered in tinfoil and armed with an old TV antennae.

Nobody becomes a writer overnight. Well, Im sure somebody did, but that persons head probably went all asplodey from paroxysms of joy, fear, paranoia, guilt, and uncertainty. Celebrities can be born overnight. Writers cant. Writers are made forged, really, in a kiln of their own madness and insecurities over the course of many, many moons. The writer you are when you begin is not the writer you become.

Your journey to becoming a writer is all your own. You own it for good and bad. Part of it is all that goofy shit that forms the building blocks of your very persona a mean daddy, an ugly dog, a smelly house, pink hair, a doting mother, that bagger at the local Scoot-N-Shop. The other part is the industry part, where you dig your own tunnel through the earth and detonate it behind you. No two writers will sit down and tell the exact same story of their emergence from the wordmonkey cocoon. You arent a beautiful and unique snowflake, except when you are.

Yours is the power of gods: You say, Let there be light, and Sweet Maggie McGillicutty, here comes some light. Writing is the act of creation. Put words on a page, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to seven-book epic fantasy cycles with books so heavy you could choke a hippo. But dont give writing too much power, either. A wizard controls his magic; it doesnt control him. Push aside lofty notions and embrace the workmanlike aesthetic. Hammers above magic wands; nails above eye-of-newt. The magic will return when youre done. The magic is in what you did, not in what youre doing.

Treat it with respect and a little bit of reverence. Storytelling is what makes the world go around. Even math is a kind of story (though, lets be honest, a story with too few space donkeys or dragon marines). Dont let writing and storytelling be some throwaway thing. Dont piss it away. Its really cool stuff. Stories have the power to make people feel. To give a shit. To change their opinions. To change the world.