The idea of C2E2 is to be a pan-geek con, covering comics, movies, games, just about anything in the world of geekdom. When you think about it, it is very smart. Something I heard a couple of weeks ago that has been resonating quite a bit lately is that the younger market increasingly distinguishes less between mediums. There is little difference between a comic, a movie, a video game or a book, and there are many examples of projects which blur the lines. This is one of the reasons the YA book market is one of the strongest segments for publishing. Doing a convention based on all of these rather than just one segment makes a lot of sense, it capitalizes on the overlap of fandom.

One of the best ways to lay this out on the table for everyone to understand is to get a huge guest of honor. Last year, Neil Gaiman was the keynote speaker, perfect because he is huge in comics, books, and increasingly, film and television. He would bring people to the convention like few others could. If you don’t know it, Neil is hard to book and expensive. There was a discussion with him shortly after last year’s con where he explained his $40,000 (I think I remember that right) appearance fee. He explained it as a way to weed out people who weren’t serious about booking him, and a way to make sure we keep him writing by not overbooking him. If you want a symbol of cross media success, Neil Gaiman is probably the best fit.

Last year’s con had a very strong indie presence, and a refreshing open feeling, it wasn’t overly crowded, you could talk to people, and there was good representation from various industries. A movie Prop Auction house had a large presence, and the various medias were represented in small but probably fairly proportionate numbers.

The significant point of this is to define that you are not a replacement  for comicon, establish yourself as something different.

This year, the con was crowded as comicon, and felt much like it.

In talking to one of the organizers we knew, he mentioned a few things that stuck out to me. One was that a lot of people didn’t do so well last year, and so didn’t return, particularly non-comic vendors. The problem is how to attract those vendors back.

I can identify a major limiting factor in the con, in particular, the name. Years and years ago, I was at a Neil Gaiman signing, back when Neil showing up somewhere would attract 150 people instead of 5,000. Somebody asked him what he liked about books vs. comics particularly regarding Stardust which had been a comic first, then a novel (and some years later the movie came out), and one of his points was that the Stardust comic had sold at best 10,000 copies, whereas his novel of it had sold 100,000. And books aren’t as widely consumed as movies, which are losing out to video games lately as far as gross dollars of sales.

So think about this: of all the media you’re trying to cover, the only one mentioned by name in the name of the convention is the smallest market by at least a factor of ten. Sure it mentions “Entertainment,” but what the heck does that mean? I don’t even know. I can think of forms of entertainment that appeal to wider audiences than this convention, and they aren’t represented, NASCAR, Hip-hop and pro bowling for example. Any of these would fall under the “entertainment” banner (though I question the definition of them as entertainment) so that’s just a non-descriptive term. If I looked at “Chicago Entertainment Expo” I would have even less clue of what it’s about.

If you drop comics from the name, you probably lose the independent nature of the show, as comics are the most independent industry of the bunch, and the easiest for a single creator to get an edge in. It is nice to see an artist’s alley that is about half the size of the show. You don’t want to drop it entirely, but the other media needs to be spelled out in some way.

The other way to do it would be to call it what it is-the Pan Geek Media Expo. You want to bring people and vendors and guests the way San Diego does? Well, you don’t have the proximity, industry or history, so branding is going to be one of your most powerful tools to accomplishing this.

In Chicago, we had a very interesting related event in comic conventions when Wizard World bought out the Chicago Comicon from Motor City Conventions. I was at the last couple years of the Motor City cons, and when you walked in, you waled into Artist’s alley, which was huge, and made your way to the majors. They were like milk in the supermarket, you’re going to go there, so they make you walk past all the other stuff you don’t need to get there. There was a separate dealer room. When the major company took it over, all off the majors were up front, booths doubled in cost leaving many indies priced out of even artist alley. I had a company that made an appearance, and paying off the booth was a challenge. The entire con probably cut to half the size. I think because of this, there’s a big opening in this market for a large, independent driven convention.

So I think C2E2 attendance was up, but industry participation was down. It’s a new con and needs years to grow. This is probably nothing to worry about in terms of the con returning next year. I just hope it finds it’s market and thrives, because it could be great.

Under the Poppy is set in a brothel in 1870s Brussels owned by Decca and Rupert. It is a brothel like no other, with a grand stage, a bawdy puppet show put on by Decca’s brother, the puckish Istvan and mute pianist Jonathan. As war threatens nearby, the army takes up occupancy in whatever buildings they can, and the Poppy becomes a boarding house for the military presence, while still running business.

This presence complicates matters for the residents. Accommodations must be made for the soldiers, a new class of people are coming through, including the mayor, and the general in command of the forces. These forces of order react as you might guess to the forces of liberality and counterculture represented in the Poppy, scandals that would have been contained in this vice district are now being witnessed by the high society of the city, and this brings unwanted attentions their way. Istvan in particular will not back down from his ever more outrageous and shocking puppet performances.

Backstage, too controversy begins to build as Decca loves Rupert, but Rupert loves Istvan. The homosexual nature of this relationship is certainly not tolerated in this society, and as it becomes more open, the politics of the house and its relationship to the city become quite complicated. The survival of the Poppy becomes doubtful as the war passes near, supplies begin to run low, the population become afraid to go out, and the residents must make decisions on how to survive, whether remaining at the Poppy is plausible, and every departure hurts.

The exploration of sex and sexuality in Under the Poppy is very well handled. We have a society that has not yet embraced the modern view, but is on the cusp of it, and I think the more modern sensibility is symbolized by Paris in the book. One of the very tricky aspects of a period piece like this is demonstrating just how attitudes differ from the modern while not looking like you are demonstrating it. Koja was very adept at making this apparent and natural to the world of the book. Often, you’ll find a character which can embody the modern take on things, but she has a cast of characters with which to accomplish the subtle shading between the liberal and conservative points of view. Sexuality itself is well handled, it would be easy to go over the line, make the kinks an overt motif, but such heavy handedness would certainly be detrimental to this book. Sexuality deserves subtlety in all its variety, but hinting is too little for a book like this. Koja understands this and gives us doses of sexuality in just the right amounts and places to make it resonate without bringing the house down.

There’s a few reasons why I wanted to read this book. First, the language was described as lush and poetic, and this it certainly was, on the level of description and metaphor, she wrote a very visual and sensual world, replete with historic sights and smells, beauty and ugliness, rooms filled with cigar smoke and fine alcohols, with gaiety and danger. Her characterization is strong, a significant challenge with the number of social classes represented in the characters of the book, and the structures of the society.

I was also interested because my main character for Inside is mute for part of the book, and I wanted to see how she handled it. In this respect I was disappointed. He was never so significant a character that it became an issue, and some opportunities were probably missed with him, at least I felt.

I did have significant issues with a couple decisions she made in the writing of this book as well. First is how deaths were handled. The first death was one of the girls in the Poppy who had consumption. We hit a point of some tension, a chapter ends, and the next thing that happens, they are talking about the poor girl who died. I felt cheated we didn’t see the death scene, we only hear about it second hand in reactions from the rest of the residents of the house. She had been a character of some significance up to that point, and then she was just gone, and people were talking of her in the past tense. Doing this once might have been permissible, but it happens again to a much more significant character and at a much more significant moment, and by much more sinister means. When I didn’t get to see this death, I very much felt something was wrong, a wrong choice was made, and from that point I was wary of being cheated again. The shock of that event didn’t register because I was feeling the shock of having not seen it happen.

The book’s biggest writing challenge, however, was maintaining the large cast of characters, and this for me was the biggest point at which the book failed. There were many point of view shifts in the way the story was told, and while each shift happened at a major section break, so no head-hopping, I felt every time that a new character was being introduced the shape of the line felt like a freeway with many on-ramps, and every time I had to get back up to speed. The effect it had was to break up the ensemble cast feeling I thought the book could have and should have had, while also making the plot feel less straightforward than it really was.

This came down to a point of view issue. It came down to a sort of ensemble over-the-shoulder third person narration, and I would have preferred a stronger through-line, which would have tightened the ensemble cast feeling. As it stood, I felt like I was being introduced to a new character every section, and couldn’t be bothered after a point with what the relationships between characters were. Limiting the points of view to only a few would have made it a much better read for me. This is not to say it wasn’t a worthy read. I certainly got a lot of what I wanted out of it, and it was a nice break from my usual horror fantasy and scifi reading habits.

That being said, this is a synchronicities post, and two of them happened in writing this post. I got a direct tweet which probably a few hundred people got asking for a submission to this, and the rules said the story had to be written after Jan. 22nd (I think, mine was actually written this week after grinding on the initial idea for a week). So I came up with this idea about lab-grown meat, and the next day, on one of my regular news sites, there was an article about how one man was working on lab-grown meat as a food alternative, and how he went about it. I thought great, the universe is helping me out again.

Let me explain what I mean by that. This isn’t like when I wrote about the University of Illinois Chicago linguistics professor who transplanted a group of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their Mayan dialect, and then a month later found out about a real life University of Illinois Chicago linguistics professor who transplanted a group of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their Mayan dialect. This was more like when I was in college, writing my senior thesis novel about a group of men made immortal by Anunnaki in ancient times, and during the break before I began writing it, a copy of Archeology Magazine arrived at my house, addressed to me, with a relief carving of an Anunnaki photographed on the cover. I didn’t have a subscription, never asked for a free trial, and another issue never arrived. That’s what I mean. The world provided me with research material, poked the story on.

During the writing, I used a number of articles I’d read in the past to guide the conversation in the story, and mentioned the creation of skin in the lab. I didn’t have anything to go by. The day after I wrote that, an article on making skin in that lab came up on Fark.

I know. Strange. Go visit the contest. Vote. Maybe for me if you like it.

But this isn’t why Cuddly Cthluhu will kill us all. Last weekend I went to Capricon and took in the panel on Lovecraft. We started off on where we first ran into Lovecraft. Gene Wolf was on the panel, and he went back to dime store adventure stories days. One of the panelists found out about Lovecraft from gaming.

But then we got into how Cthulhu has evolved in pop culture, mostly by talking about cuddly Cthulhu, Miskatonic University window stickers, some of the film and television adaptations, and then some derivative works, things like the Sarlacc pit in Star Wars, and even got to Japanese Tentacle Porn. We told some amusing stories about the non-scifi public’s encounters with these things and had a good laugh. There were a few other things, like fear of the unknown which Lovecraft creates so well in the atmosphere of his stories. Then I tried to steer the conversation back to the literature, asking who is carrying on the literary legacy.

The conversation went back to pop culture.

This goes back to something I’ve been thinking about for a couple weeks, namely “clever” will kill us all (which was originally going to be the title of this post). One of the worst trends I see in current SF/F or horror is the clever story. What do I mean by this?

We are being overrun with cutesy zombies, vampires, elder gods, robots and everything else under the sun. I can think of a couple examples of zombie temporary agencies. I’ll puke at another classic old book and classic monster mashup. Abraham Lincoln was not a vampire hunter, and there’s no Zombies in Pride and Prejudice. My life doesn’t revolve around cute mashups of pop culture and crochet.

I have a daily ritual of sites I go to, mostly for inspiration and ideas, for looking froward and being on the cutting edge of thought and technology. One of them is Neatorama. A couple days ago, the front page was The Great Gatsby NES game (which appeared on several of my reads), then moved on to the Legend of Zelda as a teen movie, then a couple stories down, a space invaders moss (yes the green plant-y stuff) mural, slasher movie plushies, a dating service for Superheroes and villains, and it goes on.

At the same time, we’re at a unique point in sci-fi history. We’ve had a ton of success in popular culture from some serious films. From the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to Inception, we’ve got quite a run going on here, and the question is, where do we take it?

Science fiction used to be about ideas. We’re just now realizing the potential of technologies Arthur C. Clarke thought up fifty years ago, and we’re doing better at them because of how he thought for us. Our phones are way better than any communications devices science fiction came up with prior to the 90s or so, and that’s only one technology example. Sci-fi used to be about ideas and their implications. Fantasy too, had its mirror to the world.

We have the ear of the world, and what are we offering up that is new? If we allow the pop culture references to become our answer, we’re going to lose it quickly. Pop culture references of this sort are a sort of reciprocating inside joke. We are no better than Comic Book Guy, and the more mainstream a person, the less they’re going to join in on the fun. The more we insulate ourselves at con, the worse this phenomena will become, too.

I have a feeling that while the rise of geek should be celebrated, we should take pains to remember at one point, Star Wars was an innovative leap forward in storytelling, science fiction, and movie making, not just a series of pop culture references, and we lose the impact it once carried as we trivialize it. Lovecraft was once ahead of his time and visionary. I’m wondering if our attention to the in-joke will starve the veritable prodigy out of our market. Yes, an Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter may sell a million copies, but is that paying for the next Lovecraft, or is it paying for The Wizard of Oz and Werewolves?

We stand at an interesting precipice. Abilities to produce film, animation, and product which were once the realm of big companies with lots of money, as well as the distribution of that product is now in the hands of the average person. This unprecedented power comes with great responsibility, er, well, you know. That one was kind of hard to avoid. We also control delivery methods, largely thanks to iTunes, the App Store, Scribd, Lulu, Bandcamp, and any number of other sites. Pioneering artists like Radiohead and some of the authors who are now branching to self-pub are leading the way with a reputation for credibility, but the question of anybody coming up gaining credibility in this manner is still up in the air. Arguments about who is the gatekeeper for quality should be addressed elsewhere.

I don’t want to say that there is any less creativity or skill in any of these endeavors. There certainly is skill and talent. I think we should recognize what is a more serious attempt at creating something new, and what is an extended joke, and be conscious of how we handle it in either case. When you sit at a con, and the discussion lingers on the relative merits of running zombies versus walking zombies, remember, most people in the world probably don’t care. A line must be drawn, and I think my criteria is fairly simple. Doe we go for the obvious joke like Shakespeare went after puns? If so, well, I’m really not that interested anymore. I study writing, I read widely, I read classics, I’m into literature. That’s where I go. Your mileage may vary, but I don’t have a lot of time for stuff that ultimately won’t satisfy me past the moment.

There are warning signs. Steampunk is one, much as I like the aesthetic. Zombies are another. There are just no original comedic uses of zombies anymore. And yet, Cherie Priest mixes the two brilliantly in Boneshaker, but it is how they are used, as significant points of a well-built world, not as a pastiche, not as a way to lead to punchlines, in the world they exist in, they are a circumstance, not an absurdity.

Many of us try fanfiction, and this is where a number of current authors developed. There is a certain departure velocity and trajectory from fanfic and parody to higher art, and some consideration should be put in to how we review, what we expect of that feedback, what kind of coverage we give it, and how serious we take it as an audience.

I have my moments of this, but I don’t try to pass them off as literature. I also reject more cute and clever ideas than anything else. I’m a little concerned that my tendency to reject these cute ideas will bury me because the public taste is very for it right now. Then I see those ideas someone else has written. Sometimes I think I would have done better. Other times they are way more developed because I abandoned them early in development.

So there’s some thoughts that probably pissed off a generation of fanboys and girls. Let me know what you think.

Two days ago, this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354445/Super-pack-400-wolves-kill-30-horses-just-days-remote-Russian-village.html

On some of the projects, this might be good news, at least personally. In some very bad for all of us. You know what I write.

Since the technology wasn’t there, and the doors we needed opened weren’t opening, we began to find other ways, ways that pulled us apart. One by one we made our way into separate ventures. Some of us found success in our pursuits, some found a way to live, but I don’t think any of us lost our creative edge.

I found a lot of distractions, a lot of challenges, lost my way quite a bit, but all of that is turning around now, and I’m finding a number of us are looking at the same kinds of projects again, fresh and with a new interest in making our own way. I’ve accumulated some new talents, and many of the old ones are still with me. What we wanted to do but couldn’t ten years ago is now easy. We may not be on the cutting edge of media or technology, but our products are still high quality, our skills are better, and our capabilities are greater than ever.

And the technology is finally here, the content delivery mechanisms to not have to go through a producer, a manufacturer, or a big company to be discovered.

So my next steps are pretty clear in my head. I’ll be meeting with a number of you in a couple of weeks. More of you are across the country, across the world, in the twitterverse or the facebook realm. We’ll find our ways to collaborate. But it starts now.

It’s time.

The mess with Prime resulted in only one novel being released in six years despite his assertion of having fifteen done. Another book is set to be released by another publisher in the spring, a couple other titles are known, but have not found a home. 

The Narrator was released in October 2010 by Civil Coping Mechanisms, which promoted it as his most mature and ambitious novel yet. The title character, named Low Loom Column begins the book at a university, training to become a narrator when he is drafted into military service despite having an exemption. When he tries to protest he is told time and again it is a futile effort, and he is forced to report to the nearest city for service. He continues seeking ways of getting out of conscription, even considering desertion, as he meets others from his unit, notably the conscripts Jil Punkinflake, and Silichieh, and Captain Makemin. He has some time in the city before they gather and move out, which he spends in his occupation. He records a séance, and provides his services for a wealthy and mysterious resident of the city, the cannibal queen who is said to have killed and eaten her husband after the death of her child, and who is socially imprisoned in her mansion. Here he illustrates just what a narrator does, he records the story that is told to him. 

Forgive me a brief foray from the plot at this point, to set up what Cisco is so good at. Cisco can write sentences better than anybody. Long and lush descriptions, brilliant similes and metaphors, a tremendous mastery of language which always inspires me. While still in the city, he lays out the matter of the book in this paragraph. 

“I find unaccountable difficulties always arise in searching out the narrative sections of any marketplace, but of course, how could I know that? Anyhow there always seems to be some distraction, or the sort of wrong turn that, having drawn you into the trammels of its mischief, dodges behind the innocent turns and loses itself among them like an absconding pickpocket. No shortage of the real ones either—at the wine store, Jil Punkinflake took my wallet slowly from my hand as I was about to restore it to my pocket and deftly slipped it into my shirt, where my vest holds it now against my skin. I ask him about the narrative market and he gives me a swift, canny look. With a nearly invisible toss of his head I realize he is one of those go-betweens who are involved with the narrative merchants, the storiers and letterers and calligraphers and abcedarians. We flit out into trough like stone lanes.” 

Here Cisco lays out exactly what to expect in this book. This is a story about story, existing on many levels simultaneously, and it will steal your wallet if you aren’t careful. Low is an unreliable narrator, as unreliable as this narrative market. It is also here that he is seen by an Edek, and once the Edek sees you, there is no sneaking away from conscription. They assemble, and we find Makemin is a hard officer, intent on making a name for himself, and forget about his pending divorce, mostly by taking out his personal anger on his troops. Low tries to avoid him until on the march our of the city, Makemin notices he is a narrator. Low is given a horse, and ordered to ride alongside him to record the story of his unit. 

They are attacked on the road, enemies described as “blackbirds” ambush them as they make their way out of the city. They take some casualties, but curiously, the blackbird dead hover above the ground. Their first stop is a mental institution. In the run up to the war, the caretakers locked the residents in, leaving them to die. Makemin releases and treats many, and then conscripts the able bodies into his unit. A woman, Saskia describes how the Blackbirds have metal body suits, cast specially so lightly they float, and can therefore attack from the sky, cover great distances in a jump, and be gone in seconds. 

They make their way to the shore, where they commandeer a ship to make it an island which is a strategic stronghold for their side of the war. Their ship is attacked en route, and they suffer large casualties before reaching port. The port is designed to be very easily defended from the sea, and mountains protect the city from the inland side of the island, but the enemy is known to be on the opposite shore. The unit disembarks and makes friends with the natives, largely through Low’s translation skills, and soon marches on the enemy, Makemin eager to make a name for himself. Early exploration reveals a larger than expected enemy presence, and Makemin is forced to make a decision, return to the city and defend it from there, leaving the rest of the island to fend for itself, possibly leaving it to become a stronghold, or wait for reinforcements in the form of Predicanten, (also known as predicates), soldiers locked in giant armored suits, essentially walking insane tanks. There is another option, however. The interior of the island is said to possess ancient magical weapons, enough to destroy any army, if the spirits of the island decide they like those seeking to use them. If not, well, no one makes it back alive. Only Low, the Narrator, has the ability to translate the languages needed to convince the spirits to fight on their side, and so he leads a final expedition into the interior to gain the spirit weapons before the opposing army realizes they are there and makes its own attempts. But to describe it like this is to leave out all of the details that make a Michael Cisco book so rich and engrossing. 

The book is rich in ambiguity. It is never clear what the matter of the war is, or who the enemy is, nor is it clear how anybody in the country feels towards the war, the enemy, or the soldiers. There are mentions of separatists, but these seem to be more an ethnic minority and never figure into the fighting. Even the soldiers have very little to say about the why of the war, and only discuss the circumstances they find themselves in. 

The Narrator is a book that rewards a slow read due to its rich text and subtle storyline. This is certainly an gifted author coming into his own, though I think The Tyrant left me more satisfied emotionally as a reader. 

Cisco succeeds here at writing a rich story on several levels, not just telling a story of this military regiment, but a story of people, a nation, and a story about story telling, and the strength narrative holds personally and culturally. It is interesting to see how the pursuit of story affects the characters through the book. For Low, being a narrator should have been a blessing, a way out of this war, and it soon becomes a burden, but a burden he must carry as his training requires. Makemin does not set out in search of honor, glory or country, it is to make his own story, and all along the way, story drives every character. Low is the historian on the spot, setting each down, it is only with reluctance that he takes control of the narrative, and it is up to the reader to decide how unreliable a narrator he is. 

Cisco also succeeds in re-imagining the unreliable narrator story, creating a narrator always suspect, seemingly capable of everything he undertakes, and yet incapable of the tasks he takes on.

I’m not saying it will wane immediately. We have a couple years at this rate, maybe three. After that, I think it will recede into yet another genre in a crowded field. The costuming trend will also fade at cons.

We simply got too saturated too quickly, and my prescient mind saw the slow descent today.

But here’s why it’s a good thing. In terms of writing, fewer books means better books. Cherie Priest will still be around, I think there’s a couple books left coming out in the Boneshaker universe, and who knows, may she’ll keep on with it. Scott Westerfield will keep up with his series, Girl Genius will continue to genius through her universe. Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine will be working on their series which I think will do well. But there’s been a lot of dreck. This will fade and thankfully so. Some of the second tier purveyors I saw failed because they got caught up in the aesthetic without recognizing or requiring substance. I think the Steampod Podcast died because every story I heard on it spent more time choosing a name for the featured device than actually worrying about plot, character, or sentence construction. I’ll be glad to see this level of steampunk go.

And costuming. There’s brilliant work out there, and it will survive. People will keep working on it, and keep showing up to cons with it. Eventually, though, we’ll lose the “make it in brown and brass and put some gears somewhere” crowd.

I’m rarely wrong on these things. It could be saved by a really brilliant movie, something good enough to appeal to a mass market and still really please the aficionado. I can’t foresee that.

So the secret is to find the next thing. Not sure yet. I hope it’s good horror, or good dark fantasy. We’ll see.

Let me start off by saying I don’t believe in writer’s block. Never really had it, even this recent bout came down more to feeling connected enough to the material to feel the emotions I needed. It was more of a personal emotional block than a creative block. I never stopped writing other things, I never stopped coming up with new ideas. There was one project that was just a little out of where I could be viciously honest with myself.

I’m pretty good at getting people past writer’s block though, and I don’t seem to follow any standard methods of getting people past it, I just dive in like a therapist, diagnose, prescribe, and then it’s done.

Since I don’t believe in writer’s block, I’ll tell you what I do believe in, fear and blinders. In the case of reconnecting with my current WIP, the fear was am I really doing the emotions of the project justice. This may not be the fear you’re having, it may be a structural fear, a fear of lost direction, or any of several other fears.

I also recently ran across an article on 20 ways to overcome writer’s block, and let me tell you, a lot of it was bullshit. Let me just dispel these points before I get to mine.

One of them was go to a writer’s workshop. Well, if you’re in a major urban area, you can probably find a few in the metro area, but if you aren’t in a big area, you may have to wait for a convention. At any rate, what is happening while you pursue this means of getting out of writer’s block? You’re putting off writing. And the more you put it off, the more doubt creeps in and you’re digging a bigger hole. Don’t wait for a workshop. Get on facebook and twitter and find some writers, bounce ideas off of them. Instant feedback is way better than waiting for a workshop.

Another one this article mentioned is relaxation techniques. There again, something that isn’t writing. If you’re so stressed about writing, this may not be the thing for you, I mean, you won’t be a successful actor if you can’t get your butt on stage. I write better when I’m agitated, anyway.

Sleeping on it. Sometimes a rest is good, but being tired is not writer’s block. If you’re blocked and you’re thinking about sleeping on it, sit that butt back in the chair and write. Sleeping on it will only get you further from writing. Sleeping on it is good when you’ve written your little heart out and you’ve practically had an orgasm because your last bit of output is so good you need a cigarette and a reach around.

Reading inspirational quotes. Did inspirational quotes ever  work? I mean, if they did, there wouldn’t be so many parodies of inspirational quotes. Forget that new age crap. If you are reading inspirational quotes, you aren’t writing. You can read Ghandi and Dr. Phil all you like, but are they really helping you finish your book? No, confront the problem directly and boldly. This goes for another of their suggestions, making an inspiration board. Isn’t this just a way of wasting more time than just reading inspirational quotes? Forget about it. Get your butt in a chair. Write.

They also mention checking the news, which is something I usually do in avoidance of work. News may inspire a story, but it won’t get you over a block.

Another suggestion this post had was to take a walk. I’m iffy on this one. Taking a walk does two things, it accomplishes a change of scenery, and gets the blood flowing. I’ve never been a believer in changing scenery, and leaving your desk means leaving your post as a writer. I’m a pacer, and at the very least, a very active sitter. Stay in the room with your project. I actually keep a set of weights near my desk, and between scenes and paragraphs, I’ll do some exercise. This keeps my heart rate and energy up, and decreases the sedentary nature of the act of writing.

The primary problem I have with a list of 20 things you can do to get over writer’s block, however, isn’t any of the suggestions per se, it’s more that the article is throwing out suggestions without diagnosing a specific problem. I know you have writer’s block, but what is causing the block? It’s kind of like a doctor randomly prescribing something and seeing if it works. This is a craft, it has its techniques, and overcoming block is just one of the processes you’re going to have to deal with. We don’t throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks. We study the problem, and come up with a likely solution.

So let’s run through it. The scenario I’m picturing is this: you’re working on a novel or something like that, and you just can’t get through a scene, and don’t want to move on to the next one without getting this one out. It is probably useful to go over a few categories of the background on why you’re blocked, and diagnose out a solution. While I am arranging things here by a specific group of issues that may be blocking you, I notice in my thinking I’m going with the most likely means of conquering your block and moving to things that are less likely to unblock you. Fear. Let’s start with fear.

So nothing you put down seems right, and you can’t get a word in without a massive wave of self-doubt. Nothing is good enough, it’s all crap and you should give up and become an accountant. We all deal with doubt. It is a temporary phase. Understand that first. Got it? Good. Now start writing, and don’t stop. Really. Any doubt just gets in your way of the goal, and the goal is getting more words at the end of the page, more pages at the end of the document, and getting it done. Really, this is just a draft. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Force yourself to write it no matter how bad you think it will be when you look at it. I have a hint, it probably won’t be as bad when you come back through, and a second hint, it’s just a draft. So you set down a thousand words or so that didn’t work. That’s not horrible. That can be an hour or less. No biggie. Stop thinking it is. It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time, no matter what your journalism class told you (unless you’re a journalist, then you’re on your own).

If you had so much fear, you wouldn’t have started, right?

If your fear is getting too much of you still, and you absolutely can’t get a scene out, the next best thing to do is to give a few minutes to what actually has to be in the scene, and write them out in a summary sentence each. Expand on those thoughts. Link one to the next to the next. It may not be pretty, in fact, it probably isn’t, but its done and set down. Expand on the first one, keep moving, try to create a flow to them. Or you can move on, but make a note to expand, edit, rewrite. I have less problems setting down something and moving on than I do stopping working. Stopping writing is the enemy, and it should be avoided at all costs.

Maybe you have an issue with is format. I find this happens a lot with people switching formats between screenplay and prose or comic script, or people who can’t decide what format it should be in. This can sometimes be obvious if you do an outline or at least a major act breakdown. If it isn’t in a nice three act formula, it probably isn’t a screenplay. But still, that person who is used to writing screenplays and wants to transition to prose may have some issues and see some scenes in a more cinematic style may get blocked when the format changes from dialog and description to prose. Write it in whatever format you feel it fits in. Get it out. Put words at the end of the page. Go back and re-write. In the interim you’ll figure out what format this is going to take. The prose may turn to screenplay, the screenplay may turn to prose. Either is fine. Just keep going (are you noticing a theme yet?).

Maybe your problem is plotting. You aren’t sure where your story goes immediately, but you have a goal, you know where it’s going overall. It may be time for an outline. Yes, an outline. You look at me as if I said a dirty word, memories of your pigeon faced English teacher in high school are running through your mind and now you know you’ll never write again. Let me rephrase just a little bit. It may be time for a near-term outline. List out the next three main scenes you have in mind in a couple key sentences. Now you’re a story paleontologist, and you’re looking for the missing link. Write a sentence that would fall between them, and another. Summarizing is fine at this point. Just keep going until you have everything you need to be writing again.

Or, find a writer (we tend to hang around on twitter and facebook a lot). Ask questions. Ask for help. When a writer asks for help and I see it, I’ll usually jump in. Seriously. Every time I help a writer through an issue or help a writer make a decision, I learn more, I hone my skills, my craft. I get energized. Every writer out there has been in your situation before, we all have our ways. We all like to share them. Even the best get stuck on plot at times, and the key is out there. You just need to ask. Unlike our characters, we don’t bite.

The point I want to keep making is nothing will allow you to overcome a block better than keeping yourself directly entangled in the work you’re trying to do. Stepping away from it is stepping away from it, no matter what you call it. You have to confront the block, if you step away the blockage will only get stronger, and probably start calling you bad names behind your back and ruing your reputation.

So what else might be plaguing the blocked writer?

You may be suffering a disconnect from your material. I had to go to an extreme recently to reconnect with some material, and you can read about that in the post just before this one. There are lesser extremes, ones that don’t open old emotional wounds.

First warning. Editing a previous part of the book may seem like a great idea, and it probably is if you’re picking up the book a really long time after you laid it down, but if the story is fresh for you, it’s a very bad idea to go back and edit. You’ll hate what you’ve already done (you’re already in a hypercritical mood after all), and you’ll get caught up in minutiae that don’t matter. For most people, writer head is very different from editor head. Let them exist separately.

Like a lot of writers, I’m a pretty intense researcher. I have a file for my big book with news stories (its sometimes ripped from the headlines, sometimes the headlines rip from it), images of various kinds, an iTunes playlist, movies and books that will remind me of what I’m trying to do. Some of it is sorted according to plot point of the WIP. If I get stuck, I’ll take a brief foray into these. The important note is brief. Very brief. Then get back to writing.

What we’re trying to accomplish is the creation of flow. You should check out the books on Flow and Creativity by Professor Mihalyi. They’re brilliant. In flow, a minute will seem like an hour, an hour will seem like a minute, you’ll forget conversations, you’ll forget about the need to eat, and solutions will come to you. When you’re blocked, you’re about as far from flow as you can be.

A big part of flow is choosing and creating your environment. There is a good basic quick idea about flow and environment. Some people say changing your environment will help, get up, go to eat, get coffee (these are of course contingent on you taking your writing device and writing while elsewhere). I never found that a change of environment helped me or was necessary until I was hungry, in fact, discovering a monster in my belly that needed sating was a good cue to move out of the house and get food and keep writing. Clean off all of the kipple from your desk (preferably with a cathartic single swipe of your arm), and keep writing. Immerse yourself in an environment that reminds you of your project.

Part of environment is time. Make a schedule to develop a habit of writing. Schedule a couple hours at least. Give the kids to the significant other, give the dog a shot of wine to make it drowsy (not really, but you get the idea), close and lock the door. Make your writing time your own, and make the consequences of disturbing you clear and severe. This is YOUR time to write. Not theirs.

The reason I tell you to schedule a couple of hours is important. Rather than switching to something else to get past your block, try switching to your project. Write some warm up, a character sketch, something else. Struggle on words you definitely won’t let anyone see, and when you’re warm, dive in. You may just come up with something useful or a new story. It will help create a flow, and take the pressure off of sitting down to a screen and thinking these words count.

In fact, I really think the correct term for writer’s block is flow block. Really, we mostly know what we want to write, we just can’t get the flow going.

I like the concept of setting a writing goal, a deadline for completion, or a minimum word count for the day, but for some people, this can add to the fear of failure. Another problem with this is knowing that some scenes are definitely way harder than others, and we don’t necessarily know which will be one of these scenes until we’re in it. The extreme of this is the program write or die, which I believe you can find on-line. I’ve never tried it, but it works for some people. Turning off the internet should also be considered. This would fall into the eliminate distractions category. I really think an important part of setting a goal is setting an accomplishable goal. Saying 5,000 words a day or else is likely not practical unless you’ve got no distractions, commitments and day job. You’ll likely hit it sometimes, but you’ll feel bad when you don’t. Setting a goal of 500 words is manageable, and if you’re dead set on 500, you’re probably doing 1,000 or more without thinking about it. That requirement of 500 is merely a requirement that you sit down and get something out, keep it going.

Another part of your environment is the tools you work with. Are you still working with Microsoft Word just like it was 1994? Ditch that program. Try something like Celtx or Scrivener, where you can make notes, save multiple documents in the same file, create character profiles, setting profiles, and just about anything else you may like to do. You may also try mindmapping. A program like Freemind can open yourself up to some very fast sketching of plotlines, and the speed with which you can throw down and alter with this program is faster than anything else out there. It will get your synapses moving, and will actually help you find connections in your WIP more easily.

If you still can’t get yourself to put words down on your project, the next best thing you can do is to write on something else. You may have a short story you’re dabbling on, a side project. These things are important. I really believe in letting my subconscious work things out. Best way to do that is to give my conscious mind a cat toy to bat around. If you don’t have that, do some writing exercises. Try finding a portrait of someone and write a character sketch. Try some flash fiction. I came up with stories from a hat. That would work. Notice, the most important thing is to start writing, keep writing. If you are blocked, no word set down is wasted. Stop thinking that every word must be gold, because you’re going throw a lot away as a writer. It is just part of the process. It may be important for you to remember that no one ever needs see what you’re setting down. Take that pressure off yourself.

When I’m really well locked into flow I’ll trade off activities, but I don’t recommend it if you’re really blocked. It is a very slippery slope between giving yourself a break and distracting yourself under the guise of a writing break and not getting anything done. When everything is working for me in writing, I’ll work on the novel until my brain says to stop. Then play guitar. Then do some art or craft. By then my brain has allowed the subconscious to assemble the next part and kick it back up to my conscious mind. Repeat. It is worth noting however that these are rarely my best moments at the other tasks.

So here we are, 2,500 words into an essay and I’ll now talk about doing something other than writing to get yourself over a block. This is how important I think writing your way out of a writing block is. Stopping writing  is the most dangerous thing you can do, and you have to recognize when to do it. There may be a time to put the writing away for a while. The brain needs down time, science has studied and confirmed this. The down time doesn’t mean go do email or play a game, the science says that isn’t really down time, and for a writer, it forms a part of that slippery slope. It needs to be real down time. Let it recharge. But don’t do this for too long, or it will be harder to start up again.

Writing is also a basic input-output system. Many of us writers don’t read, not nearly enough. I hear this complaint of many writers, professional and aspiring alike. We need input data, and when our memory of source material is used up, we need to refill the buffer. Read a book. I think I’ve heard the right ratio of reading to writing is ten to one, and that seems about right. Make the time, it is an investment in your writing future.

There are other reasons for block, more personal and psychological reasons that may be a more difficult thing to diagnose in this venue. I’ll revisit the topic as long as you give me some comments on your specific block. Or find me. I’m up here and on twitter and facebook. I’ll certainly listen and give you some ideas. But that’s it for now, Need to get back to writing.