I'm inspired also but my job just drains me (software developer). So writing means sitting in front of my desk or laptop and after dealing with the incompetence at my job all day, the last thing I want is to sit and watch the cursor blink and mock me because I can't clear my brain enough from work to write.
I completely agree! I would always find myself getting stuck trying to type. When I switched to handwriting, I finished my first novel in a couple months and am now halfway through the second (a story idea that came to me when a Green Day song randomly popped into my head while driving down an empty stretch of highway with the kids asleep in the back). I don't even touch a computer until the first draft is complete. Inspiration always seems to come easiest when you are alone with your thoughts, or lack thereof, and something is lost when the pen is replaced by a keyboard (for me, at least).
That's my main activity at Study Hall: Transcribing from my longhand notes to Word on my laptop. As I key each page into a file I savor the act of crossing out the scribbled notebook page. So satisfying.
Get a notebook. Commit to collecting just one excellent sentence each day and putting it into the notebook. Every two weeks get yourself trapped in a boring place -- automotive shop waiting areas are deadly boring, so are airports -- and keyboard your sentences into a file. As they develop critical mass, begin to cut and paste and juxtapose them in new ways. A pattern will emerge, and you'll get something your planning, logical mind could never have foreseen.
Damn! That's another $1.99 down the toilet. Hint: Steal office supplies. Isn't that why we get office jobs? Those Uni-Ball High Impact gel pens don't buy themselves.
Also you can get half decent old typewriters for real cheap these days. I bought one, for 50 AUD and one of the keys stick but it's fine. I can sit there and type without distraction and I'm not getting a weird headache from too much blue light or whatever.
This is the best content on the internet. And that's not a kiss-ass thing because it's C.P.'s page here, but with all the doom and gloom of Covid, politics, inflation, global warming, and abortions in Texas, it's refreshing to pull something up that isn't heralding the end of the world.
Thank you. As the shit piles up we do reach "shit fatigue" and topple into absurdity. I can't wait to tackle "Absurdist Existentialism" here. For a preview, read "The Day of the Locust" by Nathanael West. Or "Deliver Us Not Into Penn Station" by Amy Hempel.
Dude, how do you think "M.A.S.H." and Catch-22 got written? Salinger wrote "The Catcher in the Rye while being shelled in WWII. And Patrick Dennis wrote "Auntie Mame" while serving in Italy in WWII. And don't forget Vonnegut who wrote "Slaughterhouse 5" while exhuming bodies in Dresden. Now it's your turn...
My first ex-wife threw away my letters and my second confiscated my journals. My thoughts were taken away from me when my son was ripped from my care with out a trial. I fear I defended the wrong country, and I have tried to not let defining moments dictate my future.
This is the most and the only encouragement I could ever need.
It's crazy. I was telling my wife that I wish I could learn writing. In everything I do, I've always wished that I had the gall to create more. I'm a musician, but not a songwriter, so I've always wished that I learned song craft. I had a few years where I did nothing but watch films and wanted to be a screenwriter. I'd go through all my favorite novels by Chuck, Hornby, Coupland, etc. and wish that I could write a novel. But here I am, almost 45 and said to my wife this weekend that I really want to learn to write and take it up as a hobby at least. Then on Monday, Chuck announces this. And everything posted so far is SO inspiring. Thank you, Chuck. For reading my mind across the country.
Please don't make this a "should." Just look for an idea or the germ of an idea that keeps you coming back to the page. I'll hammer on this more in the near future.
I'm definitely inspired. I've got so many past lives that I want to pull from, and I have a deep fascination with sub cultures (some I've been a part of). Hell, I was on track to being a Pentecostal preacher in Texas from 1993-2001, now I'm an evangelical atheist. Also went from working in a photo lab for 20 years as a high school dropout, to having a masters degree and working as an Archivist in DC. All things that whisper in my ear to "write something."
Chuck’s best advice is to just write. Get it out, get it on the page. Then you can delete/add/rearrange but at least it’s there for you to shape. Otherwise it’s still just a wish. ❤️
Chuck—Not totally off topic— I’ve read fiction (for example, crime/thriller genre—Robert Bloch’s PSYCHO, Jack Ketchum’s THE GIRL NEXT DOOR) that was clearly based on real people/cases/crimes, but names/places were changed. Other times I hear about “normal” people who become “flavor of the month celebrities” because of something that happened in their life who then sell the rights to their life stories. (Usually it’s some scandal they’re involved in or something extraordinary they did). What’s the difference for us as writers mining for material? Are there certain people/events we can’t touch because we don’t have the rights? (Excluding, of course, say fictional characters or IPs, or parody). Thanks boss—Josh J.
Don't mistake me for a lawyer. But my understanding is that if you fictionalize a true event (geez, I hate that Latinate word "fictionalize") the plaintiff must prove real defamation and damages. But even the smallest tweak will cover your ass. In "The Devil Wears Prada" the narrator is clearly the assistant to Anna Wintour, the Editor of Vogue. But as such the author must've signed a non-disclosure promising not to bad-mouth her boss. So how can she write this book? In one of the final scenes of the book -- in Paris for Fashion Week -- the narrator looks across a salon and sees... wait for it... Anna Wintour! Thus the fictional Miranda Priestly stands beside Anna so the book can't be about Ms. Wintour. I'd bet a big box of doughnuts that some publishing house lawyer asked for that passage in the book just to avoid a lawsuit.
On a more basic ethical level, if you write a balanced fictionalized version that honors the real story without cheap shots and malice, then you won't feel like a user scum-sucking lowlife. Stay with me here. Recently a lawsuit was resolved over "The Help." A housekeeper/employee of the author's family had sued, claiming that the author had stolen stories the plaintiff had told about her own life. The woman Ablene Cooper asked for $75,000 in damages but the case was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired on the alleged theft.
So, in short: Hedge by tweaking the material so it's not identical to the truth. Don't malign the subject and hold him/her up for ridicule ('The Help' author Kathryn Stockett had compared Cooper's skin color to a cockroach -- cheap shot!). And wait until the statute of limitations has expired before you use those stories told to you by your servants who stand around dropping peeled grapes into your mouth all day.
I make my living reading other people’s stories to children. Then I ask questions about the book, written by someone else. The method works. Plus, I get to teach kids to love reading. It’s a win-win.
Something that’s shifted in our culture, and I think an argument could be made that social media was a driving force behind it, is that for a lot of people they choose not to listen. They just wait for their turn to talk.
Essentially, your post is all about listening, whether or not you’re the target audience. Our lives are a lot more isolating than we realize, and the pandemic has certainly condensed them further. I can’t wait to feel comfortable again to sit at a coffee shop and take in my surroundings. I’ll find some diamonds.
Pssssst. I used to lurk on phone sex chat lines as people talked their dirty scenarios. "Press 1 for the Orgy Room." You'll find diamonds in a septic tank that way. It really helped flesh out "Invisible Monsters."
Back when I was doing a lot of flying back and forth between the east and west coast, I loved getting to the airport early to people watch and make conversation with strangers I'd never see again. Once on a connecting flight between SC and NC in a tiny puddle jumper, a reporter and cameraman for Univision couldn't fit their gear under the seats, and the camera man handed me a very large very expensive camera to hold while he disassembled another, and didn't realize I wasn't the reporter until I handed it back. Haven't found a home for that in any stories yet, but someday.
Hello back. I hope to live through this Covid mess just so I can come visit you and find my roots. Lidia Yuknavitch says you haven't lived until you've visited the region where everyone looks like you.
After my first book had been published in Hungary, one of the biggest book resellers had to suspend the related comments on their website because many people found their embarrassing stories and they did not like that. They did not seem flattered (in spite of the fact that no real names were mentioned and the overall story was a fiction). Many comments started with the F word and even Adolf made a comment (yes, that one). So I am just saying be careful about how you preserve stories, especially in the corporate world. Especially in Eastern Europe.
So these people felt your characters were based on them? I've always wondered about the legal ramifications there. I live in Canada and some of my fiction is partly autobiographical.
Yes, the novel was a dark comedy about how inefficient and stupid multinational companies can be (are, indeed). Some events and conflicts were based on true stories, I had worked for some of these so-called multis as a consultant.
I am inspired! It's time to hack together a bunch of words and phrases into something resembling a story and then try to sell it. I can probably do it. Sell something I got for free? How about something I didn't pay money for instead. Because no idea, no story is free. They all cost something. Every story has a price, and the only question is: are you willing to pay that price? After years of writing little-to-nothing, I think I'm once more ready to get back to it. Thank you for inspiring me to hack together words and phrases again.
I love that you are talking about this! I get asked all of the time how I came up with an idea or how I knew about something that goes into one of my stories, and it's really just the result of being inquisitive and paying attention to the world around us. Can't wait for your next post!
Chuck, your works created a fleury of thoughts and ideas that I leaned on to write a novel. It’s out there for free cause why not! Just wanted people to read and connect with an introverts existential tale about dying slowly at work.
Can read it free here. I mean chapter 1 starts of off with a bang, comparing small talk to masturbation.
Sorry, eh! Maybe it was the article I read on Marc-Andre Fleury before reading your article. Or maybe it's the Canuck in me. Either way, thanks for the reply! I guarantee at least one sensible chuckle if you read Chapter 1.
I am so glad I am subscribed to this. Holy hell. Very inspired to start writing again.
I'm inspired also but my job just drains me (software developer). So writing means sitting in front of my desk or laptop and after dealing with the incompetence at my job all day, the last thing I want is to sit and watch the cursor blink and mock me because I can't clear my brain enough from work to write.
Oh for sure. After a long day of working 2 jobs I once loved deeply, the last thing I want to do is stare at my reflection in a monitor.
That's why the notebook. Take it to the gym. Keep it in the bathroom, your mind goes places while you take a shower. Keep it in your car.
I completely agree! I would always find myself getting stuck trying to type. When I switched to handwriting, I finished my first novel in a couple months and am now halfway through the second (a story idea that came to me when a Green Day song randomly popped into my head while driving down an empty stretch of highway with the kids asleep in the back). I don't even touch a computer until the first draft is complete. Inspiration always seems to come easiest when you are alone with your thoughts, or lack thereof, and something is lost when the pen is replaced by a keyboard (for me, at least).
That's my main activity at Study Hall: Transcribing from my longhand notes to Word on my laptop. As I key each page into a file I savor the act of crossing out the scribbled notebook page. So satisfying.
Get a notebook. Commit to collecting just one excellent sentence each day and putting it into the notebook. Every two weeks get yourself trapped in a boring place -- automotive shop waiting areas are deadly boring, so are airports -- and keyboard your sentences into a file. As they develop critical mass, begin to cut and paste and juxtapose them in new ways. A pattern will emerge, and you'll get something your planning, logical mind could never have foreseen.
And turn off your car radio/stereo. Drive time is thinking time, and your brain enters delta-wave territory.
I'm going to need to start a commonplace notebook to jot down all of the extra useful advice that winds up in the comments sections.
Damn! That's another $1.99 down the toilet. Hint: Steal office supplies. Isn't that why we get office jobs? Those Uni-Ball High Impact gel pens don't buy themselves.
Also you can get half decent old typewriters for real cheap these days. I bought one, for 50 AUD and one of the keys stick but it's fine. I can sit there and type without distraction and I'm not getting a weird headache from too much blue light or whatever.
This is the best content on the internet. And that's not a kiss-ass thing because it's C.P.'s page here, but with all the doom and gloom of Covid, politics, inflation, global warming, and abortions in Texas, it's refreshing to pull something up that isn't heralding the end of the world.
Thank you. As the shit piles up we do reach "shit fatigue" and topple into absurdity. I can't wait to tackle "Absurdist Existentialism" here. For a preview, read "The Day of the Locust" by Nathanael West. Or "Deliver Us Not Into Penn Station" by Amy Hempel.
As someone who ascribes to absurdist existentialism and knows it's weird and dumb, I am extremely looking forward to what is to come...
"Shit fatigue" is the new favorite addition to my vocabulary.
The other day a friend said, "I'm tired of your bullshittery." And I notched that one in my brain for later use.
I have a literal litany of free trauma from deploying to Afghanistan, and having my first born taken from me because of said federal service.
Dude, how do you think "M.A.S.H." and Catch-22 got written? Salinger wrote "The Catcher in the Rye while being shelled in WWII. And Patrick Dennis wrote "Auntie Mame" while serving in Italy in WWII. And don't forget Vonnegut who wrote "Slaughterhouse 5" while exhuming bodies in Dresden. Now it's your turn...
My first ex-wife threw away my letters and my second confiscated my journals. My thoughts were taken away from me when my son was ripped from my care with out a trial. I fear I defended the wrong country, and I have tried to not let defining moments dictate my future.
This is the most and the only encouragement I could ever need.
This is already an amazing start to a story
Use your past so you're not used BY it. Just say'n.
That's damn near religious right there.
Yes
Honestly this subscription could not have come at a better time
It's crazy. I was telling my wife that I wish I could learn writing. In everything I do, I've always wished that I had the gall to create more. I'm a musician, but not a songwriter, so I've always wished that I learned song craft. I had a few years where I did nothing but watch films and wanted to be a screenwriter. I'd go through all my favorite novels by Chuck, Hornby, Coupland, etc. and wish that I could write a novel. But here I am, almost 45 and said to my wife this weekend that I really want to learn to write and take it up as a hobby at least. Then on Monday, Chuck announces this. And everything posted so far is SO inspiring. Thank you, Chuck. For reading my mind across the country.
Please don't make this a "should." Just look for an idea or the germ of an idea that keeps you coming back to the page. I'll hammer on this more in the near future.
I'm definitely inspired. I've got so many past lives that I want to pull from, and I have a deep fascination with sub cultures (some I've been a part of). Hell, I was on track to being a Pentecostal preacher in Texas from 1993-2001, now I'm an evangelical atheist. Also went from working in a photo lab for 20 years as a high school dropout, to having a masters degree and working as an Archivist in DC. All things that whisper in my ear to "write something."
Chuck’s best advice is to just write. Get it out, get it on the page. Then you can delete/add/rearrange but at least it’s there for you to shape. Otherwise it’s still just a wish. ❤️
Tiffany! Good morning!
Morning, Chuck!
I know you’ll get to it, but it was your story of the reading interrupter folks, the balloon poppers, that really brought this home for me.
Chuck—Not totally off topic— I’ve read fiction (for example, crime/thriller genre—Robert Bloch’s PSYCHO, Jack Ketchum’s THE GIRL NEXT DOOR) that was clearly based on real people/cases/crimes, but names/places were changed. Other times I hear about “normal” people who become “flavor of the month celebrities” because of something that happened in their life who then sell the rights to their life stories. (Usually it’s some scandal they’re involved in or something extraordinary they did). What’s the difference for us as writers mining for material? Are there certain people/events we can’t touch because we don’t have the rights? (Excluding, of course, say fictional characters or IPs, or parody). Thanks boss—Josh J.
Don't mistake me for a lawyer. But my understanding is that if you fictionalize a true event (geez, I hate that Latinate word "fictionalize") the plaintiff must prove real defamation and damages. But even the smallest tweak will cover your ass. In "The Devil Wears Prada" the narrator is clearly the assistant to Anna Wintour, the Editor of Vogue. But as such the author must've signed a non-disclosure promising not to bad-mouth her boss. So how can she write this book? In one of the final scenes of the book -- in Paris for Fashion Week -- the narrator looks across a salon and sees... wait for it... Anna Wintour! Thus the fictional Miranda Priestly stands beside Anna so the book can't be about Ms. Wintour. I'd bet a big box of doughnuts that some publishing house lawyer asked for that passage in the book just to avoid a lawsuit.
On a more basic ethical level, if you write a balanced fictionalized version that honors the real story without cheap shots and malice, then you won't feel like a user scum-sucking lowlife. Stay with me here. Recently a lawsuit was resolved over "The Help." A housekeeper/employee of the author's family had sued, claiming that the author had stolen stories the plaintiff had told about her own life. The woman Ablene Cooper asked for $75,000 in damages but the case was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired on the alleged theft.
So, in short: Hedge by tweaking the material so it's not identical to the truth. Don't malign the subject and hold him/her up for ridicule ('The Help' author Kathryn Stockett had compared Cooper's skin color to a cockroach -- cheap shot!). And wait until the statute of limitations has expired before you use those stories told to you by your servants who stand around dropping peeled grapes into your mouth all day.
Thanks!
Voodoo donuts, of course.
Hi there Chuck! Damn looooong time no meet you.
Love this new thing you created, thanx a bunch!
This post about “stealing” real-life-people’s speeches and put ‘em in fictional characters’ mouths is so cool, makes me think of Quentin Tarantino.
PS: hope to meet you again soon in Italy… or somewhere else. Much love.
Ciao!
Can you remember when I interviewed you in Milan and Mantova? Man I miss our stuff exchanges through the legendary St. Helens bookstore
Yes! LouAnn's old store. Toward the end I was spending a full week out of every month just inscribing books for her. And I do recall you in Mantova.
I make my living reading other people’s stories to children. Then I ask questions about the book, written by someone else. The method works. Plus, I get to teach kids to love reading. It’s a win-win.
Something that’s shifted in our culture, and I think an argument could be made that social media was a driving force behind it, is that for a lot of people they choose not to listen. They just wait for their turn to talk.
Essentially, your post is all about listening, whether or not you’re the target audience. Our lives are a lot more isolating than we realize, and the pandemic has certainly condensed them further. I can’t wait to feel comfortable again to sit at a coffee shop and take in my surroundings. I’ll find some diamonds.
Pssssst. I used to lurk on phone sex chat lines as people talked their dirty scenarios. "Press 1 for the Orgy Room." You'll find diamonds in a septic tank that way. It really helped flesh out "Invisible Monsters."
Back when I was doing a lot of flying back and forth between the east and west coast, I loved getting to the airport early to people watch and make conversation with strangers I'd never see again. Once on a connecting flight between SC and NC in a tiny puddle jumper, a reporter and cameraman for Univision couldn't fit their gear under the seats, and the camera man handed me a very large very expensive camera to hold while he disassembled another, and didn't realize I wasn't the reporter until I handed it back. Haven't found a home for that in any stories yet, but someday.
I really missed this kind of storytelling from you.Hello from Romania!Hope to see you sometime in a tour in Europe!
Hello back. I hope to live through this Covid mess just so I can come visit you and find my roots. Lidia Yuknavitch says you haven't lived until you've visited the region where everyone looks like you.
This is a fact
This is really really great. Feels like the good old days at CP.net with the essays. Thanks for this.
After my first book had been published in Hungary, one of the biggest book resellers had to suspend the related comments on their website because many people found their embarrassing stories and they did not like that. They did not seem flattered (in spite of the fact that no real names were mentioned and the overall story was a fiction). Many comments started with the F word and even Adolf made a comment (yes, that one). So I am just saying be careful about how you preserve stories, especially in the corporate world. Especially in Eastern Europe.
So these people felt your characters were based on them? I've always wondered about the legal ramifications there. I live in Canada and some of my fiction is partly autobiographical.
Yes, the novel was a dark comedy about how inefficient and stupid multinational companies can be (are, indeed). Some events and conflicts were based on true stories, I had worked for some of these so-called multis as a consultant.
I am inspired! It's time to hack together a bunch of words and phrases into something resembling a story and then try to sell it. I can probably do it. Sell something I got for free? How about something I didn't pay money for instead. Because no idea, no story is free. They all cost something. Every story has a price, and the only question is: are you willing to pay that price? After years of writing little-to-nothing, I think I'm once more ready to get back to it. Thank you for inspiring me to hack together words and phrases again.
I love that you are talking about this! I get asked all of the time how I came up with an idea or how I knew about something that goes into one of my stories, and it's really just the result of being inquisitive and paying attention to the world around us. Can't wait for your next post!
Chuck, your works created a fleury of thoughts and ideas that I leaned on to write a novel. It’s out there for free cause why not! Just wanted people to read and connect with an introverts existential tale about dying slowly at work.
Can read it free here. I mean chapter 1 starts of off with a bang, comparing small talk to masturbation.
https://happinessisjustapillaway.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/happinessisjustapillaway.pdf
Dude, what are you? French? The word is "flurry." Thanks for the link.
Sorry, eh! Maybe it was the article I read on Marc-Andre Fleury before reading your article. Or maybe it's the Canuck in me. Either way, thanks for the reply! I guarantee at least one sensible chuckle if you read Chapter 1.
I have this on my Kindle.
Hey Dan, that's awesome! Thanks for downloading - hope it wasn't too painful to read haha :)