(Do watch the first few minutes of the video where I go off script and tell you how much I love you and how much fun this whole gimmick has been.)
Alright, boys—Mother is here.
Now, what seems to be the problem? I say ‘seems to be’ because whatever your answer, I promise, you are wrong.
The actual problem is that you to have gone beyond illustrating the problem to actively reinforcing it and damaging yourselves and the fiction-writing community in the process.
There is ONLY ONE WAY to write a book and that is to sit down and put words on the page, rearrange the words, read the words, and rearrange them again and again and again until you agree with what they say and the way they say it. This being said, the only WRONG way to write a book is to not.
There. That’s all 100% of all you need to know. Go. Write. Ignore the absolutists.
…To continue reading past this point will only reward you with me diddling my intellectual clit.
And perhaps a new respect for my ability to dunk with a hard-G .gif.
Love and Respect Wear a Harsh Mask of Truth
So buckle-up, Buttercup, I’m serving cunt on a silver platter and if you’re brave enough to stick it out to the end, I guarantee you’ll learn something new.
STOP IT RIGHT NOW! What the actual fuck is wrong with you?! Here we are, skating on the razor’s edge of Indie Publishing—and I mean, literally, we three as well as our peers like
, , , and —and you are wasting words and time with a pointless argument about an imaginary thing!
Emil-the-Ottoman-Warrior is on the verge—read: has already begun planning—his own boutique publishing house. All his whining an begging us to talk him out of it is nothing more than the remnants of a frightened little boy who is facing his Forever Dream and overflowing with anxiety and dread that Some Authority is going to come along and burst his bubble with a pin shaped like NO!
And Thaddeus-a-saurus Thomas Rex? This paragon of publishing platitudes says that he doesn’t worldbuild, and yet is the architect of a radical new experiment in worldbuilding-through-story that makes the audience a part of the collaboration in a unique, yet familiar way. Meanwhile, the ghost of his frightened little boy sits like a king atop a story-pyramid-shaped throne of cowardice rather than shit out 750 words of fiction and throw his own voice into the ring to be voted upon by his peers.
The Only way to LEARN is to FAIL!
As boys of western civilization, you are inclined to play King of the Hill, conquering new high ground in some metaphorical—if not physical—way. I’ve seen it. I am, after all, Mother. (2 boys, 23 and 28 this year. Wait. Fuck. Haly, HOW THE FUCK OLD ARE YOU?!)
In your keen battle against good sense, you have both deluded yourselves into thinking that these New Hills Upon Which to Die are a) new and b) hills.
Messirs Ottoman and Thomas, allow me to lay out for you the truth:
You are reinforcing the gates at the very tippy-top of a bell curve representing artistic tradition vs. artistic intuition and, in so doing, you are making the act of writing less accessible to yourselves and—most egregiously—to our students!
Go ahead. Argue with Mr. Miyagi. But let me pop some popcorn first. I wanna watch him honk your nose, clown!
Back to my Point: Shame on You!
What makes matters even worse is that you have chosen the most basic, the most vanilla, the most milk-toast excuse for an argument behind which to hide and procrastinate so that you do not have to sit down and write the words that might lead to…. To what?
If your argument was a spice, it would be flour. If it was a book, it would be two books!
You espouse indie publishing, while at the same time, becoming an illustrative embodiment of the same argument that traditional publishing has been using against us for years.
Let me see your outline, you blurb, your one page-summary, your two-page summary, three chapters, and the last roll of paper you used to wipe your ass because that’s how it was done by a bunch of old dead dicks. What do you mean you’re too busy writing to do your own marketing and advertising and printing?
Why are you Still Reading This?
Are you waiting for me to hold my breath, squeeze really hard, and inflate my litero-philosophical dick?
Fine!
I am a modern torchbearer for a school of thought that began with Voltaire; was carried to its fullest measure of surreal excess through Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade; flourished in Victor Hugo’s rejection of his wardrobe (fashion being the French version of social media, don’cha-know); stripped to the bare essential question of being by Jean-Paul Sartre, held holy on high by Lenny Bruce, and now forms the beating heart that drives every bit of my artistic expression…
FUCK YOU, PUSSY! GO FAIL AT SOMETHING GREAT!
…right down to a game of “Yes, and…” through notes with myself and Emil.
You. Are. Fucking. Welcome.
And with whom among our contemporary voices would I most identify myself if I had to give a list of philosophical comps—besides those who are struggling to stand in their graves and ovate me? Tom Morello. Maynard James Keenan. Tobias Forge.
. And God’s-own-gift-to-independent-thinking, who introduced me to Jean-Paul Sartre in the first fucking place!!
I couldn’t find him as the housewife, so you get the rabbit instead! Fie on you!
Why are you wasting your finite time in life writing about the words and thoughts of old dead dicks for whom we have only referential context?! Who the fuck do you think you are?! ME?!
And all of this nonsense over an imaginary boogy-man, to begin with!
All. Writing. Is. Discovery. Writing.
Exactly 0 times in the history of language and imagination has a book been written, perfectly, all the way through, on the first go, and made sense.
Periodt.
What is an outline, except a disciplined and rigid form of discovering the story?
You two pillars on your high hill-that-is-really-a-bell-curve are so busy trying to out-piss each other, you cannot see that the trail you’ve been following was blazed by the likes of authors such as George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss—men so impressed with their own thoughts on LIT-ER-AH-TUR-AH that
THEY ARE NOT WRITING THE FUCKING BOOK!!!
Plotting and pantsing, tribalism and spectrums. It’s all a distraction, a ruse, hocus-pocus, smoke-and-mirrors.
If I could have one person show up at my door right now for a cup of creamy coffee and a long-ass chat, it would be Penn Gillette.
Fun Fact: There are two schools of thought in the magic community. One school believes that the audience should leave a show believing something about the universe that the magician knows is not true. Penn Gillette, like me, believes that people are more fascinated, more appreciative, and more engaged when they know up front that you are performing tricks.
Being honest with the audience will produce more magic than a con job.
Stop demonstrating how to be afraid of doing it wrong, stop tricking people into thinking that there even is such a thing as doing it wrong. And, in the process, you’ll stop tricking yourselves, as well.
2 million World Anvil authors, and all of Substack.
14 showed up.
Where were you?
Sit down. Shut the fuck up. And write the god-damned book. Put your words where your mouth is. Create something new. Wallow in the pain of bringing forth new ideas and enjoy the simple freshness of being fucking human.
Write.
Now, Boys, What Have we Learned Today?
“Mother’s not the cream; she’s the tits!”
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