I Once Hiccuped so Hard I Cried. Not Because it Hurt, I Just get Emotional About Random Body Functions · 12:29am Nov 10th, 2014
As I was walking home today, I made one very important decision:
I’m gonna write a story while wearing no pants, drinking beer, and with a video of two kangaroos having sex in the background.
Why? Many reasons. Wearing no pants is always relaxing, for example. Yes, my flatmates will get a little bit flustered, but, look, they knew what they were getting into when they said they’d share a house with me. Tough luck. At least they’ll get to gaze upon my mighty butt cheeks.
Also, I like seeing marsupials mating. It’s alliterative and Australian, and if you don’t see the beauty in what I just said then you’re probably way smarter than me. I’m so sorry. Please don’t hit me. Playwords were never my forte, okay.
Anyway, you might be wondering why the heck I’m writing this blog. Good question! That was a smart one. Here, have a cookie. Other people would have read the title of the blog, but you’re special and dislike titles. Who the hell needs titles anyway? We should all embrace communism in that regard.
But I digress! Blog. I’m talking about a blog. Well, actually, I’m blogging about a blog, which is stupid, but I think I already said that you’re probably smarter than me, so that shouldn’t be a surprise. Hrrm.
Y’see, usually I like to talk about my latest stories in this kind of blog. To give some kind of meta information about them. However, it would be kind of late for me to write about Parenting is Easy, I Swear, because honestly talking, there’s not a lot to say about it.
No. What I want to talk about here is writing. I’m gonna write one of those “informative” blogs nobody really reads, except for my mother. Hello, Mom. How’re you doing? Good? Cool. What I want to write about, y’see, is writing itself.
Hah. I went deep there, didn’t I? Luckily for you, I’ll try to fit a joke or two while I puke out words about how to correctly puke out words (spoiler: I don’t actually write about how to write well, because I can’t really do that, but who cares?). Unluckily for you, those jokes are probably going to suck.
Hello, I’m one of Google’s results for the words “bad joke”. I don’t get it either.
I’ll also add a picture here and there because I’m a lonely, sad man, and I like pretty pictures.
Wait. Was the whole “I don’t get it” thing the joke? Because then it was pretty bad – wait a moment.
So.
Writing.
First question: Why the hell am I writing about this all of a sudden? Easy-peasy one-two-threesie: I thought it would be fun.
That’s way more important than you think.
You see, not so long ago, a person sent me a private message and asked me for writing advice. It wasn’t the first time someone did that, which once more proves that people don’t really know how to tell an idiot for a smart person when they see one. Asking me for writing advice is like asking a tiger for dating advice.
But yeah, I tried to help him… and I probably messed it all up. When somebody asks me something like “How did you get popular?” my first reaction is to scream and hide under a table because holy shit, people. My second reaction is to try to be sincere, which means I explain how I usually write. Here’s the process:
• Part one: I get an idea.
”Hahah, dogs are funny! I should write a story about Celestia dying.
• Part two: I think about the idea. Usually this also involves talking with my friends about the idea. If you’re wondering how I manage to talk with my friends, the answer is easy – they’re not people. I think they’re either sheep or very smart rocks. Probably rocks.
”Okay,so here’s the thing: what if Celestia dies, but she’s also a velociraptor so everything is, like, super confusing?”
“Meow.”
“Huh. So she should be two velociraptors instead? Sounds interesting. I’m game.”
• Part three: I write the story.
”Man, this quote would be funnier if writing didn’t involve being quiet and doing nothing but type. A shame, really.”
“Meow.”
Kind of… anticlimactic. “Hey, Aragón! How do you write your stories?” “I, uh, I write them, I guess.” Yep. Definitely helpful as balls. Go me, I should be a pro job advisor.
“I have this set of skills. What should I do?”
“I think not drinking poison is a good start!”
“I… what? Why would I drink poison? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Good start!”
So yeah, there should be something else in writing stories. I thought about it a little. And I think I got it! I cracked the code, guys! I can tell you how to write well and become famous and turn into a millionaire by writing! Only have in mind this advice is coming from the guy who thinks including some random lady at random intervals makes a good joke.
Yeah, maybe trusting him is not that good of an idea.
You see, there’s this funny thing about my stories: the most popular ones are the ones that I wrote in one sitting.
I shit you not. Daring DONE! was written in one afternoon after giving it, like, what? Thirty seconds of thought? And it’s my most popular story. A Hell of a Time was like that – I wrote it with nothing specific in mind, then I went to sleep, then I woke up and changed the ending a little bit, and next thing I know that thing was sitting at the first spot of the Top Rated stories ranking for a week or two (now it’s far lower).
Parenting is Easy? Same. Eleven thousand words in one go, with little to no plan, and there it goes. Meanwhile, stories that had a lot of thought in them got kind of ignored.
And the weirdest thing? I see why that happened. The stories I sort-of improvise are far better. They feel fresher, somehow. You laugh at them. You can see the point. Sure, they’re not perfect, and sometimes the flaws are so obvious they almost kill the story – but what they do, they more or less do it well.
Hell, I enjoy them, and I’m their author. Everybody tells me I should despise my own works, and turns out I’m not even good at that. Why does that happen?
The answer is kind of… obvious. Or maybe I should say “cheesy”. You see, I had a lot of fun while writing those things.
I know, I know. It sounds like bogus. But, you know, I was reading this book the other day – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – and it makes a huge deal out of Quality and what it means to really do a good job. As in, no matter what are you doing – it’s about doing things well. It’s an interesting book, you should give it a try.
The idea is one I already knew, but I never stopped to think about it. It’s related to the eastern philosophies that talk about Zen, the Buddha, and the like. You know, that hole “peace of mind” thing? The yoga stuff? Sort of like that.
You see, when you’re doing something and you enjoy it, the results are obvious. Maybe not on a conscious level, but you can tell. I always roll my eyes when somebody says a meal tastes better “because they were made with love”, but, fuck, I can’t be the only one who noticed long ago that grandmas are awesome at cooking.
That’s the trick. That’s how you get good at writing. Maybe not “professional writer” good, but certainly “fimfiction-well-rated” good. I don’t even know if I’m on that last level yet. I doubt it.
But yeah. You gotta be a grandma, man. That’s it. That’s everything you need to know. You can go write now.
Hell yes. My time has come. Bow before me, motherbleepers.
The thing about Grandma Cuisine, that beautiful thing that makes the world worth living, is that grandmas have been cooking for a really long time. Sometimes, they’re that good because if you do a thing for eighty years, you get really good at it, holy crap. But there’s more than that. When a grandma cooks for herself, it’s not that good. They shine when they cook for their grandchildren.
Why? Because they care. They don’t even need to care about the grandchildren – those little arseholes can go choke on a big male chicken if they want – the thing is, they want that meal to be good. They put part of them in the cooking.
And here’s the somewhat tricky part – it’s not something as simple as thinking “boy, I sure what this stuff I’m cooking to be great”. You gotta care on a deeper level. You gotta worry about you’re doing, about every new step you’re following.
It’s not as simple as following a set of instructions. Maybe the cooking book says you should boil the potatoes for five minutes and then chop them with a knife that’s taken the life of seven virgins, for example, but when the grandma looks at the potatoes she thinks they’renot boiled enough.
What does she do? She thinks of what she’s doing right now. She concentrates on the potatoes. She thinks, look, those potatoes gotta be as soft as Aragón’s sweet butt. The book is saying that I should wait for five minutes, but I know both my potatoes and my Spanish butts, and five minutes ain’t gonna cut it.
Also, that knife has killed seven virgins, because that’s how that grandma rolls, goddammit.
See, she’s not just following some instructions. She’s creating something that’s hers. She’s thinking about the general picture, and then about the potatoes, and then she puts everything together and tries to solve the problem. She’s not half-arsing anything.
But that’s not enough, of course. She’s caring, but that care uses the skills and experience that eighty years of nonstop potato-boiling gave her. She’s pouring herself into what she’s doing, and she gives it the importance it needs.
When you do something, giving your best is always better than not giving your best. I know, this is not exactly mind-blowing, but I sometimes think back on some of my stories, and I know I could have done better.
How does this relate to the whole “having fun” thing I mentioned earlier? Simple. When you have fun, you care. Even if you don’t think you’re caring, you care. Because you’re not distracted, and you’re not forcing yourself to do whatever you’re doing. When you force yourself, you’re half-arsing it. Probably you’re doing it on a subconscious level, yes, but that’s not an excuse.
But when you have fun? Completely different. You give it all you have, because there’s literally nothing else you would like to be doing. You’re having a good time, which means you want to continue having a good time, which means you’re absolutely concentrated.
So that’s the first part of this advice thingy I have going on – remember to always have fun. Always. Enjoy what you’re doing. If you’re not enjoying it, then you’re doing it wrong, and you should fix that. You can care about the things you’re doing and not have fun with them, but having fun is the easiest (and by far the most pleasant) one of them, so there you go.
Now remember the grandma example. She’s having fun, even if she doesn’t know it – she wants that meal to be good, and by God’s name she’s going to make it good. She cares, because the result matters and because she’s confident she can make it.
But she’s also, like, a zillion year sold. She’s cooked a jillion meals. And she fucked up more than half of them.
That’s the second part of the advice, I guess. I’m not good at this. Am I making any sense? I don’t know. What I know is that, even if I cared about the stories I mentioned earlier, they’re not perfect. Because I’m not perfect. But I can get better.
How? With practice. Kind of obvious. Nobody was born a good writer, no matter how many times you tell yourself that’s not right. I’m fairly sure Hemingway’s first story sucked major balls. I’m also sure Hemingway himself knew this. But he kept on writing and writing, because he wanted to get better, and because he cared.
You can’t just half-arse a story and then try to get popular. You need to give it what you’ve got. The more you give, the better the story is, and the only way to get things to give is to keep writing. Practice, practice, practice. Write, write, write.
It’s kind of contradictory, I know. I myself said I wrote my two most popular stories with the absolute half-arsing approach: “let’s write without thinking and see what we get”. But even if I didn’t know it, I was having so much fun. I didn’t get stuck at any point, and it shows. I didn’t force out anything, and it shows. I didn’t get angry with myself, and it shows.
I didn’t take it too seriously, which meant, I mostly tried to have as much fun as possible, which meant I took those stories far more seriously than any other thing I’ve written.
It’s kind of a subconscious thing, maybe. If you have fun, your writing gets better. If you keep writing, you get better.
If you do both? A miracle happens, and suddenly people think whatever you wrote is not as bad as it could have been.
I think I could go on and on about this, and if people keep asking me I guess I might do exactly that, but let’s be honest – not many people are reading this. But who cares? I had fun.
I didn’t.
I’m not the best writer out there. I believe I’m pretty mediocre. But I’ve been writing for a very long time, which means that at one point I got just a liiiiittle less sucky than my past self – and then I wrote something that had that special care that fun brings along. I was an absolute nobody until Daring DONE! came along. Now I’m still an absolute nobody, but, y’know. I have a popular-ish story, and some people think my stories are not worse than having a heart attack, which is pretty awesome.
So, to all those writers who want to get popular, and who want to get better – make sure you have fun. Make sure you care. Don’t try to half-arse something just because you want notifications. Give your stories all you’ve got, and don’t care about what people will say. Just have the best time you can, and then keep doing that.
I promise that, at some point, people will approach you. When you put your heart into something, it shows. Humans are cool like that. And then maybe those people will want to help you. They’ll give you advice, and teach you to get better.
And then, one day, you’ll realize you’re exactly where you wanted to be in the first place. And that’s kind of awesome.
As I said, I could go on and on about this, but it probably makes little sense, so mneh. It’s over for now. Who knows? Maybe at least one guy read the entire thing. By this point, even my mother has stopped. Joke’s on her, though – I started using bad words the moment I knew she would stop caring. HAH! ANOTHER VICTORY FOR ME, WOMAN!
But as I said, I hope somebody tries to listen to this advice. I promise you, it’ll be worth it.
Yaknow, up until this point, I thought for some reason that I was reading a blog by Regidar.
And I was not at all confused.
2584858
That has to be the weirdest comment I've read in a long fucking time, man. Not by its contents, but by what it means.
Like, what the hell?
2584859
Seriously, my thoughts were, "Oh, Regidar's offering writing advice now? That's cool, maybe he's finally taken my words to heart and serioused up about horsefic."
I honestly can't explain this at all.
This is really way too much for me. I skipped over about 25% of it, namely in the grandma stuff.
Also, it's like you took up the pent up random that you had that stemmed from not writing and dumped it all at once.
So how did the surgery go? I'm assuming you just got out of surgery and the meds you're on is where this came from.
2584872
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Stream of consciousness, people. Imagine I'm talking and getting sidetracked all the time, don't read it as an essay or a story.
I guess I'll edit tomorrow, if more people tell me they didn't get a single thing of what I said, tho. It's kind of two in the morning in here. That might explain a couple things about the blog, come to think about it.
The whole time I read this, I had this playing in my head.
Maybe it was because you started off with a lot of sexualization of Australia in alliteration. That's my thing. We all know that's my thing.
I gotta say, I feel a lot for this line. It's the difference between Rarity Virginity Poker, which I adored, wrote a chapter all at once not particularly caring either way except to make it amusing to me, and just went to town on. Just had fun writing and that's it. Meanwhile, we have The Bounty which is one I put a lot of planning into, worked out all the scenes in advance, storyboarded blah blah blah. That one I feel really meh about. I think the fic suffered as a result.
Yeah.
At some level, love is more important than planning. Unless the story is longer than 10 or 20,000 words, at which point fuck you go and plan the hell out of that beast. Work out every last little detail of the world and story. Then you can fall in love with the minutia as you write it.
We've extensively talked about characters having their own way, so I won't expand upon that here. God knows you're the only one reading this comment anyw- you've fallen asleep, haven't you?
Goddamn it, I knew I should have added that grandma picture to keep you interested.
Also, I'd admit to reading the whole thing, but you've already accused me of being your mother. I don't want to reinforce that. We all know you have an Oedipus complex...
You've made some good points, and you've made them in a rambling roundabout way. Also I've found out they must have majorly rejiggered the popular stories computer-thingy because I barely recognize the top ten of all time and that was almost unchanging for the couple of weeks I was paying attention to it. Which has nothing to do with your post, but I found out when I checked out where Hell of a Time was in the rankings.
Also, you should go to sleep at 2am.
I dig what you're saying; and most if my stories that are popular were written in one go, but then most of my stories are because I lose interest otherwise.
So... What you're saying is that I need to get a team of grandmas to write my stories for me, and to tickle them every few minutes so that they have fun?
I'll get right on that. Thanks.
This blog needs a, "comedy" tag. Best writing advice I've ever seen.
22/7
When I first read this line, I went, 'It's okay, but the middle word doesn't match the other two'. Then I realized what just happened, committed seppeku, and am typing this as a ghost because the world most know I am a horrible human being.
2585756 That's why Aragon has editors, so that people don't kill themselves while reading his work, right?
A really long way of saying "If you do what you love and love what you do, other people will love it too" and "Practice makes perfect" very valuable advice there. Though to anyone that isn't Aragon I wouldn't recommend writing while watching kangaroo mating -- it might very well cause irreparable brain damage.