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If you read enough stuff by a given writer, sooner or later you are going to read Opinions, and most of the time these will be Opinions About Things In Which The Writer Is Not An Expert. This is natural, because writers are people too (no, honest!) and people like spouting off their Opinions.

This is also very dangerous, because you’ve got someone whose entire job is to make things sound believable, blabbering authoritatively about stuff they don’t really understand.

No matter the topic – religion, philosophy, politics, lepidopterology – you’re going to get a well-reasoned, well-structured, polished, coherent, grammatically correct argument. And then, if you’re not careful, you can find yourself nodding along and thinking “Hey, that makes sense, we should employ genetically modified marmosets to direct air traffic.” And you have to snap out of it and remind yourself that Writers Don’t Actually Know Anything.

“Okay,” says you, “but there is one thing writers actually know about: writing. Surely I can trust their opinions on writing?”

Ah, to be young. I remember the days when I myself was a naive lad of but 25 years.

I got a book one time – I’ve long since forgotten the title – that was nothing but interviews with writers, asking about their process and their thoughts on the craft. Every writer described their own process – throwing out words like “of course” and “naturally” to make their experience sound universal and obvious – and every process was totally different from all the others.

Probably you’ve heard this before, that every writer’s process is different, that you should do what works for you. But the less-publicized corollary is that most writers don’t actually understand writing, they only understand the writing process that works for them.

I’ll say that again. Most writers don’t actually understand writing.

This is part of the reason you get so much conflicting advice. Because even though writers know that they’re all different and readers are all different, even though they read other writers’ blogs and think about other ways of doing things, fundamentally (and naturally) they are still rooted in what works for them. And a lot of writers understand this, and that’s why the smart ones put disclaimers like “This has worked for me, but your mileage may vary.” Because they know that when one person’s driving a Hummer and another has a Harley, mileage will indeed vary.

Me, I have a silver four-cylinder base-model 2006 Honda Accord, and I include myself very much in the “writers who don’t understand writing” category. Which is why I try to be careful about the advice I give here.

Because I Don’t Actually Know Anything.

P.S. To all the well-wishers yesterday: my birthday was great, so you got your wish. Yeah. On my birthday, you got your wish. Jerks.

I mean, uh. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Today I turn 26.

Coincidentally (I hope) I woke this morning with a headache like Bane had pounded a railroad spike through my left eyeball. “Life is suffering,” said the Buddha; I believe he meant this headache specifically. Yes, Tylenol, good, work your deep inscrutable magic…

Between the celebration and the woe, no writing-related post today. Instead I leave you with this, one of the coolest Mario 64 videos you will ever see (if you’re into that sort of thing). Yeah, it’s TAS. Doesn’t mean it won’t rock your socks off.

See you tomorrow!

Fair warning: this one’s gonna be a rant.

I think we can agree that when we’re talking about books – online, IRL, whatever – certain ones are cooler to like than others. I think we can further agree that Twilight and its sequels fall firmly in the “others” category. In fact, I’ll go further: in the current literary landscape, if you like Twilight, you almost have to hide it. Like it’s some shameful secret to tell your priest in confession, like they’re going to put a scarlet “T” on your chest.

And for good reason. Because mention Twilight, and prepare to watch people who are otherwise nice, thoughtful, reasonable individuals start spewing comments about how those books are only for teenage girls who read fantasy fulfillment stories because they’re too stupid to understand real writers.

Not to put too fine a point on it: this is bullshit.

Hang on, I think that was too subtle. I’ll try again.

If you look down on people for reading Twilight, that is FUCKING BULLSHIT.

Literary snobbery is a fool’s game to begin with, of course, because anything you like, someone else is looking down their nose at it. Harry Potter fans turn up their noses at Twilight, Lord of the Rings lovers mock Harry Potter, people who read “real” literature scorn anything in a genre, and James Joyce fanatics chuckle condescendingly at everybody else in the world. Even if you like Ulysses you’re not safe, because the guy to your left has read Finnegans Wake and thinks you’re adorable for writing it with an apostrophe. There’s always a snobbier snob.

Yes, you say, but snobbery is silly. I like what I like because it appeals to me, and nobody’s going to tell me otherwise just because they have more letters after their name.

Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. Because, you see, here’s the key point, the deep dark secret of books (and art in general) that no snob wants to admit:

The quality of all fiction is totally subjective.

Or, to put it another way: “good writing” and “bad writing” are all in your head. If you like it, it’s good; end of story.

I can already hear people protesting. There have to be objective measures of skill, right? What about plot? Pacing? Structure? Word choice? What about style? An enticing hook and a satisfying ending? Worldbuilding? Hell, if nothing else, what about spelling the words right?

Sorry, folks. All of that stuff only matters insofar as it creates a better subjective experience for the reader. (Now, to be clear, certain factors will make you appeal subjectively to a lot more people, which is where the delusions of objectivity come from. But fundamentally it’s all subjective.)

I’ll put this another way.

My favorite book is The Lord of the Rings. Why? Is it because the characters are deep, the worldbuilding is unprecedented, the scope is literally epic? Partly, but none of that gets to the core. The reason I love The Lord of the Rings is that it touches something inside me. Tolkien’s words reach into my soul and give me feelings that are indescribable. Reading that book is, for me, transcendent. And because of that, nothing else matters.

You can tell me the beginning is slow, the dialogue is cheesy, the plot is derivative, the morals are hypocritical, the story is racist. All those things may be valid to varying degrees, and are certainly worthy of further discussion. But when it comes to loving the book, none of that is right or wrong, it’s simply irrelevant.

I love the book because I love it. You can’t retroactively invalidate the experience of love.

I’m not personally a fan of the Twilight books. You don’t have to be, either. You can think Stephenie Meyer is a bad writer; that’s your opinion and you are entitled.

But if you’re honestly going to look down on another human being because their positive feelings are triggered by a different series of words than you? Then it’s possible you might be missing the entire point of reading books in the first place.

Okay. Rant over! See you tomorrow, kids!

It occurs to me that I haven’t talked about my own writing projects in a while. On the (rather dubious) theory that y’all come to this site partly to hear about me, here’s a quick rundown of what I’m working on (and waiting on) right now.

1. The Novel. I haven’t mentioned The Counterfeit Emperor in a while. I’m still in the Getting Feedback phase. I’ve gotten a ton of critiques back on the latest draft, and I have a pretty good idea of what kind of revision it needs (mainly: tighten up the opening, sharpen the ending, miscellaneous to-do list in the middle). However, I’m still waiting on one more critique in particular before I tackle my next, hopefully final, revision. So in the meantime I’ve been practicing my short fiction. For example…

2. The Machine of Death story. I submitted my story for Machine of Death Volume 2 just before the July 15 deadline. So did, um, about 2,000 other people, so the competition is pretty stiff. Fingers crossed – I actually think my work here is one of my best stories. Unfortunately I won’t hear back on that one till October 31, so in the meantime I’ve been trying my hand at a bunch of…

3. Chuck Wendig’s short story prompts. I’ve written stories for three of Wendig‘s weekly challenges so far, plus a sonnet for fun. I’ve really been digging those, for a lot of reasons: the prompts are intriguing, it’s fun to read other people’s stories, and it’s fun when the other participants read my stories. And hey, I’ve done pretty well; “Scissors With Running” and “Bald Pregnant Women” were chosen as top-five winners by Wendig and his readers, respectively. Cool! However, I don’t have a story this week. That’s because lately I’ve forsaken Chuck (he’ll get over it – in time) to work on…

4. Agent Courtney’s short story prompts. I don’t know if I’ve linked to Agent Courtney yet, but she’s fairly new to the agent-blogging scene and she’s already got a bunch of story prompts up on her site. Deadline is August 26, and the prize is a query critique. I was planning to have a story for this challenge up here today, but it just hasn’t worked out. I’ve made no fewer than three false starts on two different prompts, and I just can’t seem to get anything I’m happy with. Very frustrating, actually. But August 26 waits for no man, and I will have an entry up before it does. Next Thursday it is. In the meantime, I’m also waiting on…

5. Something secret. I don’t want to say anything just yet, because I’m not sure when it will happen, but I do have something else that I’m looking forward to announcing. Oh, and in the back of my mind there’s still…

6. The next novel. Which I have a lot of truly righteous ideas for. But this is a long ways off yet so I won’t talk too much about it, either.

Huh. That’s weird – I was feeling unproductive lately, but when I write it all out like that, it actually sounds like I’m pretty busy. Ok, we’ll go with that.

What projects are you working on, writing or otherwise? Tell me in the comments! (I mean, if you want. If not, that’s cool. Just click that little X and close the window. No, go on. It’s fine. Not like I’m sitting here…waiting…alone…in the darkness…)

Uh, right. See you tomorrow!

I was all set for today’s post, hypothetical reader. I had this great idea: take the major candidates for President and make a funny (and, if possible, insulting) anagram out of each one of their names. Amusing! Topical! Word-related! I fired up the anagram generator, I got out my pencil, and I was ready to go.

Except – as so often happens – the candidates did not cooperate.

Yeah, there were a few decent ones. Herman Cain gives you “Inane Charm,” Mitt Romney is “Metro Minty,” Newt Gingrich is “Wrenching Git.” But Rick Perry’s name is a veritable fortress, and Jon Huntsman and Barack Obama don’t give you much to work with either. Ron Paul is “Our Plan,” which is sort of neat but not funny, and “Oral Pun,” which is sort of funny but doesn’t really make sense. And Michele Bachmann, despite a promising start (her name contains “maniac,” for pete’s sake!) never really goes anywhere.

So much for that idea, right?

But wait a minute – there’s one guy left. Rick Santorum to the rescue!

It turns out Senator Rick Santorum is far and away the front runner…in generating awesome anagrams. This guy brings more to the table than all the others combined. He is, truly, the gift that keeps on giving.

And so, just like the Constitution, I’ll cut this preamble short and get straight to the main event:

The Rick Santorum Top Ten

10. Stork Cranium
9. Runt Mocks Air
8. Can Risk Tumor
7. No Karmic Rust
6. Cram Our Stink
5. Crank Tourism
4. Murk On, Racist
3. Moist Urn Rack
2. A Scrotum Rink

And the #1 Rick Santorum anagram, my personal favorite…

1. Struck A Minor

I mean, I’m no Santorum fan, but even if you are (they must exist somewhere), come on. “Struck a minor”? That could be, like, a campaign slogan. Give it to your marketing guys. Hell, just put it on a bumper sticker: Rick Santorum Struck A Minor. It sells itself!

What say you, good people? Know any excellent anagrams – political or otherwise?

(Please note: the amount of personal politics you decide to spout in your comment is directly proportional to the the probability I will delete it. Thank you!)

“What’s that crazy Buckley guy up to today?” you almost certainly wondered this morning as you got out of bed. Ha! I knew it. Well, here’s what that crazy Buckley guy is up to: learning Italian.

My wife and I are planning on going to Italy someday (like, 2013 maybe) and we figured that would be a lot more fun if we actually knew how to talk to people. So, Italian it is.

First thing we did was cover our house in Post-It notes. Sounds silly, but if everything in your house is labeled with its Italian word, you remember it pretty quick. Later on we got a labelmaker and put that to work too. Yeah, our house looks a little weird right now, but who cares? We’re learning.

(“Oh, man, that crazy Buckley guy!” you chuckle, sipping your $800 glass of wine. “Will he never cease to amuse?”)

Another great tool for learning Italian? This right here:

The Italian English Bilingual Visual Dictionary. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a bunch of pictures labeled in both English and Italian, so if you’re a visual learner (like me) you have something to tie the words to instead of just other words. And let’s face it, looking at pictures is just more fun. A whole page of nothing but words? I mean, that would suck.

Ahem.

Anyway they have books for German, Spanish, Arabic, French, and other languages too, so if that sort of thing sounds interesting, grab yourself a copy and you won’t regret it.

Other tactics include: CDs in the car, configuring Chrome to run in Italian mode and use google.it as its homepage, streaming Italian TV channels on the computer, talking in Italian with my wife, and generally mumbling the Italian words for things as I go about my daily business.

“Groovy,” you say (because you’re a refugee from Woodstock, apparently) “but what kind of groovadelic Italian stuff have you actually learned?”

Here are – BAM! – no fewer than three cool Italian things I’ve learned:

1. Italian has six words for “the.” SIX! What. The. Eff? English (which is obviously the best language, because I speak it) gets by just fine on one – and Japanese has zero, those crazy cats – but I’m not a poly-definite-article hater by any means. French has three, Spanish rocks out with four, whatever. But six? Seriously, get that shit together. We’ve got company.

2. Italian uses the same word for “breast” and “sinus.” I really can’t explain this at all. All I know is that if you go to the Italian Wikipedia and type in “seno,” you get a disambiguation page. I just…I mean…I really can’t explain this at all.

3. Italian can teach you about English. Okay, I feel stupid for admitting this, but I never actually noticed that cranes (the machine) are so called because they look like cranes (the bird). I know, shut up. But listen – you know how I finally realized this? Because the Italian word for both – la gru – is also the same. And I was all like “That’s weird, why would they have the same ohhhhh.” (Actually Italian can help you learn lots of other, non-retarded stuff about English too, but that’s another story.)

Any peeps out there learning a foreign language? Want to share any tips?

Well, hypothetical reader, today marks my 101st post. What? No, not in binary. This is the full-on, honest-to-goodness decimal system we’re talking about here, and I’ve been posting every single weekday since March 30. That’s over four solid months of drunken coherent literary rambling insight!

And I couldn’t have done it without you, hypothetical reader.

So, to celebrate, I hereby declare this an official De-Lurking Post! Meaning: if you don’t normally comment (or even if you do), leave me a comment today! Say whatever you want: introduce yourself, or give me a link to something cool, or tell me what you’re reading (or writing), or curse like a freshly marooned sailor, or just say hi. Maybe even tell me how y’all discovered this little corner of the Netwebs.

Then you can go back to lurking, and I won’t call you out for another 100 posts or so. Promise.

Ready…set…de-lurk!