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Warning: italics follow.

1. To people who write sentences that end in fourteen exclamation points: do you truly believe, in your heart of hearts, that the degree of enthusiasm you convey is proportional to how long you hold down the Shift key? Did you write twelve exclamation points, shake your head silently, and think that just isn’t enough exclamation points? Your sentence with eight question marks, does it question more deeply? Allow me to suggest to you that it does not.

2. Putting something in bold draws attention to it. If a lot of things are in bold, putting something in bold underline can draw even more attention. This is a fickle hierarchy. If readers aren’t already looking at the sentence you made all caps, red, size 18, bold, and italicized, I fear your text has troubles that underlining cannot mend.

3. There are indeed times when saying “is” twice in a row can be borderline grammatically acceptable. Example: “What it is, is a problem.” This does not mean you have to say “is” twice every time you say it. “The problem is, is that we don’t have enough resources.” The problem is, is a little deeper than that.

4. If you’re not sure when to write “use” vs. “utilize,” please consult this handy guide.

(Deep breath.) Okay. I feel better now.

You guys have any pet peeves?

Let me start today by giving a big thank-you to Jodi Meadows, who just last week graciously critiqued the entire manuscript of my novel, The Counterfeit Emperor. She donated her time as part of the Write Hope charity auction, which benefited the survivors of the Japanese earthquake. Thanks, Jodi!

One of her critique comments was that my opening moves too slowly. Beginnings are tricky things. You want to hook the reader’s interest right away, but you can’t be gimmicky about it – the rest of the story has to flow naturally from the hook. At the same time, since the reader knows nothing about your story, you have to very quickly orient them in your world – but it can’t feel like an orientation, because then you lose their interest.

So, yeah – beginnings on the mind lately. And it was in this beginningy mindset that I started playing The Longest Journey, a PC game that came out in 1999. Ever heard of this game?

It got wonderful reviews at the time, and as I play further, I’m starting to see its potential. But let me just say, having started last Sunday, it has a pretty awful beginning.

The story opens on a cutscene with an old woman in a chair, talking to two adults sitting by her on the floor. They’re begging her to tell a story – a “true” story, about her life. She agrees, and the scene ends, implying that what follows (the rest of the game) is the story itself.

This is not an inherently bad idea for an opening, but the two adults keep going on about what interesting stories she tells, which just makes me think: “Really? You open your game by raving about how interesting it is? That’s…not very interesting.” I mean, if the story’s so fascinating, shouldn’t you open with that? Also, the dialogue was unbearably awful, so there’s that.

Next you watch a video, something about a statue coming to life inside a tower. It’s got cool music, it’s dramatic, it’s pretty…and it makes very little sense. When it’s over, you get the feeling that big things are happening, but you don’t know what they are. And not in that intriguing, I-want-to-learn-more way, but in a I’m-lost-what’s-going-on way.

Next, you get a character to control – but she starts off in a dream sequence, which means we’ve made yet a third jump. The dream isn’t related in any clear way to the two preceding cutscenes, so not only am I even more lost, I’m also still not to the actual game yet. In the dream, I perform a few odd little tasks, fall off a cliff, and wake up in bed in a little studio apartment.

And with that, the game starts for real: I begin exploring the city, talking to people, etc.

Like I said, beginnings are tricky. Because I can tell you for sure that this kind of disjointed, confusing, slow-to-get-started opening does not work. Yet if the writers had started with my character waking up in an apartment, that’s not very interesting either, and I can understand their desire to give me something intriguing and cinematic at the outset, something that suggests the epic, fantastical feel of what the game will be.

I don’t know the best solution for this particular game (especially since I’m not far enough in yet to know what it’s about), but I think somehow a game needs to throw you straight into the story, give you a thread to follow from the very start. And books are the same way.

(See, I really can relate everything to writing.)

Played any good games lately?

At Half Price Books this weekend I picked up Zen: Tradition and Transition, a great little essay collection by modern writers. One author talks about his own experience becoming a Zen monk: being refused entrance to a monastery (which is traditional), and persisting for three days as he was beaten with a stick, over and over, until they finally let him in. Another story tells of the legendary master Bodhidharma, who refused to take on Dazu Huike as a student. The latter waited for weeks, sitting in the snow, and finally hacked off his own arm with a hatchet to show his sincerity, before Bodhidharma took him in.

It strikes me that Zen monasteries are all about seeking truth and a deeper understanding of reality, yet daily life in a monastery involves little debate or philosophical discussion, and has almost nothing in common with, say, the life of a typical American studying philosophy at college. Instead, monks spend all day working hard, meditating, following careful rituals with absolute strictness. The way to truth centers not on talking about truth, but on disciplining the mind.

Writing is similar. I write because I love stories, because I’m excited about coming up with my own stories that others might enjoy as much as the ones I’ve read. But the actual practice of writing is only partly about stories. Mostly it means learning a host of technical rules and when to apply them, a commitment to write regularly (and especially when you don’t feel like it), a willingness to put out your work to have it critiqued again and again, rejected over and over. I do all this because I love stories, but a love of stories isn’t how it happens. The real magic, the turning-ideas-into-books magic, is all about mental discipline.

Mental discipline is a tricky thing. On the one hand, I think that I personally, and we as a society, need much, much more of it. I worry that we spend so much time ingesting entertainment – movies, TV, video games, and yes, even books – that it becomes part of our identity, that we begin defining ourselves not in terms of what we’ve done, but what we’ve consumed. I know this makes me sound like I’m eighty-five, but I don’t care.

Yet on the other hand, too much mental discipline can make you stupid. Hacking off your own arm, for example, is not actually a good idea, if only because you risk bleeding to death (and then no enlightenment for you!). Similarly, sometimes a restless mind seeks out new pathways that a determined mind misses, like a samurai who spends a lifetime mastering the sword and then gets shot with a machine gun. So I think that, while more discipline is good, there is eventually a point of diminishing returns.

Thus pondereth Buckley on this warm July morning. What do you think about all this? Let me know in the comments.

Yeah, that’s right. I just checked Dictionary.com to see if it was “boozy” or “boozey.” Want to make something of it? Also, did you know “boozily” is a word? Let me tell you, this is a lexicon I can get behind. And I will get behind it boozily.

So. Yes. First drafts.

Till very recently I’ve always been a slow first draft writer. I would try to write at a polished, final-draft level on the very first pass. I knew I’d still have to revise, of course. But that’s just how I operated. That’s how I had always operated; that’s what writing meant to me.

I knew that other writers did things differently. “The first draft is the beach-storming draft,” says Wendig, and he didn’t invent the concept. You’ll hear lots of authors talk about how a shitty first draft is just part of their process. I knew that, too. But I stayed…careful. Too careful, I think.

For the short story I’m working on now, for Machine of Death volume 2, I threw careful out the window. (Don’t worry, it landed in an eco-friendly recycle bin.) I downed three beers rapid-fire and tore through a draft as quick as I could. Five minutes agonizing over the name of every character? Nope. Ten minutes fiddling with the structure of a single sentence? Negative. Get it out, just go, vomit up all the ideas and feelings inside you in roughly the proper order, and see what you have.

Turns out, the boozy first draft? Pretty righteous.

Yeah, a lot of it gets cut, rewritten, rearranged. But that’s fine, because that probably needed to happen anyway. Rough draft is rough. And because you’re roaring through fast and reckless, the energy and the emotion stay raw, and you don’t water it down by over-thinking.

(Checking Dictionary.com…nope, “overthinking” isn’t a word, so the hyphen stays. Yes, I do this with every single post. Irony!)

And Dad, if you’re reading this – yep, you gave me this advice a long time ago. I should’ve listened. Kids these days, you know?

Anyway. The process constantly evolves, and if sometimes the process demands more Sam Adams, well, that’s a sacrifice I can learn to accept.

Now the question is: will it work? That July 15 deadline for Machine of Death submissions is coming up awful quick…stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted.

HA! Get it? Posted? Because it’s a blog, and…

I’m going, I’m going.

My favorite poem in the world is “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I won’t go into all the reasons I think this poem is so perfect, because that would be a whole separate post. Suffice it to say, I think “Ozymandias” is the bee’s knees, and bees have six legs, so that is a lot of knees.

But the first time I read it, I didn’t even like it. It just didn’t grab me. The poem took years, and multiple re-readings, to grow into what it is today (for me).

Pachelbel’s Canon in D was the same way. (Music, not poetry. We’re shifting gears. Keep up.) First time I heard it, yawn, boring. Now it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of music I know. I had to listen to it more than once to fall in love.

This goes the other way, too. I can think of poems and songs that seemed heartbreakingly gorgeous the first go-around that got shallower with repetition.

“Yeah, Brian,” says you, “and some stuff you hate at first and keep hating, and some stuff you love at first and keep loving. What’s your point?”

Well (says I), the point is this: first impressions are tricky things. They’re subjective. They depend on mood. They don’t always represent the true quality of the work.

This matters for readers. It’s a warning not to give up too easily, especially on poems and stories that are considered to be Great Works of Genius™. I’m not saying you should waste hours reading stuff you hate – I’m just saying the road to love isn’t always apparent your first time through.

This matters for writers, too. If I had been BFFs with Percy Bysshe Shelley back when he first wrote “Ozymandias,” I might have said, “Percy, you’re a good guy, and this sonnet’s all right, but it needs a little extra oomph. Try again.” And Percy, if he were an impressionable sort of man, might get discouraged, and start doubting his own skill in creating one of literature’s great masterpieces.

“But Brian,” you interrupt again (you jerk), “most of the time when readers don’t like something, it’s because it isn’t good. How do you tell the difference?”

That is a damn good question, hypothetical reader. Years and years of experience is one part of the answer, and artistic instincts are another part. I don’t know exactly know.

What I know is this: it’s a long, long road to love, and not only for the reader.

I have awesome friends.

No, really, I can prove it. How, you ask? Don’t question me, hypothetical reader. Wait, I didn’t mean it. Come back. Look, here’s how I know I have awesome friends:

They started a book club to discuss my novel.

To clarify: they did not decide, at an existing book club, to discuss my novel next. They formed a new book club, willed it into existence, ex nihilo. That right there is the kind of thing that could inflate a writer’s ego, if it weren’t already the size of Texas. (Which you’ll note is only the second-biggest state.)

The new book club’s first decision: the author should not be present for discussion. They kicked me out. Which is an excellent idea. Nothing spells disaster for a free exchange of ideas like someone hovering over your shoulder the whole time.

So they discuss in private, and then, like some reality TV contestant, I’m summoned into the room to receive their judgment. (Book club says: you are not the father!)

And these awesome friends of mine, they are awesome not only because they’re doing this in the first place, but also because they are honest about their feedback. Yeah, don’t worry, they don’t like me that much. Which is great even when it’s just one person, but a group is even better. When you get feedback from a group, you can ask questions like, “Did the whole group think this or just one person?” Looking at which points people agree on, and which they don’t, helps separate the more objective advice from the more subjective – although of course it’s not an absolute rule.

So, yeah. Awesome friends are awesome.

All right, three-day weekend is over, back to work. Joke’s on them, though, it’s a four-day week. HA!

A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns

O my luve ‘s like a red, red rose
That ‘s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve ‘s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune!

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.

I wrote this on Tuesday. I can offer neither explanation nor apology.

This ain’t about yellow and green anymore
Ain’t about jumpin’ through hoops for the Corps
Take a hard look around you, what do you see?
Three thousand five hundred ninety-nine suckers, and me
Yeah, they got the right color, their names is on file
But everyone knows only Jordan got style
Check it:

In blackest day
In darkest night
No evil shall escape my sight
Best reco’nize, I got the right
To tear it up like dynamite
Even white boys got to sing –
I got da RING.

While a bunch of old Smurfs sit and stare at each other
I’m rippin’ up planets and moons like a mother
Got that bling on my finger as tight as a boa
Got no fear, just a one-way ticket to Oa
And Sinestro, you best know, I’m crazy as Sheen
And I’m tough as Kal-El, and I’m pissed, and I’m green
Dig it:

[CHORUS]