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A student asked Soen Nakagawa during a meditation retreat, “I am very discouraged. What should I do?”
Soen replied, “Encourage others.”
-Essential Zen, Kazuaki Tanahashi & David Schneider

I’ve been frustrated with my writing lately.

It’s hard to pin down exactly why. The beta readers seem to be liking the novel – people are reading it pretty fast, which I take as a good sign. I’m getting plenty of great constructive criticism, and it’s all fairly surface-level stuff: style, pacing, description, things I can fix without rearranging the plot. I take that as another good sign. I feel like I’m on the home stretch now.

Meanwhile, I’m working on a story for Machine of Death Volume 2, which is all sorts of exciting. It’s really been way too long since I did any major writing outside the novel. Yeah, it’s a struggle, but no more than any other new project. I’m having fun with it.

So what’s the problem?

Here’s what I think the problem is. For a very, very long time, my writing has been almost – but not quite – good enough.

My last novel was not good enough. It got a couple nibbles from agents, including a request for a full manuscript, but it didn’t make it.

My story submission for Machine of Death Volume 1 was not good enough. I got some encouraging feedback from the editors, but it didn’t get me in the book.

I’ve been submitting to flash fiction contests lately – just little things, 100-word micro-stories, and the contests are small and informal, hosted on people’s blogs. I’ve been a finalist plenty of times, but I’ve never won.

None of this stuff should matter. The last novel and the last MoD story were long enough ago that I know my writing has improved since then. I know I can (and am) doing better. And the contests, I mean, that’s small potatoes, that’s one person reading blog comments in their spare time, what does it matter?

Yet I can’t help feeling like I’ve been stuck in a loop lately.

while (true) {

head.hit(brickwall);
}

There’s only so many times you can be told your writing is almost – but not quite – good enough, before you start thinking that you, yourself, are almost – but not quite! – good enough. It’s silly, but there it is. I’ve been in this particular loop for years, now. I think (I hope) I’m close to breaking out, but still. Years.

Hell, I’m reading over this blog post right now, thinking I’m not saying this right, there has to be a better way to explain it, why doesn’t this sound good?

Well, regardless.

Maybe you’ve been frustrated lately, too. Maybe the thing you’re working on seems endless, maybe you feel like you’re never going to be good enough and everyone else is better than you and there just isn’t any point.

Here’s what I would say: that feeling, that frustration, is the test. Not just a test but The Test, the thing which separates people who achieve their dreams from people who don’t. It’s normal. It’s part of the process. Banging your head against a brick wall is part of the process. If you’re bleeding, if you’re getting nowhere, that’s good – it means you’re still trying.

Everyone else, all those successful people you’re trying to emulate, they’ve all gone through this too. This is the path. The path leads through the wall. You just have to trust the path.

(Trust the path? What am I, a fortune cookie?)

All right. Now that I’ve dispensed my wisdom, maybe I’ll listen to it too.

What’s new with you guys these days?

Who, what, when, where, how, why. These are the six basic question words in English. Their simplicity (all monosyllables) and uniformity (all containing w and h) might lead you to think there’s something basic, even elemental, about them: that these are the six fundamental types of questions a person can ask, that all six are equally simple and straightforward.

As usual with English, the uncomplicated facade hides a jungle of complexity.

For one thing, there are other question words besides these six. “Which” is perfectly valid but for some reason doesn’t spring to mind as readily; “whither” is antiquated; yes-or-no questions can take many forms (is, are, were, should, would, could, etc.); and of course we can imagine endless other constructions (“To whom were you speaking?”).

But even the big six are not all alike. Some are far more complex than others.

“Where” and “when” are the simplest, requiring only a basic notion of space and time. Both can be answered with coordinates. “What” is more complicated, requiring not only spatial awareness, but also the concept of objects or entities to fill that space. “Who” is trickier yet, layering the idea of personhood over top of “what.” Animals do not get their own question word, and neither do stars, rainbows, or shiny rocks. Only people are special enough for “who.”

“How” is where it starts to hit the fan. “How” implies a concept of status, of organizing the universe into not just objects but modes. “How are you?” The question is meaningless unless the asker and the answerer share a common understanding of not only the myriad ways a person can feel and exist, but the ways people categorize those states. “How” is a big step up from “what.”

“How” is also a catch-all for questions along every axis not covered by the other five. Height: “How tall is she?” Speed: “How fast are we going?” Quantity: “How much does that cost?” Other languages are constructed differently. Spanish, for instance, uses cómo for “how” in the sense of status, but cuánto for “how much.” There’s no inherent reason we have to use the same word for both.

All that complexity is nothing compared to “why.” “Why” implies a profound understanding of the universe, a sense of causality, a mind that asked “what is the reason” so often it needed its own word. “Why” is dissatisfied with just knowing the arrangement of things; “why” demands an explanation. It asks for a story.

The first five questions are animal-brain questions, questions a dog could ponder. “Why” is a question for humans.

I found a post recently on Writer Unboxed called What’s It Like To Be a Girl? The author, a man named Bill Loehfelm, recently wrote a novel with a female protagonist. He talks about how he, as a man, goes about writing a woman:

The mistake, I decided early on, would be to focus on the woman part of Maureen’s character. I didn’t think “What would a woman do/think/feel/want/fear” in any given situation. I focused instead on creating a complete character, a complete person, and asked myself what would Maureen do?

I think this makes a lot of sense, and it applies to all groups, not just women. In fact, I think this is one of the most fundamental things that writers (and people in general) get wrong when they think about other groups of people:

The group is not the most important thing about the person.

Kurt the gay guy isn’t primarily a gay guy, he’s primarily Kurt. Hiroshi the Japanese dude isn’t some generic Japanese archetype, he’s Hiroshi. If somebody wanted to write me as a character, it would be nonsense for her to say, “Okay, I have to get inside the head of a white male,” because I’m not A White Male. I’m Brian.

That’s not to say that groups don’t matter. Obviously people are at least partly defined by their groups, and writing with a blind eye to differences between groups is not the path to believable characters either. People have complex relationships with their own gender/racial/cultural/etc. identities, which can range from proud to resentful to apathetic in the space of a single day.

So, as with most writerly matters, it’s tricky. If you really don’t feel comfortable getting into the head of a person in some particular group, maybe the best thing is to read writers who belong to that group – and notice I said writers plural, as in five or ten, because God Save Me From The Man Who Has Read One Book on any particular subject, this one included.

People are not groups. People are people.

Hm…I feel like this was a pretty serious post. Like you’re picturing me right now with stern eyes and a disapproving frown. Actually my eyes right now are mostly just sleepy, and I haven’t had any coffee yet. Maybe I’ll do something more fun tomorrow.

So yesterday I was reading an online article. (“omg really? That’s fascinating” “stfu, hypothetical reader, I’m not done yet”) The author of the article was making a point I disagreed with, so I was reading it with a critical eye, trying to figure out whether he was wrong, or I was. I wasn’t terribly convinced with his arguments, but his name seemed vaguely familiar (like a guy famous enough I should know him, but not famous enough I did know him) and the article came highly recommended, so I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Then I googled him and found his picture on Wikipedia, and he was, well, just a regular dude. Not ugly or anything, but kind of a goofy grin, sort of a funny mustache. An ordinary person.

And suddenly I lost all interest in analyzing his argument further. I stopped trying to find ways he might be right, became much more satisfied with my own counterarguments, and moved on.

This happens to me a lot: my perspective on someone’s writing changes after I see their picture. Why? I think it’s because text without a face seems somehow authoritative, powerful because of its anonymity (even if you know the author’s name). Once you see his picture, it’s like, hey, this is just some dude. Dudes are wrong all the time. I mean, I’ve met dudes, and honestly? Not that impressed. (By “dudes” I’m not excluding women, here; damn English and its dearth of gender-neutral words, etc.)

There are two ways to look at this phenomenon. First way: if you don’t see an author’s face, you judge the writing solely on its merits. Your critical reaction isn’t tainted by any unconscious bias you might have against the author’s physical appearance, which is irrelevant to the text. In other words, my shift in perspective after viewing the photo is bad, and I should try to fight it.

But there’s a second way to look at it. I think that words without a human context – black text on a white background – have a kind of seductive power. If I say something out loud, it’s just me talking; but if I write it down, suddenly it has the same form and appearance as the words of the Bible, of Socrates, of Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Tolkien and whoever your favorite author happens to be. For me, written words cast a kind of spell, and seeing the author’s face breaks the spell, reminds me that this is just a human being like anybody else. In other words, my shift in perspective is a good thing.

I’m honestly not sure which is true – whether I’m a more objective reader before seeing an author photo, or after. I also have no idea whether the same thing happens to other people when they read, or not.

But, uh, you’ll notice I don’t have a photo of myself on the blog.

You tell me – does seeing a picture (or video) of an author affect the way you read?

I live near a recycling center, and every few weeks I drop by to deposit the accumulated detritus of Chez Buckley. In addition to the usual categories (cardboard, plastics by number, glass by color) there is a container set aside for books.

One day I looked in this container, and what did I see? Not just Yellow Pages and water-damaged paperbacks, but perfectly good novels and nonfiction! Lots of them, that people were just throwing away! I mean, throwing away for recycling, but still!

Although their prior owners considered them trash, it would still, technically, be considered stealing if I were to “rescue” these innocent books from their imminent destruction. And Stealing Is Wrong. So I most definitely did not liberate close to a hundred books and place them in my silver 2006 Honda Accord. I most certainly did not make a habit of checking the book bin every time I returned, nor did I chortle nefariously as I set free more and more shackled text. And I absolutely, unequivocally do not have over three hundred such books in my basement even now, arranged in tall piles by genre, which I encourage my friends to browse and pilfer every time they visit.

Tell you what, though: the first time I (ahem) didn’t do this, I figured nobody else would be crazy enough to do it, either. Turns out, book-stealing is a burgeoning vocation in our humble hamlet. Not just other patrons but the staff, too, enjoy getting their thief on. I have even, on one occasion, had a recycling worker tell me what delicious morsels were on offering today, to tempt me toward that dark indulgence. (I fled in white-faced horror, of course.)

I am constantly surprised to see how many people in our little town actually recycle, and even more surprised to see how many take books. I hear a lot about the death of print, the death of the novel, the Facebook generation and shrinking attention spans. And yeah, I do worry about people reading less. But I can tell you that where I live, there are plenty of folks who still care enough about books to go Robin Hood on a pile of trash.

And to those people, I say: shame on you. Because stealing is wrong.

Now that I’ve finally sent my revised manuscript off to beta readers, I’ll be receiving and processing a lot of feedback over the next few months. For a writer, feedback is wonderful and terrible. Wonderful, because you finally break out of the mind-destroying cycle of reading and revising and revising the same text over and over and over until you utterly lose your mind and someone else, an actual person, is really and truly going to read the thing, which for writers is a kind of miracle. Terrible, because the manuscript is the work of years, the result of countless loops of the aforementioned mind-destroying cycle, its ink a little hard to read it’s because it’s covered with sweat and tears; and the prospect of someone looking at it and saying “Eh, this doesn’t do it for me” is shall we say somewhat disappointing.

But of course the negative feedback is even more necessary than the positive, so it’s crucial to develop strategies for processing and responding to it. One tactic I’ve found useful is to divide feedback into two types: reader feedback and writer feedback.

Reader feedback is a response that’s given from a reader’s point of view. “I like this character.” “This chapter is boring.” “I thought this scene was confusing.”

Writer feedback is a response that’s given from a writer’s point of view. “Don’t use passive voice.” “Cut out this chapter.” “Develop this character more.”

Reader feedback is subjective. The critiquer tells you how he feels. Writer feedback attempts to be objective, and generally tells you how to fix the problems it identifies.

Why does this matter? Simple. With reader feedback, you can take it at face value, because readers can never be wrong about their own subjective opinions. If five different people all think Chapter 8 is boring, guess what, my friend, Chapter 8 is boring.

Writer feedback, on the other hand, is only as good as the writer giving it. That means you have to be very, very careful about accepting it.

Think of it this way: if a friend feels your forehead and says you have a fever, or tells you your eyes are bloodshot, you’ll probably believe her. But if she starts prescribing you pills, you’re going to get worried. “Umm,” you say. “Are you, like, a doctor?”

Writing is the same way. That’s not to say writer feedback is bad – it can be great, in fact, if you get it from the right person. You just have to be careful.

Even bad writer feedback can be useful, though. You just convert it into reader feedback. “Cut out this scene” becomes “I didn’t like this scene, do something to fix it.” And the solution is up to you. Bam! Magic.

I hereby formally apologize to Gandalf the White and also Radagast the Brown for that horrible, horrible misuse of the word “magic.”

That is all.

Today, after spending fourteen hours on revision this weekend, I can finally say that this wave of revision is done. Yesterday afternoon I e-mailed copies of the manuscript to my beta readers, most of whom – poor souls – will be reading it for the second time. I am a lucky man to have friends like these.

It’s a wonderful feeling. And honestly, I have to be rid of the thing for a while. I’ve stared at it so long, the words are running together. I need objectivity. I need an external perspective to tell me what’s boring and what’s interesting, what makes sense and what doesn’t. I need to hear a voice besides the crazy ones in my head.

When will The Counterfeit Emperor be simply “DONE” and not just “DONE…For Now”? That all depends on what kind of feedback I get from my beta readers. If the consensus is “It’s good, you just need to tweak X, Y, and Z,” then maybe it won’t take too long to whip it into shape for querying. If my readers determine the text could replace ipecac as a means to induce vomiting, then perhaps I have a longer road ahead of me.

(Of course, even querying doesn’t mean you’re done with revision. If your agent doesn’t ask you for changes, your editor surely will.)

So what am I doing while I wait on feedback? Well, I’m going to submit a story for Volume 2 of Machine of Death, which probably means I should write one first. The deadline is July 15. Better get cracking, Buckley.

After that, I think I’ll relax for a while. Read more than I have been lately. Write some poems. Maybe read through The Counterfeit Emperor again, slowly, with a fresh eye.

And, of course, refresh my inbox every eight seconds as I wait for my beta readers’ critiques.

Ha ha! Kidding, of course. Oh, man, that would be crazy.

*opens Gmail quietly*

So, uh, that was my weekend. What are y’all up to these days?

Let’s start with this:

Across the brimming fields I go
The road above, the clouds below
And all around, unfurl’d, the ground:
The only canopy I know.

What do you think? I wrote those four lines Monday morning, as I was getting ready for work. I don’t suppose it makes a lot of sense, but for some reason, I like it.

The scrap above, and the sonnet last week, are the first poetry I’ve written in ages. It feels good to be back. I used to write poems all the time, you know? The other day I was going through some of my old writing archives. A lot of my old poems are so bad I can’t stand to read them anymore, but a few are actually still pretty good. Makes me want to do more of it.

But then, I’ve had poems on the brain lately. I finally started reading The Top 500 Poems, an anthology edited by William Harmon. The poems are arranged in chronological order, and I love that, because it’s like getting a guided tour of the English language. You start around 1300 with “Cuckoo Song,” which is Middle English and barely readable without a translation; but the poems get more readable very quickly, and soon you’re reading Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and a host of other poets whose names you’ve never heard of, all the way up to the current day. Right now I’m in the 1600s with John Dryden.

Poems are a strange thing. I’ll read four or five poems in a row that do nothing for me at all, then I’ll stumble across one that makes me think Yeah, this is why I love poetry. Often it’s not even a whole poem, just a few lines. This is from the anonymous “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song”:

I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at bloody wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.

(I had to look up “welkin.” It’s an old word for “sky.”)

Poems hit everyone differently, and maybe those lines do nothing for you. But for me – wow, a hand reaches into my chest and plays my soul like a harp. That sounds a little goofy, but it’s just the best way I can think to describe it. I read those lines over and over. There’s just something about them, you know?

Or how about this one, which despite its brevity is not a poem fragment, but a complete poem:

Western wind, when wilt thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.

The words are so simple, but to me, the poem seems to encompass a lifetime of sorrow.

In my opinion, this is the purpose of poetry: those brief, transcendent moments when the poet reaches across the miles and the centuries and grabs you, shakes you a little, says Wake up, there’s beauty in the world. That’s what I love. That’s what I want to get back to.

Maybe I’ll write a few more soon. I still owe my wife a poem I promised her a while back.

If you know any poems that reach out and grab you, please tell me about them in the comments!