Move over, Mickey Mouse Club...!

Take a hike, Hugo Awards. Smell you later, New York Times. Today, I have officially Made It - because today, I have become a Halloween costume. Love you to the moon and back, Anne!
(I dressed up as a muggle. Shirt by Jodi Thompson . Body by McDonalds.)

Not #MeToo

Not me. Somehow.

I have no idea why. Can't take credit for having unbearably great parents and upbringing. Maybe living as a sedentary suburban nun had something to do with it - I never drank or dated, didn't socialize, lived at home until I was 24. It probably helps that I live in a fat suit, make zero style effort, and dress like a fourteen-year-old boy. (Thank you for loving me anyway.) Also, having mostly dude-friends for the first 20 years definitely equipped me with a "one of the guys" cadence, which may put out dickhead-deterrant signals I'm not aware of.

But that's the point, right? You shouldn't have to be an hourglass John Candy to avoid the bad touch. You shouldn't have to be a teetotalling sexual dustbunny to keep from getting hurt. My experience should NOT be the exception to the rule.

Anyway - nobody should apologize for having a great life. I'm just sorry I haven't had more to say when this subject has come up previously. I'll try to be a better listener and advocate. Regardless, please let me know whenever I can send some surplus goodness your way: if there's one thing I love about being human comfort food, it's getting to share it.

Writers in the Field in the Books!

I don't have any photos of Writers in the Field, partly because we were using my phone as a wifi hotspot for the ticket booth. But here's some of what's been filling up my feed over the past couple of days.

And really, you guys. I already knew Shane Richmond and Leslie Richmond couldn't put on anything BUT a phenomenal show. I already knew that Marsha Hubbell and Sarah Hamilton and Daniel Wells and the rest of the WORD crew would ride-or-die to make it happen. And I was *pretty* sure that William Humble would do the hardest job - namely, translating and diplomatically buffering between the word-nerds and the sword-geeks - with his inexhaustible good humor. 

But even so, I was knocked acock by the enormity of the enthusiasm we generated this weekend - on all sides. People like Lauren Liebowitz and Kelly L White and Dominick D'Aunno dropped everything and diverted to WITF to showcase their particular expertise. People like LB Clark and Misty Ellen Mikes and Sanan Kolva moved heaven and earth (and literally slept in their cars) to get themselves here to drink it in. And people like Pamela Skjolsvik and LeAnn Robinson and Alicia Holston have graciously endured the most monstrous neglect while we threw 110% into making this thing happen. (I'm done being a zero, you guys - I promise.)

Usually after I get home from a big event weekend, I hit the emotional skids in a big way - as if I've used up a month's worth of joy in three days, and wake up afterwards with a horrible serotonin hangover. But this doesn't feel like the end of the show. It feels like we've just tossed a match into a whole fountain of good-will gasoline.

We made us some magic here, y'all. We started something huge. And I SO appreciate all of you who came, who helped, and also who dauntlessly led the cheer squad (Jennie A Komp, Jenny Hanniver, I'm looking at you!) New things always need extra love, whether they're animals or human beings or stories or ideas, and that extra helping of faith and affection has made all the difference today.

Sailing My Failboat Beautifully Onward

I woke up today and was 35. (You're not supposed to put that kind of info out on the Internet, but Equifax has already scrawled my data on every virtual truck-stop toilet wall from here to China, so whatever.) I would like to celebrate by taking off the professional enthusiast's hat for a minute and indulging in some reflective realness.

Lately, my entertainment indulgence has been watching the infuriating greatness that is Silicon Valley. And despite my aversion to cringe comedy in all its forms, MAN do I empathize with Richard. Working 80-hour weeks for months on end with a ragtag bunch of iconoclasts who have somehow bought into your mapcap vision? Constantly circling the drain, curling up in a fully-clothed fetal position in the bathtub, convinced that THIS time you really are fucked? Absolutely SURE that you could knock the world on its ass, if only you could stop being your own worst enemy long enough to make it happen? Oh yes.

We occupy the best and worst of all worlds, simultaneously.

Granted, I haven't invented a revolutionary compression algorithm, and my little proto-company isn't getting multimillion-dollar funding offers. Nor can I pretend that any of what I'm killing myself trying to do will ever put a roof over anyone's head. Honestly, it's a great day for the WORD crew if we can throw a good party and still break even. And sometimes it's hard to justify the effort, if it's never going to make you rich OR save the world.

But I gotta have something to hang my hat on in order to keep moving forward, and lately - in the year of our lord 2017, in which we're all stumbling through a neverending shit-blizzard of murder-suicide madness - it's this:

You know who doesn't tend to end up as a mug shot on the evening news? People who can take pride and pleasure in what they do - whether it's writing or gardening or fixing houses or dressing their dog up as Batman.

Or folding tiny little rainbow origami books, like my friend Frank.

And I worry that we're losing emphasis on doing in favor of *being* - in favor of swearing allegiance to a group, a tribe, a label, and then walling ourselves up behind like-minded individuals and the institutions who cater to them. You'll never hear me say that being and belonging isn't important - shit, I spent three books exploring just that - but my notoriously unbalanced self is at least Libra enough to commit to tipping the scales back toward the joy of doing.

Because people who feel like they're accomplishing something, be it ever so small or silly, are so much less likely to hurt themselves or others. The demons that haunt creative people are real and dangerous, but not as dangerous as those who whisper to people bereft of purpose.

So that's why we're doing WORD, concocting all these madcap schemes to get writers fired up and connected. That's probably why you and I are friends. And that's why I'm so glad that you are still out there fighting to do the things you care about, even when it feels like you're killing yourself just to tread water.

Hang in there, y'all. Do your small things with great love, and try to make sure that at least some of them are projects of your own devising. It's the only way I've found to make all the tired worthwhile.

Acknowledging the Cost

Man, I'm going to regret writing this. But here goes.

Sooner or later, we all have to take a turn defending the status quo. And it sucks.

Sooner or later, something (or someone) crucial to our value system is implicated in a disaster or a tragedy, and we have to take a turn in the cognitive hot seat, saying "well, let's not be hasty here - you can't use this as an excuse to XYZ - the *real* problem is ABC."

Nobody likes to be in the hot seat. Nobody likes to be put on the defensive. And in moments like those, our brains actually, literally defend our worldview harder than ever. We double down as instinctively as a pill-bug rolling up under a three-year-old's inquisitive poking. It's what we're neurologically wired to do.

Today a white guy with a shitload of guns is in the spotlight, and the right is on the defensive. Eventually there'll be another ISIS attack, and the left will take its turn.

But y'all - the thing I wish we could ALL do? (Besides hold hands and sing kumbaya.) Is understand that when we say "well, hang on - you can't just up and ban these people/things - that would be a betrayal of the greatness America stands for" - what everyone on the other side of the fence hears is "and that's why we have to let this keep happening."

Guns are a constitutional American right - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.
Immigration is what this country was founded on - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.
The free market is an essential cornerstone of our democracy - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.

Any time you try to deflect criticism of your thing (that you are deeply invested in) over to some other thing (that you are not invested in), without offering any specific, meaningful skin-in-the-game plan of action, your statement always ends with the unspoken "and that's why we have to let this keep happening."

(Example du jour: "it's not guns, it's mental illness" - but I'll wager the percentage of the people saying that who have personally called, written, and/or voted to advocate for improved access to mental health care is slim at best. The left-side equivalent is probably "it's not Muslims, it's radical Islamic terror" - which rarely comes with a solution more nuanced than "pull out of the Middle East and hope that in twenty or thirty years everybody will have settled down and stopped hating us.")
And that's why your argument wins no converts.

I wish our neural wiring would allow us to straight-up admit our feelings this way. I wish we could psychologically afford to stand up and say "I accept this blood as the cost of doing business." I mean shit, maybe we can. We've long since done it with cars. Being an automotive society means that there WILL continue to be fatal accidents, DUI manslaughter, kids forgotten in hot cars, and cars/trucks used as weapons of terror... but the only way to completely prevent those deaths is to stop driving, and we are not willing to do that.

That does not mean we're bad people. It means we've weighed up the pros and cons, and accepted a certain number of auto fatalities as the cost of doing business. We'll happily do what we can to *minimize* that cost (what company doesn't want to reduce its operating overhead?) - but only so long as it doesn't impede the business itself.

So when your goal is to vent, to commiserate with the other people on your team, to express your feelings - absolutely go for it. No criticism here.

But whenever it's your turn in the hot seat, and you feel obliged to defend the value/importance of your thing to the unpersuaded world at large, your efforts will be so much more fruitful if you start by acknowledging its cost.

Digging in the Spurs at the Paragraph Ranch

Y'know, it's always a strange experience coming back from a convention. Kind of feels like going home from Hogwarts for the summer. There was this magical place, full of fantastic people and all the most delightful conversations... and now I'm back here in the real world, belatedly plugging back into the news, the inbox, and the Face-feed, and y'all - I'm not sure who started what, but absolutely EVERYONE is pissed off about something. I swear this happens every time.

They call it a 'hard return' - and boy, is it ever.

There's a pattern to the readjustment, too. First you're annoyed that the 24/7 Internet slap-fight has made no allowances for your lingering literary wizard-buzz. Then you feel guilty for getting to run off to La-La Land in the first place, even and especially while things were getting real on the six o'clock news. Sometimes you just feel like everything you're doing with your life is some kind of first-world frivolous... or at least I do. It's hard to feel like writing daring new adventures for your story-barbies is all that important or helpful when the doomsday clock perpetually reads one minute to midnight.

But you know what else? We are sharing a planet with some incredibly sharp, talented, big-hearted ambitious doers - and if you put your own self out there often and enthusiastically enough, sometimes you can catch one of them on their way past, like the Little Prince netting a comet.

Sometimes, if you are really lucky, you can catch two.

I'm still not sure exactly how it happened, but I seem to have roped a pair of shooting stars called Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon. You might already know Kay as the editor of Lone Star Literary Life, and Barbara as the director of the Texas Historical Commission's panhandle region. Writing plus Texas history. Hold that in your memory buffer - it's about to get radically relevant.

And so is this place right here.

Because guys. Kay and Barbara have cracked the code. They have figured out how to harness writing-energy and turn it into something that makes a positive, real-world impact before you ever publish a single word. Are you ready? Here's their secret.

Step 1: Find a historic West Texas town that has been losing population to the big cities - one that has modern infrastructure and conveniences, but needs a new economic engine to survive.

Step 2: Move there. Buy a big plot of land with a storied house and outbuildings. Work like a twenty-mule team to completely update and remodel it from top to toe.

Step 3. Invite scriveners of all stripes to come out for a writers retreat like no other - in a place where you can perfect your craft in perfect rustic splendor, while your presence helps keep small-town Texas living sustainable for generations to come.

It's called the Paragraph Ranch - in a little place called Spur, Texas. And if you are up for the adventure, I'll meet you there. Here's what we're doing:

'Spur of the Moment' - The First-Ever Paragraph Ranch Writers Retreat

WHEN: December 1st-3rd

WHERE: In Spur at the historic Back Door Inn (we are making our home base at this fantastic B&B for the first year, while Kay and Barbara finish their renovations).

WHAT: Come and write! And while you're there, let's talk about your work. Send me your current project - whether it's 800 words or 80,000 - by November 27th. (Yes, you can send me your entire novel. No, I'm not scared!) I'll read it and come ready to have a one-on-one conversation tailored to your specific goals and concerns. Kay and Barbara will also open up the treasure trove of their knowledge as successful working authors, and we'll have opportunities for you to share some of your writing with the group.

HOW MUCH: $250 for the weekend. That includes your room and board, and all of the expertise on offer - everything but your gas and road-trip snack supply!

We're keeping it simple this first time out, and giving it 100% - all you have to do is get there. Here is the thing, though: we have to make our minimum head count by November 1st in order to hold our space at the Back Door Inn. (I hope this won't be hard to do: we have eight beds, and two are already spoken for.)

So. If you like the idea of racking up good keyboard karma - if you want to get in one last big burst of word-slinging before the holidays eat your life - if you're willing to pack up your laptop and hit the road to help keep small-town living going strong - please sign up as soon as you can. (If you have questions about it, hit us up - lonestarliterary at gmail.com , tex at thetexfiles.com - and we'll be happy to tell you more!)

Regardless: you know this isn't your only chance to catch a comet, y'all. You know you don't have to wait for a moonshot to make good things happen for yourself, or to put your goodness out into the world. I'm just saying: if you've been feeling a little short on light in your life, there is a twelve-gigawatt bright idea passing right overhead - and you never know where it might take you.

Writers in the Field: Your Hogwarts Letter Has Arrived...!

Okay, so you know that whole thing about karma: whatever it is you dump out into the cosmic ocean on a daily basis will eventually wash back up at your front door. I can't say for sure that it's true, but I have been striving (however imperfectly) to pour out Exxon-Valdez quantities of love and realness and radical generosity. Helps cut down on water weight, if nothing else.

Of course, you never know exactly whether or how your moral exports will come back to you – but a few months back, a bona-fide unicorn beached itself at my feet. Only this is a marine metaphor, so like... maybe a narwhal or something. His name is Shane.

He's basically Mead Hall Dumbledore.

Anyway, so you know that thing, when somebody just randomly says to you, "Hey, so my wife and I own sixteen acres down south of the airport, and we've been running this big-ass awesome steampunk ren-faire for a few years now, and I'm not a writer or anything, but I'm a huge reader, and... how do I say this... is there some way I could help you guys like, not screw up your fight scenes?  And period clothing and such? Like, if I got some of my sword guys down here, and a poisons expert, and the WWII artillery crew, and some folks who could show you how to pick locks and sew Victorian underwear and make real-life herbal remedies and stuff... do you think writers would be interested in a thing like that? We can throw in a wine-tasting too, by the way. Do writers like wine?"

And y'all... when a dapper pipe-smoking karma-narwhal asks you a thing like that, there is really only one thing to say.

It's called Writers in the Field. It is going to be PHENOMENAL. And I am asking for your help in making it an unforgettable smash hit.

Shane and his crew have thrown themselves into building this event. They've been hammering away at the pavilions and the booths for weeks now.

They've brought in a slew of experts from their huge arcane Rolodex, for every kind of hands-on tutorial and demonstration you can think of.

A small sampling of the faculty. Anybody know a good potions professor?

They've got first aid, security, parking, concessions, restrooms, vendors, electricity, and wifi all taken care of – and kept the ticket price for the entire glorious weekend to only $45. Yes, really.

This is it, guys. This is your Hogwarts.

This is going to be an incredible event, y'all. It's built - it's happening - and the only thing we need now is you.

And let me be clear: even if you live a thousand miles away, we still need you. 

If the logistics don't work out for you to attend this year – we still need you.

If this isn't exactly up your genre alley, or your writing is on the back-burner right now, or you've already given your bottom dollar for worthy causes and don't have a penny to spare – we still need you. 

Because damn it, the fun's not going to have itself!

If you're thinking "man, this is such a cool idea - why hasn't anybody done this before?", let me tell you: it's because an event like this is a five-leafed clover. Because nailing down the venue AND the outdoor-event-management know-how AND the talent AND the community connections AND still keeping the cost down to something the humble striving scrivener can afford... is damn near impossible. You can't do all this when you are hiring for each of those positions. You can't create something like this as a strictly transactional enterprise.

Which means that something like Writers in the Field can only happen under the most perfect and unlikely conditions – when you have *exactly* the right balance of passion, talent, generosity, and one-in-a-million golden opportunity. We just-so-happen to have lucked our way into the perfect primordial alchemy here - and you are the lightning that is going to bring it to life.

Your playground awaits...

So. If you like the idea of making hands-on education and research opportunities accessible to writers from every walk of life – if you want tentpole writing events that go beyond the ballroom of the airport Hyatt - if you want to see this event come back next year with even more variety of activities, for even more kinds of writers – if you want to help us establish a strong precedent for one day having something like this in YOUR neck of the woods – then we need you to come out of the gate *roaring*, as fierce and enthusiastically as you ever have. We need mentions. We need shares. We need good old-fashioned buzz. More than anything, we need 'proof of concept' - and that means tickets sold.

...and so does your saloon.

And of course, I wouldn't ask you to do anything without putting my own skin in the game. So let me make you a deal.

1.    If we can sell 150 two-day tickets between now and midnight on Sunday (three days from today) I will personally read 5,000 words of your work - any format, any genre, any combination - and you and I will have half an hour of undivided real-time conversation about it. Phone or Skype or whatever you want to do. Once we hit the 150-mark, you forward me your ticket receipt and attach your doc file and we will make us a date.

2.    If you can't attend Writers in the Field but want to get in on the critique deal – or again, want to vote with your dollars for more events like this one – we can totally do that. Just buy a ticket and use promo code GIFT when you check out. We will give the ticket to a local writer who couldn't otherwise afford to go - and you will get the critique, even if we don't hit the 150 mark. Like I said, y'all – this is about love and realness and radical acts of generosity. And, you know, learning how to hit people with swords.

This is how we do it, guys. This is how first-evers become first-annuals, how we know more and do better, how we give ourselves something fantastic and special to be proud of, even when it feels like the whole rest of the world is going all to hell. This is how game-changing greatness begins.

It is also how legends begin.
Epic, unforgettable, totally-worth-the-hangover legends.

Are you pumped? Are you ready? Then pick out a job below and go!

• Help us collect likes, shares, and follows: Facebook event - Facebook page - Twitter - Instagram (hashtag #writersinthefield)
• Volunteer to do a demonstration, help out at the event, or request to be a vendor: email findyourtribe@wordwriters.org
• Print and post flyers for your writers group, coffee shop, library, etc. (remember to ask permission!): download our full-size flyer here
• And of course, visit the website and buy tickets - yours or someone else's!

Set your watches now, y'all: in one month exactly, we make literary-adventure-field-trip history!

The End of the Tour

Not gonna lie, y'all. Lately it feels like we're living under a darkening sky - so many people in such dire straits - and even the best acts of solidarity seem microscopic compared to the enormity of the need. I've really enjoyed my little tornado alley tour, but it's hard not to feel like the whole exercise is a bit privileged and frivolous. Who can get worked up over the finer nuances of playing with story-barbies when the whole world is underwater, on fire, or both?

But I just got this beautiful message from a beautiful person whom I met on the tour, and she said it would be all right if I shared a part of it here.

"I don't think you realize what a difference you actually made for me on Sunday. Frankly, I attended your presentation not expecting much. I don't know you. I haven't read your writing; although, I certainly intend to. I went simply to get my mind off of my son. He recently found out he has testicular cancer. The prognosis is good, but I must tell you I've been terrified, and I thought by attending your presentation I would be able to think about something other than cancer for a few hours. You provided that for me, and your enthusiasm and funny disposition actually made me smile which is something I haven't done a lot lately."

It's a hell of a thing, isn't it? And even though it showed up in my inbox, I'm thinking maybe it was meant for you too. It is so unfortunately unacceptable to be anything but "fine" in front of other people, even when we're really, really not - so you just can't know when that one little thing you did or said made all the difference for a person that you weren't even thinking twice about.

It's so good to see so many people putting themselves front and center to help with the fallout from the hurricane - but I hope you are also giving yourself credit (and doing things that let you give yourself credit) for helping the people right there in front of you, whether you knew they needed it or not. Those needs don't tend to show up on the 6 o'clock news, and if you don't catch them, it's likely nobody will.
 
Also: I know gas and time are in short supply here in DFW, but if you would likewise enjoy a couple hours of "and now for something completely different", the last stop on the tour is tomorrow at 10AM - The Plate Tectonics Theory of Dialogue at the Roanoke Public Library - and I would be heartily glad to see you.

How Not to Evacuate a Texan

New proposition: instead of naming hurricanes on an alphabetical boy/girl system, let's call them according to whatever will appropriately intimidate the people who need to evacuate. If we had called this one Hurricane Post-Game Traffic, Texas would be deserted clear up through Abilene.

Also: 'evacuate' is a wussy word. Nobody with a Winchester and an ounce of self-respect wants to think of themselves as retreaters. Next time you need to move a mass of rednecks, NOAA, drop the Frenchery and call it a 'Yankee raid'.

Now lock up and light out down there, y'all - shit's going to get Biblical.

Tornado Alley Bliss

Guys. Guys. In the past 24 hours, I've driven 900 miles, given two presentations, and gone eclipsing with the hedonists of Hebron, Nebraska. Needless to say, my death is now imminent. But before I go, I need to tell you something. Come closer. Are you listening?

This. Is. AWESOME.

This tornado alley tour is barely half done, but it's already been the best, most amazing thing. I have turned tricks on Route 66. I have listened to George Strait's "Amarillo by Morning" while literally driving to Amarillo at the crack of dawn. I have been phone-coaching writers while doing 80 on highway 80 (hands-free, natch), preaching the gospel from town to town like some kind of redneck revivalist, buying gas and motel rooms with the wares I sell out of my trunk, and all of it, ALL of it made possible by one or more exceptionally generous, hard-working writer-wranglers in each of these magical midwestern metropoli. 

This photo is an incredibly deep metaphor for... something.

You know. The ones who put their own work on the back burner to make a good time happen for other people. The ones who turn a bunch of atomized, scribbling saddos into a crew, a posse, a bona-fide network of word-warriors. I tell you what: this industry is one of the most frustrating, archaic, long-odds masochism olympics out there - but Misty and Mike and Kimberly and Lynette and people like them are the lynchpins that keep the wheels bolted on and the literary world turning.

And just on the off chance that I happen to survive the night, this I vow: I am done chasing invitations to workshops and conferences. From now on, I am not waiting to be asked, much less asking to be asked: I am here for the people who are here for *their* people, and the rest of the world had better strap in and watch out!