Category: Books

I think it’s time for a reboot check-in

Posted on 17 January, 2017 By Wil

I had decided that I wasn’t going to do these after a year, but since I’m still committed to the changes I made a little over a year ago, and I need to post something today, to keep the chain unbroken, I’m going to check in and see how I’m doing. I haven’t actually thought about these things until now, so when I give myself a grade today, it’ll be an honest grade, based on where I am right now.

If this is your first time hearing about the reboot, here’s what you need to know:

Just about one year ago, I took an honest look at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. I needed to reset a lot of habits, make some significant changes to the way I approached just about everything in my life, and keep working at it, even when it was hard.

I can’t even believe that it’s already been a year, and that it’s only been a year, because time feels like that when you’re 44, I guess.

Here are the things I decided to address:

Drink less beer.
Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).
Write more.
Watch more movies.
Get better sleep.
Eat better food.
Exercise more.

Every month, I wrote a post that looked into each of those things I decided to change, and examined how I was doing with them. That was a helpful part of the exercise, because it made me look at myself and my choices honestly and fearlessly. At times, it motivated me to work harder, and at other times it encouraged me by making me realize that I was doing better than I thought.

This time around, since I haven’t done a public check-in since October, I’m going to give myself two grades on each point. One will be the overall since last time, and one will be for January. Here we go.

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Books

The Tale of the Wicked

Posted on 15 January, 2017 By Wil

I’m currently rereading Dune, and it’s even more amazing than I remember, probably because I am not 12 years-old anymore, and I can appreciate things now that I didn’t even know existed, then. My copy is a glorious hardback, so I can’t read it in bed after Anne has gone to sleep, on account of the “fucking light that’s so goddamn bright and why is it on after midnight”. This means that when I can’t read Dune before bed, I read something on my Kindle, so there is isn’t enough light to earn me The Wrath Of Anne Wheaton.

A few nights ago, I had finished an old Asimov Robot story that I got in a Humble Bundle, and when I went back to my homescreen, my Kindle recommended a short story from Scalzi, called The Tale of the Wicked. It is described thusly:

Captain Michael Obwije of the Confederation Armed Forces has been hunting a Tarin battle cruiser in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse. But when he orders his own ship in for the killing blow, the hot pursuit turns into a potentially more dangerous situation. One with implications for the entire Confederation.

That’s more than I knew when I bought it. In fact, all I knew when I bought it was that it was a short Scalzi story that cost 99 cents. For the record, that’s typically all I need to know to go ahead and make that kind of purchase.

It’s short and I think even that official description tells you more than you need to know, so I won’t spoil anything for you by adding my own details. I will say that I rated it 5 out of 5, and I would like very much to adapt it into a screenplay, if John hasn’t already made a deal to do that.

You can read it in under an hour, and if you’re like me, and thought that Zachary Quinto did the audio version of it, you can hear it in his voice while you read it, which is pretty nice. Or you could imagine that it’s me, which is not as nice, but is still kinda nice.

blog

Three books that helped make me a better writer

Posted on 5 January, 20175 January, 2017 By Wil

I’m really tired, and don’t have a whole lot of motivation to do anything today, but I don’t want to break the chain of daily posts that I started over a month ago, so here’s some writing advice I gave on my Tumblr earlier today:

Do you have any recommendations for books on how to be a better writer and/or how to go about getting published? Or any advice in either. Thanks you’re the best!

Before you get into books, read and listen to Ira Glass talk about The Taste Gap. You’ll come back to this many times over the next few months and probably years.

Books:

Stephen King’s ON WRITING is incredibly valuable, and each time I read it, I learn something new because I’ve grown as a writer, and unlocked new perception abilities.

Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder, is very good, too. I don’t agree with all of it, and its primary focus is on screenwriting, but the fundamentals of pacing and working from a logline and basic story type are really useful.

The Anatomy of Story, by John Truby, is also very insightful and helpful. I love that it uses movies you’ve already seen and know to help explain the mechanics behind building them, so you can use the same mechanics in your original work.

As far as getting published goes, don’t worry about that until you feel confident and mature as a writer. Put your effort and XP into developing your voice, your discipline and commitment to doing the work, and rewriting the first draft. Once you’ve gotten all of that into your build, you can go ahead and start looking for publishing.

I hope this helps get you started. If there was one thing that I could make you listen to and internalize, though, just one single thing that you would be compelled to do, it is this: Write every day, and keep it simple.

I say to keep it simple because we all have this tendency to complicate things, in an effort to show everyone how clever we are. There’s certainly a place for that, but when we’re learning and developing, it’s going to be complicated enough on its own. Think of it like learning to play guitar: get your scales and basic chords down before you decide to tackle Metallica’s One or Stairway to Heaven.

Books

the spice must flow

Posted on 22 December, 2016 By Wil

I first read Dune when we were filming Stand By Me. I remember that I loved it, even though I’m sure that most of it went over my head. I think about “I will not fear. Fear is the mindkiller…” and “The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience” all the time. I imagine that reading Dune again, as an adult, will open some portals in my tiny little brain that weren’t accessible when I was 12.

My son, Ryan, recently read the entire series for the first time. He loved it, too, and has been talking about it so much, I decided that I’d finally reread it … but then I got stuck in this decision process that I’d illustrate with a Sheldonesque flowchart if I wasn’t lazy. It basically went like this: Should I get it as an eBook? That’s convenient and I can sync it across all my different devices. But maybe I should get it as an actual book, because actual books are beautiful, and I feel like Dune is something that I’d want on my bookshelf. But if I want to read it in bed, there’s that whole “risking the wrath of Anne when the light wakes her up” situation. Maybe I could listen to it as an audiobook! But I have so many story ideas in my head right now, my mind tends to wander when I listen to anything. So maybe an eBook is the way to go, but … and so on.

So it was a whole thing and I ended up not making a decision.

Then, yesterday, I picked up a bunch of mail from my manager’s office, and holy shit there was this package from Penguin Random House that contained the Penguin Galaxy Edition of Dune! Look at how beautiful this is:

It has an introduction by Neil Gaiman, titled “What We Talk About When We Talk About Science Fiction”, which is amazing. So it turns out that, I chose not to decide, but still I made a choice … with a little help from whoever is writing the events of my life.

The reread begins today. Maybe I can find some inspiration and solace in a work of science fiction, before the world is engulfed in flame.

Books

Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free

Posted on 6 December, 2016 By Wil

I worked on an audiobook all day yesterday. I don’t think I can talk about the specifics of it, but I’m proud of the word I did.

But I can point out this cool news that Cory Doctorow posted on boingboing yesterday, about an audtiobook that I read for him a couple of years ago:

I released an audio edition of the book in 2014, read by the incomparable Wil Wheaton, who also read the audiobook of my novel Homeland). At the time, I tried to get Neil and Amanda into a studio to record their intros, but we couldn’t get the stars to align.

But good things come to those who wait! Neil Gaiman’s 2016 essay collection The View From the Cheap Seats includes his introduction to my book, and the audiobook edition — which Neil himself read — therefore includes Neil’s reading of this essay.

Thanks to Neil, his agents, and the kind people at Harper Audio, I was able to get permission to include Neil’s reading of his essay for a remastered audio version of the audiobook.

I really like Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free. I learned a lot from it, and it helped me grow as an independent artist and creator. You can get your own DRM-free copy for $15.