I value accurate reports from readers who are (a) in the audience for my books and (b) approach the book as honest readers, not critics, nigglers, axe grinders, toadies, or flatterers. I just want accuracy. In How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, Orson Card calls these types of folks “wise readers.” When I find one, I cheer because not every reader has time, ability, or interest. And their reports are usually very helpful.

I know a lot of aspiring authors ask friends and family to read their work. And I know that many people can easily become wise readers with a little direction. So I thought I’d share with you what I ask of my wise readers. Maybe you’ll find it useful with yours. Here’s a revised version of a letter I just sent to one who has agreed to read draft 3 of CURSE. Every author’s a bit different in how they approach readers. Some just say, read it and tell me what you like and what you don’t. But I like to provide a bit more guidance. And I wanted to make sure this reader understood exactly what I was looking for. It might be a bit much for some, but I wanted to make sure it was clear since this was his first time reading a full book for me.

Thanks so much for agreeing to read this draft! What I want at this point is to see how I’m managing the reader experience in 3 areas: (a) the characters, (b) each chapter and scene, and (c) with the book as a whole. So  I’m hoping you just read, and as you go along make quick marks or comments when you’re delighted or bumped. I’ve listed the types of delights and bumps I’m talking about below. Please know I’m not providing them for you to use as a checklist, i.e. it’s not my intent to have you actively search for these things like a Where’s Waldo. You may feel some of these things. You may not. I just want you to be aware of them in the back of your mind as you read and to note when you experience them. In the end, I simply want an accurate report of YOUR experience. Accuracy is key to me.

I find with my own reading that it’s often hard to respond to the story as a regular reader if I’m always stopping to write lots of detailed comments. It seems to knock me out of the reader’s trance. So don’t feel like you must stop at the end of each chapter to assess your experience or be exhaustive in detailing your every reaction. Just make your quick marks and comments as you go, then review and write up your report when you’re done. If you feel the book’s too big to do it all at the end and actually remember what your marks and comments meant, then break it up into chunks of 100 pages or every few chapters. Whatever works for you. 

Sometimes, despite our best wishes, we are just not in the audience for a specific book. If the book just isn’t working for you, do not read past the point where you would normally put it down. Pushing yourself beyond that point will only drive you nuts, and it won’t provide me with anything useful. So just stop there, be happy, and write your report. Remember: the most useful thing to me is accuracy. 

As for the report, give me a summary of your general and specific reactions. For comments on specific parts or lines, it’s critical for me to know page numbers so I can go back and see exactly which part you’re talking about. Write your explanations on the specific page of the manuscript. They don’t need to be long. For example, if a page introduces too many names and you couldn’t keep track of the people and started to get confused, you might underline all their names and write “huh? too many names, can’t keep track.” If a character does something that makes you cheer, you could circle the paragraph and write “yes! yes! yes! Go Talen.” Just so that it’s clear to me what your reaction is and what your reacting to.  

Please know whatever your reactions are, they are just as valid as anyone else’s. It’s my job to review all the reports and decide what they mean and whether they indicate I need to make any changes. Whatever I decide, know that it means a lot to me that you took the time to read and report with accuracy. 

So, any of the following types of things count as bumps and delights. You might have others you experience as you read. Feel free to mark and comment for them as well.

DELIGHTS
I want to know what IS working with the characters, scenes, chapters, and plot as a whole. So any parts–story, people, or things–that elicit a strong reaction of the type you see below.

Characters

• You really like or enjoy them
• Intrigued or fascinated by them, want to know more
• Great lines
• Envy them or think, oh man, that would be so cool to be able to do that or be there or have that skill/ability
• Sympathize with, root for
• Dislike, hate, root against

Story

• Suspense, anxiety, stress, dilemma
• Curiosity
• Mystery
• Surprise
• Cool!
• Wonder or awe
• Insight, poignancy
• Sadness
• Triumph, stand up and cheer moments
• Laffs or grins
• Dread, horror
• Great action, stunts, adventure
• Romance
• Compelling “Dude!” chapter or scene beginnings, ends, and story turns

Text

• Vivid descriptions
• Poetic beauty in the prose

Overall

• Did the story build well for you, bang bang in the climax, and then leave you wanting to linger and enjoy the rolling credits? Did it leave you feeling “wow” or “that was great?” If it didn’t quite make it, then give me an indication of how much on a scale of 1 – 10
• What were the most interesting parts of the story for you?
• Did you feel resolution and a strong tug to read more, come back to the world?

BUMPS

“Huh?”

• It’s not clear what’s going on, who’s doing it, or why.
• You really don’t understand something and you think you’re supposed to.
• Too many terms, names, etc. and you’re getting lost or feel like you need a diagram.
• The text itself doesn’t make sense, or it clunks badly.
• The book contradicts itself.

“Come on!”

• Something just doesn’t ring true.
• It’s just not how things work, e.g. John, there was no FBI in 1638 in China.
• The character’s actions don’t feel logical given the situation, e.g. um, why would she do that? I’d just X and, boom, it would be over. She was stupid.
• You just don’t buy some plot turn. It doesn’t make sense. Was too easy. Seems to ignore all sorts of things in the story.
• A character is irritating or annoying you.

“Yawn” or “What, that’s it?!”

• Things are starting to get boring.
• You start to skim the blah blah blah to get to the good stuff.
• You were built up to expect something and instead got a fizzle. This could be some mystery, a character, an insight, conflict, the ending, etc.

Please note that this list might change depending on the type of story I write. And the reader. For example, if I wanted a content or technical expert to report, then I’d be asking him or her:

• Anything not ring true
• Anything too cool or intriguing that I’ve left out.

If the book was focused more on a romance, then I’d probably provide a slightly different list of delights. Horror would require yet a different version. Not too different. But the emphasis would probably be elsewhere. The key is in me knowing the type of experience (entertainment & drama) I’m trying to provide, what I’m trying to test, and giving the wise reader enough examples that they know what I mean by “delights” and “bumps.”

Aspiring authors, I wasn’t able to attend, but heard from a few who were that the Superstars Writing Seminar in Pasadena with Eric Flint, Brandon Sanderson, Dave Wolverton, Rebecca Moesta, and Kevin J. Andersen was EXCELLENT. 

See clips of parts of the videos here (still a lot of good info): http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2F211054CBD822A8

Purchase the full recordings on DVD or MP3 here: www.writerscanon.com

Topics include:

• Econ 201 for Writers: Economics of Commercial Publishing
• Inside Editors: How editors look at manuscripts, novels & short fiction
• Dirty Secrets: What you need to know about being a Professional Author
• From Slushpile to #1 New York Times Bestseller in 4 Years
• Intellectual Property: How to Exploit Yours
• Balancing Acts: Writing World & Real World
• Agents: the A Word
• Networking for Writers
• Self-Promotion for Authors
• Novel Contracts
• Self-Publishing: Realities & Pitfalls
• Pitching the Big Proposal
• Two Heads Are Better than One: Collaborative Writing
• New Media: Using It to Get an Edge
• E-Publishing
• Movies, TV and Authors
• Anatomy of a Major Book Release
• Myths of Publishing
• Eleven Tips to Increase Your Writing Productivity

We already know that many people break into the novel market WITHOUT writing short stories. So they’re not necessary for starting a writing career, although they might have helped some folks. See this page http://johndbrown.com/writers/writing-business-facts-figures/ for links that will show you how people break in. But some people just love short stories, so the question is can you make a living writing them?

The answer is yes, you CAN do it–you go into television and get hired to write scripts for TV series (grin).

But what about doing it in print? Well, let’s try some conservative math.

1) How much would you need to sell?

TARGET: a conservative $30,000 gross per year.

The median household income in the USA is $50,000. But you can find a place (rural Ohio or Indiana or North Dakota etc.) where housing is relatively cheap and live on $30k. I think this is a reasonable target. So let’s make some assumptions about the stories. We’ll assume each short averages around 4,000 words and that you get paid seven cents per word. To earn your target amount you’d have to sell:

• TOTAL WORDS YOU NEED TO SELL: 428,571
• TOTAL STORIES YOU NEED TO SELL: 107 (words divided by average story length)
• TOTAL STORIES/WEEK: 2 sales per week (weeks in year divided by number of stories)

At 10 cents a word:

• TOTAL WORDS YOU NEED TO SELL: 300,000
• TOTAL STORIES YOU NEED TO SELL: 75
• TOTAL STORIES/WEEK: 1.4 sales per week

No, this doesn’t count reprints, movie deals, gaming contracts, etc. But reprints usually don’t pay well and movie deals, while they pay well, can’t be counted on. Besides, we’re being conservative. 

2) Is this a feasible production rate?

Again, a little math.

TARGET: 2 stories, 8,000 words average per week

If we assume you write five days per week for six hours per day at a rate of 500 words per hour, which may be very aggressive if you try to include thinking and revising time in that, then you’ll produce 15,000 words per week.

So, yes, this is a feasible, if aggressive, production rate–on paper. But I don’t know anyone finishing this many stories per week. Furthermore, it’s highly unlikely you will sell 100% of what you send out. So you need to actually produce MORE than two stories per week. You might have to end up writing three or four. Week after week after week. That’s one story every day or two.

Theoretically, yes, that rate of production still fits in the 15,000 word capacity. But I’m going to say it’s doubtful anyone can do this because I haven’t seen anyone do it. Have you? 

But even if you were the Lizard King of writing and could pull this off every week of the year, the question is can you sell all those stories?

3) Is it feasible to sell two stories per week?

According to http://duotrope.com/index.aspx there are about 200 venues for short fiction paying pro rates, which for them is 5 cents or more. No,  anthologies are not represented there. But I’m not sure it will change the equations that much. So you have to sell 107 stories to these 200 markets. I don’t know how many slots are open in these places. Some of these venues publish one story per year, some publish twelve, some more. Some are published semi-annually, quarterly, bi-monthly. Let’s say there are 2,000 slots. Of course, we might need to count total wordage up for hire at these venues instead, but we’re just doing this on the back of a napkin. So 107 stories out of 2,000 slots means you’d have to make up 5% of the market. You sell five of every 100 stories these folks buy.

FIVE PERCENT OF THE WHOLE MARKET!

Nobody makes up 5% of the whole short fiction market. NOBODY. Okay, let’s say there are 4,000 slots. Each venue averaging twenty stories per year. So you have to make up 2.5% of the market. Nobody does that either. What about 1%? Anyone? One out of every 100 stories? No.

Is this because writers are lazy? Could it be done? You might be the first?

That’s lotto thinking. What you want is demonstrated income, i.e. people have DEMONSTRATED it can be done. Nobody has demonstrated this can be done in the current market. So it’s not reasonable to expect you’ll do something nobody else is doing.

So the answer is that even if you produce three to four short stories per week, you’ll never be able to sell enough to make a living. Now, I know of a few authors who can make a few thousand dollars per year writing short stories. I’ve heard of one guy who made $10,000 a year for a few years. But can you live on that? Even if you move to a place where housing is very, very cheap? Besides, we’re trying to avoid lotto thinking here. We’re trying to be practical and conservative. This is one guy. Do you yourself know anyone who has done this? I wouldn’t want to base my future on what one guy did.

CONCLUSION: there’s no evidence that strongly suggests it’s feasible to sell at the necessary rate to make $10,000 per year let alone $30,000.

4) Re-purpose the wordage to Novels!

Go back up and look at the annual output of words. If you can write 300,000 to 450,000 words per year, you could write four to six young adult novels (averaging 70,000 words per book) or two to three adult novels (averaging 120,000 words per) in that same time.

Why not build a career in novels?

Yes, you may start at $5,000 – $6,000 advance per book. But if you sell well, that goes up. Plus, if it does sell well, you get royalties. Plus you can sell foreign novel rights. Plus you get an advance to help with some expenses. More importantly, we have thousands and thousands of folks DEMONSTRATING they can make a living writing at that pace.

So write short stories if you love them, but don’t expect to make a living at it.

5) But what about Amazon and self-publishing?

Could you make a living selling your shorts out there?

Only if your shorts were once worn by Brittany Spears.

For more on e-book sales, let me recommend you read a few posts by J. A. Konrath. I’ll let you decide. But please note that he’s selling NOVELS. And as always, you want to be realistic about this and make sure you see many people DEMONSTRATING it can be done. Do you think Konrath presents such evidence? You tell me.

• What Konrath has done these last two years: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/06/amazon-kindle-numbers.html and http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/03/ja-konrath-kindle-sales-30k-ebooks-in.html 
• His advice on what should you think about if you want to try? http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/03/am-i-good-enough-to-epublish.html
• Can others do it? http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/04/guest-post-by-mark-terry.html and http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/05/platform-shmatform.html (make sure you read the comments on this one)
• If you’re really interested, take some time to read all his posts in the last two years.

Postscript

Read these two posts by Dean Wesley Smith where he busts some big myths about not being able to make a living writing:

Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Only 300 Writers Make a Living

Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Can’t Make Money in Fiction

Bible’s full of great stuff. Look at this.

(Old Testament | Exodus 20:17 – 19)

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass [we're talking animals, folks], nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.
19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God aspeak with us, lest we die.
20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.
21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

Dude, the “thick darkness where God was.” The thick darkness . . .

I love the images in that passage. Moses going to talk to God face to face. Talk about spectacle. As for the commandment, well, let me just say that I might be smite-worthy.

I do not covet many things. Certainly not any dude’s butt, but sometimes it’s so hard not to covet my neighbour’s writing success. And it’s not the big boys that kill me.

I read a Lee Child or Orson Card or whoever, and I can legitimately say, “Hey, those guys have been writing for years and have produced a lot of novels; it’s unrealistic to compare my skills to their current masterly levels.” I can legitimately say, “Hey, best-sellerdom takes craft and luck, and I just need to be ready the next time the opportunity train stops at my station.” I can even say of those who start off as best-sellers, “Dude, maybe they DID start out with more skillz than me. Doesn’t mean I can’t learn. Give me some more books, you’ll see the Brown dog rise.”

These are all true statements. I’ve got the big guys down. I can spot the Brain Nazi trying to hit me with them a mile away.

It’s the other folks that get me. The guys at my level.

I just had an email exchange with one of them. (No, I’m not going to tell you who it is. Author X might read this, get a fat head, and then be ridiculed and derided by small children. I’m not that heartless.) X comes up with great ideas. Has a ton of them. X is one of those other pro writers I meet who are always lamenting about how many ideas they have. Truckloads. Boatloads. They could employ all of  the peasants in a small country like Mozambique just writing the fab things that flow from their brains.

I don’t have boatloads of ideas. I don’t have a truckful. I’ve got maybe two or three riding around on a Yike Bike.

Covet, covet, covet.

Author X is also funny. X can take a pedestrian idea, twist it, maybe with a great character or situation, and suddenly I’m dying to know more. X watches a TV show I’ve been watching for years. Bim! Bam! Comes up with another great idea I want to steal. (I think I average about two ideas a week I want to steal from other authors.)

Covet, covet, covet.

Author X has great sales. Better than mine, at least.

Gol-leeeee, Mother of Hacks, please, put me out of my misery.

Or not.

I’ve got this freaking Brain Nazi’s number as well. The truth of the matter is that while Author X may have some minimal amount of writer-fu, X has also sold his/her soul to the lizard people of the hollow earth. I think they’re going to breed X. So I could have writer-fu too, but I don’t want to become anyone’s genetic experiment. I have standards.

And with that, I’ll sign out. Happiness!

Larry just wrote a great post about Writing Gun Stuff. Down at the bottom, he says this:

I’m not one of those people who gets hung up on “rules of writing”. . .  If it is awesome, and your readers like it, write it. [emphasis added]

Amen to that. And if you’re going to write about characters with guns, read the rest of the of the post.

I’ve had a number of people ask me where I am with the second book. I have the progress bars on the side, but they don’t give any details. So I thought I’d start up a semi-regular post that would be something like a writer’s journal. We’ll see how it goes.

Right now I’m working on the climax of CURSE OF A DARK GOD. For the last two weeks I’ve been struggling trying to figure out the flow. I knew in general what I wanted to have happen. I had some images and the general feel–spectacle, revelation, battle at the fortress–knew I had to fulfill some expectations I’d raised with four characters. But I didn’t know the exact steps of the scene, the back and forth. I also hadn’t figured out the exact details of some of the magic that would be used.

I outlined the objectives and plans of the two opposing warlords and then the steps of the scene. I listed my objectives for the scene. I do this sketching, sometimes exploratory drafts, to help bring the scene to life in my mind. I find that until a scene is alive in my mind, it’s impossible for me to write. Anyway, over the course of two weeks I went through six takes of the scene, and it still didn’t feel right. I won’t give the details and spoil the ending, but it just wasn’t there and I was getting frustrated. I’m behind on my deadlines and a book’s ending it critical. I talked a few things over with Nellie and made some headway, but it just wasn’t there.

So I called a brainstorm meeting. I’ve never done this before for my writing work. I mean, I’ve bounced things off individuals (mostly Nellie) many times and found good resolutions, but I’ve never had a group. However, I felt I needed some extra input to get my mind going down new paths. Lenn Johnson, Amy and Alex Lamborn, and Miles and Becky Pinter came over. I borrowed a white board and easel from my church and made gingersnaps. When they arrived, I sat them around our kitchen table with Nellie and had them riff on one question while I captured their answers and ideas on the white board.

It was incredibly productive. Partly because they came up with some great ideas I’m going to use. But also because it got me thinking in a new way which allowed me to come up with an idea that resolved the main issue I was dealing with. That was last Thursday. The next day I sat down and outlined a scene that did everything I wanted it to, including giving me the “oh, baby” feeling. It feels right. I have the spectacle, the revelation, the fulfillment to the expectations for the characters. I’m excited to write it. Which means I can now move forward. This week and next I hope to finish. After that there are a few small things I need to insert and clean up. Then it’s off to my editor.

BTW, I did some calculations. For those interested, in this draft, the third, I ripped out 50% of the draft two and completely rewrote it. New problem and situation for two of my three points of view, major changes, etc. I heavily revised above 20% of the remaining 50%. I’ve put in a little over 500 hours working on this draft over the last six months.

500 hours  (remember, I still have a day job).

I am a slower writer than many. But it still would have been a huge task even if I could write twice as fast as I do. I think this is a perfect illustration of three things. First, if you don’t fix some things you feel are off when you find them, you might find you have a massive amount of rework later. Second, sometimes you don’t recognize you have those issues until you’re well into it. Third, writing requires the author to make time. I think this is the most important one. And the one that probably kills most aspiring writers. The fact is that if you can’t make time, you ain’t going to write

Speaking of making time as a new artist, watch this interesting interview with author Scott Turow.

Have You Got a Brain Nazi?

If you’re conscious, you’re monitoring your environment. You have to. It’s how you survive. This is not something you can turn off. It’s just one of those systems that runs automatically, like your liver. You’re always appraising the situation.  

And as soon as you encounter something that’s likely to be of importance to you or yours, your monitor kicks off a physical response to prepare you to deal with or take advantage of it.    

The problem is that sometimes a Nazi propagandist worms his way into the monitoring station. And like any good Nazi, he distorts reality.    

Sometimes those distortions lead to burning resentment, sometimes to unwarranted shame or anxiety, sometimes to eating disorders, sometimes to grave depression. When I heard of the tragic suicide that occurred in our community a few months ago, my heart went out in sympathy to the girl, her family, and friends.  I’m not a doctor. I don’t know the situation. But I’m positive she was dealing with one of these villains.  

I wished I’d been able to share something that’s been a literal life saver to me. Now, it might not have changed anything. But hopefully it can change things in the future for you and others you know who may have to deal with a Nazi in the brain.    

And you will have to deal with a brain Nazi at some time.  

This is not something that affects a miniscule portion of the population. In any given year you can expect more than 15% of a population to experience some form of this [1]. That’s roughly 238 of the estimated 1,592 people 18 years and older in the little county where I live [2]. Rates for teens are similar [3]. Besides, you don’t have to have a full-blown case of a depression for distortions to affect you. How many of us haven’t made faulty comparisons with others? “Oh, she’s so thin and has such great hair; I’m so dumpy.” “Oh, he’s doing so well, and I’m not. I’ll never be a success.”   

The question is not whether you or someone important to you will have to deal with it. The question is how prepared you’ll be when you do. Everyone deals with distortions now and again.  Which means everyone can find a little more enjoyment in life by showing their brain Nazis the door.    

So how does it all work? How do you show the villain out?    

I’m going to summarize it below, but I’ll tell you right now that the book that saved my life was Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD. This isn’t positive mental attitude. It’s not neuro-linguistic programming. It’s not the mumbo jumbo of Freud and Jung. This is practical and proven. It is the most prescribed intervention for dealing with these issues in the current medical community. It’s prescribed because it works.    

Your Brilliant Appraisal-Emotion System

To understand this, you have to understand how emotions work. As I said before, you’re always monitoring your situation. You hear a buzz and see a rattlesnake on the path two feet away. Your monitor immediately responds. Alarm, adrenaline, increased blood flow–all of that to get you ready to deal with the situation. Your monitor writes “alarm” on your face to communicate it to those around you–to warn and ask for help. This happens in less than a blink of an eye.    

But this doesn’t just happen with danger. It happens when we encounter unfamiliar things. When we encounter positive things. You see a great friend who makes you laugh all the time. Boom, your monitor responds. You smile. Feel. Focus. You do so because you not only want to avoid dangers, you also want to seek out the things that make you happy.    

Our emotions prepare us to fight, flee, seek, and pitch woo. Our little monitoring and physical response system is brilliant.    

But there’s more. We don’t rely on just the automatic subconscious monitoring. We also have a cognitive (conscious thinking) part. Let’s go back to the rattlesnake. You walk out into the garden, step on a slither, and immediately go into alarm mode. Then you look, consciously see the slithery thing is not a snake, but the garden hose. You relax. Laugh.    

The quick subconscious appraisals keep us alive, because with snakes and other things, if you’re slow, you’re dead. We don’t have time for thought. If you touch a hot stove, you want an immediate reflex. You don’t want to ponder it for a second or two. On the other hand, the cognitive appraisals help us further appraise a situation. They bring more of our resources to bear on the situation.    

How Does the Nazi Get In?

So there are three parts of the appraisal-emotion system: the subconscious appraisal of the situation, the physical response, and the cognitive appraisal. Each of the three parts affects the other two. And when things are running smoothly, we don’t have problems. But sometimes we get a distortion mucking up the works. We make a faulty appraisal of the situation. And therefore have a faulty physical response.    

For example, you’re a mother. You’ve had a hard day. The kids make a huge mess with flour in the kitchen. You yell, freak out. When they’re cowering in their rooms and you’re cleaning up the flour, you think, “There I go again. I’m a total failure. I can’t stand it! I never do anything right! I’m a terrible mother.” These thoughts make you even sadder.    

And that’s the propaganda. That’s your brain Nazi with his all-or-nothing thinking, telling you that you either perform perfectly or you’re a failure.    

But is that true? No, it’s not. You might be a B+ mother, filling the lives of your kids with all sorts of goodness. You might have just had a great time reading with the kids not thirty minutes before. But the brain Nazi tells you to forget that. “Vatch dis film,” he says, “und see de horrors of vut you are!”    

And the all-or-nothing thinking gambit is just one of ten common weapons he uses. Furthermore, this happens so quick that we often don’t notice it. In fact, we’ve often repeated some of these distortions so often than they’ve become almost automatic.    

Mr. Nazi, Meet Mr. Bazooka

The good news is that you can pull the lid off the lies. You can open the door, spot the brain Nazi that slipped in, and take him out. You can do this because one of the three parts of the system is our cognitive appraisal. This means you can consciously stop the movie, pin the distortion on the wall, and uncover the truth. Once you do that, it’s like the rattlesnake scenario above—oh, it’s a hose, we realize, not a snake, and the appropriate emotions immediately follow.    

But you need to know how to stop the movie. You need to know how to spot the lies. David D. Burns, MD tells you exactly how to do this in his book Feeling Good. (By the way, DON’T get this book confused with his Feeling Good Handbook–you DON’T want the handbook; you want Feeling Good, the book.)  In the book, Burns talks about the theory, the results, and then gets right down to the practical techniques used to blow the brain Nazi to kingdom come.  

A few years ago I hit a bad patch with a brain Nazi that had taken up residence. A very bad patch. He’d been there for quite some time. This book and a good counselor saved me. I thank the Lord for that. By the time I went to see a medical doctor to assess whether chemical issues might be playing a role, I was stable. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but I had opened the lid and found the villain at the controls. I used the techniques Burns gave me, and I’m happy to say that while the brain Nazi still comes round every once in a while, I can spot him. And I can take that sucker out.     

Below I’ve included an assessment you’ll find in the book. Fill it out. If you, or someone you know, scores in the mild range, maybe you’ve just experienced a very sad event. But maybe you’ve also got a villain in residence. Get the book. Read it. Be happy. Nobody needs to live with a Nazi at the controls.    

Burns Depression Checklist

Instructions: Put a check to indicate how much you have experienced each symptom during the past week, including today. Please answer all 25 items.

* Copyright 1984 David M. Burns, M.D. (Revised, 1996)
** Anyone with suicidal urges should seek help from a mental health professional       

Interpreting the Burns Depression Checklist

To figure out your level of depression:     

1. Take the total number of responses in each column and multiply it by the column value shown at the top
2. Sum the values of the columns
3. Compare your score with the table below

For Authors

By the way, fiction authors should pay special attention to this stuff. Not because we’re more susceptible to brain Nazis than others, although we do have to deal with our fair share as we develop and share our stories. No, we should because the emotion process is exactly what we’re trying to tap into. Knowing the principles can be very useful indeed. Let me recommend you read the books on emotion listed on the Learning With Pros page. 

Sources

1. 1. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml
2. 2. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/49/49033.html (find your state and county and see how many folks are likely dealing with a brain Nazi in your area)
3. 3. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/youthDepression/youthDepression.htm

Aspiring writers, Jim C. Hines is starting to release the results of his how did you break in survey. Go read it!!

Interview with The Man Monday night

Dungeon Crawlers Radio interviews The Man Monday, March 8th at 10:30 PM MTN. You can listen live or to the archive they’ll post to their site. All brought to you by UtahFM. Malak and Revan are great guys. I had a blast with them.

Cool facts on breaking in, advances, etc. for writers

New page on writing facts & figures in the On Writing section.

Novel update

CURSE OF A DARK GOD is moving along. You should see the progress bar move along quite a bit this week.

Initial Schedule for American Fork Arts Council Conference for Writers

This is a cheap day-long writers conference and looks like it’s going to be another great one.  I’ve highlighted what I’ll be doing in red. I’ll be making adjustments to the HOW TO WRITE A STORY THAT ROCKS presentation for things learned at LTUE.

Here’s their website. That night I’ll probably be attending the Whitney Awards Gala which is also being held down in Happy Valley, Utah.

DATE: Saturday April 24 2010

8-9 a.m. Registration
9-9:10 Welcome (Plenary)

KEYNOTES
9:10-9:40 Keynote #1 Ginger Churchill, “What I Wish I had Known as a Beginning Writer”
9:40-10:10 Keynote #2 Ally Condie, “My Journey to National Publication”
10:10-10:40 John D. Brown, “Aiming for National Publication”

INTRODUCTIONS of editors and authors
10:40-11:05 EDITORS: Derk Koldewyn, Granite NAME
AUTHORS: Caleb Warnock, Linda Jefferies, Shannon Guymon

11:05-11:20 15-minute break

11:20-noon BREAKOUT ONE
Upstairs room “Crafting the Novel” with Shannon Guymon, John D. Brown
Downstairs One “Finding and Working With an Agent” with Ginger Churchill, Ally Condie, Caleb Warnock
Downstairs Two “Taking Your Questions about Publishing” with Deseret Book and Granite Publishing

noon-1 LUNCH “Mix and Mingle with Authors and Editors”

1-1:40 BREAKOUT TWO
Conference One Derk Koldewyn of Deseret Book “What Deseret Book is looking for now”
Conference Two Ginger Churchill “How to Write and Publish Picture Books”
Upstairs room John Brown, “How to Write a Story That Rocks Part 1: First Principles & Story Concept”
Office room Caleb Warnock “10 Things Every Writer Should Know about Copyright”
Downstairs One Granite Publishing “What Granite is looking for now”
Downstairs Two Ally Condie “Writing Young Adult Fiction”

1:40-1:50 Ten-minute break

1:50-2:30 BREAKOUT THREE
Upstairs Room John Brown, “How to Write a Story That Rocks Part 2: Character”
Conference Two Ginger Churchill “Genres of Children’s Books, from Board Books to YA Novels”
Conference One Derk Koldewyn of Deseret Book “National Publication with Shadow Mountain”
Office room Caleb Warnock “How to Write the Query Letter”
Downstairs One Granite Publishing “Publishing Options with Granite”
Downstairs Two Shannon Guymon “How to Write Romance”

2:30-2:40 Ten-minute break

2:40-3:20 BREAKOUT FOUR
Upstairs Room John Brown, “How to Write a Story That Rocks Part 3: Plot”
Conference Two Ginger Churchill “How to be a Writer and a Mother Too”
Conference One Linda Jefferies “Writing Poetry”
Office room Caleb Warnock “Write a Synopsis? I’d Rather Gouge My Eyes Out!”
Downstairs One Ally Condie “Succeeding as an LDS author”
Downstairs Two Shannon Guymon “Writing Nonfiction”

3:20-3:30 Ten-minute break

3:30-4:10 BREAKOUT FIVE
Upstairs Room John Brown, “Writing Scenes: The Basic Units of a Novel”
Conference Two Ginger Churchill “Querying Agents and Publishers”
Conference One Linda Jefferies “Publishing Poetry”
Office room Caleb Warnock “Okay, You Were Rejected – Why, and What to Do Now”
Downstairs One “How to form a critique group that works”
Downstairs Two Shannon Guymon “Succeeding as an LDS Author”

4:10-4:20 PRIZE GIVEAWAYS, GOODBYE

REVISED (MAY CHANGE)

This is J. K. Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.” It’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. Watch and then watch again. Read the full text here.

Two quotes that in no way can do justice to the whole thing.

And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

. . . 

Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.