Carlton Mellick III

I’ve been saying this for years, but recently I’ve heard Neil Gaiman say it:

“The imagination is a muscle. If it is not exercised, it atrophies.” The more you use your imagination, the stronger your imagination becomes.

If you are a writer, especially a bizarro writer where strange imaginative ideas are the most important aspect of your work, make sure to daydream as much as possible. Daydreaming is the best way you can exercise your imagination. Do it as much as you can, in little spurts all day long. I’m sure most bizarro writers already daydream a lot. That’s probably why you started writing in the first place. But as you get older and become absorbed by the real world, your imagination is likely to suffer or you might feel like you’re running out of worthwhile ideas. Just take some time out every day to daydream. It might seem immature and a waste of time to other people, but it will actually exercise your brain and help you to become a better writer.

Many have said that some people are just natural born writers. They say these people have a certain spark that they were born with that just can’t be taught in schools. I disagree. I think that spark is just the writer’s imagination, which has been built up from years of daydreaming. If you are lacking in creativity all you have to do is daydream more and your imagination will build. Maybe even try playing with toys again. That’s what Ray Bradbury did.

Of course, another way is to just write a lot. Writing forces you to imagine and the more you write the more you will strengthen your imagination. Still, it’s good to train it as much as possible before putting into action, especially if you don’t write every single day.

I’ve been talking a lot about marathon writing. The one a lot of bizarro writers try, that I highly recommend, is the 3 day writing marathon. That is where you write a 100 page book in just three days. It can be more or less than 100 pages, but you do have to make it to the end.

Today I received this comment from Bradley Sands:

“I’m doing a three day tomorrow. Last time I tried, I woke up on the second day without any motivation to go on and I didn’t. You should give me a day 2 pep talk.”

So that’s what I want to talk about: the second day slump. If you lose interest in your marathon book on the second day it might have to do with a dislike of what you have written on the first day. You might not have prepared yourself mentally. Perhaps you didn’t even know what the book was going to be about yet. In order to avoid this, I recommend preparing yourself before you start the marathon. Come up with a bunch of ideas. Know exactly what you are going to write about. Most importantly, build up your excitement and confidence on this project. When you lose confidence you will slow down.

However, these things happen no matter how well you prepare yourself. The most important thing to do is convince yourself that you have to finish this no matter what. You have no other option. If normal discipline doesn’t work for you, I recommend putting money on the line. Bet a friend $100 you will finish your book in three days. If you don’t want to lose $100 you will finish it no matter what. Or you can spend $100 on a cheap motel…if you don’t want your money to go to waste you will finish your book in three days no matter what. Don’t worry if the book is crap. Finishing it is most important. It’s better to write a piece of crap in three days than not to have written anything during those three days. If you waste three days, big deal. At least you gained some writing experience.

A big thing to know is that if you finish your three-day book, even if it sucks, you will get a huge satisfying feeling of accomplishment. It might even inspire you to start a new project right away…one that might be much better. If you quit halfway through you will feel pathetic and depressed. You might even get discouraged from writing for a while. So make sure to finish it even if that sense of accomplishment is your only reward.

Here is some more advice that I find useful:

1) Focus on hour-to-hour goals. Try to write at least 500-1,000 words an hour. Watch your clock and watch your word count. Meet that goal even if you have to write some garbage. Try to keep your fingers on the keys typing nonstop for as long as you can (without writing stream of consciousness, because you probably won’t learn anything that way).

2) If you get stuck on something, feel free to skip ahead.

3) Focus more on plotting and characterization and less on the language. One sentence can take an hour if you obsess over it. Leave the poetics for the second draft.

4) When you need to take a break or are done for the day, always stop in the middle of a paragraph where you already know how it ends. This way you will know exactly what you need to write when you get going again. You will instantly get back into the swing of writing. Never stop at the end of a chapter or a section that you’re stuck on.

5) Eat, sleep, breathe, dream your book. Don’t watch TV or have a phone conversation, even if you are on a break. While you’re having lunch, taking a shower, or on a cigarette break, these are the best times to think about your book and brainstorm what will happen next in the story. You want to go to sleep thinking about your book, then dream about the book, then wake up the next day excited to get back into it.

It’s going to be hard, but you can do it. Just write. As long as you sit in front of a computer for three days straight without any distractions and keep typing you will finish it. If it’s not any good throw it away and then try again.

I hope this helps, Bradley… And if it doesn’t help you I hope it helps somebody else.

This rant is for beginning writers interested in marathon writing.

Just before my marathon started, I wrote the blog “Get Off Your Butt and Write” with ideas on how to write marathon-style. However, every time I tell new writers they should challenge themselves to write 20,000 words in three days or 50,000 words in a week, there’s always a handful of writers who tell me:

“I can’t do that. I’m more interested in quality than quantity. I’d rather spend five years writing a good book than one month writing a sub-par one.”

Although this sounds like good logical thinking, it’s usually not the way things work. Especially for new writers. You can easily spend 5 years writing a sup-par book (or even a terrible book) and you can easily spend one month writing a really good book (or even your best work ever). Quality is more likely to come from your skills as a writer rather than the amount of time you spend on a book, and you gain these skills by writing as much as possible.

So, that means: quantity = quality.

As a new writer, you should focus on quantity first and quality second. Never sacrifice quantity for the sake of quality. Ever. Even if you have to trash a lot of what you write in the beginning. Your ego will tell you otherwise, but trust me when I say that quantity is more important to your growth as a writer. When you’re writing, set a firm deadline. Force yourself to write a 30 page short story in a day or a 100 page novel in 3 days. Whatever your deadline is, meet that deadline no matter what. Try to make it the best book it can possibly be, but only give it as much as time will allow. After you’re done, set another deadline for another story and do it again. Over time, you will gain experience that will increase the quality of your work. Not only that, but if you do many marathons where you are forced to work at a fast pace you will eventually learn how to produce high quality work in a very short period of time. You’ll be able to write quickly and efficiently, a skill that will be very useful if you want to write professionally.

In addition to that, I actually believe your work turns out a lot better when it is written at a fast pace. It seems my best books are the ones that I wrote in less than a week and the worst are the ones that took years to complete.

Here’s why:

1) Excitement – when you first come up with an idea for a book you’ll probably have a lot of excitement for it. You want to get that idea down on paper as fast as possible before your interest in that idea fades. If you marathon a book when you are at your most excited to write it then the energy that you put into it will really pay off. If you’re loving writing the book the reader will most likely love reading it. Finish the book before the excitement fades. If you take years writing this book your excitement will most likely fade. You will probably get bored with it. Writing the book will seem like a chore. These negative feelings will definitely have an impact on the quality of the book.

2) Focus – if you write a whole book in a short period of time, without distractions from everyday life, you’ll be able to focus more intently on your book. You will be able to live your story as you write it. You can’t do this with a book that takes years to write. The absolute best writing comes when you are in the “zone.” You can only get into this state when you are completely absorbed into your writing. When in the zone, you will forget that you are at a computer, writing the story. You’ll forget where you are, maybe who you are, and the story just flows out of you. I can only get into this state when marathon writing.

3) Memory – this is a cheap one, but if you write a book in a short period of time you are most likely to remember everything going on in the plot. When books take years to write you’ll have to keep notes and reread the thing several times, because you’re probably not going to remember everything you’ve written. If you have to reread your book several times before finishing it you’re going to get bored with it. Your book isn’t likely to be very good once you get bored with it.

4) Making it to the end – the fewer days you spend on a book, the less likely you will give up on it. I have given up on several books that have taken me years to write, but never on a book that I marathoned. On a marathon you just don’t have time to second guess yourself. If I didn’t marathon Cybernetrix or Apeshit and had time to second guess myself I would have said “There’s no way anybody will ever want to read this crap” and then trashed them.

When you start writing by deadline, you’ll probably produce some crap that will be thrown out. Don’t worry if you produce crap. You’ll still learn from it. What I don’t recommend is focusing too much on rewriting this crap. Just throw it away and use the knowledge you learned on your next book. Your time would be better spent starting a new book than rewriting the crap book, because it’s difficult-to-impossible to turn crap into gold.

This marathon-writing method doesn’t include editing and rewriting. When it comes time to do the rewriting, don’t be a perfectionist. Like you did while writing the first draft, give yourself a deadline and stick to it. Make your book as perfect as you can until the deadline is up. Then be done with it. If a publisher asks you for some revisions then do those, but otherwise call it quits. I say this because you have to know that your book will never be perfect. All works of literature, including all of the classics, are flawed. You can work on one book for the rest of your life and it will never be perfect. You have to know when to let it go and move on to your next book.

I think most people don’t believe it is possible to write a book in a week that is equal (or better) in quality to a book of the same length written in a year or two. But I assure you that you can do this with practice. Normally, I would say all writers are different and all writers have their own ways of doing things, but every single writer I have convinced to write books marathon-style have become better writers for it.

If you’re a new writer struggling with getting work done, then your main problem is probably getting your butt in the seat to write.   In order to get work done, you need to either be disciplined or challenged.  If you can discipline yourself then you can write every day.   But most people aren’t so disciplined.   Writing every day is not easy for a lot of people,  just how exercising every day is not easy for a lot of people.   Personally, I get work done by challenging myself with a deadline.  In my opinion, the best motivation for a writer is a deadline… especially when that deadline comes from a publisher interested in your work.   Not many writers are so lucky, but there are other useful methods of getting work done.  Here are some ideas:

1) NaNoWriMo – November is National Novel Writing Month.  Writers all over the world participate in this event.   You have one month to write a 50,000 word novel.  Although many people swear by this, I don’t think it is works because you have nothing to lose if you fail.  Even though I have written several books in less than a month, I have tried the NaNoWriMo marathon and failed twice.  Still, a lot of people swear by it and have done great work by giving themselves a one month deadline to write a 50,000 word novel.   Bizarro authors Gina Ranalli and Bradley Sands have also tried this.  For more information, go to:  http://www.nanowrimo.org

2) The 3-Day Novel Contest – Every labor day,  there is a contest to see who can write a 100 page novel in three days.  To enter, you send in your $50 entry fee.  The best book written during those three days gets publised.  This is an excellent motivation to finish a project, because a) you paid $50 to enter so you will force yourself to finish the book because otherwise you’ve wasted $50…and  b) if you win you’ll get a book published.  I recommend all writers do this at least twice (the first time is miserable for a lot of people).  Not only is it a great challenge, it also really teaches you to throw away the perfectionist instinct and embrace the creative flow.  During this kind of marathon, you might also get into the ‘zone’ where you are so into the book you are writing that you forget you are actually writing a book and feel like you are inside of the story.  That’s my favorite part of writing.  Gina Ranalli has also tried this contest before.  For more information, go to:   http://www.3daynovel.com/

3) Betting a Friend – Another way to work by deadline is to bet a friend $100 that you can finish a book within a certain amount of time.  Maybe a 50,000 word book in a month, maybe a 20,000 word book in a week, or three days.  Make sure to bet a friend who will definitely collect the money if you fail.  This method works because you will definitely finish a project if you know you have something to lose.  If you try this method and fail, then you might want to try again with $300-500.  If you have the choice between finishing a book or losing $500, which would you choose?  You might also want to bet another writer who, in exchange, bets you he can finish his own project during the same time.  That way, if you both fail neither of you has to pay.  I have done a bet like this with Jeremy Robert Johnson and Mitch Maraude in the past.

4) Checking into a hotel – This is my favorite method for getting work done.   I like to isolate myself from the rest of the world (people, the internet, tv) for several days until I finish the project.  I check into a hotel and don’t leave until it is done.  Because I am paying money for every day that I write, I make sure to get as much done as possible per day.  This is seriously the best method of writing that I know.  I like to do this once a month or at least once a season.  In fact, that is what I’m going to do this week.  I’ve got a crappy $30 hotel booked and I’ll be living there until I write at least 100 pages.  So you won’t here from me until the weekend.  I have done this before with Daniel Scott Buck and Mykle Hansen.   This week, Mykle Hansen, Cameron Pierce, and Jeff Burk are all doing writing marathons at the same time as I am.  However, Mykle will be writing at a friend’s beach house, Jeff will be doing it at home, and Cameron will be camping out in the Eraserhead Press office.  I have faith all 4 of us will be successful.

5) Withhold Something – Tell your spouse, roommate, mom, or whoever is closest to you to withhold something from you until you finish your project.  It can be television, your Xbox, the internet, drinking, smoking, sex, spending money.  Whatever you think you would miss the most, forcing you to finish your project as quickly as possible.  If you are overweight a good one would be to have good/fattening food withheld.  So then you would be on a strict diet until you finished your book.  This is good because if it takes you a really long time to write your book, at least you will be losing weight and living healthy during the process.

For additional information on getting stuff done, check this out:

Merlin Mann talks about getting creative things done. He says, “Get comfortable with the idea that you’re going to suck” while advising abandoning perfectionist tendencies and fear of sucking for the sake of improving through doing.

Have a listen:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/19/merlin-mann-on-getti.html

Yesterday, Troy Chambers asked:

“What’s the “rule” on having something be considered a novel as opposed to a novella or short novel? What’s the word count?”

Well, these are the official word counts that are recognized by writer’s organizations to define stories, novels, and novellas:

Flash fiction: 0-500 words
Short shorts: 500-1,000 words
Short Stories: 1,000-7,500 words
Novelettes: 7,500-17,500 words
Novellas: 17,500-40,000 words
Novels: 40,000 words and up

(though most mainstream publishers won’t publish novels under 75,000 words, so some people consider novels to be 75,000 words and up)

However, I think most of these terms with word count definitions are bullshit. There are only novels and stories. These two are separated not by word count but plot content. If it has enough plot to be turned into a movie (or a three act play) without needing to add anything then it is a novel. Otherwise, it’s a story. The reason defining a novel/novella/story by word count doesn’t work is because there are works that have enough plot to be considered a novel, but are written in a minimalistic style that keeps the word count low (example: Animal Farm). And I have read works that have such little plot that they must be considered short stories, but are so overwritten that they have really high word counts (example: Stephen King stories). So you can have a 20,000 word novel as well as a 20,000 word short story. I would call a 20,000 word novel a ‘short novel’ and a 20,000 word story a ‘long story.’

Most bizarro books work best in the 15,000 – 45,000 word length. In other words, they are great short novels. I believe bizarro works best in the short novel form because bizarro requires a certain amount of strange elements in order for it to be considered bizarro. The deeper these strange elements are explored, the more bizarre the work will be. A short story just isn’t long enough to do these ideas justice. While there are some great bizarro short stories (such as those by D. Harlan Wilson or those published in The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction), I think the best bizarro works are those published in the short novel form. However, bizarro doesn’t work will in the long novel form because weirdness can get old pretty quick. If Alice in Wonderland was 4 times the length, I never would have gotten through it. If David Lynch movies were three hours I’d never want to watch them. Of course, there are some great bizarro novels like Chris Genoa’s Foop! and Kevin Donihe’s Washer Mouth: The Man Who Was a Washing Machine.

I really love short novels because you can read them in one sitting, like watching a movie. I am glad the bizarro writers are bringing them back.

I sometimes get negative reviews from people who are confused (aka pissed off) at the page count of my books versus the word count of my books. Some of my books have tiny fonts, some have big fonts, some have retardedly big fonts. Some have illustrations. Some have a lot of blank space. There’s a bizarro catalog in the backs of the books that gets longer every year. So the page count really doesn’t have any impact on the length of the story. Unfortunately, the page count does have an impact on the price of the book, so I understand why some readers get pissed off at the big fonts. This is why Rose at Eraserhead Press doesn’t let me use big fonts or a lot of blank space these days (even though I personally like the look/feel of these books).

To figure out the real lengths of my books you’d have to look at the word counts, rather than page counts. Here is a list of my books from longest to shortest based on word count:

Electric Jesus Corpse – 150,000 words
Satan Burger – 75,000 words
Punk Land – 55,000 words
Cybernetrix – 45,000 words
Apeshit – 40,000 words
The Cannibals of Candyland – 35,000 words
The Egg Man – 35,000 words
Ugly Heaven – 30,000 words
Adolf in Wonderland – 30,000 words
Sex and Death in Television Town – 28,000 words
Menstruating Mall – 25,000 words
Sausagey Santa – 23,000 words
Fishy-fleshed – 20,000 words
The Haunted Vagina – 20,000 words
Razor Wire Pubic Hair – 20,000 words
Teeth and Tongue Landscape – 20,000 words
Steel Breakfast Era – 20,000 words
Sea of the Patchwork Cats – 18,000 words
War Slut – 18,000 words
Ultra Fuckers – 16,000 words
Faggiest Vampire – 14,000 words
Baby Jesus Butt Plug – 9,000 words

Although I think these reviewers’ complaints are completely valid, many of them have the tendency to claim that my books are actually short stories stretched out with big font and blank space to turn them into 200 page novels. And they say that if a mainstream publisher were to release my books they would only be 10-20 pages long. This is a pretty big exaggeration. A short story is less than 7,500 words. Anything longer than that is a novella or a novel (though I prefer the term short novel instead of novella). My children’s books Faggiest Vampire and Baby Jesus Butt Plug are close to short stories, but all children’s books have low word counts. A normal book has about 250 words per page, so if one of my books were published by a mainstream publisher…let’s say “The Menstruating Mall” which is 25,000 words… it would actually be 100 pages long (rather than 212). So, yeah, the page count is misleading, but it is far from a 10-20 page short story. But is it a ripoff? The industry standard for a 100 page trade paperback is $10 and industry standard for a 200 page book is $12. Menstruating Mall is $10.75 on amazon.com, so it is closer to the price of a 100 page book than a 200 page book. But I agree the page count is misleading. Sorry about that. I do want to add that my newer books, such as Cybernetrix, actually are at a standard font size and do have an average of 250 words per page.

For those of you (like myself) who preferred the large font books, sorry but you won’t be seeing them anymore (except in my children’s books). For those of you who dislike the large font books, these are the books to avoid: Menstruating Mall, Fishy-fleshed, Baby Jesus Butt Plug, Razor Wire Pubic Hair, and Faggiest Vampire (though Faggiest Vampire is a children’s book).

Recently, somebody online said that Jeff Burk’s bizarro novel “Shatnerquake” walks the fine line between genius and retarded. I don’t know how Jeff feels about that, but I think it’s a big compliment. Most of my favorite movies and books are pretty retarded works of genius.

Although it’s not a definitive element of bizarro, I do think a lot of bizarro walks the fine line between genius and retarded…as well as the fine line between garbage and art, or scary and funny, or simplistic and complex. In other words, bizarro is low brow entertainment and high brow entertainment at the same time.
That’s something I really like about bizarro fiction.

Here are some other examples of genius/retarded works of art/entertainment:

SOUTH PARK

DEVO

JOHN WATERS

KATHY ACKER

AEON FLUX

Rich Ristow asked me this question last week:

What separates Bizarro from run-of-the-mill new surrealism? Or, the difference between bizarro and the older, more “classical” sense of surrealism?

I’ll start with classical surrealism. While classical surrealism seems weird, it is not bizarro at all. Classical surrealism was all about examining the subconscious human mind. Through the process of automatic writing, the early surrealists would just let language flow out of them at random. Andre Breton, who started the surrealist movement, was a Freudian psychiatrist who studied the subconsciousness of his patients during WWI. He believed that automatic writing was the purest way to study the subconscious. He turned this into an artform. A lot of early surrealism read like dreams.

While bizarro can be considered dream-like at times, it is not like surrealism. Bizarro is the genre of the weird. Dreams and the subconscious are not weird. They are incredibly common. Weirdness caused through dreams, insanity, or drug trips cannot be bizarro because those things are far too normal. Other differences between bizarro and classical surrealism is that the surrealists were politically motivated and took themselves far too seriously. If a writer didn’t share the same political views as Breton he wouldn’t let that writer get involved with the movement. In other words, he was a complete douchebag.

New surrealism is harder to define. There’s no new surrealist manifesto, there’s no new surrealist movement, and most people who are considered new surrealists never use the term “surrealism” to describe their work. There is actually a lot of confusion over what surrealism is these days. Some people think that all surrealism is just the old style of surrealism, some people think that anything that takes place outside of reality is surrealism (including sci-fi/fantasy), some people think that surrealism is just weird fiction. Personally, I think if anybody is writing surrealism these days they need to get rid of the “ism” part unless they are doing automatic writing or a Breton tribute. Just call it surreal fiction. Or better yet, call it irreal fiction. Very few people know about the term irrealism, but what most people are calling surrealism these days is actually irrealism…which can be defined as “a style that features an estrangement from our generally accepted sense of reality.” I would put Russell Edson in the category of irrealism.

Irrealism is definitely weird. Bizarro is the genre of the weird. So bizarro does include the irreal, (a lot of bizarro is irreal). But bizarro cannot include surrealism… because dreams/subconscious are not weird. Also, bizarro is mostly about weird plots and weird characters, and the automatic writing of surrealism has no plots or characters (unless by accident) so it cannot be bizarro.

I was asked this question last night by young writer named Miles, so I decided to blog about it today.

The question was:

How do you guys or the publisher discern what is bizarro and what is weird for weirds sake?

This was my answer:

Well, in a way, all bizarro is weird for the sake of weird. Just as horror is scary for the sake of scary. But weird can have different meanings for different people. Sometimes weird means interesting, sometimes weird means nonsensical, sometimes weird means funny. Bizarro isn’t all definitions of weird.

If it is weird for the sake of being interesting or weird for the sake of being funny, then that is bizarro.

If it is weird for the sake of being random or weird for the sake of being nonsensical, then it is not bizarro.

Really, though, the term “weird for the sake of weird” is just bizarro when it is weird but boring. When writing bizarro you want it to be so weird it is interesting, not so weird it is boring. Usually, the way you make it interesting-weird instead of boring-weird is through good storytelling. A good storyteller can make anything worth reading no matter how weird it is. A bad writer can make anything boring no matter how weird it is. However, what is good writing and what is bad writing, what is interesting and what is boring…these are all opinions and can vary from person to person. One person’s bizarro might be another person’s “weird for the sake of weird.”

Another thing I want to mention is that there are certain people out there who think all weirdness in fiction has to be a metaphor, or have a deep hidden meaning, otherwise it is “weird for the sake of weird.” These people, I have to say, are complete douche bags. Never listen to them. While creating a metaphor through weirdness can be interesting, it can also be very very lame if handled incorrectly. A story about woman who gives birth to a marshmallow could be interesting on its own. It raises questions: how would the mother take care of a marshmallow baby? Would the family dog try to eat it? What would its childhood be like? What could it be when it grows up? These could be interesting avenues to explore. However, this story could just be a metaphor for the fragility of youth…which would, more likely than not, just come off as really really lame.

So, my advice is: never force meaning upon your weirdness. Just focus on telling an interesting story. More often than not, the meaning will slip in naturally. It should be so subtle that a reader wouldn’t even notice it until their third or fourth read through. If it’s too heavy-handed it will make people groan. Don’t make people groan.

If anyone else has questions like this that you’d like me to blog about email them to me: carltonmellick3 at yahoo.com.

The difference between a cult author and a mainstream author:

A mainstream author writes a book and sells it to thousands of people.
A cult author writes thousands of books and sells them to one person.

For those who are wondering why I write so many books, that is the answer.