Curiosity Killed the Fucking Cat

Don't worry. Only metaphorically.

THE INSPIRATION: Curiosity

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

—Albert Einstein

I hemorrhage a lot of time and energy worrying about whether I’m doing the right thing, saying the right thing, thinking the right thing. It’s honestly a bit much after a while. And the thing is, I know the cures: kindness, and curiosity. I just forget to engage them.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m a particularly unkind individual; generally, it’s my default setting. Except when I really need it; when I’m in crisis. When I’m pissed. When I’m tired. When I’m scared. Kindness goes right out the window, and usually I get it back, but not before I’ve behaved abominably.

But curiosity… that’s less natural to me. I am always reaching for one answer or another, trying figure out what’s Right and share it with everyone else as soon as I find it. I often feel so uncomfortable without an answer to put my back against that I have trouble comfortably sitting in uncertainty without freaking out, and that’s a curiosity dampener.

Instead of needing to always have the answer, I’d like to be not only comfortable with not knowing, but intrigued by the lack of my own knowledge. I’d like to be able to engage with my own curiosity without feeling like somehow I’ve failed by not knowing an answer.

Life. It’s a fucking journey, right?

THE FAT ORANGE CAT: Fuck that shit

I saw an article on Psychology Today that linked cursing with honesty, and well… that engaged my curiosity. Is it really true? I wondered, and then I thought about the truly atrocious liars I’ve known in my life. One of them didn’t curse at all; another cursed all the fucking time; and the third… I honestly can’t remember. Maybe a little? Not as much as me, though.

Anyway, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a sign of a more honest individual, but what if you gave that trait to a character in your story? Would someone who cursed all the time be seen as more straightforward, less interested in trying to accommodate people? Huh. I wonder.

Give it a shot. Let me know what happens.

The “Get Your Stuff” link will bring you to an item I selected specifically to accompany this post, but you do not have to buy that thing in order to support me. Just keep popping through Amazon and buy the stuff you were going to buy anyway.

THE TROPE: Chekhov’s Gun

Anton Chekhov wrote in a letter that “one must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.”

We talk about Chekhov’s gun often with regard to writing; if you introduce something in the first act, you should use it in the third. Generally, I think that’s solid advice, and if you’re willing to broaden the concept from props to ideas, this principle generally well-served in three-beats and bookends and basically any self-referential part of a story.

There are writers that appreciate some randomness in stories, and I think there’s a place for that, too. Life is random, and wild elements that don’t reappear and don’t really mean anything can add some verisimilitude to the experience.

But overall, when I see a reflection used in a story, I know that the writer is paying attention, and working their dough with deliberate thoughtfulness. I appreciate that.

THE QUESTION: Write to the market?

“What's your guiding light when you are creating ? Is it thinking about the market/audience for what you're doing? Or is it about the idea that grabs you—staying true to that and then working the positioning out later? Or somewhere in between?”

—Market Maybe

Dear MM,

Never write to the market.

Ever.

Now, understand that I say that as someone who is a NYT bestselling author because she did a book with two other major authors, so you go grab as many grains of salt as you need. My solo books did great critically, but they never blew the lid off the market.

Still. I stand by my advice.

Never, ever write to the market.

Here’s why:

1. By the time a particular kind of book is “hot,” you’ve already missed the boat.

2. Markets get “hot” on a particular kind of book because that kind of book wasn’t previously that big. So the writer who hit the jackpot with that kind of book wasn’t writing to the market; they were writing what they wanted to read.

3. You’ll never do your best work unless you’re doing the work that you want to do.

Also… thinking about the market it outcome-oriented thinking, and I’m not a fan of that. Focus on the things you can control; writing great stories that mean something to you. Write as many of those as you can, and if the traditional publishing market doesn’t want it, self-publish and keep your damn profits. Traditional publishing is validating, yes, but the mid-list is shrinking and even if you’re on it, it sucks. You give away 90% of the profit from your book only to have to do all your own marketing and paying for your own travel to signings, if you can even book any signings… which you’ll also likely be doing on your own. Plus your publisher is basically the Dread Pirate Roberts, who every night tells you that they’ll most likely kill you in the morning.

Think of the market like a wide open field. Sometimes a storm hits and lightning strikes in that field, but no one knows where it’s going to strike. Your best bet at having lightning strike is not putting one lightning rod next to the spot where it struck last time. It’s to put as many lightning rods in that field as possible.

So my answer is… write what you love and are excited about, and forget everything else. Create as much as you reasonably can, and self-publish if no one in traditional publishing is interested. You don’t need validation. Just write. Just create. Do it because you love it, and when it’s done, the fact that you created a thing should be the only reward you ever want or expect.

Forget the market. Do the thing.

THE PRACTICAL: Fairy Tales

I can feel myself sliding into a renewed fascination with fairy tales. I watched the “Explained” episode on fairy tales earlier this week and felt my curiosity tweak hard. Partially because I reference them a bit in the How Story Works book which is in second draft edits right now, and partially because I’ve always had a fascination with the way the same fairy tales were told through the millennia, all over the world.

There’s something about retelling a story, over and over again, that has a sacredness to it. It feels like, as the story passes from hand to hand, the ephemeral in human experience becomes recorded and permanent. So many human ideas and perspectives are woven into the fabric of these stories until the stories themselves become artifacts, preservations of the dream world, carrying deep subtext and magic and imagination from so many cultures as they grab bits and pieces of all who touch them and weave the human subconscious into something that is neatly packaged, and so much more than it may seem.

Fairy tales engage my curiosity, and make me want to dive deep into the folklore of the ages and meet the people, long dead, who still live within the woven fabric of these stories and whisper things we’ve forgotten we know. The worlds they lived in are wildly different from the one we live in now, but it’s the common ideas, desires, experiences and beliefs that show us that people have always been, and will always be, essentially the same.

It’s fascinating, and I believe it’ll be the next rabbit hole I dive down… once I’m done with this book and am free to dive.