Football and writing — unless you’re in the business of writing about football, the connection between the two is not necessarily self-evident. But last night’s New Orleans victory illustrated a few principles that apply not only to writing projects but to business of publishing.
Barton Silverman/The New York Times
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Here are five things writers can learn from the New Orleans Saints.
1. Have a plan, and stick to it.
“The first quarter we were almost all 3-4. The second quarter we went back to the 4-3. The third quarter we mixed it up, and the fourth quarter we mixed it back and forth. That was our plan, to make sure we didn’t show everything we had early in the game. We had a first half game plan, a third quarter game plan and a fourth quarter game plan and we were able to stick to it because our offense was able to keep us in position.” – Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams
Writing is an art, but it’s also a business, and must be taken seriously. If you’re writing a book, you need a plan. You need a place to write and a time to write. You might use an outline, or you might not. You need to plan for your audience and your genre. (I’m not saying write for the teeming millions, but at least be able to say, “My legal thriller will appeal to fans of John Grisham’s The Rainmaker.”)
Real jobs require you to show up at a designated time, do a certain task for a certain number of hours meet a certain standard of quality. The boss, in other words, already has a plan in place. Microsoft Word, on the other hand, doesn’t care if you type a single word. It doesn’t care if you take the day off or play video games or watch American Idol.
But you can’t do those things. You’ve got to plan to write, and you’ve got to follow through. And that takes discipline and tenacity. When the Saints were down by 10 at the start of the second quarter, Sean Payton didn’t toss away his clipboard and start polling the crowd. He stuck with the plan, because he believed in the plan. Similarly, when you’re ready to write but the Muse hasn’t shown up, it’s not okay to check everyone’s Facebook updates. You’re there to write, dammit. So do it. Too hung over? Too sick? Too tired? To quote Hemingway, “No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”
Follow the plan. Write.
2. Fortune favors the bold.
“In the locker room, [Saints head coach Sean] Payton told his team he was going to pull one of the biggest surprises in Super Bowl history.”
An onside kick to start the second half. ESPN called it, “the decision that changed the fate of the entire hard-luck New Orleans region and will live forever in Super Bowl lore.”
Writing is a hard business. Carrying a book from page 1 through revisions and the final draft takes months, if not years. And that’s not counting the gauntlet of rejection letters from agents and editors. The very act of writing is a gamble. In the end, it might not be good enough. It might be too ambitious. It might be too pedestrian. You might just be a bad writer.
To be an author is to be bold. To know the odds of publication, and to trudge forward, relentlessly, takes courage. To send out another set of queries after you’ve gotten forty rejections takes steely resolve and determination.
Because the odds are against you. The publishing industry isn’t trying to get you in the door; it’s looking for any reason to keep you out.
And yet you must write on. Because you might just recover that onside kick. You might just get that phone call.
3. Don’t panic.
In the third quarter, the Saints were down four points when the camera zoomed-in on Drew Brees. His eyes, his face, his body language all revealed the same thing: relaxation. He wasn’t worried. For my part, I was catatonic. But on the field, in the most important game of his professional career, the weight of a city and a region resting on his shoulders — he was collected, confident.
He knows how to play football. He’s playing a football game. Everything is okay.
As writers, when the Muse doesn’t show up, panic is often to set in. When up against a description that one cannot quite find the words for, or dialogue not quite dynamic enough, it’s easy to lose grip on what matters: you are a writer. You’re writing. Everything is okay.
Don’t pull up Facebook. (See rule 1!) Don’t take a “short break” to check email. Don’t reach for the Xbox controller. Keep writing.
Don’t panic when the Muse doesn’t show up, because there is no such thing as a Muse. Everything is okay.
4. Be agile
In the fourth quarter, the Saints were up by seven, but Peyton Manning had proven more than once an ability to drive the ball down the field at will. One of the best quarterbacks in history versus the number 29-ranked passing defense in the league. Not an ideal situation. Third and five at the thirty-one, Manning drills it, and Saints cornerback Tracy Porter intercepts, driving the ball seventy-four yards for a touchdown and effectively ending the game.
As a writer, a lot of roadblocks stand in your way of success. Once you’ve signed a contract, your publisher might treat your work like an unwanted orphan. Your copyeditor might carve your manuscript to pieces, missing obvious errors in favor of quibbles over stylistic decisions.
Expect such setbacks. When your baby has been bloodied, the red ink dripping from a ream of paper — stupid red ink that is sure to sully your literary reputation — be agile.
Reread every page. Consider every edit. Break out your style manual
An ominous sign doesn’t always mean doom; sometimes it’s an opportunity for elegance. Be agile. Intercept.
5. Finish Strong.
Between typing the first sentence of my novel, Red Planet Noir
And I still had to promote and sell the thing, an ongoing process. (And one that is neither trivial nor inexpensive.)
If the Saints have proven one thing this year — even if they’d not won a single playoff game, much less the Super Bowl — it’s that they could finish strong. The most exciting two minutes of every game this season have been the last two, because the Saints never gave up, ever. Finish Strong became the team’s unofficial motto during the playoffs, but they’d been finishing strong for an entire year. And last night? They finished strong, definitively.
Four preseason games. Sixteen regular season. Two playoff challenges. And the Super Bowl. That’s a long time. That’s a long, exhausting road.
Writers know that road.
Finish strong.
Yesterday, my Apple Time Capsule
The warranty: one year.
The age of the device: two years.
How a Time Capsule works
Time Capsule
Squeezing my credit card until my knuckles blanched, I walked into the Apple store with my deceased device. (Writers don’t make a lot of money.) The greeter directed me to a “Genius,” as Apple technicians are called, who examined my dead unit.
“Yep, it’s dead all right,” he said. (For whatever reason, I was reminded of the movie Clue
He continued: “And it’s out of warranty.”
He continued: “Let’s see what we can do.”
I expected a service charge. I expected screw drivers and soldering irons and replacement capacitors. I expected bad news, and a ten-percent discount on a new model if I traded in my dead unit.
Instead, he said, “You’ll have a new one tomorrow.”
What?
“You’re all set up. It’s not officially a known issue, but there’s no reason we can’t replace it for you.”
Actually, I could think of a few reasons they couldn’t replace it. It was out of warranty. I didn’t buy the service plan
Apple saw differently. They thought different, as they say.
Early this afternoon, they called with the good news, and I picked up my shiny new device. I didn’t even have to pay the cost of overnight shipping.
This was customer service at its finest. The Time Capsule is a quality device, and I’d have paid for another. But they gave it to me for free.
Guess whose appreciation for Apple has grown? Guess who is reconsidering his harsh assessment of the iPad? Guess whose loyalty to a brand has been reinvigorated?
It’s not what a company does for you; it’s what they don’t have to do. Apple went for the happy customer instead of the easy cash. And now they’re getting good word-of-mouth.
~
When I was young, I got a Gameboy — the original black and white boxy thing from 1989. It was a marvel of modern technology at the time. Without going into detail, I drifted away from video games for a stretch, when, a decade later I found that old Gameboy hidden in a box in my closet. It still worked, but after all that time was missing the battery cover.
So I called Nintendo customer support in hopes of ordering a replacement cover. The device was, after all, still good, even if newer, faster, color models had been released. I just wanted to play Tetris without the batteries falling out.
The Nintendo representative was surprised to get my call. I doubt she spent much time supporting ten-year-old devices. Yes, she said, she could provide me with a replacement cover.
For free.
For being a loyal customer for all those years. Free shipping and everything.
Yes, the part probably cost Nintendo pennies to manufacture. But again, I was willing to buy it. Asking, even. And here they were, giving it to me. In a flash, I felt like a kid again, like Santa Claus lived in Redmond, Washington. I was the same little boy who joined the Nintendo Fun Club and got the first issue of Nintendo Power
They didn’t have to give me anything. They certainly didn’t owe me anything — the joy I took from them greatly exceed the price paid — but they went the extra mile.
And today? I’ll never utter a negative word about Nintendo. I’ll defend them to my dying day.
Customer service has become synonymous with pain-in-the-ass automated telephone calls and screwed consumers.
But not always. Not at Apple. Not today. And — though another decade+ has passed since the fateful Gameboy battery cover call — not at Nintendo.
Sometimes you get treated like a human being. Sometimes companies do nice things because they can. Sometimes corporations think different.
Thanks, Apple. Thanks, Nintendo.
If you want a shiny new Gameboy, here you go
A Time Capsule? Right here
Take my word for it: these guys, they’ll take good care of you.
It’s Patrick Stewart. ‘Nuff said.
Dr. Marc Wessels of the Space Exploration Archive was kind enough to send along footage of a heretofore unseen view of the Challenger disaster. It’s chilling and heartbreaking and a reminder of the dangers that the brave men and women of the space program face with every mission. I’m ready to see a man on Mars. But until then, we should all pause and consider the human price. We’ll get there. But it won’t be easy. Nothing worth doing ever is.
The footage can be found here.
Over at The Atlantic, I throw rocks at Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. A snippet:
In the training environments of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, specifically, personal invectives and corporal punishment are hurled like meteors from above. Combat is stressful. Combat zones are isolating. Discomfort is a way of life. In day-to-day military life, piercing insults among equals are very often to be taken with a thick skin. As homosexuality is normalized, it takes little imagination to see that brought into the mix. Here, again, experienced NCOs will need to council effectively and determine what constitutes harassment and what is intended merely as emotional and familial roughhousing. If every soldier whose feelings were hurt filed an EO complaint or demanded an Article 15 punishment, the military would grind to a halt. In the Army, everyone’s feelings are hurt. To quote Tom Hanks, “There’s no crying in baseball!” The same applies in uniform.
Read the rest here.
Update: Quoted on Slate!
Update: Spotlighted on Politico!
Update: Change.org, favorable!
As I mentioned yesterday on Twitter, I am currently organizing a blog book tour, wherein I write a post for your blog. No blog is too big or too small! Do you get 5 visitors a day? Awesome. Do you get 50,000 visitors a day? Awesomer, admittedly. But I’ll treat both blogs with equal respect.
What do you get out of this? I’m a pretty good writer, and people pay me to do it and everything. You get free content — you pick the topic. I write. (I’ll suggest topics if you need ideas.) You get new visitors — I’ll send traffic your way through Twitter and this site and Facebook. You get some time off from having to write anything. And isn’t that really the dream?
What do I get out of this? At the bottom of the post, in the biography line, I add a little picture of my book and a link to my website. It’ll read something like this: “D.B. Grady is the author of Red Planet Noir and can be found at http://www.dbgrady.com.”
No, I’m not going to write a 400-word commercial for my book on your website. (Unless you want me to.) No, you don’t even have to run it if you don’t like it. It’s win-win for everyone. My goal is to reach new people. Your goal is to reach new people without doing any work. My other goal is for people to discover my book.
If you’re interested, drop me a line at db@dbgrady.com, DM me on Twitter, or message me in the comments below. Thanks.
Update: Full! Thanks everyone. You’ll hear from me shortly.
I am the last person to defend the TSA as an entity. As a general rule, I’d sooner trust the greeters at Walmart to prevent a terrorist attack. And I suspect that most TSA screeners hate their job, are the subjects of public invectives better directed at Washington D.C. (where the embarrassing policies are made), and are pretty exhausted by day’s end.
So when a TSA agent takes a nap during her break, why snap a picture and post it on the Internet? Are we so desperate for just a little more snark that we need to get someone fired because she’s not bothering anyone?
(I thought we hated the TSA because they bothered us?)
Here again, the TSA as an entity fails. Just as their security measures are security theater, instead of properly handling this situation — telling the said agent to nap in a break room next time — they’re “investigating” her, pending possible termination.
Because some jerk on the Internet wanted to be mean and funny.
Nobody expects TSA employees to be Jack Bauer. I’d feel safer if more of their agents were well-rested.
I hope she sues, and I hope she wins.
Over at Pop Syndicate, I review Snow Angels
Snow Angels, by James Thompson is dark. It’s supposed to be; it’s noir. But set in Finish Lapland during Kaamos, it’s dark quite literally. Weeks pass without sunlight. People are morose. People are edgy. As Thompson writes, “That’s the way things are here in winter. A bunch of depressed hard drinkers freezing in an endless night. Kaamos is tough on everyone.” And as the story progresses, things get so dark the novel itself threatens to collapse into a black hole.
Read the whole thing here.
The iPad
The Steve Jobs Apple keynote is over, and my kindest response is: we’ve waited this long… for this?
I am an Apple fanboy. There are no less than 6 iPods in my home, a MacBook
But this..
This is worse than the Apple TV
The iPad is a disappointing product by every measure. Strip away the marketing, the “most magical, most revolutionary thing we’ve ever done, ever,” and you’ll find that it’s just a giant iPod Touch. Unless you want the 3G chipset, in which case it’s a giant iPhone 3GS. But if you’re dropping $829 for a device (plus $29/month for 3G service [on AT&T, natch! Insult to injury!]) for the fully-featured device, you’re probably the sort who will invest in the keyboard and dock for another $79+, at which point you’ve bought a severely-underpowered baseline MacBook.
The computing power of an iPod Touch with the inelegance of laptop.
(How’s that for a slogan?)
Not exxxccellent...
It’s the worst of both worlds. And none of this is to mention the lack of a camera for iChat, the lack of any potential benefits of MobileMe (another Apple failure), and no kickstand to watch movies with others or offer an improv presentation. Chiropractors will love the iPad. Any productive work will require one to spend hours hunched over a table looking facedown onto a glass keyboard, hands perched like Mr. Burns. The biggest accomplishment of the device seems to be its ability to run iWork… barely by all accounts. Good luck getting Photoshop on there.
No multitasking. A backlit, eye-draining ebook reader that weighs 1.5 lbs. Admittedly, it runs the iPhone OS which, to its credit, runs iPhone apps. But then… so can my iPhone.
There is nothing groundbreaking here. There’s nothing even grounddenting. If this device succeeds in its current form, everyone on Apple’s marketing department deserves a raise. And everyone with a credit card deserves what they get.
Steve Jobs promised a tablet device with more useful than something to read while on a toilet. And he delivered. He’s created something that should also be flushed.
Travelpro Platinum 6
When flying, there is no reason to check a bag, ever. I am an devotee of one-bag packing, and while this is not a how-to (there are many sites brimming with such information), I will touch on a few basic techniques that every traveler should know.
My bag of choice is the Travelpro Platinum 6 22″
A word about carry-ons. The standard size for an airline carry-on bag is 45 linear inches (that is, length + width + height), with dimensions of 22″ x 14″ x 9″ being the most favorable measurements. Anything larger or oddly-shaped runs the risk of being rejected by the flight crew and made to be checked. A checked bag is a lost bag.
(Click “read more” to read the rest of the story.)
Red Planet Noir at Hastings
[Note: The Events page has been updated with several upcoming appearances and interviews.]
This weekend I traveled to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area for a television interview (I’ll post it when they send it to me) and a Red Planet Noir booksigning at Hastings Books in Waxahachie, Texas.
Let me start by saying that the Google Maps app on the iPhone is probably the worst piece of navigational software ever written, ever. “Want to be steered into a unpaved, fenced-off, open field? There’s an app for that.” It repeatedly–repeatedly–insisted I drive the wrong way down one-way streets. It suggested 20-turn back-road subdivision meanderings when a straight shot down the freeway and a single exit would have sufficed. Its GPS (and this might fall at the feet of Apple) would update hundreds of yards after I’d missed an already convoluted turning suggestion. If you’re out of town, get a paper map, a GPS, or ask someone at a service station. Google should be ashamed of itself.
All of this is to say that it took two hours to reach a thirty minute destination — the television studio. And though I’d left quite, quite early, I was still a bit late. This had me extremely rattled, and I don’t think I ever recovered. If I look like a hostage in the video, it’s because I felt like one, at the hands of my iPhone.
(Click “read more” to read the rest of the story.)
Jessica Ferguson was kind enough to interview me on her blog. Here’s a snippet:
What are the biggest surprises you’ve encountered as a writer?
Easily, the biggest surprise is how kind and generous and supportive other writers have been. Everyone who’s set pen to paper knows what a challenge it is. Everyone who’s had to sell that paper knows the challenge increases exponentially. But rather than build jealous walls of bitterness or resentment, every writer that I’ve met has reached his or her hand out and offered to help. Published, self-published, unpublished — it’s a unique and beautiful kinship.
Read the rest of the interview here.
On Chris Redding’s blog, I was asked to contribute a recipe. I am not a cook. But while there seem to be some (significant!) formatting errors, there’s a pretty tasty pie to be found. A taste:
Step 10. Remove the cold, solidified, tasty-looking pie from the fridge. Open the giant tub of Cool Whip that you’d ordinarily eat with a spoon as you cry over how meaningless life is. Generously ladle the Cool Whip over the pie.
Find the full recipe here. I am not responsible for food poisoning in the event that I missed an ingredient.
Over at The Atlantic, I throw rocks at the intelligence community’s handling of the Christmas Day terrorist incident.
How courageous is Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, the father of terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? If, as it is argued, the Islamic world sees the War on Terror as a War on Islam, it must have been quite intimidating to walk into the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria. It must have been terrifying to walk to the front desk and ask to see the man in charge. It must have been a father’s worst nightmare: not only to turn his son over to the authorities, but also to know that Guantanamo may have been in the boy’s future. Did Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, though a wealthy and respected banker, fear that he, too, might find himself on the business end of an American rifle? One does not casually discuss actionable information on terrorism with American officials and not expect a hard look and maybe a little roughing-up.
The White House Review of the Christmas Day terrorist attack reads like a game of Clue, in reverse. From the start, we knew the killer, we knew his location, and after sixty years of aircraft hijackings and Al Qaida’s record, we had a pretty good idea of the weapon of choice. We even had a motive and a witness.
Read the rest here.
UPDATE: Instapundit links!
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan agrees!
Today The Advocate reviewed my novel, Red Planet Noir. A snippet:
Grady consciously mimics the great detective writers of the past — Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, etc. But his hard-boiled detective’s first-person narrative peppered with gumshoe metaphors is most reminiscent of the writing of Mickey Spillane.
“When the phone rang, I was half-drunk, half dressed, half-asleep, and half-expecting it to be the phone company reminding me that my bill was past due.”
And “I pulled on a shirt that wasn’t very dirty, but smelled of Scotch and strippers, my signature cologne, and pressed the Answer button. The phone company only hired brunettes, because that’s what the owner liked to fool around with, and only hired men, for the same reason. She was neither, and carried her curves as if to prove the point.”
It’s a reluctantly positive review, but he does compare me favorably with Philip K. Dick, which is high praise indeed. Read the review here.
