Matt Forbeck

Back in September, I wrote about “The Season of the Pitch.” In that, I mentioned that one of challenges with freelance writing is that right after you sign contracts for one gig you often wind up getting contacted about a better, shinier assignment. After you’ve spent so much time beating the bushes to flush out these choice pieces of work, it’s hard to turn them down. After all, if you didn’t want to do them, you wouldn’t have pitched for them in the first place, right?

Let me state, though, that this is an excellent problem to have. It’s hard to complain about having too many cool things to work on, especially when others may be struggling to find anything to work on at all.

So don’t. Sit your butt in the chair and get the work done instead. You can sleep when you’re dead—or at least when you’re done. Sooner or later, the season of the pitch will come around again, and you’ll wonder where all those people who piled work on you last year have gone.

Of course, that’s easier to say than do. Life tends to crop up and suck up time too. For instance, I just spent a few hours in the local ER with my son Ken, who sliced open his hand on a fireplace door, a wound that required nine stitches to repair. He should be fine, although he’ll have a nice scar to show off later.

The point is that you can’t plan for things like that. They happen, you deal with them, and you get back to work as soon as you can. Good editors will understand if such things make you a little late.

However, if you dodge emails and phone calls for weeks while you juggle projects and scramble to catch up, those good editors will turn on you—the way they should. There’s little worse to an editor than to wonder if she needs to recommission something that might show up completed the next day.

So, if you get behind, be sure to be up front about it as soon as you can. Apologize, offer solutions, and keep moving.

It’s better yet, though, if you can figure out a way to hit those deadlines, no matter how fast they keep coming at you. Doing this requires discipline, self-knowledge, a calendar, and a calculator.

Your self-knowledge tells you how much work you can get done in a given stretch of time. Keep a record of how many words you write each day, both under the worst and the best of circumstances. You’ll need this information later.

Use your calculator to figure out how many days each project in your pipeline should take. If you can write 5,000 words per day on a good day, and you’re tackling a 100,000-word book, then that should take you about 20 days to complete. Of course, that assumes you can string together 20 good days in a row. Some will be better than that, and others will be worse, but this should give you at least a rough idea of how much time you need.

Then take up that calendar and plot out those days you need. Don’t forget about weekends and holidays. You can sacrifice those breaks when you find yourself in a crunch, but try not to do that to yourself too often. That way lies burnout, which is the last thing you need when you’re hoping to beat your deadlines.

Once you’ve done all that, focus on your discipline to make sure you stick to your plan. A plan’s no good if you ignore it, no matter whether your excuses are excellent or not. Keep at it, and soon you’ll find yourself on the other side of the crunch—and with a stack of shiny new credits (and corresponding payments) to wait on.

As I watched the inauguration of Barack Obama, the reporters and pundits strove to overlay a narrative on nearly every detail, from the gift that Michelle Obama brought Laura Bush to the look in George W. Bush’s eyes as Barack took the oath of office. That’s their job. They’re there to provide us with a context for what we see on TV.

Just like in fiction, the best narratives in life have a sense of both the improbable and the inevitable about them. President Obama’s personal history resonates with the strength of the American dream. A boy born to a Kenyan immigrant and a native Kansan, then raised by a single mother and his grandparents, grows up to become the first African-American President of the United States.

When Obama was a child, I’m sure this seemed like such an impossible dream that his parents couldn’t possibly have imagined it for him. Looking back from today, though, his ascent has a well-defined arc as clear as a meteor burning through the summer skies.

Good fiction works like that too. You start with a simple premise, and you follow the hero on a journey through a staggering series of events until coming to a triumphant close. Sure, not every story works this way, but the most satisfying ones tend to.

As the pundits (and Obama’s team) create this narrative, they pick out and highlight the relevant details, the ones that wind up having some bearing on the story line they’ve chosen. Details like who was his first girlfriend or what he had for breakfast on his first day at Harvard get passed over. They might be interesting in themselves, but they don’t mean anything to the story at hand.

As human beings, we crave that sense of order in the universe, the feeling that events mean something, especially when lined up next to each other. We want to believe that purpose drives our lives, not random chance, so we naturally winnow out those relevant details and leave the chaff behind.

Fiction has to follow that same urge. Nothing in a well-told tale is random, even if it might feel that way at any particular moment. In fiction, the author plays the role of the intelligent designer, placing every piece, forming every character, and setting events in motion.

This is why truth can—and often is—stranger than fiction. Reality is random, no matter how we may try to frame it.

Dick Cheney hurt his back just before the inauguration. This put him in a black overcoat and a wheelchair for the ceremony. All he needed was a white cat on his lap to transform him fully into Ersnt Stavro Blofeld.

Later in the day, Senators Ted Kennedy (last of his generation of Kennedy politicians) and Robert Byrd (former KKK leader who endorsed Obama in the primaries) both became ill at the post-inauguration lunch.

If you placed these events in a bit of serious fiction, you might set your readers’ eyes rolling. They’re just a little too pat to ring true—even if they are. To make such things work, a writer needs to set them up before knocking them down. Kicking something that’s already down is the act of a bully, not an author.

And nobody likes a bully.

I don’t write because I have to. I do it because I forced myself to.

I know some writers say, “A writer writes,” or “write every day,” or “I can’t not write.” None of those apply to me. I can go without writing for days—weeks even, especially if there’s a long vacation stretching out before me. That might not sound like much, but I make my living as a full-time writer. If I don’t write (or design games or toys, which I also lump into my makeshift career), I don’t eat.

More to the point, my family of seven doesn’t eat. I usually find that notion serves up plenty of motivation to write. I don’t need a neurosis to pull me to the keyboard. I don’t pursue some grand notion of art. I’m not here to change the world—just to feed my family and to have a great time while I do it.

Of course, if I can change the world along the way, I’m all for it. I don’t spend much time hoping that will happen. Few pieces of writing have actually changed the world, and I’m not quite arrogant enough to think any of mine will. I’d settle for rattling a few cages that need it every now and then. In the meantime, I’m happy if I can just get my readers to keep turning my pages.

When I was in college, I set myself up with a dual degree program, approved by the deans of two colleges at the University of Michigan. Had I stuck to the plan, I’d have had a BS in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and a BA in Creative Writing in five years.

Read more…

I must keep writing, he says, or I’ll die. He’ll kill me the way he has the others, take my skin, tan it, and bind my books with it, transforming them into the most prized editions of my work in the world.

Like some modern Scheherezade, I must keep spinning one story after another if I want to keep his poisoned pen from piercing my throat. Just keep my tired fingers typing, tapping out my desperate tales.

I will laugh last though. I will welcome death when I am a writer with nothing left to say.

[Last year, I wrote six-word stories. This time around, I thought I'd stretch my fingers a bit and go for triple digits. The story above is exactly 100 words, including the title.]

I love freelancing. Given my choice, I’d do nothing else for the rest of my life. To date, I’ve not ever had a full-time job outside of writing and games, and I’ve effectively spoiled myself for any other kind of career.

I’ve had a few points at which I had long-term contracts (effectively salaries) with certain clients. I co-founded a noted RPG publisher (Pinnacle Entertainment) and ran served as its president for four years. I was also the director of Human Head Studios‘ tabletop games division for a couple years. But for the vast majority of the past 19 years since I got out of college, I’ve been a determined freelancer.

The thing about freelancing work is that its as steady as the deck of a storm-tossed ship. It rocks back and forth on the waves, and it’s up to the pilot of the ship to keep a steady hand on the wheel and trust to his skills and good fortune. Every now and then, even the most stalwart freelancer find his ship tossed upon the shoals, and he had to decide whether to ride it out or jump ship and start paddling for land.

The past few years, however, I’ve noticed a pattern in the timing of my freelance work. I start out the year in January with plenty of work and a good plan for taking care of it all in a manner that will keep my family fed and allow me the luxury of occasionally seeing my bed.

Come the spring, though, enough new projects drop in my lap that I need to give up the dream of dreaming through the night. I file for an extension on my tax return and hope that I can get back to them again before too long.

The trouble, of course, is that the best gigs never come first. If they did, I’d just take those and express my regrets to the others. Instead, I always seem to start out with some fun but clearly not spectacular projects and sign contracts for those. Then the better offers come in, and I have to decide between letting them slip away or sacrificing the little free time I have.

Free time always loses out.

I then work like crazy through the summer. I apologize to my all-too-understanding wife about having to bring my work along on our family vacation, but I thin the regrets over that by keeping work hours that would make a banker blanch. (Fun during daylight and work at night.)

Once we’re back home and school starts for the kids, I settle back into my office and realize that the deadlines I have are farther off than usual, the stress is less, and if I’m not careful I might actually run out of work. I take advantage of the breather for some home improvement projects, catching up on my sleep a bit, and—yes—finally doing those taxes.

Then I remember what comes in September. It’s the season of the pitch.

It’s about this time of year that companies start their plans for the next business cycle—either next year or farther out, depending on how big or ambitious they may be. They’re looking around for new ideas, and they’re open for suggestions. They want to discover the greatest new projects and bring them to life.

That’s where I come in. I reach into my bag of tricks and pull out a fistful of boomerangs. Then I scribble my ideas on them and let them fly. Some come back, and I throw them out there again. The ones that don’t are the ones I love best. Someone out there liked it enough to snatch it for herself.

That time is now. I have anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen (or more) pitches, projects, and deals in various stages of development. Some of them are just for fun. Others might make me rich. Most fall in between. And I have no control over which ones will interest anyone. I just keep tossing them out there and hope I get enough responses before my arms get tired.

This season usually lasts until November. Then the week before Thanksgiving, right in the middle of the month, the companies make up their minds. They want to get things signed and sealed before the winter break, and we spend the next few weeks making that happen. Then we all go hibernate for the holidays.

Come January, it all starts over again. Right now, I can’t think about that though. I’ve got an idea for something else, and I have to find another boomerang on which to write it.

I’ve been on the road almost the entire time since my last post here on Storytellers Unplugged. I started out with a quick couple of days in San Diego at Comic-Con International, the biggest pop culture convention in the world. On that Friday (July 25), I rode up to LA for a business meeting. I flew back from there and got home around midnight.

The next morning, my wife and I packed the kids into the minivan and set off for the Northwoods for her high school reunion in Ironwood, Michigan. After that, we stayed at her family cabin near Watersmeet, Michigan, (home of the Nimrods!) for the next week and a half. From there, we drove to Madeline Island and spent five days with my mother, brother, and sisters and their families in a huge house overlooking Lake Superior.

With all that family fun behind us, we hustled back home on August 12. On August 13, I got up and drove to Indianapolis to be a guest of honor at Gen Con, this hemisphere’s largest gaming convention.

That meant I wasn’t at my desk for three and a half weeks. Toss in the prep for the trip and the recovery (I still haven’t gotten my voice back from Gen Con), and we’re looking at a full month of vacation.

Or so it would seem.

The fact is I brought my laptop with me, and I worked just about every day. Normally I’d get up and type for a bit, then have some lunch and horse around with the family in the afternoon and evening. Then, after everyone else was in bed, I’d start typing again.

This is the curse of the freelance life, the one no one tells you about when you get started. Being able to set your own hours sounds like you’re going to have plenty of time to mess around, play games, watch TV, and goof off between those frantic moments of getting work done. The reality is that once you punch in you never punch out. (Cue “Hotel California.”)

I’d intended to take some honest time off. To leave the laptop locked up in the car. Maybe to whittle away at some personal projects rather than to keep carving away at my regular work.

Then, a couple weeks before the start of the trip, a number of opportunities—great ones, the kinds of offers you can’t bring yourself to refuse—dropped in my lap. And they all had to be taken care of ASAP. Of course.

So I didn’t manage to free myself from my silicon shackles.

The trick with setting your work schedule is that the coolest, best-paying projects always seem to come in last, after you’ve already allotted every sane bit of time you have. Rather than turn down the great jobs so you can peck away in resentment at the ones you already have, you start looking at those nights and weekends. And those vacations.

In Watersmeet, out at the cabin, we don’t have running water or a phone. Our side of the lake just had electricity run out to it a few years back. Cell phone coverage is spotty. We usually have to stand by a particular tree near the beach to hold an unburbled conversation.

But the cabin next to ours has a satellite dish. With internet service. And Wi-Fi.

I was doomed.

Still, it was the kind of doom I dream about. My office became the stump of an old pine tree only spitting distance from the beach (and near enough to the neighbors to borrow their Wi-Fi). Many times, I’d sit there long enough for a family of ducks to gather in the waters around me and bathe, unaware of how close I was. More than once, I looked up to see a bald eagle swooping overhead.

One day, I finished work after midnight, and I needed to e-mail it out. I didn’t want to disturb the neighbors by stumbling along the beach in the middle of the night, so I edged my way as far as I could into the fringe of the woods separating their cabin from ours. No matter how close I moved, though, I still couldn’t get enough of a signal to get my files e-mailed out.

Then I grasped my MacBook in two hands and held it over my head. The screen shined like a lighthouse in the night, a rectangular beacon for the invisible, wireless threads of the internet I hoped to gather to it.

A moment later, I heard the zooming noise that told me my efforts had paid off. My message had been sent. My editor would be pleased. And I could stop brushing the bugs off the glowing screen.

I love my job.

My editors almost never call. Most of them, I’ve never met. Often our only contact is via e-mail and Federal Express. It can go on that way for years, and has.

As long as everything’s fine, there’s no need to talk. I land an assignment for a novel, I’m thrilled. I turn it in on time and it rocks, the editor’s even happier. And it’s all done in the most efficient way possible for busy people racing around the dawn of the 21st century. No time for chats with people we don’t really know.

So, when the phone rings, you know it’s trouble.

Last week, I didn’t even hear the ringtone on my cell phone. (It’s the opening bars of the freelancer’s rock anthem: “Taking Care of Business” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive.) It wasn’t until I heard my editor talking on my voice mail I knew something was wrong. I called her back despite that.

Erin Evans is probably a wonderful lady. She’s never been anything but kind to me. Hell, she commissioned a fantasy novel from me for Wizards of the Coast.

But sometimes circumstances force wonderful people to do rotten things—things that, while they may kick you in the teeth personally, are for the greater good. It does suck, but I have to respect people brave and classy enough to do it over the phone. Giving bad news via the written word is too easy. The right thing to do is to call someone up, talk them through it, and risk having him bite your head off, and it takes guts to pull it off right.

Politely and professionally, Erin informed me Wizards was sadly no longer interested in publishing the novel she’d commissioned from me. This decision did not reflect upon me at all. The entire subline of which the novel was to have been a part had been killed. Not too surprised (the phone call had tipped me off, after all) I took it pretty well, and both Erin and I left the door open to work on another project together at some future date.

Management at Wizards apparently wants to do something different with the book department, although I’m not privy to what it is. They’ve removed a number of books from their schedule recently, including (others have told me) a subline of Dragonlance novels and their entire Wizards of the Coast Discoveries line of original fiction.

This is the second time I’ve gotten news like this from Wizards. The last time one of my editors called me, it was Nina Hess telling me that their Knights of the Silver Dragon line had been canceled. I’d already written three books in that series (which I’d created for them) and had been contracted for two more when that axe fell.

Nina was just as fantastic and regretful about it as Erin. While I may not always agree with the decisions the managers at Wizards makes, they sure do hire good people.

Honestly, this wasn’t horrible news for me. I’ve had too much to do lately to spend any time on the book. It wasn’t due until December, but Erin had been asking me for a full outline for much of the spring.

All I ever put on paper for the book was the initial pitch, which ran about three pages. Despite that, Wizards kindly asked me to keep my initial advance, so I really can’t complain. It’s decent money for a few pages worth of work, and I now have a bit more time to tackle more pressing things without feeling guilty about pushing that outline off.

The news is a bit sadder for the people who’d gotten farther along on their work, like Jeff LaSala, Marcy Rockwell, Paul Kemp, and Ari Marmell, plus Steve and Melanie Tem and many others I probably don’t know about yet. They all have my sympathies.

Still, I’m confident we’ll all live to write another day. Nobody broke our fingers. Our word processors still work. And our imaginations burn brighter than ever.

No matter how much it may hurt to land on your rump when the rug gets yanked out from under you, we’ll all dust ourselves off and continue on.

Look for new and better books from every one of us—soon.

My latest work in comics just hit stores this week: Blood Bowl: Killer Contract #1 from Boom! Studios. It’s the first in a five-issue miniseries of comic books based upon my Blood Bowl novels, which are in turn based upon Jervis Johnson’s Blood Bowl board game.

I’ve written a handful of comics before, but this was the first time I’d tackled such a long story arc. Before I jumped in, I decided to see if anyone had come up with any new tools for writing comics that hadn’t been around the last time I’d given it a shot.

Unlike many other forms of writing, comics has no standard format. With a novel, there’s a certain accepted way in which to turn in your manuscript: generous margins, double-spaced text, numbered pages, etc. The format for screenplays has even less wiggle room.

With comics, though, the format can be whatever works best for you as the writers, as well as for everyone else you’re working with. Traditionally DC Comics works with a full script, which means you describe every page, every panel, every spoken, thought, or captioned word, and even every sound effect as you write the script. Marvel Comics, on the other hand, used to have the writer turn over page-by-page plots to the artist and then go back and fill in all the words later.

Today, most writers use full script, although not all, and many of those use something close to a screenplay format for their scripts. Some use Microsoft Word, Open Office, or another standard word processor. Others use Final Draft, the most popular of the screenplay-writing programs. This automatically pops in the correct indentations and styles that give a screenplay its distinctive look.

Me, I chose something entirely new: Scrivener. This is a new type of word processor that’s available exclusively for Mac OS X. It comes with all sorts of tools designed to help creative writers of all stripes in their craft. This includes a simulated corkboard for helping you breakdown a story scene by scene and then shift things around until it all works; a handy outliner; the ability to open and look at multiple parts of a project within a single window; even a full-screen mode that blocks out everything but the writing program, freeing you from other distractions.

I’ve used Scrivener for other projects, but for most books I go back to either Word or Pages. When it comes to comics, though, Scrivener really shines.

Comics have a strict format and many inherent tropes that writers have to keep in mind at all times. Most issues feature 22 pages of story. These pages are laid out in 2-page spreads, and the best time to build tension to a peak is on the last panel of a spread. The big reveals work better if they come after the reader turns a page after reading one of those pressure-ratcheting final panels.

In Scrivener, I use a free template that Antony Johnson devised for his comic book scripts. It’s proved so popular that it’s now included in the basic installation. In the template, you make each page into its own sub-document inside of the issue, and then make each panel into a sub-document of a page. This gives you a lot of flexibility for moving panels, pages, or entire scenes around in an intuitive and powerful way. You can fiddle with everything until you think you’ve got it just right.

Once I’m done, I export the document to Microsoft Word format so that my editor can read it, and the template automatically generates and includes page and panel numbers no matter how many times I’ve jiggered around any part of it.

I just finished writing issue #5 of Blood Bowl: Killer Contract last week, and I’ve put Scrivener away for a while. I’m already on the hunt for more comics to write, though, if only so I can put the program through its paces again.

When I start out a book, it never seems like I’ll have a chance of finishing it. Although I’ve written several, it’s like standing at the foot of a mountain and wondering how I’ll ever top it. Doing it over and over again gives me a semblance of confidence, but since each book is its own challenge, it’s like climbing a different mountain in the range each time. I know I should be able to make it to the top, but I have to find a different route every time.

Like most climbers, I enjoy the challenge, and part of what keeps me going is the lure of new peaks to top. A perverse part of me wants to look for bigger, steeper pinnacles to reach, and for some reason I keep giving in to that.

Once I’m done with the book, I get that same exhilarating sense of accomplishment. And—I don’t know if climbers feel this way, but I sure do—I never want to see that book again. I’m done, it’s behind me. Reading it only reminds me of the many unsure choices I made some of which I might have made differently had I known how it was all going to end up. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

A few months after that, though, I have to. The edits come back from the publisher, and it’s my job to go through and make sure that the suggested corrections are in fact correct. That means slogging through the manuscript one more time, watching someone else point out where I went flat wrong and second-guessing some of my other choices.

Once I get through that, the book can sometimes come back to me yet again for a last-second galley check. Changes at this point are expensive to implement, and I’m often tempted to just report back that the book is fine as is without even bothering to open the package in which it arrived. Instead, though, I always go through it once more, making sure that it’s as good as the editorial team and I can make it. It’s my name on the cover, after all, and I owe that much to anyone who pays for it.

It’s not until months or years later that I can go back and enjoy the book. This most often happens when I have to write a sequel and can’t recall what happened in the first book in the necessary exacting detail such a project requires. It’s then, after I’ve forgotten the contents of the book, that I can come back at it fresh.

It’s at these times that I’m least critical of my work and I can finally read it with new eyes. It’s almost like I’m reading someone else’s book, written by an author who knows exactly how to push all my buttons—in the best way. Having put that particular mountain so far behind me, I can now marvel at it along with (hopefully) everyone else.

This week is the annual GAMA (Game Manufacturers of America) Trade Show in Las Vegas, and for the first time in memory, I’m sitting here at home instead. I have many reasons for this.

First, of course, is my family. I’ve been off to Hollywood and Sweden already this year, and tossing another trip on top of that would be a bit much. I used to travel a lot more before my wife and I started having kids, but with five little ones tromping around the house, getting away means having to pull many more scheduling contortions and outright acrobatics to pull such ventures off.

Second, I’m busy. Too busy to leave town right now. I was up until 3 AM this morning, beating a comic-book script into submission, and its lucha libre tag-team partners are straining at the ropes for their chance at me next.

Third, I have more offers for work these days than I can properly field. Since I’m a freelancer, I’m always looking for more. I keep a steady eye on that event horizon out there on the edge of the roiling seas. You know the one. It’s labeled “Last scheduled deadline.” Once you go beyond that, well, Here There Be Dragons.

Fourth, these things cost money. As a freelancer, I’m run a small business, a.k.a. my career. I’m happy to invest in attending a convention if there’s a remote chance it may pay out in the future. I’ve built much of my business on good relationships with friends and coworkers, and while it’s always a good idea to keep those fields freshly watered, I need to keep an eye on expenses too.

Fifth, GTS is all about tabletop games, and I’m mostly working on novels, comics, and video games these days. I’ll always go to the Big Daddy of gaming conventions—Gen Con—but everything else comes farther down the list.

So, I’m staying home. If you’re interested in making or selling tabletop games—or anything else in that market, including tie-in gaming fiction—I recommend the show to you, but you won’t see me there.

In general, conventions—literary, gaming, etc.—are wonderful when you’re starting out in any career. You get to meet all sorts of like-minded people and try to figure out how you can all make a living together. You make the kinds of friendships and contacts that will serve you well throughout your career. You live a little and have some fun so you have something to write about later.

Later, though, conventions become a way to catch up with those now-old friends (the friendship is old, not you, right?) and pass on something of what you’ve learned to the next crop of fresh-faced optimists ready to storm the walls. You sit on panels instead of attending them, and you spend as much time at the show’s Bar Con as you do in the exhibit hall.

The value of the show changes. You don’t stop learning, but you don’t learn as much. The curve flattens out as you go, and you wind up treasuring the friends you see more than the event you’re all nominally there for.

Still, I’m always looking for new horizons, new edges of the world that I can sail over—or off. While I may not be at GTS this year, I’m already making plans for events in the newer fields in which I work, like Comic-Con and the Austin Game Developers Conference and the rest.

And hopefully I’ll be back next year. While I always like to make new friends, I miss my old ones too.