T. Michael Martin's Blog

A philosophical look at whether Walt is evil, Hank should kill him, and what Heisenberg tell us about ourselves. (Also, bonus footage of my visit to Walt’s house!)

In which I battle the tyranny of Brain Crack.

Wheezy Waiter on (Brain) Crack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhaAw4v_HN8&list=UUQL5ABUvwY7YoW5lgMyAS_w&…

Brain Crack origin (NSFW):http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html

Vlogbrothers on (Brain) Crack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeqlCTACUA0

My email (for giveaway bonus!):

tmichaelmartinbooks [at ] gmail [dot] com

(Note:  I’m breaking my vlog-centric lifestyle momentarily to share this quick post.)

One thing people ask a lot is whether they should go to film school/grad school (MFA for writing). I’m never quite sure how to answer.

I loved film school, and the psychological affirmation it gave me (i.e.: I’m not “weird” for wanting to be an artist; people seem to like me and/or my work reasonably well) was wonderful. I also can’t overstate how helpful it was to see, like, 2,000 movies on the big screen. Likewise, I had a couple screenwriting mentors in school who were instrumental in helping me feel like I could face the anxiety inherent in trying to get a grasp on How To Write Stories.

But I also agree with Stephen King: The most important lessons are the ones you teach yourself.

I only really started feeling like I was pretty *good* a couple years after I graduated. This isn’t necessarily a knock on school or anything; it’s just another way of saying that schooling can’t “give” you anything that you don’t earn 99% on your own steam.

(I only began to understand paragraph structure, for instance, at the age of 25, after writing two [unpublished] novels and spending a full year just studying paragraph structure. I only began to understand thriller structure after reading 30 or so books about it, attending Robert McKee’s seminar, and spending *another* year analyzing literally 100 scripts and about 50 of the best thriller novels ever. And the best mentor I’ve ever had — Sara Zarr — was someone I just met through the Internet.)

Also, FWIW, I applied to grad school twice; I got form rejections both times (one with a writing sample from THE END GAMES). Again, this isn’t a knock on school at all (at the time, I would have loved to have gone to school, gotten the mentorship/time/stipend/etc.). It’s just: schools and teachers are neither genie factories nor oracles. They’re just human, in other words. Often really fantastic and talented humans! But humans.

Which is both the bad part and the boon, I guess: Whether you go to film/grad school, or you do your “10,000 hours” on nights and weekends while working minimum-wage jobs, you are the only steward of your own talent & fate.

There are legions of MFA’d writers who don’t do the work; there are legions of MFA’d writers who become brilliant pros.

Both groups are made up of *individuals,* though: people who were ultimately on *unique* paths of their own agency.

Don’t get too hung up on the idea that somewhere out there is the epiphany/answer/silver bullet that will supercharge your life. Study & forge your craft & find a mentor if you can. Network when you have the opportunity, certainly.

But the battle is fought daily and unromantically at the word processor. And whatever degrees you attain or don’t attain, if you don’t show up, the battle is forfeited.

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My debut novel, The End Games (HarperCollins), hits shelves May 7th, 2013.  You can pre-order it here:  http://dft.ba/-theendgames

“It’s full of both jaw-dropping action and heart-twisting beauty. A thrill ride that makes you think and feel: terrifying and joyful, funny and moving. In so many ways The End Games is the book I was waiting for and didn’t know it until I had it in my hands.”

- Sara Zarr, National Book Award finalist

 

“One of the sharpest, most unexpected zombie novels I’ve read in a long time.” 

Want to keep your New Year’s Resolution? Then this video’s gonna make ya smile.

This is a prank call to Proactive Solutions about an (uhh) unusual way to use their product. My little brother, Patrick, and I recorded this call in September 2008. For the record, I neither endorse nor condone prank calls. (I just think they’re awesome.)

Not keeping your New Year’s resolutions can feel disheartening, sad, & blergh. But 99% of every success story looks like catastrophe! I hope this video will provide a little look at “the secrets of success.”

Hey, all!

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s been Quite A While since my last blog entry, so I wanted to stop in and explain what’s been happenin’.

Which is:  I’ve decided, for now, to cease blogging and connect with readers, instead, through YouTube and Twitter.  There are a couple reasons why.

The first is, writing good blog entries takes up a lot of Word Energy, and as I’ve been gotten settled into this Writing Career Thingy, I’ve realized just how much I need to reserve my Word Energy for Book 2 and my new screenplay projects.  The second reason–and this is the mighty one, really–is that when I do blog, it feels as I’m talking at people, rather than with people.  And the wonderful thing about Twitter and the YouTube community is their sense of interaction and connection, both of which I honestly want more of in my life.

So I hope you’ll come subscribe to my YouTube channel (youtube.com/tmikemartin).  I’ve had such an encouraging response so far (for instance:  John Green, the man himself, called my first video “very very good,” and later became a subscriber), and I’ll be updating with a new video every Friday.  I’ll have a YouTube page here soon that will keep an updated record of all my uploads.  In the meantime, though, you can check out my videos so far below.

Thanks for reading!

The cover for The End Games has been zipping around the blogs.  I can’t tell you how delighted I’ve been thrilled by the wonderful response.

And so while this doesn’t strictly count as a “reveal,” it’s the first time I’m sharing the cover myself.

And I have to say, y’all:  I adore it.

Actual fact:  The first time I saw it, I teared up.

Frightening and wonder-filled, beautiful and ominous, the cover that Balzer + Bray and designer Jon Smith came up with is everything I’d dreamed it could be.  Thank you so much for Donna Bray, Joanna Volpe, and everyone else for working so hard to create this magical image.

(Also, big thanks to Lenore Appelhans and YA Highway for allowing me to share the cover with their readers!)

The cover:

“The End Games is full of both jaw-dropping action and heart-twisting beauty. It’s a thrill ride that makes you think and feel: terrifying and joyful, funny and moving. In so many ways The End Games is the book I was waiting for and didn’t know it until I had it in my hands.”

— Sara Zarr, National Book Award finalist

You can now pre-order The End Games (Balzer + Bray)  at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and soon on IndieBound.  You can also read more about The End Games on Goodreads, or by following me on Twitter and Facebook.

Do you know what I think allows people to do their best work?  Being weird, and loving a lot of things.

More than anything else in my reading life, I adore the feeling of putting down a novel and thinking, Good Lord, nobody else on this planet could have written that book.

Through some incredible combination of craft and passion, my heroes—Cormac McCarthy, Tom Wolfe, John Green, Stephen King, even a man like Steve Jobs—create work as singular as a strand of their DNA.

I think about this so much.  More than anything, that feeling—This is the work of a distinct voice—is what I so hope to create for a reader.

I’ve got a theory about how it happens.  I think that what these folks do is what most of us spend a lot of our lives shying away from:  They allow their whole, weird, one-of-a-kind selves to pour onto their work, and they love a lot of things.

 Here’s one of the strange and wonderful secrets of adulthood:  A lot of the things that I spent years wishing I could change about my writing have wound up being the things that other people seem to like the most.

That’s the “weirdness” part:  the distinct sentence style, the word-personality, that we all call “voice.”

Nobody writes with the pulse of Cormac McCarthy.  Nobody else can harness the propulsive beautiful reckless energy of Tom Wolfe, whose work reads like a lightning storm.

There’s no harm in trying, of course:  You learn by imitating, and buh-lieve me, I tried to imitate these folks for a long while.

But one of the most important creative (and psychological) realizations I’ve ever experienced is that style can be imitated (usually poorly, admittedly).

But you can’t imitate love.

Here’s what I mean.

When you read John Green’s work, you can see the things he loves:  complex thought, “your mom” jokes, religion, bad puns, mathematics.  Because of his dedication to craft and his gorgeous style and the care of his editor—but more importantly, his love of a lot of things—Mr. Green’s books glow with intelligence.

Then there’s The Stand.  It’s an amazing “yarn”—one of the best American stories of the last century—but it also burns with an attractive anger about the Pandora’s boxes technology continually opens, right?  On the other hand, don’t Mr. King’s thoughts on God and destiny soar?  That fusion of craft and passion (with only occasional lapses into lecture-i-ness) is why The Stand is my favorite novel of all time.

“To manipulate life, toss the bright-colored orbs up to mix with the dark ones, blending a variation of truths.” — Ray Bradbury

I’m convinced that a big part of why The End Games sold is that I accepted and embraced my own native style, and allowed myself to love what I love, even if I’d never quite seen all those things put together in a book before.  

I adore Spielberg-ian action, and well-orchestrated moments of terror, and the diving twists of great thrillers.  But I also love being a big brother, and the psychology of flow, and thinking about God.  With lots of time and revision, I started to see how all of those things were points of light creating a single constellation.  The constellation was my book.

A few of the many “weird” inspirations for THE END GAMES.

So when the writing feels thin, or I’m lost in the plot, I try to grant myself the grace of allowing myself to be odd.

I’m curious about what y’all think.   Have you found that embracing your “weirdness” and your loves helps?  And do you have any favorite artists who seem to do the same?  Let me know in the comments.

About The End Games: You can now pre-order The End Games (Balzer + Bray)  at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and soon on IndieBound.  You can also read more about The End Games on Goodreads, or by following me on Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s one thing I know:  Until the final breakthrough comes, “Success” feels like “Catastrophe.” 

I’d like to tell you the story of five beautiful catastrophes, fears, and failures that led to me living my childhood dream.

I’ve wanted to tell the tale of how I sold my debut novel, The End Games, for a long time, but I only recently realized where the story’s true heart lies.  It’s ultimately a story about a willingness to live with the terrors of disappointment and the unknown.

Steve Jobs famously said that you can only connect the dots of your life looking back.  So here are the five dots, the five awful-wonderful moments in time, that got me here.

1.  The Short-term Pain (and Long-term Gifts) of Being a Geek.

When I was a kid, my friends wanted to be Troy Aikman and Barry Bonds.  I wanted to be RL Stine.

In other words:  I was a geek.

And I honestly didn’t even notice at first.  In elementary school, when I first cracked the spines of RL Stine’s Goosebumps books, all I remember feeling was a sense that I’d stumbled upon something wonderful and secret, that Mr. Stine had introduced me to some true aspect of myself and ignited something deep within me–a jack-o’lantern candle, perhaps.

Mr. Stine’s books won’t ever be confused with Great And Serious Literature, but that’s way beside the point:  Those stories enchanted my life, and some of the happiest memories of my kid years are of drawing Mr. Stine’s monsters on my school notebooks, of calling Waldenbooks every Tuesday to see if the new Goosebumps was on the shelves yet, and even of planning with my friends to start “a monster hunting business.”

(I’m not sure what services we planned to offer, but buddy, we were PUMPED.)

Here’s the Catastrophe part, though: When you’re that young, you don’t realize how beautiful (and fleeting) it is to love things unapologetically.

That’s why middle school (where suddenly loving scary stories Was Not Cool) felt like such a sucker-punch.  Middle school was lonely and a little bit awful, and I can’t tell you how many times I tried to stay awake during football games on Sunday so that I’d had something to talk about at lunch the next day.

But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop loving scary stories.  And thank goodness for that.

2.  Post-College FAIL

My generation was told that we could be anything.

Probably true.

But gaaaaawd, is it hard.

I did all the right things to get ready for “the real world”:  I “followed my bliss,” went to a great college, studied, got solid grades, flossed.  And by the time I graduated in 2007, I had a screenplay optioned, an amazing film manager, and I was working on my first novel with a famous agent.

Then, in the space of three days, all those things disappeared.  It’s difficult to describe how lost I felt (though I tried to do so here).

But it turned out that failure was more miracle than catastrophe.

“What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.”

I’d been in a deep, sad funk for a few months when I found that quote.  The quote made my heart sing, because I realized  that just because my hard work had not yet taken me all the way, I could learn new things to remake myself and reach that higher ground I so wanted to attain.

It turns out that this is a common thing.  Steve Martin talks about how, at twenty-one, he realized that his act had to be totaled and rebuilt.  Marianne Williamson talks about how sometimes we ask God to help us “set our house [aka. our lives] in order,” and rather than coming in and doing a little dusting, God shows up with a bulldozer and rubbles our house to the ground.

I felt bulldozed.  But I understood that I had the power to rebuild.

3. $210—and Getting a Mentor—Changes My Life

But that knowledge didn’t make everything click magically into place.

I worked a series of frustrating day jobs for a couple more years (pharmaceutical study guinea pig, 4AM-shift worker at a kosher bagel shop), and though I’d begun writing a new novel I liked called The End Games in late 2008, I still often felt like I was trudging through a quicksand pit.

Then I got a mentor, and changed my life forever.

In the late winter of 2010, Sara Zarr, one of my favorite novelists, put up a “full manuscript critique” as part of a charity auction.  Money was tight for me and Mrs. Martin right then, but on the night the auction was to end, I set my alarm for five minutes ‘til midnight, put in a bid on the Sara Zarr critique at the final second, and won the auction.

It cost $210, and such a big expenditure felt (you guessed it) a little catastrophic at the time, as did the feeling of vulnerability that comes from submitting your work to someone you so admire.

But having an author whose work I adored coach me through the writing and revisions of The End Games was a gorgeous vivifying Frankenstein-lightning-bolt miracle that has enriched my life and writing in ways too many to recount.

It didn’t make the writing process magic, or even easy:  I still sweated blood, and Sara would be the first to tell you that The End Games is 100% mine.

But the validation and kinship I found in having a mentor has been the greatest gift I’ve ever received in my writing life.

(PS:  Taking that chance changed my personal realm as well:  Sara Zarr eventually became my best [non-spouse] friend.  PPS:  The day I finally got to meet SZ, I also met another Really Awesome Person….)

Me & Sara Zarr & Me & RL Stine. (That was a rad day :] )

 4.  Letting Go

The scariest part of the writing process for me is letting go.

I finished The End Games in September 2011, and I knew that I’d poured my sweat/blood/soul into every page and plot twist, and that ultimately I’d created a novel that (while not autobiographical) represented a kind of topographic map of my heart.

But even though I knew I should begin querying agents, I was (uhmm) pants-crappingly petrified.  ’Cause I’d committed everything (everything) I had to the page… and what if that wasn’t enough?

This was one of those moments when SZ stepped in, and said something I’ll never forget:

“Your job is not to get the book perfect.  Your job is to get the book done.”

So, on a Saturday night, after three years of writing The End Games, I cast my fate query to the winds of the unknown.

I told myself to be patient, that it was going to be months before I heard anything back, that even if I got an agent, it would still be roughly a geological age before I knew whether The End Games would be published or not.

Thirty-six hours later, on Monday morning, I received multiple offers of representation.

The End Games sold to HarperCollins a couple weeks after it went out on submission.

(Do I have to tell you I cried?)

5.  May 7th, 2013

The End Games will be published next May.  I have to admit that even typing that sentence still feels so alien—and yes, dreamlike—to me.

I know how hard I worked, so I don’t believe in luck.  But I do feel lucky.

I look back, and I know now that if The End Games had never received literary representation or an offer from a major publisher, I would have eventually rebounded.  I would have grown, as necessary.

I know this because every apparent catastrophe in my life ultimately turned out to be a gift.

It’s corny but true that the journey is the reward, that the book itself is the boon.  But man oh man, I can’t wait to see The End Games on the shelves.  It’s a story about two brothers fighting monsters, true, but it’s also about the gifts of catastrophe, and the beautiful truths that can only be revealed by adversity (and, y’know, the zombie apocalypse).

That might sound familiar  :]

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So what do you guys think?  Is adversity a key part of success?  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the Comments .

About The End Games: You can now pre-order The End Games (Balzer + Bray)  at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and soon on IndieBound.  You can also read more about The End Games on Goodreads, or by following me on Twitter and Facebook.