Take 43 - Novelist Chuck Wendig, Wanderers, The Book of Accidents, Star Wars Aftermath

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for sure, dozens of unproduced scripts littering the morning.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

All of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

For every six days, there is something failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

That's the default thing we have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business here and count.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose. And I probably lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I do my one big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. As ever, I'm your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein, and we have on the other side of the Zoom Noah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Hey Dan, how are you doing? Uh, and hello world. I am super excited to introduce Chuck Wendig to the podcast. Chuck is an author, blogger, screenwriter, and graphic novelist. On top of the New York Times best-selling book Wanderers, he also wrote the Miriam Black Thrillers, the Atlanta Burns novels, and most recently The Book of Accidents, as well as a screenplay for the 2018 feature film You Might Be the Killer. Chuck has also written in the Star Wars universe with his Star Wars Aftermath book series and the Force Awakens graphic novel series. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for this prolific rifer, prolific, prolific writer. Welcome, Chuck.

SPEAKER_04 1:52

All right, I'm a rifer too. It's fine. I I write all the time. How are you doing? Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

It's great. Um, it's a perfect setup for the show. Obviously, no one's making a complete mess of the intro, but it puts us on the right tone immediately. So um I've got a sort of I guess it's an adversity question. And let's let I think it I think it forms in the adversity box, depending on how you answer this. So Star Wars fans have obviously earned the reputation for being sort of fair-minded, open, welcome to new ideas. Um, they really like people sort of moving around with the franchise and trying different things and being very kind to people on social media. Totally the kindest. So, how was it for you being part of that world?

SPEAKER_04 2:44

Uh, it was weird. It was a very strange experience. Um, you know, and there's two sort of different sides to it. There's the online side and there's the in-person side. And the in-person side, uh, every fan I've met, literally to the person, has been wonderful. Uh, online is not always quite that way. And the the like the perfect dichotomy of that is like when we released uh the first book of the aftermath series, it was uh at a midnight release um in at Dragon Con, but in a Barnes Noble. And so uh, you know, midnight rolls around and it's Force Friday, and we release the book, and there's all these people and these fans there, and I read some chapters and we sell some books, and I'm like out of there by two in the morning. So it was a good event. And uh at two in the morning, I decided to check Amazon on my phone, and I already see that there's like a dozen one-star reviews of the book. And I was like, I don't, well, that's weird. I feel like, why are there one-star reviews already? And then all weekend I would go to Dragon Con and I would have these panels and I would meet all these fans, it'd be super exciting. Then I would find a little corner and get some some signal and look at Amazon, and it'd be 50 one-star reviews or 100 one. And I was like, oh, this is something's happened. So it was this strange, sort of like these two sides of uh fandom uh approaching the book in very different ways.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

So obviously, given we've had a global pandemic and you've not been able to do very much in person for a while, I guess you will have seen more of the negative than the positive. Do you just really want to go into a room full of people who are nice to you rather than you know just be much nicer?

SPEAKER_04 4:20

I would prefer that, yeah. Though I thankfully I haven't had to uh you know, I haven't uh been too involved in Star Wars in in a while. Um, especially since they I think technically you could argue they let me go uh from doing comics um to do my politics. So I am free and clear uh of Star Wars, and maybe it was one of the better things uh that has happened.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

So that feels like it's sort of rejection, which is it's definitely a kind of rejection, yes.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Yeah, tell tell us that story. Uh so it was um I was doing some obviously worked the three books, and then I was doing some comics work for Marvel on the um Star Wars side of things, and I had done some superhero stuff for them too. Uh and it was New York Comic-Con, uh, and it was happening, it was coinciding with the Kavanaugh hearings that uh Brett Kavanaugh, the SCOTUS. So uh I, along with uh what I feel like was a not insignificant number of people, were pretty salty about how those proceedings were going. Um, obviously you had you know Brett Kavanaugh there being Brett Kavanaugh and all of the you know Christine Blasey Ford stuff. So uh I was uh salty about that online and using um four-letter words to describe my saltiness. And then I went to Comic-Con to announce that I was writing uh a new series for Marvel Star Wars, uh, a Darth Vader series. And uh that went well and it was a good experience. And then I came back and during the following week, um, the sort of alt-right first comic or the the group known as Comics Gate picked it up and it went uh sort of around that sort of, you know, like the YouTube people who get angry because like there's a Black Widow movie or Shang-Chi, there they get flopped, it's secretly flopped. We have the secret conspiracy that tells you how it flopped. And uh, so those people got a hold of it and were very uh not happy that this um uppity Star Wars writer was daring to get uh mean about um the Supreme Court judge. So uh it got picked up from there um by some particularly big alt-right kind of figureheads, uh, like a Dinesh Tassouza type. Um, well, I mean literally him, uh Kirk Schilling, like a lot of those pundits, uh James Woods, like those guys all picked it up and got really mad at me. And then next thing I know, I was getting a phone call from uh Marvel a week later, and they were like, Yeah, no, that you we're being kicked off the job. Uh, this is you're done um with that Star Wars thing here. And uh it's you know, I was like, Well, it's because of my politics, and they're like, Well, it's because of your vulgarity about your politics, uh, and we don't appreciate that. And um, I couldn't get an answer as to where it came from. I mean, uh, they have obviously um Marvel entangled uh people up there, even to the point of the um person who ran the company uh was sort of apparently shadow running the veterans department at that point. Uh, but I also know Disney is uh famously sort of hands-off um and and gun shy about stuff like that. So uh I was there and then suddenly I wasn't, and they didn't want me to go public with it. Uh they wanted me to say that I was um uh just like a freelancer who couldn't hack this work, and so I chose to you know back out of it. And I didn't want to do that because I felt like that was uh gonna look poorly on me. So I was like, no, I'm gonna uh talk about this because I comics wasn't my world anyway. So I was like, if I burn that bridge, that's a that's a bridge that's burned. And I um I would rather own what happened, uh all of it snout to tail, than sort of get caught up in sort of lying about especially like you know, having to throw myself under a bus for no good reason. So it was a gnarly, messy thing. We went to the Washington Post and they did a big article on it, and then then uh I I think it was vox.com did like a huge thing about all the bot traffic that got around it and how most of the negative tweets about me were bot driven. And it was a very it was a fascinating uh experience in a very bad way, but then got good.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

That the the sort of principle of uh the separation between the artist and the art and the artist's views in today's world of social media. Obviously, it cuts both ways because um there was an actress who appeared in in The Mandalorian, and everyone thought she was amazing in The Mandalorian, and no one questioned her acting ability at any point, quite the opposite. But a lot of people questioned her political views, um, and then there was a whole you know, cancelled, not cancelled, where were Disney on it, that sort of thing. Um obviously, a lot of this is a social media phenomenon, or at least it speeds it up.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

It does, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

What is the answer? Is it that everyone should just make art and be neutral, or actually you can separate people from the work they do or they can't? Like you've been in it. So what conclusions have you drawn?

SPEAKER_04 9:02

Uh, I don't have any good answers there. I just know that I uh from my mileage, I'd rather be me. And um, you know, I I never really subscribe to the view that um artists should somehow remain uh neutral because uh who else is uniquely primed to at least speak about these things? That doesn't mean artists are right about stuff either. But I mean, I we're citizens just like anybody else, so I don't feel like uh we should be kept out of the discourse just because we have um uh books out or comics or movies or whatever it is. So uh, you know, I feel like you should own that and be that. And um, but I there's also there's reality that comes with sharing those views, um, whether it be a social media thing. And of course, social media can turn an ember into a conflagration pretty quickly. Um, and then the whole house is burning down around your ears without realizing. But uh, you know, that's also maybe part of the price of being alive and being an artist is you know, saying things and owning things and uh being who you are, regardless of what uh any sort of corporate owner might think about it. Another crunch? No, no, no, actually, it was the it for in this case, especially it was the best thing because I did so there's something kind of seductive about Star Wars, like you kind of get in and it's not your really your fan base, but you're kind of thrust into uh this massive group of people who want to talk to you about things and like your your books are selling really well and it's very exciting. But a lot of those people don't necessarily jump ship and come see you uh for your other non-Star Wars books. So uh it reminded me to focus on uh the stuff that's mine, like the stuff I own. I mean, just on a very simple level, like I would rather um not only artistically own what I'm working on, but also be able to um use that long tail of uh royalties and foreign rights sales and uh film and television licensing and things like that that are uh gonna help me as a writer. Uh, where I can't do that with Star Wars. It's like it's a one and done deal. Like, I don't get, you know, one of my characters is in the Mandalorian. I don't get a cent for it. So this is how it is.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

This is also interesting. I realized as you're telling the story that you came to my on my radar during that whole you know phenomenon with Star Wars. And I would, I kind of I think I liked a few of your tweets before that because you had a few viral tweets because you have you have a very pithy way of describing humans and other things. And and then you you had this whole thing, this really open discussion of what happened with you in Disney. And I think maybe at the time I was working for ABC or whatever, so very cognizant of the rules, so to speak, and you know, social media, and also trying to figure out, you know, how I wanted to present myself on social media on a much smaller level. How transparent do I want to be? How open do I want to be? And I decided that, you know, I wanted to be fairly transparent and fairly open. And there was people that I liked and respected who had careers and who were able to put themselves out there, like you, who were who were transparent. But you know, we there is a discussion going on right now in writers' rooms and in Hollywood and um around the industry about social media and the fact that today it often can hurt you more than it can help you.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

Yeah, I think the juice is not worth a squeeze anymore. Um, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

Um, so well, you know, now that I'm kind of leaning us back into a little bit of process questions, I do have uh, you know, you you we normally have a lot of screenwriters on this podcast who dabble in novels, right? You are you're a novelist, first and foremost, New York Times bestseller. You have a lot of books who you also write screenplays, but it feels like the ratio is reversed.

SPEAKER_04 12:32

And and I ratio is reversed.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

And I've been puzzling over this that it feels like there's not a ton of crossover where a lot of screenwriters write novels, a lot of novels write screenplays, but very few people do both well.

SPEAKER_04 12:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

And I'm wondering about your process. Have you seen that? And do you are is there are you do you want to write more screenplays? Are you happy writing novels? Do you like itching scratching both itches, so to speak?

SPEAKER_04 12:58

Um, I mean, I definitely like scratching both itches. Uh, like my I mean, the thing about a writer is I think any writer in any industry probably uh they kind of dig their own tunnel and then blow it up behind them. Like everybody always wants to know how you did it, but like my path is as circuitous as any. Like I was trying to write novels and I was doing that very badly. And then uh on a lark, I uh entered a screenwriting competition. Uh, and the prize was a uh mentorship um with another screenwriter, uh Steven Susco, who did the uh grudge films and uh his whole kind of thing was adapting pre-existing material to the screen. And so I was like, Well, I want to try to win this so I can get his sort of his wisdom on how to translate my own broken novels to the screen and then back to a novel. Like I really didn't like film that was not where I wanted to land with it. I mostly just wanted story help and was looking for any sort of expert to do that. So uh I inadvertently did actually win. Um, and he really helped me sort of understand story, but also really gain a really a love for writing screenplays. And he hooked me up with a um a friend of his, uh who became my writing partner for a number of years, and um Lance Weiler, who did uh uh last broadcast, which sort of preceded uh Blair Witch in its um kind of found footage horror film vibe. And uh, you know, we ended up at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and we had a short film at Sundance the year after, and it was sort of a and we had we had a pilot, and that's a whole crazy rejection failure story that so like I kind of started there even really before getting any traction with novels. And uh it was only once I kind of picked back into the novel thing that it was like, well, Hollywood sort of moved aside just because that that's you know, the time to do novels is somewhat significant, um, to sort of uh churn through that. And it's a very different situation, you know. Uh uh writing a comic book and writing a screenplay are very similar. Like you kind of start at the bottom, you're you're kind of doing these bare bones things, and then a lot of other people are going to be involved in that process. But writing a novel is like you just sort of hand this brick of material to an editor, and you're like, I don't know, let's hope that that's it, because there's not much else to do with it after that.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Well, well, you know, as a failure, reduction failure and adversity podcast. I want to you you mentioned there was a story and a failed pilot, but and we can come to that story. But I also want to talk about this, isn't a failure, so to speak, but it's we had Glenn Mazara on our podcast who um I think was adapting your wanderers uh before the pandemic. And I think he he brought up this a little bit of the story. I don't think he mentioned your name, but I knew it was you who had written that book. And uh, you know, you you you you you write a book, it does really well. New York Times bestseller, your your your trajectory of your career, it's everything is going really well. Hollywood comes calling, they they buy your book. You have a great Glenn Mazaro, has a great track record. This guy's now adapting your book. Are you beginning to sort of, you know, your bank account's filling up, you're beginning, and and and and then obviously something completely outside of everyone's control happens. There's an actual pandemic and your your project tanks. Well, what's that emotional process for you of sort of dealing with the loss of that TV project?

SPEAKER_04 15:58

Uh it's both frustrating and unsurprising. Like because I, you know, I've had, I think most of my books at some point or another have probably been uh option. Actually, my first novel, Blackbirds, is has never been out of option. Uh it's just always someone either new is picking it up or it gets extended for a little while. And sometimes it has, I mean, we were at stars for a long time and they had, you know, offices and some location scan, and then it just sort of deflates. And I always say that the thing is the the difference for me that I've noticed between you know, like New York publishing and kind of the film and TV world uh of LA is like in New York publishing, everything is with some exception, no before it's yes, right? You gotta you submit the thing and it's like this is not good, no, or you submit it, but finally you kind of get a yes from an agent, a yes from an editor. Next thing you know, your book is eventually gonna be on a bookshelf. But in Hollywood, it's yes before it's no. Everyone loves you, they want to be in the you business, they love all that you've done, pitch us this, pitch us that. Oh man, this is gonna be huge. And then next thing you know, it kind of does the well, not really, and then it just stops one day. And uh, so I've kind of gotten used to it. Like I'm not I'm not mad at it, but I'm just sad. Mostly the saddest thing about all of that is not about the opportunity to lose wanderers on a screen, but uh the the loss of Glenn, because Glenn really understood the material. Uh, obviously, he's someone who works at a high level uh of storytelling and understands all that stuff and all the uh uh the burks and mortar of it. And uh so just to sort of have that uh fall away from the project was the greatest loss for me. Because part of the joy for me for doing these options is not the expectation that it's ever going to get made, but the chance to sort of get to work with people like him. Uh and it's really um I cherish that time, and I'm um, you know, I hope I get to work with him again someday.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

So um I get it's a hypothetical, but I just we'll we'll ask this and see where it goes to. So if you had a choice between writing a book and it flying straight to the top of the book charts, but remains only a book will ever only be a book. Uh writing a book that does below average compared to your other books, but ends up being a TV show, and you get to work with a sort of Glenn Mazzara-esque person and adapting it, and it's a big success, albeit you know, it comes a bit later and and your book didn't do well on its own, um, or actually just writing something uh straight for TV and that being a success. Which of those three would be your optimal? Oh, that's tough.

SPEAKER_04 18:44

Probably the middle road there because the book is still the book and the book is always going to exist as a book. And uh if it then leaps the fence, right, and gets to be this other thing, uh, which if the book by itself was not a huge success, usually going to film or TV will at least give it a little more juice uh in terms of its sales. Um, like I said, that long tail for Renopolis is a real thing. Um, and then getting to work with great people and have that be out there in two different forms, um uh I think is is probably the the that's where the the maximum value would would enter in for me, uh at least emotionally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

And I guess as a result of knowing that is the case now, particularly given you have had successes, you know, for your next books, if they don't jump the fence, as you say, yeah, but still do incredibly well just as books, does that make them will they start in your head starting to become sort of partial disappointments as a result because you've now got an idea you want to do this, and you've got, you know, were it not for a global pandemic, you actually probably would have achieved that. Um, yeah, not really.

SPEAKER_04 19:56

I don't think it, but it it's like um it's like this, it's like not getting dessert. Do you know what I mean? Like I don't expect dessert. I but I'd like it. I'd really like it to be great. Dessert is wonderful. Uh, but if I don't get it, I'm also not upset about it if the meal was satisfying. So uh the book, the book is always the goal. I mean, that's always why I'm in it and what I'm doing. Um it's just having it sort of uh become something different is always an interesting, and it's just something that hasn't happened yet, really, in a big way for me. Um, in terms of a literal book to uh film or TV translation, I'd like to see that. Um, but it wouldn't be a disappointment. It's uh it's it's actually it's business as usual, uh, really.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

It was interesting that obviously your point about the no before the yes and the yes before you know. That's quite an interesting way of describing it. We know from having had lots of screenwriters on here about the number of pitches that just don't go anywhere and so on. From your point of view, um, let's talk about some projects that have died for you in terms of either books you've actually finished and have just no one wants to have anything to do with them, or ideas for things that just no one wants you to pursue. Just tell us a bit about sort of some of the failures. And I'd be interested in the sort of volume of failures to success in terms of things that actually make it into print compared to those that don't.

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Well, early on, the volume of failure to success is heavily weighted toward the failures because you know, uh they call them trunk novels in my case almost for a literal reason. I would much rather those novels be buried in a trunk, uh a lead line trunk, preferably six feet deep in my backyard. So uh they will never expose uh the audience to whatever sort of foul septic fumes are coming off. And they were horrible. I wrote terrible novels early on. Um, and uh I would try to ping agents with them, and I would get uh just you know, very polite but whatever kind of meh um uh responses from them. Um, you know, I've tried to sort of ding into creator own comics, which is its own chaotic place, um, in a lot of times that's a no. Um so that's where if I have sort of no's they're still happening. But now at this point in terms of the books, they're still generally occurring. But um like when I first when I first wrote my uh uh the the original novel Blackbirds my first original novel released into the world um it took oh god I think I mean I had some funky agent stories just people who you know were yes and no or hot and cold but then uh getting it to a publisher was kind of a nightmare because I would get these rejections that were like the nicest best rejections that were because of their niceness and their uh their opinion they were all the more crushing like I would get routinely again and again like we love this book so much uh it's the it's great uh all of our team loves it and we'll never be able to sell it. So no and be like well okay and I I mean I would literally be like well then what what do we need to change at the time I was still like new like I wasn't we so artistically committed to the story like what does it need like a ghost detective a talking dog what can we put in this thing uh that will turn this no to a yes and they and be like no we like it as it is we just can't sell the book as it is if you changed it then we're not gonna like it anymore and it feels like insane to but like but then it's still a no and you would just constantly bang my head against uh these really really wonderful projections for about a year and a half and it wasn't until a couple small British publishers sort of picked up um the book and kind of did like a tiny little backforth auction on it that it uh ever actually got the juice to come out. British British people very good they are so it's true the best.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

He jumped the gun on that I knew I knew there was going to be a joke there. The um the what do you think you know as we're talking about um IP and creating IP this is going to sound like a very sterile question but on our side of the fence here when we're writing screenplays the the networks and studios don't want us to show up without IP without your book so to speak we can't they don't want to pitch all our original ideas don't count. Yeah and yet they want to have your you know someone like you having written a book and we can walk in with the books they can have read the book and there's fans do you face the same like what kind of pressures do you face in the publishing industry about sort of pre-existing IP do they want original stuff what do they want from someone like you now that you're sort of at the top of your game uh generally original work now.

SPEAKER_04 24:26

They are you know both comics and books are I think happy to be a generative place for um intellectual property for film television or for foreign rights editions or whatever it's going to be games, what wherever it goes from there. There are usually opportunities to write um in other people's licensed worlds. They're not usually super rewarding and they're usually not super financially rewarding as well. There's usually some fraught language in how that gets sometimes there's not even royalties and then it ends up being quite literally work for hire and not um you know a real kind of novel situation. So uh I don't generally get asked too much um mostly because I have a pretty blanket no with my agent there's only a few properties I'd be like yeah I would work on that kind of regardless of how how it pays me or what it's going to do. But I don't really own it and I can't do much with it beyond uh pay, you know, pay a mortgage and not that there's anything wrong with paying a mortgage uh obviously please believe me but um if I can pay a mortgage and then pay my next mortgage because um you know I'm getting royalties on a on a book that earns out uh then it's better for me to own kind of my own thing and do my own stuff with it.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

What what you know on I'm speaking of on our side of the the fence we agonize over all kinds of things as as screenwriters. You know, are we going to sell again? The business is constricting we don't have any buyers I mean we have buyers that don't want our stuff the pandemic all of this stuff and it's weird now right it's harder now it's it's like impossible this this last year for you know many of the people come on this podcast and and other top notch writers there's just the market has constricted pitches are are flailing people aren't selling they're just like it's just been it might be slowly changing as we speak right now like things are kind of reopening up but they they the the Hollywood overbought during the pandemic and then and then couldn't make as much as they wanted. So they had this huge backlog of stuff and we still need to kind of feed that machine more importantly we need to feed our families yeah and that's the things that keep us up at night on on on your side of the fence you know as a as a novelist and you have to self-generate as well you if you don't write new novels you're not paying for the things that you need to pay for but right what you know what keeps you up at night you know about your business about your industry and and especially now that brick and mortar's gone or mostly gone like on on your side of the industry?

SPEAKER_04 26:48

On the good news the the some of the brick and mortars are back and indie bookstores have over at least over the course of the pandemic done um much better than anyone expected which is good. And Barnes Noble is also retrofitting their stores and doing some changes. So that's also good. But uh kind of the two things right now that are really challenging is number one the fact that in film and television everybody's hitting a wall now. So you know from June to August it was like a dead zone. There was nobody selling anything like you said they kind of overbought early on. So all these novels that are coming out uh only really recently have I started to get kind of new uh interest in anything I've written in terms of uh translating it to that medium. Um obviously we don't rely on that for income but it's one of those things where again it's kind of nice. Uh the other thing that's really troubling is the supply chain. We are uh experiencing like I have a I had a book that was coming out on October 5th my first middle grade uh and suddenly I got an email uh last week I guess from my publisher that's like well supply chain issues are going to move your date and so we didn't know and it's kind of a really like a Halloween kind of book like it's a creepy fun kids book so to be moved out of October would have been a nightmare. Thankfully they only moved it for two weeks so it still lands kind of smack in the center of October so we're still in an okay place. But that was like terrifying just to think that like because of paper problems and shipping from China because China does most of the printing for the publishing industry um you know the pandemic that all of the sort of cascading economical issues uh that have rippled out uh were worrisome and it's still happening. I know there's people who were uh having books out in 2021 who have been literally moved to 2022 which in the way publishing pays, they're only paying you really when a book is coming out. So uh it's deferring you know any income you're hoping to get from it and if you were counting on that that's now a new problem for you.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

So yes it's it's really tough stuff so there's been a bit of a debate over the last few months and and this is to do with movies. Different people have been on different sides of this debate because obviously films until actually I think Shang Chi the other day most films were coming out on streaming platforms at the same time as movie theatres because they were shut and there's a question about you know is it the same experience is it being made for film for for you as a writer this is nothing to do with the pandemic this has been over the last few years do you care if somebody reads your book in a book book or if they read it on a Kindle or other type of electronic device do you don't care you really don't care I really don't care.

SPEAKER_04 29:29

It's um those are to me like just containers for the story that I wrote um it's still words. I mean it's not and I think it's different from film because you're not I mean film has so many layers of experience to it um for good and for bad you know going to the theater and having food with you and the the way the sound is and the way the projection is and uh you know then moving it to the home market and what with your television and everything there's all these really layers of experiences but for the most part books are like you either have a physical book which we all know what that is or we have an ebook and there's some variation there in what that looks like but even now generally speaking you can get an ebook that looks like the actual print book on the I mean you know the fonts are the same and the the spacing is the same. So it's not functionally that different the only time it gets a little uh you know really kind of changes the and transforms from the print is when it becomes an audio book and then it's a little more performed.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Um but even there I don't uh it's not doesn't bother me if that's how people prefer to um experience it then that is uh all the power to them and uh or if it ever goes to film and television more power to them and they can experience the work uh wherever they so choose I'm not uh uh particularly a purist about the the format it lands in and apologies to our listeners that that was a question that was nothing to do with redaction failure or diversity but it's just fascinating having an author on I can't help myself but ask that question because I've always wondered that um and actually slightly self-indulgently I'm gonna ask another question that's not really to do with redaction failure and diversity although it might be depending on your answer. So you are Chuck Wendig you've got 184 ish thousand followers on Twitter you've written books that people have heard of people know who you are you're successful. Is there a part of you who wants to do what JK Rowling did and secretly write a book under a different name just to see if you can still write a book that stands as a book without anyone buying it because they wanted a bite because it was you who wrote it uh yeah I've tried oh actually tried uh yeah my middle grade coming out uh next I I wanted to do a pseudonym for it like a lemony snicket type of thing just because I was like well you know I am an adult presence online I'm very uh R-rated as it as it were uh and my my other my adult books are are definitely not for the faint of art so I was like well I don't really want you know kids that are like my age like googling me and be like oh my god and then but the the publisher was like no we don't care about that we don't that's not usually an issue and we want the name is the name and we want the name and I was like it's terrifying to me that you think my name has any value at all in this world.

SPEAKER_04 32:13

I was really hoping for like what kind of wacky fun pseudonyms can I come up with and they're like nope none.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

It's but it was it your reason for doing it wasn't a sort of does my art stand alone it was more you just want to protect young people from your profanity.

SPEAKER_04 32:28

Yeah pretty much yeah I was like oh maybe I should be careful about that but uh as it turns out that's not too much of a big deal.

SPEAKER_03 32:33

So okay right I mean and just quick related I feel like you're you know having read a number of your books now that you've sort of come into your voice has really solidified over the years and you coming into this like what is uniquely yours through all the different books that you're writing what might be hard to jump away from at this second if I was the writer going no this is my voice this is me.

SPEAKER_04 32:53

I'm not quite sure I want to put a new name on that yeah yeah we go especially with adult work I definitely wouldn't want to change that at that point.

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Um well you know we're coming to the time of our podcast where we we we la we ask our last question and the question that we always ask people normally in you know screenwriters and actors in the business is is if you had a piece of advice for anybody coming up in this business, in this in your case a novelist, what would it be?

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Uh I mean it's increasingly weird because as I get more and more into this writing thing I realize I know less and less. Like I realized I am uh just a a boat without a sail on the ocean and I I kind of like that because it it changes the experience every time. So my advice um has kind of dwindled uh to like what I would actually tell people. Like I don't feel like I I have any uh merit to give them uh rock solid advice but I in the vein of sort of being a podcast about rejection and failure and all that stuff um I always say that failure is an instruction manual written in scar tissue. Um it it we view it, you know, uh kids go to school, right? And everybody wants like nobody wants to fail. Failing is the bad thing that's like the the worst thing you can do in school but it's also like the most important thing you do in life is getting stuff wrong and taking as many sort of shots at the goal as you can and uh examining every time you didn't do it and every time you almost did it and didn't quite get there. There's so much to learn in failure that I think when we demonize it, it's uh a bad thing. So I I try to have people celebrate failure I mean at least to a point obviously it never feels like amazing. You know like yeah I did it I completely didn't do anything. Uh but to sort of view those things as like uh even if it's just the rubble and and garbage that you're you're crowd crashing down upon the earth becomes a hill that you can climb onto and get further uh than you were before. And so uh that's sort of my lesson is embrace failure and and enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Fantastic. This might actually end up being the last episode of this podcast because I think we should rename it an instruction manual written in scar tissue could be the name of our new podcast launching results. Unless you've got copyright on it I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 35:26

I I don't but I I will you I you have to have me on periodically so um look Chuck this has been absolutely fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

A slight departure from what we normally do going into books but um really interesting hearing your versions of rejection failure and adversity so thank you very much for your thank you your good humor and your patience it's been wonderful to have you on. Yeah thanks for having me thank you Chuck thank you for listening to another one of our fantastic episodes yet again I think you'll find that I ask better questions than Noah. Noah have you got anything to say?

SPEAKER_03 36:04

As always uh since you've done most of the talking I'm just gonna sit here quietly again. Surely there's some people to thank oh right right right right uh I would love to thank James Launch for doing all of our outro music. As always I think we owe a big thank you to both of our wives who support us through this endeavor that started in our basement and seems to be ever growing and if you want to reach out to either Dan or I I am at atn Ebslin on Twitter. I'm not sure Dan has a Twitter account. Dan do you have a Twitter account?

SPEAKER_01 36:36

I mean I I do but no one cares all they care about is being on Noah's podcast. So well done Noah for conceiving producing editing writing and asking the best questions of the two of us because you've done all this work and well done you.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

I do think it's worth pointing out after 33 or so episodes that I do both voices. There actually is no Dan Resting