Hey, ho, let’s go!
Reading Assignment for this class: “Billy Badass Part 1” and “Billy Badass Part 2” chapters from Teardrop Road
Writing Assignment for this class: The writing assignment from Class 3 is due today. Send it to jesseteller (at) yahoo (dot) com. Remember to rate and review your performance at the bottom of the assignment.
The Dread, the Horror of the Blank Screen
The threat of perfection
Had an artist friend, I don’t hang out with him anymore, but he said that sketchbooks were sometimes a problem because you buy a fancy new sketchbook and you want every page to be perfect. So you don’t want to start because you’re afraid you’re going to mess up the whole book by messing up the first page.
He said the first mark made in a sketchbook can be terrifying. So the first thing this guy does when he buys a new sketchbook is he gets a pen or a brush and makes one flippant mark. Now the book is not perfect anymore. There’s no reason to be afraid of it.
It reminded me a lot of something I do as a writer when I get to the point where I am staring at a blank screen for too long. I take the following steps:
- Insult to the blank page. Type in something stupid like “Bite Me.”
- Next is a threat, “I’m going to write this story whether you want me to or not. Not only that but it’s not going to be perfect, it’s going to be messed up. And after I write it, there’s going to be a long time before it’s perfect. You’re gonna have to deal with it. Now shut up and listen to the story I have to tell, and don’t get in my way.”
- Now the screen isn’t blank anymore. There’s no reason to fear messing it up. Usually when I’m writing this little sass, I purposely misspell something. And let’s be honest, I accidentally misspell a lot of other things. And now, you’re not looking at a blank screen anymore. You’ve taken over the situation and you can just get started.
A new composition book
I had a big problem with this, a really big problem, when I guess it was my second or third semester at Missouri State University, ’99 I think, pretty sure it was ’99, and I was opening composition books. I would buy a new composition book, open the first page, put the composition book back, sit at an empty Pizza Hut table, drink three Dr. Peppers, open the composition book again. It was a big problem. It was a problem I did not confess to anyone. How do you explain to someone who’s not a writer that you’re afraid to start because you might mess up?
It’s a completely ridiculous comment. Of course you’re gonna mess up. So you try to explain, “No, no, no, no, the page is white.” And still they have no clue what you’re talking about, but they’re smiling and nodding. “No, you don’t understand, I just bought this composition book. I spent three dollars.” And they look at you with a look that’s really trying to understand, but even though they’re trying to make their eyes soft, their face is saying, three whole dollars?
The blank sketchbook, the blank screen, the blank comp book, the blank journal. So, I went to go buy my books and as I’m walking through the bookstore I see this weird little black, it was a series of papers, they were square, maybe 10 inches. Had a black cover to it. I don’t remember what it was called. It was held together by three rings. I start flipping through it and I see the concept pretty quick.
This book is for an art class. Every page has a strange, unique kind of image, not image, just a strange unique mark of some kind made with what looks like a paint brush, right in the center of the page. Concept of the book is really simple. You draw an entire page incorporating that mark. Try to make it look like you were the one that made the mark.
Well I bought it. I wasn’t in that art class. My schedule had nothing to do with art classes at all, but I bought it. And I used it for this blank page problem. Every page I’d look, stare at the mark, which was like looking at the clouds, I’d stare at the mark and then I’d start at the top of the page and just write, based on some kind of inspiration that was given to me by the mark. Well this one looks like a smoke ring, so the story on this page is about a gangster smoking a cigar. And this one kind of looks like a hatchet, so this story is about a guy that went camping and found something wild. Every page was… the mark was always so different that the inspiration was completely new.
I filled the book pretty quick. And I don’t really remember what happened to it. I was dating an evil girl, I think she may have thrown it away. She was a writer too, and I think she was jealous that I always had an idea, or maybe not. Maybe it was worse than that. I’ll let you think about and decide the twisted things that might have been going through her mind when she looked at my slap book, because your truth is as important as mine. Not to me. To me, my truth, if I could ever find it in here, in the Wasteland, if I could ever find an alter I could sit down and have a talk with who would tell me why she threw away my slap book, maybe Ronin, my reality would be more important to me.
But that conversation’s not important to you. Don’t walk out of here thinking about that conversation. Think about the black mark on the page that is an evil writer looking at her boyfriend enraged.
At this point, if we were in a painting class, I’d have you grab a small canvas and a tube of oil paint and you would draw a simple line sketch, never taking your brush off the canvas, to inspire me to write the story, or understand the story, of the evil girlfriend. So, be lucky you’re not in my painting class.
My painting class is so much more intense than this writing class. My painting class is taught by Smear Lord of Ire. He’s so much more demanding than I am. Wildly more interesting, but so much more demanding. And not at all legitimate. No college would ever hire him. He never would apply for a college to hire him. He still teaches a painting class. Up here, in my mind, he has a class of people he is trying to teach how to paint. But Smear Lord of Ire doesn’t know how to paint. So he waves his hand over an empty canvas, and of course an image shows up there and it’s amazing and brilliant. And he looks out at his class, and he says, “Now do that.”
Shade and Shadow just kind of look at each other. Guardian raises his hand. Shade shakes him off. Smilin’ Jack waves his hand over his canvas. His canvas is full and he’s finished but nobody wants to look at it. And Ronin’s been standing in the back by the door the whole time. And he just turns around and walks away.
Shadow’s halfway out the door, and Shade is like, “You know all we have is oil paints and paint brushes, and there’s no teaching going on here. Prince isn’t even talking about,” and Shade waves his hand in the air at the painting Smear has done. “He’s talking about this,” Shade’ll pick up the brush, dip it in the black ink, and Shade’ll make the perfect mark. He’ll make the perfect mark that inspires Smear Lord of Ire to write the story of the evil girlfriend.
The class will be over. Everybody will get an F except Shade. Smear will give Ronin an A out of respect and fear. Shade will get a… Smear is willing to give him a… B-. But with that mark, Smear will understand why this girl destroyed this beautiful thing and tossed it off into oblivion, where all I remember is a smoke ring and a hatchet.
This is the point where I should make you write the story that involves the smoke ring and the hatchet. But I’m not gonna do that. You’ve got way too much on your plate right now and I plan on being a problem much later. You’re not in my painting class. But if you were, you’d have to deal with Smear Lord of Ire. Also called Artist. He’s an absolute nightmare to live with. And would be worse to do assignments for.
But I want you, I want this gang, this gang of people in this room (quite like the Benders), raise your hand if you’re my Billy Badass. Raise your hand if you’re my Demon Duck. Raise your hand if you’re my Jad. Or don’t raise your hand at all, but you’re still in my gang. We have a neighborhood to protect. The Quicky Fill will give us anything we ask for, but we have a neighborhood to protect. And that neighborhood is your story. It’s your butterfly knife. Your story is the Cadillac of bikes. Your story is a picture of Gregory Romeo. Your story is a discarded purse and wallet. Or maybe the story you wanna write is the story of a kid getting his head bashed on the side of a curb.
So think about this before you go to bed, because you’re gonna be staring at a white screen soon. So think about what one evil writer would do to another writer’s book of inspiration. Take that home. Chew on that. No writing assignment, just think about it while you make your Rice A Roni tonight before you go to bed, because Rice A Roni may be the San Francisco treat, but evil vindictive ex-girlfriends are the writer’s treat. I’ll let you decide what happened to the book of slaps, is what I called it. Each picture, not even picture, each image was a slap in the face that woke my imagination, and it worked. If you’re having a problem with any kind of inspiration, you can write some kind of, any kind of errant mark, scribble of any kind, and really look at it. See what it gives you.
This blank screen thing is not only you. The blank screen still haunts a lot of professional writers, established writers. The blank screen is a lot of writers’ Gregory Romeo. Sometimes you’re on top. Blank screen up, typing immediately. But you and that blank screen have history. They’ve beat you in an arm wrestling match one day, and now the blank screen is raging against you. But raging is the wrong word, isn’t it? Picking, pushing, shoving, turns to wrestling. And now you and Gregory Romeo are on the street. That blank screen has your head on the curb. And it’s pounding. And it takes a casual, loving person from your life to stop that fight. When that happens, I’m your Billy Badass. You got your ass kicked, look me in the eyes. Billy said to me be a man about it. I know too many powerful women to say something like be a man about it. So instead of that, I’m gonna say, lock and load. It doesn’t matter what anybody says about you, he said. And then Billy took me to Gregory Romeo’s house.
Imposter Syndrome
We get this idea that once we have experience in any field, we’ll get past the point of doubt. Just doesn’t work that way. Neil Gaiman is a perfect example of this. I’m sure you’ve all heard of and dealt with imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome, it’s pretty crippling. What ends up happening is somebody starts to get recognition, and they have so many doubts about their own ability that they think one day everybody’s going to realize that they don’t know what they’re doing and they’re going to be called an imposter.
That’s imposter syndrome, and it only kicks in once you start to get a little recognition, and it makes you question yourself and question how good you really are. People I’ve heard talk about imposter syndrome are Stephen King, he talked about it in the mid-2000s. The actress Michelle Rodriguez, who’s one of my favorites, Shadow really wants to get punched in the face by her, but he wants to get punched by everybody. She’s an action hero star. She’s really good with romance, she’s just a great actress. I heard her discuss imposter syndrome. Neil Gaiman talks about imposter syndrome, which I think I mentioned earlier. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have.
The green belt rule
I was in martial arts for years with my entire family. The Tellers are warriors. When I got to green belt, and when I was testing for green I was warned by my master. I was told there’s a green belt rule. I think the green belt rule and imposter syndrome are dating. When I got my green belt, I felt the two walking hand in hand through my Wasteland.
You start off as a white belt, you know nothing, and you admit it. You see people doing amazing things around you with their bodies that you just can’t do. And you know you have a long way to go. You get past yellow, you get past orange, you get into purple, now in the dojo you’re getting known for one thing. With me, it was the cross. I have a really great right cross. Don’t get hit by my right cross. That was at purple.
At blue, you get even better. Now you’ve perfected (you haven’t but), you think you’ve perfected that cross. You feel really good about your fighting ability. Really powerful, you wanna take over the class. You hope somebody messes with you in public. Not even so that you can fight, but so you can hold your hand out and say, “I take martial arts. You don’t want to do this.”
You take your test and you get to green belt. Then it hits you, next is brown. That’s when things start to get problematic, because brown leads to black. You’ve never compared yourself to a black belt before, but you are now. And then the green belt rule kicks in. You get really insecure about your own ability. And this is how my master put it: when you get to the level of green belt, you realize how much you don’t know. Until you get to green belt, you can look back and see how far you’ve come, and you can feel really powerful and really secure. Green belt is when you look forward and you realize how much you don’t know. That is the green belt rule, and it’s very applicable.
Where Furies Scream
I wrote a book called Where Furies Scream. It was the sequel to a book called The City of Exiles. The City of Exiles is 800 pages long, this was when my career was really taking off, and by “when my career was really taking off,” what I really mean is, I finished The City of Exiles after I had committed to my work regiment and come to a few breakthroughs about how I was going to lead my career. I hadn’t published anything yet.
So I finishThe City of Exiles and I’m on top of the world. Can’t be beat. Written my first epic novel, and it’s a good one. It starts off slow. I haven’t published it yet. When I publish it, I’m going to have to rewrite probably the first 300 pages. But The City of Exiles done. And now, Where Furies Scream, and I get 900 pages into it, and green belt rule hits me.
At this point, I’ve written 1700 pages of one story. I should be extremely proud of myself. It’s gonna take me about 200 more pages to finish this book. I should be really excited about that, but I’ve already decided this series is seven books long, averaging 850 pages, five books, 4,250 more pages of the same story. It’s insane.
The gravity of it hit me, and I had to sit down, but I was already sitting down. (Have you ever felt like that? You’re already sitting down but you’re hit with something so hard and so devastating that you need to sit down. What’s next, like, lay down? There’s no lay down.
It’s gonna happen, either in your writing career or in your real life. Something’s gonna hit you so hard, you’re gonna feel that you need to sit down but you’re already sitting down. I would say that those are moments you don’t wanna forget. And this was one of those. Braced, and comfortable, and secure from falling was not going to be enough to keep me from falling.
It’s the same with imposter syndrome. You know, while I was writing the fourth book of that series, imposter syndrome hit me really hard. I’d written twelve books. Hadn’t published any, but I’d written twelve books. I was a good writer. But I had a great fear. And the rest of the public didn’t matter, and the reading didn’t matter, and none of my peers mattered. The only person that mattered is the only person that ever matters, my wife.
I spend a lot of time in my office, trying to talk myself into getting started with my writing day, watching video after video to try to spark myself to write, but it wasn’t a spark I was missing. I was terrified that the things I was going to write were going to be boring to my wife. I had this book I was writing called Forsaken. It’s the third book in the mountain.
My alpha reader, who reads everything, told me while I was writing it that it was never going to be her favorite book. She’s the one who gets into darkness so much, the nurse. She said it was never going to be her favorite book because it was just honorable men doing honorable things.
I was having a conversation with my wife about a storyline, and she just blew up, telling me that, well I can’t quote exactly what she was telling me because I didn’t hear it. So many times the things somebody saying to us lines up with our own fear so much that we don’t even hear what they’re saying. And what she said was that she hated the book, she didn’t understand why Luther was doing what he was doing, it made no sense to her. She thought it was a stupid storyline, and then she stayed. We were in my office. It was an hour before she was going to bed and I was going to have to write.
When somebody says something like that, you want them to storm off so you can whisper scream how wrong they are, and build up your own righteousness. But she said those things, and then she stayed in the room and looked at me. I changed the subject, but I had to live with that. The two people whose opinion mattered the most had told me they didn’t like my book. And I was devastated, and I had to look at her for another hour, hour and a half, before she left and I had to sit down and write my words.
I wrote them. You should all be proud of me, but you’re not. You should all be proud of me because of the fact that after getting hit twice, I was still able to work that same night. You should all be proud of me, but you’re not, but one day when you’re facing the same thing, you’re gonna remember this lecture and you are going to be proud of me. One day, you’re going to be writing something that your audience doesn’t approve of. You’re gonna have to do it anyway. One of these days, you’re going to be like the musician that got me through that night. And right now, you’re gonna have to listen to her.
It’s very important, we’re talking about imposter syndrome, we’re talking about writing things people don’t want you to write, but you think needs to be the story. So, I’m going to tell you a story of a person who inspires me. You’re gonna think this is weird. My wife is typing this lecture. She’s sitting on the edge of her seat, she can’t wait to hear what I’m going to say. This curriculum will eventually be a college class that I teach. It will have to be approved by the head of the department or somebody similar. They’re going to be shocked that I’m playing this for you. And as I’m sitting here, looking at my Rottweiler and my bullador, and having my wife write these words, I want you to know that in the writing industry this is what we call a dramatic pause.
Nature does this, too. There’ll be a big storm or something intense is happening in the area, and everything will go quiet.
So right now you’re wondering what I’m about to show you. Let me tell you, if you stay with me and you stay with this class, I can show you incredible things.
Anybody have any idea why you watched that? I grew up in gangland Milwaukee. I was raised by gangsters until the time I was eleven years old. I’ve lived my entire life with a blade in each hand. I’ve gotten into countless fights. Everywhere I go, there’s a silent menace that trembles the air around me. Why am I watching Taylor Swift? This is what we call building tension, rising to a climax, me and Taylor have all of you wondering. Except maybe a few, maybe. Maybe a few of you can see where I’m going with this. My wife still has no idea, and she’s typing all this up. And she knows me better than anybody in the world. She knows me better than I know myself.
I should take a picture of her face once I break the information to you, just so I can show her every now and then the shock on her face when she starts acting like she knows it all.
If whoever is checking my curriculum is still with us, I’m probably giving this lecture to this class. Which means, they’re still listening, so I have them on the edge of their seat. But me and Taylor go way back, so here we go.
Taylor Swift started as a country star. She made platinum albums like my wife makes pancakes, one perfect delicious succulent platinum album after the next. Come over to my house sometime this semester. My wife will make pancakes. It’s ridiculous. Her pancakes are awesome. She has reinvented the form. When I was deciding who I was gonna marry, she made me these pancakes and I thought, “My children need to grow up with somebody that can make them the perfect pancake.” Come over to the house, we’ll have pancakes for dinner.
And then, Taylor Swift comes to her record company and she says, “I’m not making country albums anymore. I’m a pop star now.” Arguments. People yelling at her, people getting ahold of her agent, her manager, people getting ahold of her parents, the world around Taylor Swift explodes. Because her record company knows she could pump out another country album and they could make millions, tens of millions. But how is a young, cute country darling supposed to create a brand new audience? These pop people that are fans of the pop industry, they aren’t Taylor Swift fans and they already have an opinion about Taylor Swift. How’s she going to change that opinion? How is this record company supposed to get this golden goose to lay another golden egg?
And Taylor was hit for it from every direction. She was told in every way that she was an imposter to what she was about to do. And she would be called an imposter for a long time. Her record company agreed to record and produce her album with one condition. The album had to have one country song. Legend says, and I’m the one writing the legend, so I get to say, she set her glass of water down, she shoved her seat back, she got up in the middle of the meeting as they all started talking and yelling behind her, and I don’t think she stomped out, because at this point Taylor Swift is not a brat. I think she just walked out. Well they did let her record and produce, I think the album’s called 1989.
Taylor Swift, she could not stop repetitively, over and over again, putting out smash hits from this album. It was her first pop album. (I had my wife look that up to check it, because I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure because I’m writing the legend. I wasn’t sure because I’m just, I’m putting this whole curriculum together the way that you will put your career together. We’ll talk about this again later, but you’re gonna have to find your own way. So that’s how I’m writing this curriculum. That’s how I’m writing this lecture. Sometimes I look things up. Sometimes I pop off at the mouth. Sometimes I puff myself up and say the Tellers are warriors. Sometimes Ronin’s just walking out of the painting class in disgust. Sometimes the green belt rule and the imposter syndrome are holding hands and skipping through Shadow’s streets. This is how your career, at least in the beginning, is gonna go. You’re gonna start grabbing things from all different directions and snapping them together in ways that nobody ever expected. Then one day you’re gonna create the perfect pancake, and the next day you’re not a brat anymore. Now you’re three books into a seven-book epic and when you’re there, there’s a precipice. When you’re truly afraid of what you’re doing, there’s a precipice you’re standing on. And nobody can be there with you. That night that I listened to that song by Taylor Swift, there was nobody with me, not even my soulmate, there was nobody with me. And I can’t be with you. So I’m gonna show you how I built my entire mindset my entire career. I’m gonna do it as I unfold this curriculum, as I write this lecture, as I teach this class. The things I’m telling you are true. They’re 100% true. [except all the times I’m lying to you – those are the times you should listen really close] but the things I’m telling you are 100% true. Because I wrote those seven books. They are 1,757,689 words. As writers, what you are trying to do is not possible. Except when you use your own abilities and your own personalities and your own personal stories and you get out of your way, because you are standing in your way. I’m gonna insert a little mention here of The Judge, we’ll get to her later.)
The night my wife told me she didn’t like my book, we talked for the rest of the night, then I took her up and put her to bed. I kissed her and I walked downstairs. And I knew I was right. I knew I was right. My alpha reader was wrong. The book is supposed to be noble men doing noble things until a certain point where the whole noble thing just shatters like glass and melts. I knew my alpha reader was wrong. I knew my wife was wrong. But it was a love story. The problem she had was about a love story. And my wife is the very definition of love. And I knew she was wrong.
So, I listened to some Taylor Swift pop. And as Taylor said, I told myself this book is gonna be forever or it’s gonna go down in flames. But under the last chapter that I had written was a blank space. And I’m Jesse Teller. So right there, on that screen, I had to write my name.
By the end of the book my alpha reader was saying, you should consider how dark this book is and maybe be careful. I’m sorry I ever doubted you. She apologizes for that comment she made at least once a year. My wife wrote me a love letter the day after our conversation where she told me she would be a terrible writer if she had to do what I do. My wife is a poet. She’s a fantastic writer. She’ll blow your mind. She blows mine all the time. But she said that if she did what I did, she’d be terrible at it, because she’d want everybody to be happy, and there’d be no suffering in her book.
So don’t listen to the voice in your head when it tells you that you’re an imposter. And yes, as a green belt, you have a long way to go before you’re a master. But out there somewhere is a list that the world is keeping of great writers, writers who have worked and struggled and fought to get to where they are. They’ve put on the boots. They’ve watched the videos. They’ve stayed up for every late night. There’s a list out there of the great writers. And ladies and gentlemen, there’s a blank space for you to write your name.
I can’t write it. Taylor can’t write it. She would if she could. I think she’s real sweet. I think she wants you to succeed. Yeah, let’s go with that. It might be a lie. But we have decided we’re believing lies, so let me tell you this with authority. Taylor Swift wants you to succeed. She would write your name in that blank space. But this time she knows she can’t. And you wouldn’t want her to. She’d cut out the nipples of your shirt. Write your own name in that blank space. You’re riding the Cadillac of bikes, black with red mag wheels. You can hop the curb like a bunny. You’re deciding what you’d take a blade for, and you’ve got a butterfly knife. Now, write your name.
I gotta tell you, I cannot wait to read what you give me. Every time I give you an assignment, I wait with bated breath to see what you will give me. Because I am watching you find that blank space and every time I give you a writing assignment, I’m watching you write your name.
Writing Assignment
Due next class: Remember by next week, your short story assigned in Class 1 is due.
Reading Assignment
Reading Assignment for next class: “Home” chapter from Teardrop Road
Seeds of Tarako will have to be read by Class 17. It’s available to download free until Friday, August 16.
—Prince
Jesse Teller 
Leave a comment