The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk

My beloved niece telephoned her father, who came and told the news to my wife: Charlie Kirk has been shot, while speaking to students at UVU. My niece had been there to listen to his message. She needed to call her dad.

My wife had to explain to me who Charlie Kirk was. I must have seen him on a talk show before, as his name sounded familiar, but I did not know what Turning Point USA was, or the kind of career — no, ministry — that Charlie Kirk had conducted.

But I did know Utah Valley, and UVU. I’ve taught workshops on that campus, I’ve walked and run and cycled on those impossible hills. Orem, Utah became my home in 1967, and for many years my parents and my wife’s parents lived there. Even now, going there still feels like going home. So on Wednesday, as I left my house to teach a class of high school creative writing students, I found that I could hardly drive for weeping. 

Because evil had come to my home. 

I felt an immediate wave of grief that someone had brought a murderous heart onto that campus and struck down someone whose only crime was speaking of his beliefs and listening to the beliefs of others. In the days since then, I have wept many times, as I learned
about Charlie Kirk’s work, the principles he taught, the example he set. I was proud when Governor Cox of Utah pointed out that the people of Utah — in many ways my people, though I have lived in North Carolina since 1983 — did not riot, did not loot and burn, but instead gathered in vigils and prayer, and came
together in peace.

I have watched as America’s universities became indoctrination chambers for principles that I believe are both false and evil. They have become places where I have not been welcome — even before I was canceled — because most universities are intolerant of any but the approved opinions. I have long told writing students who have asked me what they should major in at college:  “Why are you going to college, if you want to write? They have nothing to teach you as a storyteller. You don’t need indoctrination, you need life and ordinary people.”

If you want to write stories that other people will care about, you need to
know who those people are. You will get better preparation as a storyteller by working at entry-level jobs and being kind to the others who work there. They will give you your writing career by introducing you to your readers, so you’ll know who you’re talking to.

The stories that move me most, as an audience member, are the stories of good people doing good.

“Who should give me feedback on my first novel?”

You don't want just any reader. Also, you are inexperienced in understanding feedback.

Most of the time, for instance, when a reader says “It felt long” or “it was too slow” you will think that means you need to cut.

The opposite is true. 🧵 Usually it means you moved so quickly through the story that you didn't give the reader time to care about the characters and their relationships. Without emotional involvement, it FEELS slow or long, but when you give us more details of life and relationships, the longer version will FEEL more involving and important, and it won't feel long.

I’ve been asked by new writers: “Should I read books of the same genre that I’m writing?”

With science fiction in particular, it’s absolutely essential that you have a general familiarity with the tropes of the genre. When I started writing sci-fi stories and novels, I was NOT a fan, per se. I was a playwright, writing historical and contemporary plays. However, I had voluntarily read H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, then the Heinlein and Norton juveniles (the old word for Young Adult fiction), and then I read Asimov and Bradbury and Clarke, LeGuin and Niven and Ellison. 

As I started writing sci-fi stories, I did begin my deliberate science fiction education, reading the SF Hall of Fame and the Hugo Winners novels, reconstructing the whole history of science fiction from sample novels. Some I hated (I couldn’t finish Slan; unreadable. EE Doc Smith was sadly archaic). But I read A Case of Conscience by Blish, I read Pamela Sargent and James Tiptree Jr., but even then I was sadly ignorant of much of the field. Still, even though I had not (and still have not) read Starship Troopers when I wrote “Ender’s Game” (novelet), I did not try to reinvent the wheel. I absorbed Heinlein’s expository method, which is the bare minimum for writing sci-fi. I knew I was uneducated in the field, and so I educated myself by reading copiously. This applies to all other genres. If you want to write Romance, READ ROMANCE. If you want to write Fantasy, READ FANTASY — from Tolkien, Macdonald, and other early fantasists, to the YA fantasists who were published in hardcover by Atheneum and then in paperback by Del Rey, and on to the commercial fantasy genre of today, where Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, and George RR Martin lead the way.

Do you have to read them all? No, you GET to read them all. You need to be familiar with what has already been done, not so that you can avoid doing it, but so you can do it even better, and with your own slants and interests.

“When should I start preparing my book cover design?”

Short answer: After you’ve been dead for about a year. Or never. Whichever comes first.

I promise this advice will save you time and frustration. But for a more detailed explanation (and tips for those self-publishing), see 🧵 below: Unless you have already had sales like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, book covers are sadly none of your business. The book cover is not an illustration, it is the billboard designed to sell your book. And you know nothing about marketing a book. So your opinions about what the book cover should look like are as interesting to editors and art directors as a fart in an elevator — it's meaningless and annoying, but you have to put up with it till the elevator gets to your floor.

Back when I was an eager young writer I was trying to figure out what made good stories good. From the start, I knew that it wasn’t the MANNER of writing — it wasn’t the style, no matter how quirky or clever it was.