![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarkerWriting Excuses 20.10: Interview with Chuck Tingle: Breaking the Rules
Key Points: Any number of ways to approach art. Failure is a learning opportunity. Capture the truth of the moment that it's written. Try punk rock writing. If you can't fix it, feature it. Message first, then character and plot. Be the slippery slope you want to see in the world. Take the road less travelled. Come at them as an equal. Art is more than just the words in the book.
[Season 20, Episode 10]
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
[Season 20, Episode 10]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] Interview with Chuck Tingle: Breaking the Rules.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
[Mary Robinette] We are joined today by our special guest, Chuck Tingle. Who... Let me just say, as we start off, I'm so happy to have you here because love is real.
[Chuck] Oh, wild. Do you know... Want to know why I'm happy to be here, along with that? I think there's some buckaroos that believe we are one and the same, or at least...
[Laughter]
[Chuck] About a decade ago did. I guess this kind of clears it up unless you have a little soundboard and you're flipping between sound modulations. But actually this is pretty good evidence that we are two separate entities.
[Howard] That would be...
[DongWon] [garbled]
[Howard] Impressive to fake.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Very talented performer. So...
[Mary Robinette] Yes. Yes. It's amazing. You're actually my cat. But...
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] For readers who are unfamiliar with you, would you mind telling them just a little bit about some of what you write and who you are?
[Chuck] Yes. So I started off self-publishing erotica. I still do that. I have about 350 erotica shorts called Tinglers, and then I recently have signed a deal with Nightfire, which is part of Tor, part of McMillan, traditionally published horror novels. The second of which just came out. And then I just announced that I've got four more coming. So, yeah.
[Mary Robinette] [This is… Garbled]
[DongWon] That's awesome.
[Mary Robinette] This is very, very fantastic. I became aware of you first because of your erotica. Then when I started seeing that you were going to be doing traditionally published things, one of the first… The assumption that I made was that it was going to be similar to what you were doing. The reason that we have you in to talk about breaking the rules is that your path to publishing traditionally is extremely unconventional. But the other thing is that you are ignoring a piece of conventional wisdom, which is that you are supposed to put yourself into a niche and stay in that niche. If you're going to do two different niches, that you need to have [garbled] for those.
[DongWon] Yes. So…
[Chuck] I think pretty much everything about my career has been pretty untraditional. Unconventional. The writing itself, I think there's a lot of rules that I break. It is something that I like to talk about. Because I think there's a lot of buckaroos out there who are creators, not just writers, but in any sort of medium who kind of get discouraged if they don't fall into a specific path of kind of traditional creativity. There's a reason for a lot of those paths. I mean, obviously, like, there is a system to getting a publishing deal and everything. But I like to talk about my own journey, because there's some really incredible things that happen if you kind of chart your own path. Sometimes that can lead to astonishing failure, and sometimes that can lead to something really beautiful. Not just beautiful, but kind of push mediums forward sometimes. I mean, it's… That's such an important role out there. So, I just think it's important to talk about it, and not discourage those that think, well, that's not how I think. Because there's any number of ways to approach art.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] This is… Any number of ways to approach art is something that is like a flag that I will ride to. You have my sword.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] One of the things that we are fond of saying here at Writing Excuses is tools, not rules.
[Chuck] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] I think that that's one of the things… When you're talking about art, that there isn't a right way to approach it, because we're all coming from a different point.
[Chuck] Yes.
[DongWon] One thing I wanted to pick up on in there, too, was, Chuck, you mentioned the possibility of astonishing failure, I think is how you put it. What I… One of the things I love about you bringing that up immediately is it such a possibility in any creative endeavor, in the artistic endeavor. Learning to not be afraid of that failure, but to also embrace it as an opportunity to learn more and explore and discover what works for you, and what doesn't work for you, for me, I think, is incredibly important. But to start out almost, like, on the negative, the downbeat note, and, like, what are those moments of failure that you've run into that you found instructive for you in terms of figuring out how you wanted to move forward? What were the paths that made sense to you?
[Chuck] That is a great question. You've caught me, a little bit, because…
[Chuckles]
[Chuck] I use that… Well, I use that word, because we're communicating through words. It's semantics. We're just… We are speaking, we need a word to put value to an idea. But if you were to really, like, dive deep, and I guess that's what we're doing here, get philosophical about it, I kind of think an art failure doesn't actually exist. I'm using the word to make a point, but in reality, when I look at the process of any career, but I'm just going to talk about my own. Anything, anytime, let's say I had a Tingler that came out that I thought was going to do really well and didn't, I just… Failure's the best word for it, because we all know what that means. But if you actually look at it, that is literally just a… That is a learning opportunity. It is an experience. It is, honestly, the stuff that life on this timeline is made of. It is so beautiful, in fact, it's equally beautiful to success. So I… It was… If I'm really going to get in touch with the depths of my feeling about it, I just… I don't think that it exists, it's part of the process. Making great art is not just some trajectory upward into the sky like a rocket. It is a river that flows in various directions, and all of that is important. It's equally important, I think.
[Howard] To paraphrase badly Mahatma Gandhi, be the try-fail cycle you want to see in a good book.
[Laughter]
[Chuck] Absolutely.
[Howard] We see this in all of the things that we consume as entertainment. We see this idea of a try-fail cycle. As long as the failure is not something that stops you completely, it can be part of a process that leads to the success that you were aiming for.
[Mary Robinette] This is… Yeah. This is a thing that I love, is the part of a process. There's a thing in film and television where you only need to get the perfect shot once. Right. When you're watching the Muppets, they fling puppets all the time. There is this outtake reel that I love from Emmet Otter's Jug Town Christmas… Err, Jug Band Christmas, where they need a drum to roll out of a store.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] It rolls out of the store and fails so many different times in different hysterically funny ways. This blooper reel is now one of my very favorite things. But they only need to get it right once. I think one of the wonderful things about writing is that you can try something and you don't have to put it out into the world until it's… Until you have successfully gotten the drum to roll the way you want it to roll. Then, even if someone is like,, whatever, that drum is not perfect for me. It's like, well, that's fine.
[Chuck] Yes. I also tend to believe that the quote wrong way of the drum to roll is actually more perfect than the quote perfect one. I think that with art, a lot of the things… Like, for me, it's not about capturing the perfect story. It's about capturing the truth of the moment that it's written. That's the goal for me. So, Tinglers are a perfect example of that. I think of my writing, specifically with Tinglers, as, like, punk rock writing.
[Chuckles]
[Chuck] If you look at other mediums, if you look at, like, music for instance, if you have a song and you play it a little too fast and it's a little out of tune and it's a little sloppy, someone will listen to that and say, wow, that's a perfect punk rock song. If you do that in painting, you can say, oh, that was something like, oh, you really captured the movement and the emotion or something, if you don't fix those mistakes. In writing, for whatever reason, I have just found that there's a strictness that I kind of like to push back against. So the mistakes, like, spelling errors or things in my erotica shorts, I don't… I don't even see those as errors, I see them as punk. It is capturing the moment that it was made. A lot of those I wrote in 24 hours about a news item, and the idea that I should make it seem like it wasn't written in 24 hours just seems silly to me. I… It's a piece of art and I'm capturing the moment. So I kind of like to look outside of the conventions of any sort of genre, but specifically the medium of writing, and think, well, what do these quote mistakes actually mean if we're actually just trying to capture the moment?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. There's a thing they say in puppetry… I think other places too, but… If you can't fix it, feature it.
[Chuck] Oh, beautiful. Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] As a cartoonist, I'm fond of saying that art for art's sake is allowed to take its time. Art for money has to run like it stole something.
[Chuckles]
[Chuck] That's a great one, too.
[Howard] It's… Because the mistakes… Mistakes isn't the right word. That first stroke you throw down with a pen as an energy to it, and enthusiasm to it, that repeated strokes trying to get it right won't have. So, boy, sometimes you just gotta roll with the first take.
[Mary Robinette] I feel like there's a joke right here about repeated strokes and Tinglers, but…
[Chuck] Oh, there you go. [Garbled] Just wait until this episode comes out and you see a fresh Tingler…
[Laughter]
[Chuck] Directly referencing Writing Excuses.
[Mary Robinette] Oh, my goodness. Any time we're talking about things coming out, it's always exciting for me.
[Chuck] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] But before we do anything more on that, I think we're going to take our pause. As I break my [garbled] podcasting.
[We're fine. We're all fine.]
[Mary Robinette] We're fine. So let's take our pause for a thing of the week.
[Chuck] So, going with the theme of this episode of breaking the rules, and as a Writing Excuses fan myself, I listen all the time, I have yet to hear anyone recommend food. So I have… I would like to recommend the Franken stand, which for anyone either living in Los Angeles or visiting Los Angeles, it's a vegan hot dog stand that serves horror-themed hotdogs.
[Laughter]
[Chuck] So, every week, you show up and you're not sure what you're going to get. Maybe the Mummy with a nice pale alfredo drizzled across the top, wrapped up. You could get the Swamp Thing, which is more like a chili dog. There's all kinds of things. It's just really incredible. It's the… You have to follow them on Instagram to find out where they're going to be. Normally they are some days in front of a horror shop called the Mystic Museum out in the big valley. Yeah. So my thing of the week is a delicious vegan horror-themed hotdog at the Franken stand, and their Instagram is the hotdog_franken.
[DongWon] As a new resident of Los Angeles, I am excited to go and track this one down and see what they have to offer.
[Mary Robinette] And I am thinking that anyone who is coming on the Writing Excuses cruise that is cruising out of Los Angeles in September is probably also going to make a slight detour too.
[Chuck] Oh, there you go. You've gotta get a haunt dog. That's what they call them.
[Laughter]
[Chuck] Not hotdogs. Haunt dogs.
[Mary Robinette] This is amazing to me.
[DongWon] I've had some hotdogs that I felt haunted by. So…
[Chuck] Yes.
[Howard] Writing doesn't have to be a solitary activity. That's why we host in-person retreats and workshops. At the Writing Excuses retreats, you'll get access to classes, one-on-one office hours, critique sessions, and activities to keep you inspired and motivated. Become a more engaging storyteller and learn how to navigate the publishing landscape. As you make meaningful progress on your stories, you'll also build connections with your fellow writers that will last for years to come. Check out our upcoming events at writingexcuses.com/retreats.
[Mary Robinette] it's One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging, it's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients designed to fine tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, lethargy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86 percent of women lost weight, 77 percent found improved mood, and 100 percent felt like themselves again. Start your next chapter balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15 percent off your entire first order at happymammoth.com with code Next Chapter at checkout. Visit happymammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally.
[Mary Robinette] All right. So, as we come back in, I want to talk about some of the rules that you feel like other people get trapped by that you just kind of stomped over with great joy and enthusiasm.
[Chuck] Wow. I feel like there's two categories of that. There is… There are the rules of kind of the business side of things. There's the rules of the creative side of things. I think that… I mean… Part of both of these is that while… I am a masked buckaroo. It's funny. In the introduction, we didn't even mention that, but for those listeners not familiar, I am anonymous, and I wear a pink bag over my head. I would say that… I mean, just to list a few, actual… Well, the way I do book tours is certainly different. I don't do readings. Because, really, they didn't make sense to me. I thought if you're trying to get new readers, what are you going to do? Show up and talk about a book that nobody's read and have spoilers? I found it to be kind of fundamentally broken, so, like, I do my own thing with some shows. I think that in the creative side of things, I kind of disagree with the idea that you should only show, never tell. I think that you need to do both.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Chuck] Which you've actually done an episode on that was pretty wonderful. So [garbled] your listeners, go back to that one. I also… There's this whole discussion of sort of should you write with character or plot, is the big thing, or, well, who's in the driver's seat? I think most of the time you're supposed to say character. I would argue that that… I like to write message first. I always put the message in the driver's seat. Kind of the what am I delivering to the reader, what is the gift of this, and then I would say probably character second and then plot third. There's all these things that I come out it with… And that come back to the anonymous thing. Many buckaroos have tried to guess my real identity.
[Chuckles]
[Chuck] All the time I have kind of… I'm breaking off… Breaking down the layers. But I will say, for those listening, because I have said this before, that many assume that I am, like, a writer under this [garbled], but I am not. Which I think becomes apparent. I mean, I'm a writer now, but coming into this, I did not know this industry at all. Which I guess moves on to the… Kind of the business side of things, which, DongWon, my agent, who happens to be here…
[Mary Robinette] Shocking.
[DongWon] Amazing coincidence.
[Chuck] Experienced firsthand, which is just kind of… I think that my path… I used [garbled] since about the querying and all that stuff. Actually, I just… I wrote the book, I wrote Camp Damascus, and then I went on Twitter and said I have a book. I think I'd like a traditional publisher. Does anyone want to put it out?
[DongWon] Literally, just tweeted it out.
[Laughter]
[Chuck] Yes, I just tweeted it, and then old McMillan said, I guess that's a good one, let's do that. That is the short version. It's more entertaining. You could also look at it like I spent eight years building my fan base, writing erotica, creating kind of this whole thing outside of the books itself. I prefer the short version because I think it's funny. But…
[DongWon] I love the short version.
[Chuck] The short version is very fun.
[DongWon] But I have a question, which is, you came into this, you're saying, that you didn't know much about the publishing industry. Yet, years ago, you started writing the Tinglers and putting them up is self published. What was the thing that led you to that choice? Right? Like, when you were starting, before you knew what the rules even were, before you knew that you were breaking any what was the thing that got you to say, hey, I want to write these. I'm going to put them up here. Here's how I'm going to do it. Then, you developed a very distinctive style since then, of course. But…
[Chuck] Yes.
[DongWon] What was that inception there?
[Chuck] So, I always have… I've been a creator my whole life. So… I just thought, as a medium, that the fact that you could self publish something and kind of work through an idea and it could be out in 24 hours and have an audience, I found to be pretty fascinating and also kind of underused in the sense of, like, hey, if this works, I could talk about current events, I could express myself in this way. I would say that there was a sort of a personal kind of version of that, and a political version. The personal version was that I am on the autism spectrum, so I am [garbled] typically masking all the time. The idea of being able to create this art in, like I said, a punk rock way where I said, well, I'm just going to… My autism really shows itself in how I organize things. I'm so strict about things, and I thought, well, if I have 24 hours, I want to write these quickly. I'm not going to have time for that, and it's going to be kind of therapeutic, which it very much ended up being. Then, also, my queerness as a bisexual buckaroo in a hetero presenting relationship… Actually, I thought, I don't get to express my queerness [garbled], so, actually, kind of therapeutic personal reasons that I suspected would be very helpful for me, and ended up literally changing my life. So that was a good guess. Then, politically speaking, the kind of crux of the idea was that I was always fascinated by conservatives… There was this line a long time ago, kind of the gay marriage line was, well, if we let two buckaroos marry, what's next? Are we going to marry free trees? Are we going to marry a sentient automobile? I always thought…
[Howard] They're already marrying their cars.
[Chuckles]
[Chuck] Well, there you go. I always thought that kind of slippery slope argument… It was always kind of trotted out like this dystopian landscape. And every time they said it, even back then, I thought that sounds wonderful.
[Chuckles]
[Chuck] What a utopia. So part of writing a Tingler, as, like a larger piece of all of these books was that if I just wrote about this world where that conservative nightmare was kind of just you let it run wild and show that that's actually more of a utopia than a dystopia. So… Those were the two pieces where I thought, okay. Writing these quick shorts is going to be an interesting way to do that. Let's see if it can work. And it did.
[DongWon] You gotta be the slippery slope you want to see in the world.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] It's fascinating to me that your path to publishing… Yeah. You broke rules. But now we look at self pub to trad pub and that's not really rule breaking so much as it is a road less traveled.
[Chuck] Yes.
[Howard] 25 years ago, when I started putting Schlock Mercenary on the Internet, it was the same sort of thing. It was very rule breaking. Web comics were the new thing. Now you look at them and, oh, it's… Everybody knows what that is. Oh, it's a web comic. So in part I think some of the pattern here may be that if you break rules or if you break from a form, if you break from a process, and do something in a new way and succeed, the next generation is going to treat that as an accepted form, an accepted pattern, an established way of accomplishing things.
[Chuck] Oh, yes. Absolutely. I hope the lesson that they can take… That goes one step beyond that, too, which is I hope another generation, listeners to this, thinking, well, how am I going to break into it, not only could you say, well, I could trod the path that Chuck did, but the broader idea of I could just come at things from a totally different angle. Something that I have that Chuck has never thought. It's like that is the beauty of art right there. So I just I would love to encourage others to do that. I'm so proud that it has kind of worked out into a career that supports itself by kind of trodding this outsider path. And, thank you, DongWon, for being a part of that.
[DongWon] Thank you for letting me be a part of it. In terms of… You spent all that time building up your profile, having a career, doing the Tinglers, building that audience. You built… What you built outside of the traditional rules of publishing, even outside the rules of like indie publishing. Right? Like, even on the indie side, people work doing what you were doing in terms of the, like, punk rock methodology of writing in terms of, like, doing it in 24 hours, embracing the medium itself as part of what your message is. What then made you pivot again into sort of breaking through all of those rules now into doing something with a traditional publisher? Right?
[Chuck] Yes.
[DongWon] Like, in terms of making that move… Why put yourself back in all the boxes that traditional publishing creates and loves to reinforce and loves to build around all of us?
[Chuck] So, this is kind of, I guess, that's a great question. Why I encourage others… Like I… You can trod the traditional path, but, like I said, you can break off… The one thing I think breaking off really has going for it is that if you get the opportunity, if it resonates with this timeline and means something to buckaroos, then when you do want to reach more through a traditional means, you can enter that conversation a completely different way than most are used to. Because you come at it as a sort of equal. I wanted to do traditional publishing because I knew that I had the ability and the strength because of my own situation that I could come in and make sure I only signed a deal with someone who would also let me do my Tinglers. Who would listen to exactly what I say and kind of treat me as sort of like an hauteur author almost where it's… I am very involved in every aspect of it, where I think some other authors might not be, as far as, let's say, cover decisions or edits or things. Because at this point in my career, it's like, why would you sign a deal with Chuck Tingle and not want him to write a Chuck Tingle book?
[DongWon] Yep.
[Chuck] So I'm allowed to basically do whatever I want as if I was self published, but with this massive company behind me because I've already proven it. I think there's something with… Not just with publishing, but with all types of mediums where the hopefuls who want to be career artists almost see it as a lotto ticket. I think that's a very unfortunate way to look at it, because you're essentially, like, begging someone to notice for you. Never come to the big record label, the giant film studio, the big five publisher saying please, please, notice me. Come to them as an equal. I always think back to the show American Idol where everyone was competing for a quote record deal. It always blew my mind because I would see it and think, well, what's the deal? What is the record deal? Is it a good one? Is it a bad one? Why are we competing for this nebulous idea that is not a good thing inherently? I feel like in book publishing too, you see that as, like, if I could only get this big five publishing deal… What big five publishing deal? Is it going to be a good one or a bad one?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Chuck] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] Well, I think one of the things that you said about coming to the table as an equal is something that… That people just don't… They get hung up on the dream. It's something that you don't have to have a huge platform already to bear in mind, that publishers exist to publish things. They do not exist without your work.
[Chuck] Yep. Absolutely. Yes. It's almost a mentality.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Chuck] It doesn't have to be. You just have to go and be willing… Go into it and think if I don't like this deal, I'll say no, because I'm a great writer.
[DongWon] Yep.
[Chuck] So few buckaroos seem to do that.
[DongWon] The way I frame it is you have to be undeniable. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Because if you are deniable, they will deny you. Right?
[Chuck] Yes.
[DongWon] Part of being undeniable is being willing to walk away from a thing that may be what you've dreamed of, but is on bad terms or isn't with the right partner or at the right time. Right? All of those things, we all… All of us here we know too well can really derail you in a variety of ways. So it's not just reaching for a literary agent or a book deal or a opportunity, it has to be the right one.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] The way you get the right one is by manufacturing it, by creating it. Like, playing within the boundaries of how people expect you to behave won't always get you there. I mean, now you have to be respectful, you have to treat people…
[Mary Robinette] Right.
[DongWon] With courtesy and respect and on the terms that they are requesting for a variety of different reasons. But, provided you're living up to civility and treating people like people, you don't have to conform to the expected channels. Like, most of my clients did not come to me through the query process. Right? Most of my clients in one way or another didn't end up in the same sort of set of traditional rules that we talk about in terms of how you get a book deal. Right?
[Chuck] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Well, what publishers are looking for a lot is the thing that Chuck is delivering, which is a book that no one else could have written.
[DongWon] Absolutely.
[Mary Robinette] I think that when we get hung up in rules, when we get hung up in the this is the way things are done, what we're doing is that we are putting ourselves into boxes, and that we're trimming off the pieces of ourselves that don't fit into those boxes, and those pieces are often the things that make our work the most interesting. [Garbled] Howard was using the metaphor of that first initial rough sketch, and then you draw over and over and over again. I see early career writers editing themselves out of the story in an effort to meet all of the rules.
[DongWon] Which is why the rawness of the Tinglers works so well. Right?
[Chuck] Yep.
[DongWon] You mentioned that you lead with message, not with character or plot. You lead with message. But then you also made the medium itself the message. Like, for you, how is leading with message driving what you choose to work on and how you write and how you publish?
[Chuck] Yes. Well, I've always looked at art as more than what's between the… For the example of writing, it's more than just the words in the book, and I think it really drives. I have found authors do not like this. But I'm going to go with it. There was a sort of thing of, like, well, I just want to write the books. I don't want to have to be a brand. I'm sure you probably have 10 episodes of the same podcast about it. Fortunately, for me, I have always loved that because I don't think that there is a difference. I don't think that art ever stops when the medium ends. I think when you read the last page of the book, that the art is in what you dream of that night when you go to bed.
[DongWon] Yes.
[Chuck] It's in what you eat for dinner. I think that the song doesn't end when the track stops. It's everything that you know about that singer. It's everything that you don't know about that singer. It's… So this idea of art in a vacuum, I think is really held onto tight by a lot of writers who are thinking, well, I don't want to have to be anything else. Being something else… Not being something else, that in itself is a statement. But, fortunately for me, I always thought, wow, how many different ways can I find to make art more than just the product, more than just the book? How can I make it everything that surrounds it? How can I show it's not in a vacuum? So I just spent a lot of time doing that because I love it. I kind of just got lucky in that fortunately for me… In an office, they call that branding. For me, I call it art.
[Mary Robinette] I feel like…
[DongWon] For me, I call that just being alive.
[Chuck] There you go. Yes.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think this is a great opportunity for us to go ahead and move to our homework, because otherwise we will be talking for several hours.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Chuck, I think you have some homework for us.
[Chuck] I do have some homework. So, whatever your work in progress is, find a section, whether it's a chapter or just a page, and think of the writing rule that you believe is kind of the North Star of sort of not necessarily your personal rule, but the writing at large, the English department would hammer into you. Take that rule, whatever you think it may be, and try to rewrite that section either without that rule or doing the opposite. Then look at it and see what change does that make? Is there a version of it where you can use this as a tool, not a rule?
[Mary Robinette] I love that homework. Thank you so much for joining us, Chuck.
[Chuck] Oh, my gosh. Thank you for having me. And before I go, I've just got to say, it is truly an honor. This is… I came to this, like I said, not knowing anything about writing, and actually, listening to this podcast taught me a lot. So I am so honored to be here and I just… I love it. So it's really wonderful to be here. Thank you so much.
[Mary Robinette] Thank you. Well, you all have heard that here. So, now you are out of excuses. Go write.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
