Weird Things I Say to Brandons
(And how it's their fault)+Permission to waste stuff
Don’t feel like staring at a screen? I recorded myself reading this whole thing to you just in case! Listen here:
Apparently, saying weird things to Brandons* is an oddly specific habit of mine. I shall share four such interactions presently.
Brandon Sanderson.
The weird thing: At a book signing after Storymakers one year, I get up to my turn and go, “Hey, Brandon Sanderson, so, I do have books for you to sign, but first, we have something to give you.” And there in line, with not a small number of people waiting behind us, my sisters (who were on the Whitney Awards Committee) and I (who was the president) hosted an impromptu awards ceremony of our own, complete with his publicists taking pictures and me awkwardly saying “Surprise!” as I held a Whitney award out to him (which he had won with his co-author, Janci Patterson, who had accepted hers at the Gala he couldn’t attend).
How he started it: Listen, I handed him a lovely award in a proper setting the year before, and he went and stuck it on his head like a funny glass hat. So I’m just following his lead, really.
The weird thing: This Brandon is in my writing group and we’re probably neck-and-neck for best tangentalist, so I’m having trouble narrowing down a specific weird thing I’ve said to him recently. Maybe the time I ran into a room where he was a panelist right before his panel started screaming OH MY GOSH IT’S BRANDON HO! and fangirling it up. Because I will fangirl all of my writing group homies.
Yes, I’m aware of the low-hanging fruit that is a play on words using his last name. It’s hard to see him and his wife, say, at the formal Whitney Awards Gala, and not greet them with a loud, “Hello to my favorite Hos!” But I don’t want to disrespect his family name too often for an easy laugh. This does, however, remind me of a related funny story! It’s tangent time, friends!
Funny Aside: So I was outside shooting some hoops with my daughter, or attempting to shoot a hoop here and there. We decided to make it a friendly competition, and started a game of HORSE, where each time you miss a basket standing in the same place where the other player made one, you collect a letter. If you’re the first to spell HORSE, you lose. Well, I collected an H, and so did my daughter. Then, she gained an O, and I pointed at her and yelled, “Ho! How ya like me now?” What a moment for my neighbor to walk past on his way to the mailbox. And then, wouldn’t ya know it, but she got an R, right after I did. How do I explain to said neighbor, now on his return trip from the mailbox, that I’m calling my 12-year-old girl a “HOR,” and not a “whore?” Don’t worry, sir, it’s a game we play… nope.
How he started it: I’ve known Brandon since the college days, when I was still thinking I might be able to pull off being cool, and hadn’t yet given up and fully embraced my awkward. So I’ll just claim that he was awkward first, though I’m not sure it’s true.
Brandon Mull
The weird thing: I was Brandon Mull’s room host for his class after his amazing keynote speech. But the bio I was supposed to read was the same one we’d just read at his keynote. So I picked up the clipboard and told him he needed a new one, and pretended to read a different bio, which I made up as I went along. It went a little something like this:
“Brandon Mull,” I pretended to read from the sheet, “is the most efficient vacuum repairman this side of the Mississippi. He enjoys writing by day, and spends his Tuesday evenings fighting crime as his alter-ego, Mully the Hobo Clown.”
I glanced up at him from the paper. “Weird, but okay…”
He chuckled and said he liked it, sounds good. But I assured him I’d just read the paper, and then tried not to think about what in the world had just come out of my mouth.
How he started it: He put a creepy clown up on one of his slides as a jokey title image for his podcast, Mulling it Over with Brandon Mull. So it’s his fault about the clown thing. I was also still reeling from his other slide, where he introduced us all to the original German cover of Fablehaven, featuring a character he called “Yoda’s nakey cousin.” I can’t be held accountable for my brain words with images such as these taking up all the space.
Look at this fellah. So demure. How can you not love him?
The weird thing: I ran up to where he was sitting at Brandon #3’s class that I was hosting, slammed my hands on the table in front of him and said, “Brandon! Can you get Brandon some water?” He graciously jumped up and got water from the green room LIKE A FRIGGIN CHAMP, thank goodness. But probably my more cringeworthy move was when he and Colby “Not A Brandon” Dunn were doing a martial arts for writers presentation back in February where he had the audience come up and kick or punch pads. I was in a businesslike dress, and said, “We’re all friends here, right?” and then wrapped somebody’s borrowed hoodie around my waist. I told him to hold the pad up and then not look while I kicked toward him, just in case the hoodie didn’t provide adequate coverage. I could have just, ya know, not kicked. But no. That’s not how I roll. If there’s a pad to be kicked, I’m sure as shootin’ going to be getting in on that action.
How he started it: His vibe demands it, I tell you. From the curled red mustache to the unbridled enthusiasm for all the things, this Brandon just oozes an aura of people-I-can’t-help-but-be-myself-around-ness. Any strange goings on from me are his fault. Take this group photo, for example. I, along with all who saw this edit agreed that this was the appropriate way to photoshop this particular Brandon into the picture.
*Are you a Brandon with whom I have not exchanged weird words or had an awkward interaction? Never fear! Just hang out with me a little longer. It’ll happen.
Earlier this month, I got to spend some time with a whole slew of amazing writers and friends at the Storymakers Writing Conference! One of the coolest things to happen at Storymakers (or like, ever in my life) was that my publisher, Splinter Press, brought a big ol’ honkin’ sign and some fancy schmancy bookmarks to pass out to anything that moved people who wanted them. And when I scanned the QR code on the back, I saw that they’d succeeded in setting up pre-orders before the conference! Waahooo!! Aren’t they beautiful?
Preorders are up for the ebook, the paperback, and the hardcover (they’re making it easy by charging 1/2 now and 1/2 when it ships).
I’ve also started a list for ARC readers. So we’re all in the same boat, I don’t mean the barge that saves us from The Flood. I’m talking about Advance Reader Copies (sometimes called Advance Review Copies). My publisher is sending out several ebook copies to people willing to read and let us know if you see any typos or other weirdness (of the unintended variety), and possibly leave an honest review. Unless you honestly hated it, that is, in which case, you just hush up. JK LOLZ, all the reviews feed that algo, right?
Interested in being an ARC reader? Sign up here!
My advice this time comes from Brandon Mull, and it’s reiterated by Sandra Tayler.
After a fantastic weekend filling my brain and soul and body full of learns and feels and foods at Storymakers (HUGE thank you and congrats to Emily Huey and Tiana Smith for such a phenomenal job), I came across this comment, where someone was talking about AI. They not only oversimplified the reasons some people are okay with it and some aren’t, but they also stripped all nuance and beauty from what it means to produce a novel. I won’t broach the AI subject right now, but they’re dead wrong about what a novel is and what it does. Not wrong, really, just too narrow in scope.
Sure, a novel can be a product. We all enjoy the finished piece. We enjoy having written. But is that the entire point of a novel? I say nay! The vast majority of novels do not reach many readers. They don’t make Brandon S or Brandon M sales numbers or get turned into director Brandon H.’s movies. Brandon C. will likely never hear about it. This is not a secret in the writing world, yet writers keep on writing.
Why?
It is not just the end product we’re after, but the process. The real value in a novel, I submit, does not lie in the few hours of entertainment it provides, but the life-enriching experience it gave the writer to create it, and in turn, the ways it provides not only entertainment, but inspiration, new perspectives, empathy, enlightenment, safe spaces, mirrors, windows, journeys and escapes for our readers.
Further into the comment, they quoted their screenwriting teacher opining about the “point” of writing.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this teacher. This conclusion feels incredibly transactional, and completely discounts art for art’s sake, or creation for the sake of creation and for the good it does its creator. I understand that in specific cases where you are hired to create an entertaining product, it is important to fulfil your contract. But the point the commenter was trying to make was that as technology progresses, AI is just a tool to help get to that end goal of “entertainment” more efficiently, like better paint or snappier writing software, so why not let it help? I’m trying to not talk AI this time around, but here’s an interesting thing Brandon Mull said during his keynote:
We call it the Humanities because it’s how we portray what it means to be human. What an interesting task to delegate to a computer.
Brandon M. also spoke about why our writing is important—what he feels the point of it all is. Even if we’re writing alone in our basement. Even if no one ever sees a thing we write. Even if the only product we end up with is a slighty better us, a version of us who is a little closer to filling the measure of our own creation.
He said, “Everything we create only adds to creation,” his point being that anything we create adds to the whole of creation in the universe, whether it’s read by anyone or not. Even if we’re only improving ourselves by learning and growing through our solitary creative persuits, that is worth the effort. We are worth the effort.
Sandra Tayler gave a class where she made a similar point. “Grant yourself messiness.” She spoke about providing her kids with paper and crayons and everything they needed to create. The results usually ended up in the trash, but the result wasn’t the point, it was the process. She said:
I had to throw materials and time and cleanup energy onto the altar of their growth. I want you to do the same thing for yourself. Waste time. Waste materials, in order to grown. You have to.
I love the permission she gave to waste stuff. I try to tell myself nothing is wasted, every terrible sentence is a vital step in the process of creating something beautiful. I believe this. But I like the idea that wasting stuff is okay. It’s not necessarily that nothing is wasted, but that the wasting is crucial to developing our skills and confidence therein.
“You being confident is a way of making the world better,” said Sanrda. “The act of creation changes the world, even if the only one who ever sees your creation is you. The creation of that changes you . . . You can do this.”
Remind me next time to share some insights from our other keynote, Martine Leavitt, as she was also incredible!
I think I’ll skip this part, because the sections above are so long this week. Buh-Bye now!
Thanks for hanging out with me today! If you haven’t subscribed, go ahead and do that, because I have many more funny stories, and we all need a reason to smile here and there, right? I’ll see you next time!
YODAS NAKEY COUSIN. I love these stories so much.