Hello, and welcome to the thirty-seventh essay in my accidental series of essays on the art, craft, and process of writing. We're almost done; the series will eventually be fifty essays long, all of them based around my original set of fifty thoughts on writing. Because the list of thoughts was written in no particular order, the essays are addressing the various components of the writing life in no particular order, and will eventually cover just about everything. Spooky. Here's today's thought:

Thoughts on Writing #37: Hype.

We live in a world of hype. We swim in hype, we breathe hype, we eat and drink and sweat hype. But what does it mean? To expand on today's thought:

Don't buy into your own hype. There will always be people ready to tell you that you're so awesome you should be elected President on the basis of sheer badass. There will always be people ready to tell you that you're brilliant, that your books are the best things ever written, that they can't imagine why you aren't winning every award in the industry. That's okay. Those are not bad people. They're good for your career, and frankly, they're probably telling the truth; everybody has the one author that can do (almost) no wrong, or the one book that's absolutely perfect as it is. Still, those six, or sixty, or six hundred people? Are just six, or sixty, or six hundred people. If you let yourself believe them, you're going to hurt yourself in ways that I can't even begin to describe.

Hype is natural, normal, and entirely unavoidable. Some of us react to it positively—"Wow, everybody loves this, it must be awesome!" Some of us react to it negatively—"Wow, everybody loves this, it must be horrible!" Some of us just learn to ignore it, and trust our own judgment about the things we do or do not enjoy. No matter what our reactions to hype, at the end of the day, it's going to exist, and it's going to be a part of your writing life. You're going to need to deal with the good parts, the bad parts, and most importantly of all, with the parts that involve not believing everything you hear. Let's take a good look at hype, what it means, and how to keep yourself from falling under its sway. Ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on hype, and why it's not always good for you.Collapse )

So I've been chatting with various people—now that the first rush of book release crazy is blessedly behind us—about Rosemary and Rue as a book, Toby as a character, and where I think the series is going. This has led to several of my friends confessing, usually while looking slightly sheepish, that Rosemary and Rue is Not A Perfect Book. It is, tragically, Not Without Flaw. And to this I say...

Thank the Great Pumpkin.

You see—bear with me, I swear this is relevant—I'm a Counting Crows fan. Their first album, August and Everything After, was perfect. Maybe not every song, maybe not every lyric, but as an album? Perfect. The sort of album you can listen to over and over again, finding new things, making new discoveries about the way the songs fit together, the stories that the lyrics are telling...perfect. So naturally, when their second album was released (Recovering the Satellites), they got basically panned. Why? Because Recovering the Satellites was a bad album? But it wasn't. It was actually a really good album, with a lot of really good songs. So what was the problem?

The problem was that it wasn't perfect. And once you've been perfect, people are going to start expecting perfection every single time. It's the dilemma of the student who manages straight As on a report card—once may be amazing, but when you bring home that B+ next quarter, there are going to be some pointed questions directed your way.

Now, I do think that a few of the things some people view as flaws will become less flaw-like as the series goes on. At the end of the first episode of Veronica Mars, you don't know who killed Lilly Kane, who raped Veronica, or what happened to her mother, now, do you? I'm absolutely working to make sure every Toby book has a satisfying conclusion all its own, but there are going to be some narrative threads that take a long, long time to be resolved. I'm actually crazy-careful with my timelines, and with making sure that all my guns are on the mantelpiece as soon as they need to be, just so there's no "but wait, there was no six-fingered man in the plot last season."

Yes, I will tell you who killed Lilly Kane.

Yes, I will tell you who raped Veronica.

Yes, I will tell you why every little piece of importance is important. But it's going to take a while. And I will, thankfully, probably never be perfectly perfect in an individual volume...although I, like the Counting Crows, really hope that my album (or series, as the case may be) is close enough to perfect when it's done that the flaws are forgiven.

I, Seanan McGuire, having now survived the release of my first novel without bludgeoning anyone to death with a copy of Child's Traditional Ballads of England and Scotland, have once again started pondering resolutions. After all, I've posted my personal resolutions (see also "Flowers, Chocolates, and Promises You Don't Intend to Keep"), and I've posted my "don't be an asshole" resolutions (see also "A Vague Disclaimer Is Nobody's Friend"), I figure it's time to post the third set of resolutions. The ones that keep me from destroying the universe in a fit of pique.

I. I will acknowledge that no matter how fast I write, I still have a limit to how many books I can finish in a year, and while I will continue to pursue however many projects I feel like pursuing, I will not commit to delivering more than I can actually deliver. Biting off more than you can chew is a good way to end up like that python that tried to eat an alligator. No fun.

II. I will prioritize the things that I have committed to delivering over the things I haven't committed to delivering, even when I'm working well ahead of my deadlines, because deadlines make me crazy. (I'm a little worried that I'm committed to writing a book called Deadline, because deadlines make me crazy. On the plus side, Kate will beat me if I get out of control.)

III. I will continue to make sure everyone knows what I'm working on, because that reduces the number of people asking "but when is _____ going to be done?" I will also continue to remember that having ten people asking "but when is _____ going to be done?" doesn't mean I have to prioritize that project, or that it's okay to set them on fire. Everyone has their limits.

IV. I will do my best not to snap at people for asking questions which have been answered, in detail, on my website FAQs. Sometimes you just want to have an answer that's yours, rather than going to the author's website and poking around. The answers won't change, mind you, but I'll still try to be polite while giving them. (I do not, however, promise not to cut-and-paste from the FAQs when faced with questions I've answered ninety times already.)

V. While I may find discussions of the contents of Toby's cupboards endlessly fascinating, I will remember that other humans don't, necessarily, and will try to refrain from dominating dinner table conversation by explaining which brands of soup she prefers. (Vegetable barley and Spaghetti-Os, if you were wondering. Which you probably weren't.)

VI. I will continue to work as far ahead of my deadlines as possible. This has the twin benefits of not causing things to become completely uncontrollable if something comes up that can't be avoided, like last month's bout of Martian Death Flu, and of keeping me from totally scrapping a book and starting over when I get a review that upsets me. Too late! The sequel's already turned in!

VII. I will not allow myself to fall into the comfortable trap of "oh, this is what worked last time, let's just do it again, only moreso." Yes, series books and sequels will always have a tendency to be "more of the same, but moreso." That's natural. At the same time, if you hike the stakes too high, you actually run out of places to go. I'd rather do new things, and enjoy them.

VIII. I will, however, keep doing the old things that are awesome, rather than going "oh, you liked that? Well, I won't do that anymore." While that might make every book an exciting adventure, it would also make hiding from my readers an exciting adventure, and that's one exciting adventure more than I can take.

IX. I will absolutely continue to get spun-up and faintly crazy every time I have a book coming out, because I have met me. I will, however, also make it a point to thoroughly document each book release, which will have the double benefit of telling me what to expect, and telling the people who help me organize launch events what to expect. When they see checked-off to-do lists that include "wax the cat," they may realize that I mean it.

X. I will not wax the cat.

XI. I will internalize valid critique, and attempt to incorporate it into whatever I'm working on, even if my tendency to work ahead of my deadlines means that it may take a while for anyone outside my head to see the change.

XII. I will occasionally take my own advice, put down the keyboard, and go out into the big blue room where all the nature lives. I like the nature. The nature likes me, too. The nature stings and bites and generally does its best to destroy me, and I really appreciate that. Good things happen when I go out into nature. Sometimes the good things include antivenin, and I'm cool with that, too.

XIII. I will write.

As an urban fantasy author who grew up on a steady diet of fairy tales, horror movies, Disney princesses, Victorian Gothics, and other seeming contradictory influences, I'm pretty regularly asked "Well, can't you just make up your mind?" Unicorns aren't supposed to gore you; werewolves aren't supposed to save the day. Horror and fantasy aren't meant to exist on the same shelf, much less in the same story. And to this I say...

Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, there were three sisters, living in...well, not harmony, exactly, but living in the sort of uneasy cease-fire that comes naturally to a lot of siblings. Horror—we'll call her Rose Red, in honor of the color she tends to paint the landscape behind her—thought that her sisters played too nicely with their toys. They never stopped to smell the entrails. Fantasy, on the other hand—and let's call her Snow White, since that's a nice, familiar, fantasy name—wondered why Rose had to be so nasty all the time, and why her sisters couldn't see the virtue of sugar and spice and sleeping for a hundred years beneath the fairy hills. Meanwhile, stuck in the middle of it all, you had their poor sister Marchen—arguably the eldest, and somehow always the first to be forgotten—trying to hold it all together. We'll call her Lily Fair (and there's a reason for that), and she was constantly trying to strike a balance between the other two, or at least keep them from killing each other, because Lily understood something that people still have trouble with today: Lily understood that they were all telling the same story.

Sure, Rose's stories tended to wreak havoc on the poor woodland creatures, while Snow's tended to result in an unbearable overabundance of talking rabbits; sure, Lily's stories almost always came with morals, while the other two were perfectly content to just let a haunted castle be a haunted castle; but they were all sides of the same basic human need to imagine something more. Marchen contained all the horror and all the fantasy that anybody could want, and as long as Lily was in charge of that weird little trio, things held together.

But then, well, things changed. Marchen was reduced, cleansed and simplified, becoming "fairy tales" and getting regulated to the nursery, where they were taught alongside Mother Goose and her kin. The Fair Folk of the old stories began transforming into the Tinker Belles and Hot Topic decals of today. Little Red Riding Hood lived. Cinderella's sisters kept their eyes. And bit by bit, Lily lost control. Quite literally—the name "Lily Fair" isn't just a casual invention, but takes its source from the same tradition that gives us Rose and Snow. How many people have heard the story that it comes from? Not many. Like so many other stories that mixed the horrific with the fantastic, the tale that Lily came from was left behind when the decision was made to turn the darkest stories into tales for children.

Without Lily to provide balance and keep them together, Rose and Snow began rapidly drifting apart. While there were elements of horror in fantasy—Shelob, anyone?—they were reduced to the merely monstrous, becoming things for the glorious light to overcome, often to the strains of a gallant harper's jaunty airs. Meanwhile, while there might be fantasy in the horrific—even Frankenstein dreams of better things while making his monster, much as he'll later come to regret that particular plan—it became more and more fleeting, used to taunt the doomed while dragging them deeper down into the pit. Rose and Snow stopped speaking to one another. They didn't even exchange birthday cards anymore. And no one mentioned Lily, because who wants to go through that again?

And they all lived miserably ever after.

Only not, because "man" and "magpie" share letters for a reason. We never really let go of the older, twistier stories; we just put them on shelves for a little while, until we could figure out what to do with them. How to make the a functional part of our world again. Bit by bit, we've been rediscovering those old paths, and realizing that fairy tales really were urban fantasy, as we currently define it. "Fantasy set in what is essentially the real world, mingling with real people, in real situations." Well, once upon a time, "the real world" wasn't a city, it was a big, scary wood where there might be wolves, or robbers, or any one of a thousand other things. "Real people" weren't businessmen and police, they were woodcutters and tinkers and little old women whose granddaughters brought them baskets full of goodies. The world changed, the stories moved on...but the roots remained.

I see the current trend toward urban fantasy as, in some ways, the resurrection of Lily Fair. We always needed her; we always needed that middle ground, where the monsters and the fairy godmothers could get together and work out their problems without worrying about the curtains (they're stain-proof) or what the neighbors will think (they're all enchanted princes, anyway). Urban fantasy gives us that, and more, because it makes the trio whole again. I have made up my mind, thank you very much. I've decided to be a daughter of Lily Fair, who might not be as sweet, and might not be as sour, but is never, never boring.

This time, I think we're shooting for the happy ending.

(Originally posted as a guest blog for Penguin.com.)

This is National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness week, which is something I consider to be genuinely important. We're an appearance-based society, to a large extent, and "you don't look sick" is a far-too-common statement. talkstowolves has posted about her experiences living with temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJD), as well as a variety of other conditions. It's very eye-opening. Meanwhile, jimhines has posted about the frightening financial realities of diabetes.

I don't have an invisible chronic illness. What I have is an invisible chronic disability. At some point during my early to mid-teens, I managed to severely herniate three disks in my lower lumbar spine (L3-L5, for the morbidly curious). Because I was extremely overweight at the time, every doctor I saw for more than ten years said "lose weight and the pain will go away," and didn't look any deeper to see why a twenty-three year old woman was staggering into their offices screaming whenever she put her foot down and unable to straighten without vomiting.

Because the body learns to cope with things, I eventually recovered enough mobility to decide to do what the doctors were telling me, went on Weight Watchers, and lost over a hundred pounds. This wasn't as hard as it might have been, because I am a) a naturally picky eater and b) naturally really, really, "was walking a mile every morning to the convention center at the San Diego International Comic Convention, because that calmed me down enough to move calmly through the crowds" hyperactive. So "here, eat lettuce and do aerobics," not exactly the most difficult thing I'd ever heard.

Sadly, it turned out that the doctors were wrong. Being severely overweight may have made things worse, but it didn't cause the injury, and a year and a half of hard aerobics definitely made things worse. In the fall of 2007, I began experiencing numbness of my right side, culminating in losing all feeling in my right leg and nearly falling into traffic when I suddenly couldn't walk. That's when a doctor finally slapped me into an MRI machine, went "oh, crap," and started dealing with my actual injuries.

I look totally healthy. I walk quickly. I move sharply. I am 5'7", reasonably young, and apparently able-bodied. But sometimes I sit in the "people with disabilities" seats, because I literally can't stand on the train for the duration of my commute. Sometimes I glaze over while I'm talking to people, because my sciatic nerve has started screaming like my leg is full of fire ants, and I'm trying to figure out a polite way to excuse myself to go take painkillers. Sometimes I keep walking at a crazy death-march pace because I can feel the numbness creeping back, and if I don't get to my destination before I lose the temporary use of my leg, I'm going to be stuck. That's just how life is.

We may eventually pursue surgical solutions—right now, I'm doing physical therapy, restricted forms of exercise, and trying to work out a detente with my own limitations. They aren't bad enough to qualify me for full-time disability, just bad enough to be inconvenient, invisible, and keep me off roller coasters. Sometimes I meet people who blow off my limits as "whining" or "being lazy." They don't stay part of my life for long.

So please, this week, and every week, remember that appearances are deceiving; like books and their covers, you can't judge a person's health by how fast they're moving. They may just be outrunning the collapse.

Here in California, the blackberry brambles are putting out their last, sweetest berries, the ones that taste like an entire summer crammed into less than a single bite of fruit. The season's scant burden of tomatoes is ripe and colored like a thousand bonfires, coming in from the fields a bushel at a time. The butterflies are migrating down the coast, toward warmer climes; the department stores are dressing themselves in orange and black, like a season of mourning for our departing monarchs. Stray cats sun themselves later into the afternoon, because it takes that much longer for the concrete to warm up.

Summer is ending.

I always feel a little wistful this time of year. Autumn is my favorite season; I love the colors of the world, the constant taste of rain and bonfires in the air, and the seasonal ice cream flavors that inevitably cluster in the supermarkets. I love Halloween. I love the buildup and the teardown and everything else that comes with it. But still, the summer's ending. The rains are coming, the snows are coming, the harvest is coming in. Lily Fair only holds her court for a few months at a time, and then it's Snow White's turn for days on days, and then Rose Red again. We have so little time here, it makes me wistful to know that no matter how much I love it, it never lasts.

The orb weaver spiders are building their webs against the winter. The squirrels are squirreling away everything they can. The crows are singing songs of the cold days to come. And I'm watching my temporary country come around again, and I have my passport, and I'm an autumn girl; it's been too long since I've been home.

It's time for the thirty-sixth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art, craft, and process of writing. There will eventually be fifty essays in all, all of them based around my original set of fifty thoughts on writing. No, I didn't set out to write an essay series, but I figure it's too late to object now. These fifty essays touch on a lot of different topics, and are all aimed at helping you stay sane as a writer, sometimes through process, sometimes through perspective. Here's today's thought:

Thoughts on Writing #36: Plotting Against You.

I don't actually mean that there's some sort of vast global conspiracy against you, although I can't promise that there isn't. To expand on today's thought:

You're going to get ideas from wherever it is you get ideas. There's no magic well. There's no "proper source." They'll come when they come, and you can't force them to show up if you're not ready to have them. The "what if..." moment is one of the most amazing things there is, and when it happens, you'll be the king of all creation, you'll be so fucking cool that nobody can stop you from conquering the planet...but you can't make it come. Just expose yourself to the world, and wait, and see what happens.

The question "where do you get your ideas?" is one that haunts writers, from the high school creative writing prodigy to the grizzled old lion who's published seventy novels, all of them still in print. People always want to know where the ideas come from, like there's some secret well or magical wardrobe that we're just not willing to share. I wish this were true, but it's not. So how to do we handle the fact that we're working with a resource that is at once limitless and severely limited, and how do we keep from bludgeoning our friends? Let's take a look at ideas, where they come from, how to attract them, and why we'll never be able to schedule their arrival. Ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on ideas, and where they come from.Collapse )

With Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] approaching its official release date, and with my evenings spent neck-deep in The Brightest Fell, aka, "Toby five," aka, "the book I am writing partially as a form of informing the universe that it really needs to give me the sales to sustain a long series," it's only natural that my thoughts should be turning to reviews and promotion. I have Google spiders set to tell me whenever my name or the title of my book get mentioned—they aren't perfect, but they do pretty well—and I try not to let myself obsess too much about my Goodreads ranking or Amazon sales number. (These are not easy things to avoid obsessing over. I admit that. But a girl can still try.) This has led, of course, to contemplation.

Do I like reviews? Well, yeah. What author doesn't like reviews? Especially since I'm a shiny new author, which means reviews will have a genuine impact on my sales—I'll read the new Kelley Armstrong regardless of what the reviewers say, because I know she does what I like, but I didn't pick up Jeri Smith-Ready (who is also made of awesome) until I started hearing people I trusted saying good things about her. I especially appreciate the fact that, now that we have the wonders of the Internet, everybody can be a reviewer. I mean, yes, that means that people like me, whose credentials are questionable at best, are allowed to express our opinions with apparent authority, but it also means that there's a range. I'm a lot more likely to trust a product whose reviews have a range than I am a product only discussed in the most glowing of terms. At a certain point, the "does your book cure cancer?" blinders kick on.

Which brings me to today's actual topic: what constitutes "going too far" where reviews are concerned? I regularly solicit the readers of this blog to post reviews, and while I'm not going to hunt people down and make sad eyes at them if they post something really negative, the odds are pretty good that if you're here, you're well-inclined to like my writing, or at least play nicely. (Not always, mind you. No one is nastier to my favorite authors than I am when I feel like they've lost the thread. At the same time, because they're my favorite authors, even before I adopted my "post no negative reviews" position, I was likely to not say anything at all.) Now, I don't think this is being uncool. It's not like I'm paying people, and it's not like I can actually force anyone. Also, I told my mother she's not allowed to post a review. I have done what I can.

At the same time, there are ways that some people really abuse the review system. Let's take a hypothetical book called Mary Sue Goes to Mordor. It's published through a small press, but it has Amazon distribution, and the author—like all authors—has the understandable desire to see the book succeed. Without a major press, it's very unlikely that there will be many review copies kicking around, and almost certain that there won't be a big press campaign. So it's all word-of-mouth and Amazon reviews. It's natural that the mind might turn to thoughts of upping those numbers, just a little...just to even the playing field, as it were.

So now Mary Sue Goes to Mordor has fifteen reviews, all of them five-star, all of them heaping praise on the book in a glowing manner. Often mentioning not only the author in superlative terms, but also praising the publisher for "doing it again," perhaps in hopes that this will lead curious readers to click through to other titles by the same publisher. Where does the line lie beyond which the reviews are simply impossible to trust? How many "reinventing the world of fantasy" comments can be taken before the book crosses the line into "not with a ten foot pole"?

No, Mary Sue Goes to Mordor isn't the title of a real book, although it sounds like it would be similar in concept to The Wizard, the Witch, and Two Girls from Jersey, which was a disturbing amount of fun. So if I saw Mary Sue Goes to Mordor on the shelf, I'd probably give it a read. This question basically comes from a combination of a) chasing my own reviews around the Internet, watching to see what critical response will actually be, and b) seeing several books take the hypothetical approach above—the one where half the reviews just read like they were written by the same guy changing accounts as quickly as he could.

There are lines. The lines are funky. I'm going to quote David Edelman here, and say: "Don't post glowing reviews of your books on Amazon under assumed names. Don't start up your own fan websites. Don't go through the phone book and call bookstores anonymously asking if they stock this amazing new book you've just heard about. In fact, any time a marketing activity involves the use of pseudonyms, that should raise a red flag."

And now I'm going to link to his fantastic essay, A Guide to Ethical Self-Promotion.

And now that I've thought my thinky thoughts for tonight, I'm going to go to bed.

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-fifth essay in my current series of essays on the art and process of writing. All fifty of the essays in the series are based around my original set of fifty thoughts on writing. These fifty essays touch on every aspect of the writing life that I could think of; some apply directly to the process, while others apply more to maintaining your sanity while being a writer. If you ask me, they're of equal importance. Here's today's thought:

Thoughts on Writing #35: Gimme a Break.

No, I'm not suggesting that you break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar; I'm talking about down time. To expand on today's thought a little:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a break from time to time. I pretty much write every day of my life—I'm a junkie, and I admit it—but there are days where the writing takes an hour in the morning, and is then set aside completely, in favor of seeing Flogging Molly perform. Sometimes, my "writing" for the day consists of jotting notes in my planner (also known as "Seanan's second brain"). I need those pauses to reset myself, and sometimes, to find new books in the world around me. Don't hate yourself for needing to breathe.

This is one of those thoughts that seems so logical that it shouldn't need expressing—of course it's okay to take breaks! Dude, we're allowed our leisure time!—but oddly, it's also one of the things I've found personally most challenging. Writing is both a job and a leisure activity for me, and, it seems, for many of us. So how do we keep those functions of our lives split, and how do we keep from becoming so wrapped up in our work that we forget to play? Let's take a look at leisure, and how to have some without losing all our hard work. Ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on taking the occasional break.Collapse )

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-fourth essay in my currently ongoing series of essays on the crazy little thing we call "writing." All fifty essays are based around my original set of fifty thoughts on writing. The fifty thoughts were written in a single sitting, and thus wander aimlessly through a wide variety of aspects of the writing life. The essays were not written in a single sitting, because I am nowhere near that crazy. Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #34: Obligations 'R' Us.

I tend to enjoy the process of not being hit, but it might help to have a little context to go with that summation:

The only people you owe your work to are your agent, your editor, and your publishing house. Don't let anyone pressure you.

This is one of our simpler thoughts, on the face of things, but once we start digging into it, it rapidly expands in complexity. Don't we, as writers, have an obligation to our readers? More, don't I keep saying that we need to be gracious? Well, what's so gracious about saying "I'm sorry, I don't owe you anything"? It's a difficult line to draw, and it's an even more difficult line to hold, especially now that we're here in the Internet age of instant gratification. So how do we cope with the pressure when we've been praying for that pressure all our lives? Let's discuss obligation, pressure, and why they matter. Ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on your obligations as a writer.Collapse )

Naturally, one of the topics discussed at the SDCC was "how are we going to market and position the Mira Grant books?" Toby is, in some ways, a much easier property to position; she's urban fantasy, straight up, with a noir shaker and a twist of lime. (The lime is cursed, but that's beside the point.) Do I think that Toby is new and different and exciting, and deserves a place on your bookshelf? Of course I do. I'm the author. But the urban fantasy community is huge and healthy enough that it's reasonably non-traumatic to find reviewers and readers, say "look, shiny," and actually get their attention.

The Newsflesh trilogy, on the other hand, is weird distopian zombie horror science fiction. I was describing it to people as "what happens when you cross Transmetropolitan, The West Wing, and The Night of the Living Dead." I consider Feed to be one of the best things I've ever written, but that doesn't mean I think it's the world's easiest thing to market effectively, since "please watch seven seasons of a television drama and the works of George Romero, and read this really cool but pretty long comic book series, and then you'll totally want to read my book" doesn't actually work as a strategy. Although it would be awesome.

So we talked marketing and positioning and various other fun things ending with "ing," and I started looking at the various marketing strategies playing out around the convention with a bit more of a critical eye. It helped that this year's con played host to the single most brilliant piece of unusual marketing I've seen in a long time:

Syfy created the Cafe Diem.

The Cafe Diem is a major location on Eureka, showing up in almost every episode. Syfy took over a local diner, completely rebranding it to match their fictional restaurant. The menus, the logos, the waitstaff, everything was transformed into a little slice of Eureka, the smartest small town on Earth. They had monitors throughout the restaurant showing Syfy bumpers and sizzle reels for the various shows, and it was sheer brilliance in marketing. I probably couldn't tell you any real details of the "big media" booths inside the convention...but I'm going to remember the Cafe Diem for years.

The folks responsible for the promo for 9—the new Tim Burton-produced "stitchpunk" movie—also deserve a round of applause: they had clearly-labeled runners scattered through the convention, handing out con-exclusive cards. If you got all eight of the character cards, you could start looking for The Machine. If you found The Machine, and got his card, you could win a prize. The prize had a time limit, and Jeanne and I didn't much care about it anyway; what we wanted was The Machine's card. We seriously spent hours upon hours searching for The Machine, and when we found him, triumph and victory were ours. This, too, made more of an impression on me than all the bored-looking half-naked women in the world.

Being innovative with promotion is hard, especially at a place like the San Diego Comic-Con, where the signal to noise ration is just insane. Thinking about it is interesting, though, and I have some fun ideas. Sadly, none of them involve taking over a diner.

Yet.

One of the few black spots on an otherwise shining weekend involved...a shirt. A shirt, and an attitude that went with the shirt in question.

See, there was a lot of stupid pre-con surrounding the fact that OH NOES TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! Never mind that Twilight, whether you like it or not, is speculative fiction, full of My Little Vampires, and has spawned a massively successful movie series. Never mind that this same complaint came up about the Harry Potter people, the urban fantasy people, and lots of other "not our kind" groups, before they became "our kind." TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! IT IS TEH END OF DAYZ!!!! Worse yet, they're girls! Icky icky girls! The mainstream press—which still views the female geek as a charmingly endangered species, one which is potentially a myth—grabbed this and ran with it; if you go digging, you can find some...charming...articles about "the female invasion of Comic-Con" and "girls meeting geeks."

I first "invaded" Comic-Con thirteen years ago. Pretty sure I was a girl at the time. My boyfriend at the time definitely thought so, and as he had more opportunity to perform practical examinations than anybody from the mainstream press, I'm going to place bets that he was right. But anyway.

The Twilight girls, understandably, took offense, since they were being presented as fluff-brained bimbos who wouldn't know a comic book if it bit them on the booty. The general populace of Comic-Con wasn't offended, per se, although some offense started brewing when the Twilight fans started speaking up, since the cycle o' slag went media -> them -> us. But there was still the chance that everybody would be able to just get along. I know that I'm a lot more focused on getting where I'm going, at-con, than I am at playing Sharks vs. Jets in the middle of the Exhibit Hall.

But then came...the shirts.

Shirts on Twilight girls all over the convention. Shirts which read, in large, easy-to-read lettering, "Yes I am a real woman / Yes I am at Comic-Con / Yes I love Twilight." As a "real woman" who's been attending Comic-Con since before she could legally drink, these shirts awakened in my breast the deep and abiding desire to force-feed them to the people wearing them. I did not do so. Be proud of me. Be especially proud of me since large groups of the shirt-wearers—not all of them, by any means; I'm sure there were Twilight fans who were having a fantastic time without trying to piss in anybody's Cheerios—chose to stand around near the Exhibit Hall cafes and out by the Heroes carnival, making snotty comments about the costumes, figures, and overall appearance of the non-Twilight girls who went walking by.

Not cool.

I am a girl who likes the X-Men. I am a girl who likes horror movies. I am a girl whose favorite comics currently in print are Hack/Slash, The Boys, and Creepy. I am a girl who has spent a long damn time fighting for respect in her chosen geeky social circles, because we are still the minority in a lot of places, and it's difficult to convince your average horror geek that the female IQ is not calculated by taking the national average and subtracting her bra size. Twilight aside, there aren't enough of us to start playing this sort of game. Yes! You in the shirt, you're a real woman! And so am I! And so is every other girl at this convention! I did not give up my right to femininity just by deciding that I like to keep my My Little Ponies and my blood-drinking monsters separate, nor did you get a double-dose by combining the two. Women have been fighting for respect in comic and media fandom for a long time. Undermining that fight, even if you're doing it because you were provoked, just undermines us all.

No one has to like what I like. I try not to judge the likes and dislikes of others, and even when I can't avoid it, I try not to wander around in T-shirts that say things like "Every time editorial brings back Jean Grey, Magneto kills a kitten" or "Women Opposing More Bad Adapted Terror: JUST SAY NO TO STEPHEN KING MOVIES." All this could have been avoided if people hadn't been dicks to the Twilight fans in the first place...but I really do wish the Twilight fans hadn't felt compelled to be dicks to the rest of us in return.

I, Seanan McGuire, am intending to be writing books, stories, and other bits of fiction for the foreseeable future. Because I am a reasonably nice person (except when I'm not) who likes not being lynched (except when I do), I have decided to make the following promises. They're sort of the other side of my personal resolutions (see also "Flowers, Chocolates, and Promises You Don't Intend to Keep"), only they're a little more geared toward stuff I won't do because I don't want to be an asshole.

I. If something is part of a series, I will say that it is part of a series. I won't stealthily trick you into picking up a book and then spring a cliffhanger on you. I won't promise that stand-alone books will never develop sequels, but I promise that as soon as I know, I'll get the information out there. (Kate will tell you I don't write stand-alone books. Kate is sadly probably right.)

II. If I discover that a book has been packaged in a way that does not clearly indicate that something is part of a series, I will make doubly sure to include series information in a prominent place on my website, because a little typing now is a lot more fun than a lot of getting yelled at later.

III. I will do my absolute best to end every book in a way which makes it perfectly okay to say "right, done now." If this isn't possible, for whatever reason, I will only end a book on a cliffhanger or unresolved note when I can provide a guaranteed publication date for the sequel.

IV. I will not change genres in the middle of an ongoing series just because I've decided that I really want to be writing steampunk horror instead of urban fantasy and don't want to go through the work of starting something new. (Actually, I always want to go through the work of starting something new. Still, it's nice to be upfront.)

V. If I get tired of a series, I will bring it to a reasonable and satisfying conclusion, rather than continuing to beat the dead horse for another eighteen volumes out of inertia.

VI. I will keep my FAQs up-to-date and accessible, thus making it a little less annoying when I become completely overwhelmed and answer ninety percent of the questions I receive with "it's in the FAQs." (This should also give me time to answer the remaining ten percent in English, not Typo. Typo is a strange and difficult language, and I've never really mastered it.)

VII. I will continue to put myself through rigorous and vicious editorial, because the editing process is fun. Also because if I stop allowing myself to be edited, Vixy and Brooke will come for me in the night. They will come for me in the night with very sharp sticks, and they will edit me.

VIII. I will not answer fair and reasoned critique with "oh yeah? Why don't you come over here and say it to my face, punk?" For one thing, some people might, and those are usually the people that are bigger than I am.

IX. I will not rewrite my work to meet unfair and unreasoned critique. Not everyone is going to like me. I will attempt to be at peace with that. When I am not at peace with that, I will attempt to do something other than "hide under the bed and hope they go away."

X. I will not answer "you killed my favorite character" with "it sucks to be you, doesn't it?" I also won't resurrect anybody whose resurrection was not already planned. No, not even if you cry.

XI. If you say "Bob is my favorite character," and then we have a big fight, I will not take it out on Bob. That isn't fair to Bob. It isn't fair to my plot, either. But damn, I'll probably be tempted.

XII. I will not write a book just for the purpose of "creating real literature" and "finally being taken seriously as an author." I take horror movies, My Little Ponies, and street pennies seriously. I thus must assume that some people will take me seriously no matter what I do, and since they don't require me to wear a powder blue pantsuit and go on Oprah, they're the ones that matter.

XIII. I will remember that I am Christopher Walken, and enjoy every minute of it.

A year ago, I posted my fifty thoughts on writing, which has since managed to turn into an essay series (don't ask me how that keeps happening to me). Naturally, my thinking about writing didn't stop with those initial fifty thoughts, and working on the essays has just made me think about writing even more. It's a little disturbing. I've spent the last year a) writing at a pace that makes me wonder what the hell I've been doing with myself for most of my life (oh, yeah—having a life), b) revising at a similar pace, and c) thinking about writing enough that it's a miracle that I haven't managed to set myself on fire. Just give me a little more time.

I've also spent the past year really digging myself into the reality of what it means to be a professional writer, even if I am not yet full-time. So today, because I still believe firmly in the art of over-sharing, I've decided to write down some more of my conclusions about writing...and my conclusions about what it means to be a working writer, which means that some of these may be less universally applicable, but may still be helpful for relating to the writers in your life. You may look at my list and go "wow, she's totally out of her tiny little blonde mind." You may look at this list and go "wow, I never thought of it that way." And either way is totally fine. My method of writing is not yours. Your method of writing is not mine. And we should all be very grateful for that, because if we cloned my muse, the world would rapidly run out of absinthe and cherry pie.

( Click here to be subjected to a variety of disconnected thoughts on the wonderful world of writing. Fifty new thoughts for 2009! You must be at least this tall to ride this ride.Collapse )

So last year, Entertainment Weekly decided to rank "the new classics," and made lists of the "100 Most Influential" bits of various media in the last few decades. They had a list of movies, a list of books, a list of TV series, and so on. This, naturally, made me think, because their list looked absolutely nothing like mine would. I promptly took umbrage, as I am wont to do, and made my own list of books that influenced and informed my reality. That was a year ago. Things can change considerably, in a year.

You know what comes next.

Books on this list aren't necessarily high literature; they're not necessarily classics; they're not even necessarily particularly good, although I think the bulk of them are. They're just the books that combined to construct a me. They are, in short, not the books I was supposed to fall in love with; just the ones that I did.

Your list will probably be drastically different. You may still want to take a look at mine. You might just find a few things that will surprise you.

( Click here for Seanan's updated list of 100 books that have influenced and rocked her world, and which may have influenced and rocked yours. Complete, in some cases, with commentary. Because she can, that's why.Collapse )

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-third essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. All these essays are based around my original set of fifty thoughts on writing, and are moving rapidly through a variety of aspects of the art, craft, and primary reason for insomnia that is the life of the writer. Many of these thoughts are not exclusive to the professional; if you write at all, they can apply to you. Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #33: Not Making People Hit You.

I tend to enjoy the process of not being hit, but it might help to have a little context to go with that summation:

Learn to be gracious to everyone who helps you. Thank your proofers. Thank your editors. Thank your agent. Thank your readers. They're doing you a favor. You're also doing them a favor—you're letting them play with your kids—so don't be servile, but do be gracious.

It may seem a little odd to you that I feel the need to say this, but honestly, after watching my own behavior under pressure, and the behavior of others, I feel that it's an important statement to make. Not just for writers, either. No matter who you are or what you do, you need to be gracious, and appreciative of the things that people do for you when you don't need them to. Our culture tells us it's better to give than to receive. How do you react to the good things without seeming entitled, arrogant, or just plain snotty? Let's discuss graciousness, what it means, and how we all sometimes fall a little short. Ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on being properly gracious.Collapse )

Okay, so here's the thing:

At my DucKon reading, I was making jokes about "the thirty-five dollar retirement plan"—IE, "if everyone I know bought that many copies of my books, I'd be a lot closer to no longer needing a day job." While this really was a joke—I intend to be working in an office environment for a while yet, since I like having health insurance and paying for cable—there was also an aspect of seriousness to it. The midlist is in trouble, and has been in trouble for quite some time.

What's the midlist?

Well, to quote Wikipedia (source of all knowledge): "Midlist is a term in the publishing industry which refers to books which are not bestsellers but are strong enough to economically justify their publication (and likely, further purchases of future books from the same author). The vast majority of total titles published are midlist titles, though they represent a much smaller fraction of total book sales, which are dominated by bestsellers and other very popular titles."

Most genre authors are publishing "in the midlist." This has always been the case, and it's not a bad thing—my favorite author may be considered a blockbuster sort of a guy (Stephen King), but the majority of the authors I adore are solidly midlist, and have been for the length of their careers. I am honored to know that my books will be in the midlist, at least until my mother gets her way and convinces the entire West Coast to buy them. (If I don't type that, she'll hit me.)

So why is the midlist in trouble? A lot of reasons. Some of them have to do with marketing, some have to do with the business models of the larger chain bookstores, some have to do with the fact that people are reading less, and some have to do with the big books becoming bigger than they've ever been before. When most people only read one book a year, if that book was written by Nora Roberts instead of Jeri Smith-Ready, it matters.

Where's the math?

This will seem like a tangent, but bear with me: I was asked recently whether I had a problem with used bookstores and libraries, since the author only gets paid once. I do not have a problem with either of these things. I'd be a hypocrit if I had a problem with used bookstores, since every used bookstore owner in the East Bay knows me by name, and libraries are proof that humanity is worthy of existence. Plus, libraries do provide reporting, and they track what's popular, stocking additional copies of the things that people really want to read. Used bookstores are a form of recycling. I've always seen them as running on a sort of karma, since you only get what you really want if you're dedicated, lucky, and persistent. I have good used bookstore karma. I work very hard to maintain it.

That being said, especially with the authors in the midlist, numbers really matter. Let's say I got a ten dollar advance for Rosemary and Rue (for the sake of keeping the numbers simple). Now, I get 6% of the cover price of the first 150,000 units sold, and 8% of anything after that, since presumably once my publisher has sold that many, they really want to keep me happy. I think we figured out that this was roughly forty-eight cents a book, at current mass-market cover price. Let's call it fifty cents, because again, math is hard. It's like a word problem:

Seanan is paid a ten dollar advance for her new book. Her publisher credits her fifty cents for every copy they sell. After they have made more money than the amount of her advance, they will start paying her that money as royalties. How many copies must Seanan's book sell before she can pay the grocery bill? How many copies must Seanan's book sell before her publisher will buy the next one?

With these highly simplified numbers, the answer is easy: clearly, I need to sell twenty books to earn out my advance, and when the twenty-first book sells, woo-hoo, I can buy a can of generic soda! (Well, not really. Remember that my agent gets seven cents out of that fifty, to pay her commission. So really, there will be no celebratory soda until the twenty-second book flies off the shelf.) The trouble is that real advances, even small ones, tend to be larger than ten dollars, which means I need to sell a lot more copies before my publisher will be a happy camper.

How many copies need to sell before they want to keep publishing me? That math is truly beyond my ken, for which I am glad, as I like to sleep at night. But that is why I keep telling people where they can buy my books, and why, my passionate love of used bookstores aside, I recommend buying the books of currently-publishing midlist authors new whenever you can manage to swing it. Those little fifty-cent-per-book transactions add up, and it's the final number that really matters.

Math is hard. Where's my damn strawberry ice cream?

Welcome to the thirty-second essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. All these essays are based around my original fifty thoughts on writing, and are working their way in a disorganized manner through a variety of aspects of the art, craft, and excuse for antisocial behavior that is the life of the writer. Not necessarily the professional writer; just the writer, period. Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #32: Deadlines.

That's even less helpful than our normal short-form thoughts, so here's our expanded thought for the day:

Deadlines are your friends. Learn how to work to them. If you ever start publishing, you're going to be getting a lot of deadlines, and you won't necessarily have any real say in the matter. It's best if it's not a shock to the system.

Love 'em or hate 'em, the world is full of deadlines, and the world of the writer is doubly full of deadlines. There are deadlines dictating when you need to get the words onto the page, when you need to finish processing editorial changes, when you need to correct any typos, and when you turn in your manuscript. So how do you maintain your sanity in the face of a seemingly endless list due dates? How do you meet your deadlines, how do you handle it when you miss a deadline, and how do you cope? Let's talk setting deadlines, meeting deadlines, and living with deadlines. Ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on deadlines.Collapse )

It's time for the thirty-first essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. Thirty-one essays, and I still haven't run out of things to say. All these essays are based around my original fifty thoughts on writing, and are touching on just about every aspect of the art, craft, and marginal insanity that is this particular profession. Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #31: This Is Not A Race.

As always, and because it's good to explain yourself, here's our expanded thought for the day:

Measuring your output against someone else's output is a game with no winners at all. Maybe you write fast. Maybe you write slow. Maybe you're somewhere in the middle. I can write an obscene number of pages on a good day, and finish it off with a song and maybe a sonnet or two. Another friend of mine considers herself to be doing amazingly well if she finishes three pages in eight hours. Neither of us is doing anything wrong. Some of the best books ever written took years to finish; so did some of the worst. Write at your own pace, and know what that pace is.

Everyone naturally moves at their own speed. Some of us are fast, some of us are slow. Some of us are somewhere in the middle. Our quality will often be determined by our natural comfort zone. Is it something we can push out of? Is it something we should push out of? Let's talk speed, why it matters, and why yours is no better than mine. Ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on output.Collapse )

Today is June 1st. According to my big list of holidays, it's Dare Day. Fitting, I suppose. It's also three months, exactly, to the release of Rosemary and Rue, which means it's probably two months to the actual physical production of Rosemary and Rue, and time to start the giant "When will Seanan have her first nervous collapse of the year?" betting pool. (Much as I'm complaining about convention season, it's actually a very, very good thing. Convention season keeps me focused. True, what I'm focused on is primarily "get in and out of the next convention alive and without being brought up on murder charges," but any focus is better than no focus. I flail a lot when I have no focus. I flail a lot regardless of focus; it's just that focused flailing is less destructive and more amusing for the people around me.)

I keep looking at the numbers on my "countdown to book release" and thinking "that can't be right..."

In case you were curious, the date on the short story that marks the first-ever appearance, in any form, of October Daye, is...Friday, June 27th, 1997. So if I seem a little flipped-out about Rosemary and Rue coming out, just remember that from where I'm sitting, it's been a long, long journey. A long, long journey that is, in a very real way, just getting started.

Three months. Good ye gods.

I need some candy corn.

So here's the basic skinny: recently, an ARC for Rosemary and Rue (which is, y'know, not available until September) showed up on eBay. I stomped around, I glared, I made hissy noises, and I got on with my life, because that's what I do. (Behold the Irish temper in action! On the plus side, you can distract me from world-destroying fury with something shiny. On the minus side, that something shiny may well be a death ray.) My dear friend trektone had a question. Namely:

"I'd be interested to know (in your spare time, of course) your opinion of the buying/selling/trading/etc. of ARCs & book proofs. If they are by favorite authors, I love them. ... Regarding your stated urge in #6 above, is it because the official book has yet to hit the shelves? Or because you're not getting your nickel or whatever from the sale? Both? Something else?"

Now, in my spare time, I'm going to provide an answer. Because I can.

The buying/selling/trading/rendering into art installations of ARCs actually makes me happy...after the official book has hit shelves. Beforehand, it both seems like a rather pointed way of taking advantage of people with poor impulse control—look! You don't have to wait, if you're just willing to pay three times the cover price!—and sort of counter to what ARCs are for. I guess I see the "R" as standing primarily for "review" where ARCs are concerned. (While I'm not going to say "oh, sure, re-sell that ARC when you're done with it" to every reviewer on the planet, I'm also not silly enough to think that every person who receives an ARC is going to love it and treasure it and call it George. Lo, I am a slightly smarter blonde than that.)

The giving away of ARCs, or the re-selling of ARCs after they have been read, strikes me as a totally natural part of the book's life cycle. I mean, I don't "get my nickel" from used bookstore sales, and I believe that used bookstores are quite possibly proof of the divine. I don't "get my nickel" from the reviewers and bookstores and con goers and contest winners who receive ARCs through normal channels. Instead, I get reviews, early readers, and people talking about the book...which, if the book is worth talking about, is a good thing. (Presumably, a book could be bad enough that the author would want to collect and burn all the available ARCs. I'm trying to avoid becoming so neurotic that I worry about this particular issue, and I'm worrying about sensible things, instead. Like the idea of Godzilla eating New York, and hence, my publisher, before book two can come out.)

I guess I'm just not all that sanguine with the idea of ARCs showing up on sites like eBay, totally unread and unreviewed, because a) my publisher isn't getting paid for it, b) my publisher, in fact, paid to have it printed, and is hence losing money if the person who buys the ARC doesn't proceed to buy the official version, and c) it didn't get the chance to do its job before it was ripped from the nest and thrown to the wolves.

trektone also says:

"I'm aware "Not for Sale" is typically printed/stamped on the ARC cover. I've obtained ARCs in many ways: free from authors/book folks, purchased from used book stores, winning bidder in charity auctions. For most of the many ARCs I own I have purchased multiple copies of the official version(s)."

And see, as far as I'm concerned, all these are totally understandable and legitimate ways to obtain ARCs. As I've said before, they have a limited but vital shelf-life: until the official versions of the book comes out, they're worth their weight in kittens (mew), but after the "real" books are available, they're interesting paperweights, collector's items, and things for the cats to sleep on.

In the end, I suppose my feelings on ARCs are very convoluted things, I should go find something shiny to distract me, because now my brain hurts. Hope that helps.

So recently, Neil Gaiman made a post about entitlement, which has been circulating widely under the assumed title of "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch." Good title. Interesting entry. Lots of people are saying lots of things about it, most of which boil down to "here, here" and "you go, girl." Er, "you go, British guy." Whatever. Anyway, as is my natural inclination when presented with such things, I've been thinking. (And she's been crying, and I am the Rain King.)

See, the core premise of the original post is one that I agree with: an author doesn't owe their work to anyone except, perhaps, their agent and their publisher. Buying Rosemary and Rue doesn't somehow create a contract between us wherein I swear on penalty of death to do nothing but work on Toby books, all day, every day, until the series comes to a satisfying conclusion. For one thing, Kate would kill me. For another, if I worked only on Toby, with no pauses for other books, I'd go crazy, and the quality of the Toby books would decrease dramatically. And then The Agent would kill me (if Kate didn't get there first).

At the same time, the email which inspired the post contained a very different question. Is it wrong, the writer asked, to be annoyed when I read the blog of a favorite author and see nothing to tell me what the status of the next book is? And to that I have to say, quite honestly...

...no.

Look: there is no formal "deliver or die" contract between writer and reader, and there's a reason, as jimhines so helpfully pointed out, that very few publishers actually punish authors for missing their deadlines once in a while. Quality matters, and sometimes getting something done right takes longer than originally expected. I finished Late Eclipses in December of 2008, dammit! It was done! It was...nowhere near as good as it honestly needed to be, both to live up to the standards set by the first three books, and to live up to the standards I set for myself. I gave it to The Agent. She promptly gave it back, with a command to fix it. If I'd been working to a January deadline, I'm afraid my release date would have slipped more than a little as I took the book and ripped it apart to resolve its structural issues. Quality is always going to come first for me. Hopefully, it'll be a long time before that makes me miss a deadline, but even I and my OCD work habits can't guarantee that slippage will never occur.

At the same time, I do believe that there's a certain "social contract" which exists between writers and readers when those writers hang out their proverbial shingles out for the world to see. Once I've opened a professional blog and announced that hi, this is the professional blog of Seanan McGuire, come on in, I do owe you updates, even if those updates are things like "didn't work on Toby this week because I was busy following the Counting Crows around the Pacific Northwest" or "didn't finish the new chapter of Discount Armageddon because Alice got into the watercolors again." I have said, on some level, that I will keep you posted. The social contract demands that I uphold my end of the bargain, and if I don't, you have every right to get annoyed with me.

(This is similar to a scenario that plays out frequently with web comics, who have been dealing with their audiences online for longer than nigh anyone else. New guy hits the web comic scene, updating regularly. Sets an update schedule. Basks in the love. Starts missing updates. People start to complain. Snaps "I do this for free, and you should be grateful." Well...yes and no. I don't have the right to demand you work for me, but I do feel that, once you've entered into a social contract which says I'll get updates on days one, three, and five, I should get an update on those days, or, failing that, I should get information on why that update isn't there. That was the deal. If you tell me why the update is missing, you take away my license to bitch.)

In conclusion, no, George R. R. Martin is not your bitch, and no, you shouldn't view delays as personal attacks. Often, delays are there because the book is being made better. But yes, I do believe that once an author says "come hang out in my virtual office and play with my virtual fidget toys," you have a right to expect to be told what's going on, and a right to ask "why is the eighth book in this series not out yet?"

It's all a matter of where you stand.

Hello, and welcome to the thirtieth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. Thirty! That's a pretty big number, and it's just set to get bigger, since all these essays are based around my original fifty thoughts on writing. (On the plus side, this also means we're sixty percent of the way there.) Here's our thought for today:

Thoughts on Writing #30: Continuity Trapper Keeper.

This is definitely one of those that needs a little expansion before it starts making sense. Here you go:

If you're writing any sort of series, whether it be a series of short stories or a series of novels, you need a continuity guide. The format is up to you. The level of detail is up to you. But believe me, even if you somehow manage to forget that your hero has green eyes and turn them hazel, your readers won't, and they will eat your soul.

When I was a kid, I found continuity errors unbelievably offensive. If I could always remember your main character's favorite sandwich, childhood pet, and preferred route to the spooky old house on the top of the hill, why couldn't you, the author, remember the same things? You created them!

Ah, the innocence of youth. Let's talk continuity, why it matters, and how to maintain it. Ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on continuity tracking.Collapse )

I am essentially a magnet for books. It helps that I crawl through used bookstores like it was some sort of an Olympic sport, regularly raid the collections of my friends, get a lot of books mailed to me, haunt science fiction convention dealers rooms, and basically take every opportunity to get my hands on the written word. I try not to consider how many books I have, except on those occasions where I'm forced to try putting them back onto the shelves.

Some of my books are pre-cover ARCs. (There are two kinds of ARC. Some, like the ones for Rosemary and Rue, are essentially mock-ups for the finished book; they have front covers, they have back covers, and they look like books, except for the big "NOT FOR SALE" printed all over them. Others are basically bound manuscripts, with plain heavy-paper covers, and look more like the spec scripts that sometimes show up in specialty bookstores. I don't know if there's a technical term for these, so I just call them "pre-cover ARCs" and have done.) These are always interesting, because it means I'm reading them based on nothing but the back cover blurb.

How much does a cover matter? We're always told not to judge a book by its cover, but how much does the cover really matter?

It matters a lot.

The book I just read (which will not be named, because dude, you do not slag on other people's cover art; it's simply not okay) was in a genre I'm fairly fond of; I have an ARC not because I was asked to do a pre-review, but because the book is already out, and so the ARC got shoved off on me. No objections here, as I always buy books that I enjoyed in ARC—I consider it my part of the social contract. "I liked your book when I saw it in an advance form, so here is some money." Much like buying a book I enjoyed when I got it from the library. Anyway:

I had actually seen this book on store shelves, and totally failed to notice it in any meaningful way, because the cover was so non-appealing. I glanced at it, shook my head, and glanced over it. I didn't even realize I'd seen it—when I finished the ARC, I went to the bookstore, hunted down the book, and was gobsmacked to realize that it was "oh, that one." I would never have given the book the credit it deserved, judging solely from the cover. Which would have sucked.

(I realize that giving a positive, if vague, review, and then failing to name the book, is really annoying. I promise to review the book later, when it no longer auto-associates with my kvetching about its cover art.)

Covers matter. Covers matter a lot. More and more, I'm coming to realize that a good cover can make all the difference in the world between a book getting snatched off a store shelf that same book only getting read when somebody shoves it into your hands.

What covers do you especially love, or hate?

Welcome to the twenty-ninth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing, all of which are based around my original fifty thoughts on writing. We're starting to get into somewhat more specialized concepts; surprisingly, I still find that I have things to say, which is good. Here's our thought for today:

Thoughts on Writing #29: Outlines.

Since every outline needs a bit more than a single word, here's today's expanded topic:

Outline as much as you need to. I have books where I've written incredibly detailed outlines, including locations and characters involved in every scene. I have books where I pretty much just plunged in blind and started hacking around with my machete, praying that nothing in my new-found jungle was going to give me Ebola. Even those books eventually got "event chains" written on Post-It notes and stuck to my computer, because I needed to keep track of who was where. Neither style is superior to the other.

Outlines are scary, I think because most people's experience with them is limited to academic papers and the idea that there's some secret "ideal outline" that will turn the simplest of ideas into a New York Times best-selling novel. If that ideal is out there, shouldn't it be pursued? Yes. And also no, because the truth behind the ideal is that the ideal is different not only from person to person, but from project to project.

Now that we've established that outlines exist to confuse us, are you ready? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on outlines.Collapse )

Today brings us to the twenty-eighth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing, all of which are based around my fifty thoughts on writing. We're not quite on what I'd call "the home stretch" yet, but we're definitely more than halfway there. That's nice to think about. Anyway, here's our other thought for today:

Thoughts on Writing #28: For the Critics.

In case that's too boiled-down to make sense, here's today's expanded topic:

Kevin Smith said "this isn't for the critics" when he was talking about Jersey Girl, and the critics savaged it anyway. There's a lesson here. You can't write to some imagined critical ideal, but if all eleven of the people you trust to review your first drafts say "wow, this makes no sense at all, what the hell is going on here?", you should maybe consider taking another look. Pandering is bad. Being accessible is not.

"Not for the critics" is an interesting concept to me, because it implies that anyone who's going to be in the least critical of a thing doesn't have the right to enjoy it—and more, that I don't get to have an opinion about a thing I love if it isn't entirely positive. Slither is possibly my favorite movie in the world, but the zombie deer looks damn fake. Hairspray would have been even more fun if they'd kept "Cooties," since taking it out renders Amber toothless. Stephen King has written some stuff I didn't like. Does that mean these things weren't for me?

Pandering and accessibility are two different things, and none of us are ever above critique. Honestly, that's a good thing. With me so far? Good. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on what it means to be for the critics.Collapse )

Because understanding what a thing is makes that thing less arcane and mysterious, and I like people understanding what the hell I'm talking about, I'm providing a handy guide to the stages a book goes through as it trudges its way towards publication. (I said this to a friend of mine, who replied with, "Like the life cycle of a butterfly?" After some thought, I have decided that this metaphor doesn't work. It's more like the life cycle of a fricken—half-frog, half-chicken, all abomination of nature. Tadpoles with feathers are just sort of sad.)

You can thank me, beat me, or march on my castle with an army of angry peasants, later.

***

THE LIFE STAGES OF A BOOK: FROM PAGE TO PUBLICATION.

***

Stage I: The Larva (IE, "The Manuscript.")
We're picking up with the assumption that the book has already been written, approved by your agent/primary beta reader, and sold to a publishing house (or, if you prefer, your frickens have already done the nasty in the romantic swamp setting of their choosing, and have laid the fertilized eggs in a suitable pool of semi-stagnant water). Now, your manuscript gets to go into something called "editorial review." Different houses and different editors will have different names for this process; when I'm doing it to myself, I tend to call it things like "why God why" and "getting blood on the ceiling." This is the stage where you'll actually have some input, and can even argue.

Some manuscripts sail the waters of editorial review with nary a ripple. Others will be shredded and stapled back together several times before they're allowed to take the next step forward. Whatever the case happens to be with your manuscript, assume that it's going to take some time, and just keep breathing.

Stage II: The Hatchling (IE, "Copy-editing.")
So you've made all the changes your editor requested and returned an approved manuscript to your publishing house. Awesome. Your beloved baby book has emerged from its gooey amphibian egg and is now thrashing around the puddle, downy feathers all plastered down and making it swim more slowly, thus becoming an easier target for predators. In this case, the predator is someone with a red pen and an eye for typos. Your manuscript will take some time to review, because they're trying to be thorough; a book pushed out of the puddle before it has time to mature is probably going to get punctuation all over the floor.

You may or may not ever see your copy-edited manuscript. I have a clause in my contract that lets me see mine, because I'm neurotic that way. Lilly appreciates this clause, because she likes to sleep on manuscripts. I, also, appreciate it, because every typo that slips past me is a dagger in my soul, and I try to remain as un-stabbed as possible.

Stage III: Adolescence (IE, "Page Proofs and ARCs.")
Once your copy-edits have been made, two things will happen at basically the same time. Think of them as your weird little tadpole starting to sprout legs and flight feathers at the same time. The poor guy is all over the place, and both flying and swimming are out of the question until he figures out which direction is "up."

Your page proofs are basically a bunch of loose pages comprising your entire copy-edited book. As the author, you will generally get the opportunity to go through them and catch any little things that might have been missed earlier in the process. Note the stress on "little." The idea is not to rip out that chapter you've always hated; it's to catch that three-word continuity error on page seventeen, and that slightly out-of-synch tense on page eighty-four. By the time a book reaches proofs, it should be essentially ready to go. The ARCs, on the other hand, are your Advance Review/Reader Copies. These will be bound editions of the manuscript, potentially with covers, probably with any blurbs you've managed to collect, sent out to reviewers, trade publications, and major genre bookstores about four to six months before publication.

Stage IV: Frog (IE, "Publication.")
After your page proofs have been returned and your ARCs have been sent out, your book will go to press, and your weird-ass feathered frog will hop free of the puddle it was born in for the first time. Printing and shipping will take however long your publisher thinks it should; you can make sure there are no delays on your end by turning in your proofs by the deadline. You should have a publication date. Cling to it as best you can.

Watch your feathery amphibian creation fly.

Look! I made a word!

I love anthologies and short story collections, and have loved them for as long as I can remember. I mean that very literally; some of the earliest books that I have a strong memory of reading are the Colored Fairy Books, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Asimov's Young Monsters series of anthologies, and the Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark books. (This list probably says a lot about the formation of my psyche.) I spent most of middle school tracking down the largely out-of-print Noun! series of anthologies—Dogs! and Mermaids! and Unicorns! and the whole super-excited bunch. There were some awesome stories in those things. Awesome, awesome stories.

I was in high school before I realized that some anthologies were write-to-request—it wasn't that twenty people just randomly decided to write stories about magic-using hyper-evolved insects, they were asked. This struck me as the absolute height of human achievement. Imagine being asked to write stories about magic-using hyper-evolved insects. Somebody comes up to you and says "hey, write me a story about a fireball-flinging butterfly," and you do, and then, if it's any good, it gets published.

Ladies and gentlemen, the holy grail.

I always said I'd know I'd made it as a writer when I started getting invited to anthologies. I got an agent. Shrieked a lot. Sold a trilogy. Shrieked even more (as well as crying, hyperventilating, and calling Vixy and making hysterical dolphin noises at her while she tried to work out whether the sounds I was making meant "we sold Toby" or "I have just been bitten by one of those nasty parasite things from Cloverfield and am about to swell up and explode"). And then I got invited to an anthology, and I just sat there and cried.

And then I got invited to another one, and I sat there and cried even more.

I love anthologies. I love the toybox fabulousness of them, the way you don't know what you're going to get, just—vaguely—what it's going to be about. I finished reading Pandora's Closet [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] yesterday. I picked it up on a lark. I found stories that made me laugh, stories that made me giggle, and a distinct lack of stories that made me want to throw the book across the room. And I thought, "wow." And I thought, "I get to do this now."

I've been smiling for three days.

So I'm merrily cruising around my reading list—amusingly enough, and you'll understand why in a moment, right after composing a lengthy letter to my agent—when I discover that a friend of mine (hi, Jim!) has linked to an essay about literary agents. Now, I'm a big fan of literary agents. I go to have a look. Hmmm. The essay in question is titled "The Talent Killers: How literary agents are destroying literature, and what publishers can do to stop them." That's a mouthful and a half. I proceeded to read the essay, that being what one does in such a situation. Then I read an essay from Beth Bernobich about why agents are not, in fact, servants of the devil. And then I read Jim Hines's post on the topic.

And then I thought about it for a while.

And now here I am.

(As a digression: titles are important. I realize that not everyone aspires to grow up perky, pithy, and easy to say, but seriously? For an essay title? One that actively insults a large group of people whom you admit have the ear of the person or people you're trying to reach? This doesn't work for me all that well. Just saying.)

Look: many authors do not have agents. The agent-to-author ratio is scary, especially since you don't have to have some sort of training before you can tack "author" onto your name. Most agents are already representing several clients, and may not be able to estimate how many clients they can take in any sort of firm number. I, for example, am relatively self-starting; point me at something, tell me it has a candy center, and I'll check in with you next month. Olga over here, she needs daily contact or she starts to freak out, and when she freaks out, she's not getting anything done. An agent who could handle four of me may be hard pressed to handle one of me, plus Olga. Being an agent is something like trying to plan a dinner party, only instead of dietary restrictions and seating plans, you have amount of hand-holding and sanity exams.

Also look: many authors, who have written good, salable books, manage to sell their first book, or even their first several, without the aid of an agent. It's true that the number of major houses willing to consider unrepresented authors is down. It's also true that the number of accessible small press houses willing to consider those same authors is up. It can be difficult to tell the genuine small houses from the predators playing "print on demand," but if you want to be an author, you're going to spend hours in the research trenches. Researching publishing houses is the least you're going to be expected to do. The sentence to remember here is "who have written good books," not "who have written books." Typing "The End" is actually just the beginning.

I didn't find an agent the first time I tried. I didn't find an agent the tenth time I tried, either. And you know what? I'm glad. The books I was writing when I first started my search were...well, let's just say they weren't the best books in the history of mankind. Actually and honestly, they were, well, pretty damn bad. I had talent and I had enthusiasm, but what I needed was practice and time. (I know people whose response to this is "a good agent would have recognized your talent and taught you what to do." Sadly, no. World of no. Author to agent ratio again, remember? I would be seriously unhappy if my agent said she wouldn't be returning phone calls for a month because she'd found some green new writer to exhaust herself over. What's more, when I was that green new writer, I wasn't ready to hear a lot of the things that needed to be said. An agent who took me on then would have exhausted themselves for nothing.) My books are better because I had to face rejections and ask myself what I was doing wrong.

There's also the point of writing to sell vs. writing from the soul—or, as a friend of mine said recently, "I'm selling out as fast as I can." Something being popular doesn't make it bad, and wanting a client with an easy-to-pitch first book isn't bad either. Your future sales will be determined, in part, by your initial sales, and most publishers are going to be a lot more willing to take an "out there" second novel. Sell your vampires and you may find your race of symbiotic plant-people from the Outer Limits gets a much warmer reception. If an agent says "What else have you got?", it's not a judgment on your book. It's part of the necessary dinner party planning.

Finally—because I could talk about this topic for hours, and that means it's time to stop—keep in mind that when you're talking about people who read books and sell books for a living, reading comprehension really, really matters. Someone asked me the other day what I thought she had to do if she wanted to make it. I said "read the submission guidelines." They're sort of like airport security; if you set off the metal detector after you've been told to empty your pockets eight times, you may miss your flight. Well, if you ignore an agent's—or publisher's—submission guidelines, you may find yourself in the same situation. Metaphorically speaking.

In conclusion (for now), agents good, reading comprehension good, not getting signed not an evil plot to destroy your soul.

Promise.

Welcome to the twenty-seventh essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing, all of which are based around my fifty thoughts on writing. I was asked recently why this paragraph goes on every essay, since it's essentially filler, and beyond the innate "because I can," the answer is simple: people are still coming in shiny and new with each essay in the series, and I like to make sure everyone understands the premise. Remember that the thoughts are being addressed in order, and that I respond well to bribery with candy corn and pumpkin products.

Thoughts on Writing #27: A Matter of Perspective.

Everyone in the world has their own point of view, on just about everything. I sleep in a room that's painted to look like the inside of a big pumpkin, and my pillowcases glow in the dark; I find it soothing, while other people complain that they'd be able to see the walls even after they closed their eyes. Neither of us is wrong. We just have a different perspective on things. Here's today's expanded topic:

People are going to act like writing is easy, because that's all they know; they're not writers. People are going to say you're being a snob when you say "I'm sorry, I have to work," because they can't understand why you'd choose reworking chapter three over going to the roller derby. Try not to take it personally. I'm sure they do shit that seems crazy to you, too.

Things that make sense to us are baffling to others; things that make sense to others are baffling to us. That's human nature. That's the way we're basically programmed, as a species, to operate. I don't get you, you don't get me, and neither of us quite gets that guy sitting over there. The trouble arises when one of us has a trait or tendency—like, say, the desire to work a second job in your free time, for which it is unlikely you will ever receive above minimum wage—that the majority just doesn't understand.

What's the answer? Well, unfortunately, if there were an easy answer, I'd be making millions as an advice columnist, and I wouldn't have time to write this essay. But there may be some coping strategies. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on tolerance...on both sides of the equation.Collapse )

It's time for the twenty-sixth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. We're more than halfway to the end of the series now, since all these essays are based around my fifty thoughts on writing. Thanks to everyone who's been reading, discussing, and generally making this a fascinating process. I've learned a great deal, both from sitting here scratching my head as I look for things to say and from reading the things that people say to me in return. The remaining essays will be touching on a great many more aspects of the art of writing, and will probably double back on themselves more than a few times. That's the business.

Thoughts on Writing #26: Hermitage.

It sounds like a simple notion, doesn't it? But the fact of the matter is, hermitage is a big, complicated thing that we often fail to give sufficient attention or consideration. Bearing that in mind, here's today's expanded topic:

Learn to be a hermit. Learn to say 'I'm sorry, but I can't come to your party, I booked that night for revisions and I don't have any other time to do it this week.' Learn to tell people no. Learn to treat writing as a job -- one that may well be both unpaid and in addition to whatever job pays the bills for a long, long time. If you make excuses to let yourself skip writing, if you choose a social life over that second job, you're not addicted enough. If you want to get better, you'll learn.

As anyone who's ever tried to sit down for a block of scheduled writing -- from the wealthiest novelist to the kid who just needs to finish that book report -- can tell you, most people don't view 'writing' as being the same as 'real work.' Even the people who've heard me explain exactly how many hours I need to complete a novel frequently have trouble understanding that those necessary hours will sometimes conflict with their proposed dinner plans. And here's the thing: nobody tells a doctor not to practice medicine, or tries to talk him out of reading that book on brain surgery because they'd rather be playing checkers. But as a writer, you'll get it all the time.

So how do you cope? How do you strike a balance, and how do you do it without losing all your friends? Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on writers and the need to sometimes crawl into your cave.Collapse )

Hello, and welcome to the twenty-fifth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. This particular essay is something of a milestone, because it means that we are now officially halfway through the original set of fifty thoughts on writing. Given that I didn't exactly set out to write a set of fifty essays -- it was an accident, I swear -- the fact that I've finished half of the damn things is a bit unnerving. Anyway, these essays will eventually touch on as many aspects of the art of writing as I can think of, and may occasionally seem to be self-contradictory. Writing is like that.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #25: Bibliophile Heroin.

That's a bit of a brick to the head, isn't it? It probably makes a bit more sense in context -- at least I hope it makes a bit more sense in context, or this week's essay is going to be a lot like Seanan Does Hunter S. Thompson. Here's today's expanded topic:

If you're going to be a writer, you'll be a writer, because if you're going to be a writer, you'll write. This is not a glamorous profession. This is not something people do because they want to be rich and famous and sleep with Hollywood stars. This is something people do because, at the end of the day, they can't not do it. People decide to be writers for a lot of reasons. People continue to be writers because they can't figure out how the hell to quit. Writing is bibliophile heroin, and we're all addicts over here.

What I find a bit interesting about today's thought is that it's the first thought where I've actually had someone argue with me. Not in a bad way, just in a way that made me stop and go 'huh.' Paul -- who frequently plays guitar for me, and is one of the most tolerant, reasonable men I know -- said that I don't get to claim that writing isn't a glamorous profession, because everyone thinks of writing as glamorous. The children of writers are second only to the children of firemen and policemen when it comes to looking cool on Career Day. Teenagers dream of growing up to write. Some of us even manage it. We don't get paparazzi and cereal endorsements, but we're seen as glamorous all the same.

That disconnect between vision and reality is a lot of why this thought exists. Ready to ponder? Fantastic. Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on writers and the addiction that we all share.Collapse )

Last night -- following our regular Thursday dinner of Tasty Indian Food (tm) and the ceremonial watching of the season premiere of cycle twelve of America's Next Top Model -- Kate and I began discussing the current state of Late Eclipses of the Sun, which is to say, spread out across my laptop like a patient etherized upon a table. I'm doing heavy, heavy surgery on this book, which is making it steadily better, smoother, and more compelling, but is still getting blood all over everything.

(If you're wondering, and don't feel like going digging, Late Eclipses of the Sun is the fourth Toby book. The first, Rosemary and Rue, is the one that's coming out September first [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]. The second is A Local Habitation, and the third is An Artificial Night; they've both been turned in to my editor at DAW. The second trilogy starts with Late Eclipses, and then runs The Brightest Fell and Ashes of Honor. What, me plan ahead?)

In an effort to explain what was happening in Late Eclipses, I basically ran down what had already changed, what was planned to change, and what needed to happen in book five, since book four sort of sets a lot of that up. This wound up turning into a review of the events planned for books four through six, with notes on what had changed. It was sort of fascinating, in an abstract sort of a way, because a lot of what I do in terms of series outlining is best defined as pebbles in ponds. I create ponds -- these are the overall stories, the things I want to have happen when everything is said and done. I get a pile of pebbles -- the characters, specific situations, and little complications. And then I stand on the shore, throwing rocks at the water, and watching where the ripples go. Thing is, the pebbles keep getting bigger, and the patterns of the water are very rarely what I would have initially expected. Plus, sometimes I change my mind. It's all very quantum.

To be quite clear, I really do know where I'm going, and I always know where the ending is, what's happening, and why. It's just that the details of the journey change, and that makes me very, very happy. I like to be surprised by my characters! I like to know that the things they do have a purpose, and seeing the moments where everything shifts really keeps me engaged. Sure, I could try to yank everything back on-track to get so some pre-determined 'perfect scene,' but what would be the fun in that?

Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out across the sky...

Yesterday, as I wandered through Wondercon, I found myself at the booth of a very charming lady in the Artist's Alley. I've sadly forgotten her name, but not her most excellent eye makeup, which was the sort of elegant Bettie Page-esque look that I only wish I could achieve. (Seriously. My makeup skills are...well, they're better than they could be, which is to say I rarely stick the mascara brush in my eye anymore, but they're nothing to write home about.) I asked her how her convention was going, and she responded happily that she'd sold completely out of the first printing of one of her comics. I acknowledged the awesomeness of this. She then informed me, still happily, that the first printing had consisted of one hundred copies.

Sliding backwards a few months, at the start of January, the entire run of my latest CD hit my front porch and filled my front hallway with boxes upon boxes of musical goodness. Ecstatic that we'd actually finished printing in time for Conflikt, I chattered about the CD to anyone who'd listen. Someone asked me where the CDs were being stored. I responded with 'in my bedroom,' and the fact that we had printed a thousand copies. The person I was talking to promptly asked whether my lack of faith was in my work, or in my fans, since printing 'only' a thousand seemed like a statement of insecurity.

According to various sources, the average print run on mass market genre paperbacks is between 5,000 and 150,000.

Welcome to the wonderful world of scale.

Each of these ranges makes sense. An independent comic artist, self-producing their own material, would be silly to print more than a few hundred copies at a time -- until they manage to become properly established, they'll have a hard time selling more than that, and there's only so much room in the average house, apartment, or double-wide trailer. (I'm not knocking people who live in double-wides. I've lived in a double-wide, and it was awesome. Way bigger than the apartment I'd been living in prior to that.) As a filker, I have a fairly limited pre-existing audience, but it's large enough to justify ordering a thousand CDs at a time. Additionally, because I can't self-print my own CDs very easily, I need to meet certain minimums before I can go to press.

The potential audience for a professionally printed book is much larger. If every bookstore in the country orders two copies, well, that's substantially more than either the independent comic artist or the filker is going to need, right out the gate. Sell-through on mass market paperbacks is variable, but even assuming you get 50% of those books back as returns (which is a big, complicated thing that I'm still trying to understand), you still need to have printed them before you could send them out. It's all a matter of scale. When looking at how much of a thing is needed, it's always a good idea to pause and ask yourself a question:

How big is that pond?

Hello, and welcome to the twenty-fourth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. We're almost halfway through the original set of fifty thoughts on writing, which is a slightly awe-inspiring thought if I think about it too hard. These essays will eventually touch on as many aspects of the art of writing as I can think of, and may occasionally seem to be self-contradictory. Writing is like that.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #24: Revise or Die.

Now, those of you who have been following this series may look at today's topic and find yourselves scratching your heads. 'But wait,' you might say, 'wasn't essay twenty-three about revision?' You'd be right. Because here's the thing: we're going to be circling back to editing, revision, and critique quite a bit as this essay series goes on. It's that important. Which brings us to today's expanded topic:

Anyone who tells you that your first draft is brilliant, perfect poetry and deserves to be published just as it is and you shouldn't change a word and oh, you're going to be famous and make enough money to buy a desert island is either a) lying, b) delusional, or c) your mother.

Does it seem like I'm harping on this? That's because I am, a bit. We all have cheerleaders. We all have people who believe, truly and deeply, that we are the perfect special snowflakes to end all perfect special snowflakes, and that because we are perfect special snowflakes, we need a constant stream of validation, love, and affirmation, because otherwise we might melt. Those are wonderful people. Those are important people. And sometimes, those are the people we need to listen to the least.

We're all special snowflakes. We all need to turn on the heat. Ready? Excellent. Now let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on the art of revision, take two.Collapse )

So as I sit here, a safe seven months from my release date, I'm watching various friends and acquaintances as they madly dance through the steps required to promote and advertise a new book. It's important, especially for newer authors, to do something beyond just saying 'I have written a book and my mommy says it's awesome' when they have something hitting the shelves. (Although 'I have written a book and Seanan's mommy says it's awesome' seems to carry a surprising amount of weight for everyone but me. Does anybody else out there have a tattooed, foul-mouthed mother who'd be willing to fill that particular role for me?)

So the question becomes, what works? Book giveaways are obviously good things, but also somewhat self-limiting, as I sort of want people to buy things. (Oddly enough, I don't feel like earning back my advance all by myself.) Competitions are also good, providing the prizes are interesting -- and heck, prizes are just lovely things to offer. So what do you think would be a good idea? What kinds of promotion would you like to see? We have seven months to put even the strangest of plans into motion, so sing out!

Operators are standing by.

Because we like progress around here, it's time to take a step forward and present the twenty-second essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. Here's the precis, in case you're new around here: there will eventually be fifty essays, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. (Past essays are linked from the list of thoughts as they're finished, thus allowing people to tell me when I contradict myself.) The essays are being written in the order of the original thoughts, to keep me from becoming completely lost in the twists of my own logic. It works. Mostly.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #22: Changing Time, Tone, and Type.

People will talk about 'authorial voice' and 'developing your own way of writing,' but the truth of the matter is that each of us will develop multiple styles of writing. They're going to be very different, and they're all going to be uniquely ours. The trouble is finding a way to force them all to get along with one another. That takes us to today's expanded topic:

Your writing style will actually change over the course of a single day, not just over the course of your lifetime. I write very crisp, sharp prose in the morning, and very purple, rambling prose at midnight. My sentences start turning into spaghetti around ten o'clock at night. A finished work is going to need to stick to one of these styles of prose, and I need to be aware of that when I'm editing, because otherwise, the transition can be so organic that it isn't visible until someone else gets a look and starts screaming at me for blinding them with adjectives.

A lot of people fail to account for what state of mind can do for their writing styles. They also fail to account for what state of exhaustion can do for their writing styles. This is, I believe, a mistake, because if you don't understand your own quirks, you're not going to know how to compensate for them. (As one of the quirkiest people on the planet, I get a lot of practice compensating.) So how do you identify your cycles? How do you compensate for the changes in tone -- and how do you learn to catch them?

That's today's topic. Ready? Excellent. Now let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on what it means to learn the cycles in your own writing.Collapse )

It's time to return to the modern day for the twenty-first essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. Just in case you're new to the party, there will eventually be fifty essays, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. (Past essays are linked from the list of thoughts as they're finished, thus allowing people to tell me when I contradict myself.) The essays tend to focus on a single aspect of the writing life, whether personal or professional, and then beat it into the ground until it shatters. Fun for the whole family!

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #21: Magpie Moments.

Look around the room you're in. If you're at work, look around your desk. If you're reading this on the road, look in your purse or backpack. First thing you're going to see is 'my stuff.' That's often what we see when we look around us. 'Well, yes; that's my stuff.' But where did that stuff come from? Where did you acquire the fondness for this, that, and the other thing? We magpie our way through the world -- and yes, I'm aware that verbing weirds language, but I think this is legitimate -- and that leads us to today's expanded topic:

We are all magpies. We are all going to pick up bits of flotsam and jetsam from the cultural void around us. Part of the value of having people edit you is the outside perspective they provide. If I tried to write a book that was a climactic clash of good versus evil following a slatewiper pandemic, there are people who would point out its similarity to The Stand before I managed to hurt myself, and that's gooooooooooood.

The human race -- the portion that I know, anyway; I can't speak for the entire human race, and that's actually a good thing -- is made up entirely of magpies. Some fascinating psychological studies have been done on the matter, but most of them don't apply today. We're going to be looking at influences vs. homage vs. plagiarism, and we're going to start from the position of 'everyone's a magpie.' Because that's what's important here.

Ready? Excellent. Now let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on what it means to be a magpie.Collapse )

It's time to return to the modern day for the twentieth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. Just in case you're new to the party, there will eventually be fifty essays, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. (Past essays are linked from the list of thoughts as they're finished, thus allowing people to tell me when I contradict myself.) The essays tend to focus on a single aspect of the writing life, whether personal or professional, and then beat it into the ground until it shatters. Fun for the whole family!

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #20: Boundaries.

All of us set boundaries every day, with everyone around us. They start when we wake up, and they continue from there. Even going to sleep involves setting boundaries, unless you regularly sleep with your house entirely unlocked and a big sign on the door saying 'why yes, you can totally come inside, touch all my stuff, and stare at me while I'm unconscious.' And if you do, please tell me, because I am never spending the night at your place. So let's talk about those boundaries. Our topic for today:

You are absolutely allowed to say 'this is new, I don't want opinions until it's ready.' You are absolutely allowed to refuse to discuss something until you feel you're prepared. You get to set the boundaries on your own work. That said, you do need to tell people where the boundaries are, especially if they're used to reading something of yours where the boundaries are different.

Boundaries can be tricky things, and almost all of us get upset when we feel that they're not being respected. The thing is, we also get upset when we feel that they're being unclear. So how do we get them straight, and how do we make sure that everybody knows where the lines are? That's what we're going to be talking about today.

Ready? Excellent. Let's get started.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on boundaries.Collapse )

Dear myself, age nine;

Hi! How are you? It's mid-December as I'm writing this, so you're probably sitting in your third grade classroom with Mr. D, wondering whether you're going to be able to get home in time to watch The Munsters on TV 20. The odds are good that you will. Just so we can get that out of the way early.

You know how on Career Day every year you say you're going to grow up to become a writer? Well, congratulations: you will. It's going to take a long time and a lot of work, and you're going to feel like giving up a whole bunch of times, but if you can make yourself keep going, you'll be me someday. You're going to write a lot of crap. I mean a lot of crap. It's necessary crap. (Well, maybe not all of it. There's going to be this novella in seventh grade that you'll be totally proud of and let a lot of people read, and trust me, you're wrong, it's terrible, and if you want to not do that, I promise I'll understand.)

Being a writer is a lot more complicated than it looks. You don't have the Internet yet, but let me tell you, it's going to change everything. You're going to wind up being friends, or at least acquaintances, with some of the people whose books you're reading right now. (Sorry, I still don't know Stephen King.) Learn to take criticism. Learn to shrug off insults. It'll all be okay.

Leela is going to live for a really long time, but not forever; be good to your cat while you have her. I still miss her. You're not going to be friends with the same people for your entire life, but you have them for now, and that's worth a lot. Hug Stacy and Natasha for me, okay? They're going to bring My Little Ponies back in 2004. That isn't as far away as it sounds. Trust me.

You're going to be okay. You're going to tell stories, and you're going to see the world, and you're going to meet amazing people, and you're going to be okay. Just wanted to drop a note and let you know that.

But I really mean it about that novella. Yuck.

Love,
You.

Since we've already traveled back in time to talk about the mighty thesaurus, let's stay in the Jurassic period a little bit longer for essay nineteen in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. I like the Jurassic period. Things were simpler there: eat or be eaten. In case you somehow missed it in my happy discussion of dinosaurs, this is the nineteenth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. There will eventually be fifty essays, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. Any excuse to talk about dinosaurs around here.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #19: Brontosaurus Bones.

I realize that the title isn't entirely helpful, which is why we always have an expanded topic for discussion. (My personal shorthand for a lot of things is very, very strange. This is only one of those things.) Here's today's expanded, hopefully less-confusing topic:

Talk about writing exactly as much as you, personally, need to talk about writing. I suggest finding tolerant friends. When I talk about writing, I'm like a velociraptor gnawing on a brontosaurus bone -- it's going to take me a while to get my head all the way around things, and there's a whole lot to swallow. If I tried to work everything out in the privacy of my own head, I would explode, and nothing would ever get done. You may be on the opposite side of the spectrum. There is no wrong answer.

So that's where the dinosaurs come into things. (Also, yes, I'm aware that the paleontologists of the world have decided that there was never such a thing as the brontosaurus. Since I'm not actually a velociraptor, I really don't care.) This week, we're talking about talking about writing. A lot of people have said a lot of things about talking about writing, and now I'm going to say several more.

Ready? Excellent. Let's get started.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on talking about writing.Collapse )

Let's take a trip back in time with number eighteen in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing, aka 'the first essay where Seanan has really had an excuse to use dinosaurs as a metaphor for life.' There will eventually be fifty essays in this series, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. Naturally, this means that some essays will be more useful than others, while some essays will contain a lot of references to extinction events and the need for electric fences around your velociraptor pens.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #18: Thesaurus vs. Velociraptor.

I realize that the title isn't entirely helpful, which is why we always have an expanded topic for discussion. (My personal shorthand for a lot of things is very, very strange. This is only one of those things.) Here's today's expanded, hopefully less-confusing topic:

Using big words doesn't make you a better writer, it makes you somebody who figured out how to use a thesaurus. Every word has a purpose and a meaning, but there's no reason to clutter up what you're trying to say with a bunch of words that will leave most readers diving for their dictionaries. That doesn't mean you need to dumb yourself down. It just means you need to really stop and ask yourself whether you want to use the word 'expectorate' when what you mean is 'spit.' Even Shakespeare used small words sometimes, and even the trashiest popular novelist in the world is allowed to use big ones. Suit your words to the task at hand.

That's right: this week we're going to be talking about word choices, what those word choices actually say about us as writers, and how to use the Thesaurus without inspiring people to beat you with it. The velociraptors are a metaphor for using the appropriate word in the appropriate situation. Also, I just really, really like velociraptors.

Ready? Excellent. Let's get started.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on word choices, thesaurus abuse, and why some nervous habits need to become extinct.Collapse )

Well, I'm over on Facebook now, for a variety of reasons, not least of which was -- let's be honest here -- I have a first novel coming out before too terribly much longer*, and it's a good idea to find anybody who might know me but not read this journal if I want them to be aware of that fact. In the current economy, skipping anything that increases potential readership is a little bit silly. Which doesn't mean I'm going to be standing naked on a highway overpass with a big sign reading 'BUY MY BOOK SO I CAN BUY SOME PANTS,' but when I hear about another small bookstore going under, well...the temptation is there.

So anyway, you can look me up as 'Seanan McGuire,' and get live pithy one-liners about the fact that I write a lot, watch a lot of television, and cook an awesome turkey. Thus far, mostly the former, the latter, and a lot of mentions of a) being too sick to die, and b) playing Rock Band 2. Did I mention that it was my Martian death flu that made Facebook look appealing? 'Cause yeah.

I have already found or been found by several people from high school, which I find somewhat daunting. But one of them may well be My Favorite Teacher Ever, so that's pretty awesome (I'm waiting for him to confirm or deny). It really is a fascinating networking model, one which honestly assumes that you'd love to get back in touch with your best friend from first grade. (I would. Natasha, call me.)

It's all very odd around here. And I have no DDP in the damn house at all.

(*Sadly, 'not terribly much longer' isn't a clever way of saying that I have a release date, 'cause I don't. It's a clever way of saying 'I had six hours of sleep, and am thus talking myself in pretty circles.' Well. Typing myself in pretty circles, anyway.)

This fascinating article in the Baltimore City Paper talks about the books we loved when we were twelve, and how they never ever leave us. It opens with a quote that really resonates with me:

"A girl I once caught reading Fahrenheit 451 over my shoulder on the subway confessed: "You know, I'm an English lit major, but I've never loved any books like the ones I loved when I was 12 years old." I fell slightly in love with her when she said that. It was so frank and uncool, and undeniably true."

I have found books that I love every year of my life. I am a person who reads, I've been a person who reads for almost my entire time on this planet, and I go through a lot of brand new books every month (often to the chagrin of my budget). And yet...

The books I go back to, the books that comfort me when I feel bad, the books that lift me up when I'm feeling down, are largely books I encountered between the ages of nine and twelve. I'll go up one level on that, since that was also the period of my life where Xanth and Dragonlance reigned supreme: they're the books that emotionally moved me between the ages of nine and twelve. Tailchaser's Song. The Last Unicorn. IT. The Stand. War for the Oaks. There are others -- oh, there are others -- and so many of them source back to that same stretch of time.

I'd argue that you can fall in love with the way an author uses language, as much as a specific use of language, and that it's also at its most powerful when it happens between those ages. Hence my total inability to get over my love for Stephen King (not that I really want to). Hence the comic geeks of the world and their insistence on viewing whichever death of Jean Grey happened during their 'imprint years' as the only real time she died. (Personally, I'll take any of her deaths, as long as she promises to stay dead.)

I'd be curious about how universal this is. But is strikes me as being something that's very true for a lot of us, and somehow manages to be practically invisible at the same time. Pretty cool.

It's time for number fifteen in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. There will eventually be fifty essays in this series, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. Some of the essays will be more practical than others; some of them will be theoretical, and most of them will be based around really weird metaphors, because that's just the way we roll around here. Please feel free to poke at me if you have any questions about the things that I discuss, and remember, I am very easily bribed.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #15: Follow Your Bliss.

While the thought at the core of today's essay is a bit more publishing-oriented than many of them have been (or will be), it can still apply to writers of all stripes, whether you're writing for fun or writing with the goal of eventually becoming the next big best-selling author. This is another essay that's just as much about being a reader as it is about being a writer; hopefully, if I write enough of these, people will realize that I genuinely mean it when I say that without reading, writing starts going a little bit stale. Here's today's expanded topic of discussion:

Write what you want to write. I don't care if it's a total cliche, if that's honestly what you want to do, do it. You may never get it published. You may strike it big and wind up in a position to publish all your trunk novels. Either way, refusing to write what you love just because it's not commercial enough is going to do nothing but turn you bitter and angry at the whole industry, and that's no good for anyone.

'Write what you love' may seem like an odd piece of advice on the surface, but considering how often people hear 'write what will sell,' I think it's important to say it. The pressure to write what's hot and popular is always present, no matter what sort of an audience you happen to be writing for. How many fanfic authors get notes that say things like 'wow, this story was great, but you know what would have been better? If it had my favorite characters instead'? Most of them, that's how many. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

All set? Excellent. Let’s begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on writing what you love, rather than writing what people tell you to.Collapse )

We're back! Welcome to number fourteen in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. There will eventually be fifty essays in this series, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. This proves that I have no hobbies. All fifty thoughts were composed in a single heated, Diet Dr Pepper-powered session, which probably goes a long way towards explaining the number of seriously weird metaphors involved. I'm reasonably easy to bribe and distract, so if there's something you've been hoping I will -- or won't -- discuss, remember, if it's orange, I probably adore it.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #14: Know Your Territory.

While the thought at the core of today's essay is a bit more publishing-oriented than many of them have been (or will be), it can still apply to writers of all stripes, whether you're writing for fun or writing with the goal of eventually becoming the next big best-selling author. This is another essay that's just as much about being a reader as it is about being a writer; hopefully, if I write enough of these, people will realize that I genuinely mean it when I say that without reading, writing starts going a little bit stale. Here's today's expanded topic of discussion:

Even if you're not publishing right now -- even if you're just hoping to publish someday -- make sure you're reading as much as you can of the genres where you're writing or planning to write. The line between 'new and hot' and 'played-out and cliche' is a thin one, and while I'm not saying 'throw away your baby because somebody else got there first,' you need to know where that line is at any given moment, because you need to be able to defend your work from an informed perspective.

Now, you will hopefully remember that we discussed genre and what it means in essay thirteen, 'Reading Outside the Box,' and I can thus continue without going over old ground. If you don't remember that essay, or if you want a refresher on its contents, that's okay. We can wait right here while you get caught up. Once you're ready, we can continue.

All set? Excellent. Let’s begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on reading inside the genre, why this is an important thing to do, and why we sometimes have to defend our work.Collapse )

Up until recently, I was unaware that sometimes the reason I can't find certain books in certain stores is because those stores have just sort of decided not to carry them. This process is called 'skipping.' Books can be skipped because the store doesn't have room on the shelf for another new author, because their historical-romances-with-sharks section just isn't that big, because your last book didn't perform well enough, or because they don't like your cover. (I suspect this last is unlikely, but I'm not a book-buyer, so who knows?)

Now, this practice is absolutely not always malicious or cruel or even ill-intended. The economy is hitting everyone pretty hard right now. My favorite independant bookstores are being forced to make some very tough choices, and most of us -- myself sadly included -- will probably reply to 'we don't have that' with 'I'll just go elsewhere for this one,' rather than waiting for the special order.* So either they buy one of absolutely everything to avoid 'skipping,' or they only buy what they know is going to sell, and maybe lose a few sales as people don't go there for the other books. Bit by bit, the lack of disposable income nudges the bookstores towards whatever is currently 'mainstream.' No malice. Just money.

(*I did this just last week, when Other Change of Hobbit didn't have the new Kelley Armstrong. In my defense, I really needed the book to read during my flight to Ohio. That's still money that they didn't get from me, and would have had they either had the book in-stock, or had I been willing to wait.)

There's a fascinating post on being skipped and what it means here, which is really what got me thinking about the topic. I mean, no one wants to be skipped. The idea of being skipped has given me something entirely shiny and new to worry about, along with 'will my cover be awesome?,' 'will my reviews be good?,' and 'will the zombies come before my book comes out?' Now we have 'oh dear stars, will my book be skipped?'

The answer is, at the end of things, no, yes, and maybe. Will every store stock my book? Nope. Will most stores stock my book? Everything going well, yes. Will some stores order my book after the initial sales figures start coming back? Almost certainly.

There are some additional issues to be considered, and it's important to remember that threats of boycott and such have a nasty tendency to result in stores getting sour grapes and saying 'well, fine, I just won't stock any giant shark books at all, then,' which does no one any good.

It's a big topic. It has a lot of factors. It's a little daunting. But we shall be okay! Because our strength is as the strength of ten, and also, we have cookies.

Hello, and welcome to number thirteen in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. There will eventually be fifty essays in this series, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. The fifty thoughts comprise everything I could think of to say on the topic in a single afternoon. I could probably come up with more -- I'm useful that way -- but I really think that fifty essays is more than enough for now. I respond well to bribery, so if there's anything you've really been hoping I'd go into, remember that candy corn and dead things are an excellent channel to my affections.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #13: Reading Outside the Box.

Today’s essay is going to be a little bit different, because today’s essay is going to be just as much about being a reader as it is about being a writer. Reading is an enormously important part of writing. The temptation to say ‘oh, I can’t take the time to read that, I’m a writer, I have to be writing’ is always going to be there. Most writers are essentially junkies; our drug of choice is putting words on paper. Cheaper than most of the things you can buy on the street, but very time-consuming, and like all junkies, we can get resistant to things that might get between us and our fix. Even when we do make the time to read, the temptation to say ‘I’m just going to stick with what I know I like’ is intensely high. It’s also intensely bad for us. So here’s what we’re going to discuss today:

Read outside your preferred genres. I'm an old-school horror girl. I love fantasy and funny genre fiction. I read more books on epidemics than anyone outside the CDC really needs to. But that won't make me grow, so I also read trashy crime thrillers and westerns, hard science fiction and romances, and pretty much anything with a plot that looks like it might hold my interest. Seeing what they're doing outside your comfort zone will help you understand what's inside your comfort zone much, much better.

Because our topic is a little less cut-and-dried than some of them, we’re going to be taking a slightly different format today, defining genres and discussing things that may qualify as ways to step outside of them. I’m also going to try to offer alternatives, in those cases where the genre is one that tends to alienate those it doesn’t embrace. Hopefully, you’ll be able to look at the options I offer and come up with a few options of your own.

Make sense? Excellent. Let’s begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on reading outside the genre, ways to find books outside your comfort zone, and a few possible places to start.Collapse )

Hello, and welcome to number twelve in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. There will eventually be fifty essays in this series, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. I wrote all fifty of the initial thoughts in one hot, caffeine-fueled session. That may explain why the metaphors are occasionally so bizarre. (The English language as Frankenstein's monster was really just the beginning.) I'm averaging about one essay a week, of varying lengths, and will thus be able to avoid figuring out something else to do with myself for the better part of a year. That's awesome.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #12: Good Critique, Bad Critique.

Now, it was brought up in the discussion on one of the earlier essays that it read less like an essay about how to write, and more like an essay on how to be someone who writes. I think that's an important distinction. There will be several essays in this series that are less about how to do and more about how to be. In a weird way, it's like trying to explain Weight Watchers to people. I can tell you 'what you do is you eat this much food and drink this much water and you're fine,' but that doesn't tell you how to handle the various hurdles and complications that will arise if you want to actually succeed at doing the program. I also need to tell you how to be on some levels. This essay, like some of those before it and several of those after it, is more about being than doing. And here is what we're being about today:

Good critique targets the text, not the author. Good critique says 'this is sloppy and needs tightening,' or 'I don't think this word works here,' or 'I really don't understand the pacing in this scene.' Bad critique says 'wow, you really turned the suck knob to eleven on this one' or 'why don't you do something you're good at?'. Learn to tell the difference. Don't reject critique because it's harsh on the text; don't seek out critique that's going to make you lose the will to improve. It's a hard balance to strike. It can take a long time. It's absolutely worth it.

Please note that I can't really teach you how to give good critique, although I can give you some examples of things not to do because you'd hate it if people did them to you. What I can do is talk about the way to tell good critique from bad critique, determine your comfort zones, and respond to critique without placing value judgments on anything other than the text. Critique is vital. Learning to take it well is just as essential.

Good? Good. Let's go.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on good critique, bad critique, and the way to tell the difference.Collapse )

So periodically, I spend time thinking about the best of all possible worlds -- I call it the world of sunshine and rainbows and zombie ponies, where it occasionally rains candy corn -- and what I'd like to have someday happen there. Beyond the million-dollar book deal, the New York Times best seller, and the death of the previously unknown, fabulously rich relative who leaves me the deed to his sprawling Victorian estate, I mean. Being an enormous comic book geek, I've actually considered who, in my perfect world, would get the chance to adapt my books. And because I'm a nice person, I thought I'd share.

Upon A Star should absolutely be adapted by Amy Mebberson (As If!, Divalicious, my princess icon). Not only is she a joy to work with, but her particular blend of gonzo-Disney and manga-inspired comic layouts would be absolutely perfect for illustrating the story of Corey Markham, accidental teen queen. It would rock my world in the most thorough of manners.

Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues would ideally be adapted by Chynna Clugston (Blue Monday), whose Archie-gone-wrong approach would be fantastic applied to Clady and company. Given Clady's horror movie fixation, having a slightly comic edge to the illustrations would keep things from getting too-too-bloody. Plus, Chyna draws awesome plaid. Plaid is key.

Now that I've had the silly, let's have the sublime: I would absolutely love to have Discount Armageddon (and sequels) adapted by Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Mystery Date). Who else could do proper justice to a large colony of pantheistic demon mice? Or to the various cryptids and horrible things that litter Verity's world? She'd be totally ideal. If you don't believe me, check out Finder and be enlightened.

Newsflesh owes a lot to Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, which was the work that introduced me to the idea of gonzo journalism (and unlocked a whole new world of possibilities). So I would totally want Darick Robertson, the man who drew Spider Jerusalem and company, to be the one to handle bringing the Masons into an illustrated universe. It would be insane. Insanely awesome.

Toby is the series I have the most time, energy, and love invested in; I guess that means it would naturally be the hardest to select someone for. After a lot of angst and waffling, I'm going to say Pia Guerra (Y: the Last Man) probably comes the closest to what I see inside my head. Although I could be totally wrong. I don't know. It'd make a gorgeous comic, but only if drawn right.

What works, of your own or other people's, would you like to see in comic form? And who would you want to see behind the pencil? Rock me.