Well, what happened around here in 2008? Let's see...

1) I signed with the eternally delightful dianafox, who has shown a remarkable capacity for taking the things I say (some of which make very little sense, filtered as they are through my sunshine-and-zombies Pollyanna worldview) and doing something functionally useful with them. Everybody needs a personal superhero.

2) I started this journal. Because everybody needs their sunshine-and-zombies updates as regularly as possible. No, seriously. How can you know what's happening in their magical playland if somebody isn't making a point of telling you on a regular basis?

3) I arranged to have my website fully revamped, thanks to the design talents of taraoshea and the technical can-do of porpentine. Now it's glorious, it's gorgeous, and it's changing pretty much daily as we hammer the text into place and start getting the various sections hammered into their desired configurations. Which matters because...

4) I sold the first three Toby Daye books to DAW! Yes! Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night have all been sold, after so many years in my head that it's really not even all that funny. Soon, the world will understand why I love these people so much. I hope.

5) I finished writing or revising six books in 2008. The three mentioned above, along with Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby, book four), Newsflesh (The Masons, book one), and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues (Coyote Girls, book one). So that's, y'know. Pretty productive of me.

6) I started work on three more books -- The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh), The Brightest Fell (Toby, book five), and Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, book one).

7) I recorded an album. Scaaaaaary. You can still place pre-orders for Red Roses and Dead Things at my website. I promise that it will be awesome. And filled with corpses.

So it's been a huge, exciting, amazing year, and next year is just going to be a bigger, more exciting, more amazing year. Thanks for being here, and I really can't wait to see what happens next.

Since I'm feeling better* today, I'm taking care of all those things which were permitted to slip over the past several days. Specifically...

* I've gone through and checked checks against orders in my ordering database, so that I could correctly mark off those people I don't need to harass into paying me. I'm a very polite harasser, really, but the major down-side of doing CDs the way I do -- IE, 'the pre-orders pay for the production costs' -- is that when people don't pay me, I have real trouble making the albums actually exist. In other news, I now have 212 pre-orders in the system. I feel special.

* I've reviewed the final mastered tracks for Red Roses and Dead Things, confirming that they are MADE OF AWESOME. I am, of course, hyper-critical of my own performances, but that's my nature, and everything I can be objective about on the album is fantastic. Michelle Dockrey, Maya Bohnhoff, and Tom Smith are all super-cool in their appearances, and Tony Fabris just blows me out of the water with his mournful Dave Davenport. I'm so glad this album is about to exist.

* I've also written the back page for the liner notes, which is sort of like the acknowledgments page in a book, only with a lot more references to James Gunn and his pressing need to call me. And yes, I will be sending him a copy of the album. He's on the extremely short 'freebie' list. (It consists of James Gunn, Stephen King, and Eric Kripke, for this album. Because I am a good little horror girl.)

* Since I like not being clubbed to death by The Agent for getting nothing done**, I've also been plugging away on The Brightest Fell. The goal du jour is hitting three hundred pages, and then breaking to hammer on The Mourning Edition for a little while. I find it hysterical -- and also annoying -- that I have, like, two books in my entire 'write this' list that start with the word 'the,' and I'm working on them both at once. Bah.

* Also, I keep stopping to poke at Facebook, and its addictive little clicky-clicky vampire game. You know you're hooked when you consider soliciting total strangers to join your clan. Again, bah.

More to come, after I find my desk under this pile o' crap.

(*Local values of 'better' include 'capable of moving around under own power without feeling the intense need to stop and yark up everything consumed in the past hour' and 'capable of stringing six coherent words together in a line.' We've lowered our standards, now up yours.)

(**My definition of 'getting nothing done' is a very specialized one. I know this thing.)

"Why do you have that look on your face?"
"My head is full of bees, and the turtle cannot help me."
"...huh?"
"Ignore me, I have the dumb."
"Will do.

(Actual conversation with an actual human. Names omitted to protect the innocent, but I bet you can guess which one was me.)

So I am made of fuss and flail today, which basically means I'm totally unfocused and just want to go back to bed. As this is tragically not an option, I'm guzzling Diet Dr Pepper like a stretch SUV guzzles premium unleaded, and praying that dinosaurs attack San Francisco, forcing an evacuation and allowing me to, yes, go back to bed. Plus, people would probably get eaten by dinosaurs, and that always puts me in a better mood. (The 'always' in the following sentence may not apply when I'm the one getting eaten by dinosaurs, as I have yet to really enjoy any of the various reptile bites I've received, but hey. Maybe it's different when it's a velociraptor.)

Kate informed me this morning that we are now living in the future, as she has all these cool technological capabilities that seemed totally outside the realm of possibility* even ten years ago. I agreed that this was probably true, but the fact is that I'm currently living a little bit in the past, which probably accounts for some of my internal bees. See, a year ago, I hadn't...

* ...finished Newsflesh.
* ...finished Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues.
* ...even thought of the InCryptid books.
* ...rebooted Rosemary and Rue, and hence the entire Toby universe.
* ...signed with an agent.
* ...sold a book.
* ...gone to New York to visit a major publishing house. Especially not one where I belonged.

Basically? I'm not ready for the future that actually exists, because I'm living in the future that I dreamed about when I was nine years old. I have a bright orange bedroom. All my bedding is a) orange, b) green, or c) Halloween themed -- hell, one of my pillowcases is bright orange and covered in little white ghosts that glow in the dark. Brightly enough that I can use them as a nightlight, no less, which is really convenient for the hour or so after I first go to bed. I have a Siamese that is so ideal to my conception of The Perfect Cat that I may as well have designed her in a genetics lab. Horror movies are popular again. I can stay up as late as I want (even if I'm almost always in bed by nine-thirty). There's good stuff on TV, and my stepdad never turns off the movie when the scary parts make me hide under my sleeping bag. I'm sorry, but I'm quite prepared to sign up for the future that's happening to everybody else. I'm still enjoying the one where having an orange ceramic octopus and a plush velociraptor creates an ideal world.

In other news, I've started receiving edits on the first three chapters of The Brightest Fell, thus proving that my personal reality show is continuing to pull good ratings. ("Well, Barbara, they're in their fifth season, with countless spin-offs, and still going strong...") Recording for Red Roses and Dead Things is totally done, and my cover art is so awesome it makes me want to scream. Safeway has two-liter bottles of Diet Dr Pepper at buy three, get three free. And my head remains full of bees.

Bleah.

(*You think I'm kidding? Go back and read some of the really classic whizz-bang-pow science fiction from the 1950s to the 1970s, back when it was all jut-jawed heroes, pneumatic blondes, and phallic rocketships. Did they have Tivo, text messaging, downloadable libraries, terabytes of data-storage in an easily handled medium, reality television, blogging, or distributed informational hyperspace models? No. They had plastic spacesuits and freeze-dried ice cream. The world has changed so much, on such a mundane level, that we totally forget just how far into the future we actually are.)

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 )

Hello! Would you like to take a trip to Writerland, where all the writers are? You can see them frolic in the Fields of Verb, boldly venture into the Adjective Woods, and sink like stones in the infamous Editorial Swamp (home of the deadly White-Out Anaconda, capable of swallowing both man and manuscript in a single gulp). In an effort to help you survive your visit, we here at the Writerland Tourist Bureau have prepared this handy phrasebook, designed to help you understand our natives a little better.

You Say: "How much do you get paid?"
We Hear: "Did you know that being a writer means it's not rude to ask you about money?"

You Say: "How big was your advance?"
We Hear: "My use of industry jargon means you'll tell me."

You Say: "So when are you going to quit your day job?"
We Hear: "Since you're obviously making pots of money JUST TELL ME ALREADY."

You Say: "Where do you get your ideas?"
We Hear: "I would like it if you would punch me in the face."

You Say: "I always wanted to be a writer."
We Hear: "How hard can it be?"

You Say: "Why do you waste your talent on that trash?"
We Hear: "It's been too long since the last time you punched me in the face."

You Say: "Why do you need an editor? Aren't you good at this yet?"
We Hear: "Punching isn't good enough. Get the cobras."

You Say: "How long are you going to just sit there?"
We Hear: "I've come to distract you! Thank me later."

You Say: "Is it really that hard to be published?"
We Hear: "I would like a double order of cobras, and maybe some scorpions."

You Say: "Did you publish this yourself?"
We Hear: "Make those scorpions radioactive, if you would be so kind."

You Say: "How much writing do you have to do?"
We Hear: "I know you're just screwing around and being anti-social."

You Say: "Will you read my story?"
We Hear: "Litigation is fun!"

Please submit any further suggestions for our phrasebook to the Bureau, and have a nice day!

* I'm writing my world description outline for the InCryptid books, which is a lot of fun, since it lets me make statements like 'insect-derived exothermic placental mammals with a decentralized circulatory system' in a completely serious, sincere way. (I love my insect-derived exothermic placental mammals. They're so wonderfully creepy. Also, I would not want them in my house, and neither do you.)

* The Brightest Fell -- also known as 'Toby Daye, book five,' also known us 'uh, Seanan, isn't book one due out next year?' -- is now well underway; I finished chapter seventeen last night, with a great deal of giggling and clapping of my hands. This is also why I haven't been posting many word counts recently, since every time I think 'well, I'll just hop projects now,' The Brightest Fell slaps me upside the head and drags me back in. I think this is because the book really, really wants to be finished. And who am I to argue? I like it when books want to be finished. It makes me feel productive.

* I am seriously considering writing a book about zombie virology. Just because it would give me an excuse to go and hang out at the CDC asking weird questions without getting looked at funny. Also, if you haven't read Zombie CSI by Jonathan Maberry, you totally should. The slowly developing zombie non-fiction genre for the win, yo. (It's true facts about fictional things. This makes it, bizarrely enough, non-fiction. I love the world sometimes.)

* Lilly's best silly parlor trick is once again seasonal: yes, my cat will sing 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' as a duet if you simply start the song and pause at the right places. Behold the beauty of the Siamese. Unfortunately, this means she gets pissed off if you try to sing the duet with another person. The point in Elf where Will Farrel and Zooey Deschanel sing it together drives her into a furious rage. Which is actually really adorable, as long as she's not in your lap when it starts.

* Yes, I am intending to clip her claws before we go to see Santa, in the hopes that this will prevent her from clawing Santa's balls off. Be good to Santa. Let him keep his balls.

* I have decided to use Zip-a-tone on the Conflikt program book cover, to give it that little extra 'zing.' I haven't actually used Zip-a-tone in years, since digital coloring has largely eliminated the need for it, but really, who doesn't love an art supply that requires use of an exacto knife? I'm gonna have me a slice-and-shade party, and it's going to be awesome. The awesome doubles if I don't have to go to the emergency room afterwards. I'm hoping for double awesome.

* The second Hack/Slash omnibus comes out this month, along with a reprint of the first omnibus edition. Hack/Slash is the ongoing story of Cassie Hack, a horror movie final girl who fought back and then kept on fighting. Imagine Buffy if she'd been created by James Gunn and Vincent Price instead of Joss Whedon. And if they'd been doing acid at the same time. This is pretty much my favorite currently on-going comic book, and I highly recommend it. A Christmas gift for the ages!

* Evil Dead: the Musical opens in Martinez, California on January 6th, 2009. Tickets are $25 for cabaret seating, $30 for splatter zone seating. The splatter zone is awesome, but make sure you finish eating (it's a dinner theater) before the song 'Look Who's Evil Now,' as the fake blood tastes terrible. It also smells weird, which could totally kill your appetite.

* The growth of my website continues. It's like an evil alien weed, come to destroy all within its path. The latest addition: you can now access the 'review' page from the discography. Yes, there's a lot of text there right now. I'm going to trim it down to about half that, and increase the font size. We're just getting what exists in place before we start messing with content.

And that's my today. What's yours?

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 )

Since people keep asking me, with increasing levels of petulance, why it takes so long for a book (or, more specifically, my book; I think some of them think I'm supposed to hand-bind every copy, and am thus slacking off) to hit the shelves, I thought I'd take a moment to play Enlightenment Lass and explain. Because I'm just easily amused that way.

Step One: The Idea.
Tragically, this step isn't reliably the fastest part of the process, although it's usually right up there. The idea for Newsflesh took well over a year to come together coherently enough for me to start writing. The idea for Upon A Star, on the other hand, came together in less than five minutes. It can be argued that Newsflesh is a much more complicated idea, and thus needed the extra baking time, but that doesn't change the fact that sometimes, the 'flash of inspiration' takes long enough to make everyone you know start going 'sure, I believe you're planning to write that book.'

Step Two: The First Draft.
This is going to vary depending on how fast you write. If you're Stephen King, it takes about three months ('the span of a season') when it's going well. If you're not, it can take anywhere from thirty days to thirty years. Luckily, unless you're already incredibly famous, or working on the sequel to something, people are unlikely to prod at you during these steps. For values of 'people' that don't include 'your agent,' who gets to prod at you whenever.

Step Three: Revisions.
Again, variable, and not always in the ways you'd think. That six-hundred-page monster may only need one major revision, and be done inside of six weeks, while your fluffy little bit of two-hundred-page nothing may have a major logic problem on page seventy-five and take you three months to fix. Again, this step is often conducted in private.

Step Four: Sale.
Once you've sold a book, you can sometimes manage this step before step three, or even before step one, although that strikes me as potentially bad for your blood pressure. Before you've sold a book, this step can take anywhere from a week to a decade. During this step, the odds are good that your family will be pestering you, but nobody else will. Be glad.

Step Five: Editorial.
So you've managed to write and sell a book. Hooray! Now you get something new. Now you get an editor. Your editor will review your manuscript and get back to you with anything that needs to be changed. It may be practically nothing. It may be practically everything. A good editor will do their best not to steer you wrong. I love my editor.

Step Six: Waiting.
Step six actually contains about seven billion steps on the part of your publishing house, because this is where they find your cover artist, send your manuscript to the copy-editing department, talk to their marketing folks about how they can best position you in the market, and generally works to make sure that your book will to totally awesome. You'll spend a lot of this time waiting and fielding questions about when your book is going to come out. This step can take anywhere from eight months to two and a half years. Find something distracting. Like knitting, or watching every horror movie released during the 1980s.

Step Seven: REALLY Waiting.
Eventually, you'll get an official publication date. This is awesome, because it means you can tell everyone to buy your book on a specific day. This also means that you've just started that giant 'when do we drop the ball on Times Square?' countdown clock inside your head. I hope you have a lot of knitting to do.

Step Eight: Advance Copies.
The fabled ARCs! These are bound copies of your book sent to reviewers and bookstores and your mom six months or so before your release date. They are the final proof of your book's existence. Feel free to cry. Do not feel free to send a personally inscribed copy to that guy who beat you up in high school and is now totally harassing you on Facebook. It's not worth it.

Step Nine: BOOK.
So here we are, anywhere from one to four years from sale, with nobody-really-knows how much time actually elapsed since step one. And now, gloriously, amazingly, your baby is on the bookshelf.

Step Ten: The Question.
"When's the sequel coming out?" Time between book being released to first person asking you: five minutes. Try not to kill.

Have fun!

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 )

Welcome to number sixteen in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. I'm planning for fifty essays in this series, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. Not all the essays will be of use to everyone. Some of them may not be of use to anyone but me (and since they're my thoughts, I definitely find them useful). Some will be more practical than others. Some will be more theoretical than others. None will be filled with tasty candy, although I really wish they would be.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #16: Be Realistic About the Market.

Yes, this is another of the more publishing-oriented essays in the series, and provides the opposite side to essay #15's 'love your work and write what you love' coin. If you're looking for more specific writing tips, you may want to check back later. We will be discussing writing today, obviously, but we're mostly going to be looking at the parts of the business that relate to market trends, taking advice from agents or editors, and making hard decisions about the future of your work. Here's today's expanded topic of discussion:

Understand that what you want to write may not be something that the market can currently support. There will be books no one wants to buy because they can't figure out what genre they fit into. There will be books you can't sell to anyone, period. And then there will be the books where your editor says 'look, we can only take this if you're willing to make the evil scientist a werewolf.' The decision is ultimately yours -- I can't tell you what to do -- but you're going to need to embrace the fact, right out of the gate, that your best-behaved, most beautiful baby may be the one that no one wants to invite to their birthday party.

Yes: after talking about 'write what you love,' today we're going to talk about 'write what will sell.' They're not quite the polar opposites that they seem to be on the surface. After all, you might argue, one of them's the cute but bookish girl who organizes the school literary magazine, writes romantic poetry, and never goes out without a notebook, while the other is the high school beauty queen punk-rock cheerleader movie star who has all the boys wrapped around her little finger. There's no way that they have anything in common, is there?

On the contrary. Much like Hannah Montana and her secret pop star routine, the two have more in common than you'd think. Bearing that firmly in mind, 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 to the market, and making the hard decisions about how to handle your work.Collapse )

The Edge of Propinquity is a monthly webzine edited by jennifer_brozek, and is updated the fifteenth of every month. It's a creepy, atmospheric medium that specializes in stories focusing on the hidden world around the more mundane, everyday world that most people are aware of. Which is all very nice, and it's an awesome webzine, but why am I telling you this again?

Because I have a story in this month's issue. And I think that's both pretty spiffy, and something that people would probably like to know. My story, 'Let's Pretend,' can be viewed currently through the main page of the Edge, or by following the permanent archive link:

http://www.edgeofpropinquity.net/library.asp?id=202

It's a fun little slice of creepy pie, and I'm pretty pleased with it. More to the point, it's the first slice of creepy pie I've served anywhere in 2008 (which was a primarily novel-length year), so I'm incredibly delighted about that part of things. Go, read, enjoy the whole webzine, and meet my creepy friends. I think you'll like them.

I definitely do.

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 )

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire, and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets reposted roughly every two months, to let new people know how we roll around here. (I will make no more Clueless references in this post, I promise.) Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.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 )

I'm currently marooned in the Denver International Airport, due to fun wackiness with my flight back to the Bay Area. (Apparently, the gods of travel thought that Chris and I had too many dinner plans for tonight. Ah, well.) Since I am relatively self-amusing -- I'm the authorial equivalent of Tom Sawyer, I can almost always find a dead rat and a string to swing it with -- I settled down on a power outlet, and have just finished the first chapter of The Brightest Fell, also known as 'Toby Daye, book five.'

(I swear, there really is a method to my madness. A lot of that method centers on the fact that I'm going to be a lot more curtailed in my writing once Rosemary and Rue comes out and book promotion eats my life. So this is sort of a 'start walking early because you know it's the only way to get yourself even remotely close to your destination before the army of frogs attacks.)

(And yes, Jennifer, I've also been working on my GP story this trip. I just hit the point where all the talk of plague was making my neck itch, and since I have a mild cold, that was not a good thing. Work will resume after medication.)

I'm not done with Late Eclipses of the Sun -- there are more edits to be received and crunched through, and I haven't even reached the 'give it to your agent and see if it inspires projectile vomiting stage of things -- but I'm sufficiently finished that working on the next book is the logical thing to do. At least if you're me.

Whee.

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 )

Hello, and welcome to number eleven in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. All the essays in this series are based on my fifty thoughts on writing, all of which were composed in one hot, caffeine-fueled session. That may explain why the metaphors are occasionally so bizarre. This week's essay is a little different, because it depends rather heavily on having read essay number ten, which was on the topic of validation. If you've been skipping in and out of the series (totally understandable), please take a moment to go back and skim number ten before proceeding. It's okay. I can wait.

Back yet? All right, excellent. Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #11: Suffer For Your Art.

This is continuing to touch on the topic of validation, which, as we all know, really doesn't like to be touched. More importantly, it doesn't like to be disputed, and that's what we're about today. Where is the line between seeking validation and refusing to grow? How do we deal with the human desire to hear nice things, and the author's need for critique? It's hard, and that's why our thought for the day is:

Look: if you just want validation and sugar and sweetness, that's okay. But you need to admit it to yourself, and you need to admit that you don't actually want to sell anything. Thanks to the Internet, you can have a wide audience by opening a website, and that can be wonderful and fulfilling, and you won't ever have to listen to a single harsh word. There is nothing wrong with that. I post a lot of stuff online that I don't necessarily feel like being critiqued on. Those pieces say 'be gentle,' and their safe word is 'no.' If what you want is to improve as a writer, however, and if you're looking to publish someday, change 'be gentle' to 'bring it on,' and get ready to suffer for your art.

As a writer, you're going to hear a lot of things about validation. Some of those things will be good. Some of those things will be bad. None of those things will change the fact that, as human creatures, we will occasionally require positive feedback to encourage and motivate us, and to keep us moving forward. So when is it okay to go fishing for approval? What makes validation a good thing, and not a handicap?

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 continuing thoughts on the touchy topic of validation.Collapse )

The fascinating thing about the speed at which I tend to work is the way that I always feel like I'm not getting anything done. To quote Amy, "Even though Superman can move super-fast, time feels the same for him as it does for everybody else." So while my idea of a 'slow day' may look like some other people's idea of 'so productive I wouldn't be able to move for a week,' the agonies of feeling like I've been goofing off are just as severe for me as they are for everybody else.

I get scolded for this periodically, since I tend to get frustrated and whine. Another friend likened it to that lady who only needs to lose five pounds, yet complains every time she accidentally ingests a calorie. To which I can only note that those five pounds may mark the end of a two hundred pound journey. I'm as fast as I am because I've always ridden myself to move faster, move cleaner, and get more done.

Watching other people at work is truly a fascinating thing for me, because they're chasing the same end through methods which are, quite often, entirely foreign. This is also why I say that there's no 'one true way' to write, beyond the part where all writing eventually needs to involve putting words on paper. (Although even that's questionable, since I know people who've composed and memorized stories and poetry without every writing anything down. If they perform it the same way every time, isn't it still something they wrote? Oral tradition and the rise of podcasting as a method of getting stories out there are changing 'wrote' to mean more than just the act of physically recording words on a page.)

Lilly is ecstatic about the fact that I'm writing again; she feels that my adoration of the strange clicky-box is paid for by the fact that when I'm adoring it, I tend to sit still for long periods of time, thus giving myself ample time to pet the cat. I think she senses that the ailing health of my older feline means something, but hasn't yet put together the connection between 'Nyssa isn't doing well' and 'Mommy keeps looking at pictures of Siamese kittens on the clicky-box screen.'

Won't she be surprised? And, as a secondary question, how does writing work for you?

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, land of a thousand climates and master of none. This Saturday, I hopped a train to Sacramento, a much warmer, flatter, still frequently blessedly rural area. (Lest someone from Sacramento think I'm insulting their home territory, believe me when I say that this is anything but disrespect. I love farms, I love pumpkin patches, I love goats, and I hate that my semi-rural home town has turned into a small city where empty lots are strange and livestock is stranger. From me, 'rural' is a compliment the size of Neptune.) Michelle met me at the Sacramento station with Kaia in the car, and we went straight to the pumpkin patch from there.

If you're in the Sacramento area, especially if you have kids (or like goats), I can't recommend the Fog Willow Farm pumpkin patch highly enough. They had the biggest hay mattress I've ever seen, goats, a free hay ride, goats, a hay pyramid, goats, enormous numbers of pumpkins, goats, St. Bernard puppies, goats, and they have a special free pumpkins club for kids under thirteen. Not better than Disneyland, but more fun than your average carnival.

Now, Michelle and company are in the process of moving (something I can't really help with, since I have multiple herniated disks in my lower back). We returned to the house to find David (Michelle's husband) and Matt busy unpacking the truck, and Michelle settled to help and juggle Kaia while I retreated to the back bedroom to work on the end-to-end revision of Late Eclipses of the Sun.

(Late Eclipses is shaping up to be entirely awesome, by the way. Seriously, while I may not appreciate this stage of the revisions -- it's a lot of climb for very little immediate cookie -- there's something fabulous about being able to stop, look down, and see a vast expanse of clean, crisp text stretching out behind me. This book is getting stronger all the time, and should provide a really stable foundation for The Brightest Fell, aka, 'book five.' No, I do not sleep.)

I've reached that stage of revision where I'm catching tiny little continuity errors several times a chapter -- the things that were either too small to see when we still had bigger issues, or were accidentally introduced by the more violent edits and revisions. This led to me standing up several times, going to the living room, announcing, "Everything is stupid," and returning to my labors. Anyone who thinks writing a book is easy should really observe this fun and exciting part of the process. Of course, that'll probably cause them to seek a different career.

Sunday was a relatively low-key day, capped by a vigorous flight towards Berkeley for a birthday party. (The birthday girl was the one driving the car; Matt and I were literally along for the ride.) I ate tasty Indian food for dinner -- goat again, although this time it was goat going into my face, rather than goat going into a pen with all the other goats -- before going home with Kate and sleeping in her basement. The end result of all this? I was just away from the Internet for the longest single period of time where I was not a) at a convention, b) at Disneyworld, or c) camping in living memory.

I am now over one hundred pages of the way through the revision of Late Eclipses.

Life is good.

My efforts to clear all the built-up comments on my LJ (going through my inbox, responding to the ones that want responding to, making sure things are generally tidy) has just been thwarted by my utter and complete exhaustion. It doesn't help that I'm facing a jam-packed weekend of thrilling goodness, including...

* The first pumpkin patch of the season! More, the first pumpkin patch of the season with a small child! Because nothing says 'it's October now, honey,' like forcing my friend Michelle to wrestle me and Kaia in a field of giant orange squash.

* Trying to pass the 75 page mark in the current end-to-end rewrite of Late Eclipses of the Sun! Because it is absolutely vital that the fourth Toby book be finished before the first one is available in stores, don't you know. Behold my crazy. It's definitely beholding you.

* Making progress on my Grant's Pass story! I swear, if I didn't think the editor would hunt me down with a chainsaw, I'd consider dropping out of this anthology, because my story is cursed. Seriously, seriously cursed. I work on it, I get Martian death plague. Finishing it may unleash the pandemic. If that happens, blame Jennifer.

* My monthly Firefly RPG session! This week, Cherry probably shoots something (or blows something up), Archer makes a snarky comment, Levi is vague and priestly, and Jerrika eats something humans were never meant to put in their faces. Bet you a dollar I'm right.

* A good friend's birthday party at some BBQ joint I've never heard of! Now, I am not a big eater of meat. Or vegetables. Or anything beyond candy corn, tomato sandwiches, and pumpkin products. This is going to be hysterical.

So yeah, I'm going to go and fall over now. I hope you all have jam-packed weekends filled with excitement and fun, and while I may not be around until Monday, I promise not to unleash my obedient dinosaur army without warning you.

Yesterday, I...

...got official sign-off to turn in An Artificial Night to my publisher. This means that the entire first trilogy has now been turned in, and I can focus (at least for a few days) on the process of prepping the second trilogy, starting with Late Eclipses of the Sun. I'm deeply excited about this. I have a finished rough draft of Late Eclipses, and about half of The Brightest Fell, but Ashes of Honor is an entirely unfamiliar country. I hope my passport photo doesn't make me look like an idiot.

...finished processing some full-body machete-shot edits to Late Eclipses of the Sun, resulting in my needing a cold shower and the book needing some serious medical attention (the big baby). There's still a lot of work to be done, but the overall shape and structure of things is getting cleaner by the day, and by the draft. I'd estimate that I have maybe two or three passes through left to go before I can file it and get to work on book five. Book five lives in fear. Book five has every reason to be afraid.

...finished the next Velma Martinez installment, 'Velveteen vs. The Flashback Sequence, Part I.' (Technically, that means I need to write the second part of the story still, and I'm direly afraid that it's going to develop a third part, but we take what accomplishments we can get.) I've finally had the opportunity to fully introduce The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division. Velma 'Velveteen' Martinez, David 'The Claw' Mickelstein, Yelena 'Sparkle Bright' (no last name released by her handlers), and Aaron 'Action Dude' Frank. As a lifetime comic book girl, it's incredibly awesome to have the excuse to taunt the things I love.

...fully outlined my story for Grants Pass, after realizing that I was trying to write it from the wrong point of view. Yes, again. Only this time, I was in first when I really needed to be in third. (It seems that my novel default is first, and my short story default is third. I do not know why this is, only that it is.) I am a happy girl, full of pep and the love of horrible pathogens.

...watched an enormous amount of television.

Now we shall have victory cake and Diet Dr Pepper, for no other libation could properly match this victory. VICTORY!

It's time for entry number ten in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. All the essays in this series are based on my fifty thoughts on writing, and will range from the deeply practical to the somewhat more abstract. Not all thoughts will be of equal use to everyone, but you never know until you try. I will continue doing my very best to make sense if you will continue telling me when I don't. As for today's thought, here it is:

Thoughts on Writing #10: Validate Yourself As Well As Your Parking.

The topic of validation is a very touchy one, and we're going to be returning to it several times as this essay series goes on. Since this is our first time, we're basically going to validate the idea of validation -- that is, we're going to look at when it's not only okay to seek validation, it's practically required. So our thought for the day is:

When a book or an idea is new, it's okay to want validation. You're standing at the mouth of a tunnel that's probably thousands of pages long, once you calculate for discarded text and revisions, and that's scary. Ask people 'do you like my idea?'. Tell people you need to hear good things about what you're doing. It's okay to say 'it's my first time, be gentle.'

As a writer, you're going to hear a lot of things about validation. Some of those things will be good. Some of those things will be bad. None of those things will change the fact that, as human creatures, we will occasionally require positive feedback to encourage and motivate us, and to keep us moving forward. So when is it okay to go fishing for approval? What makes validation a good thing, and not a handicap?

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 initial thoughts on the touchy topic of validation.Collapse )

As a rule, I'm working on a minimum of three projects at any given time. For 'working on,' read either 'writing' or 'seriously and intensively revising.' (There will usually be other projects overlapping, but they're generally the sort that require less constant attention -- processing light edits, outlining, setting up the continuity guide for a sequel.) Right now, those projects are Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby four), The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh), and Discount Armageddon (Incryptid one). A month ago, they were Late Eclipses of the Sun, Newsflesh, and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. What a difference a few weeks can make, huh?

I like working on multiple projects at the same time. When something is really on fire, I can buckle down and dig my heels in, and when everything is just chuckling along at a normal pace, it means I keep myself rotating so that nothing ever has the chance to get stale. I know something is going well when I start thinking about the next thing. I'm really comfortable inside a book when it's so familiar that it's practically transcription of things I already know, and that frees my mind to go pondering what happens next in the next thing in the cycle.

When I finished last week's chapter of The Mourning Edition, I was immediately thinking about a pacing problem in the last quarter of Late Eclipses, and finally figured out how it could be repaired. While I was dealing with Late Eclipses, I found myself thinking about Verity, and ways to keep things moving without losing the quixotic edge that makes her story so damn much fun to write. And now that I'm back on Discount Armageddon, I'm pondering what's going on in my happy zombie wonderland. As long as I know what happens next, my mind is free to roam, and the text is almost always the better for it.

People periodically ask me how I juggle things. It's one of those questions that sort of causes me to look blank and blink a lot, because I really just do. I write about as fast as I think, and I need to pause sometimes and think about what I'm going to do next; that's what the alternate projects are for. As for making sure each gets its fair share of my attention, well, that's why I keep to-do lists.

My week so far has looked like this:

MONDAY: Work on revisions to the end of Late Eclipses.
TUESDAY: Finish revisions to the end of Late Eclipses, process reader edits.
WEDNESDAY: Agent revisions to An Artificial Night, start on chapter four of Discount Armageddon.

Today, I'm finishing chapter four of Discount Armageddon, and tomorrow I'll be starting on the next chunk of The Mourning Edition, with a break to work on my story for Grant's Pass. My to-do lists are robust and sassy, and glad to assist me in making progress.

Life is good.

It's been too long since we've had one of these, so welcome to the ninth installment in my ongoing essay series on the art and craft of writing. All of these essays are based on my fifty thoughts on writing, which I basically wrote down because I was bored one afternoon. If I'd known that I was going to wind up accidentally basing an essay series off the damned things, I might have been a little more careful about what I was thinking. Only probably not, because I've met me, and I tend to regard that sort of thing as a challenge. Luckily, I'm caffeinated. Today's point to ponder:

Thoughts on Writing #9: Control Your Children.

I truly do feel that today's topic is an important one. I also feel that it's one of those things that's mildly difficult to explain -- either it makes sense or it doesn't. Since I've never been one to back away from something just because it was impossible to articulate, I'm just going to get out the hammer. The core of the idea is simple: sometimes your kids aren't perfect either. More expansively:

You know those parents with the totally out-of-control kids who run around the restaurant sweeping things off tables and screaming in the faces of all the other diners? And you know how they just sit there looking serene, because their kids are precious little angels and everything they do is wonderful? Don't be one of those parents. If your book spits in somebody's metaphorical soup, the appropriate thing to do is to apologize and discipline your text, not tell the person with the saliva slowly dissolving in their minestrone that they 'just don't appreciate the beauty of spit.' Not everyone is going to like what you do, but you can damn well make sure your kids don't trash the place before you pay the check.

What does this mean? It means that we can't please all the people all of the time, no matter how amazing we may think we are. It also means that sometimes, we aren't going to be able to defend the things our children -- our words -- can do, and we'll need to just apologize and move on. The responsibility for our creations is no one's but our own.

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 things our kids can do.Collapse )

So several people have asked me, in amidst the more general posts on writing and formatting things and watching too much television and my cat being adorable, exactly how it is that I go about writing a book. Since saying 'I put words on paper until a novel falls out' seems a little bit twee, and I like writing things down, I am now writing out How I Write Books, or, What Seanan Does In Her Rapidly Decreasing Spare Time. This glosses a lot of the more complicated steps, since a truly accurate portrayal of how I write books would involve a lot of 'stop writing, go find a zombie movie' and 'get another DDP,' and no one actually needs to read that. Those particular steps are sort of a given.

Soooo...

( Click here and learn about the way one blonde's brain works, in the literary sense. Lots of confusion? Yeah, that's rather to be expected around here, where running three books at the same time is entirely normal, but stopping to focus on something that makes sense absolutely isn't.Collapse )

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire, and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis (currently, approximately every two months). It may look familiar; that's because it gets reposted every time the answers change, and to let new people know how we roll around here. (I will make no more Clueless references in this post, I promise.) Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

I am primarily a writer of novel-length works. I could offer a bunch of babble about how this is due to the scope of my artistic vision, but a) a lot of my friends are short story writers, and would slap me, and b) it'd be crap. I just have trouble thinking in blocks of less than twenty thousand words. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, just that when it does, it's pretty rare.

The fact that I recently got a rewrite request on a short story submission that was essentially 'please increase your word count' is thus hysterical.

I'm doing pretty well, by my standards; I've actually managed to finish two short stories to the point of submission in the past month (no word yet one way or another, which is entirely reasonable and understandable), and I conceived, started, and completed 'Velveteen vs. The Isley Crawfish Festival,' which is a totally new setting for me. Super-fun. Not only that, but it's a totally new setting where I have no desire to write a novel. Practically unheard of.

(By the by, there is now a 'velveteen vs.' tag which will index all the Vel stories. Because there are definitely going to be more of them cropping up over the next few months. I stretch my short story muscles! I force cranky superheroes to do things that they don't want to do! I am maybe not such a nice girl.)

I don't think I'll ever be 'a short story writer' in the sense that I naturally think in the format, but I think I can get better at achieving a beginning, middle, and end in under twenty thousand words. And that'll be a nice change.

I'm pleased.

(To be specific, today we're spotlighting Amanda-the-physicist, not Amanda-who-isn't-a-physicist. Why doesn't real life work like fiction, where two people are only allowed to have the same name if one of them promises to die five pages later?)

Amanda was one of the first people ever to get their hands on Rosemary and Rue, in a much earlier form. She's also one of my longest-running proofreaders, having now been involved with every book in the series. Oh, and she's married to Michael, the man that Newsflesh was functionally inspired by. All of which makes her an awesome friend, but not necessarily an awesome proofreader.

Luckily for me, she is an awesome proofreader, and because she's known me -- and been reading for me -- for so long, she's capable of making statements that might be offensive coming from just about anybody else. Right now, she's proofreading Late Eclipses of the Sun (the fourth Toby book), and had this to say:

"Okay, hon. During the Shadowed Hills sequence, they are all still having a major attack of stupid."

Behold the honesty! Being a) an academic, b) a folklore geek, and c) a scientist, she then proceeded to support this argument with fully two pages of 'this is why all your characters are dumb right here.' Seriously, two pages, not of edits or continuity catches, but of detailed and nit-picky textual critique. I'm going to lose my entire weekend to rewrites solely based on this set of notes, and I am overjoyed.

Good writers are made by talent, practice, persistence, luck, and alcoholic muses with sick senses of humor.

Great writers are made by their editors.

It's time for yet another essay on the art and craft of writing, since there's nothing else going on around here. To recap our premise, this is number seven in a series of fifty essays based around my fifty thoughts on writing. The topics range from the deeply silly to the fairly serious, and that's probably why I keep doing them. That, and I don't like to leave things unfinished. As always, bribes are happily accepted, and since we're approaching Halloween -- the most wonderful time of the year -- suitable bribes are easily found. But enough about that. Here's a look at today's topic:

Thoughts on Writing #7: Write What You...Hell, No.

One of the first things most of us learn in classes on writing -- even high school-level English classes -- is 'write what you know.' We hear it from teachers, we hear it from other writers, we hear it from people who just want to help. 'Write what you know.' Well, here's my thought on the topic:

The phrase 'write what you know' is innately flawed. I don't know what it's like to be a changeling detective working the mean streets of San Francisco, or a hard-boiled journalist with a crazy twin brother, or a teenage lycanthrope with a serial killer problem. Write what you're willing to know. Everything will begin with a kernel of pre-existing knowledge -- I know folklore (Toby), zombies and blogging (Georgia), and coyotes and high school (Clady) -- and expand into a fabulous orgy of learning. Toby taught me San Francisco history and lots of ways to kill people. Georgia taught me virology and plagues. Clady taught me about snack foods. If you're not willing to write anything but what you already know, you're going to be restricted to autobiography, non-fiction, and writing the same plot ten thousand times. And that's just not fun.

I think it's pretty clear that I don't actually believe in 'write what you know.' So what does that mean? This time we're talking about writing what you know, writing what you're willing to know, and writing what you learn.

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 know -- when it's appropriate, and when it really isn't.Collapse )

1) Return home from work basically a walking swamp, due to the summer deciding to have one last party here in California. Collapse into desk chair and download heaping piles of edits rather than doing anything that actually requires coherent thought.

2) Add some pages to the new Toby Wiki, as this requires little more than cutting and pasting, at least for now. Later, this thing is going to require heaping piles of effort and thought, but right now? I cut, I paste, I format, I get bored, I wander away to do something else.

3) Perform major surgery on Late Eclipses of the Sun, slicing the events of chapter three into four equal chunks and stapling them together in a new order before covering the scars with sticky tape and glue. Discover that the chapter is way, way better this way. Grumble.

4) Try to explain the continuity changes to the cat. The cat fails to care.

5) Send the new version of Late Eclipses to my proofing list. Get antsy. Start transitioning Discount Armageddon from third person to first person. Again, discover that the text is way, way better this way. Orders of magnitude better. 'There is no possible way you were wrong about the POV change' better. Grumble more.

6) Process some minor edits to Late Eclipses, including one that points out the fact that there is no such date as April 31st.

7) Decide to go watch Eureka with the cat.

(For purposes of this post, 'post-weekend' means 'Thursday night to now.')

Well, things continue to be hectic around here, which is exactly how I like them, so I really can't complain. Since Thursday, I have...

* Finished the initial revisions on Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. This was draft one-and-a-half, to let me fix all the continuity glitches and authorial stupid that had managed to creep in around the edges; now I'm ready to kick off draft two, during which I'll lose 10% of my hard-earned word count and hit all my characters repeatedly with a hammer. Because that's social. I'm feeling super-good about this book, and I love, love, love the fact that it's finally, blessedly finished.

* Purchased tickets to head for Seattle for my first pre-Conflikt rehearsal. Conflikt is the Pacific Northwest's own filk convention, and I'm going to be their Guest of Honor in 2009 (it's a January convention). I'm super-excited, but I'm also super-nervous. Rehearsal will make the nervousness become less while the excitement becomes more. It's a match made in heaven. Plus I get to hang out with all my awesome Seattle area friends, and that never fails to make me happy.

* Processed a bucketload of edits on Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, 'Toby Daye book four,' aka, 'Seanan, if you just sold the first three, what the hell is wrong with you that you're working on the fourth one already?!' OCD cat is working marginally ahead of the curve, yo. OCD cat is also endlessly amazed by the editing process, because, well...I'm a pretty good author. I think I can say that without bragging, since, y'know, sold the trilogy and all. But give me a bunch of good proofreaders with machetes, and things become amazing. I'm watching this book just get better and better, and it's incredible.

* Finished the third chapter of The Mourning Edition, bringing me one step closer to world domination through zombies. I like world domination through zombies. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

* Entered about ten pages of data into my Toby Continuity Wiki, where it gleams in hyperlinked, clickable glory, thrilling my OCD heart to no end. It's gorgeous. I'm trying not to think about the part where it's the beginning of several hundred cumulative hours of work, because it really is going to make my life infinitely easier, and just dwell on the part where it's gorgeous.

* Started Discount Armageddon, book one of the Price series. Because I know you're gonna say it anyway, say it with me now: CHEESE! AND! CAKE! Also, ballroom dancing, snarky chameleon girls in fancy hotels, apartments sublet from Yeti, and La Parkour. It's good at be this kind of crazy.

My weekend was awesome. How was yours?

Having moved past our series of entries on people being mean to you (which is going to happen, just in case you miraculously managed to miss that memo), it's time to begin a totally new topic here in my series of fifty essays based around my fifty thoughts on writing. We're starting to get into the really philosophical, and hence somewhat more difficult to express, concepts. That means we're heading for more headaches and a lot more fun. Also, hopefully, more bribery, as we're standing at the gateway of candy corn and pumpkin products season. Remember, a bribed blonde is a happy blonde. A darling blonde. And that brings us to today's topic:

Thoughts on Writing #6: Kill Your Darlings.

That's right: I'm advocating murder. Now, before you call the police to report me as a hazard to the human race, I think we'd better take a look at the thought that goes with the title, because it's going to make a lot of things a lot more clear:

Kill your darlings. You can save their wordy little corpses in a file where you can look back on them with love -- I do -- but often, the little bits of text that we're the most proud of have no business being in the middle of the narrative. Nothing is sacred once the editing machete comes out.

This is one of the proverbs of the writing world, and one of the hardest instructions I've ever had to learn how to take. This time, we're talking about identifying your darlings, killing them mercifully, and finding a way to live with what you've done.

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 killing your darlings, doing it mercifully, and not turning your manuscript into a blood bath.Collapse )

1) Return home from work. Update local backups of various files to reflect edits processed during lunch break, since failure to do this leads to madness and tears. Process slightly complicated by the sudden presence of an attention-starved Siamese cat who insists on licking every inch of my hands. Resistance is futile. You will be exfoliated.

2) Begin downloading edits received during commute. Be both daunted and elated by the sheer scope of said edits. Remember that maybe if I'd stop writing three or more books at a time, I wouldn't wind up opening my inbox to discover fifteen people commenting on my abuse of the common comma. Then again, what would be the fun in that?

3) Get accused of sadism by a proofreader. Cackle maniacally.

4) Compulsively answer all pending LJ comments on this blog, while the little voice in the back of my head scolds me for wasting time that could be spent processing all those edits from step two. Remind the little voice that if I do this every day, it takes fifteen minutes, rather than an entire Sunday. Little voice quiets, grumbling.

5) Process edits. The English language: I am once again doin' it wrong. Also continuity, punctuation, and making sense. Mysteriously, the books in question remain pretty good. I become increasingly more and more convinced that I have sold my soul at the crossroads. I also find it increasingly more difficult to be bothered by this notion.

6) Ask the cat what I should work on. The cat says I should work on feeding the cat.

7) Feed the cat.

So you know that series of essays based on my thoughts on writing that's been appearing here? Well, it turns out that the folks at Aphelion -- a science-fiction and fantasy-oriented webzine with a history of scholarly articles -- like those essays so much that they've decided to reprint them! (With my permission, of course, not being the sort of folks who really want to be attacked by an army of plague bats.)

Only the first of the reprinted essays is up so far, but be sure to drop by and check out the rest of the 'zine. It's pretty spiffy. And obviously, they have really excellent taste in columnists.

Since we've gone a little while without a lengthy essay on writing, I figure it's time for the fifth installment in what seems really likely to be a series of fifty essays based around my fifty thoughts on writing. On the plus side, at least this means we're ten percent of the way there! On the down side...why am I doing things where 'ten percent of the way there' seems like a ringing endorsement? Ah, well. At least it's keeping me from starting the pandemic, which would be antisocial and really quite mean of me. And speaking of people being mean to you, let's take a look at today's topic:

Thoughts on Writing #5: People Are Going To Be Mean To You, Take Two.

Does this seem similar to our last topic? That's because superficially, it really is. It's only when we start digging down beneath the surface that the differences become really apparent. Get your shovel, and take a look at the original thought:

People are going to be mean to you: that's axiomatic. And sometimes, those people are going to have good and vital things to say. But people who are being mean for the sake of being mean have the potential to do more harm than good, and when you encounter those people, it's okay to walk away. Don't refuse to let anyone tell you that you're flawed. That way lies madness and pretentiousness. But don't stand around to be told that everything you think is fun is a steaming piece of shit, either.

So last time we talked about cruelty and the fine line between tough love and people being dicks just because they can. This time, we're talking about the fact that you do have a right to assess the critique you're given for its innate value and walk away when it's necessary.

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 second set of thoughts on people being mean to you.Collapse )

Here go:

Words: 4,060
Total words: 63,080
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twenty-four.
Music: whatever happened to be playing at the time.
Lilly: asleep in my tank top drawer. Again.

I managed to find a) my additional word count, and b) Jason without his shirt on. I basically win at writing. I have defeated all those who might oppose me, and I have returned home with the finest spoils of battle. Said spoils are going to require whacking with a machete before they really qualify as 'awesome,' rather than just 'potentially so awesome it makes my teeth hurt,' but that's why I have a machete. Without a machete, there's so very much that you just can't do.

Almost everything that I have left in this book is wham-wham-wham-action-adventure-wham, which is always fun (and fast) to write. Especially when I'm dealing with Clady, who's seen every horror movie ever made, and is thus immune to many of the stupid horror movie girl cliches. She still makes mistakes. It's just that they're very different mistakes, full of unexpected badness. Putting a horror movie savvy character into a horror movie world is just so much fun. I should have done it years ago. Except that, had I done it years ago, it wouldn't have been Clady. So I suppose there's a reason that everything happens in its own time.

This book has, at most, 10,000 words left to go. And I am loving every single one of 'em. Whee!

Well, here we are, back again, for the fourth installment in what's looking more and more like a series of fifty essays based around my fifty thoughts on writing. Never let it be said that I looked at an enormous commitment, shrugged, and declared myself to be preemptively over-booked. Besides which, this is at least reasonably entertaining, and the discussions it's sparking are really entertaining. As always, I respond well to bribery. Consider the virtues of candy corn. And in the meantime, why not check out today's topic? Which is, of course:

Thoughts on Writing #4: People Are Going To Be Mean To You.

You are a person, and you have a right to the ball! Just make sure that it's the right ball before you really get attached. Committing to the wrong ball just makes everyone sad. The original thought:

People are going to be mean to you. Full stop, absolutely, people are going to be mean to you. Some of them will be mean because they like what you're doing, and they want to see it work. Some of them will be mean because they feel like being jerks. Learn to see past the mean and get to the actual meat of what's being said. 'I don't like romance' is not the same thing as 'this scene makes no sense,' and they don't have the same potential to benefit your work.

That's right: today we're talking about cruelty, and the fine, fine line between tough love and being an absolute asshole. Because that's the sort of thing that keeps us entertained around here.

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 people being mean to you.Collapse )

I have, in fact, discovered the single best reason for an author to have an agent. Namely:

Your agent won't think you're crazy.

I think a lot. I mean, no matter what else I'm doing at any given point in time, the odds are pretty good that I'm thinking. As I write this, I'm thinking about, well, writing this; I'm thinking about Discount Armageddon, which I've started outlining; I'm thinking about Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, which I'm planning to work on tonight; I'm thinking about the song that's stuck in my head; I'm thinking about processing edits in Newsflesh; I'm thinking about packing for the weekend. All these many, many trains of thought are running at the same time, and while the conductors in my head are pretty good about keeping to the timetable, there's always the chance that some switch is going to get thrown wrong, and the wrong train is going to hit the station.

For the most part, I've learned not to answer 'how are you?' with 'I think Moira married an incubus' or 'if viral amplification was underway when the body was put into cryogenic suspension, what would happen when you thawed the person out?'. Note the use of the words 'for the most part.' When Chris asked me what I thought of Hellboy II, I looked at him with deep and bone-searing sorrow, and replied "Evening* has the wrong hair color." That's just how it goes sometimes.

Conversations with my agent are different, because my agent understands that I, as a writer, am in some ways a little bit to the left of 'normally sane.' So when she says 'how are you?' and I reply 'you can totally apply ballroom dancing to demon hunting!', she says 'that's awesome!' instead of 'perhaps it's time to stop the Masters of Horror marathons.' Now, it's true that sometimes, she needs to summon me back to the world of linear thought long enough to answer serious questions, like 'when can you give me a manuscript?' or 'do you really think it's a good idea to start another series right now?', but it's not a judgment, it's a business need.

My agent is the person who, at the end of the day, doesn't mind the fact that I don't need a segue to start explaining the mating habits of the North American Yeti (messy), the rules of succession in fae politics (messier), or the patterns of Kellis-Amberlee incubation in a closed population (messiest). She throws herself on that conversational grenade daily, for the good of all the rest of you.

How I adore her.

(*A character in Rosemary and Rue. You'll all get to meet her when you read my book. So much will make sense when you read my book. Like why I twitch so much.)

The first fabulous thing: note the icon on this entry. Is that an icon for An Artificial Night? Why, yes. Yes, it is. And was it made by the amazing noelia_g, who made my Rosemary and Rue icon? Why, yes. Yes, it was. She has also kindly made an icon for A Local Habitation which is just gorgeous. So now I can tag all my Toby posts accurately. Or at least all my Toby posts about the first three books, and right now, those are what matter, right?

The second fabulous thing: I think I get, quite possibly, the funniest mail in the world. At the end of an inquiry I recently received:

Thank you for your attention (and please don't engineer a flesh-eating bacteria just for me).

I have the best correspondents in the world. Also, they have amazing faith in my ability to synthesize flesh-devouring bacteria without a lab or access to trained support staff, which is actually seriously awesome in and of itself.

The third fabulous thing: I'm still basically floating from knocking out ten thousand words on The Mourning Edition over the weekend. Yeah, I know, it's just the beginning, but y'know what? It's my beginning. And even if the book runs to 200,000 words, which seems rather unlikely, it's 5% of the full text. It's a good beginning. I'm happy.

What's fabulous in your world today?

And now it's time for the third installment in what I'm pretty sure has just become a series of fifty essays based around my fifty thoughts on writing. Because what I was really dying for was another way to drive myself insane. Oh, well. I work best when I'm trying to run in seventy directions at the same time, and this definitely qualifies as a series of sprints, if not a marathon. Remember, I respond well to bribery, especially when the bribery happens to be pumpkin-flavored. In the meantime, please enjoy today's topic. Namely:

Thoughts on Writing #3: You May Not Be A Novelist (and That's Okay).

You are a person, and you have a right to the ball! Just make sure that it's the right ball before you really get attached. Committing to the wrong ball just makes everyone sad. The original thought:

Putting fifty thousand words on paper does not make you a novelist. It means you successfully put fifty thousand words on paper. You should be proud of yourself for that, because dude, it's difficult to stick with a plot and a concept and an idea and characters for that long, and I salute you. At the same time, you're not a novelist. Sweating over those fifty thousand words until you're confident that at least forty thousand of them are good ones is what makes you a novelist. Good luck.

Ready?

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 becoming a novelist.Collapse )

Welcome to the second of what looks dismayingly like it's going to be a series of fifty essays based on my fifty thoughts on writing. Because, y'know, it's not like I was doing anything else with myself in my copious amounts of spare time. Except for the part where, oh, wait, I DON'T HAVE ANY. Clearly my brain is trying to kill me. Please send help. If you can't send help, please send pumpkin cake, as it is direly needed. If you can't send pumpkin cake, well, enjoy today's topic. Namely:

Thoughts on Writing #2: Your Grammar Is Eating The Neighbors.

...what's sad is that this is actually nicer and less snarky than the first entry in this series. Just in case you'd wondered whether I was actually mellowing. The original thought:

The rules of English grammar were devised by an evil linguist who had a bone to pick with the adherents of the more traditional schools of the written word. They laughed at him in the academy, and we bastards are still paying today. You don't need to have a perfect grasp of the seventeen thousand (occasionally conflicting) rules to be a writer; that's what editors and proofreaders are for. At the same time, you can't just throw a bunch of words at the page and expect to have all your work done for you. Learn the basic rules of punctuation and grammar before you subject other people to your work. They can squabble over the Oxford commas at their leisure.

Ready?

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 grammar.Collapse )

Okay, now we REALLY have to have a dino dance party. Why, you may wonder? Why, you may ask yourself? Because I have just finished my first post-editorial pass through A Local Habitation, book two in the Chronicles of October Daye. And I have turned that puppy in. Yes! No longer is my manuscript malingering around on my thumb drive, looking lost and lonely and wondering whether it ever gets to go anywhere! It's gone, off to the magical wonderland of sunshine and zombie ponies that is DAW Books. (I've seen the offices at DAW. They're totally filled with sunshine and zombie ponies. I swear. Okay, not really, but wouldn't that be lovely? Zombie ponies for all!)

I kinda completely love this book right now. I mean, I kinda completely love this book all the time, because hello, my baby, all grown up and ready to go play with the big books, but also, I've just gotten up close and snuggly with all its little bells and whistles, and this has resulted in me kinda completely loving it. This is sort of awesome, as I have a very love/hate relationship with my books while I'm working on them.

I'm reasonably sure all this glowing happy 'yay my books are finished yay' is just the endorphin rush before the inevitable and soul-consuming crash. I'm basically okay with that.

Meanwhile, off in the land of 'people doing arcanely productive things that I don't understand but which fill my universe with buckets and buckets of awesome,' Tara is mostly finished with my website redesign, and Chris continues to keep the site itself alive and not eating people who happen to be passing randomly on the street. Let's be clear, here: my skill with HTML basically extends to the cutting-edge of 1997. I can close a tag with the best of them, as long as it's not, y'know, a hard tag. Once it gets difficult, I crawl under my desk and hide until Chris manfully rescues me. So credit for every ounce of visual and functional awesome? Goes to Chris and Tara, rather than to me.

Plans for this weekend include a lot of house cleaning in preparation for Terence's upcoming visit, a family funeral, and probably starting to dig myself into The Mourning Edition (which is the sequel to Newsflesh). I may also head for the Starbucks and spend a few peacefully isolated hours inking, as that's the best way to get ahead of myself.

I have finished this week in triumph.

DINO DANCE PARTY!

Apparently, coming up with a list of fifty thoughts on writing wasn't enough for the teeming bag of plague-carrying bats that is my brain, because I have continued to ponder each of the points...

...thus leading to what looks very likely to be a series of fifty posts on and about writing. There are days when I look at my brain and truly wonder whether it is, in fact, a suicidal glob of fat and neurons, devoted to driving me insane and thus allowing it the sweet oblivion of death. But no matter! For the moment, there is pondering to be done, and a pseudo essay to be written. Today's topic, inspiring as it may or may not be:

Thoughts on Writing #1: You're Going To Suck.

Aren't we kind around these parts? The original thought:

You're going to suck when you start. Sucking when you start is okay. Every new project, no matter how brilliant the idea at the heart of it happens to be, is going to start by sucking. Just deal with it, and soldier through. Every sentence is a learning experience.

Ready?

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 sucking.Collapse )

Ahem.

I have just -- I mean, within the past fifteen minutes 'just' -- finished the first pass revisions on Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth book* in the Chronicles of October Daye. That's several hundred pages of text that I have now pummeled to within an inch of its text-y little life. Since I haven't closed the proofing pool on An Artificial Night yet, this book gets to go to bed and mellow for about a week, like fine wine. Tomorrow, I'll start processing Brooke's truly epic edits on Newsflesh. For right now, however...

For right now, I shall CELEBRATE MY TRIUMPH by opening a can of peas, getting a Diet Dr Pepper, finding my art supplies, and going into the back of the house to watch crappy horror movies and ink. Because that's just how we roll around these parts.

Tomorrow, there will be zombies. Tomorrow, poor Clady may actually get my attention focused her way again. Tomorrow, I will consider -- seriously consider -- turning my attention back towards Grace, Chastity, and their little homovore problem. But that's all tomorrow. Tonight, I bask in the glow of my success. Tonight, I consume legumes.

Tonight, I watch TV.

(*This is the first book not covered by my current contract. Just FYI.)

So here's the skinny on the first four books:

Rosemary and Rue. First-pass editorial is done, and the book has been sent off to DAW to get cuddly with my editor, who will hopefully find it to be an amazing construction of chocolate chips and chainsaws, and thus be able to pass it straight on to the line-editors. While I'm wishing for impossible things, I'd also like a zombie pony full of money.

A Local Habitation. I have my editorial notes from The Editor and The Agent, and I'm about to start processing them. This should be a lot of fun. I find that every book improves immensely as it goes through the editorial process, even if, occasionally, it comes out the other side looking extremely different than it looked going in. This hasn't been officially 'turned in' yet, but it's getting very close.

An Artificial Night. We're still in 'game preserve' edits on this one -- I've been working industriously, and The Agent has seen it, but it hasn't gone to DAW yet. I'm planning to finish the home-team editing before the end of July, and I'm shooting to have the book turned in on an official basis by the end of the first week in August. This will be awesome, as it will free up a lot of my brain for working on...

Late Eclipses of the Sun. Book four! Book one of the second set of three, since almost everyone seems to think in trilogies these days! I'm in the middle of rewriting this one, and by 'the middle,' I mean 'currently, I'm on page 277 of 375, and things are rocking like a cruise ship in a tsunami.' I haven't turned the lions loose on it yet, but dude, the improvements are vast and epic as it is, and I can't wait to move on to the next stage.

After I finish with the LE revisions, I'm going to focus on The Brightest Fell, aka, 'book five,' and then move on to other projects. Because standing still is for other people. Also because I really enjoy having several books written past the point of 'current' in the series, since that means I have the luxury of changing my mind before the deadline.

It probably says something that my reward for finishing book four is going to be quality OCD-girl time with my brand-new continuity Wiki, but I'm trying not to think about that overly-hard.

Whee!

It's time for the July installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain what I'm working on and what its status happens to be! Please note that Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation have returned to this list after a brief vacation, because they've finished their initial review at DAW and are now entering the glorious revision process. Ah, progress. It smells like fear.

Also, this time we're cut-tagging, because the list has, as is so often the case with me, managed to get longer. My brain, ladies and gentlemen. Nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

I just read On Writing again. I also just read half the books in the Howdunnit series, because it's always good to refresh your understanding of poisons and blunt-force trauma. Oh, and a couple books on pandemics and how to make sure everybody has a good time—what if we threw a pandemic and everybody came?!—but that was for fun. Also, I just revised three novels at a speed that, were the publishing world a reality show, would probably qualify me for a spot on the finale and a shot at the hundred thousand dollar grand prize (So You Think You Can Write, with your host, Warren Ellis, will be back after a short break...). The end result of all this wallowing in the technical sides of the written word, as well as all this revising? A whole lot of thinking about writing. I mean, seriously, I never spend this much time just thinking about writing, and I spend the bulk of my time actually writing. When I'm not writing, I'm whining about the fact that I'm not writing. And now? Now I'm thinking about writing.

Because I believe firmly in the art of over-sharing, I've decided to write down some of my conclusions about writing. Technique, reality, functionality, revision, critique, the whole ball of wax. Because maybe that will get them out of my head, and allow me to get some goddamn work done. Your mileage will absolutely vary. 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 in total. You must be at least this tall to ride this ride.Collapse )

So back on June 9th, I started the major surgical adjustments to the third Toby Daye book, An Artificial Night. Again, I know the exact date because I never ever ever throw anything away ever, and also because my planner tends to have notations like 'started rewrites today' and 'actually ran out of pickle relish' on the monthly view. Because that's just the way I roll. After spending most of yesterday threatening a single chapter with pitchforks and torches, I cleared the hurdle and raced to the end of the book. WINNER!

I still need to do more proofing and processing before the book gets shipped off to The Agent for further consideration, but the heavy lifting has been done; it's time to put away the machete, get out the scalpel and the staple gun, and start repairing the smaller, more easily overlooked issues. Even after spending several months in 'everything I know is wrong oh dear heavens did I really write that?!' mode, this book remains my favorite of the first three, and that's like, seriously magical.

VELOCIRAPTOR DANCE PARTY TIME!!!! Because nothing says 'I just finished a book revision' like dancing dinosaurs.

Still being me, and still being totally incapable of sitting still for more than a few minutes, I've already started the revisions on Late Eclipses of the Sun, the fourth of the Toby books. (This is the first book that comes after my current contract with DAW. So if you want to read it, y'know, encourage everyone you've ever met to buy Rosemary and Rue.) I'm also getting ready to seriously buckle down on the Newsflesh revisions, because nothing says 'detox after wallowing in urban fantasy for six months' like 'zombies and politics.'

I love the fact that right now, there's always something else waiting to be worked on. And, of course, the editorial process is going to be kicking in sooner than later, which will take me right back to Rosemary, and a whole new set of adventures. But for right now...

Dance!

My writing has just been compared to early Stephen King.

I can now die happy, content that I have actually done what I always wanted to do with my life.

So, y'know. And stuff.

Last night, after a lot of introspection, prodding, and generally gnawing at the idea like a velociraptor gnaws on a brontosaurus bone, I took the entire first chapter of An Artificial Night, shifted it to a separate file (where it wouldn't get in the way), and started working on a new first chapter. It contains a lot of the same elements and setting-establishment themes, but is, at the same time, a very, very different beastie. This has become a pattern. Every time I start revising a book, the first chapter seems to wind up in the recycling bin.

(I am at least reasonably confident that this won't happen with Newsflesh, since it starts with rip-roaring zombie adventure, or with Chasing St. Margaret, which starts with...um...Indian food. And I'm pretty sure taking off the first chapter of Upon A Star would cause the rest of the book to stop making any sort of linear sense. So it's probably safe.)

I find this part of the process insanely annoying -- I had a perfectly good front porch on this house! I was just getting used to it! -- but also deeply gratifying, because I have yet to build a new porch that isn't substantially better than the old porch. Plus, it gives me the excuse to really go to town with the chainsaw, and I always love that.

(Editing viciously and with little concern for life or limb, machete. Editing carefully, with surgical care and precision, scalpel. Editing in a way that leaves women weeping, strong men sick to their stomachs, and entire chapters broken and bleeding on the road to editorial perfection, chainsaw. I don't get to use the chainsaw very often. It is not an instrument for small adjustments. The chainsaw does not forgive authorial weakness. The chainsaw does not care. I love the chainsaw.)

I should be finished with the new porch by the end of today, and I'm just sort of amazed, because it's so very clearly a better porch, and it's so very clearly the porch we needed, and yet? I really thought the old porch was the right one.

It's a funny old game, writing.