It's that time again! It's February 15th, and that means I need to write a big long post explaining what all I'm currently working on, just in case you'd started to think that I knew the meaning of the words "free time." This is the February 2011 list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving. And yes, the date is there for a reason. Largely so you can find the right post, if you insanely want to reference them.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Late Eclipses and Deadline). The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Well, here we are: the final current projects post of 2010. There are things that have been on this list since January. There are things that have magically appeared, sometimes startling everyone involved (but rarely startling anyone more than me). The year is ending, and for better or for worse, this is what I still have to do before I get to take a nap. This is the December list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Late Eclipses and Deadline). The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer (although this month's list is shorter than last month's list). But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

We're already somehow halfway through November, which is a bit of an "um, what?" for me, but that means it's time for the monthly current projects post. I actually look forward to this one, most of the time, since it means I can demonstrate that I occasionally Get Things Done. Of course, it also means another month has somehow slipped away, which is a trifle stressful, but hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles. This is the November list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list, as are those that have been turned in but not yet printed (Late Eclipses and Deadline). The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Today is the 15th of October, or, as the Disney Channel likes to call it, "the fifteenth day of Halloween." Since I have to put up with a full month of Christmas every year, I am okay with getting a month of Halloween to soothe my wounded, ghoulish soul. Anyway, welcome to my monthly current projects post, the regularly scheduled update which provides the only non-hysteria-inducing answer to the question "What are you working on?" It has the extra added bonus of proving that I am able to stop time, since otherwise, even I don't quite understand how the hell I'm getting everything finished in a timely manner. Seriously, I don't think I sleep. This is the October list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list. Late Eclipses and Deadline are off the list because they have been turned in to their respective editors, and I am waiting for page proofs.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Behold! For now I wear the human pants! I have finished processing the editorial notes on Late Eclipses, gone through the book end-to-end to make sure everything still makes sense, and finished processing the corrections in Vixy's gloriously detailed machete file. Then I packed it a lunch and sent it off to play with the Machete Squad, who will doubtless hack it to hell before it gets to go back to The Editor for the final time.

The current book stats:

Pages, 369.
Words, 107,372.
Chapters, thirty-seven.
Cans of DDP, oh, wow, I cannot tell you.

I'm finally happy with this book. It's in a very awkward position, because book four is sort of where you get to say "here's when shit gets real," and make people stop treating you like you're writing a trilogy (which I never was). It's a transition book, and it follows An Artificial Night, which is still my favorite in the series. But it's also better than I ever dreamt it would be, and I'm so thrilled to have watched it grow into something wonderful.

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!

And now it is July 15th—where the hell did the year go?!—and that means it's time for my monthly current projects post. This is the regularly scheduled update which provides the only non-hysteria-inducing answer to the question "What are you working on?" It has the extra added bonus of proving that I am able to stop time, since otherwise, even I don't quite understand how the hell I'm getting everything finished in a timely manner. Seriously, I don't think I sleep. This is the July list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that all books currently in print are off the list. The second Newsflesh book (Deadline) is off the list until The Other Editor tells me otherwise. Discount Armageddon is off the list because it has been turned in to The Agent.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!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 (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. 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 )

Item the first: I have run the random number generator against the latest ARC contest, and saladofdoom is our winner. saladofdoom, you have until Sunday, July 4th, to contact me with your mailing information. (This is longer than I usually give, but I'm about to head for Westercon, so I'm not going to be checking mail reliably for a few days.) I can also just bring your book with me when I come up to Seattle next weekend. Let me know your preference, and it shall be done.

Item the second: Yesterday morning, I saw a single crow sitting on the telephone pole next to the bus stop, watching me. "One for sorrow," I thought, and followed it up with, "But where's the sorrow?" Immediately, a car drove through a puddle that shouldn't have been there, it being, you know, July, and spattered me with lukewarm water. The message is clear: do not taunt the crow oracle, yo. You will not enjoy the results one little bit.

Item the third: The editorial revisions of Late Eclipses are barreling merrily along, and reminding me once again that there's a reason we do multiple passes on these things. So far, I've found an appearing/disappearing jacket, an appearing/disappearing car, a totally misnamed architectural feature, and a chunk of dialog that seriously read like it had been pasted in from another book. Thank the Great Pumpkin for the editorial process.

Item the fourth: My mother came by last night with my sister and her wife in tow. They have once again absconded with a very large sack of books, because I am the family lending library. I treated them to the hysterical spectacle that is Alice trying to get me to give her wet food, because I am a cruel, heartless lending library. (Their favorite part was when I picked her up, and she tried to swim through the air to the bowl.) It was nice to see them, even if it did mean I had to save the second half of this week's Leverage for tonight.

Item the fifth: I am watching the second half of this week's Leverage tonight.

Item the sixth: I should have some very concrete information about Wicked Girls super-soon, and it's really shaping up to be amazing. I love working with Kristoph, and I love all the material on this album. Both of my cover songs have been approved ("Tanglewood Tree" and "Writing Again"), and since I wrote the other fourteen, I'm not particularly concerned. I'm so pleased with this whole process. Life is good.

Item the seventh: My dreams last night featured a tank of lionfish that wanted snuggles, two connected houses in a suburb of San Francisco that managed to look exactly like Concord, buying new luggage, trying to fly to Australia while balancing on a bathroom railing, taking a nap, and a visit to the tiara store. I'm reasonably sure this was a big ol' anxiety dream about Australia and the Campbell Award, but I woke up going "awwwwwwwww, cutest lionfishes ever." This proves that not even my own brain is very good at upsetting me.

What's new with you?

And now it is June 15th, which is sort of upsetting me a little bit, and that means it's time for my monthly current projects post. This is the regularly scheduled update which provides the only non-hysteria-inducing answer to the question "What are you working on?" It has the extra added bonus of proving that I am able to stop time, since otherwise, even I don't quite understand how the hell I'm getting everything finished in a timely manner. Seriously, I don't think I sleep. This is the June list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first three Toby books (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night) and the first Newsflesh book (Feed) are off the list because they are now in print. The second Newsflesh book (Deadline) is off the list until The Other Editor tells me otherwise. Discount Armageddon is off the list because it has been turned in to The Agent.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Tuesday, I realized there was something wrong with The Brightest Fell (October Daye, book five).

Wednesday, I began reworking the book from the beginning, to see if I could figure out what the problem was. Twenty pages in, I figured out what the problem was. Twenty pages after that, I came up for air.

Thursday, a package containing the page proofs for An Artificial Night landed on my doorstep, roughly four hours after the official sign-and-return contracts for Late Eclipses and The Brightest Fell landed in my hands. And to this I say...

Here we go again.

Tonight, I'm going to go home, pick up the page proofs, and decamp to the Starbucks down the street, where the combination of caffeine, iPod, and no fixed bedtime will enable me to burn through a decent number of chapters before I collapse into a twitching heap. Tomorrow, I'll get out of bed, take my walk to the 7-11 (land of "it's exactly a mile and a half round-trip"), and get back to work on The Brightest Fell. By the end of the weekend, I expect to be at least eighty pages into both manuscripts.

Toby's world is one that's very familiar to me, and very welcoming, because I've spent so much time there. At the same time, The Brightest Fell has been a challenge—it's resolving a lot of things that should make people very happy—while An Artificial Night remains my favorite of the first three, and thus needs to be as bad-ass as possible. So, you know. No pressure or anything.

But gee, it's nice to be running away with the faeries again.

It is now April 15th, which means a) I am way closer to the release of Feed than my nerves appreciate, and b) it's time for my monthly current projects post. This is the post wherein I prove to the curious that I either don't sleep or have access to some mechanism for stopping time (don't I wish). There's a reason I start to giggle and twitch whenever someone asks me "What are you working on?", and this post provides a bit of explanation. It also serves as something I can point to when the question gets asked, which it does. This is the April list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first two Toby books (Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation) are off the list because they are now in print. Feed is off the list because it is in the process of being printed, and it's too late for me to make changes of any kind. The third and fourth Toby books (An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses) are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise. Discount Armageddon and Deadline are off the list because they have been turned in to The Agent.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

So currently, I am...

...working on The Agent's revisions to Deadline, all of which have been totally awesome, erudite, and coherent (at least so far; for all I know, I'm going to hit page 200 and suddenly she'll be demanding I insert evil clowns and flying monkeys). I'm addressing the manuscript 10% (IE, fifty pages) at a time, so that I can imagine a little progress bar guiding me sweetly toward the conclusion of draft two. Currently, the status bar stands at 20%. Since I started work yesterday, I am not yet freaking out over this.

...hammering away on The Brightest Fell (Toby Daye, book five), which, like, woke up one morning and just decided that it wasn't going to suck anymore. Seriously. This book has been a petulant brat for ages, and then bam, all of a sudden, it was all "La la la, I am ready to play nicely with the other children." So now I'm burning pages, the stakes are getting higher, the action's getting tighter, and Toby's having one of her Worst Weeks Ever. I'm always happy when Toby is having one of her Worst Weeks Ever. This is why Toby will eventually find a way to kill me in my sleep.

...getting content up on MiraGrant.com. If you go there right now, you'll still get the splash page, but I promise you, Behind The Scenes, Things Are Brewing. We'll be ready to launch super-soon, and when we do, look out world! Tara has done an incredible job with the site design, and Chris has done an equally incredible job with the coding. And of course, there's things afoot over on the Orbit side of things, and soon the whole world will be asking the question that's been gnawing at me for a while now: When will you rise?

...writing two short stories for the same anthology, since that's the only way to have a proper cage match between the two (thus letting me determine which one works better). In this corner, Toby, Danny, and Quentin do stuff involving poking things with sticks and following the basic rules of horror movie survival (IE, "When the house tells you to get out, you leave"). In this corner, Alice, Thomas, and the mice go wandering around the woods looking for fricken nests, and face the usual dangers inherent in doing what a tribe of talking pantheistic mice tells you to do. Fun!

...finishing the sixth Sparrow Hill Road story, "Last Dance With Mary Jane," in which we finally find out what actually happened on the night Rose Marshall died. This is sort of where the series turns, and where everything else that happens becomes inevitable. I'm really excited.

...really in need of a nap.

I will have a silly, silly contest starting later today, and remember, the various cage matches are still going on. Help Toby deliver the ULTIMATE SMACKDOWN, thus earning her a pretty tiara that she won't wear and a Starbucks gift card that she will use up in an afternoon.

As it is March 15th, marking the middle of the month and the defeat of my sanity, it's time for me to make my monthly current projects post. This is the post wherein I prove to the curious that I either don't sleep or have access to some mechanism for stopping time (don't I wish). There's a reason I start to giggle and twitch whenever someone asks me "What are you working on?", and this post provides a bit of explanation. It also serves as something I can point to when the question gets asked, which it does. This is the March list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first two Toby books (Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation) are off the list because they are now in print. Feed is off the list because it is in the process of being printed, and it's too late for me to make changes of any kind. The third and fourth Toby books (An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses) are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise. Discount Armageddon and Deadline are off the list because they have been turned in to The Agent.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

I'm a writer. I've been a writer for as long as I've had a grasp of written language, although my earliest works were, admittedly, not all that complex. I get asked "when did you start writing?" pretty commonly in interviews, and my response is always something along the lines of "I have no idea, in the womb, maybe, I don't know." Because really, I don't.

So as we continue our countdown (five days! Sweet pumpkin pie, five days!), here's today's list:

5 Reasons I Love Writing.

5. Stephen King put it best when he said that writing is like a form of telepathy. I make things up, I write them down, and then you can see them, in your mind. You "hear" dialog that I wrote. You "meet" people that I invented. When I write, I am Emma Frost, and that is awesome.

4. Writing continually surprises me. No matter how long I do it, no matter how much time I spend working to improve, I still find myself staring at things on the page and going "whoa, where did that come from?"

3. Writing comes with a very concrete and visible reward for hard work. If I write 2,000 words, I have 2,000 words that I didn't have before. If I write a book, dude, there is now a book in the world that didn't exist before I started typing. Me! I made that! It's incredibly fulfilling. Very few things in life are this immediately fulfilling.

2. I have to work to write. It's my hobby and what I do to relax and it makes me happy, but it's also work. If I don't revise, edit, check my spelling, check my continuity, and basically do hard labor, I don't get good books. I feel like I've done something when a story is finished, and that's amazing.

1. When I'm writing, I make all the rules. I don't think there's anything better than that.

First off, I apologize profusely for the lateness of this month's current projects post. While my self-imposed schedule may not matter to most, I know it matters to some, and I know that my current projects update is due on the ides of every given month. I plead jetlag and exhaustion, and will attempt to make up for it by...well, largely by demonstrating, once again, that I am not a huge fan of either free time or sleep. This post and its kin are the reason I start to twitch like a tarantula riding a record player every time someone asks me "What are you working on?" The answer takes too long to actually deliver. Anyway, this is the November list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first four Toby books are off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. You can pre-order A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise.

The first Newsflesh book, Feed (formerly Newsflesh), is off the list because it has been turned in to The Other Editor. Not only that, but my page proofs have been finished and returned. You'll see this bad boy again when it comes rolling off the presses!

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

As it is now the fifteenth of October, it is once again time for me to make my monthly current projects post. Some people measure out their lives with coffee spoons; I seem to have taken a slightly more masochistic approach. This post and its kin, by the by, are the reason that I burst into tears and flail around like a squid on an electrified floor every time someone asks me "What are you working on?" The answer just takes too long to actually deliver. Anyway, this is the October list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first four Toby books are off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. You can pre-order A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise.

The first Newsflesh book, Feed (formerly Newsflesh), is off the list because it has been turned in to The Other Editor, and I won't see it again until the page proofs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Today, I'm processing edits to The Brightest Fell (Toby five) and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. Because whiplash is AWESOME. (Actually, I find working on edits for two totally dissimilar projects at the same time strangely soothing. It means that when my eyes start to cross, I can just switch files and let the other book work the kinks out.

Today's gem from the proofing mines comes by way of Vixy, who comments:

"I don't usually get involved with lagoon maintenance, but I think "seriously" might be a candidate for alligator chow."

Isn't that sweet? She's worried about the health of the alligators in Brooke's lagoon! This is really why my proofing pool works so well. They really care about one another. And I'm starting to think that our cute school mascot may be the alligator.

Beware the ides of...well, every month around here, since that's when I make my monthly current projects post. Since it is now September 15th, it's time for me to demonstrate once again that George R.R. Martin may not be your bitch, but I just may be. (This is also the post that explains why the question "What are you working on?" sometimes causes me to burst into tears and point vaguely toward my Livejournal, as if actually saying it out loud would break the spell, wake the princess, and call down the demons.) Anyway, this is the September list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] now. A Local Habitation will be returning to the list briefly in the near future, when my page proofs arrive, but will then be disappearing again to prepare for publication. The fourth Toby book, Late Eclipses, is off the list because it has been finished, and is in the hands of The Editor, having been formally sent the hell away.

The first Mason book, Feed (formerly Newsflesh), is off the list because it has been revised and turned in to The Other Editor. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

So I'm in the middle of a super-fast clean-and-jerk on Feed, before I kick it back to my editor. I'm processing comments tonight, and just got this little beauty from Brooke, referring to my tendency to occasionally lean on unnecessary modifiers:

"LARGELY. I wish to efficiently move you on a collision-free path to AN ALLIGATOR'S GULLET."

I love my proofers. I love them so hard.

That is all.

* Pick up Canadian currency from my bank, where hopefully, no one will say "Canadians have money?" Once was funny. Twice may well be grounds for punching somebody in the nose. I like my bank. I don't want to get thrown out for assaulting a teller.

* Revise and process the editorial notes on the next thirty pages of Feed. I'm currently on page 251 of 544 (this includes the dedication page, but does not yet include the acknowledgment page); I need to hit page 281 before I can go to bed tonight. I like sleep. Sleep is my cuddly friend. I like zombies. The fact that zombies are a prerequisite for sleep around here probably says something about my psyche.

* Attempt to unearth my dresser from beneath the epic pile of crap that accompanied me home from San Diego. This may or may not be something I can accomplish without the use of a flamethrower.

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Attempt to integrate the epic pile of crap that accompanied me home from San Diego into my bedroom without causing some sort of avalanche or otherwise hitting critical mass and opening a black hole into another dimension. Of course, if the objects responsible for opening the black hole influence the dimension on the other side, it will be a dimension filled with flesh-eating My Little Ponies and telepathic velociraptors. So that might be a nice place to have a vacation home.

* Trade the July pages in my planner for the shiny, new, relatively unmarked September pages. Immediately start filling the September pages with to-do lists, deadlines, goals, and the other unavoidable roadmaps of being me. I actually find this process quite soothing, in a nit-picky, obsessive sort of a way. Here is my month. I have scheduled panic attacks, showers, and laundry. Go me.

* Finish chapter four of The Brightest Fell, aka "the fifth Toby book," aka "well, at least she won't be done with the entire second trilogy before the first book comes out." (The Toby books aren't really trilogies. It's just that I tend to outline them three at a time, because it's an easy number to deal with, and people are less frightened by "oh, I'm working on the second trilogy." Apparently, math and logic are not always our friends.)

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Inform Alice that I am not going to fish the cat toys out from under the bed a third time.

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Pull my towering stacks of trade paperbacks into one mega-stack and put the damn things away before I lose a cat beneath a pile of Hack/Slash. Since Lilly eats comic books, this would be a fitting end, but it would make me sad, and I don't have time for that right now.

* Update three entries in the Toby continuity wiki. I'm getting close to being done with the data-entry from the original continuity guide, and that means soon, I'll be able to start updating things to match current continuity, as well as adding extra information on characters whose profiles are still just skeletons. If there's ever a fan wiki, we can have a race.

* Ignore the Maine Coon telling me that her toys have disappeared under the bed.

* Go to Dairy Queen.

* Sleep.

Behold! For now I wear the human pants! Earlier this evening, I finished doing the redline edits on the physical manuscript of Late Eclipses, finished entering those edits into my manuscript copy, and finished processing the corrections in Vixy's gloriously detailed machete file. Then I kissed it goodnight, told it to wear its jacket, and shipped it off to The Agent once again. Ha.

The current book stats:

Pages, 400.
Words, 106,830.
Chapters, thirty-seven.
Cans of DDP, beyond counting.

So basically the book gained two chapters and lost a thousand words. It also gained a lot of awesome, which is good, because otherwise, it might have gained a date with a wood-chipper. I am very, very ready to be working on The Brightest Fell, aka, "Toby Daye, book five," aka, "Seanan, honey, can we please wait for Rosemary and Rue to come out before you finish the second set of three?" But dude, it's been waiting so patiently, and I've been neglecting it for so long. Book five needs love!

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!

There are a lot of ways to edit. Mostly, I edit on the computer, feeding drafts to my dedicated pool of machete-wielding psychopaths and trusting them to give me back something bloody, beaten, and better than it began. I also do a lot of my own rewriting, but like so many, I've "gone green," working almost entirely in the virtual world. It's not uncommon for a book to make it through multiple drafts without ever existing in a physical form. Not bad for a girl whose first two books were written entirely on typewriter, huh? (And no, you can't read them.)

Sometimes, though, the damage is too deep, and you need to take a new approach to making things not be broken. That's where the red-line edits come in. I have printed a copy of Late Eclipses—yes, the entire multi-hundred page epic—and am now going through it chapter by chapter with the red pen. It's fascinating. Passive voice and wishy-washy modifiers fall before the tide of crimson ink like trees going down before a particularly dedicated logging crew. Things that looked just fine on the screen make me cringe when I see them on paper. And then I fix them. Because I can.

There are definite limitations to the red-line process, not the least of which is "you have to carry whatever it is you're working on." But I gotta say, when I get to this particular level of nit-picky correction, where it feels like the book is winning, it's nice to know that I have a dark alley to lure the text unsuspectingly down. And in that alley, I have a brick. A brick made entirely of red ink and causing pain.

Sometimes my taste in metaphors worries me. But my manuscript looks like it's been the victim in a low-budget slasher film, so I really don't care.

Okay, follow the timeline with me here for a moment. On July 2nd, 2008, I started a major revision of Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, "Toby Daye, book four." On December 15th, 2008, I gave it to my agent for review...and on January 15th of this year I started a second major revision, because the book had some issues, and those issues could only be solved through the application of more machete. Much, much more machete.

Last night, on the plane somewhere between Michigan and California, I typed "the end" once more, closed the file, and called it good. The current book stats:

Pages, 389.
Words, 107,089.
Chapters, thirty-five.
Cans of DDP, beyond counting.

Please compare these to the book stats before I started my revision:

Pages, 417.
Words, 115,310.
Chapters, thirty-six.

Oh, and did I mention that—at one point during the revision process—the book managed to swell to a high-water mark of approximately 118k? Yeah. This was a book in need of some serious surgery, and now that the surgery has been performed, I can look at the manuscript and not feel like a match would improve it immensely. (I have a real love/hate relationship with my work. I love it while I'm creating it. I love it six months after it's finished. Immediately after it's finished, I would really love to set it on fire.) At some point during the revision, even the book's name got tighter, becoming Late Eclipses and skipping that whole "sun" thing entirely.

So now I'm tossing my innocent manuscript into the wolverine pit with my hungrily slavering initial readers, who will gut it and play hackysack with its kidneys for a little while; then I'll send it off to The Agent, and resume prodding at The Brightest Fell, aka, "Toby Daye, book five," aka, "Seanan, honey, can we please wait for Rosemary and Rue to come out before you finish the second set of three?"

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!

Late Eclipses—formerly Late Eclipses of the Sun, before I admitted that if even I wasn't calling the book by its full title, there was no point—was originally finished, in its first draft form, towards the end of last year. (This is the fourth Toby book, for those of you playing the home game. Which is essentially everyone but me, in this particular case.) It was a lumpy, sort of misshapen monster of a thing, but that's not uncommon for first drafts, and besides, it was mine, and I loved it. Not all of it, true, and there were some parts I even came close to outright disliking, but still. We try not to judge our children.

Thankfully, my various proofreaders—and perhaps more importantly, The Agent—have no such compunctions about judging me, and my manuscript was sent home beaten, bleeding, and covered in corrections. Many of them were structural, since there were large chunks of text that seemed intent on playing ring-around-the-rosie with one another.

(As a small digression, some of these same sequences would have seemed amazing if I'd produced them, say, a year ago. Two years ago? The skies would have opened and angels would have descended to sing "Listen to Jesus, Jimmy" in six-part harmony. This is the problem with writing constantly: you get better, and then people expect better, because they know you're capable of it. Sometimes I feel like I'm tap-dancing on an ice floe surrounded by hungry polar bears with attention deficit disorder. If I ever run out of shiny things, I'll become some lucky bear's new picnic basket, filled with lovely things to eat. Like my spleen.)

I've been working on revising Late Eclipses for the last several weeks, with varying degrees of success. Oh, I'm constantly succeeding—the text is changing, the book is getting shorter (it was previously almost 15,000 words longer than a "normal" Toby book, and it didn't need to be), and the action is getting more linear—but the rate of success is exceedingly variable, and can sometimes feel like I'm swimming through vanilla frosting. Mmm. Vanilla frosting. Anyway. Last night? Last night, I basically sliced the book open, ripped out half its guts, and stuffed them back into the chest cavity in a new, more aesthetically pleasing arrangement. Last night, I dropped from 115,000 words to 109,000, and the counter is still descending. I cut a chapter, transplanted another chapter to a point later in the book, and then combined the transplanted chapter with the chapter it was now adjacent to in a variety of interesting patchwork ways.

I am totally exhausted. My book is a battlefield. It's like Elm Street in here; dead darlings everywhere, blood on the ceiling, and the vague, sticky fear of a sequel (in this case, it's called The Brightest Fell). But the book is getting better. It's sort of awesome, in a "baby, when I finish this, plain ol' Philadelphia Burke is going to be Delphi forever and ever" sort of a way. Plus, it's eventually going to be fun to tell this story at conventions and watch people check their copies of the book for scars.

I just don't know if I'm ever going to get the blood out of my hair.

I have spent my week being very, very productive, especially when you consider the fact that a) I just got a new kitten, b) Lilly didn't allow me to sleep for over a month during her "kitty go crazy" period, and c) the lack of sleep, followed by sleep's sudden return, has left me slightly sick and very definitely jet-lagged in my own body. It's exciting! But this week, I have...

...turned in an essay for one of those exciting "smart people try to sound smart while talking about television" essay books. I'm excited! This is the first time I've been asked to participate in something like this, but I've always been a little envious of authors who get to go and sound smart while they talk about, say, Supernatural or Buffy. Hopefully I've managed to sound super-smart, because I'd love to do this again. I have a list of shows I'm just dying to sound totally smart about. Like Fringe and Cupid. Oh, and if there's ever a "smart people try to sound smart while talking about shows that were canceled before their time" book, I can corner the market on Freakylinks.

...revised nine chapters of Late Eclipses, only to discover that one of those chapters needed to be combined with another to form a sort of, I don't know, "super-chapter," while another chapter needed to be cut entirely. On the positive side, I made these discoveries entirely on my own, without any outside assistance. Also on the positive side, this will help with my goal of getting the book down between 105,000 and 110,000 words. On the negative side, dammit, I already revised this part of the book. Damn plot. It's getting complications and fingerprints all over my stuff.

...set up the landing page for the Velveteen vs. series, including a brief description of what the series is about, a listing for the stories in order-as-written, and a listing for the stories in chronological order (which will matter more as the JSP-era stuff starts getting posted). All the Vel stories are being cleaned up and revised before they're posted, which slows it down a bit, but also lets me take care of all those pesky typos and logic problems that people have been so very kindly pointing out to me. Behold! For now I wear the continuity pants!

...submitted all my receipts, agreed to an estimate on my taxes, and confirmed that I'm ready to receive my extension forms, hence to turn my taxes in. Self-employment tax blows. The next time someone asks why I haven't quit my day job yet, I may pull out my tax receipts and a conveniently labeled graph. SCREWING A WRITER IN FIVE EASY STEPS. Step one: self-employment tax.

...introduced Lilly and Alice to one another without bloodshed (either feline or human), and without any major emergencies, unless you want to count Lilly forcing her way into the bedroom during what was technically the isolation period. I rarely, if ever, close my bedroom door all the way -- the cats like to be able to come and go, and the litter box in my room is a relatively recent development -- so I had totally forgotten that Lilly knows how to work the latch, and will work the latch if given sufficient motivation. Like, say, being locked out of the room. But all's well that ends well, and this has ended well.

What's everybody else's productive looking like?

Time once again for my favorite semi-regular feature, Horrible Things What Seanan's Proofreaders Say To Her. Today's special guest star is Brooke, taking us for a tour of her wonderful, terrible lagoon with the following gems.

* "Sort of" and "real" need to have a totally hot double date together in the wishy-washy modifier bistro, which is way more romantic than this sentence. Hop in, guys! Alligatormousine will take you right there! Chop chop! Cupid awaits!

* This digression is mildly boring. Toby is bored because she's bad at it, but not the kind of bored where she starts fights, so I'm bored too.

* Needs a serving of Pronoun-Aid, The Handy Kitchen Helper That Clarifies While-U-Wait.

* That would be a really affecting sentence except for how it starts with almost. ALMOST! ALLIGATOR AQUACISE HOUR! 10% discount when you sign up for two classes at the Lagoon fitness center!

Bless you, Brooke, for the way you abuse me. Also, I suggest you lock the doors tonight before you go to bed. I know where you sleep.

Me: I believe I shall revise this chapter.
LE: I believe I shall kick your ass.
Me: I'm the author, I get to win.
LE: *chuckles evilly*

(Eighty pages and a lot of profane language later, there's blood on the ceiling, and slaughtered adjectives litter the carpet like, um, thingy.)

Me: I HATE YOU SO HARD.
LE: I'm better now.
Me: ...what?
LE: I'm a better book now.
Me: ...why the hell couldn't you cooperate if this was the end result?
LE: Because it's more fun this way.

(Cue more insensate swearing. Fade to black.)

In other news, work on the fourth Toby book continues apace -- yes, I'm aware that the first book doesn't come out until September; remember, my life goals include "turn in the second trilogy by the end of 2010," because that's just the way I roll -- and is only causing me small amounts of severe physical, mental, and emotional trauma. I'm busting ass now, while I can, before the promo for Rosemary and Rue kicks into such high gear that I don't have brain anymore.

Late Eclipses has lost three words from its title, four thousand words from its text, and two chapters from its numbering system, and it's better for these subtractions. It is gradually becoming a lean, mean, causing-me-pain machine.

Now, television, tuna sandwiches, art card inking, and the eventual sleep of the just. Good night, y'all. Don't burn down the internet.

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

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

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

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

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

I am currently engaged in a truly fascinating dance of projects. I'm writing The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh) and Discount Armageddon (first of the Incryptid books). I'm doing a full revamp and revision of Late Eclipses of the Sun (October Daye, book four) at the same time, preparatory to getting back to work on The Brightest Fell (October Daye, book five). Each of these projects is filling an important niche in my mental ecosystem, since they're different enough that I don't get them confused, and they refresh me in different ways.

Right now, my writing regiment looks like this:

* Day one, revise/rewrite a chapter of Late Eclipses.
* Day two, start a chapter of The Mourning Edition.
* Day three, finish the chapter of The Mourning Edition, process edits on Late Eclipses.
* Day four, revise/rewrite a chapter of Late Eclipses.
* Day five, start a chapter of Discount Armageddon, process edits on The Mourning Edition.
* Day six, finish the chapter of Discount Armageddon, process edits on Late Eclipses.
* Day seven, revise/rewrite a chapter of Late Eclipses...

...and I bet you can catch the pattern from there. In amidst all this madness, I'm answering email, writing blog entries, finishing essays, doing book reviews, working on my website, detailing art cards, finishing comic strips, doing random pieces of promotional art, and, of course, sleeping. I've also been watching an average of twenty hours of television per week.

Yes, we think I steal time from a parallel dimension.

Writing something new is always exciting, but right now, it's the revision of Late Eclipses that really fascinates me. I have the shape of things entirely in place; I know who's where, when they get there, and what they need to do. Now I'm patching the logic problems, fixing the bits that seem out of character or don't make sense, and generally having a lovely time wading through my own world. (If it seems odd that I'd be having logic problems, consider the fact that by book four, I have roughly twelve hundred pages of continuity that needs to be acknowledged and worked with in order for things to make sense. It's both freeing and confining. Much like a really good corset, which gives you excellent support, but makes eating a big lunch a bad idea.)

A lot of things are coming clear to me as I work on this book, and I'm really starting to think that my second trilogy is going to be made of awesome. Which is good. I sort of lose the ability to gauge the quality of my own work after a certain number of revisions -- I don't see the clever, I just see the commas -- so I really enjoy these moments where I stop, and blink, and go 'hey, wait, this is good!'

Busy blonde is busy, but busy blonde is happy, and that helps a lot.

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

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #24: Revise or Die.

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome back! It's time to call class back into session for the twenty-third essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. (Really, it's all just an excuse for me to eat a lot of apples and claim to be spelunking for worms, but don't mind me.) We are now almost halfway through what will eventually be a series of fifty essays, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. If you missed an earlier essay, never fear; they're all linked from the 'fifty thoughts' post as they're finished.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #23: Embrace Revision.

I think we've all been tempted to say 'the first draft is good enough' and move on to something new, rather than going through the often-painful process of trying to edit our way down to the heart of the matter. Many of us may have managed to get away with it a time or two...or even twenty, in the case of high school and college-level creative writing classes. Which brings us to today's expanded topic:

For the sweet love of all that is holy, edit, proofread, revise, and practice the art of self-critique. I mean it. There is no one on this planet so good at this game that they can just throw a fistful of words at the page and declare it brilliant. Needing to revise does not make you a failure, and becoming a better writer isn't going to take that need away. Embrace the revision process as a chance to dig down into the heart of your text and make it everything that it deserves to be.

Revision is a huge and tangled topic, as is revision's sister, editing. Some people will argue that a really good writer doesn't actually need to edit or revise; a really good writer will always get it right the very first time. While it's true that writers will get better with practice -- writing is a skill like any other, and even those who start out with more raw talent than others will improve or decline according to how much they work at it -- you're never going to meet a writer who has improved to the point that they no longer need to review their work.

So there it is; that's what we're going to be talking about today. Ready? Excellent. Now let's begin.

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

* Item: according to the latest issue of one of the totally random-ass gossip magazines that I like to read while I'm waiting for my groceries to be rung up, Miley Cyrus is in talks to play Snow White in the adaptation of The Stepsister Scheme. Now, Jim keeps insisting he knows nothing about this rumored movie project, but I see how it really is. He just doesn't want everyone he knows with nieces under the age of sixteen to mob him demanding Hannah Montana tickets. YOU CAN'T FOOL ME, JIM. I'll be expecting tickets for Gracie and Alanna stat. And me, of course. I'll, uh, need to keep them company. That's it.

* Item: I sometimes wish we had a gossip-column for the urban fantasy circuit, not because I actually want to get stalked, but because I want an excuse to write sentences like 'Is the author of Dead to Me a secret serial killer?' or 'Has David Wellington managed to wake the Great Old Ones in Central Park? WE HAVE PICTURES.' And then I remember that I don't actually need an excuse, and my life becomes awesome once more.

* I'm doing my editorial revisions on An Artificial Night, sort of hand-in-hand with my second rewrite of Late Eclipses of the Sun. I'm really not sure which is more painful, although right now, I'm inclined to vote editorial revisions. It's incredibly difficult to keep my inner perfectionist from kicking in when I'm just supposed to be making small changes, and I'm pretty sure I'd get in trouble if I let myself get sucked into a full revision. (As for who I'd get into trouble with, well...trust me, there'd be a line. It would form remarkably quickly, and many of them would have access to sticks. Sharp, pokey, pointy sticks.)

* Anyone who thinks it's strange that I'm editing book three when book one (Rosemary and Rue, mass market paperback, DAW Books) isn't coming out until September needs to have a long chat with Kate about the sort of lead time I prefer to build into my projects. There may be flow charts involved. Wear comfortable shoes.

What's up with all of you?

So I haven't been posting many word counts recently -- not, as one person jokingly asked, because I've given up writing in favor of playing Kingdom Hearts for the fifteenth time, but because I've entered one of those phases where the word counts are somewhat less quantifiable. If I start out with a file containing 50,000 words, and finish with a file containing 51,000 words, I've clearly written 1,000 words, right? Well, what if, in the process of working that day, I deleted an entire chapter, replaced it with a new chapter, and rewrote three fight sequences? I actually wrote 11,000 words. My net gain, however, is 1,000. And how do you measure revisions? Sometimes I'll spend six hours of quality time with a manuscript and a machete, and come away bleeding, grinning, and down a couple of thousand words. Negative word counts seem a little silly in that situation. I wind up just waving my hands around in the air and saying, blankly, 'lots.'

I've actually been busting ass around here lately. Discount Armageddon got a whole new first chapter, as did Late Eclipses of the Sun; in the case of Discount Armageddon, the original first chapter stayed on as the new second chapter, but in the case of Late Eclipses, well...kill your darlings. I've said it often enough that I really do need to learn how to live by it. I've also done some serious restructuring on the rest of Discount Armageddon, making it tighter, leaner, and much more prepared to dance the samba all over whatever happens to get in its way.

Late Eclipses is going through a similar, but much more dramatic, series of restructurings; several large swaths of the book are being tossed out the window and completely rewritten, including, so far, the original chapters one and two. (One of the other things I say way too often to plead ignorance: the author can be wrong, and that's what rewrites are for.) The story is still essentially the same, it's just getting tighter and more directed in the things that it's saying. That, and I'm slaughtering a lot of wishy-washy modifiers. They're like kittens -- one is awesome, thirty is a crazy cat lady.

I'm just about finished working on Discount Armageddon for a little while, since it's a busy book with places to go and people to see. This is going to mean the return of the word counts for The Mourning Edition, as I get back to work on my favorite zombie universe, and probably the beginning of the editorial revisions on An Artificial Night.

In short, even when it looks like I'm goofing off and having fun with art supplies, I'm working too much to sleep.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.

Step one: Get off work. Go to Target. Buy microwave lunches for the next week, because Target is the only damn store in the damn Bay Area that reliably carries the kinds that I'll actually eat. Is it so hard for Safeway to keep Chicken Mirabella, Shrimp Marinara, and Tuna Casserole on their shelves? Apparently, yes. Yes, it is. (I'm only willing to eat like four kinds of microwave meal, and even I eventually get tired of spaghetti.)

Step two: Go to the comic book store. Engage an annoying patron in a vigorous discussion of why, perhaps, declaring "Fuck the Gemworld!" in a store containing, well, me, is not the world's very best idea. Amuse the counter monkeys immensely. The counter monkeys like me, as I am reliable, polite, and very, very addicted to comics. The counter monkeys have no such fondness for annoying patron, hereby referred to as 'the cat-toy.' The cat-toy survived our encounter, but did not linger.

Step three: Go home. Set the kitchen on fire making cranberry sauce.

Step four: Put out the fire.

Step five: Read Hack/Slash while eating dinner. After the dinner part of the program is done, ink and watch two episodes of Big Bang Theory (season one). Mr. Memory and The Human Labyrinth are now fully inked, as is the masthead. Most of the Ragnaroctopus still needs to be finished. But I found my zip-a-tone, so all will be well.

Step six: Process the final edits for my Grants Pass story, which is pleasant and nice and not at all disturbing.

Step seven: Muck around with my clicky Vampire Wars game on Facebook. Damn you, Jennifer, damn you.

Step eight: Make this entry.

Step nine: Retreat to the back room for Leverage and more comic books.

It's time for number seventeen 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; once number fifty has been written, I'll need to find something to do with my time. Maybe I'll, I don't know, write a book or something. Not all the essays will be of use to everyone, but I'll at least attempt to make them entertaining.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #17: Have Faith In Your Editor.

This is actually a thought that applies to everyone who writes, whether you're doing essays for a class or trying to craft the Great American/European/Australian/Martian/Whatever Novel. It's publishing-oriented in the sense that I do believe that work intended for publication requires more extensive editing, and we'll be talking about that. It's also writing-for-fun-oriented, in the sense that we want our readers not to bludgeon us to death with trout. Here's today's expanded topic of discussion:

A good editor looks good when you look good. They're trying to help you. Listen to them. Not everyone is a good editor. After a few experiences with the bad ones, you'll learn how to recognize the difference.

It's impossible to provide the experience necessary to tell a good editor from a bad one, at least in part because that definition will vary from person to person. Sometimes the variation will be slight; other times, the variation will be large enough to become incomprehensible. So we're going to try to cover the generalities today, and more importantly, we're going to be discussing the reasons that we need to be edited at all.

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 editors, being edited, and why these things are necessary.Collapse )

Well, I just finished copy-editing my friend's manuscript and returned it for review. Because I am virtuous and hard-working and industrious and stuff. (I am now awaiting the crews of trained ninja assassins and rabid pixies to burst through my bedroom windows and slaughter me, but that's another matter altogether.) As my reward, I shall go and see Bolt with my housemate. That's how we roll around here. Oh, yeah.

I'm actually quite pleased with myself. I managed to copy-edit -- lightly, but still thoroughly -- an entire manuscript, while not falling behind in my own (often self-assigned) deadlines. As I said earlier, I have some things I have to finish this weekend, but none of them have been endangered by my taking the time, so ha.

Copy-editing someone else when I spend so much time being copy-edited was interesting, because I've learned a lot of rules of grammar and punctuation without intending to; they were hammered through my admittedly thick skull through constant and occasionally angry repetition. (You'd be angry too if you'd given me the same correction fifty-seven times.) There are a lot of casual behaviors, text-wise, that are technically incorrect, but which we happily do anyway. What's interesting is that they often create a slight feeling of 'something is wrong here' when we look at those sentences in a critical fashion, yet without knowing the actual rule, we may or may not be able to articulate the actual problem. The brain is fascinating. So is the language.

...wow, that was all a little closer to 'deep thinking' than I like to be on a Saturday afternoon immediately after completing a large task. Blame it on the soda the size of my head (which is woefully now gone to the great soda fountain in the sky).

Off to the movies; don't burn down the Internet while I'm away, and I'll reward you later with my cranberry sauce recipe.

It's time for another glimpse into the marvelous mind of Brooke, where the Modifier Lagoon Resort provides a happy home for all your unwanted metaphors and wishy-washy phrasing. You know how parents tell kids that the rabid dog is now romping happily in the green grass of a farm that's very, very far away, and it can't call to tell them what a wonderful time it's having because dogs don't have thumbs? The lagoon is like that. Remember the lagoon when you need a place for your modifiers to have...fun.

Anyway, today's specific gem from the proofing mines:

* I've largely skipped a few drafts. Maybe you thought you could sneak by, largely. Maybe you thought I was largely losing my touch. Maybe you thought we'd largely gone soft on WISHY WASHY MODIFIERS. Well you're WRONG. LARGELY! LAGOON! NOW! DROP AND GIVE ME 50 GATOR-PUSHUPS!

And this, after my protagonist made a reference to Pop Tarts:

* Pseudo-pastry deserves a word-construction MEDAL. <3

So now I'm short a few modifiers, but hey, I got a medal! In a much more general sense, Brooke has a major talent for going 'this conversation makes no sense' and phrasing it in such a way that I can actually step back and find my way out of whatever logical cul-de-sac I've managed to run down this time. Brooke. Because Canadians make life better.

So tomorrow is Saturday. And more, tomorrow is a Saturday where I have no social plans at all (not only a rare occasion, practically an unheard of one). So...

...my mother is coming over to help me get some pictures on the walls (I have a bad back and I'm not allowed to work the hammer), drive me to look at a cat tree, and keep my stepdad from chopping his own leg off with a machete while he's working in my backyard. (We're a very close family. We're also the sort of family that believes flea marketing and gardening with a machete is a great way to spend a weekend. I love my family.)

...I'm finally going to get my new scanner installed and, hopefully, functional. I managed to clear a space for it in the cupboard right next to my workspace, which means I will no longer need to balance my laptop on my hip while trying to scan standing up. That's sort of scary. It also means I need to get back into the habit of inking while I watch television (I've been slipping lately, largely because it's not like I can scan anything).

...I'm planning to hit Late Eclipses of the Sun with an even bigger hammer, in the hopes that I can actually get some of the lumps out of the damned thing. It just did that thing where I realize that chapter sixteen is actually chapter twelve, and all the events I thought I had nailed down suddenly shift around. This has never failed to result in a better book. It's still a headache while it's happening.

...the Science-Fiction Channel is doing an all-day marathon of bad horror. Guess what my sanity check is going to be?

Have a fabulous weekend, all. I'm going to get some sleep before the hectic starts.

(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.

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.

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.

Quietly he lurks, sharpening his knives, sharpening his wits, and booby trapping his escape routes, lest one of his cuttingly funny, cuttingly accurate comments causes me to bay for his blood. He is...SUNIL, SECRET NINJA PROOFREADER.

And he has just made me laugh so hard that peas came out of my nose. Actual peas, out of my actual nose.

This hurt.

Sadly, it's difficult to quote Sunil's edits directly, despite the fact that they are some of the funniest shit I've encountered in days, because, well, they're very dependent on the text around them. But he's hysterical. You gotta take me word on this one. I meant to just check to make sure he'd used one of my standard editing formats, and wound up processing eight chapters of commentary, because it was too damn funny to stop going through.

One of the best things about becoming a better writer has been the change in the kind of edits that I tend to get. Because, you see, when I no longer need regular lectures on pacing and character development, it becomes possible for my editors to focus on more important things, like causing me to breathe vegetation.

Best end to a Monday night ever. All hail Sunil!

Here go:

Chapters so far: eight
Total words: 70,814
Reason for stopping: finished the first eight chapters, which was the weekend goal.
Music: horror movies on Sci-Fi. Bad, bad horror movies.
Lilly: sleeping on the filing cabinet above my head. Like a fuzzy gargoyle.

So I'm eight chapters into the revision. My romantic lead has suffered a name change, going from 'Jason' to 'Kevin' due to some conflicts with, y'know, other books. Stupid other books, existing and...um...creating a genre for me to work in. Well, crudcakes.

My chapters have acquired titles, which is fairly spiffy, and I'm catching some excitingly uncaught continuity issues. (Seriously, I think that I and my proofers were both napping at certain points on this book. I will punish myself by watching more bad horror movies. Oh the agony.)

Productivity is awesome.

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!

Quoth Brooke:

"I love a good semi-colon, but damn isn't worth one. Comma or full stop. I vote for full stop. Quorum of me. Motion carried unanimously."

You heard it here first, folks: Brooke is a quorum. All the tiny digestive bacteria in the belly of the Brooke have full voting rights, and we poor fools are outnumbered in our mono-organic shame.

And now it's time for more quality adventures in Brooke's Lagoon, where all my wishy-washy modifiers are eventually banished:

"The word very doesn't make first any firster. Misbegotten modifier lagoon has a special wading pool for you, very, with your very own, very hungry family of caymans."

...and...

"Oh, in FACT! I thought it was all a dream! IN FACT. LAGOON. SPLASHY SPLASHY."

...and...

"Yoohoo, very! (whistles) How'd you get out of the lagoon, you little rascal? ALLIGATOR HOSPITALITY SQUAD! PLEASE ESCORT VERY BACK TO THE LAGOON."

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, when you're booking your next vacation, choose Brooke's Lagoon! Maybe you'll never be seen again, but all those postcards that manage to make it back to civilization will be really, really well-edited.

When she's not making me snort Diet Dr Pepper over the editing process, Brooke is a pharmacologist, and helpfully broke her knee in a motorcycle accident. This makes her perfect both for checking the medical details in Newsflesh -- a wacky zombie adventure that will not include glaring pharmaceutical or 'riding your bike without dying horribly' errors. She's concise, generally accurate, and incredibly pointy when she wants to be. How I adore her. (It helps that she's a fellow member of the Orange Army, and while she fights my pandemic-lovin' ways, she shares my desire to turn the entire planet over to the giant squid.)

This is Brooke. Adore her, because there's a more than reasonable chance that she's heavily armed and might destroy you for the sake of her own petty amusement.

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!

I have just finished my first post-editorial pass through Rosemary and Rue, book one in the Chronicles of October Daye. All changes suggested by a) my proofreaders, b) my own neurosis, and c) my editor have been incorporated into the text, which continues to get cleaner and crisper and more all-around happy-making with every smack of the machete.

I've also updated the continuity guide (yes, again) to reflect the new canon. I honestly can't wait for publication, not just because, dude, PUBLICATION, but because I so very much want to have official and formal and unchanging canon. I'm really looking forward to being forced to live with my decisions. It seems like it's going to be a pretty awesome thing to complain about.

Chris is setting up a Wiki for me to transition my continuity guide into, because that's going to be so much easier to work with than my current enormously massive .doc file that it isn't even funny. Infinite links! Category pages! Related pages! Truly, my geeky little heart swoons with the anticipation of making my already-obsessive database even larger, and more obsessive. And I found another month this morning, bringing the total of months represented in the series up to six. Behold!

Now I am going to turn in my manuscript, get dressed, and go to Starbucks. Because that's just the way we roll.

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!

Dear brain:

'Chair' and 'cherry' are not the same word. If, by some horrible quirk in the functionality of the universe, you manage to begin dictating what things mean, please consider screwing with some other words. Words which do not have an impact on a major part of my summertime diet. Because seriously, here, I don't want to eat my desk chair, and I don't want to sit in my cherries.

In other news, you're very strange sometimes.

Love,
Me.