Interferons and Other Anti-Writing Woes, parte une

As Kelly recently noted, there are a 1001 and one ways to write, all of them equally correct if they get you to the desired result.

There are also 1001 ways to not write. Some are valid, some are not, and some occupy that vague, shadowy land of improbable but occasionally accurate excuses.

Right now, for instance, I have a headache. It's one of those that comes from eye strain--low light, staring at the computer/TV for too long, reading a 400 page book in one go and realizing that blinking slows you down, and so on. The real difficulty is that as soon as I start to think about plot, title, character, or anything else that's useful toward the writing process, the headache starts producing thought police, who are like little anti-virals running about inside your head, grabbing hold of stray Seretonin revelers and collaring them up in the hoosegow. The end result of which is that the thought comes to a dead end and the headache cuts right through the middle of your thought:

"Okay, so when she orders that coffee, I need to have her say something about the shark jaw on the wall, because that will foreshadow OW OW OW! Ah, screw this, I'm going to meander the internets."

There are plenty of reasons that we don't write. In fact, I don't know anybody, save perhaps one person, who actually writes as often as they'd like. And often our reasons are justified. But, I submit, there are plenty of times when our reasons are not justified, and we allow ourselves to buy into the idea of the excuse rather than do work--which this is, though it be the most joyful plow that e'er I've laid my hand upon.

What are the excuses that you use not to write? What real world interferences too often keep you from your planned writing time? And what solutions to those problems can others suggest? What motivators do you use to keep yourself working?

Catch of the Day

In another world, the Hugos.

The Spanish Exposition-Outlines (An Interlude)

I'm still not sure if I'm going to have another go at talking about outlines, but Lyda brought up something in comments on her outlines post below that I want to put out front and respond to.

lydamorehouse said...
It might not matter what you call it, but when I first started writing novels I felt I HAD to outline like that and it pretty much scared the crap out of me.

This is important. If outlines don't work for you, or if you need to call them something else or construct them in a different way, say as clusters of words on a whiteboard, do that.

There are a 1,001 ways to write a novel, every one of them right. If something works for you, do it. If not, don't let anyone tell you that it should. Move on and find something that does work. Everything we say here is meant by way of suggesting things that may help, not as laying out the one true path to novel success.

Lyda does things in her process that would drive me over the edge and vice-versa and yet both methods produce novels that sell. The only thing that really matters processwise is that you write and that you finish at least some of what you write.

Another Interjection: Hugo Nominations Announced

NOVEL
Blindsight, Peter Watts (Tor)
Eifelheim, Michael Flynn (Tor)
Glasshouse, Charles Stross (Ace)
His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik (Ballantine Del Rey; Voyager as Temeraire)
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor)

NOVELLA
"A Billion Eves", Robert Reed (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2006)
"Inclination", William Shunn (Asimov's Apr/May 2006)
Julian: A Christmas Story, Robert Charles Wilson (PS Publishing)
"Lord Weary's Empire", Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Dec 2006)
"The Walls of the Universe", Paul Melko (Asimov's Apr/May 2006)

NOVELETTE
"All the Things You Are", Mike Resnick (Jim Baen's Universe Oct 2006)
"Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth", Michael F. Flynn (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2006)
"The Djinn's Wife", Ian McDonald (Asimov's Jul 2006)
"Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)", Geoff Ryman (F&SF Oct 2006)
"Yellow Card Man", Paolo Bacigalupi (Asimov's Dec 2006)

SHORT STORY
"Eight Episodes", Robert Reed (Asimov's Jun 2006)
"The House Beyond Your Sky", Benjamin Rosenbaum (Strange Horizons Sep 2006)
"How to Talk to Girls at Parties", Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things)
"Impossible Dreams", Tim Pratt (Asimov's Jul 2006)
"Kin", Bruce McAllister (Asimov's Feb 2006)

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer [Not a Hugo]
Scott Lynch (first year of eligibility)
Sarah Monette (second year of eligibility)
Naomi Novik (first year of eligibility)
Brandon Sanderson (second year of eligibility)
Lawrence M. Schoen (second year of eligibility)

Full list at: http://www.locusmag.com

The Spanish Exposition-Outlines (Part II)

Outline, a personal lexicon:

Sketch/Brainstorm: When I have a new idea for a story I always write it down in brief and tag on ideas for expanding the idea into something with a plot, characters, and fully realized setting. This can run anywhere from three sentences for a short or poem to two or three pages for a multi-book idea. I have hundreds of these in my ideas file, including probably 30-40 novel outlines sufficiently fleshed out to start writing.

Working: When I actually start in on a new project I take the sketch outline and expand it to something that gives me a good idea of the first third of the story, a rough idea of the middle bits and a good handle on the ending. How much work this is depends on how fully fleshed out the sketch outline was. This will typically run around 3-5 pages and include notes to myself along with the narrative paragraph blocks--things like "establish ruthlessness in dialogue here," or "she will return in book two as a ghost."

Timeline: In order to keep the days of the week, dates, moon phases, holidays, etc. organized, I almost always create a timeline for each novel with important events attached to specific days and dates and sometimes times of day or other time indicators. I do this both for the arc of the story and for historical and future events relative to the story. That last part is where it becomes more like other outlines as I use this as another type of sketch/brainswtorming tool.

Ongoing: As I'm writing, I constantly update the working outline with ideas for upcoming bits of business, plot points, character nuggets, and magic system chunks. At some point, generally when I hit the point where the working plot goes all sketchy I will sit down and lay out a chapter-by-chapter scene-by-scene outline for what happens from there to the end of the book. This can run as much as 30 pages single spaced.

Length: This is a specialized form of ongoing outline. By the time I move to the ongoing outline I generally have a very good idea of the book's natural chapter length which can vary widely depending on all sorts of factors including number of POV characters, type of POV, and target audience--I generally write shorter chapters for YA. What this allows me to do is take my ongoing outline and figure out how long the book is likely to be based on chapter length and how much material needs to go into each chapter and scene. More importantly, it allows me to add or subtract story elements to help me achieve a target length--I'm usually within a thousand words of target length when I finish a draft. Since writing to length can be very important to editors and for specific markets, this is an enormously valuable tool and simple to use. Do I have too many chapters? Collapse some scenes and ideas together. Do I not have enough, open some scenes out into full chapters or add others to achieve effects I hadn't thought I'd have room for.

Narrative/Proposal/Pitch: This is largely a sales tool, though I also use it to do brainstorming/sketch work for books that are part of a proposal but not yet written. These have to have a very specific form and often have set lengths--particularly for newcomers to the field. They can run from 1-5 pages either single or double spaced depending on submission guidelines and they must be in present tense (with the exception of quoted material from the book). They also can't keep secrets.

I've got a proposal in with the Loft to teach a course built around the book proposal and pitch with an emphasis on outline, and I might talk more about it if I write The Spanish Exposition-Outlines (Part III).

In the interim, I'm sure there are other uses for an outline, but I'm done for the moment. Please feel free to add comments or ask questions.

Interjecting About Outlines and Semantics

I think, in general, I’m opposed to the term “outline.”

The word itself is ugly and thoroughly unrepresentative of the pre-writing thinking that I do (and I *do* do it, despite my tendency towards composting, er, organic thinking.) The word outline calls to mind hours wasted in social studies or English class performing some kind of trained-monkey, “critical thinking exercise.” It involves Roman Numerals.

I. Ways to Kill My Creativity

A. Make me write/think in some highly-structured, artificial way.

B. Make me always have to follow an A with a B.

II. More of the Same Until My Head Explodes or I Never Want to Write Again, Whichever Comes First

This being said, absolutely no editor (or agent) has ever asked me to produce anything that resembles the above in any way.

I do write book proposals/chapter synopses (which, no doubt, Kelly will be covering momentarily,) which should never be called outlines, even though they are. What a book proposal/chapter synopsis really is -- is a narrative description of the key emotional and pivotal plot moments in your novel. There is, btw, a fantastic book that helps an author write a pitch proposal for an agent or editor, which I would love to recommend: Blythe Camenson & Marshall J. Cook, Your Novel Proposal from Creation to Contract. (My personal experience is that chapter six, which concentrates on writing the synopsis, is worth the cover price alone.) This I do. I’ve written what is basically a story about the story I’m going to write for every novel I’ve sold subsequent to Archangel Protocol (which sold the traditional way, via an agent to an editor as a completed manuscript.)

I write very detailed synopses with a core conflict, a middle, and a tidy, little ending. I submit this to my agent who sells it to my editor, and then I forget about it completely until I find that I’m stuck and can’t remember what’s supposed to happen next. In the meantime, I do, in fact, follow my characters down those proverbial alleyways, get lost, meander, and generally flounder as I write. I consider this process the absolute BEST part of writing. It makes me a slow writer. It means a lot of revisions. But, I wouldn’t enjoy writing nearly so much if I couldn’t get caught up in the magic of letting the organic, creative bits of my brain take over and rule my fingertips for hours at end. Anything else, to me, would be tantamount to assembly line work, and, frankly, the job satisfaction would plummet and I’d quit.

All that being said, I can no longer imagine what it would be like to start writing a novel without knowing the complete story in my head. I don’t think I could finish anything if I didn’t know where I was intending to go. Joan Vinge talked to me about this in an interview I did with her for Science Fiction Chronicle (now The Chronicle, not of higher education or the other SF.) She used the metaphor of a car trip. For her, novel writing is like gathering a group of friends at one coast and saying, “Hey, let’s take a trip to California!” She knows who’s in the car (though she may not know everything about them) and where, in general, they’re headed (though not the specific destination.) Everything else just happens... Kind of like certain bodily functions.

Compost.

It works for me, too.

The Spanish Exposition-Outlines (Part I)

I started to write a comment in Sean's post on outlines, but it quickly turned into Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch—my chief use of outline is as a book writing tool...book writing tool and book selling tool..selling and writing... My two main uses for an outline are book writing and book selling...and structuring. My three uses are... and so on. Now it's become so big that I'm actually going to do it as a two or three part front page post.

Over the years I've become a militant outliner. My first two books were written off the cuff, and though I still love the bones of both stories, I can see how knowing where I was going from the beginning would have produced a better end product. My third had a crude outline, and my fourth had a cruder one. Since then, I've gotten steadily more efficient and focused with outlines and it's led to big improvements in writing speed and quality.

Brief digression: I hated outlining in college. Absolutely hated it. I would go to great lengths not to have to write outlines for papers, even going back and writing outlines post paper in classes that required them so that it looked as though I had followed the desired process. To all the professors who tried to get me to outline back then, mea culpa, you were right, I was wrong.

Back to the main topic. I use many different types of outlines in my work (updated to add timeline):

Sketch/Brainstorm
Working
Timeline
Ongoing
Length
Narrative/Proposal/Pitch

These each have their own foibles and uses, and I'll get into that in part II tomorrow. In the meantime, if you've got comments or questions, I'd love to hear them.

Quick Hit

Jay Lake has an interesting post on reusing and overusing words in a story.

Catch of the Day

We're dusting off the flying motorcycles, man. We have some great ideas for those babies.
—Ron Moore

The Distillation of Story--an Outline for Success

(Cross-posted from Sean M. Murphy's blog)

I am nearly completed with the outline for the murder mystery novel, which has been temporarily named Murder Mystery Novel until that part of my brain comes back from its extended hiatus and provides me with something to name it that will elicit even vague interest in a reader/editor/publisher.

And then, yesterday, I read through Kelly McCullough's three book outline for a series of books that he's about to pitch to a publisher, one of which is written, and two of which are anxiously awaited by your truly and a few other folks (read: everyone) in Wyrdsmiths. Reading his outline for those novels and looking at my own for this project got me thinking about outlining in general, and its various values/uses.

I've used outlining in the past to develop a project and get a handle on its scope ahead of time, and found it to be a wonderful tool for focusing the project. When I outline, I describe the plot arc and various subplots or key elements on a chapter-by-chapter basis, and then as I am writing the novel, I can go back and revise the outline--tweak it a bit, add a section, even restructure or remove a section altogether. But where it's been most useful for me is when I get into the meat of a story, and it becomes a big enough thing where I have to work hard to hold the whole story in my head, the chapter breakdown of the outline helps me focus on where I'm headed and what I need to work on next. Also, its a great way of re-energizing myself if the story has started to stall, because I can see where I had wanted it to go.

I'm not suggesting that outlining is a foolproof way of preparing for a story, or that it worls for everyone. Lyda, for instance, is a very "organic" storyteller, learning where the story goes as it builds up, following her characters down a dark street because, despite her protestations, that's where they want to go, and damnit, that's where they're going to go.

But in my experience, outlining can be a boon in getting down the ideas when that initial bloom/explosion of creative juice happens, and then as a road map, albeit a flexible one, later on.

How about you? Do you outline, or is it an abhorrence to your process? How do outlines function for you? What other uses are there for an outline--for instance, Kelly's outline as a sales pitch--and how does their different function alter their construction? Do you outline as a means of preparing, or abstract an outline as a sales pitch once you're done?

Fantasy Writer Light Bulb Jokes

There's some pretty funny fantasy writing related light bulb jokes at Fangs, Fur & Fey (skip the self-promotion stuff and get to the end.) I laughed out loud.

Meet the Wyrdsmiths

For those of you who are interested, here's a list of upcoming cons where some or all of us will appear.

MiniCon
Lyda

WisCon
Eleanor
Lyda
Naomi
Kelly
Bill
Doug
Rosalind
Sean

CONvergence
Kelly
Sean

NASFic/Archon
Kelly

AAPT
Kelly

Diversicon
Eleanor
Lyda?
Sean?
Doug?

Story and Sleep

I'm an insomniac. Let's start with that. Sleeping is a skill I've never fully mastered and I am subject to both going to sleep too late and waking up too early as well as occasional bouts of being awake in the middle. In general this is no fun, and actually in specific as well now that I think about it.

But what does this have to do with writing you might ask. And it's a reasonable question. I'm not entirely sure it has anything to do with writing, but it definitely has to do with being a writer, or more specifically a storyteller. Not only do I tell stories literarily (my writing) and socially (at parties) but I tell stories to myself in a more or less continual stream.

Someone smiles at me as they drive past me on the freeway? I automatically make up all sorts of things to explain the smile. I can't help myself, given any starting point and something unknown, my brain starts filling in the gaps. This is one of the two chief sources of insomnia for me--the other being problem solving--I can't get my brain to shut up and quit telling stories. I seem to need the damn things.

As with most storytellers, I am an avid consumer of storytelling (that might even be the root of being a storyteller--an impulse that says "well, if nobody else is going to tell me a story...). Often this leads to reading--yes, the horror, a writer who reads--quite often at night, when I might otherwise be sleeping. Because of this and the complete exhaustion of some life stress I made a discovery about three years ago.

I sleep better if I don't finish reading the book. In fact, I can almost always go straight to sleep if I put it down at a cliffhanger moment. If, however, I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open but I still push on to the finish to see how it all ends, I will then spend the next several hours wide awake.

This is because (I think) when there's still story left at the time I put the book down, my brain stays in happy reader mode--the story is still in the hands of author and not my problem. OTOH, if I finish the book, the storytelling part of my brain knows that the author is done and realizes that if it doesn't do something right now the story will end! There will be no more story! Aiee!

And so it kicks into high gear telling a new story. It may be the story of what happens in the book after it ends, or it may be the story of what's going to happen to the stupid cat who is sitting on my head. That part's not really important. The important part is that story is once more my responsibility. I bring this up because last night, like an idiot, I finished the book.

So, how about you? Did you finish the story last night? Do you regret it this morning? Does this sound completely alien to you?

Tasteless Writing

Despite the title, this isn’t a post about tacky writers. Instead, I’ve been thinking a lot about Kelly’s post about the intuitiveness of writing. I think he’s hit on something that is really key to a person’s success or failure as a writer.

No one teaches us how to write.

Doctors and lawyers and nearly every other profession you can think of have regimented, structured ways to teach a person how to do their job – usually involving many years of school and thousands of dollars in tuition. Writers (as well as other artists) don’t have that. Okay, technically Mrs. Knutson taught me English grammar and how to diagram sentences and that kind of basic structure of “writing.” But the way most of us learn to tell stories is by listening to them. We learn to write by reading. The more you read, the better you write.

Reading is how a writer develops their “ear” or, for Kelly, their “sense of taste” for how words make a mood or a plot or a character. Kelly (and all of us) has developed an intuitive sense of storytelling based on the cumulative experience he’s gathered in a lifetime of reading (and writing.)

However, just as I wouldn’t expect Mason to pick out the individual instruments that make up an orchestra the first time he hears a symphony, I wouldn’t expect the beginning writer to intuitively grasp the complex art of storytelling – an art form, I dare say, I happily continue to struggle to comprehend every day.

Because much of writing is counter-intuitive, I think. Like the epiphany I had the other day about endings. You’d assume that when a story is finished, it’s over. However, I think I make a pretty good case that that’s not always true. I also strongly remember the day that I realized that lingering on an important event or moment in a story doesn’t slow the pace, it actually increases it. Two pages of description of a pivotal scene can be riveting stuff (and if not done properly, readers say they “missed the clue.”). On the other hand, it’s when I spent “time” (words on page) on details that weren’t important that I made the pacing drag.

Are these things intuitive? Well, maybe. Perhaps they are if you’ve been enough of a voracious reader in the past that sort of thing soaked in at an early age. Admittedly, in my misspent youth, I didn’t read nearly enough actual books (comic books, yes; books, not so much.) For me, at least, the craft of writing is still an act of discovery.

I think this phenomenon is also why there are so many writers (including myself) hungry for “advice on writing.” So many of us haven’t ever had to articulate how it is that we do what we do that words fail us (us!) when we are asked how we accomplished a particular writing trick. It’s like asking a reader who’s never leared to critique to tell you why a particular book is good. “Uhm, because it just... was.” Their answer is right, of course. Not very helpful, but right.

Ta-Dah, Full Stop

Cross-posted from my blog:

I’ve ended my novels the same way for years. I rush headlong toward a climax, and then when all the various threads are all tied up, I stop writing. Invariably, some critic (either professional or amateur) says that the book feels rushed or as if it’s missing something. Comments like this used to leave me confused and baffled. I mean, you have to quicken the pace the closer to get to the big, final showdown, don’t you? And, as long as all the bits are nicely tidied up at the end, you’re done, right?

I used to think so, and, in the end, I think that the answer comes down to a matter of style. Because, after all, for every person who complained, there were probably dozens who thought the book ended just fine. Certainly, my editors have never asked me to change the way I do endings, so they must be “correct” in at least one sense of the word.

But, I think I’ve figured out what so many people have that reaction to the way I tend to end books: readers don’t like to leave stories. As writers, sometimes, I think we’re so driven towards writing those precious words “The End” that we forget about the experience a reader has during the final chapters of a book. The headlong rush is great, but when all the bad guys are defeated a reader wants to take a moment and catch their breath and know that the characters that they’ve come to know and love (hopefully!) are going to be all right in the end.

I don’t usually give this moment to my readers. I tend to stop writing when the action is done. It’s very much, “Ta-Dah! Full stop.” I get why a reader might feel a little whip lashed by that, even though I still tend to resist the idea of the “wrap-up” chapter. It reminds me too much of the “let’s all stand beside the captain’s chair and make some lame joke at Spock’s expense” wrap-up of the Old Trek episodes. The “morning after when everything is okay again” chapter always felt to me (as a reader, but even more so as a writer) as contrived.

I’ve come around, however. I think about what Charlotte’s Web might have been, for instance, if the last chapter was “Final Triumph” where, after Wilber’s life is saved and the egg sac is safely on its way back to the farm, Charlotte dies alone. That’s definitely the end of the whole character arc and conflict that White set up for Wilber and Charlotte. Even some minor character’s issues, like Templeton, the Rat’s, are resolved. Everything is tidy. She dies. The end.

Except White knows better than to leave us there, with a sob in our throats. He gives us a condensed vision of the winter, and brings us around to the next spring when Charlotte’s babies are born, grow, and leave Wilber to say good-bye again. Though three of her daughters stay, White tells us that no one is ever a match for Charlotte, and, in effect gives the reader several small chances to slowly let go of a beloved character and to be filled with the sense that although her death seems unfair, she will be remembered fondly by the one who loved her best, and that’s all any of us can ever hope for, and that’s all right. Sadder than sin, but all right.

Readers need an opportunity to let the story go. I think I have been ending my novels too quickly, without a good sense of that need.

And so, without further ado, good-bye.

Good-bye. See you tomorrow.

Smart Things

Eleanor is saying smart things over at her personal blog again. Go look.

Quickies

Sword & Socery short fiction magazine Black Gate has started up a blog at: http://bg-editor.livejournal.com/

Here’s an interesting post about five things that Don’t Happen when you become a published writer from David Louis Eldman. And its companion piece: five things that Do Happen when you become a published writer.

Tastes Right

I do all sorts of things as a writer and critiquer on the basis of how they taste to me, whether the words feel right in my mouth as I'm mentally speaking them—I always internally voice as I'm writing, perhaps because I came to writing from theater.

The best example of this comes from a critique I did for Sean. There was a sentence where I wanted one word changed—I don't remember which one now, but that doesn't really matter. It was one of a large number of suggestions. Sean was pretty happy with most of them, ignored some, and wanted to understand what I was thinking with others. This was one of those last and the conversation went something like this:

Sean: Why did you suggest this change? I think you're right, but I'm not sure why.
Kelly: It just tasted better.
Sean: But why did it taste better?
Kelly: It just did.
Sean:...(waiting patiently)
Kelly: (unable to let the silence stay silent, begins mentally unpacking the process) Let me think about it...

It turned out that when pressed I had six separate reasons for wanting this one word changed. For me, the change reinforced something in the sentence, reinforced something in the paragraph, reinforced one of the story's themes, amped up a plot point, showed a contrast between character voice pre and post traumatic event, and removed a slightly clumsy related word repetition.

I've found that's usually the case when my brain says something tastes better rather than opting for a specific reason—my sub-conscious has a bunch of reasons to change something and is too lazy to articulate them all without being pressed. My new structural sense is definitely a tasting thing because it's hugely complex. I trust it in part because I know that the taste of something is very important for my process, but I still want to unpack it because I enjoy unpacking.

Praise? Flames? Fresh flavors.

Harry Potter and the Heaping Buckets of Cash

So, the first American hardcover printing of book seven of the Harry Potter series is going to be 12,000,000 copies with a cover price of 34.99. At a very conservative estimate of 15 percent royalty rate for the hardcover, that's 70,000,000.00 for the first printing. That's a single hardcover printing in one country. That doesn't include paperback, further printings or any of the other countries. Wow! Just, wow! This business is a very strange lottery.

Seasons of Writing

Happy Saint Patrick's Day from Saint Paul, Minnesota! Cross-posted from my blog:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s still jacket weather outside. Even though I’ve seen evidence that spring is on its way – crows gathering sticks for nests, buds darkening on our silver maple on our boulevard, large clumps of brown grass, litter, and mud poking through the shrinking clumps of snow – the temperatures here in the Midwest are still hovering awfully close to freezing.

Yet the novel I’m writing is taking place in June, in the full blossom of summer.

Sometimes, when I sit down to write a scene, I forget. I find myself typing “she shrugged out of her coat” because that’s what I would do, now, when coming in from outside. After tapping the delete button, I have to take a moment to remember what summer was like. I have to mentally call up nights so hot that the only relief is a bathtub full of ice cold water. I have to remember sundresses and sandals – or even bare feet on hot sidewalks or through stiff pokes of drying grass. I have to picture birds – summer birds, not the winter juncos, chickadees and cardinals, but the great blue herons, noisy red-breasted robins, and squawking blue jays. Bugs! Mosquitoes, cicadas, blue-bottle flies, crickets, gnats, ants – all the stuff that’s EVERYWHERE during the summer, that, somehow, I completely forget about during the winter.

It’s weird to write out of season, but I kind of enjoy the process of trying to recall a summer day while snuggled under six blankets. In fact, it’s one of my favorite things about writing contemporary settings. I love the challenge of trying to convey what a Midwestern season is like. I try to imagine someone who’s lived their entire life in southern Texas cracking open my book and being (hopefully) transported to a farm in the upper Midwest in springtime. I want that reader to smell the clover and alfalfa in the gentle spring drizzle. Just the way I FELT the oppressive heat and smelled the magnolias the first time I fell into the New Orleans of the Dave Robicheaux series by James Lee Burke.

Burke made me appreciate location. He made me realize that if you’re going to write about a place, you should fill it with the sights and sounds that are unique to the place you’re writing about. Why? Because, as a reader, I like going there as an armchair tourist – and weather (along with fauna and flora) is a surprisingly large part of that experience. Some of it didn’t work, because I didn’t have reference points for some of the specifics, but most of the time that didn’t matter because he gave me enough that I could imagine it (however wrongly.)

Eh, besides, you know us Minnesotans. We love to talk about the weather.

Writing and Ego: A Love Story

Cross-posted from my blog.

One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years I’ve been a writer is that I write better (stronger, faster) when my career is going well. This is frustrating if only because the times when I most need to produce are often the times when my career is in need of a boost.

For instance, I have a hard time starting the next book until the contract is signed. (By “signed,” I don’t mean literally, since getting an actual copy of the contract often takes months after the deal has been struck, but more when my agent calls and says “they’re buying it.”) This, of course, is absolutely stupid. It’s a little like waiting for “inspiration to strike” before sitting down at the keyboard. Lois McMaster Bujold once told me in an interview that the best thing a writer can do when s/he finishes a book is start the next one. Editors always want to know “what else you have” and it behooves a writer to be like Kelly and have lots and lots of offer. (Would you like this flavor? No, how about this one?)

I could do that, and did, before I broke into publishing. Now, I find that if I don’t have a deal on the table (or if I feel like my career is in any kind of jeopardy) I choke… or at least sputter.

If I have any concerns about my sales figures or whether or not my publisher is going to buy the next book, I find myself so consumed by those thoughts that I have trouble getting words onto page. Thankfully, even though my writing becomes more labored, I have yet to be completely paralyzed by this problem.

I need to learn how to get over this because in today’s publishing climate careers stall – a lot. Currently, I’m needlessly fretting because my editor informed me that the publisher is not printing any galleys for the second book in my current series. She says that in series romances, they often don’t print galleys, which may well be true. To me, the importance of advance copies is that they often mean advance reviews in places like Booklist and Library Journal (places that libraries, a big buyer of books, scan for titles of what they should be ordering next.) I believe my editor, I do. But, I’m suffering a bit of “once bitten, twice shy.”

Because... when my previous publishing house (which is actually my current publisher, only a different imprint) was unhappy with my sales figures and were trying to “shuffle me out the door” (my then-editor’s phrase) the thing that prompted my discovery of their disinterest was the fact that they didn’t print a galley for my fourth book. Thus, when hearing that I’m not getting a galley for the current book out in May of 07, my first thought is, “Oh, crap, time to come up with another pseudonym.”

As far as I know, my current book has sold well. At least, it’s sold well for a book of mine, which given that I was in a different genre all together, might not be saying very much. I also know that publishers these days are expecting bigger and better things from books that in the past would have happily taken up residence on the “mid-list.” My book made some bestseller lists, but not the bragging rights ones like New York Times or USA Today. My editor tells me that my publisher has ordered a larger print run for book two, which she says is a vote of confidence.

What scares me about the bigger print run is that without any advance reviews (or few) how are they expecting to sell all those extra books they’re printing? And when all those extra books are rotting in the warehouse, the publisher is going to turn to me and say “your book’s sales figures sucked. We’re dumping you, you loser.”

Thoughts like that keep me up at night.

And not writing.

(Spidey) Sense of Structure

Tate's post (below) leads me to write this one. It can get easier. I won't say it does, because every writer has a different journey, but it can.

The good news, I've developed a strong sense of novel structure. The bad news, it's still almost entirely intuitive rather than conscious. The worse news, it took 10 books. The better news, it seems to be shifting into a conscious process as I'm writing number 11.

I've had a pretty good handle on how to plot since my fourth book—the first three are decently-plotted, but it was an organic process. But I didn't fully develop this structural sense until writing number 10, The Black School, + 30 or more outlines. I got inklings of it with number 8, Chalice, but it mostly blinked out for 9, Cybermancy. And now I'm occasionally managing to consciously invoke it for 11, MythOS.

This is a pretty typical development process for me in terms of learning how to do something in writing:

1. Consciously set out to learn how to do X
2. Beat my head against the wall on X
3. Lose track of the fact that I'm trying to learn X
4. Get compliments about how well I'm handling X
5. Notice that X makes sense to me intuitively—it tastes right*
6. Think about how I'm doing X
7. Bafflement
8. Forget that I'm thinking about how I'm doing X
9. Answer someone's question about X and realize I now get it

*Tastes right. I'll talk about this in some depth with my next post.

Thoughts? Arguments? Digressions? Large purple groundhogs?

Alex, I'd Like to Buy A Clue for 200, Please

Cross-posted from my blog.

I feel dumb. I’ve been really very stuck on Bloody Charming. There are a number of contributing factors, not the least of which is my ego (but I’ll write about that tomorrow) and the fact that I’m writing “late at night” (read: 8:00 pm and know that by nature I’m a lark, not a night owl.) However, while talking to Shawn the other night I realized something so profoundly obvious that I nearly smacked myself in the head hard enough to give myself a concussion. Here it is:

If you’re going to have a mystery, you need to provide some clues as to “who dun it.”

Wow, Tate, really?

Yep, really.

Turns out that if person x is casting magical attacks on your heroine, you can’t just keep that information in your head until the final “ta-dah!” The reader needs to see person x on stage doing something that makes them go “hmmm, that’s curious.” So that by the time you get to the end the reader can say, “Ah ha!”

Guess what? Writers even have a special word for this. It’s called “foreshadowing.”

As many novels as I’ve written, you’d think I’d know this by now. Other me has even won the Shamus Award, so you’d assume I might be familiar with the basic principles of mystery writing, right?

Apparently, not today.

What this means is that I’ve had to revise the entire novel starting at page 50 or so. The good news is that when I’m finished with this backtracking, I should be primed to write straight through to “THE END.” Wish me luck.

This goes with my theory that every novel, for me, is like starting over. People always ask me, “Does it get any easier?” I’m supposed to say yes, of course, the more you write the easier the whole thing becomes, but the truth is that getting words down on page becomes easier the more you do it – structuring a novel, at least for me, is complicated every time because each novel is like the next baby, complete with their own personality and quirks.

As I often say with a sigh, “Someday I’ll learn how to write a novel.”

Catch of the Day

Paul Rudnick at the New Yorker shows us that the scrotum controversy is only the tip of the . . . here.

Laugh till your hyena hurts.

Brief Remark

I am on my way to ICFA (the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts) tomorrow morning and do not plan to take my computer. This may be a mistake. But I am planning to take paper and five pens. With luck, I will have something intelligent to say about writing and/or cons when I come back. Cheers.

Astronomy Workshop for SF Writers

From SFNovelists:

-----

Launch Pad is a free, NASA-funded astronomy workshop for about a dozen writers held in beautiful high-altitude Laramie, Wyoming. Launch Pad aims to provide a "crash course" for twelve attendees in modern astronomy for its attendees through lectures, discussions, activities, and observations through the University of Wyoming's two professional telescopes. The aim of the workshop is to promote more accurate astronomy in literature and media in order to educate the public and inspire future scientists.

This year's guest instructor is Jerry Oltion, amateur astronomer and science fiction author. Other lecturers include the founders/hosts of Launch Pad, University of Wyoming professor of astronomy and sf author Mike Brotherton and education specialist/astronomy instructor Jim Verley.

This year's workshop will be held from July 15-22, 2007. Lodging and some meals will be provided, and additional travel support may be available for exceptional and female/minority applicants. For more information, and to apply online, visit:

http://www.launchpadworkshop.org/

Please be encouraged to distribute this notice to any and all interested parties. While the workshop was originally conceived with science fiction writers in mind, we'd like to reach anyone who would benefit from more astronomical knowledge and produces work that reaches a broad audience

Thanks!

Mike Brotherton
Author of STAR DRAGON (Tor Books)
Astronomy: physics.uwyo.edu/~mbrother
Science Fiction/Blog: www.mikebrotherton.com

Writing Order /= Publishing Order

So, I just finished my 10th novel and started my 11th. My 1st, which is also my 4th came out last year, and my 9th will be my 2nd. You with me so far? My 11th may well be my 3rd, but I'm hoping that my 12th won't be my 4th, because there are several earlier books that I'd like to see sell and go to print before that and I might try to slip a 12th in before I write the 4th that's currently sold.

It's moderately complex now, and likely to get crazy over the next couple years, and that's ignoring that some of the books were written concurrently. When you add in proposals and partials (which could be characterized as quantum manuscripts) it gets really loopy. So I thought I'd put it all down here as a memory aid and to illustrate an earlier discussion about why you can't tell anything about writing speed from publishing speed.

Currently complete and projected novels in writing order:

01. 1990 Uriel
02. 1991 The Swine Prince
03. 1992/1993 The Assassin Mage
04. 1998/1999 WebMage
05. 2001 Winter of Discontent
06. 2002 Numismancer
07. 2003 The Urbana
08. 2005 Chalice book 1
09. 2006 Cybermancy
10. 2006 The Black School
11. 2007 MythOS
12. 2008 Codespell
1?. 200? The Eye of Horus (might go in front of Codespell)

Currently complete and projected novels in tentative publishing order
01. 2006 WebMage
02. 2007 Cybermancy
03. 2008 MythOS
04. 2009 Codespell

But any of the following could end up in print between #2 and #4

Uriel
Numismancer
Winter of Discontent
The Urbana
Chalice
The Black School (goes to my agent in March)

Plus there are proposals which could get written at any time
Chalice books 2-4
The Eye of Horus (proposal)
The Shadow in the Blood (proposal)

And partials which may or may not ever get written
Uprising
Outside In
Ave Caesar (mystery)

As always comments are welcome as are questions, riddles, and non sequiters.

Preorder + Smart Things

Two quick tidbits.

First, Cybermancy is now available for preorder (ships Sept 25th): Cybermancy*

Second, once again Eleanor is saying smart things about writing: Inspiration

*If I did that right, using that link to order a copy will even earn me a few extra cents per book should you be so inclined.

The Mysterious Case of the Novelist Askew

(Cross-posted from Sean's blog.)

How exactly does a writer of spec.fic get the idea to write a murder mystery? Novel?

I. Don't. Know.

But, there I was, three weeks ago, reading to leave for my vacation in Kauai, when the idea blorped up into my head (blorp being the technical term, as in the release of an gas pocket from a thick substance, i.e., oatmeal boiling). I wanted to write a sort of chick-lit murder mystery novel set in Kauai, primarily on the North Shore, where my wife's family vacations.

What?

I mean, I've been jonesing to get back to a novel length--it is more my natural length, and I've been prepping for one for a few months now. But I have no idea how to write a murder mystery, or chick-lit, having never written either and having read no more than a half-dozen of each--if that. Yet here was this idea, vigorously presenting itself, getting up in my face and trying to press a bar napkin with its phone number into my hand.

Talk about an alien encounter.

I put the thought aside. I had plenty to do--wrapping up at work, packing for Hawai'i, regular apppointment and life, cleaning house, making sure the neighbors had a key and there was plenty of food and litter for the cats, etc. I didn't think about it again.

Until I had an eight-and-a-half hour flight to Honolulu. This is too much time to sit still, for me, though I did tremendously well, only getting up once, as I had the new Guy Gavriel Kay novel Ysabel to read--which was great. But there's no way it's taking me eight-and-a-half hours to read a 432 page novel, so when I got done, writing brain is all primed up and readt to go, and starts looking around for a chew toy.

And Little Miss Tree Murder starts waving seductively over there. Apparently, she didn't go away, and even managed to tuck away in my luggage to go on vacation.

So I think, Hey, I'll look around in Kauai and see what interests me, see if there's anything that I could use for a project like that.

Yeah. That's a sure sign that I'm going to work on a project, if I ever met one. Because freakin' everything in Kauai seemed to slip into place as I spent the week there. The setting is perfect--which I must have known, at some level, because it really jelled with the sense of the novel that I had in my head.

And then, two weeks ago today, as I'm sitting on the couch in the evening with my wife and my father-in-law, after a day out and about on the North Shore, my head exploded. I had that initial moment of plot development energy, where the yeast colony of ideas suddenly runs into a pocket of 110 degree (F) water and a bunch of sugar, and suddenly starts ballooon out of control. I'm sitting there shouting out things like "Ooo, I could kill her while she's snorkeling!" or "What kind of safe do they have at the hotel?", and I'm pretty sure my father-in-law started edging away from me--I wasn't paying a lot of attention at that moment, but, hell, I would have been edging away from me.

So it looks like I'm writing a murder mystery novel set in Kauai. The energy is still right--I started doing a regular old novel plot outline yesterday, and got all excited and had to tell my wife all about it at breakfast. God bless her. I overwhelm her with details every time I start in on a story idea, because these are all deatils that matter to me, and I'm excited about them. At least half or two-thirds of them, she would never see as a reader, but for some reason, I just vomit all ideas about everything when I'm talking out loud.

So I guess I need to write it.

Snow

Never to forget a truly magical winter's night (and a whole lot of shoveling).

Knocked Out by Weird Details

Cross-posted from my blog (since Kelly subtly chastised me for not doing this last time):

I’m still enjoying the book with the smoker [ See: Tate Hallaway's Blog: Personal Habits and Reader Sympathy], by the way, though I’ve run into something else that this author does that knocks me out of the story.

She over-shares.

It’s a strange phenomenon, and, I realized, one hundred percent related to my reaction to the nasty-details of the smoker’s habit. Because, if I wasn’t clear, the thing that most lost sympathy points for me as a reader wasn’t so much the smoking, per se, but the intimate details about it. Things I “saw,” like overflowing ashtrays, added just a bit too much realism for my comfort.

I wouldn’t think that it would be possible to knock a reader out of a story by writing a detail that’s accurate, but it happened to me twice in this book. Once, in the scene I previously described, and again in a moment after sex that was just a touch too real. Later, after some consideration, I ended up liking the later detail, but my initial reaction was “ewww!” which inadvertently knocked me out of the story.

Knocking a reader out of a story isn’t the same as making them uncomfortable in a self-actualization kind of moment. When an author stretches my mind, it’s not usually a painful jarring, “whoa, I have to put this book down for a second,” moment, it’s often an “ah-ha!” Either it’s an ah-ha that makes me look at something in a new way, or it’s an ah-ha, “so this was the author’s agenda” thing. Either way, getting knocked out of story is usually a fraction of a second when my reader brain tilts -- when I’m no longer IN the story, but suddenly aware that I’m reading a story.

This is often death for a story. Too many moments like that, and the book goes back on the shelf.

What’s weird to me about my experience with this particular book is that the knock-out moments I’ve experienced aren’t ones that “ring false,” (which is what usually kicks me out of a story), but those that are simply too graphic. I’m getting too much information about stuff I find kind of gross.

This realization distresses me. One of the things I always tell my writing students is that the way to universality is through truth in details. If you describe a scene with unflinching accuracy, your readers will feel it, the scene will become real to them, I tell my students. Now, I’m thinking that I might be wrong about that. There may be such a thing as too much realism.

Perhaps you have to be careful regarding details. Pick the things you expose with accurate description with caution. Too much perfect imagery about garbage is going to turn your readers off, which might be okay if the story is supposed to do that – like in a horror story, for instance. Ah, perhaps I’ve hit on the key. The details need to be appropriate in tone to the story you’re telling. Don’t linger on the gross bits in a story that’s meant to be a romantic, light-hearted romp.

The devil is in the details, indeed.

Workshops Vs. Writers Groups

Jay Lake has a post up about workshops here and some of the things they do or don't do. I agree with a good bit of what he has to say in terms of structure and how they function and that whether they are good or bad for you is situational. For example, I get a good deal out of the critiques of my work. Perhaps less now than ten years ago, but still quite a bit because my investment in my stories is structured a little bit differently from many folks.

On the other hand, I think he missed completely some of the things that I find most important about a writers group, the things that aren't critique at all. And this may be a distinction between an ongoing writing workshop and a writers group, which seem to me to be two different animals.

So, here are some things besides critique that a good group can do for you:

Brainstorming, both on stories and career.
Mutual promotion.
Share industry gossip.
Writerly support and cheerleading.
Cross introductions to agents, editors, and con folk.
Listening to complaints and brags.
And, most important of all, peer friendships.

The Interface

Writers have things that really excite them. Readers have things that really excite them. The trick is connecting the two, because in real terms the two are only intermittently the same. Furinstance, the thing that really makes me want to write is creating a cool new world and bringing people there. Of course, there's no market for writing travelogues for places that don't exist. So, I need to make sure that I find some way of connecting my passion to my readers, because no readers means no sales which means having to find something else to do. That means telling a really cool story that'd peopled with characters that my readers want to spend time with. And that's more or less the order in which a story goes together for me:

World and all the cool stuff.

Story that shows off said world.

Characters that are appropriate to the world.

But that's only one of 1001 and one ways to do it, all equally correct, and all of which have to have some way of addressing and engaging the reader. So, I'm wondering, how y'all handle that interface. In On Writing Stephen King talks about having his target reader (I think it was Muneraven who brought this up at Marscon, but I'm terrible at remembering that sort of thing, so if was someone else, please leap forward and take credit). I don't have a specific target reader other than myself. I try to write a story that I would really want to read. Others will have other systems, including (I presume) pretending that there is no audience because the thought of actual readers is paralyzing for some while they're working.

So, thoughts? Clever advice? Description of your target reader? Noodles?

Loving the Craft

About once a month I run across the idea that you must suffer for your art. There are a number of variations on the theme, but one of the more common one for writers is of the sweating blood variety—writing is easy, I just stare at the blank page until the blood I'm sweating spills all over it. This drives me crazy. So does the oft quoted Everybody hates to write. Everybody loves to have written which is usually attributed to Hemingway.

If it hurts that much to do something, it's probably not a good idea. (Okay, there are subset of writers who can't not write and who hurt themselves in the process. This has always struck me as terribly unhealthy, but everyone's got their kinks.) However, excluding the compulsive writing masochists, if writing doesn't make you happy, why are you doing it?

The monetary rewards are low, arbitrary, and rare, so you really need to find the process emotionally rewarding if you're going to do it. I write because there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do. I love every minute of it, from the conception of an idea to fussing with final drafts. Yes, I love having written, but I love writing more. It brings me joy. That's why I do it. It's actually quite simple.