A Question Answered + Smart Things

Lately I've been posting a lot on Facebook and Twitter about vivid and bizarre dreams. Someone asked me where I get these things, and I thought that since the answer is writing related I'd toss it up here as well:

Unusual density of cross-linking in my neural networks. Or at least that's the operating theory as it's strongly in sync with family medical history. It's part of why I write. When I'm writing a lot, I don't remember my dreams much at all and when I do they're almost always about the story I'm working on and useful to moving the story forward. When I'm writing less, my dreams tend to be wildly uncontrolled and extremely vivid. Since I'm currently in wait and see mode for which project is next up, I'm not really writing and the side effects are starting to get me.

And, some smart things:

Lilith Saintcrow talking about skill vs. talent.

Jeff VanderMeer on paying it forward and literary leverage.

Odd things: The Battle of the Pelennor Fields…candy.

The physics of space battles at gizmodo.

New Animal Tool User.

All you scientifically-minded folks have probably already seen this, but it's pretty amazing: Octopus Using Tools/Carrying Portable House.

Friday Cat Blogging Holiday Edition

I'm going to get you for this.



I'm going to get you for this.



I'm going to get you for this.



I'm going to get you for this.

Speaking of Cover Art…

Ooooooooh:



Notice the fancy series title below the laptop screen in the image.

I blame John Scalzi

Updated: This was inspired by Scalzi's pranking of Wil Wheaton (link below) and perpetrated by my friend James (link in comments) with the support of a rather large cast of unindicted co-conspirators. It is also made of awesome.

Ravirn...on velvet...eviiiiiiiil:



I see it:



Me and it:



Recreating the Wil Wheaton pose:


And Scalzi's original eviiiiiiiiil.

Friday Cat Blogging

I'm not posing for any more pictures,
so you better make this a good one.
(taken about 12 hours before she died)



Me and my shadooow…



My surgery scar let me show you it!



Turn the damn heat up already!



Have you ever really looked at your foot…
'cause I find it fascinating.

The Urge to Click

One of the things that often surprises my students is that, until very recently, every bit of editing that happened to my manuscript was on paper. My editor might email me her comments, but after that I was expected to do them and then print out two copies and mail them to New York. (One stayed with my editor, the other went to a copy editor).

Until very recently (like within the last two years), I would get a copy edited manuscript back with post-it notes stuck all over it where the copy editor or editor had questions for me to address. I was expected to make changes in a colored pencil on the paper where I could (or reprint a page or two if I had to) and mail it back.

Weird, huh?

Now, finally, and for the first time, I got back a commented/track changed manuscript electronically as my _editorial letter_.

Penguin has been starting to do this for copy edited manuscripts, but this is my first back-and-forth that's just between me and my editor. I think I complained here (or perhaps elsewhere) that I wasn't necessarily fond of the new electronic copy editing, if only because the temptation to fire back snarky commentary to the occasional dense question from a copy editor was VERY STRONG. When there were post-it notes to scribble on, it was much easier to resist. I had to pick up a pencil and crib out some long rant. Now it's a click away. Much harder to remain professional. Though I managed to do it -- I think.

However, I find I'm liking the track changes editorial letter. I'm getting a much better line-by-line sense of what my editor had trouble with and, I find, more compliments dashed in here and there. The "ha! funny line!" bits, even for an old hand like me, still go a long way. My editor's standard e-mail editorial letter always had a line in there about how I gave her a great read and all that, but, you know, it feels more real when I can see where she put in positive comments.

Plus, the urge to respond to comments here is very different. It feels more like a conversation with my editor. She tends to start out with, "What do you think of..." which naturally calls for a response both in the text and in the comments field. Of course it helps that I have a long, well-established relationship with her, and I tend to trust her judgement. :-)

New Writer Badge

So my son Mason has discovered the joys of Pokemon Diamond Version for the Nintendo DS Lite (or whatever... it's that thing that replaced the Gameboy that all you kids are into.) Anyway, he's forever running up to me telling me he got a new badge for winning battles and such.

I think we need a system like that for writers.

You could have a "Completed first short story" badge and one for "First Pro Rejection" badge... the list of possibilities is endless. You could end up with a chest full of metal, like some kind of war hero/general.

I got a new one on Friday. I came home to a message on my answering machine: "Hey, so.... about that novel you're already overdue on.... any idea when we might see it? (No pressure!)" I finally get to be one of THOSE writers: dodging calls from their editor, hiding from angry fans...

The rest of the weekend was spent with my head down over a calendar figuring out a serious answer to that question. I think I have one, but my other life keeps interrupting. I just got my editorial letter for my young adult novel ALMOST TO DIE FOR and a January deadline for those edits (some of which aren't small. My editor wants a whole new scene near the end.)

It's funny. When I was a kid, I used to think that curse "May you live in interesting times" was kind of weird. Now I get it. "May you have too much of the work you love."

Friday Cat Blogging—Ave Leith Edition

We lost our white cat to cancer this week. I'm too heartbroken for captions today. I'm just going to post the pictures. She was a dear old thing and we loved her very much.

Just Checking In...

Since I notice we've all been a bit absent from the blog, I thought I'd just write a quick note to prove that we're still here, still plugging away...

For myself, I caught some nasty cough-thing that's totally wrecked my sleep cycle. Yet, I managed to finish off two proposals for new series ideas and send them off to my agent. I only hope they're as good as my cough-medicine addled mind THINKS they are. And now I'm that strangely happy place where I'm inordinately proud of my own cleverness and yet anxiously waiting to hear from my agent (who will undoubtedly tell me how pedestrian they are.)

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I never feel like a master at any of this, no matter how long I've been doing it. Every time I sit down to write a synopsis for a book proposal I bring out my "How to write a syonpsis" book and re-read the important chapters like a complete newbie. (And strangely, I often still have an "aha!" moment when I realize I forgot some critical bit in my first draft.) This time I realized I need to actually show the romance developing as part of the story... duh!

That's about all I got right now though. I have to run volunteer to stuff folders at my son's school. See ya!

Industrial Smart Things (with a side of link salad)

I'm home with a sick boy today, so the most imaginative thing I have time for is cut & paste. With that in mind, I provide a smattering of Smart Things, with a (loose) focus on the publishing industry:

If you want to know how your book might be marketed, how sales and advances are determined, and the general nuts & bolts of what goes in to a publisher marketing your book, Pimp My Novel is a gold mine of a blog. A few choicer items I have been reading there of late include:

Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of how publishers figure Profit and Loss statements for a book. (Yeah, it sounds dry, but this stuff helps determine whether they make an offer on your work or not.)

A brief overview of the state of how Fantasy, Science Fiction, Historical, Romance, and other genres (check the sidebar on the site) are selling these days.

A two parter on how book chains (and others) determine how many copies of a given title they will buy.

Literary agent Nathan Bransford has some thoughts on how to respond to an editorial letter/critique. As I am expecting to go through this myself for the first time in a week or two, I will post back later with my observations on the matter as well.

Dr. Syntax (a.k.a. Peter Ginna, editorial director of Bloomsbury Press) makes a case for a greater rate of failure in publishing. He doesn't go into details, but I can see where the basic premise can be argued. Heaven knows something will have to change in the near-future.

Just because I can't seem to leave the topics alone, here's an excellent post by Max Dunbar as to why "self-publishing" isn't; and a post by afore-mentioned Dr. Syntax as to what we risk leaving behind if we move to e-readers.

And finally, I just plain need to link to this book trailer because it's so freakin' impressive.

Now, off to check a young lad's temperature and get on with whatever I manage to get on with for the day. Cheers!

Monday Morning WIP Thread

Today I've got rewrites for the Aqua Vitae proposals on the agenda. I'm hoping to get those done and printed along with the manuscript for the revivified Swine Prince so that I can send a package off to my agent Tuesday or Wednesday. I'd originally hoped to get both to him in early October, but the combination of Laura's sabbatical and the resultant increased travel schedule have meant that non-contract work is not going apace. It's a small price to pay for all the extra time together that sabbatical has bought us, but my inner workaholic is a little tense about the whole thing. I did get the last of the new countertops in, which means I also installed the new sink (see below), and wonder of wonders, it went beautifully with no leaks on the initial pressure test. What about y'all?

Friday Cat Blogging

Nothing to see here, cats napping, move along.

Proposals and Series Vs. Standalone pt. 2a

Part 2a: Structure without planning—WebMage

So, as mentioned last time, WebMage accreted into a series rather than being planned as one. But what does that mean? How is planning for a series different?

Let's start with the short-story version of WebMage's plot and the things I didn't think about beforehand. The short story WebMage was all about Ravirn's successful escape after a hacking run. Because it was essentially a chase story, it really didn't matter why Ravirn had hacked Atropos beyond for the hell of it (strongly implied in the short). Fine motivation for a short story, but ultimately unsatisfying for a novel. Because it was a short the long term effects of the cost of that escape didn't matter when I was writing the short. So, at the end we have Ravirn with the enmity of one of the Fates, a knee that's thoroughly hashed, short a fingertip, and in no real shape to do anything but lie in bed and recover. Fine in a short, more problematic in chapter three of a novel with a whole book left for him to limp through.

Then there's world. In the short all I had to put together for the magic system was the rough framework and decorate it with the bits that I needed to make the plot work. A novel needs a lot more than that, and if I'd been planning for more story there are thing I would have made simpler or stronger. Names are another issue. At short story length I just grabbed cool stuff and didn't worry too much about making a coherent culture of it. Likewise culturally, the colors my characters wore and the pseudo-Elizabethan court structure, both done because they were cool and at short length coherence wasn't really an issue.

Finally, character. Ravirn and the Fates were basically perfectly workable characters for the longer run of a novel, so no real problems at the first order build-out level. Cerice and Melchior however both needed a lot more room to grow. A good part of the familiar underground subplot was by way of making the expanded Melchior make sense. As for Cerice, I don't think I really got her to work fully the way I wanted until book V.

So, a good deal of the structure of WebMage the novel went into mitigating and justifying the cost of the events of the short and into making that set of scenes make sense in a larger context. A fair amount of work also went into ret-conning the magic system to make it work for the novel. Culture had to be justified and characters twisted and expanded. I'm quite happy with the result but it was an enormous amount of work to get it there and I suspect that if I'd been planning ahead I could have achieved better results with less wordage, which in turn would have given me room to make things richer elsewhere.

There were similar problems moving from the stand-alone WebMage novel into an open ended series a piece at a time as I did, most notably with Cerice (who worked very well as a love interest in the original happily ever after ending of WebMage but not so much over multiple books), Tisiphone (who I straightjacketed in book I much more than I would have had I known how big a part she was going to play going forward), the magic system (see the handing off of the mweb system from Fate to Necessity), and plot (having your main character go up against Fate in book I doesn't leave you a lot of room to step back down into a more human scale of story or, on the other end, much space for a bigger badder baddie). Again, I'm happy with the results, and in particular with some of the choices forced on me by the original structure of Tisiphone, but I think it could have been done better with only a little more forethought.

I don't regret a single choice I made with WebMage but man, looking forward, a lot of them are choices I'm glad I won't have to make with the next set of books. Next up, application of the lessons learned, or structure with planning.

Worldbuilders

Pat Rothfuss is doing a fundraiser for Heifer international in which he and his sponsors (Subterranean Press) auction off books and all sorts of incredibly cool f&sf stuff including signed limited editions, posters, and music among other things. The fundraiser is called World Builders and the master page is here. Go look.

Random Silliness

Fellow Wyrdsmith Naomi Kritzer pointed me to these, but they were just so awesome, I had to share: Star Wars Facebook Status Updates

Also, though this is "old" from July of this year, local author Rob Callahan discusses being mistaken for me (or rather, my Lyda Morehouse persona.):

Get Your Tickets NOW!

Many Wyrdsmiths have been on the obligatory panel about how awesome it is to be a science fiction fan/writer in this town, but we're even cooler than you think. Check this:

The Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis will be presenting A Klingon Christmas Carol. The production runs from November 27th until December 13rd. Ticket prices are $18 for adults and $14 for students and seniors.

The best part is from the Mixed Blood site:

Scrooge has no honor, nor any courage. Can three ghosts help him to become the true warrior he ought to be in time to save Tiny Tim from a horrible fate? Performed in the Original Klingon with English Supertitles, and narrative analysis from The Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology.

The classic Dickensian tale of ghosts and redemption adapted to reflect the Warrior Code of Honor and then translated into tlhIngan Hol (That’s the Klingon Language).

A co-production of Commedia Beauregard and the IKV RakeHell of the Klingon Assault Group.

Okay, not only is it a retelling, but it's also IN Klingon (with Vulcan commentary). How can you not love that? It's like we live somewhere between reality and ficition.