These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for December 6th through December 10th:
A young girl discovers that she is the Key to travel between Earth and the realms of Faery. Upon her kidnapping by dark Fae, her brother will accept any ally to get her back – including a pixie slave with clockwork wings and a band of man-eating goblins.
Please feel free to leave your comments.
Edit: I should note that A Clockwork Pixie is a YA steampunk fantasy novel in draft 0 currently weighing in at roughly 51,000 words.
These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for November 16th through November 26th:
These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for November 4th through November 11th:
These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for October 22nd through November 2nd:
“I’ve been thinking about writing a novel. But I just haven’t found the time.”
How many times have writers of all ages, ability, and publishing status heard these words or something like them*? This is probably the most irritating statement you could ever make in a writer’s presence. (At least, I can’t think of a worse one. Even a bad review is better than that.)
I am a (mostly) unpublished writer. And even I have heard this.You might as well just punch me right in the gut. It would have the same effect.
You see, writing a novel is a job. It’s a skill. It’s something that writers work very, very hard for. It’s not something one can complete in a day, or a week, or even a month**. In order to write well, one must do even more than that – a writer must complete one or two or seven or more novels before they come close to being publishing ready.
Most people believe writing is easy. And in every day life, it mostly is. Anyone can scratch out a note, make a list, or dash off an email. That lulls most ordinary people into the perception that writing a novel would be easy. It’s just a long letter, right?
Then again, I can run, but that doesn’t convince me that I could be a professional athlete. I can do a bit of 3D animation, but I wouldn’t just decide one day that I was going to go work for Pixar, either. I can tell you the symptoms of the common cold but that doesn’t automatically give me the knowledge and dedication that it takes to become a doctor. Why in the world do people remain convinced that absolutely anyone could write a novel and get it published with a wave of their hand – “if [they] only had the time”, of course?
“I could make up a great story like that, man!” Said with a snap of the fingers.And maybe you could. Far be it from me to try to crush anyone’s dreams. In fact, the first couple of times I heard this presumptuous statement, I tried to be encouraging and excited for the speaker. I pointed them toward NaNoWriMo and bestowed heartening words that I thought might help them toward their professed big dream.
After dealing with two or three of these people, though, I realized something. These people have no intentions of ever sitting down to write. They have absolutely no concept of the amount of work it takes to actually do the thing that they’re talking about. Nowadays, I just give those people a pained smile and change the subject.
It’s the equivalent of someone who knows the basics of folding a paper airplane deciding they are going to build a Boeing jet in their back yard. Yeah, they might be able to do it one day. But right now, they have no idea of the hard work, the dedication, the blood-sweat-and-tears, the money, the long hours, the putting-off-of-doing-the-dishes, the self-doubt, the despair, the thrill, the joy, the heartache, and the team of devoted professionals it takes to construct a whole new world one tiny wheel-sprocket-nut-bolt verb-adjective-noun-metaphor at a time and then to release the whole beautiful thing into the wild.
I’m not saying don’t do it. In fact, if that’s your dream, then you shouldn’t let me or anyone stop you. But please, for the sake of my sanity, don’t dismiss it as a simple, easy thing to do. It’s not.
*Rant inspired by the wise, hilarious, and read-worthy Patrick Rothfuss.
**Yes, I do know about NaNoWriMo. I love it. I have participated every year since 2004. This DOES NOT mean that your NaNovel is ready to go out on submission to agents or editors on December 1st.
These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for October 16th through October 21st:
These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for October 8th through October 15th:
I’m introducing a new series here at MG, one that I’ve been thinking about for awhile. These posts will focus on authors I admire and why. It could be something related to their writing or something they’ve said or done outside of their books. This series of posts will tell you, in detail, which authors I believe are worth the admiration.
The first author would, of course, have to be Robert Jordan. No other author has done more to change my life.
Robert Jordan was the author of The Wheel of Time series. He passed away from illness in September of 2007. The epic fantasy Mr. Jordan left incomplete will be finished by Brandon Sanderson, an author I’m sure we’ll see later on in this series. To read about his life and his passing, in both his own words and those of his fans and family, please go here.
As I said, Mr. Jordan has done more for me than any other author out there. It was his writing that hooked me first. I was going through a bad time in my personal life and I went out and found the longest series with the thickest books that I could find. I don’t believe anyone can deny that The Wheel of Time fits this requirement.
Not only did the story absorb and distract me in difficult moments, but something possessed me to go out into the digital world and try to find a community of people I could talk to about Jordan’s work. I needed, at that moment, to find people of like mind. To be blunt, it was a desperate time for me and I needed friends.
The Wheel of Time community at Dragonmount became that and much more to me. At the forums there, and on the WoT (as fans lovingly call the series) mailing list, I founded friendships that I know will last a lifetime. I adopted two sisters, a circle of friends… And it was there that I met my husband. I would say “love of my life” but that phrase is so cliché as to be embarrassing. (It does not make it less true, however.)
These people helped and supported me while I was busy dragging myself out of the mire of a terrible time in my life. And I owe it all to the words and wisdom of Mr. Robert Jordan.
Of course, maybe your life right now is fine and dandy. So why should you go out and pick up what is probably the most anticipated series in the world – one that’s still not quite finished? The answer is this: because inside the fantasy trope of a young farmer who is trying his best to save the world from evil there is love and laughter, strife and pain, longing and disaster. Mr. Jordan wrote about life in a way that tells you unequivocally that he lived it.
May the Mother’s embrace have carried you home on wings of gold, Mr. Jordan. We still miss you.
These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for October 5th through October 8th:
These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for September 27th through October 1st:
So pretty soon it will be October 1st, which is the day that the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) forums reset for the 2010 challenge. That means it’s time now to start thinking about this year’s NaNovel. Once the forums reset, we’ll all have 1 month to brace ourselves for the writing whirlwind.
To recap, for those who’ve never heard of it: National Novel Writing Month, widely known as NaNoWriMo, is a yearly writer’s contest in which you are given 30 days in which to pen a 50,000 word novel. NaNoWriMo begins at midnight your local time on November 1st and ends at the same time on November 30th.
There are no prizes, other than a certificate and bragging rights. There is nothing to stop you from copying other text and reporting yourself as a winner. Except for the sheer ridiculousness of cheating in a contest for which you win absolutely nothing.
The point of the contest is to get into the habit of writing every day, as well as to use time constraints to shut down the voice of that evil inner critic every writer seems to have. I’ve participated every year since 2004.
Everything I write tends to have a different method. My current work in progress (WiP) has been pretty thoroughly plotted. You should see all the post-its on my wall. This was a very different method for me as I’d usually not done much more than a vague outline before. I’ve also been a complete pantser in the past.
I recently discovered something called ‘phase drafting’, however, and I’m kind of interested in giving it a try. (Find out more about phase drafting here.) On the other hand, I don’t have much more than a couple of scene fragments to build from. That’s if I choose to use one of the two more developed ideas I’ve got on hold.
Yet it’s also a nice idea to be able to weave in whatever comes to mind. I find it exciting to think about writing in all the purple bunnies and ice-skating penguins that show up in the middle of the story. A completely whimsical, nonsensical story sounds enormously appealing after all the work that’s gone into plotting my current novel.
I haven’t decided on anything yet, though, and I still have a little while to make up my mind. So please join in. Are you planning to plot your NaNovel this year or write by the seat of your pants? Please leave a comment and let me know!
Note: I’m not asking for details of your plot and it’s probably best to keep that to yourself. Just tell me if you’re going to be a plotter or pantser this year! Thanks!These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for September 26th through September 27th:
These are my links for September 25th from 14:00 to 15:42:
These are my links for September 21st through September 23rd:
Sometimes, I think I’m married to the smartest man alive. Don’t tell him that, of course. I’d never hear the end of it if he knew I thought that, even sometimes.
It’s true, nevertheless. I’ve taken up an attempt at knitting the last day or so. I’ve known how to do very basic crochet since I was a youngster, but the two hands needed for knitting have always looked sort of formidable to me. However, I took the plunge, bought some needles and yarn and looked up a pattern and some videos on the internet.
The attempt … has not gone very well.
I was ready to give up. Until my husband said something that I realized applies not only to knitting, but to just about anything. He said (and I’m paraphrasing here):
If you know ahead of time that you’re going to suck, then you might as well go ahead and suck. That frees you up to do just about anything you can think of with it. You don’t have to worry about trying to be great anymore. That’s the power of kamikaze. Why do you think it always worked?
Putting aside the statistical impossibility of kamikaze “always” working, he does, in fact, have a point. It’s rather freeing to think that, whatever you do, it’s bound to be terrible. Because then you don’t have to worry about being perfect.
What was it about kamikaze fighters that made them so formidable? I think it was the fact that they were willing to do anything – even die – to accomplish their goal. Are you willing to do that for your writing?
Not die, of course – because to die with stories untold would be a terrible waste. But are you prepared to get up early or stay up late to get those words on paper? Are you okay with skipping a shower or leaving those dishes to languish in the dishwasher for another day? Can you give up one hour of TV to dedicate it to accomplishing your goal?
Translated into your writing, kamikaze also means that you shouldn’t worry about always doing the correct thing every time. It means not every word has to be perfect on the page. Not every idea has to be ultra original or have layers of meaning. Being terrible actually sounds rather like a good idea to me.
It means you don’t have to worry about always showing instead of telling. It means you can feel free to use things that don’t make sense. Purple bunnies? Check. A kick-ass female lead who doesn’t fall in love with the male lead? Got it. How about the oldest trope in the book? (Farm-boy-turned-king who saves the world, anyone?) Go ahead and use it.
Have fun with it. Write crap. Being perfect is over-rated anyway.
I’ll leave you with a quote (the source of which I am no longer clear on, as it’s been with me for quite some time):
To be perfect, simply: say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
I’ll tell you truly – I’d rather be crappy than nothing. How about you?
Sure, I have a day job. Most writers have to keep a day job. It’s a long, difficult road to making a living off of a writing career. But that’s another post entirely. If someone were to ask me what I do, I’d say that I work in a pharmacy. But if you were to ask me what I was, the first thing out of my mouth would be, “I’m a writer.”
Why a writer? I’m not published – unless you count a sad POD first novel that I wouldn’t show to my own grandmother. I don’t even get to sit at my laptop and live inside my fantasy worlds for hours at a time. I have a day job and a family to support. I don’t write all the time or even very consistently most days. Very often, I don’t feel much like a writer at all.
So why do my instincts shout that I am, for better or for worse, a writer first and foremost above almost all else?
Well, I’ve been writing ever since I could remember. My very first story was about a young monster who got in trouble with his parents for not being scary enough. I think I still have it lying around somewhere. More than that, something in the written word just calls to me. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve had stories in my head so long that my choice is to either write them down or consider myself insane.
When I was a teenager, I ran across this quote from R.M. Rilke (which is not the exact quote I ran across but conveys the meaning; and this is the original statement anyway):
“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity”.
It changed my world. Here, finally, was a definition I could fit into. I had never been the outgoing, endearing school girl that I so admired as a child. I couldn’t be the smartest, or the fastest, or the prettiest. I daydreamed. That is what I did. I immersed myself in other people’s stories and tried to use those worlds to make sense of the one I was in. When they didn’t quite fit, I started writing them myself. Now, I finally had a word for what I was: a writer.
It’s been many years since that youthful hope, however. I’ve nearly given up on the whole thing at least a dozen times over the years. The doubts plague you. Am I good enough? Do I have anything significant to say? Can I touch the hearts and minds of my readers the way that the books I’ve read did for me? Then each time I realize that it doesn’t matter, because I simply can’t not write. It’s no more a choice for me than breathing. When I don’t write, I become a zombie stumbling through my daily routines. Life loses it’s luster and I forget the reason I get up in the mornings. It’s a spark of happiness so small that I don’t even realize it’s there until I’ve let it die. And it’s hard, so hard, to get the flame burning again.
But what choice do I have? I’m a writer, dammit. It’s what I am.
I still have a lot to learn. Thankfully, the internet is a useful tool for this. Later, I’ll post for you some of the best writer’s resources I’ve found on the web. For now, I’ll leave with some more modern and equally important advice from CE Murphy. “[I]f I could be content, even happy, doing something that didn’t pile up the rejection letters, that didn’t require spending years of my life at a keyboard when I could be doing something else, if I could get ten or twenty or thirty rejection letters and say, ‘No, this isn’t worth it,’ then it wasn’t worth it. I would be happier doing something else. If I could walk away from writing, I should, because it would make for an easier and more comfortable life.”
So if you can walk away, do it. A writer’s life isn’t glamorous. It isn’t fame. It’s sitting alone in front of a keyboard, realizing you’ve not done the dishes in three days and you haven’t showered in almost as long. It’s neglecting your real-life friends while the ones in your head clamor to be released. It’s being rejected by agents, editors, and eventually readers – and that’s the best case scenario. There’s a darn good chance that you’ll never get past the agent stage.
But… If you’re like me – if you’re going to write anyway, regardless of what anyone says… Well, then welcome to the club.
So I had a few thoughts on pen names and the obligation (if any) of authors to disclose that they are using such. These thoughts stem from a small controversy over a recent Locus article in which Kim Harrison, author of the best-selling Rachel Morgan/Hollows series, revealed that the name – and much of the persona – is a nom de plume. Since the rest of this may end up not being a very nice article, I will tell you here that Kim also writes mainstream fantasy as Dawn Cook. Go look her up. I read The Decoy Princess, not knowing it was the same author, and really enjoyed it. Once you’ve done that, if you still want to hear my opinion, come on back.
Let me state plainly that my personal opinion is that those people who are accusing Kim¹ of being a liar are acting like entitled, conceited, selfish little witches². Note that I say acting like because I don’t know these people personally, so I can’t say that they ‘are’ anything. I can only base my opinion on what I’ve seen and heard of their behavior on the internet. And that behavior has been appalling.
Regardless of her reasons – which I understand to be a combination of personal family safety issues and the trends of the market³ – the use of a pen name (or not) is an author’s choice and has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of what’s between the pages. An alias can be used on a book for any of dozens of reasons, and all of them are valid. Yes, including the “she just wanted to dress up and mess with people” one.
But you know what? I don’t believe that last one of Kim at all. I’ve been following Kim’s work since Dead Witch Walking first turned up on book store shelves. I’ve watcher her interact with fans online for years and even met her in person several times. I will say I do not know her, but I feel that I have learned enough to say that Kim has been one of the kindest, most genuine authors I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting.
Now, as a (part-time, mostly unpublished) author myself, I’ve spent time drawing my own conclusions from the pen name debate. I considered using one and ultimately discarded the idea. Why? Because the truth is much too easy to find on the internet. If I someday do end up selecting a nom de guerre for marketing or other reasons, I foresee being mostly open about that fact. However, the ultimate decision is a personal one, and I would expect my fans to respect that.
I find this current trend of outrageous entitlement in regard to an author’s life and behavior appalling and offensive. We purchase their books for the stories, people. Authors are not selling us stake in their personal lives. The money we spend on the book(s) entitles us to the words on the cover and the ones between the pages and nothing more. To quote Neil Gaiman: “[Authors are] not your bitch.”
If an author wants to play Xbox 360 all day instead of writing the next book in their series, discuss their sex lives on the internet (though I don’t recommend that one) or even pretend to be someone who’s not backed up by the information on their birth certificate°, well then guess what? You don’t get a say on that. Feel free to take your diatribes off to a corner of the internet where you can kick and scream. That’s what it’s for, right? But personally attacking the author on his or her website, mailing list, Facebook page or anywhere else they have an online presence is not only disrespectful but makes you look like an idiot. One in which I will take great joy in mocking.
So jump off your high horses and try not to break your necks on the way down, my dears. Once you’ve gained your equilibrium again, come back here later this week for an article on the best new authors I’ve just read (and now you should, too).
¹ I will continue to call her Kim because that’s how I was introduced to her work. ² I’m trying to be nice, but you can insert your own word choice here, if you like. And no, I’m not talking about the kind of witches who live in the Hollows. ³ David B. Coe wrote an excellent and informative article on why market conditions may pretty much force an author to use an alias. Find it here. Which I was going to link to; but it has since disappeared from magicalwords.net. ° I will conceed one exception to this rule: books marketed as being ‘autobiographical’ which – aren’t.My Muse is a fickle creature. She dresses in moonlight and shadows and lives quietly in a forest glade, far from the reach of mortal thought. Most of the time I have to quietly lure her out of hiding with the promise of chocolate or a new toy to play with. There have been periods as long as months in the past when I couldn’t bribe her into showing her face at all – regardless of how I begged and pleaded. Then, on some days – like today – she hits me over the head so hard that I can’t concentrate on anything else until I finally give in and do whatever it is that she wants.
Recently, I’ve been having to work my day job quite a bit. Lots of overtime and such. So when does my shy little Muse want to dance about my mind with a tantalizing new idea? Right smack dab in the middle of my work day. There’s nothing quite like being focused on resolving your hundredth corporate problem of the day when you find yourself staring off into space and wondering what would happen to a plot line if vampires were a migratory species, racing around the world to stay ahead of the rising sun.
My Muse has done exactly this in recent days. Yet when I try to sit down and grasp her hand and make her tell me these ideas in a space where I can take advantage of them… Well, no Olympic sprinter runs as fast as a Muse who wants to avoid working.
This is probably why most of my usable ideas come to me in the middle of the night. My Muse obviously only likes working when she can be the most troublesome. So I have a multitude of strange and wonderful nighttime escapades. I call most of them my “Stephen King dreams” because my Muse is obviously a fan of horror and urban fantasy. Almost all my dream-ideas involve some sort of supernatural or frightening creature: zombies, werewolves, witches, ghosts, vampires. Or a frightening setting: an asylum, a haunted and/or mass murderer occupied house, the wind swept moors of the Scottish highlands. That sort of thing.
Sometimes when I have these sorts of dreams, the details slip away quite quickly and I’m left with nothing but the vague feeling that I would have had a great idea, if I could only remember it. Other times – like today, for instance – my Muse is like a monkey riding my back or a little cloven-hoofed voice on my shoulder whispering in my ear until I finally throw my hands up and say, “Of COURSE I had nothing better to do than to sit and write today! Long hand, you say? Sure! I LOVE aching wrists!”
What she wanted, today, was for me to sit and write nearly 2,000 words longhand about a dream she visited upon me about these hauntingly mysterious quartet of children and their curious ability to make fairy lights by playing their instruments (flute, cello, violin and piano, in case you were curious). I haven’t the faintest clue what the lights are for, why the instruments are important, or why the elder brother who is the main character is so suspicious of everyone who gets near his little sister. I also don’t know why little sister is so special. Frustratingly, I also don’t know if this story is going to develop into something more or what form it will take if it does.
Urg.
So what does your Muse do to torture you? Share in the comments. And it’s okay if it’s a drawing or painting muse, or a music muse, or even a business muse that torments you.
Courtesy of The Forbidden Library.I’ve marked off the ones I’ve read. It’s more than I thought. I challenge all my readers to read at least one book from this list in 2009. Post in the comments which one you choose!
So that’s 29 out of 69. 40 more books yet to read. My goal is to read Paradise Lost this year. How many have you read?