Category Archives: Writing

• Via anghara, tightropegirl on writing what you love instead of what you think you should write.

• Via fairmer, I think , this essay by Zadie Smith in the Guardian on what makes a good writer: Writers know that between the platonic ideal of the novel and the actual novel there is always the pesky self – vain, deluded, myopic, cowardly, compromised. That's why writing is the craft that defies craftsmanship: craftsmanship alone will not make a novel great. and Bad writing does nothing, changes nothing, educates no emotions, rewires no inner circuitry – we close its covers with the same metaphysical confidence in the universality of our own interface as we did when we opened it. But great writing – great writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non- sequitur, a dog dances in the street. It rings true and is not encouraging: it is probably easier to learn craftmanship than to learn to express a soul.

• Via someone, Justine Musk on Why writers should read. Musk says she's puzzled at people who say they don't have time to read because they need that time to write. I don't find that statement puzzling at all; just do the math. I don't read nearly as much as I used to (though that's not only because I spend the time writing, and I'm starting to read more again). Having spent 23 years doing a ton of reading and no writing, I figure I can get away with very little reading for a few years. There are a ton of things I'd like to do in my life, but I don't have to do them all at once.

Though when I say I don't read much, I mean fiction, or nonfiction books. I don't count the daily paper or news on the web. Or nonfiction related to my job, like articles about technical writing or journalism. Or books I don't finish (novels that don't hold my interest, nonfiction books of which I only read a chapter or two). Or magazines. Or the short stories I read on the web….

• Mur Lafferty's interview with Nancy Kress is a good one (podcast)

I was saving this for Sunday's roundup of links, but it keeps getting longer and longer. Links are at the end.

For the approximately two people reading this who haven't heard, there's a discussion going on about fast writers and slow writers. Really not much of a debate since everyone pretty much seems to agree that writing speed doesn't affect the quality of a book.

Do fast writers create worse books than slow writers? It depends on the writer. Since I am a slow writer, I would love for the answer to be “yes, so writers should slow down,” but I just don't believe that's true.

That said, I have a feeling it's easier for people who have lots of examples of people who write slower than they do to say it's ok to write slow than it is for unpublished writers like me who look at their examples of “slow” and laugh.

This used to be a painful issue for me. A few years ago when I was hanging out on Forward Motion, the culture there was really tilited towards fast writers. Marathons, wordcount wars, discussion in the forums all made it seem that fast was the way to go. I really felt that no matter what I did, I would never be fast enough. (I left the community for a long time, and it doesn't seem nearly that bad now.)

Eventually I got over it. I'd still like to write faster, but at least now I have reasons. While I'm relieved to hear that has a client who turns in one book every four years, she also repeats a number I've heard before: Yes, the going knowledge among editors and agents is that a professional writer of fiction should attempt to turn in at least one book a year to keep their name on the shelves and build some sort of sales momentum.

That's the second reason I want to get faster. The first is that I want to finish more books in my lifetime.

Luckily, my writing speed is gradually improving. Someday I may even become a slow writer rather than a slothlike writer!

Links:

• Justine Larbalestier seems to have started the discussion.
• secritcrush made a lovely poll about the issue.
• Other recent posts include Whatever and here and a couple places I stuck in my google reader shared items (which are all linked in arcaedia's post, I think).

If writing a novel is like taking a cross-country road trip to visit a friend's new home, then I never had a map, lost the very sketchy directions I'd written down, and have forgotten whether my friend moved to California or Washington.

I meant to be writing up to the government's official decision to rebel (or not) against the empire, but the story veered in another direction, and now far far too much stuff has to happen before then. I've got 70k words now and that's too late to start addressing new issues. Things are moving forward at a rapid clip, and the story'll get there eventually, just not in this book.

(Yes, it's a series. This is book 2. If I'm lucky they all stand alone. If I'm unlucky I get a big pile of scratch paper.)

I do have a great climactic scene in mind that, as an ending, would resolve the questions raised in this book very nicely while leaving the larger questions waiting for later in a slightly-more-defined state. Might be too melodramatic though.

I also have, finally, a lame one-sentence summary for the book: Two friends struggle to come to terms with their estranged families while helping their adopted homeland reunite with its parent empire. (Or not.)

magicnoire linked to a joint blog run by Bob Mayer and Jenny Crusie, which is a year-long workshop that looks really interesting. The first two lessons were on the one-sentence summary concept. I find it useful as a way of focusing on what the story's about, but I keep revising it as I write and the focus changes.

Onward.

Middles are fun.

My WIP has been creaking along very slowly lately. Last night a bit of plot finally went Ping! and fell into place, and everything is moving forward again.

I had wondered if I were slogging because I was trying too hard to have the right events happen rather than just getting to the end. (I rewrite a lot, so in a sense, worrying about everything being correct is pointless. Even if I am sure it is correct now, I will have to rewrite it later anyway.) Or if I had gone off entirely in the wrong direction and was going to have to scrap some unspecified amount of story.

Luckily that isn't the case — there was a bit of plot I'd forgotten about (there are a million things going on at once in this book) and my subconscious was apparently worrying away at it before the rest of me had remembered it was there. So last night the subconscious figured it out and pinged me, and now I've picked up that lost plot thread, answered the question of why Segun is in hiding if no one knows he's guilty, tied some things from early part I into the rest of the plot, and drawn a few bits of part 2 together. Whew. My subconscious deserves some chocolate.

And then it should get back to work, figuring out how the smuggling thing fits into the rest of the book, what Kaite has to do with it, and just what was up with that spell, anyway.

And I get to write the first conversation Wren has with her mother since betraying her. Fun.

• truepenny on whether short stories are necessary (Necessary for what?)
• raleva31 offers consolation and inspiration to frustrated writers
• the results of Tobias Buckell’s survey on how many novels people wrote before selling one (More than one, mostly.)

I don’t like to read short stories very much, so I don’t write them (I think I’ve written three, ever). I wish I did like them, because it would be nice to have a short way to practice writing from the perspectives of different types of characters, or in a different style, or setting or subgenre. On the other hand, I’ve done that with novel fragments.

In today's paper, there was an article about a woman whose first novel was recently published; she's been writing for 28 years. Or 15, depending how she counts. Also, another article on the marketing efforts authors have to make (some of which seems to deal with nonfiction).

Various posts on the hard life of a full-time writer have been floating around (these are courtesy magicnoire, I believe):

Alison Kent has found a day job that seems to be ideal for a writer, although I think the boredom would drive me insane.

Tamara Siler Jones warns against taking a day job that involves writing because it could kill a writer’s desire to keep writing when they get home. That’s a good thing to figure out for yourself – some of us are perfectly happy to write all day. Most writing day jobs I know of (I’ve tried two so far, reporter and technical writer) mostly involve other activities than writing. (There’s a reason it’s called reporting, frex.)

I admit to being perplexed at some of these posts – not the ones above, but the topic does crop up from time to time – because they often seem to carry the message “It’s not easy! It’s not easy! It’s not easy!” and I am surprised that that message needs to be given out so many times and so stridently. I am surprised that so many people think having a full-time career as a fiction writer is easy. Maybe it’s because I didn’t start writing until I was in my mid-20s and immediately fell in with a good online group, so I never had that attitude myself. (I don’t expect to ever write fiction full-time, though I’ll jump at the chance if I get it – less time spent doing other writing = more time doing fiction.)

•Last week there was some discussion over the 101 Reasons to Stop Writing blog.

For those of you who may have missed them, here are jaylake‘s post and arcaedia‘s post.

Also, don’t miss jimvanpelt‘s Signs that you need help quitting writing.

I don’t have any thoughts to add: basically, I don’t see the point in quitting writing, or telling other people to quit writing. If it’s something I enjoy, why would I quit just because I’m unsuccessful?

•Via sartorias, swan_tower on Magic vs Science in fantasy.

If you remove that personal element, making the procedure something anyone can do, then you have science, not magic. Even if it doesn’t obey the laws of science as we know them, it’s imaginary or invented science, not magic.

Very interesting essay; also useful to me in terms of clarifying what I can do to strengthen my distinction between magic and science in Shadow Play (and in the rest of the books in that world, but it’s less confusing there).

Found The Art of Travel, Sir Francis Galton, 1855, a book of advice based on his experiences in southwest Africa. I was looking up different kinds of pack/riding animals (“Now, it is to be noticed that men attach themselves to horses and asses, and in a lesser degree to mules and oxen, but they rarely make friends of camels.”), but was also amused by the figure showing a knot that you must never tie.
(table of contents)

How Megan Lindholm became a writer. And why I need a cat.