#18: hey, it's fall
Even if it doesn't feel like it--with the persistent 80s and 90s hanging on where we are--summer's over. I have only a smattering of travel ahead and a lot of work to do, and I'm settling in to do it. Fall and winter are the burrowing season, the season of much writing. This'll be my first one without having to pry myself out of bed before it's light out. Next year it looks like I'll have three books out (Triple Threat, The Lost Legacy, and a hardcover reissue of an overhauled Blackwood--which may have a new title), so I'm gathering my rosebuds of sleep and work while I may.
(I guess I should start nailing down my schedule for next year. Don't wanna. But I will anyway.)
Sorry to be so sporadic with these of late, and that this one's going to be a little all over the place. I came back from Salt Lake Comic-Con (which was great fun!) and almost immediately got a cold. And I was on deadline to turn in the first draft of Triple Threat, so yeah, that was not great fun. But I managed to get through with bursts of work and two hour naps in the afternoon and turned in a draft on time (somehow). Like most of my drafts, it came in a little short. I love cutting, but don't do much of it these days. (Is there any feeling more satisfying than highlighting a block of text, hitting delete, and seeing the story immediately get better? Well, yes, but I still like that one a lot.) My revisions are almost always adding and tweaking.
My brain immediately switched over into revising/editing mode, which is where it does best. I did a final mark-up of C's extremely awesome new novella, The Border State, the centerpiece of his collection from Small Beer Press next year (it's going to be called Telling the Map: Stories). And I started on my remix of the book known as Blackwood--I'm changing it to dual first person and making some other edits, with the goal of deepening and improving it. To the writers out there, this probably either sounds like a dream or a nightmare. So far, I'm enjoying it--the characters came back to me much faster than I thought they would--and it's kind of dare I say...fun? Hard, but fun. I'm just getting to the first tricky part now.
The important thing for me when revising is the mindset. I want to hold onto the details lightly enough that I don't mind letting go of them if I need to, and view the whole from a step away. There's a clarity to this kind of work that I really love. Being able to see the whole story. Drafting, by comparison, has its charm and pains, but is something that feels like flailing. I've said before that writing a novel is like trying to catch a whirlwind with a butterfly net. And it is, but really, that's only how I feel about drafting.
But I can't skip the butterfly net part, alas. My regrets as an author are for times when I rushed (or attempted to) one part of the process or another. Sometimes the only way to get that view, the distance for revision, is time--especially when you're first starting out. Trying to fix your book as you go is difficult at the best of times, but at the beginning when you're still learning how to revise...I think it often just holds you up. There's no way to no what needs to be done yet. (Except for those rare people who actually do work this way. I envy you.) Deadlines can make the distance thing difficult, but I find having different things at different stages also helps with simulating the effect of time away when actual time away can't be had.
In news that doubtless is super-boring to anyone else, I bought a big external monitor over the weekend to hook my laptop into. IT IS LIFE-CHANGING. I can already feel myself doing better work, and especially when you're dealing with edits and tiny bubbles along the margin, a big screen is magic. I also really like being able to see the page when I'm working. Like I said, BORING but I would hug this freaking huge hunk of technology if I could. I also got a bunch of new music and it has great speakers. I love podcasts, but I haven't been listening to enough stuff lately. New music = almost like a new brain.
News? There's some!
- If you guys aren't familiar with Serial Box, it's pretty cool and I'm going to tell you about it. This Wired piece explains the overall process, which is basically creating serialized stories that are a hybrid of a TV season and a novel in parts written by multiple writers. I was invited to do a guest episode (number 10) for the first season of the new fifth serial from the company, ReMade, which launched last week. The writer who is the "show runner" and who wrote the pilot, Matthew Cody, is interviewed in the piece. I agreed to do an episode initially because I think it's such a cool idea and I love collaborative projects. Playing with these other writers--Matt, E.C. Myers, Kiersten White, Andrea Phillips, and Carrie Harris--in this fascinating future with a truly diverse cast of characters for a Lost-style dystopian seemed too fun to pass up. I'll be joining them more formally and getting to do my first story summit with the writers room this fall. The way it works for you is, you can buy episodes each week or subscribe and get them automagically. They arrive as ebooks and with audio files and are designed to be perfectly bite-size lunchtime or commute reading or listening. You can also read in-browser.
View the kick-ass trailer for the show here.
Then go check out the ReMade pilot here and subscribe! Still need more convincing? Sayeth James Dashner: "Sharply told in a fantastic new format, ReMade should be on your radar."
- Parnassus Books has coordinated a truly excellent charity auction for bookseller Stephanie Appel and the fund to help other booksellers in need with piggybanks decorated by a whole bunch of authors. I contributed a Lois Lane pig! (Also a Clark pig, but he broke in transit. I suspect whoever wins Lois will also get cracked Clark.) Bidding opens this week. Check it out.
Take care, dearies! More regular dispatches to come.