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seanan_mcquire asked a question in post about first/second/third readers.

I'm always fascinated by the way different people approach the editing process. I know authors who don't let anyone see anything until the book is finished for the first time. ... What are your feelings on editing? How much is too much -- and how mean is too mean?

I am one of a few writers I know who did not come to craft through workshopping. I didn't come up through fanfic critiques, which are often the same thing; I wrote -- badly -- and I put things in drawers (literally, although these were file drawers) for a very long time. I had no experience with the paradigm of improvement through critique until I ventured into workshop-style classes.
( yes, this is another quasi-process post! )

I think about process the way some people think about media fandom. It's one of my minor obsessions. I find writing process -- or perhaps creativity processes -- fascinating because we're all so different; I find them fascinating because even if I can't approach or think about my work the way other writers think about theirs, some glimmer of commonality can make me recast what I do see in my own work.

So what I've been thinking about recently, thanks to

desperance, is tone, and the way tone affects (my) writing speed. Tone also affects everything else: Character, viewpoint, pacing. But, today, speed.
( Writing speed and tone, some thoughts below the cut )

In honour of the day, I decided that I would write a little post about the two things I do that take up most of my time. I realized as I started that, in fact, they're similar in many ways. So:

Being a mother is like being a writer. Most of mothering resembles the middle-of-the-book that you are currently writing.

1. You start out with an idea, and a fully formed sense of character and (admittedly) a sense of plot and how things are going to go. It is both exciting and slightly intimidating, but the weight is on the excitement. You know all the ways in which you will improve on all the previous output you've perused. You are going to do better than those other people because you are going to work bloody hard.
( But then your character immediately rejects your fabulous and sensible ideas, and more, behind the cut )

While reading

alicebentley's LJ, I started (and even finished) a comment. But I've been thinking about it all day, and actually, decided I wanted to -- and I know this will come as a shock to everyone -- say more.

alicebentley talks about posting on LJ, and in particular, about the difficulties she has.

Most commonly, I realize the thing I planned to write about is so trivial and unremarkable that it doesn't warrant bringing up. (1)

Or the topic is about something that upset me - and writing about it is also upsetting. And I don't like to be upset, so I stop. (2)

Recently there have been several cases where I really want to comment on someone else's post, but I don't feel like I'm close enough to them to make the sort of personal remarks their subject calls for. (3)

(I added the numbers beside the comments; the comments are otherwise quoted.)
( Musing on LJ, and these three points, beneath the cut )

I just received email from someone asking, among other things, how to write a good pitch.

As long-time readers of this LJ are no doubt well aware, this is an area of expertise in which I am sadly lacking. However, Agent Kristin (and no, I don't actually know who she is) has posted a 5 part series about how to build a pitch -- based in part on back cover blurbs and in part on a workshop she's given a number of times.

It's all good. I think it's probably all good for those of us who are already agented and published, but who, like me, are not really very good at the short, sharp pitch. You can find the articles here.

John Ottinger at Grasping for the Wind has just let me know that an interview he conducted has just gone live. It's here.

I have eaten too much cake because, yes, it's that time of year again. I explained to my younger son that the correct number of candles would ruin the cake because by the time they were all lit the icing would be covered with wax.

And now, because people are finally in bed, I am going to try to write a few words...

So, we are trying to make room for things in the West household. This involves getting rid of rather a lot of other things. I was downstairs making dinner and my husband was upstairs, inspecting the bookshelves (there are bookshelves in all of the rooms of the house except the kitchen).

He just came downstairs, and asked if I needed the Japanese language Kenshin (I don't, although I told him to hold on to the French versions until the kids are done with French in school). Then he asked about one or two others (all not needed) and last:

"What about the other Japanese ones?"

"Which ones?"

"The ones with the short, obnoxious girl."

Cory Doctorow and his wife, Alice, came by with their baby-of-many-names and I got to hold the baby! :D :D :D. (And tell his wife the anecdote about body piercings.) I had to finish line-edits/copy-edits and get them in the mail first thing this morning so that they will be in NY on Monday, which is when they're due, so I missed his book launch at the Merril Collection. But! Baby! Squee!

The baby is three months old and she is absolutely adorable and not in the slightest as hyper as Cory. While it can be argued that it's a fate he deserves, Alice seems perfectly reasonable and calm, and doesn't :D.

Okay. Words now.

ETA: The whole store's collective brain and general competence goes south when small children cross the threshold in strollers or the arms of their parents. It's not just me. Honest.

Everyone on LJ has probably seen the Richard Morgan post. It's here.

I have minor doubts about the over-all collegiality of any large group of writers, because, well, writers. But I really like his overall point, which is that we don't need to piss in the pool that we're swimming in in an attempt to hit the Other Guys. Because, well, we're all swimming in the same water, and it's icky.

I occasionally talk about the business of writing, which is not entirely like the business of publishing, and one of his points struck me enough that I wanted to talk a bit about it, because there is one quibble I have with his article.

( Choosing what to write. Partly opinion, partly about me. Maybe too much about me. Sorry... )

( The Cover of Cast in Fury under the cut )
This is the cover flat that is used in sales kits, rather than the cover that will be bound; it's also called a cover proof. The front is what I've posted, and the back -- which I should have had scanned, and will if anyone wants to see it -- has the marketing tips and information that are in theory more relevant to selling the book to bookstores.

One of the points listed in my Luna publishing history is that Cast in Secret had a 6 week Sales Velocity of 57%. I still haven't remembered to ask a rep what "Sales Velocity" means, but I am assuming that a Six Week Sales Velocity of 57% means that the book in question (the previous volume in the series) sold 57% of the total number to date at that time in the first six on-sale weeks.

ETA: Because I never upload images, I didn't realize that this one would be smaller than the actual .jpeg; if you want to see a larger version (with slightly more legible text, it's here.

Over on the Whatever, John Scalzi is being very much, well, John Scalzi. While I was reading this entry, I said to my husband, hey! I want to do this!

And, before something like sanity, or at least dignity, could take hold, Mr. Scalzi closed his post with: A challenge to other authors with blogs, LiveJournals and etc: Post your one-star (or otherwise negative) Amazon reviews, if you have them, and you probably do. Oh, go on. Own your one-star reviews, man. And then, you know. Get past them. If you're lucky, some of them might actually be fun to read.

My husband Thomas said: People will feel they should praise your work to compensate for the negativity of those reviews. Which is sort of beside the point of the exercise, and if you do this, you will make me feel very, very, very guilty.

For the record: I don't really care about the one star reviews. If they have a point, I generally wince and take a mental note not to mess up so badly the next time. If they have no point, I think they're kind of funny. The West bad reviews are less inherently funny because I often can't tell if they have a point or not (but when I am having this dilemma, I remember the Starlog review for Broken Crown, in which the reviewer very perceptively noted that you will either love the book for the level of detail and cultural tapestry, or you will loathe it for the same reason. Which reminded me that in some cases, what people hate is the book I did try to write, as opposed to the obvious failure of the attempt to write the book I tried to write. If that makes sense.)

( Amazon 1 Star reviews :D )

I missed this last year, because I was mostly off-line.

And I thought about posting a short story here, but actually, I liked what

papersky did, so I dug out the first chapter of Broken Crown. Sort of. When I started Broken Crown, there were three things, three story strands, I had to reach for: Diora's, Valedan's... and Kiriel's. I wrote three chapters from the viewpoint of a young Kiriel in the Shining City, and then realized that there was no way that the book would reach Diora, and I put those chapters aside, with some vague plan of using them as the start of a later book. Which didn't happen. Or hasn't, yet.

ETA: Having just perused Chapter Two, I realize that these were written before I wrote the prologue(s) for Broken Crown.

( Kiriel, Chapter One, behind the cut )

ETA: Wretch. Because I forgot it.

So. I go to sleep at 5:00 in the morning because damn it all I am going to finish my writing goals for the day, and the day doesn't end until I've slept, and wake up to

kate_nepveu's completely correct and yet entirely confusing post.

Why is it entirely confusing? Because the content seems so entirely obvious that saying it at all causes cognitive dissonance. And the fact that she did state it clearly meant she felt that she had to make that point. You know, the one that seems obvious to me.

( Social pressure, and some thoughts about it )

edited to clarify the teenage years.

I went out for dinner with

ksumnersmith last night and during the course of conversation, most of which involved a lot of structure neep (because I really, really, really enjoy writing process discussions, to the point of complete over-focus which would bore almost any other writer out of their mind), she mentioned that there is nothing of my written work available on-line. This has come up, for her, because when she talks about my work with other people, she has nothing to point them at.

This would be because I am a dinosaur.

She strongly suggested that I put up at least a few .pdfs of my shorter work someplace where readers could actually get to it, to get some idea of what my writing is like. But my short fiction isn't really like my novel-length fiction. I think. I'm possibly not the best judge of this.

Because MeishaMerlin closed its doors, the collection that would have been published by them is not going to be published by them. I haven't actually tried to sell the collection anywhere else; I sort of didn't try to sell the collection to MM, either (Steve asked).

So.

I'm asking for suggestions of possible short story downloads, because it seems reasonable to put a few of them up on the not-very-much-used website. It's also been suggested elsewhere that I put up a chapter or two of previous novels.

I'm not entirely a luddite. But. Well. MySpace and Facebook? They make me feel bemused and almost entirely incompetent. But I know there are a bunch of people in my flist that probably don't feel either of these, and I thought I would, you know, badger you for helpful advice.

1.* How does it work? I recently created a MySpace account and then ... kind of clicked in circles because I couldn't really figure out how to do anything, or in fact even figure out what I was supposed to do. My oldest son and my friends mock me mercilessly in Facebook, and because I love them, I want to avoid having to kill them, so I haven't yet created an account there.

2. Have you found it helpful?

ETA: * as in rudimentary step-by-step instructions as if you were speaking to your 5 year old dog. Because I in theory understand that you are suppose to build a friends-list there, but cannot figure out how to do this.

jimhines has the second in his bookseller interviews up here. The bookseller he interviewed this time is me :D.

I am happy -- honestly happy -- to expand on anything, or even to, you know, get it right the second time if I wasn't clear the first time.

But I am pinch-hitting at the store at the moment, so the actual answers will happen when after I leave it :).

ETA: In the interview I say "write one book a year, or less," and what I meant to say was: Write a minimum of one book a year, or more than one book a year, when you are first establishing yourself, because, etc.

There has been some discussion on LJ recently about the speed at which books are written, or the speed at which one expects books to be written, and the question of professionalism and quality with regards to writing speed.

So I thought I'd have a little rant about that. Because it's the internet, and I can :D.
( A small rant from a reader )

Please hop over to

jimhines' LJ, to read his interview with Jessica 'Strider', who works at the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto.

They have a terrific SF/F section, and I frequently send people there when we're out of stock of something, and, well, it's all good stuff.

I remember, long before I started writing a novel, I had the certain sense that writers knew what they were doing and that every word was brilliant (if I loved their work); every word was golden. Because the words were important to me and I was just the reader, I assumed that the depth of import must be orders of magnitude more significant for the writers.

I also assumed they knew everything about their world and characters, and remembered every detail they had ever written, and somehow planned everything in advance, to achieve the things that moved me so much. I was a reader to whom books were a religious experience, an epiphany; how could it be less?
( Yes, it is embarrassing to remember that now, why do you ask? )

Process, again.

It occurs to me that, in all this talk of process, I've spoken about inspiration and about slogging, but in entirely general ways. All of us -- every writer who is toiling in the trenches -- can identify what either inspiration or slogging feels like in our own particular process universe.
( In the interests of specificity, then )

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Michelle Sagara

Recent Entries

Sending drafts to readers/editors

Tone and writing speed

Why being a Mother is like being a writer

Radio Silence

A five part blog about pitches

Link to an interview with me

A not entirely helpful description which will probably only amuse manga readers.

Baby Squee!

Business choices in writing

Just in case you didn't see it

The John Scalzi one-star amazon review challenge

Second Annual International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day

Oh for the love of god

A question of content

Questions about MySpace and Facebook

Jim Hines & Bookstore Interviews & questions

A little bit about writing speed and reading

Link to a bookseller interview

Translating Writer-Speak for non-writers, in brief

Process, more detailed