1.  Define the project.  I need to know, in advance of starting work for the day, what my goal-point is.  Today is a writing day?  Great, how many words do I need to get done?  Today is an editing day?  Wonderful, how many chapters must I get through?  Today is a research and plot day?   Fantastic, what, exactly, do I need answers for by the end of the day.  I set this up at the very end of the day before, so that I can think about the project during those precious inspirational shower- and walking-moments of the next morning.

2.  Close out of email.  Yeah, I know that the committee could be contacting me, to award me the Nobel Prize for Genre Writing.  But seriously?  It can wait for an hour.  And the chance that the email chime is summoning me to something  less pressing than my writing goal-point is much higher.  (Note:  I don’t sign out of Firefox, because too much of my writing and editing demands a quick check on name brands or historical facts or whatever…)

3.   Set interim goals and rewards.  Yeah, my stomach really thinks that those nectarines are *just* the thing to let me concentrate on the next 2000 words.  But it won’t know for sure until I finish 500, or the next page, or the next chapter, or whatever.  (Note:  Bio breaks are the exception.  There’s nothing less likely to lead to writing success than shifting awkwardly on one’s chair for minutes on end.)

4.  Schedule lunches, errands, and other activities, but be flexible with the schedule.  I know that I’m going to the grocery store today.  And I know that I’m supposed to go around 3:00 this afternoon, after the lunch crowd, before the after-work hordes.  But I also know that if I reach a goal-point earlier than 3:00, I might as well go, shop, then come home and launch my efforts toward the day’s next goal-point.  I’ll lose more time if I interrupt myself because the clock says it’s time to go to the store, then come back and pick up the second goal-point mid-thread.

5.  Accept certain losses.  It’s no secret - there are going to be days when I just can’t make time ends meet.  I’m not going to get to the goal-point.  I just can’t stow away the family- or friendship-drama in email.  I get caught in traffic, coming back from the store.  I know that the fate of human civilization rests on my ability to get that bleeping helicopter past the first 1000 miles.  If I do abandon all attempts at writing for a morning or an afternoon or an entire day, then I try my best to take care of other non-writing work during that lost time, clearing the decks for true progress when I next sit down to write.

Okay - those aren’t perfect tips, but they’re the ones that have worked for me.  Mostly, they’re variations on skills that I developed in the office place, through years of day-job time-juggling.  What’s worked best for you?

Mindy, off to get some editing done, now that her blogging time has been spent…

I came home from Gen Con earlier this week with the realization that I have a bias about gaming fiction (Forgotten Realms, etc.) and other tie-ins.  I posted a long examination in my own blog, but the bottom line was that I believed “original” fiction was somehow better than tie-in work.

There are problems with this belief, not the least of which include the fact that my next “original” series is a bunch of fairy tale retellings.

There’s been a lot of discussion on this issue.  You can read thoughts by gaming writers like Erik Scott de Bie and Steven Schend, follow the post and comments at SF Signal, or lurk at any of the other discussions I’m forgetting.  (See brain-fried, above.)

Thinking some more, I’m finding whole new layers of irony in my own bias.  As a kid, I read nothing but Trek novels, and once wrote to Jean Lorrah asking how to be a Star Trek writer myself.  (I got a form letter.)  I have an outline and 5000 word sample chapter of a Buffy novel I submitted back in 2002 (it was ignored).  I pitched my work to Peter Archer at Wizards of the Coast back in 2002-2003 (they weren’t interested).  So I’ve got to wonder, was I biased back then but so desperate to break in somewhere that I just didn’t care, or did this only come along after I broke in with a “real” publisher?  I don’t think it’s sour grapes, since I’ve been rejected by non tie-in markets far more than I have by the tie-ins.  But it’s strange to think how easily I could have ended up on another publishing path….

While I recognize my bias is irrational and probably wrong, I’m also not ready to accept the idea that ”All publishers and genres are equal and contain good and bad stories both, and if you ignore them you’re only cheating yourself.”  While it’s true that any publisher might put out a gem, the odds vary.  For example, I’m more likely to find a worthwhile read from Tor, where a cadre of professionals have screened and edited the work, than at Publish America, where Atlanta Nights qualifes as publishable.

(That’s not to say gaming publishers are on the same level as PA.  Quite the contrary — I know first-hand that they’ll reject work they don’t feel is good enough, which is not the case with the vanity and scam publishers.)

Bottom line, I’m out of touch with the tie-in markets, and I’m not really qualified to judge one way or another.  I know we have some tie-in writers here at SF Novelists, and I’d love to hear their thoughts and experiences.  I’ve also got three gaming novels waiting for me on my To Be Read stack.  (Thanks, Gen Con!)

I’d insert a witty conclusion here, but I think my pills are wearing off.  So I’ll just ask what y’all think, and I’ll be back later after I’ve grabbed more drugs….

I bring this up because my editor has just sent me an image of the art that will grace the cover of my next release (The Horsemen’s Gambit, book II of Blood of the Southlands).  Before I go on, I’ll take the suspense out of this post.  I love the art.  I think it looks great, and, more to the point, I think it will sell books.  Here, look for yourself:

I always count myself lucky when my jacket art comes in looking good.  It’s not that I don’t trust the artist who does most of my covers.  On the contrary, I think he’s great.  His name is Romas Kukalis, and he’s done the art for (now) eight of my ten novels.  It’s also not that I lack faith in Tor’s art department.  Generally speaking, they’ve done great by me over the years.  But the fact is that art and literature are both highly subjective.  When the two are merged, as they are in the assignment of a specific piece of art to a specific work of fiction, the results can be . . . well, let’s just say they can be interesting.

I’m hard-pressed to think of any author, myself included, who hasn’t had issues with at least one of his or her covers.  It probably seems counterintuitive, but I believe that writing is actually a highly visual art.  Authors try to write for all the senses — we describe smells and sounds, tastes and physical sensations.  But humans tend to be a visually oriented species, and much of the descriptive writing one encounters in most books is geared toward visual stimuli.  I know that I try very hard to visualize my characters, my settings, and the action I describe in my books.  And so it follows that by the time I finish a book, I have some pretty specific ideas of what my jacket ought to look like.

My publisher often asks me to suggest scenes that I’d like to see portrayed on the cover, and in fact the cover for The Horsemen’s Gambit that you see above is drawn from the scene I suggested.  Yet, ironically, it looks nothing at all like what I’d envisioned.  And, deepening that irony, I love it anyway.

Does jacket art matter?  If by “matter” we mean, “can jacket art impact sales?” the answer is:   absolutely.  Good art can certainly help a book, and a cover that isn’t distinctive or eye-catching can hurt one.  I had terrific art on the cover of my first book, and I think it helped me quite a bit.  I was unknown, and that good art, a few nice quotes, and some generous reviews were all I had going for me.  On the other hand, I have friends who are certain that some of their books have been hurt by poor covers.  That said, there are several factors other than the jacket art – reviews, distribution, an author’s name recognition, “buzz”, to name just a few – that are far more determinative of a book’s ultimate fate. 

Does that mean that authors who get upset about jacket art that they don’t like are overreacting?  I don’t think so.  It’s not just the sales that we worry about, though we do worry about them.  (After all, this is our livelihood we’re talking about.) It’s also the fact that every book we write is the product of a huge amount of labor and time.  I know that I invest enormous emotional energy in every novel.  I struggle with the books, at times I rail at them.  But ultimately I care deeply about each one.  And I want to see it presented to the reading public as well as possible.  I want it to look wonderful on the shelf.  I want people to see it and say, “Wow!  That looks cool!”  Maybe they’ll buy it; maybe they won’t.  But at least it will be noticed.  Vanity?  Yeah, sure.  I’m a writer.  Of course I’m vain.  I write stories and I assume that you should want to read them.  How vain is that?!  Can you blame me for wanting them to look good?

This is an introductory course, not a survey, so I don’t feel compelled to give a sense of texts over time. Instead I can focus where I want and when I want. The main thing I want to accomplish is to introduce students to the main tropes of fantasy and sf, give them a reasonably broad taste, and also hopefully coax out a desire to read more.

Right now, the four novels I’m planning to use are Nancy Kress’ new book Dogs, which is only slightly SF and more a thriller. But it brings up interesting themes and I think will generate fruitful discussion. Then I want to use Elizabeth Bear’s Dust, which is a strange and wonderful blending of hard sf and fantasy tropes. It will be difficult for them I think, but worthwhile and also fruitful for discussion. Then I’m deciding between Emma Bull’s War For the Oaks and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Ysabel. But that may depend on what I use for my epic fantasy, which right now may be Kay’s Tigana. I love that book and it’s stand alone and has a lot of meaty themes. But it’s long. And this is a short class. Plus I intend for students to read some essays and some short fiction, plus watch a few films.

If I don’t use Tigana, I’m not quite sure what I will use. I need a stand alone epic fantasy, and while there are a number of them I like, I want to use one that fits into the themes of the other books and will also generate interesting discussion. I won’t use my own fiction–I find it a little creepy to ask students to buy my books and then make them talk about them in front of me. I can take the criticism, but my bet is students will feel a little odd about that. I know I would.

So as you can see, planning a three and a half week class is a little bit tricky. Students are immersed and this is their only class, so this is the only homework they have to do in a day. But they also work and have lives and they may be very slow readers. I have to balance texts in terms of themes and what students can learn from them, but also in terms of length and whether students will be able to read them.

But let me ask you. If you had to pick one epic fantasy for a new freshman in college to read to introduce them to the world of epic fantasy, what would be your top choice?

Which is by way of an lead-in to this revelation: I think I’ve pinpointed at least one reason why there’s such a spectrum of reactions to my characters.

You can imagine the range without me citing specific examples: some readers love my characters for their believability or depth, while others dismiss them as lifeless cardboard. (I would cite, but I don’t want to put anybody on the spot.) A recent iteration of the latter made some synapse fire in a back corner of my brain, connecting that to something I thought of during a brief exchange with Yoon Ha Lee: that, as I am a fairly reserved person, my characters’ idea of demonstrative floods of emotion may not look like much to the extroverts out there.

Most of you have never met me in person, so you have no idea how I behave. The short form is, while I’m friendly and all, especially at cons and other public events, I don’t tend to show much of what I’m really thinking or feeling. (A fact which caused some difficulty for my husband when we first started dating. What’s funnier was when he met my father, from whom I inherited this tendency. But that’s a story for another day.) So I, not really being the sort to wave flags when I’m excited or angry or whatever, don’t tend to wave them for my characters, either. Or rather, I do — by my standards of measurement. And maybe if you’re a similar sort of person, then the things I intend to be flags register as such, and voila, you see depth of emotion. But people who are more used to wearing their hearts on their sleeves will only see a faint tick on the psychological seismograph, and think the character is made out of wood.

I’m not sure if that explanation is right, and even if it is, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Characterization, like every other aspect of the craft, is something I intend to work on from now until they pry my keyboard out of my cold, dead fingers, because I know there are things I can improve. (Like, for example, learning to write some honest-to-god extroverts — you freakish alien things, you. Seriously, how do you live like that?) So I’m not going to throw my hands up in the air and say “well, that’s how I roll, and if you don’t like it then there’s not much I can do.” Because there are things I can do, and will.

But this feels like a useful realization. Improving things goes a lot better once you understand what it is you’re doing now.

This might not matter for a lot of fiction, but in fantasy, especially epic and heroic fantasy, it’s a legitimate question.  Epic and heroic fantasy is often concerned with the Manichaean fight between GOOD and EVIL, which means that the villains (and the heroes) are frequently terribly one-sided.  Is there a point at which an over-the-top villain ceases being a villain and becomes a monster instead?  (We’ll deal with impossibly perfect heroes some other time.)

What is the difference between a villain and a monster, anyway?  To my thinking, a villain is someone who chooses to be evil.  (Or, if that’s not morally relativistic enough for you, who chooses to oppose the aims and goals of the hero for the sake of narrative tension and structure in theme and plot.)  There has to be a conscious decision on the villain’s part to do things that are to his benefit, and others’ detriment.  It has to be a rational choice.

Monsters, on the other hand, are just doing what comes naturally.  They’re forces of nature.  They do what they have to do, what is essential to their being.  They have no choice in the matter, no more than a hurricane has choice.  Monsters just are.

To use a simple illustration, I’d say that, in The Lord of The Rings, Saruman is a villain, while Shelob is a monster.  Sauron, I assume is also a villain, though he might be both.  Which begs the question:  How do you define a psychopath?

Anyone have any good examples out there of characters who straddle the line?  And which would you rather the hero face when you’re reading a book? 

I’m talking to you, man. I want you back. Not the Sean Stewart who’s now making ground-breaking reality games like i love bees and writing ground-breaking interactive YA novels. I want the novelist. The guy who wrote some of my favorite books: The Resurrection Man, The Night Watch, Mockingbird, Galveston.  The writer that I’ve tried to steal as much from as I could when I was writing my first novel. That guy.

Are you listening, Sean? I don’t care if you’re happy. I don’t care if you’re artistically fulfilled and making gobs of money at that games company you started. I am a jealous reader. I want your new novels. I don’t need a new one every year. Every 18 months is fine. But it’s been four years since Perfect Circle and that’s too damn long.

Now, I’m not criticizing the reality games. They sound cool. I’m sure there are thousands of people — tens of thousands? — who love to have their cell phone ring and have it be a fictional CIA operative, or who love to get emails from artificial intelligences, or who can’t wait to hunt down websites and follow clues and solve puzzles. That’s pretty bitchin’.

But Sean, they’re not Night Watch.

People who haven’t read your books — may I someday find the grace to forgive their ignorance  — might not know what the big deal is. Let me explain.

The three books that are most important to me — and I believe made Stewart’s name — are Resurrection Man, The Night Watch, and Galveston. They aren’t explicitly a trilogy, but they’re thematically linked, and they form a satisfying arc. In those novels, magic has come into the world. Stewart’s most effective metaphor is of a flood: The magic flows in — uncalled for, uncontrollable — then changes the world, and by the third book recedes. His characters are ordinary people learning to swim.

Resurrection Man is essentially a mainstream novel about a young man and his family coming to terms with the fact that magic is real. Denying that fact, trying to pretend as if everything is normal, is an act of cowardice. The Night Watch is something even stranger — a near-future science fiction novel,  stocked with all the paraphernalia of near-future SF, including highly-trained commandos and flying cars,  but at a time in which the flood of magic is at high tide. Stewart hits a second gear here, and its full of amazing set pieces, such as the forest in love with a woman, and a Chinatown overrun by magic. It’s still my favorite of his books. And Galveston is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel in which magic has destroyed the world. The flood has retreated, and with it any lingering romance about how nice it would be to live in a world of living gods and magical powers.

I’ll stop now, and I haven’t even gotten to the early stuff, or the two great later novels, Mockingbird and Perfect Circle. I haven’t even explained how beautiful the prose is in all those books.

So Sean, I’m waiting. And if you can’t do it for me, do it for my son. He’s twelve now, the golden age of science fiction, and he’s a voracious reader. In a few years he’s going to be ready for your stuff, and after I hand him the first book he’s going to tear through your complete oeuvre in a matter of days. Then he’s going to look at me like a fricking orphan in Oliver! and ask for more. And it’s not like I can reach into my shelf and hand him a bound copy of i love bees.

So please, man. Have a heart.

And Patricia Anthony, I’m talking to you, too.

1) Making Light the group blog run by the Nielsen Haydens of Tor editorial fame. It is not primarily a writing or publishing blog but it has dispatched tons of valuable advice on those topics.

2) Miss Snark is the no-longer-updating blog of an anonymous literary agent who for several years dispensed enormous quantities of useful advice on how to deal with agents and other publishing matters. There’s nothing new being added at this point but her archives are a treasure trove.

3) Wyrdsmiths is the group blog of my writers group which includes four professional writers and several more who are very likely to make their first large press sales in the next 1-3 years. I’ll admit to a certain bias for the Wyrdsmiths blog because I help write it, but I think there’s a lot of good advice on writing there.

So what do these blogs have in common, and how does this relate to indexing? All three of these blogs are sites for which I have constructed writer-oriented indices. They’re organized topically in categories like: Action, Character, Dialogue, Plot Structure and Outlines, Voice, World. Or: Agent Information- Where to Find, Agents: What to Ask/Know Before You Sign, Being a Good Client/Client Agent Relationships.

I’m going to put the links in below and hope that some of you might find the indices of some value. There are also links to the indices from the the Wyrdsmiths front page on the top of the right side. If you do find this useful, you might want to check back there once in a while to see what else has been added to the list.

Wyrdsmiths Index
Miss Snark Index
Making Light Writers Index
Special Bonus Making Light General Index

I won’t be able to respond to posts here for a couple of days as I’m going to be off net when this goes up, but I will definitely check back in and make comments and answer questions around the 17th or 18th.

Launchpad, debriefing

My usual day (the fifth) was so swamped by all of this that I simply missed it. But it isn’t as though I haven’t been BLOGGING. Go read all the stuff I was writing throughout all of last week…

You know, I would love to write every day, I really would. But real life just keeps getting in the way!
Help. What can I do?

I thought that was a question worth pursuing in its own post (and by the way, I’m writing this early and I’ll be at SpoCon when this posts, so it will take a few days for me to respond).

The easy answer to the question is Nike’s: Just do it. Yeah. And it’s that easy, too, isn’t it? Well, not so much. More like simple–yes; easy–no. First of all, life does interfere. I mean personally, I work a full time job and I also have two kids under the age 8. I have to run errands and clean and drive children to games and lessons, pick them up off buses, feed them, help with homework and blah blah blah blah. Additionally, I like to read and watch TV. And oh, breathe on occasion. So I get it. And that’s with a job that does have flexibility, which many people don’t have.

When I first got out of college and was working on my really bad trunk novel, I would take my lunch hour, drive to Taco Bell and get a soda, and then sit in the parking lot and write longhand in notebooks. I did finish that ugly novel in less than a year and I learned a lot about cramming writing into a small space of time.

I write during naps (kid naps–not mine). I write on weekends and I’ve been known to get up at 5 to write before work (but I’m nocturnal and this is difficult). I will sometimes write after everyone else goes to bed. I have learned to write in 10 minutes or 15. I have learned that I do not need large blocks of time to get some forward progress, though yes, I prefer it. I do not get easily distracted usually (I don’t need silence, but if I did, I’d buy the kind of headphones that you use at the shooting range–actually, I have a pair of those, so I’d just use them).

But I think the things that get in the way of writing and finding time are very individual and as varied as sand on a beach. Everybody’s life is different, as is their writing styles, and how to finesse some writing time can be very tricky. So I invite any writer here–pro or otherwise–to offer their experiences and advice for carving a little time out to write and yet still have a life.