Magical Words

My husband sent me a link to a review of my book this morning.  It was a favorable review, but I felt like crawling under the table and sobbing.

You see, there have been three reviews so far (well, three that I’ve seen, anyway.)  All of them have been lovely, complimentary and packed with praise.  PW even called my book “rollicking”.  How cool is that?

All of the reviews have pointed out that they would like to have had more background on the way the magic works.  That’s fair - I left it vague on purpose, since the main character doesn’t know herself why it works.  I’ll be sharing more as future books are released, until the reader and Kestrel all understand together.  It’s not so much a complaint as a desire, and something I should keep in mind as I write future books.  At least they care enough to want to know.

So why is it that when I look at these reviews, all of them giving me praise and telling people my book is worth reading, I can only focus on the one slightly negative bit?  And if I’m already worrying this much, what happens when the inevitable unfavorable review finally shows up?   Talk to me, my more experienced compadres.  What do you do to get over the emotional roller coaster of reviews?

Disclaimer: I’m suffering one of those headaches today, I’ve misplaced my only pair of glasses, and my son is practicing his bassoon.   Scary….

Tags: Misty Massey by Misty Massey
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Expanding a bit on Catie’s post from yesterday…..

We all have our distractions:  the metrics Catie described, our favorite computer games or web sites, those household chores and long-neglected repairs that never seem to matter until we’re supposed to be writing.  I could write a whole post just about this (and probably will, at some point).

But as someone who is fairly new to blogging, and who has jumped into it with both feet and then some, I have to wonder if my web work is just another excuse to ignore the work I ought to be doing, or if, on the other hand, it’s actually helping me write more efficiently.  I currently have two personal blogs (http://DavidBCoe.livejournal.com and http://DavidBCoe.wordpress.com — please forgive the shameless self-promotion); I have an amazon.com blog; I blog monthly on sfnovelists.com; and now I’m doing Magical Words every week.  I also have a couple of forums running where I answer questions from readers.  That’s a lot of blogging and web writing.  Yes, there’s some overlap in the content across venues, although not much, aside from dual posts on my personal sites.  The bottom line is, I’m spending a great deal of time writing stuff that never finds its way into books or stories.

In part I do this to “increase my web presense,” to make more people aware of the fact that I exist, that I write, that there are books out there with my name on them that are available for purchase.  But I’m still trying to figure out if blogging does more for me than that.  And I think it does.

For one thing, I don’t play nearly as much solitaire, minesweeper, and pinball as I used to.  When I have spare time, or need a break from writing whatever book or story I happen to be working on, I go to one of my blogs or forums and work there.  I also find myself thinking more about creative process and work issues than I used to.  I need material for all these blogs, and I’m discovering that I’ve got more than I ever would have thought.  In this respect, the Q. and A. stuff is particularly helpful.  Answering questions from other writers forces me to think more about my approach to the profession, to individual projects, and even to the business side of what I do.  This level of professional introspection is new for me, and I think its valuable.

And finally, I think the blogging is helping to make me more efficient, even though — or perhaps because – it’s eating into my writing time.  I’m generally more productive in the afternoon.  I have trouble getting started in the mornings, but once I’m going the pages start to pile up.  Now though, I begin my day by blogging and before I ever even open up a book or story file on my computer, I’ve already got the juices flowing.  By the time I get to my creative work, I’m in efficiency mode.

I guess the point of all this, is that writing begets writing.  Beginning writers ask me sometimes how they can make themselves more productive, and the answer is always the same:  Put your butt in the chair and write.  But maybe the answer is both more and less complicated than that.  Obviously, if you have a book you want to write, you need to work on it regularly – daily, if possible.  But focusing on a journal or an unrelated story or, yes, a blog, can get you in the habit of writing.  It can force you to think about your craft and your creative process.  Or it can simply build up those writing muscles so that when you return to the book, you’ll be ready to churn out the pages.

Today’s music:  Vivaldi (The Four Seasons — Nigel Kennedy, violin and director)

Tags: David B. Coe by DavidBCoe
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First day of Magical Blogging! How cool.

I deleted solitaire off my work computer a few months ago, and I’ve pretty much gotten over missing it. But, of course, I’ve found another way to goof around, which is fiddling with metrics.

I mean, I did this anyway. Everybody does (she said, looking around shiftily). “Oooh,” you say, “if I wrote 7800 words a day I’d be done with this book in a month!” (a comment followed by BAHAHAHAHAH), or, “I must turn this in by March 28th. That’s 1756 words a day to reach the anticipated length.”

This is usually followed by spending a lot of time writing a few words, checking the wordcount, subtracting that from 1756 and seeing how much more I have to do, so on and so forth. You get the idea.

The flip side of metrics is what my mother calls putting handles on the cups. We have a friend, a potter, who really hates putting handles on coffee cups. It’s tedious. It’s not hard, but it’s tedious. So she tells herself, “Okay, look, all you have to do today is go out to the studio and put five handles on five cups and you can be done for the day.”

Except when she’s out there, well, there are actually fifteen mugs that need handles, and her hands are covered in clay anyway, so she might as well throw a few more of those plates…

This is an *incredibly* successful way to get words on the page. It’s more metrics. It’s great. You say, “Ok, all you have to do is write a hundred stupid words. Anybody can write a hundred words. Go on, go write a hundred words. It’ll just take a couple minutes.”

Then you check the wordcount and you’ve written 117 words. Well, heck, that’s *practically* 150. Might as well edge up to 150. That’ll be satisfying.

Except, oh, gee, that kind of flowed, and wow, look, you’re at 298 words! How’d that happen? Jeez, you might as well go for FIVE HUNDRED at that rate!

Keep that up for a while, and by George, you’re at 1756 words, and the “I’ve got to be done by,” date is still safe. In fact, since 1756 is such a weird number, odds are you’ve probably scooted past it and landed somewhere around 1900 words.

In which case, 2000 is just an eyelash away…

The best part is that this works every single time, even though I know exactly what I’m doing. I manage to fool myself every time.

Guess I better get back to it. Just a hundred words, you know…’cause it’s all about the metrics.

Tags: C E Murphy by cemurphy
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 I was looking for the old manuscript of one of my out of print mysteries the other day—okay, I know, this is a fantasy blog.  Bear with me— and I came upon my first fantasy (got there!) attempt.  I say attempt because it failed so miserably.  I couldn’t get the mix right.  Mix, you say?  What the hey?  Is this recipes? No.  It’s worlds and magic.  In the general sense, that’s what makes it fantasy, but it’s the mix that makes it addictive.  Kingdoms, princes and princesses, a pirate or two, a rogue, a mage or sorcerer, attack by demons and dark forces, maybe some romance tossed in, a witch or seven, or in my case, a seraph or two, give it a good stir in the imagination.  That mix, if it works, is what give us that addictive book that we can’t put down.  Oh – and it also gives us subgenres. I once heard an agent ask an unpublished fantasy writer, “What’s your subgenre, here?”  Manuscript pages turning.  “Romantic epic?  Erotic standalone?”  The writer’s answer was, “Uh….”  Which is the way many of us feel when we are starting a new series or new manuscript and are in the phase of world building.  IE: trying to figure out what we are writing.  Yeah, even after multiple books, sometimes we have that problem, too.  Which is why my first attempt at fantasy remained an unfinished effort. My favorite type of fantasy is urban fantasy.  Sometimes dark urban fantasy.  And I’m not averse to dark urban erotic fantasy. What’s that?  It’s a current day, alternate reality universe, where vampires and werewolves and/or other mythical (wink-wink) creatures live among us humans.  When you mix into the story some of the current geopolitical reality, a few gritty subtexts, like American cops and American mythos and lore, you get urban fantasy.  When you make it violent and dangerous, it becomes dark urban reality.  When you add in hot sex, you get the erotic part.  Duh. In the failed attempt, I didn’t know what I was writing.  Frankly, I still don’t.  But the medium-dark urban fantasy I’m writing now is…OMG!  I love it!  I’ll be posting things about it here off and on. Someday, perhaps fortified with a good cigar and a small tot of brandy, I’ll read my failed attempt.  And try to laugh.  For now, I’ll just keep trying to write two books a year and make the mix work.  And come to think of it, maybe I won’t ruin the cigar and the brandy with reading failed material.  Maybe it should stay in the big trunk in the parlor (Yeah. I got a parlor)…hidden away from the world.

Faith Hunter

Tags: Faith Hunter by faithhunter
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When Faith, Misty, C. E., and I first started talking about what we wanted this site to be, we agreed that it would be fun to discuss issues we encounter as writers of speculative fiction.  Each of us specializes in different subgenres of fantasy, and each of us has dabbled in other genres as well, be they science fiction, mystery, romance, or mainstream.  And in writing these various types of books, we encounter creative issues that are both universal to writers of fiction and quite specific to the type of books we’re writing.  The intersection of those concerns, the ways in which each writer deals with his or her creative challenges, can be fun to explore.  It can also be incredibly illuminating for seasoned professionals and beginners alike.  So that’s we hope to do here, when we’re not posting less heady stuff, or rants, or whatever else moves us on a given day.  We hope you enjoy it.  Please feel free to come back again, and bring a friend or two.

Today, I happen to be thinking about some advice that I often offer to beginning fantasy writers who are making their first attempts at worldbuilding and developing background for their novels.  I write epic fantasy, and I usually work in novel length.  But one of the things I usually suggest to people who are developing new worlds is that they take episodes from the history of their lands and write short stories about them.  Why?  Several reasons.  First, this is a great way to make yourself imagine small details about your world that will come in handy later, when you’re writing your book (or books).  Second, it can help to establish an authorial voice for your writing that will carry over to the novels.  I find that each new series I write has a sound, a style of prose, that is unique to that project.  Writing short stories about your world before you begin the novel itself can help you find that sound.  And third, it gives you something else to sell and publish.  Having a short story appear in advance of a novel release will generate more interest in the series and give you another publication to talk about when dealing with agents and editors; never a bad thing.

The thing is, while this is great advice, I don’t always follow it as often as I should.  [Hangs head in shame.]  I know, I know.  What kind of idiot comes up with a fine suggestion like this and then ignores it himself?  Answer:  My kind of idiot.  As it happens, though, I’m currently in the process of developing a new world for the series I’ll write after I’ve finished my Blood of the Southlands trilogy.  And yes, I’ve started working on a short story that has nothing to do with the books themselves, but that manages to bring in some history of my world and also some background on my lead character.  I’m learning a lot about my world, I’m finding that voice I mentioned before, I’m getting to put to use some of the research I did for the books, and best of all, I’m having a great time writing it.

So, my questions to my fellow writers:  Are there bits of advice you give to beginning writers that you sometimes have trouble following yourself?  Are there certain things you like to do when worldbuilding that help you develop histories, maps, religions, magic systems, and other components of a good fantasy setting?  When you write short fiction do the stories tend to be connected to larger projects, or do they tend to stand alone?

Tags: David B. Coe by DavidBCoe
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Last night we watched a History Channel special called “Life After People”. It posed the question of what would happen on Earth if people were suddenly gone. And except for the short discussion of house pets and their awful fates (I just hate it when dogs are in trouble!) it was interesting. It’ll be replayed several times this month, so if you’re intrigued, check the History Channel schedule.

Anyway, somewhere between “100 years after people” and “500 years after people”, I found my mind wandering. What if everyone was gone? What if I happened onto an empty Earth, and for some reason was forced to remain? What would I do first?

According to the show, the grids supplied with energy by the Hoover Dam would have power longer than pretty much anywhere else - up to two years or more. Assuming I was smart enough to know this (and this is my thought experiment, so I can!), I’d head out west to Las Vegas, and set myself up in the penthouse of the Bellagio. Why that hotel? Because the chocolate lives there, too.

Anyway, once I’d done that, I’d make a few trips around town to stock up on DVDs I’d never seen, and books I’d never read, and kick back. I’m sure eventually I’d have to turn my thoughts toward actual survival. With all the humans having mysteriously vanished, at least I don’t have to worry about zombies. Whew! Once the power finally died, I’d move somewhere tropical with a beach, and learn to like eating coconut.

So what would you do?

Tags: Misty Massey by Misty Massey
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