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It's day twenty and I've seen some talk on NaNoNoWriMo blogs of muses showing up or, more often, not. I'm sure for some of you muses are a very useful metaphor for your creative process. However, sitting on your arse waiting for them to show up? Frequently not a good approach to actual writing.
"Oh noes! My muse is not here! I cannot write! Instead I will play Left 4 Dead 2 until muse shows up."
This method will leave you with kickarse zombie killing skills but will not be much chop when it comes to, you know, writing.
Now, I'm not a very spiritual or mystical person, so feel free to ignore me. But I can tell you that even my most ...
Posted by Justine at 13:25, November 20th, 2009 under Writing process |
I keep being asked the same basic question about Liar so I thought that I would answer it here before pushing it across to the
Liar FAQ. My answer is not a spoiler as it touches on stuff that is revealed in the first few pages.
The question is:
Q: What do I know is true that Micah tells us?
A: It's not straight forward for me to answer this question. What I thought I knew about Micah changed as I wrote the book. But I can tell you that all Micah's fundamentals are absolutely true. Her race, her age, her gender, her neighbourhood---she is from the East Village of New York City, her parents. I also know that she had ...
Posted by Justine at 20:12, November 19th, 2009 under Liar |
Yesterday's post led to
Kilks suggesting that I base a NaNo tip on it, which I am now doing.
One of the biggest flaws in beginner writing is a reliance on stereotypes and cliches which produces characters who never come to life because they lack verisimilitude. The female protag faints and is afraid of spiders. The male one is brave and strong. Or vice versa. And that's all there is to them. They're thinner than paper.
What do I mean by a stereotype? Let's look at one that frequently shows up in US teen movies and books: the dumb jock.
Now am I saying that you can't write about a dumb jock? No, absolutely not. I'm saying that if you're writing a ...
Posted by Justine at 15:42, November 18th, 2009 under Writing process |
Recently, the brilliant Sarah Rees Brennan talked about her
love of romance and reviewed a few in her inimitable style. ((Well, I could not imitate it.)) She mentioned in passing her least favourite kind of heroine:
I truly hate the Blank Page Heroine. She is in a lot of books---I don't mean to pick on romance, because sadly I have seen her in every genre, including my own---and sometimes she seems to be there as a match for the hero who won't bother him with things like 'hobbies' and 'opinions.' Sometimes she is carefully featureless (still missing those pesky hobbies and opinions) so that, apparently, the reader can identify with her and slot their own personalities onto a blank page. ...
Posted by Justine at 20:19, November 17th, 2009 under Feminism, Reading |
I know I wrote a whole tip telling you to ease up on yourself and
expect badness in your first draft. I encouraged you to just pound it out and leave the editing till later.
Sadly, that doesn't work for every writer. Nor does it work for every book. Although I bashed out a crappy zero draft for the majority of my books, I wrote Liar editing as I went. I don't think it would have worked to have written it any other way.
I wrote Liar scene by scene. Working on each one until it was polished and gleaming and then, and only then, moving on to the next one. The scenes in Liar are pretty short so it ...
Posted by Justine at 13:51, November 16th, 2009 under Liar, Writing process |
Because I just had a long discussion with some friends about what constitutes being crassly commercial I've decided now is the time to let you know where you can buy signed books of mine. What? Some people write and ask me that, you know. Also it's Sunday no one will notice me being crassly commercial.
I have scribbled on copies of my books in the following places in the US of A:
Austin
Book People
603 N. Lamar Blvd.
Austin, TX 78703
Chicago Area
B&N Skokie
55 Old Orchard Center
Skokie, IL
Anderson’s Bookshop
5112 Main St
Downers Grove, IL
Lake Forest Book Store
680 N. Western Ave.
Lake Forest, IL
Memphis
Davis-Kidd Booksellers
387 Perkins Ext
Memphis, TN
New York ...
Posted by Justine at 19:19, November 15th, 2009 under Vainglory |
Yes, it's time for some more vaguely contradictory advice. So first a word on that. Here's why this tip is not contradictory. No one technique or strategy works for every writer. They don't even work for one writer all the time. There are times when the only way I can get any writing done is to cut off from all external stimuli, most especially the internet. Sometimes I can't write if there's music on. But other times I need music and I need the internet.
Sometimes my procrastination feeds my writing.
That's right, sometimes procrastination is your friend.
Yes, I know I just told you to
turn the internet off. Well, now I'm telling you to turn it back on again. Or ...
Posted by Justine at 13:30, November 14th, 2009 under Writing process |
This year I've been getting more and more people asking about ebook editions of my novels. This is my general response to that query.
First of all: you're asking the wrong person. My publishers are in charge of the electronic rights to my novels. If you're curious
John Scalzi has more to say on this question. If you're desperate for ebooks of my stuff bug my publishers, not me. That will be much more effective.
But here's what I know: Penguin has made electronic editions of Magic Lessons and Magic's Child available. But for some reason not the first book in that trilogy, Magic or Madness. Apparently they're working on it. That's all I know.
Bloomsbury, who publish How To Ditch ...
Posted by Justine at 21:02, November 13th, 2009 under How To Ditch Your Fairy, Liar, Magic or Madness trilogy, Publishing business, Reading, Young Adult literature |
It's day 12 and on the NaNoWriMo blogs there's much talk of word counts missed, scenes not written, and of generally falling behind. Now that is to be expected. As previously mentioned I do not think you should be freaking out about
word counts. NaNoWriMo is chance to stretch and grow. However, I can't help noticing that those same blog bemoaning lack of progress are also full of talk of excellent blogs with great NaNoWriMo advice and sundry other things discovered on these wonderous intramanets. Could it be that the one is getting in the way of the other?
Perhaps now is the time to rip the DSL from the wall, switch your cable off, hide your modem. Maybe you ...
Posted by Justine at 12:23, November 12th, 2009 under Writing process |
The event at
Books of Wonder with
Libba Bray,
Kristin Cashore,
Suzanne Collins, me and
Scott last night was astonishing. Several people said they thought there were around 200 people there. I could not possibly guess from where I was sitting, but it did indeed appear to be many.
Here's my bad fuzzy photo of the many:
It was pretty overwhelming to be on the bill with such popular writers, especially Suzanne Collins. For those who don't know, her two most recent novels, Hunger Games and Catching Fire are currently, and have been for some time, numbers one and two on The New York Times bestsellers list, selling bajillions of copies a week. The Books ...
Posted by Justine at 17:03, November 11th, 2009 under Book tour, New York City/USA, Writing life, Writing process, Young Adult literature |
I hope you all saw
Scott's tip yesterday, the first of a series on meta-documents. Though now that I use
Scrivener, I no longer use meta-documents. Or, rather, I do but they're all incorporated into the one Scrivener document so it doesn't feel like lots of different documents.
But I digress: on to today's tip which has nothing to do with meta-documents and also kind of contradicts my previous tip about using
square brackets. It emerges from a conversation I had with the marvellous
Sarah Rees Brennan. It turns out that she does not skip the boring or tricky bits but instead bribes herself into writing them. Her reward is to write the fun scene on the other side of the tricky bit. So if she doesn't write the scene she's been avoiding then she's not allowed to write the scene she really wants to write.
There are many reasons for doing this but the most frequently cited one is that if you skip all the hard bits---as I advised you to do in the square bracket post---you may never finish the book. As
Zeborah puts it:
It means I write all the easy parts of the book first, meaning I have to write all the hard parts later in a single chunk, meaning I probably won’t finish the book. Whereas if I force myself to write entirely in order, I can use a future easy-and-fun scene as a reward for getting through a hard scene.
Another reason not to skip tricky scenes is that sometimes you don't know whether a scene is going to be hard until you've written it. I can't tell you how many times a scene I was dreading has turned out to be easy and vice versa. A slightly spoilery Liar example after the cut:
Posted by Justine at 13:42, November 10th, 2009 under Writing process |
From various sources, I see that a few people are a little freaked when the tips Scott and me have been sharing don't work for you. Please to relax. No writing tip works for everyone. And even if it does work for you now, it might not always. For instance, I no longer use
square brackets though once I found them extremely useful. My last novel had no
zero draft. Some novels I write without paying attention to
daily word counts, some novels I do. I've not used a
time line for most of my books. I've never
dialogue spined an entire novel.
I recently learned that in certain fandoms OTP stands for One True Pairing. ...
Posted by Justine at 21:57, November 9th, 2009 under Viewing, Writing process |
By now I'm sure you're all racing along in the land of NaNoWriMo: tap tap tappety tap tap. Your little fingers tripping across your keyboard. What a blessed sound that is!
But, wait, you've stopped? Why?
Is it because the bit you have to write next is a tad too complicated (how does a nuclear reactor work?) and/or requires research (when a car explodes do the windows go flying out? how far? what does it sound like exactly?) or is too squishy (you got to the love scene, didn't you?) or you're not in the mood (writing journeys is boring).
Rather than come to a grinding halt why not square bracket it?
By which I mean do this:
Janice Lardano got out of ...
Posted by Justine at 16:46, November 8th, 2009 under Writing process |
Certain things ((Like the people who responded to
Rihanna's moving interview about domestic violence by talking about her forehead being too big. WTF? 1) Her forehead is gorgeous 2) Way to attempt to change the subject. Talking about domestic violence makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it? Poor baby.)) lately ((I'm not going to link to any of the horrific events that have taken place over the last few days. Too upsetting.)) have been making me just a tiny bit tetchy and upset so I thought I would work out my feelings by watching Michelle Rodriguez as Diana Guzman in
Girlfight.
I love this movie. Saw it first when it came out in 2000. Loved it even more on this ...
Posted by Justine at 20:22, November 7th, 2009 under State of the World, Viewing |
One of the most frequent complaints I'm hearing from those down the NaNoWriMo word mines is that they keep getting stuck.
As it happens I have already written a post on
how to get unstuck. It is rather lengthy, however, so here's a quick and dirty version of what you should do when you get stuck:
Dance. That's right, get up from the computer, turn whatever music you like up loud, and shake it! Dance! Dance! Dance! Do it till you're sweating. Then dance some more.
Run around the block. For some of us dancing is just not our thing. But we can run. Or shoots some hoops. Or some other physical activity away from the computer.
Read newspapers. This ...
Posted by Justine at 16:27, November 6th, 2009 under Writing process |
Today (yesterday) I had my last school events of the Liar tour at Joliet West High School and Glenbard South High School in the outer suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. The students at both schools were amazing and asked many smart, engaged, funny questions. It was a total pleasure to meet you all. Thank you.
In other news
Cristina Hernadez posted her midterm project for her painting class on her blog and I was so impressed I asked if I could share it with you here. Remember, Cristina? She's the one who photoshopped a very
disturbing version of Maureen Johnson's Suite Scarlett.
Here's her midterm painting:
Wow, huh? Cristina also had to write an essay about the painting and I ...
Posted by Justine at 3:10, November 5th, 2009 under Book tour, Ideas, Liar, Love is Hell, Praising, Writing process |
I know that NaNoWriMo is set up with a specific word count in mind. And word counts are, indeed, a useful way to keep track of you progress. However, do not get obsessed with them. The world will not end if you don't meet your daily word count. Nor will it end if you don't have 50,000 words at the end of November.
I'm seeing too many people stressing out about word counts and beating up on themselves when they fall short of them. Cut yourself some slack!
Here's why:
NaNoWriMo is meant to be a fun, companionable way to try your hand at novel writing. That means that over the month you're going to start to learn what kind of writer you ...
Posted by Justine at 1:49, November 4th, 2009 under Writing process |
Don't forget to look out for
Scott's NaNo tip today.
And here's where I'll be in Chicago today and tomorrow:
Tues, 3 November, 7:00PM
B&N Skokie
55 Old Orchard Center
Skokie, IL
Wednesday, 4 November, 7:00PM
Anderson’s Bookshop
5112 Main St
Downers Grove, IL
Same deal: if all who turn up have read Liar then I will tell you what really happens at the end.
Hope to see some of you there!
Posted by Justine at 1:06, November 3rd, 2009 under Book tour, Liar |
This is the most important tip of all: It's only a first draft, it doesn't have to be perfect.
You know what that means? You can relax. A first draft can be bad. In fact, it will be bad. Don't worry about it. Plow on. Don't even think of it as a first draft. That's too much pressure, not to mention insulting to first drafts, think of it as your zero draft.
That's what I do.
I get a lot of people asking for tips for dealing with writer's block. I don't get writer's block. But only because I've learned not to be bothered by writing utter, utter rubbish. ((Also I don't get paid if I don't write.)) I expect my zero draft ...
Posted by Justine at 12:24, November 2nd, 2009 under Writing process |
Today's
NaNoWriMo tip comes from Scott.
Go check it out.
Last night we watched Bong Joon-ho's
The Host again, which is probably my favourite giant monster movie ever. If you haven't seen it do so immediately! It more than stood up to a second viewing. We then watched the Making of The Host documentary, which was way better than those things normally are. For starters, they barely talked to the actors at all---always a very good sign. Pretty much every aspect of film making was covered: from the initial idea to the storyboards to sound design. Q: How did they create the monster's voice? A: Painstakingly.
A lot of time was spent on the logistics of filming on ...
Posted by Justine at 14:18, November 1st, 2009 under Viewing, Writing life |
