Monthly Archives: February 2010

Today (yes, Saturday) I sent out three more queries for AGRIPPA’S HEART. I won’t say to whom, we wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone who doesn’t pick me up when Ezekiel is bigger than that Potter boy, would we? I’ll be mailing out a fourth Tuesday.

It’s about telling the right story, too. I just axed 30k words from THE MACHIAVEL, which is about half of what I’d written. They were a fairly good 30k words too. I liked them, they told a good story. They just didn’t tell this story. It was too complex. It was a good story for a third or fourth book, moving into an overall story arc. I like story arcs. I’m a Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski fan, after all. But it wasn’t right for this first book, which needs to be more visceral and just plain mean. Marcus is not good people and he’s not a hero. I mean, he’s an assassin who kills people with demons. So, 30k gone and a hundred or so re-written to re-finish the end the chapter where things went off. Time to get moving again.

“Meta” is a cool word. It means self, or with, or beyond or various other things like that. Okay, what it really means is . . . hard to put into words. So, examples. Metaphysics is the physics beyond physics, the physics that makes physics work. Meta-communication is communicating about communication. Its sort of like that.

What’s my point? This is going to be a post about writing. I’m writing about writing. Meta-writing. Writer’s do this a lot. We’re a very self-reflective bunch. I teach cultural anthropology, so myself, perhaps a little more so. Or maybe that’s just the Narcissism talking? Whatever the case may be, this is the seemingly obligatory entry on my writing process. But don’t worry, its not what you’re thinking.

I’ve seen a lot of these posts. If you want to be a writer of the publish author variety it pays to read what those who are where you want to be have said on the subject. I see a lot of the same thing. Writing is very hard, the hardest part of the whole thing. You see a lot of books geared towards that as well. I get it, I really do. Pat Rothfuss was writing his book The Name of the Wind, while he was still in college. It took him forever to finish it, and it was well worth the wait. (Go out and read ;The Name of the Wind right now. I’ll wait. Back? Okay, here we go).

So I get it. But it’s not me. For me writing is not difficult. Its time consuming, especially with the equivalent of two full time teaching loads and a three year old, but it isn’t something I agonize over. Maybe I will once I start making money and it becomes a job and not just that thing I do when I’m not teaching or hitting martial arts students. But right now, not so much. I blame that on having a doctorate. After you’ve written that first 100k words, and had two experts in the field go over it for anything they can chew up and spit out, everything else seems somehow less intimidating. That being said, it does take discipline and you have to do it, if not every day, as frequently as possible. So, here’s how I write (at the moment. Take all this with a grain or three of salt. I’m not actually published, so who’s to say this is actually working for me? A fantasy novelist with delusions? Say it ain’t so!):

First, I do try to write every day. I have time set aside for it. Usually not too long, maybe an hour or two. I do have two day jobs after all. I don’t like to start on blank pages, so whenever I finish a chapter I start the next one. Even if its only a paragraph, even if I’ll re-write the whole bloody thing the next day. It just makes me feel happy inside. I usually start each writing session by re-reading what I wrote last time, usually starting at the beginning of the chapter. So, yeah, I edit. A lot. I’d like to think of myself as a wordsmith. It’s a loverly self-image if nothing else. Then I rewrite anything I don’t like. Which is a lot. Then I move on to the next bit, whatever is new, wherever I left off, etc. Usually there’s a lot more editing involved there, too. Discrepancies in the time-line or descriptions creep in and the like. That’s why I edit a lot. To catch where I’ve fallen asleep at the keyboard. Beyond that, my particular writing style if fairly organic. I’m one of those strange one’s whose characters live their own lives. Hell, Olivia Monroe has her own twitter feed! But that also means I end up doing a lot more rewriting when I want a scene to go somewhere and everyone else wants it to go somewhere else. Occasionally I win those, but usually they’re better at describing what’s going on in their lives than I am.

So, yeah, its kind of like that. Write, rewrite and then write some more and hope everyone is getting along well enough in my head, because there’s only so much room up there.

Work continues. All three of the sample chapters of AGRIPPA’S HEART are now up, as is a little profile of Ezekiel. I’ll probably trickle in other profiles through the week and might even get a bit on the Academy up and running. Eventually I want to do some cool-looking map thing that shows where each of the Circles of the Academy are located. You know, something Renaissance looking, ’cause I roll that way. That’ll be about it, then, until I get THE MACHIAVEL finished.

If you have any friends who like Urban Fantasy or occult fiction, please pimp the site, the FB page and Olivia’s twitter out to them!