People of Mpls/St Paul. Tomorrow (Saturday June 29th) I will be at Uncle Hugo’s from 1:00-2:00 and Barnes and Noble Har Mar from 3:00-4:30 signing books. The following weekend I will be at CONvergence where I have a reading at 7pm on Friday and signing on Saturday at 5pm.
Author: Kelly McCullough
Kelly McCullough writes fantasy, science fiction, and books for kids of varying ages. He lives in Wisconsin with his physics professor wife and a small herd of cats. His novels include Numismancer, Winter of Discontent, the WebMage and Fallen Blade series — Penguin/ACE, School for Sidekicks, Magic, Madness, and Mischief, and Spirits, Spells, and Snark — Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has Patreon and Ko-fi pages for those who are interested in supporting his work more directly.
He also dabbles in science fiction as science education with The Chronicles of the Wandering Star — part of an NSF-funded science curriculum — and the science comic Hanny & the Mystery of the Voorwerp, which he co-authored and co-edited — funding provided by NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope. Kelly on Twitter, Facebook, G+, ello
Friday Cat Blogging—Book Launch Week Edition
Oh, goody, the manic phase of book launch. Wake me when it’s over.
Is something going on?
Wait what?
Dude, you think we care? Dat’s the funniest thing ever.
You think yours is bad? You should see what mine does when a book comes out.
I Finished the Book, Now What Do I Do?
Back in 2007 I was teaching a fantasy novels class at the Loft and the discussion led me to put this together for my students. I thought it might be of some interest here.
Revision: What do you change? How? Why? These are big questions and tough to answer.
This is also where you’re going to start getting really sick of reading and rereading your novel. I’m going to list a bunch of techniques for identifying problem spots. This isn’t a sequence and I’m not going to give them to you in any particular order. These are just methods you can use.
1 Read the book aloud. You want to try to get through this in as small a number of reading sessions as possible . Whenever you hit something that bugs you, highlight it. Don’t stop, don’t note exactly what it is that bothers you. Just highlight it. If you get a brilliant idea for the story right it down on a separate sheet of paper, but in as brief a note as possible. At the end of the session write down any ideas you’ve had for changes.
2.Read the book silently and follow the procedure in one.
3. Read the book as you would read a book from the store. As close to straight through as possible without making any notes. When you’re done, right down what did and didn’t work for you.
4. Build a chart or spreadsheet. Read the book, making notes on the spreadsheet of every scene and chapter. What does the scene do? What should it do? Plot. Character. World. Mood. Theme. Why did you write the scene? What can you do to it to make it serve more than one purpose.
5. Create a duplicate document of your novel. Open it. Read through and smooth out the prose, but don’t do any major reworking. When you hit something that needs work, make a note of what and why, but don’t actually do any of that.
6. Build a revision plan, or list of things that need changing. You will probably need to use some of the techniques above to create the plan. Make it into a set of bullet points. Think about how each of those changes will echo forward and back through the book in terms of consequences and needed foreshadowing. Add those to the plan. Plunge in.
7. Open the book up and just change everything you don’t like. This one can be dangerous and should be approached with caution.
8. Get another set of eyes, preferably several.* A couple of writers and a reader or two who doesn’t write is ideal. Listen to what they have to say about the book. Decide where they’re right, where the things they note point out stuff you should have put in that you didn’t. Where the suggestions diverge from what you want the book to be.
Revision resources:
Wyrdsmiths Index—Category: Revision and Multiple Drafts.
Miss Snark Index—Category: Revisions
Making Light revision oriented comment thread.
David Louis Edelman on line edits:
Thoughts, comments, suggestions?
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*Important note: always remember it’s your book and you ultimately are responsible for it. Don’t make changes that don’t work for you. Be certain it’s your sense of the story that’s telling you they don’t work and not your ego.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 27 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Friday Cat Blogging
A Friday Cat Blogging Credo:
Lurk with intent
Sleep with reckless abandon
Stop and smell the rosezzzzzzzzzzzzz
View the world with worry and paranoia
And don’t forget to mock the photographer
Thinking Days
One of the hardest things for me as a writer was learning to accept thinking days. I was raised in North Dakota and Minnesota both of which have a strong ethic of “never complain” and “if it’s fun it’s not work” and “if you’re not accomplishing something at this very moment” you’re lazy. Garrison Keilor’s takes on the subject are deadly funny if you were raised as I was.
A writer has a lot of jobs that look and feel like work, and a couple that don’t. The writing itself is easy to see as work. If I’m writing I’m working. Likewise sending stuff out to my agent or publishers, dealing with same either via phone or email, revising, editing, reading galleys, etc. There is obvious work happening in all of those situations. Research is a little bit less clear. If I’m looking up a detail of Greek mythology that’s relevant to the story right now, that’s certainly work. If I’m reading mythology looking for stuff for the next book, that’s still pretty obvious, but it’s treading dangerously close to fun.
Reading widely because that’s how I find new ideas—can I really call that work? I can and I do, but my inner Minnesotan does more than a little hmphing at the idea. Self-promotion? Ooh, that’s a hard one, mostly because I don’t actually believe that most of it works (see not accomplishing things above). However, since it’s an expected part of the industry, I can squeak some out without guilt.
All of that is nothing, nothing at all compared to thinking days. Tuesday was a thinking day. I did a lot of stuff around the house. I wandered around the internet and wrote on blogs. Every twenty minutes or so I’d stop back at my working plot document and put another bullet point into the “stuff what has to happen” section. I got maybe 300 words down. If this was a writing day a 300 word count would be a catastrophe. I can do 300 words standing on my head in a bucket. A normal day when I’m fully into a project is 2,000+ and I’ve gone as high as 6,000. However 300 is pretty good for a thinking day. Sometimes no words actually make it into a document on thinking days.
I just wander around and think and don’t actually write at all. And despite the very grim look my inner Minnesotan is giving me about this, it’s still working. In fact, it’s critical. The reason I had thinking day Tuesday was that I hadn’t done a scene-by-scene outline for this book yet—in part because there were several significant decisions that needed to be made and I still wasn’t sure which way I’d go on them. Making the wrong decision and writing it into the book can be quite costly to fix (in terms of time). A day spent thinking about story and structure now can save me ten days later on. It’s still frustrating.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 17 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Woke up with a bit of book lodged in my head
Update 2013: Not sure if this will interest anyone other than me since it’s mostly a process post on a book I haven’t gotten the chance to write you, but I’m bringing it over so I have a copy on the site.
Storms last night, big ones. They set off the sirens and sent Laura and I to the basement at 4:00 a.m., always a pleasure, especially since it means herding cats. I was just starting to nod off after getting back to bed when I realized I had a chunk of book lodged in my brain.
Since I can’t leave story alone, I started nibbling around the edges of this one and pretty soon realized it was both quite large and, technically, on my schedule. It’s the beginning of the Halifax book that I’ve mentioned once or twice before, which isn’t supposed to show up for at least a year– possibly more since I’ve got 3 books firmly scheduled in front of it and, depending on the vagueries of contracts and such, as many 7. Update: 9 and counting.
Silly book, I don’t have the time to write you right now. Unfortunately, it’s not listening and I quite like what I’ve got so far – 1-2k words and big bit of plot, character, and setting. Maybe I can cheat and carve out a bit of extra writing time in the mornings before I’m really awake. I’d have to see if I could hold two novels in my head while writing them in parallel for a bit, but that might make a fun challenge.
Oh, and for those of you who’ve been paying attention to my process, this one’s a real oddity. I don’t have strong ideas about the contours of the world at the moment. I’m not even sure about the edges of the magic system beyond the way they affect the protagonist personal situation. I’ll have to see how that goes. Since I’ve caught this one forming, I’ll try to add bits of the how of it as I go.
A bit more on the Halifax book
I’ve known ever since I wandered around the Citadel that I was going to write something set in Halifax with the old fortress as a major component. What I hadn’t planned was doing anything about for the next two years or so. Books take time, and I’m currently all booked up. Also, I find that I need to let ideas marinate in the back of my head for a while before I get something really useful. This has taken as long as ten years and rarely takes less than one. So, not only was I not planning on working or even thinking about this, I honestly didn’t think my back brain would spit anything out at least until next summer. I was wrong. I even know why I was wrong. Two reasons:
First, The Halifax environment was so rich that in its marination phase bits of it dribbled down onto other brain structures that had already been bubbling away for years.
Second, I just finished Zelazney’s A Night in the Lonesome October. This is one of those books that I’ve had kicking around the house on and off for more than a decade. I’ve even gotten rid of it on at least two occasions, but it keeps coming back–I think I’ve been given three copies over the years and bought two. I’ve picked it up, read four pages, and put it down quite a number of times. Three nights ago it had come out on top of the bookdrift on my bedside table once again, and I decided to try it one last time before getting rid of yet another copy. This time it was fabulous, fast, fun, dark, and most importantly, educational. I learned something new from this read something about both plot and character. Really, about a specific kind of plot and a specific type of character: The Big Magical Event, and the World Weary Cynic. They’re F&SF staples and I’ve used variations of them over the years, but I suddenly had new insights into how they work at a deep structural level.
Cool! Something that I would find a use for in years to come–after it had marinated a bit. Except, my subconscious took the shiny new toy and dropped it into the same bucket where the Halifax stuff was soaking and there was something of catalyst reaction that reached through all the other layers Halifax had already touched on and then somehow cross-connected itself with some things I’d been thinking about the WebMage series and what to do after book five (assuming that ACE is interested in five) that would extend the brand I’ve been developing with them while still giving me something new and exciting. Et voila, the Halifax book leaped from my forehead nearly fully formed.
I don’t know if all of that makes any sense to anyone else, but that’s what happened. I was mugged by a book that hasn’t even been written yet.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog in two part on August 28 and August 29 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
New Writer Cycle-Strange Monkey
So this is going to be another post in which I talk about not being like all the other monkeys, which is more a reflection on my own personal oddities than on anyone else’s experience
It all started because Jay Lake was talking about being a newbie in the F&SF writing world in response to Paul Jessup’s post on the same phenomena* and Lyda Morehouse linked to both in her benchmarks post here on the Wyrdsmiths blog. I find my experiences to have been quite different really from the start–not better, just different–and I’m not sure why that is, but I’m guessing it has to do with two things, coming out of theater and the way I’ve always set up my personal goals.
Goals first: Mine has never been to be the best thing ever or to win the respect and adulation of the writing world (mind you I’d consider achieving either of those things as a hell of a perk). Nor have I ever set out to crack this or that market as anything but an interim goal. No, what I’ve wanted to do from day one is tell stories and make a career of telling stories. Please note that I won’t be able to tell if I’ve truly achieved that goal until I’m quite old and looking back, and that any individual sale or award or whatever will only count as a signpost at best. And in response to Lyda’s benchmarks post mentioned above, I’ve always counted my benchmarks by stories produced and sold, with the markets that take them being almost irrelevant as long as they meet professional criteria.
Background: Because I grew up in theater I learned in my bones that nothing would come easy, that I would always have to work in a continuous and ongoing way to improve my craft, and that it would be a lifetime endeavor. I also learned in my bones that other people would be able to see things in my work that I couldn’t–both positive and negative and that if I could learn from something that one of them pointed out I would get better.
That meant that I never had that I’m the best thing since sliced bread, why don’t they see my genius thing going on, or, at least, only for spans of a few minutes at a time. An early confirmation of this came when my wife was reading my first novel and would point out an awkward sentence. I could see that she was right, but couldn’t then see how to fix it. That was occasionally frustrating, but since I’d already experienced similar things in theater, I knew it was a stage, and that the way to get past it was to improve my craft.
I do admit to the occasional brief bout of look at what all the cool kids are doing and if only I hung out with them I’d have an easier time, but that was balanced early on by the enormous satisfaction of getting acceptances and encouragement from editors who didn’t have any reason to say nice things to me but the quality of my stories.
I guess that’s all a long winded way of saying: Focus on writing the stories and getting better. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. There is no secret password or magic clubhouse, and wasting energy looking for them will only take away from the important stuff. Also, there are 1,001 and one ways to write and every one them correct.
P.S. Jay’s exactly right to talk about a member of the f&Sf professional writing community in terms of large high school—in part because it’s about the right size, and ape hierarchies are pretty consistent in how they self-organize. At the same time, I went to an open school, and was simultaneously, a gamer, a theater geek, a student government nerd, and one of the popular kids, so I firmly believe that breaking the mold is possible.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 24 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
*2013 Update: The original version of Paul’s post has vaporized, so the current link goes to the wayback machine.
Milestones and Playing for an Audience
I bumped into myself the other day–the child me that is.
On Tuesday I went to a concert in the park with my wife and her parents. It was a typical small town affair held at our bandshell with a bunch of enthusiastic amateur musicians sharing their joy and talents. The audience paid intermittent attention to the music while they ate pie and ice cream sold by one of the local community groups. The reason I mention it here is the little girl.
A tiny blonde, maybe 5 years old, she was standing on the grass between audience and band and very obviously pretending that the former were there to watch her and the latter to provide her with background music while she performed a silent play. At the end of the first number when the audience clapped she made a big show of bowing to everyone there. I remember being that little girl–okay, so I was a boy, but the intent was the same.
Sometime when I was very young, call it 5, I started telling stories to anyone who would listen, mostly myself in those days. I don’t remember a time where I didn’t love the stories or having an audience. Somewhere along the line I learned that there were people who got to do it for a career and I never looked back. That led me into theater at the ripe old age of 11 where I stayed until I got my first computer and wrote a novel at 22—right after finishing a BA in theater.
I’ll be turning 40 on Sunday and yet in so many ways I’m still that kid playing make believe at the concert. The business side of the business can be a royal pain, but the storytelling and playing for an audience are still a blast 35 years on. So, to that little girl–go for it, kid! You never know where it might lead. Someday someone might even pay you to entertain yourself. Oh, and the audience too.
2013 Update: With my 46th birthday coming up in a bit over a month and having just started writing my 20th novel. This. Still, and always.
(Published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 20th 2007, and before that at SFnovelists. Original comments may be found at both sites. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project and getting all of these in one place.)
My First Break as a Writer
This is the story of my first professional sale.
I’m proof that you don’t need connections or anything but a good story, at least at the short fiction level. I made my 1st sale by sending out short stories to markets that looked good in the market reports and collecting heaps of rejection letters. I didn’t know anybody at the short markets and I didn’t have any special in. I collected more than 90 rejection letters before I had my 1st sale—WebMage to Weird Tales. It came within a few months of my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th sales. Respectively, The Wyrm OreBoreUS to TOTU, Soul of the Samurai to a pro rates magazine that paid me promptly and went under before they published the story, and The Sharp End to the Writers of the Future contest.
On the novels front, my path was a bit stranger. I’d had something like 20 short stories bought or published when I joined the Wyrdsmiths and had recently shifted back to writing novels–my first love. Not long after that I was at MiniCon where I met Jim Frenkel—then agent to fellow Wyrdsmiths Lyda, Naomi, and Harry. He said, “You’re a Wyrdsmith? Hi, I’m your agent, what have you got for me to look at?”
A few weeks later I sent him WebMage. He liked it and I signed up with his agency. He sent the book to one editor before he quit the agenting business. At that point he asked Jack Byrne of Sternig-Byrne to look at a few of his clients for possibly representation. I was one of those. I liked Jack’s style and he loved my work and I’ve been with him ever since.
It did take three more years—in which time I wrote three more novels—before WebMage sold to Ace, but that was mostly because WebMage and two of the other three in that group were tied up for a good bit of time in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at a multi-book hard/soft deal with a publisher who will remain nameless.
2013 update: The editor who tried to put that deal together is currently trying to put together another three book deal with the unpublished books from that original deal. Which goes to show how very strange this industry can be. Will keep my fingers crossed.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog August 8 2007 , and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
