Category: Writing

Tastes Right

I do all sorts of things as a writer and critiquer on the basis of how they taste to me, whether the words feel right in my mouth as I’m mentally speaking them—I always internally voice as I’m writing, perhaps because I came to writing from theater.

The best example of this comes from a critique I did for fellow Wyrdsmith Sean Michael Murphy. There was a sentence where I wanted one word changed—I don’t remember which one now, but that doesn’t really matter. It was one of a large number of suggestions. Sean was pretty happy with most of the suggestions, ignored some, and wanted to understand what I was thinking with others. This was one of those last and the conversation went something like this:

Sean: Why did you suggest this change? I think you’re right, but I’m not sure why.
Kelly: It just tasted better.
Sean: But why did it taste better?
Kelly: It just did.
Sean:…(waiting patiently)
Kelly: (unable to let the silence stay silent, begins mentally unpacking the process) Let me think about it…

It turned out that when pressed I had six separate reasons for wanting this one word changed. For me, the change reinforced something in the sentence, reinforced something in the paragraph, reinforced one of the story’s themes, amped up a plot point, showed a contrast between character voice pre and post traumatic event, and removed a slightly clumsy related word repetition.

I’ve found that’s usually the case when my brain says something tastes better rather than opting for a specific reason—my sub-conscious has a bunch of reasons to change something and is too lazy to articulate them all without being pressed. My new structural sense is definitely atasting thing because it’s hugely complex. I trust it in part because I know that the taste of something is very important for my process, but I still want to unpack it because I enjoy unpacking.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog March 19 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

(Spidey) Sense of Structure

Writing can get easier. I won’t say that it does, because every writer has a different journey, but it can.

The good news, I’ve recently developed a strong sense of novel structure. The bad news, it’s still almost entirely intuitive rather than conscious. The worse news, it took 10 books. The better news, it seems to be shifting into a conscious process as I’m writing number 11.

I’ve had a pretty good handle on how to plot since my fourth book—the first three are decently-plotted, but it was a messy organic process. But I didn’t fully develop this structural sense until writing number 10, The Black School, + 30 or more outlines. I got inklings of it with number 8, Chalice, but it mostly blinked out for 9, Cybermancy. And now I’m occasionally managing to consciously invoke it for 11, MythOS.

This is a pretty typical development process for me in terms of learning how to do something in writing:

1. Consciously set out to learn how to do X
2. Beat my head against the wall on X
3. Lose track of the fact that I’m trying to learn X
4. Get compliments about how well I’m handling X
5. Notice that X makes sense to me intuitively—it tastes right*
6. Think about how I’m doing X
7. Bafflement
8. Forget that I’m thinking about how I’m doing X
9. Answer someone’s question about X and realize I now get it
2013 Updated to add:
10. Forget that I ever didn’t know how to do X
11. Forget how to explain X
12. Grrrrr

*Tastes right. I’ll talk about this in some depth with my next post.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog March 15 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project. In and effort to elicit comment at the old site, I wrote the bit that follows at the end. No response. This is one of the many reasons I have not enabled comments here at kellymccullough.com)

Thoughts? Arguments? Digressions? Large purple groundhogs?

Writing Order /= Publishing Order

Update up front: I originally wrote this in 2007 when I had just finished my 10th novel and started my 11th. My 1st, which was also my 4th came out last year, and my 9th was going be my 2nd.

You with me so far? My 11th may well be my 3rd, but I’m hoping that my 12th won’t be my 4th, because there are several earlier books that I’d like to see sell and go to print before that and I might try to slip a 12th in before I write the 4th that’s currently sold.

It’s moderately complex now, and likely to get crazy over the next couple years, and that’s ignoring that some of the books were written concurrently. When you add in proposals and partials (which could be characterized as quantum manuscripts) it gets really loopy. So I thought I’d put it all down here as a memory aid and to illustrate an earlier discussion about why you can’t tell anything about writing speed from publishing speed.

Currently complete and projected novels in writing order (updated through 2013):

01. 1990 Uriel
02. 1991 The Swine Prince
03. 1992/1993 The Assassin Mage
04. 1998/1999 WebMage
05. 2001 Winter of Discontent
06. 2002 Numismancer
07. 2003 The Urbana
08. 2005 Chalice book 1
09. 2006 Cybermancy
10. 2006 The Black School
11. 2007 CodeSpell
12. 2008 MythOS
13. 2008 The Eye of Horus
14. 2009 SpellCrash
15. 2010 Broken Blade
16 2011 Bared Blade
17. 2011 Crossed Blades
18. 2012 Blade Reforged
19. 2013 School For Sidekicks: The Totally Secret Origin of Foxman Jr.
20. 2013 Drawn Blades
21. 2014 Darkened Blade
22. 2014 ?????

Currently complete or projected novels in tentative publishing order:
01. 2006 WebMage
02. 2007 Cybermancy
03. 2008 CodeSpell
04. 2009 MythOS
05. 2010 SpellCrash
06. 2011 Broken Blade
07. 2012 Bared Blade
08 2012 Crossed Blades
09. 2013 Blade Reforged
10. 2014 School For Sidekicks: The Totally Secret Origin of Foxman Jr.
11. 2014 Drawn Blades
12. 2015 Darkened Blade

But any of the following could end up in print between #2 and #4 (2013 update: That was the 2007 order and projection—now Uriel is out of the lineup, though some of the others might get slotted in somewhere after Blade Reforged but before Darkened Blade)

Uriel
Numismancer
Winter of Discontent
The Urbana
Chalice
The Black School (goes to my agent in March)

Plus there are proposals which could get written at any time
Chalice books 2-4
The Eye of Horus (proposal—now complete)
The Shadow in the Blood (proposal)
2013 update adding a few more books in pontentia:
The Hand of Light (Black School III)
Aqua Vitae (series proposal)
Mirror Duel (series proposal)
Nightmare Academy
The Uncrowned Prince (series proposal)

And partials which may or may not ever get written (still true)
Uprising
Outside In
Ave Caesar (mystery)

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog March 12 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Jade Dragon: A Tragedy in Doggerel

In the year of the Falling Yeti in the century of Eviscerated Yak, the only jade dragon that has ever graced our world died, taking a perilous beauty with her. Due to the heresies of the Staggering Sloth cult five centuries later, all known pictures of the early dragons were destroyed.

Fortunately, the great poet Vash Tilborn was alive in the days of the dragon’s youth—a witness to her early glory, and the perfect man to describe her draconic magnificence.

Unfortunately, before he had the chance, he saw the transcendent dancer Aishen Bira dance her Portrait of a Jade Dragon. Whereupon, he put aside his quill and said that no mere words could paint the dragon as well the dance of Bira, and that he would not write of her.

Only one other poet was willing to venture onto the ground that Vash feared to tread. Some thirty years after the death of of Vash, Sjel Seastrand—known as The Incomparable for his ability to find exactly the wrong rhyme—laid down his own verses on the jade dragon.

The only contemporary art we have that references the most beautiful of all the dragons who have ever lived is this:

Jade Dragon:
She is big she is awesome.
Better than pig, better than possum.

Workshops Vs. Writers Groups

Jay Lake has a post up about workshops here and some of the things they do or don’t do. I agree with a good bit of what he has to say in terms of structure and how they function and that whether they are good or bad for you is situational. For example, I get a good deal out of the critiques of my work. Perhaps less now than ten years ago, but still quite a bit because my investment in my stories is structured a little bit differently from many folks.

On the other hand, I think he missed completely some of the things that I find most important about a writers group, the things that aren’t critique at all. And this may be a distinction between an ongoing writing workshop and a writers group, which seem to me to be two different animals.

So, here are some things besides critique that a good group can do for you:

Brainstorming, both on stories and career.
Mutual promotion.
Share industry gossip.
Writerly support and cheerleading.
Cross introductions to agents, editors, and con folk.
Listening to complaints and brags.
And, most important of all, peer friendships.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog March 6 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/2007/03/workshops-vs-writers-groups.html

Loving the Craft

About once a month I run across the idea that you must suffer for your art. There are a number of variations on the theme, but one of the more common one for writers is of the sweating blood variety—writing is easy, I just stare at the blank page until the blood I’m sweating spills all over it. This drives me crazy. So does the oft quoted Everybody hates to write. Everybody loves to have written which is usually attributed to Hemingway.

If it hurts that much to do something, it’s probably not a good idea. (Okay, there are subset of writers who can’t not write and who hurt themselves in the process. This has always struck me as terribly unhealthy, but everyone’s got their kinks.) However, excluding the compulsive writing masochists, if writing doesn’t make you happy, why are you doing it?

The monetary rewards are low, arbitrary, and rare, so you really need to find the process emotionally rewarding if you’re going to do it. I write because there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do. I love every minute of it, from the conception of an idea to fussing with final drafts. Yes, I love having written, but I love writing more. It brings me joy. That’s why I do it. It’s actually quite simple.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog March 1 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

The Interface

Writers have things that really excite them. Readers have things that really excite them. The trick is connecting the two, because in real terms the two are only intermittently the same. Furinstance, the thing that really makes me want to write is creating a cool new world and bringing people there. Of course, there’s no market for writing travelogues for places that don’t exist. So, I need to make sure that I find some way of connecting my passion to my readers, because no readers means no sales which means having to find something else to do. That means telling a really cool story that’d peopled with characters that my readers want to spend time with. And that’s more or less the order in which a story goes together for me:
World and all the cool stuff.

Story that shows off said world.

Characters that are appropriate to the world.

But that’s only one of 1001 and one ways to do it, all equally correct, and all of which have to have some way of addressing and engaging the reader. So, I’m wondering, how y’all handle that interface. In On Writing Stephen King talks about having his target reader (I think it was Muneraven who brought this up at Marscon, but I’m terrible at remembering that sort of thing, so if was someone else, please leap forward and take credit). I don’t have a specific target reader other than myself. I try to write a story that I would really want to read. Others will have other systems, including (I presume) pretending that there is no audience, because the thought of actual readers is paralyzing for some while they’re working.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog March 5 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Locus of Control and Gender in Writing

There’s something I’ve been speculating on after talking about the phenomena with my wife–she’s a physics professor who does educational research on women’s achievement in physics classes. One piece of the literature on research on gender interactions with the classroom has to do with what’s called locus of control, or where the student believes control over things like grades is located.

For example, a female student who does badly on a test will typically internalize the blame I’m a bad student, I didn’t study enough, whereas a male student will typically blame the instructor or the material they wrote a bad test, this is a bad class.

Over the last few years the advent of writers’ blogs has given us an unprecedented window into writerly processes and writers emotional interaction with their art. I’ve seen an awful lot of I’m a bad writer, I’m not good enough, my work is crap, from professional and semi-professional writers talking about how they felt before they sold their first story or novel, but not as much the system sucks, this editor just didn’t get it, etc. and I’ve been wondering about it.

Is it a function of gender and locus of control? My sample set is heavily weighted toward women.

Is it just not wanting to offend the folks who might be buying your next novel?

Is it that these writers are an unusual sample set and have a more female communication style?

Is it that these writers are an unusual sample set in that writer self-esteem is lower than normal?

Something entirely different?

I’ve written a bad post?

I don’t know, and I don’t have a good idea for coming up with a measurable answer, but I thought it was an interesting question.

Oh, and for the record, I tended to blame the system, a position reinforced when stories that had heaps of rejections suddenly started selling after my publishing record improved. I tend to code very male on things like that.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog February 27 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Pitching Your Book Part V: Pitch Sheets

Most of what I want to say about how to write a pitch sheet I’ve already said in the previous four parts of this series talking about synopses. The main difference between the two forms is length.

So, what I’m going to do here is post a diverse set of examples. Below you will find a pitch for a novel I’ve never written, one for a novel I’ve written and haven’t yet sold (though it’s out with an editor who would like to buy it), and one for the first novel I sold, WebMage. All of these are exactly as they went out to editors. I will also include the long form synopsis for WebMage for comparison. After each pitch I’ll include a brief note. Oh, and there will obviously be major spoilers.

The rest of this post is beyond the cut to hide the spoilers and because it’s enormous.

Continue reading “Pitching Your Book Part V: Pitch Sheets” →

Deciding Not To Quit

We had an interesting discussion at Wyrdsmiths the other night about not quitting writing. It was stimulated in part by a note in the acknowledgments of Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty and the Midnight Hour “to Dan Hooker for calling the day after I almost decided to quit.” It was something that resonated for me when I read it—I always read acknowledgments—so I brought it up at the meeting.

It was a moment all of us who were there had experienced at least once, and I suspect that almost any writer you talk to, no matter how well published, will be able to tell you about that moment. Maybe five times I’ve felt frustrated and depressed enough about the whole writing gig to seriously contemplate finding something else to do, but I’ve had only one true deciding not to quit moment.

It came in January 2005 right after a Wyrdsmiths meeting. At that point I had a good agent who believed in my work, more than 20 short stories either in print or forthcoming, 2 novels in the trunk and 5 out with various editors none of which had sold. I was also having major family stress and had seen a three book hard/soft deal that was over three years in the making fall apart at the last possible moment. That had happened a couple of months earlier and several editors had passed on the books involved since.

I was depressed, not clinically, but damn close, and I felt like 15 years of hard work had officially gone to hell. But worse, far far worse, I wasn’t enjoying writing. I was doing it—I can’t not—but I wasn’t taking the joy from it that I always had. For perspective, I’ve worked at art or entertainment my entire conscious life. I pursued theater in serious way from ages 11-22. When I was 23 I switched to writing and found the second great love of my life (my wife Laura is the first) and I never looked back. Not until January 2005.

So came, the meeting that sent me over the edge. The trigger doesn’t matter. It wasn’t about that, it was about me and writing. I drove home (an hour) getting more and more down the whole way. When I got in I went off to stare at the ceiling. For probably three hours I did nothing but think about how something I had loved and pursued for years had come to this and how I just wasn’t feeling the joy of it anymore. And I tried to figure out what else I could possibly do with my time—I was writing full time. And the answer was nothing. Nothing. There wasn’t anything else that appealed to me half so much.

I don’t know what I’d have done if something else had occurred to me. And the fact that nothing did was totally bleak at the time, because I felt like the only thing I wanted to do was going nowhere and would continue to go nowhere. But in retrospect it was a powerful moment. I had come to place where I realized that writing wasn’t just something I did that I could walk away from. It was who I was down in the bedrock, and I would keep at it no matter what.

The next day I got up and wrote, though I didn’t much enjoy it. And the next day. And the day after that. And somewhere in there I started to love the work again, and then WebMage sold and Cybermancy. In the last year and a half I’ve written three novels that I am damn proud of, one of which is hands down the best work I’ve ever done. And now, two years on, I’m finally loving writing with the same joy and deep passion that I found when I first started. 2014 edit: adding that seven years and eleven novels have passed since I wrote this and I’m more in love with writing than ever.

Deciding not to quit was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and one of the hardest. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog February 22 2007, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)