words

Announcing a month of book giveaways! Day one!

Standard

Game of Cages will be coming out on the last day of the month, so I’ve decided to hold a special month of book giveaways. Every day (unless I screw up, which I probably will) I’ll give away a book or themed set of books to someone who asks for it. To enter, you have to comment on this blog or on my LiveJournal–email, Facebook, and Twitter won’t count, and if more than one person speaks up, I’ll roll a die to determine the recipient.

You get a new book every day, and on the last day of the month I’ll give away my own.

For day one, I’m offering this:

IMG_7207

No, it’s not a horror novel. It’s actually an examination of the concept of Satan in a historical and social context, especially with regard to creating a Christian identity by identifying and defining Christianity’s enemies. Interesting! But I’m not going to reread it, so why don’t you try it?

Update: This book has been won.

Head, meet wall

Standard

I’m trying to get a package together for my agent (sample chapters and selling synopsis, basically) and sweet mole sauce, have I been struggling. The last couple of months have been stressful–I don’t need to review, do I? Good.–and my daily word counts have been small. Now that I’m in the revision phase, I’m finding all sorts of repetitive and contradictory stuff in there. Characters are introduced twice, the protagonist discusses a clue with a character then decides to hide the info from him 50 pages later, the protagonist is confused by changes to a building he said he’d never seen before.

It’s a damn dirty mess. I really need to work faster on these early drafts, if only to save myself time and effort during revisions.

Anyway, I picked up a bunch of weird books at a yard sale today, and I’ll be slipping out of the library as soon as I dig up a movie for the family to watch tonight. We have a big afternoon of de-cluttering planned, although it remains to be seen which family members will be willing to get rid of some of their belongings (me) and which will not (them). Wish me luck.

Randomness for 7/31

Standard

1) First Pacey-Con squelched by private police force. SDCC just isn’t like it used to be, man.

2) Autoeroticism in America (in convenient graph form!)

3) Kermit Bale. Yes, poster, you do, in fact, have too much time on your hands.

4) What does Harvard have to teach YOU about vampires in film and literature? Take the online course and find out.

5) Captain Higgins, flatworm of power!

6) Photoshop Time portals. via Kurt Busiek

7) Job prospects for 2011 in the urban fantasy world. Pretty funny, and let’s just pretend she didn’t use the phrase “tramp stamp.”

Fan fiction (by me)

Standard

Remember the Scalzi/Wheaton benefit anthology, with the fan fiction contest? You may have noticed that I posted my son’s (non)entry? Of course you do. Well, I thought I would post my losing entry.

No, the winning story hasn’t been chosen. I’m just assuming.

Anyway, I dropped my son off at the day camp and have a few extra hours to myself. Of course it’s gorgeous weather out there, but I’m going to spend it on The Buried King. I doubt I’ll have something ready to send to my agent by the end of the day, but I should be able to take a big bite out of it. Especially when I turn off my modem, as I’m about to do.

Then I get to vacuum.

Anyway, here’s the story (about 800-words worth), behind the cut. Continue reading

Mid-career writing advice

Standard

One of the topics going around right now is advice for writers who are “mid-career.” Check out Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Sherwood Smith, John Scalzi, and Jessica Reisman. And that’s just skimming the surface.

First let me state this: I don’t qualify as a “mid-career” writer. I haven’t been publishing long enough, only have one book out (soon to be remedied!) and need to fail or succeed more.

However! Looking over these posts, I can’t help but wonder why advice for a mid-career writer has to be so idiosyncratic, while advice for new/trying-to-break-in authors is so general.

Yeah, I know, there are some basic things to learn. Follow guidelines. Don’t be a crazy jerk. Write better.

Those are basics, and they shouldn’t really take up a few million words of blog postings and internet articles, but they do. When I was trying to break in (yesterday? last week? seems more recent than that) I read the same things over and over again. Sure, sometimes I’d find advice that flipped the on switch for the invisible light bulb over my head, but usually it was same same same same same same same.

I dunno. Maybe I’m an unusual case, because I spent a lot of time searching out craft advice and inside tips on publishing norms. A lot. It didn’t take long for every issue of Writers Digest to seem identical to the last. I’ve abandoned several message boards and blogs because people kept having the same damn conversations over and over. It was all general, basic stuff and I was hungry for something that addressed my own particular problems.

(Digression: One thing that struck me as nutso was the length of time some people needed to absorb those basics. Some people were so resistant to instruction that they had to be told over and over how things work, and often still refused to adapt their thinking.)

Eventually, after years of learning from others, I started looking for answers inside myself. That’s when I started to really do good work. I’d internalized the basics and I knew how to put them into action. It’s not enough, not really, to make my books as good as I want them to be, but I’m not looking to other people for answers anymore.

Anyway, to sum up: Yes, mid-career writers need individualized advice that won’t apply to everyone. But new writers and writers trying to break in professionally need the same thing, once they get past a few basics.

Randomness for 7/24

Standard

1) Can you spot the endangered species in this photo?

2) Want your kid to do well in college? Take them out of school! via Jen Busiek.

3) A book marketing idea I’m going to steal. For Child of Fire, I’m thinking flame-proof kiddie pajamas. For Game of Cages, I’m not sure. Doggie sweaters?

4) Slate discovers BBB is worthless. The rest of America says “DUH!”

5) Last time I linked to a funny post by Josh Freidman. This time I’m linking to a post that is just as true and wrenched tears out of me. Incredibly powerful writing. Jesus.

6) And, to move from the sublime to the ridiculous: How to pay for a Death Star.

7) Science fiction writer profiled in NY Times. I hope it gets him new readers.

Randomness for 7/21

Standard

1) The Creative Process, in graphic/maze form.

2) This is pretty exciting: BLU has a new stop motion video out!

3) I’m sure many of you know that there’s a new storyline in the Superman comics where he walks across America to reacquaint himself with regular people. Well, now The Mighty Thor is doing it too!

4) Baby eats his way out of a watermelon. This one isn’t very interesting, but it is awfully cute.

5) Parkour from 1930.

6) Serial book thief gets three and a half years.

7) When Josh Friedman posts to his blog, we read. It’s long, but it’s amazing. He combines development notes, TV trends, and true crime, coming out the other end with belly laughs.

Harry Potter and the Constant Lulz

Standard

My family is reading the Harry Potter series right now. We’re on the second book, and we’re reading it aloud to each other.

I did not remember how funny these books are. Maybe it’s just the difference between hearing them aloud and in my head, but we have been laughing and laughing throughout. Rowling really has a feel for broad characters and light comedy.

It’s fun!

Talent and craft

Standard

Jay Lake talks about the value of talent and craft right here. It seems to me that this is a misguided post, mainly because it never really defines the difference between “talent” and “craft.” If I’m reading him correctly, he’s asserting that there are a set number of skills a writer needs, and the writer’s talent is made up of the skills they have without practice, while craft is made up of the skills acquired with practice.

I think this is misguided. Let me go further. “Talent” is not some inborn trait. Maybe some people have biological, social, and cultural tendencies that make certain parts of writing easier to learn, but once the skills are there, how do you tell them apart from “craft?”

You can’t. Not really.

Personally, I believe every writing skill is learned. I’m teaching a couple of them to my son right now (not to make him a fiction writer–god forbid) and he’s practicing them whenever he tells a story. The best thing to do is to learn as many of those skills as possible as a child, when learning is a little easier than it is for adults. And if practice can be made fun, so it never feels like practice, so much the better.

I define talent as accuracy. A writer who can accurately predict the effect of a specific sentence, a particular character, a certain sequence of plot turns, is considered talented. The more subtle or sublime the effect, and the more original the construction, the more talented the writer is perceived to be. A writer who can’t predict the effects of their sentences or plot twists is not considered talented at all.

Writers who acquire these skills early are called talented. Writers who acquire them late call it craft. In truth, talent and exceptional craft are pretty much indistinguishable–if you pick up a wonderful book by someone you’ve never heard of before, how much of that wonderful came from some nebulous, inborn “gift?” How much was learned?

Talent is teachable. It can be hard or easy to teach, depending on the person, but it’s something most anyone can learn.

What holds writers back is not lack of talent, it’s lack of critical self-examination, qualified instruction, and willingness to be original.

Okay, procrastination over. I’m going back to work on today’s pages.

Randomness for 7/16

Standard

1) Letters written to fictional characters by actual people. I like this one, this one, this one and this one. And now I can’t help but wonder what letter I would write.

2) Proving there’s a niche blog for everything (until someone creates a niche blog you never even thought of before): Handsome Men Who Are Now Dead.

3) Prank rollercoaster photos. Maybe not entirely safe for work, but not too bad.

4) via Steve Barr: Ferris Beuller is Tyler Durdin!. And now in video form (which I can’t watch at work.)

5) If movie titles were honest. The funny ones make up for the dumb ones.

6) The 100 Best places to appreciate art online.

7) How to ask Thomas Pynchon for an author blurb.