O Come, O Come, Emmanuel by Enya
edited 1/27/12 to remove embedded video
5 tips to help you get started
November 30, 2011 9 Comments
Getting started is often the hardest part of any project, whether it’s tackling that difficult scene or cleaning out the basement you’ve been tossing things willy-nilly into for the past ten years. I spend an inordinate amount of time procrastinating, especially when I’m making the transition between two very different tasks, say–for instance–wrangling my three children into bed and writing. A lot of laundry-folding and RSS feed checking goes on during that time.
Along the way, I’ve developed some tactics to help me get past the how-do-I-even-begin hump. Here are a few:
1. Warmups. Not every project lends itself to warmups, of course (I don’t know what sorts of warmups one can do before scrubbing out the bathroom–and no, I don’t really need to know if there are). But you can ease into a difficult task. No one goes into a rigorous exercise routine without stretching out their muscles. I don’t tackle a difficult piano piece without limbering up my fingers with scales, or something easier.. In the same way, writing warmups can help get you into the mood before you have to figure out how to rescue the beautiful Princess Meliandora from the Dark Lord’s impregnable fortress. I recommend freewriting.
2. Break it down. Writing a novel is a big undertaking. So is cleaning your entire house. Or starting a business. Or creating a historically accurate Marie Antoinette costume. My advice? Break the project down into manageable chunks. Don’t think of it as writing an entire novel, but as getting to that first candybar scene. Focus on one drawer instead of the entire house.
And celebrate the milestones, even if it is with a cookie or five minutes to check Twitter/Facebook/email/[insert social media of choice].
3. Give yourself a time limit. I’ve extolled the virtues of writing in sessions of 10-20 minutes before. You can do anything for a short burst of time, whether it’s weeding or scrubbing the inside of the oven or drafting a blog post. Sometimes that short time period is enough to get you going so you can continue even when the timer beeps. Or, if you’re like me, you write super-fast in order to cram in as many words as possible before the time runs out!
4. Get support. Make your goals public. Tell your family and friends what you’re going to do. Use the #amwriting hashtag on Twitter, tell your Facebook friends you’re attacking the attic today (and that they should send in search parties if you don’t re-emerge in a few hours). Get your spouse to prod you, and your friends to harass you about your goal (in a nice we-support-you sort of way). Tell your blog readers you’ve decided to post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday–oh wait, did I say that out loud? *grin*
5. Get it on the schedule. Clear your schedule for your project. For the longest time, exercise wasn’t even in the kitchen for me, much less the back-burner. Now, with my husband working from home, I have a standing date with his iPhone to listen to a podcast while taking a brisk walk during the kids’ afternoon Quiet Time. Hire a babysitter, send the family out of the house, or go out yourself–just block that time off. Put it on the calendar, even. In pen. It makes it all the more real and official.
What about you? How do you deal with procrastination?
cover artist: Chris McGrath
November 28, 2011 5 Comments
Post-Thanksgiving, Life Has Been Happening (with a vengeance) and my brain is wiped, so let’s just admire cool book covers today, shall we?
I first when looking for Chris McGrath’s work after seeing his awesome illustrations for Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy:
Done? (No? You can scroll back up–or skip my words and look down–I won’t be offended). I think these covers are spot-on for Sanderson’s dark, urban setting, a place of ash and soot and mist. Right away, you can tell this is not a pseud0-medieval fantasy or a bucolic setting (I think I’ve been waiting all my life to use “bucolic” in a sentence!)–there are no long journeys through rich farmlands, dense forests and the usual trappings of fantasy settings. This is a menacing city, soon to be in turmoil. Note the lightning in the background, and the fire on the third cover.
I love the way Vin is depicted on these covers. She comes across as smart and strong, yet there’s still a bit of the former waif in her. I like the dynamism of the mid-fight scene in the second cover, and the contrast between Vin’s black and Elend’s white in the third. The pose of the two on The Hero of Ages is perfect–obviously together, ready to protect each other, take on the world and save it, too, that sort of thing.
Haven’t read the above book, but the female on the cover looks an awful lot like Vin (same model?). Which is probably why I like this one, too. And again, the guy and gal, guarding each other’s back, the woman staring directly and boldly out at the reader, while the man’s keeping a lookout to the side.
Something more traditional fantasy–look at the costumes–but still the darker colors. This time the man’s looking at the reader, while the woman’s looking off to the side. If looks like if I reached out, I could feel the texture of the man’s hair and of the wall behind them.
I had to include a Dresden File cover, just because. I like the ones with the whitish backgrounds best–they contrast well with Dresden’s dark clothes.
And here’s Sanderson’s latest Mistborn book (The Alloy of Law, which I have yet to read–can’t decide whether to get it myself or let have the husband have first dibs on it). I like the steampunk elements of this–the goggles, the gun, the clock in the background, the transport to the left (can’t tell whether it’s a really big train or an airship or what).
Check out Chris McGrath’s website to see more detail on some of these illustrations.
I’d like to make this spotlight on a cover artist a regular feature on this blog. Are there any illustrators–especially of F&SF–whose work you particularly admire? Let me know in the comments.
happy thanksgiving!
November 24, 2011 4 Comments
This year I implemented this fabulous Thanksgiving tree idea. The kids have had a lot of fun sticking on leaves, and I’m happy that they’re focusing on giving thanks for all the many blessings that have been poured out on us.
I am fortunate beyond reckoning. Since it would take far too long to enumerate all the things I’m grateful for, I want to focus on my many writing-related blessings.
I’m grateful for my husband, David, who let me stay home and write while he delivered pizzas for a living back when we were first married. I’m grateful for his continued support, and for his invaluable help in building my crazy worlds.
I’m grateful for my three children, who bring light and laughter to my house, and who have trained me to write in frenetic 10-minute segments. Plus, they keep me from wallowing in my emotions and being all self-absorbed.
I’m grateful for my friend and crit partner, Jo Anderton, who has stuck with me through story after story. I’m grateful for her incisive criticism and encouragement. Couldn’t have asked for a better beta reader.
I’m grateful for all the writers, blogs, and communities who have taught me so much about the craft and business of the profession. These include–but are not limited to–the Online Writing Workshop, Holly Lisle’s articles and writing courses, and the bloggers on my blogroll on the right (which needs much updating!). Thanks to all those hardworking professionals who take the time to inform newer writers.
I’m grateful for all the acceptances and rejections I’ve gotten along the way, and how each of those have been a milestone on this journey.
I’m grateful for all of you who read and comment on my blog–Prue, Megan, Deb, Kirsten, Tia, Tammy, and anyone else I’ve forgotten in my old age.
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate.
RIP, Anne McCaffrey
November 23, 2011 6 Comments
I was saddened to hear the news of Anne McCaffrey’s passing yesterday. Like for many others, Anne McCaffrey was a huge influence in my teenage years.
I grew up in a relatively book-poor country, and F&SF books were particularly hard to find. The very first McCaffrey book I read was Pegasus in Flight, book 2 of the Talent series, which I got out of the British Council library (yes, foreign powers provided books for those of us who could afford to be members). While I loved that one–and read it over and over and over– my real love was Pern.
Dragonsinger was my first introduction to Pern. I found it while patiently going through stacks of pirated Sidney Sheldons and John Grishams and 70s Mills & Boons at a weekly bazaar (The thellaywallay, as the men who ran the secondhand bookstalls were called, carted their books from place to place all over the city, following the different bazaars, which were–originally– known as Monday Bazaar, Tuesday Bazaar, Saturday Bazaar etc.). My delight knew no bounds–I was actually holding a book with little dragons (aka fire lizards) on the cover (which also came from the 1970s, but had survived till the 90s where I could get my grabby hands on it).
This cover! This is the cover on my tattered, falling-apart copy of Dragonsinger!
I read that book several times. A couple of months later I ran into its prequel, Dragonsinger, at a secondhand bookshop in an entirely different city. I still remember holding that book, dizzy with disbelief at my good fortune. Now I could find out Menolly’s backstory! (Yes, I was used to reading series out of order, and skipping books entirely, in those days.)
On a trip to the UK a few years later, I made sure to snag as many Pern books as I could lay hands on–the ones with the gorgeous covers put out by Corgi.
Isn't it beautiful?
Pern was the first world I ever immersed myself in so fully and completely. I ached with Menolly as her music talent was derided and dismissed by her family; I thirsted with vengeance with Lessa as she plotted to regain control of Ruatha. I felt the joy of the dragons and riders as they flew, and trembled for the rest of Pern when Thread fell. The culmination of Pern–for me–was the gamechanging All the Weyrs of Pern. I know McCaffrey and now her son have continued writing in Pern after that, but for me, that book was so final. When I got to the end, I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. It was the end of an era–the end of a chapter in Pernese history, the end of a season for me as a reader. I was not far from college by that point, approaching adulthood, and on the cusp of changing reading tastes. I don’t allow myself to be drawn into a world as fully as I did as a girl; no world has gripped me the way Pern did. I’m older, more wary, more holding myself at an arm’s length.
I devoured other McCaffrey books–the Brainships, the Crystal Singer series, Sassinak, Rowan, and the Powers that Be. But Pern was my first love. Thank you, Anne McCaffrey, for giving it to me and thousands of other readers.
don’t listen to yourself
November 16, 2011 12 Comments
We live in a culture that wants us to be in touch with our feelings. We’re encouraged to lay ourselves open so we can examine every nuance, every tone, every chord of our emotional states. We have cheerleaders–from celebrities to magazine articles to self-help gurus–to tell us our feelings are the truest part of us, to exhort us to listen to ourselves, to let it all out.
Can I offer an antidote to all this emotionalism?
Don’t. Don’t put feelings first. Don’t let them reign supreme in your life. Don’t let them control you.
See, I’ve been there. I’ve listened to my feelings, I’ve dived deep in them, swam in them, rolled in them, wallowed in them. I’ve held pity parties in my head, and invited all my emotions to come hang out and be loud and tell me what they really really think feel.
It’s not pretty.
Feelings are valid, but they are not always right. Feelings are ephemeral, fly-by-night, dependent on body chemistry and external circumstances.
Feelings, if you let them, can sap your will, overrule your mind, and sabotage your dreams. I’m tired, they whine, I’ve had a hard day. I deserve to sit down with my feet up and watch Numb3rs all evening. Or, No one’s called me in three days. They don’t love me. They don’t appreciate me. Or, How come she got published, and not me? She’s a no-talent hack. Or, I’m just a failure. Nothing ever goes right for me. I’m unlucky, misunderstood, underappreciated. I need a chocolate truffle.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting we find the Emotions Off switch and flip it. Because we are not robots, and emotions are an important part of us. Often, emotions are symptomatic of underlying problems. Hey, I’m sad all the time. Maybe I need medical help or I’m angry a lot. I need to find a way to deal with the stress in my life. We need to deal with our feelings in a healthy way, not let them rampage all over our lives.
Stewing in ones own emotional juices just leads to a funk. I speak from experience.
So, how to deal with strong feelings? Here’s what I’ve learned from years of internal conflict with moodiness and negative emotions.
Recognize where particular feelings come from. Tiredness, stress, hunger and other physical conditions can magnify our emotions (as a parent, I am very familiar with this). Earlier in our marriage, I kept my poor long-suffering husband up wayyyyy too late some nights, detailing every nuance of my feelings of failure, inadequacy, and sense of being slighted. It didn’t matter what he said; I was determined to wallow in my exhaustion-magnified misery. If only a divine voice had spoken up and told me to shut up and go to bed. Funny how things always looked so much better in the morning.
Talk to ourselves, instead of just listening to ourselves. Let reason assert itself over the emotions sometimes. I know, reason gets a bad rep these days, but sometimes you do have to give yourself tough love. You do have to tell yourself that you are being unfair and kinda of a jerk for being jealous of someone else. You do have to say “Too bad” when your feelings complain that they just neeeeed and deseeeerve to kick back and relax, instead of work on that story.
Find something else to do. Spinning wheels, going around the same emotional track over and over again, is not helpful. If you can’t deal with the situation that caused the feelings in the first place, or they are beyond your control, do something else. Sometimes we can deal with feelings by just changing out circumstances. It might mean unplugging from the Internet, if a volatile issue is making you see red. Go outside and talk a walk. Exercise. Meditate. Do the dishes. Whatever you can to clear your mind and subside the raging rapids that is your emotional state.
Do you find yourself giving far too much airtime to your emotions? How do you cope?
review: The Way of Kings
November 14, 2011 4 Comments
This week I’m doing something a little different. I’ve invited my husband, David, to write a joint review of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings with me, so you get a bit of a different perspective.
Rabia: I hadn’t intended to read The Way of Kings–at least not yet. For one thing, it’s the first book of a projected 10 (ten!)-book series. Book 2 has not been written and won’t be out until 2013 at the earliest. I’m a late adopter when it comes to series, because a) I am impatient and b) I forget things. Since I don’t want to end up like GRRM’s teeth-gnashing fans, I stay away from series that aren’t complete, or close to complete. Secondly, The Way of Kings is HUGE. It has a prelude, a prologue, several interludes with characters you see only once, and over a thousand pages. Forget the whole series–just reading book one is a big commitment.
So why’d I read it? Because my husband did, loved it, and told me I should read it (which is not something he does lightly). And it’s also written by Brandon Sanderson, author of the wonderful Mistborn trilogy. I know this guy can write a good story. I also know he doesn’t want to leave his readers hanging, so I’m willing to follow along for the decade or so(!) he needs to write this series.
David: I have to start with a confession. I’ve actually never read this book (cue gasps of shock and confusion). On the other hand, I’ve listened to it four or five times now. (Had you going for a moment, didn’t I?) My lovely wife got me the audiobook for Christmas, and I do a lot of driving, which gives me plenty of time to listen. Of course, The Way of Kings is a large book; it takes up 36 CD’s–almost 80% the size of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (46, for those playing at home). They used two narrators, and generally used them well. The only problem is that the narrators apparently didn’t consult with each other on how to pronounce High Prince Sadeus’s name; since he’s a fairly important character, this was rather jarring.
One of Sanderson’s greatest strengths as a story teller is the amount of effort he puts into the world building, and this really shows in The Way of Kings. A minor example: most of the world is battered periodically by high storms, and the plants and animals have evolved to deal with this–except for the plants in Shinovar, which is protected geographically. So, for instance, the plants in most of the world retract when someone draws near, so they’re constantly walking on rock; the grass in Shinovar, however, stays in place, and the Shin people feel that it is profane to walk on rock–which puts them at odds with pretty much everyone else. Small details like that abound, bringing the world to life. Of course, since this is the first book in a series, not all of the details are explained–but they’re there (unlike some series where details appear only in later books, making it clear when the author thought of them!).
Rabia: I’m glad David brought up the worldbuilding, because it’s the reason why–for such a big book–not much happens in The Way of Kings. The world is a character in and of itself, and Sanderson reveals it layer by layer. Because it is so alien, he needs to take a lot of time to show it to us. He does it skilfully, weaving it into the action, and by the end I felt both immersed in Roshar and knowing that there are great swathes of it still unrevealed.
Most of the story is told through the eyes of three POV characters: Shallan who embarks on a dangerous deception in order to restore her family fortune; Kaladin, a surgeon-turned-spearman-
David: I have to disagree with Rabia’s statement that “not much happens”. The three main characters don’t do much travelling–Shallan spends almost the entire book in the city of Kharbranth, while Kaladin and Dalinar’s stories are mostly on the Shattered Plains–but physical location is pretty much the only thing stable for all three of them. This is a fairly strong contrast to the Lord of the Rings, where there’s a lot of physical movement, but the characters change slowly, if at all (think about it: does Aragorn undergo much of an arc? He’s a great warrior and leader throughout the trilogy; all that really changes is that he gets more people following him). I won’t go into details–for those, you really ought to read it yourself!–but none of the three main characters end the book with the same worldview as they start with.
I would like to note one other detail: as much as I like the story, the actual book is a work of art in its own right. The maps, the artwork throughout, every detail has clearly been carefully crafted to make reading this a truly unique experience. I hope (and assume) that they’ll continue this throughout the series, and I look forward to owning them all. These books are what traditional publishers need to produce if they want to give readers reason to buy the original, rather than (or in addition to) the e-book or audiobook formats.
Rabia: Since I always have to have the last word (sound familiar, David? 
), I want to point out that the ending of The Way of Kings absolutely delivers–and then some. There are several like-a-punch-in-the-guts revelations, questions answered, and more questions raised. Sanderson manages the difficult task of wrapping up this book satisfactorily while setting the stage–and raising the stakes–for the sequel.
If you like epic fantasy, you should definitely try this book. In hardback, since having the map is really useful for keeping track of everything!
artist trading cards, HTRYN style
November 11, 2011 4 Comments
Look what I discovered in my box of odds and ends the other day:
Oh, fun, I thought. Doodles on neon-colored index cards. I love index cards, and I love doodles. But then I flipped the cards over and found:
Folks who’ve taken Holly Lisle‘s How to Revise Your Novel course will recognize these as the color-coded scene cards from Lesson 10. Apparently, after I was done with the revision, I recycled them into ATCs. I love that the leftovers and discards from one creative project turned out to be the raw material for another.
Btw, there’s a lot more you can do with index cards besides turning them into artist trading cards. Check out my post, 9 Ways to Use Index Cards, for more ideas. Also, Tammy over at Daisy Yellow hosts ICAD (Index-Card-A-Day) to get those creative juices flowing.
