First off, I am pleased to say that the three Kate and Cecy books will be going live as e-books on May 22. Stephanie Burgis did a lovely blog post on them. Which means that all of the backlist except the Enchanted Forest books are now available in nice, legal ebooks, one way or another (the two Mairelon books are available together, in the omnibus “A Matter of Magic,” rather than as individual titles). There are an assortment of issues with the Enchanted Forest that I hope to work out eventually, but I have no idea how long “eventually” will take, especially if lawyers get involved. So let’s just say it’ll be quite a while yet for those, and leave it at that.
For those who are interested in the glamorous, exciting lives that writers lead: I have spent the last three days doing every stitch of laundry I could find anywhere in the house. I am currently waiting for the plumber to arrive to unhook the ten-plus-year-old washer and dryer, so that they can be hauled away when the replacements are delivered tomorrow. They don’t get hooked up until the new floor is down in the laundry room, though, which won’t happen until at least next week. And then they get to repair the ceiling, which will be much easier without the new machines in the way (hence the frantic laundry-doing, in hopes of minimizing the number of trips to the Laundromat during (re)construction.) Then I get to go to Home Depot to pick up some widgets. Doesn’t that sound glamorous and exciting?
Which brings me back around to another writing balancing act (several, actually). Everybody has daily life to do: cooking, laundry, cleaning, house maintenance, etc. For writers, it’s perilously easy to put off doing the words in favor of sweeping out the laundry room before the repair guy arrives (it’ll only take a minute), doing the dishes (they have to be washed some time, so why put it off?), sewing that loose button back on (it’s been bugging me for days, but I only seem to think of fixing it when I’m standing in the middle of Target, so now that I have thought of it, I’d better seize the moment).
It’s especially easy when the writing isn’t going well; it feels so much better to be doing something actually useful instead of just staring at the blank page/screen and muttering balefully under one’s breath. And if one is yet to be published, or doesn’t actually have a deadline at the moment, it’s even easier to justify. After all, there’s no guarantee that whatever words one manages to painfully extract from one’s backbrain will sell, so why not do something more obviously productive?
The problem with thinking like this is that if one does, one generally arrives fairly quickly at a point where no writing happens at all. Not only that, but “I’m not getting any writing done today, so I might as well do X” turns into “I can’t write today, because I’ll be more productive if I do X” and then to “X is more important to get done than writing, so I can’t write today” and finally to “I can’t write.”
The solution to this is fairly obvious, if notoriously difficult to implement: sit down and write anyway, whether or not you feel like it, whether or not there’s other stuff to do, whether or not you feel worthy or competent or whatever else you think you need to feel. Writing isn’t about how you feel; it’s about getting words on the page. You have to figure out how for yourself, but really, making time to write and guarding that time from everybody and everything else including yourself is ultimately what works.
The other balancing act is the one involving the characters in the story. They, too, have daily lives and need to cook, do laundry, etc. The convention in most fiction is to skip lightly over all this daily maintenance, because really, who wants to read about someone doing laundry? At the other end of the scale, there are writers who feel that giving the readers all the dramatic details of cooking and laundry makes the characters “more real” (or perhaps it’s “more realistic;” I’m never sure).
And of course, they’re both right – for elastic values of “right.” Which is to say that it depends on the story, the characters, etc. Every story has a unique balance point between showing the main character cleverly breaking into the museum and showing the main character lovingly chopping onions for the stir-fry. In some cases, even one scene of onion-chopping would be too much; in other stories, the right balance means spending several pages having the main character wax lyrical over the proper way to chop onions.
And once again, it’s up to the writer to figure out where that balance is and what the most effective way of achieving it is.
Grin! Steven Brust once said that he only includes scenes that he thinks “Oh, cool!” about. (I’m paraphrasing.) And I have to admit that _The Phoenix Guards_ is some kind of cool: witty word play interspersed with grand spectacle, witty dialogue, and dramatic action. It’s one of my favorite books.
But every writer and every reader will have a different idea of what is cool. I plead guilty to a love of interior design myself, and there is a fair bit of description of the enchanted underground palace that is the setting for much of _Troll-magic_. (Just paragraphs, not on and on for pages!) I *think* it’s okay, since the magical nature of the palace causes it to reflect the essence of its inhabitants (my characters). But I worried about it.
Tuning out that self-doubt is still my biggest challenge as a writer. Dean Wesley Smith urges new writers to trust their back brain. He says it knows more about storytelling than does the logical intellect.
And my work in progress seems to have a very different balance of mundane things shown. _Troll-magic_ had few; the enchantments did everything. (Lucky people! Of course, that convenience led to dueling a troll-witch!) My WIP has a good bit more “washing up”(no enchanted servants), and it feels tricky balancing it all. I want to include enough to give a feel for what my protagonist’s days are like, but not so much that it bogs things down. At this stage, I’m relying on the back brain. Once I get the first draft done, I’ll rely on my first reader’s feedback. She *is* excellent!
I hope I haven’t rambled too excessively here! I think I’m avoiding writing. It is actually going well, but I didn’t get enough sleep, and writing is harder when my brain is tired and not fully online. Feels comforting to hang out at a favorite blog.
Speaking of which . . . thank you Ms. Wrede for sharing all that you do. Your generous offering of your experience and knowledge is much appreciated by this new writer.
And now, Jaenii-one, you really need to open up that novel file and get to work!
“It’s especially easy when the writing isn’t going well; it feels so much better to be doing something actually useful instead of just staring at the blank page/screen and muttering balefully under one’s breath. And if one is yet to be published, or doesn’t actually have a deadline at the moment, it’s even easier to justify.” <— This. Times 100. I have fallen prey to this many times.
Good luck with the construction! You should post before and after pics!
Also, I'm so glad Cecy is now available in e-book format! Double yay! (Or should it be triple, since there are three?)
NotaCat – The Mairelon omnibus is done by the dead-tree publisher, which is a US company (Tor). Amazon makes a distinction between US ebooks and British ebooks; if you don’t have the British subrights, you can’t put it up on Amazon.uk. Open Road is an ebook company; they asked for all electronic rights and immediately put the titles up everywhere. And I have no idea why “Shadowlight” is showing up on your search, unless it’s because my titles show up in the “you might also like” section.
LizV – Balancing work and life maintenance is an ongoing struggle for anyone who’s self-employed, but it’s especially hard for writers, I think, because one hour’s worth of words usually isn’t a lot compared to a whole novel’s worth, so it doesn’t feel as if it’s much of a problem. And it isn’t…if it’s just one day. The problem, of course, is that it becomes two and five and thirty days with astonishing speed.
Tiana – Thanks for the reminder! I forgot to take “before” shots before they took out the old washer/dryer, but I did want before-and-after shots. I’ll post ’em when it’s finished…whenever that ends up being!
Jaenii – Steve used to actually have a sign on his computer that said “Now I am going to tell you something cool.” I don’t know if he still does. And if you’re worried about interior description, you could always go look at “The Worm Ourouborous,” by E.R.Eddison – he goes on for pages of lush pseudo-Elizabethan prose about what everything looks like. And not enough sleep is often a problem…which is one reason why that “get up an hour early or stay up an hour late if you want writing time” advice doesn’t always work nearly as well as people think it should.
One of the things I tell my fellow unpublished writers (who mostly don’t want to hear it) is that you can’t find time for writing, you can’t even make time — you have to steal it. Steal it like a master thief from every household chore and mundane demand that dares turn its back. Apropos of your post, laundry in particular seems to be a problem; I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard people say “I just have to do a couple loads of laundry, and then I’ll sit down to write” — and they’re invariably the people who don’t have a finished story to show. It makes sense in your case (good luck with the remodel!), but in general, Laundry Is The Enemy.
For me, my lawn looked like the Amazon rainforest the summer I finished my first novel. It took a bit more effort with the mower to finally reclaim the yard before it ate the cats, but in the meantime… life went on. And book got written.
Great news about the eBooks, but I wonder…on Amazon UK, I cannot find a Kindle edition of the Mairelon omnibus. Maybe this is a good thing for my wallet since the prices for the Chocolate Pot eBooks (and the Lyra novels) make my teeth itch, and I suppose I’m lucky to have both Mairelon books already in dead-tree format, but they’re buried in storage somewhere and I want them to carry about with me on my Kindle (I am geek, hear me moan…)
TL;DR: when should the Mairelon omnibus be available for UK Kindle users?
.
.
.
Odd observation: why would “Shadowlight” by Jacqueline Diamond and Jackie Hyman (who are apparently the same person) be showing up when I search for *you*?
Ouch. I just spent an hour and a half in the garden. The soil was still damp from recent rain (not a common thing here in Colorado); the air was cool, the tarragon desperately needed to be rescued from rampant garlic. and I’d be able to concentrate SO much better when it was done! I wasn’t planning to spend that long on it…
Back to the writing. I will skip TV this evening to compensate.
You have described any given weekend in my life! Minus the uprooting of the laundry, of course. Every weekend at my house sees several loads of laundry done, interspersed with some serious dishwashing, occasional ironing and even the odd button sewn on here and there. Sometimes, while I’m dusting the laptop (instead of sitting in front of it, writing), I’ll wonder if I’m making the right choices in my weekend occupations. Soon enough, a whole weekend has zoomed past and I’ve managed to make myself feel productive all without writing a single word.
Argh.
So thank-you for sharing this, because now I know it’s possible to focus my productivity in the correct direction with just a bit of self-discipline.
I have the same problem getting going with programming when it is difficult. I work at home so that makes it even easier to Do Something Else.