My friend Kari Sperring (who is one of those writers whose prose just makes me want to weep with envy) has been putting up terrific questions and commentary over on Twitter. Today’s question (which can be followed at the tag #1stSFFReads) is “What was the 1st sff book you read? The 1st by a woman? By a writer of colour?” As it happens, the first SFF novel I read was *by* a woman: THE CITY UNDER GROUND, by Suzanne Martel. It was published when I was two; I read it…
Category: CEMurphy
evolving process
Following up somewhat on last week’s process post… Recently on Twitter Tobias Buckell mentioned he was 6K into a 10K synopsis for a 55K book. Kate Elliott chimed in to say that in December, she’d managed 4K a day for 2 weeks straight–far above her usual writing average–due to having a supremely clear idea of what had to happen in the book at that point. I myself have become increasingly aware that the more I outline, the more smoothly the book goes. Particular cases in point were THE PRETENDER’S CROWN,…
GGK Book Club: The Darkest Road, ch 1-4
I was just sitting here frowning at my website wondering why a post hadn’t automatically posted and I realized it was because I hadn’t written it yet. @.@ And indeed, because I’m supposed to be working, and because I read the whole book at once this time, and don’t have it in my office right now, I’m going to make this a super short post primarily for the purposes of getting it out there rather than having anything insightful to say right now. I’ll try to get insights into the…
worth the price of admission
I had the sudden suspicion that Scrivener might let me put both my synopsis and the chapter I was working on up in a split screen, and lo, within a few seconds I’d figured out how to do so. That feature alone is worth the price of admission. I’ve also got an obviously-increasingly-useful sidebar going on with research materials filling up, and find a sort of unholy glee in the idea that it’s all just right there to flip through instead of digging through browser bookmarks or random text files.…
GGK Book Club: The Wandering Fire, ch 13-16
(Chapters 1-4 of THE DARKEST ROAD for next week!) “The crying books” indeed. I don’t remember crying my way through THE WANDERING FIRE before, but I spent the final quarter of the book totally in bits. I’m somewhat concerned about reading THE DARKEST ROAD, particularly the part that *always* reduced me to wracking sobs. I’m going to need a pint of Haagen Daaz, a box of tissues and six hours alone in a soundproof room, apparently. I’m already late posting this, so I’m gonna make a couple quick comments and…