Last night was Kim Stanley Robinson’s talk at Hodges Figgis. It went really well: the audience was full and there were a lot of great questions, almost none of which I can remember right now. :) Someone asked about ESCAPE TO KATMANDU, which I haven’t read and which apparently I must, and ANARCTICA, which is actually one of my favourite KSR novels (and turns out to be one of his favourites, too, although it evidently made no blip at all when it came out) was mentioned, and there was someone…
So I’ve been looking into what’s necessary for submitting self-published books to major review sites (RT, PW, etc) and the answer is primarily “a long lead time.” Several months. Four, for RT, ideally four but 3 is bearable, for PW. Which means if I want to get REDEEMER in for a late October launch, just post-Octocon, I have to have it written and edited by 21 June. AAAAAAAAAAGH. Written, yes, it will be written. But *edited*? Like to the editor, returned to me, and revised? That seems…unlikely! I mean, I’m…
Beth Cato, author of the splendid CLOCKWORK DAGGER books, said she’d love to know more about my outlining process(es) for series. bahahahwoooohahahahahaha ahahaha bahahah hee hee hee *wipes eyes* Okay. No, seriously. *laughs* Seriously, it’s an excellent question/thing for me to think/write about. The truth is I’ve become much more serious about outlining in the past few years, but I haven’t yet taken it to the series level that I’d *like* to. (I should, in fact, be looking very hard at REDEEMER and perhaps MAGIC & MANNERS in those terms…
Six years ago today I started a writing chat room colloquially known as the War Room. Its purpose was to create a space where the writers I knew could log in and encourage one another to write. The idea is basically a chat room where you don’t chat, you just shut up and write, but in the presence of others, so that there’s some accountability. It’s a way of creating a work environment for a job that often expects you to get it done with nothing but your own self-discipline…
A fellow writer over on Twitter was asking for example elevator pitches to show to some of her friends as examples, and since I’ve got, oh, eight or seventeen of them that I’ve been using for years, I threw several of them at her. An elevator pitch is what you want to have prepared for when you find yourself in an elevator with the high-powered head editor of your favourite publishing house and she says, “Oh, you’re a writer? What are you working on?” This is not the moment to…