Me, to Mom: Want to do some hired sitting this week? Mom: What book are you about to write now? Me: Just polishing up the last Walker Papers. NEXT week I get to write the Spirit of the Century novel for Fred Hicks/. Mom: In a *week*? Me: It’s only 60K. It is possible there is something wrong with me. (And also, no, I am not going to be writing a 60K novel in a week, although it’s *theoretically* possible. That theoretical world, however, is not this one. :))
My takeaway from the (now annual) kerfuffle surrounding the Hugos (and now the Arthur C Clarke award, as it has just been announced to have an all-male shortlist) is twofold: 1. I must spend more time developing my friends list, Twitter follows, and Facebook friends*, because clearly women who write urban fantasy will only be nominated for such crap if they have a lot of brainless girl readers who are willing to boost them up**, since after all, books people just like to read obviously shouldn’t end up on award…
Me, worried: I’m at the climactic battle & I’m only 75k into the book. Ted, phlegmatic: You’re at the end, Catie. It always takes you until the third draft to get the end right. Me: But I don’t know if I’ve got 20k of wrap-up! Me, hours later: Oh, shit, I see what he was saying. It DOES always take me multiple drafts to get the end right & this whole book is The End. Riiiiiiight. Okay. No wonder this is so messed up. I have, in fact, completed the…
In the last several books I’ve written, I’ve noticed a tendency that as I approach the end, I leap ahead, write the end, then come back and fill bits in. I have been doing that for this whole bloody book. Now, I know people who work this way as a matter of course, but I don’t, and I don’t like it, and seriously, what’s that all about anyway? This evening I realized that it’s because I’m writing the end. I mean, yes, the end happens to be 100,000 words long,…
I was obliged to stop and remind myself today that in fact by any standards at all, a 5100 word day is actually very good. Even by my standards, which as we all know are completely lunatic. I’ve done 25 or 30K since Wednesday last. It’s not as much as I’d been hoping for, but again, in actuality it’s quite good. The problem, of course, is I’m not even vaguely convinced they’re the right words. I have no sense of the book and frankly think it all sucks. Ted and…