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Authors should marry well

I’m working up in my office today (it’s the third floor loft) because it is warm enough to step away from the fireplace today. My husband just brought me a carafe of tea and a hot pad to put under my feet because while it is warmer, it is still a wee bit chilly (feels like 10 degrees outside). Note to future authors: choose your mates with care. The life companion of an author must have the following:

1. The patience of all the saints, combined.
2. A fondness for inexpensive clothes and peanut butter sandwiches.
3. A wicked good sense of humor.
4. The ability to not be put off when you talk to your characters in your sleep, or when your eyes glaze over during conversation and he/she realizes that you are in your story, and not really listening.
5. A gracious acceptance of the fact that state and national library conventions count as family vacations.
6. The ability to stand at the Staples photocopier for hours and remain cheerful.
7. The courage to return your overdue library books and pay the fines.
8. The willingness to go back to the library and pick up the dozen books you just ordered.
9. The skill to spin the straw of all critical reviews into gold.
10. The sense of when to cheer, when to nudge, and when to brew tea.

I am a very lucky author. Thanks, BH.

I found an amazing mistake in a history book this morning, and lost a half-hour verifying it. But now I know I’m right about the date of a particular invasion and I’m feeling a little smug. (And I have warm toes! And hot tea!) Am anxiously awaiting the news from Seattle about the Big Awards this morning. Good luck to all!!

Yesterday: writing. Today: more of the same.

edited to add: Here are the ALA winners – hearty congratulations to all!

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Not a day of rest

This past year I have been trying to take Sundays off from work, but that won’t be the case today. My goals for the day are ambitious: review yesterday’s work on Chapter 27, one more edit of Chapter 28 (which I think is in fairly good shape already ::crosses fingers::), and major reconstruction from the ground up on Chapter 29, which is a shambles right now.

I also need to answer the stack of mail on my desk and empty the email box. And get some exercise.

I took some time off yesterday, so don’t feel bad for me. Wrote all morning and played all afternoon. We went to a tattoo convention and to the booksigning of my friend, Ellen Yeomans, whose new book Rubber Houses just came out.

The differences between the tattoo convention and book signing were rather….. striking.

Writing prompt: Take a person from each world (World A: tattoo/biker convention, World B: booksigning in suburban chain store on a cold snowy day) and drop them into the other world.

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More of the author at work

I SO ROCKED THOSE CHAPTERS YESTERDAY!

::dancesdancesdancesdances::

It took from 7:30 – 5:30 but by all the gods above those two puppies (chapters 25 & 26) are done. I think. I hope. Well, they are in good shape for right now. And 25 wound up having a very sweet unanticipated turn of events, so that was fun. (Notice that I did not go to the gym… that’s the tradeoff – exercise or another chapter. Argh.)

This is what my world looked like as I worked yesterday:

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Today will not be quite as tidy. I have to go to a doctor’s appointment and take care of my mom, and there is more family stuff later in the day. If I can squeeze in work on Chapter 27 I will be very happy, but I am not going to be unrealistic about it.

In yesterday’s comments a student asked a couple of career questions I’ll answer here:

Do you enjoy what you do? I love it, even the hard days.

What is you favourite part of the job? When ideas jump up out of nowhere and when characters talk to me.

What is the hardest part of the job? I hate how long it takes to write a book, I hate how anxious I get, I wish I had affordable health insurance.

what is the average salary? (don’t answer this one if you don’t want to) Authors are paid based on the numbers of books sold. Generally, we earn 10% of the price of a hardcover book, and 6% of the price of a paperback. (Out of that money I have to pay my agent 15%.) A book that sells 10,000 copies a year is considered to be doing very well. Authors are not as rich as many people think. Except for J.K. Rowling.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a writer? Have a Plan B. You need some other kind of job that will pay the bills while you are learning the craft and breaking in (which takes on average 10 years).

Do you think that this is an obtainable career goal? It depends on how hard you are willing to work.

In other news, the magical people with the microphones just finished recording the TWISTED audiobook. I’m not sure when it will be released, but I am really looking forward to it.

Safe travels to everyone headed out to the ALA Mid-Winter conference in Seattle. Is anyone blogging from there?

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You asked for it – real life writing process example

Yesterday was a near perfect day. It was cold and snowy so I wrote by the fireplace all day, a mug of coffee in reach. I got in about 7 hours of writing, went to the gym with BH, ran on the treadmill at a decent pace (3.25 miles at a 1% incline in 30:18 minutes, for those of you who care about these things) , stretched, showered, visited my parents, ate leftover turkey soup for dinner, watched half a movie, and was asleep by 10 pm. Seriously – I adore days like that.

Let me tell you how the writing went. I am currently turning Part 2, Draft 3 of my WIP into Part 2, Draft 4. (Draft 4 of Part 1 is finished. It is 163 pages long, so I figure the total book might come in between 300-325 manuscript pages.)

Yesterday’s task was to smooth out the action in chapters 24 – 28, and to polish chapter 24 until it was so tight and bright I could see my face in it. After much jumping back and forth, I felt the pacing was off in the section. In chapters 21 – 23 there are several Very Dramatic Things that happen. Chapters 24 – 28 are kind of a breather, both for the characters and the readers. A fair amount of time passes and there are some subtle and important developments and the character changes her opinions about a few things. In Chapter 29, we again get a Big Honking plot twist that sends life on another wild ride for our main character.

But every time I read through it, something didn’t feel right. The character’s motivation was a little off – I figured that out by my second cup of coffee. That could be fixed by clarifying some of her dialog and giving a few more peeks into her head. But that wasn’t enough…. what wasn’t working?

Revision is a pain in the butt, no question about it. It is also a necessary part of writing. You need that flash of inspiration, sure, but (for me at least) if I don’t revise and hone that flash, it is wasted. In early drafts, I often throw in way too many characters, details and (in this case and in the case of FEVER 1793) too much historical research. This tends to make the book bloated and uncomfortable, like eating too much junk food.

I find it helpful to ask myself – at every scene – “what happens to the rest of the story if I throw this out?” If the answer is “Not much” than it is time to reach for the delete key.

After close examination, and a good lunch, I realized that Chapter 27 was a total waste of time. It was a talking-heads chapter in which my Main Character and someone else stand around (in a dynamic location – very cool – I hated cutting that) and talktalktalktalk – no action at all, no true furthering of the plot. So I threw out the entire chapter and renumbered everything else.

By the time we left for the gym, chapter 24 was in really good shape. Getting rid of 27 allowed me to see more clearly what had to happen in 24-26. Today’s goal in to rewrite Chapter 25 (minimum goal) and to rewrite 25 & 26 (maximum goal).

That’s the way it works in my head.