- There's a wide-ranging discussion over in Justine's comments section, leaping off from a recent NPR piece about the writing quality in Twilight and whether that should matter since it's for teens (paraphrasing). Tansy weighs in with a long post of her own, well worth your time, about the importance of reading bad books.
- Sarah Prineas considers fairy tale retellings and what makes them work (or not); comments excellent here too. See also: Deva Fagan's post.
- Speaking of fairy tales, there's a fascinating piece in the NYT on Bluebeard in light of a new film version. My own favorite version of Bluebeard is probably Greg Frost's brilliant, woefully underappreciated Fitcher's Brides.
- Sarah Weinman looks at authors developing new--and successful--strategies around e-books and other publishing models at Daily Finance.
- Oh, and the Washington Post really did the best version of the Obama at Prairie Lights story.
- Jim Hines surveyed first-time authors about their experiences breaking in; here are the results.
- Richard on I Spy, following Robert Culp's death. (I must admit to missing the boat on this one; but there's always DVD.)
- Salon's definitive 10 time travel movies. Good list overall, but THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE? And when director Brad Anderson's Happy Accidents, one of my own favorite movies OF ALL TIME and one of the best modern examples of the screwball sensibility around, is tragically omitted? For SHAME.
- Monica watched Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars (with a title like that...) so we never have to.
- Make sure you check out Alan Gratz's blog this week for fantastic posts full of excellent pics from his trip to Japan.
- Finally, a list of 50 outrageously successful people who initially failed.
March 2010
March 29, 2010
March 27, 2010
::drumroll:: Margo Lanagan, Everybody!
As a reader, there are few better moments than the first time you discover the work of a writer you immediately love and know you'll follow for years to come. Reading the first story in the short story collection Black Juice, "Singing My Sister Down," was that moment for me with Margo Lanagan (and I know for a bunch of others). I've yet to be disappointed, and don't expect to. Margo tells brave, wise, outrageously beautiful stories filled with terrible, wonderful things. Her novel Tender Morsels (Amazon | Indiebound) is one of those books I know I will return to over the years, finding something new every time. All by way of saying I'm happy to host the final stop on Margo's blog tour for its paperback edition. Now, as usual, I asked for process porn--I know you all love it so--but instead what Margo has written is an essay about having various editions of one's books and, also, about process. (It's a difficult topic to escape*.) So, welcome, Margo!
NOTE: First three U.S. commenters will be sent a copy from the publisher!
Gwenda, I know you usually ask people to talk about their writing process, especially for the book in question, but honestly, I’ve written and talked so much process-porn about Tender Morsels, there is really nothing new to say - and I want you to have new stuff!
So, let’s talk about the weirdness that is new editions. It was pretty weird for me to have two editions of Tender Morsels come out (US hardback and Australian adult) in October 2008, and then two more hardback editions published in the UK (by David Fickling as YA and as adult by Jonathan Cape) in July last year. I don’t publish a whole bunch, and I’m used to maybe a new cover every couple of years, so to have four different covers for the same book felt a bit excessive (in a wonderful way, of course!). And to watch the different reactions to the book when it was marketed as YA and as adult was interesting, especially the very strong reaction both for and against it as a YA book in the UK.
Now, with the fuss over challenging-YA-book-wins-World-Fantasy-Award well and truly died down, it’s time for the Knopf paperback edition to come out, and for the novel to be published in Australia as YA (by Allen & Unwin) - both of these with gorgeous new covers, of course. And soon the UK paperbacks will be out, too. So the thing proliferates, wrapping itself in cover after cover like a vaudeville actor undergoing costume changes.
This is mild stuff; this is very small beer. I don’t know how really-properly-famous-bestsellery-authors keep track of all their different editions - they must have assistants to remind them exactly which and with whom and for whom and when etc. Especially prolific authors, who would by this time have published something else and be just about finished the book after that, plus have backlist reissues happening all the time - how do they even remember what it was like to put that story, two books ago, together? I mean, I can remember the writing of Tender Morsels, pretty much month by month, throughout 2007, but that was because it was my first novel for 10 years, and a struggle. For a novel that flows easily, that just falls out of you (as this next one of mine - due end March - seems to be doing, yay!), what’s to grip onto?
Because the process itself is kind of mysterious; if the writing is going well, it kind of feels as if the story is happening because you’ve stepped to one side and are letting it happen, rather than that you’re bodily pushing it along. There are not many points where you step in and make conscious decisions. I don’t, anyway. I kind of play around at the start (with both stories and novels - oh look, here I am talking process! how’d that happen?), then when I feel confident enough of the mood, general direction and some of the characters, I do step in and make a kind of a plan, keeping it fairly squishy so it’s not predictable enough to take all the surprises out of the writing. And then, for a short story I fix my eye on the end point and let the rest happen; for a novel I kind of wallow, and try to keep the process playful and not-a-chore and not close off too many possibilities. I’m not a highly technical, front-brain kind of writer, I’m more grunty and instinctive; all the clever, connecting-type stuff happens at a subconscious level and surprises me as much as it does my readers, how it all seems to work together at the end!
So, looking back and talking about process (especially from such a distance) feels to me somehow wrong-headed, because although, yes, there’s a lot of head involved, the main direction of the process is not happening anywhere that can be seen. Happily fumbling around in the dark for the next bit of dialogue is not really a spectator sport, and neither is screwing up your face because you got a scene wrong, and going for a brisk walk and watching the alternative path through that scene unroll before you. Nobody who doesn’t already do that habitually is going to understand what you mean when you try to describe it; and anyone who does is quite happily doing their own fumbling and striding about, and probably doesn’t need your reassurance.
Yes, so, new editions? Pretty, but a little puzzling for the author who once was inside that story, engineering its many possible resolutions, and is now firmly outside the single version that survived, and up to her ears in something else, a setting with a whole different climate and shape, a group of entirely characters with a new set of tortures to undergo.
New editions of Tender Morsels? I love them all, and I still stand by the story inside all those covers - I think it’s knobbly and meaty and interesting, and I still love all the magic bits. I hope the new paperback and YA editions find their way even farther out into the world, and that more and more people get to chew on them.
Visit Margo's previous stops:
(*I think every writer feels a bit suspect talking about process--we're storytellers, after all--which is one of the things that makes it so fascinating for other writers to read. And, really, it all circles back around in one way or another, since without the making, there's nothing.)
March 25, 2010
March 19, 2010
March 15, 2010
March 11, 2010
March 10, 2010
::drumroll:: Varian Johnson, Everybody!
I'm delighted to welcome Varian Johnson today as part of the blog tour for his WONDERFUL new novel, Saving Maddie, and share an essay on his writing process. For those of you who don't know, Varian is sometimes known as the hardest working man in show business, er, or at least one of the hardest working writers I've ever met. (See his recent post over at Justine's for reference.) His last novel My Life as a Rhombus garnered a whole heap of acclaim and I suspect this new one will surpass even that. Saving Maddie is a complicated, exquisitely-executed story about what happens when the girl you had a crush on when you were a kid comes back to town talking about not being into organized religion anymore and scandalizing all the adults around--and you're the preacher's son (oh, and she's also a preacher's kid). Here's Varian on the tough magic employed to create it.
(AND: The first three commenters on this post will win a free ARC!)
The writing process for Saving Maddie
Gwenda asked me to write a bit about my writing process, which would be easy to do, if I had a set process. The only constant in my process is that it takes me a really long time to write a novel (though I’m hoping to be a little quicker on my current work-in-progress). So for this post, I figured I’d focus on the process of writing Saving Maddie, which was just released yesterday.
There was only one thing I knew when I started working on this book—that it would be from a male’s POV. I had just spent the past three years working on My Life as a Rhombus, published by Flux in 2008. The novel, written from a seventeen-year-old girl’s point of view, touched on topics such as sex, pregnancy and abortion, and was emotionally exhausting. In order to keep somewhat sane, I swore I’d never write another girl first-person POV novel, and set off to write my version of a “boy book.”
Process-wise, I usually approach a manuscript thematically: I think about the big questions I am interested in exploring; I think about what I want to discover about the world and myself. Specifically, I found myself thinking a lot about the idea of “saving” someone, both from a religious and an emotional well-being point of view. Really, what does it mean to save someone? Who are we to determine who is or isn’t in need of being saved? And how to do you save someone that has no interest in being “rescued?”Continue reading "::drumroll:: Varian Johnson, Everybody!" »
March 08, 2010
March 02, 2010
GWENDA BOND
A writer on the high wire of life.
Recent Comments