It’s the start of the year, so it’s time for yearly anticipated lists! There are tons around already, but here’s one of mine:
Anticipated Books for 2015
4
2014 in Review – the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Here it is, a big 2014 in review post. 2014 has been a hell of a year, in great and terrible ways, across most axes of my life. It is a year that will not soon be forgotten, that’s for damned sure.
The Good
Three New Books
I had three new book releases this year, all in ebook and audio, and one in trade paperback (my first print release). That’s pretty freaking amazing. If I’d accomplished nothing else in 2014, this would still be a win. I’d had one book out each of 2012 and 2013, so jumping up to three book releases was a huge step for me and my writing career.
Those three books, in case you’re new to the Mike-verse, are:
Attack the Geek: A Ree Reyes Side-Quest – a long novella in the Ree Reyes/Geekomancy series. It’s short, action-and-character-driven.
Shield and Crocus: A superhero epic fantasy set in a city built among the bones of a titan. It’s my attempt to combine my favorite parts of the New Weird and Superhero genres.
The Younger Gods: A supernatural thriller starring the one moral son in a family of sociopathic sorcerers who want to bring on the apocalypse.
Writing Breakthroughs
In addition to releasing new books, I was also writing new books. I wrote Hexomancy, the third Ree Reyes novel, as well as revising the releases for this year. I also wrote three novellas in a new series which I should be able to talk publicly about very soon *plotty fingers*. All of these were written very quickly (for me). I wrote the first draft of Hexomancy (72k words) in a month, which was a total process breakthrough for me. When I finished that draft, I was exhausted, depleted, but totally excited. The major question I had was this: Can I do it again? Or was this an aberration?
Then, in about six weeks from the very end of October through the first week in December, I wrote another 70k ish words for the rough drafts of the three novellas. That’s not nearly as fast as the Hexomancy draft, but this was a new series as opposed to a series I’ve been writing for multiple years. If I can consistently produce at the 70k in 6 weeks rate? That would be a total game changer for my writing career.
Outlining
One of the reasons why I was able to pull of these strong production schedules is that this is the year I made a major move along the Outliner/Pantser continuum. Thanks to books like 2K to 10K by Rachel Aaron, the videos/tutorials from the folks at the Self-Publishing Podcast, and Mary Robinette Kowal’s Writing on the Fast Track class, I changed my outlining and pre-production process, giving myself a much clearer outline to work from, as well as learning how to design more of the story ahead of time so that my first-drafting time was more focused on moving forward and less on having to stop and figure out what to do next. I’m still refining my pre-production process, trying to figure out what parts of the world and story I need to have at least penciled in before drafting begins. And considering the production schedule I’ve set for 2015, I’m going to need all of the help I can give myself.
Conventions
In addition to tons of writing, I went to a lot of conventions. Eleven of them, in fact. About half were for work, half were on my own as a writer. I met a bunch of cool people, connected with fans, plotted with fellow authors and with my Angry Robot peeps, sold a bunch of books at the consumer shows, and decided to expand my writing career into comics.
Also, I was nominated for a Hugo Award as part of the Skiffy and Fanty Show, which is amazing. We didn’t win, but getting to participate in the pomp of the Hugo Awards as a nominee was a total delight.
In those eleven conventions, learned a lot about what makes conventions work and not work, what I want out of conventions, and how to approach a convention in a focused way to pursue that agenda.
And More
I’m also planning a wedding, co-hosting a readings series, participating in a podcast, and geeking out as much as I can.
The Bad
I Was an Adventurer Like You, Then I Took An Arrow in the Knee
Well, not an arrow. My fiance and I moved across town to a new (awesome) row-home in February, but there was a price. As a result of a day spent tromping up and down stairs with heavy boxes and crawling over the center console of my car to drive back and forth (you see, the driver’s side door was broken because fun), I did something truly unkind to my knee. Walking more than a half-mile or so hurt, driving hurt, and the moderate-intensity exercise regimin I’d been doing was right out. Even using my treadmill desk as a standing desk hurt.
It sucked. I babied the knee for a while, and it got a fair bit better, but then I went and worked two conventions in two weeks, where I had to be on my feet and energetic for eight or so hours a day. And so when I came back, my mostly-better knee had gotten a lot worse. So I went to the doctor, I got an MRI, etc. And it turns out I’ve got a nice little bone spur on my knee that scrapes the tendons as I walk and move.
Sweet. No, wait, the other thing.
Anyway, I buckled down and went through a couple of months of physical therapy, which was incredibly helpful (I know know the terror and marvel of the foam roller. Oh, foam roller, my most hateful friend). I can drive more easily now, but it still hurts. I can use my treadmill desk again in a limited capacity, which is excellent. I’m hoping in 2015 I’ll be able to expand what I do for exercise and get back into some historical martial arts or tango, but it looks like the bone spur isn’t going anywhere unless I want to go get surgery, which I’d rather avoid if I can manage with PT and smart self-care.
The Ugly
The Summer of My Discontent
The knee thing was bad. What was worse is how summer went with my day job. Our owners decided to put the whole company up for sale, but we weren’t allowed to talk about it at all, under threat of losing our jobs. Which meant I spent most of the summer worrying about whether I was going to lose my job and having very little control over much of anything.
That was not fun. In fact, it was pretty miserable. For a lot of reasons.
Luckily, we found a buyer, we’re no longer beholden to the old owners, and the company is back, with grand plans for 2015, and my quality of life at the job is way better, and will be even better when our publishing program resumes in March.
Takeaways
So, that’s a lot. A lot of good, some not-so-good, and many lessons.
Here are my big takeaways from the year:
- Discipline and planning have a direct relationship to my speed of production.
- Some separation between work and my personal life is good, even in a job I love.
- Conventions are fun, but they require a plan just like every other part of the business.
- Surprisingly, I am mortal, and I need to take care of myself and listen to my body.
Looking Forward to 2015
Where 2014 was a big year in writing and life, 2015 is promising to be even bigger. I’ve got a lot of work planned to be completed in 2015, including some very exciting stuff. I’m going to get married in 2015 to the coolest, smartest, funniest woman I know, and we’re throwing (two?) parties to celebrate that marriage with friends and loved ones. And there’s a ton of books and movies and comics and TV I’m excited about enjoying over the next year.
2014, you’ve been instructive in a bunch of different ways.
Roll on 2015.
The Content Wars Come to Publishing – KU and Subscriptions
or Veteran of a Thousand Content Wars
We’re well and properly in the era of The Content Wars in the US entertainment industry – internet music subscription services like Spotify and Pandora, but also into TV/film with start-ups like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon moving into the content-generation business, all-you-can-watch services that gain market share by having the best selection and supporting both the “I want to watch something” and “I want to watch this specific thing” audiences. Subscription services jockey for exclusive content, either by out-bidding one another for partnerships with distributors or by bringing in people to generate exclusive content.
The result? Unparalleled access for consumers, but for *comprehensive* access, we end up paying out several times. I can watch Community on Hulu, but I need Netflix if I want to watch the new street-level Marvel shows (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, etc.). And I need HBO to watch Game of Thrones, and Amazon Prime to watch more of Chris Carpenter’s. And many of us are still paying for cable access, and then add on these subscription services.
Publishing
The Content Wars have already been waging in publishing – one has to look no further than Amazon and Hachette’s multi-month impasse, resulting in diminished or non-existent access to Hachette content, in-service diminishing of available content, with the service specifically directing attention away from Hachette content to content from providers they were on better terms with. And before that, we had B&N’s impasse with Simon & Schuster, where new S&S books were passed entirely by the chain in many cases, completely tanking the sales of many books that launched during that window.
And now, the subscription model has come to publishing in a bigger way, with Kindle Unlimited making a lot of noise, though it was beat to market by Oyster and Scribd. Libraries have long served as a way for readers to get access to a large amount of content at a single price (usually free-though-you-pay-for-it-with-your-taxes).
But in the last week, there’s been some more chatter about Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s subscription service. The inciting incident is this article on the New York Times, from David Streitfield. (Looking at Streifield’s previous Amazon articles shows some Anti-Amazon slant, but in this article, I think he’s dead-on).
Former SFWA president and Dude Who Knows A Lot About Publishing John Scalzi talked a bit about KU on his blog, and identified one of my major concerns about Kindle Unlimited: it creates a Zero Sum Game for Authors:
In the Kindle Unlimited scheme, the pool of money available to authors is strictly limited by a corporation whose purposes, short- and long-term, are not necessarily aligned with the authors’, and every time someone with a Kindle Unlimited account reads another author’s work, every other authors’ share of the pot becomes that much smaller. In the traditional publishing model, it’s in my interest to encourage readers to read other authors, because people who read more buy more books — the proverbial tide lifts all boats. In the Kindle Unlimited model, the more authors you and everyone else reads, the less I can potentially earn. And ultimately, there’s a cap on how much I can earn — a cap imposed by Amazon, or whoever else is in charge of the “pot.” As an author, I won’t be able to ever earn more than Amazon wants me to (especially if Amazon requires my title to be exclusive).
Personally, I think Amazon has really flubbed this one. The implementation is wonky (that’s a technical term, folks) – KU borrows seem to count more than ebook sales in the algorithm (anecdotally if not officially confirmed), which skews Amazon’s much-obsessed-over ranking-based discovery engine. I also think they’ve overplayed their hand by limiting KU to KDP Select (and its exclusivity). With the borrow rate notably below the author share for a $2.99 book (where AMZ’s preferred pricing share kicks in, giving authors 70% of retail instead of 35%), all that we’re going to see is more flooding at the $.99 price point as authors try to make back money by gaming the KU system.
And beside all of this, the way KU is working is damaging AMZ’s otherwise-largely massive favor with indie authors, which generate a huge amount of passive income for AMZ retail. Amazon wants indie authors to favor their KDP platform, either as first-among-equals or as an exclusive partner. KU undermines that status for many, though I’m sure there are some authors making a killing in KU – there are always winners with a new system like this, writers whose works are just the right kind of thing for the tastes of the majority of Kindle Unlimited users. By marrying KU access to KDP exclusivity for indies (save for the small minority of indies who are such a large draw that they can command better terms), Amazon is moving the goal posts and forcing authors to chose between anti-competitive exclusivity and access to where Amazon looks to be moving their market.
At the end of the day, so much of this comes down to controlling the territory. The Content Wars, from Hulu/Amazon/Oyster’s perspective, are all about making yourself indispensable, about becoming a Utility – something you pay for every month because you need it to live the way you prefer. Amazon wins when consumers do all or almost all of their reading on Amazon – if your consumer never has a reason to leave your walled garden, they’ll get everything there, and you control what they consume, how they consume it, and what they’re advertised along the way.
Another possible problem with subscription services is that while subscribers might end up reading more books overall, they might pay less for those books – with more of their reading on subscriptions. Oyster/Scribd/KU rely on the gamble that on the whole, enough subscribers will read less than their subscription prices’ $$ worth of books in a month, so that the service can be profitable.
For a $9.99 subscription, that means reading less than $20 worth of books in a month, or 2-3 books a month (presuming that the publisher’s share is modeled on a 50% WHS model). Whether that’s viable remains to be seen. The users who would be most attracted to this model, I’d think, would be super-users, the kind of readers who tear through 10 romance novels a month. But what these subscriptions need to be solvent are casual readers who like the access, the idea of being able to read whatever they want, even if ‘whatever they want’ is actually a tiny percentage of all books currently on the market.
Worst-Case Scenario
Here’s my worst-case scenario, which I don’t think is likely but is very possible:
1) Subscription service(s) become the majority platform for ebook discovery and consumption.
2) Said subscription service (s) pay based on a fixed pool, where retail price or comparative value of books is erased in the process of paying out creators.
#2 is basically the Spotify model for books, which is what Kindle Unlimited is already using. The payout per-borrow is better than Spotify, to be sure, but it’s already trending down from where it started.
The Content Wars are nastiest, from what I can tell, in music, especially for creators. iTunes is the biggest dog in digital music sales, and if you’re not on iTunes, Pandora, or Spotify, your discovery chances are incredibly low (YouTube is your game, in that case).
Spotify and Pandora pay fractions of pennies per play. Imagine your favorite author getting paid $.50 for a read of their brand-new hardcover novel. An industry-dominant subscription model paying on a pool determined by fiat would be disastrous for authors. Consumers might win, and whoever owns and operates that subscription would win, but again, without competition, content providers lose a lot of leverage – they need to be in the only game in town (or one of the only games in town – a small oligopsony is almost as bad as monopsony), unless they’re big enough (like Taylor Swift) to pull their content and use other distribution models.
Kindle Unlimited is not nearly a Spotify, but it’s the closest thing to it. Amazon stands to benefit from making KU more like Spotify, as long as they can keep enough content in the program and deliver a stronger user experience to edge out Oyster and Scribd and therefore control the subscription market the way they control the Ebook market (in the US that is – other territories have a different market share distribution).
Summary
I believe subscription services can be beneficial for publishing, including authors. Oyster’s model is, I think, a good one. They pay full royalties for each time that a user reads beyond the 10% mark in a book, and for now, the publishers that work with them are mostly offering backlist to the service. This means that Oyster can serve as another way to monetize the backlist and get consumers caught up so that they then get excited to pay full price for the newest book.
And really, all of this is still early days for subscriptions, both in publishing and in TV/film and music. I predict that we’ll see metaphorical blood shed in 2015 over these subscription services, but I hope that it’s not the blood of creators.
What do you all think? Do you use Kindle Unlimited, Scribd, or Oyster? And for my fellow creators, what are your thoughts on subscriptions? What would a good subscription service look like to you?
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter.
This simple statement shouldn’t be controversial, but the events of the past weeks have made it painfully clear to me that a disturbing number of people, people in law enforcement positions, the legal profession, and around the country simply do not believe in that statement.
In just one of many irregularities in the Grand Jury hearing to decide whether to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, the prosecutor *failed to ask for an indictment.* IANAL, but my lawyer friends tell me this is kind of a big deal. Also, Darren Wilson was allowed to testify, and for hours, without being cross-examined, which is also highly irregular for a grand jury hearing.
One of the best decisions I’ve made in the last few months was to take a suggestion (I believe from Daniel Jose Older) to follow reporter Shaun King, who writes for the Daily Kos.
King has written the following reports (among many others) about three of the most recent police killings of black people in the USA.
On the killing of Eric Garner.
On the killing of Michael Brown.
Or maybe watch this Daily Show segment:
The Civil Rights movement is not over. It was never over. But it is back with a strained, but powerful voice, with protests in 137 cities last week, and more coming.
Many of you are as incensed as I am, or more, probably more. I can only be outraged and ashamed on behalf of my country and the people who are supposed to protect its citizenry. I don’t know what it’s like to be black in America. I haven’t lived it, and even reading about the lived experiences of black people in the country, I don’t really know what it was like. But I see the pain on people’s faces, read what people write about what it is like, and I want to do something.
I need to do something.
Black Lives Matter.
Here are some sites of groups that are organizing protests and direct actions:
https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatter
http://fergusonresponse.tumblr.com/
If the USA wants to prove that it believes that black lives matter, we need to stand up and do something. I’ve been RTing like it’s my job throughout this, and trying spend more time listening and using my platform megaphone to magnify the voices of black people rather than drowning them out with my own voice.
So what am I doing about it?
My main answer to these issues of systemic injustice is to work it into my writing. One more white body and white voice at a protest may not tip the scale as much as one more white writer writing diversely and supporting diverse works and creators.
The way I see it, there are two main approaches in terms of writing to support diversity.
1) Write the world as it is, to show people who do not know or who refuse to see. Show how life actually is for people in marginalized and threatened positions. This is harder to do from the outside. I can’t know what it’s like to be a black man living in America, but neither can I know what it’s like to be a wizard, and I’ve written plenty of wizards. These are not the same, but it’s important, I think, to remember that fiction writers, especially writes in the literature of the fantastic, that we are constantly writing outside our own experience. But getting it wrong when it comes to writing diversely can have pronounced, real-world effects, can hurt people, can propagate dangerous stereotypes.
2) Write the world you’d like to see. Write worlds where black lives do matter, where the systems work, where systemic racism has been ended, or is being overthrown, or slices within a world where things already are better, worlds untouched by these problems, to give breathing room, space for safe escape and adventure. A world that says “Don’t worry about that for a moment, let’s have some fun and take a break.”
I spend more time on strategy #2 than #1, but I hope to do better at both, do better all the time, as I become a better writer and a more whole and compasionate human being. I try t write diversely because representation isn’t just about the pleasure of seeing yourself in narrative. It’s about narrative acknowledging that you exist, that you are a valid person, that you deserve existence. That there is space for you in this world. When generations worth of abuse and violence looms over your head, it is my hope that having more stories where black lives matter can help change the conversation. That stories can fight stereotypes, can provide more models for readers of a world that does better, of black people as people, instead of the Big Black Buck or Thug stereotypes propagated by a white supremacist system.
We can also support diverse writers, promote diverse voices in publishing – not just writers but editors, designers, artists.
All of this is connected. The killing of Michael Brown is connected to Daniel Handler’s racist comments overshadowing Jackie Woodson’s National Book Award Win. These are all manifestations of a racist, anti-black culture.
So this is me, lifting my voice in an attempt to follow suit with existing actions, to write in a way that moves the conversation and our cultures towards sympathy, empathy, and justice. And along the way, I’m trying to spread the news as written largely by people who this systemic injustice threatens most directly, using my privilege to help propagate their message, so that they may be heard by more people, that their voices build momentum, as do their actions.
Black Lives Matter.
UPDATE: In the 8ish hours since I posted this, I’ve learned of another shooting death of an unarmed black person by a police officer: The note about the officer’s immediate verbal response makes me thing that it was a mistake based on an in-the-moment judgement call by the officer, but Rumain Brisbon, the victim, is still dead, mistake or not.
Worldbuilders Critique
I’m participating in the Worldbuilders campaign again this year, offering a 10,000 word critique AND a Skype consultation about the manuscript and submission package, all in one. My hope is to give both wide-ranging and deep feedback for a writer looking to get a competitive edge for their novel submission.
You can see the auction here. Please do click over to the other Worldbuilders auctions, as there’s plenty of awesome stuff up for bid, and it’s a great cause.
NaNovellaWriMo
My NaNoWriMo efforts are off to a great start, especially considering that I started fast-drafting the last week of October.
From a 4,000 word head-start, I finished the first draft of the first of what I hope will be three novellas fast-drafted between the end of October and the beginning of December.
Once again, I’m using all of the tricks possible from my How to Write a Novel In a Month post, just on three connected novellas instead of one novel (hence NaNovellaWriMo). These novellas are all in a series, part of a grand design I hope to be able to talk about shortly. It’s a fun challenge to be writing at a shorter length, but not stand-alone stories, instead using smaller chunks of story that are connected.
Thankfully, I’ve already been working on episodic writing with comics work, and I’ve got a solid overall plan for this project. I finished the rough draft of the first novella last Friday, and started work on the second, which will probably be a tad longer.
My daily wordcount goal is 2500 words, which usually breaks down to two chunks of 1250 words, which I can often hit in about an hour of drafting, barring major distractions. I’m giving myself a break on the wordcount goals for WFC, since I’ll be otherwise occupied, though I’m hoping to get some writing in over the weekend regardless.
Something else I’m doing this time is what I’m calling Development Diaries – short notes each day about how the writing went that day – challenges, things that worked and didn’t work, the ways that daily life impacted my productivity, and so on. It’s a good way to capture the day-to-day experiences of writing, and I hope it will be interesting to readers when I get to share the diaries later on.
But for now, back to writing!
World Fantasy 2014
This weekend I’ll be down in DC for the World Fantasy Convention (abbreviated WFC).
WFC was the second F/SF convention I ever attended, back in 2006 in Austin. I knew almost no one, but was very helpfully schmoozed around the convention by my friends. I’ve been several times since then, and it’s become one of my favorite cons. Being small, it’s not so great for meeting readers – instead, it’s more like the summer camp reunion – a relax atmosphere, but with a lot of colleagues and friends all in one place at one time, without the bustle of WorldCon or a Comic-Con or all of that jazz.
Programming is very light at WFC, with each person usually only on one panel or reading slot. I tend to go for the readings, and to then hit a lot of other readings. I’m a sucker for that live experience.
My reading slot this year is on Thursday at 4PM (in the Fairfax room), so I hope that folks will have settled in enough to come and say hello.
Otherwise, you’ll be able to find me wandering around, at the bar or cafe, and many places between. I’ll be at the banquet on Sunday, cheering on the nominees, especially my dear friend Marie Brennan, up for Best Novel with her excellent book A Natural History of Dragons. Otherwise, hit me up on Twitter to say hello.
Narrative Praxis is the Name of My Muse Cover Band
In another life, I was an academic. More precisely, I completed a M.A. in Folklore Studies from the University of Oregon, and then spent several years applying to PhD. programs in Media Studies, Radio, Television Film, and more — with a proposed dissertation topic investigating the mainstreaming of geek culture. I completed my M.A. in 2007, and applied to programs for the cohorts of 2007-2010. I got on the wait list at a couple of schools, but was never offered a position in a cohort.
So now, in 2014, when superhero movies dominate the big screens and are taking over the smaller screens, when Game of Thrones is a toast of the town, and SF Dystopias have helped cement the strength of YA literature as a cultural juggernaut, I can look back at those programs that rejected me and wonder what might have been. Was I too early? Did I see the wave because I was inside the subject group, but pushed for it too early for the academy to see it? Probably.
But here’s the thing: By *not* pursuing a PhD, I saved myself possibly over a hundred thousand dollars in student loans, and have ended up with a burgeoning pair of careers in SF/F publishing as a professional and as an author.
And my scholarship? It hasn’t gone away. Not getting into a PhD program didn’t quash my academic interest in SF/F and cultural studies. Instead, I focus on praxis.
Narrative Praxis.
Praxis Wordcloud, from Infed.org
What do I mean by narrative praxis? Simply put, praxis is putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to a theory or worldview. For me, Narrative Praxis is putting my scholarly and cultural perspectives into my fiction.
The Ree Reyes books examine bricolage, textual poaching, my own idea of narrative farming, and more. They literalize the metaphor of “we tell ourselves stories to learn how to deal with the world,” and more.
For lack of a PhD appointment, I turned my scholarship into prose. I’m far from the only person to write fiction infused with critical theory, and I’m far from the best at it, since my focus in the Ree Reyes books is more on the fun than on the theory, though they are far from mutually exclusive. My notion of narrative praxis is directly informed by the work of several of my colleagues – both scholars and writers themselves – Alyc Helms, and Darja Malcolm-Clarke, who have both masterfully incorporated critical theory into their prose works.
Shield and Crocus takes my thoughts about the New Weird and Superhero genres and puts them into dialogue with one another, showing how one genre can shore up the weaknesses of the other. But I do it on the back of an action-adventure story. And instead of possibly a few hundred academics reading my essay on how the New Weird and Superhero genres have interesting contrasts that could speak usefully to one another, I *show* how those genres can speak to one another by making the culture that others can comment on. Not that scholarship is not cultural work – it is. But I’m using the age-old trick of putting my argument into a story to make it both more digestible and less direct.
And a new project I’m working on (the one that I’m fast-drafting right now) is applying my love of narrative genres and the relationship between genre tropes and assumptions and our social lives to fiction.
Takeaway
I don’t have a PhD. I don’t get introduce myself as Dr. Underwood. There are days I wish I had, and I could.
But I’m still a scholar, and (occasionally) a teacher. I have a platform for sharing my views on the world, my praises and my critiques. And I couldn’t be happier to be in a place where I can change the world with stories.
Literary Off-Roading
Yesterday, I resumed work on the first of a series of novellas. I had around 4K already banked, and I’m shooting (agressively) to have three 25,000 word novellas drafted by January. It’s about the speed that I wrote Hexomancy in April/May, with the added challenge of being three stories instead of one (though they are the same series, and follow sequentially).
That’s the context. Here’s the blog-worthy thing:
Today, I went massively off-plan. Like, ‘oh, the main guest star is this character, not that character!’ off-book, including creating a whole different backstory for that guest, which then called for completely re-writing Act Three to suit the new character.
That’s…scary, to be honest. I loved the new approach, and I think it is very promising. Generally, when my subconscious suggests an alternative plot approach or lobbies to promote a character from secondary character to guest-star, or extra to secondary, I try to listen. I’m generally a very conscious writer – I think ‘What makes sense to happen here?’ or ‘How should this work?’ and then answer that question for myself. I don’t often rely on ‘inspiration’ to come along and deliver a story idea while I’m pounding the keys.
So when inspiration comes along, I take those gifts very seriously, because it generally means that my brain has figured out how to tell the story in an even cooler fashion, and that I should listen, using my conscious skills to incorporate the idea given to me by my unconscious.
I do this all the time, in little ways. Even with my mostly-outlining style, I try to leave room for my subconscious to contribute – set dressing (both physical and worldbuilding nuggets), character inflection, and more.
For me, character voice almost always has to emerge in the writing. I blame my RPG background – just like when I’m gaming, I have to inhabit characters for a while, spend time with thm, before I can really lock down their voice.
I think the change will make the story stronger, but it does mean that four days into drafting, I now need to re-outline the rest of the story (I’m at about the 35-40% mark), which involves completely re-working the plan for the back half of Act Two and all of Act Three.
If this were a novel, I’d probably be in more trouble, going off-book in a major way only 9,000 words in. But for a novella, I think I’ll do fine. And if it goes poorly, I’ll only have to fix a 25,000 word chunk of story, as opposed to 100,000 words.
What will this big change lead to? Only time, and more writing, will tell.
How to Write a Novel in a Month
Hi folks! Since NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, I thought I’d re-post and expand on my piece from earlier this year, How to Write a Novel in Four Weeks.
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I wrote the first draft of Hexomancy, the third Ree Reyes novel, in a month and a day (April 14th to May 15th). The draft was 72,326 words, and it was written in twenty-eight days of production (I gave myself Saturdays off to recover, and I had a couple of low-production days).
Hexomancy was written twice as quickly as any novel I’ve written before, and I think the first draft was stronger that any other, as well, partially thanks to the accumulation of experience, but also due to the power of momentum. After the first couple of days, I was averaging 2,800 to 3,300 words a day in two sessions a day of around 45 minutes to 60 minutes each.
Here are some factors that went in to my being able to write a complete, if short, draft in just over a month of calendar time.
1) Hexomancy was the fourth Ree Reyes story, following two novels and a novella. By now, I know the characters, they have pre-existing relationships that I can leverage into lots of tension and sparks, making interpersonal scenes zoom along fairly well. I had a clear vision of what the big concept for the novel was, what the major sub-plot would be, and what the big, explosive ending would be. Those all got me very excited to write the novel, so I started with a ton of energy, writing 15K words in the first week.
2) The series is designed to be light, energetic, and action-packed urban fantasy. Much of the setting is our own world, and most of the rest of the setting I’d already created in previous books in the series. This means I didn’t have to do much world development on top of what I already had, which might slow me down as I have to create whole new systems or settings before moving on with a scene. I broke down the new settings during the outline stage, so I knew enough about each of them to flesh them out on the fly as I wrote. If I were writing sociological SF that was light on action and long on politics, I don’t think I’d have been writing anywhere near as fast. But the important thing was that I was passionate about the story, the characters, and I knew what kind of experience I wanted the reader to have with the story, so I could write to that aesthetic.
3) Most importantly (for me), I outlined the whole novel before I started writing. This was a chapter-by-chapter outline, though some of my chapters were more like beats, as I discovered going through and seeing places where a beat was a chapter, or a chapter turned out to be just a beat. I’ve been outlining more and more for my work, between reading Rachel Aaron’s 2K to 10K, following Chuck Wendig’s TerribleMinds, and perhaps most importantly, taking the Writing on the Fast Track class with Mary Robinette Kowal, which focused on writing fast by outlining and training for better discipline.
4) Writing quickly meant that I always had the story in mind. I was always excited about the story, even on the days when I consciously stepped away to relax and let myself recovery. But I never spent too much time away from the novel, writing six days a week, usually twice a day. And I always left myself clues at the end of any session as to what was going to happen next, by leaving the outline/beats at the bottom of my Scrivener document. That meant that whenever I started a session, I could take three to five minutes to read what I’d last written and to remind myself what was coming next. And from there, it was off to the races.
5) I used a writing soundtrack – this is something I have done for years, and it helps me get into the right frame of mind. If you’re curious, here’s the playlist I used for Hexomancy.