Category: FB
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Getting sort of tired of all the oppression-based critique of narrative art
Have been feeling a little disenchanted lately with the literary world lately. Every book and every movie and every television show seems to get judged according to the same analysis of power relations. If a book has an orthodox (for the reviewer) view of all the possible power relations (i.e. it acknowledges every form of…
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Turned in my revision yesterday. It’s a complete rewrite. Feeling trepidation
Yesterday I turned in the revision on my book. Now that I’ve (sort of) hit my deadline, I feel free to reveal that even though my editor gave me five months to do this work, I spent the first three finishing a novel for adults, so I’ve only been working on this revision for two…
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Coming down to the wire on revisions
The next draft of my book is due to my editor on August 1st. I am working hard and expect to make the deadline. It’s been a long process, but I feel guardedly optimistic about these revisions. They’ve made the book smaller and more personal, refocusing it on a handful of relationships, and I’ve been…
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How much work is enough?
One common thread that runs through stories about really successful people is how hard they work. Now it’s possible to overstate this. There are plenty of successful people who do not work hard. We’ve had at least three presidents in the last thirty years who didn’t seem to work very much at all, and whatever…
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Revisions revisions revisions revisions
My mood continues to bounce all over the place in accordance to how my revisions are doing on any given day. Today I’m doing well, but that’s mostly because I haven’t really started yet. Sigh. Avoidance behavior. I’ve learned over the last year though to pay attention to my avoidance instincts, because they usually indicate…
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Revisions continue apace
After several weeks of not feeling good about my revisions, I am unexpectedly, today, feeling much better. The problem I think is simply that I’ve grown a lot as a writer in the year since I last worked on this book. The book isn’t at fault. The book is still good. I mean it got…
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Revision is very important, but I don’t think it makes books more likely to sell
Have been feeling a little stir-crazy at home, so I’ve done what I hardly ever do, and I’ve repaired to a local cafe (the Atlas Cafe on 20th and Florida, in case I’ve any stalkers) to drink coffee and try to get some writing done. But then it turned out that my computer was out…
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Writing is going really well
I’m experiencing that loss of motivation that comes whenever the writing is going really well. It’s such a rare event that I want to slow down and enjoy it. Was just thinking today that right now I’m working on my eleventh novel. That’s definitely something. I wouldn’t say that I have absolutely no idea how to…
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I try not to beat myself up over procrastination
Some of the things I write about here are more advanced-stage writer stuff that might be dangerous in the hands of an apprentice or journeyman (journeyperson?) writer, and this is perhaps one of those topics. Because I know that people often procrastinate for years, or even a lifetime, when it comes to writing. In the…
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The three things that cause stories to stall out
Am stalled today on writing, because there’s just this one thing I don’t know. I have these two characters interacting, and I don’t know how it turns out. The thing is, you can always just write down some crap. One pulls out a gun and shoots the other one. They break up. They’re mean to…