Personal

Upcoming hangouts and chats!

  • I had a guest post at The Qwillery about how I accidentally wrote an urban fantasy.
  • This Friday night I will be chatting with the people in the Ruthless Book Club on a Google+ hangout. It should be a lot of fun, show up if you can!
  • And you can chat with me on Wednesday, May 22nd at 6:30 PM Eastern! – via Shindig
  • And I have other guest blog posts coming up that I will be listing here as they come.

Busy May. Busy busy busy.

Personal

A look into the scary mind of Mur. And some confidence I found.

I’m going to go all stream of consciousness on you right now. Hold on tight.

[Something happened, which I will explain after I discuss the emotions involved.]

  • Huh. That happened. That’s interesting. I should blog about it. It’s a look at the writing life I’ve not experienced before.
  • No, I shouldn’t blog about it because it’s bragging.
  • What the hell is wrong with you? You’re only allowed to blog about your fears and anxieties? You can’t proudly say that you feel good about something? DON’T YOU SEE THAT THIS REACTION IS WRONG IN SO MANY WAYS?
  • …You’re right. 

So here I go.

I was solicited to do a novella. I spent the last week researching and brainstorming, and last night I wrote my outline. As I was writing it, I felt good, it went a lot smoother than any other outline I’d experienced. So i have a character in a setting. What happens to her? What next? What next? What mistakes does she make? What next? How does it end? BOOM- 1000 word outline. Done. LIKE A BOSS. (link NSFW)

I checked it over a couple of times, all the while feeling a slow sinking feeling. This was drivel. It was predictable and weak and trite and lacked any depth at all. They were going to hate it and regret asking me to write for them. They would take my gin away. And my puppy.

Then I had an epiphany. I realized the following things:

  1. The text was predictable because I FREAKING WROTE IT. Of course I knew what was going to happen. The damn thing happened in my head. I knew the beginning, the end, the twists, etc.
  2. It was trite because I had to write it in my own style. I don’t think my own style is exciting just like I don’t think I’m particularly pretty and I think my voice is lousy. This is the same me, same face, same style, that I wake up with and go through my day. Of course it’s trite, contrived, and appallingly boring — to me.
  3. And lack of depth? It’s a freaking OUTLINE. Outlines don’t have depth, as a rule.

So once I remove the watermark of MUR WROTE THIS THEREFORE IT IS SHIT that I place over every story I write, and look at the story as a standalone, it might, you know, be good.

Half an hour later one of the editors contacted me. He really liked it. Mur the gladiator got a THUMBS UP and lives to fight write another day!

So this thing I wrote might actually be OK.
So this thing I wrote might actually be OK.

And the crowd goes wild.

And then Mur stressed about whether she should blog about this newfound confidence.

Personal, Projects

Sequels are hard

I know in your world, my “next book” is The Shambling Guide to New York City. (io9 calls it one of the “astounding summer books not to miss” – and you can preorder it now! – not that I’m squeeing like crazy or anything.) But in my world, I’ve been soaking in the Palmolive of New Orleans and Zoe’s next adventure. I just finished The Ghost Train to New Orleans, the second book in The Shambling Guides.

So many sequels, so little time! Carrie Vaughn's Kitty series, I can only hope The Shambling Guides will last this long.
So many sequels, so little time! I’m on book 4 of Carrie Vaughn’s awesome Kitty series. I can only dream of such a successful series.

Sequels are hard. There are so many things that can go wrong:

  1. The beginning. You have to balance the first chapter carefully to appeal to both new readers and people familiar with the series. If someone just picked up the book, the story must stand on its own while it can’t deny the plot points of previous books. You also don’t want to deluge existing fans with boring backstory that they already know. (Small shoutout to the legendary Liz Hand and the incomparable Jim Kelly and my fellow students at Stonecoast who helped me deal with starting a sequel.) What I eventually did: Picked up one of Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty books and read the first chapter again (I’d read the earlier ones; I’m a fan.) Then I wrote down what happened, roughly, in the chapter. I literally wrote down, “Emotion. Setting detail. Emotion. Backstory nugget. Detail.” This established the character in her emotion, a small piece of setting, and the backstory that put them there. Then I wrote my chapter one using the same broad road map. It helped out a lot.
  2. Sophomore efforts are often weaker than freshman efforts. You can spend years writing a first book, because no one is waiting on you. You submit it, get it rejected, tweak it, then submit again. You constantly polish it. Then, if you get a 2-or-more book deal, the time given to write the sequel(s) is much shorter. Unless you build in ample time for beta readers (I didn’t this time around, except for early chapters I workshopped at Stonecoast), you won’t have the failure/feedback/rewrite step that, while painful, was so important for the first book. You spend years trying to write a book and work toward pro, and then when you get that coveted deal, you realize that often pros are expected to turn a book around a hell of a lot faster than you wrote book 1. What to do: trust in my editor that she will help me make it as strong as possible.
  3. Expectation. Now I know I’m sounding like I’m complaining that my diamond shoes are too tight (that saying is from this scene, not this one), but here is an emotional response that I had to a recent event.
    • Kirkus reviews on SGTNYC: “The hip, knowing and sometimes hysterically funny narrative, interspersed with excerpts from the guide of the title, lurches along in splendid fashion.”
    • Me: “Hot damn! I’m hysterically funny! Yay!” … (1 minute later) “Oh SHIT that means book 2 has to be funny and it’s not funny it’s awful there’s not a damn funny thing in this** oh shit oh shit oh shit!”
    • /me falls down
    • /me cries into the gin
    • What I did? /me takes the compliment and gets over my damn self and writes the damn book.

All of that said, I’m pretty happy with the book, except when a rush of overwhelming fear comes over me and I think it’s absolute crap. But I’m pretty sure I am experiencing a very common feeling*** to being done with a book, so I just tell myself it’s natural and have another cookie.

** I admit that yesterday I wrote a scene that made me laugh out loud, which I figure was a good sign, but still, for someone like me, I suppose any early review of book 1 can paralyze your work on book 2. If someone says something bad, then OH SHIT I AM A SHIT WRITER WORTH SHIT I MAY AS WELL QUIT AND SAY SHIT AGAIN. SHIT. If someone says something good, then OH SHIT I HAVE TO DO IT EVEN BETTER THE SECOND TIME. PRESSURE! PRESSURE! You can’t win. And by you I mean me. Perhaps this has something to do with my own psyche. Huh.

*** I just spent 20 min searching Neil Gaiman’s blog for something he wrote about feeling like his books are shit every time he gets about halfway through them, but the guy has such a huge blog and I can’t remember the appropriate keywords, so I’m at a loss. If your Google-fu is better than mine, knock yourself out.

Personal, Projects

This “day off” you speak of…

I’m going to take today off.

It's done! Now I don't have to freak out that the cover was done before the book was.
It’s done! Now I don’t have to freak out that the cover was done before the book was.

Now, I suppose from your point of view, since I’ve been mostly on a blog and podcast hiatus, I’ve already been taking days off, but I’ve been working hard to finish The Ghost Train to New Orleans and then edit it. (see yesterday’s podcast for more on editing)

But I’ve been writing thousands of words a day, or rewriting, and I’ve been burning myself out. And the writing doesn’t stop; This month, I have two novellas to write, a project to finish, and marketing for The Shambling Guide to New York City (insert preorder reminder/plea/beg here.) Also podcasting again. Remember podcasting?

I’m struggling with this day off. First, I can’t take the day 100% off, since today will be my 150th day writing in a row, per the Magic Spreadsheet. Second, I have a lot to do to get ready for the next things on my list. Lots of guest blog posts this month! But I need a day. Just a day. This afternoon I’m taking the kid to the comic book store and then we will get ice cream so I can remind her what her mother looks like when her face isn’t bathed in the glow of a monitor. This morning perhaps I will play a video game, or nap, or watch True Blood. Maybe I’ll take a bath. Or finish listening to John Scalzi’s The Human Division, since I’m on the final episode and was cursing the fact that the drive home from fencing wasn’t longer yesterday because OMG drama. (And hey, if you want to join Audible so YOU can listen to awesome The Human Division, then follow this link and you will be supporting the podcast!)

Coming up in May:

  • The release of Chapter 1 of The Shambling Guide to New York City podcast! Free! Early! Holy shit! (May 2 – THAT IS TOMORROW)
  • Guest posts on several blogs
  • The return of I Should Be Writing
  • A more robust blog – I’ve got some fun ideas.
  • The return of Fabulist Ramblings.
  • Balticon (with ninja launch party. Shhh.) (May 23-27)
  • The release of the print and ebook version of The Shambling Guide to New York City. (May 28)
  • Complete and utter sloth as I watch marathons of the new Arrested Development and Season 5 of True Blood. (Oh, crap, I forgot, you don’t care about that. BUT I DO.)

Also, I’ll be writing more in May, and working on a game project for school, working on my Torment novella, and planting vegetables and flowers. But you won’t see those things yet. You’ll probably never see the tomatoes. Sorry.

Coming up in June:

Lastly, this month I will be blogging about some things I’m involved in that I should have been talking about already, but have been too freaking busy. Such as:

Personal

Early reports on Shambling Guide to NYC, and other news

Orbit has informed me of some really interesting reviews about The Shambling Guide to New York City lately:

  • Kirkus Reviews: STARRED REVIEW AW YEAH: “The hip, knowing and sometimes hysterically funny narrative, interspersed with excerpts from the guide of the title, lurches along in splendid fashion. Combine wit, style and acute observation: The result is irresistible.”
  • Library Journal: STARRED REVIEW AW YEAH: “… Lafferty, a 2012 nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, introduces a spirited, indomitable heroine who is bound to be a favorite of urban fantasy devotees.”
  • Romantic Times: TOP PICK AW YEAH: “…a refreshing departure from the dark and sexy face of so much urban fantasy.”
  • Publishers Weekly: “A charming debut”

Funny thing is, although PW wasn’t a starred review (though it was quite positive), today I learned that SGNYC is on PW’s “Best Summer Books of 2013” list. Right beside Connie Willis’ new collection.  “Podcast host and blogger Lafferty is known for her sharp wit, which is in evidence here.”

O_O So, uh, yeah. Wow. All I gots to say is…

[NOTE- I don’t blog a lot about current events because I’m commonly raw, numb, upset, and withhold opinions until I have information. But my heart is hurting for all of the horror that the world has experienced this week, and I hope everyone reading this is as well as they can be.)