First, to my utter shock and delight, The Shambling Guide to New York City was nominated for Best Urban Fantasy Novel of 2013 by RT Book Reviews! The awards are given out at the RT convention in May, and I’ll be there for sure! Other nominees include Karen Lord, Lauren Beukes, Mary Robinette Kowal, Diana Rowland, John Scalzi, Paul Cornell, and many other talented authors. Check out the nominees!
The other news is of a more personal nature. I’ve signed with a new agent: Jen Udden at the Donald Maass Literary Agency! Jen and I bonded at WorldCon and I’m super excited to be working with her. I’ll be putting her info on my Contact page.
I caught a neat thing on MediaBistro the other day: a writing pacemaker.
Not something that will kickstart your writing if you slack off – man, there’s a golden ticket idea – but instead you input into Susanna’s Pacemaker your wordcount goal, your deadline (if you don’t have a deadline, it’s a good idea to make an internal deadline, by the way), and couple more options, and then you see a graph or table with your daily wordcount goal listed.
The tool is interestingly flexible; it asks you if you want to keep the wordcount steady every day or increase your wordcount a little bit daily as you go. It also takes weekends into account: are weekends days you want to take off, or will you binge write because you’re not at work? You can even ask for a “random” wordcount goal, and it will give you some days with a goal of 64, and other days with a goal of 1300. I wouldn’t recommend that for a project, but in theory it’s kind of neat.
It also has an “intensity” option, which has no description but I figured out means you can write steady and then binge at the end (low intensity) or write more every day and end up with a couple of days with 0 wordcount goal (high intensity.)
Me, I’m a slow and steady girl so I have a simple 45 degree angled graph. If I were a weekend binge writer, it would look like this. (The “write MUCH more” weekend option seems broken though, as it has me writing 4 words per week day, and 3000+ on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t think I could hold a story in my head writing 4 words a day.)
Susanna’s Pacemaker: Binge writing at the start, then tapering off.
I think what’s lacking here is a place to input your personal wordcount so that you can see how well you’re following your graph. If you write more words, it would be neat to see your dot above the projected graph for the day (and if you slack, the dot in the lower area would be good to shame.
Pacemaker is a neat tool, but I probably won’t use it because the Scrivener wordcount function is so robust now.
If you’re using Scrivener, I highly recommend this tool, as it helps you track your goal and automatically adjusts your word goal for the day based on how many words you have left to write. If I write 2000 words today, tomorrow’s graph will show that my daily target has dropped to 836.
Admittedly, I only know the Mac keyboard shortcut for calling up this tool – Shift+Command+T. From there you can hit “Options” to fill in all your information like wordcount goals and deadline. You can learn more about this tool, and many other Scrivener tips, at Super Producer Patrick Hester’s blog.
There are other tools for when you want to spent time and effort keeping track of wordcounts and not writing, like I’m doing right now. One of my favorites is from Writertopia. They have several very simple tools to put your wordcount on your site, and all they ask is a link back. That’s WRITERTOPIA. They’re awesome.
We have the no frills picometer:
But if you feel like a writing potato, and who doesn’t, from time to time, you can go for the larger and more creative one.
The best part about the writing potato is s/he has moods:
There are eight moods in all; I won’t spoil them for you.
The toolbox page at Writertopia has all the information on how to put this on your site. It’s super ultra mega easy. All of the tools default to a goal of 50,000 words, but changing the goal is simple, and they explain the tiny tweak you must do to customize it.
Here’s the difference in the image tags:
http://picometer.writertopia.com/words=14432 (included for reference)
And
http://picometer.writertopia.com/words=14432&target=100000 (included for reference)
Then of course if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, that site has its own dynamic tool that grabs your wordcount from the server. This won’t work any other time of the year, but since we are near NaNoWriMo season, it makes sense to include it for you crazy 1,667-words-a-day kids. Like the Writertopia widget, you just put a little image tag on your site:
http://nanowrimo.org/widget/LiveSupporter/mightymur.png (included for reference)
(Huh. On editing this and reloading the page, I noticed that the image changes every time. Clever!)
Unlike Writertopia, you don’t need to update the image every time you write. So if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, this is the best tool. It’s also extremely versatile, where you can view your wordcount as a simple line, a calendar listing your writing days, a word war with another writer, or a word war with your region vs another region.
So there you have it, folks. I have spent a great deal of writing time procrastinating by researching these tools for you, SO YOU WON’T HAVE TO.
Now go write or something.
COMING SOON- I’m downloading a bunch of iOS and Amazon apps to track wordcount, I’ll review them here soon.
The Escape Artists family of podcasts are dear to me. I was an early fan of Escape Pod, was one of the founding editors of Pseudopod, and then much later became editor of Escape Pod. I left the magazine last year but it and the people involved have remained dear to my heart.
One of the things EA has always prided itself on is the fact that it’s always been in the black, supported by member donations. It’s been doing this for eight years. When the economy takes a dive, donations always suffer, and EA hasn’t been immune. The magazines are suffering from a lack of donations and if they can’t cover their expenses, the future doesn’t look bright. So they are asking for donations.
But not just donations – they want subscribers. $50 is great now, but what’s even better is $5 a month. (Which, if you do quick math, is just $10 more a year than you just donated!) The subscribers are what sustain the podcasts, those willing to give some money for their free fiction.
I’ve talked on my show before about how my brain needs a break after I finish a project. I’m serious- if I try to work after I finish a book or a script or something, it’ll be like I’m calling down to the productivity room for inspiration and nothing comes back. The brain, it just won’t work. So I’ve learned to give it a break.
Recently, though, I had a perfect storm. I turned in edits to Ghost Train to New Orleans in late August. Then I went to WorldCon. Then I won the Campbell. These are all positive things, but they all send a message to my brain- “Achievement unlocked, well done, it’s break time!” And with all three of these messages coming in at the same time, my brain checked out. I think it went to Tenerife.
The really big problem with this is if I don’t give my brain down time, if I try to force thinking and productivity, it won’t happen. What will happen is a lot of self-loathing because I can’t write a sentence or get anything done. I’ll hate my characters. I’ll record a podcast but not have the oomph to edit and upload and post it. I’ll do a load of laundry and leave it in the dryer for days.
I got a very nice email from an award winning author who gave me the advice that now that I’ve won an award, I may hit a wall, paralyzed by the pressure of needing to now prove I’m worthy of the award. The fear that everything I write will be scrutinized through a stronger magnifying glass, looking for any error to brand me a fraud. I appreciated the email, and tried to ready myself. But it’s like rejection, or a punch – even if you know something harsh is coming, it’s hard to not feel it.
In fact, I’m realizing that the response to these good things has to be like my response to the bad things. When I get rejections or other bad news, I allow myself a day of feeling sorry for myself. Red wine and chocolate are often involved. When I allow myself to process the sad, I can usually bounce back a lot faster than if I just try to soldier on. The response to good things can be similar; I need time to process, to relax from the hard work, and yeah, to get my confidence back. Because the threat of the Fraud Police doesn’t go away when you get published or win an award; in fact, now that there’s more at risk if you’re revealed a fraud, they’re after you even moreso than before.
Fraud FBI has been watching my house. I just know it.
So I’ve been getting my wordcount in (294 days on the magic spreadsheet!) but that’s about it. I need to get back to podcasting and brainstorming and email and stuff. Because it doesn’t matter if the Fraud FBI are watching, or I win an award, or I lose an award, or I get rejected, or what. If I’m going to be a writer, I have to do the work.
I’ll be on my local NPR show, The State of Things, next week! Will post when it’s live.
VCon is around the corner, and I’m a Guest of Honor! I’m still amazed and honored and can’t wait! Oct 4-7.
A June, 2014 workshop was just announced, Writing the Other, and the instructors are amazing. (David Anthony Durham is my current mentor at Stonecoast and he’s been instrumental to my growth as a writer.) A lot of people say they don’t write people unlike them (whether it’s gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, etc) because they’re afraid of getting it wrong. If that’s you, attend this workshop.
It was just announced that I’ll be a visiting author to the July, 2014 Shared Worlds workshop (the site currently only has 2013 information)! I’m very excited to work with this program, so if you have a teen interested in writing, check it out!
I’ve heard from a few sources that email to mur.lafferty at gmail.com is bouncing. And since I have the account forwarded to another account, I haven’t accessed it in a while so I’m having trouble getting in.
So if you need to email me, PLEASE mail mightymur at gmail.com for the forseeable future. Thanks.
Brad Parks writes from Brooklyn, NY: pharmaceutical copywriting by day, fantasy and science fiction the rest of the time. Out of desperation, he founded the now fabulously successful critique group Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers (we’re on the list) through Meetup.com. Brad blogs at bradzooks.com.
Finding A Speculative Fiction Writing Group
The value of having a group of your peers to critique your work cannot be overstated. But finding a group that meets your particular needs can be daunting. I know. My own search led me to create the group that works for me.
Your group may already be out there, so I’ve assembled this quick guide to finding it or starting it yourself.
Websites for writing groups
Meetup.com is a fantastic place to start your search for a writing group to help you hone your speculative fiction writing skills. Below is just a selection of successful groups, which for his purpose I’ve defined as more than 100 members and/or meeting on a regular basis.
Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers (BSFW) (also on Facebook and at bsfwriters.com)
NYC Shared World Sci-Fi Fantasy Meetup Group
North Seattle SciFi and Fantasy Writers
Milwaukee Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop
The Lawrenceville Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Group
Orlando Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
Obviously, Meetup is a great place to look for an active group in your area, or if none exists, do what I did and create your own. Feel free to reach out to the organizers of BSFW for advice on starting and running a critique group like ours.
Other writing groups exist outside Meetup, and can be found with a simple online search, for example:
A list of lists
The Science Fiction Writers of America has a few lists of their own, which haven’t been updated in a while, though, like many of their other resources, are still worth checking out: http://www.sfwa.org/tag/critique-groups/ http://www.sfwa.org/category/workshops-and-critique-groups/
Online writing workshops
For those who either can’t find a good group nearby or who live in remote areas where creating a group of your own isn’t practical, consider one of these excellent online writing workshops (thanks to Angie Smibert (www.angiesmibert.com/blog/?p=262) for the list)). Check each site for their requirements for participation in the community, which usually means you need to critique other writers in order to get your work critiqued.
Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror (http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com) [Mur Notes- I was heavily active here once and found a lot of good help!]
Professional groups
These are generally not open to new members, as all the members are professional writers. But they frequently keep blogs dripping with useful advice from writers who’ve been there, and it’s a great place to keep up with your favorite writers.
Wyrdsmiths (www.wyrdsmiths.com) (blog at: www.wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com)
This Minneapolis-St. Paul area group features such outstanding authors as Lyda Morehouse, Kelly McCollough and Naomi Kritzer, and their blog is a balanced blend of news and advice.
Altered Fluid (www.alteredfluid.com)
A group composed of such luminaries as Saladin Ahmed, N. K. Jemisin, Alaya Dawn Johnson and Rajan Khanna.
Codex (www.codexwriters.com)
A dual-purpose workshopping and discussion group for writers who have met their definition of professional status.
As you can see, your next writing group may be just an online search away, or may even be one of the ones listed above. If you have a group to add to the list, please do so in the comments of this post.
I’ve talked a lot about Creative Commons on the podcast and in talks and panels, but I think a lot of people still have questions about it. I’m thrilled to discover that today they released their “School of Open,” courses starting next Monday (March 18) where you can learn about Creative Commons from an educator’s POV, or a scientist’s, or a creator, or even just a Wikipedia writer.
In 2013 the marvellous Angry Robot books will be publishing three Split Worlds novels, the first is out in March and called Between Two Thorns. This story is part of a crazy thing I decided to do before I got the book deal and was forging ahead with the project on my own: releasing a new story every week for a year and a day, hosted on a different site every time, all set in the Split Worlds. I wanted to give readers a taste of my kind of urban fantasy and have the opportunity to build in secrets and extra bits for those people who, like me, love the tiny details. It’s also been a major part of my world-building work alongside writing the novels.
This is the forty-seventh tale in the year and a day of weekly short stories set in The Split Worlds. If you would like me to read it to you instead, you can listen here. You can find links to all the other stories, and the new ones as they are released here. You can also sign up to get the stories delivered to your inbox, one per week for a year and a day.
Full story is behind the cut. Thanks, Emma!
The Letter
The letter had remained unopened for precisely fifty-four years, six months and three days. She had decided to break the seal, today, at sunset. (more…)
