Babel Clash

If you’ve ever seen authors depicted on TV or in movies, you have a pretty good idea of our lifestyle.  Get beyond the cinematic novelist’s angst and it’s a cushy job.  Write for an hour or two a day, and spend the rest of it hanging out with friends or solving crimes.

Now, I kind of suspected that’s not how real writers lived.  But I’ll admit I had this crazy idea that full-time writers wrote full-time.  Plan the book, write the book, edit the book.  Repeat annually.  With good time management skills and an early-bird start, you should be done with your day by noon.  And I’m sure I could be . . . if that was my entire job.

The part I was leaving out?  Promotion.

Promotion is an ugly word for some writers.  I was recently on a panel to discuss ways authors can promote themselves, and after listing everything I do, another panelist blamed publishers for this sorry world where authors need to “whore themselves” like that.

The truth, as I discovered very early on, is that few people will buy a book by an author they’ve never heard of.  Promotion, then, is not about whoring yourself - it’s about getting your name out there.  When someone sees your book in a store, it helps if they think “I’ve heard of that author before.”

Getting your name out there doesn’t mean flogging your books.  I couldn’t sell one to save my life.  If asked “Why should I buy your book?” I suggest, if they’re interested, they check it out of the library instead.  Or I direct them to my site for more information and free sample chapters.

To me, promotion means getting my name out there by doing things I enjoy.  Giving writers workshops.  Sitting on panels at conventions.  Interacting with readers online.  Providing free stories online.  Writing guest blogs like this.

Yes, all that adds to my day.  Yes, I’m often running behind on it.  But while I may be backed up on the business/promo side, I never miss a novel or short story deadline.  That’s my priority, and it should be, because nothing is a better promotion tool than a good novel.

That’s it for me.  Thanks for tuning in for our visit!

I’ll follow up on Marjorie’s post again.   She was having one of those days when things demand your attention and none of them have anything to do with writing.  I just had one of those weeks, and with me, it’s a summer problem.

It’s not that the sun i shining and I feel like playing hooky.  I love my job.  When I first became a published author, I was warned taht my love of writing would diminish.  It would become a job rather than a hobby.  It hasn’t.  So goofing off really isn’t a problem.  It’s those pesky outside forces that live in my house.  Not evil spirits or demons.  I’m talking about my family.

For nine months a year, the pattern is established.  Get up right after my husband leaves for work at 5:30.  Edit while drinking my first cup of coffee.  Get the kids up and off to school at 7:30.  Then write and edit until they come home at 4, along with my husband.  It’s a great system.  Only it doesn’t work when summer holidays come.

It’s not their fault.  They’re good about letting me get work done . . . well, mostly.  But I can live with the interruptions.  The problem is that when they’re home, I’m accustomed to spending time with them, not holed up in my office.  So while I do retreat to my writing dungeon, I come out regularly, and often stay out for longer than I stay in.

This summer, I finally wised up and cleared my plate for summer.  Or I cleared it of the writing.  As I’ve discovered, thought, that doesn’t mean it’s clear.  More on that in my next blog!

The winner of my last blog contest was Emily, who procrastinates by looking up pictures of hot guys on the internet, then sending them to friends to distract them.  Because, if you aren’t getting your work done, you’ll feel so much better if others aren’t either

Speaking of not getting work done… Marjorie blogged about writer’s block, so I’ll follow suit.  It’s a question I get asked at about 35-50% of events and I always start with the warning that what I experience as writer’s block may not be the same as what others experience. I believe it’s different for everyone, and the techniques to overcome it will differ as well.

For me writer’s block is one of two things.

The first type? I’m stuck in the plot.  I sit down for a day of writing and I know where I ultimately need to go, but I have no idea how to get there.

Solution?  I treat it the same way I would anytime I have a destination and no route.  I make sure I don’t get behind the wheel of my computer without a map.  I outline.  Not extensively.  And I’ve never stuck to one in my life.  But I never sit down without knowing what scene comes next and how it begins.

The second type?  Lack of confidence.  I sit down for that day of writing and I don’t feel up to the task.  I worry that the current story isn’t good enough.  It’s not as good as my last one.  Or not as good as the one I read the night before.

Solution?  Accept mediocrity for the day. I give myself permission to write crap, knowing no one ever needs to see that first draft, and I’ll have plenty of time to fix it later.  At the first draft stage, the goal is simply to get the story down.  I remind myself that I can’t fix a blank page, and plow through.

Are either of these problems “true” writer’s block.  I have no idea.  They’re what passes for it with me, and these are the solutions I’ve found.  Your mileage will vary

Okay, so I’m home, which means I should be ready to knock off a killer blog, right? Mmm, no. I just got back from two weeks on the road, with a family vacation starting Friday, and I seem to have fallen into a pit between trips. I keep looking up, seeing a pile of “post-tour” and “pre-vacation” work teetering on the brink, and just huddling closer to the side, hoping that, if it falls, it won’t completely bury me.  Or if it does, at least I’ll catch up on my sleep until someone realizes I’m gone.

So, while it’s not quite 7:30 in the evening, I’m ready to call it a day. Or, at least, spend the rest of the evening doing mundane tasks that require no creative thought, like laundry (which did not magically get done by elves–or my family–in my absence). So I’m going to give up any attempt to write a thought-provoking blog and distract you from my negligence by giving stuff away.

Prize? Any one of my published books that I can still order (which excludes the sold out Angelic–always gotta mention that, because it’s the one everyone asks for!)

How to win? Give me your best distraction technique for getting out  work.

I’ll pick my favourite Thursday, when I’ll return with a real blog.

My hotel room didn’t have wireless internet, so this blog is coming to you from the airport in Lansing Michigan, which has an amazing (and totally empty) business centre.

Like Marjorie, I have trouble sticking with one format and one series. For me, even a permanent narrator within a series is too much to ask for.

I think writers quickly figure out what works best for them, in everything from genre to process to form. Some are happiest immersing themselves in a single series, sticking with the same characters for as long as they can. Some can’t imagine revisiting the same world even for a second round.

I fall in the middle. When I create a universe, I want to stick around a while, but I get restless, too, wanting to explore every nook and cranny, meeting new faces and telling their stories.

Not surprisingly, then, since first being published in 2001, I’ve created three series. I started with the Otherworld. Even there, by book 3 (Dime Store Magic) I’d shifted to a new narrator (and am now on book 11 and narrator 6). Next came my non-paranormal crime series, (Exit Strategy and Made to be Broken) Haven’t abandoned my hit woman narrator there yet, but at only two novels, it’s still early! For my YA paranormal series, I’ve gone one step farther, changing to a completely new set of characters for the upcoming second trilogy, rather than just spinning off with a character from the first.

For me, this is what keeps story-telling fresh. I’m never bored. Never feeling like there are no more stories to tell. My Otherworld series is contracted through 13 books, and I’m starting to think a change might be in my future. I still love these books, and I’m sure I’ll never stop telling Otherworld stories, but I can see the day when my Otherworld-novel-a-year schedule will end and I’ll be off exploring a new world, popping back to this one when I can’t stay away

When I come back Tuesday, I’ll be home again and I’ll celebrate with a contest!

For Wednesday’s contest, I drew the name of Suzanne, who wanted lunch with LKH or FLB. Email me at: mail at kelleyarmstrong dot com and I’ll get your prize out.

Like Marjorie, I get a lot out of writing comics. I also write “full script” as in her example, which means I’m writing it panel by panel, rather than doing an extensive outline and letting the artist take it from there. Yes, I’m a bit of a control freak.

As she said, comic writing really does make you boil story down to the essentials of what can be shown visually. Action, setting and dialogue is all you get. Internal dialogue must be kept to an absolute bare minimum. Scenes that seem fine in a novel, such as having two characters in discussion, are incredibly boring visually, which forces you to write such scenes in a more active way–and to realize they should be written in a more active way in prose, too.

Outlining is another big one. Every page has to say something and should end in a small hook that makes the reader turn it. The issue must end in a bigger hook to convince them to buy the next one. And unlike novels, there’s a set length–you can’t go over or under it. That level of structure is a big help for my prose writing.

You need to pay a lot of attention to the visual aspects, too, being far more specific. We’re working on the Otherworld primer right now, and I’d received some layout pages where one of my characters (Clayton Danvers) wasn’t quite right physically. I said so and was asked to supply photos of examples. Yes, I had to spend some time searching for shirtless guys online. It was a great hardship. As I was searching, I remembered way back when Priscilla Queen of the Desert came out. I was writing an early draft of Bitten, and thought Guy Pearce in that movie had the physical condition I imagined for Clay. So I Googled “guy pearce shirtless” and the Internet obliged with this photo.

And on that note, I’ll head back on tour (hello, Cincinnati! I signed lots of copies at your Borders stores this morning!) Sunday I’ll be back to talk about my forays into other forms of fiction.

Well, apparently my posts here are going to be very ugly this week. I’m on tour using my iPad instead of my laptop, and it won’t let me add text to the formatted box…just straight HTML. Fortunately, I’m a former programmer, so I know HTML. Unfortunately, I’m now a writer, meaning I haven’t used it in years!

Like Marjorie, I’ve done comics. My experience is a little more scattered than hers. I started with a free online graphic novella that’s half done on my website (the other half is finished and being tweaked now!) If you’re interested, you’ll find that here: http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/PDFs/Becoming.pdf

Then I contracted to write an original Otherworld graphic novel for a new line that fell through. Then came my big break. Well, sort of.

I was at an HWA convention when I mentioned to another author that of all the fictional universes out there, the one I’d love to write in was Joss Whedon’s Buffy/Angel. A year or so later, IDW was looking for a new writer for their Angel series, and contacted this writer, who gave me them my name.

Was I interested in writing a 5-issue story for “season 6″ of Angel? Absolutely. I asked what limitations Whedon put on the stories and was told that he says “just have fun with it.” Do whatever you want. Which is a huge thing for a writer–I know if someone was writing in my universe, I’d have a laundry list of rules.

I loved writing those comics. What I discovered, though, is that while I’m a huge fan, the universe is so vast that I felt I could never know enough to do it justice. I was bound to screw up the mythos, and that bothered me more than I expected.

I’ve now moved back into my comfort zone, writing comics for my own universe. I have an Otherworld primer coming out this fall–a whirlwind overview of my fictional universe. I follow that with a 4 issue original Clay & Elena story, Forbidden. Both are with Dabel Brothers and Dynamite Entertainment.

I learn a lot from comics and I feel it really helps my fiction writing. I’ll discuss that in my next blog.

For now, I’ll close by answering the #1 question I get when I mention my Angel writing experience: Did you get to meet Joss Whedon? Alas, no. But I always say I would have done the project for free in return for lunch with Whedon. So that leads to my question. What writer, in any genre or format, would you love to have lunch with? I’ll draw one name from the comments and give away a signed copy of my first Angel: Aftermath edition.