Babel Clash

Oh, the opportunity for self-promotion. What every author lives for…when we’re not hiding underneath the bed, that is, which is usually what I can be found doing when this particular dog-and-pony show. I sort of wish I could run up to the whole world, shove books into their hands, squeak, and run away. Since that isn’t an option…

The fifth book in my October Daye urban fantasy series comes out this September. The Toby books are about fae living alongside the mortal world, focusing on Toby herself, half-fae, half-human, all pretty much annoyed at the universe for forcing her to deal with every little thing that comes along. One Salt Sea is about mermaids, kidnapping, murder, war, and not nearly enough coffee. I love Toby so much. She’s the protagonist I’ve been living with the longest, and the one with the most books in her ongoing story. I really do recommend reading these in order; the first book is Rosemary and Rue. All five books are published by DAW, and the first four are available now from a bookstore near you. Assuming there is a bookstore near you. You could be on an Arctic research base, or in Atlantis, or something. In which case, go go Gadget online ordering.

The first book in my shiny new urban fantasy series, InCryptid, comes out in March of 2012, also from DAW Books. InCryptid is about a family of cryptozoologists working to protect the cryptid population of the planet from humanity, and occasionally working to protect humanity from the cryptid population. It’s a multi-generational story, beginning with the adventures of Verity Price, professional ballroom dancer and part-time cryptid social worker. Her story starts in Discount Armageddon, which is about finding yourself, getting a little bit lost, ballroom dance, old rivalries, hot European men, talking mice, and jumping off tall buildings with very little provocation. I’m super-excited about this book. Like, really, really super-excited. I love this family, I love this setting, I love the fact that Verity really does fight monsters in impractical shoes, and she does it on purpose. Please please please check it out. (I have no pride.)

The final book in the Newsflesh trilogy, Blackout, will be coming out in May 2012, under the name “Mira Grant.” This is the conclusion of my vast story of virology, conspiracy, politics, and journalism, all set against the backdrop of a post-zombie America (the zombie apocalypse was twenty years ago, and we survived). You should definitely read these in order; the first in the trilogy, Feed, has been nominated for the
2011 Hugo Award for Best Novel, which makes me a little giddy to this day.

I also have a lot of short fiction, always, but those are the big projects. What’ve you got, Devon? Bring us home!

It’s been great having Seanan and Devon on these past two weeks.  All of their posts were filled with lots of great content and ideas (and lots of good tips for aspiring writers).  While it’s sad to see them go, as is customary here, their last day shall be used to plug any past, current, or future projects!  Let the self-promotion commence!

Then, when the dust clears, we’ll be joined by two authors who combine some of my favorite things - steampunk, superheroes, and New York City!

First, let’s welcome George Mann back to the blog!  His latest series for Pyr follows The Ghost and should not be missed.

Joining George is Andrew P. Mayer, who debuts the Society of Steam series with Pyr this year! This series follows the adventures of Sarah Stanton on her path to becoming a hero in a time where women weren’t even allowed to vote.

Again, please join me in thanking Seanan and Devon for their time on the blog and welcoming George and Andrew!

Do I have any memos I wished I’d received when I was fresh and shiny? Just about a thousand, but I’ll whittle it down to a sticky note or two.

Dear shiny-new-writer Me,

Go read Seanan McGuire’s blog post from yesterday. I know, the internet practically hasn’t been invented yet, but here–push this time travel button and peek in on the future. See how she says: Read, Write, Do Stuff, and Don’t Be Stupid? (okay, maybe that last one was the Internet Is Forever, but hey, same diff.). She is right. Dead center of the bulls eye, up to the fletching kind of right. Believe what she said. It is true and it applies to you.

Stop following every rule. Yes, those rules about writing, and how-to’s and how-not’s are important. Yes, you should get to know them. But some of those rules that feel like a safety line might just strangle you. If all you’re doing is thinking about the rules, you aren’t thinking about writing.

Look, the rules are really more like training wheels than a GPS system (trust me, Little Miss Gets-Lost-A-Lot, you’re going to love GPS when it’s invented.). Understand how the rules are trying to guide you, but if you suddenly pick up steam and are peddling outside the lines, stand up and take that hill. That terrifying “Look, Ma! No hands!” challenge of the journey is part of what will make your writing stronger. Heck, it will make YOU stronger. Be brave.

Don’t stop writing. People will tell you to stop. People you idolize. People you love. They’ll tell you it will never work and it’s a silly dream. They’ll say you aren’t good enough. Know what? You aren’t good enough. Yet. But the only way to get better is to keep going. So keep going. I, the future you, is counting on us.

Do stop writing. Sometimes the only way forward is to pause and take a step back. This isn’t a race. You aren’t trying to get to the one and only spot on the tip of the mountain before anyone else. As a matter of fact, that mountain is flat on top–plenty of room for you and everyone else who’s making the climb. It is, however, a tall mountain and you will be climbing it for days, months, decades. Yes, I said decades. You will discover that just as you’re cresting that mountain, there will be another mountain in sight, waiting to be climbed. It’s important to pause and catch your breath now and again.

And hey, while you’re climbing, why not have a little fun? Fun in your real life. Fun in your writing life. Fun in your everything. Pretty soon writing won’t be just what you do, it will be a part of what you are. Maybe even a big part of who you are. So enjoy every crazy moment of it (and trust me, it will be crazy!) Laugh a lot. Be silly. Heck, go out and get yourself some evil Care Bears. I hear they come in pretty handy for fetching that morning tea and bon bons.

With kindest regards,
Me

Advice for my beginning writer self? Okay. You asked for it…

Read. As much as you can, whenever you can, whatever you can, read. Read outside your comfort zone. Read books you know you’re going to dislike. Read books you know you’re going to love. Read books you remember reading and loving five years ago but can’t quite remember all the details of. Read non-fiction and fiction and books on history written from both sides of the inevitable ideological divide. Read books you don’t quite understand, take notes about the books they reference, and read those, too, until things start making sense. Read books aimed at children and adults and men and women and dog lovers and cat lovers and people who really, really care about the history of chess. Learn to read while you walk, while you go to the bathroom, while you brush your teeth, and while you’re riding every known form of public transit. You want to write? Now read.

Write. As much as you can, whenever you can, whatever you can, write. It doesn’t matter if you’re jotting fragments on napkins and bits of dialogue on the back of math tests; what matters is that you’re writing, you’re putting words down on paper, you’re exercising muscles you’re going to need so badly later that I can’t even begin to prepare you. Write things you’re passionate about. Write things you couldn’t care less about. And write it different ways! I learned things about writing from working on a typewriter that I didn’t learn from working longhand or on a computer. That means you can learn that way, too. If someone gives you the opportunity to write in cuneiform, take it. Every little bit helps when you’re trying to find a voice that you can call your own.

Do things. They say “write what you know,” and while I don’t quite consider that a religious commandment the way that some people seem to, the fact is, it’s easier and more believable when you’re writing about things you can actually remember experiencing. Go to amusement parks. Ride rickety carnival rides and try to convince yourself that the insurance hasn’t been allowed to lapse. Wander through creepy cornfields in the middle of the night being chased by men with chainsaws. Milk venomous reptiles. Stay awake for six days straight. Ride a freight train to Canada. Enroll a duck in a community college Marine Biology program. The more you do, the more you’ll be able to write about with believable authority.

Let people edit you, and learn to actually listen to their suggestions, rather than screaming NO NO NO YOU’RE WRONG MY BABY IS PERFECT AND ALSO YOU SMELL LIKE FEET. Sometimes they will be wrong, but you know what? Sometimes, you’ll be wrong, too. Sometimes, like the parent who watches her small child feed hamsters into a blender and says “She’s so creative!” rather than “She’s a budding sociopath!”, you’re going to be wrong about your own story. Learning to listen to people when they tell you that is going to help you grow so, so much as a writer, and it’s going to make this process so, so much smoother. Not easier. Nothing can do that. But smoother.

The internet is forever. Remember this. Any time you think you might forget it, any time you think “hey, it would be totally fun to post inappropriate comments about someone using my real name” or “hey, pictures of my piercings won’t ever come back to haunt me,” remember that the INTERNET is FOREVER. Tattoo it on the palm of your left hand if you have to, because the internet? Is forever. If you actually manage to become a published author (which you’ll hopefully do, since I’m your future self, and I don’t feel like erasing myself via paradox), people will magically find everything you ever posted that you don’t want found, so try to minimize what’s out there for them to mine.

Read the submission guidelines, in detail, always.

Trust me.

See? No Care Bears involved in the advice! How about you, Devon? Got any memos you wish you’d received when you were still fresh and shiny?

I actually love it when a story jumps the track. Now, remember, I’m all for outlining. I do it all the time. As a matter of fact, I outline every book before I start writing, especially if I’m on a tight deadline. But no matter what I do, my outline always breaks. I’m lucky if the outline holds together until the half-way point before it falls apart for the book in progress. I re-outline what I think the new second half of the book might look like. That holds up for the next quarter of the book until it crumbles into dust, and then I just sort of wing the last quarter, aiming for my hoped-for ending.

But like you, sometimes that ending has shifted, or maybe that “last scene” I had in my head is now the second-to-last scene, or there are different characters on stage, or it’s gone from happy to bittersweet, tragic to funny.

I think it’s really important to have an end goal. I think it’s really important to want to know who your characters are at the beginning of a book, and what and who they might by the end, and maybe have a clue or three about how to get there. But….

Listen. This writing thing for me is all about finding that sweet spot between the creative and the analytical self. Whether I’m outlining, drafting, revising, or proofing, I am sort of standing in two mental states simultaneously while trying to hot-wire a connection that will flip the breakers and send out a signal that I’m on the right track. I want good words all in a row, plausible conflict and tension in every chapter, and an emotional roller coaster ride laying tracks in the white space between the lines.

I want to build an experience for the reader. There are hundreds of ways to do that. And every writer has to decide which trick or tool or ticket will make the ride go forward.

But that’s not exactly what you asked. You asked what I do when a story starts changing on me, and making its own plans behind my back.

Do I force it down a false path to keep my outline and logical brain happy? No. I always follow the shift of story and theme. I always follow the characters.

Have they led me down useless dead ends and cul-de-sacs covered in ironic plastic pink flamingos? Yes.

Have they led me to the unplanned heart of the story, and the pivotal moment when everything about the characters, the world, the book becomes clear? Yes.

When the story jumps the tracks, can I tell the difference of when I’m on the good road or bad road? Nope. Really nope.

But I never regret writing, even if I temporarily wander and go astray. What do I have to lose? A little time and a few words? No biggie. And sometimes I don’t lose either. All writing is good writing. It’s the sheer effort of doing, trying, risking, failing, and clutching victory out of the jaws of dead ends that makes us become better writers. And I, for one, hope I never run out of new things to try and risk and learn.

Since we only have a couple more days left to post, I have a question for you, Seanan. What piece of advice would you give to your beginning writer self? Would you take a different path? Follow the same route to publication that you took? Get more sleep in advance?. Or…oh, I know! Maybe employ more creepy Care Bears?

Dude, I totally fill out personality quizzes and dating site questionnaires for my characters. Doesn’t everybody do that? But that was not your question.

Do I always know what happens next? No. But I always, always know where the story as a whole—the greater story that hangs around these characters I love so much and know so well—is going to wind up. I’m always writing to that final scene. Here’s the part that may be interesting for you: the “final scene” that I’m writing to isn’t always the last scene. It’s the point where everything comes together, either successfully or with an Earth-shattering KA-BOOM, and the world changes. There can be chapters and chapters after that, and sometimes the actual ending of a story can surprise me, but the “final scene” never does.

The thing is, the “final scene” isn’t necessarily in this book. Sometimes books surprise me by sneaking into an ongoing series like, la la la, what? I totally belong here, I have an invitation and everything. Those stories usually wind up becoming integral to the overall story arc, but they don’t change the final scene…usually.

Because we change as authors while we write. We grow as authors while we write. And our characters, if they’re well-constructed, will also change and grow as we write. That means that sometimes, when we hit the actual end of the story, the ending we originally planned just isn’t going to work anymore. I’ve known the “final scene” of my Toby Daye series since the beginning, but what that scene actually is has changed six or seven times, because the things that would have worked when she was younger and simpler just don’t work anymore.

I think that one of the greatest disservices we can do as authors—to ourselves, to our characters, and maybe most importantly, to our stories—is clinging to those perfect “final scenes” even after the characters themselves have made it clear that they won’t work. I can usually tell when an author has had to railroad his or her characters back onto a pre-determined track; they go from being living, breathing people in a world that just happens to be imaginary to being puppets on strings, being moved about by a puppeteer who doesn’t have all that much practice. And that’s usually the point at which I throw the book across the room.

So what do you do when the story starts changing? Do you step back and change the ending, or do you go back through the text with a chainsaw and hack everybody back into the shapes you thought they were going to be in? Do you let them grow and change, or do you force them to stay the same, since that would make your job an awful lot easier?

I do, however, get candy-colored plot bon-bons from the Care Bears. They just come with my morning Diet Dr Pepper, and usually require me to do enough studying to get a degree in some obscure scientific or sociological discipline. This is because while the creepy Care Bears care about the writing, they don’t really care about playing nicely with their toys.

Do the worlds and characters I’m writing about ever surprise me? Oh, heck yes. That’s half the fun of the writing gig, don’t you think?

I was at a steampunk event recently, and the audience asked us authors what came first in our writing, the world or the characters?

I was the only author who said I always, always know my characters first and the world develops out of their conflicts, emotions, hopes and fears. It’s not like I fill out a dating questionnaire for my characters, throw them off cliffs to find out what note they scream, or have their shoe size memorized. (Okay, maybe I do one of those things. I’ll let you guess which one.) I just sort of shrug into their skin, immerse in their emotions, discover their hurts, their wants and needs, and then I look out through their eyes at the world around them. It’s a method I developed back when I was writing a lot of short stories, and needed be able to get in and out of people and worlds quickly.

Even though I spend a lot of time in my characters’ heads, that isn’t to say I don’t put a lot of time into creating their worlds too. I could show you my reams of notes and scribbles and long conversations with my genius first readers, not to mention the giant whiteboard that takes up my office wall.

But all that happens after I know who I’m writing about. Because, as a reader, it’s the who that interests me most. I loves me a well thought-out and flawlessly created world, but don’t give a flying monkey poo about it if there aren’t interesting, engaging people in that world for me to love and hate.

Do I outline? Yes. Sometimes it’s as little as one sentence for each chapter. Sometimes it’s a synopsis of the major events in the order that they should appear–which has saved my bacon more than once trying to keep the nine-book urban fantasy series straight. Or sometimes at the beginning of a writing session, I’ll note what needs to happen next in the story: “surrounded by life-sucking ghosts. Someone better come up with a plan” or cue myself to a pivotal emotional point: “she realizes there is nothing she can do to stop his death.”

But the one thing I always, always know about a story is the final scene. I don’t start writing, not even one little word, before I know where the book is going to end. Once I can see that clearly in my mind, then I have at it. I follow the characters through the things I planned and things I most certainly did not expect, all the while aiming for that last scene.

Hopefully, by the time I get there I will have written a book that holds together on its own whether or not it resembles my original outline. Even though I am a plotter, it really is only by finishing the book that I find out what it’s all about. And then I set about the second draft business to make that story shine.

Which means, yes. I agree with you, Seanan. The writing comes first. See? No creepy Care Bears needed. Now tell them to put down those knives, m’kay?

But I am curious. Do you plan what scene you need to write next, or have an ending in mind for your books, characters, and world? Or do those Care Bears of yours bring you candy-coated plot bon-bons with your morning tea?

There is no such thing as putting the creepy Care Bears aside. They’re like Santa. They see you when you’re sleeping, and they know when you’re awake. They know if you’ve been bad or good. And they have knives.

No, I was not kind to my younger siblings. Why do you ask?

I am at once the most research-oriented writer you will ever meet, and the least research-oriented writer you will ever meet. It’s not just tied to genre; it’s a whole setting and science thing. And yes, I acknowledge that it’s a little weird.

See, for me, worlds require construction. Worlds require research. Worlds occasionally require spending six months auditing virology lectures at the local university, taking copious notes that don’t make any sense to anyone who isn’t a medical professional and cause people who are medical professionals to look queasy and find another seat on the train. Worlds need documentation and thought and consideration.

People are the part that just happen.

I like to say that my brain understands how afraid of commitment I am, so it lures me in with delicious research-flavored candy, promising me a joyous romp in the bibliophile forest. Then, once I’m in too deep to find my way out again, it starts presenting me with plots and people and by the way, were you aware that this series is seventeen books long and requires an index? Have fun.

Writing a book is a lot like planning a D&D campaign. First you read the manual. Then you spend six months carefully drawing dungeons and populating them with all manner of monsters and treasures and traps, all of which you document with scrupulous attention to detail in your reams and reams of notes. Then, once you’re absolutely sure that this is the best dungeon ever constructed by any DM, ever, you summon your players…or, in the writer’s case, your characters. And you put them down at the mouth of your dungeon, and you wait to see what they’re going to do next.

And then they set the thermite charges, blow the whole thing to shit in thirty seconds, and head for the nearest pub to get roaringly drunk, because no plot, ever, has survived contact with the player characters. Half the time, I have no idea who my characters are when they first make their appearance. Toby was a changeling with a smart mouth and an occasionally dumb reaction to danger, the kind of girl who would go into the big creepy house at the top of the hill just because she wanted to see what the big deal was. George liked the truth, rode a motorcycle, and wore sunglasses after dark, despite living in a zombie universe, where you’d expect vision to matter a little bit more. It was through running them through my dungeon that I learned the reasons why they were the way they were, and was able to adjust the world to suit them.

Now, I am crazy-meticulous once I know what’s going on, and my second drafts require more notes and flow charts than a calculus exam. But the writing? It’s like Stan Uris once said on the topic of conceiving a child: “I never think about it during.” And I don’t. Thinking comes after. Writing comes first. Writing, and creepy Care Bears. Don’t the worlds you’re working in ever surprise you? Do your characters do things you didn’t see coming? Talk to me, here, Devon, or it’s the Care Bears for you!

Creepy Care Bears aside, I agree with you, Seanan.  Switching between genres can be a trick.  I’ve never thought about using scents to clue me into the brain space needed for a certain project.  Probably because I don’t have a plethora of lovely perfumes to choose from. Not that I’m jealous.  Nope, not at all.  (Okay, I totally am.) But for me, I think music is the best trigger to indicate which of my worlds is on the writing block for the day.

You also mentioned brain freeze–when you get stuck in one genre and no matter what trick you use, you’re still in that genre. Yep. I totally get that.  I just go with it.  I figure the freeze will thaw once the shiny of whatever idea I’m chasing wears off, or the scene that has me brain-tight is finally down on the page.  My mantra is go with the flow, or the freeze, as the case may be.

But let’s talk more about TV, the great distraction on the wall.  I don’t watch a lot of shows regularly. But when I’m writing the steampunk, I find myself hungry for visual candy.  I’ve always had a fascination with history, and I love filling my brain with images of everything, from hats to the inside framework of old buildings.  And it’s not just the TV that fills that hole for me, though it certainly helps. 

I watch movies, browse old patent applications, look for failed or unmarketed inventions, and thumb through the pages of old catalogs.  I get excited about going to steam locomotive shows so I can look at bolts and welds and valves, find myself mapping ghost towns, visiting museums, and walking graveyards to read the headstones. TV, books, the internet, documentary clips, magazines, newspapers, audio clips, and anything else I can get my grubby hands on, all get stuffed into my brain and into the steampunk world I’m building. I can’t get enough of it.  I am hungry for the look, taste, smell and feel of times gone past.

Urban fantasy doesn’t set off my craving for images quite as much. Maybe that’s because I can drive through Portland Oregon (the town where my urban fantasy books are set) and look for a chocolate shop for a haunt, or a warehouse for a battle, or a neighborhood resistant to magic. There have been the occasions when I’ve hit a scene and suddenly thought, “how would this person decorate?  What kind of architecture reflects his personality or his lifestyle?” and gone to look through magazines, or online sites for interior design ideas. But mostly, the urban fantasy is clear in my mind, without me needing to go on visual research binges.

Some authors put together character boards with photos of their characters: the kind of clothes they wear, the car they drive, the house they live in, and the full background on their life history.  I don’t do that.  My characters come to me pretty much whole cloth, and then I discover cool little details about them as I write them on the page.

How about you, Seanan?  Are you one of those kinds of writers who puts together visual clues before you start writing?  Do you interview and chart and map out the details of your characters before you head into a project? Or do you just jump in and wing it?

You’re not going to scrub that image out of your brain, Devon. Urban Fantasy Bear is my loving gift, from me to you. You’re welcome.

Mood is tricky. Tone, perhaps even moreso. There are days where, for various reasons, I’m writing Toby in the morning (urban fantasy noir), Newsflesh in the afternoon (science fiction zombie thrillers), and InCryptid in the evening (perky monster hunters with talking mice; whatever the appropriate genre is, you know they’ve attacked it with a Bedazzler at some point). This means I’m experiencing the equivalent of genre whiplash every six hours or so, when I have to grab my brain and force it, very quickly, off one track and onto something entirely different.

Devon mentions music as a way to change the mood, and I have to agree with her there. I have playlists of mopey seventies and eighties rock for writing Toby, heavy on the Journey, Pat Benetar, and Meatloaf; I have playlists of dance music and bubblegum pop for writing Verity. The right beat and tempo can definitely do a lot to slam me into the right headspace for telling a different kind of story. Sometimes I have characters latch onto songs that may not make sense on the surface–why does Alice have such a thing for “Never Gonna Give You Up”? Why is Toby so attached to “Carry On My Wayward Son”?–but which make a whole lot of sense once you get to really know them. It’s fun!

I also use scents to switch myself from one universe to another. I’m a big fan of those weird little perfume companies that have sprung up all over the internet in the last few years, especially Conjure Oils and the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. My perfume collection is somewhat daunting to the uninitiated (and to me, when it comes time to dust my shelves). So no matter what sort of story I’m trying to tell, I probably have some sort of perfume to dab on my wrists and really immerse myself in my subject matter. And we’re not just talking “roses and strawberries,” here. I have multiple dirt-based perfumes (my favorite is Graveyard Dirt, which smells like dirt and loam and the risen dead), a perfume called Embalming Fluid, and even a perfume called Bad Luck Woman that’s best described as smelling like freaky chainsaw swamp sex. Any story I want to tell, I probably have a scent to go with it.

(It would be amiss of me not to mention that there’s even a perfume line from Conjure Oils that’s directly based on my Toby Daye books. So now I can not only smell like the story, I can smell like the specific characters from the story. My cats are frequently very confused.)

If music and perfumery doesn’t do the trick, I break out the big guns of redirection: television shows. I watch a lot of TV, and different shows put me in the mood for different stories–not always in a predictable way, either. Phineas and Ferb makes me want to counterbalance its relentless positivity by starting the zombie apocalypse or wiping out mankind (again). Fringe makes me want to work on Toby, where nothing is explained by science, and magic can solve most of the problems it creates. About the only series with a really understandable TV show/urge to write connection is InCryptid; nothing makes me want to work on those books like a new season of So You Think You Can Dance.

Sometimes I just can’t make the switch. I admit it. Sometimes I get jammed on one track, and I just have to go around the track over and over and over again until I get it out of my system. Learning to recognize those times was really the hard part, since otherwise, I wind up with Toby fighting zombies, or the Masons casting spells. And that’s not fun for anybody.

So how do you deal with those moments, Devon? Do they hit you, too, or am I alone in my genre brain freeze?