Lilith Saintcrow's Blog, page 215

Audiobook Wow

My God, you guys. I just listened to the boathouse scene in Betrayals on audiobook. (Strange Angels is here.) A copy of it was just delivered today, and OH MY GOD, you GUYS, the woman reading it is spectacular. She just nails Christophe. It's amazing. I finished listening to the scene and had cold chills.

It's an exotic experience to hear words that you agonized over read professionally. I just about came out of my skin, I was jumping up and down and squealing so hard. This is the first time I...

Why I Do This

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames!

This Friday's writing post is a bit late because, well, life happens. As it is, I was taking a cake to a sixth-grade classroom this morning (long story, don't ask) and I ended up giving an impromptu Q&A about the life of a working writer for about an hour and a half.

Oh, my God, you guys. Sixth-graders are brutal. I think the second question was, "What do you make a year?" The kid asking it was genuinely curious. The teacher looked horrified, someone else...

If I Could Do That, I Can Do This

Yesterday I did my very first three-mile run. I'm informed that three miles is the breakover point–once you reach three miles, you can pretty much train for any distance effectively, or something like that. Everyone was cheering me on–funny, running is so solitary, and yet my Twitter and Facebook blew up with "Go Lili!" "You can do it!" "Those miles don't stand a chance!"

I was so grateful for the cheering, you guys. It was like I had a whole crowd urging me for the finish line.

I did finish...

Hand On Sword, Eye On Prize

When you get up at 6AM with a whole week's worth of to-do collapsed into a single day…everything turns into a blur. Especially when you've been awake half the night stressed out about All The Things You've Decided To Do Today. I was up pretty early this morning, and I got everything accomplished. My list, which looked like a mad scientist's scratchpad, has EVERYTHING crossed off. If I wasn't so damn tired I'd go get myself a glass of wine to celebrate. Unfortunately the wine would put me...

Linkspam! (And Drop-Dead!)

Links this morning!

* Ever wonder how the Deadline Dames came to be? Wonder no more. Here's the real story. (Devon Monk is a GENIUS.) Before you ask, yes, I am considering a Tiger Lili short story.

* Motoko Rich on the math of of publishing meeting the ebook. (h/t to Colleen Lindsay and Victoria Strauss.)

* It's amazing what gets left out of a Will Rogers quote. (h/t to Mary Robinette Kowal.)

It's ironic that not so long ago I couldn't run a mile without wanting to throw up and die, not...

The Plot-Pant Continuum

Crossposted to Deadline Dames.

Someone once said, "You don't know how to write novels. You only know how to write the novel you're writing NOW."

Wise words.

Writers fall on a continuum. You have your pantsers, who tend to store things in their head and blithely run through a novel; then you have your plotters, who have a variety of strategies for deciding on what happens in a novel before they write it. (Strategies like outlining, 3X5 cards, mapping a novel on butcher or kraft paper, Post-Its...

Shake That Into Place

I am doing #Askawriter tonight at 6:30PM PST. For 20-25 minutes I will answer questions on Twitter about writing and publishing.

I climbed on the treadmill yesterday. A half-mile later, the simple answer to my dilemma hit me right between the eyes. Security cameras. That's how that character knows what he knows. Duh! So then I had 2.25 miles to think about it and the implications.

That's the big secondary reason why I exercise. Physical movement often shakes the creative nuts and bolts enough t...

Give That Bitch Some Bonbons

The Muse, again. Taking the story through a bootlegger's turn, and now she's sitting on her red velvet fainting-couch, selecting bonbons from a beribboned cardboard box, and thinking through how she's going to tell me to fix this thing. I can't go any further until I figure out how Character A has received the information he's going to impart to Girl Friday. I know there's a solution, it's on the tip of my brain. The goddamn Muse is sitting on it.

Some days she's like that.

I am just going to k...

It Will Go In The Graveyard Like Every Other Wrong Turn

The morning is nice and gray and soft-edged outside my windows. Not foggy, but not with the glare of spring sunshine and a blue lidless sky either. I'm glad–you live in the Pacific NW for long enough, you start getting nervous when it's not cloudy or raining. No doubt the rain will start later today, but for now it's just…cloudy. And I like it. The synchronicity engine is still turning over and echoing under the surface of Real Life.

Yesterday I was fighting tooth and nail with the latest...

A (small) Ramble On Synchronicity

The engine of synchronicity runs under the surface of my days. In order to feel the engine and see the connections, I have to be in a certain frame of mind. I can generally tell how OK I am by how well I can sense the engine running. Whether it only runs when I'm happy or I just don't see it when I'm in the undertow is largely academic as far as I'm concerned.

So. I am reading Murakami. There's a passage in Dance Dance Dance–Chapter 17, to be precise–where he talks about the phone, about...