Maggie Stiefvater's Blog: Maggie Stiefvater, page 357
June 2, 2016
"I hate the assumption that you can’t write about something because you haven’t experienced it, and..."
- Stephen King (via alakeeffectgirl)
hey Maggie I noticed that in your acknowledgements you said thank you to you editor David Levithan. Is this the David Levithan that co-wrote "Will Grayson Will Grayson." Also good book!
Dear w-i-n-g-w-o-m-a-n,
That is, in fact the David Levithan who wrote Will Grayson Will Grayson with John Green and wrote Boy Meets Boy and Two Boys Kissing and Every Day and Love Is the Higher Law and The Lovers’ Dictionary and all sorts of other things on his own. He has been the editor for all of my books with Scholastic.
urs,
Stiefvater
June 1, 2016
Tomorrow (5/2), Chapters Indigo is hosting a Harry Potter...
Tomorrow (5/2), Chapters Indigo is hosting a Harry Potter twitter chat with me. I doodled a small Harry to give away during it.
Dear Maggie. Do you have advice for those of us in the trenches desperately scooping words into a bucket that may have a hole in its side? Sometimes writing a novel -Such a Big. Thing.- feels useless and scary when you know there isn't a soul on this eart
Dear trululu7,
Five things.
1. Never feel bad for wanting to create for an audience. Writing and storytelling can hold hands and play cheerfully in the sandbox together, but they are not the same thing. One exists for its own sake. The other is like a joke without a laugh; it’s not finished until the audience is there. Nothing wrong with either of them, but it’s important to know why you do it. I write for an audience. I am happier to write with a contract and deadline in place. I want to know I’ll be read. It’s not a grubby impulse.
2. The bucket does have a hole in the side. You’re going to have to get used to scooping faster. Otherwise you as a human will change faster than your story gets completed, and your story will try to shift to accommodate this new person you are, and you will end up with something that is many things instead of one. That’s not wrong, either, but the more things a book is to you, the harder it will be to both complete and edit.
3. A rough draft of a YA novel or a slender adult genre novel is 60,000-80,000 words. Don’t think about that. It’s too big of a bucket. Think about how a scene/ chapter is 1200-2000 words. Think about how that is only 30-40 scenes. Take out a piece of paper. Write the 30 steps it will take to tell your story. Write them one at a time, or out of order, but remember that it is only 30 chunks, not 60,000 attack words coming to nibble you to pieces.
4. Imagine what the book will be when it’s done. What does it feel like. What does it do to people. What sort of cover does it have. What, what, what. Write that book.
5. Climb out of the trench. This is going to be fun, or you wouldn’t be doing it.
urs,
Stiefvater
Dear Maggie. Do you have advice for those of us in the trenches desperately scooping words into a bucket that may have a hole in its side? Sometimes writing a novel -Such a Big. Thing.- feels useless and scary when you know there isn't a soul on this eart
Dear trululu7,
Five things.
1. Never feel bad for wanting to create for an audience. Writing and storytelling can hold hands and play cheerfully in the sandbox together, but they are not the same thing. One exists for its own sake. The other is like a joke without a laugh; it’s not finished until the audience is there. Nothing wrong with either of them, but it’s important to know why you do it. I write for an audience. I am happier to write with a contract and deadline in place. I want to know I’ll be read. It’s not a grubby impulse.
2. The bucket does have a hole in the side. You’re going to have to get used to scooping faster. Otherwise you as a human will change faster than your story gets completed, and your story will try to shift to accommodate this new person you are, and you will end up with something that is many things instead of one. That’s not wrong, either, but the more things a book is to you, the harder it will be to both complete and edit.
3. A rough draft of a YA novel or a slender adult genre novel is 60,000-80,000 words. Don’t think about that. It’s too big of a bucket. Think about how a scene/ chapter is 1200-2000 words. Think about how that is only 30-40 scenes. Take out a piece of paper. Write the 30 steps it will take to tell your story. Write them one at a time, or out of order, but remember that it is only 30 chunks, not 60,000 attack words coming to nibble you to pieces.
4. Imagine what the book will be when it’s done. What does it feel like. What does it do to people. What sort of cover does it have. What, what, what. Write that book.
5. Climb out of the trench. This is going to be fun, or you wouldn’t be doing it.
urs,
Stiefvater
Who inspires you?
Dear boykingdom,
Everyone. Everything. I think if you imagine my mind as one of those chopper-grinder kitchen appliances that you feed vegetables and fruits and pasta into, and pretend like music and people and stories and pain and joy and automobiles are vegetables and fruit and pasta, you’re just about there.
Ever since I was a tender maggot, I’ve felt the pull of something more. I couldn’t tell if I believed in it or if I just wanted it or if I was afraid of it. Someone told me the other day that the thing I was describing was called meaning, and I don’t disagree, even though I don’t think that’s all of it. By the time I was a teen, I knew I was going to spend the rest of my days hunting it with whatever tools and traps I had at my disposal. By the time I was an adult, I realized that I wasn’t happy to just search for meaning — for something more. It wasn’t enough to just look for proof of it outside myself. Better to actively make it.
So every day I pour fruits and vegetables into the chopper-grinder of my mind, and every day, I produce something that I think is a meaningful compilation of the things I’ve consumed as a human. Some bit of art or music or writing, either for other people or for myself, on a page or on my basement wall or just hummed in my car and gone the second I sing it. Every time I do, I’m reminded that I’m living, not merely existing. I’m looking for that something more still, but I am also being that something more.
My mind never stops being hungry.
I hope it never does.
urs,
Stiefvater
J.K. Rowling Just Can’t Let Harry Potter Go
In this article about J.K. Rowling they have a few quotes from the author of the The Raven Cycle, Maggie Stiefvater.
Hey Maggie, will you ever do a Recaptains for trk? Also, are we ever gonna see outtakes from it?
Dear alix-champagne,
I can’t imagine that I’d ever recap The Raven King — I recapped the first three books (1, 2, 3) for the Recaptains so that readers could have a refresher before reading the next one in the series, but as the Raven King is the last one, there’s no need for a refresher, right?
Likewise, I can’t imagine at this point releasing any of the outtakes. I’m more interested, one month after the book came out, in the book that I did write instead of the one that I didn’t.
urs,
Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater
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