B.E. Sanderson's Blog, page 7

Finished? Yeah, I Guess So

Once again, I wrote this and forgot to post it...  Sorry it's late.

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Last night, I finished Untitled Fantasy.  At the time, I wasn't sure I was finished.  In fact, I said something on FB about it being finished unless my brain said otherwise while I was trying to fall asleep.  But my brain was quiet.  Well, other than starting the next book.  That didn't last long, though.  I told my brain to shut up and it did for a change.  Best night's sleep I've had in weeks.

Now I need to let the book marinate for a while.  A week.  Maybe two.  Maybe less.  The story will tell me when it's ready to be edited.  

I guess I really need to find a title for the damn thing.  Everything I think of sounds lame at this point.  No biggie.  Rumor Has It was 'Duke Noble 1' until it was time to make the cover.

From here, I need to wade into the book and decorate.  It needs paint and furniture.  Or frosting and fondant.  Whatever metaphor suits you.  

Anyway, now I can relax a bit.  This story I started in 2011 is finally done.  I'm pleased with it overall.  It ain't perfect, but its imperfections can be sanded away and polished up.  Yay for edits.

Oh, here's another song for you.  This one really speaks to the muse for me.  Bottom of the River by Delta Rae.  Watch the video.  It's totally cool.  I think she's supposed to be a witch being dragged out of her house in the middle of the night and taken to the river.  But she gets them in the end.  Hehe.  Fun.

Music and Words

Recently, I created a station on Jango specifically for this book, which is as close to a playlist as I'll ever get for my books.  I started out with the band Of Monsters and Men then added in The Lumineers and Phillip Phillips and then Delta Rae.  All artists that, for me, say 'fantasy'.

It has totally helped me get in the mood for writing.  Even when I don't feel like writing, once I throw this on, I can sit down and at least knock out a few hundred words.  And this is totally awesome, considering I've had a tough time these past couple years getting the words out.

Last night, I was in the process of knocking out way more than a few words when a song came on that was totally not in line with the mood I was going for.  Oh, it was in line with the general theme of the station, so I wasn't going to give it a thumbs down and have it removed permanently from the playlist.  I was just going to click next and move on.  But by the time I had made the necessary move from Word to browser, I was already hooked on the song.  Then I went to my search engine and looked for the video of it and listened not only to the song, but to the lead-in where the songwriter talks about writing the song and why he wrote it.  (The song was No Piece in Quiet by Delta Rae, btw.  It's pretty and kinda sad.)  

By the time that was finished, I was derailed.  Pretty and sad is fine, but it definitely didn't put me in a place where I could write the next BIG SCENE.  I mean, if the next scene had been a pretty and sad scene it would've been great inspiration, but the next scene is fraught with tension and action.  I need zippier music for that.

In the end, getting derailed was okay because it was after 8 anyway and I did already have over 1700 words.  The song probably derailed me because I was already getting tired.  My writing stamina ain't what it used to be.  I let it atrophy.  Still, I really should've just clicked past this song and kept writing.  Worked on rebuilding the stamina and all that.

What about you?  Does music help or hurt your writing?  If you don't write, does it help or hurt your focus on other things?  Do you ever just get derailed by a song?  

Epiphany

I've been struggling this week, trying to create an awesome climax for this book.  The big battle scene.  What's a gal to do when she's created a baddy so bad that nothing could stop it?  

I knew when I reached the point of actually needing to do something about the baddy that I wouldn't be able to sleep unless I fixed this.  The hamster was running hard on its wheel and not getting anywhere.  And it would continue to run.

So, I stopped.  I got up off my chair and put on my workout clothes.  This is the point where I'd usually go for a walk, but it's so hot and humid right now, I'd probably drop over halfway through.  Instead, I got on the exercise bike.  (Which I've moved into the spare room, positioned so that it looks out a window and I've placed the stereo next to it so I can listen to jams, too.)  Eighteen minutes on that sucker.

I still didn't have the answer, even if I was in a more-receptive place.  

I flopped into my recliner and vegged out while Hubs watch Mountain Men.  (He loves that show.)  And I let my mind wander over the problem.  I was determined to figure this out no matter how late I would have to stay up.  What to do.  What to do.  What to do.

Epiphany!

I got right up, grabbed my beverage, and headed into the office where I made magic.  The answer was bloody brilliant, if I do say so myself.  

Plus, I got it all out and finished in time to go to bed at the normal time.  Of course, I was totally hopped up on cold coffee drink and iced tea by then, so while I had hoped to avoid not being able to sleep because my brain was turning over the problem, I still didn't sleep because of the caffeine.  

Time and readers will tell whether my brilliance was actually brilliant, but right now, I'm loving it.  

It looks like I will actually finish this book this time.  The hard part is over.  Now there's the denouement and some additional excitement as there's still a thing or two the characters have to deal with.  (Which actually might be dealt with in edits.)  I'm just over 89K words as of last night.  Maybe another 5K... perhaps 10.  

I do love epiphanies.  I wish they'd happen more often, but then again, they wouldn't be as awesome if they came more frequently, would they?

What's in a Name?

What's in a name?  Would an author by any other name write as sweet?

Years ago, when Wish in One Hand was newly birthed and out in the world, I stumbled across a website that trashes bad book covers.  (Yes, my original cover for WIOH deserved to be there.)  Only problem was one of the people trashing my book's cover went after my name, too.  

They accused me of trying to riff off of Brandon Sanderson.  Like this was some kind of name I made up to lure unsuspecting Brandon fans.  I posted about it on my blog and then went on about my merry way, because it's not like I was doing what they accused me of, we don't even write the same genres, and it wasn't like I was going to change my name.  

I'm kind of proud of my name.  After all, I chose to be a Sanderson when I married Hubs.  I could've easily kept my maiden name.  I chose not to.  I use my initials because it gives me some small measure of anonymity in this weird world.  And while I do like my first name, it doesn't necessarily say AUTHOR.  Some of you know it, most of you don't.  (Yes, it does begin with a B.  No, it doesn't rhyme with witch.)  So, B.E. Sanderson.  Tada!  (For the record, before I got married, I was B.E. Meissner online and in print - LTOE's and whatnot.)  

Five plus years later and I thought this issue was done.  But once something sticks in my head, it's in there.  So, lucky me, when I was laying in bed thinking about this fantasy novel I'm writing, the old criticism jumped out of my memory banks and slapped me across the face.  If you're not familiar with Brandon, he writes fantasy.  If I got tagged for being a Sanderson with an urban fantasy, which he doesn't write, how will people react to seeing my similar name on a fantasy novel?  

Blerg.  And since I have never read anything by him, now I'm wondering if what I'm writing is even a little bit close to what he's already written.  How gauche would that be?

Since I don't want to stop writing this fantasy, I'm debating on whether to switch back to my maiden name for this venture.  But I like my name... :whines:  And writing under a pseudonym is such a pain in the ass.  I'd have to go get a DBA registered and find some way to market that name without linking it to my name and... :collapses:

The really stupid thing about all this is that the need for any of this is so far away I really shouldn't be letting it hamper my writing.  But, sure enough, it derailed me.  Of course, I've already talked about this book using my name and I've posted snippets of it under this name and if I really wanted to divorce the book from the name I should've already started that process so there'd be a clean break.  :shrug:

It is what it is.  

Have any of y'all read Brandon?  He's like a big best-selling author and junk.  I so do not want to ride his coat tails, even a little bit.  I also don't want to get smeared as being someone who's trying to make money off his name, even if it isn't true.  He's got money for lawyers and stuff.  I don't want to get sued, but I don't want to stop writing my fantasy either.

I'm probably worried over nothing.  But on the off chance it's something...  Gah.

Yep, neurotic writer is in residence this morning.

Writing for the Love of Writing

Yesterday, my friend Silver posted about writing for herself.  Which dovetailed nicely into something I've been thinking about this week.

Why am I suddenly writing right now when I hadn't been able to write for a while?  I stopped thinking about what was marketable and started writing what I wanted to write.  If for no other reason than I needed to write again.  

Hell, the whole reason I never finished this fantasy in the first place boiled down to worrying about whether it would be something I could sell.  It's why I couldn't muster the will to finish Duke #2.  It lays beneath every unfinished novel I have on my harddrive.  Including the ones I didn't finish before I started publishing my own books.

Of course, back when I wasn't publishing, I was querying and the thought was more along the lines of 'why finish this is no agent is going to want to look at it?' Which in a circuitous way led back to selling books. Down the road.  Eventually.  

I get to worrying whether anyone will want a book and I lose faith in the book.  Yep.  That shit's a killer.

So, yeah, I picked up this old book I never finished and now I'm working on finishing it.  And still, the demon whispers that I'll never sell it.  I'll never be able to make a cover for it or buy a cover for it.  I'll never be able to pay for marketing.  Why bother finishing it?  

Because it's the book I want to write and I'm going to fucking finish it this time.  Screw the market.  I realized a long time ago that the market - as traditional publishing sees it - doesn't jibe with my set of philosophies anyway.  And no, that isn't sour grapes.  It just is what it is.  

There's a market out there for me somewhere.  It might not be huge.  Or it might be bigger than I think.  It's filled with people who want a good story, well-written and well-organized* and well-edited.  People who want to be entertained and maybe think a little while they're doing it (or not because my some of my books encourage rather than force you to think about issues).  I seek to entertain.  I seek to uplift through heroic actions when I can, but the entertainment is the priority here.

Anyway, you might not see me publish anything else any time soon.  I'm writing.  You also might not see me marketing stuff because putting all that effort into marketing and not seeing sales harshes my groove.  And I certainly don't need that.  

I'm writing for the love of writing again.  And that's all that really matters.

*Typing those words made me remember a particularly heinous reaction to a paper I wrote in college.  The prof said it was well-written and well-organized but he didn't like the topic, so he gave me a D.  (The assignment was to write a paper on some form of aggression.  I chose to write it on 'assertiveness as positive aggression'.  He hated that.  Buttwart that he was.)  Looking back, it was probably my first taste of a bad review of good writing.  He was definitely not my target market.

The Floodgates Have Opened

After too long a time not being able to see the story... any story... the floodgates have opened.  My brain is being blitzed with idea bombs.  But do the bombs come when I'm doing nothing and have all the time to sit down at the keyboard?  Nope.  They come when I'm trying to fall asleep.

Last night was a particularly spectacular show.  The hamster-wheel in my head must've been hooked up to some kind of Van de Graaff generator and shit was sparking all over the place.  And I was all like "Doood... I'm trying to sleep here.  Come ON."

I did get up and write some of it down.  The rest?  Well, I can only hope that when it comes time to work on the story, my brain cooperates and shows me once more all the wonderful things it was trying to show me last night.

Unfortunately, when the floodgates opened, they opened wide and hosed me down with ideas for not only this book but the book after this book, wherein our intrepid hero and his merry band move onto the next part of their story.  

I seriously did not want another series like this.  But the story does what the story wants.  I wanted to finish this and then get back to Duke.  Unfortunately, the crime fiction writer hat has been thrown into the wind in favor of the fantasy writer hat... purple velvet with a pointy top gently crumpled over and replete with sparkly stars, comets, and crescent moons.

This probably isn't the best for maintaining a fan base, but... :shrug:  I can't do it any other way.  I can't force the story that my brain doesn't want to write.  Wish I could.  Can't.  

Right now, I'm just happy to be writing again.  Although I do wish I could get some sleep.  Thank goodness there's always coffee.  

Back in the Thick

I finished reading the unfinished manuscript yesterday.  And I started writing on it again.  Only 500 words, but it's a start.  It'll just take me a little while to get back in the swing of it again.

I bet you're wondering which manuscript I restarted.  It's the Untitled Fantasy from several years ago.  (I think I started it in 2011 and then wrote some more on it in 2019.)

I think Aryl and the gang deserve to have their story finished.  It's a good one.  New and fresh... I think.  Admittedly, I haven't read a ton of recent fantasy novels, so how ground-breaking it will be remains to be seen.  :shrug:  It's got some elements y'all will be familiar with - young guy, school for mages, dragons... the battle between good and evil.  There's plenty of new stuff, too, though.  Dark stuffs.  This ain't Harry Potter, folks.

As I said in a previous post, it's a behemoth, but some fantasies are.  I'm still playing with the idea of breaking it into a series.  Once I get it all written, I'll decide.  I'm not promising when that'll happen, though.  There's still quite a bit to be written on the first draft and a lot to be inserted in the second draft.  

But I'm excited to be back in the thick of it again.  Hell, I dreamed about it last night and figured out a plot point, which I got up and wrote down in the dark last night.  (With a dull pencil.  Luckily, I can still make out enough of it to figure out what I meant. LOL)

I still don't have a title for it.  I haven't named the kingdom.  Or many of the monsters.  (I have a lot of :insert bad critter here: littered throughout.)  But I have the magics figured out and how everything fits together.  Sort of.  

It'll be fun figuring it all out.  Or it'll kill me.  One or the other.  We'll see what happens.  Woohoo.

Deciding About Book Length, Etc.

So, yesterday on The Writing Spectacle, I talk a bit about what I'm currently doing.  I've pulled a forgotten manuscript out of the dank corners of my harddrive, shaken the dust off, and am reading it to get back into the swing of the story.  I'm still not ready to say which one, but I'd like to talk about a couple things regarding it.

I'm still not sure if this is one book or several.  It's already at 78K words and it's only 2/3rds of the way through the story.  Plus, I have ideas that need to be inserted throughout what I've already read through to make the story fuller and richer.  (I had an awesome idea last night as I was trying to sleep that I got up and wrote down.  Woohoo!)  That'll swell the story up to upgodly pages for a single title.  

I'm not super afraid of putting a big book out there.  Lord knows I have a few titles over 100K words out there already.  I just want to do what's right for this story.  

There are definite places where the story could be broken into three to make a trilogy.  Without making it too cliffhangery.  I hate stories that leave too much hanging from one book to the next.  

The genre could handle a single title of epic proportions.  It could also handle a trilogy.  

Decisions decisions.  

Any way I slice it, I'm still working toward having the whole story done before I decide.  It'll either be a behemoth or it'll release one after the other as a trilogy.  Which brings me around to another point...

Will the market bear paying for three separate books or would it be better to lay out a single book?  Personally, I like big books.  It's hard to hold them these days, but I manage, and if they're ebooks, even better.  I'd rather read one big book than three little books, especially when I have to pay for them.  But that's me, and I know I'm not the typical reader.

So what say you?

Doing the Job

It seems like I've come around to that time again,  You know the time... when I sit here wondering why I bother to write books and wondering whether my time would be better spent  by getting a job outside the house.  

Of course, who would hire me?  I haven't worked outside my home in 17 years.  

Seventeen years...  I've been writing now for SEVENTEEN YEARS.  God, that's depressing.  

Yes, I know.  I have sixteen books published.  And umpteen others in various states of finished.  It's not like I haven't done anything.  But if I had an employee who was so sporadic in her efforts, I'd have fired her years ago.  Hit the road, you lazy bitch.

So, yeah, I looked at jobs.  Writing, editing, proofing... you need a degree.  Umm...  I don't have one of those.  And I haven't been able to write to spec since I worked for other people (and even then, it was like pulling teeth).  Editing/Proofing other people's work?  Well, that would be fine if it was for other people I like who write the stuff I like.  I'm at the point in my life where I can't stomach reading stuff I don't like written by people I don't like.  

Why yes, I would like some cheese...

Anyway, I'm thinking housekeeping would be an awesome job right now.  Loads of places around here - resorts and things - are hiring housekeepers and the pay isn't too bad.  

Or I could just get up off my lazy ass and get back to writing.  The pay sucks and the benefits are for shit, but it's my job.  Maybe I need to get back to treating it like one.

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