Scott Westerfeld's Blog, page 37

Back in Sydney

I haven't been posting as much lately. But as you probably have noticed, Justine and I have been in Istanbul the last week or so, me doing research for the next book in the Leviathan series, and her mostly eating.

We also got to meet with some of our Turkish publishers: Epsilon, who will bring out Leviathan next year; and Artemis, who publish the Midnighters books and will soon be releasing Justine's latest, Liar. We didn't get to meet with Tudum, who publish the Uglies series (which...

Turkish Delights

Here in Istanbul, researching Book 2 of Leviathan. Busy with travel, but I will say two things:

The place is beautiful (this is the Haggia Sophia) . . .

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. . . and the food is amazing:

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Click here for more about food from Justine.

Confluence Day

Just some weird confluences to report:

1) There's a cool article about steampunk in Time magazine, which quotes me profusely.

2) The December 4 Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster is "Leviathan." I haz proof.

3) Tomorrow morning, Children's Literature Ambassador John Scska will be on CBS's The Early Show to talk about good books. I hear that he'll be mentioning Leviathan.

That is all of the weirdness.

Oh, and Justine and I are in the Korean Air lounge at JFK airport, which is also the Aeroflot and ...

The Forum

NaNoWriMo is over, so it's time to get back to regular posting about regular stuff. Here we go.

Thing Number One:

You guys have been asking for a Forum for a while, and when I re-jiggered the site a few months ago, we planned to have one. It took a while, but it's been active for the last few weeks.

We were working out some bugs, so I didn't announce it here. But people randomly found it, and various interesting conversations have started. You should go check it out.

To get there, click on the F...

Nano Tip #29: Finish Everything

As we all approach the end of NaNoWriMo, you may be thinking, "Well, I might not ever finish this sucker, but at least I got my 50,000 words done. And that's what I set out to do, so I'm awesome!"

Um, no.

You need to complete your NaNoWriMo novel, even if it takes you till next November. Here's why:

Finishing is a habit, and it's a very important ones for writers to cultivate. In fact, my very first writing advice post, back on June 26, 2005, was about finishing. So let me end my month of Nano ...

Nano Tip #27: Word Clouds

We all have words we love too much.

Maybe for you it's something fancy, like "effulgent" or "apodictic," or something sillier, like "smellypants." And because we love these words, we will use them too often, until our readers begin to snicker quietly at us.

But those big, obvious words are easy to spot. We'll whack them in the second draft. And even if we fail to do so, our friends will probably slap us the fiftieth time they encounter the word "prognosticate."

It's the little overused words...

Nano Tip #25: Read It Backwards

This is my ante-penultimate Nano Tip, so you must be nearing the end of your fantabulous NaNoWriMo novel. Soon you'll need to read the whole thing over with an editorial eye, polishing every sentence for sparkling clarity.

But how to concentrate on mere clauses and word choice while your amazing story is sweeping you along in its wake? How can you focus on all those pesky details when your characters are bleeding heroically onto the page?

Three words: Read it backwards.

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Reading through a novel i...

Nano Tip #23: Change Your Brain

So . . . you're more than two-thirds done with NaNoWriMo, and maybe you're starting to crumple a bit. Your dialog sounds forced, your action scenes are flat, and your plot twists have all turned to spaghetti. What can you do to break out of this slump?

Here's my tip for the day: change your brain!

"Um, what now?" you may ask. Allow me to explain . . .

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This tip was inspired by a recent article in the journal Brain and Cognition, about how traffic levels between the two hemispheres of your brain ...

Nano Tip #21: Writers Re-read

Being a writer should change your daily life. You should scan the newspaper for story ideas, deconstruct old fairy tales in the shower, and eavesdrop shamelessly in the name of dialog development.

And being a writer should also change the way you read.

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The next time you read a scene that makes your socks roll up, make yourself stop and learn.

Even if it interrupts your readerly pleasure, take a moment to wonder. How did the author just make you cry? Which elegant phrase or shameless trick...

Nano Tip #19: Read Out Loud

If you ever take a linguistics class, you will hear this catechism from the first day on:

1) Speech is primary.

2) Speech is universal among human cultures, and separates us from other animals.

3) Speech is innately acquired-–-unlike writing, which is a skill that must be learned.

4) Therefore speech (not writing) is the primary material for linguistic study.

Yes, dear NaNoWriMor-ers, writing is important. But speech is the bee's knees. So when you want to measure your burgeoning novel against a b...