Laini Taylor's Blog, page 8

Theirs was a forbidden love . . .

Clementine has a lot of toys, a plethora of teething rings, a population of dolls, etc etc. She has teethers made in France that are scented with vanilla. She has hand-made wooden toys from Germany. She received a doll from the Netherlands yesterday, with the word "lief" (love) embroidered on it (thank you, Auntie Lori!) She has a lot of neat stuff. Can you guess what it is she wants to chew on? Hm? Can you? You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

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Nothing can quite compare...

March mini-NaNo, half way! + Thoughts on Zero Drafts

What? It's Wednesday again? How did that happen . . . *looks around distractedly*. Seriously. HOW? Ah well. Another week of life has flown by, with me groping ineffectually after its tail feathers as it passed. This week LEFT ME BEHIND. You know how some weeks you climb onto and ride like . . . an ostrich, or a unicycle? They carry you along, wind in your hair, and you reach the new week like it's a bus stop (ostrich stop, unicycle stop) and you're perfectly on time, impeccable in your croche...

Right there waiting for me

I've been slowly easing back into painting over the last several months. It had been a while; it had come to feel very distant. The caps of my oil paint tubes, I imagined, were crusted shut -- an apt symbol for my soul as a painter.

The thing is, though I do art for part of my living, I haven't found I'm able to put the time into both art and writing that I would like. They're both full-time jobs. So though I have continued to create new Laini's Ladies lines several times a year, that has pre...

March mini-NaNo, one week down, three to go

[First, some exciting news! The Dreamdark books have sold Turkish rights!!!! Yeeeeeeee!!!! I love Turkey, really really love it. Jim and I went there the summer he asked me to marry him (though the actual proposal came later, in Italy), nearly ten years ago now, and it is the most beautiful shimmering fantastical country -- the minarets and markets, the carpets, the apple tea! We slept in a fairy chimney scooped right out of limestone, for goodness sake. Turkey is magical, and now Dreamdark w...

1st Small Goat

Hey all March NaNo'ers! Our first small *goat* is almost upon us. How goes it? Tomorrow it'll be time (already!) for another Mr. Linky box, where we can check in with our first small goal and forge forward toward the next one. I hope you're all writing writing writing!!!

I've had some very good days here and some days that were fun (sunshine!!!) but not productive, and yet another day that was productive, but for art (new Laini's Ladies!), not writing. Still, I am going to make my goal tomorro...

March Mini-NaNo Club, thoughts for Friday

Hi all! Well, Clementine has decided that 6 am is a nice time to wake up and play. It could be worse, certainly.
Here she is, in all her dawn glee, wrapped up in the bed sheet :-) Hopefully we'll get a nap later, but for now, this is just a brief check-in before I get to work on my w.i.p.!

First, for fun, a picture of a serious writer at work, and not just any writer, but the best-sellingest writer in history:
Take it from Agatha: have some dignity while you write! No slumping around in your paj...

March mini-NaNo Club, come on, you know you want to do it!

Okay, stalwarts, it's on! March mini-NaNo! Thank you for joining me in the crazy push to get a draft done by the end of the month. A draft. A beginning, a middle, and an end. A big, juicy, messy word-count boost to your work-in-progress. Of course you can start something new if you want to play and are not currently working on a novel. Or you can just vow, as I am, to finish a draft of your w.i.p. by the end of the month!

Amber suggested having a sign-up for accountability, and I think that is...

Mission for March & the Baby Food Theory of Process

As of yesterday I laid a new plan of attack, and I'm speaking it *aloud* here to make it real. (If you don't blog about it, did it really happen?) It is my resolution to write to an ending of a draft of the current novel by the end of March. Yikes.

This will involve using every trick in my writerly tool box, as well as gritting my teeth plenty to endure the suck. It's not my usual M.O., and I've written before how the enforced fast draft doesn't work for me, worse, how it killed my book (a dif...

Expect the Worst!

The Guardian posted Part II of their writers' advice lists, and like the first part, there's some great stuff and some ridiculous stuff. Colm Toibin, for example, will allow you to watch Bergman film on Saturdays, but not to go to London, or anywhere else. Whu??? Will Self counsels that if you're writing a contemporary setting, "there need to be long passages where nothing happens save for TV watching." Ha ha! Joyce Carol Oates tells us to "expect the worst."

I'm especially fond of Philip Pull...

Assorted writing advice and laments

My mom just emailed me this link to a Salon.com article by Laura Miller, "A Reader's Advice to Writers" on what she, as a reader, who say to writers. There are five pointers, and they're all very good, I think, including one that I find sadly true (#4). You can read her detailed reasons at the above link, but here's the gist:

1. Make your main character want something.

2. Make your main character do something.

3. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, charac...