Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 130

LAWKI month ends

Last night was the end of our LAWKI month without buying any food. I was really hungry. It is true, what they say, that if you eat the same things over and over again, you can stop wanting to eat anything. You feel hungry, but not for that. It's not like I lost weight or anything, but when I am hungry I tend to cry and be irrational about perfectly normal things.

What did I learn?

1. Desserts are really important when the dinner is frequently soup and homemade bread. There aren't enough ca...

bad hair day--apparently

Conversation in the car, on the way to an author talk:

14: Didn't you do your hair before you came to this?
Me: What's wrong with my hair?
14: You should, like, do it more. Especially when you're going to something in public like this.
Me: This is the way my hair always looks.
14: (Eyes roll) I know.
Me: How do you think I should, like, do it instead?
14: You know, curl it, or straighten it or something?
Me: Curl it or straighten it? Why can't I just leave it with its natural curl?
14: It would look...

Links

A couple of links:

First, a new essay at IGMS on Point of View.

Second, an essay on my first triathlon .

I wanted to add to my books read list that I really enjoyed CHILD OF FIRE by Harry Connolly this month. I read it to get my Harry Dresden fix, and while it is in the same genre, it's not Dresden at all. Completely different, darker (YES, even darker!) world view. Interesting magic. Twists and turns. Characters I liked doing things I sometimes didn't. I will be reading it again.

Also e...

winners!

The following, please send your snail mail addresses to: mette@argonautfilms.com

windsong5
angie_frazer
maryling
csiowa

outlining--late for Halloween, but still very frightening

I did it. I wrote an outline for my WIP, the one that is having severe plot issues. Specifically, it needs an ending. And well, it needs things that lead to that ending. Which is, as far as I can tell, pretty much everything.

I did not write a traditional outline. It started as a list of events that I thought should happen in the book. Then I wrote a four or five word gloss of the first four chapters I had written. Then I wrote three basic plot lines, well, the main plot A and sub plots...

Books Read in October 2009

Geektastic ed. Cecil Castellucci, Holly Black
Child of Fire by Harry Connolly
Liar by Justine Larbelestier
Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe
My Life as a Rhombus by Varian Johnson
Fantasy and Science Fiction August/September 2009
Mean Streets ed. by Jim Butcher
The Compound by S.A. Bodeen
Asimov's December 2009
Fantasy and Science Fiction October/November 2009
Asimov's September 2009
Servant of a Dark God by John Brown
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney
The Golden Cord by Paul Genesse
Dull Boy by...

Inevitable

I want the plot of my current WIP to feel inevitable. Not all books are like this and I love plenty of boks that build slowly like The Magicians or The Name of the Wind.

But there are books that set everything up in the first chapter and while you may not realize, the rest of the book is an unfolding of those possibilities. A couple books like this are Among The Hidden and The Demon's Lexicon. This isn't to say there are no surprises in these nooks. There are, but when you go back to the b...

makeup and book promotion

It occurred to me recently that my feelings about makeup are actually related in some strange way to my feelings about book promotion. I will try to tease out this strange connection here.

When I began writing, I had this idea that I was a writer. That is, I was not a salesman. I was not an entertainer. I was not a speaker. I was not a movie star or a rock star. I was not a motivator for kids. I was a writer. What do writers do? Well, they pretty much sit in their dark caves and produ...

fantasy vs. science fiction

I hear people debate about what has happened to science fiction and why the big numbers in terms of sales are all in fantasy. This is the reverse of say, the 1980s, when fantasy was lagging considerably behind. I have some possible theories on this:

1. It's just a cycle. Who knows what causes these things? Bellwethers of some kind, but we don't know how to track them. Harry Potter. Twilight. Possibly they are causing it. Or possibly they are simply proof of it.

2. We are living in a sci...

The best part of writing?

Is when you get to look over the galleys and make the tiniest little corrections to a manuscript that has been polished again and again and is really as close to perfection as anything you will ever see again. There are a few of those moments where I say, "Did I really write that? That is incredibly poetic or powerful."

Yes, I compliment myself. Who knows if anyone else ever will? This is the time before reviews that may sting or amazon comments, before sales reports or even hints of ord...