Rachel Aaron's Blog, page 31
April 4, 2012
Spirit's End cover revealed!
The Lord of Storms, he is not happy! Eli, however, is giving him the "bitch, please" look. I'm not sure if this is the 100% final cover, but I totally dig the purple. Let's get the other 2 in here to compare!
Oh Eli, being on every cover is not going to help with those ego problems, is it? At least he's in good company. You can see all of Orbit's upcoming covers, including mine, over at their massive cover post!
Spirit's End's official release date has been set for November 20, 2012. This will be the fifth and final Eli novel that finishes out the story. The Spirit War, the fourth novel, will be out on June 5, 2012. I hope this answers everyone's release date questions!
April 2, 2012
Guest Post: Budgeting and the Writer
Sorry I've been AWOL, folks. I've been a bear in her writing cave, attacking all who come near (so, in short, having a pretty awesome time!). As promised in my last post, though, my husband, the amazing Travis Bach, has written a guest post for me about what it's like to actually support a family when 1/2 of the money comes from a writer (a topic that he has a lot of hands on experience with, seeing as he keeps all our books). So, without further ado, here's Travis!
Writing Financials, a Guest Post by Travis Bach
Since Rachel has recently posted about writer money, I wanted to take this opportunity to try and guest post it up. I'm not a professional writer, but I do have to be the one who looks at the money and figures out how to make it work. I'd like to share some of the planning and tactics we've been using to keep the lights on even though author money is less like a cash flow and more like a cash glacier that drops big cash ice blocks off at irregular intervals.
#1 - Know thy self...Financially
We've spent a lot of time analyzing our spending habits. This is typically done using tools like mint.com, but I used to have just a spreadsheet for it. Mint.com is way nicer than a spreadsheet by the way and will save so many hours of work its not funny. There's some competitors to mint out there as well, like quicken online and such. I encourage you to explore, as these are powerful tools that should not be ignored.
This step is essential. You cannot plan if you do not know how much you spend regularly. If you've never done this step, it might be an eye opener and a little painful. Sometimes we waste amazing amounts of money on things we've never thought of. Also, you'd be amazed at how many weird automated payments can slip through the cracks and hang around for years sucking up cash.
This item is #1 for a good reason. Keeping an eye on the money is vital and simply paying more attention will often reveal what courses of action are available to you. If you do nothing else, do this on a frequent basis.
By the way - if you are afraid to look at your bank statements... Count that feeling as a massive alarm bell. You need to get in there now. Face that fear!
#2 - Budgeting
For us, we have to dole out large sums of money (RA NOTE: all those big checks I talked about in the last post) carefully over long periods of time. By far the majority of my efforts on this simply are looking at what we're spending and how fast is the money going. Making a budget is key, but there's so much advice out there that there's no point in me covering the basics of that here.
However, estimating incidentals is the hardest part of planning. The expense events that are not part of the budget. Things like medical bills, car repairs, home maintenance, fines, fees, etc... Having done this for a few years I know to plan for about $1100/month (~$13,000/yr actually divided by 12) in incidentals.
How did I get that number? By looking at my historic spending summaries at mint.com and using Bank of America's online equivalent (since it had a lot more historical data for me). I look at total budget overruns (total spent - budgeted expenses) over several years and generally a 'safe' number emerges for me to use.
In addition to estimating incidentals, we maintain an emergency savings fund that can keep us afloat for 3 months with no money coming in at all. Any good financial planner or personal finance website will tell you how important this is. When talking about incidentals, its vital. The savings fund prevents us from having to use debt to cover short-term financial gaps or emergencies and, thus, not having to pay more for those incidents.
When the emergency fund gets low, we know its time to start cutting back and finding ways of getting money flowing into it for replenishment. Its a good, practical, and empirical measurement of the reality of that year's incidentals; rather than just my predictions.
#3 - Handling Large Blocks of Income
The chief challenge we have to deal with is the payment schedule. Rachel isn't getting a monthly paycheck for writing. She gets a few checks through her agent throughout the year. Knowing our budget requirements though, I can look at each check and see how many months of operations that check represents. When I look at our savings account, I know about how long we've got before something has to change (more on this later).
I also keep an eye on how many book payments are yet to be made and when those might be coming in. Forecasting like this is very important as its much easier to cut spending over the course of many months than over just a couple (or one). Cutting $200/month for 10 months is easy. Cutting $2000 from one month is hell.
Early detection of fiscal difficulties prevents us from getting blind sided. It also makes it so that I can more easily spot the ramifications of incidental expenses that pop up without warning (car breaking down, etc.). When that big, unexpected, whatever bill comes in, I know which way to jump and what it means for the future (i.e. next 12 months)
Also of note, we keep all the writing money in its own separate savings account so that it doesn't get eaten by accident. Having a lean checking account helps create the proper feelings of wealthy/poor as the monthly cycle repeats itself. I will say with certainty that putting lots of money into a pile that's connected to a debit card will result in that pile getting spent much faster than desired and on little, meaningless things.
We always strive to make the spending of the writing money a deliberate and planned act. Money, writing or otherwise, is earned through great effort, so its spending should always receive careful attention.
#3 - Using Milestones
I try to always have a plan for the next 12 to 18 months. Currently I have a rough idea of what's going down through 2013 (this planning might be its own post, it's a lot). There's a lot of assumptions going into that, planning on books yet unwritten and unsold. Fortunately, Rachel writes at a fairly reliable pace now, so its easier to guess what books will be written and when.
I have a spreadsheet on my desktop that I've used to calculate some numbers that are of vital interest to me and for Rachel's writing career, such as:
Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living on only my salary.Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living without my salary.Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living without any income.Book sales to cash-in hand ratio. Ie.. if the publisher pays $X, how much comes home?* How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 6 months?How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 12 months?How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 18 months?What's the threshold for me to quit my job?**What's the threshold where Rachel has get work other than her own novels?
*This number is approximately 63% right now
**and become Rachel's full-time assistant/promoter/financial manager/product developer/GM/etc.... (RA NOTE: Slave, coffee boy, full time ego adjustment coach, etc...;D )
I tend to update this sheet once/twice a year. These milestones are important. They are indicators of future prosperity or trouble. All writing work takes months to pay out, so we have to look forward far enough to start damage control on time. I bet that Rachel could get contract writing work easily enough if needed. That said, getting a contract to write for hire, writing the book, editing the book, and getting paid for the book would take months and months and months. Much of that spent waiting on people.
It's these kinds of delays between need, effort, and payment that make planning so amazingly vital. If there's gonna be a problem in October, we need to be on the move in March.
Debt
The last thing I ever want to do is to use debt to cover a shortfall. Nothing like having money troubles and then having to pay 20%-50% extra to deal with them. Did you know the average small item put on a credit card winds up costing the owner triple what they would have paid? Yeah. Screw that.
So, in recap, my advice to folks would be to monitor, budget, and plan plan plan plan plan. Just like steering a big ship on a long voyage, its vital to constantly update your knowledge of your position and to make corrections early enough that the problems are small and fixable, rather than huge and crushing. Thank you for reading and I hope this helps shed more life on living as (or with) a working writer!
- Travis Bach (AKA, the real Slorn)
Writing Financials, a Guest Post by Travis Bach
Since Rachel has recently posted about writer money, I wanted to take this opportunity to try and guest post it up. I'm not a professional writer, but I do have to be the one who looks at the money and figures out how to make it work. I'd like to share some of the planning and tactics we've been using to keep the lights on even though author money is less like a cash flow and more like a cash glacier that drops big cash ice blocks off at irregular intervals.
#1 - Know thy self...Financially
We've spent a lot of time analyzing our spending habits. This is typically done using tools like mint.com, but I used to have just a spreadsheet for it. Mint.com is way nicer than a spreadsheet by the way and will save so many hours of work its not funny. There's some competitors to mint out there as well, like quicken online and such. I encourage you to explore, as these are powerful tools that should not be ignored.
This step is essential. You cannot plan if you do not know how much you spend regularly. If you've never done this step, it might be an eye opener and a little painful. Sometimes we waste amazing amounts of money on things we've never thought of. Also, you'd be amazed at how many weird automated payments can slip through the cracks and hang around for years sucking up cash.
This item is #1 for a good reason. Keeping an eye on the money is vital and simply paying more attention will often reveal what courses of action are available to you. If you do nothing else, do this on a frequent basis.
By the way - if you are afraid to look at your bank statements... Count that feeling as a massive alarm bell. You need to get in there now. Face that fear!
#2 - Budgeting
For us, we have to dole out large sums of money (RA NOTE: all those big checks I talked about in the last post) carefully over long periods of time. By far the majority of my efforts on this simply are looking at what we're spending and how fast is the money going. Making a budget is key, but there's so much advice out there that there's no point in me covering the basics of that here.
However, estimating incidentals is the hardest part of planning. The expense events that are not part of the budget. Things like medical bills, car repairs, home maintenance, fines, fees, etc... Having done this for a few years I know to plan for about $1100/month (~$13,000/yr actually divided by 12) in incidentals.
How did I get that number? By looking at my historic spending summaries at mint.com and using Bank of America's online equivalent (since it had a lot more historical data for me). I look at total budget overruns (total spent - budgeted expenses) over several years and generally a 'safe' number emerges for me to use.
In addition to estimating incidentals, we maintain an emergency savings fund that can keep us afloat for 3 months with no money coming in at all. Any good financial planner or personal finance website will tell you how important this is. When talking about incidentals, its vital. The savings fund prevents us from having to use debt to cover short-term financial gaps or emergencies and, thus, not having to pay more for those incidents.
When the emergency fund gets low, we know its time to start cutting back and finding ways of getting money flowing into it for replenishment. Its a good, practical, and empirical measurement of the reality of that year's incidentals; rather than just my predictions.
#3 - Handling Large Blocks of Income
The chief challenge we have to deal with is the payment schedule. Rachel isn't getting a monthly paycheck for writing. She gets a few checks through her agent throughout the year. Knowing our budget requirements though, I can look at each check and see how many months of operations that check represents. When I look at our savings account, I know about how long we've got before something has to change (more on this later).
I also keep an eye on how many book payments are yet to be made and when those might be coming in. Forecasting like this is very important as its much easier to cut spending over the course of many months than over just a couple (or one). Cutting $200/month for 10 months is easy. Cutting $2000 from one month is hell.
Early detection of fiscal difficulties prevents us from getting blind sided. It also makes it so that I can more easily spot the ramifications of incidental expenses that pop up without warning (car breaking down, etc.). When that big, unexpected, whatever bill comes in, I know which way to jump and what it means for the future (i.e. next 12 months)
Also of note, we keep all the writing money in its own separate savings account so that it doesn't get eaten by accident. Having a lean checking account helps create the proper feelings of wealthy/poor as the monthly cycle repeats itself. I will say with certainty that putting lots of money into a pile that's connected to a debit card will result in that pile getting spent much faster than desired and on little, meaningless things.
We always strive to make the spending of the writing money a deliberate and planned act. Money, writing or otherwise, is earned through great effort, so its spending should always receive careful attention.
#3 - Using Milestones
I try to always have a plan for the next 12 to 18 months. Currently I have a rough idea of what's going down through 2013 (this planning might be its own post, it's a lot). There's a lot of assumptions going into that, planning on books yet unwritten and unsold. Fortunately, Rachel writes at a fairly reliable pace now, so its easier to guess what books will be written and when.
I have a spreadsheet on my desktop that I've used to calculate some numbers that are of vital interest to me and for Rachel's writing career, such as:
Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living on only my salary.Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living without my salary.Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living without any income.Book sales to cash-in hand ratio. Ie.. if the publisher pays $X, how much comes home?* How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 6 months?How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 12 months?How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 18 months?What's the threshold for me to quit my job?**What's the threshold where Rachel has get work other than her own novels?
*This number is approximately 63% right now
**and become Rachel's full-time assistant/promoter/financial manager/product developer/GM/etc.... (RA NOTE: Slave, coffee boy, full time ego adjustment coach, etc...;D )
I tend to update this sheet once/twice a year. These milestones are important. They are indicators of future prosperity or trouble. All writing work takes months to pay out, so we have to look forward far enough to start damage control on time. I bet that Rachel could get contract writing work easily enough if needed. That said, getting a contract to write for hire, writing the book, editing the book, and getting paid for the book would take months and months and months. Much of that spent waiting on people.
It's these kinds of delays between need, effort, and payment that make planning so amazingly vital. If there's gonna be a problem in October, we need to be on the move in March.
Debt
The last thing I ever want to do is to use debt to cover a shortfall. Nothing like having money troubles and then having to pay 20%-50% extra to deal with them. Did you know the average small item put on a credit card winds up costing the owner triple what they would have paid? Yeah. Screw that.
So, in recap, my advice to folks would be to monitor, budget, and plan plan plan plan plan. Just like steering a big ship on a long voyage, its vital to constantly update your knowledge of your position and to make corrections early enough that the problems are small and fixable, rather than huge and crushing. Thank you for reading and I hope this helps shed more life on living as (or with) a working writer!
- Travis Bach (AKA, the real Slorn)
March 19, 2012
The Nitty Gritties Writing and Money
I think about money a lot. I don't think this will come as a surprise to anyone. I mean, the main character in my series is a thief whose main goal in life is to earn a million gold bounty, so clearly money interests me. Admitting this interest, however, is sort of like admitting I have an embarrassing personal grooming habit, because money is one of the few remaining things you do not talk about in polite society.
The older I get though, the more I realize that this aversion is a huge disservice. Few things can ruin your life faster or more completely than money. This is especially true for writers who, as John Scalzi points out in his own excellent post about writers and money, seem to be unusually and universally bad at dealing with money. This (admittedly anecdotal) failing is further aggravated by the byzantine feast-and-famine nature of writing money combined with the fact that most new writers have no idea what to expect when they sell their first book because, you know, people don't talk about it.
Thankfully, though, this is no longer totally true. While it can still be pretty hard to get an accurate picture of what to expect money-wise as a writer, both in terms of amounts and how money actually comes in (both of which I consider pretty vital information if you're looking to make publishing your new career), a few brave souls have bucked convention by sharing their own experiences. Today I'm throwing my had into the ring as well, so if you've ever wondered about the nitty gritty of just how authors make their money, or if it's possible to make a living writing, keep reading! We're about to talk about the Benjamins (or, you know, your denomination of choice).
Disclaimer!
First up, I should clarify that everything I'm about to say comes strictly from my own experience and things I've heard directly from other writers. Likewise, the links I post are from other writers posting their own findings/experiences/opinions. Writers are contract workers. You write a book, you get a check. To further complicate things, writing contracts vary wildly between publishing houses and even between authors within the same house. Because of all these variables, no two writers get paid exactly the same, so please please PLEASE don't make your life plans off what I say here, and never ever ever make tax decisions based on what you read off the internet.
I repeat, I'm writing this article based of what I know from what happened to me and links I found helpful. The information/numbers/etc you see here are purely for informational purposes. You will almost certainly have a totally different experience in your own writing career, so always keep your eyes on your own money and explore all your options before committing to a path of action. (IE: please for the love of little kittens don't sue me for lost wages/accountant fees because you quit your job/got audited after reading this blog post.) I am neither a financial adviser nor an accountant, so take everything I say with that grain of salt firmly in mind.
Also, as mentioned, I link to a lot of people in this post. Many of these links are resources I used a ton when I was first figuring out this business worked, and I want to take a moment to thank every one of these writers for their efforts. Seriously, read the links. The information is priceless.
How Do Writers Get Paid?
Not enough! *rim shot* Seriously, though, most writers with publishing contracts get paid in checks through the mail. If you don't have an agent, this check comes straight to you. If your contract was negotiated by an agent, the publishing house will send the check to them and the agent, in turn, will take their 15% off the top and send another check to you for the remainder. This means there will be days when you open your mailbox and find a check for thousands of dollars. (More on the dangers of this later).
Wait? They just send you a check? For what?
Many things! But primarily, checks fall into one of three categories: advance payments, royalties, and rights sales.
The Advance - When you hear that an author "sold their book for a million dollars," you need to understand that the word 'sold' isn't entirely accurate. Author and publisher did not meet in some back alley and exchange a book for a briefcase full of cash. Instead, what this saying means is that the author (or most likely the author's agent) made a deal with a publisher allowing the house to publish their work, and in return, the publishing house pays the author an advance on future royalties. These payments are generally broken up into several installments, such as a third when the contract is signed, a third when the book is turned in, and a third when the book hits shelves. This money is exactly what it sounds like, an ADVANCE on future earnings. You never have to pay it back, but you won't see any more money off your book until you've earned enough in royalties to cover what the publisher has already advanced to you.
Confused? I don't blame you. It's a crazy system. Fortunately, author Rebecca Brandewyne wrote an absolutely amazing breakdown of how advances work already! I even learned things I didn't know, so I totally suggest taking a few minutes to read it.
So how much can you expect to get in advance for your book? Well, this also varies wildly depending on the size of your publisher and how many books the deal is for, but here's a few surveys to give you a general idea:
Meghan Ward's Author Advance Survey - Very detailed breakdown and lots of graphs, though the wide spread of genres represented (fiction, non-fiction, memoir, etc) makes me worried. Still, a fantastic survey and very well done.Tobias Buckell's Author Advance Survey - THE survey for SF/F authors (I participated!). A great resource for anyone looking to get published in fantasy/sci fi.Finally, there are some (mostly ebook) publishers who don't pay advances at all, but instead offer a much larger royalty cut. The erotica publisher Ellora's Cave, for example, pays no advance but offers a 34% royalty rate on all sales and pays monthly based on your sales. This method of payment means you potentially need to sell far fewer books in order to make a living and you never have to worry about failing to earn out an advance (more on that below). It's definitely an attractive method!
A while ago, author Brenda Hiatt did a survey to determine average earnings for Romance publishers, including the e-publishers like EC who use this method. Her results, called Show Me The Money are invaluable for getting an idea of how much money you can expect to make from a romance, especially an e-pub erotic romance through one of the big e-publishers.
Royalties - This is the real way authors make money, the thing the advance is an advance of. A royalty is the money the author gets every time their book is sold, usually a percent of the cover price, For example, I get 8% of each paper Eli book sold, though the actual amount of money I receive varies enormously depending on a huge number of factors. For example, by my contract I get different royalty rates based on format (paper or ebook), country where the books sold, and where the book was sold (since royalties are calculated off cover price, you get more money when your book sells at a higher price point, say from an independent bookstore, than when it sells from a discount retailer like WalMart). If you want to know more about the specifics, here is an extremely excellent breakdown of how royalties get paid from Romance author Sabrina Jeffries (this post talks Romance exclusively, but the same idea exists throughout publishing. Also, Ms. Jeffries has tables and graphs, and we all know how much Rachel loves tables!)
Royalty statements come out from publishers twice a year, and the numbers can be kind of disheartening. I'm not quite brave enough to put up my royalty statements yet, but fortunately for me Lynn Viehl (whose Paperback Writer blog was my shrine for many years) stepped up to the plate and posted the royalty statement for her NYT bestselling book Twilight Fall. So if you want to see the down and dirty numbers behind a bestseller, go have a look. She also has a followup post about how much money she actually took home, totally worth your time.
Rights - The right to publish your book is only one of the things you can sell. Other rights include audiobook rights, foreign translation rights, and even the coveted film rights (ask Suzanne Collins about that one!). Rights money can keep coming in even years after your book is published as your book slowly moves into other languages and formats. Depending on your contract, you'll sometimes get surprise checks for these (if you retained your rights) or the money will be applied toward earning out your advance (if your publisher holds you rights).
In my case, the deal my agent negotiated with Orbit gave them my world rights in return for a larger advance that was enough to let me quit my job and write full time. This means that Orbit now owns pretty much everything except my media rights like film, and when they sell these rights, like just recently when a publisher in Germany bought the right to publish Eli in German, Orbit gets the money, not me. HOWEVER! I am totally cool with that. True, I could have possibly made more selling the rights myself, but then I wouldn't have been able to quit my job. More than fair trade in my mind.
This is just an example of how publishing contracts can get very, very complicated. If any of you were grumbling at the sentence above where I mentioned the check goes to the agent first for their 15% cut, well, this is what that 15% pays for. Your agent makes sure you get the best contract and that you understand the contract you are signing. They are worth their weight in gold, and considering the price of gold these days, 15% is getting off cheap.
I leave all rights worrying to my agent, but if you're the sort of on the ball person who likes to be informed (yay for you!), here's an excessively detailed list of what rights you can sell.
Living off Writing Money, Feast and Famine
Ok, so now we know what that check in your mailbox is for, what do you do with it? This is where the writing life takes a drastic detour from any other employment experience. Because of the nature of publish schedules (read: SLOW), it's not uncommon to get money in the mail for books that won't be coming out for a year or more (hence, why it is an "advance" because it's so far in advance). These checks come based on when you sign contracts, turn in manuscripts, or when your books hit the shelves, which means they come with no rhyme or reason and often in strange clumps. (I'm not the only writer who goes up and down! For more information, and graphs!, see Jim Hines' excellent series on writing income.)
For example, in 2010 I turned in 1 book, handed in edits for 2 books, and had 3 books hit the shelves. Each of these was a payment milestone, which means that many checks arrive in 2010. Toward the end of December, I had enough money sitting in my savings account to buy a new car flat our in cash. Not bad! But then, in 2011, because I only turned in 2 books that wouldn't be published until 2012, I did not get many checks. In fact, in 2011 I made about 1/4 what I made in 2010 even though I was writing the same books for the same publisher.
And this, friends, is where writers get themselves into trouble.
For all but the luckiest, writing money is a life of feast and famine. There will be years where you make more money than you ever thought you could from writing sword fights in your pajamas and years where you wonder if you're still employed. During the fat years when all that money is sitting in the bank, it can be very tempting to make large purchases or pay off the house or take a vacation or go to ComiCon (SO TEMPTING), but you can't. Because that money, that fat cow, has to last you through the lean years.
I can't speak for other countries, but the vast majority of America lives paycheck to paycheck. If you ever plan to live off writing money, you can not live check to check, because you have almost no control over when that check arrives. My publisher, Orbit, has always been very good about paying me promptly (have I mentioned how much I love my publisher?), but the writing world is full of horror stories about checks taking months, even years to arrive. And when the money is late, there's very little you can do. This can be very depressing. After all, the mortgage company doesn't care if the check was supposed to come. They want their money monthly, even if you're getting paid yearly.
So what can you do? Well, like our ancestors before us, writers have to plan. You have to know how much it costs you to live the life you like to live. You have to keep a close eye on how much money you've been paid, how much is still owing, and how much you need to bring in to keep from dipping into debt (the writer's worst enemy). Most important of all, though, you have to understand that only about half the money that comes in is actually yours.
Death and Taxes
One of the most useful pieces of advice about living as a writer I ever came across was this, save 50% of everything you get for taxes. This is not an exaggeration. From the moment you get your first real writing check, your days of getting refunds are over.
When an employer pays you a paycheck, they withhold all sorts of things, taxes, medicare, social security, as well as optional goodies like 401k contributions, health insurance, and so forth. Your publisher does none of this for you, and when tax day comes, it will be up to you to pony up all the money out of your own pocket. I have had tax bills upwards of $8,000, this is NOT FUN in the extreme, but there's nothing you can do about it other than save your money and get an accountant who understands your position.
Note of personal experience - get a good accountant. Your taxes are not a place to cut corners or be cheap. Take your time and do your legwork to make sure you're getting someone who 1) actually understands how the hell to file for an author, and 2) is willing to work with you to determine how best to shelter your income (incorporating, paying quarterly, etc.). I had a bad accountant my first year and I'm still paying for it. Learn from my fail, get a professional.
Of course, there are people who are plenty good at doing their own taxes, and if you happen to be one of these, more power to you. Still, unless you're a certified accountant yourself, I would still highly suggest paying for a professional the first year at least both to make sure it gets done right and to make sure you get all the deductions you can and that you have proper cause to claim them. The IRS loves auditing independent contractors.
TL:DR
Save half your income, make a budget, and hire an accountant.
Despite what conventional wisdom tells you, it's very possible to make a good living off writing, but, like writing itself, it takes time, discipline, and the ability to push forward no matter what. Over the years, my husband and I have worked out a good method for weathering the hard times on writing money by rearranging how we pay ourselves out of our savings, and he's actually going to be writing me a guest post on that very subject very soon.
In the meanwhile, though, I hope you enjoyed this very long, very linky post about writing and money. Please feel free to leave your own experiences/comments below!
March 17, 2012
Pretties!
First off, in case you didn't see the FB link, the Orbit art department made me some awesome wallpapers out of the new covers! So if you want to invite Eli into your home, you can put one of these bad boys up. Just be sure to count the silver afterward...
(big versions here)
Oh Eli, don't fall!
Also! We have some Miranda and Gin art from the awesomely talented Minna Sundberg (ShadowUmbre on DA)! Because there was a serious lack of ghosthounds up in here.
Full sized version here!
Miranda is serious business even when she's hanging out. You can see the DA post here, so please leave any comments for the artist over there.
Poor Gin looks grumpy, we should have drawn him in a pig. :D
(big versions here)Oh Eli, don't fall!
Also! We have some Miranda and Gin art from the awesomely talented Minna Sundberg (ShadowUmbre on DA)! Because there was a serious lack of ghosthounds up in here.
Full sized version here!Miranda is serious business even when she's hanging out. You can see the DA post here, so please leave any comments for the artist over there.
Poor Gin looks grumpy, we should have drawn him in a pig. :D
March 13, 2012
Wasting Time, a clarification
As someone who talks about writing efficiency, I also talk a lot about wasting time. Namely how I use planning to prevent losing time to stupid stuff. Time is limited enough as it is, especially for people who write on the margins of their lives, stealing an hour here or an afternoon there. I always try to emphasize that time is our most precious commodity, the one thing we can never get back, and we should treat it with respect by using it wisely. That said, I got an email tonight that made me realize I should perhaps add a caveat to my general hatred of waste.
When I'm writing, even when I have my plot all planned out, I sometimes I go off course. Something that looked go on paper might not work once I get it into the novel, and as a result I can end up scrapping a paragraph, or a scene, or a whole chapter as I go back and start over on the right track. From an efficiency point of view, this can seem like a horrible waste. That scene is never going to be in the book. The time spent writing it will only bloat my spread sheet, dragging down my words per hour. But even so, I never count backtracking as waste, because every word I write makes me a better writer.
I read once that an author has to write a million words before they know what they're doing. I fully agree, but what that saying leaves out is that no small percentage of those million words will be ones that never make it into the final draft. I have whole or nearly completed books that I spent months of my life working on that will never see the light of day, but even those I refuse to count as wastes or failures, because the stories I tell now are built on a foundation of the words I threw away.
The hardest lesson I've learned so far as a writer is that failure teaches more than success, but only when you stop being scared of failing long enough to start learning from it. After all, the novel that never gets published teaches you to write the one that does. The wrong word makes you find the right one. Cutting, rewriting, doubling back, these are not waste. This is writing, and sometimes it's only by falling on our faces that we find the way forward.
When I'm writing, even when I have my plot all planned out, I sometimes I go off course. Something that looked go on paper might not work once I get it into the novel, and as a result I can end up scrapping a paragraph, or a scene, or a whole chapter as I go back and start over on the right track. From an efficiency point of view, this can seem like a horrible waste. That scene is never going to be in the book. The time spent writing it will only bloat my spread sheet, dragging down my words per hour. But even so, I never count backtracking as waste, because every word I write makes me a better writer.
I read once that an author has to write a million words before they know what they're doing. I fully agree, but what that saying leaves out is that no small percentage of those million words will be ones that never make it into the final draft. I have whole or nearly completed books that I spent months of my life working on that will never see the light of day, but even those I refuse to count as wastes or failures, because the stories I tell now are built on a foundation of the words I threw away.
The hardest lesson I've learned so far as a writer is that failure teaches more than success, but only when you stop being scared of failing long enough to start learning from it. After all, the novel that never gets published teaches you to write the one that does. The wrong word makes you find the right one. Cutting, rewriting, doubling back, these are not waste. This is writing, and sometimes it's only by falling on our faces that we find the way forward.
March 8, 2012
Goals
First off, another big thank you to Stefan at Far Beyond Reality for hosting an omnibus give away! I have the winner's book right here beside my chair, all wrapped up and ready to go. Congratulations again, and don't forget you can still enter Fantasy Book Critic's omnibus giveaway if you haven't won one yet!
Back when I was in high school, my guidance councilor had us do one of those exercises where you write down all your goals for the future and when you want to achieve them. It was supposed to encourage us to make something of ourselves, but most people just goofed off (I recall a great deal of my senior class wanting to be doom lords and world conquerors). But I took the exercise seriously and wrote out this huge and ridiculously detailed road map for the rest of my life, which for some reason ended at 30 (hey, I was 17 at the time, I don't think I believed there was life after 30).
I still have this list. I'm not quite sure why I kept it, it was just one of those things that gets put in a box over and over, and every time you clean you think about throwing it away, but you never do, and then suddenly enough years have passed where it's become this relic from your childhood, so you take really good care of it, etc. etc. Looking back over the list now, I was a pretty ambitious kid. I mean, 2 PhDs by 25? I didn't even write down what they were PhDs for, just PhDs.
So yeah, the ambitions of youth. But the big thing? My huge, end of life goal for the immeasurably distant future of 30? Make a living as a professional fantasy author.
Done.
Today is my 30th birthday. Really, I made my goal three years ago, but it's as true now as it was then, though it still doesn't quite feel real. Even three years on, I get the violent urge to giggle in disbelief every time I realize "Holy shit, I am paying my mortgage with sword fights." But I do. I made it. Life goal, crossed off!
Now, as I enter the uncharted, "Here Be Monsters" part of my life, my biggest concern isn't knowing where I'm going, but what my new goal is. I sold my book, I've published one series and sold another, and I make a living as an author full time. That's pretty much everything on the list. So, now what? What comes after you "make it?"
Oh sure, there are plenty of big, shiny goals after your book hits the shelves: making a national list, becoming a #1 NYT Bestseller, seeing one of my books get made into a movie, winning a Nebula or a Hugo, but all of these are determined by other people. If all it took was hard work and a great idea to become a huge bestseller, then we'd have a lot more of them. I don't want to tie my big new goal to things I can't control, where success or failure has as much to do with luck as effort and talent. So, instead, I've picked something I can control, a milestone no less lofty but completely my own, and it goes like this:
Write 150 books by the time I turn 60.
That's 5 books a year for 30 years. Of course, I get to subtract 8 from that for the books I've already written, but still, 150 books! That's multiple bookshelves of my own work (assuming they're still putting books on shelves in 2042). Is it a ridiculous goal? Of course! But no less crazy or unlikely than getting a book published in the first place. Less, because this goal depends entirely on me. It'll be a lot of work, but I think I can make it. I'm already on track to write six books this year, maybe 7 if I don't get hung up. And if I make it to 60, I'll reevaluate. Maybe I'll set another goal, 300 books by 90!
I've spent most of my thinking life running toward the goal of being an author. I might have made it, but the race isn't over. It can never be over. We always have to have something to run toward, or we stop running. I for one mean to run this thing as hard, as fast, and as well as I can. And that, I think, is a very worthy goal indeed.
Back when I was in high school, my guidance councilor had us do one of those exercises where you write down all your goals for the future and when you want to achieve them. It was supposed to encourage us to make something of ourselves, but most people just goofed off (I recall a great deal of my senior class wanting to be doom lords and world conquerors). But I took the exercise seriously and wrote out this huge and ridiculously detailed road map for the rest of my life, which for some reason ended at 30 (hey, I was 17 at the time, I don't think I believed there was life after 30).
I still have this list. I'm not quite sure why I kept it, it was just one of those things that gets put in a box over and over, and every time you clean you think about throwing it away, but you never do, and then suddenly enough years have passed where it's become this relic from your childhood, so you take really good care of it, etc. etc. Looking back over the list now, I was a pretty ambitious kid. I mean, 2 PhDs by 25? I didn't even write down what they were PhDs for, just PhDs.
So yeah, the ambitions of youth. But the big thing? My huge, end of life goal for the immeasurably distant future of 30? Make a living as a professional fantasy author.
Done.
Today is my 30th birthday. Really, I made my goal three years ago, but it's as true now as it was then, though it still doesn't quite feel real. Even three years on, I get the violent urge to giggle in disbelief every time I realize "Holy shit, I am paying my mortgage with sword fights." But I do. I made it. Life goal, crossed off!
Now, as I enter the uncharted, "Here Be Monsters" part of my life, my biggest concern isn't knowing where I'm going, but what my new goal is. I sold my book, I've published one series and sold another, and I make a living as an author full time. That's pretty much everything on the list. So, now what? What comes after you "make it?"
Oh sure, there are plenty of big, shiny goals after your book hits the shelves: making a national list, becoming a #1 NYT Bestseller, seeing one of my books get made into a movie, winning a Nebula or a Hugo, but all of these are determined by other people. If all it took was hard work and a great idea to become a huge bestseller, then we'd have a lot more of them. I don't want to tie my big new goal to things I can't control, where success or failure has as much to do with luck as effort and talent. So, instead, I've picked something I can control, a milestone no less lofty but completely my own, and it goes like this:
Write 150 books by the time I turn 60.
That's 5 books a year for 30 years. Of course, I get to subtract 8 from that for the books I've already written, but still, 150 books! That's multiple bookshelves of my own work (assuming they're still putting books on shelves in 2042). Is it a ridiculous goal? Of course! But no less crazy or unlikely than getting a book published in the first place. Less, because this goal depends entirely on me. It'll be a lot of work, but I think I can make it. I'm already on track to write six books this year, maybe 7 if I don't get hung up. And if I make it to 60, I'll reevaluate. Maybe I'll set another goal, 300 books by 90!
I've spent most of my thinking life running toward the goal of being an author. I might have made it, but the race isn't over. It can never be over. We always have to have something to run toward, or we stop running. I for one mean to run this thing as hard, as fast, and as well as I can. And that, I think, is a very worthy goal indeed.
March 5, 2012
More reviews and Tweet questions #2!
Some really lovely reviews/contests have been coming in!
Mihir over at Fantasy Book Critic did a great review of Spirit Eater and Spirit's Oath, my Miranda short story! They're also giving away a signed copy of the Omnibus through March 10th, so don't forget to put your name in the hat!Tor.com had a great, very in depth review of the omnibus as a whole. In addition, Stefan (author of the Tor review) is giving away ANOTHER copy of the Omnibus on his own (fantastic) review blog, Far Beyond Reality. This give away ends today, though, so hurry over before it's too late!Also, I have been darting about the internet writing things both about writing and about my own books! Here's a round up: I wrote a post for Orbit all about Nico, so if you want to know more about how the little demonseed came to be, please be sure to check it out!I did a guest post for fantasy writing blog Magical Words all about tension, complete with visual aids!And I did an interview for Waterworld Mermaids about writing and the Eli series. Very awesome site, so happy they invited me over!Ok, enough business, let's do some questions!
@Mathew_Braun asks How do you write characters whose experiences and background are different than your own?This is actually something I struggle a lot with. As I mentioned in my Nico post for Orbit, I had a lot of trouble with Nico because of exactly this reason. Nico is shy, I am emphatically not. She's also quiet, I talk more than Eli (not really, but that apple didn't fall far from the tree, if you get me). The experiences and backgrounds are less trouble for me than the character themselves. Experience and background are really just the stimulus, it's the character's reaction to that stimulus where things get really hairy.
Writing characters who are not only different from me, but different in ways I have trouble understanding, is something I think I'll struggle with for the rest of my life. But it's a good sort of struggle, the growing kind. With Nico, I had to slow down, listen, and do a LOT of rewriting before I got her down. It was a slow, messy approach, but that's the rough part of trying to make your characters people. People tend to be messy, and just like with friends you don't understand, sometimes you've got to slow down and talk to your characters before they'll come clean, or talk at all. In the end, though, you get a diverse and deep cast that can hold you through several books, and that's worth a lot of effort.
Jessi in the email box asks How much control do you have over your covers?There are two answers to this - a bunch and almost none. My publisher, the ever amazing Orbit Books, actively solicits my input on every part of the Eli books. However, publishers are in business to make money, and while they work with me a lot, in the end, they choose the cover they think will sell the most copies. I'm happy they do this, because I also want to sell many copies so I don't have to go out and get a real job again. The cover they choose might not always be the one I envisioned in my dreams, but it's almost always good, and if I have serious issues, the art department listens and does their best to compromise with me. I've never had a cover I flat out hated (thank god), but I will admit I like the new covers a LOT more than the old ones.
They just look so much more "this is a fantasy series" to me.
Of course, this is just the experience of one publisher and one author. Every house works differently. I've known some authors who were involved every step of the design and others who didn't see their cover until it was up on Amazon. Most authors fall somewhere in the middle, but if you're a new author (or a hope to be new author) and you have strong opinions about your cover, make them clear (in a polite way) right from the start, and then get ready to compromise.
As the author, you do have some measure of final veto power, and that can be tempting to use, especially if you hate your cover. Before you fire the nuke, though, consider, no one wants your book to do better than your publisher. If they have a cover, they picked it for a reason. They paid money for that cover. Digging in your heels and saying NO helps no one. Instead, try to figure out how the cover can be changed to make it less odious. Publishing is a small town, and no one benefits from burned bridges.
Well, I hope that was entertaining! As always, if you have a question about Eli/publishing/writing you'd like me to answer, please send it to me via Twitter or through my contact form. I look forward to seeing it!
Thank you for reading, and as always, thank you for helping to make Eli a success!
Yours sincerely,Rachel
Mihir over at Fantasy Book Critic did a great review of Spirit Eater and Spirit's Oath, my Miranda short story! They're also giving away a signed copy of the Omnibus through March 10th, so don't forget to put your name in the hat!Tor.com had a great, very in depth review of the omnibus as a whole. In addition, Stefan (author of the Tor review) is giving away ANOTHER copy of the Omnibus on his own (fantastic) review blog, Far Beyond Reality. This give away ends today, though, so hurry over before it's too late!Also, I have been darting about the internet writing things both about writing and about my own books! Here's a round up: I wrote a post for Orbit all about Nico, so if you want to know more about how the little demonseed came to be, please be sure to check it out!I did a guest post for fantasy writing blog Magical Words all about tension, complete with visual aids!And I did an interview for Waterworld Mermaids about writing and the Eli series. Very awesome site, so happy they invited me over!Ok, enough business, let's do some questions!
@Mathew_Braun asks How do you write characters whose experiences and background are different than your own?This is actually something I struggle a lot with. As I mentioned in my Nico post for Orbit, I had a lot of trouble with Nico because of exactly this reason. Nico is shy, I am emphatically not. She's also quiet, I talk more than Eli (not really, but that apple didn't fall far from the tree, if you get me). The experiences and backgrounds are less trouble for me than the character themselves. Experience and background are really just the stimulus, it's the character's reaction to that stimulus where things get really hairy.
Writing characters who are not only different from me, but different in ways I have trouble understanding, is something I think I'll struggle with for the rest of my life. But it's a good sort of struggle, the growing kind. With Nico, I had to slow down, listen, and do a LOT of rewriting before I got her down. It was a slow, messy approach, but that's the rough part of trying to make your characters people. People tend to be messy, and just like with friends you don't understand, sometimes you've got to slow down and talk to your characters before they'll come clean, or talk at all. In the end, though, you get a diverse and deep cast that can hold you through several books, and that's worth a lot of effort.
Jessi in the email box asks How much control do you have over your covers?There are two answers to this - a bunch and almost none. My publisher, the ever amazing Orbit Books, actively solicits my input on every part of the Eli books. However, publishers are in business to make money, and while they work with me a lot, in the end, they choose the cover they think will sell the most copies. I'm happy they do this, because I also want to sell many copies so I don't have to go out and get a real job again. The cover they choose might not always be the one I envisioned in my dreams, but it's almost always good, and if I have serious issues, the art department listens and does their best to compromise with me. I've never had a cover I flat out hated (thank god), but I will admit I like the new covers a LOT more than the old ones.
They just look so much more "this is a fantasy series" to me.
Of course, this is just the experience of one publisher and one author. Every house works differently. I've known some authors who were involved every step of the design and others who didn't see their cover until it was up on Amazon. Most authors fall somewhere in the middle, but if you're a new author (or a hope to be new author) and you have strong opinions about your cover, make them clear (in a polite way) right from the start, and then get ready to compromise.
As the author, you do have some measure of final veto power, and that can be tempting to use, especially if you hate your cover. Before you fire the nuke, though, consider, no one wants your book to do better than your publisher. If they have a cover, they picked it for a reason. They paid money for that cover. Digging in your heels and saying NO helps no one. Instead, try to figure out how the cover can be changed to make it less odious. Publishing is a small town, and no one benefits from burned bridges.
Well, I hope that was entertaining! As always, if you have a question about Eli/publishing/writing you'd like me to answer, please send it to me via Twitter or through my contact form. I look forward to seeing it!
Thank you for reading, and as always, thank you for helping to make Eli a success!
Yours sincerely,Rachel
February 24, 2012
The Legend of Eli Monpress, official launch!!
The omnibus has already been towering over the other books at the bookstore for a while now, but today is the OFFICIAL release date for The Legend of Eli Monpress omnibus! HOORAY! This means that the omnibus is now available for ebook, which most retailers have posted for $9.99. That's crazy awesome, it's like $3 per book!
But ebooks don't really show you how impressively huge this thing is. Let's see this big brick of awesome again, shall we?
I love that picture. It's like Eli's about to get the drop on Eli!
Anyway, for those who are interested I have several things up and about on the interwebs today in celebration, starting with a guest post on Fantasy Book Critic about The Changing World of Eli Monpress! HePore I talk about how Eli's world has changed through the books, including the final two volumes.
I also have an interview up at The Waterworld Mermaids blog! This is mostly writing related, but I also talk about the Eli books.
Finally, don't forget that you can still win a signed copy of the Omnibus over at Fantasy Book Critic! The contest is world wide and open until March 10, so go over and put your name in the hat if you haven't already!
On the review front, lots of new reviews are out! Meghan from StellarFour totally made my day with her awesome review of my Eli world novella, Spirit's Oath.Pornokitsch reviewed The Spirit Thief along with another thief book, Greatshadow. Thieves are hot these days!Book Chick City reviewed Spirit Thief and Spirit Rebellion on audiobook. If you haven't listened to the audio versions of my books by the way, they are completely amazing. Luke Daniels does such a good job with the voices.And finally, The Bookbag got all the way through the omnibus and loved it! Yay!Ok, I think that covers everything! Thanks as always for reading and I really hope you get a chance to pick up The Legend of Eli Monpress. I know I've been kind of crazy about it, but the Omnibus bind up is really, really, REALLY pretty! Eli would totally steal a whole truck full, just sayin.
<3Rachel
But ebooks don't really show you how impressively huge this thing is. Let's see this big brick of awesome again, shall we?
I love that picture. It's like Eli's about to get the drop on Eli!
Anyway, for those who are interested I have several things up and about on the interwebs today in celebration, starting with a guest post on Fantasy Book Critic about The Changing World of Eli Monpress! HePore I talk about how Eli's world has changed through the books, including the final two volumes.
I also have an interview up at The Waterworld Mermaids blog! This is mostly writing related, but I also talk about the Eli books.
Finally, don't forget that you can still win a signed copy of the Omnibus over at Fantasy Book Critic! The contest is world wide and open until March 10, so go over and put your name in the hat if you haven't already!
On the review front, lots of new reviews are out! Meghan from StellarFour totally made my day with her awesome review of my Eli world novella, Spirit's Oath.Pornokitsch reviewed The Spirit Thief along with another thief book, Greatshadow. Thieves are hot these days!Book Chick City reviewed Spirit Thief and Spirit Rebellion on audiobook. If you haven't listened to the audio versions of my books by the way, they are completely amazing. Luke Daniels does such a good job with the voices.And finally, The Bookbag got all the way through the omnibus and loved it! Yay!Ok, I think that covers everything! Thanks as always for reading and I really hope you get a chance to pick up The Legend of Eli Monpress. I know I've been kind of crazy about it, but the Omnibus bind up is really, really, REALLY pretty! Eli would totally steal a whole truck full, just sayin.
<3Rachel
February 23, 2012
Tweet Questions #1
In an attempt to actually write about things people want to read about (ALWAYS VITAL), I put out a general query yesterday to the Twitterverse (Twitsphere? Twitterland?) soliciting topics to write about. I got so many good ones I've decided to start up a new, semi-regular blog series!
It goes like this: have a question about writing or publishing? Ask me on Twitter (@Rachel_Aaron) or through my site and I'll answer them here on the blog to the best of my ability. And if I can't answer them, I'll do my best to point you at someone who can. It'll be sort of like my NaNoWriMo Thread, but in blog format and not quite so rushed.
Sound fun? Ok, let's do some questions!
@erchristensen asks: How do you determine whether an idea is worth a short story or novel? Or if it should be abandoned/saved for later?
This is a touchy question for me, and a really, really vital one to nail as early as possible. You don't want to waste time and energy on a story that can't stand to completion. Generally speaking, though, any idea that can make it through my plotting process is one that can take the stress of bookdom. But even earlier than that, when I'm on Step 0 (the "decide if I'm going to write this story" step), I sit down and just think about the story. Am I really excited about it? Does the idea of writing down all kinds of wacky back story make me excited or bored? Do I yack my husband's ear off about it?
The yacking part is actually the most important. I've learned over the years that staying power the surest indicator of an idea's quality. If a story sticks with you over the long haul, if you find yourself thinking of scenes or imagining character interactions even when you're supposed to be other things, that's the surest sign that you've got a winner.
I should note though that I NEVER completely throw out ideas. I am a story hoarder! Even if a plot/character/world can't stand on its own, you can always cannibalize it later for the good pieces and put them into other works. I actually have a giant Google Doc that's nothing but short descriptions of ideas I want to put into future stories. Creativity is never wasted, you never know when that weird, not quite baked idea will turn out to be just what you need on a future project.
@abhinavjain87 asks: how about character creation or world-building? and @EldritchGirl stays something similar: Maybe help developing other world systems, etc? I'm so bad at that... Eli's world was fully believable & realized
And for the record: Meghan, I don't believe you're bad at anything. <3
I believe character creation and world building are the same animal in different guises. In a really good book, the world itself is a character. It has personality, history, traits, quirks, all that good stuff. Most writing books agree that the most important thing about creating a character is finding out what they want. I totally believe that, but in addition to motivation, I also try to figure out what a character loves, what they hate, what irritates them on a daily basis. This also goes for worlds creation, I try to figure out where the world is going, what are the major problems facing it, and how does the world react. It's kind of silly to think of your world as having a motivation, but I always try to make sure my settings are changing, going places. This could be something as simple as a border war or something as huge as The End Of The World.
Most important with both worlds and characters though is that they must be internally consistent. This doesn't mean acting predictably, but nothing happens without cause and no one does something for no reason. Novels are just long chains of cause and effect. The first step to creating believable worlds and characters is to understand them inside and out, to know how they react to change and why. Color in their details, get to know them like friends or a favorite place, and then put them in trouble and watch them squirm. When these things all come together, you can't help but end up with something amazing.
Also, and this is a bit of writing voodoo, but I try to hear my character's voices. Lots of times, if I'm having trouble with a character, I'll just sit down and spend some time with them, ask them questions, that sort of thing. This is especially important if the character is very different from myself (like Nico was) and I'm having trouble imagining how they react. Same goes for worlds. If my world feels flat or if I can't think of what should happen, I stop everything and go spend some time in my imaginary places. When I can feel a place like I've been there and hear a character like they're a separate person in my head, I know I've got it right.
And finally, @Oath_Breaker has some general queries: Perhaps brainstorming or simply your opinions on fantasy in general or Dialogue?
See above for my brainstorming :D. As for my ideas about Fantasy as a genre, I'm actually going to cheat and paste over part of my interview with Civilian Reader.
----------CR: What's your opinion of the genre as a whole today? How do you see your Legend of Eli Monpress series fitting in with the contemporary fantasy scene?
RA: I think we are living in a golden age of fantasy. Years from now we'll look back with awe and wonder and talk about how good we had it. Thanks to the blockbuster titles like Harry Potter, Eragon, Twilight, and the Lord of the Rings movies, as well as the phenomenal success of fantasy video games, fantasy is coming out of the back shelves and into the spotlight. Fantasy, dare I say it, is cool right now, and it is staking a big claim in the YA and adult markets. This attention means more books and more publishing houses willing to take chances on new authors and ideas. It is a really, really exciting time to be a fantasy author and a fantasy fan, especially if you like YA fantasy.
To answer the second half of the question, I'm actually not really sure where Eli fits in to this flowering of the genre. The Legend of Eli Monpress isn't really epic fantasy because of the aforementioned lack of gritty battles and dark heroes, but it's not pure Pratchett-esque comedy either. One reviewer described the series as feeling more like urban fantasy than a traditional swords and sorcery tale, and I think they hit it on the nose. The Eli books are fast and snarky with modern pacing (no slow grinding epics for me), but at its heart The Legend of Eli Monpress is a story about doing what has to be done even when you REALLY don't want to do it. So, being a hero, which is a very traditional fantasy theme. I think that's why the books have had a little trouble catching on, actually. They're hard to pigeon hole. However, I maintain that if you enjoy the idea of a witty gentleman thief with a glib sense of humor, you'll probably enjoy The Spirit Thief. If nothing else, the sword fights are killer. I worked really hard on them, and I still consider Josef's fight with Coriano at the end of Book 1 to be the best fight I ever wrote.
---------
And my opinion now is still pretty much the same!
As for dialogue, I'm actually really bad at explaining how I do it because I don't actually think about it. Dialogue is the easiest thing for me to write. My characters talk a LOT, and I generally have to cut dialogue from my books when they start running off at the mouth. Really, I think the key to good dialogue is good characters. If you have interesting people, they'll say interesting things. Just make sure you say in character, or your characters will all start to sound the same, which is to say, all start to sound like the writer. I do try to keep my dialogue sections as short as possible, though. Talking heads are no fun to watch.
And that's it for Twitter Questions! I hope you enjoyed the answers! If you have a question you'd like me to answer about writing, publishing, Eli, or anything else in the pro-author sphere, feel free to post them on Twitter to @Rachel_Aaron or just send them the old fashioned way through my contact form.
Thank you for reading, and if you see the Eli Omnibus on a shelf, say Hello for me! :D
- Rachel
It goes like this: have a question about writing or publishing? Ask me on Twitter (@Rachel_Aaron) or through my site and I'll answer them here on the blog to the best of my ability. And if I can't answer them, I'll do my best to point you at someone who can. It'll be sort of like my NaNoWriMo Thread, but in blog format and not quite so rushed.
Sound fun? Ok, let's do some questions!
@erchristensen asks: How do you determine whether an idea is worth a short story or novel? Or if it should be abandoned/saved for later?
This is a touchy question for me, and a really, really vital one to nail as early as possible. You don't want to waste time and energy on a story that can't stand to completion. Generally speaking, though, any idea that can make it through my plotting process is one that can take the stress of bookdom. But even earlier than that, when I'm on Step 0 (the "decide if I'm going to write this story" step), I sit down and just think about the story. Am I really excited about it? Does the idea of writing down all kinds of wacky back story make me excited or bored? Do I yack my husband's ear off about it?
The yacking part is actually the most important. I've learned over the years that staying power the surest indicator of an idea's quality. If a story sticks with you over the long haul, if you find yourself thinking of scenes or imagining character interactions even when you're supposed to be other things, that's the surest sign that you've got a winner.
I should note though that I NEVER completely throw out ideas. I am a story hoarder! Even if a plot/character/world can't stand on its own, you can always cannibalize it later for the good pieces and put them into other works. I actually have a giant Google Doc that's nothing but short descriptions of ideas I want to put into future stories. Creativity is never wasted, you never know when that weird, not quite baked idea will turn out to be just what you need on a future project.
@abhinavjain87 asks: how about character creation or world-building? and @EldritchGirl stays something similar: Maybe help developing other world systems, etc? I'm so bad at that... Eli's world was fully believable & realized
And for the record: Meghan, I don't believe you're bad at anything. <3
I believe character creation and world building are the same animal in different guises. In a really good book, the world itself is a character. It has personality, history, traits, quirks, all that good stuff. Most writing books agree that the most important thing about creating a character is finding out what they want. I totally believe that, but in addition to motivation, I also try to figure out what a character loves, what they hate, what irritates them on a daily basis. This also goes for worlds creation, I try to figure out where the world is going, what are the major problems facing it, and how does the world react. It's kind of silly to think of your world as having a motivation, but I always try to make sure my settings are changing, going places. This could be something as simple as a border war or something as huge as The End Of The World.
Most important with both worlds and characters though is that they must be internally consistent. This doesn't mean acting predictably, but nothing happens without cause and no one does something for no reason. Novels are just long chains of cause and effect. The first step to creating believable worlds and characters is to understand them inside and out, to know how they react to change and why. Color in their details, get to know them like friends or a favorite place, and then put them in trouble and watch them squirm. When these things all come together, you can't help but end up with something amazing.
Also, and this is a bit of writing voodoo, but I try to hear my character's voices. Lots of times, if I'm having trouble with a character, I'll just sit down and spend some time with them, ask them questions, that sort of thing. This is especially important if the character is very different from myself (like Nico was) and I'm having trouble imagining how they react. Same goes for worlds. If my world feels flat or if I can't think of what should happen, I stop everything and go spend some time in my imaginary places. When I can feel a place like I've been there and hear a character like they're a separate person in my head, I know I've got it right.
And finally, @Oath_Breaker has some general queries: Perhaps brainstorming or simply your opinions on fantasy in general or Dialogue?
See above for my brainstorming :D. As for my ideas about Fantasy as a genre, I'm actually going to cheat and paste over part of my interview with Civilian Reader.
----------CR: What's your opinion of the genre as a whole today? How do you see your Legend of Eli Monpress series fitting in with the contemporary fantasy scene?
RA: I think we are living in a golden age of fantasy. Years from now we'll look back with awe and wonder and talk about how good we had it. Thanks to the blockbuster titles like Harry Potter, Eragon, Twilight, and the Lord of the Rings movies, as well as the phenomenal success of fantasy video games, fantasy is coming out of the back shelves and into the spotlight. Fantasy, dare I say it, is cool right now, and it is staking a big claim in the YA and adult markets. This attention means more books and more publishing houses willing to take chances on new authors and ideas. It is a really, really exciting time to be a fantasy author and a fantasy fan, especially if you like YA fantasy.
To answer the second half of the question, I'm actually not really sure where Eli fits in to this flowering of the genre. The Legend of Eli Monpress isn't really epic fantasy because of the aforementioned lack of gritty battles and dark heroes, but it's not pure Pratchett-esque comedy either. One reviewer described the series as feeling more like urban fantasy than a traditional swords and sorcery tale, and I think they hit it on the nose. The Eli books are fast and snarky with modern pacing (no slow grinding epics for me), but at its heart The Legend of Eli Monpress is a story about doing what has to be done even when you REALLY don't want to do it. So, being a hero, which is a very traditional fantasy theme. I think that's why the books have had a little trouble catching on, actually. They're hard to pigeon hole. However, I maintain that if you enjoy the idea of a witty gentleman thief with a glib sense of humor, you'll probably enjoy The Spirit Thief. If nothing else, the sword fights are killer. I worked really hard on them, and I still consider Josef's fight with Coriano at the end of Book 1 to be the best fight I ever wrote.
---------
And my opinion now is still pretty much the same!
As for dialogue, I'm actually really bad at explaining how I do it because I don't actually think about it. Dialogue is the easiest thing for me to write. My characters talk a LOT, and I generally have to cut dialogue from my books when they start running off at the mouth. Really, I think the key to good dialogue is good characters. If you have interesting people, they'll say interesting things. Just make sure you say in character, or your characters will all start to sound the same, which is to say, all start to sound like the writer. I do try to keep my dialogue sections as short as possible, though. Talking heads are no fun to watch.
And that's it for Twitter Questions! I hope you enjoyed the answers! If you have a question you'd like me to answer about writing, publishing, Eli, or anything else in the pro-author sphere, feel free to post them on Twitter to @Rachel_Aaron or just send them the old fashioned way through my contact form.
Thank you for reading, and if you see the Eli Omnibus on a shelf, say Hello for me! :D
- Rachel
February 20, 2012
Yet ANOTHER give away!
Didn't win my Eli giveaway last week? Well, have no fear! The lovely, wonderful people at Fantasy Book Critic are giving some away as well! HOORAY!These will also be signed and this time the contest is open world wide! So head on over to enter, and say hi to Mihir for me! (He's said such lovely things about my books.)
