Kameron Hurley's Blog, page 36

Learning How to Write Again

The trouble with getting out of the fiction writing routine is figuring out how to get into it again. I’ve talked before about my latest book depression, and though I’m happy to report I’ve come out of the weeds of my deadlines and am writing fiction again, it’s a funny stop-start process, this remembering how to write.

That’s not to say, obviously, that I haven’t been writing. I write a lot. I write hundreds of projects for work, usually 2-6 a day, and on the fiction front I wrote a short sto...

Books You Should Be Reading (and other things)

I haven’t done one of these posts in awhile because… well, because it takes me awhile to read books. So here’s a quick grab bag of what I’m been consuming that I think is pretty good food for thought. I do have a stack of other things (so many, many other things) left unread. So here’s to hoping I can recommend some of those soon as well. But no promises! I’m in deep research mode again, and headed off to the library today to look up some information on toxic plantlife, so much of what I read...

On the Business of Writing, Creativity, and Burnout

After today’s kettle bell workout, I lay on the floor for awhile just staring at the fan and the whirling wooden dragon I have hanging from it. Not because I was all that physically tired, just because I didn’t feel like thinking or doing anything else for awhile. I tried, in vain, to let my mind wander to a big day job project in the hopes that I would be magically inspired with a fantastic creative idea that I could bag up and get to my creative director on Monday.

Alas, no luck. Spinning dr...

On the Perils of Writing for a Living (Or, Rolling with the Punches)

So I have this terrible fear that all this work won’t be enough.

I realize that I’m in my 30’s now, which is, historically speaking, the prime time folks have to start collecting and putting away cash for the future. Statistically speaking, I’ve got about 15 years less of old age than other folks (chronic illness and all that), but I come from a long-lived family, so even if I chop 15 years off that, it still means I should be around until I’m at least 80 or so.

I’m reminded of Chuck Wendig’s p...

Paying the Piper: 2012 Writing Income

I was recently at an event at the day job and got the question I get there on occasion, “So, when are you going to quit and go off and write novels full time?”

This generally results in me laughing hysterically.

We have a very skewed view of how much money novelists really make, which is why I like to contribute to the yearly writing income breakdowns that some folks put out around tax time. You only hear about it when people get big advances. The actual realities of being in this biz don’t get...

Surviving the Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul

As we come out of the long dark slog that is December and into the rapidly lengthening days of January, I can’t help but look back and be amazed at what I got done in December. December is, traditionally, a horror show of a time of year for me. For most of my life, I’ve been useless from mid-November to early January. When I lived in Alaska, this time lengthened from about October to mid-January. I was able to push through this in Alaska primarily by sleeping this entire time. And the summers...

Milestones, Setbacks and Goals: Writing the Future

I hate people’s end of year wrap ups. I hate the end of the year, when I feel like I’m in a worse place at the end of the year than I was at the beginning. There’s also so much hope and promise in the New Year, and then you get to the end of the year, and all I end up thinking about is what I didn’t accomplish instead of what I did. I’ve been writing such an incredible amount of churn work in the second half of the year that I’d all but forgotten some of the successes I saw at the beginning o...

On Twilight Fan Fiction, Content Mills, and the Strangling of Creativity

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a content mill. It’s about creating a high churn of work at a very low price. It’s about blasting out as many messages as possible – it’s pure, useless drivel. Best of all, it makes us feel like we’re actually achieving and accomplishing things – look! This is out! Now this! Now this! – when in fact we’re just spinning our wheels.

The more churn work I’ve done (at the request of paying parties), the more it got me to thinking about why we continue to...

LeGuin, Boys’ Own Adventure, and the Fine Art of Genderfucking

NOTE: This post was originally published on the Feminist SF blog in 2006 or so. It was pretty popular at the time, but has been difficult to find these days, so I dug up the cache and am re-posting here. Despite being tempted (the “terrorism” bit is… interesting), I have left it unedited.

Almost without fail, Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness gets praised (and praised, and praised) as the most groundbreaking book on gender relations ever written in the SF/F field. I’m always hearing about how it...

Whiling Away the Dreary Days

Am avoiding writing. Here, have a Christmas skull.