Charlie Jane Anders's Blog, page 47
November 28, 2015
“Our Shoes Will Be Insane”
It’s weird how hard it can be to find the right title for a book or story. Sometimes I have a story that I love but it takes me weeks and weeks to find the right title for it. And sometimes I come up with a perfect title for a story, but there’s no story to go with it, and that makes me even sadder.
The original title of All the Birds in the Sky was Indestructible Friends. That was a great working title because it helped me remember what the book was about. The “Friends” part reminded me that this was a book about a relationship, first and foremost, and everything else came second. And the “Indestructible” part kept me thinking about how Patricia and Laurence survive everything you throw at them, and they always find each other again, and their bond makes them more indestructible.
But everybody told me that this was not a good actual title for the book.
Because it was too “on the nose,” or sounded too generic, or something. Nobody else liked that title. So I decided to change it. For a long time, the title of the book was Our Shoes Will Be Insane, which is something Patricia says to Laurence early on in the book, about what their life will be like when they’re grown up. I liked that title because it sounded sort of funny and hopefully made you curious about what sort of people wanted crazy shoes. But then I decided it didn’t really fit the book. All the Birds in the Sky was also a quote from the book, and it seemed to have the kind of feel I was going for—it sounds sorta magical, and sort of whimsical.
I have a long list of other titles that I seriously considered, and some of them I still could use for something else. Other possible titles included:
Patricia and Laurence, and Everyone In Between
Bird and Rocket
I Hope We Live to See It
The Weirdo Twins
The Enchanted VW Jetta
We Survived Middle School, So Do Your Worst
Ideas Too Good To Be True
Fully Fledged
Top image:
Francis Storr, CC+BY 2.0
November 27, 2015
Sunset with giant camera
Sunset with giant camera
God Still Hates Figs
Way back in the day, I used to have a website called GodHatesFigs.com, which was a satire on GodHatesFags.com, the website of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church. I would constantly get email from people asking, “Is this site for real?” and my response was always the same thing: “There’s only one way to find out. Hit the ‘Refresh’ or ‘Reload’ button at the top of your browser. If the site loads a second time, then it’s definitely for real.”
One guy wrote to me and said the site was “a refreshing pastiche.” I responded, staying in character: “Pastiche is OK as long as there are no figs in it. I quite like pastiche with bacon and spinach, personally. But cheddar pastiche is OK too.”
Anyway, God Hates Figs has been down for years, because I lost the domain name. For a few years, the current domain owner had a Robots.txt file that prevented Archive.org from keeping old versions of the site, but luckily that’s no longer the case.
November 26, 2015
November 22, 2015
Took a long walk and found two gorgeous horses grazing on a hill...
Took a long walk and found two gorgeous horses grazing on a hill overlooking the bay.
No bison today…. but they were a huge help when I was...
No bison today…. but they were a huge help when I was writing All the Birds. I went and talked to them for hours and they helped me figure out how to fix the ending. Bison have impeccable editing instincts. But no, I didn’t feed them.
November 17, 2015
Book giveaway for All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders Nov 17-Dec 15, 2015
You can win a copy of All the Birds in the Sky!
November 15, 2015
Come say hi and celebrate awesome books!
Today at 1 pm! Celebrate the amazing @TachyonPub with Ellen Datlow and me!
It’s at a library! What could be better?
November 14, 2015
Merry go round in Golden Gate Park
Merry go round in Golden Gate Park
November 13, 2015
Back in 2013, I took part in Ignite, which is a series where you...
Back in 2013, I took part in Ignite, which is a series where you have exactly 5 minutes to give a talk and you have 20 slides that auto-advance. They asked me to talk about my writing, and about worldbuilding and stuff — so I talked about the history of magic in my novel! They just posted the video of the talk, which is above. But be warned: There are MAJOR SPOILERS for the book in this talk! Seriously if you’re a spoilerphobe, please don’t watch! :)
