Ksenia Anske's Blog, page 34
January 30, 2016
When the going is tough, KEEP GOING
You guys often ask me how I did this or how I did that, and if there is a secret recipe to it all. "How did you get so many readers?" "How do you keep up with posting everywhere online?" "How do you get people to read (review, like, talk about) your books?" "How do you find the time to write and read and do everything else?" "How do you find motivation to keep moving forward?" "How did you get to be so successful (famous, known, respected)?" Which is total bull as I don't know...
January 27, 2016
Editing someone else's book
Let me sing praises to all editors.
HOW DO YOU DO IT, YOU AMAZING PEOPLE?!?
I'm on the other side for the first time, editing for R. E. Vance his magical series called Paradise Lot (the upcoming books,to be published soon). There are all kinds of mythical creatures in them, every single one you have ever heard of and more. Turns out, editing is hard work, dammit. It's so much harder than editing my own shit that it doesn't even compare. And though I have just started doing it this week (Or l...
January 21, 2016
Cutting down to the bones makes your writing stronger
It's scary to go by your gut when you hardly have experience writing and consider yourself a rookie and tend to look up to the masters and doubt your every decision and agonize, agonize, agonize. You really start to bloom when you stop agonizing, and you don't stop agonizing until you learn to trust your gut. And that is very hard. How can you trust it when there are all these other writers who know better? You think they know better because they've been writing lon...
January 16, 2016
I'm not killing people. I write books.
There could be a different path for me in life, the one to a different kind of fame. The more I read about serial killers as research for Janna, the more I see the characteristic killer-making patterns that were present in my life and that could push me in that direction but never did. For every badness that came my way there was always some goodness that canceled it. And then I fled. I learned to flee early, first out of my body, then together with my body out of my country,...
January 12, 2016
The daily battle with fear and conditioning
"Do this. Do this. Do this. Don't do this. You're not doing it right. Do it like this. I said, like this. Do this. Do this." The constant directing and scolding and reprimanding that starts early eradicates something in you, the rush of spontaneity, the impulse to have fun, to simply jump around and do nothing and be happy for no reason but being alive. The fear sets in. "I'm not doing this right. I'll be scolded. I better do a good job." Girls get the heavy end...
January 8, 2016
Excerpt from TUBE, Draft 3
I'm writing again, at last, and many things are new. The calm is new. The lack of anxiety is new. It's weird. I don't know where it's coming from. I no longer force myself to produce 2K words a day, though I count daily words still, as a way of giving myself an idea of how much I wrote. I write about 5 hours a day, roughly from 9AM till 2 PM,and for the first time I'm writing into a new clean file, occasionally glancing at the old file for Draft 2. It's curiously liberati...
January 4, 2016
How I decided to stop being a good girl
This New Year's Eve I noticed something, a pattern, a pattern I haven't seen before. I sensed it, it bothered me, but I was blind to it. It's rather simple. Nothing alarming or significant about it. Until you understand what it means.
Every year on December 31st I call my relatives and friends in Russia to wish them Happy New Year. What could be wrong about this? Nothing at all. Except I AM THE ONE WHO CALLS. Think about it. Think about it carefully. Not once has anyone called me. No, I take...
January 2, 2016
10 things I learned from shrinking 3 books into 1
All of this shrinking was done by Sarah, of course. She wrote a wonderful post about it. When she was finished with the manuscript, she sent it to me.I read it and sent it back with comments and fixes, and Sarah sent new fixes to me, and I sent her more comments and fixes, and so on. But they were minor. And in the process of reading and rereading the new condensed story and comparing it to the original trilogy I have learned a great deal about story structure and maybe even g...
December 30, 2015
Happy 2016, writing monkeys! 2015 in recap.
Yes, 2016 is the year of the Monkey. No, there are no monkeys in Russia (only in the zoo, munching on vodka-soaked bananas). Yes, in Russia everyone is obsessed with Zodiac shit and,in particular, with Chinese Zodiac Cycle shit, and yes I used to believe it too, in conjunction with divining fortune via playing cards and reading people's traits by their facial features (long nose means long dick and propensity for vigorous sex) and wearing gems that make your liver healthy and procuring mumiy...
December 23, 2015
New Siren Suicides cover reveal!
It's here! It's here! I know you've been waiting for it. I've been waiting for it, too. There is, however, more waiting involved before the second edition of Siren Suicides gets published. The prepping of the cover for publication is something that requires time, and I'm waiting for Anna to finalize it. I'm also waiting for Sarah to send me yet another version of the manuscript with her comments on top of my comments on top of her comments. Just so we have the final...
