Sue Painter
asked
Jeff Vandermeer:
How long did it take you to write the draft of Annihilation that you eventually sent to the editor, and how long does it take you to rewrite, when the editor sends your draft back with corrections?
Jeff Vandermeer
Annihilation took about a month to write--I wasn't doing anything else but working on the novel, and it's fairly short. Then over the space of the next six months I worked on revision and edits. Once FSG acquired it, I took the developmental edit notes and worked on it a bit more. Those edits were fairly light in the grand scheme of things and didn't take me that long. On the second and third books in the series, it took longer. Because they were longer novels but also because they were more complicated in terms of their structure, which usually means you spend a bit more time making sure everything is in place where it should be.
More Answered Questions
Jeannie Leighton
asked
Jeff Vandermeer:
In your first "Steampunk Anthology", you included what I'd term more traditional content, what one would expect from a steampunk story. Your second volume contained more varied topics representing the evolution of this genre. Are you going to produce another anthology (steampunk or otherwise)? What criteria do you use when selecting stories for an anthology?
Caroline Martin
asked
Jeff Vandermeer:
Mr. VanderMeer! I read Wonderbook from cover to cover and loved it. I'm a high school teacher with 7 years experience, mostly AP Literature & Composition and British Literature. I will be teaching Creative Writing for the first time in the fall. The students will be sophomores, juniors and seniors. Any advice on how to promote creativity without having the kids go wild for shock value? Thanks for any and all help.
David
asked
Jeff Vandermeer:
You pull off a very tricky thing in The Southern Reach by making a story where relatively small events bloom, over the course of the book, into much creepier horrors *interiorly,* with characters who do a lot of analysis and rumination. How do you maintain so much tension under a quiet surface? And what authors have you drawn from in doing it?
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