Q&A with Josh Lanyon discussion
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Writing Questions for Josh
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I guess I should qualify. I try and write but it's not always on the current project. Although right now all my projects are current, I guess, given the way I'm skipping around from one to the other.
I try to squeeze an hour or two in every day, but I pay attention to my writing cycle. Some days I just don't feel the flow so I'll edit or work out some plot details for upcoming scenes. Occasionally I just don't want to do anything on any of my wips. When that happens I don't force it. Usually it's because I'm coming down with something or stressed about a family issue. The words and the desire to write always return in a few days.
My spouse isn't a reader so he doesn't read anything I write. He helps with plot problems though.
Thanks for the replies, everyone. For some reason I love reading about the writing process... this includes anything from how-to books, essays on the subject, or something like this where people talk about their writing habits. I've always been fascinated by it. Maybe it's because I have respect for the craft and get to enjoy the outcome.
Josh, I read somewhere a quote from you where you said something about being a bad writer when you first started. What would you say helped improve your writing? Do you feel that most of your writing skill is self-taught, or did someone or something in particular help guide you? I can't imagine you writing anything bad, and I keep thinking you must be referring to something you wrote when you were ten. :-D
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It was a combination of self-help and working with excellent editors (I mean real live old fashioned editors -- people who devoted their lives to discovering and developing writers). The first step was educating myself enough to understand what editors were even talking about when they rejected a story.
I read a lot of writing books while I was being "rejected," and eventually the light dawned and I understood what the heck my would-be editors were trying to tell me.
You have to understand, though, I was so young -- sixteen -- when I got my first pro credit. I was so young (and so inexperienced) that I thought a request for revision was a rejection! I was so young I didn't realize how incredible it was to be published at my age. :-D I was so young I thought I could lay aside my "writing career" for a couple of years and then pick it up again if/whenever I was so inclined without trouble.
I am actually uncomfortable remembering how young and dumb I was when I started. So when I hear people my age talking about how they've been twenty years in the biz? Yeah. No.
Believe me. Twenty years of being pro shows. It certainly shows to the people who have been twenty years pro. :-)
Thank you, Josh. I find this really interesting. I figured when you spoke of writing badly when you first started that you were probably pretty young at the time.... Not because I think of you as being old but because your writing is so good that I can't imagine bad writing happening during any recent time. :-)Whenever I read one of your answers I always think of more questions that I'd like to ask, but I'm trying not to turn this thread into my own personal JL writing interrogation. :-) I'll let it simmer and come back another time. :-D
p.s. I'm glad you didn't put your writing career aside forever. I hate the thought of missing out on all the wonderful stories and characters you've created; they've oftentimes made my world a happier place.
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I think that your questions are great, Tina "James Lipton" Kay! ;-) And I love to read Josh's answers! Please continue... (and anyway, you are the first person for a long time to use this thread properly, LOL.)
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Hey, this is the interrogate Josh thread, so no worries. :-D
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We do digress a lot, don't we? But that's part of the fun!
Johanna wrote: "I think that your questions are great, Tina "James Lipton" Kay! ;-) And I love to read Josh's answers! Please continue... (and anyway, you are the first person for a long time to use this thread properly, LOL.) ...":-) Yay! Thanks, Johanna!
Maybe I should ask Josh his favorite word and favorite curse word like James Lipton asks actors. :-D
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LOL. :-)
(I bet his favorite word would be juice...)
Josh wrote: "Hey, this is the interrogate Josh thread, so no worries. :-D ..."Thank you. :-) I'll be back with more soon, I'm sure.
Johanna wrote: "I bet his favorite word would be juice..."What about ''Irish coffee''?
Antonella wrote: "Johanna wrote: "I bet his favorite word would be juice..."What about ''Irish coffee''?"
Or chia seeds.
What do you guys do if you write on multiple platforms. I have my writings on two laptops and my desktop. I try to throw my stuff up on the Amazon cloud but don't always get to it every time I'm done writing.So now my big laptop, my main writing laptop, is dying. I don't have much more progress than the last time I've saved, but I'm afraid I've lost some work.
Do you use USB drives? Cloud Drives? A CD? Or do you stick with one main computer for your writing?
All my writing stuff is on Dropbox. I mostly just use one computer (my laptop) to write on, but if my laptop ever goes, I know I've got it backed up in the cloud.I have used external hard drives and USB drives, but I've had them go bad on me.
Dropbox (cloud storage) is very convenient but it does require reliance on a 3rd party -- what if Dropbox gets hacked? What if Dropbox goes out of business, what if they have a hard drive failure, how often do they do backups, etc.? (I do have local copies on my laptop but with the automatic syncing I'm not sure how long my local copies would stay before being sync'd to a hacked file in the cloud, you know?)
And now that I've completely made myself paranoid I'm gonna go back up my stuff on CD... ;-)
Christie wrote: "Dropbox (cloud storage) is very convenient but it does require reliance on a 3rd party -- what if Dropbox gets hacked? What if Dropbox goes out of business, what if they have a hard drive failure, how often do they do backups, etc.?..."Dropbox and other cloud storage systems are most likely using sever arrays with redundant backup. That means that if a hard drive goes bad, you pull it out and plug the next one in and the system chugs on with no interruption.
NOTHING big online is kept on a single hard drive anymore.
Susinok wrote: "What do you guys do if you write on multiple platforms. I have my writings on two laptops and my desktop. I try to throw my stuff up on the Amazon cloud but don't always get to it every time I'm do..."I use an external hard drive, but if I'm away from home with my laptop or in a real hurry I email my work to myself as an attachment.
After losing my harddrive a couple of months ago, I save everything everywhere. I've been told dropbox is the best way.
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Carbonite
I do email myself work sometimes when I know I'm moving around a lot.
I'm using Dropbox, mostly, additionally mail stuff sometimes, have several USB-Sticks and harddrives with all kinds of backups and, just to be on the save side, often enough schlep both of my work-containing notebooks with me when I go anywhere for longer than two days. Plus sticks and harddrives.Which is to say, I have no system at all, and really should think about this more. I'm trying to put most stuff into Dropbox, but since I have sensitive personal data from other people to work on, I can't upload anything like that. Damn data protection regulations ;D
Susinok wrote: "What do you guys do if you write on multiple platforms. I have my writings on two laptops and my desktop. I try to throw my stuff up on the Amazon cloud but don't always get to it every time I'm do..."I don't write (fiction) but I have a rather exhaustive approach to backing up my work. I have two external hard drives. The first makes a complete, bootable clone of my hard drive every night. The second does an incremental back up every ten minutes (Time Machine for Macs). I also have a nightly offsite (cloud) backup of the important stuff, and I have my email stored on the server as well as locally. All of this happens automatically.
I did have both my computer hard drive and my external hard drive crash within a few days of each other once, so I do not trust easily. :-) In addition, I know two people who came very close to losing their homes to fire, so I need offsite backup to feel safe.
Perhaps not everyone has to be quite so anal retentive as I am. :-) What I would suggest to anyone is that your back up solution be automatic - if you have to remember to do something you probably won't - and that you back up at least your most important stuff in two places. All hard drives die eventually, and often with no warning.
Charming wrote: "an incremental back up every ten minutes (Time Machine for Macs)"I wanted to mention as well the Time Machine because for me it is magic. Before I had it I kept forgetting to make backups, and now everything is automatic.
Not to mention the first time I was able to get back a document I thought lost!
Tina Kay wrote: "Thank you for the well wishes, everyone! Well I survived my procedure (obviously), but I felt a lot crappier afterwards than I thought I would, so I never made it to my planned evening of guys with..."Hope you're feeling very much better now.
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The problem I have with local backup is that I'm lazy and forget. When I was in grad school I lost three weeks of work on my dissertation when my machine went down. It was my own fault for not backing up. Then a few years later I lost all my photos (not backed up). I don't seem to learn well. So I have my writing stored on Dropbox and my entire computer backed up automatically by Carbonite. When I recently spilled tea (yes, I'm so hard on computers I've started to buy them cheap and refurbished) I was able to get everything back up and restored easily.The cloud may be fallible but it's much more reliable than I am.
I have transferred most of my books to my new tablet, so now I see the covers.Josh were you totally horrified when you saw the cover of "Scared Stiff"?
Why am I asking? I bet you were.
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Josh were you totally horrified when you saw the cover of "Scared Stiff"?
Why am I asking? I bet you were."
Really. With all that you know of me, what do YOU think my reaction was? ;-D
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That's the main reason I switched to Carbonite. Because I'd had external hard drives for the two previous computer crashes and I hadn't managed to remember to save a damn thing.
Josh wrote: "Really. With all that you know of me, what do YOU think my reaction was? ;-D .."Long streams of unprintable blue language that pretty much is summed up by WTF! ?
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Long streams of unprintable blue language that pretty much is summed up by WTF! ?"
I'm thinking it was good there was no photographer in the room. Although, come to think of it, maybe it would have made a suitable cover for the project -- I'm sure the word "horror" was personified.
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I was trained well and early in life by my dad who worked in IT. It's so natural for me to hit the save button, I save the period I just typed if I stop to think about something. And I try to save emails the same way if they're not short. So, I'm usually very good about doing that.
I have a computer I use mainly for writing which doesn't go online, and then I stick to refurbished computers for my internet because they tend to die so fast. When I took my writing laptop to the shop to get a hinge fixed last year the guy asked me if I was fine with the computer because it's so old. The thing is, it runs faster than anything else I own. If the stickers worn off on the bottom weren't a tell, and you couldn't see where I'd rubbed the wrist rest raw or worn the keys down, you'd think it was new. And that's what I love about it. :-)
Susinok wrote: "I have transferred most of my books to my new tablet, so now I see the covers.Josh were you totally horrified when you saw the cover of "Scared Stiff"?
Why am I asking? I bet you were."
Charming wrote: "Susinok wrote: "I have transferred most of my books to my new tablet, so now I see the covers.Josh were you totally horrified when you saw the cover of "Scared Stiff"?
Why am I asking? I bet yo..."
... uh... very... uh... interesting. I'm sorry to say that, but this cover is frightening me indeed quite a bit. Only, maybe, not in ways intended...
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:-)
I took out the book: the cover looks even more ''frightening'' live ;-)
There's a most enlightening blog post over on Graywolf press about how we make a judgement about the quality of a book based on the opening pages.
Caroline wrote: "There's a most enlightening blog post over on Graywolf press about how we make a judgement about the quality of a book based on the opening pages."I certainly do. It's how I choose whether or not to buy a book. I don't read blurbs and I only look at the headline (re)marks of reviews, because I don't like finding out anything about the plot before I'm supposed to i.e. when it's revealed by the author in the book. So reading the first few pages is what I do to decide whether I want to read the book.
Hj wrote: "Caroline wrote: "There's a most enlightening blog post over on Graywolf press about how we make a judgement about the quality of a book based on the opening pages."I certainly do. It's how I ch..."
Yup, I generally get a sample of the book, however I came across a book that had a decent m/m sex scene, it propelled the scene, but when I got to reading it, no more m/m at all and it was strictly a very bad m/f sex type book.
So, I'm reading Writing the Gay Mystery... great article by the way. I'm a little confused... I guess I just assumed that m/m meant it was a gay novel, but reading the article, m/m is considered a different type of fiction from gay. Is m/m considered more erotic? Also, why is there a difference? Isn't something that is m/m, just gay?
I hope it's all right to poke my head in here, as I don't write M/M.I think I need some encouragement? Good advice? A kick in the butt?
A couple of thoughts/questions based on what's been discussed the last few pages.
1. I've been having a hard time getting into the heart of essays/writing. I waste a lot of time (that I could spend doing other critical things) thinking I'm writing when I'm actually not writing. Then the deadline hits, I suffer, and something comes out. Now, editing? That moves pretty quickly; I'll ginzu through things, and in general, even the phrases I love, I can excise (especially if I'm writing to a maximum word count). I never used to be like this with getting a first draft down - what happened and how do I change it?
2. I've been able to get back into writing because of all the academic work I've been doing, so that's terrific, but how do I get back to fiction? My process isn't very efficient as it is (see number 1), though I know if I get something substantial down, I can edit the hell out of it.
3. Discipline and doing it is job 1, of course, but do you all think that doing other things - reading, exposing yourself to new concepts etc - helps the fermenting process, even if nothing new is coming out? I like to think that this long drought of no new fiction is really the land lying fallow in the winter, and everything I do is providing nutrition to the soil (I have just mixed about half a dozen farmer/nature metaphors, which is riotous since I'm a city girl and have no idea what I'm talking about). But is this an illusion just to make myself feel good?
4. On the topic of backing up - I haven't backed up a damn thing (writing, lectures, photos, music etc.) in over 9 months, and realized last weekend that my external hard drive is totally full, but today I bought a 2 terabyte external hard drive, so if I get it this weekend, I'll be copying as I'm writing.
Again, I really hope you all don't mind my intrusion here...feel free to ignore all these questions.
Joe wrote: "So, I'm reading Writing the Gay Mystery... great article by the way. I'm a little confused... I guess I just assumed that m/m meant it was a gay novel, but reading the article, m/m is considered..."
What Lou said, and it's a valid distinction. In addition, I think m/m romance is often perceived as a.) primarily the province of female writers and readers, b.) schlocky, and c.) sex-saturated. We're sort of the red-headed stepchildren of het romance and gay fiction.
Oh, then it's a good thing I'm a red head. ;-)
mc wrote: "I hope it's all right to poke my head in here, as I don't write M/M.I think I need some encouragement?"
Hi Mc
I don't write M/M either but it doesn't stop me holding forth on here so I don't think you're intruding at all.
If I've understood your questions correctly you're talking about two things - writing academic essays and writing fiction. As regards academic work often the only way it gets done is under the headlights of a looming deadline. As an undergrad the only time I started drafts well ahead of time was when I'd agreed with someone else that we'd keep each other up to the mark. It was slightly different as a postgrad but by then I was studying for its own sake and wanted to learn but even so I needed deadlines to get things finished.
If it were me I wouldn't try too hard to force myself back to fiction whilst I was still studying. You are right that all the reading and thinking, ploughing the land etc will be honing your writing skills regardless but academic work requires a different mindset and I think you might drive yourself round the bend if you try to do both. A trick might be to regard fiction writing as a treat into which you can fling yourself during the vacation or when you've finished studying. Having said that I believe Irvine Welsh wrote Trainspotting while he was having time off work to do an MBA but I have no idea if he actually completed the MBA.
When are you studying BTW - apart from Foucault? Should have asked this first really.
Joe wrote: "Oh, then it's a good thing I'm a red head. ;-)":-D
mc wrote: "3. Discipline and doing it is job 1, of course, but do you all think that doing other things - reading, exposing yourself to new concepts etc - helps the fermenting process, even if nothing new is coming out?..."Hey mc! I personally am inspired by art of any type (doesn't have to be fiction), and I've found that it helps with my creativity. It makes me want to do what makes me feel good. So if I see I movie I love or see a beautiful painting or read an awesome book, it makes me want to create in return.
By the way, what type of fiction do you like to write?
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Q&A with Josh Lanyon
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I try to write every day but very rarely do I show the work to the SO. Once in a while I'll have him look at something. He's great for catching continuity errors.
ETA -- I will brainstorm with him sometimes. He does come up with interesting and very different ideas. But if he sees the actual ms he starts rewriting my dialog and then I want to kill him. ;-D