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I write because…
it makes me happy. the voices tell me to. other voices tell me not to. it’s what I know. it’s everything unknown. it’s who I am. it’s everything I’m not. it’s escape. I want to leave something behind. there are too many stories to tell. there are too many secrets to share. there are too many zombies at the window. it keeps me company. it saves me from reality. it brings me closer to the real world. the machine is already primed. everything’s already been written. it might be better if I write again. it’s the best of me. it’s the worst of me. it’s the greatest freedom I know.
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WIP excerpt from Blue Heron
First draft caveats, but I liked this bit. Aboard the Vagrant, approaching a dead Earth. — Sacha sputtered as she came to, gagging again on the tube down her throat. She had not got the hang of it, even eight trips in. Her first thought was: Shit, not even remotely helpful. “Calm down, just a second,” came Dr. Sten’s voice, low and comforting enough to convince Sacha to stop sputtering. She felt the tube slide out, taking phlegm with it, and she gagged a few times, seeing spots. The lights were dimmed in the room, but she could still see the screen blinking to her right, the images of the…
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Old school #queryfail
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good. – Samuel Johnson I mean, he only wrote the Dictionary. What did he know?
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The day Clary Darcy destroyed the world.
I entertained the notion of writing a YA novel a few months ago. Didn’t get too far, but I stumbled upon the 522 words that I did write down and found it to be rather amusing. Made me smile, at least. Thought I’d share. — We begin with the end. The end of a world: a plunge into darkness, destruction and despair. The usual. An accident, an impossibility, and yet, a fact. Clary Jane Darcy stood in the middle of it, aware that she had caused it, and not yet certain that she was still alive. She could feel her mind, understand that she was thinking, but her body felt…
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Perspective tension
I am still having a problem. When I wrote Queen of None a few months ago, it happened very quickly. To this date it’s the fastest I’ve ever written a book. At the time, writing it was the easiest thing in the world. Everything flowed magically, or so it appeared to me, and when it was done it was with a feeling of rather impressive triumph. I may have danced. Now I’m editing, and I’m having issues. Just coming off of another book, which was third person limited, this first person narrative is seriously getting under my skin. Where I thought it was engaging before, I’m feeling like it’s annoying…
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The blood between the lines: writing who we are
When I was three, my world was changed irrevocably. I had been a very happy child, by all accounts, albeit a little precocious and sometimes serious for my age. I loved art, music. I used to stand next to my dad while he played guitar, and leaned my head on his knee to hear the vibrations of the music. I watched my mother sketch life from the nib of a pencil. But no one was as life-changing for me as my sister. Llana was born, and everything came into focus. I remember virtually nothing before she came into the world, this little blond miracle. Though now she’s an elegant woman,…
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Six of these, half a dozen of the other – a character conundrum
I am making every effort to write and/or edit every single day, whether it’s a work in progress or something past the first draft. It’s part of the whole, “I’m going to act like this is a professional gig” approach I’ve been instating over the last few months (to surprising success, I should add). However, I’m having a really hard time shaking the last batch of characters for any new set. It’s almost amusing, but since it’s coming in the way of a current editing project I’m trying to do (preparing Queen of None beyond the first draft) it’s bordering on plain irritating. It’s quite literally a fact of characters…
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It is universally acknowledged that women English majors of a certain age always read Jane Austen.
Unless you’re me. Oh, it isn’t that I never tried. It’s just that Austen always seemed a little too foofy for me, a bit too girlie and modern (to a medievalist, anyway). Not to mention that in undergraduate and graduate studies I was constantly trying to distance myself from women writers and feminist readings because everyone always assumed that’s what I was. I wanted to play with the boys and talk about chivalry and brain bashing. I didn’t want to have anything to do with feminist bullcrap. Yeah. That was pretty stupid of me. I entirely blame my son for my becoming a total feminist. No, on the surface, I…
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Sitting on the curb of the empty parking lot of the store where they let me play the organ…
Central North Carolina wants to be the coast of Britain. Good lord, it has not stopped raining since I landed in RDU last Wednesday. Coupled with the fact that my husband Michael has been away on business all weekend, and my two-year-old has not been outdoors at all since Friday… yes, excitement all around. Writing has been not exactly scarce, but a little scattered. Since I left a week and a half ago, I managed around 10,000 words, which isn’t bad. I’m not precisely sure where the words came from, but I know what Scrivener says, and I have a tendency to believe it rather than my own feelings of…
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Tweeting in the Writing World
For years I had the hardest time writing. It wasn’t that I didn’t have ideas, or inspiration, or even time. As many point out, novel writing isn’t something you have to be unemployed or financed to do. A little bit, every day, adds up very quickly. I started a blog when I finished the first draft of my novel with the assumption that if I had some method of accountability other than myself, I would produce more work. I started podcasting the drafts, asking for feedback from listeners. And it sort of helped. But not really. I was still dawdling editing my draft, still extremely undisciplined and totally erratic. I…
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A post above the skies
From yesterday: I’m somewhere high above the earth, writing a blog post, on my way to Santa Ana/Orange County airport to visit my little sister. You may have heard me mention in other posts, but she is currently undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. After spending four days with her, I’m going to be visiting my great aunt in San Francisco, who’s also been diagnosed with cancer. It’s a bittersweet “vacation”–I found it very difficult to leave my two and a half year old this morning. But as usual, he seemed more besotted with my mom than worried about his Mommy going on a trip across the country. Someday he will…
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A Tuesday short story WIP excerpt
But Alice was practically obsessed with exposing the truth and making a name for herself as a journalist, one who plunged into the deepest, darkest corners of the city to expose the maggot-ridden underbelly. She would grab opportunity by the scrotum, and direct it where she wanted to go, never relenting in her pursuit of cold, hard, facts. Of course, first she’d write a few fluff pieces, just to get the papers interested in her work, but then she’d go for the jugular. The instruction card was hand-written, and stamped with a government-issued seal of authenticity. Alice turned it over again in her hands and read the opening paragraph: Congratulations…
