Writing Is Never Working Alone

I like to use my "go down into the word mines" analogy about writing, as if it presents this image of me as this lonely old prospector, heading down into the depths with pick-axe over my shoulder. 

Of course, that's not how it really works.  You can't do this without people having your back. 

I've got a lot of people, but if I had to narrow it down to the inner circle, I'd have four names.

1. Dan Fawcett -- Dan's been my friend since seventh grade, and has been my constant sounding board for story ideas, worldbuilding concepts, and generally putting up with my ramblings.  He would probably hesitate to take any credit, but Thorn of Dentonhill and the rest of the books in Maradaine wouldn't be what they are without his influence.  Heck, I'm pretty sure he's the one who suggested "Maradaine" as the city's name. 

2. Mike Kabongo-- my agent, who has stood with this work in the time it took us to sell it, who encouraged continued projects while Thorn and others were out shopping, and who read a manuscript that wasn't ready, but saw enough potential in it that he was hooked.

3. Sheila Gilbert -- my editor at DAW.  There are plenty of other people at DAW as well, half of whom I don't even know their name, who are all doing things for me and my work.  But Sheila is front and center, making Thorn be the best it can be when it hits the shelves in February.

4. Deidre Kateri Aragon -- my wife.  Of course she's on this list, because it would have been impossible for me to achieve this without her.  She's the one who kicked my butt so I stopped being the person saying, "Yeah, I'd like to be writing books" and made me actually write books.  And just as I'm working every day on writing, she's working every day so I'm able to.  But we both work from home, so we get to sit across from each other at our big table.  So it's the best of all things; I get the space I need to work, but I have my favorite person in the world right there with me. 


Are there more people?  Yes. Tons. I could go on, but that's what acknowledgement pages in books are for, right?  And even there, I probably missed a few.

That said, it's time to make the most of their support.  Off to the word mines.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Editing

During ArmadilloCon I had the pleasure of talking with a woman who was in the enviable-but-frustrating position of having an agent, but her manuscripts were still being reviewed by publishers.  (Enviable because YOU HAVE AN AGENT, and that's awesome. Frustrating, especially at cons, because while you are on the path to success, you don't have that tangible commodity to show for it.  Talking up your agent-having alone just sounds strange.)  She was already worried about what might happen when an editor got a hold of it. What sort of crazy changes might be demanded?

Fortunately, I had just been through two editing processes, and I could reassure her that it wasn't likely to be as radical as the horror stories she had heard. 

In fact, I even wrote an article for Book Country on how my process was. 

Everyone's writing process and editing process are different, of course.  For example, I hear from a lot of writers that editing involves throwing a lot of words away and re-doing it.  I, personally, could never work that way... but at the same time, in my writing process, I cannot do the "just get it on the page and fix it later" method.  Not to say it's perfect when I first write it... not at all.  But if you were to compare the first draft of the first chapter of Murder of Mages to the one I submitted as a final version a few weeks ago, the fundamentals are more or less the same.  And almost all of my "major surgery" edits have been a matter of adding more to the manuscript, rather than throwing stuff away. 

Anyhow, being edited wasn't a scary process at all, thanks to having a fabulous, Hugo-nominated editor (fingers crossed for this year!)  Go and check out the article, and you can see the true finalized-cover of Thorn, including the DAW logo which identifies it as the 1681st book in their 30+ year history. 

Perils of the Writer: All the "Rules" with a Grain of Salt

Every fledgling writer hears all sorts of "dos and don'ts", rules that you NEED to follow if you want to have ANY CHANCE of getting published.  Most of these things are nonsense, essentially trying to quantify something that is more gut-feeling than hard and fast rule.   Case in point:

I was just at a conference, where in the opening pages agent-author seminar, the agents stopped reading a participant's opener as soon as they hit an exclamation point, and stressed that shows lazy writing. There must be some other way to show the emphasis, or else don't emphasize the point where it is used. 

I have to admit, this one, in particular, strikes me as especially arbitrary. Exclamation points show lazy writing? Incorrect usage of exclamation points can certainly be problematic, but to exclude their usage altogether? Absurd. I'll say again with emphasis: Absurd! (Especially considering one of the events at that conference was titled, "The Power of Positive Writing!” Yes, with the exclamation point.)

But more to the point, there are only three punctuation marks that can end a sentence.  Why avoid one-third of them completely?  How is that lazy writing? I don't know.  It's a fundamental part of punctuation.  It would be as if someone said, "I never like seeing quotation marks.  There must be some other way to show a character is speaking."

The advice, as a reading rule itself, I find almost obscene.  It's a step away from saying, "If I see a sentence with two words that start with a 'k', I stop reading." I shudder to think of fledgling writers running to their manuscripts and slashing out exclamation points. Because THEY! MUST! GO!

I'm so glad neither my agent nor my editor follow such a silly rule.*

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*- The first sentence of Thorn of Dentonhill is "Thief!"