NaNoWriMo 2013

Because I am quite mad, I have decided to participate in NaNo this year despite having no less than four other projects up in the air at the moment. My username is Katherine Pearl, and my profile is here. If you have any plans to participate, I hope that you'll add me as a friend.

I participated in NaNoWriMo from 2005-2010, and "won" the last of those two years. It's a really great way to come up with a very inventive, seat-of-your-pants first draft. Unfortunately, back in 2009 I hadn't yet practiced rewriting a novel, and I fear that SNOWBERRY--dearly as I love it--is not destined to see the light of day, at least in its current form. HAUNTED HOUSES, the most recent effort, was actually a second attempt at one of the earlier NaNo projects. It, too, is probably lost to time.

Over the last two years, I have been working--with varying amounts of dedication--on a young adult novel, THE WOODS AND THE CASTLE. (They make you write it in all caps if it isn't published yet.) I've written a full three drafts of that book, and am four chapters away from finishing a final edit of the third. Ideally, I'll finish those edits and this year's NaNo project at more or less the same time. That would leave space for NaNo '13 to slide smoothly into the editing spot. But time will tell.

One complicating factor is one of the aforementioned side projects. It was meant to be a Halloween short story, but--like so many drafts--got way too big for its pants. I'm hoping it will come out at around 20,000 words. Tentatively, I'm planning to self-publish it, priced at 99 cents like Five Stories. (If you haven't read Five Stories yet, wouldn't Halloween week be a terrific time to do so? I... sort of... kid.) It would be nice to put out at least one thing like that every year--I'm still on the fence re: self-publishing, but it was a really fun project, and I'd like to improve my cover-fu. The novella, currently titled "The Tongue of the Dead," went over quite well with some very respected beta readers, and I'm having a wonderful time writing it.

Other than that... waiting on something big, but I feel like if I tell you I'll jinx it. Feel free to speculate! And stay warm.

XOXO,

Kate

Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 1/30/13

Lots of links today! Here's a random song to start us off:

Pomplamoose: "Mister Sandman." Song ends about halfway through the video, but I like this version. : )

1. "Rising Action, Falling Interest." Sherwood Smith of Book View Cafe argues that too much literary analysis, too soon, can kill a person's chance of becoming a lifelong reader.

2. "How to make the most of being a noncelebrity author." Janet Kobobel Grant of Books & Such discusses the occasional need for pragmatic choices in a beginning author's career.

3. "What to do when an editor shows significant interest and other editors have the proposal." Rachel Kent, Books & Such. May we all have such a problem. Probably aimed mostly at nonfiction writers, since it's talking about proposals.

4. "8 Ways to Help Your Favorite Author* (*and Get Your Fans To Help YOU)." Another from Books & Such--this one by Rachelle Gardner. They have a really good blog, actually--I think they're a Christian agency, but most of their advice is universally applicable. Give them a look!

5. "How does an author handle multiple requests for 'exclusive reads'[?]" Again, may we all have such problems. This is a "Question Emporium" post by the inestimable Janet Reid.

6. "Should Writers 'JUST' Write?" By Dan Blank of Writer Unboxed. (Spoiler: The answer is "probably not.")

7. "Cover Art -- So Where's The Problem?" For those who came in late, Jim Hines sums it up.

8. "Girl Hood: On (not) Finding Yourself in Books." Jaquira Diaz of Her Kind on the importance of diversity in children's/YA literature.

9. "The Making of a Cover," by Zoë Marriott. This is SO COOL. I'm now having daydreams about someone doing this for my book.

10. "Where Kristin Discusses The Importance Of Metadata,"  by Agent Kristin of Pub Rants. The video quality isn't great, but this is definitely something to think about, especially for people who are interested in self-publishing.

For those of you wondering what the heck is metadata, these are the descriptive tags included in product description and in a lot of cases, embedded in the content file itself of electronic books, that allow a novel to be searchable and discoverable on distribution venues such as Amazon, BN, and Kobo.  

The overall gist is that flexibility and responsiveness are important here, as they always are in self-publishing (or publishing in general).

11. "A love letter to books that aren't exactly mine (or, why I love foreign rights)." By agent Molly Jaffa.

12. "25 Hard Truths About Writing And Publishing." I have mixed feelings about Chuck Wendig's blog style, but this is a good piece.

Sorry these were late! And happy birthday to my sister, thelisbet, who's 27 today. XOXO!

Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 1/16/13

This week's random video: Did anyone know Christina Aguilera had done a duet with a country singer? Apparently the song's been out awhile, but I didn't hear it till Friday. I think it kind of works! I'm glad she still has a career--I always liked her.

 

Christina Aguilera/Blake Shelton: "Just a Fool"

1. "Don't Make Your Book Launch Like a Trip to the Dentist." Dan Blank of Writer Unboxed reminds authors to build their platforms well before the book is due to launch. 

"So how do we avoid this feeling, this panic of the drill in your mouth as you lead up to your book launch? At the most basic level, I would encourage you to answer these questions:

1. Describe to me, in detail what your ideal readers read in the last 12 months....
2. Where specifically can you go – online or off – to meet your readers?...
3. Who manages or organizes these places[?]"

2. "Got a cool idea for a story? Now break it." This is a fantastic post about plot creation by Hugh Howey, author of the Wool series, which I've heard incredible things about and need to read. Thanks to M. David Blake for the link.

3. "The wrong goodbye of Barnes and Noble." In the words of Cathy: "Ack!"

4. Autharium.  New ebook publishing platform; looks like they intend to compete with Smashwords. Some differences: According to the FAQ, it looks like they take about a 15% cut of what you earn from the various retailers (that's after the retailers take their cut). Also, it seems heavily skewed towards nonfiction--the fiction section doesn't even have genre divisions. Still, it's something to be aware of.

5. "9 Tips for Writing a Really Good 'Shitty First Draft.'" Lisa Cron of "Writer Unboxed" gives hints on how to produce a coherent story on the first try (rather than a Gordian knot that has to be cut to shreds and stitched together again before it makes any sense). My favorite tip is #7, the "third rail."

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Had a wonderful time at IllogiCon 2 this weekend, and saw a lot of good friends. What's everyone else been up to?

IllogiCon 2, Day 3

 Click here for Day 1, or here for Day 2.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Got there late, of course. The first panel I managed to attend was "Humanizing Villains," which started at 2. I came in at 2:15, and missed a lot of the discussion, but enjoyed what I was able to see. The panelists were Misty Massey, John Kessel, John Hartness, Natania Barron, Ada Milenkovic Brown, and Garth Graham.

Dangerous confidence

I went to a book signing tonight. Marissa Meyer was at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, promoting her novel Cinder.  I unfortunately missed the reading, due partly to my propensity for tardiness and partly to a wrong turn at Albuquerque, but it seemed to have been a very nice reading, and the bookstore was lovely. The author herself was sweet and charming and well-spoken, and her signature message is adorable: "May the glass slipper always fit." (The book is now on my shelf, trying to cut in front of the other books on my to-read list. I think it's about to get into a fistfight with my copy of Anna Dressed In Blood.)

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Seeing people promote their books-- hearing authors talk about their careers-- inevitably makes me desperate to be one of them. I feel like telling people, I'm like you! I'm an author, too! You can't see it, but I'm almost done, and soon my book will be published and it will be on the shelf like yours! Even though it's not finished yet. But it's almost there, and it makes me crazy with anticipation sometimes. And ambition, as well. 

The thing about writing is that until you are published-- until you have an actual, physical, beautifully-bound book with your name on the cover-- authorial ambitions are generally seen as empty daydreams. "Yes, dear, you want to write a book, just like everybody else. Maybe you'd better do something else in the meantime-- you can always write in your spare time!" 

And I want to say, No! Not me. I can do this. Other people might give up, but I'm going to make a career as a writer. Someday I'll have a whole row of books on the shelf, each more beautiful than the last, and people will see them in the bookstores and point them out to their friends. And then their friends will pick up one or two of them and take them to the register, and maybe read them and fall in love with them and point them out to their friends, later. And all the while I'll be writing more.

And on that note: