#PenPower Myth Debunk #2: I have to write FAST!

Are you a rabbit or a snail?

I  used to be a rabbit. I wrote quickly and I didn't think of what I was writing much. All in all that's a good strategy to create output and to test your wings. As a beginner (although you don't necessarily need to write every day as we have shown in post #1) the more you write the better. The practice you get is invaluable. Writing fast and often (I used to write 10000 words every day for two to three weeks then take an equally long break) is useful when you start out.

However, there are two main issues with writing FAST:

1. Trying to write when you're not ready. Stories need time to gestate. The story that pops into a writer's head fully formed is rare. It happens, and it's a gift when it does, but these instances are rare. Usually, a story takes a while to complete itself in your head before you write it down. We'll see below from our writing superheroes how stories come to them and how they approach the challenge of being patient enough to let it form on its own.

2. If you write too fast then the quality of your writing may suffer. This ties in with the above. I know you want that story out. I know you want it written, preferably yesterday. I know there are some writers who don't like the writing process but like being 'done'. However: each story has its pace. You can't force it. And that's not an excuse for laziness. That's fact. Your mind needs rest o figure out kinks and twists and turns and broken plots in your story. All good things take time.

That latter was a hard lesson for me personally to learn. I'm impatient by nature and I love to write fast. I can do it - if the story is ready. If not? Why, the story just crashes and burns, and it takes a while to recover it. Once I've gotten out of the frenzy of I HAVE TO WRITE NOW (EVERY DAY) EVEN THOUGH I KNOW THE STORY IS NOT READY I usually delete most of what I've written and go back to exactly where I knew the story needed to gestate and ignored the signs.

In the background of many writerly minds there seems to be a race going on: A lot of new writers are trying to get their projects finished and another started. They either want to be THE FIRST to use THIS IDEA or perhaps they are just worried an idea will run away if they don't use it NOW. Or they just want to get it DONE because they don't like the writing process and prefer to edit. Or they don't like the writing process period. Alternately they may think if they don't hit high in their youth they will never make it.

So how do our writing superheroes handle this need to write fast? Do they think it's necessary to write quickly at all? I've posed them one simple question that's allowed me to gain a lot of insight into the subject.

1. How long did it take to finish your [novel/trilogy/project]?

ANNA: (On the Godblind Trilogy) My first trilogy has been a long and winding road! From first draft to publication, the first book, Godblind, took approximately 13 years. After that, the sequels came out roughly 12 months later - June 2017, August 2018, September 2019 - so a good decade and a half from story germination to published trilogy. When drafting Godblind, I didn't have any external input from anyone at all, which may be one of the reasons it took so long. These days I draft a lot faster.

YOON: (On the Machineries of Empire Trilogy) I started [the first novel] Ninefox Gambit in 2011 and completed a draft in about a year, then spent another couple of years revising it. I wrote the sequel, Raven Stratagem, and most of the third book, Revenant Gun, on spec.  The third one was about half-written by the time I signed with Solaris for the trilogy, but finishing it (in 2016) was complicated by the fact that we were flooded out that year and I had to ask for an extension to my deadline, which Solaris graciously granted. It takes me about a year to draft a novel.

TIM: (On The Wrong Stars Trilogy) I couldn't even tell you the beginning of the idea. 2013 or 2014, maybe. As I began to plan the end of my Marla Mason urban fantasy series, I started to think about what I wanted to do next, and space opera was appealing. That's when I began jotting notes. In 2015 I wrote the first 12,000 words of the Wrong Stars. That was to create a submission package, which also included an outline. Took a while to sell the book, and then the due date wasn't for even longer, so I wrote and revised the other 80,000ish words in 2017, over about six weeks. I began writing The Dreaming Stars in December 2017 with the last 50,000 words written over five days at a writing retreat in February 2018. I started The Forbidden Stars on New Year's Day 2019 and finished revisions [in] March. For all three, of course, there was more revision in response to editorial feedback, and copyedits, and proofreading, and etc, but the above covers my pre-submission process.

THORAIYA: (On the Titan's Forest Trilogy) Initial concept was in 2012, final book published in 2019! At the time I was writing 5 days a week, aiming for a thousand words per day.

MARTHA: (On The Murderbot Diaries) Each one was different. I wrote All Systems Red in 2016, after I finished a first draft of my last fantasy novel, The Harbors of the Sun. All Systems Red was a novella of about 32000 words, and took me about a month to write. When Tor.com bought it for their novella line, they asked for a second novella. I started Artificial Condition, and it was a little longer but took about three months to write. Then I started on Rogue Protocol, then Exit Strategy. Both were around 34,000 words each and both took about three to four months each. The novel, Network Effect, was much harder to do. It’s 110,000 words, which isn’t particularly long for a novel, but it took about 18 months, just constantly writing and revising. So it took from around May-June of 2016 to the publication date of the novel in May 2020. 

KAT: (An editor's perspective on Whispers from the Abyss) Whispers from the Abyss Vol. 1 took about a year to go from concept to completion. 

We set out an open call for submissions as well as invited a few specific authors that wanted to include. Reading submissions [after the deadline and maximum submission volume had been reached] took about two months. In all it took about six months to go from open call to selection process.  

As for publishing, I ran Kickstarter campaigns to raise the funds needed to print the books. The Kickstarter lasted a month and many of the authors were kind enough to help promote the project. From there it went to the printer and in the hands of the reader.

[Whipsers from the Abyss 1] was so well received that we immediately launched the open call for Whispers Vol. 2. 

ADRIAN: (Example: Children of Time) Now I’ve gone full-time writer (have been for a little over a year) I’d say around 4-6 months to produce a first draft, plus up to a month to turn that into a submission draft. I spent a few hours each day, mornings and evenings, and that generally suffices. 

In general, the total lead-in time between breaking ground on a new book and that book hitting the shelves is 18 months to 2 years, and you’re entirely at the mercy of the publisher’s schedule for most of that.

EOWYN: (On The Snow Child) It took me about a year to have a first, rough draft of the story. Then it was another year of revising and working with my agent, and then maybe another year or more before it was actually out in the world.

SUE: [On the Semiosis Duology] It took me about two years to write Semiosis, and another two years to write Interference. I was working on other projects at the time or at part-time jobs, so I could only devote limited hours of work on the novel on most days.

I finished Semiosis in 2004. Then I started sending the manuscript or queries to agents and publishers. I got no takers, so I decided to write a couple of short stories set in the Semiosis world to get some attention. One of them, “Spiders,” was published in Asimov’s magazine in 2008, and it was picked for a “best of” anthology that year. (Both stories are available at the Semiosis website. https://semiosispax.com/2019/04/18/two-short-stories-set-on-pax/)

That piqued the interest of a small publisher, who bought the book, but then the economic recession reached the publishing business, and the publisher wasn’t able to get it to print. The three-year option ran out, and I got the rights back in 2014, so I began to try to sell it again. I found an agent, who sold it to Tor, and the book finally came out in 2018. By then, I’d finished Interference years ago, and when Semiosis did well, Tor was willing to pick up the sequel.

So … never give up.

JOHN: [On The Fisherman] I first had the idea for the story that would become the book back in 2003. [The] book was published in 2016. I didn't work on it every day during that time. [There] were long periods when I was writing other things.

RICH: (On the Steelhaven Trilogy) I started writing the first novel in 2011 (my files show chapter One as written on 6th January). Book Three was published (according to Amazon) on 7th May 2015.

CAITLIN: (On The Luminous Dead) I wrote the first few chapters and outlined much of the rest of the book in fall of 2014. I then didn't touch it, for various reasons, until November of 2015, when I decided to use NaNoWriMo as a prod to actually finish it. I wrote every day from then through the middle of December, when I finished the first draft. Editing was sporadic over the next year while I queried it, and I signed with my agent in spring of 2017. We did another editing round and sent it off to publishers, where it was bought by Harper Voyager in August 2017, at which point I had to rewrite the second half of the book entirely! That and subsequent edits took until the summer of 2018. So, all told, it was almost four years, but with a lot of breaks and different purposes for each edit.

There are two most important things we can glean from these answers.

1 (curtesy to Sue who summed it up in one simple statement): Never give up.

2: It seems that a lot of our superheroes took times off their works in project 'for various reasons' (quote by Caitlin but almost everyone mentioned starting the idea then taking a 'break' so to speak).

So what is the deal here? It seems to again come down to two reasons (apart from dreaded REAL LIFE getting into the way):

1. The story needs to gestate. It might mean the writer isn't ready yet or it might mean the story isn't ready yet. (You could of course argue those two are so closely related they may just be the same.) Time is required for your brain to make sense of the story - What it's trying to say and how that information can best be packaged. 'How' it wants to say it. This unfortunately cannot be rushed. There seems to be no 'average' completion time either. Eowyn wrote her book in a year and published it in three. John took his time from 2003 to 2016 - 13 years. And our superheroes working on trilogies and series are unicornishly hard to pin down: a few months to a year. A few years to a decade+.

This all comes down to one important point which I've already mentioned in post #1:

The second insight: everyone is different. Each author has their own way or approaching writing and their own pace. An Adrian Tchaikovsky might plan to meticulously it takes him only a few months to finish a book. An Anna Stephens may take 10. And a Sue Burke might just take 14.

So is there a 'wrong way'? Is there a novel that takes 'too long'? Is it worth working on a project that doesn't come to fruition until decades later?

The more commercially oriented of writers might say 'yes! Stephen King writes a novel or two a year and he's rich! I want to be rich!'. That's fair enough.

But does it mean you failed if your writing doesn't take off within its first year? Does it mean you failed if you can't get the story outline together in a month?

Of course not! I don't know where you got the idea and why you are beating yourself up about this! Each writer has their pace. Each book has their timeline. Rushed work is (usually) low-quality work. The best advice I can condense from our generous superheroes' answers is this: Take your time. Don't stress about your novel not being finished. Don't fret over the plot not coming together immediately. Remember: All good things take time.

And remember to check in next week for the next batch of questions! Next Saturday on: Are there any hard and fast rules WE MUST adhere to when writing? The writing superheroes will have some great input for you!

#PenPower Myth Debunk #1: Write Every Day

We've all heard it before: Write Every Day.

Is it required to write every day? Is it useful? I have agonized about this question for years and finally decided to ask some of my favourite authors for some insight. Do they write every day? Does every published author write every day? Certainly there are the Stephen Kings who stick to a strict schedule of four hours of writing every day. They might do it in the morning or in the afternoon. Or they might do it in the middle of the night.

But there are others who don't.

In order to answer the question 'Do you need to write every day?' and the perhaps even more poignant: 'If you don't write every day can you call yourself a writer at all?' we'll take a close look at each of the twelve writing superheroes' writing process below.

I would personally argue that after you've leveled through the beginning stages (where indeed you should be writing a lot of the time) you do not need to stick to a rigid schedule or write every day. As we'll see below it's not necessary to write every day to get published. Just like a stonemason (forget the tired old plumber metaphor) gets two days a week off work the writer needs these two days (or three weeks or four months) off just the same.

A lot of writers (no quotes given because who truly knows where any of this originated?) have given a reason for this: You must 're-fill the well'. You must 'gestate your idea'. You must mentally (subconsciously) test the idea to make sure it's worth it. You must let go of the idea and see what comes back (Hint: usually the good ideas come back!). Et cetera.

All these come back to a simple reason for taking time off: Your brain sometimes needs a break. You've finished a story? Chances are you've wrung your mind dry. The ideas are all out there and you're... blissfully empty. Or not! I often get the feeling of wanting to write - almost HAVING TO write - MORE even after I've successfully added a good chunk of useful words to my project. And isn't that great? It is! But at some point my energy levels will still drop and I won't be able to stand sitting and writing for a day or two - or a week. And isn't that all right?

But don't let me the one to convince you to drop your fear of letting go and taking a few... time to relax! Let's hear from our writing superheroes how they churn on through endless days or words vs no words.

Myth #1: Write Every Day

Question: What is your writing process like? How much time do you spend writing every day?

SUE:

I work full-time as a writer and translator. I get up and go to work every morning in my home office, and on a perfect day, I work on one project in the morning and different one in the afternoon. If I had a “day job,” it would be more complicated.

It took me about two years to write Semiosis, and another two years to write Interference. I was working on other projects at the time or at part-time jobs, so I could only devote limited hours of work on the novel on most days. Of course, I had no deadline, so I could take my time.

CAITLIN:

I wrote the first few chapters and outlined much of the rest of the book in fall of 2014. I then didn't touch it, for various reasons, until November of 2015, when I decided to use NaNoWriMo as a prod to actually finish it. I wrote every day from then through the middle of December, when I finished the first draft.

I write best in committed bursts, probably because of NaNoWriMo. I'll average about 2000 words a day while drafting, and work 6-7 days a week, but then not touch that project again for a month or more (when possible).


TIM: (Hold on to your seatbelts this one's getting lengthy! But so interesting! I couldn't cut too much of it out!)

Tim had a special question from a while ago added. (A while in this case is about two years when I first started to bug him with them!)

1. Do you write every day? (Or do you take the weekends/holidays off?)

Oh, not remotely. According to my work diary I only wrote or revised fiction on 50 days in 2017. (It was my lightest year in a decade. I wrote on 94 days in 2016, which is more typical.) I have a full-time day job, a ten-year-old kid, and a busy social life. Writing one day in three or four is about the most I'd ever do.

In 2015 I wrote the first 12,000 words of the Wrong Stars (four days of writing, scattered over three weeks in late spring/early summer). That was to create a submission package. I wrote and revised the other 80,000ish words in 2017, over about six weeks. (21 working days total, according to my writing diary.)

I began writing The Dreaming Stars in December 2017 and did a bit more on a dozen days in the next month, with the last 50,000 words written over five days at a writing retreat in February 2018.

I started The Forbidden Stars on New Year's Day 2019 and finished revisions on March 17, across 15 working days total. (I did another little retreat in there where I produced another 50K in six days.) For all three, of course, there was more revision in response to editorial feedback, and copy-edits, and proofreading, and etc, but the above covers my pre-submission process.

ANNA:

I work part-time and write the rest of the time, not just on my novels but on short story and novella commissions for Black Library and other various presses and anthologies; and I have a semi-regular newsletter and a monthly Patreon, all of which take away some focus from my main writing. That said, I manage around four hours' writing a day, usually seven days a week. When I'm on deadline I increase this as much as possible/necessary, but the rest of the time it ebbs and flows. I'm trying to be less strict with myself - instead of having to write 3,000 good words a day, I'm trying to focus on writing 40,000 good words a month. So if that's 500 words on Monday but 4,000 on Tuesday, that's fine. Having a daily word count target worked for me for a while, but then it ended up causing me more stress. Shifting to a monthly word goal has actually improved my productivity.

EOWYN:


It's always changing based on circumstances. When I was working on The Snow Child, it was a crazy time for me and my family. I was pregnant with our second daughter and working part-time as a bookseller, my husband was working full-time as a fishery biologist, and we were building our fixer-upper cabin that had no running water or electrical wiring as we lived in it. And then, as I continued writing the novel, we had a newborn. I couldn't have done it without my husband. Each night, after he'd worked a long day and we had finished dinner, he would get the girls ready for bed while I stole an hour or two of writing. That's how I wrote it, an hour here, and hour there, always in the evening.

Once The Snow Child was published and both our children were in school, I found myself in this wonderful but strange situation of being a full-time, stay-at-home writer. So now, instead of sneaking in an hour or two at the computer, the whole day stretches out in front of me. I tell myself I have to write 500 words a day, and I set a timer to write for 20 or 25 minutes, then a five minute break to throw some laundry in the washer or feed the chickens, then it's back to the computer. Sometimes I give myself a treat of writing at our local coffee shop or at the library, just to have a change of scenery.

ADRIAN:
 

I’m far to the planning end of [the writing] spectrum. I’ll generally start a project by building a world I’m interested in exploring – setting out its axioms and parameters, its species and factions, and gradating into finer and finer detail. There’s a definite difference between doing this for fantasy and for SF, in where the focus is and how I approach the ‘rules’ of a world. If I’m working with hard SF, such as with Children of Time, I’ll need to research and talk with people who know more than I do about various aspects of the science and the setting. After that I will generally set out an overview of the plot, detail the major characters, and then produce a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. 

I spend a few hours each day, mornings and evenings, and that generally suffices. My personal process for planning and writing means the first and submission drafts are generally fairly close in content, which is a godsend for getting stuff done.

YOON:

I need time to compost ideas and get a sense of the big picture. In particular, I need to know the beginning, midpoint, and ending before I can really get into outlining. I use outlines partly because I like planning, partly because I have a terrible memory--if I don't write down the master plan somewhere, I'm liable to forget what I was trying to do halfway through.  Of course, I do frequently diverge from the outline and end up changing the plan, but that's part of the process too.

These days I write at a pretty steady pace of 1,000 words/hour, and a sustainable pace for me is 2,000 words/day, so that's two hours of writing a day.  The rest of the day is spent dealing with other writing business matters (answering emails, promo, revisions to earlier pieces) or on hobbies like gaming or art.

MARTHA: (short and to the point!)

  
I don’t really have any rules. I usually write in the morning, and try to do at least 1000 words a day, but I also know pushing myself if the story isn’t working doesn’t help. If I push myself, I usually end up having to take it out and re-write it.


 

MR. SPACE MARINE RICH:

I’ve been writing for about 10 years and I’ve only just developed a process I’m happy with. I take an extremely modular approach to writing a novel - it’s a monumental task, and I can only achieve it by breaking it down into bite-sized pieces.


First I will formulate a plot from different ideas, be they influenced by character arcs or specific scenes in my head. With the Steelhaven trilogy, this involved working on an excel spreadsheet and mapping each major character’s arc, then crafting an interweaving story. I’ll take these ideas and organise them into a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. Each chapter will only consist of a few very basic bullet points.


I go on to use Dragon Naturally Speaking to dictate the basic plot of each chapter, as though I’m telling myself the story. It results in a very short and rough draft, but I find it helps when I come to writing the actual prose. Next step is to turn this synopsis into the first draft of a chapter.


[How much time I spend writing every day] can vary wildly. I’ve been writing professionally for about 10 years now and my process has never been the same for more than one book. I tend to go by word-count-per-day or a chapter per day. Currently I’m on about 2,000 words a day, which might take anywhere between 3 and 6 hours, depending on my level of focus.
 

JOHN: 

I try for a page a day, which works out to somewhere between three and four hundred words. I try to get to that page when my inner critic (i.e. the voice that says, "This is awful.") is asleep--either early in the morning or later at night. I have to write fiction by hand, and I prefer to use a legal pad. At the end of a project, though, I may be good for a couple of pages at a time.

KAT: (This one's a bit different. Kat's an editor primarily and a writer second. Still her 'writing' process and progress can be gleaned from her brilliant answers!)

Volume One [of Whispers from the Abyss] took about a year to go from concept to completion. We set out an open call for submissions as well as invited a few specific authors that [we] wanted to include. As far as the open call went, I waited till the submission doors closed before reading the submissions. I learned not to do that for the second volume.


[The Slush reading process] is very different than editing a manuscript for a client. I look for different things when vetting submissions for an anthology. Mainly because the submissions for the anthology should have already (presumably) gone through the editing process and the [writer] is now submitting to me their best work. In going through these works I’m looking for how well the story is constructed and how well the author can grab their audience in the first paragraph. It must fit what I’m looking for the first time or not at all. I usually give authors the benefit of the doubt and read the first three paragraphs, but if it doesn’t hook me in that time, I give the piece a pass and move on to the next one.



THORAIYA:

I used to be a pantser, but there’s nothing like a big fat fantasy trilogy to turn you into a plotter. I write best in the morning, in silence, on a computer with no internet connection.

[While writing the Titan's Forest Trilogy] I was writing 5 days a week, aiming for a thousand words per day.





As far as this interview went we received 12 very different answers. Some of your writing superheroes will work meticulously seven days a week (a lot of the outliners seem to be the ones who stick to word counts a day!). Others are content to write 94 days a year (looking at you Tim!). And yet others fall somewhere in between.

All of the writers above have their own process and style. All of them have found a method that works for them. Some take more gestation time than others. As scary as it sounds, it's all about finding your own path.

I believe Martha's response in particular can be very helpful with this - whichever way you want to approach it: Martha has a wordcount she would like to achieve daily but won't push hard if there's no give from the story (her muse, some might say!). As with any puzzle: if you don't know where the square block fits then forcing it into a round hole will only destroy the framework around it.

So the best I can make of this as a summary: Find your own way. Don't panic if the words don't come one day. I assure you they will the next. Don't agonize over 'I should be writing' if you really don't feel like it or are busy otherwise for day - or even half a year (like Tim). The most important thing is to get back to it when you are ready. And this readiness can't be forced.

You'll find out yourself if you keep at it: Sometime you need a time-off. Sometimes you need to find new ideas. If you're patient they will eventually come out to play.

And play is our next week's topic! We're going to go deeper into our superheroes' writing process. When did they start their magnum opus? When did they finish it? How much play did they need in order to get it done? How fast did they get it done? We're debunking the myth that you have to fast or your food gets cold! Are you a rabbit or a tortoise? [Hint: All good things take time!] Stay tuned for next week's post!

#PenPower Project: 1.2 The Villain

Hi folks

In my last #PenPower post we got to meet the heroes who will be going up against the darkest force in the universe (writerly blockages). This time we'll explore in some detail what it is writers are afraid of.

A quick practical intermission: This post was supposed to go live Saturday 29.02. instead of March 1. Apologies. If you're reading on Bleeding Fool it's probably already Monday or Tuesday. There appears to be a slight lag due to time zones that I'm intending to get under better control for the remainder of the series.

The intent with PenPower Project is to post once a week (more on this below) on Friday (Saturday/Sunday if you're reading on Bleeding Fool). This post is also a bit of a unicorn.

Here is a list of the posts (and topics) updated regularly:

1: #PenPower Myth Debunk #1: Write Every Day
2: #PenPower Myth Debunk #2: I have to write FAST!
3: #PenPower #3: Rules and Fear (How to beat your writerly worries)
4: #PenPower Myth Debunk #4: I MUST outline

So without further ado, let's delve into the what, how, and why of writing fears!

PenPower 1.2 The Villain

Don't think she's a villain because she has books? Look more closely! The books are all empty!

There are plenty of things to worry about when starting a new story/project. There are even more when you're already halfway into the fledgling novel/short story/novella and the plot/characters/circumstances aren't coming together. And then yet more when you've finished the first draft and realize it's a pile of nonsense you somehow have to make work in a painful weeks-long edit.

To find out the most juicy writerly fears I've both run a survey (still available here: What are your writing fears? Leave a comment!) and scoured the le ole internet for those writerly posts and comments that sound the most like panic.

PenPower's writing heroes are no immune to this either! Here are some examples courtesy of our sometimes-despairing heroes:

(There are more colourful ones by Anna but I'm trying to keep this post PG. Check out her twitter @AnnaSmithWrites if you're interested!)

All in all the reasons for writerly despair are many:

THE BLANK PAGE.

THE (confusingly/messily/makes-no-sense) FILLED PAGE.

What if it's not good enough?

What if I'm never able to finish it? I've been working on this for ten years and it's not complete!

What if it's not original enough?

Is my process wrong? Should I be doing X? Should I stop using adverbs entirely? Do I need the Oxford comma? (Hint: You do, whatever everyone else says, the Oxford comma makes things prettier whenever you use it!)

I don't know where I'm going! How can I write it?!

I'm a perfectionist. Will I ever be able to write this well enough?

I'm blocked. The middle sucks. What should I do? I can't take time off work to iron out these kinks!


Have worries like these been circling around in your head (perhaps for years)? Have you been stressing out about your writing works in process? If you're worried about any aspect of your writing then this post is for you.

1.2.1 The form of #PenPower Project series: We have collected twelve authors who will be helping us debunk the above and more myths and terrors that like to sit on writers' shoulders and whisper unpleasant nothings into their ears. The form this debunking will take are author interviews. I've found 8 juicy questions relating to fears to put to our 12 author/editor superheroes. We'll be debunking one of these prevalent writing myths per week = 8 weeks of fortifying posts! It'll be part making you feel more comfortable with your writing style/writing pace/ideas and part superhero training camp. Soon enough your own novel will hit the shelves! (Disclaimer: Don't hold me to this. You have to put in some blood sweat and tears yourself to make this work!). We'll be busy well into April!

Next week (Saturday the 7th) we'll be starting off with one of the most horrifyingly rigid myths: Write. Every. Day.

Has anyone else ever felt this rule is much too rigid? That your brain NEEDS time off from being creative and just consume... say Amazon Prime's new short film series inspired by Simon Stålenhag's art book? Or maybe it's a rewatch of Community you need. Some writers call this filling the well. I call it being a well-rounded character. All other professions get time off. Why shouldn't writers? And then there's the fact that some of our superheroes only write once a week/month or perhaps two months out of twelve!

Stay tuned to find out more next Saturday!

#PenPower Project 1.1: Introduction to the Heroes!

Hi writers and readers!

In my most recent post before this I discussed what PenPower Project is about. In short it's a series of essays and questions answered by my (and soon your) favourite authors designed to debunk the myths of writer's block and all kinds of other writerly fears.

Today it's time to introduce our heroes and villain!

Those who have been following the #penpower tag closely on Twitter will know this post has been meticulously prepared for the last two months. I've sent out links to a survey to ask you all what your worst writing fears are and I've commissioned an artist, the great Oscar Celestini, to work me with on illustrations of our writing superheroes.

Oscar has now finished illustrating and the survey has run its course. Thank you to all who participated in it! (PS: If you'd still like tell us about your writing fears please feel free to leave a comment on blogspot!)

So without further ado here are the twelve authors who have generously decided to sacrifice their time for the greater good to help other writers fight the fear of the blank page:

1. SUE BURKE (who gives plants people personalities and seems to love bamboo almost more than is reasonable!)

SUE is a very mobile superhero. She's lived in Milwaukee, Austin, Madrid, and now defends Chicago of writerly deprivation. Sue's published short stories, poems, and articles in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and her novel Semiosis was published by Tor in February 2018. Its sequel, Interference, in 2019. (That's the books about people-plants and bamboo!)

Her superpower? She's flying through the pages of her books!






 

2. CAITLIN STARLING (who has written the coolest lesbian romance creepy sci-fi ghost-cave adventure of 2019.)

CAITLIN lives near Portland and wrangles spreadsheets as well as being a writer. She has an unhealthy interest the dark and macabre and she writes horror-tinged speculative fiction of all flavours. Her first novel, The Luminous Dead, has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her writerly superpower is currently exercised in two more forthcoming gothic horror novels: Yellow Jessamine and the Death of Jane Lawrence.






 
3. TIM PRATT (who is definitely not dissolving but teleporting! And writes about many stars - wrong and forbidden and dreaming. Plus lesbians.)

TIM lives in California with his wife and son. As an extremely prolific writer he has so many achievements there is no space to put them all in this blog post. Suffice to say he's written novels, novellas, taken part in collections and anthologies with his short stories and poetry, and is a senior editor for Locus magazine on the side. If you're interested in the whole story check out his website: Tim Pratt's full biography

4. YOON HA LEE (who invented a whole grand new universe for his Korean inspired space opera!)

YOON is a Korean-American sf/f writer who received a B.A. in maths from Cornell University and an M.A. in math education from Stanford University. Yoon finds it a source of continual delight that math can be mined for story ideas. Yoon's fiction has appeared in publications such as F&SF, Tor.com, and Clarkesworld Magazine, as well as several year's best anthologies.

His superpower? To blow up spaceships (which he does a lot in his Machineries of Empire books!)

 5. THORAIYA DYER (who writes exciting stories about a place called Canopy and another called Understorey. There's people who reincarnate - possibly into gods - and live in/on/around trees. Honestly it's much better than that though.)

THORAIYA is a writer from Australia. As an Australian superhero it's almost natural she loves animals of all sorts (even the creepy crawly ones). Thoraiya is also an archer and her tools to defeat writer's block are many: As with Tim Pratt her accomplishments are too many to fit into one puny post: short stories in various magazines and anthologies. Novels: Crossroads of Canopy, Echoes of Understorey, The Tides of Titans. Check out her website instead: Thoraiya Dyer writing.





6. ANNA STEPHENS (vast imagination, multiple characters, gritty grimdark epic fantasy!)

ANNA lives in the UK and has written a trilogy of grimdark fantasy called GODBLIND. Anna started her writerly superhero journey early in life: As a child she raided the library. As an adult she collects Doctor Who memorabilia and Wonder Woman and Star Wars figures. She's also a sword-fighter, a Karate black belt, and DnD enthusiast.

All of that combined made Godblind quite an imaginative and terrific adventure to read!

Her superpower? Flying, obviously, and see the tail? She can grab things with it (such as her pen and paper if she wants to!)

7. EOWYN IVEY (here's one from a cold place writing fiction that should be cold but will instead melt your cold heart of writerly despair)

EOWYN has been raised in Alaska and now lives there with her husband and two children. Her debut novel, The Snow Child, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013. One of the first things you might have noticed about Eowyn is her name: Eowyn Ivey was named by her mother after the well-known character Eowyn in Lord of the Ring. And isn't that already a set-up to becoming a great writer?







 8. ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY (spiders in space! Highly creative novels and novellas abound. Adrian is a mastermind who cannot be called evil due to the amount of work he creates!)

ADRIAN is the author of the acclaimed Shadows of the Apt fantasy series. He has been nominated for the David Gemmell Legend Award and British Fantasy Society Award. In civilian life, he used to be a lawyer, and is still a gamer and entomologist.

His superpower? Shapeshifting into animals! (I'm not sure what this has to do with writing, but take it from me, you won't get bored if you add Adrian's books to your reading list!)

9. KAT ROCHA (now here's a writer/editor/content creator with tons of variety in her superhero kit!)

KAT began her publishing career as a collaborating artist on such projects as Utopiates and Titanium Rain. She went on to produce numerous concept designs for Spartan Games and has had her work features in Interzone Magazine. She began her own comic series entitled LD30: The Adventures of a Swinging Robot in 2010 and in 2011 she founded 01Publishing. Kat is active as well on Youtube (where she talks about writerly concepts and popular art and comics and all sorts strange of things - sometimes with her husband!) and has edited two cosmic horror short story collections entitled Whispers from the Abyss.

Her superpower? Well if the short bio above doesn't give you a hint, I don't know what to tell you!


10. MARTHA WELLS (inventor of friendly robots and heck has her first Murderbot novella won many awards! I'm serious. Keep reading about her. This is a great chance to learn the writing process!)

MARTHA Wells has written an impressive amount of novels, novellas, and short stories, the first of which (a novel by the name of The Element of Fire) was  published by Tor in 1993. One of her most recent works, the novella All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries published by Tor.com was a 2017 Philip K. Dick award finalist and won: an ALSA/YALSA Alex Award, a Hugo Aware for Best Novella, a Nebula Award for Best Novella, and a Locus Award.

If we cannot learn from her, then from who? In addition to offering her answers to my interview questions for this project Martha has her own writing guide as well!

 

11. JOHN LANGAN (the villainous page's laughter quickly fades when faced with John Langan - and his wife's - determination to finish The Fisherman. I can't talk about the reader's laughter. I found the creeping horror of John's novel delightful.)

JOHN is an American author and writer of contemporary horror. He has been a finalist for and nominee for several Horror awards and finally won the Bram Stoker Award for his novel The Fisherman in 2016.

John's superpower? He says it'd be something like Dr. Strange's. I'd argue it's more in the direction of atmospheric writing and delightfully creepy stories of (sometimes) cosmic horror.

12. RICHARD S. FORD (heroic fantasy and balls to the wall action - yes I stole this line from his website -)

RICHARD lives in [unknown] but has written several short stories and novels (all available on his website!). They are mostly fantasy and then, heroic, because what else could this particular superhero write? Richard enjoys Warhammer 40k and is rendered as a superhero with a space marine's armor. His superpower? Tenacity. Hunk. Down. And. Write.

It seems to have worked for him. Is there some more advice we can mine from his answers? You just bet there is!







And last but not least we must consider the villain.

What are our writers up against? Considering the length of this post this will be the subject of an entirely new one - to be released Saturday (because what is worse than your writing fears threatening your perfect weekend?)

WriteBot.

2020: projects, deadlines, reading list

It's taken me a month to write this blog post (I'm terrible!). There are several reasons for that. At first I was busy with the day job (within one month I had to travel three times!) and then got caught up with coursework for my MLitt. And recently I've started tinkering with an old project again and got somewhere until I got stuck.

Fun times.

Let's talk about my MLitt course project instead. It's supposed to be about editing and publication so I decided to make it fun.

I've asked several of my favourite authors and editors to work with me on this and they've (almost) all agreed to interviews. (Yay!)

There will be another post shortly to introduce THE HOST. (The host as in the host of characters I've interviewed for the project). After all you already know the Hive Princess.

The project theme is writing fears and I was able to ask some juicy questions about it. The project itself will take the shape of blog posts: essays combined with answers from the interviews.

What are my favourite authors afraid of? What gives them gray hairs the most? Those questions and more will be tackled in the upcoming project. The hype logline: A series of blog posts that de-mystifies writing and gets rid of the blank-page fear! So stay tuned!


There's a few other things (but by no means all) I'll be working on this year:

1. getting a short story published. I think it's high time for this. As vain as it sounds my writing has gotten quite good over the years and if I don't start to attempt getting published I never will. There's no time like today!

2. being more deliberate in my use of 'spare time'. I've managed to read 50 books despite getting a new day job and played plenty of League of Legends (I got to Gold II so beat it!). So there's no excuse of 'having no time to write' for example. As I see it, reading is fun, but ultimately, it's writing and publication that I want. That means reading will have to take a backseat and become less of a coping mechanism for my fear of the blank page (plus, we're debunking those fears in my upcoming project anyway, so I'm hoping to get some amazing results this year!).

3. The website. Capital The. The website needs an overhaul. I still like the way it looks but I'm unhappy with its contents. For one, Amazon removed one of my books from KDP for some reason (? dude, I've read worse on there!) so this will go up on the website instead. For another, for the website of a writer, there's suspiciously few stories, and that'll have to change. Henceforth (Ok, as soon as I can get to it) there shall be stories on the website itself.

    
4. And last here is my reading list: https://locusmag.com/2020/02/2019-locus-recommended-reading-list/
That's right. I'll be reading all the novels on this list.

Hive Princess/WriteBot/Your Overlord out.