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This post, by Kathleen Damp Wright, originally appeared as a guest post on the Routines For Writers site on 8/5/09.

That sentence has come out of my mouth too many times over the summer. Probably beginning before summer, if I’m honest. It’s time to deal with it. Guest blogging for Kitty provides an opportunity to explore what I’m actually saying, why I say it, and so what anyway?

The premise: writing is hard  

• I don’t finish ______ (insert “scene,” “book,” “rewrite,”) because it’s hard.
• Getting the scene to run free but not too free is hard.
• Taking the critique is hard.
• Dealing with the “no thanks” from an editor is hard.
• Getting some buzz about my ms without a contract is hard.
• Making myself sit down consistently when I’d rather ride my bike, learn to make vinegar, or play with my friends, is hard.  

          Hmmm…okay.

          What if it IS hard?

          Huh?

          And what if it simultaneously means being hard isn’t bad, evil, miserable, or impossible?

“Precise language,” if you please

          With a nod to The Sound of Music, I started “at the very beginning; a very good place to start.” I reviewed the definition of “hard,” all the while thinking of The Giver by Lois Lowry and the community rule to use “precise language.”

HARD: as listed on Dictionary.com :

• difficult to do or accomplish; fatiguing; troublesome: a hard task.
• difficult or troublesome with respect to an action, situation, person, etc.: hard to please; a hard time.
• difficult to deal with, manage, control, overcome, or understand: a hard problem.
• involving a great deal of effort, energy, or persistence: hard labor; hard study.  

          That definition sounds like writing, doesn’t it? Synopses may be difficult to deal with, characters are hard to manage. It’s fatiguing to spend hours at the computer. It takes a great deal of effort, energy, or persistence to stay in my chair (whether inside, outside, by a lake, etc.) or to decide which of the myriad of techniques to use to solve the problem with my work in progress (wip.)

          What if, however, I have replaced what the word means (denotation: simply what the word means) with my feelings associated with my experience of the word (connotation)? Relax, no English lesson follows. Keep reading.

“Pain is inevitable, misery is optional.”

          No matter how hard (there’s that word again) I try, I can’t make the denotation of “hard” say “impossible,” “evil,” “miserable.” It isn’t there. So, as I continue to ruminate, “hard” does not have to be “bad.” Or miserable. That part is the connotation I’ve been applying to it. Hard/difficult/troublesome is what it is. Reaction—emotional loads to the word—is my choice. My habit.

          In his book, The Feeling Good Handbook David Burns presents thought-provoking information and illustrations about why we keep doing what we’re doing. He states we keep habits because they work for us on some level, whether healthy or toxic. I think his ideas can be applied to calling writing “hard.” See if what’s written below resonates with you.

Read the rest of the post on Routines For Writers.

 A young man you are, still growing and learning as you mature into maturity.  Oh how  proud i am of you, I just wished i could share in your lows, highs, glories and in your triumphs-for you have become a wonderful young man, accomplishing so much in your short life span.For i am very proud of you.

love uncle james

This article, from Cherie Priest, originally appeared on her The Clockwork Century site on 8/8/09.

I would like to take a moment to define “steampunk.” This will be an exercise in futility (not to mention sadomasochism) because there is no formal, all-encompassing, final word on the subject, and people are bound to disagree. But for the purposes of what is to follow, I must begin with a definition of this term which I’m going to be flinging around willy-nilly. So here goes.

Steampunk: An aesthetic movement based around the science fiction of a future that never happened. Recall, if you will, visions of the future that were written a hundred years ago or more. Think Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and the like — telling stories featuring technology that didn’t exist at the time, but might someday. Remember that they were writing with no idea of the microchip, or the internet, or (in some cases) the internal combustion engine. Therefore, in their versions of the future, the technology upon which society would eventually come to depend is driven largely by steam power or clockwork. Sometimes electricity is likewise invoked, but it’s often treated as quasi-magical due to the contemporary lack of understanding about how it behaved and what it could do.

WooEEE. That’s a mouthful, I know. Let me broaden that just a smidge and add this as a postscript: Steampunk could be considered a retro-futuristic neo-Victorian sensibility that is being embraced by fiction, music, games, and fashion. It is ornate and vibrant, and intricate. It believes that functional items can and should be beautiful.

It is lots of fun. If it isn’t lots of fun, you’re doing it wrong.

Let the emails beginning, “Actually …” and “Technically …” and “But you’re forgetting …” begin! But please bear in mind, this is but one woman’s experience and opinion.

And click the jump below in order to keep reading.
(Or just scroll down if you’ve been linked directly, or are reading from a feed.) 

Why I got interested in steampunk:

I first became interested in steampunk about four or five years ago, when I stumbled across a message board dedicated to the subject. This brief introduction sent me on a little research expedition to learn more, and the more I learned, the better I liked it — and the more I understood that this nebulous term was actually encompassing a whole slew of things I already appreciated.

My only tiny gripe was that most of the steampunk art and fiction I was seeing appeared to be centered around Victorian London.

Don’t get me wrong — Victorian London is a pretty awesome setting, and far be it from me to declare it unfit in any capacity; but this American cosplay enthusiast with a history minor [:: points thumbs at self ::] could scarcely resist composing a checklist.

Did we have oodles of fancy steam-and-coal-powered tech? Check. One massive rail system that eventually crisscrossed over three thousand miles of rivers, plains, mountain ranges, and swamps. I believe that counts.

And what of similarly hardcore weaponry, and early mechanisms of flight? Check. How about everything that ever fired, rolled, or flew during the Civil War — including the “aeronauts” and all their war balloons, spy crafts, and surveillance equipment? If that doesn’t count, then gosh darn it, I don’t know what does.

What of class clashes, colonialism, exploration, and scientific expansion? Oh honey, Check. Westward expansion with all its inherent ethical and pragmatic difficulties; an enormous slave class which was liberated and then obligated to integrate into free society, often with zero social or legal protection; a region’s failed secession and “reconstruction” into a crippled territory with a ravaged economy that hasn’t fully recovered even 150 years later; agricultural barons vs. industrial barons; urban poverty vs. rural poverty vs. urban wealth vs. rural feudal wealth; frontier millionaires; gold rushes; smallpox blankets; Spindletop and the rise of fossil fuels; Thomas Edison; Henry Ford … Jesus, need I go on?

So I still had a book under contract.
And I knew where I wanted it to take place — and what I wanted it to look like. 

Why I think steampunk will stick around:

And now as people talk about steampunk breaking through to the mainstream, and what it must become or acquire if it’s going to have any staying power … I think that at least some of the answers are obvious, and I intend to talk about two of my favorites: (1). Steampunk comes from a philosophy of salvage and customization, and (2). Steampunk’s inherent nature is participatory and inclusive, yet subversive.

Read the rest of the article on The Clockwork Century.

This post, from Paul Anderson, originally appeared on the Write Anything blog on 7/19/09.

Than you to everyone for your suggestions at the end of last week’s petulant whine appeal for ideas. I’ve got an idea for a few different articles based on suggestions, but I thought the first one to address should be something that Rob asked, as it seems to be one of the first things to address – why do we write?

Well, I can’t really speak for anyone else, I can only say why I write, and give thoughts on what I perceive to be the general urge to write.

All life is story and myth. We tell stories about ourselves every day, in gossip, in conversation, in blogs and emails and telephone calls. “You’ll never guess who I met”, “did you hear about Sandy”, “I’m so excited I just have to tell you….”

Our popular entertainment consists almost exclusively of stories. Drama, comedy, horror, fantasy, science fiction, romance on television, DVD, the movies, radio, online (even books!).

Even current affairs and news is a form of storytelling, depending on the point of view you want to put across from supposedly objective events (or in some cases events cut from whole cloth). The news is myth in the making, before passing into the realms of history, myths that are generally accepted.

Religion too comes down to storytelling, an esoteric myth to history’s exoteric myths.

Stories impart essential information, warnings about dangers, and explanations for how things are. Humans are curious, curious about everything, and stories are how we explain things. From reminiscing about our greatest hunts and warnings of the dangers lurking in the dark, to how we came to set foot on the moon, our existence is told and retold through stories.

Read the rest of the post on the Write Anything blog.

This article, from Gretchen Rubin, originally appeared on her The Happiness Project site on 5/27/09.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day. This Wednesday: 13 tips for actually getting some writing accomplished.

One of the challenges of writing is…writing. Here are some tips that I’ve found most useful for myself, for actually getting words onto the page:

1. Write something every work-day, and preferably, every day; don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Staying inside a project keeps you engaged, keeps your mind working, and keeps ideas flowing. Also, perhaps surprisingly, it’s often easier to do something almost every day than to do it three times a week. (This may be related to the abstainer/moderator split.)

2. Remember that if you have even just fifteen minutes, you can get something done. Don’t mislead yourself, as I did for several years, with thoughts like, “If I don’t have three or four hours clear, there’s no point in starting.”

3. Don’t binge on writing. Staying up all night, not leaving your house for days, abandoning all other priorities in your life — these habits lead to burn-out.

4. If you have trouble re-entering a project, stop working in mid-thought — even mid-sentence — so it’s easy to dive back in later.

5. Don’t get distracted by how much you are or aren’t getting done. I put myself in jail.

6. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that creativity descends on you at random. Creative thinking comes most easily when you’re writing regularly and frequently, when you’re constantly thinking about your project.

Read the rest of the article, including tips #6-13, on The Happiness Project site.

This post, from British writer Stuart Evers, originally appeared on the Guardian.co.uk Books Blog on 2/11/09.

I have begun to wonder why I have quite so many books by American authors.

Spanning a period of some three decades, the autobiographical pieces that make up Poe Ballantine‘s Things I Like About America are warm-hearted, witty and tender. Pinballing around the country, Ballantine describes a patchwork quilt of small town Americana, along the way meeting a rich cast of drunks, headcases and deadbeats. He is an engaging and endearing narrator, but it’s his vision of the US – of swap meets and boarding houses, fast food and battered cars – that is the real hero of his book.

I devoured Things I Like About America in one sitting, and, hungry for more, went to my bookshelves for Denis Johnson‘s Angels – a novel that captures that windswept, Hopper-esque America better than any other I know. Looking up and down the shelves, I realised that a good three-quarters of the books I owned were written by Americans. I’d always known that I preferred American writing: I didn’t, however, realise that this had meant the exclusion of writing from everywhere else in the world.

So why so many American books? It can’t just be that Americans are better at fiction than everyone else. After all, writing isn’t swimming or professional basketball, is it?

The reasons, I suppose, are ones of personal taste and individual prejudice. The fact is, I prefer American English: I like the way it sounds; its rhythms and its cadences. Give me a diner over a café, a sidewalk over a pavement, a bar over a pub and definitely a gas station over a petrol forecourt. Take that "gas station", for example. Because of its sibilance, it’s almost as though you can hear someone inflating their tyres. Not only that, but when I read those words, I have a very exact picture in my mind. Compare these two sentences:

Mary fills up at the gas station, then drives her Chevy Impala to Roy’s Diner.

Mary fills up at the petrol station, then drives her Nissan Micra to Roy’s Rolls.

The first could be the beginning of a heartbreaking tale of small-town American disappointment; the second a script instruction from Coronation Street. A petrol station is functional, a place to pick up charcoal briquettes and wilting cellophane-wrapped flowers; a gas station is a place to pick up a packet of smokes and a hitchhiker with a gun in his waistband.

Read the rest of the post on the Guardian.co.uk Books Blog.

This post, from Jonathan Morrow, originally appeared on Copyblogger on 8/15/08.

Does this sound familiar?

You’ve picked a topic that your ideal readers are dying to know more about. You can write about the topic with authority. You’ve even chosen an interesting angle. In short, you’ve got a killer post that should bring your blog thousands of new readers.

You’re also smart enough to realize that you need to tell other people about it. So, you send an email to all of the top bloggers in your niche, pointing them to the post. Then you sit back and wait for the links to come rolling in.

But nothing happens.

You don’t get any links. You don’t even get a reply from any of the bloggers you emailed. You check your stats, and none of them even clicked the link that you sent them.

No, you got ignored. And worse, you now realize that no one is paying attention to you. You wonder, could you really be that much of a nobody, that no one would even read your email?

Yep. You could.

The Oldest Blogging Myth

“Content is king.”

It sounds good in principle. Produce a truly great piece of content, and you’ll get all the links you could ever hope for.

Maybe it worked too, several years ago. The Web used to be a fairly quiet place compared to what it is now, and it was easier for people to notice great blog posts.

But not anymore.

Now great is no longer good enough. The Web is full of so much remarkable content that bloggers don’t have enough time to read it all, much less link to it.

If you want links now, you need to be more than great. You need to be connected.

The Secret to Building a Popular Blog

Remember the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know?”

Well, it’s kind of true. A mediocre writer that’s friends with every member of the Technorati 100 will become a popular blogger faster than a brilliant writer with no friends at all.

Why? Because bloggers link more often to their friends than anyone else. If you write a reasonably good piece of content that interests their audience, they’ll link to you, mainly because they like you.

The secret to building a popular blog isn’t just writing tons of brilliant content. It’s also having tons of well-connected friends.

Read the rest of the post, including How To Make Friends With Popular Bloggers, on Copyblogger.

This post, from Maurice Broaddus, originally appeared on the Apex Blog (of Apex Books) in March 2009.

A few years ago, I was speaking to a fellow black horror writer and she told me that she didn’t write characters of color in her work. She didn’t think it was important, even as a black writer, for her to write black characters (and descriptions of characters with dark hair and brown eyes were enough). It was more important for her to write for her chosen audience, who she perceived as white, and she didn’t want to in anyway alienate them.

This is how badly issues of race have infected and confused some people.

Yes, there is a current brouhaha brewing in speculative fiction that has since been dubbed RaceFail ’09. It started when Elizabeth Bear wrote a piece on writing the other which was then openly disagreed with. Hilarity ensued (catalogued here). I, too, wrote a piece on writing the other (in a response to something Jay Lake had written; mind you, both pieces came out a few YEARS ago) and have stayed out of this round of self-examination except to offer up a play-along cultural appropriation bingo card to go along with the “fantasy/science fiction no racism edition” bingo card. And yet, as Chesya Burke laments, such a discussion has largely not reared its head in the horror community. I don’t expect it to, frankly. Not to be too pointed about a race discussion in horror, but the genre largely amounts to white folks writing about white folks for the consumption of white folks. In other words, horror circumvents the issue of “writing the other” by … not.

With a few exceptions, race isn’t discussed much in the horror genre. Most folks are afraid to discuss it or admit there is a problem. With good cause: the last horror brand RaceFail discussion involved the release of Brandon Massey’s anthology series, Dark Dreams. The bulk of the discussion revolved around the series being the equivalent of reverse discrimination (because, you know, there are no all-white, even more specifically, all-white-male, horror anthology series) or writer affirmative action (because obviously writers like Tananarive Due, L.A. Banks, Wrath James White, Eric Jerome Dickey, Zane, or, I humbly submit, myself, can’t be published elsewhere).

In some ways, I can see why RaceFail has gone on within the science fiction and fantasy genre/communities. By the nature of those genres, they explore (and are allowed to explore) big ideas. Horror too often prides itself on being the “lowest common denominator” genre, not built for rigorous idea exploration. “I’m doing an analysis of man’s inhumanity to man” usually amounts to puerile masturbatory fantasies of rape and torture justified by someone getting their comeuppance in the end.

Read the rest of the post on the Apex Blog. 

This post, from Brian Scott, originally appeared on the Book Publishing News blog of BookCatcher.com on 7/20/09.

New changes to an already popular website for readers and writers are proving to be a big hit. www.worthyofpublishing.com was created by Kiwi entrepreneur Aaron Cook, to give writers the chance to gain free feedback on their manuscripts from the general public.

Book lovers can preview and vote for what they would like to see published and available for sale on bookshelves, and leave comments to help authors improve their writing.

One of the most recent upgrades to the website was the message centre, which allows members to communicate with each other directly to share tips and ideas. This compliments the already popular comments section, where members post comments about a writers work for the public to view.

The website has also been made more transparent, so when a reader rates a book their rating is displayed beside the comment they have left for that book.

Cook says the new upgrades have proved to be very popular amongst members, and have definitely brought a more community feel to the website.

The overall concept originated from China around a decade ago. Since the establishment, it has helped numerous authors become recognized by the public and achieve dramatic success. It was mentioned at the most recent Frankfurt Bookfair that the world’s eyes are on the growth of China’s publishing industry, which has been driven by the internet.

Last year twenty percent of China’s bestsellers originated from the internet, many of them have been [from] previously unheard-of authors discovered on similar types of websites to worthyofpublishing.com in China.

Just one of the many examples of a Chinese author becoming a huge success through the internet is Tian Xia Ba Chang, who wrote a book called “Candles Blown by a Ghost" which is a thriller/adventure novel. Over time this book reached over 3.6 million hits online and once finally published sold 500,000 copies in one year.

Read the rest of the post on the Book Publishing News blog of BookCatcher.com. 

This article, from Joseph Finder, originally appeared in his Tips For Writers in May of 2009.

My name is Joe, and I’m a research-aholic.

This should surprise no one who reads my books. In fact, I’ve taken some teasing about the length of the “acknowledgments” sections of my books, because so many people have been so generous about sharing their expertise with me.

I have always considered “Write what you know” one of the most useless pieces of advice a beginning author gets. Write what I know? If I’d started out writing what I knew, I’d have come up with 10 or 12 pages about a kid in upstate New York who wanted to be a cartoonist (I did, actually; see my monthly newsletter for more about this). Granted, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, among others, did very well in turning their life experiences into literature — but I wanted to write thrillers, and my life was not thrilling.

No, for me, writing was all about having my characters do things I could only dream of, whether that was taking the Concorde to Paris, escaping assassins on the streets of Moscow, or wining and dining beautiful women in Boston’s finest restaurants (which I am now able to do, thanks to my wife and daughter, but you know what I mean).

And let’s face it: research is the fun part. Who wouldn’t want to ride along with cops, learn to shoot guns (lots of guns!), and talk to interesting people about the cool things they do? It’s much more fun than sitting alone in front of a blank computer screen, trying to figure out what happens next.

Research has also given me some of my best plot points and material. A weapons expert once showed me how to smuggle a gun through airport security and on to a plane. Believe me, I could not have thought that one up by myself.

But every hour you spend doing the fun stuff of research is time you’re not writing. And I’m here to tell you that research, while fun and often necessary, is addictive and dangerous.

It’s also a great crutch. All novelists feel like impostors at times; it’s only natural to feel unqualified and insecure in what you’re writing about. You don’t really know it — what do we know, we’re writers, right? Ñ so you want to find out as much as you can. But in the age of the Internet, you’re always one hyperlink away from the next website or article, and it can go on ad infinitum. The easiest thing in the world is to put off writing while you find out exactly how many gallons the New York City reservoirs hold, or how long it takes to fly from Washington to Timbuktu, or whether Brazilians drive on the right or the left-hand side of the road.

So stop. Put the story first. Write your story first, and fact-check later. It doesn’t have to be 100% accurate; it just has to be plausible.

John Grisham was 100 pages into his latest book, The Associate, which was set at the Princeton Law School — when he found out that Princeton doesn’t have a law school. It didn’t derail him; he just moved the story to Yale, which does have a law school. The key is that the setting wasn’t the important part, the story was — and he’d already written 100 pages, so he was able to go back and make the necessary changes.

Read the rest of the article on Joseph Finder’s site, and click here to subscribe to his newsletter or Tips For Writers. 

This post, from Justine Larbalestier, originally appeared on her blog on 7/23/09.

In the last few weeks as people have started reading the US ARC of Liar they have also started asking why there is such a mismatch between how Micah describes herself and the cover image. Micah is black with nappy hair which she wears natural and short. As you can see that description does not match the US cover [Publetariat editor’s note: cover image included after the jump].

Many people have been asking me how I feel about the US cover, why I allowed such a cover to appear on a book of mine, and why I haven’t been speaking out about it.

Authors do not get final say on covers. Often they get no say at all.

As it happens I was consulted by Bloomsbury and let them know that I wanted a cover like the Australian cover, which I think is very true to the book.¹ I was lucky that my Australian publisher, Allen & Unwin, agreed with my vision and that the wonderful Bruno Herfst came up with such a perfect cover image².

which is why I was a bit offended by the reviewer, who in an otherwise lovely review, described Micah as ugly. She’s not!³

The US Liar cover went through many different versions. An early one, which I loved, had the word Liar written in human hair. Sales & Marketing did not think it would sell. Bloomsbury has had a lot of success with photos of girls on their covers and that’s what they wanted. Although not all of the early girl face covers were white, none showed girls who looked remotely like Micah.

I strongly objected to all of them. I lost.

I haven’t been speaking out publicly because to be the first person to do so would have been unprofessional. I have privately been campaigning for a different cover for the paperback. The response to the cover by those who haven’t read Liar has been overwhelmingly positive and I would have looked churlish if I started bagging it at every opportunity. I hoped that once people read Liar they would be as upset as I am with the cover. It would not have helped get the paperback changed if I was seen to be orchestrating that response. But now that this controversy has arisen I am much more optimistic about getting the cover changed. I am also starting to rethink what I want that cover to look like. I did want Bloomsbury to use the Australian cover, but I’m increasingly thinking that it’s important to have someone who looks like Micah on the front.

I want to make it clear that while I disagree with Bloomsbury about this cover I am otherwise very happy to be with them. They’ve given me space to write the books I want to write. My first book for them was a comic fairy book that crossed over into middle grade (How To Ditch Your Fairy). I followed that up with Liar, a dark psychological thriller that crosses over into adult. There are publishers who would freak. No one at Bloomsbury batted an eye. I have artistic freedom there, which is extraordinarily important to me. They are solidly behind my work and have promoted it at every level in ways I have never been promoted before.

Covers change how people read books

Liar is a book about a compulsive (possibly pathological) liar who is determined to stop lying but finds it much harder than she supposed. I worked very hard to make sure that the fundamentals of who Micah is were believable: that she’s a girl, that she’s a teenager, that she’s black, that she’s USian. One of the most upsetting impacts of the cover is that it’s led readers to question everything about Micah: If she doesn’t look anything like the girl on the cover maybe nothing she says is true. At which point the entire book, and all my hard work, crumbles.

No one in Australia has written to ask me if Micah is really black.

No one in Australia has said that they will not be buying Liar because “my teens would find the cover insulting.”

Both responses are heart breaking.

This cover did not happen in isolation.

Every year at every publishing house, intentionally and unintentionally, there are white-washed covers. Since I’ve told publishing friends how upset I am with my Liar cover, I have been hearing anecdotes from every single house about how hard it is to push through covers with people of colour on them. Editors have told me that their sales departments say black covers don’t sell. Sales reps have told me that many of their accounts won’t take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can’t give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told me that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA—they’re exiled to the Urban Fiction section—and many bookshops simply don’t stock them at all. How welcome is a black teen going to feel in the YA section when all the covers are white? Why would she pick up Liar when it has a cover that so explicitly excludes her?

Read the rest of the post on Justine Larbalestier’s blog.

1. I didn’t see the Australian cover until after the US cover was finalised.
2. Yes, another protag of mine who looks like a WNBA player. What can I say? I’m a fan.
3. If you’re interested, I imagine another character in the book, Sarah, as looking like a younger Rutina Wesley, who’s not a WNBA player.