JULY COMMENT THREAD (NO SPOILERS, PLEASE!)

[merlinscribe]

Greetings, my fellow sojourners, and my apologies for the gap between posts, but there is little new to tell. I continue working on Book Three, which has (amazingly!) required some real-world research trips. At this point I hold myself ready and willing to move a pre-modern army over any possible terrain.

I will be spending some time over the next few days clearing up the backlog of comments. The short version is: there is no publication date for Book Three set, nor has it been delivered.

Questions, comments, explanations, and excoriations below, if you please.

Many Thanks,

--James

Comments

Re: Yay!!

[merlinscribe]

Thank you for your kind words. I'm glad the Elven culture seems so plausible to you; that makes me very happy. I think the almost fanatic levels of politeness make sense when you're writing about a culture that has such a long history of hyperviolence; everyone wants to put as big a wall around the anger and violence as possible, and that means a lot of the conversation is going to involve rote forms. (I do hope you eventually came up with an appropriate set phrase.)

Now, on to writing. The best way I have found to finish a book (and I was entirely unsurprised to discover that this is also Mercedes Lackey's advice to writers) is the so-called "butt in chair" method. Essentially, you set aside a block of time every single day (the same time of day if at all possible) of one hour or two (two is better, but not always possible), and during that time, you sit in front of your computer and WRITE. You don't wait for inspiration, you don't revise, or read email, or do anything else. You write. Eventually your brain will give up on trying to convince you that anything else in the entire world--including cleaning your entire kitchen with a toothbrush--is more fun/necessary/urgent than writing. Eventually.

What you write doesn't have to be a novel. It can be a short story or an essay or really anything so long as you are WRITING.

Rule #2 is: finish what you start. It doesn't matter if you discover you have a great new idea on another book just begging to be written (make notes). It doesn't matter if you think the book you are currently working on is awful (writers are no real judge of how good their writing is). Finish the book, because you will learn a great deal from the process.

Meanwhile, learn as much as you can about your new profession. If you hope to go the traditional publishing route, you will eventually need a literary agent. There are good ones and bad ones, ones that just aren't for you, and total scam artists. Find out which is which, and how to query them so that everybody's time isn't being wasted.

If you're thinking of self-publication, you also need to do your homework. You'll be your own publicity and marketing director in addition to being the writer. Look for blogs discussing self-publishing: there are many out there.

Most of all, remember James Macdonald's cogent phrase: "Money flows toward the writer." Take a good hard look at any publicist, agent, agency, packager, ANYONE, who is asking you for hard cash up front. This is a risky business to be in sometimes, and it's a breeding ground for scammers.

With all that being said, the best of luck to you. I very much look forward to seeing your book in print. Or "print".

Re: Yay!!

[chichiri]

I've studied Japanese for over 3 years and tried to maintain it to some extent for about 20 years and it never occurred to me that their crazy politeness rules related to their extreme warrior culture, but I think you're right. Thanks for the insight! (And after a lot of googling I eventually settled on modifying the set phrase "this time of year is hot and humid in Japan" to "this time of year is hot and humid in Japan but it's not like that here." Lol)

Also thank you for all of the advice on writing and publishing a novel. I'll be saving the dreamwidth notification email so I can easily go back and reread it as needed. I likely will try to go the traditional publication approach, but for the moment I'm more concerned in actually having a novel to market. The "butt-in-chair" method makes sense but sadly it will be at least a year before I can actually do that - I have 3 year old twins at home with me, so setting aside an hour at the same time daily to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of everything else just isn't possible, lol. I'm hoping once they are in school I can start spending more time writing. In the meantime I'm trying to work on character development, world building, and learning what considerations need to be made toward publication as I write.