post-novel blech

I sent off a draft of In Ashes Lie to my editor yesterday, and within a few hours had succumbed to the bug I think I've been fighting off for a few days. I strongly suspect a connection.

So today is a day of being the laziest lump I can manage to be. (Which is harder than you might think, unless you have my sense of guilt masquerading as a work ethic.) Ergo, I will recruit help from you, the internets, and hop on a meme while I'm at it:

Ask me a question!

Writing-related or not, though I won't, of course, give spoilers for unpublished work. Comments are screened; I'll answer the questions in later posts. Ask away, and we'll see if I can marshal enough brain cells to give coherent replies.

In the meantime, I'm going to go contemplate eating a waffle, and find a book to collapse with.

Round one

I figure I'll answer questions in batches of three or so, to keep the posts from being stupidly long.

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Question the first: How easy/difficult was it to score arrange "special" tours when you were on your research trip in England? Did you have to get a letter from your publisher, or was, "I'm writing a novel!" sufficient?

Answer the first: Pretty easy. I think I got a slightly sniffy reaction from one woman I e-mailed -- in the vein of "we're really quite busy, you know" -- but that was just the go-between; the woman who ended up giving me that tour was fantastic. Mostly people are very glad to help. After all, you're expressing an interest in a topic they've decided to devote either their careers or their volunteer time to; they like geeking out about it with somebody.

I've only once been asked to bring proof of writerliness, and that was for the library and archives at the Globe Theatre. They set up the appointment no problem, but I had to bring a letter from my publisher to show at the security desk.

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Question the second: What is your absolute favorite thing about being a writer, and what is your absolute least favorite thing about it?

Answer the second: Favorite is probably how I'm always doing something new. I was talking with my brother about this last month; my whole life, I've never found myself doing the same thing for more than about three or four months at a stretch. I've been in school, with new classes every semester, or I've worked at summer jobs, which by their nature are limited, or I've been writing novels, which generally take me about the same length of time. (Sure, I'm still sitting at the computer typing words, but it's different characters and settings and plots; there's substantial variety.) I have to go back to high school to find the last time I did the same tasks on the same topics for even so long as nine months consecutively.

Least favorite is probably the solitude. This is fundamentally about me spending long hours with my keyboard and monitor, which sucks in certain ways. I think that's why a part of me thinks it would be fun to work in TV or movies; I'd still write, but it would be social. Downside: I'd have to deal with other people. The truth is that I'm often a solitary person; it's just that this job can feed that tendency too strongly, and I have to guard against that. (In fact, if I can kick this bug out of my system, the plan is to use this weekend to launch Project Get A Social Life.)

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Question the third: If you could redo one thing about your career, what would it be?

Answer the third: . . . nothing?

Seriously, the answers that leap to mind are not in my control. It would be cheating to say "be a NYT-bestselling debut novelist!" Because even if I had a redo, I couldn't be assured of making that happen. In fact, my sales might well be worse; Doppelganger earned out its advance handily, and has done well enough that my publisher reissued it, which is not the general fate of first novels. I'll keep that result, thanks.

So I have to look for mistakes I know hurt me, and there just aren't any bad enough to merit erasure. I'm glad the first novel I submitted wasn't the first one I sold, because it wasn't nearly as strong as it could be, but the act of submitting it wasn't a bad idea; it got my feet in the water and earned me some personalized rejections. Etc. There's only one thing I've done so far that I seriously regretted, but it's worked out okay in the end, so even that I wouldn't change. (Sorry, not sharing what it was, for personal and professional reasons. I know, that's kind of cheating on this whole "answer a question" thing.)

I don't think I've had a perfect run so far, but it's good enough that I don't feel an overwhelming desire to redo any of it.

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If you'd like to ask a question, head on over here.

Round two

Question the fourth: What's your daily/weekly routine like now out in the Land of Sunshine and Magic?

Answer the fourth: I don't really have one yet. I despise living among boxes, so the last four weeks have been spent alternating between a madness of unpacking and a madness of novel-finishing, with no particular structure. (Interspersed with the occasional bit of flopping on the couch to watch Supernatural with kurayami_hime and kniedzw.)

I do, however, intend to get into more of a regular routine, and in fact I have a series of posts planned on that exact topic. So stay tuned for adventures in the life of I'm A Full-Time Writer Now.

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Question the fifth: What are you doing to keep your idea inputs levels where you want them?

Answer the fifth: I assume this means, how do I keep feeding my mind so it will come up with ideas? At the moment, I lack sufficient brain to process much in the way of non-fiction, so I've just been catching up on a variety of novels and TV shows -- feeding the mind with fiction. But that's because I've been way overworked for a few months now; once I've regenerated a few grey cells, I'm planning on resuming a practice I had a few years ago, wherein I tried to read some of the nonfiction accumulated on my shelves. I may, for example, go on a kick of reading about ancient China, because there's a series of short stories I'd like to write that requires research in that direction. Or, y'know, that book over there about the Mongols, just because I don't know much about them. Or whatever.

But yes -- if I want to get much out of my brain, I am going to have to be careful to keep feeding it. Grad school used to take care of that for me, but I haven't been in classes for two years now; it'll be up to me to keep the food supply going.

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Question the sixth: Will you be writing any more books in the world of Warrior and Witch?

Answer the sixth: You know, one of these days I'll do the smart thing and post the answer to this question on my website. I'm kind of afraid to know how many times I've answered it in e-mail.

So here it is in a blog post: I'm not currently planning to, no. Yes, there's the question of the younger generation, and the Cousins, and Mirei and Eclipse (though I rather feel like where that one's going is obvious), but none of that is a conflict. It's just consequences to the work the characters have already completed, and that does not an exciting book make. If I come up with a conflict that excites me? Sure. My publisher would have been happy for me to do a third book two years ago, and I don't imagine it would be terribly difficult to convince them to take one later on -- not so long as the first two keep selling. But I finished the story I was telling; I'd have to come up with a new one before I'd sign on for another installment.

The closest thing I have to an idea is much smaller and more personal, and it keeps stubbornly resisting my attempts to make it grow enough plot to be a worthwhile book. But if such a book ever happens, the likeliest scenario is that it will take place about ten years later, and it will be about Indera. I think she's up in Kalistyi somewhere, under another name, doing something else entirely with her life -- not sure what -- and I know she would run into whatever Amas/Hoseki is calling herself by then. Because if there's one question I want answered, as the author, it's what would happen when Indera comes face-to-face with her. (And, I suppose, how Indera has come to terms with herself. Or failed to do so. Whichever.)

Or maybe I could make it be a short story, though it's hard to imagine writing it in a fashion that doesn't require the reader to be familiar with the novels. Anyway. The idea sits in the back of my head, and if one day it jumps up and starts waving its arms, it'll get written. But poking it with a stick isn't getting it anywhere, so I leave it alone.

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