I’ve just blown my first deadline! Now I’m a REAL writer!
February 16, 2008
So February 15th has come and gone and the first round of editorial revisions on Powerless are still not done. Granted, my editor Joan is terrifically understanding person and therefore the Feb. 15th date was always sort of a soft deadline, but still it’s kind of frustrating.
I’ve decided that books are like babies - you expect them to conform to tidy little schedules and work around the important things in your life, but they have an uncanny tendency to surprise you with all-nighters and painful growth spurts.
Baby Will has decided that sleep is for the weak, and Powerless has somehow grown by nearly two thousand words in the editing process, even though I’ve cut two chapters nearly in half.
I love them both dearly, but . . . c’mon! If anyone knows any great nannies who do freelance copy-editing on the side, send them my way.
The New(est) Book?
January 30, 2008
I’ve got this thing about working on two projects at once. Here I am busily typing away on the revisions for Powerless, and yet there is this other nagging little book tugging on my sleeve . . .
The little fella used to just be an idea-for-book. Cute. Fun to look at, but still just an idea.
Well, it looks like he’s just sprung up into full blown book-in-progress status.
Working title: The Hundred Year-Old Book Club
More later.
Wish fulfillment and boys and girls . . .
January 21, 2008
I’m deep into the first set of Powerless revisions and something’s been nagging me during my tea and biscuit breaks (actually they usually turn out to be Coca-cola and cookie breaks, but I’m trying to sound writerly).
Why do folks like to read? What is it about one story that ignites the imagination over another? What makes such a ripping good yarn that little Jimmy will put down the Sony and crack open the dog-eared pages of a 300 page-plus tome?
Well, beats me.
But I suspect that it has something to do with truth, with the ability to get swept up in a grand adventure while all the while feeling that you can understand the characters. When a reader says, “yeah, I feel like that sometimes too.” That’s when the story is working.
I believe this so strongly that I’m banking on it. See Powerless is not about Wish-Fulfillment. It’s not about imagining that you can cast spells, or have the power to slay dragons (not that there is anything wrong with either of those things. They are perfectly acceptable professions.)
Powerless is a very fast-paced adventure story, to be sure, full of wondrous things. I took my inspiration from the pacing of the comics I loved so much as a kid - complete with superheroes, cliff-hangers, mysteries, twists and turns. But the hero of this story is not the Chosen One. Or the Destined Something-or-Other. Or the most powerful blah, blah, blah in the wherever.
He’s powerless. And I just hope that kids and adults will read it and say, “Yeah, I feel like that sometimes too.”
What’s been going on . . .
January 14, 2008
Well, I had a baby boy. His name is Willem Owen Cody and he is as fine a specimen of baby-perfection as I have ever seen. Razor wit, Herculean strength and Jedi reflexes. This kid’s got it all. 
Now that he is out and about in the real world, I’m changing the focus of this rather focus-less and rarely if ever updated blog into something different and (hopefully) much more reliable. Since my focus for the foreseeable future is going to be life-as-father-husband-writer that’s what I’ll be writing about. All the early morning crankiness, the deadline-making nervousness and, of course, spit up. So I hope a few folks will tune in. On that note, I thought I’d better post a few professional updates:
- I received the first round of edits on Powerless and am hard at work to meet a February deadline, for a 2009 release. It’s amazing the lead time that is required in the publishing world, but there it is. A huge thanks to Joan Slattery and Allison Wortche at Knopf for their insightful comments and deft red pens.
- The second book of the Knopf deal may not be a Powerless sequel after all. I’ve got another project on the back burner that seems to desperately want front-burner status, so that may come first. I’ll let you all know more here when I’m more settled.
- I just turned in a story for a Clarion anthology that should come out sometime this summer. The anthology is being edited by Jeff and Anne VanderMeer, both of whom I’d take a bullet for. (A small bullet. One preferably of the non-lethal and imaginary variety, but it’s the thought that counts). Jeff writes some of the best adult surreal fantasy out there and Anne was recently made Fiction Editor of the legendary mag Weird Tales. Check out Jeff’s musings here and subscribe to Weird Tales here.
Outline . . . Shmoutline!
August 20, 2007
I started the second Powerless book today and it took about a page and a half before I was reminded why I don’t outline. I’ve already deviated from the course I set for myself and you know what? That’s fine by me.
I know some authors who are meticulous outliners, top-notch strategic planners, and it works for them. But I really can do no more than follow LOOSE notes or scribbled ideas. There is just a certain kind of creative energy that I get when I am actually in the middle of a paragraph - a freedom that doesn’t come to me when I’m trying to think “big picture”.
The only other time I get that kind of idea storm is . . . well, when I’m in the tub. I know, I know. The rubber ducky is my muse.
