creativity Archives - Laurell K. Hamilton

Creative Emptiness

I’ve been running on empty so long, I don’t know how to refill my tank. Usually when I don’t write for even a few days my dreams turn to violent nightmares and my inner demons and ghosts drive me back to my computer to put it on the page. This time, my inner world is quiet. I feel more peaceful and relaxed than I have in years. I realize now that I never recovered creatively, mentally, emotionally, or even physically from researching and writing, Crimson Death which came out in 2016. I tried to write a Merry Gentry book afterwards, but hundreds of pages in, it fell apart. I thought, well maybe I’m not ready to write Merry yet, so I set it aside. It was the most pages accumulated on any book I’d written where I abondoned it in place. (I will get back to it, but with a different plot. Trust me the darkness of what I’d written – no, just no. Merry, Doyle, Frost, and the babies deserve better than that.) So, I turned to Anita, because she’s always written faster for me than Merry. I had and have dozens of Anita ideas, but even there it was slower than normal. I finally had to admit that I was drained, and that some books take longer recover periods than others, and Crimson Death was one of those. I think it didn’t help that the last Merry book, A Shiver of Light, had left me, and my fans feeling pretty traumatized, too. The Anita Blake novel, Dead Ice, was next written and published, but it, thankfully, wasn’t as hard on all of us. Crimson Death wasn’t traumatic in the same way as A Shiver of Light, but it was almost three times as long as a typical novel. That is a lot of pages to write in a deadline space meant for a book a third of its size. And as my usual I didn’t allow myself time to rest between books, though honestly if I’m to do two books a year, there is no time to rest between, even if I’m doing one book a year if its the page count of two books or more, then again, there’s no time to rest if I’m to meet my deadlines. Which leads me to why the book I just turned into New York will be out in 2018, so both my new editor and myself have more time. Time, the one thing that we cannot create more of, and the thing that so many of us give away the most freely. Its been so long since I had this kind of time to rest and regain myself between writing projects that I don’t know what to do. I don’t remember what I used to do to refill my creative tank. Right now my muse and I want to hibernate for awhile. I feel like I could sleep for days, and yet I’m already restless and fighting not to grow anxious.

I’m feel like a castaway that’s washed up on an island after fighting through a storm of waves and tides. I’m wanting to sit under the shade of the palm trees, but currently feel like I’m still crawling my way out of the surf and skinning my hands and knees on the sand and seashells, as I try not to be swept back out to sea. Eventually, I’ll have to swim back out and find my ship of words again. I’ll need to find my star and use it to steer towards a new horizon, a new story, a new novel, a new world perhaps, but for now I just want to find a place to rest and let myself be happy that I made it to shore.

First Dog and First Book

The picture with this blog is of my original copy of Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White. As you can see it is a much loved book. I’ve had the book for about forty years, but that’s not why the book looks so beaten up. I bought this book through the Scholastic Book Club in junior high. I think I was twelve. I got off the school bus with my new book in my armload of school things. I ran towards the house eager to start reading this new adventure, but when I got inside the house I couldn’t find it. I searched every inch of what I’d been carrying in my arms, including my sweater, but the book was nowhere to be found. I finally looked outside and found my dog, Jenny, chewing on something in the yard.

I ran out and, of course, Jenny was chewing on Charlotte’s Web. I grabbed the book from her and I was furious. The cover was ripped off, there were tooth marks all over it. The book was ruined! I yelled at the dog, and can still remember how angry I was with her. I marched back inside with my damaged book and she stayed out in the yard where she always was because my grandmother didn’t believe in indoor dogs, or indoor pets for that matter. I was able to read the book, but every time my fingers touched the tooth marks it made me angry all over again. I was livid about the book being damaged for a long time. Fast forward a little to the serial dog poisoner that was killing in our small town. The coward even put poisoned meat inside fences and cages where the dogs never got out to bother anyone. If I’d been the grownup in my life, I’d have brought Jenny inside to live with us and put her on a leash – always – until the poisoner was caught. But I wasn’t the grownup in my life, and my grandmother only allowed Jenny inside the house one day a year, on Christmas morning to get her presents. You can guess the rest, one morning we discovered Jenny stiff with her body stretched out in a painful bow. I know enough about poisons now that it was likely strychnine, which is a painful way to go.

I dug the grave for my dog in our yard. I ground was hard, or maybe I’m remembering other pets and other graves dug. It all sort of gloms together in my mind, digging in the dirt of the yard to bury something I loved.

In the years to come I would value this copy of Charlotte’s Web all the more, because it holds the toothmarks of my first dog, the only dog my mother would ever bring home to me because she would die the summer of my sixth year. The marks that had irritated my fingers when I touched them before were a touchstone that comforted me and reminded me of things I had loved. No, I suppose in the end this book reminds me of things I still love. You never forget your first dog. The one that was beside you on the first adventures out of the yard. The one who roamed the woods at your side. Jenny even risked her life to protect me, taking on the most fierce dog in the town. One so dangerous that even his owners knew it and kept him on chain, or caged, except with them. He got loose one day and tried to attack me, but she threw herself at him. The other dog was almost four times her size but she never hesitated. This was her child, her pack! The big dog’s owners heard the dog fight and my screams and came running. They dragged the other dog off and miraculously Jenny wasn’t hurt. He’d gone for the throat and her thick wooly coat had saved her. But I can still taste the fear on my tongue when the dog attacked and the surprise when my little dog that had never picked a fight in her life launched herself at the other animal. Ironically, the other dog would be one of the first victims of the poisoner, who put meat into its outdoor caged run.

Would I have read Charlottes’ Web so often if touching it hadn’t reminded me of my lost dog? I don’t know, but I do know that this was the book where I first began to figure out how a good sentence was constructed, how a descriptive paragraph worked, how a story is built. For decades I would read Charlotte’s Web once a year in the autumn. Eventually this, my first copy, got so fragile that I bought other copies to read so this copy could be saved. But when I think about reading Charlotte’s Web, this is the book I think about reading. This texture of toothmarks, and tears, that one rip. I know the feel of this coverless book in my hands better than almost any other book I’ve ever read, save perhaps one. This book helped make me a writer, and those precious teeth marks helped me learn another invaluable lesson. That there is no anger, no fight, worth being truly enraged at someone/something you love. It’s not every book that can teach you two life lessons, and its not every dog that can help you learn them.

You never forget your first dog. I’ve had other dogs since, but once I got to be the grownup in my life and had a way to make choices, all the dogs have been indoor dogs. I would never lose another pet because I could not protect it. As I trace the bite marks on the pages, I wonder would I have loved this book so much if Jenny had not chewed it up, and then died, so that it was my remembrance of her? Since this book was the first one that began to teach me the trick of being a writer, would it have happened without everything that I think of and feel when I touch this book? What goes into making a writer? How does the magic happen? I don’t write about dogs much, or pigs, or clever spiders, and I certainly am not a writer of children’s stories, but I know, absolutely know, that this book was critical to my development as a writer. For the first time, I wonder if maybe my first dog, Jenny, was more important in that development than I thought. I’ll keep this book forever, because a writer never forgets that first important book, and a girl never forgets her first dog.

More in Love Than When We Started

I promised myself that I would write something different after I finished the latest Anita Blake book, Dead Ice, coming out June 9, about a month away. So, I wrote a short story set in a new world with brand new characters. It was wonderful, exhilarating, and strangely exhausting. I’d forgotten how tiring it is to forge my way through a brand new creation. It made me hesitate to do the novel that I’d thought I would do next because its also a new world with a brand new main character, magic system, and everything. The story I just finished has made me rethink, so I decided I’d do the next Anita Blake novel, but which one?

I wrote a list of Anita plots that I’d been thinking about for a while. When I got to “Q” I stopped. I had more ideas to write down, but seventeen seemed like plenty to choose from. From the very beginning, Anita had a large list of potential book plots; I think I started with thirteen mysteries. When I wrote that initial list I didn’t know I’d ever get a chance to pursue them all. The fact that my initial Anita contract with Penguin/Putnam (now Penguin Random House) was for three novels had thrilled me, because I knew there would be at least that many in my series. My first novel, Nightseer, had been planned to be part of a four book series, but my first publisher, ROC, had only purchased one book. When that one didn’t sell well, like most first novels, they weren’t interested in me continuing the series. Three books was a luxury after that.

So, why did I make a list of future plots when I didn’t know I’d ever get a chance to write them? I’m not sure, but the ideas came to me and I’d learned years ago to write down all my ideas. You think you’ll remember them, because they’re so great, but you won’t. Write the ideas down, all the ideas, so you don’t lose them. Maybe that’s why I did it, and that would make sense, but in retrospect it seemed terribly optimistic.

I’ve actually used all the original thirteen ideas that I wrote down, except for a couple. Those plots went away because of character growth, or just the logic of Anita’s world, and my magic system. By the time I got that far into the list I knew that certain creatures of legend just didn’t exist in her world, so some ideas went away on that basis alone.

Yet, here I am with seventeen new book plots, and more I could have listed. Some of the list is just intriguing as hell. Example – Olaf’s return. That’s all, but those two words are enough to make me wonder what a fan favorite serial killer will do when he’s next on stage. There’s The British book, set in England; The Irish book, set in Ireland, where Damian’s maker is waiting; Nathaniel’s book, which is going to be a long, complex mystery; Jean-Claude’s story, but so many ways to structure this one that I haven’t even started an outline; Nicky’s book, where he goes home for his mother’s parole hearing and asks Anita to go with him; New Mexico and Edward’s Wedding, will he actually walk down the aisle; Peter’s first hunt, three bland words with so much pain and possibility; and so many other ideas and characters that want more of their stories told. I know other writers that struggle for ideas, even novelists with their own successful book series that have fallen out of love with their main character/s. I find that idea leads onto idea and that a finished book will often give me ideas for new books. I feel about Anita, and all the people in her life and in her world, the way I feel about my real life marriage – more in love now than when we started.

Down the Rabbit Hole and into the Maze:

The White Rabbit from The Nursery Alice by John Tenniel, Held and digitised by the British Library, and uploaded to Flickr Commons. A higher resolution version may be available for purchase from BL Images Online, imagesonline.bl.uk, reference 065443

I fell down a rabbit hole this week, not a literal one, but a literary one. No, I didn’t reread ALICE IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carrol, but that’s where the original idea of following a strange rabbit down it’s hole and falling into something, or someplace, totally unexpected came from. I first heard the term ‘rabbit hole’ used for writing by Emma Bull on a panel at Archon, a science fiction convention here in St. Louis. I was in the audience back then because I had yet to sell a single story of my own. I had read and loved Emma’s book, “War for the Oaks,” and listened to any bits of writer wisdom from her with great attention.

She and her husband Will Shetterly both explained that for a writer to fall down the rabbit hole meant an idea, or subplot, that led you off your plotted path. They seemed to think rabbit holes were always a distraction and the writer should climb out and get back on their plot path as soon as possible.

Years later with my own writing group, The Alternate Historians, we continued to use the term in much the same way. If you are a writer that plots and outlines heavily then rabbit holes are truly a bad thing, but if you are an organic writer like me, sometimes the rabbit is right. I believe George R. R. Martin calls them gardeners as opposed to architects.

What does it mean to be an organic writer? For me, it means that sometimes all I know is the first sentence of a short story, but I’m going to sit down and write that sentence and see where it leads me. It means that once the world building is done, or sometimes in the midst of it, I’ll often start writing the first draft of a book because I learn things about my world and my characters by actually writing. What I learn goes into the character building, or even the world building. I often find that what looks good in notes, or plot outline, doesn’t work at all when you are in the middle of the story. I’m very much a throw it out if my characters have a better idea that comes more naturally to them and their world. A word of warning here: do not edit heavily as you write your first draft, especially as a beginning writer. You do not know how your process works yet, so don’t do what I do, be cautious, save everything, and edit once you have a complete draft.

For an organic writer chasing rabbits down their holes can lead to new ideas that help grow your world, your characters, and just make it all into your own Wonderland. Or it can be just a distraction that wastes your time, energy, and derails your book just like I was warned all those years ago. The problem is that you can’t tell the difference from the outside of the hole. You have to crawl inside and risk falling down and down, before you know if you’ll be talking to a hookah-smoking caterpillar, or just trapped in the dark, covered in dirt.

In other words, the hole could lead you to things you need to discover as a writer, or it could just get you lost and covered in rabbit poo. To find out which way it will go you have to chase the rabbit and be willing to climb into the dark and follow where it leads.

The Anita Blake novels, and the Merry Gentry series, have both benefitted greatly from me chasing rabbits through their tunnels. It has led me to some of my most creative and innovative ideas, or most poignant scenes, but it’s also led me to the dark end of a lot of tunnels, where I had to dig my way out, or back track and cut out all the writing I’d done while I was in that particular scene “tunnel”. I’ve lost a week, or more of work this way. Hundreds, if not thousands of scenes, characters, all useless in the end, but I’m still not certain that writing out the useless bits doesn’t shake something lose that I need.

When I was in high school, I read an article by Ray Bradbury, I believe it was exerts from, The Zen of Writing, but I’m no longer certain. I do know that I translated his wonderful, and much more poetic advice into this, “Every writer has about ten thousand words of crap in them, so you better start writing early and get the bad stuff out, so you can get to the good stuff.” I think sometimes books are like that for me, I need to write the stuff that doesn’t work, then cut it, to find the stuff that does work. I can’t prove that this is true, and maybe I just tell myself that to feel better about all the lost pages, but I can’t prove that isn’t true, either. I’ve written over thirty novels this way, so I’m not going to change my creative process, it works for me, but I’ll admit it’s imprecise. I think all creativity is imprecise, if you could measure it out to be precise it would be science, not art, though there is more than a bit of art in most good science.

I don’t mind following the white rabbit when I know that’s what I’m doing in a book. I’ll run the new idea, or scene, up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes. If they don’t then I delete it, probably put it in an outtake file, and go back to the original plot point where I diverged and keep writing. What I do mind is when I don’t realize it’s a rabbit I’m chasing and I think its more unicorn. For a unicorn, which is an amazing idea that will make the book even better, I’ll drop everything and give chase, but I hate it when I see a horn and think unicorn, but it turns out to be more jackalope.

Last night when I finished writing I began to suspect I had fallen down the rabbit hole. I was hoping I was wrong, because my deadline was upon me. I went to bed hoping I’d wake up and it would all make sense, but instead I knew it didn’t. It wasn’t a rabbit hole, it was a rabbit warren full of tunnels and it was all dark, dirty, and even the rabbits had fled. I had to own that I would be throwing out about twenty-five pages, or more. Days worth of work when I honestly can’t afford to lose the time, or the pages, if I am to make my deadline, but there it was, the brutal truth. I was trapped in the maze in the dark, and the only thing I could do was try to find my plot thread in the dark, and follow it back to the last point where the book really worked.

As a beginning writer it was easier for me to tell when the plot thread broke, because the writing wasn’t as good, but as I’ve had more practice, I’ve gotten better. In fact, I’ve gotten so good that my writing is great even when the character development, plot, or world building, has derailed. It all reads well, but that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it the best the book, the characters, the world, can be.

I had to go back through this morning and read, painfully, where that character wouldn’t have done/said that. Oh, there’s where the magic system that I have so carefully built and explained to the reader totally imploded. Yes, it was an exciting scene, riveting, but it isn’t the way the magic works, so out it goes. Okay, so that whole scene goes. Wait, that entire plot line is out. It’s far too late in the book to throw in something this big; it will distract from the mystery which we have to solve in ex-number of chapters. I’m not an obsessive outliner, but I do plot my mysteries out in broad strokes, the closer to the end of the book, the more that outline is filled in and eventually becomes fixed. This close to the end of a novel I have to keep my eye on the goal, which is to solve the mystery in a fair manner that helps the reader feel that all the clues were there. I dislike other writers who cheat by pocketing clues and just almost lying to the reader, so I try to play fair myself. Yes, I am aware that some really big names in mystery hide clues from the reader all the time. I adore Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, but Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie are both guilty of hiding clues to keep the reader in the dark. Sometimes it works brilliantly, but it’s still a bugaboo for me as a reader myself, so I try not to do it to other people.

So here I am in the maze, which is the worst possible kind of rabbit hole. Not only am I in the dark, covered in dirt and maybe worse, but it’s not just a straight tunnel. I can’t just back up a few pages and keep writing, because there are tunnels leading off the main tunnel, so many lefts and rights that I’m not entirely certain which is the main tunnel, or if I came this way, or that.

I begin to suspect it isn’t rabbit droppings on my shoes, but Minotaur crap, and that’s much worse for the book, and for my deadline. My plot thread has broken off in the maze somewhere. I only know it’s not ahead of me, so I can’t keep writing the book from here, I must go back. How far back? I’m not really sure, but I have to find where the thread broke, so I can follow it back and rewrite from there, because the thread still in my hand leads to the heart of the maze and the ruin of the book.

I know I will find my way out of the maze, because I’ve been lost in here before. I know I will find my broken thread and trace it back, and then write myself out of the maze. I know, because I’ve done this before, and that means I can do it again. That’s really what an experienced writer has over a beginning writer, we know that we can do it, because we’ve done it. Success is like a shield to protect you from the monsters, both the outside obstacles and your own self-doubt.

So for all you fellow writers out there both experienced and not, if you find yourself lost in the dark take courage. First try to just back up, if it works, then it’s a rabbit hole, and you’ll soon be out. Dust the dirt off and keep writing. If you realize that some of the tunnel was great ideas, then dig your way up and out, and keep writing from there. If the worst happens and you realize you’re standing in the middle of the maze with a broken thread in your hand, and Minotaur crap on your shoes, then keep moving. You will find the other half of your plot thread, eventually. Once you find it, grab it and drop the other end, because the other end only leads to the heart of the maze where the Minotaur waits to smash you to has-been, or never-was pulp, and dance with castanets on your creative soul.

New Blog – Did Technology Kill the Muse?

The picture with this blog is from our recent vacation. Look closely and you’ll see the hummingbird hovering near my hands. The bird was so enamored of the flowers that it brushed my hands and wrists in it’s boldness. Jon and I took our daughter, Trinity, and my sister, Pilar on vacation. It was a glorious trip, and I’ll blog about it eventually, but tonight I want to introduce you to Jess, my new media minion. The job title came out of some brainstorming and was mostly her idea, which says something about how fun she’s going to be on the job. But why do I need a media minion, at all?

One of the most valuable thing any writer has is their muse. Contrary to the television show, “Castle”, most writers don’t have flesh and blood muses. When I say, muse, I mean the creative spark, that part of us that sees the real world and translates it into a fiction. The care and feeding of an artist’s muse means different things to different people, because the “muse” is as variable as the writers themselves. What is happy activity that will send one writer to their keyboard eager to create, may drain another and leave them empty of words, ideas, or just stopped dead in the water. Some writers are extroverts and love people and activity. Some writers love work in hotel rooms, or on trains, and some need the same room, the same desk, and the same everything day in and day out. Some writers listen to music, others need dead silence, and sometimes those needs change from book to book. Charles Dickens supposedly served drinks at his parties with one hand and wrote with the other. That level of activity while I tried to create would have driven me mad, but Dickens & his muse must have thrived on it. I need a certain amount of quiet time to stare into space, and let myself think. I knew too much in person socialization stole that solitude, but what I’m beginning to wonder is does electronic socialization do the same thing?

I love interacting with all of you online, but even happy interactions may be messing with the alone time I need in my head. I need to be thinking about the current book I’m writing, but I often find myself thinking, “That would make a great Facebook post,” or “Hmm . . . what should I blog about next?” or “How do I get that down to a 140 characters for Twitter?” I’m beginning to wonder if my subconscious is being sidetracked from creating stories so that it can manage my social media. I remembered on our vacation that getting out of the house, and seeing new things can feed my muse and refresh my subconscious, but talking about it online as soon as I have an experience maybe sapping the “magic” out of an event for me as a writer. It’s almost as if writing it online takes the impetus away from me wanting to translate things into fiction.

Now my real life is not a one to one translation to my fiction, but the experiences I had on vacation fed parts of me that had been starving for awhile. I can’t explain it precisely, but I’ve been needing to go to the woods, the wilderness, for awhile. It feeds something in me as a person, and that part gives energy to my writing. But thinking about sharing that experience online, before it’s had time to sink into my subconscious and sit for awhile in the quiet, I think is hurting part of my creative process. So, I’ve decided to get off line for awhile, but I didn’t want to leave you guys hanging, so Jess’s job as a media minion was born.

I’ll still be blogging. My posts to Facebook will either be texted, or emailed, to Jess for her to post for me, but they will still be my posts. Or Jess will be posting as herself. She will also be wandering around Facebook to answer your questions and being far more social than I have time, or inclination to be in the new Facebook landscape. She’ll be running her answers by me & Jon, but I’m hoping you’ll give her a warm welcome & appreciate her input. Twitter is actually the most problematic, because I actually enjoy and understand Twitter more. I may try to stay on Twitter for awhile, but if I feel that it actually is still distracting me from my writing, then that may have to change, too.

The first novel I wrote was typed on a computer, and I’ve finally really embraced the technology. I’m typing this on my iPad, and I feel naked without my iPhone. I’ve started to enjoy it all, but I’ve become less productive as a writer as I’ve become more productive in posting on line, so time to back up and put the actual writing first, and the social posting second. I need to hike in the mountains and truly be in the moment, absorbing it and letting it sink deep into my subconscious like a rock thrown into a still pool. I need to let the ripples flow out and see what muck and mire that metaphorical “rock” stirs up. I need to do all that before I think, “I’ve got to tweet this, or Facebook this, or blog this,” I need to think of my fiction first, not my social media. Thanks for your patience while I try this little experiment. I’ll see you on Twitter, at least for awhile, and you’ll still get to read the blogs, but for the rest I’m saving it for my muse, for me, for my family, and for the new adventures to come.

New Blog – Of Typewriters, Computers, & Bitching

First, my website at https://www.laurellkhamilton.com is finally updated and a bit more user friendly for us and all of you. The Anita Blake books, and the Merry Gentry books are now in order of publication, for all who have asked. Second, I’ve answered some of the questions that were prompted by my latest blog.

A lot of people have been bitching that I do page count, rather than word count on my daily writing quota. First, why should you even care one way or the other? Second, I think everyone forgets that I’m 51, which means when I wrote my first short stories at age 17 it was on a manual typewriter. There was no word-processor to show me my word count at the bottom of my page. If I wanted a word count I had to do it the old fashioned way by counting average lines per page and then estimating words/characters per line, and then adding your pages in, and by the end of a writing session I wasn’t up to the math. I did it before I sent a story out to a magazine and put the word count at the top of the story as was professional format at the time, but my daily writing quota was pages, not words, because the math seemed laborious after my brain was fried from actually writing, or I’d had a really good writing session and my brian was euphoric with endorphins and I was too happy to do math. Math at the end of a day of wonderful creativity seemed like punishment to me, and still does. (Sorry all you math lovers, but it’s not my cup of happiness. )

But that’s why I do page count, instead of word count for my daily writing quota. Most writers form habits early on and if it works most writers, and artists, are loath to change it. I think we’re all a little superstitious as if changing one small thing will somehow make the magic go away. I know it sounds silly, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and setting myself 4 pages a day works better for me than saying I owe myself four thousand words before I can take a break, or quit for the day.

And onto my typing speed – I posted my typing speed in a bid to help some of the beginning writers feel better about not hitting my page count on my best days when I can do 20-40 pages in 6-8 hours. That’s counting only the pages I kept, not the ones that didn’t work. The pages that are completely unsatisfactory as I type are usually just toggled lower down on the page so that all my rough drafts have this enormous garbage section at the end of manuscript file of writing ideas, plot twists, or character breakthroughs that just didn’t work. I don’t delete it, because sometimes I find the scene really did work and I need it. If I deleted the “garbage” at the end of the day I’d have to rewrite the scene. (This was learned the hard way early on when I switched from typewriter to computer. It’s too damn easy to delete on a computer screen, at least with typed pages the pages are still in your office to dig through.) I wouldn’t type 200 words a minute on a standard typing test, because that’s not me writing my own fresh words. I have no idea how fast I type when copying, or taking dictation, because why would I bother copying someone else’s words, or take dictation from anyone, but my own imagination? But using my own writing as the speed test on the online tests it did come out to 200 wpm, and that is subtracting for mistakes. I spent years with computer buffers unable to keep up with my typing speed. The blinking cursor would sit at the end of the line beeping and complaining at me, and I would have to wait until the text on screen spilled out what I’d just typed, and then I could continue on, until I out typed the buffer again, and again, and . . . I love how fast computers are now, and that they don’t complain with noise that I’m typing faster than they prefer. (The picture attached to this blog is me today with my very first typewriter. We found it as we sorted through things recently. I’d totally forgotten where it was. Thanks to my Aunt Juanita, who loaned me the machine when I was in high school. Without her kindness I couldn’t have sent stories in for publication. I owe her a typewriter, but I’m keeping this one out of sentiment. )

And, yes, I actually have had writers with long standing and lovely careers of their own ask me how I produce so much in one writing session. (Writers are like all career people, we talk to each other. We share tricks of the trade, and talk shop, even those of us who are all bestsellers.) Most writers find that 2-4 hours is the maximum usable time for them to be writing, or trying to write. If they stay longer, it gains them nothing and makes it even harder for them to write the next day. On some glorious muse-driven days I can get 10-20 pages done in 2 hours, but usually it takes me 4-6 hours to do 4-8 pages. I’ve timed it and the first two hours of my writing is usually not very productive for pages to be kept at the end of the day, which are the only pages that go into my daily page count. I actually get the lion’s share of my pages done in the last 2-3 hours of the 5-8 hour session. I’ve tried to skip that first unfruitful 2 hours, by shortening my writing sessions to only 4 hours, but my process needs that 2 hour window of noodling at the keyboard, staring off into space, and basically banging my head against the computer, before something breaks free and the words flow. I hate that my writing process works this way, because it means that if I can’t get a huge block of uninterrupted time to write that my productivity suffers, a lot.

Now, once I hit the groove of a book then things change. Sitting down at the computer means words come immediately. The words flow and it’s all I can do to type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts, but that doesn’t happen until between 150-250 pages into a book. For the those first pages its more brute force than muse-driven, but I’ve learned without that force at the beginning of a novel I’m never going to get to the happy, dancing muses at the end.

Choosing Character Names, part 2

Names are where characters begin to take shape for me, and its always been that way. I bought my first baby name book when I was fourteen, the same year that I decided that maybe, just maybe I could be a writer. I remember the bookstore clerk that checked me out glancing down at my stomach, and then quickly up at my face. I realized that she thought I was pregnant and looking for names for a real baby. I didn’t try to explain that I needed the book to help me name fictional characters. I was painfully shy, and had finished one story in my entire life. How was I going to say out loud to an adult that I was spending money on a book to help me write stories that I hoped to sell to real magazines, and earn real money, and maybe eventually make a living at this. I couldn’t explain, so I said nothing and let her think what she liked. I still have that first baby name book, Name Your Baby by Lareina Rule, and I still reference it constantly when creating new characters. The cover has actually come apart, but I saved it, kept it with the book. The pages are starting to yellow, but I still love this book. From the very beginning of my career when I knew the name, I knew the character. Sometimes the name comes first and a character just magically forms around it. Sometimes I have a character in mind, but it’s not fully formed so I’ll search through all my baby name books and makes lists of names. That’s how I named, Micah, Nathaniel, Doyle, just to name three. Sometimes characters choose their names without me looking anything up, like Anita and Jean-Claude. Anita chose her name and I knew enough to know it was originally a Spanish name, so she chose half her ethnicity without me deciding anything consciously. Though since all the people I grew up with that were Hispanic came from families that were originally from Mexico that’s where Anita’s mother’s family had to be from, because it was more familiar to me. Jean-Claude on the other hand, I wanted to be Spanish, because no one had done a master vampire from Spain as a main character. At that time I spoke and read Spanish. I wasn’t fluent, but I could get by. (Please, do not speak Spanish to me now, I’m so rusty it’s embarrassing.) But he insisted he was French, which I didn’t speak, couldn’t read, and my accent is still horrible according to my French translator. I tried so hard to force him to be what I envisioned and the character just didn’t work at all. Finally, in desperation I let him be French and suddenly he chose his name, his personality, and stepped on stage almost fully formed and just, well, Jean-Claude. I’ve been informed since then that it is not an elegant name in France, and not sexy enough, but he came with the name, this one I did not choose. Of course, it’s not the name that he was born with in France, but one that he acquired after he became a vampire, but that’s a story for another day.

Two other name books stay in the reference drawer with Rule’s book. Beyond Jennifer and Jason, by Linda Rozenkrantz and Pamela Redmond Satran. I found the book by accident in the grocery store over ten years ago. It has lists for boyish names, ambisexual names, handsome names, pretty names, names for standing out, names for fitting in, macho names etc . . . I don’t agree with every name on every list, but I find them all useful in their way. Multicultural Baby Names by M. J. Abadie is rare find, because it’s literally what the title promises, names that aren’t just white Anglo-saxon, Northern European, or German, which is the predominance of most English baby name books. There are chapters on Arabic names, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, African, Hindu, Native American, and more. I try very hard not to have my fictional characters seem like they stepped out of a “Dick and Jane” kid’s book where everyone is middle to upper class and living in a white bread America that never existed for most of us outside of sitcoms from the 1950s and 60s.

What’s Next for Anita Blake?

One of my goals for this year was to work happier, so I gave myself permission to write anything I wanted, and that was great for awhile. I’ve made some notes and even chapters, or pieces of chapters in a brand new world. I’ve learned that I need dozens to hundreds of pages that aren’t for publication while I explore and world build. I’ve tried skipping this part of my process and it’s what led me to throw out 70% of the first Meredith Gentry book after the editor had already accepted it and start the novel over. The book was immensely better for it, and the world, my main character, plot, everything vastly improved, but I learned my lesson. Unless the muses give me a book opening and world whole and complete through near magical inspiration, I need to write out my world building before I write the first book in the world.

I finished a brand new Anita Blake short novel that’s even longer than Micah which was my last original paperback surprise. Eventually, I had to look at my deadlines and my goals for the year and realize it was time to get down to brass tacks and begin the next full-size Anita Blake novel. This year, 2014, will see the first new Merry Gentry novel in almost five years, 2015 will be Anita’s turn, but to make that happen I have to write the book. Funny, how they don’t write themselves.

I usually know what I’m writing next with Anita, but I did something I used to do years back, but had stopped in the press of deadlines when I was delivering two big books a year. A decade of doing that put a lot of things on hold. There just wasn’t time to do my usual process and meet those deadlines, but see that goal to “work happier”, so I was trying to recover some of the pieces that had made things more joyous for me and my muse. I used to tidy and sort my office between writing projects, but I’d fallen so far behind on that I had literally boxes of papers on the floor, and sticky notes on the wall so old the ink had faded.

I went through every file folder, every piece of paper in my office. The desktops are cleaned and ready to go for the next book, but which one? Because in going through all the notes and scrapes of paper I’ve got a wealth of possibilities. I thought I’d chosen a follow up on Sampson, the mermaid/man, and his rather dysfunctional family situation: sirens, vampires, and murder, oh, my! But I think that Sampson’s story maybe a short story, or a different book than I thought, so – not yet. I have this great opening that I wrote on the plane back from Paris a few years ago. It has Nicky featured and I thought, cool, we’ll do a book where he takes center stage. Um, no, not ready. That opening may have Nicky in a main part, but I think it’s a book more about Anita’s necromancy and the power boost/side effects from the Mother of All Darkness. (You didn’t really think all that happened without side effects, did you?) But the book isn’t soup yet, not done, not ready, so . . . Valentina, our forever five-year-old vampire, has a story to tell, and a modern spin on her own fate, and I thought that was next, but as I tried to write it . . . it slowed down, and . . . Edward’s wedding finally? No, that story isn’t ready yet, close, but not quite ready. Olaf’s return? Maybe, but not yet. Nicky will be going home to make sure his abusive mother doesn’t get parole and Anita will go with him for moral support, but not this book. (That may actually be a novelette, or short story, and not a book at all.) Bartolome trapped forever in the body of a twelve-year-old boy, has more to tell, but again he’s not ready to tell the rest of his story. I’ve got a short story/novelette with Micah doing his job for the Furry Coalition, but so not soup yet. I’ve got a Jade novelette, or short novel, and that maybe close, but not sure. I’ve got the beginning of a short piece where Jean-Claude and Asher tell an adventure they had when they were a happy threesome with Julianna. I know the whole plot there, I think, it’s more how to tell the story without running into the traps of “telling a story,” where you know the people survived, or they couldn’t be telling you the story now. I’ve got two short pieces where Richard is on stage, and one that revisits his family, his brother Daniel in particular, but that’s not even close to ready to be written. I’ve got several pages of a story about Jean-Claude, and Nathaniel, and we find out something from both their pasts that intertwine in a way that totally surprised me. That seems to be the front runner at the moment, but again it feels more like a novelette than a novel. There’s a piece that features Detective Zerbrowski and his son, and that’s close to being ready, but again I don’t think it’s a complete novel. It may even be a short story. I found notes about a visit to Philadelphia to visit Requiem in his new home. A book set in the Carolinas that was inspired by a horrible hotel room my husband, Jon, and I had in Charlotte, North Carolina once, but though a great beginning, it’s just an idea, a book length idea, but it needs another idea, or two to bump into it before I sit down and begin in earnest. That’s just a few of the ideas I rediscovered, or tidied up into folders for later.

I’d forgotten that I did that, shed ideas like flower petals in a high wind, so that the path is strewn with wonders, and curious notes. My office is clean and neat as a pin, but my imagination is cluttered with fragments of this and that idea, character, plot, so that it’s like I’ve smashed a stained glass window and covered the floor with bright, shining, pieces, but which to pick up first?

New Year’s Resolutions and Working Happier

You know those New Year’s resolutions that we all make, but never keep? Well, I made one to read some of the books on my to-be-read pile. I started with Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and enjoyed it. It was thought provoking, though I don’t agree with everything he proposes, it still had a lot of new ideas, new ways of looking at things, and that turned out to be something I needed. I came away with one personal insight that was very valuable to me. I realized that the one positive thing I hadn’t been able to give my daughter was to show her my happiness with my writing, my life’s work. She saw the deadlines, the tours taking me away from her, the research trips that did the same, and I guess I put all my negativity that I wouldn’t allow anywhere else in my life on my work. I didn’t realize I had done it, but I have. Maybe that’s why my very artsy daughter doesn’t want to make a living as an artist of any kind. “It’s too hard, mom,” she says. She’s right. If you don’t want it more than anything else in the world art will eat you alive, and spit you back out. Most of us never make enough money to live well, if at all. Many writers have to keep their day jobs forever, and write on the side. Most actors spend more time waiting tables than being on stage, or in front of a camera. I have worked very hard for my success, and been very lucky that what I want most to write so many people want to read. I’m one of the ones that made it, but for every amazing success like mine, there are hundreds that aren’t so positive.

The next book I picked up was The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and that was also very well timed, because it got me thinking about happiness. I’d been working on my personal life for over a decade to make it happier. It had led me to leaving my first marriage and finding my husband Jonathon. I realized that one of the things that made my first marriage fail was that I wasn’t really cut out to be monogamous, so from the beginning Jonathon and I were polyamorous. It means to love more, even before we knew that poly was a word and there were other people out there doing it, we dated other people and added them to our lives. Thirteen years together as a couple, or more, and it just gets better. Part of truly being happy for me meant letting go of old ideas of what I thought marriage would be and embracing what worked for us.

Which brings me back to my career, my writing, what was once the passion of my life and had become a job. I’ve worked harder, faster, smarter, but I decided that I would try to work happier. I started to try and figure all this out while I was writing the newest Merry Gentry novel, A Shiver of Light, I gave myself permission to write anything I wanted part of the day, as long as I got my pages on the book done, too. Before this, with rare exceptions, I had forced myself to stay on one project at a time and write until it was complete, but when I was writing two best selling series for two different publishers, the deadlines were crushing. It was one of the things that led me to consolidating my two series under one publishing roof, though ironically the two publishing powerhouses have merged. Allowing myself the new freedom to spend part of the day on other projects didn’t slow me down on writing Merry, but seemed to energize me. It led to two e-specials. Dancing which is a novelette featuring a more happy domestic and relationship side of Anita Blake, my other series character, and tow of her boyfriends, Micah, and Nathaniel, along with a visit to see Detective Zerbrowski and his entire family at home. It was a lot of fun to write and many of you have told me how much you enjoyed reading it, so yay! I also wrote, “Shut Down,” which was an e-special gift to all of you for free while our government was behaving so childishly. I couldn’t make the politicians do their jobs, but I could give you a short story featuring Richard, our handsome, but self-loathing werewolf, and Ulfric (wolf king). Then I started what I thought was a Jason short story, and it got out of hand. It wouldn’t end and I began to fear I had a short novel on my hands. I finally had to stop working on it and let Merry and her world eat everything for awhile. For me, as a writer a book eventually consumes everything. It’s not unusual for me to work eighteen hour days for weeks on end as I finish a novel. I’d love to not work like that, but it’s simply the way my muse and I work best. Every time I try to write a few hours, then quite, and hit it the next day, my productivity grinds to a halt.

I finished the Merry book, and was exhausted, drained, used up, as I usually am at the end of a long novel. This book had been unusually exhausting and emotional for me. It was the first Merry novel in four years, the babies were finally born, and I had to remember some personal sorrows so I could do Merry and her story justice. I went to some pretty dark places to write this book. I cried more than once, and came away feeling like I’d broken my own heart. As you can imagine, it takes a bit to recover from something like that, so I didn’t force myself to write something else right away, as I usual did. I didn’t even make myself finish the Jason piece. I wrote if I was moved to write. I wrote if an idea came to me. I made notes on ideas. I made notes on Anita. Eventually I even made some notes on Merry and her crew. I’m world building at least three brand new worlds, and some day, one of the three will raise it’s hand and be ready to be written and shared with all of you.

I thought I’d be finishing the Jason novelette first, but then two other shorter ideas got my attention and I wrote on them, but . . . they weren’t ready. As my writing group, The Alternate Historians, says, “it wasn’t soup yet”, so I let the stories simmer and didn’t push myself, normally I would have. Then came two weeks of travel that included one of the most fun Geek-loving weddings Jon and I have ever participated in – we got to be part of an arch of light sabers for the Bride and Groom to exit through! Yeah, that kind of wedding! We flew straight from that out of state wedding to Spring Break with Jon’s parents, and our daughter, Trinity.

We left this overly long, overly cold, overly snow-filled winter behind for tropical beaches, Caribbean blue oceans and 80F temperatures. It was glorious. I usually try not to write when I’m on family trips. First, it’s incredibly difficult with so many demands for my attention. Second, because sometimes, I feel punished when I’m writing while everyone else is playing in the sun and surf. It’s like being in a pretty cage. Yeah I can see the sunshine and ocean, but if I can’t touch it, what’s the point? But it had been so many weeks without really writing for me, that I began to search for a place to write.

I was poking at every flat surface that would hold my iPad and full-size keyboard. I put on my new Bose headphones and made notes. But one day, I wrote enough that it felt like writing, not just notes and it was an older idea, but suddenly a new idea had bumped against it, and there was a spark. I wrote until that spark faded, and it was time to have dinner with my family.

I’ve been letting myself write on whatever my Muse and I wanted to work on, and that’s been fun. I’ve had more ideas come to me in the last few months than I’d found in years. I’ve let my Muse and I play, and it’s been glorious, but I need a deadline, a focus. Its been so long since I’ve let my mind wander through the Looking Glass without worrying about where I’m going, or when I’ll get there, that I’d forgotten that deadlines are my friends, not my enemies. They help me concentrate and narrow my vision down to a laser point and create. I had three stories ready to go, but no idea which was cooked enough to be soup. I let myself write on any of the three, and then suddenly one of them took the lead and we were off!

Today, for the first time since I typed, the End, on Shiver of Light, I wrote so long and so hard, that when Jon interrupted me for lunch, because when you eat healthier you really have to eat regularly during the day, I was inpatient, snapping at him. I knew it, I apologized, but I felt like if he didn’t get out of my office and let me finish the scene I was writing I would scream. He kissed me, and left to fetch lunch. He let me know when he got back, but today was his day at gym, not mine, so he had to eat on time, I could fudge it a little. When I was done with the scene, my injured arm hurt like hell. (It’s a permanent injury, more muscle helps which is one of the reasons for my dedication to the gym.) I was dazed and almost stumbled downstairs with the dogs trailing around me. I joined Jon in the other part of the house. We had a few minutes together while I started eating and then he had to go to gym. I put my feet up for a few minutes and cuddled the dogs on the couch and watched CSI. It’s one of my go-to shows when I’m writing well and want to be entertained, but not distracted from my story. I think we got through the first five seasons while I was writing Merry, so today was the beginning of season six. Then I went back to work. It was mostly notes, but I know exactly what happens next in the story. I know which idea I will finish next. I’ve given myself about two weeks to complete the story. I want it done before we get on the next plane for our next trip, which is about two weeks away. (I actually didn’t make that deadline, but finished it on the plane for the trip.)

I told Jon that I knew what I was writing next. He said, “I know.”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Because this is the first time since you finished Merry that you were frantic to write and shushed me, so I’d leave you alone to write.” He smiled, kissed me, and left me to work.

I love my husband, and part of why loving each other works for us, is that he understood that me practically snarling at him today was a very good sign. He didn’t take it personally, he understood. He married me after I was established as a novelist, so he knew what he was getting into as much as anyone can that marries an artist. We are not always easy to live with, and if you expect us to play by muggle rules then you will be sadly disappointed. But since Jon is no more a muggle than I am, it works for us.

I don’t know if I’ve figured out all I need to work happier, but I’m getting there, and it’s not the view from the top of the mountain you need to love, it’s the climb up, because you can’t stay at the top of the mountain forever. That gets you one goal accomplished. I’ve got a whole mountain range spread out before me, and I want to climb them all.

Post Book Blues, or I finished my novel, now what?

Restless as hell. Don’t want to watch anymore TV, movies, even the great book I’m reading is just irritating. If we have anymore sex we’re both going to have rubby spots. Somewhere around day three after I finish a book, I get so restless I’m almost angry. It just seems to be part of my process of post-book down time. It doesn’t matter where I go, I’ve tried the ocean, heck I’ve gone to Disney World, and still this awful restlessness takes possession of me.
The day I wrote, The End, on the newest Merry Gentry novel, A Shiver of Light, I was on such a writer’s high, it was awesome! When the high left, the tiredness hit like it always does. First full day of not writing the book, was a day of my mood going up, and down – up and down. This mood swing is also just part of the post-book process for me. I know it and I don’t let the sad rain all over everyone. I know what is happening and I just ask my husband, Jon, “Happy, sad, happy, sad; do I always do this?”
Jon says, “Yes.”
The only thing I didn’t do per usual was I didn’t have a whole day of what I call, “The little lost lamb day,” where I wander around the house, or wherever drifting from room to room, or yard, as if I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’m doing, which is pretty accurate. Months, or a year, or more, of concentrating on this one project and suddenly it’s gone. The structure to my day, the thing that consumed me for so long and it’s done, and I’m at loose ends. I think the reason that I didn’t have as much of the “lost lamb” day is that this book was so emotionally draining I was happy to be done, and happy to begin to rest up before edits come back from New York.
Now, I’m tired, but don’t want to sleep, as I said at the beginning I don’t want to do any of the things I was looking forward to catching up on, or I’ve done them for three days and enough is enough.
I’ve tried leaving as soon as I finish a book and going some place warm with an ocean view, but I still go through the same post-book process. I’m just restless and angry staring off at amazing Caribbean blue water and palm trees, instead of St. Louis in the winter. It usually just pisses me off that I’m someplace great and still can’t be happy. But I’ve finally embraced the truth, that all this emotional angst is part of me coming down from writing a novel. I wish I was one of those writers that doesn’t go through all this, but a writer doesn’t choose their creative process, anymore than they choose what ideas come to them. J. K. Rowling says in the Harry Potter books, “The wand chooses the wizard.” Well, the idea chooses the writer.
I think the same is true of how our entire creative process works, from how we gather ourselves to write a novel, to the writing of it, and the celebrating and grieving process after it’s written. Some of us struggle to get enough ideas to write, others of us have more ideas than any one lifetime can allow us to write. Some need silence and solitude to work, others need a busy cafe around them, and still others do solitude with music blasting; we are all as different as our stories.
Now, I’m going to take this restless, cranky mood and get on the treadmill, because until I work some of this energy out I won’t sleep. I almost went to gym today, but was afraid I wouldn’t concentrate well enough for weights. Next time I’ll listen to myself and do gym sooner, but for right now treadmill. Gotta walk some of this off.