Do you put all of your business information out on line for strangers to read? No, me either. My agent and publisher would be very unhappy with me if I did that, and it would be beyond foolish for me to do it. What information I do put on line has to be incomplete because it’s business. What I do is an art, but the business of publishing is just that – business. I’m happy to share bits of my work, my life, my thoughts, with you on line, but I don’t share everything. I believe that too many people share far too much on line. If it makes them happy, that’s fine, but I believe that real life trumps on line. So I save most of me for my real flesh and blood life.
Twitter can be even more of a problem than the blogs because it’s only 140 characters. I’m trying to answer questions, share information, and reply to other posts in just 140 characters. It means that not all meaning is conveyed exactly. It means some meaning is lost, because it’s too short to be complete. And honestly, if I tried to be too detailed online on Twitter, in blogs, whatever, I’d use up the time I need to write. I always assume that you are following me online because of my books, my stories, so that you would prefer I use my time to write rather than get sucked into the online world to the detriment of my real life joys and responsibilities.
I was working on an Anita short story the day I tweeted one post but I have since laid it aside for other projects. What I’m writing on a given day isn’t at all what is coming out next to be published from me. Short pieces are especially up in the air until I send them to my agent and say, “Here it is.” It’s one of the reasons I sell completed short stories most of the time rather than specific ideas – it gives me creative freedom and I like that.
Most contracts early in a writer’s career are for specific books, especially if you are a series writer, but I’ve earned the privilege to write what I want to write. If I wanted to write another Merry Gentry book next, I could. Anita will likely be the next book, but I’ve got this start to a brand new world and that keeps niggling at me, so I honestly don’t know for certain. If I post online anywhere that I’m working on Anita, or something new, or Merry, then that’s for that day. Now once I’m in to the middle of a story, half-way or more, then that’s a done deal. I will finish anything I get that far into, but short of that, it’s like a my muse is still shopping among the ideas. We do a few pages here, a bit more research there, sometimes just a list of the research that will be needed for a given book, but it’s all part of the preparation for writing a novel. I rarely write short stories that I don’t have all the “research” in my head and skill set already. Research takes time away from making pages, so it’s worth it for books, not so much for short stories. But there are exceptions to all rules and I tend to write short pieces in a world before I decide it’s novel worthy. The short story, “Those Who Seek Forgiveness” came before the first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures. In fact, there are several short pieces with Anita and the gang where I was exploring the world but the stories weren’t complete, or the idea strong enough, it was all part of me exploring the world and getting my feet wet. I’ll often write hundreds of pages that will never be published until I nail the voice and feel of a main character, the supporting cast, the world, the magic/science/mystery that needs to make sense to the reader for it all to work. There’s less wasted pages as I’ve gotten more practice under my belt, but I still often explore in notes, then short vignettes, then short stories, novelettes, novellas, and finally novel length.
I’m almost positive the next book will be Anita and the gang, but the new idea, which isn’t connected to the short story I just finished at all, keeps coming into my head. I have this great opening, great world, and reality system, but I think I’m waiting for another idea to come and rub up against it, as if one last ingredient is missing, so I’ll wait. But who knows?