Author Archives: David Carrico

About David Carrico

David is a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. He has been writing since 1977, but made his first sale in 2004. Most of his work has been written in Eric Flint's Ring of Fire universe, and has either appeared in The Grantville Gazette electronic magazine (http://grantvillegazette.com) or in the anthologies Grantville Gazette III, Grantville Gazette IV, Ring of Fire II, Grantville Gazette V, and the forthcoming Grantville Gazette VI and Ring of Fire III.

Keeping the Ball Rolling

Craft & Skills First Drafts The Writing Life The Writing Process No Comments

So, once you have the work started, how do you keep the words flowing?

Sometimes, of course, you don’t have that problem.  Sometimes you have to hustle to keep up with the flow.

But sometimes, eh, you might have to encourage things a little.  This isn’t going to be an essay on the art of encouragement.  Rather, it’s a short list of things you might find useful in keeping word productivity up.

First, some general tips/rules/suggestions:

#1 – Write.  This may seem silly, but if you don’t plant your posterior in the authorial chair and exercise your fingers on the keyboard, nothing is going to happen.  Really.  (Unless you’re one of a handful of writers that I know of who dictate everything.  But even then, the principle holds.)  Good intentions, well-laid plans, “gonna get around to it” generate no words.  Only the actual act of writing can do that.

#2 – Write consistently.  Most of us, whether we want to admit it or not, are creatures of habit; we do better at our craft if we exercise it on a regular basis.  (Okay, I’ll grant that there are writers who seem to be “burst writers”, who will produce a book or two or three almost in a blur, then not do anything for weeks or months.   But they are the exception to the rule.)  There is validity to the idea of “being in practice.”  It’s easier to slip into the creative trance if you’ve been there recently.

#2A – Be organized about your writing.  This is especially important for folks who have kids at home, or who have a day job, and therefore have to manage their time closely.  Try to write every day, but if that’s not possible, then at least set up your schedule so the back of your brain knows when you will be writing.  You almost have to have a minimum of an hour per session in order to give your mind time to get back into the flow.  Whether it’s early in the morning, late at night, three nights a week, or all day Saturday, your mind will be more prepared to write if you’ve got a regular schedule worked out.

#3 – Do as much of your research as possible before you start writing.  Those two activities require two different mindsets, and if you have to stop in the middle of the creative flow to look up something you need for a plot or character point, you can blow yourself right out of the creative trance.  If you’re lucky you can get by with just throwing in a NOTE TO SELF at that point and moving on and doing the research in the edit pass.

#4 – Another potential mindset conflict:  don’t go into editor mode while you’re in the middle of the creative flow.  That’s another case of two different mindsets needed for the two different activities, and they are often not compatible.  If you suddenly start doing heavy editing and critiquing, the odds are good you will again blow yourself out of the creative trance.

Now for a few tips and tricks about actually getting the flow started every time you sit down.

#5 – When you stop working for the day/night, don’t halt at the end of a major section, especially if you know it may be a couple of days (or longer) before you come back to it.  I don’t recall which writer I learned this from, but I can attest to the fact that it really does work.  I have hamstrung myself a couple of times by ending a night’s work at the end of a chapter or even an arc within a novel, only to have a totally blank mind when I finally was able to get back to work on it.  After the second time, I make it a point not to leave a work at such a point.  If I’m at the end of a chapter or an arc, I’ll go ahead and write the first couple of paragraphs of the next chapter, just to set the tone and point where I’m going to go next.  Sometimes I’ll even leave the last sentence I’m writing that night unfinished.  That kind of primes the mental pump for the next session.

#6 – I think this one came from Robert Silverberg originally:  if you sit down to continue and nothing wants to start flowing immediately, go back and retype the last two or three paragraphs (or maybe the last page) of what you had written last session.  Again, it seems to prime the pump, and when you get to the end of that section your mind and fingers should be ready to put out and take down new words.

#7 – This one comes from David Morrell (First Blood, among others) in his book on the craft entitled Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing.  (If you haven’t read it, do.  It’s worth the price of admission.)  One of his techniques for getting past stumbling blocks (or even the dreaded writer’s block) is to sit down and interview the character, or sometimes interview himself, asking questions as to what the problems are that are being faced, and what the character (or the author) might do to overcome them.  For those of us who are pantsers (as opposed to plotters), this may be something we’re already doing almost unconsciously.  Sometimes doing it as a conscious exercise, even talking out loud as we type, can really help.

There you go-seven suggestions/tips/tricks that can help keep productivity up and words flowing.

Good luck!

Rule Six

Craft & Skills Editing First Drafts Ideas & Plotting Rewriting The Writing Process 2 Comments

What do you do when your brainchild is stillborn?  What do you do when the story you’ve spent months-years-in crafting and writing, the story you’ve almost literally sweated blood over, the story you love more than all your other literary children . . .

Just . . .

Doesn’t . . .

Work . . .

Last week I gave another writer a beta read on the second draft of a science-fiction novel he’s writing.  (All third-party pronouns in this post are generic, so don’t bother trying to guess who it was.  Not telling.)  I was able to report that the writing was really good.  I was also forced to report that the novel had issues that I felt kept it from being publishable.  (Said issues mostly lay in world building, but aren’t germane to this discussion.)

My friend accepted my thoughts with grace and class, and agreed that the novel definitely needed more work.  We parted still friends; which, to me, is perhaps the sign of a premier friend-the ability to accept criticism of a personal labor of love and still be warm to the critic.

A couple of days after our conversation, this thought occurred to me:  Should I have told him to cut his losses and move on to something new?

At first I was shocked that the thought had even crossed my mind, but then I realized what had prompted it.

Rule Three of Heinlein’s Rules of Writing states:  You Must Refrain from Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order.  Now most of us understand that rule not to mean that Thou Shalt Write Only First Drafts, but rather, that to spend excessive amounts of time rewriting and polishing a work is ultimately counterproductive and contra-indicated for building income.  (A writer I once read comes to mind who said that after he finished the first draft of each book, he would then spend a year reviewing every single word in the draft, one by one, considering whether it was the best word in that place.  Eep.)

So that was part of what was in the back of my mind, because I knew my friend had already spent a pretty fair amount of time on this work, and I had just indicated a lot of it needed to be taken apart and put back together differently, which would take a lot more work.

But there was something else in the back of my mind.

You see, I finished my first novel in 2002.  Before you congratulate me on that, I have to say I started it in 1977.

Twenty.  Five.  Years.

I was young.  I was stupid.  I was working solo, without the benefit of knowledgeable readers.  I had started it in a fit of temper after finishing a particularly bad SF novel which I threw across the room.

I wrote for a few weeks, then bogged down in the story.  I gave it up for a while, went and read some more good science fiction and fantasy, then came back and tried again.

That was the pattern for the next twenty-five years:  write until I became frustrated, then go away for months, or even a year or so, but eventually circle back to it, frequently starting over again.  By the time I finally drove it to a conclusion, I estimate I wrote over a half million words.  The finished manuscript was well under half that length, and it was too long.

It didn’t sell.

I gave it another full revision/rewrite/polish.

It didn’t sell.

Although I had never heard Robert Sawyer’s addendum to Heinlein’s Laws (Rule Six: Start Working on Something Else), I intuitively knew that I couldn’t just fixate on that novel; I couldn’t just hover over it and continue to try to pump life into it.  That way led to stagnation and sterility.  So I put it on the shelf, and moved on to other things, and before long did find my author’s voice and began selling professionally in 2007.

I still harbor love and affection for that first story, that first novel.  It still resonates in my mind.  But I realized something this week as I considered my friend’s novel:  mine will probably never be published, because I have too much new stuff I want to write to consider going back and trying one more time to build an edifice of words on a faulty foundation.

In the end, I answered my question about my friend’s novel:  “No.”  It wasn’t a warranted question.  It wasn’t my call to make.  And besides, there’s no doubt in my mind he can address the issues and write the story.

In the end, I answered my question about my novel:  “Yes.”   With a certain amount of sadness, I let it go.

Rule Six: Start Working on Something Else.

Tomorrow.

It’s a Book Review! (Fictorian Style)

Author's Perspective Reviews The Writing Life No Comments

I love comics.  And one webcomic in particular has hit the top of my list:  Girl Genius, by Phil and Kaja Foglio.  (If you haven’t tried it, go here.  I’ll wait.)

All of which is prelude to this review of the first volume of the novelization of the comic:  Agatha H. and the Airship City, by Phil and Kaja Foglio, published last year by Night Shade Books.  (Note that the authors are the same creative team that produce the webcomic.)

 

 

First, what it is:  the whole Girl Genius story universe is a fantasy/steampunk extravaganza, laid in what appears to be an analog of late 19th or early 20th century Europe, if you squint your eyes really hard.  There are all kinds of glorious brassy machines of all sizes, incredible monsters of all descriptions, and mad engineers all filled with the Spark, which enables them to create all of these crazy beasts and contraptions.  So it reads a bit like a three-way mash-up of The Prisoner of Zenda and Jules Verne and The Three Stooges.  Slapstick, oh my.  And Murphy’s Law appears to be a universal constant in this universe also:  whatever can go wrong, will.  And at the worst possible moment.

High hilarity is the result.

Now my experience of novelizations of original visual and graphic works has been very disappointing in the past.  But I finally broke down and read this one, and was very pleasantly surprised.  Perhaps because it was written by the creative team that writes the comic instead of by some outsider “adapting” the comic, it captures the flavor of the comic very well.  It does an astonishingly good job of telling the webcomic story arc that it parallels.  And almost all of the balancing-on-a-high-wire suspense and riding-a-speeding-car-down-the-mountain-road-with-no-brakes pacing makes the transition to text extremely well.

Second, what it isn’t.  It’s not dark, or depressing, or grim.  It gets a little tense from time to time, and it’s a little bloody, but most of the blood is green, so that doesn’t count.  It’s just a lot of fun.  I think we need to be reminded as writers that not everything we write has to be apocryphal, apocalyptic, or tragic.  There’s a place in the market for books like this, and kudos to the Foglios for writing it and to Night Shade Books for publishing it.

There’s not much of a way to tell you more about the story itself without committing major snerks, so let me just say that underneath the fun is some well-plotted writer’s craftsmanship.

Okay, so what did I as a writer find illuminating about the writer’s craft in this book?

First of all, I think it’s an excellent model of how to maintain a high energy breakneck pace in a long story.  It’s 264 pages long in hardback, and when I closed the cover I felt like I’d been on a killer roller coaster ride.  I think we could all get some pointers from that.  The writers just never let up on the pace.

Second, as mentioned above, even missing the mugging and double-takes possible in the comic, it’s still genuinely hilarious.  And it’s consistent in its humor as well, which is much harder to do than you might think, especially in a novel-length work.  I’ll be looking back at it for some hints on how to handle humor, as well.

Third, a negative lesson:  there is a class of characters in the story who are presented to the reader with a heavy generic Eastern European/Russian accent spelled phonetically.  I stumbled over this.  I’d have to stop and sound out the words to figure out what they were saying.  This reinforced in me the teaching I first got from one of L. Sprague deCamp’s essays, that dialect and accents need to be treated very carefully, otherwise it can interfere with the readability of the story.  If they had it to do over again, I would suggest to the Foglios that they lighten up on the dialect.  But with 11 years of producing the comic behind them, it’s a bit late for that.  Nonetheless, that was my only problem, and it wasn’t nearly enough to make me quit reading.

To wrap it up, all in all a well-crafted and enjoyable read, suitable for adults and YA as well.

Enjoy!

P.S. – The sequel, Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess has just been released, also from Night Shade Books.

I Haven’t Given Up

Publishing The Writing Life 3 Comments

The writing business is in an incredible turmoil right now.  It has been for a long time, actually.  And right now, there are doom-sayers and prognosticators all over the place predicting that traditional publishing is on its last legs and the only way to go is independent self-publishing.  Some of them are experienced writers who are intelligent and articulate (see Lawrence Block, or any of a series of posts at According to Hoyt, for example); others, not so much.  Myself, I’m a bit of a skeptic.  If someone indicates he knows for sure what the publishing industry is going to look like in ten years, I put my hand on my wallet.  If he says he knows for sure what it will look like in five years, I put both hands on my wallet, because sure as death and taxes, the next statement will probably be something like “And here’s an opportunity for you to get in on the ground floor of the New World Order.”  Heh.  Lord knows my spam bucket catches enough “we want to publish you” emails to prove that point.

Moving on.  I’ve been trying to crack the fiction traditional publishers’ Newbie Wall since 2002.  My first hardback anthology story was published in 2006 by Baen Books, with five more since then.  My first novel, a collaboration with Eric Flint, was just turned in to the publisher, Baen Books in April 2012.  I’m not sure I can say I’ve arrived, but I think I can see the station from here.  (And “arrived” does not mean I’m a name.  It just means I’ve got solid professional credits.)  So my perspective on all this may be a little different from either an established author with an extensive back-list or a struggling newbie yet to make a “professional” sale.

In my skepticism, do I think traditional publishing will survive?  Yes, I do.  There are a lot of people out there who derive an almost physical pleasure from sitting down with a physical copy of a good book anticipating a pleasant evening of reading (myself included), and I think those folks are going to continue to demand hard copy books.  And at this point, I’m not sure that the economies of scale for print-on-demand technology are going to prove truly competitive.  I think the jury is still out on that.

Will traditional publishing survive in its current form?  No.  I think the next ten years will force traditional publishers to find a different business model.  But I do think that there might be a few publisher names you recognize still in business in ten years.  However, I can guarantee that they will be doing business in a very different way.  Forget the governments; Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Apple will force them to it, one way or another.

Do I think traditional hard copy books will survive?  As I stated above, yes, I do.  However, I think the days of the 200,000 copy best-sellers are singing their swan song as I write this.  Once publishers adopt reasonable pricing for e-books and drop the DRM security, which I think they will be forced to do by market and legal pressures in the not-too-distant future, I suspect the sheer convenience of e-books will drive the sales of e-books up, consequently forcing sales of hard copies down.  (But that opinion and $5 will get you a Starbucks coffee.)  What I think will happen is independent publishers like Baen and small publishers like Subterranean Press and Nightshade Books will continue making hard copy books for readers who are dedicated to their offerings and programs.  Surviving big name publishers, if they can get divorced from the bean-counters who are killing them, may do something along those lines as well.  200,000 copies?  No.  500 – 5,000 copies?  Yes.  Maybe by subscription only, but still there.

But what does this mean for the writer?  Do we totally abandon the traditional publishing approach as so many are advocating?  Do we totally embrace the independent self-publishing model?  Do we reject it and cling to the traditional model?  Or does the truth lie somewhere in between those two extremes?

Regardless of what you think, any realistic assessment of the near-future industry is going to contain e-books and a substantial amount of self-publishing.  That topic has been and is almost continually being addressed in blogs all over the web, including right here at The Fictorian Era this month.  But what about the writers who still have a desire (for whatever reason) to make it in the traditional publishing world, to see hard copy books with their names on the covers?  What are their options?  Limited, but they all have a common element, and that is getting the author’s name out there somehow in the traditional world.

To do that , I think the future successful new author will have almost certainly have to build a resume of self-published work to serve as a door opener that shows the following:  number of works published, how quickly they were produced, samples of quality, and statistics of sales volumes over time-not just the initial surge, but the longevity of the sales.  Whenever you’re around other significant writers, or editors, or publishers, have those files (constantly updated) on your phone or your tablet, accessible at a moment’s notice, ready to e-mail or present if someone asks for them.  And work on your verbal presentations:

  • The elevator speech:  what can you say in 15-30 seconds that will intrigue an editor or publisher or significant writer with your ideas enough to say “Come with me,” or “Call me tomorrow.”
  • The expanded elevator speech:  1-2 minutes.
  • The conversation.

You never know when an opportunity may arise.  Be ready.

Here’s one final thought:  I found my publishing route by participating in Eric Flint’s grand fan-fic experiment, where he allows anyone who has the desire to write and submit stories in his Ring of Fire universe, the best of which are selected for publishing in the Grantville Gazette e-magazine, with the best of the e-magazine stories selected for the Grantville Gazette hard copy anthologies.  So this is a blended electronic and traditional approach, and it’s produced a number of writers, myself included, who have cracked the Newbie Wall from that platform.  Eric’s approach is unique (although I hear rumors that Thieves’ World may be contemplating something similar).  But the idea of finding some kind of existing program or co-op that has an established presence and fan base may have some merit.  Star Trek/Star Wars/Harry Potter don’t qualify, but there may be something else out there.  Look for it.  Again, the goal is to get your name on the cover of something that will serve as a credential to a traditional publisher, whether New York or small house.

So, that’s my thoughts.  They may be good prognostications, or they may be as wildly out in left field as the flying cars that were predicted in 1950’s science fiction.  It will be interesting to look back in five years or so and see how they stack up.