GRIT + PEARL is my monthly letter about all the annoying stuff that goes into writing books and being a person who writes books (or other stuff, I don’t know, I’m not your boss). You can sign up here. Here’s January’s letter.
Writing & On Writing
I turned in my revisions early!
Right now I am writing to you with Elvis all around me. And I do mean *all* around me. There is Elvis music playing in every room. There are photos of Elvis on every wall. The soaps in the bathroom are all Elvis themed. And just out of sight is a PB+J bar that the other hotel guests talk about with unflinching reference.
I’m writing short stories again
I began a new short story yesterday. It started as a warmup for a day of writing, but a few hours later I was still within it, toiling away. I think this was a trick I played on myself. I’ve already resolved to write short stories this year, though yesterday was not the day I planned to start. So why was it the thing I started with? Probably because it’s the thing I should be writing.
Writing in 2018
I didn’t write a ton in 2017, mostly because I was busy revising a project, revising it again, and then creating auxiliary resources (like a series synopsis) for submission. Once that all got handed over, my job as a writer became: WAITING. For the first time in two years I was without a project to hold my attention, and it was a feeling that was both liberating and stupefying. What was I going to work on next? I’ve avoided asking myself this for ages, for two reasons.
Some big news
Okay so I couldn’t really say anything about this until today but it’s official: I’m now represented by Veronica Park at Corvisiero! I’m absolutely beyond thrilled to be working with her and her agency. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m tortured by big decisions like this, but Veronica’s wit and savvy made this an easy one. I’m so glad to join her list of clients, and to demand all of her attention until she inevitably realizes she’s made a huge mistake and flees the country.
Plotting new things in 2017
For a while I avoided considering writing another book because it seemed like an act of defeat. It felt this way because my first book was this big, messy thing that lived in pieces upon my desktop, and I hadn’t really sent it around to agents, and it wasn’t published. For that reason alone, the idea of starting a new book felt like giving up on the old one.
How to avoid your publishing dreams in the summer of 2016
It’s hard to write in the summer. At least for me. And maybe I’m alone in this — other people brag about how much writing they’re doing on Twitter, but the quiet irony of this pleases the jealous and bitter part of me (which is, really, most of me) greatly, and so I have to repeat myself: It’s hard to write in the summer.
Read moreHow to avoid your publishing dreams in the summer of 2016
Writing Spaces
I’ve been listening to Sarah Enni‘s First Draft podcast non-stop since I discovered it via Twitter a few weeks ago. I tweeted at her to let her know. She tweeted back. It was great. Still waiting for her to reach out to interview me, but I know she’s busy and heaven knows I’m busy. Gosh.
Word Counts: Yours, Theirs, and Mine
This past weekend I was at a bar with a few folks from work and the topic of writing and fantasy novels came up. This, to me, is always a perilous moment. Compared to a lot of writers, I’m not altogether that enthusiastic with talking about my writing projects with strangers (you know, aside from having a blog that is url’d with my name, where I literally talk about my writing projects with strangers…). But someone mentioned that I was working on getting published and inevitably someone else asked: “How long is your book?”
Metaphori-Weekly! – People Are Like Pencils
People Are Like Pencils
People are like pencils; honed and whole at first, with a core of potential words hidden beneath a sheath of laminate, a hard-gloss finish in any and every color. People are like pencils; sharpened to a lethal point in a moment of whirring tumult, a point that might prick blood in the half-thought of haste, a point that cuts across yawns of ambiguous blankness in precise, stringent lines that structure and rectify, cross-out and destroy. People are like pencils; their words might be erased, but not the actual imprints they etch on the surfaces they touch; when their sentences are gone, the ghosts of their sentiments are left behind as pocks and scars and smudges and particles of dust.