December is here. Tomorrow’s Iowa forecast is for a serious 20 degree drop in temperature. I think we’re getting serious about this winter business. You’d think the plethora of Black Friday commercials would be my first clue.
As I oft do while I was driving to Iowa City to register students, I accessed the ole subconscious today, and the Klarion saga came popping out. All of the grimness of the last several days is material I can use for the misunderstood and stunted aunt in the first book. I may even be telling the book from her misunderstood and stunted point of view. I have the same feeling I did when Errol told me to listen to a story, although he told me someone else’s story. Stunted aunt is too self-centered for that.
I dragged my mind back to the present project. I am planning to make a required word count each day this month. I want to make a January deadline with this troll book. This is going to be discipline, because ever since October, the other project has been goading me. (Write me! People want me!) It’s no biggie. I am a workhorse. I’ll get the troll book done because I know when it’s realistically due.
And finally, the other thing that occurred. What will the next big thing be in publishing? Because we’ve peaked the Steampunk summit, so it’s now on it’s way out.
The next big thing will be ansty demon binding magicians from the 19th century, full of melodrama and betrayal. We’ll call it Steam Goth.
No, I guess we will not. 😛
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So this post isn’t totally clueless, here’s something from Seanan McGuire about believing your own press and how everyone can’t and won’t like your books. It’s worth a looksie.
Catherine
This started out as a comment on believing your own hype and turned into a rant, so I turned it into a blog post, and re-posted most of it here.
If you read the rants of crazy people on the Internet and literary reviewers, you would think that no one would ever buy Stephanie Meyer or Dan Brown. You would think they would stay at home with the covers pulled over their heads ashamed at the fecaliterature they had visited upon the earth. A teacher once told Stephen King that he should be ashamed that he used he talent to write such horrible stories. There are even people who not only admit to writing romance, but they go to book signings and join the RWA just like they know how to write.
And yet, all these woefully inadequate writers have agents, publishers, and followers.
Here’s the truth, and this may come as a shock to some people. Different people like different things. Just like some people believe in a mechanical universe based on Newtonian physics and some people believe in deities, angels and fairies, some people read to be informed of the newest innovations in science, but some people read to feel their adrenaline pump or their heart swell. And contrary to what some people think, hating on a book does not denote intelligence.
Mmmm, steamed goth. They go well with kippers.
Shannon, well done!
Steve, steamed goth is kippers, right?