Story Order

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Am Reading

I had wanted to read Octavia Butler's Wild Seed for so long that I picked it up the moment I thought I could spend that much on a book (and that Veronica Roth didn't have anything new for me to inhale). The book fascinated me, I loved it, and when I saw it was part of a series, I bought the whole thing.

:cue dirge here:

Wild Seed was written fourth. You know what that means? Even though chronologically, in story-time it was the first book, it was not meant to be read first and shouldn't have been. The book redeemed Doro and then I read the second book chronologically and Butler killed him.

End of series for me.

But the second book was written almost first and the characters were all good and the ideas were wonderful. If I had read it first, then I would have loved probably the whole series.

Let this be a lesson to the scribbler (me): think about your story order and your publication order, especially when you put together omnibuses. Do not assume chronological is best. It probably isn't.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

I'm Not Alone

Behold! My writing process in the words of Kristine Rusch:

I mentioned in my first blog on this that there would be a lot of sausage-making in these posts. I don’t write in order (I wish I did) and characters tend to surprise me at times. So, I often have to work out how they got from point A to point YY. Some of that stays in my office forever, and some of it either becomes other projects or goes into the book.

In other words,  I don’t just write a book, I assemble it from pieces. On my very first novel, I printed out the chapters, then spread them on the floor of my office like playing cards, and put them in piles until they made sense. I can mostly do that on the computer now, with my own weird version of a spreadsheet, but it’s the same process.

A friend of mine calls that “writing into the dark” and whoa, boy, is she right. Sometimes I shed a light on a part of that darkness, see a maze, and slam the door closed. Sometimes I shed a light, and realize the room was bigger than I thought. And sometimes I shed the light, and realize what I thought was a room was really just an unimportant shadow. But I need to go in deep enough to turn on the light in the first place.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Scribbling at Leisure

This entry is part 44 of 44 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

I didn't rush into anything and I took my time and here I am.

Today, I skipped reading The Drought like I was supposed to and read Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler and the collaboration fic so I could write in it.

Writing went well and is continuing. I also created the mass-market book cover for Dowse and Bleed. I like it better than the trade. I'll do the interior tomorrow.

So tonight, I added 19 sentences to Splintered Gates, which came out to 150 words. Now, I can go to bed.

Word Count

• Fiction: 1263 words
• Poetry: 0 words, 0 lines
• Blog: 324 words

Splintered Gates

• Today: 150 words
• Total: 2325 words

Collaboration

• Today: 1113 words
• Total: 2724 words*

*written by me in 2014

January Totals

• Fiction: 6585 words
• Poetry: 212 words | 45 lines
• Blog: 6347 words

Completed Pieces

• Poem: "Before My Eyes," 220 words | 47 lines.
• Fanfic: "Mistakes," 1397 words.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.