Lois McMaster Bujold: On writing (sort of forwarded from LMB mailing list) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2092: Martin Bonham asked a question that appeared too far down in my digest for me to use the nice auto-reply, but to paraphrase, he asked how far in advance do I plan the Miles books? Usually, one book at a time. In other words, I know about as much about what is going to happen next in Miles's life as he does, and have nearly as much chance of guessing wrong. The series mutates as it is written, its future changing with the accidents and new possibilities raised by each succeeding book. New ideas or characters or settings appear, old ones are abandoned or expanded or twisted. Ideally, each book stands alone and so potentially, each book could be the last. The _Komarr_/_Civil Campaign_ duo form an exception; for once, I got onto a theme and series of events I could *not* handle in one volume. I might have left the story arc at the end of _Komarr_, done something else in between, and got back to it, but from my point of view at the end of _Komarr_, the story *I* wanted to tell was not finished. _A Civil Campaign_ insisted upon itself. It does make me feel as though I've been writing the same damned book for the last three years, though. (Head 'em off at the pass note: the thriller/science plot of _Komarr_ was finished at the end of the volume. The emotional story arc is the one that gets continued. There will be new action (if you can call them that) well, intrigue plots in the next book -- two out of three of the plotlines are unrelated to _Komarr_, the third is a continuation. The body count is appropriate for a comedy of manners. I gird myself to try to persuade Baen *not* to package it as military SF, but see doubts below...) No, I do not have shelves of notebooks with Barrayar's, or Miles's, future history all sketched out. My vision for his fate is unrestricted except by the published stories. Another way of putting this is, I am not the person I was ten years ago. If I change as much in the next decade as I did in the last, how the devil should I guess what books that future me will want to write? My future me would not thank the current me for putting her in a creative straight-jacket by excessive pre-planning -- or worse, pre-contracting. Re: my cover concerns, above, Jim Baen is right, I concede, when he says military SF sells better. If a recent note in Locus is to be believed, Honor Harrington is now out-selling Miles by over two to one. While I am very glad that my publisher is making lotsa money -- this is a Good Thing -- my feelings about this are naturally somewhat mixed. (Still, if numbers were my only consideration, I could write a Star Wars novel that would doubtless outsell my entire ouevre put togther -- an offer I have declined.) This leads into the news from Amazon.com, that _Komarr_ is sold out. There are two ways of looking at this, the optimistic and the pessimistic. One the one hand, one may think that the book sold well. On t' other, one may think that it was under-printed. I am divided about this as well, since it's *really* *really* embarrassing when one's publisher optimistically over-prints and the book tanks, leaving an ugly low sell-through on one's resume and mountains of unwanted remainders in the warehouse. (_The Spirit Ring_ being the case in point, a blow to my reputation in the chain computers from which my career has still not recovered. And what I'd *really* like to write next is another fantasy... sigh.) On a brighter note, I just got my author's copies of _Shards of Honor_ in Hebrew today, from Israel. It's... sort of mind-boggling. Rather nice, if slightly schizophrenic, cover, with a couple in quasi-historical dress embracing romantically in one corner and a couple of space ships in the other. Sums up the book, really... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3371: The new Miles book that I contracted without consulting my backbrain first is being slow to assemble itself. I'm still not actually writing. I have a lot of promising-looking pieces assembled that I'm still mentally shoving around in the box, but so far, there's something still missing. The pattern does not yet please me. The characters just lie there, staring at me in dumb resentment. No, you can't help; this part I have to do on my own. I usually get very grumpy just before a creative breakthrough, so there's hope. If it isn't just the concatenation of personal aggravations and stresses clustering at the moment (none insurmountable on its own, just bunched up.) I definitely need to go on a stringent Internet diet Real Soon Now, though. > > From: Drew Hill > Subject: Fan fics and Copyright stuff question > > I'm a big fan of Babylon 5 as well as being a fan of > the Vorkosiverse. I know that there's a lot of > fanfics > for the Vorkosiverse and that it's actually promoted > to some extent by Herself. Tolerated. As in, turning a blind eye. Not promoted. Left to my own devices, I'd just think of it as an especially flattering form of fan mail, but other writers have had problems. And my agent is very twitchy indeed about anything that might compromise the salability of my rights. >This is the total opposite > of the B5 newgroup, it's not only frowned upon, but > some people have been ejected from the moderated news > group for posting script suggestions! Hollywood is, necessarily and from lots of unpleasant experience, wildly lawsuit-sensitive. I've heard it put that New York (publishing) buys words, but Hollywood (film) buys ideas. So far, I've only been selling words, but that may change, and I've had to become more cautious than I would prefer to be. > > My question is for both Lois and the rest of you > folks: > To what extenet to the fanfics inhibit or enhance new > plots and book ideas? Not because of the copyright thing, but if too many people come up with the same idea, I figure it's too obvious, and the creative energy sort of drains out of it for me. Once a book is actually written and in the publishing pipeline, speculation is much less of a problem for me, even if folks guess right. There's a sort of time window of opportunity there for entertaining chat. >Are there books that haven't > been written because of a possibility of copyright in- > fringement? Not yet, but the possibility increases. I had been toying -- three years ago! -- with the possibility of sticking Ivan with a haut wife, but several fans in various venues have come up with the idea independently since. The idea, though not yet discarded, is on hold in the bag of multiple possibilities. It's not a scenario that's part of the current project anyway, so it's not a present dilemma. >Are there times that we've "guessed > right" > and made you change your stories? Usually, I've been able to stay out ahead of y'all, but that's been getting harder. One of the secret joys of writing _The Curse of Chalion_ was the knowledge that *nobody* was going to be coming up with correct detailed guesses about *this* one in advance. As I add more books to the Chalion universe, however, we'll doubtless be back to square one. >Have the fanfics > ever caused any legal, publication, or story line pro- > blems? Not yet. I am reluctantly, becoming more cautious; I don't read the fanfic posted on my own website, for example. Some kinds of fan writing are less problematical; filk, for example. > > Not being nosey, just trying to start another > non-flame > but yet relevant thread. :) > Andy Hill (the Draken) It's a puzzle. I feel speculation and fan-fic should be among the legitimate joys of experiencing certain kinds of fiction. Were the series finished and/or the author dead, it would also be a non-issue, but the Vorkosiverse may still have a few more books in it yet, and, of course, there's the hope of some lucrative media-rights sale down the road someday. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3352: > From: Deb Stansbury > "POUNCER ." wrote: > > > But many details later, I've heard it rumored that it was > > IVAN who was outlined to be, er, lined out. And that only > > the direct intervention of the GodEmperor Baen salvaged > > him. > > > > Anybody else ever hear such a terrible rumor? If so, it came from some random fannish speculation, and not from me. 'Tain't so. I did, early on, hope to find a romance for Ivan to match Miles's and Mark's, but my back-brain had other plans. Hence the "missing" sixth viewpoint. > > > > Anybody believe it? > > Several people suggested the fight scene where Dono is attacked... Such a turn of events would have destroyed the tone of the novel. And the theme, and the structure, and several other fundamental aspects. Some People have no sense of Art, that's what. Selection. Restraint. Knowing what to leave out, fer gosh sakes. I'm on record elsewhere as saying that the main difference between comedy and tradgedy is that when Sir Toby Belch says, "Put up, put up, gentlemen, for God's sake!" they do, but when Mercutio says the same thing, they don't. Tone balances on a knife edge. > > I don't know...I'm with those that say Lois wouldn't have agreed to change > something _that_ major (to the readers and loyal Ivan fans :-) at the behest > of even the big B. That is correct in principle. I do give all editorial input careful consideration, and I did make some clarifying changes in the final draft of _ACC_ in response to same. But the final decisions are always mine. > On the other hand, _characters_ often have minds of > their own. Say, she had intended that Ivan died. As it's been said, he's > not stupid. Maybe he saw what was coming and said "NO!" :-) Anyone's who > done any writing know that characters have been known to do that to their > writer from time to time ;-) > > I'm just saying, it could have happened :-) Self-preservation is a powerful > force, even (especially?) in literature. > > Debra Stansbury, ramblin' away. See above re: Ivan's truncated romance plot. I think there must be some sort of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" thing going on with the plots characters attract to themselves. (Insert chorus from the old Stones song here...) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2101: > i believe Pouncer also mentioned the possibility of some > short stories that can be later collected as an anthology. Another novella collection is a real possibility, as _Borders of Infinity_ is my top-selling title. And God knows I'd like to do something *shorter* next. > > I am presently > > sitting at the top of that midlist SF gap, on the wrong side of the > > chasm, and I don't know how to jump the gap. > use a bridge...... i have the impression that, aside from > the "Spirit Ring" related drop, that your sales have > gradually been climbing since your first book. It's hard to evaluate numbers between books that have been on the market for some years, and newer books. I will have to look at the sales numbers from another angle to correct for the time-differential, but in any case, it looks a lot like the problem of crossing a chasm in two jumps. The numbers are not going up in any obvious way. The exception is hardcover sales; I've been s*l*o*w*l*y gaining ground with each title, a few thousand more sold each round. Solid and respectable, if still far short of the sort of exciting numbers that get puffed off in _Locus_. But paperback sales appear to have stayed flat for the past several books. > hopefully Baen will > keep coming out with the double volumes..... "Cetaganda" > combined with "Ethan of Athos" (opened with the short story > "Labyrinth"), "Brothers in Arms" with "Mirror Dance" (opened > with the short story "Borders of Infinity"), "Falling Free" > with the Quaddie sequel.... etc....) Not sure. Baen had very good numbers from Elizabeth Moon's Paks trilogy in trade paperback, which my two have failed to equal. They may leave it at the two -- which nonetheless are both very good Bujold starter-sets, and will likely stay in print for that reason for some time to come. > > hmmm...... if the current rate of "rather too little" > increase continues - how many more books would you have to > write in order to cross that "gap"? I have no idea. Lots, but all things don't ever really remain equal. > From: Pat > What several writers have done is establish several > personalities, so that "Lois McMaster Bujold" writes the Miles stuff, > "Laisa Masters" writes the Renaissance fantasy, and "Louis Bull" writes > Westerns. ;}> > That would work great -- if I could write faster. But if I could write faster, I wouldn't have the problem to solve in the first place... > From: Pouncer@aol.com > > Given that slightly derisive label, (Space opera) any thoughts about > taking a straight opera like _Carmen_ or _Don Giovanni_ > and transliterating it to SF? Well, I have been referring to Mark and Kareen in _A Civil Campaign_ as playing Pappageno and Pappagena... (I'd better explain this joke. They are characters from Mozart's _The Magic Flute_. I think of them in this context principally because they are a secondary romantic couple whose trials and tribulations thematically mirror, on a more physical level, those of the primary romantic couple, not because Mark is ever likely to suddenly sprout any musical talent whatsoever.) From the Plot FAQ, you > are quoted: > > > I use music a lot, but very eclectically. ... I don't ever > >have music on while I actually write, but I often use it to > >kick up ideas and images in the pre-writing phase of story > >development. With one exception -- "King Henry and the > >Grisly Ghost" on a Steeleye Span album -- > > What was the exception for "King Henry..."? It's the source of Taura, in "Labyrinth". --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2610: > >Miles is an unreliable narrator Scott replies: >I have objections to this. I've had objections to it since the first time I > saw it. > > Is First Person Miles _really_ less reliable than any other First Person > viewpoint? If so, why? (Note, Miles is not written in first person, he's written in tight third person. Which is actually someplace between first and third in its filtration effects.) Well, it depends in part on the writer, but no, Miles is not more (or, for that matter, less) unreliable, if the writer has chosen a tight third person or first person voice. It's a question of how many voices are being allowed in into the text. It's perfectly possible to write a third person (although not a first person) in which the character's voice and the narrator's voice are two quite separate and distinct things. In this case, the POV character's voice is set off or balanced by the narrator's voice (which, granted, may have its own unreliabilities, but let's not make this too complicated.) In tight third, the narration is "filtered" through the POV character's perceptions and mind to the point where the authorial-narrator voice nearly or completely disappears. If the reader fails to notice that's what's happening, they may well mistake the character's voice (not to mention political opinions) for the author's, or be upset when something the character has said/perceived/done turns out to be mistaken or untrue. I had, in _ACC_, a spot in the revisions where I had occasion to re-write a scene from Ekaterin's viewpoint to Miles's. Let me tell you, Miles may not be more unreliable, but he's sure more opinionated! Among the other things that reserved-Ekaterin reserves are judgments. The scene ended up about a page longer, all from Miles's interpolated editorials. > > Now, Miles _is_ unreliable as compared to a an omniscient narrator - yes, > that's true. But I'd have to go re-read all the books - I'm not certain any > of Lois' novels are written from the point of view of an omniscient > narrator! Correct. They're all tight third, so far, albeit with various degrees of control as I honed my style. > > In summary - Miles _isn't_ a narrator. He's a POV character, which is not > the same thing at all! (IMAO) You are correct that they're not the same thing, but Miles is both, in the scenes from his point of view. The perception, the metaphors, the rhythm and choice of words used to describe things -- all Miles. It's a very *practiced* voice for me to write in, after all the on-stage time he's had, and I fall into it very easily, almost by default if I don't watch myself. But, as I *hope* _ACC_ shows, it's not the only voice I can write in. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DIGEST 2971: > From: Scott Raun > Subject: Re: Is ACC really science fiction? > > Just ran across what should be a valid point on this question - > > On Tue, 30 Nov 1999 21:03:24 GMT, nancy ott wrote: > > >Is "A Civil Campaign" really science fiction? > _ACC_ most certainly is SF, but it's a question of miscegenation -- there are those who might feel that the *presence* of a romance element denies it its place rather than the *absence* of SFnal elements. I believe this to be a form of literary allergic reaction, and not susceptible to rational argument. > From: Avery Andrews > Absolutely. Living in Australia (but having grown up in East Coast USA, > I detect a noticeable Australia-New Zealand flavor in some of the diction, > describing things as being `buggered', saying `too right', etc. Generally British, as filtered through whatever sources reached my ears back in Ohio... >South > Africa is another possibility, tho I don't have any sense of what > South African English is like. It might be relevent that Lois says > somewhere that the scenery in South Africa inspired some of the > landscape of Sergyar in SoH. It was East Africa -- Kenya and Tanzania, 1971 college biology trip. > << If I can consider Dreamweaver's Dilemma to be canon: > there was some sort of massive techno-ecological catastrophe in North > America (possibly combined with a nuclear war? ISTR mention of Pittsburgh > getting nuked...) No, Cleveland. I have/had relatives in Pittsburgh... used to visit 'em every year... > which permanently broke America as a major power. >> > Sheesh... > Carol > (who doesn't have Dreamweaver's Dilemna...need to go find it) But don't let that stop you from picking up a copy of _Dreamweaver's Dilemma_ anyway... :-) > > To be honest Terry Pratchett is an author whose books I have yet to > > read, (the cover art initially put me off), although enough people > > here have recommended them that I do plan to start next time I go to > > an appropriate bookshop. _Equal Rites_, _Mort_, and _Guards! Guards!_ are all great starting points, each one beginning a different sub-set of the books. _Small Gods_ and _Pyramids_ are two of the better stand-alones. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DIGEST 749: > Maybe this is Another Thing I Don't Really Want To Know... but here it > goes... Where did a nice person like you learn to write such horrific > torture scenes? Or am I making another erroneous assumption about an > author :-) > > Martha > chisholmdog@juno.com There's a story I heard about Dustin Hoffman and Lawrence Olivier... seems they were working together on a film the script of which called for Hoffman's character to have been awake for 30 hours -- Hoffman being a method man, he'd kept himself up for that length of time and then stumbled zombie-like onto the set. Upon Hoffman's explaining the reason for his his debilitated condition, i.e., his desire to be more convincing in his part, Oliver is said to have remarked: "My dear boy! Have you ever considered *acting*?" Art transforms and transmutes experience, it doesn't just record it. You can't make any assumptions about a writer based on their art unless they themselves have given you the key to the transformations, and even then they're not always right/perfectly insightful about their own work. Pat may like to expand on this... I'm pretty sure I've read at least one lucid rant by her on this very topic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DIGEST 1767: > I've gotten the feeling from things said and posted that _Impwed_ might be a > break from heavy thematic lifting. ImpWed will be a comedy, thank God. Re: heavy lifting, as I see it, the operational difference between comedy and tragedy is that when Sir Toby Belch cries, "Put up, put up gentlemen, for God's sake!", they do, but when Mercutio cries the same thing, they don't. The main bifurcation is in the timely good sense of the characters, rather than the thematic heft, which I find pretty even. To address some of your gripes about > _Komarr_, _Impwed_ falls Good word choice, that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DIGEST 2122: > In _SoH_ and _Barrayar_, the pov is Cordelia's. Why did LMB choose to > tell the story from a female character's pov in a male dominated planet? I'm not sure I can be said to have "chosen" anything about my first novel. I just sat down and started writing. Cordelia was a woman in her early thirties, and so was I; the viewpoint seemed easy and accessible. And I didn't "choose to tell the story from a viewpoint" in any case; the story did not pre-exist. I began with the viewpoint, the characters, and made up the story around them. In other words, the characters came first, then the plot. And after that the setting and background, for that matter. I > know that almost sounds like I answered my own question, but I don't > really think of Cordelia as being an activist for feminism b/c Beta Colony > is so egalitarian.... > > But back to my question. Did LMB choose a female voice b/c LMB is a woman? > Was that just always how LMB pictured the books? I ask b/c once when I was > rereading them, it occured to me that I didn't know what it was like > inside Aral's head. I've never done Aral's viewpoint, and probably never will. It would "de-mystify" him, cut him down to size too much. Power doesn't look so much like power from its own point of view, after all. Note that I advanced through other sorts of viewpoints as rapidly as possible, given that (until Falling Free) I was writing single-viewpoint books. A woman... a young man... a gay guy... then, with FF, a *truly* alien viewpoint: a 40-year-old white male engineer... I noticed that Cordelia learns about all the political > ramifications and such thru Aral, and hence the reader learns about them, > too. Even though I'm not really into politics, I was wondering how Aral > thinks about all the Counts and where they stand. You know, all the > usual stuff being regent for 16 years ingrains into you. Not sure, but for the certainty that Aral at 20, 40, 60 and so on were all very different men. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DIGEST 1756: OK, here are my views on the intrinsic subjectivity of literature, or more properly, reading, and why all good-bad arguments are doomed to turn to hash. In the first place, there are no words on the page. At all. What's on the page are patterned splotches of ink. When these patterned splotches are brought into viewing distance of a human eye and mind, they are capable of creating different levels of response according, and only according, to the mind that is perceiving them. The first thing the mind must possess for the blotches to become words is a definitional meaning of that particular pattern, which is socially learned. A person who lacks this learning will only see ink splotches, more or less pretty -- as when an illiterate person looks at a word, or when a person literate in his native tongue looks at a word in a foreign language. The person who has received the appropriate prior learning looks at the ink splotches and *projects the meaning into them from the reservoir of their own mind*. The second thing that happens (simultaneously) is the projection of associational meaning. The more emotionally neutral the word, the more likely it is that most people will share similar associational meanings for it. The more emotionally freighted the word, the more likely it is that associations will differ profoundly. Take the word "mother" for an example. The associational meaning the reader may project will depend heavily upon his/her personal and unique experiences. "Mother" can evoke a warm fuzzy feeling about someone who loves, feed, protects, and reads one stories. Or, instead, it might evoke feelings of inchoate terror as it calls up memories of a bitch-queen from hell who used to burn one with cigarettes for minor infractions of an ever-changing and entirely bewildering set of secret rules. Associational meaning, too, the reader projects into the word from the reservoir of their own training and experience. Every reader will have some slightly different associational meaning for every single word they encounter (some of them will have different definitional meanings as well). The closest a writer can get to picking the "reality" of a word is to select something fairly close to the center of the bell curve; we trust that more people's mothers fed them and read them stories than burned them with cigarettes. But the reader who brings the second associational meaning to the word *can't* be told his meaning is "wrong"; for him, it's absolutely right and true. The most you can say is that his associations are different. Thus, a reader who had has his perceptions altered, say, by reading the Turkey City list and deciding every dialogue tag modified by an adverb is an error called a "Tom Swifty", and that furthermore such use of adverbs is an objective definition of "bad writing", will dutifully see such a dialogue tag as "bad writing", and truly will experience "badness". A reader who's never heard of Turkey City, and wouldn't know an adverb from an advertisement, won't project that associational response into the word before him, and truly won't experience "badness". Readers must be *taught* to experience a cliche as bad writing; most of them won't come up with the notion on their own, but merely take the word-string as a verbal macro or multi-word package of definitional/associational meaning, just as they are used to hearing it in real life. I can quite easily imagine some reader, perhaps in a psychology experiment, being taught instead that cliches represent "good writing" for some plausible-sounding reason -- that cliches enhance the social framework of literature, say -- and ever after greeting every cliche they encounter with a little wriggle of aesthetic delight. Every subjective pitfall on the word level is squared and cubed on the sentence, paragraph, and higher-order emergent property level of writing and reading. Reading is an *experience*. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading *experience* depending on what they project into the words they see, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never, therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the single mind. The real reason discussions of quality in literature get emotionally hot very rapidly is that they inescapably entail a covert judgment being passed on the private and invisible minds of other human beings. A very few people, alive to this -- Pamela Dean is one of them -- can phrase a coherent literary argument non-judgmentally, paying careful and respectful attention to both the text and its reader or groups of readers. Many critiquers get into trouble by mistaking *their* reading experience for *the* reading experience, as though anyone who read the same text brought the same mind to it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 767: Hi folks! First, I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my informal survey question. I've been doing a rough totting-up of the replies, trying to reach some sort of statistical illumnation. I'd also like to apologize for de-railing the normal conversation; *I* find this marketing stuff riveting, but then, I have a vested interest (and a child in college). In general, there have been no great surprises compared to the Received Wisdom of things I've been told about the SF market, one of which was "Don't sweat about reviews, almost nobody buys books on the basis of reviews." Indeed, almost nobody did -- with the exception, importantly, of the purchasing librarians who placed all those library books where people could find 'em. The realization follows that the only really important reviews are the ones which librarians buy from -- Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and a couple of others. Reviews in SF genre sources are therefore only important for notifying old readers when a new book is coming out; they may maintain but do not increase sales. Hm, interesting. Judging by the numbers, among the people who have responded to this question so far, word of mouth is far and away the most important "marketing tool", which wisdom also matches what most of the publishing insiders say. (Unfortunately, this wisdom usually comes in the form of, "It's no use spending money promoting your books, they'll sell by word of mouth.") As *incoming*, it's co-equal with several other sources, but if I throw in all the *outgoing* reports, people who've turned other readers on to my books, it trumps all the rest. So I can go around repeating myself honestly, if boringly, at every opportunity that "word of mouth has been the lifeblood of my career." For which I thank you all very much. That said, the other categories fell out, as the numbers rolled in, suprisingly equally. Analog Magazine holds a slight lead, followed by new and used bookstores and libraries almost neck-and-neck. Analog appearances are one of the few items in any way under either my or my publisher's direct control -- I went out and hustled all my Analog sales my very own self. It follows, a little depressingly, that one of the most effective things I could do to increase my sales is to "salt" every used bookstore in the country with multiple copies of THE WARRIOR'S APPRENTICE and SHARDS OF HONOR. I'm not sure I can sell this idea to Baen. Meantime, I suppose anyone who want to replace their old copy of WA (the one with the lady in the "combat nightie") with the new edition with corrected spelling and the dippy-faces cover, and sell their old copy off to their nearest and dearest used store, feel free, my blessings upon you. (I shall tell you cover stories in a separate post, as this one is long already.) This idea is related, but not identical to, the good and rather more practical one from Alice Bentley (proprietor of the fine Chicago SF bookstore The Stars Our Destination -- look it up if you're in the area, folks -- and they do mail order) of giving books to store clerks. SHARDS and WA were the books most often cited as "starter books", not too surprisingly either, as they are the oldest titles and have been on the market the longest; as "early books" in the series, they're also the ones most likely to be pressed on a new reader by a knowledgable proselytiser. Well and good, they're still in print, Baen's doing their part there. A few words on how US book distribution works, for the uninitiated. A publisher's primary customers are not, surprisingly, you folks: the people who buy books from publishers are bookstores, book chains, and independent distributors (Ingrams, Baker & Taylor, etc.) About three or four months before a book is due to be released, the publisher's sales forces goes around to these customers and collects their orders, based on internal publicity (an important part of the advertising budget the end-reader never sees; in fact, it's what the publisher usually means by the term "advertising") and, (keep an eye on this) the sales of the author's previous book(s). Then, and only then, the publisher decides the print run. At this point, before any reader has ever seen the book, it is "positioned" as a potential best-seller -- or not. If orders are high, it's positioned to go, though it may yet fall flat. If it's not, even if the stores sell out, it won't be -- the books don't exist to be sold, and even if they're reprinted, the momentum is lost, it's a new month with a new lead book to be pushed, etc. This is a catch-22 for the writers. If the publisher under-prints, opportunities may be lost forever. If they over-print (as, for example, 1945 suffered from vastly inflated bookstore orders -- though it actually sold twice as many hardcover copies as MIRROR DANCE), the publisher ends up with an embarrassing and expensive pile of hardcovers back in the warehouse later, or if paperback, an appallingly low sell-through. Needless to say, it's the author/book who usually gets blamed for a bad sell-through. So an author jumping up and down and demanding high print runs from their publisher is a tactic which can backfire badly. Yet if the average sale is one-half of whatever stack is in the bookstore, and author with a stack of 10 books is going to sell five times as many copies as the fellow with a stack of 2 books -- and the next time around, the bookstore will order five times as many of his new book. One gets quite literally trapped in a certain sales-level slot in everyone's computers. Ways of breaking through the glass ceiling are few and chancy. They include such draconian measures as changing one's publisher or even (if you know about Robin Hobb/Meghan Lindholm's career) changing one's *name*. Argh! (Explanation of sell-through. Unsold paperback books are not returned to the publisher. Instead, the covers are stripped off, the books are (supposedly) destroyed on-site, and the *covers* are returned for the refund, often by weight or measured-inches of the stacks. This is a pernicious but entrenched system that is doing a lot of damage to American publishing; Pat or Alice or I can expand in another post if there's interest in the topic.) Oh, another publishing factoid of interest to the statistically-inclined. The author's share of the cover price of a book is 6% to 8% for paperbacks, 10% to 12-15% for hardcovers. Publishers sell wholesale at, usually, less than half of cover price. So of a typical $5.99 paperback, the author's share is about $.47. The other 92%, $5.53, all goes to other people. It follows an author has to sell a *pile* of paperback books to make a living at this game. So, I've been watching this system for years, trying to figure out where to stick in a lever to move it to my benefit, and I haven't figured it out yet. Running around spending personal effort on promotion cuts into precious writing time and energy, and quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns even for the most hyperactive author (which I am not.) Pushing for big print runs unsupported by an assured audience is a quick and messy form of professional suicide. Doing nothing appears to result in staying trapped in the glass box. Word of mouth is wonderful, but it is *s*l*o*w*. But frankly -- Obi-Wan -- you guys are the only hope. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 807: Hi folks -- One last visit for now. I am down to the last revision run-through of the new book, and absolutely have to settle on the final title. The two candidates are KOMARR and FRACTURE AND FROST. You folks are the very people for whom the title doesn't matter; you'd buy the book on author's and series' name, so you may have as much trouble with this decision as I do. But at least it's some sort of customer survey. I've given up on coming up with the perfect thematic title, and have defaulted to market considerations. (You are the market.) KOMARR has the advantage of being short and unique. However, it is also uninformative to the new reader; doesn't say anything about what the book might be. I'm afraid it would not attract the new eye. FRACTURE AND FROST are at least recognizable words; but I have a horrible suspicion it sounds dippy. I'm afraid it would actively repel the new eye. So: if you were non-Bujold readers, browsing an SF section, which title would be more likely to make you pick up and try the book? ========================================== Thanks for all the thoughtful responses on my title quest. It looks like KOMARR wins by a wide margin; by my rough count in the last two digests, KOMARR got about 28 votes to FRACTURE AND FROST'S 11 or so (I counted some peoples' waffle-votes one for each, so the number of votes may exceed the number of voters.) 5 valiant votes for EKATERIN, two write-in's for GODZILLA VERSUS KOMARR (maybe in my next incarnation) and one for ARMS(WO)MEN OF GOR. I had to ask... For the moment, and unless inspiration-lightning strikes my brain (which it hasn't done for the last many months, despite hours of whining on the subject, so it's probably futile to wait longer) the new Miles book out next summer in hardcover in the US (and in the fall in the UK in paperback) will be titled KOMARR. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2242: A passing observation on narrative voice -- when a writer is doing what we call around here "tight third" or "third person personal", the writer really doesn't *have* a separate narrative voice with which to invite the reader to do, well, anything. This is very much a modern writing style, developed mostly in the 20th Century (along with a lot of innovations in presentation and transition that are visually-, not voice-, based, which both stem from and depend on an audience trained in the conventions of cinema and TV.) In tight third all the narrative chunks are, or are supposed to be (one slips now and then), filtered entirely through the viewpoint character's perceptions. It is perforce left to the reader to figure out just how reliable or un- the character is. Some readers -- indeed, some with literary training who *ought* to know better -- seem to miss this curve with distressing regularity, especially in the single viewpoint books. Confusing the character's opinions with those of the author is one symptom of this error. Multiple (tight personal) viewpoints at least give the possibility of triangulation on the -- I hesitate to use the word, "truth" in this context, since I don't believe truth in this sense exists apart from the heads it's held in -- relative degree of unreliability among the several characters. (Indeed, a good subject for somebody's thesis might be a study of the shift to this 20th Century multiple-relativity from the 19th Century narrative assumption of "one truth" that exists apart from the characters and is the property of the Author. In place of the formerly-omniscient Narrator is an empty space; the reader is not given a secure platform from which to look and judge...) Re: _Memory_ versus Henry James's _The Golden Bowl_, what I mainly stole from it was the notion of an absorbing climax that consisted entirely of a single character sitting alone in a room and coming to some key realizations and decisions, after which the world changed. Any other resonances the alert reader may find between the two books are accidental or unconscious. PS -- The "new" ACC cover on the Baen website may be found by scrolling down from the first one; it's on the same panel. I am assured it was a joke. Thank God. I about fainted... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2262: I just wanted to drop in a line and mention that I've been enjoying the reader-response chat as a result of Baen posting ACC. This method of, um, serialization, I suppose one could call it, plays almost as much hell with my carefully orchestrated pacing as our high school lit teachers did with/to the books we had to read and discuss, painfully slowly, for them. But on the other hand, it stops in their tracks those bloody speed readers who wolf down a year and a half's work in two hours and then say brightly, "And when is the next one?" At the rate Baen is posting scenes, you'll be forced to read the thing at almost the same pace as I *wrote* it. I hope it doesn't make you equally sick of the prose... But it is resulting in an amazingly close reading of the text, which I appreciate. The trick will be to squeeze something equally detailed out of you for Chapters 11 - 20, this fall. And I am rather fond of the fact that in *this* format, no one can flip to the end and find out how it all comes out, heh. You're *forced* to read it in the order I mandated. The speculation is just fascinating, from my point of view. Picture me fiendishly chucking each time you hare off down a blind alley, or wincing and whimpering in pain every time you successfully second-guess a plot development. I do notice, as a general rule, that you all base your speculations upon known previous events and characters; any *new* events and characters introduced in a book are, naturally, outside your possible scope. The way for me to stay out ahead of y'all becomes clear... I can hardly wait for you to get to Chapter 3. Or Chapter 7... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2865: On Vorkosigan Tarot ideas: Heh -- This one may be even more on-topic than you know. Back when I was booting up the ideas for _Komarr_, Pat Wrede and I did a tarot reading for Ekaterin. I'm now very sorry I didn't write down the results, but I remember we were both rather impressed when her reading turned up all but two cards (of 13?) major trumps, right side up, and ended with the final outcome being The World. Tarot is a fascinating trick to stir up one's ideas when plotting fiction. I remember the results in the position covering love/marriage as being rather ambiguous, compared to some of the others... I suspect she and Miles will find a few boulders in their life's road together, but hey, that's what makes things interesting. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 749: > Was there any particular reason you gave Miles a seizure disorder > rather than some other physical problem? > > ================================================== > susanc@columbia-center.org > Western Oregon, USDA zone 8, Sunset zone 6 Well, it's something I saw in my hospital tech days, and as Barry remarks below, it fit the needs of my plot. It wanted to be something that would clearly render Miles unfit for field work, yet not slow him down too much. In fact, it wasn't something planned out in advance; the seizures came up as a throw-away detail at the end of MIRROR DANCE as what seemed to me a logical nasty side-effect of cryo-freeze, and it was only upon reflection that I decided to make 'em permanent. One of my Baen editors was in fact very worried at the end of MD that I make it clear Miles was "all better"; I kept my mouth shut at the time, since a bare description of what I'd planned for Miles next might have given 'em heart failure. The next development had to appear in context to be fully comprehensible, I felt; that was of course MEMORY. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2866: **** quote Lois McMaster Bujold on Baen's Bar *** Date: 10/7/99 10:15 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" via the web Subject: Miles the Assassin!! [Lois replies to Sergei Alderman who commented that Lois was a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle, who also was known for references to untold stories] Or a Trained Cormorant. Remember, Miles talked someplace of completing almost 40 missions for Simon over the decade. Some will have been low key, uneventful and successful (no story there), even *he* admits two were disasters (and if Miles will say that out loud, they must have been really embarrassing); that gives maybe a dozen story opportunities of potential future interest. Neither the assassination, the girl agent, nor the talk of working with Galeni on Komarr have yet been written into anything; they don't map onto any extant tale. [Sergei suggests these would make good novellas in the style of _BoI_] That's one of the many possibilities on my table, but not this week, as I'm heads down in Another Project. The novellas would have to be very plot-centered (or at least, centered around the new characters/settings), and, of course, the problem one must always finesse with a prequel is, if it's important enough to write a tale about, why has it had no causal effects/never been remembered, referred to, or thought about subsequently in the characters' timeline? On the other hand, since I make up my background/world *by* writing stories in it, some prequel novellas would give me the opportunity to add some more complexity and possibility to Miles's universe before moving him forward again. Kindly do not interpret these words to be a *plan*. It's Schroedinger's plot box in here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3009: >Topic: Re: Short stories? (32 of 38), Read 27 times >Conf: Miles To Go >From: Lois Bujold lmbujold@mn.uswest.net >Date: Thursday, December 23, 1999 08:12 AM > >On 12/23/99 12:51:00 AM, Patrick Vera wrote: >>You know the idea of >>anthologies looks like a very >>good idea. > >Well... no. > >More fundamentally, besides the fact that Little Lois does not work well in >groups, and doesn't want to share... > >It runs backwards to the way I do my worldbuilding. For the Vorkosiverse >books especially, I usually start with the characters (or on a less >articulate level, theme) and build the universe around them. In other >words, the world does not exist until a Story passes through it, assembling >setting around itself. It makes farming out the setting impossible, even >leaving aside the more fundamental issues of world-view. Granted, there is >now a kind of spaghetti-trail of fixed setting in the wake of tales already >told, for people's minds to swing on, but that's only a fraction of the >potential universe. *One* literary universe. Others are possible... > >Never say never, but I don't see myself sharecropping Miles's world until I >am absolutely sure I'm done with it myself, and have emotionally >disconnected from the work and let it go for all time. Which is Not Yet, >anyway. > >Ta, Lois. > >> >>There could be several books >>out of this. One book for >>Dendarii missions, one book >>for Imperial auditors, one for >>Time of Isolation, one for the >>Cetagandan Occupation, one >>general Nexus stories (like >>Quaddies, Athos, Beta Colony, >>etc.), one during the Regency >>and perhaps one for Sergyar >>(more Aral and Cordelia!!!). Oh, well. I did try. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3724: [In reply to a fan offering Lois a list of character names - Lois having said in the messages reposted last time that she needed to pause writing to name some characters] Date sent: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 11:06:16 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" Hi [snip name] Thanks for the kind offer, but I finally got to work last night with a stack of science magazines (for names in the bibliographies of the correct ethnic origins) and did my list, so I'm fixed for a while. And a perfect ship name fell out of my backbrain, as well. So now my next task, after making cranberry muffins and running off to straighten out my son's health insurance, will be to go back over the first few chapters and regularize those those people presently named X, Y, and some other things that don't fit. Ensign Y was bothering me a lot, as he's scheduled to have a speaking part in the next chapter. If the writer doesn't know enough about a character to even know their *name*, it's very hard to figure out just what they'll have to say for themselves. It's also very uncomfortable when you've given a character a wrong name; they don't settle down properly till they get their right one. Ta, L. ***** [In reply to another new fan who started with ACC] Date sent: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 11:16:24 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" Hi [snip name] Thanks for the post! That is all extremely interesting. To the author, anyway! Dealing with necessary backstory in a coherent fashion, whether mid-series or in a brand-new book, is always a challenge. Especially as the series advances, I don't want to spend a disproportionate amount of time bringing new readers up to speed, and some kinds of data dumps can get pretty awkward. It's a challenging balancing act. bests, Lois. ***** Date sent: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 14:31:10 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" [In reply to Lois telling us the current word count of the work in progress, this poster had referred to another writer (Lawrence Watt- Evans) who he said periodically publishes his current word count in his sff.net newsgroup] That would not surprise me a bit. Writers use all sorts of motivational tricks on themselves to keep going, especially during the long but necessary slogs through the parts between the inspired bits. Nothing as vast as a novel, alas, can consist entirely of inspired bits. Dividing it into very small bites ("500 words a day, just 500 words") sometimes works to get me through the sloughs of despond, but only if I have my visualizations first. I can't write it down before I make it up, and in my process, those are two somewhat different events, requiring different mental states (relaxation versus concentration, for starters.) When I do have a strong visualization, the writing can go quickly, till I reach the end of that sequence. I note with interest that LWE's thing is all statistics, no content. Makes sense to me. When you are in hot pursuit of your own inner vision, having other people's inner visions dropped into the delicate mix can be, for some writers, very disturbing. I also report word counts to people who have no interest in the content, such as my family. Just to prove I'm really working, I suppose (and that they should be too). Income reports serve a similar function with my mother, since she has no real interest in the stories either. She just doesn't engage much with fiction, never has. My formerly-most-obnoxious brother, however, is a fiction reader, the only one in the immediate family, and he and I *can* talk about the characters and the plots; he reads my stuff with genuine interest, not as a social duty. So that's nice. Since you asked (by implication, at least) -- 23,500 words total at the end of this morning's work session; I'm into Chapter 5 now. Now I must go eat breakfast, get the cat's pills from the vet and mine from the pharmacy, and go to the bank. Coming up next will be a dialogue bit with a new minor character, that will take some choreographing in preliminary notes before I sit to type again. Ta, Lois. ***** Date sent: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 12:09:38 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" [In reply the question about her brother arising from her last post >Formerly-most-obnoxious?] He's improved with age, slowly. The nadir was when he was in his teens. Now that he's pushing 60, he's almost fully human. [glad that she can discuss her writing with at least one family member] Well, he lives too far away, but he has read manuscripts in progress a few times, when we visited him at his summer place on Lake George, and while he really doesn't say much, compared to my writer friends, it's clear he does respond to the content. He's quite interested in the new fantasy, and on the rare occasions we talk has been known to inquire if it's being treated well, etc. He also especially likes _The Spirit Ring_ and _Falling Free_. (Welding engineer by training, sales engineer by current profession.) [asked for a page count rather than word count] Page count is deceptive; depending on type size and font design, not to mention line spacing, page numbers for a given number of words can vary all over the map. Word count remains steady. That said, on average, 5000 words, which is a normal sort of chapter length for me, yield about twenty pages of double spaced typed manuscript. Ta, Lois. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3703: [in reply to a thread started by a reader who had only just discovered Lois starting with _ACC_] Subject: Re: Probably an old question from a new fan Date sent: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 18:56:10 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" Well, now there's four chapters. My new policy of fending off enticing travel invitations in favor of staying home, resting, and actually writing is starting to pay off, a bit, though I still have one more upcoming con to chew through, and recover from, in January. The book doesn't have a title, though it's being labeled M2K in the header at present, because I refused to call yet another untitled book _Miles to Go_ (two or three of my books have had that place- holder title, at various times.) Several new characters don't have names yet, which is something like sending them onstage undressed. I hate making up names, especially in bulk. I need to spend a day soon and run up a list of ethnically suitable ones I can just select from, so when new herds of characters/places/ships/whatever appear roping and branding 'em all doesn't slow the flow. Someone asked me at the library conference in WVa if I could say anything more about the book yet, and my reply was that it was in a state of inspiration rather like a sand painting -- blow on it and it would disintegrate. It will feel like that for several more chapters yet, I think. About the only news I'd feel comfortable giving out at the moment are word counts. (22,300, if you must know.) This will likely change in a few more months, as multiple floating aspects of the thing lock in more solidly -- you can ask again about March, I think, and perhaps get a more informative reply. Perhaps. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3733: Topic: RE: Favorite LMB SCENE(was: Book) (30 of 30), Read 15 times Conf: Miles To Go From: Lois Bujold lmbujold@mn.uswest.net Date: Friday, December 15, 2000 10:20 PM On 12/15/00 9:29:00 PM, Allison De Kanel wrote: >I believe (??maybe because of >a copyright notice, or because >of comments by the author in >afterword to Cordelia's >Honor??) that Aftermaths WAS >originally published as a >short story. Can anyone >confirm? "Aftermaths" was written (soon after I'd finished _Shards_) as a separate short story, which I marketed without success. At the time I was hoping for a short story sale to add interest, on various editors' desks, to my novels then also seeking a home. By the time Baen bought _Shards of Honor_ (and _WA_ and _Ethan_), it still hadn't sold as a separate short. In the course of those negotiations, I dimly recall, I mentioned the short story to Jim, and sent it along for editorial viewing. Jim bought it, first to run it as a teaser for the forthcoming novel in _New Destinies_, his personal anthology-cum-magazine Baen Books was putting out at the time, and then it was his idea to append it to the end of _Shards_, where, I think, it significantly strengthens the book. Ta, Lois. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3804: ***** Subject: Re: First Lois experiences Date sent: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 00:17:56 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" [In reply to Barb Sigler asking for a progress report] For the new book (_The Curse of Chalion_), seven months. For the Miles book after that, the one I'm presently working on, I'm not at all sure. Between the terminally sick cat and the holidays, coinciding with an internal-to-the-book event horizon, the second half of December was pretty much blown out of the water. January is bifurcated by Arisia (a convention I'll be a guest at in Boston. I'm sure they have a website, if you want to know more.) After that, I'm hoping for a nice, quiet time at home for a period of several uninterrupted months, yay! An event horizon is my personal writing term for... hm, how to describe this. For places in a book where a lot of decisions must be made about how the story will go on, where final choices can't be put off any longer or where some bit of special inspiration is needed. I find I can often write quite a bit without knowing exactly what happens next, sort of "This needs to happen, and that needs to happen, and this bit can go in here, and that takes us through two more chapters..." It flows along till my mental buffers are emptied, and then ka-chunks to a stop till I work out whatever sequence of events/character twists/bit of backstory is required to carry me to the next event horizon. Lather, rinse, repeat till book is done. So I'm still stalled at the start of Chapter 7, though things feel like they may be starting to work loose a little (I got some words down today for the first time since Dec. 16th, according to my word processing program.) The scanned and formatted manuscript for me to re-copy-edit of the NESFA Press first hardcover edition of _The Warrior's Apprentice_ just turned up, too, a nice semi-mechanical task which might help carry me through the dead zone. Ta, Lois. ***** Subject: Next book (_tCoC_) news Date sent: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 16:52:47 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" [This is Lois's reply, after I had posted to Baen's Bar, sharing with them the news Lois had given us here about _CoC_, and a link to the archives here containing Lois's message >towards the end of digest 3781 (2001,January, 05) > http://ftp.herald.co.uk/pub/lists/bujold-archives/010105-3781 ] Hi all -- On 1/7/01 3:04:18 PM, Martin Bonham wrote: >Unless I have overlooked some posts, it appears that Lois considers >it good mannered to not post about her next (non-Baen) book here. Upon longer consideration, I have actually concluded that this is a win-win situation. If, as I must hope it will, _The Curse of Chalion_ reaches some new portion of the fantasy and science fiction reading audience (as Robert Jordan and a few other fantasy writers have demonstrated, there are indeed a lot more of 'em out there than I've managed to tap so far), and they like it, what will they do? Look on the "Other books by" listing opposite _Chalion_'s title page, where they will find 14 titles, all published by Baen Books. It will be extremely interesting to see if there is a measurable blip in my backlist sales in the second half of this year, same as when I have a new book out from this house. (I love backlist royalties. They're so *earned*.) And, of course, some portion of any audience growth will feed back into the next Miles book, when it's done. What's not to like? >I do hope that the non Baen publication of _tCoC_ will introduce >Lois to a wider audience, and cause lots of new Fans to buy lots of >copies of her backlist from Baen (all available from Baen - some >also available from other publishers in the US and UK). Just exactly so. Ta, Lois. ****** Subject: Next book (_tCoC_) news Date sent: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 20:30:59 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" [In reply to Thomas Monaghan asking if the 'log jam' had broken yet] No. But it's collected more logs in it now... :-) L. ****** Subject: Next book (_tCoC_) news Date sent: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 12:54:01 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" [In reply to Barb Sigler asking Lois if 'log-jammed' meant 'writer's block' or just too many things to do and not enough time] Well, there's Arisia and some copy-editing on the hardcover edition of _WA_. But otherwise, no; I have lots of potentially good quality writing time available at present, which is why being stuck is so aggravating. Later in the year, when a lot of family and travel obligations (not to mention deadlines) concatenate, I'll long for this time back. Grumble. [suggests a surprise attack scene] That sort of surprise attack is not a bad way to move things along -- in fact, I did it most notably in _Mirror Dance_, albeit not for reasons of being stuck for plot twists. But the current hang up is in some delicate (and some not so delicate) adjustments to the backstory, things that happened before the characters strolled onstage, which is alas not amenable to that particular logjam-busting technique. Well, it will get there eventually. (Writing process comment): When plot complications start to proliferate beyond control, it's almost a sure sign that one is trying to do the wrong thing in the first place -- or it wouldn't need all those fixes and patches. It's nature's way of telling the writer to stop, back up, and re-think. If only one can come up with the *right* thing instead, it all slides in as smooth as grease, sometimes to miraculous effect. And sometimes, of course, you just have to tie a knot and go on. Ta, L. ****** Subject: Re: Next book (_tCoC_) news Date sent: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 14:39:14 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" Hi again -- On 1/9/01 2:05:28 PM, Martin Bonham wrote: MB>Lois wrote in part LMB>Look on the "Other books by" listing opposite _Chalion_'s title LMB>page, where they will find 14 titles, all published by Baen Books MB>Wow. Can you say how did you get them to do this? Is this MB>something that you and your agent specifically asked for in your MB>contract, or is this something that EOS does normally? It's something most publishers do normally for most books. Not having an "other books by" listing somewhere in the front matter would be unusual, for any author who does have significant prior work. Such lists vary in completeness, I note most recently among my Heyer collection; some of her reprints have complete listings, most only have partials. But then, she wrote 50 or 60 novels, some long out of print, in several genres. MB>BTW have you got them to include the URL http://www.dendarii.com MB>anywhere? It is your 'official' site after all. It appears on the back cover of the promotional edition. I wouldn't expect it on the dust jacket. (snips) Ta, Lois. ****** Subject: Re: Next book (_tCoC_) news Send reply to: "Miles To Go" Date sent: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:46:35 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" [In reply to Barb Sigler continuing the 'writers block' conversation] Hiya -- Naw, I wouldn't call this writer's block. This is normal process, for me. I was stuck for five weeks in the middle of _The Curse of Chalion_ last summer for a backstory problem less complex than this. Hated it, but being stuck wasn't nearly as fatal as plowing through wrongly would have been (which, in my frustration, I almost did, shudder.) Being stuck for three to six weeks isn't writer's block, it's just being stuck. Much longer than that starts to get alarming, I admit. (It would also help a lot if the teenager would move out of my basement/get a job/do something. He's just about passed his sell-by date for adolescent waffling. Anybody out there want to adopt a 19- year-old? He plays computer games extremely well...) I have a schtick titled "Writer's Block -- Your Friend". Whatever it is in my backbrain that stops me from writing reams and reams of wrong stuff that I'd just have to throw out, I'm grateful for it. And in the meantime, well, there's Arisia. Tip: keep a notebook by your bedside for those drifting inspirations. Ta, L. ****** Subject: Re: Next book (_tCoC_) news Date sent: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 11:42:06 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" Hiya -- On 1/10/01 3:56:41 AM, Martin Bonham wrote: MB>Lois Bujold wrote in small part: LMB>Well, there's Arisia and some copy-editing on the LMB>hardcover edition of _WA_. MB>I presume this is the NESFA (New England Science Fiction MB>Association) edition. Yay. Yes. Work flow permitting (NESFA is staffed by volunteers who squeeze in this stuff around their day jobs), it'll likely see print later this year. MB>Lois, could you please clarify MB>what you mean by copy-editing? Going over the ms prior to typesetting (now, there's an obsolete term!), looking for any grammar gaffes to clean up, italicizing some internal thought, checking word choices -- some words have shifted meaning or connotation since the early 80's when the book was written. Nothing extensive or invasive, or, indeed, that most readers (possibly excepting Martin, here) would even notice on a re- read. I under-italicized back in '83 due to the fact that my daisy-wheel printer did underlining (which is how italics are indicated in manuscript) by backing up over the prior line, and frequently jammed up, causing much aggravation, and I wanted to limit the amount of going-over by hand with pen and ruler. MB>If this is different from correcting galley-proofs It is. They'll have to be checked later, too. MB>does this mean that you have made some changes to the text of the MB>earlier Baen editions? Can you give us any more details about MB>which words (if any) you have changed? I've hardly started yet. It's nothing the casual reader will even notice. (The gimlet-eyed fanatics, I do not speak for.) Ta, Lois.