on writing and publishing and paths

I would hope it’s not necessary but I would like to say that all statements herein are one writer’s opinion/journey/thoughts/observations (that is, mine) and I think publishing is far too vast and complicated, especially lately, to say that a single author experience speaks for an industry or a movement or anything but its own self. One thing I’ve realized from meeting lots of writers in the past few years is that every single person’s journey is different and personal. It’s not a particularly straightforward job trajectory, after all.

So the wise and lovely Chuck Wendig has been posting a lot of wise things about self-publishing lately and I’ve been following along and having Thoughts from my admittedly unusual perspective on such things and the Thought that I’d most like to get out there in response is this:

Had I self-published The Night Circus it would have been a lousy book with no plot and likely would have disappeared into the ether. I will stand by that statement, though in all honesty I probably wouldn’t have self-pubbed it and instead let it languish on my harddrive while I wrote another book.

The entire saga of manuscript-to-agented is detailed back here but the short version is I got my manuscript to the point where I didn’t know what else it needed and it seemed like the right point to start sending it out. I did. It got requests because I had a query letter that made it sound like it had a plot when it really didn’t. It also got a lot of rejections.

And then my messy, plotless manuscript reached people who politely informed me that it was messy and plotless and needed a lot of work. But they also said they would be interested if I worked on it more and basically completely rewrote it.

I could have decided they were wrong and not listened and turned around and self-published the manuscript I had because at that point I was in a bit of denial about the whole messy plotless thing.

I’m really, really glad I listened.

(I will fully admit I dragged my feet. I did two rounds of revising and the first was a “stick bells and whistles and glitter on it” attempt to not actually re-work the entire damn thing and the second was a proper re-working of the entire damn thing.)

To be clear: no one ever told me what to write. Ever. All choices were made by me, all words were written by me, all fiction-fueling tea & chocolate was consumed by me personally. But agents and later editor and my very dear critique partner all gave me lots of feedback about what wasn’t working, what was working, and what I could do better along the way. No one ever tried to alter my artistic vision, they just helped me make it clearer.

An example: The initial draft that I queried with has no competition. One suggestion was to make the circus more of a background setting and that combined with the already black and white color scheme and the fact that I didn’t want it to be just setting led to thinking of it as a chessboard, and that’s when I started playing with the competition angle.

(Then I realized I had characters that would never consent to being truly antagonistic because they’d have too much respect for each other’s work and that’s when the Romeo & Juliet flavor came in.)

Publishing professionals who get too often grr-ed at and called gatekeepers wanted to help me tell the best story I could, because all of those people at the gate and behind the gate are people who love books, people who love stories. I’ve yet to meet a person in the publishing industry who doesn’t love books. They are booklovers. Most of them are booksluts. I mean that as a compliment of the highest order.

It’s a hard thing to write a story, because you can’t read it. I can never have the experience of reading The Night Circus because I wrote it, I know all the surprises and the motivations and the backstories and I can’t watch it unfold properly. But I had to figure out how to fold it up so it could be unfolded by a reader in a coherent, entertaining, satisfying way.

I, me, myself, personally, could not have gotten this particular story to that point by taking a drastically different path to publication.

The tricksy thing about a path is that you can’t untake it, so I can only speak for my own path, my own footsteps, my own book. That’s all anyone can speak for, and one path’s success does not negate another. I can point at my path and say “this path was successful!” and so can a lot of other people who took wildly different routes. There’s an enlightenment analogy here, or possibly a Wizard of Oz reference. Something about shoes, maybe.

Different paths work. Old ones, new ones, combinations of the two. Tunnels probably work, too. I don’t think there’s a best way or a better way, I think it’s about each individual writer finding the right path for them to get the best stories possible into the hands and heads of their readers.

flax-golden tales: finish one thing

finish one thingfinish one thing

It’s only one thing.

It shouldn’t be that difficult to finish.

It wasn’t difficult to begin

It happens all the time. A thing creeps into my mind unbidden. Appears out of nowhere or crawls out from the dark spaces between a lot of little ideas strung together.

And it sits there, glowing and existing and refusing to be ignored.

That one thing takes over my brain and I can’t focus on anything else.

So then the thought of being finished with that one thing, of letting it go, feels scary because my mind would be so empty without it.

Until the next thing comes along.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

cocktails

I’ve been a little bit obsessed with cocktails lately. I’d always been more of a red wine person with the occasional gin & tonic and I knew I preferred Manhattans to Martinis but I hadn’t ventured very far into the often intimidating world of the cocktail.

I’ve been venturing for over a year now and I’m still pretty sure I haven’t gotten that far, but it’s been very fun and educational. I’ve found gorgeous speakeasy-esque bars and developed a thing for coupe glasses (if anyone knows where to find good ones let me know, I have a few I got from Pottery Barn that I love but they no longer have them, hrmph.) My favorite cocktail that I can actually manage at home with some decent flair is a Bee’s Knees, a prohibition era concoction of gin, lemon & honey. (I have made something of a sub-hobby out of trying them with different gins and different honeys.)

(It is worth noting that in a strange sort of way this is all book research. If the circus with all its chocolate mice and Midnight Dinners was a food book, the new one is most definitely a cocktail book.)

(This post has too many parentheticals already.)

This is the first of what will likely be a series of cocktail-related posts as I continue to research and explore. I may include favorite recipes as we go on, but I have something fun for today.

A few weeks ago I discovered (via Twitter, of course) Julibox, which is something like a cocktail of the month club where you get ingredients and instructions for different cocktails sent to your door in a box full of boozy wonderment.

So of course I pondered for all of a few hours before I signed up. I got my first box (collection #7) in mid March.

Everything arrived gorgeously wrapped in pretty paper with matching stickers and I am such a sucker for an aesthetically pleasingly wrapped package that I almost didn’t want to unwrap anything.
julibox wrappedBut I did, because cocktails.

julibox unwrapped

This month’s collection was elderflower liqueur themed which meant lots of St Germain which was happy making because I love St Germain. I suspect I love it even more because it comes in the most beautiful bottles.

There are fancy, incredibly easy to follow recipe cards:

julibox cardsIt includes 2 different cocktails and there’s enough to make 2 of each. (4 drinks total.) They email you beforehand to let you know what you’ll need that’s not in the box, which was lime, lemon & grapefruit for this box. (I always have limes & lemons on hand but I did have to go out and get the grapefruit.)

Both of the cocktails in this box were lovely, one was a spin on a Hemingway daiquiri and the other was a lovely fizzy pear vodka concoction, and of course both had St Germain. I’d give the very slight edge to the fizzy pear one just because it was more in line with my tastes but it was wonderful to try something with light rum that was different than the rum drinks I’ve had in the past. (I tend to be a gin girl, I’m thinking this will be a good exercise in trying things I might not order off cocktail menus or create from my own bar.)

julibox pear flower

I’m already looking forward to next month and I can’t wait to see what cocktail surprises are in store.

flax-golden tales: deer

deerdeer

I should have made his legs shorter, but other than that I think I did a pretty good job considering he’s my first deer.

Well, he has antlers so maybe he’s a stag but he’s small, so deer seems more appropriate. Also he’s made of logs and sticks so it probably doesn’t matter.

I also forgot to give him a proper name but he responds to “Deer” and seems to like it.

I could have added hinges to his legs, maybe, that might have helped. He walks with a wobbly, uneven gait on his too-long legs. I worry he’s going to fall down but he always manages to right himself.

We’ve been practicing in the yard and I think he’s getting the hang of it, though sometimes he just jumps in little circles.

I asked him if he would have preferred shorter legs but he said no.

When I asked him why he said he likes his long legs because they let him jump higher so he can see more of the world.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

on absorbing story inspiration in non-prose form

So Bioshock Infinite came out yesterday and I am being really good today by not playing until I get everything else on today’s to-do list checked off. I just got to “blog post” so here we go. It has a theme and some points, I promise.

I will preface this by (re)stating that I’m not much of a gamer. I am picky about games that I like and I am not widely versed in all the video game wonderment that is out there, but I have dipped my toes in and splashed around in my not-terribly-skilled way. (I remain annoyed that you can’t marry the Khajiit characters in Skyrim, do I at least get some sort of geek credit for that?)

To make everything ever somehow relate to Punchdrunk: I first became acquainted with Bioshock when I heard Sleep No More referred to as “live action Bioshock” which is a fairly apt description for something that’s almost impossible to describe. I’ve been waiting for Bioshock Infinite since 2011 when the first trailer came out, even though aesthetically the first two games are much more up my art deco alley, because floating city = swoon.

This brings me to my (first) point: I love this entire series largely because I am overly fond of architecture. The level of detail is amazing and I seriously spent about two hours playing Infinite yesterday and I’m barely past the intro because I keep stopping to look at things. (I really wish you could play in spectator mode and not have to worry about, you know, shooting things or getting shot at, which I understand is the basis of the game but it can be distracting when I’m trying to look at windows and statues and figuring out how the building docking systems work.)

It is immersive visual world building on an epic, gorgeous scale and still being somewhat in the architectural world building phase of writing a novel it is giddy-making for my storyteller brain.

Which brings me to my main point, because this post needs to have one before I am allowed to scurry off and play more, about how much I learn about storytelling in non-prose formats.

I suppose it goes without saying that I read a lot of books which are inspiring for my own writing (see this post for a recent example and also another Bioshock reference) but I also watch a lot of movies and look at a lot of art and listen to music and lately, play games.

There is some really innovative storytelling technique going on in games and I find it almost as fascinating as the architecture. How information is relayed and how plots are advanced and learning how a world works through interacting with it.

(I kind of want to do a documentary film about immersive entertainment. Need to figure out how to conjure more of that time stuff first.)

I’m a very visual person so it helps to be able to see things so I can expand my own mental treasure trove of images to include more things to build with. I suppose it is the visual equivalent of expanding your vocabulary, creating a visual media dictionary.

And a step beyond the visuals, games and movies and graphic novels and, oh, I don’t know, let’s say, puppet theatre all touch on telling stories without words which is a useful thing to study and figure out how to do, even if you end up telling your own story with nothing but various combinations of letters and punctuation.

That’s not to say that static visuals can’t be just as nuanced and layered. Take this Shaun Tan print I just had framed:

rabbits print

I know the context behind it because it’s an illustration from The Rabbits by John Marsden, but even as a separate single piece it’s full of detail and wonderment. And rabbits.

I’m losing my points here and instead of trying to pick them up I’m just going to throw them up in the air and let them fall in a visual waterfall of sketches and plush songbirds and inflatable presidents. I was going to include something more about graphic novels but maybe I’ll make that its own post some other day. I also still owe a post about cocktails (next week!) and also when my storyteller brain is in full absorption mode it gets a little weird and spongy in my train of thought.

Also, this is why it is sometimes difficult for me to describe my writing process because there’s so much stuff going on in here.

flax-golden tales: strange tides

strange tides

strange tides

The pirate ship crashed into the living room. If the window hadn’t been open it probably would have smashed the glass, instead it swooped against the side of the couch and hit the coffee table.

My mom said she didn’t want to waste money on an exterminator because they always charge by the size of the ship and not the number of pirates, and this ship was about as tall as the couch but had a fairly small crew.

I helped her gather up all the small objects and books in the room so they wouldn’t plunder, and then we left them in there with the doors closed and the window open.

I overheard the pirates arguing as they surveyed the damage, apparently they had been attempting to commandeer one of the cars parked outside but the breeze pulled them too far toward the house.

Strange tides, one of the pirates kept muttering, strange tides.

It took them three days to finish their repairs. We left a roll of twine and some duct tape and paper clips on the carpet nearby, my mom says that’s the best way to deal with them because it speeds up the repairs. (If you just drag the whole ship outside again they get confused and start pillaging.)

I didn’t see them leave, but I heard the neighbor’s car alarm in the middle of the night and in the morning the ship was gone and there was no sign of them except the broken coffee table and the tiny empty bottles of rum.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.