Recharging through Reading
At this point about a dozen people, that I know of, have finished my debut novel, Shatter. Record breaking, I know. Unequivocally, their reactions to the story have been to demand when I'm finishing the second book in the series, Render. To that, the only answer I can give is to say that it's in the first drafting stage, which I hope to complete in August.
That does not mean that Render will be available for consumption by August. Far from it. My hope is to have Render finished and ready for publication by this winter. I'm already about 35k words into the first draft. To give you some context, Shatter was just under 150k words. I have not, however, done any drafting in Render for a while. Because pushing to hit my May 1st deadline for Shatter, resulted in me working 10-14 hours a day after I got home from teaching. The school year just ended a couple weeks ago and I'm still utterly spent.
Last year I got into the habit of writing every day. A habit I would recommend to any writer - to a point. A couple months ago (I think. I have no reliable concept of time.), I read a fantastic blog post by guest blogger, Margo Lanagan, on Justine Larbalestier's blog about when not to write. She discusses when and why it's time to walk away from the page. I'm there right now. I am so irrationally sick of my own written voice and my mind is still stuck in the editing phase, which nearly paralyzes me when I try to draft. Because as we all know, first drafts exist to suck. That's their job, their reasoning for being, their existential reality. They just suck. It's a fact of life. If you want to write, just accept it, embrace it, give it a pet name, because you're stuck with it.
So, I'm taking a small break. Not a super long one, but I need to recharge. I need to gain some perspective and the best way to do that I've discovered is to read - a lot. During the school year, amidst teaching and attempting to write a novel, I didn't have much time to read. I read some outside of what I needed to re-read for my classes, but not much. I do the majority of my for-sniffles-and-giggles reading during the summer. Ah, glorious summer. I have already finished four books in probably the combined span of as many days. I'm slowly yet surely chipping my way through the queue of books on my goodreads to-read shelf, which always gets longer, never shorter, no matter how many books I finish.
I know that some readers always wonder what kinds of books authors who write genre fiction read. I know that some authors read nothing in their genre and some read ravenously within their genre. Me? Like many things in life, I believe in the shotgun method. Hit as many things as you can and it'll all work out. The range of books I'm reading this summer include, but are not limited to (Caveat: many of these classifications overlap with certain authors.):
So, that's the plan, man. Read a lot. Then back to writing.
That does not mean that Render will be available for consumption by August. Far from it. My hope is to have Render finished and ready for publication by this winter. I'm already about 35k words into the first draft. To give you some context, Shatter was just under 150k words. I have not, however, done any drafting in Render for a while. Because pushing to hit my May 1st deadline for Shatter, resulted in me working 10-14 hours a day after I got home from teaching. The school year just ended a couple weeks ago and I'm still utterly spent.
Last year I got into the habit of writing every day. A habit I would recommend to any writer - to a point. A couple months ago (I think. I have no reliable concept of time.), I read a fantastic blog post by guest blogger, Margo Lanagan, on Justine Larbalestier's blog about when not to write. She discusses when and why it's time to walk away from the page. I'm there right now. I am so irrationally sick of my own written voice and my mind is still stuck in the editing phase, which nearly paralyzes me when I try to draft. Because as we all know, first drafts exist to suck. That's their job, their reasoning for being, their existential reality. They just suck. It's a fact of life. If you want to write, just accept it, embrace it, give it a pet name, because you're stuck with it.
So, I'm taking a small break. Not a super long one, but I need to recharge. I need to gain some perspective and the best way to do that I've discovered is to read - a lot. During the school year, amidst teaching and attempting to write a novel, I didn't have much time to read. I read some outside of what I needed to re-read for my classes, but not much. I do the majority of my for-sniffles-and-giggles reading during the summer. Ah, glorious summer. I have already finished four books in probably the combined span of as many days. I'm slowly yet surely chipping my way through the queue of books on my goodreads to-read shelf, which always gets longer, never shorter, no matter how many books I finish.
I know that some readers always wonder what kinds of books authors who write genre fiction read. I know that some authors read nothing in their genre and some read ravenously within their genre. Me? Like many things in life, I believe in the shotgun method. Hit as many things as you can and it'll all work out. The range of books I'm reading this summer include, but are not limited to (Caveat: many of these classifications overlap with certain authors.):
- general fantasy (Naomi Novik, Elizabeth Haydon, Kristen Britain, James Mallory, Mercedes Lackey, Terry Goodkind)
- steampunk (Cherie Priest, Scott Westerfeld, William Gibson, China Miéville, Paolo Bacigalupi)
- young adult (Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson , Holly Black)
- urban fantasy (Sarah Rees Brennan, Charles de Lint, Maggie Stiefvater)
- classics (Ayn Rand, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov)
- historical fiction (Jeff Shaara, Edward Rutherfurd)
- philosophy (Hannah Arendt)
- dysotopian (Suzanne Collins, Scott Westerfeld, Paolo Bacigalupi)
- religion (Anne Lamott, Ann Spangler , Kevin DeYoung, Ted Kluck)
- creative nonfiction (Maxine Hong Kingston, George Orwell, Jon Krakauer)
- mystery (Agatha Christie, Matthew Pearl)
- horror (Elizabeth Kostova, Cherie Priest)
- linguistics ( John H. McWhorter)
- cyberpunk (William Gibson, Neal Stephenson)
- sci-fi space opera (Randolph Lalonde)
So, that's the plan, man. Read a lot. Then back to writing.
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