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everyting I write lately is a novella, and it's starting to piss me off.

  • Dec. 13th, 2007 at 5:31 PM
criminal minds reid weep
Because it's going around, the "What I published in 2007" meme:

Short fiction:

Books:

New Amsterdam, Subterranean Press, May 2007
Whiskey & Water, Roc, July 2007
Undertow, Bantam Spectra, August 2007
A Companion to Wolves, Tor, October 2007 (with [info]truepenny)


Things I did this year:

Long fiction:

Wrote and revised Dust
Rewrote All the Windwracked Stars
Revised Ink & Steel and Hell & Earth
Wrote and revised Refining Fire (with [info]coffeeem)


Short Fiction:

"Boojum" (with [info]truepenny)
"The Girl Who Sang Madder Rose"
"Shoggoths in Bloom"
"Black in the Color"
"Annie Webber"
"King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree"
"Knock on Coffins"
"Overkill"


Plus some nonfiction--columns and essays. And this blog. And about 30,000 words of fanfiction. Ahem.

Only counting fiction, my output was around 300,000 words. Which is about half of my best year ever.

I have slowed down. A lot.


Things I still need to do this year:

Revise "King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree"
Revise "Overkill"
Write Bone & Jewel Creatures, or at least start it
Write a short story for Baen's Universe, if possible
Write a short story for Subterranean, if possible


Things I need to do early next year:

Revise By the Mountain Bound
Write Chill
Write Wehrwolf
Write the Boojumverse thing with [info]truepenny


Things I need to do by the middle of next year:

Write "Wind-Up Boogeyman"
Write "Smoke and Mirrors"
Write a short story for Doselle


Things to do by the end of next year:

Rewrite The Sea Thy Mistress
Revise One-Eyed Jack & the Suicide King
Revise Chill
  • Mood: lethargic
  • Music:snow falling

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Comments

( Leave a comment )
[info]jerusha wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 10:47 pm (UTC)
Only counting fiction, my output was around 300,000 words. Which is about half of my best year ever.

I have slowed down. A lot.

If I recall your earlier comments, wasn't your "best year ever" in terms of word count pretty much Bataan Death March/working yourself into an early grave pace?

As gleeful as the prospect of more BearWords makes me (which is plenty!), I imagine I speak for a lot of people when I say it's OK to pace yourself.
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 10:48 pm (UTC)
Hee. yeah. I basically didn't leave my desk for 24 months....
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[info]truepenny wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:19 pm (UTC)
A Companion to Wolves, Tor, October 2007 (with [info]truepenny)
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:22 pm (UTC)
what, you want credit for your work now? *g*
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[info]truepenny wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:23 pm (UTC)
What can I say? I'm high maintenance.
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:27 pm (UTC)
*loff*
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[info]rezendi wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:39 pm (UTC)
God, I feel lazy.

Oh, wait. I am lazy. All right then.
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:40 pm (UTC)
You're busy trekking the Alps with Yeti caravans and things, aren't you?
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[info]rezendi wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:46 pm (UTC)
Things. Yes. Yes indeedy. Lots of...things.
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[info]anghara wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:47 pm (UTC)
Bear, the year hasn't even started and you're already making me exhausted... [grin]
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 13th, 2007 11:56 pm (UTC)
It's a hard life keeping the cat fed on a writer's salary...
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[info]anghara wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 12:03 am (UTC)
Yah. I have TWO of the little blighters.

And I don't do half the short fiction you do.
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[info]stwish wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 12:26 am (UTC)
make me feel like a wuss.. two teeny little histories, a hundred odd basses and one and a half trucks.

I'll be younger next year, and you'll be older, and I'll catch up.
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 12:55 am (UTC)
There's a Lovecraft story with more or less that plot.
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[info]stwish wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 01:06 am (UTC)
don't believe in no Lovecrafts..
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[info]andyleggett wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 03:11 am (UTC)
Damn, girl! Four books out this year? Well, baby's been workin' hard, deserves a cookie...*proffers peanut-butter ones*

At any rate, I'm glad to see you've slowed down from working yourself into an early grave and continue to pace yourself... 'cause after all, I think there is credence to your earlier point that you might overwhelm the market with all your Bear-liciousness.

Though, once I'm able to aquire everything you're putting out, I daresay I will cease complaining. =^_^=
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 03:15 am (UTC)
:-)

Cookie. mm.
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[info]takrann wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 06:57 am (UTC)
I'm amazed you get time to write any fiction, given how prolific your LJ entries are! I suddenly have a headache and need to lie down...

Why is it that writing novellas is beginning to piss you off? I am writing another at the moment, offshoot (another) of my novel proper. Is it because it is almost impossible to get anyone to publish them?! What in Sharpe books is know as the 'Forlorn Hope' as an enterprise...
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 07:01 am (UTC)
I don't like novellas. They're too short to tell a complex story in anything like a balanced fashion, and long enough to be really boring to write because they take forever. Also, they tend to be sloppy and bloated.

I like short stories. Preferably short stories around 3000-4500 words, which can by little lasers of thematic clarity and perfect craftsmanship and not a word out of place.

My brain is on strike, though.
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[info]takrann wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 07:38 am (UTC)
swan_tower wrote the other day: 'One person's magic bullet is another person's bullet in the head'. Wish I'd said that!

I find exactly the same problems in writing a novel as you do with the novella: a novella right now seems the right size to tell a tale in a complex and balanced fashion. Truth probably is that I just can't handle a novel as I am right now... I even colour-coded the three sections of the last novella symbolically! That's entering a world of pain in itself, but with novel-length that sort of layered-play would be a veritable Inquisition.

There is 'Death In Venice' and 'Heart of Darkness' and 'La Symphonie Pastorale' to use as models. Just the right length, all of them; and all of them rich in symbolism and a closely knit thematic 'web' as you call it (and right now writing a novel I feel a sort of latent fascism in having to write in what you elsewhere describe as 'chains' to even stand a chance of getting read, let alone published).

Maybe a novella for me is a halfway house between a novel and a poem, the latter I gave up writing years ago (and a recent piece of redrafted drivel another reason why). At the cost of about 1,000,000 brain cells and there you are: only about ten lines to show for them. Hardly energy-efficient!
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 14th, 2007 01:39 pm (UTC)
I seem to have broken my poetry engine learning to write prose.

I'm kind of hoping I can get to a place where I can do both. Right brain AND left brain. Both all at once.

But it's a hard slog balancing the two. And I do not want to do the established writer thing where I get self-indulgent and stop trying to make every book better than the last.
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[info]blackholly wrote:
Dec. 16th, 2007 04:45 am (UTC)
As always, I am humbled by your productivity. I am inspired to try harder. Maybe someday I can manage half of half of your best year.
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 16th, 2007 04:48 am (UTC)
But *you* write books I wish I had written.

So there. *g*
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[info]blackholly wrote:
Dec. 16th, 2007 05:07 am (UTC)
But you write MORE BOOKS that I wish I had written. So you still win.
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 16th, 2007 05:13 am (UTC)
Hee. I meant to tell you! The last time I drove through Amherst I saw a GIANT SPIDERWICK BILLBOARD TWENTY FEET HIGH!

They got you your very own?
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[info]blackholly wrote:
Dec. 16th, 2007 05:16 am (UTC)
That thing freaked me right the fuck out. I nearly swerved off the road. Jared's face is ENORMOUS.
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[info]matociquala wrote:
Dec. 16th, 2007 05:21 am (UTC)
Hee. I did a little cardance. *g*
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