Writing Excuses 8.23: Micro-Casting

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Writing Excuses 8.23: Micro-Casting

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2013/06/09/writing-excuses-8-23-microcasting/

Questions:
1. What is your very first step in the rewriting process?
-- look at the book as a whole and see what I can delete wholesale. Characters, scenes, locations, what can I chop out?
-- read it out loud.
2. Writing artificial intelligence and computers as characters.
-- recognize that they are not people, but are designed to interface with people. Anthropomorphize them, but remember that they are not people.
3. Tactful promotion. How to get nominated for a Hugo or a Nebula?
-- Tell people what you have that is eligible.
-- Make sure you know what the community norms are for self-promotion.
-- Tell people that you are eligible for another nomination.
-- Be helpful. Talk about the way you wrote it.
4. Holding out. Should a career-minded author take the first publishing offer, or not?
-- Get an agent, and work with them.
-- Google the publisher, find out what authors they have, and talk to those authors.
-- Do you like what they are saying about your book and what they are going to do for it? Do you like the editor and think your book will be better because you are working with them?
5. Author's notebooks. Are novels usually built fully in writing notebooks?
-- My non-digital brain. I dump everything in there. One of the tasks is to transfer nondigital items into the digital arena.
-- Physical notebooks may be an older style. My phone is my notebook. Got a great idea? Type it into my phone, and text or email it to myself.
-- I write in a notebook when I don't have a computer available.
6. What methods or criteria do you use to test the coolness and viability of a story premise?
-- Tell it to my writing group and friends.
-- Make up thumbnail sketches, pitches or concepts, and ask my agent, "Which one do you think you can sell."
-- If the idea is so exciting that I would rather write than sleep, I know I'm on to something.
7. Which genres outside the ones you write in most often do you read most often?
-- Mystery. Historical fiction. Fantasy. Superhero comics. Nonfiction.
What is a great book in that genre to try?
-- Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. The Last Kingdom. Mistborn. Planet Hulk. A History of Warfare OR Guns, Germs, and Steel.
( Lots and lots of questions and answers! )

[Brandon] All right. Let's do a writing prompt. Howard?
[Howard] This actually came up earlier. Two words. Flying Caldecott.
[Laughter]
[Brandon] Thank you, Eric, for joining us.
[Mary] That's a writing prompt?
[Eric] Thank you for having me.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.