Tag: books

Procrastination

Here I am, in my best writing place, in the study carrel at the university that I’ve used on and off for thirty years.  I’m supposed to be working on Empire’s Hostage.  I have my lunch, and my coffee; I have my notes and a mug of water.  So why I am I not writing?

Well, firstly, it’s because writing is hard work, and like much hard work it’s easier to procrastinate than do it. When I do start (and I will), if I hit a flow I can write for hours; other days the whole process is excruciating, as if I forgotten who my characters are and what they are doing, or at least why they are doing it.  If that happens it’s really tempting to shut up the laptop and go home, but what I should do on those occasions is wonder if subconsciously I’m seeing a problem: maybe my plot or my character’s motivation or feelings aren’t clear. And if they aren’t clear to me, then they won’t be clear to a reader. Time to re-read what I’ve written, sometimes from the beginning, with this in mind.  This is a valid piece of the writing process, so I shouldn’t see this as wasted time.

Sometimes it’s just that my mind isn’t focused: I’m still thinking about the shopping list, or the conversation with my husband, or the car that cut me off at the intersection.  This is where I find rituals – if that’s the right word – are important; it’s why I write in the same place in this library, with my coffee at hand, when I could choose anywhere.  I actually tried a new location, large tables facing the big windows on the ground floor.  It was quiet, and I could spread out – and I couldn’t write there nearly as effectively as I can where I’m sitting now. Even the walk from the parking area I use is part of getting my mind into the right place to write.  Madeleine L’Engle once said to be a writer, one needed to be able to write anywhere.  I wish I could, but it’s just not true for me.

Writing this blog post falls somewhere between procrastination and warm-up.  It’s a form of metacognition – thinking about thinking – I’m thinking about why I procrastinate.  I could also think of it as a warm-up, or a new part of the ritual.  To be honest, I’m not sure yet.  But now I can feel my characters tugging at my mind, wanting me tell the next part of their story – so I should heed that call.  I hope it’s a day of good flow: I’ll go find out.

Download Empire’s Daughter for free for a limited time!

Upon reflection, I decided that serializing Empire’s Hostage without making Empire’s Daughter equally free for readers wasn’t logical.  So, for a limited time (until September 15th), you can download Empire’s Daughter from www.smashwords.com for no cost, using the coupon code available on the About this Project page of Empire’s Hostage.

Available e-book formats: : epub mobi pdf rtf lrf pdb txt html

Enjoy!

Marian

An update on Book II: Empire’s Hostage

Empire’s Daughter has done well in the months since it was published.  I’m pleased with it.  But in the interim, I’ve been thinking hard about why I write, and what it means to me.

I write neither for profit nor fame.  I write because I need to tell stories, and have since I was a child.  It’s as simple as that. I also heartily dislike trying to publicize, sell, or otherwise promote my work, and I run a hundred miles from public speaking or book launches.

I have chosen to serialize the second book in the Empire’s Legacy series, Empire’s Hostage, here.  Eventually I probably will publish it as an e-book, but perhaps not. We’ll see. This is a ‘real-time’ project:  I will be adding posts, generally of between two to three thousand words, a reasonable reading chunk, as I write and edit them.

Do you need to have read Empire’s Daughter?  It will help, but I’ll try to recap where I can in the sequel without it being too awkward or contrived.

This is speculative fiction, and an alternate reality.  If you’re only comfortable with conventional marriage, or with heterosexual relationships, or, you’re looking for magic and high fantasy, these aren’t the books for you.

I hope you’ll visit the site and begin reading.

Marian

Serendipity

I don’t buy a lot of books any more, for reasons of both economy and a concerted effort not to buy what I don’t need. Libraries provide me with most of what I read.  But I will buy a book if I need it for research, and I can’t get it any other way, or, it falls into a category I call ‘contemplative books’:  books I will read several times, books that make me think about my relationship to the world.  Mostly these are books like The Wild Places, by Robert MacFarlane, or Four Fields, by Tim Dee, thoughtful, insightful books written about the relationship between nature and humans.  Mostly British, as this is the country I love best of all the world.

So when Amazon.co.uk sent me their most recently generated list of ‘books recommended for me’, one stood out.  (By the way, I don’t understand the algorithms they use, but they get it right 95% of the time.  I want to buy almost all of them.  I resist.)  The Green Roads into the Trees:  A Walk through England, by Hugh Thomson, ticked enough of the boxes. My libraries didn’t have it  and weren’t interested in getting it – too specialized.  I was pretty certain I would read it more than once.  So it became one of the rare books I bought.

I was busy, so I didn’t look at it for a few day after it arrived.  But when I opened it….call it grace, call it serendipity…but it ticked a box I hadn’t realized it would.  The book is about the author’s walk from Dorset to Norfolk on an ancient trackway called the Icknield Way, a route and an experience I need to research, not for the Empire’s Legacy series, but for another novel which is in the very early planning and research stage.  I was absolutely delighted. And if I know the way of things, there is a good chance that somewhere in this book there will be a line, a comment, that will inform and change that novel in a way I can’t foresee.