Review of Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races

Maggie Stiefvater's  The Scorpio Races is set on a Celtic island called Thisby (in the early 20th century? there was talk of bowler hats) where flesh-eating kelpies, called capall uisce, wash up on the beach each November. The bravest (or most fool-hardy) denizens of Thisby capture them and ride them in the Scorpio Races.

 I bought this book hoping it would be like The Hunger Games. It was and it wasn't. It had the same quality of tension that exists in the beginning of The Hunger Games, because the characters live in poverty and must take part in a deadly competition. That's pretty much where the similarity ended, though. If you expect The Scorpio Races to get to the racing any time before the end, you'll feel impatient, as I did. Once I realized that the race would happen only at the end and would probably comprise only a few pages of the novel, I was able to stop feeling impatient and enjoy the story. And once that happened, I really did enjoy it. And the end made me cry (not for the reasons you might guess), which is saying something, as books rarely get tears from me. I really liked the characters, and while many YA novels annoy me with the requisite romance, this one, like The Hunger Games, did not, because I didn't feel that the romance weakened the characters. That's a feat most authors don't manage (it's why I struggle with including romance in my own stories).

Using Tweetadder

In order to quiet some of my "shoulds," I've subscribed to Tweetadder, which Michael R. Hicks recommends for marketing your novels. It's a cool utility. You may get a direct message from me in the next week or so if you follow me on Twitter offering you one of my ebooks for free, for instance. I'll be curious to see if the marketing I'm doing with it amounts to anything. So far, I seem to sell between 1-5 books a month not doing any active marketing at all. If that number increases in any significant way, that would be exciting. I'll be sure to post here with my observations either way.

Also, I've redesigned this blog a bit. What do you think? Do you prefer the previous, aquamarine version, or this beige?

My current "shoulds" of writing

My cbt therapist (or should that be cb therapist?) Shiva, would probably tell me to rephrase this, but there are several things I "should" be doing for my writing right now.*

First of all, there's the sequel to The River and the Roses, which has been through one round of revisions, and probably could stand to undergo about nine rounds more. If I gave it some serious time and energy, I could probably get it up to par for April, and publish it. I even have most of what I need to create the cover. I've been meaning to do this for about six months, with the intention of dropping the price for River to $0.99 once the sequel is out. Why have I not done it yet? Well, aside from the whole pregnancy/bed rest/newborn baby distraction, revisions are... well, work. And often annoying, painful work at that. I read a quote on twitter the other day, I forget from which famous author, saying something about how revisions or rewrites are more pleasant than producing the first draft because you don't have the dread of not finishing the novel hanging over you. I can relate to that, but for me, revisions are way more difficult to get into. Still, and Shiva would approve of this phrase, it would be satisfying to get that item done.

Then there's marketing. I stopped actively marketing my books nearly a year ago, I think, or at least nine months ago. I'm still on twitter and I update my facebook page from time to time, most often to notify you all that I've got a new blog post, actually, but as for directly sending out messages on twitter suggesting that people check out my book, no. Michael R. Hicks, one of those lucky and driven self-pubbed authors who is living the dream (he quit his day job last April, I think it was--I admire him so much!) suggests that the "tipping point" for twitter as a marketing platform is to have 1000+ followers. At the moment I have about 845. I use my twitter account to recommend news articles and just talk about things I'm doing or am interested in. And also let people know when I've posted something new on either this blog or the recipe blog. I don't advertise the family blog because it's much more personal and I figure if you're really that interested in me you'll check it out off this page. And probably most people aren't that interested in me! Anyway, I don't have a problem with people posting on twitter to advertise their books (in fact I try to retweet them when it's clear to me what they are about). Although some people will spam the feed for like, ten minutes, and it makes me wonder whether they've ever read an article about twitter etiquette. So my point is, though, I haven't been doing that. Why not? I feel like until I've got something new to offer, I don't want to risk losing followers because I'm self-promoting for the sake of self-promoting. Probably not sound business reasoning, but there it is. Maybe this week I'll send out a couple of links to my books.

I'm on Pinterest, now, too. Please feel free to follow me. I even have a board devoted to books, although they are books I want to remember to check out, so it seems weird to post my own books there. Maybe I'll create a new board for my books and stuff related to them. I do have a decopunk board where I collected a bunch of stuff to help me world build my current story. So I suppose when (if) it's done and I've published it, I could pin it to that board and it wouldn't be weird.

Speaking of the current novel, it is teetering on the edge of that going-to-be-abandoned cliff because I haven't been working on it regularly and I'll lose so much steam I'll never get it back at this rate. And that would be a shame, I think, because I have some interesting ideas for it. So what would be good there is to set up some sort of schedule or something... and bribe myself with some reward for achieving a word goal too, I think. My attempts to create NaNos outside of the official NaNoWriMo have failed thus far. It's silly, it shouldn't (there's that word again) make a difference whether I'm looking at the official site's graph for the word count or a ticker I created myself, but for some reason, it does. So the trick may be to abandon the large goal of a NaNo and make smaller goals. Shorter term, too. And small rewards as a result. Hm... must give some thought to what rewards would motivate me.

Any suggestions? Must be cheap. We are broke-ish.

How about you, do you have any writing "shoulds" or other projects that need your attention? How do you get yourself on task?

__________________
* By the way, if you have ever struggled with depression or anxiety, I strongly recommend going through cbt. Changed my life, no exaggeration.

Modes of Story Writing

I did a little bit of writing today: maybe 20 minutes worth. And a little is better than nothing. I'd like to get into doing it more regularly and doing more of it, though, because this story hasn't gained the momentum it needs to start moving along without a lot of extra pushing on my part.

Sisyphus (from
http://www.mythweb.com)

I find there's different stages, or maybe just modes, as stages implies a chronological order, to writing stories. The mode I'm in is the trying-to-overcome-inertia mode that NaNoWriMo is so wonderful for curing. The next mode, and the one I seem to spend the most time in usually, is the this-is-work-but-I-know-where-I'm-going mode. Then there's the story-is-writing-itself mode: that's the best one, the one I wish I lived in. It's rare and elusive, but usually by the last week of NaNo I reach it.

How about you, do you find your writing has different modes? Any tricks for how to get from one to the next?

I did plan to write today...

I promised myself, when I woke up this morning, that I would write for at least a half an hour today. I hoped that it was a low estimate. However, the baby is having a bad day (he's in his crib, not sleeping, right now--it's only a matter of time before I have to pick him up again, I think). We've both had colds and I switched him to soy-based formula in the hopes that it would alleviate his sinuses (when I drink cow's milk it always makes me stuffier), and I don't think it's agreeing with him. I'm especially frustrated because 1) the doctor told me to switch to soy weeks ago because of the baby's eczema, but I didn't because we couldn't afford new formula at the time, and the eczema got better on its own 2) due to a snafu with Amazon I ended up ordering a large quantity of the soy formula and now he seems to dislike it and possibly be having a hard time digesting it, and maybe even getting a bit of a rash from it 3) this all comes at a point where my own milk supply is really dwindling and I've been having to "pump-and-dump" anyway because I'm taking cold medicine so that I can actually sleep the few hours I get here and there... ugh. I feel guilty about not breastfeeding him and now I'm going to have all of this soy formula, and it looks like I have to order more of the other kind. I'd consider returning it, except we're almost completely out, and I can at least mix the soy formula with the regular while we wait for another shipment of the regular... and I have to order all this stuff online because everything at the local store here in lovely Mount Shasta is ridiculously overpriced. Basically I'd pay more than double if I bought the formula there.

Sorry. Didn't mean to go on a tirade about baby formula there. Looks like he's dropping off, at last. Of course, in about 45 minutes I have to pack him up in the car to go pick up his dad from work. I hope he doesn't freak out, poor thing. He's having a rough day.

So maybe I'll grab these 45 minutes to do some writing. I haven't been making much headway, but that has more to do with the cold, the bad sleep patterns, and all the other mommy stuff than with a problem with the story. Jeff and I just started watching the first episode of Boardwalk Empire, which is awesome as it's set in the 1920s, like my story. I love it when a tv show or movie fuels my inspiration, just by its setting, like that, or sometimes there's an actor I've envisioned for a character, and it can be inspiring to watch them, too.

Do you have shows or movies you watch to get your writing juices flowing?

Sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation is seriously cutting into my ability to write. I know, it sounds lame. It's just sleep, right? But as my husband pointed out, sleep dep can be used as a form of torture. Yesterday was a bad day! The baby didn't go down until 5am and I hadn't had a nap at all so I was a mess. Today is better--got a three and a half hour nap in the evening and then the baby went down at 2am and slept through until 6:30 when I had to take Jeff in to work.

So I actually feel functional enough to do some writing, which I'm off to do as soon as I'm done with this post. Nathan Bradsford recently wrote a blog post about returning to writing after a long break and he recommended, among other tips, writing anything to get the juices flowing, like a blog post. So here I am. Plus, I like feeling like I'm talking with you guys again--I missed it. It's no fun being isolated from the world. Don't get me wrong, I have a tendency to be a hermit. But I do like to feel connected to people who are interested in the same things I am.

Anyway, I started my decopunk story about a week ago. I wrote about 2700 words, I think, and now I'm going to get back into it. If I can just convince this baby to let me sleep at least five hours every 24 hours (doesn't have to be all at once!) I might even get to where I can maintain some sort of routine again.

What about you? Do you have issues with sleep and writing? How do you handle them?

Writing again...

Well, it's been nearly a year! Finding out I was pregnant pretty much stopped my creative juices from flowing in the writing direction. I spent my time cooking and knitting, instead. But I am now finally starting to work on a story again. I'm happy about this, although I really didn't sweat the months on hiatus. I figure, as long as I'm not feeling stressed out because I'm blocked, I just have to go with my creative flow.

Of course, I've done some writing for the MA program I'm in online. It's for American History. That's been good, getting back into writing papers. There's something really satisfying about putting a paper together, like finishing a puzzle.

I have yet to actually start writing the story, although I think today may be the day for scene 1. We'll see; I'm not entirely sure the idea has matured enough. I've been using Pinterest to collect images for the idea I have. I discovered dieselpunk and decopunk recently and after watching Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film, Metropolis, I became inspired by the possibilities of a 1920s/scifi setting.

Actually, it all started when I was on Netflix in the middle of the night--I've discovered that the only way I can stay awake to feed the baby is to watch movies or tv shows--and I started watching Deep Space Nine from the beginning. And the first thing I realized, is that I am craving good sci fi. The second thing I realized is that I'm really intrigued by the space station as a setting. I can't say I was overly impressed with the writing of the shows--I can only hope they gain in depth as the series progresses--but the setting is really interesting. I like Quark's gambling hall, the promenade, the way that characters can come and go due to the daily docking and departure of ships.

One thing I haven't really hammered out yet, and I may need to give more thought before I jump into writing, is the tone I want for this story. I'd like to make it quirky, in the vein of dieselpunk stories such as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and make it a fun adventure, but I also just got finished reading The Hunger Games Trilogy, and I was blown away by how brutal Suzanne Collins is with her characters. It really made me realize how NOT brutal I am with mine. So... something to ponder.

How about you, how do you treat your characters? Do you like to just have fun with them, but keep it light? Or do you put them through the ringer?