Sean Williams

Today is day two of NaNoWriMo. Yesterday I wrote 1600 words of my novel before being driven to write a new short story instead, only my second for this year (123rd all up). The day before that, I wrote 4000 words, which don't count to my total. I know it's not a race or anything, but ... well ... typical.

It's nice to be moving again. I've spent too much of this year thinking about writing and writing about writing, and not enough time actually doing it.

Back to the coalface I go ...

"This is where I heal my hurts." (thanks, Faithless)

Actually, it's just my study, revealed in all its glory. Kinda. Enjoy!

Provoked by this inspired Clarion fundraiser, here lies my toothless old keyboard, along with the detritus of sixteen novels, four short stories and four novellas--around a million words worth of crumbs, bitten nails, and cells sloughed off my hard-working fingers.


Is that hair in there? I can't imagine where that came from.
 
(No, wait. I can. Ewww. Don't go there!)

What do these phrases have in common?

Meanwhile, Charlie Jane Anders over at io9 asked the question: "Your awesome novel is firing on all thrusters... except one. A major character, who's important to the story, isn't clicking. She's dull, or he doesn't play well with others." What to do?

Eileen Gunn, Rachel Pollack, Kelley Eskridge and I answered. (Hint: it has nothing to do with feeding them to the Movember Wolfman.)

I'm on the road again for the next ten days or so.  Here are some things I've been meaning to post properly about but hadn't got around to.  My apologies.  See you when I get back!

• an Astropolis reviewing contest
• an interview with me and a couple of awesome Writers of the Future winners in LA, on Starship Sofa
• another interview, this time about the SA Writers' Festival
• Karen Lee Field and I talk about stuff
• my favourite science books of recent times
• once upon a time, I had a quote of the day on my favourite spec fic news site, io9

(It's raining here in Adelaide at the moment, and I'm really going to miss it.  Could be the last we see for a while.)

What with Continuum in Melbourne, Writers of the Future in LA, the odd virus or two, and deadlines, the last four weeks have been a bit hectic.  Good stuff has been happening, though, and I'll do my best to bring things up to date here soon.  After all, if I don't write it in my journal, does it really exist?

Another first draft bites the dust.  Now to edit, catch up on emails, sleep, and generally start to be human again.  Writing three thousand words a day for seven weeks has left me feeling like a bit of a machine, but not, you know, in a good way.

I'll start posting here again soon--perhaps with the name of the book, once I'm allowed to tell people what it is.

Thanks for your patience!

Last week, Boing Boing featured a post offering public speaking advice for anyone forced to bite that particular bullet.

Now I know full well that, given a choice, most writers would never come out of the garret, but as that choice doesn't really exist any more, taking note of this kind of thing is important. If you haven't done it yet, you'll probably be forced to one day, so best to read and absorb as much as possible from the people who did it and survived. Which is everyone, of course. No one ever died from public speaking, did they? (Please, catsparx, don't tell me otherwise!)

I just want to add one other thing to the excellent (not exhaustive) list on the other end of those links. It's really a couple of things rolled into one, but they're connected.

The first half is: know your place. By that I mean, find out in advance what's expected of you so you can get the second part right: do your damnedest to deliver. In other words, do exactly what's required, no more and no less. If you're chairing, don't assume you're also a participant. If you're reading, don't go long. Prepare as required. That kind of thing. Obvious, really--so obvious that it boggles my mind how many people screw it up.

Going long, in particular, is a classic newbie mistake that pros will hate you for, because a true pro will never do it. They work hard not to, and so should you. Practice what you've prepared at least twice, and time it accurately both times. Have a watch or clock in line of sight during your performance. Stop your reading in mid-flow if it's obvious you're going to go too far over. Speaking twice as long as other program participants is never acceptable, no matter how good you think you're being. Break this one simple rule and everyone in the audience will curse you. Curse you, I say!

(Can you tell this happened to me recently?)

Anyway, this isn't aimed at anyone in particular, and I apologise for making so many sweeping generalisations. Some pros do make these mistakes, and some newbies are already good at it. This is just a rant thrown out into the collective unconscious (please, make it stop!) with apologies to anyone who had to sit through my overlong efforts way back in the day.

Recently on Facebook I mentioned that I'd finished a novel, the first of three I've planned for this year. It's a four-part romp about a young boy who lives in a street where nothing works. After a mysterious crew of silver-suited plumbers wake him up in the middle of the night, Ollie finds himself falling through holes between worlds--meeting vampires, cyborg pirates, and living castles, among other things--and ultimately saving the multiverse from the plumbers' nefarious plans.

The release date of the first instalment is May 2010--a very long way off . It doesn't even have a title yet (but Omnibus is the publisher). I mention it here mainly to answer those people who've asked about it, and also to talk about how so many of my stories are inspired by things that happen at night.

This particular book wouldn't have existed but for a 4am event in our street almost identical to the one in the book (minus the holes-to-other-worlds angle, of course) plus several hours of hypnagogic musings on the subject. That's just one book. There's also The Stone Mage & the Sea and the various Change series, "A Map of the Mines of Barnath" and the Structure stories, my first novel Metal Fatigue, and Protection, the crime novel I'll be writing next year--all of which came from dreams. That's not to mention the many, many plot points generated while unconscious--solutions that came to me, over the course of waking up, to problems that utterly stumped me the day before.

The subconscious-as-homunculus model of writing is one I'm very much beholden to. The more evidence mounts, the more I'm convinced that my best ideas come while I'm asleep.

That said, I've stopped reaching for my bedside notebook every time I lurch out of unconsciousness, brain a-buzz with what feels like awesome inspiration. Most of the notes I write under those circumstances are gibberish, when they're legible at all. Sleep, I've learned, may provide ideas, but it's also a great filter of crap ones. I figure that if something's worth remembering, I will remember it--or it'll drag me out of bed, properly awake, after an hour of nagging--and if I forget something, it was probably for a reason. On the odd occasion I do worry that I've lost a good idea, I console myself with the knowledge that coming by another one might be as simple as rolling over and getting a few more Zs.