No, not the theoretical fifth book in the Uglies series, but Cinco de Mayo birthday cake! For me! Because it is my birthday!
Rather more steampunk than Cinco de Mayo, but that’s how I rofl.
I’m taking off today, of course, but I’ll be joining whoever wants to chat in the next Forum Meet-Up:
Saturday May 8th
7PM US EST
Midnight in London
9AM (May 9) Australia Eastern
Here at the WesterForum.
And now I’m off to party on the bottom of the sea. Seriously.
Ciao for now . . .
Every year, the Australian speculative fiction (that is, science fiction, fantasy, and horror) community comes together for the Aurealis Awards. This year, Leviathan was nominated in the YA category, and won!
My speech was a bit shambolic, but here’s everyone I should have thanked:
Congrats to all the other winners and nominees (click here for a list), especially Cat Sparks, who won the YA short story category for her story “Seventeen.”
The award itself made of curved glass, and so is fiendishly hard to photograph. I’ve been trying and failing all afternoon. So here’s the picture I took with my phone on the night, lit by tiny lightsabers (long story), and showing the audience for the ceremony filing out in the background. It’s more interesting than anything I’ve done under controlled circumstances.
Event News
For those of you in Adelaide, I’ll be appearing virtually at the Royal Institution of Australia’s Science Exchange Book Club this week. If you’ve read Leviathan, come and join in the discussion. I’ll drop in through iChat or skype, so I can’t sign books, I’m afraid. But I’ll try to answer any questions generated by the discussion.
Leviathan at the Science Exchange
Wednesday, 27 January, 2010
6:00-7:30PM
55 Exchange Pl
Adelaide SA 5000
Admission is free, but book ahead.
As we all approach the end of NaNoWriMo, you may be thinking, “Well, I might not ever finish this sucker, but at least I got my 50,000 words done. And that’s what I set out to do, so I’m awesome!”
Um, no.
You need to complete your NaNoWriMo novel, even if it takes you till next November. Here’s why:
Finishing is a habit, and it’s a very important ones for writers to cultivate. In fact, my very first writing advice post, back on June 26, 2005, was about finishing. So let me end my month of Nano Tips by reposting that long-ago advice, which is as true today as it was back then . . .
Finish everything!
There will always be a part of your brain that wants to give up when characters aren’t behaving, when you don’t know where to go next, when the inspiration has faded. Don’t give the start-something-else part of your brain any extra leverage, or it will win every time. And once it starts winning . . . Well, let’s just say that the not-finishing habit is a hard one to break.
It’s easy to think up logical reasons to stop writing a story. You say to yourself: “This sucks. Why waste any more time? I’ll start something new that inspires me!”
Yeah, well, the inspiration of a new story is exciting. But if you wind up not finishing ninety percent of what you start, guess what happens. After a few years you’ll have written 100 beginnings, 40 middles, and only 10 endings. Which means you’ll be great at writing beginnings, only so-so at middles, and you’ll suck at endings. Which means you will almost certainly keep faltering between the middle and the end of every story, which means you’ll keep giving up and not finishing . . . Rinse, repeat.
And that’s a hole you don’t want to fall into. So finish, even if you know this story isn’t going to win you the Nobel Prize—it’s good practice to type THE END.
That’s it from me! Good luck with the remaining hours of NaNoWriMo. Don’t forget to check out Justine’s post yesterday, and her big finish tomorrow!
I’ll see you in December with non-writing advice posts. Phew.
Done and done. Thanks for coming.
There were 216 of you!
You can still read the chat here at Suvudu.com.
___________
This evening at 7PM I’ll be doing an online chat with Naomi Novik, author of the amazing Temeraire series (also known as His Majesty’s Dragon).
To join in the chat, just go to Suvudu.com at 7PM eastern time tonight.
See you there!
I’m on tour in Canada this week, so today’s Nano Tip will be a blast from the past. This post is from early 2005, when this blog was young and tiny. (It got a whopping seven comments, and I was well pleased with that.) And yet its ancient caveman wisdom is as true today as it was then!
So here it is again . . . “Write Your Way Out.”
People in writing groups often ask me, “What do I do when I get conflicting advice? How will I ever decide which way to go?”
My answer is: “Try it both ways and see which works! Don’t just write one ending, write three!”
It’s a medically proven fact: Writing the same scene several different ways won’t kill you.
Take a cue from visual artists. They make a hundred pencil drawings of a subject before even starting with the paint. They paint the same dang pot of flowers a dozen times, with only slight variations. They doodle in their sketchbooks all day, making stuff no one will ever see. But they rarely sit there and just complain about a compositional problem without putting their hands on a brush/pen/piece of clay.
In my second novel, Fine Prey, I actually wrote a scene that I knew wouldn’t be in the final draft, just so I could visualize what had happened “off screen” in the story. Weird, but it worked.
In another case, I lost a short story and had to write it again from scratch. Then I found the original again. (Argh.) Guess what? The combination of the two–taking the best elements of each–was better than anything I would have reached by fiddling endlessly with that lost original. And the experience of writing a story twice and then comparing the two versions helped me understand it in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise.
You see, paper is magic: Making marks on it changes your brain. So, don’t sit around trying to think your way out of problems, write your way out of them. The best place to find answers is on a piece of paper or a glowing phosphorus screen.
Of course, thinking about writerly issues in the shower or while jogging is a fine habit to get into, because otherwise that’s just wasted time.* Please understand that I’m not against thinking; I’m only against thinking that thinking on its own will get you out of a hole. Shovel also needed.
*Except for the being hygienic and fit, which is somewhat useful.
So there’s my blast from the past. Don’t forget to check out Justine’s excellent tip from yesterday, and she’ll have tomorrow’s tip as well. I’ll be back on Saturday.
Ottowans and Toronto-ites, don’t forget to come see me, Holly Black, and Cassandra Clare tonight and tomorrow night. We have buttons!
Ottawa
with special guest Keith Thompson,
illustrator of Leviathan
Thursday, November 5th 7:00PM
Chapters Rideau
47 Rideau Street,
Ottawa, Ontario
Toronto
Friday November 6th 7:00PM
Trinity St. Paul’s United Church
427 Bloor Street West
(Because this is an off-site event, admission is five Canadian bucks. You can buy the tickets right here. You can also pay at the door, if there’s any room left!)
And over the weekend, I’ll be appearing on my lonesome back in NYC:
NYC
Sunday, November 8 1:00PM
Thalia’s Book Club
Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre and Café
Symphony Space
2537 Broadway (at 95th Street)
New York, NY 10025
The Symphony Space series is aimed at young writers. There will be a discussion, a few slides, a short reading, and a creative writing prompt. Then lots of Q&A. I’ve never done one of these, but it sounds like a cool format. Go here to buy tickets.
Want a free ticket? Write me and say why, and I’ll see what I can do.
Click here for all my tour details. And click here to buy Leviathan.
After all your great responses to Monday’s Nano Tip post, I though I’d spend one more post looking at the story. So many of you had cool interpretations and in interesting questions, so I thought I’d give you my own version.
(For those of you who haven’t read the Dialog Spine Story, and most importantly the comments, you should go do that now. And don’t forget Justine’s Nano Tip #2 from yesterday.)
Now, the author’s interpretation is privileged in some ways (people tend to give it extra weight) but that doesn’t mean that my version is “right” and any that differs from mine is “wrong.”
But here’s what I was thinking as I wrote the story:
Okay, that’s all I got. Thanks again for being such good readers.
Also, note that I didn’t even notice the resonance of “Don’t let me go down there alone” until El pointed it out in Comment 14. w00t!
See you in Montreal tomorrow!
Wednesday, November 4th 7:00PM
Chapters Pointe-Claire
6321 Trans-Canada Highway, unit 1410
(514) 428-5500
Click here for all tour details. And click here to buy Leviathan.
Update:
And don’t forget that my lovely wife Justine is in Chicago this week, talking about her new book Liar:
Wednesday, 4 November, 7:00PM
Anderson’s Bookshop
5112 Main St
Downers Grove, IL
First of all, thanks for all your fascinating thoughts on yesterday’s Nano Tip post. It’s been really cool hearing your interpretations of the story. All you Nanowrimo-ers should pay close attention to the comment thread; it’s really important for writers to realize how different reader responses can be.
I’ll be posting my own personal thoughts on the story tomorrow, but today you can read Justine’s Nano Tip #2! Remember, she’s doing the even-numbered days of November and I’m doing odd ones. We’re organized like that.
In other news, there’s a discussion about Leviathan between me and Joe Monti here at Tor.com’s Steampunk Month. And I’ve just learned that the book has been chosen as one of Amazon’s Top Ten Books of 2009. w00t!
Congrats to everyone else who made the list.
Now, as promised, here are THREE final dates in my US tour:
Sunday, November 8 1:00PM
Scott Westerfeld Discusses Leviathan at Symphony Space
Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre and Café
Symphony Space
2537 Broadway (at 95th Street)
New York, NY 10025
The Symphony Space series is aimed at young writers. There will be a discussion, a few slides, a short reading, and a creative writing prompt. Then lots of Q&A. I’ve never done one of these, but it sounds like a cool format. Go here to buy tickets.
Then I’m doing a mega-event with five other authors at Books of Wonder, here in NYC. Check this out:
Tuesday, November 10 6:00PM
Books of Wonder
Libba Bray – Going Bovine
Kristin Cashore- Fire
Suzanne Collins – Catching Fire
Michael Grant – Hunger
Justine Larbalester – Liar
And me!
18 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
And finally, we finish up with an ultra-mega-event in Philadelphia:
Sunday, November 22 1:00-3:00PM
A NOVEL IDEA:
A benefit for the Philadelphia Free Library
summer reading program
Laurie Halse Anderson, Jay Asher,
T.A. Barron, Sarah Dessen,
Steven Kluger, Justine Larbalestier,
David Levithan, Lauren Myracle,
Jacqueline Woodson and me!
Children’s Book World
17 Haverford Station Rd.
Haverford, PA
Holy Guacamole, what a line up! Hope to see you there.
Click here for all tour details. And click here to buy Leviathan.
Okay, so the Canadian segment of the Leviathan tour starts next week.
One cool thing is that I’ll be appearing with Cassandra Clare (author of the Mortal Instruments series) and Holly Black (author of Tithe, Good Neighbors, and the Spiderwick books). On top of that, the Ottawa event has bonus special guest Keith Thompson, illustrator of Leviathan!
I’ve only done one event in Canada before, in Toronto, so I’ll be meeting a lot of you for the first time.
Here are the dates:
Montreal
Wednesday, November 4th 7:00PM
Chapters Pointe-Claire
6321 Trans-Canada Highway, unit 1410
(514) 428-5500
Ottawa
Thursday, November 5th 7:00PM
Chapters Rideau
47 Rideau Street,
Ottawa, Ontario
(613) 241-0073
Toronto
Friday November 6th 7:00PM
Trinity St. Paul’s United Church
427 Bloor Street West
Because Toronto is an off-site event, admission is five Canadian bucks. You can buy the tickets right here. You can also pay at the door, if there are any seats left!
See you there!
Note that the week after next (November 8-12) I’ll be doing events in NY and NJ. And I’ll be doing a benefit for Philadelphia’s library system on November 22, at Children’s Book World in Haverford, PA. Watch here for details.
Justine will be in Chicago next week, talking about her new book Liar.
Tues, 3 November, 7:00 pm
B&N Skokie
55 Old Orchard Center
Skokie, IL
Wednesday, 4 November, 7:00PM
Anderson’s Bookshop
5112 Main St
Downers Grove, IL
Order Leviathan here!
And you can also buy Leviathan prints from the artist.
One of the cool things I found out on the Leviathan tour was that the libraries of Howard County in Maryland are doing a little experiment called Pass the Book.
Here’s how Pass the Book works:
Step One: Obtain six hundred copies of Midnighters.
Step Two: Tag each one with its own unique tracking number.
Step Three: Release them into the wild!
Step Four: Let people read the books, register them online, and pass them on as they see fit.
Step Five: Monitor them using the internets!
That’s right, six hundred copies of Midnighters: The Secret Hour are being given away free and are traveling across the country right now. They look like regular copies, except for this sticker:
There’s also a page inside with detailed instructions on how to register the book online. To check out where the registered copies are right now, just click here.
I was given one of these books at my appearance in Baltimore. To be precise, it was Midnighters number 130, a multiple of 13! It flew with me to Los Angeles that very night, where I gave it to a bookseller. So hopefully it will appear on the map soon.
If you find number 130, let me know! There are also three other copies that I autographed, all of which are multiples of thirteen.
Click here to read more about Pass the Book.
Touring Update: Justine will be in Philly tomorrow, Thursday, to talk about her new book Liar. I’ll probably come along to say hi, so maybe see you there.
Thursday, 29 October, 7:00 pm
Justine Larbalestier
Big Blue Marble Books
551 Carpenter Ln
.
Philadelphia, PA
Click here for the rest of Justine’s appearances. And here for my remaining tour details, including Canada. And click here to buy my new book, Leviathan!
In other news, it’s time for a special Halloween Walker Wednesday!
I’m in Miami Airport, hanging out and waiting for the airplane home. I’m sleepy, exhilarated, and slightly addled by everything that’s happened on the Leviathan tour—meeting a bunch of new fans, getting to know Sarah Rees Brennan and Robin Wasserman much better, and of course the awesome hotel fire!
But I’ve only slept in my own bed two nights since October 5 (TWO NIGHTS!), so it will be good to get back there. Justine just got back from the Austin Teen Lit Fest, where she had a blast, so the Larbfeld household will be complete.
To all you USians who missed this tour, I’m sorry I didn’t see you. And for those of you in Canada, click here for details of the next stage. See you next week.
And note that there will be a few bonus appearances in the US, mostly close to my home in NYC, which I’ll list here soon.
Now here’s some cool news for everyone:
You can now buy lovely prints of the Leviathan art in big, beautiful, framable sizes, directly from artist Keith Thompson! The Grand Map, the UK cover, and eight interiors are available. Click here for details.
As you can see, my website has had its first makeover in many years. This is to celebrate the fact that my first new series in years, Leviathan, comes out this autumn. (October 6, to be exact.)
Things may be wonky for a while as we play around under the hood. But I hope you enjoy the new look. Let me know what you think!
Click here to contact Scott Westerfeld.
Jill Grinberg
Jill Grinberg Literary Management
244 5th Avenue, 11th floor
New York, NY 10001
212-620-5883
info@grinbergliterary.com
