Bill, I Believe This Is Killing Me

The Seasonal Affective Disorder is really fucking with me this year.  I’m on medications, which helps, but not really.
See, the Paxil means that it’s not slamming me for ten days.  I’m feeling okay for a day at a time, and then the SAD slips in and WHAM.  The whole afternoon vanishes because I’m just sitting here crying and breaking down and I don’t know what to do.
With the old SAD, it sucked, but I got used to it.  A constant suck was horrid, but I could adjust, keep working, get everything done.  This is a horror show where I’m okay, I’m okay, then suddenly I’m through the trap door.  And I can’t handle this.
I’m struggling harder now that it’s lessened.  I honestly don’t know what to do.  And I guess maybe that’s not what a blog is for, but I try to chronicle my existence and today I was about to get back to work and then I was all like, “I shouldn’t be trying to sell The Upterlife.  I’m reading Saladin’s book, it’s so much better, I’m an awful writer, no agents are interested anyway and it’s just going to be a long slow haul to the inevitable stop of my talent, yes I lucked out once with the Nebulas but this book isn’t it and it sucks and I should just toss it away and hope the next one is better and oh God why am I bothering it takes so much fucking effort just to get anything halfway decent.”
How can I work like that?  When I’m just assaulted by ghosts?

Blast It To Flinders, Come Back Stronger: On Exciting Failures And Deleting Two Months Of Work

So I’m 30,000 words into a new novel, and this weekend I realized that I have to throw out everything except for the first 600 words.  The last two months of work?  Completely erased.  Hit “Delete” and kiss that effort goodbye.
Normally there’s something to be scavenged from a manuscript collapse, but this is a total implosion.  My protagonist used to be a harried, frightened nerd, prone to punching when cornered; in this new novel she will become a nerd-king, the kind of super-popular high-school kid that has yet to realize that she’s peaking and that things have already begun to slope downwards.  The villain in my old book was a charming, well-meaning rogue; now he’s a sneering killer who’s only masquerading as human.  I’m reducing everything to such rubble that there’s nothing I can retain.
Such an exciting failure.
Failing is a good thing in writing; it means you’re taking risks.  But furthermore, it indicates you’re skilled enough to recognize that you’re writing something flawed.  Which is a sign of growth to be cherished.
A few years back, I would have looked at the scenes I’d written and said, “But those are good scenes!”  And indeed, they are; some of them are touching and beautiful and honest in a way that I’d never been capable of before.  There’s a scene where my protagonist faces down her reclusive, immature father to have to justify her expulsion from school – which was one of the subtlest and truest things I’ve ever written.  There was a lot of good stuff in that 30k, personal high-water marks.
Yet the novel as a whole wasn’t up to snuff, with character largely revealed through interminable interior monologues and backstory instead of action.  The fact that I recognized that was a sign of how far I’d come.  And figuring out how to fix it involved a combination of using every tool I’d developed as a writer and having the boldness to go, “No, this can’t be massaged back into position.”
Now, I’m trying a new technique: I’ve never outlined a novel before.  I’ve only written the scene that comes next, hoping my internal searchlight would find the correct path.  But in outlining, I’m having to use all sorts of techniques stolen from the theater – the three-act structure, internal versus external challenges, ensuring that character is revealed through action, explicitly raising the stakes with every chapter – and that’s a sweaty workout.
I’m learning so many new things that I feel revitalized.  This novel doesn’t feel like a slog any more, but a mountain to be climbed.  It’s tough, but there’s a certain masochistic satisfaction I’m deriving, a brisk slap to the face.
To which I say to you, dear readers, is that there are mundane failures and exciting ones.  The mundane failures you can’t learn from, you just did the same thing all over again.  But the exciting ones are the ones where you can break yourself and then reforge your shattered forearms into adamantium claw-laden superpowers.
What I encourage you to do is to fail big.  Write to the edge of your limits.  And when you realize you can’t pull off this tricky story you’re halfway through, don’t get depressed; take it as a sign that you’re recognizing flaws even if you don’t know how to correct them yet.  Writing’s full of invisible pitfalls where you think it’s brilliant, but your readers are unsatisfied.  Just understanding that something doesn’t work is a major accomplishment, one you should congratulate yourself for.
What’s important is not this story.  It’s your overall skill level.  And a failed story can teach you far more than that easy sale.
Today, I’m taking the first step in spending at least a month outlining my novel chapter by chapter.  Maybe it won’t work.  But I’ll learn, and if this collapses then it’ll be such a glorious failure that I’ll be harvesting new talent from the ruins.  Celebrate with me, people.  Go blast a story of your own.

Pay My Wife To Be Crazy. Er. And Help People.

If you haven’t been paying attention, my wife Gini has committed herself to a mad project: riding 150 miles in two days to help fight Multiple Sclerosis.  She’s doing this because of her grandfather – read her touching essay on the topic – and because a friend of ours in town, Patti, has MS.
I wish you all could meet Patti, and if you live in Cleveland, you probably have.  Patti’s one of the sunniest, wittiest, cleverest women around, so much so that you occasionally have to remind yourself, “Oh, right, she has a disease that is stripping the motor functions from her body.”  She has good days and bad days, but retains her sense of humor.  Amazon.com once issued me an email that said, “People who liked [GINI JUDD] also liked [PATTI].”
As a way to fight this evil, Patti’s husband Mike has created the “Patti’s Paladins” biking group, which pedals out to a lighthouse once a year in a gruelling display of physical fitness.  Well, it’s not that hard for Mike, who is so fit that they literally had to give him amphetamines before surgery because his resting heart rate is below what a normal human’s heart rate is while sedated.  This, I believe, officially makes Mike a superhero.
Gini, however, was starting from scratch.  She wants to do this.  She’s been getting on her bike every day, pushing herself so hard she trembles the next day, reporting in: “Ten miles.”  “Fifteen miles.”  “Twenty, but I had to take a break.”  She’s up to forty-one miles, a three-and-a-half-hour sweatfest that left her wrecked, but she is determined to make it to the lighthouse.  For Patti.  For herself.  For all other sufferers of MS.
What she needs is sponsors.  Many, many sponsors.  As she says, “10 cents a mile is only $15 out of your pocket for 150 miles of my effort. Of course a dollar a mile would be quite lovely, but any pledge is money going straight to an important and worthy cause.”  So I would strongly request, if you can, to give some cash to my wife, who is straining her healthy legs and lungs and heart for those whose legs and lungs and hearts are slowly deteriorating.
It’s a good cause.  Help her, audience.  You’re her only hope.

Pleased To Meet You, Hope You Write Your Name: A Confused Rant On Autographs

As someone who’s starting to get requests for autographs, I have to admit they puzzle me.  I’m not sure what an autograph is supposed to represent.
I mean, let me tell you that I have the entire Sandman trade paperback series scattered throughout my basement, a series I quite enjoyed.  I was also lucky enough to spend a week in Neil Gaiman’s company at Clarion.  And my friends routinely ask: “Why in God’s name didn’t you have him sign your books?”
I didn’t see a point.  Either I know Neil enough well enough to have him wave “hullo” to me at conventions, or I don’t.  If I know him that well, the signature is superfluous.  And if I don’t, well…
…there’s another author who I also spent a week learning from.  When the workshop was over, so was our relationship.  I’ve seen him/her at conventions at least six times since then, and despite a happy wave s/he has never acknowledged me once.  The single time I attempted to start up a conversation with him/her made it painfully obvious that s/he had bigger fish to fry than me.  Which is fine!  Not every teacher/student relationship needs to end in a happy acquaintanceship.  I paid my money, and got my value; series ended.
But I could have had his/her signature on a book, too.  It would have been a cold, sad thing, a timestamp to say, “We interacted here.”  Yet if that person doesn’t want to interact with me now, then what does that signature prove?  A mere co-location in time and space, coupled with a societal obligation to scrawl their name on a page.  That’s really not that much.
Yet despite the difference in our post-workshop interactions, both Neil and Unnamed Author would be a signature in a book.  And if the autograph is that useless in measuring how I know them, why have it?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve asked for autographs myself, mostly as an excuse to make feeble conversation with someone I admired.  That’s something I understand, that need to have some reason to approach your Big Damn Writing Hero.  And it’s certainly a thrill to have a memory that you met someone whose writing helped to shape who you are.  Here’s the evidence that you had thirty seconds in the presence of your hero!  Wonderful.  What a way to stimulate fond reminiscences.  Because good authors will not just sign your books – they’ll look you in the eyes, ask a question, establish a brief connection so that for a moment, you feel like they were aware of your presence and let you take that home with the book and their name in it.
The autographs themselves, however, are just this weird dross.  An afterthought.  I’m always puzzled by people who show off their autographed books proudly, as if the signature was worthwhile in and of itself.  And there are autograph-hounds who patrol conventions, looking to get signature after signature, just plopping the book down in front of you as though this was some onerous task they have to get through.  “Just sign there, don’t make it out to anyone,” they say, thumbing to the right place, valuing your scribbled name over the potential time of interacting with you, then half-turning away before you’re even done.
I don’t get it.  I’m not bashing it – hey, if it makes you happy, it’s two seconds of my time, I can do it all day.  I just don’t get the idea that a signature is worthy in and of itself.  I’m the sort of person who’s of the opinion that an autograph isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on – what matters is the moments you have with people, commemorative or not.
Thinking the ink is more important than the smile just strikes me as being very, very odd.

Cassie Alexander's NIGHTSHIFTED: A Review

Most of my friends’ list has gone justifiably apeshit over author Seanan McGuire.  And why not?  Seanan’s got the list of skills it takes to acquire a maddened fan following: a monstrous and engaging imagination.  A deft hand at devising interesting characters.  And the ability to write so fast she can write three different series simultaneously, so every few months see more Seanany goodness delivered straight to your bookshelf.
But there’s a new kid on the block who, I think, also has what it takes to acquire her own rabid fan following.  Her first book in a much longer urban fantasy series, Nightshifted, has been published today.  If you’re smart, you’ll get in on the ground floor.
That woman is one Cassie Alexander, whose debut novel is available for a mere $7.99.  It’s the kind of book that made my bathtub run cold, as I read in the tub and usually get out before I run out of hot water.  But no, Nightshifted kept my ass in cold water, because I wanted to know what happened next.
The hookiness of Nightshifted is evident just in the description:

Nursing school prepared Edie Spence for a lot of things. Burn victims? No problem. Severed limbs? Piece of cake. Vampires? No way in hell. But as the newest nurse on Y4, the secret ward hidden in the bowels of County Hospital, Edie has her hands full with every paranormal patient you can imagine — from vamps and were-things to zombies and beyond…

What I liked about Nightshifted was that we have an imperfect protagonist.  Edie’s prone to having unsafe sex as a way of burning off steam, is too overprotective of her junkie little brother, and her attention occasionally flags when she’s been working an eighteen-hour shift.  She’s not a superhero but a genuine nurse, her flaws balanced out by a kind compassion that lets her connect with the monsters who have wound up within her ward.  The whole plot revolves around her willingness to do the right thing, even at a cost to her own life and soul – which makes her not super, but an actual goddamned hero.
Even the inevitable romantic triangle feels fresh, mainly because one of the romantic leads is a firefighting zombie, who’s one of the more unique takes on zombies I’ve seen recently.  He’s a sexy zombie who is still clearly dead, which is something you don’t see that often.
The biggest problem I had with Nightshifted, honestly, was that at times it felt too packed with interesting things.  Cassie’s dazzling imagination is on full display here, from debates on the proper tranquilizers to use on shapeshifters to the hinted origins of the shadow-monster puppeteers of Y4, to OH HEY HERE’S ANOTHER THING WE DON’T QUITE HAVE TIME TO GET INTO.  I know that this will all be explored in future series, but there were several moments where I was like, “Wait!  I hardly got to know you, and… Oh, you’re gone.”  Which is a strength, I suppose, since most books don’t even have one concept I want to see explored further, but still.
In any case, this is a book well worth reading, because Cassie’s driven.  She’s writing a book every six months, and if you liked this I happen to know there’s two more coming down the pike.  And today is her book birthday, a very important day to a first-time author… So if you’re interested, I’d buy Nightshifted now and help out someone who’s just starting out her career.
It’ll be worth it.  Cassie’s going places.