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Drafts

26/10/2014

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There is this almost inescapable misunderstanding about how writers work. Maybe not so much of a misunderstanding as a misconception. As readers, we only see the end product, all pretty and edited with shiny cover art (or, if an ebook, with shiny cover art on a BUY ME NOW page). We don't see the work that went into it. We can't. 

There is no way to see the two or seven or thirteen drafts of the novel (or essay or story or poem or epitaph). There is no way to see it because it isn't a THING. It's a process, like learning how to ride a bike or bake a cake or build an ark. You can't eat burned spills on the bottom of an oven. Or, well, you can, but GROSS. But you can't because they are not a cake. And the twelfth draft with scribbles and tears and coffee rings on it are not the finished novel that's in your hands. 

The only person who can conceive of how much work it took is the person who did it. And even then she can only remember it in bits and pieces--seconds here or there. There is this awful (though true) saying that we all die alone (and gawd but does that make me want to forget ever being a maudlin teenager...but remembering being a maudlin teenager who wore lots of black lead to a story that still hasn't seen the light of public day...never mind). Well, here's what to do with that nugget of defeatist wisdom: we all draft alone. And there is this other saying that is way better (better for a t-shirt or a cross-stitched cushion or a tattoo or whatever you need to remember it): Don't compare your first draft to someone else's final draft.


I say all of this because right now I am lost in the fucking weeds in the middle of the PhD dissertation. This draft is due Friday, and the plan then is to 'use' NaNoWriMo to rewrite the novel, and then return to the dissertation in December. I keep adding paragraph after paragraph, some of it good but oh-so-much of it good enough for nothing but the fireplace. But I don't have a fireplace. So I keep on slogging through, keeping the faith that I WILL figure it out. But it takes going through the weeds to get there. 

And so ends today's ridiculous stringing together of bullshit proverbs.   

And that photo of cherries? From Audley End, taken this summer, just because. 

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About Time (take two) and Kickstarter News

12/10/2014

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I found out a little while ago that I have sold a SF story to an upcoming anthology. YAY! 

It's my first SF sale (it's a story about time travel that uses a mechanism, not 'magic', so it's SF for all intents and purposes!) and will be in Athena's Daughters vol. 2. YAY!


Thing is, there is a kickstarter gearing up for the anthology, which will require a lot of time on my part (advertising, blogging, guest blogging, etc.). Don't get me wrong; it's going to be a lot of fun. But with the PhD going full steam ahead, and me teaching two classes a week (which requires prep time), plus having to do life stuff (like go to the gym, sleep, eat, etc.), my time and attention span are short. So I've had to make some choices. It makes me sad, but I have had to bow out of my writers' group (which meets in London once a month, which is now 2 trains away from me). It seems contradictory, to leave a writers' group right when I need good writing feedback, but I need the time right now more than anything. 


So watch this space. In the near future there will be news about the Kickstarter, including possibly guest posts/interviews with my fellow anthology-mates. And as part of the Kickstarter, I will be donating some goodies!

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There is Never Enough Time in the Day

10/10/2014

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It's the truth. It's also a lie.

Since moving and finishing up ALL OF THE CONS, I have been working on the PhD, settling into a new home routine, starting teaching again this year, and trying to figure out how to get everything done that I need to get done in the next several months. This means that my attention is constantly being pulled away from what I am trying to do right this minute. I've hit this sort of internal calm; I've got edges of panic and high stress levels, but internally I know it will get done. It's an accepted fact. The panic is just that I don't know HOW it will get done, or at what cost. 

That makes very little sense.

I suppose the important thing is that we make our choices, and we live with the consequences. I have 4 hours on Mondays between the classes I teach, and I have yet to fully prep for the following week in that time so that I don't have to take materials home with me. This means that I had to take a couple of hours out of last night's work on the dissertation to get ready for Monday. Which means that I am now playing catch-up this morning (yesterday was also a day with ALL THE EMAILS). I am paying for my lack of sit-down-and-do-it ness, and I am annoyed at myself. So, Monday will be different, with the hope that the rest of next week will also be different.

News: I sold a short story to an anthology that is having a Kickstarter here soon. Deatils to come.

Coming up: 
About a Kickstarter
Away Writing Weekend
How to Go Back and Revise a Novel a Year Later


Just finished reading:
Emma Newman's Split Worlds books (the 3 that are available)
Seven Deadly Sins of Gardening and the Vices and Virtues of Gardeners by Toby Musgrave & Mike Calnan
The Tudor Garden by Twigs Way


Reading Now:
In Search of Eden: The Course of an Obsession by James Weir
A Conspiracy of Alchemists (book 1 in the Chronicles of Light & Shadow) by Liesel Schwarz
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    Tiffani Angus

    Mostly thoughts on writing and the creative life.

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