Odd Lots

[alanajoli]

Well, I've written a couple of book reviews and an essay, and I've done a lot of copyediting. Obviously, I've not done a lot of blogging. I'm brainstorming a new short story, which is exciting. And I'm thinking about the fiction I set aside for the past year, and I'm sort of wondering if, when you leave a story alone that long, is it yours any more? Is it the story you're meant to tell if you can set it down and walk away from it for a full year? I'm not sure, and I wonder if it means I need to start somewhere else in the story.

But mostly pondering and not a lot of action. I do have linky goodness, however, so here's what I've been reading online this week:

• Friend of the blog Carrie Vaughn has a great post on the rise of urban fantasy at Tor.com.
  
• From jeff_duntemann, DIRIGIBLES!
  
• QuestionRiot by dcopulsky has an interview up with a graduate student in video game production.
  
• Lastly, a PW article on how the format falling most as the ebook rises is actually the mass market. It shouldn't surprise me that this is the case, given the similarity in pricing between the two formats, and yet, it sort of did. I didn't expect to see mass markets take a hit.
  

That's it for today. Maybe I'll get back up to having a guest blog tomorrow -- I'm reading the Charlotte Guest Mabinogion on my nook (among other e-books, like a good chunk of the library of sartorias's titles, which I've acquired a number of), and her introduction had some words of interest on myth that, if I can track them down again, were worth sharing.

Comments

[breathingbooks.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of wondering if, when you leave a story alone that long, is it yours any more? Is it the story you're meant to tell if you can set it down and walk away from it for a full year?

Are those two questions meant to be linked/dependent? I can't quite tell and it interests me because to me they are very different questions with very different answers.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think they're dependent. They're just tangentially related. Or perhaps they're the same question from the opposite point of view (one seeing fault in the writer, the other seeing fault in the story?). I'm still pondering both.

[breathingbooks.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps they're the same question from the opposite point of view (one seeing fault in the writer, the other seeing fault in the story?).

If you ever have time to elaborate on that, I'd be most interested.

When I leave a (mostly) complete story alone for long, it can become strange and not-mine, but that isn't to say it can't become mine again with work. And as for walking away... stuff happens?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

*g*

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

In fact, I need to post to Athanarel about something now that I've mostly caught up with what's been published. ;)

[dcopulsky.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks for linking to my interview!

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing it! It was cool. :)

[lyster.livejournal.com]

When I wrote my first mystery novel back in the day, I wrote the first 100 pages or so in one summer, then went back to college, then wrote the remaining 400 pages the next summer. Seven or eight drafts later it got shortlisted for the St. Martin's Minotaur / Malice Domestic contest (sort of - it's a complicated story), so maybe the time didn't hurt it all that much?

You're almost certainly at a different place now than you were last year, so listen to that as you re-approach the story; you might need to rewrite portions, shift some of the bones of the tale, or whatever, but it'll be much better for all that.

Re: mass market, that confirms my suspicions. Personally I look forward to the day when I have no mass markets and my physical bookshelves hold only good hardcover editions of books I actually want to reread over and over again (hence my investment in the Compleat Sandmans and NESFA's Roger Zelazny collection).

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

You're almost certainly at a different place now than you were last year, so listen to that as you re-approach the story; you might need to rewrite portions, shift some of the bones of the tale, or whatever, but it'll be much better for all that.

This is similar to what Jeff says below, and I think it's along the lines of what I'm thinking. I may need to start over to tell the story, since the me who started it isn't the same as the me I am now. :)

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

Worry less. Your children remain your children, even if they leave home for awhile. I let my story "Born Again, with Water" lie unfinished for nineteen years, from 1980 to 1999. I finished it and rewrote it twice, and it turned out reasonably well. (It's one of the items in Cold Hands.) I began "Drumlin Wheel" in 2002 and got blocked after the first scene. It wasn't until 2006 that I picked it up again and decided it was viable, and it took another four years' worth of fits and starts before I completed it.

It may be less fair to ask "Is the story still mine?" in these cases than to ask, "Have I changed too much to remain its author?" Stories are not the only things that may be considered "works in progress."

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about the change element, and I think that's the direction in which my thoughts are going. I'm hoping to write a full entry on this later. :)