“If you had a superpower, what would it be – and why?”

Answers in the comments or via email deborahb AT livejournal DOT com. Competition closes in about 24 hours!

But if you prefer to buy your copies, BAD POWER is available via Twelfth Planet Press & several good bookstores.

“Don’t let your father ruin you.”

“Mum? Wow. He’s dead, for chrissake.”

“My point, exactly. How about you go sleep it off, Matthew. Seeing you like this, people will talk.”

“That’s the problem. That’s the problem, they talk. They never stop talking.”

- Web of Lies, BAD POWER

Matthew Webb has been hearing things for years, ever since the disappearance of that homeless woman who’d stalked him. His father has kept him comfortably numbed against the voices in his head with a prescriptive chemical padding. But when his father dies, his mother takes over and she’s got plans for him.

“If you had a superpower, what would it be – and why?”

Answers in the comments or via email deborahb AT livejournal DOT com. Competition open until the end of the week!

And if you prefer to buy your copies, BAD POWER is available via Twelfth Planet Press & several good bookstores.

“She told me my future.”

“What was it?”

“In the words of Dorothy Parker-”

“I know. No one gets a happy ending.”

“You want to hear something really creepy, you should ask her what she sees in her own future.”

- “Palming the Lady”, BAD POWER

Detective Palmer is called to the home of Matthew Webb, an anxious young medical student who claims he’s being stalked by a homeless woman. When Palmer takes the nameless woman in, she finds she has an uncanny ability to tell the future. By the time Palmer unravels the truth about so-called ‘Mad Mary’, Palmer herself must confront the devastating future that Mary has left her – a future where the only forgiveness available to her will be her own.

a) “All sorts of middle-class folks agree with the billionaire owners of sports teams that the millionaire players make too much money.” Good point, Sherman Alexie. Some interesting questions raised here about the effect of the current eReader gold rush on culture, especially for poor kids, in: Sherman Alexie Clarifies “Elitist” Charges

b) Avid book readers (more than 10 books/year) make up 30% of the US population, or 70 million people, with the biggest proportion of those readers being 45-55 year old women. This presentation from the Digital Book World Conference on 25-January goes on to discuss book buying behaviour & why a ‘diversified retail ecosystem’ is important (because buyers want it). Plus, the influence of eReaders & customer preferences on eReader and eBook price points. And did you know that eBook purchases, in order of most % purchased, fall into these categories:

1. General Fiction
2. Mystery
3. History
4. Fantasy/SF

Eh? I always thought F/SF was first on the list, not fourth. But nope, general fiction reads outrank all other types. More in the Verso Digital 2011 Survey of Book-Buying Behaviour. Very interesting reading.

c) The Guardian annoyed me yesterday with an article on ‘lady writers’ and their new taste for horror (the dears), but today I find Ewan Morrison discussing The Self-ePublishing Bubble as a temporary phenomenon akin to the dot com bubble that caught a lot of people out (remember that? A handful of people got rich, a much bigger group of people went broke, & the world kept turning). Says Morrison, “I, for one, could never have guessed that writing about the end of books would generate more income for me than actually publishing the damn things.”

And here’s an interesting comment from Morrison, “Take for example digital guru, free culture activist (former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) and author Cory Doctorow - an SF celebrity and aggressive exponent of self-epublishing who gives his books away for free under a creative commons license (with optional payment). It turns out that Doctorow isn’t just any old novelist: the subjects he and his characters talk about are file sharing, the digital revolution, digital rights management and the oppressive old gatekeepers of the mainstream. His kudos comes from the fact that we are in a transitional period in which “free digital culture” is still an issue. Ironically, if and when self-epublishing becomes the norm, his subject matter will no longer seem so radical and no doubt his reader base will diminish.”

Ouch. Better invest in some diversified shares, Cory.

d) But if you get into the bubble quickly enough, maybe you, too, can do what Amanda Hocking did in this self-explanatory entitled (Guardian) article: Amanda Hocking, the Writer Who Made Millions by Self-Publishing Online.

e) Jonathan Franzen won my vote in one of his articles when he argued for ‘the protection of public spaces’ from the intrusion of those banal conversations that happen whenever someone answers a mobil/cell phone on the bus & begins with ‘I’m on the bus’. Here he argues that serious readers will always prefer paper books to eBooks, in Jonathan Franzen warns eBooks are Corroding Values from our friends at, yes, the Guardian. Hmm, I’m not convinced. Most paper books don’t come with a Search option (or Index), for starters…

“If you had a superpower, what would it be – and why?”

Answers in the comments or via email deborahb AT livejournal DOT com. Competition open until the end of the week!

And if you prefer to buy your copies, BAD POWER is available via Twelfth Planet Press & several good bookstores.

“There are two kinds of people with lawyers on tap, Mr Grey. The powerful and the corrupt.”

“Thank you.”

“For implying you’re powerful?”

“For imagining those are two different groups.”

- “Shades of Grey”, BAD POWER

Esser Grey is a rich and powerful man who has discovered, despite the world’s attempts to soften its edges for him, that one power eludes him: he cannot die. He sets out to divert the unwanted miracle through suicide and, when that doesn’t work, through murder. Along the way he meets Detective Palmer, the first person not only to acknowledge his miracle, but also his humanity.

Sounds like another ‘accidental empires’ in the making. Can’t wait to read the book (she said, wryly).

The Bookstore’s Last Stand: Barnes & Nobel taking on Amazon in the fight of is life.

Amazon’s Hit Man: Larry Kirshbaum was the ultimate book industry insider – until Amazon called.

Confessions of a Publisher: “We’re in Amazon’s sights and They’re Going to Kill Us”

Ok, this next one is about television, but I still find it interesting in terms of organised fandom:

Farewell to an Unlikely Hero: Why ‘Chuck’ Packed Such a Potent Punch

(From “Cliffs of Fall”.)

Ugh, I hate reviewing Shirley Hazzard’s CLIFFS OF FALL. What words can be used to describe such beautiful, lyrical, bittersweet, intelligent writing? Better, surely, to just read the words themselves. And I think you should, you should really read CLIFFS OF FALL because it is sad and beautiful and bittersweet, and Shirley Hazzard *should be more read*. She even made me want to use phrases like ‘our Shirley Hazzard’ or ‘one of Australia’s best exports’, taking refuge in cliche to hide from the dazzling brilliance of her writing. I’m so glad she’s written this book, this collection of, well, not even short stories, but of *moments*, sparkling moments chipped from a colossal diamond that Hazzard probably keeps in her apartment. (I’m not sure which apartment, either the one in New York or the one in Capri. A citizen of the world, she was born in Australia.)

There are themes uniting Hazzard’s works: yearning and sadness, maturity, society, femininity, duty. Relationships. What is said and what it means. What is not said.

None of which would have attracted me to the collection, I admit, unless someone I respected had told me, “Shirley Hazzard is one of the best short story writers working today.” So I will just say to you: Shirley Hazzard is one of the best short story writers working today. But, again, be aware she’s not dealing in narrative. She’s dealing in moment. In emotion, finely expressed and exquisitely, attentively observed.

Some motifs return, such as the aloof male partner, the “meekly attentive” female partner (description quoted from “In One’s Own House”), the social expectations surrounding them from his mother to the people they were at the party with. And there is so much careful detail, almost casually presented, that you have the sense you are there, I mean, really *there* in the 1950s/60s, in an elegant house wearing elegant clothes and swapping witticisms with dreadfully refined men and women at an exquisite ‘do’, while Hazzard’s characters give controlled smiles to everyone they meet (while secretly harbouring complex emotions and reactions which would have them turfed from said party if they dared speak them out loud).

I thought at first Hazzard’s greatest power was the remarkable balance and efficiency of her prose, the moments of sly wit. Lines like this:

“He linked across the lock a small gilt chain in which May had complete confidence.”

(From “A Place in the Country”.)

Doesn’t that just say it all? A security chain on the back of the door, a slight measure in which most of us have ‘complete confidence’. Except it doesn’t. It doesn’t say it all. Because then I realised that the real power of this sentence on its own isn’t felt, that the true impact is not from the innate wryness of tone but relies on it’s equally balanced and efficient context. Because the ‘he’ in that sentence is May’s husband. And the reason May’s confidence is so very ironic is because the true danger in the story doesn’t come from without. It’s already inside, as May’s husband locks the door against social judgement and resumes the affair he’s been having with May’s young cousin.

*Now* read that sentence, & see how much power and meaning Hazzard has packed into it:

“He linked across the lock a small gilt chain in which May had complete confidence.”

Are you thinking ‘poor May’? Let me assure you, that’s because you haven’t met her. Or maybe it’s because you read all the way to the end, because by then Hazzard has given you enough insight into every character that you will find yourself warming to the cold, methodical May in ways you hadn’t anticipated. And she’ll do that, again, in a sentence.

I admit that Hazzard’s characters have a sameness of affect (or even effect), so much so it’s occasionally hard to tell one long-suffering woman from another, or one intelligent-but-emotionall-distant man from another. But the pace of the pitch-perfect prose is enough to keep you reading, and the fact, again, that the stories are *moments* means in the end they feel as if they might even add up to one story, one set of circumstances for one set of characters – an observation that is only obvious when the stories are collected together in this one, slim volume.

Which I strongly urge you to read.

“For the fact was that they were not really suited to one another, which he would have discovered if he had ever tried to understand her properly.”

(From “The Picnic”.)

- Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief‘

This review is part of the AWWC2012 challenge & is cross posted on Goodreads.com.

BOURNE IDENTITY has so much to recommend it: it’s an action movie, an amnesia story (gosh, but I love amnesia stories) set in some of the more stunning parts of Europe, & it’s the movie where Matt Damon discovered he could be an action hero. Or, as Bourne has often been described, ‘the thinking woman’s action hero’. On top of this, it has the much under utilised Franka Potente, who is simply stunning on film, a mix of vulnerability and fortitude.

The moment I love most in BOURNE, though, is after Damon’s character – still nameless – is trying to sleep on a park bench and is disturbed by police asking for his papers. Sleepily, he starts to tell them he doesn’t have papers. Then he tells them in German and there’s a spark, a beginning of a recognition that ‘heck, I’m speaking German, wtf?’.

But it’s the next moment that the film turns, that we go from Act 1 hurtling into Act 2. Because one of the police goes to prod Damon’s character with a nightstick, and Damon grabs it. Right then you can see it in his eyes: realisation. Of what, he’s not sure. But he’s just shifted from a kind of bumbling, confused amnesiac with no sense of purpose, to having a strong purpose: to find out who in heck he is. THAT is the moment, the turn, the new Act, when the character’s motivation changes*. THAT is the making of a good Act, with each successive Act turning on the point when a character’s motivation is changed.

As I mentally meander through these great character moments on film, it occurs to me that film is great at establishing that second act via what McKee would name the ‘call to action’. But a third or fourth act is harder to spot. Perhaps once launched on a path, a character doesn’t alter their motivation as much as fine-tune it. Perhaps the third act is not motivated as often by a realisation as by something else. Perhaps a failure to succeed, or a well-earned discovery. (Anyone have any ideas on this one?)

I have a screenplay-writing friend who often asserts that movies today lack a third act. I’m beginning to think that’s because of the lack of any change in direction of character motivation.

- The second in a random series of Great Character Moments in Film. You’re welcome to nominate your own in the comments!

—-

* The idea that a new act is launched by a change in protagonist motivation is – you won’t be surprised to discover – an idea from Robert McKee’s teachings that I’m exploring.

I just love the turn in SIXTEEN BLOCKS, the moment Bruce Willis goes from drunk deadbeat cop to hero. The entire movie spins on that point and even the camera spins, giving us Willis’s grim, slack face and his suddenly sharp & sober eyes. And he looks around, at the new world he’s just created. And he *runs*.

And of course, as the movie progresses you realise the Willis character, who everyone figured for a fck-up, was *chosen* for his job for that very reason. Because he was a fck-up, and nobody expected him to succeed. So they gave him the job they didn’t want him to succeed on. And he’s cannon fodder, kiddo, he’s completely expendable. And we learn that as Willis realises it, too. And then he’s given that option: ‘keep fucking up and live, or choose something else – and risk dying’.

We know it’s Bruce Willis, so we know what he’s likely to choose. But the case is put so compellingly that even we, the audience, has to think, ‘hmm, maybe take the low road on this one, Bruce’. Even we momentarily forget that the life Willis has been living so far doesn’t look like much a life, doesn’t look like it’s worth saving. “Life’s too long,” Willis says a few minutes before the first turn – the first ‘call to action’, as McKee would call it. Life’s too long. And eventually, Willis obviously realises, ‘THIS life is too long, THIS life is worth risking’.

The only thing I’d change about that decision moment is I’d make the Mos Def character – the character needing to make it the sixteen blocks to the court house – I’d make him less likeable initially. So we wouldn’t be thinking, ‘aw, Bruce, don’t give up on Mos Def, he’s adorable’. I’d make Mos Def truly irritating, so even the expendable Willis character would think, ‘THAT’S the guy that’s expendable’.

- The first in a random series of Great Character Moments in Film. You’re welcome to nominate your own in the comments!

Women (With rather insincere apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling.)

I went to ask my government
if they would set me free,
They gave a pardoned crook a vote,
but hadn’t one for me;

The men about me laughed and frowned
and said: “Go home, because
We really can’t be bothered
when we’re busy making laws.”

Oh, it’s women this, and women that and women have no sense,
But it’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense,
It comes to the expense, my dears, it comes to the expense,
It’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense.

I went into a factory
to earn my daily bread:
Men said: “The home is woman’s sphere.”
“I have no home,” I said.

But when the men all marched to war,
they cried to wife and maid,
“Oh, never mind about the home,
but save the export trade.”

For it’s women this and women that, and home’s the place for you,
But it’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do,
There’s outside work to do, my dears, there’s outside work to do,
It’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do.

We are not really senseless,
and we are not angels, too,
But very human beings,
human just as much as you.

It’s hard upon occasions
to be forceful and sublime
When you’re treated as incompetents
three-quarters of the time.

But it’s women this and women that, and woman’s like a hen,
But it’s do the country’s work alone, when war takes off the men,

And it’s women this and women that and everything you please,
But woman is observant, and be sure that woman sees.

Will YOU be one of those winners?

Not if you haven’t entered, you won’t. C’mon, be part of history, win a book!

1) the next idiot who says something really stupid to me will get a slap upside the head, I don’t care WHO it is; and

2) oh, gee, an ad for a sandwich hand. Sandwich hand. Hmmm. That sounds really interesting.

These are not good thoughts to have.

But taking time off to write a novel WAS a good thought, & I’m powering through the first draft of a novel that’s been haunting me for a couple years, which was inspired by a billboard ad about 15 years ago. I can’t, even now, explain what the relationship was between that billboard ad (which I think was for a hardware store) and the idea that leapt into my head as I sat in a slow-moving bus on a nastily bright day. I just remember thinking, ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if …’ And so on.

It does mean I’ve put aside my other novel for a time that I’ve been working on for over four years, on account of being bored to death with it. I may or may not bring that one out of retirement and have at it with metaphorical scissors. Or, real scissors, since it sits in a real, physical pile on a shelf just above and to the right of my head. (I moved it to the right because I was certain it was looking to fall on me. It is a spiteful thing.)

But for now, having a new novel is like having a new romance: you’re enraptured but cautious, addicted but convinced of impending hurt. I have 50% of the words I planned for this novel already (well, 57%, but you need a bit of fat so you can feel the satisfaction of trimming it later) & I started this caper exactly 17 days ago.

Amusingly, since writing the novel is taking up all the time I would have spent in a full-time job, I’m STILL not getting onto all those other projects I thought I would be able to wrap up during my time off. Like, my taxes.

I should really get onto that.

“A brutal, honest look at a friendship pushed to the limits by one woman’s failure to accept her terminal illness or the effects of that illness on her family & friends. It’s also the study of a narcissist, Nicola, equal parts selfish & fascinating, as observed by her angry friend, Helen.

Garner’s prose is hard-edged, occasionally stark, & sometimes oddly melodramatic. She doesn’t just sit in a chair, she ‘dives’ for a chair, she doesn’t hand over a bottle of juice, she ‘thrusts’ it into her friend’s hand. So many strange verb choices that symbolise, I think, the energetic rage of the central character. 
Garner’s strength is to keep us reading even when we can’t find a single likeable character in the book. She is a keen observer of the domestic horror of an ordinary life during extraordinary events, & her character are almost all more or less monsters in an untamed landscape. During moments of potential pathos, Garner’s characters have an unusual tendency to suddenly admire a red vase on a windowsill, or ‘dive’ for a pair of shears in order to trim a friend’s rosebush.

Ultimately, my conclusion was that this is an admirable book, & left me with a feeling akin to what the ‘Helen’ of the narrative felt for her friend Nicola: compulsion, repulsion, tenderness, and a pressing need to rush through to the ending. 

(Note: This is my first entry in the Australian Women Writers Challenge for 2012.)”

I’ve been meaning to read this for a long while: I loved THE CHILDREN’S BACK in the eighties as a gritty & honest look at motherhood & relationships, but then I lost faith in Garner over the whole THE FIRST STONE incident, where she criticised women students for accusations of sexual misconduct directed at a university lecturer. As a recent graduate at the time, well aware of some departmental reputations that had been ‘questionable’, I put Garner on the ‘enemy’ pile.

Last year a friend talked me into trying THE SPARE ROOM, so after a 20-year hiatus, I’m opening my mind up to Garner’s torturous realism yet again. Let’s see how I go, eh?

Whatever your preference, whether you’re a fan of one genre or a devoted eclectic, the 2012 Australian Women Writers Book Reading & Reviewing Challenge invites you to celebrate a year encountering the best of Australian women’s writing.

I’m a Dabbler (according to the rules: more than one genre), & I’m aiming at the Miles challenge level (read 6 & review 3 books by Australian women). It’s a kinda modest number, but the challenge contradicts an earlier rule I’d laid down to minimise expenses next year. And – weird, I know – that includes minimising book buying!

So I’ll be starting by scouring the mountains of To Be Read books I own. Already without moving, I can see Adrienne Ferriera‘s WATERCOLOURS and Caroline Overington‘s GHOST CHILD waiting to be read. I’m pretty sure I have a copy of Joan Lindsay‘s PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (minus the controversial ‘final chapter’) someplace. And of course that’s not counting all the shiny TWELVE PLANETS coming out. I’m also going to use the excuse to read some more Australian women crime writers (the Sisters in Crime site will hopefully help me out). And I *might* just use some of my frugal funding to find out if there’s any Dorothy Porter I haven’t yet read.

So that should cover genre, mainstream, poetry, and crime. Hmmm, what have I missed?

And if you don’t win, you can still buy it direct from the publisher at Twelfth Planet Press.

In other news, the non-Amazon version of CLOCKWORK PHOENIX #1 is available from Weightless Books. $USD3.99. Worth it for the Cat Valente story alone.

WFC was great, Peter Beagle was absolutely charming, & the Mexican food was exceptional – especially at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where I was lucky enough to spend an evening with editor Danel Olson & some of the writers from TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY GOTHIC.

AND bunch of stuff happened back home in my absence. F’instance:

• BAD POWER is available for order. BAD POWER is my second short story collection, & I’m really proud of it. It’s also the first collection from World Fantasy Award-winning Ms Alisa Krasnostein of Twelve Planets Press since winning her first World Fantasy Award (well, I think it’s the first collection since October – I didn’t really check that), it also features an awesome cover by Amanda Rainey & an intro by the inimitable Ann Vandermeer.
• Excerpts from BAD POWER have found their way onto the Twelfth Planet Blog recently. I’ll re-post ‘em here in the lead-up to Xmas.
• Gilgamesh Press has released ISHTAR: a 3-novella anthology with stories by Kaaron Warren, Cat Sparks and myself. ISHTAR features a kick-arse heroine in a kick-arse city (my home town) as she chases down a terrifying, ancient deity.
• At Apex Magazine, Tansy Rayner Roberts has published an article on THE AUSTRALIAN DARK WEIRD featuring some of my favourite cohorts & me as we pontificate on how all this sun & surf has given rise to so much literary horror.
• CLOCKWORK PHOENIX: TALES OF BEAUTY AND STRANGENESS is now available for Kindle. My story, The Tailor of Time, is in volume one & scored a lovely mention in a recent Dark Cargo review of the new electronic edition. The Tailor of Time is still available as a free read in two parts at the Steampunk Workshop if you’d like a taste test.

Marvellous way to wrap up the year – thanks, teamsters.

Tomorrow I travel back in time to the other side of the world – San Diego! Just in time for the World Fantasy Convention.

Here’s my schedule:

Pacific 1: The Successful Misfit as a Theme in Fantasy

Is Schmendrick the Magician endearing because he’s a lovable loser, or is there something else going on? Nerds, geeks, and absent-minded professors abound in the pages of genre literature. What is it about the social misfit that attracts readers and makes them empathize with the protagonist? Are authors and readers self-identifying?

Peter S. Beagle, Deborah Biancotti, Erin Hoffman, R. L. LaFevers, Mark L. Van Name (M)

I LOVE this topic!

Apart from that, I’ll be in the bar. The bf is coming along for this one, so he’ll also be in the bar. Or, playing golf. After too few days in San Diego (& probably missing out on Tijuana, on account of timing – omg, I can’t believe we won’t be there for Day of the Dead!!), we’ll be off to NYC for the Halloween parade, & about a week later to San Francisco, including side trips to Vegas & the Napa, depending how we’re feeling.

This trip has been a long time coming, gentle readers, on account of it being a long, long year. But I’ve an inkling this will be exactly what my burnout has been craving.

When I started this series, I gave the Burnout blog posts 2 weeks to run. I approached a couple of writing lists I’m on, then did the rest of the invitations by hand, first plumbing my address book and then resorting to that faithful, timeless tool: Google. I found myself on the electronic trails of many writers I admire, from Alain de Botton to Annie Proulx to Mary Doria Russell, Lee Child, Simon Pegg, Tanith Lee, Delia Sherman, Michael Robotham, Tara Moss, Mary Gentle, Patricia Anthony, Peter Watts, Cory Doctorow, Nicola Griffith – some of whom proved elusive on my cursory electronic search. May of whom were findable, but only *carefully* findable – their websites were available, for example, but not their contact details. I imagine this is the price that’s paid for ‘big fame’, but it did make me admire those that still offered up an email address or contact form. I can’t imagine what offers they receive, apart from my own odd little one.

Some of those that *were* contactable had auto-responders on their email addresses, advising that their existing workloads or deadlines didn’t allow them to read &/or respond. It was rather thoughtful of them, I felt, & in-&-of-itself, it spoke volumes about the dangers of burnout in the schedules these successful writers were keeping. Some others took the time to email in person to explain why they couldn’t respond. Occasionally I had the sense that if some of them slowed down enough to even consider how they address their creative workloads, they’d burn out on the spot. More than one hinted at that very fact.

The reasons people couldn’t respond varied from sad, personal reasons to wonderful, deadline-type, exhilarating reasons, offering up a dialogue based on nothing but their goodwill and my random invitation. I admit, I was kinda touched. And it reminded me of the wonder of words – not just the kind of inspiring words Elizabeth Gilbert can put together in an 18-minute TEDx talk, but the wonder of simple words, ‘thanks for asking’ type words or ‘Australia, eh?’ words. It reminded me, simply, of words.

And I was even more impressed – you can imagine – by those that responded in the positive. Pullitzer-prize nominated author Mary Doria Russell wrote a response despite being on the road. Delia Sherman made a glorious & much re-tweeted contribution. After Ellen Kushner pointed out a wonderful blog post by Terri Windling on Autumn Cleaning, we caught Terri’s eye & she named some of her own favourite posts from the series. I remembered that Terri had, in fact, planted the seeds of my journey in 2005 when, at my first World Fantasy Convention, I saw Terri talk about the value of ‘fallow times’. A lesson it may have taken me this long to execute (though at least I knew enough to remember her words).

One of my favourite authors, Jim Lewis, bucked the trend towards optimism (you see why he’s a favourite, eh?). Ben Payne vacillated in style (or did he?), Alan Baxter taught us something valuable about martial arts, Kaaron Warren gave us a new reason to have children, Matthew Cheney charmed us with the value of ‘crazy’ (perhaps inadvertently). And there are so many very wonderful posts from so many generous people who honoured the mandate to answer ONE question in ONE paragraph with a ONE-line bio – with not a dud post in the bunch. All of them were thoughtful, smart posts that taught me something. I mean, ALL of them. And I wanted to link to them all, except I remembered I could just link to the burnout tag on LJ & trust the readers to find the people and posts they needed.

I’m proud to know you guys.

Thank-you.

You have to let your fantasy world grow with you. You cannot keep it preserved the way it was when it was first published, because it’s trapped on paper and can’t change, but you will change. The real world foists new experiences on you and you will age. Your opinions and your character will evolve. Looking over your own work, you’ll think it a bit odd, maybe old-fashioned or childish. You have to reinvent your writing to suit who you are now. Do not try to fossilise yourself at the age of your first success. This is fantasy and should be the most lively form of literature; if you want aeroplanes and oligarchs instead of swords and kings, or peace instead of war, of course you can have them. Throw out the old and reinvent to keep up with your new taste.

This reinvention isn’t an immense chore. It is the same creative flow that caused you to write the fantasy world in the first place. 

So to any writer who has creative exhaustion I’d say: Maybe you’re stuck in a rut because you’re trying to write in a style that no longer suits you. You know this deep down, but you fear to change because your first books have been so successful. The publishers and fans seem to want more of the same, but you’re sick of it. For heaven’s sake stop thinking you should duplicate it: You’re different now. If you have the strength to lead them in something new, they’ll know it’s good. They’ll be excited and they’ll follow.

Put all your old notebooks in a crate and shove it in the attic. Forget publishers and awards. Don’t open any of your novels trying to create consistency where none should exist. This is fiction and we celebrate its lability. Nothing you have previously written is important, only the bits in your memory. Pick up a few scraps of paper, because a shiny new notebook is offputting. And write a scene for yourself.

Then another.

- Steph Swainston

If you’ve got a deadline and you’re stuck in the middle of the story, try taking Raymond Chandler’s advice: have someone kick in the door and burst into the room, guns blazing (metaphorically, of course). Injecting something left-field into the stalled plot-line often gets the brain — and the story — working again, even if it changes its direction.

- Robert Hood has written many short stories and a few novels.