writing
Stitches in a Vast Room
A man sits in a vast room, working a sewing machine, creating a piece of a sculpture that defies sense and gravity. Time doesn’t matter in this place, if it matters anywhere. He merely works, guiding the fabric through the needle’s bite, while the light falls in around him, and the noise of his machine makes perfect silence.
My brilliant, patient editor has given me an extension on The Rule of Mirrors. It’s a gift that can’t be measured. I’m happy to report that we have no firm… Continue reading
Unknown Girl
Mirror Mind
Part of the trouble with writing a new book involves unlayering a new side of yourself, a thinking you’ve never tried. These characters haven’t existed before in this way, for this book, and the sole place to look them up is inside, in the foggy places.
For me, it’s like meeting an unknown version of myself and gradually becoming her. My Vault 2 people are back there in my mind. I saw their exterior actions and speeches when they showed up in the first draft, but now as… Continue reading
Where Does the Writing Come From?
When I listen to Itzhak Perlman’s violin in the Theme from Schindler’s List, it reaches a wordfree place inside me that resonates and curls around the melody. It brings me a kind of hovering freedom that hurts. The plodding and soaring notes take me wide, across time to other people, and simultaneously, they bring me into myself, solitary.
Readers often ask me how I get inspired to write, as in, where did you get the inspiration to write Birthmarked? I have an answer for that which covers… Continue reading
Puzzles
No doubt I’m not the first to compare writing a novel to working a puzzle. The difference between a jigsaw and book, however, is that a jigsaw comes in a box with a picture to guide you, and someone has provided the precise pieces to fit together. The puzzle of a novel, by contrast, is a wild amorphous thing that rarely lies flat on the table and is just as like to have a piece of cheese mashed in where a corner piece belongs.
I feel, these days, like a… Continue reading
Writing for a Deadline vs. Not
The view from my window for the next week.
I met Kate Jacobs twice in passing before she became my editor, but I only met her for real as my editor a week ago when I was out in Las Vegas for ALA. She’s a warm, fabulous person, and we had a lovely long talk together face to face. She asked at one point if she could do anything to help me with the first draft I’m writing for Vault of Dreamers Book 2, and I said she’d already helped.… Continue reading
On the Tender Care of Early Ideas
How’s your writing coming?
Oh, just fine, more or less, in a savage kind of way.
I know it doesn’t make much sense to talk about writing the sequel to The Vault of Dreamers when the first book isn’t even published yet, but such is the timetable of publishing that I am now writing the first draft of Book 2, and it reminds me so much of the first draft of Book 1 that I’ll use that as my excuse for bringing it up.
First drafts for me are ridiculous.… Continue reading