Odds Bodds

erinbow @ 2012-05-03T14:58:00

2012-05-03T18:58:17Z

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with me that’s up today over at Scribophile, an online critiquing and hanging-with-writers community.

Scribophile: In general, how much research do you do for your novels? Does it take place before you sit down and write the thing, or do you work on both tasks at the same time? And how can you tell when you’ve done enough—or even too much?

Erin:

Mostly I write and research in parallel. There are places where it’s straightforward. You need to give a character a sucking chest wound, so you read up on sucking chest wounds, find yourself a combat medic to chat with, and then get your knife ready and write. Easy peasy.

There are places where research is just procrastination. You need to launch a spaceship from a magnetic rail, so you start researching eddy coils etc, and before you know it you find yourself wondering if the magnets need to be supercooled, and deciding Loftstrom Loops are awesome and we should totally build one, who do I write to at NASA about that—forgetting that none of the characters give two figs about how the shuttle works.

The best and hardest kind of research is the research that builds the world. For instance, my current book in draft, The Swan Riders, has horses in it — in fact it takes place during an epic cross-continent ride. I’ve never been on or around horses, so I don’t know much about them. The tricky part about this research is that you don’t know what you need to know. So I did a lot of general reading, of the “horses for dummies” kind. A lot of hanging out in virtual communities like The Long Rider’s Guild. A great horse informant was found (hi Jen!).

The other kind of research (chest wounds and space ships) I mostly do as I go along, but the horses kind of research I have to do upfront. This is because I have to shape the story to suit the horses, not twist the horses to suit the story. I knew I’d got it (as much as it could be got) when horses stop being a problem and became an inspiration. When they moved themselves, the way stories move or characters move.

I call this letting-research-shape-the-story thing “writing from the inside out.”

Getting to inside-out is difficult. If you think that’s hard to do with horses — and it is — try writing about another culture. You can’t just pin some feathers and blood sacrifice on ye olde sword and sorcery story and call it Aztec. That’s writing a story from the outside in.

Appropriation is always a risk—and really, all stories are appropriation. But the second miracle of fiction is that it is possible. Writing about people who are in various profound ways Not You is possible.

erinbow @ 2012-04-28T09:52:00

2012-04-28T13:51:59Z

For a week I've been flailing around with the current chapter of Sorrow's Knot.

I keep thinking I'm about to hit the point where I can stop completely ravelling the last draft and saving only a sentence here and there. I dream about the big downhill rush, and I'm always sure it's just after this last little slog. And maybe this time I'll be right, who knows.

Anyhow. This week's chapter addresses one of the big problems from the first draft: no one understood why my hero had to do the terrifying and incredibly brave thing she did at the climax. I mean, I feel like I understood it. But no one else did. And by no one I mean my incredibly smart editor.

So, task: create a chapter where the whys and wherefores of the brave/terrifying/magically logical climax are spelled out. Where the character - visibly and on-screen - figures out what she's going to have to do. Short-term payoff: suspense. Will she really do THAT? Long-term payoff: increased reader satisfaction and decreased reader confusion. Hopefully fewer editorial post-it notes expressing bafflement. Definitely worth doing.

But what does this look like on the page? This looks like a big old chunk of talky exposition, that's what it looks like. The scream in the sunlight horror all-is-lost incident right before this? Let's lose all momentum by TALKING about it. A lot.

You may now picture me banging my head into my treadmill desk. Repeatedly.

Today, finally, I think I found the path through it. It's a well-worn path - so well worn that screenwriters use it as a truism: exposition is ammunition. Let's make the characters FIGHT about what to do next. It's a well-worn path but I missed it, and finding it seems like a little miracle. If I can just get through this next little push, it will be a fast clean rush to the ending.

(Or not.)

On the edge, part two

2012-04-11T21:06:34Z

Well, I did it. I tore apart the chapter I was talking about yesterday and put it back together again.   And then - then I wrote the new ending for it.   The one which brings the characters to the edge of escape, but fails to let one of them out.   I finished it about 12:00, and spent the remaining half hour in my office shaking and crying.   You can either view that as a sign the book is working, or a sign that I should up my meds.   Up to you.

It's not even really that terrible a scene.   It's just that characters being crazy-brave always nail me. Every single time, they nail me. Sad I can handle. But beauty and bravery break my heart.

So where are we now? Well, if I didn't seem to be allergic to structure, I'd say this was the "darkest moment" part of the draft. If it were a 100-page screenplay, so sayeth the Screenplay God Blake Snyder, this would be page 75.   The break into act three.

I have some hope that act three will be faster to write. I've totally torn act one and two apart, saving only the main characters, the general premise, and a paragraph of description here and there.   I have never had to strip a book so far back.   It's not a rewrite, it's a just-plain write.   But act three may be more or less salvageable. Wish me luck.

Also, an aside:  mamculuna commented yesterday on my berating myself for listening to thinky-plotter me and thereby getting stuck.   She says: "But I suspect that the thinky self gets you across the chasm on some kind of Rube Goldberg bridge, and then the real writer self sees where to go and flies across."   That rang true.   Maybe I can usefully view my thinky-plotter self as one of the poor souls working on the crazy bridge in Dr. Suess's How Lucky You Are.    After all, you have to cross the gap somehow.   Maybe you need a little crazy bridge labour before you can leap.

On the edge

2012-04-10T17:52:21Z

Today saw me back my writing office after a four day weekend. I've not gotten much work done since the beginning of April, which is a long stretch when deadlines are near.

But the thing is ... I tried to write this last chapter. I gave myself a nice pause and a couple of thinky days before tackling it, plotting how I was going to help the characters out of the dangerous place where they were trapped, and then later how I was going to get them to go back there on purpose. When I thought I had it all figured out I tried to write it.

And failed. I wrote an entirely wrong-footed chapter, mechanical and choppy and confusing. But I pushed it (after all, I'd already given myself the pause) and got the characters to the end of the chapter, and the edge of escape. And as they came to the edge, I thought, "wait, this is IT, this is where it happens, right here, right now." And I thought: "this is why I couldn't write this: I was trying to avoid this moment."

Of course that wasn't what I had thoughtfully planned, so I ignored the hunch and wrote past the moment, completing the escape. Then I froze up.

It took me a few days to decide to throw out my plans (not to mention most of a chapter) and trust my gut. Of course NOW it seems obvious -- why would they want to escape then come back? -- but I fought and fought and whined and stomped my feet. But today, finally, I scrapped the problem chapter, stripping it back and putting it back together with its new not-escape ending in mind. I'm ready, tomorrow, to bring my characters to the their worst moment, the all-is-lost point. GULP.

But when, oh when, am I going to figure out that my thinky-writer self doesn't know what it's doing? When am I going to stop pushing through before I'm ready? When am I going to quit fighting those deep flashes of insight? Listen to your self, Erin: "This is where it happens. Right here. Right now."

Read these now

2012-04-10T01:44:24Z

I don't often talk about the books I'm reading on my blog, but I've recently read two books that are about to make their North American debuts, and I would love to see both of them reach lots of readers, because they are both fabulous. I thought: it would not hurt to do my part.

The first is Zoe Marriott's Shadows On The Moon, which a high-concept blurb writer would probably call "A Japanese Cinderella." That does not begin to do it justice. For starters, take it from me, it's not easy to make the jump from fairy tale to novel, and most writers fail. They forget to fill in what almost all fairy tales leave out: motivations for the characters, and rules for the world. So, you must imagine a story in which Cinderella was not a fairytale cipher, but had an agenda of her own. What, exactly, does it mean to dance so well a prince might fall for you? And why would you need him to?

But I love Shadows most and best for its first scene, its first sentences, which I just want to diagram and study. Here's how you do it, folks:

On my fourteenth birthday, when the sakura was in full bloom, the men came to kill us. We saw them come, Aimi and me. We were excited, because we did not know how to be frightened. We had never seen soldiers before.

Go on, put the book down after that. I dare you.

(Also, let's hear it for non-white people in Fantasy Land, hurrah!)

Shadows On The Moon comes out April 24th.

I also just finished Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity. Here's a book to give to your friends who shy away from reading YA because they think it's all broody vampires. It is straight up fabulous, shatteringly good.

The novel largely takes the form of a rather rambling written confession of a female British special agent being held in Nazi-occupied France. From the title on in, you suspect the agent is up to something. Indeed, I've always loved unreliable narrators, and who is less reliable, for better reasons, than a confessing spy?

On the surface, the confession tells the story of her friendship with the (also female) RAF (or rather, Air Transport Auxiliary) pilot who brought her to France. And here's something else I've never seen done this well. The agent and the pilot have one of those fearsome "first friendships" that many of us have in college -- the girls are of just that age. That first adult friendship that is not sexual, but in other ways just that intense, and just that new, because *you* are so new. Of course I've seen this first friendship explored for young men, but much more rarely for young women - and I have never, ever seen it done this well.

Code Name: Verity comes out May 15th.

On Endings ....

2012-04-04T02:44:59Z

I was just talking to a writer friend about how we want our scenes, our chapters, our stories as a whole, to be a little more jagged and gangly, with bits sticking out that don't quite fit. Neatness is often seductive -- you feel it's "right" if it all fits together -- but it is a small thing, and a false one.

The friend I was talking to was another writing Mommy, and we were particularly discussing our tendency to let the external pulls of our life creep into our fiction. Why did her scene end there? Because it was time for her to go pick up her daughter from school. Why are my chapters suddenly turning out at about 3,000 words? Because that's how many "keeper" words I can write in a week. Deep true artististic reasons, both.

But it is hard to resist the temptation to wrap things up at the end of the day, and make them neat. Leaving bits hanging feels like leaving wounds open. Or, less dramatically, like stopping your knitting in the middle of a row, without casting off and tying a knot. If you leave loose threads - won't it all unravel? But writing is not knitting. Writing is wild. It does not prosper when we clip it short and box it up so. Ursula LeGuin wrote that all art tryings to say the unsayable--and writing, God help us, tries to say the unsayable in words. It ought to be rough. It ought to be shaggy.

(A related point, which I won't develop here: outlines don't work for me. I observe that they work for other people but I don't understand how they possibly could.)

Endings are of course place where one is tempted to pull all the threads together and tie a bunch of knots. That's legitimate. You don't want a novel that feels like it's going to come to pieces in your hands. Novels - this is a remarkably controversial statement, but - novels are big stories. When you come to the end of a story you don't want to be startled by the storyteller's sudden silence. You don't want to look up going: "wait, what's wrong, did you choke on something? Did the transmission cut out? Did they leave out the last few pages? WHAT? WHAT!?" At the end of the story you want the sigh and the silence, and then the impulse to stand up and cheer. You don't get that if you don't make a good ending.

But many, many books go too far in making endings. They tie everything up too neatly. They end with a great clanging final thump.

The thing is, book endings aren't really endings. (Unless they end with the world blowing up.) They often have that sense of launching something new, of going through a new door. Even something as simple as "and they lived happily ever after" is about putting a big door at the end of the novel and then opening it up. I personally like readers to be able to imagine the future of my characters, and to be able to glimpse what it is. It's not too different than the way I like them to be able to glimpse the back stories of the assorted secondary characters. That these untold stories are there adds richness, even if no one writes them.

Endings are like ... weddings, I suppose, which is why books often end with the bells ringing. In life it's bad when weddings are viewed as endings. Anyone who's successfully married will tell you a wedding is a beginning, or at least merely a climax at the end of Act One. Still, weddings have that quality I look for in novel endings, of ceremony and transition, of possibilities changing.

And like weddings, the happiest of endings can sometimes make me cry. And I like that.

An open letter to Mr. Joel "Adults Should Read Adult Books" Stein

2012-03-30T14:45:33Z

In response to this piece in the New York Times -- a particularly fun addition to a growing list of major newspaper pieces by people who don't read young adult fiction but publicly disparage it anyway.

Dear Mr. Stein,

You're a humorist, yes? Your books (and possibly this column) are meant to be funny? That's just ducky: good for you!

I don't read humour writing, myself. Perhaps funny books are lovely, full of characters so alive you could swear you know
them personally, like the works of John Green. Maybe they can make the simplest language into a fully breathing description of the glory of the world, like E.B. White. Maybe they take the shattering pain that made Melinda from Speak silence herself and turn it into crooked little smiles, smiles that hide too much. I don't know because I don't read anything that's mean to be "funny."

I'm sure it's fine for some. I remember the boys in class who could get a laugh. The one with a line in fart jokes. The one who could burp the whole alphabet. Those kids grow up. They need something to read. Maybe they'll even learn something from books like yours, who knows? Personally, when ever I see someone reading, say, Pratchett, I judge them instantly. You'd think they could at least get one of those classy leather book covers to hide their shame.

For my part, I'll read humour books after I've finished the 3,000 years of writing that's entirely serious. After all, books aren't meant to be fun. They're improving. That's why teachers assign them.

Fair warning: reading the whole cannon may take me a while. I'm currently stuck in the Greeks, and I'm not sure whether to re-read Antigone or Euclid's Geometry. They're both pretty serious ... and yet, last time I read them, they both gave me delight. Hmmm. These genre distinctions are tricky. It's almost as if they weren't marks of quality at all.

John Green, for instance. I admit I skipped ahead of the Greeks a bit and read his book on kids with cancer, The Fault in Our Stars. I was sure it would count as serious -- it's got those breathing characters (only one of them can't breathe very well). It's got a Shakespearean riff for a title and a sort of metatextual problem of authorship point on which the plot turns. Plus, you know, it's kids with cancer. How fun could it be? And yet I laughed so hard reading the egg-the-car scene that my husband made me read it to him, which made me laugh even harder, bittersweet crying real laughter that made snot bubbles come out my nose. But I swear I didn't mean to read that. We Serious Readers are considering some kind of labelling system, warning against "mixed" books like this. Or possibly a fatwa.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for your piece "Adults should Read Adult Books" and wish you good luck with your future "funny" work.

Yours in all seriousness,

Erin Bow

Young Adult Author

Look for more New York Times "balance" pieces, including the one for the series on contemporary theatre (Maxin Kon's "I'm a movie director and plays are for suckers") and the one for series on artisan teas ("Grow up and drink coffee").

When not writing is the best writing you can do....

2012-03-29T18:52:22Z

Yesterday I did a great deal of awesome writing, bringing my characters to a climax/crisis/realization/high-point thingy. (This is the technical term.) Today I put almost no words on paper.

I'm not stuck. I think I know what happens next, in broad strokes (which is more than I knew yesterday at this time), but I felt a resistant to writing it. I felt in need of some time to let the idea leaven and rise. So I took the time, doing some editing and note-making and doodling instead. And even though I'm missing a deadline soon (April 1? not gonna happen) I feel better for letting the dough sit.

I am not always -- not often -- this kind to myself, but I believe in the value of this sort of kindness. Sometimes it's best to respect your reluctance when you don't want to write. There may well be a reason for it.

See also: [how to get stuck and brood].

.But with dragons

2011-12-08T20:47:59Z

(originally posted at erinbow.com. Gonna try to do a better job with my mirroring.)

Check out this Adam Gopnik piece from the New Yorker on why young people like fantasy novels. For a change, it’s NOT insulting to youth or to fantasy. (Much.)

I’m not sure I agree with everything — though it’s always hard not to agree with Gopnik; he’s such a good writer that he can make anything sound reasonable and insightful, if not revolutionary. But he’s spot on about this: fantasy elevates ordinary and eternal problems of young people (and the rest of us, though Gopnik doesn’t say that) into stories via the language of myth. It turns “No one really knows me” into “I’ve got a secret identity.” It turns “I don’t understand why other people act the way they do” into “I’m trapped in a faerie realm.” It turns “my high school must have been built over the mouth of hell” into “my high school must have been built over the mouth of hell.”

I once told a class of 12th Graders that Plain Kate was autobiographical. “Not that I’ve ever fallen victim to a witch hunt because I don’t quite fit in,” I ad-libbed, “except that high school is exactly like that.” I didn't mean to say it, but it sort of burst from my heart. As one, they locked eyes and some even nodded. It was an electric moment: my hair stood up. All of them looked at me, all of them. Even the cheerleaders.

“Be kind,” says Pliny, “for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

There are certain things in life that are glorious, and they are glorious for everyone. There are more that are hard, and they are hard for everyone. We like to see these things retold, but with dragons.

erinbow @ 2011-09-04T00:27:00

2011-09-04T04:27:16Z

(originally posted at erinbow.com)

Readers, I have been shopping.

Under the influence of my visiting (and very stylish) mother, I bought not one but two Serious Frocks.

One is a little black dress — not what I was shopping for, but so smashing, and I got the most amazing turquoise and gunmetal earrings to go with it. The other is a wrap dress in gunmetal, olive, and cobolt blue. Also bought: two pairs of quite impractical shoes. I’m having second thoughts about those. I normally wear flats with serious insoles — the kind made of half an oak’s worth of cork and holding several patents — and I bought Chinese Laundry three-inch “Barbie goes to the Party” heels. I may also need training wheels.

The Serious Frocks are needed for some serious parties. In fact, by the end of the month I am anticipating needing writerly life support, as I sink into some kind of introvert’s healing coma. Because here’s my schedule:

CBC Book Club Saturday, September 10: I’ll be in Vancouver doing the CBC Book Club, which is taped before an audience and broadcast later. Free tickets for the taping, folks! It’s at 11:00 AM. I don’t know when the broadcast is, but I’ll try to find out. It will be on North By Northwest, the BC-wide morning show, and on the internet.
Sunburst Awards Wednesday, September 14: I’m at Harbourfront in Toronto as part of a lineup of authors shortlisted for the Sunburst Award — Canada’s award for science fiction and fantasy. Holly Bennett, Paul Glennon, Guy Gavriel Kay, Douglas Smith, Hayden Trenholm, and Robert Paul Weston are also reading. And then they give out the award. Like the Oscars, but lower budget and geekier, and hey: doesn’t that sound like more fun anyway? Keep your fingers crossed for Plain Kate, which is up for the Sunburst in the Young Adult category.
Science in the Pub Friday, September 16: I’m home in Kitchener/Waterloo, and appearing at the Perimeter Institute’s popular Science in the Pub event at the Huether. It’s part of the Grand Opening Weekend for the new Stephen Hawking Centre. For discussion: Science vs. Art: which is more creative. (Somehow they didn’t mention the smackdown aspect of it when they were signing me up…) Rumour has it they’ve pulled in Ray LaFlamme for Team Science, which makes me heavily outclassed: Team Art supporters must come wave our far more beautiful flags. There is one event at 5:30 and one at 7:30: they are the same, so pick one or the other. Attendance is free but advanced tickets are required.
Telling Tales Sunday, September 18: I’m reading at Canada’s leading children’s literature festival, Telling Tales, in Rockton, Ontario. Anne of Green Gables and Mark Twain are also going to be there, in person. Free admission, though donations are accepted.
Word on the Street Sunday, September 25: I’ll be appearing via videolink at the newest location for the coast-to-coast festival Word on the Street: Lethbridge, Alberta. Since Plain Kate is up for the Alberta reader’s choice award, the Rocky Mountain Book Award, I’m hoping some folks will actually have read the book.
EEEK! The TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award Gala Tuesday, October 4: Oh, my goodness, I’m going to the ball. Plain Kate is up for the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for the most distinguished book of the year. This isn’t public, alas, but an “invitation-only gala” at the Carlu in Toronto. (Lah-de-DAH!) This, too, is like the Oscars: the winner will be announced on the night. Wish me luck: this award is a very big deal, especially for a first novel.

I shouldn’t go before I tell you my two favorite parts of the Serious Frock Adventure. The first is that my five-year-old Fancy Nancy daughter, seeing me model my little black dress and great big earrings, went to her jewelry box to get her new mood ring to complete the ensemble. I am to wear it, she says, to be extra beautiful.

The second is that I talked to my grandfather after shopping. To help you paint the stereotype in your head, I’ll tell you he’s a 90-plus retired farmer with an eighth-grade education and an Irish temper. To erase it, I’ll tell you he looks like Jimmy Cagney and dresses that sharp. And that my grandmother, who died last year, was a great beauty who took up modelling in her 70s, and had a closet full of smashing clothes, for which she made special trips to the city (Sioux Falls) with my grandfather proudly on her arm. She wore a hat and gloves to go into town to shop. She would not have dreamed of cork insoles. She is greatly missed. Anyway, I talked to my grandfather and he sighed and said: “Ah, you can’t beat a black dress.”

On simple-minded science

2011-08-07T23:18:53Z

originally posted at erinbow.com

Here's a video of me on my personal connection between literature and science: both are simple-minded, monastic, and willing to dig deep. Simple-mindedness is a virtue to me. Want to know why? Here:

I'm addressing the Knowledge Integration Students at the University of Waterloo: students who decided to integrate a number of different passions instead of narrowing themselves to one. They are an impressive and exciting group and I was honoured to get to talk to them. The book I mention researching is *Sorrow's Knot.*

This is up online thanks to the good folks at The New Quarterly (hi, Melissa!) who edited this down from an hour. The edit is so good it makes me wonder what else I said. Over at their QuArc issue (a joint issue with Arc celebrating the intersection between science and literature) you can see more video from this talk, and read my essay on the history of the names of quarks.

Swan Riders grows feathers

2011-07-15T09:16:22Z

(originally posted at erinbow.com)

I am pleased to report that my fledging novel is flapping along.

This is the second book of Children of Peace, which for now I'm calling *The Swan RIders*. I've added a few thousand words this week. Specifically I wrote the opening chapter, and the climax for the first act. Unfortunately, while I know the beginning and end of the first act, I don't know the middle, don't know my way from A to B. (I do know they go by horse and existential crisis, but that's about it. Speaking of: shoot, I think I'm going to have to take a riding lesson or two. At least it will add some variety to the rather gruesome research I've been doing into sucking chest wounds.)

It's possible when I do take that A to B journey that makes up the middle it won't end up where I think it's going to and I'll have to scrap the chapter. But oh well. The important thing for now is that I like it. I have one character who's a hoot to write for. I am always trapping myself with emotionally closed characters who are interested in things like order and restraint (Greta Stuart, I'm looking at you) so when I get over the top characters it's delicious change of weather. This one is prone to replying to little questions like "Are you all right" with: "A list of the various ways in which I am not all right, Greta, would top the Oxford English Dictionary. The unabridged one. With the little magnifying glass."

Anyway, I write ever spare second and think of the book when I'm not wiritng. When you start daydreaming about your own stuff, you're onto something.

I'm setting a #wipmadness goal for July of 15,000 words total. I'm at 7,000 now.

Still Looking For Me Here?

2011-07-11T23:39:59Z

I've moved! Dear Husband has set up a blog that's integrated with my website, and you can check out my latest thoughts here! Go and have a look!

Gee. Is that a bulldozer you parked in my driveway, WSJ, or are you just happy to see me?

2011-06-05T05:13:12Z

Me, and just about every other YA author I know, am grumbling about this WSJ article/opinion piece. In the piece, the reviwer today's "brutal" and "violent" Young Adult fiction as "book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young." All hope is not lost, though, because "No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives."

Ummmm. Okay.

Listen, WSJ, I know my book, Plain Kate, isn't a light read. It takes place in a world where being a bit different can get you run out of town at best, burned as a witch at worst. (You may be familiar with this world: high school students seem to be.) Among other things it is about friendship and its limits, family and its loss, the strength of community versus the horror of the mob. It is a book about grief and courage. Writing it cost me quite a bit of both.

If the internet quotation collections are anything to judge by, if any sentence from Plain Kate will be remembered, it will be this one: "Hope will break the heart better than any sorrow." Sometimes I think I wrote a whole book just to say that. And whatever else you think of the resulting book, that's not a coarse theme, and it's not a miserable one. It's a dandelion seed, not a bulldozer.

But you have to watch out for dandelions. You flatten a whole genre and lay down a nice sticky layer of disapproval, and the next day the unruly little flowers are cracking on through.

I now help with query letters

2011-06-02T14:36:08Z

The other day my fledgling editing service (with its affordable introductory prices: check it out) got a request: could I help with a query where I hadn't read the book? I wasn't sure I could, but I gave it a go ... Writing one's own query is like doing one's own dentistry, but doing someone else's is actually fun. And my client sent me this testimonial, which made me smile even more!

"Erin worked with me to craft a killer query letter. She made a real effort to get to know my book and its characters so she could help the letter strike the right tone and voice. She was generous with her time, her thoughts and her amazing creativity. I could not be more pleased by the result: a clever, concise query letter that encapsulates my heroine, hits the high notes and leaves the reader wanting to know more. This is one query I'm proud to send out the door.

Erin's services went well beyond my expectations. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend working with her or to work with her again myself. In fact, I'm almost hoping for a full manuscript rejection, so I can have her look at my whole book!"
- Gilly S.

I'm going to add a stand-alone query service to my suite of services. I'd love to do this again.

Interview at Beth Hull's site!

2011-05-28T02:12:50Z

In keeping with my new "I don't blog, but can manage guest posts" philosophy, here's a link to an interview I did at Beth Hull's site.

I have to post this particular excerpt, because I did a lunch at Our Lady Of Lourdes high school in Guelph, and I promised that if they googled me they'd see pictures of my (scandalous!) writing studio on my blog. I had a great time at Lourdes: they treated me so well, and they made me want to go back to high school and start a book club. Obviously, we needed a book club: how did I miss that! I salute the librarian there for seeing the need, and the kids for joining. And for being smart and interesting and great hosts.

Without further ado... Beth asked me what my writing space looked like, and got more than she bargained for. On the other hand, her writing studio is in the "Love Shack," so maybe this was just what she was expecting.

People think I’m kidding when I say I work in a pole dancing studio, but I’m not. My office is their spare room. It can only be reached by crossing the dance floor — check those poles! It’s cheap because I can’t use it at night, when the dance floor is, um, busy. And it’s fun because when I need to clear my head I can swing around a little.

I furnished my office with a hodgepodge of things that were either free or cheap – but it doesn’t feel makeshift. It feels cozy and practical, like a yurt. In this picture you can see the little loveseat (curbsourced) for curling up, a chair (from Rare Funk) handy for pulling up to the loveseat for coffee with friends, and of course a big desk (Goodwill) with lots of room for bulletin boards. You can see the picture boards here for Sorrow’s Knot (upper left) and Children of Peace (lower right).

My office is a highly ritualized space – and I refuse to feel silly about that. I often find one needs to coax oneself closer to inspiration, the way a church coaxes one closer to God. So my office is furnished with ritual objects and relics.

Goat Sex in Action!

2011-05-26T13:25:50Z

Since I've been tweeting about the fun of researching goat sex, I thought this week's teaser for Children of Peace could be about, well, goat sex. Here we have Greta Gustafsen Stuart, Duchess of Halifax, Crown Princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy, and blood hostage to Precepture Four, discussing the matter. (If you want to know why the children of kings are raising goats in the first place, the first chapter is over here.)

So, then: August. It is perhaps a strange thing that the children of kings and presidents should concern themselves with the sex lives of a herd of milch goats, but come the end of August, it was time to do just that.

The Precepture strives to be self-sufficient, a model of environmental rationalism. To that end we grow our own food, and keep chickens and goats. In the Precepture barns, many a young prince has learned the facts of life, such as: there’s no need for more than one rooster. Or one billy goat. They are (respectively) noisy and smelly, and left to their own devices, they fight for dominance. So, like Talis himself, we kill off the trouble makers.

In their season the male offspring of the flock and the herd provide the Precepture with welcome doses of meat, for those who choose to partake. Most of us do. We are the children of realpolitik, not sentimentalists. Our herds give us meat, and we eat it.

But the fly in the amber of this ancient system is inbreeding. Go more than two generations with only one billy goat, and you will regret it. It’s only a handful of newly come Children who balk at eating (as one young Jainist rajan told me earnestly) food with a face, but all of us dislike it when our food is born with two faces. Therefore, in earliest September, we inject some fresh blood — or, rather, other vital fluids — into the system, through the services of a billy goat from a different herd.

Someone, generations back, decided that this grand event should be known as the Royal Visit. (While waiting to be executed, we Children take our humor where we can.)

Fall is the breeding season for goats in any case, but to bring all the nannies into estrus at the right day, we hedge our bets. Ampoules of goat drugs come in our yearly supply shuttle, with our clothing and our salt and our medicine and the handful of other things we cannot make for ourselves. They are in two kinds. The first is pheromones: we snap open the thin glass tubes of Essence of Billy Goat and apply it to a buck rag, which can be simply rubbed around the face of the nannies. This is a smelly job, and can be a dangerous one. I have seen many a nanny driven mad by lust: they bleat as if you were killing them and some of them bite or even ram like billies. Last year mild-mannered Dipsy had pinned Han against a fence and broken three of his ribs, provoking a diplomatic incident of a scale our Precepture hadn't seen since Bihn killed herself with a pitchfork when we were all ten.

Anyway, the buck rag is the better half of the job. The other half, a synthetic hormone, must be applied, shall we say, internally. From the other end. Briefly I will say: this is not the highlight of our year.

So. There came a day when Elián had a goat named Bug Breath in a headlock, and I was applying the hormonal cream, wrist deep in something I imagine princesses of old got to miss. ....

I actually haven't finished researching goat sex yet, so please do not rely on this section for goat breeding advice. And if you are a vegetarian, please be offended by Greta, not me.

Dear Twitter: "It's for a book"

2011-05-14T18:11:02Z

Yesterday on my twitter stream

erinbowbooks to twitter:
You know how you can ask twitter anything? "I need to block wireless transmissions across a 100 km radius. It's for a book." Well...

erinbowbooks to twitter:
Now I need to know about goat pheromones. Are there any goat breeders on my list?

libertysyarn to erinbowbooks
I probably have some: what do you need to know?

erinbowbooks to LibertysYarn
Need to know how you might use synthentic goat pheromones. Can you encourage nannies to breed out of season, for instance?

erinbowbooks to LibertysYarn
Actually I really need a source. I have lots of goat sex and general goat questions. (It's for a book. I SWEAR.)

The next day

erinbowbooks to twitter
I can still taste the sour adrenaline I generated killing someone yesterday. Also my neck hurts. Writing: who says its not physical?

erinbowbooks to twitter
And by "someone" I mean a CHARACTER. Murder: it's for a BOOK. I SWEAR.

teaser for Children of Peace

2011-05-13T19:00:48Z

A teeny teeny teaser for my novel in progress, Children of Peace. I just added the blurb for this book to my works-in-progress page -- about time, since the first draft is about two-thirds done. In this scene, something bad has just happened to my character, Greta, and she's recovering.

Darkness fell, and stars beyond the shattered roof. The Abbot lit one of the golden lamps. He was silent, crouched at my side. “You should sleep,” he said, finally.

I closed my eyes for a moment, but terror loomed up in me. I opened them. “You should shelve the books.”

“Ah,” he said. “That I could do.” He unbent his hexapod suport and leaned forward, his hands on the upper joints, wheezing like an old man. He paused there a moment. And then he turned to the books and lifted one delicately.

I watched him work in the lamplight, and he did not seem like a machine. He lifted the tumbled volumes as if they were flowers. He tucked them to sleep on their shelves.

“Would the whole world were so easy to order,” he said. “So easy to repair.”

“Would that it were,” I said, and closed my eyes.

Would that it were, indeed. By the way, do check out my re-vamped website, complete with brand-new descriptions of my editing service and school visits. The spackle is still a little wet, but it's looking better all the time.

How to Get Stuck and Brood....

2011-05-13T03:02:31Z

Whoops: the link in my last post used to be broken. (Just fixed it)

Those writers in urgent need of getting stuck can now find out how over here: http://bit.ly/iD83gG

Things I learned about my writing while learning to baking bread

2011-05-09T16:32:41Z

In keeping with my "I don't blog, but might be able to guest blog" philosophy of blogging -- I've done a guest post over at the lovely site Shrinking Violets: Marketing for Introverts. It's called "How To Get Stuck and Brood: Anti-Advice for Writers." Here's a taste! Go read the whole thing.

Things I learned about my writing from learning to bake bread:

You can overwork things: knead bread that doesn't want to be kneaded and you'll have bread that only double-stomached animals can eat, because it needs to be chewed as cud. Kneading develops the gluten, the long strands of protein that give the bread its structure and strength. But you don't want a bread to be all structure and strength. You want it to have softness too. Whatever process you use for your writing, leave room for softness, for mystery, for levity, for surprise.

Enjoy the process. There's plenty of good bread in the world already, and most of us can get some without fuss. So why make bread from scratch? For the smell, for the feel in the hands, for the pure satisfaction. When I sold my first book I had a bad spell when I forgot that writing was fun, because now I was a Professional Writer (Of Very Little Brain). Remember: for the smell, for the feel in the hands, for the pure satisfaction.

Rising time is as important as kneading time. In bread baking, it's obvious, as it is not in writing. Some times the right work of the moment is not to work at all. Things need to sit and develop. Don't poke them. Be patient.

No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.

I didn't have a chance in the essay (though it's a long-ish one) to quote my favorite scene in literature about the two methods of writing. It's this, from "Rabbit Has A Busy Day," in House at Pooh Corner.

"Hallo, Pooh," said Rabbit.
"Hallo, Rabbit," said Pooh dreamily.
"Did you make that song up?"
"Well, I sort of made it up," said Pooh. "It isn't Brain," he went on humbly, "because You Know Why, Rabbit; but it comes to me sometimes."
"Ah!" said Rabbit, who never let things come to him, but always went and fetched them.

And let us remember that Rabbit's great contribution to literature is: "Notice a meeting of everbody will meet at the House at Pooh Corner to pass a Rissolution By Order Keep to the Left Signed Rabbit." Brains and Busyness can be overrated.

Sisters at play

2011-05-03T17:23:46Z

Vivian hit it off with a visiting boy, a friend's cousin, at the playground yesterday. Before I knew it she was all: "Look out! You just went through the imaginary lasers!"

They got themselves cornered up on a scrap of slope by the pine tree, and could not work their way down the hill without getting zapped by imaginary lasers (and you know they are the worst kind) so I suggested she turned them off for a minute.

Alas, no: "I forgot to imagine an off switch!"

Nora, meanwhile, was digging quietly with her favorite shovel. Not building anything, just archeologically scrapping away the top layer and peering at things. "What are you doing, Nora?"

"I'm looking a' sand."

Be wild and ruthless and possibly get a ridiculous hat

2011-05-03T04:42:39Z

Here's a belated note about a guest post I did over at Routines for Writers. I talk about utter failure, The Guilts, and why I ended up subleasing an office in a pole dancing studio. Here's a preview:

I mean, let’s face it. We don’t sit down inspired and burning with words. (If you do, I don’t want to hear from you.) The worst part of writing is those days when you sit down and you’d rather surf the internet, you’d rather scrub the toilet, you’d rather chew off your own foot than write. There are times in my writing life when this inertia is tremendous.

The whole trick is to get started, and for that, it helps to have a space that cues the muse that it’s time to show up. My muse is recalcitrant and needs cues from all the senses. The schedule – the quality of the light in the window. The brass temple bells hanging from the door. The glass bird and smooth stones for my hands. The white tea in the blue cup. The music – I have one sound track for each project. The lemongrass candle.

If you don’t have a room, you can still get most of that: sounds, smells, tastes, times. Try them. Court yourself closer to the writing in the way a church courts us to come closer to God. Ritualize your space and refuse to feel silly about it. My office is painted bordello red and has black trim. It is absurd. The absurdity of it makes me happy. Buy a special writing hat and let people stare.

This, by the way, is something I'm going to actively try to do more of: guest posts. I don't chat enough, really, to keep a blog. But I do write the occasional interesting long essay. And they might as well go somewhere! I'll link to them from here so that my die-hard fans (hi Mom!) can keep track.

two haiku

2011-04-12T19:39:57Z

Simplicity:
two men in black broadfalls
struggle with a cast-iron stove

Running for the joy of it:
a three-legged dog

Wood Angel is launched!

2011-04-03T20:44:13Z

My little book, Plain Kate, has just made its transcontiential debute. The lovely chickens at the Chicken House have treated Kate to new cover and a new marketing approach, and launched her as Wood Angel. The book has already been reviewed glowingly by the Times of London, and -- just today, by the Guardian.

The TImes Review is available only to subscribers. But they say, in part:

"Wood Angel is gorgeously well written, unafraid of plumbing joy and sorrow, and with a story that you can’t bear to stop reading...Kate’s sufferings are drawn with deep feeling. Bow’s use of Eastern European fairytales is simply the best I’ve encountered for years. It’s hard to believe that it’s a first novel, but Wood Angel...is by someone who has made fairytales her own."

The Guardian review is equally lovely. They say:

"The slow-approaching, sky-darkening showdown makes for a page-turner, but the book's great strength is Erin Bow's beautifully economic prose, layered with songs, poetic hooks and images that live long in the mind." Here's the whole thing.

So here's to Wood Angel. Far may she sail.