Writers, Writers Who Need Editors…

… Are the Luckiest Writers in the World.

So I’ve been having one of those weeks where the writing has not been going well. At two separate times, with two separate projects, I threw my hands up and entertained those insidious ghastly thoughts. The ones that say:

“… your a hack. you suk.”

The insidious ghastly thoughts always speak ungrammatically and with misspelled words.
I couldn’t tell you why.

Each time I curled into a little ball and spent a little while contemplating what I was going to do if my book was broken, or if I’d lighted on exactly the wrong essay topic. What I would do if, in fact, I had to admit that I’d totally screwed things up, and was a big sucky hack.

And then I yanked myself up by my bootstraps, swallowed my pride, and emailed my editors, saying, “Hi, I have a problem.”

And this is why my editors (Kerri, for SSG; and Scott, for the Philip Pullman anthology) rock.

Kerri read the scenes I was having a problem with, and agreed with the problem I was having (I had plot needs that were difficult to wrangle, given the personality one character had been displaying for two books, and thus I’d written him a bit out of character). We discussed why I wanted the plot to go the way I wanted it to go, and brainstormed ways to get there without sacrificing established character traits. And the solution she came up with was elegant and simple and actually made the plot and timeline even STRONGER than it had been before. Why couldn’t I see that by myself? I don’t know, but man, am I grateful that I have Kerri.

I’ve also been pulling my hair out over my essay for the anthology. Sometimes, I felt like I had a really fun idea. Other times, I felt like I didn’t quite have the linchpin that would hold it all together. naturally, this inspired a panic spiral (did I mention that the deadline is upon me?). I panic-whined to Scott, and without even knowing he was doing it, he fired back my linchpin quote. I’m actually mildly concerned about how much of His Dark Materials the poor guy has memorized, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: thank goodness for Scott Westerfeld.

So, crisis averted, I go back to meeting my deadline. Speculation like Justine’s about how much my epic blog entries of late have been inspired by my artistic frustration shall be heartily ignored.

Speaking of epic blog entries, I have my first blog post up at the urban fantasy LJ community, Fangs Fur Fey. I’ll probably be doing the bulk of my killer unicorn posting there, but I’m undecided about whether or not to simulcast on blogger. What do you think? Killer Unicorns everywhere? (I can see my heroine shuddering now…) I think it might be tough to keep track of two different comment threads, so if I do simulpost, I might close the blogger one for comments. FFF is an amazing blog, by the way, and I encourage everyone to visit. I’m thrilled to be a part. It’s my only “author group blog” (I don’t count RTB, since it’s not just authors, but readers and industry folks).

I realize I don’t often talk about the sucky writer days. In fact, I think I’ve blogged about my reticence to discuss such matters in the past. But yeah. This last week has been one of those, “Does trepanning help, I wonder?” weeks, but maybe I just had trepanning on the brain, given my immersion into His Dark Materials. In fact, earlier this week, I had written a blog post in my head that went like this:

You Know You’ve Got Philip Pullman on the Brain When…

SSB is telling you about this World of Warcraft bug that makes hunters lose their pet, permanently, and your response is “intercission.”

But, obviously, that was too short for a proper post. Especially when I’m on deadline. 🙂