The Magic of Group Brainstorming

Hello all and happy spring!

At the SFF Seven this week we're asking: What’s your brainstorming process? Do you come up with ideas by yourself or do brainstorm with someone else?

Me? I don't preplot because I can't. My ideas all come to me pretty much in the course of writing. Some of them come from daydreaming about the story, but the real flow comes as I write. A lot of the time, that's the ONLY way the story flows. 

The salient exception to this is that I love brainstorming with author friends. There are few things more fun for me than brainstorming a world or exits from sticky plot solutions with other creative brains. And I have just as much fun working on their stories! It's a real truth that, for whatever reason, an outside mind can almost always see the story more clearly than we can our own. I can tell other writers how to "fix" their stories and have zero ability to find solutions to my own. And vice-versa. 

Especially when trad publishing wants me to tell them something about the plot before I actually write the book, I turn to my friends. I can usually say who the characters are and I can describe the situation they're in - and then my brilliant author comrades take it from there. It inevitably changes when I write the words, but they are true lifesavers in giving that much-needed perspective.

Brainstorming for the win!

Taking a Chance on that Love/Hate Thing

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is whatever is on our minds. 

It's been release week for me, so there's not a lot else on my mind. DARK WIZARD released on Thursday, 2/25/21, and it's been a major ride. And I say this with full self-awareness that I have book releases quite regularly. So much so that I'm sometimes chagrined by how many of the covers down the right side of this group blog are mine. 

But, as someone trying to make a living at this gig, and to support my Parkinson's-afflicted hubs, I feel like I have to keep up that pace. If I had a book or series that hit big and made tons of money or garnered juicy options, I would likely ratchet down my pace a bit.

(Or maybe not - I feel like I've found a sustainable pace for productive creativity. I might take more time off between books, alternating writing with business-focused activities.)

I've talked a lot about this on my podcast (listen here or watch on YouTube here) and I wrote a post for the SFF Seven in early January about it, which explains a bit more about what's going on in my life.

But I didn't tell you the entire story there. I glossed a bit. It was too fresh, too raw.

Last year I was seriously hoping that DARK WIZARD would be that "hit big" book. I'd been nurturing the idea for a long time, my agent thought it was a good ones, and she loved the initial pages. She thought it could be a big book, too. We came up with a fantastic, high-concept comp - The Witcher meets The Selection - and I wrote up the first quarter of the book for her. She loved it! My beta readers loved it! There was serious excitement.

Also, though I'd planned to stop there and go on submission with just that much of the book, I couldn't stop. I couldn't write anything else but that. The book had me by the throat and demanded to be written.

I finished it and those who read for me pronounced it probably the best book I'd ever written. In great excitement, I sent it to my agent to read.

She hated it.

I was crushed. 

We've had conversations since then. She says she doesn't hate it; she just thought it wasn't marketable. Regardless, she had a very strong reaction to the book and she didn't want to take it on submission. 

This is something that happens with creative work. I read a study years ago where they looked at the habits of people listening to a radio station. If a song came on that they loved, they'd be happy with the station. But if a song came on that they hated, they'd change the channel. Interestingly enough, it turns out that when people really love something, like a song, a statistically consistent equal number of people will hate it. So, for every person that was happy with the radio station, another was repelled enough to change the channel - not a desired outcome for the advertisers. However, if the person neither loved nor hated the song, they wouldn't change the station. So, the corporate-designed playlists moved to including music that people didn't feel strongly about either way. The triumph of mediocrity.

I think this happened with DARK WIZARD. That while so many of my early readers loved it, my agent was equally repelled. So, as you can likely imagine, I was nervous for release. 

You guys, it's been performing so well!

And so far, it's all about the love. People are saying the nicest things about the book, comments about how compelling the world is, how vivid the characters. 

Yes, readers are having strong reactions, but that's something I'm happy with. I'll risk the hate to have the love. 

"DARK WIZARD is pitch perfect. The best two main characters I've read in a long time. The world is finely drawn and lustrous, the hero and heroine so real, they walk off the page. DARK WIZARD will be on my keeper shelf for freaking ever. I can't wait until book 2 comes out, because I'm desperate for the rest of the story, but also, because I'll get to reread book 1 in preparation. (If I don't reread it sooner, which I probably will.) If you like fantasy romance, clear your day."

~NY Times Bestselling Author Dana Marton

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Battling Author Envy

This week at the SFF Seven we're talking about ENVY. We're asking if things have ever gotten weird between you and another author after publishing?

Yeah, they have. And it's awful and heartbreaking.

You know what else is awful and heartbreaking? Feeling that envy for other authors who seem to be more successful than we are. None of us wants to be that person, and yet none of us is immune from those green crawly fingers of professional jealousy.

So, what happened to me? It's happened a few times, with different people. The most startling cases were authors who were published before I was. I admired their books. They became friends. They were lovely and generous and helpful to me. A couple of the people I'm thinking of were ones I counted as very close friends. Women I loved. 

In every case, after I did get published and enjoyed some moderate success, they ended up just... not being my friends anymore. They essentially ghosted me on social media. One emailed me after we roomed at a convention, told me she wasn't going the next year and so I should find another roommate - then she did go, didn't tell me, and roomed with someone else. 

Did it hurt? Oh, yes, it really hurt. It still hurts to write this.

Did I wonder what I'd done to lose those friendships? Obsessively. I still think about it sometimes.

Do I know it was envy? No. It could be I said or did something. Sometimes we never know why someone stops loving us. Even if we can figure it out, there's no changing the past. 

The point of all this is that I can't control those relationships. They didn't want to be my friends anymore and I couldn't change that. I've found only one way to combat that ongoing pain, and that is to control what I can: changing myself.

I do my very best to be a good friend to others. I try to help and support other authors. I counter professional jealousy in myself any time it pricks me with its poisonous thorns. 

The best way to counter that? Flow out the opposite energy!

Read a book that you don't think is as good as yours but seems to have done better? Find something to love about it!

See an author with more followers than you have? Follow them too!

Someone is nominated for an award that you aren't? Celebrate it!

Another author is making way more money than you are? Take some of theirs!

Oh, wait...

Okay, so, it's not a perfect method. But it really does work. If you feel the pinch of professional jealousy, the most effective way to combat it is to be the opposite of that. You don't have to feel it, just act accordingly. Trust me - the feeling will follow. 

And know you're not alone. 

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Dark Wizard comes out Thursday!!

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Should You Reference the COVID-19 Pandemic in Your Writing?

So exciting! DARK WIZARD, Book #1 in a totally new series - new world, new magic system, new everything! - is coming February 25, 2021. You can preorder now. 

Available at these Retailers

    

Yes, I know I just released a book last week, but sometimes this is how balancing an Indie career with a Trad one works out. Probably we could do a theme week on that topic. Suffice to say, I'd already planned out and begun the Heirs of Magic series, when this book - finished and very sparkly to my eye - was returned to my aegis. I could have sat on it. Or I could just launch this series, too! 

You all know me (or you should, by now) - I checked my Gantt charts and decided to go for it. 

Our actual topic at the SFF Seven this week is *not* filling the pipeline with projects in order to juggle the demands of a career as a hybrid author. It is, however, not entirely unrelated. We're discussing topicality and making choices about what to write and publish - "In These times of plague: Writing about the real world in fiction."

I recall, lo these many years ago, when I was a newbie author and soaking up All The Advice, a writing professor at my university pronounced (you may add stentorious tones, if you wish) that we should eschew anything of popular culture in our work. Such references only dated the work, and made it less than. I vividly recall everyone nodding along sagely and making erudite remarks about the banality of popular culture. So much so that, for once, I kept my mouth shut.

Though I didn't agree.

People sometimes support this argument by pointing out that Jane Austen doesn't mention Napoleon in her novels, though that was the overshadowing political force at the time. She does, however, include the presence of the regiments. The movements and stationing of The Officers! (feel free to read in Lydia's excited squeal) are omnipresent to the milieu of the stories. They're such a seamless part of the world that we don't really remark on it. Except... why are there parades of uniformed soldiers marching through these idyllic, rural hamlets? 

My point is that, even if we make the conscious choice not to mention Napoleon, the tenor of the war will invade the story regardless.

I've seen a number of authors in various groups asking about whether others are including the COVID-19 pandemic of 2019-2021 in their books. Do we show characters in lockdown? Wearing masks? Avoiding public superspreader events?

Putting those realities of our lives in this extraordinary time into our books feels... fraught. Do we really want that stuff in our escapist fiction? And yet, the alternative - at least for contemporary fiction - is to pretend it never happened, or risk our characters looking foolish, cavorting maskless in a pandemic world, coming within six feet of PEOPLE THEY DON'T KNOW.

I don't know about you guys, but I flinch now watching movies where people attend parties in close spaces, embracing and kissing on others. It didn't take all that long, relatively speaking, for my habits and worldview to change.

The advantage of writing alternate fantasy as I do is that I don't have to worry so much about this kind of thing. On the other hand, this is the world *I* live in, and - like The Officers! - aspects will infiltrate the milieu of my stories.

I've seen a number of interviews now with directors talking about how the pandemic changed their films in profound ways, leaking in where they didn't expect it. I also saw Locked Down (Baby's First COVID-19 Movie™) and enjoyed it very much. However, filmed in London in early 2020, it already felt dated in marked aspects. 

Cue sagely nodding of sycophantic students. "See?" they say. "Dated. Less than."

I disagree. Capture the moment, if that's what calls to you. As artists, we observe the world and reflect it through our own lens. That includes *gasp* popular culture. 

Besides, it's going to leak in anyway.

Career Leveling Up: What Jeffe Is Doing

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Room for Growth." We're discussing one aspect of our writing or publishing careers - that we can control! - that we'd like to improve this year.

This topic is apropos for me right now because I'm in the midst of a push to boost (wedge, shove, or squeeze) my career to a new level. I should caveat that I know I'm doing relatively well. I'm grateful for the success I've realized in my writing career and I never want to lose sight of the fact that many excellent and deserving authors haven't seen the same success. 

But I've reached a real sticking point.

For those who don't know, my husband has early onset Parkinson's Disease. He's over ten years into diagnosis, so while his progression has thankfully been quite slow, he's reached the point where he really can't hold down a job. That leaves supporting our household up to me and my books. I'm stubbornly resisting getting a day job again, so this year will really be the make or break on whether I can make enough money to pay the bills and have a cushion for the future.

So, what have I been doing?

Since I can't bottle lightning - which, I admit, I've kind of been hoping to do as getting a book or series that takes off into the stratosphere would be super nice - I've been learning to *shudder* market and advertise.

I attended Romance Author Mastermind in December. Something I'd been leery of before for many reasons. My bestie and sister author Grace Draven talked me into it and I'm so glad she did! I learned so much from it! Mostly I came to the realization that it would behoove me to treat my business like an actual business. 

The other thing that happened is I completed my contract with St. Martin's Press (all but for page proofs on book 3) and they passed on my option book, which is one I've mentioned, DARK WIZARD. They passed on it - even though my editor loved it and the house loves me - because they feel like they can't move fantasy romance in the print numbers that they'd like to. (They don't care about ebook sales. They want what they can sell at Walmart, which is Cowboy Romance and sweet contemporaries these days - so a tidbit for those of you who write that!) 

Once I got over the initial sad, because I loved working with St. Martin's, I took this as a Sign. While my writing income had been pretty close to 50/50 between Indie and Trad for the last few years, in 2020 that changed to 65% Indie - and my Trad income was only 75% of what it was in 2019. That's not a good trend. At Romance Author Mastermind there were many former Trad authors who been where I am and said they'd made their money switching to Indie. Yes, I've heard this before, too. These people showed the numbers. 

I decided that, instead of taking DARK WIZARD on submission to other Trad houses on submission, I'd self publish it. So, DARK WIZARD, book one in my new series, Bonds of Magic, will come out on February 25, 2021. (I loved writing this freaking book so much that I'd already written the whole thing!) 

(If you want a sneak peek of the cover of DARK WIZARD and what it's about, it will be in my newsletter going out Monday. Sign up here.)

Then, because I'd already planned a new series, Heirs of Magic (unrelated, I didn't realize the series title echoes until too late, ah well), with book one THE GOLDEN GRYPHON AND THE BEAR PRINCE releasing on January 25, 2021. You can preorder it here, or here are some handy buttons.

   

That means in 2021, I'll be taking advantage of the fact that I'm a relatively prolific writer - not writing anything for Trad - and releasing two Indie series. My release schedule will look like this. 

The Golden Gryphon and the Bear Prince (Heirs of Magic 1) 1/25/2021

Dark Wizard (Bonds of Magic 1)                                                 2/25/2021

The Sorceress Queen and the Pirate Rogue (Heirs of Magic 2) 4/19/2021

The Promised Queen (Forgotten Empires 3)                                  5/25/2021

Bright Familiar (Bonds of Magic 2)                                         6/26/2021

The Long Night of the Crystalline Moon (Heirs of Magic 0.5) 7/15/2021

The Dragon's Daughter and the Winter Mage (Heirs of Magic 3) 8/25/2021

Bonds of Magic 3 (Bonds of Magic 3)                                     11/1/2021

The Storm Princess and the Raven King (Heirs of Magic 4)         12/31/2021

Of those, three are already written, so it's not as intense as it looks. Also, because I track my productivity so intensely (something I always recommend all writers do, so we know exactly what we can and can't do), this is a doable writing schedule for me. (Hopefully. I'm pretty sure I can do this, but light a candle for me.)

I'm also doing things like reading books on marketing and advertising! I very much recommend David Gaughran's AMAZON DECODED: A MARKETING GUIDE TO THE KINDLE STORE. It's easy to digest and full of excellent, practical advice, absent the ickier kinds of self-publishing shouting. I bought the Publisher Rocket app and have been taking the online classes on maximizing keywords. 

I'm going all in, people. Wish me luck! (And buy my books :D) 

Grabbing Those Great Ideas

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about Ideas. How do you write down or remember those great ideas that you get mid-shower/dream/car drive? If you lose them, how do you get them back?

It's funny this came up now because I talked about this very thing on my podcast, First Cup of Coffee, just recently - and even commented that I liked what I'd talked through so much that I should transcribe it. So this gave me the impetus to do that - and edit the transcription, which is the time-consuming part.

If you prefer to listen, you can listen here. Or, read on for the transcription! I included the whole thing, but set off the relevant section in bold, in case you don't care for a faithful reproduction of my conversational rambling.

******

Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. It's Thursday, July 2, and I am back in my grape arbor and my folks are on the road this morning. So the staycation is over. I'm getting back to work today.

It's good to have a little bit of fallow time. But now I am ready to get after it. I have not yet gotten edits back from editor Jennie on The Promised Queen. She said she thought maybe week of June 29. But seeing is how it's Thursday. It might be next week. Which I told her whenever is fine, and that's really true. So that means that I can start in on one of my other projects today, because Lost Princess released on Monday, and thank you all for the wonderful reception for that book.

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to have the book earn out on release day, or a little before, as some of that's before because when you guys buy through my website, I get that money right away. But to go ahead and recoup all of my costs on that first day of release is wonderful, because then after that I can consider it all income. And that's, that's just incredibly useful. So thank you all. And I'm glad that you're happy with the book. And so far, nobody seems to feel cheated.

I won't spoil or anything but there was something I had hoped I'd be able to do with that book. And I just couldn't figure out a way to make make it happen. Although I've received suggestions from several people. Spoiler: cover your ears for just a second if you haven't read it yet. I've received suggestions from several people on how to actually get elephants to Dasnaria. It could happen We'll see. Okay, now you can all come back.

So, yeah, I'm feeling rested, tanned, rested and ready. It's an old joke. Uh, yeah, it's um, it's actually a, like a Nixon joke, I think. Which tells you something. It also tells you something when our political climate is such that we long for the simplicity of Nixon who simply resigned in disgrace and flew off of this helicopter. Ah, the good old days. Right.

So, I will get back into the groove now.

The projects I'm thinking about working on are: going back to Dark Wizard which, I think I told you all, that Grace Draven wants me to just call it Dark Wizard. We're arguing about this. She says, I should just title it Dark Wizard. I'm like, you can't just name a book Dark Wizard. And so then I've started playing with variations on that, you know, a little bit of gamesmanship with wordplay, etymology, you know, sort of like Darth Vader, you know, it could be like Darth. Of course, I can't use Darth because that it immediately evokes Star Wars. But the working title is definitely Dark Wizard. And then I also got another great idea for a story that I don't know what my working title for it should be. But I think it's a really good idea. You know, like one of those ones that zings. Oh no, I started to mention it when I drove in for writer coffee last Thursday, I talked about it some and then I decided that there was too much noise on the podcast and I didn't put it up.

That's one thing about taking some time off and letting the well refill is that sometimes you just get these ideas that pop into your head. And this is one that comes a little bit out of my mentoring session too at SFWA's Nebula conference.

So, I think it's really good idea. I'm tempted to try again. I mean, I know my 3000 words a day is sustainable. I'm definitely going to try to do 3000 words a day. I'll get back into the groove on Dark Wizard - and I'm thinking about trying for more words again later in the day on this new story, on the new shiny. I don't know how that would work. I definitely can't do it right off. And there's probably nothing wrong with letting the idea percolate. Kelly Robson said something about that when I told her I had a new idea. You know, the really good writer friends are the ones who, when you tell them that you have a great new idea, they don't ask you what it is. Because they know better. They know that you're still sort of sitting on the egg as it were. And I do think that there's a possibility of sitting on an egg so long that it goes bad, you know that it's a dud. But I think that if that -

Okay, so here we're going to extend the analogy.

If you're sitting on an egg so long that nothing happens and it's a dud, then I think it was always a dud.

The really good ideas, if you sit on them for a long time, eventually, they're going to start picking their way out of the, the shell. And by that you will know. Different writers are different ways about those things. And you know how I'm always talking about, own your process. Discover what your process is, own it. Keep refining it.

And I feel like this is a lifelong process for all of us. I kind of gave my I finished teaching my class on Identifying and Breaking Bad writing habits. In my rousing goodbye screed, I talked about this, that as much as we would like - and I'll tell you what I am so this person: I want to buy thing and then have it for the rest of my life. I want to be able to learn something and then know it. I want to build a habit, and then have it. And I don't get to have that.

This is not how the universe works, to my great consternation. And with all of these things, it's because building habits and refining your creative process are our processes. And they are iterative. So this means that you keep going back over and over and you keep checking and rechecking to see how they're doing. See how you are doing. Are you still being productive? Is that thing that worked before still working? How can you tweak How can you maximize? How can you maximize in terms of not increasing output, but improving output, which I think is a different thing. You know, like Leslye Penelope, she's been talking about that she just took a break, that she took a couple of weeks off and she's been reading and enjoying herself, that crop rotation idea of letting the fields lie follow. Deanna Rayburn talks about that, that she took like a couple of years off writing, and only read. And I think that those things are very important as part of discovering your process, and refining all of these things.

Every round is different. So it's very tempting to listen to other writers and say, Okay, here's how you do the thing. Like, you know, I had one of the students in my class ask saying, Well, when I do a really detailed outline, I find I lose interest in the story and I struggled to finish it. You know that's a question that we get all the time. This comes up all the time. And it's, it's so funny, because the obvious answer is, then don't do a detailed outline. Your process does not involve doing a detailed outline beforehand. But people get so wrapped up in the idea that that is how you do the thing, that you do this thing by making a detailed outline. And they think that the problem is is is somehow in how they're executing. And it's like, No, no, this is not your creative process.

Figure out what your creative process is.

Own it.

Don't let other people tell you how you should be doing the thing.

So along with this idea of like sitting on, on new ideas, John Scalzi has a very interesting approach. He said that he gets an idea. And he thinks about it a little bit, and then he puts it away. And then if it's still there in the morning, he gives a little bit more thought and then puts it away. And then if it's still there a week later, he gives a little bit more thought and puts it away. And he'll do this for months or a year.

And I thought, well, that's a that's an interesting approach.

Some people I know, like my friend Darynda, she gets ideas, and she has to go ahead and write out a pretty detailed outline of the idea before it'll leave her alone. I don't know if she's still doing that. I should ask her if she's still doing that. We haven't done an interview with her in a couple of years, we should get her back on here. Because these things change, right? That's the most important thing is that these things change over the course of our writing career as we refine our process. You know, so the upshot was is that Darynda has something like 60 plus book outlines on her hard drive, which even she acknowledges is not super productive, because she won't have time to write all of them. But that's it's part of how ideas seize her and how she deals with them. So it would be very interesting to ask her if she's still doing it that way. I will try to remember to make a note poke her and see if she wants to do an interview. I haven't seen her in so long . When was the last time I saw Darynda? January, I guess? Yeah. So it'd be nice to have a nice a good long conversation. And you guys might as well listen in.

I usually the jot down a few notes on the idea, because I will forget it. And that's where  Scalzi would say, well, then it deserves to be forgotten. And I'm not sure I believe that's true. Because sometimes I will go back to my spreadsheet of ideas. And I'll think, oh, that is a great idea. And I'll write down just enough words to make it come alive for me again, and I think I would lose those and I'm not sure that they should be lost.

So then Elizabeth Gilbert talked about - I'll see if I can find the link to this podcast. I think it was like two years ago that I was reading her, maybe just a year. I know, I was doing a podcast on listening to her audio book, which I can't think of the name of now. It's the one on that's kind of like about creativity and magical thinking. (BIG MAGIC) But anyway, she has this idea that that ideas come to you and kind of lurk and wait. And if you don't pay attention to them - she thinks of them as like living things - that if you don't pay attention to them, then they leave and they go find someone else. That was it: she had said that Ann Patchett ended up writing her idea because she didn't get to it, and that it was uncannily close to her own idea.

It makes for a fascinating story.

I'm not sure I believe that, but I kind of like my egg analogy. Part of what I'm thinking about now is okay, I'm working to this idea is like, does it hurt to write down a few thousand words to get the story started and then poke at it every once in a while. I know writers who do this, but I'm thinking back to one concept I had that I did that on, and it did kind of die and lose impetus. So maybe it'd be better to keep it fully in the egg. Maybe this is part of it. It's like, once it starts, once you crack that egg, you know, it's okay to let the idea incubate in the egg. But once you crack that egg, then you either have to feed your little baby bird regularly, insects all the time, like my bluebirds ferry insects to their babies.

Or it'll die. You have to.

That's an interesting concept. So I like the idea of keeping the idea eggs. So thanks guys! You just helped me solve this problem. And, for your information, in case you didn't know, this is exactly how all of my conversations with my friends go: where I ask them questions and they say things and then I arrive at the answer and and thank them and they're like I just sat here and listened to you talk. So you guys are all doing this for me. All right, I won't try to do more than 3000 words a day, because that really does work best for me. It's very sustainable, and it's good. And even though I didn't get that much written the last couple weeks of June. I still am way ahead of last year. So I've been doing much better And on that note, I think I will go get to work today. I need to, I want to get 3000 words on Dark Wizard if I can. And because there's always the ramp up factor, you know, it's just as yesterday morning, I ran on the treadmill again for the first time and today I lifted weights and my body is feeling a little creaky because I've mostly been like, shopping and going out to eat and drinking wine. So, physically and creatively, I am waking up those creaky muscles and getting back to it. So all right: I am getting back to work.

I'll remind you that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network, and you can find more podcasts you'll love at frolic.media/podcasts and I will talk to you all tomorrow. Promise. Okay, take care. Bye bye.