One Piece of Advice for Aspiring Authors

       

Just in case anyone missed the news: ROGUE FAMILIAR is now out and available in ebook and print from all of your favorite retailers! The audiobook is coming, but probably won't be out for a few weeks. Because I ran late on this book, I lost my time slot with my narrator, the fabulous Deborah Balm. She has the manuscript, but has not yet started recording. I'll keep you all updated on that! 

This week at the SFF Seven, we're offering one piece of advice for aspiring writers.

It's funny because we were just discussing my favorite piece of advice for ALL writers on my mentoring and coaching Discord. This is shaping up to be a really fun community of authors at all levels. You can get there by joining my Patreon. At any rate, in the General Writing Advice channel of the most basic Patreon level - Community Member - one of the gals said that this piece of advice is "one of my favorite Jeffe Mantras." I love that! We may even make a special emoji to denote this mantra, as it's a recurring point of discussion.

So, what is it? 

Figure out what your process is and own it.

 

See, the point is that every single creator has the0ir own creative process. It's as individual as retinal patterns. While it can be helpful to take classes on writing processes and techniques, to learn from other authors, in the end we all find that our process is unique to us. I've seen SO MANY writers struggle to change their process and try to "make it be" something or other, to no avail. The whole point of learning various techniques is to triangulate on what works for you. It can be a long and iterative process, but that's the "magic formula." Figure out what your process is and own it. Don't try to make your process be something other than what it is, even if you are occasionally frustrated by it. (I often am by mine!)

Like learning to love yourself, learn to embrace your process. Own it. It's yours. 

 

Do You Knit... or WEAVE?

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is... knitting? Did our calendar guru pick this for Mother's Day week, or is it a coincidence?

Anyway, it's not the knitting you think. (Or not the knitting *I* thought.) We're asking each other if we write scenes piece by piece and knit them together, or if we have ever had to knit-in scenes?

I am not a knitter. If I go for a textile metaphor, I'd say I'm a weaver. I line up all the threads, begin at one end with nothing but a lot of colors and textures, and then I weave them gradually into a tapestry. That said, I've occasionally had to weave scenes, themes, and clues into the finished story - which is probably what the topic poser is getting at here.

It just doesn't feel like knitting to me.

For example, for developmental edits on THE FIERY CROWN (out in only two weeks!! preorder now!! Eeee!!!), my editor Jennie Conway asked me to add in some scenes early in the book. She wanted to see some of the secondary characters sooner. She also wanted discussion of a later issue to happen sooner. So I ended up adding two scenes and fleshing out a couple of others.

The thing is, this isn't like patching a tire or splicing a soundbite into a podcast (which I've learned to do!). Nor is it like reworking some part of a painting. That's why I think of it as weaving. In order to add scenes and characters to an earlier point in the tapestry, I have to adjust the warp and weft before that to accommodate them. Then I have to alter the pattern of the threads thereafter, to keep the texture even and the pattern tight.

It was all for good reasons - and made for a better book - but yeah... I don't knit. Either in my writing or in real life!

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On My Mind: Let the Process Break

This week, what's on my mind is change. Large, sweeping, long-overdue change. The kind that comes from the complete and total failure of an administration, an industry, and a national individualistic mind-set.

Once upon a corporate life, in the heyday of "do more with less," I had my weekly status meeting with my boss. We were dusting off the ashes of surviving the latest layoffs and trying to squeeze everybody else's "Priority 1" into our already overbooked schedules. I showed her my "escalations" list and her face went blank. Two heartbeats later, she took my hand, looked me dead in the eye and said,

"Let the process break."

Wut? My overworked brain didn't grok what she was saying. Was she setting me up to fail? Was she putting me on the firing list? (She wasn't.)

"No one knows how badly things are broken if you keep bending over backwards to fix them. 

Stop. 

Let things break. 

Projects will either get scrapped because they weren't really that important

 or they'll be properly resourced."

Twenty-ish years later and I still think of that moment, that lesson, that sanity-saving insight.

This week, I'm wondering if we, as a nation, can see how continuously and consistently screwed over we are by industry and politics that real change, beneficial change, will come from it. For example, is our healthcare industry broken enough now that for-profit health will be replaced by actual care? We're good, sort of, with the actual care providers: the nurses, the doctors, the orderlies, the environmental services. But the insurers? The administrators? The bloated bureaucracy feeding off our human problems? Have we learned our lessons yet? Or will we have to see the tens of thousands of dollars charged by insurance companies for a COVID-19 patient being treated by an "out of network" ER doc? How about the privilege of being charged a couple grand for being denied a test? Oh, then there are the lab bills because the tests are being processed by facilities who didn't pre-negotiate a contract with the insurer. And don't think for one moment the inflated cost of the PPEs that are in such staggering short supply isn't going to show up a patient's bill. Hospital stays are over $15k/night before beds ran out; tack on ICU, ventilator, and the battery of drugs they hope will work and you're over $20k/night, easy. That's if you're lucky enough to be "chosen to live." Better hope your insurer allows the doctor to sedate you if you draw the short straw, since you can't breathe and are drowning in your own blood and fluids.

Gods forbid you survive the worst of this because now you have a pre-existing condition and a government that's bound and determined to make sure you aren't entitled to healthcare because someone will actually have to treat you...which means less money in the pockets of the industry CEOs and stockholders. You can get in line behind the mass shooting survivors, coal miners, cancer patients, military, civilian DOD injured in the line of duty, and 50% of the non-senior citizenry.

And if you don't have insurance? Bankruptcy is your only option. (No, suicide won't help you; your bills get passed on to your family.) Congrats, you get to lose everything! Hope you're not looking to the government to help with that homelessness problem. What's that? Scar tissue on your lungs? Can't breathe without aid? You want welfare? Are you kidding? You think you're some multinational corporation entitled to government bailouts? Bootstraps, boyo!

Is 30k dead from a pandemic enough to prove that the healthcare industry is broken? Will it take 300k dead to make the shift? 3 million? 30 million? What's the magic number that makes us as a nation say, "enough"? What is the number that finally frightens the politicians into doing what's right for the people instead of the corporations? The motivation has got to be fear because ethics isn't working and neither is shame.

Sadly, I don't think we've reached the tipping point. I don't think the tragedy is real to enough of us to affect change. Not yet. Not enough to last through November, certainly.

Don't let this screed make you horribly depressed, I hope it makes you angry. Angry enough that whenever you can push for change, you push. HARD.