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Oh My God. I may not sleep tonight with the thought of monkeys crawling around my brain. Thank you very much for that. Like I don’t have enough trouble sleeping or being freaked about things that aren’t there…

I prefer to think that my ideas come from story fairies that sprinkle them in like fairy dust (far less of a crawly sensation).

In reality, it’s probably just my seriously over-active imagination - I blame my parents for reading me The Velveteen Rabbit as a child…

(Still, could be the fairies).

emily

*shiver*
the thought of brain monkeys in my mind is oddly appealing…now i too shall have an answer!
(i actually was convinced it was magic mushroom spores that gave me my ideas)

[…] is exactly where writers’ ideas come from. All other answers to this question are fired. (via Justine, who found the cutest monkey photo ever to illustrate the point.) 11:02 am […]

_opal_: Magic mushroom spores? Say NO to drugs!

yach!
I forgot about mushroom’s unfortunate connotations. I just like drawing them…

re: ideas- my cat whispers them to me at night while i sleep….

which might explain a few things.

Hm…looks promising. On Word it just looks waaay too scary. Daunting.

Oh wow, that makes a big differance! I want one now!! Too bad I don’t have a mac. They orginize so well. *puffs with jealousy*

Looks very cool. As a PC person, may I recommend http://www.softwareforwriting.com/pagefour.html Page Four? It doesn’t have all the functionality that Scrivener seems to, but it’s a nice, light, many documents visible/workable at once alternative to Word.

I love Scrivener. I’ve been using it for about a year. I use the bits on the right (the inspector?) too. I keep notes there, even pictures, and I use the synopsis cards for keeping track things like what day it is, subplots, and things I need to keep track of for continuity.

Using scrivener makes it so much easier to bounce around inside my story without losing my place. It’s a totally groovy program.

i have never ever ever had good luck with a mac. one time one literally ate my disc. it went in like a normal disc and came out with scratches and gouges in it, plus no information on it. bye bye chemistry lab…….but i’m not bitter. *sigh*

it looks like a cool program, though. less stress is good.

raisin? raisin?  hee! :D

i’ze not fond of word. but it is all i can haz. when i gradjooate colleje, i’ze getting a mac. thenz i get scrivener and then i happydance. yayz!

I am so bitter it is only available for the mac. :’(

That actually looks like it would be really useful for my next term paper.

I’ve been using Scrivener for a little more than a year now, and I really love it. I’m glad to see so many people who love it, too. The fellow who wrote the program is a nice guy as well, and has always provided fast, personal, accurate support whenever I’ve needed it.

i wish i’d had this for my thesis, it looks very cool indeed. probably not worth doing another long document for, though!

i don’t really want scrivener, because i generallly don’t write long documents. what works really well if you are trying to make something pretty (like a brochure, a fancy report, or a flyer) is pages, the mac version of word (yes, another mac-only thing. sorry!) it has a lot of templates, much more than word. it has ones for 3 different types of posters, travel journals, photo journals, several fliers, invitations, 2 postcards, school reports, and a template for quizzes. pages is really bad for a lot of writing, if your not concerned how it looks like. so you wouldn’t want to use it for a rough draft. but if your making something that needs to look well laid out, it’s amazing.

Gina Black: I use the bits on the right (the inspector?) too.

Yup, that’s great too. And if you’re writing a multiple pov novel it’s wonderful being able to label each chapter (or scene) with the correct pov.

If I’d talked about all my fave things the post woulda been ten times as long.

Cat Sparks: I love it so much I sent a gushing fan letter to the dude who invented it. How embarassing.

That’s nothing! I posted my gushing fan letter publicly on the Scrivener forum.

Gwen: the fellow who wrote the program is a nice guy as well, and has always provided fast, personal, accurate support whenever I’ve needed it.

Yup, he’s amazing. I had a prob and he got back to me about it in half an hour.

I’m another huge fan of scrivener. I evangelize it to all of my writer friends. It works well for writing short stories, too. I love being able to track character bios, research notes, outlines and feedback all in one place.

That looks more like a basic text editor as opposed to a word processor. I’ve never had problems with word, though I haven’t tried to combine all the chapters of my WIP either.

As a computer geek, I am often working with GB sized log files and I use TextPad.exe. It can pretty much handle anything.

BTW - is that just Word for mac that is being complained about or is it PC word too? I’m still learning to be more mac savvy these days and haven’t used word on mac to see if/how different it is from the pc version.

Yummy, I’m glad I have a mac.

I like Scrivener, tho I have yet to use it to its full potential.

My favorite feature so far is the index card board, where I can write quick character sketches.

An update. I hadn’t used Scrivener for some time–when I opened it this morning, it asked me if I wanted to update to version 1.11 (I had version 1.03). I updated, at which point Scrivener asked me if I wanted to open the Tutorial because I apparently had never used Scrivener before. Except I had–the files were just made using the old version.

I went roundabout and opened the .scriv files via Document. Scrivener asked me if I wanted to update the files to the new version. I was then warned that I could not try to reopen the updated files with an older version in the future. If I did, Scrivener would update the files again, and likely corrupt them.

Anyway, I updated the files. So far, I can’t get my character sketches to display on Corkboard. The text is still saved, because it shows up when I mouse over the character names on the sidebar. But I can’t open the corkboard itself.

still working through it.

Patrick– The scrivener documentation actually says, i think, that it’s a text editor, not a word processor. But a text editor with special features designed to help out the authors of book-length works.

I have yet to find anything better than loose leaf. I write all my first drafts in pen, then grudgingly type them out.

I can see that might not work so well for novels though….

You said in part “For the Fairy novel I had notes from my editor and others, a list of kinds of fairies”. At first glance I thought you said “my editor and mother” and thought “WOW! Your mum helps you write!” I am not sure that I could let my mum do that, were she still around because of all the gratuitous sex and violence in my NaNo. I realized it was “others” instead and now I am speculating on who these “others” may be. Aliens? The Quokka Liberation Front? Werewolves? Inquiring minds want to know!

PS: I hate Word with the heat of a thousand burning suns, too, but I am not able to upgrade to happy Macland right now. Boo hisss!

this made my day. i downloaded a free trial of scrivener, and it is all things beautiful and wonderful. i can use it for drafting novels (joy) and for writing fancy term papers.

scrivener rocks. i have writ a novel and a half on it, and it makes the whole process so easy i feel like i’m cheating.

i use the inspector when i’m editing too, to put reminders about all the stuff that needs to be added/changed for that chapter, and then delete them as i go.

also, i have a scrivener file to store all my short stories (all=2.5), so when someone says ‘do you have a short story’ i know where to find them all.

AND finally, i love the ‘targets’ function, so I can say i am writing 2000 words today, and i’m not allowed to watch 30 rock until i do.

I use Open Office on my laptop cuz Word 2007 is currently out of my budget and i can’t find the word 2003 cd.

Open Office isn’t as pretty (or as advanced) as word 2007 but it does what i need it to do so i’m not complaining.

Scrivener sounds fantastic though.

Ooooh, it’s so streamlined. And pretty! And if it’s working for you, I just might try it. But how do you send it in to your editor? Does it convert to a word file? And, for those of us whose novels lean dangerously close to the novella, is there a way to see how many pages the document is?

Why is it available for macs only? *is very unhappy* WHY???

I use word, which works well enough. (especially after having written by hand for a couple of months - definitely enough to make one appreciate it). However, I do find it frustrating having to open several (some of them rather lengthy) documents and then constantly flip between them. I’ve often thought there must be a better way! And I only use page breaks to divide up my documents so I can find things (like particular chapters) in them; the rest of the time I use views where they are basically irrelevant.
Scrivener sounds fantastic. I’m terribly annoyed.

I use Word for Mac and I don’t have all those templates that Emily is talking about. Also, I’m in the midst of trying out Scrivener (for the second time — Gina tried to hook me on it a year ago and it didn’t stick) but so far, it’s not sticking for me this time either. I don’t usually keep a lot of files open as I write, but I LOVE having pages, and I don’t have pages here. I have no idea whether I’m looking at the beginning of a chapter or the end. It makes it very hard for me to “see” the pacing, if that makes sense.

My trial goes on for a few weeks more, but I’ll be out of town for most of them.

In all my years using Word for Mac, all my manuscripts, I’ve never had a problem keeping my entire manuscript in one file (knock wood). Splitting them up into chapter files also wouldn’t work for me.

Drat, and just when I thought I could live without a mac.

I found out about this program about a year ago when I first learned Holly liked it. I haven’t found a mac yet, and with such an in depth look at the program, you’re making me crave a mac again!

I dabbled with q10 during nano, and liked the mandatory full screen mode. It also made typewriter noises as you typed. I had two problems with it, I use italics for character thoughts, so when I switched over to word, I had to comb through the document to find all the ‘thought quotes.’ search didn’t help, because I found all of the normal apostrophes.

I used open office’s writer after that, because I couldn’t find a copy of word that would transfer to my archaic laptop. Off nano’s forums, I found out word has an outline feature, which makes it really convenient to separate chapters and scenes.

i tried ywriter too, but wasn’t impressed.

Lucky you with Scrivener! Oh well.

I’ll have to go pick up prom nights from hell. I got 21 proms, and didn’t realize there was a similar compilation out by the other half of my favorite authors.

The WordToolOfSatan sounds like an old time gospel or choir song with lots of handclapping and stomping.

Oh, the word tool of Satan, it’s a-
Comin’ for you, brother! It’s a-
Comin’ for you, sister!
Just! Say! No!

Word will actually do most of what you’re talking about here if you take the time to learn how to do it. Master document function will break a ms up into chapters for you and you can work on individual chapters or on the whole document at once. On the drop down menu under “View,” you’ll find a number of fun tools, like a Document Map that allows you to hop around in your document easily and a Full Screen function that does the same as the Scrivener full screen function. Not trying to convert you back to Word but offering for those who are coveting but can’t have Scrivener. If you are stuck with Word, it’s really worthwhile taking the time to play around with it and learn its many functions. You can do a lot with Reference, Frames and Track Changes tools to keep a project organized.

Effie: I have been using Word for close to twenty years. I have tried all the things you have suggested and they are all kind of broken. Word was never designed for Macs and have never worked for me on them. Well, not since Word 4 when it was simpler and leaner. I’m thrilled it works for you, but way more thrilled that I’ve found scrivener.

I am jealous. I hate microsoft.

I love Scrivener, but I must warn you. If you do not read the instructions, this author’s nightmare could happen to you . . .

http://lisayee.livejournal.com/60457.html

Sigh.

Lisa Yee: I does not wish to be unkind, but, um that kind of looks like a user error . . .

Well, I suppose it could be considered a user error. However, i think that scrivener should come with a pool boy who could prevent that sort of thing from happening.

I owe my novel draft to two things: Novel in 90 and Scrivener.

I just discovered this blog due to a link from Scalzi’s Whatever — great blog you have here.

And I cast another vote for Scrivener — I’ve been using it for several months and written about 25,000 words of a novel in it.

I have only one concern with it — I’m a little bit fanatical about standardizing formats for word-processing files. Some science-fiction writers will occasionally try to access a story they wrote twenty years ago in a word-processor that doesn’t exist anymore, and they find they can’t open the file. I’m worried about that happening with Scrivener. For that reason, I’m thinking of switching at some point to plain text files for drafts, then importing to Word for the final draft.

OTOH, Scrivener is just so damn good, I’m in no rush to make the change.

The New York Times reviewed Scrivener a day or two ago. Your review is better.

@Mitch Wagner: Scrivener doesn’t use a proprietary file format; the .scriv file is essentially just a folder containing all the project files, so even if the program is no longer installed, all the content is still accessible as text files. Admittedly, text files with fairly unhelpful file names.

WHOO! dead deadline! ergh.. today is my second day home from school and i got woken up from the fedex lady.. when i signed the thing i dont even know what i wrote. but its my ipod for christmas

yeah! Congrats. Sleep the sleep of angels.

Congratulations. Now write the next one!

Was this the first draft? I can’t remember. Sleep is a good thing.

Why is the FedEx lady coming to your house so early Ally?

I hate French. I fail at speaking French. But I ace it in the pronunciation department.

I’m gonna go knot and purl now.

woo hoo! congratulations! hope you had a good sleep.

whats pulcritudinate?

yay for u!

Yay!

Onyer, Justine! Sleep well and come back to the land of the living soon.

woohoo! yay! cheers! yeahhhh!

they took your life, but they could not take your blog

in the name of deadlines

oooh, that is excellent news, well done, congratulations.

yay yay yay!!

now sleep and breathe and live with no stress. or much less stress, anyway.

congrats on destroying that deadline!

whee! congratulations.

Congratulations! That has to feel good. Did you at least have time to notice we beat New Zealand (in the cricket)?

yay for deadlines being done! yay for sleep!

Awesome! n_n Yay for killing the deadline!

YAY!!!! Go Justine!!

woo-hoo!!

go out and dance in the streets singing celllllllll-e-brate good times, come on!!!!!!

i am so alone!!!!!!!!!!! :(

go you!!!!!!!!
that is truly awesome. deadlines should die.
in other news, yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy! i got my new ipod nano yesterday. it’s awesome.

for biology i have to do a report on smallpox and i was reading a demon in the freezer and it was saying that almost every animal has their own pox. there is evena quokkapox!!! :0

party!!!

this is one long nap justine!

so prettylicious. I hate winter. You never get to see any pretty flowers during the winter.

i’m pretty sure the gumnut flower is an alien.
most definitly sure

me likey!!!! me want!!!!

Aww they’re so pretty! and.. exotic? We don’t have anything like those here.
I want to go there!

Ooh, the gumnut flower! brilliant. i used to think my mum & dad were such dorks for photographing flowers all the time, but i have been reconsidering this position for a while now.

eucalyptus flowers are incredibly beautiful things. Thanks Justine, have a good Christmas and good luck with YKN.

Sorry, y-k-w.

no school todya!!!

SOOOOOOOOOOo pretty. Too bad everything in MN is covered with snow. Or even in the summer time, we don’t have things as pretty as that.

school is out!!!!!!! :0

or as my english teacher would say…..First day of winter break 2007, sophmores gone wild!!!!!

Good luck with your deadline. I miss your regular blogging.

Hope your (at least) in TX, not NYC. Latter is a truly dreary place in winter. As you’ve noticed….

Cheers — Pete Tillman
–
“S. Koreans Clone Cats That Glow in the Dark”–headline, Agence France-Presse, Dec. 12
http://tinyurl.com/32sf7m

oh noes! violence against paperclips! ’tis a terrible thing. here, have a kitty to bring down the stress: http://tinyurl.com/2lr5e8

um….may i tentatively suggest that, post-deadline, you test-run OpenOffice? I haven’t used it much, but i hear it’s awesome and that it’s compatible with the evil MicWord.

hahahahahahaha! at the video. that is hilarious. perhaps you could change the paper clip to the cat? it won’t really improve the situation, but i find that a cat asking me if i’m writing a letter is far less aggravating than a moronic little paperclip, for some reason….

clippy = evil. Jim Hines turned one of my covers into an anti-clippy LOL (http://jimhines.livejournal.com/327414.html) that you might appreciate at the moment. He did at great personal cost too–turning clippy back on and then not being able to get rid of the damn thing without manually editing his registry file.

If I don’t yell “I hate (explicative) microsoft” at least once a week, I don’t think I’m working hard enough.

Maybe you need more RAM? Or more waking hours in the day - computer troubles are legendary for only happening in times of stress.

Or - you know how they say if you just think about exercising for 20 minutes, it’s as good as actually exercising, maybe if you just think about lying in the sunshine for 20 minutes (there has to be some music you can use to evoke sunny thoughts) you will actually get some vitamin d.

I send my novel off last night, and I can now vouch for the fact that if you just keep turning up and hacking at the thing, you eventually get to the end.

Write like the cyclone (but not tracy)!

I would hate to be an author. I much prefer reading, appreciating, adoring and loving the final product. but I gotta agree that microsoft really does go Korazy when you are stressed. Does it sense the impending doom?!

I am so sorry Word is being hateful and horrible to you. If it makes you feel better, I HATE it too, and frequently am forced to swear at in in all languages that I speak and a few that I have made up just for such occasions. The Sweetheart tells me “that is why Mac is better” and then I am forced to yell back “as soon as you convince my entire workplace to switch to Mac i would be happy to be all Macified!” Yes, I know that there is conversion software out there, but if getting windows to behave is a constant struggle for dominance, why would i complicate things further?

I saw on Libba Bray’s blog that you are also having nasty flu aside from homicidal thoughts about that stupid paperclip! I hope you feel better soon!

I am buying a damn mac as soon as possible.

MS is just … *screams*

Have you looked at Open Office? (ducks, as the breeze from a mistimed punch parts his hair)

oh, I am glad to see someone who rants at Word the way I do. I write in Wordperfect and only resort to the evil Word when I must attach a document for the rest of the writing world. And Mr. Clippy? A sadist. Commiserations.

i have a hard copy of this anger-management lolcat stuck next to my work computer for similar instances of word rage.

I’d be interested in a blog entry of the tools you use and how. Cory Doctorow writes in some form of XML, which must be horrid yet Word hates large docs so do you have one doc per chapter or something?

Open Office is a good Word-alike but no idea what it like for large docs either. Scrivener looks good but complicated and just how good is the export to Word feature?

As a non-author/writer I find it fascinating to read how different authors approach their craft and what tools they use (and how).

i love macs, but they aren’t that much better with word-prossesing. i still haved to use word on it, and it crashes only when something is due tomorrow. i know that feeling.

what happened to my commet??!?!?!?!?

all i said was that you could switch off Mr. clippy *evil laugh*

Try q10 from http://www.baraa.com/q10/

Word sucks. very much so, especially for large docs. I hope you’re backing up very very often because, well. Word sucks.

I use wordperfect for my personal writing and it handles large docs effortlessly. Haven’t had a crash since moving to their x3 version. But I use Word at work, my girlfriend and her hubby use word Mac for their professional writing and it ain’t any prettier on that side of the fence.

Might I suggest, if you feel like you need to stick with word, you look into the latest version? It is hell on learning curve (so don’t even think about it now … is that a deadline I see before me?) because they’ve changed just about every thing about it, but the file format is much better, smaller, and more manageable for the computer (less choking on big files) and once you get used to it the new layout is pretty good. I do not know, however, if it is any better with long docs. Cause, you know. Word sucks.

I kind of like being 100% of the votes… and I am not even from Australia. (:

You have skewed my poll! So were you answering it as if you were an Australian? Because I can’t imagine anyone from Seattle missing the weather . . .

Drat those pesky deadlines….

Poor old Justine. Hang in there!

If only there was a way to parcel up sunshine and mangosteens and red duck curry served in a coconut without seriously pissing off australia post . . .

Oh yes. I answered as if I were Australian. I would not want to intentionally… ruin the poll. I also would have asked my good Australian friend what he would miss, but he was not there to ask. So I just imagined his answer. Long story short, I’m sure if I were from Australia I would miss the weather most. It has got to be loads better than Seattle’s weather right now. Bleh.

Kaleb: Indeed.

Hereandnow: Stupid Australia Post!

Capt. Cockatiel: No worries. I was just amused at the idea of anyone in Seattle saying they missed the weather.

justine: If someone in Seattle missed the weather I would be extremely surprised. Anyone in their right mind should run far, far away from this weather. If I could, I would. ^_^

I miss it all, and I’ve never even been to Australia. But between you and my dear Australian pen-pal (hi, Aimee!), I’m quite sure it is a place well worth missing.

~Mary

If anyone understands about deadlines, I do. Good luck with the “death march”; I just got out of several back-to-back, and may be headed for another if I have too much fun instead of knuckling under.

As for ovens in New York apartments:

Most apartments have an oven of some sort. (Those that don’t often make do with a cheap, battered toaster oven for the odd bagel or two.

However, many ovens are effectively nonfunctional for one reason or another, such as being switched off for having a leaky pilot light, being so caked with grease that they set off the smoke detector every time you turn them up above “warm,” or being stuffed with dirty pots and pans, old manuscripts, books, drugs, etc. Never turn on a New York oven without looking inside it first. And then, when you do turn it on, prepare for the rush of suddenly dispossessed cockroaches–or worse.

All in all, going out for pizza is a much better idea.

i’ze not aussie so i can’t do the poll, but my aussie friend jess says “family and friends,” which i agree wholeheartedly with. that is what i would miss most if i were somewhere else. although, the weather might be nicer. i know i have no right to complain, seeing as south and central texas have quite mild winters compared to other places, but i’d still rather be wearing my shorts and t-shirts. except for scarves. i like scarves.
keep hacking away at that deadline!

i just remembered something totally random: did you ever get cowboy boots?

First of all, it was my receptionist who voted for the jerboa from her desk at my office. Once I told her the jerboa was in jeopardy, she logged right on.

Anyhow, multiple votes (if they had occurred) are nothing compared to some of the atrocities you committed during the poll.

so remember, whenever you point your finger at someone else, there are three more pointing back at yourself.

(or something like that)

i havent been on in a while…

wanted to tell you that you need to post more about your faerie book. hehe. i love that spelling. fairy seems…fairytaleish. but faerie seems all magestic and sly. different spellings are appropriate for different settings. which spelling do you use in your book?

-Lizzy-wa OUT!

good luck with the deadlines horror! will be thinking of you.

and don’t worry about the rewrite post, at least not on my account: i printed the first draft of my nano novel, and am currently unable to do more with it. since ohmygod the embarrassment of the thing, aaaargh.

*dies*
*and is dead*, as elizabeth bear might say

lizzy-wa: I’ll be posting heaps more about the Fairy book as soon as the cover is finalised. But in the meantime it’s definitely “fairy” not “faery” in my book. My fairies are invisible and are not even slightly majestic. They’re very silly.

Marrije, not to worry several others have been expressing their keen-ness to see the “How to rewrite” post. I’m pretty sure you’ve only mentioned it once.

Most people’s first drafts are shocking. Mine certainly are.

marrije, i so totally know what you mean. for the 2nd year in a row, i haven’t even bothered to print or read over my nano novel. it’s that bad. le sigh.

I don’t think you have been sufficiently praised for bringing Scott’s site back to life!

[…] I’m still dealing with you know what I thought I’d share a couple more flowers from my parent’s place. I don’t know […]

Funny!

I like your voice. why do you laugh all the time?

where is everyone?

Ah! Now I’m really excited for the ufb! I’m going to explode with waiting or something! Gah!
But that was really awesome and funny. (:

Weee! I feel like I’m a big ball of energy! I now know stuff about The Ultimate Fairy Book! Haha, ferries. That made me giggle.

you *don’t* pronounce it lar-ba-less-tee-ayy? i fear that i will continue to pronounce it this way in my head. i will attempt to get it right if/when we ever meet someday.

[…] characters after donaters.) Plus, some silly writing stunts. Justine Larbalestier and partner Scott star in a podcast (there’s also a second half). Paul continues his incredibly personal and humbling recount of […]

Amen. I’m so tired. . .

My wife has that nighty! You *must* be cold to be wearing something that fleecy

[…] up shop. I’m not sure exactly what the follow-up to the Magic or Madness Trilogy will be, but recent posts suggest Larbalestier’s stranded in New York working on something big. Of course it could also […]

simon: Is not nighty! Is pjs. Real writers only wear pyjamas!

Same design though, probably just as fleecy and probably a lot less draughty …

I’m just impressed with that stack of books in picture #2. Anti-gravity FTW!

she’s holding them there with her mind. All writers do it. The books follow her around dilligently waiting for more words.

love the jammies! hang in there, fellow deadline-facer!

Okay, see, this is when you eschew the sleepy sheep pajamas for ones that are peppy and inspire insomnia. Like pajames decorated with cups of coffee…or teaspoons of crack.

I like that bookshelf behind you, the single tower thingie. where’d you get it?

Wow! I know this family that has the same bookshelf! They fit the books so exact that you can’t see the metal part. (By accident of course) And then it looked like one entire tower of books that disregarded physics!

I recommend eating chocolate covered coffee beans.

Hank Green has floating books on his walls. I reccomend a Juice It Up. It’s natural and yummy. Mango!

who stacks books like that?

I’m curious…how close is said dread date? Are we going to be treated with more time lapse images to see the spiraling descent into madness the nearer it gets?

hee! I just found your blog, I’ll definitely stop back. Ha, I recognize the “thousand yard stare” in that first photo!

I was actually going to comment on “novels I despise” but no more comments are allowed! Sad. that is too fun.

good luck with your deadline!

we are your personal cheering squad. go justine, yeahhhhhh!! down with deadlines!!

I could have sworn you were one of the unfortunate viewers of the dreaded 2girls1cup video.

you’re at the finish line. you can do this. think shoes. think chocolate. think great book party.

love the pjs. how’d you manage to make those books stack like that?

Deadlines are horrible. High five for meeting them, though.

i hates deadlines when deadlines make blogger no blog

Me too Patrick!

I’m back!
nice P.J’s in that picture Justine very stylish

You will be like the georges perec of y.a., only without the chainsmoking and the supreme weirdness! (this is assuming you don’t chain-smoke . . .)

Georges Perec, eh? I likes it.

And you are correct. I do not chain smoke. I smoke nothing, not chains, not cigarettes, not anything.

In fact, no YA author smokes so as not to be a bad influence. We take our responsibilities seriously.

i had to something of that nature when i worte a story of english in jr. high school.
our teachers wanted us to cut half of our to-be verbs wich are…
1.is
2.am
3.was
4.were
5.be
6.being
7.been
in half.so if we had 100 to-be verbs we had to cut it down to roughly to 50.
the teachers also did not want two sentences right after on another starting with the same word.

Do you think it made your story better?

i think so. it tooka really long time. and know i am going back and rewriting the stories that i wrote in 7th and 8th grade making them more adult sounding and increasing how many words that there are because i had a word limit od i think 3,000 words.
i rewrote the first paragraph of one of my stories call the missing spot, and it was a page and a half long,

funny, i feel like i’m writing a good-free book as we speak.

See, I thought that’s what I’d done with “good” and “nice” and I was so proud. But then I searched and the dread truth was revealed. So I ruthlessly went through and nuked as many as I could.

Search your document for “good”. Are there really none? If so. I bow down to you, Robin. You are amazing!

Oh, the *word* good shows up plenty. It’s just the *quality* of good that I fear might be missing…

You was joking. I am such a literal minded fool! Sorry!

Not that you are capable of writing a good-free book!

oh, i don’t mind nice or good. sometimes they’re irreplaceable like “he was a good dog.”

but when i worked in magazines i got really, really sick of: gutsy (especially when applied to handbags or nail polish), luxe (meaning luxurious or sometimes velvety), glam (short for you know what), moxie (instead of nerve or chutzpah). Then there are the phrases like “’nuff said.” (Choke me now.) It just seems to reduce everything to the same level, whether it’s courage or nail polish.

p.s. Justine, I just re-sent you the list of multiculti fantasy novels so do check to see if it got eaten again.

I have recently become aware of the fact that Beatrix Potter overused the word “dear.” We all have our faults.

what’s wrong with the word ‘nice’ anyway? it’s very nice - except when it’s nasty… so how times have you used the words ‘nasty’ and ‘bad’ ?

My word like this is “still” — this book, at least. It is driving me mad — still!

That’s nice, dear. Good for you.

Ack. “it’s” Pthuie.

You could always put back in one “nice” -only spell it “nyce” and use it in the Chaucierian sense (the opposite of it’s modern meaning) - that would be fun…

hehe. no more ms.nice guy. hehehe.

-Lizzy-wa OUT!

[…] Write Rite So, between Robin, Justine, and Diana posting about writing, they got me to thinking.  Ok, that’s not true.  I […]

yesterday we had to take a ela benchmark test. it took us all day. we had to write an essay, answer questions over 2 stories, do short answer questions, and read stories that we had to find mistakes and fix them.

it was a long day.

it took me from 8:30 in the morning, a 30 min break for lunch, and then until 1:00.

Good luck! I recommend taking an allergy pill before cleaning, as the dust always gets to me. And put on some music - it should distract you from the fungi that might be alive.

[…] Justine Larbalestier wrote a fantastic post today on “In which I commence the cleaning of my desk”Here’s ONLY a quick extract buried alive in an avalanche of old catalogues and magazines and receipts and envelopes and wine labels […]

If we don’t hear from you within the next few days, we’ll send the St. Bernard with the brandy keg:)

stay safe, justine!

oh, and don’t forget to bring a baseball bat to hit anything that is moving.
you never know.

Haha, lol kim. and justine, i’m still litterally loling.

reminds me of when we have to clean out our lockers at the end of the year. scary…

you should hire an assistant to clean your desk!

And i thought my desk was messy:)…Good Luck

Good luck! I’m afraid of my desk as much as I fear homework. Now that I’m thinking… I don’t know the color of my desk. Off to find a shovel!

Don’t forget to recycle any papers that you don’t need!! Oh, and have the SPCA on speed-dial if there are any poor creatures underneath everything.

is it time to go to ikea?

or you could go and work at the kitchen table.

Let me share with you the patent-pending McLaren method of cleaning a desk. Well, not so much cleaning up a mess as compressing it–you can’t really fight entropy in a closed system without putting your valuable energy into said system, but you can do local rearranging within the system at a zero (or very low) net energy cost.

First, you sort the stuff on the desk into five piles:

1) Books
2) Other physical objects which have a definite place they belong (not “on the desk”)
3) Other physical objects which don’t have a place they belong
4) Papers that need to be dealt with in the short or medium term
5) Papers that need to be sorted and filed

Then:
1) Put the books away
2) Put the other objects in their places
3) Put all these objects in a large cardboard box, and put this in the closet or storage room. Forget about them until/unless you have need of them
4) Put all these papers in an appropriately sized Rubbermaid-type container, and put them under the desk. By the next time you clean up, these will be candidates for pile #5.
5) Put all these papers in an appropriately sized Rubbermaid-type container, and put the container near your filing cabinet. You can probably stack it on top of the container from pile #5 last time.

Ta da: clean desk!

Bah, to heck with desk cleaning. Just toss it all in the corner and move on! Nope, that doesn’t work for me either, sigh.

It’s November, what are you still doing in the Northern Hemisphere? It was a lovely 86F here in Austin today…
Anon

there should be video documentation of this event. there absolutely must be. you should film it, since you know all about camera angles and such. :D

Good God! What a hideous suggestion. If I have anything to do with it there will be no video shot on the train! Some things have to be private. What happens on dragontrain stays on dragontrain.

Awesome! I didn’t know you were going to Dragoncon. I’m even going down early (well, early-ish), because we’re going to the AQUARIUM! on friday. I secretly *love* dragoncon because it’s so totally comfortable with its very very weird self.

I wish I could go to one of these *con* thingies…Justine, you are so lucky! and especially to be going in such great company! Can you at least film some of the Con, not the train?

*pouts*

but i was actually referring to the con, not the train. i wanna see maureen’s wonder woman costume.

i agree. video the con.

I can understand your excitement ovet the train - LOVE train rides!

“what happens on DragonTrain stays on DragonTrain”. teehee
But yeah, I think that filming the con would be a great idea!

ha! 5 votes to 1.

i went on a train in kindergarten once. twas fun.

I have a question about Scott, well about *Fine Prey* and *Extras*, the school in *Fine Prey* is called Aya and the main character of *Extras* is named Aya. Is this a coincidence, or does he just really like the name, or did he forget?

TAKE THE LAST TRAIN TO CLARKSVILLE AND I’LL MEET YOU AT THE STATION

hmmm…

What was that I read the other day about good bloggers who don’t blog everyday even when they are at huge conferences in Atlanta?

There will be no videoing of anything. I threw Maureen’s camera out the window of the train. It was swallowed by the kudzu.

Hillary!: He says he just really likes the name. When he finally gets the pet monkey he longs for it will also be called Aya.

Patrick: Whatcha talking about. I’m blogging, ain’t I? Haven’t missed a day in two months.

I’m now beginning to realize that I must have too much time on my hands…

Why aren’t people blogging 5 times a day?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

I figured it out.

I’m suffering from scalzi withdrawal

Heh. I’ve -assigned- one of your scholarly books this semester, but I don’t think it would have occurred to me to ask you questions about it, since it seems so obvious that you’ve shaken that particular dust off your shoes years ago.

What’s your favorite YA scifi book?

I enjoy reading your scholarly books, nonetheless. But don’t worry, no questions.

Susan: Thank you! I hope the students find it useful.

Hilary!: My favourite YA sf book that’s in print is Scott’s Uglies series. I know he’s my old man, but I really enjoy those books.

I’m more of a fantasy reader though. I can give you a long, long, long list of my fave YA fantasy books.

Shara: And I’m thrilled that people have read them and found them useful!

okay then, what are your favorite ya fantasy books?

Yeah! What are your fave fantasy books? And seeing as how I’ve already read *Uglies*, I’d like to know another one of your fave scifi novels, or you could just reccomend one to me that you think is really cool. Hopefully I’ll not have ever read it before.

[…] though I spent more than eight years doing nothing but read science fiction. My standards are very very high and my tolerance for less […]

blargh. i am not much for the academic-y stuff either. but eight years.

i dislike reading scholarly works as well. *shudder*

i love it too. once i get over the initial resistance (”but it took WEEKS to write!”), deleting it is awfully satisfying. Although it buggers up my word count targets for the day.

my most frequent complaint about books is “could have been 30 000 words shorter”.

You are not alone. I gleefully culled about 5000 words out of Fathom before I sent it off the other night. Cutting crap out is the easy, entertaining, immediately rewarding part of revising.

For me, anyway.

Will we ever get to read the deleted chapters anyway? It would be just like watching the special features of a book.

I know what tole means! I relish every last page of a book and am so sad when it ends, I can’t believe there’s cut out stuff I could have read! But then again I tend to love loooong books, just because I get more time with the characters… even if some parts get drawn out xD

aww, your eating of capitals killed my laughing face =(

“Makes me wonder why I wrote them in the first place”: I always figure these phantom sections are the dross that must be drawn off to get to the pure gold.

Random marketing idea: If you have these chapters sitting around, and if you could do something coherent with just those chapters, you could use them as a promotional freebie when the book comes out. Stage a blog contest or whatever, with “an extra vignette not included in the published text of ufb” as a prize. All you’d need is a well-laid-out pdf file. Like I said, just an idea, but it might appeal to your fans who just can’t get enough . . .

Cutting’s always good for the author, but not always for the reader. I with elodie and tim. I’d love to see them all–or if removing them significantly changed the plot, can you roll a few into a short story for us?

you’re mad. i hate cutting out scenes and i can always see the scars in my book when I do it. i know it’s not the way it’s “supposed” to be.

if possible, i put them back in later books.

not alone, nope nope nope.

I always have to go back and add between 15-30%, because I apparently believe that if I put a few words on the page, the reader will be able to extract the story from my brain through osmosis.

so when is this book do? I’m excited to read a new book of yours, especially a fiction maybe fantasy.
Totally off topic, but I really love libraries and Librarians too and I was wondering what do I need to do, besides talk to my librarian, to become one? I am going to be his aide this year but I don’t think that’s enough. any advice or ideas?

LOL! Elizabeth, i’m with you. I rarely have to cut. always add, add, add. (or, as I think of it, plumping.)

I’m surrounded by literary sadists ^^

I, like diana, hate cutting. In fact, i rarely do it. rewrite, perhaps. But cut… no. i get eeked out by cutting, afraid that I’m cutting the very thing that people loved and that the whole house of cards will fall around me because of what I cut.

not healthy, I know. You should see me editing my query letter! As if the world hinged on one word! (those start going out today! w00t!)

i love cutting words and large passages. and if they go out, they never come back in. i deleted eight-five pages, a few chapters in a row, of something i wrote, and the book needed some tweaking, but it was so much better without it. it’s nice just to delete and let the good things stand alone, without the mediocre.

i love, love, love cutting also, in fact i was just writing about the exact same thing this morning on my blog!

you’re not alone. i’m all about carnage. time consuming b/c there’s that bit where you have to write it all again. but productive.

To all those who pine for deleted chapters: I think a couple of them will work on their own and will post them on my website when there’s an Ultimate Fairy Book section.

I promise!

Yum. I love this time of year. I call it “ratatouille season.”

food is good. have you ever heard of a tomatillo? (i think that’s how its spelled.) it looks like a tomato but it has a garlic like skin on it. very interesting. i think its called a tomatillo because it has a shell like an armadillo (not really i just cant figure out why and that sounds good wnough.)

*enough

corn’s good too now. Check it.

ahm
Friday you talked to ME

your post made me hungry

i was already hungry b/c there is no such thing as lunch in this house, and this post made it worse. the best way to eat a tomato is to slice it across the middle and lightly salt it. cooking them with zucchini and yellow squash is tasty too. *drool*

dess: “tomatillo” means “little tomato” in Spanish, I think. We use them here (in texas) to make salsas etc. If you’re ever in this neck of the woods (from Austin south to the border), try enchiladas with tomatillo sauce.

re tomatoes: my great-grandmother used to serve tomatoes grown in her garden. she was blissfully unacquainted with modern agricultural chemicals, but extraordinarily well-acquainted with the folk cooking traditions of the deep south, where she lived all of her 90+ years. She would serve these tomatoes, fresh from the garden - they had never in their lives been cooled - with “dinner” (i.e. lunch). The entire preparation for them was: slice fairly thick, serve with salt. Sweet red heaven on a plate.

Lauren: Yes, we got corn as well. Sheesh.

I just can’t get as excited about corn on account of you can get great corn at home. But not tomatoes. US of A heirloom tomatoes are the best I’ve ever had. Yum!

um, i like the tomatoes here…(a lot actually, they look a h*ll of a lot better than the ones they use on Englands ‘ready, steady, cook’…they’re actually *red* for a start…) but i’ve nver been to america, so what do i know?

my favourite tomato dish is a toss-up between off-the-vine-tomatoes with cheese and tomatoe pepper or stewed tomatoes, which is only slightly more complicated.

xo (lol) elmo

There is no such thing as tomatoe or even tomatoe pepper…that was a major typo.

A tomato sandwich is sounding really good right about now :q. Good luck with the whole writer isolation thing. And you know. The whole writing thing.

(I’m really excited for the UFB, by the way!)

My mother likes to make a tomato salad with roma tomatoes, fresh, chopped garlic, a bit of oil, salt, and parsley (I think, maybe it’s basil, she uses a lot of both in many recipes).

And unrelated to food, but still interesting–a 400-level English class at my school (University of Hawaii-Manoa) is using your book, “Daughters of Earth,” in a class on gender and sexuality in sci fi, alongside ‘Frankenstein,’ Freud and Le Guin.

i hate tomatoes. love corn and paotoes

little tomatos huh? well that does make more sense that armadillo tomatos.

We also call cape gooseberries ‘ground cherries.’

I was just visiting new york, and I went to the union square greenmarket, and now I understand why you couldn’t find Thai herbs there. It has quite a different character from the farmers markets here in minnesota, where most of the vendors are hmong farmers and have all sorts of interesting herbs for sale.

hey justine! i just wanted to tell you that i finished reading magic’s child this week and that i absolutely loved the trilogy! (i’d've written the word “loved” in capitals, but they don’t exist on here, do they?) i’m from malaysia and i got strangely excited about the mention of rambutans in magic’s child. =) can’t wait for the next one!

As a loyal reader of your blog and your works, I completely respect your need to focus on ufb. I want to read it asap, after all! Sometimes I wish I could get that many emails so I could be cool like you and John Green and declare email bankruptcy. Alas, I’m far too devoted to checking my email multiple times a day…and it often says 0 new emails. hehe. Anyway, I hope everything is still going well! Good luck.

you should really get your spam filter fixed…

will miss you but yay ufb!!

all your caps are belong to justine!!

bwahahahahahahahahaha!! just noticed the tagline above the comment box. alright, sorry, leaving now.

Well, now I understand why you haven’t replied to my email about the exciting chervil sighting in my local grocery. I’m not offended. Really.

Help with e-mail is close at hand. Try this:

A Low-Fi Solution to E-Mail Overload: Sentenc.es

The *very* short version: pick a small number of sentences (e.g. four) and commit to answering every e-mail in that number of sentences or less. It makes the task of going through a loaded inbox much less daunting, since you know there’s only so long any one reply will take.

My extra piece of advice: add a short note to your e-mail signature that says something funny like “Please pardon typos, run-ons, lacunae, and incoherent syllogisms: I’m wrestling a big piece of writing and it’s not clear just now which of us is winning.”

Hope this is helpful - good luck with your big project!

1) you do not suck. at. all. not even a little bit.

2) i don’t understand why people look at me wierd when i talk about my shopping fairy or my parking fairy. Oh, but they will totally understand once your book comes out. They will understand, even if I have to sit on top of them and read the entire book out loud.

3)not answering hundreds of emails is a valid lifestyle choice. that’s just what happens when you’re a literary rock star.

4) we still love and adore you.

5) I will gladly give you all of my big letters.