This is the cover for the forthcoming Cast in Fury, an October 2008 release from Luna Books. The cover itself came in the mail with the line-edits/copy-edits for, oddly enough, the same book, and I’ve been reading those. Which made me think of the stages of a book. Because I have a severe sensitivity to outlines, I will do almost anything to avoid writing them. This would include writing the whole book first. Because all writers work in their own unique ways, this isn’t meant to be prescriptive, and it’s not meant to offer advice; it’s just a statement of what I do. So… in my case, I basically sit down, over a period of several months, and write the book. This would include all the hair-pulling, … Continue reading
Tag Archives: process
I posted this as an answer about series writing over on sfnovelists.com, but I wanted to post it here as well, so it would be, among other things, easier for me to find. I currently have two worlds in progress, and they’re very structurally different. The first, the DAW books I write as Michelle West, aren’t really self-contained, and they’re certainly not short. I started those in 1994, and have continued to write them, and for me? They’re not finished yet. They don’t have an ending. I had envisioned a number of ending arcs, emotionally, for a large cast of characters– but I am only approaching the end of one of many character arcs in the newest set of books; the end of the six book … Continue reading