Friday Five
1. This week I managed to wait all the way until Thursday before I broke down and went back to Caffé Nero for my favorite addiction. I feel that I deserve a medal. Perhaps one in the shape of a Hot Chocolate Milano...although that might have the wrong effect on my willpower if I looked at it too much!
2. Two weeks from today, Patrick, MrD and I will be heading to Bath, where the Bath Children's Literary Festival will be taking place. We are, ahem, OF COURSE making the trip for serious professional reasons - I'll be meeting up with one of the very cool marketing people from my UK publishing house, doing some last-minute historical fact-checking for Kat Book 2 (A Tangle of Magicks), which is set in Regency-era Bath, and...oh, who am I kidding? You guys know I adore Bath. It's my favorite British city, and one of my favorite cities in the world.
I do have lots of good professional reasons for this trip...but the true thought-bubble that formed over my head when the idea first occurred to me was: Oooh! Ooh! Jane Austen Centre gift shop! Big Waterstones bookshop! OOH!!!! So, yes, there may well be some shopping involved... ;)
3. This year, for the first time in either of our lives, Patrick and I made the mistake of being too organized about something. This never happens! Ever! But we decided to shop for MrD's birthday presents REALLY EARLY this year...and now they're all here, weeks ahead of time. Sitting. Unopened. Unloved. Unappreciated. Waiting...aaagh! It is SO HARD not to give them to him now, when we know he would love them so much. Luckily, we are mature, responsible grown-up people. Or at least, we know we can't afford to buy an all-new set for his actual birthday...so we're hanging on to common sense by the skin of our teeth.
Suddenly, I understand how sensible it really is that my usual shopping policy is to do things the day ahead of time (or sometimes, an hour before the big event). Maybe next year...
4. Y.S. Lee's fabulous second book, The Body at the Tower, is out now in the UK! I absolutely adored this book when I read an ARC earlier this summer. You can read my full Goodreads review of it here (prepare for excited gushing!), but here's a quick snippet:
I loved, loved, loved this book. Of course, I'd already loved the first book in the series - after I read A SPY IN THE HOUSE, I wrote my first-ever piece of author fanmail - but THE BODY AT THE TOWER is just a whole new level of awesome...
So, yeah. I am a total fan-girl. :) Yay, Ying! (And as a disclaimer - yes, we are friends. On the other hand, the way we first met was that I wrote her that piece of fanmail - so my admiration for her books came long before I found out what a fun, funny, smart, and generous person she is in real life.) I strongly, strongly recommend The Body at the Tower!
5. Last week I read a great interview with my friend Sarah Prineas (author of the fabulous Magic Thief series - wonderful high-fantasy adventures for kids), and one question from the interview really stuck with me. The interviewer asked whether Sarah would keep writing if she knew she would never again be published. Sarah's answer was No, because she felt (I'm paraphrasing - see the interview for an exact quote) that without having any future readers for her work, there wouldn't be any point in writing in the first place. I've seen variants of this response from a lot of smart authors, who all point out that communication is a major part of writing. We write to express ourselves, which means we need someone to express ourselves to, or what's the point?
It makes sense.
Still, the question stuck with me because my own immediate, kneejerk answer to the question, even before I read Sarah's answer, was Yes, of course I would keep writing anyway! I've been writing with intensity and focus since I was a very young kid (I knew I wanted to be a pro writer from the time I was seven, and I'd been writing with happy absorption for a while before that), and I can't imagine ever intentionally NOT writing - or rather, I can only too easily imagine the not-writing part, because I've gone through periods of my life when I didn't write, and it made me absolutely miserable.
My very smart mom once put it this way: "Writing's just like eating or breathing for you. You can't do without it, so you might as well not try." And she was right - it really does feel that essential. I would be very, very unhappy if I was never published again...but I'd be FAR unhappier if I gave up writing because of it. Even when it's hard, even when I'm struggling with it, writing makes me happier than anything else in my life except my family.
I don't think one answer to the question is any better than the other - I think we all write for different reasons, and it's right to do what feels right to us when it comes to writing and publication. But I've been thinking about it ever since I read that interview.
What do you guys think? If you're writers, how would you answer that question? And if your vocation lies elsewhere, would you give it up if you knew you'd never get a paying job in the field again? I'm really interested to see what you guys think.
2. Two weeks from today, Patrick, MrD and I will be heading to Bath, where the Bath Children's Literary Festival will be taking place. We are, ahem, OF COURSE making the trip for serious professional reasons - I'll be meeting up with one of the very cool marketing people from my UK publishing house, doing some last-minute historical fact-checking for Kat Book 2 (A Tangle of Magicks), which is set in Regency-era Bath, and...oh, who am I kidding? You guys know I adore Bath. It's my favorite British city, and one of my favorite cities in the world.
I do have lots of good professional reasons for this trip...but the true thought-bubble that formed over my head when the idea first occurred to me was: Oooh! Ooh! Jane Austen Centre gift shop! Big Waterstones bookshop! OOH!!!! So, yes, there may well be some shopping involved... ;)
3. This year, for the first time in either of our lives, Patrick and I made the mistake of being too organized about something. This never happens! Ever! But we decided to shop for MrD's birthday presents REALLY EARLY this year...and now they're all here, weeks ahead of time. Sitting. Unopened. Unloved. Unappreciated. Waiting...aaagh! It is SO HARD not to give them to him now, when we know he would love them so much. Luckily, we are mature, responsible grown-up people. Or at least, we know we can't afford to buy an all-new set for his actual birthday...so we're hanging on to common sense by the skin of our teeth.
Suddenly, I understand how sensible it really is that my usual shopping policy is to do things the day ahead of time (or sometimes, an hour before the big event). Maybe next year...
4. Y.S. Lee's fabulous second book, The Body at the Tower, is out now in the UK! I absolutely adored this book when I read an ARC earlier this summer. You can read my full Goodreads review of it here (prepare for excited gushing!), but here's a quick snippet:
I loved, loved, loved this book. Of course, I'd already loved the first book in the series - after I read A SPY IN THE HOUSE, I wrote my first-ever piece of author fanmail - but THE BODY AT THE TOWER is just a whole new level of awesome...
So, yeah. I am a total fan-girl. :) Yay, Ying! (And as a disclaimer - yes, we are friends. On the other hand, the way we first met was that I wrote her that piece of fanmail - so my admiration for her books came long before I found out what a fun, funny, smart, and generous person she is in real life.) I strongly, strongly recommend The Body at the Tower!
5. Last week I read a great interview with my friend Sarah Prineas (author of the fabulous Magic Thief series - wonderful high-fantasy adventures for kids), and one question from the interview really stuck with me. The interviewer asked whether Sarah would keep writing if she knew she would never again be published. Sarah's answer was No, because she felt (I'm paraphrasing - see the interview for an exact quote) that without having any future readers for her work, there wouldn't be any point in writing in the first place. I've seen variants of this response from a lot of smart authors, who all point out that communication is a major part of writing. We write to express ourselves, which means we need someone to express ourselves to, or what's the point?
It makes sense.
Still, the question stuck with me because my own immediate, kneejerk answer to the question, even before I read Sarah's answer, was Yes, of course I would keep writing anyway! I've been writing with intensity and focus since I was a very young kid (I knew I wanted to be a pro writer from the time I was seven, and I'd been writing with happy absorption for a while before that), and I can't imagine ever intentionally NOT writing - or rather, I can only too easily imagine the not-writing part, because I've gone through periods of my life when I didn't write, and it made me absolutely miserable.
My very smart mom once put it this way: "Writing's just like eating or breathing for you. You can't do without it, so you might as well not try." And she was right - it really does feel that essential. I would be very, very unhappy if I was never published again...but I'd be FAR unhappier if I gave up writing because of it. Even when it's hard, even when I'm struggling with it, writing makes me happier than anything else in my life except my family.
I don't think one answer to the question is any better than the other - I think we all write for different reasons, and it's right to do what feels right to us when it comes to writing and publication. But I've been thinking about it ever since I read that interview.
What do you guys think? If you're writers, how would you answer that question? And if your vocation lies elsewhere, would you give it up if you knew you'd never get a paying job in the field again? I'm really interested to see what you guys think.