Reading as Research

Listening to: The Starting Line, "Direction"

First off, thanks to everyone for the big congrats and everything. It's been a heck of a week...still looking around myself in pure amazement from time to time.

So I just finished, around 2:30 a.m., Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments Series. I finished Book II on the way to the in-laws on Wednesday, and Thursday morning I made The Husband take me to a bookstore to get Book III.

Okay, I was gonna be laying by the pool all day, I needed something to read. Never mind that my mother-in-law has like a living room full of books.

Plus, you know, I could potentially be writing sequels/a trilogy/more than one book in a world before I'm forced to move on to another world and other characters, sometime in the near future. So it's RESEARCH.

You know what I love about writing? Aside from, you know, everything. I love that reading is research. And NO, that's not just a cop-out to get my husband to leave me alone when I'm reading or make him go get me the next book in a series when I'm hooked. It really is. I almost always "read like a writer", as the creative writing profs put it in college--with an eye toward characterization, plotting, dialogue, description, symbolism, etc. Even as I'm following the story and getting caught up in the plot, a part of my brain is working to notice other things. It's not really something I can control anymore--the writer part of my brain kind of took everything else over a few years ago.

Every so often I mourn this habit, as I love nothing more than getting so sucked into a book that I forget everything else around me. You know, when someone interrupts your reading, and it's like waking up from an incredible dream--you have to re-orient yourself to your surroundings, figure out what time of day it is, and probably throw something at the person who interrupted you? But if a book is really good, like crazy good, it can still happen.

Mortal Instruments did that to me several times, which is why I re-read the first one--I wanted to read it with an eye toward style and plotting and all that technical stuff. The first time, I just got sucked in, occasionally stepping out to wonder how, exactly, she'd done it. Since I want to do that with storytelling, I have to figure it out, y'know?

It's still the most incredible thing to me, that this thing I've done since I was tiny, this thing I've never been able to help doing, could be a part of my job. I always hated it when I was little or in my teens, and I'd be reading, and my parents would force me to get my nose out of the book and socialize or do chores.*

MWA HA HA! I say to them now. Just TRY and stop me from reading. I have the world's best excuse now. "But I'm working!"

And speaking of which, since I spent yesterday at the in-laws, reading and getting a tan...it's time to get back to work. The actual writing work, not the reading work. I can only use the "But it' work!" excuse for so long, you know.


*My parents have multiple pictures of me reading on vacations, on holidays, etc. They'd turn the camera toward me and be like, "Oh, and here's a picture of Kristy doing what she always does, but in a different place/on Christmas Eve!"

Back from the Grave (metaphorically speaking)

I feel like I haven't written any substantial, interesting blog posts in weeks...

That might be because I haven't, but the jury's still out on that one.

I kind of figured out why it's been so quiet here. I haven't really had a project to talk about and groan over and inspire interesting posts. I've had a few ideas, here or there, but they all got abandoned or petered out after, say, 20k words.

Then finally, a few weeks ago, something in my brain clicked, and I decided what I wanted my next book to be about. I had to wait, though--it was one of those ideas that kind of shimmers at the corner of your eye, but if you look at it directly, it'll disappear.

Yes, some of my ideas are like eye gunk. Beautiful analogy.

Anyhow, then I sat down last Saturday, finally feeling ready to brainstorm. And the idea, which had been about three words in my head, ("about a cult"), just came pouring out onto the paper. Suddenly all these characters were popping up in my head, and plot threads were branching out, and possibilities I'd never even considered were appearing.

And let me tell you...most of it is pretty scary.

Not because the idea itself is scary, but because many facets of it are going to involve stretching myself to places I've never stretched before. This is a whole new ballgame for me, folks, and I don't really know the rules.

For instance, I'm setting it outside of Pennsylvania. Every book I've written has been set here, because this is my comfort zone, and I know it. But the very nature of this book dictates that it must be set somewhere else. And I'm going to have to create that setting, not out of whole cloth but from scraps of other cloths, so to speak.*

Also, massive amounts of research will be required. I'm actually pretty good at research--I've been a college student and a journalist, so that skill has been honed pretty well--but it'll still be a giant pain. A pain I think I'll enjoy, though.

As if that isn't enough, I'll have to channel a completely different voice for the protagonist. I know this is confusing, because I mentioned in my little asterisk note below that the novel is set in the present day, but her voice will have to come from about 300 years ago. One of those it-is-but-it-isn't things.**

There are many other things, smaller things, that will crop up and make my life difficult, I'm sure. This will not be an easy book to write (of course, there's no such thing). I've explained the idea to my two sounding boards,*** though, and they're both very excited. Both of them think it could be really great. Thus, I'm utterly terrified that I'm not going to do it justice.

That's the name of the game, though, right? Do me a favor and scroll down to the bottom of this blog and read the quotation from John Irving posted there.

That's going to be my life for at least the next year.

Let the terror begin...now.


*I realize this is confusing. Let's put it this way: the setting will be in the real world, located near places that really exist, but it won't really exist. Less confusing? No? Oh well.

**No, it's not a time-travel novel. Not my thing. I'll leave you to wonder what on earth I mean, because I'm not going to explain it fully.

***Until the novel is well under way, I will not tell the full idea to anyone else. Ideas in their baby stages are very fragile, shiny things, and if exposed to too many eyes, they can lose their luster or break into a million pieces. Learned that the hard way, I did.