(This is part five of a blog series on the discussion between Sarah A. Hoyt and the Avondale United Methodist Church Book Club about Hoyt’s book Witchfinder, the art of writing, and what it is like to publish a book as both a traditional and “indie” author.)
Mark W.: You mentioned that you read 2-3 books at a time. How many books to do you write at a time? How many books are you working on right now?
Sarah: I should give the proper answer and say one book at a time.
Right now I have two science fictions, and then on the side I have the stock pile. I will be going on one project and another idea will come along. The proper thing to do with an idea is to ignore them until they go away, Because I already have more ideas on file than I could write in a lifetime. So the first thing I do is “go bother someone else”. Then if it doesn’t go away, if it sits there, then I have to do something to keep it quiet for a little while. Can be anything from jotting down this happens and this happens.
I have a science fiction trilogy that exists in a notebook my husband moved. Three books about humans who for reasons of necessity enhance themselves with alien genes and how that changes them and how that changes the people back home and about the poor kid who is raised by ordinary humans back home but isn’t. It wouldn’t leave me alone, actually attacked me while we were away for the weekend so the only way to make it shut up was to write the plot for three books.
I went to this convention and my publishers were there, they asked what are you doing, and is this indie or are we getting it.
(I told them) This is generally new and absurd. Like Dragon Riders of Pern meets Starship Troopers. Set in a world that is sort of like World War I technology. That sounds odd. But it has to got to be you because I see the cover, it is a Tompkins cover. A steam train is coming out of the cover toward the reader and above it is a silver dragon with a girl riding it in World War I aviator’s gear. This is Toni (my publisher). She says “It is a Tompkins cover, I guess we get it.
It is all there, if I just let it dictate it it is all there. Right now I am trying to stop it long enough to finish this other book.
At one time –I was writing books set in Elizabethan England, 19th century China, and 24th century. That got very weird, because there was cross contamination .It is the result of (my) low attention span and lack of self-control.
The proper answer is “I write a book at a time like a good writer.” Because there are things readers don’t need to know.
Jonathan: Let me follow up a little bit on that. You talk about a lack of self-control, but if you average it out, how many words a day do you write?
Sarah: Including the blog, it alternates … life keeps interfering. There are days these past two years I wrote nothing. I signed up for the catastrophe of the week club. I didn’t know it, maybe somebody gave it to me as a gift but it just been really hard. But if I sit down and write at all – about 10,000.
Sandy: That’s a lot.
Sarah: I have been known to write 40 thousand in a weekend…. But it is not my normal.
Mark: This book had extremely short chapters. Several in the discussion said it made us, well let me read one more chapter, one more chapter. …and kept going. Was the existence of extremely short chapters because of the story, of because of the blog with the chapter a week.
Sarah: For a reason. First when you are writing multiple persons with a large cast it is better to have short chapters because if you have these really long chapters then have you 4 or 5 threads people are following, when you get to that 4th one you get a “who is this?” so it is better to have short chapters. Second one is because I learned from Pratchett. Who in his first books didn’t have chapters but sections because of the traction you are talking about, I will read one more section. And the next thing you now it is 4 in the morning and you are still reading the book. That is a good effect for writers.
I like for people coming to cons and saying “you, you kept me up all night.” One guy said “I probably failed my first year of med school because of you. Now I am going to go and buy the other book.” He’s now a doctor, so I guess he didn’t flunk.
The other was the chapter a week. Did it on Friday. Friday is the day I clean, so I have half an hour to write the chapter and then get to cleaning. So that controlled the length too.
I know as a reader if you have a short chapter it is easier. If people get to the end of a chapter and go, oh my heavens it (the next chapter) is 30 pages they put it aside and there is a good chance, life being what it is, that they won’t come back. Part of it is to keep people attached.
I was talking to an author, writing science fiction and he is putting in links to another area. And I said, stop that, put them as afterwards, do not link from the inside. Why not? He said. Because, I said, I go off and read about your super-duper time travel device and search for it, and then I go on the internet and start searching up names you gave me and I never come back. Stop sending the readers away. That’s not the way to have a career in this field. And he said, “oh, I never thought of that.”
The End (for now)
At The Rainbow 