saturday night with paper farms

had a fun evening this past saturday at the paper farms literature and arts festival.  my phd advisor, douglas cowie, had recommended it; he knew the organizers, even though he’s all the way in london – small world!  the event was held at the LAB in orange county, which was a funky and creative venue.  there was live music, a panel of authors, and impressive art exhibits (i especially liked the word processing artwork, with intricate 3D pictures made from paper cuttings).  all in all, a great night!  =)

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author interviews: first novels

i have a particular fascination with first novels, probably stemming from a fondness for my own first novel, which i wrote over summer vacation when i was 17yrs old.  it was an epic fantasy about twin warrior sisters and their relationship.  looking back on it more recently, i saw that it was quite awful at the sentence level, but the story idea is interesting and i still hope to save it into publishable form someday.  writing my first novel was life-changing, so i was curious about other authors’ experiences and decided to ask a few of them about their firsts.  here’s what they had to say:

Adam Roberts says:

My first completed novel (there’s a wilderness of abandoned drafts compacted into the “first completed” part of that phrase) was a dour little science fiction text called The Soul Transporters.  It managed to be gloomy, pretentious and shallow, all at once.  It has never been published.  Indeed, I have deposited all remaining copies of the manuscript in a time machine and sent them back in time to the impact site of the meteorite that finished off the dinosaurs, just to be sure.  My second completed novel, Salt, was published.  It is a little better.

Cinda Williams Chima says:

I wrote my first novels in junior high school.  I guess you’d call them romances.  My friends and I were all characters in them.  At the time, I had a much more exciting life in fiction than at Cloverdale Junior High.  The novels were never published.  I still have some of those stories, and enough time has passed so that I’m no longer embarrassed by them.  In fact, I can hear the first faint echoes of my writer’s voice in them.  Plus, if I ever want to revisit my fourteen-year-old self, I can.

I returned to novels when my sons were thirteen and sixteen.  We all loved fantasy, and I thought it would be cool to write something they would enjoy reading.  I had this idea about a high school student in Ohio who discovers he’s among the last of a race of magical warriors.  He’s being hunted by wizards who want to play him in a live-action tournament to the death.  That became my first published novel, The Warrior Heir.  It was the first in a series.  The fourth book in the series, The Enchanter Heir, comes out October 22, 2013.  There’s more information about me and my books at www.cindachima.com  and www.facebook.com/CindaWilliamsChima.

Hugh Howey says:

My first novel was Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue.  It was published by a small press called NorLights.  Writing a novel had been a dream of mine since I was very young, and I’ll never forget the rush of completing the story and realizing I had written a very long piece with an actual plot.  It was a book.  I’d written a book!

The next great milestone came when I held a proof copy of said book.  I saved the box until my wife got home.  Some friends came over with a bottle of champagne.  I didn’t care how many copies I would ever sell.  I didn’t care if I wrote one more book in my life or a hundred.  All I remember is feeling a weight off my shoulders.  Something I’d wanted to do for over two decades — a dream that hung over me and nagged at me — was now real.  Whatever came next would never change the fact that I’d written a book.

This is why I encourage aspiring writers to push through to the end of their story.  It’s like climbing a mountain.  Once you see the view from the top, all you want to do is shout down for others to join you.  And then you spot another peak in the distance, another story idea, and off we go.  Let’s do it again.

Michael J. Sullivan says:

My first novel, The Crown Conspiracy, has been published in every way possible: through a small press, self, and now with one of the big-five (retitled as Theft of Swords).  I wrote it after returning from a decade-long writing hiatus (having concluded I’d never get published) and only on the condition that I would never submit it, or anything else, again.  Apparently my wife had other plans, and she made it her mission to “get the books out there.”

I know of only one way to write books, which is to create something that I want to read.  So it’s little wonder that I love Theft of Swords, but to hear praise from readers is a reward beyond measure.  Much of recent fantasy focuses on anti-heroes in settings that are dark and depressing.  My books are a return to more traditional stories where the reader is transported on an adventure with characters they want to spend time with.  Having well rounded characters, shouldn’t mean they have to be cruel or abusive.  Like most “real” people, Royce and Hadrian have regrets, and while they are motivated by their own sense of self-preservation, they can still rise to the occasion and do what must be done.  At the end of the day, I prefer my entertainment to be escapist and to feel good about my time spent.  Luckily for me there seem to be enough people who also feel this way, allowing me to live my dream of writing full-time.

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what about you?  have you read these first novels?  or have you written a first novel as well?  share below!

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- read what others are saying about this interview on:

• fantasy faction
• goodreads
• mythic scribes
• sff chronicles

 

why rejection is a blessing

in today’s instant world of push-button publishing, rejection letters may become a thing of the past.  i once wrote:  “there are only three certainties in a writer’s life:  death, taxes, and rejection letters.”  well, now it seems i have to modify this to:  “there are only three certainties in a writer’s life:  death, taxes, and bad reviews.”

it’s somewhat of a shame that rejection letters, so long a staple of the publishing industry, may someday go the way of the dinosaurs.  as i think back – waaaayy…. back – to when i wrote my first novel 14yrs ago, i realize that all the many rejection letters i’ve collected over the years were actually a blessing in disguise – a very good disguise.  i started out like most authors – i loved reading, fantasy in particular, so i wanted to see if i could write my own novel.  three months and 200pgs later, there it was, my first novel, sitting high and mighty on my desk.  in fact, it’s sitting next to me right now, as i type this, waiting patiently for its umpteenth re-draft, because… well… the draft i wrote at 17yrs old was, quite frankly, shit.  nevertheless, back in the day, it was my precious darling – i was blinded by love and couldn’t see its flaws.  i thought:  even if it was terrible (and it was), what’s the harm in adding another bad book to the masses of existent dreck?  so, there i was, perfectly willing to litter the literary landscape with written trash.  i sent it off to a publisher and soon got my first rejection letter.  however, this only made me more determined to get published and “make it”.  i decided that i was going to become an english major.  while applying to colleges, i applied to uc berkeley simply because it had the best english program in the nation, but i wasn’t going to actually go there ’cause it was all the way in california and i was in new york.  as fate would have it, i got rejected from all the ivy leagues, with uc berkeley being my best remaining option.  here again, rejection was a blessing, because uc berkeley turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life.  it truly is a one-of-a-kind university.  because of berkeley, my family and i moved permanently to california, and now i cannot imagine living anywhere else.

throughout college and graduate school, i continued to write more novels and more stories, and continued to get rejected.  but guess what?  looking back over these manuscripts, i see that each novel is better than the one i’d written before (a trend that i hope to continue).  by trying to break past the rejection barrier, i was unwittingly practicing my craft and becoming a better writer.

what would have happened if i’d been born fourteen years later and written my first novel now, in the era of instant DIY publishing?  i would’ve catapulted my precious into cyberspace within a couple weeks of writing the last line.  it would have generated bad reviews and sunk to the bottom of the huge digital slushpile.  my teenager pride would’ve been wounded, but i would have thought, oh well, i might not be the best writer, but at least i have a novel “out there”.  i would never have been determined to get it published, never have decided to become an english major, never have applied to uc berkeley, never have moved to california, never have written my subsequent novels or gone to graduate school for creative writing in england.  instead, i would have attended college at one of my east coast safety schools, majored in who-knows-what, and probably spent the rest of my life wondering what to do with it.  my first novel would have faded away over the years, and fourteen years later, i would likely only remember it as something silly i did as a teenager.  it’s hard to imagine what my life would be like now without those crucial rejection letters that have shaped all my adult years, changing my life for (i believe) the better.  rejection can be a very painful blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.

will i ever be able to salvage my first novel into something publishable?  maybe.  will it ever see the light of day?  perhaps someday.  but even if it’s never published, it was still the beginning of what would prove to be a very worthwhile journey – a journey that i still make every day, and will make for all the rest of my days.  writing a novel, like having a child, can change your life.  and so can rejection.

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