Guys. Guys, I am so excited. The last two weekends have been majorly productive, with my plot finally reaching Awful Disaster #1: Shit Gets Cray. I feel the same way about this set of scenes -- like, genuinely excited to share them with the world -- that I did about "
Break your own fingers," when I wrote that back in January. (And readers seemed to like "BYOF" a lot, so that's reassuring for the self-worth-meter.) Chipping away at that mortification level, bit by bit.
This week we wrapped up
Gods and Demons: Writing from Your Own Pantheon, the writing workshop I was taking about Asian American/Pacific Islander voices in sci-fi/fantasy/horror (hi, Bryan!). I'm still processing a lot of it, but am thinking actively about how to envision speculative settings, and the world of this novel in particular, with better AAPI representation. Because what does it mean if we don't imagine a future/fantasy with us in it?
I'm also thinking about how writing foreshadowing is kind of like the way I build chains in Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (PAX tournament losers represent, yo). Put this innocuous thing that has the latent ability to blow stuff up right here, where it's completely weak and useless. Right in the middle of a bunch of layers, like the pea in the proverbial mattress. Several pages/chapters later, uh oh, we've removed a mattress. Now, exactly what detonates?
This is how we write a book and hold down a full-time job. Word count: 28,000.
How would you feel about getting sneak peeks of newly written chapters, such as Awful Disaster #1, through this newsletter? Hit reply and let me know.
Yours,
Amy