Facebook flog - Dec 21 2013

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Dec 21 2013, 10:11
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's Facebook. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

Treadmill and meditation with a side of writing this morning. Lunch and holiday shopping with Jon and our daughter, Trinity, with a side of office supplies to help me organize the end of A Shiver of Light.

This is a complex plot bringing together plot threads from nearly all the previous Merry Gentry novels. It's so complex that I have actually purchased a presentation easel and white board for my office. I use to use walls, but all my walls are already covered in sticky notes. I need clear space, so . . . a white board and notes to put in order, and dry erase markers, and . . . the end game is long and needs choreography and a map.

Comments

[glimmerfox.livejournal.com]

Wow. It's like she's trying her damndest to let us know how hard she's working and how good Merry will be, but all I can think is that most authors get the plot outlines out of the way before they write the book.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Yeah... and how far off is this book's publication date? She seems to be treating it like a university essay, knocking it out with a little help from her tutor the day before it's due.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

June 3 is the drop date. The next Dresden drops the week before and only had minor edits left last month. Jim admits he got behind thou

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

When she says "choreography" I groan, because I anticipate long descriptions of where everyone was standing in relation to each other, and how many degrees to the left their body was turned, and how every minute movement brings so-and-so half an inch closer to this-and-that, but now an inch farther away from whatsit, and whatsit looked displeased by this because whatsit knows so-and-so's relative position is displeasing to LKH's issue of the week.

Then once they've all been properly placed according to their stage markers, they will stand there and talk the ending of the book to death without anything actually happening.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Or worse, choreographing a "end game" with a major sex scene.

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

Now I'm picturing her drawing out a diagram of who was standing where during the orgy. Complete with notations on penis length and the angle of the dangle.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Maybe if she did that, her sex scenes would end up within the bounds of physical possibility.

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

This comment makes me wish LJ had a Like button for comments.

[killiara.livejournal.com]

*tilts her head to one side*

Um, yaknow? I kinda thought all the plot threads were tied up in the book where she rejects being queen after getting all the powers that show she is the rightful heir, and (in my headcanon at least) she and her harem and her magic babies would dance off in the distance, returning to doing actual detective work now that all this fairy queen crap was out of the way.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

She still has the other fae court to deal with, some new plots were introed in DM and hence why she needs to try and wrap things up.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

A white board. Christ. Didn't they teach her to make an outline in middle school?

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Who uses paper taped to the wall besides LKH?

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I can kind of understand that. And butcher paper is a lot bigger than post-its, and much less prone to fall behind the desk and be lost forever.

LKH's method, however, obviously doesn't work for her at all. I also wonder what she's going to forget in the future that used to be on the white board but got erased.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

A RL friend of mine does that. She also uses post its, cork boards, and tacks.

I used butcher paper taped to the walls for lots of classroom activities, including teaching outlining & timelines.

Different strokes for different folks, you know?

And if you leave something on a dry erase board long enough, the ink actually ceases to be smudge-able by fingers and you have to use the special board cleanser to get it off.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I know re: the dry erase board and stuff sticking. So does LKH plan to get another dry erase board for each book?

We're not talking about classroom activities. Nor are we talking about any writer but LKH. Her method is completely broken, as proven by her books being completely broken.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

She has a method? I honestly thought she just made things up as she went along. (And thus the height issues.)

....Also, I grinned at the mental image of LKH with a whiteboard for each book. It's unkind of me but still true.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Doesn't she have a really big office? I wonder how long it would take until she filled it up.

[cherrypep.livejournal.com]

I did the first draft of my thesis that way. Well, not the whole thesis but the outline. Mindmapped and scribbled all over it. That said, it wasn't so much an elective way to develop a thesis, more a reaction to being terrified and clueless...

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

I use my kitchen chalkboard (it's pretty big) to write plot points. I did it for NaNo. But I also wrote it down on word files too encase it got splashed from a haphazard kitchen accident or something. Plus I just like writing on chalkboards.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

There are special chalkboard pens (they come in a variety of bright, pastel-ish colors) that write on chalkboards and stay on until you scrub them off with soap and water.

Just, y'know, if you need/want to try such things...

(I have a vast and possibly useless knowledge of office supplies.)

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Ooooh I want. I'm going to use them next time I plot a novel. :D