The Student-Doctor Newbie-Author Shuffle
Dearly Beloved Y’All,
Apologies for the blog abuse. A sudden turn of events a few weeks back has made things pretty hectic. Here’s the 411.
The line edits for Spellbound started coming in and are looking good, correcting smaller errors and adding polishing touches. Nothing major. Well, at least not yet. My editor’s been sending the manuscripts in hundred page chunks as he goes. We’ll see what he thinks at the end.
The first round of edits on a manuscript always makes me blue. It seems among my group of writerly friends this is a bit unusual. Many authors start feeling confident and proud of a manuscript at this point. Being dyslexic, I do it backwards. I love creating a novel, all the possibilities! But when it has a life of its own, I _worry_. I worry for a story the way I worry for my patients in the free clinic. Do I understand its problem? What if it has a bad reaction to my prescription? Does it need to lose weight (thousands of words worth)? And in what universe-dear Lord help me-would this handwriting be legible? <-Referring doctors and editors seem to have taken the same classes in calligraphy.
But, I’m not complaining (much). So far everyone seems to agree that Spellbound is a better book that avoids the sophomore jinx and the middle book syndrome. We’ll reserve final judgment until the readers get their mitts on it, but I’m keeping my hopes up that I’m continuing to grow as a writer.
I still don’t have a bead drawn on exactly when next summer the book is going to publish. I think some of it depends on when the bigger fish at Tor will hit the shelves. I’m pushing hard for a pub date before WorldCon 2011 so I can throw a launch party in Reno next year. You should come.
More distressingly, the fates governing medical student debt and financial aid have not been smiling upon me. Really, they’ve been looking upon me with expressions best described as…dyspeptic. This likely because I teased my readers here with a preview of why they should look forward to Spellbound. As fitting punishment, the funding my mentor and I expected to be available until June has—due to the General Economic Downturn, Byzantine Academic Politics, and El Niño—evaporated. This means I am in danger of losing my financial aid unless I return to the clinics and the hospital. While this is unexpected, it’s not unwelcome. I’ve been itching to get back. Fortunately, my mentor is committed to helping me find Research Assistant appointments that would allow me to take one of every three months out of clinics to produce academic prose by day and the fictional stuff by night. The long and the short of it: baring an Act of God, Spellbound will pub in Summer 2011, while Disjunction (the third and last book of the Spellwright Trilogy) will be slower to come out. How much of a delay, I can’t speculate on. I can promise to do everything I can to deliver a book that’s better than its predecessor and in a timely manner. I already have a good slice written and can tell that working in the hospital will help me to better tell this story.
Meantime, I won’t start clinics until January. So this autumn will still be full of novel writing and posting snide remarks on facebook and twitter.
Comments
20 Responses to “The Student-Doctor Newbie-Author Shuffle”
Clifton Hill
10:49 am Sep-8-2010
And thus: Life is never easy. Sorry to hear about the complications, hope you can make it work in the financial mire.
Are you finding the writing in general to be easier or harder than Spellwright? Now that you have your world created, characters formed, and plots charted is it easier to do what you want or harder to make what you want fit within the constraints you have already made?
Regards,
Clifton
blakecharlton
4:53 pm Sep-8-2010
hey clif! thanks for the wishes. though it’ll be a bit confusing, i’m pretty sure i can keep both careers going. it’s worked so far, right?
re: writing a second book, i wouldn’t say that it’s any ‘easier.’ no matter how much i improve, i always feel like writing is hard hard work. however, though it doesn’t feel easier to me, the product does seem a whole lot better, which is encouraging.
re: the fitting into the previously set constraints, i’ve been thinking about that a whole lot lately…how a good series does have an ‘all of a piece’ feeling and yet each book is distinct from the rest. getting that right, of course, is pretty difficult. think that’ll be the topic my next post
Doug French
12:52 pm Sep-8-2010
Hey Blake, Keep an eye out for Ian MacDonald’s Dervish House as an audio book. It’s a wonderful read and imo will come out beautifully in audio as Ian uses cadence to evoke the density of Istanbul. and in a “it can be done vein”, here’s an author with 20 years of novels that just keep getting better.
blakecharlton
5:00 pm Sep-8-2010
you just sold an audiobook…well, almost. right after reading this i punched ‘dervish house’ into my audible.com membership, but alas no dice. do you know when it might launch? i haven’t read any macdonald yet and it’s something i need to fix asap.
Caitrin
3:18 pm Sep-8-2010
If you hold a book launch party in Reno for Spellbound I am so there! \o/
blakecharlton
5:00 pm Sep-8-2010
woot! keeping my fingers crossed and saving up my nickles and dimes
Mary Victoria
3:56 pm Sep-8-2010
Don’t you worry about a thing. Spellbound will be a triumph, as it should be, and you will juggle the work/life/creative thing with aplomb.
Speaking as a fellow obsessive, I sympathize with the desire to perfect - but here’s the thing. Nothing ever will be. Perfect, I mean. You know the old adage. Persian carpet-makers always put a deliberate error in their creations because only Allah is capable of perfection. Neat philosophy, imho.
Tyson just teased me on FB about the old OCD streak. Forget line edits - I can’t even let go of my damn book after publication. Sad but true.
Tyson Perna
4:34 pm Sep-8-2010
Haha! I’m mean like that. You should fly to Reno for WorldCon 2011, btw.
blakecharlton
5:05 pm Sep-8-2010
oh i didn’t know that about the carpet-makers; that’s beautiful. someone told me once that the most beautiful carvings in some famous french church…perhaps it was mt. saint michel…were placed highest up, where no one could see it, but where it could be closest to God. not quite the same idea, but in the vein with the whole we live down here among the imperfect.
also, you should come live (for a few days at least) in the imperfectness of reno next year
Mary Victoria
10:02 pm Sep-8-2010
Lord, Melbourne already put a hole in my credit card wide enough to let through a Stormtrooper - I don’t know whether Reno will be an option. *searches horizon hopefully for those as-yet-elusive book sales*
Would be so much fun. (I personally dig imperfect)
blakecharlton
8:57 am Sep-10-2010
rats. we’ll i’ll keep my fingers crossed and try not to feel bad about missing out on AUS : /
Tyson Perna
4:37 pm Sep-8-2010
I had no idea that WorldCon was in Reno next year! I’m so f**king going to that.
blakecharlton
5:06 pm Sep-8-2010
schweet! yeah, man it was down to seattle (i think) and reno and seattle bowed out. super happy to have it on the westcoast. i put in for a absence from clinics for all of august
Eugene
8:51 pm Sep-8-2010
I’m amazed you’ve been juggling writing and medicine for all this time. Sorry to hear about the financial woes, but I’m sure you’ll get through it because you have such a great attitude towards life and work. Best of luck!
blakecharlton
9:02 pm Sep-8-2010
Thank you kindly, Eugene. I feel pretty good about that comment because that’s how I feel about your attitude toward life
Harry Markov
10:31 pm Sep-8-2010
As a person almost constantly in some financial trouble, I can relate. Go save some lives, House!
It’s not Lupus, though. Keep that in mind.
PS: I want my greedy little hands on Spellbound.
blakecharlton
8:58 am Sep-10-2010
man, it’s never lupus, is it? and, as i said, i’m not at all dr. house (yet?) more like student doctor who’s-the-bald-guy?
Simcha
1:24 pm Sep-12-2010
Sorry to hear about your financial aid difficulties. I hope you won’t have too much trouble finding a suitable situation where you can do both your writing and doctoring. Though frankly I have no idea how you manage to balance the two and keep your sanity. Good luck with it and I can’t wait to read Spellbound, whenever it gets completed.
blakecharlton
11:33 am Sep-15-2010
oh, my dear, my sanity went out the window a long time ago
i don’t want to jinx anything, but i believe i’ve fond a way through the institutional maze that would allow me to become a doctor and still write book three. fingers crossed. and all that. more news soon. (and with luck we will be able to get you a review copy!)
Nadie
1:45 pm Sep-21-2010
I’m late to this particular party. But-
“I’m pushing hard for a pub date before WorldCon 2011 so I can throw a launch party in Reno next year. You should come.”
You know… I might be able to do that. Maybe. We’ll see how the pennies stack up, but at least it’s not international travel, which makes it marginally more likely.