Liz Williams: journal

I have finished the revisions on VANISH. Still not 100% happy, but when does that ever happen? I'm planning on a re-hash of the whole thing once Stef (my editor at Macmillan) gets a look at it. I'm sending it off tonight and then that leaves the way free - for a bit, anyway - for the work on the next Chen book.

Research takes one into some strange places. Like the possible composition of Manchester United in 50 years' time, and a fascinating (if not entirely necessary) reading of accounts by Islamic women as to why they adopted the niqab. Some of these were entertaining, such as the girl who got into a tugging competition with her aunty with her veil (it tore) because the aunt thought it caused 'hair fungus.' Hmmm. More likely to protect one's locks, I'd have thought. What it brought out was that there are as many reasons for adopting the veil as there are wearers of it and principal opposition mainly arose not from disapproving Westerners but from people's own families. There's a surprise, on both counts.

I saw a woman in the full hijab (I still haven't got all these dress terms straight in my head yet) yesterday in Glastonbury: unusual in this little country town, though not in Bristol or Gloucester (in my home town, the whole rig including the mesh beak thing is common). Glastonbury - used to witches, druids and the man who dresses as an Orthodox priest but isn't - took her pretty much on board, as far as one could tell.

We've been having a very family-oriented few days: had dinner with my parents last night and this evening are heading down to Dorset tonight for dinner with T's brother and sister-in-law. 07 kicked off well, with a rather damp day at the races - but driving up, it could almost have been early March, with peewits wheeling above the fields and the meres full of flocks of swans.

Otherwise it's back to the shop, and some writing: I'm about to hit 4K with GREAT LEAP and so far, it seems to be shaping up, though not the plot I expected to be writing. Characters keep elbowing me in the ribs and demanding airtime. Happens.

On this note, I have just been taking a look at another author's response to some negative feedback (won't say who, but I'm sure you'll have some idea) about a long-running and very popular series which started off as police procedurals, but then turned into something else entirely (romance is a polite way of putting it). In her comments, she mentions the reality of her characters to her (finding oneself in the mall and thinking 'that would make a good present for character X', for instance). I will say with some caution that this is not my own approach: characters do possess a limited life of their own, but they are, at the end of the day, fictional components of my own imagination. I don't have long conversations with them inside my own head when I'm not writing, although I do think about what they might do next. Maybe that's where I fall down as a writer, though....It's an interesting issue.

I have sold my Somerset Levels story, THE HIDE, to Strange Horizons.

And I hope everyone who celebrates it has a very happy Christmas! My parents are down at the moment, after a somewhat will-they-won't-they episode caused by the appalling fog that has descended on this country like a blanket. However, this lifted in the SW yesterday morning and I was able to drive up to Gloucester and collect them.

My grandmother knitted things and was very good at it, until she developed Alzheimers, when suddenly she began producing shapeless, lumpy things - I call them 'things', because we had no idea what they were supposed to be. Socks? Scarves? No one could tell.

In the course of my revision of VANISH, I have just reached the 300pp mark and suddenly the mss looks not like a seamlessly woven tapestry, its threads glowing in perfect position, but a thing knitted by a mad grandma, as a vast chasm opens up in the plot and the linear nature of the narrative goes horribly awry.

This usually happens to me, at around this stage. I know how to fix it: it just means unpicking a lot of stuff and unravelling the wool. Bugger, eh?

I have finished LEUCROTTA and started on another short story, WINTERBORN. On some accounts, a winterbourne is a submerged or hidden river, which returns in times of trouble or war or (most likely) in winter, when there's more rain. London's hidden rivers have always fascinated me - even Brighton has an underground river, which rather memorably re-emerged above ground several years ago, along the main road out of town.

Seem to be writing more fantasy at the moment, but there's some SF on its way.

Apropos of none of the above, a customer just put his head round the door and said 'Is it dangerous?' To which my reply was: 'Not usually.'

It was a bit more dangerous earlier on because the wine merchant showed up. We have all been very restrained.

My writing group had a meeting the other night - rather than critiquing work, we had a career meeting. Several of us are pros, but everyone who is in it wants to write professionally at some level and the hit-rate of the group in publications like Asimov's is pretty high.

We went through issues such as agents and how to get one, small press vs larger press, novels or short stories (or both). My own take on it is this:

- the state of the SF industry is fairly dire at the moment, fantasy somewhat less so. I'm going to keep writing SF for as long as I'm allowed to do so, and as long as I have the ideas. But I would like to move into a more mainstream direction and there are a couple of things I want to start which are not genre. I'm enjoying the freedom with Night Shade to do the Snake Agent novels, which are more on the fantasy/horror axis, and there's more that I want to do in this line. I am also by no means sure that I'll be able to continue being published. What I write does not sell well, although - critically - it depends what an accounting department classifies in any particular decade as 'well.'

The smaller press is, IMO, doing more interesting work overall than the more major houses, which are increasingly playing things safe - someone said during the group that if you write something that is like something else, it seems to sell better than something individual. There are exceptions. The churning mass of supernatural detective novels was, in part, why I chose to do Snake Agent - I got fed up of American vampire detectives who are in love with werewolves or werewolf policewoman who have a yen for the local vampire or who have mothers who are witches who have offended the High Council of Supernatural Beings - you know, I have enjoyed this kind of stuff but it's jumping the shark as we speak....

This is a very personal choice but I would rather work outside the field than do tie-in work, or copy writing etc. Some tie-ins are very well written, but it's just not my thing, even for the money. It depends what one wants to do: writing is a hard slog for relatively little pecuniary reward, even if you're doing OK on the midlist. I can earn more, for less hassle, doing other things. When you have been writing professionally for a while, a lot of the fun (and, I suspect, a certain amount of the creativity) goes out of it. My real love these days is writing short stories, although I still get a lot out of novel writing. Mileage varies.

Finally, someone also said the other night that for them, one of the best things about the writing group is that we write. We don't talk about it endlessly, we don't bring our personal dramas to the group, we just write and critique. And I'd second that.

I start teaching at Sussex next Monday, so this week has been taken up with university logistical things like logging onto the system and establishing contact with students. It's going to mean two days per week out, what with driving (I'm commuting from here on Mondays, returning Wednesdays) and teaching, which in a way is good because it's made me focus on trying to get as much of Precious Dragon done before I start the course and things go necessarily to pot. The temptation when I'm at home is to get on with stuff outside: the orchard needs mowing and so forth. But it is just too baking hot, so I'm forced to stay in the cool. How life conspires to make you do what you need to do.

There have been a lot of fight scenes recently and now, an orgy (I'm still talking about the novel, BTW, just in case anyone's wondering). I have a Keralan tiger demon plotting pheromonal havoc. Must be the hot weather.

67,000 / 90,000 (74.4%)

I'm now back, having attended writing group last night. I was one of the people in the hot seat, and it was a helpful, critical session.

Some while ago, someone asked me (in a rather superior, 'haven't you grown out of that by now?' way) if I felt that I really needed a writing group. The enquirer apparently no longer did, which is their decision. But I find it helpful. It's not so much that you yourself get complacent, as that a complacency (particularly of style) creeps into the writing: because things work, you tend to repeat them. That's not always a good thing, because you start leaning on the things that already work and neglecting the areas that need work. I know what does work, after 50+ short fiction sales, and I sure as hell know what I can get away with, but it certainly doesn't mean that my short fiction doesn't need a good kicking from time to time.

We also discussed that hoary old aesthetic issue: relationship between reader and writer and work. As with most philosophical issues, there's never been a wholly satisfactory answer to this one, and probably never will be. I trotted out the example from a previous writing group: one of the group members, a rather well known writer, put in a story which featured a man falling under a train, flashback visions of a Belgian autobahn leading through agricultural land, and various other elements. 'Christ,' I thought. 'Better say something intelligent about this, quick.' So having been an academic philosopher, and therefore able to bullshit, I came out with a quite elaborate system of metaphor plus references to existentialism. Turned out that the story had been commissioned in a hurry by a Brussels newspaper and they wanted a story with Belgium in it. And a reference to sprouts.*

So, go me, er, or not. I'm not really up for a debate about whether I may still have been correct in some esoteric sense, but I just give it as an anecdote, really.

*No, it wasn't Robert Rankin.

I have been doing some, as a matter of fact. New novel is now at:

50,000 / 100,000 (50.0%)

Also, the edited mss of BLOODMIND arrived a few days ago and I am in the process of trawling through my editor's helpful notes, which are mercifully brief.

We've been up in London for the launch of DARKLAND and of Neal Asher's latest book THE VOYAGE OF THE SABLE KEECH. This was held in the Phoenix Arts Club and I was philosophical about people showing up, because Gollancz had its authors' party on the same night, at the rather more prestigious Wallace Collection. However, we kicked off at 6.30 and the next time I looked at my watch, it was 10 pm. Lots of folk there and I will shamelessly namecheck Tanith Lee and John Kaiine, Chris and Leight Priest, Graham Joyce, Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley, Geoff Ryman, Robert Holdstock, Alastair Reynolds, Pat Cadigan and Chris, and many more. I had some good conversations and congratulations to Lavie Tidhar for his new book.

And it was great for T to meet everyone at last, too.

A huge thank you to everyone for coming, and for Tor Macmillan for hosting this. It was a lovely evening. We bailed out about midnight and got a taxi back to Greenwich, and woke feeling a lot better than we should have done. It's been an average week so far - new mortgage, new book, new shop, new lodger, new dog and the forthcoming appearance in this household of the proprietor of Carnival El Diablo on Sunday will only complete matters: my life is a circus. Rock on.