Thursday, June 19, 2014

Make it so...

It's good to be home and back to work!!!

The other night, late-ish, when I was too spent to write but not ready to sleep, I decided to do something about all the blank notebook covers staring up at me, looking all identical. Craft time! I keep notebooks for each project I'm working on--and some I have yet to work on but dream about. They're more than just collections of thoughts and scribbles and ideas. They're kind of like avatars, like they represent the unwritten book in physical form in the real world. That sounds hoopy. Whatever. I've always done them, and I keep all the old ones near me, and I love them. I use Clairefontaine hardcover lined journals, which have perfect paper and aren't too beautiful. You know what I mean by too-beautiful journals? You're afraid to write in them? These are workhorses. Plain but good quality. But I like them to be pretty, and to not be identical, so I collage them. (I posted a tutorial years ago.) I'm at the beginning of a slew of new projects (yay!) so I had a bunch of blue journals sitting around, indistinguishable from each other.

Now they look like this:




This one here is a page I pulled out of the gorgeous magazine FLOW (love love LOVE this magazine), complete with a quote by an artist other than me -- a quote that I very much want to be TRUE.




"I try not to over-perfect things, and I leave a lot of room to chance." 

If you know anything about my creative hangups, you know I struggle with perfectionism. So this quote is kind of like a blessing on my new project. MAKE IT SO. 

BUT. The fact is, now, with the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy behind me, I've had some revelations about my writing process and how it's changed, and how I've changed. I've been occasionally at work on a long blog post about this, so I won't go into detail here, but the thing is: I do leave a lot of room to chance. That has become my process: writing into the unknown, figuring it out as I go. I never used to think myself capable of this. It was too frightening. I wanted to know everything and be in control of everything before I ever wrote an actual sentence. Now I'm all about chance and discovery and spontaneity. It's awesome. And scary. And awesome.

And scary.

And I am so excited to be creating new books, new sets of characters, new plots, and to continue to grow as a writer, and continue to take on my own creative challenges and my persnickety brain. YAY WRITING!!! 

Now back to work...




And, ha, when I went looking for these photos on my phone I discovered someone had been taking some selfies while I wasn't looking...



11 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

Oh, MAN, I love that the collage has the word "begin" on it. LOVE that.
Also, what a beautiful wee selfie! That's frameable - all that impish mischief. Silly C. Pie.

Really looking forward to what you write next.

Joyce C said...

Am I the first to comment?? This post is a lovely way to start a Friday! Love that shot of Clementine at the end - she's getting so big :)

Can't wait to see what you come up with after Daughter.

Also, on an unrelated note, have you read Ruth Graham's article for The Slate on how adults should be ashamed to read YA? I'd love to hear your response to it!

Joyce x

Holly said...

I'm really excited for whatever the next book is going to be!

(But I really hope we get to go back to Dreamdark sometime soon! :D)

C.J. said...

These are gorgeous! I've always wanted to do something like this. I have a whole set of very outdated encyclopedias that might work well.

C.J.
Sarcasm & Lemons

Jackie Lea Sommers said...

I'm reading the Daughter trilogy right now and LOVING it. I'm in the middle of Blood & Starlight. :-)

Can you buy Flow in the States or do you have to order internationally?

Ashley Williams said...

I love your notebooks!! The covers look lovely! The bird one is my favorite from what I can see =) You spoke about your struggle with perfectionism at the book talk I attended in CA, and it's great to see the ways you combat it! Happy writing.

Kim Aippersbach said...

I second Holly's comment about hoping we get to go back to Dreamdark one day. But also happy to go wherever those amazing notebooks want to take us!

Love the idea of the notebook as avatar for the project.

Laura D said...

Any chance you will be revisiting the Faeries of Dreamdark? I absolutely love those two books and am convinced such a series could be the next Harry Potter phenom!

Well, whatever you come up with, I'm sure it will be wonderful. Good luck!

yangjanice said...

I make notebooks for each of my projects too! Except I use sketchbooks because I can't write on lined paper. Can't wait for your new books to come out!!!!!

Joanna Roddy said...

I've been really inspired by what you've said already about this part of your creative process. I feel like I am finally figuring this out too. I just really identify. I wrote about it on the collaborative blog I do called Project Middle Grade Mayhem and even linked to an interview you did for Gods and Monsters. Can't wait to hear the rest of your musings on the topic. http://project-middle-grade-mayhem.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-joy-is-writing-by-joanna-roddy.html

Anonymous said...

Will there be another series after the Daughter of Smoke and Bone as far dealing with the creation of the new "Godstars"?

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