{"id":20257,"date":"2024-11-29T19:38:17","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T00:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20257"},"modified":"2024-11-29T19:38:17","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T00:38:17","slug":"gazing-into-the-creative-abyss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20257","title":{"rendered":"Gazing into the creative abyss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Should I share negative thoughts<\/strong> about my own books on this blog? Is it acceptable to indulge in self-criticism, or should the tone be relentlessly rah-rah and self-promotional?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh heck, that ship sailed long ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m working on formatting The Ghost of the God-Tree<\/em>, the second part of The Year of the Warrior<\/a><\/em>, for paperback. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s bad. It\u2019s got some strong stuff in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I think it\u2019s among my weakest books. There are lots of things I\u2019d change, if I didn\u2019t feel obligated to keep the editions relatively uniform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019m pretty sure why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am very grateful to Baen Books, and to Jim Baen the maverick publisher, who gave me what little legitimacy in the industry I possess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Jim had a system. A program for his authors. And into that program I did not fit well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim felt that nothing contributed more to an author\u2019s success than having a bunch of books with his name on them all together on the shelves in the bookstores. This worked for him again and again. He knew his business. In order to achieve that shelf-space goal, he wanted several books from his new authors, quick. That\u2019s why I got a three-book deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is, I\u2019m not a fast writer. I\u2019ll admit that some of my languid output is due to laziness and inattention. Fair enough, mea culpa<\/em>. But regardless of that, it just takes me a while, and many drafts, to produce decent prose. It took me years to produce Erling’s Word<\/em>, the first part of the book. The Ghost of the God-Tree<\/em> was written in haste, and suffers from my parental neglect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, judging by history, I\u2019m probably being a little over-critical here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there are parts I like. I enjoyed the section where Ailill (Aillil) and Asta go to Thor\u2019s country and meet the god himself. I thought that was kind of fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Should I share negative thoughts about my own books on this blog? Is it acceptable to indulge in self-criticism, or should the tone be relentlessly rah-rah and self-promotional? Oh heck, that ship sailed long ago. I\u2019m working on formatting The Ghost of the God-Tree, the second part of The Year of the Warrior, for paperback. … Continue reading Gazing into the creative abyss<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,12,17],"tags":[3098],"class_list":["post-20257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-publishing","category-writing","tag-the-year-of-the-warrior"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20257"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20259,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20257\/revisions\/20259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}