POC Author: Michelle Sagara, Cast in Silence

Cast in Silence is the fourth book in the Elantra series. I've been reading them one by one as they come out, and I completely love them. This one was no exception.

I ended up staying up late one night to read part of this, and considering how committed I am to my usual sleep schedule, that says a lot. ( Spoilery Notes )

I do have to make one complaint about the book design. The designer either chose a font with only one ligature (of the typographic variety) or chose to turn off all but the ff one. Neither option makes any sense, and it's particularly troublesome in a book with multiple fiefs and fieflords and a lot of discussion thereof.

Poll Results: What I've Decided

A whole four people took my poll. I found it hilarious to watch the poll as people kept voting for completely different options. Interestingly, au_bigbang got the most votes, and it's the one I've been feeling least likely to write for.

So here's what I've decided: I signed up for bandombigbang, and I'm going to write the actor!Gabe/director!Victoria story for it. I'm also going to hope that bandgirlsbang happens again this year, and if it does, I'll write the Leighton/Vicky-T Good Girls Go Bad AU for it. (Last year, writer sign-ups didn't close until the end of May, which is after bandombigbang stories are due anyway.) If it doesn't happen, I will find some other challenge to write it for. Or maybe those of you who expressed interest would be up for a small challenge with me.

If you didn't take the poll but you are interested in reading along with the actor!Gabe/director!Victoria story, let me know (comment, email, tweet, tell me on the phone, whatever). My plan is to write 200 words a day, which will get me to 20,00 by the end of April. It's entirely possible I will end up needing to write more to finish what the story needs. I do feel like I should forewarn you that there is no sex in this story. There's barely even any kissing.

What I Write About, Take Three

As I've said before, I hate "write what you know." I think it's a crappy piece of fiction writing advice. It leads to people writing characters who are supposed to be different from them but really aren't, it leads to people trying to tell their own stories when they don't yet have the skill for it, and it ignores the part where fiction writers make stuff up.

I think if you flip the verbs, "know what you write" is a very useful piece of advice. That's actually what I put, without comment, at the top of the last two handouts for my writing group's craft chats about doing research and incorporating research. I'm not sure if anyone noticed.

At our last meeting, the topic of deliberately writing your own story came up because there's a piece we're reading that the author has said is at least partly based on their own life. The conversation moved on a bit, and I didn't say everything I was thinking, so you get it now.

The biggest problem with deliberately trying to fictionalize your own story, especially a part of it that you're still living, is that you just don't have the distance. It's really damn hard to be emotionally honest about your own life. A related issue is that real life doesn't always make for good fiction.

I also think it's true that our own stories come out even when they're not the story we think we're telling. I can tell you exactly what three of the other people in my writing group write about, and I know for sure that one of them is her own story.

I've talked before about what I write about (here and here). For a good ten years, the story I told was that of people going away from the people who've known them as children to become their own people as adults and make their own choices, which is what I did. Then it shifted a bit and the story was people becoming who they are in place, which is also something of what I did - I moved back home and finished growing up and realizing what I wanted out of life here.

Now it's shifted again. The (mostly long) serious stories I've been writing in the last few months, the stories that mean something to me - "Fighting For," You Have My Heart (in your hands)," "Nothing Different," "With This Ring," and the accidental marriage fic I'm supposed to be working on the rough spots of today - are all about people who already know who they are dealing with the consequences of choices they've made, often without knowing beforehand what those consequences will be. That, of course, is my story now. I'm very secure in who I am, and I'm dealing with the consequences of my choice to spend over a year unemployed, trying to write something that I could sell.