Taos Toolbox #11: David McAmis

David couldn't be reached for an interview, so I am leaving this spot for him.

I can tell you that David is an incredibly talented Australian entrepeneur, whose talents include not only writing, but also singing. David was our official social chair, and brought charm, urbanity and wit to our workshop.

David's latest venture is adopting several young children. I wish him and his partner the best of luck with parenthood.

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.

The Writing Process and Cassie Alexander

Cassie Alexander is the writer of the UF Night-Shifted series, and a very prolific author. Here, she's kind enough to share her writing process with us.

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Tamago: Do you have a regular drafting process, or does your drafting process vary from book to book. Can you describe it to us generally, or at least for one project?

Cassie: You know, even after fourteen books, I do it all pretty much the same. It works for me, so why change? I write novels in one looooong word document. I title it Title1, Title2 as my revisions reach significant points where I make big changes and I get scared I'm screwing things up, but the version I'm working on all stays in the same .docx until I reach the end.

The very last thing I do is put chapter breaks in. I think this works for me because it forces me, as I write, to make sure that each scene is punchy -- I don't think, 'oh, this is in the middle of a chapter so it doesn't matter'. And that doesn't allow me to do 'here's a time-killing word montage to get me from A-D'. I just get my characters there. And then when I do chapter breaks at the end, I find that they naturally go where the scenes end, or at the turning point in the scene, where the cliffhanger is happening, which I have a lot of because of the way the no-chapter-method forces me to write.

(The second to last thing I do is take out all my extra commas, which I won't be doing here, since I'm writing this very late at night. )

Tamago: Which part of writing--drafting, revising, critique from others--do you enjoy the most? Why? The least? Why?

Cassie: I like the part where I actually know what's going on and I'm just writing it. That's the best. Revision -- once I know what's going on -- is a close second. The knowing what is going on is key .

Getting edits, from my reader Daniel or my editor, is like being freezingly cold and stepping into or out of a too hot tub. Every other page feels grand, where they've said nice things, and lord do I love that they both do that, but the ones in between are like a horror movie, I can barely peek through my fingers at the page. It's so important, and reallllly hard, to get into that zen, "This is what's best for the book, and thus, it must be done," state. I usually fake it until I get there for real, or until the edits are through.

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Mirrored from Writer Tamago.