All Darby & Joan

Turns out I'm one half of a cliche. A certain someone will find this extremely fucking funny.

I read Kelly Link's "Magic For Beginners" last night. I can't put into words how much I love her stories. You kind of wish The Library were a real TV series, and that Kelly was writing for TV, because it would be gonzo.

I finsihed Chapter Seven last night, though I think I may have come to an important plot point too soon. I'll have to think about it. I did some revision to the moon rock story after getting some good comments from my editor at Jigsaw Nation. Tonight I wrote the first eight pages of the Aran Islands story, about a nurse named Jess. Right now it's just weird. Creepy weird, and not as scary as I might have thought (I thought my last two stories would be funny, but turned out creepy; maybe this will turn out hilarious). I like what I wrote, but it's sort of hanging loose on the bone, because there's some important questions about nursing I haven't answered yet.

It's not important for me to do research before I write. I do it as I go, because most of the time, I don't know what I need until I need it. And I never let a question stop me from writing. I always put in a stand-in answer and move on. I go back with the research later, during revision. No one sees my first drafts anyway. I don't really have first drafts until I print them, and by then I've edited them pretty heavily. Then comes what I call the "Sugu draft." This is what I send to Sugu thinking it's done and then realizing, a day later, it's not, and then I hurry up and fire off another draft to him, leaving with something like the Library of Congress. And then there's subsequent drafts, and someday, maybe, a final draft.

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