Welcoming back Vera Nazarian, author of this month’s reading selection Pride & Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret, for part two of our interview. Today we will be asking about writing. Don’t forget to enter at the end of this post for a chance to win one of three digital copies of this month’s reading selection we’ll be giving away!
4. As a writer, how do you balance working on new pieces with editing and revising?
Writing new material and editing and revising are two different brain tasks for the writer. In fact, a person kind of needs to split into two different people to do each task properly. Let’s call them Writer A and Writer B.
Writer A is the creative bohemian slob. She puts on overalls and old sweats and produces new material in that relaxed receptive zen state that allows her to be a complete mess and to just spout forth fresh bubbling sentences and crazy exciting imagery, and just go with the creative flow, wherever it takes her. The resulting product is like a big pile of yummy dough with occasional brilliant chunks, and lots of general potential, all ready to be shaped into the final form.
Writer B is the precision artist. She is the uptight, anal-retentive, detail-oriented nit-picker who arrives on the scene in a hazmat suit and starts shoveling dough and then pounding it into geometrically precise shape. When Writer B is done, all the extraneous verbosity is molded into fluid beauty, the gasping holes are filled in with the bright mortar of logic, the irregularities are smoothed out, and what was once haphazard stream-of-consciousness blabber of a drunken monkey pushing its butt against a keyboard is now unabashed style.
My solution to balance these two avatars and to keep them separated in two different “brain cages” and only let them out one at a time, taking turns. Because, seriously, they should not ever be allowed in the same room together, else there will be a creative apocalypse and—bite your tongue—that horrendous monstrosity known as Writer’s Block.
5. Every writer has to deal with rejection, how have you faced rejection and used it to empower yourself as a writer?
Rejection is such a major part of publishing life that it doesn’t even bother me anymore. After your first decade, if you are a professional writer, then you automatically come to expect rejection with any submission, even though it always stings a little bit when it actually happens. Bu the emotional “boo-boo” goes away in seconds.
However, this here now is the Era of New Publishing. Which means that nearly every established professional writer is dipping their toes in self-publishing, and many of us (myself included) have long gone past the self-publishing wading pool and into the deep end, and are happily swimming with self-publishing dolphins in the deep cerulean self-publishing waters of the Caribbean. Yes, we’ve even said bye-bye to our agent, traditional publishing house and their cadre of editors and their art and marketing department, and said hello to our own hired industry professionals (editors, copyeditors, cover designers) who all work for us directly.
As a result, we have our careers under control, and no one can reject us any longer, except the most treasured precious person in the equation—you, the reader.
So, please, gentle reader, be my friend!
6. What three books are you reading/have read this summer?
With all the writing I have to do, there’s no time to read at all. I have my eyes on the to-read mountain that has been neglected for years, and hope with all my heart that by the end of the year when my current major project is done (Cobweb Bride Trilogy), I can actually read something for pleasure instead of research.
7. What other project are you working on or anything special to share with your fans?
Well, as I just mentioned, there is this huge, epic, major project on which I’ve embarked early last year and it is taking up all my time. Setting aside my humorous Jane Austen parodies until the end of 2013, I am feverishly writing a deadly-serious (pun intended) historical epic fantasy three-book series set in an alternate Renaissance.
Cobweb Bride, the first book of the Cobweb Bride Trilogy about Death’s ultimatum to the world is a complex retelling of the Persephone and Hades in the Underworld myth set in an alternate Renaissance Europe, and it is both romantic history and magical fantasy and a whole lot of Brothers Grimm-style fairytale atmosphere. There are glittering royal courts, poor peasants, fair maidens, brave knights, and fierce battles. There are witches and wonder, high romance, and Death himself, in the human shape of a dark grim Spaniard who demands his Bride from the world, and until she is found, no one dies. The consequences of this set in motion a clever and amazing story.
I am thrilled to say that Cobweb Bride has just been released earlier this week. It is available online everywhere that books are sold, in trade hardcover, trade paperback and every imaginable ebook format under the sun.
Get your copy today from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. For more buy options, check out the official Cobweb Bride website.
Meanwhile I am busy working on book two, Cobweb Empire, which is forthcoming in September 2013, followed by book three, Cobweb Forest, scheduled for December 3013, which will conclude the trilogy just in time for the holidays.
And when that’s done, I promise, I am getting back to work on the next hilarious Supernatural Jane Austen Series parody, Pagan Persuasion: All Olympus Descends on Regency!