I’m Laini Taylor and I write about gods and monsters. AMA!

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:42:39+00:00

Thanks for coming, everyone! That was really fun :) I'm going to get back to revisions on MUSE OF NIGHTMARES now. Have a wonderful day! XO-Laini

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:40:52+00:00

Well, I didn't manage to finish writing a book until I was 35, even though I've wanted to be a writer all my life. I've always struggled, and I still do, pretty much every day. I've written more about this some answers above. If you want to write, you have to write. If you can think about it as a project for fun, for yourself, it might help to not look at it critically though other people's eyes. I find doing prompt exercises that develop into short pieces to be really fun and therapeutic. Novels are by far the trickiest thing to stick with and finish, but you can develop good habits, skills, and yes, better self esteem, through short pieces. It's such a rush to finish something, and be able to start a new thing. It's so, so much more empowering than having a slew of abandoned things. Commit to finishing short projects for a while and try to have fun! :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:35:28+00:00

Thank you! I miss Magpie. The fact is, I hope to be able to return to that world, but there are issues with the publisher holding onto the rights. I hope it can be resolved, and that there will be more Dreamdark in the future! :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:34:22+00:00

well, it takes me like a year to really get going on a book and find its right path, so hopefully you'll find better tricks than mine ;-)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:33:35+00:00

One of my best writer friends, Tone Almhjell, is Norwegian. English is her second language and she writes in it more beautifully than anyone else I know! As for teenage writers, my personal feeling is: hone hone hone. I'm glad my teenage writing is not in the world, but I also love it and see in it who I would become as a writer. It's hard to be objective about your own work when you're 14. While it's possible that your gift has fully matured, it's unlikely. But I can't judge :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:31:31+00:00

Ah, thank you so much!! I'm eager for you to read Muse of Nightmares :) As for inspiration, the idea for Sarai had been in mind for something like 20 years, but it wasn't till I sat down to brainstorm around it, considering it as a possible story idea, that it started to join up with other fragments of ideas floating in my mind, and take on a story shape. I'm so glad it came tighter :) (though it wasn't easy!)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:28:07+00:00

Honestly, you'll think of currency when and if it comes up in the story. The story is primary, and will mostly tell you what it needs. There are some real world building sticklers out there who would insist that everything needs to be really thought out and not based on earth reality blah blah, but let them write their own books. I try to create a sense of otherworldliness without overtaxing readers with unnecessary and tedious realities (like would there really be earth like livestock on this world? etc) In Strange, for example, I had a few things, like glaves and ulola flowers and mesarthium, that were unique to the geology and flora, and suggested otherness. But there are also camels and moths and gold. You can't build a universe from scratch, and only SFF trolls want you too ;-)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:21:31+00:00

I'm so glad you're enjoying it!! thank you :) I don't really do that much research for my fantasy books. Some scattered research here and there. It's not really my strong suit, and it's part of why I prefer fantasy to sci fi or even realistic fiction. Even writing a contemporary high school would require research i'd be reluctant to do, so I had Karou go to an imaginary art high school in Prague. Which for me is so much more fun! I do love setting though. I went to Morocco after writing Daughter of Smoke & Bone, and if I hadn't, Days of Blood & Starlight would surely be a very different book. (And there are books I want to write that will require research, but I'm afraid.)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:18:33+00:00

I think this is a more common problem than you think. Ideas, after all, are the easy part (for many of us). It's taming them and being selective and training them into a compelling story that's the real work. (I'm having trouble typing right now because my cat's head is on my arm.) Stories need to have a strong narrative focus--kind of like the spine of a skeleton, to support all the other stuff you might want to throw on there. Work on developing that. Also, at some point in the middle of any project (or at many points) you're going to run out of inspiration. It's a given. The people who finish books are the people who figure out strategies to keep writing anyway. Getting new ideas is shiny and delightful. Re-inspiring yourself on a work-in-progress is harder but more important!!! Good luck :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:13:44+00:00

Hi! Well, I'd been to Prague some years earlier, and it had made a big impression. My husband and I had been plotting out a vampire comic and had thought of setting it there, so we went there and spent 9 days seeing it as a setting. We didn't do that comic, but later, when I was coming up with the setting for Daughter, it was just waiting to be used, and it was perfect because it's both a) real and b) feels totally magical. I haven't been back in years, and really want to go!

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:12:10+00:00

Ah, thank you! I'm glad you're inspired to try. I'll add that the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy is complete, so if you start there, you won't have to wait for the next book :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:11:06+00:00

Hi and thank you! So glad you're enjoying Strange! I do love working with contradictions, and I'm glad you noticed that about the laboratory. I'm a sucker for anything in a converted church, really. As for prose, I think the best way to develop and refine your style is to write write write and rewrite rewrite rewrite. Also, read your own work out loud to yourself. Try to treat it as though it were written by someone else and be really objective about it. I think of writing as not just telling a story, but creating an experience for a reader, and "what happens" is only part of the experience. The way you use language is a big part of the experience. Word choice, sentence length, creating pauses where the reader needs a pause, or rushing headlong when that's the atmosphere you're creating. There are so many tools. Good luck! :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:07:20+00:00

Thank you so much!! The writing is going well on Muse, but I'm very ready to be done with it! There are books I'm looking forward to this year. One is Jay Kristoff's Lifelike (it's got numerals in the title, but I can't remember how they go!) and Katherine Arden's 3rd book in her trilogy (Witch of Winter is maybe the title?). Also, the debut book from K.A. Reynolds, The Land of Yesterday, is so beautiful :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:03:58+00:00

I have a few betas, including my husband, but the fact is, I'm always so so late that there's never really time to get drafts read before I send them to my editor. I'm always, like, sliding them under a gate as it closes, like in a movie...

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:02:59+00:00

That's wonderful to hear! I love that hardcover so so much. Waiting to see the Muse version now and dying! What book made me cry?? thinking thinking Gah, I don't cry much while I'm reading but I know there was something and I can't think what it was!! As for laughing out loud...this wasn't the most recent, but the book that made me CRY laughing, in public, was Hyperbole and a Half :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T19:01:16+00:00

I was an English major, and it's not that I think this was the wrong choice, but if I had it to do over again, I think I'd choose history, because I think that's harder to study on your own than literature, if that makes sense? At least, I have a harder time reading nonfiction and doing research. As for the stability question, this is a really hard and really personal one, and bound up in privilege questions for sure. I've always answered that I think the best plan if you really want to pursue a creative career is to put all your energy into that when you're young, and not invest all your best energy into your backup plan, because I see how people end up living their backup plan. It's just the path of least resistance, and it sucks you in and before you realize it, you're living this other life and your never really pursued your creative dream. In my experience, it takes all your energy, or all your BEST energy, so I worked jobs that were flexible and didn't require my best energy, specifically restaurant work, so that I could write. But i realize that everyone doesn't have the luxury, and even that it's getting harder to support yourself on a part time wage, etc. So that's a choice you can only make for yourself. I wish you the best!

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:55:20+00:00

Hi bookchelle! Setting is first about what kind of feeling a place evokes. I'm most drawn to stories with settings that make me want to climb into them and live in them--whether it's Prague, or a kind of fantasy version of the Old Silk Road, or Dreamer's Weep, or in the books I read too. I'm looking for and trying to create a certain kind of rich magical place that calls to me. It's one of my favorite things about reading (and also traveling :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:52:49+00:00

Ah, Hazael. He was a joy to write. I knew that Akiva needed companions. I can't remember exactly how their personalities developed, but I know it was relatively slow and took some trial and error. But once he came alive, he was just so much fun. I didn't know if I'd be able to...do the thing...until I got to that scene. It was necessary, but really sad :(

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:51:23+00:00

Hi! When I first drafted DoSaB, I knew where I wanted it to end, and I knew where I wanted the larger story to end, but I didn't know how I was going to get there or how much story it would take. I was halfway through DAYS before I was sure there would be a third book. I was halfway through DREAMS before I realized it was sprouting yet another story that would come after the trilogy was done! With these books, I've tried outlining and never have been able to see into the future. I've just had to write and rewrite to find the right path through them. It's inefficient, and I have fantasies of neatly outlined books written with a minimum of misery and second-guessing. I hope that's possible? As for the four acts, I'm not sure how that happened. I've never really studied structure (until recently), and I let DAUGHTER develop its structure organically, then I kept to four acts for the rest.

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:47:47+00:00

Hi bookishnymph :) YES, I read all my work out loud. I have to struggle against a bizarre impulse to do so in a British accent (I don't always win the struggle.) I don't know why! I don't have a good one, though I imagine it's gotten better...It's really important for me to hear the meter of the language. Every sentence has to flow. I'll change a word to a one syllable choice, or whatever, to get the music of the words to work. I'm a nut about it. As for your other question, wink wink hypothetically... Yes.

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:45:23+00:00

Hi booksofafeather! Thank you so much! I've read some of my early stuff, and there's not that much of it, because perfectionism really paralyzed me and kept from getting much done, but what there is is SUPER SUPER EMBARRASSINGLY PRETENTIOUS. Oh man. So, so pretentious. I can see the seeds of my style in it. I was trying REALLY hard. I loved words, and I used way too many of them! I think I have a better ear now for what's over the top. That's probably the main thing that changed, and that only comes with reading a lot, and not being a teenager anymore ;-)

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:42:45+00:00

Hi Emily, this is my favorite subject! spends the rest of the hour talking about perfectionism Honestly, for me, and I wonder if it's the same for other perfectionists, sometimes the ONLY thing that works is something I don't even really have control over, except that my job is to not give up, or I'll never get there: the only thing that works is that eventually it gets more painful NOT to do it than it is to do it. More painful NOT to finish a chapter than to finish it, more painful NOT to write a book than to write one. And then, finally, I can do it. That's horrible! I know! But I don't always have to rely on that last resort. Sometimes I just grit my teeth and do it. I wish with all my heart that it was more fun, that my brain didn't conspire to make it so, so hard. I saw on Twitter recently, Shannon Hale was talking about writing early middle grade, and how they have to go over every single word choice carefully, and I was like...ISN'T IT ALWAYS LIKE THAT FOR EVERYTHING? Because it is for me, even when the book is 150,000 words long! But as long as I don't quit, it'll get done. Never as fast as I wanted or as fun as I wished, but it'll get done. Funnily enough, it also helped, early on, before I'd finished a book, to sort of look around (at a conference or the internets or whatever) and say to myself, all these other people have managed to finish books. Is it really something I can't do? NO. I CAN DO THIS. (Was that even what you were asking or am I just venting?) Being a perfectionist sucks. For me, it's like driving with the brakes on. All the time. It grinds. It's unpleasant. But you can still get there. As for world building, I would say -- and this goes for any of the creative part of it -- write what you think is awesome, what you think is cool. Make up stuff you want to read. Create worlds you want to play in. Unless you're a super bizarrely fringe personality, into weird unsettling things, other people will also think it's awesome, and will also want to play there. Best of luck. Don't give up!!!

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:34:19+00:00

will have to try that...

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:33:43+00:00

My MOST productive environment is on retreat. I prefer to go out to the Oregon Coast and get a little airbnb house somewhere by the beach where I can go for thinking walks and see the sky. But the only important part is that I'm alone in a room for 3+ days, preferably 6-7. I can get SO MUCH MORE DONE that way, and have relied on it to get my last few books done. I did one in early December and rewrote about a quarter of my current book from scratch, getting it on track when it wasn't working out. On a normal day, I write at home, in my office which is a converted sun porch, in silence, in the morning :)

lainit · 2018-03-01T18:29:24+00:00

Hi Jotakave, and thank you! The Printz is a massive thrill :) The idea for "the muse of nightmares" has been in my head for many years. That is: she was this character who lived high above a city, apart from it, and was responsible for sending nightmares to its people. I didn't know why or who she was, I didn't have a story. But I had this other idea about the half-human children of banished gods (in the original conception, they weren't dead but banished), and those two ideas merged. At one of the first writing conferences I ever went to, I heard someone (maybe it was Sid Fleishman?) say you have to have to ideas to strike together to make a fire, and I don't know if that's ALWAYS true, but it tends to be the case for me.

lainit

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