Happy 25 Years

Spending the week with my bride of 25 years in Kauai. Thanks for a wonderful quarter century. Here’s to the next one. (And, yeah, got to admit I’m getting in a little writing too.!)

Let There Be Air!

Thanks for the congratulations everyone. I’m still smiling from ear to ear. A year ago, Farworld was in limbo and I’d never imagined I would soon be signing a national contract.

Now, I have a great new series coming out with Harper, and Farworld is going to be finished. (Not to mention my time-travel series with Deseret Book.) If you see a crazy-looking author dancing and singing in the street, that would be me. I don’t know how I got this lucky. But I’ll take it.

As a reward for all of you who have waited so patiently for the next Farworld book, Shadow Mountain has agreed to let me publish one chapter a month until Air Keep’s release. First, just a couple of cautions, then we’ll get to the good stuff.

Until it is actually sent to the printers, any book is constantly a work in progress. Editing takes place. Chapters move around. Entire storylines come and go. Basically, what I am saying is that what you read here may be not be exactly the same when the book comes out. Theoretically, what you read here might not make the final cut at all.

Normally a publisher doesn’t release chapters until the story is set in stone. But you know what? You all are so awesome and have been so patient, we’re willing to take the risk. I’ll post the chapters as they come out of my brain (with a little editing help from my friends) and hopefully you’ll enjoy them. There will probably be a few typos, but I trust you can overlook them.

Occasionally I may add some author notes along the way. So here goes. Enjoy.

Finally, the Farworld News

 

No one ever said the publishing world moves quickly. And patience is a virtue most authors do not possess. But it has moved and I am so excited to make this announcement!

Ladies and gentlemen (and all the rest of us goofballs), Farworld is back!!!!

Still working out the finer points, but here’s what I can tell you. Shadow Mountain has agreed to publish the last three books of the Farworld series: Air Keep, Fire Keep, and Shadow Keep in hardback with the same amazing artist who did the first two books.

They will also be releasing books 1 and 2 in paperback at about the same time.

Right now, it’s looking like Air Keep will be released in late February. That’s perfect, because my new Harper series, Case File 13 will be coming out sometime between Christmas of this year and New Years. Books 4 and 5 of the Farworld series will probably come out about the same time in 2014 and 2015.

In addition, Shadow Mountain will be sending me out to visit schools, not just in Utah, but across the US.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to make this announcement. I have been in love with the Farworld story ever since it came into my head one night shortly after James Dashner told me about his series. I am hard at work right now writing Air Keep.

And the final piece of good news is this. Since you have all been so patient, waiting for this book, Shadow Mountain has agreed to let me post not one, two, or even three chapters of this book here on my blog. But ten! One chapter a month right up until the book comes out.

Tomorrow I will post the first chapter and then every month I will post another one. Hopefully that will help the wait for book three not be quite as terrible.

Also, I’ve seen a rough cover sketch for the Air Keep cover, and it is beyond awesome. The best one yet in my opinion.

Thanks Shadow Mountain for making this possible. Thanks to my writing group for encouraging me not to give up when it looked like the last three books might never happen. And most of all, thanks to you, my loyal readers. I get e-mails almost every day from people asking about book 3. Thanks for not giving up on me or the series. You all rock!

Catching Up & Using Books as Writing Examples

First things first. I know I haven’t given you any Farworld news yet. Trust me, it’s not by choice. Sometimes these things just take a while. But I do hope to have good news soon. I am so anxious to share Air Keep with you. It is definitely going to be the best Farworld book yet. And there will be some shocking twists.

So, please, please, please, keep an eye on the blog and I’ll tell you the moment I have Farworld Book 3 news.

In the mean time, if you haven’t read Mark Forman’s (Corrected the spelling of Mark’s last name. Mark Foreman is Bob the Builder’s big brother.) latest Adventurers Wanted book, Albrek’s Tomb, you totally should. Just finished reading it with my boys and it was great. Really fun D&D style middle grade series. (Yes, this is the same Mark who keeps bugging me here for Farworld news.)

Also, I had a chance to take part in several awesome activities over the last few weeks that totally deserve a shout out. Last Saturday I was at the Writing for Charity event at the Provo, Utah library. So-o-o-o-o much fun. Lots of great writers, both published and soon to be published. And a really great event for a great cause. Thanks for a wonderful time, and Hi! to my little writing group and all my other friends I met there.

The Saturday before that I was teaching at the Teen Writers Boot Camp put on by Writers Cubed. There must have been 300 teenage writers there. I was totally blown away by how talented these kids are. If you didn’t make it to either of these events, put them on your calendar for next year. They are great!

Finally, over the last six weeks, I have been teaching a Spanish Fork city creative writing course. I always start teaching this class wondering if I can find the time and I end up being so glad I did, because the writers are truly inspiring. It gives me a huge boost to talk shop with writers who are so good and so committed to succeeding. This year, the amazing Annette Lyon taught the last two classes. If you haven’t read her books or discovered her blog, you need to. I never miss a Word Nerd Wednesday.

One thing I hear a lot when I teach classes is, “But [insert big author’s name] didn’t/did do that.” If I teach that starting your book with a dream sequence is generally not a good idea, it’s inevitable that someone in the class will have read a successful book that starts with a dream.

There are many reasons for this. One, big name authors can pretty much do whatever they want. Two, for every rule there are bound to be exceptions. Three, I might be full of crap bad advice.

There’s a better reason though. I’ve always known this but haven’t ever heard it put quite as succinctly as Brandon Sanderson put it last Saturday in his plotting class. If you are going to read books to see what works and what doesn’t in your genre, read books by authors that have been published for the first time in the last five years.

Duh! Why haven’t I been saying that to every single class I teach? I guarantee, I will from now on. The point is not that you shouldn’t read books by established authors. It’s that if you are trying to get published now, you need to see what kinds of debut books are being sold and published now. Something that worked twenty years ago in epic fantasy, very likely will not work in a romance published last year.

This is the case with all art forms, not just literature. Sit down with your kids and watch a family movie that came out twenty years ago. It might still be a great movie. But it will almost always be obvious that the movie is older. Not just from the clothes, cars, and technology either. Effects change, dialog changes, techniques chance. What was cutting edge then is a cliché now.

Don’t get me wrong. You can learn a ton from reading older books, going all the way back to the classics. But if you want to understand what new authors are currently getting published, the only way to find out is by reading works by new authors. I’m not talking about trends. What’s hot now may be done to death when you finish writing—so chasing trends is a bad idea. I’m talking about POV, tense, voice, length, and style.

So next time someone teaches not to start your story with the weather, don’t quote that fifty year old book that begins with, “It was a dark and stormy night.” You can’t get away with it now! And I will haunt you in your writing dreams.

Almost There

Remember when you were a kid and Christmas just seemed years away, maybe even centuries? And the wait didn't seem shorter as the day grew closer. If anything, it seemed like it would never come. Then, bam, one day it was Christmas Eve. Yeah, waiting on book deal is a lot like that.

However, it is nearly Christmas Eve. Until everything is done, I can't say anything official. But I am really hoping by next week I can tell you some awesome news about Farworld. Thanks for hanging with me and have a great weekend!

Hello, World!

Back in the days when I had aspirations of being a computer programmer, one of the first programs I learned to write for Windows was a program that simply said, "Hello world!" I thought that was kind of funny at the time. I mean who would ever need to write a program that would say hello to the whole world?

Now we do that all the time just by posting a blog. Kind of weird thinking that you are posting to the whole world. Or at least the part of it that reads your blog. Which is my way of saying, "Hello. I'm back. Sorry I've been gone for so long. But it's been a crazy few months."

I really am sorry. Just felt like for a while I didn't have much to say. I started up the Wordplay podcast. Hit the holidays. Got sidetracked. Spent a ton of time writing. But here I am. I hope of few of my friends are still out there.

But anyway, let's jump right into things. First, let's talk about my new Harper series, Case File 13. I am so excited about this series. Two of my favorite things are monster stories and making people laugh. Case File 13 has both of those and much more. i just got to see the cover for book One, Zombie Kid, and let me just say it is awesome! Can't wait to show it to you all. And hopefully I can soon. I don't have a firm date for Zombie Kid's release. It's definitely early 2013. But I should have more info for you soon.

Now on to Farworld. When last I wrote, I had to decided to self-publish the last three books. I promised you chapters and artwork. Then I suddenly went quiet. This was not because I had forgotten about you, my loyal Farworld readers, or the series. In fact I have a really cool color sketch of the Air Keep cover I am dying to show you. And the story is so cool. I promise that when you read the first couple of chapters you'll be going, "What?!! Is J Scott Savage crazy?!!"

And I will have chapters for you, very very soon. But a funny thing happened. I was invited to lunch by a man and a woman I admire very much. And they said something that changed my whole outlook on the series. I know I am being a total jerk here. But I can't say anything for a few more days. But if things work out, it will be awesome news for all fans of Farworld. I will freely admit I shed a few tears of joy when I heard the news. Then I started singing "Back in Black" so loud my wife told me to be quiet because people would call the police.

So trust me and hang in just a little while longer. I will share the news with you the moment it is final.

Lastly, I am doing a whole bunch of conferences over the next few months. Teen Boot Camp, Storymakers, Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers, Writing for Charity. I'll get links up by tomorrow. But you can Google them between now and then if you want.

In the mean time, know that I am writing my fingers off and counting the minutes until I can share chapters with you.

The Good the Bad & the Ugly of NaNoWriMo

Yep, it’s that time of year again. The time when turkeys cower in fear, leaves multiply on your lawn faster than rabbits, costume companies pretend there actually is a reason to take kids’ cartoon characters and make “sexy” versions of them, and last but not least, the time of year when hundreds of thousands of people decide to write a book in a month—I speak of course about National Novel Writing Month.

If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, check out their website here. It’s a really cool idea and has picked up amazing steam since it started in 1999. The basic concept is that you and a bunch of other people all try to write a novel (or at least 50,000 words of a novel) in the month of November.

First of all, let me say that I think anything that gets people writing is awesome. So many times people tell me they’ve always wanted to write a book. And I say, “Well then start writing.” And whenever you do anything with a group of people who have the same goals, it makes it a little easier. So, yeah, NaNoWriMo=very cool.

If I stopped my blog right here, everything would be great. I said the right thing to the right people at the right time. Now is the part where I doff my hat and exit stage left.

Except that, while I think NaNoWriMo is very cool for a lot of people, I also think that there could be times when it is actually could be a bad thing.

Here’s why.

Imagine applying the book in a month concept to other activities. Compose a symphony in a month. Train for a marathon in a month. Build ten houses in a month. Perform 100 heart transplants in a month. Have six kids in . . . okay, maybe we will stop the analogy there.

The thing is, different people write at different paces and different books take more or less time. I have written an entire book in close to a month. I’ve also taken a year or more to write another book. Quantity does not always equal quality.

I was recently talking to an editor about an author. The editor thought the author was a great writer, but the author’s work often seemed rushed. The editor felt that the author was hurrying to finish one book after another without taking the time to get each of them right.

I know that NaNoWriMo isn’t about completing a final draft in a month. The idea is that you force yourself to crank out 50,000 words and then come back and edit them later. And that absolutely works for some authors. They do what we used to call in grade school a sloppy copy and then make it better and better as they rewrite.

If you are one of those kinds of people, NaNoWriMo may be a great fit for you. But not everyone can do that. You can’t always “force” creativity. Some stories just take a while to come together. And I worry especially for newer writers that if you start training yourself that writing is like mowing the lawn, you just get up start the mower and get to it, you might be training yourself to be a bad writer.

I think I’d be more comfortable with something where you had to spend x number of hours on your novel in a month. Maybe you create a character bible, maybe you outline, maybe you write that number of hours without worrying about how many words you complete. As an author I’d rather spend an hour writing a great page or even a great paragraph than an hour cranking out 2,000 words that will never be something I’d want to show the public.

I’m not saying don’t take part in NaNoWriMo. If nothing else you will learn whether you are able to write 2,000 words or more a day. I know lots of authors whose first published work came as a result of a NaNoWriMo project.

But if it doesn’t work, don’t feel like you are a failure. Writing is not brick laying. It’s not emptying trash cans. It’s a process that can come together all at once in a rush of inspired storytelling or sweat itself out word by painful word. Sometimes it involves outlining for weeks or months. Sometimes an entire story arrives in only a few minutes with a burst or fireworks and sounding trumpets.

Don’t worry about what other authors are doing around you. Don’t write YA because that’s what everyone is doing. Don’t write a novel in a month because it’s November are you are supposed to. Do what works for you and stick with it.