It is the fourth day of the FAQ-contest–ask me a question, and you will have a chance to win a $15 gift certificate, and a super-secret something, which together make up a double-plus wonderfully truly incredibly awesome fantastic very good prize.
It is also a day before two of my sisters come into town, which means I am trying to double down on writing so I can have the weekend free. This means the blog is going to get somewhat neglected–ack! In good news, I deleted 10,000 words this morning! Um, yay again. I think. At this point, the words deleted on this project are 2x greater in number than the words that have made the cut . . . for now.
BUT–back to the FAQs:
Q. How do you pronounce your last name?
A. However I feel like it. I started out pronouncing it MILE-in, but everyone seems to think that it should be mill-AN, like the Italian city, and since it is not my actual name, I figure you can pronounce it however you want, and the majority will rule. mill-AN it is.
Q. Are you planning to quit your day job? Do you think your writing will interfere with your work?
A. No. I started writing because there was a dearth of creativity in my daily work, and I needed a creative outlet–almost desperately. If I did not write, I don’t doubt that I would find some other way to fill that creative void. But the truth is I just adore hard-nosed analytical stuff, and I think if all I did was write, I would feel as unbalanced as I did when all I did was hard-nosed analysis. I’ve found that when I take long vacations from all that intellectually rigorous stuff that I will invite analytical problems for me to solve–e.g., figuring out precisely the contours of a computer game. I need both! As for whether writing will interfere with my work–in the long term, no. I actually think that keeping both these elements in my life has been very good for me intellectually and creatively, and the two forms of writing are very complementary. On the day-to-day level . . . sometimes. From time to time–if I have a tight deadline on either end–one job will sometimes suffer for the other. But that short-term setback is more than made up for by the benefits I find from having a really balanced workload.
Q. How many words do you write a day, on a day-in, day-out basis?
A. Varies. Somewhere between zero and (my max, ever) around 7,500. I cannot do 7,500 words on command–that only happens when I hit a part that is truly on fire, and then I just can’t stop. It usually burns me out for days afterwards, too. My ideal pace–the one that doesn’t leave me feeling like I just want to die, but does stretch me a little bit–is about 1500 words a day, 5 days a week, with weekends for revision and clean up.
You’ll get more answers tomorrow–and of course, you should ask more questions!
I’ve been trying and trying to think of questions… I don’t know why this is so hard. I mean, I’m always asking you endless questions. I’ll keep thinking…
1. What’s at the heart of your stories? Are you writing just to entertain? Or is there another reason?
2. What particular challenges come with writing historical fiction?
3. What’s the biggest historical roadblock you’ve hit? In other words, what would you have loved to do, but historical accuracy prevented it?
4. If cavemen and astronauts got into a fight, who would win? Note: No weapons.
How has your journey toward publication thus far been different from your dreams and/or expectations?
1. What’s at the heart of your stories? Are you writing just to entertain? Or is there another reason?
This is a really good question, and I really wish I knew how to answer this! Every time I thought I “knew” what a book was about before I started writing it, the book twisted itself around to be about something else entirely. I write books for a reason, but I usually don’t know what it is until I get there.
3. What’s the biggest historical roadblock you’ve hit? In other words, what would you have loved to do, but historical accuracy prevented it?
Nothing. I love the fact that historical accuracy imposes on me; that’s where a lot of my plot arises.
There are only two things that I can think of offhand:
1. I can’t use the word “metastasize.” I love that word!
2. I really wanted my hero in PROOF BY SEDUCTION to be able to grouse that cold doesn’t flow, but he can’t realize that until people had a kinetic theory of temperature, which did not exist in 1836. I ended up cheating on this one–he grouses that cold can’t flow. It’s not historically accurate. I went back and forth and forth and back and decided that I loved the line, it fit, there was not another good substitute, and maybe one person would notice. Of course, everyone will notice now that I’ve disclosed it. So shoot me.
4. If cavemen and astronauts got into a fight, who would win? Note: No weapons.
Astronauts. I was originally going to say cavemen, because they are scrappy, but cavemen basically all suffer from malnutrition and astronauts train physically, are in top physical form, and must pass mental and physical exams that put them in the top percentage of today’s population. The cavemen don’t stand a chance.
How has your journey toward publication thus far been different from your dreams and/or expectations?
Good question. Thus far, I have discovered that once you publish, there are still innumerable things that you worry about–covers, blurbs, nobody buying my book…. The worries just keep on coming!
re. cold not flowing until 1836. That is what historical notes are for!
This is true, Miranda. I can also pretend that my hero was just really freaking brilliant and intuited this all from Carnot’s early work, and thought it so obvious he never published it. I’m really only 15 years off.
Hey, if Laura Kinsale can build a radio and an airplane in Regency times….