This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

I know I have a book coming out on September 19 (which you can pre-order at Powell's,  Amazon, B&N, or your local independent bookstore, *cough*), and that's supposed to be the only thing I'm thinking about.

But the truth is that I'm mostly thinking about another book: the one I've written 330 pages of so far and am about to start rewriting (again) from the beginning (again) because I keep learning new, important plot things that change everything that went before.








Godspeed to all writers.

Lateish last night, in the middle of the sixth revision of what will be my fourth published book, I inaugurated Notebook 24.

It's been a long journey to the middle of the sixth revision of my fourth book. First I needed to write all the other books, and revise them, and write this one, and revise it five times. After I revise it for the sixth time, I will probably revise it for the seventh time.

Confession: I'm tired and cranky.
BUT,
 I'm not the only one who was working hard in my office yesterday.
See the lily? (The tall, skinny one in the middle?)

Look what it had done by the end of the day.

How the heck did it do that? I don't know. But I'm guessing it started a long time ago.
Keep trying.

Kishi Bashi at SXSW in 2014.



Also, yesterday it snowed all day, but this happened on my writing desk:

I've been a very poor blogger lately. I have a list as long as my arm of things I've been wanting to blog about, but the spirit has not been moving me. In particular, I've been going through a period of grievously fractured focus with my writing, and have been wanting to blog something about that. I actually sat down yesterday, expecting to write a blog post about it – even contacted a few friends to ask permission to share some of the wise things they've been saying – but then, to my delight, my focus came back, and instead, I worked. I'm hoping the same thing is about to happen as I sit down this very moment. So, instead of one of those blog posts I've been meaning to write, I offer a few random pictures and one wise quote from a friend, presented with no context whatsoever :o). Maybe they will mean something to you.

YOU GUYS. Over at Written? Kitten!, every time you write one hundred words, YOU GET A PICTURE OF A KITTEN. (Thanks, S!)

Over at Teen Librarian Toolbox, I really like the post "Dear Media, Let me help you write that article on YA literature." It begins, "Recently, there have been a voluminous number of articles written about YA literature. And they are mostly wrong. So if you are a member of the press and given this assignment, I thought I would help you out a little.  But first, let me start by telling you why I am, in fact, qualified to help you out. Credentials are important, something these articles always seem to lack..." (Thanks, R!)

As a companion to her recent blog post, "Some things to consider when writing fat characters," Rebecca Rabinowitz has written "Some things to think about when writing thin characters."

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Pardon me for a minute while I copy and paste everything I've written in this blog post so far and GO GET ME A…

Bulgarian cover for Fire! Published by Emas, designed by Zlatina Zareva. Click to enbiggen! ------>

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My dear nieces (accidentally and with great affection) gave me a Christmas present of a terrible cold in which my head was like a TARDIS of snot, so I've fallen behind in some things, including blogging. (The TARDIS, for those of you who aren't Doctor Who fans, is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, such that it's capable of containing unimaginably huge quantities of stuff you would never think possible if you're standing outside it. And by the way, I'm not as obsessed with Doctor Who as it might seem given recent mentions on my blog (though I do rather love it). It's more that a character I'm writing about is often wearing Doctor Who pajamas, so it's always on my mind.)

As colds go, this one was massive, but also dreamy and contemplative, possibly because it coincided with the New Year. I should have some resolution thoughts to b…