Books This Week

[wolffyluna]

Harrow The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Oh my god I loved this so much. Harrow is very much my fave. I wish to squish her, but she would not like that.

I have... no clue how to describe it. It's very much a book that deliberately leaves you going "what, wait? What the fuck is going on?" for most of it. It gaslights you about the events of the previous book, for fun and profit. Also it's got saintly poly drama in it. What more could you want in a book?

More seriously: I have a policy that if I hear of my friends talking about sympathetic and [wiggle hands] vaguely accurate psychotic characters, I feel an obligation to be a bit of a cheerleader for them. They may not be my fave, but I will go "woo! go [character]!" Just because there's so few of them. But here's the thing: a) Harrow is not just "not actively an offensive disaster" psychotic representation, she's actually good. b) your honour, I love her. She's so good, and fun.

Anyway, read Harrow the Ninth. ...but read Gideon the Ninth first.

Gentle Writing Advice by Chuck Wendig

This is a writing advice book, mostly aimed at talking process and not technique, and very much about writing without emotionally shredding yourself. It has some good advice in it, but... have you ever read a book about how to do something, and you realise it's aimed at someone much less experience than you, and so there's not a lot of new information for you? Reading this felt like that, which is weird, because objectively I'm not that experienced as a writer? I don't know how much the amount I'm going "yeah, yeah, don't stare at the time knife, we all know that" is because I'm more ?even keeled? or if writing a lot of fanfiction for a decade has given me a creative baptism of fire, so ideas like "your process may change, and that's okay" and "writing kind of inherently feels bad sometimes, and here's some way to deal" isn't, like, novel?

Still I would recommend it if you wanted a pep talk, or to think about how to be more resilient or have a more resilient process.

Comments

[lb_lee]

Reading this felt like that, which is weird, because objectively I'm not that experienced as a writer?

Says someone who's pumped out like a novel's worth of wordcount a year for what, ten years? :p

[wolffyluna]

Okay, so, fair cop-- (Though there's still part of me that's like 'but I haven't been published yet!')

[lb_lee]

Neither have I, except by myself and some friends! (Wait, no, my writing has never been published by anyone but me ever.)