Results tagged “editorial advice”

Awe, isn’t Pat cute when he looks adoringly at his fans?

The other gentleman in the photo overheard Pat and I talking, looked down at our badges, and then stopped to tell Pat how great a writer he was and that Pat could take as long as he needed to make Wise Man’s Fear the best book it could be.

Pat glowed, so happy to hear such sincerity about his work, and he signed several books for the fan and his family.

As I promised yesterday, here is the post containing Part III and Part IV of the San Diego Comic Con Patrick Rothfuss interview!

In these parts, Pat talks about how editing is going on Wise Man’s Fear, rewriters, milk-fed veal, how many people have read the first draft of Wise Man’s Fear, the release date of Wise Man’s Fear, what he’s reading and recommending right now, his soon to be published not for children children’s book, who he has met at Comic Con, and a last message to the fans.

Click through to watch and listen to Part IV!

Comic Con is for old friends.

Sometimes I force my old friends to work!

I’ve known Patrick Rothfuss since almost the moment of his debut publication—and in some ways even earlier. His agent, Matt Bialer, had been telling me for months leading up to the release of The Name of the Wind that he had found a great author. “Just wait until you read it, Shawn. It is going to blow you away.” Matt, as usual, was right.

So when Pat came to Seattle for NorwesCon, we had to meet.

And after getting to know him better and having many shared similarities in our lives, it’s been great fun watching him grow from debut writer to successful and working writer!

I chained him to the Suvudu booth at the San Diego Comic Con and wouldn’t let him go until he had given me an interview. We thought it would only go 10 or 15 minutes. Turns out Pat had a lot to say about his debut, its sequel and what his life is like now.

Let’s get to it then!

Part I and Part II of the interview we conducted are posted in this article. He talks about his initial thoughts on Comic Con, his panel and the definition he has for urban fantasy, the structure of his trilogy and the future, the interesting story he wants to write when he is a stronger writer, his craft of writing and revision of Wise Man’s Fear, what happened to the “yearly” release of his books and woman cats.

You’ll see what I mean.

Enjoy!

Click through to watch Part II! And then come back tomorrow for the release of Parts III and IV!

I spent the week going over the second drafts of upcoming novels by two authors whose books are on the 2009 Del Rey schedule. Note I said second drafts. These came in in response to long letters requesting changes to the novels’ first drafts. And in response to each of these second drafts, I wrote up still further notes requesting a third and final draft.

These are not baby authors I’m talking about. Each has numerous books to his/her credit. Even so, these authors understand that each new book is a fresh chance to win new readers—or alienate old ones. A smart author will accept valid criticism no matter what the cost in rewrite time.

My thanks to this week’s writers—and you know who you are—for going to the trouble of responding both carefully and cheerfully to my editorial notes. One of my personal maxims is that the manuscript doesn’t exist which does not need editing. Yet we’ve all read published books that could have been so much better with certain changes made. Reviewers and online commentators often say, “Where was the editor?” And it’s true, sometimes the editor hasn’t done a serious job on the book, or hasn’t pushed the author hard enough to make necessary changes.

Other times, though, it’s an author’s stubbornness that results in a less-than-satisfactory finished product. [more after the jump]