Shannon McGee's Blog

I'm moving over to storygraph for logging my reading in the coming year. It just seems to be a better site all around and the transition process was very easy.
I'm shannon_mcgee if you want to follow one another.

I'll keep adding books here for a while but that's the way the wind is blowing. ✌️

I’m excited to do this bookish themed Naughty-or-Nice tag created by Jenniely and I was tagged by Lola Andrews! This is the first time I’ve ever been tagged in anything of the kind— so this is pretty cool!

Here are the rules for this tag:

Tag & link the person who tagged you

Tag and link me/this post (if you would be so kind, I love reading your answers!)

Mark off the ones on this list you’ve done.

Tag more people!

1. Received and ARC (Advance Reader Copy) and not reviewed it  X

I’ve never received...

Hello! Its been a while hasn't it? Sorry about that. Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine that there's anyone out here that is interested in my musings... Which is probably not the best mental practice for an author, is it?

On that note, I thought I'd share one of my more recent writing related musings. Recently, my mom and I were discussing the uses of literature. Specifically, Young Adult literature (YA.) It’s something I’ve been mulling over for a few weeks— I mean, obviously longer, becau...

I think there are little moments—little catalysts that set us on the right path in life. If we’re listening. If we’re willing to put in the work. Here are three of mine.

About six years ago I was fresh out of high school, and I was plugging away at my first year in college. I was going to be something in the field of Criminal Justice. Maybe a police officer. Or a parole officer.

Yes, I loved to write. The dream was to be a published author. My senior year of high school I had even written a novel for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and had a full-page blurb printed in the local paper… Still, ten out of ten experts agreed that that was not how a person made money, or secured a retirement that involved people food, rather than cat food. College was the thing. A Real Job was the thing.

I continued to write in my spare time, but nothing like a full book. There wasn’t time.

Not long into my second year of college my major changed. I was nothing like the other students in my Criminal Justice courses. I was going to be an artist. One teacher suggested maybe I could consider illustrator as an educational route. “You’d make a great children’s book illustrator, with a little practice,” she said.

Around that time, I was looking for something new to read. I had just reread Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and I thought, “There has to be more in her repertoire than this.” So, I went questing for more. There was Jo’s Boys of course, and a few others. But then I spotted it. A Long and Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott. The Louisa May Alcott. And it didn’t look like any of the other things I had read by her.

If you’re familiar with Little Women then you are aware of Josephine and her penchant for writing desperate heroines and tragic, ridiculous tales. You remember how she had a stint as a newspaper writer—offering up works that certainly were not up to the standard of a Good and Proper writer?

You remember how Jo was based off Louisa May Alcott herself?

Oh man. A Long and Fatal Love Chase was bad. I mean. Miss Alcott was an excellent writer, so the writing was fine, but that book… That book was bad. I’m going to spoil it just a little for you. Essentially the main character becomes involved with a man, then they become estranged because he’s a cad, and she travels the world to avoid him and eventually she dies. I remember reading it and thinking, “The author of the classic that has stood the test of time… She wrote this? No way. How?”

I dug around a little. It was written before Little Women, under a nom de plume. After I had finished it I sat back and thought… Well, if she can write this and go on to be successful couldn’t anyone? Couldn’t I?

It was then that I first looked into getting my high school book looked at by publishers. All the big names and most of the small ones wanted me to have an agent, and a list of other things which I didn’t understand or couldn’t afford. I was going to school full time and working in fast food part time. Editors charged upwards of a thousand dollars. Agents needed paying. Book cover art… and formatting…? There was just no way. Discouraged, I discarded the idea of being a published author yet again.

I changed my major. I was going to get my degree in psychology—no! Sociology. Obviously.

After that I was going to be an actor. I took fencing, and a class on creative process where we spent half of some classes sitting and breathing, or walking in circles and breathing. We stared into each other’s faces and attempted to mimic the movements the other person was making as they made them without taking our eyes off their eyes. I was very good at that particular exercise.

I submitted the book I had written in high school to one of those “pay us to publish your book” sites. Just to get a quote to try and figure out if that was the right route. Their price was too high for me, and when I told them it wasn’t for me they continued to call me endlessly.

I performed in a play at my university where I played four different roles, one of which had to get very wet in a pool that had been constructed as part of the stage.

I fiddled with writing short pieces.

I dropped out of college.

I started work in an office.

I drafted a couple of different story ideas. Whole sets of chapters, strung together. I did not finish them.

I went back to college. I was going to be something in the field of sociology again, or perhaps city planning, or something to do with geography. (I'm still mulling that over. College is still something I want to finish. I love learning, I just hate how college is structured.)

Then, while I was working in the office I got it into my head to participate in NaNoWriMo again. In earnest this time. I created Somerlarth, and the characters began to come through. Before I knew it, I had the first full draft in my hands.

I dithered over it. I edited it within an inch of its life, and started on the second book without letting go of the first one.

I went out with this girl and she told me she was also writing a book. Very exciting. We laughed and commiserated about how the day job was The Thing. Someday the book would get finished. Somehow. Eventually, she got back together with her ex, and we lost touch.

A friend of mine visited and saw a scarf I was trying to weave on a cardboard loom. “You are never going to finish that,” he said, the moment I showed it to him.

A few months later I caught up with the girl. She and the ex had broken up again and she had consequently fled to Germany to be an au pair—still writing though, in her spare time. Not any closer to publishing though. Someday.

The scarf had gone half-finished into a box in a closet long before that.

Something twanged in my head. Three catalysts.

The travesty that was A Long and Fatal Love Chase.

The unfinished scarf in the closet.

The aspiring author turned German au pair.

I was either going to make something, or I wasn’t... I was either going to make the leap and try to become a published author, or I wasn’t. It was going to be good, or I was going to try again.

I had enough money to foot the bill of getting everything done. If I really wanted to. I was in a better state of mind to do all the research required. If I decided to make the commitment.

So… I did it.

If it’s bad then there’s always next time, but the only way to know is to try.

If Louisa May Alcott had the guts to be a beginner—to be bad and then continue on to be fantastic… why not me?

Why not you?

 

(P.S.:  The scarf never did get finished. It's ok to let some things go.)

UCLA Professor Richard Walter talks in this video about a young man asking him if pursuing a career in script writing is a reasonable thing to do, and he says "No!" He tells the interviewer, writing a screenplay, writing in general, it's tantamount to going up to someone and saying "I had this dream... can I tell you about it?" And should they be a kind person, and say "Sure, tell me about your dream," then adding the addendum, "Ok, it's going to take X number of hours, and I'm going to need ten bucks from you."

It's not reasonable. You'd have to be bonkers to expect to make money out of a career doing that. You hear all the time, from all different writers: when you become a writer it is because you cannot be anything else. Nothing else satisfies. Everything else seems even less reasonable.

No other career but writing has ever made sense to me. And, luckily for me, writing a story has never been hard for me. I truly enjoy writing, and I have a million ideas, and I have since I first started writing when I was in elementary school. However, writing a story is not the same thing has finishing a book, and it's not the same thing as publishing a book, and both of those things are hard. Especially when you're self-publishing, and you have to plan out, and undertake each stage with minimal help and only the amount of money you can afford to invest in a project that (if you're honest with yourself) might not pan out.

The title of this blog post is one of my all time favorite quotes. It comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson. This quote embodies the first step towards becoming a writer. You're going to have doubt. Go over Doubt's head to the big boss which is Courage, and do the thing anyway.

When you do? You'll hit road blocks anyway. The decision to self-publish was my first road block. I asked myself, did I want to wait months and months trying to find someone who believed in me as much as I did? And once I did find that person, did I want I want to sign over the majority of my rights to someone else? Did I want someone else to design my cover and how the rest of the world first got a look at the thing I had poured my heart and soul into?

No, no, and no. Thank you very much. That path is perfectly fine, but it's not for me. I've seen the modern book cover trend of stark text on minimal background, and I've heard the horror stories of authors who got picked up and then put into storage for ages. Hard pass.

I figured, if I was going to have to put in the work of writing the books, promoting the books, and all the rest anyway then I wanted my dream to be on my terms. I think that's as reasonable as this career gets.

In the preface to his book "Gardens of the Moon" (which, full disclosure, I have not read) writer Steven Erikson leaves off with this quote:

"One last word to all you nascent writers out there. Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat. Write with balls, write with eggs. Sure, it's a harder journey but take it from me, it's well worth it. Cheers, Steven Erikson"

I ran across (and love) this quote in a pared down form, "Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat."

Does anyone remember that scene from Mulan where Shang hands her the two weights: discipline and strength? If you don't, here it is. 

Honestly, Dickinson's quote, and Erikson's quote, they are those two weights weights for me. You need both to reach the arrow, which is finishing a book, and then self-publishing it. You need to go above your own limitations, and you need to work your tail off and get exactly what you want.

 

If you have any questions about the process, or anything else, feel free to drop it in the comments down below!

Recently I received a comment asking me, "What makes you want to create a new world to write about?"

And the short answer is: I get to make the rules.

The long answer is thus:

In the real world the story which I devised is not exactly possible. To tell my exact story I would have needed to subvert the history of some real place, and twisted and pinch it to fit. Or I would have needed to make this a post-apocalyptic world where medieval technology is all that remains and new kingdoms have become erected on top of the old ones-- and don't get me wrong! Both of those options sound lovely. They just wouldn't quite have been my story.

Beyond that? I like making new worlds. I take a great deal of satisfaction in constructing maps and "discovering" the history of the places I've created. It's fun. I listen to a song; I feel inspired; I picture a character doing something daring or romantic; I open up the map, I put the character somewhere. What do they look like? What put them in the situation I just imagined? Do they have a family? Friends? What are they like? A world branches off that character.

Somerlarth and the surrounding kingdoms rolled out ahead of me as I wrote, and no one could tell me "But that's not how it happened." or "That's not how that apocalypse would end up. Not really."

It did happen this way. I wrote it. From the beginning of time, up until the point where we first meet Taryn, and beyond. It happened exactly as I tell it. (Unless a character lies, and then I'll try and have another character straighten it out later. I promise.)

I have a rough Paint file titled "The Wide World" and just as it's named, it shows all of the continents outside the one on which "Of Gryphons and Other Monsters" takes place. It's not necessary to see The Wide World for Taryn's Journey to make sense. It may be that no characters will ever journey to those places. It's possible that the characters that live there will never get their own stories. But I like making them. I like seeing it.

I hope this sort of works to answer that question. If you're reading this and it only brought up more questions, or you'd like to ask about anything else, feel free to leave a comment down below.

Except when it turns out to be unnecessary info dumping.

No, I'm kidding. I'm always grateful when I have a chance to learn new things. Luckily, as a writer, I get many opportunities to research all sorts of subjects that normally would not come up in my life. In considering some of the logistics of having a fantasy realm set in what amounts to our medieval era, I picked up a lot of trivia.

For example, I am now fairly familiar with the process of cheese-making. Why? Because in the rough draft of "Of Gryphons and Other Monsters," the book began with Taryn starting her day, and grabbing some cheese to take on sheep watch. I wrote it, and then I sat back and thought, "Huh. How did people keep cheese before refrigeration? I know they had it. But how?"

The short answer is that old cheeses were either very hard (think like a cheddar) or they were soft and very salty (sort of like feta.) A hard rind came from turning a cloth wrapped wheel of compressed cheese curds continually, keeping the moisture at the center and... I could go on. I did go on. Did you know that curds and whey used to be separated using rennet found in the belly of calves (specifically male calves because females were needed to keep producing dairy) that had yet to be weaned from their mother's milk? Which goes hand-in-hand with the popularity of veal. Did you know that use of the milk from a cow (or sheep) used to depend highly on the season and therefor how rich the milk would have been?

I inhaled every Ruth Goodman documentary available on youtube, from "Tudor Monastery Farm," to "Tales from the Green Valley." I learned about how homes/road walls were built, and where the bathrooms were. I learned about what people ate and how they took care of sickness. I learned how people made fishing poles and fishing line, and how they cooked food or stored it for later, (credit for that goes a lot to the Townsends youtube channel.)

I put all of that into the book, at some point or other and then in the subsequent edits? I took almost all of it out. Because the reader doesn't actually need to know those things in an action/adventure/fantasy novel, and it slows the pace down. It's enough that I know why the cheese is hard, and that I know that pigs can be used to clear fields for farming (and how cool is that???)

You know, a lot of people will tell you that when you're writing you shouldn't let yourself wander off down the internet rabbit hole. They'll say that you need to keep yourself strictly on task and if you have to research something you must save it all for Designated Research Time ™ or else.

I'd disagree with that. Obviously if you have an important deadline then scheduling your time is important, but I think a good portion of the joy of writing comes from those little jaunts, and a great deal of inspiration can come from them as well. The only thing to remember is that these pieces of knowledge should just be hinted at, to lend authenticity to your writing. Your writing shouldn't read like a history book or an instructional manual... Unless that's what you're aiming for.

This blog post was made after a suggestion that I write about some of the things that I learned about while writing my first book. If you have any questions about that, or anything else feel free to leave them in the comments.

 

I'm someone who enjoys making lists. I specifically like making a list and then crossing everything off on it. Publishing a book involves a lot of that. Here is what my list has sort of looked like so far:

Write a manuscriptObsess over your manuscript for no less than 6months.Send your manuscript out to as many beta readers as will take on the job.Research the costs and benefits of self publishing for no less than three months.Scour the web for someone to format and edit your book without making you broke.Send your manuscript to a professional editor.Contact a cover artist.Buy 10 isbn codes because you need more than one and the site assures you that 10 is the optimal numberGet your book back from the editor and cry in relief because they didn't hate it.Begin professional edits.Realize that you really need to get a move on your Social Media Presence.Create a website.Write a blog.

There are a few things left to do. My cover art is still enroute. My interior formatting is waiting on that. My goal is to get at least two youtube videos uploaded this month. I've got to contact my local paper to see how they'd feel about running a blurb on my release date. I also need to speak to a few brick and mortar bookstores to try and coerce them into buying my book.

Still, I made a promise to myself that I would be published by the end of this year, and it's looking as though I'm going to be keeping that promise. Which is pretty rad.