This is the most useful book on writing I have ever found, and it’s the only one I will actually buy to give to people. I ended up writing the introduction to the 10th anniversary edition, because I know the publisher and, well, I’ll let that introduction tell its own story. The “Patrick” referred to in it is Patrick Swenson, the publisher who owns Fairwood Press.
For the past few years, I have been covertly getting people to go up to Patrick at conventions and ask when the electronic edition of this book would appear. Why? It might be that I have a prankish mind that was devoted to making him believe there was a vast groundswell awaiting this book. But actually, that’s the truth, because I’ve been pushing this book for years, less for prankish reasons than because I think it’s so useful for new writers.
The 10% Solution is not a cure to all your writing woes. It’s not a tool that helps with everything. But it is a great little book that will make you a better writer if you use it at the right stage in the process. The time to employ it is in that last pass before you send the story out into the world. I think of it as a lint-brush, something that tidies things up and makes sure every sentence that you’re sending out into the world to represent you is doing so beautifully, showing off that you can construct clear and error-free sentences that do exactly what you want them to be doing.
I don’t remember the circumstances when I first ran across The 10% Solution, but I do know that since then I have given out multiple copies and recommended it to literally hundreds of people. Why? Because it works and effectively shows you how to polish a piece of work in a way that shows you are at the professional level. For not just fiction but nonfiction.
Yes, it’s a pain in the butt. Yes, the first time you apply it to a manuscript it will be a huge pain in the rear end that may well lead you to curse aloud, calling down vile imprecations on my head. Yup and yup. I’ve been there too. But it’s worth it. After you’ve done it a few times, your unconscious mind gets tired of that labor and begins making changes before you write, tightening up and clarifying your prose in a way that will make it better.
Don’t believe me? Don’t try to apply it to a book then, but test it out with a short story or essay. Do give it a full chance, not skipping any steps, doing the actual “now I am searching on ly, now I am searching on of” steps. And keep a copy of the original, then look at them side by side. If your original prose is so golden that this didn’t substantially improve it, well then, perhaps this is not the book for you. But for the rest of us, it’s an awesome one.
Thank you, Patrick, for finally listening to all those people I kept sending up to you. I swear you won’t regret it. I know I won’t.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Retreat, Day T-7
Willow, sleeping in her net.It feels like I have been here a shorter time than I have, but it’s been great and I have gotten so much work done. I’m filling in gaps on Hearts of Tabat right now and happy with its progress. I wrote a bunch of stories and one poem. I walked on the beach and among the redwoods, and I got to spend time petting a bunny, and watching deer. I saw a grey fox and a barn owl swooping along late at night and covey after covey of quail, including a mama with six bitty little perfect quail running as fast as they could to keep up with her. Tonight I’ll lie out under the stars and watch the Perseid meteor shower from probably the best vantage point I’ll have in my life.
I spend literally less than a day at home, then get a haircut in the morning and head off to Sasquan in Spokane with my bestie, the fabulous Caren Gussoff. I’ve posted my convention schedule here, and if you’re wondering what sort of SFWA events I’ll be attending, here’s a video about that:
I’m working on a blog post about how to create videos like that — it’s much easier than you think. But you should make time for the SFWA auction, because there are some frickin’ amazing and very much one of a kind things for sale, including authors doing your voicemail message, supplying creative profanity, critiquing stories, and Tuckerizing (including one award winning novelist’s very first Tuckerization ever.) And lots of signed books, including ones from Worldcon toastmaster David Gerrold, George R.R. Martin, and Guest of Honor Vonda McIntyre.
I’ll also be spending a good bit of time at the Wordfire Press booth — please stop by and say hi (and buy a book if you like — I’ll have copies of both my new novel and story collection Near + Far!). If you’re coming to the con and are a vegan or vegetarian, here’s a handy list of food options.
In various news, Rappacini’s Crow will be reprinted in the BCS Best of Anthology and Abyss & Apex has accepted a novella that Bud Sparhawk and I wrote together, “Haunted.”
Here’s a piece from what I’ve been working on lately, near the beginning of Hearts of Tabat:
“Why do you always pick this teahouse when you are troubled?” Leonoa asked.
Adelina’s eyebrow raised and she smoothed a hand self-consciously over the garnet silk of her blouse. “I wasn’t aware that I did,” she said. And then, with mock severity, “That is the peril of associating with artists, Gilly. They are often dangerously observant.”
Gilly laughed nervously.
“But it makes sense. At one point,” Adelina said, “I became convinced that I was aberrant.”
Leonoa gave her a sidelong glance, but Adelina continued. “I thought I was different from all the other merchant children of my age, in that they all seemed very concerned with some sort of invisible game of unexplained points.”
Gilly frowned in noncomprehension.
“They all cared deeply about this game, and part of it was caring what other people thought ““ or more importantly, said ““ about each other. And I, honestly and completely, did not care what most people thought of me. My mother, the nurse who had raised me until the age of thirteen, my poetry tutor”¦ I did care about what they said, but no one else.”
“You were a prodigy,” Leonoa said wryly.
Adelina shrugged. “Perhaps not a prodigy. But I was one of those children who are capable of discerning the layers of adulthood mysteries that were truly not mysteries at all but simply things that adults were either too busy or bored or whatever to explain or which they thought were inappropriate for children for some reason or another.”
“Was there a moment of revelation?” Gilly asked. Her eyes were downcast, her voice a little lower. She’s flirting with me.
Adelina checked Leonoa’s expression and the wry flicker when the little woman realized she’d been caught amused and watching.
Not this one. Ah, Vyra Serena, send me someone eloquent, who loves words and will woo me with them, not innuendos and touched knees.
“I was given a child’s catechism of the Trade Gods,” she said, pulling her leg away from Gilly’s as she sat back.
Gilly looked nervous in the way one sometimes does when anticipating someone else is about to reveal some overly religious sentiment. Leonoa, who had heard this story before, maintained a polite, amused silence.
“The Trade Gods are an analysis of the way the world works,” Adelina said. “The ebb and flow of coin, of trade, of wants and necessities. Everything is there in the religion, because that is what it is. It is not that a God who is the personification of Coinage or Surplus or Fairspeaking, walking the street, the way the ignorant speak of such things.” She rolled her eyes. “Every religion is that ““ a way of understanding and teaching about the world.”
“But there is a natural order to things,” Gilly protested. “Surely someone came up with that.”
Adelina shook her head, one quick definite shake. “Not at all. As you said, a natural order, one that could not but happen to arise. It is the only thing that could given the circumstances.”
Gilly chewed her lip in perplexity, trying to summon a reply.
“It is not so,” Leonoa said. “There is no natural order, just happenstance. The reason that Humans are elevated over Beasts is that we are more numerous and they have not been able to successfully ally.”
Gilly’s eyes widened.
“Please,” said Adelina. “Before you get us all hauled in for Abolitionism, at least lower your voice when making such pronouncements.”
Leonoa pursed her lips but took a silent sip of tea.
Some deaths hit you
like a broken bone.
That sharp. That painful.
They stick with you, hurting even when healing,
a dull throb keeping
you from sleeping;
a startled, knifeslash pang when jostled.
And you know that, decades later,
it’ll still be that ache, that pain,
that returns whenever you are standing,
alone, in the melancholy rain.
This is the most useful book on writing I have ever found, and it’s the only one I will actually buy to give to people. I ended up writing the introduction to the 10th anniversary edition, because I know the publisher and, well, I’ll let that introduction tell its own story. The “Patrick” referred to in it is Patrick Swenson, the publisher who owns Fairwood Press.
I don’t remember the circumstances when I first ran across The 10% Solution, but I do know that since then I have given out multiple copies and recommended it to literally hundreds of people. Why? Because it works and effectively shows you how to polish a piece of work in a way that shows you are at the professional level. For not just fiction but nonfiction.
Some deaths hit you
