Rachel Starr Thomson

The CSFF Tour for this month is officially over, but before we leave Raven’s Ladder, I want to explore one of its themes. I also have a book to give away, so it’s time for a contest! Scroll all the way down to the bottom of this post for contest rules and deadline.

Warning: there are series spoilers contained herein, though they are not too earth-shattering.

Ever since CSFF first toured Auralia’s Colors, reviewers have been confused about whether or not the Keeper and Auralia represent God the Father and Christ in a straightforward allegory. They don’t, as the author pointed out in my interview with him and has said elsewhere.

(Digression: John W. Otte, blogger extraordinaire, addressed this topic on his blog and was kind enough to reply to my questions to him at length today. He points out that while he doesn’t expect or want every Christian book to be an allegory, these characters have so many God- and Christ-like characteristics that it’s misleading. Overstreet says he isn’t writing an allegory, but his series sure smells like one. Point taken!)

But whether or not we’ll see a clear picture of God in the Expanse, we will certainly see a clear and biblical picture of ourselves.

When we first meet Captain Ryllion in Cyndere’s Midnight, he is recovering from an encounter with beastmen that killed his charge and set his career significantly back. But Ryllion is a passionate believer in the value of his own desires and the inevitability of his destiny. Others may waver in their faith; Ryllion doesn’t. He’s a devotee of the moon spirit religion, whose seers teach that everyone has a moon spirit of their own who comes and shines desires into their hearts. Your religious duty, then, is to pursue those desires, believing that your moon spirit will reward your efforts.

Ryllion comes across as young, sometimes aggravating, but really admirable. He believes so sincerely, so wholeheartedly in his dreams. He’s courageous and smart. He’s an underdog fighting his way back up, and we can’t help rooting for him.

At first.

It’s only as time goes on and more backstory is revealed that we start to realize how much integrity Ryllion has already sacrificed in pursuit of his dreams, how much the desires of his heart have torn down any sense of morality or real duty, how much his courage is nothing but — extremely — selfish ambition. Ironically, Ryllion’s pursuit of personal freedom makes him a slave to the Seers, who slip something into his drink to help him along. And before Ryllion even knows it, he’s changing.

He’s becoming a beastman.

On the flip side of the story, we have Jordam. Born a beastman, with a jutting browbone and three brothers who snarl, kill, and hate, his life is also all about desire. He’s hungry, so he kills. He craves Essence, the power-giving poison that created the beastmen, so he steals, plots, hunts, and does obeisance to the Cent Regus chieftain in order to be given it. There is no real difference between Jordam and Ryllion. Both are enslaved to what the Bible calls “the lusts of the flesh.” It’s just that Jordam’s desires are more obviously, outwardly carnal than Ryllion’s.

But while Ryllion is a man becoming a beast, Jordam is a beast becoming a man. It begins when he encounters Auralia’s colors in a cave by Deep Lake and is calmed by them, able to be at peace for the first time in his life. An encounter with Cyndere and more exposure to colors awakens new desires in him, desires that wrestle with his powerful cravings. Desires to protect, to care, to think clearly, to rise above his carnality. Jordam starts to avoid Essence, even though the cravings twist him up inside. And the longer he stays away from it, the more human he becomes. In a brilliant and beautiful portrayal of what it means to be human, he starts to think in metaphors — to see the world artistically, poetically.

Scripture speaks of the war between flesh and Spirit and tells us that “to be carnally minded is death.” Yet we live in a world that promotes self-advancement above all things, that tells us just to follow our desires in order to be happy. If we want something deeply, it has to be right. But we don’t see that our fleshly desires, like Ryllion’s, are nothing more than carnal cravings dressed up in glitz and glamour. In the end, following them will make animals of us. God calls us to a higher way, the way Jordam begins to take — a way of self-denial for the sake of something greater and more beautiful than ourselves.

It’s in denying himself that Jordam becomes a man. But in what is very good news for all of us, the more human Jordam becomes, the more his desires actually start to change. Perhaps someday there will be no more cravings for Essence. No more ambition for evil. No more carnal drives. Perhaps someday Jordam’s desires will be entirely purified — just as, perhaps, someday ours will. And then, as Proverbs says, God will give us the desires of our hearts.

Christianity is sometimes charged with denying humanity, with trying to pull us all into some ascetic club that sucks all the joy out of life. But that’s not the truth at all. Christianity as Jesus lived it calls us not to deny our humanity, but to really become human again, to return to the fellowship with God that once made us so much more than the animals.

I don’t know how Ryllion and Jordam’s stories will end. I’m eagerly awaiting the final book in the series so I can find out. But in the meantime, they’ve given me a vivid way to think about humanity, temptation, sin, and desire. They’ve given me a new way to think about myself.

————–

And now, the contest details :).

As readers, writers need us. We may not realize that, but it’s true. They need us to buy their books so they can keep writing them, and they need us to spread the word about what they write. So here’s how this contest will go:

1. Choose a book you like with an author who is still living. No Jane Eyre or Anne of Green Gables this time.

2. Write a review of said book and post it to your blog or Facebook or GoodReads or Amazon or wherever (or even all of the above).

3. Post a link to your review in the comments section of THIS POST.

You have until May 6, exactly one week. May 6 also happens to be my birthday, so you can consider your reviews a present for me. I will put your names in a hat and pull one out, and if you win, I will send you a brand-new copy of Raven’s Ladder. If you haven’t read the rest of the series yet, hie thee to the nearest library (or better yet, bookstore — remember, writers need you!) and get cracking. Don’t start with the third book; trust me.

Happy reviewing!

And yesterday’s discussion continues, this time touching on editing, plot, fantasy as a genre, and influences. Enjoy!

Rachel: You once mentioned on Facebook that copyediting is one of your favourite parts of revision: I think you said you would turn the whole Auralia Thread into a long prose-poem if you could. Can you comment on that?

Jeffrey: Copyediting used to be agony for me. But the more I come to love poetry, the more I see that any sentence in the book is full of revelatory potential, and the more I like playing with the sounds and rhythms of each paragraph. So yeah, I’d prefer to have three years per book instead of eight months.

Rachel: Your work has strong literary sensibilities, yet you’re working in the much-maligned area of genre fiction. What drew you to fantasy rather than more “realistic” fiction?

Jeffrey: Let me give you a few quotes in answer.

Stanley Kubrick said, “I’ve always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized ‘realistic’ story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its ‘realist’ style.”

I completely agree with that. Fairy tales are, for me, some of the truest stories I know. They distill things down to such a concentrated, poetic truth. Yes, we live under a curse. Yes, we long for redemption. We are the beast, longing to be healed, and hungry for beauty. We are beauty, feeling compassion for the beast and sensing that there is something worth saving there. We are Sleeping Beauty, deceived into error, and suffering the consequences. We cannot save ourselves, so we have to hope for some kind of grace.

Tolkien said, “It was in fairy stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.”

That’s been my experience. And it goes on. In fantasy, we’re allowed to “play” with ideas in a childlike way that helps us apprehend the mysteries beyond the practical, beyond what is immediately available to ur senses. I think the world around us is meant to be read like poetry, and fairy tales help us train our senses for that kind of reading.

Rachel: You’ve pointed out before that there are some amazing writers working in fantasy, some real depth and artistic merit. Why does the genre still get such a bad rap?

Jeffrey: Well, trashy book covers don’t help. And in a consumer-driven society, people will exploit their audiences by fashioning their work to appeal to our baser appetites. Thus, most fantasy takes from Tolkien the violence, the epic battles, the grotesque monsters, but they don’t carry on the grand and glorious ideals that stand in such stark contrast to the darkness.

Our imaginations are more easily dazzled by perversion, by what is lurid and twisted and shocking, than by what is true and beautiful. Beauty requires us to do some work to comprehend it. In our busy culture, where so much is competing for our attention, whatever is loud and shocking will win out. So a lot of fantasy writers and illustrators, as in any genre, exaggerate whatever will grab people’s attention.

But I also think that as people get older, they feel threatened by the mystery of fairy tales. They grow to prefer portrayals of a world that they can understand and control. So they write off fairy tales as childish, because their ego has a desire to feel very grown up, sophisticated, and in control. Not me. I like Madeleine L’Engle’s perspective: I’m 39, but I’m also 5, and 7, and 14, and 21.

Rachel: The power and purpose of art is a major theme—if not the major theme—of the Auralia Thread. I have to ask: What works of art, be they fantasy novels, music recordings, movies, paintings, etc, have influenced you most? What have delighted you most?

Jeffrey: Bible stories, like the Joseph narrative and the Exodus, have sunk right into my marrow, I think—just as much as The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Dune, and especially Watership Down. The music of the language in those books, as well as in works I discovered later like Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels, and Patricia McKillip’s books from the last fifteen years—those have inspired me too.

But readers familiar with the music of contemporary bands and artists like U2, Over the Rhine, and Sam Phillips will find echoes of song lyrics here and there. And I’ve named some characters and musical instruments after some of them.

Rachel: I re-read both Auralia’s Colors and Cyndere’s Midnight before reading Raven’s Ladder, and in all three books I’m struck by how masterfully you handle plot. We never feel cheated, yet things rarely if ever turn out the way we expect them to. You are a master of surprises. Does that come naturally, or do you have to work hard to keep from falling into more predictable plots? To what extent do your plots surprise you?

Jeffrey: I suspect that I liked to play “peek-a-boo” when I was an infant. I love the kind of surprise that is both startling and yet the best possible outcome.

But I find that it won’t work if I decide those surprises ahead of time. It works best just to spend a lot of time writing about characters and their surroundings, and the surprises just suggest themselves.

I was writing a scene about the two thieves Krawg and Warney very, very quickly one afternoon, and I found myself writing about how they met, and what made them into thieves. I’d tried to imagine that story for years, and nothing felt right. But one day, following them into a certain predicament, the whole back-story just unfolded right in front of me like somebody putting on a slide show. I was totally surprised and delighted to learn about Warney’s childhood, his sisters, and how he was accused of being a thief from the moment he was born. I hope readers enjoy that scene as much as I enjoyed writing it.

But you throw away a dozen dissatisfying scenes just to get to one that feels like that one.

Rachel: I’m listening to Nathan Partain as I write these questions, thanks to a link from your Web site. Any connection between Nathan and the Bel Amican musician Partayn?

Jeffrey: I feel like you should win some kind of prize. Nathan and Sarah Partain used to lead music at my church, along with a guy named Rick Jensen. They would sing and play with such joy, such rapture, that it took my attention away from them and turned it toward the mysterious interplay of the ancient texts they were singing and the music they were discovering. It was one of the most profound artistic experiences of my life.

They’re making music elsewhere now, and there’s a big Partain-shaped hole in my heart. So I had to name the great musician of The Auralia Thread for them—although he also represents the spirit of Rick Jensen. Sometimes I’m tempted to give my characters long, complicated names in tribute to large groups of people!

Rachel: Jeffrey, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on so many subjects. This has been a great interview!

—–

This officially marks the end of our three-day tour, but I’m not done with Raven’s Ladder yet. Check back tomorrow for a more personal look at the story AND a chance to win a brand-new copy of the book for yourself.

A slight change to the planned schedule: as I revisited this interview, I realized that it is long and rich and worthy of being posted over more than one day. So this week my touring days are going to extend to Thursday, methinks :).

Today we discuss allegory, art, religion, and shockwyrms. The interview begins:

Rachel: The “one true religion” concept is common in Christian fantasy, although it’s more likely to be couched in political terms (the “one true king” idea) than presented as an actual religion. But Raven’s Ladder delves more deeply into false religions and their origins and powers than it does into the “true faith,” even showing how truth can be twisted into something deviant (I’m still thinking about the scene with Auralia’s Defenders). What inspired you to explore this territory?

Jeffrey: That’s a big question. So forgive me if I ramble on for a moment.

For me, the central questions in The Auralia Thread are about art. Writing these three books, I’ve found the characters stirring up a lot of those questions: Where does inspiration come from? Should an artist seek to please an audience, or focus solely on their work? What is going on when a work of art takes on a life of its own? Religion was never the primary subject.

But conversations about art and religion are intertwined. They both ask us to venture into mysterious territory. I’m not surprised that the characters around Auralia and her extravagant artwork have been struggling with questions about what they believe.

King Cal-raven realizes that Auralia’s colors suggest there is a better world somewhere within reach. That shakes up his assumptions about the world. He’s determined to follow those implications and lead his people to a better place. I can’t tell you how many times a good book or a good song has done that very thing for me.

Beauty restores my faith because it reminds me what is possible, and it trains me to read the world around me in such a way that I sense the design, the love, and things that—as Hamlet tells Horatio—“are not dreamt of in our philosophy.”

Beauty inspires us to awe, and makes us feel like we’re a part of something tremendous. But it also humbles us and makes us feel smaller. That can threaten a person’s ego, or their sense of control. Or it can be an exciting invitation to discovery. That’s what happens when Auralia’s colors are revealed to House Bel Amica.

So it makes sense to me that people in a consumer-driven society like House Bel Amica would react to Auralia’s colors by exploiting them for their own advantage. They try to control them, instead of responding to the possibilities they suggest. People do this with art and religion all the time. In the name of American “freedom,” we justify destructive behavior. In the name of Jesus or Mohammed, we justify all kinds of violence and prejudice. But if we take the claims of faith seriously, we’ll realize that it requires humility and sacrifice, and that is disturbing to us. We want to avoid that. So we pervert the original idea to suit ourselves.

Fore example, look at the flourishing industry of “Christian art.” It’s a huge industry. People love the name of Jesus, and so they’ll accept any shoddy, derivative art that has his name stamped on it. A lot of that art is designed to make them happy, to make them feel good, and to tell them things they agree with. “Christian art” is, in most cases, processed comfort food. It pleases them without requiring any change. But if they were really paying attention to the effect of Jesus on people around him, they’d realize that his presence did not make people comfortable. His ideas challenged them. He discomforted them. He made them wrestle with hard questions so that they would grow. The hope and love he revealed to them called them to sacrifice and commitment.

That’s what great art does.

But those artists who are really wrestling with Christ’s scandalous ideas—they produce something different that shakes up culture all around them. Look at Marilynne Robinson’s novels. Bach’s compositions. The politics of Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln, Films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Carl Dreyer, or Robert Bresson. The films of Andrei Tarkovsky. The poetry of John Donne, John Milton, or W.H. Auden. Annie Dillard’s nonfiction. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Art that is true and beautiful will not let us sit still. It will break us and humble us even as it gives us hope.

But we don’t want to be shaken up. So we excuse ourselves from dealing with big ideas by blaming the idiots who pervert those ideas. Conservatives mock John Edwards and his infidelity so they can put down liberals. Liberals mock George W. Bush’s lousy vocabulary just so they can bash conservatives. This shuts down progress and the hope of reconciliation. It’s a cop out. Fools do not falsify the truth they’re misrepresenting.

In the world of art, we need to be discerning, so that attractive art doesn’t seduce us into believing lies. At the same time, we need to be careful not to reject great ideas merely because they’ve been distorted into terrible art.

So, it made sense to me that in a free, consumer-driven society like House Bel Amica, people would take advantage of Auralia’s beautiful work in order to promote themselves and to deceive people. That’s so much easier than doing what Cal-raven does—respond to the art by changing his plan and taking terrible risks.

Rachel: In our age of The Secret and Disneyfied spirituality, the Bel Amican moon spirit religion is a bold statement. Thanks for making it.

Jeffrey: Thanks! Growing up, I learned right away that Disney movies—well, actually, American movies—wanted me to follow my heart. But my heart is “deceitful above all things.” Every mistake I’ve made, I could blame on the impulses of my heart. I need a compass that’s made out of something greater than my own skewed perspective.

I like the character of Ryllion a lot. He’s a monster, but he’s been taught to be a monster. He has a sense that he should respond to something greater than himself, so he falls for the lie of the moon-spirit religion. But the Seers tell him that the moon has given him all of his desires, so he should indulge them. That’s a road to self-destruction.

Rachel: In earlier interviews, you’ve said that you don’t like it when readers pigeonhole the characters into an obvious allegory—The Keeper as God the Father, Auralia as Jesus (Raven’s Ladder will certainly explode the notions of those who’ve done the pigeonholing despite your warnings). But I’m wondering if readers have just chosen the wrong allegory, or if you’re avoiding allegory altogether.

Jeffrey: I’m not really thinking about allegory while I write. I’m trying to think about what the characters would do in any given situation. When I stand back and look at the story, sometimes I see various possible interpretations. Some see it as a story about religion. That’s fine. Others see it as a story about art, and the prophetic role of the artist in culture, that’s fine too. I think that if I’ve done my job right, it will inspire different interpretations. Time will tell.

But if I feel that the story is just illustrating a lesson, then I’m doing a terrible job. The story, the characters, the particulars… they need to come first. A good parable will leave the listener or the reader in some measure of doubt about its precise application. That’s what wakes up the gray matter and gets us wrestling with a text. It’s what makes a story personal. It’s what makes a work of art stick.

You’re right, though. Anybody who took Auralia’s Colors as a simple religious allegory is in a position to be very surprised by Raven’s Ladder, I think. And the fourth book should do away with any notion that Auralia is Jesus. Perhaps her artistic endeavors have a redemptive influence in the world around her, but she’s a much more complicated character than just some cardboard messiah.

Rachel: The Expanse is full of strange creatures, even plants, and while you use their names you don’t always describe them—making the Expanse at once familiar and foreign. As a reader I’m sometimes frustrated that I can’t clearly picture the things you mention offhandedly. And I’m curious: can you? Do you know exactly what a gorrel looks like? A shockwyrm? A coil tree?

Jeffrey: Some people seem to like that, some don’t. I try to leave just enough hints to get the reader working with me at painting pictures. I love the idea that readers might come up with strikingly different illustrations of some of these critters. But there was one critic who went on a rant that I didn’t ever describe what vawns are like. I don’t think he read very closely. There are several passages about their raptor-like bodies, their colors, their scales, how they eat, what they sound like. You just have stay alert.

Gorrels—I see them as kind of a cross between a possum and a squirrel, with the occasional nasty effect of a skunk. A shockwyrm is kind of a cross between a rattlesnake and an electric eel. A coil tree—I could swear I’ve seen coil trees—broad, black trees that twist as they sprout branches, until they’re a swirl of rising, spiraling branches.

I know that I would write these books differently if I started over. What author wouldn’t? You learn as you go. So I’m still finding my way to a good balance of details and mystery.

——-

Readers, come back tomorrow for the rest of the interview, in which we’ll talk about the joys of copyediting, fantasy as an under-appreciated genre, art, and influences.  My thanks to Jeffrey Overstreet for his generous gift of time and thoughtfulness in answering my questions at length!

In the meantime, check out the other CSFF bloggers covering Raven’s Ladder this week. The links are in yesterday’s post.

Raven’s Ladder is the third book in the four-book Auralia Thread, a startlingly poetic, deeply spiritual fantasy series that begins with Auralia’s Colors and Cyndere’s Midnight

The story dawns on a displaced people: The people of House Abascar, led by the young king Cal-Raven and his faithful guardsman Tabor Jan, have moved into a network of caves after the collapse of their house in a cataclysmic earthquake. Cal-Raven dreams of building New Abascar according to his childlike dreams, filling it with the beauty glimpsed in Auralia’s colors and following the footsteps of the Keeper, a strange forest creature he has come to revere almost as deity—but which remains mysterious and out of reach.

An unexpected encounter with the Keeper charges Cal-Raven’s faith and sends him on a journey to find the perfect settling place for his people. But even as he travels into the north, a menace from the ground threatens the caves, and Tabor Jan is forced to lead the people out. The refugees are discovered by Bel Amica’s beastman-hunting Captain Ryllion, and they have no choice but to accept the hospitality of House Bel Amica—a wealthy and exotic house which, under the influence of the follow-your-heart moon-spirit religion, has become a sort of Vanity Fair.

Click here to read the rest of my review, originally written back in February when I received a complimentary copy of Raven’s Ladder. The review covers the basic (ha, ha) storyline and my overall opinions about the book.

It’s been a while since I could participate in the CSFF Tour, and I’m so glad to be back for this one! Since CSFF introduced me to the Auralia Thread during the Cyndere’s Midnight tour, Jeffrey Overstreet has become one of my favourite authors. I appreciate the beauty and skill of his writing, and I appreciate the depth to his stories and the way he explores the intersections of art and faith (as you know, that’s one of my major topics around here).

Jeff was kind enough to give me a fantastic interview back in February, which I will be publishing tomorrow as part of this tour. Wednesday will bring some sort of reflection from yours truly on Raven’s Ladder, AND I have a free copy of the book to offer a commenter. Stay posted as I devise a plan for the giveaway.

For today, the links:

Raven’s Ladder at Amazon (this is an affiliate link, so thanks for clicking.)

Jeffrey Overstreet’s Web site/blog: Jeff writes great fantasy, but he’s also a movie critic, so there’s lots of good stuff on his site.

And my fellow CSFF bloggers, with their opinions, reviews, and more. His books usually stir up some controversy, so this should be fun:

Brandon Barr
Rachel Briard (BooksForLife)
Keanan Brand
Beckie Burnham
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Ryan Heart
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Julie
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Donita K. Paul
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
Andrea Schultz
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
KM Wilsher

I love technology, in particular the Internet and personal computers. I used to fancy myself something of a Luddite, moaning about how I wished we could go back to the pre-Industrial Revolution days or at least move to Amish country, but no longer!

As a writer/editor/publisher, I am flat-down excited about the speed and efficiency and possibilities of our modern age. And as a Christian, I think it’s pretty cool that we can interact so freely online with people from all over the world. (Which inspires a short rant: the Net is NOT a place to use less care with your words;  it is a place to be more courteous, more reasonable, and more ready to give an answer — this here Internet is a mission field, people, so behave yourselves!)

My favorite piece of gadgetry is my new keyboard, which I bought yesterday at Staples because the spacebar on my laptop stopped working. I had to go back and fix the spacing in every other word. Do you know how horrendously that can slow a girl down? Anyway, I bought this new keyboard and it’s really comfortable and fast and I love it.

So now I want to hear from you: as writers and readers and just people, how do you feel about technology? What are your favourite gadgets or widgets or iThings? Weigh in!

P.S. Ironically, I couldn’t blog yesterday because of technical problems — first my cantankerous laptop keyboard, and then my site was down for a while. But I will keep posting on Tuesdays and Thursdays as a general rule! Except next week, when it’s time for the CSFF Tour for Raven’s Ladder. Yes!

Happy Tuesday, friends! Heather at Magical Ink has reviewed Worlds Unseen, declaring that “the story rules,” and also interviewed me. The interview was a lot of fun, covering everything from writer’s block to what my family would do “if you suddenly blurted out a random story idea at the dinner table,” so I hope you’ll check it out :).

Funny thing about interviews — when I was very young (like 8 ) and writing picture books, I used to imagine being interviewed on TV about them. Eventually I got old enough to realize this was kind of a silly thing. But over the last few years I’ve had a lot of fun being interviewed by various blogs and also on TV and radio. Apparently all the practicing I did as an 8-year-old has paid off!

It’s mid-April, and the Easter season has once again passed. I love Easter. I wish that as a church (the Protestant arm of it, anyway) we would make a bigger deal out of this season. I mean, Christmas takes over our lives for about a month, in our faces and our mouths and our hearts all season long. Easter always seems to come and then go almost before we’ve had time to think about it, just a blip in the calendar. And yet it marks something so incredibly significant.

Our Soli team performed “Glorious Day” for the last time on April 11, so the Easter season has JUST ended for me. But all that time backstage, praying that the Risen Lord would really manifest His presence and change lives during our performances, has challenged me anew to remember the resurrection and live as though it’s true each and every day. One of my “Glorious Day” lines says of the first Easter morning that “on the glorious morning of a glorious day, everything will change.”

Everything will change. Everything did change. What difference is that making in my life, or your life, today? What difference is it making in our relationships, in our writing, in our work, in our play, in our priorities?

I leave you with that thought today :).

P.S. You may notice a change in the blog schedule around here — I’m now posting Tuesdays and Thursdays (except during blog tours). Sometimes I will miss it, because, like last week, I travel or get sick or lose my Internet connection. But for the most part I should be pretty consistent!

In a comment on my recent “How I Revise a Novel” post, Rael asked,

I have a question.  Do you print each version as you change it?  My stories are quite a bit shorter than your SW Trilogy novels, and I can’t imagine the amount of paper and ink you could potentially go through!   I’d love to know at which stages you think hard copy is beneficial to be worth the trouble printing, and if there’s several stages at which it is, how in the world you keep everything organized!

~from an oft-unorganized lass~

I thought that was a great question and probably of interest to other readers, so allow me to answer it publicly. I usually print out the first draft to save my eyes because I already spend so much time on the computer doing other things :). This gives me a reward and sense of accomplishment (that huge pile of neatly printed paper is gratifying), which is important to personal motivation. I can read it in bed or wherever I’m comfortable, and it feels more like reading an actual book! But I don’t actually revise in that draft — I just read it and take notes on it. All the actual revision (the second draft) gets done on the computer.

The third draft (the nitpicky line edit) likewise gets done on the computer, reading out loud most of the way. If I’m being good I’ll print that out once I’m finished and proofread in hard copy, as I’m more likely to catch mistakes that way (it’s just something about seeing the words in a different format).

Often I only print a manuscript once; sometimes it will be printed twice. I title each one with the draft number and date (if you really want to keep track of things, put that info in a header at the top of each page). My foolproof way to keep from confusing various drafts is to get rid of each one once I’m done with it — I have many little sisters who are always hungry for scrap paper, so they get all my old material.

I advise against keeping hard copies of every single draft. It’s hard to let go of them, but really, it’s just paper — the real work is represented by that final draft.