January 21, 2016

Cutting down to the bones makes your writing stronger

It's scary to go by your gut when you hardly have experience writing and consider yourself a rookie and tend to look up to the masters and doubt your every decision and agonize, agonize, agonize. You really start to bloom when you stop agonizing, and you don't stop agonizing until you learn to trust your gut. And that is very hard. How can you trust it when there are all these other writers who know better? You think they know better because they've been writing longer than you, they wrote more books than you, better books than you, and so on. You can drive yourself crazy thinking these thoughts.

I'm certainly nowhere near trusting my gut fully yet, but it comes in waves and it happens more often. The latest test of that trust is happening right now in the shape of me hacking and slashing and cutting and ripping at the second draft of TUBE whilst making it into Draft 3, which is resulting in prose that is so lean and minimal and bony that it makes me scared, and yet somewhere in the darkest farthest corners of my gut I feel that what I'm doing is right.

January 8, 2016

Excerpt from TUBE, Draft 3

by Ksenia Anske

I'm writing again, at last, and many things are new. The calm is new. The lack of anxiety is new. It's weird. I don't know where it's coming from. I no longer force myself to produce 2K words a day, though I count daily words still, as a way of giving myself an idea of how much I wrote. I write about 5 hours a day, roughly from 9AM till 2 PM, and for the first time I'm writing into a new clean file, occasionally glancing at the old file for Draft 2. It's curiously liberating. I don't have to adhere to the old structure nor do I have to write over old stuff and fix it. I can write fresh.

This is something, I tell you. I'm loving it. At the pace I'm going, this draft should be done in about 2 months, and it will need one more draft (to polish it) before publishing. I'm cutting out A LOT and simplifying A LOT. So far 89 pages are gone, and I'm only on page 31.

If you want to read my daily writing, pledge $1 per month on Patreon, and voila! YOU WILL BE PLAGUED BY NIGHTMARES. So here it is for you, the opening.

November 26, 2015

How to persevere when you think your writing is shit

by Ksenia Anske

"Hi Ksenia! I'm currently writing my second novel. The first one was so easy; such a continuous rush of excitement and inspiration and creativity. But this one... is very different. It's the first time I've lost all faith in my writing and thought that it all is pure shit, and wondered how I'll ever be able to turn this into something readable. I feel like just giving up. How do you do it? Are you ever faced with these moments of despair and futility in your writing? You are so goddam inspiring—you've made a career out of writing books all by yourself, in a language that isn't even your native tongue! That amazes me. I'm hoping you might be able to pass on some wisdom to me. Thank you!"

Hi Spencer! Thank you for asking this difficult question. We like to boast about the rush of writing but we don't like as much to talk about the other side of it, do we? We like to hide, to pretend, to blame writers' block, or whatever. Most of the time we do it quietly, we the non-social creatures who don't like to air out our personal problems in public which is why we like to write fiction in the first place, right? And the truth is, most of the time after we decide that what we write is so bad there is no point in continuing, we quit. And that's a shame. So many books could've been written. So many books never get finished because of this fucking internal police.

August 9, 2014

IRKADURA excerpt, Draft 4

by Ksenia Anske

My heart is jumping out of my chest as I'm typing this, because with this book I've been through a herd of frolicking flamingoes and I thought at first they were nice and sweet and pink and then they turned into black fucking ravens and stripped me off my skin and opened their terrible mouths and, well...I HAVE FINISHED THE DAMNED BOOK YESTERDAY but what I mean to say here is, when I wrote the 1st draft, some people loved it, but the one to whom I dedicated it didn't (and rightfully so, it was shitty) and suggested improvements, and so I wrote the 2nd draft, and some people liked it a lot, and I got more notes on how to improve it, and then I wrote the 3rd draft, and I had some people outright tell me they fell in love with it, and now I finished the 4th draft, and it has changed so much, that I'm scared shitless. I do hope I didn't toil for nothing for 7 months, so you tell me what you think. I can tell you that I'M SO FUCKING HAPPY I'M DONE WITH THIS BOOK, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

If you want to compare, here are the versions:

Draft 1 opening - people told me it was like chick lit/women's fiction type stuff, and it's in 3rd person.
Draft 2 opening - people told me it was like historical fiction with an element of horror. I added a magical realism layer.
Draft 3 opening - people told me this turned raw and fresh and it's a psychological thriller. I changed from 3rd person to 1st person and went bonkers.
Draft 4 opening - people told me that the word choice and the imagery is so intense, it makes them want to cry and it's a masterpiece (WUT?? Totally not).

See for yourself. I'm beyond terrified now, and I wonder what this book would've been like if I didn't publicly post the drafts and listened to feedback. Probably something else entirely. I've sent it off to my lovely editor who says I should have it back sometime in October, so to those of you who pre-ordered it, I think I will have paperback copies in November. Thank you for waiting!

IRKADURA

A Novel by Ksenia Anske, Draft 4

Chapter 1. Mouse

I wake up and feel for the boar. The boar is Lyosha Kabansky, mama’s boyfriend. He’s there all right, snoring. It’s September first. I don’t need to go to school anymore and I could’ve slept in, but I’m leaving. He tried to sell me yesterday. He said, “Irkadura, this is Vova. You know what to do. I’ll give you a ruble for some ice cream.” I wouldn’t do it, so he beat me. Then they had me. They took turns, Lyosha and Vova. Drunk.
I turned into a mouse to escape them. It’s easier that way.
I’m sixteen and I’m mute.

July 26, 2014

4 emotional stages of writing a book

by Ksenia Anske

What follows is fiction and it's fiction of my own creation so don't somehow assume that it's some sacred truth because it isn't because I made it up. It's a total lie and so I wanted to get it off my chest right away and now I feel better and you feel better and we're both ready to continue. Great. What I'm going to make up is 4 emotional stages of writing a book and I promise you I haven't read about this anywhere and it's based on my own personal writing experience which is not very big, really. Only 2 years. Therefore, what follows needs to be read with caution and with an uninhibited mind. Deal? Deal. Now, this is what happened in the last few weeks.

In the last few weeks I've been whining all over social media about how hard it is for me to write IRKADURA and bla-bla-bla and I even celebrated the finishing of the 3rd draft thinking it was the last when it wasn't and now I'm writing the 4th draft. Funny, I know. Laugh all you want. What is even funnier is that no matter how bravely I tried to put up a happy facade online and joke and do my usual silly stuff, people have noticed. Here is what I got from concerned readers.