I know what you’re thinking: Forbes, what the hell are you talking about? What do writing and cleaning have in common?

Answer: Absolutely nothing at all!

And that’s kind of the point. Here’s my (somewhat twisted) logic on this:

Writing a novel takes a long time. The core idea might be rattling around in your head for months or years before you start to write it down. Then there’s the time — again, at least several months — of figuring out the plot, characters, themes, etc. Then (for me) there’s writing an outline, and finally a draft of the book itself.

But even then you’re not done. You can tinker with it, rewrite, polish, rewrite again. If you’re lucky enough to have it accepted by a publisher, there are changes your editor will suggest (these are on top of the changes your agent has already probably suggested). You will have to review the copy-edited manuscript, and then the final proof copies. It will take literally years from the initial idea to the book reaching bookstore shelves.

So yeah, yeah, whatever, Forbes, you still haven’t explained how this ties to being a clean freak!

The gist of the above is that books take a long time to write, and if they never get published they never feel “done” even if you abandon them. That last, final step is hanging out there, forever incomplete.

But I can spend a couple of hours cleaning my house, and when I’m done it’s done! I have accomplished something, World! Hear me roar! I get a feeling of satisfaction and closure that for me is a pretty good payoff for a few hours spent vacuuming and dusting and mopping and scrubbing. It doesn’t hurt that I consider dust to be my arch-nemesis — I’ve been known to walk around with a Swiffer duster in one hand and my phone in the other, annihilating my enemies while chatting with my mom about her latest luncheon with the crazy Red Hat ladies.

So there you have it! The reason why writing has made me a clean freak!

My favorite scene is the suitcase armor. Now that is cool!

I realized I hadn’t really read much long-form zombie fiction. I bought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at the beach last year and while I appreciated the idea of the mash-up, I just couldn’t get into it and put it down without finishing it.

I thought about it some more and perused my bookshelves and came to the conclusion that I have not read any zombie novels.

I really have nothing against zombies. I said to Zombiejoe that I thought they probably worked better in movies than they do on the page, but that may be coming from my own lack of exposure and inability to imagine a good zombie book than a failure of the zombie genre.

Zombieland Rule#1: Cardio

I love movies like Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and 28 Days Later (and it’s sequel). I thought Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead was pretty killer, and I’d been prepared to despise it since the original was one of the seminal movies of my teen years. I guess I’ve always preferred to watch zombie mayhem than read about it.

So I’m going to ask for recommendations. What should I read? What are some good zombie novels out there that you think hold there own over a few hundred pages? I’m vaguely familiar with World War Z and a book called Xombies (though i guess barely aware would be more accurate). Tell me what you think are the books at the top of the genre (or sub-genre, or niche, or whatever) so I don’t have to do any work and figure it all out for myself. Use the comments here to let me know what you think are the best and why.

Let the recommendations commence!

I stopped by my ex’s house after work and talked to him a little more. He said the name calling has mostly gone away. He’s been ignoring them, which was going to be my advice to him (and thanks Katie and everyone else who offered this suggestion). I said to keep it up and not to respond no matter what they say. I also told him I wanted to know if it got worse, or escalated into hitting, but fortunately it doesn’t appear to be headed in that direction.

Again, thanks everyone for listening, and your suggestions. I will post updates on this subject from time to time as the situation warrants.

There’s nothing that kills forward momentum in a writing project more absolutely than reaching a point where you say to yourself, “Well, hell, I need to go research the Black Plague/nuclear weaponry/wormholes/World War II submarines/state parks in Minnesota/how dirigibles work/whatever.” Everything grinds to a halt while you scamper off to do your research, and gaining that momentum back can sometimes be difficult, especially if it gets interrupted again by the need for more research into something else you didn’t realize you didn’t know when you started writing.

Some writers just put in placeholders that read along the lines of [research whatever/add shit here], and that’s fine, unless there are later plot points or character developments that hinge on what you need to research now. If that’s the case, you’ll end up with an increasingly note-riddled story with big chunks of potentially very important information missing. This can get really ugly, and makes the second drafts more work than they otherwise should be (or that I would like them to be).

I do my research during the outline phase. By writing the outline in such detail, I realize that, “Oh, yeah, I’d better get some info on djinns and machine pistols.” There’s no real momentum in an outline, so there’s nothing to break or interrupt. I expect the outline to be rather slow and tedious. I don’t mind stopping to go look stuff up. It means when I sit down to write the first draft that I can motor through it pretty quickly because all of the hard decisions and research have already been done. It also means that my first drafts are pretty clean, and don’t change a lot from first to final. (Note: there are always changes, whether brought about by me, suggestions from my agent, or my editor, but they usually aren’t of the “this whole section doesn’t work get rid of it” or “all of this needs to be rearranged” variety.)

I realize that there are writers who research big chunks of stuff before they ever start writing. Kat Richardson and Cherie Priest just embarked on a really interesting road trip that will help both of them with research on future projects. And that’s great, and definitely helps, and works for other writers. If you know your book is going to involve a character who’s a funeral director, go out and research the hell out of that business before you even get started. You’ll probably end up with more information than you’ll use, but that’s okay, and a perfectly valid way to operate.

There will still probably be stuff that crops up later that I didn’t expect, but the number of those pesky little incidents are definitely lessened compared to what would happen if I wrote shorter outlines or didn’t outline at all.

His recent few posts have been about the business side of writing. His latest post is about how books are sold. For anyone interested in how this works — what rights writers have, what rights they give up, and the details of an actual book contract with a publisher — should head on over and check it out.

Here is, for me, one of the key passages of his post that many people outside the biz simply don’t understand:

When you “sell your novel” to a major publisher (or even a small one), what you are actually selling is the right to reproduce the work in a variety of specified formats in the English language in certain designated territories for a specified duration. In return for signing the ten-to-fifteen page contract, you receive royalties, which may vary depending on the format and the volume of sales, usually based on the publisher’s net receipts from the work. You may also receive an advance against royalties: this is effectively a loan against the anticipated value of your future royalty earnings.

Note that sensible authors do not negotiate contracts themselves, unless they have a day job as an intellectual property lawyer; they go through a literary agent. Literary agents have a lot more experience of contractual negotiations in publishing than any author, usually have a contract lawyer on tap, and their relationship with the author is a symbiotic one: that is, they take a percentage of the author’s cut, so they have a vested interest in maximizing the author’s income. (SF author Tobias Buckell’s survey suggests that agented first novels receive advances that are on average nearly twice the size of unagented novels; the literary agent’s cut is typically 15%. This is one of the reasons why authors use agents.)

There’s a lot more. Head on over to check out the post in it’s entirety.

This post is actually part three of a series.

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

You don’t necessarily have to read them in order, but anyone interested in commercial writing should absolutely read all of them.