{"id":1240,"date":"2021-05-21T02:04:56","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T10:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=1240"},"modified":"2021-05-20T21:15:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T05:15:06","slug":"naming-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2021\/05\/21\/naming-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"Naming Favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago I heard someone ask Vonda N. McIntyre which of her novels was her favorite. Her answer? \u201cThe one I\u2019m working on now.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that she meant that she was most excited about that particular book, the one she finished just before she died. It is a brilliant book.<\/p>\n

But I took it more generally to mean that whatever she was working on at the time someone asked that question would be her favorite.<\/p>\n

I like that idea, though I suspect it\u2019s rather a romantic one. After all, writers who become known for certain books often find themselves in a position where they have to keep writing them long after they\u2019re sick of the subject.<\/p>\n

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes so that he could quit writing those stories, but it didn\u2019t work. I suspect strongly that his favorite Holmes story \u2013 assuming he hadn\u2019t become so sick of doing the work that he didn\u2019t like any of them by the end \u2013 would not have been any of the later ones he wrote.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure many other authors have felt something similar, though they\u2019ve kept it to themselves since people were paying them to keep writing the same thing. After all, most writers need the money. <\/p>\n

But Vonda wrote a lot of different books and she spent a lot of time researching them, something that also gave her pleasure. I can see her being obsessed with each one, loving it even as she struggled to make the words fit her vision.<\/p>\n

(I also heard Vonda say something to the effect that there are rules to writing a novel but no one knows what they are, so I\u2019m pretty sure even she struggled with what she was doing from time to time.)<\/p>\n

\"For<\/a>I have a book coming out June 1 \u2013 For the Good of the Realm<\/em>, from Aqueduct Press<\/a> \u2013 and in the interest of self promotion I should certainly tell everyone that it is my favorite book.<\/p>\n

I am, indeed, very happy with it. It started out to be a simple adventure story and ended up being a more complex tale. And for all that it\u2019s about swordswomen and power struggles, it is, at heart, a rather gentle book.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty impressed that I could write a gentle book. I\u2019m also pretty sure that\u2019s not what I thought I was doing. But it seems to be what I did.<\/p>\n

(I certainly don\u2019t know what the rules are for writing a novel. I just write until something comes together.)<\/p>\n

But if you asked me right now about my favorite of my works, I\u2019d be hard-pressed to know how to answer. For one thing, it makes me feel like the parent asked which is their favorite child.<\/p>\n

Even if you have one, you might not want to admit it. And since I\u2019ve only got two novels out there, I\u2019d feel guilty choosing one over the other.<\/p>\n

(Also, the previous one, The Weave<\/em><\/a>, is still in print, so I wouldn\u2019t want to discourage anyone from buying it by bragging solely on the new one. I like what I did in that book, too.)<\/p>\n

I might, though, be willing to say the book I like best isn\u2019t written yet. Because I have this idea, one I\u2019ve been working on for years. Right now the written parts are a jumble of pieces that certainly don\u2019t qualify as the best of anything.<\/p>\n

But if I can ever put it together, I think it might be the best of my work. As long as it only exists in my head, it\u2019s easy to believe that.<\/p>\n

And maybe thinking that it could be my favorite book will make me finish writing it.<\/p>\n

Which might have been what Vonda was really talking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago I heard someone ask Vonda N. McIntyre which of her novels was her favorite. Her answer? \u201cThe one I\u2019m working on now.\u201d It\u2019s possible that she meant that she was most excited about that particular book, the one she finished just before she died. It is a brilliant book. But I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,18],"tags":[195,274,273],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","category-writing","tag-for-the-good-of-the-realm","tag-the-weave","tag-vonda-n-mcintyre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1243,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/1243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}