Daniel José Older Profile picture
Sep 8, 2017 21 tweets 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
when you finally finish that book
at the @BNUnionSquareNY event with @LBardugo someone asked how you know when a book is done. It's a great question. WHEN YOU TYPE THE END jk
WHEN YOU'RE DONE WORKING ON A BOOK:
1. don't be a perfectionist
2. write the best book you can
3. It takes a village
4. trust your gut
there's a difference between when you're done working on a book and when the book is done.
Because edits. It is a collaborative process.
if you train yourself to trust your instincts, they will become trustworthy. This is important, because there's no simple equation for Done.
sometimes you're just fuckin' done
but in that moment, there can be an impulse to hide the manuscript instead of sending it out. And then just never doing anything with it.
Fear of success can be as terrifying and paralyzing as fear of failure. Or maybe they're one in the same
1. It's probably much better than you think it is
2. You can send it to a beta-reader instead of an agent/editor first
3. In fact you should
but don't hide it from the world forever.
Manuscripts, like dreams, fester and mold when you defer them.
And then they explode.
ultimately, the process requires of us what's pictured in the gif that starts this thread: we must learn to let go.
but put that on the list of crucial skills they somehow never mention in writing classes right beside listening and power analysis.
A beta-reader is someone who reads to give you feedback. I advise it be someone you're not shmanging in any capacity
not that people you're shmanging shouldn't read your work in early drafts. Just make sure some people who you're not are reading them too.
I've chopped a whole-ass 2/3 of a book and reworked the entire mythology and plot from ground up. That was the most.
anyway, rounded out this week of bouncing btwn edits on one book and words on another finishing this round of edits and sending it in :-)
so all that stuff was on my mind.
It's a new process every time.
Which is why as a writer you gotta keep your machete sharpened.
feel me?
"Oh you're a writer? Have you written anything I might've heard of?"
Me:
#TheLastJedi revealed
This question is seriously the equivalent of finding out someone does Karate and asking if they can beat you up

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More from @djolder

Aug 22, 2018
I'm happy Crazy Rich Asians is doing so well at the box office but like it...I didn't...it wasn't my jam, personally
there were a lotta Male Writing Rom-Com tells in it, most notably the EXTREMELY PERFECT DUDE who was also completely trash and lied to her for their whole relationship but never had to deal with that fact at all and that bugged me :-/
I get that the tension and comedy of rom-coms is often premised on a lie, and I never care much for that aspect personally, b/c in real life a lie is a shoddy foundation to base a relationship on, but ok it's movies, relax, yeah yeah...
Read 46 tweets
Jul 29, 2018
Blasphemy. The semicolon is the sexiest form of punctuation; it is the sweet inbetween.
Also a very sexy punctuation mark — it's true. Someone should make a calendar.
I do caution some sparseness with the semicolon whereas I use the em dash is like garlic: spread liberally throughout
Read 6 tweets
Jun 14, 2018
As folks begin to mobilize around this, and there needs to be mobilization around this, please study and connect to the prison abolitionist work @prisonculture and others have been doing. This is both a carceral state issue and an immigration one.
Organizing, like any creative endeavor, is a journey of finding your voice. It is intensely personal. It is a marathon not a sprint. It requires both being quiet and being loud. It is what this moment asks of us. Find your voice, and then lift it.
which is to say, there isn't ONE THING organizing is or isn't. It's what you do and the intentionality you bring to how you do it. It's your analysis but also how you walk with that analysis, how you carry it. What it means to you. How you place yourself and move.
Read 13 tweets
Feb 5, 2018
"How many students chose slavery as the reason the South seceded?
Eight percent."
Our schools continue to fail to teach any semblance of what really happened in American history, often because of white teachers' discomfort.

n.pr/2GEsQR8
☝Speaking of how badly America tells its own story to itself...👇
I'm really really really excited to announce my new Middle Grade series DACTYL HILL SQUAD on @MrSchuReads. In it, a bunch of kids from the Colored Orphan Asylum ride dinosaurs around Civil War era New York mrschureads.blogspot.fr/2018/02/cove-r…
Read 23 tweets
Oct 31, 2017
4 years ago this week I left my life as a medic behind forever after a decade on the job. This is clearly the cover of my unmade mixtape...
you can read some of my ambulance adventures here danieljoseolder.net/category/blog/…
you may notice the voice is mysteriously similar to a certain half-dead protagonist in my adult Urban Fantasy series...shocking, I know...
Read 28 tweets
Sep 8, 2017
Commemorating #StarTrekDay by rewatching The Phantom Menace for the first time
some literal ass no sense of humor having ass #WellActually McGee coming into my mentions to tell me that's SW not ST in 5432...
lmao Anakin's mom is like yeah he has no dad I just got pregnant like kaboom and Qui Gon's all mmk
Read 16 tweets

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