I'd be flattered if someone said that my work is "too weird" for... by Kelly Link

I'd be flattered if someone said that my work is "too weird" for them. I value the uncompliment.

Kelly Link

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Categorized in : Said Ifs Flattered

You get a lot of narrative energy from people who make really big mistakes, who act against their best interests, who do things that turn out to have serious consequences. It's very hard make a story out of people doing the right thing over and over again.

narrative mistake people

Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends. by Kelly Link

Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends.

wizards ends knows

You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buri... by Kelly Link

You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buried it in the first place.

buried life firsts

Look. All books are weird when you think about it.... It goes without saying that real life is also weird.

real book thinking

It's very unlikely that a writer is going to make a living by writing. So then the question is: how do you balance work, life, and writing? If you find out, please tell me.

unlikely balance writing

I don't think I'm cut out for a job where you have to look professionally tidy. I prefer working in my pajamas and taking showers after lunch.

cutting jobs thinking

Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl.

girl reading stories

So yes, this is a show about an adolescent girl, her friends, and various vampires. Vampires writing in diaries, vampires attending high school, vampires investigating various mysterious supernatural events, vampires tormenting each other, vampires eavesdropping on each other, and vampires being sarcastic about other vampires' hairstyles. Vampires embracing every possible opportunity to take off their shirts.

girl sarcastic school

Most of My Friends are two-thirds water by Kelly Link

Most of My Friends are two-thirds water

thirds water two

Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without... by Kelly Link

Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without the proper goodbyes.

series goodbye life

Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead. Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that part of you.

faster enough moving

Sometimes it is safer to read maps with your feet. by Kelly Link

Sometimes it is safer to read maps with your feet.

maps feet sometimes

No wizard has ever made himself useful by magic, or, if they've tried, they've only made matters worse. No wizard ever stopped a war or mended a fence. It's better that they stay in their marshes, out of the way of worldly folk like farmers and soldiers and merchants and kings.

soldier kings war

We are sitting on our honeymoon bed in the honeymoon suite. We are in a state of honeymoon, in our honey month. These words are so sweet: honey, moon. This bed is so big, we could live on it. We have been happily marooned -- honey marooned -- on this bed for days.

bed moon sweet

Everyone has a bizarre childhood and unusual life experiences, whether they know it or not. There's no such thing as a normal childhood. What's useful in writing weird fiction is learning how to understand and articulate those moments of personal, particular strangeness.

childhood normal writing

I'm grateful when stories come in a rush, although I keep an eye on them afterwards, to see whether they hold together. It's harder to judge the ones that took so long to finish. With those, I've lost perspective. Mostly I'm just glad that I can be done with them.

perspective grateful eye

The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method.

sparks panic editors

When you're Dead ... you stay up all night long. by Kelly Link

When you're Dead ... you stay up all night long.

up-all-night night long

I spend a lot of time loathing the sentences that I put down on the page. Once I'm past that phase, it doesn't really matter what the routine is (coffee shop, someone else's house, my dining room table), I'm pretty fast. I go back to the start of whatever I'm working on, every half hour or so, and revise my way back to where I left off. I have my headphones on, I'm checking email, I look at Twitter and Tumblr, and drink a lot of coffee. I need a lot of distraction to work.

coffee house past

I built a cannon out of ice, and wrapped myself in the funeral carpet which my husbands and wives had woven for me out of their own hair, and one of my wives was my gunner. I came back here, after many adventures, and once, when I'd been drinking, donated the funeral carpet to the national museum. When I was sober again, I asked for it back, but they claimed not to know what I was talking about.

husband drinking adventure