Author Archives: Jeannie Lin

I'm researching, honest!

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I just had a breakthrough. I realized why I’m stuck in my current WIP. I had all this research about the Tang capital of Changan, but once I left the city, the geography becomes vague. As a result, two of my books became plagued with what I’ll call “stuck in the forest” syndrome.  The characters travel through nebulous trees and mountains and rivers until they emerge in the inhabited world.

I’ll blame the wuxia trope for part of it. A huge component of those stories were travel. Technically, the fictional world where all those stories take place is Jianghu which simply means “rivers and lakes”. If you think of Tolkien’s Middle Earth as the characters traipse through Hobbiton and all the surrounding lands on their way to Mordor, that’s sort of what Jianghu is. And, with all due respect, Tolkien had a bit of “stuck in the forest” syndrome too. 🙂

So early on as a writer, I was criticized for becoming bogged down in description. As a result, I started glossing over details to skip to external action. But then, I was always given a lot of positive feedback for description.  I think I learned something in the course of writing the subsequent books. I learned how to move my characters through Jianghu, through places and settings that were important.  But now I’m back here, back at Book #1 and I realize I’ve got to get these characters out of the forest because Jianghu has more interesting adventures to offer them.

So I’m researching, honest! And not ummm…wasting time on the Internet when I should be writing.

Here’s a quick tour through some ancient sites. It’s amazing what they do with digital animation. *sigh*

Jianghu

Thank you notes

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I received a very nice thank you note from a contestant I judged yesterday. I gave her a perfect score, which is actually not too rare for me even though we’ve already established that I’m the hanging judge. When a story clicks, it clicks. But this letter was really uplifting because the author had been through so many ups and downs (like all of us) and had decided this was going to be her last run for the gold after writing forever. After doing so well in this contest, she decided to enter the Golden Heart® this year and I have no doubt I’ll see her sometime, somewhere…soon.

It reminded me of my contest warpath. I always forwarded thank you notes when I could. When the contests were mostly paper based, I wrote paper notes and mailed them. I’m surprised how few thank yous I’ve received for judging. Someone had told me it was good etiquette to thank judges and that stuck with me.

Sure, sometimes I get the terse “Thank you for judging. Your comments were interesting.” But that’s fine too. 🙂

In any case, I’ve actually had past judges seek me out after Butterfly Swords finaled to ask if this was me and to congratulate me.  If nothing else, it’s a way to connect. This really is such a small, small world in this business.

When you’re running a marathon, random people will cheer you on by saying things like “Looking good” and “See you at the finish line.” You know they’re just trying to be nice, but it actually helps. Whenever I got a contest entry back with all those lovely comments, whether they liked or disliked my writing, and they ended with “Hope to see this on the shelves” or “This needs work”, it really helped me. The harshest judges comments are a hundred times better than getting a form rejection. Because now you have somewhere to go.