Meet Beth Hilgartner

I discovered the joys of reading and imaginary worlds at a young age. All through my childhood, I always had a book (or more than one) I was reading. If (when I was 10, and still knew everything) some adult had asked me to tell them where books came from, I would probably have fixed them with my best 'what-are-you-an-idiot?' Look and replied: "The library," with an eye-roll and a sarcastic sigh. It had never, ever, occurred to me to wonder how books GOT to the library —at least, not until one of my teachers asked us all to write a story. I felt like someone had exploded a flashbulb (remember those?) in my face; I sat down (and alas, rather typically for me) didn't bother to listen to the rest of the assignment ("about an animal" the teacher had said), whipped out a notebook and scrawled across the top of the page: The War of the Sun and the Moon. And I was ... off. I had discovered J.R.R. Tolkien that year, so I started right in to do my own version of Epic Fantasy. It was terrible — but it was a lot of fun. And for a short, mouthy kid, with a lot of attitude, pretty much NO athletic ability, and a constitutional inability to back down, writing stuff (instead of saying it to the big bully) turned out to be a much better life strategy. 

I have always used my books to work out stuff in my life; I've also always concealed what I'm doing with a lot of fantastical razzle-dazzle. When I was a kid, this was a survival instinct. I was quick, impatient, smart (though probably not as smart as I thought I was), and mouthy, which got me into a lot of trouble with my peers. Once I started writing, though, I could cast the (current) mean kid as the dragon in my tale, and slice him (or her) into collops with my magical sword and feel much better about my life — and not actually need to say (out loud) any of the clever retorts that would get me slugged. I got more sophisticated with age, but I still use my books to work on things. 

For all that my stories frequently involve complicated plotting, I don't use outlines; I rarely know where a book is going when I start it; and lots of times, it heads in directions I never anticipated. I have (over the years) learned to trust my characters, and let the things they care about happen, even if at the point where the issue arises, it seems strange or superfluous to me. Later on, it almost always turns out that they were right; and in the (rare) instances where something still seems superfluous when the draft is done... well, that's what rewrites are for. 

I love first drafts, because I'm learning what's happening as I go. When it's going well, it sometimes feels like I'm reading a good book, and the first time I know what the characters are up to is when I read it off the computer screen. (It does not always go this well; sometimes, it's absolutely agonizing slog.) But it does mean that the "send in an outline and a sample chapter" model a lot of publishers and agents use is really not my jam. When I was working with Meisha Merlin on A Parliament of Owls, they'd written me a contract without insisting on seeing a draft first. This worked well for me, but it did mean that instead of having a manuscript to tinker with well in advance of having to deliver it, I was pretty frantically writing it to meet the deadline. The art director lined up a cover artist a while before the completed manuscript was actually due (or the draft was done, which I don't think he knew at the time). I got an email from the artist, asking if he could read the book so he'd know what to draw for the cover. I told him it wasn't finished, and he said I should send it along, anyway, and he'd make allowances. So I sent him what I had — from the beginning to about three quarters of the way through chapter 29 — and a week or two later, got an email back from him that was just one line: "Do they get out of the burning building?!" I sent him the rest of the draft (which, fortunately by that time was done) by return email. 

This gives you a bit of an idea of how I work. I'll post snippets, odd bits about what's going on in my life and work, and (possibly) more about where I've been (writing- or NOT-writing-wise) for the last 20 years or so. Check in on the News and Notes section; and if you follow me on BlueSky or Facebook, I'll post notices there whenever I post new material on this site. 

Happy reading!