I am so glad that I watched this today. Very inspiring and it makes me feel so much better about my work to hear that bit about "the roughest first draft". Like Leigh, I didn't really realize that my process is the same as many authors: writing a rough first draft and then going back to make it good in the subsequent drafts.
I loved the Grishaverse stories. I never have any trouble reading stuff graded as YA and I thought Bardugo stuff couldn't get any better. Then Bardugo came out with her "adult" Alex Stern series. Read Ninth House as soon as it came out, had some trouble getting into Ninth House but enjoyed it. Then by the time Hell Bent came out, it had gotten a bit fuzzy and I had this incomplete unsatisfied feeling by the time I finished Hell Bent even though the story, characters and prose are pure magic. It seems I am not the only one not getting it and some reviews blame it on Bardugo, but I knew I just wasn't getting it so I went and read Ninth House over and the Hell Bent over in pretty close sequence. Hallehja. The flashbacks make it a little harder to get into and this series is a little more challenging in that way than the Grishaverse stories, and it is amazingly compex, but worth the journey. Don't blame the author. READ IT ALL TWICE. It doubles your enjoyment and you know how hard it is to find a good book sometimes.
I am so glad that I watched this today. Very inspiring and it makes me feel so much better about my work to hear that bit about "the roughest first draft". Like Leigh, I didn't really realize that my process is the same as many authors: writing a rough first draft and then going back to make it good in the subsequent drafts.
I loved the Grishaverse stories. I never have any trouble reading stuff graded as YA and I thought Bardugo stuff couldn't get any better. Then Bardugo came out with her "adult" Alex Stern series. Read Ninth House as soon as it came out, had some trouble getting into Ninth House but enjoyed it. Then by the time Hell Bent came out, it had gotten a bit fuzzy and I had this incomplete unsatisfied feeling by the time I finished Hell Bent even though the story, characters and prose are pure magic. It seems I am not the only one not getting it and some reviews blame it on Bardugo, but I knew I just wasn't getting it so I went and read Ninth House over and the Hell Bent over in pretty close sequence. Hallehja. The flashbacks make it a little harder to get into and this series is a little more challenging in that way than the Grishaverse stories, and it is amazingly compex, but worth the journey. Don't blame the author. READ IT ALL TWICE. It doubles your enjoyment and you know how hard it is to find a good book sometimes.