September 2008 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Progress comes slowly

I feel like today was fairly productive. I finished all the homework that’s due tomorrow, put in three hours at the writing lab, went to all my classes, got up early, and now I’m going to bed relatively late, after writing for about two hours.

However, I still wasn’t able to get all the writing done that I’d have liked. Edited another six pages of Phoenix. Didn’t write a wikidpad article for Hero. Didn’t put in another 500 words in that story.

I’ve noticed, though, that I’m starting to think a lot more about my writing, especially after yesterday. While walking around on campus (and during the more boring parts of my classes) I was thinking about what I should do in the next few pages, how I should edit this particular scene–actually putting myself in the scene and trying to visualize it.

In short, the momentum is building. When I got back from working out, I was able to sit down and dive straight into the story. No procrastinating. No avoidance behavior. It was nice.

And then, what felt like five minutes later, I got this pop up message on my screen that the LRC was closing in only one minute and that I was about to be kicked off. Talk about panic! I wasn’t able to eject my disc safely, so when I got back to the FLSR I literally ran to my computer to check if I’d lost the story.

Thank goodness, it was still there, but my roommate Basseem had quite a laugh.

Now I just have to get that momentum going on my other project. If I can freaking find the time. I haven’t even figured out what I’m going to do as far as dating this week–and heck, if I don’t consciously make it a priority, I know that it won’t happen. There are a few girls I’d like to ask out, but no specifics or anything.

Man, I can’t afford avoidance activity or procrastination anymore! There’s just not enough time. But…shoot! That means I have to be constantly putting myself out there! Argh!

I’m sure that all of this is good for me. Probably a little bit more good than I’d like.

In the meantime, I don’t believe in writing boring, useless blog posts anymore, so here is something interesting I found the other day. It’s a customizable podcast for the scriptures. Basically, when you sign up you create a personalized podcast feed for any of the standard works, so that you can download the scriptures one chapter at a time (or two or three) as often as you would like. It’s basically like podiobooks, except for the scriptures.

So anyways, that’s what’s going on over here. It’s 1:30 am, and I have a class that starts in six and a half hours. G’night!

Maybe I spoke too soon…

Yeah, I thought that six pages a day wouldn’t be that hard for the rewrite of The Phoenix of Nova Terra. Well, I might be wrong.

After a really awesome and refreshing Sunday, I sat down around 10:00 pm to work on Phoenix. I thought that I’d spend maybe half an hour or an hour working on that, which would get me excited to work on the other projects. After all, six pages isn’t that much, right?

Well, it’s 2:00 am and I’m signing off, after getting through about nine or ten pages only. Man, it was difficult. Satisfying, but difficult. I didn’t even have time left over to get to Hero in Exile. Dang!

It probably didn’t help that I had facebook open the whole time. I think I spent an hour and a half just chatting with various friends. Even though it was distracting, it was fun. I found out that one of the kids from the Amman branch got his mission call…to San Jose California! Awesome! And chatted with a few other friends who I haven’t talked with in a while. It was fun…but very distracting.

A day has not gone by since the beginning of this semester wherein I have accomplished all of my daily goals. That’s kind of frustrating. I got two out of three today–six pages in Phoenix and an article on the wikidpad for Hero. I hate writing those articles, but they are actually extremely helpful because they make me think about that story. Prewriting sucks, but when you put your ideas down on paper, the exercise makes you see things that follow logically from your story elements, which affect other elements, which come back around to give you good ideas of new things to put in your story. Hero will probably be a much stronger novel than Phoenix because of all this.

But yeah, it’s late. I must sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppp.

Letter to the Daily Universe

My roommate Matt wrote this awesome letter to The Daily Universe last year (scroll down to the heading “Message for Sisters” to read his letter), and garnered some incredibly hilarious responses from the BYU community. He struck a tightly strung chord in this community, something that everyone here at BYU spends a lot of time thinking about: dating.

Well, I figured that I have something I’d like to say on this subject, so earlier this week I drafted a letter of my own. I haven’t actually looked at the submission guidelines for letters to the editor, so I’ll probably have to shorten this quite a bit, but I wanted to post the full version here in case anyone’s interested. Enjoy!

When girls complain that they don’t get asked out on dates, we are quick to find fault with the guys and slow find fault with the girls.I believe this is a mistake.While it is true that a lot of the stinging criticism leveled at the guys is true and valid, there are many things that the girls do to turn off potential admirers.With regards to that, here are five general principles for dating that I believe every girl at BYU should know and follow:

1.Everyone is worth a first date.

Of all of Elder Oak’s dating counsel, the point we ignore the most is that a first date is not a big deal.Relax.Have fun.Give it a chance.How do you know that it can’t work out?And even if it probably won’t, at least it’s a great learning opportunity.No one is too far beneath you for a first date.

2.If you turn down a first or second date, no matter the excuse, it says “I’m not interested in dating you.”

Ambiguity is more painful than rejection.Even if your excuse is legitimate, guys will assume the worst.They may ask you out again, after some time, but they will be much slower to do so.On the other hand, if you want to communicate disinterest, turning down a second date is the polite way to do it.

3.If a guy asks you on a date and the time does not work for you, the way to say no without communicating complete lack of interest is to suggest an alternative time and activity.

If you have an honest scheduling conflict but are interested in dating him, do this and you erase the painful ambiguity that makes him reluctant to ask you out again.Besides, it is polite and very classy.

4.Backing out of a date at the last minute not only says “don’t date me,” it is inconceivably rude and extremely unattractive.

Guys step up to the plate by taking the initiative; girls step up to the plate by following through.If you are guilty of backing out after saying yes, you have absolutely no right to complain that guys don’t ask you out enough.Quite frankly, you are getting what you asked for.

If something genuinely does come up and you must cancel at the last minute, remember principle three.Show by your actions that you are not flaking out just because you got cold feet.

5.If you rudely turn down one guy, others will hear about it.

Guys are not as aloof as you think.We have our social networks and we talk with our friends about our dating experiences just as much as you do.Keep that in mind when someone out of left field asks you out.The word gets around.

Please know that I don’t mean to blame the girls at BYU for not getting asked out.Too many guys at this university aren’t man enough to step up to the plate.At the same time, the girls are not beyond the need for repentance.I’ve found, in my experience, that these five principles work, and I sincerely believe that if every girl in this university followed them, not only would we all date more, but we would all have a lot more fun.

New job!

This past week I just started a new job at BYU. I’m a writing advisor for the FHSS (Family of Home and Social Sciences) writing lab. It’s GREAT! I help students work on their papers and work on their writing skills, and I really love it.

How I got this job is an interesting story. Honestly, it was really just a series of flukes that ended up working beautifully. I was just in the right time at the right place and fell into it.

It began when I went to the BYU Bookstore to talk with my old boss in the stockroom and figure out all the paperwork for getting rehired. I’d talked with him at the end of the winter semester, and he knew my schedule and had told me that everything was fine for me to work in the fall–we just had to fill out the paperwork and go through the formalities.

Well…long story short, when we finally got into the rehiring interview and I told him that I could only work MWF, his face dropped and he gave me a card with a number on it to call and check on my job application the next day. He said that he wasn’t sure if they had a place for me because I couldn’t work TTh, but that he’d try.

It wasn’t hard to see, though, that I wasn’t going to get rehired.

Here’s a funny thing. I tend to get really worked up and angry over little things, like slow drivers or computers that don’t work or paperwork that I didn’t know I had to fill out. But when it comes to major things–like my old boss dropping the ball, leaving me without a job–I’m really mellow about it. Even though I needed money and didn’t know what I’d do without a job, I figured that this had happened for a reason and that everything would work out in the end.

It did. I was walking through the Wilk on my way home one day and decided to check the job boards. I skipped over all the custodial and dining jobs (those are dead ends anyways) and looked at the academic ones.

Usually when I look at these jobs, I feel that I’m much too underqualified. However, as I was skimming over them, my eye fell on the ad for being a writing advisor. I love writing, so I decided to read a little more closely. To my surprise, as I read over the qualifications, I found that I met almost all of them.

I picked up an application, selected some writing samples, and wrote a cover letter. I was a little bit worried because I spent so much time talking about my experience as Quark writing VP, since that’s a non-academic setting, but that ended up being one of my most attractive selling points. When they asked me what my greatest weakness was, I said “procrastination,” but then I was able to turn around and say “but I set a goal to write a novel last year and achieved it” through consistent, daily writing. Even though the advisor position is for academic writing only, my experiences with creative writing made me look surprisingly attractive.

The thing that sealed me the job was my schedule. They needed MWF and practically all my classes are TTh. So not only were they excited because of my qualifications, they were excited because I was available when they needed it. Getting the job wasn’t that hard from there.

So now I’m a writing advisor, and I LOVE it! I sit around the lab, chatting and hanging out with all the other cool people who work there, and every once and a while an MFHD or Psychology major comes in with a paper and we look over it. Good people, low-stress work environment, work that I actually love doing, really good pay for an on-campus job, and best of all, it’s the kind of job that looks REALLY good on a resume. This has got to be the best job I’ve landed since I came here at BYU. I’m so happy and thankful that things worked out the way they did!

Goals update…and it’s freaking late…

Man, I’ve been really bad about my writing goals this month. I set a whole bunch of goals right as school started, and I don’t think a single day has gone by where I’ve kept all of them. Blegh, that’s disgusting.

So today I took some time to rethink things and reevaluate. I figured that I’d have to drop those old goals I’d set, settle for something more practical and less wild and crazy. Something disssapointing like that.

The surprising (and encouraging) thing was that, when I calculated how many days I had to accomplish these things, I saw that they were still very much within my reach.

I mean, in order to finish the rewrite of The Phoenix of Nova Terra on schedule, all I’ve got to do is revise six pages a day. Six pages! That’s virtually nothing! Get me on a roll, and I can do ten to twenty pages easy–and thoroughly enjoy it.

As far as Hero in Exile is concerned, if I write 500 words a day, I’ll be at 100,000 words by March. 100,000 is more than I want to write for this novel–I want to try and keep this one relatively short, in the 50,000 to 100,000 word range. And that’s just at 500 words per day! I’m sure there will be days where I write more–where I’ll be driven to write more.

So now, I’m happy to say that even though this month has been way disorganized, I still think I can do this. I will. I’ll be consistent, put forth my best efforts, and have three polished novels by November 2009 in time for the World Fantasy Convention. And I’ll be there! For sure, I’ll be there.

The problem is that I put off writing until the last thing I do before I go to bed. Then, I run around doing all sorts of night owl type things, until finally 2:00 am comes around, and then it’s just too late to do anything but pass out. ugh. UGH.

But tonight, before running out to hang out with some friends (and then waste time upon coming back), I sat down and forced myself to write. And it worked! I made some good progress in Hero in Exile. It’s just 500 words or so, but I’m starting to think in terms of “what do I need to accomplish in this scene?” rather than “how can I get my 500 words in today?” That’s good. Progress, at least of some kind.

There is other stuff that I need to blog about, but I’ll do it in a later post. Gotta review Dune, gotta write about my new job, I’ve got a letter to the Daily Universe that I want to post up here first…all kinds of stuff.

But for now, I think I’m finished. Time to pass out for the next four or five hours. UUGGGGGHH.

I love revising

Today, after I got through with my homework for tomorrow, I figured it was time to do my writing for the day, so I opened up the rough draft of Phoenix and picked up where I left off. I didn’t really feel much in the mood for writing, but forty five minutes later the library was closing and I was getting so into it that I didn’t want to stop.

Revising is one of the aspects of writing that I really enjoy. I hate prewriting–love coming up with the story, hate actually writing it out on paper–and writing the first draft, while it has its good points, is also quite a struggle for me. But give me a rough draft of a story that I can believe in, and I’ll have so much fun making that story work. When I revise, I really feel like I’m making progress–like I’m making something better. Maybe that’s what makes the inner critic in me so less caustic when I’m revising, because I don’t find myself saying “this is crap,” I find myself saying “gotta do this, and this, and this over here…” and when it’s all over, I just feel so productive and satisfied, it’s great.

I’m finding with this novel that cutting things out can actually make the story a lot stronger than putting new stuff in. I think I read something about this by Hemmingway once in high school, how the revising process involves cutting out everything that doesn’t work. I tend to be a discovery writer, so this makes a lot of sense. I prefer to write myself into a story, which means that most of the stuff that I write is more for my own benefit than it is for the reader. It’s like baby fat that naturally comes off as the story matures and grows under my hand.

I’m also finding that revision is an excellent opportunity to practice the “show, don’t tell” mantra. I’ve heard that most beginning writers (and a lot of experienced writers) really struggle with this–they tend to tell everything in an uninteresting, unengaging kind of way, instead of incorporating the information into the story so that it naturally flows with the setting and the action. Revising helps me to see just how much I tell instead of show, which not only gives me a chance to replace it with “showing,” but hopefully will help me as I write the first draft of my other story, Hero in Exile.

Connected with all this, I’m starting to realize the importance of giving specific, concrete, almost anecdotal sensory details about the things that the viewpoint character notices. This is something that I need to work on. When it comes down to Jungian types, I am sensing, not feeling, which means that I tend to miss sensory details because I spend so much time thinking about abstract theories and ideas. However, sensory details are important, both because they enrich the setting and because they effectively develop the viewpoint character.

I was browsing through Robert Charles Wilson’s book Spin the other day, and I was surprised to notice how often he did this. Every paragraph is full of the oddest sensory details, small things that the viewpoint character notices that really enrich the story. He doesn’t spend a lot of time on any given one–maybe just a passing sentence or a phrase–but they build up in such a way that really draws you into the world, and into the character’s life. You start to care about him in ways that you wouldn’t have before. It’s very interesting.

I feel like I made some very good progress today. Edited chapter three, which was about fifteen or twenty pages. There was definitely a lot that needed changing, but that’s not bad because now it’s so much better! And not only that, I think I can see that I’m gradually becoming a better writer. Revising is definitely my favorite part of writing.

AI birth…through spam?

What if the first truly autonomous, self-aware, sentient AI emerges from spam detection software? What kind of an outlook on life and the world will this newly birthed AI have? What kind of mythology would a society of these budding AIs create? What would be their thoughts and opinions on mankind?

The idea for this character is kind of like Jane from Speaker for the Dead. The game program in the battle school was supposed to be interactive and adapt to each player individually. When Ender played it, he got to the very last part of the game that was human programmed and beat it. The game itself was forced to program new challenges and quests, and did so based on what it knew about Ender. In time, this led the game to become more and more autonomous, until it developed a degree of self-awareness and awakened as the AI character Jane.

Spam is one of the hallmarks of our time, the beginning phase of the information age that is revolutionizing our society. I get spam all the time on this blog and in my email, and it is $@#%! annoying. The extent to which people and their programs go to generate all this stupid spam just astonishes me. Fortunately, I have some really good spam-blocking stuff that does its job 99.9% of the time–but to be that good these anti-spam programs have got to be really complicated. As technology advances, they’re only going to get more and more complicated, which may (in a sci fi kind of way) lead to the possibility of a Jane-like character emerging from one of these complicated spam blocking programs.

So what would it be like if this is how the first true Artificial Intelligence emerges? What kind of an attitude would this AI have for mankind? Would it be hostile or (mostly) benevolent? What would it mean for us as mankind that our superiors come into being from out of the darkest, most disgusting dregs of our garbage?

I think it’s a cool idea for a story. What do you think?

Awesome weekend!

This was a really good weekend for writing. We had a REALLY fun writing meeting with Quark and I got some very helpful feedback for the first chapter of The Phoenix of Nova Terra (aka The Lost Colony), and now after another rewrite I feel really happy with it.

On Friday, as I was walking between the FLSR and campus, I thought about the fact that I haven’t really been getting into my new novel, and wondering what was holding me back. I realized that it’s this game that I just recently started to play through for the second time, Final Fantasy Tactics. Excellent game–one of the best in the series, IMO–but as I reflected on it, I realized that it’s been distracting me, both in terms of how I use my time and how much I think about my stories. It’s hard to immerse yourself in an imaginary world when your mind is fixated on something else. So, I decided to drop FFT and erased all my saved games. Now, I’ll have a lot more time to think about and write in the worlds of my stories.

The writing meeting on Saturday was great! We had about eight people there, which was cool, and joked around quite a bit. The best thing I think is that the new people aren’t afraid of criticism, so we tore into their stories and everything was still fine. We went a little over time, but I think it was ok because we spent a lot of time bantering and getting to know each other. That’s important too, I think–to get a sense of community and friendship going.

I rewrote the first chapter of The Phoenix of Nova Terra for this meeting, but something was wrong with it and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Well, the meeting helped me to see what it was–the action didn’t start soon enough and the protocol between the officers on the ship wasn’t all that interesting. So I took another look at my story and realized that I was trying to give too much of the big picture, the grand overarching “this is how the main character’s mission is going to help mankind,” and not enough of the concrete details as seen through the eyes of Ian himself. Man, even after writing for so long, I still make mistakes like this! But once I saw the problem clearly, it wasn’t that hard to fix it.

Now, I’m really excited about this story, and I’m ready to move on and edit everything else. Really, about 70% of the work is going to be cutting out all of my “discovery writing,” the stuff that was really just me figuring out the story by explaining it to myself. There is a ton of that on every page, and it all has to go. But once it’s gone, I really do think that I’ll have a sweet story underneath it all.

I just want to have it done so that I can say, once and for all, that I have a novel under my belt–a novel that I can be proud of. It’s not enough to say “I’ve written a rough draft”–I want to be able to say “I have written and finished a novel.”

Three novels by fall 2009…it’s going to take work, but I’m going to do it. The momentum is building, and I’m getting back into writing.

Progress!

Last night I hung out with my friends Steve Dethloff and Lindsay Rowe over at Steve’s new apartment at King Henry. Had a really good time, which unfortunately involved staying up until 2:30 am. The next day I was zombified–even more than usual. I can’t keep this up much longer…need sleep…

So the day pretty much sucked. I can handle tiredness, but not too much of it. By the end of the day, I was just miserable, so I skipped my last class.

The evening was much better, though. Much better. I went out to the Smith Fieldhouse and worked out from 9pm to 10pm, riding the exercise bike while reading Dune. Fantastic book: I’m reading it for the quark book club. Working out in general is also really good because it wakes up your mind and gets your creativity flowing better. At least it does for me.

So then, I decided that enough procrastinating is enough, and if I’m going to ever write any of these novels, it’s butt-in-chair hands-on-keyboard time. Washed up, went to the library, and just sat down and wrote.

It was good! I think I’m gradually starting to get into this new story, Hero in Exile. I only got about 530 words today, but I can feel the momentum picking up. Once I’ve got momentum, things will be much easier.

So that’s what I was up to today as far as writing. Gradually getting back into it. Now, it’s 1:20 am, I’ve got a test in the Humanities testing lab at 9:00, and I really need to sleep.

Cool New Title!

Hey guess what! I finally figured out a new title for the story previously known as The Lost Colony! From here on out, that story will be known as The Phoenix of Nova Terra.

That title fits in so many different ways. Humanity is crawling out of the ashes of a near xenocidal war and Nova Terra is their greatest hope; Ian has struggled all his life to cope with the nuclear holocaust of his home world and he finds rebirth at Nova Terra; the aliens who come in WAY later in the story find the fulfilment of their prophecies and the beginning of their return to glory because of Ian’s actions, etc etc.

Many thanks go out to Natascha Faux for helping me to come up with that new title! That definitely deserves a major place in the acknowledgments page. What’s more, it makes me really, really happy.

🙂

What a freaking awesome title!