One Thousand And One Parsecs

Space Pirates of CONduit

So this weekend I went to CONduit up in Salt Lake city.  It was a great experience! Lots of fun, lots of friends, and lots of excellent panels on writing.

The usual crowd was there: Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, L. E. Modessitt, Bob Defendi, Dan Willis, Paul Genesse, Julie Wright, John Brown, Larry Corriea, James Dashner, Eric James Stone, and tons of others.  Besides the bigger names, I saw a lot of other aspiring writers like myself who have yet to make it big–friends from World Fantasy and LTUE.  It was good to catch up and reconnect.

Friday had a number of excellent panels.  My personal favorite was A Writer’s Life, in which a number of relatively newer writers gave advice on breaking in and talked about what their lives are like now that they’re published.

At one point on the panel, a fearful aspiring writer asked the question: “when do you know when it’s time to quit and give up?”  The responses from the panelists were quite insightful.  Basically, the only way to know that you need to quit writing is if you can imagine your life without it.  If you can’t, you may feel that you’re writing currently sucks, but you’ve still got stories in you, and those stories need to find a voice.

There were a number of other gold nuggets on that panel.  Larry Corriea surprised me by saying that there is no such thing as an “outline writer” or a “discovery writer”–that these concepts simply describe writing tools, and that different projects require different tools.  Julie Wright said that if you are not enough without a publishing deal, you will never be enough with it.  John Brown (I think) said that writer’s block doesn’t exist: if you’re blocked, it means either something’s wrong with you or something’s wrong with the story.

Saturday had a number of excellent panels as well.  The guest of honor was Barbara Hambly, and she was a delight: witty, saucy, and full of interesting stories and great advice.  For her main address, she simply talked about how her life has changed in the past thirty years, but it was fascinating.

One of the more interesting things she said was that God places an angel with a flaming sword in front of every door in our lives that we shouldn’t take.  Sometimes, it seems that you’re simply staring down a corridor full of guarded doors–and sometimes, especially towards the end of life, it seems that you’re staring down a corridor and the angels are saluting you.  That made her tear up–she’s had a long, rough, yet interesting and vibrant life.

When asked to elaborate on the decline of the fantasy market in the past twenty years, she gave a very interesting response.  Today, instead of buying fantasy novels by the pound, fans are immersing themselves in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.  Because it requires much less effort to play a game than to read a book, people are turning to games as a substitute.

Another fascinating panel was Riding the Rocket, in which a number of established authors discussed the career blast off and what to expect.  Lee Modessitt made the point that there are two basic approaches to writing: storytelling or writing excellent prose.  In order to be successful, a writer has to master both, but they generally start out better at one than the other.  The key is to know which one you’re weaker at and consciously work on it.

When asked about their greatest fear, the unanimous answer was that they’re terrified their next book will tank and that they’ll fade into obscurity–that they’ll be forced to go back to that dreaded day job.  The only way to deal with that, though, is to keep writing, keep working on your craft, and control the things you can while not fretting too much about the things you can’t.  If you do what you can, things will generally work out for the best.

There were a ton of other excellent panels, other nuggets of wisdom.  I recorded a number of panels, but I’ve decided not to post the mp3s publicly here: if you want them, just email me and I’ll send you a copy.

All in all, I’m very glad I came!  Besides all the panels and networking opportunities, it was just a lot of fun to hang out and talk science fiction and fantasy with a bunch of like minded people.  CONduit is an awesome convention–if you’re a local Utah writer and you have the chance to come, I definitely recommend it!

CONduit post coming shortly

Just a micro-quick update, since it’s 2:00 am and I need to meet up with friends tomorrow morning to carpool to Salt Lake.

The first day of CONduit was awesome–there were several excellent panels on writing, as well as many familiar faces from the local writing scene.  I’ll blog all about it this weekend, after the big day tomorrow.

Wrote 3k words today and killed off a couple major characters.  Invigorating, as always.  Only 7k words to go to the end.

Goodnight.

Weird slump

Man, I’m going through a really weird slump these days.  Yesterday, I wrote 2.5k words, and today, I only wrote 1.5k words–this, in spite of the fact that I’m only working about three hours a day.  It’s kind of frustrating.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m right at the end of this novel.  I’ve got 10k words to go, only 12 scenes, but I’m kind of burned out on it.  I already know it’s going to need another revision after this one, and while I’m trying hard to fix things, it’s more on the overall story level, not on the detailed polish level, where I usually thrive.

The real truth, though, is probably that my days are split up so weird.  I work from three to six, and most days I have obligations in the evening (Leading Edge, Institute, FHE, etc).  To add to that, Tuesdays and Thursdays I donate plasma in the mornings, which usually takes up a couple hours.  When you’re already in the mood to procrastinate, it doesn’t help it when your free time comes in 2 to 3 hour chunks.

Oh well.  At least I’m still producing.

CONduit starts tomorrow, and I am totally stoked.  Last year was excellent, and I’m looking forward very much to this year as well.  I don’t think there’ll be too many agents and editors there, but there will be a ton of other writers, most of whom I expect I’ll see at other major conventions across the country.

Speaking of conventions, I’m thinking very seriously about attending Dragoncon this year.  When I spoke with Dan Wells at the Provo Library event a couple weeks ago, he told me that DragonCon is going to be big for writers this year, on account of Worldcon being in Australia and World Fantasy being in Ohio.

I’ve got a friend in Atlanta who can put me up and/or has friends who can as well, so housing shouldn’t be too difficult.  My Dad’s giving me the old Buick, and it’s got lots of space, so I could probably fit four or five people in it.  If we took turns driving, we could probably make it out there nonstop, and membership only costs like $80.  At ten tanks of gas split by five people, plus maybe $100 for food and other expenses, it seems like a pretty good deal.  Anyone interested?

If I’m going to Dragoncon this year, I suppose I should make it my goal to get Mercenary Savior polished and ready for it.  That should be enough time–a month or two to let it sit, then a couple months to polish it.  Definitely doable.

In the meantime, I’ll be finishing this draft this weekend, inshallah.  I’d like to finish it on the bus to Salt Lake, but I doubt that’ll be the case.  10k words is a lot of writing, and I’ll be busy all day at the con.  I’ll let you know how it goes, though–stay tuned!

Falling behind

Man, CONduit is at the end of this week, and I’ve still got a good 14k words to go in Mercenary Savior. Today, I only wrote 1,300 words.  I have no idea why my productivity has fallen so much, but it’s not good.

It might not be a totally bad thing, though.  I’m having trouble finding a ride up for Friday, so I might end up spending two or three hours on the bus.  If that’s the case, I might have some writing time then.

I read something interesting on Dave Farland’s daily kick (the email newsletter he sends out–it’s free, btw, and very helpful).  Basically, he said that it’s better to wait to submit something until it’s absolutely perfect than to submit something for the sake of submitting it.

This is making me rethink my plan to start submitting Mercenary Savior right after I finish this draft.  It’s much improved, I think, from the first couple of drafts, but it still needs a lot of work.

As I run down my list of revision notes, I keep thinking “dang, I didn’t pull that off as well as I’d hoped” or “that last scene could have been better.” It’s hard, though, to juggle so many changes; you can only do so much work at once.  Mercenary Savior is going to need another revision after this one before it’s polished.

The only thing is…that means I only have one novel to submit to agents/editors.  Is that a bad thing?  Now that I’m in the real world, I’m anxious to launch my writing career, but at the same time I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot.

I suppose the first thing to do is to finish this beast.  Ugh.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet.  For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate.  Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

I first picked up this book two and a half years ago, when I was still trying to read a novel a week.  I’ve got to be honest; this was the book that made me break that new years resolution.  It is freaking huge, and some points are more interesting than others.

That said, this is an awesome piece of hard science fiction.  Lots of people have written about Mars, but very few have done it believably.  Kim Stanley Robinson does an job here–you can tell that he put in a ton of research, both into Martian geography (areology?) and feasible technology.

When I read science fiction, however, that’s not what I generally read for.  I’m more interested in characters, conflict, and thematic elements–in other words, the stuff that makes for a good story.  As far as that stuff goes, my opinion of Red Mars is somewhat mixed.

For example, the first chapter starts out with a murder, as seen from the point of view of the murderer.  Right away, I’ve got a reason not to sympathize with the main viewpoint character.  When we get into his mind and I see his motivations for killing the character, I like him even less–and he’s one of the main, driving characters.

Some of the characters are more sympathetic, and I enjoyed the sections in their point of view.  Others, however, were just plain boring–I neither loved them nor despised them.  Because of this, a lot of the character drama early in the novel didn’t engage me much; stuff was happening, but I didn’t really care.

When it comes to setting, Red Mars is also somewhat mixed.  Robinson goes to great depths to describe the Martian landscape, and several of his setting descriptions were quite interesting and wonderful.  At the same time, he explains everything in a very clinical, scientific way–his imagery is never as poetic and captivating as Ray Bradbury’s, or Ursula K. Le Guin’s, or George R. R. Martin’s.  I came away with a lot more knowledge about Mars, but not quite as much of a sense of wonder.

Things did get interesting once the political tensions started to come into play.  Robinson’s portrayal of the colonization of Mars raises a lot of interesting questions about the political relationship between Earth and Mars once those colonies start to become self-sufficient.  He follows things through right to the war for independence, and the implications of the conflict are quite interesting.  I finished the last hundred pages or so at a sprint.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you’re already a fan of hard science fiction.  Like most hard sf, character and conflict plays second string to scientific plausibility.  Within its sub-genre, however, Red Mars is awesome.  Let’s just put it this way: even though I got bored with it the first time, I knew I would one day pick it up and finish it.  I don’t regret that I did.

When life gets in the way

Just a quick post before I go to bed.  Things are coming along well with the revision of Mercenary Savior–I fully expect to be finished by next week (hopefully by Tuesday).

That said, these past couple of days have been very unproductive, and it’s been very frustrating.  I feel as if tons of little things have been getting in the way.

Work is from 3:00 to 6:00, which can be nice but breaks the day in half, and donating plasma always seems to suck up a ton of time.  Besides that, I’ve been applying for work, and THAT certainly takes up quite a bit of  time mental space.

The main problem, though, is the urge to procrastinate.  These little things wouldn’t pop up all the time if I 1) were unusually excited about this book, or 2) had the iron discipline to buckle down and just do it.   I’m working on both of those, but in the meantime, it’s frustrating.

Still, I am producing.  I wrote about 1.5k words yesterday, and 2.3k today.  Nowhere near the 4k+/day I was hoping to write, but not bad.  Things are progressing.

Part of it may be the fact that my only computer right now is a netbook.  Netbooks are nice for traveling (I carry mine literally everywhere), but they aren’t great as primary machines.  Also, they tend to break down faster than regular laptops.  Mine’s probably got another year left, but the wear and tear is starting to show.

To remedy that, I’m thinking very seriously of building my own computer.  Tomorrow, BYU is having a surplus sale, and I’m hoping to pick out a decent LCD monitor or two, plus a keyboard and mouse.  I’ve picked out all the other parts online (I’ll blog about that later), but I’ll probably hold off until the  end of the month to buy them all.  I want to prove to myself that I can make more money in a month than I spend.

I know that a new computer won’t solve my writing problems, but it will be really cool, and it is something that I need–if not this very second, then at least before my netbook breaks down.  Plus, I’m hoping to learn a lot from the experience of building it from parts.

Other than that, things are good.  I will definitely finish Mercenary Savior by next week before CONduit, and the revision is significantly better than the old draft.  Before long, inshallah, I’ll have another  manuscript to float around with editors/agents.

Book Festival and other updates

So last Friday, there was a book fair at the Provo Library.  I only heard about it the night before from Facebook, but there were almost twenty authors on the guest list, so I figured it would be a good place to go to meet other writers.  I wasn’t mistaken!

I biked up to the library just as Brandon Sanderson was walking in.  We chatted for a while, caught up on stuff since the last time I took his class.  I almost got to walk into the author’s only lounge with him, but one of the staff stopped me.  One of these days, though…one of these days!

I also ran into Dan Wells, who remembered me from World Fantasy and gave me a very nice compliment: he said I was very good at approaching people, especially at conventions.  Talked about the different cons this year; according to Dan,  Dragoncon is going to be huge this year, since Worldcon is in Australia and World Fantasy is in Ohio.  I have a friend in Atlanta–I’ll have to look into attending that.

Brandon Sanderson, Clint Johnson, Mette Ivie Harrison, and J. Scott Savage did a panel on writing fantasy.  Fortunately, I had my mp3 player on me and was able to record it.  If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here:

Fantasy Panel, Provo Children’s Book Festival (15 May 2010)

Clint had some interesting advice for me after the panel; he asked about the books I’ve written and said I should submit them to YA agents/editors as well as mainstream adult agents/editors.  Apparently, Genesis Earth and Mercenary Savior could work as YA, since 1) they’re about (relatively) young protagonists having coming-of-age experiences and learning how they want to live their lives, and 2) they don’t have the sense of nostalgia that adults often have when they think about their childhood.

So that was the Provo Children’s Book Festival.  Let me just say, this is one of the reasons why I love Utah: the writing scene for fantasy/sf/YA is HUGE.  Tons of writers, tons of readers, local writing events all the time–it’s great.

In other updates, I got a personalized rejection from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show! It was a pretty long one, too.  The assistant editor said the writing was pretty good, but it felt too much like a novel.  Hehe…confession, it was part of a novel.  But that’s awesome that he thought the writing was good!

Besides that, he gave a lot of suggestions as to formatting, referring me to this site for detailed ms instructions.  I didn’t think most editors would mind Times New Roman, but if it’s an issue even for a few of them, I should probably just switch to Courier–no editor is going to fault me for using Courier.

Besides all that, I’m well on my way to finishing Mercenary Savior 3.0 before CONduit.  My goal right now is to finish it next Tuesday and spend Wednesday and Thursday sending it out.  After CONduit, I plan on starting Hero in Exile (except the name will change), and I have a TON of great ideas for it.  Funny how sometimes in order to finish a book, you need to write another one first.

Man, I don’t write for this blog as much as I should.

Life is going well.  I just recently got a part time job doing telephone surveys; hopefully, it will help tide things over until I can get something better.  Between that and donating plasma, I should be able to pay the bills for the next couple of months.

I’ve also been writing quite a bit, hitting between 2k and 4k words per day.  At this rate, Mercenary Savior 3.0 should be finished by the end of next week.  That’s good, because I’m excited to start submitting it.  I’ve already got Genesis Earth making the rounds, but the sooner I can get another project out there, the better.

For my next project after , I want to recycle Hero in Exile (ugh, it needs a new title) and turn that into a complete novel.  I have a lot of ideas for it, but it will require some research, which may delay the actual start date.

For example, the main character (who I’m going to rename) has this major conflict where he’s trying to go home.  As a young boy, his parents put him in an escape pod that crash landed on the planet, where he was raised by the locals.  As the writer, I’m going to need to know about adoptions, know a handful o f adoption stories to pattern things off of, and maybe read a couple of essays  on the meaning of “home.”

As another example, one of the major themes I want to get across is the struggle to maintain personal moral integrity in a morally corrupt world.  I probably won’t have to look too far for that–being Mormon has given me lots of opportunities for research there–but I need to do a lot more to be aware of that particular conflict.  When you’re slogging away, it’s very easy to focus too much on plot and no enough on the rest.

Probably the biggest preparation is going to be working through the character motivations, and that inevitably means building a background, since motivations grow out of the character’s history and background.  But that’s going to involve a fair degree of pre-writing, which I may or may not be able to do before I start page one.

And that’s another scene; I’ve got to completely revamp the beginning.  What I have now involves the main character staring out over the desert just before a sandstorm.  Picturesque, but essentially navel gazing with little real character development.  Instead, I want to show him thinking or doing something that reveals the central, most important aspect of his character, the way Brandon Sanderson did it in Elantris.

So anyways, lots of work to look forward to, in terms of writing that is.  Other kinds of work…well, it’s good to have a sense of security.  Even though I’ve been producing a lot, I’m sure I could have been producing more (upwards of 6k or 8k per day) if I’d had that sense of security provided.

Anyways, there is more that I could say, but I’m going to go to bed because it’s freaking 2:22 AM.  Night.