844 words, an awesome writing meeting, and some plans for submitting stuff

I haven’t posted in the last couple of days, mostly because I’ve been so busy. Thursday especially was crazy–there was this huge Arabic final, and I had a big paper to write and get in by five. But, yeah, these are crazy times anyways, what with finals. I sat down and immersed myself in my novel tonight, and it was really good! About 850 words and I’m catching up to where I want to be. And…I’m over 56,000 words in the entire novel. I’m probably going to end up cutting a lot of it out. Can’t worry about that now, though. I’ll do it in the rewrite…

Had a really good writing meeting today! It was the end of the semester, so this was our last one. And…I forgot to schedule a room in the library, so we ended up getting kicked out and making a mass exodus to the Clyde building. One of the new guys in the group has connections and knew of some rooms we could use. It was a fun meeting! Relaxing, enjoyable, motivating, all of the above. I think a lot of the new guys are here to stay–probably about four or five people. A BYU graduate named Eric Stone came, and he had some good advice. I learned from him about this writing group that Brandon Sanderson leads, that sounds interesting. Also, got some advice on places to submit some of my short stories.

I had everyone critique Decision LZ150207, got some really good feedback on it. I’m going to touch it up a little bit, and then I think I’ll send it out. I’ll do that over Christmas break–with that one and also with The Clearest Vision; I need to find a home for that story. However, The Clearest Vision is going to be kind of hard to…find the right audience. It’s set in an LDS paradigm but it isn’t your typical sappy Mormon fiction story. It actually offended a few of my initial readers. And it’s a short story–and a lot of LDS publishers don’t really do short stories. So, I don’t know where to send it out. Probably it will keep bouncing around for a few years until it finds a home. Should I try sending it out to Writers of the Future? It’s been rejected by Inscape and Irreantum, and it probably wouldn’t be as meaningful to a non-LDS audience (especially a non-Christian audience). I dunno. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to submit it…but I don’t know.

Other than that, CLASSES ARE OVER FOR THE SEMESTER AND I AM SO FREAKING HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!! Finally, a break!!! It’s within sight!

By Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

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