Goals for this Blog

Welcome to A Thousand And One Parsecs! This is a blog about my writing projects as an aspiring writer of Science Fiction. At this point, I’m coming out of a lull in my creative writing, but I think that with the start of a new semester at BYU (and my duties as writing VP for Quark, BYU’s Sci Fi / Fantasy club) will break me out of that lull pretty quickly. Besides, it wasn’t much of a lull to begin with. I won a short story contest in the spring, lost one in the summer, and have two short stories that are looking for a place to get published, with a little bit of polishing.

My inspiration for this blog comes from a couple of my friends at Quark, who also have their own blogs about their writing projects. I’ve really enjoyed reading them over the past few weeks and months, and figure that it would be a great way to keep me honest in my writing. Besides, blogging in general is a lot of fun! I have a couple of writing projects, and I hope that this blog will give me a chance to talk about my struggles and get good ideas from everyone who stops long enough to drop a comment or two.

Ever since I knew how to write, I’ve had this urge to sit down and write stories. Even before then, when I was just a little kid, I would constantly make up stories in my head. My writing has always come in stops and spurts, floods and famine. In high school, I started two or three stories and took them all the way out past 100 pages before either getting frustrated or distracted. I have no problems starting a story, but I hardly ever finish them. I was really proud of myself in 2006 for finishing a short story and submitting it to several places to get published. Even though it was rejected everywhere, it was a real first.

Right about now, I’m on the border between being a hobby fiction writer and actually doing something serious about it, but I’m still on the hobby side. Hopefully, though, I can jump to the other side fairly soon. Like most creative people, I am ridiculously busy (I’m taking 18 credits, living in foreign language housing, working a part time job, active with church duties, and taking jujitsu, all in addition to leading the Quark writing group and doing my own personal writing. Oh, and I have three other blogs). However, I know that it’s not an excuse. If I’m ever going to be more than just a hobby fiction writer, I’ll have to start now, since I don’t think I’m ever going to be less busy than I am now.

My goal with this blog is 1) to help me be more engaged in my own writing, 2) to keep my friends updated with my writing, so that they can help me with my goals and struggles, and 3) to start some interesting discussions and share some constructive thoughts about writing with anyone who drops by and stays a while. I’m going to pattern after the blogs of some of my other friends in Quark, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m used to blogging anonymously, but I’ll open up a little bit more here with how things are going in my personal life–at least, those parts that impact my writing. I won’t try to popularize this blog or get it listed all over the internet, but I will try to share some thoughts that are worth reading, rather than ranting about myself all the time. We’ll see how it goes.

So, that’s what I want to do with this blog. Thanks for stopping by, and please, drop a comment or two anytime and let me know what you think!

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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.

2 comments

  1. Cool background! Needs more pink though… šŸ˜‰

    Congrats to the new writing blog. They’re a lot of fun to see the progress of a story over a long period of time (and to see your reaction to it as you slug through it all).

    Another fun thing about writing blogs that I’ve found is that you can use it for freewrites; when you’re stuck or you really are just not in the mood to write, you can write about that in your blog and usually (at least for me), it gets me either excited to write or annoyed enough at myself to force myself to write anyway.

    Either way, I get the writing started ^_^

  2. What, the nebula wasn’t pink enough for you?!

    Yeah, thanks, I hope that this blog helps me to get more involved with writing. I’ve really enjoyed your blog and Reigheena’s!

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