Trope Tuesday: The Last DJ

In any vast bureaucracy, you’re bound to find obstructive bureaucrats and professional butt-kissers.  But if you look long and hard enough, usually somewhere towards the bottom, you may be lucky enough to find one of the Last DJs. The Last DJ is a man with integrity, who often puts honor before reason and cannot be… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: The Last DJ

Story Notebook #5 (part 2)

For those of you who don’t know (or can’t remember, since it’s been so long), I’ve been doing this ongoing thing where I go through my old story notebooks.  Last time, we covered my last semester of classes at BYU; this time, we’ll cover my time in Washington DC, when I was trapped in an internship from… Continue reading Story Notebook #5 (part 2)

Story Notebook #5 (part 1)

Alright, time to revisit my old story notebooks and run through some of the ideas there.  This one starts in fall of 2009, my last semester at BYU,  and ends shortly after my hasty exodus from a miserable internship in Washington DC. And now, without further ado, here goes: A super-celibate society that holds that… Continue reading Story Notebook #5 (part 1)

Second Quarter 2010 report

As you may or may not know, I keep a spreadsheet of my daily word counts.  Nerdy, I know, but you’d be surprised how helpful it can be with keeping goals and staying motivated.  As part of that, I’ve decided to do a quarterly report here on my blog.  Here’s my report for April 2010… Continue reading Second Quarter 2010 report

Quarterly report

So I figure that since I want to write professionally, it would be a good idea to keep track of my writing and do quarterly updates on my blog.  Here’s the first one for this year: The red line shows my daily writing word count, the blue line a running seven day total.  The graph… Continue reading Quarterly report

Goodbye DC

So I have some crazy, unbelievable news to share: I got fired from my internship, under disputed circumstances.  That’s right: fired from my unpaid internship four weeks before it was scheduled to end. The exact reasons for the termination were never made completely clear to me, but I suspect politics played a significant role and… Continue reading Goodbye DC

Chomping at the bit

It’s 1:30 am where I am, and I just finished reading through the second draft of Bringing Stella Home and all of my first readers’ comments.  I don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling right now, but I am so ready to make this story shine! First of all, the story itself is incredibly… Continue reading Chomping at the bit

Go to Tor.com and read this.

Brandon Sanderson’s story of how he decided to become a writer is very interest.  It goes back to elementary school, when he hated books and reading in general.  A wise teacher put a copy of Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane in his hand, and it started a chain reaction that led to him becoming a bestselling writer.… Continue reading Go to Tor.com and read this.

Snowmageddon! Hooray!

So for the past week, a series of crazy snowstorms has been pelting the Mid-Atlantic.  President Obama has dubbed it “snowmageddon,” and it’s so bad that all federal government offices have been closed since Friday.  With another storm hitting us tonight, it looks like we’re going to have the whole week off! Yay!!! So, for the… Continue reading Snowmageddon! Hooray!

Career chat at high tea

So my Turkish supervisor at WINEP took us new interns (all four of us) out to the Mayflower hotel last week for high tea, where we talked about how things have been going for us at the institute so far.  It was interesting–the first time this Mormon boy has been out to tea, particularly in… Continue reading Career chat at high tea