Random thoughts on creativity and a cover preview

18. March 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Novellas & Novelettes, SW-V: Dreamweaver, SW-VI: Benefactor · Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve noticed that I tend to go through at least two revisions on most of my stories.  The first one generally identifies the problems in the rough draft and eliminates them, while the second one adds anything that’s missing and smooths the story over so that it works as a whole.  They both use different parts of my brain: one critical, the other creative.  Since both are important, I can’t easily skip either of them, and combining them into one mega-revision doesn’t really work because it’s hard to switch from one mode to the other.

I’m currently in the second revision for Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver, and it’s coming along really well so far.  Now that I’m in creative mode, it’s a lot easier to add stuff that was missing from the first draft and tidy up some other parts that seem a little disjointed.  With luck, this revision should be finished in a day or two.  It’s really only one chapter that needs the bulk of the work–according to my first readers, everything else is pretty good.  Far be it from me to fix something that isn’t broken.

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The other day, an old friend of mine emailed me with a question about the world building / plotting process I followed for Star Wanderers.  I wrote a fairly lengthy response, and while most of it was a more detailed explanation of the stuff I’ve already included in the various author’s notes, I came up with some advice that surprised me:

If I had to give any advice, I’d say that the most important thing is to just feed your creativity.  You can’t force your imagination, just like you can’t get any more golden eggs by killing the goose that lays them.  However, you can organize your life and your environment in such a way that bursts of creativity are longer and more frequent.  A huge and important part of it is learning to turn off your internal critic, especially on the rough draft.  Sometimes, if I spend too much time thinking about writing, it paralyzes me so that I can’t actually write–but if I trick myself into opening my WIP without really thinking about it, then ten minutes later I’m plugging away and the ideas are flowing.  And just as bad habits can be very harmful, good habits can be very helpful.

I think a lot of us creative types tend to force ourselves a little too much, especially when we’re first getting started.  We want to be productive, we want to have something that we can show for ourselves in order to feel validated, especially with so many people raising eyebrows at our dreams and creative pursuits.  But productivity goals, while important, are really only a means to an end–and they’re not even the most important means most of the time.

If you want your work to ring with authenticity, or to reflect the truth and beauty you see in the universe, you have to be in touch with that kind of stuff.  And once you get back in touch with the stuff that drove you to create in the first place, there’s nothing that you want to do more.

This morning, I wrote for three hours in one sitting, and I wasn’t tempted by any distractions at all.  I only produced about 1.3k words, but they were good words that added both to the story and my understanding of the story.  I got back in touch with the spark that drove me to write it in the first place, and hopefully that spark will carry through to the readers.  I think that it will.

So yeah–it’s not about productivity goals, or reworking our creative process to be more like someone else’s, or any number of other writerly insecurities.  It’s all about story, and everything that drives us to tell them.

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All right, if you’re still reading (or even if you cheated and skipped ahead), I have a treat for you.  I just found the AWESOMEST image for the cover of Star Wanderers: Benefactor, which I hope to finish up later this week after finalizing the revisions for Dreamweaver.  Here’s the cover:

SW-VI Benefactor (cover)

Pretty cool, eh? I <3 NASA. :D

The picture is of Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT), taken by the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.  It was taken on 7 May 2004, and covers an area roughly five times the size of the moon.  As with all NASA images, it’s in the public domain.

The inspiration actually came from comet PANSTARRS, which is visible in the sky right now.  I tried to catch a glimpse of it tonight from the Y Mountain trail head, but there were too many clouds on the horizon to see it clearly.  Hopefully, the skies will be clearer tomorrow.

In related news, comet ISON later this year is expected to put on a really incredible show.  Astronomers think that for a brief time, it may even shine brighter than the moon, making it visible even during the day!  If that happens, it’s going to be AWESOME.  Mark it on your calendars for November–it’s going to be great!

That’s just about it for now.  I’d better get back to forming those good habits I mentioned earlier–like actually getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Later!

Unstuck again

12. March 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Children of the Starry Sea, Novellas & Novelettes, SW I-IV: The Jeremiah Chronicles, SW-V: Dreamweaver, SW-VI: Benefactor, SW-X: Wanderlust · Tags: , , , , ,

For the past few weeks, I’ve been kind of stuck on chapter 3 in Star Wanderers: Benefactor.  This one is a parallel novella to Fidelity, from Jakob’s point of view.  It’s been a lot of fun to write so far–Jakob struggles with a lot of the same issues I do, like self-reliance and independence vs. accepting help from others–but there was this one scene that just kind of knocked the momentum out of it for me.

Well, I started out the day by rereading Fidelity.  Actually, I started reading it yesterday right as I was falling asleep, and had some really weird dreams that I’ve since forgotten.  After rereading Fidelity, I went to the Provo Library to write, and everything just sort of clicked.  Finished the chapter today, and if all goes well, I’ll finish the first draft sometime this week or next.

I think the thing that was blocking me was that I wasn’t as familiar with the story I was writing parallel to.  Which is funny, because Benefactor has very little overlap with Fidelity, even in terms of plotting.  This is Jakob’s story, and it’s very different from Jeremiah’s or Noemi’s.  Even so, the nagging feeling that I was missing something really slowed me down.  When you’re in a dark, empty room and can’t see anything, you’re not going to run across it even if you know there isn’t anything to trip on.

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Just recently, I added some new book teasers to the back matter of the Star Wanderers ebooks.  They look a little like this:

If you enjoyed Star Wanderers: Outworlder, be sure to check out Part II: Fidelity!

Star Wanderers II (thumb)

IS FIDELITY WORTH THE PRICE OF FREEDOM? CAN LOVE TAKE ROOT BEYOND THE STARS?

Oriana Station: a bustling frontier settlement between the Outworlds and the Coreward Stars. A popular port-of-call for free traders and independent starfarers alike—and the latest target in the aggressively expansionist plans of the Gaian Empire.

Life was simple for Jeremiah and Noemi before they arrived. Though neither of them speak the same language, they’ve reached an understanding that goes beyond words. But when the colonial authorities make them into second-class citizens of a fractured empire, even that might not be enough.

Their newfound friends in the immigrant community can only do so much. With Noemi and her people depending on him, Jeremiah must find a way back to the Outworlds—before they lose everything that they came for.

Each one has a teaser for the next one in the series, including Homeworld (for the as-yet unpublished Dreamweaver).  Ideally, I’d like to put out a new Star Wanderers novella every month or two, but time things so that I can have the teaser for the next one ready before publishing the one previous.

So far, the Star Wanderers series has been selling a lot better than anything else I’ve published.  That’s great, because I really enjoy writing in this universe!  The short novella length is perfect for exploring one or two characters in-depth over the course of a much more intimate story than you usually see in a novel.  The really cool thing, though, is that the more I write in this universe, the more characters and storylines unfold.  It’s like watching a flower bloom, where each individual petal is a single story.

Anyhow.  I’m really excited to keep writing in this series.  Some of the stories I have kicking around in my head:

  • A parallel novella to Sacrifice, primarily in Mariya’s point of view but also perhaps with a bit of Noemi.  Basically, something exploring the subtext behind the polygamy that drove most of the conflict in Sacrifice.
  • A parallel novella to Homeworld, from both Lucca’s and Mariya’s points of view.  Basically, an adventure romance that actually shows the final battle between Captain Helena and the colonists.  In Homeworld, it didn’t make sense to show that battle since the story was about Jeremiah and Noemi, and both of them were plugged into a simulator at the time.  But my first readers really want to read a story about the battle itself, so that’s one story I definitely have to write.
  • A story from Master Korha’s point of view, showing the gradual collapse of Megiddo Station and the buildup to his decision to give his daughters away.  This one is going to be more tragic, or at the very least, bittersweet.  But hey, I kinda like bittersweet endings.
  • A story from Samson’s point of view.  Actually, I’ve already got this one plotted and ready to go.  The only trouble is, well, it’s Samson.  With his ethical slut mentality, whatever I write, my family is going to be scandalized by it (and I might be, too, when my kids are old enough to read it).  Don’t worry, though–I’ll get around to it eventually.  This isn’t a story that I can just walk away from.
  • Something from Jakob’s sons’ point of view, Isaac and Aaron.  Except … I can’t really say much about this, because Benefactor isn’t out yet. o.0
  • At some point, I’d like to write a full-length novel from the point of view of Jeremiah and Noemi’s kids.  I don’t have a plot or anything else figured out for this one, but I’d really like to revisit their world again through their kids’ eyes.  I even have a title: Children of the Starry Sea.  But yeah, that’s probably not going to come out for another couple of years or so.

So yeah, those are some of the things kicking around in my mind.  Once I finish the parallel novellas to Fidelity, Sacrifice, and Homeworld, anything is free game really.  Is there any story in particular that you guys would like to see?  Now’s the time to drop-kick my imagination–once it gets fixated on something, it won’t give me any rest until a story comes out the other end.

And that’s enough for now.  Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll do a Trope Tuesday post.  I’ve got a job interview in the morning and probably won’t have work for the rest of the day, so while that kind of puts a cramp on my wallet, it means you’re more likely to get a blog post.  In the meantime, I’d better get some sleep.

Later!

On the verge of another story

29. September 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Bringing Stella Home, Empress of the Free Stars, Novels, SW I-IV: The Jeremiah Chronicles, The Sword Keeper · Tags: , , , , ,

So with Star Wanderers coming to a close, at least as far as the actual writing is concerned, I’ve recently found myself back in that weird writerly place where I don’t have any pressing projects to work on.  Whenever this happens, I find that it’s generally a good idea to start something new.

Until just a couple of days ago, though, I wasn’t sure which project to start.  At first, I thought I should do the sequel to Stars of Blood and Glory, since I’m currently getting that one ready to send off to my editor, but beyond a tentative title (Empress of the Free Stars) and a really awesome opening scene, nothing has really sparked for that one.  With time, I’m sure my ideas will come together, but for now it’s just not ready to come out of the incubator.

So then I went back to The Swordkeeper, going back over the ideas that had sparked that one.  I started the opening scene back in March, but it’s currently lackluster, and none of my attempts at worldbuilding have gotten me anywhere.  For the past six months, I haven’t really touched it.

But when I took the time to just think about the story, something amazing happened.  All my ideas came together, and the ending just came to me–not just for the first book, but for the entire series.  Seriously, I must have spent hours staring out across the Georgian countryside from my farmhouse balcony, totally in awe of the story in my head.

A similar thing happened to me last summer with Stars of Blood and Glory.  It took me a few months to finally get around to writing it, but when I did, the first draft flew out in just a matter of weeks.  I’ve since made a few relatively minor fixes to the beginning and added some scenes that were missing, but otherwise haven’t made any substantial changes, and the comments from my first readers so far confirm that that’s the right decision.

So if all goes well, I’ll finish up with Stars of Blood and Glory by the end of this next week, and restart The Swordkeeper soon after that.  Things are looking good, and I can’t wait to get immersed in this next story.  It’s a fantasy, so that’s going to be a major shift, but I think it will help to keep things fresh.

Anyhow, that’s all for now.  More later.

Managing time and mental space in a foreign country

29. April 2012 · 4 comments · Categories: Heart of the Nebula, Novels · Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Some of you asked for a writing update, so I figure I might as well do a quick post on my current projects and where they are.  I’ve also been experimenting with my daily schedule a bit, so it would probably be good to blog about that as well.

Right now, the main project taking up all of my attention is the 3.0 draft of Heart of the Nebula.  It’s a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and continues the story from James McCoy’s point of view, five years later.  I’m making a lot of changes, toning down the romantic subplot and emphasizing the more interesting social and ethical issues.  When I’m through, I think it will be completely different from the first couple of drafts, but in a way that’s truer to the spirit of the first book.

I’ve only been managing about 500 to 1,500 words per day, though, which is abysmally low compared to my usual word count.  Part of that is because I’m throwing out entire sections and drafting new ones from scratch, but the more significant part is that I don’t have as much mental space for writing as I did back in the States.

Basically, moving to a foreign country and starting a new career has taken a lot more out of me than I thought it would.  I teach 18 lessons per week, some with as many as 30 or 35 kids, across grades 1 through 12.  Culturally, everything is completely different too.  So far, the shock hasn’t been too bad–I really love it out here in Georgia–but it’s made the writing a little bit more difficult than I’d expected.

I have a lot of free time, though, so that’s not a problem: the problem is clearing my mind and keeping the creative juices fresh.  Here’s how I’m going to do it:

  1. Limit internet time.  As tempting as it is to turn to the familiarity of the internet, it’s a huge time-suck and doesn’t really do anything for the culture shock.  A much better thing for that would be to spend more time reading.  From now on, I’m going to limit myself to one internet session per day, no longer than 2 hours (more if there’s something I actually need to do).
  2. Get out more.  I get cabin fever very easily, and it’s only gotten worse now that I’m in a foreign culture.  Fortunately, there are tons of places to explore, and in my local neighborhood I’m kind of a celebrity (hey look, it’s the American!  Let’s chase him and shout ‘hello’!).  The prime time for this is the late afternoon, when everyone’s out and things are still open.  If I check the internet right after school and get out immediately after, I think that will help me better to focus.
  3. Get up early to write in the morning.  I tried this last week, and it was a great way to get focused and build more momentum.  Even if I only manage a couple hundred word, it gets me thinking about the story for the rest of the day, which makes it easier to pick up in the afternoon and evening.

So that’s the plan for now.  My goal is to finish Heart of the Nebula before the end of May, which is going to require a significant change of pace.  It should be pretty straightforward, though, and after this draft it shouldn’t need too many more revisions before it’s ready to publish.  If all goes well, I foresee a publishing date sometime in the fall or winter.

Do you have any other ideas for ways to manage creativity in a totally foreign culture?  If so, I’d love to hear it–that’s my biggest struggle right now.

Q1 2012, or what writer’s angst looks like

08. April 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Heart of the Nebula, Novels, Stars of Blood and Glory, SW I-IV: The Jeremiah Chronicles, The Sword Keeper, Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

Actually, this last quarter wasn’t quite so bad as the title might make it seem.  For the first part, I was on roll, writing almost 25k new words a week.  But then I finished that project, started a new career, moved to the other side of the world…yeah, my writing took a hit.  Or at least, that’s how it feels.

In January, I was working on Stars of Blood and Glory, and was really on a roll.  The application process for TLG was still pending, but I pretty much knew I was getting in, and since I was staying with my parents until it went through, I didn’t have to worry much about money issues.  With lots of writing time, I finished SBG in about 6 weeks and published Journey to Jordan.  Life was good.

After Stars of Blood and Glory, I went back to Star Wanderers, finishing up Part II and starting Part III.  However, something felt wrong, and I didn’t really know what it was.  With my TLG departure date imminent, it was really hard to focus, and I wasn’t in much of a position to move on to anything else.  That’s when the angst began.

I flew out to Georgia on February 15th, did a week of training in Tbilisi, and then was whisked about 220 kilometers away to Kutaisi.  As a consequence, I didn’t get any real writing done for almost a month.  However, I didn’t have any major challenges navigating the new culture, and was soon settled pretty comfortably.

The trouble was, nothing was working.  Star Wanderers was broken, and I was too close to the project to fix it.  But after putting it on the back burner, I didn’t know what to do.  For most of March, I switched from one project to another.  Nothing seemed to stick, though, and by the end, I was getting pretty antsy.

What if I’d made a mistake to come to Georgia?  What if that was the reason nothing was working?  It sounds silly now, but that was what was going through my mind.  I still worry about it a little, but I think it has to do more with my creative process than anything here in Georgia.

I have a very non-linear way of writing first drafts.  After starting the revision for Heart of the Nebula and making some good progress on that, I got an idea for Star Wanderers and moved back to that.  At this point, I think the only way to get productive again is to finish that project, even if it sucks.  I’ve got a lot of great ideas for other stories, but until I can close the book on this one, I don’t think I’ll be able to make much progress.

So that’s where things stand right now.  All in all, it wasn’t a bad quarter, but I’ll be happy when I’ve actually finished something for a change.  Hopefully, that’ll only be a couple of weeks.  In the meantime, I’ll keep writing.

Getting settled in the land of the Kartulis

07. March 2012 · 3 comments · Categories: Novels, Stars of Blood and Glory, SW I-IV: The Jeremiah Chronicles · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

About three weeks have passed since I came to Georgia, and I’m starting to feel comfortably settled in this new place.  I like it a lot out here: my host family is great, I get along really well with everyone at the school where I work, the kids are so crazy eager to learn it’s awesome…really, I couldn’t ask for more.

Of all the places in Georgia where TLG volunteers are placed, Kutaisi seems like one of the best.  It’s the second largest city in the country, so it has access to several amenities such as markets, hospitals, restaurants, parks, and basically anything else you’d  expect in an urban center.  However, it’s about 200 km from Tbilisi and has very little exposure to the West, so culturally it’s very authentically Georgian.  It’s also much less crowded, and (in my opinion) much more beautiful.

My host family is great; I get along with them real well and already feel like a member of the family.   My youngest host brother, Kako, is 9 years old; I showed him Star Control II over the weekend, and he’s been addicted to it ever since.  We also play chess, and I’ve kind of taken him under my wing to teach him the basics of good strategy.  He’s getting steadily better!

Gura and Kati are the two teenage kids; they also speak English, so we’ve had some fun discussions.  Besides Facebook and her cell phone, Kati is really into books; I showed her my Kindle, and she wants me to help her persuade her father to get her one!  Gura is into Call of Duty and spends a lot of time hanging out with his friends; he lacks confidence when it comes to English, but he knows it better than he thinks he does.

The parents don’t speak much English, but they are really good people.  It’s a working class family; the dad works as a welder, and the mom is a nurse part-time and a home-maker full time.  They spend an amazing amount of time and energy on their kids, which is pretty typical for this part of the world.  They’re both non-smokers, and they’re very respectful of the fact that I don’t drink coffee, tea, or alcohol.  Some of the extended family keeps trying to push wine on me, but in the land known as the cradle of wine, that’s to be expected.

We basically spend all of our time in the family room when we aren’t sleeping; it’s where the heater is, so despite the relatively cramped space it’s the most comfortable room in the apartment.  Furniture consists of a couch, a computer desk and office chair, a bucket seat from an old van, a folding table, several small wooden chairs and a stool.  The TV isn’t quite a member of the family, but when the power isn’t out, it’s usually on.

The neighborhood is this bizarre mix of urban and rural elements.  The roads are super muddy and free-range chickens wander everywhere at will, but everyone lives in 9-story apartments that were built back in the Soviet days, when Kutaisi was a major center for the auto industry.  The school was built 50 years ago this year and has barely been renovated since, but it’s just starting to get some much-needed attention, with a computer center and a resource room for special needs students.  When the weather clears up, I’ll bring my camera to school and take some pictures so you can see what the classes are like.

I’ll have to do a post later on Georgian culture; there are some really bizarre and paradoxical juxtapositions, such as the way they mix religion and alcohol, or their strong belief in the nuclear family with their easy-going acceptance of bride-napping as a “Georgian tradition.” I have yet to really get a handle on all this stuff.  However, as a culture, they have a great respect for literature; when people ask my profession and I tell them I’m a writer, their eyes light up, and they show me a degree of deference that I never would have gotten back in the States.

Partly to have something to talk with them about, I’m reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy right now.  I just finished Book III, where Napoleon smashes the Russians and Austrians in the Battle of Three Emperors.  Everyone says that it’s the best novel ever written, and now that I’m in the thick of it, I’m starting to agree with them.  There’s a lot of really good storytelling here, as well as passion and depth.  I have the feeling that I’m going to be on a Russian literature trip for a while, though I should probably pick up some Rustaveli and Kurban Said as well.

As far as writing goes, I’ve had some difficulty settling down into a solid routine, not because of lack of time so much as trouble with my current WIPs.  Star Wanderers has more or less stalled; I ran into another wall midway through part III, and I’m still not quite sure how to get past it.  I’ve decided to take a break for a while, but I think my experiences here with the Georgian language are going to give me what I need to really make this novel come together.

In the meantime, I’m working on the 2.0 draft of Stars of Blood and Glory.  I’ve decided to try something new: revising not by chapter, but by viewpoint character.  Isolating each of the five viewpoints is helping me to see which ones work, and which ones are missing something.  I’ve also been using Dan Well’s 7-point outlining method, which is helping out a ton.

It feels like I could be writing more, but I’m not pushing myself too hard at this point.  I’m still adjusting to life in this totally new culture, and I’m also spending a lot of energy getting my TEFL career off on the right foot.  It’s paying off; I’m having a great time teaching, more than I thought I would.  Pretty soon, though, I’m going to start putting more energy into my writing.  I just hope that I’ll have enough mental space left over to really immerse myself and make it work.

Desert Stars is now published!

19. December 2011 · 3 comments · Categories: Bringing Stella Home, Desert Stars, Genesis Earth, Novels · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Desert Stars, my third novel (and second in the Gaia Nova series), is now available as an independently published ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.  Within the next couple of weeks, it’ll be available through Kobo, iTunes, Diesel, Sony, and Xinxii as well.

It’s been a long journey, and I’m thrilled to finally see it come through.  I started the first draft back in the fall of 2008, but had been working on ideas for the world since 2005, when I returned from my LDS church mission in California.  Spending the summer of 2008 in Jordan was a major catalyst for my imagination, and I soon was bursting with ideas for a far-future story on a desert world.

I got stuck in the winter of 2009, however–right before taking Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class.  Since he encourages all of his students to work on something new, I decided to write a book in the same universe in order to work through some of the world-building things that were holding me up.  That book became Bringing Stella Home, which was a thrill to write all of its own.

The strategy worked; by the time I’d finished that one, I had a much clearer idea where to go with Desert Stars, and an awesome ending that was nothing like anything I’d planned in the first draft.  And so, after graduating in April 2010, I soldiered through and finished the rough draft that summer.

It still had a lot of problems, though.  Fortunately, my first readers were extremely helpful both in pointing those out and in giving me fantastic ideas for other things I could do.  In the second draft that winter, I completely scrapped a major subplot in the second half of the book and focused on perfecting the character arcs for the two main characters: Jalil and Mira.

Around this time, I made the paradigm shift from traditional to indie publishing.  Other projects like Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home took my attention for a while, as I learned the basics of the new world and prepared those books for publication.  However, I always kept coming back to Desert Stars: I knew I had a good story there, and I was just itching to bring it to its full potential.

In the fall of 2011, I finally had that opportunity.  The last draft flew by in three weeks, and was one of the funnest writing experiences I’ve had since I started writing seriously in 2007.  By the end, I knew it was ready.  I sent it out to my editor, Josh Leavitt, and started to prepare it for publication.

In writing any book, there are always moments that stand out; experiences where things come together in an unexpected yet memorable way.  One of those came to me in Jordan, while I was walking down Queen Rania street from the University of Jordan to Al-Dustour, and the phrase “Temple of a Thousand Suns” flashed into my mind and sparked the whole novel.  Another of those moments happened while I was driving from Salt Lake to Provo, and Mira’s final words in the last chapter came to me; I literally could not stop screaming for two or three minutes.

I could share more, but if I did, I’d find it difficult to maintain the illusion that I’m not a loony psychopath. :)

In any case, it’s just awesome to see the story come to maturity and embark out into the world.  I’m sure this isn’t the end of the journey, but it’s definitely entering a new and exciting phase.  I sincerely believe that this is my best book yet, and I hope you find it as worthwhile to read as I have found it worthwhile to write.  If you do, I would appreciate it greatly if you took the time to post a review, or share it with a friend.  Every little bit helps, and I’m grateful for whatever support you can give!

In the next couple of days, I’m going to send out a newsletter with some freebies including desktop backgrounds of the cover art.  If you’d like to get in on that, be sure to sign up for the email newsletter via the form on the sidebar; you’ll also receive notices for other giveaways, as well as new releases.  It costs nothing and you can always unsubscribe, so there’s no pressure or obligation.

And that just about wraps it up.  Now: on to the next book!

Braving the unexpected rough spots

23. July 2010 · 3 comments · Categories: Bringing Stella Home, Desert Stars, Novels · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Right now, I’m going through this unexpected rough spot in my novel, where I know what’s supposed to happen (or at least I have enough of an idea to wing it fairly well), but the writing just isn’t coming.  This happens every time I hit the two thirds mark, and it really sucks.

Currently, I’m using two methods to get through it: 1) keep a running chapter-by-scene outline of the next few scenes, and 2) use a loose adaptation of story theory models (such as the hero’s journey) to keep perspective on things.  Right now, this is what my chapter-by-scene outline looks like:

Chapter 14
14.1: Jalil
Jalil meets LARS, who with Michelle shows him the ship. Jalil learns that Lars has a connection with the Farlen family and that the Stewarts are from his parents’ home.
14.2: Mira
Mira returns home an outcast. Sheila rails at her for failing to seduce Jalil, while Sathi pulls her into his quarters to tell her that he’s arranged for her speedy marriage.
14.3: Jalil
The Bridgette launches from GN-2 using a gravity whip maneuver. The ship heads out for the L2 point, using a second gravity whip around GN-2b. Jalil realizes this is goodbye.

Chapter 15
15.1: Mira
While Mira prepares herself to get ready to meet her cousin Ibrahim, Tiera approaches her in private to apologize for calling her a whore. Tiera advises her to stand up for herself.
15.2: Mira
IBRAHIM’s convoy arrives. As Sathi and Ibrahim’s father conduct negotiations, Mira meets him and is surprised to find that she’s attracted to him.
15.3: Mira
Mira, Surayya, Amina, and Tiera discuss Ibrahim in the women’s quarters. Tiera advises Mira not to pursue him, but Surayya and Amina convince her to go ahead with it.

Chapter 16
16.1: Jalil
Lars and Michelle tell Jalil about the Colony. They show him pictures, and he has flashbacks.
16.2: Jalil
While making maneuvers around GN-2a, the Bridgette receives news of Hameji movements near Karduna. Jalil learns a bit of the Hameji.
16.3: Jalil
The Bridgette arrives at the L2 station and enters the starlane. Jalil’s first experience as an adult making the jump.

Chapter 17
17.1: Mira
???

As you can see, I’ve broken down each chapter by scene, with the viewpoint character indicated as well as a short one or two line description of what happens. When a new character comes along, I mention them by name in ALL CAPS. I use the auto font color for story that I’ve already written, and the stuff that remains to be written in red. Also, I only outline a handful of scenes ahead of my current position.

That’s the method that works for me.  I have no idea if it will work for you, but feel free to give it a try or let me know what methods you’re using.

I’m finding that even though I’m more of a “discovery writer,” certain methods of outlining give me much greater flexibility to discovery write than simply winging it all on the fly.  In particular, I find that outlining my characters and keeping a running scene-by-scene map for the next couple days helps to keep me on track.

I ran into this problem earlier in the week: without any kind of outline, and no previously written material to fall back on, I had no idea what to do.  Instead of sitting at my keyboard doing nothing, though, I plotted out the next few scenes to give me some idea what to do.

That helped me out for a while, but now…man, it’s still rough.  I did 3,251 words yesterday, but today I only hit 1,555.  It’s a lot, I know, but with all my free time, I should be hitting more.  Much more.

I suppose the only way out of this slump is to write–and write I certainly must.  I seriously need a real job, and right now I’m looking into the field staff position at Wilderness Quest.  If they hire me, I’ll need to finish this novel before I start work, since I’ll be out in the wilderness for three weeks at a time and the last thing I want is to pick up a half-finished project after it’s gone cold–especially when I’ve got to rewrite Mercenary Savior for World Fantasy 2010.

So that’s what I’m looking at right now.  Three weeks, inshallah, and Worlds Away from Home 1.2 will be finished.  Hopefully by then, I’ll have a real job too.

To close, check out this awesome version of the Corridors of Time song (Zeal theme) from the Chrono Trigger soundtrack.  I’ve heard maybe twenty or thirty different arrangements of this excellent composition, and this one takes the cake.  Beautiful.

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