Yesterday was the first day of English 318 with Brandon Sanderson! I’m really excited for it! I can tell already that this is going to be a very interesting class–especially because it’s taught by someone who actually writes good fantasy, not just someone who can criticize it. Brandon is a real cool guy and I feel that there’s a lot that I can learn from him writing and publishing wise. Even just the first day has given me a lot to think about…
Month: January 2008
The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
My friend Logan picked out this book for me when we were over at Pioneer Book, the used bookstore in downtown Provo. He told me that this book is considered to be one of the best first contact stories in Science Fiction. Once I started reading it, I could see why–and by the end, I really was sad to say goodbye to this fictitious universe and the characters within it…
1,191 words and another novel idea
Tomorrow this novel will officially be my longest novel attempt. I put in another 1,191 words, but it’s not progressing as quickly as I’d like. Blah blah blah boo hoo is it really going to be as awesome on paper as it is on my mind what if it doesn’t go anywhere blah blah blah. I’m going to finish it and I really don’t need to worry about anything other than that.
Except for this: English 318, the sci fi novel writing class with Brandon Sanderson is starting in two days. What if I have to start a new novel in that class from the beginning?
This is just Amazing
I have this feed in my blog aggregator for this awesome site that puts up astronomy pictures every day. Yesterday’s picture was just freaking amazing:
I am 500 words from 70,000
Holy cow! And English 318 starts in a couple of days! I hope Sanderson will let me continue working on this novel for the class–but if not, I have some other cool ideas. I may have to do like Aneeka and write two novels at the same time, but I’m definitely going to finish this one by April (rough draft, at least)!
This makes The Lost Colony the longest novel attempt that I’ve ever made…
1,282 words and something I’ve noticed
Well, I put away Alpha Centauri long enough to make some real progress in this story of mine. I put in 1,282 words today, and now I’m right at the part where I wanted to be about a month ago. But you know, I’ve noticed something interesting…
Dragonsflight by Anne McCaffrey
Dragonsflight is the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern series. Think fire breathing, teleporting, telepathic dragons who, with their human riders, fight off swarms of devastating alien worms falling through space from another planet, and you’ve pretty much summed up the basic premise of the story…
2007 Winter Reading Challenge
I saw this reading challenge on my friend Gamila’s blog, and it looked interesting so I decided to join. Basically, you set a goal to read a certain number of books this winter (it should be winter of 2008, but meh), post the list, and then post updates and/or reviews as you go along. Since I’m already doing something like this for one of my New Year’s resolutions, I thought I’d join in. Here is the list:
Resolutions and Alpha Centauri
Here are my thoughts on New Year’s resolutions (and goals in general): they need to be short, simple, specific, measurable, realistic, easy to remember, and before you set them you need to realize that success (or failure) is not measured by how well you keep the goal itself, but what you accomplish as you strive to keep the goal. Of course, they should also stretch you, but at the same time you need to recognize that you have limitations, and that if you set a really hard goal in one area, it’s going to limit the amount of energy you can put into another difficult goal in another area. In general, I think it’s better to set one or two goals and achieve them than to set a dozen goals, overwork yourself, and fail to meet any of them. So here are my New Year’s resolutions (and I only really have two of them):