Hey, check this out! I used this site to create a word cloud for the rough draft of my novel, Genesis Earth. I did the same thing a while back for my other novel. Pretty interesting.
Month: April 2009
Semester endgame
Seven days! Seven days! And then the semester is over! Hallelujah!
Unfortunately, in the course of those seven days, I’ve got three major papers to write. It’s going to suck.
But then it’s over!
Thank goodness. This semester has been pretty crazy–not in terms of work, but in terms of motivation. A lot of the classes I took (especially MESA 350) are basically just repeating the things I already know, which is really boring. When you’re bored, you don’t have much motivation to do the work, and when that happens…well, let’s just say that bad things happen when that happens.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), there’s nothing quite as motivating as last minute panic. The work will get done.
Unfortunately (and this is definitely unfortunately), the end-of-semester crunch will almost certainly take time away from my writing. Just when things were going so well, too. The revision of Genesis Earth is coming along VERY well–I’m not only enjoying it, I think I’m making some excellent fundamental improvements on the story. Of all of the novels I’ve written or worked on, I think this one is the most promising. If I didn’t have any other obligations, I could almost certainly finish this revision in a week–possibly even less. I’d really love to get into it.
Also, the other day I had an idea how to revive Hero in Exile and turn it into a workable story. Hero in Exile is the working title of the novel I started last fall, but after I got 70,000 words into it, I realized that the story I was writing and the story I had in mind were incompatible with each other. I put it all away, recycled some of the basic ideas, and used those for Bringing Estella Home. Well, now that I’ve put Bringing Estella Home on hold (ironically, after getting 70,000 words into it), I just had some really interesting ideas how I could make Hero in Exile work! It would require throwing out my original outline almost completely, but I could use almost everything I wrote previously–basically, tell the story that I was writing instead of the story I thought I was writing.
Except I have to change the name of the main character. “Tristen” just isn’t a good guy’s name–at least not for science fiction.
So now, I’m considering picking up that story and putting Bringing Estella Home on hold for a while. I’m going to be really busy these next couple of weeks, but after all the craziness has settled somewhat it’s going to be a very interesting question. Honestly, I have no idea. It could go either way.
But it’s all academic until the semester is finally over. But dude! SEVEN DAYS!!!! And then…FREEDOM!!!!
Some thoughts
This is going to be real quick, since it’s 1:30 am and General Conference is tomorrow. The revision is going along really well for Genesis Earth–I am really excited about this project. My only regret is that I don’t have more time to dedicate to it. As it is, I’m probably putting too much time into it already. But it’s worth it–it makes me happy, and I feel I’m telling a story worth hearing.
Yesterday was also the awards banquet for the English department. It was a very positive experience. I saw a few familiar faces–Chris from my English 318 reading group last year, and slipperyjim from Quark.
The main address and proceedings in general were very interesting. There was a lot of talk about the value of literature, its importance in our society, but more than that, the importance to write good literature. By that, I don’t mean the kind of stuff that has the stamp of approval of some elite clique of stuck up literary types somewhere–by that, I mean literature that has purpose and meaning, that shows us something worth living for, not merely pointing out the absurdities of our modern world. There are plenty of absurdities and paradoxes and stupid little meaningless things, but where does it really get us to be pointing those out all the time?
I came away from the conference with something really valuable: a heightened awareness of all the things that made me want to write Bringing Estella Home, the novel I’ve been working on this semester.
Bringing Estella Home is very tragic, a little dystopian, and has a lot of unrealized hopes–a lot of shattered lives. It’s essentially a tragedy, and I’ve found that I don’t particularly enjoy writing tragedies. When you’ve worked on one for a few months, it tends to grate on you–all of these suffering characters, and you with the knowledge that it’s only going to get worse. Not very feel-good.
But that’s not the thing that made me want to write this book. There were two things that I wanted to get across, two major ideas: sacrifice and loyalty. If that makes any sense. I guess it won’t, unless you read the finished book, but I wanted to show how people struggling to do the right thing in a world turned upside down could find meaning and depth in their suffering, in their trials. Suffering comes and goes, but it shapes you in ways that last forever, and I wanted to show good people becoming better through their suffering. I guess that’s the best way to put it.
I think I’d lost sight of that recently. This novel needs a lot of major changes to it, especially in the middle section, which I was just wrapping up when I put it on hold. But with a clearer idea of the overarching goal of the story–what deeper meaningfulness I’m trying to get across–I think I’ll be able to pick it up again and give it a strong finish. That’s good.
I don’t know if I’ll ever write another tragedy again. This one has been quite a ride. However, I shouldn’t just throw it out and run away from it–I really need to listen to this story and tell it like it needs to be told. I guess that’s the ultimate motivation, or should be. I don’t just sit down and write because it’s what I do, I do it because it is something meaningful, something that can help others see the world in a new, better way, and obtain those truths that will really bless their lives.
Revision is underway
Well, I started working on Genesis Earth 2.0 over the weekend. I’ve got to say, I’m really excited about it!
I’ve gotten a lot of really useful response from my alpha readers and I’ve compiled a master draft with everyone’s comments on it. I’m reading that now, keeping a list of revisions that I need to make, chapter by chapter, and using that as I rewrite this book. I’m not usually much for organization, but I really like the way this is set up–opening up that massive document and seeing all those comments across the pages. It’s really cool!
Of course, I’m not responding to every comment. When you have all the comments side by side in the same document, you can see where everyone disagreed as well as agreed. There are comments saying “I really didn’t like how you did such and such” right next to comments that say “I love this section and how it did such and such.” Where everyone had the same negative response, I’ll see that as a problem that I need to fix, but for everything else it comes down to my own judgment call. That’s how I’m doing things.
I rewrote the first chapter the other day, and I’m really satisfied with it. It feels really good when you can take something that has problems and fix them, make it better. That’s why I actually love the revising process.
Oh, and check out the REALLY awesome widget on the sidebar! It’s something that Drek wrote for me on the fly today. He’s really awesome–he wrote the speedometer widget that was up there before. I must admit, it was much more fun playing around with that widget and setting it up than doing my homework. And don’t worry–I repented for downloading and temporarily installing an ftp client on the public computers to upload the files to my server. Twice.