Joe Vasicek

A slow spot

This last week has been somewhat frustrating. Started it off well, with good progress in my story, but early on in the week, all kinds of assignments started piling onto me–stuff that I should have seen coming, but have been putting off ’til the last minute (as usual). It didn’t help that I just discovered Genghis Khan II, a really awesome old DOS game. :p

So, between juggling homework, struggling not to get addicted to this new game, and dealing with exhaustion in general, it’s been a pretty slow week.

The upside, though, is that I’ve had lots of time to think about the universe of Hero in Exile. I’ve got some REALLY awesome ideas for the world, stuff that’s inspired by Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy and the rise of the Mongol Empire. History 240 is one of my favorite classes this semester–it gives me so many good story ideas!

As a result, I can hardly wait to get to the really good parts of my novel. I just wish I didn’t have so much school to worry about. Grr…

There is a lot that I want to blog about, but I need to get my sleep tonight. Take home test due tomorrow for PLSC 201, and I want to get it finished before work at 10 am (yeah right…).

Hooray for Obama!

Well, the President of the United States has been decided. Obama won. I honestly can’t say that I’m disappointed.

No president would do all of the things that I want him to do, but I think Obama is going to steer this country in the right direction. Less foreign intervention, more multilateralism and better relations with our allies, more economic regulation, etc.

The only thing I’m really worried about is the fact that the Democrats have such a commanding lead in the Senate–I would rather have the branches of government balanced between the parties, especially when one party nearly has the sixty votes necessary to ride out a fillibuster. But I’m not too worried.

Obama’s acceptance speech was very good. I like how he emphasized his family and his wife. The more I listen to him, the more he strikes me as a well-meaning, honest family man. He just seems like a clean statesman in a country filled with ridiculous political scandals. It’s going to be interesting to see who he picks as his advisors and cabinet members.

So, overall, I can’t say I’m disappointed. I’m optimistic that the next four years will see increased American credibility in the world and a government that can stand up to the domestic crises of our times and lead us through. We’ll see whether I’m wrong.

The election issue that I’m most interested in, however, is Prop 8 in California. This isn’t just because I served my mission there–it’s because I think that this election will deal a decisive blow to either the gay-rights movement or the traditional family. I wholeheartedly believe that marriage is an institution between a man and a woman, and that the state should uphold this institution defined as such. In a dramatic move, the LDS church has stepped into this issue and mobilized its adherents across the nation to vote, volunteer, fast, and pray for this ballot initiative to pass.

Fortunately, it looks like it’s going to happen. We’ll know for sure in the morning. I’m almost too nervous to watch, but inshallah, it will happen.

In the meantime, not a lot of writing today. Between elections, homework, and exhaustion, I slipped in about 570 words. Not bad, but I want to keep those pointers in the red all through November.

Halloween and Nanowrimo kickoff

So, if you checked my blog earlier today, you may have noticed the, um, lack of progress as noted by the speedometers. Well, all I can say is that yesterday was kind of a special case, it being a holiday and all.

However, it was an awesome Halloween! I went to work at 10:30 am and started noticing people in costumes, which made me think “hey, today is Halloween…I should get a costume!” (I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been doing things more and more at the last minute, and I don’t know what’s more unnverving: the fact that I’m doing it more often, or the fact that I’m becoming so good at getting away with it).

While chatting with my coworkers in the FHSS writing lab, I decided to dress up as a writer. After all, the costume shouldn’t be too hard–I am one, after all, right? Well, it proved to be a lot easier than I’d thought! Turtleneck sweater, Birkenstocks with socks, a copy of Strunk & White in my pocket–all I really needed was a gray sports coat and a European cap, both of which I got at DI (one I bought, the other I borrowed from a friend I happened to run into at the store).

Properly attired, I was ready to attend the Quark Halloween party!

It was lots of fun! There were LOTS of costumes this year, nearly twice as many as last year. Most of the people were some obscure Anime character that I didn’t know about…I’m a nerd, but pretty ignorant when it comes to anime and manga). I did recognize quite a few of them, though!

A bunch of the guys from the Super Smash Bros tournament dressed up as their favorite characters. There were three Links, a Princess Peach, a Pikachu, Nes, and a bunch of other characters that I didn’t recognize. I thought it was really funny how Lunesar (on the right) and his wife dressed up as their favorite characters. It’s especially ironic because that’s how they met each other–through the Smash Bros tournament. Hoorah for Geekdom–it’s what brings us together!

I really liked Miriel and her husband’s costumes–Star Wars! Miriel is on the staff of The Leading Edge and helps us with back issues to give out as prizes for the writing contests. I really liked her hair in this picture! She gave me a huge box full of back issues of the magazine at the party, which was really nice–we’d been running short. With the new box of contest prizes, though, we’re ready to have lots more contests in the months to come!

For the Halloween short story contest, we did something new and experimental: we had a live reading during the actual party. I was a little bit worried at first, but it worked out really well, I think. We had the third, second, and first place stories read out loud by their authors. It wasn’t as visually exciting as watching anime explosions and giant mecha fighting each other, but it was still a treat to hear the stories read out loud, especially the first place winner, The Beauty of Decay. We actually had a big prize to give out (a $20 gift certificat to the BYU Bookstore), so it was lots of fun!

Aneeka, who won 2nd place, wasn’t there to read hers (since she’s in Germany, and, um, graduated), so we had Gamila, one of the old timers, read it for her. I briefly told the audience how Aneeka started the writing group, back in the day, and how she was the one who got Jakeson and Gamila to start dating (they’re married now–both were there at the party). It’s always fun to pleasantly embarass your friends.

So yeah, this writing contest thing is definitely something we should keep on doing! I just need to convince the rest of the officers to set aside more money for contest prizes. Everyone who participated got a copy of The Leading Edge, which was motivational I think. Besides that, the voting was fun as well. We need more contests–and not just contests, but readings as well!

So that was the Halloween party. It was basically one of the awesomest Quark socials of the year. I love this club!

Today, instead of having a writing meeting where we critique each others’ stories, we had a writing party in room 135 of the TMCB instead. I think it went really well! We started out with lots of food, chatting, and distracting conversations, but for about an hour-long stretch, there was nothing but writing. It was pretty cool. Then, towards the end, I started getting distracted with showing people photos from my photoblog via the overhead projector, but all in all I think it went well.

Today is (was?) November 1st, the first day of nanowrimo! Sadly, I’m not doing nanowrimo this year–at least, not strictly speaking. The rules of nanowrimo state that you have to start on November 1st with a wordcount of 0 and end with a wordcount of 50k. Unfortunately, if I were to freeze all my current projects and focus on something totally new, I’d lose so much time and momentum with the other projects that I doubt I’d meet my goal to have three manuscripts ready for World Fantasy 2009.

Still, nanowrimo is pretty cool, and it’s a good way to connect with the wider writing community, so I’ve decided that even if I’m not strictly going to do nanowrimo this year, I’m at least going to do something in keeping with the spirit of it. My goal is to get 50k into my current project, Hero in Exile, so that I’ll have a wordcount of 64,500 by December 1st. It’s going to require more than 1,500 words a day, but I think I can handle it.

At the writing party, I got about 700 words in, and when I transcribed it from my notebook to the word document, I got in about another 300. Right now, I’m finished with all the buildup, and now I’m poised to go for the jugular: the next scene is going to involve some fighting, explosions, death, and heroics. I’m excited!

I’ve also got to prepare a Sunday School lesson tomorrow morning, so even though we get to set our clocks back tonight, I think I’d better get to bed now. So far, the first half of this weekend has been awesome–and since I don’t have to do any homework on Sunday, I think that the second half has the potential to be just as good!

Breaking 1,000

I broke 1,000 words today! Yay! That’s my daily wordcount goal from here on out, so it was good to reach it.

Also, the story is coming along nicely. I can see how my original idea for the scene that was giving me trouble just wasn’t fleshed out enough. If I’d have gone with it, there would have been less conflict, less development of some key characters (some of whom die soon in the next chapter! bwahahaha!) and some worldbuilding.

That’s about all for now. I have a lot more I could blog about…Prop 8, Mongol hordes, history class, schoolwork, craziness…but it’s late and I need to got to bed. Gnight.

Grr…

Man, I’ve been busy this week. I have been making progress–750 words isn’t bad, even if it is lower than I’d like–but I haven’t moved past this one scene. It’s kind of frustrating.

I have the next couple of scenes figured out in my head, and I’m really excited to get to them (they’ve got all kinds of action and explosions and such), but the more I try to get there, the longer and longer the current scene becomes.

It’s not a bad scene. It’s just…unexpected. The plan was to quickly show Mira and Tristen entering one of the planetary domes for the first time and their awe at the lush, rolling agricultural land inside. Instead, it’s morphed into a confrontation with customs and security at the entrance to the dome.

I considered cutting it all out, but as I read over it I realized that it seems to be working. I sat down tonight, hoping to get past there so I could start tomorrow with the exciting stuff, but now it looks like other characters are getting drawn in. Grr…

In all reality, though, this is probably a good thing. The story is starting to take on a life of its own, and the characters are starting to act for themselves instead of having me pull the marionet strings all the way.

At least, that’s what I hope is happening. I still worry that Tristen is a little too flat.

In the meantime, I saw something interesting on the Publisher’s Lunch email for today. A minor publisher is offering to give away free books to bloggers who promise to post reviews of the book on their blogs and on Amazon. Free books, eh?

I checked the list of books available to review so far, and it looks like most of them are either non-fiction and/or mainstream Christian, but the concept is very interesting. If a minor sf/f publisher were to do the same thing, I’d be all over it.

Oh, and this made me laugh today. I still need to figure out what I’m going to be for Halloween…

Just discovered Pandora Radio

Dude–you know how Jane from Speaker of the Dead was born from the interactive, self-writing game at the battle school?

What if the first sentient AI is born from Pandora Radio?

It just keeps getting better and better the longer you listen!

It’s up!

If you look off to the sidebar on your right, you might notice the two incredibly awesome meters off to the side. Aren’t they freaking awesome?? Drek programmed those and helped me install them on my website! They show my writing progress for the last day and the last seven days. The number on the meter is the raw wordcount, and the meter gives some indication as to how well I’m doing…or not doing.

Man, this is so cool! Thanks, Drek! It makes me want to sit down and just write.

Unfortunately…I won’t be doing that tonight. Not in my novel anyways. I’ve got a paper due tomorrow at 8:00 am, and it’s a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. It’s only three pages, but in three pages I’ve got to use all kinds of quotes from The Odyssey and Socrates’s Apology. Plus, I’ve got to attach a rough draft with the final draft in order to show progress. Unfortunately, I didn’t start writing this until tonight…

So, if I don’t pull an all nighter, I’ll be taking a quick nap before heading up to campus at an ungodly hour to print out this crazy thing. No rest for the weary. And I was so good about doing all my homework today, too. Didn’t hardly do anything else. 🙁

Ah, some days are like that. Now I’ve got to pound out a “rough draft” (fortunately, it can suck) before I register for Winter 2009 classes in, oh 40 minutes. In the meantime, admire the lovely new wordcount meters on my sidebar. I swear, before the end of the week, those meters will be cranked up where they need to be…

Okay, a new direction

I owe a lot to Aneeka. She is the one who motivated me to write The Phoenix of Nova Terra back in 2007 when I didn’t really think I could finish a novel before the end of the school year. Like I said in the last post, I’ve hit something of a wall in my writing life recently, and a couple of days ago she was the one who pointed it out to me. The conversation went something like this:

Empress: lol – okay, okay!
how are your stories going?
me: very slowly
frustrating
mostly just because of personal disorganization
Empress: yeah, that can happen. tired of school? or just a lot of things you want to do?
me: school is pretty easy right now
it’s just hard to get back into writing regularly
I dunno
I’m trying to juggle two projects
Empress: maybe that’s the problem?
it’s hard focusing on two stories at once
(says the girl that does it all the time – the irony!)
but it really is hard to get all focused on two projects at once
me: it probably is
Empress: I flit between projects because I’m not that into them and write because I’ve been inspired (and tend to be inspired on different stories all the time)
when I get into a project though, then it’s best that I leave the rest behind and just focus on that one
get out all that I have and see how far I can go before I get distracted again
me: yeah
I’m trying to be 100% into two projects at the same time
trouble is, I can’t keep the momentum going on both
Empress: yeah. looks like you’re human, after all 😉
me: dangit!
Empress: you should choose one to focus on and then, if inspiration hits for the other one, focus on that one for a bit before turning back to the main project
me: grr
Empress: think of it this way. You could struggle for 6 months trying to work on two projects and arrive halfway done with both
OR you could focus on one project for 6 months, finish it, and then have plenty of energy to finish the next one
me: that’s true I guess
Empress: it’s better than wearing yourself out
then you’ll be left with no project finished
and just a heap of frustrated dreams
me: I guess that’s right
question is, do I revise my old novel or do I go ahead with the new one?
I’m more excited about the new one, but I want to get the old one finished
Empress: how long would the old one take to get finished?
wait…and you’re having problems with them right now, right?
you know, I would think it’s easier to edit two stories then to write two stories at once. maybe you could finish up the new story and then edit both of them at the same time?
me: that’s an idea
Empress: and NaNoWriMo is coming up. you could finish up the first draft by next month and whallah! only have 2 stories to edit 😀
me: ugggggggggggh
I coooooooooould
that’s intense, though
Empress: well, doing two projects at once is intense as well
why not just switch it around and do this kind of intensity instead? 😉

So, after mulling it over for a couple of days, I’ve decided to do things a little differently.

Instead of trying to do two major projects at once, I’m going to put the revision of Phoenix on hold for now and focus all my energy on Hero in Exile. For November, instead of doing nanowrimo, I’ll try to get 50,000 words deep into this novel instead. After that, if I do roughly 1,000 words a day, I should be in good shape to finish it before the end of January. I don’t anticipate this novel going over 120,000 words, and if it tries to, I’ll do my best to reign it in.

So that’s my goal: Finish Hero in Exile before the end of January. Oh, and write 50,000 words in November.

I’ve noticed that I tend to either be too focused or too distracted. Trying to balance two projects at the same time has taught me that…well, I can’t do it very well. But I do know that once I have one project that I can focus on, I can focus on it until it gets done. That’s what I’m going to do now.

In the meantime, I was chatting with Drek from the writing group, and found out that he could program a way cool widget for my sidebar! It’s going to be a pair of speedometers that show my daily wordcount and my wordcount over the course of the last seven days. Oh, and if I’m nice, he might program a widget that displays my writing projects as status bars! I’m way excited!

Drek recently designed a website for nanowrimo this year. The idea is that every minute, it displays a new word from his novel. Something like that. It’ll be really interesting to see what happens once november starts up.

I can definitely say that the goatee gives Drek programming +2.

A change of direction?

I had a chat with Aneeka yesterday about writing. She was in London waiting to catch the bus to Scotland at around 4:00 am or so (jealous!), and I was winding down a frustratingly unproductive day.

I told her how I’m trying to divide my attention between two different projects, and she had some interesting things to say. Basically, she said that if it isn’t working and I’m not getting as much done as I’d like, I should put one project on hold and focus on the other one.

Duh. Of course that’s the answer. Trouble is, I’ve been so focused on doing things this way that I haven’t seen it.

So, before this weekend is up, I need to take a step back and figure out just what I’m going to do. Splitting my attention between two projects really isn’t working at all for me, and if I keep going at this rate I doubt I’ll be half finished with either one by the end of the semester. Definitely time for an adjustment.

Besides figuring out what I want to do with my writing, I also need to 1) send in my absentee ballot (I’m still somewhat undecided, though Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama has almost cinched it for me); 2) read Homer’s The Odyssey and write a paper comparing Odysseus to Socrates…for Tuesday (this isn’t as bad as it seems though–The Odyssey is a really interesting story and I’ve enjoyed it a lot so far); 3) get cracking on Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, since I’ve got a book report due in a week and a half, and; 4) various other assorted homeworks. Blegh!

Oh, and I haven’t asked anyone out on a date in the past month. Haven’t even thought about it, really. Dang. How did time start moving so fast? The semester is more than half over!

At least I got in a thousand words in Hero in Exile today. That, and I’ve been working through the next few scenes in my mind quite a bit. I think I know where I want to take it, even though it has nothing to do with what I wrote down in the plot outline. I’m excited.

And tired. More tomorrow.

Speciation of the sexes–what the crap is this?

Ok, I just had a crazy idea come to me like five minutes ago, and since I’m here at my computer, I’m going to write it down.

You know how we sometimes say that men and women are practically members of two different species? Well, what would an alien race look like if that were actually the case? What if the males of the species looked so indistinguishably different from the females that, to a human observer, they were two distinct different species?

Of course, this is a question that has been asked many times before. Just now, though, I had a really weird idea that might lead to a new take on the question: what if the males got pregnant with the males of the species, and the females with the females?

The males would have short lifespans and reproduce very frequently, with very large litters. They would only have to have sexual contact once to get pregnant. The females, on the other hand, would have very long lifespans and bear only one offspring at a time, with a very long gestation period. They would have to have sexual contact multiple times, possibly from multiple partners, in order to acquire the genetic material to reproduce.

But wait? In this reproductive cycle, who’s the “male” and who’s the “female?” Couldn’t it be the other way around? Or really, can our human concepts of gender even describe this species–or rather, these two species?

What would a society of these beings look like? What kinds of gender roles would arise from this kind of a life cycle? What kind of philosophy would arise from it? What kind of society?

I haven’t written a lot of science fiction with alien species, but this idea is cool enough that I just might have to do it sometime. What’s your take on this idea?