Joe Vasicek

General Conference and weekend progress (or lack thereof)

This weekend was General Conference. I watched most of the sessions from friends’ apartments here in the FLSR. While I enjoyed many of the speakers and caught all four sessions, I have to confess that I slept through a lot more of the talks than I should have. I’ll definitely download the mp3s and listen to them when they come out.

As far as writing goes, this week was a lot slower than I would have liked. Yesterday was packed from the moment I woke up (10:30 am) to when I finally went to sleep, though I did get in a little bit of writing between sessions. Today, I woke up feeling sick, which didn’t help things either.

Despite all this, I’m really happy to say that I made some serious progress in Phoenix. Cut out more than a thousand words and revised nearly twenty pages altogether. Things are right on track for that story, and I’m really enjoying the rewrite.

Hero in Exile, though, is different. I didn’t make nearly the progress that I wanted to on that one. <sigh> looks like I’ll have to wait for the next weekend. That, or start writing in it more consistently.

That’s all for now. In the meantime, check out this amazingly cool picture of a solar prominence from Astronomy Picture of the Day. Or my friend Steve’s blog. Just remember, Steve claimed for the longest time that he would never write his own blog, so don’t believe a word he says. You have it from me.

Posting story ideas

My friend Steve posted a comment on my last post that I thought was deserving of a post all to itself. He said:

Joe,
If you have a good idea, you shouldn’t put it up on your website, man. Someone is gonna’ steal it. Take your flower idea and hoard it, man. Because, I’m gonna’ be honest with you, Victorian women using flowers to fight with in that punk setting is awesome. And you need to protect your kids, dude.

I can understand why people would be wary of sharing their best story ideas in a public place. For a long time, that was my philosophy as well: that good ideas should be hoarded and protected, lest anyone should “steal” them and run away with all the credit.

However, I know what I’m doing. My perspectives have changed, and I have several reasons for posting my story ideas up here publicly. Here are a few of them:

1) Ideas are cheap.

There are a ton of really good story ideas floating around in the sf/f publishing world. In English 318, Brandon Sanderson said that any given editor sees dozens of fascinating, imaginative, stupendous ideas in any given day. The thing that gets you the contract, though, is the quality of your writing. There are just so many amazing story ideas out there that even the most amazing ideas are relatively common.

2) Everyone has a different take on the same idea.

Two authors, writing essentially the same story, will come at it so differently that both books will be unique. Heinlein’s take on space travel is very different from Frank Herbert’s or Arthur C. Clarke’s, and Haldeman’s take on galactic war and colonization is radically different from Scalzi’s. Trantor is not Coruscanth, and Arrakis is not Tatooine.

All these story elements, though based on similar ideas, differ radically from each other because each author had a different take on things. When we write fiction, we bring all our personal beliefs, values, experiences, and perspectives to the story, whether consciously or subconsciously. It’s unavoidable. And since all of us are unique and different, so long as we’re honest in our writing our stories are going to reflect that uniqueness.

I’m not afraid of someone “stealing” my ideas because I know that my approach is different enough that my stories (so long as they’re honest) will be very different.

3) It takes several ideas, combined in a unique way, to make a full novel.

I used to think that you could write a novel based off of two or three really good ideas. Maybe that’s why I never finished anything. I’ve learned over the last year that, in fact, it takes somewhere around fifteen or twenty ideas, minimum, to come up with a good story. And that’s just for starters. Once you sit down and start writing it, new ideas erupt as the story progresses, and you find yourself taking things in unplanned directions. Adjusting your plans and integrating the new ideas with the old ones is part of good writing.

Brandon Sanderson said this in English 318, and I believe it: a novel is not found in the ideas by themselves, it’s found in the synergy that happens as you combine them together. As ingredients, your ideas may be powerful by themselves, but when you combine them together, the end result is much more powerful than the mere sum of them all. It’s all in how the ideas intermix.

4) Ideas grow and develop when you bounce them off of other people.

I do not believe that story ideas are static. They are not like Lego blocks that you stack together to make a construct. They are dynamic–they change and grow over time, like plants in a garden. If you take a plant and hide it in a closet, it will die. Similarly, I believe that if you “hoard” your story ideas, showing them to nobody and putting off writing them until you can write the best novel possible, those ideas will become weaker.

I tried to hoard one of my story ideas a few years ago, thinking that it was the best idea I’d ever come up with and that I needed to wait until I was experienced enough to include it in my magnus opus. Now, the idea doesn’t even interest me that much. I’ve grown, but the idea hasn’t, and I’ve moved on to other things.

My goal in sharing my story ideas here on this blog is to bounce them off of other creative minds and start a discussion. From that discussion, I think that my ideas will grow and become stronger. Other people often see things that I miss, and their take on things can really spark my imagination and help me to take my ideas to a new level. Discussing my ideas, not hoarding them, is what I need.

5) It’s easier to lose a notebook than it is to lose data stored on your website.

This last idea is purely practical. I keep a notebook with me at all times and scribble down story ideas in it as they come to me. Over the summer, I lost a notebook that I’d been keeping for several months. It had maybe thirty or forty story ideas in it, and now those are lost. From that, I learned the importance of keeping a backup. This website, in a way, is my backup.

So those are the main reasons why I’ve decided to blog about my story ideas and make them public. If my story ideas inspire you, then by all means go ahead and run with them. We live in an open source world, and besides, your take on the idea is still going to be very different from mine. And if you have any thoughts to share, please do! I welcome comments, especially for these posts on my story ideas. My goal is to bounce ideas off of you as the reader, because interaction is one of the things that makes blogging so useful.

Flower magic

Alright, here is a really cool idea for a magic system that I came up with while hanging out with friends. I have no idea exactly how it came up, I just know that it did.

What if you had a magic system that was based entirely on flowers? I just don’t mean recycled My Little Pony or Carebears or something cheesy like that–I mean a thoroughly researched, methodical magic system based on different colors, varieties, etc of flowers.

I don’t know how exactly it would work, but I think that there would be special women with enhanced powers based on their names. For example, a woman named “Rose” would have an enhanced ability to use the magic associated with roses. Or perhaps the women would only have the ability to use the magic associated with the flower of their name.

The specific powers of each variety of flower would correlate with their symbolic meanings. One would drain magic from the flower itself, so that once the magic was spent, the flower would wilt. Thus, the “flower mages” would have to keep different kinds of flowers in great abundance to be able to use their abilities. Since flowers wilt quickly after they’re cut, people would only be able to use their powers in certain seasons, when the flowers are in bloom. Also, it would be hard to use massive amounts of this magic when traveling, unless the particular flower is abundant in the wild.

At the same time, perhaps it would make it interesting to say that each person has the ability to rejuvenate a particular variety of flower as well. Thus, one could drain certain varieties of flowers, but through meditation or some other ability could cause other varieties to flourish and thrive. Thus, natural alliances would form between people of different abilities, based on the growing seasons of different flowers.

To be really cool, you’d have to really do your research for this. I mean, you’d have to know all the different varieties of flowers, their colors, growing systems, scents, etc, and their symbolic meanings. But if the research was solid, this could be REALLY cool.

Esh Raykom? What do you think?

Making it up on the weekend

Yesterday, as I was writing a small paper (~500 words) for PLSC 201, I realized that I would be FINISHED with classes this week today at three o’clock and I wouldn’t really have to worry about homework. What a delicious breath of freedom!

So today, after I slept through the four hour-and-a-half classes that I have today (no joke–I sat next to Gretchen Belnap in history and she doodled on my notebook!), I thought to myself “you know, I could take all this extra time on the weekend and use it to catch up on my writing.”

I was really stoked until I remembered that General Conference is this weekend. Not that I wasn’t looking forward to Conference–I really enjoy it–it’s just that it’s going to eat up a lot of time, hanging out with friends and family between sessions and all.

But regardless of that, tomorrow is almost totally open! I’ve just got work from ten to three (which, even though it sounds like a lot, really isn’t), a writing meeting at five, and I’ll probably drop in on a mission reunion sometime in the evening just for a little bit. And even though conference is all weekend, I’ll probably have time in the morning and/or between sessions.

So I’m going to take that time to sit down and do some serious writing, especially in Hero in Exile. Does 3,000 words sound like too much to shoot for? I just want to sit down and immerse myself in that story. Phoenix too–maybe I can get through ten or fifteen pages.

Everything else is going really well for me. My classload is really light, which is great because it’s leaving me time for other stuff, like a social life. Work is awesome–I have so much fun going over people’s papers! Even though I sometimes feel like I’m BSing too much, I find it both relaxing and productive at the same time (if that makes sense). Plus, all my coworkers are way cool. My supervisor is way chill and thinks that I’m really amazing for writing novels. It’s just a lot of fun. Plus, I calculated that with my sixteen hour week, I can expect to earn $280 every pay period. SWEET!

Finally, here’s something interesting I was looking at today. It’s a really cool steampunk webcomic called Girl Genius. I heard about it when Brandon Sanderson and his buddies did a podcast with the creators of this comic, and got hooked on it shortly thereafter. It’s got a really complex storyline that I honestly don’t understand yet (I’m slowly making my way through the archives), but each strip is hilarious in itself, and the characters and setting are so interesting that it’s not hard to get swept up by it all. I mean, airships…need I say more? If you like steampunk and/or good quality webcomics, this is definitely worth checking out.

And now, I’m going to finish this post because I should be writing in my stories, not on my blog.

Progress comes slowly

I feel like today was fairly productive. I finished all the homework that’s due tomorrow, put in three hours at the writing lab, went to all my classes, got up early, and now I’m going to bed relatively late, after writing for about two hours.

However, I still wasn’t able to get all the writing done that I’d have liked. Edited another six pages of Phoenix. Didn’t write a wikidpad article for Hero. Didn’t put in another 500 words in that story.

I’ve noticed, though, that I’m starting to think a lot more about my writing, especially after yesterday. While walking around on campus (and during the more boring parts of my classes) I was thinking about what I should do in the next few pages, how I should edit this particular scene–actually putting myself in the scene and trying to visualize it.

In short, the momentum is building. When I got back from working out, I was able to sit down and dive straight into the story. No procrastinating. No avoidance behavior. It was nice.

And then, what felt like five minutes later, I got this pop up message on my screen that the LRC was closing in only one minute and that I was about to be kicked off. Talk about panic! I wasn’t able to eject my disc safely, so when I got back to the FLSR I literally ran to my computer to check if I’d lost the story.

Thank goodness, it was still there, but my roommate Basseem had quite a laugh.

Now I just have to get that momentum going on my other project. If I can freaking find the time. I haven’t even figured out what I’m going to do as far as dating this week–and heck, if I don’t consciously make it a priority, I know that it won’t happen. There are a few girls I’d like to ask out, but no specifics or anything.

Man, I can’t afford avoidance activity or procrastination anymore! There’s just not enough time. But…shoot! That means I have to be constantly putting myself out there! Argh!

I’m sure that all of this is good for me. Probably a little bit more good than I’d like.

In the meantime, I don’t believe in writing boring, useless blog posts anymore, so here is something interesting I found the other day. It’s a customizable podcast for the scriptures. Basically, when you sign up you create a personalized podcast feed for any of the standard works, so that you can download the scriptures one chapter at a time (or two or three) as often as you would like. It’s basically like podiobooks, except for the scriptures.

So anyways, that’s what’s going on over here. It’s 1:30 am, and I have a class that starts in six and a half hours. G’night!

Maybe I spoke too soon…

Yeah, I thought that six pages a day wouldn’t be that hard for the rewrite of The Phoenix of Nova Terra. Well, I might be wrong.

After a really awesome and refreshing Sunday, I sat down around 10:00 pm to work on Phoenix. I thought that I’d spend maybe half an hour or an hour working on that, which would get me excited to work on the other projects. After all, six pages isn’t that much, right?

Well, it’s 2:00 am and I’m signing off, after getting through about nine or ten pages only. Man, it was difficult. Satisfying, but difficult. I didn’t even have time left over to get to Hero in Exile. Dang!

It probably didn’t help that I had facebook open the whole time. I think I spent an hour and a half just chatting with various friends. Even though it was distracting, it was fun. I found out that one of the kids from the Amman branch got his mission call…to San Jose California! Awesome! And chatted with a few other friends who I haven’t talked with in a while. It was fun…but very distracting.

A day has not gone by since the beginning of this semester wherein I have accomplished all of my daily goals. That’s kind of frustrating. I got two out of three today–six pages in Phoenix and an article on the wikidpad for Hero. I hate writing those articles, but they are actually extremely helpful because they make me think about that story. Prewriting sucks, but when you put your ideas down on paper, the exercise makes you see things that follow logically from your story elements, which affect other elements, which come back around to give you good ideas of new things to put in your story. Hero will probably be a much stronger novel than Phoenix because of all this.

But yeah, it’s late. I must sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppp.

Letter to the Daily Universe

My roommate Matt wrote this awesome letter to The Daily Universe last year (scroll down to the heading “Message for Sisters” to read his letter), and garnered some incredibly hilarious responses from the BYU community. He struck a tightly strung chord in this community, something that everyone here at BYU spends a lot of time thinking about: dating.

Well, I figured that I have something I’d like to say on this subject, so earlier this week I drafted a letter of my own. I haven’t actually looked at the submission guidelines for letters to the editor, so I’ll probably have to shorten this quite a bit, but I wanted to post the full version here in case anyone’s interested. Enjoy!

When girls complain that they don’t get asked out on dates, we are quick to find fault with the guys and slow find fault with the girls.I believe this is a mistake.While it is true that a lot of the stinging criticism leveled at the guys is true and valid, there are many things that the girls do to turn off potential admirers.With regards to that, here are five general principles for dating that I believe every girl at BYU should know and follow:

1.Everyone is worth a first date.

Of all of Elder Oak’s dating counsel, the point we ignore the most is that a first date is not a big deal.Relax.Have fun.Give it a chance.How do you know that it can’t work out?And even if it probably won’t, at least it’s a great learning opportunity.No one is too far beneath you for a first date.

2.If you turn down a first or second date, no matter the excuse, it says “I’m not interested in dating you.”

Ambiguity is more painful than rejection.Even if your excuse is legitimate, guys will assume the worst.They may ask you out again, after some time, but they will be much slower to do so.On the other hand, if you want to communicate disinterest, turning down a second date is the polite way to do it.

3.If a guy asks you on a date and the time does not work for you, the way to say no without communicating complete lack of interest is to suggest an alternative time and activity.

If you have an honest scheduling conflict but are interested in dating him, do this and you erase the painful ambiguity that makes him reluctant to ask you out again.Besides, it is polite and very classy.

4.Backing out of a date at the last minute not only says “don’t date me,” it is inconceivably rude and extremely unattractive.

Guys step up to the plate by taking the initiative; girls step up to the plate by following through.If you are guilty of backing out after saying yes, you have absolutely no right to complain that guys don’t ask you out enough.Quite frankly, you are getting what you asked for.

If something genuinely does come up and you must cancel at the last minute, remember principle three.Show by your actions that you are not flaking out just because you got cold feet.

5.If you rudely turn down one guy, others will hear about it.

Guys are not as aloof as you think.We have our social networks and we talk with our friends about our dating experiences just as much as you do.Keep that in mind when someone out of left field asks you out.The word gets around.

Please know that I don’t mean to blame the girls at BYU for not getting asked out.Too many guys at this university aren’t man enough to step up to the plate.At the same time, the girls are not beyond the need for repentance.I’ve found, in my experience, that these five principles work, and I sincerely believe that if every girl in this university followed them, not only would we all date more, but we would all have a lot more fun.

New job!

This past week I just started a new job at BYU. I’m a writing advisor for the FHSS (Family of Home and Social Sciences) writing lab. It’s GREAT! I help students work on their papers and work on their writing skills, and I really love it.

How I got this job is an interesting story. Honestly, it was really just a series of flukes that ended up working beautifully. I was just in the right time at the right place and fell into it.

It began when I went to the BYU Bookstore to talk with my old boss in the stockroom and figure out all the paperwork for getting rehired. I’d talked with him at the end of the winter semester, and he knew my schedule and had told me that everything was fine for me to work in the fall–we just had to fill out the paperwork and go through the formalities.

Well…long story short, when we finally got into the rehiring interview and I told him that I could only work MWF, his face dropped and he gave me a card with a number on it to call and check on my job application the next day. He said that he wasn’t sure if they had a place for me because I couldn’t work TTh, but that he’d try.

It wasn’t hard to see, though, that I wasn’t going to get rehired.

Here’s a funny thing. I tend to get really worked up and angry over little things, like slow drivers or computers that don’t work or paperwork that I didn’t know I had to fill out. But when it comes to major things–like my old boss dropping the ball, leaving me without a job–I’m really mellow about it. Even though I needed money and didn’t know what I’d do without a job, I figured that this had happened for a reason and that everything would work out in the end.

It did. I was walking through the Wilk on my way home one day and decided to check the job boards. I skipped over all the custodial and dining jobs (those are dead ends anyways) and looked at the academic ones.

Usually when I look at these jobs, I feel that I’m much too underqualified. However, as I was skimming over them, my eye fell on the ad for being a writing advisor. I love writing, so I decided to read a little more closely. To my surprise, as I read over the qualifications, I found that I met almost all of them.

I picked up an application, selected some writing samples, and wrote a cover letter. I was a little bit worried because I spent so much time talking about my experience as Quark writing VP, since that’s a non-academic setting, but that ended up being one of my most attractive selling points. When they asked me what my greatest weakness was, I said “procrastination,” but then I was able to turn around and say “but I set a goal to write a novel last year and achieved it” through consistent, daily writing. Even though the advisor position is for academic writing only, my experiences with creative writing made me look surprisingly attractive.

The thing that sealed me the job was my schedule. They needed MWF and practically all my classes are TTh. So not only were they excited because of my qualifications, they were excited because I was available when they needed it. Getting the job wasn’t that hard from there.

So now I’m a writing advisor, and I LOVE it! I sit around the lab, chatting and hanging out with all the other cool people who work there, and every once and a while an MFHD or Psychology major comes in with a paper and we look over it. Good people, low-stress work environment, work that I actually love doing, really good pay for an on-campus job, and best of all, it’s the kind of job that looks REALLY good on a resume. This has got to be the best job I’ve landed since I came here at BYU. I’m so happy and thankful that things worked out the way they did!

Goals update…and it’s freaking late…

Man, I’ve been really bad about my writing goals this month. I set a whole bunch of goals right as school started, and I don’t think a single day has gone by where I’ve kept all of them. Blegh, that’s disgusting.

So today I took some time to rethink things and reevaluate. I figured that I’d have to drop those old goals I’d set, settle for something more practical and less wild and crazy. Something disssapointing like that.

The surprising (and encouraging) thing was that, when I calculated how many days I had to accomplish these things, I saw that they were still very much within my reach.

I mean, in order to finish the rewrite of The Phoenix of Nova Terra on schedule, all I’ve got to do is revise six pages a day. Six pages! That’s virtually nothing! Get me on a roll, and I can do ten to twenty pages easy–and thoroughly enjoy it.

As far as Hero in Exile is concerned, if I write 500 words a day, I’ll be at 100,000 words by March. 100,000 is more than I want to write for this novel–I want to try and keep this one relatively short, in the 50,000 to 100,000 word range. And that’s just at 500 words per day! I’m sure there will be days where I write more–where I’ll be driven to write more.

So now, I’m happy to say that even though this month has been way disorganized, I still think I can do this. I will. I’ll be consistent, put forth my best efforts, and have three polished novels by November 2009 in time for the World Fantasy Convention. And I’ll be there! For sure, I’ll be there.

The problem is that I put off writing until the last thing I do before I go to bed. Then, I run around doing all sorts of night owl type things, until finally 2:00 am comes around, and then it’s just too late to do anything but pass out. ugh. UGH.

But tonight, before running out to hang out with some friends (and then waste time upon coming back), I sat down and forced myself to write. And it worked! I made some good progress in Hero in Exile. It’s just 500 words or so, but I’m starting to think in terms of “what do I need to accomplish in this scene?” rather than “how can I get my 500 words in today?” That’s good. Progress, at least of some kind.

There is other stuff that I need to blog about, but I’ll do it in a later post. Gotta review Dune, gotta write about my new job, I’ve got a letter to the Daily Universe that I want to post up here first…all kinds of stuff.

But for now, I think I’m finished. Time to pass out for the next four or five hours. UUGGGGGHH.

I love revising

Today, after I got through with my homework for tomorrow, I figured it was time to do my writing for the day, so I opened up the rough draft of Phoenix and picked up where I left off. I didn’t really feel much in the mood for writing, but forty five minutes later the library was closing and I was getting so into it that I didn’t want to stop.

Revising is one of the aspects of writing that I really enjoy. I hate prewriting–love coming up with the story, hate actually writing it out on paper–and writing the first draft, while it has its good points, is also quite a struggle for me. But give me a rough draft of a story that I can believe in, and I’ll have so much fun making that story work. When I revise, I really feel like I’m making progress–like I’m making something better. Maybe that’s what makes the inner critic in me so less caustic when I’m revising, because I don’t find myself saying “this is crap,” I find myself saying “gotta do this, and this, and this over here…” and when it’s all over, I just feel so productive and satisfied, it’s great.

I’m finding with this novel that cutting things out can actually make the story a lot stronger than putting new stuff in. I think I read something about this by Hemmingway once in high school, how the revising process involves cutting out everything that doesn’t work. I tend to be a discovery writer, so this makes a lot of sense. I prefer to write myself into a story, which means that most of the stuff that I write is more for my own benefit than it is for the reader. It’s like baby fat that naturally comes off as the story matures and grows under my hand.

I’m also finding that revision is an excellent opportunity to practice the “show, don’t tell” mantra. I’ve heard that most beginning writers (and a lot of experienced writers) really struggle with this–they tend to tell everything in an uninteresting, unengaging kind of way, instead of incorporating the information into the story so that it naturally flows with the setting and the action. Revising helps me to see just how much I tell instead of show, which not only gives me a chance to replace it with “showing,” but hopefully will help me as I write the first draft of my other story, Hero in Exile.

Connected with all this, I’m starting to realize the importance of giving specific, concrete, almost anecdotal sensory details about the things that the viewpoint character notices. This is something that I need to work on. When it comes down to Jungian types, I am sensing, not feeling, which means that I tend to miss sensory details because I spend so much time thinking about abstract theories and ideas. However, sensory details are important, both because they enrich the setting and because they effectively develop the viewpoint character.

I was browsing through Robert Charles Wilson’s book Spin the other day, and I was surprised to notice how often he did this. Every paragraph is full of the oddest sensory details, small things that the viewpoint character notices that really enrich the story. He doesn’t spend a lot of time on any given one–maybe just a passing sentence or a phrase–but they build up in such a way that really draws you into the world, and into the character’s life. You start to care about him in ways that you wouldn’t have before. It’s very interesting.

I feel like I made some very good progress today. Edited chapter three, which was about fifteen or twenty pages. There was definitely a lot that needed changing, but that’s not bad because now it’s so much better! And not only that, I think I can see that I’m gradually becoming a better writer. Revising is definitely my favorite part of writing.