Joe Vasicek

I’m starting to get to the really cool parts…

…in both of my stories. In The Lost Colony, Leila, who’s a native of this somewhat primitive civilization that doesn’t understand spacefaring, stows away on a shuttle and experiences space for the first time. Pretty cool! And in The Wormhole Paradigm, tension builds as they set off towards the planet, anticipating that the aliens will intercept them at any time. When they don’t, Mike almost has a nervous breakdown–but that’s about 1,500 pages down the road. Altogether, I wrote 3,000 words tonight. Holy Cow!

There was also a Quark writing meeting today, and it really surprised me…

Get married in the temple…but just barely!

That’s the advice from Stephen L. Robinson, at least (author of Believing Christ and Following Christ–some of the best books that I’ve ever read on the subject of the Gospel that weren’t scripture). The other week, he gave quite possibly the most fascinating lecture I’ve heard all year–Paul the apostle on sex and marriage…

3,000 words tonight

Just another daily update on my writing progress:

I live behind an invisible wall of awkwardness

ok, so this post is going to be completely spontaneous and a little bit personal…

6,400 out of 10,000 isn’t bad

Well…I came a little bit short of my outrageous goal to write 10,000 words this weekend. But 6,400 isn’t bad. I got past some really difficult parts in my novel and I can almost see the end from here (next time, I’ll have to do a better job outlining so I can see the end before I get past 100,000 words)…

President’s Day Challenge

There are no classes Monday, so I think I’m going to do something crazy. I’m going to write 10,000 words in the next two days, and do it from at least six different places. LTUE this year has really got me pumped up to work on this novel, and I’m going to take advantage of the break to make some progress! So, if you want to be crazy like me, you can join me in the challenge. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Recap on Life, The Universe, and Everything

Yes, BYU had its annual sci fi con–er, symposium–this weekend! It was pretty freaking awesome! We had Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, Elantris), Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted), and Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) as some of the main speakers, plus Kevin Wasden who’s a famous illustrator, Eric James Stone who makes it out to Quark writing meetings occasionally, and Howard Taylor, who writes the webcomic Schlock Mercenary. There were also all kinds of other cool LDS writers there who had some pretty awesome things to say–unfortunately, I didn’t recognize most of the names, but it was really fun to listen to them! Here are some of my thoughts and reactions from the symposium…

Writing…is…hard…ugh!

And it doesn’t help when you’re sick. Yeah, I think I’m coming down with something. It’s kind of…demotivating.

Still, 715 words isn’t too shabby. I’ll definitely write more over the weekend. What’s more, a pretty little romance story has sprouted up in my novel…

English 318 just makes me want to WRITE.

…so I did today. A lot. Somewhere around 1,500 words–though I wish I could write more. Progress is being made. As to the final status of this novel, well, I don’t know…it’s hard not to have doubts…

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

I wanted to read one of the books that was written right around the time when science fiction as a genre was just starting to form, so I decided to read this classic by Jules Verne. Even though I knew the story already, it was fairly enjoyable to read, and I noticed a few things in it that are typical of the genre even today…