Author: Joe Vasicek

Yeah!  1673 words, and that doesn’t include some major edits I made of the first chapter.  I got some good feedback from the Quark writing meeting, and made a few edits to the first chapter.  Some pretty sizeable edits, in fact, but I’m very satisfied with them.

Now, my philosophy is not to make any really major edits until I’ve finished what I’m working on, so I don’t plan on going back, rewriting the chapter, and submitting it again to the writing group.  In fact, now that I’ve implemented the suggestions that I found useful, I’m probably not going to hardly touch it until I finish the whole thing.  It would be violating Heinlein’s third rule of writing to do that (as if I haven’t violated enough of those rules already 🙂 )

The awesomest part was rereading the story from the beginning.  Honestly, just from the perspective of a reader, I really enjoyed it.  It surprised me because (for some crazy reason) I wasn’t really expecting it.  There were a couple of scenes that really stuck out to me, where I felt I was in it, and it was awesome. It makes me feel that this is actually a pretty good story, that it has the potential to go places.  Wow!

I’m finding, also, that I’m thinking more about my story in the spare (or not so spare) moments I have.  During my somewhat boring History class, I read an essay on the Hero cycle and started applying that to the general idea I have for my story, which got me thinking for the rest of the day about what’s going to happen, what the plot is about, and what the major themes are, etc.

So yeah, things are going AWESOME!  It’s funny, though, because the worse things seem to get for Aneeka, the better they get for me.  Maybe there’s some kind of a cosmic balance going on here, in which case, I hope she writes a dozen more suicidal poems, destroys her computer and all the backup files of her novel Cursed Cure, and runs away naked with amnesia into some Elven forest, only to remember who she is twenty years later and throw herself onto her lover’s sword (a ripoff from the Silmarillion, in case you aren’t a true blue Tolkien fan).  jk! You rock Aneeka! (and your freaking security code sucks)

So, it’s late now, but I’m going to finish this blogfart by making a list of the posts I would like to do in the next week or so:

• An in depth review of Escape Pod
• Discussion of the two main characters of The Lost Colony, Ian and Leila
• Discussion of the major themes that I have in mind while writing The Lost Colony
• A review on the Quark writing group meeting that we had today and how awesome the group is
• Upload the fliers that I designed for Quark
• Review some of the other good writing podcasts that I listen to

That’s about it for now.  It’s late, and I’ve heard that sleeping is good for your health.  Tusbah al-kheer!

It’s late at night, but I just got finished writing and I wanted to blog in about it.  It went fairly well.  I introduced a new character (Leila) and tried to develop her a little bit, show the different sides of her personality and how she reacts to trials and difficulties.  I hope that I got started off on the right note and that she’s an interesting character to read about.  I probably didn’t do all that good with the main male character (I’ve changed his name to Ian) and should probably revise that before I submit it for the Quark writing group.  It can be challenging to make your characters interesting in those first few pages when you introduce them.  You’ve got to be efficient.

I’ve decided to modify my goals a little bit.  I’m going to shoot for 4,000 words a week instead of 500 a day.  That way, if I miss a day or two, I’m still good.

For me personally, I don’t think that writing is the kind of thing that lends itself to doing a little bit every day (which is why I decided never to be a full time writer). I do much better when I write sporadically in big chunks, rather than consistently spitting out very small pieces every day.

I am a little bit worried that I’m too wordy in my writing, but I’m not going to worry too much about editing and rewrites until I actually finish the whole thing.  I’ve got to allow myself to suck if I’m ever going to be any good.  I’m optimistic about all this.

I’m wondering, though, if I should try to think out the entire story in my head, including the ending, before I go much further.  I tried that a couple of times with some of the other stories that I wrote, but things always changed so much midway that it didn’t really work.  On the other hand, if I have at least the skeleton of a complete story in my mind, I might believe in it more as I write it.  That would provide motivation and keep me from wondering if I’m just making a fool of myself as I write this.

And, one quick note, in case you’re getting sick of reading nothing but my whining about writing, I do plan on doing some useful things on this blog, such as reviewing some podcasts, talking about Quark, and doing some other things.  It’s not just going to always be me saying “well, this is how my story is going but I don’t want to actually post it on the internet since I may want to sell it someday.”

I hope that you enjoy my stream-of-conscious ramblings anyways.  That’s what blogging is about–random ramblings on interesting subjects.  At least I’ll try to keep it short!

1,127 words yesterday and I started class today, with TONS of Arabic homework, so I decided to take a break and go to bed early.  I need the sleep.

Yesterday, when I started writing, it was difficult at first because there wasn’t much action, but as soon as the action picked up the writing just flowed.  It was beautiful.  The scene that I saw in my mind matched the scene I was writing.  It’s moments like this that I enjoy writing.

It shows me that if it seems hard to write, it might be a good idea to cut out all the unnecessary stuff and get right to the action.  That’s very similar advice, actually, to what I’ve heard in my political science classes.  In academia, there’s a real problem with people writing in the passive voice.  It can make an article seem more prestigious than it really is, and put the reader to sleep at the same time.  In PLSC 200 they are nazis about passive tense, even when it’s actually legit.  The result is that your writing is simple and the action is clear.  Apply that to fiction, and it helps as well.

Even though I didn’t write anything tonight, I do need to keep the momentum going.  I’ve experienced this before, where I’ll have a great story idea and lots of fun writing it out, but then a few days go by without me working on it, which quickly becomes a few weeks, then a few months, and then it gets buried.  I may or may not pick it up again, but it’s usually a bit harder than it would have been if I’d have kept the momentum going.

On the other hand, there is a reason why I decided long ago that I would never become a professional fiction writer.  That reason is that writing would become a chore if it became my job. I don’t want that.  I enjoy writing.  It’s creative, expressive, therapeutic sometimes, meditative in others, and sometimes it can even be exciting and invigorating.  To keep it that way, I’m reluctant to let writing become the primary focus of my life.

When you’ve got momentum, though, it’s beautiful.  That’s why I’m a “binge” writer.  I don’t usually force myself to sit down and write (out of fear of turning a recreational activity into a chore), but when I do do it, I get in this sort of trance and I don’t want to get out.  Hours become minutes and pages flash by faster than my mind can notice.  It’s beautiful.  I could spend a whole afternoon doing that, once I’m in the right groove.

I’ll try to wake up a bit early tomorrow and write a bit, as an experiment.  Morning writing vs. evening writing. More on that tomorrow.

1,257 words tonight.  That should make up for yesterday’s missed goal.

The great thing is that I’m starting to really get into this story.  In my mind, I’m already thinking out the details of the events in the next couple of chapters.  Now, I just need to make sure to keep up with it!

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually start writing until after midnight.  That will hopefully change.  I don’t want to be going to bed after 2 AM every night.

I’m coming up to the part where the main male character, whose name is Sayed (though I’ll probably change that) meets up with the main female character, whose name I haven’t yet figured out.  Sayed and two of his crewmates are stranded on the planet and separated from the captain and the rest of the crew.  They decide to walk out of their situation and try to find the captain.  Along the way, they come across a group of bandits who roam the desert on these bipedal lizardlike creatures and make a living stealing from the local tribes.

Of course, Sayed and his crewmates don’t realize this, so they approach the bandits peacefully without expecting a fight.  When the bandits attack, a firefight ensues, in which the bandits are cut down like butter by the superior weapons of Sayed and his friends.  All of the bandits, about thirty or forty, are killed.  However, one of Sayed’s crewmates is fatally injured, and his other crewmate Aaron is severely wounded.

Sayed doesn’t know it, but this group of bandits has recently captured the main female character.  She is the daughter of a local tribal leader of some influence.  While the men went off to rob and plunder from the strange foreigners, their wives and the princess stayed behind.  The wives of the bandits are jealous of the princess and treat her abusively.  When their husbands don’t return, they are scared and force the princess to go and find out what’s going on.

She comes across Sayed and Aaron at the site of the battle, but Sayed (who is peaceful at heart) sees that she is unarmed and doesn’t attack her.  They try but fail to communicate, because of the language barrier.  When the princess sees how sad Sayed feels about his wounded comrades and the bandits they killed, she realizes that he’s a good person at heart and won’t hurt her.

However, she connives a scheme to get herself back home–and to get back at the women in the process.  She takes Sayed and Aaron back to the wives who abused her and tells the women that these foreigners have come to rescue her–and capture them.  When Sayed tries to communicate with them, she pretends to speak on his behalf, and Aaron has such a jittery trigger finger that the women quickly come to believe what she tells them.

She then leads Sayed and the others back to her home, where, to Sayed’s great surprise, he is treated as a prince and a hero.  The plot thickens from there.

That’s the basic gist of the story at this point.  I don’t want to reveal too much in this blog, but I also don’t want you to read about my writing without having any clue as to what’s going on in the story.

I think that’s enough for now.  As always, suggestions are always welcome.

So, I’ve been unpacking and moving in all day–what a freaking chore! It didn’t help that my sister, who left me her car while she’s visiting the family, was 5,000 miles overdue for an oil change, or that it suddenly decided to leak power steering fluid. Holy cow! I could go on listing things, but basically, I’ve been busy all day. That’s not the excuse, though! The excuse is even lamer. While unpacking and moving in, my flash drive with all my writing was buried under a pile of junk (ازبل, as my Syrian roommate taught me to say), and he went to bed before I could completely put everything away. The result was that I couldn’t find my flash drive while glancing over the pile in the dark with my cell phone as a light, and I didn’t want to disturb him so I stopped looking. So, no writing today (::innocent emoticon::). I’ll try to write at least 1,000 words tomorrow.

But here’s a question, and something I noticed: at what time of the day do you do your best writing? At what time of the day do you do most of your writing?

I’ve noticed that with this daily word goal, I’ve been doing a lot of my writing at night, right before I go to bed. I’ve also noticed that I get really loopy right around that time (haven’t you noticed while reading this blog?). I wonder if perhaps it would be better to write at a different time of day. Would that increase the quality of the writing? I dunno.

I’m not quite sure how to logistically do that. Every time I’ve set a goal to do something at a specific time each day, it always ends up not working out. Every day is different, and different obligations pop up at different times. I suppose I could set a flexible time, such as “after lunch” or “before such and such class,” but would it really work? I don’t know.

I think the ideal thing would be to get so excited about your writing that you think about it when you don’t have to think about anything. That way, you’re much more motivated and it’s natural to make the time.

But writing doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of thing that you can do when you’re bored. It takes a lot more thought than watching TV or browsing random blogs and websites. I heard from somewhere once that the brain is naturally wired to minimize work and maximize output. That means that you’re naturally wired to seek for highly stimulating things that require little or no effort to obtain. I’m sure it’s possible, through an exercise of will, to overcome that, but it would require quite a lot.

Besides that, writing strikes me as something that you can’t really do in little chunks here and there. If you want to catch up on your blogs, you can go to a kiosk between classes and check out half a dozen or so before you have to go. But writing is something that, in order to do well, you have to take time to work yourself up a little bit more than that. It takes inertia, and it’s hard to accelerate if you’re starting from zero. Once you’re going (I’ve found) you can go practically forever, but it takes a bit to get started–to REALLY get started.

Because of all this, I think that writing really is something that you have to set aside the time to do–it’s not something you can just expect to naturally do when you’re bored. This means that the solution is either to set aside a time each day (either by the clock or by routine) or keep it constantly on the front of your mind.

I’m going to try doing that. I’m going to try to get my writing done during the day and not right before I go to bed. Maybe while I’m eating lunch…

Yeah, I did about 3,000 words in The Lost Colony today.  I’m just about caught up to the place where I was before I decided to rewrite the first chapter.  About a third of that was cut and pasting from the previous part, but I did have to substantially edit it.

The funny thing is that it was a struggle to get myself settled down and actually writing, but once I did, the time flew by like nothing and so did the words.  Last night, I didn’t write anything because it was late and I was very tired, and I figured that it would be better to make it up today.  I figure that goals are only useful if they push you to the best possible end.  They’re not there to make you feel guilty or satisfied, they’re there to get you to do something.  If I get overly swamped with schoolwork, or a family death happens, or I’m in desperate need of sleep, I’m not going to make myself spit out 500 words of forced prose.  Apparently, I’m not the only one thinking or saying this.  (I highly recommend Mur Lafferty’s podcast, by the way.)

All day today, I had it in the back of my mind to sit down and write, but whenever I tried, I always distracted myself.  It was weird.  I need to get past this, but I’m not sure how.  I figure it will happen naturally as I get deeper in the story.  I think that writing is most enjoyable when you really believe passionately in the story itself.  I think that that’s also one of the best motivators for writing.  I’m sure there are others–like, for example, starvation–but when I really have a good story idea, I almost CAN’T keep from writing.  This past winter, I had this awesome story idea of a bunch of guys in someone’s brain piloting him like some kind of spaceship and helping him to overcome his fears and ask a girl out on a date.  I kept poring over the story in my mind until one day I just sat down for three hours–and voila! an entire rough draft came out beautifully!  One major edit and a few cosmetic changes later, it actually won a writing contest.  So yeah, it really helps if you’re passionate about your story!

The question is, how do you get yourself more excited about the story you’re trying to tell?

School is coming up, and I’m about to discover if I’ve got too much on my plate.  18 credit hours, advanced Arabic plus living in the Arabic house, working part time, no car (not yet–I just sold my old one), and other craziness.  Despite all this, I am very much looking forward to going back to school.  It will be exciting!  It will also be exciting to get involved in Quark again.  We’ve had some good online meetings, but only a handful of people have shown up to those (mostly just Reigheena and Aneeka).  A lot of people in the writing group have graduated, so I really hope we can bring in some new blood this semester.