Bringing Stella Home – Page 17 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Why am I so #$%! unproductive?

I don’t know why, but it’s a lot harder for me to write the first draft of something than it is to revise it. Finishing my last novel was much, much harder than any of the projects before it, and my productivity is still suffering because of it.

The root problem, I suppose, is procrastination. While I was writing my last novel, things got really tough towards the end, and I found myself procrastinating much more than I should have. That led me to develop a dangerous habit. Right now, as I move into the fourth revision of Mercenary Savior, I find that I’m still procrastinating even when the work is much easier (and more enjoyable).

Or is that really it? Maybe I wasn’t procrastinating when I was writing my last novel–maybe I was taking frequent breaks to “fill the well.” Except now, those breaks have turned into full-scale procrastination, and I’m finding it very hard to get back on a regular schedule.

I’ve been doing about 1k to 3k words per day this past week, but I feel like I should be doing around 4k or 5k. A lot of the time, I put off even starting until around 5pm, and stay up until late hours of the night when I should be sleeping. It’s not a sustainable schedule, and I know it.

Part of it might have to do with the fact that I’m back at my parents’ house right now, taking a short break before returning to Utah. I guess I should just stop worrying and enjoy my time here–I’m still doing well, overall, and there’s more to life than writing all the time. Still, it’s maddening to feel unproductive. Blarg.

Other than that, things are going great. I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with my dad, as well as relaxing and taking time off from other pursuits. Saw Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and loved them both. Read a couple of good books, too. Life is good.

In unrelated news, my sister is about to have a baby. Everyone in the family is WAY excited. We love you, Kate and Danny!

Update on things

Revised the first chapter of Mercenary Savior today. I will probably revise it a couple more times before this draft is finished, but at least I’ve done it once.

For some reason, most of my alpha readers didn’t give me too many comments to work with. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but in practical terms it means I’m mostly on my own. Still waiting for some to get back to me, though.

Last week, I wrote the prologue, where as a young woman Danica returns to her home only to find her family massacred by hired thugs. It was…surprisingly dark. Charlie liked it, though, so that’s a good thing.

Charlie also complimented me on my prose, saying that it improves every time she reads something of mine. That’s a pleasant surprise, since I certainly don’t notice any difference–but then again, I’m so close to my own writing that improvement is hard to see. Good to know that my craft is getting better, not getting worse. Thanks!

Last week, I realized that I didn’t have any submissions out for Genesis Earth. None at all. I sent out a query on Saturday, but it was surprisingly difficult. Submitting is definitely not my strongest point; I really need to work on that.

In unrelated news, I’m flying home tomorrow to spend the week with my parents. I asked to come home for my birthday present; my mom’s health insurance through her work covers me until September, but only in Massachusetts. Since I haven’t had a dental checkup in years, I figured it would be good to get that done. Also, it’s a nice break and a chance to see my folks. I’m looking forward to it.

Let’s see, what else is going on? Oh! The Kepler Mission announced a press conference for Thursday to discuss “an intriguing star system” they recently discovered. Needless to say, I can hardly wait!

Also, no less than 6 fellow quarkies are moving in to my apartment complex this next semester. Six! And they’re all girls! If Baggins old place was Bag End, and his new place is Rivendell, our complex is freaking Minas Tirith. And we’re forming a dinner group, too! This next year is going to be awesome.

And that’s just about it for what’s new in my world. I came just shy of 4k in Mercenary Savior today, and I hope to keep that up (or do more) until I get a new job. For now, let me leave you with this EPIC chipophone presentation from lft. 8-bit music ftw!

Almost at four

I’ve got half a dozen things I could blog about, but it’s 2 am and cleaning checks are tomorrow, so I think I’m going to give a quick update and go to bed.

Worlds Away from Home is doing quite well–I’m only two chapters and five scenes from the end. I’d push really hard to finish it tomorrow, but I’m still waiting on some of my alpha readers for Mercenary Savior and probably won’t start that project until after I go back to Massachusetts at the end of the month.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the seven point story structure Dan Wells talked about at LTUE 2010 (which I missed, but caught on youtube), and I’ve got a TON of ideas for Mercenary Savior now. I’m practically chomping at the bit to start analyzing this story and working out all the complex plot and character elements. That’s very good.

While chatting with one of my alpha readers for Mercenary Savior, I had an interesting idea for a direct sequel. Basically, while James’s storyline has some closure (or should, after I finish this next revision), he’s still got a lot of growing and maturing to do. My mind is already working it out…should I make that my fifth novel? Or move on to something else first? The thing about direct sequels is you can’t sell them without the first book, and if the first book doesn’t sell…

I’m applying for Redcliff Ascent; if all goes well, I’ll be participating in the November training (since September is full). At first, I was hesitant about this (since I kind of need a job now), but looking at it now, that’s probably the best time to do it. It’s after World Fantasy, which gives me time to finish Mercenary Savior, and late enough in the year that I can still finish that article for Mormon Artist. Plus, I can easily get a schedule that allows me to attend LTUE 2011. The only disadvantage is that I won’t be able to attend all of Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 classes, but that’s not such a big deal (seeing as I’ve taken the class twice already!).

Other than that, life is good. I’m going home in a week to see my parents and get my teeth done (since my mom’s health insurance covers me until my birthday in September–why pay for a checkup when you could have it for free?), and I’m definitely looking forward to that. And now that I’m almost finished with Worlds Away, I can see that it’s got potential, and that’s encouraging. Not this draft, certainly, but once I fix all the holes, it could really go somewhere.

Either way, it’s going to be nice having four novels under my belt.

End in sight

Things are winding down for my current work in progress, Worlds Away from Home–or should I say winding up, since I’m just a chapter or two from the major climax? In any case, by the end of the week, inshallah, the rough draft will be finished. <crosses fingers>

It’s been tough, but I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be able to salvage it, probably sometime after World Fantasy 2010. Drafting is not my strongest point; I’m much better at revision. My goal is to have a fully polished draft before the end of 2011.

As far as the real world goes, things are starting to come together as well. I’m going home at the end of the month to get my teeth checked before my Mom’s insurance no longer covers me, and when I get back this temp agency should have a warehouse job lined up for a while, if I can’t find anything else. I’m cautiously optimistic that my sister will help me get a job at the residential treatment center where she works, which would be awesome, and of course there’s always the possibility that BYU will lift the hiring freeze (pretty soon, they’ll have to).

So here’s my plan for the next few months: quit my job at the call center and go home in two weeks, then either work through the temp agency through September/October or find something better. The wilderness job I was looking at has their training in November, so I’ll start the application process now in order to have that option in case everything else falls through. And if all else fails, I’ll go teach English in Asia for a year.

Meanwhile, I hope to stay in Utah until at least February, preferably until April. There are a lot of good resources here for writers, and I hope to take advantage of them. After I finish the rough draft of Worlds, I will throw everything behind Mercenary Savior and get it polished in time for World Fantasy 2010.

And then? Who knows. I’d kind of like to try my hand at a fantasy novel; I’ve got the start of an idea for a magic system, and enough knowledge of Middle Eastern history to throw in a sweet medieval Arab flavor in the mix.

In terms of the real world, my plan is to reteach myself Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus using some excellent resources my Dad is sending me, then go back to school in a hard science…probably. Still not sure what I want to do school-wise, but hopefully I’ll figure that out in the next year or two and head back soon.

That is, if I don’t get published and launch my writing career by then.

So that’s what my life is looking like right now. If you’re still reading and aren’t bored stiff (or if you just skipped to the end of the post, which is what I would have done), here’s an excellent song from one of my favorite Celtic bands, The Rogues:

If it kills me

I will finish this novel if it kills me. At the rate things are going, it just might.

Things are kind of tough for me right now. I desperately need a new job–the one I’ve got is slowly sucking away my soul without even paying enough to get by–and job rejections are way worse than rejections from publishers (I’ve been getting a lot of both, by the way. Not that I’m looking for pity, but yeah.).

As if that weren’t bad enough, my current novel, Worlds Away from Home, is turning out to be a train wreck. There are all sorts of problems with character motivations, improper foreshadowing and plot set up, etc etc. That makes it REALLY hard to get motivated to write each day. Yesterday, I wrote only 245 words (youch). Today, I did about 2.2k, but that’s still way less than I need to be doing.

The thing that worries me the most is the thought that the audience for this particular story may be slim to nonexistent. It’s solid space opera, but with a romantic element that challenges a lot of the mores of our modern, sex-saturated society, as well as many of the conventions of romance within science fiction.

The main female protagonist is something of a pushover–but she has to be, in order for her growth arc to have any umph. The main male protagonist is an orphan on a quest to discover his own origins, kind of like a cross between Mogli and Pip. His quest, combined with her parents’ manipulative attempts to get them physically intimate too soon, are the main things keeping them apart.

But in a genre where physical intimacy usually marks the romantic climax, how do you make it out to be the obstacle against that climax? Will science fiction readers go for that, or will they hurl my book across the room because of it?

Well, if they hurled my current draft, I wouldn’t blame them one single bit. So many plot holes and awkwardly written scenes–ugh. I’ve got to seriously rethink so much about this story. But a later draft? I don’t know–maybe it would work. It would probably need other hooks to keep them engaged, such as cool world building elements, but I think I could make those work.

Anyway, I suppose it’s nothing unusual. For every book I’ve written, I’ve come to a point in the rough draft where I thought the story was completely unworkable and should be scrapped. It’s a tortuous, masochistic process, but I suppose it’s normal. That’s some comfort, at least.

My goal is to finish this abomination by August 15th, then move on to polish Mercenary Savior and make it really shine.

Another goal is to get a decently paying job (at least $8/hr at +25 hours per week) in order to afford to go to DragonCon in September. Another goal is to reteach myself algebra and calculus through the math books my dad (who is a geometry teacher) is letting me borrow. Another goal is to actually get a social life. BLARG.

Braving the unexpected rough spots

Right now, I’m going through this unexpected rough spot in my novel, where I know what’s supposed to happen (or at least I have enough of an idea to wing it fairly well), but the writing just isn’t coming. This happens every time I hit the two thirds mark, and it really sucks.

Currently, I’m using two methods to get through it: 1) keep a running chapter-by-scene outline of the next few scenes, and 2) use a loose adaptation of story theory models (such as the hero’s journey) to keep perspective on things. Right now, this is what my chapter-by-scene outline looks like:

Chapter 14
14.1: Jalil
Jalil meets LARS, who with Michelle shows him the ship. Jalil learns that Lars has a connection with the Farlen family and that the Stewarts are from his parents’ home.
14.2: Mira
Mira returns home an outcast. Sheila rails at her for failing to seduce Jalil, while Sathi pulls her into his quarters to tell her that he’s arranged for her speedy marriage.
14.3: Jalil
The Bridgette launches from GN-2 using a gravity whip maneuver. The ship heads out for the L2 point, using a second gravity whip around GN-2b. Jalil realizes this is goodbye.

Chapter 15
15.1: Mira
While Mira prepares herself to get ready to meet her cousin Ibrahim, Tiera approaches her in private to apologize for calling her a whore. Tiera advises her to stand up for herself.
15.2: Mira
IBRAHIM’s convoy arrives. As Sathi and Ibrahim’s father conduct negotiations, Mira meets him and is surprised to find that she’s attracted to him.
15.3: Mira
Mira, Surayya, Amina, and Tiera discuss Ibrahim in the women’s quarters. Tiera advises Mira not to pursue him, but Surayya and Amina convince her to go ahead with it.

Chapter 16
16.1: Jalil
Lars and Michelle tell Jalil about the Colony. They show him pictures, and he has flashbacks.
16.2: Jalil
While making maneuvers around GN-2a, the Bridgette receives news of Hameji movements near Karduna. Jalil learns a bit of the Hameji.
16.3: Jalil
The Bridgette arrives at the L2 station and enters the starlane. Jalil’s first experience as an adult making the jump.

Chapter 17
17.1: Mira
???

As you can see, I’ve broken down each chapter by scene, with the viewpoint character indicated as well as a short one or two line description of what happens. When a new character comes along, I mention them by name in ALL CAPS. I use the auto font color for story that I’ve already written, and the stuff that remains to be written in red. Also, I only outline a handful of scenes ahead of my current position.

That’s the method that works for me. I have no idea if it will work for you, but feel free to give it a try or let me know what methods you’re using.

I’m finding that even though I’m more of a “discovery writer,” certain methods of outlining give me much greater flexibility to discovery write than simply winging it all on the fly. In particular, I find that outlining my characters and keeping a running scene-by-scene map for the next couple days helps to keep me on track.

I ran into this problem earlier in the week: without any kind of outline, and no previously written material to fall back on, I had no idea what to do. Instead of sitting at my keyboard doing nothing, though, I plotted out the next few scenes to give me some idea what to do.

That helped me out for a while, but now…man, it’s still rough. I did 3,251 words yesterday, but today I only hit 1,555. It’s a lot, I know, but with all my free time, I should be hitting more. Much more.

I suppose the only way out of this slump is to write–and write I certainly must. I seriously need a real job, and right now I’m looking into the field staff position at Wilderness Quest. If they hire me, I’ll need to finish this novel before I start work, since I’ll be out in the wilderness for three weeks at a time and the last thing I want is to pick up a half-finished project after it’s gone cold–especially when I’ve got to rewrite Mercenary Savior for World Fantasy 2010.

So that’s what I’m looking at right now. Three weeks, inshallah, and Worlds Away from Home 1.2 will be finished. Hopefully by then, I’ll have a real job too.

To close, check out this awesome version of the Corridors of Time song (Zeal theme) from the Chrono Trigger soundtrack. I’ve heard maybe twenty or thirty different arrangements of this excellent composition, and this one takes the cake. Beautiful.

Thoughts on the convolutions of discovery writing

It’s been forever since I posted, so I figured I’d put something up and let you guys know what I’ve been up to.

I’m happy to say that Worlds Away From Home is going well; I wrote just under 20k this week, which is more than I’ve written in a long time. I hope to keep a steady 15k to 20k for the next three weeks as I finish this draft.

I think I’m through the roughest parts (famous last words, right?), and I’ve got a fairly clear idea where I want to take this. That is, I have a target ending that’s both specific enough to give me direction and vague enough to give me some flexibility. If I’m doing things right, I expect these characters will surprise me before the end.

When I first started this novel almost two years ago, I hit a bad rough patch right around my current spot and had to put it on hold for a while. At the time, I thought it was because of a particularly difficult scene (which I just rewrote), but now I see that the problem was much bigger.

I thought that I was telling a story about a guy who nearly falls for the wrong girl and ends up with the right one in the end, when really the first girl was the right one. Once again, I found myself telling a very different story than the one I set out to tell.

Interestingly, in order to see what I needed to do to fix the problem, I had to write a completely unrelated novel in the same world about the same overarching world events. My problem, I think, was that I spent so much time world building that I stopped paying attention to what the characters were doing.

With the current draft, I’ve discovered that this story is very solidly a science fiction romance. There’s plenty of sf action, but it’s the romance that drives the plot.

While this discovery comes as a pleasant surprise, it also worries me because the potential audience may be very small. Traditionally, science fiction has been anathema to romance, and while that may be changing (as evidenced by this interesting post at tor.com), I wonder how well this book will sell, especially because it’s not your typical romance. In some ways, it’s actually a critique of our typical ideas of romance.

Oh well. I suppose there isn’t anything I can do about it except finish the damn thing and worry about selling it later. These types of thoughts tend to be counterproductive to the creative process, especially when you’re more thank 50k into the draft.

Overall, though, I’m optimistic. I like this story that I’m telling, and while I may cringe at the mistakes I make as I go along, I know that I need to resist the urge to fix them until the rough draft is complete.

Writing for me is like wandering around blindfolded with a Polaroid camera and taking a picture of something that sounds cool. When I take off the blindfold and check the picture, it takes a while before I can see the coherent whole. Usually, though I have some idea what to expect, the end result surprises me.

I love it, though. That element of surprise and spontaneity is well worth the lack of control, because usually (if I handle things right) it helps to give the story depth, meaning, and honesty that my conscious mind simply could not give it.

I’m very optimistic about this novel. Now that the world is solidly built, I can focus everything on the characters, and that’s where the true story lies. I’m currently having a lot of fun torturing them, but I know where their headed with their growth arcs and how all of this ties together (well, most of it, anyway). If I can pull it off, it should be quite satisfying. In the meantime, I’m excited to seeing where it takes me.

The need to change

I picked up this sign at institute last Wednesday. The lesson was on our desires; specifically, how the thing that we truly desire deep down is often the thing that we get.

The main reason I posted this sign on the door was to motivate me to get a better job than my current one. However, it applies to so many other things as well.

Take writing, for example: if I’m going to actually turn this writing thing into a full time career, I’ve got to bust my butt to make it happen. Writing a paltry 250 words each day on a novel you’ve been working on for the past twenty years just isn’t going to cut it.

I got two form rejections today, and that made me realize that I need to be more serious about submitting my work. So instead of working of working on Worlds Away From Home, I researched a slew of agents, rewrote my query letter for Genesis Earth, and sent out four carefully prepared and researched submissions. I don’t want to spend any more time bouncing around from job to job than I have to–I want to break in and make this writing career take off.

So far, I’ve gotten approximately 14 rejections for Genesis Earth: ten form rejections, one personalized rejection, one rejection after the partial was requested, and two that I haven’t heard back on but have been out for so long they’ve probably been rejected. Interestingly enough, rejection itself is not that hard for me to deal with: it’s building the motivation and nerve to submit to the next place that’s tough.

But I’ve got to do it. I feel kind of like Hachimaki from the anime series Planetes, who quits his job without taking the severance package when he applies for the Jupiter mission. If he has the safety net, he knows that he’ll get lazy, so breaks goes out on his own, even sleeping on the streets for a while during the initial tryouts.

I haven’t quite fallen that low yet–I’ve got an apartment, a bike, and a job, even if it’s only a subsistence level one. But when it comes to long term careers, I’m putting everything into my writing right now–there isn’t anything else.

It’s still discouraging to get rejected, but I’m still very optimistic that things will work out. Even if everyone rejects Genesis Earth, I’ll have Mercenary Savior ready to submit before the end of the year. It’s just a matter of time–I just hope it happens soon.

In the meantime, here’s the opening sequence from Planetes. Such an awesome series–I’d take a job with Debris Section in an instant! Even garbage collecting is cool when it’s IN SPAAACE!!

Quick update

Just a quick update on things, since it’s been forever since I’ve blogged.

The Utah Valley Democrats offered me a position, but it wasn’t the internship they’d advertised, so I turned it down. They wanted me to do all their phone surveys, for 20 hours per week at $8.50 an hour, working evenings and Saturdays from now until November. Basically, they wanted me to do the same crappy job that I’m already doing, but for less pay, more hours, and with significantly less flexibility. Needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled.

I sent out Mercenary Savior 3.0 to my beta readers. If you weren’t included in that list, don’t be offended–I’m trying to get feedback from some new people who haven’t read the previous drafts, to see what they think. I’m hoping to start the next revision of that novel sometime in August; my goal is to have it polished in time for World Fantasy 2010, which I will be attending.

Worlds Away from Home is coming along, but much too slowly. I want to finish it by August 15th, which means that I should be writing between 2.5k and 3k words per day. Right now, I’m averaging about 1.5k–not bad, but not enough either. I need to take some time and immerse myself in this project.

At the same time, I really need to find a decent day job. The one I’ve got right now is good for summer stuff, but I don’t want to be doing it long term. Ideas for a more semi-permanent job include:

Working in a bookstore
Teaching Arabic
Getting a wilderness job (see previous post)
Getting an editing internship
Freelance translating (I’m a little uneasy about this)
Finding a job in the Middle East and living/traveling there for a year

I’m a little wary of the last one, given the current political situation, but if things improve, I could see myself moving out there in the fall. It depends on what I can find, of course–and for that reason, I’m considering signing up for the TESOL certificate program here at BYU.

I don’t know, though. There’s a lot to do, a lot to figure out. It’s hard to balance it all, but I’m doing what I can. Whatever happens, though, I’m sure it will all work out.

An interesting concept

Last night, I was hanging out with a friend of mine and a couple of girls in the apartment complex where I currently live. We got to talking about books, and one of the girls said something really interesting:

Every book needs to have one thing that the main character knows that the reader doesn’t know, and one thing that the reader knows that the main character doesn’t know; otherwise, it’s too boring.

That’s a fascinating concept. I know that both things are important, but I’ve never connected them together.

When the reader knows something that the main character doesn’t, it can make for great suspense. A good example of this is this scene from Xenogears, when the characters are trying to hunt down a monster in the sewers (skip to 6:37):

It’s harder to pull off having the characters withhold information from the readers, but it can be done. I think a good example of this is the scene from Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back when the Millenium Falcon arrives at Bespin and C3PO gets shot:

Granted, nothing really vital is withheld here, since by this point Master Yoda has seen Luke’s friends in danger, and Bobba Fett has clearly followed them to Bespin–but the audience still doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, and so it creates suspense.

In terms of Orson Scott Card’s MICE quotient, this would definitely fall under the “information” component of stories. In Brandon Sanderson’s class (and in my own reading), I’ve focused a lot on character, setting (milieu), and plot (event), but I haven’t thought a lot about information.

I wonder how my own novels measure up to this principle. Let’s see…

In Genesis Earth, there are a lot of things that Michael and the reader doesn’t know, but not much that one knows and the other doesn’t. There are, however, quite a few things that Terra knows that the reader doesn’t. Those all come out in the middle, though. In terms of information withheld from the reader, I suppose you could count Terra’s feelings for Michael, in the buildup before the climax, but that’s about it.

In Mercenary Savior, the reader knows a TON of stuff that James doesn’t know–it’s a major source of the suspense in that novel. In terms of things the characters know that the reader doesn’t, there’s much less, but I can think of a few things Danica knows that are kept mysterious until a key climax. Those aren’t foreshadowed until maybe 50 or 100 pages before the reveal, but I suppose it still counts.

Thinking WAY back to my first practice novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea (which I will probably never publish), there is, again, a TON of stuff the reader knows that the characters don’t. Basically, every character is clueless in some crucial way, and the resulting comedy of errors drives the plot. In terms of information withheld from the reader, though, there’s not as much. There is a point where Ian runs off without an explanation, but I’m not sure if that’s just my own poor writing. I could probably pull it off in a revision, but I don’t know when or if that will ever happen.

So yeah, I suppose I’ve done that in my own writing. I suppose it’s much easier to do this in third person, however–Genesis Earth is entirely in first person, and there isn’t anything Michael thinks about that the reader doesn’t see. He is an unreliable narrator at times, but he’s not the character withholding the information–and if he was, I don’t think it would have worked very well.

In any case, it’s a very interesting principle. I’ll have to keep it in mind.