Bringing Stella Home – Page 18 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Mercenary Savior 3.0 is finished!

That’s right–after nearly three months, the third draft is finished!

How do I feel? Tired. It’s 2:00 am and I’m just coming off of three straight hours of writing. I. Need. Sleep.

I will say this, though: finishing this draft isn’t quite as satisfying, knowing that it needs at least one more revision before it’s fully polished. It’s an accomplishment, I know, but there’s still work to be done–lots of it.

Ah, well. I’ve got time. My goal is to have the finished, polished, final draft done before the end of the year. Now, I just need to put this one on the back burner and let it simmer for a while. In a couple of months, after I’ve finished another project, I’ll probably be excited enough about it to pick it up again.

So much for that. Here are the stats:

Mercenary Savior 3.0

mss pages: 646
words: 135,756
file size: 1,822 KB
chapters: 30
start date: 13 March 2010
end date: 1 June 2010

CONduit post coming shortly

Just a micro-quick update, since it’s 2:00 am and I need to meet up with friends tomorrow morning to carpool to Salt Lake.

The first day of CONduit was awesome–there were several excellent panels on writing, as well as many familiar faces from the local writing scene. I’ll blog all about it this weekend, after the big day tomorrow.

Wrote 3k words today and killed off a couple major characters. Invigorating, as always. Only 7k words to go to the end.

Goodnight.

Weird slump

Man, I’m going through a really weird slump these days. Yesterday, I wrote 2.5k words, and today, I only wrote 1.5k words–this, in spite of the fact that I’m only working about three hours a day. It’s kind of frustrating.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m right at the end of this novel. I’ve got 10k words to go, only 12 scenes, but I’m kind of burned out on it. I already know it’s going to need another revision after this one, and while I’m trying hard to fix things, it’s more on the overall story level, not on the detailed polish level, where I usually thrive.

The real truth, though, is probably that my days are split up so weird. I work from three to six, and most days I have obligations in the evening (Leading Edge, Institute, FHE, etc). To add to that, Tuesdays and Thursdays I donate plasma in the mornings, which usually takes up a couple hours. When you’re already in the mood to procrastinate, it doesn’t help it when your free time comes in 2 to 3 hour chunks.

Oh well. At least I’m still producing.

CONduit starts tomorrow, and I am totally stoked. Last year was excellent, and I’m looking forward very much to this year as well. I don’t think there’ll be too many agents and editors there, but there will be a ton of other writers, most of whom I expect I’ll see at other major conventions across the country.

Speaking of conventions, I’m thinking very seriously about attending Dragoncon this year. When I spoke with Dan Wells at the Provo Library event a couple weeks ago, he told me that DragonCon is going to be big for writers this year, on account of Worldcon being in Australia and World Fantasy being in Ohio.

I’ve got a friend in Atlanta who can put me up and/or has friends who can as well, so housing shouldn’t be too difficult. My Dad’s giving me the old Buick, and it’s got lots of space, so I could probably fit four or five people in it. If we took turns driving, we could probably make it out there nonstop, and membership only costs like $80. At ten tanks of gas split by five people, plus maybe $100 for food and other expenses, it seems like a pretty good deal. Anyone interested?

If I’m going to Dragoncon this year, I suppose I should make it my goal to get Mercenary Savior polished and ready for it. That should be enough time–a month or two to let it sit, then a couple months to polish it. Definitely doable.

In the meantime, I’ll be finishing this draft this weekend, inshallah. I’d like to finish it on the bus to Salt Lake, but I doubt that’ll be the case. 10k words is a lot of writing, and I’ll be busy all day at the con. I’ll let you know how it goes, though–stay tuned!

Falling behind

Man, CONduit is at the end of this week, and I’ve still got a good 14k words to go in Mercenary Savior. Today, I only wrote 1,300 words. I have no idea why my productivity has fallen so much, but it’s not good.

It might not be a totally bad thing, though. I’m having trouble finding a ride up for Friday, so I might end up spending two or three hours on the bus. If that’s the case, I might have some writing time then.

I read something interesting on Dave Farland’s daily kick (the email newsletter he sends out–it’s free, btw, and very helpful). Basically, he said that it’s better to wait to submit something until it’s absolutely perfect than to submit something for the sake of submitting it.

This is making me rethink my plan to start submitting Mercenary Savior right after I finish this draft. It’s much improved, I think, from the first couple of drafts, but it still needs a lot of work.

As I run down my list of revision notes, I keep thinking “dang, I didn’t pull that off as well as I’d hoped” or “that last scene could have been better.” It’s hard, though, to juggle so many changes; you can only do so much work at once. Mercenary Savior is going to need another revision after this one before it’s polished.

The only thing is…that means I only have one novel to submit to agents/editors. Is that a bad thing? Now that I’m in the real world, I’m anxious to launch my writing career, but at the same time I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot.

I suppose the first thing to do is to finish this beast. Ugh.

When life gets in the way

Just a quick post before I go to bed. Things are coming along well with the revision of Mercenary Savior–I fully expect to be finished by next week (hopefully by Tuesday).

That said, these past couple of days have been very unproductive, and it’s been very frustrating. I feel as if tons of little things have been getting in the way.

Work is from 3:00 to 6:00, which can be nice but breaks the day in half, and donating plasma always seems to suck up a ton of time. Besides that, I’ve been applying for work, and THAT certainly takes up quite a bit of time mental space.

The main problem, though, is the urge to procrastinate. These little things wouldn’t pop up all the time if I 1) were unusually excited about this book, or 2) had the iron discipline to buckle down and just do it. I’m working on both of those, but in the meantime, it’s frustrating.

Still, I am producing. I wrote about 1.5k words yesterday, and 2.3k today. Nowhere near the 4k+/day I was hoping to write, but not bad. Things are progressing.

Part of it may be the fact that my only computer right now is a netbook. Netbooks are nice for traveling (I carry mine literally everywhere), but they aren’t great as primary machines. Also, they tend to break down faster than regular laptops. Mine’s probably got another year left, but the wear and tear is starting to show.

To remedy that, I’m thinking very seriously of building my own computer. Tomorrow, BYU is having a surplus sale, and I’m hoping to pick out a decent LCD monitor or two, plus a keyboard and mouse. I’ve picked out all the other parts online (I’ll blog about that later), but I’ll probably hold off until the end of the month to buy them all. I want to prove to myself that I can make more money in a month than I spend.

I know that a new computer won’t solve my writing problems, but it will be really cool, and it is something that I need–if not this very second, then at least before my netbook breaks down. Plus, I’m hoping to learn a lot from the experience of building it from parts.

Other than that, things are good. I will definitely finish Mercenary Savior by next week before CONduit, and the revision is significantly better than the old draft. Before long, inshallah, I’ll have another manuscript to float around with editors/agents.

Book Festival and other updates

So last Friday, there was a book fair at the Provo Library. I only heard about it the night before from Facebook, but there were almost twenty authors on the guest list, so I figured it would be a good place to go to meet other writers. I wasn’t mistaken!

I biked up to the library just as Brandon Sanderson was walking in. We chatted for a while, caught up on stuff since the last time I took his class. I almost got to walk into the author’s only lounge with him, but one of the staff stopped me. One of these days, though…one of these days!

I also ran into Dan Wells, who remembered me from World Fantasy and gave me a very nice compliment: he said I was very good at approaching people, especially at conventions. Talked about the different cons this year; according to Dan, Dragoncon is going to be huge this year, since Worldcon is in Australia and World Fantasy is in Ohio. I have a friend in Atlanta–I’ll have to look into attending that.

Brandon Sanderson, Clint Johnson, Mette Ivie Harrison, and J. Scott Savage did a panel on writing fantasy. Fortunately, I had my mp3 player on me and was able to record it. If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here:

Fantasy Panel, Provo Children’s Book Festival (15 May 2010)

Clint had some interesting advice for me after the panel; he asked about the books I’ve written and said I should submit them to YA agents/editors as well as mainstream adult agents/editors. Apparently, Genesis Earth and Mercenary Savior could work as YA, since 1) they’re about (relatively) young protagonists having coming-of-age experiences and learning how they want to live their lives, and 2) they don’t have the sense of nostalgia that adults often have when they think about their childhood.

So that was the Provo Children’s Book Festival. Let me just say, this is one of the reasons why I love Utah: the writing scene for fantasy/sf/YA is HUGE. Tons of writers, tons of readers, local writing events all the time–it’s great.

In other updates, I got a personalized rejection from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show! It was a pretty long one, too. The assistant editor said the writing was pretty good, but it felt too much like a novel. Hehe…confession, it was part of a novel. But that’s awesome that he thought the writing was good!

Besides that, he gave a lot of suggestions as to formatting, referring me to this site for detailed ms instructions. I didn’t think most editors would mind Times New Roman, but if it’s an issue even for a few of them, I should probably just switch to Courier–no editor is going to fault me for using Courier.

Besides all that, I’m well on my way to finishing Mercenary Savior 3.0 before CONduit. My goal right now is to finish it next Tuesday and spend Wednesday and Thursday sending it out. After CONduit, I plan on starting Hero in Exile (except the name will change), and I have a TON of great ideas for it. Funny how sometimes in order to finish a book, you need to write another one first.

Untitled

Man, I don’t write for this blog as much as I should.

Life is going well. I just recently got a part time job doing telephone surveys; hopefully, it will help tide things over until I can get something better. Between that and donating plasma, I should be able to pay the bills for the next couple of months.

I’ve also been writing quite a bit, hitting between 2k and 4k words per day. At this rate, Mercenary Savior 3.0 should be finished by the end of next week. That’s good, because I’m excited to start submitting it. I’ve already got Genesis Earth making the rounds, but the sooner I can get another project out there, the better.

For my next project after , I want to recycle Hero in Exile (ugh, it needs a new title) and turn that into a complete novel. I have a lot of ideas for it, but it will require some research, which may delay the actual start date.

For example, the main character (who I’m going to rename) has this major conflict where he’s trying to go home. As a young boy, his parents put him in an escape pod that crash landed on the planet, where he was raised by the locals. As the writer, I’m going to need to know about adoptions, know a handful o f adoption stories to pattern things off of, and maybe read a couple of essays on the meaning of “home.”

As another example, one of the major themes I want to get across is the struggle to maintain personal moral integrity in a morally corrupt world. I probably won’t have to look too far for that–being Mormon has given me lots of opportunities for research there–but I need to do a lot more to be aware of that particular conflict. When you’re slogging away, it’s very easy to focus too much on plot and no enough on the rest.

Probably the biggest preparation is going to be working through the character motivations, and that inevitably means building a background, since motivations grow out of the character’s history and background. But that’s going to involve a fair degree of pre-writing, which I may or may not be able to do before I start page one.

And that’s another scene; I’ve got to completely revamp the beginning. What I have now involves the main character staring out over the desert just before a sandstorm. Picturesque, but essentially navel gazing with little real character development. Instead, I want to show him thinking or doing something that reveals the central, most important aspect of his character, the way Brandon Sanderson did it in Elantris.

So anyways, lots of work to look forward to, in terms of writing that is. Other kinds of work…well, it’s good to have a sense of security. Even though I’ve been producing a lot, I’m sure I could have been producing more (upwards of 6k or 8k per day) if I’d had that sense of security provided.

Anyways, there is more that I could say, but I’m going to go to bed because it’s freaking 2:22 AM. Night.

The time sink

Man, life is different outside of school. So much time, so little structure. I find that I either write a lot, or I get distracted on some side project and write almost nothing.

For example, my bike broke down last week. Since that’s currently my only form of transportation besides walking, I spent a good amount of time this week fixing it. In fact…I took it apart and completely rebuilt it on a new frame. It was fun, educational, satisfying, and a good way to meet girls, but it took a lot of time away from writing.

Job hunting is another example. I signed up with a temp agency this past week, but haven’t seen any work yet, so I’m still somewhat antsy. It’s not easy watching money leave when you have no way to replenish it. But when your mind is on getting a job, it’s very hard to think about anything else.

I dunno. Maybe I’m just very bad at multitasking. But tonight, for the first time in a few days, I put all that aside and completely submersed myself in the act of writing. Boy, it sucked up a lot of time…but at the end, it felt so good. So satisfying.

I need more of that, if I’m going to make this writing thing take off. Got to outline a space for every necessary thing (including writing) and be careful about not overfilling that space. Looking for work is good, but thinking about it so much that I don’t have time for other things, that’s not good.

In the meantime, I’ll try to find some balance and update this blog more often. It’s my only active blog now, so I figure I should write more frequently. One thing I want to do with this free time is read more; I read a George R. R. Martin book last week, and I’m finishing up Dave Wolverton’s On My Way To Paradise for the second time right now. Expect some book reviews in the near future.

(hmm…I wonder if I could find a way to review books and get paid for it?)

Life in the Real World

So it’s been a week since I graduated, and life in the “real world” is very different from academia. In some ways, it’s scary, but in other ways, it’s actually kind of fun.

Freedom from schoolwork is HUGE. Seriously, I had no idea how much day-to-day stress came from school until now. Without this or that assignment hanging over my head, I feel incredibly liberated. I can go wherever I want, or do whatever I feel like doing, and the only restrictions on my time are the ones I set for myself.

Of course, life isn’t stress free–far from it. Employment is definitely a problem. I need to find a job and start making some kind of an income. That’s the main stressor right now–how am I going to sustain myself?

In some ways, it’s kind of a game. I’ve got my budget lined up, with projected monthly expenses, and that tells me how much money I need to make to break even. The object of the game is to find creative ways to make that money.

This is what I spend most of my day doing. Some interesting prospects include:

Freelance editing. A roommate of a friend of mine has actually contracted with me to do this for a company he recently started. It isn’t steady work, but $40-$60 per job for basically reworking a piece of fantasy, it isn’t bad either.
Freelance translation. A friend of mine from the FLSR told me all about this. Basically, I just need to set up a free account at proz.com, post my resume, set up paypal, and start taking jobs. Again, it isn’t steady, but it’s promising.
Temp work. As luck would have it, there’s a temp agency across the street from my apartment, and a friend of mine already works there. It’s just filler until I get a real job, but it seems to pay fairly well, though the labor is mostly grunt work. Still, better grunt work than office work.
Working for a teleresearch company down the street. It isn’t the best kind of work, but it’s a job, it’s got flexible openings, and it’s local.
Anything legit on craigslist.
Anything from the Wilk boards (though it’s kind of skimpy right now).
Donating plasma. Hey, $65 a week is better than nothing.

So that’s what I’m thinking about doing to hold me over until I get a real job. My goal for May is to make more money than I spend.

Really, though, I don’t need a job for the money–I’ve got enough cash saved up to last at least through the summer. I need a job for the sense of security. It’s hard to focus on writing when I don’t know how I’m going to support myself.

Another danger with unemployment is the lack of structure. When you don’t have to get up and go to work, you find yourself getting up later and later. If you don’t have to do anything, you generally don’t accomplish very much. It’s hard to stay productive in the face of so much free time.

Still, I’m going to try. I’m keeping up with my writing, doing about 3k-4k words per day on the revision of Mercenary Savior. I’ve got a handful of submissions out on Genesis Earth, and I’m going to keep a steady number of submissions out at any time. I’ve also been submitting my unpublished short stories, so we’ll see where that goes.

In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a day job while I play the game of financial independence. It’s an adventure.

Pluggin’ away

Wrote 2,889 words today, bringing the running 7-day total to just under 15,000 words. If I can keep this up for a month without lagging, I should be able to finish Mercenary Savior 3.0 in time for CONduit.

In the meantime, I’m looking for a job. A friend of mine who’s in Egypt right now told me about this interesting online freelance contractor, which looks like a promising source of cash in the short term. Sent in my application, inshallah will hear back soon. Payment is via paypal on a work for hire basis, with most writers / copy editors averaging $20-$25 per hour, so could be useful. No benefits, but what the heck.

In between writing and applying with the online writing place, I submitted Genesis Earth to a couple new places, and sent From the Ice Incarnate to IGMS. I don’t have many short stories, but I really need to send out the few I do have to more markets. Maybe I can pull out the first couple chapters of some of my novels and call them short stories and/or novellas. Wouldn’t hurt.

Graduation is coming up in less than 100 hours. My parents arrived in town about an hour ago, and the rest of the family should be coming shortly. It will be really good to see them–I’m looking forward to it.

That’s about it for now. I’ve got some other thoughts on jobs, dating, future plans, settling down, an article I’m writing for Mormon Artist, and the computer I want to build once I’ve got a job, but I’ll write about that later. Goodnight.