Bringing Stella Home – Page 21 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Final polish

I mapped out all the major assignments for my capstone class for the next month on my calendar. Turns out I’ve got a lot more work than I thought I did. Because of that, I decided to start work on Genesis Earth 4.0 today.

This is the final polish before World Fantasy convention. Of all the stuff I’ve written, Genesis Earth is the only ms that I feel is ready for me to send to editors/agents. With this draft, I hope to smooth out the writing, make the text more readable–basically, make this book really shine. We’ll see if it succeeds.

It’s kind of nerve-wracking, in some ways, doing this final edit (inasmuch as any edit is “final”). Previously, whenever I did a revision, I knew that I had time to come back later and fix anything that I just couldn’t get to. Now, this is where it counts. The writing has to be perfect.

Imagine how horrible it was to find a grammatical mistake on page one. I’d forgotten to capitalize the first word of a sentence in the third or fourth paragraph. Thankfully, it was the only mistake I saw on that page, but it’s enough to make me nervous about those chapters I sent out to the editors from BYU’s Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers. I know how to write–really, I do! Please believe me!

So today, every hour of the day was jam packed with classes, work, homework, and obligatory social activities. I only had two hours to write, and in that time, I only wrote about 500 words for Genesis Earth (though, to be fair, I’m measuring it by comparing documents and only counting the words that changed). Ouch. Not sustainable, if I want to finish Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home (I need to change that title) before World Fantasy. I made up for it by writing for half an hour just now in Stella, but still…

And this is where I hope I don’t mess things up. Every time I’ve tried to juggle two projects at once, I’ve found it very hard to do so. It’s something I’ll probably have to learn, if I want to write professionally, but it’s still very hard. I hope my writing quality doesn’t suffer because of it.

If worst comes to worst, I’ll focus on Genesis Earth until it’s done to my satisfaction. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, even with school. But I’m still keeping my goal to finish Stella before World Fantasy.

In unrelated news, in my political philosophy class today, Professor Hancock mentioned Huntington and I said, under my breath, “that guy was so full of crap.” Well, it turns out that Professor Hancock is quite the admirer of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations theory. This is going to make class…interesting, to say the least. After studying this stuff my entire college career, I really do believe that Huntington’s theories are utterly full of crap.

Oh, and I had a great idea for a comic: Plato’s Republic, as a cartoon! Okay, maybe I’m just a geek, but seriously, if it were done well, it could be really, REALLY cool. Really cool.

School is kicking my trash

It’s true. This is what my wordcount spreadsheet currently looks like:

Note that the seven day totals are dropping consistently. If I want to finish this novel before World Fantasy, I’m going to have to keep that number above 7,800…not including the work on Genesis Earth 4.0.

Something tells me that’s going to be very hard.

This week was particularly busy. I had a research proposal presentation for my capstone class–that was stressful–plus a writeup of the presentation. Thankfully, the full written proposal isn’t due for a couple of weeks.

Besides that, I’ve been working my two TA jobs and doing a buttload of readings and summaries for my other classes. Ugh.

The cool thing, though, is that when it’s my office hours and the students aren’t coming, I can get paid for reading Aeschylus, Plato, Sophocles, and all those other awesome Greek writers. The Libation Bearers was surprisingly good. I’d like to read The Furies, but I’ve got to read Plato’s Apology in order to keep up with the class. Still, the Apology is good stuff, too.

Reminds me: today, I went kayaking on Utah lake with the wilderness writing class. While I was there, I had this story idea: what if the Greek civilization had developed in Alaska instead of Aegea? And then I realized that it already happened: the Norse.

With school and work consistently kicking my butt, the only time I have to write EVER is between 10pm and 12pm. Every day this week (except for one time, when I drove a girl home), I’ve been in the Harold B Lee library until closing time, when the music starts to play. Every day, I come home exhausted. And then I get up the next day at 7am to get ready for class. Something tells me this isn’t sustainable.

Still, I think the worst times in the semester are at the beginning and the end. In the beginning, you’re still in the summer mentality, so the work beats you up until you get used to it. In the last half, everything gets so insane with exams and term papers that you can barely keep your head above the water no matter what you do. I’m adjusting slowly, but adjusting.

I’ll keep up with the writing as best I can, but Genesis Earth is going to be my top priority when I start that. In the meantime, I’ll just try to finish Bringing Stella Home by plugging away and catching up on the weekends.

In the meantime, I’ve got some great ideas for my next big project. Come November, I’m going to have a lot of fun.

🙂

Climax (thank you Ennio Morricone)

Just passed the major climax in the middle of Bringing Stella Home. In a moment that I hope is as poignant to the reader as it was to me, I…well, let’s just say I’m glad I’m not my main character.

I hit the climax doing a 1,765 word sprint, with this song playing on repeat:

So awesome. I just hope that when I wake up from this daze, my writing doesn’t suck.

Next, gotta finish up the chapter, clean up the mess, give the denouement. After every emotionally poignant climax, I think it’s critical to have a good denouement to give those emotions their proper release and bring everything full circle, bring some proper closure. Best denouement of any story I know: the Throne Room from Star Wars IV:

The denouement for my story will not be nearly so triumphant. But then again, it’s not the final climax–there’s a lot more to come, a lot more pain and suffering for my main character to endure.

I’m 2/3rds of the way through this rewrite now. I hope I’m not being too melodramatic, or that the story sucks. They say it’s not enough to be good–to make it as a writer, you have to be brilliant. Does this story have that potential? Gosh, I hope it does. As it stands, though, it sure needs a lot of work.

But still–it’s been awesome writing it.

Battle scenes are HARD

I’m in the middle of revising a major battle scene right now. This is supposed to be one of the more important climaxes of the book, adding a lot more tension and emotion as the novel approaches the main climax.

Let me just say, writing a good battle scene is tough. The first version of this one…yeah, it sucked. Hardcore sucked. I’m cutting whole sections at a time–five hundred words, eight hundred words–and completely rewriting them from the ground up. I’m not sad to see these sections go, either–they were BAD.

I think the most difficult thing is to keep the pacing up without confusing the reader. For that reason, I reconceptualized most of the action here and made it simpler. I also repeated several times the main point of tension–basically, will we get out of here before reinforcements come and kick our trash? I hate it when a fight scene is so confusing that the tension just leaks out. I don’t want that to happen here.

At the same time, I’m trying to filter everything through the viewpoint character. Too often, I’ll read an action scene that’s just a blow-by-blow of the physical action. That gets boring REALLY fast. Without character, you have no stakes. I want the stakes to be high from the very onset.

Still, it’s hard. I don’t know if I’m succeeding yet. I probably won’t until I distance myself from what I’ve written tonight and take a good, hard look at it.

Since I can’t do that until the third revision, I’m not going to worry about it. Better to write it out now and move on than to try so hard to get everything perfect that I can’t see the story for the words.

On the plus side, I’ve been listening to a LOT of Star Wars battle music while writing this. That’s always fun!

Six weeks to World Fantasy

Holy cow! How is September halfway over? It seems like school started just a week ago. Only six and a half weeks before World Fantasy convention in San Jose, and I think I’m going to have to readjust some of my goals.

I’d wanted to finish Bringing Stella Home 2.0 by the 11th of October, but the way school and work is looking, I probably won’t be able to write 2k words every day in order to meet that goal. Besides, the story has several major issues that can only be fixed with a major overhaul, so there’s no way this novel is going to be ready for submission in time for the convention.

However, Genesis Earth is looking pretty good. So far as story issues go, I was very satisfied with the third draft–I think I fixed all the major issues and wrote something that’s pretty close to salable. Before the convention, I want to go through and make one final revision, one where I polish up the prose and fix the readability issues. That shouldn’t be too hard–I can probably do that in two to three weeks.

So here’s what I’m going to do in the next six weeks. I’m going to check out all of Robert Charles Wilson’s books and immerse myself in his prose–not to copy it, but to hopefully boost the quality of my own prose. The quality of his writing is fantastic, a beautiful mesh of literary prose and thriller pacing and rhythm. While I’m doing that, I’ll start the 4.0 draft of Genesis Earth and work hard at it, until I’ve polished that work as much as I can. That’s the work that I’ll try to sell when I’m at World Fantasy.

I’m a little worried, because I submitted the full manuscript to Krista Marino back in June and haven’t heard back. At the BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers conference, she said she had a response time of 4 months, but I’m worried I won’t hear back from her before World Fantasy. Is it appropriate to send a polite note asking her to get back to me before the convention? I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by sending out simultaneous submissions, and if an editor asks to see my ms, I want to be able to send it to them ASAP. Then again, I suppose I could just tell them that the full is currently with someone else, and that would demonstrate some professionalism…but I want to be able to send it if/when they ask for it.

Which reminds me: I need to do some HEAVY agent/editor research before this convention. I want to go to World Fantasy with a list of people to look for, so I know where to go to network, which panels to attend, who to look out for in the hallways and parties. I want to be very professional about this, and get the most out of those two/three days that I can.

As for Bringing Stella Home, my current WIP, I’m going to do my best to finish it before World Fantasy so that I can start November with something new. I need to finish that book before I can set it aside and let it percolate in my mind for the next revision. Besides, it’s been too long since I’ve worked on something completely new. After October, I’ll need to take a break from all these revisions.

So that’s the plan: Finish Genesis Earth 4.0 and Bringing Stella Home 3.0 before World Fantasy. Research all the editors and agents to look out for at the convention. Oh, and hold down 14 credit hours and 2 on-campus jobs at the same time, with some time left over for a dating/social life (INSHALLAH).

Hehe…these next six weeks are going to be packed!

Busy busy AWESOME day

I had an awesome day today. Totally awesome. If every day this semester is like this one, I’ll be dead tired before Thanksgiving but so happy it won’t even matter.

It started at 7am. Woke up, worked out, read a galley from Dragon Moon Press for Leading Edge while working out. The book wasn’t that bad, either.

Showered, ate breakfast, read 1st Jacob chapter 1 in Arabic. Great scripture study. Read “The false gods we worship” by Spencer W. Kimball on the walk up to school. Powerful. President Kimball was a Prophet with a capital P.

Met with Dr. Bowen to discuss the TA job she wants to hire me for. It’s going to be a LOT of fun! I’ll be doing all kinds of interesting research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and making a sort of game / role play for the students in the class…and getting paid good money to do it. Fun fun fun.

Classes were awesome. I love my capstone. Professor Christensen is a blast. Talked about spatial voting and why political parties in America tend to be identical. Made fun of Provo/Orem municipal elections. Good times.

After classes, met with Professor Kramer to discuss the other TA job I’ll be working. He was incredibly happy to have me on board. Out of the hundreds of papers he read for PL SC 201 last year, he still remembered mine. Holy cow. I’m shocked.

Proceeded to run through a series of bureaucratic hoops to get all the paperwork filled out for both TA jobs. I was so giddy about working I didn’t mind the hassle. Dr. Bowen at one point said “What’s the other job paying you? Eight something? Well, we can do better than that!” Man, I’m going to earn so much money this semester.

Went home, cooked up some locally grown corn and spaghetti. Mmm, corn on the cob! Delicious. Talked with my roommate Ben Crowder about all the stuff he’s done since graduating. Dude, he is a renaissance man, through and through. Awesome guy.

Leading edge was a total blast. The editors threw a start-of-semester pizza party, and we had almost a dozen new people show up to read slush. Plus, Peter was there–he’s always fun. Talked about spaceballs and Big Bang theory (the movie), how Arrested Development is funnier than The Office, violence in fiction, crazy story ideas, and all kinds of stuff. Good times.

So then, after finishing my homework, I was sitting in the library when I realized I only had an hour and a half before the library closed. An hour and a half, and I had not written a single word in my WIP that day. In order to keep up with my self-imposed deadline, I needed to write 1.2k words. 1.2k words…in 1.5 hours.

I didn’t really think I could do it, but I decided what the hell and gave it a shot. Turned off the music, avoided the email and twitter, and just focused on the work.

An hour and a half later, lo and behold! 1.2k words! And just as I realized that, the HBLL closing music comes on…and it’s Dropkick Murphies!

Let me just say, there is no better way to end an awesome day than with some good outro music. So let me end this post with tonight’s awesome outro music, courtesy the Harold B. Lee Library.

That’s the news and I AM OUTA HERE!

Summer roundup

Alright, with the first week of school already over, I figure I should recap and evaluate my writing progress this summer.

When school ended in April, I was still waiting to hear back from Brandon Sanderson’s agent about an internship. My backup plan (which I started as soon as classes ended) was to stay in Provo and write full time.

Sanderson’s agent ended up taking on a different intern, which ended up being the best for both of us, since I get the sense that he was looking to mentor someone who would go on to become a professional agent. Me, I was just looking to network and develop some connections in the publishing world, which I did anyway (at least in the local Utah scene). Besides, Provo is WAY cheaper than New York!

From the beginning, I treated writing as a full-time job. I set project deadlines, daily and 7-day wordcount goals, and spent somewhere around 8 hours a day working on my various projects. I submitted a full to an editor from the BYU Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference and partials to the other two editors. I also submitted to the Writers of the Future contest and to the LDS Publisher Christmas story contest (much smaller, but geared toward a niche market).

I started keeping my stats on May 25th, using a spreadsheet to keep track of my daily wordcount for each of my projects, the daily total wordcount, the 7-day cumulative wordcount, and any writing I did for synopses or revision notes. Since BYU’s summer recess begins in April, I missed the stats for the first three weeks or so, but I kept consistent records since then until now.

From May 25th to August 31st, I wrote 244,065 words in 8 projects (3 short stories and 5 novel drafts). I averaged 2,490 words per day. Adjusting for Sundays (I typically take Sundays off), I averaged 2,906 words per day.

My goals were to write 4k words per day, and to shoot for a constant 7-day total of 24k, but to never let that total dip below 12k words. In 98 days, the 7-day running total only went below 12k eleven times–on those particular days, I was either traveling, moving out, moving in, or extremely busy with back-to-school chores. For the two weeks I was on vacation, I still wrote more than 12k words each week.

Interestingly enough, out of the eight fiction projects, only one was a rough draft–a short story that I worked on for two days and never completed. The vast majority of my writing went into revising novels that I’d already written.

I completed the first draft of Bringing Stella Home in early June (my third complete novel rough draft). Later, in July, I began the second draft. I’m currently just over halfway through with the revisions and hope to finish by October 10th.

I started a revision of my first novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea, but decided midway through that I was running up against diminishing returns and decided to drop it (I completed the rough draft in April of 2008–it was my first finished novel and the reason I started this blog, waaaaay back in August 2007).

I started a new draft of Hero in Exile, making some drastic revisions, but found it difficult to juggle more than one writing project at a time and put it on the back burner. I may or may not pick it up again once Bringing Stella Home 2.0 is finished.

I completed the third draft of Genesis Earth and started to submit it. I will probably do one language/readability edit before the World Fantasy convention in late October and try to sell it while I’m there.

Overall, the summer was a practice run to see if I could write full time and survive the insanity. I always feared, as a child, that if writing became my full time job I would come to hate it. I found, however, that writing full time (8+ hrs/day, 6 days/wk) only made me enjoy it more. Now that school is back in session, I already wish I had more time and mental space to dedicate to my writing.

I miss the summer, but not because of the lazy days, or the parties, or the vacationing–I miss the opportunity to write full time! Provided I can find a way to support a family off of this, I can definitely see myself turning this into a career. In the meantime, I’ll keep honing my craft and start working on getting an agent.

Now, more than ever, I feel that breaking in is more of a question of ‘if’ than ‘when.’

🙂 🙂 🙂

First week drama and other news

It’s been a while since I’ve written here, mostly because it’s been a crazy week so far. Gosh, it feels like Saturday already. School’s back in session, and while the homework hasn’t been bad so far (and probably won’t be), I’ve been jumping through hoops just to get this semester figured out.

Long story short, my work schedule has been clashing with my class schedule, especially since I decided I wanted to drop this English class that didn’t look very appealing. But to graduate with an English minor, I must take an English class this semester, and all the ones I want to take conflict with this two hour weekly mandatory in service class. My boss will probably fire me if I can’t make the meeting, but you know what? As much as I love the FHSS Writing Lab, school comes first. If push comes to shove (and I really hope that it doesn’t), I’ll probably just find work elsewhere this semester.

Augh. Everything’s complicated by the fact that you have to use add/drop cards for some dumb reason, so you can’t just rearrange your schedule online. If you drop a class, then realize that you shouldn’t have done it…tough. Blegh.

Making things even more complicated are the looming deadlines. I’ve barely touched the FAFSA (need to get on that), and for Washington Seminar I’ve got a lot of application work to do ASAP.

As usual, though, it’s the little stuff that really gets to me, not the big, earthshaking stuff. In twenty four hours, all this crap will probably be resolved. Twenty four hours ago, I was frantically trying to find an English class, and now I’m signed up for this AWESOME wilderness writing class! I am so looking forward to it!

With all this first week upside downness, you would think my writing has suffered. Well, not so! I put in a solid 3k today, writing in hour-long blocks between classes and from 7pm to 11pm tonight. Very satisfying to get so much done, at least as far as writing is concerned.

Now, I need to get to bed. I’ve decided to keep working out in the mornings, like I did all summer, but the SFH weightroom closes from 8am to 4pm for classes, so I need to get up around 6:30 if I want to work out. G’night!

Blarg.

I’ve got a bad case of writer’s avoidance. It’s annoying.

I wrote 1,500 words in Bringing Stella Home today, and about 800 words of outlining. That might seem like a lot, but when you consider how much free time I had today, it’s really not that much. Blarg.

I’m all moved in to my new place, with my class and work schedule all worked out, my insurance paid for, groceries in the fridge, books on the shelf (or boxed in the closet–not much book space, considering that Ben’s already taken most of it!), etc etc. I even went on a date last night–a really awesome one! So it’s not like I can say “I had chores” and use that as an excuse.

Part of the problem, though, was that I didn’t have this particular section very well planned. Without having a good macroscopic view of the novel, it’s hard to revise things right. Fortunately, I took a step back today and planned out the next three chapters or so. That should keep me going strong for a while.

Whenever I stop procrastinating and just write, I usually dive right into it. It’s thinking too much about it before I start that really holds me back.

So, no more thinking–just doing.

Tomorrow is the last Friday before school starts, and the last 100% open day I have before the craziness begins. Here’s what I plan to do:

Cook chili (all from scratch–I’m soaking the beans tonight).
Pick up tupperware and a cutting board from DI.
Read and critique the stories for writing group.
Read required readings for Poli Sci 309R (or, if not, at least on Saturday).
Go to the temple–gotta go to the temple before school starts.
Catch up a bit on the blogging backlog (and boy is it LONG).

Hopefully, in between all of that, I can knock off a chapter or two. My goal: 4k words. Gotta buckle down!

In related news, I got an amazing compliment from my friend Drek! We were chatting online, and this is what he said:

Ben: Just remember you have to find a girl BEFORE you become an incredibly famous novelist, or you’ll never know if your wife married you for your money or your looks.

me: ha

ha

ha

no, I”m probably going to be poor and destitute all my life

working a day job

Ben: No way, I predict you’ll be a professional author within five years.

me: thanks

but will it be enough to make a living?

lots of bestselling authors still have day jobs

Ben: Eh, you’ll have more of a day “hobby” just so you can earn some play money.

me: perhaps

Ben: Anyway, see you on Saturday!

Thanks Ben! I haven’t really thought of it that way (I don’t dare get my hopes up), but that would be awesome if things worked out that way. That’s the goal, in any case. I just hope I can keep my head out of the water after I graduate!

Finally, I’ll leave you with some awesome Celtic music–part of the reason I haven’t been writing!

To write on vacation or not to write?

That is the question.

These last couple of weeks have been very unproductive. I hate it. Yeah, there have been reasons–moving apartments, sister’s graduation, coming home, etc. Worthless excuses–I should have been writing more, and I didn’t.

At the same time, taking a break every now and again is very important. Sometimes you just have to sit back and recharge your creative batteries–otherwise, you’ll overwork them and they’ll die. What better way to kill your productivity than that?

I noticed, back at the beginning of the month, that I needed a break. I produced about 85k words each month in June and July, and I’ve been sloshing through the middle of Bringing Stella Home 2.0 for some time now. Consequently, my creative brain seemed to shut down about two weeks ago (or at least switched to power-saving mode) and I haven’t been writing at a consistent rate since. Blargh.

So I know I need a vacation. I’ve needed it for some time. And now that I’m here in Massachusetts, heading to the cape on Saturday, I’ve got the perfect opportunity to relax and recharge my batteries.

Trouble is, if I stop writing altogether, will I lose momentum? Will it take me another week just to get back into the story? I’ve already lost so much productivity, it makes me feel disgusted. I need to be so much further along in this story than I am if I’m going to meet my (self-imposed) deadline.

So, I’m wondering–should I write while I’m on this vacation?

Of course, I’m not going to spend eight hours a day writing full time, the way I have been for most of this summer. I’m going to relax. But should I set a modest goal of 1k words a day while I’m there? I kind of think I should.

Don’t worry, though. I’m going to take time off for fun as well. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for a very long time!

As if writing weren’t fun enough already. 🙂