Bringing Stella Home – Page 25 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

It’s been a while

Man, it’s been a while since I wrote on this blog. I guess I’m caught in the semester tailspin or something.

Writing’s going really well, though. I’m about 100 pages into Bringing Estella Home right now, and even though I’m probably a day or two behind where I’d like to be, I’m generally right on schedule to finish it in April.

I say that tentatively because I’m a discovery writer, so I can’t really predict when I’m going to finish it since it’s probably going to do something crazy and surprise me. However, I feel reasonably confident that I can finish this thing by late April.

To help out with this, I’ve engaged in a little friendly competition with Aneeka. She’s finished her 1st draft (‘skeletal’ draft, I guess you could call it) of her next novel, but she’s going to go through and do a major revision. We’re racing each other to see who’s going to finish first!

Hehehe…I am so going to win this. After losing our last contest, I’d better make it up this time!

I had a surprisingly satisfying day today. My classload is really light, but there was one midterm I had to take this week, and I took it this morning. I spent all yesterday studying, which is why I only wrote about 500 words, but I got a 98 on the scantron section so I think I’m in good shape. And really, I don’t have any midterms in any of my other classes (hard to believe, but true), so I think the worst of the mid-semester crunch is past me!

Man, it’s nice having almost no school obligations!

I’m starting to think I should stay here in the US this summer. After all, if I’m trying to get ready for World Fantasy, I should put a lot of work into my stories. If I do stay here, though, where will I go? Maybe I could teach Arabic at one of these summer seminar things. Maybe I could go to the East Coast doing that. Maybe I could stay here in Utah. I don’t know. It’s so complicated…and meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

Another confession: part of me wants to go to Iraq to work for a year right after I graduate. Why? Well, the money would be nice. But really, I’d want to do it because of the way that experience would enrich my writing. Make it a lot more gritty, the conflict that more real. It might even qualify my to write military sf–who knows?

Don’t worry–I’m not crazy enough to listen to that part of my brain. At least, not yet. 😛

Always too slow

I’m kind of paranoid the way I plan things out. I set a grand deadline for the novel I’m writing, then I figure out a general plot (VERY general, without any of the subplots or other stuff), and use that to tell myself where I should be from week to week. I’ll have the few days ahead of me partitioned out really strictly, with “I want to be at this point in the story by this day,” but only for the week immediately ahead of me. I need a lot of room for discovery writing.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I wanted to be done with “act I” of Bringing Estella Home by the middle of last week. That didn’t work, because I got hung up in the chapter talking about Estella and her captivity. Then, I decided to be finished with “Act I” by Sunday…but as of now, I’m two scenes from the end of it. Blegh.

I tend to think I can write more than I actually do. Perhaps part of it has to do with just too many distractions. That’s a self-discipline issue. Another thing, though, is that I really do tend to burn out after a while. I can keep writing, but it will be difficult and probably not as good. My limit is at about 1,500 words per session.

However, another thing is that I do most of my writing late at night. What if I were to write in the mornings? Is that even possible? I could put down 1,500 words in the morning, spend the rest of the day replenishing the well (so to speak), and then write late at night after everything else is done. That would double my productivity.

It’s an interesting idea. I’ll try it out.

In the meantime, I am sooooo excited for how this act is going to end. They say that if you show a gun in Act I, someone’s going to get shot in Act II. Well…the last scene involves a gun…in the hands of James’s brother. Oooooh!

I’m so glad I’m not a character in my own novels. My life would be miserable. 😛

I love writing

Man, I love writing. I wrote 1,617 words today, and when I wasn’t writing I was thinking about what I was going to write. I only regret that I waited until about 10:30 pm to start writing; it’s 2:10 am and I still haven’t started my Arabic homework 😛

When I started Hero in Exile, I tried to plan everything out before I started writing. As a result, writing was a real chore, and to make it more of a creative exercise than merely transcribing what I’d already worked out in my head, I played around a lot with the language and writing style. It was still a chore, but I think my writing improved quite a lot. I’ve gotten some really interesting comments back on my writing style for Genesis Earth, some very encouraging comments about the way I played around with the English language.

For this story, Bringing Estella Home, it’s both completely different and more of the same. I’m going into chapter 4 without any planning or preconceptions, so practically all the world building is on the fly. It’s wonderful. This is the chapter where Estella enters the harem and gets assimilated, in a certain way, into Hameji society. It’s basically her discovery of this new world, and it is so much fun creating it as I go along. Lots of room for a creative outlet, and yet at the same time, I’m also playing around with the language aspects of the narrative like I did in Hero in Exile and Genesis Earth. The result, I hope, is good quality creative writing.

Of course, one of the side effects of this process is that it sucks up a ton of my time. A ton of time, and not just time–since I’ve got internet access here, there is no shortage of distractions to tempt and indulge me. This is actually quite a serious problem–and yet, if I forced myself to focus, would I really have been more productive? It’s hard to say, because taking little breaks every once and a while can actually help you think of better ways to phrase things. Still, I know that I worked a lot slower because of all these distractions; perhaps a little more self-discipline would have really helped me out.

When I move out on my own and make my own writing space, it’s going to be in a secluded corner of my house somewhere, with an old desktop computer that has no internet access, just word processors and perhaps an electronic encyclopedia of some kind.

I’m going to have an overstuffed easy chair pulled up to the desk where the computer is, the kind that I can just lay back in and get absorbed by the sheer comfort of it. I’m sitting in a chair kind of like that right now, and it is wonderful.

I’m going to have lots and lots of music on this computer, especially trance music because it helps drown out a lot of outside distractions. This room is going to have a skylight, but it’s also going to have a door with a lock. There will be no phone in this room, and I’ll probably leave my cell phone outside.

There will, however, be a bookshelf on the wall behind me (at least one, perhaps two), filled with all kinds of books, most of them sci fi paperbacks, but also with a few key books on various interesting and miscellaneous subjects, as well as books with quotes about writing.

Sitting prominently on my desk, between a couple of bookends, I’ll have a few copies of my own books in print, just so that I can look at them and think “wow, that’s my name on those books! My very own name! I’m in print!” And, at least for the first few years, it will not get old, no matter how many times I look at them. 🙂

It’s going to be great. In the meantime, I should do my Arabic homework. 😛

I swear I’m not morbid

Wow, I had a interesting experience writing today. I only got about 650 words in, but I spent almost half an hour just walking around and thinking about it.

The basic premise of Bringing Estella Home (I should probably think of a better title…) is that the young protagonist was forcibly and unexpectedly separated from his older brother and sister when a barbarian war fleet invaded their solar system, and he’s trying to find and rescue them. The barbarians capture and enslave both the brother and the sister–they send the brother into a very brutal brainwashing program to turn him into one of their empath soldiers, and they turn the sister into a concubine to the head of the fleet.

Well, in the scene I wrote today, the Hameji put Ben (the captured brother) through a mock execution, after putting him through weeks of physical and psychological torture. The idea is to break him down completely so that they can remake him from the bottom up. The execution involves putting him in an airlock and “spacing” him.

For some reason, this scene had a really huge impact on me. It was…very brutal. Very moving, though I’m not sure if it’s moving in the way that I want it. It wasn’t senseless–it happens for a reason, to set things up for when he meets back up with his brother–but man, it was very brutal and disturbing.

Now…I swear I’m not a morbid person! No, really! My first novel was a happy, adventuresome, optimistic space opera, and I’m sure it won’t be the last one! And really, I don’t have any pent up anger or goth tendencies or anything–it’s just, this is what I thought should happen in the story right now. And…wow. It was a lot more powerful than I’d thought.

This has made me realize that I’m going to need to bring in a humorous character to periodically give relief to all this tension. I’ve got the novel figured out in my head in a rough three act format. If all goes well, I should be finishing with act 1 before the end of next week. At the beginning of act 2, James is going to meet up with a very interesting and quirky band of mercenaries, and that will (inshallah) be a good opportunity to bring in some comic relief. Not too much, of course–just enough to help the reader get through the really serious, really disturbing parts.

And I know where I want this novel to end. I don’t know how, but I know the main character’s root motivations and how that inner conflict needs to be resolved. I actually have it all coming down to a single line of dialogue given from the head mercenary, Danica, to James at the very end of the story. The denouement shouldn’t take up more than a chapter and an epilogue, which of course I haven’t figured out yet, but the key to everything, the thing compelling me at this point to write this story, is to get the main character (James) to get to that one line of dialogue and come to this realization about himself.

Of course, I won’t tell you what that is, since that would be giving away spoilers. 🙂 But if you want to be an alpha reader, let me know. The goal is to have this sucker finished before the end of April. Tough goal, especially now that so many storylines are exploding all over the place, but I think I can do it.

Interview with a character

Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged here. Or anywhere else.

Things are going well. I’ve been writing steadily this past week, and it’s going swimmingly well. I’m really, really excited for the novel I’m working on right now! I’m about 12,500 words into it right now, and my only frustration is that I can’t write it down fast enough.

That’s not to say that I don’t put off writing each day. I always tend to put off the things that take real effort, and it really frustrates me. Something personal I need to work on: self-discipline. Well, don’t we all.

English 318 has been particularly motivating. Every time I listen to one of Brandon Sanderson’s lectures, it’s like my fingers start to itch and all I really want to do is sit down and write! He has a lot of really good advice, insightful ideas and perspectives, and it’s just really great to be taking this class from him. This has got to be my favorite class at BYU, hands down.

Well, today we talked about character, and I had this really cool idea to sit down and do an interview with one of my characters, to try and flesh them out a bit. When I got home, that’s what I did–I put myself on the Catriona, the ship he’s flying on, and had a little chat with him.

Of course, I skipped ahead a little bit–this isn’t where the story actually is at this point, it’s where it is in my head–and, well, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about anyways because you haven’t read what I’ve written so far. Perhaps none of this will make any sense. However, it was a fun exercise, so I thought I’d put it up here. Enjoy!

I’m here on the Catriona right now, sitting next to James McCoy on the command bridge. We are somewhere out in deep space, well beyond the heliosphere of Karduna Prime, on our way to the first station of the Karduna-Gaia Nova starlane. Except for the two of us, there is nobody else around for literally millions of miles. James, welcome.

Thanks, Joe. It’s good to be with you.

I know this isn’t exactly the best time for you, what with your brother and sister getting kidnapped and all.

Well, maybe it isn’t, but here you are.

Yeah (after all, it’s not like things are going to get any better for you <cough>). Well, to start off, why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?

Ok. Um, let’s see…I was born on the Colony, a mining station out in the Trojan asteroids just behind Kardunash III. My mom and dad are space traders–local traders, not the interstellar kind. I have a brother and a sister…

What about yourself? What can you tell me about yourself?

Well…I just finished general schooling at the colony, and was just about to start my apprenticeship with the McLellan family when this whole big mess with the Hameji happened.

What did you want to do for your apprenticeship?

I don’t know…my sister went into communications and programming, and my brother did deep space astrogation and business…I guess he wants to go off and start his own trading business, a deep space trader. But me? I haven’t figured that out yet.

I know the Hameji invasion has been pretty hard on you.

Yeah, it has.

What are you going to do about it?

I’m going to sell this ship, hire some mercenaries, and rescue my brother and sister, that’s what I’m going to do.

Sounds dangerous.

I know it does. I know it is. I’m going to do it anyway, though–or die trying.

They say that no captives have ever escaped from the Hameji. What do you think of that?

I’m still going to try. If I gave up now, how could I live with myself? Besides, there are a lot of legends about the Hameji. You can’t trust them all–they’re human beings too, just like the rest of us.

So you’re not worried?

No, I’m worried. To be honest, I’m scared out of my mind. I’m just not going to let that stop me.

So when something’s wrong, you like to take action?

I suppose. To be honest, I never really thought of it that way until the invasion. Then again, I was always the youngest child. Everyone always seemed to take action on my behalf, not the other way around.

How do you feel about being the youngest child?

Well, (don’t tell anyone, will you?), I sometimes feel that I don’t get enough respect. I mean, I’m seventeen years old, I can take care of myself, but everyone still acts as if I’m the little kid brother. My Mom clings to me whenever I’m back home, my Dad always gives the real work to my siblings, Ben always treats me like a little kid…it’s tough. I don’t like being the youngest.

You didn’t mention Estella in that list. How come?

Estella is…well, she’s different. We get along really well. I feel like I can talk with her. Ben is a good brother, and we get along and all, but I sometimes feel as if he looks down on me a little. But Estella, she’s really close. She understands me.

What makes you say that?

She likes to talk a lot. Ben likes to torment the both of us sometimes. I mean, we’re really close to him too (I mean, he’s our brother), but it’s different. Estella used to come to me with her problems while Ben was starting his apprenticeship. She was really scared about graduating and leaving the family. We got really close back then, and I shared a lot with her.

What about before her graduation?

Well, I always felt like I needed to take care of her. She’s my older sister, but back home at the colony, men are definitely the ones who wear the pants. Women can vote, but men do all the dirty work while the women take care of the home. Men are the protectors. I guess that makes me and Ben Estella’s protectors–at least until she finds a husband. If I get her back.

Yeah. . So, how do you feel about your brother Ben?

He’s my older brother. We used to fight a lot, but always good naturedly. He left for his apprenticeship when I was still in my early teens, so I haven’t seen him a whole lot since then. When I have seen him, he always tends to be in charge. He’s gotten a little bossy recently, actually. But I still love him. I’m sure he’s taking care of Estella, whereever he is.

How do you feel about the Hameji?

I hate them. They’re monsters. I wish I could drive them out of this system by myself.

If you could have any wish, what would it be?

To get things back to the way they were before the invasion. I feel like my life just sort of stopped on that day, and I’ve been wandering around somewhere else trying to get back. I hate it. I want my brother and sister back. I want things to return to the way they were.

But if that’s impossible, what will you do?

(long pause). I don’t know. It probably is impossible. But if I can’t get my brother and sister back, I might as well die with them myself.

Yeah. So…life kind of sucks for James right now. Hehe. Sorry, James. My goal with your story is to make the reader cry. Needless to say, things are only going to get more difficult for you.

But one thing I can say is that it will be worth it in the end. At least, I think it will be. I haven’t quite gotten there yet.

Oh, and I can’t have you making the story all boring with your melancholy. You’ll meet up with someone very interesting in a little while. Her name is Danica, and she’s the captain of a band of mercenaries. She’s killed at least half a dozen people with her knife and bare hands, and she’s got a bounty on her head that’ll keep her out of civilized space for many, many years to come.

Oh yes, it will be interesting when you run into her. It’ll be more interesting to see what happens to you both when she becomes your mentor.

It’s done!

205 pages, 57,499 words, thirteen chapters and an epilogue–Genesis Earth is FINISHED!!!

It really did get more and more difficult the closer I got to the end. The last part of the last chapter, in particular, was very difficult. I can’t exactly tell you why, without giving away the story, but…let’s just say, it was hard. I’d write a paragraph, lie down on my bed for a while, write a few lines, chat with some friends, write a little bit more…torturous. Ugh.

Man, it feels so good to have the rough draft finished now! I sent it out to thirteen people, seven men and six women, so I think I’ll have a good sense of how it appeals (or doesn’t apeal) to each gender. That’s something I’m really interested to find out about; how the different genders react to the story. It’s sci fi, so the audience is predominantly male, but I tried to put in some stuff that tend to appeal more towards women as well, and I want to know if I pulled it off or not. I hope I did.

This novel is completely unlike my first one, The Phoenix of Nova Terra. It is much, much shorter–three times as short, roughly. It is much less epic–90% of the story is just two characters alone, talking with each other and struggling to figure out what’s going on. The conflict is much more local, much more internal, and has nothing to do with the rise and fall of civilizations…well, maybe I spoke too soon.

I’ll stop talking about the novel, because I don’t want to give too much away. 😛 Needless to say, it just feels really good to have my second novel finished! GENESIS EARTH 1.0 — that’s what the file says on my flash drive now. So good. It’s done–the rough draft is finally finished!

Now I can focus all my energies on that other novel, Bringing Estella Home. If I can finish that one by April–holy cow, that would be so awesome!

3rd novel? I’m going for it.

Ok, I have officially decided. I’m going to write a new novel this semester instead of simply rewriting The Phoenix of Nova Terra (or Terra Nova?) for English 318.

The working title is Bringing Estella Home, and it is going to have a lot more action than Hero in Exile and Genesis Earth, my last two novel attempts. It starts with a massive invasion of the Hameji (basically, space Mongols) that splits up a family. The rest of the story is their struggle to find each other again and rebuild their lives.

Here’s the basic storyline, as I currently have it conceptualized. The McCoys are a family of local merchants in the Kardunash system. There are three younger siblings who fly on the shipping runs: Ben (the oldest), Estella, and James (the youngest).

When they arrive at Kardunash IV, Ben and Estella leave the ship to have some fun, while James remains with his father to handle the offloading. Within the hour, a massive Hameji war fleet jumps into the system and launches an all out assault on Kardunash IV. James and his father are forced to retreat, leaving Ben and Estella behind.

The Hameji destroy Kardunash IV with mass accelerators and capture or destroy every ship in the system. Ben and Estella survive as prisoners. Ben gets shipped off to a slave world where he is tortured, broken down, and eventually turned into a empathically manipulated slave warrior of the Hameji. Estella is given as a concubine to the new Hameji overlord of the Kardunash system.

At first, Estella is terrified of everything and everyone. She’s treated like cattle, right up until the point where she enters the overlord’s harem. At that point, her captors start to treat her more civilly, and she learns some interesting things about them and their culture. The brutal, inhuman barbarians turn out to be human after all, and she grows to understand them and even sypathize a little. Eventually, she realizes that she has the power and influence to save her people from brutal enslavement in the new order.

James, in the meantime, is completely devastated. He pledges to save his lost brother and sister, and dedicates all of his energy towards that end. However, he learns something frighening about himself; he can’t take a human life without compunction. This is something he must struggle with as he joins up with a band of mercenaries and goes deep into the occupied territory, putting his life at risk.

It’s going to be a fun story to write. I’m going to kill at least one of the siblings, possibly two of them. I still don’t know how it’s going to end, however. That’s still a surprise to me–one that I’m very eager to find out.

My goal now is to finish this novel by the end of winter 2009. I wrote about 70,000 words last semester, and I don’t expect this novel will be much longer than that. I want to keep it short, fast, and brutal.

The best part is that if I accomplish this goal and finish this novel, I’ll have three rough drafts done before the summer. Three! That’s the magic number I’m looking for World Fantasy 2009! That’ll leave the rest of the summer to revise them…difficult work, but at least I’ll have three rough drafts.

Wish me luck!

Back in school

So, school has started again! As fun as the vacation was, it’s good to be back.

I think I’ve more or less finalized my schedule by now. I’m taking an Arabic grammar class, a poli sci class on Islamic politics (taught by an Arab guy who drove ambulances in Lebanon during the Israeli invasion/occupation in the 80s), a class on modern Middle East history, a class on Islam and contemporary society, and…English 318! The one taught by Brandon Sanderson!

I took this class last year, and it was a lot of fun. Brandon Sanderson is the best selling author of the Mistborn fantasy series, as well as the Alcatraz YA series and Elantris. He also teams up with Howard Taylor and Dan Wells for the excellent writing podcast, Writing Excuses. Genesis Earth, the novel I’m currently working on, is a novel I started in his class last year.

Last semester was really miserable for me because few of my classes were challenging or interesting; most of them were easy, boring classes that I was only taking because they were required. Not so this semester. Even if two or three of my classes this semester turn out to be tedious and draining, English 318 is going to make it all worth it.

Here’s the thing, though; I’m not sure if I should rewrite one of my older novels or start a completely new one for English 318 this year. Brandon tends to encourage us to start with something fresh, but I would really like to revise the novel I wrote last year. I was originally planning on doing that, but then I thoought about it for a little bit, and realized that I wanted to do something with the Mongols in space idea before it drifts out of my mind.

In some ways, though, this throws a wrench in the works for my long term plans. I want to have three novels polished for World Fantasy 2009, and I was originally thinking about doing The Phoenix of Nova Terra, Genesis Earth, and Hero in Exile. However, if I were to start something completely new, that would mean throwing out all the work I did last semester for Hero in Exile and doing something completely new.

I don’t know, but before I can do anything, I’d better finish Genesis Earth, and fast. The first English class is in two days, and I don’t want to juggle two novels. That means I’m going to have to sprint these next two days to finish this novel.