Desert Stars – Page 12 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Deceptively productive day and other updates

Man, I revised through about 4k words today…and wrote a 1.5k outline for Edenfall to boot. Not bad, considering how much time I spent putzing around reading publishing blogs and job hunting on craigslist.

Things are going well with WAFH; after a slight dropoff at the end of last week, I’m rebuilding momentum rather quickly. But then again, I’m currently at an easy part in the draft. Pretty soon, I’ll have to throw everything out and start from scratch.

Job hunting sucks…but what else is new? I signed up for an online TEFL certification course, to the tune of $250 (youch!). Hopefully, that will help land me a good teaching job in an advanced pay grade overseas.

I swear, the job market here in the states is so bad that I don’t see any other way around it but to leave the country. Maybe if I was a CS major, or had no qualms selling people crap they didn’t need, or was willing to wipe up elderly people’s butts after they’ve defecated all over the place…no thank you. In any case, teaching English is an adventure, and I very much look forward to it.

In the meantime, there are a few local graveyard job openings that might allow me to write on the side while I babysit a desk. If those don’t work out, hopefully I’ll find something else before my checking account dries up sometime in March.

I’m getting really excited for Edenfall. Last night, as I was falling asleep, I ran through the basic storyline in my head. Fortunately, I remembered it well enough in the morning to write it all down. It’s going to be awesome.

I’m also starting to rethink my philosophy on writing direct sequels. I used to follow Sanderson’s line of thought; it doesn’t make sense to finish the series, because if a publisher rejects the first book, they won’t be interested in the others. However, with ebooks and self publishing becoming more accessible and lucrative, the ability to put out a complete trilogy all at once is a great strength.

I’m thinking very seriously about putting Genesis Earth out there, but it’s the first book in a trilogy, and it would probably boost sales of all three if I could put them all at once. Aneeka gave me a good suggestion today: put out the first book for free, while selling the other two at a competitive price. Sadly, it will probably be a year or two before the others are ready…but my writing skills are constantly improving, so maybe I’ll be able to produce them a little faster.

Which brings me to a very interesting post I read on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog yesterday about writing speed. Thus far, I’ve been shooting to produce one polished book per year, but after reading that post, I wonder if I should shoot for more. Can I write two books a year and still maintain a high level of quality? I’m not so sure; GE and BSH both required five rewrites before I got them fully polished, and Mr. Smith’s numbers don’t seem to take the revision process into account.

This year, though, I’m hoping to produce two polished books: Bringing Stella Home, which I’ve already finished, and Worlds Away from Home, which is my current WIP. I’m only on the second draft, and there are tons of story issues, but I’m working through them fairly quickly. I’ll probably put in another two or three rewrites before the end of the year, and still have time to finish a couple of other rough drafts–Edenfall and The Stars of Redemption (third book), potentially.

Of course, if I land a job, that might throw a kink into things–as will traveling overseas. But as with all things, I’ll take those eventualities as they come.

(image shamelessly lifted from this site.)

Looking for alpha readers and planning the next project

Worlds Away from Home 2.1 is going along well. I had a hard time switching from Bringing Stella Home back to this other project, but I’ve got some good momentum going and assuming no major interruptions, should be able to do about 3k words a day for the rest of the week.

Then again, if I get interrupted by work, that might be a good thing…

The second draft is going to be pretty rough, but good enough to start sending out to alpha readers. Anyone want to volunteer? It’s basically a far future love story on a planet with desert-dwelling tribal nomads who drive micronuclear powered dune buggies and centuries-old arcologies under giant continent-sized domes. Earth is an ancient, mythical legend, and roving bands of starfaring nomads stand poised to crush the galactic empire.

I hope to be finished with the second draft by March 1st, and I’d want to get feedback no later than the end of April. If you’ve been one of my alpha readers before, or if we’re friends IRL, let me know if you’re interested.

So earlier today, I was thinking about the project I want to do after WAFH–a sequel to Genesis Earth. I’ve been toying with the idea of releasing GE as an ebook, but I don’t want to do that until I have a sequel in the works. Anyhow, I was thinking of ideas for the title, and out of the blue, it struck me:

EDENFALL.

Kind of plays on the subtle Adam and Eve theme of the first one (and no, Genesis Earth isn’t technically a sci-fi Adam and Eve story…but it kind of evokes one). I like it because it fits well with my ideas for the story, which basically center around shattering the Edenic paradise that Michael and Terra reach at the end of GE.

I’ve got a lot of ideas for this book, and I think they’re reaching a critical mass. Just last month, I came up with a great name for the main female protagonist: Estee. She’s the eldest daughter of Terra and Michael, and kind of takes after her mother’s personality. The male protagonist will be a young soldier from the military force sent out by panicky Earth officials to neutralize any threat on Icaria–which gives the commanders of the expedition a broad mandate to do whatever the hell they want. As you can imagine, conflict ensues.

I know how this story begins, and I know how it’s supposed to end (and thereby set things up for an awesome third book in the trilogy), but I have no idea how to build things up to the crazy twist ending. It’s going to require some serious worldbuilding, and that’s going to take some time. Daydreaming is such hard work, after all.

Anyhow, I should be ready by the time I finish WAFH 2.1. As an experiment, I’m going to write the rough draft entirely in longhand. Am I crazy? Perhaps. But I also want to spend some time in the Utah wilderness for inspiration while I’m writing it, so pen and paper is probably the best medium for that.

So those are my plans. To close, let me link to this awesome cover of “Something About Us” by Daft Punk. Now that’s some sweet theremin action…enjoy!

How do you write a character who is shy?

The writing is a little sporadic these days, but it’s coming along. I’ve broken out of my most recent block, and progress is coming along on WAFH…or at least it was, when I didn’t have a temp job sucking up most of my time during the day.

Still, can’t complain about work–and even though all the job interviews from a couple weeks ago seem to have lead nowhere, I’ve got a few new opportunities opening up that seem promising. More on those later.

One of the more challenging aspects of WAFH is writing the main female protagonist, Mira Najmi. Mira is something of a shy pushover, who gradually learns to stand up for herself and make her own independent decisions.

Because of this, I find it difficult to write from her point of view. When she isn’t letting people walk all over her, she’s either homesick and depressed or following others without making any real decisions for herself. And yet, in order for her growth arc to work, this is the point at which she needs to start out; her gradual change into a strong and independent woman is a major part of the book.

In short, how do I make a shy, self-effacing protagonist sympathetic and interesting while remaining true to her character?

(Before I go further, I should note that Mira does have strengths. She has a caring, nurturing personality, and is sensitive to the needs of others. She often notices the little things that go right over the male protagonist’s head. Besides that, she’s basically a good person, with a pure heart and an aversion to causing hurt or injury. Oh, and she’s stunningly beautiful–though in some ways, that’s more of a handicap than a strength.)

Thus far, my strategy has been to delve into her internal monologue when in her viewpoint and try to make her underlying motivations clear. I suspect it goes beyond that, though. The best thing I can probably do is make her relatable to the audience–to make her shy in ways that make the readers feel like she’s one of them.

But that’s difficult for me, because I’m not a very shy person and I don’t generally relate well with people who are. So how can I get a better understanding of what it’s like? Do you guys have anything that you can share with me that would help me to understand? Any tips or techniques for writing similar characters?

(image taken from http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/lgrove/resign%20splashpage.htm)

New OCR album and my first chiptune

So overclocked remix came out with a new album a few days ago, and it is absolutely fantastic. It’s called THE ANSWER, and it’s a fanmade album of music from the Armored Core series.

For those of you who don’t know, ocremix is an online community of video game music fans. It’s got a database of almost two thousand fanmade remixes of popular game tracks, and all of them are available for free download.

THE ANSWER is ocr’s 21st album project, and in my opinion it is one of the best. It’s full of happy, high-energy techno mixed with guitar and drums, and the quality of production is quite good. While each track is unique, there are enough recurring elements that the album feels very coherent as a whole. In that, it reminds me a bit of Humans + Gears and Summoning of Spirits.

Anyhow, the album is available for free from the project’s webpage. You should definitely check it out, even if you’ve never heard of the Armored Core games. Good stuff– ocremix is definitely starting the year out right!

Speaking of which, remember how I mentioned I wanted to make an album of original chiptune music this year? Well, I found a program for doing just that!

It’s called MilkyTracker, and it’s an open source program based off of FastTracker 2, an old DOS program for writing computer music. The interface is way old school–makes me feel like I’m on my old 386 from the 90s. Ah, those were the good days…

Anyhow, after playing around with it for a while, I wrote an 8-bit style remix of Son of Flynn, the third track on the Tron: Legacy soundtrack by Daft Punk. Several excellent chiptune arrangements of songs from the Tron soundtrack have been popping up recently, so I thought I’d get in on the action.

Here it is:

Pretty sweet, huh? You can download the original file here, but unfortunately I don’t know how to convert .xm to .mp3, so unless you have a media player that can read extended module files, all I can say is go fish.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been up to these past few days. Haven’t gotten a whole lot of writing done, but I’m slowly transitioning back into WAFH and getting excited about it again. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish it before LTUE as I’d hoped, but a February 28th deadline seems reasonable. More on that later, for sure.

Q4 report, 2010

For those of you who don’t know, I do a report on my blog at the end of each quarter, giving a progress update on my writing. I like to think it helps me keep things professional. Whether or not it does, it’s certainly helpful to look back on how I did.

So anyhow, here’s the word count chart:

The red line represents daily word count, and the blue line is a running total for the previous seven days. The chart includes revisions as well as original material; for revisions, I just do a wordcount of the finished version, whether or not I’ve cut out significant chunks of the text or left it largely as-is. Maybe that skews the picture a bit, but it’s the best I can do with the tools I have.

At the beginning of the quarter, I was working 40+ hours per week at a seasonal job, so the writing was pretty slow, averaging a little less than 15k per week. My main project was the fourth draft of Mercenary Savior, which I was struggling to get ready for World Fantasy.

The job ended October 28th, and I didn’t do any writing during the conference, which is why you see the dip at the end of the month. But I took November off to work entirely on my writing, which is why things took off again rather quickly.

That huge peak in the middle of the quarter is from the fifth draft of Genesis Earth, which I completed in about two weeks. The draft was already pretty well polished, but one of my hard sf friends did a read through and got back with a few major science issues which I needed to rectify. Also, I figured it was in need of a language polish, since I finished the last revision almost a year ago and my writing (I hope) has improved a lot since then.

I was pretty surprised at how quickly it went. The book is definitely as good as I can make it, and any further revisions without professional editorial assistance would be a less effective use of my time.

Things dropped off rather sharply, however, because I spent all of Thanksgiving week either on the road or with family. Ah, how I love road trips…but they sure can throw a kink in the writing schedule. I also had a hard time settling on my next big project, which is why things took a while to take off again after I got back.

After starting a sequel for Mercenary Savior and toying around with a short story idea, I decided to do a major overhaul of Worlds Away from Home. Unlike GE, however, WAFH really, really sucks. It took me two weeks just to read through the rough draft and pick out all the troubled spots, after which I rewrote the outline from the ground up and decided to completely scrap half the book. I started the second draft in mid-December, but it’s taken a while for things to really build steam.

Right as I was starting WAFH 2.0, a couple of other writer friends from World Fantasy got back to me with their comments on Mercenary Savior, and pointed out a few problems that I hadn’t noticed before. I started the revision on December 21st and have been plowing through ever since. That accounts for the huge spike at the end of the quarter–like GE 5.0, the draft has a lot fewer story problems, but does need a few things fixed for consistency, as well as a language polish.

Overall, I wrote or revised through about .25 million words this past quarter–some of which were easier than others. I started a new project (Into the Nebulous Deep), polished one of my manuscripts to the very best of my abilities, and made significant headway on revising and polishing two others. In terms of publications, I had a major article published in Mormon Artist, and a short poem accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Leading Edge.

Not a bad quarter. Now, let’s see if I can find an agent and/or publisher in 2011.

The second to last post of the year

I’ve been figuring out what to say in my Obligatory New Year’s post–resolutions and all that. Before I do that, though, I wanted to give an update on recent goings-on.

First, the writing: I’m making excellent headway in the latest draft of Mercenary Savior, and should be finished by the end of next week. WAFH is coming along too, but at a much slower pace. It’s hard to juggle a good book that only needs a polish with a crappy book that needs a complete overhaul, because the one that needs the most work looks so much worse in comparison. Still, I’m making progress on both.

I just recently noticed, though, that I’ve spent the last two years working almost exclusively on Mercenary Savior. Whenever I took a break to work on something else, it was never more than a month or two before I jumped into another major revision of that project. I worry that that’s going to handicap me, especially as I reach the point of diminishing returns. Mercenary Savior is an awesome novel, and I totally stand by it, but I worry…well, I worry too much. Let’s just leave it at that.

Second: jobs! To my surprise, a number of places have been calling me in for interviews and such. My first pick would most likely be with the BYU Political Science Department, since I already know everyone there and would probably love it. However, a number of other opportunities have been opening up, which means (inshallah) that I’ll probably be employed by the end of next month. Woohoo!

In the mid- to long-term, though, I’m thinking very seriously about teaching abroad. I interviewed today with a program that places people in South Korea, and that could be quite interesting. If I choose to go through with it, I’d probably be shipping out in September, hopefully after completing a TEFL certification program. After working there for a year or two, I could probably land a much more lucrative job in the Gulf, which could be an interesting experience.

Then again, I could stay here in Utah, where I’m much more likely to find a wife…

But you know what? I’m starting to think that that’s a horrible reason to stay here in the bubble. I don’t need to live in Utah to find the right girl (or, as my dad says, for the right girl to find me). She could be anywhere.

And as for all that stuff about the odds being better out here, I’m starting to think that’s a bunch of crap. Yeah, there are a ton of young, available LDS women here in Utah–but there are also a ton of guys, and the competition has like a gazillion advantages on me. I mean, come on, I’m a writer–what have I got on a Marriott School graduate? Even a pizza can feed a family of four…

So maybe I should spend some serious time abroad, even if it does mean fewer dating opportunities. In the meantime, I need to renew my passport and get a job. And who knows what the future ultimately holds? Maybe I’ll stick around. Maybe…

Encouraging realizations

So today I realized something about my writing process that encouraged me quite a bit. With every project so far that I’ve finished, revised, and polished (or will soon be polishing), I went through a depressing period where the draft absolutely sucked and I questioned whether I was just wasting my time with the whole project. I went through it with Genesis Earth, I went through it with Mercenary Savior, and I’m going through it right now with Worlds Away from Home.

None of that is new, of course; what’s new is the realization that this phase is an essential part of my personal writing process. In other words, it’s not a distressing thing that I’m going through this phase–it’s actually a sign that things are normal. The story has potential but needs a significant overhaul, so until I complete that overhaul I’m only going to see how much it sucks.

The trick, of course, is keeping momentum. I’ve found that if I consistently write 2,500 words per day, my mind is so absorbed in the story that I can make good headway on it. I only revised through about 1.4k today, but I cut off at least another 2k of useless fat, so I suppose that works.

I also submitted Genesis Earth to two agents, so overall, today was quite productive. I’ll probably count those as my submissions for this week, to allow people time off for the holidays. Of course, I won’t stop writing!

Out of it

Man, I feel like I’ve been so out of it recently. I’ve been getting up around 9 am or 10 am every day, going to bed every night around 2 am or 3 am, and running around so much that I hardly seem to have time to write. Life is good, and between plasma and phone book deliveries I’m earning enough to get by, but my days are very unstructured and that’s not good for my writing.

So here’s what I need: a stable job that facilitates my writing. For the past year, I’ve been working random odd jobs and temporary jobs, and while they pay enough to get by (just barely), the variability and lack of long-term security is just too much to juggle on top of writing. I’ve got to find something else.

Trouble is, I’m afraid that if I settle for a dead end job, it’ll put such a stigma on me that I won’t be able to get a better job later if the writing career doesn’t take off. I’m pretty confident that I’ll eventually be able to make a living off my writing, but I don’t know how late or how soon that’s going to happen. The last thing I want is to end up as a wage-slave without a future.

Anyway, despite the lack of daily structure, I really love the flexibility that this phone book delivery job is giving me. Pay is on a per route basis (like newspaper delivery), and the supervisor is really awesome and easy to work with.

If I want, I can take the mornings easy, do personal chores for a while, deliver a couple hundred phone books and write in the evenings. That’s basically what I’ve been doing these past three weeks.

I really hate going to bed and waking up late, though. That’s not sustainable. If I come to my writing only at the very end of the day, it’s going to be a wash. I might get a thousand words in, but if I’m not consistently crossing the 2.5k threshold every day, my heart really just isn’t in to it.

In any case, WAFH 2.0 is coming along fairly well. I’ve got a good idea where I want the story to go, and the characters seem to be working out. Also, I think I’ve found my big reason for wanting to write this story–I’ll write more about that in a later post.

This next draft isn’t going to be perfect, but hopefully I can get rid of all the major story problems (and there are a TON of major story problems!). I suppose my goal at this point is to make it good enough to send out to my first readers. The rough draft is so full of crap, I wouldn’t let anyone read it if they paid me. Blegh!

Also, I know it’s only been a month, but I think I’m going to do another cover to cover revision of Mercenary Savior in the next few weeks. I really want to get it polished enough to start sending it out–preferably by the end of the holidays–so that’s probably going to take priority. If it goes as fast as Genesis Earth 5.0, I should have the entire manuscript done in about three or four weeks.

And another thing–I’m going to set a new goal: submit at least one thing to an agent/editor every week. Right now, I tend to go on splurges where I’ll send out half a dozen queries, then sit around for a month without really doing much to try to break in. I feel like I need to be more consistent on that front, because submitting is definitely one of my greatest weaknesses. They say everything comes better with practice, so I might as well send stuff out more regularly.

Anyhow, that’s how things are going right now–disjointed and all over the place, but somehow things still get done. I just wish I could get more done, but who doesn’t? Anyhow, there’s always next week–may it be better than the last.

Getting back into things

So yesterday, I wrote through 4k words in WAFH 2.0 without even realizing it. I didn’t feel very productive, because I only did about 500 words at a time before something came up and I got distracted, but by the end of the day, ended up accomplishing a lot. That was a pleasant surprise.

In terms of my writing, I’ve been really out of things since Thanksgiving. I finished Genesis Earth 5.0 right before the vacation and started outlining WAFH 2.0 immediately after, but…man, the rough draft REALLY sucks. Like, sucks so bad I’ll have to completely throw out part III and start from scratch.

Fortunately, I think I’ve got a good idea what to do. I’ve outlined about eighteen complete plots and subplots, so that’ll probably help out with keeping things tight. The rough draft has a lot of shotgun writing, which means I have a lot of stuff to cut out–and now that I see where things are going, I know how to cut it.

One thing that worries me, however, is that I don’t have a strong driving reason to write this book–or maybe I do, but I just haven’t noticed it yet. I’m hoping that’s the case, but I don’t yet know, and it’s really bugging me.

For Genesis Earth, it was the first line (“Earth was a ghost that haunted me”) and the cryo scene. For Mercenary Savior, it was the ending, and the way it resonated with an old Western I saw as a kid. With both projects, I got to a point of desperation somewhere between the first and second drafts where I wanted to throw everything out and never work on it again–but with both projects, that driving reason kept me going until I made it work.

With WAFH, however, I’m not sure what it is that’s driving me to write it. For now, though, I’ll just press through until I find out. I really hope I’m not just wasting my time writing this (because the rough draft sucks REALLY bad) but past experience has told me to ignore my own self-doubts at this phase.

Which reminds me: this week’s Writing Excuses podcast is really amazing. I just listened to it an hour or two ago, and the advice this time around was exactly what I needed to hear. Brandon’s advice in particular is very good: he basically says to stop worrying and enjoy what you’re doing.

So do I enjoy all of this? In spite of all the angst I’ve spilled, I think I can say that I do. When you’ve got a good story, and you know that it’s good, and you tell it in a way that moves someone else in a personally meaningful way–man, there’s nothing that compares to that. I look back now on stuff I used to think was absolute drivel, and I’m amazed. It takes persistence and drive and a little bit of crazy, but once you can get to that point, it makes everything you did to get there worth it.

The only thing now is to find out why WAFH is worth writing, and to hang onto those reasons at all costs until the story comes into its own. Wish me luck!

Slogging through a funk

Just a quick update, since it’s 3 am and I’m kind of in a daze after playing Halo: Reach on Xbox live with my roommate. Whoa, decompressing…

This whole week, I’ve been in a weird funk. It sucks to be unemployed, especially since I can’t commit to anything long term because I’m waiting to hear back from the wilderness job. Man, I really hope I get it–but even if I do, I’ll need to raise some cash to keep me going through January until the paychecks start coming in. And if I don’t get the job, I have no idea what I’ll do.

But mostly, it has to do with my writing. I’ve been running through the rough draft of Worlds Away from Home, and…holy crap, it REALLY sucks. It sucks to the point where I’m not sure exactly how to fix it.

Part of it probably has to do with my initial ambitions for it, which I probably set too high. I originally wanted to write a science fiction romance that turned the “romance” element on its head by having the sex be the thing pushing the characters apart rather than bringing them together. I got a little too didactic in the rough draft, though, and failed to tell a story that, at it’s root, is meant to entertain.

That’s probably the most important thing–to tell a story that’s fundamentally entertaining. So I’ve been looking at that, and I’m finding that there are significantly fewer plot threads here than there were in Mercenary Savior. That, and there’s considerably less suspense. The character arcs are still sufficiently complex, I think, but there aren’t nearly as many hooks and cliffhangers as my other work.

This whole week, I’ve been vacillating between “alright, I can do this” to “this novel sucks and I should just throw it out and never work on it again.” In fact, I drew up a chart today of all the novels I’ve started, finished a first draft, and finished a polished draft–and the results are a little stark.

I only just produced a fully polished draft for Genesis Earth, so at 2010 I’ve finally gotten one novel to the point where I think it’s as good as I can make it without an editor/agent to help. One freaking novel–and that’s after two years of work. Mercenary Savior, I’m finding, isn’t quite where it needs to be, though it’s close–probably I’ll nail it down in early 2011. But other than those two? I’ve got nothing.

I started Worlds Away from Home back in 2008, and I’m wondering whether I was even good enough back then to craft a story that could carry through a complete novel. Ashes of the Starry Sea was probably a bit too ambitious, and Genesis Earth, while it ended up working out, was so small in scope that it wasn’t that hard to pull off.

Is something fundamentally flawed with Worlds Away from Home? Did I bite off more than I could chew? Is the story premise so screwed up that I should just abandon it and reuse it occasionally for scraps?

I have no idea. Maybe I’m just being too angsty–after all, I started Genesis Earth BEFORE I started Worlds Away from Home, and that one turned out great. It took two years, of course, but it worked out in the end.

So will this one work out? Probably, I suppose–but only if I can solidly get behind it. I’m trying to put together a detailed plot outline to figure out what the story needs, but if I can’t find something else–something on par with the cryo scene and the first line of Genesis Earth, which for the longest time were the only two things keeping me from trashing that project–if I can’t find something redeemable like that, I might just drop this monstrosity and let it die.

Blarg. I hate this. I might just take a break from things and write a couple short stories. This whole week, I’ve been writing nothing but outlines and revision notes–I need to do something a little more creative.

Anyhow, that’s what I’m currently slogging through. Before the end of next week, I’m hoping to find out whether I’ve got that wilderness job or not. Let’s hope…