Hameji Cycle – Page 40 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

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.

Productivity breakdown

I’ve been thinking a lot about the writing I accomplished in the past few semesters. In some ways, I worry that I’ve become a lot more disorganized and a lot less productive than I was a year ago.

Back in winter ’08, I took a couple of really difficult classes, got up early each morning to work in the BYU Bookstore stockroom, wrote a handful of very difficult research papers…and still managed to write about 120,000 words. Oh, and I wrote on this blog almost daily. I finished my first novel, started my second, read a dozen other novels, wrote reviews of them all…
I accomplished quite a lot.

In fall ’08, however, my workload was much lighter, my classes were ridiculously easy, I didn’t have to get up early to work…and yet I only wrote about 70,000 words, didn’t hardly write for this blog, only read a couple of books, etc etc. Much less productive.

Though, I guess you could say that I made up in other areas. I started working for the FHSS Writing Lab, and that took a lot of my time and mental energy. Also, I think the quality of my writing improved quite a bit, and I experimented a lot with things that I hadn’t tried previously. Right now, I feel that Genesis Earth, my second novel, is a much better work than The Phoenix of Nova Terra.

So maybe all of this “oh my goodness where did my productivity go” is just me worrying for no reason. It’s hard not to worry about it, though.

I know for certain that I could be much more productive with my time. I come home tired, with less than an hour before dinner, and I usually squander the time on the internet or with video game emulators. I tend to put off homework, and only do the stuff that will get me in trouble if I don’t do it (though some would say that that’s a life skill…hmmm…). On any given day, the last two hours before I go to bed is filled purely with time wasting activity. I could use an extra two hours of sleep…

Meh. I guess it’s always a struggle. A year from now, I’ll probably be saying “I can’t believe how productive I was back in winter ’09!” That, and “holy cow, what am I going to do after I graduate??”

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!

Assessment

Well, it’s a new year now, and English 318 has started! We had a wonderful class yesterday, getting things set up, figuring out our writing groups and all that. I am so looking forward to this semester!

With all of these changes happening, I thought I’d do a little recap and assessment of the last six months. I tried out a lot of new things over this time, and learned quite a bit about myself as a writer. I wish I could say that all of my experiments were successful, but at least I know a little bit better what works for me and what doesn’t. Here goes.

Experiment #1: Extensive planning and prewriting

About three months before I started Hero In Exile (the book I was writing last semester), I downloaded wikidpad and wrote a huge collection of articles, all about the world and the story plot. I spent a lot of time in worldbuilding before I’d even written a single word. I wanted to try this because I’m a discovery writer, and in my previous writing I tended to figure out the details of my world on the fly, as I wrote out the story.

This experiment was largely a failure, I think. I stopped writing Hero In Exile because it became too massive to write. As I wrote the story, I kept receiving story ideas and tried to integrate those, but towards the end of the first part, I realized that I was trying to doo too much. Planning didn’t stop me from discovery writing like I always do, and by the end everything was just too cluttered.

Experiment #2: Extensive prewriting of characters using Meyers Briggs personality types

I remember how a few months ago how I wrote a long post describing my characters using the Meyers Briggs typology (INTP, ESFJ, etc). I did this because I wanted more depth to my characters, and I supposed that by planning them out a little more, I would be in a better position to fully develop them.

My assessment on this is mixed, but overall I would tend to call it a failure. There were a handful of descriptions in the personality profiles that helped me to better understand these characters, but once I sat down and started writing, the characters started to do things that surprised me and that didn’t fit into what I had planned. By trying to describe their character before writing them, I wasn’t giving them enough room to show me who they really were; I didn’t give them enough space to act on their own and surprise me.

Studying the personality profiles was good in that it got me thinking more about my characters, but not a good way for me to conceptualize them before writing. I was simply trying to structure too much and not giving myself enough room to discover them and let them act on their own. By the end, I felt as if I were forcing my characters too much, and that made things very difficult.

Experiment #3: Waiting for the ideas to accumulate critical mass

For Hero in Exile, I felt all of my ideas reach a critical mass and converge while I was studying in Jordan. I then waited for nearly a month before sitting down and writing chapter 1. I did this for a couple of reasons: first, it simply wasn’t practical to start the project while I was studying abroad, and second, I had heard that a good novel is built out of a synthesis of several ideas, not just one, and I wanted to have all my ducks in a row before I started.

This also proved to be a mistake. Yes, it takes more than one idea to make a novel, but you don’t have to have all the ideas lined up before you start. I guess that planners do, but I’m not much of a planner, I’m more of a discovery writer. By waiting too long to start the book, I had too many ideas to work with.

However, with Genesis Earth, I had the exact opposite problem. I started way too early, before I had enough ideas to work with. Now, a year later, I’m struggling to wrap it up. The ideas have come, but the writing process was very choppy.

How do you judge when you’re ready to start? I have no idea how to measure it. It’s very touchy feely. I think I started Phoenix at the right time, but Hero was too late and Genesis was too early. At least I’m in a better place now to tell when is a good time to start.

Experiment #4: Spend more effort on detailed physical descriptions

When I wrote Hero in Exile, I found myself spending a lot of time on the aesthetics and physical descriptions of the world. I did the same in Genesis Earth. In doing so, I always tried to show, not tell, by giving some visceral or sensuous detail of something the viewpoint character was sensing.

I think this was a success. Whenever I brought in an excerpt from Hero into the quark writing group, everyone always complimented me on how how full and engaging my world was. The descriptions really added to the sense of wonder and helped them to feel that they were there.

Experiment #5: Avoid info dumps at all costs

Related to #4 was my decision to completely excise all info dumps from my writing. Anytime I found myself telling instead of showing, I stopped and focused on what was happening in the here and now of the story. I also withheld information to create curiosity and intrigue within the reader’s mind. Throughout this, of course, I always tried to keep my writing as clear as possible.

This, also, was a success, I think. At times, the readers became confused, but the withholding of information did create a lot of curiosity and desire to read more. Many times in the quark writing group, people said that they were sucked in by the writing and very much wanted to read on to find out what happened next!

Experiment #6: Create difficult ethical dilemmas and have the characters wrestle with them

I wanted to try writing stories that are more thematic and deal with controversial and difficult issues. For Hero, I had the main character struggle to keep his honor and chastity, where the people he trusted and loved the most try to manipulate him by tempting him to give in to his sexual urges.

I’m not sure if this was a success or not. I think that it was, but it was like pulling teeth, and some of the scenes are a little bit graphic. I guess that without giving my story out to some alpha readers, I have no idea whether it was a success or not. I have learned, however, that it’s not a good idea to sacrifice entertainment for a message. It’s possible to do both, and if your own story is something you’re not excited to tell, it’s not going to be easy to write it.

In short, last semester I wrote about 75,000 words total, without much to show for it except the unfinished rough draft of a flawed book, and a partially finished novel that I started last year. Still, I think I’ve learned quite a bit from the experience.

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.

Finishing this novel is harder than I’d thought

So is trying to hit 3,000 words each day. For the past week, I’ve been doing between 1,500 and 2,500 words every day, but lately it’s just been really hard. I’m on break, and I know that I should have more time for this kind of stuff, but I don’t know.

It has been a while since I’ve worked on this story, and that might be a part of it. I dropped it in the summer and just picked it up again a week ago. That might have something to do with it.

I think it’s more than that, though, and I’m not sure what it is. Instead of savoring the time that I have to write, I dread it and find myself putting it off and finding other things to do. Most of my writing has been coming late at night, at the end of the day. If I really was driven and enthusiastic about writing this novel, I think I’d be doing all my writing earlier on in the day.

Bah. It’s like there’s some law of the universe that the closer you get to the end, the more you think it sucks and the less motivation you have to finish the damn thing. At least, that’s the way it is for me.

But I will finish it before school starts up again. That’s what I set out to do, and that’s what I’m going to accomplish. Even if it ends up being less than 50,000 words, which is quite possible.

Right now, I’m just over 35,000, and right on the cusp of the central climax of the story. At least, that’s the way I’d originally envisioned it–the rest should mostly be winding things down.

The really interesting thing is that now that I’m banging my head against a wall with this story (Genesis Earth), the other one that I was struggling so much with before (Hero in Exile) doesn’t look nearly as bad. I could almost pick it up and work on it again. And the novel I finished last year–the one that I want to workshop in Sanderson’s English 318 class this year (The Phoenix of Nova Terra)? When I wrote the last chapter, I felt like the book was pretty crappy. Now, though, I can’t wait to work on it, I think it has so much potential!

It’s all so weird. All I can hope for is that something publishable will come out of it all.

The Mongol hordes…in SPACE!

A while ago, I wrote a post on this blog about what we were learning in History 240 about the Turks, the Seljuks, and the Mongols. Fascinating stuff! Really epic! Genghis Khan, Tamarlane, Tugril Beg, and all the rest of those guys may have been bloody, totalitarian rulers, but they did some incredible stuff, especially Genghis Khan and the Mongols. When the sky god Tengri says he has given the world to the Mongols, and the Qiriltai elects you leader of the Mongol tribes, who can fault you for stepping up and facing your destiny?

This last semester was generally miserable, but I still remember the class lecture on the Mongols and how I sat there, eyes wide, thinking to myself “holy cow! This would be so cool as the backdrop for a novel!” I’d love to read a historical novel set in this world, but since my passion is science fiction, I immediately started trying to figure out what sort of a culture would be analagous to the Mongols in a far future galactic empire.

Here’s what I came up with. I’ve been meaning to write about this for months and months, but just haven’t got around to it, but I still remember my ideas very well.

First of all, this culture would develop on the fringes of sedentary civilization. That much is obvious. The Mongols developed out on the steppes, and the space Mongols (I’m just going to call them Hameji, since I’ve already started to incorporate this idea into Hero in Exile) would develop out on the fringes of explored space–unsettled, unterraformed planets, asteroid fields, comets, etc.

The Mongols were nomads, highly mobile, with an economy centered around horses and cattle. Similarly, the Hameji would also be nomads, living in spaceships instead of planetary colonies and orbital stations. Their economy would be based on building and modifying spaceships; just as the Mongols were master horsemen, the Hameji would be master pilots and mechanics.

The Mongols had a secret weapon that gave them a clear offensive advantage: the highly mobile horse archer. Similarly, the Hameji would also have a military advantage: close range gun modifications that they could cheaply and easily attach to any ship, civilian or military. Just as the proportion of Mongol warriors per total population was much, much higher than any other culture (due, in part, to their horse based economy), so the proportion of Hameji warriors to total population would be incredibly high. Basically, every Hameji ship is a warship.

Things got really interesting, though, when I started imagining what the social dynamics of the Hameji would be like.

First of all, the Hameji are extremely authoritarian. That much has to be clear, given their spacefaring nature. When you’re on a spaceship, everyone has to work together, willingly or otherwise. There are so many complicated operations that have to be performed precisely in order to pilot and maintain a spaceship: engines, power, navigation, life support systems, food and hydroponics, sensors–it’s so complicated. What’s more, everyone has to work together; the guys in the engine room can’t do their work without the guys in the power plant, the navigator can’t do his job if the guys in the engine room and the deep space sensors aren’t doing theirs, and nobody can work together if life support isn’t doing its job. Something has to keep all of these guys in line, otherwise an accident or an unexpected attack could kill everybody.

In Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy, intra-ship unity was maintained by a system of cultural norms and values that restricted individual freedoms and required painful sacrifices for the good of the community. But basically, it was rule by strict tradition. With the Hameji, tradition definitely plays a role, but besides that, the rule of the captain is absolute law. Heinlein’s space traders were just trying to stay alive; the Hameji are trying to conquer and subjugate the known universe. They need an absolute ruler to keep things in line.

Since authoritarian figures play such an important role in their society, the Hameji don’t believe that all men are created equal. They believe in a ruling class and a following class. Those who command the spaceships are, in the minds of the Hameji, more human than those who merely follow orders.

Because of their nomadic roots, the Hameji despise the sedentary planet-born. Just like the Mongols, they consider the “civilized” city/planet dwellers to be soft and weak, like cattle, devoid of true strength and honor. Because those who cannot command spaceships are less than human, they think nothing of killing off planets wholesale, using mass accelerators to smash them into the stone age with asteroids and space rock. Just like the Mongols swept the world, burning cities to the ground, so the Hameji sweep across the galaxy, annihilating entire worlds.

You could think of the Hameji as bloodthirsty and evil, but really, they have to be aggressive in order to survive. They have to capture new spaceships in order to provide space for their growing population, first of all, and that means that they have to do a lot of raiding and killing. Since all of their neighbors have to do the same thing to stay alive, the Hameji learn to be quite good at what they do.

Mongols in space. How cool is that? It’s definitely got potential, I think. I was going to throw it into Hero in Exile as yet another setting element, but now I’m thinking about writing a story with this as the main, driving conflict. We’ll see which one ends up getting written. It’s all on the back burner until Genesis Earth and The Phoenix of Nova Terra get written.

Change of plans

So, it’s been two weeks since the end of Thanksgiving break, and things have changed quite a bit. I’ve been struggling quite a bit with my story. I could hardly get past the first chapter of the second section of the novel, and I’m at a critical point where I have to start introducing key characters and setting things up that will be important later. The complicated thing is…well, I don’t know where I want to take things at this point.

My conceptualization of this novel basically began winter of last year when I thought to myself, “what if I set the pioneer exodus in space?” It didn’t really take off, though, until the summer, when I started building a really cool universe in my head and came up with an interesting main character. From there, a whole bunch of loosely related ideas started to coalesce and I thought I had something.

Unfortunately, now that I’m in the middle of it, I’m starting to realize that my characters aren’t what I envisioned them to be, the conflict as I’ve set it up isn’t what I’d started out with, and that main idea that sparked this thing–the pioneer trek in space idea–it’s been flooded out by so many other cool ideas that I don’t know where to take it. In this next section, as I’ve envisioned it, I need to set up the religion and the space pioneers, but I haven’t thought it through enough to really understand what’s going on. Plus, I feel like my main character…isn’t all that interesting.

I’ve found, these past two weeks, that it’s been very hard to write this story when I have other issues and obligations on my mind. A lot harder than Phoenix. With that story, at least I always felt like I knew what the next step was. Here…I know what the next step should be, according to my plan, but it just…doesn’t feel right.

A lot of it is related to worldbuilding. I haven’t thought out certain things in this world enough, mainly because there are just so many ideas to consider. The part that I’ve worked on the least has, ironically, been the idea that sparked the whole thing: the Mormon pioneer trek in space. I have no idea what to do with that, or who the main characters are, or what the religion should be, other than a thinly veiled version of Mormonism.

So, either I’ve planned things out too much, to the point where I’m trying to control things at the exclusion of just letting the story come out naturally and honestly, or I haven’t thought things through enough, so that now that I’m at this point, I don’t know what I should do next. It’s pretty tough.

If I had nothing else that I were doing right now–no other daily tasks or obligations, other than personal chores–I could write my way through this. But now, as I think about it…it’s just too much for me right now.

With Phoenix, I at least had enough of a seed that I could keep the momentum, even when my classes were very hard. This semester, all of my classes have been ridiculously easy, and yet I still haven’t been able to keep a steady momentum in writing this novel. Momentum ebbed and flowed with Phoenix, but at least I always had some kind of momentum. With Hero, if I’m not dedicating lots and lots of time to the story, making it my primary priority, I lose all momentum and go days without writing.

So, upon realizing this fact earlier this week, I decided to take something of a drastic step. I’m going to put Hero in Exile on the back burner for a while, and bring back Genesis Earth to finish it over the break.

Genesis Earth has been on the back burner since July or August, but I’m excited about it and feel that it’s worth bringing back. Plus, it’s a lot shorter than Hero, and in some ways quite a bit simpler. I don’t have a dozen completely different ideas swirling around chaotically inside my head concerning this story–all of my ideas are straightforward. What’s more, I’m excited about it again. When I pick it up after exams, it will be fresh.

As far as Hero in Exile, I haven’t given up on it…well, not entirely. I may end up deciding to drop it, but I’m sure I’ll be recycling ideas. As of now, however, I still think I can pull it off. I just need to let things settle, figure out some things about the world of this universe, and rewrite the first 50,000 words to draw out the main character a lot better. Since that’s work that I can’t finish over this winter break, or even by the end of January, I’m going to lay it aside and focus on other things.

The goal is to finish the rough draft of Genesis Earth before the next semester begins. I think I can do it. Where I left off, the story was about half finished, maybe a little less. I highly doubt this novel will go over 60,000 words. With 18 free days after I finish these finals, that averages to 2,000 words a day. I can do this.

The best part is that if I do this, I’ll be able to focus all my energies on the Phoenix of Nova Terra rewrite in the winter! Now that I’ve spent some time away from that story, I’m starting to feel more and more confident about it. I honestly believe that it has the potential to be publishable, and not only publishable but desireable to someone out in the world of science fiction publishing. I’m excited. I think, with a little work, I could walk up to an agent or editor at World Fantasy 2009 and talk enthusiastically about it.

So, if I finish the rough draft of Genesis before winter 2009, polish Phoenix before summer, and polish Genesis while I’m interning somewhere for spring term, I could take a couple of months off to focus on all the problems with Hero and still have 3 novels finished in time for World Fantasy 2009. One of them won’t be as polished as I’d liked, but I could perhaps do that in the fall.

These past two days, I wrote up a 2.5k synopsis for Hero in Exile in my project notes. It basically details where I see the story going from here. I may end up not following it–I certainly didn’t follow the synopsis I’d written for the first section, except in a very broad sense. However, this is good because it preserves my thoughts on the story as they exist at this time. When I pick it up again, I can use the notes to jog my memory.

So, as of now, Hero in Exile is on the backburner. Even if I never pick it up again, I know that I’ve learned quite a lot just by pushing myself to get this far. On to Genesis Earth!

Not bad…but not where I need to be, either

959 words isn’t bad. But I want to be further along in the story than where I am. I need to get Tristan out into space so that he can meet the space trading family, fit himself into their dynamic on the spaceship, develop a new romantic interest, find out about their religion, and be all ready to get caught up in the religious wars once they land on his mother’s homeworld. Right now, I’m almost 2k into the second section and he’s still on Nova Gaia, where we left him at the end of the first section.

I’ve found that I tend to make more progress when I pick out major landmarks in the story and use those as daily and weekly goals, rather than a wordcount. I can spit out tons of words but still get stuck really bad because the story itself hasn’t been progressing. When I think in terms of major events and developments, I can keep the momentum going and know when I’m getting stuck.

Also, when I start a story, I really have no idea how long, in terms of a wordcount, it’s going to be by the end. My story is already long enough to be considered a novel, according to some definitions, and yet I’m only about a third of the way finished.

Fortunately, MY NEW COMPUTER JUST CAME IN THE MAIL!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ll blog more about that later, when it’s not past three in the morning =P

The point is, now that I have a tiny, ultra-portable laptop, I can write just about anywhere. Hopefully, this will mean that I’ll write more often. As to whether that’s actually going to happen, we’ll have to see…