Category: Hameji Cycle

Section one complete

Yes!  I finished section 1 of my novel Hero in Exile today (the rough draft, at least).  The main character, Tristen, just had everything he thought he knew pulled right out from under him, and now he’s on his way “home” to a world he knows nothing about.  New characters, new problems, change of scenery, and fresh new cultures and peoples to explore.  One potential love interest down, another one about to come out of nowhere.  Space barbarians and pirates threaten, and down on his mother’s homeworld, a religiously motivated genocide is about to begin.  How incredibly exciting.

The really cool thing was that I read over all the stuff I’ve written in the past month that was really frustrating me.  All of the edgy stuff that I was afraid I wasn’t pulling off right, and all of the twisted romantic climaxes that I was sure I’d done wrong.  I resisted the urge to revise them, and when I was through reading them, I realized that there’s really something there.  I could make this work.  I might not be able to do it by the rewrite, but there is something compelling in there.

I’m also very happy with the overall structure of this section.  It has a clear start, middle, and end, and all the major elements are clearly connected.  Themes and events weave in and out of each other and affect the characters’ choices.  It all leads up to a gloriously twisted climax that fulfills the promises of the structure while leaving the reader unfulfilled and wanting to read on.

At least, that’s how I see it now.  Maybe I’m too close to the story to be a fair judge of its overall structure.  In fact, I almost certainly am.  Even if it hasn’t taken this structure on the page, however, it has taken structure in my mind.  That is something.

When I started writing this novel, I only had a vague idea where I wanted to go.  In fact, in the freewrite plot overview that I spat out back in Jordan, half of the events in this section didn’t happen, and the rest happened out of order.  Prewriting was helpful, but ultimately the story took shape in my mind as I wrote it out.  That everything eventually ended up tying back to the previous elements (at least in my mind) is very, very encouraging.

So, in short, I can say that this vacation was very much a success.  I got through some of the most difficult parts in my novel, got over some severe obstacles holding me back, pushed BOTH of the wordcount meters deep into the red, rebuilt my enthusiasm of the story, and finished at exactly the spot where I wanted to end.  I’m finally starting to get things right.

🙂

Hooray!

Yay!  I’m FINALLY past the really difficult part of the story.  And man, I’ve written so much these past two days.  3,199 words today, 2,727 yesterday!  That’s something of an accomplishment!

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’d ever let anyone see what I just wrote.  Holy cow, it is so rough!  It’s probably riddled with cliches and cheesiness, not to mention some awkwardly written edginess that would make half my friends from Quark throw the book across the room.  I tried not to be too suggestive (and really, I don’t feel guilty for what I wrote), but everyone’s got their own opinions, and I probably erred on the side of describing things too much.  Not to mention, it’s not all that well written, so if you don’t throw the book across the room because it’s too risque, you’d probably still throw it across the room just because the writing is so bad.

HOWEVER, all of that I can fix in the revision.  ALL of it.  Don’t tell me that I can’t.  I’m not listening to you.

Seriously, though, I really am satisfied with myself for writing all this.  Even if it isn’t anywhere near good enough to get published, it is good practice.  I don’t want to only write cute adventure stories that sell, I want to write characters who are forced to wrestle with some serious issues and dilemmas.  I want to challenge myself and write something that has some deep meaning to it, even if I don’t know consciously what that meaning is exactly.

Maybe I’m doing it here, maybe I’m not.  Maybe I haven’t got my characters figured out well enough to really dive into things–maybe I won’t be until I finally do the revision.  Maybe the revision is going to kill me.  The important thing is that it’s DONE and now I can MOVE ON to the rest of the story.

Oh, and one other really cool thing: I’m exactly where I wanted to be by this time! I can finish this chapter in another 2,000 words or so tomorrow, and then it’s on to a completely new section of the book!  Yay!

Vomitous

Ugh.  This romance in my novel is so…vomitous.  Awkward.  I hope I’m doing something right, but I have no idea.  It’s WAY harder to write good romance than it is to write good action.  Stuff blowing up is so much simpler.

At least I can fix it in revision.  That’s what I tell myself, anyways.

Unstuck

Happy Thanksgiving!  Holy cow, I ate a lot.  Had dinner with the McQueens, my sister’s husband’s grandparents, and all the inlaws.  My sister-in-law can cook a mean chocolate pie.  Holy cow.  Delicious.

So, when I wasn’t eating or groggily digesting over at my in-laws’ house, I was writing.  It was pretty tough, to be honest.  Even though yesterday I got through the climax of the chapter that was hanging me up, I still felt really stuck today.  It took me more time than I’d expected to finish the chapter, and I didn’t know how to start the next one.

I was really frustrated the whole day.  There was nothing to do, and nowhere really to go.  I took a break and walked down to campus in the middle of the afternoon, but it was dreary outside and all the buildings were closed.  There was barely a car on the road, and even though it was good to get out and go for a walk, I didn’t come back with any good ideas for how to start things out.

To be honest, I contemplated putting this project on the back burner and working on something else for the next two months.  My novel Genesis Earth is halfway done, and I could probably finish it by the end of January if I put this other novel away and focused all my energy on it.  I’ve recently gotten excited about that story again.

But that would be an admission of defeat.  I didn’t know if I needed to do that yet.  I do have a lot of really good ideas for Hero in Exile–the trouble is, they all take place about a hundred pages from where I am right now!  I should probably write them down before I finally get there and realize that I’ve forgotten them all.

I figured that things are hard just because I’ve been so distant from the story these past few weeks.  I decided I needed to start the chapter out with some action–or, if not action, at least with some dramatic momentum–and figured the best way to do that was to have my two main characters kiss in the first scene.  I was going to do that somewhere in the chapter, but I figured it would be better to start things out with it rather than gradually build up.  After all, that’s not the climax–the climax is much more twisted and painful than that.

But then, before I could start, I had to figure out just how, exactly, these two characters would end up in that kind of a situation.  I mean, it was hard for me to work through their motivations in my mind.  I’ve been building up the tension for the last few chapters, but it all felt so distant, and it was hard to remember exactly how these characters are supposed to be feeling.

It was really frustrating.  I had this kissing scene all figured out in my mind a few weeks ago, but I’d forgotten it all.  As I kept mulling through my characters’ motivations, I got more and more frustrated.  After all, things have changed so much from my original idea.  Are these even the right characters to pull my story through to the end?

I started wondering if I’d made a mistake by starting the story when I did–whether all my ideas had truly come together to the point where they were ready to begin.  Back about a month before I started, I thought I was ready–but now?  I don’t know.  It’s very frustrating and discouraging.

After all, maybe I bit off too much with this novel.  My first novel, The Phoenix of Nova Terra, was more of a straight up adventure story.  There were some deeper ideas and ethical dilemmas in it, but I felt like I had to slog through those parts.  They didn’t work out as good as I’d hoped–the main focus was the adventure, the suspense.  With Hero in Exile, I want to focus a lot more on deeper questions–like, what is honor?  What is heroism?  How do you keep your honor in a dishonorable world?  Do you have to prove your heroism through some grand, daring act, or does true heroism manifest itself in other ways?  These were some of my original questions, but now…I don’t know how it’s turning out.

As a side, note, that’s where I was going with my question a few weeks ago about depicting immorality as immoral without watering it down–how do you get your characters to deal with these challenging issues without driving away readers?  It’s tough, and my main frustration has been that the scenes just don’t seem to be well executed–I’m afraid that they fall flat.  I could be wrong, I could be overexaggerating, I could be trying to write a perfect first draft, and I could be doing all three of these at the same time, but it’s been really frustrating.

Oh well.  At least I know I’m pushing myself.

I don’t really believe in writer’s block, but I guess you could say that I had something like it today.  I knew where I wanted to go, and I knew what I wanted to happen, I just didn’t know how to get there.  So then, after checking email and facebook some twenty million times, I opened up my outline and decided to work on that.  Ten minutes later, I remembered how I’d envisioned this scene, and I set down and finally started the next chapter.

Romance is kind of hard for me to write, not only because of my lack of experience, but because it’s hard not to fall into cliches when you’re describing things.  Because of that, it took me a few hours to slog through the end of the opening scene–but I did it!  And now, I’m excited about this story again!  I know where we are, what we’re doing, and exactly where we’re going over the next few scenes.  It’s great!  I’m FINALLY unstuck!

So now, I just have to keep up at a good pace before I forget everything again.  Shouldn’t be too hard for the rest of this vacation, but the next two weeks are going to be a tough sprint to the end of the semester.  Still, it won’t be impossible.  And after, I’ve got more than two weeks of winter break–with the netbook I went ahead and ordered a couple of days ago!  Hooray!  I can hardly wait!

Satisfaction

Yes.  I finally broke through this one scene that’s been giving me trouble for the last few days.  I don’t believe in writer’s block, but I do believe in writer’s avoidance, and I’ve had that for the past ten days or so because of this one chapter.  I’ve really wanted–and really needed–to get beyond this section of the book, but this one part of Tristen’s journey has really been hanging me up.   Now that the climax has passed, I’ve only got a few hundred words before the next chapter.  Thank goodness.

As frustrating as the last few days have been, and as frustrating as it was to slog through 1,700 words to close up the major fight scene in this chapter, it felt really satisfying to have it behind me.  These last few days, I haven’t been writing very regularly, and I’ve also felt kind of…down, a little.  I don’t know if it’s connected to my frustrations with this novel or with something else, but it just really feels good to know that I wrote 1,704 words today and got past a major hurdle.

Productivity.  What an aphrodisiac.

If I finish the chapter tonight with another 500 words or so, then that’ll bring the 7 day wordcount meter up around 5,500 or so.  If I write another 1k or 2k tomorrow, that’ll push it up around 7,000.  If I write another 3k or 4k on Friday (and that’s not unreasonable–I’ve got the whole day off), I can probably be in the red.  If I keep up with at least 2k for the rest of the break, I can have both counters in the red for at least three days.

And hopefully, before Monday comes around, I’ll be at that part of the book where I want to end up–with my main character offworld, headed for his mother’s home planet.

There are other things about this book that I want to talk about, but the library is closing and I have to go.  Fortunately, I went ahead and bought that tiny little laptop I was talking about in the previous post, so come next week I won’t be limited to public computers outside of my apartment.  I’m excited to get this thing in the mail!  Now that’s going to be satisfying!

playing catchup

Holy cow!  I feel like I haven’t been blogging or writing hardly at all in the past week.  Last year, I was so enthusiastic about the writing–and I still am, it’s just that school has freaking blindsided me.  I had a 10 page history paper to write for today, and it threw off my schedule big time.

Fortunately, Thanksgiving break is almost upon us, and that means FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yes, you’d better believe it!  I’ll be here in Utah for the break, probably having Thanksgiving dinner with my sisters and their husbands’ families.  In the meantime, though…FREEDOM!!!!!!!  Ah, how sweet!  I am so looking forward to it!

So, to help me catch up with the writing, here’s what I plan to do, starting tomorrow.  Every day, I’ll wake up early (I hate sleeping in anyways) and start off the day with some writing.

If I can get in just 500 words each morning, that will be awesome.  I always put off writing until the end of the day, after I’m already tired from running around juggling fifty different things at once.  By that time, I don’t want to write–I want to veg out on a computer game.  As a result, it’s been hard to keep a schedule–something I absolutely must do if I’m going to be anything more than a hobby writer.

If I start each day with writing, that will help me in a couple of ways.  Not only will I tackle the day’s wordcount before I’m too tired to do anything except rot in my unproductive disgustingness, but I’ll be thinking about the story a lot more throughout the day.  That will help me to keep the story moving.

Right now, I feel like I’m still in the first third of the story, not even halfway through with the thing.  I really, really want to finish this before the end of January–if I don’t do that, it’s going to be really difficult to have three polished novels by World Fantasy 2009.  So, that means that before the end of the month, I need to get Tristen off of the planet and into the Mormons-in-space society that I have envisioned.

Except, I really don’t have it envisioned yet–nothing concrete, anyways.  Augh!  So much to do!

So this whole break, I’m going to try and hit 4,000 words every day.  If I can’t do that, at least I can do 2,000.  And before school starts again, I want Tristen to be off of this planet and into the next section of the book.

Oh, and I’m going to blog more.  There’s so much that I want to discuss here that I just haven’t been able to post for lack of time (as well as general disorganization and disgusting unproductiveness).  So, more updates during the break.

I’m playing catchup.  Let’s hope that the vacation is awesomely productive as well as refreshingly liberating.

Pay no attention to the wordcount meters

That’s right.  It’s 2:40 am and I just finished up for tonight.  1,924 words–that should catch me up a bit for missing the past couple of days.  At least chapter four is finished right now.  Some of you might throw the book across the room if you were reading this in print, but I don’t feel bad about it.  At least I can always cut stuff out.

And now, since I’m operating under the illusion that I can get all my homework done  tomorrow in the morning, I’d better go to bed.  Goodnight.

No writing yesterday…but there is a reason

Well, as you may notice, I didn’t write at all yesterday.  My wordcount meters are both down significantly, especially the 7 day one.  Grr…I will get them back up before too long!  New goal: get both meters in the red by the end of the week.

However, I have a reason for not writing, and it’s not a lame excuse that such-and-such happened outside my control and I had to put my writing on hold.  It’s a lot more complex than that.

Basically, the scene that I’m stopped at has some graphic content, and I didn’t feel that it would be appropriate to write that scene on a Sunday.  At the same time, I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t write this scene at all.  In terms of the story, I think that this scene is necessary, but I can see people taking it the wrong way when they read it.  I can also see myself feeling somewhat embarrassed when my friends read it.  I’m not usually the kind of person that avoids controversy, but this is something where I’m not sure how to proceed.

Basically, here’s what I have in mind: Tristen, the main character, is on a mission to find his birth family.  He’s left behind this futuristic Bedouin camp that’s raised him, except that the sheikh of this camp will do anything to get Tristen to stay.  The first leg of Tristen’s journey is a pilgrimage to this famous temple, and the sheikh sends his daughter with Tristen, ostensibly because she want’s to make the pilgrimage too, but won’t have the opportunity in the future.  Really, though, the girl has conspired with the Sheikh to try and seduce Tristen to convince him to stay.

That’s the background, but it really has nothing to do with this specific scene.  In the scene I have in mind, Tristen and the girl are in a bar/restaurant halfway around the world, way far away from home, when this graphic performance occurs on the stage at this place.  Basically, there is this major religious cult in this part of the world whose priestesses are basically holy prostitutes, like many Ancient Near East goddess cults.

The scene would involve some suggestive nudity and would raise the already existing sexual tension between Tristen and the daughter of this Sheikh.  Basically, he’s been raised in this ultra-moralistic conservative environment, so the dance of this temple prostitute shocks him to the point where he doesn’t know what to think about it.  He gets these images in his mind that he can’t get out, and he feels confused, guilty, passionate, and just…well, weird.  This confusion gets him to the point where he doesn’t know what he’s doing with this girl who’s supposed to seduce him, so that she is able to break through his resistance and almost succeed in getting him to stay (and all that that implies).

Also, I want to throw this scene in to show the moral depravity of the society that Tristen passes through.  By demonstrating just how graphically immoral the mainstream society has become, I’m hoping to show who Tristen really is–a morally upright person.  I want to have this contrast in the story, even if it does mean writing a scene that might cause a lot of LDS readers (and even some of my friends) to throw the book across the room.

So how do I do this?  How can I write a scene that is graphic and yet not pornographic?  What do you think about my ideas here?  What should I do–and not do?  Why?

Destiny

A couple of weeks ago, we started learning about the Seljuk Turks in History 240 (History of the Middle East to 1800).  This band of rugged, horse-riding nomads went from mercenary warriors of some Persian dynasty to the de facto rulers of nearly half the Muslim world.  In an era when radical Shi’ism swept across North Africa and the Levant, and people thought the rise of the Fatimid Empire marked the end of the world, the Seljuks, self-appointed defenders of Sunnism headed the Fatimid conquest at Baghdad and pushed them back to Egypt.  Fascinating stuff!

Then we learned about the Mongol invasion and the sack of Baghdad in 1258, when the world really DID end from the point of view of the Arabs, and I knew that Central Asia would never be boring to me again.

The Turks and the Mongols were both nomadic peoples who lived on the steppes of Central Asia–basically, an enormous stretch of grassland like the prairie in the American Midwest.  These guys lived in camps, with their cattle and horses, and looked down on the thought of settling down in cities and living a civilized, sedentary life.  To them, the nomadic life meant freedom–the people of the cities were voluntary slaves and beneath the hardy nomads.

Genghis Khan, born Temujin (“Genghis Khan” is a title that basically means “ruler of the world”), united the Mongol tribes and built the largest empire the world had ever seen.  Bigger than Alexander’s Hellenist Empire, bigger than the Roman Empire, bigger than the Babylonians, Assyrians, Sassanians, Umayyids, or Abassids.  The Mongol Empire was BIG–it stretched from Korea to the Black Sea!  If it weren’t for the Mameluks (one of the few Arab kingdoms that wasn’t mismanaging itself to death), the Mongols might have swept North Africa and the Mediterranean!

The coolest part of the story was the religious justification behind Genghis Khan’s ruthless, bloodthirsty conquest.  When Temujin was a young boy, the shaman of his tribe told him that the great sky god Tengri had given Temujin the world.  By conquering millions of people, massacring hundreds of cities, and building an empire of blood, death, and fire, Genghis Khan was only fulfilling his destiny!

For the last few weeks, I’ve been practically obsessed with all this history.  It’s fascinating!  Like reading a really good novel–except it’s real life!  Orson Scott Card often says that anyone interested in becoming a writer should study history instead of English in college, and I can see what he means.

All this stuff I’ve been learning about the Mongols has given me dozens of story ideas, many of which I plan on including in my current novel, Hero in Exile.  I’ll write a separate post to explain it all, but basically it involves the Mongol Empire in space.  Just like the Mongols considered themselves the only free people in the midst of sedentary urban dwellers, so the Hamejis in my novel (a spacefaring people who live entirely in their spaceships) consider themselves free in comparison with the billions of people living under continent sized domes across nearly a hundred settled planets.  Just as the sky god Tengri gave Temujin the world, so the god of the epistellar jovian in the Hameji home system has given them the universe.  It is their destiny to take and rule it by blood and fire.  Bwahahaha!

(photos taken from Genghis Khan II by Koei, a 90s DOS game)

Halloween and Nanowrimo kickoff

So, if you checked my blog earlier today, you may have noticed the, um, lack of progress as noted by the speedometers.  Well, all I can say is that yesterday was kind of a special case, it being a holiday and all.

However, it was an awesome Halloween!  I went to work at 10:30 am and started noticing people in costumes, which made me think “hey, today is Halloween…I should get a costume!” (I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been doing things more and more at the last minute, and I don’t know what’s more unnverving: the fact that I’m doing it more often, or the fact that I’m becoming so good at getting away with it).

While chatting with my coworkers in the FHSS writing lab, I decided to dress up as a writer.  After all, the costume shouldn’t be too hard–I am one, after all, right?  Well, it proved to be a lot easier than I’d thought!  Turtleneck sweater, Birkenstocks with socks, a copy of Strunk & White in my pocket–all I really needed was a gray sports coat and a European cap, both of which I got at DI (one I bought, the other I borrowed from a friend I happened to run into at the store).

Properly attired, I was ready to attend the Quark Halloween party!

It was lots of fun!  There were LOTS of costumes this year, nearly twice as many as last year.  Most of the people were some obscure Anime character that I didn’t know about…I’m a nerd, but pretty ignorant when it comes to anime and manga).  I did recognize quite a few of them, though!

A bunch of the guys from the Super Smash Bros tournament dressed up as their favorite characters.  There were three Links, a Princess Peach, a Pikachu, Nes, and a bunch of other characters that I didn’t recognize.  I thought it was really funny how Lunesar (on the right) and his wife dressed up as their favorite characters.  It’s especially ironic because that’s how they met each other–through the Smash Bros tournament.  Hoorah for Geekdom–it’s what brings us together!

I really liked Miriel and her husband’s costumes–Star Wars!  Miriel is on the staff of The Leading Edge and helps us with back issues to give out as prizes for the writing contests.  I really liked her hair in this picture!  She gave me a huge box full of back issues of the magazine at the party, which was really nice–we’d been running short.  With the new box of contest prizes, though, we’re ready to have lots more contests in the months to come!

For the Halloween short story contest, we did something new and experimental: we had a live reading during the actual party.  I was a little bit worried at first, but it worked out really well, I think.  We had the third, second, and first place stories read out loud by their authors.  It wasn’t as visually exciting as watching anime explosions and giant mecha fighting each other, but it was still a treat to hear the stories read out loud, especially the first place winner, The Beauty of Decay.  We actually had a big prize to give out (a $20 gift certificat to the BYU Bookstore), so it was lots of fun!

Aneeka, who won 2nd place, wasn’t there to read hers (since she’s in Germany, and, um, graduated), so we had Gamila, one of the old timers, read it for her.  I briefly told the audience how Aneeka started the writing group, back in the day, and how she was the one who got Jakeson and Gamila to start dating (they’re married now–both were there at the party).  It’s always fun to pleasantly embarass your friends.

So yeah, this writing contest thing is definitely something we should keep on doing!  I just need to convince the rest of the officers to set aside more money for contest prizes.  Everyone who participated got a copy of The Leading Edge, which was motivational I think.  Besides that, the voting was fun as well.  We need more contests–and not just contests, but readings as well!

So that was the Halloween party.  It was basically one of the awesomest Quark socials of the year.  I love this club!

Today, instead of having a writing meeting where we critique each others’ stories, we had a writing party in room 135 of the TMCB instead.  I think it went really well!  We started out with lots of food, chatting, and distracting conversations, but for about an hour-long stretch, there was nothing but writing.  It was pretty cool.  Then, towards the end, I started getting distracted with showing people photos from my photoblog via the overhead projector, but all in all I think it went well.

Today is (was?) November 1st, the first day of nanowrimo!  Sadly, I’m not doing nanowrimo this year–at least, not strictly speaking.  The rules of nanowrimo state that you have to start on November 1st with a wordcount of 0 and end with a wordcount of 50k.  Unfortunately, if I were to freeze all my current projects and focus on something totally new, I’d lose so much time and momentum with the other projects that I doubt I’d meet my goal to have three manuscripts ready for World Fantasy 2009.

Still, nanowrimo is pretty cool, and it’s a good way to connect with the wider writing community, so I’ve decided that even if I’m not strictly going to do nanowrimo this year, I’m at least going to do something in keeping with the spirit of it.  My goal is to get 50k into my current project, Hero in Exile, so that I’ll have a wordcount of 64,500 by December 1st.  It’s going to require more than 1,500 words a day, but I think I can handle it.

At the writing party, I got about 700 words in, and when I transcribed it from my notebook to the word document, I got in about another 300.  Right now, I’m finished with all the buildup, and now I’m poised to go for the jugular: the next scene is going to involve some fighting, explosions, death, and heroics.  I’m excited!

I’ve also got to prepare a Sunday School lesson tomorrow morning, so even though we get to set our clocks back tonight, I think I’d better get to bed now.  So far, the first half of this weekend has been awesome–and since I don’t have to do any homework on Sunday, I think that the second half has the potential to be just as good!