Genesis Earth Trilogy – Page 16 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Beard pics and other updates

In case you didn’t know, I’ve been experimenting a bit with facial hair recently. I figure, hey, I’m no longer a BYU student, so I might as well, right? Well, the results are in, and I must say I’m quite pleased.

I mean, check out how awesome I look:

Alright, fine, so that’s actually Waylander from David Gemmell’s Drenai series, but hey, a man can dream, right?

So anyways, here’s what the beard REALLY looks like:

I figured it would be good to keep it short, and trim around the neck and cheek; kind of like Riker, actually (no joke–his look was kind of what I was shooting for).

One of the funny things I’ve noticed is how many girls have actually complimented me on this thing. It struck me as quite a surprise, because from previous conversations with the opposite sex, growing a beard is something of a kiss (or lack thereof) of death. Interestingly enough, I’ve gotten as many or more compliments from women as I have from men. How does that work?

I guess that girls are opposed to beards as an idea, but (like most guys) they just don’t know what they want until they see it.

Probably the most hilarious about-face was from my sister Kate (who just started a new blog, hey!). When I was contemplating growing it earlier this winter, she kept telling me not to–that it would look hideous, that no girl would ever want to date me, that it would ruin my social life, etc. Well, guess what she said today?

Me: so you like my beard, eh?
oh ye of little faith
Kate: yes
…
Kate: I like it
I think it makes you look good
you need to be sure to keep it trimmed
it looks good
I’m really surprised
Me: hehehe
Kate: I eat my worrds
Me: so why are you so surprised?
Kate: hahaaha

So anyways, what do you think? Should it stay, or should it go? I’m kind of partial to it, but I’m open to hearing any contrary opinions, if there are any.

In unrelated news, I am sooo freaking close to finishing WAFH 2.0, and it orders of magnitude better than the first draft. Still, it needs a lot of work, so I’m looking for first readers to help me out with it. If you’d be willing to help out, please let me know (and please, only people I know in real life–as much as I love you for reading this blog, I’d prefer not to hand out my work to complete strangers) (also, some of you have already emailed me and I haven’t gotten back to you yet, but don’t worry–I haven’t forgotten. Expect an email about it sometime in the next week).

If you’d like to volunteer as a first reader for WAFH, I’d ask you to finish it by April 15 (tax day, joy!). My next project is Edenfall, and I expect that to take me at least a month and a half. I’m really hoping to get WAFH publishable before the end of the year, so I’ll probably start the next draft by May.

In other totally unrelated news, I’m going to write Edenfall 1.0 entirely in longhand. Crazy? Perhaps. I’ve got the notebook for it, though, and did some arts and crafts with it over the weekend–pictures to follow. Also, I’ll be sure to let you know what it’s like to write a novel in longhand; it should be interesting.

Aaand that’s about it for now. Gotta write!

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!

Sick (blegh!), submitting, and thoughts on self-publishing

Sorry I haven’t been posting much recently; I came down with a nasty fever this week, and I’ve spent the last two days recovering.

It really sucks, because my two temp jobs just finished, and I was hoping to get into another writing routine. The jobs were sucking up all my time, though it was definitely awesome to have money flowing in.

Anyhow, I caught Brandon Sanderson after his 318 class and asked him about submitting to agents while I’ve got my full ms out. He said I shouldn’t do it; that it would look bad if I had to turn down another request because it’s already out. So for now, I’m just going to sit on it and send out Genesis Earth to other agents.

Genesis Earth keeps getting turned down, but the vibe I get is that it’s more because of the agents’ tastes, not because of the poor quality of the book. So far, I’ve gotten one request for a full, one request for a partial, two personalized rejections, and several variations on “I don’t feel I’m the right agent.”

Even if all of the latter are just nice standard form rejections, that’s enough to tell me that Genesis Earth isn’t a crappy book. So I’ve been thinking, if I run the rounds and fail to find an agent or a publisher, maybe I should take the plunge and publish it for $2.99 as an e-book on Amazon.

Speculation about e-publishing is rampant, and opinions are wildly mixed right now. According to Joe Konrath, everyone (including new writers) should self publish their works–to wait even a day is to give up large amounts of potential earnings. According to Dave Wolverton, however, new writers should definitely not self publish, but try to break in through traditional publishing with as big of a deal as they can possibly get. Both authors have had huge self-publishing successes, so which is right?

Well, I read an interesting guest post by Lee Goldberg on Joe Konrath’s blog that takes the middle ground: start out with a traditional publishing deal, in order to build a name for yourself, but self-publish a couple of e-book lines shortly thereafter.

So far, that seems to make the most sense to me. The science fiction and fantasy community is very tight-knit, and I don’t see myself becoming a major part of it through self-publishing alone. At the same time, it’s very difficult to make a living through traditional publishing in these genres, so once I’ve built up something of a name and a fan-base, it would be good to start self-publishing a couple of e-book lines.

But then again, why not try it out now with Genesis Earth? Well, a couple of reasons. I’m worried that self-publishing would make me look bad when I submit my other stuff. E-book sales tend to take a long time to build momentum, so even though the starting costs are low, the returns don’t start coming in until later–if they come at all. And that’s the second thing I’m worried about–that my stuff will get buried under the flood of drivel that’s swamping Amazon and other e-publishers right now.

The main reason, though, is that I feel I need to do more research to figure out what’s going on. Probably the most valuable thing I can do is get an e-reader and dive into the market from the consumer end, just to figure out how the system works. Without some hands-on experience and a good working knowledge of the field, I’m probably not ready to take the leap.

In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to break in through the traditional route. I might not make as much money as quickly this way, but I hopefully will build my name faster–and at this point, that’s more important to me than revenues.

What the…?

I sent out two queries this afternoon, about an hour apart from each other. The first was for Genesis Earth, the second for Bringing Stella Home. Both agents responded within the hour. Genesis Earth got a form rejection, and Bringing Stella Home got a request for the full manuscript. Yeah, I was shocked too.

So I was planning to query Bringing Stella Home all over the place in the next few weeks, but with the full out…I’m not exactly sure what to do. I know it’s okay to send out multiple queries, so long as you only send the full ms to one place at a time, but what about querying when the full is already out?

I’m assuming that it’s okay to keep sending out queries, so long as you don’t send a second copy of the full while the first agent is considering it. If someone else requests to see it, I should probably say “so and so is currently considering it, but I’ll let you know once they’ve gotten back to me.” Is that right?

Needless to say, this is very encouraging.

Racing along

Ugh, why do I always stay up until 2am? And then I don’t get up until ten. Man, I need a job–either that, or more self discipline.

Just a quick post before I hit the sack. I’m making excellent progress with the revision of Mercenary Savior, regularly hitting between 7k and 8k per day. Most of that is polishing work, which tends to go fast, but I’m also rearranging a few chapters, deleting scenes and putting others in a different order.

One thing that’s surprised me a lot so far is how much I’ve managed to cut. The first draft, which I wrote on MS word, was about 135k–which runs around 145k by open office’s (flawed) word count method. The second draft was about the same, the third a little shorter, and the fourth around 120k by open office’s algorithm. By then, I thought it was as lean as I could get it–but no, that’s not the case. It’s all for the best, though; a 100k word novel isn’t nearly as daunting as a 145k monster, especially in science fiction.

Anyhow, today I got some feedback from C.A. Jacobs, a friend from World Fantasy (which she mailed to me…from HAWAII…), and I’m thinking I ought to change the title of this work. She suggested something like “The Fall of Karduna,” but the book is more about the individual characters than the world, so I’m thinking of something like “Saving Stella,” or even reverting back to “Bringing Stella Home.” Any thoughts?

In unrelated news, a ton of job opportunities have been opening up recently. I interviewed for a position with the BYU Political Science department on Monday, and I’ve got another interview with a local marketing company Friday. My sister also says that her work needs a new cook, so that could be good if the other stuff falls through. And as for phone delivery, I’ve got until the 17th to keep up with that.

So, life is good. Writing-wise, I’m having a very productive revision of one of my better works. Job-wise, a lot of promising options seem to be popping up. Social-wise, I’m doing pretty well, too; Utah is a great place to make new friends.

Oh, and English 318 starts TOMORROW! Holy crap, I am excited!!

gnight

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.

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!