That’s probably the best term for what I’m doing with Heart of the Nebula right now. Basically, I let some of my darlings live, and they grew some extra limbs and started drooling acid without my realizing it. But now, I’ve put enough distance between myself and the first draft that I have no qualms about grabbing the axe and chopping off heads.
Don’t worry; this is all a normal part of my creative process. Maybe someday, stories will burst fully formed from my head like Athena from the brow of Zeus, but for now, my ideas are a lot more like baby turtles–if I’m lucky, one or two out of a dozen will actually reach the water and survive. Protip: don’t follow the lights.
Speaking of ancient mythology, I’m reading the Argonautica right now, and I can’t help but notice that it would make a really, really, REALLY awesome science fiction story. No, seriously–think about it. A group of legendary heroes sets out on an epic voyage in search of some applied phlebotinummacguffin, have all sorts of adventures on strange and distant planets, get the girl to fall in love with the captain, and bring her back with them to their homeworld. It would also work well as a heroic fantasy, but space is so much more awesome.
Incidently, Kutaisi was the capital of ancient Colchis, where Jason and the Argonauts came seeking the golden fleece. People still speak of Medea as if she were a real person–generally, they think she was a dirty traitor who sold out her own people. But people still enjoy the love story, and if you keep your eyes open you can see restaurants and hotels named after her.
So yeah. Ancient Greek mythology + science fiction = win. You can definitely expect to see some more of that in my own writing in the future.
In other news, I recently did an interview on fellow indie author Ty Johnston’s blog. In it, I talk a little about my travel writing, what draws me to speculative fiction, my favorite number (hint: it’s 12), and my insights into the ancient Mayan calendar and the 2012 apocalypse. It was a lot of fun–you should definitely check it out.
If you would like to host me for an interview on your blog, shoot me an email! I’m always up for stuff like that. Otherwise, I’d better roll up my sleeves and get back to hacking up operating on my book.
One of the most satisfying ways to defeat the villain is to have his own nefarious scheme bring about his downfall. In Hamlet, Shakespeare described this as “hoist by his own petard,” or blown up by his own bomb. Basically, it’s a self-deposing villain whose evil plans have gone horribly right.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, you’ll often find this trope in stories geared towards a younger audience, which generally try to avoid messy endings and shades of gray. In some ways, it almost resembles a Disney Villain Death, in that the heroes often come out with clean hands and an unambiguously clear conscience.
However, this isn’t always the case–sometimes, it’s precisely because of the shades of gray that the villain’s plans become self-defeating. Case in point, Pride and Kimblee from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. You’d think that both characters are totally evil–and perhaps they are–but that doesn’t stop the one from undermining the other at just the right moment.
When done right, this is an incredibly satisfying way to defeat a bad guy. When done poorly, however, it undermines the villain altogether, or turns the story into just another Aesop. As always, your mileage may vary, so when writing one of these stories it’s important to keep your audience in mind.
In my own books, it’s probably more common for this to happen to the heroes, which probably makes it a form of Two Rights Make A Wrong or Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. I do enjoy hoisting the villains as well, though, and will almost certainly use this trope in the future.
Everywhere I go, I see people playing ნარდი (“nardi”), known in English as backgammon. Men and women, children and the elderly–everyone knows how to play, and just about every family owns a backgammon set. It’s popular everywhere in Georgia, but it’s especially popular here in Kutaisi, where it’s not uncommon to see clusters of old men playing on the side of the street.
I recently played in a nardi tournament at my school. Long story short, I was massacred (I still want a rematch with the principal), but the experience got me thinking about how the game kind of parallels what life is like in Georgia. As a foreigner, I’m sure I don’t have a complete picture, but it’s an interesting way to look at things, and I don’t think it’s completely off base.
So anyways, here’s my theory on how life in Georgia is like a game of backgammon:
1: Everything is driven by chance.
In backgammon, every turn starts with a roll of the dice. Likewise, in Georgia, people tend to approach life like a game of chance. Good things happen, bad things happen, but you’re never totally in control of your own destiny. When your luck turns sour, the best thing you can do is just resign yourself to it until things get better.
One thing I’ve noticed about my host family is that they play the lottery almost every day. Even when they aren’t playing, they usually tune in to see the results, probably just from force of habit. I don’t know if every family is like this, but there are stands to buy lottery tickets in every major district of the city, and every kiosk sells them.
It’s not just the lottery, either–there are tons of casinos too. In fact, Georgia is a very popular tourist destination for Israelis simply because of all the gambling. That doesn’t mean that everyone in the country is a hardcore gambler, though–but if life is ultimately a game of chance, you might as well put a line or two in the water, right?
2: Skill is the ability to manipulate chance in your favor.
Even though backgammon is essentially a game of chance, there’s a lot of strategy to it too. The key is to maximize your own options while limiting the options of your opponent. It’s all about knowing when to move aggressively, and when to protect your own interests.
Likewise, even though Georgians put a lot of trust in luck, they also know that it’s better to make your own luck than to wait for luck to find you. While my host family does spend a little bit on the lottery, they spend a lot more on physical improvements and their kids’ education. My host dad works until 8pm every night, sometimes later. They aren’t rich, but they’re taking advantage of opportunities their parents didn’t have, and making sure their children have more opportunities than they did.
3: No amount of skill can change the established pattern.
There’s not a whole lot of variation in backgammon. Every game starts with the same setup, and follows the same general pattern: block your opponent while doing your best to advance. Once your last piece passes your opponent’s last piece, it becomes a race to see who can get all their pieces home first. Short of changing the rules, there’s really no way to break the game.
Likewise, life in Georgia is still very much about tradition. If you were born in Kutaisi, you’ll probably die in Kutaisi. If your parents are Orthodox, then that’s what you are, too. If you’re a woman, you live under a certain set of restrictions and expectations. Likewise, if you’re a man, there are certain things you’re expected to do to prove your manhood.
No matter how much Georgia changes to become part of the modern world, it’s an ancient country with a very, very long memory. Most social norms aren’t going to change overnight, and some of them probably won’t change at all. While this might seem incredibly stifling to us in the West, it does have its advantages, such as offering everyone a sense of identity and giving them a place where they know that they belong.
So that’s my theory. I don’t know if this is why backgammon resonates so much with the people here, but it’s a fun way to look at it. Now I just need to figure out which game is the most like life in the US. Poker? Monopoly? Dungeons & Dragons?
When done right, this trope can be one of the defining moments of greatness of the entire work. When done wrong, however, it becomes little more than a Deus Ex Machina of the most unsatisfying kind. How, then, can this moment be done right?
As with any Deus Ex, one of the keys is to adequately foreshadow the end. This often takes the form of Gondor Calls For Aid, when the heroes petition the cavalry for assistance before going into battle. To make things interesting, the relationship between the two parties is often complicated and ambiguous, making it doubtable that the cavalry will actually show up.
However, I think it goes deeper than this. In order for the arrival of the cavalry to be satisfying, it needs to not invalidate everything that the heroes have already gone through. If the cavalry shows up after the heroes have defeated the Big Bad, and essentially rescue them from a heroic sacrifice, that’s satisfying. If the heroes are still fighting the Big Bad and the cavalry comes out of nowhere to hand them an unearned victory, that’s cheap.
In English 318R, Brandon Sanderson often used the film versions of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to illustrate this. The Battle of Helm’s Deep was satisfying, because the entire premise was to hold out until the third day. When Eomer arrived with the Rohirrim on the morning of the third day and swept away the Uruk-Hai, that didn’t invalidate King Theoden’s efforts because all he was trying to do was survive.
In the Battle of Minas Tirith, however, Aragorn’s arrival with the unbeatable army of the dead was kind of cheap, because the premise was to defeat the orcs, not to hold out for reinforcements. Gondor could have just stood down and let the orc army capture the city, and they still would have won in the end.
The two genres where you’re most likely to see this trope are westerns (trope namer) and heroic fantasy. Just about every David Gemmell novel involves a cavalry moment of some kind, and I looove it. It’s also quite common in military science fiction, too–basically, any story where war is a major part of the narrative.
The variations on this trope are also quite fascinating. For example:
Cavalry Betrayal: When the cavalry switch sides in the final battle, utterly crushing all hope of victory.
The Cavalry Arrives Late: When the heroes defeat the bad guys on their own, and the cavalry cleans up the mess.
Some of you asked for a writing update, so I figure I might as well do a quick post on my current projects and where they are. I’ve also been experimenting with my daily schedule a bit, so it would probably be good to blog about that as well.
Right now, the main project taking up all of my attention is the 3.0 draft of Heart of the Nebula. It’s a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and continues the story from James McCoy’s point of view, five years later. I’m making a lot of changes, toning down the romantic subplot and emphasizing the more interesting social and ethical issues. When I’m through, I think it will be completely different from the first couple of drafts, but in a way that’s truer to the spirit of the first book.
I’ve only been managing about 500 to 1,500 words per day, though, which is abysmally low compared to my usual word count. Part of that is because I’m throwing out entire sections and drafting new ones from scratch, but the more significant part is that I don’t have as much mental space for writing as I did back in the States.
Basically, moving to a foreign country and starting a new career has taken a lot more out of me than I thought it would. I teach 18 lessons per week, some with as many as 30 or 35 kids, across grades 1 through 12. Culturally, everything is completely different too. So far, the shock hasn’t been too bad–I really love it out here in Georgia–but it’s made the writing a little bit more difficult than I’d expected.
I have a lot of free time, though, so that’s not a problem: the problem is clearing my mind and keeping the creative juices fresh. Here’s how I’m going to do it:
Limit internet time. As tempting as it is to turn to the familiarity of the internet, it’s a huge time-suck and doesn’t really do anything for the culture shock. A much better thing for that would be to spend more time reading. From now on, I’m going to limit myself to one internet session per day, no longer than 2 hours (more if there’s something I actually need to do).
Get out more. I get cabin fever very easily, and it’s only gotten worse now that I’m in a foreign culture. Fortunately, there are tons of places to explore, and in my local neighborhood I’m kind of a celebrity (hey look, it’s the American! Let’s chase him and shout ‘hello’!). The prime time for this is the late afternoon, when everyone’s out and things are still open. If I check the internet right after school and get out immediately after, I think that will help me better to focus.
Get up early to write in the morning. I tried this last week, and it was a great way to get focused and build more momentum. Even if I only manage a couple hundred word, it gets me thinking about the story for the rest of the day, which makes it easier to pick up in the afternoon and evening.
So that’s the plan for now. My goal is to finish Heart of the Nebula before the end of May, which is going to require a significant change of pace. It should be pretty straightforward, though, and after this draft it shouldn’t need too many more revisions before it’s ready to publish. If all goes well, I foresee a publishing date sometime in the fall or winter.
Do you have any other ideas for ways to manage creativity in a totally foreign culture? If so, I’d love to hear it–that’s my biggest struggle right now.
I have some interesting news. My first quarter submission to the Writers of the Future contest has been put “on hold,” following the untimely passing of the contest’s coordinating judge, K.D. Wentworth. Here’s the email I received this morning:
Dear Entrant,
I wanted to let you know that we have a delay in the handling of the 1st quarter due to the loss of our coordinating judge, K.D. Wentworth to cancer last week. Please bare with us while we get over this difficult time and organize the continuance of the contest. We do have another judge that is taking over and will make that annoucement soon.
Your story was placed in the hold category while K.D. was reading the hard copy submissions. You will be notified in the next month where you stand.
I’m sure you can understand the delay and thank you for being patient.
Best,
Joni Labaqui- Contest Director
From what I understand, this means that K.D. read my story and didn’t assign it a rejection or honorable mention, but put it in a pile of stories to read leader. It’s possible, of course, that the story could still receive a flat rejection, but it appears that most of the rejections have already gone out, so that’s probably unlikely.
The story I submitted is the first part of a novel which I hope to publish as soon as I hear back from the contest. If it wins or makes published finalist, however, those plans might be put on hold. I’ll let you know more as it happens.
If I do win, I’ll probably end up spending all the prize money just to come back to the States to accept the award. My Georgian co-teachers think that’s hilarious.
Orthodox Easter is April 15th, and in Georgia, most places take off four or five days for vacation. In typical Georgian fashion, we didn’t know for sure how many days we had off until a couple of weeks before the break came up, but fortunately that was time enough to find out where some of the other TLGers in Kutaisi were going and tag along with them.
Our group consisted mostly of TLGers and embassy staff from Tbilisi, friends of my friends in Kutaisi who came out at the same time last year. For 300 GEL (about $185 USD), we got a private marshrutka and tour guide for four days, 3- and 4-star hotels each night, breakfast and dinner, and tickets to some of the more interesting sights between Reza and Trabzon. Multiple entry visas were $20 USD each, and the exchange rate in Turkey was quite favorable.
We met up at the McDonalds on Tchavtchavadze Street at noon and went up to see Motsameta Monastery. In spite of the fact that it’s so close to Kutaisi, this was my first time going up there, and I must say I was quite impressed! The monastery is situated on the top of an imposing cliff where the Tsqaltsiteli River makes a sharp bend. The English translation of the river is “red water,” named for the two Christian martyrs who were executed on the site of the monastery by the Muslims shortly after their conquest of the region.
Some priests hanging out by the chapel on Easter Sunday.Detail on the door handles to the monastery chapel. Georgians take their grapes quite seriously.
I spent most of the vacation relaxing, so I didn’t take many spectacular photos. But Motsameta was really fantastic–I’ll have to go back sometime to do it justice. There’s a forest trail that goes between Motsameta and Gelati Monastery, where David the Builder is buried, and I’d like to hike that before I come back to the states.
Next, we drove down to Batumi on the Black Sea, where we spent some time wandering the Botanical Gardens. It’s a really nice place, with trees and plants from all over the world right up against the seashore. Very peaceful. It’s pretty big, though–I walked for almost an hour along the main road without getting to the end. And of course, there are many places along the way where you can stop and wander around for a while.
The Black Sea, visible through the trees of the Batumi Botanical Garden.Some red and white rose bushes. There are tons of flowering plants in the gardens, so spring is a really great time to see the place.A small spring in the middle of the Batumi Botanical Gardens. There are springs like this scattered across Georgia.
Batumi is an interesting place–not as big a city as Kutaisi, but with more money, hotels, casinos, and resorts. It’s right on the Black Sea, but the snow-capped mountains of the Lesser Caucasus range are right behind it, so you’ve got a big mix of climates and landscapes all within a short drive.
Batumi, Adjara Republic, Georgia.
The other TLGers were impressed to see that the roads are actually paved–apparently, there’s been a lot of construction in the past year or so. It’s not completely finished, but walking around downtown is quite pleasant. We hunted for ice cream and eventually settled on a smoke-filled cafe on some random street corner. Good times.
We spent the next morning crossing the border, a process that was surprisingly disorganized. The system on the Georgian side was pretty straightforward, but on the Turkish side we had to wait on the curb for a long time, with giant eighteen-wheelers driving past us and the sun beating down. It wasn’t too bad, though–definitely not worse than the Allenby crossing.
We drove for an hour, stopped in Reza for tea and lunch, then went on along the seashore to Trabzon. In Reza, I stood at the edge of a garden overlooking the city when the call to prayer started up. It brought back a lot of fond memories. 🙂 Turkey is definitely a Muslim country, with mosques everywhere, pencil minarets dotting the cityscape like steeples, and women dressed in colorful hijabs.
View of Rize from Rize Castle.Interior of the Little Haggia Sophia at Trabzon. It’s a pretty modest sized basilica, now a “museum” which basically means it’s not used for religious services. It needs renovation.
Compared to Kutaisi, Trabzon is a large and well-developed city. The downtown marketplace was packed, but the streets were well-paved, the shops were quite nice, there weren’t any beggars and basic amenities weren’t hard to find. Almost no-one spoke English, which made communication difficult since I don’t speak any Turkish, but it was surprisingly easy to make friends. We stopped for lunch at one place, and after a very difficult time trying to explain that we didn’t want any meat in our sandwiches (most of the girls in our group were vegetarian), the restaurant owner actually let us eat for free!
Some of the other volunteers had asked that we go to an American style mall, so we spent a few hours there before going to the hotel. I must confess, I was bored out of my mind. Nothing but clothes stores and Turkish fast food restaurants–it was identical to an American mall in almost every way. I suppose that that’s why the others wanted to go there–after spending a year in Georgia, they probably craved someplace that feels like home. But I’m not there yet, so that particular excursion was kind of boring.
The next day, we went up to Sumela Monastery in the mountains, and from there to Lake Uzungol. The monastery was quite cool, because it’s perched literally on the side of a cliff, almost 500 meters above the valley floor. Unfortunately, the friezes and other artwork was quite damaged, so I didn’t feel compelled to take many pictures, but it was fun to hike up there and see the view. A bunch of Turks laughed at the way I ran up the path, and the fountain at the top had some FREEZING cold mountain runoff. It was a lot of fun.
Sumela Monastery from the top of the canyon. The surrounding countryside is absolutely gorgeous.Inside the monastery complex itself. Many of the buildings are new additions, but there are some original structures.
At the lake, I bought a piece of Turkish silverware for my host mom that ended up being a huge hit. A lot of the shops were really touristy, but it was fun anyway and the landscape was quite beautiful. Reminded me a bit of Colorado. We stayed in a mountain cabin and the bedsheets smelled like cigarettes, but otherwise it was quite comfortable.
Adjaruli khatchapuri. If you eat this every day, you will have a short and happy life.
On the way back, we stopped in Batumi for dinner and had Adjaruli khatchapuri. Khatchapuri is the main Georgian go-to food–it’s basically cheesy bread with a thick, doughy crust. In Adjara, though, they take it a couple of steps further.
Immediately after taking the bread out of the oven, they crack an egg in the center, which gets cooked a little by the heat but otherwise remains raw. They then take a huge slab of butter and plop it right in the center of the yolk, where it melts in and gets everywhere. To eat it, you stir the egg around and work your way inward from the crust, dipping the bread in the molten gooey center. Between the cheese, the egg, the butter, and the bread, you get a pretty heavy meal–delicious, but heavy.
After that, we took to the road again, talking about all sorts of stuff and having a generally good time. Our tour guide was a great guy, and we had a lot of fun racking his brain. The other lady from the company was quite delightful, and talked with me a lot about Racha, growing up in Kutaisi, her experiences living in the Persian Gulf, etc. It was a long ride, but it went by pretty fast, and we pulled into Kutaisi around 9pm.
All in all, a fun, relaxing vacation, and a good chance to get out and see a little more in this part of the world. Turkey was nice, but I have to admit, I felt a bit like I was coming home when we crossed the border back into Georgia. It’s not as clean or developed, but it’s got a feel to it that isn’t quite like anything else. I like it.
Sorry, but no Trope Tuesday post this week. Long story short, more internet problems–I’m blogging right now from the McDonald’s on Tch’avtch’avadze Street. Since my battery’s running out, this is going to have to be a quick post.
I suppose I should ask, though: what tropes do you want me to cover in the future? I’m open to pretty much anything, as long as it’s got a tvtropes page. Together, we can enable our addictions have some productive story research.
In other news, I finished part III of Star Wanderers, and I’m putting that project on hold for a while. Writing a novel in serial parts is proving to be a lot more difficult than writing it straight. Not only do I hit a wall at the 2/3rds mark, but I have difficulty moving on to the next part until the part before it is free of major problems. Because I have to take a break and distance myself before I can really address those problems, I think it will be better to move on to something else.
On the upside, it only takes two or three weeks to knock out each draft, so I’m not too concerned about finishing this project before the end of the year. Part I is already set to go, and Part II just needs some vetting before I feel it’s ready. If you’re one of my first readers and you’re up for a quick novella-sized work, let me know.
That’s about all for now. I also signed up to do a couple of blog interviews, so those should be up in a couple of weeks. And I’ve also got some more posts coming about Georgia and Turkey, so that should be interesting. Stay tuned!
Sorry about missing the Trope Tuesday post yesterday. My internet was sporadic, and I didn’t think it was worth it to keep refreshing every time I wanted to access tvtropes. I’ll make it up next week with a good one.
The rest of the week is going to be pretty busy. We have a make-up class on Saturday and I’m going to Tbilisi on Sunday for church, so things might be a little sporadic on this blog. However, I’m making good progress on Star Wanderers, even if it is a bit slower than I would like. I should finish up Part III this week and Part IV sometime in early May.
I haven’t heard anything from Writers of the Future yet, but judging from the forums, neither have most of the others who submitted this quarter. The official results should come out in May, though, and as soon as they do, I’ll publish the first part of Star Wanderers (provided it doesn’t win).
I’m really excited about this one; it’s one of those stories that came when I least expected it, and practically wrote itself. The first part, which stands completely on its own, is about 17k words, or 60 print pages–basically, a very short novella. It’s a science fiction romance set within the same universe as my other Gaia Nova novels; in the next few days, I’ll post a blurb and the first couple chapters for you guys to check out.
So that’s what’s going on out here. In other news, my Georgian host family just got a washing machine, and the excitement it generated reminded me of that scene in Fiddler on the Roof when the village gets its first sewing machine. Here’s the youngest son watching it go round and round:
Between this, internet TV, and the hot water heater they installed a few months ago, they seem to be moving steadily up in the world. Hopefully I’m not putting too much of a burden on them. I buy fruit from time to time and got the host mom a piece of silverware from Turkey. From what I could tell, she was really happy with it.
Anyhow, it’s getting late and I’d better go. ღამე მშვიდობის!
So I just got back from Easter vacation in Turkey, at Trabzon and Lake Uzungöl. It was pretty awesome–I’ll definitely be blogging about it in the next couple of days! First, though, I wanted to share something interesting that happened on the way back.
While I was hanging out in Batumi with some other TLG volunteers eating Adjarian khatchapuri (an experience in itself), we got to talking about what we’re going to do with our lives after we get back to the States. Most of them didn’t really want to think about it, which surprised me, so I asked why.
They told me they didn’t want to have to figure out the rest of their lives–that coming out to Georgia to teach English was a way of putting off those major life decisions. Fair enough. They then asked me if I’ve figured it out. I said yes: that I want to be a full-time writer, and that I’m out here to see the world and get some cultural experience as I try to make that dream a reality.
One of the girls then asked what my backup was if that didn’t work out. To be honest, I had no idea what to say. My plan at this point is to just keep teaching and traveling until the dream becomes a reality. Am I confident that it will? Eventually, yeah–as long as I keep writing, which I certainly will.
I thought about it a bit on the way back, and realized that my mindset has shifted tremendously in the past few years. When I was back in college, and to some extent for the first year after I graduated, I used to worry a lot about my “backup plan.” It was a way of addressing the fear of failure, of creating an illusion of safety by having a “fallback.”
I’m sure there are careers where that’s a good idea. Generally, those are careers with definite paths, where if you don’t pass a certain number of checkpoints, you’re basically screwed. With writing, though, there is no set path that everybody follows–especially now with ebooks and epublishing. Because of this, it’s impossible to really fail–either you keep on trying until you make it, or for one reason or another you give up.
Ever since I graduated in 2010, I’ve been structuring my life in such a way that I can continue to pursue my writing. Every job I’ve taken has just been a stepping stone, a bridge to allow me to keep pursuing this dream. Have I made it yet? No, but I haven’t given up yet either, so I haven’t had to fall back on my backup–whatever that would mean at this point.
From the outside, it probably looks like I’m being hopelessly responsible–that, or willfully oblivious to a hundred things I should be worried sick about. However, I’m actually quite confident that I’m on the right path and things will work out–and that surprises me. It’s like that moment when you realize you’re actually swimming, not just kicking and thrashing about the pool.
Worst case scenario, I fall head over heels in love with an awesome, wonderful girl, and after a few heady months filled with blissful romance, I wake up one morning and realize that I’m married. If that happens, I might have to put my writing on hold for a while until I get things sorted out so that I can support both myself and my wife–but then again, with her help, I might be able to do twice as much, or even more. Perhaps that will help my writing career even more than trying to go it alone.
So really, there is no back up plan or worst case scenario–just the future. And as Georgians are so fond of saying, “no one can know what will happen in future.”
