One Thousand And One Parsecs

Blog buttons!

So I was reading my friend Gamila’s blog, and she mentioned that she made some blog buttons. Immediately, I thought: “Cool! I should do something like that.”

So, without further ado, I give you…blog buttons!

Post them to your blog! Put them on your sidebar! Attach them to your message board forum signature! Use them as your avatar! Write a spam virus that will…okay, don’t do that. But seriously, if you love me, go crazy nuts and post these EVERYWHERE!

And just in case you don’t know how to put these onto your sidebar, here are some basic html instructions:

Fly, my pretties! FLY!

Dragging behind a bit

My writing slowed down significantly during the Writing and Illustratin for Young Readers conference a week ago, and it hasn’t really picked up at all since then. For my seven day totals, I’ve only been averaging between 17k and 14k–that means, on average, I’m doing about half what I want to be doing. Blah.

While I haven’t been writing a whole lot, however, I have been doing a lot of outlining. It looks like I’m going to be throwing out a ton of scenes, putting other scenes in different chapters, and adding whole new scenes in places where I previously didn’t have any. Yikes.

In other words, I’m in the process of completely reconceptualizing the structure of this novel–taking a few steps back and looking at the entire project as a whole. It’s taking up a heck of a lot of time right now, but hopefully it will help the rewriting process to be more successful. After all, if I try to stumble through without a clear idea of what I want this story to be, it’s just going to be a waste of time.

But if I’m going to finish this draft before August 1st, I need to pick up the pace. If this draft runs up to 150k as expected (and at the current rate, it could easily go over), I need to do just under 22k per week. That means, if I do anything less than 3k per day over the next six weeks, I’m going to fall behind this deadline.

The deadline is entirely arbitrary and artificial, but still, I want to keep it. Keeping deadlines is a writing skill I want to train myself to do, and I think it will help me out tremendously down the road.

So the goal this week is to pick up the pace again and get the seven day totals back up to 24k by next Sunday. It’s going to be something of a psychological struggle to get the momentum up again, but it’s something I know I can do. Inshallah.

In the meantime, I’ve been putting together some awesome ideas for a steampunk novel. Things are starting to gel for my next big project, and I’m getting REALLY excited. I still have an enormous amount of research to do before I can begin (like, tons of research), so I won’t get started just yet, but man! The ideas in my head are hot, I can feel it!

I know I’m speaking in vagaries…but to make up for it, I’ll leave you with a link to this wicked awesome steampunk picture I found the other day. Seriously–how cool would it be to be this guy??

Steampunk Airship Pilot by ~homarusrex on deviant ART

“Why people read”

Dave Farland puts out this great e-newsletter called “Dave’s Daily Kick-in-the-Pants.” For the kick today, he suggested the following exercise:

You probably have a good idea about what you want to write—horror, mainstream, fantasy, historical, romance, westerns, religious fiction, and whatnot. Sit down for ten minutes and on the left-hand side of your paper, list five things that you feel you most like in the fiction you read. On the right-hand side of your paper, list the biggest potential danger that you see in trying to create that effect.

Doing this exercise will help you understand who your potential audience is, and some of the challenges that you may face in reaching that audience.

This was my response:

Why I read:

1) To meet interesting characters and get lost with them in an exciting fantastic world.

2) To think deeper about fundamental truths I see in my own life.

3) To feel like I understand another person and connect with them.

4) To be reassured that true heroism is real, alive, and within the realm of possibility.

5) To experience beauty in the language and metaphor, the imagery and tension.

Potential dangers:

1) Trying to write about a world without a story–all info dumps, exposition, lacking interesting characters with whom the reader can journey and experience the world. Story IS experience, and experience does not exist independent of the person doing the experiencing.

2) Waxing allegorical or didactic in the writing–trying to force the message instead of leaving it open for the reader to discover multiple layers of meaning.

3) Focusing so hard on the character that the plot lacks the structure and tension to keep the reader interesting. Characters do not exist separate from plot or setting; they change and grow in reaction to both.

4) Creating a hero whose struggle is so far removed from the real world or our real life experience that the reader feels that this type of person could only exist within the pages of a book. Or, trying so hard to follow the monomyth structure that the story falls flat (ie Star Wars I, II, III).

5) Thinking that poetic license frees you from basic rules of style and grammar. Creating metaphors that are so unusual that they are merely non sequiturs. Writing prose so thick and “literary” that it kicks the reader out of the book.

something

So…I figure it’s been a week and I should probably post something on this blog.

Wow.

Well, work is underway on Ashes of the Starry Sea, and I’m starting to have a love-hate relationship with it. Most writers say you first novel isn’t that good, and you just need to get it out of your system so you can write the real stuff.

Well, this is my first finished novel…but it’s not my first novel attempt. My first novel attempt was in 8th grade, and I am happy to report that it no longer exists. Anywhere. No, seriously, I lost (or destroyed) it after my mission, and I am perfectly happy with that.

My second novel attempt was in ninth grade, and I still have a copy of it, though I haven’t looked at it in a while. Somewhere around page one hundred (single spaced) I realized that the story wasn’t going anywhere, and I got all angsty and depressed about it. Then, midway through tenth grade, I realized that the problems were fixable, and stopped being angsty and depressed.

And then I got bored and moved onto other things.

For the next two years, I started all sorts of projects but never really got anywhere with them. This was when I came up with my “great golden idea” that I wanted to hide from the world until I had the skill to turn it into my masterpiece.

I’ll tell you what the idea was right now: a high school kid learns how to control his dreams and realizes that the dream world is just as “real” as the waking world. An amazonian dream mage named Lachoneus takes him on as his apprentice and he saves the world from demons while struggling to turn his dream-world relationship with his hs crush into a reality in the waking world.

It’s got potential, but if this is the best idea I ever come up with, I’m going to be very disappointed. Fortunately, I kept writing through this phase.

My next project that got past page ten happened my senior year. I created an island fantasy world with a Greek aesthetic and started what I thought was a character study on my sister. If she ever read it, she probably wouldn’t see any similarities between Sareli and herself, but she was kind of distant from all of us in those years.

Then my mission happened. Not much time for writing there, but even so, I had this one idea that was so good that I spent a handful of p-days in my second area writing it out longhand. It was supposed to be this incredbly poignant allegory based around Lehi’s dream. I got about two chapters in it before things got too busy for me.

When I came home, I picked up a story that I’d started before the mission and got pretty far with it…word-wise, at least. The pre-mission version was based on this game I used to play with my Zaks building blocks. When I got back, I renamed it Planet New America and envisioned it as Jesus’ second coming as experienced by American colonists on another planet, under Chinese occupation.

Sound pretty bad? Yeah…about 60k words in I realized it had no plot and put it on the “back burner.” I haven’t picked it up since.

Sophomore year went by, and I wrote a short story and an undeveloped novel that I thought was a short story. Decision LZ150207 was the short story, and it’s getting published!!! in The Leading Edge. I signed the contract yesterday (woot!). The Clearest Vision was the undersized novel, and…it was pretty bad. Cheesy, sentimental, poorly written–but some of the ideas were cool. Too bad it probably isn’t marketable.

Then, in the summer of 2007, I decided I was going to start another novel! This one was going to be…<drumroll please> a Final Fantasy 6 fanfic (huh?!). Thankfully, I had a much more original idea in gestation, and Aneeka convinced me to run with it.

Thus began the rough draft version of Ashes of the Starry Sea, my first finished novel and my current primary project.

So, yeah, they say to throw out your first novel…but I wrote at least five significant partial drafts before I got to Ashes. I think that’s enough to justify my assessment that this story’s going potential. I still worry about it, though…I’m only in chapter 4 and I’m already struggling with the same angsty doubts that don’t usually hit until about halfway through.

The other day, though, I sent out my first three chapters to Charlie, who read them at work and gave me her assessment. I thought that the main character, Ian, was weak and boring, that the first chapter didn’t have enough of a hook, that it took too long to get into the action, etc. To my surprise, this is what she said:

Charlie: “Charlie is the coolest person I know”
say it.
me: charlie is the coolest person I know
Charlie: thank you.
me: because she read my first three chapters
Charlie: I just sent them to you
me: oh, nice
Charlie: 😀
me: they kick my other characters’ trash?
Charlie: yes
me: really?
how so?
Charlie: I like them
I can see their dinstinct characteristics very well
they’re developed subtly and efficiently
me: yeah?
Ian isn’t boring?
Charlie: no
I like him more than michael
me: ???
how?
Charlie: because he has definite character
me: he does?
Charlie: I totally understand how he thinks and his motivations after three chapters
yeah. He’s a passive weenie of a guy, but I like him
me: he’s a passive weenie and he isn’t boring?
Charlie: nope
I like him
me: you like him even though he’s a pansy?
Charlie: yeah
I like him because he’s a pansy
me: really?
huh
I don’t understand
Charlie: I’m sorry?
I like that you don’t have a complacent protagonist
me: Ian isn’t complicated?
sorry for all the questions
I’m just trying to understand
Charlie: no
me: so you like him because you get him
Charlie: that’s part of it, yeah
me: but if he’s weak and doesn’t start being proactive for very long, you’re going to stop liking him
is that right?
Charlie: I am expecting him to grow, yes
me: ah, so it’s the potential for growth that hooks you
Charlie: yeah

Like any first novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea has some serious plot issues, against which I’m currently banging my head. However, despite the voices inside and outside of my head, it’s probably got potential. Now I just need to convince myself of that. Hopefully, as the story progresses, the story itself will do the convincing. And you know what? If I shut up and listen to it, it just might do that.

Genesis Earth soundtrack

Hey, Charlie made a soundtrack of my novel, Genesis Earth. Yay! First fan inspired creation! Anyway, here it is:

Hero in the Shadows by David Gemmell

Waylander gave up his dark life as an assassin years ago–or so he thought. When an ancient magic gateway begins to break down and evil beings from another world set out to reconquer the lands of Kydor, Waylander finds himself caught up once again in the cycle of war and bloodshed.

Waylander joins forces with Kysumu, a rajnee warrior who has been training all his life to be the best swordsman, and Ustarte, an escaped changeling experiment who has come from the demon world to organize a resistance. But when the spirit of Qin Chong comes from the past to aid the fledgling resistance, he comes to the unlikeliest person of all–the ditch-digger Yu Yu Liang. As Kysumu wrestles with envy over the spirit’s choice, he comes to understand what it truly means to be a hero.

This book was good. Way good. Not only was it a thrilling action/adventure story, it was full of deep, wonderful insights into the nature of courage and cowardice, life and death, good and evil, and true heroism. David Gemmell’s books are full of wonderful insight, and deliciously complex in the way they deal with life’s most important and meaningful questions.

I read the last hundred pages at a breathless sprint. So many of the characters died! Yet even though the story was very violent, I didn’t feel that it was excessively so. The violence always had a reason to be there, and added something to the story.

What really surprised me was how Gemmell redeemed even some of his most evil characters. Just when you think one of the main antagonists is soulless and outright evil, he shows you another side of the character and makes you rethink him/her entirely. Amazing.

Not only where the “good guy” characters imminently likeable, they were surprisingly relatable. I felt like I understood exactly how Kysumu felt, having spent his whole life training to be the best warrior, only for the spirit of Qin Chong to choose a clumsy, shameless commoner. As he struggled with his jealousy, I felt I knew exactly what he was going through. Interesting stuff.

Waylander, too, was very interesting. Even though he was the best warrior out of anyone in the book, he was far from invulnerable or perfect. He had a dark side that was very believable–not too gritty or over the top. In fact, I think Waylander was originally an antagonist in the earlier books in the series.

When I read White Wolf, I had issues with the plot structure and excessive use of flashbacks. Not so with this novel. The plot progressed wonderfully, keeping me engaged and interested the whole time. The twist ending was delicious! Wonderfully satisfying.

Above all else, this is a book that means something, that actually says something. I came away from this book satisfied, not only because of the excellent, entertaining story, but because of the way the story made me think. Gemmell is an expert at creating depth to his characters and his stories, pulling you beneath the surface to glimpse at things that are really important and meaningful.

Some updates

Just a few quick updates before I go to bed:

My short story, Decision LZ150207, is getting published in The Leading Edge! Hooray! This will be my first publication credit. It certainly won’t be my last!

As you can see from the progress bar to the right, I’ve started work on draft 2.2 of Ashes of the Starry Sea, the novel that I finished back in April of 2008 (my first “finished” novel–and the project that spawned this blog). My goal is to finish this draft by August 1st, 2009.

It is a beast of a novel–I’m predicting it will be at least 150,000 words. The draft is currently at 158,000 words, but I’m going to have to add several scenes as well as vigorously trim out the bad writing.

And boy, is there a lot of bad writing in this draft! I knew, when I wrote it, that I wasn’t that good, but holy cow! Way too much introspection, way too much “tell”-iness, not nearly enough concrete details. Too many adverbs, too much wordiness, especially in the scenes with the action. This is going to be a deep revision.

BYU’s writing conference was a blast! I’ll try to post more about it in the near future, hopefully tomorrow if I can get around to it. The three editors who attended are open to submissions from the conference, and one of them prefers full manuscripts to partials, so on Saturday I printed up the full 2.0 draft of Genesis Earth.

Holding the full manuscript in my hands was surreal. It’s one thing to write it out digitally and see it on your screen, but it is something else entirely to hold the tangible, physical thing in your hands. I just…keep wanting to hold it. It feels so real.

But yeah, I’m kind of uneasy sending the full manuscript off to this editor, especially since she hasn’t asked me for it specifically (she just told all the conference-goers that she prefers full manuscripts). I don’t want to get in trouble sending my full ms out to multiple places, so my game plan is to send this to her ASAP so it can get rejected within the next 1-4 months (what she claimed was her turnaround time).

Because of that, I’m sending her a draft which could be more polished, but oh well. Anything could be more polished–eventually, you just have to send your stuff out. Besides, as pessimistic as this might sound, I do think that my mss has a fighting chance. We’ll see what comes of this.

On your mark, get set…

This post will be really quick, since it’s after midnight and I want to get up at seven tomorrow.

I’ve decided to work on The Phoenix of Nova Terra for my next project. Except…I’m renaming it (yet again!) to…

<drumroll, please>

Ashes of the Starry Sea.

I like this title much more than the previous one. I think that just about everyone, when they first start out, comes up with a somewhat cliche title having something to do with a phoenix.

Even though this is the first novel I ever wrote and finished, I think it has a lot of potential. People always say that your first novel is never publishable, but this one wasn’t my first attempt at writing a novel (it’s something like my sixth or seventh). Besides, when judging these things, you need to look at the work itself, not on these general rules that everyone always throws around.

The story itself is pretty decent, I think. The main things to improve are 1) the worldbuilding/research aspect, and 2) the nuts and bolts writing. To help out with that, I’ve decided to follow some of David Louis Edelmen’s revision advice and completely transcribe every word of this revision draft in a new word document. Hopefully, that level of focus will help me to improve things on the word, sentence, and paragraph levels.

At the same time, I need a very clear macro-level view of this project–after all, it’s been over a year since I finished the rough draft. To do that, I started a wikidpad file that will become the story bible for the new draft. I’ll use it to do the things I mentioned in my previous post, “Outlining for discovery writers.”

I’ll also spend the next week or so reading the most recent draft from start to finish, figuring out my revision notes. This will be hard, since I stopped ennumerating the chapters towards the beginning, but I’ll figure it out.

Gah, everything is so disorganized for this project! I’ve got revision notes for the 2.0 and 2.1 versions, files scattered everywhere, feedback from a friend of mine from the FLSR that I haven’t even looked at yet…just too much. The draft needs a TON of work, too.

If I can polish this draft to a satisfactory, presentable second draft in the next month, I’ll be happy. That’s prettymuch my goal. 140,000 words in five weeks…let’s go!

Bringing Stella Home 1.1 is finished

A few minutes ago, I finished the rough draft of Bringing Stella Home. This is my third completed novel. Huzzah!

It needs a ton of work, too…there’s no way I’m going to let this thing see the light of day, not until I finish the second draft.

In fact, I should probably set down tomorrow and start listing all the plot holes that need to be fixed in the revision, before I forget them all. It feels like there are dozens and dozens of holes. Not a good feeling.

Still, IT’S DONE!!! All that worrying and fretting and gtalk rants at Charlie along the lines of “GAH!! THIS NOVEL SUCKS!!!” have paid off, and I’ve got a draft I can work with! Inshallah, it should be downhill from here.

I remember when I wrote Genesis Earth, how all throughout the process of writing the rough draft, I felt that the work was terrible. And it’s true–the rough draft needed a lot of work. However, I think revising comes easier to me than drafting, and the process of writing the second draft was much, much smoother and more enjoyable than the first one.

So, what I have now is a hunk of rock roughly in the shape of a face. I can’t quite tell if it’s th face of a man, a woman, or a monkey, but it’s a face nonetheless. That’s better than an unworked block of stone, at least. Maybe someday it will be a decent work of art, if my hands don’t slip and I shave the nose off by accident.

I’ll let this draft sit for a few weeks, maybe a month, then pick it up again for the revision. In the meantime, on to other things.

And really, as rough as this draft may be, it feels awesome to finally have it finished. Reality sets in tomorrow, when once again I find myself staring at a blank page.

Bringing Stella Home 1.1

mss pages: 416
words: 118,596
file size: 791 KB
chapters: 21
start date: 6 May 2009
end date: 10 June 2009

POSTSCRIPT: Hahaha! MS Word just popped up a dialogue box saying “there are too many spelling and grammar errors to underline them all” or something like that! HILARIOUS.

Heaven’s library

2,943 words today, even though today was the first day of Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers. I’ve reached the major climax of the book–the moment I’ve been replaying over and over in my head. Perhaps this novel is not as bad as I’d thought–perhaps I can pull this off. The current incarnation is terrible, but I can see in my mind how good it can be in its second or third incarnation. Inshallah, I’ll pull it off.

Today was the first day of BYU’s writing conference, and it was great! The speaker in the last workshop I attended, Dandi Mackall, was exceptional. I don’t have my notes with me and the BYU library closes in twenty minutes, so I’ll recap the best part of her presentation, the story she told in the last five minutes.

She said that once she had a dream where she died and went to heaven (thank goodness!). When she got there, the angel who greeted her offered to show her around, and asked what she wanted to see first. Her answer? The library, of course!

In heaven’s library, she found shelves stretching as far as she could see, full of the very best books. She picked out a few and recognized some of her favorites, the ones that had impacted and changed her life.

After a while, though, she started to get a little disappointed: all of the books in heaven’s library were books we already had down on Earth. Why was that? Didn’t heaven have anything new–anything we hadn’t already seen down below?

“But all these books were here first,” said the angel.

Still, she couldn’t accept that as an answer, so the angel took her down a long, winding, narrow corridor. The deeper she went, the narrower and dustier it became, until she started to feel uneasily. This part of the library was dark and dirty. It was clear that hardly anybody every came down here

Finally, the angel led her to a door covered in cobwebs. He brushed them aside and opened the door, leading her inside. Here was a room many times larger than the first, with old, dusty bookshelves stretching higher than she could see.

She picked out a book and started reading through it. It was one she’d never heard of, but it grabbed her. She could tell that it was really good. She picked up another one, and realized that it was just the kind of book that one of her friends would have loved to read. She picked up another one, and realized that this one could have helped out another friend when she’d gone through a terrible life crisis.

All of this made her angry. “Why didn’t we have these books?” she asked the angel. “They are just as good as the ones in the other room. Why didn’t they make it down?”

“These are all the books that remain unwritten,” said the angel. “Each one of these is a book that a writer, somewhere below, has in them but fails to write down.

“This one is by a writer who just won’t let anyone touch her writing and give her the criticism she needs to improve her craft. This one is by a writer who doesn’t have the discipline to write consistently and finish what he starts. This one is by a writer who doubts her story and doesn’t think she can ever get it to work.”

At this, she nodded and let the angel lead her back out to the main room. As she left, she saw one final book near the door. It had her name on it.

What a great, encouraging story. I didn’t do nearly as good a job retelling it as Dandi did the first time, but it had a tremendous impact on me. I hope sharing it with you, it does something of the same.

For some reason I don’t understand, fate, God, or genetics (or some malicious combination of the three) conspired to turn me into a writer. I don’t write for fame or fortune; I write because I can’t not write. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m making a mistake trying to turn this into a career, into something that will feed myself and my future family. Looking at the millions of other floundering writers like myself, it’s easy to feel anxious. After all, only a tiny fraction of us will ever get published, let alone make a professional career out of this. Do I even have a fighting chance?

But then I hear a story like this one and I remember why it is that I write. Not for fame, fortune, publication, personal gratification, or even just because I can’t not do it. It’s because storytelling itself is important. It helps us connect with the world around us, to see its beauty and wonder. It helps us to appreciate ourselves and understand others. It stimulates our imaginations and, by so doing, helps us to life our eyes from the ground and see the divine potential that is all around us. It helps us to grow through vicarious experience–it helps us to live and to love.

Writing, at its best, is a sacred act, an important act, and if by grace we have been touched by inspiration and given a story to write, we should consider it noble and honorable to bring that story incarnate into the world, to touch the lives of others and lead them to what is good and true.