Hey, check this out! I used this site to create a word cloud for the rough draft of my novel, Genesis Earth. I did the same thing a while back for my other novel. Pretty interesting.
Semester endgame
Seven days! Seven days! And then the semester is over! Hallelujah!
Unfortunately, in the course of those seven days, I’ve got three major papers to write. It’s going to suck.
But then it’s over!
Thank goodness. This semester has been pretty crazy–not in terms of work, but in terms of motivation. A lot of the classes I took (especially MESA 350) are basically just repeating the things I already know, which is really boring. When you’re bored, you don’t have much motivation to do the work, and when that happens…well, let’s just say that bad things happen when that happens.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), there’s nothing quite as motivating as last minute panic. The work will get done.
Unfortunately (and this is definitely unfortunately), the end-of-semester crunch will almost certainly take time away from my writing. Just when things were going so well, too. The revision of Genesis Earth is coming along VERY well–I’m not only enjoying it, I think I’m making some excellent fundamental improvements on the story. Of all of the novels I’ve written or worked on, I think this one is the most promising. If I didn’t have any other obligations, I could almost certainly finish this revision in a week–possibly even less. I’d really love to get into it.
Also, the other day I had an idea how to revive Hero in Exile and turn it into a workable story. Hero in Exile is the working title of the novel I started last fall, but after I got 70,000 words into it, I realized that the story I was writing and the story I had in mind were incompatible with each other. I put it all away, recycled some of the basic ideas, and used those for Bringing Estella Home. Well, now that I’ve put Bringing Estella Home on hold (ironically, after getting 70,000 words into it), I just had some really interesting ideas how I could make Hero in Exile work! It would require throwing out my original outline almost completely, but I could use almost everything I wrote previously–basically, tell the story that I was writing instead of the story I thought I was writing.
Except I have to change the name of the main character. “Tristen” just isn’t a good guy’s name–at least not for science fiction.
So now, I’m considering picking up that story and putting Bringing Estella Home on hold for a while. I’m going to be really busy these next couple of weeks, but after all the craziness has settled somewhat it’s going to be a very interesting question. Honestly, I have no idea. It could go either way.
But it’s all academic until the semester is finally over. But dude! SEVEN DAYS!!!! And then…FREEDOM!!!!
Some thoughts
This is going to be real quick, since it’s 1:30 am and General Conference is tomorrow. The revision is going along really well for Genesis Earth–I am really excited about this project. My only regret is that I don’t have more time to dedicate to it. As it is, I’m probably putting too much time into it already. But it’s worth it–it makes me happy, and I feel I’m telling a story worth hearing.
Yesterday was also the awards banquet for the English department. It was a very positive experience. I saw a few familiar faces–Chris from my English 318 reading group last year, and slipperyjim from Quark.
The main address and proceedings in general were very interesting. There was a lot of talk about the value of literature, its importance in our society, but more than that, the importance to write good literature. By that, I don’t mean the kind of stuff that has the stamp of approval of some elite clique of stuck up literary types somewhere–by that, I mean literature that has purpose and meaning, that shows us something worth living for, not merely pointing out the absurdities of our modern world. There are plenty of absurdities and paradoxes and stupid little meaningless things, but where does it really get us to be pointing those out all the time?
I came away from the conference with something really valuable: a heightened awareness of all the things that made me want to write Bringing Estella Home, the novel I’ve been working on this semester.
Bringing Estella Home is very tragic, a little dystopian, and has a lot of unrealized hopes–a lot of shattered lives. It’s essentially a tragedy, and I’ve found that I don’t particularly enjoy writing tragedies. When you’ve worked on one for a few months, it tends to grate on you–all of these suffering characters, and you with the knowledge that it’s only going to get worse. Not very feel-good.
But that’s not the thing that made me want to write this book. There were two things that I wanted to get across, two major ideas: sacrifice and loyalty. If that makes any sense. I guess it won’t, unless you read the finished book, but I wanted to show how people struggling to do the right thing in a world turned upside down could find meaning and depth in their suffering, in their trials. Suffering comes and goes, but it shapes you in ways that last forever, and I wanted to show good people becoming better through their suffering. I guess that’s the best way to put it.
I think I’d lost sight of that recently. This novel needs a lot of major changes to it, especially in the middle section, which I was just wrapping up when I put it on hold. But with a clearer idea of the overarching goal of the story–what deeper meaningfulness I’m trying to get across–I think I’ll be able to pick it up again and give it a strong finish. That’s good.
I don’t know if I’ll ever write another tragedy again. This one has been quite a ride. However, I shouldn’t just throw it out and run away from it–I really need to listen to this story and tell it like it needs to be told. I guess that’s the ultimate motivation, or should be. I don’t just sit down and write because it’s what I do, I do it because it is something meaningful, something that can help others see the world in a new, better way, and obtain those truths that will really bless their lives.
Revision is underway
Well, I started working on Genesis Earth 2.0 over the weekend. I’ve got to say, I’m really excited about it!
I’ve gotten a lot of really useful response from my alpha readers and I’ve compiled a master draft with everyone’s comments on it. I’m reading that now, keeping a list of revisions that I need to make, chapter by chapter, and using that as I rewrite this book. I’m not usually much for organization, but I really like the way this is set up–opening up that massive document and seeing all those comments across the pages. It’s really cool!
Of course, I’m not responding to every comment. When you have all the comments side by side in the same document, you can see where everyone disagreed as well as agreed. There are comments saying “I really didn’t like how you did such and such” right next to comments that say “I love this section and how it did such and such.” Where everyone had the same negative response, I’ll see that as a problem that I need to fix, but for everything else it comes down to my own judgment call. That’s how I’m doing things.
I rewrote the first chapter the other day, and I’m really satisfied with it. It feels really good when you can take something that has problems and fix them, make it better. That’s why I actually love the revising process.
Oh, and check out the REALLY awesome widget on the sidebar! It’s something that Drek wrote for me on the fly today. He’s really awesome–he wrote the speedometer widget that was up there before. I must admit, it was much more fun playing around with that widget and setting it up than doing my homework. And don’t worry–I repented for downloading and temporarily installing an ftp client on the public computers to upload the files to my server. Twice.
This sucks and I’m a horrible writer
It’s getting really, really hard for me not to believe that statement, especially as I finish up with the middle part of this novel. I’m starting to realize that I made a whole bunch of mistakes pages and pages ago, and that the climaxes just aren’t working without everything set up right.
I know, cognitively, that it’s mostly just psychological and that this book probably isn’t as bad as I think it is, but I’m finding it hard to convince myself of that. I got to the climax of part II yesterday, and it was…not what I’d had in my head. That’s probably what’s frustrating me the most. If I can’t write down the story as I have it in my head, what does that mean? It either means I’m a terrible writer, or that I didn’t get the setup right (or both…gah!).
So…where do I go from here? Throwing out the entire story isn’t an option–I’m not going to allow myself to do that. I could, however, put it on the back burner for a while, let it simmer…or I could do or die and finish the 1.0 draft, no matter how crappy it turns out. I suppose that would accomplish something for my self esteem, but is that the way to best serve the story?
Fortunately, this past week we talked about revision in English 318. Listening to my recording of the class gave me a few ideas. I could make a list of known problems, with their fixes, and continue as if I’d already made them. I think I did that a few times with The Phoenix of Nova Terra, but I don’t know how I feel about that now. I could probably make it work…
The main issue is that I feel very, very distant from this book. A month ago, I was immersed in the thing, writing over a thousand words each day, just chugging it out. Now, for various reasons, other things have come up and drawn away my attention, so I don’t feel that I’m really in this world anymore. I feel like I’m more of an outsider, writing for the sake of writing rather than trying to tell this story the way it wants to be told. I can’t really remember what I wrote a hundred pages ago, despite that big sheet of butcher paper up in my closet.
Another thing that complicates all of this is that I’m really, really excited about the other novel, Genesis Earth. I’ve gotten back comments from most of my alpha readers, and I’m all but chomping at the bit to start working on it again. If I had nothing else going on, no pressing obligations or assignments, with the enthusiasm I have for this project I could probably finish the second draft in a week, and the third draft the week after that.
So…what’s next?
Well, I think I’m going to start the revision on Genesis Earth today or tomorrow. When I was this enthused about revising Pheonix, I decided to wait and finish Genesis Earth instead, and the enthusiasm for that project died down surprisingly fast. Better to start now than wait until I’ve got the free time but struggle with motivation.
In the meantime, I’m going to finish the current chapter of Bringing Estella Home and let it rest for a bit. I’ll probably reread what I’ve got from the beginning, make a few revision notes, perhaps an outline of sorts–try to figure out what’s wrong, what I need to change to make it work. I’ll restrain myself from actually making those revisions (though I did that, mid-draft, for Genesis Earth, and it turned out alright…sort of), but once I feel I’m sufficiently “into” the story again, I’ll get back to work and finish the 1.0 draft. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do all that before the end of May.
The trouble here is that I’ll probably end up writing the first draft of this novel and revising the other one at the same time…something I tried last September and failed miserably. However, by the time all of this is finished, inshallah school will be over and I won’t have to worry about it. Things are looking really good for me to get an internship in NYC, which makes me think I should drop my Spring classes and just take it easy for a month before I start (as for housing, that’s a whole other conundrum…).
Gah! Writing is complicated. Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life? Something I can do? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just have to keep on writing through this depressing pessimism and trust that it will pass.
As a side note, I took the title of this post from a Writing Excuses episode some time ago; here is the link to that episode, in case you want to hear it.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Welcome to Mars, a magical world of ancient ruins like giant glass chess sets and canals of wine and sandy desert seas. A world inhabited by golden eyed people who can telepathically project hallucinations–some of them still live up in the hills. A desolate, empty world, the next frontier for a new generation of pioneering spirits, each with different dreams, different reasons, different goals and outlooks on their new life in the new world. Some come with respect and reverence to the ancient world, while others come to exploit it. But no matter why they come, everyone is deeply and profoundly changed. Some never return.
Ray Bradbury is one of the biggest names in science fiction, and this book is one of his greatest works. A lot of my friends really love Bradbury, but strangely, I haven’t read a lot of him (Fahrenheit 451, way back in Middle School, and a few essays, but that’s pretty much it). After putting this book down, all I can say is wow. Now I know what my friends were talking about.
The Martian Chronicles is more of a collection of short stories than anything else. That’s understandable, when you consider that science fiction began with short stories, not with novels. Keep that in mind as you read it, too. This is not a book you can read all in one go; you have to take time between the chapters to let each one soak in, otherwise your mind will just get overloaded. Bradbury delivers a bang! ending to just about every story in this book, and some of them are really deep. My favorite one was the one with Sender, and how the fourth rocket discovered that all the Martians were killed off by the chicken pox. There are some really profound ideas in that one, and I loved reading it.
A lot of hard sf purists tend to call Bradbury a writer of fantasy disguised as science fiction, and I can see where they’re coming from. There’s nothing really scientific about this book; the Mars of Bradbury’s stories is a purely fantastic invention (even for the 50s). I remember the story about the third rocket, and how it landed on a grassy green lawn, and all the crew stepped out and found themselves in a little Ohio town, and all I could think was “what??” It was very fantastic, very surreal and even trippy at parts, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not so bad. And really, I’d argue with the whole “Bradbury = fantasy” thing–I think some of the ideas in these stories definitely blur the line between fantasy and science fiction.
One thing Bradbury is fantastically good at is infusing all of his writing with passion. There wasn’t a moment in this whole book when I couldn’t envision Bradbury himself, his eyes wide and bloodshot, gripping me by the shoulders and shaking me. His imagery was amazing, and his twist endings were incredible. You really read Bradbury for his prose and for his ideas; everything else takes a back seat, but he does so well with the first two that that’s ok.
These are the kinds of stories that stick with you long after you’ve read them. They might not be consistent with each other or follow in a coherent, logical order, but they will deeply and profoundly move you.
Sabriel by Garth Nix
Sabriel doesn’t know it, but her father is more than just a powerful necromancer; he is a key in the political intrigue of the Old Kingdom–the land beyond the wall. When he interrupts her class at Wyverly college by sending a hand–an enslaved spirit–from beyond the fourth gate of Death to drop off his sword and magic bells, Sabriel knows that something is wrong.
Something is holding her father hostage in Death, and Sabriel is determined to find him and rescue him. When she crosses over the wall, however, into the world of magic, both free and charter, she discovers just how little she knows about the history of the world, and the conflict in which her father was intimately involved. On this side of the wall, the world nearly ended two hundred years ago, and something that should have passed beyond the ninth gate of Death has come back to finish what it started and claim the world as its own…
I read this book for English 318 this year; we discussed it in class a couple of weeks ago. I ended up reading the book in about 48 hours, and as far as required reading goes, it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. In fact, I really enjoyed it.
Garth Nix creates a fascinating world in this book, with magic that feels wondrous and otherworldly and places that feel fantastic. His conception of Death as a river with nine gates–nine waterfalls–is extremely fascinating, and the use of the bells to cast spells is really well done. The first hundred pages of this book felt a little bit like the beginning of The Dark Is Rising: it felt really dark and spooky, like being lost in the woods and knowing that something ancient and dangerous was out there with you.
The characters were also interesting and likeable. Sabriel is a necromancer who, in some ways, is afraid of facing death–the fact that everyone has to go at sometime. This is a YA book, so she was basically a young adult thrown in way over her head, tossed back and forth from crisis to crisis. At the same time, she takes charge often enough that she is definitely not just a weak character, driven passively from place to place. When the love interest enters the story, she’s basically the “prince” that rescues him from the “dragon,” repeatedly.
The biggest issue I had with this book was its predictability. It seemed that I could see every plot development and big reveal at least fifty pages before it happened. That said, the main thing driving me through the book wasn’t the plot–it was the setting and the characters. Sabriel has to learn some difficult lessons in order to succeed, and the magic she uses is just really freaking cool. Charter symbols, free magic, the five great seals of the charter, the nine gates of Death and the voices of the bells–cool stuff. That was enough to keep me interested, despite the relatively straightforward and unsurprising plot.
Overall, this was definitely a good fantasy. Garth Nix does a great job creating a sense of wonder, and his characters were interesting too. If you like fantasy and haven’t yet heard of this one, I’d definitely recommend it.
Ugghhhhh…
Man, I am sick. It sucks.
I’m also at a low spot in writing this novel. That sucks too.
When you get towards the last third of the book you’re writing, you start to have doubts about the whole project. Is this really any go0d? Is the story really holding out? Things slow down a lot, and you lose most of the enthusiasm that carried you through the first half. The daily drudgery of writing becomes harder and harder, and pretty soon you can’t see beyond the chapter you’re presently writing. It’s not a whole lot of fun.
Then, as you get into the final stretch, the ending comes into sight and you start to regain a little bit of the enthusiasm. Your goal isn’t too distant, and you start to see how things wrap up to bring you to that final climax and ending. You find yourself believing in the story again, and excited to see it to the grand finale.
Of course, the actual writing gets harder and harder, exponentially, right up until the last page, but you’ve regained the motivation and you have at least a portion of the drive.
Right now, I’m kind of at the low point. It doesn’t help that school is starting to get busier, too. It certainly doesn’t help to be sick, even if it does give me more time around the house (man, I need to get out…I need to get out…). But I’m almost at the end of the second act–one climactic battle, one huge and tragic development, one major try-fail cycle, and then I’m on the final stretch. I’m currently at 64,250 words, so I should wrap up part two by about 68k and finish up the novel at around 100k. Perhaps a little longer, but I don’t think part three is going to be much longer than part two.
One of the major doubts I have about this novel is that it’s too predictable. All of my readers from English 318 have been making their predictions, and…really, most of them are correct. In fact, they’re correctly predicting stuff that happens WAY later, stuff from part three that I haven’t written yet. If this story doesn’t have any surprises, I worry that it might not be as good.
On the other hand, it has some ideas and concepts that are really drawing in my alpha readers, particularly with the Hameji. Over and over again, that’s the comment I get–they want to find out more about the Hameji. This is something that might help me to carry the book, even if it is a bit predictable: show this barbarian spacefaring culture at their most brutal, make them the key antagonists, and then slowly humanize them until the readers understand exactly why they do what they do, and even come to agree with them. That is pretty fun.
So we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, I’m going to go to bed early–9:30 or 10:00. This sickness is just killing me, and I don’t know of anything more effective at curing it than sleep. G’night.
Many Bothans died to bring you this weekend
This past week was pretty crazy. Tests, papers, homework…BLEARGH. Less than satisfying. What’s more, I was starting to get cabin fever from being in Provo so long. Every day, doing the same old thing, going the same old places, seeing the same old sights…
…Then I got a call from my friend Ben Fisher, saying that everyone from the old Capitol House was going down for a camping trip near Moab. Would I like to come?
HECK YES!!!
I basically dropped everything to run away with these guys. First, I had a late paper that I had to finish–stayed up until 5am Friday to write it, took a 3 hour nap, then went to class. CRAZY. Emailed it to professor Ricks, with “many Bothans died to bring you this paper” in the body. Got my coworkers to cover for me so I could get out early, met up with Ben, and then we loaded up our car with the girls and the camping stuff and basically ran down to catch Steve, Warren, Mike, and the others, who were already at the campsite.
What an awesome weekend! Ben had brought a couple of dutch ovens and tons and TONS of good food! Dinner was much better than the stereotypical hot dogs and smores (though we did have smores in the morning). We had cobler, sweet and sour chicken, and fried rice for dinner–awesome! Plus, it was fun just to hang out around the campfire and talk. Good times.
We laid out some tarps on the sandy ground, then threw down our sleeping bags and had a big bivouac under the stars. I fell asleep as Ben was telling us all a story that had something to do with galoshes…I don’t really remember it all that well actually…and then I woke up a couple of hours later and didn’t sleep again the whole night. I hadn’t brought a mattress, and man, the ground was hard…ugh. Note to self–get a better sleeping bag and some kind of a camping mattress. Mike Lebben was the smartest–he brought a cot.
Got up early, restarted the campfire, and we had a good breakfast–biscuits and gravy, and then smores a little while later. Good times. We took off a little later and went up to Arches National Park to do some hiking.
We checked out Delicate Arch and Balancing Rock, then did some rock climbing out near Sandstone Arch. Lots of fun. I got sunburned really bad (of course), but the weather was really nice! Not too hot, with a good breeze up near the top of the mountain.
This was my first time at Arches, and despite some problems with the parking, it was a lot of fun. The desert around Arches reminds me a lot of Petra–lots of sandy red rocks in weird formations, making for relatively easy climbing. In fact, the whole trip reminded me a lot of Jordan and Petra.
One of the most interesting things about these trips is the social dynamic and getting to know new people. I knew all the guys from the capitol house, but I met a few new people as well. Natascha was there (she kept telling me to take a candid picture of her, then posed! The pictures above are some of the few ones where she didn’t know I was pointing the camera at her), and her sister Hannah, who I hadn’t met before, plus her good friend Beth, who always bugs me about the one time I didn’t sub for her at the MTC cafeteria when it was her birthday (for consolation, I told her I was fired the next year–I think it made her feel vindicated to hear that), plus a couple of other friends of the other guys. It was also good to see the guys from the capitol house again. Probably my favorite part of the trip was hanging out around the campfire, or the conversations we had driving the three hours up and back.
In a lot of ways, the weekend was a roller coaster. Beth commented that she was really surprised that all of us from the old Capitol House, with our strong personalities, get along as friends without tearing each other to pieces. It was a valid comment–me and Warren weren’t getting along this weekend, for some reason. I think I was still stressed out about the past week, plus I just haven’t hung out with him a lot recently. So that was one of the lows of the weekend. Another low was getting up Sunday morning, after we’d gotten back, and finding out that I had a 102 degree fever. Not too much fun.
Still, there were quite a few highs. On the way back from Moab, Natascha and her sister got me talking about my mission, and I shared a TON of old mission stories with them. Good times, even if I was more than a little loopy (or perhaps it was BECAUSE I was so loopy…). Also, when I got back, I found out that I’d gotten a letter from the English department–turns out I won first place in the Mayhew short story specialty contest!!! WOOHOO!!! Awesome!
So, anyways, that was my weekend. Basically, it was like half of a summer rolled up in 2 days. It was SOOO good to take a break and get out of Provo! Good times!
Slow but steady
Okay, quick post before I go to bed.
Things are progressing in this novel, slowly but surely, as you can see from the wordcount. Unlike past weeks, I’m not pushing myself too hard, mostly because I’ve got a lot of schoolwork right now and if I were to spend much more time on this novel, I would neglect a lot of the more important stuff. Even though my course load is relatively light this semester, I’m a senior and I’m really not as motivated to do this stuff as I used to be. I get done what needs to get done, but just barely.
I have been successfully getting up early, however. And I’ve discovered something very interesting: I’m more productive when I have less free time. Thursday, I didn’t have class until noon, so when I got on the computer at about 6:30 to write, I opened up the email, opened up facebook…and, by the time I had to leave for class, I had only written about 430 words. Disgusting. But today, when I had class at 9:00 am and still had my Arabic homework to do, I got in about 700 words in half an hour.
I still have a lot of self discipline to learn, I guess. 😛 The scary thing is that my idea, up to this point, has been to keep my time open in the summer so that I’ll be able to write. Err…yeah. We’ll see how that goes.
I’ve been getting a lot of comments back from my alpha readers on Genesis Earth, and it’s been REALLY fun! Even the criticism–as long as it’s helpful criticism, I really appreciate it. This one girl in my ward asked me if she could be an alpha reader, then read the whole thing in only a couple of days. She had a LOT of positive comments–in fact, almost all of her comments were positive–and she said she really loved it! So much so, in fact, that she said she was having withdrawals, so I sent her The Phoenix of Nova Terra v1.2. Hopefully, getting her comments back will give me motivation to pick up that old thing and rework it…goodness knows it needs it. Needs it bad.
My first two novels, The Phoenix of Nova Terra and Genesis Earth are completely different in some ways, but very similar in others.
<spoiler alert>
They both have an important romantic element, and they both have generally positive endings. The book I’m writing now is something of a tragedy, at least at it’s core, and there is a completely different dynamic there. No love stories, no happy resolutions–lots of pain, lots of violence, lots of grappling with difficult issues.
</spoiler alert>
I suppose it’s good to try out a lot of different things early on in your writing career. That’s what I’m doing. At the same time, though…I get feedback on the one novel, and I kind of want to work on it instead of the one right in front of me! And when I think about what I did right in the one I finished, I look at the one I’m currently writing and I think “man, this is crap.” Of course, I keep working on it because I recognize that I ALWAYS think “man, this is crap” at some point before I’m done. Knowing that doesn’t make it easier, however.
Jason from the FLSR writing group said something interesting about that, however. He said that writing a draft of a novel is like climbing a mountain: you do it three times.
The first time, you climb it in your mind as you plan it out. You’re excited and motivated, and busy with all the preparations.
The second time, you actually physically do the work of climbing. It is long, hard, and frustrating, you get lost a few times, the summit is anticlimactic, and the return is boring. You can’t wait until you’ve finished and it’s all over.
The third time is when you look back on the experience after you’re safely back down. No matter how excruciating the climb was, you look back on it fondly and remember all the best parts. You thrive on the memories and wish that you were back up there, standing on the summit, enjoying the experience.
Right now, I’m on my third climb for Genesis Earth and my second climb for Bringing Estella Home. I can remember how miserable I was when I was still in the middle of Genesis Earth–for a while I seriously thought about throwing the whole thing out and doing something else. However, now that I’ve been letting it sit for a while, I’m getting really, really excited about it! I can hardly wait before I can get back and write the second draft.
But that’s not going to happen until I finish Bringing Estella Home. And, no matter how difficult it gets, I swear I WILL finish this book! I’m a chapter away from act III, and that’s too deep into the thing to quit and start something else! This book WILL be finished–if not by April, then by sometime in May!