Tag: Brandon Sanderson

Christmas break 2009

Christmas was great this year!  I spent it in Texas, with my extended family–the family on my dad’s side, who I almost never see.  The break has been a lot of fun so far!  No school or work obligations, lots of time to lay back and relax, plenty of games to play and books to read, plus fun people to hang out with–it’s been great!

Most of my cousins are young teenagers right now, and are a lot different than I remember.  However, I was able to get some presents for them that I think worked out well.  David is into his iPod, so I got him some U2 albums (How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and Joshua Tree).  Savannah and Nash are both avid fantasy readers, so I got Savannah Mistborn: The Final Empire and Nash Victory of Eagles (the one chain bookstore in Midland didn’t have His Majesty’s Dragon, so I got him another from the series).  Daniel, I didn’t know what to get, so I gave him my old camera.

Ashley (who is older) was telling me about how she lived abroad and wants to spend some time in Australia, so I got a travelogue on Australia by the same guy who did A Walk in the Woods. Based on her reaction, I think she’s going to like it!

It was much easier to get stuff for direct family, since I know them better.  For Kate, I got Soulless, a steampunk / paranormal mystery novel that had an awesome release party at World Fantasy 2009.  I don’t know if she’ll like the book, but the party was very steampunk / regency fantasy with the cosplayers, so I think she will.  I got Danny The Screwtape Letters, since I know he likes that kind of religious fiction–turns out he’s been meaning to read it for a while!  Mykle, I got the first book in C. S. Friedman’s latest series, since I know that she’s his favorite author–24 hours after Christmas, he’s already 200+ pages into it!  And for Sarah and Mykle, I got them both $20 gift certificates to Pioneer Book in downtown Provo.  They were very happy with that!

I wish I’d had the time to get presents for everyone in the family, but with moving out, coming here so quickly, and not having a car (or much of an idea what they wanted), it just wasn’t very practical.  I did get my mom a gift certificate to B&N, but I haven’t gotten anything for my dad yet.  I will, though–he wants stuff from our Christmas memories, and I happen to have all my old childhood journals in my carry on luggage.  Lots of Christmas memories in those!

I’m satisfied with what I got, even though it wasn’t all that much.  Besides the generic clothes, socks, ties, candy, popcorn, and other stuff, I got a spiffy tool kit from Robin and a flexible tripod from pop.  Very nice!  They will add some weight to my luggage, but I think I can give some of it to mom or pop to bring home.

As far as writing goes, I’m less than 13k words from the end of Bringing Stella Home 2.0.  It’s not quite ready for alpha readers yet, but I want to get it ready soon (it’s going to take so much work! <sob>).  If I average 2.6k words over the next five days, I’ll have it finished in time to start something new by new years!

That’s the goal.  As for what the next novel is going to be about…let’s just say it’s Homer’s Odyssey meets C. J. Cherryh and Ursula K. Le Guin in space, where Telemachus is a girl and the story is primarily from her point of view.

I hope I can pull it off!

Summer roundup

Alright, with the first week of school already over, I figure I should recap and evaluate my writing progress this summer.

When school ended in April, I was still waiting to hear back from Brandon Sanderson’s agent about an internship.  My backup plan (which I started as soon as classes ended) was to stay in Provo and write full time.

Sanderson’s agent ended up taking on a different intern, which ended up being the best for both of us, since I get the sense that he was looking to mentor someone who would go on to become a professional agent.  Me, I was just looking to network and develop some connections in the publishing world, which I did anyway (at least in the local Utah scene).  Besides, Provo is WAY cheaper than New York!

From the beginning, I treated writing as a full-time job.  I set project deadlines, daily and 7-day wordcount goals, and spent somewhere around 8 hours a day working on my various projects.  I submitted a full to an editor from the BYU Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference and partials to the other two editors.  I also submitted to the Writers of the Future contest and to the LDS Publisher Christmas story contest (much smaller, but geared toward a niche market).

I started keeping my stats on May 25th, using a spreadsheet to keep track of my daily wordcount for each of my projects, the daily total wordcount, the 7-day cumulative wordcount, and any writing I did for synopses or revision notes.  Since BYU’s summer recess begins in April, I missed the stats  for the first three weeks or so, but I kept consistent records since then until now.

From May 25th to August 31st, I wrote 244,065 words in 8 projects (3 short stories and 5 novel drafts).  I averaged 2,490 words per day.  Adjusting for Sundays (I typically take Sundays off), I averaged 2,906 words per day.

My goals were to write 4k words per day, and to shoot for a constant 7-day total of 24k, but to never let that total dip below 12k words.  In 98 days, the 7-day running total only went below 12k eleven times–on those particular days, I was either traveling, moving out, moving in, or extremely busy with back-to-school chores.  For the two weeks I was on vacation, I still wrote more than 12k words each week.

Interestingly enough, out of the eight fiction projects, only one was a rough draft–a short story that I worked on for two days and never completed.  The vast majority of my writing went into revising novels that I’d already written.

I completed the first draft of Bringing Stella Home in early June (my third complete novel rough draft).  Later, in July, I began the second draft.  I’m currently just over halfway through with the revisions and hope to finish by October 10th.

I started a revision of my first novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea, but decided midway through that I was running up against diminishing returns and decided to drop it (I completed the rough draft in April of 2008–it was my first finished novel and the reason I started this blog, waaaaay back in August 2007).

I started a new draft of Hero in Exile, making some drastic revisions, but found it difficult to juggle more than one writing project at a time and put it on the back burner.  I may or may not pick it up again once Bringing Stella Home 2.0 is finished.

I completed the third draft of Genesis Earth and started to submit it.  I will probably do one language/readability edit before the World Fantasy convention in late October and try to sell it while I’m there.

Overall, the summer was a practice run to see if I could write full time and survive the insanity.  I always feared, as a child, that if writing became my full time job I would come to hate it.  I found, however, that writing full time (8+ hrs/day, 6 days/wk) only made me enjoy it more.  Now that school is back in session, I already wish I had more time and mental space to dedicate to my writing.

I miss the summer, but not because of the lazy days, or the parties, or the vacationing–I miss the opportunity to write full time!  Provided I can find a way to support a family off of this, I can definitely see myself turning this into a career.  In the meantime, I’ll keep honing my craft and start working on getting an agent.

Now, more than ever, I feel that breaking in is more of a question of ‘if’ than ‘when.’

🙂 🙂 🙂

Goal shift for Ashes

These past few weeks, I’ve been killing myself trying to write Ashes of the Starry Sea. I’ve made some good progress, as you can see on the sidebar.  Today I broke 200 pages.  Not too bad.

However, the pace has just been killing me.  4k words per day is something I can do…but 4k words per day on the same project?  It’s burning me out.

What’s more, to keep up the pace, I’ll have to put all my other projects completely on hold for the month of July.  That, or write MORE than 4k per day, which would be excruciatingly painful.

So I looked at my calendar tonight and figured that if I pushed back my self-imposed deadline for Ashes to the weekend before school starts, I can cut my daily wordcount in that book in half.  2k per day in Ashes–not bad.  That I can do.

What’s more, with the other 2k, I’ll have enough room to work on my other projects, Genesis Earth 3.0 and Bringing Stella Home 2.0.  I’m starting to get really excited for those, very motivated.  For Bringing Stella Home, I’m practically chomping at the bit.  I want to make that story shine!

Inshallah, juggling two projects at a time will be helpful, not harmful.  During the school year, when I was juggling work, school, and writing, it didn’t work.  Now, however, with writing the only major obligation, I’m hoping that two projects will help keep my creative mind fresh, if that makes sense.  When I get burned out on Ashes at 2pm, I can switch to Genesis Earth and work on something that excites me.  When I get burned out on that at 9pm, I’ll be excited about Ashes again.  Etc etc.

Besides, if I want to be a professional writer, project juggling is an important skill I’ll need to learn.  Inshallah, I’ll get it to work this time.

Wow!  If all goes according to plan, I’ll have all three novels finished and polished before school starts at the end of August!  July to write Genesis Earth 3.0, August to write Bringing Stella Home 2.0, and both months to finish Ashes of the Stary Sea 2.1.  Yeah!

In other news, Charlie finished Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson and reviewed it on her blog.  I was also reading Warbreaker, but about 200 pages in found that it just wasn’t working  for me.  I’ll probably finish  it someday, but for now, it’s on hold.

I hate to say anything bad about it, since Brandon has been something of a mentor to me (and his Mistborn books are some of the best fantasy that I’ve read!), but I shared many of Charlie’s complaints with the book.

The biggest thing, however, was the way he fell into long, frequent info dumps about the world.  Every time, I felt that it stopped the action and jolted me out of the story, like reading a college textbook.  The world was okay, but the way he presented it just didn’t work for me.

That, and the way the characters acted.  When Siri got carted off near the beginning to be the wife of the God king, the fact that she hardly showed any fear or anxiety about have sex with the guy just threw me out.  She was just like “oh, well,” and was nervous about everything else EXCEPT for the sex part.  From then on, I had believability issues with her character.

Finally, let me just say that when I write my steampunk flower novel, I want to make one of the characters a Circassian janissary.  I just think it would be really cool to put a Circassian in the book, as either a good guy or a bad guy (or, more likely, a grey-area guy).  If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out the video below:

Genesis Earth pitch and other assorted thoughts on writing

Today I got together with Charlie after her work and discussed how to pitch my novel Genesis Earth.  We did it in the following way: I took a few minutes to explain what the book was about, while she wrote down the words that stood out and excited her.  Later, I took the words and worked out a thirty second pitch for it.

It was HARD!  I spent nearly two hours after meeting with her just to write out a stupid four or five sentence blurb!  Selling your work is totally different from producing it.  Anyway, here’s what I came up with:

Michael has never set foot on Earth, but it haunts him as much as the legacy of his parents.  So when his parents build the first artificial, traversable wormhole, he sets out with his mission partner, Terra, to explore the Earthlike planet on the other side.  They arrive only to discover an empty, abandoned world and an unresponsive ghost ship advancing towards them.  When Terra’s schizoid tendencies threaten her mental stability, they both must learn to trust each other in order to confront the mysteries of the new universe–and the personal insecurities that keep them from what they truly desire.

I have that down to 29.6 seconds.  I should probably cut it shorter, but as it is it only has about half of the words that Charlie wrote down.  If I cut it any more, I’m afraid it just won’t make sense.

It’s a start, though, and talking with Charlie helped me out tremendously.  I realized that when I’m selling this stuff, I need to focus on the characters.  Sure, all the worldbuilding stuff is interesting, but it’s not what hooks the reader.  If all you’ve got is thirty seconds, don’t cut to the chase–and don’t give a synopsis!  Synopsis =/= pitch!

Charlie was exhausted, so as we talked, she started ranting in a way that can be described as bluntly honest.  Interestingly enough, most of what she said was actually quite helpful, not only for Genesis Earth, but also for my other projects.

The most helpful thing she mentioned was that when you’re writing characters, you often have to pick out their distinctive character traits and consciously overemphasize them.  If you don’t, the reader might not pick up on it and find your characters stale and boring.  While I hate melodrama and try to keep my novels free of it, I also need to keep my characters interesting.  It’s a fine line to walk, but one that you can’t avoid.

She also said that it’s very easy for protagonists to be more boring than the main characters.  I think this is probably because we rely on formulas and cliches when we’re starting out, since that’s much less risky than breaking the rules we don’t yet fully understand.  The protagonist is the character closest to the trope, while the side characters can do what they want without threatening the integrity of the story.  

Charlie said that because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of a boring protagonist, you need to consciously choose the traits that are interesting about that character and work them into the story as much as possible.  I realized, as she said that, that my main protagonist for Hero in Exile is, indeed, a boring character.  I need to pick out the things that make him interesting and consciously work those into his character.

This got me to think about planning.  I’ve found that if I try to outline a novel when I set out to write the rough draft, I end up telling a completely different story.  However, if I try to write a second draft without an outline, I have a hard time keeping things straight and fixing all the stuff I missed while discovery writing the first draft.

(I’m really upset now, because I was going to mention something that I need to foreshadow in the next revision of Genesis Earth, but…I totally forgot what it was!  GAH!!!  That’s what I get for not outlining!)

Charlie then started to rant about some of our writing friends, and how she would never listen to criticism on her writing from someone she considered to be an inferior writer to herself.

That part was…interesting.  While I agree 110% that arguing with criticism is a sign of a poor writer, I don’t think it’s especially useful to rank writers in terms of “good” or “bad.” I would like to believe that I can learn something from everybody, and not just what not to do.  Perhaps that’s optimistic, but I think it’s also practical–I’ve found that a bloated ego can shoot you in the foot six ways to Sunday before you even know what’s going on.  I’ve found that not just through one unfortunate experience, but through several.

Brandon Sanderson said something very interesting in the last email he sent out to his English 318 class: he said that in New York, editors and agents don’t rank manuscripts by “good” and “bad,” they rank them by how much work they think it needs to be publishable.  There is a distinction between the two, just as there’s a distinction between recognizing something that works really well and something that follows the rules.  

That’s about all I have the time for now.  I’ve got to get to bed.  Late night internet == bad idea.

“That’s what it looks like when the infection sets in.”

So said Howard Tayler at CONduit today when he saw the expression on my face at the Aspiring writers Q&A panel.  We chatted a bit afterward, and he said something very encouraging: that if I continue to pursue my writing career with the same hunger he saw on my face, he believes I will be successful.  Awesome!

This weekend, I attended CONduit 2009 in Salt Lake.  It was my first con experience, and I had a great time!  Besides being just plain fun, it was very educational and inspiring.

I felt a bit unnerved at first to be surrounded by so many people that I barely knew, in a comfort-zone shattering kind of way.  I went up with  Charlie and Laura, though, and it helped to have friends sharing the experience.  By Saturday, we were all getting around very well.  By the end, I figured that I did know a lot of people there–and, surprisingly, that a lot of people recognized me.

I came away with a TON of ideas and things learned!  Here are just a few of them:

  • One of the panelists on Friday suggested this revision method: use search-and-replace to color all filler words (such as “really,” “just,” “very,” “was”; basically, the words I always overuse on this blog).  That way, you can easily see which sentences you need to rewrite.
     
  • Howard and Sandra Tayler mentioned, almost in passing, how they made it a matter of prayer before deciding to go full time on the web comic thing.  I definitely need to include the Lord more as I try to figure out how this writing thing is going to fit into my life.
     
  • In their Saturday panel, Howard made a very interesting remark about cultivating your personal image.  I realized that if I want to be seen as a professional by editors and agents, I need to adjust my wardrobe and appearance accordingly.  I don’t necessarily have to go the suit-and-tie route–Howard’s  image involves jeans and a button-up shirt–but my dress and appearance should say “I am competent, sharp, and serious about what I do.”
     
  • Dan Willis had a very interesting suggestion for writers: get and use business cards.  Networking is one of the most important business activities that aspiring writers can, should, and must engage in, so using business cards at conventions is very important.  It sounds so obvious, but I’d never given it much thought.   I’ll have to get some printed up for myself before I go to World Fantasy and Worldcon later this year. 
     
  • Between panels, I got into a fascinating conversation with Eric James Stone about networking at these conventions.  From that conversation, I learned how important it is to be genuine and personal as you network, to listen more than you talk, and to never see people as mere stepping stones for your career.  He got an anthology contract with Kevin J. Anderson through a con, and he never approached him with that attitude–ever.  Other people he saw who did, Anderson treated politely but never contacted.  You should certainly have a pitch ready, but you should also give time for contacts to develop.  Over time, people will remember your face and recognize you at these events.

conduit2009-jawaConventions are definitely great for networking, but I absolutely hate walking up to a stranger and asking for favors.  It makes me very nervous.  As a result, I’ve adopted the philosophy of asking myself what I can offer the person I’m trying to connect with, rather than asking something of them.  I tried to follow this philosophy at CONduit, even if all I could offer was a compliment on something they’d said on a panel.

Using this strategy, I was able to get into a lot of interesting, genuine conversations with some of the big names at the con.  Charlie, Laura, and I got into a long, interesting conversation with L. E. Modessitt at one point.  He gave me some advice on women, which Charlie found hilarious (he must have seen us bickering/bantering earlier).  Had some good conversations with Dave Wolverton as well–he probably recognized me as the crazy fanboy who had him sign a poster of his first (now out of print) novel.  It was also good to see Brandon and talk with him–I thanked him for his helpful (if harsh) comments on my English 318 final.  Other people like James Dashner and Julie Wright recognized me from LTUE, which was really cool.

If people in the local scene are starting to recognize my face and my name, I must be doing something right.  That’s very encouraging.  Plus, the convetion was just plain fun. To top it off, the guy in the jawa costume was awesome.  All around, good times.  Very good times.

Miscellaneous news updates

I’m so bad at writing catchy titles for my blog posts.  CORRECTION: I can come up with catchy, sexy, exciting titles for my blog posts, it’s just that the first one that comes to mind is always dull and uninteresting.  Well, too bad.  To quote my mother: “suffer!”

Item One: State of the summer plans

Real quick: still haven’t heard back from the guys at JABberwocky.  I’m starting to think their either really disorganized (not out of the realm of possibility), or they’ve picked someone for the internship and it’s not much of a priority for them to get back to me.  I’ll email them tomorrow or Friday and ask what’s going on; probably I’ll stay in Provo, at least for spring.  But you know what?  I’m actually okay with that.

Lately, I’ve been staying at my sister’s apartment, hanging out with her and her husband, and spending most of the day at the HBLL writing (and chatting with Charlie, who seems to be perpetually bored at her nine-to-five job).  Should I end up staying in Provo, I don’t think that’s going to  change much.  I might work a couple part-time and/or temp jobs, and definitely attend a few cons and writers’ conferences, but that’s about it.

Oh, and maybe go on a random road trip every once and a while.  Fun! 🙂

Item Two: State of Genesis Earth

The rewrite is coming along very well!  I’m over 80% finished now and I think it’s getting better.  Incrementally, certainly, and there remains a lot of room for improvement, but at least it’s headed in the right direction.

I’ll probably write a different blog post on this, but I got Brandon’s comments back on the first three chapters (I submitted those for the final) and his comments were…interesting.  Helpful, certainly, but a lot more negative than I thought they would be.  Basically, he got really confused in chapter 2, and that ruined it for him.  I’ve got to completely overhaul a couple of those scenes to make sure they’re clear.  Fortunately, he really liked chapter 1, so if I can fix chapter 2 in the same way I fixed chapter 1, I think I’ll be in business.

Item Three: Other projects

With all this free time, now that school’s out, I think I should take on another writing project.  Back in the fall, I tried to do this and utterly failed at it, but now that I’ve got the time I think I can manage.  The question is, which project should I choose to work on first?

Option 1: Bringing Estella Home

Summary: When their home system is conquered by the ruthless Hameji barbarian warfleet, James leaves his home and sets out to rescue his older brother and sister, who have been captured and enslaved.  Little does he know, his brother is being turned into a Hameji killing machine and his sister has become one of the Hameji overlord’s personal concubines.

This is the most recent project.  It’s about half finished, but it needs some major revision work before I can comfortably continue where I left off.  It’s got a lot of action, but it’s also pretty dark and tragic.  Not a happy space opera, that’s for sure.

Option 2: Hero in Exile

Summary: Tristen (lamest name ever–I’m totally going to change his name if/when I pick up this project again) fell from the sky in an escape pod when he was only eight years old and was raised in the desert of Nova Gaia by a clan of desert tribesmen.  When he sets out with Mira, the chieftain’s daughter, for the legendary Temple of a Thousand Suns to ask the keepers of the Holy Archives of the Earth of Legend about his true parentage, he has no idea of the disparity, depravity, and danger he will meet in the world outside the small, isolated community of local tribesmen–or of the corruption and intrigue within.

I started this one in the fall, planned it out extensively, and then, halfway through…realizing I was writing a completely different story.  If I pick up this project, I have virtually no idea where I’ll end up with it.  However, it’s a fun space opera with a lot of action and a fair amount of romance (unlike Bringing Estella Home which has virtually zero romance.  No, slaves and concubines don’t count).

Option 3: The Phoenix of Nova Terra

Summary: When Ian finds himself stranded on a distant planet, the only thing he wants is to meet up with the rest of his crew and go home.  Little does he know, the native humans already venerate him as their chosen savior and their king has selected his daughter to be his wife.  When his journey takes deep into the forbidden lands, from which no-one has ever returned alive, Ian begins to uncover the secrets of this long-lost world, and the alien artifacts that will forever alter the paradigm of galactic human civilization–for its good or its destruction.

Gosh, how do you write a paragraph summary for a 168,000 word epic?  This is the first complete rough draft of a novel that I’ve written, and it is HUGE.  It spans dozens of worlds, six separate civilizations (including one alien and one AI), seven or eight viewpoint characters, and a friggin boatload of internal and external conflicts.  INSANE.  What’s more, it requires a lot of work–the rough draft was REALLY bad.  But you know what?  It might be kind of fun to try out.  It’s definitely a very fun, very positive story, with lots of intrigue and lots of romance.

So, the question is: which one should I pick up first?  Which ones should I work on this summer?  I’ll probably only be able to do two, plus Genesis Earth; which ones should I choose?

Item Four: Looking for Beta readers

 

This last item is pretty brief: I’m about to finish up with the Genesis Earth rewrite, and I need some beta readers to help out with it.  I’ve already got about a dozen people or so, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some more.  I’m looking for as much criticism and feedback as you can give me–anything helpful, including specific problems as well as your broader, overall impressions.  

Who wants to help out that can read this story by the end of May?  I really appreciate it!  Email me or post a comment if you want in (but please don’t ask to read it unless I already know you from real life).

Aaaaand…this post is almost 1,100 words long.  Yikes!  See y’all around!

(images courtesy Inkygirl: Daily Diversions for Writers)

Living in a state of limbo

Graduation was today.  I’ve got another year left, but a lot of my friends are moving on.  I took my last exam of the semester on Monday, and my contract at the FLSR ends Saturday morning at 10 am.

And I have no idea where I’ll be living for the summer.

There’s a chance I might be going to New York for an internship with Brandon Sanderson’s agent.  My friend Steve has been planning to move to New York in June, to try and break into writing for Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, and I thought it would be really cool to live with him while working/interning/whatever in the publishing world there.  I asked Brandon if he knew of any openings with editors/agents for a summer intern, and he got back to me with the news that his agent was looking to take one on.

Well, I got in touch with the guys over at JABberwocky literary agency at the beginning of the month, sent them a resume, had a phone interview, and…haven’t heard back yet.  They told me they’d get back to me after the London book fair, which was this past weekend, so…I’m still waiting to find out what they say.  I think the interview went okay, though I heard from Brandon that they’ve got a lot of other people itching to get this internship.  College graduates.  With degrees in editing and publishing.

So…I don’t know what’s going to  happen.  It would be WAY awesome to go to New York City this summer, and really awesome to be an intern in the publishing world.  REALLY awesome.  I’ve been following the publishing world, especially the sf&f corner of the publishing world, for a couple of years now.  It would be great to get in there and see it up close, see how it works, see what kind of career opportunities exist there and meet the people who are involved in all that.

If it doesn’t work out, though, that’s still okay.  I’ve got a backup plan.  It’s not as awesome, but it still works.  If I don’t go to New York, I’ll probably spend spring here in Provo, taking a break from classes and working odd jobs here and there (private English tutor–my boss at the FHSS Writing Lab can set me up with that–Arabic tutor, freelance editing, temp campus jobs during some of the conferences out here, etc).  I’d also spend some serious time working on my writing, and attend some of the major local sf&f conventions, such as BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers and CONduit.  I might even be able to go home over summer term and attend Worldcon in Montreal.

I’ve got two finished rough drafts right now and two others that are only halfway finished.  With a relatively free summer, I could almost certainly have three polished, finished drafts by the time school starts again.  Perhaps I could even have them all finished before Worldcon 2009 in August, or finish all four of them before World Fantasy 2009 in October.

It would also be a good chance to see whether I can handle the writing lifestyle.  I’ve been writing fairly steadily for the past two or three years, doing between 500 to 1,000 words a day, but it was never the primary thing I was doing.  If I have the summer off from all my other obligations, I’ll be able to explore a little bit what it’s like to write full time.  It doesn’t exactly translate into something nice and shiny on a resume (not like an internship, at least), but it would give me some valuable and useful personal experience.

Besides that, taking time off would help me to figure out what I want to do post-graduation.  I’m aiming to be a professional writer, but I’ll probably graduate from BYU long before I sign my first book deal, so it’s good to have other directions to go.  Trouble is, whenever I’m busy with school I never take the time to think existentially about what I’m doing and what I want to do.  I’m so focused on the day to day aspect of things that I find it hard to make any long term plans.

Of course, either way is going to help me figure that out.  Whether taking time off to work on my writing or working as an intern for a literary agency, I’m going to gain experience that will help me figure out what I want to do after graduation.  So I can expect that to happen no matter where I go, I hope.

So…until I get an email / phone call from the guys at JABberwocky, things are up in the air.  It’s a little bit nerve wracking, especially with all of the moving out / moving in going on around here.  I know I won’t have any trouble getting a spring/summer contract here at BYU, but New York…I have no idea.  I’ve got family up there that I can stay with for a few days until I get settled, and there’s the housing list for the New York stake, but man, it’s expensive over there.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll end up staying here in Provo after all.  We’ll see how it goes.

(Image courtesy David Iliff. Published under a CC attribution 3.0 unported license.)

Revision, revision, revision

I finished revising chapter 6 of Genesis Earth today. It took a lot more time and effort than I’d expected. Even though I’d revised half the chapter yesterday, I started from the beginning and changed a lot of the other revisions I’d made. I think this version is stronger, but I’m not sure how it’ll fit in with the other chapters.

The thing about revising is that if you change something fundamental about the character / setting / plot early on, it changes everything that happens later, meaning that you have even more revisions to make. It’s like ripples on a pond, or switching tracks at a railroad junction hundreds of miles before your destination. Right now, a lot of the changes I decided to make earlier are making much larger changes necessary later on. That’s one reason why this chapter took so long to revise.

Another reason is because I felt I’d told it wrong the first time. A lot of my alpha readers said that my novel was weakest on conflict; they didn’t feel that it had enough conflict to carry them through the longer parts in the middle. I realized, when I reread it, that the conflict was mostly there, it just wasn’t emphasized properly.

A lot of these revisions had to do with connecting the events better, starting late and exiting early, creating more of a build up to the climax. They also involved changing the order in which I explained certain things–it created more tension to bring up certain things earlier, before the action. Tension and release.

I think I failed to do all that in the rough draft because I’m more of what Sanderson calls a “discovery writer.” The middle sections are always the hardest for me, because I have to figure things out as I go along. I’ve tried planning everything out from the beginning, but when I did that, the story that came out was completely different than what I’d planned.

Trouble is, if I’m discovering my story as I’m going along, the middle sections are going to be much more choppy and rough. I can write a pretty good beginning, and I think I can pull off a decent ending, but the stuff in the middle is just all over the place, every time I write.

Fortunately, I think the revision process is going well. It takes a lot of time and effort, but it’s producing results. I think chapter 6 works much better now, though it could probably use a little more tweaking just to fit it into the context of the story as a whole. Better finish the 2.0 revision before I do that, though.

For a while, I thought that with school out and all this free time on my hands before I really go anywhere, I could finish the 2.0 revision before the end of the week. Now, I’m thinking it will probably take more time. I could probably be about 75% done by the end of the week, though. Even with all these deep revisions, I’m plugging along at a healthy pace. And honestly, this is the kind of work I enjoy. It’s a challenge, but not an unpleasant one at all.

Running the gauntlet

In the past five days, I have written somewhere on the order of 10,000 words. None of them has been fiction (at least, not explicitly–more BS, if anything).

One monster history term paper, one middling poli sci essay, and two exams requiring 2,000 and 1,000 word essays. Blegh. Like pulling teeth.

The upside is, it’s almost finished! Just got my history exam left, and it shouldn’t be too hard. There is an essay, but the teacher already gave us the two questions from which he’ll pick the one on the test, and a short answer section. The rest is multiple choice. Not too hard, especially because I’ve really enjoyed the class.

The two exams I took today…let’s just say I’m glad it’s behind me. The deeper you get into your major, the more you have to take dumb classes about things you don’t care just to graduate. Blegh.

There is one other exam besides the history one, but I’m not counting it because it’s Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class. His final exams consists of the first three chapters of you novel, plus a query letter and synopsis that he’ll mail out to the editor/agent of your choice (sending out the submission is a required part of the final). I did some research, found an agent, sent out a query email. If I get a response, I’ll send out the chapters to her. If not…I’ll send it out somewhere else. It didn’t seem like she wanted people to send her partials without her requesting it, so I didn’t send that out.

You know, it’s funny how the title of your novel seems a whole lot less clever when you’re finally sending it out to people.

And, as if things weren’t crazy enough, Utah decided to play jokes on us with the weather. We got our worst snowstorm of the year…on April 15th? Holy cow! WTH? (that’s “what the heck,” for all of you non-Utahans)

Here are some shots from my photoblog, before and after (or rather, before and during).

Crazy!