Tag: Brandon Sanderson

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.

Worldbuilding

This is what I was doing the other day.  The FLSR (Foreign Language Student Residence) at BYU has chalkboards in the common rooms, and I just discovered that those can be WAY useful for diagramming your story.

On this occasion, I drew out a couple of space battles, according to how they’d play out with the FTL technology I’ve been thinking up and a few other things.  I worked things out logically and figured out a few basic rules of combat–some basic strategies that you can expect people to follow.  I then took what I know about the Hameji, the main antagonists in my novel, and figured out how they would use their special abilities to counter these tactics.

Pretty fun.  Now, when I go back and rewrite the beginning, I can make the opening space battles feel a lot more vivid, immediate, and engaging.

I finished part 1 of my story last week, and now I’m at the beginning of part 2.  I’ve got the novel roughly outlined out in my head, and it’s following fairly closely to the three act structure.  Not exactly, but pretty close.

According to Brandon Sanderson (and several other people), act 2 is the most difficult part of the story.  It’s where  you need to do the “blue collar work” of simply sludging through and writing the thing.  It’s where things get complicated enough that you can get lost if you don’t know how to plot things out.  Considering the fact that I’ve only gotten this far with two other novels I’ve written, I’m expecting this part to be really difficult.

Only 599 words today, and none on Sunday (more because I was feeling sick than anything else).  It really is getting easier to get hung up on a single scene; even if I know where I want to be three or four chapters from now, if the scene right in front of me isn’t working out, it’s almost impossible to move past it and get things to work.

Today I took a big piece of butcher paper from upstairs and drew a diagram of everything I’ve written so far, scene by scene.  That was immensely helpful.  Now I know what this chapter is about, what I need to do to bring it to a natural close and leave a hook for the next few chapters, and how to develop my characters and what they’re doing.

While taking a shower, I figured out what Estella needs to do next, and how to take her story over to the end of act 2 and carry her to act 3.  That’s something of a breakthrough.  I’m excited.

And…it’s late.  I’d better get some sleep.