career decisions – Page 13 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Deceptively productive day and other updates

Man, I revised through about 4k words today…and wrote a 1.5k outline for Edenfall to boot. Not bad, considering how much time I spent putzing around reading publishing blogs and job hunting on craigslist.

Things are going well with WAFH; after a slight dropoff at the end of last week, I’m rebuilding momentum rather quickly. But then again, I’m currently at an easy part in the draft. Pretty soon, I’ll have to throw everything out and start from scratch.

Job hunting sucks…but what else is new? I signed up for an online TEFL certification course, to the tune of $250 (youch!). Hopefully, that will help land me a good teaching job in an advanced pay grade overseas.

I swear, the job market here in the states is so bad that I don’t see any other way around it but to leave the country. Maybe if I was a CS major, or had no qualms selling people crap they didn’t need, or was willing to wipe up elderly people’s butts after they’ve defecated all over the place…no thank you. In any case, teaching English is an adventure, and I very much look forward to it.

In the meantime, there are a few local graveyard job openings that might allow me to write on the side while I babysit a desk. If those don’t work out, hopefully I’ll find something else before my checking account dries up sometime in March.

I’m getting really excited for Edenfall. Last night, as I was falling asleep, I ran through the basic storyline in my head. Fortunately, I remembered it well enough in the morning to write it all down. It’s going to be awesome.

I’m also starting to rethink my philosophy on writing direct sequels. I used to follow Sanderson’s line of thought; it doesn’t make sense to finish the series, because if a publisher rejects the first book, they won’t be interested in the others. However, with ebooks and self publishing becoming more accessible and lucrative, the ability to put out a complete trilogy all at once is a great strength.

I’m thinking very seriously about putting Genesis Earth out there, but it’s the first book in a trilogy, and it would probably boost sales of all three if I could put them all at once. Aneeka gave me a good suggestion today: put out the first book for free, while selling the other two at a competitive price. Sadly, it will probably be a year or two before the others are ready…but my writing skills are constantly improving, so maybe I’ll be able to produce them a little faster.

Which brings me to a very interesting post I read on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog yesterday about writing speed. Thus far, I’ve been shooting to produce one polished book per year, but after reading that post, I wonder if I should shoot for more. Can I write two books a year and still maintain a high level of quality? I’m not so sure; GE and BSH both required five rewrites before I got them fully polished, and Mr. Smith’s numbers don’t seem to take the revision process into account.

This year, though, I’m hoping to produce two polished books: Bringing Stella Home, which I’ve already finished, and Worlds Away from Home, which is my current WIP. I’m only on the second draft, and there are tons of story issues, but I’m working through them fairly quickly. I’ll probably put in another two or three rewrites before the end of the year, and still have time to finish a couple of other rough drafts–Edenfall and The Stars of Redemption (third book), potentially.

Of course, if I land a job, that might throw a kink into things–as will traveling overseas. But as with all things, I’ll take those eventualities as they come.

(image shamelessly lifted from this site.)

Sick (blegh!), submitting, and thoughts on self-publishing

Sorry I haven’t been posting much recently; I came down with a nasty fever this week, and I’ve spent the last two days recovering.

It really sucks, because my two temp jobs just finished, and I was hoping to get into another writing routine. The jobs were sucking up all my time, though it was definitely awesome to have money flowing in.

Anyhow, I caught Brandon Sanderson after his 318 class and asked him about submitting to agents while I’ve got my full ms out. He said I shouldn’t do it; that it would look bad if I had to turn down another request because it’s already out. So for now, I’m just going to sit on it and send out Genesis Earth to other agents.

Genesis Earth keeps getting turned down, but the vibe I get is that it’s more because of the agents’ tastes, not because of the poor quality of the book. So far, I’ve gotten one request for a full, one request for a partial, two personalized rejections, and several variations on “I don’t feel I’m the right agent.”

Even if all of the latter are just nice standard form rejections, that’s enough to tell me that Genesis Earth isn’t a crappy book. So I’ve been thinking, if I run the rounds and fail to find an agent or a publisher, maybe I should take the plunge and publish it for $2.99 as an e-book on Amazon.

Speculation about e-publishing is rampant, and opinions are wildly mixed right now. According to Joe Konrath, everyone (including new writers) should self publish their works–to wait even a day is to give up large amounts of potential earnings. According to Dave Wolverton, however, new writers should definitely not self publish, but try to break in through traditional publishing with as big of a deal as they can possibly get. Both authors have had huge self-publishing successes, so which is right?

Well, I read an interesting guest post by Lee Goldberg on Joe Konrath’s blog that takes the middle ground: start out with a traditional publishing deal, in order to build a name for yourself, but self-publish a couple of e-book lines shortly thereafter.

So far, that seems to make the most sense to me. The science fiction and fantasy community is very tight-knit, and I don’t see myself becoming a major part of it through self-publishing alone. At the same time, it’s very difficult to make a living through traditional publishing in these genres, so once I’ve built up something of a name and a fan-base, it would be good to start self-publishing a couple of e-book lines.

But then again, why not try it out now with Genesis Earth? Well, a couple of reasons. I’m worried that self-publishing would make me look bad when I submit my other stuff. E-book sales tend to take a long time to build momentum, so even though the starting costs are low, the returns don’t start coming in until later–if they come at all. And that’s the second thing I’m worried about–that my stuff will get buried under the flood of drivel that’s swamping Amazon and other e-publishers right now.

The main reason, though, is that I feel I need to do more research to figure out what’s going on. Probably the most valuable thing I can do is get an e-reader and dive into the market from the consumer end, just to figure out how the system works. Without some hands-on experience and a good working knowledge of the field, I’m probably not ready to take the leap.

In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to break in through the traditional route. I might not make as much money as quickly this way, but I hopefully will build my name faster–and at this point, that’s more important to me than revenues.

Some thoughts on the future

I went to the first class of English 318 yesterday, and the lecture got me to thinking about my mid- to long-term future as a writer.

Brandon spent most of the period organizing the class, which was made doubly difficult by the ridiculously small classroom size. I swear, bureaucracies exist only to make life difficult. This year, for the sole sake of screwing with everyone, they are trying to limit his class size to thirty people (twenty students, ten auditors), but that’s a whole other rant in and of itself.

Oh well–at least there’s still room on the floor.

Anyhow, after getting all the administrative stuff done, Brandon talked about the practicalities of being a writer. He made the very interesting point that as a writer, it doesn’t matter where you live–moving further away from the city won’t negatively affect your earnings, unlike most jobs. That means you can save a lot of money on a house if you’re willing to live 50 to 100 miles away from a major population center.

That got me to thinking: maybe, once my writing career starts taking off, I’ll move down to southern Utah for a while. The country is absolutely gorgeous down there, and the people don’t seem hard to live with. Small house with lots of space, maybe a garden, lots of outdoor stuff all over, plenty of privacy–sounds great!

So here’s a tentative map of the next few years:

present–fall 2011: Get a job, build some credit, get TEFL certified. Keep writing, attend some cons (LTUE, Worldcon), develop new projects.

fall 2011–2012: Teach English abroad for a while (Korea, Japan, etc), build up some savings, have some adventures. Keep writing and submitting.

2013–2014: Get a teaching job in the Middle East (gulf region), have some adventures down there, continue to build savings and gain experience. Hopefully I’ll have broken in to publishing at this point; if not, keep on trying.

2015–2020: Come back to Utah (maybe Salt Lake), live off of savings for a while and really focus on building the writing career. Attend cons and workshops, network, write like crazy (the adventures will probably give me lots of material), work on promotion if I’ve already got a publishing deal, etc.

2020–????: Hopefully, somewhere along the line I’ll meet my wife and get married. Also by this time, my writing career will hopefully be earning me a living–enough, at least, to support a family. With all these things in place, we’ll select a home out in southern Utah, settle down, and start having kids.

That’s one plan, at least. When 2020 rolls around, I’ll probably laugh at my naive and short-sighted view of the future–but at least it’s something to work with.

Brandon did make the point that it’s not as hard to make a living as a science fiction & fantasy writer as most people say–which isn’t to say it’s easy, but it is possible.

According to Brandon, about 1,000 to 2,000 writers in sf&f are currently making a full-time living. Most of them are mid listers–authors you probably haven’t heard of, but see their books occasionally in the stores. If your books sell about 5,000 copies in hardcover over the first three years in print, your publisher won’t cut you–and with the way ebooks are changing things, new business models will certainly evolve, presenting a whole new host of challenges and opportunities.

Bottom line, this is something achievable, so long as I keep producing consistently and work hard to improve my craft. I’m very optimistic about the long-term.

Now, all I need is to find a job…ugggggggh.

(image courtesy Postsecret)

Q4 report, 2010

For those of you who don’t know, I do a report on my blog at the end of each quarter, giving a progress update on my writing. I like to think it helps me keep things professional. Whether or not it does, it’s certainly helpful to look back on how I did.

So anyhow, here’s the word count chart:

The red line represents daily word count, and the blue line is a running total for the previous seven days. The chart includes revisions as well as original material; for revisions, I just do a wordcount of the finished version, whether or not I’ve cut out significant chunks of the text or left it largely as-is. Maybe that skews the picture a bit, but it’s the best I can do with the tools I have.

At the beginning of the quarter, I was working 40+ hours per week at a seasonal job, so the writing was pretty slow, averaging a little less than 15k per week. My main project was the fourth draft of Mercenary Savior, which I was struggling to get ready for World Fantasy.

The job ended October 28th, and I didn’t do any writing during the conference, which is why you see the dip at the end of the month. But I took November off to work entirely on my writing, which is why things took off again rather quickly.

That huge peak in the middle of the quarter is from the fifth draft of Genesis Earth, which I completed in about two weeks. The draft was already pretty well polished, but one of my hard sf friends did a read through and got back with a few major science issues which I needed to rectify. Also, I figured it was in need of a language polish, since I finished the last revision almost a year ago and my writing (I hope) has improved a lot since then.

I was pretty surprised at how quickly it went. The book is definitely as good as I can make it, and any further revisions without professional editorial assistance would be a less effective use of my time.

Things dropped off rather sharply, however, because I spent all of Thanksgiving week either on the road or with family. Ah, how I love road trips…but they sure can throw a kink in the writing schedule. I also had a hard time settling on my next big project, which is why things took a while to take off again after I got back.

After starting a sequel for Mercenary Savior and toying around with a short story idea, I decided to do a major overhaul of Worlds Away from Home. Unlike GE, however, WAFH really, really sucks. It took me two weeks just to read through the rough draft and pick out all the troubled spots, after which I rewrote the outline from the ground up and decided to completely scrap half the book. I started the second draft in mid-December, but it’s taken a while for things to really build steam.

Right as I was starting WAFH 2.0, a couple of other writer friends from World Fantasy got back to me with their comments on Mercenary Savior, and pointed out a few problems that I hadn’t noticed before. I started the revision on December 21st and have been plowing through ever since. That accounts for the huge spike at the end of the quarter–like GE 5.0, the draft has a lot fewer story problems, but does need a few things fixed for consistency, as well as a language polish.

Overall, I wrote or revised through about .25 million words this past quarter–some of which were easier than others. I started a new project (Into the Nebulous Deep), polished one of my manuscripts to the very best of my abilities, and made significant headway on revising and polishing two others. In terms of publications, I had a major article published in Mormon Artist, and a short poem accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Leading Edge.

Not a bad quarter. Now, let’s see if I can find an agent and/or publisher in 2011.

The Obligatory New Year’s Post

So I guess I was lying when I said that my last post was the second to last post of the year. Oh well–better late than never, I suppose.

Last night at a party, I told someone that 2010 wasn’t that bad…but it was also the worst year of my life. I suppose that’s true: I got kicked out of my Washington DC internship, almost failed all my classes, spent most of the year unemployed, and never quite achieved full financial independence.

At the same time, I made a bunch of new friends, started two novels and finished another, published an article about the BYU sf&f community that’s garnered some major attention, and generally had a fun time, in spite of the setbacks.

So really, what is there to complain about? Not much. Still, I’m glad it’s over.

As far as new year’s resolutions go, I’ve found that the best way to do them is to make one or two of them–otherwise, come February, you lose steam and none of them get done.

I’ve got a couple private resolutions, but here’s the big one I want to focus on:

Resolved: Read a minimum of one book per week.

I made this resolution back in 2008, but it only lasted until mid-March or so–not so much because I wasn’t reading, but because I didn’t understand how I read.

I’m not the kind of person who finishes every book they pick up; in fact, I only finish about 3/4s of them. If I don’t think a book is good, I stop reading it. Sometimes, even if a book isn’t bad, I end up putting it down just because I lose interest. I’m also really picky; I don’t usually read any fiction that isn’t fantasy or science fiction, because the real world bores me.

At the same time, though, if I want to write well, I’ve got to be constantly reading. And as I’ve written book reviews for this blog, I’ve found that reading widely has helped me to hone my craft.

So anyway, that’s my major resolution for this year. Other things I would like to do:

1 ) get Army fit
2 ) live in another country
3 ) write a novel entirely in longhand, with actual pen and paper
4 ) get three new publications (two are already in the works)
5 ) fall in love with someone–and then make it grow into real love
6 ) get a MIDI keyboard and compose original 8-bit music
7 ) get a digital SLR and become an amateur astral photographer
8 ) get an agent
9 ) land a publishing deal
10) honestly, it’s just an honor to be read

Do these goals sound a little outlandish? Sure…but who cares? We’ve got a whole new year in front of us; anything can happen between now and December 31st!

Happy New Year!

The second to last post of the year

I’ve been figuring out what to say in my Obligatory New Year’s post–resolutions and all that. Before I do that, though, I wanted to give an update on recent goings-on.

First, the writing: I’m making excellent headway in the latest draft of Mercenary Savior, and should be finished by the end of next week. WAFH is coming along too, but at a much slower pace. It’s hard to juggle a good book that only needs a polish with a crappy book that needs a complete overhaul, because the one that needs the most work looks so much worse in comparison. Still, I’m making progress on both.

I just recently noticed, though, that I’ve spent the last two years working almost exclusively on Mercenary Savior. Whenever I took a break to work on something else, it was never more than a month or two before I jumped into another major revision of that project. I worry that that’s going to handicap me, especially as I reach the point of diminishing returns. Mercenary Savior is an awesome novel, and I totally stand by it, but I worry…well, I worry too much. Let’s just leave it at that.

Second: jobs! To my surprise, a number of places have been calling me in for interviews and such. My first pick would most likely be with the BYU Political Science Department, since I already know everyone there and would probably love it. However, a number of other opportunities have been opening up, which means (inshallah) that I’ll probably be employed by the end of next month. Woohoo!

In the mid- to long-term, though, I’m thinking very seriously about teaching abroad. I interviewed today with a program that places people in South Korea, and that could be quite interesting. If I choose to go through with it, I’d probably be shipping out in September, hopefully after completing a TEFL certification program. After working there for a year or two, I could probably land a much more lucrative job in the Gulf, which could be an interesting experience.

Then again, I could stay here in Utah, where I’m much more likely to find a wife…

But you know what? I’m starting to think that that’s a horrible reason to stay here in the bubble. I don’t need to live in Utah to find the right girl (or, as my dad says, for the right girl to find me). She could be anywhere.

And as for all that stuff about the odds being better out here, I’m starting to think that’s a bunch of crap. Yeah, there are a ton of young, available LDS women here in Utah–but there are also a ton of guys, and the competition has like a gazillion advantages on me. I mean, come on, I’m a writer–what have I got on a Marriott School graduate? Even a pizza can feed a family of four…

So maybe I should spend some serious time abroad, even if it does mean fewer dating opportunities. In the meantime, I need to renew my passport and get a job. And who knows what the future ultimately holds? Maybe I’ll stick around. Maybe…

Out of it

Man, I feel like I’ve been so out of it recently. I’ve been getting up around 9 am or 10 am every day, going to bed every night around 2 am or 3 am, and running around so much that I hardly seem to have time to write. Life is good, and between plasma and phone book deliveries I’m earning enough to get by, but my days are very unstructured and that’s not good for my writing.

So here’s what I need: a stable job that facilitates my writing. For the past year, I’ve been working random odd jobs and temporary jobs, and while they pay enough to get by (just barely), the variability and lack of long-term security is just too much to juggle on top of writing. I’ve got to find something else.

Trouble is, I’m afraid that if I settle for a dead end job, it’ll put such a stigma on me that I won’t be able to get a better job later if the writing career doesn’t take off. I’m pretty confident that I’ll eventually be able to make a living off my writing, but I don’t know how late or how soon that’s going to happen. The last thing I want is to end up as a wage-slave without a future.

Anyway, despite the lack of daily structure, I really love the flexibility that this phone book delivery job is giving me. Pay is on a per route basis (like newspaper delivery), and the supervisor is really awesome and easy to work with.

If I want, I can take the mornings easy, do personal chores for a while, deliver a couple hundred phone books and write in the evenings. That’s basically what I’ve been doing these past three weeks.

I really hate going to bed and waking up late, though. That’s not sustainable. If I come to my writing only at the very end of the day, it’s going to be a wash. I might get a thousand words in, but if I’m not consistently crossing the 2.5k threshold every day, my heart really just isn’t in to it.

In any case, WAFH 2.0 is coming along fairly well. I’ve got a good idea where I want the story to go, and the characters seem to be working out. Also, I think I’ve found my big reason for wanting to write this story–I’ll write more about that in a later post.

This next draft isn’t going to be perfect, but hopefully I can get rid of all the major story problems (and there are a TON of major story problems!). I suppose my goal at this point is to make it good enough to send out to my first readers. The rough draft is so full of crap, I wouldn’t let anyone read it if they paid me. Blegh!

Also, I know it’s only been a month, but I think I’m going to do another cover to cover revision of Mercenary Savior in the next few weeks. I really want to get it polished enough to start sending it out–preferably by the end of the holidays–so that’s probably going to take priority. If it goes as fast as Genesis Earth 5.0, I should have the entire manuscript done in about three or four weeks.

And another thing–I’m going to set a new goal: submit at least one thing to an agent/editor every week. Right now, I tend to go on splurges where I’ll send out half a dozen queries, then sit around for a month without really doing much to try to break in. I feel like I need to be more consistent on that front, because submitting is definitely one of my greatest weaknesses. They say everything comes better with practice, so I might as well send stuff out more regularly.

Anyhow, that’s how things are going right now–disjointed and all over the place, but somehow things still get done. I just wish I could get more done, but who doesn’t? Anyhow, there’s always next week–may it be better than the last.

Looking for a life experience

This week, I got hit by some good news and some bad news.

The good news was that I got a short term seasonal job, delivering phone books. That should keep me solvent for the rest of the month, at least until I can find something slightly more permanent.

The bad news? I heard back from the company with the wilderness job, and it turns out I didn’t get it.

So now I’ve got to figure out what to do with my life for the next year. My writing career, as always, is plan A, but that’s more of a mid- to long-term thing. And honestly, that’s how I want it.

I feel that I need to do something big–to go on some kind of adventure. I’ve been working hard to hone my craft, but I feel that I need to acquire some kind of significant life experience, not only to boost my writing, but just to grow as a person. It’s tempting to look for a comfort zone and camp out in it, but I don’t think that would be the best thing for me to do right now.

Before I graduated, I decided not to go to graduate school yet for a few reasons. First, I was sick of school, and felt that I needed a break. Second, I didn’t know what to go in for, and didn’t want to go to grad school just to postpone figuring things out.

Third, I wanted to get out of the cloistered halls of the university and gain some real world experience. I’d spent my whole life up to that point in academia, and was sick and tired of being sheltered from the “real world.” I wanted to get out and see what things were really like on the other side of the ivy.

For the past eight months, I’ve been bouncing around in Utah, working odd jobs to get by. It’s a different set of stresses and problems, and while I can’t say I’m unhappy, I certainly can’t say that I’m fulfilled. Being unemployed is about as unfulfilling as you can get and still be breathing.

I could probably find and hold down a graveyard job until my writing career takes off, but somehow that doesn’t seem much better. I don’t just need a job to facilitate my writing–I need a major life experience to broaden my perspective on things. I was hoping the wilderness job would provide me with both of those, but unfortunately that’s no longer an option.

So what next? Here’s an idea: maybe I could go abroad and teach English for a year.

I used to joke with all my friends that if I didn’t get the wilderness job, I’d probably leave the country and go on an adventure–but really, why not? A chance to see the world, use the teaching and language learning skills from my degree, and acquire new skills that might come in handy later on. Plus, when I come back, I’ll sure have a lot of interesting things to write about.

The big question in my mind is what I need to do to get ready. I suppose the best thing would be a TEFL certificate–I could probably get one of those in a month or two through online classes. But…is that really the best path? And what is the best program to go through? A couple of friends of mine who have taught English abroad for the past couple of years say you don’t need a certificate to get a job, but they were working with kids, not adults. And for the English teaching jobs in the Middle East (especially the gulf), you really do need certification.

So I guess I still need to think it through. Right now, my top three destinations would probably be Japan/Korea (for the earning potential), Saudi Arabia (for the Middle East experience), or the Czech Republic (for the chance to connect with my roots).

I don’t know, though. I’ve still got to weigh the pros and cons. I’ll probably do that in a later post–but for now, that’s what I’m thinking about. And the more I think about it, the more attractive it becomes…

Change in direction

Just a quick update on things before I go to bed.

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to put Into the Nebulous Deep on hold for the time being. The main reason for this is that it’s a direct sequel to Mercenary Savior, and if the first one doesn’t sell…yeah, not the best business decision.

I figure the best way to do it is to have a series of indirectly linked standalone novels set in the same world. That way, a publisher could pick up any one of them after rejecting all the others, but if you want to bundle them into a series and sell them together, you can do that too.

That’s my strategy–I like the universe I built for Mercenary Savior, and I’m going to keep it for the foreseeable future, but for now, the trilogies and duologies will have to wait. In any case, I’ve written down my major ideas for ITND, so I’m sure I’ll be able to pick up where I left off if/when MS sells.

Instead, I’m going to start working through the second draft of Worlds Away from Home. It needs a ton of work, but having finished the rough draft, I know that the story has potential. At this point, I’m actually very enthusiastic about it, so hopefully that will help drive momentum.

Right now, I’m in the outlining stage. I’m taking a page from Dan Wells and using his seven point story structure to draw out all the plot lines and character arcs. When I did this for MS 4.0, I had to outline about fifteen arcs before I felt it was sufficiently tight; it will probably be the same for WAFW 2.0 as well.

Currently, I’m in the middle of outlining chapter six. If all goes well, I’ll finish outlining and start writing by the end of the week.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of submitting. Sent out another short story to Leading Edge–oh, and by the way, they accepted a poem of mine, so expect to see that in a forthcoming issue. I also submitted the latest draft (5.0) of Genesis Earth to a few agents, so hopefully that will lead to something positive.

In other news, I’m looking for a job again. Oh joy. I’m hoping things will work out with the wilderness job, but if not, I still need something to tide me over for the Christmas season. It’s stressful, but at least I’m not broke yet, which is good. If I can’t find work and have to buy gear for the wilderness training, however, I just might be.

I’m confident things will work out, however. I’ve found that they always do, even if not in the way I wanted or expected. Just keep swimming.

In the meantime, check out this AWESOME 8-bit remix of one of the tracks leaked from Daft Punk’s upcoming album for the movie Tron. Dude…this makes me so incredibly happy. And the 8-bit art! I nabbed it and turned it into my avatar for the Quark forums. In case you want to use it, here’s a copy.

8-bit Daft Punk FTW! The only thing more epic would be if Daft Punk and E.S. Posthumus joined forces–but if that happened, hosts of heavenly angels would descend upon our planet and usher in an era of global peace and universal prosperity. But dude, I would give my firstborn son to acquire that music.

You laugh, but I’m only half joking…

Confessions of a delinquent blogger

Man, so much has been happening, but now that I’m working an eight to five job, I never have the time to blog about it. It’s 2am and I’m running on only four hours of sleep from the previous night. Oh well, it’s a weekend. Here goes.

I passed the 50k mark for the rewrite of Mercenary Savior. I’m surprised how much I’m changing the draft. I’m especially finding a lot of slow chapter beginnings and thinly veiled expository lumps–not of scene descriptions so much as worldbuilding. Gotta remember the iceberg concept (to only include about ten percent or less of your worldbuilding in your story’s narrative).

I interviewed a few more people for the article on the “class that wouldn’t die.” Good stuff, all around. I met with Cara O’Sullivan today, and she had a very interesting comment about why there are so many LDS writers of science fiction and fantasy.

In her opinion, Mormon literary culture tends to push the more talented writers into sf&f because of the extreme lack of freedom in other genres of LDS writing. In mainstream and literary LDS fiction, there are so many expectations for the writers: for example, that the story will have a clear message, or that it will contain a certain brand of Mormon sentimentalism, etc. In science fiction and fantasy, OTOH, there’s much more freedom; therefore, LDS writers tend to gravitate that way.

I also had a phone interview for the wilderness job last Thursday. I think it went well, but we’ll find out at the end of the month, I suppose. Questions that caught me off guard include: “how do you define success?” and “how would you respond to something you heard secondhand about an employee from another shift?”

Finally, I recently got hooked on an old abandonware DOS game called Princess Maker 2. It is so freaking awesome. Basically, you are the father of this ten year old girl, and you have to raise her from childhood to adulthood.

There are so many possible ways to do this: build her fighting skills and send her on adventures, build her artistic skills and have her win dancing/painting contests, build her refinement and send her to court to build her social reputation, etc etc. There are over 70 different possible endings, including some really weird and crazy ones!

And yes, I know, it seems strange that I’d go for a game this girly–but dude, you have no idea until you try it out. It’s like being a father, but with magic and knights and dragons and stuff! So totally awesome!

The flipside is that I spent almost the entire day playing this game. Yeah…still got in 2.5k words, but I was hoping to put in somewhere around 6k or 7k. Man, I haven’t been this addicted since Alpha Centauri. Will it last? I don’t think it will, but then again, I don’t know. The bigger question is whether this is a game I can play in moderation (like Star Control II). I certainly hope it is, but I don’t know.

In the meantime, I’ve got five weeks to write 70k words. Lets go!