Tag: career decisions

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:

Thoughts after finishing Legend by David Gemmell

I just stayed up a bit late, finishing Legend by David Gemmell.  Wow.

According to his  wikipedia entry, Mr. Gemmell wrote Legend in two weeks while waiting to hear if his cancer diagnosis was terminal.  After reading this book, I can definitely see how that influenced the writing.

This book is incredible, one of the most authentic, thought-provoking things I’ve read.  It is…just incredible.  I’ll articulate my thoughts better when I write the review, but let me just say that reading this book made me a better man.

I want to quote the passage that impacted me the greatest, because it has to do with some of my more existential thoughts about being an aspiring writer–no, being a writer and aspiring to be an author.

“All things that live must die,” said Vintar. “Man alone, it seems, lives all his life in the knowledge of death.  And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death.  For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose.  A man must pass something on–otherwise he is useless.

“For most men that purpose revolves around marriage and children who will carry on his seed.  For others it is an ideal–a dream, if you like.  Each of us here believes in the concept of honor: that it is man’s duty to do that which is right and just, that might alone is not enough.  We have all transgressed at some time.  We have stolen, lied, cheated–even killed–for our own ends.  But ultimately we return to our beliefs.  We do not allow the Nadir to pass unchallenged because we cannot.  We judge ourselves more harshly than others can judge us.  We know that death is preferable to betrayal of that which we hold dear.

I don’t want to write books just to entertain.  I don’t want to fill pages with words just so I can get paid and take care of my temporal needs.  Both of those are important, of course, but I don’t want to write “good reads” that people put down and completely forget about after a few months.

At the same time, I don’t want to write just to express myself either.  I don’t think I deserve any special treatment for being a writer, and I don’t suffer under the delusion that I’m somehow gracing the world with my genius (at least, I hope I don’t).  The world owes me nothing, and I’m certainly not the most qualified person to  be out doing this kind of thing, making the world a better place by telling stories.

What I do want to do, however, is write books like Legend, or Mistborn, or The Neverending Story, or Ender’s Game, or Spin, or any number of other books.  Books that you read and remember, because they changed or inspired or impacted you in some profound way.  Books where you read the last hundred pages in a breathless sprint, because you connect with the story in a deep and personally moving way.  Books that help people to understand the world better, to appreciate its beauty, to see the people in your life in a new light, and connect with them in new ways.

I can tell you exactly when I crossed the threshold from childhood to adolescence, down almost to the very day.  I crossed that threshold by reading a book: Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech.  For what I was going through at that pivotal time in my life, that book had a profound, formative impact.  It helped me to see my family members in a new light, to understand a little bit better the changes I was experiencing in my own life, and to get through an emotional period that was particularly rocky.  When I read that book, I changed as a person.

That’s the kind of stuff I want to do as a writer: pass something on.  Something meaningful.  Something that will make this world a better place by connecting with someone, anyone, on a deeply personal and intimate level.  Something that will help peope to stand tall and live their lives more fully.

I don’t know if I’m getting this across effectively, but those are my thoughts at this time.  Legend is a damn good book.  It’s in good company, along with all the other books that have just made me go “wow.” Someday, I hope something I write will be up there on the same level for someone else.

Heaven’s library

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things to do before June 8th

BYU’s Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference is coming up in less than a week, and I’m pretty excited for it! I’m signed up for the afternoon sessions only, but it should still be a great experience. From what I’ve heard, this conference is several steps up from CONduit and LTUE in terms of professionalism, and I want to be ready. Here’s my list of things to do to prepare:

  • Spot edit Genesis Earth for the really major stuff that I can reasonably fix in the next few days–especially the first three chapters. A lot of the feedback I’m getting suggests that this novel might comfortably fit in the YA genre, which means that I’ve actually got something I can market to these agents and editors. I want it to be ready (or, barring perfection, at least as ready as I can make it).
  • Work out a good elevator pitch for Genesis Earth. I’m not going to ambush anyone with it, but I want to be ready in case I get into a conversation with an agent/editor and they ask about it.
  • Research all of the agents/editors/authors coming. The list is here.
  • Polish shoes.
  • Do laundry.
  • Iron shirts.
  • Shave. Probably every day of this thing.
  • Get business cards? I’m not entirely sure about this. I suppose it couldn’t hurt. Anyone know where I could get a few dozen cheap/free ones on short notice?
  • Brush up on recommended conference etiquette. Miss Snark has several great posts on this in the archives of her blog.
  • Buy/reuse a cheap notebook and get ready to take lots and lots of notes. Sorry, guys, I probably won’t be recording or posting mp3s of this conference. It’s not a fan event, after all, and I don’t want to do anything that would get me in trouble.

Anything else I’m leaving out?

Breaking 90k and other mundane excitements

(I almost always have trouble figuring out titles for these blogs posts.  I mean, my writing life isn’t all that exciting–I just write.  Check out my study abroad blog from last year for true (if old) excitement).

I broke 90k words in Bringing Stella Home today.  According to my goal of 120k, that’s the 3/4 mark.  Yay!  I’m happy to say I’m going strong, and will probably “finish” this thing in a couple of weeks.

I say “finish” because it needs a LOT of work.  Oh yeah.  Not even ready for the alpha readers yet.

But I’m excited for the story.  Dave Wolverton at CONduit this past weekend suggested full and complete immersion as a way to write well.  I think that applies here: without school or a job, I basically write all day.

Speaking of which, I haven’t quite gotten up to doing 4k words steadily each day.  Right now, I’m hovering at around 3k, which is twice as much as my daily wordcount during the school year, but not yet up to where I want it to be.

However, getting up to that level is like training your muscles.  Through a number of small, intangible things, I feel that I’m working myself up to the 4k/day level.  

For example, I’ve been opening my word document and plugging out the first few hundred words BEFORE I open a web browser and waste an hour of time checking out my favorite blogs and websites.  That’s progress.

I’ve also started writing more in the time that I set aside to write.  These days, I usually write for a couple hours from 11pm to 2pm, take lunch and do something to recharge my creative batteries, do some more writing in the midafternoon (usually not too much), then take dinner, head out to the library (because the parking gate opens at 7pm) and write until about 11:30pm when the LRC closes.

In each of those three blocks of time, I used to be getting around 800 to 1,200 words done.  Today, from 11am to 1pm I wrote about 1,500.  Progress.

The bar says that I only did about 2,9k today, but that was because a good friend of mine is going active duty in the Air Force and his farewell party was tonight.  Also, Leading Edge took up the 7pm to 9pm slot.  So, without those things, it probably would have been 4k.

However, I’ve noticed something interesting: doing the math, 4k/day equates to just over 120k per month.  120k is a freaking novel!  Taking out Sundays, that’s still over 100k, which is also an acceptable novel length.  

So…if I were really doing 4k/day, would I be writing a rough draft of a novel each month?  Or are most published writers doing less than 4k words of new material each day?  I wouldn’t be surprised–this is not a business you get into because of your glowing math skills.

Regardless, 4k/day is still my goal.  Heck, if I get used to writing that much and find that the practice improve my craft, I might even go up to 6k/day.

Oh, and one more mundane excitement: Charlie got freaked out by a spider today and had me come over to hunt it down.  After sprawling out on her bathroom floor and looking under all the appliances, I didn’t find it–but I did find the hole that it probably escaped through.  I didn’t think it was much of a deal, until I read this post from Miss Snark’s archives.  So…I may start making it a practice to shake out my shoes from now on, especially since my room in my sister’s apartment is slightly buggy.

Fortunately, I usually wear my old pair of Birkenstocks these days.  Awesome footwear.  I quite literally love them to pieces.

4k a day

It’s late, but I really need to write something of my recent thoughts on this blog, so this is going to be a stream-of-consciousness word-vomit sort of post.  But please keep reading, it probably won’t be uninteresting.

I haven’t been posting much on this blog recently, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing recently–specifically, the practicalities of trying to make this my career, getting serious about it, etc.  

In fact, for the past three weeks, it’s been just about the only thing on my mind.  I’ve been listening and re-listening to just about every episode of writing excuses, the LTUE mp3s that I recorded, the old English 318 mp3s from last year, and various other talks and speeches on the subject of writing as a career.

I don’t have the time to really explain all my thoughts on the subject, but to sum it up, I’ve been angsting over it quite a bit.  Will I be able to break into publishing in the relatively near future, or does my writing need years and years more work?  Am I making a mistake to spend my summer just working on my writing?  Am I making a mistake to be pursuing this so vigorously as my primary career path? and a whole lot of irrational angsting besides all that.  You get the picture.

Well, I’ve gotten sick of doing all this thinking and now I think it’s time to just do it.  I heard back last week from the agency in New York–turns out they already have someone, so I won’t be going there for the internship–but that’s actually alright, because it means I can take the summer to really focus on improving my writing.

Of course, if I’m not doing anything else, I need to be treating this like my full time career.  The standard thing I keep hearing, at least from the professionals in the local scene, is that the average per-day wordcount is 4k.  Depending on deadlines and other projects, that may increase, but the average daily wordcount is 4k.  Since I plan on making writing my focus this summer, that’s my goal: 4k a day.

Last week, my wordcount was above 10k, but that’s actually a bit misleading.  I wasn’t writing 10k words of new material each day, I was doing a quick mid-draft revision to add in a few crucial characters and scenes that I didn’t know I needed until I got midway through the book.  It wasn’t even much of a revision;  when I saw places where my writing really needed work, I made a note for later and kept on skimming.  I only stopped to rewrite the sections that needed major changes in order to set things up correctly for later.

As a result, I feel that I’ve lost a degree of momentum.  Now that I’m through all the old stuff, I’m writing entirely new material, and it’s very hard.  I’ve only been skimming the last few chapters and scenes; as a result, when I picked things up this morning, I had difficulty getting into the story again.

I did 3,248 words today–that’s 3.2k words of new material–and by the end, I felt like the momentum was building and I was  starting to get back into the story.  A couple of weeks ago, when I was still angsting uselessly over the whole writing career thing, I kept feeling like this novel I’m writing is just crap.  Now, however, I’m starting to see my faith in it return.

Writing is like that sometimes: the further you are from your story, the worse it seems, while the more you get into the story, the more faith you’re able to have in it.  If you don’t have faith in the story you’re trying to tell, you just won’t be able to write it.

I could say more about what I’ve learned from my experience these past few weeks, but this post is getting long.  To sum it up, that’s my new goal for this summer: 4k a day, as if I’m doing this full time.  

At that rate, I’ll probably finish this novel sometime before the BYU writer’s conference (which I will be attending, at least the afternoon sessions–just registered yesterday).  The personal deadline I set was June 15th, after the conference, but I think I can get it in early.

Okay, enough word vomiting.  Time to get some sleep.

What did you do with your summer?

This is the question I’m kind of worried people will ask me (or I’ll ask myself) when fall rolls around.  It’s looking more and more like I won’t be going to New York for the internship, so that begs the question–what else are you going to do?  Are you going to be productive and do something that helps boost your future career, or are you going to waste your time and have this gaping hole in your resume?

Well…I don’t know what to say.  I mean, I could use a break, but I also don’t want the days to turn into weeks and the weeks to slip away until I have nothing to show for myself.  I suppose the best thing to do would be to make some plans and set some goals.

I do already have a backup plan–or at least, a vision of how I want to use this time.  And honestly, I’m kind of glad that I’m not going to New York this summer, partially because it means I don’t have to get catapulted out of my comfort zone here in Provo (not a good reason), but mostly because it means I can focus on the things I really want–and need–to do.

I mean, half of me seems to be freaking out, afraid that I’ll just end up wasting this time.  But the other half is both calm and optimistic, and with good reason.  My sister and her husband (in a surprisingly generous gesture) offered to let me stay in their spare room over the spring term without paying any rent (just so long as I help out with groceries, dishes, that sort of thing).  I have no financial stressors, no pressing obligations, access to vast amounts of resources (ie BYU campus), lots of friends in the area that I can call on for support, as much free time as I could possibly ask for…I mean, if ever I had any freedom to spend my time doing what I want to do and working towards what I want to work towards,  now is that time.  There are virtually no restrictions, and that’s awesome.

Of course, with all of that freedom comes the freedom to screw it up.  But I won’t be doing that.  I know exactly what I need to do, and how this summer can help me achieve my long term goals.

I want to be a full time writer.  At least, that’s what I think I want.  This summer, I can test that out and see if the full time writing thing is something I can actually stand.  Since I don’t have any pressing work or school obligations, and no financial obstructions either, I can devote this time to work on my writing, hone my craft, and produce something that I can take to  an agent/editor and sell.  I’ve been writing nonstop for the past two years, but always as an on-the-side kind of thing.  Now I can see if this is something I can actually stomach for doing full time.

Goal #1: produce on a consistent basis as if writing were my full time job.

And, while regular practice is one of the best ways to hone your craft, it’s better to both read and write–read the kind of stuff that you’d like to write, and use what you read to help improve your writing.

Goal #2: read and review, on this blog, 15 works of science fiction / fantasy (that’s roughly 1 per week, with a little bit of room for leeway).

And, so long as I’m honing my craft, I shouldn’t restrict myself to just reading and writing.  There are a number of good conventions and writers’ conferences, both here in Utah and on the east coast where I’m from.  Besides the opportunity to hear some great talks and panels by experts on the craft, I might also be able to make connections in the sf&f community, the publishing world, and may even have the chance to sell some of my work.  At the very least, I can practice doing all that stuff.

Goal  #3: attend at least 3 conventions and/or writers’ conferences.

One of the things I want the most from this summer is the long-term perspective and vision I need to make some very important life decisions in the near future.  Part of that is trying out the full time writing thing, but it’s not limited to that either. I’ll be graduating soon, probably within the next year, and I still don’t have any post-graduation plans.  Hopefully, the free time this summer will give me a chance to take a  step back and make some plans.

But while thinking things out and weighing my options is definitely part of doing that, another very important part is listening to the spirit, praying about my options and plans, and connecting with the Lord on these things.  Towards that end, I need to work on my personal spirituality, my relationship with the Lord, and take the time to really listen on a spiritual level.  As a summer nomad, working on this individually is going to be even more critical, because I won’t be settled in one ward for a long period of time.

Goal #4: consistent daily scripture study.
Goal #5: worship at the temple at least once weekly.

I think it was my grandfather who said that as long as you’ve got your health, you can do just about anything.  It’s true–being in good physical condition can really help you get everything else done in a much more efficient and effective way.  Besides, it’s important for it’s own sake.  With all this free time, if I didn’t exercise at all I would certainly be neglecting myself.

Goal #6: work out at least five times a week and eat healthy.

And finally, while I still have enough grant money left over to cover just about anything I want to do this summer, it would be wiser (and helpful for my resume) to carry a few jobs and at least break even.  I’m not paying rent, but I am paying for food, gas, car and health insurance, and tickets to all those conventions and conferences I want to go to.  Besides, if I don’t spend the grant money now, I can spend it later on a poli sci internship next school year, possibly in Washington DC or even Scotland.

Goal #7: find part time employment and try to break even.

So those are my seven goals this summer; we’ll see how it works out.  Usually, I’m not that good at keeping goals and resolutions, but I think these will at least point me in the right direction.

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.)

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!

Almost at part 3

Wow, writing this novel is going a lot faster than I had thought. At the same time, though, I sometimes worry that I’m not going fast enough.

I broke the 50k mark this week, and I haven’t even gotten to any of the major climaxes yet. This thing could easily go to 90k words before the end. With only 6 1/2 weeks left in the semester, can I finish it in time?

At the same time, I have NO IDEA what I’m doing this summer. Really. I have a lot of possibilities, but no concrete plans. With the semester coming to a close in a little more than a month and my housing contract with the FLSR coming to an end, that is a little bit unnerving.

Whatever I do, I want to devote some serious time to revising and rewriting these novels, getting them polished. Finding a spring/summer contact isn’t that hard in Provo; the question is whether I can find a job. I also want to go to the Middle East for a while, and if I go home to Massachusetts in August (which I would like to do) another possibility is Worldcon 2009 up in Montreal.

As far as how Bringing Estella Home is coming, it’s coming along very well. I have all of the key climaxes mapped out in my head, and the one that ends part 2 and begins part 3 is only two chapters from where I am now. I don’t normally keep a detailed outline of the whole novel, but I can usually see at least one chapter ahead. Kind of like the faith-promoting story of how a train conductor only has to see as far as his headlights, except that with novel writing, getting derailed is a very real possibility. I know I’ve crashed and burned in my novel attempts before. Fortunately, this one seems to be right on track.

This semester hasn’t been too hard, but last week was somewhat harder than usual. However, it seems like things are starting to calm down into another lull (knock on wood), so I think I can shoot a little higher as to where I want to be at the end of this week (in terms of my novel). I’ve found that I can do about one viewpoint scene per day, one chapter per week. This week, I’m going to shoot for two chapters by Monday. It seems a bit tough, but since I’ve already written the first scene in chapter 9, I think I can do it.

Also, as an experiment, I’m going to try to wake up early and get in a solid hour of writing before I start my day. I found a random website the other day (lost the link, sorry) that showed the routines of several famous, successful writers. Almost all of them woke up early in the morning and did most of their work before noon. Right now, I write almost everything between eleven at night and three in the morning, so I’d like to see if I can change that. I may fail miserably, but what the heck. Now is the time in my life to figure out what works and what doesn’t.