daily routine – Page 3 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

10k words and going strong

Today I crossed the 10k mark for my newest project, Into the Nebulous Deep. It’s a little bit behind in terms of nanwrimo, but I’m confident it will be on par before the end of the week. I wrote 2.6 words today, and I’m hoping to keep that fairly steady as I move on into the month.

Since I’m between jobs at the moment, I’m hoping to get my daily word counts up to between 4k and 5k and keep it there consistently. Sounds daunting, but I know it’s possible because I did it back in June and July of 2009. If I could enjoy that kind of productivity again, that would be awesome.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a good, hard look at my routine from that time to figure out how I did it. Here are some of the key things that stood out to me:

1) I was waking up each morning in a timely manner.
2) I was exercising regularly.
3) I was splitting my time between two projects (one revision, one drafting).
4) I would leave my apartment and go somewhere else to write.
5) I had a short ritual I’d go through to focus myself on the project.

Of these, I think the most important were 1, 2, and 3. A strong, early start to the day is always helpful, and exercising is not only good for you physically, it boosts your creativity for a short period of time as well. For that reason, I recently bought a pair of good running shoes and started running. Today was the first day, and it felt great!

Three was the most surprising, because whenever I was busy with school, I found it impossible to juggle two projects at once. But out of school, it makes sense: work on the first one until you hit a rough patch, then shift gears and work on the other until you find what you need to pick up the first one again. It helps to exercise two parts of the brain, so juggling between revision and drafting t is probably for the best.

As for going somewhere else, I’m reluctant to do that since my only other computer is a tiny little netbook–but if things get rough, you may start seeing me around the Provo Library more often. I remember over the summer, this one chapter in Worlds Away from Home was just killing me, so I took my netbook to the Provo river trail, sat down on a bench, and muscled my way through it. It surprised me how quickly I punched through it–because if I were at my apartment, I know it would never have gotten done. It was just too tough.

The last one was kind of a quirky little thing for the second draft of Mercenary Savior (I called it Bringing Stella Home back then), but it would be a good idea to do the same with these other projects. For Mercenary Savior, it involved watching the opening credits of Fistful of Dollars. For Into the Nebulous Deep, I’m not sure what the ritual will be, but whatever it is I’ll make it awesome–without spending too much time on it.

So anyways, that’s what’s going on on the writing front. In response to a nibble from an agent, I’m doing a fifth draft of Genesis Earth, but I haven’t gotten past the first chapter (which I posted). Soon, I’d like to be doing about 2k to 2.5k on Nebulous Deep per day, and 2k to 2.5k in the revision of Genesis Earth.

There’s more, but I’m starting to fall asleep at my keyboard, so it’s time to wrap this up and post it. Keep up the writing, nano-ninjas, and good luck!

Dog dead workdays and killing your characters

This post is going to be super quick because I’m dead tired.

Due to power surges and computer glitches, I had to work overtime today and yesterday at the warehouse, so I really haven’t had time for anything except writing and a little socializing at Leading Edge. However, things are going well. I’ll get the extra hours off on Friday, which means a big chunk of free time to do whatever I want.

I broke 3k words today in Mercenary Savior. It was awesome. I love revision–taking something good and making it really shine. Just hit some major climaxes and killed off a side character, which is always exhilarating if you do it right.

As a footnote to that, I’m reading George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, and I just reached the part where he kills off the first major character. What’s more, he was my favorite character in the book so far!!! AAUGGH! Why, Mr. Martin? Why??? Yet I must confess, killing him was necessary to take the story to the next level of awesomeness <grumble>.

I’ve been thinking a lot about killing characters recently, and I figure the best way to do it is to recognize that everyone has to go sometime (in real life if not always in fantasy), and to write accordingly. We tend to ignore our own mortality, when really, there can be so much meaning to it. After all, to die for something is to make the ultimate sacrifice. If you make sure your characters die for a reason–either heroic or tragic (or both)–then I think that’s the key to make it work.

The Book Academy Conference at UVU was great; I’ll do a writeup on that soon, probably over the weekend. I probably won’t post the audio files, but if you want them, just email me and I’ll send you the link.

I’ve been waking up early each day this week, and it’s been great. I’m so much more productive in the morning, writing wise. It’s like a computer: when you first boot up, your desktop is so clean. With only the startup programs running in the background, everything feels uncluttered.

At the end of the day, though, it’s the exact opposite. You’ve got maybe a dozen applications running, and it’s all too easy to get distracted by switching from one to the other. What’s more, you just don’t have the energy to get things done.

The downside (if you can call it that) is that it’s only midnight and already I’m about to collapse. Oh well–guess I’ll just have to go to bed earlier.

In closing, let me leave you with this really weird, slightly disturbing anime clip I found on youtube of a vegetable committing seppuko. I guess it has something to do with the rest of the post, seeing as I went on a tangent about killing characters. Anyhow, this is the friendship among vegetables…

Just another update

Just another quick update, before I crash.

Went to the Book Academy Conference at UVU today. It was fun, with several excellent panels by some local authors. More about that in a later post.

My new mp3 player arrived today: a refurbished iRiver T10. An ancient, nearly obsolete machine, but it’s got a good quality microphone, which all the other brands lack. Besides, if it’s anything like my old iRiver ifp-890, it’s built to last. With 1 GB of storage instead of 128 MB, it’s a step up in the world.

The revision of Mercenary Savior goes well, though it also goes slowly. Only 1.2k words today, when I was hoping to finish this last chapter. I’m right between part II and part III, with the twist ending that…well, I won’t give it away. So far, I’ve managed to add a scene and rearrange several chapters without adding more words than I’ve cut. That’s good–I need this draft to be tight.

I also dropped the money for plane tickets to World Fantasy 2010. They came to about $300, which was cheaper than I was expecting. I’ll be sharing a room in the next hotel over with Eric James Stone for about $50 per night, but there’s room for others if you’re willing to sleep on the floor. Just let me know.

I think I’m going to experiment with my schedule next week and try waking up early to write instead of staying up late. Maybe if I get the writing in first thing, it will help things flow later, and I won’t always feel like I’m playing catch up. We’ll see.

One final thing: I’ll post more about this later, but I have a great idea for a direct sequel to Mercenary Savior kicking around in my head. It would involve James leading the people of the Colony on an exodus into the heart of the Good Hope Nebula, where they would be completely cut off from the outside world–kind of like the pioneers. It would also involve letting James grow up and giving him a romantic interest or two, something that I didn’t really do in the first book.

And before you say it, yes, I know the advice is to not waste time writing a sequel to a book you haven’t sold yet. I think I could make this work, though. Mercenary Savior, while far from perfect, has a lot of potential–perhaps the most potential of anything I’ve written. I’d be surprised if I didn’t eventually find a home for it, and when I do, having a sequel already written can only be a good thing.

More on that later, though. For now, sleeeep.

Weird slump

Man, I’m going through a really weird slump these days. Yesterday, I wrote 2.5k words, and today, I only wrote 1.5k words–this, in spite of the fact that I’m only working about three hours a day. It’s kind of frustrating.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m right at the end of this novel. I’ve got 10k words to go, only 12 scenes, but I’m kind of burned out on it. I already know it’s going to need another revision after this one, and while I’m trying hard to fix things, it’s more on the overall story level, not on the detailed polish level, where I usually thrive.

The real truth, though, is probably that my days are split up so weird. I work from three to six, and most days I have obligations in the evening (Leading Edge, Institute, FHE, etc). To add to that, Tuesdays and Thursdays I donate plasma in the mornings, which usually takes up a couple hours. When you’re already in the mood to procrastinate, it doesn’t help it when your free time comes in 2 to 3 hour chunks.

Oh well. At least I’m still producing.

CONduit starts tomorrow, and I am totally stoked. Last year was excellent, and I’m looking forward very much to this year as well. I don’t think there’ll be too many agents and editors there, but there will be a ton of other writers, most of whom I expect I’ll see at other major conventions across the country.

Speaking of conventions, I’m thinking very seriously about attending Dragoncon this year. When I spoke with Dan Wells at the Provo Library event a couple weeks ago, he told me that DragonCon is going to be big for writers this year, on account of Worldcon being in Australia and World Fantasy being in Ohio.

I’ve got a friend in Atlanta who can put me up and/or has friends who can as well, so housing shouldn’t be too difficult. My Dad’s giving me the old Buick, and it’s got lots of space, so I could probably fit four or five people in it. If we took turns driving, we could probably make it out there nonstop, and membership only costs like $80. At ten tanks of gas split by five people, plus maybe $100 for food and other expenses, it seems like a pretty good deal. Anyone interested?

If I’m going to Dragoncon this year, I suppose I should make it my goal to get Mercenary Savior polished and ready for it. That should be enough time–a month or two to let it sit, then a couple months to polish it. Definitely doable.

In the meantime, I’ll be finishing this draft this weekend, inshallah. I’d like to finish it on the bus to Salt Lake, but I doubt that’ll be the case. 10k words is a lot of writing, and I’ll be busy all day at the con. I’ll let you know how it goes, though–stay tuned!

When life gets in the way

Just a quick post before I go to bed. Things are coming along well with the revision of Mercenary Savior–I fully expect to be finished by next week (hopefully by Tuesday).

That said, these past couple of days have been very unproductive, and it’s been very frustrating. I feel as if tons of little things have been getting in the way.

Work is from 3:00 to 6:00, which can be nice but breaks the day in half, and donating plasma always seems to suck up a ton of time. Besides that, I’ve been applying for work, and THAT certainly takes up quite a bit of time mental space.

The main problem, though, is the urge to procrastinate. These little things wouldn’t pop up all the time if I 1) were unusually excited about this book, or 2) had the iron discipline to buckle down and just do it. I’m working on both of those, but in the meantime, it’s frustrating.

Still, I am producing. I wrote about 1.5k words yesterday, and 2.3k today. Nowhere near the 4k+/day I was hoping to write, but not bad. Things are progressing.

Part of it may be the fact that my only computer right now is a netbook. Netbooks are nice for traveling (I carry mine literally everywhere), but they aren’t great as primary machines. Also, they tend to break down faster than regular laptops. Mine’s probably got another year left, but the wear and tear is starting to show.

To remedy that, I’m thinking very seriously of building my own computer. Tomorrow, BYU is having a surplus sale, and I’m hoping to pick out a decent LCD monitor or two, plus a keyboard and mouse. I’ve picked out all the other parts online (I’ll blog about that later), but I’ll probably hold off until the end of the month to buy them all. I want to prove to myself that I can make more money in a month than I spend.

I know that a new computer won’t solve my writing problems, but it will be really cool, and it is something that I need–if not this very second, then at least before my netbook breaks down. Plus, I’m hoping to learn a lot from the experience of building it from parts.

Other than that, things are good. I will definitely finish Mercenary Savior by next week before CONduit, and the revision is significantly better than the old draft. Before long, inshallah, I’ll have another manuscript to float around with editors/agents.

Life in the Real World

So it’s been a week since I graduated, and life in the “real world” is very different from academia. In some ways, it’s scary, but in other ways, it’s actually kind of fun.

Freedom from schoolwork is HUGE. Seriously, I had no idea how much day-to-day stress came from school until now. Without this or that assignment hanging over my head, I feel incredibly liberated. I can go wherever I want, or do whatever I feel like doing, and the only restrictions on my time are the ones I set for myself.

Of course, life isn’t stress free–far from it. Employment is definitely a problem. I need to find a job and start making some kind of an income. That’s the main stressor right now–how am I going to sustain myself?

In some ways, it’s kind of a game. I’ve got my budget lined up, with projected monthly expenses, and that tells me how much money I need to make to break even. The object of the game is to find creative ways to make that money.

This is what I spend most of my day doing. Some interesting prospects include:

Freelance editing. A roommate of a friend of mine has actually contracted with me to do this for a company he recently started. It isn’t steady work, but $40-$60 per job for basically reworking a piece of fantasy, it isn’t bad either.
Freelance translation. A friend of mine from the FLSR told me all about this. Basically, I just need to set up a free account at proz.com, post my resume, set up paypal, and start taking jobs. Again, it isn’t steady, but it’s promising.
Temp work. As luck would have it, there’s a temp agency across the street from my apartment, and a friend of mine already works there. It’s just filler until I get a real job, but it seems to pay fairly well, though the labor is mostly grunt work. Still, better grunt work than office work.
Working for a teleresearch company down the street. It isn’t the best kind of work, but it’s a job, it’s got flexible openings, and it’s local.
Anything legit on craigslist.
Anything from the Wilk boards (though it’s kind of skimpy right now).
Donating plasma. Hey, $65 a week is better than nothing.

So that’s what I’m thinking about doing to hold me over until I get a real job. My goal for May is to make more money than I spend.

Really, though, I don’t need a job for the money–I’ve got enough cash saved up to last at least through the summer. I need a job for the sense of security. It’s hard to focus on writing when I don’t know how I’m going to support myself.

Another danger with unemployment is the lack of structure. When you don’t have to get up and go to work, you find yourself getting up later and later. If you don’t have to do anything, you generally don’t accomplish very much. It’s hard to stay productive in the face of so much free time.

Still, I’m going to try. I’m keeping up with my writing, doing about 3k-4k words per day on the revision of Mercenary Savior. I’ve got a handful of submissions out on Genesis Earth, and I’m going to keep a steady number of submissions out at any time. I’ve also been submitting my unpublished short stories, so we’ll see where that goes.

In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a day job while I play the game of financial independence. It’s an adventure.

Freaking busy

Sorry for not posting; I’ve been ridiculously busy these past few days. As in, I don’t think I can remember ever being this busy. Maybe when I was taking PL SC 310, but then again…that was more stressful than busy.

I’m working two jobs (two awesome TA jobs, by the way), I’m taking 15 credit hours of classes, and I’m applying to 9 or 10 internships in Washington DC for the winter. All of my classes are upper level, including my capstone class, which is pretty intensive.

I read maybe 7 or 8 academic articles a week and about 150 pages of philosophy and other texts. I grade dozens of papers, tests, and quizzes, write papers (anywhere from 6 to 12 pages each), and spend virtually all of my waking life on campus.

It’s insane. On a typical day, I leave my apartment at 7:30 or 8:30 in the morning and only come back for dinner (and maybe an hour of homework). Then it’s back to the library until midnight, when it closes.

I feel like a slave.

Still, even though I haven’t been blogging much, I have been writing consistently, even through the worst of it. Right now, I’m running about 6k to 7k a week, which isn’t as much as I’d like but is surprising, considering everything else.

The only time I really have to write these days is from 10:00 pm to midnight, up at the library. If I’m lucky, I’ll slip in about half an hour in the morning, but most of the writing happens at night.

The thing that gets to me, though, is that I probably won’t have the 4th draft of Genesis Earth finished before World Fantasy. With my crazy workload, I just don’t think it’s going to happen. The first three chapters are finished, but the rest of the ms? Unfortunately, it needs more time.

Blegh. I can’t wait until I’m out of school. Hopefully, things won’t be as insanely busy.

But I’m probably wrong.

School is kicking my trash

It’s true. This is what my wordcount spreadsheet currently looks like:

Note that the seven day totals are dropping consistently. If I want to finish this novel before World Fantasy, I’m going to have to keep that number above 7,800…not including the work on Genesis Earth 4.0.

Something tells me that’s going to be very hard.

This week was particularly busy. I had a research proposal presentation for my capstone class–that was stressful–plus a writeup of the presentation. Thankfully, the full written proposal isn’t due for a couple of weeks.

Besides that, I’ve been working my two TA jobs and doing a buttload of readings and summaries for my other classes. Ugh.

The cool thing, though, is that when it’s my office hours and the students aren’t coming, I can get paid for reading Aeschylus, Plato, Sophocles, and all those other awesome Greek writers. The Libation Bearers was surprisingly good. I’d like to read The Furies, but I’ve got to read Plato’s Apology in order to keep up with the class. Still, the Apology is good stuff, too.

Reminds me: today, I went kayaking on Utah lake with the wilderness writing class. While I was there, I had this story idea: what if the Greek civilization had developed in Alaska instead of Aegea? And then I realized that it already happened: the Norse.

With school and work consistently kicking my butt, the only time I have to write EVER is between 10pm and 12pm. Every day this week (except for one time, when I drove a girl home), I’ve been in the Harold B Lee library until closing time, when the music starts to play. Every day, I come home exhausted. And then I get up the next day at 7am to get ready for class. Something tells me this isn’t sustainable.

Still, I think the worst times in the semester are at the beginning and the end. In the beginning, you’re still in the summer mentality, so the work beats you up until you get used to it. In the last half, everything gets so insane with exams and term papers that you can barely keep your head above the water no matter what you do. I’m adjusting slowly, but adjusting.

I’ll keep up with the writing as best I can, but Genesis Earth is going to be my top priority when I start that. In the meantime, I’ll just try to finish Bringing Stella Home by plugging away and catching up on the weekends.

In the meantime, I’ve got some great ideas for my next big project. Come November, I’m going to have a lot of fun.

🙂

Busy busy AWESOME day

I had an awesome day today. Totally awesome. If every day this semester is like this one, I’ll be dead tired before Thanksgiving but so happy it won’t even matter.

It started at 7am. Woke up, worked out, read a galley from Dragon Moon Press for Leading Edge while working out. The book wasn’t that bad, either.

Showered, ate breakfast, read 1st Jacob chapter 1 in Arabic. Great scripture study. Read “The false gods we worship” by Spencer W. Kimball on the walk up to school. Powerful. President Kimball was a Prophet with a capital P.

Met with Dr. Bowen to discuss the TA job she wants to hire me for. It’s going to be a LOT of fun! I’ll be doing all kinds of interesting research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and making a sort of game / role play for the students in the class…and getting paid good money to do it. Fun fun fun.

Classes were awesome. I love my capstone. Professor Christensen is a blast. Talked about spatial voting and why political parties in America tend to be identical. Made fun of Provo/Orem municipal elections. Good times.

After classes, met with Professor Kramer to discuss the other TA job I’ll be working. He was incredibly happy to have me on board. Out of the hundreds of papers he read for PL SC 201 last year, he still remembered mine. Holy cow. I’m shocked.

Proceeded to run through a series of bureaucratic hoops to get all the paperwork filled out for both TA jobs. I was so giddy about working I didn’t mind the hassle. Dr. Bowen at one point said “What’s the other job paying you? Eight something? Well, we can do better than that!” Man, I’m going to earn so much money this semester.

Went home, cooked up some locally grown corn and spaghetti. Mmm, corn on the cob! Delicious. Talked with my roommate Ben Crowder about all the stuff he’s done since graduating. Dude, he is a renaissance man, through and through. Awesome guy.

Leading edge was a total blast. The editors threw a start-of-semester pizza party, and we had almost a dozen new people show up to read slush. Plus, Peter was there–he’s always fun. Talked about spaceballs and Big Bang theory (the movie), how Arrested Development is funnier than The Office, violence in fiction, crazy story ideas, and all kinds of stuff. Good times.

So then, after finishing my homework, I was sitting in the library when I realized I only had an hour and a half before the library closed. An hour and a half, and I had not written a single word in my WIP that day. In order to keep up with my self-imposed deadline, I needed to write 1.2k words. 1.2k words…in 1.5 hours.

I didn’t really think I could do it, but I decided what the hell and gave it a shot. Turned off the music, avoided the email and twitter, and just focused on the work.

An hour and a half later, lo and behold! 1.2k words! And just as I realized that, the HBLL closing music comes on…and it’s Dropkick Murphies!

Let me just say, there is no better way to end an awesome day than with some good outro music. So let me end this post with tonight’s awesome outro music, courtesy the Harold B. Lee Library.

That’s the news and I AM OUTA HERE!

I’m back!

Wow, I’m back from vacation. Not “back” as in back in Utah, but “back” as in no longer at the cape. We drove home to Western Massachusetts this evening and arrived just a couple hours ago.

Family vacation this year was lots of fun! It was me, mom and pop, and Sarah and Mykle at a local cottage for about a week. We went to Nauset Light Beach, Coast Guard Beach, Race Point Beach, Provincetown, Hyannis, Moby Dick’s restaurant, the Cape Cod Natural History Museum, and, of course, good old Sheep Pond in Brewster (Brew-stah). When we weren’t out and about, we were either watching movies or playing Hearts and Shanghai, the Vasicek family card game of choice.

It was a lot of fun to hang out with the family at Cape Cod, but after a week I’m ready to head back into life as usual. My back is fried, I’ve had enough Shanghai to make me sick (especially considering how CRAZY our family games can get!), and I’m looking forward to no longer smelling like salt water or sun tan lotion.

I’m also looking forward to writing again. I kept up the writing at the cape–about 1k to 2k each day, mostly in the evening–but man, stuff like moving and vacations and travel and having fun tends to throw out your daily routine. I haven’t had one for the last week and a half, and I want to get back to something a little more stable (not to mention productive).

Alas, the summer is just about over. I’ll be flying back to Utah on Tuesday, moving all my stuff into my new apartment on Wednesday (Ben Crowder is going to be my roommate–I think it’s going to be a fun and interesting semester!), helping a friend move her stuff out of storage on Saturday, and doing other get-ready-for-school things on the other days, including filling out the FAFSA, getting parking stickers, books, figuring out what’s going on with my double-major capstone, and blah blah blah other boring annoying stuff.

Gah! Why can’t I just write all day, every day? Looks like those days are over…<sob>.

Someday, inshallah, I’ll make that dream a reality. Someday soon, inshallah!