Tag: deadlines

Semester endgame

Seven days!  Seven days! And then the semester is over!  Hallelujah!

Unfortunately, in the course of those seven days, I’ve got three major papers to write. It’s going to suck.

But then it’s over!

Thank goodness.  This semester has been pretty crazy–not in terms of work, but in terms of motivation.  A lot of the classes I took (especially MESA 350) are basically just repeating the things I already know, which is really boring.  When you’re bored, you don’t have much motivation to do the work, and when that happens…well, let’s just say that bad things happen when that happens.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), there’s nothing quite as motivating as last minute panic.  The work will get done.

Unfortunately (and this is definitely unfortunately), the end-of-semester crunch will almost certainly take time away from my writing.  Just when things were going so well, too.  The revision of Genesis Earth is coming along VERY well–I’m not only enjoying it, I think I’m making some excellent fundamental improvements on the story.  Of all of the novels I’ve written or worked on, I think this one is the most promising.  If I didn’t have any other obligations, I could almost certainly finish this revision in a week–possibly even less.  I’d really love to get into it.

Also, the other day I had an idea how to revive Hero in Exile and turn it into a workable story.  Hero in Exile is the working title of the novel I started last fall, but after I got 70,000 words into it, I realized that the story I was writing and the story I had in mind were incompatible with each other.  I put it all away, recycled some of the basic ideas, and used those for Bringing Estella Home.  Well, now that I’ve put Bringing Estella Home on hold (ironically, after getting 70,000 words into it), I just had some really interesting ideas how I could make Hero in Exile work!  It would require throwing out my original outline almost completely, but I could use almost everything I wrote previously–basically, tell the story that I was writing instead of the story I thought I was writing.

Except I have to change the name of the main character.  “Tristen” just isn’t a good guy’s name–at least not for science fiction.

So now, I’m considering picking up that story and putting Bringing Estella Home on hold for a while.  I’m going to be really busy these next couple of weeks, but after all the craziness has settled somewhat it’s going to be a very interesting question.  Honestly, I have no idea.  It could go either way.

But it’s all academic until the semester is finally over.  But dude!  SEVEN DAYS!!!!  And then…FREEDOM!!!!

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.

update on the novel

Ughh…….

Alright, in the tradition of last year when I would write until 2am every night and then blog on it before going to bed, here is another update on how Bringing Estella Home is going right now.

It’s getting tougher.  I’m right in the middle of it right now, in chapter 7, and I’m not sure whose viewpoint I should do next or how I should be organizing these chapters.  I’ve got four viewpoints, but really there are three separate subplots going on, and I need to give them each equal time while structuring them so that the tension builds from one to the other.  When you don’t know what your chapter is doing in relation to the novel as a whole, it’s difficult.

My readers in English 318 tell me that one of the most interesting things in this story is the culture of the antagonists, the Hameji, and that’s really good because I want it to be interesting.  I’ve created a sort of ruthless, cold-hearted, irrationally violent barbarian culture, and over the course of the rest of the novel I’m going to show exactly WHY they are so violent, what drove them to it, etc.  Sound familiar?  It’s my Mongols in space idea, and it’s coming along very well…

…except that I didn’t have Ben’s part figured out very well.  He’s the one who gets brainwashed and turned into one of their soldiers, given a drug that melds his emotional being with that of a collective–kind of like the borg, but only with feelings and emotions, not with thoughts.  It will be interesting to play with that idea, but this chapter, which was originally supposed to focus more on his experience with that transition, just…didn’t work out as well.  Not a lot of screen time for him, for some odd reason.

So I did a little bit of thinking as I was walking home today.  I thought to myself, “if I were a Hameji commander, how would I train these guys?” And it worked out very well!  I think I know what I need to do now, what Ben’s story is going to be for the next couple of chapters.  That’s very good.

Man, going for a walk can really help you sort things out and figure out what happens next.  Even though I have an mp3 player, I rarely listen to it as I’m walking to and from campus.  Many times I have my best ideas while making the commute.  If/when I become a professional novelist, I’m going to have to set aside time each day for long walks.

Finally, I’m a little worried that I’m falling behind on my deadline.  I wanted to finish this thing by the final exam day, sometime in April, but now that I’m sludging through the middle, I wonder if it might take longer.  I have the climaxes figured out very well, but I’m still a long ways away from them.  I might not finish this novel until the end of May, especially since I’ll have to do some major revisions of the first three chapters to hand it in for the English 318 final.  That won’t give me a lot of time to revise my novels for World Fantasy 2009…

Bah.  There is so much to think about.  Rather than deal with it now, I’m going to go to bed.