friends – Page 7 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

New computer!

So about a year ago, I blogged about my dream computer, with dual monitors, a nice comfy chair, and…well, that was it. What can I say? I’m easy to please.

Well, now that I’m graduated from BYU and (theoretically) no longer have access to BYU’s computers, I decided to go ahead and build my dream machine.

I got a lot of help picking out parts from my friend Cognoscente, who is a pirate par excellence. My goal was to be as economical as possible while still picking out parts that are going to last for a long time. I bought virtually everything from newegg.com, except for the mouse and keyboard which I picked up for $5 each from the BYU surplus sale (I’ll probably pick up a second monitor from them, eventually).

Anyway, here are the specs:

CPU—Intel i3-530 (2.93 GHz, 4 MB cache) ($114.99)
Mobo—Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 (USB 3.0) ($119.99)
HDD—Western Digital 1TB drive ($69.99)
RAM—A-DATA DDR3 2 x 2GB ($98.99)
Video Card—Zotac 9800 GT 512 MB x2 DVI ($89.99)
PSU—Corsair CMPSU-450VX 450 W ($69.99)
Optical Drive—ASUS 2 MB cache DVD burner ($21.99)
Case—Rosewill Blackbone ($39.99)
Monitor—ASUS 22″ widescreen 1680 x 1050 ($169.99)
Total Price (including s&h, not including rebates): $824.05

I ordered the parts on Memorial day, and guess what? Everything but the video card showed up this morning–and the video card is scheduled to come tomorrow!

So this weekend, after I find a desk somewhere (either from DI or listed free on craigslist), I’m going to get together with Cognoscente and put together this beast.

So yeah, I’m totally geeking out about this new computer. It’s going to be sweeeet once it’s set up–I can hardly wait!

I’m also hoping it will help me write more. Right now, my only machine is my netbook, which is extremely portable and useful for travel, but not very good as a primary machine. It can get tiresome to write on a 10″ screen all day.

So yeah, I totally know what I’m doing this weekend. It’s going to be AWESOME 🙂

Space Pirates of CONduit

So this weekend I went to CONduit up in Salt Lake city. It was a great experience! Lots of fun, lots of friends, and lots of excellent panels on writing.

The usual crowd was there: Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, L. E. Modessitt, Bob Defendi, Dan Willis, Paul Genesse, Julie Wright, John Brown, Larry Corriea, James Dashner, Eric James Stone, and tons of others. Besides the bigger names, I saw a lot of other aspiring writers like myself who have yet to make it big–friends from World Fantasy and LTUE. It was good to catch up and reconnect.

Friday had a number of excellent panels. My personal favorite was A Writer’s Life, in which a number of relatively newer writers gave advice on breaking in and talked about what their lives are like now that they’re published.

At one point on the panel, a fearful aspiring writer asked the question: “when do you know when it’s time to quit and give up?” The responses from the panelists were quite insightful. Basically, the only way to know that you need to quit writing is if you can imagine your life without it. If you can’t, you may feel that you’re writing currently sucks, but you’ve still got stories in you, and those stories need to find a voice.

There were a number of other gold nuggets on that panel. Larry Corriea surprised me by saying that there is no such thing as an “outline writer” or a “discovery writer”–that these concepts simply describe writing tools, and that different projects require different tools. Julie Wright said that if you are not enough without a publishing deal, you will never be enough with it. John Brown (I think) said that writer’s block doesn’t exist: if you’re blocked, it means either something’s wrong with you or something’s wrong with the story.

Saturday had a number of excellent panels as well. The guest of honor was Barbara Hambly, and she was a delight: witty, saucy, and full of interesting stories and great advice. For her main address, she simply talked about how her life has changed in the past thirty years, but it was fascinating.

One of the more interesting things she said was that God places an angel with a flaming sword in front of every door in our lives that we shouldn’t take. Sometimes, it seems that you’re simply staring down a corridor full of guarded doors–and sometimes, especially towards the end of life, it seems that you’re staring down a corridor and the angels are saluting you. That made her tear up–she’s had a long, rough, yet interesting and vibrant life.

When asked to elaborate on the decline of the fantasy market in the past twenty years, she gave a very interesting response. Today, instead of buying fantasy novels by the pound, fans are immersing themselves in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. Because it requires much less effort to play a game than to read a book, people are turning to games as a substitute.

Another fascinating panel was Riding the Rocket, in which a number of established authors discussed the career blast off and what to expect. Lee Modessitt made the point that there are two basic approaches to writing: storytelling or writing excellent prose. In order to be successful, a writer has to master both, but they generally start out better at one than the other. The key is to know which one you’re weaker at and consciously work on it.

When asked about their greatest fear, the unanimous answer was that they’re terrified their next book will tank and that they’ll fade into obscurity–that they’ll be forced to go back to that dreaded day job. The only way to deal with that, though, is to keep writing, keep working on your craft, and control the things you can while not fretting too much about the things you can’t. If you do what you can, things will generally work out for the best.

There were a ton of other excellent panels, other nuggets of wisdom. I recorded a number of panels, but I’ve decided not to post the mp3s publicly here: if you want them, just email me and I’ll send you a copy.

All in all, I’m very glad I came! Besides all the panels and networking opportunities, it was just a lot of fun to hang out and talk science fiction and fantasy with a bunch of like minded people. CONduit is an awesome convention–if you’re a local Utah writer and you have the chance to come, I definitely recommend it!

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.

Quark has a new writing VP

That’s right; her board name is Jimmy and she’s basically doing it the same way I did it–by jumping in the deep end first. Joined quark last semester, went to a few writing meetings, and pow! Writing VP.

Anyways, we had some interesting conversations after the last writing group meeting of the semester. Basically, I think I convinced her to set daily writing goals the same way Aneeka convinced me. She also decided to start a writing blog, so if you get a chance, you should check it out! It’s called Dragons, Dirt & Bones, after the quote by G. K. Chesterton:

Fairytales are more than true–not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

The funny thing is that we met each other two years ago and both totally forgot about it. She was a high school junior visiting BYU, and came to Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class. She remembers bookstore guy…and one of the writers whom the others in the writing group mercilessly ripped on. Guess who that was?

In unrelated news, I am no longer homeless but am currently unemployed. Dropped off a business card at Pioneer Book, though–told them I could help if they need extra work for the move. Who knows, maybe that will lead to something.

I will probably end up getting a generic summer job, then upgrade to something more semi-permanent (and resume friendly) by August. I’ll probably stay in Utah, using my writing and editing skills in some capacity. I’d like to work as a grant writer for BYU, but they’re still under a hiring freeze. Once that lifts, though, there are going to be a ton of job openings.

My primary plan is still to make my living as a published author, and I’m very optimistic about that working out. Before the end of next week, I want to have Genesis Earth sent out to at least five new places. My goal for Mercenary Savior is to finish draft 3.0 by CONduit at the end of May, but I will probably polish the first three chapters and start sending it out before then.

In the meantime, the real world awaits. Scary, I know, but at least I’m graduating debt free, with a roof over my head, friends and family close by, and lots of exciting possibilities for the future. I think things will turn out well.

Quick post from Provo

This is going to be quick, because it’s late at night and I want to get some sleep.

I made it to Provo. I’m currently staying with an old roommate, sleeping on his couch. To do: find a job and a place to live. Fortunately, I’ve just about got the second one secured.

I talked with the editors at Leading Edge today, and they told me they’ve been having problems with the buy function on their website. If you tried to buy a copy of issue 58 (the one with my story) before this month, they probably lost your address. Don’t worry, they voided the purchase, but if you want a copy you’ll have to go through the process again. Sorry for the hassle.

Wrote the last academic paper of my undergraduate college career today. The last freaking paper. Hooray!

I dropped in to English 318 tonight, and a couple of Sanderson fans got engaged in front of the whole class. It was pretty cool, not the least because they were cosplaying at the same time. Good luck, Mi’chelle! May you and your future husband have a wonderful life together!

Thanks for all the feedback on the new title. I think I’m going to stick with it. It’s weird to call the book by a different name after working on it for so long under the other title, but I think Mercenary Savior works much better.

Looked up Westercon today and found out it’s only $60. Thinking seriously about going. Should I? Is anyone else planning on going?

To do tomorrow: get cap and gown, complete and file taxes, sign a spring/summer contract, meet up with old supervisors/professors in pursuit of a job, go to a bonfire and have a good time.

My mom always got depressed with to do lists; she always felt daunted when she saw all the tasks she needed to accomplish. To counteract this, she made a “tasks accomplished” list at the end of the day to make her feel better. So, on that note:

Accomplished: finished all Washington Seminar coursework, attended English 318 and obtained leads for Mormon Artist article, attended Leading Edge and caught up with the slushies, got a date for next Friday (totally unrelated), submitted Genesis Earth to an agent, wrote +2.2k in Mercenary Savior.

Not bad. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to crash for the night.

Dinner with friends

I had dinner tonight with one of my classmates from English 318 last year, who is a frequent commenter on this blog. He and his wife were kind enough to invite me over to their apartment, where we ate, talked, hung out, and had a general good time.

It was great to see an old friend from Sanderson’s class! We talked a lot about writing, and that was way cool–I haven’t been around people who can talk writing since I left Provo (not counting the IM conversations I have with Chuck every other day). At one point, his wife had to stop and say “wait, let’s put this conversation on pause and let me get to know this guy”!

He showed me this interesting online compendium of Wheel of Time characters, which blew me away; I haven’t read the Wheel of Time series yet, but just looking at how many characters are in the books, I have no idea how anyone could write something like that. I guess that’s the direction Fantasy is going in–enormous worlds, long books, dozens and even hundreds of characters.

We talked about all kinds of other things, too–school and work, career decisions, future plans, social pressures, life in general, etc. It was great being with interesting people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. I tend to be a little self-conscious about the fact that I talk too much, but they got me to talk a lot–about how I decided to be a writer, how I wrote Genesis Earth from story idea to the latest draft, my future goals as a writer, etc etc. It was a lot of fun.

We also talked about my current project (working title: Bringing Stella Home), and I shared the 30 second story blurb. I then asked them what they think the title should be, and together we came up with an interesting title idea: Saving Ben and Stella.

What do you think of it? I kindof think it has a nice ring to it. Mentions Ben and Stella, which shows that Ben’s storyline is important as well as Stella’s. Then again, it’s not much of a change from the previous one.

In any case, I had an awesome time with Stephen and his wife. It’s great to have friends wherever you travel, and meet up with old classmates after graduating from college. Thanks guys!

Chomping at the bit

It’s 1:30 am where I am, and I just finished reading through the second draft of Bringing Stella Home and all of my first readers’ comments. I don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling right now, but I am so ready to make this story shine!

First of all, the story itself is incredibly powerful, at least to me. True, the current draft is full of problems (some of them so embarrassing I cringe just to think that I allowed other people to read it) but at its core, there is definitely something poignant and moving. One of my first readers is on active duty right now in Afghanistan, and it actually inspired him to write a poem.

Of course, a reader can be “moved” in bad ways as well as good, and some of the feedback on the current draft’s problems brought out a side of my friends that I didn’t know even existed (yes, Kindal, I’m talking about you). Seriously, reading those comments was like getting gutted and filleted with a rusty fishing knife. If I’d had problems with my self esteem, I probably would have cried.

Oh well. At least it wasn’t boring. 🙂

But harsh or not, the comments were all useful–surprisingly useful, actually. In a story this big, it’s easy to miss things (even big things like character motivations), but after reading through all my reader comments, I feel confident that I’ve got a solid outline for the revision.

Some of the suggestions were pretty dang good, too. Usually, I only adopt about half (or less) of the proscriptive comments my readers give me, but this time, I’ll probably end up taking quite a few more. I don’t know if it’s because I was an idiot when I wrote the first draft or because my readers were getting into the story a lot more than usual, but the advice this time opened me up to all kinds of new ideas.

I probably can’t say much more without spoiling my own story, and I definitely don’t want to do that. Let me just finish by saying that I believe this story may be the one that breaks me into publishing. I hope this doesn’t sound conceited or arrogant, because I don’t mean it that way at all. I just think that this story has some serious potential, and that if I treat it right, it will end up in print someday.

Inshallah, someday soon!

In the meantime, I’m going to put everything into revising this next draft–that is, everything short of secluding myself in a white room and starving myself (or graduating and not looking for a job, which is a more realistic possibility). This story is calling to me–it needs to be told. It needs to be fixed. It needs to be polished and shared with other readers.

It needs a lot of work. But now it’s 2:00 pm, and I’d better get to bed. Another exciting day of photocopying newspaper clippings and compiling spreadsheets of data on press freedom in Turkey awaits me. Excuse me if I sound too excited.

I’m published!

That’s right–my first published story just came out in issue 58 of The Leading Edge. I am happy to say that after three years of formally pursuing my career as a writer, I am now a published author!

The story is titled Decision LZ1527, and it’s about a guy asking a girl out on a date–as told from the point of view of the little men inside his head piloting his body like a starship. I really like the tagline in the table of contents: “A man, a woman, and a whole crew of matchmakers.”

Full disclosure: I submitted this story after I joined the staff as a volunteer slushpile reader. Most of the editors for this issue are pretty good friends of mine (including the Production Director, who’s one of my most trusted alpha readers). I submitted it under a pseudonym, however, so most of the staff didn’t know it was mine until after they’d accepted it.

The Leading Edge is known for the excellent quality of its illustrations, and I’m happy to say that I lucked out with with the artist the editors picked for my story! Josh McGill is a graphic designer and aspiring children’s book illustrator. He’s done art for issues 53 and 55 of The Leading Edge. The picture on the right is the one he did for the front page of my story. I must say, I’m impressed!

The Leading Edge is a semi-professional small press science fiction and fantasy magazine affiliated with BYU. It’s been in publication since the early 80s, when Marion K. “Doc” Smith’s famous “class that wouldn’t die” got together and started it, along with Quark and LTUE. If you would like to support the magazine (and read my story!) you can purchase a copy of issue 58 at the following link:

Issue 58: “Redemption Songs”

Lot’s of people dream about getting published, but it takes a lot of hard work and rejection to actually make it happen. As writers, though, we tend to be harder on ourselves than we ought to be. It took almost four years for Decision LZ1527 to find its way into print, but it did. That’s enough to make the rest of the process worth it.

Let’s hope it’s the first of many!

Snowmageddon! Hooray!

So for the past week, a series of crazy snowstorms has been pelting the Mid-Atlantic. President Obama has dubbed it “snowmageddon,” and it’s so bad that all federal government offices have been closed since Friday. With another storm hitting us tonight, it looks like we’re going to have the whole week off! Yay!!!

So, for the past couple of days, I’ve been hanging out around the Barlow Center, watching movies, doing random stuff with my friends here in the program, taking naps in the middle of the day, and writing. Lots of writing! It’s awesome–I haven’t had this much free time since Christmas (which wasn’t all that long ago, but still…)!

Today I didn’t write quite as much. I got in about 1.1k words, a decent amount, but if I’d pushed myself I could have finished the current chapter. Monday went much better, because I sat down and forced myself to write in the morning. Once those initial hundred or so words were out, the rest came much easier.

On the first day of snowmageddon, when we were snowed in at Valley Forge, I got in over 1,000 words before noon. It was rough going, though–nothing was flowing, and everything took a lot of effort. I hate it when that happens–blegh.

But I think it was necessary, because now, the scenes are flying by pretty easy. Sometimes, when I’m struggling with momentum, I find it helps if I take a day to focus and push myself through it. Get rid of all distractions, put my butt in the chair, close all internet browsers, and just write, no matter how difficult.

My next novel, To Search the Starry Sea, is going to be a lot of fun. It starts out almost exactly like Homer’s Odyssey, with the same basic conflict and setup. Beyond that, however, I have nothing solid planned–I’m just following where the story takes me. And boy, is it taking me to some crazy places!

For example, one of the first places Katriona (the Telemachus character) goes is a nearby world, ruled by a friend of her father’s. To liven things up, I decided to have him live on a giant rotating space station, where the inside is covered by forests and jungles–scenery that Katriona has never seen.

This got me wondering, however: how did the jungle get there? The answer: thousands of years ago, before superluminal space travel, a group of colonists set out for this world, freezing themselves in cryo. When they got there, they found that a solar flare-up had rendered the planet uninhabitable, so instead they built this massive station, hoping that it would serve as a second ark for humanity.

Instead, a raiding party of space barbarians took them over, enslaved the colonists, and built their palace in the midst of the carefully maintained artificial biosphere.

This opened up a series of new possibilities for subplots, which shapes my protagonists interactions with the people here, which points her in new directions for the main plot–the next few places that she’s going to go.

This is discovery writing at its best. Even though I have no clue where she’s going to go next, things are unfolding very nicely, and I’m excited to find out!

Genesis Earth 4.0 is complete!

And it’s about time. I started this back in September, thinking I could easily get it done before World Fantasy 2009. More than a month after the convention, and five days after the last self-imposed deadline, it’s done!

Alright, here are the stats:

ms pages: 270
words: 73,009
file size: 492 KB
chapters: 16, prologue & epilogue
start date: 28 September 2009
end date: 4 December 2009

When I finished, I was listening to “To far away times” from the Chrono Trigger soundtrack. It fit the mood perfectly–absolutely perfectly. The epilogue might be a little cheesy (if you were one of my alpha/beta readers, you’ll know why–thanks, Gini!), but in a good way, I think. Anyways, here’s the track:

It took me forever to finish this draft, but that’s what happens when you’re swamped with school, I guess. If this were the summer and I had nothing else on my plate, I probably could have finished it in 17 days (or less) like the 3.0 draft.

For a more detailed breakdown, here is a graph of my daily wordcount for the project:

Overall, though, I’m very satisfied with my work. I’m sure that if/when it gets picked up by a publisher, they will have a multitude of editorial critiques and suggestions, but I can honestly say this draft is as neat and polished as I can make it.

It’s time to send it out!