Goals and Plans – Page 10 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Some new writing resolutions

So I’ve been following Dean Wesley Smith’s blog pretty closely over the last few days, as he posts about his creative process for a novel he’s ghost writing. It’s more than a little mind-boggling–he started literally with nothing, not even a working title, and yet he’s averaging between 5k-7k per day. If he hasn’t already, he’ll probably finish it tonight.

I’m learning a lot from these posts, especially about the importance of switching off your internal critic and trusting your creative instincts. Over the last couple of days, I’ve tried to do just that with the sword & planet novel I mentioned last week, and I can say that it really works! By doing all I can to put words on the page and ignoring everything else, I’m averaging about a thousand words per day and the story is unfolding wonderfully. It’s like a trust fall with my muse, where instead of failing miserably I’ve found she’s there to catch me.

All of this has made me think that I need to reorder my writing routine and make some resolutions in order to keep this momentum going. If I can overcome some of my bad habits and replace them with good ones, I can be a lot more productive, and writing will be that much more fun.

So here’s what I’m going to do this week:

Start every day with writing. Even if it’s only fifteen or twenty minutes, as soon as I get out of bed I’m going to sit down at the writing computer and pound out a few hundred words.
Write in lots of little chunks, rather than one or two large chunks. In other words, don’t put off writing until the chores are done–put off the chores!
Shoot for 1000 words per hour or better. If the pace starts to flag, switch projects if necessary, even if the other project is fanfic.
Go for at least one walk at some point in the day. Walks do more to re-energize my creative energy than just about anything else.

Basically, I’m going to treat my work-in-progress as something fun, rather than work or a chore. I’ll use a stopwatch to keep track of how many hours I write each day, but I won’t give myself a quota.

My writing process isn’t the same as Dean’s, and I’m not going to try to imitate his process, but I am going to pick out what I like about it and see what works. Also, I’m going to focus a lot more on quantity than quality, with the understanding that treating everything as practice will likely improve both.

As for the A to Z blogging challenge, I’ve got two posts left, Y and Z. I haven’t written them yet, but I’ve got a great idea for both of them. Since writing takes precedence, though, I may not get to them until later in the day. It also depends on whether the temp agency calls me up in the morning with a job–they’ve been doing that a lot recently. Last week I was at a factory making toothbrushes for dogs (true story). This week, I could be doing anything–or nothing, as the case may be. I’d like a couple of days of nothing, just for a good chance to write.

Projects, projects everywhere …

… and not a clue where to start.

Seriously, I feel like that guy in the Russian proverb who’s chasing two rabbits. Except, in my case, it’s more like a dozen. Here’s what I currently have to choose from:

Stars of Blood and Glory — This one is in publishing mode, and should be out in a week or two. I’ve gone through all the line/copy edits from my editor, finalized the book teaser–all that’s left is the formatting and cover art. The preliminary sketches look really good, so it shouldn’t be too much longer before it’s ready to go. Of course, it’s more of a publishing thing than a writing thing, but still important.

Lifewalker — This is a rough draft that’s only about 15% to 20% finished. It’s in a totally different genre than I’m used to writing (post-apocalyptic / weird western), but so far it seems to be coming along fairly well. I hit a block a couple of weeks ago and put it on the back burner for a while, but I may be ready to pick it up again.

Star Wanderers: Benefactor — This is another rough draft, about 35% to 40% finished. It’s a parallel novella to Star Wanderers: Fidelity, except from Jakob’s point of view. Right now, I’m in the phase where everything sucks and I don’t know where to go with it. It’ll probably turn out just fine, but I may have to put it on hold for a while. However, if I could just push through and finish the damn thing, that would be preferable. It’s only another 15,000 words …

Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver — This is a first draft that I need to revise. Last night, I looked over it for the first time in eight months. Opening the file was like pulling out an unopened bottle of wine that’s been sitting for years in the back corner of the wine cellar. So far, it seems pretty good, but I’m going to wait until I hear back from one of my first readers before doing any serious revisions. After that, maybe run the first chapter through Kindal’s writing group, and if everything seems good, I’ll probably publish it sometime in April/May.

Star Wanderers: The Jeremiah Chronicles — This is purely a publishing project. Basically, I want to bundle the first four Star Wanderers stories and release them as an omnibus. To do this right, though, I’d have to commission some cover art, which takes time and money. Since it’s not a writing project, and I already have enough publishing projects on my plate, I’ll probably put this one off until Dreamweaver is out.

Mercenary Savior — Long term followers of this blog might recognize this as the old title for the novel that became Bringing Stella Home. Well, I plan to recycle that title, as well as the original prologue, in a prequel novel that basically tells the origin story of Danica Nova and her band of mercenaries. So far, I’ve got the prologue and the beginnings of the first chapter. Haven’t looked at it in a few months, but if I get stuck on these other projects, I just might pick it up again.

Heart of the Nebula — A second or third draft that needs a deep revision. This is probably going to consume all my writing time for six to eight weeks, and I’d rather do it all at once rather than in chunks. It’s been on the back burner long enough that I can probably pick it up again, but I want to finish a rough draft first.

The Sword Keeper — I’ve still got this one on the current projects bar, but it’s been a while since I’ve worked on it, so it’s pretty much on the back burner. I think it’s at about the 40% mark, though honestly I have no idea. It’s an epic fantasy novel, a bit outside my usual scope, and it’s turning into a beast of a book. The story is pretty solid, though, so I’ll probably finish it before the end of the year–that is, unless the muse drops an anvil on me (which has definitely happened before).

Empress of the Free Stars — An unwritten novel that’s been kicking around in my head ever since I finished Stars of Blood and Glory. Basically, it’s a direct sequel from Hikaru’s point of view … except that I can’t really discuss it without giving away spoilers (TO A BOOK THAT ISN’T EVEN OUT YET). In any case, the prologue has been beating on me to get written, and I finally caved and started it last night. I’ve got a pretty good idea for what’s supposed to happen in this novel, but there’s still a whole lot of room for the story to surprise me.

Edenfall — Ah, Edenfall … this is probably my most neglected story. I started it a little over a year ago, but hit a block, and then Star Wanderers happened. I’ll pick it up eventually, but to really do it justice, I feel like I need to go backpacking in the wilderness for a week or two. The weather isn’t good for that right now, so it will probably have to wait until spring. Or maybe I’m just making things too complicated. We’ll see.

Star Wanderers; Wanderlust — A Star Wanderers story from Samson’s point of view. This one is going to be tricky, but I’ve actually got the whole thing plotted out already. However, I don’t want to write it just yet, because there’s still a bunch of other Star Wanderers stories that need to come first. Or maybe I will write it, and let it sit for a while until I write the others. Maybe it’s better to finish it first and let it sit for a while, just to be safe …

Those are pretty much all the projects with titles that are floating around in my head right now. There are a few others, like parts VII and VIII of Star Wanderers (from Mariya and Lucca’s points of view, respectively), but those aren’t quite ready to start. With all of these, I’ve at least got some words on the page.

So now that I’m in that frustrating space between projects, I think I’m going to take a week or two to just let my creative mind do whatever the heck it wants. Hopefully, I’ll get excited enough about one of them to see it all the way through. I’m not going to stress about word counts so much as putting time in at my chair, doing something.

Man, I wish my creative side weren’t so scatterbrained. Though as long as I’m still finishing stuff, I guess it’s all right.

And now that I’ve procrastinated long enough by writing this blog post, it’s time to go hang out with my friends and procrastinate some more. Later!

4:04 hours and 2.8k words. Not bad!

You know, sometimes I miss the days when I would churn out 1,000+ badly written words and throw up a badly written blog post, still reeling in awe from a white-hot creative heat.

Well, I think those days are coming back! Except hopefully, my writing has improved since then. Today was the first day I hit my four hour writing goal, and it was awesome. Also, I wrote over a thousand words in two different projects: The Sword Keeper (which is my primary project right now) and Star Wanderers: Benefactor (a secondary project, though that may change in a month or so). Not bad!

The really cool thing, though, is that when I woke up, my brain was actually wordsmithing. It was weird–I was actually crafting sentences in my sleep. Of course, being an idiot, I didn’t actually sit my butt in the chair until around 11:00 am. Still, the words came out all right, and they didn’t stop coming all day.

I think my new time tracking goal is going to work out really well. For most days this week, I managed to get at least 3:00 hours in. Also, I noticed a lot of interesting things about the way I write. Starting is the hardest part, especially first thing in the day. Frequent short breaks can help, but the internet is a huge trap and should definitely be cut from my writing computer. If I can’t manage 500 words/hour, chances are I’m not going to stay put for very long, but once I hit 800 wph, it’s smooth sailing.

Keeping a daily time goal also makes me conscious of a lot of things. For example, when I first wake up, I look at the clock and think “if I do my full four hours right now, I’ll be finished by XX:XX.” That motivates me to start earlier, since it means I can finish earlier (or at least have less pressure later when I’m tired). Also, it motivates me to write for longer lengths at a time, rather than writing in short, less productive bursts. And even though I’m still keeping track of how many words I write, the pressure to hit a certain word count is less, since once the four hours are up, the goal is accomplished no matter what’s on the page.

Of course, all this mean I’m actually writing more. Even on the days when I didn’t hit the full four hours, I wrote a lot more than I otherwise would have. And the neat thing about writing is that the more you do it, the easier it comes. It takes a while to build momentum, of course, but if you can just ease back on your inner editor and let the words come, they really will come.

So the next few days are going to be interesting. I’m leaving Massachusetts on Sunday, to take the train across the country. That will give me plenty of writing time, I’m sure, but once I arrive in Utah, things are going to get tricky.

My first priority will be finding an apartment, then a job–probably a crap job, though in this economy even those can be hard to find. From what I’ve heard, things haven’t changed much since I left. My writing is starting to take off, though, so I’m not too worried about the long-term–it’s the short-term that’s going to be a challenge.

I don’t know how long I’ll stay in Utah this time, but definitely until the summer. There’s a lot of old friends to look up, and writing conferences to attend. If I’m not totally broke by August, I’ll do my best to attend Worldcon as well.

That’s just about it for now. I’ve got a lot of chores tomorrow, so I’d better get some sleep. Later!

A not-so-obligatory New Year’s resolution

First of all, happy New Years! I hope you’re all looking forward to 2013 as much as I am. Last year was full of awesome life-changing experiences, but I have a feeling that this one is going to be even better.

So after chatting about resolutions with some old friends, I’ve decided that a good new year’s resolution should be more than just another mundane daily goal. Those are great, but you shouldn’t just set them at the beginning of the year and forget about them around February or March, you should adjust and rework them constantly no matter what time of the year it is.

Instead, a good resolution is some extraordinary task or challenge with a deadline of December 31st. Basically, it’s something from your bucket list that you hope to accomplish that year. Because it’s extraordinary, it’s not something that you forget in a month or two. And the deadline gives you a sense of urgency, so you don’t put it off for “someday.”

With that in mind, here’s my 2013 resolution:

Hike four of the seven peaks of Utah County.

I was originally going to go for all seven, but I’m not (yet) an experienced climber, and some of the peaks look a little difficult. Others, though, seem pretty doable. I’ve hiked Y Mountain several times, and got a chance to do a little hiking in Georgia. Four shouldn’t be too much, even with my relatively limited skill level right now.

Here are the seven peaks:

Of course, I’ll wait until June to make the first hike (probably Provo Peak). In the meantime, I’ll do what I can to get ready: eat healthy, climb a few smaller mountains, and otherwise get in shape for the big ones.

As far as writing goes, I’m going to go back on the early morning writing schedule and shoot for three hours of writing new words per day. My monthly goal is to start / finish / publish at least one thing, and my yearly goal is still to finish at least two novel-length works (2012 was Star Wanderers I-IV and Stars of Blood and Glory).

But it’s hard to call any of those goals resolutions, since most of them are probably going to change over the coming weeks and months. It’s hard to know exactly what life’s going to throw at me once I get back in Utah, so I’m going to stay flexible and just try to do the best I can.

I do want to publish Stars of Blood and Glory next month, and I think I can finish The Sword Keeper before then–if not, then definitely Star Wanderers: Benefactor. After that, I’d like to do a print version of Star Wanderers I-IV with some decent cover art. And Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver will probably be out sometime in the spring.

Beyond that, who knows? It all depends on where the muse takes me. One thing’s for sure, though–I’ll definitely keep writing.

Someday…

Someday I will settle down, probably in southern Utah or somewhere else in the American West. I will live with my wife and kids in a small house in the country, one that I’ve built with my own hands. It won’t be larger than 1,000 square feet, but we’ll have at least five acres of land–a small house with a big yard.

We will keep a sizeable garden and grow at least half of the food we eat. We’ll start with tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, and zucchini, then move on to other crops as our tastes change and our gardening skills improve. We will keep live chickens, and maybe a cow if it’s not too difficult. We will eat what we love, love what we eat, and live by the maxim: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

In the winter, we’ll stay warm with a wood burning stove. Everything in our house will all be centered around one main room, which will help to keep our family close. We’ll sleep in the loft, with the kids on the other side. Daddy’s writing space will be off in the corner, but not cut off from the rest of the family.

Our house will be well-insulated, so it will be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We’ll get our water from a well on our property. Like good old-fashioned Mormons, we’ll grind our own wheat and bake fresh bread every week. We won’t own a lot of material things, but we won’t waste anything either. The people in our lives will always be more important than the things.

When we aren’t at home, we’ll be on the road. Our children will see the whole country, from the rolling hills of New England to the oil fields of West Texas, from the orchards of California to the skyscrapers of New York. My wife and I will have seen the world together, and we’ll visit our international friends as often as we can.

Above all else, we will be independent. No one will own us, and we’ll stay out of debt as much as possible. Our failures will be our own, as well as our successes. And when our friends and family need us, we’ll be there.

All of this will happen someday. That’s my dream. Someday soon, I’ll find a girl who shares this dream, and together we’ll make it a reality.

A Letter From My 2013 Self

So shortly after writing up my last blog post, I got an email from myself marked December 27, 2013. How freaky is that?I don’t know if it’s a glitch or a feature, but apparently in 2013, you can use gmail to send messages back in time.

In any case, the letter is pretty interesting, so I thought I’d post it. Here it is:

Dear Joe,

Well, it’s been an interesting decade so far, hasn’t it? Not a bad time to be alive–and that’s going to be even clearer by the end of 2013.

Right now, you’re still in the Republic of Georgia, anxious to get on that flight and head back home. Don’t be. You’re going to miss that place, even though it’s hard to feel that way right now. Your time there has changed you a lot more than you realize, though it’s going to take most of the year for you to figure that out.

You’ve picked up some bad habits, mostly from the other expats. Swearing is one of them. Clean up your language–it’s not going to do you any favors, especially back in Utah. Personal hygiene is another. Just because you could go for days without showering back in Rokhi doesn’t mean that you can get away with it in the States.

Money issues are on your mind right now. That’s good. You’ve learned how to be extremely frugal in the past two years, and that skill will serve you well. Don’t be afraid to get a crap job–that’s actually one of the best things you can do right now. The economy hasn’t improved much since you left, but if you look in the right places and speak with the right people, you’ll be able to make ends meet without too much trouble.

Remember, your writing career should be your main focus. Don’t go chasing after the dollar. You’ve experienced a taste of success in the last few months, and you’re going to taste it again. It comes in spurts, though, so be prepared for that. You’ll figure it out–in fact, you’re already most of the way there. Just remember to keep your butt in that chair, and you’ll be all right.

By the way, you really should spend more time on your business plan. Don’t just use it as motivation to write something else–that stuff is actually important. In Georgia, you can get away with winging it, but not in the States. That’s going to take some getting used to as well.

Your biggest anxiety right now is your supposed lack of self-discipline. That’s actually not as much of a problem as you think. After spending a year in Georgia, you might feel incapable of working another honest day in your life, but that feeling will soon pass. In fact, 2013 is going to be a very productive year for you. All that self-discovery is going to pay off in a big way soon. So don’t worry about it so much, and remember, you haven’t written your best book yet.

Perhaps the most important thing about your year in Georgia is that it really lit a fire under your butt. You know what I’m talking about. If you can travel alone to a foreign country, you can work up the courage to ask her out. No, I’m not going to tell you who. You’ll know her when you see her. But you may have to trim the beard. Just sayin’.

You won’t spend the entire year back in the States, but when you do go overseas again, you won’t be alone. No, I won’t tell you who you’ll go with, or where. Some surprises are better left unspoiled.

There’s more I could tell you, but that’s enough for now. You’ll figure things out on your own, same as you always have. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Follow the path of least regret.

Joe

A Letter To My 2011 Self

Dear Joe,

Well, 2011 has been an eventful year, hasn’t it? It sure didn’t feel like it when you were down in the trenches, but now that it’s over, you’ve got to admit, you sure came a long way.

You’ve discovered a lot of things about yourself since January. In your quest for economic security, you’ve learned that you’d rather work for yourself as a freelancer than be anyone else’s employee. You took the plunge and self-published, something you thought you’d never do (and yes, it’s okay to call it ‘self-published’–the stigma will be dead in another year). You attended your first Wordcon, made a couple of cross-country road trips, worked a ton of crap-jobs just to make ends meet, and now you’re on your way out of the country to try your hand teaching English. It sure seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Just wait. Next year is going to be just as full of changes, though it won’t always seem like it at the time.

I know, I know–cut to the chase and give me some advice already. Well, looking back on what you’re going to go through in 2012, here’s what I have to tell you.

First, don’t stress out so much about the whole self-publishing thing. You’ll figure it out all right. No, I can’t say whether you’re going to hit the turning point before the end of the year. In fact, that’s not even a healthy way to look at it, so stop thinking about it that way. Follow the slow growth model, and don’t angst about sales or price points so much. Keep your butt in that chair, because writing new words is still the most important thing you can do.

Don’t beat up on yourself so much for failing to meet your ridiculously high goals. You’re going to write a novel in the next six weeks, and the rest of the year is going to be a struggle. Right now, you place too much emphasis on your daily word count. Relax a bit, and don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ve still got a lot to learn about your own creative process, so take the time to figure it out.

By the way, you totally rock the beard. Growing it out was a great idea, no matter what your sisters told you back in 2010.

About your upcoming excursion to Georgia, the best advice I can give you is to remember what Spencer told you back in 2008. Adventures are like stories–they each have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You’re going to experience all of that in the next year. No, you probably won’t write another travel journal. Most of your experiences are going to be too personal for that kind of thing anyway. You’re going to accomplish all of your goals, though, so don’t worry–things are going to be just fine.

The most important thing you can do is keep yourself grounded spiritually. I know, I know, that’s always the most important thing. Well, it’s especially true now. Where you’re headed, you’re not only going to be the only Mormon, but the first Mormon to live there. Sundays are going to be a struggle. Everyone is going to think you’re crazy because you don’t drink. You’re going to make wine, though, and that’s going to be an interesting story for your friends back in Utah. Just be sure to keep doing the things you know you should be doing, and everything will turn out all right.

You’re going to love teaching English. Oh, you won’t love everything about it, but it’s something you’re naturally good at, so don’t worry about that. Just try to listen to your Georgian co-teachers and be more considerate of them. And don’t worry about the language. You’ll pick it up pretty quick. Just realize that Georgian verbs are impossible to conjugate unless you’re a native speaker.

I could tell you what your biggest mistake is going to be, but I think it’ll be better if you go ahead and make it. Just be sure to hope for the best, even as you plan for the worst. Follow the path of least regret, and you’ll make some really awesome memories–not to mention some truly amazing friendships.

At this point, I’d tell you you’re on the right path, but that isn’t exactly true. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ path for you right now, but you’re on a good one, so keep it up and see it through to the end. You’ll be glad you did.

Take care!

Joe

Summer recap and new goals

So back in June I made a to do list of things I wanted to accomplish this summer. I’ve only got a week left before I go overseas again, and I’m happy to say I’m on track to finish most of them. A couple of them (such as doing a blog tour and submitting aggressively to book bloggers) I decided weren’t worth my time, and dropped them, but these are the major things I’ve accomplished:

Release print-on-demand editions of Genesis Earth, Bringing Stella Home, and Desert Stars through CreateSpace.
Redo cover art for Bringing Stella Home.
Redo blurb/description for all titles.
Put proper copyright page in all titles.
Publish all titles on Kobo Writing Life.
Find a better way to build an ebook and reformat all titles.
Finish the second draft of Stars of Blood and Glory.
Finish and publish parts I and II of Star Wanderers.

The only major thing I haven’t accomplished is figuring out how to sell ebooks directly from my website. I figure I can set that up later, though, when I’ve got a large enough readership to justify it. If it’s all online, I can probably do it from anywhere.

While I was vacationing with my family on Cape Cod, I had a chance to step back and take a long look at what I’m doing with my life, which helped me to set some new goals and get a renewed sense of direction. I stopped tracking my daily writing word counts in July, which threw off my productivity a lot more than I thought it would. After setting some long-term goals, though, I think I can find a better way to structure my writing.

In ten years (2022), I want to…

have 25+ published novels.
earn a solid middle-class income through my writing.
be married and have kids.
own a house.
live in the United States.

My lifetime goal is to publish 100+ novels, which is actually a lot more doable than it sounds. It means writing a minimum of two novels a year, though, so I’m going to have to follow Heinlein’s rules a lot closer than I have been in the past. That’s the trouble with keeping a daily word count: it made me look a lot more productive when I was in revisions, so I spent more time doing that than writing new work.

In three years (2015), I want to…

have at least 10 published novels.
make enough with my writing not to need another job.
be married or engaged.
have lived for at least three months in 3+ countries (not including USA).

I want to settle back down in the States eventually, but before that I want to get around and see the world a bit. The absolute coolest thing would be to marry another world traveler and make enough on the writing to have a bunch of adventures together. I’m not sure if I’ll find her in Georgia, but I’ll be sure to keep my eyes open.

As for short-term goals, I’m still trying to work them out. Here’s what I have so far:

Quarterly Goals:

Start at least 2 new projects.
Finish at least 2 first drafts.
Publish at least 2 titles (print and ebook counts as two).

I think this is enough to stretch me while still being doable. By my count, in the first quarter of this year I did 2-2-1, in the second quarter I did 2-2-0, and in the current quarter, I’m at 2-0-5 so far. Of course, this includes all the Star Wanderers novelettes and novellas, which I hope to expand in the future.

I’m not going to count revisions as progress, except as part of the publishing stage. Some stuff needs a lot of revision, other stuff, not so much. What I really want to do is train myself to produce high quality work on the first or second write-through. Of course, I’ll still use test readers to gauge my work before publishing anything.

Monthly Goals:

Finish at least 2 projects (first draft or revision).
Write at least 15k words of new material.

I can write a lot more than 15k words in a month, of course, but I figure this is a good starting point. The key is that this is for new material. When I looked back at my word counts, I found that months of revision would go by before I actually worked on something new. I want to change that, but I still need to allow for longer projects that might require several weeks of revision (while emphasizing the need to produce new material, of course).

Weekly/Daily Goals:

Keep all project deadlines.
Start each day with writing.

I’ve found that if I don’t start off each day with writing, I keep putting it off until I’ve spent more time and energy angsting about it than actually doing it. For a short period of time this summer, I put my butt in the chair and my hands on the keyboard first thing after waking up (even before getting dressed). It was amazing how much of a difference that made.

Beyond that, I’m not really sure what other goals to set. I want to plan things out on a project to project basis, but beyond that I haven’t yet figured out what kind of a daily structure I need to build.

It’s probably a good idea to keep things flexible at this point, though, since I have no idea what my schedule is going to be like once I’m in Georgia. I do know a little bit about my next placement–more on that later–but for the first half of September, I’m going to be all over the place. Ani, Tusheti, Kars, Akhaltsikhe, Tbilisi, Baghdati, and Istanbul–it’s going to be crazy!

For this next week, my goal is to finish the revisions for Star Wanderers: Sacrifice (Part III) and send that out to my beta readers. I’ve been struggling with it all month, but I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of where I need to go with it. I’m going to finish chapter 3 tomorrow, then rewrite chapters 4 and 5 from scratch.

After that…another Caucasian adventure! 🙂

Stars of Blood and Glory 2.0 is finished!

On Tuesday, I finished the second draft of my latest writing project, Stars of Blood and Glory! Here are the basic stats:

words: 78,746
pages: 372
chapters: 20, epilogue, and prologue
start date: 3 July 2012
end date: 24 July 2012

Also, this is probably really dorky, but I made a logo for the title:

They say to use only Courier or Times New Roman in your manuscript, but whatever. I think it looks pretty cool.

This was a lightning-fast revision, compared with the ones I did for Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars. Part of that is because I want to try and follow Heinlein’s rules more closely. I recently looked back at how I’ve spent my writing time over the past three years, and found out that as much as 3/4ths of it was tied up in revisions, not in producing new material. Yeah…that’s something that needs to change.

For this draft, I resisted the urge to do a line-by-line edit, and instead focused on rearranging the scenes in their proper order and inserting new ones that were essential to the story but missing from the first draft. That’s probably why it only took three weeks to finish.

I don’t think there are any glaring holes in the story, but if my first readers find any, I’ll probably do another scene rearranging draft much like this one. If they give me the green light, though, I’ll do a quick pass to fix any errors and send it off to my editor to start the publication process.

Two things about Stars of Blood and Glory have really surprised me: first, how little time it’s taken to write it (two months for the first draft, a little less than one for this one), and second, how short it is. Even with five viewpoint characters, it’s less than 80k (Bringing Stella Home was 110k). The pacing feels right, though, so that’s probably its natural length–it’s just that I seem to be writing shorter and shorter novels lately instead of longer ones. Maybe it has something to do with all those David Gemmell novels I love to read.

There’s more I could say, but I don’t want to bore you guys too much. Besides, you probably want me to move on to the next one.

My next writing project is Star Wanderers: Part II, which should take me about a week to revise and another week or two to finalize and publish. If any of you want to help me proofread the final draft, let me know–I’m willing to exchange services and/or give you a free copy.

In the meantime, I’d better get back to writing.

Form rejection and WOTF closure

So I finally got an email from the Writers of the Future contest. It reads:

Dear Entrant,

Your story has now been judged and did not win or place in the 1st quarter. Even though you have never had to wait for results in order to submit for the next quarter, this hopefully gives you incentive to submit again. The more often you enter, the better chance you have of winning, and improving your skills.

I do urge you to join our forum if you have not already, or subscribe to our judge, David Farland’s newsletter. Lots of great tips at both locations to help you.

I do hope you are already working on that next story and do let me know that you did get this e-mail.

Best regards,

Joni Labaqui

I’m not going to lie: it’s a pretty disappointing way to end an 8+ month wait. But when you’re a writer, rejection is just a normal part of the business. I was hoping to get at least an honorable mention, but oh well.

Stories are fundamentally subjective: what might work really well for one reader might not for another. The important thing is to write the best stories that you can, and to send them out into the world until they grow into their audience. I still feel confident that Star Wanderers represents some of my best work to date, so I plan to make it available as soon as I can.

I’m flying back to the States on Friday, but Part I is already edited and formatted, so I’ll probably publish it over the weekend. In the meantime, I’ll finish the first draft of the complete novel somewhere between Tbilisi and New York. That’s one good thing about the long wait–it helped me to finish the story and work out some of the kinks before publishing it.

So yeah, the WOTF rejection is a bit of a setback, but at the same time, it’s also quite liberating. All I really wanted was to get this story out to the readers, and now I can finally do that! If you like my other stories, I think this is one you’re really going to enjoy.

Expect to hear more about it soon!