Goals and Plans – Page 16 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Book Festival and other updates

So last Friday, there was a book fair at the Provo Library. I only heard about it the night before from Facebook, but there were almost twenty authors on the guest list, so I figured it would be a good place to go to meet other writers. I wasn’t mistaken!

I biked up to the library just as Brandon Sanderson was walking in. We chatted for a while, caught up on stuff since the last time I took his class. I almost got to walk into the author’s only lounge with him, but one of the staff stopped me. One of these days, though…one of these days!

I also ran into Dan Wells, who remembered me from World Fantasy and gave me a very nice compliment: he said I was very good at approaching people, especially at conventions. Talked about the different cons this year; according to Dan, Dragoncon is going to be huge this year, since Worldcon is in Australia and World Fantasy is in Ohio. I have a friend in Atlanta–I’ll have to look into attending that.

Brandon Sanderson, Clint Johnson, Mette Ivie Harrison, and J. Scott Savage did a panel on writing fantasy. Fortunately, I had my mp3 player on me and was able to record it. If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here:

Fantasy Panel, Provo Children’s Book Festival (15 May 2010)

Clint had some interesting advice for me after the panel; he asked about the books I’ve written and said I should submit them to YA agents/editors as well as mainstream adult agents/editors. Apparently, Genesis Earth and Mercenary Savior could work as YA, since 1) they’re about (relatively) young protagonists having coming-of-age experiences and learning how they want to live their lives, and 2) they don’t have the sense of nostalgia that adults often have when they think about their childhood.

So that was the Provo Children’s Book Festival. Let me just say, this is one of the reasons why I love Utah: the writing scene for fantasy/sf/YA is HUGE. Tons of writers, tons of readers, local writing events all the time–it’s great.

In other updates, I got a personalized rejection from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show! It was a pretty long one, too. The assistant editor said the writing was pretty good, but it felt too much like a novel. Hehe…confession, it was part of a novel. But that’s awesome that he thought the writing was good!

Besides that, he gave a lot of suggestions as to formatting, referring me to this site for detailed ms instructions. I didn’t think most editors would mind Times New Roman, but if it’s an issue even for a few of them, I should probably just switch to Courier–no editor is going to fault me for using Courier.

Besides all that, I’m well on my way to finishing Mercenary Savior 3.0 before CONduit. My goal right now is to finish it next Tuesday and spend Wednesday and Thursday sending it out. After CONduit, I plan on starting Hero in Exile (except the name will change), and I have a TON of great ideas for it. Funny how sometimes in order to finish a book, you need to write another one first.

Untitled

Man, I don’t write for this blog as much as I should.

Life is going well. I just recently got a part time job doing telephone surveys; hopefully, it will help tide things over until I can get something better. Between that and donating plasma, I should be able to pay the bills for the next couple of months.

I’ve also been writing quite a bit, hitting between 2k and 4k words per day. At this rate, Mercenary Savior 3.0 should be finished by the end of next week. That’s good, because I’m excited to start submitting it. I’ve already got Genesis Earth making the rounds, but the sooner I can get another project out there, the better.

For my next project after , I want to recycle Hero in Exile (ugh, it needs a new title) and turn that into a complete novel. I have a lot of ideas for it, but it will require some research, which may delay the actual start date.

For example, the main character (who I’m going to rename) has this major conflict where he’s trying to go home. As a young boy, his parents put him in an escape pod that crash landed on the planet, where he was raised by the locals. As the writer, I’m going to need to know about adoptions, know a handful o f adoption stories to pattern things off of, and maybe read a couple of essays on the meaning of “home.”

As another example, one of the major themes I want to get across is the struggle to maintain personal moral integrity in a morally corrupt world. I probably won’t have to look too far for that–being Mormon has given me lots of opportunities for research there–but I need to do a lot more to be aware of that particular conflict. When you’re slogging away, it’s very easy to focus too much on plot and no enough on the rest.

Probably the biggest preparation is going to be working through the character motivations, and that inevitably means building a background, since motivations grow out of the character’s history and background. But that’s going to involve a fair degree of pre-writing, which I may or may not be able to do before I start page one.

And that’s another scene; I’ve got to completely revamp the beginning. What I have now involves the main character staring out over the desert just before a sandstorm. Picturesque, but essentially navel gazing with little real character development. Instead, I want to show him thinking or doing something that reveals the central, most important aspect of his character, the way Brandon Sanderson did it in Elantris.

So anyways, lots of work to look forward to, in terms of writing that is. Other kinds of work…well, it’s good to have a sense of security. Even though I’ve been producing a lot, I’m sure I could have been producing more (upwards of 6k or 8k per day) if I’d had that sense of security provided.

Anyways, there is more that I could say, but I’m going to go to bed because it’s freaking 2:22 AM. Night.

Graduation!

So last week, I graduated from college! That’s right: college is OVER! No more papers, no more homework, no more tests or quizzes or theses or final projects…at least until I decide I miss it all and go back to grad school.

It was a big week, not only because of the ceremonies, but because of all the family that came down for the event. It was great to see all my sisters, baby Jane, a bunch of my cousins who came down for our Italian barbeque (salad, lasagna, and garlic bread on the porch), and everyone else who came.

The ceremonies were interesting too. Elder Christofferson gave the commencement speech, and I was very pleased that he referenced Hugh Nibley. Man, if Nibley were still alive (or maybe if he could come back from the dead), it would be absolutely awesome if he could give the commencement address, but Elder Christofferson was pretty good too.

The convocation Friday was very long, but fortunately I snuck a novel in: Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin. Made some decent headway in it, too. There was a very interesting talk, though. One of the retiring faculty told a story from when she was a student in a wilderness class.

As they were making their way down a river canyon and came to the end of the bank, she thought to herself “it will be alright if I can just keep my boots dry.” As the water became deeper, that changed to “it will be alright if I can keep my pack dry.” Eventually, however, they had to swim, and everything got wet. Still, they made a fire, dried everything out, and had a good time.

The story was meant to illustrate that life in the real world is like that. When you start out, you worry about a lot of things, but when you look back after many years have passed, those small setbacks don’t seem like anything to worry too much about.

Well, that’s where I am right now: unemployed, looking for a plan for the next five years. My plan A is still to break into publishing, but I’m going to need a secondary career or day job to get by in the short to medium term. I have no idea what that entails, but at least I’m graduating debt free, with money in the bank. That helps.

Two years ago, I was terrified of graduating and setting out into the “real world.” A year ago, I realized I had grown out of college life and needed to move on. Now, I have no idea what I’m doing, but life is an adventure and I’m confident things will work out for the best.

Pluggin’ away

Wrote 2,889 words today, bringing the running 7-day total to just under 15,000 words. If I can keep this up for a month without lagging, I should be able to finish Mercenary Savior 3.0 in time for CONduit.

In the meantime, I’m looking for a job. A friend of mine who’s in Egypt right now told me about this interesting online freelance contractor, which looks like a promising source of cash in the short term. Sent in my application, inshallah will hear back soon. Payment is via paypal on a work for hire basis, with most writers / copy editors averaging $20-$25 per hour, so could be useful. No benefits, but what the heck.

In between writing and applying with the online writing place, I submitted Genesis Earth to a couple new places, and sent From the Ice Incarnate to IGMS. I don’t have many short stories, but I really need to send out the few I do have to more markets. Maybe I can pull out the first couple chapters of some of my novels and call them short stories and/or novellas. Wouldn’t hurt.

Graduation is coming up in less than 100 hours. My parents arrived in town about an hour ago, and the rest of the family should be coming shortly. It will be really good to see them–I’m looking forward to it.

That’s about it for now. I’ve got some other thoughts on jobs, dating, future plans, settling down, an article I’m writing for Mormon Artist, and the computer I want to build once I’ve got a job, but I’ll write about that later. Goodnight.

So much happening, so little getting done

…in terms of writing, that is. I got a lot of little and not-so-little things done today, but didn’t spend much time writing. Only got about 855 words, when I need to be averaging 2.5k per day in order to finish Mercenary Savior before CONduit.

The weirdest part is that I have so much free time. No school, no work–no pressing obligations or deadlines. You’d think I’d be writing 4k a day, just like last summer.

Instead, I’ve been so consumed with getting an apartment, getting a job, getting basic transportation–basically, figuring out a plan for my immediate future–that I’ve lost any momentum I might have had a week ago. Writing isn’t just about time; it’s about mental space as well.

It’s frustrating. I feel so distant from Mercenary Savior that it’s hard not to procrastinate, especially now that I’m stuck on one of James’s scenes that needs a complete overhaul. I wonder whether these revisions are making the novel any better–I need to deal with this outside stress and get back into the story.

Fortunately, things are working out that I’ll probably be able to do that. I found a cheap bike on craigslist that will hopefully solve my immediate transportation needs, and I’ve got a semi-workable plan as far as employment goes.

The plan that currently seems most attractive is to get a full or 3/4ths part time job at BYU (those come with benefits) before the end of the summer. Yes, there is still a hiring freeze, but it could lift very soon, and when it does, there will be tons of positions to fill. It’s not like I’m going to hold out for that, but I’m certainly hopeful. I felt very good about it when I visited D-70 ASB for information.

Anyways, the key with the writing is to cut the distractions and just slug through it for a few days, until the momentum comes back. In the absence of school or work, it will be difficult to impose structure on my days, but that problem will solve itself if I can balance job-seeking with writing.

Exactly one month ago, I started the revision for Mercenary Savior. I’ve got 40 days before the self-imposed deadline, and I’m only 25% finished. Fortunately, without any school obligations to occupy my time, I should be able to do it. 2.5k per day, that’s the goal. Once I’ve got some momentum going again, it should be pretty straightforward.

In the meantime, check out this awesome, awesome song from This American Life and rage against the robber barons of the Great Recession:

Bet Against The American Dream from Planet Money on Vimeo.

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.

Quarterly report

So I figure that since I want to write professionally, it would be a good idea to keep track of my writing and do quarterly updates on my blog. Here’s the first one for this year:

The red line shows my daily writing word count, the blue line a running seven day total. The graph starts January 1st and goes to March 31st.

For the first part of January, the seven day total was high for a week because I’d just finished Bringing Stella Home 2.0. It dropped down way low for a while because I was busy moving into the Barlow center, starting my internship, and starting a new novel at the same time. Combining all three of those things at the same time made for very little progress, until about the middle part of the month.

Things progressed at a moderate rate (about 1k words per day) from the middle of January until snowmageddon, which hit us in the second week of February. I got a lot of writing done while snowed in, and my work in progress at the time, To Search the Starry Sea 1.0, got a lot of momentum behind it.

That momentum started to taper off, as I realized that the story I was writing was different than the story I had in my head. I swear, this happens EVERY time I try to write a novel. I tried to stick with the story in my head, but the gap got wider and wider until I realized the story just wasn’t working.

At the end of February, I decided to put it on the back burner and let my ideas simmer for a while. I’ll probably pick it up again at some point in the future, but not in the short term–I need to put it away for a while. I’m sure I’ll finish it someday, though.

So then, in the beginning of March, I went through all the comments I’d received on Bringing Stella Home. The HUGE spike you see right around the middle of the month represents all the revision notes I put together for the 3.0 draft. I read through the entire manuscript in about a week and a half, made a detailed scene by scene outline, and figured out my strategy for the revision.

Things dropped off again pretty sharply the last couple weeks of March because that was right around when I was fired from my internship. That was one hell of a stressful week. They picked up pretty quick after that, though, because 1) I had a lot more free time, and 2) I’m REALLY excited about this project.

Looking ahead, I think if I push myself, I can finish Bringing Stella Home 3.0 by the end of April. It will be difficult because I’ll be looking for an apartment and a job at the same time, but after next week I won’t have to worry about schoolwork anymore (potentially for the rest of my life…whoa). Definitely, I’ll have it done in time for CONduit 2010.

One thing I need to work on a lot more is submitting. I’ve got a list of agents to submit Genesis Earth to, I just haven’t got around to sending it to them all. The responses I’ve received have been generally encouraging: all rejections, but about half form rejections, half personalized in some way. I do think this book will find it’s way in print, though it may not be my first to be published.

Even though Bringing Stella Home will probably need at least one more major revision before the full manuscript is ready to be sent out to editors/agents, I can probably polish the first three chapters enough to shop it around sometime in May. I’m not sure if that’s what I’ll do, but it’s an option. It depends on whether I jump right in to the 4.0 revision after finishing the current draft, which I probably won’t do; better to let it sit for a while.

Instead, I think I’ll jump right in to finishing that novel I started in late 2008, Hero in Exile. The title will have to change (as always), but I’ve got a lot of fresh ideas for it, plus the enthusiasm to pull it off. In many ways, Hero in Exile is a non-linear sequel to Bringing Stella Home, so if I get a deal with the one, I can always pitch the other as the next in the series. That’s a huge plus–and a major reason why I’ll be enthusiastic about the project, since the two novels build off of each other.

Anyway, that’s what things are looking like from here. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I’ll read a couple of friends’ novels (I haven’t forgotten about you, Jakeson and Drek!), graduate, get an apartment, get a job (inshallah), write an article for Mormon Artist, go to a con or two, and maybe even get a girlfriend and/or figure out what to do with my life.

Major project shift

I’ve got this goal to finish my current work-in-progress, To Search the Starry Sea, by May 1st 2010. However, the deeper I get into the story, the more I realize how many problems it has–how much it sucks, in other words.

Normally, this wouldn’t keep me from dropping the project or putting it on hold. It happens with every rough draft (or second or third draft, for that matter); midway through every project, I start to get all angsty and worry that the project sucks, that it’s beyond saving, that I’m wasting my time, etc.

However, this time it’s different for a number of reasons.

First of all, the story itself doesn’t suck. However, it does have a weak beginning and a poor setup, which makes it very difficult to develop the middle section. With better conflict foreshadowing and character introductions, I could tear right through this section, but without that, I’m floundering more and more.

A couple months ago, I started to realize this, so I started a set of revision notes for the next draft. My thought was “if I know the story needs changes, rather than going back and changing them, I can just make a note of them and move on.”

However, that approach isn’t working because the unwritten changes aren’t impacting the story as fully and completely as they would if I’d write them out. If the changes were minor, I could let them go–but when they have to do with something fundamental, like setting up a romantic subplot, or turning a minor character into a major character into a major viewpoint character, I can’ t just make a note of the change and move on–I need to write the thing to see what it changes.

In other words, I need to restart this project from the beginning. But if I do that while I’m still angsty about it, it’s going to end up like crap. I’ve got to let it sit for a while.

It’s frustrating, because I really want to finish a straight draft from start to finish. For both Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home, I only finished the rough draft after dropping the project for a while and restarting it at the beginning. If it works, I guess it works, but it would be nice if the creative process were more linear. Blegh.

All is not lost, however. Most of my first readers for Bringing Stella Home have gotten back with their feedback, and it’s been extremely helpful. I’ve got a clear direction and lots of ideas for where I want to take that story, and now that I’ve spent some time away from it, I can honestly say that it doesn’t suck all that bad. In fact, after a lot of work, it might actually be decently good.

There are several reasons why it makes sense to work on Bringing Stella Home right now. For example,

I’m excited about it. Better to capitalize on that now than wait until after the enthusiasm has died.
I’ve got lots of ideas flowing to me now. I could try to write them all down for later, but why not try them out now, while they’re still fresh?
I’m sending Genesis Earth out to a bunch of places, and the rejections are starting to come in. If I can respond to a rejection by sending out a second book in a timely way, I will look much more like a professional, and the agents/editors will take me more seriously.

My goal was to have To Search the Starry Sea done by May 1st. Let’s see if I can do Bringing Stella Home 3.0 (and yes, the title will change) by that day instead. And if that proves too difficult, what with graduation, internship, looking for work, and figuring out life, at least I can reach the halfway mark by then.

So that’s my new goal: Finish Bringing Stella Home 3.0 by May 1st, 2010 (or at least be halfway finished). To do that, I’ll have to read through all the comments by the end of this week and have the revision notes all figured out.

Better get started!

Got a bite!

Just yesterday, I got a response to a query for Genesis Earth that I emailed to an agent at Nelson Literary Agency, LLC. Apparently, my query piqued their interest and they wanted to see the first 30 pages of my manuscript!

It’s not a huge development, of course–they haven’t requested the full, just a partial–but it’s comforting to know that my query letter is decent. Enough, at least, to lead to the next step, and that’s all that matters.

Writing query letters is hard. There are so many ways to screw them up. I queried another agent over the weekend with a similar (but different) letter, and I got a standard rejection…within the hour. Ouch. I was kind of worried something was wrong with the pitch, but with the other agency’s response, I’m not quite so worried.

Submitting is something that I have to get better at doing. I’ve started putting together a personal database of agents and editors, but still, it takes guts to put your stuff out there. I still get chills whenever I slip that envelope into the mail slot, or hit send on the computer. It’s hard to say exactly what that thrill is–fear of rejection? Fear of failure? I think it’s more complex than that, but I’m not sure exactly what it is, or how to put it. I’ll let you know when/if I figure it out.

I read an interesting post on agent Nathan Bransford’s blog about sending out queries. He suggested the best strategy is to submit in little spurts, rather than all at once–that way, if you only get form rejections, you can figure out what’s wrong and fix it while still having places to send it.

That sounds like a good strategy, but to really make it work, I should probably set a goal to send out a certain number of queries a month. Not sure how many that is, but since my main goal is to have a publishing deal by 2015 (and making a full-time living at this by 2020), it should probably not be a small number. Maybe eight or ten.

I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. In the meantime…here’s to hoping!

Trading old hangups for new ones

So I started my internship with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last week, and it’s been quite interesting. Trying to figure out the new routine while starting a new novel has been quite challenging, but somehow, I’ve written at least something every day (except Sunday–I try not to write Sundays now).

I can tell, though, that it’s going to be just as difficult to juggle writing and work as it’s been to juggle writing and school. There is NO room for procrastination–when I succumb to other things on my to do list instead of forcing myself to pound out the next scene, the day goes by and nothing gets written.

There is one thing I’ve been putting off for almost a month, though, and that’s the query letter for Genesis Earth. I recently received a very encouraging rejection letter from Eddie Schneider, where he basically said “this is good, but I’m not the right agent for it because it doesn’t excite me enough.”

I’ve written the book, polished it, made the writing solid–now, all I have to do is find an agent who’s passionate enough about it to take the project on. That’s the last hurdle–most of the difficult work is already finished! All I have to do is write a solid query letter and send it to the dozen or so agents I’ve researched…but yeah, I’ve been putting it off. Query letters are…difficult.

For that reason, I’ve decided to set a new goal: submit Genesis Earth to at least 12 agents/editors by February 1st.

The only way that’s ever going to happen is if I write a query letter in the near future–as in, sometime this weekend. When I do, I’ll post it up here and ask what you think. Queries are very tricky–they are extremely different from novels, and otherwise good writers often botch them up. We’ll see how this one goes.

So look out for an “I need your help!” post here in the near future! Thanks!