Goals and Plans – Page 17 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Never a good time to write

I’m on vacation now, staying with my uncle in Midland. The rest of the family will be out here in a couple of days. In the meantime, I’m visiting with relatives, going Christmas shopping, and trying to finally finish Bringing Stella Home 2.0.

It’s not going to be easy, though, with all the family stuff going on. I managed 1,221 words yesterday, but most of that was after midnight. I get the feeling this is going to be pretty common for the rest of the time here.

There’s never a good time to write–but I think that’s the norm. If I’m not busy with exams or schoolwork, it’s family obligations or traveling. There is never a steady routine that gives me time to write.

I suppose part of being a writer is learning to write anyway.

So anyways, my goal is to finish Bringing Stella Home 2.0 before the new year. I’m about 26k words from the end, so with only 10 days or so to go, that’s going to be almost 3k words per day. A little steep, but definitely doable. Also, since this isn’t the polished draft that I’m going to be sending out to publishers, it doesn’t have to be perfect–just good enough for me to make perfect on the next pass.

And now my Dad’s calling me, asking if I’m up and ready to go. I’ll have to cut this short here, but in the meantime, check this out: explanetary systems forming in the Orion nebula. Holy crap, this is awesome! Maybe I should go back to school and become an astronomer.

Finishing and beginning

Classes for this semester are over, I’ve turned in all my papers, taken all my exams but one, and now I feel like I have this giant void in my life. I was walking around on campus today with literally no idea where I was going or what I should do.

It was…strange.

With school out, I’m getting ready to leave Provo for good. I won’t be coming back for the winter, seeing as I’ll be in Washington DC. As for post graduation plans, nothing’s solid, but I probably won’t be coming back to Utah. Not for a while, at least.

It’s exciting and scary, but mostly exciting. 2010 is going to mark the end of my academic career and my first venture into the real world. Beyond this internship, I have no idea what I’m going to do, but I’m starting to formulate some plans. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Post-graduation options:

Go to grad school
Work side jobs while writing novels
Travel across the Middle East for a year or two
Start a career in Washington DC

The first option (grad school) isn’t going to happen right away. I’ve already decided that I’m not going to go to grad school until I have a definite plan for what I want to accomplish with it (an “exit strategy,” if you will). Interning in Washington might give me an idea of what I want to study, but I’ll probably take a year off from academics just the same.

The second option (side jobs & writing) is an interesting option that I haven’t really thought through. It would involve a lot more focus on writing and trying to get published, but it would also involve a lot of uncertainty until my writing career really gets launched. However, I’d have a lot of flexibility in where I could live. I could stay in Washington DC, or move back to Massachusetts, or come back to Utah.

The third option (travel) is definitely the most exciting and adventurous of the four. It would involve living in a Middle Eastern country for a year or two, teaching English to support myself while I see the country and work on my writing. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, even the Gulf…man, it would be awesome! I have friends from the MESA program who are doing it, too.

Man, that would be fun–and definitely give me a lot to write about, besides awesome life experiences! Finding a girl and settling down, though…probably not going to happen until I get back. That’s the downside.

The fourth option (career) is entirely dependent on what happens this winter in Washington. If I find that I love what I’m doing with my internship, I’ll probably look to get a job with WINEP or an organization like it. I’ve got to admit, it would certainly give me a comforting degree of direction and certainty if such were the case–to graduate with a job in hand, doing something that I love.

At the same time, however, there’s a danger that a career in this field might not leave me with much time to pursue my writing. My dream job is still to be a full-time novelist, and I need to remember that while I’m in Washington. If I find that my work with WINEP leaves me with little to no time to write, I’ll have to re-evaluate my plans.

So really, this internship in Washington is going to be more about testing the waters than anything else. I’m going to have to periodically ask myself 1) whether this is the kind of work I find enjoyment and personal fulfillment doing, 2) whether this is the kind of work I can balance with a writing career, and 3) what opportunities are available for me in this particular field. Since it all depends on how the internship goes, I can anticipate one of three things happening:

Possible reactions to my internship:

I love the work that I do for my internship.
I hate the work that I do for my internship.
I am utterly indifferent to the work I do for my internship.

If #1 is the case, I should focus on getting a job from my internship connections, provided I can still make time to write while doing this kind of work. If not, I can probably still find a similar career path that does allow me enough time to pursue a writing career on the side.

If #2 is the case, it means that policy making and research is not my thing, but I still have a passion for the Middle East. Taking a year or two off to travel will become a very appealing option at that point.

If #3 is the case, it means that I’m going to have to completely retool. I have no idea what I’ll end up doing if this happens. Travel, maybe–but what good would it do me, if a Middle East related career doesn’t interest me? Maybe I’ll take a year off to work on my math and go back to grad school for astronomy. Maybe I’ll work odd jobs like Robert Charles Wilson until I get published. Maybe I’ll become a hobo and vanish into obscurity. I don’t know.

Whatever happens, writing is going to be a priority. If I can make an adequate living writing fiction, I’m going to do it. Which makes me wonder–what does that mean about all my other plans? Is all of this Middle East stuff just a temporary fix until I get published, hopefully in the next five years? Or is it something more permanent?

I have absoultely no idea, but this post is already getting pretty long, so I’ll cut it here. Regardless what happens, however, I’m 100% confident that everything will work out in the way that it should. These life changes are more exciting than they are scary. I’m looking forward to the new year very much!

An existential time of year

School has been kicking my trash this semester. Maybe it’s senioritis or something, but I feel like I’m doing half the work I did as a junior and still, all I can do is put out fires.

I was hoping to be finished with Genesis Earth 4.0 by now, but it’s looking like that won’t happen until the end of this week. If I really push myself, I could probably get it done tomorrow…in fact, I may just do that. Schoolwork can wait–this is what I want to do with my life.

Around this time of year, my thoughts tend to become morose and existential. Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight, or the end-of-semester crunch, but I always wonder why I’m doing what I’m doing, what the point of it is, where I’m headed in my life–that kind of stuff. For some reason, I get the feeling that my life is empty in some way.

It’s not overwhelming, fortunately. I don’t have depression or anything like that. Just…a sense of discontentment. Maybe it has to do with finals. I don’t know.

But I do know that it sucks to be pulled in so many different directions all the time. Classes, work, writing, classes; finals, papers, papers and finals to grade, writing, more papers and finals. It sucks. I can’t wait until graduation!

(talk about famous last words o.O )

In any case, Genesis Earth is just about finished. I’m finding that the closer I get to the end, the more I find that needs to be revised. I’ll probably have to insert a new scene in the second to last chapter, just to tie them closer together. For some reason, the last chapter feels too…short. And disconnected. Dammit.

And then, sometime between now and my personal exodus from Provo, I need to look up places to submit this thing. I haven’t even begun to do that. Crap. Since this is the most polished draft of anything I’ve done up to this point, I’m going to be pretty hard core about submitting.

And then, somehow, I need to finish the second draft for Bringing Stella Home before New Years. Holy crap, that novel is so full of holes. I’m not going to even begin to be able patch them until the third draft, whenever that happens. Inshallah, I can get that done over Christmas break…inshallah.

And then, something entirely new! But it’s past 1am, so I’m not going to elaborate. I’ve got some cool ideas, though–some crazy cool ideas. Stay tuned.

First personalized rejection!

Okay, I’m taking a quick break from the Final Fantasy 6 Werewolf tribute posts to mention some exciting news.

This might sound counterintuitive, but I got an encouraging rejection letter a couple of days ago from Krista Marino, one of the editors at the BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers conference! This is what she said:

Thanks for giving me a look at Genesis Earth. You’ve got a great concept and storyline worked out. Unfortunately this just doesn’t feel like a book for teen readers. All best, Krista.

In publishing, from what I understand, personalized rejections are a significant step above the standard form rejections. Once you start getting personalized rejections, your writing is generally at or near publishable, and you’re not too far from breaking in.

What’s more, it seems that her reasons for rejecting the ms had more to do with audience, genre, and her personal tastes as an editor than problems with the story or my writing. That’s very encouraging–it tells me that when I find an editor/agent who’s a good fit for this kind of story, I have a decent chance.

Or I could be wrong and it’s generally standard for editors/agents to give personalized rejections to conference attendees; I’m not sure.

Regardless, it’s a step up from a form rejection. I should probably send a thank you postcard to her in the near future.

I also need to start looking for other places to submit Genesis Earth. So far, I’ve only got three partials out right now. I’ve been putting more effort into finishing the 4th draft, but I plan to finish that this week (one way or another, inshallah), so at some point in the near future I need to crack open Writer’s Market and just find a bunch of places to submit.

Also, just tonight I got a peek at the artwork for my story coming out in this month’s issue of Leading Edge. It looks REALLY good! I lucked out with some awesome art! I don’t yet know who did it, but I’ll be sure to post a link to the artist when I find out.

Also, once the issue goes to press, I’ll be sure to post a link where you can buy it. Currently, the only way to buy copies of Leading Edge is through a mail-in form that you print out (lame, I know), but they just got a new volunteer webmaster so that’s probably going to change in the near future.

(Man, somebody read my story and illustrated it! Drew pictures of it! And they’re good! I can’t get over that!)

🙂 🙂 🙂

Must…build…momentum

Man, nothing throws a kink in your writing life like a major paper. This semester, I’ve got the mother of all undergraduate papers to write–the CAPSTONE.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been having a lot of fun with mine. A lot. I’ll spare you the gory details, but basically my capstone is a statistical study of the effects of Israeli politics on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically whether Israeli political fragmentation leads to increases in the level of conflict. One of these days, I’ll get around to showing you the tables, because they are fairly compelling.

Well, on Monday, the rough draft was due–the complete rough draft. Minimum: 20 pages. Professor Christensen doesn’t care how you get your paper in, though, so long as it’s on his desk when he shows up for work Tuesday morning. So basically, I locked myself in the SWKT and wrote the last half of the thing in the TA office. The building closed, but around midnight I finished the thing and slipped it into the dropbox! Huzzah!

And now that my capstone is complete (at least, the first draft), you have NO IDEA how liberated I feel! It’s awesome! Like, I actually have free time right now! It’s been so long, I’ve totally forgotten what that feels like. Freedom!

And now that I look back on the last three weeks of my writing, all I can say is ouch.

I’ve hardly worked on either of my novels at all these past two weeks. The 7-day word counts have been steadily dwindling, and last week it actually hit zero. Yikes! I don’t think that’s happened since…since finals last semester or something.

Well, I’m going to fix that! Yesterday, I churned through about 2.5k words in the revision of Genesis Earth, and I plan to keep it up all this week until school starts beating me up again. That probably won’t be until after Thanksgiving, which gives me just enough time to finish this revision.

Hopefully, this week I’ll be able to do at least 1.5k daily. It’s going to take hard work to build momentum again, but once I’m up and running, finishing this beast shouldn’t be hard. Then I can devote more time to finishing the current incarnation of Bringing Stella Home, which should have been finished long ago.

And then, finally…something new!

I need a new deadline

Two, actually. I’ve got two unfinished projects, both of them on the sidebar: Genesis Earth 4.0 and Bringing Stella Home 2.0, both of which have stalled in recent weeks.

Here’s what I’m thinking: I’m currently swamped with school, and have been for the last several weeks, but after tomorrow, most of the urgent important stuff will be finished, and I’ll have some breathing space until after Thanksgiving break.

That should be enough time to finish Genesis Earth, at least before the end of the break. It will require some commitment, but that’s what personal deadlines are for, right? Making a commitment.

As for Bringing Stella Home, it’s been so long since I’ve worked on that beast, I’m not sure what state it’s in. I do know that I’ll have to do a complete rewrite from the beginning before it’s anywhere near submittable. However, I’m not going to scrap the current rewrite, because even though it isn’t fixing all the major story issues, it is helping me to put the chapters and scenes in the right order. Without that, I won’t have a good foundation for the next rewrite–that’s what happened to me on the various revisions of Ashes of the Starry Sea.

So the personal deadline I’m setting for Bringing Stella Home is the end of the year. I want both projects to be completely finished by then, so I can start 2010 with something completely new. It’s been way too long since I worked on a new story.

September recap

So, September’s over now. Where in the heck did all that time go? In some ways, I can still remember the summer…but in other ways, it’s never been further away.

So, what did I do this past month? Plenty. I got a good start on school (14 credits this semester), I quit the writing advisor job and replaced it with two TA jobs, and I turned 25 years old. Quarter century…and still in school. I feel like some kind of relic. “An elegant weapon for a more civilized age…”

As far as writing goes, I wrote 41,649 words total, averaging 1,602 words per day (not counting Sundays–counting Sundays, I averaged 1,388). I passed the 3/4ths mark on Bringing Stella Home 2.0 and started work on Genesis Earth 4.0.

Not bad! I’m surprised I wrote so much; 41k is almost as much as nanowrimo. However, I can’t help but wonder: how many of those words are good words?

It’s a much more subjective thing to measure, but I do feel that my craft has improved. Now that I’ve started the rewrite on Genesis Earth, I’m catching a surprising number of sentences and paragraphs that could be much better phrased. For today, I “wrote” 1,616 words, but only got about 1,000 words further into the story (I measure wordcount with compare documents, totaling all the deletions and additions). After the last revision–just last July–I felt very satisfied with the draft as I’d written it. The fact that I’m changing so much on this rewrite shows that I’ve set the bar a lot higher for quality of writing (at least, I hope that’s what it means).

School is still kicking my trash. I’ve got papers up the wazoo this entire month–3 major ones, two minor ones, and at least one midterm, not to mention all the midterms and papers I’ll be grading. Oh, and I’m reading about a dozen academic articles per week. Dense articles. The kind that suck your life out through your eyes.

Because of all that, and because of World Fantasy at the end of the month, I’ve decided to put Bringing Stella Home on temporary hold until I finish the revision of Genesis Earth. Got to put priorities first, and that’s how it falls. If the revision takes longer than expected, I may have to change my personal deadline for Bringing Stella Home to Thanksgiving.

But come Thanksgiving, I am definitely starting something new!

Six weeks to World Fantasy

Holy cow! How is September halfway over? It seems like school started just a week ago. Only six and a half weeks before World Fantasy convention in San Jose, and I think I’m going to have to readjust some of my goals.

I’d wanted to finish Bringing Stella Home 2.0 by the 11th of October, but the way school and work is looking, I probably won’t be able to write 2k words every day in order to meet that goal. Besides, the story has several major issues that can only be fixed with a major overhaul, so there’s no way this novel is going to be ready for submission in time for the convention.

However, Genesis Earth is looking pretty good. So far as story issues go, I was very satisfied with the third draft–I think I fixed all the major issues and wrote something that’s pretty close to salable. Before the convention, I want to go through and make one final revision, one where I polish up the prose and fix the readability issues. That shouldn’t be too hard–I can probably do that in two to three weeks.

So here’s what I’m going to do in the next six weeks. I’m going to check out all of Robert Charles Wilson’s books and immerse myself in his prose–not to copy it, but to hopefully boost the quality of my own prose. The quality of his writing is fantastic, a beautiful mesh of literary prose and thriller pacing and rhythm. While I’m doing that, I’ll start the 4.0 draft of Genesis Earth and work hard at it, until I’ve polished that work as much as I can. That’s the work that I’ll try to sell when I’m at World Fantasy.

I’m a little worried, because I submitted the full manuscript to Krista Marino back in June and haven’t heard back. At the BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers conference, she said she had a response time of 4 months, but I’m worried I won’t hear back from her before World Fantasy. Is it appropriate to send a polite note asking her to get back to me before the convention? I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by sending out simultaneous submissions, and if an editor asks to see my ms, I want to be able to send it to them ASAP. Then again, I suppose I could just tell them that the full is currently with someone else, and that would demonstrate some professionalism…but I want to be able to send it if/when they ask for it.

Which reminds me: I need to do some HEAVY agent/editor research before this convention. I want to go to World Fantasy with a list of people to look for, so I know where to go to network, which panels to attend, who to look out for in the hallways and parties. I want to be very professional about this, and get the most out of those two/three days that I can.

As for Bringing Stella Home, my current WIP, I’m going to do my best to finish it before World Fantasy so that I can start November with something new. I need to finish that book before I can set it aside and let it percolate in my mind for the next revision. Besides, it’s been too long since I’ve worked on something completely new. After October, I’ll need to take a break from all these revisions.

So that’s the plan: Finish Genesis Earth 4.0 and Bringing Stella Home 3.0 before World Fantasy. Research all the editors and agents to look out for at the convention. Oh, and hold down 14 credit hours and 2 on-campus jobs at the same time, with some time left over for a dating/social life (INSHALLAH).

Hehe…these next six weeks are going to be packed!

Busy busy AWESOME day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s the news and I AM OUTA HERE!

Summer roundup

Alright, with the first week of school already over, I figure I should recap and evaluate my writing progress this summer.

When school ended in April, I was still waiting to hear back from Brandon Sanderson’s agent about an internship. My backup plan (which I started as soon as classes ended) was to stay in Provo and write full time.

Sanderson’s agent ended up taking on a different intern, which ended up being the best for both of us, since I get the sense that he was looking to mentor someone who would go on to become a professional agent. Me, I was just looking to network and develop some connections in the publishing world, which I did anyway (at least in the local Utah scene). Besides, Provo is WAY cheaper than New York!

From the beginning, I treated writing as a full-time job. I set project deadlines, daily and 7-day wordcount goals, and spent somewhere around 8 hours a day working on my various projects. I submitted a full to an editor from the BYU Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference and partials to the other two editors. I also submitted to the Writers of the Future contest and to the LDS Publisher Christmas story contest (much smaller, but geared toward a niche market).

I started keeping my stats on May 25th, using a spreadsheet to keep track of my daily wordcount for each of my projects, the daily total wordcount, the 7-day cumulative wordcount, and any writing I did for synopses or revision notes. Since BYU’s summer recess begins in April, I missed the stats for the first three weeks or so, but I kept consistent records since then until now.

From May 25th to August 31st, I wrote 244,065 words in 8 projects (3 short stories and 5 novel drafts). I averaged 2,490 words per day. Adjusting for Sundays (I typically take Sundays off), I averaged 2,906 words per day.

My goals were to write 4k words per day, and to shoot for a constant 7-day total of 24k, but to never let that total dip below 12k words. In 98 days, the 7-day running total only went below 12k eleven times–on those particular days, I was either traveling, moving out, moving in, or extremely busy with back-to-school chores. For the two weeks I was on vacation, I still wrote more than 12k words each week.

Interestingly enough, out of the eight fiction projects, only one was a rough draft–a short story that I worked on for two days and never completed. The vast majority of my writing went into revising novels that I’d already written.

I completed the first draft of Bringing Stella Home in early June (my third complete novel rough draft). Later, in July, I began the second draft. I’m currently just over halfway through with the revisions and hope to finish by October 10th.

I started a revision of my first novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea, but decided midway through that I was running up against diminishing returns and decided to drop it (I completed the rough draft in April of 2008–it was my first finished novel and the reason I started this blog, waaaaay back in August 2007).

I started a new draft of Hero in Exile, making some drastic revisions, but found it difficult to juggle more than one writing project at a time and put it on the back burner. I may or may not pick it up again once Bringing Stella Home 2.0 is finished.

I completed the third draft of Genesis Earth and started to submit it. I will probably do one language/readability edit before the World Fantasy convention in late October and try to sell it while I’m there.

Overall, the summer was a practice run to see if I could write full time and survive the insanity. I always feared, as a child, that if writing became my full time job I would come to hate it. I found, however, that writing full time (8+ hrs/day, 6 days/wk) only made me enjoy it more. Now that school is back in session, I already wish I had more time and mental space to dedicate to my writing.

I miss the summer, but not because of the lazy days, or the parties, or the vacationing–I miss the opportunity to write full time! Provided I can find a way to support a family off of this, I can definitely see myself turning this into a career. In the meantime, I’ll keep honing my craft and start working on getting an agent.

Now, more than ever, I feel that breaking in is more of a question of ‘if’ than ‘when.’

🙂 🙂 🙂