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

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!

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!