revising – Page 7 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Confessions of a delinquent blogger

Man, so much has been happening, but now that I’m working an eight to five job, I never have the time to blog about it. It’s 2am and I’m running on only four hours of sleep from the previous night. Oh well, it’s a weekend. Here goes.

I passed the 50k mark for the rewrite of Mercenary Savior. I’m surprised how much I’m changing the draft. I’m especially finding a lot of slow chapter beginnings and thinly veiled expository lumps–not of scene descriptions so much as worldbuilding. Gotta remember the iceberg concept (to only include about ten percent or less of your worldbuilding in your story’s narrative).

I interviewed a few more people for the article on the “class that wouldn’t die.” Good stuff, all around. I met with Cara O’Sullivan today, and she had a very interesting comment about why there are so many LDS writers of science fiction and fantasy.

In her opinion, Mormon literary culture tends to push the more talented writers into sf&f because of the extreme lack of freedom in other genres of LDS writing. In mainstream and literary LDS fiction, there are so many expectations for the writers: for example, that the story will have a clear message, or that it will contain a certain brand of Mormon sentimentalism, etc. In science fiction and fantasy, OTOH, there’s much more freedom; therefore, LDS writers tend to gravitate that way.

I also had a phone interview for the wilderness job last Thursday. I think it went well, but we’ll find out at the end of the month, I suppose. Questions that caught me off guard include: “how do you define success?” and “how would you respond to something you heard secondhand about an employee from another shift?”

Finally, I recently got hooked on an old abandonware DOS game called Princess Maker 2. It is so freaking awesome. Basically, you are the father of this ten year old girl, and you have to raise her from childhood to adulthood.

There are so many possible ways to do this: build her fighting skills and send her on adventures, build her artistic skills and have her win dancing/painting contests, build her refinement and send her to court to build her social reputation, etc etc. There are over 70 different possible endings, including some really weird and crazy ones!

And yes, I know, it seems strange that I’d go for a game this girly–but dude, you have no idea until you try it out. It’s like being a father, but with magic and knights and dragons and stuff! So totally awesome!

The flipside is that I spent almost the entire day playing this game. Yeah…still got in 2.5k words, but I was hoping to put in somewhere around 6k or 7k. Man, I haven’t been this addicted since Alpha Centauri. Will it last? I don’t think it will, but then again, I don’t know. The bigger question is whether this is a game I can play in moderation (like Star Control II). I certainly hope it is, but I don’t know.

In the meantime, I’ve got five weeks to write 70k words. Lets go!

Update on things

Revised the first chapter of Mercenary Savior today. I will probably revise it a couple more times before this draft is finished, but at least I’ve done it once.

For some reason, most of my alpha readers didn’t give me too many comments to work with. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but in practical terms it means I’m mostly on my own. Still waiting for some to get back to me, though.

Last week, I wrote the prologue, where as a young woman Danica returns to her home only to find her family massacred by hired thugs. It was…surprisingly dark. Charlie liked it, though, so that’s a good thing.

Charlie also complimented me on my prose, saying that it improves every time she reads something of mine. That’s a pleasant surprise, since I certainly don’t notice any difference–but then again, I’m so close to my own writing that improvement is hard to see. Good to know that my craft is getting better, not getting worse. Thanks!

Last week, I realized that I didn’t have any submissions out for Genesis Earth. None at all. I sent out a query on Saturday, but it was surprisingly difficult. Submitting is definitely not my strongest point; I really need to work on that.

In unrelated news, I’m flying home tomorrow to spend the week with my parents. I asked to come home for my birthday present; my mom’s health insurance through her work covers me until September, but only in Massachusetts. Since I haven’t had a dental checkup in years, I figured it would be good to get that done. Also, it’s a nice break and a chance to see my folks. I’m looking forward to it.

Let’s see, what else is going on? Oh! The Kepler Mission announced a press conference for Thursday to discuss “an intriguing star system” they recently discovered. Needless to say, I can hardly wait!

Also, no less than 6 fellow quarkies are moving in to my apartment complex this next semester. Six! And they’re all girls! If Baggins old place was Bag End, and his new place is Rivendell, our complex is freaking Minas Tirith. And we’re forming a dinner group, too! This next year is going to be awesome.

And that’s just about it for what’s new in my world. I came just shy of 4k in Mercenary Savior today, and I hope to keep that up (or do more) until I get a new job. For now, let me leave you with this EPIC chipophone presentation from lft. 8-bit music ftw!

Almost at four

I’ve got half a dozen things I could blog about, but it’s 2 am and cleaning checks are tomorrow, so I think I’m going to give a quick update and go to bed.

Worlds Away from Home is doing quite well–I’m only two chapters and five scenes from the end. I’d push really hard to finish it tomorrow, but I’m still waiting on some of my alpha readers for Mercenary Savior and probably won’t start that project until after I go back to Massachusetts at the end of the month.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the seven point story structure Dan Wells talked about at LTUE 2010 (which I missed, but caught on youtube), and I’ve got a TON of ideas for Mercenary Savior now. I’m practically chomping at the bit to start analyzing this story and working out all the complex plot and character elements. That’s very good.

While chatting with one of my alpha readers for Mercenary Savior, I had an interesting idea for a direct sequel. Basically, while James’s storyline has some closure (or should, after I finish this next revision), he’s still got a lot of growing and maturing to do. My mind is already working it out…should I make that my fifth novel? Or move on to something else first? The thing about direct sequels is you can’t sell them without the first book, and if the first book doesn’t sell…

I’m applying for Redcliff Ascent; if all goes well, I’ll be participating in the November training (since September is full). At first, I was hesitant about this (since I kind of need a job now), but looking at it now, that’s probably the best time to do it. It’s after World Fantasy, which gives me time to finish Mercenary Savior, and late enough in the year that I can still finish that article for Mormon Artist. Plus, I can easily get a schedule that allows me to attend LTUE 2011. The only disadvantage is that I won’t be able to attend all of Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 classes, but that’s not such a big deal (seeing as I’ve taken the class twice already!).

Other than that, life is good. I’m going home in a week to see my parents and get my teeth done (since my mom’s health insurance covers me until my birthday in September–why pay for a checkup when you could have it for free?), and I’m definitely looking forward to that. And now that I’m almost finished with Worlds Away, I can see that it’s got potential, and that’s encouraging. Not this draft, certainly, but once I fix all the holes, it could really go somewhere.

Either way, it’s going to be nice having four novels under my belt.

Forward to new ground

A couple days ago, I finished writing through the material I’d written for Worlds Away From Home back in 2008 before I dropped the project. For the first time since March, I find myself drafting entirely new material.

It’s a little bit unnerving; I’m a much better reviser, I feel, than straight up writer. Revising is awesome because I know that the book is getting better, whereas drafting is frustrating because the written story never turns out as awesome as it was when it was in my head.

At the same time, it’s really fun to play fast and loose with your book. Need a new character? Throw him in! A new romantic subplot? Go for it! A new planet for the characters to visit? Sure, why not?

I will say, though, that it’s much harder to keep up a steady writing rate when you’re drafting new material. My daily word count has fallen to about 2k, give or take a few hundred words. In order to finish this by August 15, I just need to do 2.2k per day, but I’m sure something will come up and I’ll find myself in a crunch by the end.

One thing that might throw a kink in the works is getting a new job. Being underemployed really sucks, and I want to move on to a new job by the beginning of August. Easier said than done in this economy, right? Well, there are some options open to a young, single college grad in my position: namely, a wilderness job. I’ve been holding out on that because eight days in the wilderness for every six days off seems like a lot of time away from other pursuits, but the more I look at it, the more appealing it seems. Six days completely off, with no money problems…hmm…

Which reminds me: would it be lame to put up a donate button on this blog? One that said “buy me a (non-alcoholic) drink” or something like that? I don’t want to ask for money, but if you guys feel like throwing it at me, who am I to hold you back? I don’t expect it to earn much, but something is better than nothing, especially these days.

Second Quarter 2010 report

As you may or may not know, I keep a spreadsheet of my daily word counts. Nerdy, I know, but you’d be surprised how helpful it can be with keeping goals and staying motivated. As part of that, I’ve decided to do a quarterly report here on my blog. Here’s my report for April 2010 through June 2010:

The red line shows my daily word count, and the blue line shows a running 7-day total.

At the beginning of April, I was somewhere in the middle of writing Mercenary Savior 3.0. I was also in the middle of a long and strenuous debacle with BYU’s Washington Seminar. Long story short, I got kicked out under disputed circumstances.

Anyway, that explains the sharp dip in the first couple of weeks. I returned to my parents’ house in Massachusetts on April 6th and spent a week there before moving out to Utah; that explains the short lived bump from April 6 to April 12.

So three weeks before graduation, I came back to Utah with no job, no apartment, no transportation besides my own feet–nothing. Fortunately, some friends helped me out, and for the rest of April and most of May I at least had transportation (bike) and a roof over my head.

Without a job, I had lots of writing time, and I used it well, as you can see. The sharp dip at the end of April corresponds with graduation, when all the family was over and I was spending most of my time with them.

Things dropped off the second half of May, though, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was writing fatigue? I was coming up on the end of Mercenary Savior, and as I remember, the revision was fairly tough. Also, I was stressed out about not having a job, and spent much of my free time looking for work. I found my current part-time job at the end of May, and had a few spikes, but my output never totally recovered.

As an experiment, I took a week off from writing after finishing Mercenary Savior on the first of June. I thought that this would help me recharge my creative batteries and get off with Worlds Away from Home on a good start. Instead, I found that taking the time off made it harder to get back into creative writing mode, and so I struggled for the first week or two to really get that project off the ground.

Lately, I’ve been trying to bump up my output above 10k per week, without much success. For some reason, I seem to have fallen in a rut where I can’t write more than 2k per day. 2k is good, but it’s not the level where I want to be. I want to finish Worlds Away from Home in the first couple weeks of August, so that I’ll have plenty of time to polish Mercenary Savior for World Fantasy in November.

I think that part of the problem lies in the nature of the work. Mercenary Savior was all straight up revision, with very little new content. Worlds Away from Home, however, involves a ton of new content. Yes, I’ve got all that stuff I wrote back in the fall of 2008, but I’ve also added a new viewpoint character and significantly changed the basic storyline. Only about half of the old stuff is recyclable, and I’ll run out of it in 100 pages, roughly at the midway point of the novel.

After revising for so long, it’s hard to get used to writing a first draft. I’m not sure how to describe it, except that it takes a lot more mental energy–a LOT more. Plus, there’s always the nagging voices that tell you what you’re writing is crap–and when you’re writing your rough draft, the voices are usually right! Tuning them out is starting to be a challenge.

Overall, though, I’m very optimistic. My main goal is to produce one solid, polished novel a year, and I’m still on schedule to accomplish that. Mercenary Savior requires AT LEAST another revision before it’ll be good enough to send out to editors and agents, but I’ve got half a year to do that. As for 2011, I’ll almost certainly have the first or second draft of Worlds Away from Home before January 1st. Things are going well.

And on that note, I think I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. Night.

Mercenary Savior 3.0 is finished!

That’s right–after nearly three months, the third draft is finished!

How do I feel? Tired. It’s 2:00 am and I’m just coming off of three straight hours of writing. I. Need. Sleep.

I will say this, though: finishing this draft isn’t quite as satisfying, knowing that it needs at least one more revision before it’s fully polished. It’s an accomplishment, I know, but there’s still work to be done–lots of it.

Ah, well. I’ve got time. My goal is to have the finished, polished, final draft done before the end of the year. Now, I just need to put this one on the back burner and let it simmer for a while. In a couple of months, after I’ve finished another project, I’ll probably be excited enough about it to pick it up again.

So much for that. Here are the stats:

Mercenary Savior 3.0

mss pages: 646
words: 135,756
file size: 1,822 KB
chapters: 30
start date: 13 March 2010
end date: 1 June 2010

Weird slump

Man, I’m going through a really weird slump these days. Yesterday, I wrote 2.5k words, and today, I only wrote 1.5k words–this, in spite of the fact that I’m only working about three hours a day. It’s kind of frustrating.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m right at the end of this novel. I’ve got 10k words to go, only 12 scenes, but I’m kind of burned out on it. I already know it’s going to need another revision after this one, and while I’m trying hard to fix things, it’s more on the overall story level, not on the detailed polish level, where I usually thrive.

The real truth, though, is probably that my days are split up so weird. I work from three to six, and most days I have obligations in the evening (Leading Edge, Institute, FHE, etc). To add to that, Tuesdays and Thursdays I donate plasma in the mornings, which usually takes up a couple hours. When you’re already in the mood to procrastinate, it doesn’t help it when your free time comes in 2 to 3 hour chunks.

Oh well. At least I’m still producing.

CONduit starts tomorrow, and I am totally stoked. Last year was excellent, and I’m looking forward very much to this year as well. I don’t think there’ll be too many agents and editors there, but there will be a ton of other writers, most of whom I expect I’ll see at other major conventions across the country.

Speaking of conventions, I’m thinking very seriously about attending Dragoncon this year. When I spoke with Dan Wells at the Provo Library event a couple weeks ago, he told me that DragonCon is going to be big for writers this year, on account of Worldcon being in Australia and World Fantasy being in Ohio.

I’ve got a friend in Atlanta who can put me up and/or has friends who can as well, so housing shouldn’t be too difficult. My Dad’s giving me the old Buick, and it’s got lots of space, so I could probably fit four or five people in it. If we took turns driving, we could probably make it out there nonstop, and membership only costs like $80. At ten tanks of gas split by five people, plus maybe $100 for food and other expenses, it seems like a pretty good deal. Anyone interested?

If I’m going to Dragoncon this year, I suppose I should make it my goal to get Mercenary Savior polished and ready for it. That should be enough time–a month or two to let it sit, then a couple months to polish it. Definitely doable.

In the meantime, I’ll be finishing this draft this weekend, inshallah. I’d like to finish it on the bus to Salt Lake, but I doubt that’ll be the case. 10k words is a lot of writing, and I’ll be busy all day at the con. I’ll let you know how it goes, though–stay tuned!

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.

Near scare and an awesome idea for the next novel

I wrote 1,780 words this morning–not bad. After such a good start, I figured I’d finish the last 720 for the day after finishing the day’s errands.

Long story short, when I finally settled in at 11pm to do a little writing before going to bed, I had some weird problems. Openoffice froze up, I ended it prematurely, and it turned out that that somehow corrupted one of the files I had opened. Instead of being 370 KB, it was now over 1,000 KB, and every time I tried to write something, it froze up for nearly half a minute.

In the end, I had to delete it.

Fortunately, this was NOT the main file for Mercenary Savior. Thank goodness! It was just the revision notes. I had copies of both (both about a week old), but I’m glad it wasn’t the main file, because I’d have lost over thirty pages of revisions. Yikes.

On a totally different note, I had an awesome dream this morning–one that I’m totally using in next novel I’m going to write (probably recycling much of Hero in Exile). It’s hard to describe it exactly, which is why I added this really weird picture to this post.

You may be wondering, “what the crap is that supposed to be?” I’ll tell you: it’s Arab. It’s Arab on so many different levels it makes me happy inside. I took it from the facebook profile pictures album of an old friend of mine from the ELC in Provo. What’s so Arab about it? Well, there’s 1) King Abdullah II 2) in battle fatigues 3) waving to the people 4) with an eagle in the background 5) wearing a Bedouin hutta 6) and some kind of military insignia on the agal. So freaking Arab.

So what was my dream? Well, it was kind of like a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and…a lot of weird stuff. At one point, King Hussein of Jordan commanded me to go into the desert east of Jerusalem and raise an army. I had a lot of questions, so he explained exactly what he wanted me to do–and in so doing, he explained exactly how the Bedouin fight wars.

Instead of keeping a standing army, a military leader must draw the warriors of the other tribes to his banner through his charisma, egalitarianism, reputation, etc. The warriors join his campaign, not to serve some grand concept of country, but to win spoils and glory. Once the campaign ends, they disband and return to their tribes until the next leader rallies them together.

Because of the way this works, a charismatic leader can pass through the desert virtually by himself, only to come out on the other side with a fearsome army. This is what happened in Lawrence of Arabia when Lawrence took Aqaba–he passed through the desert with a token force of barely fifty men, but the feat (and his brilliant diplomatic skills) so impressed the Bedouins on the other side that they rallied to him and stormed the city. From the Turks’ point of view, the army came out of nowhere and crushed them.

So that’s what I’m thinking I need to do at some point in my next novel: have the main character, poor and destitute, go out to the desert and rally the tribes with nothing but his charisma. I’ve already got the rough (VERY rough) outline of the story in my head, and this plot point fits perfectly into this one section where I was worrying that things lagged too much.

Oh man, I’ve got such awesome plans for this book! But first, must revise Mercenary Savior and send it out. Don’t worry, I’m enthusiastic about that project, too. It will get done! Momentum is building–I’ll more than make up those 720 words tomorrow.

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.