Schoolwork – Page 3 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Slow but steady

Okay, quick post before I go to bed.

Things are progressing in this novel, slowly but surely, as you can see from the wordcount. Unlike past weeks, I’m not pushing myself too hard, mostly because I’ve got a lot of schoolwork right now and if I were to spend much more time on this novel, I would neglect a lot of the more important stuff. Even though my course load is relatively light this semester, I’m a senior and I’m really not as motivated to do this stuff as I used to be. I get done what needs to get done, but just barely.

I have been successfully getting up early, however. And I’ve discovered something very interesting: I’m more productive when I have less free time. Thursday, I didn’t have class until noon, so when I got on the computer at about 6:30 to write, I opened up the email, opened up facebook…and, by the time I had to leave for class, I had only written about 430 words. Disgusting. But today, when I had class at 9:00 am and still had my Arabic homework to do, I got in about 700 words in half an hour.

I still have a lot of self discipline to learn, I guess. 😛 The scary thing is that my idea, up to this point, has been to keep my time open in the summer so that I’ll be able to write. Err…yeah. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve been getting a lot of comments back from my alpha readers on Genesis Earth, and it’s been REALLY fun! Even the criticism–as long as it’s helpful criticism, I really appreciate it. This one girl in my ward asked me if she could be an alpha reader, then read the whole thing in only a couple of days. She had a LOT of positive comments–in fact, almost all of her comments were positive–and she said she really loved it! So much so, in fact, that she said she was having withdrawals, so I sent her The Phoenix of Nova Terra v1.2. Hopefully, getting her comments back will give me motivation to pick up that old thing and rework it…goodness knows it needs it. Needs it bad.

My first two novels, The Phoenix of Nova Terra and Genesis Earth are completely different in some ways, but very similar in others.

<spoiler alert>

They both have an important romantic element, and they both have generally positive endings. The book I’m writing now is something of a tragedy, at least at it’s core, and there is a completely different dynamic there. No love stories, no happy resolutions–lots of pain, lots of violence, lots of grappling with difficult issues.

</spoiler alert>

I suppose it’s good to try out a lot of different things early on in your writing career. That’s what I’m doing. At the same time, though…I get feedback on the one novel, and I kind of want to work on it instead of the one right in front of me! And when I think about what I did right in the one I finished, I look at the one I’m currently writing and I think “man, this is crap.” Of course, I keep working on it because I recognize that I ALWAYS think “man, this is crap” at some point before I’m done. Knowing that doesn’t make it easier, however.

Jason from the FLSR writing group said something interesting about that, however. He said that writing a draft of a novel is like climbing a mountain: you do it three times.

The first time, you climb it in your mind as you plan it out. You’re excited and motivated, and busy with all the preparations.

The second time, you actually physically do the work of climbing. It is long, hard, and frustrating, you get lost a few times, the summit is anticlimactic, and the return is boring. You can’t wait until you’ve finished and it’s all over.

The third time is when you look back on the experience after you’re safely back down. No matter how excruciating the climb was, you look back on it fondly and remember all the best parts. You thrive on the memories and wish that you were back up there, standing on the summit, enjoying the experience.

Right now, I’m on my third climb for Genesis Earth and my second climb for Bringing Estella Home. I can remember how miserable I was when I was still in the middle of Genesis Earth–for a while I seriously thought about throwing the whole thing out and doing something else. However, now that I’ve been letting it sit for a while, I’m getting really, really excited about it! I can hardly wait before I can get back and write the second draft.

But that’s not going to happen until I finish Bringing Estella Home. And, no matter how difficult it gets, I swear I WILL finish this book! I’m a chapter away from act III, and that’s too deep into the thing to quit and start something else! This book WILL be finished–if not by April, then by sometime in May!

Slugging it out and summer plans

Ok, last week I wrote almost nothing on this blog, and last night I wrote a quick post before going to bed that didn’t really explain much. I just got done reading one of Dave Farland’s kick-in-the-pants series of email newsletters and it said, basically, to post every day if you have a blog (unless it cuts into your writing time). Sounds like a good plan: more, shorter posts instead of fewer, longer posts. Here goes.

Last week was pretty crazy. I got everything done by the time it needed to be done…barely…but it was so disorganized and upside down that it really grated on me. It was one of those weeks where, when Saturday rolls around, you look at the calendar and think “where did all that time go?”

I tried to write every day, in the morning, but it didn’t work out. At all. I allowed myself to get distracted, and by the time I was ready to sit down and write, it was time to go to class. After a couple of days of that, I just stopped getting up altogether.

I wanted to get through the last two chapters of Bringing Estella Home by yesterday, but that TOTALLY didn’t happen. I’m still in the middle of chapter 9, not even to the major climactic battle that ends the second part. Bah. As a result, I’m starting to have doubts that I’m going to actually finish this novel by April.

HOWEVER, on a more positive (and a completely different note), I actually have an idea of what I’m going to do this summer. I don’t know when or how exactly it hit me, but I have something of an idea, and it’s starting to really grow on me.

Here’s the plan: I spend the spring term here in Provo, retaking a handful of freshman level classes in order to boost my GPA (I got a C- in beginning piano, and a B- in Geo 120…yeah, those could be raised a little). That’ll give me plenty of time to work on my writing and the opportunity to attend a couple of interesting looking writing conferences out here in Utah, such as BYU Writers for Young Readers and CONduit.

After the spring, I’ll head back East (haha! ‘back East’! I’ve been transformed into a Utahan!), spend a couple of days at home, take a train down to New York City and live for a month or two with my old roommate Steve Dethloff, who’s moving to NYC after he graduates. I’ll try to get a job, possibly doing something writing/editing related, or maybe make some contacts in the publishing world. Or not. We’ll see how it goes. But either way, I’ll have enough time to work on my writing.

Also, if I’m back East in August, I’ll be in a good position to attend Worldcon 2009 in Montreal. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to go, but it’s only 4-5 hours from my home. I could borrow my parents’ car and drive up. Then, later in August, we’re going to have our family vacation out on Cape Cod, so if I’m back East for summer, I’d definitely be in a good position for that.

Wherever I go, I’ll try to find work, but even if I don’t, I still have enough money left over from the Pell grant that these plans are still viable. I’m certain I can find work down here in Provo, but I’m not that certain about New York. Still, if I’m down there for only a month or two, it shouldn’t be too hard. If I sublet out from Steve, rent should only be about $250-$300 per month.

Trouble is, there isn’t any awesome trip to the Middle East involved in these plans. :'( That’s sad. But still, if I want to focus on my writing to get ready for World Fantasy and (potentially) Worldcon, it’s probably a better idea to stay in the country. Going abroad would mean making a lot of difficult cultural and linguistic adjustments, and I’m worried that that would make it difficult to write. I know that last time I went to Jordan, I didn’t hardly write at all (except in my blog, of course).

So, until I come up with a better plan, that’s what it looks like I’m doing for now. We’ll see if things change. And as for my novel, this week I’m totally going to do better. I got up at 7am this morning and got in a good hour of writing before school. Momentum is definitely building up again.

Almost at part 3

Wow, writing this novel is going a lot faster than I had thought. At the same time, though, I sometimes worry that I’m not going fast enough.

I broke the 50k mark this week, and I haven’t even gotten to any of the major climaxes yet. This thing could easily go to 90k words before the end. With only 6 1/2 weeks left in the semester, can I finish it in time?

At the same time, I have NO IDEA what I’m doing this summer. Really. I have a lot of possibilities, but no concrete plans. With the semester coming to a close in a little more than a month and my housing contract with the FLSR coming to an end, that is a little bit unnerving.

Whatever I do, I want to devote some serious time to revising and rewriting these novels, getting them polished. Finding a spring/summer contact isn’t that hard in Provo; the question is whether I can find a job. I also want to go to the Middle East for a while, and if I go home to Massachusetts in August (which I would like to do) another possibility is Worldcon 2009 up in Montreal.

As far as how Bringing Estella Home is coming, it’s coming along very well. I have all of the key climaxes mapped out in my head, and the one that ends part 2 and begins part 3 is only two chapters from where I am now. I don’t normally keep a detailed outline of the whole novel, but I can usually see at least one chapter ahead. Kind of like the faith-promoting story of how a train conductor only has to see as far as his headlights, except that with novel writing, getting derailed is a very real possibility. I know I’ve crashed and burned in my novel attempts before. Fortunately, this one seems to be right on track.

This semester hasn’t been too hard, but last week was somewhat harder than usual. However, it seems like things are starting to calm down into another lull (knock on wood), so I think I can shoot a little higher as to where I want to be at the end of this week (in terms of my novel). I’ve found that I can do about one viewpoint scene per day, one chapter per week. This week, I’m going to shoot for two chapters by Monday. It seems a bit tough, but since I’ve already written the first scene in chapter 9, I think I can do it.

Also, as an experiment, I’m going to try to wake up early and get in a solid hour of writing before I start my day. I found a random website the other day (lost the link, sorry) that showed the routines of several famous, successful writers. Almost all of them woke up early in the morning and did most of their work before noon. Right now, I write almost everything between eleven at night and three in the morning, so I’d like to see if I can change that. I may fail miserably, but what the heck. Now is the time in my life to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

It’s been a while

Man, it’s been a while since I wrote on this blog. I guess I’m caught in the semester tailspin or something.

Writing’s going really well, though. I’m about 100 pages into Bringing Estella Home right now, and even though I’m probably a day or two behind where I’d like to be, I’m generally right on schedule to finish it in April.

I say that tentatively because I’m a discovery writer, so I can’t really predict when I’m going to finish it since it’s probably going to do something crazy and surprise me. However, I feel reasonably confident that I can finish this thing by late April.

To help out with this, I’ve engaged in a little friendly competition with Aneeka. She’s finished her 1st draft (‘skeletal’ draft, I guess you could call it) of her next novel, but she’s going to go through and do a major revision. We’re racing each other to see who’s going to finish first!

Hehehe…I am so going to win this. After losing our last contest, I’d better make it up this time!

I had a surprisingly satisfying day today. My classload is really light, but there was one midterm I had to take this week, and I took it this morning. I spent all yesterday studying, which is why I only wrote about 500 words, but I got a 98 on the scantron section so I think I’m in good shape. And really, I don’t have any midterms in any of my other classes (hard to believe, but true), so I think the worst of the mid-semester crunch is past me!

Man, it’s nice having almost no school obligations!

I’m starting to think I should stay here in the US this summer. After all, if I’m trying to get ready for World Fantasy, I should put a lot of work into my stories. If I do stay here, though, where will I go? Maybe I could teach Arabic at one of these summer seminar things. Maybe I could go to the East Coast doing that. Maybe I could stay here in Utah. I don’t know. It’s so complicated…and meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

Another confession: part of me wants to go to Iraq to work for a year right after I graduate. Why? Well, the money would be nice. But really, I’d want to do it because of the way that experience would enrich my writing. Make it a lot more gritty, the conflict that more real. It might even qualify my to write military sf–who knows?

Don’t worry–I’m not crazy enough to listen to that part of my brain. At least, not yet. 😛

Back in school

So, school has started again! As fun as the vacation was, it’s good to be back.

I think I’ve more or less finalized my schedule by now. I’m taking an Arabic grammar class, a poli sci class on Islamic politics (taught by an Arab guy who drove ambulances in Lebanon during the Israeli invasion/occupation in the 80s), a class on modern Middle East history, a class on Islam and contemporary society, and…English 318! The one taught by Brandon Sanderson!

I took this class last year, and it was a lot of fun. Brandon Sanderson is the best selling author of the Mistborn fantasy series, as well as the Alcatraz YA series and Elantris. He also teams up with Howard Taylor and Dan Wells for the excellent writing podcast, Writing Excuses. Genesis Earth, the novel I’m currently working on, is a novel I started in his class last year.

Last semester was really miserable for me because few of my classes were challenging or interesting; most of them were easy, boring classes that I was only taking because they were required. Not so this semester. Even if two or three of my classes this semester turn out to be tedious and draining, English 318 is going to make it all worth it.

Here’s the thing, though; I’m not sure if I should rewrite one of my older novels or start a completely new one for English 318 this year. Brandon tends to encourage us to start with something fresh, but I would really like to revise the novel I wrote last year. I was originally planning on doing that, but then I thoought about it for a little bit, and realized that I wanted to do something with the Mongols in space idea before it drifts out of my mind.

In some ways, though, this throws a wrench in the works for my long term plans. I want to have three novels polished for World Fantasy 2009, and I was originally thinking about doing The Phoenix of Nova Terra, Genesis Earth, and Hero in Exile. However, if I were to start something completely new, that would mean throwing out all the work I did last semester for Hero in Exile and doing something completely new.

I don’t know, but before I can do anything, I’d better finish Genesis Earth, and fast. The first English class is in two days, and I don’t want to juggle two novels. That means I’m going to have to sprint these next two days to finish this novel.

The Mongol hordes…in SPACE!

A while ago, I wrote a post on this blog about what we were learning in History 240 about the Turks, the Seljuks, and the Mongols. Fascinating stuff! Really epic! Genghis Khan, Tamarlane, Tugril Beg, and all the rest of those guys may have been bloody, totalitarian rulers, but they did some incredible stuff, especially Genghis Khan and the Mongols. When the sky god Tengri says he has given the world to the Mongols, and the Qiriltai elects you leader of the Mongol tribes, who can fault you for stepping up and facing your destiny?

This last semester was generally miserable, but I still remember the class lecture on the Mongols and how I sat there, eyes wide, thinking to myself “holy cow! This would be so cool as the backdrop for a novel!” I’d love to read a historical novel set in this world, but since my passion is science fiction, I immediately started trying to figure out what sort of a culture would be analagous to the Mongols in a far future galactic empire.

Here’s what I came up with. I’ve been meaning to write about this for months and months, but just haven’t got around to it, but I still remember my ideas very well.

First of all, this culture would develop on the fringes of sedentary civilization. That much is obvious. The Mongols developed out on the steppes, and the space Mongols (I’m just going to call them Hameji, since I’ve already started to incorporate this idea into Hero in Exile) would develop out on the fringes of explored space–unsettled, unterraformed planets, asteroid fields, comets, etc.

The Mongols were nomads, highly mobile, with an economy centered around horses and cattle. Similarly, the Hameji would also be nomads, living in spaceships instead of planetary colonies and orbital stations. Their economy would be based on building and modifying spaceships; just as the Mongols were master horsemen, the Hameji would be master pilots and mechanics.

The Mongols had a secret weapon that gave them a clear offensive advantage: the highly mobile horse archer. Similarly, the Hameji would also have a military advantage: close range gun modifications that they could cheaply and easily attach to any ship, civilian or military. Just as the proportion of Mongol warriors per total population was much, much higher than any other culture (due, in part, to their horse based economy), so the proportion of Hameji warriors to total population would be incredibly high. Basically, every Hameji ship is a warship.

Things got really interesting, though, when I started imagining what the social dynamics of the Hameji would be like.

First of all, the Hameji are extremely authoritarian. That much has to be clear, given their spacefaring nature. When you’re on a spaceship, everyone has to work together, willingly or otherwise. There are so many complicated operations that have to be performed precisely in order to pilot and maintain a spaceship: engines, power, navigation, life support systems, food and hydroponics, sensors–it’s so complicated. What’s more, everyone has to work together; the guys in the engine room can’t do their work without the guys in the power plant, the navigator can’t do his job if the guys in the engine room and the deep space sensors aren’t doing theirs, and nobody can work together if life support isn’t doing its job. Something has to keep all of these guys in line, otherwise an accident or an unexpected attack could kill everybody.

In Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy, intra-ship unity was maintained by a system of cultural norms and values that restricted individual freedoms and required painful sacrifices for the good of the community. But basically, it was rule by strict tradition. With the Hameji, tradition definitely plays a role, but besides that, the rule of the captain is absolute law. Heinlein’s space traders were just trying to stay alive; the Hameji are trying to conquer and subjugate the known universe. They need an absolute ruler to keep things in line.

Since authoritarian figures play such an important role in their society, the Hameji don’t believe that all men are created equal. They believe in a ruling class and a following class. Those who command the spaceships are, in the minds of the Hameji, more human than those who merely follow orders.

Because of their nomadic roots, the Hameji despise the sedentary planet-born. Just like the Mongols, they consider the “civilized” city/planet dwellers to be soft and weak, like cattle, devoid of true strength and honor. Because those who cannot command spaceships are less than human, they think nothing of killing off planets wholesale, using mass accelerators to smash them into the stone age with asteroids and space rock. Just like the Mongols swept the world, burning cities to the ground, so the Hameji sweep across the galaxy, annihilating entire worlds.

You could think of the Hameji as bloodthirsty and evil, but really, they have to be aggressive in order to survive. They have to capture new spaceships in order to provide space for their growing population, first of all, and that means that they have to do a lot of raiding and killing. Since all of their neighbors have to do the same thing to stay alive, the Hameji learn to be quite good at what they do.

Mongols in space. How cool is that? It’s definitely got potential, I think. I was going to throw it into Hero in Exile as yet another setting element, but now I’m thinking about writing a story with this as the main, driving conflict. We’ll see which one ends up getting written. It’s all on the back burner until Genesis Earth and The Phoenix of Nova Terra get written.

Freedom!

YES!!! Exams are over! Finished them just a couple of days ago, and now I’m at home back in Massachusetts. Ah, sweet freedom! No school obligations, no stresses for papers or projects or grades or anything! Lots and lots of free time!

…and with that free time, I’m going to undertake something almost ridiculously impossible: finish Genesis Earth 1.0, the novel I started (but never finished) last year for English 318. The one I was going to write over the summer but never really finished. The one that got all caught up in clumsy rewrites and edits even before the rough draft was finished.

But that’s ok, because Jurassic Park just came on on Pandora, which means that I can do it!

Seriously, I think I can do this. If I can ramp up the wordcount to 3k a day and totally immerse myself in this world, I think I can finish it. Plus, I already know where I want this story to go. I’ve already discovered most of the main ideas and I know how I want it to end (at least loosely). Now that this miserable semester is over and I don’t have to worry about it anymore, I can focus on this stuff.

Blah blah blah. Yeah, I think I’ll be able to do it.

I’m at home now: had a very interesting trip out here. I was originally going to go to my cousin’s wedding in Washington D.C. with my parents, then drive back to Mass with them, but two major snowstorms are hitting the East Coast this weekend, and my parents don’t feel comfortable driving nine hours up and back in whiteout conditions. You know, they’re getting older and all, so they don’t have energy for that sort of thing. Honestly, I don’t blame them.

I had thought that I was going to have an exam on Thursday afternoon, so I had Pop book me for a red eye flight that left at midnight Friday morning. There was a connection at JFK, but I cancelled it and bought a train ticket from Penn Station, New York.

So I left Utah at midnight, tried to catch some sleep on the flight (it was really hard…not the least of which because of the TV shows you could watch on the inflight screen, like This American Life! Great radio show, great TV show!), then caught the subway at 6:00 am and rode it to Manhattan.

This is when I realized just how insulated I am in Utah: I stepped onto the subway car, and everyone was black! After living in Provo for so long, that was something of a shock to me, but I got over it before too long.

So I had a four or five hour layover in Manhattan before my train left, and…no, I didn’t do anything really cool. I did walk around a little bit outside, bought breakfast from a street vendor, checked out the Empire State building from where I stood…but didn’t really go anywhere. Boo.

I would like to come back and spend some time in New York City, though. My friend Steve wants to go there after he graduates, and it would be a cool place to spend a few years. I don’t know what I want to do for grad school yet, but I wouldn’t mind living and studying in or near NYC. Plus, that’s where most of the publishing world is, so it would be easier to make contacts and hit up the conventions if I were in this area.

The layover at Penn Station was long and somewhat miserable, but not too much so. Got some breakfast and lunch, napped a bit, and caught the Vermonter up to Springfield.

I love trains! They are so much more comfortable and relaxing than airplanes, even if it does take longer to get from place to place. The chairs were so wide, and reclined back so much! Must more restful than the airplane.

I did a little bit of work on my novel while on the train. Basically, I’m trying to catch myself up to the point where I left off, so that I can pick it up and start writing tomorrow. You’ll notice that all of the wordcount meters are dismally low right now–that’s because of exams and general end of semester craziness, not to mention this huge shift in direction. It won’t be down so low for much longer!

So then, met up with my dad outside of the station, rode home in the blinding whiteout of the storm that’s raging outside right now, enjoyed dinner with my parents, and now I’m getting ready to FINALLY get some sleep. That’s what I’ve been up to all day. It’s a dramatic change of scenery from just a week ago, but I think it will be good. Very good.

I am SO ready to wash the dust of this semester from my feet

Ugh. I feel like this has been my worst semester yet. Not in terms of grades, or in terms of social life, or even in terms of workload, but just…in terms of my classes. Classes, and just school in general.

Here’s what I’ve figured out. My best, most enjoyable classes are the ones that really push me, and the most miserable classes are ALWAYS the ones that are too easy. If it doesn’t help me to learn and grow, if it doesn’t change my perspective, if it doesn’t open new doors of knowledge to me, I hate it. All the rote things that we do for grades–tests, papers, homework, attendance quizzes, extra credit assignments, all that stuff–if it’s all for the grade’s sake, I just go crazy. I can’t stand it. And if it’s all about memorizing data and spitting it back like a machine, I feel like I’m going to lose it.

Well, that’s the way I’ve basically felt all semester. To make it worse, all of my classes overlapped to the point where it started to feel like I was listening to exactly the same lecture over and over again. When that happens, what little there is about the subject that is interesting just seems to dissipate.

I can work really hard when I have the motivation. When I’m doing something that I love, I can really accomplish some amazing things. But when I don’t have the motivation…it’s almost impossible to bring myself to sit down and do it.

That’s basically been the story of this semester: trudging through day after day of work, pushing myself to do things that I didn’t really want to do. I suppose I did a good job of it…but it was very draining. It took almost as much work just to force myself to sit down and focus as it did to actually do the work. As a result, even though the workload wasn’t particularly hard or particularly exhausting, I never felt that I had the time to do what I wanted to do.

I suppose it would be immature to say “I’m not going to do what I don’t want to do,” but at the same time, life is too short not to get out and have fun. If you’re doing what you love, you can have fun and work hard at the same time. Like this Earth, I don’t have an inexhaustible supply of energy. I need to find and develop renewable resources–the things I love to do, the things that engage my imagination and passions and really energize me–and build my life on those. I wouldn’t even care living poor, so long as all my needs were supplied. I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and utterly burned out.

Interestingly enough, because of this crappy semester, I am more motivated than ever to break into publishing and get paid full time for writing novels. My plans haven’t changed yet, but now I want, more than ever, to actually make a living doing this stuff. Most of my inhibitions now are gone, it’s just…well, that first step. It’s pretty hard, and I don’t want to build up my expectations too much only to find myself out of school, without a job, and without money to pay the rent. Especially not in this recession.

But I do want to become a full time writer now–at least, more than before. I don’t know if it will ever happen, but if I’ve dedicated this much of my life to it, why shouldn’t I shoot for it? I don’t know. We’ll see.

…

This week has been rough. Last day of classes is tomorrow (today), next week is finals.

I’m going to take as many finals as possible on Monday, just to get them over with. Scholastically, it has been a somewhat disappointing semester, though I don’t think my grades have suffered much. I just want it to be over.

As a result, I’m not writing much. Or blogging much. Or sleeping much. But I will be back soon.

Unstuck

Happy Thanksgiving! Holy cow, I ate a lot. Had dinner with the McQueens, my sister’s husband’s grandparents, and all the inlaws. My sister-in-law can cook a mean chocolate pie. Holy cow. Delicious.

So, when I wasn’t eating or groggily digesting over at my in-laws’ house, I was writing. It was pretty tough, to be honest. Even though yesterday I got through the climax of the chapter that was hanging me up, I still felt really stuck today. It took me more time than I’d expected to finish the chapter, and I didn’t know how to start the next one.

I was really frustrated the whole day. There was nothing to do, and nowhere really to go. I took a break and walked down to campus in the middle of the afternoon, but it was dreary outside and all the buildings were closed. There was barely a car on the road, and even though it was good to get out and go for a walk, I didn’t come back with any good ideas for how to start things out.

To be honest, I contemplated putting this project on the back burner and working on something else for the next two months. My novel Genesis Earth is halfway done, and I could probably finish it by the end of January if I put this other novel away and focused all my energy on it. I’ve recently gotten excited about that story again.

But that would be an admission of defeat. I didn’t know if I needed to do that yet. I do have a lot of really good ideas for Hero in Exile–the trouble is, they all take place about a hundred pages from where I am right now! I should probably write them down before I finally get there and realize that I’ve forgotten them all.

I figured that things are hard just because I’ve been so distant from the story these past few weeks. I decided I needed to start the chapter out with some action–or, if not action, at least with some dramatic momentum–and figured the best way to do that was to have my two main characters kiss in the first scene. I was going to do that somewhere in the chapter, but I figured it would be better to start things out with it rather than gradually build up. After all, that’s not the climax–the climax is much more twisted and painful than that.

But then, before I could start, I had to figure out just how, exactly, these two characters would end up in that kind of a situation. I mean, it was hard for me to work through their motivations in my mind. I’ve been building up the tension for the last few chapters, but it all felt so distant, and it was hard to remember exactly how these characters are supposed to be feeling.

It was really frustrating. I had this kissing scene all figured out in my mind a few weeks ago, but I’d forgotten it all. As I kept mulling through my characters’ motivations, I got more and more frustrated. After all, things have changed so much from my original idea. Are these even the right characters to pull my story through to the end?

I started wondering if I’d made a mistake by starting the story when I did–whether all my ideas had truly come together to the point where they were ready to begin. Back about a month before I started, I thought I was ready–but now? I don’t know. It’s very frustrating and discouraging.

After all, maybe I bit off too much with this novel. My first novel, The Phoenix of Nova Terra, was more of a straight up adventure story. There were some deeper ideas and ethical dilemmas in it, but I felt like I had to slog through those parts. They didn’t work out as good as I’d hoped–the main focus was the adventure, the suspense. With Hero in Exile, I want to focus a lot more on deeper questions–like, what is honor? What is heroism? How do you keep your honor in a dishonorable world? Do you have to prove your heroism through some grand, daring act, or does true heroism manifest itself in other ways? These were some of my original questions, but now…I don’t know how it’s turning out.

As a side, note, that’s where I was going with my question a few weeks ago about depicting immorality as immoral without watering it down–how do you get your characters to deal with these challenging issues without driving away readers? It’s tough, and my main frustration has been that the scenes just don’t seem to be well executed–I’m afraid that they fall flat. I could be wrong, I could be overexaggerating, I could be trying to write a perfect first draft, and I could be doing all three of these at the same time, but it’s been really frustrating.

Oh well. At least I know I’m pushing myself.

I don’t really believe in writer’s block, but I guess you could say that I had something like it today. I knew where I wanted to go, and I knew what I wanted to happen, I just didn’t know how to get there. So then, after checking email and facebook some twenty million times, I opened up my outline and decided to work on that. Ten minutes later, I remembered how I’d envisioned this scene, and I set down and finally started the next chapter.

Romance is kind of hard for me to write, not only because of my lack of experience, but because it’s hard not to fall into cliches when you’re describing things. Because of that, it took me a few hours to slog through the end of the opening scene–but I did it! And now, I’m excited about this story again! I know where we are, what we’re doing, and exactly where we’re going over the next few scenes. It’s great! I’m FINALLY unstuck!

So now, I just have to keep up at a good pace before I forget everything again. Shouldn’t be too hard for the rest of this vacation, but the next two weeks are going to be a tough sprint to the end of the semester. Still, it won’t be impossible. And after, I’ve got more than two weeks of winter break–with the netbook I went ahead and ordered a couple of days ago! Hooray! I can hardly wait!