Schoolwork – Page 4 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

playing catchup

Holy cow! I feel like I haven’t been blogging or writing hardly at all in the past week. Last year, I was so enthusiastic about the writing–and I still am, it’s just that school has freaking blindsided me. I had a 10 page history paper to write for today, and it threw off my schedule big time.

Fortunately, Thanksgiving break is almost upon us, and that means FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yes, you’d better believe it! I’ll be here in Utah for the break, probably having Thanksgiving dinner with my sisters and their husbands’ families. In the meantime, though…FREEDOM!!!!!!! Ah, how sweet! I am so looking forward to it!

So, to help me catch up with the writing, here’s what I plan to do, starting tomorrow. Every day, I’ll wake up early (I hate sleeping in anyways) and start off the day with some writing.

If I can get in just 500 words each morning, that will be awesome. I always put off writing until the end of the day, after I’m already tired from running around juggling fifty different things at once. By that time, I don’t want to write–I want to veg out on a computer game. As a result, it’s been hard to keep a schedule–something I absolutely must do if I’m going to be anything more than a hobby writer.

If I start each day with writing, that will help me in a couple of ways. Not only will I tackle the day’s wordcount before I’m too tired to do anything except rot in my unproductive disgustingness, but I’ll be thinking about the story a lot more throughout the day. That will help me to keep the story moving.

Right now, I feel like I’m still in the first third of the story, not even halfway through with the thing. I really, really want to finish this before the end of January–if I don’t do that, it’s going to be really difficult to have three polished novels by World Fantasy 2009. So, that means that before the end of the month, I need to get Tristen off of the planet and into the Mormons-in-space society that I have envisioned.

Except, I really don’t have it envisioned yet–nothing concrete, anyways. Augh! So much to do!

So this whole break, I’m going to try and hit 4,000 words every day. If I can’t do that, at least I can do 2,000. And before school starts again, I want Tristen to be off of this planet and into the next section of the book.

Oh, and I’m going to blog more. There’s so much that I want to discuss here that I just haven’t been able to post for lack of time (as well as general disorganization and disgusting unproductiveness). So, more updates during the break.

I’m playing catchup. Let’s hope that the vacation is awesomely productive as well as refreshingly liberating.

I’m being responsible (for once)

I’ve got this history paper due on Thursday. It’s the big research paper for the semester, and it counts for a large portion of the final grade. Because the deadline is coming up, it’s really pressing on my mind right now.

Earlier in the semester, we had smaller assignments related to the paper–for example, we had to get our preliminary bibliography together, write a preliminary outline, etc. I…pretty much did the bare minimum on all of those. Yeah. Didn’t do so well.

So for this final paper, I decided to finish it early, so that I could bring it in to the FHSS Writing Lab where I work and have one of my coworkers help me with it. That means, of course, that I can’t wait until the night it’s due to write it (which is pretty much how I’ve done every other paper of my college career). I need to be responsible and get it done early.

I woke up today thinking “crap, I’ve got a paper I’ve got to write.” I decided that I’d sit down and write the whole d*** thing today after dinner. I had the urge to play Genghis Khan II, but I resisted it and went to the library. I worked really hard–I only spent about 25% to 35% of my time there chatting with friends and engaging in avoidance activity. It was tough.

I started out hating the paper, but once I had a thesis and an outline, I started to really get into it. History is kind of like storytelling, and I like storytelling. When I figured out how to insert footnotes on Word 2007, I started to get the urge to just insert a ton of them everywhere because it’s so cool. Gamila was chatting with me, and when she mentioned something from her Latin class, I said “hey, you could be the Franks and I could be the Saracens–after all, Saladin’s given name was Yusuf!” (my paper is on the crusades–can you tell?)

The coolest thing was that when I came back to the apartment, I just felt so FREEEEEEEE! I mean, yeah, the paper is still due on Thursday, and yeah, there is still a ton of work that I have to do for it, but it’s half done, and the rest is easy! I’m even starting to really enjoy this subject. I can’t wait to tell the story of Reynauld de Chatillon and all the things he did to piss off Saladin! That guy was so smug, sitting in his castle in Kerak. He even defied the orders of the king in Jerusalem to break the truce between the Franks and the Saracens! If it wasn’t for that, perhaps the Battle of Hattin would never have happened–perhaps the Kingdom of Jerusalem would have survived. Who knows?

So, yeah, I was responsible tonight…and dangit! It’s 1:45 am and I haven’t written at all for today! I would crank out a couple hundred words before going to bed, but I’ve got to get up at freaking 7am…holy cow, it’s going to kill me.

But yeah, I’m just really happy to have that burden at least partially lifted from me. Being responsible can have its perks–I should try it more often.

The week is OVER!!!

I am so happy. Yeah, I’ve got a current events paper I’ve got to write for MESA 201…but I can do that in like twenty minutes. Especially since the paper itself is not due, just the stuff that has to be peer critiqued. And really MESA 201 is like a flashback to high school, so it’s really not that hard.

As for Arabic homework…I’m trying hard not to think about it…was trying…dangit!

This is the main issue I had with this past week. Every time I thought I was free, some assignment or deadline that I’d forgotten would pop up and smack me across the head. Today, it was the Poli Sci 201 midterm (take home, open book). There was no other time except today (when it was due) that I could take it, so I ended up clocking out at work and doing it then. Freaking test probably cost me $30 to $40.

But this blog isn’t supposed to be about my frustrations with school, it’s supposed to be about my frustrations with writing. And other life stuff. So I’ll write about something else.

I’ve started to think about what I want to do after I get my bachelor’s degree(s?). Which is to say, I’m completely clueless at this point, but I’m trying to get a feel for my options. Yesterday there was an information session for the Masters of Public Policy program at BYU, and it looks interesting. I would like to go to grad school, and it looks like this program would take me in a direction I’d be interested in following.

Basically, the program prepares you to work as a policy/research analyst, which seems like an interesting skill set I could take to a non-profit / NGO / lobby group / think tank, which is a career path (or set of paths) that I find intriguing. I’ll bet I could find some real satisfaction putting my mind to work for a social cause that I really believe in.

But is this really what I want to do with my life? Do I want to spend 90% of my time working behind a computer at a desk, crunching statistics? And what about Arabic? How would I be able to use that? These are questions that need answering.

As for writing, the plan at this point is to do it on the side if/until it becomes lucrative enough for me to support myself and my family. In other words, for the next five-ten-fifteen years / forever, I’m going to be a mild-mannered man in a conventional (at least partially) career by day, and a super-power world-saving writer by night. Writing, at this point, is a given, a constant–I know what I’m doing as far as my writing career. I just don’t know if/when I’m going to make it my primary, so I have to make other plans like grad school / career path / whatever.

I guess that’s one thing I find reassuring about all of this: writing leaves me a means of escape from being pegged down in a boring career for the rest of my life. And my pursuit of a career feeds my writing by giving me new and exciting ideas and perspectives to bring into my writing. I’m glad I’m not studying English.

And…that’s about it for tonight. Holy cow I’m tired!

A slow spot

This last week has been somewhat frustrating. Started it off well, with good progress in my story, but early on in the week, all kinds of assignments started piling onto me–stuff that I should have seen coming, but have been putting off ’til the last minute (as usual). It didn’t help that I just discovered Genghis Khan II, a really awesome old DOS game. :p

So, between juggling homework, struggling not to get addicted to this new game, and dealing with exhaustion in general, it’s been a pretty slow week.

The upside, though, is that I’ve had lots of time to think about the universe of Hero in Exile. I’ve got some REALLY awesome ideas for the world, stuff that’s inspired by Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy and the rise of the Mongol Empire. History 240 is one of my favorite classes this semester–it gives me so many good story ideas!

As a result, I can hardly wait to get to the really good parts of my novel. I just wish I didn’t have so much school to worry about. Grr…

There is a lot that I want to blog about, but I need to get my sleep tonight. Take home test due tomorrow for PLSC 201, and I want to get it finished before work at 10 am (yeah right…).

It’s up!

If you look off to the sidebar on your right, you might notice the two incredibly awesome meters off to the side. Aren’t they freaking awesome?? Drek programmed those and helped me install them on my website! They show my writing progress for the last day and the last seven days. The number on the meter is the raw wordcount, and the meter gives some indication as to how well I’m doing…or not doing.

Man, this is so cool! Thanks, Drek! It makes me want to sit down and just write.

Unfortunately…I won’t be doing that tonight. Not in my novel anyways. I’ve got a paper due tomorrow at 8:00 am, and it’s a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. It’s only three pages, but in three pages I’ve got to use all kinds of quotes from The Odyssey and Socrates’s Apology. Plus, I’ve got to attach a rough draft with the final draft in order to show progress. Unfortunately, I didn’t start writing this until tonight…

So, if I don’t pull an all nighter, I’ll be taking a quick nap before heading up to campus at an ungodly hour to print out this crazy thing. No rest for the weary. And I was so good about doing all my homework today, too. Didn’t hardly do anything else. 🙁

Ah, some days are like that. Now I’ve got to pound out a “rough draft” (fortunately, it can suck) before I register for Winter 2009 classes in, oh 40 minutes. In the meantime, admire the lovely new wordcount meters on my sidebar. I swear, before the end of the week, those meters will be cranked up where they need to be…

A change of direction?

I had a chat with Aneeka yesterday about writing. She was in London waiting to catch the bus to Scotland at around 4:00 am or so (jealous!), and I was winding down a frustratingly unproductive day.

I told her how I’m trying to divide my attention between two different projects, and she had some interesting things to say. Basically, she said that if it isn’t working and I’m not getting as much done as I’d like, I should put one project on hold and focus on the other one.

Duh. Of course that’s the answer. Trouble is, I’ve been so focused on doing things this way that I haven’t seen it.

So, before this weekend is up, I need to take a step back and figure out just what I’m going to do. Splitting my attention between two projects really isn’t working at all for me, and if I keep going at this rate I doubt I’ll be half finished with either one by the end of the semester. Definitely time for an adjustment.

Besides figuring out what I want to do with my writing, I also need to 1) send in my absentee ballot (I’m still somewhat undecided, though Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama has almost cinched it for me); 2) read Homer’s The Odyssey and write a paper comparing Odysseus to Socrates…for Tuesday (this isn’t as bad as it seems though–The Odyssey is a really interesting story and I’ve enjoyed it a lot so far); 3) get cracking on Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, since I’ve got a book report due in a week and a half, and; 4) various other assorted homeworks. Blegh!

Oh, and I haven’t asked anyone out on a date in the past month. Haven’t even thought about it, really. Dang. How did time start moving so fast? The semester is more than half over!

At least I got in a thousand words in Hero in Exile today. That, and I’ve been working through the next few scenes in my mind quite a bit. I think I know where I want to take it, even though it has nothing to do with what I wrote down in the plot outline. I’m excited.

And tired. More tomorrow.

Updates

This week has been pretty good. Scholastically, I’ve had two (well, three) midterms, a paper, and other assorted homework. I managed to pull it off surprisingly well, and now I feel like I have a bunch of free time. Yay!

I still seem to be in a rough spot, though, with my writing. It’s starting to appear that this “rough spot” is more than a minor bump. I don’t know what it is exactly–maybe I’ve overextended myself, maybe I’m just not organizing my time efficiently enough (probably it’s a combination of both)–but I feel like I’m not writing as productively as I could.

It’s not a lack of ideas problem. I’ve got tons of ideas for my stories. It’s usually a daily thing where I’ll come up with a new idea for the plot of one of my stories, or a cool thing about the setting. Thinking up this stuff is the easy part–it’s the writing that’s difficult.

In Phoenix, the trouble is that I’m coming to sections where I have to throw out 90% of what I’ve got so far and synthesize the remainder into something more workable. That is a very daunting thing. Yesterday, I only did about two pages before calling it quits. Today I haven’t even worked on it at all. Blegh.

Because I’ve been paying so much attention to that project, my other project, Hero in Exile, hasn’t got the momentum it needs to carry through the hard stuff. I spent three hours of my free time today writing that novel, but in all that time I only got through 1,000 words. That’s progress, true, but it was very slow and painful. I don’t know why.

Ugh. This lack of progress is getting to me. It doesn’t help that the semester is half over by now.

I’m hoping that once I get through the current slow spot in Phoenix, things will pick up. I was really surprised when I edited this one scene in like half an hour. The scene worked largely as it was, I just had to polish it up, and in just about half an hour (or maybe an hour, I forget), I’d run through almost ten pages of manuscript. Not bad.

I just hope the rest of the novel is like that. Otherwise, I’m just going to have to start cutting stuff out.

In other news, almost all my friends have read The Hero of Ages, but I’m still in the middle of it. It’s way good, though! Very dark and depressing at this point, and most of the characters have almost given up, but not entirely. Nobody ruin this book for me please!

20% through the rewrite

Well, I don’t know exactly what it means, but yesterday I got to page 117 in the revision of The Phoenix of Nova Terra. Divide that number by the total pages of the current draft, and you get .20blahblahblah.

So, I guess you could say that I’m roughly 20% through with this revision. In reality, I have no way to tell–I’m expecting the final wordcount to be significantly smaller than what I have right now, so in terms of pages I might be quite a bit further. Or, the stuff I have to revise might be a lot more difficult than the stuff I’ve worked on so far, so I might be much further behind than 20%.

Whatever. It’s a statistic. Am I having fun doing this? I suppose…though I wish my life were better organized right now. 20% doesn’t mean much when you consider that the semester is half over. How in the heck am I going to have three polished novels by November 2009? Sigh.

On a happier note, I took a midterm today and freaking owned it! HIST 240, Middle East history up to 1800–I got a 98% on the t/f / multiple choice. YEAH! The short answer wasn’t that much harder, either.

Also, this Sunday I decided to just sit down and do my work for a change. Homework was backed up (which is unfortunate–I really do like to keep Sundays open for non-school non-work related activities), but I got all the stuff finished that needed to be done, and dove into both my novels right afterward. By midnight, I’d written 500 words for Hero in Exile and revised 6+ pages of Phoenix. Wow! Both goals, hit right on the head. I need more days like that.

When I should be doing other things, I’m reading Mistborn 3: Hero of Ages, and it’s really interesting so far (which is to say that the first five chapters are interesting). I really enjoyed the first Mistborn book, but didn’t enjoy the second one as much. However, I think that has to do more with the fact that it’s the middle book of a trilogy, and so most of the conflicts were left unresolved. Also, the opening section took a lot of time to introduce the characters and the world. The final book dives right into the action and doesn’t take time to describe anything that readers of the first two books wouldn’t already know.

Speaking of Brandon, I read an interesting post on his website that basically tells what writing was like for him before he got published. I’ve heard his how-I-got-published story a few times now, but I’d never heard about any of this stuff before, and I found it really interesting. Also, it was really interesting to hear about the struggles and uncertainty that comes along with being an unpublished writer, because…that’s where I am right now. Or rather, I’m right at the start of the trail, so it’s very good to hear about someone else who went through the woods and made it out to the other side. I want to know what I can expect for the next five to ten years of my life.

Quick updates

Last night I climbed Y mountain with Steve and Warren, old friends from the Capitol house last year, and Steve’s new roommate Dan. It was awesome! More on that later.

However, we left around midnight and didn’t get back around five. I slept for four hours, went to a Quark writing meeting, then did laundry and slept until dinner with my sisters and brother-in-laws. Ugh. Disgusting.

I feel so bad because I have so much stuff that I need to do. Arabic homework. History test. MESA test. MESA paper. Poli Sci readings. Humanities study guides. None of these is really that hard (except the history test–I’m not sure what to expect there), but they are time consuming. Time that I didn’t make for myself this past week, so it’s starting to crunch up.

Also, I feel really bad because I didn’t hardly write at all this week. I got stuck on chapter 6 for Phoenix and that really intimidated me. I guess I just kept putting it off, until finally I just sat down and wrestled with it until it seemed acceptable. And as for Hero, I haven’t written in that story for nearly a week.

I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t even really know what I’ve been doing that’s taken up all this time. It kind of sucks, to be honest.

Well, this next week is going to be different. Once I’ve got the tests and papers behind me (which should be by Monday or Tuesday), I’ll have more time to write and do other things. I just have to sit down and force myself to get it out. No more excuses.

Sorry if this post is rambling, but that’s kind of the state I’m in. I’ll write later (probably tomorrow) about the following things:

The hike last night to the top of Y mountain (the TOP of the mountain–it was awesome!).
Thoughts and frustrations with Hero in Exile, specifically Tristen’s character and the show-don’t-tell philosophy.
A really cool idea that came to me Thursday about creating a far future sci fi universe compatible with Mormon cosmology without crossing genre lines from mainstream to LDS sci fi. This is one really cool idea, and I am excited to share it and get your thoughts on it.

In the meantime, I’m going to just go to sleep now and hope that I can prepare my Sunday school lesson in the morning. That, and do my Arabic / study for my tests tomorrow. Ugh.

Making it up on the weekend

Yesterday, as I was writing a small paper (~500 words) for PLSC 201, I realized that I would be FINISHED with classes this week today at three o’clock and I wouldn’t really have to worry about homework. What a delicious breath of freedom!

So today, after I slept through the four hour-and-a-half classes that I have today (no joke–I sat next to Gretchen Belnap in history and she doodled on my notebook!), I thought to myself “you know, I could take all this extra time on the weekend and use it to catch up on my writing.”

I was really stoked until I remembered that General Conference is this weekend. Not that I wasn’t looking forward to Conference–I really enjoy it–it’s just that it’s going to eat up a lot of time, hanging out with friends and family between sessions and all.

But regardless of that, tomorrow is almost totally open! I’ve just got work from ten to three (which, even though it sounds like a lot, really isn’t), a writing meeting at five, and I’ll probably drop in on a mission reunion sometime in the evening just for a little bit. And even though conference is all weekend, I’ll probably have time in the morning and/or between sessions.

So I’m going to take that time to sit down and do some serious writing, especially in Hero in Exile. Does 3,000 words sound like too much to shoot for? I just want to sit down and immerse myself in that story. Phoenix too–maybe I can get through ten or fifteen pages.

Everything else is going really well for me. My classload is really light, which is great because it’s leaving me time for other stuff, like a social life. Work is awesome–I have so much fun going over people’s papers! Even though I sometimes feel like I’m BSing too much, I find it both relaxing and productive at the same time (if that makes sense). Plus, all my coworkers are way cool. My supervisor is way chill and thinks that I’m really amazing for writing novels. It’s just a lot of fun. Plus, I calculated that with my sixteen hour week, I can expect to earn $280 every pay period. SWEET!

Finally, here’s something interesting I was looking at today. It’s a really cool steampunk webcomic called Girl Genius. I heard about it when Brandon Sanderson and his buddies did a podcast with the creators of this comic, and got hooked on it shortly thereafter. It’s got a really complex storyline that I honestly don’t understand yet (I’m slowly making my way through the archives), but each strip is hilarious in itself, and the characters and setting are so interesting that it’s not hard to get swept up by it all. I mean, airships…need I say more? If you like steampunk and/or good quality webcomics, this is definitely worth checking out.

And now, I’m going to finish this post because I should be writing in my stories, not on my blog.