Between classes this morning, I was checking out the blogs I subscribe to and I read something really interesting about a correlation between creativity and exercise. I haven’t had time to read the original study yet, but I’ll browse over it when I get a chance. Basically, the study shows that Aerobic exercise increases creativity (not sure how they measured that) up to two hours after completing the exercise.
Tag: The Lost Colony (Trunked)
no time no time no time
Man, there is never enough time to do anything! The sun was setting yesterday before I had gotten to a point where I was ready to do homework–and even after two straight hours yesterday, I still had another four hours tonight (I HATE doing homework on Sunday, I wish I didn’t have to do it) and even then, not all of it is done! But, on a good note, I actually had fun writing a paper about Palestine-Israel, and that was encouraging. I would hate to go into a career where I hated the everyday work I had to do, so this is a sign to me that I wasn’t dead wrong to choose a major that required a lot of essay writing.
grrrr…!
Ok, so real quick, I didn’t do any writing today. That was very annoying. The really annoying thing, though, was that it took nearly six or seven hours to do less than two hours of homework. That’s what happens when I hang out around the Arabic house–too many distractions. Not that it wasn’t all unpleasant. Got into some really interesting discussions with my Arab friends, Basseem and Yanal. But when I find myself getting sucked into an hour long discussion between my Arab friends and my roommate David over who is the better prophet (Joseph Smith or Mohammed), and I’m trying to read a really dense article on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I lose quite a bit of efficiency. Bah. I should have gone to the library!
But, things will be better because tomorrow we’re having a Quark writing party over at Jakeson’s and Gamila’s! Yay! I am very much looking forward to that! I really love having these get togethers; they can be very relaxing and enjoyable. The only problem is that I feel a bit guilty for not hosting one here. The problem, though, is that there are too many people coming in and out. Maybe if the weather weren’t so cold, we could just go outside or something. Maybe when it gets warmer.
Also, as a sort of unrelated side note, I went to an open house today on the Masters of Public Policy program here at BYU, and it really sounded interesting. Very interesting. As in there’s a greater than 50% chance that I’m going to do this. I need to sit down one of these days and ask myself “what are all the possible things I can do with a Poli Sci degree and fluency in Arabic?” and then write out a decision tree that I can use to formulate some idea of a plan for what I want to do. But as far as gut feelings go, this public policy program sounds really good. It sounds like just the thing to shoot me in the general direction where I want to go. And it also means that I would have a little bit more time to get married before jumping into a vocation. I know–I didn’t come to BYU to get married, not at all, but it is pretty important, and even though I probably worry about this more than I should, it is something I would like to figure out before I get too deep into a career.
Tomorrow will be crazy busy as usual, so here are some things I’d like to post about soon: review of Citizen of the Galaxy, review of The Forever War, some thoughts on L’Engle’s philosophies about writing, a pro/con post (or two) on doing writing as a career (from the limited perspective of a mere undergrad such as myself).
Oh, and one last thing. I noticed on this really awesome site that gives out free audiobooks that they have this artificial voice that generates a lot of the mp3 files. I’m assuming that they have a program that can convert word documents / pdf’s into mp3s, which is really cool, especially because the artificial voice isn’t all that bad. Does anyone know where I could get one of these dictation programs? It would be WAY convenient to just plug some of the readings from my classes into a computer program and have it generate an mp3 of the texts.
still here and still writing
So, I’ve gotten out of the habit every day of posting my word count progress, but just so you know, I’ve been doing it very regularly. After I decided to keep working on my novel and not put it on the back burner, I’ve been doing between 500 to 700 words a day.
It’s really great that my friend Steve is also a writer, because when I want to go write, I’ll get out of my apartment and go over to his house to write in his basement, where he usually writes. For some reason, I don’t really like writing in my apartment very much. My roommate usually plays Arabic and Circassian music (he is Circassian and VERY nationalistic, which is great because it’s given me some good ideas for some of my characters), and after dinner there are usually people coming in and out, or watching TV, or something else. Or maybe it’s too messy. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I prefer to get out of the apartment to write.
It’s really great at Steve’s house, because it’s this old house with a dimly lit basement and all kinds of weird stuff all over the place. Slightly mildewy (except not so much anymore), isolated down in the basement from everyone else who usually hangs out doing stuff in the TV room upstairs, and if I need a break I can hang out with my old roommates, which is ALWAYS fun! So it’s just a great place to get away to to write.
I’ve been reading a lot of major sci fi books recently, as a part of my self-education on the genre. I just finished The Forever War by Joe Haldeman just an hour ago–and holy cow! It was good! I’ll review it and Citizen of the Galaxy here in a little bit, after doing some homework. If I’m going to write Science Fiction, I want to become well informed on the genre, know what has been done before, what’s been done well, where it’s going right now, wha the cliches are, what the successful techniques are, etc. Plus, I want to just be a better writer in general, which means that I’ll be going outside of Science Fiction / Fantasy every once and a while. One of the books on my list is The Kite Runner, which I hear is really good. I’ll probably review that one here, too.
And where am I finding this time to read all these books? It’s pretty easy, actually. I started exercising recently, and I found that it’s really easy to read while you’re pedaling on one of those machine bikes. So using only an hour each day, I can hit two birds with one stone: get in some exercise and give myself some reading time. Plus, I walk around campus a lot now with my head buried in a book, and even though I probably look a little weird, I’m getting the hang of it. After a while, you even stop bumping into people.
😉
Forget it…I’m going for it
Ok, so you remember what I said about putting off my novel and focusing on some other stuff? Well, I went a couple of days without writing in my novel, and by the end of it, I decided to change my mind. I’m going to go for it–and if I end up writing too much, well, I’ll just split my time between two projects. I’ve really gotten into this world that I’m writing, and I don’t want to leave it until the story is finished.
I am working on another project with my friend Steve, though. He was my roommate last semester, and he’s a film major. We get along REALLY amazingly well, and we decided to get together to write an online tv show. He’s really gungho about it, feels confident that once we finish the script, we can get funding and actors and all kinds of other stuff. He also thinks that it could be profitable. As for me, I’m more interested in just writing the story, but I’m also excited about this. Because, if this is a webisode series (I’m not sure exactly what you call it–it’s a tv series not on a tv), and we’re the ones who can write and direct it, then I want to make sure that it’s actually good! I mean, the biggest complaint I have with the stuff coming out of Hollywood is the horrible writing–and it’s really not the writers’ fault, it’s the system’s fault. #$%! Hollywood! So, if this is something we’re writing by ourselves, I’m going to make sure that it’s actually good! So far, we’ve just been working on the basic concept of the story, and we have some really good ideas, but I’m going to wait to post about it until we get a little further (and after Steve tells me he’s ok with me blogging about it).
On another note, I found a really interesting podcast. It’s called Tor Podcasting, and the first episode I downloaded was some kind of a panel between sci fi writers / bloggers, and it was really interesting. They said that when aspiring writers had a blog, it really helped the editors to get a feel for them as writers and in some cases helped move them out of the slushpile and on to other things. It’s not a silver bullet, of course, but it seems that blogging could be a good thing for aspiring writers. Which means a couple of things: 1) I need to be more careful about my grammar on this blog–make my rambling more coherent and pleasant to read–and 2) I need to blog about something more interesting than how many words I wrote each day! So, I will probably be making these improvements in the near future.
Other than that, I’m off to go camping with my friend Steve and my other old roommates! No, seriously–they set up a tent in their living room, and they’re going to sleep in there while watching some really amazing nature documentaries in HDTV! It’s going to be SWEET!! An excellent opportunity to relax and write a bit!
And so, with that, I’m off! Bye!
1,500+ words in two days and some thoughts on practical issues
These last couple of days, I’ve been writing in the morning/midday, and it’s been a lot more productive than waiting to do it as the last thing. I think that if I could get into a routine of doing it early in the morning, maybe before classes, it could be really good. The way I have my schedule next semester, that’s probably what I’ll end up doing. And, if I end up writing on the side of a regular job, that’s probably what I’ll end up doing after college as well–getting my fiction writing in each day before I go to work. I’ve heard that it works very well for some people.
The story is definitely progressing nicely. However, I think I may start turning to some short stories in the near future. There are a couple of reasons.
First of all (and some of you, I know, will laugh at this), I’m a little bit worried about getting too far into this novel before the beginning of winter semester. You see, for English 318 in the winter, we’re going to all start writing novels, but I’m hoping to get away with working on the one I’ve already got going. That becomes kind of hard, though, when I’m already 45,000+ words into mine, and everyone else is at the beginning. And I want to at least finish the rough draft of this one before I start another. So, either I go too far and have to start something new for the class, or…well, I just put it on the back burner for a while. Maybe I’m just stressing about it too much–after all, Sanderson seems like a pretty cool guy–but I dunno. Laugh if you want–it’s what I’m good for. 🙂
Second, I want to get a couple of short stories published in the not too distant future, and if I want to do that, I’d better write a few more. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, I want to prove that I can do it, both to myself and to my parents. It would be really awesome to sell something and see it in print / hear it in a podcast. It would help me feel a little bit more self-validated and encouraged to write more seriously–to feel like I can actually get the ball rolling on this writing dream that I have. And second, it would help validate what I’m doing to my parents. Rightly or not, they feel that I’m stretching myself thin, and want me to focus on the things that I’m passionate about and see if I can make a practical living off of it. I’m passionate about writing, but I don’t plan on doing that as a primary vocation, and I haven’t gotten published yet (although I have made some money off of it–$200 last year with the Mayhew contest!). If I can sell a few short stories, hopefully it will prove that I can actually do something legitimate with this writing thing that I have going.
Now, talking about this reminds me of what I’m reading in this book of L’Engle quotations, about how one of the ways the world marginalizes the truths found in fiction is by saying that writing isn’t a “real job.” And I don’t feel like my parents are doing that. It’s just…financial independence and providing for a family is also very important. I don’t think that they’re telling me not to be a writer–just to evaluate how important are the things I’m doing, and cut out the things that aren’t important.
But the thing is, writing is very important to me. It always has been. I was wondering the other day if I could ever get to a point in my life where I stop writing fiction altogether. And I have to say that I don’t think that that’s possible. When I came back from my mission, I found myself with a completely empty schedule–a life without anything to really keep me busy. And it took me only a week or two to jump into creative writing again–and in 8 months I had a 69,000 word novel. And after the winter semester, when I again found myself with a mostly open schedule, a number of ideas came together to compel me to write the short story The Clearest Vision. Then, while I was in school again, I wasn’t doing too much writing at all, but this idea came to me so strongly that I felt overwhelmingly compelled to write it down. And so I gave birth to another story (ok, the giving birth analogy is kind of weird, but it’s kind of…true…).
What I’m finding nowadays is that ideas are constantly developing in my head, sometimes quickly, most of the time very slowly, always on a subconscious level if not on a conscious level, and that when a number of them get to a critical point, I feel overwhelmingly compelled to write. Before that happens, I can go about my life doing whatever, not even thinking about writing the story, but when it gets to that point, it just has to come out. It’s just the way my mind works. And for that reason alone, I don’t think that I could ever become an un-writer.
The key is to embrace this condition that sets me apart and use it–not only to serve myself, but, according to L’Engle, to “serve the work” as well. Because some of these ideas could probably help to bring people to truths that they didn’t have before, and to see and experience life-changing things. So I want to embrace this, and get good at it. I don’t want to write just to sell something, or to entertain, but to tell stories as good as the ones that have profoundly impacted me and my life. I hope I can do it.
So, that’s what the vision is. And the way to do it is to stop waiting until the idea absolutely must come out, and to try and work with it while it’s developing. Writing is hard work, not just flashes of inspiration and word sprints that turn into golden stories. If I’m going to make this writing thing work, I’ve got to learn how to write regularly, submit my work and get it published, and work with my ideas before they get to that really pregnant stage. And so I’m probably going to work on a couple of short stories in the near future.
This post is getting pretty long, so I’d better wrap it up, but the next post will have some of the short story ideas I’d like to work with. And also, when I get a chance, I’d like to write some reviews of some of the books I read recently, like Mistborn, Princess of Mars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey (a piece of really hard sci fi, but a d*** good book!)
An awesome day!!!
Today was an AWESOME day for the Quark club! We had a ton of really great activities and meetings, and it was really fun!
First, we had a book club meeting at 11…with a special guest! Brandon Sanderson joined us to discuss his book Mistborn! It was a lot of fun to ask him questions and hear about the way he writes his book, as well as to discuss the Mistborn universe and other stuff! I also asked him about coming to a writing meeting, and he sounds up to it! We’ll probably do it in the winter semester. I’d like to hear him come speak with us about submitting and getting published. That’s a really big step that a lot of us haven’t taken yet.
Then, we had a writing meeting right after that. It was also a lot of fun! We had some good turnout, reviewed some good stories, and got off on a ton of fun and interesting tangents (ok, I’m not very good at staying on topic–but at least our tangents had something to do with writing science fiction and fantasy!) On the way out, Danke made the comment “man, every time I come out from these writing meetings, I’m always so energized and ready to go!” It was her first time submitting something to the group, and she was really nervous about it, so it was good that it turned out so well! We had about ten people there, but with four stories and two hours, we aren’t hardly pressed for time at all, which is nice because everyone gets a chance to say what they want and we don’t have to worry about running out of time. We actually finished early, and I think that everyone had a really good time.
Then, in the evening, we had a writing party over at Jakeson’s and Gamila’s! It was WAY fun! Gamila was kind enough to bake cookies for us, and we had a great time just hanging out and working on our stories for two hours. Well, we did occasionally become unfocused, as people would get distracted and talk about other things. But it was way fun! And we DID focus every now and then! At the end of the party, I figured out everyone’s wordcount, and the total collective wordcount came to 7,126! Yeah! I managed to get in 980 words, and I’m slowly but steadily making progress towards the part of the story where I want to be! Yeah!
So, thanks everyone for coming and making today such a fun day!
527 words–I did it!
Yeah! I was tired, and thought that I’d throw in the towel after writing just a couple hundred words, but I kept saying to myself “come on, you can at least stay awake to write fifty more words–come on!” and it worked! I met both goals today, and I feel that the story is progressing very nicely again! A couple thousand pages and I’ll get to the really awesome part where Ian tries to go and rescue the captain–in the middle of the lands of the ancients! I have some good ideas for what to have happen in the next chapter! I’m excited!
I’ve also been reading more of that L’Engle quote book, and it’s really good! I plan on dedicating at least a post to it. She really treats writing as an art, and a spiritual one at that. It’s very different from what I’m used to hearing nowadays from all of the writing and publishing podcasts that I listen to (I’ll have to do a post on that as well–sheesh, this blog might require as much or more writing than my actual stories!). I’ve never heard of someone making so many connections between writing and spirituality. It’s very compelling to me, actually. I’m very interested in finishing reading this book.
Also, my friend Steve told me today that he needs to write more often. He is a film major, and he’s written a few screenplays and won a few contests, but he usually gets pretty distracted when he goes to sit down and write. He wants to write every night. That works out really well, actually, because I don’t like writing in my apartment (too much noise), so I like to come over to his place to write! And, er, there are just as many distractions there, but at least I can find a quiet place to sit down (it’s where I am now, actually). So, I will be helping him out and we should be hanging out more often to write together! Good times!
And I’ve got to publish this before my battery dies! So here you go!
not too much
Tonight, it was late, and believe it or not I actually do value my sleep (not as much as other things, but I do value it nonetheless), so I didn’t write anything original today. Instead, I went back about ten or fifteen pages back and did some light revision while reminding myself what’s going on so far.
It was actually quite good! Helped to renew some excitement for me in the story, which was nice. Good motivation for writing tomorrow. And, day after tomorrow, there is a writing party over at Jakeson’s and Gamila’s (who actually live on the same block as me, I found)! I am definitely looking forward to getting WAY ahead during that night!
Man, I suppose I’m either a wimp or just really busy with other things to only be doing 500 pages a day, and some days less than that! I hope I can learn to balance writing with my career (not to mention career and writing with family!). As it is, I can’t hardly balance anything. Not the important things, anyways. Temple, scriptures, friends, homework, tests, papers, readings, reading for recreation, vs. all the stupid things that can waste one’s time…shoot man! It’s a hard, difficult battle!
And I really hope that writing is more than just a “good thing” on that list. I really do. If it’s just a “good thing,” then it means that I should cut it out of my life, because there are already so many “good things” that I could be doing that I don’t have time to do them all! It would be a matter of cutting them to allow time for the “great things” and the “best things.”
But then again, I think it’s quite likely that writing fiction IS something more than a “good thing.” I’m reading this collection of quotes from Madeline L’Engle, the fantastic writer of children’s literature who wrote A Wrinkle In Time, the book that (believe it or not) hooked me onto Science Fiction and becoming a writer. In this book, L’Engle talks about writing as something holy and sacred, about serving the story, and about how art and creative writing is a profoundly important and spiritual thing. It’s quite interesting, because it’s very different from my current view of writing (which is basically “I want to write because it’s cool and there’s something compelling me to do it that I don’t understand”). Very thought provoking, actually. I really want to understand where she’s coming from and see it for myself. It could really change the way that I approach all of this, in a very positive way. I’ll have to blog about it once I’ve read the book.
And you know, this might be me going out on a limb, but if writing really is a way that I could profoundly shape the world for good (or the life of an individual, which really is the same thing ultimately) then it would make sense that Satan would want to put doubts into my mind about my writing and my stories and the possibility of getting published and all of those other problems. If it has the potential to be that good on a spiritual level, then it makes sense that there would be so much opposition. In which case the answer, of course, really is faith–stepping out into the unknown, trusting in something greater than yourself to show you the way and lend power to your writing that you yourself could not have put into it. I believe quite firmly that all of this is possible–I just need to make the leap. I’m still trying to control my own writing too much, and not focusing on the ultimate potential that lies beyond my limitations. If it is true that there is a place for spiritual significance in writing, then I need to make space for God and enter with Him in a partnership to do this.
I honestly don’t know. Until I sat down to write this, I didn’t know that I had these doubts–indeed, maybe they didn’t enter into me until I started to write this. And I honestly don’t know what I’m saying or where I’m going with all this spiritual stuff. It’s something I still need to think about. But it really does seem like it’s something worth pondering and contemplating. I feel that it has the power to profoundly and fundamentally change my approach to creative writing in general. For that reason alone, it is worth focusing a fair measure of my attention. I will definitely be doing this, because I have a lot of questions.
About 500 words and some frustrations
Man, I wrote about five hundred new words today, but I’m really dissatisfied with them. I wrote them late at night / early in the morning, so they aren’t all that coherent. Towards the end, I was practically asleep hitting random keys. My brain is like an old machine right now that you have to hit a couple of times to keep it running. It’s no good!
It seems that the only time I have for writing is late at night, when my writing sucks because I’m incoherent. Of course, if I were to get more homework done each night, I’d have that time between classes to write. That’s worked out really well when I’ve done it. I’ll have to arrange things so I can keep doing that.
Also, I’m kind of frustrated that I’m writing this novel in 500 word chunks. Sometimes, it seems that I lose sight of what’s been going on in the past 15 or so pages, and so when I sit down to write it’s like shooting from the him. If I read a little of the story first, it can help. But then, I really hate it how each time I write, I’m not sitting down to write out a scene, I’m sitting down to pop out a certain number of words. It’s like these scenes just don’t end! And they’re probably not that good because the way I’m writing them is too…chunky. I don’t know. I suppose I can go back and smooth them out (and that’s basically what I”ve been doing), but in the meantime, it’s like I don’t know what I’m doing. Adn =I’m getting very tired around now. Tiem to go to bed………………………………………