Thoughts and Reflections – Page 30 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

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.

The need to change

I picked up this sign at institute last Wednesday. The lesson was on our desires; specifically, how the thing that we truly desire deep down is often the thing that we get.

The main reason I posted this sign on the door was to motivate me to get a better job than my current one. However, it applies to so many other things as well.

Take writing, for example: if I’m going to actually turn this writing thing into a full time career, I’ve got to bust my butt to make it happen. Writing a paltry 250 words each day on a novel you’ve been working on for the past twenty years just isn’t going to cut it.

I got two form rejections today, and that made me realize that I need to be more serious about submitting my work. So instead of working of working on Worlds Away From Home, I researched a slew of agents, rewrote my query letter for Genesis Earth, and sent out four carefully prepared and researched submissions. I don’t want to spend any more time bouncing around from job to job than I have to–I want to break in and make this writing career take off.

So far, I’ve gotten approximately 14 rejections for Genesis Earth: ten form rejections, one personalized rejection, one rejection after the partial was requested, and two that I haven’t heard back on but have been out for so long they’ve probably been rejected. Interestingly enough, rejection itself is not that hard for me to deal with: it’s building the motivation and nerve to submit to the next place that’s tough.

But I’ve got to do it. I feel kind of like Hachimaki from the anime series Planetes, who quits his job without taking the severance package when he applies for the Jupiter mission. If he has the safety net, he knows that he’ll get lazy, so breaks goes out on his own, even sleeping on the streets for a while during the initial tryouts.

I haven’t quite fallen that low yet–I’ve got an apartment, a bike, and a job, even if it’s only a subsistence level one. But when it comes to long term careers, I’m putting everything into my writing right now–there isn’t anything else.

It’s still discouraging to get rejected, but I’m still very optimistic that things will work out. Even if everyone rejects Genesis Earth, I’ll have Mercenary Savior ready to submit before the end of the year. It’s just a matter of time–I just hope it happens soon.

In the meantime, here’s the opening sequence from Planetes. Such an awesome series–I’d take a job with Debris Section in an instant! Even garbage collecting is cool when it’s IN SPAAACE!!

Quick update

Just a quick update on things, since it’s been forever since I’ve blogged.

The Utah Valley Democrats offered me a position, but it wasn’t the internship they’d advertised, so I turned it down. They wanted me to do all their phone surveys, for 20 hours per week at $8.50 an hour, working evenings and Saturdays from now until November. Basically, they wanted me to do the same crappy job that I’m already doing, but for less pay, more hours, and with significantly less flexibility. Needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled.

I sent out Mercenary Savior 3.0 to my beta readers. If you weren’t included in that list, don’t be offended–I’m trying to get feedback from some new people who haven’t read the previous drafts, to see what they think. I’m hoping to start the next revision of that novel sometime in August; my goal is to have it polished in time for World Fantasy 2010, which I will be attending.

Worlds Away from Home is coming along, but much too slowly. I want to finish it by August 15th, which means that I should be writing between 2.5k and 3k words per day. Right now, I’m averaging about 1.5k–not bad, but not enough either. I need to take some time and immerse myself in this project.

At the same time, I really need to find a decent day job. The one I’ve got right now is good for summer stuff, but I don’t want to be doing it long term. Ideas for a more semi-permanent job include:

Working in a bookstore
Teaching Arabic
Getting a wilderness job (see previous post)
Getting an editing internship
Freelance translating (I’m a little uneasy about this)
Finding a job in the Middle East and living/traveling there for a year

I’m a little wary of the last one, given the current political situation, but if things improve, I could see myself moving out there in the fall. It depends on what I can find, of course–and for that reason, I’m considering signing up for the TESOL certificate program here at BYU.

I don’t know, though. There’s a lot to do, a lot to figure out. It’s hard to balance it all, but I’m doing what I can. Whatever happens, though, I’m sure it will all work out.

The wilderness is calling me…

…and I’m kind of hesitant to answer.

Four years ago, my sister went through Wilderness Quest, a wilderness therapy organization based in Monticello, Utah. At the end of the program, I went down with my whole family for family therapy. The experience was incredible–intense, emotional, and very life changing for all of us.

Fast forward to last month. After graduating college, I had this crazy idea: maybe I could apply for a job with some wilderness therapy organization. My sister, who worked for WQ after completing their program, told me that they’re always looking for qualified, motivated people for the wilderness staff. As a clean, addiction-free, college grad, chances are fairly good that I could get a job here.

I talked with my sister for a LONG time about it. Yes, it’s tough–the teens in the program are very, very troubled, and there’s all kinds of drama. Some of the kids are forcibly escorted to Monticello by professional kidnappers that their parents have hired to bring them out.

Living in the wilderness is rough, too. The way WQ does it, you’re in the wilderness for 21 days, on the job 24/7, with two weeks off between work periods. That’s 21 days completely cut off from the rest of civilization, out in the middle of nowhere.

At the same time, though, that’s 21 days in which WQ pays for all your food and supplies–21 days in which you’re earning money instead of spending it. And then, after the 21 days are up, you’ve got two weeks of free time to do whatever you want. Pay ranges from $60 to $135 per day, multiplied by 21 days–not a bad job. And two weeks of complete freedom…

Perhaps the best advantage to this kind of job, though, is the incredible range of life experience it would give. Unlike sitting in an office all day, or doing telephone surveys at a call center (my current job), this kind of work offers some real meaningful experience. Changing people’s lives, seeing them at their best and worst, connecting with them in a truly genuine way–it could have a huge influence on my writing.

Then again, 21 days cut off from civilization…that’s 21 days in which I’m not going to be writing. 21 days in which I’m not going to have a social life (at least, not in Provo). 21 days in which I may miss other important career/writing opportunities. And two weeks–that’s not really a lot of time, not when you’ve got all your chores to do.

But then again–do the costs really outweigh the benefits? Maybe I could bring a notebook and write while out there. Maybe I’ll make up for the missed writing time in the two of weeks, while still having enough time to do my other chores. Maybe it will force me to make time. Maybe the improved quality will make up for it–and maybe my new friends in this apartment complex won’t totally forget me when I come back.

I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out if this is something I should do. Part of me wants to jump up and start right away–but the other half is holding back. But at this point, I’m thinking that once my Dad drives out to Utah to give me the old family Buick, I’m going to apply. I really should. Should I?

An interesting concept

Last night, I was hanging out with a friend of mine and a couple of girls in the apartment complex where I currently live. We got to talking about books, and one of the girls said something really interesting:

Every book needs to have one thing that the main character knows that the reader doesn’t know, and one thing that the reader knows that the main character doesn’t know; otherwise, it’s too boring.

That’s a fascinating concept. I know that both things are important, but I’ve never connected them together.

When the reader knows something that the main character doesn’t, it can make for great suspense. A good example of this is this scene from Xenogears, when the characters are trying to hunt down a monster in the sewers (skip to 6:37):

It’s harder to pull off having the characters withhold information from the readers, but it can be done. I think a good example of this is the scene from Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back when the Millenium Falcon arrives at Bespin and C3PO gets shot:

Granted, nothing really vital is withheld here, since by this point Master Yoda has seen Luke’s friends in danger, and Bobba Fett has clearly followed them to Bespin–but the audience still doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, and so it creates suspense.

In terms of Orson Scott Card’s MICE quotient, this would definitely fall under the “information” component of stories. In Brandon Sanderson’s class (and in my own reading), I’ve focused a lot on character, setting (milieu), and plot (event), but I haven’t thought a lot about information.

I wonder how my own novels measure up to this principle. Let’s see…

In Genesis Earth, there are a lot of things that Michael and the reader doesn’t know, but not much that one knows and the other doesn’t. There are, however, quite a few things that Terra knows that the reader doesn’t. Those all come out in the middle, though. In terms of information withheld from the reader, I suppose you could count Terra’s feelings for Michael, in the buildup before the climax, but that’s about it.

In Mercenary Savior, the reader knows a TON of stuff that James doesn’t know–it’s a major source of the suspense in that novel. In terms of things the characters know that the reader doesn’t, there’s much less, but I can think of a few things Danica knows that are kept mysterious until a key climax. Those aren’t foreshadowed until maybe 50 or 100 pages before the reveal, but I suppose it still counts.

Thinking WAY back to my first practice novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea (which I will probably never publish), there is, again, a TON of stuff the reader knows that the characters don’t. Basically, every character is clueless in some crucial way, and the resulting comedy of errors drives the plot. In terms of information withheld from the reader, though, there’s not as much. There is a point where Ian runs off without an explanation, but I’m not sure if that’s just my own poor writing. I could probably pull it off in a revision, but I don’t know when or if that will ever happen.

So yeah, I suppose I’ve done that in my own writing. I suppose it’s much easier to do this in third person, however–Genesis Earth is entirely in first person, and there isn’t anything Michael thinks about that the reader doesn’t see. He is an unreliable narrator at times, but he’s not the character withholding the information–and if he was, I don’t think it would have worked very well.

In any case, it’s a very interesting principle. I’ll have to keep it in mind.

When life gets in the way

Just a quick post before I go to bed. Things are coming along well with the revision of Mercenary Savior–I fully expect to be finished by next week (hopefully by Tuesday).

That said, these past couple of days have been very unproductive, and it’s been very frustrating. I feel as if tons of little things have been getting in the way.

Work is from 3:00 to 6:00, which can be nice but breaks the day in half, and donating plasma always seems to suck up a ton of time. Besides that, I’ve been applying for work, and THAT certainly takes up quite a bit of time mental space.

The main problem, though, is the urge to procrastinate. These little things wouldn’t pop up all the time if I 1) were unusually excited about this book, or 2) had the iron discipline to buckle down and just do it. I’m working on both of those, but in the meantime, it’s frustrating.

Still, I am producing. I wrote about 1.5k words yesterday, and 2.3k today. Nowhere near the 4k+/day I was hoping to write, but not bad. Things are progressing.

Part of it may be the fact that my only computer right now is a netbook. Netbooks are nice for traveling (I carry mine literally everywhere), but they aren’t great as primary machines. Also, they tend to break down faster than regular laptops. Mine’s probably got another year left, but the wear and tear is starting to show.

To remedy that, I’m thinking very seriously of building my own computer. Tomorrow, BYU is having a surplus sale, and I’m hoping to pick out a decent LCD monitor or two, plus a keyboard and mouse. I’ve picked out all the other parts online (I’ll blog about that later), but I’ll probably hold off until the end of the month to buy them all. I want to prove to myself that I can make more money in a month than I spend.

I know that a new computer won’t solve my writing problems, but it will be really cool, and it is something that I need–if not this very second, then at least before my netbook breaks down. Plus, I’m hoping to learn a lot from the experience of building it from parts.

Other than that, things are good. I will definitely finish Mercenary Savior by next week before CONduit, and the revision is significantly better than the old draft. Before long, inshallah, I’ll have another manuscript to float around with editors/agents.

Book Festival and other updates

So last Friday, there was a book fair at the Provo Library. I only heard about it the night before from Facebook, but there were almost twenty authors on the guest list, so I figured it would be a good place to go to meet other writers. I wasn’t mistaken!

I biked up to the library just as Brandon Sanderson was walking in. We chatted for a while, caught up on stuff since the last time I took his class. I almost got to walk into the author’s only lounge with him, but one of the staff stopped me. One of these days, though…one of these days!

I also ran into Dan Wells, who remembered me from World Fantasy and gave me a very nice compliment: he said I was very good at approaching people, especially at conventions. Talked about the different cons this year; according to Dan, Dragoncon is going to be huge this year, since Worldcon is in Australia and World Fantasy is in Ohio. I have a friend in Atlanta–I’ll have to look into attending that.

Brandon Sanderson, Clint Johnson, Mette Ivie Harrison, and J. Scott Savage did a panel on writing fantasy. Fortunately, I had my mp3 player on me and was able to record it. If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here:

Fantasy Panel, Provo Children’s Book Festival (15 May 2010)

Clint had some interesting advice for me after the panel; he asked about the books I’ve written and said I should submit them to YA agents/editors as well as mainstream adult agents/editors. Apparently, Genesis Earth and Mercenary Savior could work as YA, since 1) they’re about (relatively) young protagonists having coming-of-age experiences and learning how they want to live their lives, and 2) they don’t have the sense of nostalgia that adults often have when they think about their childhood.

So that was the Provo Children’s Book Festival. Let me just say, this is one of the reasons why I love Utah: the writing scene for fantasy/sf/YA is HUGE. Tons of writers, tons of readers, local writing events all the time–it’s great.

In other updates, I got a personalized rejection from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show! It was a pretty long one, too. The assistant editor said the writing was pretty good, but it felt too much like a novel. Hehe…confession, it was part of a novel. But that’s awesome that he thought the writing was good!

Besides that, he gave a lot of suggestions as to formatting, referring me to this site for detailed ms instructions. I didn’t think most editors would mind Times New Roman, but if it’s an issue even for a few of them, I should probably just switch to Courier–no editor is going to fault me for using Courier.

Besides all that, I’m well on my way to finishing Mercenary Savior 3.0 before CONduit. My goal right now is to finish it next Tuesday and spend Wednesday and Thursday sending it out. After CONduit, I plan on starting Hero in Exile (except the name will change), and I have a TON of great ideas for it. Funny how sometimes in order to finish a book, you need to write another one first.

The time sink

Man, life is different outside of school. So much time, so little structure. I find that I either write a lot, or I get distracted on some side project and write almost nothing.

For example, my bike broke down last week. Since that’s currently my only form of transportation besides walking, I spent a good amount of time this week fixing it. In fact…I took it apart and completely rebuilt it on a new frame. It was fun, educational, satisfying, and a good way to meet girls, but it took a lot of time away from writing.

Job hunting is another example. I signed up with a temp agency this past week, but haven’t seen any work yet, so I’m still somewhat antsy. It’s not easy watching money leave when you have no way to replenish it. But when your mind is on getting a job, it’s very hard to think about anything else.

I dunno. Maybe I’m just very bad at multitasking. But tonight, for the first time in a few days, I put all that aside and completely submersed myself in the act of writing. Boy, it sucked up a lot of time…but at the end, it felt so good. So satisfying.

I need more of that, if I’m going to make this writing thing take off. Got to outline a space for every necessary thing (including writing) and be careful about not overfilling that space. Looking for work is good, but thinking about it so much that I don’t have time for other things, that’s not good.

In the meantime, I’ll try to find some balance and update this blog more often. It’s my only active blog now, so I figure I should write more frequently. One thing I want to do with this free time is read more; I read a George R. R. Martin book last week, and I’m finishing up Dave Wolverton’s On My Way To Paradise for the second time right now. Expect some book reviews in the near future.

(hmm…I wonder if I could find a way to review books and get paid for it?)

Life in the Real World

So it’s been a week since I graduated, and life in the “real world” is very different from academia. In some ways, it’s scary, but in other ways, it’s actually kind of fun.

Freedom from schoolwork is HUGE. Seriously, I had no idea how much day-to-day stress came from school until now. Without this or that assignment hanging over my head, I feel incredibly liberated. I can go wherever I want, or do whatever I feel like doing, and the only restrictions on my time are the ones I set for myself.

Of course, life isn’t stress free–far from it. Employment is definitely a problem. I need to find a job and start making some kind of an income. That’s the main stressor right now–how am I going to sustain myself?

In some ways, it’s kind of a game. I’ve got my budget lined up, with projected monthly expenses, and that tells me how much money I need to make to break even. The object of the game is to find creative ways to make that money.

This is what I spend most of my day doing. Some interesting prospects include:

Freelance editing. A roommate of a friend of mine has actually contracted with me to do this for a company he recently started. It isn’t steady work, but $40-$60 per job for basically reworking a piece of fantasy, it isn’t bad either.
Freelance translation. A friend of mine from the FLSR told me all about this. Basically, I just need to set up a free account at proz.com, post my resume, set up paypal, and start taking jobs. Again, it isn’t steady, but it’s promising.
Temp work. As luck would have it, there’s a temp agency across the street from my apartment, and a friend of mine already works there. It’s just filler until I get a real job, but it seems to pay fairly well, though the labor is mostly grunt work. Still, better grunt work than office work.
Working for a teleresearch company down the street. It isn’t the best kind of work, but it’s a job, it’s got flexible openings, and it’s local.
Anything legit on craigslist.
Anything from the Wilk boards (though it’s kind of skimpy right now).
Donating plasma. Hey, $65 a week is better than nothing.

So that’s what I’m thinking about doing to hold me over until I get a real job. My goal for May is to make more money than I spend.

Really, though, I don’t need a job for the money–I’ve got enough cash saved up to last at least through the summer. I need a job for the sense of security. It’s hard to focus on writing when I don’t know how I’m going to support myself.

Another danger with unemployment is the lack of structure. When you don’t have to get up and go to work, you find yourself getting up later and later. If you don’t have to do anything, you generally don’t accomplish very much. It’s hard to stay productive in the face of so much free time.

Still, I’m going to try. I’m keeping up with my writing, doing about 3k-4k words per day on the revision of Mercenary Savior. I’ve got a handful of submissions out on Genesis Earth, and I’m going to keep a steady number of submissions out at any time. I’ve also been submitting my unpublished short stories, so we’ll see where that goes.

In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a day job while I play the game of financial independence. It’s an adventure.

Graduation!

So last week, I graduated from college! That’s right: college is OVER! No more papers, no more homework, no more tests or quizzes or theses or final projects…at least until I decide I miss it all and go back to grad school.

It was a big week, not only because of the ceremonies, but because of all the family that came down for the event. It was great to see all my sisters, baby Jane, a bunch of my cousins who came down for our Italian barbeque (salad, lasagna, and garlic bread on the porch), and everyone else who came.

The ceremonies were interesting too. Elder Christofferson gave the commencement speech, and I was very pleased that he referenced Hugh Nibley. Man, if Nibley were still alive (or maybe if he could come back from the dead), it would be absolutely awesome if he could give the commencement address, but Elder Christofferson was pretty good too.

The convocation Friday was very long, but fortunately I snuck a novel in: Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin. Made some decent headway in it, too. There was a very interesting talk, though. One of the retiring faculty told a story from when she was a student in a wilderness class.

As they were making their way down a river canyon and came to the end of the bank, she thought to herself “it will be alright if I can just keep my boots dry.” As the water became deeper, that changed to “it will be alright if I can keep my pack dry.” Eventually, however, they had to swim, and everything got wet. Still, they made a fire, dried everything out, and had a good time.

The story was meant to illustrate that life in the real world is like that. When you start out, you worry about a lot of things, but when you look back after many years have passed, those small setbacks don’t seem like anything to worry too much about.

Well, that’s where I am right now: unemployed, looking for a plan for the next five years. My plan A is still to break into publishing, but I’m going to need a secondary career or day job to get by in the short to medium term. I have no idea what that entails, but at least I’m graduating debt free, with money in the bank. That helps.

Two years ago, I was terrified of graduating and setting out into the “real world.” A year ago, I realized I had grown out of college life and needed to move on. Now, I have no idea what I’m doing, but life is an adventure and I’m confident things will work out for the best.