Thoughts and Reflections – Page 35 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Goal shift for Ashes

These past few weeks, I’ve been killing myself trying to write Ashes of the Starry Sea. I’ve made some good progress, as you can see on the sidebar. Today I broke 200 pages. Not too bad.

However, the pace has just been killing me. 4k words per day is something I can do…but 4k words per day on the same project? It’s burning me out.

What’s more, to keep up the pace, I’ll have to put all my other projects completely on hold for the month of July. That, or write MORE than 4k per day, which would be excruciatingly painful.

So I looked at my calendar tonight and figured that if I pushed back my self-imposed deadline for Ashes to the weekend before school starts, I can cut my daily wordcount in that book in half. 2k per day in Ashes–not bad. That I can do.

What’s more, with the other 2k, I’ll have enough room to work on my other projects, Genesis Earth 3.0 and Bringing Stella Home 2.0. I’m starting to get really excited for those, very motivated. For Bringing Stella Home, I’m practically chomping at the bit. I want to make that story shine!

Inshallah, juggling two projects at a time will be helpful, not harmful. During the school year, when I was juggling work, school, and writing, it didn’t work. Now, however, with writing the only major obligation, I’m hoping that two projects will help keep my creative mind fresh, if that makes sense. When I get burned out on Ashes at 2pm, I can switch to Genesis Earth and work on something that excites me. When I get burned out on that at 9pm, I’ll be excited about Ashes again. Etc etc.

Besides, if I want to be a professional writer, project juggling is an important skill I’ll need to learn. Inshallah, I’ll get it to work this time.

Wow! If all goes according to plan, I’ll have all three novels finished and polished before school starts at the end of August! July to write Genesis Earth 3.0, August to write Bringing Stella Home 2.0, and both months to finish Ashes of the Stary Sea 2.1. Yeah!

In other news, Charlie finished Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson and reviewed it on her blog. I was also reading Warbreaker, but about 200 pages in found that it just wasn’t working for me. I’ll probably finish it someday, but for now, it’s on hold.

I hate to say anything bad about it, since Brandon has been something of a mentor to me (and his Mistborn books are some of the best fantasy that I’ve read!), but I shared many of Charlie’s complaints with the book.

The biggest thing, however, was the way he fell into long, frequent info dumps about the world. Every time, I felt that it stopped the action and jolted me out of the story, like reading a college textbook. The world was okay, but the way he presented it just didn’t work for me.

That, and the way the characters acted. When Siri got carted off near the beginning to be the wife of the God king, the fact that she hardly showed any fear or anxiety about have sex with the guy just threw me out. She was just like “oh, well,” and was nervous about everything else EXCEPT for the sex part. From then on, I had believability issues with her character.

Finally, let me just say that when I write my steampunk flower novel, I want to make one of the characters a Circassian janissary. I just think it would be really cool to put a Circassian in the book, as either a good guy or a bad guy (or, more likely, a grey-area guy). If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out the video below:

Thank you readers

I appreciate my first readers very much, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Today I got the comments back from a longtime Quarkie friend on Genesis Earth, and she told me that, in her opinion, the book still needs a lot of work. However, she made it very clear when (and why) she was bored, when (and why) she was interested, and where (and why) she would stop reading. Thankfully, she kept reading and gave me useful feedback right up to the end.

My friend’s comments helped me to rethink several weak points of my novel. In particular, her anthropology experience helped her to pick up on some racist undertones that I didn’t intend and hadn’t realized were there. If my story would have appeared in print like that, I would have been flamed up and down the sf community! Without her feedback, I probably wouldn’t have picked up on that.

The feedback did more than point out problems, however; it helped me to rethink these problems and begin to find new, innovative solutions. Rather than getting me angered or depressed, the criticism stoked my creative engines by getting me to take a step back and rethink my story from the ground up. Though the feedback was harsh (basically, “I’d throw this book across the room at this point”) it was extremely helpful and got me more enthused than ever to write.

Receiving criticism and advice is a very delicate thing, especially for a budding writer. If you try to follow every peice of feedback you recieve, your book will inevitably tank. However, rejecting criticism is also tough because you don’t always know why you’re doing it. There is a fuzzy grey area between rejecting a comment because it’s not right for your story, and rejecting it because it rubbed your ego in the wrong way.

I don’t ever want to reject critical feedback because it hurts. After all, it’s not about me at all–it’s about the story.

Criticism is never “right” or “wrong,” “good” or “bad.” It is only “useful” or “not useful.” To pick out the useful feedback, you always have to listen to–and appreciate–every piece of feedback that you get. Only after you’ve done this can you can say (in private!) “no, this isn’t right for my work.”

In the meantime, thank everyone who takes the time and effort to read your work and comment on it. They’ve done you a huge service, and the last thing they deserve is to be attacked by an egocentric, peurile, self-righteous amateur. Honest criticism, no matter how much it hurts, is the best thing any writer can receive.

On that note, I want to thank all my first readers for helping me with my novel, Genesis Earth! I genuinely appreciate all of your comments. You’ve helped me to step back and see my work for what it is. You are helping me to make this novel a stronger, better book, and that means more to me than you know. So thank you!

Thoughts after finishing Legend by David Gemmell

I just stayed up a bit late, finishing Legend by David Gemmell. Wow.

According to his wikipedia entry, Mr. Gemmell wrote Legend in two weeks while waiting to hear if his cancer diagnosis was terminal. After reading this book, I can definitely see how that influenced the writing.

This book is incredible, one of the most authentic, thought-provoking things I’ve read. It is…just incredible. I’ll articulate my thoughts better when I write the review, but let me just say that reading this book made me a better man.

I want to quote the passage that impacted me the greatest, because it has to do with some of my more existential thoughts about being an aspiring writer–no, being a writer and aspiring to be an author.

“All things that live must die,” said Vintar. “Man alone, it seems, lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on–otherwise he is useless.

“For most men that purpose revolves around marriage and children who will carry on his seed. For others it is an ideal–a dream, if you like. Each of us here believes in the concept of honor: that it is man’s duty to do that which is right and just, that might alone is not enough. We have all transgressed at some time. We have stolen, lied, cheated–even killed–for our own ends. But ultimately we return to our beliefs. We do not allow the Nadir to pass unchallenged because we cannot. We judge ourselves more harshly than others can judge us. We know that death is preferable to betrayal of that which we hold dear.

I don’t want to write books just to entertain. I don’t want to fill pages with words just so I can get paid and take care of my temporal needs. Both of those are important, of course, but I don’t want to write “good reads” that people put down and completely forget about after a few months.

At the same time, I don’t want to write just to express myself either. I don’t think I deserve any special treatment for being a writer, and I don’t suffer under the delusion that I’m somehow gracing the world with my genius (at least, I hope I don’t). The world owes me nothing, and I’m certainly not the most qualified person to be out doing this kind of thing, making the world a better place by telling stories.

What I do want to do, however, is write books like Legend, or Mistborn, or The Neverending Story, or Ender’s Game, or Spin, or any number of other books. Books that you read and remember, because they changed or inspired or impacted you in some profound way. Books where you read the last hundred pages in a breathless sprint, because you connect with the story in a deep and personally moving way. Books that help people to understand the world better, to appreciate its beauty, to see the people in your life in a new light, and connect with them in new ways.

I can tell you exactly when I crossed the threshold from childhood to adolescence, down almost to the very day. I crossed that threshold by reading a book: Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech. For what I was going through at that pivotal time in my life, that book had a profound, formative impact. It helped me to see my family members in a new light, to understand a little bit better the changes I was experiencing in my own life, and to get through an emotional period that was particularly rocky. When I read that book, I changed as a person.

That’s the kind of stuff I want to do as a writer: pass something on. Something meaningful. Something that will make this world a better place by connecting with someone, anyone, on a deeply personal and intimate level. Something that will help peope to stand tall and live their lives more fully.

I don’t know if I’m getting this across effectively, but those are my thoughts at this time. Legend is a damn good book. It’s in good company, along with all the other books that have just made me go “wow.” Someday, I hope something I write will be up there on the same level for someone else.

Twenty percent, Writers of the Future, and the INTERN

I am now 20% finished with Ashes of the Starry Sea. Huzzah! The story is definitely picking up steam.

In related news, my seven day totals has peaked higher than it’s been in the last two weeks, up above 17,500 words. Inshallah, that number will rise to +24,000 befoore the end of the week.

In unrelated news, I’ve decided to recycle my 2009 Mayhew story for the Writers of the Future contest this quarter. I’ve got until July 1st to get it out, but I have a plan, and I don’t think it will require too much extra work. That was the thing holding me back (since, really, it’s not a story, it’s just a scene), but now I’ve got something that I think has a chance of working.

It’s funny how reading other people’s manuscripts motivates you to send your own stuff out. I mean, reading the Leading Edge slushpile, I said to myself “you know, that story you wrote two years ago could probably get a pass.” Lo and behold! With Writers of the Future, it’s definitely worth a shot. Definitely.

Oh, and as I skimmed through Genesis Earth 2.0 today, the thought occured to me that I’ve written a kickass story here (pardon the language). I mean, it’s far from perfect, and it’s not the best book ever written (not by a long shot), but it’s a lot more than a “stuff happens, the end” kind of story. Maybe I’ll even see it in print someday. And to think I almost trashed the project a year ago.

As something totally unrelated to personal news at all, check out this awesome new blog:

The straight dope on publishing from publishing’s most fearsome figure—THE INTERN.

Nice tagline!

As I read about the exploits of this publishing intern, I can’t help but think to myself, “hey, that could have been me.” Not quite sure how I feel about that, but I’m really glad to have all this time to write and work on my craft. I definitely need it.

“Why people read”

Dave Farland puts out this great e-newsletter called “Dave’s Daily Kick-in-the-Pants.” For the kick today, he suggested the following exercise:

You probably have a good idea about what you want to write—horror, mainstream, fantasy, historical, romance, westerns, religious fiction, and whatnot. Sit down for ten minutes and on the left-hand side of your paper, list five things that you feel you most like in the fiction you read. On the right-hand side of your paper, list the biggest potential danger that you see in trying to create that effect.

Doing this exercise will help you understand who your potential audience is, and some of the challenges that you may face in reaching that audience.

This was my response:

Why I read:

1) To meet interesting characters and get lost with them in an exciting fantastic world.

2) To think deeper about fundamental truths I see in my own life.

3) To feel like I understand another person and connect with them.

4) To be reassured that true heroism is real, alive, and within the realm of possibility.

5) To experience beauty in the language and metaphor, the imagery and tension.

Potential dangers:

1) Trying to write about a world without a story–all info dumps, exposition, lacking interesting characters with whom the reader can journey and experience the world. Story IS experience, and experience does not exist independent of the person doing the experiencing.

2) Waxing allegorical or didactic in the writing–trying to force the message instead of leaving it open for the reader to discover multiple layers of meaning.

3) Focusing so hard on the character that the plot lacks the structure and tension to keep the reader interesting. Characters do not exist separate from plot or setting; they change and grow in reaction to both.

4) Creating a hero whose struggle is so far removed from the real world or our real life experience that the reader feels that this type of person could only exist within the pages of a book. Or, trying so hard to follow the monomyth structure that the story falls flat (ie Star Wars I, II, III).

5) Thinking that poetic license frees you from basic rules of style and grammar. Creating metaphors that are so unusual that they are merely non sequiturs. Writing prose so thick and “literary” that it kicks the reader out of the book.

something

So…I figure it’s been a week and I should probably post something on this blog.

Wow.

Well, work is underway on Ashes of the Starry Sea, and I’m starting to have a love-hate relationship with it. Most writers say you first novel isn’t that good, and you just need to get it out of your system so you can write the real stuff.

Well, this is my first finished novel…but it’s not my first novel attempt. My first novel attempt was in 8th grade, and I am happy to report that it no longer exists. Anywhere. No, seriously, I lost (or destroyed) it after my mission, and I am perfectly happy with that.

My second novel attempt was in ninth grade, and I still have a copy of it, though I haven’t looked at it in a while. Somewhere around page one hundred (single spaced) I realized that the story wasn’t going anywhere, and I got all angsty and depressed about it. Then, midway through tenth grade, I realized that the problems were fixable, and stopped being angsty and depressed.

And then I got bored and moved onto other things.

For the next two years, I started all sorts of projects but never really got anywhere with them. This was when I came up with my “great golden idea” that I wanted to hide from the world until I had the skill to turn it into my masterpiece.

I’ll tell you what the idea was right now: a high school kid learns how to control his dreams and realizes that the dream world is just as “real” as the waking world. An amazonian dream mage named Lachoneus takes him on as his apprentice and he saves the world from demons while struggling to turn his dream-world relationship with his hs crush into a reality in the waking world.

It’s got potential, but if this is the best idea I ever come up with, I’m going to be very disappointed. Fortunately, I kept writing through this phase.

My next project that got past page ten happened my senior year. I created an island fantasy world with a Greek aesthetic and started what I thought was a character study on my sister. If she ever read it, she probably wouldn’t see any similarities between Sareli and herself, but she was kind of distant from all of us in those years.

Then my mission happened. Not much time for writing there, but even so, I had this one idea that was so good that I spent a handful of p-days in my second area writing it out longhand. It was supposed to be this incredbly poignant allegory based around Lehi’s dream. I got about two chapters in it before things got too busy for me.

When I came home, I picked up a story that I’d started before the mission and got pretty far with it…word-wise, at least. The pre-mission version was based on this game I used to play with my Zaks building blocks. When I got back, I renamed it Planet New America and envisioned it as Jesus’ second coming as experienced by American colonists on another planet, under Chinese occupation.

Sound pretty bad? Yeah…about 60k words in I realized it had no plot and put it on the “back burner.” I haven’t picked it up since.

Sophomore year went by, and I wrote a short story and an undeveloped novel that I thought was a short story. Decision LZ150207 was the short story, and it’s getting published!!! in The Leading Edge. I signed the contract yesterday (woot!). The Clearest Vision was the undersized novel, and…it was pretty bad. Cheesy, sentimental, poorly written–but some of the ideas were cool. Too bad it probably isn’t marketable.

Then, in the summer of 2007, I decided I was going to start another novel! This one was going to be…<drumroll please> a Final Fantasy 6 fanfic (huh?!). Thankfully, I had a much more original idea in gestation, and Aneeka convinced me to run with it.

Thus began the rough draft version of Ashes of the Starry Sea, my first finished novel and my current primary project.

So, yeah, they say to throw out your first novel…but I wrote at least five significant partial drafts before I got to Ashes. I think that’s enough to justify my assessment that this story’s going potential. I still worry about it, though…I’m only in chapter 4 and I’m already struggling with the same angsty doubts that don’t usually hit until about halfway through.

The other day, though, I sent out my first three chapters to Charlie, who read them at work and gave me her assessment. I thought that the main character, Ian, was weak and boring, that the first chapter didn’t have enough of a hook, that it took too long to get into the action, etc. To my surprise, this is what she said:

Charlie: “Charlie is the coolest person I know”
say it.
me: charlie is the coolest person I know
Charlie: thank you.
me: because she read my first three chapters
Charlie: I just sent them to you
me: oh, nice
Charlie: 😀
me: they kick my other characters’ trash?
Charlie: yes
me: really?
how so?
Charlie: I like them
I can see their dinstinct characteristics very well
they’re developed subtly and efficiently
me: yeah?
Ian isn’t boring?
Charlie: no
I like him more than michael
me: ???
how?
Charlie: because he has definite character
me: he does?
Charlie: I totally understand how he thinks and his motivations after three chapters
yeah. He’s a passive weenie of a guy, but I like him
me: he’s a passive weenie and he isn’t boring?
Charlie: nope
I like him
me: you like him even though he’s a pansy?
Charlie: yeah
I like him because he’s a pansy
me: really?
huh
I don’t understand
Charlie: I’m sorry?
I like that you don’t have a complacent protagonist
me: Ian isn’t complicated?
sorry for all the questions
I’m just trying to understand
Charlie: no
me: so you like him because you get him
Charlie: that’s part of it, yeah
me: but if he’s weak and doesn’t start being proactive for very long, you’re going to stop liking him
is that right?
Charlie: I am expecting him to grow, yes
me: ah, so it’s the potential for growth that hooks you
Charlie: yeah

Like any first novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea has some serious plot issues, against which I’m currently banging my head. However, despite the voices inside and outside of my head, it’s probably got potential. Now I just need to convince myself of that. Hopefully, as the story progresses, the story itself will do the convincing. And you know what? If I shut up and listen to it, it just might do that.

Heaven’s library

2,943 words today, even though today was the first day of Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers. I’ve reached the major climax of the book–the moment I’ve been replaying over and over in my head. Perhaps this novel is not as bad as I’d thought–perhaps I can pull this off. The current incarnation is terrible, but I can see in my mind how good it can be in its second or third incarnation. Inshallah, I’ll pull it off.

Today was the first day of BYU’s writing conference, and it was great! The speaker in the last workshop I attended, Dandi Mackall, was exceptional. I don’t have my notes with me and the BYU library closes in twenty minutes, so I’ll recap the best part of her presentation, the story she told in the last five minutes.

She said that once she had a dream where she died and went to heaven (thank goodness!). When she got there, the angel who greeted her offered to show her around, and asked what she wanted to see first. Her answer? The library, of course!

In heaven’s library, she found shelves stretching as far as she could see, full of the very best books. She picked out a few and recognized some of her favorites, the ones that had impacted and changed her life.

After a while, though, she started to get a little disappointed: all of the books in heaven’s library were books we already had down on Earth. Why was that? Didn’t heaven have anything new–anything we hadn’t already seen down below?

“But all these books were here first,” said the angel.

Still, she couldn’t accept that as an answer, so the angel took her down a long, winding, narrow corridor. The deeper she went, the narrower and dustier it became, until she started to feel uneasily. This part of the library was dark and dirty. It was clear that hardly anybody every came down here

Finally, the angel led her to a door covered in cobwebs. He brushed them aside and opened the door, leading her inside. Here was a room many times larger than the first, with old, dusty bookshelves stretching higher than she could see.

She picked out a book and started reading through it. It was one she’d never heard of, but it grabbed her. She could tell that it was really good. She picked up another one, and realized that it was just the kind of book that one of her friends would have loved to read. She picked up another one, and realized that this one could have helped out another friend when she’d gone through a terrible life crisis.

All of this made her angry. “Why didn’t we have these books?” she asked the angel. “They are just as good as the ones in the other room. Why didn’t they make it down?”

“These are all the books that remain unwritten,” said the angel. “Each one of these is a book that a writer, somewhere below, has in them but fails to write down.

“This one is by a writer who just won’t let anyone touch her writing and give her the criticism she needs to improve her craft. This one is by a writer who doesn’t have the discipline to write consistently and finish what he starts. This one is by a writer who doubts her story and doesn’t think she can ever get it to work.”

At this, she nodded and let the angel lead her back out to the main room. As she left, she saw one final book near the door. It had her name on it.

What a great, encouraging story. I didn’t do nearly as good a job retelling it as Dandi did the first time, but it had a tremendous impact on me. I hope sharing it with you, it does something of the same.

For some reason I don’t understand, fate, God, or genetics (or some malicious combination of the three) conspired to turn me into a writer. I don’t write for fame or fortune; I write because I can’t not write. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m making a mistake trying to turn this into a career, into something that will feed myself and my future family. Looking at the millions of other floundering writers like myself, it’s easy to feel anxious. After all, only a tiny fraction of us will ever get published, let alone make a professional career out of this. Do I even have a fighting chance?

But then I hear a story like this one and I remember why it is that I write. Not for fame, fortune, publication, personal gratification, or even just because I can’t not do it. It’s because storytelling itself is important. It helps us connect with the world around us, to see its beauty and wonder. It helps us to appreciate ourselves and understand others. It stimulates our imaginations and, by so doing, helps us to life our eyes from the ground and see the divine potential that is all around us. It helps us to grow through vicarious experience–it helps us to live and to love.

Writing, at its best, is a sacred act, an important act, and if by grace we have been touched by inspiration and given a story to write, we should consider it noble and honorable to bring that story incarnate into the world, to touch the lives of others and lead them to what is good and true.

Outlining for a discovery writer

I’m almost finished with the rough draft of Bringing Stella Home, but I can’t shake the feeling that this draft really sucks and is full of holes.

Part of that is probably that I wrote the whole thing out of the top of my head. The only part that I really took the time to outline was the back histories of the mercenaries–and that gave me material to make the story a LOT stronger. This probably means that I need to do more outlining in the future.

I think I know now what to do and not to do. Here’s my list of do’s and don’ts for someone like me who is more of a “discovery writer”:

Do’s:

Keep a list of brief explanations for setting elements (history, cultures, traditions, technologies, magics, etc). These do not need to be full length articles, but they should have enough information to trigger your knowledge and/or record the things that you are likely to forget.
Keep profiles of all the major/viewpoint characters. These should:
–Briefly explain their backstory, including parents/family/origin, childhood, education/training, major formative events, etc. This part should be fairly extensive, and will help you discover even more things about your character as you write your story;
–Explain, in some detail, their motivations–not just their desires, but the basis behind their desires. These usually grow out of the backstory;
–List some basic stats: age, height, distinctive physical characteristics–basically, the stuff someone is going to get on a first impression;
–List their important strengths. This part can be sparse, but you should at least be aware of the things in which they are competent;
–List their important flaws/handicaps. This part can also be sparse, but it should be extensive enough to at least make you aware of and/or get you to think about the potential conflicts that will arise;
–Explain why this character is sympathetic–why the reader is going to like this character. You MUST make a conscious effort to think this out. As the writer, you will love your characters simply because you created them, but the reader will not share in this euphoria. Write this section like a pitch, as if you’re addressing the reader (I haven’t tried that yet, but it sounds like a good idea and I’m going to try it on my next project).
Keep an ongoing list of all the major plot conflicts, with a checklist for each one of things that must/should happen in order to make the conflict as juicy and story-rich as possible. These lists should be sparse: one sentence to explain the conflict (character vs. character), and each point of the checklist should also be one line. You will flesh out each of these points as you go along, and you may even add new conflicts and get rid of old ones as your story takes shape.

Tip: None of these sections needs to be extensive. Sometimes, it will work better if you simply cut and past excerpts from your novel in the appropriate places in your outline. This may be especially helpful for setting elements and minor characters.

Tip: Not all of your outlining has to be done before you start writing. The outline should be an organic document that expands and changes with your draft, and your best ideas will come as you write the story, not as you write the outline. The outline exists to serve the story, not the other way around.

Don’ts:

Don’t feel that you have to write encyclopedia-style articles on all of your setting/worldbuilding elements. You are the only one who will see these, so you don’t have to extensively edit or proofread these sections.
Don’t try to explain every detail of your characters’ personalities. When you have a clear backstory, these will come out naturally. To write believable characters, figure out the basics and then GET OUT OF THE WAY and let them take over.
Don’t outline the plot; outline the major plot conficts with their necessary events, but expect these to change as you write. This should be the most flexible part of your outline.
NEVER feel that you have to fit your story to the outline. The outline exists to serve the draft, not the other way around. Use it as a reference and a set of guidelines, not a set of rules. You will discover your story as you write and daydream about it, not as you write your outline.
Don’t worry if your outline is spotty and full of holes. You’re not writing this to an uninformed audience; you’re writing this to your future self, who can fill in the holes quite well. In fact, your outline only exists to fill in the holes in your future self’s head and point him in a clear direction.
Don’t worry if your story gets ahead of your outline on the rough draft. For discover writers, outlines are more of an after-the-fact thing anyway, and your outline will continue to grow and expand in the rewrite. In fact, you may find it more productive to write the rough draft in a burst of frenzied creative energy, leaving 90% of your outlining for the rewrite.

These are a few of the things that work for me, as a discovery writer. I haven’t tried out everything on the do’s list, but looking back, I can see that they would have helped tremendously if I’d done them while writing Bringing Stella Home.

Just because you’re a discovery writer, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep an outline. It just means that you need to keep a different kind of outline, one that will enhance your discovery writing process rather than constrain it.

Genesis Earth pitch and other assorted thoughts on writing

Today I got together with Charlie after her work and discussed how to pitch my novel Genesis Earth. We did it in the following way: I took a few minutes to explain what the book was about, while she wrote down the words that stood out and excited her. Later, I took the words and worked out a thirty second pitch for it.

It was HARD! I spent nearly two hours after meeting with her just to write out a stupid four or five sentence blurb! Selling your work is totally different from producing it. Anyway, here’s what I came up with:

Michael has never set foot on Earth, but it haunts him as much as the legacy of his parents. So when his parents build the first artificial, traversable wormhole, he sets out with his mission partner, Terra, to explore the Earthlike planet on the other side. They arrive only to discover an empty, abandoned world and an unresponsive ghost ship advancing towards them. When Terra’s schizoid tendencies threaten her mental stability, they both must learn to trust each other in order to confront the mysteries of the new universe–and the personal insecurities that keep them from what they truly desire.

I have that down to 29.6 seconds. I should probably cut it shorter, but as it is it only has about half of the words that Charlie wrote down. If I cut it any more, I’m afraid it just won’t make sense.

It’s a start, though, and talking with Charlie helped me out tremendously. I realized that when I’m selling this stuff, I need to focus on the characters. Sure, all the worldbuilding stuff is interesting, but it’s not what hooks the reader. If all you’ve got is thirty seconds, don’t cut to the chase–and don’t give a synopsis! Synopsis =/= pitch!

Charlie was exhausted, so as we talked, she started ranting in a way that can be described as bluntly honest. Interestingly enough, most of what she said was actually quite helpful, not only for Genesis Earth, but also for my other projects.

The most helpful thing she mentioned was that when you’re writing characters, you often have to pick out their distinctive character traits and consciously overemphasize them. If you don’t, the reader might not pick up on it and find your characters stale and boring. While I hate melodrama and try to keep my novels free of it, I also need to keep my characters interesting. It’s a fine line to walk, but one that you can’t avoid.

She also said that it’s very easy for protagonists to be more boring than the main characters. I think this is probably because we rely on formulas and cliches when we’re starting out, since that’s much less risky than breaking the rules we don’t yet fully understand. The protagonist is the character closest to the trope, while the side characters can do what they want without threatening the integrity of the story.

Charlie said that because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of a boring protagonist, you need to consciously choose the traits that are interesting about that character and work them into the story as much as possible. I realized, as she said that, that my main protagonist for Hero in Exile is, indeed, a boring character. I need to pick out the things that make him interesting and consciously work those into his character.

This got me to think about planning. I’ve found that if I try to outline a novel when I set out to write the rough draft, I end up telling a completely different story. However, if I try to write a second draft without an outline, I have a hard time keeping things straight and fixing all the stuff I missed while discovery writing the first draft.

(I’m really upset now, because I was going to mention something that I need to foreshadow in the next revision of Genesis Earth, but…I totally forgot what it was! GAH!!! That’s what I get for not outlining!)

Charlie then started to rant about some of our writing friends, and how she would never listen to criticism on her writing from someone she considered to be an inferior writer to herself.

That part was…interesting. While I agree 110% that arguing with criticism is a sign of a poor writer, I don’t think it’s especially useful to rank writers in terms of “good” or “bad.” I would like to believe that I can learn something from everybody, and not just what not to do. Perhaps that’s optimistic, but I think it’s also practical–I’ve found that a bloated ego can shoot you in the foot six ways to Sunday before you even know what’s going on. I’ve found that not just through one unfortunate experience, but through several.

Brandon Sanderson said something very interesting in the last email he sent out to his English 318 class: he said that in New York, editors and agents don’t rank manuscripts by “good” and “bad,” they rank them by how much work they think it needs to be publishable. There is a distinction between the two, just as there’s a distinction between recognizing something that works really well and something that follows the rules.

That’s about all I have the time for now. I’ve got to get to bed. Late night internet == bad idea.

The second wind of inspiration

The more I write, the more I’ve come to realize that in order to finish a novel, you have to rediscover something powerful about the story that motivates you to tell it. The thing that motivates you to start the story is rarely the thing that drives you to finish it.

Around the second half of the novel, I usually find yourself losing steam and groping for inspiration. As I write, the story takes its own shape and morphs into something different than it was when I started. My initial motivating idea becomes obsolete, and I have to find another source of inspiration to drive me to finish.

For Genesis Earth, that thing was a scene in the fourth chapter. Late at night sometime in March 2008, I sat down in the FLSR laundry room to clunk out the 2,000 words required for my English 318 class that week. I don’t know what it was, but everything aligned just right and the words flowed out beautifully onto the page. When I was finished, I looked over what I had written and realized that it wasn’t that bad. On the contrary, it was unusually good.

A few months later, when I was about halfway through, everything seemed to be going wrong. The characters weren’t working, the conflict was petering out, my writing sucked, and it was all terrible. I was honestly tempted to throw out the whole novel and forget about it.

But then I remembered that scene–the one that was so much better than all of the other stuff that I’d written. I realized that if I threw out the novel, that scene would die with it. I had to finish my story, if for no other reason than to give that scene a place to live. As a result, I pulled through and finished the novel–and I’m glad I did, because that work represents a major landmark in my writing life.

The scary part is that you can never really know what it is that will give you your second wind. If you’re too critical, too judgmental of your own work, or sometimes just too focused, you’ll miss it. To find it, you have to be flexible with your outline, sensitive to new thoughts, emotions, and impressions, and (perhaps most important of all), you just have to have faith in the story you’re trying to tell.

I recently found the inspiration for my second wind with Bringing Stella Home. It’s a scene that I wrote just last week, where a major character dies. I’d planned it out as a gut-wrenchingly tragic moment, the ultimate low point in the protagonist’s quest. When I wrote it, however, I realized that it was much more than that: it was a merciful release for the character who died, and (though he doesn’t realize it) a victory of sorts for the protagonist.

That scene affected me in ways that I was not expecting. While the prose itself needs tightening and the scene needs revision, I realized that it has some great potential. Because of that, I now have a driving desire to see the story finished.