Thoughts and Reflections – Page 37 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Revision, revision, revision

I finished revising chapter 6 of Genesis Earth today. It took a lot more time and effort than I’d expected. Even though I’d revised half the chapter yesterday, I started from the beginning and changed a lot of the other revisions I’d made. I think this version is stronger, but I’m not sure how it’ll fit in with the other chapters.

The thing about revising is that if you change something fundamental about the character / setting / plot early on, it changes everything that happens later, meaning that you have even more revisions to make. It’s like ripples on a pond, or switching tracks at a railroad junction hundreds of miles before your destination. Right now, a lot of the changes I decided to make earlier are making much larger changes necessary later on. That’s one reason why this chapter took so long to revise.

Another reason is because I felt I’d told it wrong the first time. A lot of my alpha readers said that my novel was weakest on conflict; they didn’t feel that it had enough conflict to carry them through the longer parts in the middle. I realized, when I reread it, that the conflict was mostly there, it just wasn’t emphasized properly.

A lot of these revisions had to do with connecting the events better, starting late and exiting early, creating more of a build up to the climax. They also involved changing the order in which I explained certain things–it created more tension to bring up certain things earlier, before the action. Tension and release.

I think I failed to do all that in the rough draft because I’m more of what Sanderson calls a “discovery writer.” The middle sections are always the hardest for me, because I have to figure things out as I go along. I’ve tried planning everything out from the beginning, but when I did that, the story that came out was completely different than what I’d planned.

Trouble is, if I’m discovering my story as I’m going along, the middle sections are going to be much more choppy and rough. I can write a pretty good beginning, and I think I can pull off a decent ending, but the stuff in the middle is just all over the place, every time I write.

Fortunately, I think the revision process is going well. It takes a lot of time and effort, but it’s producing results. I think chapter 6 works much better now, though it could probably use a little more tweaking just to fit it into the context of the story as a whole. Better finish the 2.0 revision before I do that, though.

For a while, I thought that with school out and all this free time on my hands before I really go anywhere, I could finish the 2.0 revision before the end of the week. Now, I’m thinking it will probably take more time. I could probably be about 75% done by the end of the week, though. Even with all these deep revisions, I’m plugging along at a healthy pace. And honestly, this is the kind of work I enjoy. It’s a challenge, but not an unpleasant one at all.

The end of an era

Today was my last writing meeting as Quark writing vp. :'(

It’s been a good run, two years as leader of the Quark Writing Group at BYU. I remember how it was when I started–I was still just a hobby writer, with a nebulous interest in getting published someday but without any real goals or plans. I heard about the group from some friends, but didn’t really start going until winter of ’07, as Reigheena and Aneeka were graduating. One day, I showed up after the meeting was finished (but everyone was still hanging around chatting) and Reigheena was like “so, you want to be writing vp next year?”

I was kind of nervous but really excited that first semester, with lots of ideas to try out. We posted our fliers around all the freshman dorms the first couple days of class (most of the members were graduating and/or moving on), and we got quite a few new members, as well as curious English majors who came for a couple of times before moving on.

Those first days, meetings were two hours long, the submissions were up to 4,500 words, and we did four of them every meeting. We met in the basement of the BYU library, in one of the study rooms, and we crammed between ten and fifteen people down there each meeting. Pretty intense! Two hours was not enough time to comfortably cover everyone’s story, and we always felt rushed. We held meetings every other week (or, more accurately, every 1.5 weeks) on a weird schedule that only I really had figured out.

Well, after that first semester, we made a few changes. Reduced the submissions length to 2,500 words, the number of submissions to 3, and the length of the meetings to one hour instead of two. I think we also started meeting weekly, instead of the weird Tuesday–Saturday–Tuesday schedule. We also got a real room, over in the Talmadge building.

Things have definitely changed. This past year, we didn’t really do much to get new members, but we have started to bring in people from the other sections of Quark. A lot of other old timers have moved on–Drek moved up to Draper, so I doubt we’ll see much of him, and Jakeson and Gamila have been coming less and less as they move on to the next stage of their lives. Still, it’s been fun, holding our weekly writing meetings each Saturday.

While I always tried to encourage everyone to be frank and honest with their criticism, we’ve also done a good job diffusing that tension with humor. Here are some of my favorite quotes from my time as writing vp:

“He has two guns in the office and he wants to give Autumn a talking-too for having a knife in her boots?”
“She’s an intern.”

“Other than that, I thought it was just good ol’ fashioned fantasy violence.”

“I don’t remember anything about your characters right now, but I remember when I was reading your story that they were very distinct and I knew who they were.”

“I’m trying to think of something I can say that doesn’t sound like a critique.”
“Your writing is…legible”

“I have a friend that had a way to hide a knife in her hair.”
“I want a wife like that!”

“Some books don’t have chapters, they have acts.”
“We have a name for those. We call them… ‘plays’.”

“As always, your writing was legible.”
“No, wait, it wasn’t! It was courier!”

“If this was meant as a short story and not the beginning of a novel, “defenestration” will suddenly become a useful word in your vocabulary.”

“Maybe I should write a prologue about a writer who’s writing a prologue and realizes that nobody ever reads them.”

“It doesn’t have to be functional, it can just be like ‘hey, we make gears.'”

“The love in Twilight is all based on scent: he smells nice and she smells delicious.”

“The goatee gives me programming x2.”

“Missions…”
“The first six months…”
“The first two years…”

“I like getting to the exciting event within a page of the story.”
“Frodo, see this ring? Destroy it!”

“I loved how flat your characters were!”
“You’re so good at poor writing!”

“Maybe ‘MacBeth’ could be a title. Like, the leader is known as ‘The Macbeth.'”
“Yeah! And all the lower downs would be ‘the Duncans.'”

“Wait… I did write something good… at the very end!”
“Like, ‘Oh good, it ended!”
“You are putting words into my criticism!”

“Then I thought, what would my characters be like if they were alive? And then I was afraid.”

Ah, the good times. It’s so sad to log onto the Quark forums now and not have moderator privileges, to know that I won’t be sending out those weekly emails, moderating things, doing all that other stuff. It’s the end of an era for me. My duties as writing vp for Quark have been a major part of my college experience here at BYU, and I won’t forget it.

Some thoughts

This is going to be real quick, since it’s 1:30 am and General Conference is tomorrow. The revision is going along really well for Genesis Earth–I am really excited about this project. My only regret is that I don’t have more time to dedicate to it. As it is, I’m probably putting too much time into it already. But it’s worth it–it makes me happy, and I feel I’m telling a story worth hearing.

Yesterday was also the awards banquet for the English department. It was a very positive experience. I saw a few familiar faces–Chris from my English 318 reading group last year, and slipperyjim from Quark.

The main address and proceedings in general were very interesting. There was a lot of talk about the value of literature, its importance in our society, but more than that, the importance to write good literature. By that, I don’t mean the kind of stuff that has the stamp of approval of some elite clique of stuck up literary types somewhere–by that, I mean literature that has purpose and meaning, that shows us something worth living for, not merely pointing out the absurdities of our modern world. There are plenty of absurdities and paradoxes and stupid little meaningless things, but where does it really get us to be pointing those out all the time?

I came away from the conference with something really valuable: a heightened awareness of all the things that made me want to write Bringing Estella Home, the novel I’ve been working on this semester.

Bringing Estella Home is very tragic, a little dystopian, and has a lot of unrealized hopes–a lot of shattered lives. It’s essentially a tragedy, and I’ve found that I don’t particularly enjoy writing tragedies. When you’ve worked on one for a few months, it tends to grate on you–all of these suffering characters, and you with the knowledge that it’s only going to get worse. Not very feel-good.

But that’s not the thing that made me want to write this book. There were two things that I wanted to get across, two major ideas: sacrifice and loyalty. If that makes any sense. I guess it won’t, unless you read the finished book, but I wanted to show how people struggling to do the right thing in a world turned upside down could find meaning and depth in their suffering, in their trials. Suffering comes and goes, but it shapes you in ways that last forever, and I wanted to show good people becoming better through their suffering. I guess that’s the best way to put it.

I think I’d lost sight of that recently. This novel needs a lot of major changes to it, especially in the middle section, which I was just wrapping up when I put it on hold. But with a clearer idea of the overarching goal of the story–what deeper meaningfulness I’m trying to get across–I think I’ll be able to pick it up again and give it a strong finish. That’s good.

I don’t know if I’ll ever write another tragedy again. This one has been quite a ride. However, I shouldn’t just throw it out and run away from it–I really need to listen to this story and tell it like it needs to be told. I guess that’s the ultimate motivation, or should be. I don’t just sit down and write because it’s what I do, I do it because it is something meaningful, something that can help others see the world in a new, better way, and obtain those truths that will really bless their lives.

This sucks and I’m a horrible writer

It’s getting really, really hard for me not to believe that statement, especially as I finish up with the middle part of this novel. I’m starting to realize that I made a whole bunch of mistakes pages and pages ago, and that the climaxes just aren’t working without everything set up right.

I know, cognitively, that it’s mostly just psychological and that this book probably isn’t as bad as I think it is, but I’m finding it hard to convince myself of that. I got to the climax of part II yesterday, and it was…not what I’d had in my head. That’s probably what’s frustrating me the most. If I can’t write down the story as I have it in my head, what does that mean? It either means I’m a terrible writer, or that I didn’t get the setup right (or both…gah!).

So…where do I go from here? Throwing out the entire story isn’t an option–I’m not going to allow myself to do that. I could, however, put it on the back burner for a while, let it simmer…or I could do or die and finish the 1.0 draft, no matter how crappy it turns out. I suppose that would accomplish something for my self esteem, but is that the way to best serve the story?

Fortunately, this past week we talked about revision in English 318. Listening to my recording of the class gave me a few ideas. I could make a list of known problems, with their fixes, and continue as if I’d already made them. I think I did that a few times with The Phoenix of Nova Terra, but I don’t know how I feel about that now. I could probably make it work…

The main issue is that I feel very, very distant from this book. A month ago, I was immersed in the thing, writing over a thousand words each day, just chugging it out. Now, for various reasons, other things have come up and drawn away my attention, so I don’t feel that I’m really in this world anymore. I feel like I’m more of an outsider, writing for the sake of writing rather than trying to tell this story the way it wants to be told. I can’t really remember what I wrote a hundred pages ago, despite that big sheet of butcher paper up in my closet.

Another thing that complicates all of this is that I’m really, really excited about the other novel, Genesis Earth. I’ve gotten back comments from most of my alpha readers, and I’m all but chomping at the bit to start working on it again. If I had nothing else going on, no pressing obligations or assignments, with the enthusiasm I have for this project I could probably finish the second draft in a week, and the third draft the week after that.

So…what’s next?

Well, I think I’m going to start the revision on Genesis Earth today or tomorrow. When I was this enthused about revising Pheonix, I decided to wait and finish Genesis Earth instead, and the enthusiasm for that project died down surprisingly fast. Better to start now than wait until I’ve got the free time but struggle with motivation.

In the meantime, I’m going to finish the current chapter of Bringing Estella Home and let it rest for a bit. I’ll probably reread what I’ve got from the beginning, make a few revision notes, perhaps an outline of sorts–try to figure out what’s wrong, what I need to change to make it work. I’ll restrain myself from actually making those revisions (though I did that, mid-draft, for Genesis Earth, and it turned out alright…sort of), but once I feel I’m sufficiently “into” the story again, I’ll get back to work and finish the 1.0 draft. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do all that before the end of May.

The trouble here is that I’ll probably end up writing the first draft of this novel and revising the other one at the same time…something I tried last September and failed miserably. However, by the time all of this is finished, inshallah school will be over and I won’t have to worry about it. Things are looking really good for me to get an internship in NYC, which makes me think I should drop my Spring classes and just take it easy for a month before I start (as for housing, that’s a whole other conundrum…).

Gah! Writing is complicated. Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life? Something I can do? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just have to keep on writing through this depressing pessimism and trust that it will pass.

As a side note, I took the title of this post from a Writing Excuses episode some time ago; here is the link to that episode, in case you want to hear it.

Ugghhhhh…

Man, I am sick. It sucks.

I’m also at a low spot in writing this novel. That sucks too.

When you get towards the last third of the book you’re writing, you start to have doubts about the whole project. Is this really any go0d? Is the story really holding out? Things slow down a lot, and you lose most of the enthusiasm that carried you through the first half. The daily drudgery of writing becomes harder and harder, and pretty soon you can’t see beyond the chapter you’re presently writing. It’s not a whole lot of fun.

Then, as you get into the final stretch, the ending comes into sight and you start to regain a little bit of the enthusiasm. Your goal isn’t too distant, and you start to see how things wrap up to bring you to that final climax and ending. You find yourself believing in the story again, and excited to see it to the grand finale.

Of course, the actual writing gets harder and harder, exponentially, right up until the last page, but you’ve regained the motivation and you have at least a portion of the drive.

Right now, I’m kind of at the low point. It doesn’t help that school is starting to get busier, too. It certainly doesn’t help to be sick, even if it does give me more time around the house (man, I need to get out…I need to get out…). But I’m almost at the end of the second act–one climactic battle, one huge and tragic development, one major try-fail cycle, and then I’m on the final stretch. I’m currently at 64,250 words, so I should wrap up part two by about 68k and finish up the novel at around 100k. Perhaps a little longer, but I don’t think part three is going to be much longer than part two.

One of the major doubts I have about this novel is that it’s too predictable. All of my readers from English 318 have been making their predictions, and…really, most of them are correct. In fact, they’re correctly predicting stuff that happens WAY later, stuff from part three that I haven’t written yet. If this story doesn’t have any surprises, I worry that it might not be as good.

On the other hand, it has some ideas and concepts that are really drawing in my alpha readers, particularly with the Hameji. Over and over again, that’s the comment I get–they want to find out more about the Hameji. This is something that might help me to carry the book, even if it is a bit predictable: show this barbarian spacefaring culture at their most brutal, make them the key antagonists, and then slowly humanize them until the readers understand exactly why they do what they do, and even come to agree with them. That is pretty fun.

So we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, I’m going to go to bed early–9:30 or 10:00. This sickness is just killing me, and I don’t know of anything more effective at curing it than sleep. G’night.

Slow but steady

Okay, quick post before I go to bed.

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

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

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

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

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

<spoiler alert>

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

</spoiler alert>

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You do watcha gotta do for Rock ‘n Roll, ya know?”

Check this out. Apparently, back in the 80s, U2 randomly decided to put on a show on the roof of a liquor store in the middle of LA. A free show. They played one of their best songs, “Where the streets have no name,” and then the police shut them down. This video is apparently footage from that incident.

How awesome is that, dude?

I mean, aside from all the stress they gave the cops, and the crowd difficulties and dangers inherent in pulling a stunt like this, just how freaking awesome is the concept? Dude, I would have LOVED to have been there! Check out the people, standing around, waving their hands, hanging off of traffic lights pumping their arms–it must have been awesome!

U2 is one of my favorite bands of all time. I know people think Bono is way arrogant and self-righteous, that he projects himself as the Pope of Rock ‘n Roll, but honestly, come on, the music is pretty good. I mean, lets not get so caught up in everything that we forget the music. Classic. Truly classic.

And then, when you DO look at some of the stuff these guys have done, it’s pretty freaking impressive, Pope or no Pope. In Chile in the 90s, U2 put on a HUGE benefit concert for the Mothers of the Disappeared, a human rights group calling for an inquiry and public closure on Pinochet’s brutal regime…right under Pinochet’s nose! Right there, Bono called out one of the world’s totalitarian dictators IN HIS OWN COUNTRY. How awesome is that??

And it’s not like Bono is just posing for the camera, throwing concerts to boost his fame and fortune, doing all the showy stuff for human rights but not actually doing the leg work. He puts on his suit, picks up the briefcase, and meets with the major leaders in the non-governmental organizations and trans-national activist networks and works with these guys, behind the scenes. He’s really out there, doing his part.

Plus, just look how long the band has stuck together–thirty years now. How many bands have you seen that fall apart after a year or two, just because the members get all pissy and immature with each other? These guys in U2 aren’t like that–they can work together, they can do much more than just get along with each other. They can really thrive together and build off of each other.

When I was in Jordan, I listened to U2 all the time, especially their older stuff. Their music and message was born out of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and because of that it really resonated me as I lived around some of the effects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have a way of singing about love and peace in a gritty, hard-edged way that can still really cut right to the heart of how you feel and how you want things to be. That’s how I feel, at least, and for that reason I listened to U2 just about every day in Jordan.

Man, U2 has got to be one of my favorite bands of all time. These guys really know how to rock out, in the best possible sense of the word.

…and they all lived evily ever after.

Today we had a quark writing group party, and it was lots of fun! We all went up to drek‘s new house, up in Draper, and read some of our really old, really bad first attempts at writing stories. Good times!

Drek, Nick, lexish, slipperyjim, jakeson, gamila, aneeka, and one of my friends from the FLSR writing group all came up. Jakeson and his crew got lost on the way, but we had a good time hanging out, chatting, eating the pita bread and hummous that I’d cooked (I figured everyone else would bring sugar-heavy treats, so I cooked something a little more on the healthy side–still delicious, as evidenced by how much everyone ate!), and talking about how we’d gotten started writing.

I think a lot of us had similar stories–while we all wrote for different reasons, we all tried to do something big in high school, something that marked a turning point of some sort. The other common thread that ran through our stories was…how laughably bad they were! There were gradations, of course (Nick’s story that started with the word “Gandalf” and only got worse was pretty ridiculously crazy), but all of our stuff was pretty bad.

It can be both fun and painful to look back on past stuff, especially the stuff you wrote back in high school. It’s like, all the painful awkwardness of high school is not limited to your social life, it seeps into your writing as well, especially if that’s when you first try out your hand at the craft. So many cliches, so much bad grammar, so many viewpoint errors and info dumps…ARGH!!!

Of course, that is precisely what made it so entertaining. The awkward, emo, immature teenage grasp of the universe, combined with dozens of stale cliches and atrocious grammar–brilliant! I’m glad we were all at a point where we could look back on this stuff and laugh. It can do you good to air out your closet and let go of some of the old stuff you are sure would destroy you if you ever let it saw the light of day.

My first writing attempt was a novel that has since been entirely lost. I printed up a hard copy, once a long time ago, but I’ve lost that one and really have no desire to try and dreg it up. Of course, all the digital copies haven’t survived. My second novel attempt, however, I have in both digital and hard copy. That’s the one that I dipped back into for this writing party.

I actually sent out a copy of this to my aunt in Washington DC, who is/was an editor for a magazine. She read about the first twenty or thirty pages and sent me this letter, which I will use to finish off this post. The only places I’ve used ellipses are when my aunt described problems specific to certain passages and quoted them.

October 14, 1999

Dear onelowerlight [name, obviously, has been changed 😛 ]

The manuscript your mom sent home with Evan has proven to be an interesting read in many ways. It is wonderful to see people take an interest in writing. This pastime has given me many hours of satisfaction. I find that the joy is in the journey and that the process is as important to me as the finished job. However, it is always satisfying to have a finished product that I feel good about.

What it looks like you have is a wonderful outline for a novel. Your language is colorful and descriptive. The battle scene held my interest and made me want to know what was going to happen next. My intent was to read the manuscript from beginning to end purely for the joy of reading it. The urge to edit, an urge that often gets in my way as I write a first draft, got in my way as I read. Hence I was not able to follow through. I have written on some of the pages. What follows are a few other observations.

A really good writer named John Gardner said that a piece of fiction opens up a dream to the reader. Anything that causes the reader to become aware of the author or that jolts him out of the fictive dream does not belong. It is always helpful to let a manuscript cool for several days and then begin to read it. This will help you be more objective. Sometimes the things that seem marvelous turn out to be less enchanting than one thought during the rapture of creation.

Titles are difficult. Would anyone have read Catch 22 by another name? Some people don’t think so. It has been postulated that the reason the story about The Man Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain didn’t do better as a movie–and presumable a book–was because of the length of the title. For many authors the title is the last thing to be written.

Your first two or three pages contain a good deal of “throat clearing.” An opening needs to grab the reader so he will continue. There needs to be a problem, action and change. It should be action that is vital to the story. Someone is going on a trip. Someone is going into battle. someone is getting married. Someone is being born. Unless you want to write erotic literature it would be better not to start with conception. Work the background in later. In The Gospel of John the first few verses talk about the Word. Immediately the Word is identified with the Son of God and the story of his baptism. The problem of establishing himself as a teacher is presented. In episode IV of Star Wars the force is not explained to us at the beginning, rather we see what it can do. It isn’t until Solo talks about fools who believe in an ancient religion that we begin to have some idea th at the force is more than magic. The characters give all this information to us.

Point of view is the perspective that the story is told from. T he most difficult and therefore least used these days is the omniscient narrator. A good rule of thumb is to see the story through the eyes of the person with the problem. Many authors write in first person. One can also use second or third person. Third person is similar to first person except the pronoun I isn’t used as much. (Actually it is more complicated than that, but that will suffice for now.) Sometimes a narrator who doesn’t see into anyone’s mind tells a story. Most fiction that looks like omniscient narrator is actually being told from the point of view of one of the characters. The narrator can then see into the mind of one person and all the other action is viewed through his eyes. Sometimes a novel will contain oone person’s point of view in one chapter and that of another character in another. This seems to work. It is confusing when shifts occur without warning.

Psychic distance has to do with how close you want your reader to be to the story. Stephen King wants to inspire terror. He gets his readers as close as he can. You hear breathing, feel sweat, hearts race. Jane Austin keeps her readers at a great distance. You see the lights, you hear the conversation, it is all very proper–no sweat, no breathing, no racing hearts. Just as with the point of view, the important thing is that the narrative remains consistent. It must not switch in the middle of a sentence, paragraph, or chapter.

Write in active voice as much as possible. Your English teacher will tell you all about this. Be aware that verbs ending in “ing” do not help your story. (Running up the hill after Jill and tripping over a rock Jack stumbled.) This slows the action of the story down but when used sparingly can add emphasis. The following construction works better (Jack ran up the hill after Jill. He tripped over a rock and stumbled. “D___!” he grumbled. Jill took water from her bucket and soap from her pocket and washed his mouth out.)…

…You have many long sentences. Your writing will be tighter and stronger with shorter sentences and fewer prepositional phrases…

…There are lots of ways to deal with dialogue. You can put the dialogue first and description second…you can put the dialogue at the end…you can break it up the way you have in your manuscript or you can put description on either sie of it…Like every other element of your story, you don’t want it to call attention to itself.

I believe you changed fonts to show a change in viewpoint or in who is speaking. For me this is very distracting. There are other good ways that work. Also it is easier for me to read when it is double-spaced.

Two books that I have found most helpful are John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. It is out in paperback. John Gardner also wrote a wonderful fantasy called Grendal. It is not very long. It is told from the point of view of the monster. The other book is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

Thank you for sharing your manuscript with me. It takes great courage to share one’s work. I admire you for starting out early. Remember free advice is worth what you pay for and don’t let anybody discourage you. You learn to write by writinig. You have a good start.

Your’s truly,

Aunt Yvonne

Almost at part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progress!

I’m sludging through the middle of Bringing Estella Home. I’ve heard people call this the “blue collar work” of writing, all the parts between the beginning chapters and climactic ending chapters. I believe it.

In particular, I was having some difficulty with chapter 7 last week. I have, basically, three separate plot threads tied up in four viewpoints. Sometimes, it can be frustrating to give them all equal time while putting the scenes together in such a way that they contrast and build off of each other. In particular, it’s difficult to get the chapters right.

I’ve heard that each chapter is supposed to be its own distinct sub-story, with its rising action, a mini-climax, and a falling action of some kind. I’m fairly confident that I can do this intuitively over one or two viewpoints, but over four viewpoints, with three different plot lines? It’s tough. Last time I tried was with my first novel, and when I went back for the rewrite I had to reorder several of the chapters, especially the first three ones.

The way I’m doing it for Bringing Estella Home is picking one of the plot lines to be the main subject, if you will, of the chapter. I build on the other plot lines as well, but the big climax, the big reveal, comes in the plot line that I’ve designated for that chapter. Typically, I’ll start each chapter with a viewpoint from the plot line that is central to the rising and falling action of that chapter–or, if I don’t start it with the viewpoint, I start it with the characters talking about the idea that is central to the climax of the chapter.

Originally, I thought that the climax / central aspect of chapter 7 would be the brainwashing / mind-altering procedures that Ben undergoes in becoming a soldier for the Hameji. I started with James discussing the Hameji with the other mercenaries on the ship and talking about various legends they’ve heard of mind-altering drugs that give the Hameji special powers. The next scene was Ben forced to take some of those drugs.

However, I really hadn’t figured out Ben’s part of the story at this point. I knew he’d take the drug, and I knew how it would change him, but I didn’t know what happened next. As a result, the rest of the chapter just felt like a chore, one that I accomplished over several late nights (probably to the detriment of the quality of the writing :P)

It wasn’t working. The chapter just didn’t feel like it held together.

Then, I had a genius idea–why not make the last scene of chapter 6 the first scene of chapter 7? The viewpoint was from Estella, meeting the jealous head wife of the Hameji overlord. That scene set up the conflict for the next two chapters of Estella’s story–in retrospect, why didn’t I make it an opening scene for that reason alone?

I don’t know. But it worked out wonderfully well! Once I shifted the central focus of the story to Estella, EVERYTHING fell into place! Her conflict at this point really was a lot more interesting than anything else in the chapter.

So now, with chapter 7 under my belt, I am WAY excited for chapter 8! While I was walking back from school one day, I figured out exactly what needs to happen next in his story, and it is amazing! Brutal, violent, and torturous, but it is amazing! And this is the perfect chapter to insert James’s philosophical discussion with Danica, the one that I wrote down nearly a month ago just because I had to get it out! I’m excited. Maybe I’ll even finish it before Saturday.

Anyways, it is 2:30 am, and I am way tired. Time to get some sleep. Thank goodness my first class doesn’t start until noon! 🙂