the wilderness job – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Random late night thoughts

I’ve been going on a lot of late night walks lately, just wandering restlessly around Provo. Tonight I had some interesting thoughts about how much I’ve changed in the last year. Surprisingly, I’ve grown a lot.

Last year at this time, I was all geared up for World Fantasy Convention. I had just finished Bringing Stella Home, and I my thoughts went something like this: “if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll find an agent, and they’ll like my pitch enough to see it, and after they read it they’ll want to represent me, and then they’ll sell my book somewhere, so that maybe, just maybe, I can make a living as a writer in ten years.”

Now, I don’t want to get into the whole indie vs. traditional debate, because I think it’s ultimately a false dichotomy. However, now that I’ve gone ahead and published my own work independently, I feel like I’ve taken charge of my career in a way that I hadn’t before. I’m no longer waiting on someone else to make my hopes and dreams come true, I’m going out and pursuing them myself.

That’s the big thing that I think has changed in the past year: I’ve gained a lot more confidence. A year ago today, I was working a temp job in a costume company warehouse, fretting and worrying over how to make ends meet and where to find a stable job. I had considered freelancing as a translator and teaching English in another country, but hadn’t actively pursued those options because frankly they terrified me. And as for writing, that was the impossible dream that might come true someday, but not today.

Now, writing is still the impossible dream, but at least I’m on a path that doesn’t involve lottery thinking like the old one. None of my books have really taken off yet, but at least I have them published and available for readers to discover, so when I do start to get some traction I’ll be in a much better position to succeed. And either way, I’ve taken charge of my own career.

So yeah, I can say I’ve grown a lot in the past year–which is surprising, considering all I did was stay in my old college town and work odd jobs. At least I didn’t move back in with my parents–which makes me part of an elite 15%. But now, I think I’ve just about reached the limit of how much I can grow here in Provo. If something doesn’t change, I worry that I’m going to start stagnating.

So in a year, where will I be? Who knows, but if I’ve grown as much as I have since October 2010, I’ll count that as a success.

Looking for a life experience

This week, I got hit by some good news and some bad news.

The good news was that I got a short term seasonal job, delivering phone books. That should keep me solvent for the rest of the month, at least until I can find something slightly more permanent.

The bad news? I heard back from the company with the wilderness job, and it turns out I didn’t get it.

So now I’ve got to figure out what to do with my life for the next year. My writing career, as always, is plan A, but that’s more of a mid- to long-term thing. And honestly, that’s how I want it.

I feel that I need to do something big–to go on some kind of adventure. I’ve been working hard to hone my craft, but I feel that I need to acquire some kind of significant life experience, not only to boost my writing, but just to grow as a person. It’s tempting to look for a comfort zone and camp out in it, but I don’t think that would be the best thing for me to do right now.

Before I graduated, I decided not to go to graduate school yet for a few reasons. First, I was sick of school, and felt that I needed a break. Second, I didn’t know what to go in for, and didn’t want to go to grad school just to postpone figuring things out.

Third, I wanted to get out of the cloistered halls of the university and gain some real world experience. I’d spent my whole life up to that point in academia, and was sick and tired of being sheltered from the “real world.” I wanted to get out and see what things were really like on the other side of the ivy.

For the past eight months, I’ve been bouncing around in Utah, working odd jobs to get by. It’s a different set of stresses and problems, and while I can’t say I’m unhappy, I certainly can’t say that I’m fulfilled. Being unemployed is about as unfulfilling as you can get and still be breathing.

I could probably find and hold down a graveyard job until my writing career takes off, but somehow that doesn’t seem much better. I don’t just need a job to facilitate my writing–I need a major life experience to broaden my perspective on things. I was hoping the wilderness job would provide me with both of those, but unfortunately that’s no longer an option.

So what next? Here’s an idea: maybe I could go abroad and teach English for a year.

I used to joke with all my friends that if I didn’t get the wilderness job, I’d probably leave the country and go on an adventure–but really, why not? A chance to see the world, use the teaching and language learning skills from my degree, and acquire new skills that might come in handy later on. Plus, when I come back, I’ll sure have a lot of interesting things to write about.

The big question in my mind is what I need to do to get ready. I suppose the best thing would be a TEFL certificate–I could probably get one of those in a month or two through online classes. But…is that really the best path? And what is the best program to go through? A couple of friends of mine who have taught English abroad for the past couple of years say you don’t need a certificate to get a job, but they were working with kids, not adults. And for the English teaching jobs in the Middle East (especially the gulf), you really do need certification.

So I guess I still need to think it through. Right now, my top three destinations would probably be Japan/Korea (for the earning potential), Saudi Arabia (for the Middle East experience), or the Czech Republic (for the chance to connect with my roots).

I don’t know, though. I’ve still got to weigh the pros and cons. I’ll probably do that in a later post–but for now, that’s what I’m thinking about. And the more I think about it, the more attractive it becomes…

Slogging through a funk

Just a quick update, since it’s 3 am and I’m kind of in a daze after playing Halo: Reach on Xbox live with my roommate. Whoa, decompressing…

This whole week, I’ve been in a weird funk. It sucks to be unemployed, especially since I can’t commit to anything long term because I’m waiting to hear back from the wilderness job. Man, I really hope I get it–but even if I do, I’ll need to raise some cash to keep me going through January until the paychecks start coming in. And if I don’t get the job, I have no idea what I’ll do.

But mostly, it has to do with my writing. I’ve been running through the rough draft of Worlds Away from Home, and…holy crap, it REALLY sucks. It sucks to the point where I’m not sure exactly how to fix it.

Part of it probably has to do with my initial ambitions for it, which I probably set too high. I originally wanted to write a science fiction romance that turned the “romance” element on its head by having the sex be the thing pushing the characters apart rather than bringing them together. I got a little too didactic in the rough draft, though, and failed to tell a story that, at it’s root, is meant to entertain.

That’s probably the most important thing–to tell a story that’s fundamentally entertaining. So I’ve been looking at that, and I’m finding that there are significantly fewer plot threads here than there were in Mercenary Savior. That, and there’s considerably less suspense. The character arcs are still sufficiently complex, I think, but there aren’t nearly as many hooks and cliffhangers as my other work.

This whole week, I’ve been vacillating between “alright, I can do this” to “this novel sucks and I should just throw it out and never work on it again.” In fact, I drew up a chart today of all the novels I’ve started, finished a first draft, and finished a polished draft–and the results are a little stark.

I only just produced a fully polished draft for Genesis Earth, so at 2010 I’ve finally gotten one novel to the point where I think it’s as good as I can make it without an editor/agent to help. One freaking novel–and that’s after two years of work. Mercenary Savior, I’m finding, isn’t quite where it needs to be, though it’s close–probably I’ll nail it down in early 2011. But other than those two? I’ve got nothing.

I started Worlds Away from Home back in 2008, and I’m wondering whether I was even good enough back then to craft a story that could carry through a complete novel. Ashes of the Starry Sea was probably a bit too ambitious, and Genesis Earth, while it ended up working out, was so small in scope that it wasn’t that hard to pull off.

Is something fundamentally flawed with Worlds Away from Home? Did I bite off more than I could chew? Is the story premise so screwed up that I should just abandon it and reuse it occasionally for scraps?

I have no idea. Maybe I’m just being too angsty–after all, I started Genesis Earth BEFORE I started Worlds Away from Home, and that one turned out great. It took two years, of course, but it worked out in the end.

So will this one work out? Probably, I suppose–but only if I can solidly get behind it. I’m trying to put together a detailed plot outline to figure out what the story needs, but if I can’t find something else–something on par with the cryo scene and the first line of Genesis Earth, which for the longest time were the only two things keeping me from trashing that project–if I can’t find something redeemable like that, I might just drop this monstrosity and let it die.

Blarg. I hate this. I might just take a break from things and write a couple short stories. This whole week, I’ve been writing nothing but outlines and revision notes–I need to do something a little more creative.

Anyhow, that’s what I’m currently slogging through. Before the end of next week, I’m hoping to find out whether I’ve got that wilderness job or not. Let’s hope…

Change in direction

Just a quick update on things before I go to bed.

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to put Into the Nebulous Deep on hold for the time being. The main reason for this is that it’s a direct sequel to Mercenary Savior, and if the first one doesn’t sell…yeah, not the best business decision.

I figure the best way to do it is to have a series of indirectly linked standalone novels set in the same world. That way, a publisher could pick up any one of them after rejecting all the others, but if you want to bundle them into a series and sell them together, you can do that too.

That’s my strategy–I like the universe I built for Mercenary Savior, and I’m going to keep it for the foreseeable future, but for now, the trilogies and duologies will have to wait. In any case, I’ve written down my major ideas for ITND, so I’m sure I’ll be able to pick up where I left off if/when MS sells.

Instead, I’m going to start working through the second draft of Worlds Away from Home. It needs a ton of work, but having finished the rough draft, I know that the story has potential. At this point, I’m actually very enthusiastic about it, so hopefully that will help drive momentum.

Right now, I’m in the outlining stage. I’m taking a page from Dan Wells and using his seven point story structure to draw out all the plot lines and character arcs. When I did this for MS 4.0, I had to outline about fifteen arcs before I felt it was sufficiently tight; it will probably be the same for WAFW 2.0 as well.

Currently, I’m in the middle of outlining chapter six. If all goes well, I’ll finish outlining and start writing by the end of the week.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of submitting. Sent out another short story to Leading Edge–oh, and by the way, they accepted a poem of mine, so expect to see that in a forthcoming issue. I also submitted the latest draft (5.0) of Genesis Earth to a few agents, so hopefully that will lead to something positive.

In other news, I’m looking for a job again. Oh joy. I’m hoping things will work out with the wilderness job, but if not, I still need something to tide me over for the Christmas season. It’s stressful, but at least I’m not broke yet, which is good. If I can’t find work and have to buy gear for the wilderness training, however, I just might be.

I’m confident things will work out, however. I’ve found that they always do, even if not in the way I wanted or expected. Just keep swimming.

In the meantime, check out this AWESOME 8-bit remix of one of the tracks leaked from Daft Punk’s upcoming album for the movie Tron. Dude…this makes me so incredibly happy. And the 8-bit art! I nabbed it and turned it into my avatar for the Quark forums. In case you want to use it, here’s a copy.

8-bit Daft Punk FTW! The only thing more epic would be if Daft Punk and E.S. Posthumus joined forces–but if that happened, hosts of heavenly angels would descend upon our planet and usher in an era of global peace and universal prosperity. But dude, I would give my firstborn son to acquire that music.

You laugh, but I’m only half joking…

Thanksgiving report from Texas

So for Thanksgiving this year, I drove down with my sister and brother in law to have Thanksgiving in Houston with my other sister’s family. It’s Friday night, and I’m about to hit the sack to get prepped for the long 24+ hour drive back to Utah, but let me say, this vacation has been great!

It’s so good to spend time with family, especially when you live across the country and can’t see each other very often. My niece has grown so much in the past year, and she is so freaking cute it’s unbelievable. Earlier tonight, we were watching slide shows on my sister’s projector and playing around with my niece: “Where’s Aunt Dot? Where’s Oopah? Where’s Uncle Joe?” Heh, Uncle Joe. I will do my best to live up to the awesomeness of that title.

Thanksgiving dinner was AMAZING. Holy freaking crap, my sisters can cook. They put together a traditional dinner from scratch, and everything was perfect. I’m so glad they’re sending a bunch of leftovers with us on the drive tomorrow, because I would much rather subsist on that than random junk food from gas stations.

Besides family, though, one of the coolest parts of the vacation was visiting the Houston Space Center and seeing mission control and one of the original Saturn V rockets. That’s right–see that room in the picture? I was there.

Which immediately begged the question: Why am I not in space right now? Seriously, I would do just about anything to go up in space. Thinking about the Pilgrims made me think about colonizing other planets, and how the difficulties may be similar and yet different. It also made me think about my latest novel, Into the Nebulous Deep, which (I’m hoping) is a colonization story set in space, and how I can use some of the stuff from the Pilgrims in my own work.

Speaking of which, the writing has been going very slow recently. A lot of it has to do with interruptions from the vacation (which frankly are more important), but it also has to do with my growing frustrations with the current project. I’m about 15k in the rough draft of ITND, and…it just doesn’t seem as good as my other work. Of course, it’s just a mental thing–none of my rough drafts has ever been any good–but man, it’s tough to get through.

To complicate things, I’m going to have to find a job for the Christmas season, at least to tide me over. I’m really hoping to get that wilderness job, but the training starts January 13th, and I don’t have the funds to spend all my time writing, like I have this past month.

I’ll know for sure the first week of December whether I’ve been invited to the training–and if I am, it’s going to throw a real kink in my writing routine. Each job shift lasts a full week, during which time I’ll be completely unplugged, living in the wilderness. I might get some time to work on poetry or short stories, but no novels.

The upside is that I get six days off completely free to do whatever I want, but I’m worried that it’ll be difficult, at least at first, to regain sufficient momentum in that short time. I’m sure I can get used to it eventually, but for the first few months, it will probably be tough.

For that reason, I want to get as far in ITND as I can before January 13th, perhaps even finish it (HAHAHAHA!!! As if that’s going to happen). So the fact that I haven’t progressed from this one scene for like a week is really killing me. Throw in a temporary job for the Christmas season, and I’ll probably go crazy.

That’s what my writing angst says, anyways. In other words, everything is fine and life is great. Now I’m going to get some sleep before driving across the freaking country all day tomorrow and Sunday. Night!

Pulling along

Just a quick post, because it’s 3:30 am and I’ve got a TON of stuff to do tomorrow, such as:

1) cleaning checks
2) replace the air filter in my car
3) go running with my bro in law
4) finish Genesis Earth 5.0
5) band practice
6) watch Inception with a bunch of friends at the dollar theater

Yeah, tons of stuff. So anyways…

I’m amazed at how quickly I’m pulling through Genesis Earth. Yesterday I revised through 11.7k words, and today I did about 14.1k.

At this point, most of the work is sentence and paragraph level, and has more to do with voice and rhythm than actual story. There were a few science issues, mostly having to do with distances and velocities, but thanks to Logan I think I’ve caught most of those. Thanks so much!

I’m also finding out that this story is much better than I used to think it was. With all the form rejections I’ve been getting for it, I wondered for a while whether I should put it back in the trunk and let it quietly die. Now, however, I can see that it has a lot more promise than I’d previously thought. Even if it isn’t published as my first novel, I really do believe that this story deserves a home.

At the same time, though, I’ve noticed some major differences between my writing in this piece and my writing in the stuff I’ve written more recently. I’m not sure exactly how to put it, but I think it has something to do with voice. I don’t want to say that Genesis Earth is more choppy, but it does seem a lot more…matter of fact, if that makes sense. There are also a lot more rhetorical questions, but I think that’s an artifact of the 1st person perspective.

But even if the voice in this piece is different from my voice now, it’s different in a good way. It feels more…YA? I’m not exactly sure, but it seems to work. The sequels, if/when I write them, will probably be in 3rd person (ala Spin and Axis by Robert Charles Wilson), and that’s going to create a much different feel than this book.

It worked for Axis, though, so I think I can pull it off–that is, if/when Genesis Earth gets picked up by a publisher. I don’t want to write the other two books in this trilogy until I know the first one is sold.

In unrelated news, I had a job interview today. It was with a wilderness therapy company, the same that wait listed me for the January training. I really hope I get in–more than anything at this point in my life, I feel that I need to gain some major life experience. Probably the biggest stumper question was “what three words would you use to describe yourself in your last job, and what three words would your supervisor use to describe you?” A difficult question, particularly when all your recent jobs have been temp jobs. I think I did alright, though–now, we just need to wait and see.

In other unrelated news, I threw an awesome movie night tonight. We watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and maybe fifteen people showed up–most of them from Quark, but a couple of friends from some other places too. Man, that Scott Pilgrim movie is epic. So hilarious, so entertaining, and at the same time, so true. And then, we went to Dairy Queen and hung out until midnight hanging out. It was great.

In still other unrelated news, I recently ordered the anime series Planetes on DVD. It was at a good price, and I knew I’d buy it eventually, so I allowed myself to splurge. I am so happy I did, because the science fiction elements are done surprisingly well. All the little details, from the zero gravity handholds in the walls to the way the stations spin, are surprisingly true to real life, and the show’s vision of 2075 is not beyond the realm of our own possible future. In other words, Planetes is quite possibly the best rocketpunk anime show out there, and a great source for inspiration.

Well, that’s enough for now. Tomorrow, I will finish this novel and send it out to the agent who requested it. In the meantime, though, it’s 4:00 am and I must sleep.

Blarg!

What a crappy unproductive day.

This morning, I had all sorts of technical difficulties with my podcatcher and mp3 player. Spent so much time fixing those that I got no writing time in whatsoever.

Work actually got out on time today, which was nice, but I had so many chores to do before institute that I was literally eating dinner while I fixed the treats. Even then, I was still twenty minutes late (but the lesson was awesome, and so were the treats).

Went to the Quark movie forum to relax a little, watched a couple episodes of Full Metal Alchemist. It was good to relax and socialize, but I didn’t get back until 10:00 pm, and had to update my mp3 player for the next day of work. That took some time, because the podcasts were taking forever to download on the slow apartment connection…and to make a long story short, I only had about half an hour to write.

So I took an hour, which means I’ll probably be freaking exhausted when I wake up tomorrow. Blarg!

I’ve found that I need to get a solid two or three hour block of writing in each day, otherwise it’s a wash. Tomorrow, I hope to have that in the morning and after Leading Edge, but if things are going slow I might have to pull out of Leading Edge and just focus on the writing. World Fantasy is coming up, and I absolutely MUST finish this project and make it shine.

In other news, I heard back from the wilderness job today. They don’t have a spot open for the November training, since they need to focus on hiring women in order to have enough counselors to take care of their female students. However, they want to wait list me for the January training, which is a good sign. I’ll just have to find another short-term job to carry me through November and December (and get ready for camping on the snow–it’s going to be crazy!)

Anyhow, what am I doing writing this when I should be sleeping?? Ach! Goodnight!

Confessions of a delinquent blogger

Man, so much has been happening, but now that I’m working an eight to five job, I never have the time to blog about it. It’s 2am and I’m running on only four hours of sleep from the previous night. Oh well, it’s a weekend. Here goes.

I passed the 50k mark for the rewrite of Mercenary Savior. I’m surprised how much I’m changing the draft. I’m especially finding a lot of slow chapter beginnings and thinly veiled expository lumps–not of scene descriptions so much as worldbuilding. Gotta remember the iceberg concept (to only include about ten percent or less of your worldbuilding in your story’s narrative).

I interviewed a few more people for the article on the “class that wouldn’t die.” Good stuff, all around. I met with Cara O’Sullivan today, and she had a very interesting comment about why there are so many LDS writers of science fiction and fantasy.

In her opinion, Mormon literary culture tends to push the more talented writers into sf&f because of the extreme lack of freedom in other genres of LDS writing. In mainstream and literary LDS fiction, there are so many expectations for the writers: for example, that the story will have a clear message, or that it will contain a certain brand of Mormon sentimentalism, etc. In science fiction and fantasy, OTOH, there’s much more freedom; therefore, LDS writers tend to gravitate that way.

I also had a phone interview for the wilderness job last Thursday. I think it went well, but we’ll find out at the end of the month, I suppose. Questions that caught me off guard include: “how do you define success?” and “how would you respond to something you heard secondhand about an employee from another shift?”

Finally, I recently got hooked on an old abandonware DOS game called Princess Maker 2. It is so freaking awesome. Basically, you are the father of this ten year old girl, and you have to raise her from childhood to adulthood.

There are so many possible ways to do this: build her fighting skills and send her on adventures, build her artistic skills and have her win dancing/painting contests, build her refinement and send her to court to build her social reputation, etc etc. There are over 70 different possible endings, including some really weird and crazy ones!

And yes, I know, it seems strange that I’d go for a game this girly–but dude, you have no idea until you try it out. It’s like being a father, but with magic and knights and dragons and stuff! So totally awesome!

The flipside is that I spent almost the entire day playing this game. Yeah…still got in 2.5k words, but I was hoping to put in somewhere around 6k or 7k. Man, I haven’t been this addicted since Alpha Centauri. Will it last? I don’t think it will, but then again, I don’t know. The bigger question is whether this is a game I can play in moderation (like Star Control II). I certainly hope it is, but I don’t know.

In the meantime, I’ve got five weeks to write 70k words. Lets go!

Almost at four

I’ve got half a dozen things I could blog about, but it’s 2 am and cleaning checks are tomorrow, so I think I’m going to give a quick update and go to bed.

Worlds Away from Home is doing quite well–I’m only two chapters and five scenes from the end. I’d push really hard to finish it tomorrow, but I’m still waiting on some of my alpha readers for Mercenary Savior and probably won’t start that project until after I go back to Massachusetts at the end of the month.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the seven point story structure Dan Wells talked about at LTUE 2010 (which I missed, but caught on youtube), and I’ve got a TON of ideas for Mercenary Savior now. I’m practically chomping at the bit to start analyzing this story and working out all the complex plot and character elements. That’s very good.

While chatting with one of my alpha readers for Mercenary Savior, I had an interesting idea for a direct sequel. Basically, while James’s storyline has some closure (or should, after I finish this next revision), he’s still got a lot of growing and maturing to do. My mind is already working it out…should I make that my fifth novel? Or move on to something else first? The thing about direct sequels is you can’t sell them without the first book, and if the first book doesn’t sell…

I’m applying for Redcliff Ascent; if all goes well, I’ll be participating in the November training (since September is full). At first, I was hesitant about this (since I kind of need a job now), but looking at it now, that’s probably the best time to do it. It’s after World Fantasy, which gives me time to finish Mercenary Savior, and late enough in the year that I can still finish that article for Mormon Artist. Plus, I can easily get a schedule that allows me to attend LTUE 2011. The only disadvantage is that I won’t be able to attend all of Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 classes, but that’s not such a big deal (seeing as I’ve taken the class twice already!).

Other than that, life is good. I’m going home in a week to see my parents and get my teeth done (since my mom’s health insurance covers me until my birthday in September–why pay for a checkup when you could have it for free?), and I’m definitely looking forward to that. And now that I’m almost finished with Worlds Away, I can see that it’s got potential, and that’s encouraging. Not this draft, certainly, but once I fix all the holes, it could really go somewhere.

Either way, it’s going to be nice having four novels under my belt.

End in sight

Things are winding down for my current work in progress, Worlds Away from Home–or should I say winding up, since I’m just a chapter or two from the major climax? In any case, by the end of the week, inshallah, the rough draft will be finished. <crosses fingers>

It’s been tough, but I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be able to salvage it, probably sometime after World Fantasy 2010. Drafting is not my strongest point; I’m much better at revision. My goal is to have a fully polished draft before the end of 2011.

As far as the real world goes, things are starting to come together as well. I’m going home at the end of the month to get my teeth checked before my Mom’s insurance no longer covers me, and when I get back this temp agency should have a warehouse job lined up for a while, if I can’t find anything else. I’m cautiously optimistic that my sister will help me get a job at the residential treatment center where she works, which would be awesome, and of course there’s always the possibility that BYU will lift the hiring freeze (pretty soon, they’ll have to).

So here’s my plan for the next few months: quit my job at the call center and go home in two weeks, then either work through the temp agency through September/October or find something better. The wilderness job I was looking at has their training in November, so I’ll start the application process now in order to have that option in case everything else falls through. And if all else fails, I’ll go teach English in Asia for a year.

Meanwhile, I hope to stay in Utah until at least February, preferably until April. There are a lot of good resources here for writers, and I hope to take advantage of them. After I finish the rough draft of Worlds, I will throw everything behind Mercenary Savior and get it polished in time for World Fantasy 2010.

And then? Who knows. I’d kind of like to try my hand at a fantasy novel; I’ve got the start of an idea for a magic system, and enough knowledge of Middle Eastern history to throw in a sweet medieval Arab flavor in the mix.

In terms of the real world, my plan is to reteach myself Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus using some excellent resources my Dad is sending me, then go back to school in a hard science…probably. Still not sure what I want to do school-wise, but hopefully I’ll figure that out in the next year or two and head back soon.

That is, if I don’t get published and launch my writing career by then.

So that’s what my life is looking like right now. If you’re still reading and aren’t bored stiff (or if you just skipped to the end of the post, which is what I would have done), here’s an excellent song from one of my favorite Celtic bands, The Rogues: