World Fantasy 2009 – Page 2 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Polishing is harder than it looks

It is. This is the final revision of Genesis Earth before I submit this novel everywhere, and it’s tough. I’m changing a lot more than I thought I would, and it’s going a lot slower than any other process so far.

Plus, on my way to Murray for my mission reunion, the service light for my engine flipped on. What the heck? I just had the car serviced a month ago!

At least I know about it now, before I attempt to drive to San Jose for World Fantasy.

Long story short, showed up at 9pm to the reunion just in time to say hi to President and Sister Heywood as they were getting ready to leave. So worth it, though. They’re both getting older, and I don’t know when I’ll be seeing them again. Listened to From Cumorah’s Hill on the way back, and it was awesome. I mean that in a religious way.

I’ve got a research proposal due tomorrow, and I kid you not, I was working on that thing in my sleep last night. All night, while I was dreaming, I was thinking “should I use this author in my paper? How should I tie that in? What controls do I need to use? Will this dataset cover the same years as that dataset?” All. Night. Long.

And then I forgot it all when I woke up!

I did get some time to write, though. Took the netbook up to the laundry room in the FLSR (I still go there–much cheaper than my current apartment) and worked on my novel while waiting for the laundry to finish. Good times–some of my best writing has come out of that laundry room. Award winning writing.

In tangentially related news, I still have not heard back from Writers of the Future. I’m guessing that’s a good thing <crosses fingers>.

September recap

So, September’s over now. Where in the heck did all that time go? In some ways, I can still remember the summer…but in other ways, it’s never been further away.

So, what did I do this past month? Plenty. I got a good start on school (14 credits this semester), I quit the writing advisor job and replaced it with two TA jobs, and I turned 25 years old. Quarter century…and still in school. I feel like some kind of relic. “An elegant weapon for a more civilized age…”

As far as writing goes, I wrote 41,649 words total, averaging 1,602 words per day (not counting Sundays–counting Sundays, I averaged 1,388). I passed the 3/4ths mark on Bringing Stella Home 2.0 and started work on Genesis Earth 4.0.

Not bad! I’m surprised I wrote so much; 41k is almost as much as nanowrimo. However, I can’t help but wonder: how many of those words are good words?

It’s a much more subjective thing to measure, but I do feel that my craft has improved. Now that I’ve started the rewrite on Genesis Earth, I’m catching a surprising number of sentences and paragraphs that could be much better phrased. For today, I “wrote” 1,616 words, but only got about 1,000 words further into the story (I measure wordcount with compare documents, totaling all the deletions and additions). After the last revision–just last July–I felt very satisfied with the draft as I’d written it. The fact that I’m changing so much on this rewrite shows that I’ve set the bar a lot higher for quality of writing (at least, I hope that’s what it means).

School is still kicking my trash. I’ve got papers up the wazoo this entire month–3 major ones, two minor ones, and at least one midterm, not to mention all the midterms and papers I’ll be grading. Oh, and I’m reading about a dozen academic articles per week. Dense articles. The kind that suck your life out through your eyes.

Because of all that, and because of World Fantasy at the end of the month, I’ve decided to put Bringing Stella Home on temporary hold until I finish the revision of Genesis Earth. Got to put priorities first, and that’s how it falls. If the revision takes longer than expected, I may have to change my personal deadline for Bringing Stella Home to Thanksgiving.

But come Thanksgiving, I am definitely starting something new!

Final polish

I mapped out all the major assignments for my capstone class for the next month on my calendar. Turns out I’ve got a lot more work than I thought I did. Because of that, I decided to start work on Genesis Earth 4.0 today.

This is the final polish before World Fantasy convention. Of all the stuff I’ve written, Genesis Earth is the only ms that I feel is ready for me to send to editors/agents. With this draft, I hope to smooth out the writing, make the text more readable–basically, make this book really shine. We’ll see if it succeeds.

It’s kind of nerve-wracking, in some ways, doing this final edit (inasmuch as any edit is “final”). Previously, whenever I did a revision, I knew that I had time to come back later and fix anything that I just couldn’t get to. Now, this is where it counts. The writing has to be perfect.

Imagine how horrible it was to find a grammatical mistake on page one. I’d forgotten to capitalize the first word of a sentence in the third or fourth paragraph. Thankfully, it was the only mistake I saw on that page, but it’s enough to make me nervous about those chapters I sent out to the editors from BYU’s Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers. I know how to write–really, I do! Please believe me!

So today, every hour of the day was jam packed with classes, work, homework, and obligatory social activities. I only had two hours to write, and in that time, I only wrote about 500 words for Genesis Earth (though, to be fair, I’m measuring it by comparing documents and only counting the words that changed). Ouch. Not sustainable, if I want to finish Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home (I need to change that title) before World Fantasy. I made up for it by writing for half an hour just now in Stella, but still…

And this is where I hope I don’t mess things up. Every time I’ve tried to juggle two projects at once, I’ve found it very hard to do so. It’s something I’ll probably have to learn, if I want to write professionally, but it’s still very hard. I hope my writing quality doesn’t suffer because of it.

If worst comes to worst, I’ll focus on Genesis Earth until it’s done to my satisfaction. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, even with school. But I’m still keeping my goal to finish Stella before World Fantasy.

In unrelated news, in my political philosophy class today, Professor Hancock mentioned Huntington and I said, under my breath, “that guy was so full of crap.” Well, it turns out that Professor Hancock is quite the admirer of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations theory. This is going to make class…interesting, to say the least. After studying this stuff my entire college career, I really do believe that Huntington’s theories are utterly full of crap.

Oh, and I had a great idea for a comic: Plato’s Republic, as a cartoon! Okay, maybe I’m just a geek, but seriously, if it were done well, it could be really, REALLY cool. Really cool.

Six weeks to World Fantasy

Holy cow! How is September halfway over? It seems like school started just a week ago. Only six and a half weeks before World Fantasy convention in San Jose, and I think I’m going to have to readjust some of my goals.

I’d wanted to finish Bringing Stella Home 2.0 by the 11th of October, but the way school and work is looking, I probably won’t be able to write 2k words every day in order to meet that goal. Besides, the story has several major issues that can only be fixed with a major overhaul, so there’s no way this novel is going to be ready for submission in time for the convention.

However, Genesis Earth is looking pretty good. So far as story issues go, I was very satisfied with the third draft–I think I fixed all the major issues and wrote something that’s pretty close to salable. Before the convention, I want to go through and make one final revision, one where I polish up the prose and fix the readability issues. That shouldn’t be too hard–I can probably do that in two to three weeks.

So here’s what I’m going to do in the next six weeks. I’m going to check out all of Robert Charles Wilson’s books and immerse myself in his prose–not to copy it, but to hopefully boost the quality of my own prose. The quality of his writing is fantastic, a beautiful mesh of literary prose and thriller pacing and rhythm. While I’m doing that, I’ll start the 4.0 draft of Genesis Earth and work hard at it, until I’ve polished that work as much as I can. That’s the work that I’ll try to sell when I’m at World Fantasy.

I’m a little worried, because I submitted the full manuscript to Krista Marino back in June and haven’t heard back. At the BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers conference, she said she had a response time of 4 months, but I’m worried I won’t hear back from her before World Fantasy. Is it appropriate to send a polite note asking her to get back to me before the convention? I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by sending out simultaneous submissions, and if an editor asks to see my ms, I want to be able to send it to them ASAP. Then again, I suppose I could just tell them that the full is currently with someone else, and that would demonstrate some professionalism…but I want to be able to send it if/when they ask for it.

Which reminds me: I need to do some HEAVY agent/editor research before this convention. I want to go to World Fantasy with a list of people to look for, so I know where to go to network, which panels to attend, who to look out for in the hallways and parties. I want to be very professional about this, and get the most out of those two/three days that I can.

As for Bringing Stella Home, my current WIP, I’m going to do my best to finish it before World Fantasy so that I can start November with something new. I need to finish that book before I can set it aside and let it percolate in my mind for the next revision. Besides, it’s been too long since I’ve worked on something completely new. After October, I’ll need to take a break from all these revisions.

So that’s the plan: Finish Genesis Earth 4.0 and Bringing Stella Home 3.0 before World Fantasy. Research all the editors and agents to look out for at the convention. Oh, and hold down 14 credit hours and 2 on-campus jobs at the same time, with some time left over for a dating/social life (INSHALLAH).

Hehe…these next six weeks are going to be packed!

Summer roundup

Alright, with the first week of school already over, I figure I should recap and evaluate my writing progress this summer.

When school ended in April, I was still waiting to hear back from Brandon Sanderson’s agent about an internship. My backup plan (which I started as soon as classes ended) was to stay in Provo and write full time.

Sanderson’s agent ended up taking on a different intern, which ended up being the best for both of us, since I get the sense that he was looking to mentor someone who would go on to become a professional agent. Me, I was just looking to network and develop some connections in the publishing world, which I did anyway (at least in the local Utah scene). Besides, Provo is WAY cheaper than New York!

From the beginning, I treated writing as a full-time job. I set project deadlines, daily and 7-day wordcount goals, and spent somewhere around 8 hours a day working on my various projects. I submitted a full to an editor from the BYU Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers conference and partials to the other two editors. I also submitted to the Writers of the Future contest and to the LDS Publisher Christmas story contest (much smaller, but geared toward a niche market).

I started keeping my stats on May 25th, using a spreadsheet to keep track of my daily wordcount for each of my projects, the daily total wordcount, the 7-day cumulative wordcount, and any writing I did for synopses or revision notes. Since BYU’s summer recess begins in April, I missed the stats for the first three weeks or so, but I kept consistent records since then until now.

From May 25th to August 31st, I wrote 244,065 words in 8 projects (3 short stories and 5 novel drafts). I averaged 2,490 words per day. Adjusting for Sundays (I typically take Sundays off), I averaged 2,906 words per day.

My goals were to write 4k words per day, and to shoot for a constant 7-day total of 24k, but to never let that total dip below 12k words. In 98 days, the 7-day running total only went below 12k eleven times–on those particular days, I was either traveling, moving out, moving in, or extremely busy with back-to-school chores. For the two weeks I was on vacation, I still wrote more than 12k words each week.

Interestingly enough, out of the eight fiction projects, only one was a rough draft–a short story that I worked on for two days and never completed. The vast majority of my writing went into revising novels that I’d already written.

I completed the first draft of Bringing Stella Home in early June (my third complete novel rough draft). Later, in July, I began the second draft. I’m currently just over halfway through with the revisions and hope to finish by October 10th.

I started a revision of my first novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea, but decided midway through that I was running up against diminishing returns and decided to drop it (I completed the rough draft in April of 2008–it was my first finished novel and the reason I started this blog, waaaaay back in August 2007).

I started a new draft of Hero in Exile, making some drastic revisions, but found it difficult to juggle more than one writing project at a time and put it on the back burner. I may or may not pick it up again once Bringing Stella Home 2.0 is finished.

I completed the third draft of Genesis Earth and started to submit it. I will probably do one language/readability edit before the World Fantasy convention in late October and try to sell it while I’m there.

Overall, the summer was a practice run to see if I could write full time and survive the insanity. I always feared, as a child, that if writing became my full time job I would come to hate it. I found, however, that writing full time (8+ hrs/day, 6 days/wk) only made me enjoy it more. Now that school is back in session, I already wish I had more time and mental space to dedicate to my writing.

I miss the summer, but not because of the lazy days, or the parties, or the vacationing–I miss the opportunity to write full time! Provided I can find a way to support a family off of this, I can definitely see myself turning this into a career. In the meantime, I’ll keep honing my craft and start working on getting an agent.

Now, more than ever, I feel that breaking in is more of a question of ‘if’ than ‘when.’

🙂 🙂 🙂

Oh crap

Dang. I just looked at a calendar for the next two months, and it looks like I’m going to be busy.

I want to get Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home polished and ready before World Fantasy 2009, but it’s going to take a lot of work. Genesis Earth is almost there, but Bringing Stella Home is going to require a HEAVY rewrite. I’m in the middle of that now.

I’m currently about 25k words into the rewrite, with between 100k and 110k words to go (I think…could be more). I want to finish this by the last week of September / first week of October. That leaves me three working weeks in August (I’m taking off a week for vacation at Cape Cod, though I will probably write a little there as well) and five weeks in September.

But really, once school starts again, I’m not going to have much time available to write. I’ve got two capstone papers I’ll be writing, a ccouple of poli sci classes to take, and to top it all off, I’ll be taking a 400 level English class where I’ll probably be writing a DIFFERENT novel–holy cow! September is going to be a CRAZY month!

How the crap am I going to juggle all this?

Well, I figure if I write 4k minimum a day in August, I can get between 60k and 75k of Bringing Stella Home knocked out before school starts. It’s going to be tough, but it won’t be significantly more than what I’m already writing. Definitely doable.

That way, I’ll only have 35k for September, which comes to a meager 1k per day. Considering that this is revision work, which tends to go a bit quicker, I think I’ll be able to handle it.

But 65k in August…can I do that?

Well, in June, I wrote a grand total of 81k, and in July I wrote 85k. Most of the stuff in July, too, was revision work that I counted differently, excluding passages that I’d recycled from the previous draft.

Considering this, I think I can do 65k in August, even with a week’s vacation. I’ll probably even write a bit on the break, maybe 1k/day, just to keep some momentum. We’ll see.

But, just as an aside…81k? 85k?? That’s more than the novel I worked on my entire freshman year of high school! And I did that…in just a month? That’s encouraging!

Maybe I’m finally getting toward the tail end of my million crappy words. If that’s the case, maybe I’ll finally write my first good word before too long.

🙂

Quick update

Haven’t been writing as much in Ashes these past few days. With my new goal, I need to be doing about 2.5k per day in that work, but things have slowed down considerably. I need to rekindle some excitement for this project.

I will finish it–I’ve made the goal, set the deadline, and determined that this will be one of the big three projects to get ready in time for World Fantasy 2009–but I’m working on the hard parts now, the long and tedius middle. The emotional roller coaster has begun, but I’ll hang on and see this out to the end.

It will probably need another extensive rewrite, however, before World Fantasy. Don’t know when I’m going to slip that in.

But even though I only got about 1,838 words of writing in today, I finished reading through Genesis Earth 2.0 today and completed the 3.0 draft revision notes! I’m WAY excited to work on this project! My goal is to complete it within the next two weeks. It will be a very hard, very intensive rewrite, but I’m psyched up and ready to do it!

I love revising. Drafting is when you start from scratch, with nothing but your ideas to work from. The deeper you get into it, the more you find yourself saying “this is crap, this is crap, THIS IS CRAP AND I SUCK AS A WRITER!” Revising, on the other hand, is when you start with something on the page; something that needs a little (or a lot) of work, but at least you have something besides the story in your head to work with. The deeper you get into it, the more you find yourself saying “it’s so much better now, it’s so much better now, IT’S SO MUCH BETTER NOW AND I AM AN AWESOME WRITER!” That’s the way it works for me, at least.

So I am very excited to start Genesis Earth 3.0 tomorrow!

In other news, I’m starting a writing group with some serious/semi-serious writer friends here in the Provo area. Gosh, this deserves its own post. More on that later.

In still other news…I totally forgot. Blegh. Need sleep.

Oh, and here’s a cool song I found. I love anime…why didn’t I study Japanese?

Oh, and I remembered what I was going to write about! I talked with an academic advisor today, and I have enough credits to finish up my Poli Sci major and graduate in April by doing an internship in Washington DC or Scotland! More on that later, for sure.

Anyway, the LRC is closing and I have to go to bed. Gnight!

“That’s what it looks like when the infection sets in.”

So said Howard Tayler at CONduit today when he saw the expression on my face at the Aspiring writers Q&A panel. We chatted a bit afterward, and he said something very encouraging: that if I continue to pursue my writing career with the same hunger he saw on my face, he believes I will be successful. Awesome!

This weekend, I attended CONduit 2009 in Salt Lake. It was my first con experience, and I had a great time! Besides being just plain fun, it was very educational and inspiring.

I felt a bit unnerved at first to be surrounded by so many people that I barely knew, in a comfort-zone shattering kind of way. I went up with Charlie and Laura, though, and it helped to have friends sharing the experience. By Saturday, we were all getting around very well. By the end, I figured that I did know a lot of people there–and, surprisingly, that a lot of people recognized me.

I came away with a TON of ideas and things learned! Here are just a few of them:

One of the panelists on Friday suggested this revision method: use search-and-replace to color all filler words (such as “really,” “just,” “very,” “was”; basically, the words I always overuse on this blog). That way, you can easily see which sentences you need to rewrite.
Howard and Sandra Tayler mentioned, almost in passing, how they made it a matter of prayer before deciding to go full time on the web comic thing. I definitely need to include the Lord more as I try to figure out how this writing thing is going to fit into my life.
In their Saturday panel, Howard made a very interesting remark about cultivating your personal image. I realized that if I want to be seen as a professional by editors and agents, I need to adjust my wardrobe and appearance accordingly. I don’t necessarily have to go the suit-and-tie route–Howard’s image involves jeans and a button-up shirt–but my dress and appearance should say “I am competent, sharp, and serious about what I do.”
Dan Willis had a very interesting suggestion for writers: get and use business cards. Networking is one of the most important business activities that aspiring writers can, should, and must engage in, so using business cards at conventions is very important. It sounds so obvious, but I’d never given it much thought. I’ll have to get some printed up for myself before I go to World Fantasy and Worldcon later this year.
Between panels, I got into a fascinating conversation with Eric James Stone about networking at these conventions. From that conversation, I learned how important it is to be genuine and personal as you network, to listen more than you talk, and to never see people as mere stepping stones for your career. He got an anthology contract with Kevin J. Anderson through a con, and he never approached him with that attitude–ever. Other people he saw who did, Anderson treated politely but never contacted. You should certainly have a pitch ready, but you should also give time for contacts to develop. Over time, people will remember your face and recognize you at these events.

conduit2009-jawa Conventions are definitely great for networking, but I absolutely hate walking up to a stranger and asking for favors. It makes me very nervous. As a result, I’ve adopted the philosophy of asking myself what I can offer the person I’m trying to connect with, rather than asking something of them. I tried to follow this philosophy at CONduit, even if all I could offer was a compliment on something they’d said on a panel.

Using this strategy, I was able to get into a lot of interesting, genuine conversations with some of the big names at the con. Charlie, Laura, and I got into a long, interesting conversation with L. E. Modessitt at one point. He gave me some advice on women, which Charlie found hilarious (he must have seen us bickering/bantering earlier). Had some good conversations with Dave Wolverton as well–he probably recognized me as the crazy fanboy who had him sign a poster of his first (now out of print) novel. It was also good to see Brandon and talk with him–I thanked him for his helpful (if harsh) comments on my English 318 final. Other people like James Dashner and Julie Wright recognized me from LTUE, which was really cool.

If people in the local scene are starting to recognize my face and my name, I must be doing something right. That’s very encouraging. Plus, the convetion was just plain fun. To top it off, the guy in the jawa costume was awesome. All around, good times. Very good times.

Living in a state of limbo

Graduation was today. I’ve got another year left, but a lot of my friends are moving on. I took my last exam of the semester on Monday, and my contract at the FLSR ends Saturday morning at 10 am.

And I have no idea where I’ll be living for the summer.

There’s a chance I might be going to New York for an internship with Brandon Sanderson’s agent. My friend Steve has been planning to move to New York in June, to try and break into writing for Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, and I thought it would be really cool to live with him while working/interning/whatever in the publishing world there. I asked Brandon if he knew of any openings with editors/agents for a summer intern, and he got back to me with the news that his agent was looking to take one on.

Well, I got in touch with the guys over at JABberwocky literary agency at the beginning of the month, sent them a resume, had a phone interview, and…haven’t heard back yet. They told me they’d get back to me after the London book fair, which was this past weekend, so…I’m still waiting to find out what they say. I think the interview went okay, though I heard from Brandon that they’ve got a lot of other people itching to get this internship. College graduates. With degrees in editing and publishing.

So…I don’t know what’s going to happen. It would be WAY awesome to go to New York City this summer, and really awesome to be an intern in the publishing world. REALLY awesome. I’ve been following the publishing world, especially the sf&f corner of the publishing world, for a couple of years now. It would be great to get in there and see it up close, see how it works, see what kind of career opportunities exist there and meet the people who are involved in all that.

If it doesn’t work out, though, that’s still okay. I’ve got a backup plan. It’s not as awesome, but it still works. If I don’t go to New York, I’ll probably spend spring here in Provo, taking a break from classes and working odd jobs here and there (private English tutor–my boss at the FHSS Writing Lab can set me up with that–Arabic tutor, freelance editing, temp campus jobs during some of the conferences out here, etc). I’d also spend some serious time working on my writing, and attend some of the major local sf&f conventions, such as BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers and CONduit. I might even be able to go home over summer term and attend Worldcon in Montreal.

I’ve got two finished rough drafts right now and two others that are only halfway finished. With a relatively free summer, I could almost certainly have three polished, finished drafts by the time school starts again. Perhaps I could even have them all finished before Worldcon 2009 in August, or finish all four of them before World Fantasy 2009 in October.

It would also be a good chance to see whether I can handle the writing lifestyle. I’ve been writing fairly steadily for the past two or three years, doing between 500 to 1,000 words a day, but it was never the primary thing I was doing. If I have the summer off from all my other obligations, I’ll be able to explore a little bit what it’s like to write full time. It doesn’t exactly translate into something nice and shiny on a resume (not like an internship, at least), but it would give me some valuable and useful personal experience.

Besides that, taking time off would help me to figure out what I want to do post-graduation. I’m aiming to be a professional writer, but I’ll probably graduate from BYU long before I sign my first book deal, so it’s good to have other directions to go. Trouble is, whenever I’m busy with school I never take the time to think existentially about what I’m doing and what I want to do. I’m so focused on the day to day aspect of things that I find it hard to make any long term plans.

Of course, either way is going to help me figure that out. Whether taking time off to work on my writing or working as an intern for a literary agency, I’m going to gain experience that will help me figure out what I want to do after graduation. So I can expect that to happen no matter where I go, I hope.

So…until I get an email / phone call from the guys at JABberwocky, things are up in the air. It’s a little bit nerve wracking, especially with all of the moving out / moving in going on around here. I know I won’t have any trouble getting a spring/summer contract here at BYU, but New York…I have no idea. I’ve got family up there that I can stay with for a few days until I get settled, and there’s the housing list for the New York stake, but man, it’s expensive over there.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll end up staying here in Provo after all. We’ll see how it goes.

(Image courtesy David Iliff. Published under a CC attribution 3.0 unported license.)

Slugging it out and summer plans

Ok, last week I wrote almost nothing on this blog, and last night I wrote a quick post before going to bed that didn’t really explain much. I just got done reading one of Dave Farland’s kick-in-the-pants series of email newsletters and it said, basically, to post every day if you have a blog (unless it cuts into your writing time). Sounds like a good plan: more, shorter posts instead of fewer, longer posts. Here goes.

Last week was pretty crazy. I got everything done by the time it needed to be done…barely…but it was so disorganized and upside down that it really grated on me. It was one of those weeks where, when Saturday rolls around, you look at the calendar and think “where did all that time go?”

I tried to write every day, in the morning, but it didn’t work out. At all. I allowed myself to get distracted, and by the time I was ready to sit down and write, it was time to go to class. After a couple of days of that, I just stopped getting up altogether.

I wanted to get through the last two chapters of Bringing Estella Home by yesterday, but that TOTALLY didn’t happen. I’m still in the middle of chapter 9, not even to the major climactic battle that ends the second part. Bah. As a result, I’m starting to have doubts that I’m going to actually finish this novel by April.

HOWEVER, on a more positive (and a completely different note), I actually have an idea of what I’m going to do this summer. I don’t know when or how exactly it hit me, but I have something of an idea, and it’s starting to really grow on me.

Here’s the plan: I spend the spring term here in Provo, retaking a handful of freshman level classes in order to boost my GPA (I got a C- in beginning piano, and a B- in Geo 120…yeah, those could be raised a little). That’ll give me plenty of time to work on my writing and the opportunity to attend a couple of interesting looking writing conferences out here in Utah, such as BYU Writers for Young Readers and CONduit.

After the spring, I’ll head back East (haha! ‘back East’! I’ve been transformed into a Utahan!), spend a couple of days at home, take a train down to New York City and live for a month or two with my old roommate Steve Dethloff, who’s moving to NYC after he graduates. I’ll try to get a job, possibly doing something writing/editing related, or maybe make some contacts in the publishing world. Or not. We’ll see how it goes. But either way, I’ll have enough time to work on my writing.

Also, if I’m back East in August, I’ll be in a good position to attend Worldcon 2009 in Montreal. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to go, but it’s only 4-5 hours from my home. I could borrow my parents’ car and drive up. Then, later in August, we’re going to have our family vacation out on Cape Cod, so if I’m back East for summer, I’d definitely be in a good position for that.

Wherever I go, I’ll try to find work, but even if I don’t, I still have enough money left over from the Pell grant that these plans are still viable. I’m certain I can find work down here in Provo, but I’m not that certain about New York. Still, if I’m down there for only a month or two, it shouldn’t be too hard. If I sublet out from Steve, rent should only be about $250-$300 per month.

Trouble is, there isn’t any awesome trip to the Middle East involved in these plans. :'( That’s sad. But still, if I want to focus on my writing to get ready for World Fantasy and (potentially) Worldcon, it’s probably a better idea to stay in the country. Going abroad would mean making a lot of difficult cultural and linguistic adjustments, and I’m worried that that would make it difficult to write. I know that last time I went to Jordan, I didn’t hardly write at all (except in my blog, of course).

So, until I come up with a better plan, that’s what it looks like I’m doing for now. We’ll see if things change. And as for my novel, this week I’m totally going to do better. I got up at 7am this morning and got in a good hour of writing before school. Momentum is definitely building up again.